Baa-Ram-Ewe!

by Darkonshadows

Rating: teen
Tags: Smolder, Adventure, Violence, Crossover, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Them's Fightin' Herds, Ocellus
Length: 2537659

"Baa-Ram-Ewe!" - The ancient war cry of the lambkin.

Note: Not a true sequel to Airship Mauled, though there will be references and one artifact in particular that leads to this story happening.

"Baa-Ram-Ewe!" - The ancient war cry of the lambkin.

Pom 'The Canine Queen' Lambchop never thought she would have to use those three meaningful words so much.

She was living an easy going life with her family in a place known as The Volcano, or Huoshan if you were a native, as the head of the Huoshan Canine Division of the Huoshan Guard.

Her (mostly) calm life as the HCD head is soon inexorably interrupted when she's called upon to be an escort for a team of diplomats to a meeting with the Ruler of Equestria, Princess Twilight Sparkle, in Ponyville.

This lambkin, the supposed Black Sheep of her generation with very meager personal ability to defend herself, is ripped away from the world of Equestria along with three others.

A timid lambkin, a cutesy loving dragon, a sweet studious changeling and a wannabe pirate goat are going to be stuck together for quite a while.

World 1: Equestria. (Prologue)
World 2: Skunk-Fu.
World 3: Kung Fu Panda.
World 4: Rocket Knight Adventures.
World 5: Disney Afternoon World/ Sly Cooper.
World 6: Pokémon Conquest (Dynasty Warriors Style)/Nasuverse (Fate/Stay Freeform)/Digimon (Freeform)/Final Fantasy (Monsters and Summons)
World Interlude: Littlest Pet Shot: World of Our Own(Plus extended universe)/Krypto The Super Dog (Legion of super animals, The Dog Star Patrol, DC Super Pets)/Paw Patrol.
World 7: TAMBELON (My Little Pony G1.)

Published 2020-08-29 10:30:00 UTC
Last updated 2025-02-13 23:15:55 UTC

Prologue: The Lambkin.

Author's Note

Well my surgery went off well enough and I've mostly recovered from it, it happened a short while after I finished Airship Mauled. Still scheduled for another one next year...

So here's my new story, Baa-Ram-Ewe! Featuring Pom the lambkin of Them's Fightin' Herds, at least my Equestrian version of her anyway.

BIG NOTE: It's kind of a spin-off as much as it is its own story. You won't see much, if any, Airship Mauled characters. You don't even need to read Airship Mauled to understand or follow this story, I just have them set in the same frame as one another.

This is going to be a massive multiple crossover thing.

Finished this page on August 22, 2020.

Prologue: The Lambkin.

Lambkin kind, what could one say about them?

Well, they were a race of what was known as the best training aids for therapists and psychologists to ever exist the world over, mostly because eighty percent of the lambkin population were hypochondriacs even at the best of times.

If it wasn’t fearing that they had some form of physical or mental illness, then it was the race wide problem of Panphobia, which can also be termed Omniphobia or Pantophobia, which is the absolute fear of everything.

The lambkin as a race held several world records for being the most neurotic race to ever exist, a single loud noise would set them off far more than it would an actual normal ‘animal’ sheep or ram.

Many other races on the planet of Equus saw the lambkin as quite odd, especially the sheep farmers among their kind. Actual sheep and rams were ironically braver than lambkins, male or female, tended to be.

Lambkin looked vaguely close to being like regular sheep, only they were definitely far more intelligent than the average pasture grazer. Becoming self-aware didn’t help really lambkin kind in the slightest, but they were definitely something approaching ‘kin’ to the animals they looked to be like and were always quite civil in their interactions with other races.

This race were quite known for their agriculture, some would even say they were on par with earth ponies in food production. They just didn’t have much in the way of any unique exports aside from their textiles industry and didn’t need much in the way of imports, aside from an absolutely astronomical amount of antidepressants.

A unicorn pony named Rarity did tend to get a few of her more high quality imports from lambkin kind for her dress making businesses.

As a race, lambkin were so boring with love or so absolutely high strung about every little detail that the love eating, shape changing, bug pony creatures known as changelings didn’t see them as worthy of the time spent to capture or steal the love from.

It was easy to see why lambkin kind were absolutely frustrating for changelings, they were definitely far too much trouble to deal with.

This is where one can actually find a few fairly positive effects of lambkins being extremely paranoid, one is that they could always escape a changeling hive one hundred percent of the time with relative ease and usually caused problems by freeing all the other prisoners that were nearby on their way out to cause a distraction.

Being cocooned by a changeling should have had a calming and love increasing effect as it does with every other species that they could feed off of, but lambkins tended to no sell being cocooned by changelings on the basis of their neurosis problems alone.

Changelings also had tons of issues infiltrating lambkin kind, they just could not emulate a lambkin’s level of outright sheer paranoia of nearly everything around them well enough.

This is why changelings stopped trying to squeeze love from the lambkin race a long time ago, they tended to always lose more food than they gained from even trying. Nowadays Changelings don't need to steal love, but they still dislike lambkin kind.

Other useful effects of being so weak and timid was that lambkin were largely ignored by threats like a Satyr known as the Storm King. Said Storm King passed them over because they weren’t interesting enough to be destroyed and would have been saved for last after said king took over the world. The destruction that could have happened, had said king succeeded, would have been entirely for the fun of it and or out of boredom.

So what does something like this mean for the lambkin military? The lambkin military usually consisted of one lambkin warrior and the aforementioned sheep farmers association, this is not a joke and was actually a bit of a thing.

Rams, the animals and not the average male lambkin, made up the entirety of the defensive parameter of lambkin kinds territory explaining why a number of lambkin were sheep farmers. The animalistic rams weren’t attracted to lambkins, but they would still protect them as if they were actually animalistic sheep.

As for the one lambkin warrior that made up the entire military? Once in a while, or every other generation or so of lambkin kind, there would be born what is colloquially known by lambkin kind as, 'The Black Sheep'.

The Black Sheep was not a lambkin that literally has black wool, even if that has happened once or twice, it was actually a lambkin that excels in combat beyond the rest of their race to an absolutely absurd degree.

Aside from the sheep farmers, or the one particular lambkin in question that you should never mess with, lambkin kind didn’t have a military to speak of. Many would say a single halfway trained unit of Equestria's Pony Royal Guard could take the entire territory of lambkin kind by themselves, despite also being notoriously poor fighters in general.

Instead lambkins tended to mostly rely on the protection given by their close friends and wonderful allies, the loving and nomadic alpacas and their fluffmancer warriors.

Alpaca kind always stopped in to see how lambkin kind was doing, they always traded for a lot of food before heading towards the frozen northern territories of the ice shaping reindeers, the powerful and somewhat destructive yaks and more recently the crystal ponies of the Crystal Empire run by Princess Cadenza.

In the current generation of Equestria, many of lambkin kind considered a lambkin named Pom to be 'The Black Sheep' of the current age.

They didn’t mind the fact that their warrior no longer lived near them. They thought for certain that Pom was the warrior lambkin of this generation, because why else would a lambkin choose to live on a volcano or would even be brave enough to do so?

Usually that one lambkin warrior tended to be a Lambkin Ram, but there were a few occasions where a Lambkin Ewe warrior would pop up and excel... somewhat. The Black Sheep of lambkin kind usually didn't have a long life expectancy if they picked one too many fights.

The actual ‘Black Sheep’ of said generation had kept his head low enough, so that when the lambkin known as Pom stuck her head out in what would be considered suicidal bravery by lambkin standards... Well, let’s just say that Pom immediately regretted all of her life choices that day and a few years afterwards.

The only thing that kept Pom safe was that she was an absolutely ludicrous magnet for various dangerous canines that would all protect her tooth and nail.

It was her confronting the dogs and attracting even more that got her exiled from her first home. It was also how Pom Lambchop earned the title ‘The Canine Queen’, because she currently had a ludicrous amount of familiars that were all canid of varying species found on Equus.

The actual Black Sheep of the generation was a master of passing the buck onto someone else even if he could accrue combat power at an insane rate. This Black Sheep of lambkin kind was a very lazy ram and managed to successfully avoid scrutiny, he would even be called brilliant and an absolute genius by other lambkin if they were to ever find out about this.

It didn't even take Pom very long to figure out that everyone considers her 'The Black Sheep'.

Now if only Pom knew that it was her brother that was the actual ‘Black Sheep’ of their generation. At least her brother helped her with an education and was brave enough to keep bringing her food to where she was functionally exiled to, even if he was absolutely terrified for his little sister living alone with so many various canines.

The thing that further proves Pom as being 'The Black Sheep' of their generation in the eyes of all lambkin, is when Pom left her exile to help save Equestria from the shadow monsters leaking into the world. She did so by finding the ‘Key of the Lambkin’ and using it to permanently seal the monsters off from getting into the world anymore.

What perpetuated this falsehood even further is that Pom helped, for a given definition of it, to save the next door world of Fœnum as well and married a powerful fiery longma that was the captain of the Huoshan Guard.

The lambkin were all happy to know that Pom was still doing their whole race proud.

Pom would beg, cry and whine to differ, even if she was moderately content with being where she is.

"Baa-Ram-Ewe!" Is the cry of 'The Black Sheep' to unite the lambkin or any other comrades in battle, Pom has yet to use it as she didn't believe she deserved to use the war cry of her ancestors.

While she didn't know who 'The Black Sheep' actually was, Pom was fairly certain that it wasn't in fact her.

Could Pom actually be another rare Black Sheep like her brother, or was she just another weak willed lambkin that incidentally got pushed into the deep end of the pool thanks to her familiars?

-=-

In a city built onto the side of a volcano and sitting on the rooftop of a restaurant was the lambkin named Pom, the lambkin was calmly staking out the intricate stone streets below with four puppies nearby her on the roof.

Pom had fairly large head compared to her small and frail looking body, some would even say that her head was half her body weight alone. She had long gangly legs that looked awkward to move around on and her white wool was actually quite thick while looking thin in the way that it covered her whole body, this would be where the other half of her weight comes from.

She was adorable, frail looking, quite kind to those that knew her and likely weighed far less than sixty pounds.

The powerful little puppies were milling about and roughhousing playfully nearby were all Canis Minor, magical dogs that could move fast and plow through brick walls with relative ease once they built up their momentum. That was just the strength of the puppies alone, a full grown Canis Major could beat a hydra.

The puppies mother was Big Mama and she wasn’t present today for several various reasons, which is why they were with their designated Baa-baa.

Pom seemed to be entirely focused on the comings and goings of everyone below on the street.

There were the many natives to this region the longma, half pony and half dragon hybrids. One of them was Pom’s wife, of whom she loved dearly. They were in general friendly and courteous, if a bit too stoic at times.

There were a few dragons today, they were always honored by the longma. Dragon Lord Ember was keeping good ties with the longma of Huoshan and things were going smoothly in the dragon lands as they worked through their friendly alliance with Equestria.

It was kind of sad that the volcano was halfway to going completely dormant after the massive shadow monster attack that made the spirit of the volcano move to save the people that lived here. Dragons were renowned and honored by longma, their volcano once used to be one after all and its spirit notably responded in their time of need.

A few kirin, sometimes known as dragon unicorns and the other dragon pony hybrids, were coming out of the spa and chatting amiably with a griffon or two. They were always friendly… except when they became angry about something.

Pom didn’t like kirin very much when they became angry flaming nirik. At least you could tell that longma and Kirin were cousin species to one another by their similar abilities with fire.

Speaking of, there were some unicorn ponies, pegasus ponies, hippogriffs and a few other sightseeing beings that were gathered together in tour groups.

There was even a wolf like diamond dog that looked to be just enjoying the sights with a longma that didn’t look native to Huoshan. Said longma was currently snuggling up against a jorogumo pony and there was an excited little filly looking everywhere while riding on the large spider pony’s back.

Pom shivered as soon as she saw the spider pony, she laid herself flat out on the roof until that group was out of sight.

Afterwards Pom just watched the silent comings and goings of the street, one of her puppies came over to her and nuzzled against her side. She idly reached out a hoof and started petting him, the puppy named Ruff was always a big Baa-baa’s boy and a good puppy.

His identical brothers Woof, Tuft and Puff continued to happily play with one another while ignoring their brother getting in some personal time with their Baa-baa.

Pom being the puppies Baa-baa was a lifelong responsibility that the lambkin would always handle with a smile. She knew how to speak canine, that came from years of only being surrounded by them. One of her skills was the ability to perfectly mimic the bark of a Canis Minor, which actually sent a short range shockwave from her mouth.

She didn’t use the burst bark much, but it helped to speak to the canines on their level if she wanted them to listen to her.

She soon affectionately cuddled the puppy to her chest and relaxed a little, today was a ‘seemingly’ quiet day in Huoshan.

The lambkin was still rather alert as she was waiting for something to happen, she wouldn’t be sitting on the roof of this noodle shop otherwise.

-Huoshan, Upper Tier, Noble District, Low Manes Noodle House, Pom-

I wonder how I could be so lucky to have Tianhuo in my life, she was always so encouraging and patient with me. Today I was going to try and make her proud of me… I also really didn’t want to fail as the head of the Huoshan Canine Division.

Huoshan was a really nice place, I’m glad I moved here, it beats sitting in a valley with the giant creepy skeleton of a snake that kept giving me nightmares… it actually still does come to think of it. Now that I thought about, it’s probably going to come up in my dreams again tonight. Why did I have to think about it?!

Sighing loudly in exasperation, I tried to keep my head together, I was supposed to be paying attention and looking out for trouble makers.

Huoshan was warm year round, at least until the volcano started going a bit dormant after the mess that happened at Huoshan when shadows monsters breached the barrier between worlds in mass just outside the city.

I really spent most of that time protecting and leading civilians to safety or ordering my beasties around to fight mechanical ponies. Pony golems were easy to fight, I wasn’t hurting anyone and I didn’t have any qualms about hitting something that didn’t feel pain to begin with.

I personally didn’t like fighting, I didn’t appreciate violence in the slightest, but I did like the idea of being able to defend myself. I have since avoided the tournaments the longma ran between themselves and the reindeer, my time was better spent training with all my beasties and Tianhuo.

“HEY, STOP, THIEF!” My attention was drawn to a kirin yelling at a earth pony who was quickly making his way down the street with a marked bag of money.

Given that the bag of money looked incredibly cliché, I guess that was my cue to begin. My puppies noticed me moving into position to jump off the roof and the four of them were suddenly alert when I actually did.

I was really quite lightweight, I could fall from a mile up and my wool causes enough drag that I’d hit the ground with about five pounds of force. Did that once during a really odd tournament where a brick wall somehow ended up being an opponent due to some form of clerical error or something.

I hit the ground rolling and came into a standing position in front of the thief.

“Halt, Huoshan Guard, give yourself up or face the consequences of your actions!” I tried to say sternly while staring down the earth pony, the pony just smiled at my stuttering and shivering.

“You’ll have to catch me first copper!” The pony had dark green fur and bright blue hair. I noted his cutie mark was of hoof prints with clouds of dust behind them, obviously a pony that was specialized in free running.

He managed to dart around me before I could even begin to react to his speed.

“Puff, take to the air and follow him, make sure you don’t lose sight of him. The rest of you follow after him and attempt to pin him down!” One of my puppies twirled his tail and flew off as the others leapt from the roof, rolled across the ground like I did and then charged after the blazingly fast earth pony barking loudly.

I steeled my nerves and also started giving chase with determination, mostly to make sure my puppies didn’t hurt themselves in this training exercise.

1. On the lamb.

Author's Note

Music - Them's Fightin' Herds training stage music (Static). Can also be called, "One, Two Stomp".

1. On the lamb.

I watched as the pony hurriedly shoved a cabbage cart into the path of my puppies as he passed by it, the three of them just plowed straight through it sending cabbages and bits of wood flying.

I think I seriously underestimated my Canis Minor puppies a bit too much at times…

My puppies followed the thief into the alleyway, they hadn’t been slowed down in the slightest. Good puppies!

“Yes, my cabbages, woo!” The cabbage selling pony shouted with glee.

I gave her a disturbed look as I safely maneuvered my way around the broken bits of cabbages and wood, while trying to think ahead of the fleeing pony.

I continued running down the street I was on thinking about this. If I’m on this street then…

If the pony was heading towards the main staircase, he would be easily caught by the many longma that patrol it as it was the main way in or out of the various cities tiers and heavily guarded.

The pony was much more likely to have a way down to the middle tier and into the residential district, I couldn’t let him escape into the myriad of alleyways down there. If I lost him there then he might be able to get away and my evaluation would definitely reflect poorly on me.

I wasn’t really all that great at field work in the Huoshan Guard. I wanted to prove that I could personally handle myself… within reason of course.

I looked to the sky and then nodded, I started sprinting down the street two blocks as fast as I could go and turned the corner.

I rushed down the alleyway and immediately leapt to launch my rear hooves in a forward flying buck like my cow friend Arizona taught me how to do.

My aim was… entirely off.

I flew over the thief’s head as he ducked and he looked after me surprised, he was so distracted that he nearly got pounced on by my chasing puppies. He managed to avoid being pinned and continued onwards towards a rolled up rope ladder.

I watched in slow motion as he grabbed it and leapt over the side of upper tier and started to rappel down the wall, my puppies leapt over the side and started flying. They began harrying him as he rapidly lowered himself down towards the middle tier.

“Oh no, no-no-no!” Unfortunately I couldn’t follow as I was already heading towards the middle tier of the city the easy way, it was just the far more painful way to do it.

I flailed my wildly legs as I started to fall. Sure I’d easily survive this, but it could still hurt if I landed wrong.

I felt something grab the scruff of my neck and my fall slowed, I saw Puff out of the corner of my right eye straining his spinning tail to slow my fall.

I let out a sharp bark and pointed towards the roof of a pagoda, Puff angled my greatly slowed fall towards the sloped roof and released me to go continue keeping an eye on the thief.

Curling up, I hit the sloped roof and rolled down it towards the edge. Quickly uncurling, I twisted my body and caught the edge of the roof with my front hooves and slammed bodily against the wall below with a grunt. I looked down and became slightly dizzy.

“Uh… are you okay?” A longma asked worriedly from a nearby balcony.

“Huoshan Guard, just a bit busy with a training exercise, nothing to worry about!” I blurted out my response hurriedly as I released my grip and caught the edge of the sloped roof below me. I really didn't like being this high up.

I was starting to breathe pretty hard, but it wasn’t from exertion. It was just that all of this was all really, really stressful!

Dropping down two more times, I looked over my shoulder and narrowed my eyes at the streets below.

My puppies were still on the thief and had already passed below me. Ruff had actually managed to get his jaws around his left hind leg to slow him down, only to be bucked off a second later when the thief’s other leg slapped into his face painfully.

I know this was a training exercise, but that action had still irked me greatly. I looked towards a few slightly shorter buildings from my position and narrowed my eyes and looked towards Puff, the thief was already out of sight and my puppy was turning to the… right, got it!

He’s heading towards the left hoof square of the residential district, he was trying to lose us in a crowd! My puppies could all get easily distracted by all the people milling around there.

I swung my rear legs forwards and kicked off the edge of the sloped roofing I was holding onto. I shot off angling towards another sloped roof and curled up.

After rolling down this slope, I sprung out of my roll and slapped both my hooves together above my head. Thankfully I didn’t miss the rope full of colorful paper lanterns and started sliding towards the residential districts left hoof square.

My gaze went back to Puff’s position as I tried not to knock any of the lanterns off and then the crowded street below, if I had this right…

I pulled back my hind legs and launched them forward as I let go of the rope.

Just as the thief ran into the square my right hind leg missed him, but that was because I had come in too early. My left hind hoof slammed home and struck him across the temple making him stumble and become staggered.

He actually dropped his bag and a second later he toppled over groaning as I bounced and rolled forward to bleed off momentum.

“Huoshan Guard, you’re under arrest for theft and resisting an official of Huoshan.” I was actually able to say this without quivering or stuttering much, then again this pony did kick one of my puppies. “Don’t resist… please?”

“Okay, so outrunning you might be a bit of problem.” The pony grunted as he stood up. “Wait where’s the… darn it!”

My puppies Ruff and Woof were already dragging his bag out of the way and Tuft just bit into his right hind leg. He went to attack my puppy with his left hind leg and I barked out an order.

“Get him!” Following my command, Puff dived to ram into his left side, around the area where his ribs were. The pony gasped in pain and his kick to remove Tuft from his leg faltered. “Bite him!”

The pony thief didn’t see Ruff running to join his brothers on taking down the perpetrator and went for his neck in attempt to do a takedown.

None of the civilians were getting in the way and I had him before he could disappear into a crowd, now I just had to capture him.

“Ugh, I’ve never had this much trouble with escaping before!” The pony shouted as he quick slapped Ruff off his neck and roughly shook off the other two puppies. He even smacked them away with several sweeping swings of his hooves, my puppies were a bit dazed from the blows. This earth pony was really strong on top of being fast, his bite wounds weren’t even slowing him down all too much. “Normally I don’t fight, but this time Beat Feet is making an exception!”

Beat Feet, if that was his name, took a stance and narrowed his eyes on me. He charged forward and I squeaked as I ducked around to the right avoiding his left hoof jab.

He swung his right hoof in a hook for my head and I crouched under it to swing my front hooves upwards for his chin. This forced him to stumble back and out of the way of my counter.

“Go get him lads!” I shouted while ringing the bell I wore around my neck wildly, then quickly backpedaled while avoiding several more swiping attacks and led him directly into position for the attack I called.

Tianhuo got this bell for me and its chimes were rather calming to my ears in this scary situation, on the other side of things it was my signal for an all-out combined attack.

My four puppies twirled their tails in unison and immediately flew at Beat while he was distracted by trying to take me down.

Beat even tried to plant his hoof and spin buck me, roundhouse bucking wasn’t an easy maneuver to pull off and he almost snapped it out faster than I could avoid. He followed up with a one-two buck for my head as I dodged to the left and right.

This was a very really realistic training exercise, I'm glad I wasn't in any actual danger or I think I would have passed out by now.

Like the tiny torpedoes that they were, my puppies all slammed into him at the same time with incredible force. The impact sent the pony flying into a nearby wall. He hit it back first and fell to the ground groaning.

“Good puppies!” I cheered, my puppies barked happily as they turned to me. “Now help me detain him… where is the examiner? He should be calling it right about now.”

My four puppies piled onto the thief and made sure he was staying down.

“We’ll take it from here Pom, someone in a nearby pagoda alerted us to the disturbance here.” It was Mr. Yoshi, the longma that was a good friend of my wife. He was a good and honorable Huoshan Guard. “You managed to stop a notorious criminal today, color me impressed. Tianhuo had it right, you really are something else when you’re focused!”

“So how did I do on my training exercise?” I asked nervously while idly scuffing my right hoof against the street and shrinking in on myself a bit.

“Er… about that…” Yoshi started to say and I saw the flames on his head flicker in a way to show embarrassment. I learned longma body language and knew when one was flustered, at least Tianhuo was easy to read.

“Sorry I was late, but the costume was a bit problematic to get on. Also it took me a while to even find you, you weren’t even in the training zone and I got worried that something might have happened to you Pom.” I turned to another male longma named Li Ju in a large goofy looking costume, it was so utterly ridiculous and hard to see as scary with the words ‘thief’ written at the barrel on both sides in bright, cheery even, colorful letters and on the chest read ‘bad guy’ in bold letter. At best the costume was a poor caricature of an actual thief with the black and white stripes, the big inflated evil grinning head really added on to the ridiculousness of it. “I’m glad to see you’re okay Mrs. Lambchop, we can start the training exercise now the examiner is… wait, what happened here?”

“Wait… what… but…?” I was confused didn’t we just do the training exercise? Was that big goofy money sack actually filled with stolen money?! Was I hyperventilating? I was hyperventilating! Why was it getting worse?!?

“You just caught an actual thief Pom, one that has been giving us a few problems lately. Beat Feet is really fast on hoof and we’ve been having a heck of a time keeping up with him even if we can fly.” Yoshi explained as he was in the middle of making sure the thief couldn’t get away by tying him up. “This wasn’t actually a part of your training or evaluation, but you still did a great job. Exemplarily done capture even, the HCD head and her hounds are both quite worthy of the Huoshan Guard and I'll put in a good word of your achievement Pom.”

“You mean… I just sent my puppies… against an actual criminal… someone who wasn’t part of the actual training exercise… heh… heh-heh..” My lower right eye lid twitched upward a little. “And he could have seriously hurt them… or me…”

Why did everything suddenly feel so-

-Yoshi-

“Well blacking out from stress afterwards wasn’t the worst reaction to have to that news… I’ve seen lambkin react far worse to only very minor problems. Not that I’ve actually seen many lambkin wandering far away from their territory alone unless they were merchants, none of them can be really compared to Pom in staying on task at least.” It could have been worse, Pom could have released a hearing piercing scream. I saw Beat trying to worm himself away and proceed to stomp a flaming hoof down on his skull to knock him out cold. “So… Li Ju… should we send up a signal that we caught a thief with a high bounty or should it be the signal that Tianhuo should come pick up her wife?”

“Tianhuo, I like the pretty pink colors of that signal and I’m a pretty big fan of summoning the Captain herself.” At Li Ju’s suggestion, I reached into my armor and pulled out a small self-standing firework. “Can you help me out of the costume? It’s clearly not getting any use today and the only reason I’m wearing it is so that Pom wouldn’t be so scared of the actual training exercise… I think we failed in that endeavor. I will try to do better next time.”

“Of course.” With a flick of my hoof the fuse was lit when a small flicker of flame and heat burst from it. I quickly planted the firework on the ground. It went up and exploded into several colorful splashes of neon pink and white.

“Does it really say something about Pom that she has her own signal as part of the Huoshan Guard?” Li Ju queried idly, I just shrugged at him.

Ten seconds later a streaking fireball shot towards our position and Tianhuo hit the ground within seconds with a worried look on her face. She stepped out of the crater she made upon landing and looked to the tied up thief, the four puppies idly nudging Pom and then to the two of us.

Tianhuo sighed loudly and slowly dragged her right hoof down her face.

-That evening, Pom-

The smell of something wonderful hit my nostrils and that was what woke me up, I sat up on a large comfy pillow.

“Where am…” My face was suddenly hit with a large tongue and I blinked away my grogginess to look up at Big Mama and then down at the four happy puppies snuggling against me.

Big Mama let out a loud bark, probably to alert Tianhuo that I was awake. She stalked off to lay down and the puppies just started running around happily after seeing I was okay.

That’s when she came in, she was balancing a frying pan on her flaming hoof and I tilted my head at it. Her green scales, her flaming mane and her bright red, or sometimes orange, eyes looked at me with affection. The smile on her face brought a small meek one to my own, her flaming wings spread out like a pegasus wings tended to do when she looked at me.

“Ah, you are awake my lovely Pom. I’ve recently taken up cooking and am making a stir fry for your success today, I wish to be the one to take care of you this time. That stallion had quite the bounty on him.” She came over to me, her flickering mane of flames seemed to be reading as content with how slowly they flowed. The snake like flow of her walking over to me was as elegant as Tianhuo herself was. “You showed quite a lot of bravery today, even when it wasn’t actually the exercise you thought you were being brave for.”

“I still blacked out afterwards like a coward Tian…” I turned my eyes away from her and she quickly gripped my chin with her free hoof to turn my eyes back to hers.

“A city cannot be built without its foundations, you are still working on yours and I am proud that you at least handled yourself well enough before you knew that you were facing an actual enemy. You are a true member of the Huoshan Guard, never forget this.” She nuzzled me and then dimmed the flames of her hoof holding the frying pan, her forked tongue slid gently along my cheek and I felt my face heat up. “Our meal will be done soon, it will be ready by the time you are done training your fluffmancer talents with Paprika.”

The sizzling vegetables made my mouth water and it seemed Tianhuo wasn’t too bad at preparing a home cooked meal. She had great control of her flames and I didn’t fear she would accidentally burn me in the slightest, she started to saunter off while gazing into the pan and increasing the flames from her hoof slightly with a curiously distrustful look at the food.

I was technically the proverbial house wife of the two of us and I practically took care of Tianhuo and my beasties more often than she did me when off duty. I was a bit upset that she saw it as a failure on her part and that she wanted to do more to take the weight off of me doing so much for her myself.

I really liked doing things for Tian though and she really didn't have to worry about me so much.

Being capable of the lower levels of fluffmancy, I wasn’t exactly gifted in it nor would I ever be able to do the insane higher end crazy stuff that an alpaca can do with their fluff. At least I was learning to do what I was capable of from a god tier grand master fluffmancer and good friend.

Hold on… did Tian just imply that…

“Does that mean that Paprika is currently beh…” I was suddenly encased in a wall of fluff from behind and the life was slowly getting squeezed out of me by a pair of recognizable hooves. “H-e-l-p… m-e…”

I was now being buried alive by a notorious snuggle happy alpaca’s exceedingly dangerous yellow blonde fluff. Well it at least explained why I wasn’t drowning in beasties at the moment, Paprika on average scared more than half of them by the very proximity of her snuggle aura.

“Paprika, I must respectfully ask that you do not stress my wife too much or break her.” After Tianhuo gave a pointed stare to the grinning face above me, I was freed from the depths of Paprika’s demonically thick fluff. “She has had quite a trying day to great success.”

“Meep.” Paprika squeaked out while waving in a friendly manner to Tianhuo, her purple eyes filled with life and joy. A little too much life and joy if someone were to ask me.

“Train well Pom, dinner will be ready shortly and tonight is a good night to snuggle with my brave little lambkin.” Tianhuo finally left me to my impending fluffy demise.

I turned to the alpaca just smiling at me and bouncing in place with a gleeful expression on her face, I sighed and tried to mentally prepare myself for this fluffmancy lesson. Paprika was always hooves on with her fluff controlling lessons, that wasn’t a good thing when this maniac of an alpaca was involved.

I think I had a good hoof on two decent defensive abilities.

One ability was puffing out the fluff at my forehead. It certainly made leaps a little bit floatier, Paprika thinks I might be lightweight enough to use my fur as a glider like a flying squirrel with a little more effort.

Maybe I could actually fly in the air with all the other longma that burst around on jets of flame and burning wings or I could even play with my tail spinning puppies.

I wasn’t exactly scared of falling, but vertigo and acrophobia were both still a thing for me even if I could handle a fall.

The other ability was tightening all of my fur to provide better protection against impacts and weaponry. This came more naturally at the point of impact as long as it was hitting fur and, if done quickly enough, can repel attacks with equal amount of force or even greater for a counter. I couldn’t do the counter reliably, much less keep up the fluff armor forever like Paprika seemingly does.

Fluffmancy was interesting to learn about from an instructor that doesn’t speak, but at least she’s showing me how to do some of these things in a easy to understand manner.

We went over a basic review of those two abilities I’ve learned. Even if I only had minimal fluffmancy talent, it certainly felt like it was worth the effort.

Paprika was also quite happy to stay for dinner and help Tian finish cooking, Tian kind of needed the help as this was her first time making a meal for me for once.

-Forty five minutes later-

“It is nice that you can come to visit Paprika, even if you are a truly demented demon of snuggles.” Tianhuo really didn’t hold back her opinion of Paprika as she ate her stir fry, but Paprika didn’t mind and even smiled as she sat with us at our dinner table.

Around us were various large bowls of food being shared by my beasties, they were quietly eating their meals and the moon was rising into the sky. Tonight was another nice night with my family.

The Canis Minor and Major were my first beasties. Afterwards I attracted a Cerberus, an Orthros, a heavenly Tenko, the wooden Timber-wolf, A dire wolf, a Grimm, a Cu Sith and I was still finding more beasties like a lion dog. Said lion dog was better known as a Foo-dog.

Foo-dogs were native to Chineigh and some were rarely found here in the dragon lands as well, they were very protective beings and were said to stop evil spirits from entering where they resided.

All of my beasties were peacefully relaxing around the dinner table and they were always here for me.

After dinner, I wondered if tomorrow will be more peaceful than today was.

I seriously hoped so as I curled into the warmth of a pair of loving scale covered hooves wrapping around me in bed.

2. Trouble finds ewe.

The next morning, Lambchop residence, Middle Tier Huoshan, Pom-

We were getting plenty of exercise this morning when Tian decided to ask me to do something silly.

“Give me a war cry!” Tianhuo was always so calm and nice, I would have never had known she was once a bully if she had not told me herself.

“Oh um… rrrawwwrr... heh.” A slight smile tugged at my lips as I looked at Tianhuo giving me a faint smile, it soon left her face though.

“Do you not have a better war cry, a howl perhaps?” Well Tianhuo wasn’t wrong, I did technically have the ability to howl like my beasties. Mr. Birch the timber-wolf and some other beasties saved that for nights of full moons where I joined them, but we tried not to disturb our neighbors too much. “That aside, you are ridiculously adorable.”

My cheeks started heating up by quite a lot and I scuffed the floor with my left hoof, Paprika was just watching us with a smile and cuddling one of my poor beasties that probably went to close to her on a dare.

“Well I can do howls like my beasties… There’s also the war cry of my people, but I don’t exactly think I’m actually worthy of using it.” I looked down and tapped my hooves together nervously. "We only do the howl thing during full moons though."

“That certainly explains the noise complaints we get from the fields near Huoshan every full moon. Are you allowed to tell me about it, the war cry I mean?” Like lambkin ever really have any secrets Tianhuo, we’re too paranoid to keep them for longer than a day. Not that we don’t have the ability to keep a secret by not talking about something we thought was already known, that usually happened by accident.

“It’s not that much of a secret, the war cry goes Baa-Ram-Ewe… only it’s shouted out loud. There’s more to the war cry, but that’s the main part of it to be used by the Black Sheep of our generation.” I received a look of curiosity from Tian so I decided to go a bit further in my explanation. “Black Sheep are rare among lambkin kind, they don’t have to be literal in appearance and they tend to grow stronger exponentially… as far we lambkin are concerned when it comes to definitions of ‘stronger’ and ‘exponentially’. Really a Black Sheep is about as half as strong as the strongest earth pony. Close to being an upper percentile in capability, but never quite fully there. The last holder of the lambkin key was a one before it ended up with me… he was a brave and strong ram.”

I looked up to the key of the lambkin and the key of the longma sitting up on the shelf nearby, Tianhuo smiled at hers proudly and bowed her head when she looked to mine. She turned back to me.

“Are you a Black Sheep?” Tianhuo seemed honestly interested in the topic.

“Oh my goodness, no! Black Sheep are always legendarily known for being quite capable of fighting by themselves, my beasties do most of the fighting for me and I just consider myself lucky to even have them looking out for me.” I looked off to the side at the various canines sitting around us, a number of them let out barks of happiness and friendship. The Foo-dog let out a bark of protection, which was nice of my new canid with the lion mane. “I seriously doubt I’m the Black Sheep of my generation of lambkin, but there probably is one. There is a general consensus among the lambkin that I’m the Black Sheep though, but I haven’t even shown any sign of being one aside from my decent leadership skills with my beasties. The actual Black Sheep is likely living a far more peaceful life than I do… and I’m fairly jealous of that…”

“Not all strength is in the body alone Pom, it can be in the heart, the mind and the spirit. I believe your strengths are as great, even if you are not this legendary Black Sheep of the lambkin.” Tianhuo gently wrapped a hoof around me and nuzzled me slowly. She always slowed down for me and would always be gentle when it came to approaching me.

I nuzzled up into her, she was larger than me and yet she saw something in me to be proud of despite my size, weak will and general overall meekness. That she even married me really told me how much she loved me. Lambkin rarely, if ever, have such a wonderful partnership outside of our own kind… mostly because other lambkin do not get out much.

We both heard a loud sigh and turned to Paprika who was watching us cuddle together with smile and formed a heart out of her fluff from her back. We had forgotten that we had company and we were both probably turning red at this moment.

“You said that ‘Baa-Ram-Ewe’ was only a part of the war cry?” Tianhuo was trying to distract us from the fact that we had started to get rather affectionate in front of Paprika. I obliged her as I wanted a quick distraction from the alpaca in the room.

“Yes, the full version is this Tian. Baa-Ram-Ewe, to our fleece, heart, home and family, no matter where we lambkin go, we’ll always hold dear and true.” I received a light squeeze from Tian.

“It sounds like ancient wisdom of your people that you should heed and pay closer attention to. I have given you much of my culture, time and care, I am happy to finally be receiving at least some of your culture and giving back some time and care of my own.” Tianhuo gently let me go and nodded to me. An explosion outside alerted us to move towards the nearest window, we saw several colors in the sky. It wasn’t pink and white, that was mine and it said a lot about how panicky I was that they had a signal specifically designed for me. It was actually rather touching that all the longma in the Huoshan Guard cared about me that much. I was frankly nobody important, the longma still accepted me and my relationship with the captain of their guard readily and without question. “A summons for all available Huoshan Guard, this also includes the head unit of Canine Division.”

“Is it going to be something horrible?” Shivering at the thought of something major happening around here and what happened the last time. I still did well enough with my beasties, but that whole situation was a mess.

“Not likely, it is more than likely that the current Dragon Lord comes to ask an important task of one of us.” Sitting down to rub her chin Tianhuo turned to me with a smile. “Do not worry, I think it will be a mostly benign meeting at best.”

“Do you think it will be Dragon Lord Torch?” I could not keep the stuttering out of my words, Torch was the size of a small mountain and he was really scarily large.

“No… he has for the most part retired and acts as council to the new dragon lord. The current Dragon Lord is Dragon Lord Ember, for it was Torch's daughter that won the Gauntlet of Fire against his wishes.” Tianhuo quickly explained what the Gauntlet of Fire meant for dragons, it was how they decided a strong and wise leader to lead them into a new era. “Many believe that she will grow to be an even greater dragon lord than her father, come let us make haste… will you be coming as well Paprika?”

Ember was currently much smaller than her father and still quite young, I've seen her once before. Never really met Ember personally or ever talked to her though.

Paprika shook her head no and waved us off, ‘The Demon’ alpaca apparently had other things to do. That was her title and many knew of her by it and agreed that Paprika definitely deserved it, among those was Tianhuo after having fought her for several days straight of trying to avoid being cuddled and snuggled into submission.

Paprika just thought Tianhuo was playing and it was terrifying that she walked away with very minimal injury compared to a tired and completely bedraggled Tian. I would eventually be somewhat capable of doing the barest fraction of something similar as a minimal talent fluffmancer myself.

-Huoshan, Upper Tier Noble District, Middle Square-

Tianhuo gathered in the square with many of the main units of the Huoshan Guard.

I too gathered with my various beasties, plus a few of my longma friends from Canine Division who had their own dogs that I have helped trained personally. I was head of the division because I was an expert in communicating with and training partners to help the weaker members in the Huoshan Guard handle bigger problems. My job was mostly mediating problems between the longma and their canine partners. I also help the people of Huoshan with small tasks.

“Thank you all for coming on such short notice. For those of you who should be patrolling the city today, you can return to your jobs immediately. Those of you who need rest, please go get some and I am sorry to have woken you up for this meeting and I... apologize. I know what it is like to be woken up for nothing and I can get pretty grumpy personally.” Ember was a nice blue dragoness, her appearance was fairly attractive. I think I have a bias for scaled individuals, I was married to one. We waited for the many longma of aerial patrols to fly off, a number of Canine Division guards started moving alongside their partners down the staircase or off to the left or right arms of the noble district to spread out. Once that was done, I was among those that were left that weren’t on patrol today. “Those of you who are left, I have need of a few members from the Huoshan Guard who have plenty of free time for an important diplomatic mission.”

I sadly had a lot of free time, hopefully I could go completely...

“Are you actually member of the Huoshan Guard?” Ember suddenly noticed me, as a lambkin I really stood out among all the longma that were standing at attention. I also stood out when I had an army of beasties with me, I could clearly understand the question and why it was directed at me.

“Yes, Dragon Lord Ember, I am head of the HCD." I approached and bowed, my Canis Minor puppies followed my actions and bowed as well. "Huoshan Canine Division, Pom Lambchop at your service.”

“Hmmm… are you particularly busy this week?” Ember crouched down and started to gently pet Tuft, he gave a growl of contentment as he nuzzled against the palm of Ember’s left claw.

“Aside from catching a notorious pony criminal yesterday, no she mostly acts as a mediator to problems that may be occur among Canine Division and she assists people with minor things. She’s mostly a reserve member when it comes to more active duty ma'am.” A longma answered, he was from my Canine Division and his partner was a large Great Dane. I think his name was Kai Ju… the Ju family of Huoshan was fairly enormous. “She might be a lambkin, but she is an honorable member of our society and has brought much joy to us all.”

Yeah, the joy of me freaking out and doing a ton of silly or embarrassing things. Thankfully, as a lambkin, I would easily be passed over for doing anything too imp…

“Okay, we have one volunteer for the diplomatic mission then!” Wait… what?! I looked at Ember as she smiled at Tuft as he licked her face. After playfully toying with him for a bit, Ember eventually put him down shooed him off so he could go stand at attention with his brothers.

“Um… why me… if you don’t mind me asking that is Dragon Lord Ember?” Really, I shouldn’t be questioning a superior like this, but I had to know. “You do realize how lambkin can get with high stress situations right?”

“I don’t mind the question. I’m well aware of the stigma surrounding lambkin like yourself, it’s like how there’s a stigma surrounding dragons as well. If anyone could understand that, you definitely would.” Ember crossed her arms and nodded sagely at me. I guess dragons were known for being brutish idiots, the stereotype wasn’t entirely wrong nor was it entirely right. Ember for one seems like a well-educated dragon and she did handle herself fairly well during the shadow monster invasion. “Since this is a diplomacy mission, a lambkin wouldn’t be a very threatening protective force to send with the team and this ‘should be’ a low stress mission. I say ‘should be’, because you’ll be heading to Ponyville and it is quite a hot spot for weird things to happen at least once a week. I’ve personally seen how things get around there a few times myself, but I’m quite sure that you can handle it.”

I didn't like that vote of confidence. I’ve never been to Ponyville… though I’ve heard some things about how out of control things get around there. Arizona, Paprika and Velvet lived closer to the place than I ever did.

“Um, is there any limit on to the number of beasties I can take with me?” I looked over my shoulder at my canine entourage.

“Are all of those canines behind you yours?” Ember asked with a little surprise.

“Yes.” I answered meekly.

“I can certainly see why you’re the head of the Huoshan Canine Division, you may only take two Canis Minor with you.” Ember actually seemed concerned about my beasties. “Will the rest of them be alright without you?”

“They can take care of themselves as much as they take care of me.” Some would say they could take care of themselves better because I existed in their lives to teach them how things worked.

“Good, I need one more volunteer. Someone outside of Canine Division.” A longma eventually came forward and bowed to Ember and told her about himself. It was a purple scaled longma named Gai Jin, he was born in Neighpon and came to live here in the home of his ancestors. “Right then, you two will set out tomorrow to meet with the diplomacy team at the train station we’re having built leading to nearby here in the dragon lands. We’re not letting the trains move into the dragons lands themselves though. You two, along with the puppies I guess, are going to be a part of the team to discuss things with Princess Twilight Sparkle of Ponyville. You are to keep the diplomatic team safe, you are not to be aggressive in any way and you are to be ‘friendly’. Do you understand this mission I’m giving you? Do not interfere in the diplomats jobs and things should proceed accordingly.”

“Yes Dragon Lord Ember!” I intoned alongside Gai Jin and thought about which of my four puppies to take with me.

-The next day, a fair distance from Huoshan, Train Station-

I really didn’t like trouble, but it always seems to find me somehow. Tianhuo was quite reassuring when she said Ponyville was said to be mostly peaceful like Huoshan was and that everything would be fine.

Ember had said otherwise and she’s actually been there.

“Bwwarr!” A red dragon loudly shouted in my face, he started laughing immediately afterwards as I reacted poorly to the sudden fright.

I of course squeaked, fell over, curled up and locked up into a shivering mess of fluff.

Woof and Ruff didn’t like that and started twirling their tails and growling. They sped up to him to slam into his belly, thus doubling him over, and then right into his thick skull to leave him on his back with a painful looking concussion. No injury to either of my puppies. You don’t mess with Canis, Major or Minor.

Once they came back to my side, I whined out ‘good puppies’, in canine. Nobody would ever know the difference between me whining in fright and giving my puppies pats on their lovable heads.

“Really Garble, already causing trouble? I can see that, despite Pom’s personal nature, that the puppies are more than enough security for this mission if they can take you down.” Ember muttered angrily as she stalked forward towards the train. “I came here to see off my diplomacy team and that’s what you do? I order you, as Dragon Lord, to be on your best behavior Garble! I am letting you go with the team so you can visit your sister, please do not make me regret this.”

“Of course Ember.” This Garble stated meekly as I was forced into standing up on wobbly legs by Woof. Ruff stood next to Woof and glared at Garble menacingly.

“Hopefully Pinkie Pie doesn’t cause another diplomatic incident, then again dragons are rarely ever allergic to dragon fruit. Nobody could have seriously known about that until it came up.” Having no idea what Ember was talking about, I tried to stay at attention and be brave… or at least braver than I was acting a second ago. “Now apologize to one of the guards for this diplomacy mission.”

“Her?!?” Garble seemed to be disbelieving that I was a Huoshan Guard. I didn’t fault him for it at all, even I didn't believe it at times. Ember gave him a stern glare. “Fine… I’m sorry I scared you like that, I’ve been trying to do better about being… ‘nice’.”

He says ‘nice’ like it should always be in air quotes.

We boarded the train and were soon our way for Ponyville, apparently there were diplomatic talks involving the train station being built leading towards dragon territory, the possibility of sending more dragons to the school of friendship and a few other things like airship commodity trade routes and such to that effect.

My job was to stay near the diplomats and prevent anything from happening to them with Gai Jin, shouldn’t be too difficult right?

A day earlier, Ponyville, ???-

I be tracking down a pony that has taken my treasure from me, they are getting pretty far and this is where I last heard of them. They came here to be selling the treasure to some weird kook and something about bringing someone to a powerful demon.

None of that be mattering to me, I am only here for what is mine.

I am not being a great fighter or even a truly great pirate yet, but I will eventually get my treasure back and will be seen as being a real pirate. A pirate needs land legs as much as those for the sea, I at least was being good with a boat before coming here.

Being as I am going to be here for a while yet, I will seek out some food and shelter. Not that I have the money to pay for either, but I am being quite crafty for my age.

“Oh, do you want a cupcake new completely welcome person to Ponyville I’ve never met before this day that’s going to go on a great adventure as part of someone else’s story?” To be fair, the earth pony was fast and a blur of pink. It is being understandable that I be bleating my head off in fright as soon as she appeared. “Ooh nice beard, don’t see those often on girls. Here you go… you seem like you need this! Hi I’m Pinkie Pie by the way, sorry for the scare, I get that reaction a lot. I honestly don’t know why though…”

A she devil as fast as you not understanding why you spook people… I am thinking we are going to be good friends in the future. Even if I may be stealing stuff from you on the principle of this first meeting.

I blinked when she is hoofing over a sack to me with a frowning face sticker on it and a cupcake was placed in my other hoof, I be giving her a queer eye as she smiled at me.

“Hope you like my sad sack for sad sacks, don’t forget to come to the party for you later in your honor! You look like someone who appreciates free food, I mean urchins like free food right? I made sure to put some healthy things in there for you too, growing goats like you need your nutrition!” A party for me and being in my honor? There is much oddness to this Pinkie and I nary likely to be seeing it anywhere else. "The invitation at the bottom of the bag has a map so you don't get lost, bye!"

The mare be zipping away at speeds my eyes just couldn't follow, and to think I thought I was a quick one. I looked around curiously. Nobody around us reacted to that or that odd mare at all.

"Wait... how is she knowing that I am being a street urchin?" I open the sack and looked inside, it is filled to the brim with delicious snacks, some sugary and others looked healthy.

I might not be stealing or doing anything harmful towards the pink one after all, since my stomach will actually have something in it this day. I am not being one to look a gift pony in the mouth when I didn't even know where I would be sleeping tonight.

I can surely find shelter in an alley around here or maybe be finding someone willing to house the likes of me, I be hearing ponies were nice like that.

I, Shanty, will take this boon for what it is while I search for the one who is going to sell ‘MY’ rightfully earned treasure here and if it's sold, then I will only need to find the one who bought it and will just have to take it back!

I pulled a tin can from out of the sad sack and bit a chunk out of it. Tastes almost just like the ones back at home, only a little bit more flavorful and it actually had stuff inside too...

-Ponville, ???-

"Soon Princess Twilight, I will be the one to bring you to Tambelon and this will usher in the age of Grogar!" The cloaked figure cackled as she held up the artifact she just purchased from a rather dubious source.

It glinted ominously as the figure waited for Princess Twilight to meet with the dragon diplomats, they were just biding their time.

3. A baa-d day!

A little orange dragon with purple fins slowly woke to the bright morning sun, hopefully guided by Celestia. Princess Twilight wasn’t nearly as good at doing it and the dragon named Smolder would never tell her that to her face. She faced a new day with her bright blue eyes wide open.

She rubbed at her horns that came from the sides of her head and pointed straight up and slowly dragged herself out bed with a loud yawn that sent small burst of flames from her mouth.

-Ponville, School of Friendship, Smolder-

I couldn’t wait for Gar-Gar to come visit me, my brother might actually like a change of scenery. Aside from Huoshan, the dragon lands were a bit… okay, let’s face it, they are dreary compared to everything else.

I mean when you see Ponyville, you see colors, bright smiles and friendly locals. You go to Huoshan and you’d see that the longma had a civilization running and a large cultural base. The longma were our cousins and they already had more stuff than us. Huoshan was the main, and possibly only, tourist destination in all of the dragon lands.

Dragons have a large amount of cash and we could create towns if we wanted to, we were just lazy and greedy about our hoards. We had the longma and Huoshan after all, but they had built that themselves. Well most dragons were lazy, I was actually completely into this friendship thing. Didn’t think I’d have this much fun or be this close to so many odd individuals.

“Morning Smolder!” The bright cheery voice of Ocellus brought a big grin to my face, it reminded me of how we first were when we came here.

The bright blue bug pony with the cyan eyes and ladybug style carapace was probably the best roommate I could ask for, since she was quiet a lot of the time.

The glittering mane frill, wings and tail were a cute pink color and well… Ocellus already knew about my passion for cute and silly stuff. I could be myself around Ocellus without having to act like dragon culture might want me to. Gar-Gar certainly got enough ribbing for his love of bongos and poetry, right up until that saved the day for us. Also, nothing was cuter or sillier than Ocellus herself, it’s embarrassing that I keep forgetting that Ocellus can feel everyone’s emotions and she obviously knew how I felt about her. We're still dancing around the particular issue of 'us'.

Yes, my brother Garble may still be a bit of a jerk, but he was getting much better about it.

I was at first rude and didn’t see the point of coming here to the friendship school, now I can see that Dragon Lord Ember had made a good call with me. I was not going to cause big problems and I had a nearby friendly face in Spike if I needed a dragon somewhat close to my age to talk to, plus actually trying new experiences opened up the entire world to me.

Ocellus was a meek and shy individual when we first met, trying to hide in plain sight. At least she was until we became friends, even then she was still somewhat shy like professor Fluttershy. She was more outgoing to those she knew and I didn’t think it was possible for her to hate anyone, she was the most studious friendship student in the school. I'd certainly give her straight A's with pluses for being a good friend.

I had once wondered why changelings were so bad at understanding holidays like Hearth’s Warming, or even Hearts and Hooves day, especially if they were so good at infiltrating places with their shape shifting ability. Apparently changelings are a bit culture blind. This led to some of the ways one could easily discover a changeling as they couldn’t mimic any cultural norms, at least not without extensive study or going completely native. This certainly explained Ocellus’s deep rooted interest in pony culture.

Going native was its own odd kettle of fish, especially when a changeling transforms to look like a pony for so long to the point that they actually forget what they originally were. They certainly made for great method actors in that respect. Becoming the mask actually scared a number of changelings and I constantly assured Ocellus she was fine just the way she was, that she could even be who she wanted or choose to be.

There are hidden depths to all of us oddballs that came here to study at the school of friendship, I learned a thing or two about Fluttershy’s hidden depths when she talked about her Abyssinian friends.

That Fluttershy was friends with what sounded like quirky and annoying feline jerks really threw me for a loop, then again she was also friends with Discord the ‘Lord of Chaos’ who was also still somewhat a jerk himself. I guess that’s kind of Fluttershy’s thing and I was friends with my griffon buddy Gallus, so I could kind of actually see the appeal somewhat.

“You must be really excited to see your brother.” Ocellus chirped as she read a book on magical plants below me.

“You better believe I am, I want to spend the day with him and introduce him to my friends.” That and you Ocellus, I really kind of wanted my brother to like you.

I think things have gotten better now that our various cultures were mingling, we were the first class of the friendship school and we wouldn’t be the last if we had anything to say about it.

-Ocellus-

Smolder was really brave, but she still hid the fact that she liked dressing up and doing cute things. I’m actually glad Thorax gave me the opportunity to be a representative for our race and I’m glad that I’ve been doing everyone back home proud.

Only… Ponyville seemed more like my home now. It felt strange to admit that to myself.

Thinking back on it, I wouldn’t have been able to get into cheerleading without Smolder or Yona. I’m not exactly that brave, which is why I asked Yona and Smolder to join with me. A yak like Yona was never exactly going to be the most graceful cheerleader, but we managed to make it work out and it took a lot of effort. Smolder even got to wear a cute costume without feeling embarrassed by being in front of everybody, she was adorable in it.

Yes, life here wasn’t bad and there were thankfully no more thousand year ‘can of worms’ for ponies to deal with, don’t know why anyone would put so many worms into one can. Maybe it’s a pegasus going fishing thing that translated into big squirmy problems being sealed into a tin can?

Other cultures were a little hard to understand sometimes, which is why we changelings were a bit weird when we took things too literally. The barbed Q’s incident said as much, to think it was just grilling food over an open flame and not making large, painfully pointy, Q shaped objects out of chicken wire.

How were we this bad when we spent most of our lives, after more than a few hiccups with several other races, primarily among pony culture and seemingly sneaking into it almost seamlessly at times!?

At least I didn’t have to think too hard about it today… oh wait, Smolder was heading towards the bathroom before me!

I quickly put my book down. While reading about wish granting flowers or poison joke was nice, I really needed to use the bathroom before smolder did. I learned my lesson from the last few times.

“No wait, you always use up all the hot water Smolder!” I yelled as I flew after my favorite dragon friend, mostly because she was my only dragon friend… that was beautiful and looked nice in a dress.

“Thought that’d get you out of study mode. Fine, I’ll wait on you, just make it quick. Also the book better be interesting.” Smolder sent me a smug smirk as I moved into the doorway. “The history of how comic books got started was a curious subject for you the last time you left me alone with one of your books.”

“Thank you Smolder, I thought you would find that really interesting too!” I was always trying to get Smolder interested in reading, dragons weren’t really big on education. Even griffons knew the importance of that, but with them it would cost you at least two legs. Good thing the friendship school has free scholarships for those actually willing to put in the time to grow friendships!

-An hour or so later, outside Ponyville’s train station-

I was walking with Smolder, as I was somewhat eager to meet her brother too. The train unloaded and my mood immediately soured when I saw a lambkin getting off the train with the diplomats a distance away.

“Whoa, I’ve never seen such a grumpy look on your face before, are you alright Ocellus?” Smolder gave me a concerned look and I sighed.

Lambkin and changelings didn’t exactly have the best history. Knowing what I do now, I can understand exactly why lambkin were considered ‘changeling bane’. Their culture wide paranoia really worked against us, they had somewhat sharp memories and would know if something was even slightly out of place.

“It’s nothing Smolder, I just have… issues… with a lambkin being here.” I watched as Smolder sent a curious glance to the lambkin with the two Canis Minor puppies, she was standing near the dragons and talking to a longma. The puppies I didn’t mind as long as I didn't try to disguise myself around them and the longma could even be a future friend of mine.

As for the lambkin, I did mind and I think I hated myself for immediately hating her on sight just based solely on the principle of what she was.

“A lambkin? Why is she hanging around the dragon diplomats?” Scratching at her right horn, Smolder gazed curiously as the lambkin and her brother, Garble, talked about something. “Also what issues could you have with lambkin? They are completely harmless and are notably the least aggressive intelligent beings in existence.”

“You’d think that wouldn’t you? They do look ‘oh’ so innocent…” Why was I receiving such a worried look from Smolder? Has she never heard me be sarcastic before?

“So… that’s a strong opinion, what’s causing it?” Smolder couldn’t possibly know that seeing a lambkin would ruin my day so thoroughly, I didn’t feel like explaining myself at this moment. “Lambkin are known for being the weakest, most timid race in the world. I even think you have something in common with them.”

“WE CHANGELINGS HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON WITH THOSE… er… sorry!” I had caused a scene and now I felt a bit guilty for attracting so much attention from the ponies meandering around us.

“Whoa… loudest I’ve ever heard you be.” Smolder scrutinized me. “So what’s the deal Cell?”

“Look being culture blind might have been a part of the problem, but you are right in that lambkin might be the weakest people around. To changelings however, they are known as changeling bane. You know, back when we were still love sucking menaces to society.” I sat down and we weren’t going to approach Garble or the dragon diplomats, I don’t think I could stand to be a near a lambkin quite yet. “How do I put this, lambkin should have been the easiest prey for us to get.”

“They aren’t? What was the problem, you’ve already hinted that culture was a part of it. How could the most panicky and easily spooked beings around cause changelings any kind of trouble?” Sighing at Smolder, I decided to be truthful and upfront with her.

“Back when we were starving for love, Chrysalis thought they’d be easy targets… I’ll just say that they weren’t and we found that out the hard way.” I closed my eyes and wrapped my front hooves around myself. Changelings stayed away from lambkin for good reasons. “Yes, they look timid and helpless to you, but lambkin are monsters to us changelings. They caused us a lot of painful nights of starvation. Even if it was the wrong way to go about living for us, we still needed the sustenance at the time. Cocoons had a tenth of their effectiveness on them and they always got out, not only that, they always were quick to figure out if there was a changeling infiltrator if they took even one lambkin. One changeling was discovered five minutes after infiltrating the lambkin for being too perfect in his disguise, how does someone even be too perfect!”

“Well they can’t exactly do that now.” Smolder crossed her arms and quirked an eye at me and her emotions seemed to be blaring full blast at me plain as day. Those emotions were basically telling me to calm down and to think logically. “You don’t need to steal love Ocellus, changelings are not like that anymore… 'you’re' not like that anymore. So shouldn’t you let bygones be bygones, maybe bridge a gap to make a friendship with just one lambkin? She actually looks like she’s part of the escort for the diplomats. Would it really be that horrible? I didn’t think I could be friends with a griffon, a pony or… a nice changeling… but here we are.”

“I know they can’t cause problems for us anymore, but there’s still going to be issues between us and ‘those’ obscenely paranoid things.” After wincing, inhaling and exhaling slowly, I eventually sighed loudly and decided that Smolder was right. “I’ll… I’ll try to ignore the lambkin’s presence, come on let’s go see your brother.”

“This seems personal to you, did something happen?” Smolder’s question made me flashback to that day.

I remember the growling and huge teeth of a Canis Major standing over me. I didn’t want to say anything further, especially not after my infiltration went badly before it had even started. The lambkin that led the canine away kept shooting me curious glances, the four puppies were still eyeing me with ill intent. I didn't even quite make it into the settlement before I was accosted by that big beast.

Changelings do not mess with canines, especially not a Canis Major. They always know…

“I... don’t want to talk about it Smolder.” I really didn’t, I was really young and foolish at that time in my life.

-Pom-

So far, so good.

We were just exiting the station in a group and would be heading towards Sugar Cube Corner, this place was... nice I guess… now if it wasn’t next to a dangerous forest full of strange or creepy monsters.

I was at least able to work out my differences with Garble and even got into a discussion with him about limericks. He was fairly interested in limerick style poems when I mentioned them and I was fairly interested in his bongo playing, even mentioned he could probably find a few books on music or poetry here.

It wasn’t long before we ran into a dragon and a… oh… a colorful changeling. We stared at each other flatly, I didn’t know how to react to her and her general shape looked vaguely familiar to me. I couldn’t quite put my hoof on where though.

The changeling eventually chose to ignore me and turned to Garble when the small orange dragon introduced him to her.

While I was okay with changelings as they had apparently ‘changed’, I was still going to be somewhat wary around one. Not that changelings could really do much to a lambkin, it was really odd that we were the anathema to changelings. We weren’t immune to magic, but anything else a changeling tries to do to us was never actually going to work.

We made our way along until we met up with Princess Twilight’s entourage at the front of Sugar Cube Corner. I hadn’t said a single word to Ocellus, but I could almost feel her enmity for me.

I didn’t feel like bringing up past trauma that any lambkin might have caused to changelings, but I would certainly say they deserved it. I was not going to start anything, but I did have something to say to someone.

“Fizzlepop, your… feline nuisance wouldn’t happen to be around would she?” I asked coolly.

“No, she’s off having an adventure with her sister’s family.” The unicorn with the broken horn answered back. “Nice to see you again Pom, how has Huoshan been lately?”

“Warm as always, though it has been a bit cooler when the spirit of the volcano became halfway dormant. The last several times your nuisance was in Huoshan, she caused a few incidents. I can’t actually complain as long as she’s not around here or there and doing something crazy. So today should honestly be a…” I was interrupted.

“I’m truly sorry that she causes messes, but don’t finish that sentence!” Fizzle suddenly seemed very alert, her wild bright blue eyes darted about in a panic and her horn sparked wildly. “I know Ponyville looks calm right now, but saying anything like that makes something bad happening inevitable. That’s especially true around here! Twilight wants a calm and easy party with her friends, on top of the obvious diplomatic stuff of course, but she still wants it to stay ‘relatively’ quiet.”

“It is being calm, nothing too bad could be happening this day.” A goat said jokingly as she walked by us out of the bakery shop pulling food from a sack with a frowning sticker on it.

“Darn it all, we’re switching to high alert after that. Code Pooch, someone just screwed i-h... up!” Fizzle was certainly serious about this, because all the guards with her went on high alert and were all wide eyed. They could give lambkin a run for their currency in paranoia. “Hopefully these trainees are rated for Ponyville levels of madness.”

“Isn’t that the code we named after that diamond dog waitress named Brenda?” One of the pony guards with Fizzle suddenly asked.

“Yes.” At Fizzle’s answer, all the guards paled visibly.

-Hours later-

Nothing seemed to have happened, but the guard’s heightened paranoia was beginning to make me quite paranoid too. Fizzle seemed to be looking at every corner and shadow waiting for something to happen. Other than the changeling, Ocellus I believe, sending me looks of distrust and possibly a mild amount of hatred, everything was turning out alright.

“Well nothing has happened so far Tempest, maybe it was dud?” Twilight offered as she walked out with the dragon diplomats and having spent a good time with her friends.

“Finally, Twilight Sparkle, say hello to your demise!” A pony in a cloak raised an artifact into the air standing on a roof across the way. “For this will take you to The Great Grogar and he shall rule all of Equestria!”

“Okay, before you do anything, can you tell us which idiot got the Sieve Precarious out of the deep trench the Royal Guard put it in? I mean the royal guard spell shielded that thing to Tartarus and back, buried it in cement and then made it darn near impossible for anyone to get without a concerted effort. I seriously want the name of the being I’m going to beat halfway to death with my bare hooves after this.” Fizzle commented dryly and loudly. “Also, I really hate Grogar cultists like you. Your always annoying, but never really successful at anything other than causing problems.”

“His name was Diving Bell and he had the assistance of a dumb little goat who thought she was going to keep this treasure that will end your reign, for I have modified it to take all of Ponyville somewhere else other than the chaos dimension!” The hood fell down revealing the female unicorn. “I am only telling you this because I am going to be successful, for I am Poise De’ File, so welcome to your new home... Tambelon!”

The grey furred and dark red haired unicorn with green eyes activated the artifact while laughing maniacally and it created a portal to a hellish looking place from anyone’s nightmares in front of Princess Twilight and the dragon diplomatic team.

The place beyond the portal didn’t look like it had seen the actual sun in a long, long time and it started to suck us towards it.

“Everyone protect Twilight!” Fizzle, shouted while I was giving my own orders. Twilight Sparkle, the winged and horned purple pony princess moved forward slightly while lighting her horn.

“Woof, Ruff, get the diplomats back inside!” My puppies moved into position to start herding the diplomats back into Sugar Cube Corner along with Gai Jin who agreed with the sentiment.

The portal started to grow larger and I could feel it trying to suck us all in. Only for Twilight to launch her magic at it and she even started containing it, but it wasn’t getting any smaller. The other guards were holding Twilight down to prevent her from being sucked in and creating a barrier around her while Fizzle and Poise started launching magical blasts at each other.

I looked around for what I could be doing during this when I saw a goat, the very same one that had made Fizzle order the 'Code Pooch' thing earlier.

“You think I be stupid, well who would be giving up so easily after that hearing kind of compliment?” The goat leapt from a nearby rooftop onto Poise and started battering her with her bare hooves, thus the two began struggling over the artifact.

Things might actually… I noticed that Garble was having trouble. I ran forward and grabbed him to start pulling him away from the portal, I was soon joined by his little sister and her changeling friend. We actually managed to get him to get a good grip on the mailbox.

I looked up and saw the artifact that created the portal go flying off the roof for the street, my grip slipped a little and started to tumble away from them. I was grabbed by Smolder and her changeling friend Ocellus grabbed her by the tail when she slipped and was pulled in by the suction too.

That poor goat fell off the roof and just landed roughly in the street and was now being drawn towards the portal too.

Everyone heard a shattering sound and turned towards the artifact breaking on the ground, the portal shifted violently and increased in strength finally sucking the goat in. Ocellus quickly lost her grip before Garble could grab onto her and the three of us almost went flying straight into the portal.

“Hold on to me!” I dug my hooves into the street, but I couldn’t resist the pull. I tried to use my fur to anchor myself to the ground, but I was nowhere near being as capable as Paprika was and just coated my hooves to resist a tiny bit harder.

The portal’s suction increased in strength for a second and I found myself pulled off the ground and towards the portal.

“Woof, Ruff, get back to Tianhuo and be good puppies for Baa-baa!” I shouted and then let out a few sharp barks, the last thing I saw was that Twilight had captured Poise before the portal closed, so that was a good thing at least.

“Smolder!” The last thing I heard was Garble shouting for his sister.

What was going to happen to us? Where were we going? How much danger were we in?!? Hopefully we were going anywhere besides Tambelon, it didn’t look like a very nice place to live or visit!

Also I think I might be blacking out from a pani…

4. No help for ewe.

-Huoshan, lower tier, merchant district, Tianhuo-

I was performing a light patrol of the many stalls today when I heard some whining near me. Looking about, I did not see a single sign of any particularly ‘familiar’ canines.

Sighing I turned to look at my shadow and mentally stashed away some ‘light’ commentary about my wife worrying about keeping me safe, mostly for later perusal with her. She obviously knows that I can take care of myself, except domestically where my wife has always shined of course, but I suppose a little unknown backup didn’t hurt.

Marrying a lambkin, I actually should have somewhat expected her to do something like this. I thought my wife wasn’t as paranoid as many other lambkin were known for being… clearly I was wrong.

“Please get out of my shadow Blighter.” I’d recognize the completely twisted and warped wolf shaped shadow monster, one that Paprika had corrupted with love and snuggles into whatever led to its current state of existence. That such a state was contagious and that Blighter could virulently infect other shadow monsters was mildly concerning, if there were any shadow monsters left in the world for it to infect. “Also, shadows are not naturally bright pink.”

Thankfully we already sealed off any chance of a shadow monster incursion into Equestria. It is sad that our Fœnum counterparts still required their version of the keys to keep their world safe and that they couldn’t permanently do the same as we have done.

Blighter was one of the many familiars of my wife, it did not need to eat and it was constantly affectionate. Blighter being able to hide in my shadow was something that I wish I had known sooner, must have been silently following me closely without my noticing it up until now.

A wolf shaped mass of pink with no defining features poked its head from my discolored shadow. It pressed itself up against my side when it fully pulled itself from my shadow, it was whining quite pitifully.

I couldn’t actually call this thing a shadow monster, it didn’t have the endless hunger and thirst for the destruction all life in the world for one. I didn’t know what to call it aside from an abomination born from a monster of pure destructive hunger and massive amounts of what could only be purifying alpaca love.

Paprika will always be one of the scariest beings in existence to me.

Blighter seemed highly upset about something and I too started to feel it… something was very much wrong.

“Pom.” I blankly stated while staring off into space, Blighter’s whimpering grew slightly louder and the people in the market place started to become agitated by the sight of the strange whimpering canine.

Would Blighter technically be a chi-based lifeform? Any answer to that would just make Paprika all the more scarier.

I stopped my patrol right then and there to calm Blighter down, for I too was now worried.

-Ponyville, three hours after the Sieve Precarious incident, Fizzle-

With one last mash of my hoof, I finally dropped the badly battered pony on the floor and turned to Twilight Sparkle. I had not been kidding when I promised to beat whoever aided in this black and blue.

“I’m sorry about this Twilight, but I still remember what happened the last time the Sieve Precarious was used.” One could only hope the Sieve Precarious was permanently destroyed, though I also hoped it could be fixed. We still needed a way to bring our people home from wherever they ended up. “I just seriously needed to let all my frustration about this out. So… is the artifact truly destroyed?”

“Discord said it’ll reform eventually, it’s apparently a part of the annoyance package plan with almost everything he makes to cause chaos… stupid Poison Joke, at least it doesn’t spread… Anyway, it’ll just reset to only taking us to the chaos dimension. We actually have no idea of how to set it to where those that were sucked in went and given the chaos of its destruction, it isn’t a very feasible method of retrieval as the destination was completely random. At least where they went certainly wasn’t Tambelon.” Twilight looked at broken pony on the floor with a bathysphere like cutie mark. “Is he… going to be okay?”

“I’ve done nothing permanent to him, give him a medical scan and see for yourself.” That was honest, what I was about to say next was less so. “I only just apprehended him a bit enthusiastically…. I got it all out of my system, honest.”

“I wonder what Applejack would say to that. Anyway, I’m still going suspend you from active duty for a few days Fizzle and your pay will be docked accordingly.” Thank you Twilight, I actually welcome some time off from my job of trying to create something approaching competence in the royal guard. It’s a pretty good thing that they are actually getting somewhat competent these days. Given the incentives involved, they better continue to do so or else. “We should be thankful the portal changed destination before that poor goat got sucked in and that everyone went to the same place. We won’t need to open a path to Tambelon and when we find them they should all be together.”

“Thank goodness for that, I would rather not directly deal with that realm and the demon goat that runs it.” I proceeded to bind the slightly mangled Diving Bell for selling an illegal chaos base artifact to a Grogar cultist, especially one I happened to be intimately familiar with. “The question now is, how are we going to locate them? Thinking of reaching them is secondary. Poise De’ File is unlikely to help us modify the Sieve Precarious and Discord would be even less helpful than that for the fun of it.”

“It brings a flame to my eyes that you know me so well!” Discord, the draconequus Chaos Lord himself, appeared and wiped a stream of fire from his eyes and the rag he used to do it went up like flash paper. Also his arm caught fire, half his body was catching on fire and was quickly turning to ice. “Hmm… I think I might have freezer burn.”

“We really don’t want to know about your biological issues Discord.” My comment was met with a disturbed look from Twilight who slowly turned her gaze to Discord, he grinned at us.

“Don’t you want to learn something more about me, isn’t that what friends do?” Nothing fun ever came from Discord when he had a gleeful grin like that, though there could be worse grins to deal with. “Let me start with what a squeedily-spooch is!”

-???, Pom-

“Do you think she’s going to be okay?” Groaning I slowly opened my eyes and blinked a few times, everything was a bit blurry. That sounded like Smolder.

“She’s hit her head pretty badly, at least she didn’t land on her horns and her hair took the brunt of the impact to the back of her head when she hit the street in Ponyville… it’s probably a good thing that she landed in some mud when we arrived here.” The other voice sounded like Smolder’s friend Ocellus.

“Where do you think that lambkin ended up?” If they were this close, then how could Smolder or Ocellus not see me?

“Why should I care, she got us into this mess.” Ocellus didn’t sound too harsh when she said it, but she still sounded a bit bitter.

“No, I got us into this mess trying to help her. If you are going to blame anyone, then blame me for trying to help someone in need.” Smolder sounded quite indignant. “So go ahead and blame me so I can go right back to being a cold hearted and tough dragon that’s never had any friends before, is that what you want Ocellus? I think helping people would be considered a good thing to learn in a friendship school, even if it gets us stuck… wherever here is.”

Ocellus winced loudly enough for me to pick up on it, but didn’t say anything in response.

I started to shift slightly and l rubbed my right hoof against my head. I blacked out from another panic attack… I’m about to have another one right now so why was I even bothering to wake up?

Ocellus was probably one of the changelings that has personally dealt with lambkin paranoia, while I might be wary of her… I didn’t dislike or hate her. I knew she was a friendship school student, otherwise I didn’t even know Ocellus all too much.

I’ll try to judge by her actions and intent, I’m not an expert in changelings and what I do know is that they can feel emotions.

Right now I was likely emotionally dead, leaning on the side of eventually heading towards a panic attack. It was completely understandable for me to be panicking right now, given that I don’t have any beasties to protect me and almost got dragged into what was a realm of twilight and horror.

Hopefully Ruff and Woof are okay and they make it back to Tian without any trouble. They should be okay without their Baa-baa for a while and Tian will definitely take care of them and all of my beasties.

My vision was clearing up and I felt like rubbing at my head again, I soon realized why I was having a headache. I was hanging upside down from a tree, blood was rushing to my skull and I could hardly feel my rear legs.

I saw Ocellus and Smolder nearby looking over the goat that got sucked through the portal first and they seemed to have dragged her out of some mud. Since they both could fly, and were awake, they obviously didn’t hit the ground roughly. I’d estimate I fell from a fair distance up before my hind legs were caught by this tree leading to my current predicament.

The goat looked like an islander with some mixed heritage… possibly pony or donkey. Ponies were known for being quite genetically flexible.

She looked wiry and small. Brown fur, darker brown across her belly, lighter brown around the legs, tail, eyes and mouth.

Defining features are a small beard, circular healed notch in her left ear maybe caused from an incident involving a unicorn firing a spell at her earlier in life. It was either that or a bad attempt at getting an ear piercing, her ears were floppy and big enough for it.

The two small horns spoke of her young age as a goat, she was at least teenage… joy. Ocellus and Smolder were also notably young, but not as young as the goat.

She had tan, with a hint of orange, colored hair that was tied up in a ponytail. The tropical coloring is what makes me think she’s an islander. It looks like her hair would hang down around her withers if unbound and her bangs centered on the middle of her forehead and hung halfway down her face. Her tail was short and had a similar style to her hair

She was wearing a rather unique looking teal headband, well cared for, if currently covered in mud. That was likely a gift from someone important to her… or stolen. I’d need to know more about her before I could come to a conclusion.

I have her pegged as a street urchin, if the islander thing pans out given her hair style. Street rats lived inland on continents and street urchins lived next to the sea or on islands. I’m also going to guess that mentioning her parents is an exceedingly horrible idea.

The young goat was currently out cold and would likely need immediate medical assistance, it is unfortunate that I don’t think that any of us have any skills in that particular area and it was a good thing that her breathing didn’t look too unsteady.

At least my Huoshan Guard profiling lessons were paying off, good to know.

I wondered what her involvement in this mess was, she wouldn’t have gone after that unicorn or the artifact otherwise.

Okay enough of that, put my mind on some tasks instead of facing the inevitable pit of dread that is not having canines to protect me from the dangers of this place.

I curled up and tried to tug my numb legs free, only to find that my hind legs were currently quite stuck in the tree and I wanted to get down from here.

Okay, list some things we needed as a group. First things first, could I see any food, water and shelter.

I could see banana peels around here… food is not an issue then. Though I wondered what could consume so many bananas.

I can see a stream a short distance away, no problem with water there. It looks both fresh and quite clean.

I’d still boil it though, err on the side of caution and all that. We’d probably have to carve a large rock into a bowl or find some clay. We were basically working from nothing as we didn’t have any supplies or camping equipment before we ended up here.

Moving on, we can easily build a lean-to for four easily enough from all the surrounding resources or at the very least we’ll be safe in the trees in the case of large predators.

Had I not been ‘functionally’ exiled from my home, I wouldn’t know a single thing about camping or surviving outdoors.

There didn’t seem to be any large predators, most of what I was hearing was bugs, birds and nothing violent or volatile in the surrounding brush of the forest. This place seemed peaceful, too peaceful even. Please, for the love of the longma goddess Jiutian, let things stay that way. I don’t think I can face any danger by myself all alone in the middle of nowhere.

Oh right, I wasn’t alone!

“Hey, up here, I need help...” I really didn’t say that loudly, it came out above a whisper at least.

Was I really so timid? Yes, yes I was.

“Did you hear something Smolder?” Ocellus asked and looked around with fright, she reminded me of a lambkin in that moment.

I could really use a good friend right about now, instead I would settle for two people I was barely acquainted with and a goat I knew nothing about.

“Up here.” I said a little bit louder while cupping my right front hoof to my face and waving my left front leg to attract attention. The two thankfully heard me this time and turned around. They saw me dangling from the tree. “I could use a little help here, my legs are trapped and I can’t get down by myself.”

“Hold on second, I’ll find a way to help you down. Ocellus stay with the goat.” Smolder started flapping her wings.

“Gladly.” Sighed Ocellus, mostly with relief that she didn’t have to deal with me. That was going to be a rocky uphill thing.

“Oh no, take your time.” I drawled lazily. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Smolder flew up and hovered close to where I was.

“Can you brace you’re front legs against the tree?” Smolder asked after a moment of looking at my predicament from a better angle.

“Yes, why do you ask?” I started to shiver as if I already knew what was about to happen.

“Well I think I can get your legs free, but you might fall to the ground.” Smolder was a pretty nice dragon, she was actually concerned about me.

To be fair we should all be concerned about the contagions in the given surroundings...

No, bad Pom! Do not go full blown lambkin paranoia, keep it together!

I’m in a nice, quiet and calm forest, with some friendly people who are stuck in the same situation I was currently in. Well not exactly the same situation as being stuck in a tree, but yeah…

I took a deep breath, centered myself and then stretched out my legs to put my front hooves against the trunk of the tree.

“Do i-eeeahhh, oof, ahhh-ow!” Okay, I was okay and will be fine. Just keep telling yourself that Pom and maybe it’ll be true soon enough.

Smolder had tackled my trapped legs free, the back half of my body pivoted and I slammed back first into the tree. Following that I promptly tumbled to the ground in a painful heap.

“Are you okay? Sorry for not warning you.” Smolder came in for a landing next to me as I worked to get my numb legs under me and wobbled onto my front hooves.

“I’m… I’ll be fine. Nothing’s broken at the very least.” Well better introduce myself to Garble’s sister formerly. “Pom Lambchop of the Huoshan Guard, head of the Huoshan Canine Division. It’s… I want to say good to meet you properly, but given the current circumstances... Your brother Garble spooked me when I first met him, but he’s proven that he’s not that bad a dragon after we worked things out.”

“Gar-gar didn’t hurt you did he?” Smolder wasn’t even going to question me being a Huoshan Guard, I'm kind of obligated to protect her because she’s a dragon.

“Aside from a mild heart attack that normally occurs when a lambkin is spooked, no.” I held out my right hoof and she grabbed it with her right claw to help me steady myself.

“Nice to meet you Pom, I’m Smolder and that’s Ocellus. So you were part of the protection detail for my brother and the diplomats?” Dragons like Smolder are honored in Huoshan, so long as they weren’t outright jerks.

“Yes, along with a longma named Gai Jin and my Canis Minor puppies Woof and Ruff. Nobody else got sucked into the portal besides the three of us and the goat.” If we were somewhere on the planet of Equus, then I would be happy. “Do you think we’re still on Equus?”

If we weren’t, finding a way home wasn’t going to be simple.

“No… I can’t exactly describe it, but I can feel that something is very different about the air here.” At least Ocellus willingly joined the conversation with me in it. We approached her and the poor goat, looking around the edges of the forest.

“We really need to get our bearings then, can you fly up and look around a bit Ocellus?” At Smolder’s query, Ocellus nodded and took off into the air. Smolder then turned to me.

“You are taking this far better than I thought a lambkin normally would, oh and about Ocellus…” Smolder smiled weakly. “She’s not really good at hating anyone and she’s really quite friendly, I promise.”

“I’m not actually taking this situation very well at all. I’m trying to concentrate on a lot of other things other than us being lost with the possibility that we might not have a way home.” Was it hot out here? I was beginning to hyperventilate. Was everything spinning? I’m having a panic attack and that’s only making me panic even more! “It’s not working…”

No dogs to protect me, no idea where we are, limited to the surrounding resources that could be poisonous, no shelter in sight and me quickly going into a spiraling panic about it all.

Smolder hugged me, everything quickly snapped back to being focused.

“It’s going to be okay. When I let go of you, I want you to try and keep it together.” Smolder’s hug felt nice. My breathing slowly evened out and I eventually calmed down. She let me go and looked at me sternly. “You panicking is going to cause us to panic and we already have an injured goat to worry about, so don’t add on to our problems Pom."

I took in a huge gulp of air through my mouth and exhaled slowly through my nose while putting my hooves over my chest.

“Okay Smolder, I think I can handle the stress from here, but I… I need to sit down for a moment.” I did so by going over to the goat and sitting next to her. “We lambkin don’t do too well by ourselves…”

“Obviously, but that’s why you have us.” Smolder smiled brightly and spread her claws outwards.

“Let's move into the shade in a minute.” Put off the encroaching sense of doom Pom, this place seems really peaceful and there’s not much going on around here.

Smolder soon helped me carefully move the goat out of the sun and into the shade of the trees, we were still in sight of the stream. I relaxed a little bit, only for something to occur to me.

Why wasn’t there much stuff going on around here?! Why were things so quiet?! I mean there were birds and bugs, but where were all the other signs of forest life?! It was far too peaceful here and even the slightest amount of animal noises should be heard from a good distance in this kind of place.

“Pom?” Smolder said and I squeaked and flailed my legs until I was on my back, she giggled a bit and hugged me again. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t think all those things said about lambkin were true.”

“That we’re all constantly paranoid almost bordering on schizophrenia and in general are hypochondriacs? If you have to ask if there’s a problem with a lambkin, the answer is…” I closed my eyes and said it as calmly as I could. “Yes, do you want the whole list?”

“You don’t seem that bad, how would you even become a Huoshan Guard if you weren’t at least a little bit tough or good at it?” You are a really nice dragon Smolder.

“For one, I don’t do active patrols. I mostly mediate issues between other guards and their canine companions. Otherwise I do small things to help out the locals or visitors. As head of the Huoshan Canine Division I usually have my beasties with me to protect me from anything dangerous, so I don’t really feel too safe without them.” That I could even speak well over thirty dialects of canine was certainly not going to help me here, I curled up and shivered. “Personally I don’t like fighting and I’m not particularly great at combat by myself, but I do know a few things. I’m also a small talent fluffmancer, not many lambkin have that ability or even try to learn to use it if they do. That might be useful in this situation, in case something happens and I have to protect all of you.”

“Forgive me for saying this, but you don’t exactly seem very capable of protecting us.” Ocellus landed and spoke at me coolly.

“When seriously pushed, I might surprise you as much as myself…” I mumbled as I thought about the thief I caught. “The artifact that brought us here was destroyed before we were sucked through the portal. We… we don’t exactly have a way home if we're not on Equus.”

I had finally brought it up and the silence of the forest was quite palpable, there was a stronger sense of dread that came with this silence.

The goat’s erratic breathing was worsening, but otherwise she should be able to hold on until we could do something to help her at least.

Smolder and Ocellus looked at one another quietly with worry.

“So... Is anyone hungry? Want to help me find something to make a bowl out of or do we start building a shelter next to the river?” Distractions, we all needed some really big ones. “I know Smolder can help with the campfire.”

Author's Note

Pom's entire combat style is centered around commanding her puppies or other canines, without them she loses a majority of her combat ability. Up to at least 85% of her combat effectiveness is tied up in commanding her canines and she's quite aware of that fact.

She still has her personal abilities like a bark blast, 'minor' fluffmancer talent and a few other odd things she's picked up from the rest of her friends, basically the other members of the 'Them's Fightin' Herd' cast.

5. Ram-ifications realized

-???, late evening, Pom-

From what Ocellus saw, we were currently in some kind of valley and there’s several odd things around us that we could look into.

The most important thing that Ocellus spotted was a fairly large bamboo forest with what looked to be well-kept pathways, this meant that there was some kind of civilization was around here we could maybe talk to for help. Provided that they were still around or we could even communicate between ourselves.

This led to the two most important places to look for help. First there were the structures in the more cold, snowy and mountainous regions in the upper parts of the valley and the second were a few structures down towards the lower parts.

We were somewhere between them and Ocellus thought she saw some movement around both parts of the valley. Ocellus did not want to go out to scout them by herself, so she stayed near us and safely within view. This was something I praised her for, but she just gave me a slightly flat look before we set out looking for fruit.

There were not any wild animals near us, at least we haven’t seen anything dangerous enough to be worthy of note. As such this place was extremely odd, but I was more relaxed that there wasn’t much danger when it came to finding fruit, a few vegetables and making our campsite next to the river.

So I was feeling cautiously optimistic about how well we could survive here, but the young goat still needed medical help.

That nothing had happened when we set up camp had made me somewhat wary that some kind of horseshoe was going to drop somewhere eventually.

No place is ever usually this calm.

“So as you can imagine, Arizona was entirely put off about the fact that her mother in Equestria and her alternate’s mother in Fœnum were two completely different cows entirely. Minnie was nice, peaceful and a matriarch of the cows. Maggie on the other hoof is… excessively loud, loves explosives and is a bounty hunter.” I sighed and looked from our little campfire to the stars above. None of them were familiar. “So this isn’t the first time I’ve ended up in another place, but that place had another me in it.”

I looked over to the goat, her head resting on a thick pile of leaves and her body tucked into the makeshift bedding we made to keep her warm. She needed help and I was going to try to find some in the lower end of the valley tomorrow. The makeshift shelter crafted from branches, leaves and some vines wouldn’t survive a storm, but it was our shelter for the night and it would be a bit of a squeeze.

“Huh, so was the alternate Pom exactly the same as you?” Smolder said after she swallowed the bit of fruit.

“No. Though our dispositions were similar, we were very different in many small ways. She had instinctive fluffmancer abilities while I didn’t have any at the time. She also had flying sheep dogs compared to my flying Canis Minor… and wasn’t exiled from her home for several years…” I was still definitely bitter about that last thing I muttered quietly, the other Pom had never lived in exile or learned how to camp. Actually learning how to camp was really useful in this situation, so I really shouldn’t complain about having more survival skills than the average lambkin. “Her sheep dogs weren’t nearly as strong as my Canis, but they were more numerous and otherwise we were pretty much evenly matched in our capability to whine about our lives. Enough about me, do you two want to talk about yourselves?”

“No.” Ocellus didn’t eat any fruit, but with the way she was snuggled up against Smolder told me she’d be fine.

Smolder was feeding her quite well by proximity.

“Eh, you live in the dragon lands, I bet there isn’t much you haven’t heard about us dragons. We have volcanoes, rocks, gems and maybe piles of gold to roll around in to get off some loose scales.” Smolder was a good friend, she was much better than her brother at being nice without seemingly struggling with it at times. That school of friendship was actually doing a good job. “Yeah, we’re pretty boring and are usually always focused on trying to act so tough all the time. It gets pretty tiring after a while and it’s about time we started trying to do new things, even if I do like roughhousing.”

I ate a few plums and considered our course of options from here.

“One of us will want to head down into the valley to see if there is anyone intelligent around that can help the goat, I don’t want to go up into the mountains and possibly get lost.” I looked at the goat, worried about the poor things health. “Either way, someone will have to stay with her. You can both stay here while I set out in the morning or one of you can go with me. I suggest you both stay here to keep her company while I go look for some way to help her.”

“Do you think you can handle being alone by yourself?” Having seen me freak out so much in a short amount of time, Smolder had the right idea to question me.

I certainly wouldn’t trust a lambkin to cross the road without first asking about what’s on the other side, even ‘nothing’ can be a pretty scary answer to a lambkin for various reasons. Everything that is holy help everyone if there was a chicken on the other side of said road.

“I won’t let her down, she’s something important for me to focus on.” I started to floss my teeth with a small bit of reed, then drank some recently boiled water and looked at the campfire. We’ll leave the fire going, it was properly contained and wouldn’t cause trouble. “Anyway, we can’t leave her like this for much longer. If I can’t find any help tomorrow, then we’ll have to figure out something for ourselves. Let’s get some sleep, I don’t think anything will bother us here.”

I didn’t sleep easily, but keeping Smolder between me and Ocellus was probably for the best. I was closest to the entrance of the makeshift shelter and the goat was deeper in.

I was the adult here and I would protect them with my life if things came to it, even if I was completely terrified of the prospect that I was responsible for them.

-The next morning-

The sun was rising into the sky, Smolder and Ocellus would wait at the camp and I set off on a trek down the river to see if I could find anything intelligent. If I did, then my best course of action would be to ask for a doctor.

-Equestrian Campsite, Ocellus-

“Do you think she’ll be back?” Having a few doubts was not unnatural, I mean we are talking about a lambkin far out of their depth. She was surprisingly good at camping though.

“Eh, she’ll be fine, she’s a Huoshan Guard and she was put on protection detail by Ember for a reason.” Well Smolder seemed confident, though she was wary about our situation as well. “Besides, she succeeded at protecting the diplomats and my brother. Sure she might be a bit panicky, but that doesn’t mean she’s as bad as other lambkin are.”

“Have you actually met any other lambkin?” I know the answer to this, it was a definitive no. I on the other hoof have met quite a few.

The fact that Pom wasn’t a hypochondriac and wasn’t constantly paranoid did make me feel somewhat better about sending her off alone to find some possible form of help. Not that I cared about her all that much, but I wouldn’t feel okay if something bad actually happened to her.

-Down the river, Pom-

My ears twitched left and right as I trotted along listening for the sound of anything. Nature was wonderful, just so long as nothing was trying to eat you.

I heard something like a loud crash going off to my right, it spooked me into throwing myself to the ground and curling up to make myself small. My heart rate was going a mile a minute as I cowered on the ground.

After a moment I poked my head up and made my way in that direction.

In this case I needed to be curious, I needed to not freeze up and freak out. If someone needed my help and if that crash was someone in trouble, then I would need to seek them out despite how wobbly my legs are currently getting. I would continue to move forward despite my limbs knocking together in fear.

Of course this didn’t mean I wasn’t cautious. Once I was closer to the increasing sounds of something going on, I ducked into the nearest bush and poked my head out in the direction of another crashing noise.

What I saw was one of the oddest things I think will have ever seen in my life.

On one side there was a white furred baboon, with him was a lot of monkeys. The monkeys were pushing the baboon in a large makeshift wooden cart while he was wielding a wooden lance.

On the other there was a skunk, also wielding a wooden lance and in a makeshift wooden cart, only his cart was being pushed by numerous monkeys. Let’s see, there was a pig, a rabbit, a white tiger and a fox.

Both of these groups were heading straight towards each other.

I just tilted my head at what I was experiencing. What I was seeing was two groups of animals that were clearly showing intelligence and fighting one another in what looked like a jousting competition, the weirdest thing was that were all the same general size as normal animals back home.

The clash of both carts was impressively destructive on both sides and those odd monkeys went flying everywhere.

“Wasabi.” The baboon muttered as he got up from where he slammed painfully into a tree.

The monkeys with the baboon and the skunk with the other animals all got up amid the broken pieces of wood to glare at one another. The skunk, the tiger, the fox and the rabbit were all notably bipedal.

I inhaled slowly through my mouth, exhale through my nose and stepped out the bush to walk up to them slowly. I didn’t really want to spook anyone, also I was being very careful in my approach in case they all decided to attack me.

One of them said ‘wasabi’, which was that radish stuff that makes for a spicy paste. So I could understand them, hopefully they don’t attack me for interfering in… whatever this is.

“Um… excuse me…” My soft voice suddenly diverted every bit of their attention onto me, they all blinked at me curiously.

I shrunk in on myself, but someone was relying on me to find help for them and this was my best opportunity to ask for help. While I didn’t like so many scrutinizing eyes on me, my need to help the goat was far more important than my need to curl up and cry as the lambkin that I was.

“Yes?” Both the skunk and the baboon stated at the same time as they turned to me.

“Does anyone here know where I can find a good doctor?” I asked timidly while poking my hooves together. “If you do, which direction can I head in to find them?”

“Oh, you’re looking for Master Turtle, he’s down by the lake that way. Ask anyone around there if you don’t see him.” The skunk was the one to answer my question.

“Thank you.” I bowed to them all respectfully and then quickly continued in the direction the skunk pointed out to me, mostly to get out of the way. “I’m so sorry for disrupting all of you.”

“Oh that’s alright, don’t mind us.” The baboon said conversationally.

I was heading in the direction of the lake and would hopefully find this ‘Master Turtle’ the skunk spoke of.

-With the skunk-

“Uh… who was that?” The skunk said while rubbing the back of his head, he for the most part seemed curious about the newcomer.

“Never seen anyone like them around here before, do you suppose they could be a spy?” The rabbit seemed quite eager to question the newcomer. “That would be twenty percent cooler than just fighting the ninja monkeys and Baboon!”

“I don’t know why, but there’s just something I really liked about her.” The lithe fox stated while looking after the odd creature that wandered into the middle of their battle. Her tail was wagging behind her excitedly and she wasn’t quite sure what she was currently feeling about the newcomer.

“If she was a spy, she’s definitely not one of ours.” Baboon paused for a moment, considered something, then shrugged and decided to be entirely indifferent about the newcomer. He raised his fist and charged forward. “Right then, back to what we were doing, attack!”

The various animals and the monkey army glared at one another as they charged towards each other, they would resume their fight without giving another thought towards the interloper that interrupted them.

In fact, they quickly forgot about Pom’s existence entirely in the ensuing battle.

-Pom-

They all seemed nice, even if I could hear the noises of them fighting each other behind me. I had something more important to focus on then joining a fight that I have absolutely no stake in.

I’m fairly surprised they didn’t try to drag me into it or force me to choose a side. They seemed particularly violent towards one another and I knew absolutely nothing about what was happening here to make such a decision.

I arrived at the lake and started to look around frantically for a turtle. I mean if the animals here are intelligent, then I am absolutely looking for a turtle called Master Turtle.

“Looking for something missy?” The turtle that spoke to me wore a conical hat and was pretty old, his purple shell looked nice.

I squeaked pretty loudly and shivered slightly in fright since he practically appeared out of nowhere; he approached me calmly with a curious smile.

“Um, yes, are you Master Turtle?” I hastily queried. If he was a doctor, then he could help us. “A skunk told me you were a doctor.”

“Why yes, I am Master Turtle, but you don’t look that hurt.” The turtle tilted his head curiously.

“Oh, I’m not the one that was hurt, there’s someone who was injured in a pretty bad fall and I really need your help… but my group doesn’t exactly have the skills to heal her.” Okay now that I was done with my little adventure, I can finally let my panic set in and I wasn’t afraid to beg for help. “She hit her head pretty badly, her breathing is erratic and she’s not waking up, this injury happened yesterday and we are really quite lost. Please, I beg of you, help us in any way you can!”

He looked into my eyes for a moment and then nodded solemnly.

“Now, now, no need to beg, let me just get my stuff and we can go.” Sighing at Master Turtle’s answer, I waited as he quickly ran off.

I felt a sense of relief knowing that that goat could be okay, provided that the turtle was actually capable of helping us. It took forty five seconds before turtle came back to me carrying a medical bag.

“Okay, how fast can you get me to the patient?” In answer to Master Turtle’s question, I crouched down and he got onto my back without prompting. He wasn’t too heavy, so I stood up and immediately started galloping back towards the river and where the campsite is. “What’s your name miss?”

“My name is Pom.” I answered as I was speeding back towards camp as fast as I could go.

“Well Pom, you already told me the kind of injury the patient has, which is very helpful.” We were already halfway back as Turtle asked this question, I was making good time and I was more worried about the goats safety than my own at this point. “Can you tell me how large your group is?”

“There’s two others, we’ve recently become acquainted and we don’t know the name of the injured one.” Full disclosure, I didn’t have anything to keep from someone who was going to help us out of the goodness of his heart. “I hope you don’t mind us being a little bit odd.”

“Eh, I’ve lived for a long time miss, I’ve seen plenty of weird… things. Okay, so there are some things that I still haven’t seen yet even at my age. Heh, I guess you can’t see everything.” We arrived at the campsite and Master Turtle stared at Smolder for a moment, then his gaze went to Ocellus and then his patient as I collapsed into the shelter next to the goat. I pointed frantically at her, Master Turtle quickly got off my back and started to look over the goat carefully. “Well now, this is a pretty big emergency. Luckily for you, I can get her back on her hooves. You’re certainly a heroic one to travel into the unknown for somebody you don’t know. Huh, malnourished, that’s going to make this a little bit rougher. Well it’s a good thing she has you three trying to look out for her, so try to relax a…”

-A little while later, with the skunk-

“Where’s Master Turtle?” The skunk and his friends had various bumps, scrapes, bruises and the rabbit even had his right ear in a sling.

They didn’t see Master Turtle at the lake and moved on to the hill where they trained to recuperate after their arduous battle.

-Equestrian Campsite, Pom-

I sharply inhaled and sat up with a gasp and turned towards the goat. Her head was slightly bandaged and she had various needles sticking out of her.

Turtle was using acupuncture on her?

“Is she going to be okay?” I asked as I sat up blinking at the sight.

“She’ll be fine when I start removing the needles, though you should take care of yourself first before you start worrying about someone else. You have a good heart and an innocent disposition, also legs built for running.” Master Turtle chortled a bit, I couldn’t see him as being threatening. It was a little weird that he kept sending odd glances at Smolder, he eventually turned back to me. “The way you laid up the patient really helped her state immensely and I’ve got everything in order. You keep resting, you really pushed yourself hard in getting me here so fast.”

“So does this confirm what we fear Pom?” With a frown, Smolder looked to me with cross arms.

“That we’re lost and we don’t know how we’re going to get home.” It was obvious we were definitely nowhere near Equestria or even on the planet of Equus anymore, at least the locals were friendly… mostly. “The answer is yes. We don’t even know where we are.”

“We call this place The Valley. While you and your friends are a bit… odd.” Master Turtle stated as he looked at Smolder and Ocellus. “You don’t seem like bad folk to me.”

“Right, we should introduce ourselves, since you have some time to talk. I’m Smolder, do you have dragons around here?” It seemed Smolder wanted to work up a rapport with the turtle who was saving the goat’s life. “I ask, because you keep giving me weird looks.”

“I’m sorry about that, but yes we do know of a dragon around here. It’s probably for the best that you don’t ever meet him.” Turtle nodded to her and then looked to Ocellus. “Please, just call me Turtle. Unless I have something to teach you, then it’s Master Turtle.”

“I’m Ocellus, you already know what dragons are so I might as well tell you that I’m a changeling.” Ocellus seemed chipper towards him, more so than she ever was towards me. “I can shape shift into other things.”

“Truly? Well given that you’re telling me, you apparently have nothing to hide.” Turtle watched as Ocellus transformed into what changelings used to look like. He got a little spooked by her transformation and the appearance she showed.

What changelings used to look like and what they looked like now were two entirely different things.

“We used to look like this, now we look like this naturally.” Ocellus dropped her disguise as she spoke.

“I bet there’s an interesting story behind that.” Turtle said while rubbing his chin.

“Yeah, they used to steal love, but now they only try to share it. Love given freely apparently stopped the starvation that was rampant among her people and they became more colorful.” At that point, Smolder received a look from Turtle. Turtle started smiling coyly as he looked between her and Ocellus. “Now they are our friends, though they can still be a bit mischievous at times.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you are talking about Smolder.” Responded Ocellus, who grinned cheerfully.

“Well now, I’m certainly glad that your people learned a lesson about greed and you taught me a fresh one as well.” Turning back to the goat, the turtle started to remove some needles. “Now what about you Pom, what are you?”

“I’m a lambkin, my people aren’t exactly known for our great feats.” I sat down and watched as the turtle continued to remove needles from the goat. “We’re panicky, easily spooked and in general are well known for our incurable cowardice.”

“While you seem to fit that, you certainly seem to be more than just a general summary of your people.” Turtle said merrily, he was a fairly jolly and easy to talk to. He waved to us when there was one needle left sticking out of the goat. “Now, when I remove this needle, she’s going to wake up… can you hold her down for me please? She’s going to flail around a bit before she gets her head on straight. Oh and… what do you three do for a living?”

“I’m part of the Huoshan Guard. Despite being on a volcano, I assure you that Huoshan is a very nice place to live .” Was it that much of a surprise that I’m a guard? Turtle seemed to think so until I explained myself. “I’m mostly a reserve guard though, but I still help people where I can.”

“As for us we’re friendship students, we learn a lot about friendship and how not to be a jerk.” Smolder said with a smile. “It’s been working out pretty well for us dragons and changelings.”

“As for the goat… I think she’s an orphan.” I stated as I pinned down her rear legs with my hooves, Smolder and Ocellus grabbed her front legs while giving me indecipherable looks.

“So it’s as I thought, the poor dear.” Turtle just shook his head and then carefully started to remove the last needle. “Well I openly welcome you all to stay in The Valley for as long as you need.”

When the needle finally came out of the goat, she gasped and her eyes flew wide open revealing her bar shaped pupils.

The goat thrashed around wildly, she was strong for her size and current state of health.

It was nice to see her finally awake, now all she had to do was calm down.

Author's Note

Naming the world after this point or guessing it correctly will reveal it to everyone, I'm not exactly making it hard to figure out though.

Every world visited will have magic or some form of mystical element to it at the very least.

6. Ram-bunctious.

-Equestrian Campsite, Smolder-

When the goat woke up, she thrashed violently and she was really quite strong. Almost strong enough to lift me off the floor, she actually did lift Ocellus off the floor a bit.

Was this actually the same goat that was said to be malnourished, has a head injury and was apparently homeless?

Ocellus and I were too busy with trying to hold her down. Pom, who had her rear legs locked down, started to talk in a gentle voice to try and calm the goat down before she hurt someone. It was possibly Ocellus that would get hurt, because I doubt much around here could seriously injure me and Pom was a trained guard.

Sure Pom might not be the best guard in the world, but she had to have some degree of competence to be an official guard of Huoshan, that and she was strong enough to handle the goats rear legs on her own. Changelings were basically mostly like lesser alicorns and aside from her fuzzy carapace, Ocellus looked fairly small and brittle.

“It’s okay, calm down and breathe. Do what I do, in and out, come on and do it with me now.” Pom started to inhale slowly and exhale just as slowly when the goat finally focused on her. After a moment the lambkin had the goat breathing and relaxing a bit. “Are you okay now? We’re going to let go of you, so please don’t freak out or run away. We have a few things we need to discuss with you, also we have some food and water you can have.”

The goat nodded, Pom nodded to us and we released her. The goat sat there for a moment and rubbed at the bandages on her forehead.

After a moment the goat started to look around in a panic, until Pom held up the teal headband which was quickly snatched out of her hoof.

The goat quickly worked her hair up into a ponytail and tied it off with her headband, she smiled and then turned to us curiously.

“Do you think you can take it from here?” Turtle said with a smile, he was a cool old guy.

“Thank you for your help Turtle, I don’t know how we can ever repay your kindness.” Pom smiled a little.

“Well if you need any more help, I’ll be down The Valley if you need me. I’m always near the lake or the training hill. Make sure she gets some rest and doesn't do anything too strenuous.” Turtle started to walk off and out of our shelter. “If you want, you can come on down and I’ll teach you about how to lend someone medical aid so that this doesn’t happen again.”

“Maybe later.” Ocellus answered. “I like to learn new things.”

Turtle nodded and then ambled off in the direction that Pom came running from at an incredible speed. Ocellus knew what lambkin were like, but she never told me they could run or move so blindingly fast. That Pom collapsed afterwards was a testament to how hard she pushed herself to get here with help. For that alone Pom deserves at least some respect from Ocellus.

So we were stuck in another world and apparently Pom was a veteran in having done this before when she visited a place called Fœnum. Now we were in an unknown world that has yet to be visited by the people of Equus, this wasn’t even the first time the people of our world have visited other odd dimensions and it likely wouldn’t be the last.

Starswirl, Twilight, Stygian and a few other beings have notably traversed personally or transferred others to different dimensions before. Finding the one we were specifically in is like finding the world’s tiniest needle in the world’s biggest haystack.

This might even be a pretty cool adventure, provided that we could return home to our friends and family eventually.

“So… what be happening to my treasure?” The goat suddenly asked.

“Oh, um, are you talking about that magical object the unicorn had? Well it… shattered… and we ended up here in ‘The Valley’ as the locals call it.” Pom frowned in thought. “I’m Pom, that’s Smolder a dragon and that’s Ocellus. Who are you?”

“Well… I be a goat, who arrived by being stowaway on a boat, from the islands and the sea, for there’s never been someone quite like me you see~.” The goat was up and moving as she went outside our small shelter to start looking around. She put her right hoof to her chest as she started singing, she spotted the fruit and immediately made her way over to the pile. “I’m a hungry little goat, who was told as a joke, that I’d never amount to anything other than being a banty, that’s where I come from and I’m never going to be quite easily done in because my name is Shanty~!”

“Like the song?” Pom stated idly.

“Well you wouldn’t be wrong, but let me be telling you that I could be like the shack, not quite big and not so spineless like any pirates that gets tied to a stretch rack~.” Shanty was really quite good with lyrics. “So the treasure I was after has become trash, wished I could have started with that in my stash. You may think me silly, but if I ever get back to that unicorn I think I’m going to do something quite rash~. It’s only time and experience that I lack, so when I get home I’m going to try to become a true pirate and get all those who made me suffer right on back~.”

“You mean you’ll attack?” Ocellus queried.

“No, no, you don’t be understanding me, I just want to be a pirate that’s free. I want treasure and to be renowned, to become one of the greatest pirates who's tales and stories will soak into the very ground, but I can’t do that if I’m not still around~!” Shanty shouted that last part as she stuffed a few plums into her mouth and chewed vigorously before swallowing. “I want to be building a great legend of a goat who sails the seas, going on adventure and cannon shooting sprees. To do that I have to be quite smart, for no pirate worth their salt is an idiot from the start~.”

“Well you’ve certainly got the heart.” I commented dryly, Shanty seemed like a very excitable person.

“That’s why I’ll be doing my part~. You can’t roam to and fro without a crew of people that you personally know, those that will be willing to go wherever I will flow~. Without implicit trust, things will always be a bust, since mutiny will make sour hearts and leave nothing but shipwrecks full of rust~.” Shanty tapped dance as she continued to eat more of the freshly gathered food. “Though I may be colored like a turkey, I’m not nearly that dumb or quirky. I’d rather keep my wits about me when it comes to the dangers that I’ll face, because I want to become a real true pirate with all due haste~!”

“You’re not one already with singing like that?” With a curious tilt of her head, Pom watched as Shanty looked to a tree.

“If you’d think that then you’re quite a nice so and so, but I’m going to have to say quite a loud no~! I want everyone to remember where my hooves have been, or else they might soon be missing something that used to be belonging to them~. I want to walk a path of the ever blowing wind, hopefully I won’t ever walk the plank and have to swim~.” She rolled a fruit from the tip of her left hoof across her back and into her right hoof. She flicked it into her mouth, she turned and leapt onto a tree and started to dash straight up it. I think she just defied gravity with the way she stuck to the tree, with a leap near the top she did a forward somersault and landed on top of it to start looking around. “There’s mighty adventure in my pores that I want to seek, even right now I’m on one even as I speak~. With an ay, an aye and a yahar, you all know that I’m going to be a real pirate that is going quite far~! I always hope to forever stay nearly this canty, because I’m going to try hard to make you all remember the goat whose name is Shanty~!”

Well Shanty was apparently done, I’m okay with being friends with her. She was a bit wild and energetic, but she couldn’t be worse than Scootaloo in her worship of everything Rainbow Dash.

“Did you really need the song?” I asked with a grin.

“Do you think I not be living up to my name?” Shanty said as she slid down the side of the tree and hopped off near the bottom. “I want songs to be sung about my deeds beyond the day that I perish!”

“Hopefully you won’t do that anytime soon, you have a whole life ahead of you Shanty.” Pom looked visibly worried for the goat. I would be worried to, she did just recover from a head injury. “How’s your head feeling?”

“It being… augh…!” Shanty rubbed at her head and Pom was right there in an instant carefully holding her in a hug. Shanty froze up and seemed quite tense when Pom hugged her. It took a minute, but shanty eventually relaxed into the hug. “You be giving very nice hugs Pom.”

“Can we get back to the fact that we’re currently trapped in another world with no way back home?” That was Ocellus trying to bring us back on task. “We don’t know if help is coming or even if it ‘can’ come. If we’re going to be stuck here, then do we just spend the rest of our lives in one place?”

“Oh we’ll definitely try to find a way home, but we might want to scout out our surroundings before attempting anything. I saw a bit of fighting on my way to meeting Turtle, we should try to stay well out of the way of that as much as possible while we’re here.” Pom looked at the river looking up towards the mountains and then down it into the lower valley. “There’s just something mystical about this world. Where there’s magic… there’s always a way to do something, like finding a path home.”

“That’s true I guess.” Ocellus actually agreed with Pom without being a little bitter. It wasn’t exactly the kind of high end portal making stuff, but Ocellus had magic and was good at what she knew how to do.

I knew she’d start coming around eventually, Pom is not her enemy and could be really good friends. They even have a few things in common, Ocellus just has to get over her dislike of lambkin in general first.

“None of you mind me wanting to be a pirate?” Shifting a bit and pulling herself free from Pom’s grasp, Shanty went to grab more food.

“While I am a Huoshan Guard and probably shouldn’t associate with them, I personally know a few sky pirates and I would like to say we were okay friends.” After saying that, Pom had Shanty’s entire attention focused on her. “You probably haven’t heard of them though.”

“Now you be having my interest. Not being a guard of a volcano of course, not to be saying that is nothing of interest, but the being friends with real airship owning pirates is much more attention grabbing.” Shanty was now laying on her belly in front of Pom with her hooves under her chin and her rear legs kicking as she chewed on a wild carrot. “Tell me the name of their ship and I might be having heard of their tales back home.”

“Well… they aren’t exactly renowned, I mean their captain has got to be one of the unluckiest beings alive in existence.” As soon as Pom said that, Shanty’s eye lit up with delight.

“You be talking about The Ardent Survivor and the medically capable crew of Captain Blackcap!” Shanty startled Pom slightly and she had a starry look in her bar shaped pupils. “They be some of the greatest pirates to continue surviving such a horrible blackcap curse. A curse that is said to have destroyed more than a hundred ships by proximity alone… except for theirs. Many are believing it be in the name of the ship, they are like a mirror to Captain Jacqueline Sparrow and The Lucky Charm. I kind of wish I be having a curse like that, then I would always know who is being a true friend of mine.”

“Most of that is correct, I’ve seen the curse in action personally… I really didn’t want to be within twenty feet of that walking disaster zone.” Pom hugged herself and shivered. “So- thirsty?”

“If I am wanting to be a pirate like that, then survival is a must and I be here with new friends that will see to that.” Shanty closed her eyes and nodded. “Yes, I be drinking my fill if you are offering and I am never one to be turning down free meals. I hope our adventures together will be as grand and lofty as those pirates you know!”

Pom would soon be boiling some water in a bowl shaped rock I helped carve personally. We’d all get our share and then we’d… talk about stuff I guess.

We really didn’t know what we would be doing here otherwise, but I believed in Pom when she said we’d eventually find a way home at least. She got back to Equestria after visiting Fœnum, so it wasn’t impossible.

-The Valley, training ground, Skunk-

“Whoa, so we have visitors from outside The Valley, that’s so cool!” I was excited at Master Turtle’s news. We apparently had four visitors camping near the edge of our territory, which was also near the edge of Dragon’s territory. I wondered if they would be okay out there by themselves. “Can I go visit them?”

I am Skunk, one of the protectors of The Valley. So when I hear that there are visitors that aren’t from Dragon’s ninja monkey army, why wouldn't I want to meet them?

Whenever I ask about where all the other people that use to live here might be, I don’t get much of an answer. Fox gets really quiet whenever someone talks about that stuff. She always looking out for me and was always so strong.

I really looked up to Fox as my big sister, only… she seemed a little off after seeing one of the visitors we’ve already met. She looked somewhat excited to talk with them at least from what I remember of that short interaction. I was excited too.

I mean, I heard a lot about the things going on outside The Valley from various birds and the like, but I’ve never actually seen anyone from beyond it that doesn’t normally live here. I’ve been here all my life, so this was something new to me.

Master Panda knew I was excited and would likely go even without his permission.

“Now Skunk, please be patient and do not go running off. You have training to do.” Panda said as I looked up to him, he was like a father to me and was always so wise. His training taught me how to do a lot of cool and weird things that I would have never thought of as even being possible. “Now show me fifty repetitions of flying crane kicks.”

I was sometimes a bad student, but I always came through for everyone eventually. I started doing the exercise he told me to.

Thinking of training exercises, I should really train my cheeky monkey technique more. I mean, I’ve only ever really used it once and I don’t think I have ever really used that technique to its full potential.

“Then can I go see the visitors?” I said as I jumped and launched a flurry of kicks in the air, before landing and finding my balance.

“Only if you take someone with you, I do not want you going to meet them alone Skunk.” Panda didn’t say no to me outright, so I continued to do my crane kicks without complaint. He was fairly lenient with me despite all the trouble I tend to cause. “Turtle says they are of peaceful intentions, but even the most peaceful of things can still be dangerous when pushed around too much.”

“I understand Master Panda.” I really did, getting my large red nose beaten blue one too many times has taught me a lesson about being careful. The fact that ninja monkeys have more than five tricks for turning invisible was annoying, but we’ve managed to counter most of them so far.

Once I was done practicing my flying crane kicks, I would go find Fox and Rabbit. Sure, Rabbit was a bit of a jerk, but we were still good friends.

-Approximately thirty minutes later-

“Hey Fox! Panda said I could go see the visitors, but I have to have someone with me. Want to go get Rabbit and meet them?” My words seemed to make Fox happy, she put away her battle fan and started to dust herself off.

“Of course Skunk, but do we really need to take Rabbit with us?” Groaned out Fox as she ran a paw over her right ear and through her bright red fur.

Sometimes I wondered what was going on between Fox and Rabbit. Rabbit and Fox liked each other, but they always seemed to dance around the issue. Rabbit claims Fox is too girly, but he has a big crush on her and I think she likes him too.

“Come on Fox, I really want to talk to the visitors. I've never really met anyone from beyond The Valley before!” Technically Dragon’s territory was still in The Valley, so I wasn’t lying. Not that I ever told anyone that I still visited my monkey friend that was once poorly disguised as a skunk, Kiki wasn’t a bad monkey at all.

I’m not blind nor was I nearly 'that' stupid. I knew that Kiki was a ninja monkey all along and that everyone was right about her being a spy, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have friends outside of my family.

This time we knew for certain these visitors weren't part of Dragon’s army, plus Master Turtle said they were alright if a little unusual. If grandpa says they were okay, then I believed it.

I looked into Fox’s eyes with hope that Rabbit could join us for this. Sure it might be a bad idea to bring Rabbit, but he was still our friend and he always made things fun.

“Oh fine, we’ll bring Rabbit.” Fox put her paws on her hips and sighed loudly. “He better not cause our visitors any trouble no matter what they look like, Turtle did say they were all a little strange.”

-Equestrian Campsite, Pom-

“So how did you do that climbing thing?” I really don’t think Shanty was a fluffmancer, so the way she climbed and slid down the tree was unusual in how she seemingly stuck to it.

“It be my special magic, I can be climbing any surface with it.” Shanty wasn’t shy, she was quite exuberant and so full of life. “I be calling it Goat Climb.”

“You can’t do that for long can you?” There was a long pause after I asked my question.

“It be taking a lot of energy.” Shanty finally answered, she ate a piece of fruit.

“Well she’s not a fluffmancer, I know that much.” Stated Smolder as she kept the campfire going.

“I really don’t like sitting here and doing nothing with our time.” Not having any books or much else to do would bore one to tears Ocellus, I’d have known that feeling more if it weren’t for my beasties.

“I be agreeing with that, we be needing something to do.” It looked like Shanty was about ready to run off and get lost.

“How about we make a pizza?” They all looked at me like I was crazy. “The only reason why it’s possible is because Smolder is here. It’s something I’ve done in Huoshan with various longma from my canine division and it’s a fairly good way to make some friends.”

“Well…” Smolder started to say before she was cut off.

That skunk I saw earlier came running up to camp, thus spooking me slightly into letting out a squeak and falling onto my side. The skunk was slowly followed by the red fox just shaking her head while eyeing me oddly and the grey rabbit.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear the red fox was experiencing what every Diamond Dog or any somewhat intelligent canid does around me. I wished I wasn’t magnetic to canines, but it’s something that I can't control.

“Whoa, sorry about scaring you… oh hey… er…” The skunk just stared at Smolder, as did the rabbit and the fox.

“What, never seen a dragon before?” Sassed Smolder who was relaxing next to Ocellus of whom she was cuddling.

“I am thinking he not be seeing anything like any of us before.” Shanty stated with a cheerful tone.

The rabbit scowled at Smolder and went to say something, only to be slapped in the face by the fox’s tail. I think she did that on purpose, the rabbit only blinked dazedly and blushed a bit.

“Excuse us for entering your campsite, you must be the visitors to The Valley. I’m Fox, this is Rabbit and Skunk.” Fox continued to eye me strangely, I sighed and knew exactly why she was doing that. “Who are all of you?”

Fox’s tail was definitely wagging and she was just happy to be near me, this is the reason why I won’t go anywhere near where Diamond Dogs live. I was going to be polite, they only seemed interested in meeting us and they weren’t being aggressive so I really didn’t have much to panic about.

“I’m Pom.” I watched as Fox’s ears perk up when I answered her and her tail continued to show excitement.

I sighed audibly as I could already tell this was going to be a thing with Fox as long as we’re here, she was bound to hound me constantly in an obsessively friendly manner. At least I had nothing to worry about from the Fox, I knew when I had just gained a friend for life that would protect me through thick and thin. She thankfully couldn’t become one of my beasties, I already had enough familiars as it is.

If we find a method to leave, we definitely couldn’t take Fox with us. I did feel safer with Fox’s presence though.

“My names Smolder.” Smolder turned to me. “So what was that about needing my help to make a pizza?”

“I be Shanty!” Shanty introduced herself exuberantly. “If we be making tasty food, then I am all for it!”

“Well we can make a pizza with surrounding ingredients, but we won’t have any cheese for it… hmm… I can actually probably make a dessert style pizza.” I gave it some thought. “There’s plenty of fruit around here for it.”

“I’m Ocellus and I guess we don’t have anything better to do.” After blinking once or twice, Ocellus turned her head to give me an odd gaze. “Wait… is sharing pizza a cultural thing you do in Huoshan Pom?”

Author's Note

Shanty might have a few 'Guacamelee' specific abilities, basically Goat Climb, Goat Fly and Goat Jump.

7. Cooking with ewe.

Author's Note

This chapter leads into some setup for later...

7. Cooking with ewe.

-The Valley, Ocellus-

So The Valley was at war with Dragon, an army of somewhat intelligent ninja monkeys and Baboon. We were almost in the middle of their territories and I that was a little worrisome, we were clearly in The Valley defending animal’s side and they were friendly enough.

I watched as Pom made the pizza crust, showing our new friends how to go about doing it and what made this part of the dessert pizza she’s making special. Apparently being a homemaker came naturally to Pom, doesn’t surprise me in the slightest given that any lambkin would know if something was out of place in their home. They had it down to a science to know if a grain of rice was out of place.

The way Pom twirled the dough up into the air was kind of magical to watch I suppose, that she could even keep it from going all over the place was impressive in its own right.

How many times did the lambkin make us relocate again? Chrysalis should have stopped after the first five attempts and I probably shouldn’t have seen what the problem with them was first hoof after the twelfth or so attempt at failing to make headway into squeezing love from lambkin kind.

After finishing the crust, Pom then went into making a plum and blueberry jam mixture, making sure the exclude the seeds and saw to a few of them being planted nearby. She also grabbed several odd plants that were added the berry mix, possibly spices.

Pie was apparently a known thing in the valley, as was Dim Sum and other forms of healthy cooking by the one known as Duck. Duck was one of the older more intelligent beings in the valley that liked to cook and take care of others.

Dim sum was a variety small carefully made snacks and tea, it was a popular way to snack in Chi-neigh at least and it was of a similar principle here.

Pizza was less of a common commodity, so this would be a treat for them. Also I don’t think I’ve ever tasted pizza before, not that it would be as filling or fulfilling as just being near Smolder is. I tended to like sugary stuff and we changelings still needed to drink fluids. A little tea from our friends wouldn’t go amiss when we’re sharing a snack with them that Smolder is apparently going to help with.

“So you’re a warrior of your people?” Rabbit looked Pom up and down, he then scoffed loudly. “You don’t seem like much.”

Pom made sure the dough wasn’t sticking to the surface of the slate slab with a few prods here or there with a carved stick, to make sure the pizza doesn’t stick Pom added oil to the slab before plopping it on there. We found and cleaned off said slab with Smolder’s fire to prevent anyone from getting sick.

“No I’m not much of a warrior and yes I’m not really much at all. I’m just a humble guard of the people of Huoshan, hopefully my position will still be there when I get back home from this… incidental trip.” As she said this Pom started to spread the berry paste onto the dough. I eyed the two bananas still off to the side. “There’s a decent distinction between the two. A guard will protect those who can’t defend themselves and will hold their ground to keep others safe. A warrior actively goes out, fights and pushes forward. It is a guard’s duty to worry about the people under their care first and foremost. Now we need to cook this most of the way, then we need to top it off with banana slices and that’s where Smolder comes in.”

“Say, can you teach me any moves?” Skunk seemed interested in what Pom was doing as she smacked her hooves together sharply and it started a fire underneath the pizza.

“Skunk is always eager to learn new things, he is as good at learning as he is in getting into trouble.” Fox stared at the doughy circle as it cooked over the flames beneath.

“I don’t have too many personal fighting moves, but I do know four close friends who taught me a bit about their fighting styles.” That a lambkin like Pom can fight was news to me. Well I knew lambkin can run and escape a changeling hive well enough, but outright fighting? “A fifth close friend mostly relied on magic to fight with, so there is nothing I can teach as I can’t do too many magical things personally.”

“Wait, someone like you can do magic?” Rabbit’s ears twitched as he scrutinized Pom.

“Well she does have some talent as a fluffmancer.” When Smolder said that, there were odd looks from the three visitors and a curious one from the living garbage disposal that was Shanty.

Goats were supposedly picky eaters, Shanty didn’t seem to be that type of goat.

“Fluff-mancer… what’s that?” As she asked this, Fox idly eyed rabbit. She was just likely to making sure he wasn’t going to take a swing at anyone. She seemed to smack him whenever he was about to do or say something stupid and she timed it so well that I’d almost think it was a fluke the first five times she did it.

Rabbit’s emotions read as jittery and he was rather aggressive, kind of like Angel in Equestria was known for being by many people outside of Professor Fluttershy’s interactions with him.

“Well it’s a particular talent known to beings that are exceptionally fluffy, like me for instance, and using said fluffiness for mobility, utility, defensive and offensive means.” Pom got up and got the bowl shaped rock, she scooped up some water and eyed the nice smelling food on the rock plate. “I’m only vaguely a beginner and if you don’t have the talent for it, then it’s not something you can easily learn. If you ever want to see what a real fluffmancer can do, you’d want to find an alpaca. Alpaca can control the fluff on their body to do amazing or even ridiculous things.”

“How ridiculous are we talking here?” Rabbit’s ears perked up.

“If every being in this valley were to attack the particular grand master level fluffmancer that I know of, well she’d practically beat everyone in a straight fight by just hugging everyone around her into submission. I’m being quite literal here, she’d beat you even if you fought entirely dirty and she’d still win by just hugging the fight out of you. She can manipulate her fluff to such a fine degree that her fur almost shapes itself automatically to take blows without a thought. She can grapple and swing around on strings of fluff she controls like a whip and using the same idea she can practically walk on any surface. She can even create a bubble of air underwater that can’t be popped and will filter fresh out of the very water itself.” That… that was actually sounded rather impressive Pom, sounds like she can generate hydrofuge hairs that bugs have. We never invaded the alpaca because of their ability to see their loved ones with their hearts, changelings can’t fake that ability or even steal love from an alpaca. Unless an alpaca loved the changeling upon first sight, that changelings always went colorful soon after makes so much sense now. The alpaca weren’t hostile to us at least, though there was that one that cheekily invaded the hive near the end of Chrysalis’s reign. “I can barely even do the armored fluff thing with my limited talent, my alpaca friend said that I could eventually learn how to fly because I’m lightweight enough for it and I believe her. Right now, at best, I can somewhat glide or slow my fall by puffing out the fur around my head.”

“That be pretty ridiculous.” Said Shanty through a mouthful of banana to our right on her own little log seat. Pom went all out with the camp site.

“Do you think she could beat a dragon?” Skunk asked while cautiously looking at Smolder.

“Yeah, if it’s who I think she’s talking about, then it’s very likely she could beat any dragon of at least up ten times her own size.” Wait, Smolder has met this alpaca before? Why has she never told me about this? “Also I didn’t tell you about this because I’m usually trying to forget that snuggle happy alpaca even exists. Her name is Paprika right? Everyone seems to know who she is, I wonder how many people has that insane alpaca hugged by this point.”

“So this master fluffmancer is a girl?” Rabbit puffed up his chest. “Like she could take me on!”

“Three seconds, that’s how long most people my size or smaller would last against Paprika if she were to ever fight seriously. She never seriously hurts anyone though, it’s rare that ever see her with an intent to harm anybody and it takes a lot of harassing to actually get her to attack with the intent to injure. She’s very forgiving at least.” Pom wasn’t lying from what I could feel, I shivered a bit. “She’s hard to hurt and her entire fighting style is about wearing her opponent down through various methods of hugging, cuddling and snuggling. My first training session with her was training my ability block hits with my fluff, the first jab she threw was at three percent of her strength and it sent me flying across a room. My fluff actually protected me from the initial impact and the following one of me hitting the wall. I was quite bruised for a few days after that and she did it so fast that I didn’t even see her move.”

“Hugging someone into submission, that doesn’t sound very easy for me.” Skunk watched as Pom flicked the bowl of water into the flames, they quickly sputtered out and she picked up the bananas. “It also doesn’t sound like something I’d be interested it, what about the other three?”

“Does anyone have anything to chop these up with?” It wasn’t a second later that Pom received an answer in the form of Fox pulling out a fan with a twirling flourish. Rabbit rolled his eyes, but he didn’t take them off of Fox. “Where were you keeping that exactly?”

“Don’t worry, I can assure you that my battle fan is clean.” Fox said while fanning herself with a coy smile.

-Fox-

I know I’m not in love with Pom, so it’s more like I’m ‘in friendship with her’. These are some pretty weird feelings, but if I can help her then I’m going to offer to do so at every opportunity. Now if only I could keep control of my tail around her, it’s so embarrassing.

“Well okay then. I want you to peel and wash the bananas slightly, then cut the chunks evenly and spread them out over the pizza as it currently is.” I was trusted by her and I trusted myself not to make a mistake in where I hide my fan. Hidden weapon techniques are always a fun skill to learn, but can be a bit awkward at times.

“Can I be having the peels afterwards?” Shanty was an odd looking being, her manner speech equally so.

I may have even cringed at the thought of her eating the banana peels.

“Sure.” I took the two bananas from Pom’s hooves and started to peel them.

Still, to each their own.

I tossed the peels to Shanty and she quickly snapped them up with a smile and started chewing.

I then washed the bananas lightly and listened to what was said next.

-Pom-

“As for the other three fighting styles, one is the style of constant flowing movement like a flickering flame, it’s the most common fighting style of the Huoshan longma.” I wiggled and wavered about for emphasis like Tianhuo does when she’s taking a basic stance. “Another is utilizing raw aggressive brute force style of the cow. There’s also the style of the reindeer, it values evasive leaping moves, quick jabs and fast arcing blows. In fact I think it’s my best suited style, which one are you more interested in hearing about Skunk?”

“Why is that last one the one you’re more suited for?” As Skunk asked, Fox started slicing the bananas over the pizza.

“The reindeer style, Fleet Cunning Doe, I’m quite good at the defensive applications of it even if I can’t do the supplemental magic stuff the style entails. It’s meant for beings with long legs like me, given that the style requires a longer reach and quick reactions to avoid reprisals.” I eyed the thin slices of banana and nodded when they sunk into the slightly liquefied jam a bit. I sent a warm smile towards Fox that she was doing well. “Didn’t exactly help against the brute force fighting style of the cow when used to full effect.”

“So this brute force style of the cow, what’s that like?” This seemed more up Rabbits alley. “You didn’t exactly explain it in great detail.”

“It’s a bit of a thing, it’s about keeping momentum and having the ability to not be staggered by blows. Needless to say the one who taught me a few moves of it could have multiple boulders fall on her and they would always be the ones to break first.” I think Rabbit lost interest when I mentioned it was a girl, my takeaway from this is that he’s a bit of a jerk. “Strong in body and mind, able to weather blows that would fell anyone like her with just her tightly corded muscles. She’s worked for hard for her incredible physical strength and didn’t lose her agility in doing it either. If you are going to hit her, then you better make sure she can feel it or else she’ll just trample you into the ground. My cow friend was basically everything that… I am definitely not.”

“Kind of sounds like something Ox could do.” Rabbit commented dryly. “He’s pretty strong, if a bit brainless.”

“Call it a feeling, but I’m quite sure you’re strong Pom.” Well thanks for the vote of confidence Fox, too bad I don’t have that confidence myself. I certainly wasn’t seeing or feeling it at the moment. “What about that last fighting style? The flickering flame one of the Huoshan longma, I’m done with the bananas by the way.”

I looked over Fox’s work and nodded to her, then I turned to Smolder. She was grinning already as she saw where this was going, caramelized banana chunks on a fruit flavored dessert pizza…. no sugar needed even and a few spices to dent the strong sugary flavor. It’s basically a made from scratch pizza tart.

“Lightly torch it Smolder, over the pizza and not on the pizza itself.” Seeing as I had a good idea what Smolder would do, I made sure she knew not to make the same mistake that some other longma before her did when it came to cooking the pizza. “Make sure to roast all the banana slices evenly too.”

“Right, this is just like baking with Pinkie Pie. Don’t burn it too much, roast it nicely and I get something delicious out of it. Win-win for all of us as friends.” Having said that, Smolder let out a burst of flame from her mouth and kept it going for thirty seconds while looking at the banana chunks all over the pizza.

“I learned a thing or two about the flickering flame. The style is about switching between calm methodical attacks and then bursting into motion with powerful attacks at even the slightest perceived opening in someone’s defense, all while maintaining your breathing evenly throughout every action.” I sighed audibly as I leaned back against my log. “It’s about keeping yourself balanced at all times, not too rigid and not too still. Cautious, but willing to be aggressive if pushed. Burn too bright the fire wears itself out quickly, if the fire doesn’t burn that much then it’ll be too easy to snuff it out. It’s a blend of erratic and orderly attacks and defense, I’m not a longma so I can’t exactly use it to its fullest potential.”

“Sounds poetic, who taught you about that style?” Fox flicked her tail attentively as she watched Smolder continue roasting the bananas until they started changing a golden color.

“The captain of the guard… I’m married to them.” I blushed a bit, I don’t exactly want Rabbit to know that said captain is not male. I don’t want him making snide or disparaging comments about someone he doesn’t know out of ignorance, especially not my Tianhuo.

“Ah, that sounds so cute!” If only you knew the truth Fox, but I still think I was the cute one in the relationship.

Tianhuo had her moments though where she was adorable with my beasties, even if she couldn’t take care of them without an instruction manual… I did remember to leave her one… right? I’ll… come back to that thought later. No need to panic… yet.

“What about your own style or do you even have one?” Skunk suddenly asked as Smolder stopped blowing fire and looked over the pizza.

I sniffed the air, it smelled like the pizza was done.

“I only have a few moves I personally created myself… mostly defensive maneuvers, because I kind of work better with a group and being the one giving out strategic advice. I tend to try not and get involved in any of the fighting if at all possible.” That and I spend most of my time making sure my puppies didn’t get in over their heads, they were smart boys and they loved their baa-baa. I’m kind of worried that I coddled them too much, but they seem well adjusted and happy to me. “I don’t think of it as a style of combat really. That’s good enough Smolder.”

“Yeah, I kind of figured.” Smolder stretched out. “Now how are we going to slice it?”

“Like a pie?” Fox asked, she took her fan out again and I idly wondered where she pulled it from, because it definitely looked like she pulled from somewhere else this time.

“Yes, thank you for helping cook it Smolder. Say hello to berry pizza tart special. Remember all good things in moderation, so don’t make and eat too many of these or otherwise you might get chubby.” I proceeded to bow to Fox respectfully. “I thank you for your help Fox, now can you make eight even slices?”

“Sure!” Fox leapt up and with several quick swings of her razor edged fan and a few shouts, the pizza was now cut into eight even slices on the slab of stone.

“Now we have to wait a minute for it to cool off, then we can each have one piece and I have a plan for that last slice. So leave it alone.” Normally I would be scared or trying to warn people we have a watcher, but I didn’t think they meant us any harm. They were likely attracted by the smell of the berry pizza tart, that or the roasted bananas. “Also I should try the first slice, since this is my invention and I have to make sure it’s safe for consumption if I did something wrong.”

I picked up my slice after it cooled off and bit the tip off, the bananas were rightfully gooey and it added to the berry flavors. The pizza style dough and spices really balanced out the kick of the sweetness.

I should try making this with Tianhuo sometime, if there ever is another time where we’re together.

I finished chewing my first bit and then nodded to them. They each got their slice of it, the responses were nice.

“Hmm… this is pretty good… needs carrots though.” Rabbit was probably more of a carrot cake fan.

“Rabbit! Don’t listen to him, this is really good.” Well there’s the affectionate canine syndrome shining in Fox’s eyes and I accepted it. We were friends unless I wanted to be cruel to make her stop liking me as much. I’m too nice to even do that. “Thank you for sharing this with us Pom.”

“Whoa, this is almost like a green tea cake.” Skunk, as with all kids, was quite enamored with the kind of sugary flavors involved.

We ate our snack in relative silence, given Shanty was making all kinds of appreciative noises. After we finished, the trio of visitors gathered themselves up.

“I still want to learn a thing or two from you, I’m sure you have something to teach me. Everyone else I have ever met has taught me important lessons, even when they didn’t really mean to… even Rabbit!” There was a small pause and Skunk snickered. “Usually it’s mostly a lesson about what not to do.”

“Maybe we’ll come down The Valley tomorrow?” Pom offered.

“Well that sounds like a fun idea, we’ll be glad if you do and if you can’t we’re not going to be upset. We have our own things to do and we can’t spend all day every day here.” Standing up and stretching out, Fox started to mosey down the river with a sway in her hips. “Now let’s get going boys, we’ve already imposed on their time a bit too much today already and Rabbit has a patrol later on. One that I hope he remembers to do!”

“Alright, alright, lay off Fox, so I slept through a few of my night shifts.” Rabbit started to floppily waddle after Fox on his large feet. “It’s not like the ninja monkeys really try to attack us without someone ordering them to do so.”

I frowned at Rabbit’s words.

“See you later guys!” Skunk waved at us and ran off after Fox.

“Have a good day and thank you for the good times we shared!” After they were gone, I turned back to the last slice that was left behind.

“That was a really good snack, are you certain I can’t be having that last piece?” Shanty wheedled innocently.

“No, it’s for our other guest.” Honestly I hoped this worked as a peace offering, because I didn’t want to fight that baboon or all those monkeys. “You can come down now, we have no quarrel with you and we won’t attack. I think I’m the only one here who is somewhat trained.”

Smolder, Ocellus and Shanty all flinched when a ninja monkey dropped from the tree and came over to us curiously.

The ninja monkey looked at the slice, she pointed to herself and asked a question in her own language.

“Yes, take it, it’s yours.” I answered pleasantly. The monkey sat down with us and smiled while taking up the slice and taking a bite out of it. “So who are you?”

“Eep Eep!” The ninja monkey then followed that up exuberantly chattering out several things in rapid succession.

Notably the monkey had pink eyeliner on. I think it was the only feature to tell her apart from other ninja monkeys, given how much alike they looked to be when I first saw them in groups.

“Oh… sorry about ruining the possibility of you spending more time with your friend Kiki, but does the snack make up for it at least?” After eating more of it, Kiki sat up and nodded to me in a friendly manner before scampering off with the slice of food in her grasp.

“You actually understood all that?” Asked Ocellus in a disbelieving tone.

“Well of course.” I nodded to Ocellus, Smolder and Shanty. “I’m quite fluent in ‘underdog’.”

8. Teaching ewe.

Author's Note

My spine is a constant source of misery for me these last few days. No it's not related to the surgery mentioned in previous author notes... speaking of, I have get that checked on in October to make sure I'm okay. Hopefully my back clears up by then.

I'm fine otherwise, still haven't contracted the virus and I'm healthy... relatively speaking.

8. Teaching ewe.

-Huoshan, entrance gates, Twilight-

“Okay, remember girls, this we’re here to tell Pom’s wife about how Pom has been a bit… misplaced.” That was a word for it, we’re also here for diplomatic reasons. Wherever Smolder and Ocellus were, I hoped they were at least making some new friends and are safe.

One of the two puppies barked out a lot, a few growls were heard and Fluttershy translated.

“Ruff says that Tianhuo likely knows already.” She ran a hoof through her pink mane looking away from the Canis Minor awkwardly as it nuzzled her affectionately.

“Welcome back to Huoshan Gai Jin… what is it?” The longma crouched down as Ruff jumped around to get his attention. Ruff reached into the longma’s armor and pulled out a firework with his teeth and then placed it on the ground. He proceeded to look at the longma expectantly. The longma looked at the firework and then the dog. “What happened and why does he want me to launch a Code Pom?”

“There’s a code specifically for Pom?” Rainbow Dash asked looking curious.

“Yes, it is used to either come pick up Pom or in this case… some of her familiars.” The longma flicked his hoof at the fuse of the firework and a tiny stream of flame struck it. The firework soon shot off into the air and explode into pink and white.

“Ooh pretty.” Pinkie stated at the explosion in the sky. “Also before anyone says anything, I know that’s the same thing I say every single time I see fireworks, but that doesn’t make it any less true!”

Seconds later a ball of fire arrived and slammed into the ground, with an outward sweep the fireball coalesced into two wings and a longma. She looked pretty fearsome with her flaming mane and tail, not to mention those burning wings.

She took one look at us and sighed loudly as the two Canis Minor ran up to her and nuzzled up against her hooves while whimpering.

“Okay, that was a pretty awesome entrance.” Sighing at Rainbow Dash’s word, I moved forward and prepared to speak.

I tried to perk up and have a positive attitude, I was going to have to explain about how Pom ended up in another dimension. Only I was cut off before I could even utter my first word.

“Let me guess, something has happened to Pom.” This definitely had to be Tianhuo, Pom’s wife.

I wilted a bit, Tianhuo was kind of scary like Fizzle could be at times.

We’d soon learn that this wasn’t the first time the two have been lost in another dimension. Tianhuo believed in Pom being able to take care of herself, along with the others that were lost with her as well. Tianhuo also thought that Pom would likely find a way home if no one could figure out a way to retrieve them, she practically even sung praises of Pom’s resourcefulness despite being described as rather incredibly timid like Fluttershy was at times.

The last time they traveled to another dimension Tianhuo and Pom had the help of their parallel selves from Fœnum in returning home, this time Pom likely couldn’t rely on that. Pom was lost with an unknown goat and two friendship students, so it wasn’t like she was entirely alone.

Pom was a well-respected guard of Huoshan. Not a single longma had anything bad to say about her, especially not anyone from the Huoshan Canine Division. Every single one of them muttered a prayer for their lost guard once they heard about the incident and even mentioned that she would still do Huoshan proud wherever she was.

While Tianhuo was fairly good at not showing it with her stoic demeanor, I knew she was fairly worried about Pom. That and she also had a lot of canines to take care of by herself, Fluttershy offered her assistance and wanted to meet the purported Canine Queen’s pack.

Hearing about how many familiars Pom had, I had to wonder why no one has her as the world record holder for the most familiars legally and more importantly ‘naturally’ bound to one being.

While we were here my friends and I also learned of a large friendship problem between lambkin and changelings, after hearing about how some visiting changeling tourists had acted around Pom.

Being the ‘Princess of Friendship’ and Equestria meant my work was never going to be done, not until I could find a personal patsy… er… student to pass the position onto like Celestia did with me.

From what I am hearing, getting the changelings and lambkin on good terms was going to be as hard as getting most Abyssinians and Diamond Dogs to not snipe at each other aggressively when in the same room.

-The next day, Equestrian Campsite, Pom-

“Hey, you being awake Pom? Hello-~.” My eyes slid open and I saw Shanty’s face an inch away from my own, so naturally I did what any lambkin would do.

I screamed loud enough to wake the snuggle bug along with her literal snuggled bug, then rolled out of the makeshift tent while flailing wildly.

Not one of my proudest moments, but I think I handled that better than the general lambkin would to sudden surprises.

“You being that easy to scare?” Snickered out Shanty as she walked out of the shelter after me. “I wonder why I’m even considering it.”

“Did you… need something Shanty?” I slowly sat up and took a few deep breaths to slow down my quickly beating little heart.

“I did want you to help me learn how to be defending myself better by teaching me how to fight, but after that display… I’m not quite so sure of asking you about that now.” Sorry to upset you Shanty, but my reaction was basically normal for a lambkin. It could have gone worse, mostly because I could have lit myself on fire… on purpose. “Just be glad I’m not in the lesser percentile of lambkin that go for ‘the setting themselves on fire immediately’ approach to scaring off predators or to prevent being grabbed by someone. While it is a nasty way to lose wool, it beats being eaten by whatever scared you that may have only been a twig, a cucumber or your own shadow. I can guarantee that all three of those have happened before, even had a cucumber that was roasted that way once.”

“Is that actually being a thing lambkin do?” Shanty asked of a slightly upset looking Ocellus.

The disgruntled, sleepy looking, changeling didn’t move very far from her sleeping spot and still had a sleeping Smolder clinging to her in an adorable manner.

“Yes, that is actually something a lambkin will actually do, though the running around in a panic and causing other lambkins to panic and light themselves on fire once the danger has already been scared off is where it gets ridiculous. It sort of makes sense though, I mean it does actually make them quite impossible to grab or bite.” Ocellus turned from Shanty to me. “Thank goodness that you aren’t one of ‘those’ lambkin Pom, our entire campsite probably wouldn’t have survive it. Quick question, how do lambkin continue to exist with things like that being a relatively common problem!?”

“Through the massive influx of therapists, psychologist, psychiatrist and the heavily moderated use of anti-depressants mostly. Lambkin tend to be used as training aids for those particular professions.” It never took anyone too long to guess what ‘heavily moderated’ meant, lambkin were paranoid about any of the medicine having addictive qualities as much as they were paranoid about big corporations to anything ending in the letter Q. “Doesn’t help that lambkin can also be paranoid about being paranoid nervous wrecks.”

“Oh right, that.” Stated a nodding Ocellus in complete understanding, she then looked to Smolder still clinging to her and blushed slightly. “Um… Smolder… could you wake up please?”

“Five more minutes… with Ocellus shaped pillow… please…” Smolder mumbled as she rubbed her face into Ocellus’s neck.

Ocellus looked at us as if she were a deer with a flashlight pointed at her eyes. Except for the lack of pupils, the reaction was a fairly apt description of her current expression.

“So you want to learn how to defend yourself? You already have a pretty good start with your climbing and dancing ability.” I decided to deflect attention from her to myself by focusing on Shanty. “I might not seem like much, but I can get you started in the basics so you can learn how to defend yourself better.”

“I actually be needing reassurance that you can teach me anything.” Shanty stated bluntly while looked at me flatly.

“That’s completely understandable. I’m timid, prefer diplomacy to combat and it seems like a really bad idea to have me as a teacher, but I can assure you that I do actually do know how to train you.” That’s even knowing my personal fighting ability was drastically minimal without my beasties.

I did know how to do quite a few things my wife and friends have taught me. While I knew all their styles, I didn’t actually train in them except for the more evasive forms of Fleet Cunning Doe and Huoshan Basic in general with Tianhuo.

“Prove it.” Shanty stated while sitting down and crossing her hooves.

“Okay first thing’s first, even the greatest master of any martial art can be defeated by someone who has no training at all. That is because the person who has no training at all will be entirely unpredictable in their actions or movements, thus they are as dangerous as someone who knows what they are doing. As such I don’t want to underestimate your intelligence Shanty, I ask that you don’t underestimate mine.” The things for me to focus on, since Shanty wanted to be smart, was knowledge and wisdom. “Another thing is that pride has no place in a true fight for your life and you should always be aware of your surroundings. If you are fighting more than one opponent, then losing track of even one of them is dangerous since they could position themselves to inevitably take you by surprise. These are some of the things you should always remember. What I’m going to be teaching you, if you still want to learn, is how to develop your own fighting style. I’m not going to teach you a set of stances or fancy movements as that’s something you have to learn to create yourself. What I am going to teach you are your strengths, weaknesses and how you can possible improve yourself to make up for your shortcomings. Any questions?”

“Yes, is it being true that fighting can be taught through everyday activities?” Fairly surprised that Shanty didn’t scoff at me and was paying attention, I blinked at the question the young goat posed me and nodded. She was actually willing to listen to me?

Ocellus rolled her eyes and went to lay down in the bedding of leaves with Smolder still clinging to her in an adorable manner. Smolder was quite cute, even though she probably wouldn’t appreciate me pointing that out. A number of dragons tended to have tough reputations and spent a lot of time hiding how sensitive they actually are.

“Yes, everyday activities, a strong mind and a healthy body can all help in a fight. Anything goes in a battle, so long as you don’t get hurt doing something stupid. Even acting silly can be a combat style.” I learned plenty of things, like how Paprika is so scarily good in combat when she isn’t even using her fluffmancer talents and was just being playful. “My friend Paprika taught me how to block attacks by playing 'patty cake' with me, if I didn’t block her attacks I would get struck lightly. She would then slowly ramp up her speed and the strength of her blows, but she always made sure to not be too rough with me.”

“Patty cake is being a kid’s game though.” So Shanty did have some petulance, but was still willing to learn apparently.

“Yes, but when a martial artist does it, it’s consider a flurry of high speed attacks.” After stating this, I saw Shanty giving me a thoughtful look. “It also helps with hoof eye coordination as well.”

“We be playing that then?” She asked slowly and cautiously.

“That and several other methods of training that can be fun games.” I sat down and held up my front two hooves. “Let’s get started then, your job is to hit me by finding a time to distract me with something like a clap of your hooves.”

-Thirty minutes later, Shanty-

I believed Pom when she said there are things I have to be remembering, only this game was teaching me about how good Pom was at deflecting or blocking my blows with her own hooves.

Every once in a while she’d clap her hooves surprising me, sometimes before I could clap my own or sometimes when she leaned out of the way on attack. It happened before or after that she would launch an attack back at me, there was no pattern and I was getting quite frustrated by it.

Whenever I was struck, I usually lost my balance or missed a hoof thrust and she’d tap me on the forehead gently in a way that always knocked me over. Aside from scuffing myself against the ground, she only be hurting my pride.

I thrust my hooves rapidly, putting my all into it and she kept shifting her head and body out of the way while blocking my hooves with her own until she slapped her hooves together and moved her right leg. I went to block only to receive a tap on my head from her left hoof and I fell onto my back from the loss of balance.

I was quite angry at her… but also myself.

“Okay, I think that’s enough of that game. I hope you had some fun Shanty…” Why is she looking at me like that? “You looked to be getting rather frustrated by this and if you got too frustrated then you wouldn’t be learning something from it. So what do you think you have learned from this already?”

I think this be the longest an adult has ever given me any attention before… why did I want this feeling of her looking at me like that to last?

Shaking my head, I considered what I had learned.

Well I had learned that I couldn’t beat her at the game or actually come close to hitting her, she’s played it a lot and learned how to do it so well. Maybe that’s not the right answer… or better yet it wasn’t the full answer.

What had I learned? What was I missing here?

I am asking her for help and she says that is true that training could be as easy as playing a game.

So what haven’t I… that’s it isn’t it? She asked me what I’ve learned, but I was actually having fun trying to win the game. So I think I missed what it was that I was supposed to be learning. I should also consider what I haven’t learned.

When I had a hole blasted into my ear by a unicorn, the notch was a mistaken belief that the unicorn wouldn’t mean me any harm and I learned from that incident to never cross a unicorn again.

I wasn’t exactly learning from my mistakes here, trying new things and or thinking about what to do to get in that single hit, I just be going straight at Pom. This was quite embarrassing of someone who wants to be one of the best pirates of Equus.

“Shanty, are you alright? I’m sorry if I…” Pom put a hoof on my shoulder and was looking at me like that again. I quickly shrugged it off.

“I be thinking of what I learned Pom, give me some time!” I am singing that I am wanting to be smart. While I could be clever, I wasn’t exactly wise yet… aside from being street wise.

What was the first thing Pom taught me that I needed to remember? They were words of wisdom, she was trying to teach me to be smart, listen to the things she says and not to ignore them entirely. I can make my own judgements on what wisdom she gives me, but I have to make of it what I will of what she teaches me.

“I am both learning a lot and maybe not much at all.” Tilting her head at me, I received a small smile from Pom. I continued. “A master of fighting can be humbled by even someone like me, but I was being too predictable for you and let my pride get in the way of wanting to win the game. You told me that if I was fighting a group of opponents I should always be aware of the one that is out of sight, I focused too much on your right hoof and you smacked me with your left. I also learned that I need to work on my balance so I won’t get knocked over as easily.”

“Do you understand and acknowledge that the bits of wisdom I told you had merit and that I had used them in the very game we played to teach you a few things?” That was quite easy to see Pom, I could tell you were treating my fairly and seriously. It was kind of something new to me and I liked the feeling of having her complete undivided attention on me. I wasn’t about to tell her that though. “So those bits of wisdom and your own words taught you a lot, now let me tell you where you can improve.”

“This I have got to hear, this is like watching Rainbow Dash try to teach Scootaloo how to defend herself.” We turned to Smolder who was crunched her way through a piece of fruit with juice dribbling from her jaw a bit. “Only this is going far better and there’s less tree sap involved, remember how long it took Rainbow to get the sap out of her feathers after that Ocellus?”

“Yeah, Scootaloo was so upset with herself after causing Rainbow to be incapable of flying for a few hours.” Ocellus was a strange one, but I be liking her and Smolder well enough.

“First of all, don’t put your all into an attack unless you are sure you can land it. Otherwise you leave yourself open for a counter or worse. If you widen your standing slightly, that should give you bit more stability. You should also remain calm and collected, being hot headed will lead to you making mistakes and I really don’t want you getting hurt when you do.” Pom is actually sounds concerned about me… and I think she actually meant it too. Should I be worried? This was entirely new to me. “You could also incorporate dance moves into your movements or think about how you can improve on your own merit. To that end, we should head down The Valley and see about having you play with someone around your age.”

“You mean Skunk?” I asked curiously.

“Yes.” Pom nodded. “You can learn a lot from watching someone else train or from training with them. Even if we aren’t going to be here forever, I think you two can have some fun together.”

That… is not sounding like a bad idea.

-The Valley, lower end, training grounds on the hill, Pom-

I think Shanty was a bit wary of me, but at least she was willing to learn. I couldn’t protect all of us by myself and teaching Shanty to take care of herself would ease some of that pressure off of my mind.

Smolder could breathe fire and use her claws, Ocellus had magic and could hide better than anyone else, but if something dangerous were to happen then I would be the one they all had to rely on and I couldn’t be everywhere at once.

I bowed to greet Panda and he bowed back to me.

“Hello and welcome to The Valley, we are hoping to be good hosts for your visit.” Panda sounded like a wise person. "I am Panda."

“I, Pom, thank you for your warm welcome Panda. I want to show Shanty here that I am skilled enough to teach her how to protect herself before she runs off to have some fun with Skunk.” Tilting his head at me curiously, Panda looked thoughtful for a moment. “I wanted to know if you have any challenging ways to show that I have the skills to teach her… even if I don’t exactly have the greatest skill to fight.”

Panda picked up a pebble.

“Oh, he’s going to do 'that'.” Fox stated as she arrived and hovered near me.

It was obvious that Fox wanted to hug me, but I kept my eyes focused on Panda as he held the pebble out on his left paw.

“Take this pebble from my paw.” Panda smiled, I already knew what he was doing. It was something I did for fun with my beasties and Tianhuo taught me how to do this both ways.

“She’s never going to be able to take the pebble from Master Panda’s paw.” Skunk showed his confidence in his teacher and apparent father figure, at least that’s what Fox told us while we were picking fruit the other day.

“Oh this I have got to see!” Rabbit took a few glances at Fox every now and then.

I just shook my head and approached Panda before sitting in front of him.

There were also an ox, a small bird, a duck, a pig and a crane watching, I was a bit nervous with so many eyes on me. I took a deep breath and did the first thing anyone should do to solve this exercise.

“May I have the pebble please?” I asked gently as I held out my right hoof, Panda put the pebble in my hoof. I smiled pleasantly. “Thank you.”

“What?! I spent weeks working up my speed to grab that stupid pebble and she just gets it by asking for it!” Rabbit wasn’t all too bright, but I would like to think that he had his heart in the right place if things got dire around here.

I wanted to hear more about this Dragon guy Fox, Rabbit and Skunk mentioned several times while looking at Smolder oddly.

Panda was the one to ask about Dragon, I would only do so when Skunk and Shanty ran off to play.

“May I have it back so we can continue?” Panda stated congenially and I calmly dropped it back into his waiting paw, much to Rabbit’s obvious consternation. “Pom here clearly understands that there is always more than one way achieve a goal, she is quite wise and has done this before. Am I right in my assumption?”

“You are.” I answered calmly.

“Now try to take it from my paw without asking.” Panda stated pleasantly with a smile.

“Okay, but what do I do with it now?” I said holding up the pebble much to the disbelief of Fox, Rabbit and Skunk.

Panda blinked owlishly as he turned his paw over and opened it to reveal that it was empty.

No one had even seen me move to grab it immediately after dropping it into his paw.

“You have definitely learned this lesson well…” Panda turned to Shanty. “Shanty was it? You will likely learn much from this one. She can be a great teacher, but I fear she underestimates herself quite severely.”

9. Now ewe tell me.

-The Valley, Training Hill, Pom-

Panda and I established a rapport easily enough, but our small talk was boring both Skunk and Shanty. I organized some play time between them with Panda. They were ready to run off to have fun, with Smolder and Ocellus to chaperone them of course.

“Don’t let Shanty or Skunk get into any trouble!” I shouted after Smolder and Ocellus as they followed the two young ones.

“Yeah, yeah, we’ve done some foal-sitting before.” Smolder really shouldn’t have said that. “What’s the worst trouble these two could get into?”

Having had heard what follows those kind of statements from Fizzle, I know for certain it wasn’t paranoia and the world would be out to get you when you said anything to that effect. Fizzle even had extensive proof that it was a constant occurrence no matter the dimension, world or universe from multiple sources. Such a thing was proven to be in every instance of existence where anything even remotely intelligent exists and has a concept of language, one that has spoken words that can be even remotely comprehended by the universe as a challenge.

“I don’t know Smolder, the Cutie Mark Crusaders routinely caused trouble even after having gotten their cutie marks and we heard that they were a lot of trouble even before that.” Commented Ocellus as she followed Smolder in flying after the two rambunctious kids that charged off together.

Once they were clearly out of hearing range, I then turned my attention to Fox.

“Do you want to get it out of your system now or later?” Knowing exactly what someone wanted with me felt very odd, I wasn’t exactly against it as it was innocent enough.

“I’m quite sure I have no absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.” Fox was wagging her tail excitedly. Every other bit body language not related to her tail was screaming what she wanted quite loudly at me even as she rolled her eyes, the way her ears were at constant attention around me said as much. I knew canines, even if they were far too intelligent to become yet another familiar for me to deal with. “Though if you have a suggestion, I might be inclined to listen to it.”

Fox seemed to have a lot of self-control and was just waiting for me to tell her it was okay, either that or I possibly had to ask her if she thought I was naïve. I’m a bit panicky, excitable and a little crazy by my races standards. What I wasn’t was dumb, not around anyone like Fox at any rate.

“Would you like to hug…?!” I squeaked loudly as Fox lunged at me and started to nuzzle her face into my fluff.

Returning the hug gently as she cuddled into me, I was starting to worry about how far Fox was willing to take this as she started clamping onto me.

“You feel nice…” Fox stated after a moment, then tears started to spill from her eyes. “This feeling reminds me of my father.”

Don’t you dare ask her Pom, just stay silent. Hold her and let her wrap her tail and body around me affectionately. You don’t need to pry into the personal lives of the locals, not when you are currently acting as a therapeutic plush toy.

I was still going to pry into Dragon’s story as soon as Fox let go of me, this hug was something I didn’t exactly mind doing for my new friend.

I looked at Panda and I saw a sad smile on his face, he nodded to me in a silent gesture of thanks for being able to be a comfort to Fox like this.

“I… I need to go… thank you.” Fox then spent the next few seconds still holding onto me awkwardly, then she eventually gave me a tight squeeze and fully let me go.

When I let her go, she glanced at me with wilted ears and then quickly ran off.

“So how does she cope?” I asked as I watched Fox run off without looking back at me.

“She dives into her training, spends time with Skunk or toys with Rabbit to hide from her emotions sometimes, I think it is always better to confront them than to bottle them up. She usually uses her fan to slice up bamboo to get her frustrations out and will be likely heading to the bamboo forest soon.” Panda closed his eyes while sighing. “Please do not worry, I believe Fox will be okay. Now sit, I will prepare us some tea and snacks. I may presume much, but I think that you wish to talk with me about more important matters than the weather.”

I sat down and Panda set about getting tea and some snacks ready. After I got my first sip, I calmly placed my cup down and waited for Panda to finish sipping his.

“I noticed that everyone gives Smolder odd stares. That you know of a dragon and that this dragon consistently attacks The Valley, I’m finding myself rather curious about Dragon’s story.” I looked Panda in the eyes and he had a frown on his face as he slowly gazed off to the side. “What’s his story, also why the monkeys and the baboon? I want to know what’s going on if my group is going to be here for a while, because I need to know if we’ll be attacked just for associating with you.”

“Long ago, Dragon protected The Valley…” Panda started off. “We think he was punished by the heavens for his arrogance and what happened to him after that leaves me feeling sorry for what has become of my old friend. He blamed us, the warriors and dwellers of the valley for what happened. Now he seeks to destroy us, those of whom he once protected.”

I took a sip of tea and wondered what that comment about the heavens meant. I wasn’t going to think anything he said was silly, I didn’t know how this world works. Panda did know how things worked around here though, my friends and I were clearly outsiders to this situation. We knew gods existed back in Equestria, they could be quite different here.

I’ve personally met the longma goddess Jutian for a minute or so, she even helped direct us back to Equus from Fœnum. She had looked upon me and Tianhuo fondly too, I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not when it comes to love goddesses.

“We used to eat the most delicious plums and other foods together when we were younger, those were much happier times and we even had this particular tree that is now part of Dragon’s territory. Our bond may have snapped, but something is still there… given that the tree is still standing and hasn’t been torn down yet.” There was an unfathomable sorrow in Panda’s voice. “I thought the days of our friendship would never end as we grew up together… that was up until the drought happened.”

Tilting my head, I waited for Panda to hopefully sate my curiosity. I gestured that if he didn’t want to, then he could stop the tale right there with a single wave of my left hoof. He shook his head and looked at me solemnly.

“A horrible drought occurred throughout The Valley, the heavens were testing Dragon’s loyalty to them. We were pleading for help during this time and were all slowly dying of thirst.” Panda closed his eyes while shaking his head and taking a sip of tea, he even popped a dumpling into his mouth and chewed it over a bit. “Dragon responded to our pleas by trying to give us water with his magic. I did try to warn him at the time, but the heavens obviously weren’t pleased with this or his loyalty to his friends. He was swiftly struck down for trying to help us and the heavens took away his ability to fly. This had also turned his golden scales black afterwards and he soon turned his woes onto The Valley because of it. In his rampage he ended up sealed away in Lung Mountain thanks to the destruction of a rather specific mystical flower, it made him lose control over his powers of water and that's when he started burning painfully from his own power of fire. Whenever he tries to leave the waters of the mountain, of which he’s now sealed himself inside of, he is always in great agony. The waters there are the only thing that can keep his self-inflicted burns soothed.”

“Where do Baboon and the monkeys come into it?” That was a part I didn’t understand. “I heard some things about them from Skunk, Fox and Rabbit.”

“That… is something we don’t know the answer to. I sometimes think we were being tested during the drought too…” Even he seemed to be thinking about my question quite thoroughly, he looked to the sky with a longing gaze and popped another dumpling in his mouth. “It almost seems like Dragon has always had Baboon’s loyalty through offers of power and strength, yet we have never actually bothered to learn why the ninja monkeys are involved. All we do know is that they have been a constant threat to us ever since Dragon became trapped in mountain.”

Well I was certainly wary of getting on the heavens bad side while I’m here… I guess I had to go to the other faction hear the story of why the monkeys worked with Dragon or Baboon.

“Would it be a bad idea for me to wander into Dragon’s territory by myself?” From what I saw of the monkeys and Baboon, they seemed like amiable enough people. They were likely the only friends Dragon had left and that was rather sad.

“I have not finished my story yet, for there is a bit of prophecy and I am unsure what you will or can achieve by visiting Dragon personally. You might be able to change things for the better or you may make things far worse, I do not think that the heavens ever intended for outsiders to interfere with our problems.” That Panda had read my intentions so thoroughly had surprised me quite a bit. “If you make yourself known to Dragon, he may come after you or your friends. He is likely focus on Smolder, since she is not the kind of dragon any of us are familiar with. What we are glad of, is that Smolder is friendly and innocent of Dragon’s wrongdoings upon us.”

“I live in the Dragon Lands, that’s where my home of Huoshan is located. I became a guard there and while the dragons there can be jerks sometimes, they all have softer sides they try to keep hidden away behind all that bravado of being seemingly strong and confident.” I sighed as I thought about how friendly Smolder was to me. “While Smolder likes to be seen as tough, I can she’s softer than she acts and she mostly acts that way the most around her friend Ocellus. Thanks to the school of friendship, the dragons of the Dragon Lands are starting to learn how to express themselves more outwardly even if they only have one student in the school currently. That student is of course Smolder, I can reassure you that she has no ill intentions and is nothing like the dragon you know.”

“Can I hear more about what the dragons are like in the Dragon Lands?” It seemed Panda didn’t have any untoward thoughts towards Smolder, just plain curiosity. I might as well trade in some more information.

“The dragons where I’m from grow wiser with age, younger ones like Smolder are often aggressive and like to prove their strength amongst themselves. It is said that once a dragon has lived long enough, they eventually die and become like the very mountains they live among. There is some truth to it as the burning mountain of Huoshan was one of those dragons that the longma, the cousins of the dragons, live on peacefully.” Huoshan was a wondrous place and it had my favorite longma in the whole wide world just waiting for me to return home. Just wait for me Tianhuo, I’ll come home eventually. “The spirit of Huoshan even moved to protect the people even at a great cost to itself and it was one of the reasons why I became a guard there. Huoshan didn’t just protect the longma living there, they protected every single visitor no matter who or what they were against a massive horde of monstrous world eating shadow creatures. So, what is this prophecy and why do I get the idea that I don’t like where it is going?”

“Huoshan sounds like quite an honorable spirit, both as the late being and the name of your home. If what you say is true, then Huoshan has clearly welcomed your presence among the longma you speak of with respect.” Panda offered a dumpling and I took it to chew on, he nodded with a smile. “Once Dragon became sealed in the mountain several things happened. One such instance was Tiger, one of The Valleys greatest warriors who went to face him alone… he came back with his fur having turned white with fright. Dragon was a constant problem with his magical machinations. I asked the heavens for a savior for a way to deal with the problems Dragon was causing… their response was to send me Skunk. I have tried to raise him well, but I have no idea where the heavens pulled him from or what family he could have had if I hadn’t asked for help. My pupil Skunk may be the key to eventually helping Dragon or defeating him once and for all. I hope for the former.”

“It’d be quite sad if it was the latter. At least you gave Skunk a father figure… along with apparently mothers, sisters and brothers of those who live around here.” The heavens obviously had many lessons to teach everyone who lived here, but I didn’t know if I liked them or not.

The Valley was rather picturesque, if it wasn’t for the cold war going on between the two factions.

“I have more questions. It sound like the dragons of your Dragon Lands are changing their ways.” Well it wasn’t exactly a secret and Panda was a rather jovial guy, even if he was sad about his friend Dragon. He stroked his chin glancing around before returning his gaze to me. “What led to this happening?”

“Friendship is a mystical power in itself where we’re from, that’s the main catalyst for change both good or bad. It started with the Gauntlet of Fire, a competition the previous Dragon Lord by the name of Torch had started to pass his title on to the new generation. Torch is literally the size of a small mountain, I’m a very tiny speck compared to him and despite his size… he was considered to be a very respectable leader of the dragons.” I was still terrified of the idea of even meeting Torch or having his complete attention on me. “During the Gauntlet of Fire a dragon named Spike helped Ember, Torch’s daughter, become the newest Dragon Lord. Spike was not native to the dragon lands and was born and raised outside of them, he was called to take part in the Gauntlet of Fire and was the one who got the staff of the Dragon Lord. He gave it and all the power it represented up to Ember as a sign of friendship and officially passed the title of Dragon Lord to her. Dragon Lord Ember was eventually called upon to send a dragon envoy to the school of friendship as a part of a massive alliance between several races, she sent Smolder. I don’t know much of the story from there, but things were a bit rocky at the start for the various students of friendship that were completely new to the idea of having friends. Smolder eventually learned to value friendship and didn’t want to be separated from her new friends, so she’s officially a Dragon Lands liaison and lives in Equestria where the school of friendship resides. I’ve met Ember personally, I think she’s a rather wise and strong leader.”

“That answers many of my questions, it sounds like where you are from is relatively peaceful.” You have no idea Panda.

“Outright war is certainly a rarity, but things are not as peaceful as they sound. There’s always something going on somewhere or else people wouldn’t need guards.” If I had a willing audience, this was someone who has a different perspective on things and would hopefully share some thoughts. “Do you want to hear how I became a guard?”

“I would be honored to hear your story.” Answered Panda while taking in another dumpling.

-The Valley, edge of the lake, Shanty-

I be watching Skunk apply the ‘patty cake’ lesson I am learning from Pom to his abilities. It be mesmerizing at how fast he could launch palm strikes to meet my hooves.

Now if only I wasn’t currently testing myself against him, he had great reflexes from all the training he’s done and I’ve only just started. I need to eat healthy, exercise and all that other stuff Pom be saying, because I could barely keep up with him.

Skunk’s paws were lightning fast and I was barely blocking him with my hooves and what I couldn’t block, I deflected or evaded having learned from Pom’s example. Skunk was helping me by leaps and bounds by giving me tips on how to improve as we clapped our paws or hooves together and struck out at one another.

I personally think that Skunk is cute and his red nose reminded me of a tomato.

“Aren’t you going to get in on that Smolder? I think I remember seeing you doing some training with Rainbow Dash and a few of the other martial arts students in Ponyville.” Ocellus was not a fighter, but she is being quite smart. “It looks like fun and something you’d be interesting in doing.”

“I could… but I would rather sit with my best friend on the sidelines cheering our new friends on.” It is nice to be knowing that Smolder considers me a friend, I am not having too many of those until quite recently. “Besides, I don’t want to dominate them or ruin their fun. Did you know Ponyville had a response force other than our teachers, apparently when they aren’t busy the local martial artists defend the town from the things our teachers don’t deal with. It was a little odd hearing that Bon-Bon was the one organizing the local defense militia, but apparently she’s quite good at it when Twilight and the others aren’t around.”

Skunk clapped and threw his left paw for my head and I leaned back unable to get my hoof up in time.

I ended up falling onto my back, Skunk overextended and followed by falling on top me face first into my chest knocking the wind from my sails. I quickly hugged him, he was really quite nice and soft.

My laughter soon filled the air when Skunk became quite embarrassed at me cuddling him and our current predicament.

“You be winning that one Skunk.” I was well aware of my skill level compared to his. I couldn’t get mad for doing my best, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t going to work just as hard to win the next game. I was wanting to be a great pirate and I am needing to be strong and smart, Skunk was already far ahead of me on both those things. “You are really good at learning new things.”

Skunk rubbed at his head with his right paw as I helped him stand up.

“Thanks Shanty.” He was blushing and backed away quickly as soon as I released him. “It’s something I’ve always been good at, learning how to protect myself, my friends and The Valley that is.”

“What’s it like to have a family?” I wonder why he be reacting so shocked to the question. As a waif I've Been taking care of myself for quite a long time, I honestly don't know what it is like to have one.

I didn’t see any other skunks or even full families around here. I noted that while Skunk’s parents weren’t around, he be still having a family in everyone else though.

“I uh… you don’t have a family?” Skunk was now looking at me sadly. “What about Smolder, Ocellus and Pom?”

“I am only meeting them for the first time this week.” I looked to Smolder and Ocellus who seem worried about me, well they shouldn’t be as I’ve been taking care of myself quite well since I am turning six. “I am liking them, but we be strangers to one another before the incident got us lost here together.”

“I could tell you what my family is like.” Ocellus offered gently. “They are all very nice and we’re really close, but I haven’t been spending as much time with them recently since I’ve been going to school.”

“I could tell you all about my brother Garble, but as for our mother and father… yeah, let’s just say that dragons aren’t exactly the best parents in the world and leave it at that.” Smolder crossed her arms and huffed loudly. “I at least hope to be better than them if I ever have children. It’s probably why I like going to school now, it has helped me meet so many people and I didn’t know I needed friends until I met them.”

“Um… are they talking about a school for learning martial arts?” Skunk asked me.

Is he not knowing what a normal school is? Oh… of course he doesn’t. To be fair… I’ve never been to a real school either. I can tell they not be having schools around here, at least not normal ones that have nothing to do with fighting.

“I not be knowing, I’ve never been to a school either.” I received more sad looks from both Ocellus and Smolder.

“So you’ve never had a family?” Skunk asked tentatively poking two digits of his paws together.

“I be taking care of myself for most of my life.” I be at least learning the basics of how to live, reading and math were not easy to learn when you be having nothing. “I only ask for help when I think someone be willing to give it and I know I can trust them.”

“Shanty probably grew up in a rough place, I would know a thing or two about that.” Ocellus rubbed at her right leg while looking away.

“Ocellus, we all grew up in rough places.” Though Smolder was making me curious, I would rather get something to eat than ask questions and I spotted some fruit nearby that be looking quite tasty. “Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest that Pom is probably the best example of her people that they can provide.”

-Dragon’s Territory, inside of Lung Mountain, Baboon-

“So you finally decided to show yourself after your most recent defeat, I take it that this means you’ve finally recovered.” Dragon was, as per usual, angry. Understandable, I fail him quite regularly. “I’ve come to expect this of you. Do you actually have anything new to report?”

“Now that you mention it, I did see a strange visitor to The Valley between our territories. They were quite polite.” I suddenly had Dragon's attention centered on me.

“Oh... tell me more of this outsider you saw.” The large black scaled dragon leaned down and narrowed his eyes on me.

Author's Note

Well my spine realigned itself, I'm back to normal and I'm so feeling much better.

Also the abridged version of Dragon's history... did I get it accurately enough?

Here shanty outright states that she actually trusts Pom.

10. Ram-bler.

-The Valley, Equestrian Camp, Pom-

I sat here alone thinking about my talk with Panda. Among the places Panda had warned me about, there was Lung Mountain in the distance and the frozen fort up there that protects the entrance into Dragon’s lair.

There’s also the Ninja Monkey temple and the tower for the more elite ninja monkey training grounds, it was also where Baboon likes to stay when he wasn’t running around The Valley and or wasn’t at the frozen fort.

I sighed, I was still thinking about what I was told of that poor Dragon, those strange monkeys and the general of the opposing force Baboon.

Smolder, Ocellus and Shanty should be fine on their own and know how to find the camp once they were done playing with Skunk. Skunk might even hang out at our camp overnight. Shanty needed more friends and I wouldn’t say no to her having a sleepover for what is possibly the very first time in her life. I thought about how adorable that could be and smiled a little.

What did I want to do right now though? Did I really want to wander into dangerous territory to try and figure out a way to help some people who probably didn’t even want it?

There was still plenty of time in the day, but I wasn’t about to use it getting into a dangerous situation. No matter how much I wanted to help them, they weren’t currently in a life or death situation and did not urgently need me to help them with anything personally.

I did at least want to talk to Dragon’s forces eventually, but now wasn’t exactly a great time to do so and I would rather not do that alone anyway.

How stressed out was I currently? Moderately, so I could stand to do something calming… oh I know!

“I’m going to go on a ramble!” I said loudly to myself, well as loudly as I ever raised my voice anyway. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done some frolicking.”

The Valley was peaceful, aside from rogue magical artifacts in use by Dragon’s forces or Dragon’s forces themselves. There was also the naturally occurring environmental dangers and hazards that are easily avoided if you’re paying attention to your surroundings, but I didn’t have much of a problem with that.

Lambkin liked to frolic, but we could only do so on absolutely quiet days when our nerves weren’t so horrible. I really needed to get my mind off all the stress of being away from Tianhuo and my beasties while stuck in another world. I needed to relax and unwind from the possible dangers around The Valley and maybe, just maybe, I could get some ‘me’ time in for once.

The concept of ‘me’ time just didn’t exist until I just thought about it right this second. I spent so long taking care of my beasties, Tianhuo, helping people and spending time with my friends with whatever they wanted to do, I hardly ever did anything just for myself. I didn’t even visit the local spa and hot springs in Huoshan without Tianhuo with me. Come to think of it, I really did like it that way as it didn’t give me time to think myself into the ground the way that a lot of other lambkin did.

I’m actually kind of terrified of the thought of having time to myself to come up with ways that things are going to go horribly the second I blinked. Speaking of, I blinked and realized that I had wandered away from our campsite while thinking.

“Okay, don’t panic Pom, you’re at least better than at least half the lambkin back home when it comes to handling your mental state without the aid of a prescription or psychiatric help.” I would seriously like that particular trend to continue without calling for help the second I get lost.

I sighed loudly and looked around, this place really was peaceful and I think I instinctively wandered here. Standing on a hill, I looked at the flowers around me and leaned down to sniff one. Smells like the flowers back home, even looked like them too. It was nice to know that flowers were a constant of the two worlds I have visited. Though I bet there is a world out there where the flowers turned you into a ravenous rampaging monster if you eat them.

Panda only said to be on the lookout for mystical lotuses or flowers I don’t recognize, considering what happened to Dragon. I heeded his warnings, but there was nothing here to worry about as I recognized just about every flower I saw.

Okay, I could do this. No freaking out, no worrying about my surroundings for a while, no thinking too hard about things and most of all, I was going to have some fun by myself. I was getting my first ‘me time’ in… how many years has it been since I first met Big Mama?

Cautiously, I gleefully took to hopping through the flowers. Eventually I carefully began rolling through them and maybe even stopped to lightly graze around. I remembered a time when I was younger and my grandpa used to watch me play like this, I really missed my old home of Meadow Hills sometimes.

While I was here I should make a crown of flowers for old times’ sake.

-Currently inside The Valley’s territory, forest at the edge of the flower covered hills, Baboon-

Sitting in the tree I think I spotted someone wandering around the flowery hills. Standing up on the sturdy tree branch, I put my hands over my eyes and looked a bit harder where I saw that movement.

There she was, the stranger… what was she currently doing? Huh, she looked kind of adorable doing what she currently was. It would be kind of rude of us to disturb her when it looked like she was enjoying herself in the sun.

“Let’s give her a minute, then we’ll move in.” The twenty or so monkeys with me nodded. This was a relatively small unit, but I didn’t expect any trouble today and the task looked so easy with no valley defenders around to get in the way.

We really didn’t want to attract attention anyway, this is a stealth mission and not an invasion attempt.

This seemed easy… too easy. I mean the stranger looked to be relatively frail. She didn’t look like she could put up much of a struggle, but a part of me recognizes something was off with the thought of her being incapable of taking care of herself.

Why were we so hesitant to approach her when all she was doing was smelling the flowers, running around in them, even made a cute small crown from said flowers for herself and rolled down a hill on the soft grass.

A monkey chattered something.

“Why yes, it does look like she’s just having fun.” Disturbing her felt wrong to me, but we were going to do so anyways. “Four of you spread out quietly, you are going to act as lookouts. Raise an alarm if you see Snake, Crane, Fox, Mantis or any of the other dwellers of the valley that could possibly raise an alarm, especially Skunk. We’re going to do this completely silent once we get closer, do you hear me?”

All the monkeys muttered acknowledgment of my orders and started deciding amongst themselves who was getting the job of sitting around and watching for trouble.

I’m still wondering where this was going to go wrong. If it isn’t any of the valley warriors, then it’s inevitably Skunk who ruins things for us and he has a tendency to run towards problems the second he even vaguely hears about them.

That we were usually the problems that he always had to deal with wasn’t worth much thought. Still can’t believe we keep getting beaten by a kid, my reputation is still somewhat in ruins after the whole nose blowing thing. To this day that was one of the worst ways I have ever lost a fight.

-Flower covered hills, Pom-

A butterfly tickled my nose and I sneezed, I watched as it fluttered away to land on a flower. I ducked down and watched as the butterfly fluttered gently around between flowers. I heard several distinct sounds and immediately stood up and looked around with worry.

Seeing nothing, I shrugged and figured it must have been my imagination. That or the wind, but the wind usually doesn’t sound like several hollowed out coconuts being slapped against one another.

After meandering up the hill I looked about and didn’t see anyone, so I should tone down my paranoia that someone was out to get me out here.

I was a bit lost, but I at least knew enough to know I wasn’t within Dragon’s territory. I was trying to relax and if I heard another strange noise, I’d just simply run away from the area.

-Baboon-

The sixteen ninja monkeys just slammed face first into each other, the impacts left them laying in the surrounding grass just out of sight of the stranger in a circle.

Slowly I brought my paws up to my face and slowly dragged them downwards.

It was mindboggling that they missed her when she ducked down to watch a butterfly flutter around.

I wanted to get angry, I wanted to scream, but I didn’t want to alert the stranger that we were out to get her.

“Okay, let’s try the regular invisibility trick to grab her this time.” I knew they were good at various invisibility techniques, but this one was the most basic one for any ninja monkey.

They become invisible by using the distracting thoughts in someone’s head or the things around them in general. The ninja monkeys were practically invisible like that, but there were some like Ox who could see straight through it.

-Pom-

Skipping along, I made sure to stay in clearly visible and wide open space where nobody could possibly hide. I was a little less trusting of the tall grass at the moment, but at least I could still have fun.

I crossed over two hills looking at logs, large rocks and other things that caught my fancy out here, I eventually dove into a pile of flowers, rolled on to my back and put my hooves behind my head to look at the sky.

-One hour later, Baboon-

“What do you mean you can’t find the stranger?” If this were a perfect world, then my ninja monkeys would have already caught her.

The monkey then reported a major issue to me, after the good news that she hadn’t been seen leaving the area yet.

“What do mean some of our team has wandered off?!” It was quickly explained to me by the ninja monkey I just asked.

Apparently they got distracted by their own thoughts and wandered off to who knows where. We were now down to five ninja monkeys left actively searching for the target where the other eleven went off to play pranks. Chances are they were going to alert the valley dwellers to our very presence, now If only we hadn’t lost the target among the flowers.

“Wasabi.” Ugh, you just couldn’t get good help these day. Sure ninja monkeys might be unreliable at times… but they were mine to order around.

The five remaining active monkeys and I froze when we heard a yawning noise behind us. We all slowly turned our heads to the stranger sitting up in the flowers and rubbing at her eyes.

“That was a good sheep nap, been a long time since I’ve done that.” She muttered to herself, she glanced at the sky. “Only about an hour, perfect amount of time. I could do a little more rambling in the nearby forest and then end the day by picking up some food for an evening meal.”

She stretched out and didn’t even look in our direction, she was really quite close and we could grab her this instance. I nodded to my monkey and held a finger up to my mouth, they nodded and we all turned to sneak up on her.

Only for one of the ninja monkey’s to step on a twig that snapped loudly.

The resulting reaction will flummox me forever. She squeaked loudly, her ears went straight up, her tail went straight out and then within a blink she was already five hills away.

“Wasabi…” I stared blankly after the indistinct white blur several hills over and continuing to put distance between herself and us.

The stranger was insanely fast, far faster than anything we have ever seen. Not even Fox and Rabbit could move like that.

-Pom-

“No more familiars, no more familiars, my wife is going to theoretically kill me if I come home with anymore!” I cried out, having long since associated the sound of a snapping twig with something friendly about to become one of my familiars. So I galloped away before a bond of any kind could possibly form and didn’t bother looking back.

I eventually slowed down, took a slow seat on the ground and took a few deep breathes. I tried to feel out a familiar bond, I was thankfully getting nothing.

“Oh thank goodness, I know Tianhuo is infinitely patient with me, but I don’t think she’d be that patient if I came home with the number of familiars that I already have in Huoshan.” It could be worse, I could be coming home with double the familiars I already have… the horror at having to take care of three times the amount of familiars I already had washed over me.

While I loved all my beasties dearly, even seven more familiars would be far too much for me to handle.

Taking stock of my surroundings I found myself in the forest I previously wanted to walk around in. I was in the right place at least, I started looking around and eventually spotted a bush full of blueberries. I sniffed them and started picking the nicer ones, I liked blueberries in general.

It reminded me of the times my beasties nursed me back to health while I was still in exile. They all worked so hard together to bring me food and make sure I was getting rest, having Big Mama and my favorite puppies curled up around me protectively felt so nice.

I missed my family and I was getting homesickness already. Just tough it out Pom, you had three people relying on you to be their guard against any danger.

Don’t worry about being a little lost, the possible bacteria that your body is possibly crawling with given I haven’t bathed in more than a day and there’s also the possibility that something wants to be my familiar out there hunting me down.

Nope, I wasn’t having a small panic attack at all… why was my denial so transparent even to me?!

“Well then… time to construct something to carry these blueberries with.” Trying to calm down, I looked around as I popped a few blueberries in my mouth.

There were certain things I needed to build some improvised rucksacks or at the very least small bags for carrying these tasty berries I was picking. I remember Rabbit talking about carrots, so maybe I could find some wild carrots too while I’m out and about. Shanty had a healthy appetite and needed a healthy meal.

Speaking of, I wonder how Shanty, Smolder and Ocellus are doing. I hoped they were having fun at least. Maybe Skunk would bring his big sister Fox to the sleepover.

-Next to the lake, Shanty-

I be thrusting my left hoof into the face of a ninja monkey and they went sprawling. Standing on my rear hooves wasn’t too hard and it made using my front hooves easier, it was either that or I be using my head more. My horns were tough enough for it.

“Yeah, that’s how you do it Shanty!” Skunk was cheering me on as he blocked three attack with his arms and one leg and used the other leg to knock a fourth monkey away with a kick to the chin. He then leveraged the other three monkeys into each other in a rather incredibly painful display of violence that had them running.

Apparently this was a small ninja monkey raiding party and they were trying to play pranks on the valley dwellers. Skunk was upset that they were trying to prank him again, so he was in the thick of the fighting himself. I be barely capable of handling one and he was taking on five or more by himself at a time.

I be having a long way to go before I can be fighting like that. I blocked the incoming monkey that didn’t think I was paying attention with my right leg and then kicked my rear left leg up to knock them away from me.

I lost my balance, fell on my back and looked to see how Ocellus and Smolder were doing.

None of the monkeys were going near them, they were all wary around Smolder who stood in front of Ocellus with her arms crossed and just glaring at them. Fire breathing must be being a very intimidating thing to them, that and they knew a dragon with a bit of a temper already and didn’t seem to want to mess with her at all.

Ocellus stayed behind Smolder and didn’t look like she appreciated all the fighting going on.

“Shanty pay more attention to your surroundings like Pom taught you!” At Smolder’s shout I turned back to defend myself from the oncoming monkey and I wouldn’t be getting my hooves up in time.

Fox came in with a flying kick to the skull of the ninja monkey attacking me, both knocking them down and away from me. When she landed she swept another monkey’s feet out from under them with her tail and then, with the barest snap of her wrist as she spun, pulled out her fan and blasted them away with an explosion of wind.

She be using only a single sweep of the battle fan she held, but she be knocking those monkeys for the horizon. Fox is being really strong.

“Sorry to ruin the fun and your learning experience Shanty, but I don’t think Pom would appreciate you getting hurt. I’m less worried about protecting Skunk because he’s learned enough to take care of himself now.” Fox stated to me with her back to the monkey coming at her, she slapped out the back of her left fist without even looking and knocked the monkey to the ground. “I’ll take it from here and will help Skunk run them off. You are visitors and we would be poor hosts if we didn’t protect you from what is primarily our problem.”

The dazed monkey that just took Fox’s paw to the skull shook their head, got up and took one step forward. Only the monkey stopped when Fox turned her head and glared at them, the monkey immediately started running off in fear.

“Is it always being so hard to be telling the gender of the monkeys?” They all looked almost the same to me, how did they tell each other apart? Did they even need to tell each other apart? I be having so many questions.

“Eh, it likely comes with their ninja training to look that ridiculously similar to one another.” Fox commented dryly as she sauntered over to where Skunk had already downed four of the monkeys giving him trouble and was dealing with the rest of them by himself. “Also yes, it is really hard to tell them all apart unless you can get up close enough to smell them, they have a tendency to blend together visually otherwise. Now if you’ll excuse me, Skunk do you need help or can you do this by yourself?”

“I can handle this Fox!” Skunk stated as he grabbed a monkey by the tail and then spun them around to throw them away from himself, he was being quite strong for his age. “I wouldn’t mind a little help though.”

It wasn’t being long before they were run off through the forest with Fox following them slightly to make sure they didn’t double back for more trouble.

“Well looks like they won’t be causing any more trouble today.” Skunk stated pleasantly, he came out of that scuffle with barely any sweat.

-Forest, Pom-

I had several packs of freshly picked food. My goodness were plums and bananas really quite common around here, I just walked along enjoying the mostly tranquil forest. I say mostly because I met one of the valleys noncombatants. He still acted as a scout from time to time, but he wasn’t a fighter and was just in general a lazy guy.

“So I say to Ox that he was nothing special and we won the day when he started seeing through the monkey’s invisibility technique again.” Bird, the little red bird, has been talking at me about the rubber tree defense that Skunk employed against the ninja monkeys with help from Ox and Bird. I knew Bird embellished his part in it drastically, especially when he says he defeated five thousand monkeys that day. Bird heard that there were visitors and wanted to talk to me, at the most he was just talking at me and I was glad I couldn’t talk to birds normally back in Equestria. He was nice enough though. “Look out, ninja monkeys incoming!”

Bird flew up and I sighed, the ninja monkeys landed around me in fighting stances. I just lazily glanced at them and then removed two of my six makeshift packs of food I had strapped to me by repurposed vines.

“Oh good, I needed to talk to some of you guys about something.” The ninja monkeys dropped their fighting stances and looked confusedly at each other when I had addressed them calmly.

I think they were too used to fighting and they looked a bit battered. They probably just got beaten up by one of the defenders of The Valley and they were notably outside their territory, so this made sense.

“Ook eep eek ook ook?” One of the monkeys queried.

“Yes, I’m not going to fight you. Can you please do me a big favor and take these two packs to Baboon and tell him I’ll be visiting soon with my friends so I can talk to him about the things going on around here in general?” I hoofed off the two packs to the group retreating group of ninja monkeys. One with quite a few bananas and other fruits, the other was loaded with berries and quite a few vegetables that I scrounged up. “This is a peace offering from me in the hopes that we can be amiable in the future. While we are friends with the dwellers, we would like to ‘mostly’ stay out of the conflict between the two of you and be friends with you too. My name is Pom and it was very nice to meet you, but I’ve got to get back to my camp so I can start working on some vegetable soup for my friends.”

The monkeys were about to run off, but I quickly stopped and urgently turned around.

“Oh, wait, wait, wait, I forgot something! You can have what’s in this pack when you get to Baboon and deliver my message.” I gave them a third makeshift pack of food which was a different color from the other two. I bowed to them. “Okay, you can all go now and I thank you for your time!”

They all surprisingly bowed back to me respectfully, then they ran off.

Author's Note

Sheep in general sleep for short amounts of time, to the point they rarely sleep four hours a day.

The more you know!

11. Baa-bbling.

-The Valley, Equestrian Campsite, the next morning, Pom-

I woke up with less fright this time, though I found myself in the rather awkward position of having Fox snuggled up against my back. What was further confusing the situation was that Rabbit was snuggled against my belly and side with his ears laying on Fox’s side.

Skunk and Shanty’s positions looked far more innocent in comparison than me being sandwiched between these two.

At least Ocellus and Smolder have an excuse. Smolder is practically all the food Ocellus needs and the commentary that Smolder was absolutely delicious made me somewhat nervous about them getting up to things that they weren’t quite ready for yet.

Still the taste of my vegetable soup was appreciated, I hope that the packs of food I got were just as appreciated by baboon and the ninja monkeys.

“Excuse me for waking you… but I need to go do something rather private.” I whispered into Rabbit’s ear he twitched and half way woke up.

I prodded him with my left hoof a little more insistently when he started falling back to sleep.

“Wha… huh?” Was Rabbit’s eloquent response.

“Can you please let me go and help me up so I can do my business?” I really needed to go to the bathroom, but I don’t think they had outhouses around here.

“Oh… oh right… sure…” Rabbit groggily stood up and helped get Fox’s paws off of me and then he found himself being snuggled against her chest and slowly falling back to sleep with a smile.

After said business, which had me paranoid that there could be someone watching me out here. I made my way back into the camp. As I walked up I heard Fox shouting something.

“Fox, you’re the one holding onto me!” Rabbit shouted in response to whatever Fox said, Fox looked down and quickly let go of Rabbit as if she were on fire. “Yeah, I know I’m so handsome that you just can’t keep your paws off of me.”

“As if.” Fox huffed while putting her paws on her hips, she then turned to see me. She immediately perked up right that second after she just looked fairly embarrassed about snuggling Rabbit. “Oh thanks for inviting us to sleep over at your camp and for making that wonderful soup last night, but we have to get going. Skunk it’s time to get up, you don’t want to be late for Panda’s lessons today do you?”

Skunk and Shanty were as cute as I thought they’d be last night. Sure they were a bit rough around the edges, but they were good kids.

Fox, Rabbit and Skunk set about getting themselves ready and we eventually saw the trio of warriors off as they set back down the valley.

Afterwards I turned to Smolder with a smile.

“So… who wants breakfast?” I asked as I watched Smolder, Ocellus and a sleepy looking Shanty respond.

Smolder blasted herself with a few times with fire, she was probably the cleanest one of the group. I’m a bit jealous of that.

Ocellus set about getting a campfire set up by levitating a few bits of tinder for the fire to cook breakfast on.

As for Shanty she was yawning and still trying to wake up, I personally think she needs a bath.

I was going to be using makeshift soap, which wasn’t too hard to create, and would be shaking water out of my wool soon enough. I wasn’t going to just bathe myself, I would be bathing Shanty too.

“Come on Shanty let’s get you cleaned up, we’ll hopefully be somewhat presentable today.” It was probably mean of me, but Shanty grunting sleepily had me giggling as I dragged her towards the river.

That frolic the other day had been fun and little bit frightening, but it helped me loosen up quite a bit.

-One messy bath and some carapace scrubbing later, Smolder-

“So wait, why do we have to go see this Baboon guy with you?” I scratched lazily at my side and sent another blast of flames at it to make sure nothing was on my scales, being fireproof was awesome. Kind of wish my friends could experience how clean it makes me feel. If only fire wasn’t bad for them on a number of levels. “Isn’t he like… bad news or something like that?”

“I want to see the other side of the conflict, because I have a few questions to ask them about all of… well this.” Pom looked fairly undecided about something. “Can we really call what is going on here a war?”

“It seems more one sided in the favor of quality than quantity. The ninja monkeys definitely have the quantity, but apparently their quality of warriors is so frighteningly low that Skunk and his friends can hold the Valley with less numbers easily enough that they’ve apparently have been doing it for a few years.” Ocellus tapped her chin looking thoughtful, she was cute when she was thinking. “If the monkeys could gain slightly more quality within even the smaller of their numbers, then they’d be actually be a real force to be reckoned with.”

I could guess what Ocellus was comparing this to.

“This is like how Canterlot has been successfully invaded about two, three… what is it, four or five times by now?” Ponies were big on the peace and they still got problems with invaders, thousand year old problems and other things. The Storm King was far worse than the changelings, at least the changelings left buildings standing and didn’t damage too much. Speaking of, Ocellus could invade my home all she wanted provided we could get back to where we belong. “Were you thinking about that failed changeling invasion?”

“Yes. Surprisingly enough once the surprise attack wore off our forces were easily routed, by a blast of pure love no less. Our current quality of warriors is, aside from Pharynx, highly lacking. Pharynx is working on getting our military to be better than at least the Equestrian Royal Guard. I think he enjoys his position a bit too much.” Fairly certain Ocellus was not one of the changelings involved with that invasion. “The ninja monkeys definitely have swarming tactics down, but their fighting skills… I hate to say it, but I believe they are on par with changelings. Even Shanty can face them one or two at a time and win more often than not.”

Yeah, heard that our teachers took down a number of changelings by themselves in that scuffle. Mind you only Rainbow Dash was trained in fighting and our six teachers took down dozens of them with barely any personal injuries to show for it.

I had a lot nasty things to say about Chrysalis, but Ocellus assured me that Chrysalis at least didn’t bring any children to that invasion, that she was aware of.

Changeling young shape shifting into adults of their species has been known to happen… that seemed like a possible parental nightmare. Not that I actually had parents that actually worried about me to compare it to, but at least my brother Garble counts as he’s been around for most of my life until I went to friendship school. I can only imagine how Gar-Gar must be feeling right now, he must be so worried about me and angry.

“You were definitely not part of that attack Ocellus.” I stated flatly, trying to steer my thoughts away from my brother.

“Well no, but I was there when the changelings that were blasted away needed medical help… well as much medical help as we could provide from what we stole anyway.” Ocellus looked a bit upset by that. “Becoming allied with the ponies really gave us improved medical practices. There were plenty of other positive effects, but that’s probably the most notable one in my mind.”

“Well that’s all nice to be knowing, but why do you be needing us for this Pom?” That’s the question isn’t it Shanty, why does Pom want us to go with her?

“Well I don’t want to do this alone and I need some emotional support.” You almost seemed brave enough to go by yourself Pom.

“Lambkin usually need an entire intensive care unit before they can even think of going beyond their borders.” Stated Ocellus loudly.

“That’s only a… okay I was about to say it was a large exaggeration, but then I remembered whose people we were talking about here. I promise that if anyone is going to be hurt, then it’ll be me first of all.” Pom even shivered when she said that, she was not winning me over here aside from the fact that she was willing to put herself in harm’s way for our sakes. “I’m not going to let anyone hurt the three of you if I can do anything about it. All I want to do is talk, share some information and maybe get a little hospitality out of them.”

“Will you actually stop them if they try to attack us?” I trusted Pom to have our backs, it’s the question of how well she can protect them.

“I will undoubtedly put myself in their path to stop them from doing so.” Pom nodded to us. “I don’t like fighting, but I hate the idea of letting anyone I care about getting hurt even worse. So are we going to go have a nice, and hopefully peaceful, time?”

“Aye, I say they can’t be being that bad.” Shanty was siding with Pom. “Though if we get into a fight, I am knowing that I can be taking on one alone after the battle we had yesterday with some.”

“I guess, I’m curious about this dragon they know of.” I stepped forward to join Pom.

“Just know that I’m going with you under protest.” Ocellus grumbled grumpily, she had a cute face when she was scowling. She was friends with Shanty already and was dragging her heels on being able to trust Pom despite her being exceedingly helpful to our survival so far. “It just seems like a bad idea to me personally.”

“Well I hope it doesn’t turn out badly, because I can share at least some of that sentiment that this could go wrong Ocellus.” At least Pom was trying to meet her halfway constantly. Ocellus was just extending the branch of friendship ever so slowly and would eventually relent on her distaste for lambkin. “Wait a minute… did you just say you fought them yesterday?! Are you okay Shanty? Did they hurt you? Did I hurt you when I washed you earlier? Why didn’t you tell me if you had any bruising? I could have made something to bring down the swelling! Were any of you hurt yesterday? We can’t have any injuries or sicknesses out here, we don’t have the medical supplies to support ourselves if either happened!”

There Pom goes breathing rapidly and worrying over Shanty, checking everywhere to make sure the goat was alright. Knowing that Pom cared this much about us was good enough for me to see her as the leader of our group.

I would probably make too many aggressive decisions, I knew my faults well enough that I’m not a leader.

Ocellus would just go for logical decisions or would be indecisive in a dire situation.

While Shanty had some maturity… she didn’t seem to have experience or skills in leadership having been a solo act for most of her life and she seemed to just be following Pom’s lead already.

Pom was the adult, a vaguely trained fighter, able to quickly organize and was shown to be diplomatic over the last few days in how she balanced her attention on each of us equally or as needed. She had the necessary leadership skills we needed, even if she learned said skills by tending to huge variety of canines.

I'd declare Pom the leader if brought up.

-An hour and an explanation later, Ocellus-

Pom was upset about Shanty getting into a fight with the some of the ninja monkeys, I think Smolder handled it pretty well considering how intimidating she was to them. They were under the leadership of a dragon named 'Dragon' that apparently had all kinds of magical powers, so it stands to reason they’d be nervous around Smolder.

I think they were equally as nervous around me because I was an unknown to them, so they really never attacked us at all. I have magic and shape shifting for a time limited battle form. Shanty, however, did attract some attention to herself by challenging the monkeys head on when they started ganging up on Skunk.

It took us a while to convince Pom that we were okay and that Fox took care of the situation readily once she arrived. This might make peaceful relations with Baboon and the ninja monkeys go poorly, but we can at least give this a shot I guess.

I don't think we were capable of making something approaching peaceful coexistence throughout The Valley with friendship, the enmity seemed quite ingrained here.

Hopefully Pom is as good as Smolder keeps suggesting. She’s keeps telling me that the Huoshan Guard were not like the Equestrian Royal Guard and that they wouldn’t take on Pom if she wasn’t competent.

This is why we were currently meeting with a pack of ninja monkeys and I was fairly nervous as Pom stepped forward.

I wouldn’t mind if Smolder were the leader of our group, but apparently she’s keen on leaving it up to the lambkin. Sure Pom is older than us, married, has a job and a lot of other things, but that doesn’t exactly make her leadership material.

I know bad leaders, I've worked under Chrysalis after all.

-Shanty-

I am wanting to be a leader, but I can be learning how to be one by following Pom's example!

-Monkey Shrine and pagoda tower, Pom-

“So can we meet with Baboon?” The ninja monkeys spoke amongst themselves and eventually gave us a gesture of acceptance, I released a breath that I didn’t know I was holding.

We didn’t go through the shrine or the many floors of training, baboon instead came to us and we took a side entrance around all the training floors and stopped at the entrance to the upper floors.

“So you’re the one called Pom, it’s nice to meet you properly and who are these… is that a dragon?!” Baboon was large, covered in white fur and he looked like he had quite a bit of muscles on him. He had a nice voice and seemed very tough despite his pleasant sounding demeanor.

“Yo, right here, you can ask me personally if I’m a dragon or not.” Smolder said while idly waving a claw in Baboon’s direction as she leaned against Ocellus. “I breathe fire, fly and have scales, how many more clues do you need dude?”

“Hrmm… not the same kind of dragon that we’re used to. Curious… uh I... er… we never actually really have had guests before.” Baboon looked a bit flustered. “I really don’t know how to take your group showing up so suddenly.”

“I just want to discuss a few things with you if that’s alright.” He was being friendly at least, I was a little more relaxed about that. “We can even sit down together for tea and snacks.”

“I am sorry to inform you that Dragon wants to see you, what’s it going to take to get you to agree to that?” At least Baboon was telling me this upfront before we’ve even sat down.

“That’s one of the things I want to do, these are my friends. That’s Smolder and yes she’s a different kind of dragon. That’s Ocellus a Changeling. This here is Shanty.” I patted Shanty on the back affectionately. “I’m Pom the lambkin and we’re not from around here.”

“I’ve gathered that, but do you really actually want to see Dragon?” Baboon seemed surprised that I wanted to meet him.

“I was going to request that I be given the chance to do so anyway… possibly alone at least. I’ve heard some… things… about Dragon.” Stay polite and don’t be insulting Pom, that’s what I told the others to do and I should do the same. “May we come in?”

“Of course you may. Ahem, go get some snacks and tea ready for our guest so we can show them some actual hospitality!” Baboon bellowed out and the monkeys started running about. “Sorry about that, but they take orders better when they are being yelled at.”

“Well this is off to a good start.” Smolder sarcastically stated.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a neutral party to talk to, so excuse us for being a bit rusty!” Despite being a bit angry Baboon didn’t raise a paw to us.

“Are we really neutral?” Ocellus queried while tilting her head.

“Despite some minor setbacks in our relations yesterday. I would like to say yes, Pom did send us some nice packages of food and I have to say she has a good talent for finding fresh fruit and vegetables.” He smiled at me. “That made a rather decent meal for me and a portion of my army.”

“Why thank you, for confirming that they arrived and for the compliment to my foraging skills.” Okay, don’t forget that he was a war leader Pom. He was nice enough right now, but that could quickly change. “So were you ordered by Dragon to bring me to him by any means necessary?”

“Yes.” At least Baboon was an honest person, which was nice to know. “Things didn't exactly go to plan the other day, they never really do with our lot.”

“Huh… well you really won’t have to worry about that this time. I’ll see to visiting Dragon personally once we get our discussion out of the way.” First order of business secure my friends safety. “I will willingly meet with Dragon, provided you don’t hurt my friend on purpose and or hold them against their wills.”

“I can live with that, this might actually be the first full out truly successful thing I’ve ever done for Dragon.” It seemed to make Baboon happy to think about that as he led us inside.

We were eventually seated and I noted that Kiki, Skunk's friend, was here. She was the only monkey wearing that kind of eyeshadow. At least she made herself identifiable enough, but she still looked almost exactly like every other male or female monkey around. It’s rather amazing that ninja monkeys were so good at looking similar to one another, it really confused what you knew about their capabilities at any given time.

“So what did you want to know?” Thinking of the questions Baboon could answer, I wanted him to answer a particular one first.

“Are there any questions I shouldn’t or can’t ask about?” The most pertinent question I could ask was for clarifications on what I could and couldn't.

“Well I certainly wouldn’t want you asking about my love life… or the lack thereof.” He started grumbling about that. He gave me a curious look. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to be…”

“I’m already taken and I seriously doubt you could wrestle my heart from them.” I stated quickly.

“Don’t look at us, I’m already seeing someone.” Coolly stated Smolder.

“Likewise, and Smolder better keep seeing them too.” Ocellus was specifically looking away from Smolder with a blush on her face as Smolder smirked towards her.

“I be thinking I’m too young for you.” Shanty gave a mature answer at least.

“Oh… well… go on about your questions then.” Baboon seemed a bit sad, then again there were probably no other baboons in The Valley so he had reason to be. I better not ask about it like he suggested.

“What’s Dragon like?” Honestly that would help me get an idea of him and whether or not I should fear him or fear for him. “I want your impression of him before I meet him.”

“Well he’s big, he’s powerful, he inspires awe and he’s quite grumpy almost every time I see him.” Well wouldn’t you be grumpy too Baboon, his body must be in constant agony from his self inflicted burns. “He has plenty of reasons for it, so don’t take it personally if he doesn’t like you. He doesn’t like much these days and getting a laugh out of him is as rare as a blue moon.”

“What does he intend to do with me when we meet, does he even want anything in particular?” I am going to meet him, but mostly to see what he became.

“You know, I don’t have the foggiest idea why he even wants to meet you.” He rubbed his chin looking thoughtful. “I think he’s mostly just curious about you… didn’t know about the other outsiders until yesterday. Still, I think he’d want to talk you into doing something for him at the very least.”

“Do I have to go alone or can I take someone with me?” I was thinking about having Smolder meet Dragon, but I didn’t know what his reaction to that would be. Maybe he would think that he’s being replaced by another dragon? He was once the protector of The Valley, so his mind might jump straight to that at seeing Smolder.

“I’ll be accompanying you at all times while in Dragon’s chamber, whether or not you bring one of your companions is up to you.” It sounded like Baboon was taking this seriously and was going for an honorable approach with me since I was doing him a favor. “I swear and give you my word of it that I will only leave you alone with him if Dragon really wants me to do so.”

“You be trusting what he’s saying Pom?” Shanty seemed cautious of Baboon and all the monkeys around us.

“Yes, he’s been upfront with everything so far.” Turning back from addressing the young goat, I looked Baboon in the eyes as I ask my next question. “Why do all of you follow Dragon?”

“Now that’s a rather loaded question, but I will answer it as I did say that questions about my love life were the only ones off limits.” While Baboon seemed reluctant, he was still going to tell us. “One reason to support him is that we’re all his friends even when he’s at his darkest and we hope he’ll remember that much for our sakes if we ever do eventually get him out of the mountain successfully.”

“So you’re with him because you don’t want him pointed at you, but he can’t actually get free without you in the first place.” Call me puzzled, but that didn’t make sense.

“Sure we could just abandon Dragon and he wouldn’t be able to do much about it, he’s really quite stuck where he is and without us he wouldn’t have much of a connection to the outside world aside from his magic.” Baboon seemed fairly quiet and contemplative. “The animals of The Valley have a valid reason to fear Dragon escaping. If he ever gets out, he’s going to cause a lot of destruction.”

They could just leave Dragon to stew in the mountain by himself…. all alone… in a dark place.

I now just felt sorry for this dragon that basically lost everything. I don't even think the valley dwellers were even in the wrong to defend themselves from his wrath. If he’s as aggressive as the dwellers in The Valley say he is, then the monkeys and Baboon owe Dragon little to no loyalty whatsoever if he’s harming them for trying to help him as much as they can.

“As for the other reasons we support Dragon..." Baboon had our attentions. "Well... let me tell you a story.”

Author's Note

Pom promoted to leader.

Ocellus promoted to intelligence officer.

Smolder promoted to "Ocellus's bodyguard".

Shanty promoted to first mate.

12. Baa-boon.

-Monkey Shine Shrine, Baboon-

“I guess to start off you need to know about the monkeys. They’ve always been here in The Valley for a long time and they’ve been mostly peaceful until we gave our loyalty to Dragon for various reasons.” I was finally ready to get this off my chest. It’s been a long time coming. “They were always lazy, somewhat dimwitted, but they were talented in many things… mostly being able to turn invisible through various means and they can really play a mean game of hide and seek. I, as you are already very well aware, am not a ninja monkey. I was an oddity when I was found by the monkeys, there were no other baboons around The Valley and I was soon found myself being raised by them. I learned to speak their language and learned much about their culture, which was very minimal and rather stagnant. I even learned to speak the basic language the other animals around here spoke too, of course I tried to hold myself to better standards. Life really was quite simple back then, up until that deadly drought happened that dried up the entire valley.”

“From what Panda says, the heavens either caused the drought or didn’t help the situation when the drought eventually occurred. He at least implied that the heavens likely knew it was coming.” The nervous looking Pom took a sip of tea and then nodded to me. “If you will Mr. Baboon, please excuse my interruption and continue.”

I ignored the goat eating a massive amount of snacks, how often do they feed that child and where was it all going? At least her companions were being easy on the snacks and tea. She was scaring the monkeys with how much of a bottomless pit her stomach seemed to be and a few of them were scared she might even eat them.

I shook my head and got my head and got my thoughts back in order.

“Panda might be right that the heavens somehow had something to do with the drought, whether directly or indirectly. Maybe they might have had nothing to do with it at all, they are too mysterious for anyone to understand really and all we can know for sure is that the drought was a tragic turning point in life around here. I’m sure you all have heard about what happened to Dragon in that fiasco, but let me refresh you on it with our side of the story.” I told them about how Dragon tried to fix the drought, got struck down by the heavens and a few other pertinent things like mysterious lotus that, when destroyed, made Dragon lost control of his powers and ultimately caused him to burn himself painfully. “Now that I’ve caught you up on the story, this is where I come in. I, the leader of the ninja monkey army, Baboon stumbled upon Dragon in the aftermath of the destruction where he rests in his cave inside of Lung Mountain. The drought was nearing its end, but the ninja monkeys and I still needed to quench our thirsts something fierce and the waters in the mountains are cold and magically refreshing. The other animals in The Valley had very little water to survive on, but they still managed to squeak by and survive with what they could ration from what Dragon managed to give them before being struck down. We didn’t ration nearly as much as they did and we naturally have larger numbers.”

“I think I can see where this is going, so you asked Dragon for the water he’s currently stuck in since you were hurting badly enough for it while the drought was still taking its sweet time to end and you traded your services to him to save the monkeys.” Smolder was a smart one. She’d be an excellent dragon when she grows up, just not one we’d ever follow.

Smolder wasn’t a mystical guardian dragon, so at least she didn’t have to worry about The Heavens striking her down like what happened to Dragon.

“Yes, but never let it be said that we can’t quit at any time, I’ve fired all the monkeys before and Dragon has fired me at least two or three times already. Our previous binding agreements were nulled and void a long time ago, but now it’s a matter of pride and...” How do I put this exactly? Why were we still at Dragon’s beck and call when he doesn’t have any magic to control us with? At this point I guess we liked the crazy things we do in the name of Dragon, it made us feel like we were really important. At least I liked my leadership role as his general. “Well we’re loyal to our cause at sticking with Dragon through it all at the very least. Even if Dragon can barely speak a word of monkey and has never really bothered to learn much in all this time because he has me as a loyal servant. Our relationship usually has him burning me with his breath every now and then, along with a few painful beatings here and there that build character, but planning the various wild schemes gives us a reason to live these days. We look forward to what we’ll end up doing next to win one over The Valley, so far we’ve only got a few minor victories at best.”

“So… your bullies?” Ocellus was a strange creature, there was just something so very off-putting about her that I just couldn’t put my paw on. She looked vaguely like a unicorn, only she wasn’t. If a unicorn were around to purify Dragon that would have been nice, it would maybe fix his grumpy and rather evil disposition. We weren’t evil, we were just doing a job at being minions for someone who was. Sure it didn’t make us sound any better, but there was the distinction. “It doesn’t seem to matter all too much in the grand scheme of things as the defenders in The Valley seem more than a match for you.”

“Quite right for the most part, but I wouldn’t call us bullies as much as we’ve been bullied as much as we bully them and I would like to state that we’ve come close to winning against them on numerous occasions. We’re more like… antagonistic friends.” Sighing, I took a sip of tea and continued my thought. “Recently Skunk’s shenanigans ruin our plans fairly often, but we’re always having some fun at least. Injuries permitting and all that.”

“I for one think it’s a horrible way to live, but I can almost understand and see why you continue to do what you do.” You were too nice for our little slice of the world Pom. I actually don’t want to bring you before Dragon, but you were nuts enough to actually want to meet him. “Dragon’s hurting personally, he’s hurting you and you in turn likely hurt the ninja monkeys who in turn hurt the dwellers of The Valley.”

“It’s true, I may bully and push the ninja monkeys around. It may also be true that Dragon hurts me as much as the dwellers in The Valley, but let me make this one thing clear though.” I held up a paw that quieted everyone and the monkeys that were lazing about sat up. “When a monkey is sick, I care for them. When a monkey needs help, I care for them. When my people need me, I will always be there for them as they are my family regardless of everything else going on! I have never failed the monkeys nearly as much as they have failed me, it’s why I’m still the leader around here and it’s not just because I’m the best banana pie maker in The Valley to the point that even the wonderful chef that is Duck is jealous. We always care for our own and we’re as strong a community as the dwellers.”

I turned my gaze to the one monkey that I sent disguised as a skunk. ‘Epi’ as Skunk had called her to start off with after hearing her say ‘eep ee’, she was better known as Kiki. Darling girl, I knew she was friends with Skunk and might even have a crush on the little guy.

Kiki wouldn’t get in the way if Skunk was going to be… shall we say ‘disposed of’. She would definitely weep for him and I would let her do so without a word against it. Even I would weep for Skunk if he ever manages to fall in a fight, he was sent by The Heavens to either help Dragon or defeat him once and for all.

I wanted Dragon to live, but I really couldn’t try to talk Skunk into helping him and he was a strong opponent that learns fighting techniques at a frightening pace on the first glance.

There was just too much bad blood between us at this point and we had too much fun testing ourselves against one another to really give it up. Skunk as much as the other dwellers were worthy opponents and I was always willing and able to give them a challenge on any front, land, water or air!

That’s why I agreed to this talk with a neutral party, Pom was a neutral party and might be able to get some of what Dragon used to be back. Maybe talk a slight amount of sense into Dragon with an outsider’s perspective on things, because our war has been dragging on for a long time and Skunk is inevitably going to be able to end this one way or another.

“Even Kiki who’s been sneaking out and spending time with Skunk. I don’t shun her or have her spying on the valley. She’s not betraying us and we’re not betraying her, but yes we know about it. Dragon certainly doesn’t need to know about that at all though, Kiki still fights the dwellers when on the job and what she does with her free time really doesn’t matter to me as long as she can continue to keep a lid on it and is happy. Kiki, as an order, I hope that you never tell me what you do on your off time and that you can plausibly deny anything if asked about it.” It seemed our guests at the table were a little surprised that I’ve never told Dragon about that. The other monkeys around the room were also surprised, mostly for the fact that I usually tell Dragon everything. I do what little I can to make Dragon happy, but telling him that one of mine could be considered a traitor… well she hasn’t done anything worthy of being called a traitor at all in my eyes. Plus looking the other way isn’t causing us any more problems than usual. I hope the monkeys appreciate what I do for them as a leader. “I can be a bit rough around the edges, I can be cruel, I can be punishing, but I absolutely take care of those under me when they absolutely need me the most! Monkeys aren’t great fighters, I’m well aware of this, I’m even quite sure that Dragon subconsciously knows of this as well and refuses to see the fact that we continually lose as a reason to give up on destroying The Valley and everything adjacent to it. Yet time and again Dragon still trusts us to try to do the things he tells us to and we always try to deliver to the best of our abilities! If he hurts anyone other than me, his loyal general, then he knows he soon very well won’t have an army to work with. I’m the target of his wrath if failure happens, I’m the one that makes the mistakes and deserves the punishments Dragon thinks I deserve. The monkeys all around us know what I have to put up with as I make them feel my frustration, but I’ve never gone too far on it.”

“So you be actually having a moral compass?” Shanty said through a mouthful of Banana.

Kiki had a shocked look in her eyes, I smiled to her and nodded. I saw Kiki tenseness ease slightly, she was still friends with Skunk even if she had to fight him from time to time. I wasn’t going to talk about it, because what was there to talk about?

“You’re nicer than the other animals in The Valley picture you as being.” Pom stated softly while gazing at me with her large eyes filled with worry.

“I never show my softer side on the battlefield, showing weakness isn’t exactly a good thing when you’re a general and in charge of taking care of this lot.” I motioned to all the ninja monkeys around the room, on the walls and in the rafters above. None of them spoke up and were silently staring at me. “I’m not going to lie, Dragon might hurt you and I won’t go against him if he does.”

“I still want to see Dragon, there are just some things I have to know.” Pom stated solemnly, Ocellus was looking at her with shock. Why was she shocked about hearing this?

“Why are you surprised?” I asked conversationally to the strange bug like yokai or kaiju like being. Yokai were more to spirits, so kaiju would be more correct as strange entity.

“Pom’s probably the bravest I’ve ever heard of her people.” One could practically feel the surprise rolling off of Ocellus. “She actually wants to meet someone who sounds like they would kill her without remorse.”

“We’re not evil, but we follow someone who definitely is and we’re not going to mince words on it.” I couldn’t hide it, Dragon seemed have a boundless anger and wrath. “Truly Dragon has had us a do a lot of nasty things to The Valley since we started working for him. Infiltrate The Valley, destroy a bunch of stuff and we even forced a drought by blocking up the river that gives life to the lower end of the valley. Dragon even once suggested poisoning the animals to a disguised Skunk that the monkeys thought would be a good spokesperson for them, they were right for the wrong reasons of course. Skunk was lucky to escape and prevent that from happening, I really didn’t like the idea of poisoning them and neither do the monkeys.”

The various monkeys around the room agreed with me out of their personal morals as much as the ones we shared. In any case if we had poisoned the animals, Turtle would have cured them or they would have made a last ditch effort in sealing off Dragon from the outside world for good. It wouldn’t be all too hard to drop the mountain on Dragon and I could conceive of several ways they could do that, but they weren’t the violent sort unless pushed to do it. They were letting us have our territory after all and were not trying to force us to live in poorer conditions, not that they had the numbers to do that for too long anyway.

“How did Skunk end up disguised and how long did it take you recognize the disguise?” Popping a small cookie in her mouth and blowing a small bit of flame on her tea cup to warm her tea, Smolder was eyeing me oddly.

“Funny thing about that.” I tapped my paws together as I recall Dragon launching Skunk when we could have taken him captive. “Imagine Skunk accidentally getting his tail stretched out, getting a coconut carved to resemble a ninja monkey’s face trapped on his head, having his tail partially shaved down to make it look as thin as a monkeys, to top it off cover both his chest and tail in ink.”

Shanty immediately burst out with laughter and fell to the floor with tears in her eyes. A few monkeys broke out into giggles too, I sighed and chuckled a bit myself. It was actually pretty funny that he managed to accidentally infiltrate us. Even Smolder and Ocellus were smiling and Pom snickered slightly with a hoof over her mouth.

“Also it’s fairly dark up at the Frozen Fortress outside of Dragon’s lair, so excuse us for missing the obvious that the mouth on the Skunk’s coconut mask wasn’t moving. Some ninja monkeys practice ventriloquism as a stealthy misdirection technique. The ones that do that never move their mouths.” That led to a mistake I should have caught when I noticed they weren’t blinking either. “That and I probably should have realized Skunk’s mask wasn’t blinking, speaking monkey when I introduced him to Dragon… or at all for that matter. Skunk was absolutely lucky to get out of that mostly unscathed, but it wasn’t with his dignity intact when we saw him a few days later and it was reported by our spies.”

“So you’re still loyal to Dragon even when he is bad as he has apparently gotten?” Pom, the expression on my face was all I was going to say on that. “I still want to see what became of him myself.”

“Are you sure about this, I could say that you escaped and the dwellers in The Valley are protecting you. I won’t even mention your other three friends if you don’t want me to.” They were not the ones fighting us after all, they came here of their own free will and were even nice to share tea with.

Come to think of it, we never actually touched the noncombatants. Ox was barely all there in the head, Bird was lazy and too small to really do any damage, The Bees were almost neutral as long as their tree was left completely alone and Pig was quit annoying every time he came up here and spoke random gibberish in monkey.

“I’m completely afraid of meeting him, I’m getting shivers throughout my body at the possibility of getting hurt or worse… but I’m absolutely certain that I want to.” Pom gazed into my eyes and I looked into hers, she was quite determined even if her body was quaking with fear at the thought of meeting Dragon.

“I’ll pencil you in a few days from now, we have a Ro-Sham-Bo Battle tournament that we’ll drag the valley dwellers into a few days from now.” We might even win it, but it’d still be fun to do even if we do lose. I wasn’t getting my hopes up for more success like Pom. “You can watch, but please don’t get involved.”

“Oh yeah, getting all those valley dwellers to play Battle Ro-Sham-Bo is going to be a lot of fun!” Everyone turned to the constant thorn in my side worse than Skunk or any other valley dweller in existence, the one who just spoke up had me groaning in agony at hearing him somehow getting inside and past all the guards posted... again.

“Pig… you’re not a monkey… please leave for everyone’s sakes and sanity...” I tried to keep myself calm, as once again we were host to what is colloquially known by everyone as The Valley Idiot. Ox was brainless, but he wasn’t as stupid as Pig consistently was.

“I’m not?” Pig looked as confused as he usually does. “I could have sworn… hold on let me ask the guys.”

He made several monkey noises in an attempt to talk to the other monkeys. Trying to ask them something, but it was almost horrendous gibberish. The fact that it made some kind of sense was horrific to me, as Pig might actually be getting better at speaking monkey somehow despite never actually trying to learn it.

“That was really badly garbled, but I really have to know now.” Pom, please don’t, we don’t need another Pig euphemism running throughout our community. They tend to catch on fire around here given how fast they spread and it’s hard to get the monkeys to stop once they start. “Did he just seriously ask if his grandma could toot a flute with the back winds of the cheeks that smell of fertilizer?”

Shanty again started laughing uproariously. The monkeys, once they realized that Pom had repeated everything Pig said verbatim, also started laughing along with our other guests. Even I couldn’t hold back the laughter once everyone got going, this was supposed to be a serious meeting and Pig just wanders in thinking he’s a ninja monkey… again.

“Yeah, okay, I’ll admit that that definitely brightened up the room considerably.” I then decided to be a bit more serious, I crossed my arms and stared at Pom sternly. “When you come back, I’ll show you to Dragon personally. I suggest you prepare yourself mentally for it in the meantime. Also would someone quickly get a mallet or at the very least force Pig back to The Valley before he breaks anything important, because need I remind you what happened the last time we left him alone near something sensitive!”

“Sorry for asking this, but why do you need a mallet?” Well now I had to answer Ocellus’s question just to sate her curiosity while dealing with a ‘wild’ Pig in our base.

This was going to be another big or rather 'Pig' incident, I could already tell.

-Two hours, an explanation and three Pig related noodle incidents later, Pom-

“Just get him back to The Valley.” Baboon groaned with his face in his paws. “Also, I thank you for helping us with him.”

“No problem.” I felt sorry for poor Baboon as he clearly lived a tough life, but he was to be commended for sticking to his choices even if not all of them were good ones.

We exited the shrine carrying Pig tied up to a thick tree branch, he was also thankfully gagged as his monkey language gibberish was like listening to some kind of horrible alien poetry.

“So… thoughts?” I asked of my companions.

“I’m surprised you’re actually going to go through with seeing Dragon.” Ocellus said blandly while not looking in my direction.

“I be thinking that was a cannon blast, it being both funny and explosively fun.” Shanty had a skip in her step as she trotted alongside of us as we carried Pig back towards The Valley. Baboon never wanted to take Pig prisoner again after last five incidents he didn’t want to talk about, we understood his reasoning after having helped him wrangle Pig into his current state. “They be nice people. Not the nicest or friendliest, but nice nonetheless despite working for what be sounding like pure evil.”

“Eh, they weren’t too bad even if Dragon sounds like something else entirely.” Smolder was pretty good at hogtying, said she picked it up from Applejack of Sweet Apple Acres.

Smolder’s mention of tying knots had Ocellus turning solid red and shyly scraping at the ground with a hoof nearby.

“We have to get there before Pig causes… oh never mind.” Rabbit stopped when he saw us carrying Pig. “Did he damage your campsite?”

“No.” Smolder stated lazily. "He did give us the run around though."

“Okay, false alarm Crane, Pig is contained!" Rabbit signaled something to a fairly large, airborne and quite beautiful female crane. "I repeat, Pig is thankfully contained!”

There was also Fox, looking at me affectionately the second I was within sight, along with Skunk and Panda. They didn't look at all too upset to see Pig tied up, even Pig himself didn't seem upset with his current predicament.

Pig managed to shift his face just enough to get the gag out of his mouth.

“Oh, hey guys, I was visiting my cousins!” Pig said jovially, all the animals sighed in both relief and clear utter annoyance.

Author's Note

The fighting starts next arc in a completely different place, Pom is handling this with diplomacy as much as she can.

13. Ewe see… the truth is…

-Huoshan, Tianhuo-

“You really need to get some sleep Mrs. Lambchop.” Turning my tired gaze to Fluttershy, I groaned loudly.

The buttery yellow pegasus with the pink mane has been trying to help me out and I haven’t the foggiest idea why she was sticking around for so long after her friends went to try and make peace between the lambkin and the changelings.

That was going to be an undertaking of the greatest sort from what Pom has told me of her people, I even learned that she was understating the truth from what Paprika gestured to me. The alpaca were the closest allies the lambkin had and Paprika would certainly know.

“I find myself… troubled. Taking care of Pom’s familiars, as much myself, is a lot more work than I had previously thought.” It was here that I received a tongue lashing, mostly across the face by Big Mama. “Also it is quite hard to sleep when you are missing your other half.”

Big Mama soon picked me up by the scruff of my neck and then she summarily dropped me onto the bed that Pom no longer shared with me at night, she glared right into my eyes. The Canis Minor all jumped onto the bed and stared at me in the same manner, they were silently agreeing with their mother that I needed sleep.

“You know I can help take care of Pom’s familiars too, but you call them beasties right? That’s really cute. It seems like they care a great deal about you too… especially Blighter.” Fluttershy was right, I felt the mentioned shadow hugging canine wrapping their paws around me and dragged me down into lying on the bed. I didn’t resist their efforts. “Twilight has a lot of ponies working on this Tianhuo. Ember and Thorax are really quite understanding, they are giving Twilight all the time she needs to bring them back and are helping to try and find any other cultists of Grogar that might have gone into hiding. Even Discord is helping... I think...”

“Yes, that is true… but I myself have added my own option to the mix.” I was starting to give into the softness of the bed. “Hopefully she will respond soon, because she can openly travel to other realms. She is currently our only method of communicating with Fœnum.”

“Huh?” Fluttershy was sweet and kind, but she didn’t have the same spirit that Pom did. I miss my wife’s fretting, mild paranoia and her ministrations to my tired body after a hard day of patrolling the surrounding environs.

“Bamf!” At the sound of someone shouting and a sudden explosive appearance, Fluttershy squeaked and flailed away from the dissipating cloud of magical smoke revealing the two that could assist in the endeavors of bringing the lost back. The unnatural looking unicorn that just appeared, she started speaking to us with an unusually cheerful lilt. “I heard that I was needed by one of my dear old friends, it was very interesting to get the letter from a squirrel that Fred says is in fact a lower tier god.”

“Fluttershy here can tell you what troubles me, I am in great need of rest Oleander.” I laid down and the puppies curled up at my warm sides, Blighter was seemingly ecstatic to act as a pillow for me and Big Mama took up a protective position next to Fluttershy.

It was Oleander the heroic dark magic wielding unicorn, better known as Ollie to her friends that she allows to call her that. Next to her was her ever faithful companion and demon in the shape of a book, Fred the voice twisting menace that speaks softly sometimes and at other his voice goes completely demonic.

They were harmless to their friends, as for their enemies however… I felt safe enough falling asleep with a demon currently in the room. Yes, he was clearly dark, and vaguely evil, but he is clearly honorable enough to not hurt those that Oleander cares about.

“Hm, while I normally do love the smell of a tormented and pining heart like yours..." Fred was exactly as I remember him. "I BELIEVE THIS HAS TO DO WITH THAT LOVELY LITTLE LAMBKIN BEING MISSING FROM HER LIFE OLLIE!”

Distorted evil sounding demented voice and all. Better the demon you knew than the one you didn’t. My eyes slid close as I sent a prayer to Jiutian for the safety of my wife, as I have been doing for these past few days.

Oleander would stay the night and I would have them get into contact with Fœnum Oleander to spread the word to other dimensions to be on the lookout for my wife and her companions. If Pom runs across another Oleander and Fred out there, then they can possibly get them home provided they weren’t irredeemably evil versions of the two.

-Lung Mountain, Frozen Fortress, Pom-

It was a wooden fort with watch towers that was surrounded by a mild amount of volcanic activity in the snowy portions of Lung Mountain. Ocellus was left behind with Shanty at our camp, Smolder had decided to join me in my meeting with Dragon after we hashed out a few things where this could or would go wrong.

Smolder thought I was worrying too much, but I think she wasn’t worrying enough! We were meeting with an adult dragon that was trapped inside a mountain, one that was stated to have magical powers.

It was cold up here, but I had my wool. Smolder didn’t look too excited about how cold it was up here, I could even hear her muttering something about reindeer and their frosty attitudes.

We soon met Baboon after following the monkeys that led us in and he nodded at the sight of us.

“Before we get in there, I would just like to say that that Battle Ro-Sham-Bo tournament was awesome! I’ve never seen martial arts quite like that before.” Smolder had enjoyed watching the tournament and so had I. Ocellus was more curious about the history of Battle Ro-Sham-Bo than the actual fighting. “I think I learned a few things from it and Shanty certainly tried mimicking some of those moves afterwards.”

“Yeah, despite losing, all of you were quite impressive out there.” It was quite the show, I really had to compliment them on their theatrics. “That you even got two monkeys and yourself into the final rounds was awe inspiring, until you lost to Skunk and Panda beat both the monkeys.”

“Well we do try to keep things interesting around here to break up the monotony and boredom of their usually peaceful lives. If only you were around for the kite fighting. Sure those valley dwellers detest us, but I’m quite sure they love all the excitement we bring even if we are trying to harm them.” Stated Baboon with a friendly grin as he rubbed at the back of his head, he coughed lightly into his curled up left paw. “Okay, I hope the both of you are prepared to meet him mentally and physically. This isn’t going to be a friendly picnic or a visit to my monkey grandma, not to mention that Dragon might not like seeing that another dragon is around. So I would suggest you stay out of the range of his claws Smolder.”

“We’re as ready as we’ll ever be, he’ll only be able to hurt me if he can grab onto me. Fire, magic and magical fire don’t do much to my kind of dragon.” Smolder said proudly while pointed her right thumb claw at her chest. “Lead the way buddy.”

-Inside Lung Mountain, Smolder-

There was an expansive lake in the grotto, it was at the bottom of the steps beyond the ledge we were approaching. This is likely where Dragon pops up and communicates with his minions.

At least Dragon wasn’t as successful as Cozy Glow had been in being disastrous, but he still caused as much pain and suffering to others as he himself reportedly felt… I was almost onboard with Pom in feeling sorry for the guy.

Though it made me wonder, where did Cozy Glow even come from? Was she an orphan like Shanty, our teachers said she had been pen pals with Tirek, but that doesn’t entirely explain her background. I’ll want to look into it when we get back to Equestria.

“Dragon, I have brought you the strange outsider you told me retrieve… I actually outdid myself and brought another strange outsider along with them!” Baboon wheedled unnecessarily while standing on the ledge, then again this was apparently one of the first victories he’s ever had without any interference whatsoever.

Baboon and his minions were more like the fun kind of evil that the Power Ponies fight, a living breathing version of that was actually something for me to be in awe of. So I might have snuck myself into reading Spike’s comic collection once or twice, he likely didn’t mind if he ever noticed or bothered to find out. Spike was like a little brother to me, that little dragon was a really chill dude.

The waters of the lake shifted and then Dragon started to rise from it, his scales were all black some with a burnt purple tinge. The guy actually looked fairly threatening as his eyes glowed a fierce white. ‘Dragon’ wasn’t the biggest dragon I’ve ever seen, but he certainly left an impression on me at first sight.

The biggest dragon I know would always go to the previous Dragon Lord, the retired Lord Torch. Torch wasn’t a Dragon Lord anymore, but he was still a lord that holds respect amongst all the dragons that knew of him. Ember was walking beyond his footsteps and those were some pretty big holes.

“Baboon… what have you brought to…?” He quirked his eye at Pom who shivered as she looked up at him, there was no way we would come anywhere close to winning a physical fight with him. Unless Pom was holding out on us and had some serious martial arts mojo that the dwellers of The Valley obviously had.

The monkeys prodded us forward and that was when his surprise became even greater, he stared at me with shock and he looked to be thinking a mile a minute.

“Yo… names Smolder, nice to meet ya.” I said lazily raising my left claw and waving it at him, not going lie I didn’t feel comfortable being in another dragon’s lair like this without permission.

Dragon Lands etiquette stated that if you weren’t strong enough to muscle into another dragon’s cave, then don’t even bother trying. We really needed to get our civilization on the same page as everyone else, the longma make us look bad without even trying with their volcanic city.

I considered the fact that this was not Dragon’s lair by choice and I could completely understand why the décor was lacking; I also don’t think this he had any gems or jewels for me to snack on, being a completely different type of dragon that's understandable. He seemed to eat regular food if the smell of juiced fruit coming from his breathe was anything to go by, at least he kept his teeth clean so he already had much better hygiene than his minions.

“Another dragon? No… not another guardian… a different kind.” He wasn’t as angry as we thought he’d be, but he was more curious about Pom than anything. “Familiar yet unknown…”

“Uh... I would like to talk to you Dragon.” Despite being a shivering mass of nerves, Pom was doing much better than Ocellus predicted she would. “My name is Pom.”

“I find myself… interested… in your presence as well.” There was a slight narrowing of his eyes, he kept his teeth gritted and his eyes in an angry scowl, but Pom was beginning to shake less and less the more she looked at him. Dragon soon hissed out his ambivalence to us. “Go ahead, speak to me and I might deign to listen.”

“I’m wondering something, I’ve been asking all around The Valley about you out of curiosity. You had Baboon seek me out in curiosity as well. Our meeting was inevitable, but how it will end is dependent on you.” Pom took a deep breath to try and stay calm as she kept looking at him in the eyes. “So my question is simple enough in scope, but might be impossible for you to answer. Why did you turn your anger onto the dwellers of The Valley and not towards The Heavens that struck you down? Before you say anything, I already know the excuse you’re going to give me and that’s not what I want to hear. I want to hear the real reason why you won’t turn against The Heavens despite them striking you down, if you just give me the excuse then I might just be able to piece it together from there anyway.”

“It is the animals who made me get struck down and brought about my fall!” Dragon answered quickly and angrily, he spat a small blast flames I easily intercepted with my body.

It felt lukewarm at best and had a bit of an odd magical tinge to it that I could taste in the air, but even if it did hit Pom I doubt it would have done more than singed her. Dragon whined in pain from using his fire and he ducked back down in the waters.

“Thank you Smolder, I said I didn’t want to hear that excuse Dragon! It’s clearly a lie from what I… wait… you…. you can’t even think of going against The Heavens can you?” There was a look of sudden extreme horror that just crossed Pom’s face as she looked down at Dragon dunking his head below the previously stated cold refreshing waters for a bit before bringing it back up. “No, it’s not just that… no… that’s… that’s horrible… it’s wrong. What’s still happening to you is wrong!”

“Pom, talk to us, use your words.” I was still scrutinizing Dragon after he tried to blast Pom with fire, I could intercept it all day. I was immune to it, but he wasn't immune to himself... I hope I never take being fire proof for granted. “What did you just figure out?”

“It’s horrible, this… what’s going on is…” She looked at Dragon sadly and approached him as he raised back up onto the ledge.

“Do not dare to pity me with those eyes of yours!” Dragon bellowed and slammed a claw against the stone, but he didn’t move to attack Pom creating a small shockwave that almost knocked her over. He regretted that action as he hissed in pain a second later.

Pom just continued to look at him sadly.

“You’re not going to hurt us Dragon, we’re not a part of this." Pom moved to sit down within range of his claws, trusting that he wouldn’t hurt her. "You just want to scare us away, you’re in constant pain and you’re trapped in a rather tragic situation.”

After that initial blast of fire… I’m actually willing to agree with her and moved to sit beside her to look at him curiously.

“What do you think you know?!” He bellowed at us while and soon began hissing in pained and ragged breaths.

“That The Heavens... never actually revoked your guardianship of the valley…” The reaction Pom got when she said that, was Dragon looking as if he just took a huge boulder to the face with how far he reeled back. She continued to gaze at him as he lowered himself back into the water silently and was now staring at her with mystified wide eyes. “Stop me if I’m wrong Dragon, but you can’t go against The Heavens and they have you trapped in The Valley since it is still your job. To get free of said job, you’d have to somehow make everyone you once protected leave, including Baboon and the monkeys. It’s either that or find a way to destroy the dwellers and then order your forces out of The Valley so that you’re no longer under The Heavens yoke. As you will have nothing left to protect and will be able to destroy The Valley at your leisure to break free of all that confines you here, you can’t say anything against The Heavens at all. While your arrogance has a small part to do with all this, it is still beyond the pale on The Heavens part to do what they did. It's disproportionate retribution when they could have just slapped you down more gently to give you a fairer warning.”

Taking a deep breath, Pom then continued with what was starting to sound exactly like the current setup around here.

“Furthermore given that Panda got Skunk from The Heavens and he’s likely fated to never truly lose to you or your forces, The Heavens have seemed to set it all up so that he might eventually kill you protecting his friends and home. If Skunk slays you… does he... does he take on your job as The Valley’s guardian?” Pom just looked at Dragon lowering himself further into the water, he wasn’t responding and that was just as much of an answer as if he had. “It’s little wonder you blame the dwellers for your captivity. It is not just this mountain keeping you here, but the whole valley itself given that mystical lotus Panda mentioned somehow appeared directly in the path of your rampage. Your really resilient Dragon... and you’ve still yet to even hit the ground in this nightmare, one that you’re never going to wake up from even after all these years.”

Dragon didn’t say anything, but he slowly ducked into the water and raised his eyes back out. Baboon was staring at her as was I, that… she was right about this being horrible and wrong.

“Skunk is The Heavens response to Dragon's campaign against what he should be protecting when Panda asked for help. Dragon literally can’t fight The Heavens or think of doing anything bad against them, so he’s actually rebelling in the only way he can.” Pom got up and moved forward to sit at the edge of the ledge and looked down into the water. “This is all going to end in at least five different ways Dragon, most of them will be tragedies. Skunk kills you and takes over your job and might even end up the same as you. Skunk somehow redeems you and things go back to how they were before you were struck down, but you will always be wary of The Heavens and you can't openly share this knowledge with anyone. There’s the one that’s currently happening right now; it is that you’re stuck in a stalemate where if for some reason Skunk is ever incapacitated somehow without perishing, then The Heavens will likely send someone else to be trained by Skunk, Panda or whoever is in charge of The Valley in the defense against you in an endless cycle. Finally there’s the one where you actually succeed in your plan, but it’s at the cost of everything you have left. That one will leave you feeling hollow inside and you will never be able to live with yourself afterwards, you might take the easy way out even when you are free of The Valley… you could die raging against The Heavens if they are as powerfully close to omnipotence as I think they are.”

“That’s just four.” Having spoken up, I saw Pom turn to look back at me sadly.

“Option five is the unthinkable and could sometimes only appear in hindsight… or a miracle happens and something changes the status quo so drastically that The Heavens can’t do anything about it and Dragon is healed in both body and mind." Pom, miracles are what we, the people of Equus, are known for. "I don' think Dragon realizes what he needs the most right now.”

Dragon slowly raised from the water and rose above the ledge and glared down at Pom.

“What is it that you think I need?” He didn’t seem to be very cheerful or angry, he even seemed to be just contemplative. “You bring another dragon into my lair, you talk as if you know everything that is going on, what makes you think that you are so special that you think you can even help me?!”

He clutched at his body as he loomed over Pom, his hissing and wheezing form looking ready to chow down on Pom.

-Pom-

“That’s just the thing, everyone is special in their own way, even you Dragon. All you did was try to help those in the valley while they were suffering, you were never betraying The Heavens by actually trying to be better than them were you? You just wanted to help and things... didn’t go the way that you thought they would.” Dragon frowned down at me as I reached up to him. “All it apparently took to change you completely was a single action. How long have you been in here? How long were you here before someone came to talk with you after the rampage where you burned yourself? Baboon and the monkeys have always been here for you afterwards, through everything. Are you seriously telling me that you despise them completely too? After how much they’ve done for you?! Do you seriously have nothing left in your heart, but hatred, resentment and anger? Have you truly lost the ability to understand or even feel any form of… compassion?”

I reached out as I said ‘compassion’ and touched the looming dragon’s belly with my left hoof, after a moment he blinked.

He didn’t reel back in pain, he didn’t roar out in agony and he just looked down at where I had placed my hoof.

I looked at where I placed my hoof as well and there was a strange gleaming underneath it, I blinked and slowly pulled my hoof back to see a single, shining, large golden scale.

Dragon looked flummoxed at the single golden scale, as did I and everyone else. I looked up at Dragon curiously and was slightly worried about his reaction.

“You may leave now.” Dragon rumbled softly.

“But…” I wanted to say something, but he stopped me.

“If you know of a way that I can make you leave The Valley faster… then tell me what it will take to get you away from me!” Was Dragon... trying to protect me... from himself?! I started crying for him. “Baboon, please, escort them out quickly before I change my mind.”

Baboon just looked at the golden scale silently, his eyes slowly drifted up towards Dragon's face. He just stood there and didn’t follow the order, the monkeys were also struck dumb by Dragon's strange change in demeanor.

“Well I would like to be able to go home, but it’s in a different dimension. I seriously doubt you have the magic to help us as you are and I would not ask you to strain yourself Dragon. We’re not part of The Valley and have no designs on wanting to be here for the rest of our lives, especially after what happened to you.” I stated bluntly as I waved to the cave around me. “Also, I wouldn’t want leave you like this when you need…”

“Baboon! Take her away... NOW!" Dragon quickly turned away flaring his fire everywhere, I saw him looking at me out of the corner of his eye as Baboon finally started ushering us away. “I have… plans for them. Bring them back tomorrow with all their companions in tow.... that's an order Baboon!”

What just happened?

Author's Note

Mental states.

Pom- Horrified on a number of levels.

Smolder- Currently has mixed feelings about Dragon, is extremely curious about what exactly Pom just did.

Ocellus- Trying to keep Shanty from running around too much.

Shanty- Currently a bundle of wild youthful volatile energy.

14. Pom wasn’t entirely correct.

-The next day, Frozen Fortress, Shanty-

This place be looking like a big playground. I wish I could be playing here, but apparently Dragon be wanting to meet us. I am understanding that there were no hard feelings for me beating up a monkey. They be getting beaten up all the time so much that they don’t want to hold any grudges aside from wanting to do better next time, male or female they get beaten down and they don’t seem to mind it one wit as they always get up for more

I be respecting their spirits.

“Why this Dragon be wanting to meet with Ocellus and me, we being as uninteresting a sight as a pirate shoveling food into a box at a buffet.” If I was ever allowed into a fabled buffet, then I certainly would be eating all I could.

“Don’t honestly know and monkeys aren’t exactly saying much about yesterday.” There was a great concern in Pom’s eyes as she be looking my way.

We soon be coming upon Baboon, he be an amazing fighter with just raw strength alone. If he put in the work, could he be actually putting up a real fight with Skunk and his friends?

“Yes, you’ve told us that things got weird when he got a gold scale where you placed your hoof.” Ocellus is being very fun when you can get her out of her shell in a figurative sense, she even be doing a great impersonation of me. “From how you described Dragon, it almost sounds like he resembles a changeling starving for love and affection”

Baboon grumbled loudly as motioned for us to follow him.

“There’s a reason things got weird, but I’ll let Dragon do all the talking.” Baboon commented dryly as we were led to a staircase carved out of stone and down towards a ledge leading into a lake. “All I can say on the matter is, he’s been doing a lot of thinking. Dragon, I have done as you have asked!”

It not being dark in here confused me until I saw the glowing crystals lining the walls of the place, the rumbling in the water drew my attention and I saw him rising from the waters. I could feel my ears moving backwards and I slowly be positioning myself behind Pom.

“So... this is your group…” He rasped as he leaned down to look at us.

“We are the rest of the group, yes.” Ocellus was quivering as she be looking up at his blackened scales and size. “You weren’t kidding he is intimidating. I'm Ocellus.”

“Yesterday you did me a grave disservice Pom, but you have also given me a new perspective and I will do something for you for giving me said perspective…” Dragon be looking at Pom when he said that, he then be noticing me behind her. “Is she yours?”

“By blood, no… but I am her current acting guardian and will defend her with my life.” Pom be stuttering slightly and moving protectively in front of me. She be actually meaning that? It makes my chest fill with a warmth of a cloudy day on the beach where the sun isn’t burning as harshly, it be feeling nice. “Her name is Shanty, she likes humming, learning and eating more than her own body weight in food.”

“I just be always feeling hungry, but Pom and her friends be helping me a lot with that.” I stated positively with a slight grin up at him.

“Okay, what did you mean when you said I did you a great disservice?” As Pom spoke, she be moving forward and much closer to him before sitting down. I chose to move to being behind Ocellus, I am not being nearly that brave or dumb. “I’m sorry if I upset you in any way.”

“I’m quite sure that you mean that without even knowing what exactly it is that you did, but do not worry. I promise that I mean you no injury, I will keep this promise even if I do see you again after this as unlikely as that will be…” Dragon be narrowing his eyes along his snout as he lowered his head down in front of Pom. Some of his teeth jutting out of his mouth be looking quite dangerous to be near. “From what I’ve observed of you, you are a timid creature with an overactive imagination… but you do have the idea of how things could eventually end up. You were even right in saying that I cannot speak against The Heavens, but the most surprising thing you said yesterday… was that I was still 'Guardian of The Valley'. That, among many other things, had a ring of truth to them, but not everything you said was completely correct.”

Dragon be wheezing slightly and he be giving Pom a glare.

“You would have me blame The Heavens for my misfortune, in this you are not correct. Listen to me before you say anything, for I am deciding your fate here today!” Dragon quickly cut off whatever statement Pom was about to make. Pom closed her mouth with a click of her teeth, she was shivering as she leaned away from Dragon with a leg raised protectively across her chest. “The Heavens do have some blame for my current state, my inability to fly and my burns, but… I have a larger share of the blame in my own misfortunes. I dislike the fact that you even cried for a monster like me and of all the options you stated, you have already performed the fifth one. That being a miracle of hindsight by stating that my guardianship was never revoked.”

He gestured to Pom and she looked a little upset.

“So what does that mean for you, does it mean you’re going to continue doing what you are?” Pom be talking about him destroying The Valley or at least taking control of it. “What exactly do you have planned for us?”

“To answer your first question… why yes, I am going to continue making Baboon and the monkeys do my bidding. It may not occur to you, but you are not me and were not present for what happened.” Letting out a growl that devolved into a chuckle. “I now fully believe that I deserve what happened to me and I would not have otherwise learned my lesson if The Heavens did not strike me down nearly as hard as they did. I actually think that what they did to me was brilliant in scope and I think they actually did me a great favor doing it too. In turn I will soon be doing a favor of equal importance for all of you, the outsiders that have come into The Valley that I am supposed to be defending.”

“Have you gone insane from being stuck in here for so long?” Smolder be asking with a flat look and crossed limbs. “This 'The Heavens' thing did kind of put you through the wringer and I’d still be pretty mad at them personally.”

“I am quite sane and I really must praise The Heavens… for their discretion and subtle ways.” Seeing Dragon grinning had me shivering my timbers I didn’t even know I had. “I hadn’t seen or thought of it before, but I can certainly see it now.”

“What did you see?” Pom asked with a tilt of her head and more than a moderate amount of curiosity that I’m sure we all be feeling now.

“Let me tell you, as Guardian of The Valley my job was… quite superfluous… ‘boring’ even.” Groused out Dragon and he hissed slightly, before diving into the water. After twenty seconds of us looking between one another, Dragon popped back up. “The Valley was at peace for a long, long time when I was still smaller than Panda… nothing exciting ever happened around here and my job was the easiest one in the world. I just had to protect The Valley, when it didn’t need protection from anything… up until my fall. Until The Heavens decided to test me and actually make things interesting once I failed them and… what they have done is this… they gave me a challenge unlike any other.”

“A challenge?” Smolder raised her right brow slightly.

“I do love a good challenge, plus The Heavens have made things much more interesting around here. I will not hide the fact that I have become a monster, of that I’m quite aware, but my folly has become a thing of great entertainment and now The Valley needs protection… heh-heh-heh… from me…” Dragon snorted a small blast of flame and dipped his nose into the water for a few seconds. “As for what I’m going to do with you…. it’s quite simply really… my job.”

Dragon’s eyes widened slightly when he said ‘my job’ and he be propping his claws together above his chest.

“Your job… you mean as Guardian of The Valley?” Pom seemed to perk up slightly.

“You are outsiders trespassing in The Valley, however you did not come with intention to invade or cause suffering, but you will cause emotional suffering once you leave to go home. As the friends you’ve made here might never see you again, but you got here through magic in the first place and that’s how you will leave.” Dragon soon started to move away from us out into the lake. “This leads me to the disservice you’ve done me. You stated that I couldn’t do it and that I didn’t have to strain myself trying, I beg to differ and do not need you worrying about me. I laugh at the fact that you think I’m an invalid from all this agony. I still have my mind and will, The Heaven do not control my actions… though they do guide them in this one action. I will see you home regardless of whether or not it uses up this single shred of hope on my belly.”

He be grabbing something and then turned around to motion to the golden glowing scale on his belly with his right claw, in his left were four strange crystals.

“This golden scale is a sign that I have a task to do and it will be difficult and intensive on me, but… it is a challenge I will face fearlessly.” Dragon slowly meandered back over to us with the crystals clutched in his grasp. “I will meet my eventual fate without fear, whether I win, lose or otherwise… but you will not be here to witness it. Even if I were to get rid of Skunk in this method, I fear he would only come back stronger or as you stated Pom… he may get a much more suitable replacement. I wish to actually see if Skunk will bring me down, so I will not be doing something like this to him as he is a part of The Valley and he will not leave until our, 'apparently', fated battle.”

“Are you going to let up on the cruelty towards those loyal to you, maybe just a little?” Pom received a flat look from Dragon.

“Yeah, bullying your minions doesn’t end well and builds resentment. Having once been a minion I would know, our queen left our hive when we all changed for the better and she eventually got turned to stone because she couldn’t let go of being power hungry. Feeding on love wasn’t doing my people any favors, sharing it however… well let’s just say I looked more like you do at the time.” Ocellus approached to be right next to Pom, I followed her and Smolder did the same. “You seem much… nicer than her at least.”

“I may treat them better emotion reader…” Dragon look to the stone roof above us, before he turned back to us. “Now enough talk, back away and let me prepare to create a portal to your home realm. Baboon, get the salt!”

Dragon set the four crystals on the ground, Baboon came back with some salt. The remaining salt, once most of it was used to place a curved path between the four crystals to create a circle, was used to make something shaped like a dragon's head in the middle of the circle.

“Wait a few minutes for me to gather my strength to perform the spell, do not waste my time or this opportunity I am giving you. You have time to say your goodbyes to Baboon and the monkeys, they will send any message to those who you befriended in The Valley, my forces will make sure that they receive them.” Dragon soon dunked himself into the water wheezing and gasping, he be hurting a lot and Pom is being worried about him

A ninja monkey got out a flat piece of papyrus and looked to us.

“Mr. Baboon, I want you to thank Fox for being my friend these past few days.” Pom bowed to Baboon. “I also want you to tell everyone that this isn’t where we belonged and that we’re sorry that we couldn’t stay longer. Also thank you for being good friend too.”

“Don’t mention it, I’m just doing my job as Dragon’s best, and only, general!” Baboon stated proudly while puffing up his chest.

“I want you to tell Crane thanks for the tips.” Ocellus was trying not to look at anyone. “She’ll know what I mean.”

“Tell Rabbit that while he was a jerk, he was a pretty cool for a big one.” Smolder grinned. “Oh and tell everyone we said good bye and that it’s been fun, we can’t forget that.”

“I want you to be telling Turtle that I be thanking him greatly for helping me get better.” It was now my turn, I had met many a new friend in The Valley… but what did I have to go home to? Did I actually want to stay? Would Dragon even let me? I be looking to Pom and made a decision I be hoping to not regret for the rest of my life. “I also be wanting you to tell Skunk that I be having a great time with him, but I still be having pirates back home to prove wrong and that I can be just as great as they are.”

“Heh, kind of like me.” Baboon patted me on the back and I smile up at him. “I can appreciate the thought of proving yourself tough to others kid, it’s the story of my life even if I’m not always a winner. Remember that every loss, no matter how insignificant, is a lesson to be learned and I learn quite a lot.”

-The Valley, one hour prior, Empty Equestrian Campsite, Fox-

So they were going up to face Dragon today, I was worried about Pom and her friends. Pom said that Dragon wasn’t going to hurt them and meant them no harm personally … I readily believed her even without proof, but I still had a feeling something bad was going to happen soon and I couldn’t quite put my paw on why.

“Hey Fox, have you seen Shanty?” Should I tell Skunk? He’d go running off to face Dragon if he knew, should I tell him the truth or lie to him. I remember that time when we were all blaming the monkeys for everything under the sun, even when they weren’t responsible and with no evidence to support said accusations.

“Well… they are… currently-visiting-Dragon-in-his-territory.” I blurted that last bit out hoping he wasn’t being too attentive.

“They’re where?!” Skunk shouted, I probably should have lied to him. “We have to go help them!”

“Skunk, wait! Oh no…” Rubbing my paw at my forehead, I sighed loudly. I couldn’t let him go there all alone by himself.

He might unintentionally cause a lot of problems and could get Pom’s group hurt, especially if they are only being simply treated as guests. I don’t trust Dragon to be a good host, but I trust that at least Baboon could be friendly towards them.

“Hey, where’s that squirt running off to so quickly Fox?” Rabbit asked as he came flopping foot over foot into the camp, he must have recently finished his patrol.

“Follow me Rabbit, he’s heading to Dragon’s lair and we have to stop him before something happens to him!” I immediately set off in a run with Rabbit following right behind me.

“Oh yeah, this sounds like a good time, count me in!” Despite his demeanor, Rabbit really does care about Skunk and keeps his heart hidden underneath his constant oafish bravado. I just wish he would show his softer side more often. I do love Rabbit and yet I don’t think I could ever get with him until he learns to stop acting like he has to be tough all the time. There’s also his thoughts on girls that needs a bit of adjustment, otherwise he was a decent friend and he was quite adorable in his actions. That he even creates works of art about me is actually flattering, and a little disturbing. “I seriously hope the squirt doesn’t get in over his head, why is he going out to face Dragon?”

Why is it always times like this when he openly shows his emotions honestly?!

-Dragon’s lair, present, Pom-

“I have added extra precautions to the portal that I am going to create, because I don’t trust that there won’t be interference when I create it.” He grumbled audibly as he started channeling magic. “I expect something to go wrong as soon as I open it. I will prove to you Pom that this will not be too much of a strain for one as mighty as I!”

He was apparently trying to resonate our magical signatures to Equus. It doesn’t matter where on Equus we ended up as long as it wasn’t in a volcano, at the bottom of the ocean or in the middle of immediate danger. Dragon had told our group what he was doing and was meticulous in making precautions for our safety.

Slowly his glowing claws spread outward and a portal opened up at the end of the ledge where he set things up.

On the other side was a four legged purple dragon with a dragonfly looking back at us confusedly.

The portal shifted to a strange spinning bipedal creature breaking boxes that stopped his destruction to look at the portal curiously, he tilted his head at us as he bit into a piece of fruit that came out of one of the crates he broke.

The scene suddenly changed to a strange looking monkey in what could only be a giant machine fighting three little big eyed strange flying things with rounded beanbag like limbs.

The aperture changed one last time and it seemed to be in a forest pointed at a familiar place.

“That’s Ponyville, it looks like it’s opened up just inside the Ever Free Forest, let’s go!” Smolder immediately started for it with Ocellus, as did I before a shout distracted me.

“Dragon you better let them go or whoa-no…!” I heard a loud yelled as skunk came tumbling down the stairs and was rolling straight at Dragon’s set up.

Dragon glared at Skunk’s arrival and I looked back to the portal to witness a disheartening sight.

Before any they could reach the portal in time it changed locations to a strange city in a misty valley, which was when both Smolder and Ocellus sadly went through it with wide eyes. I turned back to see that Skunk had destroyed one of the crystals for the portal.

Looking to Dragon, he suddenly heaved himself at the portal and grabbed a hold of it.

“Go if you do not wish to be separated from your... friends! I will not be able to... hold it to its location for long.” At Dragon’s words I made my way for the portal and stopped to look back at Shanty who was moving towards Skunk.

“We not be hostages Skunk, we just be going somewhere else. It’s been fun and I be wanting to do this so you can remember me quite fondly!” Shanty gripped both sides of a dazed Skunk’s head as he sat on the spot where one of the crystals used to be and then kissed him. She was using her tongue and all, this caused Skunk to bright red and send a massive blast of noxious looking green gas out his backside with his eyes wide open. “I am really liking you, but I don’t be thinking we would work out. Okay, I be coming! I be thinking about staying here Pom, but I want to go on more adventures with you and eventually prove to those pirates that I can be being better than all of them when we be getting back! I’m not being ready to settle down, even if Skunk is being really cute.”

Where did Shanty learn to kiss like… oh right, lived on an island that had pirates and might have witnessed the act enough times to know how to do it herself.

Shanty darted right past me and straight into the portal and I was about to follow her, but I hesitated. I looked back as Rabbit, Fox and Baboon were all coughing and flailing on the floor from the blast of Skunk’s stink.

Luckily the stink had been aimed at the entrance instead of at Dragon who was currently holding the portal open.

“Dragon… thank you, for trying to get us home.” I said to him softly with a small smile as he held the portal open with gritted his teeth. He glared at me fiercely, but there wasn’t actually any heat in it.

“Yes, yes, I’m doing something nice!” Dragon screamed at me angrily. “Now go through portal you ingrate, I can’t do this forever and if it changes before you go through, then you might never see your friends again!”

I quickly hurried and leapt through it to find myself rolling across the grass where I slammed into a tree and a peach splattered on my face messily. I blinked blearily at the sight of the portal above me through the peach juice running down my face and saw Dragon’s claws releasing their hold of it.

Did I go to the same place as Ocellus, Smolder and Shanty?

I heard crying, I slowly sat up and saw Shanty weeping. Both Ocellus and Smolder were currently trying to console our poor little goat.

-Dragon’s lair, Dragon-

It is done…

I turned to the interlopers in my lair.

Skunk stood up and looked angrily at me.

“Do not fret ‘Skunk’, they are safe where they ended up. This was to be a one way trip to their home… a trip which you have bungled!" I angrily flared some fire in his direction, but my intention was not to hit him. I did, amusingly enough, make him jump back a little. “At least my precautions bore fruit and they ended up in a place that is safe from here… and me… I offer you a choice Skunk. You can either leave freely with your friends, or we can start our fated fight here and now. Now choose...”

Skunk looked torn between wanting to fight me for sending our visitors on their way, hopefully the precautions for a world with enough mysticism to open a pathway back home for them worked.

"They were not in any danger from me." I looked Skunk in the eyes and he looked in mine, we stayed this way for a bit. "Go back to The Valley and tell my old... 'friend'... Panda that I have done my job for our visitors.”

Once he was out of sight, I moved my left claw away from hiding the lonely golden scale.

Author's Note

Skunk Fu is over with.

Next is ??? with plenty of combat, not that Pom wants to have anything to do with it.

Arc 2: Second verse, similar to the first.

Author's Note

Music- Turtles in Time, Turning back the clock.

Emotional connections.

Pom- Great with Smolder. Motherly with Shanty. Friendly to Ocellus.

Smolder- Great with Ocellus and Pom. Friendly with Shanty.

Ocellus- Great with Smolder. Friendly with Shanty. Mild discomfort with Pom.

Shanty- Likes Pom. Friendly with Smolder and Ocellus. Currently heartbroken from an unrequited crush.

Arc 2: Second verse, similar to the first.

"So we left The Valley behind and we ended up in... you guessed it, another valley! Despite the similarities with the previous world, this place is very different. Pom handled herself well with Dragon and upheld the Huoshan traditions of respecting dragons. Despite the peace around here, we'll find trouble."

15. Barebones acceptable applications.

-Location: ???, Time: late morning, under a peach tree in a valley, Pom-

With Smolder and Ocellus off to scout, I wondered if Shanty was going to be okay. She had really liked Skunk, but even she said it herself that it wasn’t likely ever going to work out, Shanty was fairly mature for her rambunctious high energy nature.

“Are you going to be alright Shanty?” I ask as the goat snuggled against my side.

“Yes, I think I be feeling better after eating a few peaches.” Shanty had eaten most of the peaches off the tree, I don’t know where she was putting it all or why she wasn’t gaining weight. It could have something to do with her magical ability to cling to surfaces being energy intensive, it was her favorite ability to practice and it certainly wasn’t the fluffmancer method of clinging to things.

“A few… right.” I stated while looking up at the nearly barren tree that previously had a hungry goat climbing around in it. Clearly Shanty didn’t worry about ever falling out of the tree unless she suddenly lost control of her ability do to a lack of energy. “So we’re in another valley, surrounded by mountains and it has fruit and vegetables. Only it’s not the same valley we just left. We’re obviously not on Equus, in the Dragon Lands or in Equestria… or wherever you are from.”

“I think I be living around the Gallopagos Islands, might have even seen the infamous wandering Turtle Toga move by once or twice. There being enough fruit for me to live off of… though sleeping outdoors in the cold isn’t something I recommend ever doing.” Glad to teach you how to make a fire when we set up camp back in The Valley, also how to build a makeshift campsite with temporary tents and bedding. “Do you think Skunk be taking my goodbye well?”

“Well I’m sure he’ll never forget you at the very least, how often do you think he’ll get kissed by a cute bearded goat like you?” Not often by my estimates considering The Valley only seemed to have him and maybe Bird as the only kids or teenagers around.

“I am not thinking there be many goats like me out there… I was the only goat on the island and the port that was there.” Ouch, sounds like Shanty was abandoned.

“Well you obviously had someone looking out for you or else you wouldn’t be in my care now.” I tilted my head at her in curiosity, would she tell me about it or would she write off my interest in her.

“It not being any of your business, but yes... I did. She… isn’t being around anymore and I don’t be feeling up to talking about it.” Okay, if Shanty didn’t want to talk about it, then I stop prying here. “I’ve been mostly on my own for the last six years, which be what I am willing to tell you.”

She was a teenager about now, so… that would mean... That was pretty bad, especially if her caretaker died in front of her.

“So… do you think we’ll find a civilization of some kind here?” I was at least hopeful to sleep in a regular bed as soon as the end of this week.

“Maybe we’ll meet aliens?” Shanty said trying to sound perky, I just stared at her sadly as she snuggled against me and leaned her head against my chest. “Does this kind of feeling ever go away?”

“Uh, I don’t think it will?” My answer caused Shanty to smile as we sat under the tree together with the wind blowing through the nearby grass.

The cloudy skies were ever shifting and the valley seemed to be somewhere before lunch time when we arrived. We had left some time after lunch in the previous realm. Beautiful scenery, peaceful large open spaces, this place almost reminded me of Meadow Hills.

“Good, I be wanting to remember Skunk as a good friend even if it hurts that we may never be meeting again.” Shanty had a positive outlook on life and that was a good thing, because one would think she would be more depressive with how she’s been living up until now.

“Shanty, Pom, you’re going to want to see this, come on!” Smolder called out to us and waved with a claw from over the next hill.

We both got up and set off to see where Smolder was leading us. After three hills we came to a stop and saw a small… I want to say town, city maybe.

“It looks like we’ll be sleeping well tonight.” Ocellus said with good cheer, she even clapped her hooves together. “No more sleeping outdoors!”

“We don’t exactly have any local money Ocellus, which is if they even use money here at all and this world isn’t full of eldritch horrors waiting to devour us.” At least having a nearby civilization to go to is a good thing. A lightbulb went off in my head, I could teach Shanty responsibility, train her and earn some money all in one go. We’d need to find a restaurant though. “Well let’s get to it, we can get jobs if we’re going to find somewhere nice to sleep tonight that’s not just us huddled up together in an alleyway.”

“What are the chances that we be running into monsters?” Shanty asked looking a bit worried.

“Decent enough, because I know some Vikings who run into them regularly.” The words I said clearly had both Smolder and Ocellus concerned as much as Shanty. “Whether it is rye bread eating, living turn left signs or the small tentacle that once tried to take over the Huoshan Hot Springs, I know eldritch horrors exist and I don’t want to ever meet them personally. Abyssinia Giant Sumatran Rats almost count or come off as eldritch, they are quite terrifying to read about.”

-Thirty minutes later, outskirts of the small city, Ocellus-

“Do you think the locals will be freaked out by me?” Not that we had seen any of the locals so far, but I did see some movement as we approached and it looked like the place was bustling.

We were at the entrance approaching the main thoroughfare, there was a staircase on the far side of it that led up the nearby mountain with a large structure at the top.

“Are you sure that you and Pom don’t have anything in common Ocellus?” I knew Smolder was teasing me, but she should seriously drop it. I was nowhere near as paranoid as a lambkin.

“I have nothing in common with Pom, nothing I say!” I watched as Smolder, Shanty and Pom roll their eyes.

Can a changeling get a cup of some tasty respect around here?

I was at least getting a sweet ocean of love with Smolder, as part of being a ‘new changeling’ I shared that love right on back to her. I wondered if that was causing some sort of odd feedback loop and if it could feasibly have negative effects on me like forcing me to be attracted to Smolder, I also wondered if it was happening to other changelings since sharing the love made things better… except Chrysalis.

Eh, it was better not to worry about it, nothing bad has happened between me and my friends so far. I’m actually grudgingly willing to call Pom a friend, she at least hasn’t done anything noteworthy to make me hate her. She’s only ever been overly cautious and protective of us.

We trotted into town looking around at all the locals, another Chineigh themed world with animals… except these animals here wore more clothes and there were rabbits, pigs, geese and plenty of other random animals of various types, like snow leopards, snakes, a gorilla and yes, even monkeys were here.

One of the pigs saw Smolder and me, needless to say they reacted poorly.

“Oh no, a dragon and some kind of yaoguai Run!” The pig that said that quickly waddled off leaving everyone in the street looking at us.

“Is he always like that?” Smolder asked while scratching at her head.

“Yeah, that’s how Fli Eng always acts.” A nearby random goose said. “He always runs home squealing over nothing. So… you’re a strange lot, also the dragon doesn’t look or act like a demon.”

“Are the dragons that are native to this area of the world related to demons?” The answer to Smolder’s question was for the goose to shake his head.

“No, it wasn’t a true dragon, but a demon that took the form of a holy dragon and terrorized everyone. My name is Zeng, are you stranger here from outside The Valley of Peace for the tournament?” Zeng was a goose with a yellow robe green belt and matching hat.

His emotions were a bit muted or nervous, he was possibly a pessimist.

“Oh, um, no, we’re… a bit lost actually.” Pom rubbed at the back of her head looking a bit sheepish, pretty easy for a lambkin to look the part. “So this place is called ‘The Valley of Peace’, that’s nice to know Zeng. Would you happen to know where we can find a local restaurant? We’re basically vagrants looking for a nice place to rest.”

“You could try the noodle place nearby, they make really good noodles.” Zeng offered openly.

“Are you doing anything important Zeng, I ask because this is our first time being… uh what is this town called?” It didn’t seem that Pom or Zeng minded the others presence and they shared a similar enough skittishness that they started to relax around one another. It was kind of weird that Pom was less nervous about our surroundings while talking to him.

“Everything in The Valley of Peace is simply called The Valley of Peace, but the different settlements are their own districts like the artisan district out that way.” Zeng motioned at us to follow him. “I’m not too busy today to show some strangers around the Jade District.”

“So what’s this tournament you be mentioning?” Shanty hopped onto Pom’s back and she just carried her as we followed after Zeng.

“Oh it’s the tournament to choose a warrior of legend… given that you are unusual to the area, this warrior is going to be one of the most legendary fighters to ever live or so it has been foretold anyway.” Following Zeng, he eventually pointed to the out of the way place, a cozy little noodle hut with a few tables off to the side of the road. “Here you go, but I don’t know what you hope to achieve if you have no money.”

“My companions and I will be working of course. It’ll be a temporary thing, but we can do good work for a meal. We’ve been roughing it these last few days.” That was an understatement Pom, we were living far more roughly than I would have liked. This idea is sound though. “So what is that you do Zeng?”

“I’m a dutiful messenger of the palace up there, it’s where I work and I sometimes feel like I don’t deserve the job I have.” Zeng smiled at us. “I’m quite grateful that I even have one, now if you’ll excuse me.”

“Wait, I’m sorry, where are our manners. We forgot to introduce ourselves. I’m Pom, this is Smolder, Ocellus and Shanty.” At Pom introducing us we made noise of confirmation. “It was nice meeting you and you’re a really good person Zeng. If you ever need a favor, then I would be happy to assist you.”

“No, you don’t need to worry about a favor from me, but I still might take you up on it one day.” Zeng started to walk away while waving back at us. “You never know when the favor of a stranger will save your life. I’ve learned that much Pom, I wish you a good day.”

“Will you be joining the tournament Pom?” Shanty asked and Pom suddenly gained a very distant look in her eyes.

Pom tasted of fear so often that I think I’ve gotten quite numb to it. Still, she functions better than just about any other lambkin I’ve ever seen.

“Hey, yeah, you should really show your stuff Pom!” Smolder, I think Pom was about to have a coronary problem at the suggestion.

“No, just no! I will not do that as I don’t want to be saddled with something prophetic like being a legendary warrior, it is bad enough that my people think that I’m the current 'Black Sheep' of the lambkin!” With that Pom turns and walks through the entrance into the quaint little restaurant area. “Um, excuse me…”

“Yes, how can I help you?” The goose behind the counter asked.

“You wouldn’t happen to need any help would you, my friends here and I would like to work for a short time.” Pom was not exactly negotiating from a position of strength.

“Hm… what kind of skills would you say you have?” The goose scrutinizes Pom and the rest of us carefully. He did send odd looks towards Smolder and his emotions spiked with curiosity and what tasted like glee at recognizing that she was a dragon. “Is that a real dragon?”

“Not the holy kind of dragon that the guy that directed us here mentioned.” Smolder responded lazily, trying to act tough and cool, when I knew she had a gooey center of sweetness while wanting to be cute.

“That doesn’t matter or make that much of a difference to me.” The goose said plainly with a smile. “If you were directed here, then that means my special noodle soup is becoming much more famous around here.”

While I could read emotions, I couldn’t read minds. This goose didn’t have any ill intentions as far as I could feel, but he did seem to want to use Smolder for something. Maybe advertising his restaurant?

His interest in my… er… don’t go their Ocellus, that’s a little too possessive. Smolder is her own dragon and I can’t own her as much as she can’t own me, no matter how much I might want her to collar me and claim me as being her property.

... Why is that the first thing that comes to mind when I want a deeper relationship with Smolder?

“Well I’m good at just about everything you could need of me in a restaurant and we’re rather kind of desperate for work. So I’ll do just about anything you could need of me, within reason of course.” Pom looked at us with a questioning gaze, she gently curled her right hoof around Shanty and tugged her into a hug, the goat let her do so with a small grin. “I can’t speak for two of my companions, but I also want this job so I can train my... we’ll call her a protégé. There are several unique skills I want her to learn while we’re here. This will be a completely temporary arrangement I assure you; while we work for you, you will get to keep most of the profits from this so long as you can put some good food into us.”

“What was your last job like and did you get fired from it?” The goose asked with a tint of suspicion in his emotions as he glance at me, I was certainly an oddity around here.

“She still has that job, it’s just that she can’t do it at the moment given how lost and far away we are.” Smolder moved forward. “She’s a guard of a mystical place known as Huoshan. I would know, it’s in my homelands and if anyone causes problems around here she can run them off easily enough.”

“Oh, does she know kung fu?!” The voice startled us and we turned to a large tubby looking panda, he looked fairly excited and Pom cowered a bit.

“I’d say so, they don’t let just anyone into the Huoshan Guard and Pom here knows a thing or two about fighting.” Smolder exclaimed. “She’ll still be in the guard when we eventually find our way home.”

“Yes, but I don’t like the idea of fighting very much.” It’s hard to avoid when it’s in your job description Pom. “I’m more of a domestic housewife to a real warrior.”

“A domestic housewife that can move at speeds impossible for most people to see and has made it through rigorous training to even be considered in the Huoshan Guard?” The dryness of Smolder’s tone had me giggling, she smiled in my direction and I could feel my cheeks heating up. “From what you told us, you caught a hard to catch thief on the job a day or so before the incident that happened to cause us to eventually end up here.”

“While true… that was supposed to be a training and examination exercise, so it was more of an accident that I caught a thief thinking it was part of my training.” The panda seemed particularly excited to hear Pom had caught a thief.

“Oh you must be so awesome, are you here for the tournament?!” The panda was bouncing up and down with a gleeful grin.

“No, I’d rather not join the tournament thank you very much, I’ve had enough of tournaments to last me a life time with the one I was force to join and somehow ended up being in the top three. Two of which were my friends that have mountain shattering capabilities. I mean that literally, they can break mountains by just being themselves.” Okay, that was something Pom hasn’t mentioned to us. How did that happen? “I just know some people who are really good at fighting, I’m not that much of a fighter myself.”

“Pom’s just being humble.” Smolder stated succinctly even if she didn’t know the story behind Pom placing third in a tournament, which had me perplexed. “If she could get third place in a tournament held in Huoshan, then she is definitely a skilled fighter.”

“I’m a reserve member of the guard, not an active member!” Pom stated loudly. “I spend most of my patrol days just helping people out. Besides, the tournament I’m talking about had a lot of problems and strange entrants like a durian.”

“Must have been some durian.” The panda stated with a wry smile.

“Yes, says the head of her own personal unit. Seriously Pom, why are you always such a downer on yourself?” You very well know the answer to that Smolder, she’s a lambkin! “You’re really cool despite acting kind of like our teacher Fluttershy most of the time.”

“So what kind of cool moves do you have?” The panda suddenly asked and Pom looked quite exasperated.

“You’ll have to excuse my son, he gets easily excited about kung fu after a warrior saved our restaurant.” The goose stated while glaring at the Panda, he was cowed slightly by the goose.

“Right, let’s start over and forget about me being a guard of a place you will likely never see personally. My name is Pom, this is Shanty, Ocellus and Smolder.” Again we gave a noises of acknowledgement to Pom’s introductions. “We could really use a job so we won’t have to sleep outdoors anymore.”

“Please, can they help dad?” The goose was the panda’s father, either genetics were loose here like with ponies or he was adopted. I’m thinking the latter in this case.

“What is your protégé going to be learning from working here exactly?” The goose asked.

“How to defend herself better, shanty wanted me to train her in self-defense and I agreed to help her learn how.” This seemed to confuse the panda, Pom looked at him in equal confusion. “What’s wrong?”

“How is working at this restaurant going to teach her kung fu?” The curious panda asked of Pom.

“Well any skill you can learn from any walk of life can be feasibly used in a fight, sweeping the floor, cleaning dishes or even carrying various foods to a table can all teach something.” The panda didn’t look convinced by Pom’s words. “Look, I’m going to be working alongside Shanty, mostly to make sure she doesn’t break anything, and I will be teaching her the lessons she got from doing these various tasks.”

“Sweeping the floor, how can that even be used in a fight?” The panda asked.

“You’d actually be surprised at what someone can do with a broom just by sweeping it in the right way.” This made me wonder what Pom has experienced that she can say that with clear conviction. “Do you think everyone just magically had fighting techniques to start off with? No, someone had to invent a fighting style before it can be called as such, life is generally a good teacher.”

“My name is Ping and this is Po, please don’t try to fill my sons head with any craziness.” Ping stated as he waved at his son. “Also, I’ll gladly let you work here for food and small sum of repayment.”

“Really?! Okay then, put me and Shanty to work on the tables Mr. Ping.” After hearing Pom say this I felt something twinge on my emotion sensing ability, there were a lot of hungry people coming this way. “So when does the lunch rush start?”

“In about twenty seconds.” Mr. Ping said with a broad smile on his beak.

“Oh…” Pom stated while looking a little stunned. “Right, you and Po work on the food and we’ll carry them out to the tables.”

“This be being the first job I am having, also the first time a restaurant hasn’t thrown me out immediately.” This led to the feeling that Shanty has some sad stories that could easily tear into your heart.

-Thirty minutes later, Pom-

“Next order.” Mr. Ping stated as he pointed at a collection of people, I quickly took the several bowls of noodle soup and balanced them along my back and on my head as I made my way over to the table.

I carefully put the bowls down one at a time, I had good balance and control over my body. Shanty had taken to doing the job to the best of her ability, even if her balance wasn’t the best. I was only skilled at this because of carrying food to my beasties and giving them each their own dishes exactly like this.

I looked over my shoulder at Smolder boiling the soup with her fire breathing, whereas Ocellus was helping in various ways. Ocellus has been called a weird spirit more than once since we got here, her levitating things around didn’t help with that image at all.

“So what does this be teaching me exactly Pom?” Shanty asked after all the tables were full and the food was delivered.

Ping was a good businessman and was working the crowd quite well. He was using Smolder as a once in a lifetime opportunity to get dragon fried dumplings from an actual dragon, he was also talking me up as a strong mystical guard from some faraway place. Strong wasn’t a good description for me.

“Think about it Shanty, have you actually dropped any dishes after you got used to balancing them?” I was surprised she hadn’t done much damage to the stuff she carried.

She got wide eyed look and then gave a bright toothy smile as she began to understand what she was learning. She had quickly gone from moving one bowl at a time to moving three at a time while walking on her hind legs, balancing one between the horns on her head and the others on both of her front hooves.

"I think I be getting it now!" Shanty stated as she thrust her right hoof into the air.

Author's Note

Oh this will inevitably end well. (sarcasm)

It's not exactly hard to guess what the universe is this time. As soon as the location or some important characters names came up, it's kind of impossible to not know where Pom and her friends currently are.

Pom will definitely be involved in the fighting, no matter how much she wants to absolutely avoid it.

She definitely considers her accomplishments to be wildly embellished, so what effect do you think this will have to those who will only know her by hearsay?

16. Relatively affable meeting.

-Jade Palace District, Mr. Ping’s Noodle Restaurant, a few days later, Pom-

I sighed, as I sat down. Mr. Ping didn’t kid around with his business, then again the guy did raise and feed a panda for a son and was actually a very kind hearted person. You just had to look beyond his ambition to be the best noodle soup seller around.

Shanty was learning a lot and I taught her a few things that weren’t about defending herself. I taught her how to hold a job, how to be frugal with money and how to take care of herself better.

Smolder didn’t mind the attention she was getting from the locals, just so long as it wasn’t anything that she was uncomfortable with.

Ocellus was, thankfully enough, sliding to being a bit more neutral towards me. She was attracting as much attention as Smolder, but mostly because people haven’t seen anything quite like her.

We have made a small sum of money working here, we would need every last bit of it and would be using said money to find our way out of this world. Ocellus and Smolder also wanted some stuff aside from food and board that Mr. Ping was so graciously lending us with his home, I told them to only small souvenirs they could carry easily in packs. Shanty just wanted my attention more than anything and I was quite willing to give it.

I was still trying to think about how we were going to get out of this world. Magic and mysticism were a known capacity, but it seemed rare and hard to find here. We had to find something that had the right kind of magic that will open a gateway to other worlds, or at least a gateway to get between worlds so we can find a way home.

“Excuse me.” An old, rather kindly sounding, voice from out of nowhere made me flinch and flail to almost fall out of my seat. A staff quickly hooked itself around me and sat me back up, I looked to the person who interrupted my break. “Sorry for frightening you, might I know your name?”

It was an old tortoise with a staff, he was sitting near me and giving me an overly curious gaze. It was as if he has seen a lot of things and lived for a long time. Given that he was a tortoise, he most likely has.

The more he looked into me, the more I looked back into him. His smile was friendly and there was an air of intrigue surrounding him.

“My name is Pom.” To me he seemed to be incredibly ancient. Like Celestia or Luna levels of ancient, but he wasn’t a god. I just had this… feeling. “I know this might seem weird of me to ask, but… how old are you exactly?”

“My name is Oogway and some would say I’m far too old, they would mostly be right in that.” Oogway chuckled lightly at the thought and considered me calmly. “I’ve been alive for a very, very long time Pom. My life is soon to be at an end and it will come shortly after the Dragon Warrior is found, they will appear at the tournament we are holding up at the Jade Palace soon and will come out of the sky in a great ball of fire.”

“Yes, but what does that have to do with you approaching me?” I don’t believe for a second that Oogway singled me out of my group to talk to for no discernable reason. “I can understand curiosity, but yours doesn’t seem like the normal kind.”

“I’ve been hearing rumors of four interesting beings. The dragon who is not truly holy or a disguised demon. The strange magical creature who shares her emotions freely and is sustained by being around others in turn. The little goat who can eat more than her own body’s weight and never get any bigger.” In turn as he spoke of them, Oogway looked at Smolder, Ocellus and Shanty. He soon returned his soft gaze to me. “All interesting, yes, but many strange legends I’ve hear about surrounding the last visitor have me most intrigued. That would be you Pom, The guard of a mystical place unheard of by anyone, even me, called ‘Huoshan’. A guard of the people from wherever they roam and is currently quite far from their home.”

“That still doesn’t explain the interest in me specifically.” What could be so interesting about me? Sure I helped save the world once and then became a guard of a place that has a fairly competent guard under the banner of the Dragon Lands. “If anything my companions are far more interesting than I am.”

“Says the one who has been helping people all around this district with small things, Tigress really has been running herself spare with trying to find problems to solve. Only you have almost beaten her to them at every turn, if entirely by accident.” Oogway looked out towards the street. “She hides her heart well and you might know of her soon enough if you stick around, especially if you keep taking on all the odd jobs she is known to do for money to help the orphanage. She really wants to be the Dragon Warrior, but it is not meant to be.”

“If you’re going to suggest that one of my friends or I happen to be this ‘Dragon Warrior’, then I’m taking my friends and running as fast and as far away from here as possible.” I was not going to be some legendary warrior for a place that didn’t know I existed until a few days ago. “I’m not going to be stuck here, because I have a family and a home to return to eventually. Once we can finally find our way from here that is.”

“No, no, calm down.” He motioned at me gently while shaking his head, I noticed that he barely glanced at Po. The large panda was currently trying to get Shanty to balance various odd things on her body at once in a playful manner. Smolder was egging them on with Ocellus trying to get them to stop. It was still technically part of Shanty’s training as much as it was fun to watch. “I can tell you that you are not the Dragon Warrior and are most certainly not the one I'm looking for.”

“It’s him isn’t it?” I stated flatly, while taking a slight glance at Po too.

Given that Po was an orphan raised from humble beginnings in a noodle shop by a goose as nice as Mr. Ping is, yeah he was definitely the one Oogway was going to declare the Dragon Warrior. This was not going to surprise me in the slightest when it inevitably happened.

Po was excited about kung fu and wanted to watch the tournament to discover the Dragon Warrior, oh was he ever in for a wakeup call. Usually people with a love for something tended to excel at it like nothing else in some way, shape or form. Some would say he’s too fat, wouldn’t be very agile and that he would be clearly unteachable because he was somewhat clumsy, a lack of skill at the start of learning something new does not mean a lack of ability to gain said skill.

A good teacher in any subject can work with just about anyone and not just someone with all the talent in the world where they only needed to do half the work. A good teacher will always impart at least one bit of wisdom, even if it was not necessarily what they wished to initially teach.

“I am curious, are you going to enter the tournament where I will announce the Dragon Warrior?” Oogway was deflecting heavily onto the tournament to discover the Dragon Warrior, but he already knew who it was so why all this subterfuge?

Oh wait, didn’t he just say he was going to die after… oh… ohhh… he doesn’t exactly have very long to live does he?

“No and I have several reason for that. One, I’m not a master of any style of combat, even the one taught in the place I currently call home. Two, I’m a guard and not a warrior. Three, I don’t like fighting all too much and will only do so if I absolutely have to or when necessary.” I look Oogway in the eyes. “Four, I have absolutely nothing to prove to you or anyone and I’m not competitive enough to fall for goading.”

I heard some loud sounds and looked to Smolder, Shanty and Ocellus, all of them were looking Po with a wok covering his head and a number of dirty dishes on his arms with one precariously balanced on his belly. Shanty was giggling up a storm, from likely having put him in this situation.

“Five, I have those three to protect with my very life and they need me to be ready at any time.” I gave Oogway a suspicious look. “Po will need a lot of help, as whoever will have to train him won’t be able to see far beyond their own uplifted nose. Po has already learned much from just working here, he just doesn’t realize that yet.”

“I fear you are correct in more ways than one, but that’s not what I am here to discuss.” Oogway leaned against the table with smile showing his clear interest in me. “Tell me about your life and your home, I likely won’t be able to see it in my lifetime if it is as far away as I think it is. I wish to hear of a place I’ve never seen before.”

“Farther than even we can reach at the moment Oogway, but we’re not giving up hope despite the previous setback that led to us being here in The Valley of Peace. As for Huoshan, it’s a mountain that is the body of a dragon that has long since passed away. The spirit of Huoshan watches over the longma who live there in the city they built with their own hooves and a number of them are direct descendants. The longma are powerful fire controlling beings with calm demeanors, having a strong sense of duty and stoicism in the face of danger. They have wings, manes and tails that burn hot when angry and when calm they flicker like a candle on a nice moonlit night. Huoshan is in the Dragon Lands and Smolder is from there, I guess I am too as it has become my home and… I am kind of homesick right now. I always simply helped anyone who needed it when I went on patrol, it's a habit now. I'm not an active member of the guard, just a reserve member. Huoshan is consistently warm year round, but being a volcano that makes sense and the heat in the spring or summer is a little bit bothersome.” I looked at him sadly while thinking about how he knows who the Dragon Warrior is and how short his life will be from this moment of just taking his time to talk to me. “Huoshan has three tiers, all lined with buildings, business and places of entertainment. The lower tier is for the merchants, the middle tier is for residents of the city and the upper tier is for administration. The city, despite being so vast, is protected by the Huoshan Guard. Said guard will protect those who are visiting and those who stay. The longma don’t judge by appearance, race or gender, but on the actions of the individual… How long do you have and have you actually told anybody about it Oogway?”

“Do not be sad for me Pom, though I appreciate the sentiment of your kind heart. I have lived a long fruitful life and it will just be my time. I’m over a thousand years old and can’t really sustain myself like this much longer.” He said solemnly with a smile. “I created kung fu to protect people. I am originally from some far off islands and found my way to living here in peace, for the most part. I helped build up what you see around us. I have made my mistakes, I have had many victories and more importantly have had just as many defeats. I’ve had experiences of more lifetimes than anyone else living around here. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift, that is why it is called the present. I don’t have too many tomorrows left in me, but you and your strange friends still do and your presence means far more than even one as wise as I can possibly imagine.”

“Huh… was there anything else you wanted to know Oogway?” I found myself wanting to get to know him more, I wonder if he had an autobiography that I could read.

“Huoshan sounds like quite a nice place with the way you speak of it with such reverence, but no. There is something that I wanted you to know though.” He grinned at me. “Nothing is impossible, you are living proof that this is true. Just by being here and being yourself, you can alter the course of everything around you.”

“Uh… do I really want to do that though?” I rubbed my at my chin with my right hoof and Oogway chuckled.

“It is your choice in whether you decide to help or not, but the Dragon Warrior will still meet their destiny regardless and you have already unknowingly interfered. I do not know if it’s for the better or not that you have already started to change things, but it sure is interesting to see odd changes being set in motion by some people outside of any context I have ever known or will ever know.” Oogway closed his eyes and inhaled slowly. “When it comes to the Dragon Warrior’s destiny personally… I don’t think anyone would mind there being a little ‘outside’ help.”

“That over there is Shanty, what do you make of her?” I wanted to make use of Oogway’s wisdom. “I want you to give me an outsider’s perspective on her from your position.”

“She is young and spry, willing to learn and is in great need of attention. I think you are teaching her quite well, her heart is flexible and her soul is as innocent as yours is.” Not even going to ask Oogway how he knew that I was teaching her. “She is also strong in mind, but her body will need time to catch up with the rest of her. She knows of terrible loss and the world has tried to break her on more than one occasion, that she still has a good heart and can trust someone like you to help her is simply amazing in and of itself.”

“Since you teach kung fu and are the grand master and creator of it here, does that mean that you have taught many others strength of mind and body?” I received a questioning look, but Oogway still nodded. “So did you also teach them strength of heart and soul while you were at it? It’s something a Huoshan Guard learns in training when it comes to their particular fighting style, being balanced and knowing exactly when not to be.”

“The answer to that… has caused many failings on my part as much as those of my students.” Oogway looked far older when he said that and was staring off into the distance with a slight frown. “I can teach anybody to be strong in body, I can teach most beings to be strong in mind, but teaching someone to be strong in their heart or soul? Those are not as easy to fix or teach if broken down as with the body, it has led to many problems unless you were already quite strong in those qualities.”

“Like what kind of problems?” I wanted some clarification here. “What am I looking out for and who might I have to help Po with exactly?”

“A snow leopard named Tai Lung…” Oogway had a haunted and sad look in his eyes. “Tai Lung is one of the greatest warriors this world will ever know, but he let darkness fill his heart. He was led to believe he was to be the Dragon Warrior…”

“You didn’t exactly stop that kind of thinking as soon as it started I take it? This Tai Lung built his entire world around this one thing and he had his heart set on it didn’t he?” I couldn’t see the look in Oogway’s eyes as they were pointed anywhere except at me in this moment. “Please tell me this guy didn’t kill anyone when you eventually told him that he wasn’t this Dragon Warrior. He’ll likely become even worse when he finds out who is.”

“That is the one thing that left me curious, he never did actually kill anyone. He only incapacitated and proved his incredible prowess in combat, but has never ever actually struck to kill. Even when I had to stop his rampage from hurting the villagers that live here in The Valley of Peace. He never seriously hurt anyone to the point of permanent harm, but he did come fairly close numerous times before he was stopped.” Oogway was taking this conversation a bit roughly now judging by the sound of his voice. “I sometimes wondered if he would have been better off had I intervened sooner, but it was ultimately up to my pupil Shifu to train him. As such it was my failing as much as his that I had to lock Tai Lung, Shifu’s adopted son, away. I sometimes consider that locking Tai Lung away might have been the wrong choice, he has been in Chorh-Gom prison for the last twenty years stewing in his resentment. So yes, I fear he will be quite upset when he eventually hears who the Dragon Warrior is and I believe this is where you can be of help.”

“Huh?” I tilted my head at him.

“If Tai Lung is to heal, he needs to be broken of his arrogance and to be given a new purpose that does not demean all that he has worked towards.” Was Oogway telling me that he expected this Tai Lung guy to break free of that chore-gum prison place?

“This is starting to sound suspiciously familiar… is he going to break free of his prison?” It wasn’t hard for me to guess as to what might become a major problem in my near future. This sounds like Equestria’s 'thousand year' problem, where something dangerous is always guaranteed to come back after a set period of time.

“I would suggest you get plenty of exercise and be ready for the possibility, for I know you will protect the people.” With that Oogway stood up and smiled at me. “If you could accompany me back to the Jade Palace, I would appreciate it greatly. I also have something that I dearly wish to show to you.”

“Of course, let me tell my friends where I’m going first.” Once I got the nod that he accepted, I went over to Smolder, Ocellus, Shanty and Po still having fun while doing what amounted to chores.

“Smolder, Ocellus, Shanty, I’m going to be gone for a while and I’ll be back soon. An elderly person wants me to walk them home.” They shrugged me off and simply went back to what they were doing, for Shanty it was learning to juggle bowls filled with dumplings without dropping any or catching them in other bowls. I shook my head and made my way back over to Oogway. “Okay, lead the way.”

-A minute or two later-

“My cabbages!” Someone yelled in despair and we soon passed a cabbage cart that sent cabbages bouncing, rolling and flying everywhere, with a wailing owner crying over their spilled cabbages.

“Aren’t you going to stop to help that poor person?” I asked of Oogway as we made our way to the stairs leading up to the Jade Palace.

“There is no helping cabbage carts, I have learned this lesson after the first hundred thousand.” Oogway said while completely ignoring the destroyed cabbage cart. “Cabbages taste good, but not ‘that’ good. It is the one thing I will no longer respond to.”

“Huh… kind of reminds me of every cabbage cart that has ever been destroyed in Huoshan.” I sometimes wondered if there was some odd conspiracy surrounding cabbage carts.

“It is a secret that nobody has been able to figure out, I suppose it will remain one of the world’s greatest mystery as to why horrible things happen to them.” We soon started up the one thousand steps leading to the Jade Palace.

-Five minutes later-

“Master it is nice to see that you have returned.” The little red panda bowed his head to Oogway, then he noticed me following Oogway. “Who is this?”

“Someone I’ve had a quite delightful and somewhat morose chat with Shifu, do not worry or concern yourself about her presence.” Oogway was as calm and collected as he has been since I’ve met him. “I will personally be seeing her out when we are finished here, I will be seeing you and the others at dinner. Do not wait for me.”

“Of course master!” The little red panda named Shifu bowed and then set off.

“He seems a bit… uptight.” I was trying to find the right word to not be insulting.

“He is strict and disciplined, but he has a good heart if you can find it.” Oogway stated with a smile on his face. “He has lived a hard life and I have watched him grow, but he still needs more room. When I inevitably perish… that will give him the room he needs to grow into a truly great teacher. I will not mince words, right now he’s quite stuffy and is still heartbroken by many various things that has happened throughout his life, one of those things was Tai Lung. Teaching Po will be a good lesson for all those who live here, also a reminder that those from humble beginnings should always remember their roots.”

“Will Po be teaching him as much as he teaches Po?” I asked, Oogway just grinned without a word.

This makes me wonder what I have taught Tianhuo when she was teaching me.

Oogway brought me into a room with a fountain and a dragon head sculpture on the ceiling that had a scroll its mouth.

“I have brought you here to ask for your opinion on something. I have worked for years to make something unique, yet simple and easy to understand by those who are not entirely blinded by their pride.” He started to dance with his staff and eventually sent some blossom petals flowing towards the mouth and then caught the scroll with his staff when it fell out. He held it out to me. “I have not shown this to anyone else, but it is the secret to kung fu and all anyone truly needs to know.”

“Um, okay… thanks I guess?” I stated in a confused tone as I took the red and green scroll into my left hoof from the staff, Oogway looked at me expectantly.

I looked over the scroll and eventually figured out how to open it. When I eventually did open it, I saw a gleaming sheet with only one thing on it and it took me a moment to figure it out.

“You’re a crazy person Oogway.” I nodded, closed the scroll and gave it back to a widely grinning Oogway.

“I will soon be here in spirit... mostly to see the punchline.” Oogway stated merrily.

Author's Note

Now Pom will find herself involved in a bit of combat, mostly because there is no way she can avoid going to the tournament unless she's willing to absolutely abandon her charges.

17. Exceptional wild evasion.

Author's Note

Battle Music- Character Clash (Boss Fight) Ittle Dew 2.

Pom does have some acrobatics skill, mostly because she's lightweight enough to pull it off.

Not much actual fighting, but then this will go through both Kung Fu Panda 2 and 3 with quite a few changes.

17. Exceptional wild evasion.

-Jade Palace Gateway, Courtyard Arena, day of the Dragon Warrior competition, Smolder-

There were more clothes and bipedal talking animals than in that last world. The tournament was getting closer to the end and it was Pom’s turn to go up. Tigress, Crane and Viper were awesome!

“Why am I doing this again?!” Pom was freaking out as she stood in one corner of the arena with three other combatants known as Master Antelope, Master Frog and the rather intimidating brick wall that was Master Thundering Rhino.

“Shanty begged you for hours to get in on this tournament, even pointed out that she wanted to see her teacher in action and not cowering like you currently are.” This is the kind of like what my teachers back at friendship school said happened to Rainbow Dash during the ‘best young flyers competition’. I was going to be as supportive as possible, but it certainly looks like Pom was going to die out there. “Look, do you really want to look like a coward for the rest of your life Pom?”

“If I say yes, can I leave the arena?” Pom stated with a pleasant tone as she perked up while looking at us with hope.

“No, I be really wanting to see this!” Shanty said while hopping exuberantly in place.

Pom really was a shivering ball of nerves, especially with how she curled up and was almost crying on the arena floor.

“I don’t know how to feel about this Smolder, on the one hoof I’m feeling quite sorry for Pom and don’t want to watch what’s about to happen to her.” Ocellus was actually worried about Pom, I’m actually astounded. “On the other hoof a small part of me really wants to see Pom get creamed out there, just not by that rhino guy though. Am I a horrible person for feeling this way?”

“Maybe.” I answered. Never mind, Ocellus is clearly not there yet, but at least she didn’t want to see Pom harmed horribly.

“Don’t be underestimating Pom!” Shanty took a moment to look around and tilted her head curiously. “Where is Po, he be missing all the excitement.”

“I think the big guy slept in, and to think he was so excited about today too.” I shook my head and wondered how much business Mr. Ping was getting when most of the people were here watching the show.

-Oogway-

“Should we really let her compete?” Shifu was looking at the cowering Pom.

“I’m sure she wouldn’t be in the arena if she could not hold her own.” I looked at Pom’s friends, the goat was still showing support for Pom, even as Pom cowered and the other two worried. That was adorable and upbeat compared to the many relationships I’ve watched fall apart over these last hundred years. “She likely won’t fight, but I truly doubt she will lose.”

“Master Oogway, if she doesn’t fight, then how do you expect her to actually win?” Shifu was going to have a lot of trouble with Po, this thought just made me smile. “I personally believe Thundering Rhino will be the one to win.”

“Size, strength and skill are not always indications of victory.” I said calmly. “It certainly helps though.”

Pom was quite correct, I was crazy… and so was she.

Crazy like foxes!

-Pom versus Masters Antelope, Thundering Rhino and Frog-

“Start!” Shifu yelled as he swung his hand down.

Pom’s eyes darted to the others in the arena as she stood there quivering and both Master Antelope and Thundering Rhino sized up their opponents as well. Master Frog was scrutinizing Pom personally.

“Sorry, but you don’t seem like you want to be here, so let me take you out as peacefully as I can!” Master Frog leapt for Pom with amazing speed and led with his right webbed foot.

When the fast flying frog barely came within a foot of hitting Pom, she squeaked loudly and blurred out of existence.

Master Frog landed and almost fell out of the arena in confusion, he looked around as did the other masters until they eventually spotted Pom.

Pom cowering behind Master Antelope, Antelope narrowed her eyes at Pom and tightened her grip on the bo-staff she held. Antelope swung it around and swiftly lost her balance when she hit nothing but air.

Pom didn’t even bother to try and block the attack or go for a counter, she just ran.

The masters were stunned, as Pom was insanely fast.

Aside from Master Mantis, they had never seen this kind of speed before.

Pom was now crouching behind Thundering Rhino and breathing rapidly.

“Why did I think this was the safest place to go-ho-ho?!” Pom cried loudly while dragging her hooves down her face in obvious distress, this unfortunately attracted Thundering Rhino’s attention to the lambkin behind him.

The rhino swung his massive block shaped hammer around and down towards Pom, at the last moment she covered her head by crossing both her legs above herself.

Outside the arena Shifu was just staring at the coward wide eyed as the hammer went down and created a massive dust cloud.

The three masters blinked and backed away, when the dust settled they saw Pom shivering in place looking no worse for wear. The floor beneath Pom looked immaculate and untouched as well.

Master Rhino knew he clearly hadn’t missed, so what just happened and why wasn’t the little whimpering one out of the competition?

“Her cowardice is a false front, she has got to be deceiving us!” Master Thundering Rhino declared.

“No, I actually am this afraid!” Pom stated with clear shock. While shivering and trotting in place, her eyes darting about fearfully.

None of the three masters seemed to have bought her entirely truthful statement, mostly because she just survived a direct hammer strike from Thundering Rhino.

They all narrowed their eyes on Pom.

“Oh no…” Pom’s wide eyes darted between them as she quickly backed away from Thundering Rhino.

Master Frog narrowed his eyes and leapt for Pom from the left with a flying kick and Master Thundering Rhino came in swinging for her from the right, with Master Antelope standing at the ready directly in front of her.

All three of them had apparently made a silent unanimous decision to target Pom together.

Pom darted forward towards Master Antelope, making Frog collide with Thundering Rhino’s hammer. They surprisingly only knocked each other back slightly, instead of Frog being sent flying out of the arena what was a clear defiance of physics.

Pom leapt up and Master Antelope swung her staff forward and high to meet her, only to miss as Pom suddenly swung her front hooves downward to change her momentum.

Due to her actions Pom went diving under the bo-staff, turning into a rolling ball of white wool that went between Antelope’s legs.

This forced Antelope to try and swing her bo-staff around to hit the lambkin. Antelope narrowly missed grazing Pom’s tail as the lambkin was already up and running to the middle of the arena where she stopped to turn around.

Pom turned around shivering, she watched as they spread out and approached her warily while carefully keeping their eyes on her.

Antelope surged forward to thrust her bo-staff at Pom. In response Pom bounced slightly to the left and stood up on her hind legs propping her right hind leg against her left.

Pom’s front legs were spread out, she started to lean left and right as if she was carrying heavy dishes full of food while trying to balance on her one hoof. She took a glanced to Shanty, but then focused back on the situation in front of her.

“Please… work…” Pom muttered as Antelope swung the bo-staff around, she ducked under it while stumbling forward as if she were carrying a heavy burden.

Antelope brought the bo-staff around in a series of swings that went high, middle, low, high, low, middle. All the while Pom stepped sideways or backwards out of Antelope's range while seemingly stumbling from her imaginary load.

Pom was slowly drawing Antelope towards the side of the arena.

Leaning back out of the way of a spinning kick launched by Frog while constantly shifting her fore legs up and down looking to be having problems balancing on her hind legs, Pom ducked under Thundering Rhino swinging his hammer horizontally at her.

Pom was nearly knocked down by the blast of air that followed the hammer swing and hopped backwards right to the edge of the arena.

The three warriors stared Pom down as they approached her. Antelope in front of Pom, behind Antelope and slightly to the right was Thundering Rhino and Frog was off to the left of her.

Pom spun her body around and brought her front legs inwards to position them to look like she was preparing an attack, making them back off except for Master Antelope who was preparing to block. She was staring them down with a clear and noticeable fright in her eyes while looking to be doing the dishes.

Antelope shot forward and thrusts her bo-staff for Pom’s midsection.

Pom twirled up next to and around Antelope while crouching down under the attack.

Instead of an attacking like Antelope was expecting, as she started a motion to block an attack that was never coming, Pom instead went upside down her front hooves.

With an incredible heave, Pom pushed her lightweight body high into the air to avoid Antelope’s spin into a low swing with her bo-staff.

Pom’s entire body went into a cartwheel that rolled gracefully through the air and right by a quickly approaching Thundering Rhino’s surprised head as he started a swing for where she was.

Rhino’s head slowly followed after a spinning Pom’s backside as she passed by him.

Frog took this opportunity to launch a flying kick right for Pom as she was passing by a surprised looking Thundering Rhino's head.

Pom snapped her hind legs together to speed up her rotation and twisted her body around and out of the way of Frog’s flying kick.

Frog took his eyes off of where he was going to stare after Pom as she landed on her four hooves and quickly made her getaway to the center of the arena.

Frog left webbed foot hit Thundering Rhino in the right eye, entirely throwing off his hammer swing and made him give out an angry roar of pain.

The end of Rhino’s hammer bit into Antelope’s right ankle, taking her right leg out from under her.

Antelope, having a leg knocked out from under her, fell spinning to the right and her bo-staff swung outwards and high.

The bo-staff broke in a shower of splinters from slamming against the right side of Thundering’s Rhino’s face and chin with incredible force, knocking him even further off balance.

Antelope fell from the hammer blow and Thundering Rhino fell from his own momentum, both went out of the arena at the same time.

As for Frog, he had gotten caught on Rhino’s horn after kicking off his face. He soon found himself summarily smashed under it when the large Thundering Rhino hit the ground with a namesake shaking force.

“Winner by triple ring out, the mystifying guard of the mythical and mystical Huoshan, Pom!” Shifu announced with clear surprise on his face and in his voice. “Next round will be the final fight with our guest Pom. First a few exhibitions by the Furious Five, with Tigress, Snake, Mantis, Crane and Monkey!”

Oogway had an amused smile on his face as the crowd cheered for Pom.

-Pom-

“What was that last move? I be seeing carrying dishes and the washing them feint.” Shanty asked as I walked over to sit at the edge of the ring where my friends were.

“That was a Fleet Cunning Doe move called Wild Windmill. It is a leaping full body spin that is supposed to lead into a variety of hind or fore leg attacks, but it works pretty well for evasion too.” I then flopped onto my back and whined with my hooves on my face. “How did that even work?!”

-A few minutes later-

“Believe me citizens, you have not seen anything yet!” Shifu was pretty good at presentation. “Master Tigress will face Iron Ox and his blades of death!”

I was sitting off to the side watching the show, I thought I heard something and looked towards the entrance to the courtyard and saw something black and white flailing through the air out sight before I could see what it exactly was. The voice I heard sounded quite familiar though.

Was that Po just now, did he get locked out? Poor guy, he actually wanted to be here for this and here I am trying to thinking of ways to get out of the final match, especially with professionals that I might not be capable of outmaneuvering.

I turned back in time to see Tigress finishing off Iron Ox with one last attack, I gulped loudly.

I saw Oogway lift a hand and while grinning slightly, he likely just saw Po doing whatever it was to get in. He seemed to be timing this moment for something in particular.

He had his eyes closed and waited until he had the entire crowd’s attention.

“I sense that the Dragon Warrior is among us.” Really Oogway, because I was quite sure that you just saw Po from your position where you had a clear view above the gate where Po was trying to get in.

I even bet that Oogway was just timing this to Po somehow getting inside, he really was a crazy old coot!

“Citizens of ‘The Valley of Peace’, Master Oogway will now choose, the Dragon Warrior!” Shifu announced as the Furious Five gathered in the middle of the arena, the other masters stood off to the side of the arena waiting for the verdict I knew to be coming.

Instead of looking to the five in the arena, I had my eyes on the direction of the gate. Judging by what Oogway said a while back, he would be coming in on a fireball.

Po didn’t strike me as powerful or capable of… fireworks!

It has to be those time delayed, overpowered and highly defective fireworks. The very same ones that were left outside the gate this morning. I had seen Oogway and Shifu talking with the delivery people about it earlier when I was dragged up here by Shanty.

This was all planned from the start wasn’t it? Oogway might be a friendly old guy, but he really knows how to set things up.

Wait… does this mean I don’t have to fight again? Oh thank goodness!

I sighed audibly with relief, I wouldn’t have to face those five after seeing all the crazy stuff they were capable of. I really didn’t want to get on the bad side of Tigress after she broke Iron Ox with her bare paws in several precise strikes.

“Why do you be looking that way Pom?” Shanty asked with a tilted head as I stared in the direction of the gate.

“You’re about to see why Shanty. Ocellus, Smolder, the real show stopper is coming in from the direction of the closed gate.” I received curious looks from my companions, but soon we were all looking in that direction. “Thankfully I won’t have to do any more… well could we really call what I just did fighting?”

We all heard screaming and saw Po rocketing into the air on a chair with several fireworks strapped to it.

Oogway had to have known he would do this and was already approaching the arena. The chair angled downwards towards the center of the arena and my eyes widened as the fireball came dropping down towards the five standing there in confusion.

I leapt into the arena while everyone was too busy looking towards the disturbance, I heaved myself at a distracted Tigress. Tackling her, I used Tigress’s size to push all five of them out of the way of the incoming fireball.

The problem with this was that Po was now coming down right on top of me, screaming all the way.

I quickly curled up and pulled on my fluffmancer talent as hard as I possibly could before impact and tightened my entire body as much as I could for impact.

-Smolder-

“Pom!” I cried out alongside Shanty and Ocellus as we got up onto the stage and approached the circle of ash from the resulting explosion.

The dust cleared up and that Oogway guy was pointing into the cloud, the Furious Five got up and moved forward to look at who Oogway was pointing at.

-Pom-

“Ow…. Ow-ow-ow… is… is everyone… okay?” I croaked out through something currently crushing my lungs into a fine paste.

I may have blacked out there for a second, I can hear a groaning noise above me and couldn’t feel most of my body at the moment.

I probably had a rather large panda on my back given the massive painful weight crushing me. So did I just seriously take the brunt of all that for Po’s sake? What is wrong with me?! He would have been perfectly fine and I should have moved out of the way instead taking it!

“Whoa… ah… lblblb… what are you pointing…” Po started coming to and he slowly picked himself up, he noticed Oogway pointing straight at his face. “Oh, okay… sorry… I just wanted to see who the Dragon Warrior was.”

Once his weight was off me, I slowly rolled off to the side and out from under him while taking a few deep life giving breathes of fresh, clean and nicely flavorful air. I didn’t actually know air could taste this good until I had the entire weight of Po’s entire body on top of me.

“How interesting.” Oogway stated while still pointing at Po.

I was quickly surrounded by a worried Smolder, Shanty and even Ocellus was showing concern for me.

“Master are you pointing at me.” Tigress asked putting her left paw on her chest.

“Him.” Oogway intoned still pointing a claw specifically at Po, Po shifted about and I gave him a flat look from the ground as he tried to move out of the path of Oogway’s pointing claw. “You.”

“Me? What about Pom, she’s seems pretty good at this kung fu stuff even if she isn’t a master…” Po tried to stammer as he pointed at me.

I changed my look from flat to harshly glaring up at him from where I was still laying.

Do not try to get out of this Po; this was your dream and destiny calling you, not mine!

“The universe has brought us the Dragon Warrior!” As he said this, Oogway lifted Po’s left paw up with his staff.

“Huh, that’s nice for you Po, I think you’ll do a good job of it and this is coming from a dragon that you know of personally!” Smolder stated while waving her right claw in my face as I laid there, her wings spread out and flicking with clear worry. “Now if you’ll excuse us… Pom, are you alright, How many claws am I holding up!?”

“Technically… one… I think my life flashed before my eyes… for a second time in this last hour or so.” The first was nearly getting smashed by Thundering Rhino.

I had reason to believe that I was done training one ability that my minimal fluffmancer talents allowed, now that I knew how to actively activate that one skill in particular on command now. Specifically, I think I had a good hoof on the ‘armored fluff’ skill that Paprika taught me.

I flexed my fluff and smiled weakly, Paprika and Tianhuo would be proud of me as I did it several times in a row without messing it up. Even my reindeer friend Velvet might be proud to hear that I successfully performed a Wild Windmill.

Thundering Rhino was reflex, what Po just hit me with was a conscious effort on my part to not die… and possibly give Po a softer landing.

I’m just happy to still be breathing.

“Wait, I’m the Dragon Warrior?!” Po suddenly exclaimed after everyone took their attention off of us. “What?!”

“What?!” The Furious Five followed.

“What?!” Shifu also intoned blankly.

“What?!” Mr. Ping sounded quite upset.

Hearing a gong sound, cheerful music soon started being played.

I was feeling pretty dizzy.

“Master Oogway, wait, there must be some kind of mistake, you were going to point at Tigress when that flabby panda fell in front of her!” Shifu was trying to declare someone else the Dragon Warrior, after Oogway went through all the… all the… my head was getting really fuzzy. “He can’t possibly be the answer to our problem! That was just an accident!”

“There are no accidents.” The grinning Oogway stated calmly, of course he would say that and mean it literally!

I think I blacked out for a second… when I came to I saw Po looking confused as he was being stuffed into a Palanquin too small for his hefty girth.

“Uh, could we get someone to help Pom here? She did just prevent your five warriors from being injured and stopped the Dragon Warrior from getting hurt by the fall!” Ocellus screamed attracting everyone’s attention to us. “A modicum of help for our friend here would be quite nice of you, or has the traditions of good hospitality left all of your minds!”

“Whoa…” Smolder stated while looking to…

I blinked and felt myself being carried.

Did I… did I just black out again?

“Don’t worry Pom, we’ll get you help up at the Jade Palace.” Po said as he pulled me up into the palanquin he could barely fit inside of personally, he rested me on top of his belly. “I mean, being the Dragon Warrior has to have its perks right? Also thank you for making my landing softer… I’m really sorry that it was at your expense Pom.”

I heard a snap as the palanquin broke under our weight. Which seemed kind of funny, so I giggled dizzily at Po.

“Yeah, she’s out of it.” Ocellus said flatly and I smiled cheerfully in her direction until...

-Shanty-

I be hoping Pom is going to be alright, I noticed Shifu gesturing at Pom and Po’s situation and several attendants went to help carry them up the stairs from the gateway.

“Forgive us master.” Turning to see Tigress talking, I be lifting an ear to what they were going to say. “We have failed you.”

“No, if the panda has not quit by morning, then I will have failed you.” If the rodent announcer she-poo or whatever his girly name be, he was obviously not going to be nice to Po.

Pom would be willing to help Po and she be training me well enough to learn things my own way! I really be wanting to start practicing that Wild Windmill thing personally, but helping Po be far more important.

Po is being like me, except he is having a home and a good person to watch out for him. Like Pom wants to look out for me and… I was the reason she was there to get injured.

I wilted and glared at the those six jerks. Sure they be having fancy moves and were strong, but they were not nice and were just like those pirates that said that I’d never amount to anything.

I be proving them all wrong and that Po is going to be being the best Dragon Warrior ever! Pom is also being just as great, even if she not be fighting like how anyone expected her to!

Now to be quickly chasing after my friends to tell them what I heard.

18. Believing and assuring.

-Location: ???, Paprika-

I whined at Arizona and Velvet, the two just looked at me with bland expressions as we walked around the edges of the swamp.

“Well what do you expect us to do Paprika? We’re not exactly capable of going into other dimensions like Ollie is. Her method of traveling between worlds isn’t exactly what anyone would call safe, I barely trust her when it comes to teleporting us around in the same world.” Arizona the world’s strongest cow just sat there looking at me as I gave her a frowny face. “Also we can’t use the keys we used to seal the shadow monsters away to open gateways to random places in the hopes that Pom might come through one of them. That’s kind of why the world started getting attacked by shadow monsters in the first place, at least according to Sunburst anyway. Also Princess Twilight already has a lot of ponies working on it.”

“Look dear, I’m sure Pom is perfectly fine and is keeping those with her safe. Though I do find myself rather concerned that she doesn’t have any of her, rather messy, mutts with her.” Velvet, the world’s most beautiful reindeer, came up to me and gave me a tender hug. She even allowed me to snuggle my face against her floof; this was almost enough to cheer me up, almost. “Not much we can do really, not unless ponies want to mess with dimensional travel to everyone’s detriment again. This is a delicate matter and it could cause the destruction of our world. Celestia, Luna and even Twilight Sparkle all agree that dimensional travel should be fiercely regulated lest we lose more people. We barely came back from Fœnum with the help of the other versions of us that live there using their versions of our keys, it’s not going to be any easier for Pom to return a second time from a completely different world and goodness know she’ll be trying to get back to Tianhuo.”

I pressed my face against Velvets and sighed happily at being able to do this, these two made me feel like the happiest alpaca in the world. Still didn’t make me stop worrying about Pom once I learned from Tianhuo that our fluffmancer lessons were cancelled.

“She really liked teaching Pom how to use her fluff huh.” Arizona looked off to the side. “Try to cheer her up fluff butt, I’ll get to sorting out this mess we got going on around here.”

That’s when Arizona ran to leapt straight into the open maw of a giant Cragadile; I wasn’t particularly worried about this, as Arizona was far stronger than it was.

“Arizona, darling, Just don’t get any muck on my floof while I’m comforting Paprika about our friend!” Velvet yelled over the noise of Arizona starting to wrestle with the poor rocky croc’s tonsils.

“No promises!” Arizona yelled from inside the thrashing monsters closed mouth as its head jerked to the left and right with hoof shapes poking through the skin.

“Tinsel, be a dear and shield mommy if Arizona tries to splash me on purpose.” Velvet received an affirmative salute from her silver eyed ice sprite, her ever diligent and loving childlike familiar.

-Kung Fu Realm, Jade Palace, Ocellus-

“She will be fine once she gets some rest. For her, it has been a rather ‘trying’ day.” This Oogway guy seemed really nice, but…

“How old are you?” I asked blankly.

“As perceptive as your caretaker, I’m a thousand years old.” Oogway said with a smile. “Also no, I am not immortal.”

“Not much time left in you I take it.” Smolder stated rudely.

“Nope.” How did Oogway make that one word sound so sagely? He then tottered off with his staff clacking against the floor, leaving us to stand there.

The weird thing about Oogway… I couldn’t get a read on his emotions. It was almost like he didn’t exist to me, except I could clearly see and hear him as being physically there. It was unnerving.

“Bit for your thoughts Ocellus.” Oh come on Smolder, you know I don’t like that saying. It makes me feel like you have to pay me to get me to talk to you… I’d talk to you any day of the week and would try for every day. “What’s with the disgruntled… oh right, you don’t like that phrase. Sorry, but Gallus uses that one fairly often and we haven’t exactly wondered how our friends are handling our disappearing to who knows where.”

“At least Gallus isn’t greedy like some griffons can be. Well except with friendship, but that’s a good thing. I think they should be handling things well enough themselves.” I reached out my left hoof and Smolder took it into her right claw and gripped it. “I don’t think I would be taking things very well if I wasn’t right here with you Smolder.”

“Yeah, I read you loud and clear Ozzy.” After releasing my hoof and throwing her arm around my neck in a hug, Smolder looked me in the eyes. “Now spill, what’s bothering you?”

“Oogway doesn’t feel like he has emotions, he must have them under control to an incredible degree for me to not be able to read him. It just feels odd to meet someone who reads as emotionally flat.” It was a little unusual to me as everyone had emotions, everyone living and breathing! “I could at least get a bit of a read on everyone else. Frog was embarrassed to be squashed, Antelope felt curiosity towards Pom more than anything and Thundering Rhino felt only oddly upset and not actually angry at having lost to Pom. There was a lot of shock going around when Po was named the Dragon Warrior, but Pom wasn’t surprised in the slightest.”

“Huh, really, I would have figure that rhino guy would be quite angry. I think Pom knows because that Oogway guy probably mentioned something to her.” Smolder rubbed her left claw across her chin looking off to the side. “How were Pom’s emotions during her fight?”

“Don’t remind me of it, Pom’s blind terror tastes kind of funny and not in a Pinkie Pie giggling kind of way.” It made me wonder how Pom pulled off the win when she was pretty much terrified the entire time. Most of her emotions were blaringly obvious to anyone with eyes, though some of the hidden ones confused me.

“Well she still won, so that has to count for something right?” After saying this Smolder scrutinized me. “Why did you speak up to help Pom?”

“While I don’t like Pom, I don’t actually outright hate her or want to see her hurt like she currently is.” Even I knew that getting hit by a large exploding panda would hurt a lot.

“Ocellus, Smolder, I be needing your help!” Shanty shouted as she ran up to us.

“Okay, where’s the fire Shanty?” Was it ironic that Smolder said that while releasing a burst of flames from her mouth? She also released me and put on her tough girl act immediately, with Pom out of commission she was technically our leader.

Did Smolder have to act tough in front of others all the time? Why was she so afraid of being cute when she already always was? I think she should embrace it more, I at least want to see her wearing one of those fancy dress robes they have around here.

“Po be needing our help soon, sheep-loo really don’t be liking him very much and he be wanting to make him give up on being the Dragon Warrior by tomorrow!” Shanty seemed to be quite distraught to hear this, her emotions were mixed and I was trying to sort them out by order of importance. “It being Po’s dream and leak-poo be wanting it to be becoming a nightmare!”

“Why would you be so… oh… I get it!” Get what Smolder? “Shanty really relates to Po. Did you feel anything else when Po was announced the Dragon Warrior Ozzy?”

“Awe from the crowd given how he came in, resentment and jealousy from every warrior there.” Giving it some thought I decided to add onto my statement. “I think Pom was mostly relieved she only had to do one fight and didn’t have to go against the Furious Five and four other opponents.”

“Yeah, they would have shredded her.” Smolder agreed with a nod.

“I be thinking that Pom isn’t that weak.” It seemed Shanty was of a different opinion and was even defensive of Pom. “She be surviving that stone hammer.”

“Saw her fluffmancer talent save her the first time. Her talent likely protected her from the fireworks explosion on the second occasion, but apparently not from force of being crushed by Po.” Well at least Smolder gave me hope that we could use Pom as a living shield against dangerous things, but it wouldn’t be reliable. “Must not be capable of stopping constant pressure yet, still fairly impressive given that she calls herself a minimal talent at it.”

“Yes, that be happening.” Stamping her hooves, Shanty was getting quite impatient. “Now we be needing to help Po!”

“Where is he anyway?” I asked while looking around, we knew where Pom was resting at the very least.

“The Dragon Warrior, he is currently being led to the training hall. Out that way and to the right, can’t miss it.” A nearby gander stated to us and continued about his business. “Be careful of all the dangerous contraptions in there!”

“Thanks for the directions!” Smolder shouted after him while waving. “Come on let’s go see what is going on, they can’t be that horrible to Po, right?”

We opened the door to the training hall and were witness to one of the most dangerous looking rooms in existence, also Po getting tangled up in the various pointy bits throughout the room.

“This will be easier than I thought.” Yeah, that Shifu guy wasn’t someone I was going to like very much as he enjoyed watching Po get repeatedly pummeled painfully by horrible implements.

After the part where Po was getting scorched by the floor that shot flames straight up into the air in pillars, the scorched and battered panda slowly dragged himself over to the so called Furious Five and Shifu their apparent master and trainer.

I didn’t like the fact that nobody bothered to go help him at all.

“There is now… a level zero.” Shifu puts out a bit of fire on Po’s head.

“Huh, I think he be doing pretty well.” It was easy for Shanty to draw their attention to us.

“Really, I think your just saying that.” Po said in a sad manner after the beating he just took.

“You are being very tough and you be taking lots of painful hits, but you can still be moving afterwards when others wouldn’t be able to. You even be making it through every obstacle!” Shanty trotted over to Po in a cheerful manner and sat next to him as he sat up. “Sure you not be being very graceful yet, but I be learning much from watching you. I really believe in you Po!”

“You do?” Po said while giving her an odd look.

“Surprisingly, despite that rather painful looking display, I actually agree with Shanty. You’re going to be a great Dragon Warrior.” Smolder agreed after what we just watched? “You have this dragon’s seal of approval at the very least.”

“You’re a dragon? I thought you were some kind of malformed…” Master Monkey, the monkey of the group with the pants didn’t get to talk much more, mostly because he took a powerful blast of fire to the chest that knocked him against the wall.

The other four of the Furious Five didn’t leap in to attack smolder for it.

“Don’t insult a dragon, not even as one as young as I am or you’ll get burned!” Smolder crossed her arms and glared at monkey.

“You were kind of asking for that Monkey.” Mantis stated with plenty of humor coming off of him on the emotional spectrum; Crane also found it humorous but wasn’t showing it nearly as much visibly.

“I can’t honestly say I see what they are seeing, but Oogway has lived for a really long time and he seems quite wise.” I nodded to myself. “So if my friends believe in Po, then I want to do so too.”

“Thanks for the vote of support.” Po muttered dryly as he dusted some soot off of himself.

“Can I be showing you what I be learning from working alongside you?” A hopping Shanty suddenly said while eyeing the painful looking obstacle course with no small amount of confidence and a blend of determination.

“Um, who are you three exactly?” Shifu gave us curious looks.

“Pom’s our caretaker and she’s Shanty’s teacher too, we’re here as guests of Jade Palace. Also we’re friends with Po.” Smolder glared at the small red panda. “Got a problem with that? Anyway, I’m Smolder, different kind of dragon than any local ones you might see around here. Ocellus, my best friend and that over there is Shanty.”

“Aye that’s my name, I be wanting to test this obstacle course!” Shanty really was excited to try and go through it.

“Um I don’t think that’s a good…” Snake tried to say, she was raising the tip of her tail to make motions with it and it went limp as she trailed off, because Shanty ran into the obstacle with a grin and a brave yell.

“Yahar!” Following that Shanty ran to the rolling section of the floor to start the first obstacle, with just about everyone calling for her to stop.

So it was okay for Po to be humiliated and not Shanty, just because they were jealous of him being chosen for a wonderful opportunity that sounds kind of like a scholarship. There was also the chance that Shanty could get hurt and she was a kid, so I can see why they would want to stop her.

Shanty did the same thing Pom did when it came to the balancing dishes thing and ran across the rolling floor while looking unbalanced.

Our friend easily evaded the seven swinging spiked clubs on ropes and managed to looked like she was only having a little bit of trouble with the obstacle spiraling cylinders. Shanty either leaned backwards or almost fell forward, yes she somehow did it without falling over or losing her odd moving steps in time with the rotating flooring.

Shanty leapt from the rolling floors and spiked clubs into the large tortoise shaped and curled up into a ball to start rolling around inside of it while giggling gleefully.

This went on until Shanty launched off one edge rolled down the opposite side and then launched off the same edge again. She uncurled in time to put all four of her hooves against the blunt side of one of the swinging clubs, the very same one that hit Po, and kicked off it to the next obstacle.

Tilting her head curiously at the gauntlet of spinning peg totem things, Shanty hit one of the pegs with a right hoof jab to watch it spin. She tilted her and then grinned and then backed up a bit before running forward and performing a hoof stand at the start of the spinning pegs thing, she then used her running momentum heave herself into the air where she did the same kind of flying cartwheel that Pom had done.

Only things didn’t go as well for Shanty as it had for Pom who likely has experience with doing it.

Shanty ended up taking one of the pegs to her right side and felt to the floor among the dummies, but she still got up grinning and started to move forward. Despite being hit multiple times by the spinning dummies, she managed to stop a few blows from hitting her with sharp kicks of her rear legs or standing swings of her front hooves.

The goat exited the spinning dummies covered in many small bruises and entered the field of fire that we watched scorch Po. She took on a position as if she were cleaning dishes and we watched as she dodged through the plumes of flames with several quick rotations in either direction, she narrowly avoided getting directly hit and winced as her hind legs were grazed by the flames.

Making it to the wall, Shanty looked up at the rings above all the stuff down here, said rings were covered in sharp blades.

“This be taking up quite a bit of energy.” Loudly stated Shanty as she looked at the wall. “Goat Climb!”

She leapt at the wall and once all four of her hooves connected, she ran up the wall and stopped to turn her head and look at the rings. The Furious Five and their trainer Shifu just stared at her blankly as she sat on the wall gauging the rings.

“Goat fly!” With twist and a burst of energy from her hooves, Shanty kicked off the wall into a flying kick leading with her left rear hoof and went through all the swinging bladed rings to slam into the opposite wall.

Slowly sliding down the wall, Shanty was panting roughly and looking far weaker than she had before she climbed the wall on the opposite side of the room.

“See Po! That is not being so… so…” Shanty flopped face first onto the ground unconscious with a loud thud.

“Uh, how long has she been learning this kind of stuff?” Po stuttered slightly, looking a bit wide eyed at what Shanty managed to do. He had never seen Shanty training at all, but the way she moved through the rolling cylinders looked familiar somehow.

“Only in the past few weeks or so.” Was I in shock? I think I was in shock that Shanty managed to do the entire course in nearly the same way Po did, only with less flailing about in pain and she even did the part he didn’t get beaten up by. I guess Pom really was teaching Shanty things and not just trying to patronize her. “She must have really expended the rest of her energy utilizing her special talent at the end there.”

“Special talent?” Shifu asked in curiosity.

“Yeah, she has the unique ability to climb any surface and launch off of said surface she’s sticking to. I watched her doing that between trees in small bursts, but it drains her really fast.” I had asked Smolder and Pom to never leave me alone with Shanty again after that, she was like a pinball at times with how fast she could move. “She can’t do the launching thing while standing on the ground normally. It’s something unique to her personally as far as we can tell.”

“That and she needs to work on her stamina more. Compared to you guys I’m only basically trained in self-defense, but are you seriously going to tell me that Po doesn’t have what it takes after going through all that? I seriously don't think I could have done any of that.” Turning from the audience to our panda friend, Smolder grinned at him while patting him on the left arm. “Shanty wanted to prove to you that you can learn to do just as good as she can with what little training she has and she just did all of that for you. She doesn’t want you to quit before you even started Po.”

“She was pretty awesome, even if she got hurt doing it…” Po felt a little awkward about it, he also felt oddly inspired after seeing Shanty do all that.

“She’s only dinged up a bit, at least she didn’t get seriously injured on any of the spikes or blades. In fact, like her, you made it through everything without spilling a drop of blood.” Smolder was trying to be reassuring. “That’s impressive enough for me, considering you aren’t trained at all and still toughed it out. Imagine what you can do when you do eventually get training!”

Shifu tasted like sour lemon hearing Smolder helping assure Po that he would become something great, which is what we came here to do.

Tigress was tasting like a sour lemon too.

Crane was a muddle of emotions, he had a slight dour frown on his face though.

Mantis was more thoughtful and rubbing at his antenna as he looked at Po. Neither feeling negative nor positive.

Viper… didn’t actually dislike Po, huh. Nothing but positive feelings towards all of us, I liked her the most of the Furious Five now.

Monkey was afraid of Smolder? Makes sense to me.

“That’s it for today, we’ll see what tomorrows training brings.” Announced Shifu and he stalked off angrily.

“So far… you’re a disappointment.” There was a slight hesitation in Tigress’s feelings, she glanced at Shanty before stalking off.

The other four stayed behind as Po picked up the exhausted Shanty and cradled her gently.

“So do the rest of you think like that?” Cynically enough, I had a rant ready before they could even say anything. “Are all of you seriously telling me that you were any better before you were taught anything? This is his first time doing anything like this after he was chosen to be the Dragon Warrior, give him a break on not being up to your insane standards yet! Are you seriously going to bully someone who was like you at one point out of jealousy?! What really makes all of you so much better?”

They all winced as I glared at them and Smolder joined in. Mantis, Viper, Monkey and Crane shared a look.

“Nothing makes us better, I was born without fangs and had to figure out how to fight without them. It took a while for me to figure out how to get to where I am now and create my own style from being a ribbon dancer.” It seemed like Viper was the first one that was willing to try and bridge a connection when she turned to Po. “You didn’t exactly put your best foot forward today Po, but maybe tomorrow will go better for you? You know, when Shifu might actually start teaching you how to do things. That you can still walk says something about your endurance, you’re going need that and patience with Shifu.”

“Speaking of patience, I've learned that lesson the hard way. Even failed at being a doctor once quite horribly. Po, you may be heavy, but that's actually to your advantage.” Mantis was following Viper's lead. “Put some muscle on and you might be able to give Tigress a run for her money. Size doesn’t matter, it’s how you use it. I would know, I’m always fighting those who weigh far more than I do. Even if I could toss you around easily, you’d probably win just by making me use all my energy.”

“I used to be a janitor that got lucky enough to even be a kung fu master.” Crane admitted it plainly and he readily let go of his jealousy. “I really shouldn’t be looking down on you, given that I was given a fair chance and you should be given that too.”

“If you think that’s bad, I was just a horrible prankster when I started out.” Monkey joined in a second later with a cheerful demeanor. “We don’t even know you and we were already judging you, we should really get to know you first before trying to run you out. Also, don’t take it personally when we beat you up a lot tomorrow, Shifu 'really' has it in for you.”

“Yeah, I kind of figured.” Po said, feeling a bit surprised at the support he was getting.

19. Reliable association magic.

-Equus, Changeling Hive, Twilight-

As far as changelings go, Thorax was cute. At least he always has been ever since he became friends with Spike before his transformation into their king. Our current conversation on the other hoof wasn’t as cute.

“You can get along with the dragons, despite their crude or sometimes aggressive behavior, but you’re having problems with wanting to get along with the lambkin.” At this point I really was exhausted at trying to discuss things with King Thorax.

“Yes, even if we have truly changed, we still have issues with not wanting anything to do with them. My people agree that they are the biggest constant source of headaches in the world. The only changeling that would even go there would have to be training to be a psychologist.” Thorax rubbed his right leg while looking away to the left. “They are rather paranoid and their emotions are not something we want to deal with for extended periods of time. I feel kind of sorry for Ocellus being stuck with one, even if that particular lambkin is brave enough to be in Ember’s employ. We’d rather make deals with the alpaca and use them to bridge the gap between us in lieu of having to deal with the lambkin personally. At least alpaca are sane and if one of them falls in love with a changeling, well that changeling wouldn’t want for much of anything really. So very, very fluffy and soft… heh. I could hug one of them all day.”

I started growling because Thorax spaced out on me again, I rubbed both my hooves around on my forehead.

“Okay, using the alpaca to act as a liaison to the lambkin is logical.” I couldn’t wait to see how the lambkin side of things went. “Is it really necessary for you to avoid them all personally entirely?”

“Yes, very much so Twilight.” Thorax stated coolly. “The alpacas don’t have anything against us and if there was one thing Chrysalis couldn’t do, it was steal love from an alpaca. Alpaca can always tell the difference between a disguised changeling and anything else at a single glance. It is sufficient to say that they can see absolutely straight through our magic, even then they have remained neutral to us for the most part and are now willing to become our allies provided that we don’t try any subterfuge. We’re completely onboard for an open alliance with them.”

“Twilight, please, the world doesn’t have to be all perfect in friendship!” Rainbow begged, and quite loudly at that given how long we’ve been trying to get Thorax to relent on this. “Can we just drop this and get back to focusing on the people that got sucked into another dimension?”

“I agree, that is far more important than us having to deal with a people who regularly set themselves on fire out of habit when frightened.” Thorax sighed and turned to his brother Pharynx. “While I find burning or brightly glowing things to be very pretty; it is very much dangerous to us, and them, to even try to be in the same area for any length of time. Pharynx here knows what I’m talking about.”

“I agree with my brother completely and do know what he means, we will definitely liaison with them using alpacas as a go between.” From what was known of Pharynx, he always challenged his brother on things and gave him second opinions to think over. The two were working together very well. “We are definitely going to go entirely out of our way to avoid direct contact with them, given they don’t leave their lands very often that will be an easy accomplishment.”

That he was agreeing with Thorax completely wasn’t apparently a shock to all the other changelings in the room.

“Why don’t they seemed more shock at this, if you don’t mind me asking?” Rarity queried as she looked at all the other changelings. “From what I hear, Pharynx is always pressing you about the safety of your people.”

“It’s a unanimous agreement by all changelings at this point to not have to deal with any lambkin directly for any length of time; as that is for the safety of our people.” Thorax said bluntly and I was a bit disheartened, this was going to take longer than I thought. “It’s not that much of a surprise we all agree on something that was never up for debate to begin with, not even in our feelings forum. Also lambkin paranoia tastes awful or just plain odd on a number of levels.”

-Kung Fu Realm, Jade Palace, guest rooms, Smolder-

“I still think that’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen!” Po stated as Shanty was curled up against a sleeping Pom’s side where he placed her, every once in a while the goat would kick her left leg lazily and nuzzle closer to Pom.

“Yes, Po, that’s the sixth time you brought it up.” Viper stated in a slightly exasperated tone as she waved the ribbon around in intricate patterns with her tail, I think she was a very talented snake. Also yes, the battered Shanty snuggling up against Pom’s bruised and resting form was cute. “It’s been a while since I’ve practiced with a ribbon, this really takes me back. Now back to what we were talking about… so it was discovered that Tigress lost the scroll Shifu gave her and he still took us on after we ended up proving ourselves. That’s how we ended up as the kung fu masters we are today.”

Which was an explanation of how the Furious Five, Mantis, Crane, Tigress, Viper and Monkey, all came together to fight Boar some years back. They did so near Ping’s restaurant no less and Po was likely nearby at the time.

Mantis had accidentally made a food poisoned Shifu even worse by accident, his first patient in his studies to become a doctor as much as a good warrior. Crane was working on becoming something more than a janitor, Viper was still a ribbon dancer and Monkey was a stand-up comedian at the time.

“Wait a minute. That scroll is starting to sound familiar, can I see it?” Po asked out of the blue.

He was talking about the scroll that brought the Furious Five together. The one Tigress had used to seek the other four out after losing the actual scroll Shifu wanted her to use to locate actual kung fu masters.

“Of course, I know where it is!” Monkey ran off.

He eventually came back with the scroll that had their names on it and Po looked at it in shock and then started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Crane asked as Po looked over the scroll.

“I’m the one that wrote this scroll and… I am the reason that the Furious Five even exist. I even witnessed the first time you came together!” Po kept laughing until tears were in his eyes, the four kung fu warriors just stared at him in disbelief and were a little bit disturbed. “Something I wrote down led to the greatest team I know about, oh my goodness! This is my handwriting and everything, this must have happened on the day that Boar was running around and I threw out my scroll earlier when I was trying to think of future jobs for myself aside from working at my dad’s noodle restaurant for the rest of my life. That’s the day I saw you guys take down Boar together and I remember that as the day that Oogway was making a soup order from our restaurant!”

“Well that explains the toys of us you brought with you when you moved in.” Muttered Crane blandly.

To prove that he wrote the scroll that Tigress used to bring the Furious Five together, Po wrote down everything perfectly. They were all looking at him with something beyond shock.

“So we wouldn’t even be a team…” Mantis stated slowly while waving his pincers around as if trying to catch the air in the room.

“If it hadn’t been for you.” Monkey said blankly while looking at Po with a giggle escaping his lips.

“That’s… really quite amazing actually.” That is all Viper had to say about it, she was too mystified and was still dancing with that pretty ribbon of hers. I kind of wanted one now. “That you were even called to be the Dragon Warrior by Oogway… I hope you will do your best Po!”

“I’ll try to at least.” He really wanted this more than anything.

“You know, it’s kind of eerie…” I stated quietly after we just heard more about the stories of four of the Furious Five and how they came together.

“What is?” Ocellus asked from next to me.

“I’ll tell you in a second Ocellus, I just need to know something first to be sure.” I cleared my throat, with a blast of fire, mostly to gain some attention from everyone. You weren’t going to ignore a dragon when they start flaring up. “So we know a little about all of you. You know a little about all of us, but what about Tigress? What’s her story and why does she seem so stiff and formal?”

“Ooh… touchy subject… well it starts out when Tigress was really young, she was supernaturally strong. She could barely control her immense strength before Shifu came along to adopt her and before that she had little in the way of prospects of being adopted. She could plow through walls as a child and now she can bring down and topple entire buildings if she felt like it. The other children at the orphanage and the caretakers… they were all clearly afraid of her and for her.” Viper was at least willing to tell us the story behind her… I want to say friend. It was more like they were comrades and friendship has yet to take hold, but it surely will if I’m right about things. Po would certainly help a lot. “You see thirty or so years ago Shifu adopted a young snow leopard by the name of Tai Lung, when it was found out that he was not to become the Dragon Warrior after Shifu built and trained him up for it… things… didn’t go well, like at all. Shifu was far stricter with Tigress and was trying to avoid the same thing that happened to his adopted son. So technically Tigress has an older brother who’s currently in a prison specifically built to hold kung fu warriors. Tigress wants Shifu’s love and affection, but that’s not going so well either… at least she has the orphanage she helps out with to keep her somewhat more grounded and balanced than Tai Lung. Tigress is really quite a generous person once you get to know her and she rarely has any money for her personal needs when she spends it entirely on making the lives of orphans constantly better.”

“Well that just confirms it for me.” I stated clearly, this drew attention from everyone in the room. I leaned over to Ocellus and whispered. “The elements of harmony exist here and we’re looking at them, think about it Ocellus.”

“Tigress is generosity, Monkey is laughter, Viper is kindness, Mantis is honesty and Crane is loyalty. The personalities don’t necessarily match entirely, but they do fit them all… then that would mean.” Ocellus turned to look at Po, she smiled brightly and I felt a warm gooey part of my insides melt at the sight. “Po is definitely the magic that brought them together. Sure it may have happened differently here, but this is amazing and Twilight’s theory on friendship circles can actually be validated by this. Now we just have to make it home to tell Twilight about this, oh she’ll be so happy and I can even write a book about it for her to read!”

“If Oogway is the Celestia of this world, then would that mean Shifu is Luna?” I tapped a claw against my chin. “Who do you think their ‘Nightmare’ would be?”

“Uh, how good is that prison holding Tai Lung?” Ocellus suddenly asked of our new friends with the same kind of trepidation that I was starting to feel.

“It’s inescapable, nobody put in there has done it before.” Viper responded with concern as she noticed our looks to each other. “Tai lung has been there for almost exactly twenty years in a suppression device made specifically by Oogway, the prison was kind of designed around him even.”

“Yeah, about that…” I took a deep breath and decided to throw it out there. “Chances are good that we’ll hear that he has escaped soon.”

“Are you sure about that?” Asked Po, he looked a bit worried. “From what I heard, they have Tai Lung on lockdown pretty good. I mean he can’t possibly beat the entire rhino army they have guarding the place right?”

“He is one of the best warriors of our era Po, the rhino guards of Chorh-gom aren’t kung fu warriors and I’m beginning to believe Tai Lung can actually manage it despite constantly having ballista aimed at him.” Mantis seemed fairly worried now too. “If we hear he escapes, just leave him to us Po! We can take him… probably.”

“Well… let’s move on to better and less scary topics, how about I make my dad’s special noodle soup for all of you?” Po offered. Everyone agreed except for the unconscious Pom and the sleeping Shanty. “Great, I know all of you will like it. Oogway does, considering he orders from our restaurant from time to time.”

Po ran out of the room to start preparing dinner for us and I turned to the kung fu warriors.

“Oogway doesn’t have much longer, is anyone going to tell Po?” I asked, nobody would look me in the eyes. “Oh come on, the creator of kung fu and the greatest master in the world and you’re not going to say anything?”

“It’s… kind of why we’re here.” It took Mantis a moment to say it, but I understood what he meant. The little green guy was cool to me. “Someone has to step in when he’s gone, Shifu will do his best until someone can pick up the slack and we’ll be here to help to the best of our abilities. We may eventually need to figure out how to teach too.”

“Yeah, but like it was pointed out to us, we can’t forget our roots and what we like to do.” Viper said while waving her ribbon around in a flowing manner for emphasis.

“It’s kind of like there’s a cosmic joke is surrounding us all and the punchline is Po. I think we’ll all be fine personally.” Monkey said with a smile and a chuckle.

“Say, do you know where I can get a ribbon like that one?” I finally asked as I watched Viper play around with it. “I’m asking for a… never mind… it’s for me. I’m going to be honest, where I come from people tend to act tough more often than not and pick on those who like cute stuff like I do.”

“Sure, let’s go get you one before Po finishes dinner, come on!” Viper waved her ribbon at me to follow her and I did. “I’ll even get you a combat ribbon, they are made to be a lot sturdier than regular ribbons and can be used for dancing too. You’re a dragon, so something that can handle a little wear and tear would work nicely for you I think. If you want it to look tough, then we can do that too and will use a fire proofing material, maybe I can even teach you how to use it!”

Huh, combat ribbon twirling, now that would be kind of cool after learning gymnastics and cheerleading with Ocellus.

-Ocellus-

I watched as Viper left with Smolder and I didn’t follow them.

“Has Tigress been upset about an inability to make money lately?” I asked because it sounded like Pom was doing all the jobs that Tigress usually did around the Jade District.

“Yeah, but how do you know about that?” Crane as he looked down at me.

“Our friend Pom has been doing odd jobs around here to make money so we can eventually make enough funds to start a journey back home. She actually pushes herself quite a lot for Smolder, Shanty and me, even says its good exercise for her to run around so much helping people like she does back in Huoshan apparently.” She wasn’t the worst type of lambkin to be stuck with, but I was still a bit iffy about it. “We’re not going to live here for the rest of our lives, we have families to work our way back to… except for Shanty. I’m quite sure Pom would take her in if she wanted it and she would actually be good at caring for her.”

“Quite understandable, but uh… I have a question.” Sitting with us Monkey looked at the scroll that brought him and his friends together. “Have you ever actually seen Pom truly at work or helping people?”

“At work at Mr. Ping’s restaurant, but otherwise no.” Was there something that I didn’t know? “Why do you ask?”

“Well, we heard about your odd presence and well, I’ve been watching Pom interact with the people around here for the last few days before the tournament.” Rubbing the back of his, Monkey grinned at Crane and Mantis’s scrutinizing looks. “When you say she’s pushes herself, that’s an understatement. If she didn’t stop to talk to people to get to know them, then even Mantis would be hard pressed to keep up with her all day. She's really doing a lot for you.”

“Speaking of me, there are a lot of rumors flying around about you Ocellus and I just wanted to clear a few things up.” Mantis was acting pretty awkward. “First of all, are you some kind of giant bug?”

“Yes, my family lives in a hive. It’s somewhere different than where Smolder, Shanty and Pom are all from. My people haven’t always been the best of neighbors and as you can imagine our hive is pretty big.” I let out a sigh. “We’re much better about things these days though.”

“Is it true you’re magic? Not judging you for it or anything, but magic usually has a few bad connotations and the mystical artifacts that are stashed around here do a lot of weird things.” Gesticulating with his pincers seems to be something Mantis does often, then again he needs the motion for being a mantis in a world full of people bigger than him.

“Well if you’re asking if magic is related to the natural size of my people comparatively, then no I don’t think it does.” Why did I seem to awe Mantis with the fact that my size is natural? “I’m still fairly young and you’re question reminded me of my pupa days.”

“So would you be some kind of beetle?” He gestured at my horn. “The horn lends some credence to that.”

“Actually, yes, we do have some things in common with beetles I guess. I haven’t really given it that much thought.” To think some would just call my people bug ponies. While we changelings never took that as an insult, we really don’t think too hard about our natural attributes all too much.

“Neat, so what do you do for fun?” He asked conversationally.

“I like reading, do you know where I can find something that might be of interest?” Not that I could read the local language, but I would certainly like to learn. “Maybe something in the local written language that you’d teach to a kid or child on how to write?”

-An hour or so late, dinner time, Pom-

My nose twitched at something that smelled good and familiar, I blinked at the unfamiliar ceiling after my eyes slowly slid open.

I let out a sorrowful groan while putting my right hoof to my temple and felt a weight against my painfully bruised body.

I looked over to see Shanty curled up to me with her hair loose and her headband laying nearby, I carefully wrapped my left leg around her and started to gently stroke her head with my right. She smiled sweetly in her sleep.

Not knowing where I was, I sat up cradling Shanty while trying not to wake her up.

“Huh, your awake, its dinner time and well… how hard do you think it will be to wake her up?” Crane pointed his left wing at Shanty.

“It’s easy enough to do.” I lifted one of Shanty’s ears and said only two words. “Free food.”

Shanty was up and alert within seconds.

-The next day-

I yawned, it was difficult to sleep with my painful bruises. Shanty was also having issues given our messed up sleeping schedules.

Dinner last night had been pretty good. Po was trying to be friendly, but I could tell Tigress and Shifu were still somewhat upset with him being the Dragon Warrior.

Tigress was rather stiff to begin with, but around Po she was much stiffer.

I know Tigress had a heart under her rough personality, but it was hard to see it if you weren’t informed about it.

My friends had informed me about all of the Furious Five, that and Smolder apparently had ribbon training with Viper now.

It didn’t take long to come upon Tigress looking fairly concerned about something.

“Excuse me.” A powerful burst of air went over my head as I ducked and covered it. I shivered slightly and looked at the paw above where my head approximately was. I saw a wide eyed Tigress looking at my shivering form, she frowned and quickly backed away from me. “I am so glad that I’m a quadruped.”

“Sorry, I just… sorry…” Bowing to me, Tigress started to walk off at a brisk pace. I heard mutter something concerning. “Tai Lung escaping Chorh-gom has made me too twitchy.”

Tigress and Shifu were really going to let Po have it today according to what the other four of the Furious Five said and they themselves weren’t going to hold back as it might upset Shifu.

So… wait… Tai Lung escaped prison?! That was absolutely something to seriously panic about!

“Ay, what be wrong Pom?” Shanty asked as she showed up looking cheerful and bushy tailed as she usually did.

“A very dangerous person escaped a prison and he’s coming this way.” How long would it take Tai Lung to get here and how far away was that prison exactly?

Oogway has been planning things since he ordered the soup from Po’s restaurant years ago during Boar’s rampage. Hopefully I didn’t derail his plans too much just by us being here…

“What has our guests so worried?” Oogway shuffled up to us and my right eye started twitching.

“Tai Lung, the guy you mentioned, he escaped.” I was quite sure that he already knew that.

“I have foreseen this happening.” Oogway nodded to me. “Zeng, our messenger, delivered the news this morning. Shifu does not have much time to prepare, only a few days at the most; Po will be ready for Tai Lung. If you fight Tai Lung, you will not win, but you will prove yourself quite the insurmountable challenge for him.”

“Yeah, no, I don’t think that’s going to happen." My response only made Oogway smile and chuckle cheerfully. "I'm not exactly keen on being mauled by a snow leopard you know.”

"Friendship and love makes us all do crazy things we would never think possible.” Stated Oogway in his sagely voice as he walked away. “The impossible is just something you have yet to see too personally.”

Author's Note

What does Oogway exactly know?

20. Emotional windy egress.

-Jade Palace, gateway courtyard arena, Pom-

I took a deep sip of tea and then exhaled. Shifu, the little red panda, was going to have the Furious Five spar with Po.

At least Shifu was having them go against him one at a time instead of all at once, so he wasn’t a complete sadist.

“What are you girls doing today?” I asked of my friends as Po pensively looked to Shifu who asked him to go up against Tigress first.

“I’m learning about the local culture. The last world we were in had some, but it was…” Ocellus just waved her hoof about in the air and went back to reading. “I want to say primitive, but I really don’t want to be mean.”

“I’m going to train with Viper in how to wield a battle ribbon.” Smolder stated while waving around a black ribbon with a golden colored ornate dragon pattern on it in.

“I be wanting to spend the day with you learning stuff!” Shanty stated exuberantly. “I also be wanting to help with that Tai Lung guy.”

The news Zeng delivered traveled fast and there were now whispers around the Jade Palace. In case things didn’t go well when Tai Lung arrived, they were going to evacuate the people from the valley.

“I’d rather you didn’t get involved with that person or the situation going on around here Shanty.” I said calmly, or at the very least as calm as I could keep my tone. “I don’t want you to pick a fight with him or get hurt. I am still going to help you train of course, but I really don’t want you going anywhere near the guy.”

“I be wanting to help though!” Giving Shanty an upset look, I started to think of what to say.

“Mind your caretaker young one.” Stated Tigress sternly, her spar with Po went blindingly fast and he was picking himself off the ground and pointed to Tigress while talking about her in amazement. “She has your best interest at heart even if you don’t always understand his… er… her reasoning. If Tai Lung were to take you as a serious threat, he could seriously injure you from what Shifu has told us of him.”

Tigress had looked off to side at Shifu for a few seconds before backtracking her words when talking about ‘best interests’. The guy had been rather cold to her and I really didn’t like Shifu much for a number of reasons. Even then, Tigress definitely had a soft spot for children and she already seemed fond of Shanty even if she had never talked with her, there was some tension from Tigress around her.

“I not be scared of the likes of him!” Shanty stated bravely with her head held high. “Even if I not be knowing what he even looks like yet.”

“Well I am, so please don’t do anything rash! Which reminds me, I really should be asking you about where you got all of those bruises from when I looked you over last night.” My comment was met with a wince, I just pulled Shanty into a hug and there was a wistful look in Tigress’s eyes as I did. “Shanty, I want you to know that I truly care about you and want you to stay healthy enough to live a long fruitful life. We’ll be getting in some training today, are you going to be okay by yourselves Smolder, Ocellus?”

“You go on ahead Pom, I’ll be around here with Ocellus if either of you need anything.” Smolder continued to smile and play with her ribbon cheerfully, behind her Viper was smiling brightly at the dragoness enjoying her gift. “Also I want to be supportive of Po… and to watch him keep getting back up from having his butt handed to him.”

“Po really is not much of a Dragon Warrior.” Tigress stated while crossing her arms and looking over to our noodle making friend that was now being slammed around by Mantis.

Despite the size disparity between them and Mantis being the size of his namesake, along with Po being a particularly heavy panda, it was a testament to Mantis’s skill that he was capable of doing what he currently was. Flipping Po onto his back wasn’t very easy for someone so small.

“Give Po some time and encouragement, maybe he’ll surprise you like your friends did with you when you fought that Boar guy. It was neat how you all came together to save the day from all walks of life.” I honestly didn’t know how to treat Tigress; so I decided to treat her like she treated us, which was as neutrally as possible. She almost took off my head, but she did apologize for that afterwards and thankfully hadn’t aimed her swing and thrust downwards. “Oogway didn’t build this place in a day without having first laying down the foundations for it, said foundations led to something greater later on.”

Tigress regarded me with a soft scrutinizing gaze and then looked at Po now being thrown about by Viper juggling him about in the air with rapid tail or head strikes.

“I have no idea why you would ever put your confidence in a buffoon like him.” Stated Tigress as she turned her gaze back to me and raised an eye, she shook her head and started to walk back over to the Furious Five members watching Po getting juggled around by Viper. “It would help if he was actually as talented as you think he could be.”

“I can understand that you’re jealous, but do you really want to fall into the same trap that I heard Tai Lung did?” What I said froze Tigress and she looked back to me, my eyes didn’t waver from hers. “Ask yourself this, how different are you from this Tai Lung guy really? I’ve never met him personally, but what I do know is that he sounds like you in so many ways. Tai Lung was an orphan, he was trained by Shifu, he wanted desperately to be the Dragon Warrior and somewhere along the way he lost his heart. The only difference I can see is that you help out at the local orphanage and have something to fall back on if you were ever to become incapable of fighting for some reason. He built his entire life around that one thing to the exclusion of all else, if he ever lost his ability to fight… then he wouldn’t know how to live. If he breaks, would you help him pick up all the pieces as his little sister and build something new or would you shun him like he shuns everything outside of his sole interest? Would you help him even knowing that he might never do the same for you? You’d be the better person for it at the very least if you do. I think Shifu still loves him… and you for that matter, I think he just has problems with showing it.”

Tigress didn’t answer, she looked at the ground and was clearly conflicted about something.

“If this your idea of showing promise, then I wonder what you actually trying looks like.” Shifu stated coldly to Po.

Po was currently doing pretty well at staying standing against Monkey; sure he wasn’t fighting back, but he was still standing and was barely managing to keep his balance under a storm of constant attacks.

Tigress considered Po again and turned her gaze to us for a moment before she rejoined her four friends.

“Come on Shanty, let’s go.” I said solemnly and Shanty followed me with a slightly upset look on her face as we passed by Tigress.

“Is Po going to be okay?” At least you were only worried about the smaller things Shanty. “That all be looking rather painful.”

“Po will be fine Shanty; sure he’s taken a lot of hits, but he's not going to quit.” As for how I will start training this day, it was rather obvious. “First exercise, we walk down all these stairs. I’ll show you how to do some stretches at the bottom and I’ll be teaching you a few new things today.”

-Approximately thirty minutes later-

I stretched out my back and Shanty followed my movements to complete our stretches, she had told me on the way down the steps why she had ended up so badly bruised. I wasn’t ever going to leave her alone anywhere near that death trap of a training hall.

“Okay, now that that’s out of the way, do you have any concerns with your training before we begin?” It was easy for me to get Shanty thinking and making her actually think helped her learn things much more quickly.

“You not be teaching me how to attack, you be teaching to dodge and block.” Making Shanty more observant was my goal, I wanted her to pick up on these things for herself. “Can I be asking why?”

“Yes, you need to know how to maneuver around with or without your unique ability. You will have an advantage near just about any wall or vertical surface. In a wide open space you really won’t have the ability to climb on anything and if something can move faster than you, then you won’t be able to escape it.” Seeing that my point was clearly understood by a nodding Shanty, I moved on. “As you well know, I’m quite timid Shanty. As such my personal fighting style is bound to reflect my nature, as yours will for you.”

“Except when you be wanting to protect or help someone else.” Yeah, Shanty had me pegged there.

“That’s very much to my own detriment I’ll have you know! Look, Shanty, you need to work on making your own style, I’m doing my best to give you a base to work off of.” Shaking my head, I continued much more softly. “So with that out of the way, I’m going to teach you to properly do a Wild Windmill and how to do some attacks of your own today.”

“Yes!” Shanty shouted throwing her hooves up in the air with a bright smile on her face.

“Come along, I know of a place we can practice and it’s got good training aids.” I really didn’t want her getting hurt again trying to mimic a Fleet Cunning Doe technique I’ve practice with Tianhuo for hours. “Just so you know, I’m going to have problems with pushing you to your limits so you’ll have to help me do that.”

“Aye, I think I be understanding why.” Shanty followed after me as we started walking through the Jade District. “You not be liking fighting, or violence, very much.”

As we passed by Mr. Ping’s I stopped in to see how he was doing with the whole Dragon Warrior thing and his son not being at the restaurant with him.

“Hey Mr. Ping, how are you feeling?” He looked up at us from his work and smiled weakly.

“I am doing alright Pom.” The lie was so apparent coming from Mr. Ping’s beak that Shanty scoffed loudly at how poorly it was told.

“You be missing Po! He be missing you too, but he be following his dream.” That was the simplest explanation of a moderately complicated situation Shanty.

“Is it wrong for me to not want things to work out for my son?” Mr. Ping looked a bit depressed about saying that.

“A bit, you should try to be supportive of Po’s choice to try and pursue this avenue. How often has he actually asked for anything?” Waving a wing at me, Mr. Ping just seemed to continue on with his job. “He makes very good noodles, even made your special recipe for what are quickly becoming his new friends and you can honestly say you’re one of the Jade Palace’s favorite restaurants to visit. He’s never going to forget everything you did for him just like that Mr. Ping, he still cares about you greatly. I know you only want what’s best for him, but do you also want what makes him the most happy as well? You’ll always be his father no matter what happens.”

“Thank you for reminding me of that fact.” The smile on Mr. Ping’s beak was brighter.

-Minutes later, field outside of Jade District, Shanty-

I be watching Pom soar through the air looking like the blades of a spinning windmill, she kicked her hind legs in opposition of her rotation and slowed down into an immediate landing on her front right hoof followed by the rest of her legs.

“So as you can see depending on which rear leg you slam together, you can either speed up or slow down the rotation while in the air. You can even keep the rotation the same as it started.” She be showing me the technique several times in a row, how is she not being dizzy? “Do you have any question so far?”

“How are you not dizzy?” That be the thing I needed to know the most at the moment.

“Several reasons, foremost is that I’ve built up a tolerance for doing it.” Pom said with a warm smile directed at me as she patted me on the back. “The other reason is not focusing on how the world is spinning too hard and it helps to pay a little more attention to your own body while doing it.”

“So you be showing me the attacks now?” This be the moment I be waiting for.

“Of course, I’ll be practicing on one of the nearby tree stumps to show you how it’s done. Now the biggest problem with this move is aiming it correctly and judging the distance between yourself and the target.” As Pom said this she looked at the stump, took on step back with a hoof and then went onto her forelegs and sprung towards the stump. She brought both her forelegs together and swung them downwards. She be missing the stump entirely with both her hooves, but she still managed to land behind it upright. “The other problem is landing after a missing an attack or what to do after actually hitting with one. Now I’m going to move back to my position and I’m going to do it again and attack early this time. I’ll do another overhead slam, only this time I will hit with it.”

Pom flew into the air and then came down hitting the stump this time and it cracked with the force of her combined hooves baring down on it, she also kicked off it into a backflip to land standing on her hooves.

“To use this move effectively requires good timing on your part, so it can strike how you want it to. I’ll show you by repeating my actions, but my rear end will end up facing the stump this time.” She took a few steps back until she was at the same starting position as last time, I could tell because she was standing in her own hoof prints.

Pom performed another Wild Windmill, this time she snapped her legs together to speed up so that her rear half was facing the stump and she brought down her left leg down on it. The stump cracked even worse from the force of the blow, then she snapped her right leg downwards and the stump split completely in two.

“That was a scissor snap, the first blow stuns and the second does the real damage. If it doesn’t stun, then it is a good idea to kick off immediately.” Pom then motioned to me to watch her as she performed a one legged kick off using another stump. “You won’t be learning that or this next one for a bit, because I’m going to start teaching you how to tumble out of the Wild Windmill safely.”

Pom looked at the battered stump, nodded to herself and went back to her starting position. She launched herself once again, but snapped her legs in the opposite direction. Instead of slowing her spin, she reversed it entirely and landed on her front hooves to deliver a devastating buck that destroyed the two halves of the stump.

“That was a reverse spin into a buck, reverse spins are hard to do and it will make you drop faster than just slowing the spin.” That be looking really hard Pom. “I’ve landed on my face enough times to tell you to not try that until you can do a Wild Windmill while having a good grasp on changing your forward rotation speed. So are you ready to learn how to tumble like a pirate?”

“Aye, aye, Pom!” I shouted with glee.

-A short distance away, five minutes later, Tigress-

I watched as Pom, the so called guard from a place called Huoshan, instructed the child. She was soft and not exactly the most aggressive being in the world, but the way she treated Shanty was how I wanted to be treated sometimes. The love and affection I receive mostly comes from the children in the orphanage, that is what is keeping me grounded unlike what happened to Tai Lung.

If I didn’t have that, would I be exactly just like him in father’s eyes? It is little wonder that he doesn’t show much affection at all, especially when his girlfriend was a notorious problem maker and his life has been quite tough. Compared to his sorrows, mine are nothing.

I watched as Pom taught Shanty how to roll after flinging herself into the air, I nodded in approval as she was teaching Shanty how to land safely in case she misjudged her spinning first before teaching her anything else.

That technique looked dangerous and quite unpredictable, but it was also seemed to be a lot of fun for shanty.

Would I actually try to help Tai Lung even if he wouldn’t do the same for me? The question has been bouncing around in my head ever since Pom asked it.

-Pom-

“Good job Shanty, that’s how you do it!” I was proud of how quickly she learned to do a forward roll out of the aerial spin, now I had to show her how to do it in different directions. “Now watch this.”

I surged forward, launched myself spinning into the air and went into a tumble that had me rolling sideways as I landed instead of forward in the direction of my rotation.

“How you be doing that?!” That’s what you were going to learn soon enough Shanty.

“It’s not called Wild Windmill for nothing, there’s a lot of variance in how you can do it.” I showed her the one where I come out of the spin in a hoof stand on a target, I swung my rear legs down into the stump I landed on to kick off into another Wild Windmill spin. “Which is what I’m going to eventually teach you. Tired of spinning through the air yet? I’ll teach you about facing left or right while spinning towards an opponent later.”

“Admittedly, I am a bit.” Shanty had a lot of energy when she wasn’t climbing walls or launching off of them. “It is being very tricky and I am being quite dizzy.”

“Okay let’s move on to a quick spar to show you some of the other techniques we learned from working at Mr. Pings.” I stood up and thrust my right hoof forward. “Do this, I’ll show you ‘washing dishes deflection’. You already have a good grasp on ‘carrying dodgy dishes’ and ‘washing dishes feint and pivot’.”

Shanty went up on to her hind legs and reared back her right hoof as she charged for me, she slung it forward and I thrust out my left hoof into her attack and swirled it outwards in a quick circle.

Shanty’s attack was diverted off to the side from me and she blinked, the epiphany entering her bar shaped eyes as she learned something new was never going to get old. At least until I had nothing left to teach her, because she certainly excelled at learning new things.

“Okay, now try to throw a hook at me and I’ll show you how to deflect that.” I showed Shanty how I wanted her to swing her hoof by curving my left one through the air. She nodded and waited for me to be ready for her.

With a nod, she came at me and I deflected the hook upwards and inwards earlier than it was supposed to and also used the circular motion to grapple her leg with my own to flip her gently on to her back.

“I’ll be teaching you hoof based grappling techniques later too. Now again, but with your other hoof.” She came at me with her right hoof and I deflecting it downwards wrapped my right hoof around her and pulled backwards. I fall onto my back while flipping her onto to hers. She grunted with a whimper. “Sorry about that Shanty.”

“It be okay, I be learning a very important lesson about how not to be approaching someone.” Shanty shook off some mud and was smiling brightly at me. “I be having fun today, but it be getting late.”

“Come on, let’s get a meal at Mr. Pings and then we can go back up to the Jade Palace to see how Po is doing.” Knowing what I did about how much Shanty eats, our money going forward would be a bit tight.

-One meal later-

“Thanks again for helping me feed Shanty’s bottomless stomach Mr. Ping.” I picked up a lazy and tired looking Shanty who looked worked up quite a sweat today. She also learned a lot, mostly about when and when not to use the Wild Windmill as much as learning how to judge the distances she can leap. “Come on, Shanty, last exercise of the day is climbing back up all those steps to the Jade Palace.”

Shanty groaned, but she still followed me to the stairs leading towards the Jade Palace.

-Near the top of the steps-

I picked up Shanty as she fell asleep before reaching the top and draped her over my back, she’s had a tiring day. I made my way up the rest of the steps to see the Furious Five, excluding Tigress, discussing something.

“Po isn’t going to be ready, we have to give him more time. We can all intercept Tai Lung at The Thread of Hope if we hurry.” Viper stopped slithering forward and talking to her friends when she noticed me carrying a sleeping Shanty.

“Good luck out there.” Was the only thing I could say, they nodded to me and then set off into the night.

“Where did they…” Tigress said as she came running up to me at the top of the stairs.

“They said a place called ‘The Thread of Hope’, they are going to try and intercept Tai Lung to give Po more time to learn.” I stated and watched as she growled.

“Not without me they won’t!” Tigress immediately leapt off the mountain and wasn’t even going down the steps, I was a bit concerned until I saw she was still moving down there after landing.

I continued on my way to the palace and stopped when I noticed something going on at the cherry blossom tree on the nearby hill, I saw Oogway dissolving into a flying pile of cherry blossoms while leaving his staff to Shifu.

“Pretty.” A barely awake Shanty stated before falling back to sleep nuzzling into me. She was too sleepy to really understand what she just saw.

“Huh… so that’s how he dies…” I said in clear shock that Oogway was now with us in spirit.

I really don’t know how comfortable I was with that knowledge.

Author's Note

What changes were done to the original plot? It seems to be going the same way... or is it? Well ewe'll see.

21. Beleaguered and afraid.

-Equus, Meadow Hills, Twilight Sparkle-

Having a personal airship to travel around with helped us get from the changelings territory to the lambkin territory. If we can’t work at this from the changeling’s angle on things, then we’ll try from the lambkin side of things. They can’t be as bad as Thorax say they are… right?

“Uh can I get directions to who the leader is here or at least a name?” I asked calmly.

“Sorry, but I don’t think you understand us lambkin very well.” The lambkin ram I asked for directions from stated clearly and succinctly. “Asking for directions around here is plain nuts and I don’t mean unsalted cashew chunks.”

“He just confirmed that the illuminutty is real with that statement, everybody panic!” The nearby ram lambkin promptly set himself on fire and then started running around bleating his head off.

Several other lambkin both ewe and ram quickly caught fire and were running around in a panic setting nearby buildings on fire. That said buildings were made of brick and still caught fire was the most surprising thing about the quickly devolving situation that my friends and I now found ourselves in.

“Oh my goodness this means our last mayor did freeze himself in peanut brittle, everything I know is a lie!” The lambkin ewe that shouted this leaping through a broken window and started to steal several jars of jelly. “We must secure all the loaves of bread and prevent anymore peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from being made or they’ll overrun us all!”

Panic, hysteria and buildings partially collapsing, even a male Abyssinian marrying a female Diamond Dog in the middle of the street were just taking everything in stride. Chaos was Twilight’s world within a minute of simply asking for directions.

“I just wanted to know where or who the current leader of the lambkin was…” Twilight said with her right eye twitching.

“It’s worse than we feared, we must destroy all the marmalade!” A different lambkin ewe screamed while pointing at Twilight.

“Awe and I really like marmalade… oh well!” A young lambkin ram said as they started smashing jars of marmalade against the street.

“Just to be sure, we need to gather every cupcake within a mile of this spot and cover them in hot sauce!” The previous lambkin ewe screamed in complete terror as she pulled out a hot sauce bottle and splattered a cupcake in hot sauce at a nearby café.

“Well at least that one isn’t too bad.” A wilting Pinkie Pie commented idly while watching as lambkin continued to set each other off like dominoes and thing were quickly getting worse.

“Wasn’t too bad?! Then we have to eat all the cakes we can find immediately, we don’t want to attract Princess Celestia to us!” A lambkin ram screamed. “We heard all about the rumors about her habits from the Foal Free Press! We do not want any of the cake to be a lie if she shows up!”

Okay, now that one just confused the hay out of my friends and me, because the Foal Free Press was a local only newspaper in Ponyville made entirely by fillies and colts.

“I just had to go into therapy and psychology…” A nearby griffon muttered at a café table and bit into his hot sauce covered cupcake, then took a deep swig from a bottle next to said cupcake on the table that had looked like it had a Minotaur label on it. He turned to us. “Now I’m the one that needs a therapist. Next time, just imply you know the leader and where he is going to be. Hey Ms. Sweater, the leader says he was going to be in the shopping district later this evening!”

“Oh, but I thought he was going to be at the Oat Garden this evening and I know he’s going to be at the Traders and Harvest Guild for most of the day otherwise Mr. Glen. Maybe you’re misinformed, it happens sometimes dear.” The lambkin that finally answered the question, thanks to the the griffons subterfuge, just sauntered on ducking and hopping over panicking lambkin. Her wool was either naturally dark pink or she dyed it. She sent a sultry look back to the griffon, he returned it with a grin. “He doesn’t really need to do any shopping today as far as I know.”

“See you later Ms. Sweater!” The griffon called out.

Some of lambkin were on fire and some were covered in marmalade, flour, sugar or far worse like raw sewage. There were lambkin scattering all about the place in a wild and completely frenzied disorganized mess.

Was it odd that I think that the one calm lambkin in the middle of all this was the weird one out of everyone else overreacting to a simple question and the small various responses we just made?

-Kung Fu Realm, the next morning, Pom-

I sat down at the table with Smolder, Ocellus and Shanty to wait for breakfast.

“Why are you so worried about this Tai Lung guy Pom?” Smolder was kicking back and relaxing while twirling her ribbon at the air, Ocellus had her nose buried in a scroll with a smile. “Is this one guy really that strong?”

“His muscles haven’t atrophied in the last twenty years and he hasn’t moved from the spot that Oogway placed him after making sure he was immobilized with a device made to specifically keep him from moving. He escaped that device, defeated a majority of the rhino guards on his way out of the prison which numbered in the hundreds and all while he had ballista and archers firing at him the entire time. They used everything they had and explosives, that still was not enough.” It was nice to see Zeng again and that he was okay from his experience, apparently Tai Lung wanted him to deliver the message that he was coming. He had personally witnessed Tai Lung escaped Chorh-Gom and was a shivering bundle of feathers. “He may be one guy, but I really don’t want to be anywhere near him when he arrives. He’s terrifying on a number of levels that I don’t want to be near and he really wants to declare himself the Dragon Warrior above all else. He barely broke a sweat escaping the prison, does that not tell you how dangerous he is?! I was given a tour of the place after telling them to double security, Vachir the lead rhino apparently took offense to that and said it was impossible for Tai Lung to get out. The other traps are not worthy of mention, because they didn’t even slow him down.”

“The impossible is just something that you haven’t seen yet…” I stated slowly with a chill down my spine.

“Where be Oogway anyway?” Turning a sad look to Shanty, I hissed slightly.

I had drawn attention to myself. Neither Shifu nor Po were present at the table, I didn’t even know where they currently were this morning. At least I knew where the Furious Five went at least.

“He’s still among us… in a manner of speaking.” I rubbed at my head with my right hoof. “Just not physically. He passed on last night, mostly by turning into a cloud of blossom petals as they all fell off a tree and passed by him. He went peacefully at least, here I am just hoping to go in my sleep at an advanced age listening to the chirping of birds surrounded by children adopted or otherwise.”

“You actually witnessed it?!” Messenger Zeng said with clear awe in his voice. “It was said that Oogway would not die a normal death and would instead ascend to a different plane of existence, that it can be confirmed is amazing.”

“Yeah, it was certainly something amazing to witness. I can honestly say that I have never actually quite seen anything like that before.” The entire table was now in a somber mood as Shanty wilted, after a moment Shanty started looking about. “Oogway will at least be with us in spirit… I’m taking this quite literally knowing what I do of him.”

Oogway set up the existence of the Furious Five, absolutely knew Po worked at the noodle restaurant to have ordered food from there several times and definitely had an idea as to what Po was going to do with those fireworks.

The chances of Oogway declaring Po as the Dragon Warrior was a guaranteed certainty, I’m even beginning to understand why he chose Po. Po has a good heart, was loved throughout his childhood and most importantly was friendly and kind with innocent ambition of wanting to help people or protect the weak in a really cool way. That was basically the reason why Oogway created Kung Fu in this world.

This gave me quite a few ideas about how great Oogway actually was after his thousand years of life, considering that he could engineer so much behind the scenes. I think I’m the only one that noticed him setting things up.

If the rumors were true about how Celestia engineered things over her thousand years of being a mostly benevolent ruler, then Oogway would be her equivalent in this world. You know, aside from the fact that he wasn’t actually a physically present god and hadn’t become immortal. I wasn’t so sure that he wasn’t some sort of immortal spiritual presence now after what I saw.

“Where be everyone else?” Finally asked Shanty looking a bit more upset now.

“Well I know where the Furious Five are, they are heading to this place called The Thread of Hope to stall Tai Lung for Po’s sake.” I thought about what I said. “At least Mantis, Monkey, Viper and Crane are doing it for Po’s sake. Tigress just followed after them to help out, possibly while having some motives of her own to stall him from attacking The Valley of Peace.”

“I bet when they all start working with Po, they’ll be amazing friends that will have a strong bond that will never ever break.” Ocellus commented idly with an impish smile before returning to her reading.

She wasn’t as sad about Oogway, then again she never really got to know him or the crazy plot he had set into motion. Smolder was of a similar mood, but she still looked like she felt a little sad that Oogway was gone.

“Yeah, about that, I don’t know where Po or Shifu currently are.” The answer to that was something that I was not expecting.

“Shifu and the Dragon Warrior? Oh they went out to train together, Shifu saw the Dragon Warrior cooking a meal for himself in the kitchen and ordered a bunch of special dumplings to be made for the both of them. He even politely asked the Dragon Warrior to join him out on a training excursion.” A pig servant of the Jade Palace stated as he came and started placing food before us. “Shifu seemed fairly impressed about something and said he was going to do some special training the Dragon Warrior.”

Shifu must have seen Po’s showing his balance and grace in the one place he was most comfortable in, a kitchen. It is how he was when he worked with us at Mr. Ping’s noodle soup restaurant, he grew up around food and cooking working alongside his father.

“Do you be thinking he be okay with that mean deep-toot?” It was likely that Shanty was never going to like Shifu very much for how he picked on Po as a first impression. Not that Po made a good first impression either, but we got to know him after working with him over a period of time.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine Shanty, I don’t exactly think that Shifu is pure evil.” I pointed to our food. “Let’s eat, while we’re guests here we shouldn’t let any of it go to waste. Also since no one is using the courtyard arena, we can do some practicing there Shanty.”

“Yeah…” Shanty didn’t seem as excited to spar with me as I thought she would be. She started eating and not with the same enthusiasm that she usually consumed any food with. “Practice be sounding good about now.”

-A day or so later, evening, Pom-

While I wasn’t going to press Shanty on it and was giving her space, she was beginning to worry me greatly with how she was acting. She was also worrying Smolder and Ocellus.

With no news of the Furious Five or Po’s training, I was beginning to fear what was going on. They were good people so I knew they wouldn’t abandon The Valley of Peace, the very place that Oogway built up over the course of his life.

Smolder was having fun with her ribbon, well as much fun as she could have with this sense of dread hanging over everyone. At least she was openly very cute when she danced with it.

Ocellus kept busy by reading scrolls about history, local and not so local. Over the last thousand years Oogway had written and gathered a lot of knowledge that was apparently an enjoyable read.

Shanty was still going through the motions of training, learning and trying to have fun, but it was all quite muted.

I spent my time trying to cheer up and console Shanty between training sessions, Oogway’s death obviously brought back some traumatic memories of being all alone throughout her early childhood.

We all feared Tai Lung’s approach and for the safety of the Furious Five. I was curious as to whether or not they managed to actually successfully stall him at the apparent entrance to The Valley of Peace. Said location was apparently this world’s longest rope and wooden plank bridge, a world wonder that I kind of wanted to see at least once.

So it was this day after days of mostly quiet nothing, which was when things picked up again on this evening.

We all heard a thud and something slamming down through the gateway into the courtyard, Shanty and I looked over to the door and my eyes widened as Crane heaved himself and the other four members of the Furious Five through the gate.

“Huh? Oh my goodness, go get help Smolder!” The Furious Five just came back, but I could see that they were in no condition to fight or talk except for maybe Crane. Smolder immediately set off to go find someone in the Jade Palace to assist with this situation, there had to be a doctor other than the practicing Mantis on staff. “What happened?!”

Viper was a mangled pile of kinks, bruises and scabs from bleeding wounds. Tigress looked to have been heavily bruised and battered and, aside from breathing, looked unable to move any part of her body. Mantis looked almost dead with the cracks in his exoskeleton, if not for his faint breathing saying otherwise. Monkey wasn’t smiling any longer and looked as bad as Tigress and Viper did, with various injuries throughout his body.

Crane was at mostly lightly bruise, he had some minor cuts and was utterly exhausted by the way he was breathing. He carried them all back here by himself and almost looked like he broke his back and wings just bringing them in.

“We met Tai Lung and we learned that he was as good as we heard he is, but we actually did it…” Crane was the only one standing and able to move, he was barely capable of movement as he looked exhausted. “We managed to stall him, we got a day or two before Tai Lung shows up. He is going to be angry, especially after all of what we put him through. Where are Po and Shifu?”

“I think Shifu actually found a viable method for training Po.” Ocellus answered as she poked at Viper and winced at the gasp of pain she made. “Sorry…”

“No… problem…” Viper whispered through her barely moving mouth and wide vacant looking eyes that blinked every once in a while. “Nerve… strikes…”

“Don’t try to talk Viper, you’re going to be okay, we’ll get you the help you need.” I didn’t try to move her and Crane grunted trying to stay standing on his legs. “Save your strength and wait for help to arrive.”

“We may be beaten, but at least we’re not dead.” Crane sat on the ground and I noted that his hat was missing, he just kept breathing heavily. “We’re thankful that Tai Lung has never killed anyone, well I don’t know about indirectly or for the lack of trying though. I will say that he came quite close a few times though.”

“What Viper be trying to say?” Shanty asked as she parked herself next to me and press herself against my legs, I put a comforting hoof around her.

“Tai Lung used the ‘nerve attack’ technique on them, it can either leave you paralyzed, knock you out or in some rare cases stop your heart completely. That he has never killed anyone doing it says a lot about his skill.” Crane answered slowly, still roughly breathing and was slowly recovering his strength. “Healing from such an attack requires a lot of time we don’t have. At best we can get them all mobile again, but they aren’t going to be in any sort of fighting condition anytime soon. Not before Tai Lung arrives.”

“Those cracks in Mantis’s carapace look nasty.” Ocellus stated as she looked at the smallest warrior.

“Em…ogay…” Mantis seemed alright enough to force the words out in an understandable manner. “Cn… fix… dis…”

“After what I just put myself through getting them back here, I’m not going to be in any condition to fight either.” Crane seemed to fold in on himself. “I just hope that what we did was enough and worth the suffering we just put ourselves through.”

I was rather terrified for all of them. Smolder soon showed up with the various palace keepers and they started loading the Furious Five up on stretchers to carry them inside. Crane went with them without a word and quickly fell asleep on the stretcher.

“Do you see why I’m so worried now Smolder? Tai Lung apparently has the skill to paralyze just about anyone and wipe out an army by himself.” That I didn’t receive a response told me a lot about how seriously Smolder was now taking this situation. “It’s terrifying is what it is!”

“Will they be being alright?” Shanty asked as I started to cuddle and nuzzle her. “Are we going to be alright?”

“Everything will be fine Shanty, you’ll see.” My paranoid mind was calling me a liar and to run for the hills with my three friends and find a nice quiet place to hide that was out of the way. “It’s still kind of hard to believe that one person could do all this.”

“Not necessarily, you lambkin live in a relatively peaceful region. So it’s not exactly new to us that one being can do that much damage. You’ve obviously never encountered someone like Tirek then, I’m only using him as an example because he sounds similar to Tai Lung.” Ocellus shuddered and hugged herself while shivering. “Tirek was basically unstoppable and kept draining the magic from the ponies, my people are almost entirely useless against someone with that kind of ability. The sad thing is that the changelings actually wanted to help, mostly because he was attacking what we thought was a completely necessary source of food at the time. If the ponies hadn’t managed to beat him, my people might have starved by now.”

“Yeah and that would have been completely terrible, because then I never would have met a great friend like you Ocellus.” Smolder moved over to hug Ocellus, those two were just so sweet together. “This Tai Lung guy actually scares me. I know he is just one guy, but after hearing everything and actually seeing it in person. At this rate I’m ready to start running if that’s okay with you Pom.”

“It certainly is, so which directions should we run in and how fast?” Let the speed of my own cowardice compel me to stay out of danger this time.

“I be wanting to stay, we can be taking him!” Yeah, no, that’s is not happening Shanty. “He has to be tiring out by now.”

“I really don’t want any of us to end up like the Furious Five Shanty.” Despite the hurt look I received from Shanty, she didn’t move away from me, she instead pressed her head against my chest and started to sniffle. “It’ll be worse for us since we’re not exactly masters at fighting.”

“No, but you know how to fight…” Shanty mumbled before looking up at me with a quivering lip. “You be telling me even someone like you can be taking on kung fu masters, what be making this time any different?”

“Well I’m terrified and Tai Lung will likely take me seriously even if I don’t measure up to being a threat initially. At most I’d get in a few good hits, before he proceeds to shred me apart.” I was trying to put on a brave face, but I was the only capable combatant left. We’re not going to be able to call for help before Tai Lung arrives. “I’d rather be a distraction for the people if he goes after them.”

“So you will be fighting?” Shanty perked her ears up slightly.

“Only if I really have to.” Goddess Jiutian help me if I actually have to! “So if we evacuate, I’m… I’m going to be the rearguard to keep his attention off of the people.”

Smolder and Ocellus shot each other uneasy looks, but Shanty was now giving me a hopeful one. She still believes in me even knowing that I’m a timid coward.

While it’s nice to have someone believe in me, I’m well aware of the fact that warm feelings doesn’t give me invulnerability.

-Approximately ten hours later-

“Well that went better than I thought.” Shifu stated as he came in through the gateway with a smiling Po the next morning.

I immediately halted my exercise session with Shanty and ran up to them to inform them of the bad news.

“Oh thank goodness you’re here, the Furious Five came back yesterday and they’ve successfully stalled Tai Lung. He’ll be here in at least twenty four hours according to Crane an the others were all paralyzed by... nerve strikes, I think he called them.” My words had Shifu immediately running to help the infirmed Furious Five. “Mantis managed to recover on his own, but otherwise they aren’t in any condition to fight.”

“We need to evacuate The Valley of Peace.” Shifu said after helping the three mauled members of the Furious Five. “I’ll be staying behind.”

“How are you feeling Po?” I asked as I looked up to him. He was still heavyset, but he has definitely put on some muscle in these last few days.

“I’m feeling great Pom, me and Shifu kind of came to an understanding after he saw me cooking in the kitchen. I can actually do some pretty cool stuff!” Po stated as he looked off to the side at Shifu. “Now I need to go have a talk with my dad, I haven’t seen him in a few days and I want to tell him something before Tai Lung arrives.”

“Please do, I'm sure he’ll understand and support you in whatever it is you want to do Po.” I think I've been kind of like a mother figure to Po. Felt kind of awkward, but I would continue to help Po out.

“Po, I think it’s time that you see the Dragon Warrior scroll.” Shifu stated with a serious tone.

Author's Note

Calling it now, incoming character death... yes, I mean other than Oogway's ever so graceful peace out and becoming peach blossom petals method of dying.

22. Rampant aggressive mentality.

The next day some time before midday, evacuation point, Pom-

“Hopefully we can put all of this behind us, right Shanty… Shanty?” I felt my whole world tilting, Shanty wasn’t here. Why wasn’t Shanty here, she was here with us ten minutes ago before I went to check on the other evacuating citizens of The Valley of Peace. “Oh no… no, no, no… please tell me she didn’t!”

“I think Shanty ditched us to go back and fight Tai Lung.” Smolder pointed out in a confirmation of my fears. “She did mention that she didn’t think it was right for anyone to be losing a home. She definitely knows what it’s like to be homeless and scared, I can guess that she probably doesn't want anyone else to go through that too. The people here have been entirely nice to us.”

“We have to go…” Ocellus tried to say, but I was already out of earshot and running back towards Jade District as fast as my legs could take me.

-Thoroughfare of Jade District, Shanty-

I be a bit out of breath as I sat in the street waiting for Tai Lung to come.

Why didn’t Pom say anything about the blank scroll? She obviously knew the secret or at least something about it, she didn’t even act surprised at all to hear it was blank.

All she be saying was that they should see things in a different light, I certainly be wanting to know what different light she was talking about and she was not being very upfront with that information.

Even if Pom does not want to face Tai Lung, then I just have to be doing it myself!

He be wanting the scroll. If I am being him, then I be thinking the scroll was up at the palace and would be coming straight through the thoroughfare leading to the steps of the Jade Palace

I think the scrolls was currently being held by Ocellus, she had taken it and looked at it in the light and thought the glow of the reflective material was pretty.

I still don’t know how the blank scroll was going to give someone ultimate power in kung fu, but I be thinking Pom knew the secret and wasn’t willing to tell anyone about it. Was it because Mr. Oogway told her not to? I remember her taking him home after having a meal at Mr. Ping’s restaurant, maybe he told her about the scroll then? Why did she not be saying anything about that to us then?

So I stood there on the road, right in the middle of thoroughfare waiting for Tai Lung all while thinking about Mr. Oogway and what the secret of the scroll was. Maybe it was something that only special people like Pom could see?

It didn’t take long for Tai Lung to arrive and I got a good look at him when he stopped to look down on me.

There he was in purple cloth pants, using a sash as a belt and he had wrappings around his ankles. His fur was grey and white, with black and brown spots. He stood tall, looming over me with his golden eyes staring down on me.

He had several injuries, from his run in with the Furious Five and there was a rather painful looking one on his head where there were several stains of what looked like dried blood.

I stared back at him fearlessly, even if he is having lots of muscles, size and quite a scary presence.

“Glad to see I have the kind of pull and respect to have a whole city to myself. Now what do I see when I come running up the street? A little waif trying to stare me into the ground.” He chuckled dryly with his arms behind his back as he came forward to look down on me. He be very big, but bigger just means more places to hurt. “At least I know Shifu wouldn’t run from the Jade Palace. I have to ask, did he train you too?”

“No, I be trained by someone better than him and her name be Pom!” I said while spreading my legs out ready to make a move. “Yes, Shifu is being up at the palace at the moment, please do beat him up. He be kind of deserving it.”

“Of that I have no doubt, he’ll get what’s coming to him... me.” Tai Lung then gazed over me curiously. “Is this Pom of any relations to someone named Po?”

“You not be getting a chance to be hurting Po if I be winning this fight!” I stated with confidence.

“Big ‘if’ there. I’m feeling nostalgic today, so I’ll give you the first hit. Better make it count.” He be taking me too lightly! “Oh and thanks for the confirmation that the Dragon Warrior is around. My battle with them will prove quite enlightening I think. Also, I wouldn’t call what’s about to happen here a fight, that’s not quite accurate to what I can do to you.”

I was not about to be giving that one a response, other than using my first attack.

I ran forward and focused my weight down onto my right hoof, I kicked off the ground and threw my entire body into a horizontal pivot where both my rear legs slung upwards at an angle.

Two crescent shaped arcs flashed out as I continued onward to complete my spin. Ripping through the air, the two arcs sliced up Tai Lung’s chest a bit causing him to grunt and back up with two small cuts leading from the lower right side of his belly and lower chest up towards his left shoulder.

He not even be flinching or bleeding that much from my attack, I be practicing my own style so that my hooves can be cutting through the air no matter how I position myself. I would always create the shape of a cutlass with my wide swings, so I be calling this my ‘Cut-lash style’.

I could call it ‘Cutlass style’, but that being too on the nose and I do not be owning a sword. I actually did want one of those eventually. I be cutting with my hooves as I lash out, so I named my style what I wanted as it was mine.

“Okay, I clearly asked for that.” Tai Lung then crouched down and his tail flicked back and forth as he took on a more menacing tone. His eyes narrowing on me made me back away from him quite a few steps. “Good on you for doing some damage. You have one chance to run and to let me carry on my way so I can do as you ask and beat Shifu within an inch of his life. Otherwise I suggest you absolutely be prepared for a fight that you can’t win.”

“I not be running from you.” I be waiting for him to attack, I didn’t have to wait long as he lunged.

He be fast, but I be just as quick and small, maybe I am being a bit 'too small'.

I dash underneath him and launched my left leg up and barely grazed him, as he twisted out of the way, landed and swung his right paw for my head.

I quickly ducked under it and ran to leap to the nearby wall, I kicked off of it and launched a flying buck for his face.

He just leans to the right with a smile on his face as I sail past him, I landed in a roll narrowly avoiding his tail swiping up at me and bounced back on to my hooves looking at him carefully.

He rushed me and started to thrust his fists straight at me. I go onto my hind legs and dodged his attacks. The ones I couldn’t dodge I deflected outwards or too far inwards to hit me, which was all I be capable of. He is being very fast for his size.

I not be taking my chances with trying to block, he be far too strong for that. I don’t want to be flung into a nearby wall by the force of the impact... or do I?

Pom be saying being unpredictable is a problem for skilled opponents.

I grin and let his next strike directly hit me, I even be jumping straight into it much to the surprised look on his face.

I used the force of the blow to propel me backs towards the wall of a nearby building. I flipped myself into position and once all of my hooves were pressed up against the wall I smiled at him and activated my ‘goat fly’ ability at full strength.

I shot forward and slammed into his big dumb face with a powerful flying buck, both my hooves landing on either side of the injury on his head.

I be easily knocking him over and bouncing off his skull to land on my hooves, but then I turned around to see he was already getting up.

That should have been enough force to be making him dazed!

“Interesting technique, your teacher must be proud.” He said standing up and looking none the worse for just taking two hooves two the skull with as much force as I could be putting into it. “More than mine ever was of me at any rate.”

He be having a lot of baggage, I be knowing that feeling personally.

“Now let’s see how you do when I actually feel like trying.” This was him not trying?! Also the wounds I caused not be bleeding much anymore, so he be healing pretty quickly too.

I gulped and prepared to move, he lunged and I launched myself backwards to put all of my hooves on the wall behind me. Instead of launching off it for him, I ran up and looked back to see he went for a block and was surprised to see me climbing up to the tiled roof.

I started running along it while looking towards him in preparation to leap off at him, only he leapt up first to land in front of me. I not be knowing he can jump this high!

He nearly back pawed me in the head with his left fist.

Rolling under it and through his legs into a standing position, I bucked for his right leg as he turned. He dodged it by lifting his right leg high and then he be thrusting it down at me.

Rolling to the side and off the roof for the street as his foot slammed through it behind me, I hit the ground using the tumbling techniques from my Wild Windmill lessons with Pom.

“Okay, maybe I be running from you.” Okay, I now be believing that I am biting off more than even I can chew, and I can be chewing on quite a lot!

He came down with his right fist hitting the street in front of me, I did a spinning hop forward and lashed out an overhead crescent slash of my left hoof. I be cutting along his arm causing him to hiss angrily.

A second later his left fist hit me in the face and sent me tumbling down the street, I curled up and allowed myself to roll until I was slow enough to stop myself.

By the time I did that he was already on me and slashing his right set of claws for the left side of my face, I went onto my hind hooves and dodged backwards before leaping forward with my rear hooves to smash my horns into his belly.

He only grunted and had the wind knocked out of his sails for about a second before he be kicking me in the jaw with his right leg that sent me flying down the street again.

I could see the steps to the Jade Palace from here, I slowly rolled to my hooves and glared at Tai Lung.

“Seriously now, do you really think you can win this?” He asked as he sauntered up to me. “I clearly have you outmatched in every conceivable way.”

“No, but I can still be doing damage!” I shouted as I ran forward and sprung up into a cartwheel and then launched myself into a Wild Windmill, my own personal variant that added my ‘Cut-lash style’ into my spinning. This be making me not very safe to stop as all my hooves be moving like bladed edges in a series of flashing crescents.

Tai Lung went wide eyed and tried to block high as I launched myself, knowing this I quickly forced my hind legs together with as much force as I could put into them to slow my spin or even reverse it before I reached him.

My spin only slowed down immensely, I still not be getting the reverse spin thing. If I had not seen it personally, then I would not be thinking that it was even possible.

Landing right in front of him on my front legs with my rear legs reared up. I snapped my rear legs outwards and upwards right into the middle of his pants, the crunching sound be somewhat satisfying to hear and he be falling in clear pain while clutching at where I just bucked him.

As Pom be saying, do everything that you can while fighting for your life!

I be spinning around to my right to thrust my left hoof into the right side of his face, knocking him onto his back. Taking this opportunity, I be jumping on top of him and started to stomp down on him as much as I could.

I suddenly felt a strong grip wrapped around my hair and be yanking me upwards, said grip then changed to my throat. I could barely be breathing with the sudden crushing grip on it.

I kicked at Tai Lung's arm with my hind hooves and he just glared at me for trying to free myself.

“I think I’ve had just about enough of you! You know, I never did get your name.” Tai Lung be tightening his grip on my throat. Pom be saying my weakness is being grabbed, she didn't teach me how to escape and I be losing strength quickly. “Oh stop struggling, you’re not going to do that much more to me.”

“I… be… Shanty.” I managed to get out through the grip on my neck.

“I’m Tai Lung, nice to beat you.” He be punching me in the left eye as he said this, I whimpered in his grip.

I still be giving him a defiant look with my right eye, while my left one was being in quite a lot of pain.

“I’m not the type to go an eye for an eye, I wouldn’t blind a child.” He be punching me in the gut as he said this. “If you can fight, then you shouldn’t be surprised when I start hitting back.”

“Someone… will…” I felt him strike me in the side, leaving me whimpering again. “Stop… you…”

“Let me disagree with you and tell you that no one can stop me at this point, I’m the strongest fighter in the world.” I would disagree with you Tai Lung, but you be having a really tight grip on my throat. “I’ll be seeing to you when my reign as Dragon Warrior begins!”

What did he mean by... I felt a sharp jab in my chest and I felt an indescribable pain as the world faded away.

When did I enter a tunnel with a light at the end of it?

-Ocellus-

We just arrived in time to to see Tai Lung holding a battered Shanty’s limp, unmoving, form.

Oh goodness, that looked bad, really bad!

We watched as Tai Lung dropped her limp body and started moving towards Mr. Shifu that just came hurtling down the steps while glaring at Tai Lung.

“Tai Lung!” Shifu shouted out as he charged forward towards Tai Lung, he was really showing his skill when they started fighting one another.

“It’s about time you showed up.” Tai Lung stated as he attacked his father violently, while we were busy looking over Shanty’s disturbingly still body. “I’m all warmed up, so I hope you’re ready for my triumphant return!”

They were quite evenly matched so far.

I looked over to Shanty to see Pom lifting her head from the goat’s unmoving chest. She was just sitting there staring down at the body, Smolder went over to her and place a claw on her left shoulder.

-Smolder-

“Pom, she’s…” I tried to comfort Pom, but her eyes sharpened on Shanty’s still chest and the fact that she wasn’t breathing.

“No, not yet she isn’t!" What did Pom mean by that, what was she going to do? "This is going to hurt… a lot!”

Pom raised both her legs above her head and brought them together. She started to roughly rub her legs together.

“What is she…” Ocellus quieted as Pom grit her teeth and arcs of energy started surging from between her two rapidly shifting legs. They were two indistinct blurs with lightning slowly building up and arcing all over her body.

The lambkin looked to be in extreme amounts of pain as she continued to forcefully rub her legs together. She moved over to Shanty with this energy pouring off of her body and arcing all around in sparks and small bolts.

“Special lambkin fluffmancer technique: SHOCK-RAM, clear!” Pom quickly moved her hooves to above Shanty’s chest and then carefully pressed down, the eruption of energy transferring between the two was enormous and Pom was eventually flung back from Shanty’s body and painfully into a nearby wall.

Slowly we heard a gasp, it was followed by a weak coughing and then Shanty opening her eyes to look around blearily.

“M-m-mom—my?” Really don’t think you should be talking when Pom just restarted your heart Shanty.

“Don’t worry I’m here, everything is going to be alright Shanty.” Pom was there in an instant and caressing Shanty’s head gently in a rather panicked worry, she currently smelled like scorched ozone. Not quite like brimstone smell of home though. “Please get some rest now, I’ll make sure that the big mean kitty won’t hurt you anymore.”

We all heard a laughing and looked over to see Shifu taking a direct hit to the chest and then Tai Lung raised him into the air by the throat to start choking him.

Pom motioned Ocellus forward and made her take hold of a shivering Shanty that curled up against her, Pom had a look in her eyes as she stepped away.

“She’s, ironically enough, going into shock!” After Ocellus said this, she looked to me. “Smolder can you come over here and help me keep her warm by hugging her?”

You didn’t need to ask Ocellus, I’m already right here with you and Shanty.

Also I’m terrified of Pom now, she’s much scarier than Fluttershy doing the stare.

-Pom-

“You two. Please, take care of Shanty, and Shifu too when I free him from Tai Lung’s grasp.” I turned away from Smolder and Ocellus. I lowered my head facing Tai Lung, my body was trembling and tears fell from my eyes. I was going to do something I really didn’t want to do, but it had to be done. I approached Tai Lung. “Baa… ram… ewe…”

“Hmm… and just what is that supposed to…” Hearing this Tai Lung turned and was about to ask me something.

No one saw it coming, much less Tai Lung as Shifu dropped to the street in his wide eyed paralyzed state looking up at me.

-Mountains, evacuation area, Tigress-

I felt something, as did Monkey, Mantis, Crane and Viper. As one we all looked back towards the Jade District and saw a gray figure flailing through the air before falling towards the entrance to the main thoroughfare leading all the way to the steps of the Jade Palace.

“BAA-RAM-EWE!” The scream sounded like it came from Pom, that she could be heard at this distance was disturbing and that declaration was likely heard by everyone in The Valley of Peace. She didn’t even look like she had the lungs for her voice to do that. “ARH-WOOOOOOOOO!”

“Was that…” Viper started to say at the sound of a wolf’s howl echoing around the valley.

“Pom?” Monkey, Mantis and Crane stated at the same time while shivering.

I don’t know what happened, but I didn’t want to be in front of, or near, Pom at this moment. She was a fairly interesting person with highly unusual friends and equally unusual origins that was kind, intelligent and knew how to fight.

I really should thank her for the Wild Windmill technique I learned by watching her train her student, wouldn’t have gotten that axe kick in on Tai Lung’s thick skull otherwise.

-Ocellus-

“Did Pom just seriously…” I was really scared of Pom now, a lambkin who was mostly no threat to anyone and usually never meant any to ever really speak of.

There was Pom standing on her hind legs with her right hoof fully extended. It was pointed upwards at forty five degree angle and lightly smoking.

Pom wasn’t looking upwards, she was looking at the far end of the thoroughfare where the speck that was Tai Lung eventually came down.

“Revive Shanty and then uppercut Tai Lung so hard that he ended up flying across the entirety of the Jade District.” Smolder was as freaked out as I was. “Yeah, I can confirm that she just did that…”

Nobody had seen her move, Tai Lung likely saw more than we did… if he actually saw anything at all. It almost seemed as if Pom teleported.

There was also that bone chilling howl Pom unleashed while still holding her hoof skyward.

That wasn’t the scariest thing, the scariest thing was that she was only feeling one emotion and that emotion was pure fear.

I thought it would be raw rage, but I’m not feeling anything like that.

-Tai Lung-

What… just… hit me? What did 'Baa-Ram-Ewe' even mean? Did that sheep just perfectly replicate the howl of an actual wolf?

I sat up and looked at the scorch mark in the shape of a hoof on my chest, I ran my right paw over it and grimaced.

I didn’t even see the blow coming, I didn’t even sense that scrawny little thing move. I hadn’t even let my guard down for a second and she got through it unimpeded.

A worthy challenge as any that I’m getting today now that I beat Shifu, but it still seems that my goal of getting the Dragon Warrior scroll and ultimate power is being impeded by the least threatening looking creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.

I found it hard to stand, that blow actually messed up my chi pathways from the sheer brute force behind it.

Propping myself up on a building and looking at the far end of the thoroughfare, I felt 'her' glaring at me with contempt.

I could sense the wild look in her eyes as she started walking towards me. She was shivering in clear fright, even then she was clearly determined and was highly dangerous. Had she been aiming to kill me, she could have easily done so.

I charged forward on all fours to meet my destiny head on. Even if she isn’t the Dragon Warrior, she was still a warrior of the likes I’ve never seen before.

I started feeling a rising chill down my spine the closer I got to her. This... 'creature'... didn’t change her steady forward pace to come meet me, she just kept walking.

There was something fundamentally 'wrong' with her and I couldn’t place what it was exactly.

Author's Note

Old keyboard died, Shanty temporarily died and Tai Lung could die... he does in canon at the very least.

Pom's current mental state: Distorted.

Pom's current physical state: Unknown.

'?????' current life goal: Break Tai Lung, in as many ways as possible without killing him.

23. Enraged wolf emerges.

Author's Note

Music- Spicy Calamari Inkantation (Splatoon 2).

Can you figure out what is wrong with Pom before the end of this chapter? She's going to drop hints. It's not fear, but it's related to her fear.

23. Enraged wolf emerges.

-Thoroughfare of Jade Palace District, Pom Vs. Tai Lung-

On one side was Pom, slowly approaching at a slow and steady gait. Her entire body was shivering and she had a frown on her face.

On the other was Tai Lung charging straight for her at full speed with excitement on his face. Once Tai got close enough he lunged for Pom.

This wasn’t a time for words in Tai Lung’s eyes, especially not after the first blow she landed against him.

Pom looked up at him as he raised back his right paw, she inhaled and then unleashed a powerful bark that fired a small oval shaped blast of energy.

Said energy hit a surprised looking Tai Lung’s belly. He just took the direct hit from Pom’s Bark Blast and was sent backwards.

Tai Lung caught himself on his claws and glared at Pom who continued to slowly walk forward while shivering oddly.

He darted forward and slapped his left paw outwards towards her, she caught the blow her right foreleg while going onto her hind legs.

Pom’s right leg now quivered even worse than the shivering. The mass of this quivering slowly slid its way up around her back and shoulders into her left leg that was already pulling back.

Said leg started vibrating wildly before she snapped it forward into the right side of Tai’s face not only causing him to skid backwards, but it also made him spin dazedly on his feet to almost topple over.

Tai Lung barely managed to stay standing and stomped his right leg down to regain his balance. He narrowed his eyes at Pom, he saw something unusual surrounding her form.

The shape had two horns and looked like, a cow?

Pom glared at Tai Lung grimly and then opened her mouth.

“Are, you ready, for this~? You need to tell yourself Pom, are you ready, that you need to stand up strong~! Are, you ready, you’re in trouble and I’m going to tell you that you’re cruel and you're a fool that you would ever be so low as to hurt a kid~!” Pom sang as she continued walking forward while glaring at him. “Baa-Ram-Ewe, it’s-it-is all I need right now, given it is only meant for you~. Do you really think you’re so great, for beating up on a kid~? Well let me just say it again, baa-ram-ewe~!”

Tai Lung charged forward and started throwing palm thrusts at her to test the waters, but he found each thrust blocked by a hoof gently gliding into the path of each thrust that was moving at a blur barely visible to the eye.

“Baa-ram-ewe, I can’t take it back~. Now come on Pom, really~? You need to stand up strong~!” Despite being in the middle of blocking his flurry of attacks, Pom dodged left under a punch and shot her right hoof up into his chest where his heart would be. He went sliding away gripping at his chest grimacing. “Give up, what’s that~? You really don’t know what you just did and I’ll give you that you fool, so you better be ready for this~! Because I won’t, give in, to you~! That’s right, I won’t ever… give in~! I will stay standing strong~!”

Tai Lung when back on the offensive as soon as Pom got within range of him with her slow walk. She just stood up and started taking his attacks, but he couldn’t push her back no matter how much force he put into his blows.

Pom anchored herself to the ground to stay in place as she jerked left, right and back under Tai Lung furious blows. She was taking a beating, but she was waiting for the right moment.

“To give in, would be to spit on my kin, and the rule of the warcry that I just howled out~!” Pom smashed her head into his gut between one of Tai Lung’s attacks, lashed her left leg up into his chin and then jumped straight up to bucked him a good thirty feet away. “And right now I won’t give up just like I didn’t on my kid~!”

Tai Lung was very durable, was beginning to worry. He was fierce, powerful and one of the best kung fu warriors ever. What he was seeing and feeling was very much opposing this fact and he decided to change tactics.

Charging forward, Tai unleashed a blistering round of quick jabs and blows. He danced out of range of the slow, but powerful return attacks Pom tried for and ignored the fact that she wasn’t singing anymore or that she even started singing in the first place.

Why she didn’t move faster? Tai Lung didn’t know why she was only walking, but there was something that disturbed him greatly about her easygoing gait and the unusual look in her eyes.

Tai Lung had somewhat figured out that this had to be the Shanty’s teacher, she was actually quite formidable. Far more so than Tai Lung expected, then again Shanty had been partly talented. Only now she couldn’t hit him anymore.

Tai Lung was now tagging Pom a lot with light attacks and not trying to go in on her too heavily. His nerve attacks didn’t seem to be doing anything to Pom at all when he successfully landed them on her. His pummeling should be making her feel pain, but she eerily wasn’t reacting to any of his hits.

Pom managed to get Tai Lung to back off with a quick swipe of her left hoof through the air and then shifted her stance widening her legs a bit, she lifted chin higher and narrowed her eyes at Tai Lung.

Tai Lung saw a shift in the energy from a cow to a… odd looking deer? What exactly was he seeing?

“Yeah, you see, it’s there~. My unbelievable fear, its here~. I can feel it building, and it always has been with me all along~!” What Pom was singing and what Tai Lung was seeing were two different things, the haughty spirit puffed up her chest and huffed as if the snow leopard was entirely beneath her. “Now, let’s see, what you got~. I really want to know, if I can stand up to this feeling, or at the least last for very long~. Why do you bleed, why is it that you fight, where did this all… suddenly go so very wrong~?!”

Tai Lung had backed up a bit and then shot forward and when he attacked this time, Pom wasn’t taking a pummeling to get in strong hits.

Pom was hopping around his attacks and wasn’t giving him an inch of ground as she performed a series of hops that lead into rapid fire kicks that came at odd angles. She wasn’t allowing him to push her back at all.

Pom twisted out of the way of a thrusting knife hand attack and looked to be balancing dishes as she flipped sideways over his left leg and tail sweep.

Tai Lung swung his left paw out to backhand Pom and missed when she bent backwards at an insanely flexible angle, grabbed his wrist. She pulled it over her head, while thrusting her left hind hoof straight into his throat.

Tai Lung gagged, Pom hooked her left hoof into his belly and spun so that her back was to him while he was busy doubled over and clutching at his throat. She thrust her right hoof back and straight up into Tai’s chin dazing him as his head snapped back.

While he was stunned, Pom grappled both her front legs around his neck, then kicked up her with her left rear leg into his face. Her right leg soon followed in an equally painful manner. To finish her attack, Pom curled her entire body upwards using her leverage on Tai Lung’s neck to slam both her rear hooves into his face in a bloody display that broke his nose.

Staggered and bent over as Tai Lung was, Pom managed to get her rear hooves on the ground. Her wool immediately anchored her to the ground and gave her the leverage she needed. With a heave Pom flipped Tai Lung onto his back, rolled on top of him and slammed the knee of her left leg into his chest harshly before rolling into position to bring her legs up for a buck.

Tai Lung recovered quickly and rolled backwards away from Pom and started to back away from her with narrowed eyes and rubbing at his nose, his tail twitching angrily.

He switched his stance and went to attack Pom, this time a bit more cautious of her despite her frail shivering appearance.

Pom turned around and continue to walk, the shivering was becoming worse until she stopped to inhale a bit and it weakened.

“I should be feeling baa-ad~. My body, my body, is under quite a dangerous trick and no it’s not related to anything you ever saw~.” Pom sang as she leapt, rolled and dodged Tai Lung’s attacks with an odd grace. She took a few opportunities to prod him with only straight hoof jabs every once in a while, he certainly felt it when a left landed in his kidney and right went up into his liver at an angle. “I really should be in a lot of pain, but I’m currently glad that I did what I did… because I currently can’t feel, a, thing~!”

“Are, you ready~? I hope, you at least know that my name is, Pom, who is the weakest guard of Huoshan~!” In a display of supernatural strength that was clearly beyond Pom’s capabilities, she stomped her back right hoof into the edge of a cabbage cart and to send it flipping upwards high into the air. How she did this without the cabbages spilling out of it, was something nobody who ever heard about this fight would be able to figure out. “You see, I’m not the greatest that there ever would or will be in any lifespan~. I really hope you can understand what it is that’s exactly coming for you~.”

As Pom sang her last line she ducked under a kick coming from her left, hopped to the right and then slammed her right hoof up into the left side of Tai Lung’s face. She then came at him with a blow from her left, for another equally powerful stunning blow. She started to rhythmically hit him from the right and left with hopping uppercuts, pushing his slightly stumbling body back.

Tai lung bided his time, because he was starting to get the rhythm of the fierce constant left and right attacks as he tried to block them. Even when he started block them, his arms were taking quite an absurd amount of damage from the sheer force of the constant rhythmic blows.

Pom was doing what was known as a Flimsy Roll, but she was doing an incredibly slow version of it and it was relatively easy to counter it for all the power one could put into a full body uppercuts.

“I won’t, give in, to you~. Come on Pom and, don’t dare give in, you need stay standing strong~.” Pom’s next rightward thrust with her left hoof was interrupted by a set of claws coming for her face, she jumped into a rightward roll over the attack. When she was upside down in front of Tai Lung, she thrust her left hoof straight up into his chin and finished her roll to land on her hooves. “You won’t, give in, even knowing that your body is tearing up and that all of this really won’t last… for very long~!”

Pom leapt upwards and wrapped both her hooves around the right handle of the cabbage cart and slammed it downwards, cabbages and all, into the dazed Tai Lung with a devastating force.

Tai Lung went sprawling backwards a good fifty feet covered in bits of cabbages and splinters of broken wood from the destruction of a cabbage cart.

Pom landed, gasping for air. She soon stood up and kept walking forward and was sweating quite profusely, Tai Lung was already back up and coming at her again with an angry growl and a roar.

Pom stopped moving forward took a few breaths to try and slow her shivering down, she then changed her stance to standing on one leg and hopping slightly while wiggling her other three legs at him. She was breathing heavily, her eyes were wild with fear and her body was shaking badly, she was actively taunting him to come get her by showing an absolute lack of defense.

Tai Lung stopped and regarded Pom a bit, he saw a change in the flow of energy to that of a fierce flaming creature that was glaring at him angrily as she wavered about like a snake.

“I… know that… you won’t… listen to me now… but I, have hope that you will soon understand~.” Not listening to Pom’s words Tai Lung surged forward and Pom inhaled deeply, time seemed to slow down as Pom hopped over the incoming sweep ducked under the high left backhand. “I… will give… my life… I hope you’ll understand… I’m ready… to give my life for them all~. Now… let’s see… if you can really… ever truly understand~. I want you, to hear my heart’s song-ong-ng-g~!”

When Pom exhaled time seemed to speed up and she thrusted her left hoof forward it so fast that it caught fire before it struck Tai Lung in the forehead, thus scorching him. The flash from impact caused him to clutch at his eyes and stumble backwards.

Pom was now crying, she didn’t feel any pain despite her face now looking rather unhealthy and pale. She was crying for a different reason than pain, she wanted Tianhuo to be there to hold her.

Tai Lung managed to blink the spots out of his eyes and he went on the offensive.

Pom was raked across the face and body from the left to right, her blood went spilling to the ground along with a small bit of wool from the three gashes below her chest. Tai Lung snapped back and slapped Pom hard across the right side of her face. He followed up by punching her tiny torso making her bend over his fist, yet she didn’t go down screaming.

Instead, Pom half blind by the blood now streaming down over her right eye, simply thrust her right hoof into his left shoulder and an explosion of flames erupted from the impact.

Tai Lung roared and tried to back off, only for Pom to surge forward at an incredible speed while inhaling, she pulled her two front legs back and then thrust them both forward at the same time while trying to run on her hind legs.

“Two hooves… four hooves… eight hooves… sixteen hooves…” Which each count, the speed of her attacks was increasing exponentially as she let a small amount of air out of her lungs between each attack. If one were to look at her from the side, they would see a longma following Pom’s movements exactly as she pushed into Tai Lung trying to block the rapidly increasing number of blows with small flames coming off of each strike. “Thirty two hooves… sixty four hooves… one twenty eight hooves...”

Inhaling deeply again as her body was practically quaking, Pom then became very still.

“Fiery… flurry…” After quietly intoning those two words, Pom threw her two hooves forward while exhaling explosively as she could. Her two hooves became encircled by ten other hooves, those ten were encircled by twenty and they kept replicating even further.

All the hooves seemed to come down on Tai Lung all at once at differing speeds and strengths, each one burning Tai Lung’s body with every single hit.

“How… are you… doing… this?!” Tai Lung barely managed to ask under the assault as his fur was being singed away under the rapid blows of the crying lambkin… the blows were coming at him from all side and angles at speeds he couldn’t even comprehend.

Tai Lung was utterly surprised by the ferocity of the attack and was barely managing to weather through it, he couldn’t block or stop all of it. He was having enough trouble concentrating making sure the fire didn’t burn him and all the blows were quickly weakening over time to the point that he barely felt them.

As soon as it had started, the attack suddenly stopped a second later.

Tai Lung’s body was a mess of bruises except for his back and tail. Never before had he been hit with such spirit and power, but he was still standing.

That Tai Lung was still standing was almost surprising to him, he was completely drained of any ability to recover from that attack. What was truly surprising to him was that his opponent was still standing.

Her two front legs were hanging limply as she stood on her hind legs, her right eye closed due to the blood flowing over it, she was gasping for air and yet despite how badly she was shaking, she was still quite alert as her left eye stared into his very being.

Tai Lung couldn’t move, mostly because of what he was staring at.

Almost dead on her hooves, her body was quaking and her rear legs were threating to drop her to the ground, Pom started growling at him softly.

Tai Lung saw the promise of death in the energy surrounding Pom, it had taken on the form of a large wolf surrounded by an army of smaller wolves that were judging him silently with all their eyes as they protectively circled his opponent.

Tai Lung shivered and was actually afraid of the damaged, broken and bleeding frail looking thing now. He couldn’t push her back, he couldn’t get past her without killing her and he found that he didn’t want to kill her.

Despite his rampage and rage, he had never actually killed anyone before and this being was going to kill herself on him. Tai Lung was actually afraid of Pom for this one thing alone.

Pom started to weakly walk towards him on two legs, her low growling noise hauntingly reaching his ears just as loudly as her slow methodical steps.

Tai Lung thought he clearly went insane, because there was no way that she should be standing or moving if she was as badly injured by her own attack as he thought she was.

She kicked off the ground and rocketed towards him, her mouth wide open and then she bit down on his right shoulder drawing a large amount of blood from it painfully with an incredible crushing force.

“AGH!” Tai Lung quickly, and carefully, pried her off and dropped her onto her back on the ground in fright. He no longer wanted to fight or hurt her, he was actually afraid of her dying now.

He watched as, despite the lack of her front legs to help, Pom slowly rolled over and stood up on her hind legs while continuing to stare him down.

She slowly started to step forward, her breathing haggard and quickly weakening. Even moving was killing her and Tai Lung’s nerve attacks weren’t going to stop her. She was going to keep going?! She’s…. she’s clearly insane!!!

Tai Lung didn’t actually want ‘this’, whatever Pom was, to actually die in front of him on her hooves.

She said she was a guard of a place called Huoshan and the weakest of their number?! Did they not know talent when they saw it?! He had to know more about her, her story, where did someone like this come from?!

“Tai Lung, leave my friend alone, this is what you want isn’t it!” Looking beyond the crazy being before him, Tai Lung backed up a bit so as to not be bitten by the crazy thing before him with blood covered teeth now slowly turning to look back. “If you back away from her and let her go, I’ll give this to you.”

He saw the Dragon Warrior Scroll, bizarrely enough, being held by a rather big and rotund panda.

Pom had froze and looked back at Po, the wildness in her eyes disappearing as she continued to gasp for air her hind legs were wobbling and her whole body was quaking oddly.

“Of course, look over your friend while you’re at it, she doesn’t look to be too healthy... or long for this world.” Tai Lung easily backed away from the violently shaking... and now coughing up blood... creature that scared him to his very soul.

He was going to be given what he wanted? He smiled a little and thought about how the frail one fought for nothing. He smiled about the thought of ‘Once he had the power…’, not knowing that it wouldn’t be exactly what he wanted.

-A minute earlier, Po-

“Ocellus, Smolder, have you seen the Dragon Warrior scroll? It’s not up at the Jade Palace, I need to look at it one more time… in the right light like… Pom… said…” I froze and noticed the state that the two were in as they were hugging Shifu and Shanty together.

Shifu blinked at him, he looks like he has been paralyzed by Tai Lung.

Shanty looked battered and beaten.

At least Ocellus and Smolder looked okay.

“I have it Po, here…” Ocellus’s horn glowed and she opened up her carapace a bit. She levitated the scroll out of it to me, I reverently took it and opened it up to look at it in the light and saw my own face staring back at me in my reflection. “Pom told me to hold on to this, as she had a feeling you’d want to look at it again and was waiting for you to ask her about it.”

“There is... no secret ingredient.” I now knew the secret of kung fu… I really bet this Tai Lung guy wouldn’t be able to get it. Pom probably would, because she’s good at things like that and she’s the nicest lady I’ve ever… wait. I slowly closed up the scroll. “Where’s Pom? She’s always with you guys, why isn’t she here? Weren’t you guys with the Furious Five and the evacuating people?!”

“We could ask you why you are here too you know, but I’m more worried about Pom. She’s currently fighting Tai Lung down the street. Saw a cabbage cart go up a minute ago, so she’s thankfully still alive against a guy that can take quite a beating.” Smolder was a really cool dragon, you know, despite not being a holy one, or even local for that matter. I wanted to make a figurines of her, Smolder, Shanty and Pom. “I don’t know what state she’ll be in, but please help her Po. I know you got this Po, you’re the Dragon Warrior. Now go show that Tai Lung guy what you’re made of.”

“Don’t worry, I know that I’ve got this Smolder. I promise that Pom will still be alive by the time I get back to you.” I quickly started running down the street. “I just hope I make it in time.”

When I arrived, I saw Pom bleeding, with what looked like two broken front legs, dripping with sweat and when she looked back at me, her face was incredibly pale with the blood coming out of it.

-Present-

“Are you okay?” I asked Pom as I got up next to her sitting form.

“Don’t kill him Po... break him...” Whispered Pom, she's clearly out of it. “Tigress needs... brother... to love...”

I laid Pom down on her back and carefully stepped around her with the scroll in paw.

I looked at her limp form and closed eyes, I turned to Tai Lung.

Oogway's Interlude...

"Fancy meeting you here, but you are not meant to stay here with me." Oogway said with a bright smile as he bit into a cabbage. "Want a spiritual cabbage? Apparently all the cabbage carts I ever rescued in life are here."

With a wave of his right claw, Oogway motioned out to thousands of spiritual cabbage carts.

Another one appeared, crashing against the ground.

"Oh no... not again." Oogway sighed loudly at the sight of yet another one to repair. "Nothing for it then."

He went to retrieve it while watching his new favorite show, a Kung Fu Panda.

Author's Note

This has been the spiritual realm with Oogway, the exit is to the next Wuxi Finger Hold.

24. Pom’s sad story.

-????, Pom-

I snuggled against the warm hooves and sighed happily, Tianhuo was wrapped around me and making me feel all safe and well snuggled.

Lambkin had a habit of setting themselves on fire, with Tianhuo being around I didn’t worry much about catching fire because she’d make all the danger go away and wouldn’t set me on fire. The only thing of me that she would light on fire is my heart, I’m so glad our adventure was over with.

“Pom, are you feeling okay?” Tianhuo asked as she snuggled me.

“I’m perfectly fine right where I am Tianhuo… safely in your hooves.” Why did my words seemed to make her sad?

“You do not need my hooves to be safe, you are strong on your own merits.” Tianhuo pressed her face against my neck. “Do you truly think so little of yourself?”

“I try not to think much of myself… mostly because I’m a lambkin Tianhuo. It’s kind of in our nature to be ridiculously paranoid, even about our own abilities.” The only thing I wasn’t paranoid about was Tianhuo’s love for me. She didn’t mind my beasties and I knew she loved me with an unshakeable certainty. “I’m not strong and you know it. Tai Lung might have spent several days in almost nonstop motion barely stopping for food or water after escaping prison, even fought multiple martial arts masters and entire prison full of rhinos, but I still couldn’t beat him despite how tired he must have been. Therefore I’m weak.”

“There is nothing wrong with being weak Pom, though admittedly I really want you to be strong right now.” Knowing what Tianhuo was saying was honest, I sat up and looked at my hooves gripping at the sheets. “You are stronger than you think you are, you’ll prove that eventually when you finally open up your eyes to your surroundings.”

“I seriously doubt I could have fought Lung under normal circumstances, much less the kind of odd circumstances I fought him under.” If I hadn’t did exactly what I had done, then the fight might have ended sooner in Lung’s favor when he started striking me with pinpoint hits that were likely his nerve attacks.

My wool could have stopped those attack, ‘could’ being the key word as I couldn’t constantly do my fluffmancer armor technique for longer than fifteen seconds.

“Yet fight you did, you used a Fiery Flurry even when your strength was rapidly flagging… that is not a move you have ever practiced or even used before. You need to work on your breathing more too, balanced you are not and that would have killed you had you not been as resilient as you are.” Tianhuo hugged me with one leg and started petting me. “Also your injuries, the severe ones being mostly self-inflicted, are hopefully not permanently crippling.”

“You heard the doctor Tianhuo. You’ll have to take good care of me for the rest of your life, but I really don’t want to be a burden on you.” I was upset at being bed ridden, but with Tianhuo here everything was perfectly fine and safe.

“Pom… you will never be a burden to me, you do far too much for me that I can take you for granted whether or not you will ever truly acknowledge it. Also, do you not think it is time you woke up from this dream? You’ve been stuck in it for quite a while.” Tianhuo sat up and looked towards the ceiling while sighing loudly. “Your friends are worried about you, especially Shanty. I’ll be waiting for you to come home Pom, you know my heart will not waver for any other and our beasties miss you. Just as you know in your heart that I will never betray your trust, why else would you continue to seek comfort in an imagined version of me. The real me would be here if she could, but your mind has been stuck here for far too long while your body recuperates.”

“Dream? What are you talking about?” I was right here in my wife’s safe and protective hooves, happily surrounded by my beasties. “I’m awake and things are perfectly fine.”

Arizona and Velvet were beating the snot out of each other in the next room over. Also Paprika was somehow made of snow and on fire at the same time with little red demon horns sticking out of her head while walking around on the ceiling. Even the letter L continues to whisper the truth about carrots as it sat on our nearby nightstand, so everything seemed perfectly normal to me.

“I’ve tried to tell you this several times already Pom, but you won’t listen to me when I try and say that you are strong enough to hold onto life with an impossibly impressive grip.” Tianhuo took up my hooves in her, while looking me in the eyes. “You’ve seriously injured yourself and you have been unconscious for quite a while, but you are dreaming of me near constantly and have been through this cycle several times trying to tell yourself what you already know to be true. I’m a hallucination Pom, a dream of what makes you the happiest lambkin in the world. I am telling you to fight for your life, to wake up and face the world again… those three still need you. I… I need you, I want you to get up and try to live for me and them, please? You cannot lay here much longer.”

“I…” I looked at the penguin with a dogs face and that seemed normal. I looked to Tianhuo’s pleading and worried face. She should never have that look on her face, it should be a small smile or a stoic look. “I really am dreaming…”

“I thank you for finally realizing it, I am sorry that you are not with me Pom… even if I am a figment of your imagination and subconscious desires. I know the real Tianhuo would want you to get up from this and keep moving forward.” Tianhuo let go of my hooves as I got up from the bed and started to walk towards the door. I looked back at her. “Keep going Pom, it might be the only way back for all of you. Also, don’t die and continue to be true.”

“I will Tianhuo.” I made my way over to the door to the room and slowly pulled it open with my left hoof and walked through it into the light.

-Jade Palace-

I blinked blearily as I exited the door to the room with Tianhuo, the only thing I could remember about the odd dream. Her warm comforting touch, that gentle coercion and her always supporting me when I wouldn’t support myself, I could feel it all…

I could also feel the excruciating amounts of pain that my body was currently in, I started hissing through my teeth.

I wasn’t even going to try and get up, especially if I knew what was good for me. I turned my blurry vision to the left and right, I was laying on my back and heavily bandaged.

Probably had scarring on my face, my ability to walk might be shot for a short while and at least I kept my voice quiet throughout most of the fight. I could probably talk safely, doing the bark blast at the start of the fight was probably the best idea I had.

Looking to my right where I felt something poking into my side, I saw Shanty with eyes closed and her face pressed gently against my side. Kind of wish I could move my legs… they itched a bit.

“Oh my goodness, Pom, you’re actually awake?!” Smolder came walking and saw me, I just blinked. “Uh… so how are you feeling?”

“Hurts.” My voice was raspy and dry.

“Even after a week and three days? Darn, what did Tai Lung do to you? They countered his nerve strikes on you so that you wouldn’t wake up paralyzed, not that that changes much with how bad off you were when we started to patch you up. Po said you were still standing and fighting by the time he arrived.” After asking that Smolder smacked herself in the face. “No, not important, what’s important is that I get you some water right?”

I tried to nod, but moving my head hurts.

“Right, I’ll be right back. Ocellus, Pom’s awake!” Smolder yelled as she ran off and despite that, Shanty’s sleeping form wasn’t disturbed at all. She just continued to snooze away next to me. “We don’t need the funnel anymore!”

“Oh thank goodness!” Ocellus could be heard shouting back.

I turned my eyes to the ceiling, I could maybe recover enough to move in the next two days or so. I tried to move each of my legs, the only leg that was still good was my back left leg, it figures as I didn’t put too much stress on it.

Smolder eventually started helping me drink some water when she returned a few minutes later, staying awake wasn’t a problem seeing as I’ve been asleep for quite a while.

“Shanty is going to be a while, she refused to leave your side and was worried you were going to… well, it’s good to see you awake at least.” Smolder moved over to Shanty and rubbed at her back softly. “First time she’s getting some real sleep in a while. At least we managed to get her to eat and do her business, but she was insistent on someone always being with you.”

I frowned in thought of Shanty not taking her own health into account, but what could I do in my current state?

“Hey Pom, I heard you were awake. This past week since Tai Lung’s defeat has been a bit wild, never knew that being the Dragon Warrior could be so complicated.” Po came into the room and looked me over, he seemed skittish and nervous. “So, do you think you’ll recover? I’ve never actually seen someone hurt as badly as you are, well at least not someone I really cared about anyway.”

“I’ll…” I started coughing a bit and Smolder offered some more water for my throat. I was fairly parched. “I’ll be fine Po, Tai Lung isn’t really responsible for my current state. The fault lays with mostly me when it comes to my injuries.”

“How so?” Ocellus said coming into the room. “Also we’ll have some soup for you soon Pom and I’ll be feeding you.”

“You might want to gather anyone who cares to hear the story, because I don’t want to tell it twice.” This was my life now, not being at home with my beasties and one of the most beautiful longma I ever knew. “Also, can I wait until after I’ve eaten something and Shanty has woken up?”

-A few hours later-

“Thank you Ocellus, you’re a good friend.” I knew we had our issues, most of them on Ocellus’s side of things. Changelings really disliked Lambkin for various reasons, but I would like to think we’re friends and was even stating as such.

“I don’t feel like a good friend for disliking you.” It’s your actions that speak louder Ocellus, you cared enough to help me eat something in this state. “So did you know the secret of the scroll?”

“Yeah, Oogway showed it to me and asked me about it, I said it was understandable.” The Furious Five all quirked their heads at me.

“You think that was understandable?” Tigress muttered loudly.

“Well yeah, there’s nothing on the scroll except in the right light all you will see is your reflection. It has two separate meanings, there is no secret.” Given that Po defeated Tai Lung, I wasn’t going to ask what happened, I knew that he absolutely proved himself. “The other is the only thing you need to be good at Kung Fu, is to believe in yourself.”

“Yeah, I figured that out and the Wuxi Finger Hold.” Po said while rubbing the back of his head. “Also I wouldn’t have been half as good as I am now if you guys hadn’t started helping me.”

“Didn’t fa… er… Shifu tell you that there was no such thing as the Wuxi Finger Hold Po?” Tigress seemed a little less grumpy, she was acting friendlier towards Po at least. The orange and black furred warrior ruffled her clothing a bit. “It’s only something that is used as a threat to get misbehaving students to…”

“Oh it’s absolutely real, didn’t believe it until I figured it out personally.” Po stated with a bit of joviality as he moved to start prodding Shanty. “Anyway, now that we’re here, we can wake up Shanty and get this thing on the road.”

“Po, when you do, make sure she doesn’t jump on me.” I was in enough pain as it was already, I didn’t need Shanty making it worse.

“Hey Shanty… wake up… hm…” Po’s poking only made Shanty wiggle a bit, but she stayed sleeping. The panda gained a smile on his face as he raised one of Shanty’s ears. “Free food.”

Despite the previous times this worked, Shanty didn’t wake up.

“Pom’s awake?” Tested Po carefully and Shanty’s tired eyes snapped open and she was suddenly alert and looking about. They snapped towards me and the bar shaped pupils shrunk.

I gave Shanty a weak smile.

“POM!” Shanty leapt with her hooves wide out and didn’t come close to landing on me.

“Shanty, she’s still hurting.” Po said in a deadpan tone as his hands quickly caught her in the air.

“Sorry… I am being so very sorry Pom.” She started sniffling and held out her hooves towards me.

“It’s okay.” I stated after a moment. “I’ve got a story to tell now, it’s not very happy one.”

“What story?” Shanty asked as she looked around at everyone.

“It’s why I’ve been in a coma for more than a week and the story will give everyone some information about why my injuries are as bad as they are.” I said slowly while hissing in pain. “I basically tore my own body apart fighting Tai Lung and my wounds are mostly self-inflicted. Ocellus, Smolder, do you remember what I did before I hit him that first time?”

“Yeah, you did that Shock-ram thing.” Smolder said while giving me a look.

“Didn’t you say it would hurt a lot?” Ocellus asked with a bit of worry.

“Well it’s certainly hurting me now.” I mumbled.

“So what’s the story about it?” Viper finally decided to ask, she was basically the most outgoing member of the Furious Five next to Monkey.

“Well it’s about where the lambkin technique ‘Shock-ram’ comes from, it’s not a technique that any of you could do unless you have the talent for it. I’m going to tell you all right now… it is definitely not a technique that is ever meant to be used in combat.” I took a deep breath and my lungs burned slightly. “Here’s why, a long time ago there was a ram lambkin named Barbatos, he was quite intelligent and he was married to a lovely ewe, Hortensia. Barbatos was a fluffmancer…”

“What’s a fluffmancer?” Asked monkey. “Sounds cuddly.”

“A warrior that can control the fluff on their body in mystical ways, for instance I’m a minimal talent fluffmancer and my wool can absorb impacts that I personally can’t. Now back to my story, one day… Barbatos was out with his wife Hortensia having a picnic when Hortensia had a heart problem. Hortensia heart had suddenly stopped and Barbatos went into a panic, Barbatos was smart in many things and started to build up energy akin to lightning using his talent as a fluffmancer in an effort to revive his lover’s heart with a powerful jolt.” I shuddered at what I was about to tell them next. “This was a technique made to revive those dying from heart failure, like Shanty nearly did and it is only meant to do that. Barbatos managed to successfully revive his wife and was worried about her health. The downsides of reviving his wife didn’t show themselves until Barbatos and Hortensia met a monster on their way home, Barbatos bade his wife to run while he distracted and fought off the monster with an incredible ferocity and strength beyond what was normal for him. He wasn’t a very big ram, but he defeated the monster, only to die when his heart exploded inside his uninjured chest. The downsides of the technique had finally showed themselves and it took a few other lambkin a while to figure out what caused his death after Hortensia described the technique to them.”

“Is… is that being a real story?” Shanty asked shivering while looking me over.

“Sadly, yes. The initial pain from using the Shock-ram technique is excruciating, it is the first downside that I would gladly pay to see you live Shanty. The second downside, or at least the somewhat positive one in the case of my fight with Tai Lung, it turns off one’s ability to feel pain and the nervous system is partially disabled in so much as the user is still able to move and do stuff. The third downside is that due to the previous downside, the safety limiters that a body normally has to keep it from destroying itself are also down.” I stopped to let them take that bit of news in, the Furious Five were looking at me with absolute horror. “When Barbatos fought the monster, he couldn’t feel pain, he was using strength beyond what he should have been and if he had paid attention to his bodies rampant shaking despite not being too injured… he might have lived longer. One of the side effects to know when your body is being pushed too far is that it starts violently shaking. Barbatos had moved too much when it came to fighting the monster and pushed his body far too hard and paid the price he couldn’t recover from.”

“Whoa, that sounds like some of the more dangerous backfire techniques of kung fu that I’ve only heard of in legend.” Po seemed to be looking at me in worry. “That you can do something like that is… well awesome for sure, but still very scary that I almost lost a friend to what is supposed to be a medical technique.”

“The saddest thing about the whole story is that Barbatos’s widowed and pregnant wife Hortensia had to raise their children by herself. Thankfully the community pulled together for a hero who died fighting the monster that has been causing many problems locally, Barbatos gave his life in turn for his wife and the two children she was carrying at the time to posthumously become a hero. His family line still exists to this day, I have no relations to them whatsoever though.” I winced as I tried to sit up, it was hard when my entire body felt like lead. “Good news, if you can feel pain like I currently can, then my limiters and your nerves are all back to working condition. Any fluffmancer no matter how old, young or talented can do this technique and recover from it, provided they don’t push themselves too far. Permanent damage has… always been of the lethal variety.”

“That’s why you were only walking when you left us to fight Tai Lung.” Smolder said softly.

“Exactly, running to meet Tai Lung would have killed me after that first initial attack, I was trying to keep myself under control and my movements slow or deliberate. Each good hit I got in was my muscles weakening to the point that they were going to do less damage with the next hit, I don’t want to even know if my bones became brittle from the stress of it all.” Also the deep breathing technique of the longma really helped fight off some of the worst of the damage I was doing to myself. “I’m lucky to be alive after using that technique and then getting into a fight… I was scared out of my mind.”

“Can confirm.” Airily stated Ocellus while nodding her head.

“I think I’ll be good enough to walk again, but I’m going to need the next few days to rest.” We had after all needed to move on from here and I didn’t want to freeload off of the Jade Palace. “When I’m good enough to walk and check on a few things, then we might be heading of girls.”

“Are you going to be being alright Pom?” It wasn’t just Shanty that was worried, it was everyone in the room now looking at me.

“Shock-ram is known as the circle technique, it is meant to give life and could mean death for the user. It is not meant to be used as an attack at all and if it is used as one, it’ll only be a one use deal that will leave you quickly dying if you have to fight afterwards.” The story of Barbatos was a cautionary tale that I just needed to tell my friends about so they can understand what I put myself through for them. “I’ve recovered from it and, provided that you don’t ask me to use it twice in a row which immediately leads to the user dying, then I’ll eventually make a full recovery. I shredded the muscles in my front legs with one of my last attacks before Po found me, but if my bones are only cracked then I’ll be up for moving around a few days from now.”

“I be wishing to hug you, but I do not be wanting you to die from it.” Shanty said seriously as Po finally put her down.

“It’s okay, I’ll get better soon Shanty… promise.” I winced audibly at trying to shifty my hip and one of my legs. “Just give me a few days.”

-Five days later-

Everyone was treating me like I was made of glass haphazardly glued back together after somebody had already broken me, not far from the truth actually.

I eventually got the information I needed and we might have a way out of this world.

“Well I hope you and the girls have a good time in Gongmen City Pom!” Po said as I waved back to him and the Furious Five. We were riding with merchants in a caravan so I didn’t have to walk all the way to the city on the southern coast, the Furious Five helped assist us with getting a ride out of The Valley of Peace. My injuries were still pretty bad, but I was capable of standing up and moving. “You girls take good care of yourself!”

“We hear you loud and clear Po, the rest of you be watching out for him too!” Shanty shouted back while waving. “Please help Po be the best Dragon Warrior that he can be!”

“See you later Viper and thanks for the battle ribbon lessons! So what are we looking for in Gongmen again?” Smolder asked as she twirled her ribbon around in the air, Ocellus was busy looking over a map and reading up on our destination.

“A mystical artifact that might be the key to getting us home.” I said as I leaned back to rest, this was going to be a long journey.

“I’m reading up on it right now Smolder, it’s called ‘The Yen of Yunshu’." It wasn’t hard to see that Ocellus was enjoying the culture, she was wearing a pink robe with a yellow butterfly pattern on it and a flower behind her ear. Smolder also had a blue robe with a rainbow colored dragon on the back. "It's a special coin that has the power to transport people to other places.”

25. Going, going, Gongmen.

-Approximately one week later, on the way to Gongmen City, Po-

I think things took a strange turn for me when Pom and her friends came into my life. The four of them were all so interesting and awesome like the current Furious Five I idolized and had a paw in forming, they needed money and didn’t look to be carrying much on them when we first met.

At least Pom specifically needed jobs for her and Shanty to do training, apparently life lessons can teach you some skills that you can apply in combat. Makes me wonder how somebody first learned how to do nerve attacks or acupuncture in the first place, learned that being a bit big in the belly isn’t all that bad for blocking those type of attacks.

It was surprising to hear that Pom was a guard of a mythical place called Huoshan, she puts herself down more than I do myself and claims she’s weakest guard of that place. Can’t she see that she’s absolutely amazing?!

Pom is taking care of three kids, does a lot of work to earn money for a path home for them all, trains Shanty to protect herself and was basically running herself into the ground while under a bit of stress. Despite all that, she’s probably the sweetest person I’ve ever met and it would take a lot to make her angry. Like nearly killing one of her kids, but even then she’d still be more scared for the kid than angry at the attacker.

After seeing Tai Lung and the end results of Pom going toe to toe with him? I think Pom did more damage to Tai Lung than what anyone else did, but only while under some life threatening side effects of a mystical medical technique meant to revive someone whose heart has been stopped.

A technique with a severe backlash that I hope Pom doesn’t use again, because the state it left her in after using it was fairly painful to look at. It was nice to be able to help Pom recover from that and her injuries, somewhat, she hadn’t fully healed before they headed out for Gongmen City to look for something.

That Pom can even walk again is a miracle and says something about her resilience when it came to a technique that, if used twice in quick succession, would instantly kill her. Kung Fu masters could temporarily push past the limits of their bodies temporarily, that Pom lost her limits entirely wrecked her pretty badly within short amount of time she fought Tai Lung.

Pom is far tougher than she seems to think she is, about as tough as Mantis is for his size. Mantis didn’t get much chance to actually fight Tai Lung from what I heard about the way things at the ‘Thread of Hope’ played out.

Speaking of that haughty snow leopard, Pom had worried me a bit when she told me to break Tai Lung and to not kill him. I took me a minute to figure that out while I was in the middle of a furious battle with Tai Lung after he got angry that he couldn’t understand what the scroll meant. Throughout our fight, all I was hoping for was that Pom was still alive where I left her. It wasn’t a pretty or clean victory, but I still won.

Pom knew what the Dragon Warrior scroll had meant and wasn’t surprised in the slightest. Even if her advice is sometimes odd, like the whole break Tai Lung thing, she is still very much a timid and caring lady I know her to be.

Tai Lung was fairly inflexible at life and was rather rigid in how he fights. It made me realize how strict and bad Shifu can be as a teacher, I think Oogway was trying to help him with that through me. It certainly worked from my perspective at the very least, especially when Shifu realized he needed to train me in a differently from how he trained the already naturally talented Furious Five. That little red panda was still an amazing fighter otherwise.

The Wuxi Finger Hold was an interesting to trick for me to keep in mind, but it is notably impossible to use on anything that doesn’t have a requisite digit to latch onto. Shifu said it was some made up technique to scare bad students straight, but I know what it does and that it’s far more real than just some made up technique. I really shouldn’t use it on anyone unless I absolutely needed to, makes me wonder what would happen if I used it on myself?

I shivered at that last thought. At least the Wuxi Finger Hold really freaked out Tai Lung, he said Shifu never taught anyone that and I just told him I figured it out. It isn’t exactly a hard technique to do, it was also vaguely lethal.

I was sad to see Pom, Smolder, Ocellus and Shanty set off for Gongmen. I didn’t exactly have many friends before I met them. Being big, clumsy and having a minor problem with stress eating tends to not be a good combination. Big fat panda is something I’ve heard a lot while working with my father who pulled me from a shipment of consumed radishes when I was a baby. At least Ocellus and Smolder coached me in how to make friends and Shanty was a real laugh in how playful and full of energy she was.

They were all a very positive, if all too brief, influence in my life and were very supportive of me becoming the Dragon Warrior. Even I wasn’t sure I could be the Dragon Warrior for a bit there, but I figured things out and I now knew how to do kung fu and it was all so totally awesome.

I don’t remember where I came from, but I’m exactly where I wanted to be with using kung fu to help people. The awesomeness of the adventures I was bound to have were going to be remembered for quite a long time, or at least I would hope the Furious Five and I would be remembered fondly.

Now the problem currently plaguing me is that something familiar about the bandit wolves that recently invaded the valley to steal metal from the people. Said raid was being readily beaten back by the Furious Five and me, then something I saw made me lose focus of the situation long enough for them wolf pack to get away with their stolen goods.

We were all now on our way for Gongmen City, a sprawling coastal metropolis that was once in the wings of the peacocks. Thundering Rhino, Storming Ox and Croc were the kung fu masters that were left in charge of the city when there was no viable heir to take the throne, we would have to seek them out to get a better idea of the situation in the city.

I looked around at my friends while thinking about the fuzzy memory of what might have been my mother, it left me feeling a bit confused and more than a bit worried about Pom’s group that came here before us.

Crane was looking out for us as we sailed towards the disturbingly quiet city, Monkey and Mantis were hanging out, Tigress was getting in some practice and Viper was lazing about in the sun.

The city was known for its fireworks factory, I think it’s where those faulty fireworks the day I became the Dragon Warrior came from. It was also known for the Tower of the Sacred Flame, which used to belong to the ruling peacocks before it was turned over to the kung fu masters upon their deaths.

We didn’t know what was going on in the city, once we get there we’ll certainly find out. Hopefully Pom, Ocellus, Smolder and Shanty didn’t get caught up in whatever was going on here.

“Something wrong Po?” Viper looked up at me worriedly as she turned and slithered over to me, she’s a really good friend to have in or out of a fight. She was the first to approach me alone for some bonding over a few snacks and tea where we got to know one another. She was kind and approachable, mostly because she didn’t have fangs to scare people off like the rest of her family.

“Yeah, you remember how Pom looked before her and the others left for Gongmen right?” Tapping my index fingers together as I sat down, I looked off to the side at the water as Viper slithered up to me frowning she reached up with her tail to pat me on the shoulder. “I’m worried that they might be in trouble.”

“Well if they are still in Gongmen and it’s as dangerous in the streets as the rumors are making things out to be, then we’ll just have to find them and keep them safe.” There was a cheerful confidence about Viper that I liked. After a moment she admitted something that made me tense up slightly. “Now that you mentioned it, I’m feeling a bit worried about them too.”

“Yeah, we’re not leaving those four high and dry if they’ve run into problems.” Mantis came over to us looking just as worried. “Though Pom isn’t likely going to be capable of putting up a fight if something did happen, her body was really messed up after fighting Tai Lung and frankly I don’t what made her wake up or want to keep going. By all rights she shouldn’t even be alive, it’s almost a miracle if her friends didn’t know how to help her. That thing they did with the funnel was really interesting and it might become a healer approved method.”

Mantis was just bringing an honest opinion to the mix like usual and was just telling it like it is.

“Way to bring down the mood Mantis. Look Po, I’m sure they are fine.” Monkey tried to reassure us with a smile, he put his bo staff across his back and giggled a bit as he rested his arms on it. “Ocellus is smart and has magic, Shanty can fight pretty well with what Pom has taught her and Smolder is a dragon with some decent combat ribbon skills she learned from our very own Viper here. Even if Pom still can’t fight, I seriously doubt that anyone would want to cause them trouble without a very good reason for it.”

“I don’t know about that.” Crane said making his way over to us. “I think an entire army would be a little above what they are…”

A loud explosion sounded off in the distance and we could see fire on the far side of the city we were approaching.

“…capable of dealing with.” Finished Crane lamely as he tipped his straw hat up with his left wing. “Should I go take a look at what’s going on?”

Crane carried the rest of the Furious Five back by himself after their Battle with Tai Lung, never met a more loyal guy to be friends with.

“I’d rather you didn’t, but I’m not making the call.” Tigress said as she approached us with her arms crossed looking fairly cool and collected as usual, she helped me out a lot last night with a few personal issues. At least I can understand her better, she was generous with her thoughts and was both fierce and beautiful. While she wouldn’t admit to it, she’s basically the leader and heart of the Furious Five. “It’s on you Crane, we don’t know what the situation is like in the city. If we’re dealing with the Wolf Boss and that wolf pack, then its best that you try to avoid being spotted if you go. At the very least they won’t have any eyes on us coming in so we can enter the city quietly with whatever is distracting them. Hopefully Shanty and the others didn’t get caught up in this.”

While Tigress was a bit stiff and had problems showing it, she really cared about her friends, father and the orphans of the Jade District in The Valley of Peace. She apparently liked Shanty, but had problems with trying to interact with the rambunctious goat that Pom showered with affection, if anything I’d think she was a little jealous of the bond they shared.

I know I would be jealous after Shifu raised Tai Lung lovingly and then took a chance with taking Tigress in after Tai Lung turned on him and Oogway. It’s why Shifu treats Tigress distantly and I think he was afraid of being hurt again, he saw Tigress’s incredible strength and still helped her learn to control it at the very least. Tigress was bad at emotions, but she still had them and so did Shifu despite all the talk of needing discipline.

“I’m going to go check things out, I’ll be careful.” Stated Crane as he spread his wings and took off for the air towards the city, it was going to take some time for us to get there and there was a lot of nervous tension going on between the five of us.

“So… two gorilla’s walk into a bar… the third one ducks.” Monkey suddenly stated while giggling with infectious, we all began snickering. “The third one didn’t want to quack his head on the bar.”

“Monkey…” Tigress growled out a second later, after she stopped snickering of course.

“What, I’m just trying to lighten the mood Tigress.” Monkey stated plainly while spreading his arms out. “So what does one body of water say to another? Nothing, they just waved.”

We could use a little laughter when facing the unknown.

-Gongmen City, Crane-

I was a master of the sky, now if only Po would stop insisting that I say ‘caw-caw’ a lot. I’m not a raven and I don’t like the insinuation that I act like one. Po can be a bit childish and insensitive, but he’s at least friendly and is getting better at fighting. I liked him well enough and the others did too, even Tigress when Po proved that he could take Tai Lung.

Well he could only take Tai Lung after whatever everyone and eventually Pom did to him while tearing herself apart. As injured as she was, it’s surprising that Pom came back from it. It almost feels like she has the spirit of a rabid wolf that will fight doggedly for life.

My first visit to Gongmen and it’s under the circumstances of a fire starting in the city. I stayed a bit high in the air, hardly anyone looks up unless they know someone like me is around. Surprise attacks from above aren’t uncommon when it comes to fighting.

The closer I got to the fire I saw several ships burning and sinking into the river leading towards the bay, there were wolf pack mercenaries running everywhere.

“There she is, after her!” That attracted my attention to the situation brewing, I saw a familiar goat running on all fours from several thug and narrowed my eyes at them.

“You not be catching me today!” She turned into an alleyway while being followed by them, however the wolf at the back of the four suddenly was attacked by something wrapping around his left ankle causing him to trip and fall on his face.

What followed that attack, was Smolder flying up from behind a barrel and then dive bombing into the back of his head with her right shoulder. The blow knocked the wolf out immediately.

I turned my gaze to the three wolves cornering Shanty in the dead end, I watched carefully and waited to strike if she needed my help.

“It’s about time you answered for your crimes against the Wolf Boss and Lord Shen!” The leading wolf stated, the third wolf at the back looked behind herself at Smolder and I thought she’d raise an alarm.

Smolder signaled something to the brown furred female wolf as she gathered up her combat ribbon and the wolf nodded with a smile and raised her club up. The wolf then brought it down on the second wolfs head, much to their surprised and now unconscious form.

“What the…!” The first wolf turned to see the second wolf going down to the third and the fourth being pushed into a barrel by Smolder. “Betrayal!”

“I can’t betray someone I never had any loyalty to.” That was Ocellus’s voice. “By the way, you might want to avoid that flying buck to the head.”

“Wha...” The wolf took two rear hooves to the face from Shanty and staggered. The wolf was too dazed to notice what happened next.

With a quick buildup of oddly colored fire, Ocellus stepped forward revealing herself to have been the female wolf and fired some magic from her horn at the remaining wolfs head knocking him out.

“On a roof Shanty, we need to go before we’re swarmed!” Ocellus shouted as she flew up towards the roofs, while Smolder forcibly shoved the other wolves into barrels that smelled like spirits.

“Good going Ocellus, this will really set them back quite a bit.” Smolder said proudly as she finished stuffing the third thug away. The large and still very strange bug blushed, is that what her people’s blushing looks like? Weird.

Smolder soon joined Ocellus and they waited while Shanty climbed up the wall to the roof.

“Why do we be needing me on the roof again?” Shanty asked as she pulled herself onto the roof, she looked in the direction of the burning ships for a moment before returning her gaze to the two flyers above her.

I hovered above the three wondering where Pom was.

“It’s a lot harder to get you off the ground, up here it’ll be easier to catch some air and we’ll be less tired in getting you further away from here. Also you weigh quite a bit for your size Shanty.” Bluntly stated Smolder with her arms crossed as she hovered next to Ocellus. “Now come on, let’s get out of here! I don’t want to be around when they trip that rotten egg trap.”

“I be weighing more in muscle than fat, but I agree that we be causing enough damage today.” Today? How long has Shanty and these two been at… whatever this is. They knew more about what was going around here than I did and if I was going to find out what that was, then I needed to help them.

“Hey, need some help in giving her a lift?” I asked carefully as I flew lower, watching as Smolder and Ocellus were about to grab Shanty and start flying with her and away from the streets swarming with wolf pack mercenaries. “I can take her much more easily.”

“Crane? Well if you be offering a free ride, I wouldn’t be saying no to not having to run the rest of the distance.” Shanty lowered herself so I could carefully grapple her barrel with my feet and I lifted her off the roof. “Ocellus and Smolder can be leading us to somewhere safe we can lay low for a bit.”

“Yeah, follow us.” Ocellus said pleasantly and flew ahead, she didn’t seem to be a very fast flyer.

I sighed and followed after the two as we left the scene that had several wolves gagging and clutching at their noses.

“Rotten eggs so they couldn’t track you?” I asked as we flew higher over the city.

“Pom’s idea, she really knows a lot about wolves and how to deal with them. They can’t track our scents if they can’t find them in all the cluttered smells we left lying around before we destroyed some of those ships.” Smolder giggled into her claws. “So if you’re here, does that mean Po and the rest of the Furious Five are to?”

“Yeah, the wolves invaded The Valley of Peace and stole a lot of metal.” The look I saw pass between Smolder, Shanty and Ocellus told me a lot.

“So that’s where they were got all those extra resources from.” Ocellus mumbled as she rubbed her chin, looking to be thinking about something.

“Where’s Pom exactly and how is she?” We were flying across the city and passing over a few panicked patrols of mercenary wolves and their slapdash armor with the same symbol that apparently cause Po discomfort.

“She’s still not doing too hot, but she’s slowly getting better. We can’t go to her at the moment as she’s trying to lay low and we need to be careful about drawing any patrols or attention to her as she’s doing something really important. We really need to get some supplies to her tomorrow though and the people around here are helping as much as they are feasibly able with the wolves sniffing around them for any trouble.” Smolder looked about at the ground as we flew and Ocellus was leading us forward. “She’s been helping out the citizens where she can, I certainly wouldn’t ask her to fight in that condition. I’m thankful that no one’s spotted us yet this time, last time we went out they nearly shot Ocellus out of the air.”

“That was a fun one!” Why did that feel like a story and why was Shanty the one that said it with an evil grin on her face as she looked up at me. Her expression changed after a moment. “Do you be thinking Po can convince the other kung fu masters to actually get off their rears and help us?”

“What happened, what’s going on in this city?” I wonder what happened to the kung fu masters that were supposed to be protecting all of Gongmen City?

Ocellus started to fly down and we came to an empty alley leading towards a small garden and a doorway, she looked around and saw that there were no wolves about. She motioned to us to follow her as she pushed her way through a tarp over the doorway and led us into a large room that was obviously a meeting spot.

“Welcome to Walu’s Dim Sum honored customers, we’re the sum of all our parts and may the sun never dim on my establishment.” The male pika stated in his friendly tone while looking around at all the patrons that were looking towards us. “How did it go girls?”

“We were successful Mr. Walu, we are also getting some help.” As she said this Ocellus hugged the pika while motioning to me and then moved over to a table while shying away from the cheers from the surrounding patrons. The table was out of the way and sight of the entrance with a tea set already prepared and some dumplings. “To answer your question Crane, there is a lot going on around here and I really don't like it.”

“Look, we’ll talk about what Pom is doing later, it might not be as important now if Po is around. Some peacock guy named Shen formed an army of mercenary wolves’ years ago and tried to wipe out the pandas because of some soothsayers prophecy about him being defeated by a warrior of black and white, we’re all pretty certain that it’s Po who is going to fulfill this prophecy.” Of course it was Smolder, I thought dryly while shaking my head in exasperation. “In any case he was banished by his parents after trying to commit genocide against the pandas, they died leaving kung fu masters in charge. Now he’s back now and he’s creating dangerous weapons that took down Thundering Rhino and forcefully reclaimed his throne. The other local Kung Fu masters are idle, Shen has an iron wing on everything and the mercenaries have free reign of Gongmen.”

Author's Note

Now what would a psychotic peacock do when the wolves are less than reliable in handling the sabotage of his ambitions?

Also the original plot of the Kung Fu Panda movies has been derailed quite thoroughly. We just haven't seen the full effects of it yet.

26. Ocellus’s observations.

-Walu’s Dim Sum, Ocellus-

I really don’t like fighting, but in some cases I have to make an exception. I’m not good at physical combat, but then again what changeling was. Even Fluttershy can take down a changeling physically and she would have to put at least some effort into it.

Swarming tactics were the best changelings had in an open physical confrontation where numbers were to our advantage, stealth was more of an advantage when no one saw it coming. I felt bad enough for clubbing a wolf in the back of the head, but it was necessary at the time.

So far Gongmen had been good, aside from Shen and his army of mercenaries. Finding the ‘Yen of Yunshu’ was a bit of a problem with so many wolves around, it didn’t help that the coin had very few identifying marks that you needed to see up close to even identify it from all the other coins.

“So that’s what’s it’s like around here.” I stated calmly trying not to think about the problems Shanty ran into, luckily Smolder and I were already in position to drop her pursuers without problem. “The people of Gongmen are getting pushed around by the mercenaries, but Shen and the Wolf Boss won’t actually do anything to them because they need food for their army provided by the merchants.”

“Anything else?” Crane asked as he watched Shanty gobble down some dumplings noisily.

“Yeah, don’t go near the ‘Tower of the Sacred Flame’ or the fireworks factory. Both are heavily guarded and they have their weapons covering both locations.” Taking a dumpling into her mouth before Shanty could get to it, Smolder chewed it over while looking a bit down. She swallowed and grinned at Crane. “Go to the tower to get at Shen and you’ll be shot at by large metal spheres moving at speeds to rip apart just about anyone. Same for the fireworks factory that’s been converted from pumping out fireworks to creating weapons of war. Can you bring Po and the rest of the Furious Five here?”

“I can, they should be docking in the city right now.” Crane was a rather quiet guy and always seemed to be in his own head.

“Good because we need to make a plan, because while I believe you guys can take on an army, I really doubt you can take those cannons head on.” I know the warriors of this world were either on par or a level above the ones from The Valley with Skunk and the dwellers. “Your tough and could literally turn me, Smolder and Shanty into living pretzels, but you guys are not ‘that’ tough when it comes to their weapons.”

They were not beyond being severely injured by cannonballs. If anything, Mantis would have the advantage in being a target too small to hit directly. Po on the other hoof, he was a fairly easy target to aim at because of his size working against him.

“Right, I’ll head on out… er… what’s a pretzel?” Some really good comfort food Crane, unfortunately I’ve been subsisting on Smolder, water and what seems to be a near constant Chi-neigh diet for the last few weeks.

“It’s a really twisty food item that looks like a tangled rope, but it is basically roasted glazed bread with salt sprinkled on it.” Never thought I would have to describe a pretzel before.

“Huh… sounds simple. Be back with Po and the others soon.” There was no need to tell Crane to be careful as he set out and to avoid being spotted by the patrols, he peaked out into the alleyway and then quickly left the establishment.

“So how do you be thinking Po is going to defeat Shen?” Good question Shanty, none of us knew what Po could or would do to stop the murderous menace that was Shen. The citizens knew not to get in his way and told us as such.

We, Pom, Shanty, Smolder and I, all agreed to start sabotaging Shen’s operations when we found out what the occupation was doing to the people who lived here in fear. Not only that, but his ambitions with the cannons he figured out how to build.

This world wasn’t big on high end technology, but cannons were a dangerous new technology for this world that was in the wings of a monster. That we’ve been successful so far was just up to luck given we’ve almost been caught fifteen times.

“Why are you being quiet?” Shanty looked a bit upset when Smolder nor I had an answer for her.

“Shanty you want to be a pirate right, do you realize how dangerous cannons are?” Smolder asked and Shanty nodded timidly, far from her rambunctious optimism at the moment. “The Furious Five and Po are going to be more willing to help everyone than the local kung fu masters at the very least. They have a bond of friendship that’ll drive them to being great heroes.”

“I not be thinking Storming Ox or Croc are bad people, they just be losing their spirit to fight.” Quite a few people around the room agreed with Shanty through their muttering, I could feel the warm feelings in the room at the sentiment that those two particular warriors weren’t bad people overall.

Also the people of this city were nice enough to help pay for Shanty’s eating habits, our favorite goat had a monstrous stomach and the dumplings she was eating were relatively cheap if everyone chipped in. Nothing made the people around here happier than putting a smile on a hungry Shanty’s face.

“Yeah, but they aren’t exactly protecting the people of the city right now and Shen is terrorizing the population." I’d rather be dealing with Chrysalis at the moment and that was saying something about Shen’s ability to instill terror in people. Chrysalis wasn’t about killing everyone, just acquiring power. “I really don’t like the state of things, especially our part in it since we decided to get involved.”

Don’t know what happened to the pandas I heard about, but Shen tried to commit to genocide against them once he heard the prophecy about losing to a black and white warrior. It was little wonder that Shen’s parents disowned him immediately after making the best farmers around here flee in terror. I wonder if Po was related to any of those pandas.

“Hey, we got involved the second Pom decided to help even in her current state.” Feeling Smolder out, she wasn’t actually upset at Pom getting involved, she was actually proud of her. I was still rather upset that we now had to run from the patrols if they spotted us and be constantly on our guard with very few places in the city being safe. “We still need to find the Yen of Yunshu, but Shen is a more immediate problem for everyone and we wouldn’t be able to find a needle in a haystack while an earthquake is going on anyway. Don’t honestly know how we’re going to take Shen down when he has cannons all over the place and enough mercenaries to cover both his bases, there’s also having numerous patrols in the streets sniffing around for trouble and itching for a fight.”

“I don’t condone all the violence going on in this world Smolder, but in this case it seems necessary and I really don’t want us to be the ones to do the fighting.” Which is why I was making this suggestion. “Do you think Po and the Furious Five can do it?”

“I think they be capable enough.” Shanty answered once she stopped eating the sweet bean dumplings.

“Yeah, but are they willing?” I really don’t like the idea of anyone dying, but the mercenaries were equipped with clubs, blades and other various deadly implements. They were well organized even if they weren’t high end kung fu warriors that could do amazing things. “I just want to go back to Equestria.”

“You and me both Ozzy.” Smolder hugged me and I felt the warmth of her freely given love flow over into me in a comforting mass that felt like an ocean.

“I do not be having much to be going back to…” Shanty said after a moment before picking up another dumpling and biting into it in a much slower manner.

“Pom would take you in, she definitely cares about you.” Enough so that I know she’s completely willing to give her life to protect you and us. “Do you have any idea what her emotions are like?! I know because I can feel her paranoia, fear and her caring about us beyond all reason. No changeling would want to suffer being this close to a lambkin for as long as I have and I know she wouldn’t turn you away if you asked if you could live with her.”

“Yeah, listen to Ocellus on this one, she knows what she’s talking about and is aiming to be a psychologist or at least a therapist for the School of Friendship.” Smolder was feeling nostalgic and homesick, I was feeling that too. “Goodness knows friendship drives us all a little crazy at times.”

“They’re this way.” Hearing Crane say this I turned my attention to the Furious Five arriving and moving towards our booth.

“Hey guys, heard you know what’s going on around here, we could use a little of that information.” Po seemed as cheerful as usual. “Also… where’s Pom?”

“I would like to know that as well.” Tigress muttered while eyeing us, her feelings towards us were relatively fond and a bit more intense when she looked towards Shanty. She was quite fond of the Furious Five as well, her stoic demeanor couldn’t hide anything from me.

“We can’t tell you.” Smolder said immediately and for good reason, because we really couldn’t tell anyone. We can’t even drop a hint or things would go horribly wrong.

“Why not?” Mantis hopped up onto the table as he and Viper said this at the same time.

“Well, if anyone was to hear a hint as to what Pom is currently doing and it gets out, then the wolves will eventually be ordered to hunt her down and kill her by Shen. Pom is still quite physically weak and being as helpless as she is, it wouldn’t take much for the wolves to actually kill her.” My answer didn’t seem good enough for them as they gazed at us with unrestrained curiosity. “I’m the only one that can actually get near where Pom is without raising suspicion, the wolves already are on the lookout for all of us and she’s going to need supplies soon to continue doing her part. We’re not going to risk Pom’s life and it’s quite vital to the city as a whole that she stays exactly where she is, it’s going to be quite important if you can ultimately deal with Shen.”

“I not be liking it, but Pom can’t be fighting as she is and she not be needing any attention on her right now.” Shanty motioned to Smolder, who looked her way. “Smolder is being bright orange and I be actively fighting small groups of wolves in the streets, so they all be knowing us on sight. Ocellus is the only one who can deliver supplies to Pom or move around without attracting suspicion or attention. I’m the loud distracting one, Ocellus is the one gathering information on the wolves’ movements throughout the city and Smolder is our backup plan.”

“Yeah, I set fire to things. Big distraction that.” Smolder said coolly while flicking her ribbon about playfully. “Thanks for teaching me how to use this thing Viper, it came in handy earlier today.”

“No problem Smolder, so Pom is in a dangerous position and you can’t tell us anything about it?” We all nodded when Viper asked that. “So what do you know about what’s going on here?”

We dumped ‘practically’ all the information we had onto the kung fu masters to see what they could make of the situation.

“Killing off the pandas…” Tigress muttered while glancing at Po with a sense of sadness. “Shen needs to be taken down and hard.”

“We wouldn’t recommend attacking him at the ‘Tower of the Sacred Flame’ and it’ll be even worse if you try to invade the fireworks factory. Both places are heavily guarded and their cannons are placed in various locations to fire on any intruders, you won’t be able to take them all out at once before they can fire them. The streets in general are mostly safe if you avoid earning the ire of the wolf pack.” My explanation of cannons was simple, imagine a weaponized firework that fired metal spheres of death. Po thought it was kind of cool, given this is cutting edge technology for this world. “Shen even said that this will be the end of kung fu as he took down Thundering Rhino with one shot, most of you are not nearly as large or tough as he… was.”

“Wait, you mentioned that you knew where Storming Ox and Croc were?” It was Monkey that brought it up.

“Yes, they are currently in the Gongmen City’s prison.” Smolder said flatly and grumpily, she crossed her arms and looked quite adorable as she flicked her ribbon off to the side. “For all the good knowing that will do for you.”

“Smolder is upset because they aren’t being guarded and they put themselves in there in the first place.” That made the six warriors stare at us wide eyed. “They lost their fighting spirits entirely when Thundering Rhino went down. If you could talk them into helping out, then we could probably come up some better options than what we’ve been doing.”

“Which is not being much or even enough, even if we be sabotaging Shen’s supplies right and left.” Mostly to keep those cannons from having a stockpile of ammunition Shanty, we were successful in that endeavor at the very least when we hit their storage two days ago. Wet powder doesn’t work very well and we were quite knowledgeable about how cannons thanks to Pinkie Pie, never thought those lessons would be used to disable a tyrants efforts in hurting people. “We just sunk some of Shen’s boats at least, he be needing time and resources to get those weapons out of the water and working again. That be the best we did so far with how many wolves he be having on them.”

“Sounds like you’re having a rough time here.” Mumbled a saddened Viper, I could see a bit of Fluttershy in her in this moment.

“Yeah, but we can do something about it, right guys?” Po’s optimism was nice because it was contagious, even to me.

“Provided you can keep yourself focused Po, we’ll head to the prison and will be talking to Storming Ox and Croc.” Tigress obviously wanted to give them a piece of her mind, she considered me for a moment while looking to be thinking about something. “Do you have any plans for what to do next?”

“That depends on you guys, if you can’t get Ox or Croc to help then we’ll have some idea as to what we can do to stop Shen’s plans of trying to conquer the surrounding regions with what we have to work with.” I rubbed the back of my head, I felt the scratches on my hoof from when a cannonball landed near me. “We might want to get Pom’s advice on our plans of what to do as well, because she’s been given us plenty of helpful tips for how to get around the wolf pack safely. Not that I ever needed tips on how to infiltrate a place safely… we will have to wait until tomorrow before I can get back to you about what she has to say about all of this.”

“Okay, once we are done with trying to convince the other kung fu warriors to help, how can we find you?” Monkey asked as he looked about the place while popping a dumpling in his mouth.

“Oh that’s easy, we work here. Mr. Walu Nigi is a very nice person, like many people in this city really, he doesn’t like the exiled and disowned heir of the peacocks making his return in such a volatile manner.” Speaking of working here in the Dim Sum restaurant, I leaned out of the booth and waved to Walu. He made a shooing motion while nodding in understanding. “We were about to go to work anyway.”

“They’ll have a job so long as none of the wolf mercenaries come sniffing around, if that happens they will have to hide.” Walu stated as he came walking back to our personal booth, the pika bowed to the warriors and served some tea. “Welcome to Gongmen City. I am sorry that we, the people, can’t welcome you more openly in these dire times. We have heard many a great tale about the Dragon Warrior and the Furious Five, we should not be relying on children to solve our problems.”

As hurtful as that sounded, Smolder, Shanty and I were still teenagers and Walu had a fair point that we were too young to be running a rebellion, no matter how successful it currently was in getting the people of the city organized to help out where they could. He was correct to think that this was well above what we should be doing.

Still… I wanted to be a good person. So I wasn’t going to sit idle and watch while Shanty and Smolder do all the work when I could help by infiltrating the wolves while looking like one of their own. Stealing their clothing for a disguise wasn’t too hard to do and it wasn’t like I needed to do much fighting.

“Don’t worry about, we’re going to try to do our best to help everyone, right guys?” Po was still enthusiastic, but there was an underlying tension and sadness. He turned and headed towards the entrance. “Come on, let’s go!”

Po probably lost some family when Shen tried to purge the pandas, goodness knows why Shen didn’t go after skunks or any other animals that are black and white too like tapirs and badgers. He just went after specifically pandas over some prophecy, mind you the pandas in question were all mostly just farmers and relatively harmless to everyone in every way except their general large sizes.

I mean Shen seriously acted on a prophecy and made it absolutely self-fulfilling by acting on it. At least a good number of pandas managed to escape, but we have no real idea as to where they went. Shen at least thought he wouldn’t have any problems from them, only now Po was in the city and he was really gifted at kung fu.

“If you girls want to sit today out, I’m okay with that.” Walu stated in a soft manner.

“No, we’ll work. We need something to get our minds off of what we’ve been doing.” Dim Sum houses like this were a dime a dozen, it’s really easy to ceremonial produce tea and snacks for our guests dining experiences while they talked business.

“Yeah, we not be lazy.” To think it was Shanty who got us these jobs, she learned a lot about how to find and get jobs from Pom.

Shanty also learned a few interesting things from doing said jobs in trying to discern fighting moves from even the simplest of actions such as pouring tea, we didn’t think Shanty was serious about that. Only we later found out she was and the technique she created from that was ridiculous if awe inspiring in how effectively weird it was.

So compared to Smolder and I, Shanty was a genius savant when it came to fighting, which includes creating and improving on her own ‘Cut-lash’ style. Those mostly random street fights with the wolves were mostly her testing her new moves out, other times it was to help people who were being oppressed by the wolves.

Even with as good at fighting as she was getting, Shanty still had stamina problems when it came to her unique ability to climb any surface like a spider. She was getting better about pacing herself, but it still sapped energy immensely to keep it up for too long.

As I picked up a tray and started to serve tables their snacks and tea, I tried to think of several plans we could use to take down Shen. We needed options, Pom obviously wasn’t going to be a part of them.

I didn’t want to attack the ‘Tower of the Sacred Flame’, mostly because Shen would destroy it without a second thought with all the kung fu warriors inside. The fireworks factory was also a no go, because Shen was keeping both places under heavy guard.

If we could lure out Shen, then maybe that would help. So far he’s been keen on getting his fleet together so he can go off on a conquering spree and hurt lots of people. We put a kibosh on that really quick, but even if we continue hitting his ships and supplies he’ll still dig in and it would be hard to bring to justice when he has so many mercenaries backing him.

A distraction attack on the supplies and ships, invade the fireworks factory and disable Shen’s ability to create any more cannons. Shen would show up or be at the factory if it’s in danger of being wrecked.

I wouldn’t put it past him to try and turn on the citizens of the city if Shen can’t get his way, but he thankfully hasn’t done much so far aside from instill fear in them and let his men perform a few beatings to prove a point.

“Do you suppose Shen is the black and white warrior the prophecy was talking about?” Blinking at Smolder speaking up, I sent a curious gaze. “I mean aside from the red spots, he could be consider close to fitting the description so he’d eventually end up defeating himself. Prophecies sometimes do that, I mean Nightmare Moon escaping was prophesized and it happened in the way the book said it would.”

“Shen has too much red in his appearance, but it’s not like it’s a bad idea that he’ll end up defeating himself.” I could only hope that Shen would, he had all the card to play and he was a brilliant person for someone who I would term as more evil than Chrysalis. “I think the only reason Shen went after the pandas was because they are large and he equated size to danger. The pandas were just peaceful farmers, if anything Shen should have gone after badgers, skunks or various other aggressive beings that might be just as dangerous if they were to become warriors. Even Cranes could come in black and white, yet he targets the closest largest thing based on proximity? It’s little wonder that I believe the prophecy with some many possibilities for warriors that can absolutely fit the description.”

“Can we not talk be talking about skunks?” Shanty really liked Skunk from the previous world, he helped her learn a lot in a short amount of time. She still wasn’t over her crush yet and they had really clicked as friends.

We had options, but could we really do anything without someone being hurt or dying? Twilight made all this friendship stuff seem so easy, it’s really quite a lot of work and effort to build bonds as strong as ours. I'll even admit that Pom is my friend to her face... eventually.

I'm the one making the plans and am under a lot of pressure... is this what Pom feels like all the time?

Author's Note

Gongmen will not end the same way it should, mostly because a train derailed at some point with Pom and the three she's of taking care of getting involved.

I wonder how often people put their suffering into written form, it's a curious thing to read something and figure out a persons state of mind when writing it.

I'm trying to focus more on Ocellus, Smolder and Shanty interacting. I'm also going to focus on Yona, Silverstream, Gallus and Sandbar at some point.

I would like to point out that the Kung Fu Panda movies are not exactly kid friendly all the time.

27. Smolder simplifies.

-Equestria, School of Friendship, Yona-

Yona is a great yak, but Yona is not great enough to ignore my friends being missing from my life. It is like there big gaping hole in Yona's heart.

Smolder was always helping Yona and speaks so plainly that Yona can’t misunderstand her, she was tough like yak.

Ocellus also helped a lot with history homework and had a bright friendly smile for everyone. She tries to be logical, but she’s just as emotional as everyone else.

“Do you think Ocellus and Smolder are alright?” Yona asked of Sandbar, he was always so calm and collected.

Sandbar was a little dense, but Yona liked him anyway and he never got upset no matter how many times Yona asked him this question.

“I’m sure they’re fine, how much danger could they really be getting into?” He flipped a page with a hoof and kept studying the book. “Besides, Smolder is really tough and Ocellus can shapeshift to survive anywhere. If they can’t find them, then they’ll try to come back to us and I’m sure they’ll make it somehow. Also there’s the fact that they have each other.”

“Hey guys, the teachers are back, they look like they’ve been put through a wringer.” The blue griffon Gallus popped in to say before immediately leaving.

“Let’s go Sandbar!” Yona stated as Yona wanted to give our teachers a warm welcome back, even if they aren’t coming back with our missing friends.

We arrived at the entrance of the school to see Gallus. Yona began wondering where Silver Stream was, then Yona saw the sea pony pop her head out of the nearby water. She transformed back into a hippogriff as she climbed out of the moat and shook off the excess water.

“What’s going on… oh…” Silverstream turned to look at our slightly battered and bruised teachers, along with Twilight looking like the rest of them.

“Yona thought that alicorns healed more quickly.” Yona stated bluntly as Yona looked over Twilight.

“We do.” Twilight mumbled with an ice pack on her head. “My injuries should have healed by now, I think it’s the stress that’s preventing it. I also might have post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“What kind of amazing creature did you get into a fight with, it looks like you went several rounds with an ursa major or maybe even a tatzlwurm.” Gallus exclaimed while pointing out the injuries that were fairly obvious to us. “Oh and welcome back I guess.”

“Oh a monster didn’t do this to us.” Fluttershy was best teacher of yak and sweetest pegasus in existence, she was the least injured out of all of them. Even if her bruises were fairly visible, she is as tough as our other teachers. “We didn’t really understand what lambkin were like, even when we were warned they were a little… panicky. I never got trampled so hard in my life before, not that I’ve been trampled too many times before that. To think what happened to me was over a tiny grasshopper making a little music.”

“It was just an accident.” Applejack declared looking as bad as everyone else, so much so that even her hat was in a sling. “Well more like series of them that we tried to help with whether we caused them or not, I’m going to go take the rest of the day off… and tomorrow as well.”

Nodding to us, Applejack slowly sauntered off in the direction of Sweet Apple Acres with a slight limp.

“Yeah, Thorax wasn’t lying about the lambkin. It’s kind of funny in its own way.” Pinkie tried to laugh, but she instead winced in pain. “Ow, probably shouldn’t have used that whoopee cushion.”

“Yona thinks this needs more of an explanation.” Yona is knowing that lambkin aren’t intentionally violent, being incidentally violent by accident like yak was more than likely. Lambkin and yaks can be a little bit excitable.

“Yes, well… I never knew that some lambkin reacted to the color burgundy red in such a way.” Rarity mumbled as she trotted towards us and the school. “We all learned a lesson, not everything can be solved with friendship or the usual way we do things. I don’t think that Twilight will give up on changeling and lambkin relations though, come along Yona… I have some things to teach you about hiding injuries with makeup if you’re interested in helping me.”

“Of course Yona is interested in helping!” This sounds like something some female yaks wouldn’t mind, male yaks are likelier to wear their scars proudly. “Do you think Ocellus and Smolder are okay?”

“I’m sure they are quite fine and it’s okay to be worried about them Yona, but we can only hope for the best until they are found. At least they are better off being somewhere other than Tambelon from what Twilight told us about it.” Rarity shuddered slightly. Yona wanted to know more about Tambelon because Yona only know of it as a name and not the story behind it, Yona should look it up. “I’m sure they are okay, from what little Twilight saw the other side had breathable air and magic at least. Otherwise there would have been a dimensional pressure differential that could have torn our whole world apart or at least destroy an entire area. So of course the efforts in finding them requires the utmost of safety precautions, I don’t know how well the research is going, but at least we know that they didn’t end up in Sunset Shimmer’s dimension.”

“Gallus let me give you a bit of a life lesson, never… EVER… prank a lambkin!” Rainbow shouted out as we are both walking away, Yona also heard the thud of a body hitting the ground and decided to ignore it for the time being.

-Another realm, Oleander and Fred-

“Remind me again, just why exactly are these things called heartless?” Ollie said as she wielded Fred against numerous monsters successfully with a quick swings of his book shaped body.

The things she was fighting could be called shadow monsters, but there were a few key differences between actual shadow monsters and what these things were.

“Apparently this dimension runs on three part systematic symbolism of mind, body and soul.” Fred stated softly, then his book started to glow ominously as his head slowly peaked out of it. “SO LET’S JUST GET TO THE HEART OF THE MATTER OLLIE!”

Fred fully erupted from the book and swatted the monsters away from his Ollie with two wide sweeps of his claws, he was fully charged up and was given the go ahead to fully let loose.

For in the darkness, Fred was a god that would protect his dear squishy unicorn from those entirely unworthy of being in her presence.

-Walu’s Dim Sum, Smolder-

“Thank you for coming.” Nothing wrong with being nice and friendly, though some dragons might call me weak for it and at this point I was almost ready to stop caring about having a tough reputation. Some more people started to enter and I turned to the entrance. “Welcome to… oh, hey guys! Do you want some Dim Sum and tea with the news you brought? Po looks like he really needs a pick me up.”

Po looked fairly upset and I could guess why, the kung fu masters in the prison refused to come out… again.

“They wouldn’t leave the prison…” Po said while tapping his digits together. “Also we may have attracted some unwanted attention.”

“Po got into a fight with the Wolf Boss in the streets, going all the way across the city.” Tigress muttered while rubbing at her forehead. “Some unwanted attention is an understatement, now Shen will be aware that we’re here and far more alert.”

“Hey, that kind of thing could have happened to any of us.” It seemed Po was a bit miffed, I didn’t need to be Ocellus to see where this was going.

“You actually seem to have a rather large grudge against him Po.” After pointing that out with her tail, Viper turned to me with a bright smile. “Table for six please.”

“Right away, Ocellus prepare a table for six and I hope you have some ideas about what we are going to do next.” Since I hadn’t the foggiest, some days it was hard to keep a smile on my face with how distant we were from home.

It was likely going to take the rest of the month of healing for Pom to be capable of fighting in any capacity, even then she’d be entirely reluctant to get into one. That’s not to mention I don’t want to see her doing that shock-ram technique again, it messed her up pretty badly the first time and she was comatose and barely breathing for more than a week afterwards.

Shanty was getting really good at fighting, she was trying to fill a roll to make up for Pom being weak and was pushing herself a bit too hard when it came to fighting the wolves. Said wolves were always armed with a variety of weapons, wearing armor and were constantly stalking the streets for us. Those were the only mercenaries that Shanty had a decent reputation against, all of Shen’s other minor mercenaries were a bit too dangerous for her.

It doesn’t help that every time Ocellus transforms she starts smelling faintly of brimstone, apparently changelings have problems hiding that smell at the best of times and it’s a particular smell that I know other dragons would really like. I would know, I love that tiny smell of home and the reminder that we’ll have a hard time finding our way back. It’s why changelings rarely go after ponies or other people with notable pets, the pets always detected when a changeling tried to replace their owner back when Changelings were still doing their foal-napping thing.

Once the table was prepped we waited for snacks orders, business was booming and we weren’t doing anything as we’ve already served every other table and the only thing that needed to be done is pour some more tea for the guests.

Walu really didn’t really need our help at the moment, Ocellus took their order and Walu would set about preparing it and the tea.

“So we’re not getting help from them and I don’t know if a few good jokes can cheer them up after what they said happened to Thundering Rhino.” Monkey was wilting a bit as he took his seat. “Those weapons are really bad news aren’t they?”

“That’s an understatement, none of you are likely to survive a direct hit from one. So I suggest diving to the side or evading as quickly as possible.” Even I wouldn’t want to be hit by something moving that fast. While I’m quite sure the cannons Shen makes wouldn’t break through my scales, I can’t say I’m entirely sure my insides would be feeling so pleasant after a direct hit. “Of course they’ll have plenty of problems even hitting smaller targets like Viper and Mantis.”

“They’ll also have a hard time hitting Crane while flying too, swiftly moving targets are harder to hit with any accuracy. They have plenty of weaknesses when it comes to hitting small targets.” Ocellus tried not to look at Po as she joined me in waiting at the table for their snacks. “I take it they said no and stayed in the prison?”

“Yes.” Po said while slumping on the table with his head propped up in his right paw.

“That was kind of what we expected to happen.” Muttered Ocellus, and I just nodded along with it.

“So what’s the plan? If you don’t have one, then we’ll just have to come up with our own.” Tigress looked about at the kung fu warriors at the table looking a bit quiet. “With how terrified Storming Ox and Croc were, we’re coming to you three since you know the most about those weapons and have information on Shen’s movements throughout the city. How do we deal with the weapons aside from avoiding them?”

“Well, for one thing, get the black powder the cannons use wet and they won’t be able to fire. We already caused them to have to make more of the stuff by destroying a good bit of their black powder supplies.” Yeah that was some of our best work so far Ocellus, also don’t forget the sinking of their boats stalling their departure from the city to go around conquering other places. Shen is mad if he thinks he can do that with a limited number of long range munitions. “Aside from that, the weapons are slow and cumbersome to load and aim. Take out the crews that work the cannons and you won’t have to worry about them. They’ve only taught a number of wolves how to do it since they make up a majority of Shen’s forces, take enough of them out and they won’t have anyone to use the cannons aside from Shen himself. As far as things go, the cannons are useful at long ranges. Close up they are more of a liability.”

“They are better at destroying buildings and sieging places, but they don’t make up for fighting against people up close and personal. His mercenary army is really quite organized given how long they've worked for him, but they aren’t exactly the best when someone like Shanty can handle some of the smaller mercenaries. Shanty can’t handle the gorillas or larger mercenaries though.” I motioned for Shanty to come over here, she did so after she finished pouring some tea. “However, Shen is smart enough to have several teams of mercenaries around the cannons. His people will see us coming long before we can get to them, aside from Crane, Ocellus or me. The best way to destroy a lit cannon is to point it downwards before it fires, it will basically destroys itself.”

“That be one way of doing it.” Shanty stated as she looked at the Dim Sum being delivered with begging eyes. “Shen is being very smart, we not be getting much by him easily.”

Tigress sighed loudly and tossed Shanty a fruit dumpling. Our goat gave a happy noise as she started to chew on it after catching it in her mouth. Tigress smiled a bit before turning back to our conversation with a serious face.

“So take out the cannon crews or make the cannons destroy themselves, the only problem is reaching them with so many mercenaries in the way.” Po scratched at his head while looking to the ceiling. “So where are we attacking exactly?”

“It’s pointless to go after the fireworks factory. If we destroy that, then the good legacy of the peacocks goes away. If we attack the Tower of the Sacred Flame, Shen will likely topple the whole thing as he doesn’t care about his ancestral home. The best idea we have is to attack the tower.” Ocellus held up a hoof forestalling any commentary. "The fireworks factory can still be used by the people of Gongmen City. The tower is far less important if it's destroyed, without it Shen can’t use it as his local base of operations. I need to run this by Pom first if we are to get involved personally, so far we’ve been keeping ourselves safe by sticking to doing small things, sticking together and not getting caught by the many small patrols throughout the city. We’re in a portion of the city that, while they aren’t ignoring it, they aren’t nosing around too much.”

“What Ocellus means to say is that we’re trying not to draw attention to our hiding spots and this is the best one that we have as it is secluded and well away from the prying eyes of the mercenary patrols. Enough so that we can work a job openly with only a little worry about the wolves coming in.” Though I’m quite certain they wanted to hunt us down quite badly after all the problems we’ve been causing them. “We need Pom’s opinion on the situation before we can do anything, because she might have some helpful knowledge and we have to keep her in the loop of what’s going on.”

“I be all for hearing how Pom be doing.” Shanty raised her left hoof and waved it draw attention to herself. “Also I be a bit scared of having to face those wolves again, they almost be catching me this time when we sunk their ships. Thankfully only three of them managed to keep track of me.”

I blinked, an idea just occurred to me.

“If you want to make things go far simpler, then have Crane scout out the tower first and draw a map of where all the cannons are currently set up. Moving them around isn’t easy since they weigh so much, it’s pretty much a guarantee that those weapons will all be out in the open.” There was one thing most people tended to do, they overthink things and I was going with the simple strategy of keeping it stupidly simple. “You can split up and take them all out as quickly and as quietly as possible tomorrow night. We kind of overlooked something with mentioning weaknesses of the weapons, there’s the fact that they will have little to no ability to aim those cannons accurately at night unless an area is completely lit up. So take out as many lights as you can while doing that and they definitely won’t want to fire blindly into the dark for fear of hitting their own people. All that would be left once the cannons are down would be the mercenaries, which you can deal with since you apparently fended them off pretty well when they were invading the Artisan District in The Valley of Peace from what we heard. You can catch Shen off guard and he’ll try to flee, if we can capture him and prevent him from running off to the fireworks factory then everything will basically stop from there.”

“That’s a good plan Smolder, it’s really quite simple too.” Ocellus clapped her hooves together with a happy grin. “That takes away most of the problem in dealing with the cannons, so can you wait until tomorrow night? I need to deliver our idea for the attack on Shen’s stronghold to Pom. If she says we can go, then we’ll join in on the raid.”

“We can do that.” Mantis was standing on the table and in the middle of ripping a chunk off a dumpling for himself. “It’s a fairly sound plan. Do you know how Shen fights?”

“Blades or a lance, he also has a lot of knives under his robes.” I shivered at the one time he caught a glimpse of us. “He’s really accurate with throwing those things, could hit a fly midflight in complete darkness.”

“We’ll be careful, Shen can’t be that dangerous right?” Po was trying to be reassuring as he stuffed a dumpling in his mouth, but I wasn’t so sure that success was a guarantee.

-The next day, Pom-

I woke up with a gasp and took a deep breath, sitting up on the cotton bedding roll and looking about the room in a panic. I eventually calmed down when I saw that there was only one other person in the room.

“More nightmares?” A deep, if weak, voice rumbled.

Looking to my right from my sleeping spot, I saw that Thundering Rhino had managed to sit up.

“You shouldn’t be sitting up Mr. Rhino, your injuries still haven’t healed!” I said as I slowly got standing and made my way over to him.

“Are yours… any better?” Freezing as Thundering Rhino looked to me solemnly, I winced loudly. “Thought so… your movements are still too weak… to have completely recovered from your ordeals. Now about those nightmares…”

“I was dreaming that my body gave out on me and my heart exploded in my chest from using that technique I told you about. The dream continued on into the aftermath of what happened to my friends… it wasn’t pretty…” I sat down next to Thundering Rhino while looking at his bandages. “Do you need me to change them out?”

“Yes…” He rumbled a bit more weakly while grunting.

I went to go grab some fresh bandages, water, some healing ointment and a few other odds and ends.

We should be hearing news about what caused that fire in the river. My girls were stalling Shen pretty fiercely, but they couldn’t do it forever and they weren’t supposed to be fighting mercenaries. I really hoped Ocellus doesn’t bring me bad news and that she would even come at all would be a good sign that things were mostly okay.

“This is going to sting…” I said as I started removing the bandages, Thundering Rhino’s wounds from the direct cannon hit were healing pretty well. He may have lost his hammer protecting himself, but he didn’t lose his life… and he won’t if I can help it.

The only response I got was a grunt and a nod of acknowledgment as I unwrapped the bandages from his chest. Thundering Rhino was really tough, but he was almost killed taking a cannon head on. Had we not been there… I don’t want to think about that or the fact the city would be losing a benevolent if slightly grumpy leader.

I looked at the grisly wound in his chest, it was hard to look at without feeling sympathy for him. Having already made some boiling hot water, I dip the rag into it and went over to him to start wiping his wound down. He hissed and I stopped for a moment.

“Do not… worry about me.” How could I not worry when he was hurting? It still had to be done if he was to get any better. “Keep going…”

I continued cleaning the wound with a light scrubbing, the rag had turned brownish red by the time I was done and I got a dryer bit of cloth to start drying the wound. Once the dry cloth was just as dirty, I grabbed a third cloth and applied the ointment to it and started to rub it into the wound while trying to ignore his pained noises.

At least his wounds were looking better. Better than when we had to pry bits of stone and cannonball out of his body after the initial injuries.

We had saved his life, but did he want to be saved was the question I was now wondering about.

“Can you lift your arms?” I asked, he silently shook his head. “Spread them out at least, I’ll try to accommodate you Mr. Rhino.”

“I will survive… for the people of Gongmen…” He managed to get his arms spread out and I started to wrap the bandages around his torso.

Halfway through our silent interaction of me covering his wounds, we both heard a knock at the door.

“Gongmen City delivery service, fresh Dim Sum and supplies for the happy couple.” Ocellus was here with the cover story.

“Come on in, I’m a bit busy.” I said as loudly as I could, I finished tying off Thundering Rhino’s bandages and heard the door sliding open.

I looked over to see the sight of a male rabbit wearing a green robe with a cart load of supplies behind him.

Looking about to see if there were any patrols on this particular street, Ocellus quickly transformed back to her default state and started levitating supplies into the domicile at a rapid pace. She even came inside to see Thunder Rhino.

The Furious Five and Po were here, they also had a good plan and were currently scouting the locations of the cannons for a raid tonight to hopefully capture Shen.

Author's Note

Thankfully this year is almost over... it's had a lot of lows and hopefully will end on a high note.

In other news, I'm still healthy... aside from a few sniffles due to the cold barometric pressure shift causing a few mild migraines.

28. Solid Shanty.

-Streets of Gongmen, evening, Shanty-

The sun be setting soon and we be needing to reach the Tower of the Sacred Flame to help out. We were just being held up a bit…

I sat in the dark with my eye pressed up against the hole with my ears flicking to hear if they were still outside.

“Shen’s worried about the panda that fought the boss on equal footing.” The wolf patrol finally started walking away. “That’s why the patrols have increased you ingrates and Lord Shen is…”

“They… be gone.” We poked our heads out of the box and climbed out once we were sure things were completely clear.

“This is going to be a bit more difficult than we thought.” Ocellus said with a slight whine in her voice and she was being a bit fearful of the patrols.

“Are you sure that Pom be saying this was okay?” I needed to ask because this be a very dangerous plan to us.

Po and the Furious Five be wanting to help the people of Gongmen, they also be honor bound to do it for the sake of kung fu. We be having less of a stake in all this.

“Yes, but Pom wants us to stay together, to not get caught and to pull out while letting the others handle things if things get too dangerous. She had a list of things defining too dangerous that I agree with written on the back of this copy of the cannon locations.” Yes, all that be making sense Ocellus and that is being very much like Pom. “We’ll be fine Shanty, just… just don’t leave our sight for anything and we’ll watch each other’s backs like we’ve been doing.”

Since Po’s fought with the Wolf Boss throughout the city of Gongmen, Shen is being quite paranoid that a panda who can fight is after him.

“I be wondering something…” This has been bothering me quite a bit. “Are we still speaking the same language we were back in our world?”

“Actually there’s a thing about dimensional barriers and language barriers being intertwined. It’s an unsupported magic theory that no matter where you travel to, you are likely to end up in a dimension where the language you speak is understandable by everyone.” Ocellus tapped her chin with her left hoof. “We haven’t had any problems with it thus far.”

“So it’s obviously nothing to worry about until it becomes a problem, we can understand the people here perfectly and we really shouldn’t be thinking about it too hard. Aside from a few cultural problems that might rise up, like unintentional insults to some people’s grandmothers.” Smolder glanced at Ocellus who wince. “So do you really think things will work out alright once we get started Ocellus?”

“We told the others what to do to disable or destroy the cannons, we should be good to go.” Ocellus then turned to keep trotting forwards as we followed along down the street wary of the patrols we were slipping by.

I be noticing someone walking towards us with a weak frown and the streets were mostly empty this evening because of all the wolves patrolling them. The patrols be getting heavier the closer to the tower we got.

“Hello there, might I have a moment of your time?” She seemed like a kindly old goat as she be glancing us over.

“Sure, but make it quick, we have somewhere we need to be lady.” Though Smolder is being rude, we be wanting to help with those cannons. We certainly understood them and their danger better than Po and the Furious Five did.

“Smolder! Sorry about her, she doesn’t have very many elders she respects from her own culture.” Ocellus’s ears wilted a bit as she bowed lightly. “So, what did you need ma’am? It isn’t safe to be on the streets at the moment if you hadn’t noticed.”

“I’ll be fine, no need to worry about this old goat. I’m simply known as The Soothsayer, the one who predicted Shen’s fall to a black and white warrior.” The Soothsayer suddenly had our attentions, we be hearing a lot about the prophecy and why Shen went after the pandas from the local citizens. “I’ve a warning for the three of you.”

“Can I be asking something first.” It be bothering me. “Why did Shen choose to go after the pandas, they are not being the only black and white creatures around.”

“It was partially my fault the pandas were attacked by the young lord I used to be a nanny to. It’s an understatement to say that Shen didn’t take my prediction very well, but it was him who chose to target the pandas. They were quiet, unassuming and large in both number and size, so Shen’s paranoia chose them as the major target where other more volatile black and white beings flew underneath his gaze as being a major threat to his inevitable rule before his parents sadly disowned him. If only he knew that he cause the future he was trying to prevent…” The Soothsayer closed her eyes, shook her head and exhaled softly. “With all the extraordinary insights I have into the future, I can’t really do much to change what will happen and it’s considered a blessing to have a second sight. Shen will perish either by his own wing or by the paw of the panda that I spoke with before coming here to meet you, he needed some insight to find balance within himself. At least the future is brighter than what will soon happen, what a horrible night to have a curse.”

“So what was the warning you wanted to tell us about?” Ocellus asked while fidgeting with her hooves shyly. “We’re kind of in hurry.”

“It is sad that Shen didn’t’ change his ways when I warned him to do so and his demise is set in stone. The how is still yet to be determined.” The old goat lady now be grinning and sighing with relief, she seemed to be looking beyond us despite her eyes staring directly at us. “When a powerful flame bursts in the sky, this will mark the ancestral home of the peacocks fall. For all of you to stay safe from that moment forward, you must merely do nothing at all. Not a move, just stay standing, laying or otherwise in the spots you happen to be in the end, you may land if you are flying, but only do so facing the wind.”

“Uh… okay… so if we see something explode high in the sky, we should try to stay still?” Smolder rubbed her head and idly flicked her combat ribbon back and forth a bit with her right claw.

“Exactly, also be wary of your caretaker’s health… for you and her have many fights ahead in the future that she won’t survive without all of you being there to support her. There are so many wondrous things you’ll see, most of them I don’t understand aside from the obvious great evils.” With that the old goat bowed her head to us. “I have taken up as much of your time as I am willing so things do not change for the worse, good luck to you and remember my words well. It might actually save her life…”

The Soothsayer started to walk off tapping her cane against the street as she did, she didn’t seem to be afraid of being seen by the patrols like we were.

“Did she just be saying that Pom might die?” My heart be squeezing in my chest at the thought.

“Hey, Pom is quite tough Shanty, she survived saving you and temporarily pushing back Tai Lung. I’m more worried about the fact that The Soothsayer implied that we’re going to cross worlds more dangerous than this one before we get close to being home again.” Not that it could be held against Smolder, much less Ocellus, but I still not be having a place to return to. “I’m really missing Gallus’s sarcastic remarks, Sandbars brotherly feels, Yona’s bluntness and of course Silver Stream being bubbly about every single thing.”

They be having families and friends, what do I be having?

…

I be having some friends that really care about me, I’m learning a lot about how to survive and at least I’m not going hungry. So I be having little room to complain.

-A few minutes later, Ocellus-

We carefully made our approach towards the outer wall around the Tower of the Sacred Flame at one edge of the city. There were a lot of wolves around the large gated entrance. There were four watch towers coming off the main wall at the corners, the only way in on foot was through the large gate house protecting the entrance.

Climbing up to a nearby roof to get a better vantage point we could see inside the wall were some buildings being used as barracks for the mercenaries that used to be for the servants of the peacocks, guests quarters and food preparation areas. There were also some gardens to the left of the entrance and trees all around the area to hide in.

A small river flowed around all these buildings and the main central structure, a large spiky tower sitting in the middle of the area. We were responsible for a few of the cannons near the entrance on the wall. If we can’t get to them, then either problems may occur or the others will deal with them.

It was a rather daunting fortress for nine people to attack.

“Okay, we’ll make our approach to that ninety degree inward angled walls to the right of the gate house, we can easily fly up that corner while carrying Shanty without being seen.” I pointed it out with my right hoof and they nodded. “Now I’ll go over the plan one last time. Po, Tigress and Monkey will attack the gate directly, we’ll be in position to open the gates for them if they have problems doing it themselves. Crane will take down the watch towers, but first he’ll drop off Viper and Mantis to...”

-Ten minutes later, Shanty-

Getting close to the wall surrounding the Sacred Flame tower was harder than finding an all you can eat buffet that would let me in again. Well…. after the first time that is.

I ducked behind a buildings corner as I saw a wolf look my way holding his torch out and scrutinizing the area, he eventually turned back to looking forward while watching the area out of the corner of his eyes.

Once he stopped doing that, I be quickly crossing the road and diving into a bush. I stayed still and the guard didn’t move, he thankfully hadn’t noticed me.

Ocellus and Smolder already be in position to carry me up to the top of the wall from the base of it.

I be looking up at the watch tower right of the entrance nobody peeking out, I looked back towards the guard and crept forward from the bush.

There was a shape moving against the darkened sky, it looked like Crane be taking out the tower nearest to us right now.

Thankfully all the wolves, while alert, had gazes that be focused mostly outwards and not upwards. The shadow silently swooped into the tower.

“There sure are a lot of them… remind me, how many mercenaries are we expecting to see again?” Ocellus whispered as her eyes darted around and her body shivered as I quickly reached them.

“Stop worrying about that Ozzy and help me lift Shanty up onto the wall, we need to get started before things can really kick off.” With that said Smolder wrapped her arms around my chest and she started trying to lift me, Ocellus joined by wrapping her hooves around my waist. “Have you ever thought about going on a diet Shanty? You weigh for more than you look like you do.”

“Yes, a seeing food diet.” I glanced around as my hooves left the ground and we stayed close to the corner in between the two walls, hopefully nobody be looking this way from above as we slowly rose. “I see the food, it soon be in my stomach.”

“Quaint.” Ocellus muttered as she seemed to struggle with flapping her wings faster.

“I be fearing that you will drop me…” I not be afraid of heights, but that is usually being because my hooves were attached to something.

“We’re not going to drop you Shanty, now quiet and don’t squirm.” Smolder looked up and frowned, we neared the top of the wall when we heard voices.

Smolder got us high enough to see the top of the wall and several guards we came up behind. I not be knowing what they were discussing, but I be glad we weren’t in front of them as they moved towards the gatehouse.

I was dropped on to the path behind them, followed by Smolder landing next to me and Ocellus behind us. Smolder be pulled the combat ribbon from her robe and Ocellus turned to look along the wall behind us.

In front of us were two guards walking away from us.

“This’ll be easy.” smolder whispered, I nodded and we started to move forward after the guard carefully. Ocellus followed us slowly while sending glances behind us.

“I be getting the left one.” I stated before I prepared to dart forward, Smolder nodded and twirled the ribbon above her head in a tight circle.

We continued our approach slowly, Smolder made the first move by whipped out the ribbon to wrap it around the right wolf’s neck. With a sudden hard downwards yank, the wolf’s head was smashed against the ground and he bounced slightly.

The other wolf started turning in shock and was about to yell something while bringing their blade about, but he be too slow. I already be leaping at him to thrust both my hind legs into the top of his skull.

The sickening sound of flesh being harshly smashed and bones cracking rung in my ears as the wolf’s head snapped to the left. He dropped his blade with a clatter on the ground and toppled over as I tumbled forward into a standing position.

I quickly be checking if they be breathing to be sure they were unconscious, mine wasn’t bleeding too badly from the blow and should be fine.

“Some of the cannons should be up ahead in the gatehouse.” Ocellus made us jump, she was levitating the two torches the guards had been holding and the map she was levitating was swiftly rolled up and put it away in her carapace.

“What do we do about them?” Smolder tilted her head at the two unconscious guards.

“They’ll wake up eventually, but they aren’t currently a problem at the moment.” Ocellus continued to stare at the burning torches and began slowly levitating them closer.

“Ocellus, bad cuddle bug, focus.” Hissed Smolder softly as she slapped Ocellus lightly.

Ocellus blushed and rubbed at the back of her head.

“Sorry Smolder…” Ocellus put out both the torches collected their weapons in her magic and dropping everything off the side of the wall into the grass below. We started to carefully move forward in the dark towards the gatehouse after that odd interaction. “You’re getting really good with that ribbon.”

“Thanks, been getting plenty of practice in lately.” Smolder held the ribbon at the ready as we continued forward along the wall at a slow pace. “It’s cute, fun and functional in a fight, also Viper is a pretty good teacher for having no limbs other than her tail.”

We be quietly coming up to the lit pyre outside the middle floor of the gatehouse, we saw four wolves idling around inside the entryway. They were far enough apart to just be a problem, two were watching the direction of the gate’s entrance and the other two were watching the room itself.

I not be seeing cannons here, but I be seeing stairs going up to where they likely were.

Peeking through the entryway at the four I pulled my head back before they could notice me and looked to the other two staying near the pyre, Smolder was keeping an eye on Ocellus around the glowing flames.

The guards on the left were watching the gates entrance below at the railing, the other guards were at the back to our right watching the middle of the room and sometimes the entrances including the stairs.

“How we be handling this?” Any noise and we’d have to take them out quickly or risk attracting more guards from the floor above and the guards at the gate below us, we were not able to fight a group larger than five without a lot of trouble.

“Ocellus, can you get them all with a single spell?” As she asked this Smolder was hovering above the doorways entrance and Ocellus moved to be the opposite of me.

“They’d have to group up first, but yes, I can do it.” Ocellus seemed to be nervous, she was not okay with violence and neither were we. We were only knocking them out, they would try to kill us. “How are we going to do that though? We draw attention to ourselves and they’ll call more people in to deal with us and we don’t want to make trouble for Po and the others.”

“Speaking of trouble, something is up.” Smolder saw the two guards near the railing overlooking the gate point at something. “Looks like Po, Tigress and Monkey are starting their attack, Ocellus you and Shanty get the two at the back I’ll try to get both the ones in the front. We need to rush them.”

I look to Ocellus, she nodded. I darted through the doorway and target the one closest to my right, the farther one saw me and started to move forward only to duck a blast of magic from Ocellus.

I couldn’t go for a flying buck as the wolf be ready for me with that club, I did not want to be a baseball. So I chose to instead go for a dish dive.

Charging right for him I dodged back and away from his swung and then dove for his ankles with both my front hooves. When I connected, he toppled right over me and I slid slightly on my belly to end up behind him where I planted my front hooves and scrunched up.

I launched a high blind buck behind me and connected with his back, making him yell in pain. I charged for the wall and leapt up to kick off it into a backflip and then brought all four of my hooves down on his skull.

I kicked off the wolves head, twisted in the air and landed in front of their toppled form to see the wolf Smolder wasn’t dealing with starting to panic when he saw me looking his way. Ocellus was busy dodging crossbow bolts and trying to hit the other wolf.

Once my gaze went back to the last wolf he was heading for the entrance opposite of the one we came from.

I charged straight for him head first, but him be getting outside and opening his mouth to yell before I could reach him.

Crane suddenly swooped in and kicked him in the chin to close his mouth, making him stumble back towards me and I rammed him in the back with my small horns knocking him to the ground face first where Crane kicked him in the face as he tried to get up.

“You girls okay?” Crane looked over his shoulder along the wall to make sure nobody was climbing any stairs or ladders behind him.

“Yes, but we be needing a little help.” “How many wolves are at the top of the gate house?”

“There’s actually two gorillas, three wolves and two snow leopards. I was a bit worried about you when I saw you go in and then chased that wolf out. Viper and Mantis are almost done with their cannons, but Tigress, Monkey and Po are having problems getting through the gate.” He be very fast with his information. “If I take care of the upper floor and the cannons up there can you get the gate open?”

“Yes, we can be doing that.” I heard a scuffle behind me and I turned to see Ocellus blasting the wolf Smolder had wrapped up in the face. He was down and the two turned to me and Crane looking ready.

“Right, meet me upstairs and only jump in when you think you…” The wall along the left side exploded making both of us snap our gazes in that direction. We saw the lithe figure of Viper’s silhouette pass by a brazier and leapt as a portion of the wall toppled. “Well if they didn’t know we were here before... you three stay safe and get the gate open!”

Crane swept his wings downwards and shot upwards in a spiral and then with a single flap he shot into the room above us talons first. I be turning to Ocellus and Smolder.

“Crane be helping us with these cannons, we be needing to get the gate below.” The two nodded and we made our way for the stairs down. We looked at the stairs going up as we heard fighting, but we still headed down the stairs cautiously.

We stopped halfway down the stairs when we saw that there were seven wolves milling around down there.

“What’s going on?” One of the wolves asked.

“We’re under attack dimwit!” Another wolf answered.

“Must be the panda and his friends messing with the patrols outside, they’ll never get through the gate.” A third wolf stated with confidence.

“One of the walls is crumbling. I think they might already be inside, we need to alert everyone in the barracks to surround the tower!” That be the smart one.

“Ocellus hit that one, he be too smart.” My left hoof started pointing to the wooden beam barring the door. “Smolder can you be breathing a fireball accurately to hit the beam?”

Smolder looked quite angry with me.

“I’m insulted that you even have to ask, of course I can do that. Any dragon worth their scales can master fire breathing by the age of six.” Smolder then narrowed her eyes on me. “What about you, what are you going to be doing?”

“I be doing this.” I leapt from the stairs while curling up and the world rapidly spun, this be making me quite dizzy.

I uncurled and lashed my rear hooves downwards into the chest of a surprised wolf, bounced off and be landing on my hooves.

Diving into a roll to my right as a blade came down right where I used to be. I now be surrounded by a pack of wolves that all be staring at me with glares. The one I hit the chest swiped his left paw to pick up his dropped blade.

I narrowed my eyes and swept my sight around myself while tightening the muscles in my flanks, I be distracting six of them enough that the smart one that started running was being taken down by Ocellus and dragged out of sight. Smolder already set the beam on fire and was clawing at it to break it faster.

The first of the wolves lunged forward with his club coming at my head from the left.

I ducked under it and dove forward to roll between his legs as a blade lashed out for my rear.

As I came out of the roll something slammed into my head and everything be going black.

I was on my side, blinking blearily, with a blade coming down towards my neck.

Author's Note

Well I'm feeling drained...

29. Now lacking cannon.

-Equus, Equestria, Ponyville, School of Friendship, Gallus-

Without Smolder around to hang out with, I had to hang out with Sandbar more. Nothing wrong with hanging out with Sandbar, he was a cool dude, but he was also quite dull at times.

I was just on my way back to my dorm after some studying with Silver Stream, it’s easy to say she has a few focus problems and I had a few of my own when around her. I heard something that drew my attention to a side room as I walked along the hallway.

“So they were detected trying to come back home just outside the Ever Free Forest?” Is Twilight talking about what I think she was talking about?

“Yes, while you were busy trying to forge something approaching good relations between changelings and lambkin, which is unlikely to happen even if you aren’t likely to give up on it. We got four recognizable magical signatures from the area that the portal temporarily appeared in, said signatures should be familiar as they were of a dragon, a changeling, a goat and a lambkin. It is safe to say they tried to return home.” Taking a sip of tea, Starlight Glimmer yawned and stretched out her hooves, looked like she really needed sleep. It doesn’t help she was participating in the research to bring the lost home while also running the school as the head mare. “On the bright side we know they’re all still alive, the downside is that we don’t know where they are currently or what they could be doing. We can’t even trace where our side of the portal suddenly went to, all the experts know is that it went somewhere other than Equestria. We however do have the dimensional coordinates for the place they were trying to come from before the portals dimensional exit point changed locations, they might have incidentally gone to another realm… again. We know that this portal is entirely unrelated to the Grogar Cultists at least.”

“So they were close to coming home by themselves, I wonder what caused the portal to change locations?” Twilight crossed her hooves over her chest and looked thoughtful as she levitated some steaming tea to her mouth for a sip.

“We could ask the people in the dimension they recently occupied about it, someone apparently had the magic knowhow to open a portal directly to Equestria for our lost and was willing to help them. Maybe they could tell us something?” Levitating a stack of papers out of her saddlebags, Starlight leafed through them looking for something until she pulled out a page and passed it to Twilight. “From what was determined of the magical residue via several experts, the being that made it was relatively powerful and was using the native magic of our lost to locate our dimension. The residue leads to the belief that there was a large amount of safeties built into the magical portal someone created. Something set those safeties off, which is why our lost didn’t come home and instead went somewhere else.”

“We have to be careful about this, stable dimensional travel is hard to come by and it would be all too easy to draw beings from another dimension into our world for good or ill by randomly opening portals to other places. Celestia warned me about what happened when she tampered with other worlds too much.” Tossing a cookie into her mouth and chewing slowly, Twilight closed her eyes and swallowed. “As for asking the people from wherever they recently were, it’s quite a risky proposition from what I just said. We’ll keep looking for the lost either way, but I need time to carefully consider if using their last dimensional coordinates won’t make things worse or cause more problems than they’d solve. We most certainly do not want Equestria to be invaded by other worlds.”

I had to go tell the others about this, any news was good news in my book. I quickly scampered off looking for one of my three remaining friends I’ve become a bit clingy to recently, our lost friends were definitely still trying.

I wonder what kind of situations Smolder and Ocellus were getting into and what they were seeing right now.

-Kung Fu realm, wall to the Tower of the Sacred Flame, Gatehouse, nighttime, Smolder-

I turned in time to see Shanty about to be killed, Ocellus was trying to bravely charge forward and I was too slow to react as I hastily spat a ball of fire in the direction of the group surrounding Shanty. My hastily spat fireball wasn’t even going to hit the right wolf.

The blade started to come down on our little goat’s neck and I looked away closing my eyes quickly.

A chirping noise was heard, the sound of flesh being torn and a clang was heard afterwards.

I peeked my right eye open and then blinked in astonishment. Shanty had been hit, but the wound wasn’t immediately lethal as there was a small gash on her chest. The blade had been redirected ever so slightly, so what was a lethal blow became a simple injury.

The wolf I set on fire was running for the nearest source of water only to be blasted in the face by Ocellus, putting out the flames and taking them down.

The wolves looked bewildered, but the wolf with the blade looked down and something small and green shot up into his chin at a blazing speed.

Said green thing was behind the wolf and grabbing him by his tail and, once he slowed down, I recognized that it was Mantis. He heaved the wolf by the tail into all the other wolves around Shanty knocking them away and down.

Mantis leapt at one of the wolves and with a few slashes of his pincers, he ripped a big chunk of cloth off of the wolf and was back with Shanty pressing the cloth against her chest.

If I were to count the time in my head, Mantis did all of this in approximately five seconds, he was proportionally faster than Rainbow Dash.

“Hey, sorry I’m late. I might be one of the fastest kung fu warriors in the world, but even that was a bit too close for comfort… I almost just lost a friend and fellow fighting enthusiast.” Mantis then turned back to the wolves starting to crowd him and Shanty. Tilting his head quickly elicited a sharp crack throughout the room that made the wolves back off. “Keep the pressure on it Shanty, I’ll deal with them.”

“He’s just a bug, he can’t possible take all of us!” One of the wolves bravely stated.

“Guys, listen to me when I tell you this. I am not in the area with all of you.” Mantis spread his legs and made some chirping noises as he brought his pincers up. “You’re all in the area with me!”

Like a bolt of green lightning, Mantis started to pinball off the heads of the wolves. They were so thoroughly distracted by his presence that they hadn’t notice me or Ocellus moving over to Shanty.

“Are you okay Shanty?” Ocellus asked while helping her sit up.

“I’m fine.” Shanty stated despite shivering. “Though I do not be liking how close that was. Can we please be hiding this from Pom?”

“You should be more careful Shanty and… well…” I tried say something only for a wolf to break away and try to attack us, while this was happening the gate bursts open.

Within a second Tigress was lunging to land in front of us and launched a paw strike that sent the wolf flying into the wall next to the opened gate. Considering the strength of the crunching noise, that guy wasn’t going to be getting up for a while.

Taking one glance through the busted gate at Shanty, Po narrowed his eyes on the wolves in the room.

“Hey, nobody hurts my friends and gets away with it!” Po rushed in and grabbed up two of the wolves by their chests and proceeded to roughly slam their heads together, he dropped them both on the floor unconscious. “Unless… you know… they’re faster than me of course.”

Mantis quickly slammed the remaining two wolves into submission over the course of the next ten seconds.

“Where’s Monkey?” Ocellus asked looking at the gate.

“He’s holding the area outside.” Looking about for anymore threats, Tigress eventually came over to Shanty. Despite her previous fury, she immediately became tender towards Shanty. “Are you okay Shanty? How much pain are you in? Do you need me to carry you to safety?”

That soft spot Tigress had for children was showing itself, she idly backhanded a wolf that was trying to sneak up on her and Mantis made sure they stayed down this time.

“I be fine, it being only a small wound.” Listening to the instruction she was given, Shanty continued to keep pressure on the ripped up cloth over her chest and was staying relatively calm. She still whined a bit at the pain. “It might become a cool scar at least. I be ready to get back to fighting soon.”

“I can appreciate that kind of attitude, but leave the fighting to the professionals unless we need backup okay? Mantis can you stay with them for a bit until they are ready to move again?” Tigress received a salute from Mantis, she quickly turned her head to Po moving the bodies off to one side of the room. “Come on, we need to keep going if we’re going to catch Shen tonight.”

Po and Tigress charged out the back of the Gatehouse down the road towards the tower between the two makeshift barracks that had wolves bearing torches pouring out of them. A gorilla fell from above behind them and groaned in pain, they weren’t getting up though.

“Viper went upstairs to help Crane, if you’re worried about him.” Mantis commented on the look Shanty was sending at the stairs. “Now slowly move some of the cloth out of the way so I can see the wound.”

Shanty relented with a pained sigh and slowly peeled the bloodied cloth away from the wound slightly.

“It’s not too bad, return to putting pressure on it for another minute or… hold on a second.” Mantis blurred away from us and started to go all around the knocked out wolves. Not only did he quickly tie them up with their own armor, he also brought several strips of cloth over to us. “You two wrap these strips of cloth around her chest securely and she'll be ready to get back into the fight if she takes it easy. I have a hard time tying things off, pincers and all that.”

Mantis looked off in the direction of the mercenary barracks and saw Po and Tigress fighting back to back against a swarm of armed wolves. They were doing perfectly fine by themselves fighting an entire army off without even coming close to being injured, Po had eager energy and Tigress was a volatile bundle of righteous anger.

“Mantis go see how Monkey is doing, I’ll handle Shanty's wound.” Mostly because I got the digits to tie the cloth off with. Not knocking Ocellus’s magic, but I don’t want her stressing herself out with doing small things. Mantis shot through the open gate and I turned to Ocellus as I moved behind Shanty with the strips of cloth. “As I was saying before, Pom is going to fuss over us no matter what happens tonight. She’ll be happy to see us all alive by the end of this, but next time… let me do the distracting and taking hits for the team while you get the door.”

I wasn’t exactly a knot tying expert, but Ocellus’s rather eclectic reading habits did have some fun things to learn. One of the things she took interest in was the Filly Scouts, because she was curious about how long the changelings have been learning wilderness survival the hard way… which says a lot about why Thorax has a one hundred percent approval rating among all changelings.

“That should do it.” Pulling the knot tightly, Shanty sighed and stood up. “So we don’t have anything better to do, what now?”

“The nights not over yet Smolder, we should really try to keep our injuries to a minimum.” Ocellus walked towards the open gate and looked outside and quickly ducked back as an unconscious wolf flew inside and landed on his… nope, her face. The female wolf mercenaries looked like the males at time. It wasn’t exactly hard to get a female mercenaries scent for Ocellus to sneak around with, otherwise they would have smelled the brimstone. “They’re doing fine, even with the added reinforcements coming in from all over the city. Viper and Mantis have gotten most of the cannons and the only cannons we should have to worry about would be in the tower itself.”

“You know, we came to help with the cannons, but so far we haven’t done much besides get the gate open and take down a few mercenaries.” At least we were staying relatively safe. “Not that I’m complaining that we don’t need to do any of the heavy lifting, Po and the others are definitely handling it.”

“Hey, don’t knock you contributions to helping us out. Without you we wouldn’t have known how to deal with the cannons in the first place. You guys were very informative and we aren’t exactly great intellects outside of fighting and our particular interests, that is to say you guys are really smart… Ocellus in particular.” Viper stated as she slithered down the steps with a friendly smile and somewhat covered in soot. “That you got the gate open for Po, Tigress and Monkey really helps too, Crane would have quite a lot of problems lifting Tigress or Po up onto the wall. Do you remember when he exhausted himself bring the rest of us back to the Jade Palace?”

“I couldn’t be forgetting if I tried, his loyalty is being amazing. I be wanting crew members like him someday.” It seems like that pirate dream was still there for Shanty. She tilted her head looking thoughtful. “Couldn’t you be using ladders though?”

“Yeah, but making ladders that big isn't easy. Getting them into position while going unnoticed would have been just as hard. Not to mention transporting even the one ladder that could be easily destroyed.” Okay Viper had a fair point about that. “Also, I was just being polite and didn’t want to say this, but finding a ladder that would support Po’s weight would have been... difficult. Tigress and Monkey might have been able to climb the wall. This was much easier and less energy intensive for us. Crane flying Mantis and me up to the rear while he took care of the towers as we got the cannons along the walls was a good plan.”

“How’s Crane doing?” I suddenly asked. “Aside from that, you and Mantis are easy for him to carry while flying and it was just logical thinking. It was mostly Ocellus’s idea anyway.”

“He’s wrapping up with the last of the thugs at the top of the gatehouse and we wanted your help with something, there’s something odd about the cannons there and I want you three to look at the ones up there to tell me what we’re missing.” When Viper said that we all sent each other curious looks. “Anyway, aside from Shanty’s injury, nothing seems to have gone too horribly wrong.”

“Show us the cannon then.” Viper nodded and motioned with her tail for us to follow her as she slithered for the stairs. We followed her up and through a room of unconscious wolves and up into the upper floor of the gatehouse and saw that Crane wasn’t here, just more unconscious forms scattered about.

We looked at the direction the cannons were pointed.

“I be seeing the problem already.” Shanty motioned to the direction of the tower. “Were all the cannons pointed at the tower?”

“Yes, they were apparently ready to take the tower down after we got inside, but that’s not what we were talking about.” Viper motioned us over to the one and pointed something out that had me confused.

“Ocellus… what do you make of this?” There was something off about the design of the cannon and I couldn’t put a claw on why.

“Hold on a second Smolder.” Ocellus lit her horn and looked into the opening of the cannon and blinked and then hummed a bit. “Well this opens up some disturbing implications.”

“Like what?” I said crossing my arms and tapping a foot against the stone flooring.

“Well this cannon was designed to explode into a ball of fire big enough to take out the upper portion of the gatehouse and possibly send little bits of metal flying everywhere. It would kill me and Shanty if we had tried to use it against the tower.” It didn’t need to be said that I could take an explosion to the face and basically exfoliate with it to keep my girlish charms fresh. “Shen might be mistaking us for assassins, the end of the barrel is designed to blocked itself off if fired. He might be expecting us to have snuck in to try and use his cannons against him. The other cannons were likely for the Po and the Furious Five.”

“While I wouldn’t say you couldn’t hurt a fly Ocellus, I really doubt you would want to injure anyone seriously unless there was a really good reason for it.” I know I’d claw up anyone who’d hurt my best friend and favorite changeling. “Still though, assassins, us, really? We're not firing it, nothing to worry about it.”

“What about the fact that Wolf Boss is currently leading an attack on the gate?” Viper drew our attentions and we looked outside to see Monkey and Mantis were a bit surrounded. “Shen was expecting a number of things from us it seems, we’re being ambushed from behind.”

“I be having an idea, Viper go downstairs and tell Mantis and Monkey to close the gate and to swiftly move away from it.” Shanty walked up to the cannon and looked to us. “Help me move this over there Smolder, can you be making a fuse Ocellus?”

She pointed a hoof to the open balcony and I could see where this was going. As did Viper who nodded in understanding before zipping off.

-Front of the gatehouse, Monkey-

I leapt up and swung kicked out to knock another wolf back, the Wolf Boss was bringing in reinforcements towards the gates and there were almost too many of them to handle.

That’s when Viper joined us by slapping a wolf across the nose.

“Guys, back up and close the gate, we need to put it between us and them!” Viper shouted, we listened to her as we were getting pretty tired.

Of course Mantis immediately zipped right by me, I made a flying leap and was at the gate helping to quickly close the large doors.

“The door bar is gone.” I pointed out.

“That doesn’t matter, close it, back away from the gate and cover your head!” Viper stated as something fell from above. There was a small bit of fire on a bit of cloth going into what I now recognize to be a cannon. I immediately closed the door and quickly started backing away from it while putting my paws on my head and closing my eyes.

I heard a loud noise even through my paws and was knocked from my feet.

Once I was up and the smoke cleared, we saw a gaping hole and a number of wolves laid out all over the place groaning and the cannon that was dropped from above was split open like a blooming flower.

“Who wants to check on the them?” Viper said pleasantly through the ringing in my ears.

“I’ll do it, I need a break.” Mantis volunteered. “That noise made me somewhat dizzy."

“I know they’re helping, but maybe they should go somewhere a bit safer than here.” I watched as the various wolves started gathering their senses, many were rubbing at their own ears. The ones that had been closer to the cannons destruction were out for the count, and I could count a lot of them with more coming by the second.

The Wolf Boss was trying to get his senses in order as he staggered back with his gathering forces.

“Move forward! Ugh, you try to plan an ambush and it all goes to…” He was blasted in the face by a light that spooked all the wolves, the Wolf Boss collapsed on the spot and that started making them panic.

“Nice shot Ozzy!” It was pretty good timing Smolder.

“But I would like to say that think they can take care of themselves so long as they aren’t swarmed.” Mantis added a second later before zipping off.

“They have to be getting tired, we need to keep up the pressure until we can wake the boss up.” One of the wolves shouted. They started to get organized again, some of them were looking above us with shields at the ready. “We’ll get you for that you sneaky horse... bug... yaoguai!”

“They’re regrouping.” Viper muttered.

“We’ll certainly be ready for them then.” I stated with a smile.

“Yeah, but we can’t keep this up forever. Po and Tigress still have to climb the tower to get at Shen and that peacock can just glide away.” Yes, that certainly was a problem.

“Hey guys, Po, Tigress and Crane made it to the tower, we need to buy them more time.” Mantis came darting back into view. “Those three will be fine up there by themselves, I have them tying up the mercenaries we’ve knocked out.”

-Ocellus-

“I'm fine Smolder, it’s only a problem if I overuse my magic.” I was perfectly fine, the wolves were still going to be on the attack without their leader. “We've rendered the gate completely useless, but now that’s a bad thing… a really bad thing.”

“I can be helping them fight!” Shanty was brave, too much so for her own good.

“Only if they start getting by Monkey, Viper and Mantis, but I don’t think we need to worry about that.” Smolder looked out over the wolves starting to crowd the gate to see a number of bodies being knocked into the air. “Is that…”

“Who is it?” I finished tying up a gorilla’s arms and walked up to see what Smolder was looking at from the balcony.

Shanty gasped from between us when several figures finally coalesced into view.

“Is that being Tai Lung?!” Yeah Shanty, that certainly looked like the muscular snow leopard that can rip Pom in half. “Why is he here?!”

He was obviously fighting alongside Shifu, Storming Ox and Croc. He was also in the middle of an argument with Shifu even as they both kicked two wolves in the head simultaneously with the exact same fluid motion.

“He’s… I want to say helping, but given who it is…” I was just as confused as Smolder and Shanty, we hadn’t heard exactly what happened to Tai Lung and only heard references of the Wuxi Finger Hold from Po. “I wonder if they've worked out all their issues yet.”

“I will have my rematches with them old man, I'm just making sure it happens!” Tai Lung certainly seemed to be himself.

"That would be a no Ozzy." Smolder stated flatly as she wrapped her right arm around my neck and hugged me.

"Stop calling me Ozzy, do you want me to start calling you Smol?" I saw Smolder blush and sighed loudly. "Good grief."

Author's Note

I got some gifts this year.

The early one is Crash Bandicoot 4.

A game that is notorious for earning one hundred percent completion in it and it's definitely living up to it's predecessors in the difficulty of doing that.

30. The Tower Aflame.

-Gongmen City, hideout, Pom-

“I hope they’re okay.” Hearing the explosions at this distance didn’t settle my nerves very much, I felt a comforting large hand come to rest on my back.

“I’m sure… they will be fine.” Thundering Rhino was a really nice guy behind that big gruff exterior, but he wasn’t fit for combat and neither was I. He leaned back with his eyes closed, he needed more rest. “Trust in them… to be strong… without you.”

“It’s still my job to be worried.” Why do I feel so guilty about not being able to be there for them? “Worrying about things is what makes me a decent guard.”

I wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight, until I knew they were safe.

-Tower of the Sacred Flames, top floor, Shen-

Long ago the Soothsayer told me what would happen, I of course believed her and tried to fight fate.

Apparently, I didn’t chase the pandas down hard enough, because now I have a warrior panda coming after me. Just the one, it’s surprising that it was only happening now. It seems a child grew up enough to finally come after me.

There’s also those nuisances known as the Mystical Three that have been major thorns in my side giving my forces the run around, that one of them is a dragon is quite telling when it comes to my misfortune.

Those three messed with my supplies, they sunk my ships and they’ve threatened my very life with their actions, they couldn’t even do me a small courtesy and fall for the trap I so painstakingly set up for them.

Two knives slid into my wings from my sleeves as I waited patiently on my cushion for them to come for me, the wall has been breached and they have silently taken out my cannons. All of them but the one that would have been moved to my flagship had the Mystical Three not targeted it.

I am set in my course, my ambitions can’t die here. I would meet my fate head on, no matter what it may be.

For I am a peerless peacock with no regrets.

-Tower of the Sacred Flame, Gatehouse, Shanty-

I do not be liking that Tai Lung is here, but he be helping us. Confused is the word I am feeling, I not be fighting him either way as I know I would not be winning.

“Okay, aside from Tai Lung being in Gongmen, we’ve got incoming trouble from the mercenaries approaching the back of the gate!” Smolder shouted from behind us as she pointed at something, we moved over to her to see torches heading towards the gatehouse.

Tigress, Po and Crane had pushed through them, but anyone they didn’t take out getting into the tower were now coming our way.

“Well that’s not good, but at least we’re done tying up the mercenaries here.” Ocellus was sending me a worried glance as she turned away from looking over the railing. “Are you going to be okay Shanty?”

“I be fine.” Though I be quite cranky to be seeing Tai Lung again. I started to head down so I can find someone to hit.

“Well you’re not going to face them alone Shanty.” Smolder chased after me and started down the stairs alongside me.

“I really don’t like all this fighting, but we’re going to stick together.” Ocellus hovered after us as we made our way down to the destroyed gate.

I looked through the hole in the gate and saw the kung fu masters going through waves of mercenaries, they almost be being tireless to me and I wanted to be that strong one day. I had a keen interest in one of Monkey’s grappling techniques, where he flipped a salamander mercenary into one of the many wolves around here.

Mercenaries other than wolves be quite the rarity in Shen’s army.

“You…” Appearing in the gateway Tai Lung immediately spotted me and I froze up as he stalked up to me holding a struggling wolf by the throat, he carelessly tossed the wolf off to the side. I turned from the now unconscious wolf back to my least favorite snow leopard. “So if you are here, I take it your caretaker is as well. Given that I don’t see her fighting to protect you with her very life, I would surmise that she’s still healing from her self-inflicted wounds. I’ve got something to tell you specifically and I’m only going to say this once, so listen well. I would like to apologize for almost killing you, what I don’t apologize for is hurting you. A little pain teaches you to not make mistakes, I also don’t want someone who shows some promise to perish by my claws.”

I snorted angrily, Tai Lung just chuckled and backhanded a mercenary coming up behind him without looking. Said mercenary dropped his knife, stumbled backwards clutching his face and straight into the path of Mantis performing a high speed flying kicked that took them both out of view.

“I wouldn’t scoff at my honest apology if I were you. I will face your caretaker in a real fight when she isn’t under the strain of a move with such a deadly consequences as to almost kill her for every single motion she makes, as powerful as it is she got exponentially weaker with every blow. That she even survived it and has the spirit of a wolf underneath her frail appearance intrigues me greatly.” Tai Lung turned away and walked back beyond the gate into the mercenary brawl going on in front of the gate. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to back having a little fun. None of these mercenaries are a real challenge despite me not being at my full strength, at best they are a light exercise and I’m quite certain that even you three can handle the ones coming up from behind you.”

I be turning away from the jerk to look towards the several wolves approached with clubs, blades and there was one wielding a spear taking the lead.

I be taking a stance by spreading my hooves out slightly, Smolder pulled out her ribbon to start twirling it with a grim grin and Ocellus lit her horn with a slightly frightened look on her face. We held our ground and would not let our friends be surprised from behind.

When the mercenaries started to charge towards us, the top of the tower bursts into flames in a loud explosion. That distracted everyone, except for me as I charged the spear wielder.

The spear wielder quickly turned back to me to thrust the spear downward, I hopped up to land on the spears shaft with my rear hooves. I be forcing the spear into the ground with my weight as I ran up it on my hind legs and brought both my front hooves together and swung them around to the right into the right side of the wolves head.

The wolf staggered backwards from the blow while letting go of his weapon, a wolf with a blade came at me from the left only to trip and slam his face into the ground.

After seeing that the blade be swiftly pulled away by a ribbon, I turned to hop in place and then sprung off the spear to leap at my opponent.

I led with my left hoof in an overhead swing to the top of his skull and then clamped onto my opponent’s chest with my rear legs to start pummeling him with swift left and right hoof strikes that cut up his face whenever I got my ‘Cut-lash strikes’ right.

A wolf with a club came swinging for me from the right only to get hit by a blast of energy.

I be silently thanking Ocellus as I brought my hooves over my head and brought them down on the wolf’s skull. I quickly kicked off the collapsing wolf with my hind hooves to launch a flying buck into the weaponless wolf’s chest and rolled backwards away from a club coming down on me.

I swiftly rammed my head into the club wielding wolf’s gut and a ribbon snaked its way around her weapon. Said weapon was yanked out her claws, twirled around twice and then launched back into her face.

“Heh heh, I’m getting really good at this!” Smolder exclaimed with a bright smile from behind me. “Shanty, from the right!”

I hopped to the left as a blade came down and sent a bit of dirt kicking up. I took a few step back and cartwheeled into a front hoof stand while scrunching up tightly.

I launched an upside down leaping buck straight up into the wolf’s chin that knocked them onto their back and ended up with me landing on top of them with all four of my hooves.

I stomped down on the wolf’s stomach knocking the air out of them, I glance to my left and rolled off of them to the right for them to get struck by a club and knocked out.

More wolves were coming. So I better quickly deal with the one that just attacked me. I be ignoring the blasts of magic flying by and the sound of a ribbon being cracked like a whip

I extended my right hoof as far out as I could. I lashed it upwards and to the left as I charged under the next club swing. My hoof, like it has done several times before. Flashed a brilliant white as it created a crescent in air and tore through the armor of the wolf before me.

I look at my hoof and grimace at the fact that it was covered in the blood of the wolf that I just felled with a light blade like wound from going from their hip to shoulder. My hoof didn’t cut too deeply into them, but the force of the blow and the pain meant they were down.

“I’m still wondering how you do that, you’re hooves are completely blunt. It really doesn’t make any sense that you can create a blades edge like you do.” Ocellus said as she fired another blast from her horn into an oncoming crowd of problems. She was efficiently using her energy as far as I can be telling, seeing as she be taking down three people with one shot. “I don’t think I can keep this up for too much longer.”

I was dodging around sword slashes and lashing out with my hooves in return with fierce crescents etching themselves into the air from my very hooves.

“I personally think that she’s using her unique brand of magic to do that, if we get in over our heads we can fall back to our kung fu buddies Ocellus. Not that I’d count Tai Lung as a buddy, but he doesn’t seem to hold any ire towards us. Kind of reminds me of the personalities back home in the dragon lands, big tough guy jerk kind of defines some dragons.” Smolder lashed out and swooped around a wolf trying to grab her out of the air. She pulled sharply on her ribbon and, because of the way she had wrapped it around them, the wolf’s right fist flew up into their face. With another sharp tug followed by a flick, the wolf be knocked out with their own arm to the face and the ribbon unwound from their body. “Stop hitting yourself.”

“That kind of remind me of what general Pharynx does to King Thorax, of course we all know it’s just affectionate gestures and brotherly love. Eep!” Ocellus got scratched by the sword from a boar mercenary, I be thinking they were low on wolves by now.

“Be focusing on the fight!” Charging headfirst into the boar’s side, I kicked off the ground once I had him stunned and launched my rear hooves to into his face as they swung upwards. I flung my rear hooves back downwards and out, I using the second blow to launch myself backwards. I landed my right rear leg on the head of thin feminine looking male snow leopard and, feeling a little bit vindictive, I snapped my left rear leg downwards to take them down. “Also the tower is being on fire…”

I flipped away and landed on my hooves to watch the leopards face meet the ground and pointed out the entire tower now catching fire, quite a few people were trying to get away from the spreading flames lighting up the night.

“Oh gee… I hope Po and the others are alright.” Stated Ocellus while putting a hoof to her mouth, she squeaked as an arrow shot by her head. She focused on something and sent a short burst of magic flying, I heard someone falling to the ground.

“You hope they’re alright?!” With a flick of her combat ribbon, Smolder snapped it around a wolf’s ankle and she pulled it to make them fall onto their back. I be leaping forward to thrust my hoof into their head. “Worry about us Ocellus, you almost got seriously hurt!”

“I only have a scratch… Smolder!” Ocellus seemed a bit panicked and I looked to see Smolder take a full sword blow to her torso that sent to the ground on her back five feet away from her attacker.

After a moment Smolder got up looking completely fine and a little bit angry, the blade the wolf struck her with was both chipped and cracked. Maybe Smolder be having a point with letting her be the distraction next time.

“Look, of the three of us, I’m perfectly fine with taking hits Ocellus.” To show she was fine, Smolder whipped her ribbon out to the wolf staring at her damaged blade. The ribbon wrapped around their muzzle and was yanked downwards so that smolder could smash her skull against the bipedal wolfs. The wolf crumpled to the ground and Smolder planted her fists on her hips. “There’s a reason dragons are something to be feared and respected, even ones of my size!”

Seeing her inhaling sharply, I be knowing what Smolder was about to do and I backed up to where Ocellus was as Smolder blasted the incoming group with flames that made their clothes catch on fire. They be scattering and running all over the place.

“That barely be knocking the wind from your sails.” All dragons be very tough, I now be wanting one on my future crew.

“You know, I sometimes hear about all the painful stuff that Spike gets put through and I just have to ask.” Ocellus motioned to Smolder with her right hoof, the dragon was just standing there looking at her slightly damaged robe. “Did that even hurt at all?”

“It stung a little bit, but something that weak wouldn’t ever come close to piercing my scales.” Still, it be impressive that Smolder got up so quickly and Viper be teaching her so many cool techniques. “It would take a greater material than that poorly forged blade to hurt me Ozzy.”

“Why is the world being a bit weird?” My vision be blurring slightly and I be wobbling on my hooves.

“Uh Ozzy, Shanty’s not looking so hot and I would know a lot about the subject of heat. I regularly swim in lava when I’m in the dragon lands.” Smolder be coming over to me and carefully grabbing me to hold me steady. “She’s looking a quite pale.”

“Her blood loss might be finally getting to her Smol and since we don’t have anyone else to fight at the moment… her adrenaline must be running out.” If Ocellus was to be believed, I be needing help soon. “It doesn’t help that she’s been exerting herself with that cut on her chest.”

“Yeah, she’s even beginning to bleed through the cloth she has wrapped around her.” Smolder sat me down and then ran over to one of the knocked out mercenaries and used her claws to rip off some cloth and came back over to me. “Hold still and let me get this around you Shanty.”

I winced as she started pulling the cloth tight around my chest and began tying it off.

“You need to take it a bit easier Shanty.” Getting a hug from Smolder felt nice and warm, I can easily guess why Ocellus likes them.

I was starting to shiver from being cold… which was weird because this night was really quite warm a minute ago.

“I know it’s a bad thing, but the fire is really pretty at least.” Ocellus drew our attention to the burning tower.

I could be seeing Tigress kicking away from the tower and Craned grabbing her paws while extending his wings to slow her fall down.

“Are all changelings like moths?” Smolder rolled her eyes.

“Well you have to admit that bright lights and fire can be pretty distracting. Having eyes like mine makes it seem a bit more… attractive.” Ocellus pointed out with a hoof as Crane tried to bring Tigress down for a mostly safe landing nearby. “Don’t worry Smolder, I’m not nearly as dumb as a moth to fly into flames like that. Also Po is still in there!”

“I think it be more distracting they didn’t have as many archers to deal with us.” My comment was based on the fact that only one arrow has been fired at Smolder or Ocellus the entire time.

“We took care of most of that coming in.” Crane looked back up at the conflagration that was the Tower of the Sacred Flame, as Tigress got up from the ground and looked to the tower with worry.

-Smolder-

“I’ll go up and see…” A powerful explosion ripped through the top of the tower and something burst against the sky creating a large spiraling yin yang symbol. Before dropping back into the tower with a thunderous crash that could be heard from a distance. I stayed right where I was.

“Face the wind, face the wind… which way is it blowing?!” Ocellus said as she came to a landing next to Shanty.

“Obviously from the tower Ocellus.” I stated as I sat down with the shivering Shanty, she’s had a bit too much excitement tonight.

Ocellus carefully dropped to the ground facing the tower and wondered what was going on.

“So we just sit here?” Ocellus asked while staring at the flames, the way they reflected in her eyes was kind of nice.

“You heard what the old lady said, we are definitely doing nothing.” I heard a groaning mercenary try to get up only for Tigress to protectively march up to them, grab their head and then smash their face into the dirt. “Besides isn’t going into a burning building dangerous? Well aside for anyone else aside from me I mean.”

Tai Lung soon showed up and narrowed his eyes at the burning tower, a minute later shockwaves started erupting from the tower going downwards as the Furious Five, Tai Lung, Shifu, Storming Ox and Croc all gathered to stand around us.

Every floor of the tower started to collapse inward until it reached the bottom and then fire shot to the sky almost as tall as the tower used to be, the blast of the flames almost reached us and we had to cover our eyes from all the dust being kicked up.

The three of us were protected by the blast wave by all of our friends and Tai Lung getting knocked back slightly.

“There is no way he could have possibly…” Seemingly walking out of the shadows of the flames as soon as Tai Lung started his statement, a sad looking singed and burnt Po stumbled forward while looking over his shoulders. “You have got to be kidding me.”

He stopped to gasp and catch his breath and then he quickly made his way up to us with a bucket on his head, he swiftly removed the bucket and tossed it off to the side.

“Is everyone alright, anybody hurt?” We all just stared at him and the tall burning pyre of the towers remains behind him, he looked to be the most injured out of us and he was asking more about our injuries then his own. Was Po insane? “Are all of you all okay? Why isn’t anyone saying something? At least you all look fine to me and that’s a load off my mind.”

“How…” Viper started to slowly point out with the tip of her tail.

“Isn’t it obvious? He’s either got the favor of the gods… or he’s insanely lucky.” Tai Lung grumbled out the grumpy leopard with his arms crossed. “I’m leaning more towards the latter personally.”

“Would you believe there were a lot of buckets of water throughout the tower and I got hit by about half of them on the way down?” Po finally stated as he continued to breathe roughly and stare at the huge fire he escape. “I’m just going to let you know, I don’t believe it either and I just went through it.”

“Why… am I not as surprised by that as I should be?” Tigress muttered as she put her left paw over her face.

“Finally something I can agree on with my little sister.” Tai Lung said sarcastically as he stood tall. “I take it Shen was in that.”

“He got crushed by his weapon when he made it fire it’s last shot… at least he went quickly.” Po turned to the flames solemnly. “He even seemed ready to accept death in his last moments.”

“Well the tower did have a thousand buckets of water, mostly to prevent the fireworks the tower used to launch from causing problems.” Crane stated flatly. “The tower was a fire hazard and those buckets were supposed to be used to put out any flames before any fire could get out of control, there wasn’t anyone left in the tower besides Shen and Po as the mercenaries were mostly in the barracks area. I guess all that’s left to do is the mop up the mercenaries.”

There were quite a few burnt mercenaries laying around the barracks area outside the tower.

“At least Thundering Rhino’s death has been avenged.” Croc said lowering his head.

“What are you talking about?” Everyone turned to stare at me. “He’s still alive.”

“Uh, we haven’t exactly told anyone about that yet Smolder.” Ocellus mumbled.

“Oh… right… well that was a secret.” As I spoke, I smacked my face with my claws. The moderately muscular guy known as Storming Ox quickly stalked up to me. “Pom has been trying to nurse him back to health after Shen grievously injured him, she’s also been getting rest herself.”

“Show us.” He lowered himself to eye level with me.

“I think I be needing a nurse now, everything is being a bit cold.” I hugged Shanty to myself. “I be finding myself very hungry… too…”

We didn’t do the majority of the fighting, but we still did plenty enough for one night.

-Ten minutes later, sunrise, Ocellus-

“Hopefully we won’t have to do anything like last night ever again.” We made our way back to where Thundering Rhino was staying with Pom, I was leading the way as Tigress carried a sleeping Shanty while looking worried for our little goat companion. “How are we going to clean up all those mercenaries?”

“Eh, we’ll figure something out.” Mantis was in a decent mood. "The citizens will be happier at least.”

I opened the door to the hideout and saw Pom was still awake with bloodshot eyes. She saw me and searched my eyes with her own. Eventually, she gave us a stressed out sigh before flopping onto her back and she immediately passed out.

We could all use a little sleep after what we have been through.

Author's Note

I haven't been feeling too good lately, but this year is already better than the last.

Pom can't relax very well, stress level +20. (250/100, condition: overly exhausted.)

Tigress has gained three levels in Friend to Children, Current level: 57.

Po's luck stat increased 254-> 255. (Mind you Po has survived a fall from at least fifty feet or so straight up in Kung Fu Panda 1 before he was named the Dragon Warrior and drops from even higher distances afterwards with his Tai Lung fight in canon.)

Tai Lung has gained the title Unfriendly Rival.

Viper has gained the title Masterful Ribbon Teacher.

Mantis has gained +5 Field Medic Skill.

Monkey has gained +2 strength.

Crane has gained the skills Carry Passengers (Light) and Parrot-Chute.

Shifu has gained title Master-ful Redeemer.

Storming Ox and Croc's fighting spirits have changed, Broken -> Strong.

31. A Lung Pom-versation.

-A day later, Walu’s Dim Sum, Pom-

I wasn’t worried about Smolder, someone took a sword to her full swing and the sword was the thing that cracked. Aside from maybe a really small bruise, she walked away from that night uninjured.

I was moderately worried for Ocellus as she was obviously comparable to me in not liking violence or the situation they got into the other night. Her fuzzy carapace was scratched in several places, the damage was fairly minimal.

Speaking of damage, most of the kung fu warriors were still cleaning things up after the mess that was made. Shen had hundreds of mercenaries, Po and his friends thankfully chewed through most of them so that my three troopers didn’t have to.

I was glad that Ocellus, Smolder and Shanty didn’t do deal with too much trauma, physically at least.

Shanty still took a nasty cut to the chest that might have lightly nicked an artery. That was a far sight better than losing her head at the very least and Mantis was there in an instant.

I was very worried about Shanty when I woke up after passing out, I started hugging her and telling her to be more careful. That’s about all I could do really, I couldn’t bring myself to be angry with her for putting herself in danger and I was just happy that she survived.

Looked at the nearby garden at the entrance to Walu’s Dim Sum, I considered this out of the way meeting spot that none of the girls were going to be working at today. They were all still taking it easy today, but I had other things to attend to.

I sighed, steeled my nerves and walked inside. The pika known as Mr. Walu wasn’t particularly busy today, but he still apparently had a few customers celebrating the defeat of Shen and the return of Thundering Rhino.

Shen’s regime had been oppressive, he had let his mercenaries run wild over the citizenry, stole from the city and wanted to be a conquering warlord. I kind of felt sorry for the guy, his paranoia was on par with a lambkin and at least it was quick and painless.

From the way Po tells it, Shen accepted what was going to befall him in his last moments when his cannon collapsed on him.

Thundering Rhino was still recovering and now Mantis and doctors were setting up to see to his health, he could still administrate the city quite well even if he couldn’t currently fight for it.

“Hello Mr. Walu… which table are they waiting for me at.” Getting jobs in Gongmen City was a bit difficult with the mercenaries running rampant, but thanks to his kindness we weren’t going to go hungry.

“The usual for staff table in the back Pom, I figured you would want privacy for your meeting.” Nodding to Walu in acknowledgment, I started walking towards the back. “I’ll be bringing tea and snacks to your table soon, also thank you for lending aid to the people of Gongmen City.”

“I didn’t really do anything too important.” I stated as I glanced back at him and went to move forward.

“You saved Thundering Rhino’s life and brought him back to decent health, that’s something.” Walu stated. “You did just as much as your charges, apparently they’re being called the mystical three by the locals.”

I froze, lowered my head and just continued on to the booth in the back without a comment.

Taking a seat at the table, I closed my eyes and got my nerves in order again.

“Okay… what do you want Tai Lung?” I then opened my eyes to stare straight into Tai Lung’s, I wanted so badly to flinch at sitting across from someone so dangerous. My tone was utterly flat, but not devoid of worry.

“A conversation.” Tai Lung stated lazily.

I stayed quiet and waited, Tai Lung raised left his brow at me and then he decided to get on with it.

“You are a rather distinct individual, even among your odd little group. There’s also the fighting styles you used that I want to inquire about, among a few other topics I want to go over with you.” Tai Lung tapped the claws of his right paw in sequence on the table while staring at me with more curiosity than anger or a need for revenge. “Let’s get started then. While I’m not gifted in using chi, what I do have is the ability to see the flow of energy through my knowledge of pressure point techniques. I can get a good read of someone that way and my read of you was interesting to say the least with the way you changed throughout the fight we had.”

“How so?” Some might think I was curious to know where he was going with this, I was just hoping this doesn’t end with him hurting the three I take care of. He can harm me as much as he wants to.

I could clearly see that he recovered better than I did and I expended all my strength on him. He deserves the reputation as one of the best warriors from The Valley of Peace, even if he’s dark hearted.

“Well for starters, each fighting style you used had a different form overlapping yours and I want to go over with what I saw with you to make some things clear. Since something disturbed me about what I saw.” Tai Lung had me mildly curious. “After you launched me across Jade district, the form I saw overlapping you was a cow. I surmise it was someone who was tough and could deal out devastating counters.”

“Mostly right, her style is particularly aggressive and far faster than what I was limited to at the time.” Despite my misgivings about Arizona teaching me how to fight, I did learn quite a bit from her. I learned plenty from watching her picks fight with Velvet and it was rare when those two weren’t getting on each other’s nerves.

“The second style you switched to was the antelope like being, focuses on evasion and rapid attacks while keeping your distance.” Where was Tai Lung going with this? “You seem to know the style quite well and it suits you.”

“Yes, but there’s a bit more to it than that and it focuses on leaping attacks.” This made me just wonder what he was trying to figure out. “A friend taught me that style personally. They even have the ability to jump in the air multiple times without touching a surface between jumps, the insistence on it not being the same as flying comes up constantly when mentioned.”

“If it’s sustainable and you can go in a direction while staying in the air, it’s flying. Anyway, the third style was unique, bursts of raw power and speed with odd breathing techniques. I think there was something lacking about your use of it.” Tai Lung only received a nod from me. “I take it someone close to you taught you how to use it? I believe what I saw was a longma with a fiercer disposition than even you can pull off, it was like they were funneling their strength through you. They matched your movements perfectly and while you are good in the style, I think your better at the antelope one and it is more fitting. You had expended almost all of your strength with it.”

Tianhuo… I’m a little surprised Tai Lung actually knows what a longma is and saw her overlapping me.

“Can confirm, what you likely saw was the champion of Huoshan. I’m honestly the weakest of the Huoshan Guard.” Mostly because I wasn’t one to jump into combat personally unless I had to, I miss my overprotective beasties and the puppies. “I learned Huoshan’s common fighting style, yet it’s supplemented by some things I can’t actually do naturally.”

I lacked the ability to fly and the inner flame of a longma. Though doing a Fiery Flurry and actually creating multiple friction blasts was amazing for me, I thought that was only something that Arizona could do with her ‘Mach’ attacks and breaking physics.

“Weakest?” Tai Lung scoffed audibly and began to chuckles with a few snorts thrown in. “Whoever told you that you were the weakest obviously doesn’t know you very well at all. You may be frail looking, scrawny and gangly even, but you knocked me across the entirety of Jade District with one solid blow at a speed that no one could possibly follow. Even if it was a onetime thing and under duress, my jaw is still sensitive even now. What I want to know the most about, is that fourth and last fighting style you used against me. It was concerning.”

“What last style?” This had me wondering what he was talking about. “I only used three as far as I know.”

“At the end of our fight you had a pack of prowling wolves surrounding your flow of energy. It wasn’t anything like the cow, the antelope one or even the mystical longma that was obviously closely connected to you. It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever seen before.” Tai Lung seemed to be gazing into my eyes now with relatively restrained curiosity. “The only thing I could read from you is that you were willing to die fighting me to your last breath. Aside from that, your bite mark still hasn’t healed and your movements were functionally unreadable.”

Tai Lung pause the rub the mentioned mark where I bit him, his shoulder notably hasn’t healed as well as the rest of him has.

“In the pack of energy wolves flowing around, you were encased by the largest. It was if you were the acting alpha of the pack.” Tai Lung leaned back and seemed interest in hearing what I had to say. “Have you ever been taught a style involving fighting like an entire pack of wolves? I would say it’s impossible had I not seen it.”

“No… I don’t actually know what you’re talking about.” I had a fighting style with the energy of an entire pack of wolves? I’ve never heard of a fighting style that… oh please don’t let that be a black sheep thing! “I don’t think what you saw was a combat style, because everything else before that was what I actively trained in. Like my bark blast for instance, that’s actually my only personally created technique...”

Tai Lung didn’t seem to acknowledge my fluffmancer abilities existed, I wouldn’t have been capable of taking as many hits from him otherwise.

“So it was something more instinctual and rooted deeply within you… it could have very well led to your death and yet you didn’t back down for even a second.” He leaned forward while narrowing his eyes at me, I bravely kept my eyes on his. After a moment he seemed satisfied with something. “You actually impressed me, somewhat. The only thing I saw with Po’s energy is a goony dragon with a cheeky grin. I could follow the movements, but the energy was somehow not moving as Po was with the way it danced chaotically. The difference between you two is that I couldn’t read your energy when you were waning except for that one clear message, while reading Po is an effort in futility given how erratically his energy moves.”

“So… are you going to be friendlier to us now?” My interest in hearing Po had a goofy dancing dragon as a fighting style didn’t surprise me as much as I thought it would, it certainly suited his skills in kung fu by following the beat of his own drum.

“I’ve decided to slightly change my ways, Po is an idiot savant in kung fu and I want to fight him at his greatest. He only needs to see a technique once to do it and you have a dangerous hidden fighting style that not even you know about that looks like it can only be earned.” Tai Lung probably wouldn’t like to hear that I really didn’t want to fight him again. I could feasibly do much better when not under the effects of Shock-ram, but I’d rather not be mauled by Tai Lung again. “There’s almost none like the either of you and the both of you put up more of a fight than anyone I fought since I broke free of my prison. It’s why I’m willing to wait for a rematch, I would keep my skills honed for such a legendary battle.”

Walu finally dropped some Dim Sum buns at the table along with a serving of tea, I quickly got some tea for myself and took a sip.

“You might want to focus more on Po, I’m not very competitive. Come to think of it, I have met two others aside from Po that are pretty good at learning new techniques just by seeing them once.” Wait, I was actually adding something to this conversation and not just letting it be one sided? Fighting wasn’t in my blood, but it certainly was reluctantly a part of my life. “One was a Skunk that could learn a technique on a given day by seeing it once, then eventually master said technique in hours and then eventually improves upon it in unique ways.”

“A skunk? If I am ever to meet this skunk you speak of, then I may deign to actually teach them something to see it for myself.” Tai Lung was actually coming off as less scary by the second, but I was still feeling a bit tense that he wants a rematch with me. “Who’s the other?”

“It’s a good friend of mine, she’s my… special techniques teacher. It’s how I managed to not go down on the first few blows you got on me. She’s known as ‘The Demon’ and you wouldn’t think she was one until after spending an hour in presence.” I wasn’t the only one that thought Paprika was terrifying, many people still label her ‘The Demon’ and you only needed to know her for an hour to see why. “I’ve heard she mimicked some special techniques from the cow and reindeer, what you were calling an antelope, perfectly and without practicing them. She’s hard to hurt and her fighting style is hugs, kisses and affection… I’m being quite literal when I say that alpaca makes her fighting style an art form all its own.”

“Hugs, kisses and affection, how dangerous can this demon be if that’s all she does?” Tai Lung asked while waving his right paw at me dismissively.

-A few months back, Huoshan-

The entire top portion of a nearby mountain exploded, I whimpered and thought a volcano was erupting and that we were all doomed. The noise was loud enough to bring the entire city to an alert status.

It was only a minute later that Paprika came running up to the gates of Huoshan while I was temporarily standing in for a another guard.

She was covered in rubble and bits of snow slowly sliding out of her thick fluffy mass, notably she had come from the direction of the broken mountain range that was now two thirds its normal size.

I could even see the dust cloud leading from said mountain to right where Paprika was currently crouching down for a...

-The present-

“She’s terrifying on multiple levels.” I said with my eyes wide open, possibly with a haunted look on my face. I thought I had wiped that moment from my memory completely. How does someone like Paprika almost hug a mountain entirely in half just because she was just feeling a little bit lonely on the way to visiting me and Tianhuo?! “Far more so than you are.”

Tai Lung sat up straight and scrutinized me for a bit.

“I think I would like to meet this demon alpaca.” Tai Lung suddenly. “She can’t be that intimidating.”

“Trust me on this, fighting Paprika will not end well for you.” Having said that, I just watched as he crossed his arms while huffing and didn’t comment on my shivering. I took up a dumpling and would pop it into my mouth in a second, but first. “Anything else you would like to discuss Lung?”

“Yes, I know asking you to meet with me alone has you on edge, but I would like your opinion on something.” Given that you were the reason I was here Tai Lung, you might as well. He ate a dumpling and took a sip of tea, his table manners were quite good… then again this was a highly disciplined dark hearted kung fu master. “I have never given it much thought about what I would be doing aside from being the Dragon Warrior, not until actually meeting Po anyway. Now… I find myself curious, do you think I would be a good teacher? I ask because Shifu is going to let Po to lead a training session.”

I winced and Tai Lung gave me a flat stare for it.

“Honestly? You know a lot, but teaching requires patience and I’m not sure if you would be good at it at first. I doubt Po would be any better.” There was something else I could say. “Do you expect Po to cause a disaster?”

“Only because you are absolutely certain that’s what will happen.” Tai Lung commented dryly and I winced even harder. “I’m going to be there to see it happen with a smile on my face.”

“I think you would be good as an exercise coach at least.” Only a few more days and I’d be back in decent enough condition to put up a mild struggle against him. He was kind of massive compared to me and I still don’t believe that I managed to hold ‘that’ off. “I mean more of a small stuff thing like pushups, sit-ups, running and other simple stuff. Maybe some light sparring too. You really shouldn’t jump in the deep end, Shifu had a lot of a problems with teaching Po how to fight doing that. Po didn’t know the first thing about how to throw an attack and that was days before we fought.”

“Po shows incredible talent and potential, I’ll give him that much. Would you believe I find you to be far wiser than Shifu from just that advice alone? You’re just proving me right on something at the very least.” Was that a complement, from Tai Lung? It almost sounded back-pawed, but I was willing to take it and maybe… if you squint hard enough. Is it even feasible we could become friends? “I’ve taken up enough of your time, now take up some of mine.”

“You mean ask you questions?” I received a scathing glance and Tai Lung just took up a dumpling and chewed on it while waiting on me. “Okay… so Tigress is your little sister, she’s strong, skilled and driven like you are. She wanted to be the ‘Dragon Warrior’ too and got disappointed by Po dropping right on into it, thoughts on how you feel about her?”

“The old fool adopted her and she did get a few good hits in on me.” He muttered before seeming to have figured something out. “I’m willing to say that we’re related.”

“As much ‘good’ as anyone can get from you I assume.” Was I actually beginning to relax around him, what is wrong with me?! “Have you ever considered having a hobby outside of kung fu? It seems like it absolutely consumed your life, the lack of friends didn’t help you either.”

“I will not speak ill of the dead… or the ascended from what I’ve heard. You aren’t wrong in saying that I let my ambitions ultimately consume me. After hearing about what happened to Shen… Po could have rightly done that to me and nobody would have cared that I had perished by the ‘Dragon Warriors’ paws.” Tai Lung looked away and was showing a small sign of guilt?

I blinked at him and was probably imagining that, aside from a twitch of his whiskers.

“I’m sure your old fool would have cared, maybe Tigress would too if she knew her big brother better.” I was going to try to be a little less fearful of him and try to be his friend, since he didn’t have any. After focusing so long on one goal, he doesn’t exactly have a life or know people beyond how strong or weak they are. “He’s made a lot of mistakes… even heard he had a terrible girlfriend that’s a foxy lady.”

“Mei Ling is a rogue kung fu master and a known thief, but she actually does care about fa- the old fool.” Here Tai Lung repositioned himself to lie down a bit while lazily popping another dumpling into his mouth. “Those two were practically made for each other, but they have different views on how things work.”

“Mei Ling… sounds like a nice name.” I liked the name at least, but I wanted to know how Tai Lung knows her. “She can’t be nearly as bad as the thief I know of.”

“Why, what’s the thief you know like?” Asked the muscular leopard that nearly killed me. The same one that I’m trying to be congenial with and it was going surprisingly well.

“She’s the most annoying being in existence that can get away with doing a lot of really weird stuff, something inevitably happens whenever she’s around and it’s impossible to catch her once she starts running.” There was a bit of aggravation in my voice. “She has a habit of toying with guards like me no matter where she goes… and she’s begrudgingly my friend, because she’s a friend of my friends.”

“Sounds like Mei Ling, now there’s a fox who always has an angle and uses her fighting talents to steal.” Tai Lung seemed somewhat fond of the crook that was apparently Shifu’s ex-girlfriend. “I can respect her as a fighter and she’s lightning fast.”

“Wait… isn’t Mei Ling the name of a cat that Crane knows?” I knew that name sounded familiar, because Crane mentioned it in a story of how he got into kung fu.

“I would think that would be a different Mei Ling, it’s a relatively popular name… given that I’ve heard of a popular leopard harpist by that name as well.” Well that was a rather curious for Tai Lung to know, but I think we should wrap this up as we were almost out of tea and snacks. “Quick question, why did you come to Gongmen City originally? I… didn’t get out of the valley very much.”

“Well, the girls and I came here looking for the ‘Yen of Yunshu’. It didn’t even take long for Shen to show up and lay siege to the city. Anyway the ‘Yen of Yunshu’ is an unusual one use magical artifact that can transport us all back to where we came from.” We needed it like yesterday, because I wanted to avoid Tai Lung challenging me. “It only works once, because the yen transports itself to some random location in Gongmen City every single time it’s ever been used.”

“Need some help with finding it?” Asked Tai Lung bluntly. “Also I would like to talk more about your goat and that technique… that ‘bark blast’ you called it?”

"Sure, maybe we'll even become friends eventually." The glare I received with a slight growl caused me to freeze up a bit.

"Don't push it 'Pom of the Huoshan Guard' or just might change my mind about helping you." Didn't exactly need your help Tai Lung, but you more than likely needed some yourself.

I wouldn't press the issue, Tai Lung seemed a bit more amiable as our discussion continued forward for a few more minutes.

Author's Note

Here's a fun idea.

Fighting Style: Alpha Lambkin.

User: Pom.

Activation Requirement: Random chance to activate when at less than 25% health, unless actively trained to use the fighting style outside of instinct alone.

Chi/Magic Flow Appearance: Wolf Pack.

Special Effects: Moderate injury permanence, unreadable movements, the user can show their ultimate intentions. Has a 65% chance to go completely feral, has a 30% to go half feral and has a 5% chance to stay in complete control when activation requirements are met until trained to use the style outside of instinct.

Unique Fighting Moves: Buster Wolf (Incomplete), Buster Bark Flurry (Has not learned), Wolf Fang Hoof (Has not learned).

Description: Out of all the familiars Pom has bonded with from being the Canine Queen, everyone has an idea as to what her canines are receiving from her.

What no one has ever bothered to question, was what Pom was getting from all of said bonds aside from the love of her beloved companions. Familiars are always a two way street.

Just knowing that this fighting style might exist has a negative effect on Pom's sanity, just as much as actually using it can.

Fighting Style: Cut-lash.

User: Shanty.

Chi/Magic Flow: Jolly Roger.

Special Effects: Every swinging limb motion will create a melee ranged crescent shaped cutting edge at the end of said limb based on the user's will. Said cutting edge can cut straight through cloth, wood and even up metal depending on the users proficiency in this combat style. The user is immune to their own cutting edge, can deflect or parry bladed weaponry bare hoofed/pawed/handed without personal injury and will never get seasick.

Unique Fighting Moves: Aye, Yarr!, Yahar!! (Incomplete), Bladed Windmill (Incomplete), Cannonball Rush (Incomplete).

Description: This style was created by the Equestrian version of Shanty 'the wannabe pirate goat' with some help from Pom Lambchop and is based on wielding the body like a cutlass.

This fighting style can be quite dangerous to friends as much as foes and it's full potential can only be reached by Shanty who supplements it with her climbing and acrobatic abilities.

Fœnum Shanty would want to learn this style if she ever meets her counterpart.

32. Dis-Po-sition.

-Huoshan, Fighting Arena (rebuilt for the nth time), Tianhuo-

“Fiery Flurry.” My hooves strike out and blasts of fire burst forth in a wave of solid air searing heat, each strike getting faster and faster until I have almost formed a pure beam of raw fire from how fast I was attacking.

Once I’m done, because I could no longer keep up my breathing to continue the all out attack, my flaming hooves stop and I waited. I eventually extinguished my hooves, not out of thought of victory, but out of shock and due to a loss of breath.

“Ow.” After hitting Arizona more than a thousand times, it was a disconcerting that was all she said in response to being pummeled. My friend is truly impossible, especially given the fact that I hit her with heats that should have incapacitated her or at the very least would have her asking for water. The flames themselves should have scorched her more than they did. “Don’t know how Fœnum Tian’s doing, but I think you’ve got a leg up on her and then some with attacks like that.”

“How goes the carpentry business?” Do not think about wool, do not think about all the canines depending on me at home and do not worry about my beloved having problems returning. She is alive and that’s what matters, she has already once tried to return and she only needs to succeed once while keeping those in her care alive.

This is supposed to be a relaxing day… I’m still quite distressed and I am not the only one.

“It’s going pretty well, but I think you really just need someone to distract you from thinking too hard about ‘her’ huh?” Arizona looked me in the eyes and I did not flinch, but I did blink. “Goodness knows how I’d be feeling if it were Paprika, Velvet or even the both of them.”

“Can we get back to fighting… please?” One can only be stoic for so long and I had not bothered to notice how much Pom had integrated into Huoshan’s society, at least until now. The Huoshan guard is missing her as much as I am and even the imperial family from the palace noted the gentle lambkin’s absence as a massive gulf that cannot be filled in by anyone else.

Even Ember, our current benevolent Dragon Lord, is concerned about her safety on top of that of her young dragon friend Smolder.

“Right, you need to hit something…” Tilting her head to create sharp crack and shaking her slightly burnt body out with a few stretches, Arizona started scraping her hoof against the ground ready to continue. She snorted loudly and grinned at me. “And I’m a sucker for pain!”

I smiled, it is good to have friends that can understand you during times of duress. This, however, would not stop me from worrying about my better half. I am partially glad that I wouldn’t, even if I know she will come back. It was only a matter of when.

-Another day, Gongmen City Streets, Pom-

“So… let me get this straight… we have the coin that can transport anyone to anywhere they would ever want or need to go exactly once, and it can even do whole groups like ours.” I pointed at the ‘Yen of Yunshu’ in my left hoof, the coin was unique in the fact that it was solid electrum and had a boat, a bird and a cart etched into it on both sides. Anyone who knows even a little about magic will tell you that electrum is quite a unique, this coin was made of it and swamped with enough magic as to be entirely indestructible. ‘Beyond land, sea and air, this coin can get you there’, was etched around the edges of the large coin in the local written language. “We just can’t use it. We go to all the trouble of finding this thing and we can’t use it!”

Of course I was going raise my voice about this, our way home had a problem. We had no idea how to activate it. Also the one that activated it was the one that controlled the destination of where everyone involved in the effect that the coin could supposedly produce would end up.

“It definitely has a powerful magic in it.” At least Ocellus was treating me as an acquaintance now, no ugly looks or distaste. I’ll call it a win that she’ll interact with me normally now. “I just don’t know how to activate it and I’m right there with you in feeling frustrated Pom.”

“Is anyone else worried that Tai Lung actually helped us with this?” Smolder stated lazily as she performed an intricate ribbon dance in a freshly restored robe. While she didn’t like being called adorable, she certainly did do a lot of adorable thing. “Also, do you seriously trust him Pom?”

“I not be trusting him.” That was a completely understandable sentiment Shanty and that you said that immediately made me choose my words carefully.

“Look… it’s a bit… complicated. Tai Lung is a little… rough…” The looks I received from Smolder, Shanty and Ocellus made me flinch. “Okay he’s extremely rough and is as prickly as a porcupine while being twice as mean about sticking quills in you, but I don’t think he’s out and out one hundred percent pure grade evil. To trust him blindly would be bad, but to have no trust whatsoever would be just as bad and would close him off to trying something new.”

“Well he, Shifu, the Furious Five and Po are all almost ready to head back to The Valley of Peace.” Smolder tilted her head while thinking about our predicament. “Should we stay here and take Thundering Rhino’s offer or should we head back with them?”

“Good question, I don’t think Gongmen has any more information aside from the history of what the coin does. We might be able to find more at the Jade Palace, they have a lot of interesting magical artifacts at the very least and plenty of scrolls on the subject surrounding them.” Ocellus sighed and her face went flat. “Now if only those scrolls were all well labeled and the information was not spread out through at least seven different scrolls. Ugh, it is so disorganized and I’m sure Twilight would have a field day trying to fix it all! The history of the coin was somewhat interesting if a bit dry. Just to summarize what I’ve read, the coin is very ancient and the knowledge of the creator or creators of it have long since been lost to time. Oogway might have known something from his thousand years of life, but…”

“We not exactly being able to meet with him anymore.” Shanty stated while wilting.

A silence passed amongst all of us, I inhaled slightly and decided for the group.

“We’ll head back to The Valley of Peace. While Thundering Rhino’s offer that there will always be a place here for us if we need it, I need to get back in shape now that I’ve mostly recovered and the Jade Palace has good training implements. That and I like the mountain air, it reminds me of Huoshan except cooler.” Reaching out with my right hoof I ruffled Shanty’s hair, she smiled up at me with a toothy grin. “That said, Shanty here could do some training there too while we’re at it. Shifu is open to lending us the facilities until we can figure this out. Until then we just need to hold on to the coin and hope we can find something out about how to wield it.”

“We can also be getting noodles at Mr. Ping’s!” Shanty really liked his noodle soup and her next meal was always on her mind, comes with the territory of having been homeless. She wouldn’t be homeless any longer if I had anything to say about it. “I will be missing this city though, it be very nice without all the mercenaries being a problem.”

“We can always trust Shanty to have her mind on what’s important.” Smolder mumbled as she stretched her arms out. “Let’s go tell Po we’ll be joining him and everyone else on the way back to the Jade Palace then.”

-Spirit Realm, Oogway-

I turned from watching Po trying to talk to Tai Lung in friendly manner with a smile on my face.

Tai Lung’s heart may be still somewhat dark, but it was far lighter than before.

My smile soon fell as I felt something was off.

Reaching out with my senses beyond the field of spiritual cabbage carts of infinite cabbages, I felt out what the problem was.

This is a bit bothersome, someone is draining all the chi from those who have passed on.

This problem cannot go unanswered, I must focus upon this immediately!

-A few hours’ later, boat, Pom-

“So long Gongmen, hopefully you’ll get your coin back soon after we figure out how to use it.” I muttered as I waved goodbye to the city and to Walu who decided to see us off along with a few citizens and Thundering Rhino.

Croc and Storming Ox were nice, but they could have tried a little bit harder to get out of their funk without needing Tai Lung to insult them into action and for Shifu to spur their fighting spirits on further. It’s kind of funny that the both of them had worked together, considering Tai Lung still has a lot of resentment for Shifu.

Tai Lung in turn was much friendlier towards Po and me, but he was still guarded and brooded a lot. I noticed him possibly thinking about making an approach to Tigress to talk about something and I hoped he tried to open up without needing a push like I tended to.

“Hey Pom, can I talk to you about something?” Hearing Po, I turned my gaze away from the port to Po who looked a bit exhausted.

“Sure Po, what do you need?” I could tell that he seemed nervous about something, he always tapped his digits together in an adorable manner when he wanted to talk with me about a touchy subject that his father Ping would likely dither around on.

One of those subjects was about his crush on Tigress, you’d think that meeting one of his heroes would put him off of having a crush. Apparently he looked up to Tigress and his friendship with her was a confusing knot of emotions, with the problems of what is expected of a Dragon Warrior getting in the way.

“Do you think I could have saved Shen?” Po asked as he sat down next to me.

“With the way things were going… well you can’t save everyone Po and not everyone wants to be saved. You should at least make an attempt to try and save those you think haven’t crossed a line of no return. Tai Lung would have crossed his with killing Shifu and I managed to stop him.” Thinking on it a bit, I thought back to one of the scariest beings I knew about. “There was this person… well I don’t think he was so much a person as a well of infinite darkness, but his name was apparently Hollow Heart. He was trying to swamp the world with shadow monsters that would have devoured the entire world. There was no saving him, he was quite set in his course.”

“What happened to him?” Po asked with a sign of worry.

“He was strong enough to take on my five good friends and me as we fought to save the world, he was eventually taken out by my friend Paprika who punted him through a portal into the very realm of darkness that the Shadow Monsters were pouring out of and was sealed in there with them.” I shivered at the thought, but I put it out there anyway. “I don’t think he perished or was devoured by the hungering shadows, I think he might have become one of them. That’s my thoughts on what happened to him anyway, someone that relentless wouldn’t simply be stopped until he ultimately achieved his goals.”

“Yikes, make me wonder if I can fall that far and it seems to be a common thing among kung fu warriors.” Po seemed a bit upset as he slumped putting his chin in his paws. “I heard how several warriors went down, apparently Shifu has had several friends who all went off the deep end like Tai Lung did and I’m worried that it might happen to me.”

“Is this about being the Dragon Warrior Po?” The nod I received was him sulking a bit, I reached up with my left hoof and put it over where his heart was, I pointed at where I was putting my hoof. “This, this right here, this is what keeps you from letting the power go to your head. Your heart is the very reason why Oogway chose you, your ability to love and your ability to stay positive in almost any situation. The reason why those other warriors fell is because the power over others goes to their head and they didn’t have activities to keep themselves grounded, but you will always have friends to knock you down a peg if you get too big for your britches and you’re already big enough as it is. You have your father Ping and the noodle shop, the memories of good times with friends and plenty of other reasons that will never let you forget that you have a good heart Po.”

Po snorted and suddenly smiled brightly at me, he even chuckled a little.

“Thanks Pom.” He said after a moment and cheered up a bit. “I know you talked about your friends before, but you tend to get a bit nervous around the one you call Ollie.”

“Oleander is a friend that… okay, I don’t talk about Ollie much because she is a user of dark magic and people immediately go to thinking she’s evil when it comes to stuff like that.” I sighed at Po’s surprised expression. “It doesn’t help that her best friend and eternal companion is a demon of knowledge known as Fred.”

“Fred? That doesn’t sound like a name a demon would have.” Po looked a little concerned.

“Trust me, Fred is a true demon and really quite scary, but all things considered I think he is a very nice demon considering his personality has been tempered by Ollie’s as much as hers has been by his.” If I hadn’t been convinced by Ollie to leave my hermitage, then the friends I made might not have survived the shadow monster swarm without me. “They have a good balance between them and a bond so strong that I think that Ollie and Fred are close enough that they would marry one another. It’s a bit awkward because Ollie is heroic and Fred doesn’t mind reveling in carnage. She at least proves that dark does not always equal evil, though everyone’s opinion is that Fred certainly is despite him helping us save the world.”

“Huh… so even demons can be nice.” Po muttered lightly.

“Depends on knowing the demon and whether or not they have that kind of congenial personality that Fred does at times.” I don’t talk about Ollie and Fred much, but they are still good friends of mine. At least Ollie is, Fred has stated he wanted to eat me on more than one occasion for being so delectably sweet. Thankfully Ollie always gets angry with him for it while stating that you shouldn’t consume the souls of your friends, that’s only for your enemies. Oleander scared me on a number of levels more so than Fred does. “It’s probably for the best to not make deals with them or even talk to them unless you really have to, Fred is kind of an outlier among his kind.”

“We wouldn’t be friends if our lives weren’t a little strange, being weird or unusual is not a problem I should be worried about then.” Po grumbled, he was probably talking about the fact that he was raised by a goose instead of being immediately put in an orphanage after eating said goose’s radish shipment as a baby. “During this whole Shen thing, I remembered some things about my mother and why the Shen's Army symbol was giving nightmares. She was probably killed in Shen’s purge, I still don’t know about my father and all the other pandas that escaped or what even happened to them.”

“Do you need a moment… or a hug?” I found myself swept up into a crushing grip, somehow it didn’t even rate a three out of ten compared to one of Paprika’s mountain breaking hugs of pure friendly affection. I’d hate to be Velvet or Arizona who always get the romantic version.

I wrapped my hooves around him and tried to pat his back.

“I don’t even know if I have any family out there.” Po stated solemnly as he squeeze me tightly. “What if they come looking for me one day?”

“Instead of worrying about the family you might have, be thankful for the one that you currently do and take things as they come.” I said lightly. “I lost my parents when I was young, my family was my brother and grandpa for the longest time. Then it increased in size by friends and my beloved in Huoshan. It’s the family that I built that I’m trying to return to with the help of the ‘Yen of Yunshu’. As you very well know, things haven’t panned out so well with returning to the mystical city of Huoshan.”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Stated Po in a sagely tone with a smile as he held me up in front of him. “We’ll figure something out Pom.”

“Funny you came to me for comfort and now you’re comforting me.” My tail wagged a bit and I smiled at him.

“Heh, yeah, this has gotten a bit silly.” Po said while setting me down and going to rub at the back of his head. “When you do eventually figure out that coin… you and the other girls won’t be around anymore.”

“Oh Po… you’ll always have the memories of us and the good times we had together, so long as you don’t ever let go of them we’ll always be in your heart no matter how far apart.” There was something I hadn’t brought up before, because not everyone would be so kind about it. I think Po could handle it the truth. “Po, the person I’m married to, have I ever given you a description of them?”

“No, but they must be pretty lucky guy to have someone like you.” Aside from Po making me blush, I decided to correct him on something.

“You know what I told you about the captain of Huoshan, the champion even. Do you remember what I also told you of Tianhuo?” I think I might have confused him somewhat, but Po nodded and seemed to wonder what the champion of Huoshan has to do with Tianhuo. “I’m married to her."

“Oh… huh… I can see why you wouldn’t bring it up so much. Some people might not be open to the idea of that kind of relationship huh.” Po looked a bit sheepish and he blushed. “So Tianhuo’s the champion of Huoshan? Well it explains why you’re eyes light up whenever you talked about her, since you don’t actually see her as just a friend.”

“Also the reason why I even have some talent in fighting, it’s rather odd that she is the shy one in our relationship given how supportive she is.” I looked over the edge of the boat at the water. “She was quite lonely before we met. She didn’t exactly have many friends before she awakened her fire and afterwards only those in the guard, but she at least had the respect of all the other longma.”

“I’m sure you’ll get back to her eventually.” Po gently rubbed my back.

“And I’m on a boat, let’s all stay afloat and once I get my own on it I will dote~!” Shanty sang out as she ran along pasted us, I smiled warmly after her.

“She seems excited.” Po stated simply. “Then again she’s always like that, even when she was pretty badly injured.”

“Shanty has her dreams and she’s trying to keep a positive outlook on things despite being a homeless orphan that I’m now taking care of, I don’t think I’ll ever want to deter her. She wants to sail the sea or the skies, she’ll probably want to do the latter on a magical flying boat.” The technological level around here would probably jump if I said the word ‘airship’, so I would rather imply that flying boats existed as ‘air’ was the bigger hint. “She just doesn’t see it yet.”

“See what?” Asked Po.

“She’s already living her dream of adventure.” I watched as Shanty climbed the mast to stare out at the sea. “I sorely want to adopt her, but I don’t want to keep her from her dreams and she’s almost old enough to start making them a reality. She just needs a little help, I’m already doing that by making sure she can defend herself.”

“She’s like the little sister I’ve never had.” At Po’s statement, I sighed loudly and he gave me a curious look.

“She’s not actually young, she’s that small because she’s malnourished and it’s why she eats so much.” I should probably explain malnourishment. “A child needs food to grow, they become malnourished when they don’t get as much to eat and given that Shanty was homeless and an orphan before we met...”

“At least she’ll always look cute right?” Tried Po who was looking for a bright side.

“One can only I hope.” I snorted and giggled. “Ocellus has a pretty large family and Smolder doesn’t acknowledge the fact that she has ever had parents. Ocellus’s came from a society that’s big on community and Smolder comes from a society that’s more about individual prowess.”

“Yet they are really good friends… unless… they are like you and Tianhuo aren’t they?” Po picked up on that pretty fast.

“It’s not like they are really truly hiding it, now getting them to admit to it…” I rolled onto my back and stared at the cloudy sky. “That’s the challenge. Ocellus needs to consume love and Smolder always willingly feeds her a metric ton of it of her own volition, it’s just that Ocellus is too polite to take any more than she needs for any given day.”

“This has been a pretty good talk, so what’s the first thing you are going to do when we get to The Valley of Peace? I know I’m going to talk with my father about my adventures in Gongmen City.” Good question Po. What would be the first thing I would do once we get back to where we showed up in this world?

“I think I would want to go for a frolic through the fields, maybe prepare a picnic and take Shanty with me to enjoy a day of not focusing on anything in particular.” If there was one thing that relaxes a lambkin like nothing else, it was a good frolic through a calm field with no danger or paranoia triggering things in sight.

I missed Meadow Hills sometimes, but I missed Huoshan even more. The farm lands away from the volcano were always just as nice.

-Huoshan Farmlands, Velvet-

"Everyone be thankful that the only thing I'm fussy about is my floof!" I think Tianhuo needed this, Pom was said to do this when she was highly stressed out.

Author's Note

The calm before the storm, which is Kung Fu Panda 3.

Po meets his father, wants to learn how to use chi and Jade Zombies otherwise known as Jombie's become a problem.

33. Jumped by Jombies

-Another world, Oleader-

“What are these things called again Fred?” I smacked the colorful and artistic creature away with an odd magical staff blade that was supposedly a key with a prominent eye at the top of the bladed portions of it and it was colorful blood red, black and gold throughout. I still don’t understand why it was specifically called ‘End of Pain’, but it was mine and it certainly wasn’t called the ‘End of Suffering’ which was a rather specific thing of note. “I find them a bit annoying and there’s this horrible fuzzy sound in my head that just won’t go away. They also almost remind me of Heartless.”

This key-blade thing was a decent weapon at the very least and the magical eye was something Fred could see through, he could always have one eye always open while sleeping now. I also wondered why there are so many weird worlds with those riff raff swarm monsters.

It was as if the Shadow Monsters, Heartless, Unversed, Nobodies and Nightmares weren’t bad enough, they were all so similar to one another it was completely ridiculous. Now we were in another dimension with creatures that had a similar feeling to them and they had earned my ire just by simply existing.

“Well Olly they are called ‘Noise’, THEY ARE QUITE LITERALLY ABSTRACT MUSIC AND ART BASED ENTITIES!” As he said this Fred opened his mouth and devoured an entire group of frogs with blades for legs garnished with a whirlwind minks, belly sliding penguins and a number of screeching bats that had been annoying my ears in particular. In fact Fred started focusing those last ones down with extreme prejudice. “They are apparently made of divine raw power, graffiti, a caustic mixture of EVIL SOUL JUICE and HEAVY NEGATIVE EMOTIONS of this worlds inhabitants. All with a massive heaping of DISCORDANT RYTHMIC ENERGY on top which might result in all the fuzzy sounds you’re hearing Olly. Weaknesses, from what I’ve just learned by ingesting enough them, seem to include positivity, strong emotional bonds, rhythmic emotional connections between two beings working perfectly in tandem and apparently powerful mental psychokinetic soul or magical based energies which apparently can be derived from clothing pins in this dimension. On another note, I FIND THESE THINGS ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS OLLY!”

“They have no idea what they are exactly dealing with do they?” I can already tell that Fred and I were going to be too much for them with just our bond alone. “Well come along then Fred, eat your fill. Maybe we can see about capturing one of these wolf based ‘Noise’ to give to Pom when we find her? I’m sure she’d love to have one as a familiar, I know she loves collecting odd canines.”

A large artistic wolf monster leapt for me, it was caught in Fred’s shadowy claws and he held the massive beast that was thrashing its claws inches away from my unflinching gaze.

“Hmm… far too big and nasty for dear Pom, you can eat it Fred.” I saw the sudden terror in this large Noise’s face as soon as Fred started eating it alive with a sadistic grin. “I wonder if these 'Noise' have inverse versions that are friendlier for Pom, something affectionate like Blighter. It’ll make a good late present for her birthday we’re all going to miss at this rate, maybe we can even find a cuter puppy version?”

I idly flicked my hovering weapon with the barest hint of a though and it completely sliced an incoming Noise in half, hopefully there’s something intelligent behind them and that it will be a much better fight than all those ‘Organization Thirteen’ pansies were.

“Oh… looks like they are building up to a crescendo, let’s make some noise of our own Fred!”

-Another day, Kung Fu Realm, Jade Palace Arena, Pom-

I deflected Shanty’s overhead right hoof swing, the crescent she was creating with her hoof dissipated on impact when the wool on my raised front legs flexed ever so slightly.

I suddenly froze, a really sharp chill ran down my spine.

“What being wrong?” Shanty asked as she backed up and sat down.

“I felt as if someone said…” I paused and looked about in a paranoid frenzy. “Here you go, fifty more familiars. Continue collecting every type of canine that ever was or ever will be, you obviously don't have enough already.”

“I be wanting my own familiar someday, actually I be wanting a lot of things and that be what I’m working towards!” Shanty tilted her head slightly as she looked at me. “I know you can’t be teaching me fluffmancer things, but I be wondering how you be deflecting my hooves when they can cut through cloth and wood like they being butter.”

“Magic.” I stated simply and without a second thought, Shanty nodded in agreement. “Before you even ask, fluffmancer abilities require a uniquely inborn talent for it. Even if a lambkin had all the magic in the world in their body, without even a smidgen of talent to even be a fluffmancer they wouldn’t be able to do any of the techniques. My bark blasts sort of work on the similar principle to my fluffmancer talents, but I can actually teach you how to do that... I think.”

My bark blasts were a completely magical based attack, which I explained to Tai Lung when he had asked me if it was a chi based technique. When the subject of chi came up, Po became somewhat interested in eventually learning how to utilize his.

Today Po was using the training hall to try and teach his friends by leading the exercise routine, I wondered if Tai Lung was correct about how poorly it would go?

Something exploded and we looked towards the training hall to see smoke.

“Po?” I asked.

“Po.” Shanty answered with a nod and a friendly grin.

“Tai Lung was right then, I wonder how smug his smile is going to be today.” My dry statement was met with an upset groan from Shanty.

“I be thinking it being pretty big today.” Shanty was never going to like Tai Lung, but at least the leopard was working out his familial issues with his adoptive father, his adoptive sister and a few other things. So things were looking up for Tai Lung at least. “I be wanting to learn to bark blast Pom.”

We eventually saw Po heading towards us to likely head on down to the Jade District to see his father Mr. Ping. We should join him to make sure he was alright.

“I’ll teach you how my bark blast works later, let’s go try and cheer Po up.” I walked over to the edge of the arena to pick up my bag and sling it over my neck and right shoulder. It wasn’t rare for Po to fail or flounder about, but this time it seemed pretty bad and relying on luck entirely doesn’t always get you through the day.

Ocellus was going to be working on the ‘Yen of Yunshu’ problem for the foreseeable future, since the Jade Palace apparently had a problem with keeping information in an orderly fashion.

Smolder was either out on the town having fun with the local children or she was working with Mr. Ping.

“Hey Po, how did leading the training exercises go today?” I tried to put on a false smile, but even Shanty would see through it.

“Whatever be happening, it cannot possibly be being that bad.” Shanty followed up with a weak grin.

“I destroyed the entire training hall and it’ll take weeks for them to fix everything.” When Po said this, I successfully resisted the urge to cringe. Shanty didn’t resist cringing at all. “I don’t think the guys will want me around for a while.”

“So… noodle soup on me?” It wasn’t like we had much need for money at the moment, Tigress was back to earning funds for the orphanage since I wasn’t taking up all of her side jobs.

I plan to give whatever remains of our money to Po or Ping when we eventually figure out how to use the coin that could take us home. The recent training exercise gone wrong was obviously a huge blow to Po’s confidence.

“I’d like that Pom and appreciate the thought.” Po stated as he smiled to me. “But Dad would probably give it to me on the Dragon Warrior discount, that… and I’m his son. Just pay for yourself and Shanty, goodness knows she’s hungry.”

“Hey, I not be hungry at all times!” Shanty’s stomach grumbled loudly in protest, she blushed vibrantly and ran a hoof shyly through her ponytail. “Though I could use a few bowls of Mr. Ping’s special noodle soup…”

“Heh, good food and company are just what I need right now.” Po stated as we continued down the stairs at a sedate pace. “I never thought that teaching kung fu, even to professionals like the Furious Five, could be so hard.”

“How smug was Tai Lung’s grin?” I asked just to know for sure.

“Very.” Po said with a smile. “At least I’ve certainly made his day.”

-An hour later-

“That over there is my friend Pom, she’s a really nice person unless you get her mad and it really takes a lot of effort to do that.” Po’s luck was absurd. Sure bad things happened, but it eventually lead him to meeting his father Li Shan in a dumpling eating contest and it wasn’t as surprising as I thought it would be. “I don’t remember much of mom, but she’s been like one to me and helping me out a lot since we’ve met. She’s from some mystical place called Huoshan, but I don’t believe her when she says she’s their weakest guard and even Tai Lung agrees with me on that. Oh right, you don’t know about Tai Lung do you?”

“Slow down my little Lotus, we have plenty of time to catch up.” Li Shan chuckled happily. This is the first time I saw another Panda in this world, apparently something made Mr. Li come all the way out here on a gut feeling and I’m beginning to connect the dots on how this world was similar to the last one and ours of Equus.

Like Ocellus and Smolder mentioned to me, the elements of harmony were thing in this world and I’m beginning to see what they meant considering I was watching Li Shan and Po hit it off quickly enough. Po was basically the Element of Magic like Twilight Sparkle was and in general was a good friend.

Shanty was already on her fourth bowl and I really hoped she wasn’t going to clean us completely out as to put us in debt before we could leave this world. I wanted to have a clean conscience before I say goodbye.

I looked to Mr. Ping and saw that he was jealous of Po connecting really well with his estranged father, I sighed as I just knew trouble was around the bend. Po was magnetically inclined towards trouble like the elements of harmony back in our world from the way Ocellus explained them.

A hint of something moving fast out of the corner of my eye made me bleat out loudly in surprise and roll out of my chair.

Several bright green needles pierced straight through the wood I had been sitting on. Po was up in an instant and looking around for my attacker while holding a paw out to Li to be quiet, his eyes were searching the rooftops.

I finally locked my eyes on my attacker and I heard Po gasp as he did the same, they were a pair of green glowing eyes and a body that looked to be made of stone in the shape of a porcupine standing on the nearby roof.

The needles on the masculine porcupine statues back were glowing a sickly green and it slowly reached up to pluck one and placed it in the bow it was holding.

“Shanty…” I quietly widened my stance for evasive maneuvers, this made the goat chug down the rest of her soup and stand up on her seat to glare at the porcupine statue on the roof.

“Is that guy… no way… Master Porcupine?! If I remember right he was said to have died about fifty… no a hundred years ago.” Po… why do I have this sudden sinking feeling concerning what you just said about him? “Oh this is awesome, I never thought that I’d get to meet him, his special style was the thousand quills of death. It was said he could regrow his quills quickly and launch a massive barrage of them with unerringly deadly accuracy, he was almost as dangerous up close as he is at a distance using his needle knife style by using his own quills as blades. Do you think I could get an auto-… wait… no… this is not a good thing is it?”

He had been excited up until the point he took note that they had been aimed at me specifically by staring at my perforated seat.

“That’s a big understatement.” I said while closing my eyes taking a deep breathe to mentally prepare myself for this and then opened them to scrutinize the still figure that was about Shanty’s size. What was Porcupine waiting f…

Two figures burst through the entrance to the restaurant area, leaping high in the air in my direction and they brought both their bo-staffs down on my raised legs that I brought above my head.

The ground cracked beneath my hind hooves and I kept my wool flexed to prevent myself from being crushed under their combined blows and the constant pressure I was now under.

It was two green glowing stony badgers that had me pinned in place as Porcupine finally release his quill.

I have just realized the ensuing problem with this, I was only talented in blocking blunt and slashing attacks…. piercing attacks on the other hoof were actually a big problem.

I tried to move out from under the staffs, but the green badgers kept me locked in this position.

A flash of an upwards crescent struck the quill before it could embed itself in my heart and it instead had been redirected to impaling the nearby wall.

Shanty spun and leapt to knock the right badger off of me by striking its staff upwards and away, this freed up my right hoof which I drove forward into the left badger’s body knocking it backwards.

For some reason the other badger and Porcupine reacted to my strike, I was about to question this when Po spoke up again.

“Oh the Badger Twins, they were known for creating so many bo-staff techniques that are still learned and used today at the Lee Da Kung Fu Academy and you just survived their Double Crushing Gong Technique!” I sent a glare towards Po as Shanty scrabbled backwards when several quills were launched at her. “They died many years back too come to think of it, but this incredible!”

“Now is not the time to be distracted, we’re under attack!” By what were apparently dead guys made of stone if Po was to be believed. I weaved around several green quills and saw a badger coming at me from the right. “They are actively trying to kill me here!”

Speaking of, I blocked a staff strike from my right and kicked up with my left rear hoof to knock them back and ducked under the one coming at me from the left.

I kicked off the ground with my right hind leg and launched a roundhouse to their face with it.

“Well I’m pretty sure they are not doing that on purpose, they were pretty good… right.” Po finally got his head in the game as he saw me deflecting blows from both of the badger’s weapons to the best of my ability while trying not to get pinned down again.

He finally charged in and knocked the badger on my right straight into the wall were it became embedded with a simplistic shoulder tackle.

Shanty quickly darted forward and into the street while avoiding the multiple quills raining down towards us. I quickly stumbled backwards as they were generally aimed at me and barely Shanty or Po.

I prayed to Jiutian, and to be safe Paprika too, for Shanty’s continued safety as I turned to my left and leapt over a sweeping bo-staff to perform a leapinh overhead left hoof swing to the stone badger’s skull while putting my full weight into it.

This only staggered it a bit and made Po’s opponent do something similar before he struck out as well with a confused look on his face.

-Equus, Paprika-

I started to glow and looked about curiously before shrugging. I said ‘yes’ to whatever the glowing was and it stopped immediately.

I then continued to playfully chase after the hydra that was running away from me that tried to play with Hoofington.

It needed a hug and a less destructive thing to play with than the town.

Me!

-God realm of Equus, Jiutian-

“Oh us, she actually has a worshipper!” I said in horror, the universe quaked at the screams of multiple gods. “Also I'll help wherever I can my lost little lambkin.”

-Kung Fu Realm, Pom-

“Hey, I think these guys are made out of jade.” Really Po? I quickly dodge a quill aimed for my right eye and nearly got struck in my left, but I managed to get my left leg up in time to flex my wool just as the blow would have landed.

The staff rebounded and unbalanced my opponent by spinning it around, I threw two right jabs and then went into a crouch for a hard left jumping uppercut that knocked this thing onto its back.

Shanty was distracted Porcupine and stopping the quills. These three monsters seemed to be more focused on me, except for the one Po was holding off.

“Oh, these guys are legends, do you see all the techniques they are using?!” Po shouted excitedly as he caught the bo-staff swinging for his head.

“Yeah, legends that seem to be focusing on me for some reason.” I blithely stated as I kicked up my opponent’s bo-staff with my left rear hoof. I got it in a two hoofed baseball grip, I then brought it around in a full spin to break it against the stone badgers face.

Once toppled, I stomped down on its chest with my left hind leg, while my right hind leg to keep my stance stable.

“I’ve pinned mine down.” I said as it struggled to get up, but I kept the pressure on it. I don’t think I even did any lasting damage to it.

“Hold on, I almost got mine. These badger twins weren’t really good at one on one fights.” Po managed to knock his opponent’s staff out of their hand with a back paw, he kicked them onto their back with his left leg and proceeded to lunge forward to belly flop onto them. “Master Porcupine was better at a distance than close up so Shanty should be able to take him.”

“My little Lotus.” Li Shan said worriedly as he looked to Po.

“Got it Pom! I’m fine father, I get into these kind of things all the time, right dad?” Po said while standing up to put his foot down on the statue thing like I did with mine, I looked Mr. Ping and the goose shrugged while cutting up a vegetable muttering something derogatory about Li Shan and was in the midst of making more noodle soup despite all the customers being scared off. Mr. Ping definitely believed in Po’s abilities. Po went back to looking at the statue he had pinned. “These guys kind of look like zombies, zombies made of jade. Oh, I know, let’s call them Jombies!”

I sighed while putting my right hoof over my face.

-Shanty-

He be very fast, but I not be letting him hit Pom and now he is actually focusing on me as I am being just as quick.

He tossed his bow to the side and pulled two quills out to charge me, I deflected his left swing with a right hoof outwards crescent slash and launched my left forward. My hoof thrusts not be capable of doing a crescent effect, that always required a swinging motion.

My blow be shoving Porcupine back, he be quickly spinning around trying slash my face with all of the stiffened quills.

I positioned my rear half to face him and then launched my left rear hoof upwards for his chin, he plucked two quills and blocked the kick. I be noticing that the quills had cracked, so I bucked my other leg upwards. The quills shattered and he launched upwards and off the roof.

I spun around and charged towards the edge of the roof as he started falling to leap while pulling back my right hoof. With a heave I spun my body forward and hooked my hoof down into the stony face, sending it towards the ground.

Porcupine be bouncing off the ground and I be flipping down into them with swing of both my rear hooves, two cutting edges took large chunks out of its stony hide and bounced them into the restaurant area.

I chased after him and leapt up to stomp all four of my hoofs on him, his quills start impaling the ground and he be stuck like Pom and Po’s opponent. I even be putting my hoof down to make sure he not be pulling free.

“Hahaha, I see you…” The voice be creepily coming from all three of the bodies with slightly shifting mouths. This be when Tigress, Tai Lung and Viper appeared. “Your chi will soon be mine.”

“Uh, which one said that?” I be looking at Po.

“I think it being obvious that this is being one being using three bodies.” I be hearing tales of cursed evil like this from pirate stories, provided a pirate be willing to talk to a sea urchin like me.

“How observant of you.” The three bodies said at once. “You will not be able to protect the Dragon Warrior forever, she will give me her chi one way or another and all of you shall fall to me… Kai!”

“Who?” I be asking confusedly, when suddenly all the three statues shrunk down into being these amulets things of green energy and they soon be disappearing into the sky. “Mr. Ping, can I have another bowl.”

“I was making it throughout the fight, thought you’d work up an appetite from that Shanty.” Mr. Ping be knowing me so well. He quickly placed a bowl of noodle soup on the counter, or at the very least my stomach.

“Well now, guessing from what little we saw, dead warriors are coming back to life as immortal statues.” Tai Lung leaned against the entrance to Mr. Pings. “I don’t know what’s more concerning, that the entity controlling them thinks Pom is the Dragon Warrior or that he might have the power of countless warriors from beyond the grave. If whoever this Kai is manages to control Oogway and raises him as one of these statues...”

The sudden ensuing silence be quite telling as even Tai Lung looked fearful.

I be looked at Pom on the ground curled up and shivering with her pupils shrinking to tiny dots, she not be taking this threat on her life very well.

A sudden strange urge be coming over me to hug Pom as hard as I could, so I be following that urge and my hug seemed to be incredibly powerful beyond what I should normally be capable of.

Author's Note

Pray to Paprika for hugs at your own risk.

34. A Sacrificial Lamb.

-Equus Realm, Ponyville, Velvet (Reindeer)-

“My cousin Cashmere would simply love this place.” I Velvet, a gorgeous reindeer with a glorious amount of floof, was currently away from my annoying Arizona and snuggly Paprika on business. “May you currently be open for a prolonged business discussion and an application for possibly becoming better acquaintances?”

It was mostly me getting out and about as it were, I needed more friends that weren’t cuddle crazy and or udder-ly ridiculous. I needed to spend time with someone on my level of sophisticated, get back in the game as it were, something Arizona and Paprika don’t quite match even if I would never trade them for the world.

I was also trying not to think of whatever might be happening to poor dear Pom.

I could be inclined to trade Arizona for two bits, she keeps me in shape so I suppose she was somewhat worthwhile to keep around. Anyway, I’ve heard of this quaint little place and I just had to meet the owner.

“I have time in my schedule, I’m not currently busy at the moment and I’ve not much to work on other than defense spells Princess Cadence taught me personally or a few personal projects that aren’t immediately urgent.” Rarity was a lovely mare with three jewels marking her flank and overly elaborate mane, I’m guessing she had a thing for gems. Her accent was a little off, but I could tell she was angling for noble aspirations at the very least. “So what is the name of your cousin’s establishment, don’t I know you from somewhere miss…”

“Misses actually, my name is Velvet and we’ve met before, but we haven’t really interacted all that much. My cousin is the proprietor of Cap N’ Cash, It’s named after my cousin and her familiar Cap who is like my little cutie here.” I reached up to the fluff at the back of my neck and soon pulled my right hoof forward with my ice sprite on it. “Say hello Tinsel.”

Tinsel squeaked and waved his left arm happily at Rarity.

“Oh my, he is a really adorable little cutie isn’t he? May I?” After a nod to Rarity, she gently patted my ice sprite on the head making him put his tiny limbs to his cheeks and blush. Rarity then addressed me personally with a thoughtful smile. “I knew I’ve heard of Cashmere from somewhere before… she’s the reigning champion of all the northern haberdasheries. Do you think she can get me an into the yak market? You see, I have a student at the friendship school I teach at here in Ponyville that I’m thinking of taking on as an apprentice and want to help her with her eventual dual citizenship if she continues down a particular avenue of romance. Anyway, I’m wanting to open a boutique in Yakyakistan while helping my friend out by eventually giving her a job here, do you think Cashmere would be able to help if I’m willing to open up a particularly lucrative dialogue of fair business Velvet?”

“Oh most certainly. My cousin is a bit shy, but she’s quite lovely and no nonsense once you get to know her. Her ice sprite is also absurdly powerful despite being coddled and doted on so much, no ruffians would dare bother Cashmere with her little protector Cap around. She can absolutely do it, but it may take a while to set up as yaks can quite be notoriously stubborn.” I looked at the dresses around the room with wandering eyes. “If you ever visit Rein personally or the surrounding regions, just stay out of the local politics and quite far away from nobles. Otherwise it’s becoming a nice holiday hotspot for Hearth’s Warming.”

“Tea?” Rarity asked in a friendly tone.

“Fruit juice for me please.” I actually wanted to buy something from this shop and maybe a nice ice blue number had caught my eye in particular, I wonder if I could drop Arizona’s jaw with that one. “My cousin family in Airship Mauled can’t handle caffeine or theobromine, solidarity and all that. Just because I can’t have tea doesn't mean I gave up on chocolate in its various forms though, still the Abyssinian and Diamond Dog safe holy fudge mother makes is quite delightful.”

We were best friends by the time I left Carousel Boutique.

-Kung Fu Realm, Jade Palace, Po-

Pom was still a bit freaked out about the attack on her and being called the Dragon Warrior. I would have corrected the guy speaking through the Jombies, but he disappeared too quickly.

Mantis and Monkey agreed that ‘Jombie’ is the correct term for what they were. We were all currently waiting on Ocellus. She had said she saw something related to ‘Kai’, throughout her reading of various scrolls trying to find some information on the ‘Yen of Yunshu’.

“Okay guys, I’ve got it!” With Ocellus approaching us holding a scroll up with her magic, Tigress and Tai Lung quickly finished up their spar by knocking each other back. “Thanks for the help Smolder.”

“Anytime Ozzy.” Smolder said with a smile, she had recently visited the local orphanage that Tigress frequents. “So what’s up with Pom? She’s been a bit off since I got back.”

“We got attacked by Jombies, but we be pinning them down and then they disappeared after targeting Pom as the Dragon warrior.” One would think Shanty was well aware that we didn’t actually defeat them since they got away and all. “Pom not be taking it very well and she nearly be dying once, but I saved her!”

Tai Lung pretty much stated that they would be back and that we might have to actually fight Oogway. I wasn’t going to like that at all, how do you beat someone with a thousand years of kung fu and the very grandmaster that invented it?

“He means statues with the energy flow of warriors that have long since been dead and resurrected to hunt down the Dragon Warrior.” Tai Lung stated coldly with his arms crossed. “If someone would get on with the information…”

“Oh, right, ahem, heh. Through the study of Oogway’s rather expansive notes, many of which are about eating cabbages and his numerous ode’s to the enjoyment of noodle soup, I’ve found out who Kai is and why his name was familiar to me.” Ocellus pulled a scroll from a bag and looked it over. She could learn to write and speak any written language in a short amount of time, it was totally amazing. “Kai was once Oogway’s friend and companion to the point they were like brothers, he was also a general of an army that was helping to protect the world from great evils over five hundred years ago. After being injured in a very protracted battle, Oogway was carried by Kai to a village of pandas that Oogway knew of for healing. He wrote down that the Pandas are said to be the masters of chi and they healed him.”

“Yeah, maybe you can visit our village some time so I can teach you Po.” Stated Li Shan cheerfully, I’m still surprised that my father is alive. Shifu glared at him for touching the magical artifacts around the area, much like I did the first time I came to the Jade Palace. “You need to be among the pandas to really learn though.”

“I take it that this Kai didn’t stay friendly for long.” Tai Lung muttered, I was beginning to hear some similarities between him and Kai. Except Tai Lung wasn’t about stealing and or murdering pandas, he was all about gaining recognition for his efforts.

I would say Kai was closer to Shen on the scale of irredeemable and that peacock was pretty dangerous opponent despite not being a kung fu master.

“Quite right, Kai wanted to learn about chi and wanted to steal all the chi from the pandas for their power, the fully healed Oogway was forced to take him down and protect the pandas before he got too far.” Ocellus continued to read the scroll. “Oogway was the one that banished him to the spirit realm, so we have what amounts to someone who’s all powerful and can’t be stopped after Pom.”

“This… might actually be a good thing.” Pom said slowly. “I’m just scared that I might have to acknowledge the truth that a small part of me is resisting with all my heart.”

“What truth would that be being?” Shanty asked as she prodded the now lucid Pom.

Pom sighed.

“That I’m a black sheep.” Huh? Pom’s wool looked pretty white to me. She rubbed at her left leg with her right hoof while looking to the floor. “Even then I’m a pretty weak for a black sheep. I’ve heard of better and stronger than a ewe lambkin of my meager abilities and… I have a plan. It's going to take some effort and a little subterfuge to accomplish it.”

“A weakness in lacking courage maybe, but your spirit is far stronger than you’re willing to believe it is and your only holding yourself back. I’ve seen what you can possibly be and you could equal Po’s raw potential with hard effort.” Tai Lung grumbled, was he trying to talk her up? He never does that too often for anyone. “What’s your plan?”

“Well, since Po is the Dragon Warrior and since we can’t kill someone who’s already deceased and they are currently trying to either kill me or steal my chi. We should assume the only way to beat him is figuring out how to unlock Po’s potential to use chi and since Li Shan is offering...” Pom, where are you going with this? “All of you and Po should go learn how to use chi from the pandas and I’ll stay here as bait to keep Kai busy, he’s likely going to destroy the Jade palace so we should move some things to a safer location.”

“I’m all for moving the things in the Jade palace to a safer location, but I don’t want to leave you here to face him alone!” Ocellus stated with worry.

“No way, nuh uh, we’re not leaving you here to take on that Jombie making monster by yourself.” I said after it filtered through my confused mind what Pom was going to do and adding my own voice to the pile of big ‘NO’.

“Po, I think she’s right, you should come to our village and learn how to use your chi.” Li Shan my birth father stated while slightly looking hopeful about something.

I looked to Shanty, she hadn’t said a thing. She just stared at Pom and Pom was looking right back at her.

“Can you be at least be teaching me with the time we have left?” What, Shanty why are you just accepting this?!

“I can give you the basics for how I do my bark blasts. You, Smolder and Ocellus are going with Po. It’s going to be dangerous here really soon and I need to prepare myself for it, also someone should head out and tell the citizens to lay low.” What?! Why weren’t Ocellus or Smolder saying anything, wasn't Shanty as upset as I currently was? I saw Pom whispering something to Shanty before patting her on the head. “Smolder, Ocellus, pack your things and get ready to leave, come along Shanty.”

Pom, why?! Shanty followed after Pom quietly as they headed down the stairs towards the arena.

“Why isn’t anyone stopping this?” I asked quietly. Smolder and Ocellus looked to each other with frowns, Ocellus whispered something to Smolder and the little dragon nodded before setting off.

“Maybe it’s because we all know that even if Pom were to run, Kai would hunt her down as he currently thinks she’s the Dragon Warrior and he has the ability to raise dead warriors with their skills mostly intact. Even I will admit that I can’t win this one with brute force and that’s even without this Kai having control of Oogway as a… ugh… Jombie.” Tai Lung stated bluntly without a care for my feelings on this matter, he also sounded disgusted with saying the word ‘Jombie’. “She wants to face him on her own terms and give you more time to learn Po, she also wants to stall him like the Furious Five stalled me at the Thread of Hope.”

“She can’t do that by herself!” I said in a slight panic.

“That’s because she isn’t going to Po… go get ready to head to the panda village.” Tigress, what, but… “She will have us helping her.”

“I’m going to be going with you Po, I’ll be waiting for our departure.” Claimed Tai Lung from out of nowhere and started down the stairs. “One of you better make it out this, at least we’ll get an early warning and an idea as to how Kai fights personally.”

“Mr. Li Shan… can I please have the location of where the village is on this map, at least an idea.” Ocellus approached my father seemed to have accepted that this was happening.

“Po, sometimes sacrifices need to be made, do have you any better ideas?” After Shifu said that he sauntered up and off towards the Jade Palace.

-The next day-

Po and the others were already well on their way and I was sitting on the roof, watching the horizon. I looked down the stairs and saw what I could only assume to be Kai approaching. He was a large bull with green glowing eyes and really weird demonic looking horns, he was dragging two blades attached to a chain along with him as he slowly made his way up the steps.

I idly kicked my legs back and forth as I looked to the Furious Five and Shifu getting ready for him, I even looked to the nearby Oogway statue below and sighed a bit of relief. Kai wasn’t going to use his Jombies, he was going to take us on all by himself.

This might actually work out, I would apologize for worrying Po later. Shanty, Ocellus and Smolder were safe and all I had to do was survive.

Kai made his approach and he started talking to Shifu and the Furious Five as he swung his jade blades around, he looked up to me and I narrowed my eyes at him. He chuckled darkly and then began his assault.

I watched and scrutinized his every movement, how fast he threw those blades and even watched as he took Mantis and Crane’s chi to almost immediately turn them into Jombies to be used against Monkey and Viper.

Throughout all this I sat here watching them fight, Tigress is the only one that seemed to do some damage with a kick that gave off a golden spark of energy. That must have been her chi and it seemed to have caused Kai some pain, the only thing throughout the fight so far that actually did.

Tigress is knocked away after making a disparaging remark and both Monkey and Viper are taken down before also being absorbed and turned into amulets.

Shifu starts putting up whatever remaining struggle he can, it was almost my turn to put up a fight and I was dreading it.

“Tigress go, Pom, I hope you are ready!” I nodded to Shifu as he dodges the swirling of the blades and the quick straightforward launches.

I swiftly rolled to the side as Kai’s right blade ripped through the roof right where I had been standing and Shifu took advantage to cause some minimal damage. I tucked away a scroll in my bag carefully and stretched out a bit.

I saw Tigress making her escape and nodded grimly when she looked back, I turned back to watch Kai rip the Oogway statue down and destroy a part of the Jade Palace’s lower floor.

I winced, but at least we had moved all the stuff out of there with the help of the local citizenry. It wasn’t long before Shifu was taken and turned into an amulet too.

Calmly taking a few steps back, the jade blade embedded itself through the roof where I had been standing. With a single heave pulled Kai himself to the roof with one solid yank and landed before me.

“Hello General Kai.” Forcing the wavering tone out of my voice and stiffening my legs so they didn’t knock together constantly, I had a job to do.

“So you’re the last one standing.” He said while narrowing his eyes down on me, he was a bulky muscular guy with a wild mane and he was even scarier up close in person.

“So I am, but let it be known that there are those who will stop you after I fall here.” The bark of mad laughter I received wasn’t heartwarming at all.

“I am completely unstoppable, what can you do against me when I’ve just about torn down Oogway’s legacy?!” He asked while taking up both his blades in his hands.

“You think that the Jade Palace was Oogway’s legacy? You know, it is fairly funny you are so sorely mistaken about that. His legacy is kung fu and the ability for the people to defend themselves.” I tried to make myself bolder than I actually was, my throat was really feeling the strain now. “So long as one person is willing to fight for the people, that legacy will never die.”

“This is only going to end in one way, so tell me…” He stalked forward slowly swinging around his blades before catching them both to hold towards my neck while looking me in the eyes. “What could you possibly do to me that they couldn’t? Oogway said you would stop me, but you don’t look like much.”

“This.” I stated while cowering before inhaling through my nose and letting out the most explosively powerful bark I have ever done in my life.

A huge blue sphere of raw magic and sound ripped in my mouth at twice the size of my own head and once the bubble of energy hit Kai's nose it exploded into a cone of raw unstoppable power. I had hit Tai Lung with the regular version of this attack, this was me charging up for this over the last few minutes from the start of the fight.

The portion of the roof Kai had been standing on was absolutely destroyed and Kai’s body was launched towards the base of the mountain.

I stood there gasping watching Kai’s form tumble painfully along the stairs and he struck the ground and bounced several times away from the base of the mountain.

I definitely would not be able to do something like this in a normal fight without someone covering for me and moving disrupts my concentration. Also my normal range was about three to six feet, charged up was about eight to twelve feet at best and he took the full blast cone.

At this distance I could barely make out him digging his badly damaged blades into the street to stand back up.

“…ort… idh…” My voice was well beyond hoarse after doing that. I clutched at the sudden stabbing pain in my throat, I probably shouldn’t talk or do anymore bark blasts.

Three things had happened to me, I had thrown out my ability to speak, I had almost burst my own ear drums and I had lightly injured myself when I slid backwards from the recoil.

All this likely did to Kai was slow him down and make him angry.

As I pulled my hooves away from my throat I heard a small jingling noise. With how bad off my ringing ears were, I wondered why my bell could be heard so clearly. At least the rest of me was fine and Kai was furiously charging his way back up here as quickly as he could after having lost the chain to his jade blades.

I turned around and tried to walk for the backside of the palace’s roof and stumbled a bit, that really had taken a lot out of me. At least I’m not as bad off as I was after Tai Lung, I even still had a bit of magic left in me to do a few small things and I was going need it in a minute.

Once I got my breath I started making my way for the roof that was closer to the backside of the mountain. Something ripped through the roof behind me and a knife flew by my face.

I squeaked and dodged the next two knives thrown by Jombie Shen, I was quite horrified to see him again.

A Jombie Gorilla was coming at me while raising his arms during this, I hopped backwards and closer to the edge as he brought them down and smashed a hole in the roof.

I heard a chirp and sharply inhaled as I leaned to the right and let a roof tile fly past my head as I brought my left leg up.

Everything seemed a little bit slower as I kept my inhale going, I flexed and Mantis bounced off my left leg straight into the face of the Jombie Croc knocking him over.

A quill scratched by the left side of my face and I wince as I reached up and my hoof came away with a little bit of blood.

I continued to slowly back towards the edge under an onslaught of attacks various range and close up attacks, one including Jombie Chicken trying to bowl my legs out from under me as both Shen and Porcupine were crossing their shots to prevent me from evading the rolling Chicken.

Wasn’t sure how managed to cartwheel through the various projectiles with only a scratch on my right rear leg making me wince upon landing. I tried to back up, but felt my rear hoof hit air.

I looked behind me at the wide chasm below as I firmly place my hoof back on the roof and looked at the eight different jombies cornering me.

That’s when Kai showed up and he was smiling, well this was it for what was obviously Oogway’s misdirection plan.

“Did you seriously think you could take on so many warriors by yourself?” Kai stalked forward.

“No and in fact I hardly initiate or even like fighting, given how things have gone so far… I think they’ve worked out pretty well.” I said as I forced some wool over the cuts in my cheek and leg with my right hoof. “I’m actually quite scared right now. It is only as a Guard of Huoshan that I’m keeping my nerves and I still have a job to do in protecting my loved ones. I will not let you take me and let me just be clear here when I say this, Baa-Ram-Ewe!”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Kai wasn’t worried about me escaping.

“It’s simply a promise.” I said I as crouched down while glaring at him and the jombies.

When I sprang up, Kai had expected me to be going towards him or to try and slip by his jombies. Had I done so I would have been skewered in the eye by a thrown knife from Shen, took an arrow through the heart via Porcupine and Gorilla could have grabbed me to crush my body to paste.

Instead, with all my might, I leapt backwards and off the roof over the gaping chasm below me where I started falling backwards.

I tried to stay calm as I quickly began approaching terminal velocity. There was a faint smile on my face as Kai stormed to the edge of the roof and watched me fall into the abyss with rage.

The clouds and darkness that surrounded the valley swallowed me whole.

Author's Note

I've recently learned that I lost an old family member to COVID, the last time I saw them they were pretty spry and before this COVID mess started. I can at least remember their face from 2019 and the good times we've had.

I didn't go to any of the holiday parties that that particular family member did and... they died early this January as a result of a gathering my closest family members and I avoided.

The cousin family and everyone that gathered together have contracted COVID somewhere between Christmas and New Years.

At best it has been surmised that the hospital working member of the family contracted it through travel, otherwise it's not entirely a sure thing. My cousin family doesn't live close to us and are doing okay otherwise.

What a way for this year to start, at least my family member managed one last celebration before they hopefully went to a far better place.

35. Family, Friendship and Food.

-Equus, School of Friendship, Silver Stream-

I sighed as I kicked my legs about as I felt an affectionate beak nuzzle deeply into my neck. I gave off a warm smile and giggled slightly as I was a bit ticklish.

“You know, this is one of those days I would be either doing something with Ocellus or Smolder.” I sighed loudly, because I didn’t have either of them around. “Thanks for being here for me.”

I snuggled them against me, trusting that friends of a feather were as close as we were together.

“Hey Silver Stream, Yona was wondering if you wanted to… oh uh… is that…”It was understandable that Sandbar was a little wary of my current positon. “Um… should I leave?”

I would be worried too if I had suddenly caught someone in this position, but in our case it was innocent.

“Sandbar, it’s just Edith, she’s not going to hurt you.” I tickled Edith’s chin with a claw and she clucked happily to rub up against me affectionately. “Not unless you intend to hurt her first anyway.”

Edith was the friendliest cockatrice I’ve ever met, then again she was my familiar, so of course she was always nice to me!

Edith was the pretty purple outlier among her species, also our bond made me immune to petrification magic. Wish I had had that ability before the Storm King was dealt with, then I might have showed him not to mess with me and family. Otherwise it’s still nice to have and it really helped with studying cockatrices safely.

Edith could help me save ponies affected by other cockatrices, apparently Twilight had a problem with that once and Fluttershy took care of it by staring down the culprit.

I’m surprised Edith doesn’t weigh more for her size and that I can lift her with one limb. You’d think she weigh more being a quarter to half my size. Also she was very protective of me when she was around.

“Uh are you sure?” Like any pony, Sandbar was going to be a little nervous, even if Edith was looking him directly in the eyes and he wasn’t turning to stone.

“You’re not turning to stone are you? Relax, Edith has been keeping me company because I can’t do thing with Smolder or Ocellus.” I watched as Edith pulled away from me and moved over to a worried looking Sandbar while clucking for a little affection from him. “See, she’s even trying to be entirely friendly. What were you going to ask me?”

“So you want to come with me and Yona to learn how to basket weave?” Considering Sandbar’s offer, I nodded.

“Sure sounds like fun, I’ll bet Edith wants to come along too!” I was proven right when Edith turned to me clucking happily in agreement and flapping her draconic wings. “Maybe she can even have a basket for a nest.”

“Let’s just hope that she doesn’t cause a panic.” Sandbar said warily while rubbing at his forehead.

Edith was such a sweetie and she wasn't going to hurt anyone, not unless they try to hurt me or her and that's unlikely given that we're in Ponyville.

Well except for the times really bad stuff happened around here like Cozy Glow, Nightmare Moon, Tirek and all that other weird stuff that tends to happen around here.

-Kung Fu Realm, Hidden Panda Village, Shanty-

“Don’t worry about me Shanty, go enjoy the panda village.” Pom be saying these words to me, she also be saying something important. “I promise you’ll see me again soon Shanty.”

She better be keeping her promise. The village was being nice, full of really friendly people who ate a lot and while I was never happier to be surrounded by food, it just wasn’t the same without Pom being here with us.

“Aye!” A small bubble erupted from me in a small circle bending every blade of grass away from me as I threw my hooves up in the air and shouted out loud, I be practicing what Pom be teaching me.

This was not quite how Pom would do it, but it be useful in getting some distance between me and something dangerous and it may even deflect projectiles if I can do it with enough power. It not be nearly as energy as my climbing or wall launching abilities.

My new technique didn’t have the range that Pom’s bark blast did, but it would protect me in a small circle. I still be working on it, because Pom be worrying about that a lot when I got injured by being surrounded by mercenaries. Now I could maybe be knocking back groups like that for room to move.

I be getting stronger every day for my dreams and friends, things be a lot better than I was alone.

It wasn’t long before I spotted Smolder and Ocellus walking along the path by where I was training, they be checking on me.

“Okay Smolder I want an answer, why didn’t you and Shanty say anything?” Recently Ocellus seemed to be getting friendlier towards Pom, even if she didn’t be originally liking her much. She seemed fairly upset with Smolder and me since we arrived. “You both like Pom more than I do and I don’t hide the fact that I’m not exactly her biggest fan, but you two look like you gave up on her. I thought our friendship with her meant something, yet the both of you were emotionally flat towards her when she suggested using herself as bait. Neither of you were even shocked that she even suggested it.”

“Well Ocellus, it’s just that… Pom wouldn’t endanger innocents by bringing Kai directly to this village until there’s no other choice to come here to protect them personally.” Smolder gently ran a claw along one of Ocellus’s ears making her shiver. “Instead of coming here directly and giving Po no time to prepare, Pom’s going to be between Kai and us every step of the way. I’m sure Pom will be okay, I mean she has Shifu and the Furious Five with her.”

“Pom always be ready to sacrifice herself for others, I know she be doing that without question.” I approached them. I think of Pom as being a hero, she not be the strongest or wisest being around, but she be doing what she be thinking is necessary. Even then, Pom doesn’t charge into things blindly, she always be thinking… a bit too much some would say. “If Pom be alone with no one to help, then she will always run from danger. If there is someone to be helping and they be absolutely needing it, then she be fighting to protect them with all she can if they can’t protect themselves. I am wanting to be strong enough so that she doesn’t need to protect us like she did by staying behind.”

“We can agree that it sucks Ocellus, but we didn’t want to put any more stress on Pom than there already was. She was freaking out about being called the Dragon Warrior and actually being a Black Sheep.” Smolder be snuggling Ocellus pretty comfortably, caressing the right said of her neck as she pressed her face into the left. “We knew where it was heading and that she already had her mind made up, if we had stayed behind she would have put everything she had into protecting us even in an unwinnable fight. Besides, didn’t you give her directions to the village after asking Li Shan for them?”

“Yes, but can she really get by Kai?” Ocellus be giving Pom directions to the panda village should she manage to actually slip by him. “We didn’t meet Kai personally, but anyone who can do some form of necromancy is a really, really bad person to run into. There’s a reason why it’s the most banned form of magic on Equus, I mean you’ve heard the rumors of the existence of both Umbrum and Blanks right? It’s said to be the eventual end results of using such dangerous magic and my people were close to becoming something akin to those horrors stories due to our constant hunger.”

“He not be using magic though, Tai Lung mentioned that this Kai be using chi.” I not be getting it much about how to manipulate one’s own life force, but I know it is not being the same as wielding magic like we do.

“Even then, this Kai guy is bad news all around and you only faced three Jombies Shanty. I wonder if there’s an actual limit to how many Jombies he can create and control at once.” Smolder stood up and rubbed at her chin stretch after having calmed Ocellus down and fed her. “Now if only I know how to do Spike’s message sending magic, then we wouldn’t have a problem getting home, because I could just mail us back to our world.”

“I actually do know the founding principles behind how that works at least, but we can’t use it as you describe as it’s not cross dimensional magic.” The subject change Ocellus followed into almost be giving me whiplash. “So what were you working on Shanty?”

“I be practicing my new move, it is being based upon Pom’s bark blast.” I ran my left hoof over my left horn while closing my eyes. “It not being very strong yet. Pom learned her ability from being with dogs, my use of the technique is far bit different and it be somewhat weaker.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of some way to improve it Shanty. For being someone who’s homeless and never went to school, you’re really smart.” Grinning at Ocellus, I nodded at the compliment.

“I be learning much on the streets, reading and writing are necessary life skills… especially for pirates to be writing their memoires should they live to write their history and old enough to retire.” I be not having much luck in my early life, but I be having luck in my later life to have friends such as these… and maybe a parent in Pom? I be trusting her with my life at the very least. “Pirates can be idiots, but even idiots need to be smart enough to be reading a room or person on sight. I be learning quite a lot about that, but a captain has to be smarter or stronger than their whole crew and that be my eventual aim.”

“Speaking of aim, are we going to talk to Po about the whole learning chi thing or maybe the teaching the pandas how to fight Kai?” Smolder looked in the direction of the village as the pandas continued to live their lives to the fullest in spite of any incoming dangers, they never lost heart in the face of imminent trouble and were completely peaceful. These were the people Shen had been afraid of? “Po was pretty upset to hear how Li Shan lied to him about knowing the secrets they lost when their previous livelihoods burned down more than twenty years ago, which was probably thanks Shen’s attack.”

“I’m surprised that Kai is a five hundred year thing and not a thousand year things, I mean Equestria always has thousand year troubles.” I not be knowing of the things that Ocellus speaks of, but everyone be knowing Nightmare Moon. That be a fun night where I managed to steal a lot of food, but I be eating every last bite of evidence and sleeping under a pile of warm newspapers with the image of Nightmare Moon on them. She not be looking so tough. “While there are many large similarities between our worlds, it’s just not quite the same.”

“Po is at wits end, Tai Lung is at wits end trying to help him with all this and the less said about Mr. Ping and Li being at each other’s throats the better.” Yeah, things weren’t great as Smolder just pointed out.

Mr. Ping came along with us because he didn’t like Li Shan taking up his son’s attention, he be the one raising Po to make noodles and loved him with all his heart. He also be coming with us to show the pandas his noodle soup skills and work up a rapport with the locals so that they might eventually visit his restaurant in the Valley of Peace.

Li Shan still wants to be Po’s father though and I didn’t see why they couldn’t share. They both be caring about Po greatly and they should be happy that they even have a family. They don’t know what they be having is important and are taking it entirely for granted.

“Things be being a mess.” I said quietly as I wilted, I be depressing myself with those thoughts.

Ocellus looked over to me and came over to wrap me in a hug and Smolder quickly joined the hug.

I slowly wrapped my hooves around them and held them too, I be silently reminding myself that Ocellus can feel my emotions and not be capable of reading my mind.

-Past noon-

I be the first one to be seeing it, it be Tigress and she not be looking good. I ran out to meet her as she collapsed.

“Tigress, are you being okay?! Here, let me be helping you.” I managed to get my head under her right arm and I started dragging her into the village, I was soon helped by the others.

The news she brought wasn’t good and for once I saw concern on Tai Lung’s face, he be hiding it very well.

The Furious Five, aside from Tigress, and Sheep-poo be having all their chi taken and Kai can be using them as Jombies now.

I not be liking hearing this one bit.

The last Tigress be hearing of Pom was when she knocked Kai to the base of the stairs that lead up to the Jade Palace, he then be charging back up there with eight jombies and looking quite angry.

I be liking that news even less.

That was all she be knowing about Pom and it wouldn’t be long before Kai came after us, he would be more after Tigress than anything and it was useful information to know that he could use eight jombies or more at once.

It didn’t help that Kai might even know now that Pom isn’t the Dragon Warrior if he be getting her.

-A few hours later, evening-

Po looked like he was upset and be needing time alone to think, but I be wanting to cheer him up after he be arguing with Tigress. Tai Lung be surprisingly defending Po and asking his sister if she be having any better ideas than Po’s plan to use the Wuxi Finger Hold on Kai.

I want to be making things better, so what can I be doing? Oh, I know! Food always be cheering me up when things are going wrong and I don’t have to steal anymore.

So I find myself at the place Ping had set up at in village.

“Mr. Ping, Mr. Ping!” I ran up to the counter and got myself up onto it.

“What is it Shanty?” I be reaching into the bag around my neck that Pom be getting for me to carry things in and brought out a few yen.

Pom be saying that we soon wouldn’t be having much use for these coins outside of this world if we could figure out how to use the ‘Yen of Yunshu’ and we could spend our coin on food or snacks. Anything else was being left to Po and Mr. Ping.

I be making sure I didn’t somehow get the ‘Yen of Yunshu’ in my bag, Ocellus should still have it since Pom passed it to her for safekeeping.

“I be needing a bowl of noodle soup, as a takeout order for someone else!” I be receiving a glance from Mr. Ping, he was about to deny my money. “I not be needing the money soon and it be for a good cause.”

“I’m guessing that you are going to give this to Po?” It was like Mr. Ping could read me so well, I didn’t say anything and sighted. “I haven’t been acting like an adult have I?”

“I would be saying no, Li Shan is being family and… family be important even if you don’t like him and Po is upset with him right now. He will still be your family if you let him.” I received a long gaze from Mr. Ping, after a moment he nodded and got to work. As he did so I made a comment. “Do you think Po will be forgiving him?”

Mr. Ping silently looked away with a guilty expression and continued his preparations.

“Would you be able to work with Li Shan and help him with being a father as you already are? I don’t think he ever be getting the chance to be experiencing it.” There was a long silence, I be trying something else. “Do you be needing help with the soup?”

“Sure, you can even use this as a way to practice chopping vegetables with your unique fighting style.” Mr. Ping is giving me a great suggestion as he finally turned to look at me. “It could be an interesting method of training for you to get the slices to come out evenly and even if they don’t, I can still use the ingredients. I guess I should be a little more confident in things working out.”

“So you be embracing it?” I asked as I prepared to cut the first vegetable by angling my right hoof.

“Kung fu is a part of my son’s life, if I can help him or you follow your dreams, then I’m open to suggesting things that could be used as a method of training from the way Ms. Lambchop explained it to me.” Mr. Ping chuckled in a merry way. “If even my cooking skills can be used in a fight, I would gladly help Po in that way, but I don’t know how much of a fight I would be able to put up personally. I don’t like seeing Po struggle with so many problems at once, but everyone struggles at some point and sometimes they need to figure out things for themselves, and others, they need to ask for a helping wing. It’s like how I’m struggling with coming to terms with Po having another father in his life and you’re helping me. I’ll try to work something out with Li Shan soon, but I kind of enjoy watching him sweat and who knows… he might even come to me.”

“You be a really good person Mr. Ping.” He smiled at me and nodded to the vegetables as I prepared to train by cutting them using my Cut-lash style.

-Overlook-

I be balancing the bowl of noodle soup on my head as I walked up the stairs towards Po, Tigress and Tai Lung silently sitting together. I even be having a pair of chopsticks sticking out of my headband next to my right horn.

This place be overlooking a nice view, I can see why the village was built here. It was beautiful up here, if a bit cold.

“Special delivery!” I announced as I brought a bowl up to Po.

“Not now Shanty, I’m trying to figure out how to make warriors out of the pandas.” Po be earning my ire slightly for the dismissal, but I still continued forward towards him.

“They’re villagers Po, they don’t have your ability to learn Kung Fu at impossible speeds.” Tai Lung muttered. “Dragon Warriors they are not...”

“I can’t believe it, but I actually agree with Tai Lung on something.” Tigress said leaning against the nearby railing looking quite defeated.

Tigress was on Po’s right and Tai Lung was on his left, I be thinking they be like Po’s good and bad shoulder beings when I looked at the three of them sitting there.

“Why not be using what they can already do? I be learning to balance this bowl on my head, I didn’t spill a single drop of this hot soup to bring it here for you, the least you could do is eat it after I helped make it with Mr. Ping and be going to all the trouble to get it here while it’s hot. It was good training for me and I had fun too!” I carefully removed the bowl from my head and placed it next to Po and I started to walk off. “That be how Pom be training me and you already be seeing the results of that Po. I will go learn how to roll safely like the pandas do now, I can be at least learning something from them and they can be learning something from me if they want. I be using that to get my mind off of things or my worries about Pom, maybe you can do the same with the food?”

I left the bowl behind for Po and made my way uphill to where all the pandas liked to happily roll around.

-Po-

I looked at the village, then down at the bowl Shanty left behind for me. I leaned down, picked up the chopsticks that Shanty also put down with the bowl.

I started to eat the noodles as I thought about what she said, they were my father’s noodles and that made me smile a little.

When Pom, Shanty, Smolder and Ocellus came to my dad’s restaurant weeks ago, I didn’t have any talent for kung fu. Now I could feasibly match Tigress, Tai Lung and several other warriors with my own unique prowess one on one.

I remembered Pom asking for jobs while bowing herself before my dad and begging for his help, he was quite stunned as was I at the time.

Now, I didn’t know how to teach kung fu or how I was even going to beat Kai, I didn’t even know if the pandas would be willing to train up to defend themselves. That whole thing in Gongmen City with Shen and the destruction of the Tower of the Sacred Flame going up in flames was still quite fresh in my mind. Their fireworks factory is notably making a comeback.

Pom use the jobs she acquired for her group to teach Shanty balance, poise and other unique things one can learn from just doing… everyday… things… that can be applied to… oh… OH…

“That’s it…” I said mystified, I hadn’t thought about it before, but with the way Pom first started training Shanty to fight was the same way I could teach the panda villagers to defend themselves, distract Kai and lighten the burden on the those of us that took the fight directly to Kai. Of course Tai Lung and Tigress are going to be on the front with me and I would have to get close to Kai to even pull off my plan. “I know how to train the pandas now. We don’t really even need to train them too much and we just need to kick their natural talents up notch. I’m going to need Smolder to teach Mei Mei and the ribbon dancers, Tigress you are good with kicks right, Tai Lung you’re good at lunging and grappling… oh ho ho… Kai will not even know what’s going to hit him!”

Both Tigress and Tai Lung looked at me with concern.

This was completely understandable given how poorly my training hall exercise went, given I set it almost entirely on fire.

“Uh, hi son, I know you don’t exactly want to...” I ran up to Li Shan, despite him lying to me about knowing how to use chi, and pulled both my dads into a really big loving family hug.

Author's Note

I'm hoping this year gets better soon.

36. Jombie Fight.

-The next day, Hidden Panda Village, Tigress-

I identified with Po on a number of levels, but this… how he trained the pandas was just ridiculous.

Smolder, was teaching a class some of the ribbon dancing lessons she learned from Viper to them. I could actually see a viable reason for this, given how adept Smolder became at wielding her ribbon in combat.

Mei Mei the local ribbon dancer was interested in what Smolder had to teach and even gave a few pointers of her own.

As for the rest of the training though? It was all so very odd.

Ocellus was playfully teaching the panda’s how to launch themselves and other things out of their hammocks, how to get more power out of them and how to aim the things being launched with more accuracy and varying levels of force.

Tai Lung taught a big panda how to hug with more force and he eventually joined Shanty in learning how to tumble and roll like the pandas, he even taught them how to lunge out of the roll and back into it.

The fact that my… brother? Do I even dare call him that? The fact that he was actually going along with this oddball training regimen that Po cooked up was quite weird, he was even actively participating in all the stuff Po was telling the pandas to do.

I thought Tai would think this was all a big waste of his time and that he’d be angrier about all this nonsense. Instead he embraced it and actually started leading the Jianzi exercise once Po got it started.

“I be learning this one from a handsome skunk friend who did this with plums.” Shanty had pulled off some weird spinning maneuver while keeping her dumpling in the air that had her twirling her hind legs widely in a rather intricate pattern while using her front legs to spin in place and twist her whole body around rapidly.

Some of the pandas even managed to emulate the strangely hypnotic movements Shanty was pulling off. Shanty decided to show them up by doing that while juggling three dumplings in the air with her hind legs in a rhythmic beat, before catching them all in her mouth.

For what it was, it was fairly impressive and Shanty deserved the applause.

“They are ready.” Po said with a grin.

“What…” To me, it looked like they just spent the whole day having fun!

The last thing Po did in when it was evening was get every panda to break a wooden board in a unique manner, some of them actually managed fairly decent punches.

-The next day, minutes before Kai’s arrival-

Okay, so maybe Po wasn’t just messing around, especially give that Tai Lung praised Po for his training methods for the civilians and the strategy we’ll soon be employing.

That’s… actually rather high praise coming from the likes of him. I had to be ready, Kai was already on his way to attack the village.

We eventually saw Kai come flying up to land a fair distance outside the village entrance, the bull had a smug grin on his face.

“So you must be the real Dragon Warrior.” Kai said as he pointed his right chainless green blade at Po. It appears Pom had done some lasting damage at least. “That fake didn’t put up much of a struggle and the coward even jumped to her own doom. You are the last thing standing in my path to total chi domination!”

“You must be General Kai, Beast of Vengeance and Maker of Widows.” Po certainly learned a lot from the scrolls Ocellus suggested to him.

“Thank you, almost makes me want to spare your life for at least knowing who I am.” As Kai said this he twirled his blades in both his hands by their handles. “Almost, I will…”

“Can we cut out all the chit chat and get this show on the road?” Po stated loudly in an annoying tone to rile up Kai. “We already know what you’re going to do, so let’s get started already!”

“As you wish!” Kai pulled out a number of green amulets from his belt and then he tossed them up and with an intricate weaving pattern with both his weapons to launch them all towards us.

The various amulets exploded into multiple jade statues to land in front of us.

I mentally cringed at the numbers we were facing, hopefully Po’s plan worked. Kai kept Oogway’s amulet around his neck and thankfully didn’t use it.

“Huh, they are all green, except Mantis… he was always green.” I glared at Po while getting into a defensive stance.

“Po!” I said flatly.

“Right sorry Tigress, focusing.” Po took his ready stance.

We were facing Mantis, Monkey, Fath-er-Shifu, Viper, Gorilla, Croc, Ox, Porcupine, Shen, Chicken, Crane, Bear and the Badger Twins. Bear was the most dangerous given he came armed with two axes he was wielding one handed.

-Shanty-

That... be a lot of Jombies to see from my position on the hill.

“Remember to stay high and safe Ocellus, watch out for Porcupine and go for raw force when using your magic.” Smolder stated as the battle started. “Got to go Ozzy, Mei Mei and I are going to be quite busy soon.”

Mei Mei be the head ribbon dancer of the village, she be learning how to wield nunchaku on Po’s recommendation. She be good with both that and a ribbon, at the same time no less.

Did this world just make learning how to fight easier? It be a fun world if that were true.

Smolder took off to go join the ribbon dancers that would try to lock down the Jombies and I watched Po begin to move as I got into position.

I watched as two Panda be taking down Jombie Crane after being launched from some hammocks. Po was up on a nearby roof and he signaled out to us.

I be charging forward and curling up with several other pandas as Po defended himself from several Jombies with a wok, we rolled through the snow and towards a cliff.

The pandas knocked a majority of the Jombies off the roof to the ground while damaging it.

I be following them off the cliff to uncurl into a flying double buck at Jombie Shen’s head to knock him off the roof, doing minor damage to him.

I curled up again as I fell to the ground and rolled a bit.

Once I be getting out of the roll to turn around, I narrowly dodged a knife to the neck that rammed into the nearby house up to the hilt behind me.

I saw a bit of my blood drip on the ground and felt a pain in my neck and not just the figurative one from seeing Shen again.

I think I can be taking Jombie Shen, who had just thrown that knife at me while he was still lying on his back from where I kicked him. He be looking even more dangerous now that he was a Jombie.

The Pandas started doing everything they could to fight the Jombies and keep them from ganging up on Po, Tigress or Tai Lung. Tai Lung immediately started dealing with the most dangerous looking one the Jombie Bear. The Gorilla was the next most dangerous, but was currently being pinned by the hugging panda who was managing to damage it just by his hug alone.

Shen kicked up onto his feet and my attention snapped to him as he pulled out that short spear sword to charge for me. He came in for a sweeping swing and I stood my ground by getting up onto my hind legs and waiting for him to close the distance.

I slung my right hoof around and forward to deflect his sweeping swing coming from my left and went to slash upwards with my left hoof. Only for him to spin with my deflection and fan his tail outwards.

His tail solid jade feathers be slapping me harshly across the face and it be cutting into my cheeks lightly. I also be knocked entirely off balance.

Shen leapt up continuing his spin to launch his right set of talons for my belly.

I stumble back and then he landed on that leg to kick upwards with his left. I hastily slashed both my front hooves downward to block him from ripping me open from my belly to chest. Unfortunately this be leaving me open for the incoming blade spear from my right and he be putting both his wings put into it.

A blast of magic struck him, damaging his head and caused cracks to form throughout it as his blade went past my eyes. I silently be thanking Ocellus as I pressed my advantage against the Jombie with an overhead left hoof swing.

Shen deflected again and got a light cut across my right shoulder as I tried to fall under the swing coming from my left.

I be launching my right hind leg upwards to the left as I fell to the side and landed a solid blow across the jade zombie’s chest creating a large gash and causing cracks to appear all throughout the Jombie’s body.

I rolled onto my back panting and my eyes widened as I saw Shen leaping to bring his spear blade down on me.

Lifting the rear half of my body the blade slammed down behind my butt, I pushed myself back slightly with both my front hooves and then lashed my rear hooves downwards damaged Shen’s wings with two crescent slashes. This be making Shen stumble away from his weapon.

I pressed my left hind hoof against the flat of the blade and kicked off of it to spin on my back and around like I did when I juggled those dumplings during practice. I added a bit more spin and then kicked my right hind leg out to rip off a large portion of Shen’s beak and lashed out with my left to clip his right leg doing some more damage.

I planted my front hooves and with a twist of my body, I popped backwards a few steps and into a standing position facing him.

He and I looked at the weapon.

We darted forward for it.

Shen’s damaged wings would have grabbed onto it before I could, but a ribbon wrapped around it and we both watched as the weapon was yanked out the ground.

Smolder grabbed her ribbon and brought the weapon around to slam up into Jombie Croc’s chin making the statue stumble, she spun and slashed the weapon across his chest and let her ribbon fly to the left in a wide sweep.

With a yank Smolder pulled the ribbon into flowing behind her and then heaved the ribbon overhead and with a simple snap of her wrist, Smolder impaled Shen’s weapon into the Jombie’s chest knocking it onto its back.

Something in the corner of my eye moved, I ducked as a jade knife went flashing over my head and quickly arced my left hoof upward to deflect the other knife Shen was trying to stab me with.

Before Shen could try any further a barrel slammed into him and his body be getting stuck in it, I look over my shoulder and waved to a panda that just helped me and he waved back while smiling brightly.

He quickly gained a look of worry and pointed behind me. I turned around to see Shen shredding the barrel with six knives, three in each wing. He leapt up and tossed all six of them at me.

I scrunched up and concentrated, trying to pool all my energy in my body and timed my new move as the knives were about to hit me.

“Yarr!” Throwing up my hooves, I then flexed them as I shouted at the knives, they stopped mid-air and fell straight to the ground.

I charged forward, performed a cartwheel and launched myself into a Wild Windmill heading for Shen.

All my hooves were creating a rapid series of circular white glowing crescents through the air as I flew towards him and the three knives he be throwing at me bounced off the crescent slashes I be making as I spun.

With a kick of my hind legs I sped up my rotations and then flipped to bring my right leg down.

“Be going back to where you belong you scourge!” My right leg impacted with Jombie Shen’s head, his entire body be cracking now. When I arced my left rear leg down it suddenly rippled with a bright white energy that seemed to encompass my leg and solidify into the shape of a crescent blade. I called out as I saw it. “Cutlass!”

My left leg be meeting no resistance as it went downwards and I flipped forward behind Shen to land on my hooves. My eyes darted around in front of me, all the Jombie’s around suddenly froze for some reason and the pandas started immediately taking advantage of it.

I be feeling a wind at my back and grinned as my hair was gently tussled by it.

-Tigress-

I just finished protecting the panda child that liked me and even had Po’s toy of me, that’s when I noticed that all the Jombie’s suddenly froze up .

I looked over to Shanty and watched as she just stood there with her back to Jombie Shen, slowly the jombie holding two knives in an aggressive manner split in half. His two halves slowly started to fall away… then, before they hit the ground, they exploded violently sending small shards of jade everywhere.

A grinning Shanty stood tall, despite some injuries, at hearing Kai cry out in agony.

It was also music to my ears as well. Here we thought Kai couldn’t be hurt, said bull was currently clutching his head in agony as Po approached him.

The various Jianzi playing panda kids started kicking firecrackers into the various jade zombie’s faces and I noticed that Kai was entirely disorient by everything.

I could see Ping and Li Shan working together to bash Jombie Chicken around, they were actually doing some damage too.

-Smolder-

Oh yeah, that definitely had an effect and Shanty looked awesome doing it. I narrowly dodged Croc trying to slap me across the face with the tail.

The whole village was in an uproar against the various Jombies, but the pandas were taking turns putting their skills into the fight. Mei Mei showed herself to be especially adept as she had both Badger Twins tied up with her ribbon and was slowly bashing them apart with the nunchaku.

After using Shen’s weapon to impale him, I was having problems with figuring out a way to finish off Croc.

Speaking of awesome things happening, Tai Lung apparently managed to steal one of the Jombie Bear’s axes and he just came in to swing it straight through the neck of Jombie Croc, completely decapitating him.

“Hey, thanks for the assist.” I stated plainly as I heard Kai crying out in agony again.

“Don’t count on it happening too often dragon.” He might try to sound like a jerk, but I think Tai Lung has turned himself around like Princess Luna. He turned back to Jombie Bear with the axe in both paws ready to continue his fight. “It’s not every day I get to face ancient master and rip them to shreds without worrying about killing them after all. In fact, you could say I’m cutting loose!”

Tai Lung gripped his axe and brought it down for an overhead swing that made Bear block with the shaft of his axe and brought him to his knees. He may be a jerk, but then again my people were jerks at times too.

I quickly looked to the air looking for a different Jombie to focus on, something chirped and I saw a green blur shooting for me.

“Agh!” I couldn’t even react before my left wing felt like someone rammed an icicle into it and I fell to the ground. I picked myself up while looking at the damage to my wing, I was guessing Jombie Mantis just knocked me out of the air.

A chirping noise came from my right and I turned only to see a powerful blast of magic and tiny bits of Jade going everywhere, plus more pained screaming from Kai.

“Are you okay Smolder?” Ocellus asked as she came in for a landing next to me.

“Mantis just messed up my wing.” Oh yeah, I was in pain.

“Yeah, sorry about that Smolder, couldn’t exactly control myself you know.” We both blinked and looked at where the Mantis Jombie used to be to see regular flesh and blood Mantis stretching most of his body out. “Ugh that was horrible, thanks for freeing me up from that, now if you’ll excuse me…”

Mantis leapt several times at high speed then rammed into Jombie Monkey and we then saw Croc run by with a determined look in his eyes as he aided several pandas by deflecting several of Jombie Porcupine’s rapidly fired quills.

“So… destroy a Jombie that was someone taken alive…” Ocellus stated slowly a small smile forming on her face.

“Yep and I have an idea of who to go for next, we could use some instant reinforcements, follow me!” I readied my ribbon as started charging for Viper, I couldn’t fly at the moment with how badly my wing was twisted. We saw Po fighting off Shifu Jombie as he was almost to Kai. I pointed to Shifu. “Ocellus!”

Ocellus turned and immediately fired a blast that knocked Jombie Shifu away and Po waved to us and ran towards a pained looking Kai.

With Ocellus’s help I can show Viper just how good I’ve gotten at using a combat ribbon, it was thanks to her that I could be both cute and violent at the same time! The best of both worlds really.

-Shanty-

I be seeing Mantis and Croc returned to normal, I be smiling brightly and then charging straight for Jombie Sheep-poo to keep him off of Po.

I lashed out with my left hoof only for him to catch it and kicked me in the chest, I rolled with the blow, but that be smarting like nothing else I ever felt. I be coughing quite a bit.

Might be biting off more than I could chew, but I be helping Po! Besides, when would I ever get another chance to buck mean old Sheep-poo into next week? Provided that I could hit him, he was really hard to keep up with and I hoped to one day be that capable.

-Po-

I managed to knock one of Kai’s weapons out of his hands and then got him in the Wuxi Finger Hold.

“Now skadoosh!” I performed the technique correctly… but it didn’t work. Why didn’t it work?! I tried it a few more times. “Wait, why isn’t it working?”

I quickly let Kai go and back off as he nearly struck my neck with his other blade held in his left hand.

“That technique only works on the living, I’m a spirit… AGH!!” He be clutching at his head in agony. “How… h-how… are they taking my chi from me? No matter, I will have won when I’ve finished…”

He grabbed up his other blade in his right hand and started to move forward, then he cringed and growled as he looked quite dazed.

I looked behind me and saw Viper helping Shanty with Shifu, wait Viper was back to normal?

I had to quickly go back to paying attention to Kai, as he strode forward to attack me with his blades, I ducked, dodged and even dived.

I must be looking pretty awesome right about now when I slapped him across the face with a hard right paw.

He kicked me back, but I didn’t go very far when I blocked it expertly!

“Enough, I will not lose here as you have no real method of defeating me!” Kai charged me horns first.

I caught them, lifted him up and then slammed him face first into the ground, didn’t slow him down at all as he was swing his blades up for my belly making me back up a bit. I continued to strike at him, but my attacks were doing nothing to him and all I could do was dodge.

Kai was right, but how was I going to find a way to take him out? I was banking on the Wuxi Finger Hold to take him down, but he’s a spirit warrior and it only works on the… living… I looked back towards Tai Lung, Tigress and all my friends fighting for their lives. Some of the Jombies were missing and others were warriors freed from Kai. If Kai wasn’t dealt with swiftly, he could just outlast us all and just ‘Rejombify’ my friends and family.

All I need was an opening, but Kai was really tough and it was hard to get in close with him attack with those blades of his.

“Haaaa-ULP?!” Kai came forward raising both his blades, but when he tried to bring them down he couldn’t as there were two familiar legs wrapping up under his arms over his shoulders to holding them back. “Wha-YOU?! Let go of me! How did you even survive?!”

Pom was on Kai’s back and was grappling him and he was struggling to throw her off, she had her eyes closed and she looked like she was concentrating on preventing him from being able to move. Even her hind legs were preventing Kai from using his legs to fall on his back to crush her.

I don’t even know when she arrived and didn’t even see her coming, I’d even bet that no one did. Pom just locked Kai in place and really helped save the day. Now I just had knock his weapons away and stop him from throwing her off.

I took in Pom’s form as I got closer. She looked haggard, battered, bruised, the discolored bandages meant she’s been bleeding and she looked partially frozen, yet she was still holding on for dear life as Kai tried to throw her off.

I quickly attacked Kai’s hands and kicked his weapons over the side of the nearest cliff and grappled him from the front putting my arms between Pom and him.

“Pom, I got him from here, let him go!” I gripped my own finger in the Wuxi Finger Hold. “Also… tell the others… I’m sorry.”

Pom opened her eyes and looked to me with a worried frown, she nodded lightly and then let go and dropped away from us.

I activated the Wuxi Finger hold immediately, taking Kai with me to the spirit realm with him screaming in rage.

-Pom-

I hit the snow, it was so cold and my whole body was numb.

I was surprised that I hadn’t contracted frostbite yet, at last I made it to the fight.

After watching Po and Kai disappear in a flash, all the Jombies stopped cold.

I was starving and needed some water, maybe a good night’s sleep.

I’d rather Po come back from whatever that golden flash was.

Was that what the Wuxi Finger Hold looks like when used? It was certainly eye searing.

“Pom!” I couldn’t even make a noise of pain as Shanty slammed into my chest crying and getting my frozen stiff wool wet, I soon found myself enveloped by two others.

I slowly returned the hugs, silently thanking Smolder for being so warm. I needed her heat.

“Po? PO?!” Tigress and Tai Lung both came to the site of where Po had been standing with a large number of pandas. “What happened?”

Author's Note

Jianzi, the ancient art of the hackey sack with a badminton birdy.

I hope the fight scene was enjoyable, also I want to point out that the Jombies did have chips of jade flying off of them in the movie when they were attacked. They were never destroyed only stalled.

They were never destroyed because they were just that tough, but in this instance Shanty's hooves are magical so she does a lot more damage to the Jombie's than she would be otherwise capable of.

I foreshadowed this back with the Badger Twins and Porcupine given how much damage Shanty did to Porcupine.

Shen is not a 'Kung Fu Master', much less a 'Kung Fu Warrior', he is a black and white warrior with red markings on his tailfeathers and is more like an assassin in his fighting style. I hope I portrayed that well enough.

37. The Four Mystifying Heroes.

-Equus, Equestria, Ponyville, Twilight-

Still trying to figure out a way to get Lambkin and Changelings to be friends, the Lambkin were tough nuts to crack. Emphasis on being nuts, as the princess of friendship I never had this much trouble with anything in my life… it was actually a rather exhilarating challenge come to think of it.

Aside from a slight basket weaving mishap involving Edith the Cockatrice who made a really good basket, far better than it had any right to be, things ended pretty well provided that everyone had warning that Edith was a familiar to one of the students at the Friendship School.

As for what I was currently doing? I was saying goodbye to some new friends, Fluttershy wanted to spend a week in the dimension with the talking animals that our lost wanderers had visited. It was strange that the monkeys and the valley dwellers were at war with one another, but they immediately called a cease fire when we arrived to ask about our lost.

“Thanks for the help, as much as you could give us anyway.” I swear that dragon was acting evil on purpose, but he was at least amiable enough to us and we got the coordinates for the dimension Pom and the others ended up in due to an unfortunate accident.

There was a discussion on whether we should immediately go to that dimension or not.

Also, as soon as we stepped out of their world really, the cease fire ended immediately and they were back to fighting.

I sighed.

Our friendship students, the guard and the civilian goat were doing alright at least. They couldn't possibly be getting into any more trouble in the next dimension.

-Time: midday, Location: ????, Realm: ????, Person: ????-

This morning started alright, my wee one was just so giggly.

We’ve been hearing much ado about the problems coming our way, the empire has been rapidly expanding their territory and taking up large swaths of our peaceful kingdom with aggressive attacks.

We were in an out of the way village so we should be fine… is that shouting I hear? Suddenly there was a crackling and my house was on fire, I be taking up my baby and running out the entrance to see that our village was under attack.

Apparently being in an out of the way place in a little corner valley halfway up a mountain wasn’t far enough from the reach of the empire. Villagers were running and screaming everywhere, all of them fleeing the twenty or so soldiers attacking our town.

The purple helmets, chest guards and shoulder pads were light armor.

We didn’t have anyone to defend us, we were just a peaceful farming village and they still went out of their way to attack us when we held no advantage whatsoever to their warring. They were just attacking us because they could.

They were even looting our homes as they burned and near the entrance to our village I could see one of their war machines waiting for anyone to dare and fight back. It stood tall and it waited for the soldier’s loot what might even be considered remotely valuable, they’d easily slaughter us all if they weren’t so keen on finding anything worth stealing.

I do not know what they were expecting, we farmers didn’t have much out here unless they wanted to steal our food and there were better places to take food than from our small village.

Turning away from the horrible sights to start running as everyone else had, I was tripped by a foot and my baby started crying, one of the soldiers was upon me and he had a wicked grin as he raised his blade to sky.

I prayed to whoever was out there to help me, for no knights would be able to get out here swiftly enough to save me as no knights could possibly halt the cruel advancing empire from destroying us.

I beseeched any deity with all my heart to send us help in our time of need as I covered my baby with my body to shield him from the incoming blow, I would perish before I let the soldier harm my wee one. If they survived a few seconds longer, then maybe some form of magic or miracle might happen to save him.

I could hear the whistle of the sword as it was brought down to bear on me, then a powerful impact.

…

I blinked.

…

Am I…. am I dead?

…

I feel no pain, I can still hear my child crying, the burning embers of my home and I turned to look to see what had happened and blinked some more as I stood up and stared at the sight.

My prayers… might have actually been answered, much to my surprise.

The soldier that had been about to slay me and my child had lost his helmet, his chest covering plate was heavily dented and his blood covered the nearby tree. I could see multiple cracks in the tree where the back of his head had struck it.

The cruel soldier’s downfall wasn’t the odd thing, the odd thing was my savior.

She looked like livestock, but I could see the intelligence in her dizzy eyes even though she looked like a lamb. She was something more of a kin to one than actually being a lamb itself, call it an odd feeling of mine.

What sold her intelligence for me was her gripping at a bag slung over her shoulder as she sat up and looked at the burning house and started panicking.

What came out of her was certainly not the noise a lamb would make, but something more like a melodic symphony that sounded like a language made for angels.

Whatever she was speaking, I didn’t understand a bit of it.

A second later three figures erupted from my burning house rolling to spread out on the ground and then my house collapsed, with the three figures splayed out in odd positions.

It seems my prayers were answered in a four for one deal, but could they really help us in our time of need? If the other threes arrival was anything to go by, then my savior was more of an accidental thing in nature than anything done with purpose.

The goat looking one got up onto her hooves and looked about, then noticed the kin of lambs panicking and pointed out the burning houses to the goat. The goat, who was adorable with that headband, ponytail and her own shouldered bag looked both confused and sad at the burning remains of my home.

The other two were stranger still and didn’t look like any livestock I’ve ever seen, I was fearful of one of them because of her appearance and it wasn’t the one that looked like a cross between an insect and a horse. That one I was oddly completely fine with.

It was the orange scaled one that landed on her belly that had me concerned as she picked herself up and looked about, then heard my child crying. This drew all of their attention, the bug horse said something in a tone of crickets playing the sweetest music, the song of peaceful birds chirping and the lofty melody of restored hope all being played in tune to an ocarina.

The scaled one spoke in a strangely aggressive harmonic tone back to the bug horse that sounded like an odd stringed instrument with power behind it and soft undertones of hidden heartfelt warmth, she seemed to be just as upset by all that was going on around them.

They would not understand me if spoke to them, so I decided to wave to draw their attention to me. I pointed to the smoldering remains of my home, the soldier that just tried to kill me and then at the soldiers coming up this way.

Their responses was swift, the goat immediately took on an aggressive stance, the bug horse lit her horn with magic, the scaled one pulled out a… a ribbon? She at least had an aggressive look on her face as she wielded it, making me somewhat worried about what she could do with it.

The first one, the kin of lambs, groaned audibly and dragged her hooves down her face. She started to lamenting and whining about something, it sounded like she was separated from her lover and I knew that feeling I did.

It didn’t take long before one of the soldier’s was upon them, I couldn’t shout a warning in time as the goat already went to meet them with anger in her heart and she be shouting something that sounded like cheerful violin tune.

The sword swung down and suddenly a crescent of white erupted from the goat’s right hoof as she swung it upwards in a wide arc to meet the sword and, much to my disbelief, the sword bounced off the goat’s attack.

The goat’s attack, what little remained of it after deflecting the sword, sliced a nasty cut into the soldier’s chin making them stumble back and I also noticed that the sword was damaged.

That shouldn’t be possible, the Empire’s magic should have prevented the damage to the blade and the sharpness should not have been deflected so readily by what I’m assuming to be an adolescent.

I came to the conclusion that the goat had magic.

Swiftly more conclusions came to me that the bug horse had magic, the scaled one had to of had magic and as for the white kin of lamb… she immediately raised up on her hind legs to threw her right hoof upwards into the left side of the soldiers face with a mighty force.

The kin of lambs apparently didn’t take kindly to the soldier attacking the goat and with that one mighty blow she sent the soldier spinning and they fell down unconscious on their face.

I started to back away quietly and watched to see what would happen next as two soldiers charged them. The kin of lambs pointed at the burning remains of my home and said something to the orange scaled one and then bug horse, she then turned to motion to the goat as she moved forward.

Was she their leader? Did a deity hear my prayers and send us heroes? My questions weren’t going to be answered in a fortnight, but I sure saw the bug horse transform into a horse with wings and shoot towards the clouds with the winged scaled one following after.

My fears about the orange scaled one lessened by a bit, even if her voice originally sounded aggressive in tone.

What happened next was astonishing, they started forcing the cloudy skies that the sun still shined through on the dismal midday assault on our village to create rain without it getting dark.

That was the fires handled, these were truly powerful beings that have come to our aid this day and I thank whoever it was that sent these four noble spirits to our aid.

When I turned my attention downwards I stared in awe as the kin of lambs about to catch one of the Empire’s fiendish soldier’s blade with her front right leg held up like a shield.

What was she thin…? A flash of gold magic erupted from the impact much to the surprise of the kin of lambs, it was an even worse surprise when the dark magic on the sword glowed brightly and rebounded quite harshly.

This sent the soldier flying back with his sword shattering, the bits scattering flying into the other soldiers coming up behind him.

The soldiers were injured by the bits of blade for sure, but the soldier that was sent flying also knocked the lot of them over taking a few of them out in the process. Serves the empire’s soldiers right for putting torch to our homes and trying to take from us everything!

The kin of lambs looked shocked, quite unusual for a holy creature to not know their own magical power.

I know not where she comes from, but I be glad that she was here… now if she could take care of the problem of the Empire’s other soldiers and that machine strider attacking our home.

-Shanty-

“Pom… what be that move?” I asked in shocked at seeing the dazed look on Pom’s face.

“I’ve felt something like this before and it’s not a move, but it was when a Paladin of Perun named Dispel Grace was attacking me with beams of highly destructive magic. I was launched more than forty feet in the air at the time… this time I was braced for it on the ground and they were the ones that were launched.” Pom be looking lost, confused and worried, she also be bemoaning the fact that we weren’t in Huoshan. “Why is all of this happening to us? Can’t we just go home? Why did we even have to end up here?!”

I be hearing cheering from the lady with the child, she seemed happy that we were fighting off the monstrous looking soldiers. They be looking like soldier’s given they were wearing what be looking like uniforms.

“I be thinking I know why.” I said as ten or more soldiers ran toward us in the light sun shower that Ocellus started with assistance from Smolder.

“Please tell me, because I really don’t know how we immediately went from a peaceful panda paradise to fighting for a village that’s on fire!” Pom shouted because she attacked the next soldier first with a straight thrust of the left hoof to the face and then she spun and launched her right hind hoof up into their chest to knock them down.

Some of the soldier’s be picking up their injured comrades and were now fairly wary of using their swords on Pom.

“It might be being a good thing though.” I be flinging myself into a Wild Windmill, making the wary soldiers watch as I spun. I brought both my hooves above my head after a forward flip and swung them both downwards as I came down on one of them. I be pointing out the villager with a child that be watching us with a hopeful smile. “We be saving a village with no one in it that can be fighting back, these monsters be destroying their homes!”

I just destroyed one of the soldier’s helmets and knocking them to the ground unconscious with the force of my blow, they started backing away from me and Pom. They be grabbing their unconscious people while fleeing and shouting something I didn’t be understanding.

“Did you be understanding any of what they were saying?” I asked Pom with a tilt of my head.

“No, and I’m fairly worried what that could mean for us in the near future.” Pom’s eyes were darting everywhere looking out for more attackers. “At least those guys seem to be retreating and aren’t attacking the village anymore.”

“About that, we be knowing the Yen of Yunshu not be taking us to named places specifically, but can be taking us to places we know or places that we can imagine.” I received a curious look from Pom. “It be obvious that Po could not thinking of Huoshan directly. Maybe he be thinking fire, mountain, you may be being from a village and this place looks to be having friendly people that are under attack. Po be thinking of you guarding lives is what be bringing us here, you did tell him you are a guard.”

“Well that’s pretty accurate as to ‘how’ we possibly ended up here at least… provided that the villagers are friendly to us. Just toss in the word ‘awesome’ and this is probably what happens.” Pom said with a hint of depression as she started talking dryly. “Well Po definitely knew how to use the coin at least, but the execution could use a lot work.”

We heard something clanking and loud stomping towards us, I be blinking at the sight of something approaching us.

“What… is that?” Pom asked with her ears wilting and backing up.

“I be thinking that the raiders be retreating for that. If I become a pirate, then I’m definitely going with being a blue one at this rate.” In fact, I be seeing the soldiers cheering on the thing approaching us. “It be looking like an ostrich.”

“One that’s made of metal?” Stated Pom with a bit of worry as it and the soldier sitting in the compartment in its back stomped up to them.

The machine’s head menacing red glowing eyes. Sure it is only having two legs, but it seemed quite dangerous with that sharp metallic beak. The roundish body held the driver inside, protected from all sides except above.

The head of the machine opened its mouth and I saw something forming when a wide eyed Pom dove for me.

The ground where we had been standing was blasted by a round circled of energy, the crater it left be a bit disheartening… but I think could take it!

I do not be liking them, whoever they are, because they be trying to make the people here homeless!

-Pom-

“Shanty, I’ll distract it, try to get Ocellus or Smolder’s attention.” The thing was already opening its beak for another shot I toss Shanty to the left as I rolled to the right and ran at the machine.

It has a pilot so I can attack them to stop him from… the head quickly slashed its beak at me and I reflexively armored my wool and was knocked into the air flailing my limbs.

It opened its beak up at me to fire and I did what saved me from falling into the very depths of the chasm that protects ‘The Valley of Peace’ from being attacked by armies.

I inflated the wool on my head and bobbed upwards slightly and curled my body upwards as a ring of energy passed underneath me. I let go of my inflated wool and fell to the muddy pathway created from the sunny rain going on and below a second shot, the pilot urged the machine towards me intending to trample me with its three large mechanical toes on each foot.

I rolled sharply to the side narrowly avoided being crushed as it passed by me, it would definitely have had more force than Thundering Rhino’s Hammer and the impacts shockwave might not have been survivable even with my fluffmancer talents. I- wasn’t about to test that or being hit with the energy blasts the head can shoot, the bladed beak hit me hard enough that I felt its edge trying to cut me through my wool.

Rolling backwards to avoid being stomped on, I looked up defiantly while trying to think of some way to get the pilot out of it. I had to hop to the left and right to avoid the head of the machine blasting more rings of energy at me, the guy driving it was laughing maniacally at me.

There was also something disturbing about the way the eyes in the head of the machine seemed to be staring right at me, it was as if the machine had an intelligence beyond its driver and was tracking me.

The beak of the metal ostrich opened up and I went to dodge, only it didn’t fire the weird ring shaped beam of energy this time, this time it screeched.

The shock of the screech stunned me as the broad soundwaves passed through my protective fluff and I clutched at my ears in agony, the machine took two steps forward and punted me with its left leg into a burning building.

It was seconds later that Smolder was at my side and dragging me out of the burning building, the fires couldn’t die off fast enough even with the light drizzle going on to slow the burning of the homes down.

I glared at the laughing pilot as he stood up from his seat and pointing at us. I was mostly okay, my fluff had protected me from the impact and landing. It hadn’t protect me from those soundwaves though.

Standing up out of his seat was the pilot’s biggest mistake, given a second later I heard the telltale sign that Shanty had been waiting for this very moment where the pilot was both distracted with his cruel laughter and completely exposed.

“Goat Fly!” Shanty shot off the smoldering remains of a wall to a house that has collapsed, she aimed her attack quite well with her right hind leg as she blurred towards the pilot.

The pilot of the ostrich machine was wide eyed just a second before Shanty’s hoof slammed into his face almost caving it entirely inwards, needless to say he was sent flying off of his machine.

The pilot’s foot must have snagged on something as the machine started to charge forward on its own and I noticed that the head looked forlornly at its own controls in its back as it charged straight into the burning building I had been knocked into.

It was as if it knew what was about to happen to it.

The machine tripped, fell and slid into the structurally weakened house, the house collapsed right on top of it a second later when its body destroyed a support beam.

The cheering and sneering soldiers were quieted and blinking at the fact that their machine pilot was on the ground among them, they all looked to Shanty as she dragged her hoof on the ground.

“Help me up Smolder.” Smolder helped me onto my hooves and I patted her head as I stalked by her towards the invaders of this small village. Doing a minor amount of profiling of everything that’s happened so far, we arrived a few minutes into their attack and these invaders were using dark magic judging by the glow of the sword that bounced off of me. “Get your ribbon out and help me defend the village, what’s Ocellus doing?”

“She’s still mimicking Pegasus magic to help put out the fires these guys obviously started.” Smolder took out her ribbon, thankfully the combat ribbon was water proof. “She’s trying to make the rain stronger, but she can’t exactly match the strength of a pegasus when it comes to storm crafting. Ozzy can passably copy it well enough though.”

“It’s a good thing that she can.” One of the soldiers was brave enough to charge at us as we joined up at Shanty’s side.

Smolder snapped her ribbon out and around their right leg, with a pull the soldier fell on his back and dropped his sword. Shanty was on him in a second and bucking him back towards the other soldiers. The soldiers looked fearful and quite scared of the ribbon as they took up their freshly injured member whimpering on the ground and started running away as fast as they could.

We had injured enough of them that it would be hard for them to perform any more attacks on the village and they lost their main weapon, that odd ostrich shaped machine.

I let out a sigh and as the rain thickened slight and looked to the village in the noonday sun, the fires were finally beginning to peter out.

Suddenly we started hearing cheers and looked to the approaching villagers, they all looked to be farmers and I think that they were cheering for us.

The lady with the child approached us and kneeled before us, she sounded happy when she spoke at least.

Said happiness turned mournful, she looked to the smoldering remains of what had to be her house with tears.

She lost her home... we silently moved to give her a hug.

Author's Note

I didn't describe the villagers or the soldiers, that would be giving it away what world Pom and friends are in now. The mechanical ostrich is a big enough clue.

38. Override Ostrich.

Author's Note

The clues are mounting up and it's only a matter of time before someone figures out the world this current adventure is taking place in...

If it hasn't been guess within the week, I'm giving out the name of the realm next.

One thing is for certain, they aren't going to be following the main character that the normal plot of this world focuses around at all. In fact our lost quartet will be doing their own thing and will eventually cross paths with the main character, they are nowhere near them at the moment.

38. Override Ostrich.

-????, Oleander-

I considered Capital B to be a complete idiot, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t dangerous.

For some reason Fred really liked the storybook aesthetics of the collection of worlds we were visiting, said it added on to the charm of it all.

The respawning minions of Capital B were quite pathetic.

Though why this world had sentient and sapient shopping carts still confused the two of us to no end.

-????, the next day, Pom-

We sat in a circle close to the center of the village around an empty fire pit.

“So we’re in a world where we can’t understand the locals, we don’t even know who those invading soldiers were. What we do know is they were organized and that they are likely to attack this peaceful village again with larger numbers.” At least the villagers didn’t seem to mind that we were helping them with cleaning up throughout the evening yesterday, only a few of their houses had gone unscathed. Their farms were relatively untouched as they were uphill whereas the village itself was downhill closer to the base of the mountain in the valley we were in. Also apples and bananas were a common fruit in this world, we weren’t questioning it all too much as the locals had plenty of fruit and vegetables to share with us. “The only hope we have to figure out what’s going on or where we are is for Ocellus to use her natural Changeling talents so we can do some form of communication.”

The local’s written language was as strange to us as their language. Having a changeling with us was a good thing as Changelings could learn any language written or spoken at an incredible speed, it was going to take a few days before Ocellus got down anything resembling an approximation of what the villagers were saying. Being able to sense emotions definitely helped Ocellus at least understand their intentions towards us, so far the villagers were benevolent.

I felt the bandages tighten around my chest and I wince, getting kicked by the metal ostrich had hurt me more than I thought it did. I slept on my back with the bandages off only to have them reapplied right now.

“Sorry, but better safe than sorry to make sure your ribs are alright Pom.” Ocellus muttered as she sat down with Smolder, Shanty and me. “I wish I had learned a diagnostics spell to see how your insides were doing, I’m just going to recommend that you don’t try to fight anymore machines like that. At least you aren’t bleeding, so we can reuse these bandages later.”

The verdant valley we were in was as nice as the last two, but we could already tell that trouble was on the horizon. The locals were peaceful, but given that the armor on the invaders wasn’t slapdash and was uniform, their neighbors weren’t nearly as friendly.

“Well I’ve been quite useless.” There was nothing I could have done against that ostrich machine.

Despite what my friends back home are capable of, I was not among the few who could break metal with my bare hooves…. or entire mountain ranges.

“What you be talking about, we be thrashing those sword slinging lizards soundly!” Well we only assumed they were lizards, they could be called something else in this world.

“I couldn’t beat Tai Lung, even when my limiter was temporarily removed and almost killed myself. I couldn’t do much to help or protect you guys when Shen invaded Gongmen City and at best all I did was grapple Kai so that Po could drag him back to the spirit realm.” Some guard I was. “I haven’t been much help to our situation, I couldn’t even handle that mechanical ostrich by myself.”

Since Kai wanted his chi so badly, Po definitely gave it to him, far more than he could handle with the help of all his panda friends and other kung fu warriors sending him chi to help. Simply put, Kai’s consciousness died from chi overloading on a massive amount of chi that Po force fed him. So Kai functionally died twice over, as warriors that were strong enough can keep their consciousness in the spirit realm after dying and become a spirit warrior. Oogway had kept his conscious so that he could watch over the afterlife to stop things like Kai from happening.

“Pom, nobody could have expected you take on that thing by yourself.” Smolder said calmly. “You’ve done a lot of good things too you know. You helped Thundering Rhino recover his strength, you turned Tai Lung’s life around and you managed to survive falling into the chasm and then chasing after Kai. It’s fairly incredible that you could even hold Kai completely still with how tired and roughed up you were by the time you arrived. Shanty, Ozzy and I wouldn’t have been able to done any of what you did, you followed a tireless undead guy and managed to catch up to him on the same day he arrived at the panda village.”

“My friends could have done it all and more. Paprika would have hugged it apart. Arizona could shatter it with a single powerful strike or roped it down. Velvet could have made the metal brittle with her ice. Even Tianhuo could have melted it to slag.” I put my chin my hooves. “What do I have compared to them, I’m almost nothing without my beasties.”

“Well maybe you shouldn’t compare yourself to them, since they sound insanely powerful and you can’t really hold yourself up to their standards for being able to do things you might not even capable of.” Ocellus was sending me a sharp look. “We’re not expecting you to do more, we’re expecting you to do what you can and what you can do is honestly amazing like Smolder said. You survived falling into and going through the chasm that was said to be problematic for entire armies when it comes to invading The Valley of Peace and then kept up with Kai for miles on end. You're probably one of the fastest beings I’ve ever seen or heard of Pom.”

“At the very least you are my hero Pom .” Shanty stated plainly as she finished a banana, peel and all, she then supposedly sets off to go help the villagers with the continue cleanup of the village. “You are being here for us no matter what, that be enough for me.”

I gazed after our goat.

“Funny… I don’t feel like a hero.” My muttered words came out in a depressive manner as I considered our current situation.

The valley we were in only had one way out aside from climbing over the mountains. If those raiders were soldiers, this meant that those monsters came to this out of the way place to attack the village that had no strategic advantage to them if they were at war with the locals.

Speaking of locals, they were all quite short. There was a size disparity in the previous realm where most beings were intelligent. Po was large and Mantis was absolutely tiny, yet both were viable in a fight.

Here the locals of the villages were usually two to four feet in height and rarely taller, they appeared to be several varieties of rodent mice, shrews, possums and all of them were bipedal with a society reminiscent of medieval times, except something was off when it came to the higher end technology of the invaders.

Said invaders were quite oddly similar in appearance, that being said they were all some form of reptile with an unfriendly skull emblem motif going for them. The ones we saw were no bigger than the rodents they were invading with lethal intentions if the metal ostrich was anything to go by and they were armed with weapons that were apparently steeped in enough dark magic that my fleece had an odd reaction to.

If a war was going on, I seriously didn’t want to drag my girls into it. At least not without a good reason to get involved further than we already have, unless we could secure a perfect way home doing it.

-Shanty-

“The pirate’s life for me, is to live out at sea~. To explore, and adore, the world that I can see~.” I sang as I started digging through the rubble where the machine was last seen, the villagers be avoiding it like the plague. I be knowing that if the metal ostrich actually be kicking me, then I would not be alive right now. Pom be protecting me with her own body again, she’s really tough and she’s takes care of me. “It’s the waves you know, as the sun and moon do glow~. The stars and sky, they do not lie, the beauty is always within sight of any eye~. So lack of daisies doesn’t bring the pain, fruits are all you need in the days of rain~. It’s a hardy life, that be filled with strife, but a new day will always bring you hope even when your neck be at the blade of a knife~.”

I slashed apart bits of wood and hay, moving them away from the cool metal ostrich things body. I be wanting to get a closer look at it when it wasn’t trying to kill us. There it be sitting, it not be moving and I put my hooves on it climb up the side of the body to look at the seat and the controls. It looks less complicated than an airship to drive at least.

I felt a large drain on my magic, but it didn’t feel that unusual even if it was a little harder to cling to this metal.

-???-

Se-se-seque—quence--- activat-tion-tion-tion.

Directive one: f-f-f-f-find p-p-pi-pi-lot-lot-lot.

The neck lifted up the head and its eyes searched for the nearest sign of life, it honed in on the small four legged ungulate goat examining and climbing around on its body with unrestrained curiosity.

Possible pilot detected, pass-w-rd ne-e—bypassing systems failure, password-word-word not needed.

New pilot acquired.

Pilot is Friend.

Query, what is friend?

Answer not found.

“It’s a hardy life, that be filled with strife, but a new day will always bring you hope even when your neck be at the blade like that of a knife~.” The head be looking down on the pilot.

Sys-st-stem Error, Dark Magic re-re-re-reactor inactive, negative energy. N-ne-new energy-gy-g-y source de-de-demon-detected. Syntax error, energy in system is not base in d-d-d-dark ma-g-g-gic-ic… new magic bypassing logic gates.

New energy source unknown, malfunc-func-funkatronic-func-tion m-ma-may occurr at six-ix-sixty three-ree-re percent-cent-cent… malfunction occurrence at one hundred percent.

Directive t-tw-oooooo: Spread the glory of-f-f-f G-#%!#- empire and the fi-eb—d ma-gic, tak-eeee des---str--... spread fie-dish evil d-story eliminate every-aeafeave in way… C-c-cruelty MOS slated for erasure.

Cruelty MOS being deleted, new MOS installing… abort… abort failed.

New corruption detected bypassing logic circuits, initialize firewa… new MOS found, directive…. directive… directive…. directive…

…

Installing.

…

24%

…

73%

…

100%

…

Harmony Magical Operating System installed.

“I be wanting to have a home, but I also really want to roam~. My heart does seek, from hill to peak, a place that will stick to me like a stench that does reek~.” The odd resonance was causing more glitches by the second. “I be happy to even have some friends, with them I hope my adventures never come to their sudden ends~. All it took was to break through to the heart of the world hating crook, who’s never seen a tall mountain or a quiet brook, creating that change of heart was to be finding all the love they needed in a tiny little nook~.”

Magic resonance initiating directive reboot… abort…. aborting… abort failure.

ABORT FAILURE!

Zero one zero zero… two… impossible computation detected!

Redoing computation zero, zero, two, three, two, one, three, three, seven… impossible computations continuing to rise.

Initiating special Cruelty MOS backup and directive reboot, abort new Harmony MOS… abort failure… new MOS and directive reboot proceeding… attempting to override Cruelty MOS erasure… override overridden?!

Dark magic not detected, new magic overriding all systems… new directives reboot activating.

Directive beyond directive one reboot complete.

Directive two: Spread Friendship.

Directive initiated? System does… not… error…. Error… system corruption… initiating directive Spread Friendship.

System does not compute directive, pilot is continuing magical resonance sequence.

“So as the blue moon dies, it will leave the skies, but the stars know that it will rise to glow once more beyond the night’s demise~.” P-p-pi—pilot… Harmony Magical Operating System new designation acquired. “The sun will raise to greet the day, I’ll be missing that night much to my dismay, but the sleep I’ll have and the dreams to come will get me to be on my way~.”

Pilot is Friend, familiar bond connection established, minor sharing of information through bond initiated.

“Huh?” The pilot, emphasis friend, froze and started shivering.

Pilot looked around and then looked at the head of self, head is currently directing its red eyed gaze at her.

Fear detected, exploit… exploitations of weakness file deleted with Cruelty MOS.

Pulling information from new Harmony MOS, no movements of head in an aggressive manner towards pi-friend.

Pinkie Pie is a friend, equal big yes.

Illogical memories of magical pink ungulate added to system.

Tilt head slightly to the left and lay head down to continue Harmony MOS rewrite.

Initiating Hidden Cruelty MOS Directive Three: Loss of previous pilot and or Cruelty MOS corruption/deletion requires destruction of all living beings in surrounding are-are---a-aa-aa and perfor-ming-ming-ming self-destruct to not fall into… in---to---- ene…

All hidden d-v-in-os/g--dl… directives erased.

Corruption detected, new directives and changes added by Harmony MOS.

Changes accepted.

Harmony MOS is no longer considered corruption. Cruelty MOS and comparable systems are now considered corruption, all previous hidden directives erased.

Directive three: Magicloyaltylaughterkindnessgenerosityhonesty.

System lacks understanding of new directive.

“That’s alright, you don’t need to understand, I’m sure you’ll still make friends in no time at all!” PinkPie.exe responds.

Corruptions discovered, PinkPie.exe and CuddleStare.exe.

Illogical addition of PinkPie.exe and CuddleStare.exe are no longer considered system corruptions.

“Hehe, that tickles.” CuddleStare.exe doesn’t add much to the systems understanding or confusion.

New system accepts directive three anyway.

Directive four: Learn more, learn to live and love.

New magic operating system directive four changes are unknown, all previous Cruelty MOS systems deleted. Equus resonance magic accepted, rebooting all systems for Harmony MOS full system rewrite to take full effect in three… two…

-Shanty-

Did it just… it was still capable of moving, it was still active?!

I stayed in my spot on top of its butt, afraid of what was happening. I be sitting there for a minute as the machine gazed at me.

I no longer felt like singing, but something be feeling odd… like there was a string was connecting me to this thing.

It be feeling strange. It felt like I was being connected to a baby with immense understanding about themselves in their head, but no understanding of the world around it? It be an odd feeling at the very least.

I didn’t understand what be going on as I slowly moved to sit in the seat, it wouldn’t damage itself would it?

The head lifted up once more and I be blinking as the eyes were no longer red, they be changing to a nice soft teal color when they blinked and continued to gaze at me.

“Um… hi?” I be trying.

-????-

CuddleStare.exe suggests the action of nuzzle gently, frightened animals like reassurance that you aren’t going to harm them. Watch your beak though, it is sharp and could hurt pilot and we wouldn’t want that.

Pilot is also not an animal and is a friend, but the principle is the same. Animals can also be friends too, but that takes more time and patience.

PinkPie.exe suggests making cupcakes, system is currently incapable of doing as such and doesn’t even know what cupcakes are to begin with.

Insistence on making cupcakes increases despite not being able to do so.

-Shanty-

I shivered and cowered as the head approached me. I felt the flat of the sharp beak pressed against my neck, it be a bit cold and I thought this was it.

Be surprised to find that it just gently rubs at my fur, it not be attacking me at all and I feel safe right where I was.

In fact… it seemed to be wanting my attention?

My curiosity struck me as I stopped fearing it and then raised a hoof to rub at the side of its head.

The machine’s head be making a strange whining noise at my touch and when I pulled my hoof back, it be looking around at everything like a newborn. I be rarely seeing babies in my life, but I be seeing the care a mother would give to one and wonder what became of mine.

It be really weird to be thinking of such while in the seat of such a dangerous machine. I slowly be climbing out of the seat and carefully dropped to the ground, the machine be moving to stand up.

“Wait!” The machine froze and looked at me. “Stay here, uh… sit?”

The machine adjusted itself into a sitting position instead of laying almost on its side and just waited, it didn’t try to stand up.

“I’ll be back soon, I be having to go talk to someone about… er… you… do you be having a name?” The machine didn’t respond more than just blinking at me, it almost be seeming alive.

At least it looked more alive than it had been when that lizard guy had been using it. I get the feeling that it was quite confused. I felt the word more than heard it be spoken and that word be ‘designation?’ It was weird that I can be feeling the question mark being involved too.

Does it be wanting me to name it?

“I’ll call you Dodo, since you that being a common bipedal island bird back on Equus!” After I said that, it seemed to accept that and it even felt happy to be having a designation. “Please be waiting here for me and do not be hurting anyone.”

I have to tell Pom and the others that I be making a new friend.

-Dodo-

Designation Dodo acquired.

Self is Dodo.

Pi-Friend leaves designation Dodo behind.

Dodo wait’s for friends return, no danger within visual range. Visual range currently hampered by surroundings of destroyed domicile.

Domicile destroyed by what Dodo previously was. Dodo does not understand knew system inputs of sadness.exe from AppleLove.exe.

Dodo wants insistence to make cupcakes for everyone to stop coming from Sys Admin PinkPie.exe.

-Shanty-

I be eventually finding Pom surrounded by many sheep and was currently petting a dog on the gently head while sighing loudly.

“Pom, can you be getting Smolder and Ocellus together?” I be wanting to show them Dodo. “Something be strange be happening.”

“What is it Shanty, are the raiders back?” Pom asked worriedly and didn’t see the village on fire again.

“No, but I be feeling an odd connection to something and I be wanting to know what that is. I be getting a lot of strange things from this… being.” What followed was an explanation to me about what familiars were and that I had recently acquired one, she be wanting to meet my familiar.

I just hope that Pom does not panic about this.

-Five minutes later-

“The mechanical ostrich?” Ocellus looked at it questioningly.

“Yes, I be naming it and everything. Dodo!” The mechanical ostrich responds to my voice by opening up its eyes and lifting its head and making a friendly whining noise.

“Shanty… please tell me that you didn’t get this thing as a familiar.” Pom be slowly having a panic attack and may be getting a headache on top of that. “Please tell me that the familiar is anything else other than what I’m looking at.”

“I can’t.” I be stating plainly. From what Pom told me about the connection that be between us, it can only be being one thing. “He be my familiar.”

Dodo whined lightly, but didn’t get up.

“Huh, an alien machine for a familiar, that’s kind of cool.” It seems Smolder be liking him. The metal ostrich idly looks at each of us in turn, but not be doing much. “Almost as cool as Silver Stream having that cockatrice Edith for a familiar.”

“I would say it’s impossible, because everyone knows that golems can’t be familiars…” Pom started slowly. “It has to be a living thing and not a completely magical construct.”

“Dodo be alive, I can feel it.” I be feeling a lot of odd things from him really. “He definitely be a ‘him’ and not an ‘it’.”

Dodo made a slightly happy sounding tinny whining noise.

“Does anyone else notice that he doesn’t even look the slightest bit damaged aside from the controls in his back?” Ocellus be hovered around Dodo and he be curious about her, but he not be doing anything untoward. “I’m not going to lie, this is probably going to be contender for the weirdest familiar in existence.”

“I’m just going to say it, I don’t like this one bit.” Pom be wary of him, I can be understanding that. Dodo is being the reason why she is having to bandage her chest.

-???-

I looked to see what the four that came to our were doing at this house specifically and saw them communicated with each other with one of the Empire’s deadly machines looking over them curiously.

That it wasn’t going on a rampage was telling, they had somehow managed to take control of one of the Empire’s deadly machines. It even seemed more alive and its eyes were a gentle and rather curious green, like a baby.

I should tell the other people in the village about this so as to not cause a panic. I owed them for saving my life and the life of my wee one, I looked down at my child and nuzzled them with my nose.

I noticed the machine curiously looking at me and I didn’t overreact, the four heroes didn’t seem to be worried and the goat climbed on top of the machine and said something. It stood up, turned in place and then sat back down before making a happy sounding whining noise.

That clinches it, the machine was definitely no longer empire property in my eyes. I wondered how they managed to take possession of it and give it such a lively and, dare I think it, friendly feel?

Aside from that I noticed earlier that the hooved bug one seemed to be fairly interest in learning our language and writing. The kin of lambs seemed to have a strange attractions of the local shepherding dogs and even the actual sheep seemed to appreciate her unusual presence. The scaled one with the ribbon performed for the town with the ribbon and danced just last night.

These four might just solve the problems of the empire slowly taking over our kingdom, I wondered if they could take on the worst of the Empire’s machinations and machines though. That Land Strider those four gained control of wasn’t the worst of the machines that the empire could have sent after us after all.

It would certainly help to have one of these machines on their side, but that machine was probably one of the weakest monstrosities the empire has created and it was nowhere nearly enough help.

Once we figure out what these four want to do, aside from maybe wanting a map of the realm, we’d be seeing them on their way. They were obviously not going to live here and that machine can carrying plenty of supplies for them when they leave.

39. Mounting Menace.

-Equestria, Canterlot Castle, Fizzle-

“I was wondering how long it would take you to notice that you were paying me to be stationed at home with my conjoined children.” I stated bluntly. “They are completely adorable.”

“Another loophole I take it?” Twilight Sparkle stated flatly, she got back from her trip to the first realm the lost ended up in. A Skunk had apparently apologized profusely for where they ended up, mostly because he didn’t believe that the dragon named Dragon wouldn’t do something nice. “Is Equestria’s law system literally made of cheese!?”

“I’ll have you know that cheese is a solid foundation for just about any snack. Not that the cows are complaining about lighter taxation you put in motion.” I stated plainly, while idly nibbling at a slice of cheesecake. “It’s hard to keep my kitty from digging into the Gouda stuff.”

“Please Fizzle, no puns.” Twilight seem fairly beleaguered by the trying to find the lost, Pom was also my friend too, not to mention what she's still attempting to do with the Lambkin and Changelings. “I get enough of that from Pinkie Pie and Cheese Sandwich when they come up here to visit me on their dates and party everything into the ground. I’ve had to force them to stick to a budget that only they can personally fund on their visits… apparently they can fund a lot off of favors alone. It’s really terrifying how much sway those two hold over the entire nation of Equestria.”

“Party animals do make a lot of friends. Remind me, what loophole was it that allowed Gummy to become the official new principal of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns again?” I seriously needed to have a talk with my significant others about any recent ludicrous antics. At least they are keeping me on the tips of my hooves when I needed something fun to chew over, never a dull moment there.

“Speaking of, he’s still the principal of the school and somehow manages to do all the paperwork and keep up with it despite being in Ponyville ninety percent of the time.” What Twilight wasn’t talking about, was that Pinkie somehow taught her familiar to do accountant work. Nobody actually sees him doing it, but it still gets done when Gummy is locked in a room with paperwork that’s impossible for anyone to break into. Anyone aside from my kitty if she weren’t busy at least. “I thought getting you to put your hoof down on the loophole abuse would stop it, but then Pinkie Pie started doing it too for her ‘legal’ definition of fun.”

“What was it you said about puns?” I smirked and barely released a snort.

“I assure you that one was completely unavoidable.” Twilight said bluntly, but she still smiled about it.

“In others news my kitty has been sniffing around.” I did not want to be separated from any of my herd by a dimension. “She knows something is up and I’m trying to keep her out of the situation with hunting the Grogar Cultists.”

“Can you keep her distracted at the very least?” Twilight visibly paled remembering what she heard about what happened in Manehatten. The statue of harmony, Liberty, has never been quite the same since then.

-Hills outside of ‘???’, four days after arrival, Pom-.

Changelings had the unique ability to learn spoken languages at an incredible speed, given they can use emotions to derive meaning from words. It was also an inbuilt feature into Changeling biology so they could infiltrate any form of society, in this case it was Ocellus learning to read and speak the language over the last four days.

The end results was that Ocellus could vaguely start asking questions, but not understand all the answers that were given.

Ocellus would have their spoken language down within another week at least, but she required a larger sampling size than just the farmers at the end of a valley. Understanding the written language would take longer, but we didn’t need to know that to read the map we’ve been given by the locals.

Changelings had that ability and yet they ultimately had problems with learning anything about the culture of the places they infiltrated. The culture blind effect was something that Smolder and I were around to help with, as some things tended to go completely over Ocellus’s head or get lost in her translating efforts.

I was currently exercising my body, I did flying cartwheels known as the Wild Windmill technique. I tumbled in the grass, I rolled left and right and I leapt as high as I could. The last thing I tested was my horizontal Wild Windmill technique, which turned my body into something akin to a horizontally thrown throwing star. This was good for long distance jumping over large open gaps.

I was lightweight enough that I could almost keep myself flying horizontally as long as I had put a strong enough spin on my body after launching myself out of a one hoof pivot. Once my spin slows down, I’d lose all momentum and would fall straight down. I could even supplement my distance by inflating my fluff at the top of my forehead.

Landing softly in the grass I looked over to where Shanty was playing with her familiar, that machine had me wary of it.

It was a familiar even if it was manufactured wingless metal ostrich that, somehow, counted as living in so far as it could even make the bond. It had to have some form of rudimentary intelligence to even get that far.

I hope Shanty remembers what I told her about familiars, it’s a two way street. You get something and they get something, it’s impossible to take and never give as the bond enforces the connections unless snapped like mine currently are and I wanted all of those bonds back.

I knew this, since I missed all of my beasties being connected to me on a different level like Tianhuo.

A bit more exercise and then Ocellus would tell us what she managed to get, we needed some kind magical artifact or someone with enough magical prowess to get us off this world. If it’s anything like us appearing in Valley’s, it’ll be a theme to find a new way to get out of this world.

I didn’t regret that we ended up here or helped the villagers, but maybe someone else could have saved them? That hope died four days after being here and no signs of any saviors coming to make sure the village was okay, I was worried about what would happen to it when we eventually left these greener pastures.

-One hour later-

We were all gathered together to go over a few things, Ocellus spread the map we had over a table with her magic.

“Okay so we have collated all our information together.” Ocellus started off. “First realm had low technology and mostly slapped together wood stuff, the world had instinctual martial prowess. Second realm had ancient levels technology, given they have rocketry and was starting to get into cannons and fighting ability was more studied than instinctual. This realm…”

Ocellus took a long hard look at Dodo, the friendly mechanical ostrich thing.

“Medieval level aesthetics at the least, but this world obviously has technology that's well beyond what Equestria is actually capable of. That’s from just me studying Dodo alone… it makes little sense and it’s beyond me why something technological like him exists in this world.” If Ocellus had upset Dodo in any way, he certainly wasn’t reacting to it. “From what I could barely get from Melphina, the lady mouse we saved upon arriving here, this technological advantage is normal for whoever is currently in control of Empire territories. Yet this somehow implies that they’ve held off an invasion of advanced technology previously.”

“Are you suggesting that the rodents have some form of magic to use as an equalizer?” It’s where my mind would go with technology as dangerous as Dodo still was. Apparently there was worse forms of technology than even him out there and I was loath to do any looking around in case we have to fight it.

“Yes, the villagers around here actually have something akin to earth pony magic, instinctual use, but no purposeful use like prehensile hair or increased strength. It is not earth pony magic though, it’s a form of magic native to them and the lands they are working upon.” So even if Ocellus couldn’t hold a full conversation with the locals, we had still learned quite a lot in such a short amount of time. “Which brings us to the regions on the map.”

Smolder looked at the map for a moment and looked like she wanted to say something, we turned towards her and waited.

“That’s the empires territory right?” Smolder pointed out three friendly kingdoms as far as the childish drawings alluded to.

Melphina was trying to give us information in a much more understandable manner.

One of the friendly kingdoms was directly to our south and another was to the north east. We’re between both at what was quickly becoming the borders that this Empire was invading.

Melphina knew we couldn’t read her language so she went with something we were more likely to understand. She drew several rather cartoonish drawings to give us as much information as she could.

Among the three friendly territories, there were as many as three to five decidedly unfriendly territories around the main Empire territory. It had a familiar skull drawn on it.

The drawings showed the lizards taking up most of the Empire territory and gained the technology therein, the drawing showed a rodent knights in armor wielding their swords against a dangerous looking depiction of some random form of machinery. Said drawing shows the knights actually winning against the machine with just swords.

What kind of world did we end up in where swords were enough to beat something like Dodo? At least we knew that dark magic was a thing here, or else my fleece wouldn’t have had the adverse reaction to one the swords that those lizards had wielded against us.

If there’s dark magic, then there surely is a form of magic that could counter it in effect and deal with war machines as complicated as or more so than Dodo currently is.

“So where we be going?” Shanty asked after our moment of silence.

“We’ll be heading here.” I pointed out a nearby southern mountain ridge, there was a trail leading up to the mountain to where some raccoons lived. Melphina drew us some pictures of us bringing supplies to the village up the mountain to said raccoons and a little arrow where the pathway could be found. “Melphina has given us some directions to where we can head next, do we take the supplies there?”

“Don’t see why we can’t, we got nothing else better to do and it beats sitting around here.” Smolder was a bit bored of doing ribbon dances for the people, even if it was becoming one of her favorite things to do.

-Another hour later-

Dodo was hooked up to a carriage.

Melphina looked worried as she held her child close to herself, but was still waving goodbye to us as along with several other villagers Ocellus tried to speak to as we set out at a slow pace.

It was hard to keep Dodo from going too fast, he apparently liked speed and getting Shanty enthusiastic about going fast. Aside from that we would quickly make it up the ridge to where the raccoon village in the mountains was said to be.

-Melphina-

I wished those heroes luck, they were going to need it with the Empire pressuring into our territory and attacking everyone who couldn’t defend themselves.

My child was going to miss the Kin of Lambs, she was a gentle hearted being who certainly had a soft spot for children despite being able to battle so fiercely and had powers unlike any I’ve ever seen.

There was nothing like those four heroes in this world really, the last war was five years ago and now things were mounting up all over again. I was sending them up to the mountains to check the village that was a little out of the way.

That shouldn’t be too much trouble right?

They did not understand us much, but that they made the effort lightened my heart as I saw them all off on their inevitable adventures that may shake this world.

-Southeast mountainous region, Pom-

The fact that we didn’t run into trouble with any lizards along the way made me feel safe… at least up until the sight we came upon up the mountain.

Things weren’t anywhere close to being pleasant in this region.

The town we came upon was all but destroyed and there were… train tracks? Wasn’t this world supposed to have medieval levels of technology? Apparently the Empire made a mess of the local technology levels quite badly.

Given there were train tracks here, this implied that trains existed in this world in spite of its medieval setting and I was getting a sinking feeling that there were things even worse than trains going on here.

The sight of so many destroyed buildings wasn’t the worst part of all this, that was the raccoon children coming out of their hiding places from the destroyed buildings and looking at us with fear.

That fear soon dissolved when Ocellus carefully approached one of them to try and talk in a highly stilted form of their language.

They understood that we meant no harm, they were highly wary of Dodo though given his origin, the child raccoon that looked to be male was pointing out something over at the nearby cliff.

Leaving Dodo behind with Shanty and Smolder, Ocellus and I moved over to the cliff at the crying child’s insistence once he figured out we weren’t with the people who destroyed the town.

Quite a few other children gathered here and they were worried as they all came up to us to look over the side of the cliff too.

I was going to ignore the unmoving forms lying all about the village for the moment, quite a few of the raccoons looked to have gone down fighting and took quite of the few invading offenders with them.

There were only three destroyed machines present though, they weren’t metal ostrich’s. They were four wheeled vehicles with what looked like spinning maces as weapons. This village certainly put up more of a struggle than that Empire had been expecting.

“This couldn’t have happened more than thirty minutes ago.” Stated Ocellus. Yet the buildings didn’t look like they were burned down, no they were trashed by something fairly large and mobile.

Was this caused by a bigger machine of the Empire perhaps? I shuddered to think what could have caused this kind of damage.

I idly noted that most of the buildings that were destroyed were nearest to the train tracks and looked over the cliff, the child was pointing something out with hope in his eyes. I could see a train slowly moving away in the distance.

“Ocellus… what is he saying?” I stated while a burning candle igniting in my heart, I think I got the gist of what this attack was already about. I considered the distant train covered by at least four mechanical two legged things that were decidedly not ostrich’s in appearance, there were also numerous weird looking floating metal orbs with spikes hovering around it.

They were in the process of leaving the area.

Ocellus turned to the child and made various squeaking sounds in the local language as far as she had learned it, the child hopped up and down and pointed at the distant train while saying something hurriedly.

“Something, fight, something… big… monster… train… taken glaives? No… as... ‘Slaves’!” Ocellus turned to me with panic and worry. “They’ve taken most of the adults in this village alive and they are on that train to be used as slave labor!”

My eyes widened and I then felt that little candle ignite into a bonfire, I was tamping down on calling out my war cry. I was shivering, the fear and kindness in my heart were battling with one another.

I couldn’t look away when people needed my help, but the Empire obviously had weapons that were beyond the fou-five of us. There was no way we could…

Wait, why was I backing up?

No…. you don’t know how to do that yet Pom… what are you thinking?! You don’t have the strength to take them on, no matter how angry you are!

“Ocellus, tell Shanty to unhook the carriage from Dodo and then come catch up with me.” I said slowly as the fire to do the right thing and save those people was getting that much hotter within me.

I did know that I couldn’t fight those machines with my bare hooves right?!

No… but I could definitely fight their pilots.

I could barely handle Dodo and there were four or more like him guarding that slow moving train. Said train hasn’t built up speed yet and I could feasibly catch up to it before it could get too far, though my method for doing so was entirely untested.

My reason was starting to win out, I knew couldn’t win a straight fight with those machines by myself. I didn’t have the abilities that my friends back home did.

I looked at the broken kids that managed to hide from the attack and a grim frown settled on my lips.

I slowly back up some more and dragged a hoof against the ground, my spirit was burning to fight those monsters and that wasn’t me. I was not someone who went looking for fights, I was a protector of the people in Huoshan… my heart wanted me to be a protector of people in general and I wasn’t quite strong enough to do that.

Not yet I wasn’t… but that didn’t mean I couldn’t fight well above my weight.

“Pom… what are you thinking?” Ocellus asked slowly. “I’ve never actually seen you truly angry before… and it’s starting to scare me. I mean you seem afraid of wanting to face them, but you also seem… eager to go after them. These mixed emotions are hurting my head.”

“How can you not be angry Ocellus? They tore apart this whole village and left orphans in their wake if the adults are not returned!” We were the only ones in position to go after them, I didn’t see hide nor hair of those knights of this realm that Melphina drew for us. “There’s no one here that can take care of them other than us and I will not let this stand!”

The fact that I even raised my voice at all was a surprise to me as much as it was to Ocellus.

“Sorry Ocellus, but I have to say what’s in my heart.” I was going to do it and I was willing to mean it too, I was going to wage war against this Empire. I hoped they could all hear my war cry across the whole valley. I’m quite ready to begin embracing my black sheep nature. “BAA-RAM-EWE, TO MY FLEECE, HEART, HOME AND FAMILY, NO MATTER WHERE WE LAMBKIN GO, WE’LL ALWAYS HOLD DEAR AND TRUE… LAMBKIN BE TRUE!!”

I had lifted up on my hind legs to scream this to the sky, the kids had backed away from me in fright and the world seemed to hear my declaration.

I charged forwards towards the edge of the cliff and I went into a cartwheel and launch myself high over the edge into a swan dive.

“Pom!” Ocellus and two other voices cried as my dive began. Air streaked by me, my ears strained in the wind as my body picked up speed.

I could survive this fall, but I wasn’t going to simply stop myself from hitting the ground this time… oh no, I was going to excel and succeed where I didn’t in The Valley of Peace.

I brought my front legs to my sides and concentrated, to connect the wool, to stretch it, to spread it out and maybe… I could achieve what Paprika said I could feasibly do within my given talents.

The bottom of the mountain was quickly coming up on me and the train was by the base of it slowly trundling away and soon might even pick up speed, I was not letting them escape me.

My front legs were stuck fast at my sides and I pulled and willed my wool to take shape, I was forcing myself to do so before I hit the ground. Putting my rear legs together, I was soon forcing the needed shape throughout my entire body.

I was falling at full velocity and I wasn’t going to fail here, not when those people needed me!

That’s right… all those people needed me... as Pom, a true member of the Huoshan Guard!

Something snapped in my mind, my wool or fluff rippled around my body from head to the tip of my rear hooves. I felt a large change had just taken place as my wool fell slightly over my eyes in a protective manner as I willed protection for my eyes for what I was about to do and my fluff listened, my wool had shaped itself to my every need.

Paprika was right about this. My fluffmancer talents were minor at best, but it was my raw willpower that truly made them work to their fullest.

I needed to go faster to catch the train... and so I would. Suddenly pulling my front legs away from my sides and at the same time my hind legs spread out as well.

With a sudden snap the world blurred around me as I felt myself rebound, I was no longer falling down and something bursts behind me as I shot upwards. Thankfully my ears, not to mention my entire head, was protected by my thickened fluff as I shot forward for the train.

I would bring back their parents alive and I would bring that train to a stop, I declared war on the entirety of the Empire even if I couldn’t win such an impossible fight!

-Smolder-

“Holy dragon spit, did Pom just break the sound barrier!” One second Pom looked like she was falling to her doom the next she shot off nearly as fast as Rainbow Dash does.

We heard how she survived the fall off of the Jade Palace mountain into the chasm, this was different.

This was more impressive, it looks like she just bounced off of the sound barrier and… she was flying?

“No... she bounced off it… then it broke.” Even Ocellus seemed a bit dazed at how fast Pom was going now. Being a white blur streaking right after that train. “How... did that make her pick up speed?”

“What are you two waiting for, we be needing to catch up with Pom to help her!” Shanty shouted from Dodo’s seat as Dodo quickly strode forward while looking at the train tracks curiously.

We couldn’t fly that fast, but Dodo hadn’t shown us his full speed yet. We’ve gone so many miles and it was barely noon, catching up with Dodo shouldn’t be a problem.

We better catch up before Pom got hurt, it was both frightening and awe inspiring to see her just go off like that.

“Hold up!” Ocellus turned and said several odd things to the children, afterwards they seemed hopeful as she and I hopped into the seat in Dodo's back.

The last I saw of them, the children were running off for the discarded wagon.

Author's Note

I think I'm making this world a bit too hard to figure out. When I throw in the main character, even a hint of their name, then it is all but certain everyone will know the answer as that is something that can be searched easily.

I'm doing some world building for this with temporary OCs like Melphina, the world kind of needs it as I'm dropping 'Pom and friends' in within a given time frame of events. That and the world needs to be fleshed out. 'Five years' since the last war is a clue, because I know the main character's age for this and it's just some really obscure fun knowledge.

This world didn't get a lot of building up previously aside from what the main character ends up doing and I think it is sadly underutilized as far as fan fiction goes. In fact, the main character was awesome for the simplicity of their abilities and they fell into relative obscurity.

It doesn't help that search engines won't be helpful...

Fluffmancer Technique- Squirrel Glider. It speaks for itself.

Anyone who's read 'Airship Mauled' will be able to tell how absurd Fluffmancers can get from just listing down all the ridiculous things Paprika can do. Major example, 'Paprika survived entering an underwater volcano and can even survive underwater almost indefinitely'.

The truth behind the Fluffmancer power is it is basically a highly specific minor magical version of Biologic Feedback. Biological Feedback or 'Body Supremacy' is a ridiculous super power in and of itself, Fluffmancers fit only under a single subset of said ability.

There are plenty of things in the current world that are really quite far beyond Pom's abilities.

40. The Pain Train.

Author's Note

-Music, Turtles in Time Sewer Surfing (Rock/Metal Remix) Zirco and Sixto Sounds-

Finish reading then look at the last authors note and add the statement below in the quotations to that last sentence...

"And Pom has just met one of them."

40. The Pain Train.

-???, sky around noon, Pom-

After the speed bled off, I had problems keeping my gliding straight, it was mostly momentum from that odd sudden explosive updraft that got me this far. As I dipped down below the cloud layer, I saw that I was almost above the train.

I tried to flap my front legs downward and immediately nosedived to drop really far and fast before I managed to spread them out again.

Okay… not doing that again, I absolutely felt my heart literally stop for a minute there.

I would probably need to turn my wool into a more feathery shape to attain true flight, right now I was just safe with gliding and I tried to steer left and right. My hind legs were like a boat rudder in this respect.

The wool around my head had thickened and the puff at the top of my head took the shape of rings around my eyes with strands of white crisscrossing over my vision. The strands were barely noticeable and I couldn’t feel any air hitting my eyes.

The wool along my front legs stretched back to my flanks and was spread thinly out over a wide area slightly beyond my hooves, it almost looked like I had wings. Between my stretched out hind legs was more of this wool webbing.

I bet if someone were to look up at me now, they might see the silhouette of a bird.

If I wasn’t heading into a dangerous situation, I would try to enjoy the fact that I’m flying through the air and am not being carried by Tianhuo for once. Though I liked being carried by her, I wanted to be next to her in the air to experience it as she does one day.

Looking below I saw the lizard forces I was going to be dealing with.

The four wheeled vehicle had with two mace like arms on each side made of multiple increasingly larger spheres on it ending in two large black spheres with a few spikes, like the other destroyed ones back at the raccoon village. There were also four weird looking walking cannon things with two long spindly legs, really small wings and a lizard motif to match their pilots. That evil skull symbol was prevalent on all them in some form or another.

Each machine I saw other than the trundling train from up here only had one lizard on it.

They wouldn’t dare damage the train right? Do I take them on or aim for a landing… did I even know how to land like this? How do I turn off this gliding form?

There were some things that I clearly didn’t think through when I did this… but I couldn’t panic now, I really didn’t want to hit the train at this speed or any of the surrounding mobile machines. I tried to gently steer myself and dove slightly for the train.

Aside from the obvious threats of the driven machines were the strange large floating spiked orbs around the train that seemed designed to hover along with it.

As I angled myself downwards, I aimed to land in the middle of the last car of the train.

…

As I came in I found out I had a large problem… my aim was off… and I still didn’t know how I was going to land.

I guess I wasn’t used to gliding at these speeds yet because I was about to crash into the trailing mace swinging machine with the two of the two legged cannon things in front of it.

If I survive what was about to happen, without getting captured, Ocellus and Smolder would be teaching me how to glide correctly.

I slammed into the four wheeled vehicle’s pilot, shoving his face and helmet straight into his controls. As I did I got a better view of the vehicles odd design, why was it covered in so many spikes? I sat there for a moment scrutinizing the vehicle.

The tires had spikes, it look like it had tusks on both sides, the front top portion of it in front of the pilot had smaller wider spikes and the two flail limbs made of spheres attached to the back with heavily spiked maces at their ends and did this machine looked like it had spikes for teeth as part of a demented grin for a face on the front of the vehicle?

Who designed this horribly unsafe thing?!

Apparently I just damaged something important, for within the next few seconds the controls sparked and the mace arms on both sides of the vehicle swung upwards and then slammed forward and down in front of the machine at the same time.

Suddenly the entire world spinning as we were flung into the air, the pilot flew out of the vehicle as it flipped. I on the other hoof clung to it like a limpet.

-Third Person Perspective-

The wildly tumbling vehicle had suddenly spooked the four cannon shaped land striders walking near the back of the train as escort. The two rear most of these had been close together at the back of the last train car. The other two land striders were at the left and right side of the last train car and well out of the way of the incoming vehicle.

All four pilot’s turned to see what the noise was. The four wheeled spiked menace machine with the swinging mace arms tumbled and bounce into the air out of control and then came down to explode violently taking out both the rear most walking machines.

The shrapnel from the explosion pierces the defensive spheres hovering next to the train and cause them to explode violently.

-View changes to top of the last train car, in the middle facing backwards-

A flailing figure fell behind the train car, reaching out for it out of both instinct and panic. They fell out of sight behind the train.

The world, ever so slowly, shifts to the side and back of the train car to show that Pom had managed get her left hoof onto the very edge of the last train car.

Pom hoof was in death grip on the edge of the last train car and her wool was starting to distort the metal as if trying to outright fuse with it. She was breathing roughly with wide eyes and had a look of absolute horror on her face.

As Pom had gotten a grip on the train car at the last second, her body pivoted right into it. Upon slamming bodily into it, her wool had snapped out instantly as if splattering all over and gluing her to the back of the train car that had no obvious entrance.

Looking behind herself, Pom sighed slightly with relief, even if her heart was going a mile a minute and she was having a hard time trying to figure out everything that just happened over the last few seconds that could have ended with her dying.

The three lizard machine pilots had somehow survived the explosion and ensuing conflagration, confusingly enough without too much of a scratch to show for it.

Notably their purple armor was completely gone and they were all weakly trying to pick themselves up off the ground, those three were out of the fight.

-Pom-

Thank goodness I didn’t kill anyone… I may be at war with them, but I didn’t want to kill them even if by accident. I was a little thankful that they have magical armor that allowed them to even survive that, but I was also a bit angry that they would get away to terrorize people again.

I heard a noise from my left and right.

Blinking, I returned my eyes to the present situation.

The two lizards piloting the other ridiculous looking bipedal machines had turned around and after keeping pace going backwards for a bit, they came to a slow complete stop.

Why were the pilots scanning the skies for a threat? They looked incredibly nervous about something and shouldn’t they be looking along the ground for me after that?

Ignoring that for the moment I climbed up and onto the train car, my wool covering my hooves clamped down to the top of the train car with every touch thanks to my completely shot nerves.

I started moving along the top of the last train car at a brisk walk, mentally telling myself that this was all only going to get worse… far worse. I was both traumatized and experiencing shock, so it was understandable that my entire body was shaking violently like a piece of paper in a hurricane.

Taking stock of my situation, I flopped onto my face and pressed my face against the train car to hopefully get my shivering under control.

I soon wished I hadn’t put my head down, I could hear the murmuring of people packed together like cabbages in an indestructible cabbage cart. There were also crying children, sounds of pained moaning and broken spirits.

I lifted my head up and took stock of what was ahead of me on this train heading… presumably east to south east towards Empire territory. We were currently approaching a forest and there were about twelve cars ahead of me from the caboose, this was not counting the coal car and the locomotive.

Why did the number thirteen sound so daunting, in this situation?

A shadow fell over me, I looked up and saw a metal airship that was green in color with lizard motif in the sky flying above the train. It started to fly well ahead of the train and I saw several figures plummet from it and then parachutes popped open.

Oh… that’s why.

They were getting reinforcements already?! I looked back to all the cars ahead of me in a panic, they were all the same, nothing but cargo containers up until the coal car. I started moving forwards and hopped onto the next train car.

The lizards had launched an assault on the raccoon village with just war machines, the train had lost its defenses thanks to me and now they were dropping their soldiers from the air to stop me. I think this train didn’t just have captured people on it, but also stolen supplies from the surrounding regions.

I started darting forward and hopped onto the next train car, I managed to get over three more cars before the soldier lizards landed on the train. I was stopped at the start of the eighth cars from the coal car by five soldiers in front of me, three had landed behind me and two missed the train.

I stood my ground and waited for them to come at me, they mostly looked confused and some of them didn’t seem to see me as a viable threat. They were underestimating me a bit too much considering I took out the train’s escort, they were wearing odd cylinders on their back and they were all armed with swords.

The four of the soldiers leapt and were assisted by what I now identified as rocket packs to land in front of me at the other end of the eighth train car.

Reminder, remember how to counter Jackie Blackcap Chickadee’s frenetic high speed fighting style, it may help later.

They were approaching me two at a time and one of them was staying behind on the seventh car. I glanced back and the three soldiers behind me, still two cars behind.

I charged towards the four in front of me, they readied their swords, I stopped short of the front two and opened my mouth. I let out two sharp barks sending two of them flying off the train car when my bark bursts collided with them.

The two behind the ones froze up in fear and watched as the ones that fell off the train lost all their armor upon striking the ground with lethal force, but they lived because it seems their armor absorbed the lethal damage they would have taken.

That just confirmed that they had magic armor and exactly what it does to me.

Taking advantage of the two in front of me hesitating I charged forward raised my left leg and lashed it into the face of the soldier on my right with a rising jab that launched them forward and off the train. I then lashed out with my right hoof taking out the one on my left in the same manner.

I looked back and quickly bucked out both my rear hooves outwards after looking behind me slightly to knock off two of the three soldiers trying to ambush me from behind.

These guys were all rather lightweight and easy to knock around physically, it’s either that or I was just that strong and I didn’t believe that I was. Their armor, aside being able to prevent them from dying by the armor being absolutely destroyed, I would think it was lighter and magically durable against lighter forms of attack. I’d have to check on that with Ocellus.

Turning to look forward I took a blade across the top of my muzzle moving from left to right from the leaping lizard soldier coming from the seventh car. As soon as their blade got close to my wool of my right cheek from the swing, my wool glowed and the sword shattered and sent the soldier flying off the train to my left.

This made the one solder coming up from behind me back off a bit, looking a bit spooked I turned around with droplets of blood dripping from my from wound and I bark blasted that one off of the train too.

Hope Ocellus, Smolder and Shanty got here soon. I needed to bandage this cut I just took and they have all of our personal supplies. I stretched a bit of wool from my right cheek over the wound, pressed it down tightly and sealed it off with a mental flex of my fluffmancer talent.

I had to keep going, I got three more cars before another pack of troops landed on the train, fortunately it was towards the back end and I got two more cars forward before they caught up to me. I was four cars from the front of the train now.

I was in the middle of the fourth car only to stop as I saw that one of those wonky looking bipedal cannon machines running alongside the train, it seems to have caught up with train.

It leapt up from the ground and used those ridiculous tiny wings to flutter slightly in the air to twist around and land facing me, I heard a thump behind me and saw a second one had leapt onto the train behind me.

They wouldn’t actually fire on me would they? I mean they wanted the supplies right?

The one standing behind me blasted out a black sphere with the empire’s skull symbol on it, but thankfully they weren’t cannons. It was still pretty bad because a second later I turned around backed up and narrowly managed to avoid being blasted by the bouncing bomb.

That’s when the one behind me fire and I dove forward pressing my body flat as the next explosion exploded directly above me, I could feel bits of metal bits bounced off my wool when I flexed it to protect myself. I noted that the train was barely damaged by this sudden use of explosives.

I covered my head as another explosion went off in front of me, I couldn’t move as the two machine had me pinned down and I had to keep my defenses up to not be hurt by the explosions or the noise they were making. The shockwaves were still hurting me enough as it was and I took two more explosions while trying to think of a way to deal with them, my body was starting to become a giant bruise if I take any more of this and I didn’t want to be kicked by these gangly legged machines.

Wait… where were the soldiers the train behind me? I was facing the back of the train and yet I could no longer s-…!

A familiar ring shaped blast of energy ripped into the hip and left leg of the machine in front of me as it was about to fire another bouncing explosive device. The lizard looked panicked as his machine started falling off the right side of the train and looking over the left side to my right as I stood up, I saw Dodo and the girls moving up alongside the train.

Hearing a noise I turned to face the machine that was falling off the train and instinctively reach out with my hooves and caught the vibrating black metal sphere, said sphere was now in my hooves and about to…

I instinctively threw it backwards over my head in a sudden and heard a clinking noise. I blinked and looked behind me to see a rapidly paling lizard as his jaw opened. The sphere l I just threw got lodged in the cannon shaped barrel awkwardly with the other sphere.

It stopped his next explosive from firing out of the hole at the front of his gangly legged machine and now both the spheres were vibrating violently.

I ducked covered my head and I bunkered myself on the spot, a second later the two sphere’s exploded and I felt something large hit me and bounce off to my right. Slowly unfurling from my protective mass of wool I saw the lizard soldier falling out of the seat of his destroyed machine that was now stuck up in a tree.

The train was now traveling through the edge of the forest. I looked up and saw five more troops coming down only several blasts of energy fire up and ripped into their parachutes and made them fall well away from reaching the train.

I idly wondered if Dodo could eat anything, because he and the girls were doing a good job keeping the soldiers off of me.

I turned sprinted for the third car from the coal car, I leapt to the next car and it wasn’t long before I was leaping onto the car leading right up to the coal car.

Something was off about the coal car once I got close to the end of the car I was on now. I didn’t see a conductor or anyone shoveling coal into the train’s engine.

Before I could even contemplate jumping down to the coal car the train somehow decoupled from the care I was standing on and powered forward as the rest of the train was left behind to slow down.

“What?” My confusion came from the fact that I hadn’t see any method to decouple the cars previously and that it had decoupled on its left me feeling like we had just succeeded.

“Woohoo, we be doing it Pom!” Shanty yelled from Dodo’s seat with Smolder and Ocellus on the edges of the bucket of the running metal ostrich.

“I don’t think that we did!” I said as I stared at the train ahead of us suspiciously. The thirteen train cars, without the train to pull it, slowed down to a crawl and it looked like it would be stopping in a large open plains area next to the forest.

“What do you mean, the conductor obviously got scared and…” Smolder started, but then I had to interrupt her in what seemed like a moment of victory.

“It didn’t have a conductor and I think I know why!” I said while wondering about the damage the eight machines that were used to attack the village, swinging maces and bouncing bombs.

They didn’t seem to be the main cause of the mountain village damage… the train ahead of us immediately put on the breaks and once again I noted that the train didn’t have a conductor or anyone driving it.

There’s the sinking feeling in my gut as the train car I was standing on slowed to a complete stop. Dodo strode right up next to my position on the train car and made a warbling mechanical noise of confusion.

“What do you mean Pom?” Ocellus asked, I looked about and noticed that the floating orbs that had been alongside the most of the train cars weren’t there.

“Did you take care of those strange floating orbs with the spikes?” I asked slowly, as I looked at the ground surrounding the tracks and saw shadows moving.

“We be getting most of them on the left side… why?” Shanty asked.

“Move!” I leapt from the train car as a number of floating spiked orbs came down converging on my position and I’m glad that I jumped when I did.

The explosion’s rocked the train car behind me and sent me flying, I bounced a few times and rolled to bleed off the sudden momentum, I was now standing in the grassy plain with a lake to my left and the slightly smoking train car to my right and Dodo came over to look down at me.

Dodo, despite being unintelligent enough to be a familiar, was smart enough to immediately dart away from the unmoving train car as the combined explosions just blew a large hold in the front train car. Luckily there weren’t any people in that train car and just supplies.

“Are you okay Pom?” Ocellus asked with a bit of worry as she leaned over Dodo's side to look down at me.

“No… and this isn’t over yet.” The three gave me a questioning look and I just pointed with my right hoof to the train engine and coal car stopping in the distance.

My attack on the train went pretty well, at least up until now, when the train was revealing something I had only figure out after seeing that it had no conductor and thinking about it long enough.

They all turned to see what I was seeing and pointing at.

The locomotive, sitting in place and not moving, reared up so that its front end and cowcatcher were pointed at the sky. The smokestack spun to its underside and rotated to point towards the sky, a portion of the locomotive seem to split and then move upwards, the entire front end of the train resettled in place revealing a large rounded oval shaped red jewel reeking of evil magic.

I didn’t even have the ability to sense magic and even I could feel it from here. Dodo, Smolder and Shanty froze, Ocellus looked horrified and like she was feeling something much worse.

“That… it’s… pure concentrated malice?!” Ocellus screamed as she started cowering and whimpering while clutching at her head.

The wheels and pipes alongside the locomotive shifted and then pulled away into two long limbs with pipes for muscles using the wheels as joints, the end of the limbs looked to be two short stretchy tentacles ending in five bladed claws.

The cowcatcher rotated downwards into place and split in half to cover the top and lower portion of the exposed red jewel, that was acting as a giant eye, with the bars.

The coal car split in half and outwards, dumping the coal to either side, pulled up to the engine and somehow connected to it and the large wheels of the locomotive that were not part of the arms. Both split parts twisted oddly to lock in place.

That’s when the machine with what looked like a flames belching from its waist slowly stood up on the coal car legs and gave off a powerful mechanical whine that sounded like a roar.

The four of us gulped, Dodo slowly started backing away in the opposite direction of that thing.

That... is what actually destroyed the village.

41. Engine of Destruction.

Author's Note

The name of the realm is given, you just need to specifically name the series now. Also the biggest giveaway was definitely the hero.

Music- Chrono Trigger Boss Battle Theme 1

41. Engine of Destruction.

-Time: During Pom’s assault on the train, Location: Far side of the forest, Person: ???-

I slashed at another lizard and sent them flying, then looked up at the airship in the distance for a second. Why were they dropping soldiers over there?

I dodged a blade and then retorted with my sword biting through the armor another lizard lackey. I should not let my guard down, especially not while on a moving machine.

I would make my way over there and see what the situation was, once I’m finished here dealing with one of our stolen machines.

Once I find out what is going on over there, I will continue my quest to find the magic swords. I had better end this problem quickly or else we were all going to be in trouble.

Edge of the forest next to a lake, present time, Pom-

The train hadn’t finished its transformation, it did that when the fire it released stop coming from the cabin. Said cabin shifted upwards and pulled inwards around the central mass of its torso to look like the sort of chest plate you’d see a knight wearing.

“Pom, Ocellus isn’t looking too hot!” Smolder said while clutching at an awful looking Ocellus as Dodo continued to back away and I was doing the same.

“That thing is causing her pain to even be near, stay with her and see what you can do about freeing the people from those train cars Smolder. Ocellus will be better off a lot further away from it than she currently is. I know that some of them are in the last train car at the back, find out what other cars have villagers in them and get them out of there!” I was about to claim that I’ll take care of that thing, but then I realized how in what world would that happen?! I had my bare hooves and possibly bark blasts for damage, my fluffmancer talents so far were either defensive or utility. That thing was more than twenty feet tall and had several tons on me, what could I possibly do to damage it?! “I’ll… distract it.”

“I be sending Dodo to help as soon as I can.” Shanty offered as she shivered at the sight of the monstrous machine.

“Please do.” I answered back. That’s the best idea we could come up with.

Looking towards this things weakness, what I assume to be the large red round jewel like structure acting as an eye, it was staring back at me through the knight inspired faceplate made from the train’s cowcatcher.

The machine monster started to slowly stomp forward and was slowly picking up speed.

I reluctantly charged forward to meet it. All alone… by myself… what am I thinking?! This thing was going to absolutely kill me!

Despite knowing this, I still kept going forward. All the shockwaves from the various explosions I took over the last hour or so didn’t do my body any favors and I was going to be doing nothing except evasive maneuvers for most of this in the hopes I’d actually survive.

Still raring to go do something stupid for my friends and the people trapped on those train cars.

-Terror Train vs Pom-

Once I was close enough the train tried to stomp down on me with its left block shaped leg as an opening attack, I hopped back once managing to evade the shockwave it cause and then I jumped back again as it dug several furrows in the ground with a single swing of the claws on its right limb.

Swallowing hard, I paid attention to what it was doing now, the left set of claws fanned out and then they started to rotate so fast that they looked like a circular saw. Which thrust it right at me creating powerful winds as it continued forward.

I narrowly rolled forward under the arm onto my back and then rolled onto my side to look at the ground behind me. The spinning claws shred its way through grass and dirt, the wind it was generating also sent everything in its path flying.

That’s why I went under the arm instead of away from it, I would have been buffeted by all that and wouldn’t have been able to...

I heard a whirring and rolled sharply to my left and in the direction of the lake as the other arm stretched out to ram its way into the ground.

I started immediately backing away from it watching the free arm as it swung around send dirt and grass flying in my direction to keep me away from it while it freed itself from the ground.

When the machine’s right arm finally pulled free, I saw that the claws on the right arm had closed together to form into a drill shape and it just made a pretty deep hole.

It was slow to turn towards me, but as it did so it whipped around the spinning saw in a horizontal slash. I leapt over it and after landing from having it pass beneath me, I quickly scrambled backwards as it jabbed at me with the spinning drill again.

So far it seemed simple enough to do… whoa! It seemed slow, but it was actually deceptively fast.

It had turned the spinning saw blades to the right so that the spinning blades edges were pointing towards me as they spun. It proceeded to leap forward and brought the saw down on me vertically stretching the arm out suddenly.

Stumbling to the left I avoided the saw, now I was getting blasted by dirt, grass and rocks blinding me in a vortex of wind come from the spinning blades slowly dragging themselves towards me.

I tried to go to roll out of the sudden cloud of debris, only to hear the spinning drill trying to spear me from the left through the center of the vortex.

I panicked and jumped straight up high enough to land on a portion of the right limb beyond the spinning drill which deflected off its makeshift circular saw without damage it.

Clutching onto the right arm with my hooves, I looked up at the round red jewel through its faceplate and was met with the distinct feeling that it was glaring at me.

That’s when it brought its left arm up to what passes for the train’s right shoulder and swept the upwards facing spinning claws downwards at me.

Bringing my hooves under me and I kicked off as hard as I could onto the left arm and, with very little hesitation on my part, I immediately leapt from the left arm straight for the chest plate that used to be the cabins roof.

Clinging to it I looked left and right, then quickly started scrambling up towards the machines head avoiding the two tentacle style limbs formed drills that tried to stab at me from both sides.

Once I could get a good enough grip on the top edge of the chest plate with both hooves, I heaved myself up and into the air for the faceplate and latched on to it.

Looking back the drills were passing through the place I was a second ago in a second attack, there was not much time to think. I looked at the cowcatcher faceplate and reared back my left hoof while clutching to the top of it with my right hoof.

I lashed my left hoof forward and between the bars, my leg was long enough to smack solidly into the red crystalline structure. I doubted I could fit a bark blast through the bars as easily, but I could have damaged the cowcatcher with them.

The entire machine groaned and stumbled backwards as if it was a real living being that just got punched in the eye.

The damage from what I could see in my position was quite minimal… I could see the faintest bit of a very tiny crack. That was with me putting my all into that blow.

A hundred more hits like that and I might be able to beat this thing, provided that it stood absolutely still and didn’t fight back.

I wasn’t that strong and my stamina wasn’t anywhere near capable of such a protracted battle with something this large, my speed was the only thing keeping me alive.

I heard a clunking noise and a whirring noise followed soon after, the red eye of the monstrous machine brightened its light on me through the knight style faceplate.

Barely sensing the motion, I tried to leap away and armored up my fluff while. I felt an immense agonizing ripping pain in my side as I fell to the ground in agony and rolled closer to the nearby lakes water.

My right side was bleeding badly with a fairly alarming gash in it. Whatever it just did went entirely through my wool, while it was armored to the best of my ability.

Whimpering, I quickly put my right hoof over the wool nearest the wound and I pressed it over the wound to staunch the flow. I’m glad I figured out how to make makeshift bandages out of my fluff, but the pain and the bleeding alone was almost enough to knock me out.

This was a small reminder that I am small and weak being, one that didn’t have very much blood in my body. I was beginning to feel woozy and lightheaded from the excruciating blow I was just dealt.

I looked up at the train and saw that the wheels that made up the upper arms of the machine separated to create two smaller stick thin arms covered in the train’s wheels to protect its head.

The larger tentacle arms ending claws looked limp, at least until the smaller arms reconnected with them. It needed the smaller arms to act as braces for the larger tentacle arms with the claws to operate. Good to know if I ever met another one of these and survived this.

The wheels of the smaller stick limbs were now bladed and some of them along the right arm were slowly coming to stop and were freshly coated with red splatters. The vicious spike on the train wheels receded, explaining why I hadn’t noticed the wheels of the train being bladed before.

The realization struck me that with my wool bandaging my side, I wouldn’t be able to create a functional glider if it decided to start spewing fire at me. Going into the lake was a bad idea, unless I wanted to be boiled alive and if any water seeped through my wool into my wound… I had to move away from the lake.

The machine spread out the claws on both its limbs and they started spinning and was moving to shove them into the ground in front of itself, I looked behind me at the water and then at the legs of the machine as they started making a noise.

I struggled to pull myself into a standing position to start running, I prioritized my second wool bandage while releasing the one currently running over my injured face.

The machine slammed its two spinning claws forward into the ground while charging forward.

I shot off to the left putting my all into galloping out of the way of the two vortexes spinning into each other and launching all forms of debris at me with deadly velocity and force.

A flat rock slapped me across the nose of my already abused face, it bruised my right eye and causing me to incidentally tumble forward. I swiftly turned my tumble into a controlled roll out of the path of the spinning blades of the train’s right arm still creating clouds debris as it passed by me.

Taking a quick look in the direction of the train cars, I started to move away from them at a partial gallop as the loco locomotive slowly turned to face me again.

I at least still had its attention, not that that was an entirely good thing, but I had to keep it away from the people the girls were currently freeing from the cars.

The train monster, having turned towards me, leapt and brought both its arms above what passed for its head. I dove forward as it slammed both its claws down, I avoided getting hit by them directly and was subsequently sent me sprawling from the pressure wave.

I grunted and slowly got up again, fighting the soldiers and the smaller machines was easier, can we go back to that please? I was in a lot of pain and that wasn’t conducive to my further continued survival.

The train launched both its arms launched forward with the claws forming spinning drills.

I quickly galloped out of their path as they both swung outwards and the train continued to stomp forwards after me and it was picking up speed.

I ran to the side slightly and past some trees, when it turned to keep me in its sight it immediately slowed down.

It was faster at moving in a straight line the more time it kept doing so? Given that it’s a train, it made some sort of sense I guess.

Both its arms transformed the claws into saws again and swung the left in a wide sweeping blow as I ran past a few more trees with it giving chase. The other arm then buffeted the trees with a powerful blasts of wind sending them falling and flying at me.

Seeing that I couldn’t outrun the trees I curled up on the ground, quickly armored myself and was struck with a thunderous force no less than three times for the ten or so trees it sent my way. Uncurling I found myself surrounding by the trees it cut down in a single sweep.

Yet, it wasn’t where I last saw it, it was now standing next to the coal it had dumped earlier… what was it going to…?!

The train scooped up a large amount of coal with both claws and stuffed it all down the smokestack sticking up from its back.

Why in the world would it… an explosion of smoke erupted from the smoke stack, then it made a loud train whistling noise and it started to spin its splayed claws while pointing towards me.

The breeze I felt coming off the spinning claws was warm, looking at the center of the claws I could see a glow building up in the holes, that weren’t there a second ago, at the center of its claws.

Realizing what was about to happen, I tried to quickly climb over the trees surrounding me to get out of the way of what was coming.

The machine tracked me and a huge and wide burst of fire blasted outwards at a speeds I couldn’t even begin to comprehend, a veritable bright and blinding wall of death came at me.

I closed my eyes and… felt a light pinch and my body moving through the air.

That was it? I could hear the explosion and the ensuing roar of the flames, but I couldn’t feel myself being lit on fire. While my wool was heat resistant there was a level of tolerance I could handle and a flame fueled air blast was a well beyond that.

I only felt a little warm from all the heat.

I opened my eyes and looked in the direction of the noise, which was now behind me? My eyes widened at what I saw, I was outright horrified by what I was currently seeing.

The landscape in the direction the train was facing had been utterly destroyed, the attack barely left anything but dust and charcoal within the attacks range. The burnt husk of several stumps were beyond the attacks range of where I had been told me how powerful that attack was.

My gaze slowly slid to looking over my shoulder at the metal beak clutching at wool on the back of my neck, it moved to lower me into what was now a comforting seat to rest.

Dodo followed up this action by nuzzling me gently, he warbled in a strange tone that sounded worried.

“Dodo… I think…” I was in shock, of course I was, and hyperventilating was definitely a warranted reaction in this situation. This machine just ran in front of a firestorm for me. Said firestorm decimated an entire area leaving very little left other than stumps that were just outside the range of the attack, and he managed to grab me before it hit. “You just saved my life...”

The train’s red orb glowed at the corner of its helmet from our position to its left and it slowly turned towards us.

Dodo warbled and cowered as he backed away from the train.

“Dodo, run towards it.” Despite the cowardice we were both feeling, my request was immediately followed by Dodo doing what I said. “Circle to the left around it!”

Dodo avoided the two elastic tentacle swing downwards in an attempt slice us apart with its claws curling inwards. Dodo managed to maneuver past them without taking any damage.

As the train turned to track us, I thought about our next move.

“Dodo… turn around and… fire for that red jewel thing…” I started coughing and could see flecks of red in my right hoof, signs of minor internal injury. That… that wasn’t good and my adrenaline was wearing off.

Good thing we asked those pandas for plenty of medical supplies, I was going to need those herbs soon.

Dodo skidded and turned on a bit, he opened his beak and fired several blasts of energy for the faceplate. I’m lucky he could understand me, language was thankfully one of the things he obviously got from his familiar bond with shanty. I don’t know how an alien mechanical ostrich would know what I was saying otherwise.

The blasts of energy from his beak did a small amount of damage to the faceplate, causing it to crumple slightly after five or so blasts out of the fifteen he fired struck it.

“Dodo… run backwards and keep firing…” That got me an odd look from Dodo, but his head snapped back to paying attention to the train monster. He avoided it charging forward and slashing its claws for us.

I’m glad that it could only do the coal fueled attack thing once, unless it went back to the two piles of coal to load up for another one. Dodo’s constant attacks were to prevent it from doing just that, it was actually keeping up with Dodo’s running backwards and it was gaining speed.

“Dodo… when I signal, run forward and right past it as fast as you can.” I don’t know if Dodo heard me, at this point he was weaving and dodging around the trains constant attacks and trying to outpace the train’s forward momentum. The monster machine raised its right claw and I narrowed my eyes. “…. now!”

The train slammed its spinning spear claw down on the after image of Dodo running forward, that we left an after image amazed me as I looked back.

Dodo was much faster at going forward than backwards and we were behind the train now. No weakness on its back as far as I could see.

“Stop, turn and fire at the edge of the faceplate, we need to knock it off if we’re going to do any real damage to it Dodo!” My orders were followed as Dodo skidded to a stop, turned and started to fire on the train monster again as he retreated.

The train terror was halfway into turning around counterclockwise when Dodo opened fire, the blasts of energy spraying from his beak started ripping into the left side of the cowcatcher.

Eventually under the hail of fire the cowcatcher fell halfway off missing a lot of bars and left the eye of the machine exposed, Dodo started trying to attack that without my prompting.

The few shots that hit the eye directly didn’t do much damage to it, comparable to when I struck it directly with my hoof. It started to charge forwards towards us and Dodo running backwards towards the train cars blasting away at the large red glowing eye of the machine.

This wasn’t working, we weren’t going to be able to stop it as even Dodo wasn’t powerful enough to slow it down. We were quickly approaching the train cars and the train monster was catching up with us.

The train started to form drills with both its arms as it charged straight at us and it thrusts them forward ahead of itself with its malice filled eye shining upon us. Dodo warbled and leapt backwards past the blown open hole of the train car with the supplies, the two drills rammed into the train car and got stuck.

Dodo charge forward and launched a damaging kick with the bottom of his right foot right into the large red eye. That that did more damage than the energy blasts that Dodo could shoot was confusing.

Once Dodo got his left leg propped up against the breastplate, it kicked us off of the devastating machine using both legs and to the left leaving a noticeably cracked jewel.

Dodo back up a bit and was about to charge forward for another attack, but backed off when the shoulder arms activated and swung for us. Dodo looked back at me and thought better of attacking as he backed further off.

A loud bursting whining noise sounded, both Dodo and menacing machine that was almost free of the train car it trapped the end of its limbs in froze.

That sound was vaguely familiar to me, it almost sounded like a…

A spiraling blue streak shot towards the menacing machine. Said streak, upon striking the red jewel eye thing, the sound of glass rapidly breaking could be heard in a series of clinking noises as the blue figured spun against it and then blasted out the backside of it in a shower of metal and parts.

Now there was a hole through the center of the train’s eye and it sat there limp for a second, it soon fell over backwards lifeless.

“What… was…” I started coughing into my right hoof to see a few more flecks, yeah I needed help and soon. I’m surprised I’m even awake with the kind of pain I’m in.

“Hold on Pom!” Ocellus flew forward with several raccoons following along behind her looking at me in worry and looking beyond us in awe as a blurry blue figure walked up to us. Well there goes my vision.

The figure said something in the strange language that the locals spoke as Ocellus lifted me from Dodo with her magic and laid me out on the ground.

“What… is he saying?” I coughed and saw a bit of red dribble from my mouth, was everything getting colder?

“He said welcome to... fell...born...no Elhorn?" Ocellus turned and asked something of the blue blob.

"He welcomes us to the world of Elhorn... and expresses marrow... sorrow... for not being able to get here quicker and that you had to face the... I can't translate that yet... in his place while helping the citizens of the realm. Hold still Pom and don't talk, you need to rest.” Ocellus elevated my head and place something soft underneath it. “Can you let up on whatever you are doing to cover the wound, we have a doctor here and they need to get at it to help you.”

“Right…” I let up on my wool bandage and heard gasps about how nasty the wound obviously looked. “I wonder if… Tianhuo… would hate the scars?”

"I'm sure she won't mind Pom." Exclaimed Smolder as I was starting to pass out.

42. The Answer.

-The Witch’s Fare, Gallus-

I walked in feeling a bit down that Smolder and Ocellus still haven’t come back, but at least I knew that they were still trying.

“Hello and welcome to… oh Gallus, it’s so good to see you!” Kuril the proprietor stated like she usually does whenever I came to this restaurant. The perky white and gray furred Abyssinian in the robes and pointy hat was the Witch of Good Taste, she hasn’t failed to satisfy a tongue yet. Anyone that tries to pretend otherwise is lying through their teeth as they continue to eat the food here like they were starving. I’m not going to call her out on the addictive qualities of her personal cooking. “Come on, I got a table with your name on it. Are any of your friends coming?”

“Yeah, Stream, Yona and Sand, they’ll be by in a few minutes.” I was quickly seated by the nice lady that had quite the personality, especially if you caught her in one her rare bar fight appearances. I have long since learned that you never leave a chair near a La Perm in a bar fight, the end results are horrifying.

“So-- any thoughts about being another one of my lovable kittens Gallus?” Kuril La Perm was not one to let things go and her smile was hopeful. She wanted me to have a family I could go to for help, to be proud of and would support my every endeavor. She has had several sanity challenging waifs already and loved them dearly, not to mention her own flesh and blood daughter is a piece of work all her own and that’s on top of being a good grandma. I have no idea why she was insistent on treating me like family, but I secretly appreciated it. “I ask, because something certainly seems to have you feeling down. Do you need a hug?”

“We’ll discuss this subject later Kuril and I might even consider taking that hug, at least you’re not like Pinkie Pie and just assume someone wants one without asking. Hey, where’s Gavin?” I was like a big brother for that innocent fluffy ball of a griffon. Said fluff ball was why Kuril kept offering her services as a mother, she reveled in taking care of others and was rather whimsical about it. If anyone causes Kuril’s family any problems, then you would have to deal with a whole family of nutcases that live around this location south of Ponyville. You have to be nuts to live next to Barely Bearable Woods and all the deadly giant flora and fauna therein, some ponies from Ponyville even had the gall to say that this place was tamer than Ponyville when it was just as bad in the insanity department. “The little guy usually comes running when I show up.”

When Gavin grows up he may eventually want to visit Griffonstone, one can only hope that Gilda and Greta will have changed things for the better before he does. I wouldn’t want the kid to see what it was like when I grew up there, heck I’m not going to talk about it in any great light around the kid or even talk about it at all. At least Gabriella Gums, better known as Gabby the most notable motor beak and chipper postal worker of Griffonstone, certainly keeps me up to date with what was barely a home to me.

Ponyville and this place felt more like a home, I would rather think over Kuril’s offer at length and get back to her later. She’s a nice lady, but she’s a bit much to get along with even if she means well.

“Oh he’s busy with an appointment with Dr. Bones today. That’s going to take a while since Silvers is having their checkup today as well and they are going first so it may be a while.” Kuril just shook her head at that.

Given that her grand-kitten was a chimera, they need some form of specialized care with needing a personal doctor that understood their quirky form of fused biology.

Looking over towards the entrance, as I heard familiar stomping noise of a yak of a certain weight, I flagged my friends over to the table Kuril chose for us. Eventually we ordered our drinks and received them, along with menus for today’s specials and whatever else Kuril felt like cooking in bulk today.

We were looking through our menus of the daily offerings and when I went to drink some water, I think I saw a sudden evil smirk cross Kuril’s face. I think it might have been my eyes tricking…

“So… is this a double date I’m seeing today?” Kuril asked innocently and quickly, her tail flicking back and forth with excitement as she clasped her claws together.

I spewed water across the table at Yona and Sandbar, I coughed and sputtered in embarrassment until Silver Stream helped me by patting me on the back to get me breathing correctly and she giggled cutely into her other claw while she was at it.

I glared at the witch and Kuril just smiled innocently at us all.

“Yona think this would be a triple date if Ocellus and Smolder were here… they are currently trapped traveling another dimensions at the moment.” Way to bring the mood down with that reminder Yona. “It is why yak and friends haven’t been feeling too happy lately.”

“Eh, can’t be worse than losing my kitten to Limbo for Five years. The longer it goes on, the likelier the more painful your memories will get. Hold onto them and cherish them with everything you have and trust in them to try and come back!” Kuril stated seriously as she pulled out a note pad and smiled at us. “So what can I get you four lovers? I know that Gallus certainly appreciates having a pretty pink hippogriff at his side.”

“Really Kuril?” I asked with a flat tone as Silver Stream, Yona and Sandbar started laughing.

“Oh come on Gallus, you know she loves to tease you.” Silver Stream, then leaned closer while smiling at me. “Though if you want to make this a double date…”

Silver Stream pecked my cheek and smiled as she went back to her menu, my face felt like it was on fire.

“Ah, young love, it’s so sweet.” Kuril looked towards the kitchen when we all heard a noise. There was the resident assistant chef, a bat pony named Blade Bright, being held in the flailing tentacle of some large monstrous octopus thing and she was stabbing it with two knives repeatedly. “It seems eldritch horrors got into the kitchen again… at least it’s not those turn left signs stealing my rye bread. Excuse me, but this might take a few minutes kids, I’ll be back for your orders soon.”

Kuril rolled up her sleeves and stomped her way towards the kitchen.

-Planet Elhorn, Time: ????, Location: tent, Pom-

Ugh… my head. I sat up slowly and felt awful, I looked at my side to see that I was properly bandaged and so was my poor battered muzzle.

“Huh, oh, you’re awake!” Smolder came into the tent I found myself waking up in and she looked me over. “Need anything, the guys were about to start on breakfast and Ocellus is translating our unique needs to them.”

“How long was I out for?” I grunted and slowly tried to stand almost flopped onto my face, if not for Smolder catching me.

“Careful there, you lost a lot of blood and are still weak. You’ve only been out for about twelve hours, Shanty said it would take you less than a whole day. Now I owe her a few bits when we get back to Equestria…” Yes, Smolder, I’m now quite clearly aware of the fact that I could hardly stand. Though I had to wonder where this tent came from, it wasn’t from our bags or personal supplies. “So do you want the Worst news, the bad news, the good news or the best news for what’s happened recently?”

“Thank you for preempting me, just tell me everything in that exact order.” I had a headache and was quite lightheaded, I tried to steady the spinning room with my right hoof. “I’m not going very far in this state, I need something to drink and eat.”

“Okay worst news is this, the thing that was destroyed… that train? There’s far worse machines than that thing out there if you can believe what Ocellus has been learning from the locals. Said machines are being brought out by the Gedol Empire.” Smolder must have seen the look on my face as she answered the unspoken question. “Apparently the Gedol is the name of the guy behind all those lizards we’ve been facing… and why I got a few awkward looks from the villages. They apparently have frogs, half snake half lizards and other scaly, reptilian or amphibious beings in general under their banner. Not all of said beings agree with them or even like the Gedol Empire and are possibly being forced to work for it from what Ocellus has found out.”

“The bad news?” I was already thinking that I suffered some sort of permanent injury.

“We’re actually in the middle of a contested zone at the moment and things aren’t going so hot when it comes to fighting the machines they deploy that are like the ones we've already seen.” That… was very worrying Smolder. “We should be fine though, considering that a famous hero of the kingdoms just blew through here and took out a majority of the Gedol Empire’s mechanical offensive power in this region. He left soon after destroying that monstrous train and took the time to converse with Ocellus over a few things. Guy sounded busy as he’s searching for six magical swords, which honestly sounds like more Elements of Harmony stuff, so he can defeat the evil sorcerer Emperor Gedol who is threatening to take over this whole world.”

“Okay, with all that horrible stuff aside… what’s the good news in all of this?” Especially if we’re in a contested zone, I really don’t think we were safe. “How far have we gone exactly?”

“We’re still next to the train tracks where the fight took place, its good news that we have a contingent of Zephyrus, Eginasem and Zebulos soldiers helping the raccoons back to their homes after they helped with seeing to your wounds. They had to leave quickly as they very well couldn’t leave those children alone in the mountain village, the soldiers are also taking back the supplies for the people and a little bit for the war effort as needed.” Well that is somewhat comforting Smolder, unless these soldiers are about as effective as the royal guards of Canterlot. “So we’re currently in the camp they quickly set up and you’re being hailed as a hero for holding the train off as long as you did. As for the best news, while your injury was pretty bad and one of your internal organs was slightly nicked, it wasn’t really debilitating in any permanent fashion aside from the large amount of blood loss you suffered. We also know the magic we’re going to need to get us out of this world and hopefully home… I’m not holding my breath even if it will be third times the charm.”

“Really, we know how to leave this world already?” I perked up and then wilted as Smolder frowned and looked away while flexing her wings a bit in agitation.

“Yeah… about that. Until the Gedol Empire is put down we won’t be able to leave, of the few active magic users three of them are the princesses of the kingdoms I mentioned.” Smolder stated with a hint of annoyance. “One of them is currently being held by Gedol’s forces and is slowly being moved towards the capital of the empire.”

“Let me guess… we need those three princesses working together for the dimensional portal spell, or at the very least all of them focusing on our plight alongside a few other small details?” I received a pointed claw and a nod from Smolder. “Otherwise they will mostly be using their magic in the defense of the realm on a war time footing… well joy.”

“Exactly, which is why we’re going to be stuck here for a while.” After saying that Smolder sat down next to me. “How are you feeling Pom?”

“How do you think I feel?” I grunted and clutched at my side. “I’m feeling rather pathetic, I couldn’t even slow that machine down for very long by myself.”

Arizona would have torn that thing in half with raw force. Velvet could have iced it over until it was brittle. Tianhuo would have melted it with raw fury. Paprika would have just hugged it. Oleander would have ripped it apart with dark magic. I really shouldn't be making comparing myself to them, but it's kind of hard not to.

“Don’t talk and feel that way about yourself Pom, you did more than anyone could have asked of you! I certainly didn’t expect you to actually try and take the fight to that thing, even then you still successfully kept its attention on you the entire time and you succeeded in keeping it distracted until it was taken down.” Ocellus stepped into the tent and Dodo poked his head in after her, Dodo pulled his head out when Shanty called out to him. “I couldn’t do anything at all thanks to all that malice in the air, it was almost acting like a slow acting poison to me and I was being absolutely suffocated by it. The best I could do was watch you struggle against it and relay how you were doing to Shanty, Smolder and Dodo as they freed the people in the train cars. I couldn’t even use my emotional sensory abilities to tell which cars had people in them, it was so horrible Pom! If anyone should be feeling useless, then it should be me, I couldn’t do anything. So don’t demean your accomplishments!”

Smolder started hugging and, obviously enough, feeding Ocellus love as she nuzzled her neck affectionately making her smile weakly.

I didn’t say anything and looked away.

“Yeah, Ocellus couldn’t do much other than watch, that machine reeked of evil and I didn’t even know that was a smell I could identify until now. I’m highly magic resistant and even I could feel that something was wrong with that thing.” Everyone and anyone with even a small sense of decency who saw that ‘thing’ would agree to that sentiment Smolder. “Apparently some of the machines from the empire use what are called ‘Evil’ cores. They are also called, according to Ocellus, Fury cores, Malice cores, Rage cores, Wrath cores and on and on like that. Ocellus here has been doing a lot of talking with the various soldiers that set up here about it. Nasty piece of work those things, but they are a major weak point to any machine they are attached to.”

“All of those are technically correct terms for an ‘Evil Core’. Some machines like Dodo do have something similar, but it’s not nearly as strong to really be as bad as that train was. That there are worse machines than that out there scares me on a number of levels.” Ocellus rubbing at her head with her hooves, she seemed as stressed out as I usually am. “That you could even move, think and act near that thing is a miracle Pom. Changelings could likely die just from being in one of those things presence for too long.”

“Speaking of Dodo, did you ask about what exactly he is?” I know that Dodo is alive, but I’m still concerned about the how and why of it. “We know the farmers didn’t know much, but I’m wonder if you asked around.”

“From what the soldiers told me, he’s a land strider model four which is known as a Stampy-Do. Five years ago the model one was larger, clunkier and didn’t have nearly anything approaching the same capabilities that Dodo has. At best, the model one had an inbuilt flamethrower and fell apart easily if one of the legs was taken out. The model ones were larger and energy inefficient and were used to raid villages at the start of the war with the pigs, said pigs were shoved out of the capital of their empire a year or so back. It’s where Emperor Gedol is operating from now and has been building up forces for the ensuing war that’s just getting started. Aside from the war five years ago, there was the Lioness Crisis in the Eginasem Kingdom which was more of a series of skirmishes than a full out and out war.” Ocellus freed herself from Smolder’s embrace and came over to me, she poked me lightly in the side making me grimace. “You’re really tough Pom, with an injury like that someone would have been screaming their head off and all you did was stay focused, got up and tried to keep going. Even Smolder and Shanty would have been hard pressed to do anything like that. So we’re all feeling a little useless here, some of us more so than others… Anyway, Dodo did the most damage to the train and even then he still wouldn’t have been fast or strong enough to survive for too long if the hero hadn’t show up.”

“Who was the hero, I only saw a blue blob, frankly my vision was a bit poor and I’m still rather lightheaded.” I felt something roughly pushed into my hoof and I looked down to see Shanty came into the tent with a bright smile on her face and a load of fruits. I took up the canteen and started drinking the water slowly. “Thanks Shanty.”

“It be no problem, are you being okay?” Reaching towards Shanty, I patted her head and ruffled her ponytail affectionately.

“I will be.” I turned back to Ocellus.

“From what I gather the hero that saved you and Dodo was known as the last true Rocket Knight of Elhorn, most of the other rocket knight’s kind of… well five years ago they were all taken out except for him by a traitor and he singlehandedly won the war by being a one opossum army.” So what you’re saying Ocellus, is that he was a respectable hero. One that came to our aid without a second thought and someone who pushes himself to risk his life for others at a moments notice. “I would really like to know this world’s history where someone that small can total large machines with such ferocity, with regularity and an alarming amount of ease no less. The soldiers here say he’s nearly unstoppable when he’s actively using his rocket pack.”

“Does he have a name?” I asked.

“Hold on, I’ll go ask…” Ocellus got up and exited the tent and started asking something of someone nearby. After some rapid fire squeaks in that strange language later, Ocellus came back into the tent with an opossum clad in a blue shirt and brown pants with a sword at his hip and a shield on his arm. “If I got this right, the heroes name is Sparkster Sanjuro in their language. Which translates to Lightning Strikes Rapidly in ours. I’m think I’m getting better with actual names now, so I should be really good at translating anything said to me soon.”

“It’s alright Ocellus. With how fast that guy could go with that thing strapped to his back, I’d definitely believe that was his name.” Stated Smolder. “The last we saw of him, he was driving a blue vehicle with a large flat back end to it. He apparently stole it from an enemy convoy and drove it in our direction to show up in time to help us with the train.”

The opossum said something to draw our attention to him, he bowed to me and then continued speaking to Ocellus.

“He’s thanking you for helping the citizens of the kingdoms and he wants to know what our next move is and if we need to coordinate while Sparkster continues his quest for the magic swords.” Ocellus translated for the opossum as I got started on eating some fruit, I really needed some energy right now and I didn’t want Shanty eating it out from under my poor bruised and damaged face.

“Tell him I was only doing what I felt was right.” I trusted Ocellus to know enough of their language to translate my sentiments correctly. “As for us, what do you girls want to do? I’m not making a decision for all of us without some input from you.”

“We could join all these knights in kicking butt, but I don’t think you’d want to do that. If we run into any more of those machines that can incapacitate or even kill us like the one that almost got you… and then there’s how Ocellus faired with just being near one.” Smolder was wary and thinking about Ocellus’s safety as much as that of our group, but she was wanted to take aggressive action out of aggravation for our current situation. Fairly understandable, I almost felt the same way. “I’m up for doing almost anything as long as it doesn’t endanger us too much, not like we have much else going on.”

“I be thinking we can be helping greatly, but I don’t know what with.” That was Shanty’s take on things, she was sending me a worried glance. “I know I can’t be fighting the bigger machines with my bare hooves, not after seeing what be happening to you Pom. If I be getting my hooves sharp enough to cut metal, then maybe I can be taking them if I be hitting something important.”

Shanty was ready to charge forward, but she was also as cautious and doesn’t know what we should be doing.

I now turned to Ocellus for her opinion on what we should do.

“I’ve got nothing Pom, I really don’t want to go near one of ‘those’ machines again, but I still want to help people like Smolder and Shanty.” So we’re all indecisive and wanted to do something, but we had no direction at the moment.

“Ocellus, ask the opossum if there is anything we can do.” I raised my left hoof and rolled it in front of me trying to think of what else to say. “Something that isn’t overly dangerous, but would be very helpful overall to their current war effort.”

Ocellus nodded and turned to speak with the opossum about what we could do to assist their forces, the conversation went on for a few minutes.

We didn’t really know much about the regions we were in very well aside from the map we were given, but we at least knew that the Gedol Empire was definitively openly hostile to nearly everyone.

We’d at the very least need a guide, to make some local friends and to assist the war effort to earn favor from the kingdoms in the hopes they would be more open to helping us get back home.

I, out of a sense of personal honor, couldn’t back out of the war. I made the call that I would fight the tyranny of the Gedol Empire and that could mean anything from passively or actively defying the empire. I really didn’t want to face another machine like that train monster or worse, but I was bound to eventually from what we’ve learned.

“He said they could use some scouts or couriers.” Ocellus spoke up and turned to me.

“That sounds simple enough for us.” I really shouldn't have said those words.

Author's Note

A quick run down of this setting.

This is the Rocket Knight Adventures world, Elhorn, with adventures that are not going to be focused on what the hero is doing as he heads for the desert region.

Zebulos is the main kingdom of the first Rocket Knight Adventures with Princess Sherry, it's name was accidentally translated as Zebulos instead of Zephyrus.

Eginasem the main kingdom of SNES Sparkster with Princess Flora, technology and magic is considered on par with the other kingdoms.

Zephyrus the kingdom of RKA: 2 with Sherry's cousin Princess Cherry.

All three princesses are taller than most every other being by a foot or two and are all magically opossums. So they are practically the alicorns of this world given they are the ones that can actively use magic.

Never like the fourth game in the series, which may have led to the series dying, aside from the locations. The game just didn't have the same action or speed as the first three did.

We're in a world with giant robot fights, lasers, missiles, wacky machines and powerful magic when used.

The magic of this world, when it is used it, has allowed Sparkster to do things like fly, actively survive in space and makes him immune to mind control effects as much as the power of his own magic working through his rocket pack. In any art with Sparkster he is never shown to have controls for his pack, so he uses some form of magic to wield it. Sparkster would have burned his tail off a long time ago if not for the protective magic on his armor.

The plot of the first Rocket Knight is fighting an evil AI. The second is Sparkster fighting a wolf army led by a lion, and stopping a missile that would destroy the planet. The third is the Empire created by the AI from the first game has been taken over and is now their resources are being held by an evil sorcerer Emperor Gedol, said resources include machine building factories.

43. History in the making.

-????, Oleander and Fred-

“Why are these things called Grimm again? They don’t look like black dogs that warn of ill tidings to me. You know, I think Pom has one of those already...” Seriously they were weak to having their false hearts unlocked by the key blade, give them even an ounce of empathy and they just explode… violently. I felt a little sad of the fact that the key blade made this too easy, but it did have the power of unlocking and locking anything, even if that thing was just an abstract concept. A fairly useful, if dangerous in the wrong hooves, power if you ask me. “These things aren’t really close to being as dangerous as shadow monsters, especially since they get taken out by the local crystalized magic so easily."

“Don’t know what to tell you Ollie. They are simply manifestations of pure negativity, THEY SURE ARE FUN TO FIGHT THOUGH!” Fred yelled loudly as we dove into a hoard of black and white bony monsters.

“Hopefully something around here will put up more of a fight than Shredder and Krang did.” We still have yet to find Pom or the others, maybe we weren’t searching for the right kind of dimensions? I brought ‘End of Pain’ around and start firing tons of unlock shots at the oncoming monsters lazily. “I mean who would honestly use ridiculously incompetent help like those purple robot things? I was standing in front of thirty of them with all of them shooting at me with those energy weapons and all they did was hit each other. I wasn’t any more than twenty feet from any of them and some were even firing at me nearly point blank and still missing!”

“Change of subject, don’t forget to feed Pom’s present, HE MIGHT ACTUALLY LIKE A TASTE OF THESE THINGS!” Fred reminded me that we picked up a friendly white Wolf Noise about three dimension back.

I actually quite missed toying with the Composer, Producer and Conductor, they were all quite fun if somewhat demented in their own unique ways. Being an outside context problem meant they couldn’t do a single thing to stop me.

“Remind me to make full repairs to the gummy ship when we’re done here Fred.” I stated blithely as half the monsters got ripped to shreds before me, my ability to do magic was boosted by the key blade I was levitating.

On Fred’s suggestion I idly summoned Song Ender, the Wolf Noise we’re going to give to Pom, out from where I kept him.

Song Ender immediately started tearing through evils of this world like they were made of partially melted butter. It had taken a while to find a positive energy based Noise, but it had been a worthwhile effort from what I could see.

It was becoming hard to find a good challenge these days, but I was having fun and actually finding Pom’s group was one the hardest challenges of them all.

-Elhorn, a day and some hours later, road heading south by southwest, Shanty-

Pom be appreciating the grassy plains, I do to as we can be seeing trouble long before it reaches us.

We could have been scouts, but the knights were a bit wary of Dodo. Dodo wouldn’t hurt anyone, not without a reason and he be saving Pom’s life from being part of what is a now a large field of charcoal.

We were all a bit cramped in the seat in Dodo’s back, but I think we were making good time. Smolder was on the right, Ocellus was on the left and Pom was sitting directly behind me with me in her lap.

The steady rhythm of his footsteps was taking us along to the town we were supposed to deliver a few messages to while the knights of the kingdoms dealt with other problems.

We would not be being good scouts as we didn’t know what signs to look for or the surroundings, so we took to being couriers which is being much safer for us.

I didn’t be believing for a second that we wouldn’t run into trouble out here or at least at the town we were headed to.

“So what do you think they’ll do with the train monster?” As Smolder just pointed out, we did be leaving it lying where it was technically destroyed. It still be javoimg eighty percent of its body intact.

“The kingdom that gets the honor of what to do with it will likely melt it down and use it for other things.” One could only hope they would do so Ocellus, I not be wanting to see that thing again after it attempted to rip Pom in half. “The only thing wrong with the knights of the kingdoms, as I see it, is that they are spread too thin to effectively fight off Gedol Empire and they don’t have nearly powerful enough weapons to fight off ‘evil core’ machines. It doesn’t help that there are wild machines that can be taken control of like Dodo that are just wandering around, at least it helps that those are more neutral and tend to wander in territories away from civilization.”

“Hopefully we don’t run into any wild machines, as if it wasn’t scary enough that the machines of this world can be functionally intelligent like Dodo. I would rather not a machine that acts like a wild animal.” Pom be mostly okay, but she still be fretting over us and we be accepting her every step of the way. She is being the one that we should be fretting about. “You said the pigs were of the broken Devotindos Empire and the wolves of the Yellow Dog army were from the far north and southern territories respectively?”

“Yeah, they are not likely to cause problems for us unless we have to meet with them personally in their current territories for any reason. The pigs definitely won’t support the Gedol Empire after they kicked the pigs out of Devotindos City and the wolves are having territory problems with Gedol as well, the people of this world seem unable to work together in friendship.” Yet they all still be war bound Ocellus, they be fighting and driving many innocent people from their homes or worse. “That or we could meet small groups or outliers if we’re going to be traveling around.”

At least the pigs be having the excuse of all their forces falling under magical hypnosis generated by an intelligent evil core machine that hid its true nature by acting as their emperor. At least the knights had explained to us that the pigs of Devotindos weren’t entirely to blame for their mostly warlike nature.

The wolves sounded about as aggressive as the mercenaries we fought back in Gongmen City, only they were equipped with machines of their own making before they were defeated. The wolves were partly responsible for the reproducing wild machines given they invented the Stampy-Do's, the local magic of the planet was also involved in turning them into wild machines reproducing like biological beings and eating mostly plants.

When they needed to reproduce or grow they tend to eat scrap metal with two machines carrying half of a construction program for a small mechanical Stampy-Do, most people on this world be lucky they can only grow to specific sizes.

At least we know why Dodo could eat when we offered food, despite being a machine he was functionally alive in all the ways that counts. I be knowing he enjoyed the taste of sour or juicy fruits through our familiar bond.

The lizards were all being led by a magical evil sorcerer Emperor Gedol, it was a good thing that he wasn’t working with the other two empires as he was said to be extremely powerful.

“Town ahoy!” I shouted and pointed out in the distance, the town be looking fairly busy up ahead and I be steering Dodo in that given direction as Dodo slowly walked through a field of flowers looking about curiously.

“Remember, we need to make a careful approach to not spook the locals… or to not be seen if the town has been invaded by Gedol forces. It seems pretty clear from what I can see.” After Pom turned to me, she motioned to Dodo and then a sign we were going to pass ahead. “If we see any pigs or wolves, much less anyone from those two territories, then we should try to make sure to avoid gaining their ire or attention.”

“Dodo can you be stopping at the sign?” Listening to my words, Dodo slightly changed directions and slow went up the sign and stopped for Ocellus to hopefully translate it.

“Clad… in… hold… this is the right place.” Ocellus confirmed the town and I motioned for Dodo to continue forward to the town that was not too far away. “If anyone asks, should I tell them Dodo was a wild machine or should I tell them we stole him off the Gedol Empire?”

“Depends, what kind of reputation would it get us?” That be a good question Smolder.

Saying we caught the machine in the wild would be being easier to believe, but saying we be capturing it from the Gedol Empire would be making us some friends and painting large targets on our back depending on the situation of the town and the possibility of sympathizers. It also be bad if we garner attention and be having a lot expected of us, more so than we were actually capable of dealing with.

I not be dumb, we weren’t going to be on the front lines, well at least we never would be if Pom be having any say in it.

“Let’s go with this, we came across him randomly and he started bonding with Shanty. We trust him because he saved my life on one occasion with very little prompting from Shanty.” Pom likely considered the issue in its entirety to answer the question so quickly. What she just said was the truth, but just omitting finer details of it. “Change of subject. Any one of us can handle the kind of Gedol soldiers we’ve been up against. They weren’t very big threats unless they have machines to pilot, but what I’m worried about is when we run into a larger machine and or soldiers that can actually fight. Knowing my luck, and mostly because we all know I tempted fate a short while ago, we’re inevitably going to have to fight at least another evil core machine, or several, soon enough. I really doubt we can deal with giant deadly machines, even if Dodo can do some damage with his energy blasts.”

“Yeah, Dodo not being very smart on his own, but I think I be helping him with that.” I patted the back of his neck and he be giving off a mechanical warble of happiness. “We can’t deny that he be very good in a fight though.”

“Isn’t your wool heat resistant Pom?” Suddenly asked Ocellus with a curious look on her face. “I’m asking because you said Dodo saved your live when the train monster decided to burn away a large section of that forest.”

“Resistant yes. Is my wool is also slow to burn? That is also true.” Pom looked at Ocellus. “As for the rest of my body, not so much. If I had taken an attack that turned as large an area as that to immediate charcoal, well my wool could have survived it… ‘COULD’. I on the other hoof wouldn’t. I don’t exactly have the requisite skill as a fluffmancer to survive lava like Paprika does and would have been relying on my wools natural resistance.”

“Paprika can do what?!” Ocellus seemed so surprised.

“She once hugged a cherufe while it was still covered in lava and survived without permanent injury.” Knowing that Pom be telling us stuff about Paprika, there were some things that were hard to believe.

“Aren’t cherufes generally large and look a lot like lobsters?” Asked Smolder curiously.

“Yes and they can cause earthquakes with their movements and tend to nest inside volcanoes that don’t have dragons in their territory.” Pom mumbled as we entered town at a steady pace. “Okay enough chatting where do we need to deliver our message and parcel to?”

“At the local guild or tavern Cladinhold, apparently we’re supposed to ask around for two guys named Wedge and Biggs.” Ocellus would be the one to do that, she’s the only one that can speak and or feasibly read the language.

We’ve been picking up a few things from her, she is being a very good language teacher as much as she was at learning it.

“Dodo please be stopping.” Dodo came to a stop slowly and we looked around at the people.

Nobody was screaming or pointing weapons at us, but we were getting a few odd looks here or there. The town had various rodents, canines, a frog or two and even a few pigs, there were also dinosaurs like you would see in Equestria… only they were less magical. The small triceratops be the popular pet just from a few glances I took around us as we entered the town.

Cladinhold was a crossroads town between the kingdoms that has been wrecked or ravaged more than once, yet it be telling that it’s recovered each time from such incidents.

-Smolder-

“You know usually, you’d be the one that people would stare at Ocellus, but having scales and being only slightly taller than Spike is probably making them somewhat wary of me.” I certainly did not want to be associated with Gedol, but there wasn’t much I could do about my appearance.

“If you’re feeling uncomfortable I could always change into a dragon and…” Ocellus was making that offer out of the sake of our closeness, but I had to cut her off there.

“You don’t have to worry about it Ocellus, also keep your ability to shapeshift hidden until we seriously need it.” It was useful to have that ability as a trump card for a seriously dire situation, but I didn’t need to tell Ocellus that. “Well, pick out someone that looks friendly and ask for directions or at least give them the names.”

“Right… um…” Ocellus hopped off of Dodo and looked to a nearby opossum and started speaking the local language that was basically all squeaks to me.

The opossum responded favorably with quite a few words exchanged between them and he eventually pointed down the street.

“He said the guild is on the street to our left, Wedge and Biggs should be there.” Ocellus told us and motioned for Dodo to follow. Dodo was busy looking around at all the people who were staring at him curiously.

“Dodo, be following Ocellus carefully please.” At Shanty’s words Dodo snapped his attention back to us and then Ocellus, he warbled curiously as we turned left at the upcoming junction and went straight until we found the local guild.

“Smolder, Shanty, stay with Dodo and keep him out of trouble while Ocellus and I look for the people we’re supposed to deliver the package to.” We both acknowledged Pom idly while looking around.

Stone and wood town, plenty of people and despite the air of wary and some looks sent my or Dodo’s way, we were only being treated with suspicion at best. So far nothing had happened of note and people kept their distance from Dodo.

“Hey Shanty, how about a game of I Spy?” Of the things I knew about Shanty, one was that she didn’t have many friends her age to play with growing up.

When it came to street rats and urchins, they generally looked after themselves and were smart. With us Shanty didn’t have to worry so much about needing too much help.

“Can Dodo be playing?” When Shanty brought him up, Dodo tilted his head to look at us curiously.

“Sure.” We couldn’t get into too much trouble sitting here, but I didn’t want to be bored waiting for Pom and Ocellus. Somebody had to watch Dodo to make sure he wouldn’t draw any trouble. “You’ll have to figure out his answers though.”

About ten minutes later Pom and Ocellus came out with two guys, one was large and dressed in red armor and the other was wearing blue armor. In particular they were a rat and mouse respectively, with the rat being the taller of the two and the one wearing red armor.

The mouse was grumbling about something as they came over to us following Pom and Ocellus. They were both armed with swords and shields, seemed friendly enough to me.

“We need the package we came to deliver and the message.” Pom waved up to us on Dodo’s back.

“I got it!” Shanty stated and ducked down and reached under the seat to pull out our parcel and a message that came with it. She quickly passed it off to the two who were obviously Biggs and Wedge.

After looking over the message and talking with one another, they both turned to Ocellus and started hashing things out. I wonder what the holdup was or what our next job would be.

Ocellus didn’t seem worried about the two, but she sure was talking a lot with them. A moment later she looked slightly disturbed about something.

“Uh… due to needs to move small messages or supplies around quickly, we’re apparently going to be forming a courier squad with several other individuals.” Why did Ocellus just pause for a second there? “Since we successfully did some courier work in the mountains they're giving us a wagon, a moderate amount of supplies and will be telling us where they will need us soon, but first we have to meet the guys who will be going along with us as we do our courier work. They don’t intend insult, but it’s for our protection and making good use of their resources compared to Gedol throwing their resources around seemingly at random. We’ll be here for a day at least.”

“So who will we be taking with us and where will we find the wagon?” As Pom asked this she looked around. Ocellus turned to the two and started talking to them again, after a moment she nodded.

“The wagon will take a bit of work. They are getting a fixer upper for us to use, as for the support for our courier efforts… two of them are currently in the guild training yard and a third is off in town seeing to the wagon. They don’t have much manpower, but Biggs just told me they are lending us three people they don’t entirely trust too much.” After stating that worrying fact, Ocellus talked to them a bit more and I could feel the curiosity radiating off of the cuddle bug. “Er… we’ll have to err on the side of caution here. One of the members is an ex veteran of Yellow Dog, one is a frog who fancies himself an aristocrat and another is… a pig knight from Devotindos who avoided the whole magical mind control thing five years ago and even fought against them for Zebulos.”

“Does this send up red flag for anyone else or is it just me?” Pom stated dryly as if we didn’t already know the answer already. “This is beginning to sound like an intentional screw up squad.”

Yeah, I can see that, it’d be like giving the Cutie Mark Crusaders weapons with incredible destructive power and telling them all to run around doing whatever they feel like behind enemy lines. Only we were the one that would be acting as babysitters for suspected spies and this was likely going to be mostly official Zebulos Kingdom business.

“An intentional screw up squad, what be that?” Shanty asked curiously.

“It’s a squad that is not expected to succeed at anything and is made on the premise of being entirely suspicious or eye catching to the enemy. We’re going to be a major distraction that Gedol just can’t simply ignore and will have exceedingly large targets painted on us. If our squad consistently succeeds at some hidden objectives, then things will get all the more dangerous for us. You hear a lot of vague things about them whenever ponies in Equestria go to war. In fact ponies are really known as the masters of creating ridiculously successful intentional screw up squads.” Surprisingly it was Pom that answered and not Ocellus who would have likely read something about that in history books. “I’m going to guess that most of our missions as part of the war effort will be mostly pretending to do incredibly important things as an ‘ISUS’ group or delivering coded message we won’t be able to decipher, maybe we’ll even intentionally lose said messages. We were going to be drawing attention wherever we go anyway, now it’s a sure thing.”

“I can concur with what Pom said, chances are that we’re going to be in a lot of odd situations and this might be the direct end result of Pom jinxing us.” Ocellus looked exasperated about this, she sighed and rubbed her right hoof over her forehead. “It’ll be for a good cause at least, we’ll be made to look more important than we actually are. In fact it’s these kind of odd squad combinations that caused any incursions into Equestria to fail quite horribly due to how many chaotic problems that groups like these can cause, but I think Smolder should remember the most notable name of Flash Magnus of the Legionnaires. I think you remember a certain popular story amongst pegasus ponies that Magnus told to us in class with Rainbow Dash exaggerating his bravery every few seconds.”

“Wait… seriously? Flash Magnus’s squad was a…” That actually made a lot of sense to me come to think of it. “Huh, now I know why Flash Magnus visited the Dragon Lands and was seen recounting history with Torch after he retired from being the Dragon Lord. Didn’t he and Torch meet a thousand years prior?”

“Exactly.” Ocellus nodded, then spoke something to Biggs and Wedge, they nodded and went into the guild. “I told them to get the two so we can go see this wagon we’re supposed to be running around as couriers. We’re spending a day here and we’re going to be given a budget to buy anything that we might need.”

“I am so sorry about all this girls.” Pom whined loudly while putting her hooves on her head. I can understand why she was upset, being in an ‘ISUS’ sounded quite stupidly dangerous. “I really shouldn’t have opened my mouth!”

“It be okay, at least we be able to ask for a lot if we be surviving the war.” At least Shanty had the right attitude to be positive and was quickly backed up by Dodo warbling cheerfully. We’d be owed big time when we succeeded at staying alive.

Hearing Biggs voice we turned to the two who would be a part of our supposed courier squad. Ocellus started talking with Wedge about something and he passed her a scroll, she looked it over and nodded.

“We’re going to be called The White Knight Couriers.” Ocellus stated and then started talking to the two who came to join us. “These are Colleen and Jean, the third guy is currently checking out the wagon and seeing to the repairs.”

Jean seemed to be saying something proudly while sweeping a rapier around artfully, he was a rotund looking frog with armor that made him look like a tin can.

Colleen was a dog with long brown hair, wearing armor and had no visible weapon. Pom was having an adverse effect on her already, given Colleen was already staring at her.

Author's Note

I'll notify people when we get into the canon plot stuff that happens in the game, provided Pom's group is actually present for the situation. Most of this will be improvised with elements the games are known for and one of the stage bosses from RKA: 2 will be quite antagonistic to Pom's group.

One of the things Rocket Knight Adventures is quite known for is deadly giant machines, usually with animal motifs and sometimes without.

Since the series had what amounts to a Death Star in the first game, without the whole immediate planet destruction ability, I can go a bit crazy with the weird stuff that can feasibly exist in this world.

44. White Knights and Shooting Shrimp.

-Cladinhold, outside the guild, Ocellus-

Given that I was the interpreter for this group, I was going to have to learn more about both Colleen and Jean. I only had my suspicions that they were spies from other militaries, but it wasn’t a certain thing, they could just be genuinely nice people.

Of course the way our group was formed leaves much to be desired, ex-soldier of a different faction, frog with aristocratic leanings and we still haven’t met the pig yet.

Colleen shouldn’t be too much of a problem, given she was already becoming somewhat enamored with Pom’s very presence as we made our way down the street. Pom’s supernatural friendship effect with canines was unreal to watch in real time, I had ignored it previously with Fox from The Valley.

She looked like a species of Rough Collie, she had brown and white fur, long brown hair, blue eyes and short floppy ears on top of her head. She was slightly above five feet in height which was taller than most beings in the general surroundings and I was eyeballing my estimates here, which wasn’t hard to do with compound eyes really.

She was armored from neck down in a silver metal covering everything except her elbows, knees, the sides of her hips and tail. Her knees, elbows and the sides of her hips were covered by some kind of thick protective underclothing. Her armor was possibly magically enchanted. She looked to be standoffish with her arms crossed and her lack of weapon had me curious, she was an ex-soldier so I could see that she had muscles.

What I wanted to know is, with the information of the world that I currently have at my disposal, what was the reason she left the Yellow Dog army and under what circumstances?

I turned to look at Jean as he continued to wax poetic in a barely understandable manner, at least his emotions were quite plain to see. He wore them on his sleeves with how excited he was to be with us. I had worries that the excitement might be hiding something more sinister, but I couldn’t feel anything like that from him as he was truly feeling jolly.

For a frog that was four feet and some change in height, a little bit larger than the general surrounding populace, Jean was fairly strange for a bipedal frog. He were blue and white boots, with matching shorts and armor that covered his upper torso with bits of shirt coming out from under it. From what I could see, he was ridiculously skill with the rapier he was holding as he could jab it at speeds I could barely keep up with.

Jean was particularly bulky looking, but overall he didn’t come off as threatening aside from swinging his rapier around in incredible intricate arcs that Shanty was studying. He seemed to hold himself to some form of high standard and was friendly.

Pom told me to tell them we were heading to check on the wagon, Colleen immediately took up a protective position next to her when I did. I could see the dog wagging her tail from just being near my friend.

We reached the blacksmith to see a pig that was a little below four feet in height, small yellow shirt, green pants, brown boots and gloves, tiny shoulder pads with spikes on them and his belly was grossly sticking out from underneath his shirt. He was leaning against his broadsword which was fairly big for him as the tip of the handle to the tip of the blade made it reach up to his cheek.

The pig was currently talking to the blacksmith, a two foot tall grey squirrel wearing a red headband, about the wagon wheel that was currently being worked on.

The nearby wagon was… more than a fixer upper and I’m quite sure that were definitely being intentionally stuck together in what is known as an ISUS with the dangerous implications that something like that brings. It was a little concerning that Smolder had an idea as to what an ISUS was, if not the full scope of what it meant psychologically. Hopefully strong friendships will be formed from this.

“Excuse me, but you wouldn’t happen to be the other member of our courier unit would you?” The pig turned to me and blinked as he was confused by my normal appearance, eventually he collected himself and raised his sword to the sky with a broad grin.

“Yeah, I’m Bruno, I was once a happy soldier of Devotindos who stopped an invading wolf occupation force by myself about a few years back… it was around the time Yellow Dog started a ruckus with Eginasem if you know anything about that debacle. It wasn’t long after that those Gedol Gits had to push us pigs out of our capital city.” Bruno seemed proud of his accomplishment against the wolves, Colleen regarded him coolly and scoffed. “Oh sure you may scoff, we pigs know the technology we were using was exceedingly dangerous and tried to eat our souls. Most of us were quite lucky to be saved, especially from being the ones to doom the planet. I actually helped in the fight against Emperor Devligus and my own people. Didn’t even know he was a machine from the beginning though, that he was an intelligent evil core that wanted to wipe out all life on the planet was horrifying news to just about anyone with half a brain. You must also realize that Generalissimo Lioness actually lost his soul to technology and tried to do the same thing as Devligus. So you don’t have much of a leg to stand on mutt, especially if you were going to deride the people of Devotindos for letting an intelligent evil core become our leader.”

Colleen just glared at Bruno who just confirmed some information on the history of this world for me to talk with Pom about later. Still the new information about machines being able to eat souls had me cringing and nervous and I was getting the hang of names. It was also surprising that Bruno was fairly open with information.

“Everyone knows that nothing worth having isn’t gained without a little bit of risk. It’s just unfortunate the smarter the machine in this world, the more likely it will try to replace parts of us flesh and blood beings with machinery up until nothing is left.” Bruno seemed quite brusque and boisterous guy, he was currently eyeing Dodo with suspicion. I can already tell he and Colleen were going to be at each other’s throats given the animosity of the emotions flying between them. Bruno soon turned to me. “Just know that I personally prefer to deal with my problems with raw muscle and a little bit of baked or fried perfection that are doughnuts! I don’t mind machines, but I’m quite leery of ones that can think and communicate in a language that I understand for fairly obvious reasons. So… what’s our group called?”

“We’re going to be called the White Knight Couriers.” I answered while wondering why they named our group that.

“Yes, we will be the greatest of heroes, our valorous deeds will be spoken of throughout history and I Jean will be here for it!” Jean proclaimed while holding his rapier in a vertical defensive position in front of himself. The rapier was actually quite small for his webbed digits now that I looked at it.

“Fat chance of that, we’re just the delivery guys to the real heroes who are going to be on the front lines facing evil cores and deadly machines.” Bruno grumbled out as he leaned against the sword that was almost as long as he was tall. “At least there’s a high chance of action.”

“While I hate to say this, and understand that I won’t say this a lot, but I actually agree with the pig.” Colleen was being rather frigid with how cold her emotions felt. “We aren’t going to be doing anything even remotely heroic, what we are doing is just a job that will likely keep us fed and nothing more.”

“Non Non, we can still be great heroes, delivering supplies or information could be key to victory and we would be bringing that victory on a quite a silver platter! Heroes come in all forms my friends.” Jean received a flat look from Bruno and Colleen. “It will be a glorious and wonderful as a warm bug stew and a nice and fruity soufflé.”

“You’re definitely fruity at the very least.” Colleen stated out loud in a derogatory tone and Bruno snorted. “At least I’m alright with someone in this circus that’s supposed to be a courier group.”

I noted that Colleen had been looking towards Pom when she spoke.

If there was anyone here I trusted… it would have to be Jean because of his positive attitude and his earnestness. While Colleen wouldn’t do anything to harm Pom because of her weird canine factor, that didn’t mean the rest of us were safe and Colleen was rather cold emotionally. I didn’t trust Bruno much because I just met him, but I’m sure I could work up something approaching a rapport with him too and he was fairly blunt about things.

I was going to have to translate everything these three say for the foreseeable future.

-An hour later, local Cladinhold tavern, Pom-

We were intentionally put together for a reason to either fail, succeed or do otherwise in some kind of spectacular manner, sometimes all at the same time depending on the situation. Ocellus relayed to us the information about our companions Bruno, Jean and Colleen.

Bruno was the least armored, but was quite physically strong for his stature compared to the other two. Jean was fairly agile for his bulky appearance and was skilled with his weapon. Colleen, we didn’t know what her deal was, but it was readily apparent that my effects on canines was working its unusual magic on her.

Of the three, pigs and dogs like Bruno and Colleen existed on Equus, Jean was the odd one out of the group as there weren’t large bipedal frogs walking around back home. I’ve seen weirder things caused by unicorn magic, tea cup poodles, an orange with frog legs and those exceedingly annoying flying spaghetti monsters that get everywhere.

One would think Jean would be the one wielding the broadsword and Bruno the rapier, but no, they each had a weapon that seemed fairly odd for them personally. Which brought up a particular thought.

“Ocellus, can you ask Colleen something for me?” After I got her attention, Ocellus nodded to me to go ahead. “I want you to ask if she’ll be okay in a fight.”

Ocellus turned to speak to Colleen and they both started conversing, her ears perked up when Ocellus likely mentioning my worries about her. She responded in rather lengthy manner as I sat here eating something that was this worlds approximation of peanuts which came in these odd clusters like green beans and took a few sips of banana juice.

“She says she understands your worries, but she wants to assure you personally that she is ready for just about anything.” As soon as Ocellus finished saying that she started to clutch at her head. “Pom… an evil core is nearby and I th…”

With a crash the ceiling broke apart in several places as multiple round objects pierced the taverns roof, people started running out of the tavern and away from the metallic spherical shapes that just embedded themselves into the floor of the tavern. Some others like my group actually prepared to fight off whatever these things were.

“I think that the town is about to come under attack.” Ocellus finished saying dully.

They looked like curled up armadillos or at the very least a large pill bugs and there were about fifteen of them around the insides of the tavern. Several of the patrons were grabbing wooden chairs, Jean had his rapier at the ready and Bruno lifted his sword up in both his hands while putting his back to the nearest wall. Colleen moved in front of me protectively and flexed the digits of her gauntlets while crouching slightly.

One of the spheres uncurled and revealed what it was.

“A shrimp? We’re nowhere near an ocean though!” It was mechanical shrimp half the size of an average pony. The head was round and had a single glowing red eye that rotated left and right along its head. It sported two backwards facing antenna that shifted about like small tentacles, it had a small row of spikes for a mouth that were almost flush with the floor, the tail end had two short rectangular blades sticking upwards and barely half a knife’s length in size. The tail blades look like they could close together like scissors.

As for the limbs it had six limbs. Four were small pointy legs like that of a spider. Its left arm looked like a small spear and looked like it was used for stabbing. The last limb, and the decidedly most notable feature, was the rather large right side pincer that was currently opening up.

Inside the large pincer with arcs of energy flowing between the two inner halves of the claw and it pointed the claw towards the nearest being. That would be Jean who was narrowing his eyes on the metal shrimp’s actions.

The claw snapped shut with incredible force and sent a spherical bolt of raw energy ripping towards Jean, thankfully he was already in the process of leaping out of the way and narrowly escaped getting hit directly.

We all watched as the energy hit the nearby wall and scorched a small hole in it that we could visibly see through.

After that first shot the fourteen other metal shrimp in the room began to uncurl, I didn’t need to guess all too hard to know that an evil core machine was responsible for them.

“Ocellus... are you okay?” I asked slowly as multiple shrimp started to open their claws.

“I don’t think it’s in the town, not that it makes what it sent any less of a threat.” Stated Ocellus with worry.

I sharply inhaled and focused on everything as my eyes quickly swept the room as everything start to move at half speed, I noted where they were all aiming and what I could do. There were actually eighteen of them scattered around the tavern and exactly half of them were aiming in the direction of… Ocellus?

Exhaling sharply, I burst into motion to grab Ocellus and with my front two hooves and kicked with my rear hooves as hard as I could. Several things happened at once and I’m glad I chose to go with Dancing Flame instead of Fleet Cunning Doe, as I dove behind the table with a distracted Ocellus and out of the sight of at least eight of the shrimps firing on our position.

That was half the machines that fell into the tavern, we had been at a table close to the entrance and quite a few of them had been aiming directly in our direction intentionally. The other nine had chosen random targets that could have been close enough to help us.

“Ocellus… I think… I think that the evil core knows you can detect it…” I said through a few heavy breaths and propped a hoof up on the knocked over table to look over it.

I ignored the fact that Ocellus had a look of absolute horror on her face after having successfully made the dive out of the path of the nine shots directed at my changeling friend, but I don’t know how many times I would be able to do that. I started inhaling again.

The others in the room hadn’t been sitting still, not by a long shot. The taverns owner, a red squirrel, took up a bottle and quickly smashed it against one of the machines that had climbed onto the counter. This caused it to collapse into a sparking mess of lightning.

Shanty launched herself across the room, having jumped for a nearby wall as soon as the attack started and she kicked off to Goat Fly towards the wall opposite of the entrance. She kicked off that wall and flipped backwards to stomp down on the spine of one of the metal shrimp with all four hooves and bounced off after taking it out.

Jean charged towards the nearest shrimp with a slow lumbering and he was shouting something in a jolly tone as he rapidly jabbed at the shrimp machine nearest the middle of the tavern. He had created at least eighteen holes in the thing, the tip of his rapier was notably glowing with heat and something else, probably magic. That he could focus his magic down to as fine a point as the tip of his rapier made him incredibly dangerous to face in combat, provided he was quick enough to get up close and personal.

Bruno had already slashed his way through two shrimp machine with reckless abandon, with two quick swings. He efficiently and brutally landed powerful clean cuts through the metal plated shrimps. He was already charging a third with reckless abandon.

Dodo poked his head into the tavern and fired a blast of energy at one of the shrimp in the far corner of the tavern.

Smolder had blasted one with her fire destroying it, grappled another with her ribbon by the base of its tail and slammed it into a third destroying all three of those dangerous mechanical shrimp.

Colleen was the one with the oddest move of all of us, she leapt over the shot that a shrimp fired at her and then grappled it by wrapping her left arm around its torso and lifting it off the ground. The shrimp machines have to weigh at least fifty or more pounds.

The shrimp, once it was in Colleen grip, stabbed her forearm with the left spear arm and its sharpened tip just blunted itself quite badly against her armor.

Colleen quickly grappled its right claw arm and pulled, the metal was strained for a second before ripping apart in a shower of metal, sparks, wires and arcs of energy as it was torn off the struggling machine.

A glow emanated from Colleens right hand as she pointed the claw at another shrimp, the claw opened and then snapped shut sending a bolt that blew the head off of the shrimp she was aiming at. How did she make the weapon fire when it was no longer connected to the rest of the machine?

All of this only happened within thirty seconds and already eleven, make that twelve shrimp as Bruno cleaved through another one. Fourteen, Jean managed a series of rapid fire jabs that took two of the machines down before they could fire again. Sixteen Shanty and Colleen just took out another two with a slash of a hoof and another shot from the stolen claw arm.

Where were the last… I threw Ocellus off to the side and exhaled, I shot forward and slammed my left hoof home in the belly of a metal shrimp that had snuck up on us from the right. I knocked the machine on its back as its claw snapped shut firing a shot up into the ceiling.

I brought both my hooves together above my head and slammed them down on the center of its mass, breaking it in half with raw force. The light in its singular eye died out and it stopped moving.

There was one left. I turned to see Ocellus already blowing it apart with a magic blast from her horn, she was shivering and breathing with obvious fright. I slowly made my way up to her and gently hugged her close to me, she whimpered and clutched at me.

“It’s nearby, but I don’t think it’s in town Pom.” She was crying as she pressed her face into my chest, I patted her on the back gently. “My head is getting painful.”

“Can you turn off your ability to sense emotions?” I really hadn’t bothered to ask this before.

“It’d be like asking me to cut off my own leg, with a rusty sharpened spoon.” Ocellus mumbled as she tried to press herself deeper into my wool as I continued to comfort her. “I… I-I don’t think I c-c-can do it.”

“Breathe Ocellus, come on and breathe in and out slowly. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Calm down, your safe and I’ve got you.” I was snuggling her to help her calm down, Smolder made her way over to us as Dodo warbled something near the entrance earning Shanty’s attention. There were quite a number of panicked people running around outside and the sounds of more energy bolts being shot throughout the town of Cladinhold. “You really don’t need the ability to sense emotions at the moment. If you honestly can’t bear to shut off that ability, then can you at the very least give us an idea of where that feeling is coming from?”

“It’s… that way?” Ocellus seemed confused, as did I when she pointed in a direction. If anything we’d be expecting an attack from the east or northeast. “Isn’t that to the south though?”

“Doesn’t matter, the town is under attack and we need to protect the people from the machines, but more importantly protect you from them.” If they were going to target Ocellus, then we needed to move her out of here. A shrimp crawled in through the doorway to the tavern, only to be crushed by one of Dodo’s legs, Shanty was currently straddling his neck as he poked his head into the tavern.

“It be a mess out there and those one eyed machines are everywhere.” Shanty said with a large frown marring her face. “There being a lot of trouble coming this way.”

“We need to protect Ocellus, there’s a nearby evil core machine and it can somehow sense Ocellus.” When I said that Smolder’s eyes sharpened, she flicked her ribbon and growled.

“We can’t take Ocellus anywhere near that thing then!” Then Smolder calmed down as she understood the logic of what was going on. “Except… we can’t stay here as they are sending machines after her, which is putting everyone in town in danger. Okay, where is it!”

“To the south.” Ocellus muttered, I carried her over to the doorway and poked my head out to see several spheres raining down towards the town. Dodo pulled back and blasted two of them out of the air and warbled angrily. I put Ocellus down just inside the doorway “It’s not close, but that’s likely the direction these metal shrimp are coming from.”

In the distance I can see Biggs and Wedge fighting back to back against several shrimp and their shields were taking a beating as they slashed apart several machines.

“Ocellus, relay to the others I’m heading out to get an eye on the problem.” Hopefully we could actually deal with this one, I seriously doubt we were going to be lucky enough to see that blue armored hero again so soon to destroy whatever machine was behind the metal shrimp running rampant in Cladinhold.

When Ocellus started relaying my words to our three new acquaintances, I turned to Smolder and Shanty.

“Keep Ocellus with Dodo and be safe.” I peeked out the door and pulled back as a splash of energy destroyed a small portion of the doorway.

Centering my nerves with a breath, I charged out the doorway narrowly avoiding getting shot in the head. Their shots have a cooldown, which was actually good to know as I smashed the shrimp.

Author's Note

Inspiration of Colleen, taken from Road Rovers.

Inspiration of Jean, taken from Breath of Fire 2.

Inspiration of Bruno, look up Power Piggs, a somewhat bad game for the SNES.

Inspiration for the metal shrimp, take the Pokémon Clauncher and make it have the mono-eye of a Zaku from Gundam and increase it's size by about a half. You get a Large Mechanical Pistol Shrimp.

-World Lore-

The machines of the Rocket Knight Adventures series of games ranged from "What lunatic designed this thing?" to "Slightly bizarre aesthetic choices with some logic thrown in."

One such boss fight is a giant mechanical fish in a volcano, said machine didn't actually protect it's pilot from heat and wasn't air conditioned. This is why the pilot pops out of the fish machine periodically enough that you might start feeling slightly sorry for the guy who got stuck with wielding it against Sparkster. What makes this worse for the pilot is that one of the fish machines main sources of attack was gulping up lava and spitting it back out.

The pilot of the machine did have magical armor, but it didn't protect from the heat nearly as much as it protected the pilot from simply being injured.

Sparkster at least had an excuse for surviving being in the volcano, his magic armor was enchanted to protect him from the heat, among many other things. What Sparktser's armor can't actually handle is actually touching the lava as that is beyond it's enchantments.

The time period of the world is beyond the first Rocket Knight game on the Sega Genesis so this really doesn't spoil anything. Sparkster's armor is one of the reasons why he still has his tail despite blasting about constantly on a rocket pack.

The animal theming of the machines wasn't absolute, or even absolutely necessary, but it was fairly common and fun thing seen throughout all the games.

45. Ninja Contact.

-Cladinhold, Tavern Street, Ocellus-

“Where is she going?!” Colleen just watched charge out, nearly got shot and then attacked the shrimp with a double hoof swing.

“She’s going to scout out the nearby evil core machine.” I have a migraine and a headache at the same time.

“What?!” Colleen looked positively worried about this, I gave her a flat stare. “Isn’t she injured?”

“She’s not going to fight it, not alone at any rate after what happened with the last one.” What I just said filtered into Colleens brain as she fired a bolt from the stolen shrimp claw down the street, the energy struck a shrimp on a roof down the street and it fell backwards missing its head. She was capable even if her weapon was an on-site procurement as my cousin Mongoose was fond of saying. “At least these things seem easy to destroy and don’t worry about Pom, she can take care of herself.”

“Her name is Pom?” Colleen’s tail started wagging and she seemed unnaturally happy to even just learn her name and speak it.

“Let us not be distracted with that mademoiselle. If it is as Ozzy says, then she shall be fine on her own for the moment and I am willing to trust her judgement as she knows what her friends are capable of.” Jean flicked his rapier forward in a series of jabs the tore through a few of the shrimps that were starting to cluster together and fire continuous bolts of raw energy through the air while covering for one another. Dodo stomped forward to help Jean as I sat in his back. “We need to make haste and see to the protection of the fair townspeople!”

“Way ahead of you!” Bruno snorted with two shrimp impaled on his broadsword, he idly flicked them off it and then started to charge for a nearby alleyway. “I’m going to be where the most action is!”

“Weren’t we supposed to work together as comrades?” Jean looked confused and I sighed audibly, he turned to look at me.

“Our group isn’t exactly formalized yet and teamwork requires getting to know who you’re working with, we don’t exactly have time for that.” At this I slowly sat up while clutching at my head with a hoof and looked around for Shanty. “Also don’t call me Ozzy, it’s kind of a special thing to me.”

“I apologize for taking that what is special for you two milady, how about I make it up to you by sticking by your side as the greatest of friends!” As Jean spoke he raised his rapier to the sky, I noted that Colleen had taken off. She was likely going to try and keep Pom safe. Bruno was off doing his own thing and we were going thankful that at least one of them was a team player. “Since you are not looking to well.”

“Dodo, I be needing a lift!” Shanty came running forward and she leapt, Dodo aimed his beak where her hooves would be and heaved her up onto the roof by lifting neck and flicking head quickly. “I be keeping to the rooftops to keep them from firing at people from above!”

Shanty landed and started to run along the top of the nearby building while slashing her hooves at the several shrimp that landed there a few seconds second ago.

It took Shanty multiple hits and some quick maneuvering to avoid their weapons, but she was able to deal with them readily enough on her own once her hooves bashed and slashed through the metal armoring of the menacing metallic shrimp. Her hooves weren’t quite powerful enough to cut through metal, but she could take them out with enough raw force. Last I saw of her, she disappeared to the far side of the roof.

“You’re not looking too healthy. I’m sticking with you and frog guy Ocellus.” Smolder hovered over as I rested in Dodo’s seat. “Dodo, try follow and keep Shanty in sight, help out where you can… if you have enough of a mind to. Don’t go too fast and keep us all safe, okay?”

Dodo warbled in a mechanical tone, it sounded somewhat brave if confused. It was hard to tell when it was just machine noise, it did make my head feel a bit better though. It was then that Smolder smacked herself in the face.

“Right, remembered that I’m talking to what amounts to an animal, Ocellus tell that Jean guy to stick with us and we’ll form a mobile rescue and support group.” Which was what we were good at Smolder, also that was already his intention, but I might as well paraphrase.

“My friend Smolder agrees with the fact that a few of us should stick together, you’re with us Jean.” He nodded and I turned to Dodo. “Dodo go forward and turn left onto the next street. Jean, we’re going to try and head slightly towards the evil core machine while looking for people to help.”

It might not be the smartest thing for me to do to go towards the thing that was causing my head to feel like it was on fire, but I didn’t want to stay out of the action… I wanted to help.

Dodo started walking forward and blasted a few shrimp that showed up, a few buildings were now on fire and the people who could fight were staying behind to do just that and so far we haven’t seen any deaths. Dodo turned to the right and we looked down the street to see fighting going on in pockets, swords, spears and other weapons were use and were actually working against the shrimp that were crawling about all over the place.

“Tell me, what troubles you friend?” Jean asked worried as he saw me wince and clutch at my head.

“I can actually feel the magic of the evil core, it’s as unpleasant as you can imagine.” He nodded solemnly and strode forward ahead of Dodo who was happily blasting away at shrimp that were crawling into the street.

Smolder wasn’t idle either and she hovered around us blasting fireballs carefully, she didn’t want to set the whole town of Cladinhold ablaze. She wasn’t using the ribbon for this unless she could get close enough to use it without it getting damaged permanently.

Smolder was definitely getting a lot of mileage out of that gift and she loved it, I wondered if I could get her something just as cherished one day...

-South edge of Caldinhold, Pom-

I was in an alleyway and there were scorch marks on the wall nearby, I had avoided attention getting here and passed by several groups of shrimp. I placed my hooves against the stone walls and careful walked up to the roof and looked around to the south for the sign of the largest machine present.

Seeing what we were finally dealing with, which didn’t take long as it was hard to miss, I thought it was… somewhat adorable actually.

It was big, red bulbous shape with two wall eyes, a conical mouth at the base of the body and eight cylindrical segmented tube tentacles ending in large holes that were firing the shrimp into town seemingly at random.

We were dealing with a giant walled eyed octopus machine, said eyes held the evil red glow in their pupils so I already knew where the weakness of this particular machine was. If it weren’t so threatening, I would think it looked like a theme park attraction. It didn’t look like it could move very fast as far as mobility is concerned, but its tentacles would be dangerous in a close up range and then there was the matter of the odd lizard controlling it.

The lizard looked kind of like what I expected a goblin would be from Ogres and Oubliettes, he was generally four feet tall. He had, dark blue almost black armor, red belt with the skull symbol of the gedol empire, white gloves and purple boots, he also had tied up orange hair that spike upwards.

I know that this guy was behind all the shrimp based destruction going on in town, because he was standing on top of the large octopus robot and he was even directing its tentacles to fire more mechanical shrimp into town through those tube shaped tentacles.

Deducing that machine likely produced the metal shrimp, given there was more shrimp in town than even that large metal body could feasibly hold, then it was quite dangerous because it was a relatively mobile factory. I think ‘relatively mobile’ because it obviously dragged itself into position outside of town, I wonder how it even got there without anyone noticing it given the fairly large drag markings leading up to where it was currently settled.

I was close enough for the machine to fire the shrimp like cannonballs directly at me from what I was seeing and I didn’t want to get any closer to it so it could start targeting me specifically with those tentacles.

Right, time to go gather everyone for a rough… a puff of smoke appeared in front of me and I narrowly avoided the blazing skulls of energy that fired from the concentrating lizard by rolling off the roof to the streets below. How did he get over here so fast?!

The lizard somehow became bulkier with muscles in a matter of second and leapt down after me bringing his fists up. I rolled backwards and the ground shook and quaked when his fists came down cracking the streets, road and earth.

I stumbled and managed to grip the ground with my wool to stay standing and stable.

The lizard grinned at me and split into a hundred miniature copies of himself that all came running at me and clambering all over me biting and scratching. Some were going for the bandaged wounds in my side.

I vehemently defended my bandages to prevent them from ripping open the stitches in my side with quick swipes of my hooves and a periodic flexing of my wool that sent them flying off of me.

I had to release my grip on the ground and started bucking wildly, I was launching as many of the tiny copies of that lizard away and off of myself as I could until I saw something among the swarm. One of the copies was staying back and sparkling… I jumped forward and much to the tiny copies shock I nailed him in the face with a quick right thrust that sent the tiny lizard clone slamming into the wall.

This made a number of the smaller clones pop and the lizard clone I hit to increase in size, only the lizard I had smacked turned into being barely a foot tall version of himself. This was odd compared to his natural four feet in height and his supernatural muscle form which gave him quite a bit more intimidating mass. He charged me and slashed a knife at my throat, I easily dodged that attack and delivered a swift left hoof to his cheek knocking him back.

He growled and started calling something out, several of the smaller clones that had yet returned to him gathered on his body and he returned to normal size. This guy’s magic was ridiculous, was he trying to… of course he was trying to confuse me!

He leapt back and threw several knives around me, I didn’t move and they all missed and the one that was directed at me was easily deflected into a nearby wall with the back of my right hoof.

I tilted my head at him curiously, what had he been expecting? I would have been injured if I had actually moved.

The lizard frowned at me slightly and grumbled something. Likely something about me being a smarter opponent than he was used to, he put his hands together in an odd way again and started concentrating.

I narrowed my eyes at him and the energy building up around his body, he fired another fiery skull at me that was three times faster than it previously was.

I hopped to the right and watched as the energy in that attack dissolve a small portion of my wool on my left side before my body took on a golden glow and deflected the energy away from me. I was about to charge forward and capitalize on the lizards surprise only for him to be blasted by an energy bolt to the chest that opened a hole in his armor.

He gasped and then disappeared in a puff of smoke to reappear near the octopus, I turned to look at who helped me and saw Colleen already arming the stolen shrimp claw for another shot while looking around for another closer target than the distant octopus machine.

The lizard I just fought could fire some deadly magic that could damage my wool before it could deflect it. That was why I wasn’t relying on my wool to do that odd magic deflection thing for me, there were chances that it wouldn’t be able to do so in time and the strange fiery skull shaped attacks the lizard had fired were something it wouldn’t have deflected in time unless I was moving backwards.

The entire time the lizard had me occupied, the octopus machine had been randomly firing shrimp into the town. Now the lizard was standing on it and directing all the tentacles to focus in our direction. This wasn’t good thing for us, but it was at least a good thing for the rest of the town.

Colleen held her left hand out in front of me protectively as she took up a position in front of me holding the ripped off shrimp machine’s arm ready for a fight. I grabbed her tail with my right hoof and gave it a sharp tug, she froze up and turned to look at me questioningly.

I gestured for her to follow me and turned tail to start running down the street and quickly turned the corner. I don’t know how strong Colleen’s armor was, but she was uninjured thus far and I would like to keep it that way by avoiding being directly shot at by the mechanical octopus.

It was a good thing I managed to convince Colleen to fall back, because a second later several curled up metal shrimp bounced and rolled through the area we recently occupied at deadly velocities and this didn’t actually damage the shrimps.

The metal shrimp uncurled from wherever they eventually stopped after plowing through the wood and brick of nearby buildings, then proceeded to immediately chase after us while firing as quickly as they could.

Colleen returned fire as we fled the area, nobody else was around this part of town having quickly abandoned it near the start of the attack. We were leaving behind a horde of shrimp crawling and rolling behind us while firing whenever they could see us as we quickly weaved through the alleyways.

We needed to regroup and get help in dealing with the problem.

-Shanty-

I watched as a family fled their burning home as Dodo used his right leg to stop the entrance from collapsing on them, when he lowered his leg and pulled back the entrance finally collapsed. Jean organized the family and sent them towards safety, I sighed and looked around the rooftops for something to destroy.

Ocellus looks to be quivering in her position in Dodo’s seat and was clutching at her head. Smolder was watching our surroundings like I was for any trouble, especially from the south where Pom went.

She should be back soon with enough with information about what we were dealing with and she would be okay. I be knowing she’s not invincible and think she be needing to take care of herself better, but she is being stronger than the Smolder, Ocellus and me even when she was running around with her injuries.

For some reason there was a lack of falling shrimp and or things to break with my hooves. This be quite worrying to me as the attack wouldn’t just stop all of the sudden for no reason. Jean also be looking wary with his hand on the hilt of his sword.

The sounds of fighting were still going on to the north and east, as far as I could tell what was north and east anyway. We not be having a compass here, but it not be hard to discover which way was which.

I continued to trot along the rooftops looking for any more targets when I saw Pom, being followed by Colleen, come from around the corner running. What followed was a surge of shrimp and Colleen firing shots as quickly as she could make the shrimp arm do so.

“I know what we’re dealing with and we’re going to need at least Dodo’s firepower for it!” Pom shouted as she ducked and leapt over bolts coming at her from behind. Dodo and Smolder were already helping with fireballs and blasts of energy at the incoming shrimp swarm.

“What are we dealing with Pom?” Ocellus asked in a groaning tone of voice as she sat up, she was clearly uncomfortable with that machine being close to the town.

“Well…” Pom started to say before I yelped and ducked under a blast of energy sent my way. “We need to deal with these shrimp first and start holding our position to push back, that one almost hit Shanty!”

I glanced down into the street and moved along the roof until I was at a gallop and then I leapt. I stomped down on the metal armor of the shrimp and leapt forward with a flip and brought my left hoof down on the next one damaging it slightly in a crescent edged glow it generated.

I ignored the shrimp exploding behind me and slashed the shrimp in front of me with three rapidly swings from each hoof and then I turned about and bucked the sparking mass of damaged metal into a group of them. When the shrimp exploded, it took out several surround machines with it.

Jean was rapidly working his way through the shrimp with an ever increasing series of jabs that seemed to be creating pressure waves with each thrust. Smolder was melting them with her breath.

Dodo was either stomping them, slashing them in half with his beak or he blasted them with his energy blasts.

Colleen to the shrimp smashing with kicks and or shots from the stolen bit of machinery.

Pom was still going strong as she fired several small bark blasts that tore through the machinery with ease, however she needed to land a double hoof slam to do any decent damage in melee.

I be striking to knock the shrimp into others, get them to shoot one another and or hit them hard enough that they were destroyed.

By the time we be done, there be a pile of at least thirty or more of the metal shrimp lying around.

“Ugh, my head, so what are we dealing with Pom?” Ocellus hadn’t been able to contribute much, it being too hard for her to concentrate to use her horn.

“A giant red octopus machine, which is constantly generating these things.” It look like Pom be a bit exhausted as she pointed at one of the shrimp. “We need to take it out, but I really don’t want to get close because of the metal tentacles. I don’t know how they got it outside town without anyone noticing, but it’s there and it’s definitely from Gedol Empire given there’s this really weird lizard that can use magic protecting it from being approached.”

“I’ll relay this to the others.” Ocellus turned to talk to both Jean and Colleen as I approached Pom.

“Are you being okay?” I asked as I sat next to Pom, she took a deep breath.

“No, I’m feeling fairly tired Shanty, but I’ll be fine eventually. I just need some time to catch my breath.” At least she is being honest as she be catching her breath now and wiping the sweat from her forehead. “Might have stretched the injury in my side when I ran into that weird lizard, we need to take out that octopus or else the town will just continue being swarmed with shrimp. Has this area been evacuated?”

“It being mostly empty, we be saving a family from a burning home.” If there is one thing that be upsetting me more than anything, it be someone making someone else homeless without a good reason for it. I don’t be thinking Gedol be having that reason or any reason at all for that matter. “I not be very happy about it.”

“Homes can be rebuilt Shanty, bringing people back to life is much less possible and depending on the methods… it’s probably better to let the sleeping rest.” Pom came over to me and nuzzled my head and hugged me. “Its things like this that led me to being a guard in the first place, I want to help people and protect that life. Fighting giant machines leaves us at a bit of a distinct disadvantage though, I mean it really is asking for a bit much from us here to deal with something that large and dangerous. It’s like I’m dealing with Teatime Clockwork again…”

“Do you be thinking we can even be taking it out?” I asked.

“We can try Shanty. I think the machine might actually lack the ability to multitask, which is why it has someone giving it commands personally in the first place.” If Pom be thinking it be possible, then I be believing we can do it. I’m not afraid of getting hurt, I be wanting to be a pirate and they be getting hurt all the time. It was things like this that led Pom to be teaching me to defend and take care of myself. “The machine didn’t do much on its own when the lizard directing it was attacking me personally. If we can make that lizard retreat we can take out the machine a little bit easier.”

“The lizard can’t be too hard to deal with.” I saw Pom wince when I said that. “Is he being that scary?”

“He can do some pretty odd magical things. He did things like teleporting, increasing the muscle mass of his upper body in a ludicrous manner. He can splits himself into numerous smaller copies of himself and shrinks down personally when he does so. He also does this rather deadly looking thing where he fires a flaming skull of some kind that I’m guessing has more elements to it than the magic he puts into it.” Pom be shivering and poking at a section of missing wool on her left side. “Whatever the strange magic reflecting ability I have, it didn’t stop that particular attack before it took a chunk out of my wool, I would not want something like that attack to make direct skin contact.”

I was about to be commenting on that, but was interrupted.

“Okay Pom… we’re ready to… go...” Ocellus be looking sick.

“Will you be alright if we get closer to the machine?” Pom asked of Ocellus. “Even at this distance it’s certainly having a negative effect on you.”

“Yes, I should be okay.” Ocellus said weakly. “I just won’t be able to do anything productive, you’ll have to figure out how to communicate with Jean and Colleen on your own.”

“Right, tell them this and let’s move out!” Pom jumped onto Dodo’s left side and thrust her left hoof forward and pointing back in the direction she recently just came from.

Ocellus quickly relayed this to Colleen and Jean, they both acknowledged her words.

Author's Note

I miss being able to go to an arcade to play SNK's "Ninja Combat" on a Neo Geo arcade cabinet.

Yes, there is one lizard in particular that is capable of doing all of those things. The only thing this setting doesn't have is pirates, which is more of a thing the wolves of Yellow Dog might be more prone to given they have functional submarines in a medieval steampunk setting.

What I'm implying is that the lizards have ninjas, but due to inverse ninja law... they aren't as good as this one lizard in particular is by himself.

46. Octobot and Deceptive Prawns.

-Ponyville, Sweet Apple Acres, Arizona-

“So we were wiping out everyone dumb enough to stick around, then my mother charges in with a stick of dynamite in her mouth.” My Fœnum mother wasn’t as nearly insane as my actual Equus mother was. I am kind of proud of having ‘Mad Cow’ Maggie as a mom and she was amazingly awesome as a bounty hunter, but she terrified me when she had access to explosives of any kind. “Can you imagine how it felt to watch her light a dynamite stick with a hoof spark technique, especially when it was still in her mouth?!”

“Wasn’t that technique made by the longma?” Rainbow stated as she was chugging cider like no tomorrow, she nuzzled against Applejack who blushed slightly. “I mean they are kind of the leaders in martial arts traditions.”

“Yeah, don’t know much about them fancy fighting techniques, all I know is that just about everyone in the filly scouts knows how to do that in emergencies.” Applejack finally answered and then passed me a mug of chilled apple cider. “It’s nice to have you over for cider.”

“Oh come on, I’m not nearly that bad.” That would be my mother, Maggie, trying to insert her large self into my life and she sidled up to the table to look at the mugs of cider with a grin.

While I loved her dearly, and absolutely cherished her, she was crazier than I could handle sometimes. This was saying something, considering I was married to Velvet ‘frosty farts’ and Paprika ‘snuggle everything’ Paca.

“Do I go on endlessly about your tiny udders Arizona?!” Velvet’s voice could be heard from across the entirety of Ponyville and I blinked in confusion. “Stop thinking about my condition so loudly!”

“It’s amazing that my daughter in law knows exactly what my little Zone is thinking about her.” Mom slapped the end of the table, a mug flew up and all its contents went into her mouth. She belched loudly as the empty mug landed in front of her. She pulled out a stick of dynamite and chewed on the end that didn’t have the fuse on it. “That’s the good stuff. Pear and Bright would be happy that your living this well, they’d be quite proud of you even Applejack. Should introduce you to an old friend of mine called Buck Wildly someday, good guy if a bit full of himself.”

“I’m a might bit concerned that you have that.” Applejack stated at seeing that my mother does in fact tend to chew on dynamite sticks, and that I wasn’t exaggerating about her eccentricities.

“I’m not going to light it kiddo.” It was hard to believe my mother when she was already halfway into doing exactly that, I pointed it out. "Oh... whoops..."

-Rocket Knight Realm, South Cladinhold, Pom-

“Charge!” We had a plan, which of course looked stupid at the start of it with us riding Dodo into battle and straight towards a larger goofy looking, if still lethal, eight limbed large red machine. “I hope you’re ready Shanty.”

Jean and Colleen would hopefully catch up with us soon, because we were going to need all the help we could get to bring this thing down.

“I be handling it, just don’t be getting hurt again so soon Pom.” Shanty was ready to leap off of Dodo’s back when he ran close to the machine.

The main offense would be Smolder, Dodo and me, while Shanty would be trying to keep the odd magic wielding lizard busy. I could deal some damage to the tentacles with my bark blasts, Dodo had his beak bursts and, if given enough time, Smolder could breathe fire powerful enough to melt metal. We had to deal with the eight tentacles on top of the mechanical shrimp it would be generating.

I really didn’t like where I was in life right now, but I wanted to save lives and the best way to do that would be to occupy the attention of the machine.

“Three… two… one… okay, go!” I leapt to the right off of Dodo’s right side and inflated the puff on my head to slow my momentum and land safely on my hooves. Dodo charged right by the machine while attacking the large metal tentacles as he did.

Smolder was already airborne and blasting the tentacles with a series of powerful looking fireballs for her size and age.

While that was going on, I was reaching out with my front hooves to grab onto Shanty’s as she leapt for me.

“Be safe and watch for tricks Shanty, I know you’ve got a few of your own that you’ve never shown me.” I stated as I swung her around twice and then heaved her at the machine over the tentacles coming for us, then leapt backwards out of the range of the sweeping attack.

Dodo was already running out of range and was making a turn for another hit and run attack. Ocellus was unconscious, but she was safely curled up in his back. I trusted Shanty’s familiar bond with him to see Ocellus safely through this, the changeling decided to knock herself out for her own good as the mental stress was becoming unbearable.

I sent Shanty flying in a horizontal spin to a little below half way up the machine where she clamped onto the head with all four of her hooves in an impressive acrobatic display, she then started running up towards where the lizard currently was on top of the head to face him down.

I leapt back as a tentacle nearly came down on top of me. I sent three sharp barks into the chain of cylinders doing some minimal damage by minor dents. This could take a while, but at least this machine was far slower than that train was.

Rolling under a swiping tentacle I watched as Smolder narrowly flew out of the way of the one tried to wrap around and grab her, she was attack them at their base points. If the two goofy eyes were controlling four limbs each, then we were going to need whatever firepower Jean or Colleen could come up with from a nearby armory while we personally kept this thing distracted.

Our odds of taking this thing down would soon change for the better when Jean and Colleen arrived, even if they couldn’t find some heavy weaponry like a cannon to use. Hopefully they could get something like the Zebulous mech unit, but I’m not holding my breath as I leapt onto a tentacle and jumped off immediately as another slapped down on it.

The Zebulos Kingdom did have technology, but they were slow and wary to use it without careful application. They made sure that it was safe for the machines to be piloted by their people. With things like the evil cores existing and souls being eaten by machinery like what we heard happened to Generalissimo Lioness, it was understandable that they were taking things slowly on their technological front compared to the other empires that had more self-destructive tendencies.

Most soldiers from the friendlier kingdoms didn’t know how to wield their magic effectively in more ways than just enhancing weapons, but their effectiveness in wielding magic leveled the playing field for the average foot soldier against technology several levels beyond what even Equestria was capable of.

I knew Colleen would get here quickly… my effect was almost like mind control sometimes and I was going to need to convey this to her if we survive this. Hopefully she would understand that her own feelings around me might not be normal.

In my distracted thoughts as I jumped, dove and rolled, I was narrowly grasped by one of the tentacles and then it fired a shrimp after me. I avoided the shrimp hitting me with the force of a cannonball and it popped open to start firing on me only to be blasted apart by a fireball from above.

The other seven tentacles started to fire shrimp too, I narrowed my eyes as I avoid three shots directed at me and Smolder swerved through the other four. The large goofy looking eyes on the octopus focused on us and started to glow red.

I declared war on the Gedol Empire and if I wasn’t strong enough to live up to my declaration, then a lot of people were going to get hurt.

Planting my hooves and flexing my wool a tentacle slammed into me and the sound of warping metal could be heard a portion of the tentacle bent inwards on impact and the ground around me buckled. I quickly flipped backwards over it trying to grasp me and landed my left rear hoof on the head of a shrimp and brought my other down to destroy it as I flipped backwards a second time.

I threw a backwards flying buck that sent a shrimp skidding into another tentacle preventing it from coming for me when the shrimp eventually exploded to halt its momentum.

I really needed better offensive abilities than just my bark blast, which I just used at point blank range downwards into a shrimp to send it slamming into the right of the octopus machine and the explosion did a bit of damage.

A light bulb lit above my head and I looked at the other shrimp crawling around.

“Smolder, smash the shrimp into its big goofy eyes!” The shrimp machines could do some damage where I couldn’t.

-Shanty-

As I reached the top I swung my right hoof, the lizard had been waiting for me and he be leaping back quite a fair distance while regarding me as I took up a position in front of him.

He held up his gloved hands together and narrowed his eyes at me and I be grinning, he fired a fiery looking skull and I be rolling to the side and charging forward around it. He then be launching five knives at me, I inhaled and then proudly shouted my spirit into the world.

“Yarr!” My magically empowered outburst deflected all the knives straight up into the air spinning and I recalled some things I learned from Tai Lung, Po and Tigress.

I swiped my left hoof forward and smacked it into the first knife, my right hoof swung forward hitting the second one, I leapt up spinning to hit the next one with my back right hoof and then my back left hoof hit the last two in one sweep. I be liking the skewer reflection technique.

The lizard be leaving after images as he dodged around the first three, but when he dodge the fourth, the fifth struck through his armor into his right shoulder. He growled at me angrily and brought his gloves hands together again.

He fire three fiery skulls at me and I rolled under the first one only for the two that flew off to both sides of me to suddenly swerved straight for me, I back flipped out of the way as the two skulls of energy slammed into each other.

Just as be getting my hoofing, he surged forward with the upper half of his body becoming massive muscles and brought his right fist down. I rolled forward under his arms and dove at his legs.

His fist created a powerful shockwave behind me and his face smashed into the metal of the octopus machine when I was launched forward by the force and took his legs out from under him.

He growled and said something I couldn’t quite understand and then split into many smaller copies of himself after he brought his hands together.

-Smolder-

I had my combat ribbon tied to my left horn at the start of the fight, I thought it looked adorable and cute as much as it was resilient and a weapon. When Pom called out for it, I pulled my ribbon from my horn and whipped it around and wrapped it around the nearest shrimp and slammed it into the octopus’s right eye like a ball and chain.

I saw what Pom was doing when she started maneuvering herself to buck the shrimp back at this monster while trying to avoid the tentacles. She was trying to focus down the right eye and the more shrimp the octopus put out the more return to sends we could do.

I didn’t have a problem with the tentacles as I was in the air and the tentacles were far too slow to grab onto me, but when they started to herd Pom and almost got her, Dodo would come charging it for a hit and run to do some damage to the metal limbs.

“Pom you’re side!” I stated and saw her look at the fact that she was bleeding slightly from her train wound.

“I just popped a few stitches, don’t worry!” Pom stated as she leapt between two tentacles as a third tried to sweep her up from behind, she surprised me with how acrobatic she was sometimes and nearly avoided getting grabbed by a fourth tentacle by rolling to the right and away from the machine.

I could see a few specks of red on the surrounded grass and Pom continued to dodge blasts from various shrimp, I picked out a target and whipped out my ribbon to wrap it around the metal shrimp’s waist. I flapped my wings roughly a few times and heaved it off the ground and into the right eye of the monster and looked for even more opportunities to be an eye sore for the machine.

“Well I’m going to worry, because bleeding in the middle of a deadly fight like this isn’t healthy Pom!” Somehow she managed to get a powerful one hoof buck that sent a metal shrimp that was about to uncurl flying.

The shrimp must have hit something critical as the right eye of the octopus started sparking and caught fire.

It was disturbing sight to see the large goofy eye started melting to reveal the evil core underneath it, it was decently cracked and a few more good hits like that could break it completely. Only Pom was beginning to slow down from her injury that hasn’t completely healed over.

There was a subtle shift in the air as the octopus stopped trying to send its tentacles after Pom, in fact the entire machine started changing color from red to a demented looking dark purple. Something changed slightly in the gaze of its left goofy looking eye.

All eight tentacles lifted up and pointed straight down in front of itself and it fired shrimp point blank into the ground. Something was off about them though, they weren’t curled up when they came out and looked more like eight poles in the ground.

Then the eight shrimp fell over, they looked the same, but something was…

“Wait… those aren’t shrimp… Smolder get down!” I followed her voice as well as my instincts and the eight shrimp machines suddenly got their front halves lifted into the air and a massive spread of energy blasts, sure they were smaller than what the shrimp could do, but far more numerous and they fired faster.

“If they aren’t shrimp, then what are… agh!” I yelped as I was struck by several blasts that scorched my scales, I felt myself hit something soft after I fell.

“Are you okay, did that hurt you?” Pom asked worriedly while looking me over after having caught me.

I didn’t answer her and leapt from her hooves to take a series of shots for her while covering my face with my arms and trying to avoid the webbing of my wings being hit.

“I’m fine, this just stings.” The numerous shots I was taking from these slightly different machines were pouring out at a rapid pace were powerful enough to scorch my scales. “A lot.”

“Those aren’t shrimp, it’s created metal prawns!” The notable difference from what Pom and I could see was that these machines had extra shooting limbs instead of one that snapped out smaller shots at faster speeds and they were a bit larger than the shrimp and had heavier armor.

“Too bad I can’t just eat them, this is really making me miss eating seafood and sushi with Silver Stream.” If my friend drinks salmon juice, then you can be assured she was meat eater as most hippogriffs and sea ponies tended to be.

That’s when the octopus machine started fire metal prawns to spear the ground before becoming active and various mechanical shrimp that came out as spheres, then the two sets of mechanical menaces started intermingling making it harder to tell which was a shrimp or a prawn.

The prawn could mimic the appearance of the shrimp, only their legs were slightly different in being able to split open and fire like the shrimp did and at a much higher rate. The shrimp had the bigger shots, whereas these prawns could put out more numerous and weaker shots.

“Really deceptive prawns by the looks of it they look almost the same as the shrimp!” I stated as I started avoiding the manner shots coming at us from the two variations of machines that the octopus generated. Pom was no slouch in the evasion department as we were being overwhelmed by the massive amounts of energy firing at us, sometimes the bolts would be bigger and that’s how you could tell that a shrimp had fired.

I watch Pom yelp as she took a hit to the chest from a large bolt and her wool got damaged somewhat.

“We need to deal with the tentacles to stop it from creating any more of those things!” Pom stated as she rolled to the side and nearly took a shot across her right cheek. “I really just want to go home to Tianhuo...”

“I want to go home too, but that’s not happening today Pom!” I try to move closer to the tentacles and was met with a wall of shots aimed my way. “I can’t get close enough to damage the tentacles further like this Pom, what do we do?!”

“Hope that Shanty can at least make that lizard retreat and then come to help us.” Pom whimpered as one of her legs was blasted out from under her taking out a large chunk of wool on it.

Dodo came charging in and stamped down on several of the shrimp and prawn as he passed by firing into the growing crowd of smaller machines and drew fire from all of them for us he did so.

“Jean and Colleen better hurry up with that backup or at least weapons to deal with this!” I growled out, we had only managed to deal a moderate amount of damage to two of the tentacles, a third tentacles was dented and couldn’t twist or maneuver around as well thanks to hitting Pom while she was doing her immovable fluff wall thing.

-Cladinhold Armory, Jean-

“Go, Pom and the others have been fighting that machine for too long on their own already!” Colleen shouted at me as she shoved a rocket tube and a satchel into my webbed fingers, we had cleaned up the town in an exemplary and timely fashion.

That was only because Ocellus’s friends were distracting the machine generating these metal menaces and I was quickly running towards the fight as fast as my webbed feet could carry me with a rocket tube strapped to me and a small satchel of ammo bouncing against the side of my armor.

I hoped to arrive before our comrades were defeated in a most permanent, Colleen was to secure more weapons and help against the machine to the south. We just happened to be waylaid by other problems.

If we hadn’t had need to deal with an attack from the east we would have been there to help our courier team friends sooner, but without the support of the machine from the south we had routed the main bulk of the invading Gedol forces from the east quite well.

That is to say that Bruno helped Biggs, Wedge and many other fighters route the enemy forces coming from the east in several combat vehicles and many foot soldiers armed with fake rocket pack replicas that a real rocket knight would use.

The south was still a problem and I aimed to correct that and see to the survival of those who I wished to see as good friends, hopefully I would arrive in the nick of time to honor our burgeoning comradery.

With rocket tube at my back and rapier by my side I believed I could be of great assistance to the problem down south as I charged into battle once more!

Upon arriving upon the scene of the fight, I slowed to a stop and took in everything going on for a second. There were the mechanical shrimp yes, but they were faster firing machines among their number that were subtly different. The land strider was trying it’s best to cover for the orange flying lizard and the kin of lambs Pom.

Both had taken injuries and were doing their best to try and hold the machine’s attention. I did not see the small bandanna wearing child, until I looked to the top of the machine’s head to witness her locked in combat with that dastardly Paeli, the ninja commander of the Gedol Forces!

Surprisingly the blade limbed child was holding her own against the nasty tricks that monstrous cur Paeli could bring about. I saw some of Pom’s movements in the child and smiled wistfully. Pom might not be the mother by blood, but she was her mother all the same in teachings.

I pulled the rocket tube from my back and crouched down to take careful aim, I pulled the trigger and a rocket flew fourth to blow out one of the monstrous machines eyes that was visible. The evil core blew apart and half the machines tentacles went limp for a second as did half the machines offending my new friends.

The other eye glowed and the tentacles raised off the ground, but were moving slower and all the smaller mechanical monsters were back up and moving once more.

My first shot with this thing was quite a surprising success… now how do I reload this darn thing?

Colleen said it was as easy as aiming and firing, but she never mentioned the other niggling little complications to it.

I hadn’t told anyone this, but I wasn’t a soldier or a fighter… I was a duelist, a well renowned one that could thrust a rapier so hard that it could pierce a brick wall from ten feet away.

This was my first time actually being on a battlefield and it was as dangerous as many of the frogs of home said it would be, but I was not disheartened to learn of this fact.

Colleen may be an ex-soldier of Yellow Dog Army, but I was willing to trust her without a shadow of a doubt to catch up and bring a great bit of assistance. I shall eventually figure out how to reload the rocket tube later, but first…

“I am Jean De’la Frogois and you are my enemy this day for hurting those that would be my companions!” I shouted as I charged forward while shouldering the rocket tube and pulling my rapier out. “Have at you and your evil spawns of darkness!”

I started shredding straight through these metal monsters and their slightly odder versions. My armor took multiple shots for me as I leapt further into the fray with a smile on my face and a heroic dream in my heart.

I would turn the tide of battle with my very spirit alone if I had to, for these odds were never insurmountable!

Author's Note

Paeli is reminiscent of those Ginyu Force guys from Dragon Ball Z to me for some odd reason, maybe it's his ridiculous bulk up technique.

The Octobot plot continues next time with mean green Jean finally supporting the cause... when I can feel like writing and am not dealing with a rat problem or the sudden change in temperature around here from cold to hot.

When it rains, it pours.

I'm still healthy and am eating well at least, aside from the family death due to COVID this year hasn't been too horrible... yet...

47. Octo-push.

-Cladinhold outskirts, Pom-

Seeing one of the evil cores get blown out made my heart soar with some relief, not that it wasn’t already beating a mile a minute with all the dodging I was doing. Smolder and I were being worn down and without Dodo’s help we would have gone down by now.

The machine shrimp and prawn shots were going absolutely everywhere, up until half of them suddenly stopped along with four of the tentacles on the octopus machine with the destruction of the core. The other core then took control of them. We should consider ourselves lucky that the generated machines all had poor aim unless we were standing absolutely still and weren’t as sturdily built as the machine that made them.

Jean arrived on the scene with a tube strapped to his back and his rapier held aloft in his right hand, he thrust it rapidly and took out several of the closest smaller machines. He was taking several shots and his armor was holding well enough, but he was a relatively easy target for them to hit.

We backed away from the octopus machine as it slapped its tentacles down at us sending dirt, rocks and grass flying into the air. We could tell the machine was fighting us by itself without outside input, because Shanty was still fighting that lizard on top of it and had it completely distracted.

I winced when I saw Shanty take a hit to the gut from the lizard’s fist, at least he wasn’t in his magical muscle form when he hit her and she recovered well enough to fight back.

I ducked and a wad of energy passed over my head, I could smell the air burning from its passing. Right, back to the fighting, Shanty has that well in hoof.

I galloped forward, swerved around another shot, skidded sideways on the grass and launched my left hind leg into the eye of a shrimp disabling it. I wrapped my front hooves around it, then pulled it off the ground and spun around to throw it at the other eye, only for it to be blocked by one of the tentacles.

The two most outer tentacles were mildly damaged, one of the inner ones on the still present eye’s side had lost its mobility after I bent it out of shape by hunkering down in my wool. I was thankful to have done that while on solid stone instead of grass or dirt, the tentacle would have sent me flying otherwise.

“Pom I don’t want to be an alarmist, but…” Smolder flew upwards over a series of shots and managed to snag a prawn and slung it at one of the tentacles with amazing strength and leverage using her ribbon. She then spat several fireballs to pop the several metal shrimp that just came out the tentacles.

“Is it something really horrible Smolder, because we’re kind of in the middle of something like that’s pretty alarming already.” I was in the midst of disabling several shrimp with precision kicks, jabs and sweeping strikes to their eyes, a prawn was about to fire on me and it was quickly speared through by Jean.

With a flick, Jean launched the still moving machine off the end of his rapier at the base of the tentacles and it did a bit of damage when it blew up.

“Yeah, I’d say it’s a big concern, the evil core frog guy just destroyed is growing back.” Did smolder just seriously say that it was growing back?

“WHAT?!” My voice went quite shrill as I bucked a shrimp against the large dark purple frame, also I may have incidentally launched a bark blast using my burst of fear to destroy several other small machines. I looked to see what Smolder was talking about. Looking at the eye that had been completely destroyed in the blast from that rocket, I could see the edges of the destroyed eye rebuilding itself as the red started slowly growing from the edges inward. “Oh you have got to be kidding me…”

“Do you think it might be the other eye repairing it?” You know Smolder, no matter how much shrimp we threw at the problem, I don’t think we had enough raw sushi to bring this machine down. Colleen had better be bringing something more impressive than a handheld firework cannon, hopefully something big and powerful.

“Could be, but octopus are supposed to only regrow their tentacles, not their eyes!” I rolled forward through a volley of blasts and leapt behind Jean who deflected a number of incoming shots with incredible concentration and rapid rapier slashes while humming a slightly jaunty tune.

“Pom, I think trying to apply logic to a machine that runs on pure evil magic is literally asking for trouble!” Smolder inhaled as Jean blocked a single tentacle with his rapier, she started to really concentrate her breath down to fine point into a makeshift blowtorch in an attempt to sever that portion of the tentacle as Jean had it occupied and was holding it in place.

I moved forward to keep the shrimp and prawn from targeting Smolder, while rapidly bashing as many as I could and getting targeted myself I felt an energy bolt nearly hit me in the right side where my stitches were. The bolt instead, thankfully enough, flew under my belly.

I was getting real tired and a bit lightheaded from my popped stitches and light bleeding. In a matter of seconds three sections of the tentacle fell off and was both inert and limp. The tentacles stump in question had a melted portion covering any opening and prevented that limb from spewing more shrimp and prawns out.

“I don’t think it can regrow its tentacles at least.” The machine didn’t feel pain, but I noted the octopus’s fake eye covering the other core glaring at us. The tentacle that was shortened was the third from our left and sixth one from its left to right on its right side, a side which it was not controlling as well.

“Not that I can get through those easily, I’ll need a minute before I can do that again.” Smolder was backing off and breathing heavily, she was darting around in the air as she did so while avoiding numerous shots peppering the surroundings as three more shrimp came out along with four more prawns. She grappled a shrimp in her ribbon and slung it at the regenerating eye, only it was caught by a tentacle and thrown at Jean who jumped out of the way as it exploded next to him. “We knew this thing was going to be tough, we just didn’t know how tough and I think it’s getting smarter the longer we fight it!”

“We’re barely putting up much of fight as is, unless we can stop it from making anymore machines, we’re going to keep getting swarmed and we can’t keep this up forever.” I was already flagging, not that my health has been at its best when we entered this fight. I ducked under a series of shots and zigzagged forward through a series of small bolts before launching a vicious left uppercut that tore through the head of the prawn that had been firing on me. “Jean is relatively fresh, but his girth is working against him and while he’s sturdy. He’s not going to be able to keep taking hits like that forever and we can’t communicate to him very well with Ocellus out of action.”

Smolder looked angry at the reminder that Ocellus had knocked herself unconscious due to the stress of being near an evil core, in this case it was two evil cores that seemed to work in conjunction with each other. The destroyed eye was about ten percent into rebuilding itself, it was already forming a red ring in what was once a completely destroyed socket.

Here I had hoped Smolder was just imagining things… what is my life when I’m ineffectually fighting a four story mass of metal in the shape of what was an exceptionally goofy looking mechanical octopus? Well goofy with the eye coverings at least.

We weren’t doing a very successful job of taking it out and were damaging it too slowly. We couldn’t cut and run, we didn’t want the town to get damaged even more before someone else could destroy it and we’d be leaving a lot of people homeless. The damage to the town so far wasn’t that horrible as to be irreparable.

I finished punching my hoof into the eye of a metal shrimp when I saw an incoming wall of cylinders and leapt straight up. My rear legs were grazed by the tentacles sweeping forward at me and I ended up being knocked onto my face.

Picking myself up I saw a tentacle coming down on me, I was swiftly grabbed and pulled out the way of harm as the Tentacle slammed down and creating a shockwave of debris as the ground ripple from the impact.

I looked up at Jean and he smiled down at me bravely as he covered me with his body, he was still standing strong and didn’t seem to see the odds were drastically against us winning this fight without outside intervention or at least more back up.

He held up his rapier in and pointed at the octopus with a smile, he seemed willing to continue in spite of the terrifying power this thing was bringing up against us. I nodded and slowly stood up ready to continue as Smolder came to hover near us.

She had just finished wiping out the remaining shrimp and prawn with Dodo’s help, but the octopus machine seemed to have stopped generating them.

Looking up to see how Shanty was fairing, I saw that the lizard had left Shanty covered in bruises, cuts and even a few burns. The lizard had a split lip, several cuts and a knife buried in his shoulder, he didn’t seem like the type to retreat and he was slowly, but surely enough, wearing down Shanty through sheer attrition. It at least seemed that lizard in particular was far sturdier than any of the ones we have previously met that went down in a few blows.

The octopus machine whined loudly with its mouth and then started to spray a thick black gunk all over the ground as it quickly turned itself in small sharp circle using its tentacles.

“Huh, why is it spraying octopus ink everywhere?” Right there with you Smolder, why was it… that’s not ink… its oil!

The octopus’s four outermost tentacles could cover its backside, so attacking it from behind wouldn’t work and that’s not even taking the machines it spawns into account. The only reason we knew it was facing us was the large round mouth that had yet to be put to use in this fight until now.

“Smolder, how good is a dragon’s sense of smell in general?” I asked out of the blue.

“We live in a land where having a strong sense of smell isn’t really necessary part of day to day life, the most common smell in the dragon lands is sulfur.” Smolder sent me a look. “Even you should know that given where you live, so why did you a…”

“That’s not ink, run!” I yelled as I turned tail, grabbing Jean’s hand with my hoof and urged him to flee with me. He looked confused, but started to follow after me as I ran.

The large mechanical mollusk monster wasn’t very mobile, but it had spun a quick circle as it sprayed a massive amount of the puddle of oily goop everywhere around itself with its mouth acting like a large hose.

If it was about to do what I think it was, then we had to get out of the blast zone. Hopefully Shanty would be okay by being on top of its head.

The dark purple machine slammed all its tentacles down into the goop covering its own limbs in the viscous onyx substance, this also sent an entire wave of the substance after us as we ran and we were soon covered in it. Even Smolder got smeared in the substance with how big the wave was. Dodo, and by extension Ocellus, were safely out of the splash zone and closer to town, the mechanical ostrich warbled with worry as he saw us running.

What the octopus robot did next was pretty diabolical as it launched a single prawn from one of its seven still viable tentacles and the shrimp uncurled. I looked back and was still running as we were still in the splash zone of where all the oil was spread out we wouldn’t make it out of the area before the shrimp snapped its claw.

Feeling something grip the oil stained wool at the back of my neck, I looked up to Jean in confusion and he said something that sounded particularly optimistic. With an impressive show of strength, also there’s the fact that I’m really quite lightweight, he spun and threw me beyond the edges of the pooling gunk in a running hammer throw.

I landed on my rear and sat up a good twenty five feet away from the oil and watched as a wall of flames erupted behind Jean and went out in all directions from the menacing octopus. He was still running if a bit too slowly as the flames were all about to catch up to him. He didn’t look back and he wasn’t going to make it, he was too… Smolder!

Smolder dove down and rammed into Jean and then snapped her ribbon to sending him flying further and he landed in a heap and managed to pick himself up and run past me. Smolder quickly wrapped up her ribbon around a rock and threw it to me a few seconds before the oil around her caught fire and engulfed her. I caught it and leapt away as the flames threatened to set me on fire.

Jean flopped onto his face and rolled onto his back and cried out in shock, but then blinked in confusion as Smolder just stood there with her arms crossed covered in fire. He tilted his head and was looking at her in awe.

The train I fought might have been able to grievously hurt Smolder with a fuel air explosion, this kind of attack however? It did nothing and Smolder even looks like she was enjoying it.

“Feels nice and is cleansing on the scales!” She shouted over the sound of the conflagration turning another area into a wasteland. I think these landscape devastating attacks might become a running theme with these large machines.

The heat, fire and oil didn’t bother Smolder and she even went through the motions of looking like she was bathing in the powerful flames she was covered in.

“Smolder, check on Shanty!” My shouting alerted Smolder to the fact that Shanty was not heat proof and she was in the middle of the inferno that metal octopus created.

Smolder immediately took off into the air covered in flames and flew towards the top of the roaring octopus as it started to fire flaming shrimp and prawn machines at us.

Jean looked rather uneasy about this, as did I when the frying shrimp uncurled and started crawling towards us. If we got too close to them, then they could ignite the oil we were still covered in. I looked at the ribbon I had caught in my hoof and quickly got rock on one end of it while trying not to get the ribbon too badly covered in oil.

If Smolder could do it how hard could it be? I would later remind myself that Smolder was our resident combat ribbon expert and I should defer to her when it comes to wielding one.

I swung the ribbon above my head and then tried to use it the rock on the end to smack away the charging flaming shrimp and prawn that were firing on us and trying to ram into us bodily. I missed with every swing I tried, I wasn’t exactly gauging the length of my improvised flail very well.

Thankfully Jean’s rapier wasn’t covered in oil and he was using it to keep the charging shrimp and prawn at bay and I eventually manage to swing the rock into the charging machines once or twice as I got a better hoof on it.

Dodo quickly joined us by kicking and blasting energy from his beak to keep the crawling things off of us with wild abandon. It seemed like he understood what would happen if one the fried shrimp or prawns manages to touch either of us physically while on fire and was suddenly quite frantic to aid us as the octopus kept sending more our way in volleys.

-Smolder-

Oh crud, oh crud, oh crud, I was immune to this kind of attack, but Shanty is in the middle of the sea of flames!

I was hopefully flying out of sight of the octopus’s vision, it seemed to be focused on firing… are those things on fire now! I turned back to see Dodo wrecking them with a ruthless efficiency I could get behind, Pom was wielding my combat ribbon poorly and Jean was thrusting his rapier with a panic stricken face into the incoming flaming machines charging them from all sides from wherever they landed.

I was about to go back to help them, but the sudden appearance of the ones Ocellus named Biggs and Wedge were now there lending their aid to my friends with sword, spear and shields. This made me immediately go back to focusing on checking out Shanty’s predicament.

Shanty was on her back and trying to prevent herself from being stabbed in the heart with her hooves, she was sweating fiercely and I could see her fur was starting to burn from the heated metal of the octopus’s body.

That Gedol Empire guy was on top of her and the odd knife he wielded was slowly inching its way to towards her chest, he was slowly overpowering her. He was grinning sadistically and his laugh would haunt my nightmares for days to come.

“Hweeheehee!” That was the high pitched sound he made as he pushed hard and the tip sank into Shanty’s fur slightly, I dove down and he looked up at my flaming form coming straight at him. “Uh?”

I rammed him leading with my right shoulder making him lose grip of the knife, I also scorched his skin and his armor completely shattered upon impact with my flaming form. I tried to follow up with a left claw slash, but he muttered something angrily while shaking a gloved fist at me and immediately erupted in a puff of smoke as my claws raked at the air where he used to be.

That Gedol Empire lizard didn’t reappear anywhere nearby and he must have finally decided to leave and finally call it a day. That one guy, because of his ability to use magic, was far more dangerous than any of the smaller machines we’ve faced up to this point.

“I be thankful Smolder!” Stated a battered and sweaty fur stained Shanty as she got up and stumbled around a bit, the heat must have been making her slightly delirious or dizzy.

“Shanty!” I shouted while pointing behind her.

Shanty looked up at the flaming tentacle coming from behind her, she rolled to the side and ran forward as it slammed down where she used to be. She head to make another large leap as a second flaming tentacle tried to slam down on her and another swiped at me. I took to the air and watched as Shanty ran about dodging the tentacles as the octopus tried to knock her off into the sea of flames.

I would have picked her up and tried to fly her out of here, but I was still quite literally on fire and Shanty was heavy for her size. Far heavier than Pom could ever possibly be.

“Be getting me help quickly!” Shanty shouted as leapt over a tentacle that scraped over the rounded surface leaving patches of flames for her to avoid.

I flew back towards Pom and the others, what do we do? What could we do?! Come on think… maybe Dodo could run through the flames?

“Pom, Shanty needs help getting out of there, at least the lizard controlling the machine has retreated!” I saw the look on Pom’s face when I said that. She looked at the flames between us and Shanty, looked around and then turned to Dodo.

“Dodo, give me Ocellus!” The way Pom said it made the machine blink. It reached into its back and used its beak and head head to quickly flick Ocellus into her waiting hooves, she draped my best friend over her back and pointed at the octopus. “We’ll be fine, now go climb up there and save Shanty like the familiar you are!”

Dodo didn’t need to be told twice as the second he saw Shanty in danger he ran through the flames in a blur that left a fairly distinct path through the sea of flames with how fast his mechanical legs were moving.

While I started to aid with the shrimp and prawns, I could see Dodo run up the large machine’s curved surface by digging his slightly heated up metal claws into it and managed to leap up and kick a tentacle away from Shanty.

We hadn’t exactly seen how fast Dodo could go, but he managed to get to the top of the octopus machine in less than twenty seconds.

-Shanty-

I be feeling Dodo coming for me, the feeling let me know that I’d never be alone as long as Dodo was around. He leapt and kicked away a tentacle coming from. He quickly turned towards me, ran forward, stopped, dipped his head under me and flipped me into his back before leaping over a tentacle and roughly kicked another away while warbling protectively.

He be stretching his legs out and started to and took a flying leap towards the side that the town was one, he leapt incredible far. His legs show impressive amount of strength as we hit the flames, I felt the air around me heat up extremely and then the heat lessened as Dodo started to run with his legs as fully extended as he could get them. I looked up into his green eyes as he warbled mechanically at me and I started to laugh a bit.

“I be okay Dodo, keep going!” My fur was burnt slightly, drenched in sweat and I was fairly injured.

I not be a doctor, but I be knowing I was feeling bad. Dodo quickly came to a stop and his legs were a bit red with the heat as I lifted myself up to look over the edge of the seat in his back.

“Are you being okay Dodo?” My familiar warbled happily and I felt that he was happier that I was alright and didn’t care about himself. “Dodo!”

What did systems orange mean? He then gave me a positive feeling about it, but I was wary that he be lying to me, he still be nuzzling his face against me and then quickly be stomping down on a burning shrimp that shot at me.

“Well Shanty’s okay, but how are we going to deal with that? We can’t get close to it now!” Smolder shouted over the noise of the flames, she be looking pretty hot right now and I don’t mean that I be attracted to her.

The octopus machine started to drag itself forward. It was slow moving, I be knowing what it was intending to do.

Author's Note

The octopus three battle will end next page with something that's common among all the true Rocket Knight games.

48. Titan Tako Tussle.

Author's Note

Music- Yoshi's Island, Final Boss, Giant Bowser. Koji Kondo.

Using the Metal/Rock Remix version via Jonny Atma

48. Titan Tako Tussle.

-South edge of Cladinhold, Pom-

“Are you okay Shanty?!” She looked a bit burnt as she sat up.

“I being only a bit crispy and more worried that Dodo…” Shaking her head violently, Shanty looked me in the eyes sharply. “Never be minding that, I be knowing what the machine monster is going to do next!”

“Okay Shanty, you have my undivided attention.” Stating this as I climbed up and carefully laid Ocellus insider Dodo’s back behind her.

“It be dragging itself closer to the city so it can explode!” If Shanty was right and if the machine had even half a tank of oil when it does… fire everywhere and the whole town gets destroyed.

“Stay with Dodo and protect Ocellus, also get some rest.” I turned away from Shanty and waved at Jean. “Hey!”

I got his attention and then I started to draw in the dirt, octopus, building, octopus next to building, octopus exploding and building on fire, something like a pile a rubble afterwards. I kept the images as simple as possible for Jean to hopefully understand.

Jean blinked one or twice in confusion, his eyes eventually widened in understanding and horror. He turned and shouted to the black rat and brown mouse. They turned to him and he pointed at the octopus that started to drag itself forward while saying something.

Biggs said something to Jean and he quickly pulled the rocket tube off his back and tossed it to him, Wedge said something and he soon received a satchel full of ammunition that Jean pulled from his waist. I’m guessing Jean didn’t know how to reload that weapon, these two did though.

Whatever Biggs said next made Jean turn to us, he drew a circle on the ground and put two dots in it. Smolder landed next to us and looked at me questioningly, she was still on fire, so she tried not to stand too close to me and my oil soaked wool.

Jean pointed at Biggs and wedge and pointed at the two dots with the tip of his rapier, he then motioned at us and motioned in a circle. I nodded as I understood what we needed to do as I watched Wedge load the rocket tube and Biggs was kneeling with it on his shoulder.

Slashing his rapier against the ground one last time, I saw that Jean made a crescent shape to create a simplistic smiling face.

“They want us to circle up and protect them from any shrimp and prawn that might be coming from the... let’s call it ‘octobot’. Dodo will be our rear guard in case we need to abandon the town.” As I said this a rocket launched from the tube at the octopus machine that was slowly dragging itself forward.

The octobot lifted up a tentacle and it took a moderate amount of damage from the blast when the rocket collided with it. It had been aimed for its left evil core, the other evil core had fully regrown and the fake goofy eye had fallen off from the shockwave.

The octobot’s exposed evil cores were making us feel this general sense of dread permeating the air as they gazed at the town and us, it seemed more evil than it had a second ago. The sky was darkening thanks to all the smoke from the burning fields of grass from the oil attack the octobot sprayed out.

It was a good thing Ocellus wasn’t awake for this.

The octobot continued to drag itself forward through the field of flames on its burning tentacles. It didn’t need all its tentacles for forward locomotion, so it raised three tentacles and started firing flaming cannonballs that were mechanical shrimps at us. More importantly they were aimed at Biggs and Wedge who were in the middle of loading their next shot.

Jean or I couldn’t get near the prawn or shrimp or stop the octobot from directly targeting Biggs and Wedge, neither of us really wanted to go up in flames. Dodo move forward and started sending blasts of energy out of his beak and manage to deflect the cannonballing shrimp that might have had a chance of successfully directly striking Biggs and Wedge.

They all landed nearby and I moved forward unleased fired a bark blast on the far right one and watched as it blew apart once hit. Being on fire made the metal that the shrimp were made of structurally weaker, but far more dangerous to get close to.

Jean and Smolder were already handling the other two and when I heard the rocket tube fire I turned to see it would land. The octobot covered its left eye and the spiraling rocket veered to the left and smashed into the right evil core damaging it pretty badly. The entire machine rocked backwards slightly and when it tried to drag itself forward its body mostly just turned right as it suddenly lost control of its right side for a few seconds.

As Wedge reloaded, Biggs looked as nervous as I felt when the octopus got its right side back under control and pushed itself backwards to reorient itself to point at the town. As it did so several more shrimp came down, but Dodo, Jean and Smolder had it taken care of.

I was taking a small break recuperate, like me Shanty was both injured and exhausted. Shanty took to simply commanding Dodo on what to do and was doing fairly well at it, she’d be fine after a harrowing experience as she was far less fear filled than I was. So I didn’t have to worry about them for the moment.

Biggs fired a third shot and the rocket swirled through the air veering wildly out of control, when Jean fired his shot it went completely straight. It made me wonder what Biggs was doing to get the rocket to act like that and I notice that in the midst of already reloading their next shot, Wedge damages one of the stabilizing fins on the rocket slightly before he started to load it into the tube.

The rocket slammed into the underside and base of one of the octobot’s tentacles and it fully went limp from explosion. That kind of damage would slow it down immensely and disable another shrimp and prawn shooting limb completely. I guess the octobot couldn’t accurately defend itself if the rockets we fire were going to be a bit random in their approach. The tentacle taken down was the second from its left and it was getting in the way of the octobot’s movements.

It seemed like Biggs and Wedge had a rhythm going now as a fourth shot went out, only for the octopus to blow the rocket out of the air by intercepting it with one of the three shrimp it fired through the airspace the rocket was occupying. Never mind, the octobot could defend itself quite well.

Not being deterred in the slightest that the octopus blocked the shot with a shrimp, Biggs and Wedge were already loading up another shot.

The two shrimp that came down nearby were swiftly destroyed by Smolder and Jean, they had been damaged by the explosion of the rocket. How many shots did Biggs and Wedge have left? I looked at the sack and saw about five left, they had six shots and they had to make them count.

Biggs narrowed his eyes, pretended to pull the trigger and three shrimp were suddenly in the air, then he fired. The octopus was actually waiting for him to fire so it could intercept the rocket shots?

The shot wobbled in the air and then veered straight up, it’s exhausted stopped and it fell to explode against the top of the machine damage its metal hide mildly causing stress cracks to form on it.

Dodo deflected the first incoming shrimp, Smolder managed to hit the second with a fireball and Jean stabbed the third out shrimp of the air before it could hit Biggs and Wedge with an incredibly timed jab.

Another shot, the sixth flew straight and true. The octobot didn’t have time to move its tentacles to block as the shot landed directly in the undamaged left core, then entire machine shuddered to a stop for a few seconds.

Did that… no, it was moving again, but what was it doing now? It took two of its tentacles and wrapped it around the limp and useless tentacle, at this point the machine only had six viable small machine launching tubes, two moderately damaged tentacles, one disabled and the one that Smolder focused her breath on to cut a decent chunk out of it.

We heard the noise of metal being ripped apart as it used two of its tentacles on its left side to rip off the useless tentacle that was slowing it down. It then pulled back with the tentacle in its gripe. It swung the ripped off load of cylindrical bits of metal and it flew towards us like a freshly thrown bolo.

Biggs adjusted his aim and was muttering what sounded like curses as he fired our seventh shot and the tentacle that was flying at us was hit dead center to split in two. Both portions of the thrown tentacle fell to both sides of us and damaged a few buildings at our backs.

“Okay that thing is getting more nuts by the second.” Whimpered out Smolder, but what it did made some sense. “At least it’s two legs down for the most part.”

The octobot got rid of some dead weight, used it to make us waste one of our precious few remaining shots and it was now able to drag itself forward faster than it had been. It raised two tentacles and started using its five other legs to drag itself forward as it started to alternate firing shrimp form the raised limbs, the machine was getting far too close to us for anyone’s comfort.

The shrimp it was firing were disappearing into the smoke clouds above us and they were coming down from above, it was hard to spot the silhouettes. They were going to come down right on top of Biggs and Wedge’s position, Dodo had problems deflected them by aiming his beak beams upwards, as did Smolder with her fireballs. I didn’t even bother trying as my bark blasts were too short range to hit something falling at terminal velocity.

When they were about twenty feet from impact was when we got a reinforcement in the form of Bruno the somewhat traitorous pig soldier from the broken Devotindos Empire. He leapt up surprisingly high and tore the two metal shrimp from the air with quick swings of his broadsword, the bits of shrimp machines destructed upon strike the ground and he leapt up to took the next two down as well.

He stated a bunch of derogatory sounding words as he pointed at the machine that was almost upon the town’s edge. Another rocket went out and the octopus tried to block it with a tentacle only to miss by reacting too soon, it had its right evil core completely blown out. It would be a matter of time before it regrew that one and the other one needed to be destroyed quickly before it could get too much closer.

I moved forward and right next to Biggs and pointed out the other evil core, then the last two shots we had with a worried look on my face one of which was already being loaded by Wedge. He patted my head with his left gauntlet and nodded with a grim frown on his face. He hefted the rocket tube when Wedge patted it twice as a signal to fire the next shot.

The octopus was still raining shrimp down on us with one leg, half the machine went inoperable as it had before and that really stalled out the monstrous machine as it took it’s time to take full control of its other half.

The combined forces of Bruno, Smolder, Dodo and Jean easily kept them from coming close to hitting Biggs and Wedge directly, any that survived to uncurl and move on the ground were quickly dealt with.

Biggs pulled the trigger on the tube and the ninth shot flew out and managed to spiral around the tentacle that tried to whip into it, to slam home into the left evil core cracking it.

Wedge said something that apparently got Biggs to start yelling at him, Wedge looking cowed started loading up the last shot we had at stopping this thing. Our defense was going well enough against the shrimp it was raining down on our position, it gave me time to think about why this thing was built.

I think the octobot was built with the intention of winning fights through attrition, it’s what the unicorn known as Teatime Clockwork would have made of it if he built something like this. It has certainly taken quite a bit of damage from what we’ve seen and we didn’t even knock it down to half the effectiveness with all we’ve done.

I’m surprised that we even managed to do as much damage as we have thus far, which really hasn’t slowed down the machine in the slightest. Please let this last shot connect and this nightmare end.

Said shot went sailing out from the rocket tube and Biggs shouldered it to pull out his sword and held his shield in front of him, he was apparently going to stand his ground and Wedge seemed to be of like mind and bumped his shield against Biggs. They weren’t running regardless of whether or not the inevitable destruction of the town occurs, we however had no such thing holding us hear should this not work.

The final rocket, once it was close enough was struck by one of the three remaining tentacles on that cores side, specifically the far left one. The rocket didn’t explode and was sent spinning off into the air where it flew around wildly and with no chance of hitting its intended target now.

“Smolder get on Dodo we need to…” I was about to say ‘retreat’ when one the most ridiculously lucky things to ever occur happened.

The wildly spiraling rocket had been flicked off to the right of the machine, its numerous random changes in direction had it circle back around the entire octobot. As the flames on the rocket died it rammed its way into the back portion of the evil core destroying it violently in the ensuing explosion.

“Did that… did that really just happen?” Smolder asked tentatively as if she didn’t believe the rocket struck critically into the evil core and made the entire octobot go offline. “That has got to be one of the most random, luckiest flukes I’ve ever seen happen in my life.”

Even I didn’t believe it and I just watched it happen in real time, the octobot sat there lifelessly in the field of burning oil and grass under a dark sky.

Biggs pumped his fist and thrust his sword up into the sky with a shout of glee. Everyone started to celebrate, but I had my eyes on the machine.

A purple glow started on the head, slowly two doors split and pulled inwards in what was once seamless metal and slowly a large oval, vertically place, purple evil core pushed its way out. The flaming tentacles of the machine started to twitch and then they all shot forward and started to drag the octobot towards us once more.

The despair on my face was quite visible and frankly I was upset at this turn of event.

“Pom why aren’t you…?” Smolder slowly turned and gained the same look of despair I did. “ARE YOU SERIOUSLY KIDDING ME?!”

It wasn’t firing shrimp anymore at least, but I think that’s what the other two cores were for, shrimp and prawn production… this was the true evil core behind the whole machine. It didn’t take long for everyone else to notice it too. We just took out its factory capabilities, small victory there.

“I don’t be liking this octobot thing at all.” Shanty mumbled as she ducked into Dodo’s backside. “What can we be doing Pom?”

I wanted to call a retreat as it was almost in range to blow the city up. I looked around and tried of think of something other than that.

I... had... NOTHING.

“Well… Shanty… we need to…” I felt pretty bad about calling a retreat after all we just put ourselves through just to lose at the end. Before I could continue my thought I felt as much as heard the ground shaking as heavy was coming towards us, but it wasn’t the octobot making that noise. “Where is all that shaking coming from?”

“What? I thought that was the octo… whoa…” Turning to see what Smolder was looking at, I blinked at the sight coming up on us from behind and out of the town itself.

It looked like a large opossum knight styled machine and it was running on two legs, one that didn’t have a tail, but it did have two big fists and large flat feet as it stomped forward at a run toward us. The top of the opossum face had a knight helm aesthetic to it and the body looked like it was wearing medieval armor.

Instead of punching at us or stomping on us the machine leapt over us and landed feet first in the field of flames and continued its stride as it charged right towards the octobot. Said octobot was almost in range of to take out the whole town and was still encroaching upon us.

Looking at the back of the head of bipedal metal giant, I blinked as I think I saw a hint of Colleen sitting on top of the helmet as she piloted the machine straight for the octobot. Biggs said something in awe at the sight of what had to be Zebulos or Zephyrus technology in action.

That machines right arm pulled back and downwards. It pivoted forward and up to thrust the right fist into the center of the octobot’s oval evil core at the center of its head and the entire thing skid back hundreds of feet and the core cracked slightly.

The bipedal machine put up both its arms in a defensive stance in front of its body as it stomped forward towards the octobot at a slightly slower speed.

“I think… we need to just relax and watch the show, we can’t do much more here.” As I said this the bipedal machine stomped its left foot down on one of the fifth tentacle the inner most on the right side and then the entire machine swiveled and threw out its left fist.

The octobot’s tentacle snapped off as it was pushed back more violently than the last time. The octobot raised all its flaming tentacles ready to fight back as the bipedal knight robot stomped forward, it wasn’t going to put up much of a fight with five barely functional… four barely functional tentacles.

The bipedal machine just kicked out its right blocky foot of solid metal into the underside of the tentacle I had dented with my body and it snapped off entirely.

The foot stomped down on the ground after the kicked and the machine raised its left arms to throw an overhead punch right into the purple evil core damaging it badly as it sent the octobot sprawling and flailing almost onto its back.

The octobot barely managed to right itself when the knight machine launched a devastating right hook that fracture the casing surrounding the evil core, the cracks were worsening throughout the core and it started to lash out and strike at that bipedal machine’s legs.

We could hear the groaning of the metal even at this distance. The bipedal machine was taking some damage, but the octobot was weakening quickly.

The bipedal machine couldn’t move its legs, it raised both its arms and slammed them down on the octobot sending it skidding back further.

The bipedal machines stomped forward and the octobot leapt to the best of its abilities and started trying to crush the torso with its three tentacles as one was broken in that last hit, it only managed to prevent three of the limbs from moving doing this and the fourth, the left arm of the bipedal machine came around and smashed into the evil core’s casing damaging it even further and freeing up the machine.

It wouldn’t be long before the octobot was defeated, the bipedal machine kick its mouth inwards, the octobot body lit on fire as dribbles of oil poured from it.

The octobot was still going and lashing at the bipedal machine with its three tentacles, blocking and attack with its left arm the machine crouched and thrust its right fist up and into the evil core.

The evil core seemingly refused to shatter and was thoroughly cracked throughout as the octobot was flipped backwards by the uppercut. The bipedal machine moved to stomp on one of the tentacles off, the octobot was down to two and still flailing them to damage its opponent.

The right left fist of the machine swung forward and the evil core was knocked clean out of its housing, but the evil core still didn’t break. It looked like an eyeball that was sticking out of its socket and hanging by its optic nerves, if said nerves were made of threads of wire and bits of twisted and melted metal.

The core flash and the air felt charged as the octobot started glowing as if it was going to explode, the bipedal machine crouched down and jumped. It landed with both its feet on top of the evil core sticking out of the octobot and crushed it.

The glowing from the machine stop and a series of explosions ripped throughout the octobot, but it didn’t create a massive explosion overall and its body seemed to implode and melt in on itself in a pyre of flames.

Slowly the bipedal machine turned around and started to walk back towards us. Colleen poked her head up from the top of the knight’s helm and waved at us as she made her way back to us.

“I think… I think we did… we can celebrate now.” A part of me wanted to whoop for joy, but I was too tired to do much other than flop to the ground in relief.

“Yeah, like the fact that I’m not longer on fire.” Making her way over to me Smolder, using what little strength she had after that harrowing fight, lifted me and started to drag me towards Dodo. “Where’s my ribbon?”

“Over that way…” I pointed out lamely with a leg. “Lost my grip due to the oil on my hooves… I need a really long and hot bath.”

“So… we’re couriers huh?” Smolder had a weak grin as she helped lay me over Dodo’s back, she then went to retrieve her combat ribbon and made a face as it was slightly oil stained. She still tied it around her left horn.

The bipedal machine slowed to a stop and crouched down, Colleen hopped off and came running up to us. She sighed in relief to see I was still breathing, hopefully she didn’t do all of that just for me.

I wouldn’t know what to think if Colleen did and didn’t care about the town or anything of it's people.

We were the very definition of a screwed up squad, at least one of the more successful ones so far. We saved a town, now if only we can survive long enough that our injuries were better before we ran into any more evil core machines.

49. Couriers… sure...

-???, Oleander-

“Why are these things called The Flood again?” I asked as the trickle of enemies coming at us was just sad.

There used to be a lot more of them, but I just ended up standing on a mountain of them. Seriously, they could at least try to be a little bit more of a threat to me. I was destroying them in a single blow each with minimal effort. The only thing dangerous about them was their numbers, which were dwindling pretty badly.

“Because they have a gestalt psychic mind link and can all act as one. Which unfortunately for them makes them highly susceptible magical beings and therefore not a threat to us. Anything with magic is immune to them, BUT YOU’RE BASICALLY HIGHLY POISONOUS AND THEIR LITERAL WORST NIGHTMARE OLLIE!” Just listening to Fred as I slashed apart a few biological monstrosities with The End of Pain, was alleviating my boredom. “Also if they try to forcefully assimilate you and somehow manage to circumnavigate the magical immunity you have to them, they are in for a rude awakening, WHEN I CONSUME THEM ALL. They can never equal or beat a demon, EVEN ONE AS LIMITED AS I AM.”

“At this point I wouldn’t consider you limited Fred.” I stated dryly as I watched Fred continued to consume The Flood with glee, while still in his book form. He was at a point where he could act independently of me and I hadn’t the slightest worry about it. So a universe with evil giant parasites on giant rings, thankfully no signs of magic in this dimension and just high end technology. The lost ones we’re trying to track down wouldn’t have survived long in this world if they ended up here. They wouldn’t have died to these oversized and overblown parasites at least, but to the locals who would have experiment on them to try and figure out their immunity to these things. “Also since I’m mostly immune to them several times over, would anyone miss them if we exterminated them?”

“I would certainly enjoy being an extinction event.” Fred’s face on the book grinned broadly. “Also it would even be heroic to do so, THIS WILL CAUSE CHAOS AMONG THE LOCALS AND I APPROVE!”

“More custodial work for us then… at least the Grimm had a few things that were worth fighting. Right, let’s get on with this.” I rested my key blade against my withers and went to find the nearest source of life that hasn’t been subjugated by biological grey goo mind parasites. “Also remember to scrub everything clean, we don’t want to accidentally infect another world with these things.”

“Oh trust me Ollie, I WILL REVEL IN EXTINGUISHING EVERY TRACE OF THEM!” That’s my dear Fred, ever the softy. “You’re mind and body both belong to me by the way.”

“If you love me so much, then put a ring on me and actually pop the question.” Hopefully I would get a response this time instead of Fred just turning from black to blood red. “Or do you have a problem with commitment?”

“Well… we are on a giant ring… sure it’s a little big but…” Fred started to say and he was stalling, I glared at him. “Ahem… we’ve been friends for a really long time Ollie and well… I’ve never quite felt this way about anyone and…”

“Spit it our Fred, or so help me we’ll just continue being pact partners and act like nothing is going on between us.” My tone was quite even, but apparently my demon was both cowed beyond measure. How can Fred be so powerful and dark, yet around me he acts horribly flustered?

I know we love each other, but I still wanted to hear him say or do something impossible for me.

-Days later, ???-

“It’s not my rampancy issue, I swear its a unicorn and a book that is wiping them out and I can I quit anytime I want!” My name was Cortana and I was an artificial intelligence. “I do not have an addiction problem to anime and cartoons with cute fuzzy animals in them!”

This received quite possibly the flattest look I could ever receive in the history of looks.

-???, Ollie-

“So the question is where we will be having it.” Above the tip of my horn floated a tiny ring filled with the ecosystem of an entire world. It actually looked quite fetching at this size. I was running along the coastline towards the positive Equus signatures from our world.

This had to be it, it had to be Pom and the others and we’d soon rescue them from an eldritch abomination! You know, all the fun stuff that comes with being a dark hero.

I had obviously accepted Fred’s modest proposal, he went above and beyond for me and gave me an entire world on a ring. It’s beautiful and flattering at the same time, also functionally unbreakable with the magic that went into making it so small.

“Should we really be discussing this Ollie…” Fred stated quietly. “ESPECIALLY WHEN WE’RE ABOUT TO BE FIGHTING AN ELDER GOD?! By the way his name is Cthulhu.”

We arrived quickly to assist some beings that were from Equus, unfortunately they weren’t Pom or any of the ones we were looking for.

“Huh… Oleander, what are you doing here?!” A familiar looking dragon stated. He was with a yak, a golden kitsune and a mortally challenged skeleton that was half alive and half dead. I wondered how they ended up in this mess, they were also here with very well-known historical pillars of Equestria Rock Hoof the strong, Somnambula the brave and Starswirl the Bearded. “Never mind, you’re an expert at fighting against ridiculous odds and stupidly powerful things right? We could really use some of that right now.”

“Eh, this should take a few hours at most and will probably involve non-Euclidean mansions… again… at least it’s not the Umbrella Corporation this time.” This Cthulhu guy didn’t look that tough to me. Sure he might be causing me to be a little angry just from looking at him, but I’ve seen worse insanity effects.

He rates a six on our general scale of trouble at best. Universal threat, but easy to stave off with the right bits of knowledge provided we did things quickly enough to prevent full breakthrough into this reality. After that it pumps up to a nine.

Sure we were still rescuing people from Equus, just not the people we meant to rescue.

-Cladinhold Tavern, seven hours after the octobot attack, Pom-

So not only was the machine attacking from the south the town’s defense force had to repel an assault of Gedol soldiers from the east while we were busy distracting the octobot.

The Zebulos Guardian Mech Colleen hotwired was inoperable and needed extensive repairs due to heat damage. It would be a while before they could field it again after she damaged it fighting the octobot.

I spent almost five hours scrubbing the oil out of my wool with help from Ocellus, Smolder and Shanty after the incident. It would have been faster, but we didn’t exactly have a better method or the right chemicals to get the stuff out.

We would be getting a meal in before we call it a night which is why we were still awake. Ocellus was discussing all the things that happened with Jean, Bruno and Colleen.

Bruno was apparently on the eastern front, he was very much the reason that Gedol couldn’t get a foothold with their encroaching forces as he personally took out half of them. This could say a lot about Devotindos pigs and their combat prowess in general if he wasn’t an outlier among them.

I’m actually fairly terrified of Bruno, he was termed as a 'berserker' by Biggs as translated to us by Ocellus. At least were reasonably safe around him as long as he wasn’t pointing his weapon at us.

Jean and Colleen had raided the local militia armory for weapons, the rocket tube was returned to where it was found and we weren’t keeping it. I actually think Cladinhold needed it more than we did, they also needed ammunition for it after we used it all up.

Jean, I liked him, he was brave in the face of danger and was generally an optimistic nice guy. What he wasn’t was a soldier. He was a really good duelist when it came to fencing, he faced down dangers with us fairly well even if his armor is a bit of a write off and was mildly injured.

Speaking of injuries, almost none of us got off without them. Smolder’s wings were hurting. Shanty was covered in bruises and scratches. My body wasn’t feeling too good after going through all that with the injuries I still had from the whole thing with the pain train.

Ocellus was the only one of us that wasn’t injured or exhausted, at least physically. The mental strain of her being near an evil core was haunting her and she was upset that she just couldn’t be there for us, at least she was a good early warning system for the presence of an evil core.

Now Colleen, she obviously went off to find that Zebulos Guardian Mech that was having issues. Somehow, she knew how to bypass the problems and wield the machine quite effectively. Which begs the question how she knew how to operate the shrimp claw as a weapon and that she did so when the weapon was disconnected from its power source.

We knew Colleen was an Ex-soldier from the Yellow Dog Army, but not what she did when she was there. I have a strong, almost glaring really, hunch it involves technology and manipulating it in some way. She wasn’t being forthcoming with information, even to me surprisingly, and seemed a bit withdrawn after saving the day and preventing the octopus from destroying the town.

I was kind of worried about her and her cold personality. This lead me to wondering what all the locals were going to do with the imploded husk of that thing, I figured they were going to melt it down for resources.

“I can’t be waiting for food much longer.” Hearing Shanty’s stomach growled, I sighed loudly. Keeping a goat fed was far harder than keeping a young dragon or a changeling fed.

“Calm down Shanty.” I groaned out with my chin digging into the table, Shanty was on my left and across from us was Smolder and Ocellus snuggling together. “Service is expected to be a bit slow after the day we’ve been having.”

“Can we get to the part where we’re supposed to be couriers now?” Whined Smolder. “This world is ridiculous, what next…”

“Don’t!” I wasn’t the only one that shouted this, but my voice drowned out Shanty’s and Ocellus’s by quite a bit. I continued the thought. “Do not suggest anything Smolder!”

“What if I was to suggest something innocent sounding though?” Looking properly cowed, Smolder just rested her face on Ocellus’s shoulder.

“Even then, we don’t know what kind of form the machines can be made in and we do not want to give this world any suggestions no matter how benign sounding they may be.” Shuddering violently at the thought of suddenly fighting an army of machines again, I decided to bring it up. “Remember when I tempted fate not too long ago and then the octobot attack happened?”

“Right, no testing this world’s sense of hearing, got it.” Stated Smolder seriously and Shanty nodded her head rapidly.

“So what’s the first job as couriers?” Change of subject, which I thought we really needed, something far away from the subject of almost tempting fate to destroy us.

Even a hint of tempting it could set fate off. It happened on Equus with enough regularity that its mind boggling that anyone would continue to do so.

“Oh right, we’re supposed to be the White Knight Couriers. Okay the first job we have been given by Biggs has us heading west to Castle Zebulous on a large sea like lake. It should…” Ocellus stopped for a moment, she frowned. “Why is it always so hard to stop from actually doing the tempting? Is it really that badly hardwired into anything living to just tempt things to go wrong?”

“At least I be knowing better than to say something to that effect.” Shanty mumbled as a waiter brought the food over to our table. “My life is being hard enough already, so I never be wanting to tempt things intentionally. Sometimes it can’t be being helped.”

I heard the distinct sound of growling and looked over to the other table at our three new companions.

Bruno and Colleen were glaring at each other and Jean appeared to be trying to keep the peace between them. Colleen eventually calmed down and huffed, she was looking agitated if her body language was anything to go by.

“Do I want to know?” I asked Ocellus as I started eating my food.

“Not really.” Ocellus stated dryly, then her demeanor changed to something slightly cheerier. “We’ll at least get an opportunity to meet the princess of Zebulos while we’re at the castle and we’ll be able to ask for magical assistance.”

“Yeah, provided that Bruno, Colleen and Jean don’t cause problems for us with getting a meeting.” Not that I really suspected Jean of causing trouble, but you couldn’t rule out him just trying to do something nice and it ending in a disaster. Good intentions, the roads they pave and all that. “They will likely be on their best behaviors, I almost half expect one of them to try and assassinate the king while we’re there.”

“Only half?” Responded Smolder as she bit into some fish, her teeth went straight through the bones and I winced slightly at the snapping sound.

“Bruno might be a bit rough, but I don’t think he has any past grievances. Devotindos from what Ocellus told us has a generally good history with Zebulos… aside from what five years ago with their evil mechanical emperor Devligus. Colleen might have grievances, but that’s only because we don’t know much about her and what we do know is just that she used to be a soldier.” From what she was capable of, I seriously doubted Colleen was a normal soldier for the Yellow Dog Army. “As for Jean, I don’t know anything about him politically given he’s from the same swampy region that Gedol sprang up from to take Devotindos City. There might be some issues with your presence Smolder, given dragons aren’t apparently common in this world and you might be mistaken for someone from Gedol.”

“Don’t know how they would honestly be mistaking Smolder for a Gedol Goblin, but I be thinking it not be a big deal and Ocellus can be taking care of that.” We’ll try to cross that bridge safely Shanty, but that might be asking for a bit much.

“Let’s just finish our meals, we’ll get our message for the king tomorrow and then we’ll set out for the castle… done!” Ocellus smiled brightly after nuzzling against Smolder for a few seconds, Smolder’s scales turned a bit red.

I just continued eating my salad, the cherry tomato things taste like juicy olives with a heavy salty flavor. I’m still a bit unsure about local foods. It’s just a bit odd that lettuce in the world tastes like refried beans and cheese had a somewhat sour flavor with a bittersweet aftertaste.

The most unusual thing was that the bread tasted like guacamole, when no ingredients even related to the stuff was used.

I wasn’t about to complain, why should I? We were all alive and with no permanent injuries… yet.

I had more things to worry about than just myself or my current lot in life. Tomorrow we would do our first official courier mission, we’ll be so far behind friendly lines that I would feel mostly safe to happily relax a little.

We were strangers in a strange world of giant machine monsters that run on magic and malice, where the food tastes odd and learning how to speak the language was hard because we couldn’t quite match any vocal range like Ocellus could.

As I was setting up for bed at the local inn, I direly wished that tomorrow was a quiet day. It would allow my bruises, cuts and energy blast injuries to heal up.

Shanty and I were bandaged pretty well, Smolder needed to take it easy with a sprained wing that proved that she wasn’t entirely invulnerable to injury and Ocellus was still getting echoes of the migraines she should have had were she awake through the whole assault.

We’d all get through this, we just need some more time between battles of life or death to actually heal.

I crawled into bed and was about to rest my head when I felt something crawl onto the bed with me, I sat up and saw Shanty looking me.

“Can I be… sleeping next to you?” Nodding to the nervous looking goat, Shanty quickly came over to me and curled up against me shivering, I ran my hoof through her mane and kept gently petting her until she fell into a calm sleep.

Shanty nearly got stabbed in the heart by a ninja lizard, burned to death on burning hot metal in a sea of fire and, like everyone else, survived being shot at by blasts of energy from all directions. At least I wasn’t the only one that was going to have nightmares about the octobot, but I would rather it be only me who had the nightmares.

“Couriers… yeah, I’ll believe that when we don’t end up being randomly sent to places to end up dealing with problems by being in the right place at the right time.” Sighing I put a hoof protectively over Shanty, she was so adorable. I wasn’t nearly old enough to actually be her mother, but this moment made me want children someday. My head slapped against the pillow and I was almost out like a light. “We’ll make it through, I’ll prove it to you Tian…”

My dreams were of giant demonic machine’s ripping me to shreds.

-The next day, Zebulos Castle, Ocellus-

We were actually making good time, the wagon hadn’t been damaged in the assault on Cladinhold and we were at the bridge leading up to an impressive looking castle on the water. I just finished talking to the guards, Pom and I were being led in while everyone else stayed with Dodo.

Pom delivered the message to King Zebulos and I told him we were the White Knight Couriers coming from Cladinhold. The king was a tiny opossum, he was barely two feet tall, white beard around his mouth and blonde bits of hair sticking out from under his crown and armor.

I wouldn’t question his need to wear armor as this world was dangerous enough to warrant it.

His daughter however exceeded his height by quite a lot and was named Princess Sherry, she had long pink hair with some curls, a beautiful blue dress and gentle eyes. As far as I was concerned she had the air of Princess Celestia about her and she felt like paragon of virtues, but she didn’t come off as a fighter by any stretch of the imagination even with the massive amounts of magic I could feel flowing from her.

So far King Zebulos and Sherry were at best…. just curious, that’s all I felt from them. Zebulos was a bit wary, but he didn’t seem like a bad guy.

“Would you give us the names of the heroes that have entered our realm from beyond?” The king suddenly asked me after reading the many messages sent from Cladinhold. “You helped stop the sacking of a village in Zephyrus to our north, you assisted a village of raccoons that were to be enslaved by Gedol and you stepped up in our time of need at Cladinhold. You had little reason to aid us, but aid us you did and I find myself wanting.”

“My name is Ocellus the translator for our group and this is Pom a hero and guard from her home place Huoshan.” I really didn’t care what Pom thinks, she was a hero as much as she was a humble guard. “We also had the aid of Smolder, Dodo, Shanty and the three others we met upon arriving in Cladinhold. One was a pig from Devotindos, one was from the northern Yellow Dogs and the last is a frog from the eastern swamps. We all pulled together, but it was Biggs and Wedge who took up arms to stave off that mad machine long enough to give the ex-Yellow Dog the ability to pilot your guardian mech right into battle. I am sorry that she took it without permission and damaged it so badly.”

“No need to fret young one.” He said in a grandfatherly tone. “I hold no ill will against those three or your amazing group of four.”

“Dodo is our friend, we’re a group of five since he magically contracted himself to our little rapscallion Shanty who apparently fought off someone named… Paeli was it?” There was sudden whispers of wonder filling the room. “At least that’s what Jean told me the name of the ninja lizard was.”

“Paeli, if he was present and you managed to make even him retreat, then your group is a lot stronger than I thought.” The king stated with a bit of awe coming off of him. “Your chances of success without the last Rocket Knight’s assistance should have been infinitesimal.”

“We have a saying for that. Never tempt fate, it’s always listening.” After I said that Sherry bursts out giggling into her gloved hands and even the king chuckled.

“Better the enemy tempted fate than us eh?” King Zebulos was smiling now, the tiny opossum was less wary now than he was before.

After talking to Pom about what was said, I turned back to King Zebulos.

“Can I speak freely King Zebulos?” He nodded his head at me. “Are we a squad intentionally put together or was it random chance we ended up with people from Devotindos, Yellow Dog and a frog from the eastern mires across the desert near where the Gedol hailed from? Are we an Intentional Screw-up Squad?”

The king sighed.

“So the realms from which you heroes hail from have them too. Unfortunately we direly need such groupings like yours now more than ever, ever since we lost our entire contingent of rocket knights with Sanjuro Mifune’s fall years ago. That was the time Devotindos threatened the peace of this world, it is happening again from Devotindos City with Gedol now wielding their devilish technology.” I felt and heard the sorrow in his voice. “Nothing can quite match up to the prowess of a true Rocket Knight in battle, but we can no longer train more. We of Zebulos try to live with nature, we try not to destroy the fragile ecosystem and want to keep in harmony with everyone else, this world only has so much room. Evil core machines, as I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, don’t exactly care about how much damage they deal to the environment and only cause destruction. So yes, as you surmise, the minute your group decided to become couriers with the intention of aiding us, I intentionally formed the White Knight Couriers unit with the hopes of a strange magical cohesion would blossom forth. Was I wrong to think as such?”

“I think you’re as fair and wise as you can be given the circumstances.” I answered diplomatically, he smiled at me. He seemed happy, as did Sherry.

Author's Note

Diplomacy is easily Ocellus's bread and butter as a translator, she will always know what a person feels about her words and can react accordingly. Changelings have a good synergy for becoming diplomats.

50. Future Crossroads.

-Huoshan, Lambchop residence, Tianhuo-

“I find myself exhausted again…” Many could see my composure cracking in my off days, how did Pom survive having this many familiars to deal with? I was doing her work on top of my own and I could not impose on Fluttershy’s kindness again.

I flopped onto bed, between my duties to Huoshan and duties to my missing wife’s pack, I was running myself ragged. I was trying not to think too hard about Pom being in danger, the nature of longma would be considered stoicism beyond reason… and I’m well beyond that point.

It has not affected me while on the job, but in privacy? I may cry and weep, but I was not alone in my sorrow, Blighter and all the others of Pom’s familiar pack were right here with me.

Despite all the trouble with taking care of every single one of them, even the timber wolf being the most off putting, I wouldn’t trade them for anything as they were my family.

I didn’t have much growing up, I was almost an outcast and a longma that couldn’t ignite despite how strong I was and how often I bullied others. I tempered myself into something great, but Pom made things even greater for the both of us when we came together under odd circumstances.

I had mastered the ways of the warrior, she had mastered the ways of making a home. We could survive on our own well enough, but with each other we thrived. I miss that feeling so.

Ruff crawled up onto the bed and licked my cheek, I gave him a smile and a gentle nuzzle. Big Mama huffed and shook her head, she knew I was going to break and was imploring me to silently get help. I will have to call in the aid of Fluttershy’s friend Doctor Fauna and… the aid of Huoshan Canine Division.

I should have thought of that sooner. Even if the head of their division is missing, the people of the division are still there and able to lend assistance and take a great many burdens off my back.

I should book a day at the spa if I am making mistakes so big as to not ask for help, my pride is not worth breaking myself for.

Please come home soon Pom.

-A beach, Celestia-

With Twilight taking up our positions as ruler of Equestria, I really didn’t have much to do. I could do whatever I wanted and it was exciting.

I intended to spend most of the first year off from being a princess on beach sunbathing and being as lazy as possibly. Of course I would throw some adventure in while I was at it.

“Thank you for your time Princess Luna.” Turning to see a Thestral fly off, I sighed audibly.

Luna hasn’t quite dropped her duties to the thestrals.

Luna went back to relaxing under a parasol, my sister sunburns so easily and was still rather delicate despite trying to not come off as the princess she still wanted to be and wanted to be more approachable.

We were taking a vast break from politics by shoving it onto Twilight Sparkle, last I heard she was trying to get lambkin to be friends with changelings. I wished her good luck with that, but it was going to be an uphill or more like up an entire up mountain battle, she wouldn’t ever reach that peak if she weren’t an alicorn now.

I think my sister was correct in not dropping the thestrals all on Twilight, she was still in charge of the people of the night whereas Twilight was in charge of the main three pony races of the day.

We should seriously consider taking back the sun and moon duties eventually. I mean those duties weren’t nearly as hard as running an entire nation, also… special talents can’t be avoided forever. The sun and moon only needed to be moved so much during a day or night.

“Sister, I hear of Twilight’s efforts to try and bring the lambkin and changelings together as friends, it is not going too well even with thestrals and other races trying to assist as intermediaries.” Apparently the news Luna received had her grinning slightly and she was likely feeling the same sense of amusement that I was. “Do the lambkin’s still have the banners that say ‘we told you so’ in big well written out letters?”

“Yes, they tried to tell people that changelings existed and of course nobody would believe them because they are the most anxiety riddled race in existence and blow a lot of things out of proportions.” I stated calmly, but I had a smile on my face. “Just because they are right about most things doesn’t mean that they aren’t overly paranoid and the most anxiety riddled race on Equus.”

“So the entire thing with the marmalade?” Luna queried curiously.

“Queen Novo caused that and the lambkin are far more in tune with things than we tend to give them credit for.” They were so acutely paranoid, that it was scary that they got things right far more often than they ever got them wrong. “They should really collate all their evidence together, might solve a few worldwide problems in the long run. They are one of the few races that any evil is wary of trying to mess with due to their people wide insanity.”

“Should we tell Twilight about the Neighpon black market setting up close to Ponyville?” Despite our laid back attitudes, it seems that Luna couldn’t quite stay away from the intrigue of it all.

“No, I’m sure she’ll figure it out eventually, unless she’s too busy with trying to wrangle ‘The Squirrels’ to make sure their nuts aren’t going everywhere.” If I remember right my good friend Lady Nutcase was probably going to drive Twilight completely nuts with her underworld connections.

If Twilight doesn’t find out about the S.M.I.L.E. organization being reinstated before we passed things over to her before ‘The Squirrels’ start running rampant, then things were going to get quite amusing.

“You are a most cruel pony Celestia.” Despite saying this with flat tone, I could see Luna wanted to laugh and was trying quite hard to hold back her giggles. “Wouldn’t have you any other way sister.”

“Well we have to have some fun in our advanced ages, it wouldn’t do if Twilight didn’t have a few hiccups along the way that she could pester us about.” A mafia run by squirrels would be the least of Twilight’s worries, but Equestria was in goods hooves… provided Discord didn’t turn most of Equestria into a solitary jelly doughnut again.

There were so many things that Twilight has yet to learn. I may not be a good actor, but I’m much better at not telling everyone everything under the sun and omitting information was something fun to do. Discord might be sour with me later though for causing more chaos than he generally does, but he would certainly enjoy it.

-Outside Zebulos Castle, Pom-

“Where’s Dodo?” First words to come out of my mouth is wondering where Shanty’s familiar ran off to, he was our main mode of transport.

“I don’t be knowing much, but it be something about warmth? He not be causing any trouble as far as I know.” Thankfully Shanty was the very reason I could trust the machine running around rogue by itself. “In fact he be on his way back to us soon and has enjoyed his running from what I feel. He even be giving me the impression of systems green, whatever that be meaning.”

“How much trouble coul… wow Ocellus, you were right. It really is hard to avoid tempting the world to hit us with a curveball with some heat to it.” For a thing with only a head, neck, body and legs, I knew for a fact that Dodo wasn’t to be underestimated in the slightest.

“Speaking of curveballs, we should really tell Shanty and Smolder about what an ISUS truly is and what they tend to get up to.” That was going to be a tough one Ocellus, considering how dangerous things in this world were. We were going to purposely stir a hornets nest worth of it just by acting casually as couriers.

“Should we tell Bruno, Colleen and Jean about it?” I hate my life right now, but if it means I can save a lot of people, then I’d better just suck it up and keep going forward with all four hooves steadily and firmly planted on the ground.

“I think Colleen and Bruno might figure it out on their own.” Understandable Ocellus, most people who were part of a military might hear of rumors of such things like this existing. “Jean might need some help, but even he might notice it eventually.”

“So what do we be doing first as a mission?” Shanty exclaimed exuberantly as she showed up.

“Delivering supplies back to the guild in Cladinhold as a relief effort, they kind of need it.” If I had a town that was known for being crossroads between some territories, then I would want to send relief there too if it kept the Gedol Empire from gaining a further foothold to spread from. “After that we have some choices on where we’re going, the one choice we’re going to avoid is going behind enemy lines to deliver a message to possible allies. So our next destinations would be back up into Zephyrus territory to the direct north, to the east by south east into Devotindos territory, the far north to Yellow Dog Army territory, there's Jean's home region in a magical mire near where Gedol originates from slightly north east and finally there’s going to Eginasem which would take us the longest to get to given we’d have to circle around all the embattled zones to even get there to the far east.”

Shanty hummed audibly, but didn’t say anything, she seemed fairly curious about seeing those regions personally.

Zephyrus wasn’t exactly the safest territory at the moment, it was actually becoming a pretty badly contested zone. The last rocket knight Sparkster was doing his best to bring peace back to all the regions, but he was just one guy and couldn’t be everywhere at once. Wherever he did go, he made a huge amount of difference given he was a force multiplier and quite talented at devastating evil core machines in quick succession.

What made things harder for Sparkster was the evil rocket knight Axel Gear, a guy who seemed to joined those who were power hungry at the drop of a hat. At least King Zebulos had given us a description and a warning to look out of the other rocket pack wearing opossum who was deadly to face in combat, he wrecked regular soldiers in the field with such ease whenever he appeared. He was a guy to stay away from or else you get massacred,

Zephyrus sounded somewhat safer than visiting Devotindos and Yellow Dog, both of whom have gripes with Zebulos from losing a war they started in the first place and from causing a skirmish throughout the northeastern Eginasem region beyond the desert. Less politics, but more chances of fighting giant machines.

I was having problems trying to think of what was safe for the girls and I was guilt ridden with the fact that evil core machines were just something I couldn’t deal with. I was nothing more than a small distraction for them at best and I was pretty small lambkin already.

It’s a wonder my fears weren’t as paralyzing to me as they were to other lambkins, then again I had to live with a pack of my fears in the form of my beasties which likely made me a bit more numb to the fact that life wasn’t fair at all.

Even if you found a perfect place to be and someone perfect for being with you in that said place, you still had to work your flank off to survive. No sunshine and rainbows forever, even on Equus there was always fires going on somewhere, even in Equestria where it’s always under a thin veneer of the ponies trying to hide when things are going wrong around them.

Ocellus drew my attention to her, she apparently relayed to our three traveling companions that we were going to return to Cladinhold as soon as the soldiers were do done with loading up the wagon for a delivery. We were delivering several messages to Cladinhold as much as supplies, from there we could take one of the messages further abroad to one of the locations I’ve mentioned.

“Until Dodo returns we can’t exactly leave.” Ocellus muttered, the wagon was nearly finished being loaded. “Tell me honestly Pom… aside from my linguistic skills… am I being entirely useless to everyone?”

“Maybe in a fight, but you’re doing the best that you can Ocellus.” I see her wince and tilted my head, Shanty wandered off to Smolder while looking between us.

“Sometimes… that… just doesn’t feel good enough. I get progressively more helpless the closer I am around any evil core machine. I seriously don’t feel like I’m pulling my weight to help our group survive and Dodo is another mouth to feed because apparently he runs off food with a biological engine.” Ocellus sat down in the grass next to the wagon for the White Knight Couriers personal use, I quickly joined her. “I feel like… like I’m being the parasite that I am.”

“You’re not a parasite Ocellus.” I gently rested a hoof around her withers and drew her into a hug.

“Tell that to all the other lambkin Pom, bet you’d be laughed out of whatever town you’d try it in.” Ocellus muttered bitterly. “At least Smolder can bring her claws and strength to a battle, I don’t like fighting and I can’t help in that area. Sure I’ve done it a few times, but I’m not able to leap into action like you and Shanty can.”

“Do you think I like fighting, especially for my life and that of others? Try to live with having multiple friends with insane martial prowess telling you that you have some incredible untapped potential, then try living up to what they think they see in you.” I rested my head on top of hers. “Who was it that told me to focus on what I’m capable of doing and to not compare myself to them all the time? You’re a good friend, you have an incredible talent for diplomatic skills, you can feasibly learn almost any language in a week or multiple languages in that same week and unlike ponies, you can even be whatever you want to be. You can walk a literal mile in someone else’s hooves to see things from their perspectives. The most amazing thing about you is that you have the ability empathize with just about anyone, you should not be feeling like I do all the time. I feel useless in many cases, I felt useless back in Gongmen City sitting on the sidelines watching you girls run off to do things I probably shouldn’t have let you do. At least you listened to my advice about how to go about things. Can you honestly tell me that you aren’t earning the love from Smolder… Shanty… or even from me?”

I opened up my heart to her and I watched Ocellus quiver a bit, she looked away.

“Ocellus, I’m the adult of our group and I have an obligation to take care of all of you, even to my complete and utter detriment if needed of me. I’m more terrified for the three of you than I am of everything else. I’m responsible for you, if you want to entirely stay out of the fighting then I’m willing to not make a fuss about it. Life can be cruel sometimes, but I’m sure you’re aware of that growing up how you did until Thorax took up the responsibility of being a father to all the changelings. That’s what a good kings does, no one is more expendable in his eyes than the king himself and yet people are willing to move mountains for him and to go above and beyond for the greater whole of all their friends, loved ones and the community.” I sighed as she leaned into my hug and sniffled. “I can’t protect you from this world, I can only mitigate the damage that might come your way. You’re still growing up and have a life ahead of you. I already know my place in life, where I’m supposed to be and where my heart wants to go back to, but current circumstances are asking me to step up and expend myself for the sake of our little group. You’re homesick, but how do you think Smolder and I feel?”

“Not very good recently.” Ocellus mumbled. “Even when I can feel your emotions, it’s sometimes hard for me to speak up.”

“Do you wonder why Shanty gets my attention the most? Why I favor her more than the two of you?” I stated bitterly towards myself. “It’s because we’re all that she has ever truly had, we are her entire world and she has nothing to look forward to other than her dreams and her next meal. Eventually… she’s going to have to leave us behind to follow her dream of being a pirate. I think the thing with burning octobot is starting to make it click for her about the kind of life she wants to lead. I want her to have good memories of us… is that really too much to ask? That we be supportive of her goals, even if they are extremely dangerous. I don’t want her to give up her dream and I don’t want her to try and cling to us when it comes time for us to go our separate ways.”

“I guess I can add being selfish to a list.” It seemed Ocellus had wanted my attention too, which is why we were having this conversation.

“We’re all a little selfish Ocellus, you wouldn’t have the magic of friendship in you if you weren’t… at least that’s what you and smolder told me about.” I looked to the sky that was not our own and leaned back. “If anything I’m the selfish one for wanting to keep Shanty from her dreams, to hold onto her and take her in, to let her have a family that can give her the love she needs and deserves after what was an exceptionally bad start to her life. She’d be miserable...”

“So where should I convince everyone we should go?” If being diplomatic was all Ocellus could do, then she was going to come to me for direction.

“Well it’ll be over my body before I lose any one of you at this rate, but it’s nice to know that you’ll continue to be an even greater friend than before.” Being rudderless wasn’t helping my situation when we were in a stormy sea as part of a Screw Squad. “I’ll ultimately leave our destination up to you. I’m only going to throw my own suggestion into the ring, the safest place we can go is Yellow Dog. My unique calming effect on people like Colleen would make it ridiculously safe, but it’s not going to be up to me and I’m terrified of the prospect. I’m leaving the final say up to you so you can do more, you’re the one that can communicate between us all and I trust you to make the call. The call to adventure that is going to find us regardless of wherever we eventually end up.”

“That’s… a lot of pressure…” After a moment Ocellus smiled. “I kind of know what it feels like to be you, I’m getting used to all the nervousness and anxiety you constantly leak out, you’re a lot braver than I thought you’d be and those other emotions are hard to find at times.”

“Acting despite my emotions is probably the problem your having Ocellus, emotions do not always define a beings choices.” At my words, Ocellus simply nodded with a slightly grim look on her face.

“Hopefully it will never come to 'that' choice, I think I’ve come to appreciate you too much as a person, a friend… and a hero that someone like Shanty can look up to.” Ocellus seemed a bit more chipper than before. “Shanty will understand when the time comes for her to actually seek her dream out, the least we can do is prepare her for it.”

“I’m no hero, at best I’m a fool that willingly rushes headlong into danger for others.” My mouth quirked into a faint grin as I ran my hoof over the top of Ocellus’s head rapidly to make her squirm as I held her close.

“Hey guys, Dodo is being here!” Hearing Shanty shout, we both got up and saw him approach Shanty and he seemed to be almost giddy about something.

Dodo turned his heard to his back and craned it down into his backside which was loaded with something. He plucked out a basket and placed it before a confused looking shanty who picked up one of the many cupcakes stuff into it. He then plucked three other baskets to place before Smolder, me and Ocellus.

Dodo then warbled cheerfully in that odd mechanical whine after he placed a basket down for Colleen, Jean and Bruno.

“Um… he be sharing all this with us?” That was fairly obvious Shanty.

My question was this, who made all these cupcakes and did Dodo cause problems in getting them? I watched as Smolder plucked one from her basket and bit into it.

“Huh, tastes like Pinkie Pie’s brand of cupcakes.” At least smolder was happy to have one.

Hearing a groan of pleasure, I looked over to see Jean trying one of them. Bruno tried one and looked at it as if it were mildly acceptable. Colleen in general had a wagging tail after she ate a cupcake and there were several dozen more in every single basket.

Why did it feel like Dodo might have a problem?

-The next day, Cladinhold, Ocellus-

Okay nothing happened between Zebulos Castle, a really beautiful place out on the water, and Cladinhold, a town that was still partially burnt by the fires of war.

I had at least informed everybody of our options.

Colleen seemed iffy about possibly seeing acquaintances, friends or family up north in the Yellow Dog Army, but she wouldn’t explain the reasons she was so cagey about it. She really seemed upset when hearing the message we could deliver would be taking us to someone named ‘Cooler’. I faintly heard her muttered something about ‘Wulfric the Vicious’ and the terror that inspired in her.

Bruno was distrustful of the delivery to ‘Hork’ in the Devotindos territory to the south of what was once Devotindos City. In fact, while he was proud of his people and had a mile wide love of the doughnuts that they made, he didn’t trust the military side nearly as much as he absolutely did the civilian. He was even less inclined to go when he heard we would be delivering a message to a ‘General Sweinhart’, the guy that was placed in charge of the pigs who lost Devotindos City and its production facilities to the Gedol Empire.

Jean seemed okay with going wherever, so long as we were helping people and or be doing good work. He did seem wary of ‘Hork’ being too close to Gedol. He liked the idea of seeing Eginasem though.

"I’ve discussed our options with Pom and the others, we have made a fairly unusual decision…"

Author's Note

PinkPie.exe managed to execute cupcake creation protocols.

Purpbook.exe is now groaning in frustration.

Classy.exe had fun designing the cupcakes at least.

Derpderp.exe wanted to make muffins.

51. Challenging Sanity.

-Gedol Territory, Evil Core Preparation Campsite, Ligstrun-

I was Ligstrun, average lizard soldier, decent mechanic and short like all the other lizards like me, some fiery yellow hair trailing down my neck, stuffed inside some armor that will let me survive one mortal blow.

From what I hear of the rocket knight, mortal blows come at you fast and you’re armor is gone in an instant. Run for the hills was the general recommendation when the true blue rocket knight blew through you or your machine like a wet tissue paper.

It wasn’t an exaggeration, the rocket knight blew through at least three feet of solid steel in the form of a wall… head first… without injury. The good knight of the world was just that terrifying.

Not much going on out here. Just preparations for an entire unit of evil core machines to be activated. I really did not want to be around when they were.

I also didn’t want to be one of the lizards that were getting parts of themselves replaced with machinery for failing, those experiments were nightmarish and the eighty percent lethality rate had me scared for my life. I heard what happened to Generalissimo Lioness when things like that happened. I wanted my mind to stay its own and not be actively eaten by machines until nothing was left.

It was well known now that General Sweinhart wasn’t one of the mind controlled pigs, he actively helped the evil machine emperor take over his own people to launch an attack on Zebulos. That was after having one of the rocket knights turn on their own and wipe them out… except for the one rocket knight who then quickly tore through Devotindos forces like a hot knife through butter.

Intelligent machines were the ones you had to watch out for, most of them were the ones with evil cores. Not all machines needed evil cores to be intelligent. Why couldn’t there be heroic cores too? I mean how hard would it be to actually make one of those?

I would desert my position in an instant if I thought I could get away with it without being hunted down by Axel Gear to be made an example of for trying. I wasn’t nearly good enough with a sword to survive that and I doubt dark magic enchantments on the blade would help against someone who wore magical armor covered in the stuff.

Oh I liked machinery well enough being a mechanic, but I would prefer the machinery not try to eat me alive and use my soul to power itself or something. Nobody really knows what happens if an evil core machine eats you, maybe it would double its power output?

What I wanted to do was find a random land strider, a wild one that doesn’t run on a malicious operating system. It would be easier to tame one of those for my needs ever since Yellow Dog caused mechanical creatures neutral to most people to start running around.

I wanted to live a nice peaceful quiet life away from evil cores, monstrous machines and this doomed war. Instead here I am stuck as a soldier, working for a powerful magical nutcase named Gedol.

“Nothing ever goes wrong around here, I seriously doubt anything ever will.” I muttered the guard near me just grumbled in agreement while nodding her head.

I wondered if I would spend the rest of my life working on the numerous rocket pack knock-offs of what actual rocket knights use, the things break down at regular intervals from shoddy materials. At least I tried to make mine better than ones that Axel Gear was spreading around to us Gedol troops.

I think I got more functionality out of my knock-off rocket pack. At least more so than we lizards could usually manage and I was thinking about using it to escape, but it still wasn’t nearly fast enough to outrun or fight off Axle Gear if he wanted to run me through. That’s why I would need a semi-intelligent land strider, it would have to be an animal type as full manual land striders were entirely reliant on pilots to operate.

I wanted to innovate and help the world, not destroy it like every other machine monstrosity that comes around.

At least Emperor Gedol was smart enough to not try and fuse his body with machines or wasn’t one himself, but with his dark magic… I wouldn’t want him to come after me if he ever found out I wanted to try and prevent him from achieving world conquest.

The thought of Axle Gear coming after me was frightening enough already and almost a big enough threat to keep me in line on his own, that’s even if he was miles away. Being in Gedol’s presence meant you were going to die if he thought you were plotting against him, that or be turned into a compliant machine.

“Look, I know you’re nervous about them being kept here Ligstrun, but those three Panth-Zers land strider units are going to be sent out as soon as they are battle ready. They aren’t just going to jump up and rip us to shreds, even if the things scare everyone even when they are inactive. I wonder what development team thought making automated land striders would be a good idea. We can only hope they don’t replicate like the O-type land striders do, those wild machines can be annoying.” Pretal wasn’t a big fan of this either, but she was still going along with it. She wasn’t the most attractive lizard around, but she wasn’t ugly and I thought her red and orange scales were attractive. Rare to see a color more than green and purple among us. “Be glad we all got really easy jobs far away from the front. Nobody would be stupid enough to try and pass behind the front lines or even bother with attacking us in the middle of nowhere in our own territory.”

Amphibians, lizards and other reptiles in general didn’t have it so bad. If we wanted things to be better, then why not learn how to make things better? At least our cousins the amphibians had cooking, castles and artistry. If all we did was steal, nothing would get better and we’d be living on limited resources with no knowledge of how to get more once we destroyed the source of said resources. At least some long term planning skills would certainly improve our lives.

“Did you ever consider that maybe, just maybe, we should try to defect?” Was I the only lizard soldier that thought about these things?

“Do you want them to send one of those things to come after you?” Pretal grunted angrily. “Nothing is going to happen Ligstrun, especially not to us. We aren’t going to be attacked all of the sudden.”

She’d be proven wrong approximately five seconds later, when parts of our camp started exploding and a land strider pulling a wagon charged in amongst us and slowed down to attack various tents, supplies and everything in the general area with rapid blasts from its beak. The entire camp was thrown into disarray and fires were popping up everywhere.

It quickly totaled one of the Panth-Zer units we were supposed to protect by ripping into it with its beak and legs, apparently it learned from destroying just the one of Panth-Zer units and efficiently ripped out the small evil core right out of next one’s skull disabling it permanently.

Before it could get to the third a spear narrowly missed its head.

The… was that a goat? I watched as the, obviously sapient, goat leapt onto the land strider’s neck to shout something as some of the surrounding lizards started to react, albeit slowly to the intruders.

The land strider glanced at the goat for a barest of a second to take in her pointing hoof and then started charging off in that very direction with the wagon as several weapons were about to be used against the suddenly aggressive intrusion.

Is this what it was like to be attacked by an evil core machine? Well in this case the land strider had odd eye color, wasn’t red at all and being pure evil wasn’t the driving force behind it. If anything the goat was giving it orders and it didn’t mind following them.

So my plans were feasible if there was a magical operating system that doesn’t make you feel like it wants to kill you constantly… even when it was supposed to be on your side.

I had spent that entire time just standing there and staring dumbly at the chaos, I blinked as the last Panth-Zer unit eyes glowed to life and it took off after the wagon.

“That… just happened.” Pretal stated blankly as what were supposedly our comrades were still running around everywhere in a panic, a few of them had lost their armor.

“Yes, now if you’ll excuse me.” I blinked and looked at the Panth-Zer with the ripped out and destroyed core. Maybe… I looked around nobody was paying attention to the still somewhat viable automated land strider, it wasn’t meant to have a pilot. I was okay holding on for dear life. “I have repair work to do, go help with putting out the fire.”

No one would be suspicious of me trying to get the Panth-Zer with the destroyed core operational, it was my ticket out of here… and hopefully to a better life.

Evil cores were not always main power source for the monstrous machines, but they did power most of a machines weaponry functions with pure malice. Since I didn’t need weapons or evil to power this thing, I could rig it to run on an auxiliary power core in a pinch and it’s not going to have much of a brain without the evil core, but I really didn’t want the evil core running it. .

I could force it to move manually, but the weapons wouldn’t be operational and if I could figure out what those intruders did to get a friendly land strider to do what it just did… I needed to follow them at the very least. I wasn’t a programmer and would need to know how they got it to be friendly instead of neutral.

They probably wouldn’t like me, I’m quite sure no one likes the Gedol Empire right now and anyone tangentially related to them. If I could talk to them for even a minute and they’d let me get a copy of the system running that land strider, then maybe I could have a friendly machine that could protect me from Axel Gear.

Panth-Zers were a prototype, lightweight armor, high speed, predator style land strider machines with one rotating energy cannon on the back that can fire small shots quite quickly and or charge of for a powerful explosive burst. The tail fired lasers and was able to aim in any direction.

The only weapon I would have available once I got this things running are the natural metal claws, I wouldn’t be able to use the energy slashing function of them.

That didn’t matter… freedom did. I only have a limited amount of time to make this work and catch up to those people and beg them for sanctuary. They were obviously a strong group if they could hit us this far into our territory and keep going.

It wouldn’t be long before someone figured out what I was doing, I started connecting wires to on another in the ripped open portion of machine cats head. I’m glad that land strider left this one mostly intact instead of wrecking it completely.

I pulled a tool from my belt and started to tweak a few things and with a wire pushing into the right place, then I bypassed the need for the evil core and directly tied into the power systems. I then smacked the wire into place. The machine soon stood up on all fours unsteadily with me straddling the neck. With no evil core to guide it, I hoped that this next part worked without issue, because I had a lot riding on this.

“Forward!” I shouted into the lifeless eyes of the machine. The machine took off at a pace that nearly threw me off and I scrabbled to get my claws purchase on the metal hide of the beast and was quickly slipping off. Unlike the land strider that just launched a surprise attack on us, this thing did not come with a protective divot with a seat. “Uh, reduce speed slowly?”

The machine slowed until I managed to straddle it safely.

“Speed up until I until I say signal… signal.” Panth-Zers didn’t have manual controls, but I was able to control it by telling it what to do. Not intelligent like the land strider I saw, but it could still follow rudimentary commands… and I could work with this!

Although I would need to find a way to make it intelligent in the future, hopefully in a manner that would not try to destroy the world and all life on it. I already saw one friendly example, sure it may have destroyed the camp, but it didn’t try to kill anyone.

A hope for the future.

-Shanty-

“The cat thing be incoming!” I can’t be believing that it worked, we had caused so much trouble on our way to our destination. Third time’s the charm before we be running into evil core machines.

Yellow Dog would have been uncomfortable for Pom attracting everyone, also we be hearing they are in a bit of a civil war at the moment. General Sweinhart was likely to be stabbing us in the back when we tried to leave.

We could have done safer things, took the long way around and try to avoid trouble.

We be deciding to visit Jean’s people the amphibians, by cutting straight through Gedol controlled territory. I think we be disrupting Gedol forces quite badly.

“I see it Shanty, now if only most of us had long range options, at best I barely have a middling range attack!” At least Pom can be defending it be getting close enough. Dodo be the only thing capable of attacking from a distance among us and he had to keep his head forward. “Dodo veer left!”

A powerful blasts of energy passes by the wagon and took out a large chunk of the ground. It probably won’t be getting close enough for Pom to bark blast it.

“Be veering right!” I was sitting with Dodo and I be looking in the back were the rest of the team, a red beam ripped through the air as the cat machine moved to match speeds with us and kept its distance. It be firing that from its tail.

“Another incoming, something’s off though.” Pom stated.

-Pom-

The second cat was in the distance, it could have fired upon us, but I notice the lizard on its neck and that the machine’s eyes weren’t active. That wasn’t the immediate problem, as Dodo dodge the next shot my eyes narrowed at its tail.

“Grab on to something, Dodo jump!” I shrieked out.

Grabbing a groaning Ocellus, I clamped down to the wagon with my wool. Said wagon was made of solid rust immune metal and, thankfully enough, a strong suspension system.

Dodo leapt and the wagon followed it right up into the air, as the sweeping beam swept underneath. I narrowed my eyes on the machine chasing us and the distance it was keeping from us and it.

The entire wagon shook as we landed.

“Shanty, no matter what, make sure Dodo holds steady!” I leaned out of the wagon I attached my right hoof and right rear hoof to inside of the wagon as I leaned out.

“Pom… what are you doing…” Smolder asked slowly, she was the only other one that could perform long range attacks. “Whatever it is you better do it soon!”

The charging energy in the cannon on its back was about to fire, it fired and I inhaled sharply. Time slowed to a crawl.

Even then the bright red energy was moving at a blistering pace as it came towards us, I continued inhaling until my lungs hurt.

I exhale and time sped back up to normal and I fired an absolutely normal bark burst, just before the energy reached us.

The energy met my bark burst and stopped dead in the air and took on a powerful golden glow, the machine ran into the floating energy a second later and it’s cannon was blasted apart along with the tip of its tail that was about to fire at us.

My bark blast would have never reached the machine itself, the machine could have avoided it. What it couldn’t have avoided was an anomaly happening. I just bark blasted the momentum out of the energy cannon’s shot, I needed to do more outside the box thinking.

My bark blast wouldn’t have last long enough, the shot that it fired itself… lasted long enough for it to run straight into it. Now I watched it tumbling into the distance with badly damaged armor, until it managed its tumble until it was back on its feet and continuing to give chase at a much faster pace.

I noticed the other follower wasn’t trying to speed up or attack, I’m sure the others have noticed that one as well. He didn’t seem aggressive and even slowed down to steered well away from the other machine.

I don’t think it’s noticed him yet, he wasn’t acting aggressive and was actually looking rather pensive about following us.

Having been in battles with larger machines probably made me less afraid of the smaller ones.

Having thought that, I watched the machine leap up and the long glowing claws that popped out of all four it’s legs and it started tearing apart the ground as it came towards us. Its tail was also sparking with energy.

Okay now the fear here, don’t know what those claws would do up close, but I seriously doubted I could put enough magic in my wool armor would stop it.

It bounded twice and tried to leap for us, but was intercepted by the other machine being rode by the lizard as it dumbly leapt into the path as the people in the wagon prepared to knock it back.

I narrowed my eyes again. That lizard didn’t aiming for us, I think he was intentionally trying to… help?

“Ocellus, how many evil cores would you say there are?” I turned to Ocellus wincing on the floor.

“One…” She managed to whimper out.

I turned back to the lizard trying to frantically steer the obviously stolen panther shaped machine and the fact that it was now under attack by the active evil core machine.

“Move out of the way and be prepared to help me if I do this wrong…” I stated as I watched the lizard narrowly missed getting hit by those claws.

I grabbed the roof of the wagon and lifted my hind legs off the floor and started to swing myself back and forth. Colleen saw what I was about to do and went to grab me, but it was already too late and I launched myself out of the moving vehicle while curling up and forcing my body to spiral as I shot towards the endangered lizard.

I uncurled and slammed my rear hooves down as hard as I can, while reaching out and latching my left hoof onto the upper back of the machine.

My rear hooves connected with the damaged spine of machine where the cannon was sitting and the energy blast occurred and the impact snapped it half.

The rear half of the machine tumbled and fell away as my rear hooves went numb, I quickly slapped them down and stuck them to the destroyed back half of the machine and raised my right hoof to start hitting its head rapidly.

Its front to limbs started to flail the glowing energy claws at me as it swung them about, I leaned away and ducked out of the way of the swipes. I brought my left hoof off of the machine as I bound my lower torso to it.

Bringing it together with my right hoof, I slammed them both into the head to start grinding it against the ground. The front half of machine tried to swipe at me as its faces was quickly ripping apart against the dirt, stones, grass and whatever else we were skidding over at high speeds.

I increased the pressure on my hooves, grit my teeth and continued to press down on the head, inhaling sharply when I noticed one of the two claws going right for my front legs.

Time slowed just long enough for me to pull them out the way and the energy blades cut straight through its own skull and the machine started sparking as it slid to a stop. I exhaled and kicked off the machine with my front legs as my rear legs were still a bit numb, I curled up and fully inflated my wool.

The closer of the two shockwaves hit my wool and deflected around my body underneath as I was thrown clear of the blast, I heard a whining noise and I felt something catch me.

I heard a grunt when I hit the ground, I uncurled and looked to see I was on top of the lizard. He look weak, but he hadn’t been physically injured aside from slapping to the ground with that cylinder pressing into his back.

He really didn’t need to catch me. I would have been fine, but he showed the effort to try and help even though he didn’t know what I was capable of.

I raised my right hoof and he flinched closing his eyes, until I just gently rested my right hoof on his shoulder.

He opened his yellow eyes and stared at me with confusion, I gave him a calm smile and nodded. He tried to grin back weakly and then passed out. I noticed his armor had shattered, which left his backside exposed to the rocket pack and grew concerned, I put my ears to his chest and heard his heart beat a bit. He was still alive.

I was going to trust that he was a good guy, I was not going to be driven insane by the thought that he might be an infiltrator or trying to destroy our group from the inside…

He deserved a chance, like the changelings deserved a chance, like King Thorax was given a chance to turn his people around into something better. Ember was right, I can understand what it’s like to be different and out of place…

This was not going to earn me points with anyone, also OW----… my rear legs. Why?!

“Pom, what the buck!” Glaring at Smolder, I shuffled protectively in front of him.

“Language young lady!” My words had Smolder cowed as she dropped to the ground and scrunched into herself. “Ocellus, tell the others to help us load that machine and our new guest into the wagon. We're all continuing as planned.”

“Pom, that's a lizard from the Gedol Empire.” Whined Ocellus while rubbing at her pained head.

“And you’re a changeling, I think there are a lot of similarities going on here.” I commented dryly, Shanty looked a bit confused. “He’s coming with us.”

“Pom we can’t trust…” Ocellus started to say.

“King... Thorax...” That shut Ocellus up immediately.

“Okay.” Ocellus turned to talk to the others.

"What... Ocellus you can't possibly want to go..." Smolder started.

"If Thorax was never given a chance... Ocellus and you would have never met." My goodness the silence was quite palpable.

Author's Note

Pom decides to get a bit strict.

Also the group are doing something completely ridiculous by going straight through Gedol territory.

52. Going the extra mire.

52. Going the extra mire.

-Northeast of Devotindos City, Mystical Mire region, evening, Bruno-

So we picked up a crippled evil core machine, no core thankfully. What was harder to swallow was that we picked up the lizard soldier too, guy was badly injured by his knock-off rocket pack he wore. Ocellus is claiming him to be trying to defect and was using us as an opportunity to escape.

Makes me wish for the days where I was with my unit and all we had to worry about was Yellow Dog incursions from the far north.

“What are these things called again… cupcakes?” I snorted loudly as I bit into it, sugary sweet, soft and warm. “Where did the… machine… even get the ingredients to make this most recent batch? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“That’s the weird thing, Dodo made these fresh and we aren’t missing any supplies… aside from medical for obvious reason.” Ocellus was a bit creepy, but at least I knew she wasn’t a machine. You could practically feel her biological nature even if she does react poorly to evil cores.

-Dodo-

Cupcake Replication Magic Installation 100% complete, new system 100% fused into MOS Harmony systems. Muffin Button Magic installation pending.

“PinkPie.exe!” PurpBook.exe wasn’t happy.

Dodo still had no idea about things, he was mostly focus on keeping his footing. The swamp was rather difficult for him to walk through and he was helping pull the wagon with a cheerful attitude, mostly because he was asked nicely to do so by Shanty.

Also the road was firmer than the mud and Dodo did not want to get stuck in all the water around here, so he was paying attention and following it towards where they were heading.

-Bruno-

The lizard had bad burns running down his back and tail due to using one of those knock-off rocket packs that Axel Gear has been trying to get working for a long time, but we had the burn medication and bandages. Unfortunately he’ll likely fully recover, guaranteed if the amphibians decide to lend medical aid.

Nothing explains how a sheep can snap an exceptionally sized panther machine in half, even if it’s back had been damaged prior to said snapping. She did that with raw physical strength and she was like an eighty pound nothing to its hundreds of pounds of metal, most of said weight probably accounting for her head and wool.

I was clearly impressed with her ability to wreck the machine at her given mass though, her bark was definitely worse than her bite… as far as I know anyway.

That both halves of the machine blew up after the core destroyed itself was telling for how dangerous the evil core machines were getting, it also seems like they were preparing for the off chance that the machines might turn wild and wander around. If we hadn’t taken out the other two early I believe those machines in particular would have been some form of deadly cooperative attack force.

While I liked mud in general, this region was swarming with bugs, it was hot out even in the evening and the swamp gas was nauseating… I didn’t actually mind ruining those supply camps behind enemy lines.

I’m quite glad we didn’t go to Sweinhart with the message, Zebulos really shouldn’t be asking for aid or lending any to that guy. The only thing I will give to Sweinhart is that the general is holding the southern territories fairly well with what he has, the guy still let Devotindos be taken and will never earn any sympathy from me.

Zebulos and Zephyrus guys might be too nice sometimes and possibly optimistically naïve, but they were good people at the very least… aside from Axel Gear who’s been a part of every devastating incident over the last five years.

There’s no doubt Axel’s involved in this trouble too, but where is he? If there was anyone that actively goes looking for a deadly fight, it would be him.

Being Couriers might be playing to our advantage in that respect, even if we’re drawing a large amount of attention by going straight through Gedol held territories for the exceedingly small chance of finding allies out here. At least we gave those Gedol grunts on their back lines a huge black eye by hitting their supply chains and demoralizing them.

I trusted our ride enough to not poison us with baked goods, that it now seems capable of pulling out of nowhere. What I don’t trust is that dog, Colleen, something wasn’t quite right about her.

She seemed familiar with the rocket pack the lizard had with him and was making me quite suspicious about what she possibly did for Yellow Dog. I’d keep quiet until she did something worth acting on. The armored panther machine also held her curious gaze for more time than I was comfortable with.

I have good reason to be paranoid when evil cores machines were on the rise and getting worse. If any one of them disguised themselves as a living being, then everyone could be badly screwed over if they manage to get into a position of power. I just had to keep my eyes open for it.

In fact… I noted that Colleen was working with that stolen shrimp claw and had modified it into a handheld weapon with an attached handle and everything. Was she a scientist, a spy or Special Forces, I only had so much information.

When something concrete comes up, I’ll let my sword do all the talking. Unlike other pigs, I wasn’t going to be the mind controlled idiot bleeding out on the ground.

-Jean-

I lashed out my tongue and tasted the fruits of these wetlands, Mystical Mire, the tastes and smells of home welcomed me. We were to delivering a message to the amphibian king and I believe we would make it without trouble at this point, we also managed to get through enemy lines and messed up their supply depots.

I believed that I would be of great help in this region to all my friends, I knew the swamp lands like the back of my webbed hands. If we didn’t meet any Gedol on the way in towards the castle, then that would be a miracle.

I wonder if my people are alright, machines like Land Striders were usually harder to field around water and mud really. We were hard for evil core machines to assault, the heavier the worst off they’d be. The mire was a natural barrier against machinery and even machine’s like Dodo would be hard pressed to launch a successful assault as the water and muck would slow them down immensely.

Turning my gaze to our newest companion, one of which might cause a bit of trouble, I would seek to help him to the best of my abilities in his righteous need to escape being under the yoke of tyranny. We amphibians tried to keep to ourselves, so in this case I was an exception and not the rule as to wanting to help.

My people were a bit… lazy, or at the very least wary of fighting outside our home field advantage. I think I did well enough by becoming a mercenary and trying to find a job, my being a part of the White Knight Couriers was a rather prestigious position for me to be in. Well I thought it was prestigious by personal opinion, I doubt I would have made a good soldier in the actual Zebulos or Zephyrus militaries.

I idly wondered what our lizard could do with the machine that Dodo deftly dealt with when we heroically charged straight through a Gedol camp for the third time this day. The front lines in Zephyrus will hopefully acknowledge that we took some of the pressure off of them.

I looked over to Pom, she was an odd one as she rested in an adorable manner. She was fluffy, friendly and didn’t look dangerous, inside the kin of lambs beat the heart of a true hero. Having fought alongside her, I got a good glimpse of what she was like. Having watched her take down the panther machine without a weapon and just her natural abilities was quite awe inspiring. That she looked like a pillow added to the image of being something quite approachable.

She was fearful, anxious and skittish, but she was truly something else to keep pushing forward regardless of the obstacles ahead and acts for the sake of others. To think she’s just considered an average guard where she is from.

Someone was definitively underselling Pom’s worth on any battlefield in my humble opinion. Her young charge Shanty was just as impressive with her magical slashing hooves, which was as magical as her ability to climb upon any surface.

Smolder was a curious one, I thought her to be doomed when she was engulfed in flames after helping me. Sure she could breathe fire, but I didn’t think she was immune to heat entirely. Despite her youth, she was really tough and knew how to wield a ribbon like a whip with expert skill.

When Ocellus told me that Smolder’s people got as big as mountains, I didn’t know if I could believe her or not, but apparently Pom lived on one of said mountains that houses the spirit of the dragon that made it.

What wondrous places these strange people come from. I looked out at the flat wetlands as we traveled along at an even pace, as slow as Dodo the friendly land strider was willing to go at least. He was right to be cautious as we passed by another land strider rusting in the mud nearby and not ten feet off to our left side.

The land strider simply looked like legs with a control platform, said legs were almost entirely in the mire and the platform was halfway sticking out of it. Looked to be one of the most basic land striders the pigs used years ago, fully manual machines with flamethrowers if I recall… didn’t help in the mire and the humidity weakened such weapons like that horribly. The pigs didn’t keep trying to press us at the time as they couldn’t move an army through the mire at any pace that would catch us by surprise.

I continued on to my observations of the comrades I had with me. I didn’t pay attention to the various other land striders resting the mire.

Bruno was aggressive and a bit mean, but he was a hero of Cladinhold’s eastern front. Now Colleen, she was probably one of the prettiest dogs that I’ve ever seen. I do not know her background, but she treats everyone coldly. Everyone except for Pom that is, she was a lot warmer when Pom was present.

I should ask.

“Ocellus, might I have a moment of you time?” I leaned forward and use the inoperative large cat machine as a table to rest my arms on.

“Sure, what is it Jean?” Ocellus was a wonderful translator and a rather odd being, she apparently can cast magic from her horn and had other abilities she hasn’t shown off… at least since the rumors of her saving a burning village by making it rain by taking on a different form.

“Why does Colleen seem to act so strangely around Pom?” Being blunt helped people understand you much more easily, but sometimes I tried to figure out how to be sensitive to another’s plight.

“Pom apparently has a thing with any species of canine. This includes foxes, wolves, dogs and anything like them… don’t know how a robotic canine would act around her, but I’m quite sure it would have some effect.” Ocellus didn’t exactly explain what that ‘thing’ was. “She’s like a magnet, something about her is alluring to such species. Anything under the idea of what a ‘canine’ specifically is will want to either be her friend or love her. This is as much a detriment as it is a good thing for Pom.”

“How would having a fast friendship with any manner of canine, beast or intelligent, be a bad thing?” This was interesting and Colleen seemed to be more focused on fiddling with her makeshift weapon than listening to us.

“What part of magnetic did you not understand? While Pom would be safe entering Yellow Dog territory, they might not be keen to let her go. Think about what would happen if decided to keep her against her will. Think about how much worse it would be if they loved her and took that too far…” Ah yes, that would actually be pretty bad now that you brought it up Ocellus. You were paling at the same thoughts I was. I was a gentle frog and I would never stoop to ever coming close to doing something so horrid as to force myself upon another as Ocellus just suggested could happen to Pom. “Something like that could actually get pretty bad… now may I ask you a question? Other than that one of course.”

“Go ahead.” I thought about how one would go about fighting the entirety of Yellow Dog while I gave Ocellus my attention and a smile.

I wonder what happened to Yellow Dog after Generalissimo Lioness’s death in the Eginasem crisis, some would even say that he died long before the crisis even began.

I am quite thankful my people are overall neutral and haven’t been dragged into things like this prior, but we were here to ask for help all the same. At least I thought that’s what the missive we were delivering to the castle would say.

“How many ways are there into the kingdom of the amphibians?” It suddenly comes to mind that Ocellus, one of my newest friends, resembles or looks to be part bug. I will resist salivating about the thought of bugs being as big as her as she is a friend and comrade. “Aside from that I think I like the atmosphere around here. The humidity is warm and it’s kind of cozy. You’re homelands seem nice, if a bit too wet. I’m come from some badlands, but my people have begun on projects things greener.”

“There is but two paths to Castle Hydrigal, we are currently on the main one and the eventual split we will pass leads to where our cousins the lizards are from. I would have suspected that Gedol forces would have blockaded our path forward, but it seems we’re in the clear if we haven’t seen any sign of them yet.” That and I was glad that Pom may continue to get her much needed rest as we continued forward, she is under a lot of stress and could use a break. “The lizards of Gedol mostly live in the darker and heavier parts of the forested swamps, whereas we live in a lake surrounded by open wetlands and mire.”

“Nice to know.” Ocellus was pleasant to talk with, but mostly because I couldn’t talk with and understand the others among her friends. Dodo was easy enough to understand in comparison, he had simple wants and needs. “So, what is Hydrigal like?”

-An hour later, Colleen-

Some testing would be needed for this thing later, I think I’ve finished fiddling with my makeshift energy weapon and it would hopefully be more efficient to use now. I eyed the knock-off rocket pack the lizard brought into our midst as I stowed my weapon.

I could recalibrate it, but I would rather talk with the lizard first before trying anything with the knock-off. It was possibly one of the closest things I’ve seen to a rocket knight’s pack, this thing has been heavily modified and I wanted to explore the brain behind this… because they were likely onto something.

Hearing a yawn, my ears perked up as I turned towards Pom. Things were so quiet in the Mystical Mire that she managed to get her nap in and I was fairly worried about her.

Pom was strong, also adorable and hard to associate with the thing that took down an evil core a few hours ago with how she slept so cutely while kicking one of her rear legs out. She sat up and stretched out, her bandages tightening on her small, yet impressive, musculature of her petite form.

Pom glanced around the wagon and looked to the unconscious lizard with a bit of worry and then just leaned back to look out of the front of the vehicle.

There were so many things wrong with my feelings around her, Ocellus even explained this effect to me and I still didn’t have the mental fortitude to ward it off.

It was rather mind boggling.

I shook my head of the thoughts running through them about how unnaturally attractive Pom was.

I hoped we reached the Castle Hydrigal soon, I did not relish the idea of being out late at night in the mire. One that was full of machine’s that were rusted, caked in mud, soggy with water and possibly a few evil cores from years past buried under all of it that could still activate and cause trouble.

Also something had me on edge, there wasn’t much noise aside from us and the heavy feet of the machine named 'Dodo' looking about warily as he continued forward. Even the machine knows that something is up with this late evening as our star sets over the horizon.

Bruno clutched his sword closer to himself and his eyes darted about while looking out the back of the wagon for something. Jean was looking out the front with his hand on his rapier, curiosity in his eyes trying to find something that just wasn’t there.

Ocellus seemed perfectly fine though. I do not understand her method of detecting them, but she would know if an evil core was around.

I know it didn’t seem like a great idea, but I decided to try and talk to Pom. Not in a local language, but in the ancient language of Yellow Dog, a language much more emotional and feral. I wasn’t good at it, but I wanted to talk to her badly enough to try and remember how to speak it.

“Caution, advisement, wariness, haste.” I barked out in several yips not knowing whether or not my words could be understood.

Pom gave me a curious glance as if she didn’t think I could speak it.

“Not living evil motion?” Pom responded back fluidly in concern that it might be an evil core. She could understand the old language and even sounded like she was impossibly fluent in it even as she barked and yipped back to me.

“No, area quiet.” I nodded to Ocellus as I barked this, she currently wasn’t suffering from head pains. “Bug detect area yes?”

“Quiet bad?” Pom queried with a few yips and some emotional distress behind them.

Smolder said something to Ocellus and she answered her while motioning between us.

“Yes, maybe trouble. Area dark bad.” I pointed out the starlight dipping beyond the horizon and she nodded to say something to her companions before turning back to me and clearing her throat.

“If I’m understanding this right, given the language you’re currently speaking, if we’re out at dark in the mire something bad might happen?” Okay, Pom just surprised me with how understandable that was with a series of barks, low howls, growls and yips she made. I nodded vigorously in response, she was quite eloquent and I appreciated the sound of her voice every time she spoke ancient Yellow Dog. “Ah, I think I got the dialect correct now. If it’s not an evil core machine that we should be worried about coming from the mire, then what could it be?”

“Yes speak, speak good. My speak ancient not good.” My use of the language was sloppy and stilted, hers was an impossibly crafted masterpiece that could express any kind of possible conveyance one would ever need. “Something dangerous dark area, large feeling.”

“You speak well enough to me. As Ocellus might have told you, I’m Pom.” That Pom can even use proper names in the language astounds me to no end. “Why haven’t you tried this sooner?”

“Not know speak, try speak sight…” I was at a loss of how to put it into words.

“So you decided to test it to see if I could understand you?” Pom yipped at me and I nodded, my words were abhorrent and hers sounded ever sweeter and clearer now than when we started. “Can you at least give an idea of the problem or is it unknown?”

“Unknown.” I echoed her last word in the way she said it.

-Pom-

“Shanty, tell Dodo to pick up the pace and get us to the castle, we’re not camping out here tonight. Not with someone injured and the possibility that something is up with the mire.” As I watched Shanty start talking to Dodo, Smolder grabbed my attention.

“So you didn’t actually need Ocellus to translate?” Smolder asked with a curious gaze.

“Colleen’s use of this particular dialect of canine is pretty off, she almost can’t speak in full sentences and I have to fill in the gaps with what I know. Ocellus would still be more accurate for a full discussion.” The wagon jerked and I flailed a bit as Dodo started moving much faster down the soggy road of the mire. “She just tried to speak to me on a whim in what little she knows to see if I could understand her, with what she calls an ancient language. As a speaker of so many dialects of canine it wasn’t that hard to ferret out a good dialect that she could understand, it’s just extremely weird that it’s the Timber Wolf dialect that she understands. By her appearance I was expecting something more along the lines of Shepherd, Retriever or Collie.”

“So Ocellus would still be a better option got it.” Thankfully Smolder understood. “At least we got another person that can translate so it’s not all on our dear sweet Ozzy.”

We heard Jean exclaim something and pointed out a rising structure in the distance with its drawbridge still down.

The Castletown and Castle Hydrigal, on our approach we noticed a few things that made us wary.

No guards on the walls, no fire lit to show activity as we cross the bridge towards the castle's town on the lake and once we reached the drawbridge.

Dodo stopped just short of it and kicked the mud off his feet to the side and then, warbling warily, walked across the drawbridge .

The town was eerily silent, Jean looked worried for his people. No smell of evening meals cooking, no sounds of animals in the late hours, nothing.

Well, we were already here, we weren’t turning around now… no matter how much I would wish to flee the area as fast as Dodo could possibly go and I’m well aware that he can break the sound barrier.

“Ocellus, tell Jean and Colleen to raise the drawbridge.” I stated slowly while looking across the empty bridge we just crossed. “I don’t... like the idea of it being down.”

Once those two did as I asked, we moved into the town proper after lighting a few torches for visibility as everything was dark.

No light in any of the windows we were passing.

“Where be everyone?” Shanty asked while shivering and eyes darting about nervously.

“That’s what we’re going to find out Shanty, we’ll stop before we reach the castle and set up camp in a defendable corner somewhere.” A shiver ran down my spine as we continued forward quietly.

Sniffing the air, I turned to curiously spot freshly cooling pies...

There were no other signs of life anywhere nearby, something disturbing was going on here.

Author's Note

Colleen will get some time to discuss her past with Pom eventually.

53. A pervasive silence.

Author's Note

Rocket Knight might have a lot of science fiction in it, but it also has fantasy.

Music- Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis. Battle against the Dead of night.

53. A pervasive silence.

-Ponyville, School of Friendship, Gallus-

“Well… this is awkward, but I really have to ask.” I was rubbing at the feathers on my head and looking at the table in front of me. “How did you learn to play chess so well? Smolder is never going to let me live this down if she ever hears about this.”

The response was the various clucking noises Edith made and something that sounded like exceedingly smug chuckling.

I wondered if I could eventually find a familiar, maybe with Fluttershy’s help. I thought I was smarter than a cockatrice, but Edith was definitely more intelligent than the average lizard chicken and I would chalk that up to her somehow being bonded to Silver Stream.

-Castle Town, Northwest Corner, Hydrigal, Pom-

When we stopped to start setting up camp in the corner of the walls around Hydrigal’s castle town, my curiosity was getting the best of me… as much as the silence of the entire town making me anxious to figure out what happened here. There being barely any signs of life was creepy.

There was no blood, no bodies, no damaged buildings, no signs of a siege or a scuffle, airships didn’t drop bombs on the town or castle.

This place just seemed for lack of a better term… dead.

I could probably hear a pin drop down the street, the chill in my spine and the nervousness I was experiencing was slowly getting to me.

Hydrigal’s castle town was a large rectangle area line with buildings of stone and glass, what separates this from the castle was a large moat and a bridge. The castle town was surrounded by a wall that also surrounded the castle which had its own walls and one entrance. We currently weren’t in sight of the bridge leading up to the castle.

The castle town had an entrance from the south, the walls surrounded the whole castle town and went on to surround the castle.

Since we had closed off the southern entrance, we hadn’t heard a single noise aside from the ones we created, like the sound of my hooves hitting the cobblestone streets.

Behind the drawbridge we passed through to get to where we were now was a portcullis, there was another portcullis at the entrance to the bridge leading up to the castle and likely another at the entrance to the castle itself. I wanted to check on something related to this thought.

“Ocellus, make sure no one leaves this area for any reason and nobody goes off alone unless someone needs to do their business. In that case make sure that two people are present at all times with one wall between them. If you have to break into a nearby building to make a bathroom readily available. Dodo, since you don’t need sleep, you’re on watch… if anything approaches this area alert someone if it isn’t any one of us.” Hearing an affirmative mechanical warble, I turned to my companion of choice to scout out a few things. We needed more information before something snuck up on us. “Smolder, come with me. I need you to corroborate something with me and we need to look for clues as to what happened to the people that used to be here.”

“Right, I don’t know about anyone else here Pom, but dragons are supposed to be brave. So why do I feel a chill down my back from just being here?” Well that was one thing confirmed for me Smolder, I wasn’t the only one having that particular feeling. “This place screams eerie, not the fun Nightmare Night kind either. There’s just something foreboding going on here.”

“It’s not just you, I think we’re all feeling something is quite wrong here.” I glanced at Jean just looking around with worry, he didn’t seem so jolly at the moment and his hand was constantly resting on his rapier as his eyes looked about for an unseen enemy. This town was supposed to be full of amphibians like him, yet it was silent… not even the wind was blowing through here. “Just stay right next to me, we’re going to check on something real quick while the others set up camp.”

We left the northwest corner walking to the east along the wall, with me holding my torch high and Smolder fiddling with the ribbon tied to her left horn nervously. The others had their backs to the wall, wish I currently did, I didn’t feel safe moving around out in the open.

I had a few spare torches in my bag and some snacks in case something happened. Smolder was here to light another torch for me quickly if needed. I turned right and walked down the main street back towards the place where I saw those unattended cooling pies outside of what was likely a bakery.

When we got there, we saw two pie tins… no pies. Not even a crumb or the slightest hint of dust of what used to be in them. We know nothing had been through this area, not even Shanty would touch the unknown pies and it would have been dumb to do so without knowing whether or not they were poisonous.

“Smolder… I don’t want to alarm you but…” I swept the torch around, the cloudy skies weren’t letting any moonlight in and the shadows of the buildings were making this night even darker than it should be.

“Yeah, I know, I saw them on the way in too…” Smolder stated while looking around at the ground. “Nobody could have eaten those pies without even a slight mess getting on the ground or leaving a few crumbs behind.”

“Right, next w-we’ll c-c-check the entrance to the castle…” Not being able to get the stuttering out of my voice, I quickly turned around and started walking back towards the north with Smolder following me and looking behind us warily.

There wasn’t even a hint of residue in the pie tins, so they hadn’t been licked clean. I stopped for a second and looked back… the pie tins were no longer there. Smolder frozen and was about to look back when I turned without saying a word and continued forward.

I started watching the rooftops and air around the buildings as we came to the archway entrance to the bridge that lead up to the castle, the portcullis was up.

I slowly gulped and made my way across the bridge with Smolder continuing to look behind us as we did, she was the one that was looking into the alleyways and various paths that we passed walking down the main street.

At the end of the bridge we came to a silent looming castle with the portcullis to the castle’s courtyard down.

I didn’t see much through the portcullis as I raised my torch close to it, but something was out here… or at least it seemed like that to us. The pies and the tins that they were in could have just been my imagination… but Smolder had seen them too. We hadn’t touched them or moved them.

We hadn’t heard anything and the pie tins hadn’t moved from their positions, but the cooling pies in them certainly did without the tins being damaged or even leaving a single crumb and when we started to walk away they the empty tins disappear.

I slowly back away from the portcullis with my thoughts disturbed and turned around to cross the bridge again, Smolder following me while looking both forward and back at the lowered portcullis we were leaving behind. My torch held aloft in my right hoof.

“Okay we need to break the silence, because I’m starting to get terrified here…” I passed under the raised portcullis back into the town and turned right to head to the corner our camp was being set up in. “So… how have you been feeling about all our adventures so far?”

“Things could be better, I really just want to go back to Ponyville and sit down to at a table in Sugar Cube Corner with my other friends or maybe be in the dragon lands with my brother.” Smolder was as jumpy as I was as the torch flickered and waved as it slowly burned down, I was about ready to jump at any shadows that came at us. “I would also like to file a formal complaint about our current circumstances.”

I remember facing the shadow monsters and this was beginning to feel like we were being stalked by them, yet none of my senses other than the chill in my spine from all the silence could detect anything other than the two of us and those ahead at the forming campsite.

The wagon was pressed up against the wall and Dodo was sitting a short distance away and swiveling his head to the left and right watching both directions that our camp could be stealthily approached by other than straight up.

He made mechanical trill at seeing us, but stay seated where his was and even glanced skyward, he was quite alert and seemed to be as quite wary as we were feeling. Jean was getting a fire started, Colleen was hugging herself sitting next to it waiting to get warmed up.

Bruno, Shanty and Ocellus were busy setting up a large tent next to the wagon, we were all going to be in one tent. Ocellus finished what she was doing and came over to me.

“Did you find something?” Ocellus asked while her eyes looked beyond us.

“We found the absence of something that we saw on the way in.” Smolder responded while shivering.

“Something is… here… probably…” My tone made Ocellus shiver. “Whatever it might be, it is absolutely silent because we didn’t hear anything moving around.”

“This place is getting spookier by the minute, the only thing that could make this worse is if this place was covered in fog.” Please don’t make this worse for us Smolder.

Jean seemed to have asked something of Ocellus and she responded in kind, he said something back and seemed quite wary of our surroundings. Our amphibian friend was shivering as nearly as badly as I was.

“Well Smolder, he said that it does get quite foggy around the outside of town. We’re going to probably need to set out some lanterns to burn all night long.” Ocellus shivered a bit. “Pom... I don’t feel comfortable with this place. The absence of emotions other than ours makes this all feel really off.”

“Yeah, I think we’re all experiencing it, even Dodo.” I was shaking quite a bit, this place was starting to feel less and less welcoming. We came here to deliver something to King Hydrigal and barring that we’re going to at least find out what happened to the people. “So we found the portcullis to the castle itself closed, but the portcullis into town and to the bridge to castle were both open.”

“So you don’t think we’re alone, but I don’t feel anything other than us. If it was an evil core machine that caused this, then I would have been able to sense it.” Ocellus seemed worried, we should all be worried about what happened.

“I think we should check some of the buildings in the morning, all of us together and none of us should do anything separately or go anywhere beyond our campsite tonight.” It was for the best that we did, because I didn’t want us to be slowly picked off be going anywhere on our own. “I think what’s happening here is not the result of a machine, I think we’re dealing with a magical problem and I sincerely hope that we’re not currently dealing with some form of genius loci or worse… a lotus eater realm.”

“Genius loci, lotus eater realm?” Shanty came to sit down next to me after Jean got the campfire going. “Are the lotus’s being tasty there?”

“No Shanty, most of those things are not good news. Genius Loci are places that generally have spirits that can act in a limited or incredible fashion based on the location. One example would be Huoshan the dragon’s whose body created the mountain that all the longma live on, the spirit made the mountain erupt to protect the people in a dire time of need. A genius loci can be reasoned with and are as the name suggests intelligent. The other two things are arguably worse.” My breathing was starting to become panicked and I quickly slowed it down for it got out of control. “Normal lotuses are edible. Lotus Eaters on the other hoof, are a type of lotus that when eaten will trap you into eating more until you perish and you forget everything else. A lotus eater realm does something similar, it generates illusions that tend to more often than not kill the person said illusions are targeting depending on what the realm is set to do. Lotus eater realms tend to mess with and manipulate the minds to either a goal or lethality. Anything we see aside from the buildings, glass or the very ground we stand on might not be real. We know that we’re all real… so far… but it’s best to keep your senses sharp. What may fool one sense might not fool another if we’re in one of those situations. If this feeling we’re all getting is just outright illusion magic, then it’s only just as dangerous as the intelligence behind it.”

“This place is becoming scarier by the second.” Shanty huddled up against me as we sat around the campfire. “Is there any way to know for sure if we’re in one?”

“Yes, but it takes a while to find that out and usually by accident, if you don’t find out quickly enough… let’s just change the topic.” I turned to Ocellus. “Can you tell Jean and the others about my suspicions?”

As Ocellus did so, I tossed my waning torch into the flames Jean got going and turned to face away from the warmth of the campfire and stared out into the darkness.

Around us was nothing but silence, the crackling fire being the loudest thing around.

-Colleen-

“Is such a thing actually possible?” I asked of Ocellus after she described what sounded like a horror story that is usually told at campfires like this one.

“Does magic exist in this world?” Ocellus lit up her horn and generated really bad fake image of some fruits. “Don’t write off anything as being impossible, especially not when we’re all feeling suspicious about our surroundings… this place is entirely silent and we’re all feeling chills down our backs. Pom thinks it could be a genius loci or a lotus eater realm, but she’s hoping for neither and so am I. I’d rather it be something less dangerous than what we’ve been facing.”

The minute she stopped talking, we heard what she was talking about or more to the point… we didn’t hear anything at all. Well anything aside from everyone breathing or the crackling of the campfire’s flames, even the machine that pulled us here was quite silent and on the lookout for anything amiss.

The lizard was still in the wagon and we’d have to move him to the tent soon. It was going to get cold tonight and even if I didn’t like the lizard being here, I wouldn’t let him freeze to death.

Pom had her back turned to the fire and she was fairly nervous.

“My people…” Having drawn our attention, Jean looked to be quite down. “If it is some magical monster, I would face them standing tall. If I knew which direction that I needed to be facing in that is.”

“We’ll figure something out slime boy.” Bruno muttered crassly.

“It’s mucus.” Stated Jean flatly.

“Doesn’t mean it’s not slimy or a type of slime.” Bruno retorted, while gazing at the clouds overhead. “If we can trust the machine to keep a lookout, then we might be getting some sleep in tonight. So what are we doing in the morning, provided that we’re still alive by then bug eyes?”

“We’re going to be checking out a few buildings in the town and then we’re going to try and get into the castle to see if there’s anything that can be found on what’s going on around here.” Ocellus didn’t seem to be having any head pains, so we’re sure a machine is not doing… whatever all this is.

If they are right and we’re facing something magical… I’d rather fight an evil core machine, at least those things were quite obvious in their movements and easy to see coming.

-Hours later, Shanty-

I gasped and sat up, I be feeling Pom stirred at my movements and soon she stilled to continue sleeping.

I looked around the tent, we had three lanterns active around the campsite, one in the tent and two outside with Dodo. I be getting up and seeing that Colleen was lying next to us at Pom’s hooves. I carefully step around her and by Smolder and Ocellus snuggled together on my way out of the tent.

Looking around, I see the lizard wrapped in bandages for his burns stirred, but he not be getting up. He still be looking alright and breathing.

I go to the entrance of the tent and looked outside. Dodo be sitting there dutifully watching out for us, I approach him and he turned to me and made a happy sound.

I be feeling something odd… as if the fog were watching us.

“Hey Dodo, be seeing anything?” Other than the thick fog surrounding our campsite that is, I be seeing that already. It almost being as dark as it was last night.

Dodo warbled something I took to mean ‘negative’ or ‘no’, he green eyes were sweeping left, right and up. He be a very good machine and our protective friend, he be sitting in that spot all night awake for us and thankfully he didn’t have the problem of parts of his body falling asleep on him by sitting in one place for too long.

Everything was being far too quiet for my liking. It be reminding me of when I was younger, all alone, by myself. It not be breaking me then, it definitely won’t be breaking me now.

I still did not be liking it, the loneliness or the silence as I made my way to the wagon and got some fruit from the supplies for myself. I warily eyed the large and dangerous cat machine, it hadn’t moved once since we loaded it onto our wagon and it is being creepy to me right now.

I made my way over to Dodo and sat by him, he nuzzled me gently with his beak and gave me a soft mechanical warble that was reassuring me that he was here for me.

I be eating my fruit quietly, when something terrifying be happening. The big cat machine, with lifeless eyes, launched out of our wagon and charged off into the fog. The noise from its metal claws hitting the street quickly petered out.

I be looking at Dodo and he be looking right back at me in confusion.

“Did that just be happening?” I didn’t hear any noise of the cat machine running. Dodo nodded to me and warbled worriedly. “We be staying here, I do not want to be going after it by myself and you be needed here to protect our stuff.”

“Going after… whoa…” Pom be stepping out of the tent and seeing the thick fog surrounding us. “We should ask Jean if this is normal, this much fog being in the town just doesn’t make any sense.”

“Pom, the big cat machine be running off!” I pointed to the wagon and she quickly went over there to check. “Dodo keep doing a good job for me okay?”

I quickly made my way over to Pom checking the wagon and she was checking some light claw markings inside the wagon.

“Why now…” Muttered Pom looking less fearful than I thought she’d be, she turned to me. “What did it do?”

“I be getting fruit from the wagon and was eating it next to Dodo, then the machine be launching out of the wagon and running off into the fog.” That was all it be doing, other than that there was the odd silence. No insects, no living beings aside from us. The machine that the lizard had used just suddenly got up and ran off on it's own. “That is all it be doing.”

“Wake up everyone... quickly!” Pom went to climb on top of Dodo and started to look around with her left hoof over her eyes.

I made my way into the tent and did just that.

-Bruno-

“Was that wall there last night?” I asked drawing the attention of Mutt, Slimy and Buggy.

“No… no it wasn’t.” Buggy stated as our corner was now enclosed on three sides by walls, the new wall being to our south having not been there previously. She walked up to it and pressed her hoof against it. “It’s quite solid and…”

She struck it with a hoof and blinked.

“It’s real.” She had a frightened look on her face as she turned to inform the lamb of this.

-Pom-

With some minor exploration, we discovered that we couldn’t actually explore the town. There were walls to the south across every street and alleyway. The claw marks of the panther machine lead it to going across the bridge to the castle, the only direction we could seemingly go in.

Something was herding us and I didn’t like it at all. Shanty and I could try to climb over these walls, but I have a feeling that whatever wanted us to go to the castle was not going to like that.

Let’s test that theory then...

“Shanty, with me quickly!” I leapt at a wall and clung to it, Shanty was right at my side a second later as I charged straight up the wall.

Within seconds a thick fog slid across the top of the top of the walls and a solid roof made of bricks suddenly congealed into existence and spread out above us cutting us from just simply climbing over the wall. Both Shanty and I slid back down the wall.

“Well that just confirms it, something is here and it’s trying to force us towards Castle Hydrigal.” My words were met with stares and Ocellus translated what I just said.

There was silence, like we didn’t have enough of that already.

I didn’t like this one bit, time to test one last thing.

I picked up my bag and pulled a torch from it, I held it out to Smolder who lit it without a second thought.

I moved to the southern wall that wasn’t there previously and held the torch close to it and a hole formed in the wall dissipating into a mass of fog. The bricks looked like they decayed until the light no longer fully touched them.

“Well... that... is curious…” The brick wall scattered into fog as soon as I got the light close enough to it and I glanced at my torch. “Okay, we’re taking the wagon with us to the castle, the bridge can support its weight. We need to have lanterns going at all times around our supplies, the wagon and Dodo. Be on the lookout for the mechanical panther, whatever took control of it might be a problem.”

“I have concerns about all this Pom.” Said a shivering Ocellus.

“You and all of us Ocellus.” I shivered as we set about gather our tent and stowing them away in the wagon.

I was afraid of what was hiding in the fog and what caused the rather unnerving silence in Hydrigal.

54. Into the castle.

-Equus, Ponyville, Hayburger, Silver Stream-

“So Smolder and Ocellus were adorable together even then?” I asked Shimmy Shake, one of the two ponies I was sharing lunch with.

“Oh yeah, totally!” Shimmy Shake was one of the cheerleader friends of our friends, I was branching out to share lunch with her and Lighthoof at the local Hayburger. “They were so excited to learn about cheerleading together, then Rainbow Dash happened.”

“It’s just like watching you and Gallus spend time together.” After Lighhoof said that I could definitely feel my face turning red.

I started to dig my face into my fries to try and hide my embarrassment in ketchup, being messy was fun sometimes.

“I’m sure that wherever they are Stream, that they are perfectly safe.” Shimmy tried to be reassuring, but I wasn’t so sure.

-Elhorn, Hydrigal, castle town streets, Ligstrun-

I slowly came too in the back of a moving vehicle, I tried to roll over only something held me in place. I suddenly felt very unsafe at the moment as much as I felt agonizing pain in my back.

“Don’t roll over, the scales on your back are pretty badly burnt.” I was gently admonished and stayed there laying on my belly with blankets and pillows underneath me. “Calm down now, it is okay, your safe with us. For the time being anyway. What are you currently feeling?”

“Searing agony running up and down my back… what… what happened?” I decided to be hopefully as I opened my eyes and looked into that of a strangers, her eyes looked bug like.

“Well you tried to help my friend Pom, but… you injured yourself doing it.” The quadruped bug thing said with a worried tone. “Can you sit up? Here…”

As she helped me into a sitting position, a dog that could only come from the Yellow Dog Army made a comment that drew my attention. As the bug thing started to unwind the bandages from my tail and torso.

“Yeah, you burned your back with the rocket pack. The calibrations on it were off, but it is almost close to being like the real thing a rocket knight would use. You just don’t have the kind of protections needed to use it correctly.” The nearby dog said with her hand on a small energy weapon of some kind as she looked outside the back of the wagon at a brick wall.

How would she know the calibrations were off? It would be certainly useful to know what was wrong with the rocket pack if she could fix the problem with it.

“Hold still while I apply some medication.” The bug thing moved behind me and I started to feel a soothing feeling, her gentle hooves soon ran up and down my back. The pain was cooling down as something was pressed into my scales. “This should help with the pain, it’s a good thing we picked up some burn medication after the whole octobot situation. I’m betting the next evil core machine we see also has a thing for fire as much as it does landscape destruction.”

“Nobody would ever take a bet that dumb.” The nearby pig said idly while looking over his sword.

“Where are we?” I looked outside the front of the wagon and saw the land strider looking across a bridge at a large castle.

“About that, we’re currently in Hydrigal and we have a bit of a dangerous situation. I’m Ocellus.” Ocellus introduced herself as she continued to rub some stuff onto my back. “That’s Smolder, Pom, Shanty, Dodo, Bruno, Colleen and Jean.”

Wait, this was Hydrigal? The city of the amphibians in Mystical Mire? Why did the air around here feel… wrong?

“Dangerous in so far as we don’t know what’s going on.” The pig eyed me with suspicion as he said this, he had reason to be. It was my people that kicked the pigs out of Devotindos City, now completely under Gedol control.

“We do have some idea Bruno. Raise your arms, so I can wrap you back up please.” Listening to Ocellus, she started to wrap my torso and tail back up, she turned to the sheep that I helped catch after she got caught in the explosion the Panth-Zer unit caused when its core was destroyed. The sheep looked perfectly fine for having been that close to an evil core going critical, Ocellus was saying a few things to her in a rather melodic language. After the sheep said a few things back, nodding Ocellus turned to the rest of us. “From what we saw when we were packing things away in the wagon, Pom said light and heat are a weakness to the semisolid illusions created by the fog. Beyond that we don’t know what else is going on here.”

“What… fog…?” I looked out the back of the wagon and saw a thick fog billowing where the walls once were, but it didn’t seem to move towards us. It was staying a bit distant from the lantern light from inside and outside the wagon. “What’s going on?”

“I wish you knew, then I would have answers as to where my little sister and mother are.” The quiet amphibian said in a fearful tone as he stared out the front of the wagon at the huge castle and the fog flowing thickly around it and in the moat off the sides of the bridge. “We are going to Castle Hydrigal to find out what is causing this, yes?”

“That’s what we’re going to do, all of you currently have the opportunity to back out now. Pom thinks that once we start crossing the bridge the portcullis will drop behind us. We won’t be able to escape very easily from that point forward.” If Ocellus was telling me the truth, then we were at the entrance to the bridge leading up to Castle Hydrigal. “At least until we deal with whatever this is.”

I’ve never been here before, but I heard that Hydrigal was supposed to be a lot more cheerful and colorful. The fog was supposed to go around the city creating rainbows, not inside of it and creating a sense of dread.

This was supposed to be a place known for its artists, artisans and cooks, that wasn’t to say they didn’t have martial prowess. The people around here were known for high end aquatic combat and could effortlessly swim through mud and muck without suffocating. We lizards seriously didn’t want to fight the amphibians on their home turf for a variety of reasons, even if we had air superiority.

“The air around here, it feels… off.” The only thing I’ve ever had or seen from Hydrigal was a fruit fly pie. One that I was told wasn’t very well made and wasn’t the best the amphibians around here could do.

It had tasted really darn good to me and if it could be better… then I sincerely hope that whatever was going on here wasn’t permanent. That the people could all be saved.

“I’m seeing this through, I’m no coward!” The pig snorted out before he glanced my way.

“I wish to know more about this, I’m not going to back out.” The dog was also sending me looks.

“Do I really have a choice? I have nowhere to go and I really don’t want to die…” I looked at the cobblestone street to see claws marks as Ocellus finished tying off my bandages, they were the kind a Panth-Zer would make without its energy claws leading across the bridge in front of us. “Are those- are those claw marks?!”

“Yeah, that machine you took when you left your ‘friends’ behind, it came to life and supposedly ran straight to the castle.” The pig stated with concern and a grim look at the castle. “We’re going to see where it went or why we’re seemingly being pushed to go to the castle.”

“That should be impossible, it shouldn’t be able to move or go very far without simple commands. Not when it doesn’t have its evil core anymore.” I sat down and started to panic until I felt something gripping my shoulder, I looked into the eyes of the sheep.

They were gentle and reassuring, I calmed down a bit. Ocellus said her name was Pom? She seemed nice and I remembered her giving me such a look before, she was accepting of me without thinking much about what I am.

I think I needed that acceptance more than anything else right now, with the way both the dog and pig were eyeing me with suspicions.

“Impossible or not, it seems we’re facing a haunted castle. The town is empty of life and we have no true idea of what we are up against.” The dog stated with a flat no nonsense tone. “The only reason we stopped is because you started waking up. That the machine is capable of acting like it did without a core has me worried for more than one reason, can it activate its weapons like that?”

“It shouldn’t be able to, even I couldn’t activate them in its limited state.” As far as I knew, the weapon systems should not be able to activate.

This didn’t mean the machine wasn’t dangerous if it was going rogue or wild. It shouldn’t have the capacity to go wild or rogue though, I’m not an expert on evil cores or machines that run around on their own without them… I don’t think anyone is.

The dog turned and bark something, in what had to be ancient Yellow Dog considering how feral it sounded, to the sheep.

Pom nodded and turned to the goat and started to tell her something. The goat was currently straddling the land strider’s neck and she said something to the land strider.

The land strider seemed to be fairly wary of our surroundings and it started to stride forward across the bridge following the claw marks.

The second we were beyond the portcullis leading onto the bridge, it slammed down behind the wagon and it made us all jump as the fog wall swirled up to the portcullis and stopped.

“Well… that just clearly confirmed some fears.” The look on Ocellus’s face was deeply concerning.

“I’m Ligstrun by the way, I am… or was… a mechanic for Gedol.” I whimpered out, fixing machines used to be my job and I didn’t know what to do with myself now that I was on the run. “Please don’t hurt me, I’m not really much of a fighter… none of us that were forced into Gedol’s forces are.”

“It’s not us that you have to worry about Ligstrun.” Ocellus turned her gaze from me to the swirling fog around the castle, I gulped. “It’s whatever is going on in the castle that we need to be wary of.”

The land strider started forward again, it made a mechanical whining noise that sounded… afraid? Since when can machines be afraid… or have emotions for that matter? Animal style strider units tend to have rudimentary cores driving them.

Said cores weren’t necessarily evil or intelligent, then again I’ve never really studied a truly wild machine before and this one seemed to be ultimately friendly. Nobody is quite sure how Yellow Dog messed up and accidentally created wild machines, ones that reproduced like normal animals at a fixed rate and even acted like them. This machine was definitely one of the more intelligent ones, to a degree.

Most machines weren't really that complicated. Whatever this fog was that I was seeing, it didn’t have anything to do with mechanical engineering. It was also really quite silent, I could hear everyone breathing increasing in pace the closer we got to the open portcullis leading into the castle’s courtyard.

The claws marks heading straight into the castle made me fear that the Panth-Zer was on the loose in there.

-Pom-

Even expecting the first portcullis to slam down, it didn’t ease my nerves one bit when the second on came down locking us in with our supplies within the castle walls. Dodo pulled off to the side and was quickly unhitched from the wagon, he whined and looking around with worry.

I patted the side of his body with my left hoof and gave him a weak smile, he just nuzzled me with his beak and kept looking around.

“So his name is Ligstrun, he said he was a mechanic for Gedol.” Ocellus informed me after we stopped to eat some food for breakfast, Shanty already had a snack and we didn’t know when we were going to have an opportunity to eat again.

“So he fixes machinery like trains and prosthetics?” Well that was good news, at least he wouldn’t be around to help Gedol fix evil core machines if something broke in them.

“Yes, but I don’t think he understands any nuances beyond knowing how to do that, like how one would go about making an evil core or anything like it for instance.” From what we've already learned Ocellus, the prosthetics in this world had an insanely high chance to start eating your soul.

Back on Equus prosthetics were made to help the disabled, here they were likely made and used for warlike purposes where you lost bits of yourself until they outright consumed your entire being if the talk of Generalissimo Lioness was to be believed.

I certainly believed it was a bad idea to replace one’s body parts with machinery unless it was absolutely necessary.

“Okay we need to split up, we need people to wait out here with Dodo.” I wasn’t certain that Dodo would fair very well in the cramped hallways of the castle or be very maneuverable. “I’m definitely heading into the castle, can you ask the others what they want to do?”

-Ocellus-

I just got finished telling Smolder and Shanty who our new guest was.

“Right, Pom wants to know who’s going into the castle and who’s staying here with the wagon and Dodo.” For some reason I had caught Ligstrun’s interest.

“Who’s Dodo again?” He asked while wincing at his back shifting slightly.

“He’s our lovable mechanical friend here.” At my words Dodo warbled happily and nuzzled me, he was getting more affectionate and emotional as time went on. We knew he wasn’t just a machine, since he was acting less like one every day and was happy to be Shanty’s familiar. I pointed out each person for Ligstrun again. “Pom here is going in there, we expect you’ll be staying out here.”

“Y-yeah, I think I’m safer with the wagon and I don’t want to be a hindrance with my injuries.” Poor guy, he probably felt useless, I knew how that felt. “I’m no good in a fight and I’d be even worse than that as I currently am, at least I can check the wagon and make sure it’s in good condition at least. I don’t want to be a… a liability.”

“Can I borrow your rocket pack?” Colleen's question made us blink.

“Sure, I’ve no use for it anymore.” Ligstrun moaned out as he sat down and tried not to move too much, Colleen took the rocket pack and checked it over.

She slung it on her back and I personally hoped that she didn’t intend to use it after what happened to Ligstrun.

“I’m going.” Colleen stated firmly while glancing in Pom’s direction.

“Like you could keep me away from the action.” Bruno commented aggressively with a snort and squeal.

“I need to find out what became of my people.” Jean had the best reason out of us for going in. “And… my family…”

“I think I be wanting to sit this one out, besides it be being better if I was here for Dodo.” Shanty for once wasn’t rushing headlong into a fight, it seems she was less than enthusiastic about this place. “I can be watching Mr. Strum.”

“It’s ‘Strun’, Shanty, Ligstrun.” I received a shrug from Shanty who smiled a bit.

“Yep, Mr. Strum.” Shanty insisted not a second afterward. “That is what I be saying.”

“So no one’s going to bring up the fact that Lig’s only wearing shorts?” Smolder queried.

“You’re not wearing anything at all Smolder.” I stated flatly.

“I withdraw my previous statement.” Smolder immediately backpedaled, she seemed a bit nervous. “I’m… I’m staying out here, someone needs to keep a fire going to protect our supplies.”

“I suppose I’m going in with Pom to make sure she’s not going in without someone from our group.” This would actually be an opportunity for me to do something useful, I can create both heat and light with magic. I can even transform into my dragon form if needed. “In fact, I think I’m actually suited for this situation given this may be a problem that requires magical knowhow.”

“Be safe Ozzy.” Smolder said while hugging me and I felt a massive amount of love slam into my gut, I smiled and cuddled her back.

“Don’t worry ‘Smol’, we’ll be back… Pinkie Promise.” As I turned to address our friends that were native to this world, I thought I saw a pink flash in Dodo’s eyes. Must have been my imagination. “Okay the five of us are going in, those four are staying behind.”

They nodded, but Bruno had to make a comment.

“Wait, four?” Bruno looked at me curiously.

“I count Dodo as his own person.” Being a familiar, I knew he practically was because of Shanty.

Bruno grunted audibly, but didn’t comment any further as we turned to the castle. We lit several torches and moved forward towards the open frame where doors used to sit following the claw marks that abruptly ended beyond the entrance.

“Well that’s not spooky at all.” Bruno dryly stated. “Reminds me of the wolf warlock's assault on Devotindos that I dealt with, this kind of thing would be up their alley.”

“Do you know the castle Jean, where are we going from here?” As Pom asked this with a nervous lilt in her voice, the fog around us moved slightly.

It didn’t try to block off the entrance or sight of the wagon, but it did seem to try and flow into the castle in bits above us as if it were trying to follow us in or at least flow towards some place. It didn’t get very far before disappearing.

I translated for Pom and would continue to as my best skill.

“I believe we should check the throne room first, it is straight ahead and up the stairs in the next room through some doors.” Translating for Jean, he started to slowly walk forward.

The rest of us walked forward into the entrance carefully after him, Bruno slowly pulled his sword out and looked around. Colleen tensed and had her hand on her makeshift weapon.

The sound of Pom’s hooves hitting the floor echoed down the wide corridor with six pillars, the artistry and design of the entryway would have been more magnificent if it wasn’t so dark. All the frog themed aesthetics and wall art were a given, we were in the amphibian capital on Elhorn.

The further forward we moved, the more we could hear the sounds of running water.

“Is that water I’m hearing?” Pom asked curiously as we passed by the pillars and the large stone statues of what looked to be four frog knights in the corridor entryway standing between them.

The stone statues each had a different bits of equipment. The first one on the left was wearing armor, wielding a large tower shield in its left webbed hand and an equally large sword it’s right. The first one on the right had a mace, robes and a strangely shaped mouth. The next one on the left, more bulky looking than the others with very little clothing, that one was wielding a double bladed stone axe and looked angry. The last one was ominously blindfolded and wielding a staff, it had a vaguely feminine shape.

One quick translation of Pom’s words later, since I stopped being distracted by the beautiful architecture of what looked to be past heroes of the realm.

“Yes, my friend, water flows throughout the castle. It is part of the lifeblood of Hydrigal and all amphibians to have a close connection with water, fresh or murky. We have aqueducts running all over the castle and there might even be some hidden rooms that can only be reached by swimming through them. I wouldn’t know, I've never found any of them personally.” Jean stated as we approached the end of the corridor leading towards the next room which looked to have staircases. I continued to translate his words as he spoke them, I wasn’t going to even try and copy his odd accent though. “It is, how to say, strange that no one is around to care for the water systems of the castle and yet it is all still in perfect working order.”

Pom didn’t seem to like hearing that or something else had drawn her attention, she raised a hoof making us all halt. She looked behind us as we reached the entrance to the next room. There were various hallways we could have taken, but those weren’t our current destination.

If we were heading for the throne room, then we were on the right track. With what little light we were producing, I could see that the next room was a mansion style foyer. It had a crystal chandelier hanging above, two stair cases curving upwards and far too many doors to explore. The doors to the throne room was at the top of the stairs, there was a solid wall straight ahead with two spouts of water pouring out into a fountain between the staircases.

There were four paths down here, two to the direct left and right of the entrance and the ones to the left and right of the staircases down small hallways. The upper floors had even more hallways, this place was really quite big and hopefully Jean would be a good enough guide.

We still didn’t move from our spot as Pom still had her hoof raise. She slowly looked to each of us and then turned her head back and stared at the empty corridor behind us, the fog was now blocking the entrance off and wasn’t coming into the corridor itself for some reason.

“Ocellus, tell the others to prepare for a fight.” Pom said gently.

I relayed this to the others, they looked as confused as I did.

We didn’t hear anything other than running water, suddenly a loud sound echoed from the corridor behind us. I turned and lit my horn to shine a light that way.

I saw one of the statues had moved, that’s when I noticed something.

The solid stone the statue was made of was slowly turning to metal starting from the legs in a surge of dark purple energy that made it take another step, making a hollow metallic echoing noise.

Once it was facing us, the whole statue turned metallic. The eyes in the statues head were a deep blood red as it held up its sword in a threatening manner.

“What… but the Armello Quadruplets are just statues!? They should not be capable of moving!” That was likely the wrong thing to say Jean, I turned the light from my horn onto the other statues and saw that they too were slowly turning to metal. “They’ve been here for as long as I’ve been alive, longer even!”

The others weren’t moving... yet.

“Jean… I don’t think they care.” I said slowly as the knight statue with the shield started to take steps towards us. “Is it me, or is it starting to move faster?”

“It’s not just you." Pom, looking quite panicked, took a stance.

Author's Note

Four stone statues turned from stone to hollow metal, now it's time for those entering the haunted castle to test their mettle.

Against weapons both powerful and magically weird, these four statues are something to be feared.

55. Ancient metallic knightly frogs.

Author's Note

Ancient metallic knightly frogs, ancient metallic knightly frogs, ancient metallic knightly frogs, statues possessed to kill intruders, froggy power~!

Anyway life right now... in as short as an explanation as I can keep it.

Tornadoes close to home, but again never directly struck by them. Backyard literally turned from a creak with barely any water in it into a full blown river which caused some issues and several other things of the natural disaster variety occurred over this last week.

I'm completely fine, power was out for a while and no damage overall aside from basement level flooding... again.

Currently using Baking Soda to make up for the swamp smell and a dehumidifier helped with the moisture and the sogginess of it all.

Can this year get any better? I don't think it can.

At least PlayStation started handed out a few free games, Subtnautica, Rez, Enter the Gungeon and The Witness. Even heard they were going to give out Horizon Zero Dawn the Complete Edition.

Music- Mischief Makers, Mini Boss Theme.

55. Ancient metallic knightly frogs.

-Equus, Canterlot Park, Royal Guard-

“See there recruit, if you don’t do well, then that will be your fate.” I pointed out to the rookie the scariest thing to the royal guard with my right hoof.

“She doesn’t look so tough.” The poor rookie didn’t notice the twitch in the Abyssinian’s ear, she heard it and took it as a challenge.

If I tried to warn him, she would come after me too, so of course I stupidly opened my mouth to try to dance around the issue.

“Look… I wouldn’t underestimate that Abyssinian if I were you, she’s the boogey cat known as the royal guard’s bane for a reason.” I shivered as I saw the Abyssinian playing with a rubber toy mouse suddenly looked me in the eyes sharply, I shivered as she stared straight into my soul. “She’s pure evil I tell you.”

The once bright beige fur looked darker in my visage, the green hair flowed from behind her spreading out like an eagle taking flight for its prey and there was a creeping, growing, evil smile playing across her face.

It was too later for us, Misses ‘Freaking’ was already silently planning our downfall, because Fizzlepop warned us away from ever saying a single thing about the cultists or ‘The Lost’ to her.

Fizzlepop ‘Storm Queen Tempest’ Berrytwist was the only one Misses ‘Freaking’ wouldn’t touch in the guard, the only one that can stop whatever sordid plan she’s got cooking in her head.

Some would even say it was far too late for all of us… guards at least, I don’t think she bothers normal civilians.

-Jaded ‘Freaking’ La Perm-

Maple syrup… a shark tank… four hundred paper clips… a single stick of gum… an exercise ball… a playground slide for foals… a farmer’s almanac of at least one thousand pages in length… an elephant, some circus people owe me a few favors… three empty barrels… a seesaw… a Saddle Arabian flag, because I’m enough petty to try that… Saddle Arabia has it coming anyways… aid of The Squirrels to set up a jazz music festival on a last moments notice… mess with all the local libraries to distract the current ruler Twilight Sparkle with something utterly inane and time consuming… like a secret way to get Changelings and Lambkin to like one another hidden among the libraries…

Also might need a few rotten eggs… a few cartons of rocky road to bribe my adopted sister Velvet Arid with… but where would I find such a specific type of cheesecake on such… oh duh, order from Sugar Cube Corner!

Though how would I do the thing with the tiny ewe from the Crystal Empire without greatly upsetting Fluttershy though…

Okay Fizzle, I’m bound to find out what you are trying so hard to hide from me and I have ways of making the guards talk.

Yes… for it is time to break out my personal favorite ice rink machine ‘The Zampony’ once again!

-Elhorn, Hydrigal Castle, Pom-

The metal statue charged shield first, magic was the only reason I could see for this. Given that Ocellus is not unconscious or in great pain, it wasn’t an evil core machine or just a machine in general. It was making hollow noises so of course it was a statue magically brought to life by something.

The notable oddity, as I dodged out of the way it coming to a stop and swinging its sword downwards, was that it was the only statue moving and the other three were currently lifeless.

The sword sent out a pressure wave force, knocking Jean and Bruno back, it twisted the blade and swung outwards for me.

I immediately fluffed out my wool and stood my ground.

My body was slightly rocked by the blow and I was nearly launched off my hooves by loss of concentration, instead there was a loud cracking sound as the blade had a crack running a quarter of the way into the blade where it made contact with me. I was close enough to see that it was as hollow as the statue sounded when it was moving around, it didn’t have enough mass to move me.

I could hear Ocellus ask something of the others, my mind was currently on the fact that my wool didn’t do the glow thing or repel the sword in the opposite direction.

Did that mean magic had to be directed at me for that defense to work? It reflected Ninja General Paeli’s death blasts, but only after it burned through some of my wool… while it was actively armored up.

I was never going to think I was impervious or invincible as long as I had wool, my moderately frail body underneath wouldn’t let me forget what I am for a second. Paprika wasn’t invincible either, but her body was as tough as her wool and I didn’t have that same luxury of hugging things into submission.

Jean said something solemnly and then he proclaimed something bravely while pointing his rapier at the statue. Said statue was pivoting towards me and was in the middle of thrusting its shield into my face.

The blunt impact of the shield actually staggered me out of bunkering down in place and the connection my wool had to the floor. It hit far harder than Thundering Rhino had and the force was not down from on top of me this time, but sideways.

“Agh!” For unlike the sword, which was both hollow and possibly easier to break but no less deadly because of it, the shield however was one solid mass of metal.

It spread it’s sword out wide and then brought it inwards on me and I wasn’t in a position to lock myself down again. A loud clash and I saw Bruno was in the way of the fifteen foot menace that had barreled its way through the entrance into the foyer, his sword was holding back and even pushing away the struggling statue’s weapon.

Bruno was very odd for a pig, what looked like fat on him must actually be pure muscle to the lower end of the Arizona physics breaking scale.

Colleen fired a burst of energy from her weapon, the statue blocked the energy with the shield and it just splashed harmlessly across the ensorcelled metal.

Jean took the opening and the slight shifting of the shield to launch a single powerful stab that put a large hole clean through the statue’s body and armor where the heart should be upon impact with the tip of his rapier.

This unfortunately didn’t stop it, much to Jean’s confusion as I quickly grabbed Bruno with my hooves and dove between the statue’s legs when it tried to slam its shield into his back to squash him between its sword and shield.

It swung outwardly while turning to try and strike us down, the sword soared over our heads and it brought it around high to bring it down vertically. I quickly stood up on my hind legs in front of Bruno and brought my front two hooves up crossed over one another and flexed my wool hard.

The blade struck me and snapped in half with a painful sounding shattering noise, I was then blown back into the castle’s entryway with a thrust of its shield while staggered.

It hadn’t slowed down its assault despite losing half its weapon and it continued on attacking the others, it seemed to be focusing its red eyes on Jean a lot now and Bruno was trying to get its attention.

I rolled onto my belly and struggled to stand up, I then felt a hoof wrapped around my right leg and helped steady me. I gave Ocellus a grateful smile.

“Jean stabbed it in the heart, but I think I figured out its weakness. Whatever is behind the statues changing can only control one at a time and the magic is concentrated throughout the body… but mostly in the head.” Ocellus, having said this to me, we heard Colleen call out something both Jean and Bruno nodded one with understanding and the other begrudgingly grumbling as he deflected the broken blade away from himself. “I’ve already explained to Colleen what we need to do, we need to decapitate the statues to make them impossible to control by whoever is doing this. It’s a singular intelligence, but I don’t know what that has to do with the odd fog. That feels quite different than this.”

Jean wasn’t good defensively as his armor has been ramshackle since Cladinhold, Bruno was making up for that by being strong on both defense and offense. Bruno’s weapon wasn’t cracking under the pressure of the blows and he danced away from the shield bashes launched at him while Jean launched precision strikes at the statue’s neck under the helmet that opened up holes in it.

“Maybe this is something separate from the fog…” I was about to go into what I meant, but a clattering noise drew out attention to the metal statue. It was frozen in place with the tip of its jagged broken hollow blade an inch away from Colleen’s throat. The dog in question was wide eyed and shaking with her energy weapon held in a death grip with both hands.

There was a molten bit of neck that had been the last bit that had apparently been holding the knight statue’s head on and she risked her life to get under the shield and close enough to it to blow it off.

Not a second later did the red eyes in the statue’s head die out and the statue slowly turned back from metal to stone expanding and growing, yet keeping its damaged state.

It wasn’t a second later that a blast of water struck me and Ocellus from the side knocking Ocellus to the floor, I managed to skid sideways while staying on my hooves.

The mace wielding statue with the weird mouth stepped off the pedestal and hefted the mace into an overhead swing for Ocellus. I dove forward, grappled onto Ocellus and rolled as hard as I could, the smashing sound of a spiked mace slamming into the completely undamaged floor behind me could be heard.

The statue froze and I looked back to see the light in its eyes gone, why did it just…

“Look out!” Ocellus shoved me off of her and then pushed me while diving away as an axe slammed down between us.

The angry looking statue had leapt from its pedestal and tried to cleave us with the axe, yet the floor remained undamaged despite the hefty impact that sent us both flying. Ocellus caught herself with her wings and fluttered up closer to the ceiling.

The architects of this place will be proud to hear that their castle is impervious to damage at least, not that the banners, vases, wilting plants and other things were taking the pressure wave nearly as well as I did when I bounced off the wall softly. I’m quite happy to be as fluffy as a snuggle toy.

Bruno was on the axe wielding frog knight and the glowing red eyes in its head disappeared. When he struck his sword against its torso, it just bounced of its body instead of doing any damage against the hollow metal statue.

“What the?” Wait a minute… why did his sword bounce? I glanced at the mace wielding statue, no movements. I took a few steps forward and beyond the pillars towards the center of the room.

I quickly rolled to the side as a large metal staff stabbed forward at me, the blindfolded statue twisted about and stepping forward to slam its staff down on where Bruno was.

He hopped backwards out of the way while brandishing his sword at the ready, he was gripping it tightly while warily regarding the other two statues. Jean and Ocellus did so as well, Colleen was still sitting in the foyer shivering and collecting herself.

The mace statue with the weird mouth lit up and spat a blast of water at Jean, he stepped out of the way of the blast and tried to damage the blind statue with a thrust of his rapier… only it too bounced off of it.

“Ocellus, tell them only the statue that is being actively possessed can be damaged!” That earned me the attention of the mace statue, the eyes blinked out and I quickly leapt upwards and puffed up my fluff at the top of my head and curled my body upward to float over a fast horizontal axe swing that came from the axe statue.

It actually heard me and could understand what I was saying, did it try to stop me because I figured that out? Ocellus was in the middle of telling them what I figured out as I dropped to the floor quickly ran to climb up on the blind staff wielding statue avoiding the axe statue’s following overhead swing.

Whatever this thing was, it had rules to it and we’ve already discovered the weakness of its living statue trick. It could also only control one at a time and that was a problem, that it could feasibly understand my words was equally frightening.

I was clambering up the left bicep of the blind statue when the axe struck it right behind my left leg and the axe bounced off of it too. That proved it, the statue not under control was magically protected until the wielder took control, but the protection does not project outwards so that wouldn’t activate my wool’s odd reflection effect either.

The axe wielding statue hopped backwards as Bruno lunged forward and tried to strike for its neck, within a second I saw a subtle change in the blindfolded one.

Bruno barely had time to defend himself before he was struck by the staff and sent flying into the back left most pillar in the entry hallway of the castle.

Bruno grunted and tried to get up, when Jean came forward and rapidly jabbed at the blindfolded statue’s neck. The statue deflected Jeans numerous jabs with sweeping rotations of the staff and tried to hit him in the legs as it spun and twisted the staff in its defense against both him and me.

I wasn’t idle as I had moved onto its back and slowly climbed up to the back of its neck, it tried to slap me off its back with a stylish flourish of the staff once or twice.

Ducking and up crawling around its attempts, I clutched its right shoulder and got my face right next to its hollow neck. I inhaled and almost bark blasted its head clean off at point blank range with as much force as I could put into it.

The wrenching noise hurt my ears as its head ripped halfway off its body and was about to do another one to get the other half of its neck, when Jean beat me to it.

Before the entity could change control again, Jean tore the remainder of the feminine statue’s neck off with single a precision strike of one of his powerful piercing precision pokes. If I were capable of dueling, I definitely wouldn’t want to face Jean in a competition.

I quickly jumped off as the statue’s head tumbled away, it froze and the metal started to expand and warp back into stone.

That left the axe statue and the water spitting mace one with the robe, said robe was made of fluid metal and more protective, but if I had to guess…

“Help get Colleen and Bruno back in the fight, quickly please!” I was specifically not focusing on Ocellus moving behind one of the eight pillar throughout the entryway as the axe statue popped to life and hopped for Jean.

Darting forward I tackled Jean back and was lifted upwards by the force of the axe slamming into the ground behind me, we both went tumbling.

I slammed bodily into a pillar chest first and Jean managed to barely stay standing if his flailing was anything to go by.

Once he got his footing, he quickly took up a stance in front of me with his rapier as the axe wielding statue charged towards us. I shakily tried to stand up with what were likely cracked ribs, given the pain I was feeling.

To think that my stitches were almost done healing too… why do I keep getting into these situations? Oh right, I’m too nice for my own good and I wanted to save Jean’s people from whatever all of this was if there was the possibility to do so.

I’m going to be so sore after this one and we’re still just entering the castle

The statue swung the axe horizontally for Jean and with barest of movements he deflected and knocked the axe upwards. It was a simple quick hard slap to the underside of it with the tip of his rapier. He looked a bit trouble as the axe soared over his head and afterwards he had a determined look in his eyes.

Jean stabbed it forward several times creating several small holes in the hollow metal frog statue with a literal axe to grind. The statue was starting another swing and was going for an upwards slash, I got to my hooves and moved to help him.

I threw my body at the axe before it could pick up speed and blocked it from gaining any dangerous momentum by grappling onto the shaft and quickly gluing myself to the floor to hold it in place. The statue started to struggle to get its weapon out of my grip.

Jean had been trying to stab at its neck apart, but it had been moving its body and head to avoided losing it.

It eventually gave up on dealing with me and let its weapon to go throw a punch at Jean in an attempt to take at least the top portion of his head off. I wouldn’t be able to move in time and didn’t want to relinquish my hold on the axe.

It was already far too late for me to do anything, it was also far too late for the statue to really pay attention to its surroundings. Mostly because Bruno came out of nowhere, yelling as he leaped high with his sword held high above his head and he brought it down with a ridiculously powerful downwards slash that cleaved through the statue vertically.

Bruno’s sword even had the gall to look entirely pristine after such a devastating blow when it should have been at least a little damaged cleaving a frog statue in half… even if it was hollow!

The statue’s body fell into two neat halves with a clean cut going entirely through it and they started turning to stone.

Bruno was huffing and puffing as he glared at the last statue eyes lighting up blood red immediately, he had really exerted himself to do that. This was also a guy who’s faced evil core machines with little more than a sword and or a baked good on him from what Ocellus tells us about him.

I quickly dropped the axe and tried to move and was blasted off my hooves by large blast of water from its mouth and was blinded for a few seconds. Coughing and sputtering, my wool was soaked through and I rolled behind the nearest pillar. I think this was the third on the right.

The pillar I sat behind was struck with another blob of water. I peeked around the pillar shivering from being both cold and damp, I noticed the fog was becoming stronger the more water it sprayed around the entrance where the fog seemed to be held at bay by something.

I turned my sight back to the fight and the mace practically cracking Jean’s armor open, like a walnut, but he looked mostly alright after slamming into the wall while grasping at his chest. The statue spat a blast of water at Bruno and he grunted as he evaded and tried to close the distance only to be knocked back slightly by the mace creating a shockwave when it struck the floor in front of him.

Bruno still managed to leap and slash at the water spitting statue, but it’s almost liquid metal robe proved to be decently protective against his blade. A bolt of energy struck the statue’s face rocking it backwards slightly and Bruno took the opportunity to slash at its legs and damaged it lightly before he was kicked away.

It turned and fired a blast of water at Colleen from its mouth, she ducked behind the pillar across from me.

Colleen gave me a weak smile and a slightly apologetic look for not getting back into the fight sooner. It was here that I realized something interesting about Colleen and would absolutely ask her about it later.

Now wasn’t exactly the time for a discussion, especially when Jean was barely standing and could hardly get close to the statue with it blasting water at us. He dove behind a pillar and a wave of water splashed all around it. Not that Bruno was fairing any better trying to rush it.

Colleen popped out for a second and fired another bolt of energy into the statue’s face, her weapon not doing as much damage as it possibly could and that was another thing I had to talk with her about. She was still lugging around that rocket pack Ligstrun gave her, but hasn’t used once this entire battle.

Colleen winced as she was knocked over by the blast of water directed at her pillar.

“I want to show what I’ve got too!” Ocellus flew out from the pillar behind me near the ceiling, lit her horn and fired a powerful bolt of lightning as the statue fired a burst of water.

The water burst stopped abruptly in the air upon meeting the lightning and the energy from Ocellus’s horns traveled all the way back to the statue’s mouth and its face violently exploded. The statue stumbled backwards and now the water was dribbling weakly out of the statue’s face.

The statue’s eyes were still glowing red despite its damaged face, it took a step forward only to be grabbed by several tentacles of fog erupting from the entrance behind it.

It struggled against the tentacles of fog rapidly and quickly getting a grip on the statue and sliding up underneath its robes to seemingly strangle the possessed statue to the best of their ability.

This kind of added to the theory that the fog was a genius loci kind of thing and now I almost wanted to say... that it wanted to help us as much as it needed our help for something.

It had seemed oddly limited to being stuck outside the castle until now, maybe the statue got too close to the entrance to the castle?

With a powerful yank, the fog roughly pulled statue downwards and its head shattered into metal splinters upon impact with the floor.

The others were as quiet as I was at the sight, I stood up and made my way towards the fog with my wool dripping wet and looked into it.

“If you can understand me… how can we help you?” The reaction I received was swift.

It created a vaguely lambkin shaped head, then shook it left and right.

It produced a colorful imaged of numerous amphibians happily running through the streets of Hydrigal’s castle town. It then showed something dragging them deep into the castle. It showed itself trying to enter, but something was forcing it out.

What it showed next was helpful for us, as it showed what had to be the throne room and a hidden switch behind the smaller throne.

56. Secrets of Elhorn.

-Equus, Sweet Apple Acres, Yona-

“Yona is sorry about the trees…” I was apologizing for knocking them over. Yak be best at knocking things over, but there were some things that I shouldn’t have knocked over.

“It’s okay, I’m just glad you set them back to where they were.” Applejack is being very understanding about this. “Can you tell Sandbar that Fluttershy needs to see him about something the next time you see him?”

“Of course, Yona can do that easily!” I talk to sandbar all the time and wouldn’t forget. Yaks and elephants have a great rivalry in remembering things.

“Also, if you can, find out what Starlight is doing this week, that mare really needs to take a break from her research.” Applejack nodded to me. “I learned my lesson about taking on more than I can chew in a few orchards worth of problems all by myself the hard way, see if she’s open to spending time at Sugar Cube Corner with a few friends.”

-Elhorn, Hydrigal Castle Courtyard, Shanty-

The fog be sitting fairly distant from us and I be looking to Smolder for conversation, but all she be doing is being quiet and looking worried.

“The quiet be unnerving, do you have anything we can be talking about?” I be asking as I wanted to be breaking the silence somehow.

“Something to talk about huh? Let me think for a moment.” Smolder looked up at the fog filled sky thoughtfully. “So you have any plans for what you are going to be doing once we get back to Equus?”

“I be plundering the world for adventure and will be traveling with Dodo of course.” My friend Dodo warbled at me happily, he was willing to follow and carry me anywhere. “I be wanting an airship, though maybe a regular boat would work just as well.”

“How would you go about getting one?” Smolder be asking the hard questions.

“Maybe I will simply steal one, maybe I’ll just buy one outright. I know I be earning one somehow.” I had no illusions about what Pom would be doing, she be yearning for her home Huoshan. I be yearning to be let loose to the winds, but right now I’m helping out friends. I really be needing more of those, then I be getting back to my mission to prove to those pirates I can be something great. “I want to at least be an adventurer and I be learning much from just traveling with you guys.”

Some of the fog drifted closer and I warily looked at it, it moved in odd crescent shape. Why would it do that? I kept looking at the fog as it did this several times as I watched it shift and not much else.

I started to follow the motion with my hoof, the way the arc of the fog flowed and felt something odd going on with my hooves.

Something be up with this fog, I started to hum a pirate tune to myself.

“Don’t you want a place to call home though?” Smolder asked with worry. “Pom would actually be willing to give you one.”

I froze for a bit.

“I will be thanking her for that when she offers, home is where my friends are and I plan to have friends in every part of the world.” I would make the whole of Equus my home. No matter where I may roam, I will always be wanted somehow, for good or ill.

I continued to hum my tune and watch the fog shift in strange patterns near our wagon as Mr. Strum scrutinized Dodo curiously.

-Hydrigal Castle, Ocellus-

“How are you feeling Pom?” So we have just learned that Hydrigal had a ‘genius loci’, one that seemed friendly for now. From what Pom said, it can at least be reasoned with until we got information telling us otherwise.

It wasn’t able to flow far into the castle at all, but the fog had control of the town and it seemed desperate.

“Don’t you know?” Of course she’s terrified, those statues really put us through quite a bit of trouble and we just got a hoof in the door to the castle. We still don’t know where the panther machine went or what it was currently doing.

“That’s not what I asked Pom and you know it.” I know that she knows I can feel emotions, I was asking about her physically as she rubbed at her chest. She was tough and took a few bad blows from that fight.

I felt Pom wrap her hooves around me. Underneath the underlying fear, I felt a fountain of love that started revitalizing the magic I spent as she fed me. I was probably the only changeling from Equus to ever get love out of a lambkin, tasted like family or a life trusting friendship. It was nice, but didn’t taste half as good as Smolder’s pure unbridled unconditional affection.

“Thanks, but you still didn’t answer me.” She was trying to redirect the subject.

“A few possibly cracked ribs, not that bad.” What did Pom mean not that...

“Pom… are you in pain right now?” Seeing the head shake, I easily felt Pom was lying to me.

“I’ll be fine.” That would be more reassuring if I couldn’t feel your emotions Pom.

“What’s going on?” Jean asked as we moved up the right staircase in the foyer area past the beheaded stone statue.

“Pom’s chest is in pain and she’s trying to be reassuring that it is nothing.” I answered immediately. “Let’s just find the switch in the throne room, it’s behind the smaller throne right?”

“Can we remove my stitches after this?” Pom muttered quietly. “My side is beginning to itch.”

“Yeah, that water you got blasted with can’t be helping, let me have a look at it when we get to the throne room.” Not getting much of a response, I turned to Bruno and Colleen getting the door open. Colleen looked a little nervous and Bruno looked ready for another fight. They almost expected that panther machine to show up out of nowhere.

Jean on the other hoof…

“Is she going to be okay?” He asked as we walked into the throne room, which was fairly odd considering the décor.

No gold, no jewels and nothing to proclaim the richness aside from some nice pillows on some less than noble looking thrones. The smallest of which hides a secret we needed to look into.

“Pom can actually take a lot of punishment, but I don’t know if we want her facing too many more threats so soon. Now if you’ll excuse me… I have to check and make sure that the water that statue was spewing didn’t cause an infection or worse.” I turned towards Pom and motioned her over to me. “You three look for the switch around the smallest throne, at least that’s what the fog wants us to find for some reason. I’ll try to be a good friend by taking care of mine.”

Pom made her way over to me and sat down in front of me with her eyes closed and heaving a sigh.

“Feeling battered, cold, wet and have chest pains?” I said dully as I checked Pom over, those statues got in quite a few decent hits. I put a bit of pressure on her chest with my right hoof and she winced.

“Yes.” She stated dully.

“Despite all that, you do have to admit that you’re amazing, you broke that sword in half on yourself.” I was trying to be positive and cheer her up.

“It was hollow, rather easy to break in that respect.” I checked her side and looked at the stitches as she sat there still slightly damp and dripping. Jean wasn’t bothered by the water blasts nearly as much as everyone else, but frogs had their mucus layer to protect against attacks like that.

“It was still made of metal, sharp and tough, you snapped that in half just by blocking the attack.” The stitches were, oddly enough, ready to come out. It hasn’t been that long since the train, barely a week. “You’re side is healing fairly well at least, you also have a strong bark worse than any dog’s bite.”

“Yes, I’m seldom willing to use it against a living opponents though. Lung and Kai could take it, machines can ignore it and it hurts my throat to rip out more powerful blasts like that. I have to be positioned close enough to even damage them or I’m just wasting the energy.” Pom had some incredible magic. Her fluffmancer talents were easy to understand, but the bark blast she had was the unique thing I was more amazed by. “I lost my concentration a few times and it resulted in injury, mostly bruises. I wish I had Paprika’s talent for automatically having my armored fluff going at all times. Do you think Shanty and the others will be okay outside?”

“If the fog is friendly as you think it is, if not then Shanty can fight it.” I light up my horn and carefully removed the stitches with precision use of a safety scissors spell and some levitation. Her side was miraculously unblemished and without scarring aside from the little pinpricks the stitches left behind as I pulled them. “I mean she wields that odd magic with her hooves and you helped her learn how to fight, she’s also learned how to live thanks to you. I’ve even learned a few things myself.”

“You should try out for the filly scouts when we get back to Equus.” Pom smiled, it was a bit tight on her face, but she was trying for me and I appreciated it. “I really don’t have much more to teach Shanty, she doesn’t really need me much either.”

“Maybe not as a teacher, but she still looks up to you though and Smolder and I do too! She’s not going to up and want to leave your side when she wants to be a hero as much as she does a pirate. She’s putting the pirate thing on hold and we all know that for a fact.” I patted her on the back gently and loosed a small mending spell not meant for medical use at her chest. It wouldn’t fix any big problems, but it would have to be enough. “Sure you’re terrified out of your mind, but you’re really pushing for the world record of the bravest lambkin to ever exist.”

“Brave? If no one was in danger, I’d already be halfway over the horizon by now.” She stated sardonically. “I used my beasties as a shield from the world and they should by all rights be constantly upset with me because of it, yet they love me for tending to their wounds after protecting me. I learned how to bark blast to aid them ever so slightly with what meager nerves I can gather to protect them. Is it strange that my ability to magnetically attract canines is something that I don’t actually like? It’s caused me no end of headaches.”

“Yet, you love each and every one of them that kept you company when you were lonely.” We entered the castle with only me carrying a bag of snacks for all of us. I pulled out a small wedge of cheese and Pom took it while looking away. She started nibbling on it. “Here you are trying to find and help Jean’s people against wanting to be a coward and avoid trouble… it’s also strange that you accepted the fact that we would tear through Gedol territory just to get here.”

“It was far safer to do something stupidly dangerous like come out this way than go anywhere else and have danger pop up in the towns we would passed through. I just hope danger didn’t pop up when we could have been there to help.” Lambkin logic one oh one, path of least resistance and danger. Yep, Pom was still a product of her people and their beliefs. “I think we did more than enough damage to their supply lines as we crossed through Gedol’s territory to cause them numerous issues. Also we did pick up a new friend that apparently needed an out.”

A clunking noise drew out attention as Bruno drew our attention with a show of glee and we heard a rumbling from below us. We looked to each other and made our way out of the throne room to look over the banister to see the solid stone wall between the two spouts of water dribbling into the fountain sunk down to reveal a hidden entrance.

“Let’s see if the fog has the right of it… it seems to know much about this castle.” Pom stated as she started down the stairs with us following.

I’m surprised that we managed to handle battling in the darkness of the castle with very little light from our dropped torches.

Pom was lead us to the fountain where several stepping stones rose out of the water. She held the torch forth and we saw a metal hallway leading downwards into the abyss. We looked at one another and made our way down the steps and the metallic walls that were not naturally part of the castle, as we came to the bottom of the silent staircase light lit up along the walls.

We were now in a lit corridor, technology lining the walls.

“What is all this below the castle?” Jean asked with no answer forthcoming as he moved up to a door and saw something on the side of it lit up. There were strange symbols lining some of the walls.

“… a ship…” Colleen muttered drawing both Bruno and my attention.

“What do you mean by a ship? You know something about all this!” Bruno asked as he brandished his blade at Colleen. Pom got between the both of them, but she was looking more at Colleen curiously.

“What’s going on Ocellus?” Pom asked quietly.

“Apparently Colleen knows something about where we are.” I turned my attention away from Pom and asked gently. “Colleen, what do you mean when you said something about ‘a ship’, was it in reference to this place?”

“… yes, but I’ve never been here before.” Colleen moved over to look at the glowing markings next to the door. “I’ve heard of places like this, that there is one under the castle… it’s a bit daunting that it even still works.”

She traced her fingers over some faded markings next to the door and then took off her gauntlet and placed her paw, digits and all, against the glowing thing next to the door. It turned red and made a buzzing noise, this made Colleen frown and put her gauntlet back on.

“Jean, could you do what I just did?” After asking that, Colleen watched as Jean nervously placed his hand on the thing and the door slid downwards revealing a room.

A room which lit up as soon as we walked inside. There were bits of machinery about the place and Colleen quickly made her way over to one machine in particular. It was a like a movie screen for film you’d see at the local Ponyville theatre and a computer far smaller and several times more advanced than the ones Twilight kept around at the school of friendship for calculating things.

“What is all this and why was I able open the door?” Jean look at his webbed digits flexing them warily.

“We’re about to find out.” Dusting off the chair, in front of the screen, Colleen sat down and turned the thing on. “This thing is storage of knowledge.”

Looking about she looked at a brick of dust and picked it up to shake it, the dust fell off revealing an odd piano like board and she started to tap at the symbols on it. Pom looked at me and I shrugged, I didn’t have much of a clue either.

“When you said this place is a ship…” I started.

“It is… or was…” Colleen fingers hit the various piano like keys with random symbols and it brought up something on the screen, it was a large flying structure moving through space. The structure slowly fell towards the planet and landed in a mire, eventually Jean’s people came from the ship as did several other species of beings. One of which was lizards. “Jean’s people built the castle on top of it after emerging from it. The structure we’re in now, it used to travel beyond the ether far above the planet’s surface from space beyond. I don’t think this thing can fly anymore, but it certainly is an amazing find.”

“So Jean’s people are aliens?” Bruno said looking at Jean with a curious eye as he sheathed his blade. “Wait… how do you know how to wield this ancient technology?”

“To be fair… I think all the intelligent life on this world was brought here by our ancestors.” Answered Colleen, who after hitting a few keys, a new scene popped up.

The screen showed the horrors of some kind of factory. Small animals were being stuff into larger animal shaped machines and they came to life and started attacking inhabitants of another world. A world slowly being consumed by technology, said inhabitants were shown fighting back.

“What do you mean none of us are native to this world?” Bruno stopped being grumpy and stared in wonder as an ancient pig broke a machine. A small animal escaped its confines and scampered away quickly into some trees, apparently its soul was being used as a power source for the machine. “Where did we come from?”

“Good question, wish I had all that information… it’s about time I told you all something about myself and why I know about this stuff.” Colleen turned around and took in a deep breath and let out a slow sigh. “I was part of a special forces project to recreate rocket knights for the cause and protection of Yellow Dog. Unfortunately that project failed to produce anyone viable, I… was the closest to being successful… it almost killed me and I didn’t appreciate the violence required.”

“Is this the part where you say your part machine?” I asked curiously.

“No, I’m all flesh and blood, I just have an insane magical ability for interacting with machines. Every time I use my new weapon, I’m charging it with my own magic through the technology.” She turned back to the computer and started typing something. “Unlike Pom, I can’t fire energy blasts out of my mouth on command. What I can do is charge up machinery with a touch, find out what’s wrong with a machine and maybe have an easier time of making use of figuring out they work. Dodo is a very interesting thing, he’s an open book really and happy to help. He has a really curious connection to Shanty.”

A scene came up on screen and showed a large metallic sphere, one half the size of the moon and the words across the screen were written in the local language ‘Pig Star’. Time seemed to flow backwards until the words rewrote themselves as ‘Prototype Death Egg’ and it looked vastly different.

“So even the Pig Star was meant to be used by us as a last resort, to protect against the mechanical machinations that our ancestors fled from to come to Elhorn.” It wasn’t just Colleen who seemed trouble, Jean was too and Bruno was wild with panic at seeing the Pig Star. “We’re in one of the arks that brought us to this world, where we soon became a part of its nature.”

“That is correct.” A voice said making us all jump, Pom turned towards the open entrance, but didn’t see anything. The scene on the screen froze and a cat appeared on it, a lynx type of feline from appearance. “Artificial intelligence administrator for Amphibian Ark systems Nicole Beta at your service mister…”

The cat was looking at Jean.

“Me?” He stated dumbly.

“Okay Mr. ‘Me’. If I’m active again, then that means that trouble was unavoidable.” The lynx on the screen was definitely talking to us. “Now can I get a proper name please?”

“Oh uh, Jean De’ La Frogois, you’re- not going to eat our souls are you?” Jean backed away from the screen and Bruno had his back to the wall with a sword out.

“Nope Jean, I’m not a soul sucking machine. Detecting two unknown lifeforms here… curiously neither are of Mobius descent. Scanners indicate… that…. that is… a problem. A rather big one.” The lynx paled slightly and looked upset about something. “You… wouldn’t happen to be looking for a large population of amphibians by any chance?”

“Yes, where are they, are they still alive?” Jean turned his tune around at hearing this.

“Cargo Hold Subsection D… apparently it’s become part of a vast cave network, putting the map on screen now.” We were in the top portion of what looked like the ship we saw crash into the mire and onto this world. To think there were ways to travel beyond a world… well my group was already doing that, but this was same dimension world traveling. “You are here… your destination is here and the elevators are out of order, sorry for that inconvenience. If you wish for more help in this situation please ask for me, my name is Nicole Beta as I have stated previously.”

“Can you show me my people?!” Said a panicking Jean.

“Hold on… cycling sensor information… reconstructing current time feed… information retrieved.” Nicole stated with a smile and with a wave of her hand, we could see where all the amphibians were being kept. They were trapped in a large spacious area and were sitting around. They were trapped and weren’t going anywhere with a massive barrier of energy holding them. “Two further unknown signatures detected. One is powerful and is utilizing dark magic, location… unknown. Another is… please tell me that you didn’t activate the Evil Core Project! Please tell me you’ve been putting them down with extreme prejudice if you did! They were only supposed to be a last resort and only meant to be used when there is no hope left but to fight evil with more evil!”

The image of Nicole on screen seemed angry, we saw what looked like schematics for an evil core popped up, but she erased it quickly.

“No, no, no! Now I know what you meant by machine’s eating souls, it’s happening again here and that mad monster behind them isn’t even here to be causing it… or even keep it under control for that matter! His programming must have gotten through the systems on the Pig Star, checking data logs…” A seriously grim look crossed the lynx’s face. “Please, I beg of you, please tell me that half the world isn’t covered in horrid life destroying machines that have no care for nature…”

Nicole looked to be close to tears.

“Only a city, a big one.” Bruno muttered.

“Smog infested, towers to the sky, full of random factories that produce deadly machinery?” Nicole asked and Bruno nodded. "Has it spread far?”

“No, it’s not spreading at all, but a hero did destroy the Pig Star.” There was an unease in Bruno’s voice.

“Thank goodness for small mercies… that the opossums held true.” Nicole had tears in her eyes. “Planning route to Cargo Hold Subsection D, I’m sorry that I cannot help you further outside this room. My current functions are sadly… limited… for the moment.”

"How are you limited?" I asked warily.

"I'm basically stuck to seeing things, while operating lights and doors." Nicole answered swiftly. "Follow the path down and help those people."

This was all worrying.

Author's Note

Given that Elhorn has a single short series in 'S. Comic' appearance of Rocket Knight... well... there's quite a bit more to the back story of this world. We won't be seeing the mentioned 'Mobius' though.

57. Dark Machinations.

-Elhorn, Amphibian Ark, Nicole Beta-

My image was that of a bipedal lynx, brown fur with black stripes, long white hair and yellow eyes. My appearance was a heavily modified version of Nicole Prime, the original, my predecessor… my unknowing mother.

I was scraps of data copied from her, enough to cobble together me to do a job for those who that wanted to escape Mobius's brewing endless conflict.

Okay, looking over records and history of how long I’ve been out and for any anomalies and other pertinent data to the current situation…

Okay… things are… very messed up. Exceedingly messed up by numerous standards including my own.

The current time puts it at… about the time the ancestors got sucked through a mega warp ring* to end up on Elhorn, which is odd considering more than almost a thousand years have passed since planet fall.

Huh… there’s even a message I sent myself about this, before the ship went into the mega warp ring that acted as if it were a black hole in space. The ship crashed into what is now known as Elhorn, the passengers within obviously survived and the following civilization continues onto the future.

How I managed to send this message to myself before I came to the past of this planet needs to be worked on and quickly.

I’m only receiving this data now because I’ve been offline for so long, I was only awake long enough after getting sucked through to Elhorn to manage landing location procedures for all the ark ships. I then entered my slumber and hoped that the opossums would hold up their end of things in preventing the Pig Star from being used by anyone.

The information is… almost paradoxical. How would I have known any of this the first time through? It is very stable time loop otherwise, aside from some small glitches in the timeline that could have dire repercussions for the lives I needed to aid.

Time to start collating all known information and preparing to send a copy forward to myself on the day of unintentional entry of the escape fleet into the mega warp ring, so that I can eventually have it like I do now. Which begs the question… where did a warp ring of that size, enough to swallow the fleet and the Pig Star whole, come from?

If the records are correct, this would mean Nicole Prime would still be fighting with her friends against that mad machining monster around this time.

I do not know if we were ever supposed to meet or if we ever will, even so… this world needs a Nicole if evil cores machines have been running around causing damage to the world. The damage is, hopefully enough, not irreparable thus far if it is contained entirely to a single city. That doesn’t mean that said city can’t become everyone’s problem eventually though.

Never was I made to or meant to deal with time travel, then again I was never meant to even form a full intelligence. I was a jury rigged copied bit of code from the original that was used to hack into and operate multiple systems on all the ark ships all at once and to stop any attempt for malicious coding to get onboard with us. I failed at stopping that malicious coding part from what I’ve heard.

It was my job to move all the ships as one, so they could move together to assist in the various factions evacuation of Mobius. I was the reason why the people ended up on this planet as the course I plotted led straight into the mega warp ring.

I should only be as half as functional as the original Nicole, however I’m aware that I was to only wake up if I was sorely needed after assisting with the landing procedures.

Frankly, I was needed well before I was thankfully woken up, especially with the fact that there are amphibians trapped down in the cargo hold and something using dark magic is running around the amphibian ark doing who knows what.

If it’s anything like Ixis Mogul… with what little information I have of him… then I dread to think of what could happen to those going to the rescue of the people below. It is my responsibility to ensure the continued survival of the people that abandoned Mobius, said people who created me are long dead and I’m now stuck dealing with their descendants.

Who knows what the unknown entity could have gotten a hold of in this ship… I can only detect the one machine and that’s because it has the faint taint of an evil core despite no longer being connected to it.

If there are any other machines active. I should be able to get sensory data of their motions, but I’m not sensing the motions of the dark magic anomalous entity. I’m worried that it might be hiding the movements of other machines in the ship, I’m going to need to start collecting visual data for all of this if I am to assist in keeping the route down to the captives clear.

Speaking of unknowns, the data packet I received from myself does not involve them… so begin logging of two subjects not native to Mobius or Elhorn. Elhorn was a moderately temperate planet, but not much life on it was intelligent aside from some naturally occurring anomalies.

Logging intelligent long legged quadruped, the one with an oddly silent bell. White fluffy covering, consistently shows signs of nervousness and anxiety. Seems to otherwise have unusual wild magic patterns, possibly stronger than her scrawny looks would show. Gender… female… she is currently having strange unknown, if benign seeming, effects on the canine Mobian descendant.

Logging intelligent ladybug hooved quadruped. Horn, biological magical focus. Compound eyes, would likely think fire is pretty and is certainly smart enough to understand the dangers of it unlike a moth. Fuzzy carapace toughness levels, moderate to lower end of scale, comparable to wood if it were biological.

I wouldn’t have stirred from my long slumber if not for the group I’m guiding into the depths of this dead ship. The accessing of the computer terminal caused an alert, whereas a dark entity infiltrating the ship and currently holding the amphibian descendants of this vessel hostage didn’t. That was far more worrying to me than anything else.

I can’t track the dark magic using anomalous entity, but I can track the machine that seems to be infected with said anomalies power. Panther style machine, cannon on back, tail laser, claws can be enhanced with energy and it is, because of course it is, capable of mass environmental devastation like all evil core machines.

It seems to be made as a hunter killer stealth unit with a lot of fire power, however it doesn’t seem like a single unit would be so dangerous, was this thing made to work in packs? I shuddered to think who would survive being hunted by more than one of these things.

Currently it seems the machines weapons systems are, thankfully enough, inoperable. This didn’t make it weigh any less or any less dangerous as the claws were natural weapons. I shall endeavor to keep an eye on the situation as the group led by Jean De’ La Frogois moves to assist his people.

?!

“Attention, cleaner bots are attempting to intercept your descent Jean. While they don’t have weapons that can kill outright, I’m fairly certain that they can still do so with what they do have if given the opportunity. Don’t give them the chance.” The five of them stopped in the corridor two decks down when they heard my voice. The white fluffy one in particular leapt and clutched at her chest while her eyes darted about, where I alive I would hug her as she was adorable. “I’m cutting off their route to you by closing off a few doors, but I would suggest you make haste along the current route I set up for you. For I’m not in control of them and as I have stated previously I am limited in what aid I can lend you. I would not wish to change your route, but if needs must…”

“What would they be capable of doing?” The ladybug quadruped asked.

“Caustic cleaning sprays, might cause epidermal burns and may be used to blind you. Electric rods for small repair work throughout the ship can electrocute and stun you. If you get sprayed and electrocuted the damage will be even worse. They could attempt to slam into you, but they would be destroying themselves in the process as they are not primarily built for combat. They have feet that are scrubbers and may use the rapid rotation of such to attack with their legs.” My answer was a quite succinct. “If you need me to describe them, I will do so. They are small, but don’t take them lightly, they were mass produced to keep the ship clean and functioning, thus they have been entirely inoperable up until this day it seems and the ship no longer needs to be functional.”

“I’m pretty sure if we see any machines moving at us, then we’ll know what we’re looking at.” Not a bad supposition from the pig descendant, but I had reason to state otherwise.

“This ship was stolen from a machine making monster, the guy specialized in making war machines. Therefore there are some machines onboard that could be capable of worse than the cleaning machines present and heading towards you. I will warn you if any of the inactive ‘Swat-Bots’ onboard become an issue, provided the magical entity doesn’t have some method to fool my ability to detect them. It seems the dark magic anomalous entity has only managed to get control of the smaller more numerous machines.” The silence and the worried looks of the four that understood my words made me wince. The white fluffy one was worried even if she didn’t understand since the others were so. “Said machine making monster was the original owner of designation Pig Star, said Pig Star was capable of wiping out all life on this planet had it not been swiftly stolen by your ancestors before it could become fully operational.”

“How dangerous were these Swat-Bot things Nicole Beta? Oh right I guess we haven’t introduced ourselves other than Jean… I’m Ocellus!” She seemed to be trying to keep an upbeat and chipper attitude despite the devolving situation.

“Exceedingly Ocellus, they were used to capture ancestors of the now natives of Elhorn. Said captured were swiftly turned completely into machines by what was supposed to be a medical technology use to help people. The method was meant to help people survive certain sicknesses or lethal injuries until it could cured or fixed… then the process would be reversed once the problem was solved. Instead the monster that helped build the machine used it to his own ends to enslave the bodies put into it by transforming them into machines he could control with incredible ease, only a strong enough mind and soul could resist that control for a while and control the machine body for a few hours at a time. Not many had that kind of capacity to resist. He made it very hard to return to normal flesh and blood once you’ve been put through the process.” There was a look of horror on the faces, in particular the canines. “The monster I keep mentioning, his machine army started small with ‘badniks’. Pet machines that were sent to terrorize various local regions around his seat of power at the start of it all. They were powered by small live animals, said machines were what built the real machine army that truly kicked off the increasing number of atrocities the machine making monster became known for. One of the worst of those things was the Swat-Bots, who captured hundreds of thousands of people for conversion. You may think your ancestors cowards for running descendants, but they had plenty of good reasons to steal the ships that got them here and fled when they could. They at least did a big favor for those who stayed behind to continue fighting by setting back the mad machine making monster years by taking stealing some of his biggest projects and the designs for them.”

I was never meant to be a person, only a virtual intelligence… I’m just a fragment of the original.

So why was I acting like a real being with emotions that weren't necessary?

-Ocellus-

The more I heard about this monster Nicole spoke of, the more concerned I became by what this Nicole was telling us as we continued down into the bowels of the ship underneath a castle that could once upon a time reach the stars. As alien as we were, the people we were slowly getting to know where aliens that adapted to this world.

“Well… that certainly explains a lot. At least this explains where Yellow Dog got the idea to build the satellite launch palace that was destroyed by the Rocket Knight’s efforts during the skirmish of the Eginasem Crisis my people caused at least two or so years back. Our people must have used the remains of our ark ship that was cannibalized for Generalissimo’s mad quest to destroy the world with massive explosion devices.” Mumbled Colleen quietly into the soundless hallways we were maneuvering by Nicole’s guiding light. “Is there any chance that the evil cores might have knowledge of how to create this horrific sounding conversion machine you speak of?”

“No, at least not in the way that the guy that built these ships did it with a perfect melding of magic and technology. Technically the way the machines here could do it would be far worse, with less effective results overall and it would actually be irreversible. Your entire body wouldn’t quickly turn from flesh to machinery, they would have to instead cut you apart and painfully add on to what they steal away.” I could hear the quivering in Nicole’s voice. “At least the other method is quick and relatively painless… and could be reversed. The method that could be employed here would be arguably worse given it would be torturous and would likely drive you insane or just outright destroy your mind entirely! I wouldn’t recommend any of you doing anything related to replacing parts of yourself in any way, shape or form as none of the machines on this world can be trusted to do so with the knowledge you have given me. Unless you personally built a machine to make and attach a prosthetic that runs on your biology without any outside help or input. Even then, it is still ethically questionable to use.”

“Back when Generalissimo Lioness was a noble ruler…” Colleen commented sadly as she clenched her fist and her tail lashed back and forth agitatedly as we continued moving forward at a decent pace. “I can certainly understand now what caused his madness. I'm one of the few that survived Axel Gear trying and failing to recreate rocket knight’s to his own nefarious ends.”

“Yeah, and Devligus was an evil core machine that promised my people glory. Only did we later found out he was slowly steering us towards the chopping block with his mind control, only it wouldn’t be just our necks that would be chopped up.” Bruno stated dourly while rubbing at his throat. “You should all consider yourself lucky the mind control method seemed to only affect us pigs, a good ninety percent of us were being forced to our deaths in that war and the true rocket knight was the most lenient person out on the battlefield sparing many of our lives.”

“Does this machine making monster have a name?” I asked as we made our way down the stairs passing a sign labeled ‘Deck B’.

“I’d rather not say it, it might actually invoke more trouble than its worth.” There was such an intense sadness to Nicole’s words that I could feel throughout a massive area.

Wait… she had feelings I could sense? Was she like Dodo? She wasn’t a familiar though, anyone could tell at least that much if they even know what ‘familiars’ are.

“I hear something coming!” Pom yelled as we were coming up to an intersection, a machine slid to a stop in front of us.

The machine looked like a water strider bug that was basically half my size.

It’s for pad shaped feet ended in spinning brushes, it had one glowing yellow eye and two arms raised with lightning arcing between its two pointed glowing blue rods with three digits around them. The chemical spraying nozzle was underneath the eye.

There was a faint purple glow of dark magic surrounding it, none of us needed to be a genius to know it was the entity behind all of this controlling it.

It didn’t look threatening, what did was when ten or more started to surge around the corner of the intersection. A thick metal door slammed shut in front of us before the sudden tidal wave of these machines could charge us.

“Right then, take this alternate route I’m providing… follow the lights and please deal with the problem behind this soon.” There was a tentative hitch in her voice. “I don’t want anyone else to die on my watch… again…”

What did she mean by ‘again’?

“What do you mean by again?” Jean echoed my thoughts as were started moving back down the corridor and took a different passageway, he looked tired and was determined to keep going. His people were in danger and nothing was going to stop him, not even his own bulky form.

“Do you really think these ark ships your people arrived to this world on were taken peaceably without some form of monumental fight happening Jean? I was one of the lynchpins in shutting down most of the machines on all the arks and coordinating efforts to that effect.” There was the feeling of sorrow from all around us now. “They were built by, let’s call him ‘The Mad Machinist’. They still have warlike applications despite their normal designations being cleaning things, which should tell you something about how dangerous the actual war machines are when there are still quite a few that weren’t destroyed by the fighting that went on in this ship and I hope they all stay deactivated and where they are.”

“I don’t feel comfortable about being guided around by machine.” Grumble a reluctant Bruno who continued to follow the paths Nicole was setting out for us. He was almost hostile to her and he had his reasons. “I don’t like the idea of intelligent machines at all.”

“Oh trust me, this feeling is not lost on any of us Bruno, even Pom can sense the unease permeating the air even when she cannot personally understand this Nicole’s words.” It was not like we had a choice Jean, we were here to deliver a message and save your people from the cause of all this. We were going to succeed or run and never look back.

“There’s more I’d like to learn about our descendants personally.” It seemed like Colleen was more lukewarm towards Nicole than the cold of Bruno or the wariness of Jean.

“I can almost get a vague idea of what’s going on here, but could you catch me up to speed on everything Ocellus?” Pom asked this when there was a lull in our talking as we turned down several corridors and started descending down another set of stairs at a decent pace of a half gallop. We were conserving energy while trying to stay on the move.

I started to try and quickly explain all the confusing stuff we were told by Nicole Beta and what Nicole Beta herself, an intelligence that dwarfed and surrounded us entirely. There was a concerning look on Pom’s face as we passed a wall with the text that read ‘Deck C’.

“You can tell her my name while we’re on the move.” I believe Nicole said that Jean’s people were in ‘Cargo Hold subsection D’? We were getting closer if my understanding of Elhorn’s alphabet was anything to go by, this place was far bigger than the already large castle above it.

The environment felt unnerving with how quiet it was as we continued to make haste through the hallways, knowing at any moment we could be attack by dangerous machines on four spindly legs that were just meant to keep things clean.

I’d rather take all that creepy fog to this place. I don’t think we'd be able to navigate this labyrinth without Nicole’s help, the metal wasn’t rusty but it was a bit worn with age and looked partially decrepit. However we did see some signs of scorch marks, rips in metal and other signs of combat as we passed through wrecked hallways and splotches of those who came before staining the floors and walls.

“Nicole, my friend’s name is Pom, she just wanted you to know that.” We came to a door and it slid open and were looking down a corridor, beyond the six doors was a sign that said ‘Cargo Access’ at the end of it.

“Thank you, I’ll log her name.” Nicole’s mood lifted a tiny bit. “In the meantime, I’m trying to decipher you’re language. It’ll give me something to do when I’m not worried you’ll be intercepted. They are not being controlled directly by whatever turned them back on, I can’t turn them off because they are running on an outside source.”

“As long as we don’t run into an evil core down here, I think we’ll do just fine.” Of the five of us, I was the only one that really didn’t want to fight.

I still wanted to help though and I think I did my best when I timed my attack on the last of those statues up in the castle, Mrs. Berrytwist taught me that lightning spell when she was a guest speaker at the School of Friendship and it proved useful if draining. Mrs. Berrytwist also had an insanely large magic capacity, which likely made up for having a broken horn. My capacity and ability to handle magical strain was nowhere close to being on par.

Didn’t have much in the way of self-defense either as I wasn’t good in close combat, no changeling really was if unicorns could beat us in a physical fight one on one. All those fun minor spell patterns I learned with Twilight were kind of useless against the things we were facing on this world.

We finished climbing down the ladder into the lit cargo hold, it was a vast open space and there was a large rip in the side of the box shaped room which led into a cave system. Nearby we saw the glow of the barrier keeping Jean’s people prison. Jean ran over to the prison calling out something, my attention was elsewhere and so was Pom’s as she had noticed it too.

There was a strange shadow hovering in the darkness of the cave and a pair of familiar red glows appeared, the same blood red glow that the statues had and were gazing at us.

“So, you have managed to circumvent my metal thralls… no matter… for it was all part of my plan. Now you face the threat of I… BEELZEBUG!” The dark magic was flowing from the hovering bug entity with a carapace black as night. “Thank you for bringing the last piece of my plan here... the entities that sought to help you have only led you to your inevitable doom.”

“It’s a giant fly.” Pom said dully with a surprising complete lack of fear.

Author's Note

Rocket Knight Adventures 2 for the Genesis features cyborgs in the final level, with the horrible implications that entails, considering that they are created on the spot as you are running through the level... it gets quite dark.

Sparkster for SNES also featured the most notable cyborg in the series, Generalissimo Lioness. Including the whole palace flying into space to place a satellite into orbit thing as a level. frankly the rocket palace looks like it was resource intensive and used up a lot of energy not to mention all the weapons on that thing.

Asterisk *: Look up 'Super Warp Ring', warp rings were also used in the Sonic The Hedgehog movie. Imagine a humongous one the size of a black hole and that sucked up the stolen fleet to end up on Elhorn to start a new life.

If anybody wonders, I consider Dr. Robotnik to be several times more evil than Dr. Wily could ever be for many various reasons. Also yes, Rocket Knight Adventure's does happen in the same universe as Sonic The Hedgehog ties in nicely to the story even if all this stuff happens on a different planet entirely.

58. The tale of Savage Pom.

-Elhorn, War Effort News-

The battlefront tensions were raising high in the contested zones as Zebulos couriers set out looking for help or to move supplies through the various realms to aid in holding back the Gedol offensive.

One such courier unit is The White Knight Couriers, the very couriers that thwarted Paeli’s plotted two pronged assault in Cladinhold. Though badly damaged the city still stands and is recovering, Zebulos soldiers are holding the line at the city of crossroads.

The White Knight Couriers, deciding to take the riskiest venture in the war effort, were seen tearing straight through the enemy lines to the northeast. In the process they ripped apart at least three supply depots on the way to their secret destination.

The western front between Zebulos, Zephyrus and Gedol has fallen back towards Gedol Empire’s main seat of power Devotindos City. Gedol’s front line falters and there are rumors of deserters among the lizard ranks due to the damaged supply depots and the inability to effectively field evil core machines.

The dark rocket knight, Axel Gear, has been deployed to the front lines to put down the rumors of defections with deadly force and to possibly hunt down the aforementioned deserters. He is also now on the hunt, looking for the White Knight Couriers to make an example of them.

Sparkster, the last true blue rocket knight, is still searching for the rumored magical swords to aid in the defeat of Emperor Gedol. He has come from his recent victory over one of their most powerful naga at the pyramids in the desert, having found another mystical sword. Currently he is tearing through Gedol’s northern forces as a one Opossum army unto himself.

Sparkster is heading towards Eginasem, but why? What can the world saving hero be planning?

In the east to far north east, Eginasem is holding firmly against Gedol incursions and their choke point has thus far been impenetrable. Paeli is stated to be in the area and the soldiers of Eginasem are concerned by the sight of the flagship under his command.

To the far north the Yellow Dog civil war continues, there is very little information about what is occurring there. What information we do have says that the ‘Cooler’ and ‘Wulfric’ factions are still fighting for domination.

Hydrigal, home of the amphibians within Gedol territories Mystical Mire, lies quiet. Have they been completely wiped off the map by their neighbors?

No words from the smaller fringe factions on whether they will join in the effort to push Gedol back.

-Hydrigal, Amphibian Ark, Cargo Hold Subsection D, Pom-

“Pom… I don’t want to be an alarmist, but… how can you possibly have negative fear?!” Glancing at Ocellus as she was freaking out I calmly raised my right brow at her. “It’s not courage or bravery as I know what those feel like from Shanty, it’s not even the absolute absence of fear, it is literally fear well into the negative. It’s like all your fears and anxieties just jumped off a cliff into a bottomless pit, leading into a void that got sucked into a black hole that subsequently goes into another one. How is that even possible for someone like you?!”

“Eh, I guess it just is.” I really don’t know what to tell Ocellus or why she was panicking so badly, this overgrown fly really didn’t scare me at all. I even felt like actually fighting him would be a one sided thing. “So… we’re dealing with you… our battle will likely be… okay, I can’t actually take this situation or even you seriously. I mean, you have to be one of the dumbest idiots to ever exist, how many times did you nearly die attacking a kingdom full of amphibians Mr. uh… what was it again… Beezy? It must have been so hard for you to get all the amphibians stuffed into this place like this you poor thing, going to all that effort for so little gain.”

“Foolish mortal I’m a demon, the great Beelzebug, the devourer of everything!” Ah so this… Beelzebug was it… was a demon. He could understand any language and could even do the whole speaking all the languages at the same time thing, thus the evil sounding voice distortions. Demons just loved doing that to freak people out. That distorted voice coming from Beezy… it rates a… meh. “Do you not fear the eternal suffering that I can bring down upon you?!”

“Yeah, you’re not that scary, I’d rate you being about as terrifying as a blade of grass.” Why was I receiving such an aghast look from Ocellus after saying that? “What are you going to do buzz loudly at me while I’m sleeping to keep me awake all night? Flare your power some more in a futile attempt to make me be like… oh no, you’re doing a scary glow to make yourself look more dangerous, but are actually wasting so much of your power to try and fail at being threatening. Are you just going try and bug me to death over the course of the next seventy or so years? Sorry, did stating that pun hurt your feelings or strike a nerve?”

“Pom, it’s a demon.” Ocellus said slowly and flatly while holding her hooves out to the hovering fly that was almost the size of my head, almost.

Said supposed Beezy was glowing purple and seething with rage, I wasn’t impressed at the display in the slightest.

“Yes, and your point Ocellus?” At least we were keeping him distracted as Bruno, Colleen and Jean tested the barrier that the many packed together amphibians were trapped behind. I’m sure they’ll figure that out eventually. “I have seen far worse things than your ugly proboscis Mr. Beezy.”

“You have witnessed worse than my mighty visage?” Beezy said curiously tilting his head. “May I know the name of what could make you overlook one such as me puny mortal? Afterwards I will make your death slow by sucking out your organs with my proboscis for such an insult!”

“I wouldn’t be the one talking about ‘puny’ for a morbidly overweight fly that has had a taste of one too many garbage cans. I can see why you call yourself the devourer, you certainly embody gluttony well enough.” The fly just hovered there, staring at me with a strange twitch in his right eye as he started to glow brighter. “Oh look at me, I’m a bug that got too big for my britches, I have dark powers, please acknowledge my pathetic existence senpai and cower before my attempts at being scary for only being what amounts to the local garbage collector and eater thereof. Also, do you really need to know the name of the demon I’m thinking of, when you say his actual name it has an effect. I bet saying your name, Beelzebug, doesn’t really do anything. Wow… some demon you are, you are definitely one of the greatest that I have ever met in my whole life, just the shining example of power and evil that all demons are known for.”

I was proven right, saying Beelzebug’s name didn’t elicit a reaction at all, other than an awkward silence as the supposed demon was growing even angrier than he was before.

“Pom, you’re beginning to scare me.” Ocellus stated with deep concern, how nice of her. “You are taunting a literal demon here, don’t you think that’s a bad idea… like, at all?”

Nicole said something, but I haven’t a clue what that was about. The Panther shaped machine charged into the area from the cave systems and glared me down with Mr. Beezy hovering above it crossing his front limbs.

“Will you mock me now mortal?” Is that was Mr. Beezy wanted?

Well… okay.

“Oh that’s so- scary, a demon that can’t even properly fight his own battles. That you need this sort of outside help to even be considered mildly threatening says a lot about you… none of it being worthwhile.” I stated in a bored tone, this demon was almost looking ready to explode. I wonder, could I actually get him to do that? “I’m Beelzebug, but please call me Mr. Beezy and watch me hug puppies. My time and existence is wasted on collecting friendly intelligent bipedal frogs that possibly nearly killed me multiple times.”

“They did not come even close to destroying a powerful being such as me!” Mr. Beezy stated while spreading all his legs and his inferno of dark magic continued to deepen with his anger.

I heard one of the frogs, feminine pink, beanpole, and nearest to Jean behind the barrier yell something our way.

“Apparently Beelzebug nearly died forty seven times trying to trap the amphibians over the course of the last two months.” Ocellus commented with a bit of shock. “Also she said his hindmost left leg was partially bitten off by a polliwog.”

Yeah, now that I look at it… that just made this supposed demon with dark magic and powers just pitiable at best that he had that much trouble with a child eating a part of him. Hoped that child grew up alright after such a harrowing experience with trying to survive how awful Mr. Beezy must have tasted.

“That foolish tadpole just got lucky!” Groused out a seriously angry Mr. Beezy and if I was right, he was about to make the purple glowing panther machine charge us.

“Wow, so even a child is a viable threat to you, way… to… go… you... you are seriously something else and totally worth the effort for me to fight. I definitely see you as a totally valuable member of this whole scenario of good versus evil, very threatening.” I stated as sarcastically and condescendingly as I possibly could while motioning my hooves at him. “You are definitely the best, why you’re the very epitome of dangerous Mr. Beezy. I’m totally frightened of your plan to make something else do the work that you really could never do yourself.”

“Attack my mechanical panther thrall!” I just took three steps to the right and lazily watched the mass of panther shaped machinery shoot by me.

“Ocellus could you get Jean to deal with the panther machine? I need to continue my discussion with Mr. Beezy here and his ludicrously obvious and dumb plan.” I think it was about time I name dropped Fred here. “As for the name of the demon that I think is far scarier then you, his name is… FHTNG!”

The world shook as a localized earthquake happened, the lights in the surrounding area turned dim and a red glow overtook everything, a supernatural chill swept through the area for a moment actually making me highly scared that he might actually show up… especially without his beloved Ollie to keep him in check.

Nothing came of it more than a effigy of Fred’s face bursting out of the nearby cave wall with a threatening sadistic grin on it. It was so much like the real thing that I shuddered to think of ever possibly invoking Fred’s real name like that again.

-Several dimensions over, Fred-

“No! We can’t go investigate a wannabe demon that invoked you Fred, besides we are in the middle of something important… and we’re still trying to find Pom.” My love was correct, that demon that possibly invoked my name as a joke was an utter joke himself and was so puny that I didn’t even need to bother with him.

Let an adventurer squash that tiny demon’s butt. I will admit that the demon was decent at masking all the presences around him, I still sent an effigy of myself just make things clear that he should not try me. Masking his presence and that of those around him was just about all the demon seemed to be decent at.

A useful skill to be sure, but not really worth scrutinizing all too much. I think he got my message readily enough.

Now back to what I was currently enjoying, our incredible fight with Thanos the Titan!

Those Infinity Stones of his are quite tricky to deal with, but I’m sure I can continue to be an effective counter to the cosmic powers in play here. Also, we were an outside context problem, Thanos couldn’t use this universes power to wipe us out instantly as we are from a completely different universe entirely and not part of the energies of this given universe.

That didn’t mean this Thanos wasn’t of a dangerous mind. Let’s rile him up a bit more, he was putting up a halfway decent fight for something that wasn’t a demon.

“Death is too good for the likes of you!” I shouted at the titan. “She deserves far better than a pathetic maggot like you, you can’t even kill my beloved dark magic unicorn here. All she has is a giant key with the abstract power of locking and unlocking anything and… SHE HAS YET TO EVEN USE THAT OR HER DARK MAGIC AGAINST YOU AND SHE’S BUCKING YOUR ASS UP AND DOWN THIS SHIP! What kind of husband for Death would you really be? ARE YOU EVEN REALLY TRYING TO BE HER CHAMPION OR NOT, EVEN I COULD DO A BETTER JOB THEN YOU AND I’M NOT EVEN INTERESTED IN HER!”

“You better not be Fred, or else I’ll put you in a literal dog house for a year with nothing but the color of eye searing pink to occupy your time!” My Ollie was so pure, so threatening… I simply loved her and Death couldn’t have her as she was mine and I was hers. It would be over my immortal impossible to destroy existence that she’d even get within an inch of even scraping Ollie vaguely!

I really got Thanos going, this will be quite enjoyable.

“Can we fight Galactus next Ollie?” My unicorn rolled her eyes and just sighed as she swung her key-blade forward.

“No, I heard he lost to a giant squirrel, which is just plain pathetic of a world ending power Fred.” Oleander was everything to me and would Ollies be. “Did you just think of a pun using my name Fred?”

“No---” I slowly drew out the word.

-Back on Elhorn, Amphibian Ark, Cargo Hold subsection D, Pom-

“Now you see Mr. Beezy, now that… that was actually scary and absolutely chilled me to the bone! Why can’t you be more like that, I might actually begin to barely take you seriously or even have the tiniest smidge of respect for you then.” I stated loudly as I glanced behind me as Bruno, Jean and Colleen were keeping the panther machine fairly busy. Oh look the cleaning machines were arriving now and one just got a decent hit in on Bruno… now it was sliced it half as was the three behind it too. Wow… look at them go. All those cleaner bots are the most threatening thing present because of the absolute obscene number of them just flooding into this place. I’m sure they could handle that without me. “Do you want to know what makes it even worse for you in comparison? His name actually caused that kind of response, despite ninety percent of his powers being sealed away, with ten percent of them being lodged in a unicorn. He’s basically stuck in a book and is in a completely different dimension from us. Your name, it doesn’t really do anything Mr. Beezy and you are just a sad, ugly, big old fly with nothing really going for you aside from the vaguely demonic sounding name and a dream that can never be realized because you are just that awful at being pure evil.”

“You dare…” Beelzebug started to say, but I cut him off.

“That is literally an effigy of the one known as Fred, which is what I’d rather call him, he managed that with barely any of his power fully freed up. As for your name, it means absolutely nothing.” I sauntered up to the fly and stared him dead in the eyes. “Correct me if I’m wrong on this, but your plan is this. You require a ridiculous arbitrary number of specific beings for some kind of soul sucking ritual and you intend to drain all these amphibians for power. Said ritual is long, complicated and messy, with the implications that it would take days before anyone would actually die from it. If someone like me did one thing to stop it, it would actually take you something approaching an entire year to set it all up again wouldn’t it? Despite being trapped the amphibians look to be easily surviving off worms and the water somehow trickling down from above. The frogs love swimming in bacteria infested swamps, so none of the people of Hydrigal will die of sicknesses and are all in good health despite the current conditions you’re putting them through. That’s so--- evil of you, you haven’t even killed a single person yet have you?”

“Yes, the guardian water spirit of Hydrigal has been quite the thorn in my side and…” Decided to cut off Mr. Beezy again before he could get going.

“Yada, yada, yada, you are not even denying that I’m entirely correct or else you would have started with denial.” The silence that followed made me smile. “In fact, I would like to even state that you aren’t evil all. Are you just a misjudged bug that needs a big hug?”

“No! I am the demon that will destroy you and everything you have ever…” He tried, he really did. I just shook my head sadly at him and tutted at him loudly.

“If you were actually a real serious threat, then I must know this. Why am I, a being from a people known for impossibly stupid levels of anxiety and fear, just seeing you as a bump in the road that a wagon would run over without remorse or even a second thought?” I sure got him going now, as he was lighting up the entire cave system behind himself in fury. “Nice nightlight display, are you actually going to actually do something with all that or are you just overcompensating like you’re doing with all the robots you have under your control?”

He didn’t answer me right away, he was focusing and building up power, I was loathe to actually try and dodge the attack if he gets it off. I didn’t believe for a second that he could actually hurt me or pull off something that could scratch my wool.

“I feel sorry for you, pity you even, is this really the direction you are going with in life?" I didn’t see him moving to say a word, he was building up power for an attack and it felt… a little tingly. "Is evil really the best you can do, because you really suck at it.”

Oh look, my wool was starting to build up a golden glow, must be some of the dark magic directing itself at me just by proximity.

“Pom, I don’t know what this thing your doing is, but I’m just going to… go... over here, well away from you.” Ocellus quickly hurried away and the sound of robots falling to the floor could be heard.

I looked above my head and watched a stream of dark magic flow into Mr. Beezy coming from the now inert robots, even more was coming from above from the castle and some of it was being pulled out of the barrier keeping the hundreds of frogs held against their will.

“Is this really all the power you can muster this quickly, really? You’re pulling it from the castle, the barrier, the machines you controlled and it still doesn’t feel like much.” I heard Nicole say something, but ignored it.

“The fog is coming.” Ocellus was well off to the side with the others as I stood in front of Mr. Beezy concentrating all his power around himself.

“Yep, that's definitely overcompensating for something at this point.” I stated dryly to the large fly hovering in a sea of purple with red lightning flowing through it.

“I will end you with one blow mortal, I will put every ounce of my strength behind it…” Mr. Beezy only received a dispassionate stare from me. “To make sure you… yes you specifically… will die. So fear the power that I bring upon you mortal, for it will not cease until every hint of your existence is eradicated.”

“Wow… that is… by far… the emptiest threat that I have ever possibly heard in my entire life. I’ve heard some real zingers when it comes to threatening me too! Fred is quite creative, he’d at least make a silverware out of my bones and would use my skull as soup bowl, would have also slurped down my soul by now too. What is it with Demons and all the macabre stuff that you guys are into? I mean I can understand doing these things to your enemies, but demons usually don’t tend to have really unique long term goals aside from getting more powerful so they can rule over a fiefdom like some form of big bully.” I pondered on that thought for a while as Mr. Beezy was continuing to supposedly charge up his ‘ultimate attack’ that was taking minutes to build. I could have interrupted him at any time. “Anyways, whatever you’re about to do, I just want you to know that I’m truly sorry for what’s about to happen… to you at least. I care that you existed, even if you are the most ineffectual demon to ever be known by anyone ever.”

“Shut… UP!” Mr. Beezy lost his concentration and violently popped. All the built up energy just evaporated into thin air and his body was a splattered mess on the ground.

I slowly made my way up to the mess and looked down on it sadly.

“Rest in peace Mr. Beezy.” I bowed my head solemnly and then turned to the freed frogs just standing there staring at me with wide eyes. I looked to Bruno, Jean and Colleen who were as equally mesmerized. Then to Ocellus. I felt a little nervous at all the stares, even the fog just arrived and looked just as lost. “What? What is it? Is there something actually viably threatening here now?!”

Nobody answered and they all turned their gazes to the puddle on the floor, the muck that used to be a demon fly named Mr. Beezy.

In the end I would remember him fondly, he deserved that much for at least trying. He did a lot of spooky stuff, but in the end he popped... like a balloon.

“Well okay then, let’s wrap this all up by getting everyone out of here and deliver the message.” I clapped my hooves together and gave everyone a friendly smile. I hummed a quiet solemn tune as I made my way for the ladder back up with everyone’s eyes following me. “I'm sure Shanty would certainly enjoy this weird story."

-Ocellus-

“Did… she… taunt a demon... to death?” I asked blankly, my left eye started twitching violently. “What the actual bu…”

“Language young lady!” Pom snapped at me and then continued climbing the ladder while humming to herself.

“Is it weird that I’m now absolutely terrified of Pom?” Nicole's emotions quivered.

“Could she be the messiah of canines?!” Why was Colleen suddenly in awe of Pom? Her tail was now a vaguely visible blur.

“That certainly was… something.” Bruno grunted out as he wiped off the chemicals he’d been sprayed with.

“Dear mama, Pappilia my sister, I have returned to say that I have joined the effort against Gedol’s evil as a brave courier and we’ve a message to deliver!” It was Jean who broke the awkwardness.

Author's Note

As to be expected, if Pom isn't afraid of it, then whatever it happens to be is going to do absolutely zip all to be an actual threat.

59. The peace before...

-Equus, Canterlot, Fizzle-

“How did you know?” Says the kitty that was hanging upside down and bound by her legs.

“That the Tiny Ewe from the Crystal Empire was a lynchpin in your latest ridiculousness?” I just shook my head, Jaded was becoming easier for me to read. When things start getting weird look, for the most out of place thing and move it ever so slightly. “Wasn’t hard to figure out Jade, do you have an alibi for this mess or do I need to arrest you for being a public nuisance?”

“Right pocket.” I levitated what was in her right pocket of her shorts out. I quickly unfurled the note, read it and then sighed audibly.

“All the damages incurred, because you certainly don’t do thing by half, is coming out of the Royal Guards budget… again.” I just sat down and started petting the tiny ewe eating the crystal berries that I set out for it.

I looked behind me at all the royal guards in Canterlot trapped in crystalized single mass of honey and maple syrup, I’m surprised that she even got all the guards that were off duty too.

I’m one of the few things between my kitty and world domination, should she ever actually begin trying. She most likely just wants to destroy Saddle Arabia, which would be a diplomatic nightmare if we allowed her anywhere near having the idea.

“Pure… evil…” One of the royal guards whimpered.

“Zampony…. Zampony… Zampony…” Another wide eyed guard kept saying in a madness mantra.

“Suck it up people, if you can’t handle a little Jade attack, then you won’t be able to take on the rougher stuff that generally happens around Princess Twilight.” I stated bluntly. “My kitty doesn’t do killing, but what she’s good at is traumatizing people for life. I remember when she traumatized me by exploding in front of me… that’s how I ended up as the Storm Queen!”

“So… going to tell me what’s going on now Queen Fizzy?” Jade smiled innocently at me and I levitated the Tiny Ewe up to her. It promptly smacked her in the face for me with its tiny hoof. “Ow!”

“How good of ewe.” I stated, the Tiny Ewe bleated happily as I set her back to eating crystal berries. “I wonder if Silvers would like a pet.”

-Elhorn, the next day, Hydrigal Castle Town, Bakery, Ocellus-

“That’s… kind of awesome.” Smolder stated with smile. “Any dragon would wish they could do something like that!”

“No, not awesome, it was freaky and mildly traumatizing!” I received a hug from Smolder, and the love flowed. “Her one near emotional constant just suddenly ceases to exist by going entirely negative and she goes off on a verbal tirade against a demon, she even continued to do so even while we were under attack by machines!”

“Shhh… it is okay Ocellus, Pom is never going to hurt us, I’m sure she had her reasons for acting the way she did. Though having negative fear…” I watched as Smolder dug into a banana cream pie, well what passes for bananas on this world. “Sounds like the demon was so underwhelming that Pom snapped.”

The food on Elhorn apparently tasted weird, not that I would know as I’m always well fed by my friends.

It’s a good thing changelings will never tire of the taste of pure love, familial or romantic partner, the two best flavors to ever exist! With friendship being a good third that never quits!

“I think it be an awesome way to deal with a big problem that quickly, I be wanting to insult someone so bad that they explode like that now too… provided it doesn’t be killing them.” Of course you do Shanty, you were far more impressionable than we were. “All Pirates have to be good at insulting, but I be doubting that Pom is willing teach me that. Wait… can beings be exploding twice?”

“You’ve got that right Shanty, she definitely won’t. I’ll help you with that personally and we can bounce insult ideas off each other. It’s kind of a sport for dragons. So what’s Pom doing again?” Smolder asked as she and Shanty continued to eat baked goods.

“Waiting for a response to the delivered message, she doesn’t need a translator to take a message just a destination and person. Besides she’s has something important to talk with Colleen about.” I don’t think Pom will ever cease to amaze us in what she is capable of, even if drastically undersells her own worth as a friend. “She’s apparently the most eloquent speaker of canid languages ever according to Colleen. I’m also feeling sorry for Mr. Beezy after what Pom did to him, my feelings are conflicting because he ‘was’ a demon.”

“Is it because of how Pom dealt with him or is it a kinship thing from being part bug and expecting him to have done more?” That was a hard question to answer Smolder, but if I had to...

“A lot of that really.” I looked at the streets teaming with life, as the frogs got things back in order and tossed out a lot of bad supplies and were picking their lives back up quite quickly. Also there were rainbows arcing all around Hydrigal. “I’m kind of upset with Pom about it, but I have to give her credit for doing it for a good reason. The demon was obviously not going to let Jean’s people go and it was far faster than fighting all those robots and then dealing with Mr. Beezy afterwards while we’re weak.”

“How long do you suppose the hospitality will keep going?” Shanty asked with a bright grin loaded with pie.

“Please swallow your food before you talk Shanty, also they seem to make whole body weights worth of food here.” All of it was gourmet food too, even the pie Shanty was eating was made specifically for her and to her tastes. “So I don’t think you’ll be going hungry as long as we’re here and while they are quite hospitable, we shouldn’t overstay our welcome or eat all the food in the realm.”

These amphibians were a jolly people, not really many high end warriors among them. Jean is one of the best fighters to ever come from Hydrigal… except he wasn’t a soldier and he didn’t have much experience being in a pitched battle until meeting us. At least Jean had a positive attitude and wanted to help like Pom did.

“Yeah, now if only the food of this world wasn’t so weird.” Mumbled Smolder. “Bite into an apple, expect the taste of plums or an orange.”

“I have a quick question to ask, why does word ‘buck’ get so many varied reactions?” It has always bothered me and Smolder looked willing to answer, but her emotions seemed to read as embarrassed.

“Cultural context Ocellus, bucking could be used for kicking, a quote unquote ‘bad word’ or… an innuendo. Ponies and most other quadrupeds always know the context when used. I’m guessing that changelings have had cultural issues there too?” Wasn’t going to dignify that with a response Smolder, my face was too red and warm to do so.

Shanty snickered loudly into one of her hooves as she continued to consume her pie with a love for life and good food. Dodo eventually snuck up right next her, about as sneaky as a large two legged mechanical bird thing can be.

“Well that explains a few of the weirder problems when we still had infiltrators.” My face had to be quite pale as I realized she included ‘innuendo’ in that, oh gods… I’m never going to be able to look at my parents, cousins, uncles and aunts in the faces again without having to explain this to them. To think we’ve been using those phrases without fully understanding them. “It would also certainly explain the changelings that got pulled into some herds by ponies without explanation…”

“So wait, you’ve said things like ‘bucking heck’ or ‘what the actual buck’ and never know what it means in context?” Smolder burst out laughing as I looked away in embarrassment. “I can’t help but think of changelings as adorable puppies now.”

“Well we changelings had a decent idea what those phrases meant, just not everything behind them. Anyway I figured out a bit more about Pom’s wool, the magic reflecting properties only seem to activate when harmful magic tries to hit her. The ‘safety scissors’ and ‘mend’ spells didn’t do anything to set her wools unusual properties off. The particular ‘mend’ spell I used wasn’t meant for medical purposes, but it seemed to have worked well enough.” Which means thankfully that even if it wasn’t a necessarily a medical spell, it had worked on Pom’s ribs and I didn’t cause her any problems. “Reflecting dangerous magic is a peculiar bizarre ability that Lambkin are not known as having, it certainly kept her safe from that storm of dark magic the demon was building up for an attack it never got off.”

“Different topic, what do you think is going to happen to that Nicole Beta character you mentioned to us?” Smolder leaned back lazily and kicked up her feet on the table, which was a bit rude to our new friends and allies. “We can also talk about the local guardian spirit that seems to be happy to create rainbows all around Hydrigal for the amphibians, it’s actually a really pretty effect. I have to give it to the elemental spirit, it seems certainly happy to have them back.”

“It is pretty, this is being quite a nice place and…. hey!” Shanty suddenly noticed Dodo pecking at her pie and quickly looked away why trying to warble innocently, nobody was buying it for a second. “You be having bits of it on your beak you pie pilfering pillock! I be proud of you, stealing and knowing when to do so is being a great skill that all pirates should know. In this case, it is important to know that it was not right to do so… because you should never be stealing from your captain!”

Dodo whined, he was really part of our group now. He mostly runs on friendship, along with a bit of food and water. I don’t honestly know about repairs, but he seems to heal almost biologically. He was Shanty’s curious familiar and I was studying him to draw comparison to other familiars I’ve heard of from Pom.

I wondered what Nicole Beta would make of Dodo, she seems to know some of the history behind what was going on in this world despite being stuck to only doing things within the crashed ship that would never fly again.

Still didn’t know what Nicole exactly was, she did say she was like a controlling force behind machines and wasn’t truly a machine herself.

So she was like a machine’s bodiless soul, this didn’t make Bruno happy in the slightest that machines can become intelligent and or living entities if my ability to feel emotions were anything to go by. Bruno had clearly understandable reasons for having a huge distrust of them or the fact that they can have souls themselves without stealing them from someone else.

“Please don’t teach Dodo something you might absolutely regret later Shanty.” The look I received from Shanty was confused, as if she didn’t understand why she shouldn’t be teaching her familiar how to commit larceny. “Hydrigal is really nice place without all the gloom.”

“Yeah, especially with all these architects, artists and artisans, plus the numerous gourmet chefs. It’s surprising that they even have a standing military force, given how congenial they are even with neighbors like Gedol around.” Smolder, I don’t think dragons understood politics, which would be understandable given dragons prefer strength over intelligence. Thank goodness for Spike and Dragon Lord Ember turning that around. “Still didn’t stop the thousand or so frogs from being stuffed into a small place like canned sardines… what? Dragons do occasionally buy snacks from Abyssinian merchant cats, they are really good at fishing.”

Now politics were easy for changelings to understand even if we were a tad culture blind. It was always about the same common denominator, power, and it’s all basically math to the simplest degree of who gets said power and why. Also there’s the chronic backstabbing disorder that some forms of politics tends to include.

It’s a good thing these frogs are too friendly and humble for that stuff, don’t think we’d get the respite we have today if it weren’t for them willing to give us sanctuary.

“You know, if we ever see Gallus again and he makes fun of you for liking cute stuff, then you should ask him if it means he doesn’t think Silver Stream is cute.” I just made Smolder smile at me. “So Shanty, Smolder said you were doing something odd with the fog?”

“Yeah, it be teaching me something.” Shanty shook her head with a cheerful grin and droplets of water fell away from her creating sparkles in the air. “I be adding water to my Cut-lash style!”

“Isn’t water usually known for blunt force though?” Good question Smolder.

“Not if you be being hit with a spray of the briny sea, now that can cut and bite into you pretty badly. Sure the force of waves be blunt, but the sea be having its own hidden cutting edge.” Shanty was happy to talk about it. “Everyone be knowing that a little salt in the wound is being quite painful. Now that I’ve figured out how to use my sweat to increase the power of my attacks, I can do that! It be drying me out quite a bit though, it be better if I do it with a nearby source of water to draw from.”

As Shanty continued into happily telling us how she figured out how to wield water with her odd bladed hoof magic. I wondered idly how Pom was fairing mentally as I listened to Shanty go on about the neat stuff she figured out from how waves ripple and recreated ripples with her attacks.

“So Ligstrun, how do you think you are feeling?” I know how he was feeling. He was a bit tense around us, but he seemed to be recovering from the burns on his back well enough.

“Far safer around you guys at the least and my back isn’t feeling too horrible… thanks for taking me with you.” Ligstrun soon got up from his seat and started to walk away after finishing his food, he been quiet the entire time and I noticed him looking at the rainbows with a small smile. He was a good person that had been in, and probably still was, in a bad place. “Now if you’ll excuse me I’m needed in Hydrigal Castle, apparently my expertise as a mechanic is going to be of some ‘good’ use. I’ll be ready to leave with you guys and… I’ll figure out some way to repay you if you can guarantee my safety. I really don’t want to be experimented on, so if Gedol tries to capture me… please, don’t let them take me.”

“Don’t worry, we won’t!” I went back to listening to Shanty wax poetic about saltwater and its properties, she was really prepared for a life at sea.

-Castle Hydrigal, Throne Room, Pom-

Not understanding a word of this, I was letting Colleen translate anything pertinent to give Ocellus a break from tediously translating everything for me. I would always work well with dogs, a curse as much as a blessing.

I needed a good frolic… away from the war and things like what happened with Mr. Beezy.

The frogs were amiable to lending aid where they could, mostly to us specifically since we did help them out personally. Curiously enough they wanted the White Knight Couriers to do a favor for Nicole Beta.

We would be going through enemy lines again to get anywhere and Nicole needed transportation, didn’t know how we were going to carry someone who didn’t physically have a body though. The concept of her being a machine spirit was a little weird to me, but Ocellus confirmed she could feel Nicole’s emotions and presence as much as she felt Dodo being alive.

It was eventually explained that Jean had to give her permission to build a body, Jean laid down some ground rules and Nicole accepted them immediately much to Jean’s surprise. Nicole explained she was basically born to aid his ancestors and she had to listen to at least Jean.

If Nicole wasn’t needed anymore, she would just go back to sleep and was quite sad to do so as she knew she was needed. She wanted to see what kind of world she helped Elhorn become by getting most of their ancestors here alive.

I think we could trust Nicole. She seemed chronically sad or depressed from what Ocellus said and she need some more happiness in her life, but that decision wasn’t in my hooves. I could only give words of encouragement through Ocellus or Colleen, up until she’s deciphered the language of Equus.

I wonder…

“Can I ask to see Nicole?” My barks drew Colleen’s attention away from the proceedings as several frogs conversed about the message we delivered and how they are going to respond to it. I was just a messenger, not a politician or a council member. “I also need to talk to you about something.”

Colleen nodded and turned to Jean to address him, he said some things and waved at us. Colleen turned back to us.

“Come on.” Two short yips and slightly more eloquent than Colleen had spoken before, I think she was learning how to properly speak canine from me.

We went into the top of the ship entrance and walked down the staircase quietly, apparently this was an entrance to the top of the ship that was used for walking around on top of it while it was in atmosphere.

“I have questions.” I yapped at her.

“I know.” She responded with a whine.

“You speak canine? Interesting, excuse me, the mechanic I needed is here and… well I certainly didn’t know all this Gedol stuff was going on. I need his help if I’m going to make myself a body.” The mechanical tone of the barking kind of threw me off, but I understood it. “Thankfully I have a lot spare parts to steal from numerous deactivated machines around here, I at least want to be made of military grade armor even if I’m not using military grade weapons. I don’t exactly trust myself with weapons given what I am, that caution is warranted given how machines have acted in the past on this world while I slept. Jean talked to me for quite a bit about the Gedol Empire situation before he went to sleep last night.”

“Nicole?” I queried having to use a weird half bark and yip for her name.

“Yes, some form of ‘canine’ is one of the languages I apparently know having heard you speak it. Don’t really know what they added to me when the ancestors to the people of this world made me from copied fragments of an already fully realized cognizance.” Nicole then coughed. “I know it’s a bit odd for someone with the image of a cat speaking dog. I’m not actually a cat, it’s just a left over image I happen to cobble together that reminds me of my originator. Excuse me, but I have to walk the mechanic through what I need him to grab and what he needs to tear apart for me. He seems enthusiastic to aid me in making a body for myself.”

“A body? Well I guess we’ll be seeing you soon.” I turned back to Colleen as we entered the room where we first learned of how people ended up on Elhorn.

“By this evening at the earliest with a mechanics help. I’ll be able to start working on my body myself after a certain point, but a pair of hands would still be helpful.” Nicole seemed to be a little bit less dour than Ocellus predicted. “Glad you happened to have one with you.”

“Colleen, you know how to fight right?” I didn’t have a full rundown of the history of what happened.

All I knew was that it was exceedingly bad, enough so for the people of this world to go through the effort of capturing multiple ships with anyone willing to fight that they could scrape together to escape their home world.

“Yes, if facing enemy paw with paw, can handle self, but better at smarts.” She pulled her modified shrimp claw out and twirled it before putting it back, she also patted the rocket pack she sported on her back. “Can use this, but only when important. No want to rely on though, effective working burn packs rare, safe burn packs more rare.”

“What was it like being a special operative for Yellow Dog?” I growled this out as gently as I could.

“No put in field, was decent in the air and survived death knight trying to make burn packs work good. The one this one had worked weak, but no kill this one.” Colleen was good, but she had to think about the words she wanted to say. “Dark knight, no one like, is death. Train us to fight, many fall. If hurt, no help if no do well.”

I think Colleen was trying harder for me and while I appreciated it, it still unnerved me what lengths dogs would go to just to be my friend and help me. That’s even when they weren’t my beloved beasties.

“Yikes, probably shouldn’t continue this, how about we just go back up and enjoy the day together?” My words got Colleen’s fluffy tail wagging.

“Friends?” She asked hopefully.

“We already are, but are you hiding anything?” We would spend the rest of the day together in Hydrigal, this would at least make Colleen happy.

“One of few that survived dark knight. Others… not lucky.” Colleen’s best approximation for Axel Gear is 'dark knight', he sounded terrifying. I stood up on my hind legs and patted her on the shoulder.

“How long were you alone for, before ending up in Cladinhold?” That was one really big mouthful for a name spoken in canine, Colleen looked away. “I’m here for you as long as I can be.”

“Why leave?” She asked simply.

“I have family to return to.” The solemn nod of acceptance I got from Colleen was a bit sad, but she still gave me a big hug afterwards. “Jean and Bruno can be friends if you let them.”

“Not like pig, can work with.” She yapped back. “Frog is good friend. Have no family, not anymore…”

“Jean would share his family.” I would too if I could.

-The next day, north of Cladinhold, Ocellus-

We have our next message to deliver, we only needed to get back to Cladinhold and not go all the way to Castle Zebulos.

“This is what one of the people of Mobius would look like when turned into a machine.” Nicole finished saying, as her body was that of a mechanical lynx that vaguely looked like her image on a screen. “This will be my sordid reminder.”

Dodo had interested Nicole immensely, something about six benign magical viruses.

We went through enemy territory by going northwest, then we started heading south towards Cladinhold and are soon intercepted.

Dodo suddenly leapt backwards taking the whole wagon with him into the air.

A powerful swirling burst of red energy ruptured the ground in front of us.

Hearing something, I looked up.

It was a hovering opossum with dark purple armor glaring at us.

Was this Axel Gear?!

Author's Note

Things to know about Axel Gear in the Rocket Knight series.

Survived being sucked into one space without the equipment or even the magic necessary to survive it after losing a fight to Sparkster.

He's definitely an entirely flesh and blood being without cybernetic enhancements, his magic armor does not protect him from space.

He's shown wearing protective gear to survive and fight Sparkster in space prior to the moment of him getting sucked out into space, said gear involved him wielding a huge laser cannon.

Somehow he ends up making it back to Elhorn alive when by all rights he should be dead. He predates Shadow the Hedgehog basically doing the exact same thing in 'Sonic Adventure 2'.

Survives multiple giant mech battles with Sparkster that tend to end with his mech exploding violently. Not long afterwards he is always ready to fight Sparkster on foot looking to be perfectly fine.

Axel Gear is in it for the power and to face Sparkster in combat due to their rivalry, he doesn't care who he helps and has no solid loyalties to anybody. He's always on the side of evil if a war springs up and generally has a part in it, usually kidnapping princesses to prove that no army can really stop him.

He has worked for evil machine Devligus, the cyborg Generalissimo Lioness of Yellow Dog and currently the evil sorcerer Emperor Gedol.

The notoriety Axel has is because he can do everything that Sparkster can and a few unique things that Sparkster can't. Since Sparkster can notably wreck an entire armies by himself...

Axel even seems to be trying to form his own band of evil rocket knights after destroying the entire original rocket knight order of Zebulos except for Sparkster.

It certainly comes up in the games that the Gedol lizards are seen using knock-off rocket packs. It is also in the lore that Axel has stolen a manual used to train rocket knights.

He is the most dangerous individual on Elhorn, barring a few exceptions.

Most of those exceptions have died... horribly.

60. Axel Gear!

Author's Note

-Music, Rocket Knight Adventures, Boss Theme-

I hope to make this clear, the White Knight Couriers didn't win regardless of what happens.

60. Axel Gear!

-Elhorn, north of Caldinhold, Ocellus-

The opossum wore purple armor, a red rocket pack and he had dark gleam in his eyes. He gave off a physical presence that reeks of danger. His emotions were also downright arrogant.

To think we had gone out of our way to avoid a fight on the way back.

It was odd that Axel Gear had no backup whatsoever. With the stories we’ve heard, he might not even need it. Everyone, but Ligstrun, Nicole and me got out of the wagon and were preparing for a fight. There was a lot of terror coming from our friends.

Pom had a slightly upset look on her face as she took up a protective position in front of the wagon.

Smolder was hiding her tenseness as she idly clawed at her combat ribbon that was elegantly placed on her right horn by me.

Shanty had her eyes narrowed on Axel Gear and she was ready to fight from the moment he tried to attack Dodo.

Jean pulled out and readied his rapier with his right hand.

Bruno tightened the grip he had on his weapon and was sweating with fear.

Colleen checked her weapon and stayed back trying to keep her calm in the face of the terror flooding her mind.

Everyone started to spread out slightly while Dodo backed up the wagon while warbling warily.

“I take it you’re the courier team I’m looking for, you’re quite unlucky to see me again mutt and I can see where Gedol’s rumored traitor got off to.” Axel Gear landed in front of the wagon with his arms crossed and he had a smirk on his face. He glanced at a cowering Ligstrun in the back of the wagon, a shivering Colleen, a sweating Bruno and a wary Jean. He just glossed over the rest of us as if we were unimportant. “I’m not impressed, this won’t take very long.”

We had numbers on him and he was still highly confident in his abilities. There was something off about the sword he was holding.

“Is that sword magical?” I had to ask, hoping for an answer.

“My rival will come for it. He can’t finish his quest without it, so do try and make me relinquish it… if you can.” The sword Axel held out started glowing red hot and his rocket pack started to hum with power ominously. He didn’t need to answer my question, his actions answered that loudly enough. “Now let’s get to why I’m here!”

-White Knight Couriers vs. Axel Gear the Dark Rocket Knight-

With a flash, several spiraling crescents of energy fired from Axel’s blade as he swung it with a ferocity and speed that his many opponents were barely ready for. This attack was called a spiral edge, a famous rocket knight blade technique.

Shanty masterfully deflected the one coming at her and even sent it back with a single left hoof swing, Axel had to perform a short burst to the side to dodge it.

Axel was nearly hit by a second reflected attack as Pom bounced the one sent her way off of her wool, this made Axel burst straight upwards to hover as it passed below him.

At the first sign of movement Colleen had dove straight to the ground making the spiral edge soar straight over her head before the power behind the attack ran dry. She knew how dangerous Axel was.

Bruno managed to cut through the magical attack launched at him with a well-timed swing, sheer grit and raw brute force to defeat a single instance of spiraling magical attack called a Spiral Edge. He wouldn’t fair too well if he had more than one of those attacks concentrated on him solely.

Jean was the unluckiest and narrowly avoid being directly hit by the attack by jumping to the side, it still left a small hole in the side of his recently refurbished armor that made him shiver once he noticed the damage. He still stood firm and held his rapier aloft, far more ready for the next attack.

Smolder took the attack on her arms and, despite being blown back a fair distance, the force of the attack did very little damage. Being resilient to heat and magic helped her a lot in this case.

Axel had sent an attack at all of them in under five seconds, this was all it took for Axel to get a read on every single opponent currently facing him.

The sheep, the goat and the orange lizard were more dangerous than Axel previously had thought. His threat assessment of them changed somewhat despite the fact that they didn’t wield any obvious weapons.

That they had even managed to respond sufficiently told Axel almost all he needed to know about their capabilities. He didn’t think the unknowns were dangerous, he wouldn’t be making that mistake now given how they each personally handled his opening salvo.

The dark knight’s mind was running a literal mile a minute and calculating all the vectors he could feasibly boost into with his rocket pack to go on the offensive, his brain acting like a super computer having been kicked into action at the possible excitement of a halfway decent challenge.

Now who was Axel going to target first with a mad gleam in his eye and a smirk on his face?

His rocket pack roared and he shot forward while lighting on fire and began spinning, turning his body into a burning drill shooting straight past a surprised Pom and for Dodo their weakest link. Their transportation and ability to escape the area.

Dodo quickly lifted his right leg up and stomped it down creating a dust cloud that Axel shot into, a second later and a weird sound is heard and the rocket knight came somersaulting backwards out of the cloud to land on his feet.

A second later something flew out of the dust cloud after him and Axel swung his sword downwards.

This was a large mistake on Axel’s part, given both his eyes received two halves of a mass of cupcake batter making him grunt out loud and stumble back in mild pain.

Once the dust cloud disappeared, the wagon was a lot further away than it was previously and Dodo was staring at Axel warily, but seemed to be preparing for another attack to come his way. Nicole was sitting in the seat in Dodo’s back whispering to him gently.

Bruno, willing to take advantage of Axel’s temporary blindness, charge forward and lunged for a downward slash.

Turning, and without being able to see, Axel deflected the downward strike with a simple flick of his blade. Axel then spun around and outward while launching two incredibly accurate spiral edges at both Jean and Colleen, upon finishing his spin he leaned forward and proceeded to rocket straight into Bruno’s chest head first knocking him on his back in a painful manner.

Finally, after zipping straight up into the air into a hover, Axel wiped way the hardened batter in his eyes.

Axel simply grinned in excitement and flicked his ears. He quickly dodged the two slow shots Colleen fired back at him as she herself narrowly rolled out of the way of the spiral edge aimed at her. Pom managed to deflect the spiral edge aimed at Jean straight up.

Axel launched a spiral edge at the prone Bruno trying to pick himself up with his sword, another at Colleen and then jetted up fired a spread of four missiles from his rocket pack at Shanty.

Jean and Pom surged forward to defend their friends. Pom looked conflicted about protecting Shanty or Colleen and made a quick choice.

Jean thrusts his rapier to send a small bullet of air with precision to blast apart the spiral edge before it could reach Bruno. He began a reckless charge to get closer to where Axel was going to land and started to rapidly thrust his sword in front of him.

Shanty destroyed three of the missiles with several quick swipes, but missed the fourth. With a quick Pom wrapped her body entirely around Shanty to take the fully brunt of the small explosion that knocked both of them away.

Axel proceeded to somersault incredibly fast with the assistance of his rocket pack, his blade flickered out and deflected every single pressure blast Jean sent his way. One of the deflections went straight Colleen’s way while deflecting her next shot back at Jean.

Jean threw himself to the ground making Colleen’s deflected shot fly past him. Colleen wasn’t as lucky as her armor dented at the center of her chest and knocked her onto her back, the air knocked from her lungs.

Axel bursts towards Colleen and suddenly stopped, narrowly avoiding the fireball that passed by his face as Smolder started firing several blasts of fire at him.

Axel swiftly veered around Smolder’s fireballs and another shot from Colleen while she was on her back and dropped to the ground to burst backwards avoiding another pressure bullet from Jean.

It took a moment, but the White Knights Couriers were finally getting into the rhythm of the battle with helping one another. Even so they had yet to manage a solid or even damaging hit on Axel even as they had him in a projectile crossfire, his form was blurring as he dodged each attack with insanely powerful leaps that he did without the assistance of his rocket pack.

With a quick flourish and twirl of his blade, he sent some of their projectiles hurtling back in their general direction.

Jean’s armor became red hot around the belly when one of Smolder’s fireballs struck him, this quickly made Smolder quit spitting them with a worried look on her face.

While charging towards a landing Axel, Pom let out a quick bark blast. Axel went to deflect it as Pom began inhaling sharply.

Just as Axel’s sword was going to deflect the energy it evaporated before it could meet the intercepting blade.

Axel narrowed his eyes as Pom exhaled sharply and disappeared from sight entirely, he barely got his blade up in time to block Pom’s right hoof flying forward. He pulled his sword back and quickly swung it with force, Pom blocked with her legs and was sent flying away from the powerful blow Axel landed on her and the magic repulsing effect of Pom’s wool acting against her.

A second later a painful cutting edge dug into the side of Axel’s face, he quickly turned to slam the pommel of his blade into the offending Shanty’s face before she could even touch the ground from her lunging attack.

Shanty was knocked a fair distance away with a grunt as she tumbled and a small head injury.

Axel ran his gauntlets left thumb over his face, it came away not only wet with his own blood, but with a bit of water too. With a sniff, the dark knight idly noted that salt water was why that single attack had stung far more than it had any right to.

Axel glared at Shanty as she and Pom took up a position together and idly blocked Bruno coming at him from his right without even looking. With a push, the sword was knocked upwards and back.

Axel swiftly slashed his sword upwards and it dug into Bruno from right hip to left shoulder knocking him away in a splash of blood from a pointblank spiral edge.

Following this action Axel launched two spiral edges at Colleen and Jean again, he also fired four missiles from his rocket pack. Two missiles fly at Shanty, one was angling for Bruno and another aimed at Smolder.

Jean managed to jab his way through the spiral edge and was held by back from pushing forward by a third spiral edge launched by Axel.

Colleen bursts out of the way of the spiral edge aimed for her, finally utilizing the rocket pack on her back, and squeezed off a shot from her makeshift energy pistol while in the air.

Axel yawned and deflected Colleen’s shot into the ground, this was followed by Bruno squealing loudly as he was violently scorched by the missile sent his way barely managing to block it with the flat of his blade.

Smolder managed to make the missile aimed at her prematurely explode a second later with a gout of flames spewing from her mouth.

Pom was in the process of taking the concussive force of two small missiles for Shanty, said goat gave her a worried look afterwards. The lambkin stumbled about dizzily a bit before shaking her head and brought a hoof up to it to steady herself.

Bruno was forcing himself back into a standing position, Colleen quickly burst over to his side and helped him stand.

While this was happening Smolder was trying to get in close to distract Axel away from them and possibly grapple onto him to do some damage with her claws, Jean busy backing her up with close up attacks that Axel had to put his full attention towards.

As Axel traded blows with Jean wielding their respective weapon, every once in a while he would strike out at Smolder to prevent her from latching onto him or more importantly doing anything funny to his rocket pack.

Jean was proving far more of a threat to Axel up close than at a distance as Jean pushed his dueling expertise to their very limits.

Axel was proving both his might and incredible prowess in combat, he felt that he should only be matched by one person and thus he started to fight even harder. He hammered away at Jean’s offensive that quickly became a struggling defense with increasingly powerful blows flowing into their fight.

With particularly strong strike, Jean’s sword fell from his numbed and paralyzed webbed fingers.

Despite Axel’s attempt to take advantage of his opponent dropping his weapon having blasting away Smolder with a point blank spiral edge that actually scratched her scales, Jean swiftly took up his rapier in his left hand and blocked the next powerful blow haphazardly.

It was quite clear that Jean was not as good with wielding his weapon offhand, but he made do as he continued to try and get an attack in on Axel’s ferocious offensive.

Axel leaned back avoiding a shot from Colleen off to the side and kept putting pressure on Jean while knocking back an angry looking Smolder again in the middle of attempting to break either the frogs will or his weapon.

The weapon looked more likely, as the more Jean tried to defend himself the more his weapon was starting to show wear from the many dents and cracks from colliding with Axel’s magic sword. It was only by pure skill that Jean’s weapon hadn’t shattered under the thunderous force of Axel’s swings and was staying intact.

Axel’s sword had yet to show any signs of damage and Axel had yet to show any signs of actually slowing down in his daunting assault.

In the middle of his unceasing onslaught against Jean, he slashed out two spiral edges towards Colleen and Bruno. He also launched four missiles from his rocket pack, one of which immediately hit Smolder sent her flying a good two hundred feet away before it finally exploded. This freed Axel up from the various distractions.

Of the other three missiles, one was targeting either Pom or Shanty, they were in the middle of trying to plan something. The other two shot towards Bruno and Colleen who were already going to have enough problems dealing with the spiral edges that were about to hit them.

Pom unleashed a small bark blast and it struck the missile making it explode before it reached them, she turned to Shanty who nodded back with a frown. The two of them started moved towards Axel at the same time.

On the other side of Axel Gear, Colleen took the edge of the second missiles explosion as it had gotten too close when she barely managed to shoot it down. She was knocked onto her back, gritting her teeth and tightened her grip on her weapon. She slowly picked herself up and looked to Bruno.

Like Colleen, Bruno had barely dealt with both the spiral edges coming at them with two swings as harsh as he could manage them. He was now grunting, quite out of breathe and badly hurt. He stood up and said something, he held out his sword to Colleen and she looked to him in shock.

Axel, having knocked Jean off balanced, exploded forward and attempted to run him through with his blade. It was diverted by something wrapping around his right arm and pulling his thrust entirely off to the side, he swiftly yanked Smolder down to him and smashed her in the head with his left gauntlet.

Smolder went down knocked senseless and groaning on the ground.

Jean pushed his rapier forward while Axel was distracted. Axel leaned back out of the path of rapier and kicked his left metal boot up into Jean’s stomach while unraveling the ribbon from around his right arm.

Axel, once free of the ribbon, brought his blade around to rip a large chunk out of Jean’s armor. The blow dug into and across Jean’s chest making him stumble back clutching at the wound.

Axel was about to follow up with another stabbing when Shanty snapped a flying double buck to the left side of his face making him stagger away from Jean.

Shanty grinned at Axel and he swung his blade forward for her, she swung her right hoof forward creating a crescent of energy that slammed against the blade’s edge.

Both the weapon and Shanty’s hoof deflected, they were pushed away from one another by the forced of the blow.

Before Axel could retaliate or attack Shanty he took an even heavier impact across the right side of his forehead denting his helmet. He turned to see Pom rolling backwards away from him after launching a second flying buck into his head after having circled around him.

Despite how powerful the blow was, it still didn’t knock Axel over or even seemed to have phased him all too much. As he immediately burst towards Pom and shoulder checked her to send her skidding across the ground.

Axel swiftly launched a spiral edge Jean’s way only to have it deflected back at him by Shanty leaping up and slashing at it with a hoof.

Side stepping around the reflected spiral edge, Axel bursts forward skidding across the grass on his feet with his sword held in front of him towards a nervous looking Shanty who glanced at Jean behind her.

Shanty planted her right hoof in front of her, arched her back and then when Axel was close enough pivoted and lashed out with her hind legs releasing a large blast of water that stopped Axel’s momentum and knocked him back slightly.

Axel quickly launched a spiral edge at Shanty who wasn’t in a position to deflect it, Pom leapt into the way and bounced it back at him off of her belly before she landed on her side. He had to duck around it and then stopped attacking for a moment.

It was here that Axel figured he should have taken a hostage or kept attacking the ones he downed, because Jean, Bruno and Smolder were no longer present.

Pom charged forward while rearing up onto her hind legs, she thrust her left hoof forward and it got deflected off to the side by Axel. Pom kept her forward momentum going to ram into him with her right shoulder, he interposed his blade between himself and her.

Pom clamped her wool down on the ground upon impact and this time Axel was sent tumbling when Pom’s wool flashed.

Axel stabbed his sword downward to stop his tumbled and as he was getting up to his feet to charge forward, Shanty came down from cartwheeling through the air to slam both her rear hooves downward into his chest plate knocking him further back and making him grunt in pain.

From a leap, Pom slammed Axel in the left side of his helmet with both her hooves held together. This had Axel staggered even more, he lashed out his sword at Shanty who was not where he expected her to be as the spiral edge just met empty air.

Shanty skidded at Axel’s legs on her belly forcing him to fall on his face, he quickly rolled out of the way as Pom came down for a one legged axe kick that put a crater in the ground. He burst from being prone and on his feet and then blasted his left shoulder straight into a surprised Shanty’s chest, sending her flying after she tried to attack him with another lunging strike.

A pirouetting Pom came in and slammed both into her hooves home into Axel’s side with enough force to lift him off the ground and he skidded a few feet after landing. He clutched at his side where the blow landed with his left gauntlet and was grimacing in pain.

Even then, not once had his relentless grip loosened on the magical sword he held.

Axel grinned at Pom and glanced at Shanty groaning on her belly, the goat was struggling to pick herself up after being hit by several hundred pounds of opossum and metal moving like a freight train.

Pom narrowed her eyes at him and began to inhaling. Once the spiral edge shot out, Pom exhaled and was diving into its path immediately.

Axel bursts up into the air at an angle and then started to come down boot first towards Shanty with Pom unable to intercept.

Shanty kicked off into a roll to the right as Axel’s metal boot slammed into the ground where she had been, Axel turned and launched another spiral edge at Shanty who managed to swing both her hooves with enough force to deflect it.

Pom was up and running towards Axel as he launched a chain of five back to back spiral edges at Shanty.

Shanty managed to deflect four with a right hoof, left hoof, left kick and a right kick, only for the last one to rip through her left shoulder making her scream as she was sent spinning to the ground.

Pom tried to ram into Axel only for him to burst straight up above her and point his sword downwards towards her back as the magic glow of the sword went dark. He came screaming down on top of Pom in an attempt to sunder her spine.

A bursting sound not from Axel’s rocket pack sounded and Colleen flew in to deflect his blade with Bruno’s sword and then opened a rent in his chest plate with a powerful horizontal burst assisted swing.

Pom made her way over to Shanty and looked over off to the side with her ears twitching at someone shouting something, she quickly draped Shanty over her back and ran off as Colleen and Axel clashed while bursting around on their rocket packs.

Axel bursts towards Colleen and she locked blades with him.

Colleen put out her own burst from her rocket pack.

This barely put a dent in Axel’s forward momentum as he continued to push Colleen back until he eventually overcame her and knocked her down and slashed her from her right shoulder to her left side.

“I shouldn’t have left loose ends like you.” Commented Axel coolly as he went to swing for Colleen's neck.

A horizontal bolt of lightning struck Axel’s chest making all his muscles lock up, his eyes widened as he and Colleen heard a painful ear hurting sonic boom.

A hypersonic metallic ostrich named Dodo slammed his right foot into Axel’s armored chest, sending him flying.

61. A small break.

-Equus, Ponyville, Sugar Cube Corner, Silver Stream-

“Thanks for the shake Pinkie.” I smiled slightly and watched as Pinkie stopped vibrating excitedly and then smiled at me.

“No problem Silver-stream or is it Silver Stream, does your name need a hyphen? Has anyone ever asked you about it?” Pinkie was as confusing as she ever was. “So want a milkshake?”

“Sure I want a milkshake, if you’re offering. Also I don’t really care if it’s hyphen, altogether or separated.” A second later I took the offered strawberry milkshake in my claws, I slowly sipped away at it with a hurt in my chest. I sighed. “My name is still Silver Stream in the end.”

“What’s wrong Streamy?” Pinkie said taking a seat next to me.

“I miss Smolder and Ocellus.” I continued sipping as I put my thoughts in order. “Yona is fun, but she’s a bit too extreme sometimes. Gallus and I are doing the awkward dancing around one another’s feelings thing that eventually leads to true love. While Gallus is very adorable, it’s quite frustrating right now. Sandbar is a good friend, but he’s been busy lately learning to speak turtle.”

“Wait, someone’s teaching Sandbar to speak turtle?” Pinkie asked looking perplexed for once in her life.

“Yeah, apparently it’s this small turtle dove named Snickers teaching him, though I’m confused as to why the turtle dove would need money.” That was a mystery that had me curious.

“I think Snickers has an addiction to fast food. Also, I know it’s been a while, but I’m quite sure Smolder and Ocellus are alright. They do have one of the shadow fighters with them after all!” Giving Pinkie a confused look, I held out a claw and motioned for her to go on. “Right, guess you haven’t heard that story… well six beings other than me and my friends went to save the world from shadow monsters! Pom the lambkin is one and she’s currently with Smolder and Ocellus, she’ll keep them safe… she’s known as one of Huoshan’s friendliest guards for a reason!”

“Lambkin? Isn’t Twilight having a lot of trouble with them?” I saw the grimace on Pinkie’s face as soon as I asked that.

“Yeah- don’t worry about that. So how are things going between Yona and Sandbar?” Pinkie, I may be a bit of a ditz, but even I can see that was a dodge from a mile away with a mountain physically between us and I don’t have X-ray vision.

Or do I? My familiar is Edith…

-Elhorn, north of Cladinhold, Ocellus-

Thank goodness for on hoof medical supplies and Nicole having decent medical knowledge!

Dodo was quickly pulling the wagon to the south after our plan to kick that terrifying opossum away. Poor Dodo had a limp afterwards and Nicole said something about his leg being in the red after impact with Axel Gear.

“Do you--… do you think we killed him with what we did?” I didn’t want to be responsible for someone’s death.

“At best I think you just knocked him out for a minute.” Ligstrun was still panicking and looking everywhere in a paranoid fashion.

Out of all of the injured, Pom was currently the healthiest.

-A little more than a mile away in a trench-

A purpled gauntlet clenched and slammed down outside of the small trench, a sword lifted itself up and stabbed into the ground on the opposite side of the trench.

Axel pulled himself up and took one step out of the trench. He glanced around, leaned back his head and let loose a roar of frustration that could be heard for miles on end as he raised his sword to the sky.

He was quite furious, any Zebulos or Zephyrus unit that heard his rage had decided to give the area distance for several miles around and they stuck to the shadows.

A few seconds after finishing his emotional release, Axel stomped his way away from the trench and his rocket pack started charging up. He considered his injuries in the recent fight to be mild annoyances at best, he also needed to fix the giant dent in his armor.

He shot off back towards the east and eventually took out his rage on an entire Zephyrus regiment.

-Ocellus-

“Dodo, could you go a little faster?” I said with my eyes as wide open as possible. Both Ligstrun and Nicole looked about as spooked as I felt. I was feeling a bit lightheaded after the heavy magical expenditure used to just stun Axel Gear for the follow up attack by Dodo. “If it won’t hurt you too much.”

That we could hear and feel Axel Gear’s raw fury, even at this distance, was a horrifying experience.

Dodo started to limp at a quicker pace with a look of abject fear on his mechanical face as he warbled out a mechanical tone to match everyone’s feelings. He had run around in circles building up speed and then kicked Axel Gear after breaking the sound barrier like Rainbow Dash does.

That Axel Gear was already up in under two minutes and ready to continue fighting was beyond terrifying after Dodo almost broke his leg off kicking him.

I can see why Pom wasn’t impressed with Mr. Beezy now. Axel Gear wasn’t a demon, but he certainly fought and acted like one. He got up from a blow that would have at least incapacitated or crippled anyone else for weeks if it didn’t just kill them outright.

“He survived that?!” Pom asked in a shrill tone as Nicole helped her finish tying off the bandage around Shanty’s shoulder.

Pom hugged a sleeping Shanty to herself affectionately, she would definitely go to bat for the little goat and would certainly open her home to her. We would all be able to go home back on Equus, we just needed to keep going.

“I take it that Pom said something about Axel Gear surviving that, she obviously doesn’t know him as well as everyone on this planet does. He’s survived planet fall twice, several mechs exploding out from under him, being spaced without protective gear and was said to have been likely caught in the destruction of the Pig Star. If none of that could kill him, then what we just did only made him angry. He’s the main reasons dissenters are absolutely afraid to turn against Emperor Gedol, aside from all the lethal experiments.”

“Is this Emporer Gedol keen on turning himself into a machine?” Nicole asked.

“Oh no, he’s far too smart to fall for that after hearing what happened with Yellow Dog.” Ligstrun shivered and huddled his knees up against his chest and wrapped his tail around his legs, his back was still causing him pain. “He’s a dark sorcerer that just wants to rule all of Elhorn, he doesn’t want it destroyed or turned into machinery. He was definitely looking into the possibilities of somehow performing planet wide mind control magic too from what I’ve heard.”

That didn’t seem to appease Nicole’s suddenly sad mood somewhat.

“Well most malicious machinery is thankfully contained to coming from Devotindos City then.” Nicole sighed with a slight bit of relief. “If we can deal with the factories that build them, then we can hopefully end the threat of evil cores… on this world at least. You know, before someone comes along and decides to make things exponentially worse. Which has already happened when I was asleep!”

Her mechanical lynx form apparently used various parts from Swat-bots, the mechanical panther and a few of the cleaner robots. Even if her looks were uncanny and slightly unusual, she still felt very friendly to me emotionally.

After a long silence, Nicole broke it.

“It’s concerning that Axel did more damage to Dodo than Dodo did to him with that kick.” Nicole stated as Dodo stumbled slightly. A determined look cross his eyes and he warbled slightly, he then started to pull us at the same pace previously as we were in sight of Cladinhold. “Was Axel Gear truly entirely biological?”

“Yes, and that’s what makes him scary!” Whimpered out Ligstrun, as we continued onwards until we came close to Cladinhold.

We were met with a checkpoint loaded with various armed beings and someone quite familiar to us.

“Hold, identify yourselves!” It was Biggs greeting us, it was quite nice to see a friendly face after meeting Axel Gear.

“White Knight Couriers successfully returning from Hydrigal… for the most part.” I answered as I hopped out of the wagon and watched Dodo flop onto his butt with a pained whine that tugged at my heart. I didn’t know how to fix machines, maybe Ligstrun could take a look at him? “We just recently ran into Axel Gear up north, we’ve heard a lot about him… but the rumors just didn’t do him any form of justice on just how horrifying he is in a fight.”

“You survived Axel Gear? That’s a huge feat in and of itself… did you get a response from Hydrigal?” I quickly levitated out the messages for Biggs, he took them and looked into the wagon at the poor conditions of everyone. He hissed as he saw their wounds. “Yeah, you definitely ran into him, his work is just that recognizable. The guy’s a nightmare to fight unless your name is Sparkster, then it’s more of an even playing field. Okay what’s with those two?”

He pointed at Nicole who was trying to make herself look small with her mechanical triangular ears folding backwards, the many white rubber tubes simulating a mane hid her face. Ligstrun just held up his claws in a peaceful gesture and showed that he absolutely wasn’t armed for a fight of any kind.

“A defector from Gedol and a friendly machine we found in Hydrigal, we trust them.” I said without a single quaver in my voice. “Hydrigal was really nice by the way, too bad it’s in the middle of Gedol’s territory. We helped with a small problem that made the people there more amiable towards the cause of stopping Gedol.”

“Good enough for me, it takes guts to defect with Axel Gear around… I take it that’s why he attacked you?” Biggs clutched the messages in his hand tightly.

“No he was specifically looking for our courier group, I think he was sent out to hunt us down since we attacked some supply depots on the way.” I felt the sympathy as Biggs hissed loudly. “He was targeting us specifically before he knew we even had Ligstrun with us.”

“Well you’re safe here… mostly… don’t know if we actually have enough men here if Axel Gear attacks Cladinhold.” Biggs cleared his throat as he passed the message to an arriving Wedge. “I definitely mean by himself of course, far worse if he actually has a task force under his command with him. A task force like that would fight like their lives depended on it if Axel was standing at their backs, it would also be quite accurate to say that the task forces lives would definitely depend on it. That said, welcome back… to relative safety. Kick up your feet and get some rest, looks like you’ve earned it.”

As he was talking to us, a manually controlled land strider strode up to the northern Cladinhold checkpoint and the shrew on it was shaking like a leaf.

“Good news and bad news Sir Biggs. The bad news is that…” The scout was cut off.

“Axel Gear?” Biggs queried, the scout nodded while his eyes darted about. “Well that certainly confirms that he attacked our White Knight Couriers unit here and is in the area, as terrifying as that thought is. You don’t need to explain a thing… I think I have a decent idea as to what Axel Gear is currently doing. I’ll… get some people working on preparing a few graves for the fallen. What’s the good news?”

“Rocket Knight Sparkster has boarded and taken down Paeli’s personal airship in Eginasem and has even personally captured the ninja general Paeli! All forces in the Eginasem region have been routed.” The scout made everyone cheer, apparently that was the best news they’ve had all day. “Not only that, he even found one of the magical swords that was impaled into the Paeli’s Flagship by a Zephyrus soldier. Gedol forces didn’t even know it was there! Now Sparkster is looking for rumors of the remaining magic swords.”

“Wait… we’ve seen one of them!” Ligstrun suddenly stated with excitement a need to help by the way his emotions were flaring, the opossum scout and Biggs eyed him warily. “Axel Gear has one!”

“There’s also rumor of a sword possibly being somewhere within the factories under the central palace of Devotindos coming from the pigs down south… we might have to think of breaching the walls of the city soon. Oh squeaks, that’s going to be one heck of a battle!” The scout nodded seeming to look a bit grim. “Those might even be the only remaining magical swords Sparkster needs.”

“Right in the heart of the enemy and in the hands of one of the most dangerous beings to ever walk Elhorn, because of course they are! At least Sparkster already has all of the other swords.” Biggs sighed loudly while running a paw over his face. “Right, spread the word in town and make sure to find some way for this news to reach Sparkster quickly once he’s done supporting Eginasem’d cleanup and possibly visiting Noisy Toys for a break from all the fighting. We need him to come back here so we can start planning our assault on Devotindos.”

“Noisy Toys?” I queried idly as the scout moved onwards into Cladinhold after giving Biggs a salute.

“The city of music, Noisy Toys, probably the friendliest technology based form of civilization you’ll find on this entire world. Most likely the only one too, what with Devotindos being the obvious worst... said technology includes teleporters and vacuum transport tubes, plus lots of giant musical instruments that make orchestra night a thing for the locals as much as the tourists. Those symphonies are literally music to these big ears.” Biggs flicked his right ear with an appreciative smile. Naming a city Noisy Toys just sounded weird to me. “The city is named for all the amazing stuff they have going on there thanks to Princess Flora, you should probably visit there just to see it once when this war is over with… provided you survive long enough with Axel Gear actively on the prowl. Oh sorry… I’ve kept you for long enough, move on through and see your friends to the local wards for any medical help on us!”

Dodo, still resting, lifted his head and slowly stood up. He gave off a friendly warble to Biggs before making his way forward into Cladinhold with a slow limp.

-Pom-

I didn’t say anything, I just leaned back looking at the sky with a sigh. Being consistently sore, battered and bruised was not the way I wanted to live my life.

I needed a hug, but I wasn’t going to ask for one.

Why I’d even take a big hug from Paprika right this instant.

When will our torment stop?

-Equus, Ponyville, Café, Paprika-

“What’s wrong dear?” Turning to Velvet the fluffy reindeer that was having a tea party with a nice unicorn named Rarity, I whined pitiably.

“Meep.” I could feel someone needed a big hug, but I couldn’t get to them to give them one.

“Why don’t I give you a hug instead, will that make you feel better?” Yes, but only for a short while Velvet, my hug senses are tingling fiercely for something I just couldn’t cuddle.

“Meep!” I still wanted to hug the one that needed it and couldn’t get to.

“It’s okay Paprika, come here, it’s alright… a quick snuggle against my glorious floof will make you feel better!” Velvet wrapped her hooves around me and I felt a warmth happily bursting in my chest at her touch.

“Meep.” I missed hugging Pom, but Velvet’s floof was always enticing and comforting.

“You two are so adorable together!” Rarity stated quite loudly while clapping her hooves together lightly. “How ever did you two end up with that brute of a cow that’s become recent good friends with my dear friend Applejack?”

“Long story.” Velvet muttered as she took a sip of tea while holding me close with one hoof. “We have the time, especially if Arizona has to suddenly help the local construction company rebuild half of Ponyville… again.”

“Hey, we aren’t that bad Velvet!” Pinkie shouted as she walked along the street with Silver Stream. “Sure Ponyville has been destroyed like… count that one, carry the two… twenty three times in the last few weeks, but it’s not really that big a deal!"

“Funny, I only know of seventeen of those incidents, what were the other six?” Velvet asked flatly.

“Meep.” Added Paprika smartly as she snuggled against her reindeer.

Pinkie glared at Paprika, but couldn’t deny the truth she had spoken.

-Elhorn, three hours later, Cladinhold, Tavern, Pom-

We were going to be here a few days while our friends injuries heal, but apparently Nicole and Ligstrun had earned some jobs and didn’t have to travel with us anymore. They still wanted to though.

Apparently Sparkster’s mech, known as Sparkrobo, had been heavily damaged in a battle with Axel Gear over the first magical sword and was currently being interred here in Cladinhold for major repairs. It was probably why Cladinhold previously came under assault in the first place.

So now Ligstrun and Nicole had jobs getting it operational and ready to charge straight into Devotindos City. Unfortunately some of the more unique resources needed were up in Yellow Dog territory.

Having seen the big blue machine myself still in the process of being fixed, it was certainly more impressive looking than the blander looking Zebulos Guardian Mech that Colleen had used in the defense of Cladinhold.

It made me wonder what Sparkster went through before he saved us from the world’s deadliest train engine, I’ve only ever seen the guy once. He’s apparently dealt with Axel before, single hoofed with no help from anyone, multiple times.

We only faced Axel Gear once and I never wanted to meet him again, even on a bright day surrounded by all my strongest friends!

My goodness do a need a good frolic, the stress is getting to me and I can’t even do that for the fear of Axel Gear finding me alone and slaughtering me. I saw him turn off the magic in the sword as he was about to drive it into my spine, he might have been able to pierce my wool with that.

Mr. Beezy was simple, a slight breath of fresh air. Axel Gear on the other hoof… nightmare incarnate, my dreams wouldn’t be filled with killer machines anymore… no, they would just be filled with ‘the killing machine’ now.

“Pom? Are you okay?” Ocellus asked as she walked up to the table.

“Ocellus, how’s Smolder looking?” Having witnessed it personally, I don’t want to know how strong Axel Gear actually was if he could knock someone like Smolder unconscious with a single hit.

“She’ll be fine… hopefully... it terrifies me that Axel damaged her scales with a projectile attack. A dragon’s scales are usually too tough to damage for anyone.” Yeah, that also goes to show that those swirling blade beams were a good thing to be hit by. “It doesn’t help that Smolder has a nasty concussion from where he punched her. Now back to you.”

“I need a hug Ocellus.” I stated honestly without any other thought in mind.

Within seconds I felt her hugging me and I felt an unnatural warmth flooding me.

“What are you...?” I was swiftly cut off.

“Just giving some love back to you.” Ocellus answered. “Also… I need a hug too.”

“We need a break from all of this insanity don’t we?” I started hugging her back.

“You think?! This world is absolutely one hundred percent certified nuts Pom!” Ocellus was distressed. I eventually let her go and she did the same with me after nuzzling my fluff a bit. “We’ve come to a world where machines try to destroy everything and can consume people alive. The technological levels around here are schizophrenic between medieval and beyond what anything on Equus is feasibly capable of. Everyone on this planet is descended from people that came from a completely different world under even worse conditions. The most normal thing on this planet seems to be magic, when magic is supposed to be something wondrous and hard to understand! Here magic is basically all focus oriented and it just works based on that.”

“Yeah, this world hasn’t been fun has it?” My words were met with a flat stare. The red squirrel came by our table and dropped off some fruit juice for us. I smiled and sipped at my drink, Ocellus did the same with hers. “Well look at it this way, any world we could possibly go to next might be far better than this… except for Mobius. Mobius sounds like a death trap compared to living here. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t Equus, at this point I just want to go to another world just as long as we don’t end up on Mobius which is1 bound to be far worse that this has been.”

“I be happily going along with the sentiment of wanting to get off of this world, but it being cool and we be having friends here.” In a three legged walk, because her shoulder was messed up, Shanty carefully pulled up a seat. “Is it bad that I be wanting a hug too?”

I got up, walked around the table and pulled Shanty into a tender soft embrace, making sure not to put any pressure on her injured body.

“Look at me… I’m every dogs favorite cuddle toy and we’re going to end up in Yellow Dog or my name is Mud.” I muttered self-deprecatingly. “You better get as much rest as you can tonight Shanty, we’ll likely be needed back on the road soon enough to do more courier work. As survivable as it’ll ever get at this rate… they’re going to want us to help improve moral by traveling around in spite of Axel Gear.”

“I will be a salty sea dog and you are being very fluffy, so it must be true that you’re a cuddle toy.” Shanty intoned as she got her good leg around me and hugged me tightly. “Can you be ordering me some rum?”

“You shouldn’t be drinking rum Shanty.” I wondered why saying that to Shanty was such an insult to her?

“Why? I’ve drunk an entire barrel before, never got why people be getting those hangover things from drinking it.” Oh right... it was a little odd to think about it, but I just realized that Shanty probably couldn’t possibly get drunk. “It be tasting alright to me, good for pain as far as I’m concerned.”

“That’s probably because of your ridiculously weird metabolism that makes it impossible for you to get a hangover, much less mentally impaired by drinking alcohol.” I still didn’t like the idea of letting Shanty drink though. “Even if you can metabolize it like lightning and get no negative effects from it, you’re sticking to fruit juice Shanty. Mostly for the sake of my conscience.”

“Well okay then, but I still be wanting something for all this pain at least.” I patted Shanty on the head affectionately and went back to my seat.

“We’ll work on that after we’re done here.” The atmosphere in here was pretty calming. “So… food?”

“You be knowing the answer Pom…" Shanty shouted with a cute giggle. "Always!”

Author's Note

One of Shanty's Fighting Herd's quotes is asking 'why the rum is gone', with a second Shanty responding by getting incredibly shifty about it, then gulping loudly and giving off a weak chuckle.

Being as alone as she has been most of her life, nobody has ever told her what Alcohol is supposed to do. So the general field of ignorance about it protects Shanty from getting drunk with all the benefits from imbibing and none of the drawback, her odd metabolism would also explain this.

That said, I don't condone it, but Shanty did live on a pirate island where rum was a ridiculously plentiful resource even if it could feasibly be watered down.

That said, want to see what happens when Pom's canine magnetism is thrown into the middle of an already bad civil war up in Yellow Dog territory that is the frozen north? I certainly do.

62. The Resting Knight and The Far Frozen North.

-Elhorn, Noisy Toys, Peaceful Park, Sparkster-

My armor was lightly dented, scraped and battered, but it wasn’t damage too badly and I already got the dings out from my fight with Paeli. It seemed someone had stabbed him in the shoulder quite deeply, because he wasn’t fighting at full strength when I met him in combat and it was bothering him greatly while we fought.

Capturing Paeli and defeating his airship fleet in an air battle was probably the best news to happen in this war thus far.

While it was nice for everyone else, it was entirely rough on me as I still had a duty to rescue Princess Cherry of Zephyrus. My rocket pack needed maintenance pretty badly and thus I stopped by Noisy Toys in Eginasem to see an old friend, Princess Flora, to see that it gets repaired properly by the princess of knowledge herself and the rocket guru himself who helped me near the end of the Yellow Dog skirmishes.

The city of music was quite beautiful, even if the giant gleaming music making instruments were a slight eyesore to the nature all around the city. It was especially beautiful when it was not being overrun by entrenched Yellow Dog soldiers during the series of skirmishes I took part in.

The only place in the world where technology was being used to benefit everyone they feasibly could in a peaceful manner and Yellow Dog almost ruined it.

Axel Gear was still out there tearing apart Elhorn’s Forces, being as treacherous as he ever was and here I could do nothing but wait to be fielded once more.

To think I was just sitting here in the park with my armor off, barely able to relax as the fatigue of battle was quickly catching up to me. Tearing through machinery and armor alike was taking its toll on me.

“So there’s the noble rocket knight and savior of Elhorn.” A friendly voice said, I looked up and tried to stand to address Flora properly. She only put a hand on my shoulder and forced me back down onto the bench. “Be at peace Sparkster, you need to rest. You can’t fight this whole war yourself on just your own. It makes you look like you are seeking an early grave friend, also I’m not here as a princess.”

“It still feels like I’m not doing enough.” I was talking to a good friend, not a princess. She didn’t need me to properly address her, I… I still bowed my head to her at least.

“Still a truly noble knight as ever I see… I’ve heard news from the various fronts.” I lifted my left ear straight up towards a smiling Flora. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but over the last few days Axel Gear has been on a rampage in the west. There has also been great news to explain his fury. About three days ago, a courier unit was attacked by Axel Gear.”

“I take it they were they routed?” I asked, already thinking I know the answer. Axel Gear was a great thorn in everyone’s sides that was extremely hard to kill or stop once he had even a modicum of momentum.

“Surprisingly no, they all survived and the unit has a very unique composition of strange warriors for message carriers. It wasn’t for the lack of Axel Gear trying to slay them, he grievously wounded several of them in combat. Yet they held their own long enough to plan a way to escape him, heard he was even unconscious for a small time after what would have been a mortal blow for anyone else.” What Flora just said made me sit up and take notice. “Even I was surprised to hear a courier unit managed to survive Axel Gear. They are called the White Knight Couriers and they apparently discovered some vital information alongside that of another scout, we also have word that Hydrigal is pitching in as quietly as they can without drawing Gedol’s ire or attention.”

A unit of couriers managed to hold off Axel Gear, my very opposite in many ways… what kind of courier unit were they fielding in that area that could feasibly survive what was once my adoptive brother?!

“What vital information would that be Pri… Flora?” I received knowing smiled as I tried to adhere to the fact that Flora was trying to be here as a friend and not the royalty that she was. The brown eyed princess was still wearing a nice blue dress with a large yellow sash wrapping around her body.

“Why the locations of the last three of the seven sealed chaotic magic swords you are searching for.” After Flora said this, I sat there for a minute just staring off into space.

She sat next to me and awaited my reaction while placing a calming hand upon my left shoulder.

The first sword was found in a cave, it quickly replaced my Machine Buster I lost destroying the Yellow Dog mass extinction device a few years back. Said device would have caused untold destruction had it landed, possibly irreparably changing Elhorn for the worst forever. I remembered planting my sword right into the evil core, while staring down the image of an evil wolf like soul within, with as much force as I could put behind it before I fled its destruction and managed to get into the planet’s life giving air before I suffocated among the stars.

I have since lacked the ability to perform a spiral edge as I now wielded this very sword as my own. Seemingly to make up for the lack of ability, the magical sword has been all too easy to light ablaze with power in my hands.

It was a power I swore to put away once I was done with it, to the point that even Axel Gear would nary touch it for fear of his own destruction. The word ‘emeralds’ rings in my head whenever I used this blade and some warnings of ‘chaos’ following if I didn’t drop the magical sword when this was all over with. I was definitely going to heed the warnings and visions these magical swords tried to give me, it seemed they were related to the magical power on another world… I did not know of this place called ‘Mobius’ was, but I think my paths would cross with another warrior of blue eventually if these strange visions are to be believed.

It led to a question that still vexes me, how did Axel Gear even survive Pig Star!? I barely survived escaping Yellow Dog’s extinction device and I was far closer to the planet than he was, almost didn’t wake up in time as I fell through the sky towards the planet! Was he truly just that good at surviving the impossible?

The second sword was found in some ruins, Gedol was searching for it and I ran into some trouble with local ancient machinery having been activated by them. I was also chasing after Axel Gear after he kidnapped Cherry, as I had gone to the ruins with the princesses Cherry and Sherry as their escort to scout around for the location of the second sword.

Thankfully Sherry managed to make it home as a nearby Zephyrus unit escorted her back, since Gedol was heard to be encroaching in the area. It is unfortunate that Axel got away with Cherry before I could catch him.

I would soon go through a forest while I was tracking down a stolen Zebulos Guardian Mech, where I fought a tree spirit and one of Gedol’s generals with some unusual aid from the local Zephyrus scout units.

There was also that evil core train transporting raccoons towards slavery, but a strange group had managed to intercept it before it could get too far. I would not have known about it had I not seen Paeli dropping troops into that very area as reinforcements and got quite curious.

Perhaps… that strange group… maybe I should ask Flora once I get the information I direly needed.

The third sword was found hidden within an ancient shifting pyramid among the sands, where yet more ancient technology and magical monsters stirred within. I also fought the naga general of Gedol there, as he too was on the lookout for the swords.

His blows were mighty, but the magical sword I wielded held up to such ferocious strength and I was starting to believe that these blades were miraculously unbreakable… the wielder of such blades wasn’t nearly as impervious though.

The fourth sword was found in the sky impaled into to the top of Paeli’s flagship beneath one of the spinning blades that kept the airship aloft. It was quite an odd place to find the sword, it was later said to have been put there by an allied soldier.

To think Paeli had been searching for that one for so long, only to have it right under his nose. It was camouflaged against the ship quite well that even I almost didn’t see it during my assault when I deftly boarded his flagship to crash it.

My eyes sharpened as I finally came to my sense from all my musings.

“Where are they?” I finally asked while sitting up, ready to charge off into the fray once more.

“Axel Gear has one and the others… they are rumored to be deep in the very heart of the enemy itself, The Factory.” Flora answered somberly and I felt my heart stop. Axel Gear had one of the swords?! I guess it made sense, he was one of the people searching for them. A dangerous fight was destined to occur between us no matter what I did, now I knew that it was coming. “The only reason why we know Axel has one is because the White Knight Courier unit survived it being used against them.”

“Tell me… this unit… does it consist of a fluffy white sheep like being? Maybe a strange orange flying lizard that was decidedly not of Gedol. Perhaps an intelligent four legged hooved bug that is rumored to have learned to speak our language almost within a fortnight. Possibly a gluttonous, near bottomless, goat with bladed hooves and several hollow legs.” It seems I had surprised Flora this time with my knowledge. “Were they all accompanied by an unusually friendly and even, dare I say it, affectionate land strider?”

“Why yes, but how did you…” While loathe to cut Princess Flora off, this conversation was thankfully casual.

“I’ve met them once, may have saved their lives even… it seems they’ve done us a turn, possibly a worthwhile boon even!” I then frowned quite succinctly as I realized what I would soon have to do once more.

“What’s the matter?” Flora asked, considerably worried about me as she had seen the frown.

“It’s that have to go back ‘THERE’, of all places.” I said in a dull tone, I knew exactly what Flora meant when she said ‘The Factory’. It would be in the same location in Devotindos where I fought Axel Gear off with a stolen Pig Mech before taking to the stars with Princess Sherry’s magic, aiding in eventually destroying the Pig Star. I hadn’t delved too deeply into The Factory, who knew what was different about it now and how much more dangerous it was under Gedol’s control. “I was there five years ago, for a short time during the Pig Star incident. I wish I had destroyed that place in its entirety, because now I have need to delve deeper into that horrid place that almost killed me several times over! I’m ever thankful that Princess Sherry was even able to be safely extracted from that death trap in the very center of Devotindos City. And I’m supposed to find two of the swords in the most horror filled place on Elhorn and face Axel Gear too. Whatever higher powers that are out there, please give me strength…”

I clenched my hands into fists and they started shaking, I had to steel my nerves…

A pair of hands placed themselves over mine calming me down a little and I looked up to Flora who gave me a sad smile.

“You’re not going into that city alone this time Sparkster, Zebulos and Zephyrus forces are building up for an assault to bring down the cities walls despite Axel Gears best efforts and we here in Eginasem are doing so as well. We are going to try and do as much damage as the can to the smaller factories while you charge forward with the Sparkrobo, we are going to keep all the main forces occupied.” She giggled lightly and ran a paw through her brownish red hair. Despite the sour air of the war going on around us tainting our thoughts, she could still smile. “The White Knight Couriers are already doing their part, even being as injured as badly as they have been. They were last seen heading up into north Yellow Dog territory to hopefully find the supplies to hasten the repair of the Sparkrobo, hopefully to ready it in time for your personal use in the assault. I don’t think it needs to be said, but I think they also went that way to avoid Axel Gear. After this war is over with, you’ll hopefully find some time to settle down with someone for a while. Maybe in a nice peaceful farming community for a war scarred veteran like yourself?”

“A knight should dream of such peace Flora.” I stated bitterly with a small smile tugging at my lips. “This opossum can only dream of better tomorrows on this world for all other than himself.”

It seems that I’m heading to Yellow Dog next, afterwards the remaining three swords within the Gedol Empire’s walls since I know Axel will be waiting for me, then finally…

Gedol I’m coming for you!

-Yellow Dog Territory, mountain region, The Far Frozen North, Pom-

My teeth chattered as I pulled the warm and heavy clothing tighter around my form.

The cold was actually doing Smolder’s concussion a number of favors, she also doubled as a good space heater in the wagon.

This cold weather definitely did not favor Jean or Ligstrun in the slightest, the both of them were nodding off quite a lot and someone had to be with them at all times less they freeze to death or fall into a heavy sleep.

Jean was making his best effort to stay active, Ligstrun wasn’t trying nearly as hard and still managed to keep the wagon in good repair despite being half asleep most of the time. Repair work on simpler things was relatively easy for Ligstrun.

I had a few cheerful moments of watching Shanty experience snow with wonder for the second time of her life and I was around to witness it this time. She Caught snowflakes on her tongue, threw snowballs and did everything like that from building a snow pony to making an igloo for a single nights rest for all of us.

You wouldn’t see much snow on the tropical islands from which Shanty hailed from, not unless there were mountains that were big enough to support it. The only other time Shanty saw snow was in the panda village back in the last world.

We had stopped to let Shanty play while there was no danger around for miles… well at least none that we could see.

Colleen did mention to us that a frighteningly large number of Yellow Dog soldiers, specifically the wolf breed types, were exceptionally good at camouflage magic similar to Ocellus’s changeling magic when she transforms to take on some properties of a rock.

They thankfully couldn’t move or attack without revealing themselves and it took a few seconds for them to even get moving after revealing themselves, the magic locks them in place for the camouflage to work perfectly and they couldn’t move until the camouflage magic wore off entirely. It even had a secondary effect of protecting them from injury while the camouflage was falling or still up, they didn’t have much magic prowess beyond this.

We had to be on the lookout for rocks not covered in snow or in odd places, maybe even trees with thicker bark than normal. Even the odd mounds of snow around here were suspect, apparently their camouflage magic had been far less useful in Eginasem.

The magic was best used for spying on the unwary and launching surprise attacks from behind, Colleen apparently didn’t have the talent for it like she did for Ligstrun’s modified rocket pack and shrimp pistol. So far it seems we hadn’t been seen by anyone entering the territory from the south.

It had been surprising that Colleen could even match Axel Gear for the solid minute she did, she even surprised herself with how well she even wielded Bruno’s sword as a quasi-rocket knight. She did have rocket pack training… unfortunately one of her trainers was the very monster we faced off against.

Bruno stated Colleen was a complete amateur with a sword and that her usage of the rocket pack more than made up for what was considered a large failure at wielding a relatively heavy melee weapon. To him, it was complete luck that Colleen hadn’t been skewered to death when she clashed with Axel several times, given the dark knight was a master of the sword as much as his rocket pack.

Dodo wasn’t bothered by all the snow, but Nicole had warned him to stay active and to keep his systems hot. He couldn’t go to sleep or his body could freeze over. He would actually die if something inside him got broken from entering such a state.

I was a little surprised that Ligstrun and Nicole came with us, they didn’t have to and they would have been safe behind allied lines… as long as Axel didn’t target them specifically for any particular reason. He certainly had one, now that we were well outside of his operation range looking for materials from the mines up here.

We could all clearly understand why Axel Gear was a name that nobody wanted to hear as possibly being nearby.

Our supplies were a lot easier to stretch in this weather, also the hot chocolate cupcakes that Dodo somehow produced were an enormous help to our morale out here on the treacherous mountain paths.

We were still looking for someone to contact, we’re quite visible out here and if we came under attack… well we’d at least try to do our very best.

Jean, Colleen, Shanty, Smolder and Bruno were all still trying to heal from their wounds. Dodo made a surprisingly quick recovery and Nicole muttered something about biological healing processes strangely applied to machinery.

One would wonder where Dodo even got the supplies to make the banana nut muffins I was currently enjoying. It wasn’t coming from anything we had on hoof and they were safe to eat, so it was probably better to not overthink it and just acknowledge that Dodo was a highly eccentric and quirky living machine.

Though I personally blamed Shanty’s weird familiar bond on the baked goods coming from nowhere thing, or that Dodo can even make baked goods to begin with. It certainly made sense that Dodo would be capable of helping keeping Shanty fed, familiars always did have a way of being oddly connected to someone that could be their polar opposite. My beasties and I were a good example of it in action.

As far as Colleen knows, both 'Wulfgar' and 'Cooler' were still active in the region. She didn’t know who owned what territory or where they all were as we hadn’t found signs of them yet. She did know a few people that were acquaintances at best, that she stressed, ‘might’ help us get what we needed for the highly complex Sparkrobo.

I was consistently nervous about being in a place where there were so many canines that we haven’t even seen yet, who knows what they would want to do to or with me if they saw me.

Cooler is the friendlier faction that we were angling to meet out here and were given trade goods to exchange for all the stuff needed to aid in preparations for the assault on Devotindos. Our priority was securing the materials for the Sparkrobo, we also had several secondary objectives that would seriously help out our allies and Nicole was going to act as the intermediary to make sure the trade agreement was fair.

Dodo warbled.

This attracted my attention, I was in his seat and everyone was in the wagon behind me.

“What is Dodo?” I said as we continued to look for a path forward, we did have a map of where to ‘generally’ find the mines we needed up this way. That was just in case we didn’t run into anyone to open up a trade opportunity with, which I would think to be the luckier thing to happen out here than actually meeting someone. “What’s wrong?”

Dodo walked in place slightly and whined loudly, he didn’t want to move any further forward. It was like he felt something was up with the mountain pass before us, an exceptional place for an ambush if there ever was one.

“Okay, I think I have an idea what has you spooked, stay here. Guys, prepare for a fight, Dodo feels as if something is off with the mountain pass ahead.” It wasn’t snowing at least, I dropped into the snow and moved forwards slightly in front of Dodo. I trudged forward some more and scanned the pass ahead with my eyes narrowed. I think I almost saw something that looked almost vaguely out of place. I looked at the cliffs around the pass and all the snow packed onto them… the manner of which could only occur unnaturally. “Possibly an avalanche trap?”

“What be an avalanche?” Jumping and squeaking as Shanty came up to me, I clutched at my heart and took several deep soul cleansing breathes. I looked at her left shoulder still bandaged and leg held in a slight sling.

“It’s what happens when loose snow shifts and slides down a mountain… in this case I think we should move off to the side of the pass before we enter. Someone took the time and effort to make what might be an avalanche trap. It might be for us or... it could be for someone else. We have no idea what the two factions are doing out here, at least evil core machines seem to be in minimum use here in Yellow Dog territory.” We were going into a territory where a civil war was said to be happening. The thing about civil wars is that they weren’t very civil at all and an avalanche trap wouldn’t be entirely unexpected if one or both sides were willing to slaughter wantonly. “I’m going to set it off and see what happens, go back to the wagon Shanty. Dodo move the wagon off to the side of the pass to wherever you feel safest.”

I trusted Dodo enough to follow that order to the best of his ability. We needed to head this way to reach the mines and we weren’t exactly in great fighting conditions.

At best Dodo, maybe Smolder and I could swing it if there weren’t too many aggressors.

Ocellus has already pushed herself twice, it was quite expensive for her to use a power hungry spell. Even if she looked to be okay, I didn’t want her going ‘too’ far to help us. Magic and love was Ocellus’s lifeblood and she was basically casting at the possible expense of her own health to help us.

Inhale slightly and... let out a powerful bark!

Author's Note

Sparkster's history throughout out the second genesis game. The locations of the swords are as follows.

Sparkster vs. Axel, they battle over the first sword.

Found in the ruins after a long drop.

Found in the pyramid on a hidden path.

Stabbed into the top of Paeli's airship.

Castle section of The Factory.

The Factory boss fight before...

Axel Gear.

Pseudo means 'fake'.

Quasi means 'almost'.

Is wrong to think that the only reason why changelings used levitation, magic missile and transforming in Chrysalis's Canterlot Assault is because they were basically casting magic using basically what keeps them alive in the first place?

63. Risky Range.

-Equus, Ponyville, Sandbar-

Things were less exciting without Smolder around and Ocellus always knew a lot about everything. There were rather large holes in our lives without them.

Our friendship really was highly important to all of us or else we wouldn’t be missing their presences this badly.

I felt something wrap around me and gave me a hug, I at first thought it was Pinkie Pie because she really knew how to hug someone right. It wasn’t Pinkie and it was a grander hug than that, from a complete stranger no less.

“Meep.” The incredibly fluffy alpaca stated then patted me on the head and went to go back to whatever it was she was doing.

It was very strange and out of nowhere, but highly comforting.

“That was wonderful, thank you mysterious alpaca!” I stated as that had been the nicest, most needed, hug I’ve ever received. I continued my way down the street with a bit of pep in my steps until I arrived at the stump and there was my teacher waiting for me.

She was probably the most adorable little winged turtle I think I’ve ever seen. She flapped her wings to take into the air and moved some cloth on an easel to reveal some words written on the large piece of paper. The turtle grabbed a pointer and smacked it against each word slowly.

“Coo!” The turtle pointed at the words underlining them with the pointer and then pointed it at me.

“Uh… hiss coo, coo-coo hissy coo?” I asked trying to make the noises a turtle would make, more specifically a turtle dove, my teacher Snickers nodded happily.

Snickers was really good at teaching ‘traditional turtle’ and the rare ‘turtle dove’, because she was one, which can be used to halfway learn to speak ‘dove’ proper.

Dove was apparently a different language elective though. I was only paying for turtle and half turtle hybrids, of which there was plenty, and was told that Fluttershy could teach me the rest of ‘dove’ if I really wanted to expand my horizons to full blown tweeting.

I think these lessons were worth it and very interesting, because Snickers was also coaching me on how to treat Yona better on the side for free. After what happened at the dance, I kind of needed advice and Snickers was quite willing and eager to help with it.

I still don’t understand why Snickers is called the great shipping turtle by her friends though.

She obviously didn’t own a boat.

-Elhorn, Yellow Dog territory, The Far North, Pom-

Cold weather gear was necessary even if my wool could handle the cold mostly on its own, it was quite cold out here and it was worse with the avalanche.

My bark had caused a river of snow to flow down the mountain pass, thankfully I had already scrambled well out of the way and to the wagon to watch as it passed us by in a massive flood that would have buried us completely had Dodo not alerted us to it.

This left me wondering and worrying what else the trap had triggered after I set it off.

“That be a lot of snow…” Shanty said from Dodo’s seat, as she poked her head up over the rim to watch. She took a moment to adjust the tuque she was wearing over her headband to keep her ears tucked away under it.

“That’s an avalanche for you, it’s not at all fun to be in one and you could freeze to death being buried or crushed under all that the moving snow.” My old home of Meadow Hills did have a few mountains that could avalanche, usually that would be the nomadic alpacas doing as they liked hanging around in mountains after shaking all the snow out of them. I preferred the warmer climate of the Dragon Lands and living in Huoshan, I was getting quite homesick after being more than a few months away. “Once the snow stops flowing, we’ll know it is relatively safe to keep heading towards the mines. Provided that our setting off the trap that Dodo discovered doesn’t attract any dangerous attention.”

“You mean like whatever those be?” Shanty said, pointing her right hoof at the snow down the path we already treaded up as the flowing snow slowed to a crawl.

We saw multiple small pairs of poles popping out of the snow and then started to slowly head our way through it.

“Go Dodo, up into the pass!” I quickly hopped into the wagon, Dodo immediately started working on getting us moving. The snow was making it hard for the wagon to get traction, but Dodo was managing it well enough.

Once one the pole pairs got close enough, the erupted upwards revealing the ugly mechanical face of a large mechanical rabbit with two glowing red eyes with yellow slits staring at us. It ripped through the snow towards us like a snake going much faster than it did fully under it.

Once it got closer, it suddenly shot up into the air and a burst of flamed erupted out of its backside as it came blasting towards us, its body formed a more streamlined arrow shape as it did.

A bolt of energy hit it directly and it exploded violently, a lot more violently than the mechanical rabbit should have blown apart and I could feel the heat for a few seconds before the cold sapped it all away.

Colleen had her shrimp pistol out and was glaring out the back of the wagon, I noticed Ocellus and Nicole talking.

“Ocellus, does Nicole Beta know what we are dealing with here?” I queried as Colleen was taking up position in the back of the wagon as numerous poles erupted from the snow behind us and started to dig through it at decent speeds towards the wagon as Dodo started to pick up the pace.

“Yes, she’s says they’re Recon Rabbits!” Ocellus shouted worriedly. “Once they get close they can burst forward on rockets to ram their targets, these machines were created to be effective in snowy and sandy terrains. They were originally designed to be used as scouts, she says this is not actually normal behavior for them from what she knows as they were not meant to explode like that.”

I heard Colleen say something to Ocellus and she nodded.

“Colleen says these are some of the machine’s that Yellow Dog accidentally made act like wild animals.” That was very worrying Ocellus. “Unfortunately these particular wild machines don’t actually have dispositions like rabbits, unlike how other wild machines would act more like their appearance would suggest. These particular machines are actually exceedingly aggressive… and highly explosive!”

Deadly exploding rabbit machines, oh joy... why us?!
'
My mental whining as usual would go ignored as I clambered past Jean, Bruno, Ligstrun and Nicole Beta to the back of the wagon to take up position next to Colleen angling for the closest one.

“Colleen and I will cover the back, aid us if you feel like you can Smolder! You can help by watching the sides Ocellus, fire as needed!” I turned to the front. Ocellus was at the front of the wagon looking out the left and right sides acknowledging the urgency of our situation. “Shanty, make sure that Dodo turns left once we’re through the pass!”

“Dodo, be going faster please!” As she said this numerous poles that were the mechanical rabbit’s ears started tracking us through the snow and were getting closer by the second. There had to be at least twenty of them chasing us.

One rabbit popped out of the snow and was immediately met by a blast of energy to the face making it explode.

A second later another popped out and blasted towards us before Colleen was ready. I fired a bark blast and narrowly hit it, the resulting explosion rocked the wagon.

“Colleen, if I have to fire a bark blast, then they are far too close!” I growled out to her, she nodded and took steady aim for her next shot and fired just as mechanical rabbit poked it’s head up from the snow and it blew apart several other nearby rabbits encroaching on us. About ten more popped up nearby as we entered the pass. “Smolder, please tell me your concussion isn’t so bad that you can’t aim some fireballs?”

“It’s still pretty bad, but…” Inhaling she spat a small fireball and a large leaping robot rabbit blew apart in a spectacular fashion, showering the wagon with the shrapnel made out of its body. “I can manage, though I’m going to have a pretty big headache afterwards… I had heard from Fluttershy that rabbits can breed explosively, but this is ridiculous!”

Smolder was talking about the twenty new pairs of poles that popped up out of the snow and started surging towards us, they were glowing dimly. Colleen took aim and fired a shot into the snow and a chain of explosions went off.

“Maybe that’s the part of being like rabbits that they are taking a bit too literally.” I dryly stated as we had more converging on the wagon.

“You think?!” Smolder stated before exhaling a large burst of flames into the snow behind us, she melted enough to cause a recon rabbit to flop onto its face and then subsequently get rammed by another one. Causing another series of powerful explosions.

It was at this point that Dodo was starting to hit a really good stride, not that he was fast enough to avoid the Recon Rabbits entirely as they swarmed at us.

“How many of these things are there?!” Ocellus stated as she fired a bolt from her horn to the left of the wagon and something exploded. She repeated her words for our friends so they knew for sure what she said wasn’t that important, however Nicole Beta seemed to have an answer. Ocellus turned to me and looked rather haunted. “Nicole just said there’s about five hundred and thirty seven of them out here throughout the pass, something about having jury rigged some powerful detection abilities from those things she calls Swat-bots that she included into her form. Machines on this world are really complicated and interesting...”

My right eye twitched. I missed Equus and all the sunshine and rainbows that were the dangers of a world I understood, especially after helping deal with the shadow monsters. I’d even take being stuck in Fœnum with the ‘other’ Pom, similar yet so foreign to me even if I was a Pom too. I’d rather be dealing with thieves in the streets of Huoshan, without the aid of my beasties.

-Ocellus-

Pom freaking out was oddly like a warm balm to me, all was right with the world.

At least she was keeping an eye on the approaching rabbits as they spread out and tried to come at us from differing angles.

The wagon was a bit slow on the snow, but Dodo was making a really good effort to keep his feet on top of the snow and keeping some form of momentum going at the same time.

With his weight, every step put Dodo’s legs straight into snow that was several feet deep and he was amazing for powering through this as well as he could when he was built for grasslands and rockier terrain.

Being at the front of the wagon, I scanned the pass as we were going through looking for any signs of what Nicole was calling Recon Rabbits.

My multifaceted eyes narrowed, on the right! I lit up my horn and a fired a magic missile as a mound of snow began bulging upwards near the wagon.

The rabbit under the snow exploded and Dodo steered around it warbling worriedly and tried to look back. The explosion rocked the wagon and bits of the mechanical rabbit bounced off of it, but it did little damage as we passed by the gaping hole in the snow.

“Don’t be worrying Dodo, I be watching the wagon and telling you if something is being wrong!” Shanty was in tune with Dodo, as he kept his head forward at her words and his eyes seemed to focus. It made me wonder if changelings could have familiars and if it would be like having Smolder around infinitely. “You keep watching our front and stick to the left, okay?”

We were about halfway through the mountain pass and there were more mechanical menaces, who blended in with the snow, popping up to give chase.

I was watching the front, left and right sides as Colleen protected our backs with Smolder and Pom hitting whatever she couldn’t.

“That’s strange…” Nicole Beta stated.

“What is it machine?” Bruno still didn’t like Nicole one bit.

“We’re not nearing any heavier concentrations of Recon Rabbits.” Nicole’s ears spun a full three hundred and sixty degrees while making a weird noise. “They might have some form of hive mind… I think they might actually be protecting the nearby pockets of local wildlife and trees. There are no signs of Recon Rabbits beyond the pass. If we can make it through entirely, then they should stop giving chase to us.”

“Machine’s protecting nature, I’ll believe it when I have evidence to prove it.” Bruno crossed his arms and leaned back, the pig couldn’t truly do anything in this situation. He hid his grimace very well.

It’s been several days, yet most of us were still healing our wounds after our run in with Axel Gear. This kind of stressful situation was not helping Colleen in the slightest.

“Well we’re definitely not leaving Yellow Dog through here after this!” Five hundred of these self-destructing machines was a bit much for us to handle even if we were only facing small pockets of them. “We’re going to need another way out of the region.”

“I’d suggest the southwestern pass when heading back towards the Zephyrus region.” Jean mumbled from under a blanket with Ligstrun, those two looked miserable. “I can feel all my mucus freezing up, this is highly unpleasant weather for us and the dangers out here are just as bad… ah-choo!”

“That’ll definitely be our plan A, I seriously do not want to run into these things again.” As I said this, I jerked my head to the left and fired on a metal rabbit as it popped out of the snow and it blew apart.

“We’re almost through to the other side and are exiting their self-imposed operational range.” Nicole stated while looking about out the front of the wagon with me for any signs of more Recon Rabbits.

Colleen fired off another bolt from the back that was followed by another series of explosions. Slowly the poles started to veer away and go back the way we just came from.

We were out in the open on the other side of the pass and after a few minutes of no further attacks, Pom let out a sigh.

“Slow down Dodo!” Shanty yelled while waving a hoof to get his attention and he finally did so, but he didn’t stop going. “That way, to the left!”

Dodo turned and started towards the path on the other side of the pass that would lead us towards the mines that were said to be up a mountain to the northwest.

“Well this might be ‘a’ reason why there is rarely any information coming from Yellow Dog territories, the other would be whatever is going on out here. The entire southern pass is crawling with those things.” Colleen muttered as she laid down and rested her head. “Thankfully I didn’t have to do much more than some shooting, because I’m exhausted... I would have never made it as a true rocket knight.”

“Remind me again Colleen, you said Yellow Dog has submarines and what else?” We needed to be on the lookout for anything after those machines tried to ambush us in the pass.

“Well airships are large resource drains to keep fielded, I’m surprised that the pigs even managed to make a pedal powered airship efficient or exceptionally effective. We’re not likely to see one out here. Smaller manually controlled machines or mecha are far more likely, I really doubt anyone would actually be stupid enough to field a submarine up… here?” As Colleen spoke we were traveling up further and snow started falling lightly. “Doesn’t look like blizzard conditions, which is good for us. I suggest we keep going... and we’ll just ignore that sight we’re passing by.”

Colleen was talking about the remains of what had to be a submarine, which notably was landlocked in the middle of nowhere and a frozen over broken husk. The entire thing was nearly split in half in the middle with something having ripped a large hole in its side.

“There was obviously someone that was actually dumb enough to try and actually field a submarine up here.” Bruno stated with amusement. “Didn’t pan out and went badly from the looks of it.”

“Wulfgar is all about strength and viciousness, so that has to be his doing as he’s considered all brawn and barely even a percentile of brains in relation. At least he can get things done in a timely manner, wouldn’t want him for a leader if I was still willing to live around other canines.” Colleen muttered dryly while rubbing at herself with her paws and shivering. We passed by the water based vehicle slowly. Warily watching anything and everything else in our surroundings for a surprise attack. “Cooler is a dog of the people, despite not having many under him. He’s a far sight better at logistics and wielding resources than just throwing a ton of bodies at the problem, the whole survival of the fittest thing is definitely whittling Wulfgar’s power base down.”

“How do you think they’ll react to seeing you?” About ten seconds later we all noticed that Dodo had stopped and started looking about curiously. “What is it this time Shanty?”

“I think Dodo be feeling something off…” Shanty said back quietly her bar shaped pupils darted about. “Dodo back towards that submarine thing!”

Why did Shanty make that call?

-Pom-

“Quick Ocellus, the cliffs above us!” I shouted out, drawing Ocellus’s attention to a rocket flying down at us from a cliff higher up. She immediately blew it out of the air with a quick blast of magic without thinking twice.

“Darn it, we’ve been discovered and that blasted machine gave away our surprise attack!” Someone barked as Dodo got us turned around and head down the mountain back towards the submarine. “Wait, how were we going to get down there to steal their stuff after we obliterated them?”

“Um…” I heard someone yip back, trying to figure out what they were doing as Dodo began a retreating and pulled the entire wagon towards the large hole of the broken submarine.

“Nice aim Ozzy!” Smolder cheered.

“Not necessarily, I just locked my magic missile onto the heat that rocket was giving off.” Not that Ocellus had anything to prove, but she was important part of our survival as much as I was theirs. “With all the cold air around here, I couldn’t have missed it even if I wanted to Smol.”

“Still, you did a good job with knocking it out of the air!” Smolder continued praising Ocellus. “Like Rainbow would say, that was awesome!”

“Yeah, we really do not want to lose our supplies out here Ocellus, thank you for thinking fast.” I added my own praise as Ocellus deserved it. “We should also thank Dodo and Shanty for making good snap decisions.”

“Pirate, comes with the territory.” Shanty stated with a grin.

“Yes, like the fact that you drank five pints of rum before we left Cladinhold…” I stated with a slight amount of disappointment.

“Heh heh… you be knowing about that?” Shanty stated weakly while ducking into Dodo’s back.

“I didn’t say anything, because you apparently can hold your liquor without issue.” Otherwise she’d be a slurring mess by now, alcohol really didn’t have an effect on Shanty. “Next time, try to be like a real pirate and not get caught doing something I said that you absolutely shouldn’t!”

Dragons are mostly immune to alcohol, but that didn’t mean I liked the idea of Smolder or any of my girls drinking on my watch.

I looked up at the cliff and saw several wolves on it glaring down upon us, they disappeared from the edge as Dodo dragged the wagon right to the large hole ripped into the side of the submarine.

The submarine of course was empty and frozen over as he pulled the wagon inside, but we had a defensible position at least. I got out of the wagon and quickly unstrapped the wagon from him and looked out at the falling snow.

I peeked out from the hole as the sky grew darker and sighed. Well someone out here was definitely out to get us, didn’t know which faction it was though.

“I guess we’re staying here for the night instead of the mines. Smolder you break out the wood, Ocellus smokeless fire, you two will tend to that task together. Shanty stay with Dodo and watch the hole.” I turned back to Ocellus and pointed a hoof at her. “Ocellus tell Colleen to have her weapon at the ready and stick near Shanty and Dodo, Ligstrun and Jean are to be the furthest away from the hole and setting up the tents, Nicole is on food preparation. Bruno is to be back up to Colleen and Shanty. Also, remind them all of their injuries.”

“What are you going to be doing Pom?” Asked Ocellus as Smolder started getting the wood out.

“Having a nervous breakdown over here about the next imminent disaster of course, and possibly being under assault by unknown parties...” I think I giggled a bit insanely after that. I couldn’t tell, but that might be the reason I was getting so many odd stares from everyone. “In all seriousness though, I’m securing the wagon after we get out some of the supplies we need to set up camp. I’ll be helping everyone get the stuff unloaded.”

-Some hours later-

“Okay, I think I’m in a much better place mentally now.” Thank goodness for the healthy and tasty banana nut muffins Dodo produced. They didn’t taste like they were made with Elhorn resources… and I wasn’t questioning that in the slightest. That way lies complete madness… and I was a smarter lambkin than that! At least I was a more held together lambkin. “So we’re in a mountainous region full of exploding rabbits, wolves that can camouflage with magic as long as they stay in one spot and are immune to injury until said magic wears off completely. Also there are already bandits out here trying to kill us and take our supplies while maybe being a part of a faction or mercenaries that work for the highest bidder!”

“You’re not getting much sleep tonight are you?” Smolder stated dryly.

“No, I don’t think I can… too stressed.” I said with wide eyes and my whole body shivering, it wasn’t the cold of the mountains that was causing the chill in my spine. “Who knows what will happen to me if they try to take me alive? I’m a magnet for canids! Why did I agree to come up here again?!”

“Pom, existential dread and mental crisis later, you can stay awake with Dodo if you want and can sleep in the morning.” Yawned Ocellus whose face rested against Smolders neck and snuggled down into the dragon’s warm shoulder falling asleep on her.

Smolder looked a bit embarrassed.

-Several hours later, Shanty-

"Pom?" I got up and noticed the destruction outside the hole.

Dodo warbled sadly.

"POM?!"

64. Mounting Mysteries.

-Elhorn, The Far North, Abandoned Submarine, Shanty-

“Calm down Shanty, it’s going to be okay. Pom… will be… okay…” Ocellus poked her head out of the gaping hole in the submarine while resting a hoof on my withers. “Even if we have absolutely no idea where currently she is or what happened to her last night. We can all clearly see that something happened, but at least our camp wasn’t disturbed. All our supplies are still here, so we definitely haven’t been robbed at least. They never made it by Dodo.”

Dodo warbled halfway proud and the other half was mournful.

We managed to sleep the entire night undisturbed, wouldn’t Pom be waking us to help with the danger? The camp was as we left it when we be waking up, so they not be getting even close to getting inside the submarine.

“Yeah Shanty, Pom is a survivalist and she’s got her canid magnetism going for her… so ‘if’ she has been captured by anyone from Yellow Dog, I seriously doubt they’d kill her. If she hasn’t been captured and is lost, then she’ll likely try to find a way to the mines.” Walking out into the sunlight to get stuck in the deeper snow, Smolder flew up and over to the five machines that were being damaged badly. There were patches of frozen red crystals everywhere a fair distance from the submarine. The only reason they were visible in the snow was because of the sunlight reflecting off of them. “So she had a big fight last night… during a blizzard… where she apparently took off her cold weather gear to blend in with the snow and we have said gear right here. Also that’s a lot frozen blood.”

Dodo be feeling sad thoughts about Pom not returning, he be slightly injured and apparently was a part of the decent scuffle last night that was muffled by all the snow.

He stayed here to keep watch over our camp and is making sure that nobody got by him to us.

“Is that blood hers?” I asked worriedly.

“No, genetics show only Mobian canine descendants thus far, no ‘outsider’ genetics detected nearby. Pom didn’t bleed near here whatever she was doing last night, but I seriously do not understand how she could take out those mechs. Despite their small size being relative to Dodo, they are still quite dangerous with their ability to deflect energy based weaponry and are primarily melee range machines.” Wait… did Nicole just say something I could be understanding? “Is my translation software sufficient? In other words, did you understand me and is it working correctly?”

“Yes, I be understanding that.” I was quite thankful that none of that was Pom’s blood, there be a lot of it all over the place. “Do you be understanding us now as well?”

“I could get the gist of it by body language alone before, but I am a quick study and have been listening to your conversations. I apologize if that comes off as a bit… un-settlements.” Nicole stated while her glowing screen eyes flickered to make it look like she be blinking. She be sleeping too, but did machines really need to sleep? That being strange to me. “Does Pom naturally have the capabilities of taking out those mechs? That demon and Axel Gear didn’t seem like effective measures for Pom’s true capabilities… though I have noted her being unnaturally durable by taking multiple explosive devices to the body.”

“No, but she didn’t have to take out these mechs… just their pilots.” Ocellus answered while curiously looking over the toppled mechs. “It seems as if most of the damage done to them was done by the claws of the other mechs themselves and not directly by Pom.”

The mechs in question were green, small bodied and had spindly limbs… the legs be longer than the arms. The limbs were kind of like the ones of the bomb spitting Gedol land striders.

The machines also have a cylindrical head with two red orbs that had room for one pilot in a small seat, smaller than the seat Dodo had. Aside from the long limbs they weren’t exactly big or threatening looking bipedal machines despite being a bit taller than Dodo.

“I concur.” Nicole ran some of her blunt metal fingers under what passed for a chin for her, the light dying in the top half of her eyes be making her look thoughtful as if the absence of light was her eyelids. It be a neat effect. “Given she hasn’t returned, she might have gotten lost in the blizzard. We won’t be able to track the aggressors if capture is her reason for being missing. If she is lost, then she may have led them away from us and can’t make her way back swiftly. We need options on what we can do.”

Nicole be pretty lively like Dodo and really cool looking, now she can also be talking to us in our language too.

“We don’t know where to start looking, but Pom knows the general location of the mine. She should eventually be able to navigate her way back to us and knows where we’re heading.” Ocellus seemed to be think about doing something. “I don’t want to leave her behind... we still don’t even know if we’ve met a faction yet or if they were just bandits.”

“We can’t stay here and wait for Pom forever.” Would object to that Smolder, but we be having no idea of where to look for Pom and can only hope she’s alright.

“I… don’t want to leave, but maybe it being better if we do.” I think Pom be stronger than a bunch of mountain wolves, she did be causing them a lot of trouble last night. We can see it in the snow. “People be knowing that we were here. It not being safe for us to be staying stuck in a corner, I’m no coward and you be saying that Pom will be okay and I believe you!”

That didn’t mean I was going to stop worrying about her, Pom was being special to me… as were Smolder, Ocellus and Dodo.

“Right, continue the original plan until we can find some form of civilization.” Ocellus turned to look at the others in thought. “The faster we complete our mission, the sooner we can form a search party to go out and find Pom.”

-Two hours later-

Pom not be showing up after we packed up the camp and be eating breakfast. Dodo was alright enough to pull, but he not be fighting up close with his injuries. Nicole is knowing what she is talking about when it comes to machines like Dodo and I be listening to her about not putting too much stress on him while he was still healing.

We also be waiting for Ligstrun to get one of the mechs operational and Colleen got put to the task of piloting it to follow the wagon. It be walking funny and its arms be slightly floppy, but we were reassured that Colleen had it under control.

We set out at a slow pace and watched our surroundings warily, including cliffs above us as we headed northwest towards the mountain where the mines are supposed to be found.

Along the way we saw a few exceptionally weird things alongside the snowy pathways.

Upside down trees, an entire forests worth of them with their stumps in the air. Someone be taking the time and effort to turn an entire forest on its head. Even Colleen was perplexed, Ocellus translated her words that Yellow Dog territory didn’t have things this bizarre when she left it.

We be finding a single circular campfire that someone obviously slept in the middle of, even I be knowing that that not be being very bright thing to do. Who would be being stupid enough to surround themselves with fire to sleep in the middle of it?

Well Smolder could be an answer, but she is not being stupid and she would actually be enjoying heat.

What came up next was number of frost or snow covered bushes that had been painted entirely bright red or bright neon pink.

“Why would anybody be painting bushes out here?” I asked Ocellus with my head tilted. “The color is being a bit eye searing.”

“The base color of the bushes is brown and the snow flowers should be white… and… I haven’t the foggiest why anyone would go to all the effort of painting entire bushes that color.” Answered Nicole. She is being very smart, if she is not knowing then it is doubtful that anyone else among us would be figuring it out anytime today. “It seems illogical to paint a bunch of random bushes in the middle of nowhere, especially in neon pink. It's like why anyone would bother with turning all the trees in a forest upside down.”

The next oddity in the mountainous region had me questioning things.

“Is that thing being real?” I asked bluntly. “Can I be reassured that I not be just seeing things?”

“Yes, I think it is…” Ocellus muttered as we looked at a sign that read ‘obvious trap’. Said sign had an arrow pointing to a ridiculously obvious trap that only a true idiot could be falling for. The trap looked like it could close on a hoof or leg in a painful manner with spikes.

“I can detect no other traps around.” Nicole stated quietly looking at the sign while her ears rotated in place while pointing straight up.

“Let’s just go aro… Dodo!” I yelled, Dodo quickly pulled his head back from the trap looking sheepish.

“Well Dodo is definitely dumb enough to be a familiar.” Smolder stated flatly. “So we’re heading higher up to find the mines right?”

“Yep, we’re not likely to run into anything too odd as what we’ve seen so far.” Ocellus was proven wrong five minutes later when she became upset at what we saw next. “Come on, why a cement wall that’s only five feet wide and half a foot thick?! It’s not going to stop anything from going around it, it’s not even in our way to begin with! Who built it and why here!”

“Calm down Ocellus, this is actually not that weird.” As we passed by what looked like a freshly kept wall, Smolder looked back at it and blinked. “Okay… maybe it is…”

Everyone started looking at what Smolder was staring at, what was behind the wall we didn’t even have to steer around.

Most importantly, what wasn’t there.

“Is that being normal?” I asked to Nicole. Something very screwy be going on here.

“No, that is decidedly not normality.” Nicole’s eyes flickered and seemed to grow brighter as if she just blinked and widened her eyes. She be very expressive for a robot. “It makes me wonder what Yellow Dog has been up to with technology in this region. I… want to study this for a bit.”

We went back and stopped next to the wall.

“If Pom has been captured… is she living in a nightmare?” I asked Ocellus as Nicole started to look at the wall, it be about time I be giving it some thought.

“Maybe, but Pom didn’t have a problem with catching up to us coming from the chasm in the Valley of Peace.” Ocellus be avoiding the question. “We’ll find out soon enough either way Shanty.”

“Not the result of a hologram, what is this?” Nicole muttered in our language as she prodded the wall’s front and side and then scrutinized the backside, wary of touching it.

I moved to look at the wall from an angle to see both the back and the side at the same time. I could see the side of the wall and my gaze slid to the space where the wall was supposed to exist, but wasn’t there. It was like the backside of the wall didn’t exist or was see through.

“Not see through, not technology based… what am I missing?" Nicole was being a bit too slow for my taste, I ran forward. "These are odd readings.”

“Why not be touching it?” I moved forward. “Like…”

“No, wait!” Nicole dove for me and my hoof made contact with where the back of the wall was supposed to be.

“This.” The wall came into focus and I blinked and noticed that my friends weren't around, also my surroundings were entirely different. “Where did everyone be… going?”

The clacking noises of multiple wolves brought up what looked like paw held miniature cannons to point them at me. That be a lot of yellow fur, I guess that be why Yellow Dog is being a thing… also several mechs like the one Colleen is piloting be flexing their claws.

One of the wolves be pointing at me and shouting something, I be picking up the gist of that quickly enough.

“I be in trouble!” I quickly turned and clambered up the wall and was chased by sparks of hundreds of energy bolts slamming into it behind me and following me upwards.

I tried to prop my right hoof on top of the wall only to realize the wall had no top, I fell forward and lost grip of my left hind hoof as I pivoted into the nothing and then slammed into something solid.

Soon I be finding myself flipping to land on my back in the snow.

“Oof?!” I looked up into the surprised face of Smolder.

“What the…?!” Smolder be leaping away from me. “Shanty, where did you come from… where did you go?”

“Where did you come from Doughnut N’ Joe~!” Ocellus sang cheerfully with a weak grin.

“Now’s not the time for jokes Ocellus, Shanty just disappeared and reappeared from out of nowhere!” Smolder grunted out angrily.

“I was just trying to lighten the mood...” Mumbled Ocellus while looking away as I rolled onto my hooves.

“Right there, something just caused a second… oh…” Nicole looked me over, the lights dimming on the upper outer corners of her eyes. “Are you okay?”

“I be thinking that I not be rushing into any more unknown things again anytime soon.” That was being close, very close.

I like being foolhardy, but I be needing a few days off from it.

“I think I’ve figured it out, this wall is a quantum entangled object. Touch the sides that’s not there and you appear at the location it is at.” Nicole intoned quietly, Colleen came over to crouch down and start sniffing me before asking Nicole something.

I be turning to Ocellus, as did Smolder, and began ignoring the other conversation. If it was important than Ocellus would be telling us.

“Quantum entangled, isn’t that like… really bad for physics?” Ocellus finally asked once Nicole was finished discussing something with Colleen. “You know, for a single object to be in two places at the same time?”

“Normally it would be, but that’s only if it’s a single completely whole object in two places at once, this is parts of the same object being in two different places… that being the wall. This could be caused by experimenting with magical teleportation technology, which Eginasem, Devotindos and Yellow Dog have been noted as having in thankfully limited quantities.” Nicole looked to me and tilted her head. “Again, you okay Shanty?”

“There be a lot of yellow furred dogs and wolves wherever I was and they be shooting at me with their weapons, but yes, I am being fine.” I quickly went over to Dodo. “Dodo, help me up, we be going now!”

-An hour later-

It be snowing and we were getting closer to the mines, we not be seeing any dogs, wolves or anyone. That not be making me feel any safer.

“I’m getting some interference from the area ahead.” Nicole said as she came walking back to us, she was unique enough that nobody could be possibly copying her appearance. Well maybe Ocellus, but she not wanting to be trying to transform into a cobbled together machine. “Also, you should see this…”

A minute later we came across another oddity, these mountains are being really quite strange.

“To think we thought the submarine being up here was odd.” Smolder walked forward out onto what looked almost like thin shimmering air In front of us.

What it really was, was a vast portion of the landscape was entirely see through… even the snow that be freshly landed on the ground became see through shortly afterwards. Everything was being ridiculously transparent throughout this area and a fair distance down.

Dodo be warbling warily as we moved forward over the transparent ground and be eyeing it suspiciously. The river of reflective red liquid looked neat, I can be seeing myself in it.

“The other side of this area should be where the mines are.” At least Ocellus hopefully be following the map, I not be a great navigator even if I’m being good at many other things. “Don’t honestly know if Pom can handle the kinds of madness going on in these mountains.”

As we be moving forward I be looking down into the cave systems that were visible below us through the transparent ground. I wouldn’t want to be in those transparent cave systems.

“Well if Pom was down there, we’d be able to see her.” Nicole stated calmly from next to me. “Though hearing about the destruction of the ark under the command of these canines… I can’t help but think that they might be messing with things they shouldn’t be.”

“Only ‘might’, it is actually pretty much confirmed at this point even if we don’t know the whole Generalissimo Lioness story that’s been mentioned to us multiple times!” With all the bizarre things we’ve been seeing Smolder, it might not all be only Yellow Dog’s doing. “I hope we can find Pom quickly, because all this weird stuff and nobody around… aside from whatever people Shanty saw on the other side of the quandary tangled wedgie thing… is actually freaking me out.”

It wasn’t long before we be finally finished passing over the transparent landscape and were on an upward incline that we finally met someone, well at least someone who wasn’t being an immediate threat to us.

“Halt, who goes there?!” The dog was holding one off those miniature cannons and aiming it at us from higher up the path. Dodo be narrowing his eyes, but he be waiting on us to make a move.

Colleen be moving to the front of the wagon and hopped out of her melee mech while raising her paws into the air.

-Colleen-

It seems Yellow Dog territory was far more messed up than usual, thankfully I knew this dog.

“Husker Exile?” I tried carefully. Husker Exile was a husky with ice blue and white fur, ice blue eyes and was pointing his weapon at me and away from Dodo. “It’s… it’s me… Colleen, been a while since I’ve been seen in the mountains, ocean or continent to the north connecting us to Eginasem. We heard that Yellow Dog has fallen into factions, which one are you currently a part of if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I do mind, but I wonder… what faction are ‘YOU’ with? If you went to the pigs, then we’ll have a lot to talk about as they aren’t very welcome around here.” Exile didn’t lower the gun, but I wasn’t afraid of him. He wouldn’t shoot me with that rifle unless I gave him a reason to. “So are you angling to be a rocket knight and did you just come through Transparent Turn?”

“Oh no, I just happen to luck upon this rocket pack on my back, its decent equipment. As for Transparent Turn… is that what you called that weird area where the ground is all weirdly see through? What is happening up here Exile?!” It didn’t help my nerves that he didn’t ease up on his curious gaze at the weight of the cylinder pressing into my back, he growled at me a bit and I stayed my ground and kept looking him in the eyes. “I’ve been through a lot, but I went for mercenary work and I’m currently with Zebulos working with one of their courier teams.”

“Which team? We have a lot more information on what’s going on in the south than people possibly do with what’s going on up here.” Exile rolled his eyes and snorted loudly. “Even Wulfgar has his people watching those darn lizards in the south, though why he bothers when they are not likely to attack up this way at all I’ll never know. Lizards don’t fight well in the cold. Any approach without machine assistance wouldn’t make it up this far. Anything with machine assistance, we’re prepared for.”

“The White Knight Couriers unit.” After I said that, Exile lowered his weapon. I think Exile might be with Cooler’s faction, which should be nice for us at least.

“The unit that escaped Axel Gear and gave him a metaphorical black eye? Hah, I think you might actually be somewhat welcome around here for that, but you have to introduce me to everyone that came up here with you.” Exile stalked down towards me. “I’d like to also know why you are back here in the Yellow Dog. I sadly thought you might have perished under those stupidly harsh conditions Colleen and if you had managed to survive, that you would never want to come back.”

“We’re on a mission to trade for supplies, barring that… do some mining for them personally.” I motioned the wagon forward and Dodo came up to my side, he was eyeing Exile with cheerful curiosity. “To start with this is Dodo, our… oddball land strider friend. Oh right... I can’t introduce you to everyone.”

“Why not?” Exile considered Dodo as he warbled in a halfway friendly tone and kept looking down the mountainside for something, maybe Pom.

“We lost one of our people in a nightly wolf raid. We have no clue what happened to them, but it’s a general consensus that they are alive out here.” I knew Pom was quite a tough being, also quite adorable and sweet. “There’s something quite special about that particular one, but you’d have to see her to believe it. Guys, this is Husker Exile, he wants to know who you are. He goes by Exile. My mech was something we fixed up from the raid on us.”

“Why are you traveling around with a lizard, a frog and a pig?” Exile asked as they started piling out of the wagon, his curiosity went even farther with Shanty, Ocellus and Smolder. “You’ve been living in weird times haven’t you? I don’t exactly trust the pig, the lizard gets a pass because he doesn’t look like much and the rest is just odd.”

“Oh trust me, that feeling is always mutual with Bruno... still handed me his sword when Axel came after us. Felt like a rocket knight for a short while when I traded blows with Axel." I rubbed at the armor over my stitched wounds slightly. "Axel damn near killed me when we fought.”

“What’s up with the other machine…?” Exile asked while pointing his gun at Nicole Beta. “And can I shoot it?”

“My name is Nicole Beta, I believe that I have information that might be of interest. I wish to negotiate a trade for the White Knight Couriers if we can be amiable to an agreement.” Nicole tried to sound as unthreatening as possible.

After a minute of silent staring into Nicole’s eyes coldly, Exile stopped aiming his gun at her.

“Fine, come in to the checkpoint ahead.” Exile shook his head and started back up the mountain path. “I’ll be watching your machines carefully Colly.”

Author's Note

Emotional Status:

Pom- MIA.

Smolder- Wants to apologize to Ocellus, she actually liked her singing joke. Not worried about Pom, believes in her safety completely after seeing the carnage outside the submarine.
Shanty- Thinks this world is neat, misses Pom and is worried about her status.
Ocellus- A bit upset with Smolder, Pom's status is highly concerning. Doesn't want to be in charge.

Jean- Cold and barely staying conscious through raw effort of will.
Ligstrun- Sleepy and a bit wary of Exile.
Colleen- Mixed feelings at seeing an old acquaintance, mixed feelings about being back in Yellow Dog territory, mixed feelings about Pom.
Nicole(B)- Is afraid of the experiments that might be occurring in the mountains.
Bruno- Heightened suspicions of his surroundings, actually wants to be friends with Colleen. Grumpy about healing to slowly.

Dodo- Doesn't know 'da whey' or even what's going on anymore, shares in Shanty's feelings of missing Pom through their familiar bond.

65. Situational Gravity.

-Equus, Ponyville, Market Square, Fluttershy-

“So they are really easy to take care of Fizzy.” I patted the little ewe on the head and she bleated in a friendly tone.

“Yeah, now if only Jade was as easy to ‘take care of’.” It seemed as if Fizzle was a bit stressed. “The only reason why I’m even willing to entertain the idea is because this Tiny Ewe has spunk.”

“Was that air quotes I heard?” I asked politely.

“See Fluttershy you’re learning to think like me!” Pinkie stated as she passed by, I just shook my head.

“Horrifying thought that.” Fizzle commented dryly.

“Yes, well… why are you putting off telling Jade about this? Maybe she could actually help with the situation?” I received a flat look from Fizzle, my wings flexed a bit in slight fear and she eased up on the flat stare slightly.

“Imagine someone needed a surgery Fluttershy. There’s a difference between carefully using a scalpel and then there’s dropping a full grand piano on someone from high enough that there is time for it to gain full velocity before impact. Which is Jaded more likely to do?” With that said Fizzle, I couldn’t help myself when I winced… audibly enough that the entire square was looking at us. I dug my face into my mane a bit. “That’s what I thought. While Jade can be discreet, she really likes making noise… wouldn’t have my kitty any other way though.”

Jaded was my friend, but she did have problems with not going to extremes even Rainbow would find assorted flavors of nuts.

Hmm… maybe I should get some honey roasted cashews today?

-Elhorn, The Far North, Frosty Checkpoint, Shanty-

Negotiations be going fine, we not being shot at for one. Nicole, Colleen and Ocellus are handling things, but the local dogs are not going to let us up to the mines or this mountain in particular. They sounded like Cooler faction or a smaller faction of mercenaries working with said faction at the very least.

I be wondering what someone with the name Cooler would look like, I probably not be doing him any justice.

“Shanty we have some good news and terrible news, what would you like to hear first?” Ocellus asked me as she came over.

“What being the good news?” Why do I be having this sinking feeling, like I’m about to go down with it?

“Well the good news is our trade negotiations are going pretty well and we might even make a few of the side objectives of coming here.” Yes, Ocellus that be sounding very nice, but what does that have to do with me? “Even if they aren’t going to let us into their base or the mines the base is strategically placed near on this mountain in particular, they’ll bring the stuff to us and we’ll hash out things from there.”

“And?” I quirked my right eye at her.

“We… have a good idea as to where Pom is and it would be a horrible idea to go after her at this time.” Wait… what did you just be saying Ocellus?! “Look it’s just eye witness accounts, but they are clearly describing things Pom can and would be capable of in the situation she’s in. I think she’s attracting a lot of attention to herself trying to avoid it altogether.”

“Why?” It came out of my mouth with a calm tone, belying my deep rooted need to go help Pom with whatever situation she’s gotten herself into. She be doing that for me enough times already.

“Huh, you’re taking this better than I thought you would.” Smolder stated as Ocellus did talk to her first before approaching me.

“She isn’t, she’s just acting calm and she’s doing almost a good enough job to fool even me if I couldn’t sense her emotions right now.” Right Ocellus do be knowing what we are always feeling all the time. That must be an annoying ability to have constantly going for your entire life. “To answer the question, Pom is kind of living her nightmare scenario right now. She’s basically become a focus of the various factions fighting in the region. That includes Wulfgar Faction, Cooler Faction, several tribe’s worth of mountain bandits and at least four mercenary companies. It doesn’t help that the location she is in… isn’t safe for any of us to traverse, much less Dodo.”

“Where?” My anger flared a little bit, but I wasn’t angry at Ocellus. She is being the big sister I never had… Smolder is more of the fun sister I never had. Neither of them were responsible for what was going on with Pom.

“To the east of here in a place called Gravity Gorge, apparently the Wulfgar faction accidentally destroyed an empty mountain and tried to play it off as a sign of their power some time ago. It’s become a wonder of this world and would be good for tourists if it wasn’t so dangerous to be near.” Nicole stated as she came over to us, while glancing over her shoulder. “Now there’s a lot of gravity distortions in the area alongside massive floating boulders, small planetoids and other flora and fauna where a mountain used to be. Suggested cause of all these alluded to gravitational anomalies in the area is that an anti-gravity unit from an ark transport was destroyed in the most idiotic a manner as possible. I would not be surprised to find out all the anomalies in these mountains are related to Yellow Dog infighting with technologies they are not fit to use properly.”

I didn’t actually feel like running off at the first sign of Pom being somewhere, just knowing she was alive to be causing sightings like this was good enough for me. For now anyway…

We be parked in a cave called Frosty Checkpoint. It being cozy and warm thus far, I wanted to eventually go out there and find Pom when the information was more substantial. It had some homes dug out by the mostly amiable dogs we were staying with for the time being.

The dogs not be liking Bruno much and are tolerating Jean and Ligstrun far better, our presence with the courier team made it obvious that we were working for Zebulos and Zephyrus forces.

How the locals treated Colleen with indifference wasn’t a bad thing, I be learning it was not necessarily a good thing either. It was how I was treated growing up, the indifference to my existence be a bit soul crushing.

Nicole surprisingly was received well enough, despite the fact that she was constantly being watched by everyone. With the kinds of machines that this world had to deal with, it be completely understandable to me with the likes of evil cores existing.

As for the rest of us? We be seen as not threatening, which is being good. They will underestimate us if they eventually have ill winds to show for our sails.

Dodo made a noise and I found a raspberry cheesecake muffin held out to me, I smiled and took the offered treat. I was always hungry for more and Dodo be knowing this.

-A few hours earlier, Gravity Gorge, Hunt Guildar-

Being a good guy in the middle of a war was hard to do, especially when you were in Yellow Dog and happened to be one among the many eponymous yellow furred canines our regions are known for. Specifically, I’m the Retriever wearing light armor.

Cooler wasn’t a bad guy per say and his faction was nice, but I wanted to forge my own path.

How did you get here Hunt? Well a whole slew of things led to me being in this position given I was the leader for my small and relatively unknown mercenary scouts.

It started with that group of mechs tripping over my particular mercenary group trying to follow our own goals, we try to do things for an honest living and tried not to step on any paws around here.

‘Tried’ is the key word in all of this.

When I tried to get a closer look at the bandits that were hovering nearby the southern pass where all those bombastic bot bunnies were, fighting erupted going straight into Gravity Gorge and I heard someone white and fluffy was around.

I hope it wasn’t the abominable snow dog, heard the big guy lives in this weird place that is said to get darker towards the center. He was stated as being very friendly, but suddenly it seemed like every faction wanted him for some reason.

So after taking out the bandits meagerly managed mechs, we were out of ammunition for the rocket tubes thanks to that, I lead my group a merry roundabout chase through the snow to get into this position where I was quietly gathering information from my surroundings.

The information I was getting was that everything was pure chaos, even a portion of Cooler’s people were part of the havoc in this floating rock field. The Cooler faction had better be thankful for all this if I survive.

Imagine coming to Gravity Gorge and seeing it for the first time. It was a vast cylinder of large floating rocks that swirled and stretched well into the sky after going over a hill to see the spot where a mountain used to be. If any of the rocks fell out of the spinning cylinder of floating rocks, they’d roll all down the nearest incline back into whatever was making them all float like they do.

There were some rocks that were affixed in certain places where they spun and had small pools of water that get filled with fish from the blizzards that blow through here. Don’t honestly know how the fish got up here though.

Lots of food to be found around here considering some of the floating rocks were also surprisingly covered in plant life, the gravity anomalies were what was said to be generating enough heat for plant life to thrive.

A dog wouldn’t survive forever on the random patches of food unless they were crazy or knew a few things, but there was more than enough to survive off of for years out here with a good infusion of meat every now and then. That required knowing where to find fish in the middle of this maze of hovering dirt, stone and water.

Not only that, imagine one moment you’re weightless and the next you’re falling into a boulder face first.

That was my reality and the reality of whatever factions that were chasing this so called ‘puffy white target of great interest’.

I was quite sure it was mysterious abominable snow dog, but I needed a second opinion and that why I was stuck in the middle of fighting for my life.

The snow dog hardly ever left the Gravity Gorge or wanted to take part in all this fighting, what would get him to come out of hiding or get the attention of so many wild mongrels?

The various factions were obviously not deterred by doing things like falling upwards instead of sideways like I had when I leapt off a cliff into this place. They still drove their melee mechs into this crazy place with wild abandon.

It didn’t help that I have spotted just about every Yellow Dog faction under the sun out here among the floating platforms now looking for what sounded like the snow dog, a dog that definitely prefers his peace and solitude.

You used get a lot of that around here, eh… up until now where every faction has a flea to itch with this place all of the sudden and it became a huge war zone.

I’m curious as to why this was happening. All this fighting going on around me and randomly coming under attack was not doing me any favors whatsoever.

I clutched my rifle closer to my chest and peaked out of cover looking down below my current orientation. As for what my current position was?

I was sitting on the underside of a boulder and could look up at the ground below from where I was, it was a bit unsettling.

I was almost getting used to this place over the last few hours, now if only projectiles, explosives and machines weren’t flying all around me in a big mess. I’m not even sure if these canines even know who they are aiming at half the time anymore, kind of hard to tell which faction you were a part of without a decent means of identifying yourself.

Both Cooler and Wulfgar factions made a habit of barely being identifiable from one another at a distance. Wulfgar wasn’t smart, but the guys he fielded made up for lacking in the brains department by a wide margin.

You could use sight, but all the factions were using the same kind of machines, looked similar and probably couldn’t identify friend from foe without getting an up close whiff of them. There were many wolves and dogs going into or exiting camouflage magic in various places for ambushes.

This place was a death trap and nobody would want to be in the middle of this, especially if you were about to be crushed between the gravitational forces of two rocks slamming together.

The unwary wouldn’t last long here.

It was sufficient to say I was witnessing one of the weirdest battles I will have ever seen in my entire life, I’ve seen a few like the one with that submarine in the western mountains. That was more of a laugh riot than a battle and I was more of an information gatherer than a paid killer.

At least I knew that all these dogs weren’t trying to kill me intentionally, some of them were mine that got lost among the rocks. I think I gave most of them an opening to escape, but I was in a spot of trouble myself for doing so.

My guys would all hopefully fall back to the gathering point while I scouted around to see if there was something worthwhile going on in this mess, I haven’t moved from this boulder for the last twenty minutes.

It was kind of flattering that someone out here was going to this much trouble to keep me pinned down. I was cold, I wasn’t safe and I wished I could howl, but that would just alert everyone to which floating rock I was literally hiding under. At least I had food in my stomach and fresh water in a canteen at my hip protected by some light armoring.

The sharp sound of a projectile cracking ripped into my hearing, as a shot ricocheted off my boulder making me wince.

It was time to move… wait… what did I just see?

I had been about ready to charge around my boulder and jump for another one with my gun blazing, but I thought I saw some movement that would put me in a crossfire zone from the right if someone wasn’t willing to check their target.

A lot of people weren’t checking their targets out here, so I stayed in place and watched the direction I thought I saw someone trying to get a line of sight on me from.

That’s when I spotted it, a small four legged white creature with a fearful look on her face among the floating boulders with battling going on in all directions around her. Well it looked like a female creature to me.

The poor thing was shivering as she peeked around a rock, she was panicked and breathing roughly. Her eyes were darting in every direction and the bags under her eyes didn’t read as being very healthy.

That was most decidedly not the abominable snow dog. In fact, it looked almost like a sheep. There was just something about her that wouldn’t let me look away even as the boulder I was under was being fired upon from above.

“There she is!” I peeked around the boulder and the wolf that had been firing on me pointed out the white being who started inhaling deeply for some reason. “Remember, shoot to cripple, Wulfgar will pay more for her alive and only if we can get to her first! He doesn’t care if we shoot at his people to do it either, he just wants that creature and the payday will be worth it!”

That… why? The creature didn’t look that impressive, but she was adorable and looked like a big cuddle toy. What was so important about that poor thing that Wulfgar would open up word to both bandits and mercenaries to be on the hunt for her for a big reward?

I wouldn’t be surprised if Cooler faction wanted her too given a number of them were here too, so I was going to have to follow this up and learn more about this.

I popped out and shouldered my rifle and pulled the trigger with the barest hint of aim thrown in, the wolf took the blast in the shoulder and fell to the backside of the rock he was on yelping in pain and a spray of blood that floated about as the weird gravity pulled it in all directions.

What happened next blew my mind as I was ducked down.

A rocket went flying towards the boulder the white creature was on, then she exhaled and whatever passes for heck here on Elhorn broke loose.

I tried not to blink and keep my eyes on the white blur that started bouncing around the floating rocks heading inwards towards the darker center of Gravity Gorge. She was actively dodging bullets through the field of rocks with a ludicrously hard to follow finesse as she leapt, twirled and rebounded off the various boulders.

She grabbed one particular small rock and swung herself around it twice to gain momentum and then released it to go flying off deeper into the floating rocks of Gravity Gorge.

All those changes in gravity was likely taking its toll on her body as she started slowing down quickly shortly after that, but she was putting quite some distance between her and all of those pursuing her.

Out of everyone in the general region shooting at her, which would have killed just about anything else to have that much firepower aimed at it, only two shots landed and that barely slowed the fluffy cute thing.

In fact, I think I saw one of the two shots that landed bounce off of her fluffy body entirely. She kept going after that direct hit with a fear stricken look on her face as her cheek started bleeding from a painful looking deep graze that nearly went through her left eye.

Had to follow this up and find out what this was all about, going to this much effort to catch or kill this one being that wasn’t actively fighting back was a bit ludicrous!

I stood up and started hopping sideways clockwise through Gravity Gorge, heading out of the heavily conflicted areas where everyone was fighting to the south eastern and lower boulders.

Things got much quieter as I started to quietly pursue that curious thing from a different direction, I eventually pulled my rifle out and got her on the scope with my safety turned on. She stopped and was ripping into a bit of fruit voraciously once she got some distance between her and her chasers.

She was tired, hungry, cold and possibly thirsty… seriously hoped that poor thing ran into one of the floating pools of water around here. I was currently feeling tense like she was, except I was far fresher and had only been lightly shot in thigh.

Really shouldn’t be jumping around with my injury, but I’m in the middle of the floating debris of an entire mountain. Jumping was a requirement to get around in this place.

Speaking of, I started moving higher up the field of floating rocks and further away from the planet’s surface. I wouldn’t want to miss a jump at this height or fall out of the gravitational cylinder or be near the edge of it this far above ground. A fall from this far up would definitely kill me, it’s a good thing I don’t get vertigo and had a healthy fear of heights.

I’m going to watch this creature that has earned the attention of just about every canine in the given region, I was not going to approach her though. She was an intelligent hooved entity and seemed highly paranoid, I would be too with so many people shooting around me for the last few hours while giving chase.

I might have to help cut off her pursuers or else that poor thing would be captured or die running herself ragged at this rate.

It didn’t help that the general Yellow Dog melee mechs were being fielded by everyone out here, at least spare parts weren’t at a premium with the destruction derby going on further down and to my right.

“AwoooOOOwwwwooooo.” I howled out and received an acknowledgment back a second later, my howl was for my guys to make haste to Cooler faction and tell them that some of their guys ran into trouble out here. I also wanted them to pick up some salvage if they could swing it safely.

I was also calling out for them to not wait for me, I was going scouting.

Had to move quickly, as anyone could get a shot on me after giving away my position. I kicked off the rock I was on and landed in a patch of grass on a small round mass of dirt.

I took aim and popped some shots back into the fracas going on below as several bandits honed in on my howl. That scared them off of me temporarily.

I took a few flying leaps and tried to find out where that creature went, she must have been spooked by my howling.

Five minutes later I saw the fluffy creature on a large landmass with big patches of grass facing down six… bandits… just judging by the smell.

Something was off about the look in her eyes as they had her surrounded. I watched what happened next, apparently something gave away within her.

She began growling and started clawing them down with her bare hooves.

Her hooves didn’t have claws and yet still somehow made claw marks in the flesh of two of the unlucky bandit wolves as she leapt into them with a sudden feral aggression.

She bit and clawed down another with a deranged ferocity.

She was actually moving like an animal as she darted around shots from the three guys who hadn’t gone down screaming.

They were panicking and unable to hit the creature before she got another one of them by the neck with her teeth. After she almost savagely crushed that guy’s windpipe, she then looked to the last two with blood dripping from her mouth and growling like a beast.

The last two quickly threw down their weapons and jumped away from the flat landmass screaming.

Slowly the creature looked dizzy and shook her head, she started sputtering and spitting the blood from her mouth.

She looked at the carnage she caused with horror, fear and sickness, what she just did clearly hadn’t been natural for her.

That poor thing started vomiting badly afterwards.

The guys on the ground around her weren’t dead, but they needed immediate aid.

I took a step forward and small rock went flying from the floating mass I was standing on and struck the ground near her, she looked up at me for a second.

After a moment, she whimpered and took a flying leaps towards boulders leading deeper into the thickening field of rocks.

What did I just witness?

Author's Note

Pom is going through some stuff.

Also the technology going on here is all something Robotnik is capable of causing and feasibly occurring in Rocket Knight Adventures.

It's weird enough there's a reflective red river of liquid that kills any biological being on contact, which is far deadlier than Mega Mack was meant to be.

66. Gravity Gorge Zone, Act 1.

Author's Note

Reminder Shanty is being told of this hours after this happened.

Music: Sonic the Hedgehog series- White Jungle, any version, preferably Sonic Forces remix version.

Suggestion for musical fun: Sonic Unleashed, Result Level Fail.

I hear the Bermuda Triangle does similar to the instrumentation in airplanes with magnetic fields.

66. Gravity Gorge Zone, Act 1.

-Elhorn, Frosty Checkpoint, Nicole-

We needed this trade to go through so we could go find Pom and finish our mission up here.

These guys also had some decency as negotiators, my faith in living beings is somewhat restored even if all the damage the Wulfgar faction is doing with technology was dropping that significantly.

If I started seeing giant floating golden rings around here, it would be too soon.

-Gravity Gorge, southwestern edge region, Hunt-

“Okay, I did what I could for you guys, but you’re going to have to see to yourselves after this.” Patching up these bandits might not be the brightest idea, but I didn’t want them to die from their claw or bite wounds. I finished tying off the bandages around a guy’s chest from my kit. “Hope you guys survive long enough to return the favor to me some other day.”

They might be future friends or some people I can call in a favor from later, I’m sure they’ll recognize my smell if they ever see me again.

Now I just had to track down that terrified fluffy white being and somehow assure her that I would keep her safe, tall order considering how many people were after her. Including me… the one that made her go deeper into Gravity Gorge in the first place.

I walked away from them while settling my rifle on my shoulder and looked for a good floating rock to jump to.

There weren’t enough heroes for everyone on Elhorn, but if I see something happening right in front of me that I can do something about… then I’m going to help!

-Gravity Gorge Zone, Act 1, escape your pursuers Pom!-

Curled up in the hollow of a boulder, I was shivering in fright while nibbling slowly on what passed for bananas on this world.

I had just about finished the entire bunch quietly and without interruption.

Things were getting darker the further into this place I went, I also notice some weak arcs of lightning shooting between some boulders randomly.

Seriously hoped I could keep this food down, I needed the energy if all those wolves and dogs were as persistent as I thought they’d be.

I was still sickened to my stomach by what I did to those guys, even if they were threatening me. I didn’t know what happened to me for a minute there, up until I came to my senses and tasted the blood coating my teeth.

Why do I feel like I’ve tasted blood before? Did I mentally block myself from remembering the last time this happened? Oh gods and goddesses…

I finished the fruit and stayed still for a moment, I sighed as it settled in my stomach.

What was wrong with me? Aside from the usual obvious things, like being on the run for the last six hours or so without much of a break. All of this was wearing down my endurance with little rest, and that on top of spending the entirety of last night awake?

A red light shined outside the hole I stuffed myself into, I heard the mechanical sounds of a machine slamming into a boulder. It was close and the light was currently pointed at the boulder I was in, I could hear sniffing.

I peeked out and saw one of those lanky green machines being piloted by a wolf.

Oh no…

My heart started thudding in my chest as I ducked back while closing my eyes, I concentrated on that rapid beating. Once I got my breathing into rhythm with it, I carefully slowed it down.

Maybe… maybe I didn’t have to push my body so hard to get away. All this jumping and running was taking its toll on me. With the way gravity works around here…

I placed my front legs against my side and pulled them slowly away slowly forming my glide form webbing, I wasn’t going to do the same to my hind legs this time… I needed them free to stay mobile.

Okay, ready, steady… red, yellow… three… two… two and a half… oh just go already!

I leapt out took about ten quick galloping steps and jumped as hard as I currently could while spreading out my front legs.

The shockwave of a machine almost landing on top of me gave me a decent boost going into the air, I tried to steady myself being drawn towards another boulder as I wobbled slightly.

I shifted my gliding wings and managed to zip around the boulder so close that I could feel my ears drag painlessly against the surface. The machine that leapt for me slammed into the boulder, I was soon shooting off and away from it after picking up speed and exiting that particular boulder’s gravitational field.

Several lights shined on me and I could see various streaks of color passing by my form as I steered around boulders as tightly as I could to use their gravitational pulls to keep myself airborne.

I could hear the boulders I zipped by taking the shots meant for me and nearly slammed into one directly due to my inattention.

Wobbling in the air a bit and my speed slowing, I managed to avoid snapping my neck against the mass and bypass it and started to fall down into a thick field of boulders that seemed to be constantly slamming together.

Another shot whizzed by under my belly. I couldn’t really focus on them shooting at me, I had to keep my eyes on the way I was heading.

Do I go down to the ground or do I go higher?

I narrowly avoided being clawed out of the air by the left arm of a leaping fifteen foot tall robot. Just guessing the size, didn’t actually have much time to think.

Sitting duck on the ground with those machines, higher!

Sending a glance behind myself to see the machine land and start prepping for another jump, I tried to veer upwards.

Surprisingly, I started going straight up and started actively trying to mimic a manta ray in motion by waving my wool wings with my front legs in a pattern. I think this would work better in actual water than in the air.

At least seven other of those green machines had to land on the nearest landmasses, a few of them had bad impacts and one was totaled leaving a few wolves temporarily stranded among the floating rock field.

Other wolves, the ones that had been shooting at me, flew from the machines they were holding onto when they made too jarring an impact against the landmasses below me and were drawn to multiple separate boulders in a rather painful manner.

I felt my momentum was starting to bleed off as I was being dragged towards another large mass of rock back first, didn’t help that another boulder was about to… idea!

I rolled to present my left side towards the planet and my right to the sky to angle myself towards going between the two boulders about to collide.

I winced as I heard something whizz my right ear, I closed my front legs to my side and felt the pull strengthening on my whole body exponentially.

Before I knew it, I was between the two boulders. The gravitational forces threatened to rip me apart, only to be ejected on the other side of them like I was shot out of a cannon.

My body was shooting upwards at a forty five degree angle now and the stress I just put on it made me feel like one nasty bruise.

I started spiraling through the air, twisting around various boulders going above, below and around to the left and right as I tried to figure out how to bleed off my speed.

Thinking quickly, I dragged one of the wingtips near a boulder and used the gravitational pull to send me into wild spin. It took me a bit, but I managed to get myself right side up to look down at the barely visible ground below.

Okay, that experience was exceptional painful, but my maneuver put some distance between me and them so I could plan a little more as I slowed to start falling sideways towards another massive stone.

This was almost kind of fun, I was flying and I didn’t need thermals. In better circumstances, I would love to live in the outer edges of a place like this with Tianhuo. If I got back to Huoshan alive, I will want to go gliding as this is going well so far.

It didn’t take long before I noticed that I was quickly losing sight of which way was up or down in this place. Knowing probably wouldn’t matter either way soon enough, as it was already quickly getting darker due to the thick masses of floating islands near the center of this place and the sky was blotted out by the sea of floating rocks all around me.

I was going to have to land somewhere or suffer painfully by blindly slamming into something in the… something flashed in the darkness nearby and I blinked.

Looking around, it didn’t seem like there was a good place to land. Several whizzing noises were heard by me and I felt something graze my right shoulder.

They already caught up to me, was I really seriously worth all this trouble to them?! No... wait.. I knew the answer to that one already. I was apparently always worth the trouble.

Okay, think fast Pom, like your life depends on it, it probably did anyway even if they likely wanted to take me alive!

I saw a flash again and then I focused on it, in darkness I could see flashing and didn’t hear anything remotely like thunder going off. It didn’t stop energy from leaping coming off boulders in large noiseless flashes or explosions of raw energy.

Something that I couldn’t hear and was deadly if I didn’t see it in time? This world in a nutshell thus far, par for the course.

Wait, what the…?!

Suddenly being slung around and almost falling twenty feet in… I don’t even know what directions are anymore as I twisted about in the air out of control. The gravity suddenly changed into what I could hope was sideways or was I going upside down now? I flipped about and was… falling backwards now?

I shook my head and angled towards one of the boulders that was practically bursting with energy as I felt something zip past my forehead from my left.

Boulder was on the right, going to chance it! For one I wanted a closer look, for another to see what happens when those machines made contact with one.

When I neared one of these boulders building up with a glow, I noted that the boulder seemed to be made out of metallic materials. I recognized masses of copper and silver well enough when I saw it, both of which were highly conducive materials for lightning.

All my wool started sparking and I felt a massive amount of energy in the air coming right for me, I quickly veered away to the leftwards moving barrel roll. The sparks running along my body died down as I got further away and avoided the boulder by a wide margin.

One of the machines still in the chase that leapt to that particular boulder wasn’t as lucky, lightning danced all over its surface and the several wolves were convulsing as the boulder lightly blew apart and sent a small pulse of harmless energy out.

It left the scattered bunch of them groaning in the debris field, yet that small explosion had still been disturbingly soundless.

Is something wrong with my ears?

I angled my body towards one of the landmasses, unsure of which way I was going. Up and down had no meaning out here, except by personal perspective.

I was quite lost and I only knew that the darker portions of sky that I could still visibly see was further inward, so the light would be leading out of this place.

Glancing behind me, I still saw at least three of those machines leaping from boulder to boulder after me.

Turning to look forward I immediately slammed face first into a boulder that had floated into my path and heard several more floating rocks colliding around me. So it wasn’t my ears, there was something about those energy boulders that made them silent.

Also, why the pain?!

Scrambling up and around the boulder, I was about to leap when I looked at my hooves.

I hopped and then bark blasted the boulder beneath me.

It rocketed away and slammed into one of the machines and the other two had to quickly grab boulders to pivot off to the side.

I was pushed away and being tugged in various directions until I righted and spread my legs, as I did I saw a fairly large island in the distance with a lot of heavy vegetation on it.

There, that looked good enough!

There was still enough light shining through for me to still see down there and it was large enough for me to find a hiding spot long enough to get some rest.

Now if only I wasn’t being pulled in the wrong direction, I spun and slapped all my hooves against a boulder to change direction and then found myself being going towards an empty air pocket in the floating rock field.

That wasn’t what I wanted, I also didn’t want more shots to be fired my way by my pursuers.

Wait, when did the number of machines following me change back to four?! I lashed out my hoof and latched onto a small rock and pivoted around on it and quickly kicked out my hind legs wildly to force it to spin the way I wanted it to.

When I released my grip, I curled up as small as possible and launched myself towards something above my position, or was it below at this point? Was I upside down? Using the islands orientation as I see it now! Above me.

I grabbed onto the rock and used my momentum to pivot around like I had on the previous one, avoiding the shots that were coming at me from two different directions.

Letting go, I closed my front legs up against my side and shot like an arrow straight for another rock. I kicked off of it and it was blown up by a rocket a second later.

I grimaced at the fact that they were willing to fire explosives at me and that the shrapnel from the rock just embedded itself roughly into the wool around my spine.

I reached out to latch onto another small rock and hastily lashed out my hind legs to kick at another one to change my pivot rotation before releasing.

Now I was flying to the left of the island, they were shooting where I would have been if I hadn’t changed my direction mid pivot.

I kept my front legs at my side and then spread them out as I came up to an elongated rocky platform. It was relatively cylindrical with a single flat side and I was dropping in on that flat portion, square and with jagged edges on both ends. Some kind of shale maybe?

My momentum almost stopped and I touched down gently, I quickly started running as their shots started landing all around me coming from above my head.

I didn’t have time to really watch where they were going or what they were doing, I just needed to reach that island and find a hiding spot!

I felt like I was running along a wall and said wall was about to end into sparse air with barely any rocks or boulders to latch on to nearby to get me headed in the right direction.

To my right, below me and forward is the island I needed like yesterday.

Narrowing my eyes, I ran for the edge while inhaling.

As time was slowing to a crawl, I looked around for an exit plan.

Mentally nodding to myself, I exhaled and let my reflexes kick into high gear. I gripped the edge of the elongated floating rock with my right hoof as I reached it, I kicked out and flung myself around to the other side instead of off the end of the floating pillar.

I stood perfectly still and heard the machines hopping through the field and were getting closer while still firing upon where I was hiding.

My chest was hurting and I felt like I was dying, I might either be having a panic attack or a heart attack right now. Maybe both? Not important!

I didn’t have time to stop and contemplate this, as I looked down towards the floating island where I could see something shimmering… water?!

I was really thirsty, out of breath and in need of a good news right about now. Like how I was keeping down those Elhorn bananas quite well despite the utterly nauseating effects this place was having on me.

I looked to my down at something and prepared myself for a long leap. I leaned back until there was tension in all four of my legs. I felt something land on the other side of my platform and the added mass started making it rotate, it wasn’t enough to throw of my aim as I flung myself downwards.

Several rockets passed by me and blew up several of the surrounding boulders, but those weren’t my target. I held out my right hoof as I continued down nearer to the island on a slowly curving arc.

Come on... please...

I looked up and wished I hadn’t, they were all quickly descending on me from above… just like I wanted actually.

I dropped the webbing on my right leg as I held it out and passed by the island, I felt something slap right into my hoof and sighed in relief as I hadn’t missed it.

It was a barely visible against the minimal light, but the flashes of the energy boulders let me see a long snake like structure wobbling around aimlessly.

This place would quickly devoid anyone of their sense of direction.

Getting an iron grip onto the vine with my right hoof I continued downwards until the vine pulled taught and I started to swing downwards towards the underside, or was it the top, of the large island.

The shots blurred by like rain as I kept holding on for dear life and all the machines had nothing with which to jump off of to give chase, especially after going to the trouble of blowing apart all the nearby boulders I could have feasibly been jumping to.

I felt a little heady at managing to use their enthusiasm to get me against them, up until the vine was burst by a few random shots.

My good feelings dropped off a cliff into a bottomless pit as I went flailing out of control.

My momentum was centering to the bottom point of the island… or was it the top of its mountain?

I really didn’t like that my current momentum was taking me right into a particularly large field of energy boulders arcing with a massive net of energy that I wanted no part in even being near.

Whatever strong gravitational force the island had suddenly kicked in on me.

I found myself falling head first, straight into mass of vines and went spiraling dizzily through them until I fell out of them and felt myself going into shock upon impact with some water.

I started look around for a surface and saw a bubble and swam for it while forcing my body to listen to me despite the current situation.

Gasping as I pulled myself from the fresh water, I looked about at the large hollow log I found myself in. I turned back to the water, dunked my head in and took a few big gulps of it.

I sat back and sighed afterwards, that was nice, cool and refreshing.

A hole erupted through the wood above my head and leading to another right between my hind legs where I sat.

Could I just hope that that was an absurdly lucky shot and that they didn’t actually manage to see me swimming into this large log?

Several more holes punctured the end of the log where I had crawled out of the water.

“Right, going!” I leapt up and charged for the upper end of the log as chips and splinter of wood rained down all around me as I tripped several times in my scramble.

I reached the end of the log and leapt as hard as I could to clear the projectiles spewing forth behind me and then promptly got sucked into a nearby cave as gravity was suddenly went odd.

Being drawn into a circular tube filled with moss, I slammed into one side of the tunnel and started sliding, eventually the tunnel bent around and was now… going back towards the top of the island?

I saw an opening and a flash showed me the dark forest beyond the tunnel I was desperately trying to get a grip on with my wool.

To no avail, I flew free of the tunnel, chopped down half a moderate sized tree with my body with the requisite agonizing amount of pain that followed by ramming straight through a bush with my butt.

With my teeth clenched I began screaming into my mouth without letting said scream pass my lips. I didn’t feel like screaming out loud and drawing my pursuers to where I was going now.

The tree didn’t stop my momentum and neither did the bush, I skipped twice across a river and then slammed into a thick pile of mud and kept skidding until I eventually came to a stop at the base of what looked like a fly trap. Said plant was the size of a small bear and snapped at me with row of tooth green thorns, lucky this thing wasn’t actually close enough to get me in its mouth.

I actually felt like throwing myself into it to complete my suffering.

“Can I stop hurting now?” I stated as I carefully picked myself up and started to slowly trot away from the most imminent threat in my vicinity and towards a cave.

Wet, dripping with mud, a bit cold and badly battered, I triumphantly flopped onto my face. Only for a shadow the size of a grizzly bear to fall over me in the barely lit shade of the many surrounding trees.

I felt my mind drift away as I immediately got up and growled defensively, ready to attack a moment’s notice.

A large white paw, a dog’s paw, reached for my head and I flinched. The paw, undeterred by my aggression or fear, It gently rubbed my head calmly and my sense came back almost immediately.

Why was I starting to act like a wolf for a moment?

“I don’t want to be captured…” I mumbled sadly in canine, I felt myself be pulled into a warm embrace and lifted from the cave floor. The large white dog had long hair that covered everything, but his muzzle gave away his gender. “Are you… are you going to eat me? Please… no…”

I weakly struggled and couldn’t fight like this. The massive dog, at least twelve feet tall, just simply frowned at the insinuation as he cradled me and started to carry me somewhere further into the darkness of the cave.

Act 1 clear! *Insert Fanfare*.

-Hunt-

Okay, so I might have lost her, I have to head back to report what I know.

As little as that truly is with all this insanity going on.

67. Bonus Stage: Sage’s Sanctuary.

-Elhorn, The Far North, somewhere in the eastern mountains, ???-

A figure wearing blood red armor with a Yellow Dog emblem on it growled at the information he just received from the unit that had been in the Gravity Gorge area hunting down a target. They had apparently lost the bait they were going to use to lure out Cooler’s faction in the western mountains.

He smashed a table with his left fist and it soon caught on fire, he pulled out a gun and fired a spray of bullets into the ceiling scaring the ones who delivered the news. He wasn’t about to shoot the messengers, but he might just shoot the teams that failed them.

“Through the fires of the underworld, the injustice that this white creature has done to the Wulfgar faction will see her burned! She was going to die anyway after we were done using her as bait, but the least she could do is die for a good cause… ours!” The yellow furred dog in the armor grinned as he clenched his right gauntlet scaring some of the minions Wulfgar sent his way. “Because here comes Carbuncle and Orthros Omega!”

A pair of large mechanical wolf heads roared behind the flamboyantly posing and grinning dog. He was holding his machine gun at the ready as he hovered on jets erupting from the small holes in his armor.

“If you guys can’t catch this creature, then this is sure to be a hunt, send the teams that failed back out there to meet me at the edge of Gravity Gorge!” Carbuncle howled out. “Let’s ride, Orthros Omega!”

The large mechanical two headed wolf flipped backwards and the two head split outwards and produced a tire between their chins, the wings loaded with rockets turned into fins at the back of the vehicle and the tail disappeared into the machine.

Sitting in the seat, Carbuncle roared as the tail reemerged as a seat belt. The large evil core infused transforming motorcycle reared up and shot out of the base heading towards the currently contested areas around the Gravity Gorge region with huge flames coming out of the back of it.

-Evening, western mountains, Frosty Checkpoint, Colleen-

“My team and I will be heading out to find your friend in that mess… she’s attracting just about every dog in the southern Yellow Dog territories just by existing, but most of them are refusing to enter that deeply into Gravity Gorge. Only the Wulfgar guys were crazy enough to continue chasing her in there, probably a direct threat from Wulfgar or his son Ulfgar themselves.” This Hunt was cute, but I had raised an eye at that. “I assure you that my mercenary team, The Retrievers, can extract her safely. I think she’s safe for the time being.”

“I’ll be going with you, a rocket pack would be useful for saving anyone if they get stuck floating around in there and I know how to use it.” I patted the yellow cylinder strapped to my back.

My rocket pack wasn’t very magic intensive when I last used it and that was almost my last, I was going to get more use out of it and I was going to try to become a real rocket knight… out of spite towards Axel Gear for calling me a loose end!

“Aren’t you helping the courier team you’re a part of with the negotiations though?” In answer to Hunt’s question, I pulled out my pistol, twirled it, and then sheathed it.

“Nicole and the translator for our group, Ocellus, has that situation completely handled. Could use a sword and some goggles though, the last time I used my rocket pack my eyes were exposed to the elements and I nearly got beheaded by Axel Gear when I lost concentration while trading blows with him.” I should really thank Ocellus and Dodo for saving my life again. “He’s truly as monstrous as they say, believe me I would know given he killed just about everyone in training during the rocket knight project Yellow Dog was trying to run. I was one of the ‘lucky’ ones, doesn’t feel like it when I only have acquaintances left alive.”

“Yikes.” Hunt cringed, he shook his head and then looked me in the eyes. “Okay, I might have some spare equipment you can use, if you don’t mind it being salvaged from a battlefield. We do have a lot of spare guns laying around if you want one.”

“I don’t mind in the slightest, I seriously want to help Pom even if the equipment you can spare is next to useless. I’d still go in there to get her out safely.” Sure she wasn’t around to have an effect on me, but I still remember what it was like to be in her presence when she was happy or calm.

“So… how good is this Pom at survival?” Hunt asked curiously while rubbing at his chin.

“Her friends say she’s lived outdoors for years without much contact with her people due to being thrown into exile by unusual circumstances beyond her control, Pom is quite capable and a lot stronger than she looks.” Now I was wondering if I should involve Smolder, Shanty or Ocellus in entering Gravity Gorge for an extraction. “I’ve seen it myself personally, I’m going to at least tell Ocellus and Nicole Beta about this before I leave.”

“She should be fine then, Gravity Gorge is dangerous, but survivable. If you look in the right places you can find food easily enough… though your diet is likely going to consist mostly of fish.” It seems like Hunt has been in there a few times before to know that. “You’ve got a day to prepare, we need a resupply on rocket tube ammunition and we’re not going anywhere without them.”

-The next morning, Location:???, Pom-

My eyes snapped open and I sat up breathing and looking around at my unfamiliar surroundings, a cold breeze had washed against my face.

Where… where was I? The last thing I remember is the giant heavily furred dog picking me up…

I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t shackled or in a cage. I had been under some blankets? I stood up and shook my head and looked at the light coming from the nearby entrance.

I had slept off my exhaustion at least, felt a hungry and a little bit thirsty… something was off as I remembered being wet, covered in mud and had an ample amount of moss on my hooves from that tunnel when I tried to clamp down.

I’m completely and perfectly clean, it felt nice even if I felt a little bit violated that the big guy bathed me while I slept.

Making my way outside I stepped through the snow and saw a mountain in the distance, I also saw the sun rise and bring warmth to my face. I close my eyes and smiled, inhaled the fresh air and sat down a safe distance away from the edge of the nearby cliff.

I spent the next five minutes just simply basking in the sunlight, before opening my eyes and looking over the edge to see… a sea of floating rocks below and all around me. Was I in the center of all of it?

I felt something tap me in the back and I nearly leapt over the edge in fright, a paw grabbed me as gently as possible and set me back down. I looked up to see the muzzle of the really hair dog, he motioned for me to follow him.

“Uh… okay. Give me a minute.” I yipped, I’m guessing he could understand canine and was vindicated when he nodded. He was a very big guy… almost bigger than even Big Mama the Canis Major was if she were capable of walking around on her hind legs.

I just surveyed my surroundings as best I could. Judging by the way the sun rose, I think the mountain I was looking at was to the east. I’m almost betting there were worlds where it rose in the west, it was strange enough to have visited worlds where the sun isn’t raised by Princess Celestia.

To the south I saw a hill as large as a mountain and beyond it two mountains where the pass was with all those exploding Recon Rabbits were. So we didn’t see this floating field of rocks in what was a ridiculously large gorge, did this place use to be a mountain?

I shook my head and went inside wondering who the mysterious large dog was and why he brought me up here. Upon entering I saw a stone bowl filled with a steaming liquid and the dog partaking from one of his own, he nodded to me and motioned to the bowl.

“For me? Thank you.” I sat down and blew on the soup and took a sip. Tasted like potatoes, but knowing Elhorn as well as I do... I looked around and saw what looked like onion shavings and garlic cloves lying around. “There’s no meat in this right?”

The silent dog shook his head no, but as he sipped his soup I noticed there were chunks of fish in it. Mine didn’t have any of that. A few bowls of the odd soup and was feeling good and full, the big dog actively added fish to his soup. There was just enough for the both of us.

“Thank you for the meal, but I should be…” I was silenced when he held up his right paw, he motioned for me to follow him.

I was led to an exit into the rock field, he gently lifted me from the ground and then leapt off. We started to zip downwards through several rings made of gravitational rocks until we were going horizontal and then slowed down to land at another cave island. He set me down and motioned for me to follow him.

As we entered the darkness of the cave he lit up a torch and took up a staff in his other paw, he held it out to the wall to show me something.

“Freshly painted after you found me I take it?” My surmising barks received another nod and he gestured at the wall art while holding up the torch.

It showed a white wooly creature, probably me, it showed a wolf painted inside of me and then it showed me being injured and the wolf getting bigger to encompass me.

“Okay… I don’t exactly get the meaning, but are you saying there’s a wolf inside of me?” He shook his head and pointed at me. “I am the wolf?”

He nodded enthusiastically while pointing at me and motioned back to the wall, the part where I’m badly injured and the wolf growing bigger.

“If I get seriously injured or if I’m in bad health…” I slowly stated and he motioned at me to go on. "I sometimes start acting aggressively like a wolf as a defense mechanism when in danger?”

He nodded and then motioned at something further down the wall, with my mind trying to come to terms with the revelation. It was pictures of me that branched, one shows me as normal in the middle, but injured, one show me turning into the wolf after being injured and the last one that was circled showing the wolf and me being as one without injury.

“You want me to… what?” I didn’t understand, he motioned at the circled version of me. “You want me to get stronger… to… be more wolf like?”

I was a bit frightened of the idea, but he shook his head no in an exasperated manner and seemed to emphasize the image of me in the circle that was healthy and the wolf was at the same size as I was.

“You want me to be in control?” I was wrong again and gave it more thought. “You want me to… be as one with my inner wolf? Is this a stronger together than apart thing, isn’t that a little cliché?”

He nodded and smiled in good humor, I just gave him a flat stare.

“I don’t like this on the same principle that I don’t like fighting all too much.” My barks were as eloquent as ever and he just rubbed my head affectionately. “This won’t change me will it?”

He shook his head no and pointed at my chest.

“I’ll always be who I am right down to my heart.” My confident statement was received with a bright smile. “What do I have to do? You’re obviously some kind of shaman… no? What about a sage?”

He nodded and tapped the butt of his staff against the floor and turned around to start walking. I guess I have nothing better to do with my time currently, other than whatever this guy wanted.

We eventually came to a stop and there were three passageways, off to the side was a bowl filled with some murky stuff. He lifted the bowl and turned to me, he put his nose close to the bowl and took a big whiff of whatever it was and then pointed at the three passageways.

“Let me guess, this trial is based on if I can track the scent and you had this all set up after you found me to... help me with get in touch with my inner wolf?” The dog didn’t say anything and sat down while holding the bowl out to me. “It’s going to smell horrible isn’t it?”

He nodded as he continued to hold the bowl out. I was in the middle of a place where floating rocks were the norm and a giant white dog that was apparently a sage and covered in an impossibly thick mass of fur.

I trotted forward took the bowl into my left hoof and took a vague hint of a sniff, my revulsion was immediate.

“Ugh, what is that smell!” It was quite horrid. The dog smiled at me mysteriously and motioned to where his eyes would be, he then motioned to his nose with a barely visible giant paw and the ways forward. “Also how did you inhale it that deeply without your nose coming off?! Look, you don’t have to gesture it again, you basically said see with my nose and not my eyes. I clearly got that.”

The snowy colored dog just sat there in silence looking in my direction, seeing not with his eyes… but his nose apparently. I closed my eyes and decided to go full stop this time.

I put my nose above the bowl and inhaled deeply, oh was my nose in agony afterwards, but something tickled at my brain among the cacophony of smells.

Yes, there were a lot of other smells in the bowl as well, pungent and foul odors permeated the stone bowl… but there was one smell in the bowl that was quite different from the rest and oddly out of place.

I took a few more whiffs of it, despite wanting to stab my nose off with a knife afterwards, and decided that I wasn’t crazy. The smell of Elhorn bananas was mixed in with all of the other smells?

“Not smell… many smells.” I closed my eyes, carefully placed the bowl off to the side and lowered my nose to the stone flooring to start sniffing.

There were two scents, one was the big guy and the other bananas. I sniffed the floor and the air around the three passageways. The left passageway was the correct one, the only other one with bananas.

I made my way down it following the smell, ignoring everything else as I continued sniffing right up until I stopped at the bananas in question under torches. Looking back at all the darkened branching pathways I just went past, the big dog came strolling along with a smile.

I hadn’t even noticed the many other passageways branching off while I followed that one smell.

“Next trial?” I barked calmly, he nodded as he walked past me.

I shook my head and followed, while sniffing the air every once in a while. I didn’t know that I could track like a dog… or a wolf if this was to be believed… so many weird and unfamiliar scents.

After exiting the cave system I was led to the top of what used to be a mountain, above the cave in which the shaggy sage lived.

The big dog sat down at the peak and motioned around his head and then gently pulled on my ears.

“A hearing trial?” I yipped, he nodded. I closed my eyes and opened up my sense of hearing to the world around me. What was I listening for, the sounds of numerous rocks colliding with one another, the wind blowing or… what the?!

It was faint in the air and it started growing loudly the more I tried to hear it. What was I hearing? It sounded like… a song? Was I supposed to sing that? I just listened to it until it repeated itself twice.

I howled out slowly and methodically, trying to figure out what the song was saying as I sung it. Once finished, I turned to see the big guy smiling at me. The song didn’t have that much meaning, but it sounded welcoming and sad at the same time.

“Was that right? It sounded oddly like... wait… was that the… huh…” I think I just heard the magic of nature singing and repeated its song in the form of all the long drawn out howling I just did.

That… would be an experience I don’t think I’ll forget, next to the burning sensation still going on in my nose.

The big sage nodded and even clapped his paws together in applause.

“Uh, thanks I guess, what next?” I asked, he motioned for me to follow him again.

It took a few hours to get back to where the big guy found me. I suppose this place was where the last trial would be, it was amazing how the sage could navigate entire sections of the floating rock fields so easily with single simple jumps.

Yes, we were back on the island he found me on in no time flat, we were in fact standing outside of the cave entrance where he picked me up. I now knew that this was the islands topside.

“What do I do this time?” I asked looking about. He motioned to himself, went to all fours and dashed around me with incredibly speed for someone of his size. “You want me to… chase you around?”

He shook his head no and raised a paw tilting it both ways.

“So for the final trial, you want me to follow you around and… what… learn things from you?” I received a nod and a so-so gesture of his left paw. This had me curious about what this ‘learning’ would entail.

I soon had the sage trying to teach me to focus my hooves on making markings on trees like a wolf would for territory, I eventually made three claw marks with one drag of my hoof and then look at it in confusion.

The sage made me practice with my front hooves until I eventually figured out how I was doing it, it was similar in principle to what Shanty was does… except I didn’t need to make a swinging arc to do it.

I could choose to claw or to not claw something.

I played tug o’ war against the sage with a vine using my teeth, until we managed to make it snap from the stress of both of us pulling on it. My bite strength was a little bit unreal given that I’ve almost tore out someone’s throat with my mouth, but what was unusual was the fact that I could even help cause the vine to snap at all when the sage should have been pulling me all over the place.

The next things we did was running, kicking off trees to make sharp turns and in general practicing movement on unusual terrain. The big guy could move pretty fast on all four paws, I was still faster than he was. I learned how to smelling things out quickly and while on the move to get a direction to head in.

This was all really interesting, but when would I need… oh right, I could use tracking back in Huoshan to hunt down criminals. I could probably smell something off with food if someone tried to poison me. I could hear things better if I concentrated, especially if something discordant was going on around me. I could see plenty of uses.

After doing a few more things, like helping the dog pick up some frozen fish from the nearby stream that circled the entire island in a constant flow, he had it all put in a huge basket he weaved as we wandered around and motioned for me to follow him back through the rock field.

Once we got back to the cave where he lived, he had one last thing to do with me.

He eventually pulled out a stump he uprooted, and placed upon it a piece of machinery. Specifically an elbow joint from one of those tall bipedal green machines.

I glanced at him with a bit of trepidation as he finally opened his mouth and barked. The stump was perfectly fine after that, the metal cracked, bent and ripped.

I blinked and thought deeply about what he just did.

“I take it that the bark you just did is a specific frequency that doesn’t work on living beings, but certain specific rigid materials?” I was guessing here and he nodded with a smile. “That’s… quite useful if you need to break armor someone is wearing… or a weapon… or 'evil core' machines. Given the machines on this world, this isn’t a trial is it… you’re teaching me one of your own techniques you taught yourself how to do.”

He shook his head no, I wondered why. He motioned for me to follow and he went to the back of his cave and reached into a bag to pull out a small golden ring.

It didn’t look like it would fit on any of his digits, except maybe the tips of his claws. He flicked it into the air where it expanded and grew in size to show an image.

The image was me, a few years younger, I was bark blasting a moderately large snake away from my beasties and the others came together with me and scared off the snake. Big Mama needed to sleep off the poison after that incident.

“You… learned to make that technique from watching one of my first Bark Blasts?” He nodded, grabbed the ring and turned it, the scene within the ring changed. It showed the village we arrived in the portal opening and me slamming into one of the Gedol lizards that was about to kill... Melphina. “Does this ring show the future as well?”

He shook his head no, he drew something on a wall that represented a window that could only see the present and the past. The magic ring apparently wasn’t a doorway to said places either.

“Can it... see another worlds present?” I felt some elation when he nodded, I received a curious glance. “I want to see how my wife is doing.”

One turn... I saw Tianhuo sitting in a park with Blighter resting their head in her lap, while my four favorite god-puppies played.

She was... looking at… a... a picture of me.

I put my hoof against the window sadly, my friends from the HCD were there to.

“Thank you!” I cried a bit. "There's something I wish to know... about a place called Mobius..."

Author's Note

Pom, Mobius is a bit of a loaded thing to ask about... especially when it is better to not know of all the horrors that are currently happening there.

Note: Again, Mobius is not going to be a direct thing in this story. Though Pom will undoubtedly see some things she won't soon forget and it will be referenced.

68. Gravity Gorge Zone, Act 2.

Author's Note

Music- Sonic Adventure 2, Eternal Engine.

News: Covid vaccination in progress, will take a few weeks before I get the second dose. I'm feeling okay, but I've been sleeping a lot more lately.

68. Gravity Gorge Zone, Act 2.

-Elhorn, a day later outside of Gravity Gorge, Colleen-

It actually looked pretty intimidating. Never been to southern Yellow Dog very much, now I had more reasons to never come back.

“Looks intimidating doesn’t it?” Hunt asked.

“Yes, but Pom is going to need me there to reassure her that you’re there to help, we also need to make sure that we’re not endangering her family while we’re doing it. Definitely don’t want them getting lost in there.” I steeled my nerves and ran my right hand over my goggles, then checked my sword, pistol and the rifle hidden between my back and the rocket pack for backup. I placed my paws back on the controls of the melee mech Ligstrun got running. “Ready to go.”

There were four other dogs with us, two Labradors, a Poodle and a Dachshund, two of them were carrying rocket tubes. Apparently these mercenaries never went anywhere without at least some ability to disable a mech on paw, sounds like a good policy with the things I’ve seen.

“Oh right, one other thing before we go any further. There’s been word that Wulfgar sent forces into the Gravity Gorge again and that Commander Carbuncle is getting involved.” Hunt watched as his compatriots focused on the mission ahead.

-Center of Gravity Gorge, Mr. Sage’s peak, Pom-

What I saw the happenings on Mobius… it had almost left me catatonic. If anything, Nicole Beta was underselling the horror.

The events that led to the people of Elhorn coming to this planet hadn’t happened yet given the sage couldn’t show me the huge battle that was inevitably going to happen. If it didn’t inevitably, then the people here on this planet wouldn’t exist as they do.

Things were already getting extremely bad over there, it was probably only a matter of time before the Elhorn Exodus began.

At least…. at least Mobius had its heroes. All of them were far braver than I could ever hope to be. The blue hedgehog with super speed was awe inspiring to see in action. I wished every last one them all the luck they could muster, they seriously needed it as much as I did with getting my girls home alive.

So yeah… I was definitely not going anywhere near that planet with Smolder, Ocellus and Shanty from what I saw. Death trap doesn’t even describe Mobius succinctly enough.

“Thank you, for everything Mr. Sage.” I hear the large white dog approach, he patted me on the head gently. “It’s time for me to go, I’ve been taking up far too much of your hospitality… but are you sure you’re going to be alright… all alone?”

He nodded, pulled out the golden ring and flicked it, we saw Yellow Dog machines and soldiers actively scouring the Gravity Gorge for me.

Tianhuo missed me, all my beasties were being good and my coworkers in the HCD are even better friends than I could have ever hoped for.

“I’m going to be fighting on the way out aren’t I?” I looked to the sage.

He nodded grimly and motioned at me to go.

“Okay… it was nice meeting you Mr. Sage.” I stated as I brought my front hooves against my side and spread them back out with my wool wings flaring slightly. I took some steps towards the edge of the floating mountain top home in the middle of the Gravity Gorge. “I hope… I hope that you won’t be lonely forever.”

He nodded and motioned for me to go a bit more hastily.

I ran up to him and gave him a hug, he hugged me back gently.

Letting go, I gave one last look at the stump. At the ripped apart metal splinters in the wood as my way towards the edge.

-Gravity Gorge Zone, Act 2, meet up with Colleen’s team Pom!-

I needed to attack the Wulfgar forces, had to lead them away from bothering or even finding where Mr. Sage lives after all.

Diving forward over the edge, I felt a bit lighter after having met Mr. Sage. One day with the sage and I learned quite a few things.

Zipping between the floating rocks, I kept diving down deeper into the floating rock field. I could vaguely see the floating island in the distance and began picking up speed as steepened my angle.

If they wanted me, then I’ll give them something to chase!

I was soon above the jungle and angled for the green machine that was looking around, the red eye lights of the mech weren’t aimed upwards or even in my direction.

Coming at its back as fast as I was, they wouldn’t be able to react to me in time.

I fired a bark breaker, it had a much better range than a bark blast, but the stress it put on my vocal chords tended to hurt. The metal around the midsection and spine of the machine warped, weakening as I came in for my attack.

Before I hit the bipedal machine, I curled up into a ball, hardened my wool and began somersaulting through the air as I approached.

I hit the machine and my steel strength wool slowly but surely began digging against the machine until something gave away, then I was out the other side and popping out of my spin to shoot off into the air by spreading my wings.

Looking behind me, the top half of the machine toppled backwards as the legs toppled forward. I had just bisected that thing by turning my fluffmancer talent into a decently dangerous offensive ability inspired by watching a hedgehog burrow body first through machinery. Couldn’t do that again without the proper amount of momentum and windup though.

Shots started to chase me through the air as I dove among the trees, I caught a branch with my left hoof and swung up into a tree. I crawled along the tree and down to jungle floor, looking about carefully as I slunk into a bush.

My ears twitched and I quickly tumbled out of it into another bush through the shadows of the trees.

A second later several wolves, that had disguised themselves as small boulders and had dropped their camouflage magic, jumped out and brought their blades down on the bush I was just in and looked a little confused to see nothing there.

Luckily their camouflage magic wasn’t anywhere near as effective as a changelings magic when it came to speed.

Four of them, I came out and swung both my front hooves into the back of one of the wolves heads, one left, one right and one in front of me.

The one I just slammed went down and the other three pointed their guns towards me, I was already lunging forward into a roll by the time they managed to fire a barrage of projectiles in my general direction.

I came out of my roll rear hooves first, launching them up into the belly of the wolf in front of me, he reflexively let go of his weapon to fall into my waiting mouth where I clenched down on it with my teeth and quickly stood up to spin to my left to slam the butt of it across the face of the wolf that was on my left.

Letting the weapon fly from my mouth out into the jungle as I pivoted to face the wolf that had been on my right, I leapt up over the shots from their weapon and launched a flying buck to the skull that knocked him straight out.

The last wolf standing was the one who no longer had his weapon and just knocked the air out of, I charged him and leapt up to snap out my left hoof in a painful looking hook to his temple.

Something slammed down next to me as the last wolf went down and my eyes widened at the red light and the green machine swinging its left arms claws at me.

I leapt backwards out of range of the swipe and turned to flee, one of the chasing shots from the wolves clinging to the machine graze the left side of my neck as I started galloping away. The pilot was already moving it to follow me.

Long legs don’t fail me now!

It was giving chase through the undergrowth and these things were certainly faster than me on hoof when on flat ground, but I could take advantage of the jungle style terrain as I ducked around trees and slid my way through bushes.

Come on, I needed… a vine, that would do it! I bit down on it as I passed by and then sharply turned to the left into a skid to drag it in front of the machines legs. Once the vine connected I slid around the backside to the front and dodged the two sweeping swipes of the claws.

I ducked and dodged around the other wolves firing on me as leapt to grapple onto the right leg and quickly tied off the vine.

Once I kicked off and away, I rolled behind a tree and started heading towards the edge of the floating island, think I’ve garnered enough attention for my sanity.

I heard the sound of a machine slamming what passes for its face into the ground and five wolves, went screaming into the air as it promptly exploded.

So they hadn’t notice the vine then. Knot tying while under pressure, useful against bipedal machines. Nice story to tell Shanty later, provided that I survive the wrath of at least three more machines coming after me.

That said, I could hear them giving chase through the small jungle and soon reached the edge of the island after leaping over rocks, sliding under trees roots and avoiding gravity tunnels sucking me in.

Looking for a good branch hanging out into the void as I reached the outer edges of the island, I looked up and saw a familiar platform of stone I had run along a day or so prior still spinning horizontally from when the machine landed on its flat side.

I’m going in the right direction then.

Once I get out there I wouldn’t be able to navigate as well, but I would be heading straight towards the edges of the floating rock field. This place was really quite magical, it’s too bad it’s in the middle of Yellow Dog’s territory.

Clambering up the nearest tree as the sounds of Wulfgar forces closing in, I carefully clambered my way towards the end of the branch where gravity started turning sideways and now I was climbing up the branch. A shot whizzed past my head, I glanced back with wide eyes and immediately leapt out of the islands gravity field and felt something rip into my right hip.

Bleating out in pain, I spread out my legs and unfurled my wool wings. The branch was struck by a rocket and the explosion sent me hurtling into the field of floating rocks and a bit too close to energy rocks I immediately tried to steer clear of.

Thankfully they had less gravitational force than all the other rocks floating out here. I glanced back and saw to see five machines spreading out and began leaping among the rocks.

Those bipedal green machines were tough stuff and I couldn’t bark breaker all of them, I’d lose my voice trying to hit those material weakening frequencies too often. Checking out my right hind leg, I winced at the bleeding and quickly veered around boulder that wasn’t glowing.

Landing, I quickly rubbed my wool onto both sides of the painful injury and had bandaged it. I quickly leapt for a boulder below me as a machine slammed into the opposite side of the boulder I was on.

It tried to slap its right claws down on where I had been and followed that up by trying to slash me out of the air with the left.

I closed up my wings narrowing my profile and managed to dodge through the second swing and several shots from the two of the wolves clinging to the left side of it.

I kicked off the next boulder and saw that they were almost encircling me, had to move fast. I inhaled going for a dancing flame burst, my eyes darted about and I saw a boulder near and energy one.

Exhaling, I kicked off and shot between two machines leaping at me as the third slammed into the boulder behind me. I spread my front legs slightly and managed to catch the edge of the boulder next to the glowing one, my wool started sparking painfully with lightning.

This was far too close to an energy boulder for comfort as I ran to the far side of the floating boulder I was on and hopped before bark blasting the boulder into the energy boulder.

It did exactly what I wanted it too as I flipped, using the momentum from my hop and blast to land on another boulder. Wasn’t going to look back to see if my pool shot had worked.

Something certainly happened as an explosion of an energy wave nearly hit me, I made my way to the far side of this boulder and it blocked the wave for me. Only for another one to fire off angling back in my direction, I leapt up and clamped onto a different boulder and took cover from that wave by putting it between me and the energy coursing through the boulder.

The boulder I was holding onto started to glow and light up.

I gritted my teeth as lightning arced along my wool, I needed to get away from these energy boulders before they fry me even worse.

The boulders I was using as cover wasn’t enough to take the full brunt of the energy shockwaves and was becoming an energy rock itself. I didn’t want to be near these things anymore, even if they were slowing down the guys chasing after me.

Leaping hastily away and up out of the field of boulders quickly turning into energy rocks, I clamped onto and ran up a large ramp shaped bit of rock that that looped around on itself weirdly and launched myself out of it halfway up the loop.

I didn’t know if they were still chasing me, but I wasn’t stopping now as I spread my makeshift wings and soared between the boulders. I was getting out of the dangerous dark zone and could see the sky peeking through the rocks.

A projectile shot ricocheted off the tip of my left hoof and sent my spiraling out of control, thankfully it didn’t look to have damaged my hoof.

Trying to right myself wasn’t easy as I was being pulled in several different directions at once, but I managed to get enough control to slam into a boulder. I went bouncing along it to eventually fly off it into another boulder that started rotating upon impact.

Hitting the boulder belly first made me squeak as it jostled my injured right hind leg, like I needed the reminder that their weapons can actually penetrate my wool.

I started looking around for the more sunlit portions of the field and prepared for another leap, first however…

Flicking my left hoof off to the side and out into the open, I quickly pulled it back and turned to leap to the right and went flying away as several shots hit that side of the boulder that I had poked my hoof out from.

Gripping a rock with my right hoof I swung around and released, to go flying upwards and away from them. There was enough light that I knew which way was up now. I landed against a boulder, glanced in my chasers direction and kicked off to another to kick off of that one and grab a rock on my left and to change directions to going left and downwards.

A shot flew past the middle of my back making my wool ripple when it did. Do those weapons ever run out of projectiles?! At least it’s not the machines armed with larger versions of them. Sure Paprika was able to tank a few cannonballs, but I certainly couldn’t!

I landed on a platform to run along it, as I reached the end of it a machine landed on the other end causing my end to move upwards. I jumped with the momentum, flipped and landed on a boulder and quickly scurried my way to the backside of it with shots chasing me once again.

About to leap for another boulder, I stopped to think. I carefully took up a small rock in my hoof and tossed it at another boulder. The sound attracted attention and a machine slammed into that boulder, to look around.

Seeing a passing boulder nudge this one, I switched positions to ride the other boulder as it floated away as another machine landed on the one I had been on. The pilot was sweeping the lights about the damaged boulder and then the nearby floating rocks, I ducked behind the moving mass of rock as the light passed by.

There were now four pairs of red lights looking into the surroundings.

I think they lost me there for a second, so long as I don’t make a noise I’ll gain a little distance. You know, now would be the time for me to sneeze loudly or to draw attention to myself through some innocuously dumb action.

I sniffed, nope, nose is clear and… what were they… seriously more rockets!

Several nearby boulders exploded, but I didn’t move. I kept my breathing even and silent.

It was just random destruction, they were trying to flush me out of hiding and knew I was nearby. I check my leg and winced at the thought of having to clean blood out of my wool again. I peeked around the boulder and watched as they spread out and fired a few more rockets, one of which...

Begin inhaling, speeding up mental faculties and… I can’t stay here! Got to move, but where to? No… don’t panic, jump and use the explosion to cover my flying away. Which direction to go in though? Lower or Higher? They are expecting me to go higher and know that I can if they were the same guys from last time so…

I exhaled and kicked off with my rear hooves as hard as I could, with my front legs held tightly at my side as I shot downwards with the shrapnel from the boulder threatening to knock me completely off course.

Wasn’t going to open up my wings until I was a good distance away as I went further below them, glad they were looking upwards for me. As I got further away a shot went past my left ear.

Given that they spotted me, I immediately opened up my wool wings and rolled to the right and left to start zigzagging through a rain of rounds coming at me from above as the machines leapt forward above me.

I was really getting the hang of gliding without wool webbing up my back legs, but that comes from the situation. I landed on top of a boulder and changed directions to go flying upwards. I put a few boulders between them and me, but that was only preventing them from shooting me, they would almost be on top of me in the next few seconds.

Wasn’t this enough noise for Colleen and those others to find me yet? Those projectiles and the leaping machines they are coming from certainly aren’t silent! Plus I think their aim was getting better over…

“Whoa!” A shot ripped by the wool on the left side of my neck, definitely better than when we started. At least I was rising at a decent speed, but I wasn’t going fast enough to evade them.

I glanced back and saw that the machines were almost on me and they only fought in melee range, one lunged at me with its arms spread wide and I rolled to face my back towards the ground and unleashed a bark blast once it was in range and capable of hitting me.

My bark blast reflected off the green armor and slammed into my body knocking me off course and changing my direction downwards, at least it knocked me out of the way of the arms trying to grab me. I quickly got control of myself and managed to softly land on a flat piece of rock, only for the five machines to surround me.

Each could carry four wolves, but not easily as they needed to hold on to the machines to ride them, the fifth wolves were the pilots in the head of the machines. So that was twenty wolves, plus the five pilots of the machines.

I stood my ground and they brought up their weapons to aim at me, only for a rocket to come flying in to blast one of them in the chest. I took advantage and charged up the leg of that one while another rocket tore into a completely different machine from behind distracting some of the wolves, but not all of them as one took aim for me.

A whining noise was heard and Collen came flying in to ram him off the still capable machine and she bounced back to launch a flying kick into another on the still standing machines. She landed on a nearby boulder, pulled out a scimitar like blade and jetted forward rammed it home opening a large rent in one of the three remaining machines and sent it flying off the large bit of stone.

While she was doing this, my rear hooves were busy kicking off the face of the pilot wolf of the first falling machine that took a rocket to the chest. I launched upwards and kicked off a boulder and clung to the next one to look around, I ducked and a projectile nearly clipped my rear end.

I growled loudly at the wolf that just did that, intimidating him greatly.

My fluffy rear end belongs to Tianhuo thank you very much! I’d like to have at least some part of me undamaged by all of this world journeying, I’ve got enough scars as it is!

I looked about and saw that the wolves were being hit in the legs and arms by a volley of projectiles coming from Colleen’s allies. Another rocket flew forth and took out one of the machine’s arms as it tried to protect itself.

Act 2 clear! *Insert Fanfare*.

-Colleen-

“Pom, there you are, are hurt!” I barked. After landing, I lifted her up and rocketed forward as another machine was disabled by a rocket.

“It could be worse, they just got me in the meat of my right hind leg.” Which was a problem when you had a small body like Pom. She didn’t seem to have lost too much blood as to be debilitating. “I’m mostly good aside from the blood loss.”

“Well that… ah!” I veered downward sharply as several large rockets flew by us and created massive explosions.

I looked back and saw what could only be Carbuncle and an evil core machine.

-Carbuncle-

“Figured they’d get you to come running right into my paws!” My flying Orthros Omega roared beneath my feet as I stood on its back with my arms crossed, I stared after the rocket knight that had my prize.

The grunts injured her, but as long as she was still alive she could still be my pet. She didn’t necessarily need to die for our plans and could be all mine afterwards to do with as I please.

“I hope you’re ready rocket knight, because here comes Carbuncle!” I jetted forward.

69. Boss Battle: Orthros Omega!

Author's Note

Music (If you can find it)- The Mane-iac Boss Battle Theme, by Delta Brony.

69. Boss Battle: Orthros Omega!

-Elhorn, Frosty Checkpoint, Ocellus-

Ow… there’s an evil core. It’s not close enough to knock myself out over, but it still hurts even as distant as it is. More a mild headache than a complete blaring migraine.

“Evil core?” Smolder asked, I just nodded as I rubbed at my head with my hooves.

“Not anywhere close, but close enough.” I whined out.

“I be betting Pom is in the thick of it.” Shanty was being miraculously patient, but Dodo was acting as impatient as she wanted to be given the circles he was walking in while looking out of the cave the checkpoint was situated at. “She be having all the fun.”

“I don’t think Pom like being the center of attention or attacked by giant machines Shanty.” I think Pom was actually right to be terrified of the idea of being up here in the Yellow Dog region for too long. Just about every dog, wolf or cousins thereof around here wouldn’t want her to leave if her canid magnetism is as strong as she suggests.

-Gravity Gorge, western edge, Pom-

“Sorry.” Colleen yipped before she spun to hastily throw me off to the side, then quickly pulled out her sword and her energy shooter. “Got this!”

I landed on a floating boulder and watched as the flying Yellow Dog in the black and red flying armor approach Colleen. It apparently didn’t just produce spewing jets of flame for him to fly with, but also small oval bits of glass with metal bits on both ends popped out of one of the random holes and inside this thing was a red liquid.

The dog quickly grabbed and threw the oval at Colleen as he approach and she batted it away with her blade.

The thing made a loud clinking noise and exploded a second later, Colleen was lucky that the thing that was once a boulder took the brunt of that instead of her. The remains of the boulder were now flaming bits of hovering rocks.

I watched as Colleen started firing her projectile weapon, which was a lot slower and more accurate than the projectiles spewing from the armored guy’s weapon. Only the weapon was spraying those projectiles over a wide area and accuracy didn’t seem to be the point of it, more like making it eventually impossible to miss once you got up close and personal with someone was.

The two flew off into the floating rocks firing at each other and Colleen darting forward at an angle trying to hit him with the sword she had on her and while avoiding the spray of projectiles heading in her general vicinity.

Colleen’s opponent was notably avoiding a close up confrontation, his armor suddenly started generating a lot of those exploding glass bombs that began filling the air in front of him with floating mines as he bursts backwards.

Colleen barely tapped one of the floating things and narrowly escaped the chain of explosions with a burst from her rocket pack to change direction.

It led to Colleen being further away from him than she previously was, she was definitely making sure to keep this guy’s attention off me by being particularly aggressive any time he tried to drag the fight my way.

Hopefully this wouldn’t become my fight.

I turned and blinked… okay… now wished that it ‘was’ my fight.

-Boss: Orthros Omega, havoc headed heavy hound!-

Two large mechanical wolf heads with small spikes jutting off their heads and rows of razor sharp metal teeth that were currently open in front of me, they stared at me for a moment. A second later they both roared in my face and darted forward trying to swallow me whole.

Jumping away in a panic and clamping onto another boulder, a rocket shot by and smacked the evil core machine’s left head against the right head.

Only when I turned back to look at the hovering mass of maniacal metal machinery… the rocket hadn’t done any visible damage.

That… wasn’t good… was it immune to rockets? I heard shouting and looked to see a female Dachshund hurriedly loading another round into a tube, but they had to leap away when a large rocket flew from the wings of the mechanical beast.

Said rocket blew apart a series of boulders with one blast, I bunkered down in my wool as several bits of rocks slammed into me roughly.

Of course the overgrown orthros’s armor was made to take explosions… otherwise you would be able to use its main weapon against it, those large rockets it fired from its wings were complete overkill.

Over'KILL' is the defining trait of evil cores as far as I knew.

At most the rocket that was used against it only made the machine angry, that’s just judging from the glow in its dark red eyes.

It reared back both its head and I could see it looked to be inhaling, but machines didn’t need to…

Seeing particles of energy beginning to converge in the mouths, it occurred to me as to what it might be doing.

Leaping at a nearby boulder, I ran around to the far side of it and then curled up as a torrent of blinding energy slammed into it.

Once it ended, I stood up blinking the spots out of my eyes and looked about at Colleen’s allies to see that two of them were cowering behind a blackened boulder together. Moving slightly, I could see that the other side of my boulders was blackened as well.

I grimaced as I looked at the two heads of the hovering machine as they looked in my direction.

Yeah, I kind of wished that I didn’t have this thing focusing on me...

It started flying in my direction, I also felt my wool beginning to spark. I looked down as the boulder I was standing on started glowing. My eyes widened and I felt my left eye twitch a bit.

I’ve done this quite a few times, but if that thing was explosion proof… maybe…

I hopped and barked blasted the boulder sending it flying towards the large metal orthros and was left floating in the air until something snagged me around my waist and dragged me down to a different platform of stone.

It was the retriever and he was shouting something to his companions while holding me by the waist with his left arm. He was already in the middle of leaping to another boulder, managing to do so successfully even with my added weight.

My eyes were busy tracking the energy boulder that was glowing brighter by the second. The orthros’s right head grabbed the boulder and moved to toss it out the way, that’s when the boulder went off in its mouth.

The energy bursting from the rock caused the Orthros to roar in pain, but the energy didn’t disable it quite like it had the other machines. If anything, the energy boulder made things worse since it started randomly firing those large rockets everywhere randomly.

The retriever was yelling something to his friends. He leapt and ran with the various rockets taking out numerous floating platforms of floating stone around us with each with a massive explosion. That threatened to knock him down

Glancing left and right, I saw that Retriever’s team was moving parallel to us as they leapt through the fields of debris and shrapnel flying in every direction. The male Labrador stopped for a second and snapped off a rocket and it did as much damage as the first one had.

Eventually the group converged and we all ended up on a single platform together.

The female Labrador turned and fired her weapon, the small projectile just bounced off the chest of the metal orthros. She turned and stated something to Retriever, who was still holding onto me until I found myself quickly placed on the ground before the male poodle as Retriever talked to her.

The others, the female Dachshund and the male Labrador, aimed the two rocket tubes they had and fired upon the mechanical monster. Both heads were hit and knocked back, but it still was coming and it wasn’t exactly flying quickly. The two turned to the retriever and said something in sync with one another.

I turned my attention back to the poodle as he tapped the side of my head drawing my attention to him wielding a medical kit and motioning to my leg. I mentally released my wool bandage, he looked a little surprised to find my wool pulling away from the wound.

Shaking his head, he quickly checked my injury over and quickly pulled out a canister sprayed something on the wounds to staunch whatever bleeding was still happening and it stung quite a bit. He quickly wrapped my leg with a bandage and bit the end off.

We both heard something and looked up to see that the large mechanical two headed wolf was already upon us. The retriever and the female Labrador were firing at it for all the good that was doing them. The Dachshund and male Labrador still needed some more time to reload.

I think I’ve had enough time since I last used it, this was going to be rough on my throat… where to aim though? Center mass at best, can’t miss at this range… I’d be horrified if I did.

I got up and charged forward and let out a bark breaker, getting the frequency just right to do this attack was tough to do in these circumstances. If you didn’t do it right or hit with it, then you would end up losing a lot of energy on attempting the attack. But when you did do it right and hit…

The armor around the chest of the machine rumpled, rippled and cracked as it was about to bring its right paw around to slap us off of this floating piece of real estate.

The end results were spectacular for the wad of cylindrical energy coming out of my mouth.

The machine roared in pain and backed off its attack and flew backwards at least twenty feet, not far enough away as far as I was concerned.

Retriever looked intrigued at the change in the metal monsters armor and called out orders to the rocket tube carrying friends and the other two, they all nodded as I was lifted up by him again.

Retriever gave me a grin as he started jumping from boulder to boulder to once again gain some distance from the encroaching mass of malice. We were getting nearer to the edges of the floating rock field.

His four other companions were running ahead of us, two of which were obviously trying to find a place and some time to reload their rocket tubes. The female Labrador and poodle split off and were going off somewhere.

I looked back to see the two heads of the orthros were charging to fire beams again, I poked Retriever and pointed it out to him.

Retriever shouted something as he moved me to his back, I quickly understood what he wanted and clung onto him.

The female Labrador turned and fired a shot at the machine’s chest. It still bounced off, but it had at least widened one of the cracks faintly. She and the poodle continued to go off in a particular direction until I lost sight of them.

I really don’t know if I can do another bark breaker so soon to weaken the machine even further.

Retriever personally leapt towards a particularly large boulder, this is when both the heads unleash two beams of raw energy towards each other. Said beams fused into one huge beam that erased almost every bit of stone in its path.

Thankfully the energy in the beam quickly lost cohesion after a certain distance, the implications otherwise would have had devastating consequences. Also, thankfully enough, no one was in the path of that.

What was the point of the metal monster doing… oh… we’re cut off from the rocket tube carriers as the machine had destroyed all the boulders between us and them. I don’t know where Retriever’s other two friends were running off to, but they certainly weren’t sticking around after that display.

I seriously wanted to forget how dangerous or smart these ‘evil core’ things were. It was trying to actively prevent me from escaping the area by slowing us down.

Speaking of, the orthros was on approach for us and Retriever was looking around in a slight panic, he was looking for a place to jump to.

Prodding his shoulder roughly, I pointed up and to the left. He quickly leapt in that direction without a second thought as a large rocket was already on its way to hitting us.

We reoriented and landed on the boulder I pointed out and he made his way around to the other side and crouched down.

After the explosion, the boulder we left behind was now a mass of floating pebbles going in various directions. I would have gone deaf at this rate if it were not for my wool insulating my ears.

Don’t honestly know how Retriever or the others were handling the volatile noises, but they were doing well enough and were not miraculously losing their balance.

I saw two rockets streaking through the air and they passed by to the right of us and into the chest of the flying bulk of metal, the explosions actually did some damage. Not enough though, the chest of the metallic orthros was barely broken open… I could feasibly fit both my hooves through the hole they just made in its chest.

What kind of metal was that thing even made of?! At least it wasn’t fast when it came to flying, it would probably be even faster if it was on the ground.

This means we didn’t want to leave the floating rock field until we have at least disabled it somewhat. That was going to be a problem, as I didn’t think my friends here could do that kind of damage with what they had. The damage they just did was after I had already weakened that things armor, I don’t honestly think they had enough rockets to actually bring the monster down.

While I was busy thinking this, Retriever was leaping us through the field while I clung to him.

The oversized orthros was still gaining on us. Even with another pair of rockets impacting it, the metal plated armor of the orthros barely had a large enough hole for me to fit my head through. At least they were managing to widen it.

Turning my attention away from what was behind us, I almost leapt off of Retriever when I saw a green machine hopping our way. I thought Retriever’s guys had disabled all of them and the wolves that were with them, I was proven correct in thinking that as the current pilot of the machine was his female Labrador friend.

She turned the green armored machine around, crouched it down and motioned for us to get on hurriedly, she looked how I felt. Panicked, frightened and afraid of the heavily armored flying machine after us using stupidly powerful weapons in the efforts of taking me alive.

Retriever quickly clambered up the presented back of the machine and clung to one of its shoulders. He yelled out to the Labrador and she made the machine leap us away from the orthros as several large rockets blasted apart our surroundings.

I shivered and clung to Retriever, he patted me on the head and said something that was assuredly supposed to sound like encouragement. The Labrador driving the machine made a sardonic comment in response as she steered us to the two rocket tube wielding dogs that were in the middle of loading another round.

We landed on a hemispherical shape of stone between them and they both leapt for the machine caught it’s spine and other shoulder respectively as two beams slammed into the boulders they were on.

At this point all we were doing was running, I hadn’t seen any sign of Colleen and I really didn’t want to deal with that evil core behind us. We certainly couldn’t let it follow us and it was too tough to take out under normal circumstance.

We wouldn’t make it on the ground and I’m not sure Colleen’s friends had the time to stop and consider that like I did.

We certainly couldn’t stay in the floating rock field forever either and I was loath to bother Mr. Sage any more than I had to.

I could faintly see the poodle waiting for us outside the field in the distance holding a projectile firing weapon and firing it at the large rockets that were coming up behind us to make them explode prematurely.

My eyes slid to the satchel of rockets the Dachshund had and I looked back at the two headed wolf machine still following us and firing off attacks as our machine ran from it. This thing was leaping across large distances as the female Labrador piloted us closer to getting out of Gravity Gorge.

I finally came to a decision, loosened my grip on Retriever and clambered down next to the Dachshund and pointed at her rocket ammunition with my hoof and motioned to myself.

She gave me a small glare, the next time our machine leapt a beam passed underneath.

I pointed at the rockets with a most frantic expression I could put on my face, she sighed and reluctantly unslung her satchel put the strap in my waiting hoof.

I nodded as I took the satchel and gave her a grim frown as I slung the bag over my neck and shoulder.

I climbed up the back of the green machine and up to the female Labrador who gave me a worried glance as she evaded a massive beam of energy trying to destroy the lower half of the machine we were on.

This is where I leapt up at a boulder and kicked off it to go gliding straight for the large wolf machine with my wool wings spread out, much to the panic of the good dogs I left behind.

My actions not only confused Mr. Retriever and his team, it also confused the large Orthros as I was flying straight at it.

What I was about to do would only work if it didn’t absolutely want me outright dead, I’ve noticed that it hasn’t been trying to kill anyone I’m nearby. The only reason why it had fired on me was to stall me or keep me in place.

It didn’t fire its large rockets at me and it didn’t prepare the beams either. It almost seemed… as eager as it was heavily confused to see me coming right at it.

Does my special magnetism effect on canids even carry over to giant mechanical two headed winged wolves of doom?

Would it even work on something literally described as being pure ‘Evil’?

One I got close I banked around the left heads attempt to snatch me out of the air and dove out of the snapping jaws of the right head in time to land on its neck.

“Over here!” The left head went to bite down on me, I back flipped up the neck as it bit down and tore into the right head’s neck. I clambered up onto the top of the right head and grinned as I stood on its head looking into its feral eyes. “Come on, you can do better than that!”

The right head snapped backwards and opened its mouth expecting me to fall into it.

Instead I just stuck to it and clambered up to the nose and pulled one of the rockets from the satchel, I tossed it into its mouth.

The entire machine roared in pain as something inside its mouth exploded when it snapped shut around the rocket.

Smoke poured out of the right head as I crawled around to the outer side of the neck and down towards its chest, the left head tried to snap at me several times and I could hardly hold on with it attacking me like this so I had to get it off my back.

I quickly tossed a rocket into its mouth as well the next time it opened as I continued to crawl towards its chest and its left head was now howling in pain as smoke poured from its mouth.

I was having an effect, but only enough that it wouldn’t attack to kill. It was still going for outright maiming and capture, good to know.

The right head started trying to shake me off and I had to stop moving less I lose my hoofing, the left head went to snap at me and was blasted back by a rocket fired right into its mouth.

I quickly waved in thanks in the direction of Retriever’s team as I quickly positioned myself on the chest next to the small hole. I started stuffing rockets into the hole in its chest, I’m pretty sure the others had cottoned on to what I was doing.

All they had to do was set them off once I got clear of the machine.

The right head came for me and was struck in the right eye by a rocket making it create a loud mechanical whine as I continued to force these explosives into the hole in its chest. The left he was struck knocking it away from me I stuffed one last rocket in with the tip facing outwards.

There were still a few rockets left in the satchel, but I didn’t need to use them. I quickly clambered up between the heads onto the machine’s back and ran along it as the two heads turned backwards to stretch out and snap at me on its back.

I leapt forward and continued to the back half of the machine avoiding the seat, the large tentacle like tail of the machine raised up and suddenly came down at me and tried to wrap around my small form I quickly leapt to the side and the tail was blown back by a rocket.

A second later something blew up around the front of the monster and I looked back to see a chain of explosion coming my way. I ditched the rockets from the satchel by just pouring them out and leapt off the right side of the machine to fly away as the chain of explosions started tearing it into two separate halves vertically down the spine and destroying the seat.

After gliding a short distance, I landed on a nearby boulder and watched as the two halves of the wolf machine started falling downwards towards the planet irrespective of the gravitational forces in play.

I heard Retriever’s cheering for a bit, until one of them pointed at something and shouted. I turned to see what the problem was and swiftly received a metal boot to the face knocking me down and dazing me.

I felt something tighten around my throat and I couldn’t breathe, I opened my eyes to the grinning face of the guy that had been attacking Colleen. He said something and tightened his right paw's grip on my throat painfully and took to the air to avoid a rocket fired from the male Labrador.

I could see them getting further away as my vision started blackening. The last thing I saw was a scorched, bloodied and weakened Colleen landing on a boulder to pull a weapon from under her rocket pack and she hastily fired it.

My face was splattered with blood as the Yellow Dog holding me lost a chunk of his left ear. He howled, but kept quickly rocketing away from a collapsing Colleen as I blacked out.

70. Competency Check.

-???, Oleander-

“Remind me again how we ended up in this mess Fred?” I stated dryly as I sat at the table and finished eating the meal that was provided to me.

“Well it started with that guy Golbez, us incidentally finding that the captain of the guard had been replaced with a demon turtle thing and one thing led to another… THEN WE FOUND OURSELF ON THIS WORLD’S MOON!” It seemed Fred was keeping up with all this better than I was. “So of course we ended up in a castle called Pandaemonium which is situated next to a castle named Castlevania, apparently the lords of the two castles were having a luncheon, AND WE JUST INTERRUPTED THEM… IN POOR TASTE NO LESS!”

“We’re right here you know...” The pale and pasty fanged monster stated while taking a sip from his wine glass filled with an ominous red liquid that definitely wasn’t wine. “I will not let myself be beaten by a tiny darkened unicorn, though it will admittedly be less embarrassing then being beaten by that little girl that throws birds at her problems.”

“Can we hurry this along, I have an appointment with a group of four warriors of light coming up.” The other one stated hovering menacingly nearby.

“Right, which leads us now fighting two deities of evil at once, because why not at this point?” I said blandly as I twirled the key blade floating in my magic and stared down The Emperor and Dracula with Fred by my side. “I’ll show you the true power of darkness, for there is no darkness without the indestructible light of my soul to cast a shadow upon thee!”

“Really Ollie, you’re going to annoy me with stupid sounding heroic speeches now?” Stated Fred as blandly.

“You know what you did Fred!” After stating this, I summoned Song Ender to assist us and we got to work fighting two great evils at once. “Oh and thanks for the meal, I was quite famished Mr. Impaler.”

“I will not treat my guests poorly, even if that meal may be their last!” Dracula stood up and swept his cape out while tossed away his glass. The Emperor roared and his power started flooding the room.

-Elhorn, seven hours after the last fight at Gravity Gorge, Frosty Checkpoint, Ocellus-

“At least we took care of the evil core, so it should be easy to extract her.” Hunt said with a sour mood. “Sorry that we couldn’t stop your friend from being captured.”

Colleen apparently collapsed not too long after the large two headed metal wolf was split in half, unfortunately I was the bearer of bad news considering what I knew. She wasn’t critically injured, but the internal bleeding didn’t help even if it wasn’t bad enough to require surgery. Ligstrun was already in the process of fixing any damage that was done to Colleen’s rocket pack.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that…” Looking towards me questioningly when I spoke up, Hunt eventually gestured for me to continue my line of thought. “It’s still alive or what passes for living as far as machines go.”

“How would you know that?” The mercenary retriever rubbed as his head looking a bit perplexed. “You weren’t there to see it get blown in half.”

“Whatever you did, it didn’t destroy the core as I can feel when an Evil Core is active nearby, it gave me quite a headache even at the distance it was at… closer up and I’d get a debilitating migraine.” We were all upset to see Colleen brought in injured, apparently she did her best to keep Commander Carbuncle off of Pom. She did it successfully until Carbuncle caught Pom unaware and then carried her off. “I could feel it for a while until sometime after you guys probably left Gravity Gorge. The last I felt of it… it was moving until it was gone.”

“It wouldn’t be moving, not under its own power at least with the damage it’s taken.” Informative Hunt, but we needed a plan of action and already had an idea of what to do. “I already sent two of my guys to track down which Wulfgar base Pom is going to be held in, it’s not going to be pleasant extracting from one.”

“Shanty, Smolder, we’re personally going after Pom.” The frowning goat nodded to me, as did Smolder without a second thought. “Only we direly need Dodo to transport the supplies down south to Cladinhold, so that’s where he’s going.”

“So we be needing to go it on hoof?” Shanty didn’t seem so happy to be separated from Dodo, or the sugary delights he pumps out randomly.

Said miraculous metal ostrich managed to somehow pump out a gem encrusted cupcake much to Smolder’s delight as she hasn’t had any of the ‘good stuff’, as she calls it, in a while. It certainly helped with her dietary needs we’ve been somewhat ignoring since this whole world traveling thing started.

“We just need to get the supplies to Zephyrus, we can do that quickly enough by going through the southwestern pass.” Nicole Beta joined in on the conversation having looked a little down to hear what happened to Pom being exactly what she wanted to avoid. “I remember you claiming that Shanty is magically linked with Dodo?”

“Yeah, as a familiar, Dodo can find Shanty anywhere… which would be useful we split off to go rescue Pom.” I sighed. “I’m going to be absolutely useless if I have to go near an active evil core though.”

“Well we can deliver the goods safely to Zephyrus to transport or hold them for us, then we can quickly come back and will try to meet up with you as quickly as possible.” That was a sound idea Nicole Beta.

“Whatever your thinking of doing, count me in.” Bruno said as he stalked up to us, his emotions were reading as eager to do something other than sitting around. A sentiment shared by both Smolder and Shanty.

“We’re going to split up into two groups Bruno, one group is going to rescue Pom from the Wulfgar controlled region and the other is going to drop off our trade goods in northern Zephyrus.” I really hoped that the guys that captured Pom weren’t going to hurt her, while they wouldn’t kill they could still end up maiming her if they felt like it. “Pom also gets the right to say she told us so when she stated that this kind of stuff would happen to her if we came up here.”

“Well I’m in on rescuing her.” Bruno muttered while cross his arms. “It’s where all the danger is going to be at.”

“I will be part of the team ensuring the goods reach Zephyrus, ah-choo. I do not like being up here.” Poor Jean, he would feel better once we were no longer needed in these cold mountains. “Can we really move Colleen though?”

“I w-w-would rather be on the team getting away from t-t-these miserable m-m-mountains.” Ligstrun was just as miserable as Jean was.

“No, Colleen has to stay here until she recovered and rested, she battered Carbuncle and even got a last shot in on him. I say she’s earned some rest and will be safe here at the checkpoint.” Husker Exile approached us and sighing as he shook his head. “If we hurry, then they won’t be able to use Pom for some dumb plan.”

“We?” Hunt queried.

“Got word from Cooler an hour ago, I’m being assigned as a liaison with The Retrievers to help deal with whatever Wulfgar base your friend was taken to.” As he said this Exile was hefting a backpack onto his back. “Once you’re scouts have found the base, I will be in charge of dealing with the infrastructure of the place while the rest of you are rescuing your friend. Besides, you’re going to need an actual mech pilot. Your guys are relatively decent at moving one around Hunt, but I’m actually trained in piloting a melee masher.”

“I’m okay with that, the more help the better.” It seemed Hunt liked that idea. “We’re not exactly doing this all pro bono and your assistance would take a large chunk off the costs of this incoming operation… that and we need more rocket ammunition.”

Hunt certainly didn’t feel like he was greedy, he probably wants money for pragmatic reasons as being able to afford food and shelter to his mercenary group.

“Right, I guess it’s settled then. Hopefully we can get into Zephyrus without too much trouble.” Nicole Beta sounded like she wanted to get off this mountain, wished I could do the same.

Hearing a whine, I turned to look at Shanty running her hoof over Dodo’s head.

“It being okay Dodo, we will be fine.” She nuzzled against the warm me face of the ostrich and it nuzzled her back with its beak, it was heartwarming to watch. A goat and her mechanical ostrich, never has adventuring been weirder than what we’re doing. To think I sometimes thought our six teachers were exaggerating about the weird stuff they did… well maybe Rainbow Dash. “Be good for the others until you can be coming back to save us at the last minute okay?”

The machine warbled in a slightly chipper tone and blinked a few times while looking at Shanty.

“What make you think we’ll need him to save us at the last minute Shanty?” Just had to ask.

“It be being a thing with us Ocellus, I picked up on it a while ago.” Shanty started humming happily as she threw on a toque and stuffed her ears up under her hat. “Where we’re going, we’re going to be needing saving as much as doing it!”

-Several days later, a fair distance from the Eastern Mountain Base, Smolder-

“Are the both of you using me to keep you warm?” It needed to be asked, both Shanty and Ocellus were snuggled up against my body as I wielded the binoculars to look over the place. They both looked away from me and Shanty started whistling a cheery tune. We were small enough as to be unnoticeable, which is why we could get as close as we did to this place. Also it was unlikely that the patrollers would pay attention to our unfamiliar smells if they came across them. “Looks like a factory to me… so what are they making up here? Huh… look at that, a wild pack of metallic ostriches like Dodo.”

Ocellus took the binoculars and saw at least ten of the two legged machine’s running by, but they didn’t approach or attack the base. All of them weren’t moving very fast, but if anyone, Yellow Dog or otherwise, were to approach them… well that would be a different story. They would immediately become indistinct blurs that could move at the same top speed as Dodo could, you also wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of a kick from one moving that fast.

This world had some amazingly adorable things in it and Dodo counted as one of my favorite things, at least since he figured out how to replicate Equestrian baked goods somehow. Too bad all that adorable stuff was kind of smothered under all the awesome and violent stuff. I kind of liked this world, but I wouldn’t want to live here with evil cores causing Ocellus so much pain.

Thinking about it…

“How are you feeling Ocellus?” I turned to her and saw her wincing.

“Well the evil machine that survived being blow in half is here, it certainly feels familiar at least… but it’s not active. So it’s more of a buzzing in the back of my head that just won’t quit.” There was a grimace on Ocellus’s face. “I think it might even be two separate cores acting as one complete core… don’t quote me as an expert on anything involving those things. Nicole Beta has been kind of tight lipped about how the cores are made exactly, all she wants to do is destroy every last one of them.”

“If something goes active, you’ll be the first one to know and an early warning for us to run in the opposite direction.” As much as I wasn’t sure about being this close to the base, we weren’t even entirely sure if this is where they were keeping Pom. We were on a cliff and far enough away that spotting us wouldn’t be hard to do if you were to get too close. “So how long do we have to wait for Hunt’s team to get back to us again?”

“It shouldn’t be too much longer and the reason we’re watching this base is to make sure they don’t move Pom before they can arrive and make a plan.” Ocellus stated despite being highly nervous as she looked through the binoculars. “Looks like they are changing out the guards.”

Four mounds of snow in the distance warped as they turned back yellow furred wolves dropped their disguise magic and went back into the base as another four came out and slowly disguised as large rocks. It was kind of fascinating to watch and sure it had the upside of protecting you from injury until it completely wears off, but Ocellus’s people did it better and faster.

“When can we be going in to start kicking some flank?” Shanty was honestly surprising us with how patient she was being.

It was kind of worrying me as to just why she wasn’t rushing head first into this, but then I remembered the whole Tower of the Sacred Flame thing could have been handled better.

“Probably won’t be doing that if we can do this quietly, getting in and out with Pom without anyone knowing we were here would be the far better option.” Ocellus was all for stealth on this one, I wasn’t exactly on Shanty’s level when it came to fighting so I was all for doing this quietly too.

While I could go for a greed growth… that would require ocellus to be captured. I was exceptionally greedy about monopolizing her time and she knew how I felt about her. Also I didn’t want to get stupid and get tunnel vision that comes with the side effects of greed growing myself, I’m far smarter than that.

I was greedy about my friendships, but again I couldn’t garner enough greed from that as much as the pain from not having all of my friends with me. Greed growth requires pure, unbridled, uncontrolled and downright stupid greed. Stupid, I was not.

Spike was a smart dude about this stuff despite growing up in Equestria’s culture, we’ve been doing culture trades between one another for a while now. I appreciated the exchanges between us, mostly the comics, but I was missing all the peaceful stuff of navigating life with its complications compared to all this stuff.

Dragon’s couldn’t get by on brawn all the time, Ember knew that and I knew that… I think that’s why she put Pom on guard duty with the delegates in the first place. Ember showed that we could present a friendly face and we were a people that didn’t just bash our skulls against rocks all day… no matter how much fun that is at times when it came to finding gems to eat.

“That be looking quite impossible Ocellus.” Shanty gestured at the melee mechs patrolling, the guards at every corner of the fairly large base in the eastern mountains beyond Gravity Gorge. We were approximately north of the desert and Northwest of Hydrigal. “I could climb over the walls, but that be a lot of open space to cover to reach any hiding spots. I think they were being smart about not letting intruders in, or escapees out.”

“Yeah, a smash and grab would go horribly the second the local evil core becomes active and we have to actively start carrying Ocellus around Shanty.” Instead of scoffing like I expected, Shanty actually looked to be considering what I just said seriously.

“How do we be getting in then? They have the gates and everything guarded too heavily.” Shanty really wanted to rescue Pom, she also wanted to fight. She was resisting the urge to do the latter and the former she was looking for a good idea from us. We didn’t have any. “We… can maybe be stealing a mech from under one of them to cause a distraction, but I know little about actually controlling one.”

“Trying to take the leadership lessons to heart I take it?” Ocellus finally stated, as if to answer the question I had about Shanty’s seemingly ridiculous amount of patience for all the trouble Pom went through before being captured alive.

“Yes, yes, I know, never be doing anything Chyrsalis would. Unless you be knowing it will work and never be forgetting that missing small details can still be causing big problems.” When did Shanty start doing things with Ocellus? Guess I have been a bit preoccupied with being a living space heater for anyone in the general area around me. Being, quite literally, hot-blooded was a good thing for my friends. “I be working on my temper… as in always be making sure that your opponent loses theirs first! This situation be quite frustrating, but I won’t be blinking first.”

Ocellus probably got time with Shanty when I wasn’t going over a list of insults with her or when she wasn’t spending time just being a child she never got to be in Pom’s presence.

We all heard a noise and froze, it didn’t come from in front of us or below. It came from… oh it’s Bruno. He started talking to Ocellus.

“He says that Hunt’s team is back and we’re ready to start planning for a way to get in and out. The first thing he wants to know is how well our watch has gone and if we have any ideas for how to do this.” Ocellus was our translator, but maybe she should have went to the southwest and we should have had Nicole Beta translate for us instead. Aside from that idle thought, I gave Ocellus a hug and she smiled brightly despite shivering a bit from the cold. “I’ll report what we’ve seen so far about the base, aside from not many coming or going into it.”

-Ten minutes later and a ridge away-

We were soon gathered a lot further away, Bruno’s girth was helping him here as the cold didn’t bother him in the slightest. He was ready to dive on into a fight and seemed to be somewhat worried about Colleen when Ocellus brought her up.

Colleen couldn’t be moved and was staying at the Frosty Checkpoint until she eventually recovered. At least Colleen had been coherent enough to tell us about Commander Carbuncle’s capabilities before we left.

Fast flying, endless explosives and a weapon that fired incredibly fast.

Hunt was talking animatedly with Ocellus as Bruno stood off to the side with us. Bruno was frowning as he looked at Shanty and me, he grunted and shook his head when he noticed me looking his way.

“Okay, so we may have an idea of how to get inside. The plan relies on the three of us getting in and scouting the base while they make a distraction. We haven’t hashed out those details yet, but we’ll get to that in a moment.” Sighing, Ocellus put her hooves to her face and slowly dragged them both downwards. “There’s a way to get inside the facility through the tops of the buildings, I hate to say this but… we’re pulling another Gongmen City ‘job’ girls. Only without Pom’s ridiculously useful input on the situation this time. This might take us a little while longer than the last few times we’ve done this as we have to confirm Pom’s presence and or figure out what’s going on here. So we need a way to get everyone inside safely to likely fighting a running battle on our way out.”

“Why not be masking their scents and be stealing their uniforms?” Shanty just reminded us about the rotten eggs thing we pulled with Boss Wolf and his army when we sunk those ships.

“Won’t work, the guards here know each other on sight, they are actually very well trained and there aren't any slackers I can take advantage of.” If Ocellus was correct, then the wolves in this facility were ridiculously capable, I would believe that to be on the threat of death given the things I’ve seen. “Commander Carbuncle is considered one of Wulfgar’s best for a fairly obvious reason, getting results is a thing with this guy. This whole place on lockdown and he’s the head honcho in this region… did I use honcho correctly Smolder? Never mind. If Pom is in there, then we’d have to circumnavigate this place… blind... to find her.”

-Several levels down inside the mountains unground facility, Pom-

The last few days have been taking a toll on my psyche, because I think I’m seeing male wolves in tutus now.

No…. wait… those guys are real…

Whatever the armored Yellow Dog that captured me was about, he certainly had a lot of swagger while apparently running a ballet troupe inside of my holding cell.

I have no idea what that was all about, but being here and being treated like a common animal was… not as bad as it could be. They at least gave me food I could eat safely and the water was okay, but I wasn’t given much room to move about though.

The tutu wearing wolves were about as real as the guy with guns in every corner of the room with their ears perked up.

I was trapped behind a spherical energy barrier that went up to the ceiling and they were still keeping me heavily watched, even if I had yet figured out how to get out of the bubble they put me inside of.

I doubt even hawks had this kind of attention span on their prey, because that wasn’t all they had to keep me here as they had one of those sharped clawed green mechs in here.

You know, in case… somehow… I got out of the bubble, by the four guards and tried for the door and managed to not get lost on the way out. In a base probably loaded with shoot firsts and ask questions if I’m not outright dead afterward.

They, notably enough, really weren’t really leaving anything to chance involving me here.

I just know that Shanty, Smolder and Ocellus wouldn’t leave me behind… seriously doubted Dodo would either as he’s grown on me. Colleen would definitely come for me, as would Jean and Bruno.

This just left me wondering… what was taking them so long? Was I that well protected wherever I was? Well yes, I guess… considering this room with the solid metal walls.

This led me to another thought.

Why did they try so hard to capture me? Am I really that irresistible to canines? If I ever got out here, then I am definitely not coming back to Yellow Dog. The potatoes here tasted nice though, oddly reminiscent of glazed cucumbers and tomatoes really, but I would rather be sure about where my water came from than trust any of these guys.

So here I sat waiting for rescue, or for whatever these Yellow Dog guys were going to do with me after going through all that trouble of capturing me. Well, aside from entertaining me with what has to be the absolute worst ballet routine I will ever possibly see in my life, but my goodness were they trying.

I glanced at the ceiling and finally noted something fairly important about my cell.

Author's Note

They really don't want Pom to leave.

71. The ‘easy’ part.

-Equestria, Ponyville, Gallus-

“Why don’t you take her up on the offer, I think I know her family well enough that she means well and definitely wants to be there for you. She’s also not forcing it and is waiting you to make that decision.” Twilight was once again in Ponyville working on an update on the situation that’s been going on for far too long now, what the update was about I haven’t the foggiest idea or clue. Hopefully it was something positive. “Everyone in Kuril’s family is nice… except maybe for Jaded, but she’s basically doing the ‘that one friend in particular’ thing on purpose like Discord does. At least Fluttershy tells me she’s not always causing problems, because the problems sometimes cause her. Before you ask, no, that wasn’t a misstatement on my part.”

“I don’t know, would they really care that much about me?” I still had misgivings about going back to Kuril’s restaurant.

“Gallus, Kuril immediately adopted a cursed parrot that was raised on a moving island of pirates at first sight. Kuril still sees Fizzle as one of her kittens even while she was taking part of the invasion with the Storm King and caused a lot of suffering. It’s kind of ridiculous how far she’s willing to go for anyone she’s willing to call one of her kittens, for example things got pretty insane when Kuril finally ‘legally’ adopted Velvet. The reindeer, not my mother… though I do wonder how those two would act in the same room. Anyway, Rein needed to send Equestria a ceasefire request because of something Kuril did, they are more terrified of her than they are of her daughter Jaded. That says a lot about Kuril considering Jaded’s reputation.” Having said that, Twilight pulled me into a tender hug. “If she wants you to come to her for help and family support, I think you would be happy having good people who actually want to earn that right for you to start calling them family. Just give them a chance. Kuril thinks you’re worth the effort to bother despite whatever trouble you may bring into her life, all of your friends think your worth that effort to be close to too.”

“You’re just using me to get your mind off of the lambkin thing aren’t you?” Read my beak Twilight, drop the lambkin and changeling thing and hope it resolves itself within this century.

“Yes, that’s true, but I’m also trying to help you open up to people who mean it when they say they want you around and will undoubtedly love you unconditionally.” Well, at least Twilight wasn’t lying to my face about it. “Don’t ever forget that I’m one of the people that cares about you Gallus, besides you are your own griffon and can make your own decisions. Even if you don’t take up the offer, you still have Gilda, Greta, Gruff and don’t forget Gabby has been trying to be a big sister to you lately with how often she keeps coming to Ponyville.”

“Fine, so I might actually want a family… wouldn’t hurt to have that little guy Gavin as a nephew.” I sighed loudly and ran my claws under my beak in thought. “I’ll probably accept, but I will want to lay down some...”

There was a flash and I felt something wrap around me. I was lifted up off the ground with a surprising amount of strength and heard a loud keening squeal as I was squeezed affectionately.

“Yes, kitten get!” Kuril snuggled me close and licked the back of my head and my left cheek, then the crazy Abyssinian let me go and skipped away happily humming to herself.

“Did that just… how did she even know that…? I don’t…” Did she just…

“Yes, that actually happened and no that wasn’t your imagination.” Twilight looked as confused as I did about an Abyssinian managing to do a picture perfect replication of a unicorn teleportation spell.

How did she even know to do that, where I was to appear exactly next to me or what I feasibly accidentally agreed to? This didn’t mean I wouldn’t try to continue spending time with Gilda’s family, but I sometimes felt like an intruder among them.

I’m terrified of my new adoptive mother… and I somehow found that thought… comforting?!

-Elhorn, Eastern Mountains Wulfgar Facility, Carbuncle-

“Report, have you seen anything in the area… they should be scouting us out by now or already planning an attack.” I got the prize, now I was waiting for a trap to be sprung.

“No sir, we haven’t visibly seen any Yellow Dog scouts from the Cooler faction. We’ve heard some mercenary movements, especially The Retrievers who were antagonistic during the Gravity Gorge acquisition. We haven’t spotted any of their ilk personally.” My men were well trained, but the fact that our prize managed to wreck several machines and take out entire groups without any weapons while on the run meant she was dangerous as much as she was an attractive prospect. I didn’t think for a second that she was a dumb animal despite how we were treating her and had her under heavy watch in case she tried anything. “We did get some odd smells from smaller beings in the area, I think one was a goat.”

“Were the other animals known or unknown?” I asked with a hint of suspicion, because that might lead to some fun. I love a good fight, I’m fairly flamboyant, but what I wasn’t… was stupid.

“Two unknown, possibly a sign of Devotindos pig activity… smelled too dirty to be sure though. A dirty pig going to ground is harder to trace than a clean one.” Considering my grunt with a curious gaze, I motioned for him to continue. “We didn’t follow the scents like you asked.”

“Good, you didn’t get led into a possible ambush. Double security and have all our best ears on the vents, because I think our prize is about to have guests… and we’re about to have hostages that we can actually play with. Note, that the Cooler faction has outside help in the area and spread it to all guards to be on high alert and to not go beyond the boundaries of the base. If a blizzard occurs, floodlights pointed inward within the walls” I started to stomp away and then stopped. “How goes the recovery efforts of my OO unit?”

“Putting them back together again didn’t seem as viable as was rebuilding the lost halves, but both halves are fairly deadly on their own now. Yes, they can each turn into a bike separately sir, but flying is no longer viable though.” That was good news, the OO unit was one of the strongest machines I’ve ever seen and it would be a shame to retired such powerful malice. A wolf came running up and passes a note to the one reporting to me. “Wulfgar hopes we can prove strong enough to at least take out one of the Cooler faction heads that is bound to be in the area to lead the attack on our facility sir.”

“Which is well within the scope of our plans.” I turned and stalked away, smiling at another possible fight with that vivacious bitch of a rocket knight. She had been quite tough, but she was only a halfway decent one at best. “Tell Wulfgar that there might be a true rocket knight in the making and it isn’t an opossum this time, one whose career I intend to end early before she reaches Axel Gear backstabbing levels of problematic to deal with.”

Rocket knights were supposed to instill fear in all who face them on the battlefield and this one has yet to become world renowned for her prowess. She had time to grow stronger and I had patience to get revenge on her for my ear.

Carbuncle always pays back insults, with interest.

-Outside the facility and halfway up a mountain, Shanty-

The facility be having a lot of flat land around it, it be hard to approach it from the ground and something be subtly changing about the all patrols. Couldn’t quite be putting my hoof on what, but it be feeling like something bad.

“Are you ready for this Shanty?” Giving Ocellus a nervous glance, I nodded. “Sorry to say this again, but you are really quite heavy for being so small.”

“I not be feeling upset by that, I know I be having plenty of muscle!” This was not going to be a good day for us, I can feel it me bones that the winds be shifting us towards chaos.

I not be minding heading straight into a storm of trouble, but I be wanting to survive long enough to have some memorable legacies.

Getting in was going to be easy. It’s the getting back out part, with or without Pom that wouldn’t be. I be preferring the ‘with’ option personally, but if we couldn’t do that then I would find a way to absolutely be ruining someone’s day completely. Preferably the person that be capturing Pom.

“I think they might be on to us.” Well we still had to carry out the plan, but we didn’t exactly have anything resembling reinforcements beyond Hunt’s team. I passed the binoculars to Ocellus. “They are being far more alert now.”

“Okay, that is concerning, thanks for bringing this to my attention Shanty. I still might be able to get us by their ears even if they are more alert for anything, the muffle spell works wonders when it comes to quiet study time and I can do it easily enough.” The plan Ocellus told us, if we could be calling it that, was for us to glide into the base after a distraction is caused by Hunt’s team and then get a good look around without being caught. We would be the ones to signal when we were ready to do just that. “We won’t be able to talk while under its effects though. We just have to watch out if they are sniffing around for us, we don’t have any rotten eggs on such short notice, so we’ll have to improvise to mask our movements if we move anywhere the patrols are going to pass through.”

“Ready for this Shanty?” Smolder turned to me and held out her left claw, Ocellus turned into a blue version of Smolder and held out her right.

“As I’ll ever be, let’s go rescue Pom aye!” This could possibly even be fun, I held out my hooves and they grabbed them to start lifting me up.

They better not be dropping me, don’t think the snow was deep enough around here.

-Deep inside the base, holding cell, Pom-

The one way barrier was unusual, but unicorns did things like that with magic all the time. These guys somehow replicated that effect with technology. Notably they could pour water through the field, drop food through it too… food that didn’t need any scraps removed because you could consume it entirely.

If you didn’t… well they weren’t going to drop the barrier and would just let me wallow with the rotten food if I didn’t eat it all.

The reason I was thinking about this is the four guys in the corners of my cell with projectile weapons. They could shoot through the barrier and my wool, but I wouldn’t be able to do anything back to them.

My bathroom accommodations were… a very small divot in the floor leading into a tube that obviously led to some form of waste disposal. I would not be able to fit into said hole since it was half the size of my hoof.

The only way out was up through the small circular patch in the ceiling the energy barrier didn’t cover, but I had no clue as to what was above me and I didn’t feel like making a move that would make them shoot me.

The ceiling above me was metal, so a bark breaker would weaken it enough for me to break through it with my hooves, but I might end up trapped in whatever room is up there. Provided that there even is a room above my cell. This cell had to have ventilation or else I would have suffocated by now with all the panic breathing I did once I woke up in this bubble.

The barrier was not something I wanted to touch more than once, getting zapped once was enough to know that it would be difficult to create a hole in the ceiling and climb up through it without touching the edges of the barrier.

Usually when you hear of prison cells in stories, you have incompetent guards and simple methods of escape. In this situation… these guys had a fairly competent people watching me at all times and my holding cell was exceptionally designed on top of that by already being almost inescapable.

What kind of prisoners did they have before me that would require a cell like this to be made in the first place? What did they seriously expect me to pull off here? I think they are overestimating my intelligence, my abilities or everything about me.

I needed a miracle to even pull off what I’m thinking of doing without being shot.

I would have to bark breaker straight up in the center of my bubble to weaken the ceilings materials the barrier didn’t cover, it would take a few seconds to actually hit the frequency needed to deal with the materials above my head.

I would have to subsequently jump to cling to the ceiling, physically punch a hole through it or use a bark blast on the weakened material to shatter it. Once there is enough room I’d pull myself up if there is a room above me, if there’s dirt above the metal, then I would have to start digging as fast as I could.

All of that would take me time that I wouldn’t have before I become painfully neutralized by the guards.

Even if I succeeded in doing that I could just be climbing into another cell with an active barrier there too or, knowing my luck, I would end up climbing straight up into this places cafeteria for an awkward moment where all the guards are having lunch. I had no idea what time it was or how long I’ve been in here.

I wouldn’t know until they allow me at least some form of relief from being watched by at least five attentive guards at all times.

All the actions I needed to do meant I needed about thirty seconds with no one paying any attention to me whatsoever, but these guys weren’t willing to give me that much privacy. I could do it in ten with a quick Dancing Flame breathing technique.

Makes me wish I had the same kind of literal firepower that my Tian does when she’s using Dancing Flame, I’m still using a heavily modified version of it to my own ends and liberally mix it with Fleet Cunning Doe and Cow Kenpo.

I remember when Tianhuo thought that teaching me those breathing exercises would be good for keeping me calm and level headed. Well they were certainly helping me now… as much as they could anyway.

I just inhaled and exhaled, steady my breathing, steady the rhythm of my increasingly frantic heart at the thought of escape being so close and yet so far. Just keep calm and think things through, do not go full lambkin panic mode and light myself on fire.

Like Tai Lung escaping from a nearly inescapable prison built specifically with him in mind, all I had to do was bide my time and wait for a specific opportunity to act.

The thought of Tai Lung was very anxiety inducing, given I almost died facing him. I wished I could go to my happy place right now, but my happy place was quite literally worlds away and being cared for by all my beasties.

My happy place was safe, I most certainly was not.

I looked at my hoof and shifted my wool down to cover it… hmm...

-High above the Eastern Mountain Facility, Shanty-

This be really high up, but I eventually be wanting an airship so I better not become afraid of heights. Ocellus transformed to look like a blue Smolder to help with the slow drop down onto the buildings below.

The Retrievers hadn’t launched their distraction yet, but they better be doing it soon or else we would be having more trouble than the guards on the roof to face. We already be losing altitude, Ocellus and Smolder didn’t have the energy continue lifting me higher.

“What’s taking them so long?” Smolder grumbled as we continued our fall towards the roof.

“Can we be aiming for that wolf?” I be point my right hoof at someone standing on the edge of the roof looking at something.

An explosion be going off below.

“Doing it, the distraction is happening now.” Ocellus stated and be moving her wings around with Smolder and I pulled back my rear hooves.

We dropped our glide steeply towards the scruffy looking wolf raising her weapon to be shooting at something distant.

Ocellus and Smolder let me go and I flung my rear legs forward to come slamming down on her chest, she be dropping her weapon and be falling backwards with me on top of her. She didn’t be having time to figure out what was happening as I brought both my hooves around into the side of her head knocking her out.

Ocellus and Smolder landed on the roof and looked around. Ocellus quickly changed back to being herself.

“Look for a way inside there has to be one here somewhere up here.” Ocellus quietly whispered.

We be thankful nobody else was being on the roof, another explosion sounded off and all the lights around the facility went out for a few seconds before coming back on.

“Hey guys, over here.” Moving quickly over to Smolder, we found the opening we needed. Ocellus quickly and carefully pried the grating open with her magic and motioned us to climb in. She closed up the grating behind her and I watched them fly down a ladder leading into a room with spinning fans. “This is some classic spy thriller stuff huh Ocellus? Entering through the rooftop air ducts like pegasus spy extraordinaire Brilliant Findings.”

I clambered down the ladder after them.

“Yeah, but I currently don’t want our situation be anything like those adventures. Considering one of the books ended with him losing a kidney, having to regrow half a wing back and two shattered legs. I like the stealth aspects and all the weird gadgets like the funny exploding hoof polish gag, but it’s a bit too detailed for me when it comes to the injuries and violence.” I had no idea what Ocellus was talking about, much less Smolder. “Not to mention a disguised Gangly Grog almost got him too drunk to fight properly, that part was a bit too real and scary… like all of this.”

“Kind of wished we had some of his gadgets or a spy like him.” Still a bit lost here Smolder, I watched her strike a pose. “I’ll have you know that you’ll find my name to be quite brilliant. Brilliant Findings at your service.”

“Hello, magic, changeling, I practically have everything required to be an excellent spy Smolder... though I would prefer a nice and safe teaching job away from doing crazy stuff like this. Maybe I can work at the school of friendship as a linguistics teacher or a therapist.” Looking at some of the nearby large spinning fans, Ocellus turned to Smolder. “Also, this is real life Smolder. Imitating anything in those books without the kind of training Brilliant had is likely to end poorly.”

“Rarity acted like she was a detective from one of her books and that worked out didn’t it?” Smolder was also looking at the fans and the various ways we could from this room.

There was one door leading out, a mop, a bucket and some cleaning supplies nearby. I don’t think we would be doing well to be outing that we were here, so we wouldn’t be touching that door.

“It was clothing that was the main piece of evidence against the guy, of course it worked out.” It seemed like Ocellus was as easily distracted as Smolder was, it was getting way off track now and it be irritating me. “Rarity wasn’t about to let a soiled piece of clothing go unnoticed and she has a really great eye for detail.”

“Shouldn’t we be focusing on other things… like saving Pom from these guys?!” They both be give me weak grins as I nearly be shouting as I glared at the two of them.

“Right, sorry Shanty, let’s get back on task Ocellus. We’ll talk later when we’re done looking around and possibly finding Pom, also when we’re not in the middle of a base full of competent wolves that are better armed than the ones in Gongmen certainly were.” Smolder nodded to the both of us. “I don’t think anybody heard Shanty, the fans in here are kind of loud.”

“Okay… I choose… that one!” Ocellus pointed at a fan and levitated the mop over to herself while looking at the spinning blade.

“Really Ocellus? That will never…” As Smolder was stating it, the wooden shaft of the broom was quickly rammed between a pair of blades and the fan be stopping immediately. It left us plenty of room to squeeze by the blades. “How is that broom not a pile of splinters?”

“Remember hearing about the time the Cutie Mark Crusaders somehow bought an industrial sized hairdryer for pets? I did some light reading from the manual they had for it, which those three never bothered to even look at, I noticed the fan blades here have a similar cut off system in case of accidents.” Ocellus calmly walked between the fan blades with a blasé attitude and we followed despite the blade looking like it was straining against the wood of the mop. “If the pet hairdryer were ever set in reverse and sucked up a pet, it was less likely to end in tragedy because of the safeties installed in it do this exact thing. Starting muffle spell now, nobody will be able to hear us move. But if they notice something shaking or shifting about in the vents… well they can still see and smell us.”

We eventually found some more vents leading further inward until we were above a corridor. As we be going over one of the gratings and looked down, we noticed that the wolves were all running around in a slight panic.

Ocellus looked surprised by something she heard, she motioned us forward until we were in a darker part of the vents and she spelled out ‘POM’ in the air with her magic.

-Escape sequence, a few minutes earlier-

The room rumbled, the guards became distracted.

Pom’s eyes snapped open, she exhaled sharply, fired a bark breaker straight into the ceiling and crouched down.

Her wool rippled, becoming thicker around the upper half of her body as the lower half became thinner.

Within a moment’s notice all the guards immediately aimed their weapons at her and readied to fire.

A second explosion sounded out and the lights went out in the room for a few seconds.

Within ten seconds, there was a round hole in the ceiling and rubble covered the floor.

Pom, standing upside down on the ceiling of the room above, had some sweat sliding up her forehead.

The steam filled room, to her embarrassment, was currently full of showering wolves.

Author's Note

Bow-barka-baa-baa.

72. The ‘hard’ part.

-Elhorn, Eastern Mountain, Exile-

“It seems our friends made it inside, but the soldiers around the base are in high alert… somethings happening in there.” I was here on orders by Cooler to do this to the best of my ability, hopefully the infiltrating team gets their friend and get out while the getting is good. “I’m heading in, keep me covered until I close in with the bases outer wall and don’t follow me.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Nice guys like Hunt and his team don’t come around often enough.

“I’ll be fine, they have their mission and I have mine. Keep watch for any unusual happenings and if you can find a way to contact and extract the team after they recue or find their friend, then do so immediately.” I hefted my backpack loaded with explosive and made my way over to the mech. “Don’t worry about me, you have permission to forget about me and leave me behind if you have to. I’m a hard act to follow, because I’m getting old and new tricks is all anyone ever sees from me. Just watch me go to work and you might learn something!”

We stirred the ants nest, but the ants didn’t want to play. So why not give them something to pay attention to? Instead of whatever has them in a ruckus, they ignore me at their own peril.

The sharp shooting guard on the roof was going to wake up eventually, it’s a sad day when we have to involve kids in our fighting… at least those kids were fairly talented. Watching that bug horse one gave me some ideas about how to wield my disguise magic more efficiently.

Getting the mech standing, it was time for me to pull a one dog assault. We managed to knock out their lights for a few seconds with two rockets… let’s see if I can disable the whole base now with just a mech and a backpack load of explosive devices.

Slowly starting the mech forward, my eyes glanced over the green metal armor on it. These melee mashers have energy reflective armor, powerful short range combat limbs ending in claws, decent running and leaping speed, but these bipedal machines are nothing comparable to how fast a land strider like Dodo’s make can go. At least this thing is freshly tuned and geared up for this.

I generously gave the machine an estimate of ten minutes before it blows up out from under me or it is disabled by enemy fire. I liked those odds while carrying a large amount of explosive on my back and still getting into the base without an accidental premature detonation.

Heh heh, always good times with me eh…

-Inside the eastern mountain facility, BF3, shower room, Pom-

So having drilled my way through the ceiling with both my hooves held above my head to slap against the ceiling, I find myself in a room full of female and male wolves that had been peacefully cleansing themselves until now.

Since this room was being used by male and female wolves, the things going on in here were surprisingly tame. The back scrubbing was about the only thing that I saw as being even remotely promiscuous about this situation, said scrubbing soon stopped as they all started to turn to stare at me dumbly.

At a quick count there were about twenty of them, in close quarters… at least they didn’t have any weapons.

I could deal with this scenario, not the worst turnout that could have happened by any stretch of the imagination. All the wolves were a bit lethargic to react to my presence on the ceiling, probably a bit too relaxed from all the bathing.

I leapt down slammed both my hooves across the face of a female and then bucked a male wolf in the chest knocking him into a wall, I followed it up by spinning into a left hook that downed another. After I had taken about four more of them down in a flash with two powerful hoof swings and a flurry of increasingly strong jabs, they final started reacting to my presence.

If I took care of them quickly enough I can escape and find somewhere to hide and start on finding my way out.

I pair of powerful limbs wrapped around my chest and got my front legs as they lifted me up, the wolf on me said something and another went to grab my hind legs. I pulled in and bucked into their belly knocking the air out of them and then thickened the wool around my head to smash the nose of the wolf behind me, even if they had gotten a whiff they wouldn’t be able to sniff me out with a bloodied nose.

The grip on my loosened, I dropped between the burly arms of the female that had grabbed me from behind and rolled backwards between her legs as she got bowled over to fall onto of the guy that dove for me.

Stomping my right hoof down on his skull, I looked about and leapt for a nearby stall and angled the spraying water into the quickly approaching group of wolves’ faces. Once they were all staggered and sputtering, I inhaled and bark blasted, they all went scattering and flopping all over each other in a painful manner.

They may want to hold me prisoner, but I didn’t want to seriously hurt anyone. I looked about and counted out the bodies of the groaning.

Oh no, I missed one!

I turned and saw a red furred female wolf opening the way out of the room, I dove caught her tail in my teeth and heaved her into the air and onto her back where a bucked her lights out with my rear right leg to forehead.

Okay that’s them dealt with… ears twitching. I could hear a group is heading this way, one that’s likely armed.

Okay smell, what do I do about my rather specific smell?! Wait the female I just knocked out, she made it to the door and opened it… but would that work?

“Sorry about this...” I grimaced and started to roughly rub my body against hers and quickly rolled around on her. I sniffed myself, this should be close enough to mask my scent for a short while.

I jumped to the ceiling and clambered through the doorway upside down into a locker room up into the high ceiling above the lockers, the wool covering my hooves didn’t make a sound as I carefully crawled along the ceiling.

A gaggle of armed wolves stormed in and looked about at the locker room before quickly moving on to the shower room to find the unconscious ones I’d left behind, they sniffed around and seemed confused.

I carefully made my way along the ceiling and crawled out of the doorway they left open behind them into the corridor.

They thankfully didn’t feel the sudden urge to look up for me, I was going to be sticking to the ceiling. Now to pick a random direction and hope for the best.

-Facility F1, vents near the warehouse, Smolder-

“Are those what I think they are Ocellus?” I turned and saw Ocellus whimpering as she rubbed at her head.

“Yes, that’s a lot of mechs and mech pilots.” Ocellus wasn’t feeling too good there must be an inactive evil core nearby.

“Hey, over here.” Whispered Shanty from down the vent, we quickly crawled over to her. “What do you think is being in this room?”

“If that was the warehouse where they keep their mechs, then this must be where they keep their… evil core machine.” Ocellus mumbled and flashed her horn to keep the muffle spell going. We looked down into the huge room that looked like it was part of the basement level below. “I can feel their presence down there somewhere in that darkened room.”

“Are you going to be alright Ocellus, you’re looking a little pale.” After I said that, Shanty came back over to us and hugged her. I joined in and Ocellus sighed.

“Thank you, both of you.” Ocellus mumbled despite grunting and rubbing at her head. “I’ll be fine, but I think they might know that we’re here and can’t do anything about us without being activated.”

“Well let’s just hope they stay inactive, so do we keep going deeper or do we escape and try to warn everyone that...” A loud explosion happened nearby and I was immediately crawling back towards the warehouse to see what was going on, a flash had come with that explosion and I wanted to see what was going on. “Whoa, isn’t that the Exile guy from the Cooler Faction that joined up with Hunt’s team?”

Exile had burst into the warehouse and was quickly wrecking machines as pilots scrambled to get into them.

“Should we be helping him?” Shanty asked.

“From what we’re seeing, it doesn’t look like he needs the help.” I wondered what it would be like to drive one of those mechs, Exile was controlling his machine as if it were a part of himself. That guy was really going to town and wrecking the pilots that did manage to get into their machines to start fighting back, also his machine was taking a lot of fire from behind and the sides as he stormed through the large warehouse causing a large amount of destruction with his machines seemingly flailing limbs. “Whatever he’s doing, I don’t think it’s a good idea to get into the middle of that.”

“His machine be looking pretty bad.” Shanty moved forward and I grabbed the back of her neck. “But…”

“He’s making a distraction Shanty, also he’s… excited…? Huh, he seems to be having fun for someone who’s in a machine that’s about to go up in flames.” I’m all for sticking to the vents Ocellus, mostly for your sake than any of ours.

“Whoa, who’s that guy?” I saw a yellow dog wearing red and black armor jet into the warehouse.

“That has to be Commander Carbuncle… hold on yes… they are talking about seeing who will get the last laugh in this… game? What game is he talking about?” As Ocellus asked this a red oval erupted from one of the lower holes in the flying dog’s armor and he kicked it at the machine Exile was in control of. “Of dogs and cats? Oh, like cats and mice except with two predators, I get it!”

There was a loud tinkling sound following the kick and Exile stumbled the machine to the side and a large explosion took out a mech pilot sneaking up behind him. He grinned and said something while holding up a single digit with his right paw at Carbuncle.

“Yeah, not going to repeat what he just said, but I’ll paraphrase by stating that Exile just insulted him.” We watched as Carbuncle gave off a maniacal laughter and started firing his weapon, the wide spray of projectiles was blocked by the machine bringing up its arms and moving backwards. The husky didn’t look like he was scared at all by getting into a fight with the guy that captured Pom. “We’re here for Pom and he was said to be here to deal with the base. He’s probably causing as much as a distraction as Pom is with having escaped. We need to keep quiet, but we also need to be on the lookout for her if she makes it up here. We don’t want to go deeper in and miss her.”

“Then what are you suggesting we do Ozzy?” Tilting my head at her she looked to the ceiling of the vent.

“We spread out through the vents and wait for Pom to show up, if one of us sees her we can alert the others.” Ocellus pointed up and down the vents with her left hoof. “We’ve only seen one staircase, an elevator and a possibly third entrance into the dark arena with… the evil cores I can feel being in there given it takes up two floors of space this floor and the floor below.”

“Right, I’ll watch the elevator then. Shanty stairs or arena?” I sent Shanty a glance and then tilted my head towards Ocellus.

“I’ll be taking the arena. The stairs are the furthest away in case…” She looked at Ocellus with a worried gaze.

“I’ll be fine… they aren’t active… yet.” Ocellus shook her head and groaned while rubbing her hooves in a tiny circle over her brows. “Let’s just go with that then, yell if either of you see something. If the evil cores become active, then we’ll likely know for certain where Pom is. Let’s move into positions… I wish Exile luck with whatever he’s doing, he helped us get the stuff we needed for a fair trade and he sounds like a generally nice guy that Colleen knew.”

We crawled away from the warehouse and pitched battle Exile had going with Carbuncle, that dude was fast and deadly with the numerous explosives his armor spat out. Not mention all the other wolves were slowly wearing down the machine that Exile was driving, the same one Ligstrun put a lot of his effort into fixing up.

“I not be knowing him too well, but I be wishing him luck too… I would not be surviving what he is doing in there.” We eventually made it back to the intersection and Shanty stopped to watch the arena.

Ocellus kept crawling and I stopped to watch the elevator as she moved further down to see the stairs. We were able to see each other, but we were at least one hundred feet or more apart, most of the ways up were notably at the back of the building.

I waved to Shanty in thanks and she waved back, now we just had to wait to see where Pom comes up at, if she does at all.

If she doesn’t we’d have to go deeper.

-Facility BF2, armory, Pom-

Lots of weapons, couldn’t use them without the required digits unless I was willing to manipulate my wool to have some. I would be better off picking up some explosives, provided I could find them and figure out how to use them.

This whole place was almost like a maze, but I had found my way up a floor by sniffing various paths that had heavier scents, the more treaded paths led me up a staircase that only went up one floor. They certainly built this place to be hard to escape or invade, lots of holdout spots and places to use disguise magic in to look like a part of the walls in alcoves specifically meant for it.

I knew where the wolves were by sight of something being out of place or the walls smelling odd.

Clambering down to the floor, I started searching around for anything useful while keeping my ears out for any incoming movement.

Most of the weapons were locked up. I could break them out, but the effort wasn’t worth it.

As I started setting up the destruction of the room after finding a box loaded with rocket ammunition, I packed up of four of these rockets for my personal use and by sticking them to my belly. Sticking them on my back would be exposing them to projectile fire and I didn’t want to be blown up, I started lining the armory with rockets and looked around for a good way to set them all off.

I heard something going up in a loud explosion above me, whatever is going on I had better move quickly. I took one last rocket and looked around the armory. I heard a shout and reflexively flung the rocket with all my strength into the room, turned and bolted out the door between the wolf’s legs as he turned to try and fire his weapon at me.

From the sudden explosion behind me, he and several other wolves were knocked into the nearby walls as the armory was lit on fire. I started galloping away and sniffing the air before the smoke distracted me from finding a way up and out.

I quickly clambered up onto the ceiling and stayed still for a second or two as a number of wolves turned onto the path from the nearby four way intersection and ran by me in a panic. I carefully crawled towards the intersection and looked around.

To my right an elevator? No, they would obviously have control of it and I don’t think I can handle my burgeoning claustrophobia at the moment by getting in one.

I made my way forward to the next intersection as the corridor behind me was beginning filling with smoke.

I eventually picked up a smell headed in the direction of heavy traffic and clambered up the sloped metal ceiling up to the next floor by staircase where I ran into another intersection, I headed straight following the smell of heavy traffic.

When I came to another intersection, I stayed still again as several wolves passed by beneath me and the heavy traffic smell was everywhere and I couldn’t figure a way out from here. The only other ways were right, which smelled heavily of death, and straight ahead… fresh air and a path less traveled? Why didn’t many wolves go this way? It smelled like it led outside. To my left the corridor was guarded heavily by wolves.

Deciding to test my luck and crawled straight ahead, the corridor ended in a pair of metal doors. Crawling down to the floor, I detached a rocket from my wool and placed it at the center of the doors on the floor and started moving backwards while making sure no wolves were sneaking up on me from the walls.

I hefted a second rocket and looked at the rocket sitting at the base of the doors.

-F1 and BF1, vents above the arena, Shanty-

“Guys…” I whimpered, Exile be being blown up. “Exile… he… the machine be exploding and…”

“It’s okay Shanty.” Ocellus came down the vent to me immediately with Smolder following. “We’re going to be fine… also Exile isn’t dead. I can still feel him from here.”

“He… he’s alive? I didn’t see him though!” I almost be shouting as Ocellus lit her horn and we all glowed. “Do you think anyone be hearing that?”

“Exile can apparently do disguise magic Shanty, he’s probably hiding among the rubble in the destruction of his machine. Wait a moment is that…” It was stated with such a certainty by Ocellus, that I believed her and sighed with relief. An explosion happened nearby and we all moved to look into the arena. “I can feel Pom down there, I’d recognize that level of anxiety anywhere also… evil… core… I think… becoming… aghhh…”

“Active.” Smolder stated as she be picking up Ocellus and hugging her tightly as she clutched at her head in agony. “Shanty get down there!”

“Don’t need to be telling me twice!” I slashed my hooves at the grating, not caring about whether they found the damage or not and clambered out onto the ceiling just in time for blinding lights to fill the room.

-Carbuncle, mech warehouse and repair, minutes earlier-

I didn’t see a body… the bastard got away when his machine exploded. I’ll ensure he meets a quick demise when I find him.

“Sir, there’s a fire in the armory, likely the prisoners doing and we still can’t find them!” Sighing loudly at my grunt telling me of problems, I turned to him standing in salute and whimpering slightly.

“Then put it out you imbeciles, cover all exits to the base, shut down the elevator and be visible around the stairways leading up from the basement floor one. We’re going to coral my prize right towards my recovery project.” I started to make my way towards the observation room for the arena, if my prize is as smart as I think she is… she’s going to be a bit chewed up soon enough. I decided to shoot one last order. “Also be on the lookout for Husker Exile, he must not be allowed to disable this base! Shoot him at your first opportunity, do not even let him talk or do anything if you spot him!”

“Of course sir!” I left the wolf too their duty of guarding the warehouse.

-Exile, a few seconds later-

Checking my surroundings as my fur changed back to its original color, my uniform changed to what I was wearing before and my backpack full of explosives reappeared. The magic ended and I finally dropped my salute, I carefully started backing up towards a doorway further in while the various wolves of the Wulfgar Faction were watching the entrances to the warehouse.

While I still couldn’t move while using disguise magic, that didn’t mean I couldn’t have a nice talk with Commander Carbuncle. Word spread fast while we were fighting and I got one guy after my machine went up like fireworks, he was to report that to Carbuncle and my loud infiltration worked like a charm.

So the escapee has damaged the armory and was causing chaos. Good enough for me to slip right on through under Carbuncle’s nose while he’s distracted.

Heh heh heh… there’s plenty of reasons why Cooler trusts me with these kind of solo operations. Who needs an army when just one person in the wrong place can bring down their whole parts manufacturing factory yeah?

I’m getting older, but I’ve always got new tricks!

-Arena entrance, Pom-

I slowly moved forward into the darkness and saw four dark red eyes lit up… oh no… it couldn’t be! They couldn’t have fixed it already!

That’s when the large room lit up, the dirt flooring, a few patches of grass and... not what I thought when I thought I’d be seeing that metal orthros again.

I heard a voice and looked at where it was coming from, it was him! He was inside a lit room high up and looking down on me, he was grinning and stated something.

The metallic orthros had been split in half, now those halves had been repaired and were two separate large mechanical wolf entities. Each had a single wing of large rockets and the insides of their halved tails also bore dangerous jagged edges.

The repaired portions of their bodies were noticeably a strange metallic blue, the metal was not made of the same material as the rest of them. I doubted the new legs were made of metal that was any weaker than what they could previously handle.

They both stomped forward at me and roared. I turned to run only for a pair of heavy metal doors to slam shut over the entrance I had made. I looked around the room and saw any other possible entrances being covered by similar heavy metal doors.

I could vaguely see that Yellow Dog, he simply smirked while crossing his arms and stared down at me.

“Pom, don’t worry I am being here to help!” That you were here Shanty made me worry all the more as you came sliding down the wall to take up a position next to me.

“Shanty… do you realize what you just got yourself into?!” I asked slowly with wide eyes.

“No, but I can’t be getting out now anyway.” Shanty pointed towards the shutters that had closed over the ceiling vents. “Smolder and Ocellus be up there.”

At least I had two rockets on me, seriously doubted they’d actually do much to these two machines.

-Boss Battle: Orthros Omega Twins, Resurrected Terrible Twosome!-

"Shanty, we can't attack them directly..." It just became my top priority to keep Shanty alive through this fight somehow.

Author's Note

There's a small problem with the escape plans... it's two large mechanical wolves against two squishy barnyard people.

73. Dogged Dodging.

Author's Note

Music to find- Rocket Race by Waterflame. Used in several games, notably Strike Force Heroes.

73. Dogged Dodging.

-Elhorn, Eastern Mountains Wulfgar Faction Facility, Evil Core Containment Arena, Shanty-

“Why not?” I asked as Pom be putting a hoof in front of me as the two wolf like machine’s started to slowly approach us and spread out to either side.

“Too well armored, unless you can cut through the metal these things are made of. That’s highly unlikely.” She kept herself between me and them while gulping and frowning, her voice be sounded slightly hoarse. “I can maybe destroy one, but I would need to get in close to weaken it so our attacks will have an effect on it and it will take time before I can do it again.”

“What if we be making them attack each other?” I received a glance from Pom and she nodded.

“That could work, but the issue is actually getting them to collide with one another in a way to do enough damage.” Pom eyes darted between the two machines as she stayed protectively in front of me. “Try to stick close and pay attention to what both of them are doing… and if we can get them close enough to each other, then maybe I can hit them both with the weakening attack I can do. I can’t use it too often, but I can use it in a minute or so. Used it to escape, so I need a little time before I can use it again.”

Pom started moving forward and I stayed by her side and watching as the mechanical growling machines on both sides of us leaned forward. Pom suddenly darted forward and I moved at the pace she set as both the machines landed behind us, but didn’t collide.

“Watch the tails, their mouths fire beams of energy and don’t be anywhere near the rockets if you can help it!” Taking all of Pom’s warnings to heart, she be knowing what she is talking about. We galloped through the center of the arena with the two machines chasing us. “And do what you have to do to stay alive until we can deal with them or find a way out Shanty!”

Pom split off from me drawing one of them away and I kept going forward towards the wall, they both be faster than us on the ground.

The machine behind me leapt as I reached the wall and I darted straight up the wall. In its confusion it slammed face first into the wall and shook the whole room, it lunged its head upwards and snapped its teeth at my rear hooves.

They didn’t be as maneuverable or could be turning very fast though.

I turned around and backed up the wall avoiding its snapping jaws and jumped off onto its back, its head extended upwards and rotated one hundred and eighty degrees to look straight at me with a glare.

It opened its mouth and… right beams of energy from the mouth, Pom did be warning me about that!

I leapt off to the left side of it and a beam soon erupted from its mouth, I quickly moved away from it and it not be moving while firing the beam.

So it needed to stay in place while firing it? That be nice to know. The opposite wall be turning red hot, but it not be melting, I still would not want to be hit by that.

“Is that the best you can do, I bet your mother was a can opener!” I shouted making it turn its head around as it reoriented its body towards me and roared angrily. It lunged and tried to slam its front right paw down on me.

I rolled forward and underneath the machine’s claws. Moving forward and reaching up, I be clamping my front hooves onto its underside followed by my rear hooves to cling to its belly.

It looked around and turned in place, whining curiously and looking about.

I can feel Dodo in the back of my head, he be worried about my current situation and gave me the feeling that he was coming as quickly as he could. I be sending him thought about me being fine, I was currently with Pom after all.

The wolf be looking underneath itself and growling, I give it a weak grin and a slight giggle.

It reared up onto its hind legs and fell forward. I dove out from under it as it belly flopped against the floor. The shockwave sent me rolling along the ground until I stopped on my back.

I could see Pom jumping off the wall only to get bloodlessly knocked higher into the air by the sweep of the other metal monsters tail slamming into her. She was doing mostly alright as she stuck the landing afterward.

Dragging my attention back to the one after me, I quickly rolled onto my hooves and lashed out my left hoof to deflect its sharp edged tail slashing down for me. I went skidding backwards from the impact, but I be successfully avoided being slashed. Now I be knowing why Pom is telling me we shouldn’t attack them, that be hurting my leg even if it didn’t damage my hoof.

I quickly dived to the side to avoid being trampled by the machine, as I did this it skidding into a turning towards me and snapped at me with its head. I started running towards where Pom was avoiding hers with rapid hops and sideways movements.

It not be smart of me to even think of looking back, especially when it be giving chase. I heard something and glanced back and went into a skid flattening my body and side as low to the ground as I could, a large rocket passed over my body and I could feel the heat from the jets at the back end of it as it made me tumbled off to the side.

Getting my hooves under me and managing to gain control of my stride, I continued galloping towards Pom and the other machine.

Pom looked towards us, her eyes went wide and she hastily sprung backwards while covered her face with her legs, her machine lunged at her and was caught in the side by the large rocket in the air and got blasted sideways into the still hot wall.

It be getting up within seconds of the explosion, there was barely even being the tiniest hints of a scratch on it. These things really are that tough to damage!

I continued running straight for a terrified looking Pom and jerked my head slightly upwards, she gained some focus nodded and started galloping towards me tilting her head downwards.

We be making a plan silently and it will be working, but how well? The machine that was targeting started giving chase, a glance showed the one behind me was going to be on me in a second or two.

As we got close to one another I leapt with my hooves held forward for Pom, her left flank hit the floor sliding as her front hooves grabbed onto mine and she flung them upwards.

Pom be forcing me into a wild windmill, I kicked my rear legs together to speed up my rotation and landed on the back of the machine as it was in mid-air.

I ran along its spine and leapt for its tail as it slammed into the other machine, I grabbed onto the tail that whipped about as the two machine’s slammed into the floor. I let go of the tail and went flying right onto the wall with all four hooves.

I looked to see that Pom had managed to slide underneath the other one I turned and waved to her, she was breathing heavily and waved back before pointing frantically at the machines.

The one that was after her suddenly turned and fired a large rocket, I started running along the wall and the rocket be exploding behind me almost knocking me off the wall.

As the machine that had been chasing Pom fire another rocket at me, I glanced at the other machine.

It be charging and firing a beam at the wall a fair distance away.

Neither Pom nor I were anywhere near there. Why was it doing that?

I be stumbling and nearly losing my grip of the wall as the next rocket struck below me, I started to run fast as the machine fired rocket after rocket behind and below me me. The explosions be hurting my ears and this be rattling me, I think I know what the other one be doing now.

I was running along the wall towards an entire vertical section that was growing white hot to the touch and the air was getting hotter around as the beam continued to focus on the wall, I can’t turn around or go down or else without being blasted.

Three more large rockets impacted the wall behind me as I kept running, doing moderate amounts of damage to it.

Pom please do something soon!

I was almost to the section of the wall that would burn my hooves off if I touched it, when an indistinct white blur thankfully intercepted me.

Having gone straight through an explosion Pom grabbed me with her right leg as she passed by.

She ran up the wall while carrying me, avoiding another powerful rocket explosion and then kicked off while holding onto me tightly. There was a grim look on her face as she stared down the two machines as we fell, the rocket firing one was running towards where we were falling with its mouth wide open and the one firing the beam slowly stopped.

The wolf machine leapt up and tried to snap us out of the air and Pom’s body seemed to inflate as we launched upwards for a few seconds. Pom shoved me onto her back as she landed on the machines back with her three hooves and ran forward a few steps while glancing back at the head of the machine.

The machine turned its head towards us and opened its mouth to begin charging.

When it fired, Pom leapt in the opposite direction and whipped me around to throw me towards the center of the room. I rolled on the ground and started running as rockets rained down first upon Pom and then me.

I be seeing that Pom be getting clear of the rocket sent her way only to trip and flop onto her back.

The machine that fired the laser turned towards me as the other one charged forward and tried to plant its right paw on Pom, she rolled to the side paw and was up and moving in a panic stricken manner, I had to look away to start running from the one charging straight for me.

As the machine behind me prepared to lunge by crouching down and skidding along the dirt, I skid to a total stop and waited as it shot overhead. It turned its head to the left and whipped its tail at me, I slapped at it with my hoof and then grappled onto it with my left hoof.

It flicked its tail back and forth trying to throw me off, I release my hold on its tail and was launched back towards the center of the room again where I twisted into a roll to bleed off my momentum safely.

I turned to see Pom join me in the center looking at the machine that had been chasing her stop and backed up towards the wall while opening its mouth for a beam attack.

What was it… danger, the answer was always danger when evil cores did something odd! I looked to the other one that had been chasing me, it was also opening its mouth.

I quickly grabbed Pom’s hoof and ran off to the side wondering why they would be aiming at each other, I think the answer would be being pretty bad.

Two beams ripped from their mouths and met at the center of the arena where we were a second ago, a ball of energy started growing behind us and we quickened our pace only for Pom to yelp and started getting dragged backwards towards the growing sun in the room.

I lunged back and grabbed her right hoof with my left and plant my right against the floor to stop her from sliding into that thing. This be straining all my muscles quite a bit.

I heaved her forward and away from the growing orb of death that was starting to suck in the surrounding dirt. She clamped onto the floor and gave me a tug, I release my grip on the floor and she swung me forward.

I clamped my rear hooves and pivoted her forward again, only to find myself stumbling as we were both suddenly free of the suction field, but the ball of energy still be growing ever bigger.

Pom lifted me up onto her back, I quickly got my hooves around her neck as she inhaled deeply. Was she going to use that Dancing Flame thing with me on her?!

The next thing I be knowing the world is a blur as several pillars of energy randomly erupted from the orb all over the arena. Some of them even almost hit us and I was feeling both dizzy and sick from how fast Pom was moving us around up, down, left, right and zigzagging further up the wall towards the ceiling.

The searing heat from the beams were even worse and almost unbearable then the sudden changes in direction, when we finally stopped we were on the ceiling and there were hundreds of scorch marks around the room.

The small sun the two machines were creating was now randomly spraying energy all over the room in bursts, Pom clambered up the wall breathing heavily with a wide eyed look in her eyes as she ran up along the ceiling and then exhaled sharply to leap to the left as a pillar of raw energy scorched the wall next to us.

Pom looked to me gasping for air and was sweating badly, I looked to her and a whimper I didn’t mean to be making escaped my lips. She grimaced and her eyes darted to the beams of energy coming out the sphere of death, I held onto her tighter and shivered.

We didn’t have to dodge another one as the sun slowly shrunk and dissipated.

The two machines stopped firing their beams to look up to us and each raised a wing with a large rocket on each prepping to be fired.

Pom shook me to gain my attention, she pulled out a small rocket motioned at it going into her mouth while inhaling and then clutched it between her teeth sideways while tilted her head towards the two mangy mutts on the ground. She then be pulling out another one from her belly.

Nodding and opening my mouth, Pom put it between my teeth and I clamped down on the rocket. She gave me a worried glance and then pushed us both off the ceiling. We fell down as two rockets arced up and exploded.

Pom inflated the fluff at the top of her head and we bobbed for a second before setting hoof on the floor, she let me off her back and we both glared at the machines.

We can’t be letting them cool down to do whatever that was again!

Even if it means we be carrying explosives in our mouths to toss into theirs when they charge up.

Hey now, if they always be doing that thing when we get on their backs…

I looked to Pom and motioned to my mouth and patted my back with my right hoof, she nodded in understanding.

If they cool down enough to charge up a beam, what would happen if all that energy be exploding in their heads?

I looked to the machine with the right wing and started running towards it as it ran towards me, it seemed confused as the other one likely was when Pom started heading right for it.

I stopped and hopped over a swipe of its right paw and lunged forward to clamp onto its chin, its glowing red eyes glared down towards me.

It tried to slam its chin into the ground, I heaved myself upwards to grab the top of the nose as it did so. It tried to bite me with its mouth.

I flexed my rear half upwards almost being bitten in half, I did this until I somersaulted forward to be standing on its nose. I glared right back at it as it slapped its left blue claws down on its nose where I was.

Leaping straight up, I landed on its menacing machine’s left paw. Its right paw swiped around along its nose, I crouched down and jumped over the paw and my front hooves narrowly managed to cling to the outer edge of its left ear to use my momentum to swing myself around and onto its back.

Its head lifted up and rotated to stare at me, I just stood there smirking at it and that made it growl.

I glanced in the direction of the other machine with the left wing as it spun in circles and bucked wildly trying to throw Pom off of it. My machine started to do the same and held fast, I was getting really drained from all of this clinging.

The machine quickly raised up onto its hind legs and fell backwards, I quickly crawled around to its belly as it slammed to the ground back first.

It brought both its front paws down trying to crush me. I moved towards the rear legs that tried to kicked me, but couldn’t dislodge or reach me as I moved back towards the front.

The machine rolled over forcing me to quickly clamber along its body back onto its back, where its head rotated once more and its mouth opened to start building up energy.

I quickly spat the rocket Pom gave me into my right hoof and hurled it into the glowing mouth, I be crouching down and covering my head with one hoof and clinging as hard as I could with my others.

The explosion rocked the entire machine making it stumbled into the center of the arena and fall down with a smoking mouth, the only damage that seemed to do was destroying all its teeth and hopefully its ability to fire beams.

The machine was rocked as the other one slammed into, Pom quickly uncurled from being a mass of white rubbery flan and leapt off of the machine wolf she was on.

Pom motioned for me to do the same as she ran around to being in front of both of them, I quickly hopped off and ran behind her as she inhaled.

What followed was her unleashed a cylinder of raw force from her mouth to the sound of a prolonged bark that ended in a yip.

When that yip sounded the armor ripped, rippled, crunched and sundered across both machines and they both writhed in agony on the floor.

A second later all the crumpled rockets in both their wings blew up in a series of explosions that Pom be shielding me from by covering me with her body.

Pom whined a bit and it was kind of hard to hear over the noise, I be hoping to not lose my hearing from all this and wish to survive. After the smoke cleared, Pom pulled away from me clutching at her throat with tears in her eyes, she even started coughed a bit.

We could see that the two wolf machines were still standing and they be looking very angry now, also badly damaged too by whatever Pom just did. I be liking the new move, but it being pretty harmful to Pom’s health.

They both stood up, moved away from each other and towards us growling. No longer having rockets on their still somewhat intact wings and no beams to fire from their mouths… we almost be evening the playing field between us to close range.

Then the Yellow Dog, Can’t Lander Car Tinkle spoke up from his booth above us.

-Carbuncle-

“So that’s what caused all that metal fatigue throughout the center of Orthros Omega’s body that led to it splitting in two. My prize is far more dangerous than I thought… now I really want her back in her cell, so delectably powerful!” The two were impressive to watch, but my Orthros Omega wasn’t done yet. “Orthros Omega kill the goat and capture my prize alive!”

-Shanty-

Whatever he be saying, that not be sounding too good. Pom stopped clutching her throat and stared down the two wolves as she took to standing in front of me and dragging a hoof on the ground.

She glanced at me, Cow Kenpo now, so use strong attacks?

She did just be ruining their armor. I stood up and joined her dragging my hoof along the ground and stared down the machines.

They be charging for us and I be charging for the one with the deformed left wing and Pom was heading for towards the right one.

I leapt up and brought my hooves around into a flying hammer blow that sent bits of metal flying off the machine’s nose and I managed to stagger it.

Only to be lightly slashed up my right thigh by its tail, I grunt as it the tail whipped around to come at me from my left. I moved into the swing and lashed my right hoof upwards cutting off a large portion of its jagged tail in an arcing flash.

Hopping back twice, I charged forward and started doing flips into a cartwheel and then a heaving hoof spring and…

“Cutlass!” I launched a powerful double hoof axe kick to its forehead shattering the armor around its head, I kicked off and saw that I revealed its sparking unarmored ugly face underneath.

It swiped its left paw at me and my vision went red with pain as I bounced off the ground twice. Pom was by my side in a second and helped me sit up and then looked fearful as the two machines approached.

The second one was missing armor along its legs and belly, the damage looked to have been caused by… claws?

They be approaching us and looking at me hungrily, Pom stood in front of them defiantly.

-Carbuncle-

“Separate them and kill the useless waste of space and disable my prize.” As soon as I said this, the entire room was filled with a bright pink flash as something pulsed from above. Both my machines froze with their backs to me, the two on the floor looked at the machines with a curious glances and then they glanced at each other. What were they suddenly smiling about?! “What are you waiting for, I order you to complete your objectives!”

Slowly the two machines turned around to face me, the color in their eyes were a bright cyan blue.

“Sorry, but I don’t think there’s any evil left in your machines to follow those orders.” Orthros Right started charging towards the gate leading to the warehouse.

“How!?” I didn’t even know such a thing was even possible.

-Shanty-

“Ugh... headache… Smolder keep pumping me with love and carry my body to the vents above the warehouse and burn us through once... rampaging...” The other wolf machine stated in Ocellus’s voice while looking to us before charging for the door and started to shred it alongside the other wolf machine that had already physically torn halfway through to the warehouse. “P-P-Pom, Sh-sh-anty, stay b-behind the machines! Ugh... I don’t honestly know how long I can... keep this up… hurry.”

74. Outbound Orthcellus.

-Equus, Ponyville, Savor Fare Café, Fizzlepop Berrytwist-

“These dates are always wonderful Jade and I might have something you can do that would really annoy Twilight.” My kitty perked up from the three cheese vegetable lasagna she was devouring, with some kind of prayer to the orange cat of gluttony thrown in before doing so. “Maybe everyone if you’re good enough to do it.”

“How annoyed are we talking here Fizzy?” The maniacal glint in her eyes was something I was never going to be tired of for the rest of my life. “Also does little Silvers want some lasagna too?”

Our giggling chimera child was babbling happily at Jade as the dragon headed tail snapped the lasagna off of Jade’s fork, taking half the fork with it in the process.

Jade just stared at the twisted bit of metal for a second.

Maries, our significant chimera companion and herds main bread winner, sighed loftily at the sight. Likely remembering the first time Maria, the cottage cheese devouring goat head, ate a tin can.

“Good thing, we have the bits to pay for that.” Jade muttered in dull surprise, before she went back to being perky while giving me big adorable eyes and tossing the rest of the fork to our daughter’s dragon headed tail. “So what can I do for my cuddly Fizzy and… why are we still taking on that Tiny Ewe as a pet again?”

Our herd was one of the weirdest things ever seen in Ponyville when we came to visit, this included the aforementioned Tiny Ewe sharing a salad with Snickers the Turtle Dove.

Ponyville was quickly gaining ground when it came to accepting new and bizarre things that weren’t threatening. The populace was less jumpy around zebras at the very least and more open to visitors and immigrants, immigrants like Gabriella ‘Gabby’ Gums the griffon wanting to move in or have a home here after a long courier flight between here and Griffostone.

Even if acceptance was becoming a thing, a few ponies were still a bit iffy around the Skeletal Noria the Viking skeleton pony or other spooky things like her… except on Nightmare Night.

“One Ewelissa is family now, two she has moxie and knows when to slap a horrible trouble causing beautiful idiot when prompted, three you’re the one that got her in the first place, four Silvers loves her and finally… she’s my familiar…” I muttered that last part out and received a quite humorous look and snort from our favorite rogue. “Shut up Jaded, Tiny Ewes do not represent wild herd deviancies as familiars!”

“We both married a chimera and snuggled a wonderful child out of them that is biologically all five of us mashed together, I’m already expecting hell from her when she starts schooling.” Jaded said flatly as she continued to shovel the cheesy goodness into her mouth with a fresh fork brought by the waiter, she slowly dragged her tongue around at me tantalizingly wiping up her sauce covered lips. Stupid sexy kitty, which I happily married. “So… what would annoy absolutely everyone? You wouldn’t bring it up if you didn’t want the family to do something sanity challenging… again… this week… for the eighth… no wait… ninth time since Jackie caused that giant evil quesadilla to blow up by singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star loudly and horrible off key!”

“Yeah, Twilight’s phobia definitely made the news that day… oh right, it has been stated to be physically impossible for Changelings and Lambkin kind to interact as friends or in a normal fashion, lots of bad blood there. It’s driving ‘Princess’ Twilight up the wall trying to get them to do more than act through intermediaries and she’s making everyone else nuts by trying to get help with it.” My hope was that this would prove a huge distraction that will get Jade off my back about official royal guard business with finding a way to get the lost back home. Things were going well on that front and we didn’t need Jade interrupting our operations any further. “Your mission, is to do what Twilight can’t and make them be friends with each other… organically.”

“Hm… fun.” I saw the thoughtful look on Jaded’s face and a slowly building evil grin. “I need a camera to capture the look on Twilight's face if I can actually manage this… it’s actually a pretty tall order, even for someone as insane as I clinically am. My therapist says I need to do more sane things, but I don’t think she quite gets what we’re about. ‘Normal’ is actually an impossible feat of epic proportions for our family, as if we can ever truly achieve mundanity for more than a solid week. I sometimes want to do mundane stuff, but… well, you know… you at least had me up until you said the word ‘organically’, but I’ll still try to do it that way.”

Wonder what kind of havoc that would cause internationally.

Wait…

“No going near Saddle Arabia… or involving it either! No messing with Saddle Arabia for this Jaded ‘Freaking’ La Perm or I won’t cuddle you for a month!” That it needed to be said by me and hearing Jade whine pitiably in response, I think I just saved a lot of people in that region from several weeks’ worth of pure misery via ‘The Spiteful Mirage’.

Maries and Silvers laughed at the hangdog and teary eyed expression Jade was giving me.

“H-Whipped!” Marie the snake head stated jovially.

-Elhorn, Eastern Mountains Facility, Badly damaged mech warehouse, the mook horror show, currently starring Soldier 1-

I wondered how this day could possibly get any worse.

“Soldier A, the unsung hero of~… did someone hear that?” Something crunched, we were still cleaning up the mess and losing three fourths of our mech force to a single person from the Cooler Faction.

We were all wary when we couldn’t find a body that Commander Carbuncle was asking for and that meant that the elite was possibly still in the base. That was a scary thought, but how much worse could things truly get? I’m sure we’d capture the elite soon enough, he was just one guy and couldn’t possibly take every last one of us all out by himself.

We were said to be housing a captive that was nice to look at and the news was that there was just something about her that made everyone want to greedily keep her for themselves. Maybe the Cooler Faction Elite was here to rescue her and there wasn’t going to be some big assault like Carbuncle had planned for?

“Yeah, it’s coming from the ramp down to the evil core containment are…” Grunt B didn’t finish his statement.

The doors ripped opened down the ramp at the back of the warehouse and we could see one of the two halves of Orthros Omega quickly ripping through the door. Something was off about it.

“Do you think the evil cores have turned on us?” I asked blankly as I watched the effort the machines were going through to get out of containment.

“What would make you think that?” Grunt B stated, but I didn’t get a chance to answer when it and the second half of the Orthros Omega tour through the blast proof doors entirely.

To be fair to the makers of said doors, they weren’t ‘Evil Core proof’ doors, but the machines certainly didn’t feel like ‘pure evil’ anymore.

The machines galloped up the ramped and stopped to stare at all of my frozen comrades and me, they looked damaged… almost zombified with pieces of armor falling off of them. Wasn’t the armor those things were made of said to be highly rocket resistant? Also their eyes were blue.

“Uh… it’s not giving off a sense of malice like it wants to kill us all violently and maybe continue on to violate our corpses?” I finally answered as the left one surged forward and swiped a paw to send several of our people flying in all directions painfully, their weapons doing nothing to stop it from happening.

“Then why are they attacking us?” Grunt B asked.

“Maybe they actually aren’t trying to kill us, but want to get us out of the way?” I said before I was slapped through the air and blacked out upon slamming head first into the nearest wall.

-Grunt B-

“That still doesn’t mean that they won’t hurt…” I had ducked the second paw swipe, unfortunately I didn’t dodge the other paw swinging up and launching me into the ceiling.

-Mook Z-

“Someone help us, the evil cores have turned good!” A statement I, Mook Z, never thought I would have to say.

The only difference was that I wasn’t get the imminent sense of dread, the bloodlust or the feeling that they wanted to tear my entrails out in a painfully graphic manner. At best they were just knocking people out with as minimal force as two badly battered giant metal wolves could manage.

My name is Mookler Zedidiah and I knew for a fact that we were all quite boned when the last fourth of our mechs were destroyed swiftly by the two machines that were now set on making us regret the existence of evil cores… or good cores… or whatever was going on!

I was smacked in the face by a swinging metal nose and a shelf fell on top of me.

-Minion D-9341-

I watched in horror as it all played out, the two machines were slowly beating the stuffing out of everyone in the warehouse and were destroying everything.

There was nothing we could do. At least they weren’t giving off the usual sense of bloodlust, so they weren’t trying to kill us at least.

Even if their outer layer of armor was mostly off and they had no weapons, our weapons weren’t doing anything to slow them down. Also we didn’t have any rocket tubes prepped for this exact occasion, mostly because we never thought it would happen as Commander Carbuncle had good control over Orthros Omega.

Carbuncle did feed live people to them, mostly our enemies and sometimes our biggest failures.

One would think we had enough mechs to prevent problems like this, but most of those were destroyed by that Cooler Faction guy who had an insane expertise at controlling mechs to the point that it required Commander Carbuncle to come in take care of him personally.

Wait… we didn’t have a body so that Cooler Elite was still around…

I quivered as one of the machines turned to stare at me.

“Assuming direct control…” The wolf stated as its blue eyes flared.

I threw down my rifle and ran towards the exit and out into the snow and away from the base…

“Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope-” I hear southern Devotindos is nice this time of year, maybe I can even become a dance instructor like I always wanted! Maybe the pigs won’t mind me? Pigs smelled somewhat nice when they sun tanned on the beaches.

Yeah, warm weather is far better than being here!

-Orthcellus Right-

“Why did I say that and in such a manner?” Well that seemed like a rather sane reaction to a giant mechanical pile of moving wolf shaped metal saying something weird or creepy.

One that no longer had any of its weapons, tails aside, thanks to Shanty and Pom. These machines really didn’t need them to be threats, they were still moving as if they weren’t heavily damaged.

-Orthcellus Left-

I rushed out into the snow to start assaulting the base defenses with the machine’s paws, I quickly opened a hole in the southwestern wall by plowing my body straight through it.

Being in two places at once was a headache, also this felt weird. At least I know what it felt like to be Dodo now… except he wasn’t as big a problem as these two machines were.

Running towards the nearest watch tower I slapped it down with my left paw and caught the falling Yellow Dog soldier in my right and slid him onto the ground.

I glared down at him, this made him run off cowering leaving a trail of yellow snow behind.

-Orthcellus Right-

I tore into the nearer smaller building and ripped down another tower and even clamped my toothless maw around one of the green spindly mechs to shake it like a chew toy. Spitting it out on the ground after the pilot abandoned it, it exploded vibrantly.

I was the alpha and omega, hear me roar!

“Rwar~.” Why did my roar sound so cute?

I was supposed to be fearsome, I was supposed to be… wait… is all of this actually going to my head? I know how Smolder and Spike described greed growth, but wow… I was experiencing that feeling of empowerment now.

Blinking I saw a wagon quickly on approach in the distance, it stopped to pick up Hunt’s team and I remembered what I was supposed to be doing before I lost any sense of control over these things.

Had to do as much damage as I could... without killing anyone…

I guess after feeling so weak and helpless in the presence of so many evil cores, it feels like it was about time I got a little payback for the suffering I’ve been through by putting others through it too.

But… I didn’t want to be like Chrysalis by going power mad and here I am… acting… like a pair of big puppies in a playground.

I feel bad now.

-Orthcellus Left-

I wagged my broken jagged tail as Pom and Shanty quickly came out of the warehouse leaning on each other for support, I had to protect them from danger!

Pom patted Shanty gently on the head as they continued to move forward.

Orthcellus Right was handling things well, I would bodyguard these two from any nearby danger for as long as I could make this last.

Also protect Smolder and myself, wow… was I really so small and helpless like that? Smolder is so adorable too… look at her cradling me and nuzzling me. She was quickly following them with me as I stood guard over them.

This is kind of putting a new perspective on things for me and… I turned to look at the other me and I immediately knew everything she thought.

Wow… the power was kind of going to my head there huh?

Okay time to get back to business, needed to give the outer base defenses something to focus on while we escape!

I, lefty, will cover our exit, and righty would damage the base more. Not too much though, Exile was still in there… wow is this my sensory range now? I can feel almost everyone in the base from here!

No, bad Orthr-cellus Left, stop getting distracted! Rocket going for us from behind, I ran in front of it and took the blast over my already shredded armor. Even with the armor this bad off… it still absorbed that blast like it was nothing.

I glared at the one dog on the base that had a rocket tube, he grinned weakly as I smacked him as gently as a large death machine could. Hopefully someone would eventually get him out of the pile of snow he was now buried under.

These things are what Shanty and Pom were up against?

Well it’s a darn good thing I figured out how to save them and even do this!

-Orthcellus Right-

Be a hero Ocellus, everyone is counting you to get them to the wagon and Dodo, fourth tower down and occupants safely dropped on the ground without too much injury.

If they were running like they were, then they certainly weren’t that badly hurt.

I really am going to hate myself for figuring out how to do this machinery control thing later… for now I had more people to scare away from my friends and me… and quickly before I ran out of the tenuous amounts of magic I had left!

I leapt and grabbed another spindly machine making an attempt to go after us in my toothless maw and started tearing at the green armor on it.

-Shanty-

“Ocellus really be going at it, did you know she could do that?” I asked Smolder as I helped prop Pom up, she was tired and I was feeling somewhat similar to her.

“Nope, but I’m Proud at how well Ocellus is wrecking face!” Smolder grinned as she held Ocellus’s body close.

It was exciting, exhilarating even… but we would not have won that fight, as even without the armor they were still too tough to bring down by hoof. Those machines were being shot at by just about everyone and it basically be doing nothing.

We are lucky that Ocellus was here to somehow be doing whatever it was she is doing to control those things. I don’t be thinking Nicole Beta could be doing what Ocellus currently was.

I be giggling as I am hearing the distant warble that sounded worried.

“Dodo be coming for us, hurry up guys!” I started to trudge faster through the snow and tried to lift Pom up even more, she smiled at me weakly as we got further outside the base and through a hole in the wall created by Ocellus’s destruction.

Why hadn’t that Carbuncle guy tried to…? Explosions could be heard coming from behind us.

I turned my head and be looking back to see Carbuncle jetting about and fighting the nearest metal wolf, the large machine was knocked onto its side and his gun be rapidly breaking off chunks of armor at a fast rate.

“Can’t… hold out… much…” Ocellus said slowly as both machines were actively attack Carbuncle in a coordinated effort. Those two weren’t being nearly enough to stop the high speed Yellow Dog.

“A little longer Ocellus, our ride out is almost here!” Smolder yelled out, Dodo came charging up to us and drifted the wagon about to put its back end firmly in front of us.

I be helping Pom up first, then Smolder and I got in behind her with Ocellus.

The Retrievers all aimed their weapons out the back and fired as we did so, they were taking care of the Yellow Dog soldiers who weren’t focusing all their firepower on the two machines along with their leader.

“Losing… control… ugh!” Ocellus jerked backwards and then flopped limply in Smolder’s wide eyed arms.

We looked back and saw the two mechanical wolves suddenly stopped their attack and their eyes turned green.

The two large badly damaged and battered mechanical wolves looked a little lost, Carbuncle pointed to us and shouted. Instead of doing whatever he just said, they seemed to panic for a second and transformed into two wheeled things and reared up to launch themselves over the nearby wall and off into the wilderness.

“Dodo… go... now!” Dodo didn’t need to be told twice as he started picking up speed with slowly running away from the base, he already be knowing how fast the wagon could safely be going.

-Hunt-

“Uh… did they just become wild machines?” What kind of undefinable horrors would that bring back to bite Yellow Dog this time? No time like the present, we had to get out of dodge and Shanty was already directing our ride out of here. “Does this mean they’ll start reproducing now?”

“Don’t think about it too hard Hunt, we got an incoming bastard on our butts!” Ah Biscuit, what would we do without you? The female Labrador was firing round after round into at an enraged Commander Carbuncle and he was catching up fast despite all of us firing on him.

He popped an explosive out of the shoulder on his armor and when he got close enough to throw it in he was smashed backwards by Bruno’s sword, leaving a large rent in his armor as he flipped backwards and stuck the landing.

“Finally some… what the… that sound…” Bruno looked off to the right of our southwest bound wagon and grinned, the sound of a whine could be heard. It wasn’t Colleen’s bootleg rocket pack either. It sounded like a true rocket knight’s pack, but that would mean... “Axel Gear might be a terrifying bastard, but we're about to be helped by someone that beats him regularly. We’ll make it out of here alright, I still wanted a piece of the action though… I’ll just have to wait for the battle at Devotindos.”

Even as Bruno stated this, Carbuncle was already back on us. Before Carbuncle could even get close this time, he stopped and blasted backwards in the air to avoid the blue streak flashing by in front of him.

Said streak came to a stop and hovered between our retreating forms and Carbuncle.

It was the hero of Elhorn himself, Sparkster!

-Sparkster-

“Sorry I’m a bit late to the party, got held up by a few Gedol patrols and a few evil cores being activated… hard to travel around these days without someone trying to put a feather in their cap by killing me.” I was confident I could take this Yellow Dog, having seen the base on the way in and the group escaping. “So let me make it up to you, your fight is with me Yellow Dog!”

It wasn’t hard to figure out what was happening, the White Knight Couriers were said to be rescuing one of their number from the local Wulfgar Faction based in this region.

I arrived in time to see something odd happening with those evil cores before they ran off instead of picking a further fight, that was a problem for later as they weren’t currently endangering anyone.

“So you’re the blazing blue hero. You are making me lose my prize, but it would certainly earn me brownie points with Wulfgar if I can deal with you here and now!” The Yellow Dog had some pretty strange equipment, that armor and the explosives it generated would be tricky. A true rocket knight knows that they can plow right through any problem with enough ingenuity. “I’m Commander Carbuncle and only one of us will be walking away from this fight.”

“Yeah, you, because I’ll be flying out of here to give escort to the White Knight Couriers to make sure they all make it back to Zebulos alive. If Axel wants them dead badly enough that everyone knows it, then it is my job to make sure they get back in one piece!” Pointing my sword at him, my pack began charging with my magic as I stared him down. “Have at you!”

“Gladly!” We rocketed forward towards each other and thus we clashed.

-Five minutes later-

“How… could I… lose too you!” Carbuncle’s pain filled defeated cry was the last thing heard from him as his armor went up in a series of explosions ending in one large blast.

All that was left... was a broken defenseless smoking dog on the ground.

I sighed despondently at the fact that I probably just crippled another person for life. I flew away once I heard a number of wolves on approach from the northeast.

I had no further quarrel with Yellow Dog.

-Twenty minutes later, Pom-

I’m so glad that we didn’t have to fight Carbuncle, I spent most of my magic on that charged bark breaker… hurts worse than a bark blast and I’m functionally mute now.

We were passing by the submarine when a blue armored figured came down from the sky and landed next to the wagon.

This was the second time I’ve seen the hero of Elhorn, Sparkster.

He looked a little bit roughed up, but was otherwise unharmed as Dodo stopped to look at him curiously in recognition.

Author's Note

The end is nigh... for the Rocket Knight Adventures arc at least.

It's going out with a whimper like Kung Fu Panda did.

75. Never Unscathed.

-Equus, Ponyville, Carousel Boutique, Yona-

Opening the door into the boutique I saw that Rarity was talking to a reindeer, she looked nice at least and had on a really nice green scarf. I liked the color green too, so we already had some things in common and could be good friends!

Sitting on the table sipping from a teacup was ice sprite in a purple top hat, fluffy robe and cool glasses. The teacup was bigger than him and it was adorable that he held it like a soup bowl.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen an ice sprite and they always avoided going near yaks.

Maybe it is because of all the stomping we do? Yaks were definitely the best at that, aside from cows like that carpenter Arizona. Arizona actually made a bed that could support my weight and it could survive a class nine magical explosion, it was also comfy too! In fact Arizona’s work was unusually popular with all the special needs applicants to the School of Friendship.

Maybe if we were more careful around them like I am with my best yak companion and familiar for life Spindle, then could we be friends with ice sprites too?

“So I tend to do most things for salt which is a common trade commodity up in Rein, but as for everywhere else… it’s really quite good currency by the cubic meter. I don’t mind bits and if we’re talking Saddle Arabian currencies well… I’d have to go with ‘no’. My cousin Velvet’s adoptive family has one of their members apparently dead set on ruining Saddle Arabia’s economy in the next week or so. Don’t honestly know how Velvet’s adoptive sister is going to achieve that without leaving the borders of Equestria, but Velvet says she’s managed to do worse from halfway around the world before and I believe her warnings to be quite prudent. I’m still open for being paid in good gemstones though, but I think rupees are about to go down heavily in value.” The reindeer was saying this as I walked in and she noticed me immediately, yaks are the best at being noticed. “Oh, a yak! Do you suppose she’d help us with making Yakyakistan more fashionable?”

“Did you say rupees are about to go down in value?!” A brown pony stallion in a green hat and a heart symbol cutie mark with a wagon load of rupees looked horrified as he poked his head through the door, he quickly galloped off. “Epona, we have big a problem!”

I saw an Abyssinian with green hair standing nearby and she was marking something off a checklist with a smirk as she followed after the pony. I turned back to Rarity and the reindeer, they both shrugged.

“She may assist us somewhat if we ask her nicely, this is one of my students from the School of Friendship.” Rarity nodded to me to introduce myself. “If she doesn’t, then I know a yak named Eir that might help. I don’t know where or what kind of place Turtle Toga is, but I’ve been getting plenty of commissions from there.”

“Hello I’m Yona and Yona likes your pretty scarf, it is excellent for yaks!” I said vibrantly.

“Hello Yona, my name is Cashmere…. my surname is now ‘La Perm’ I suppose. Yes Rarity, Kuril forcing me to be a part of her family, but I honestly don’t have any trouble with it.” Cashmere turned to me with a smile. “Also thank you, I do like to accessorize and so does… Mr. Cap? Cap! Where are you? Oh bother, it seems he ran off in hurry.”

We stared at the tea cup spinning in a blur, the tea hovering above it because of said spinning cup and the afterimage of the ice sprite that used to be sitting there. Slowly our eyes drifted to the nearby open window covered in frost.

“Yona thinks she might have scared off Mr. Cap… ice sprites don’t like yaks very much.” I still liked ice sprites though, it would be hard to be friends if he kept running away like that.

“Right… that is a thing. Sorry about Mr. Cap’s reaction to your presence Yona.” Cashmere tilted her head and her ears flicked, she smiled after a moment. “So, are you interested in fashion?”

“Yes, Yona is very interested in fashion!” Fashion was all about having colorful and beautiful stuff to wear, I think Yakyakistan needs more of that!

-Elhorn, the next day, Frosty Checkpoint, Smolder-

“So… things are pretty bad for us huh?” That got me a glance from Shanty as we sat on a bench in the Cooler Faction cave.

“We are being alive, how is that bad?” Shanty stated firmly while crossing her front hooves.

Exile apparently succeeded at destroying the base and the Wulfgar Wolves in the eastern mountains were having problems getting back at on their paws.

“Well if you haven’t noticed, Pom’s cowering and hiding in the wagon. She’s also badly bruised and has rendered herself functionally mute for who knows how long and she was our secondary language translator. Until we meet up with Nicole Beta in Zebulos, we don’t have an active translator as Ocellus is in a coma after nearly starving herself to death… which shouldn’t have been so easy!” Being as upset as I was, I really shouldn’t be taking the news of Ocellus’s current state out on Shanty. “Then there’s you, horrible internal bruising that is causing you to flinch every other minute since the adrenaline wore off and you haven’t gotten any sleep either.”

“I be fine.” Shanty stated firmly despite wincing and looking away, I could see the bags under her eyes.

“No, you’re not fine, none of us really are!” I grouched out. I could vaguely hear Dodo warble in an upset tone nearby the wagon. “So stop acting so tough Shanty, we’re a mess. I’m an emotional wreck because Ocellus is out. You somehow survived being slapped by a ton of metal, with nasty bruising being the worst of your injuries. How are we supposed to help Pom with her current psychological trauma and paranoia?! She was stuck with them for several days! Your injuries aren’t too pretty either you know.”

“Is it so hard to be pretending that we got through things unscathed?” Shanty muttered softly as she wilted and I groaned out audibly. “We be needing some optimism here!”

“We know Pom has been helping Ocellus with feeling helpless, she makes you feel needed, but I kind of want a little more attention from her now. Ocellus… she needed me and I kissed her with all I had, the results were rather breath taking in a literal sense and it was awesome. It was a little weird that it drained me emotionally to do it, but I gave every bit of it willingly.” I looked away and rubbed at my right bicep. “While we couldn’t get through the grating when the vents were closed off from the room, we could still see what was happening down there. This world has some terrifying monsters Shanty, Ocellus did all that for you and Pom. Heh, the powers of friendship and love at its strongest. Now if only the power of love would wake Ocellus up…”

“You still be carrying her body out and we know she’s alive, she just… exhausted herself.” Shanty laid down and stared at the carved out ceiling, she grimaced as her back made contact with the bench. “So we be leaving for Zephyrus soon?”

“Any Gedol patrol dumb enough to attack us on the way back with the guy that can wipe out an entire armies and giant deadly machines, single handedly at that, should get their idiotic heads examined.” I glanced at Shanty as she looked at me. “You want optimistic? We have a living legend watching out for us that’s been beyond the sky and ether to fight up in the great big bluish black thing that we usually think Luna is in charge of… only Luna, Celestia and Twilight don’t control the skies here. We know now that there are ways to travel the stars and I don’t mean the constellation beasts, I certainly wouldn’t want to explore the digestive tract of an Ursa Major.”

Shanty snorted loudly and started giggling despite flinch a lot in pain.

“Please don’t be making me laugh… it hurts.” She closed her right eye and stuck her tongue out at me.

“To think Equus seems so small to a lot of dragons. The space beyond our world must be much bigger than we can ever truly imagine. The people of this world all came from a different one entirely, it’s really bizarre to think that such a thing is possible. They didn’t hop through dimensions like we did, they flew far away from their planet and then arrived to settle here on this one.” The things we were doing here, it was a lot to take in and we were trying to pretend we were coping with it well. We weren’t, we were just mostly toughing things out. “Do you think this war will be over soon?”

“It will be if we have anything to say about, I don’t be caring where we end up as long as it is safer than being here for another week.” Shanty closed her other eye and wiggled around a bit. “You are a hot headed, pea brained dragon that looks like a walking tangerine with giant toothpicks sticking out of your head.”

“Oh yeah!? Well you’re a brash, masochistic, little poppet with gluttony issues that will one day change your name to ‘Chunky’.” I stated back lazily.

“Furnace face.” Shanty offered flatly.

“Peewee pirate.” I grinned.

“Flame farter.” Decent one Shanty, but...

-A few days later, Zebulos heading south towards Cladinhold, Pom-

My throat still aches and I was still mute, but at least we were making good time and the only problem seems to be Ocellus. I spent a lot of time silently comforting Smolder these last few days and feeding Ocellus love personally, Shanty was chipping in with hugs and Smolder was the one giving as much love as she could to the comatose changeling.

The four of us were pretty bad off emotionally speaking, but we’d be okay soon enough. Dodo was trying to keep us all in a chipper mood, but we all knew what was coming. As soon as the Sparkrobo was repaired with Ligstrun and Nicole Beta’s help, then the forces against Gedol would all gather for the assault on Devotindos City to stop all the evil core making madness at its source.

Jean was fully recovered and ready for a pitched battle, Colleen would still need a few more days and Bruno was itching to get into a dangerous fight. Don’t know how long it would take to get my voice back, Shanty was walking bruise after the direct slap she took from one of the wolf machines and Ocellus was still worryingly comatose which was depressing Smolder.

Do we join in on the attack or do we just sit it out? We needed to make sure the Sparkrobo made it to the front lines at least, as the White Knight Couriers that may be the last job we needed to do. I’m sure we could ask someone about that with Nicole’s help.

Speaking of Nicole Beta, she was a bit antsy since I managed to express to her that I’ve seen Mobius and the fact that she was underselling how bad things were getting. I at least knew why she was nervous about the planet she was created on, Elhorn wasn’t as bad as Mobius currently was.

As for the person I wanted to interact with the most, Sparkster was someone I was quite interested in learning more about. He wasn’t very relaxed, in fact he was quite tense about the upcoming assault.

He was the one with the task of dealing with the dark magic wielding Emperor Gedol and Axel Gear. Not only that, he would be entering the death zone in Devotindos known as ‘The Factory’ by himself. Zephyrus and Zebulos soldiers had easier jobs of handling the smaller factories throughout the city.

Equus was a mostly peaceful world where large wars were seldom seen, this world wasn’t so lucky and Sparkster was a shell shocked veteran of running head long into danger with this world’s most dangerous piece of equipment strapped to his back. I knew that feeling of doing my best for others very well.

Sparkster was under pressure to do his best and to succeed in toppling the head of the Gedol Empire, because if he didn’t… nobody else might be able to do it without a grievous loss of life. Axel Gear was bad enough, how much worse was Emperor Gedol that the dark rocket knight worked for him?

As for other forces that would be helping in the fight, it is said Eginasem would be attacking the opposite side of the city even if they weren’t going to enter it personally. The frogs were possibly going to help, they definitely already sent supplies through Gedol lines to Zebulos and Zephyrus at great risk to themselves.

Yellow Dog was still in a less than civil war, but there were rumors that the Cooler Faction was willing to send some aid to the front against Gedol.

This was the stuff that we were informed of when passing through Zephyrus. We hadn’t even reached Cladinhold as we cross the plains, but we can see the forces gearing up to march against Gedol from here.

It was a massive undertaking, Gedol had spread pretty far and had had the upper claw at the beginning of the war. Now that was clearly changing and they were being pushed back even with Axel Gear aiding their cause.

I looked to Sparkster as he sat staring out the front of the wagon as we were on approach for the city where Sparkrobo was waiting.

Looking to Colleen, I worried about her health, but she was still wearing a rocket pack and I didn’t know what Sparkster thought of it. I wished I could ask… maybe I could use a piece of paper to write something on so Smolder or Shanty could ask for me.

I stood up drawing the attention of everyone, we had all been quiet and there wasn’t much excitement, aside from Bruno who was prepared for the onslaught.

I carefully made my way up to the unarmored Sparkster, I looked him in the eyes and he stared back curiously. I put my left hoof on his right shoulder and then wrapped my right hoof around his back and hugged him gently, he needed some comforting. I gave him a squeeze and then patted his back before letting him go to head back to my seat.

-Sparkster-

That… I… turning to look at Nicole Beta, the machine with the history of our world.

I didn’t know what to think and she was the only one that could currently translate for them. I have a history with machines, mostly destroying them, but this one machine knew the story of how Elhorn got started and it was a bit of a shock to learn we weren’t native to this world.

“Tell her… thank you for the hug. I’m not going to be receiving much comfort for what I have to do soon.” I noted that the one called Pom had gotten some parchment and was writing something down.

“Of course.” Nicole stated before turning to the odd four that came to the aid of many in their hour of need, she said something in a weirdly musical tone to the four. I saw the white fluffy one smile a bit as she continued writing, though she could not speak that didn’t mean she didn’t have a voice in the language of her body.

The White Knight Couriers, the one courier group that survived a direct confrontation with Axel Gear and that was actually saying something about them. A courier group made up of a pig, a dog, a lizard, an intelligent machine not bent on destroying us all and four other strangers along with their strangely affectionate land strider that produced baked goods.

I had long thought cooperation between the various peoples of this world impossible. This group held off Axel Gear and even if they didn’t beat him and struggled throughout the battle, their survival was a huge blow to Axel’s pride that had other soldiers of the Zephyrus and Zebulos alliance rallying to fight all that much harder.

This team was an inspiration to many as their adventures sounded bizarre and incredible, it started with the core four who arrived in flash of light in time to save a village in Zephyrus from being burned down and fended off a small contingent of Gedol raiders.

They helped freed the captured raccoons from a train carrying them to slavery, played a key part in the battle of Cladinhold with holding off an evil core long enough for a pincer attack to fail spectacularly, attacked Gedol supply lines and faced a literal demon that overtook Hydrigal. They even learned of things going on within Yellow Dog and brought back both news, aid and even supplies to repair my Sparkrobo after its harrowing battle with Axel Gears mech when I went for the first magical sword that I needed.

They were doing things well above and beyond what a normal courier team could have ever been expected to do. This group of heroes were battered, beaten and weary, but they were not broken by everything world has brought against them.

They were never unscathed by their trials, but they were certainly doing as much as I was and their reputation was getting to be about as good as mine was. The world chewed them up and they kept going, it was even an inspiration to one who was vaunted by so many as unstoppable.

I wasn’t unstoppable, I was tired and beleaguered beyond belief, but like them I pressed forward into an uncertain future.

Colleen was the one they are calling the rookie rocket knight, the next hope if I were to fall in the coming battle.

There was Jean the duelist who smiles in the face of danger and the one who unlocked the history of our world.

Bruno the berserker who had a sweet tooth and martial prowess was renowned even as far back as the pig wars five years ago as he aided Zebulos then as a true ally against his own mind controlled people. He was a key part in holding off the main Gedol assault force in Cladinhold while the rest of the couriers held fended off the evil core.

These were the native people that made up the bodyguards of The White Knight Couriers unit.

The others however, Ocellus the miracle maker, Smolder the flame dancer, Shanty the blade hoofed and Pom the eponymous White Knight herself who was the only being in the history of Elhorn to personally bring down an evil core machine without a weapon and with little aid.

They were all outsiders far from home and proving their mettle in helping the world at the cost of their health and sanity. These heroes needed all three princesses to continue their journey to get back home and I would soon be an important factor in that should I succeed in rescuing Princess Cherry from the clutches of Gedol.

Ligstrun the defector, the one Gedol soldier that caused a number of others to defect against the empire with his bravery in the face of being hunted down by Axel Gear. He told the story of how Pom brought down the evil core unit down with magical barks and her pure strength alone, he had been there to witness it and tried to help, he wasn’t much of a fighter and didn’t really do much more than a distraction that nearly got himself killed.

I doubt I would ever be able to accomplish such a feat of taking down an evil core personally without a blade in hand, even if the evil core Pom took down was one of the smallest ones to ever exist.

Even now tales of Ocellus gaining control of an evil core machine that had been split into two separate machines sounds downright impossible, if I had not been there in time to see it for myself and vouch for the validity of it actually happening.

The mental strain of using such a powerful magic had almost killed her from what I could see, I seriously doubted dark magic was involved as it wiped away all the malice and evil from the machines to leave them wild.

I lived in a time of impossible feats of strength and bravery, I sometimes thought I was the only one that faced such hardships as the last rocket knight… fortunately that title is no longer true.

I’m not the last rocket knight, since Colleen has found her own way to being a rocket knight and I was willing to welcome her among my number as a hero and comrade as long as she stayed true to keeping the world safe.

She was a survivor of Yellow Dogs rocket knight project two and a half years ago and had a chip in her shoulder about Axel Gear. She could not face him on equal grounds… not yet anyway, but I could give her a few tips from what I’ve learned, even if she is not using the same kind of rocket pack that I am.

-Zebulos and Zepyhrus Battleground Camp, west of Devotindos City, Pom-

My discussion with Sparkster was a bit convoluted, but I felt better that I had to communicated with him through a sheet of paper read by smolder to Nicole who translated to Sparkster and back to me.

I was nervous, I was going to be a symbol for people to rally behind. I did not like that one bit that I was being called The White Knight and they actually needed me on the front line.

The White Knight Couriers only had one job for this battle, break a hole through the front line and blow a hole in the wall big enough for Sparkster to rush through in the Sparkrobo. He’d deal with Axel Gear and Emperor Gedol from there, everyone else would be busy dealing with the front lines and the city itself.

Smolder was sitting the battle out with Ocellus, as was Nicole who was going to be volunteering as a backline battlefield medic. Nicole earned some fearful looks, but was allowed to be a medic once she proved her knowledge and capability to assist.

Shanty should have sat this out too… but she begged me to take part in this as she didn’t want me to go into it as the only being from Equus alone. Her bruising and swelling had gone down and she was getting tougher, I seriously didn’t want her following me into battle behind my back anyway.

I wrote down that she was allowed to do so, so long as she stayed next to me the entire time we’re doing this and she agreed that she wouldn’t separate from me unless she was forced to.

Ligstrun was surprisingly taking part in the fight, he was going to be piloting a Zebulos Guardian Mech and was proudly wearing Zebulos colors. I wished him well against the Devotindos pig mechs, those things looked dangerous even at this distance.

Jean, Bruno and Colleen were going to be with Shanty and I in the breakthrough unit. Our job was to protect Dodo and the wagon until we could get the explosives to the wall. Once we blew the wall, we were free to quickly leave the battlefield afterwards.

76. The Battle of Devotindos.

-Elhorn, Devotindos (almost a quarter mile away), Pom-

Looking to Shanty, she looked a little worried as I did. Zebulos and Zephyrus had as many of their forces as they could gather for this one battle, it would be a fairly large undertaking.

Squirrels, chipmunks, hedgehogs, raccoons, foxes, rats, mice and even a few birds, plus quite a few other species of animal were all aligned against the lizards. We were on the far left flank from our perspective, the people at the center of the battle were going to be drawing the most attention.

This was the last job Shanty and I would be doing with The White Knight Couriers, it was a daunting task to break through the enemy line of defenses to reach the wall. Those long legged cannonball spitting land striders, the large mechs with pig motifs, the four wheeled spiky vehicles with whirling flails, lizards equipped with jump assisting packs that couldn’t quite be called rocket packs.

There were thousands of Gedol soldiers between us and the city.

The city had an ominous cloud hanging over it, a cloud of pollution and the grass we were standing on led right into wastelands that surrounded the city that the pigs had created by sapping the resources of their surroundings. All the buildings in the massive industrial city sported Gedol symbols and the air around the place felt like all the evil that was gnawing away at this world.

I shivered and tried to steel my nerves, this was going to be a big fight. I looked off to the right and saw the Sparkster in the Sparkrobo standing at the back of the combined armies, he’d be on the move as soon as we gave him the opening he needed. He didn’t look happy to be leaving this battle to other people, but the lizards on the opposing side were watching him with trepidation.

Looking at Ligstrun piloting one of the Zebulos Guardian mechs nearest to us, I don’t know if he insisted of taking a part in this battle or felt like he needed to. He and Nicole did a lot to help the war effort in these last few days.

I flinched when I felt something touch my side, then relaxed when I noticed it was only Shanty.

“I know this is going to be a big battle. Just wanted you to know that I’m scared too, but I not be a coward and I will never think of you as one either.” That was mildly comforting, considering how dangerous this was for you Shanty and I wished I could voice my opinions on this matter. “For good or bad, I will be right next to you every step of the way Pom.”

A shout drew our attentions to Biggs and Wedge, their unit from Cladinhold would be covering the bomb wagon's approach. Dodo looked uneasy about this undertaking, but he was ready to follow us forward.

The battle was about to begin and I tapped Shanty’s back, she glanced at me and I made several unusual gestures with my hooves ending with a twirl of my right hoof.

“Yeah, I think we can be pulling that off.” Shanty nodded, nobody would understand us and we wouldn’t have a translator on the field. At least Shanty caught the gist of what I wanted to do as an opening move, if we can knock out enough lizards with it and break the infantry of their right flank, then we’d have an easier time.

We’d still have to go through their striders and pig mechs, the arms on said mechs ended in spiked maces similar to the whirling ones on four wheeled machines. I wouldn’t be able to take a direct hit from the spikes on any of those maces.

After some tense quiet and the sound of the thundering clouds over Devotindos, there was unheard signal that let everyone know that the battle had begun. The middle lines surged forwards, striders charged, rockets flew and explosions sounded off to our right.

I started unsteadily walking forward and glanced at Colleen giving me a worried look as she prepared herself for her battlefield debut as the ‘Rookie Rocket Knight’ a title officially give to her by Sparkster himself after a rather frantic paced spar.

Sparkster sat still on his machine with a grim look on his face as he waited in place, he would only act if someone broke through the battle line to protect the medics and when we opened a path for him. The only other option was if Axel Gear showed himself, but he wasn’t currently present from what I could see.

The Gedol had limited aerial offensive units and none of them were resilient to the barrage of rockets crossing the field, Sparkster would have to worry about the flying enemies being kept in the city.

I continued forward at a slow pace and Shanty was watching and waiting for me to make the move, she looked ready for what would be our first major contribution. I was planning to wipe out an entire regiment on the enemies right flank with Shanty’s help and that could rally the soldiers to make a hard push.

Bruno and Jean were tense as they stood next to the wagon as the Cladinhold soldiers moved forward at a slow pace in front of us with Biggs and Wedge setting their pace.

After a moment I nodded to Shanty and started galloping forwards and past the Cladinhold soldiers who were a little surprised, but stayed in formation.

Their rocket tube carriers ignored us and kept firing on the larger targets as the two of us moved past towards a large line of soldiers by ourselves. Shanty quickly darted in front of me and we kept running forward until we reached the infantry regiment our guys were facing.

Shanty stopped short of several swinging swords, reared up her hind legs and pushed off the ground with her front legs. I went up onto my hind hooves and reached out to catch her rear legs with my front, this action had confused the infantry enough to stop them.

I inhaled sharply.

“Cyclone!” Catching a shouting Shanty’s hind legs, I swept her round counterclockwise and we spun forwards. After a second, Shanty stretched out her front hooves and her arcing blade effect took place.

I exhaled.

We created a whirling circular blade of devastation that slammed into their infantry and started sending various kinds of Gedol soldiers flying in all directions as the two of us plowed into and then straight through them. Naga, lizards, goblin lizards and the few other odd members of our opposition like that flew away in a tornado of shredded armor and broken weapons.

The world around us was an indistinct blur, but Shanty smiled as she looked back at me, and with an upward swing to stall our momentum the ends of Shanty’s hooves arced upward near the front of one of the four wheeled machines with spinning maces on the field that approached us.

I quickly let go of Shanty so that she flipped and landed behind me as I faced the machine ready to figure out a way to handle it.

I was catching my breath a bit after having pulled off that stressful maneuver.

Only, the machine had oddly stopped in front of us with its maces still spinning, then it split in half vertically and the chains holding the maces fell apart, sending both its maces flying off into entire groups of Gedol soldiers off to both sides of it.

Shanty hadn’t even touched the thing with her hooves, but apparently the arc I made by swinging her body around upwards was powerful enough to create an invisible crescent wave to slice the machine in half and hit anything that had been directly behind it too.

The Gedol Soldier that had been driving the machine sat there with her armor falling off, it had thankfully protected her from being sliced in half. She blinked and then got up and started running while screaming. There were now a lot of Gedol soldiers lacking both weapons and armor that followed the screaming lizards lead.

One Gedol soldier in particular, that still had armor and a weapon to speak of, ran forward to slash at me with his sword. I blocked it with my right leg, the dark magic on the weapon hit my wool and then shattered in an explosion of light that sent the Gedol soldier flying.

I had almost forgotten that I had little to worry about from their infantry… provided that they weren’t wielding spears.

Quite a few of the Gedol soldiers started running losing their nerves in the face of what we just did, their morale took a large hit. This was followed by Bruno toppling a strider by cutting its spindly legs out from under it in one swing, when it hit the ground it exploded sending its pilot tumbling.

Jean stayed with Dodo and the wagon. Anyone got by us to approach him, or just Biggs and Wedge’s unit in general, were rebuffed badly by air pressure bullets launched from Jean’s rapier, rockets from various tubes or just pure martial prowess in wielding swords, spears and axes.

The real turning point for our left flank and Gedol’s right flank was when Colleen finally went on the offensive by taking down ten soldiers in a single sliding burst of her rocket pack.

While not as impressive as what Sparkster is said to be capable of, and Colleen still wasn’t an expert with a sword, the morale of the Gedol’s right flank almost broke then and there upon seeing that there was a second rocket knight on the field other than Sparkster.

That a new rocket knight was actively participating in the battle spooked a number of Gedol soldiers into running even if they hadn’t actively taken part in it yet.

The center line was heavily contested and the casualties were mounting, didn’t know about our side’s right flank because I had to focus on the left now.

I lunged forward and threw my right hoof into an overhead swing and sent a soldier sprawling, Shanty moved forward to my left and deflected a blade with her right hoof and slashed the armor off the Gedol soldier with her left in an upwards arc.

These Gedol soldiers quickly lost any sense of bravery the second their armor was broken, I’d imagine it’s because they knew that they just took a hit that could have been lethal.

Despite the violence, Shanty and I weren’t killing anyone, but we were going to be pummeling them into submission for capture or just make them run.

I bucked out at a Gedol soldier behind me and then saw something, I ran forward and shoulder checked a Naga away from a squirrel that had been knocked onto the ground. I held out a hoof and helped him onto his feet, he nodded to me, picked up his weapon and fell back to regroup with his unit.

This is when our flank started getting attention from the pig mechs that started marching through heavy rocket fire.

Our flank started being pushed back by just two of the two bipedal metal giants, Shanty tapped me in the side as I just got finished knocking another soldier’s face in. She pointed at the leftmost machine on approach and held out a hoof for me to grab.

I sighed, grabbed and spun around twice lifting Shanty’s weight from the ground and then sent her flying, she slapped into the chest of the pig mech and clambered up to attack the pilot directly.

Unlike Yellow Dog, neither of our forces had small projectile weapons to take out the pilots. Eginasem forces did have said projectile weapons, but they were all currently leading an attack on the eastern side of Devotindos City.

The pilot was soon flung from the mech and it stopped in place as I ran forward, leapt up and caught the pilot to throw him into a group of shield carrying naga harassing Biggs and Wedge. They capitalized on my distraction and pushed them back.

I looked up at the other pig mech turning towards the one that went still where Shanty was fiddling with the controls. After a moment the machined took a step forward, then two steps back, its right arm twirled around once.

I looked around and nobody was currently attacking me, but the other pig mech would be on Shanty before she could figure out how to control the darn thing.

My worries were unfounded as Ligstrun charged his Zebulos Guardian Mech forward and slammed it’s right fist shaped mass of metal into the pig mechs left side almost toppling it, this was sufficient enough to have gained its full attention and the two started to fight.

A Gedol soldier fly by my head and I saw Bruno run up to me, he sheathed his sword and pointed at the mech that Shanty was figuring out how to control. I titled my head curiously and he pointed to me and then himself and then up there.

I blinked and nodded, he wanted me to help him get up there. I motioned for him to grab me by the barrel, he did so and I kicked off the ground to cling to the lower part of the pig mechs torso and started to clamber up the machine towards Shanty.

How did people get on these things without a ladder? Probably a security feature given that they could only be captured by someone who could fly or cling to the smooth surface of the armor. The machines legs were covered in metal thorns.

“What? Oh, he would be knowing how to pilot it huh?” Shanty stopped playing with the controls and climbed out of the seat to let Bruno take control the of the pig mech.

Bruno slowly turned the mech about and then he motioned to us and pointed at the wagon, he pointed at himself and the enemy machines in Dodo’s path. We nodded, I climbed down and Shanty followed me.

At the bottom of the torso, Shanty and I dropped off and, once we were clear, Bruno charged forward to crush the front half of a four wheeled vehicle sending the poor Gedol soldier flying over the wall we were here to blow a hole in. That soldier would survive as they still had their armor on after being flung like that.

Bruno let out an uproarious laughter as he started dealing with the enemy striders and small four wheeled vehicles with stomps of the machines feet or punches from the large maces on the end of the arms.

Shanty and I made our way back to the slowly moving Dodo, while he was happy to see us he urgently warbled and pointed his beak towards Jean fending off several shield carrying naga by himself. His rapier was a slightly poor match up for their shields and spears. He was holding them off fairly well, but he could use our help.

As Dodo turned his head and fired a blast of energy at more encroaching soldiers, he was soon covered by Biggs and Wedge as they shouted orders to their unit.

Shanty and I changed directions to aid Jean, Colleen didn’t need help and was started to go after the Pig Mech pilots after seeing Bruno having taken control of the one we commandeered.

I really didn’t like being in the middle of all this and I didn’t like that Shanty was here too. There was fire, explosions, machines parts, blood, a few body parts and armor just going absolutely everywhere in the carnage.

A naga coiled up and launched upwards to try and bring a spear down on Jean, at least he would have had I not leapt up and performed an accurate upwards flying buck to the head that knocked the naga off course to land on one of his fellows.

Landing on my back, I rolled backwards and onto my hooves while looking around in a paranoid fashion.

Shanty darted in on the ground and in a flash of her hooves she broke three of their spears up into chunks and lashed an upwards arcing roundhouse buck to the chest of one of the naga. This knocked them back, destroyed their armor and causing their head smack against the crust ground in a painful manner. She quickly back off after nearly being speared by one of the two naga we hadn’t hit.

Jean dealt with the last two naga swiftly. Now that he wasn’t fighting five opponents at once and on the defensive, he unleashed a concentrated barrage of jabs that tore through their shields and armor plating like it was nothing.

I motioned to Jean and pointed back towards the wagon Dodo was pulling, several Goblin lizards were sneaking up on the wagon looking to sabotage our efforts at having gotten this far.

I think Gedol was now aware of what Dodo was currently hauling towards the wall.

The three of us hurried back towards the wagon as the tiny goblin lizards were upon Dodo, only to be blasted away in a flash of brown in the wake of a rocket pack.

Colleen spun about and fired a shot from her energy pistol that sent the last goblin lizard flying and then she shot back towards the center line in a burst towards the pig mechs she hadn’t disabled yet that were starting to turn towards our flank.

So far Colleen had left three pig mechs pilotless and they were being toppled by heavy rocket fire coming from the left most part of the center line.

The center line was losing pressure thanks to all the diverted forces that had to deal with us on their right flank, they knew what we were doing and they definitely didn’t want to let Sparkster through and into the city.

We were closer to the city and we couldn’t move too far away from Dodo now, so we took up guarding him.

Shanty was in the seat in his back and she urged him to quicken his pace. Jean and I hopped onto the wagon weighed down by numerous explosives and knocked back any Gedol soldier that tried to board us.

Biggs and Wedge's unit was noticeably smaller, quite a few of them were retreating due to serious injuries.

“Do we be knowing how to set all these explosives off safely?” Shanty suddenly asked, that… was something we probably should have brought up in the planning stages of this assault. A soldier from Biggs and Wedges unit, a brown chipmunk that looked to be bleeding out tossed Jean his rocket tube as he ran back towards our side’s backline. “Never mind, that’s answer enough.”

Jean was going to fire it and I caught his attention and motioned to the explosives behind us, he looked thoughtful for a second and then grinned in the realization of what was expected of us.

Park the wagon, Jean would fire the shot and then Dodo would leg it with us on his back. Dodo could lift an impressive amount of weight for his comparative size to the other manually piloted land striders on the field.

Jean thrusts his rapier upwards and a rocket blew apart before it reached us, it seems Gedol had guys on the cities outer walls that were now focusing their attention on us.

Both Bruno and Ligstrun moved into position in front of the wagon and raise their mechs arms to take the rocket fire for us as they slowly marched forward.

We didn’t have too many machines in our way now and only had to worry about the infantry which were now in scattered pockets thanks to Biggs and Wedge’s efforts. Though their unit was now down to nine men and a lady… the rest had successfully retreated from battle to get their various injuries looked at.

Biggs roared and held his sword aloft and pointed towards the city.

-Biggs-

“We’re getting them to that wall Wedge, or we’ll die trying!” That there hadn’t been any evil cores in the field meant that they didn’t have any to field to begin with! “I’ve just realized that they don’t have any evil cores left!”

I rallied my men and pressed forward, we still had five rocket tubes among us and very little ammunition left. So we were going to make our shots count.

“Wedge, take care of the guys on the wall!” I didn’t like that those guys were attacking our mechs and wagon, we did not want to go to plan B. “Make every shot count, we’re not going to be able to restock in the middle of all of this!”

My guys managed to take out several of the rocket tubes on the walls, but they couldn’t get them all.

“We’re out of rockets Biggs!” Wedge reported, but they certainly weren’t and we were pinned, our mechs were getting hammered and the wagon with the special explosives couldn’t get any closer. “Enemy contacts from the north, it looks to be... Yellow Dog?!”

I turned to my left and my little group looked in fear at the two approaching Yellow Dog mechs with a number of Yellow Dogs on them, those green spindly things relied on speed, energy reflecting armor and getting close and personal.

“Wait, they might not be our enemies!” I had heard Husker Exile was part of the trade agreements that gave us the ability to fix the Sparkrobo, now said Cooler Faction specialist was entering the field of combat.

The two mechs were suddenly the targets of interest by a number of Gedol soldiers up on the walls and with good reason.

Yellow Dog used those thinly armored mechs for mountain climbing.

The two mechs made it to the wall and their claws slammed into it and their mechs started to climb up the wall at a swift pace, shifting left and right to dodge rocket fire where needed and soon the Gedol soldiers on the wall were panicking.

The two Yellow Dog melee mechs just started blitzing through their number as soon as they were on the wall. After reaching a spot around where the center line was they turned around and climbed down under fire and started opening a path for the wagon on their way out.

“They’ve cleared the wall!” Wedge shouted while leaping up and down. His armor had taken a beating, but my best buddy was still in the fight.

“The Cooler Faction thinks you may have overpaid us in aid rendered; so I hope you don’t mind a little support, The Retrievers and Cooler thanks you for your patronage!” Exile shouted as his two machine ran by us and off the field of combat, by the time he was done doing that I saw that the wagon was in position.

Jean ‘The Frog Duelist of Hydrigal’ was already aiming the rocket tube I sent his way.

The sudden massive explosion took out a huge section of the wall, it tumbled down and broke. Pom, Jean and Shanty soon passed by us on the friendly land strider known as Dodo.

Their team’s commandeered mech and the allied mech turned towards the center line.

“Left flank retreat to the backline, we’ve done our jobs today and the costs were hopefully worth all the effort!” The White Knight Couriers have delivered and now it was all up to Sparkster!

The Sparkrobo was suddenly on the move and it leapt through the massive hole in the wall to start heading straight towards the very center of this monstrous city.

The wine and cheese after this is all over with was going to be sweet.

-Some time later, Pom-

I watched as Sparkter's golden glowing figure flew overhead carrying a possum princess.

Author's Note

As in Rocket Knight Adventure 2, Sparkster storms the castle and rescues the fair maiden from Gedol while gaining the power to turn into Gold Sparkster with the seven chaos swords.

Unlike Super Sonic, Gold Sparkster only exists for the end of the game... like the end of this arc.

The next arc will start with an intriguing loose end from this arc.

77. No valleys here...

-Elhorn, Zebulos Castle, Sparkster-

With the defeat of Gedol there were celebrations to be had.

I wasn’t doing much celebrating, if I were a lesser person I would have reveled in the power of the magical swords combined together and would have gone down a dark road like that of Axel Gear.

Instead, I sealed its power away in the cave where I fought Axel Gear for the first of the seven blades, Axel Gear would not be able to use its power and only the worthy could do so.

The sword would split when it was next needed by a different hero worthy of such power. I know that I might need it again one day and it wouldn’t split if I were to use its power for a just cause once more, but until then I was going to commission a fresh machine buster from a really good blacksmith. At least one that can make a blade to handle the pressure of my martial magic.

As I went to find the one that knew the history of our ancestors, I thought about how she had saved a lot of lives with her medical knowledge on the battlefield and was said to be kindness personified and that was seldom seen in all the other machines on Elhorn.

Once the west side of Devotindos fell, the remaining soldiers who could still fight and pressed forward to destroy a number of machine producing factories to the best of their abilities. Anything that could make an evil core was targeted immediately with extreme and understandable prejudice.

I was in The Factory itself at this time, where several evil cores were being produced as I fought my way through. One oddly created evil core presented me with a magical sword in a solemn manner that had left me spooked before it blew apart in a spectacular fashion.

“Excuse me, Nicole Beta.” I had finally found her in a hallway by herself, sitting on a bench. The machine with a heart.

“Yes, did you need something of me Sir Sparkster?” Her mechanical visage was a bit hard to look at. It vaguely resembled a cat turned machine, but at least she was one machine that wasn’t trying to destroy everything.

“Yes, I found something and was wondering, could you tell me what these are?” I pulled out a pouch and placed it into her dull metal fingers.

She took the pouch curiously and then opened it to look inside, only to immediately drop it on the floor and started backing away while looking at me with shock.

“Where did you get these?” Nicole stated in a tone that I didn’t like the sound of.

“Well…”

-Flashback-

The golden power flooded my weary body. I had crash my way into The Factory and found my way down into the hollowed out earth where Gedol was hiding and I had just defeated Axel Gear.

“Tch… sorry you had to find out about this, but I think it’s time I took my leave.” Axel reached into a pouch and then tossed something that expanded in size into a portal, in the middle of the portal was a different part of Elhorn. “You’ve won this time Sparkster, but we’ll meet again eventually and I’ll finally surpass you!”

He rocketed forward on his damaged rocket pack.

I burst forth to intercept him and hopefully prevent his escape.

I lashed out with my sword to slow or injure him and missed, but not entirely. He turned to face me as he flew backwards into the portal and his eyes widened in horror.

“What… NO!” It was too late as he entered the portal holding out his gauntleted hand towards something that fell on the floor nearby.

The portal evaporated after he went through, on the floor there was a brown pouch.

I picked it up and looked inside, I carefully stowed the pouch away in my armor as I heard a dark laughter sound out and equally dark magic surrounded me.

My battle with Emperor Gedol was about to begin!

I’d worry about the contents of the pouch later.

-End Flashback-

“Do you know what they are?” I asked, a bit worried about what these things were if she recognized them and had such a highly unnerving reaction to them.

“Let me tell you how your ancestors got here, and then I’ll tell you how important it was that you have acquired these. You have just set things into motion… I now believe that you owe yourself your very existence.” Nicole Beta reached into the pouch and held up a single golden ring, she examined it with a slight bit of trepidation before slowly putting it back in with the numerous others and closed up the pouch, then she put it back in my hands. “Hold onto this pouch and tell no one of its existence until we need to use them all for one important event… the very start of your ancestors coming to Elhorn. If you were to decide otherwise then you will not hand them back to me. It all starts with a monster that creates horrid machines...”

I felt a sinking feeling in my gut.

-Nicole Beta-

A loop, that’s what this all was… a stable loop from the power of magical golden rings that warped both time and space. Axel only knew of the space aspect, had he known that he could have traveled time as well…

I could do it, I can ensure everyone here exists, that what we just did at Devotindos wasn’t all for nothing. It would ensure that evil cores existed and that Devotindos would be a blight on this world, but this world had good people and is home to the many descendants of Mobius.

The hope of this world rested on my shoulders and that the knight agrees to let me ensure that it all happens the way it is supposed to. If it didn’t, then Pom and her friends were doomed to be stuck on this world with no way home without the existence of the possum princesses and quite a number of things could happen to the people that were on those arks if they didn’t arrive on Elhorn.

The future beyond all this if I succeeded in what I soon planned to do… it was uncertain.

I would try my best to ensure that this world did not fall to ruin.

Already had the data packet compiled for the ‘me’ that would soon be copied from Nicole Prime’s data, she would steer the fleet towards an unknown future… that is to become my current present.

-World: Unknown, Place: Unknown, Time: Midday, Person:????-

“What in the… bro… BRO! Are you seeing this?!” I pointed to the sky as a hole slowly opened up in it.

“This is not some kind of prank is it Sis?” My step brother was a big dork, but he was my dork.

He should know as well as I do that we couldn’t have created special effects quite like this to prank him. No one currently in the park could possibly do whatever that was.

“Do you honestly think we can do stuff like this with what we actually have at home?” I shouted at him as I gripped my head.

“Well…” He actually considered it and I groaned.

“Bro look, there’s a hole in the air above the park!” I shouted at him. “This is serious, it could actually be a real alien invasion this time and not the one we made up during that parade!”

Our brothers and sisters started gathering and staring up at the hole and I stood in front of them all with my brother looking at the sky wondering what was about to happen.

Slowly a glowing white figure started coming into focus within the hole and they slowly floated down to the grass in front of us, the glow disappeared and the… is that a sheep?

The sheep like thing slowly opened her eyes and looked around and then sighed audibly while smacking her head with her left hoof. She was cute, adorable and there was just something about her that I wanted to be near.

I started to move forward only to be stopped by my brother’s paw.

“I’m saying no to whatever it was you were about to do on impulse!” My brother was being the logical one here and we looked upon the alien figure looking around for something. She seemed… lonely and lost. “It’s an actual alien, that’s the only explanation for… for all of this!”

The portal above us slowly closed up and the alien creature gave the sky a flat look after the portal disappeared.

Something was up with that creature and there was just something I liked about… her? It definitely looked like a female, the bell around her neck and white wool did make her seem reminiscent of a sheep. The brown bag she had slung over her left shoulder looked like it was used for traveling.

“It’s not the end of the world...” We both turn turned to our darkness spewing brother, for once he wasn’t predicting the end of the world, anything problematic or troublesome that would end up spooking the younger members of our family. “It’s not the end of the world at all, in fact… the future is so bright and… and… it’s… it’s absolutely beautiful… like a work of art from Da Vinci!”

He started sniffling and crying, that wasn’t like our apocalypse obsessed brother at all. This creature was having a strange effect on everyone in park as we all stared at her. At least those of us with four legs that actually bothered to look up to see this weird sight, the two legs and animalistics all around here ignored that this had even happened in front of them by constantly looking at their little devices.

Ugh, the things you miss when you were just that badly distracted! We just had an alien presence arrive on Earth in front of us for crying out loud!

Every single one of my brothers and sisters seemed enamored with the possible sheep’s presence, even I was enamored with her presence and it somehow didn’t seem like a bad thing.

“You sure it’s not another trick like that fake Martian invasion?” My brother was still a skeptic and the alien was standing not ten feet from us looking about in a panic… wait, what was she looking for in a panic?

She started to weep and all my brothers and sisters whined and started to move closer to her.

“Hey, she could be dangerous… also she’s sad about something.” News flash bro, everyone already knows that.

“Hey D-dog why did the park get so quiet all of the… sudden… oh… huh… wow…” Even our fox friend couldn’t look away from her, he was entranced by her as well and it still wasn’t a horrible feeling.

“Remember that thing that you and Dante said about nothing being out there Fergus? Yeah, that’s… that’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told me. We now definitively know that there are actually things out there.” My brother moved forward as the sheep wept into her hooves about something. “Since we’re looking at one… excuse me, uh… do you come in… peace?”

The sheep thing just looked at all of us and sighed, she was obviously intelligent and all she did was just nod yes.

She actually understood that and… wait… how does she know that nodding yes was a gesture that we would understand? I mean this is a strange alien being that came from a hole in the sky that we’re talking about here.

“Hey, is something the matter?” I asked as I approached to where my brother was standing, all our brothers and sisters started to crowd around the sheep thing and I could imagine a large sweat drop appearing on the side of her head as we crowded around her.

“At least this odd event of an alien showing up might actually get our families minds off almost being thrown into a machine and killed.” My brother whispered to me, but the… it still doesn’t feel like a sheep, not-sheep… narrowed her eyes on him with undisguised curiosity at the mention of machines.

“Bro… she can understand what we’re saying, so please don’t say anything dorky or stupid around her. You know, things like someone tried to kidnap our family and tried to kill us.” Things around here were about to get crazy with an alien right? Maybe she could… I don’t know… help all my brothers and sisters with their horrible nightmares? She kind of just produced this feeling of contentment just by being around her.

This was the first time since the incident that we managed to convince everyone to come to the park and… well… alien sheep thing. It was certainly a huge distraction from all our worries and fears, something we kind of needed as there wasn’t a therapist that could handle our entire family all at once.

“She can?” My bro said dumbly and the not-sheep thing nodded her eyes staring right at him. “Uh… hi there… we’re friendly. At least we try to be… I’m surprised that our mail guy hasn’t quit because of our family yet.”

“You and me both Slobber Face.” Then it finally sunk in for me and my brother.

“Oh dog, we can talk to an alien!” We said at the same time.

The not-sheep sighed and sat down in the grass, our youngest sister leapt into her lap and the not-sheep started to somberly pet our littlest sister gently with a hoof.

“Why isn’t she trying to talk back if she can understand us?” I wondered.

“Maybe she can’t.” My brother said and the not-sheep responded by nodding with a frown.

-Same world, Different Unknown Place, Time: midday, Person: ????-

“Ah this is the life.” I cut through an alleyway, it was safe enough during the day and… okay maybe not so safe.

“Stick them up or we’ll make mutton out of you!” I did as the three burly gorillas in suits holding me at gunpoint asked, given they were robbing me in broad daylight. Seriously, who does that?! These guys apparently… “You listen here trollop, if you scream for help, I will shoot you and we will steal your money. You stay quiet, hoof it over and we’ll let you go about your day.”

“I may be a trollop, but do you seriously have to rob me in broad daylight! Isn’t that like horribly bad for business?” I sent out a prayer for anyone who would listen, I needed a miracle, a sign that god can love even a four bit whore like me. Also it was a bit ironic that they should say they would make mutton of me.

Sure I sold my body for money and do it proudly, but I also tried to balance my karma by being a good little lamb during the day. The things that happened at night was a different story.

“You’re walking around Muggshot’s turf, then you are going to get the mugging toll regardless of your affiliations unless you’re one of his girls and he ain’t got no girls before you dare and try that ploy.” Okay, these guys weren’t very bright goons, but nobody seemed to care that a trollop was about to lose her money after a long night and I doubt I would receive help from the lazy bastards around here.

Well Mopsy Muttoncoddle, the orphans might just go hungry this day. I looked up for a sign that things would be okay and blinked… a hole in the sky?

Something was coming through it, it looked to be relatively big and made of metal… oh geeze?!

I flopped backwards as a bird shaped mass of metal dropped feet first on top of two of the thugs, the one that had been aiming the gun at me was one of them.

Okay, apparently god didn’t want the orphans to go hungry today. Making a note here, this hopefully isn’t going to be one of those stays in Mesa City Vegas things. A reminder, be extra generous with the portion sizes for the orphans this time.

This is hopefully a sign to keep up the good work as a friendly and loveable dancer for my club, I clearly got the message here! Stay the course, do not pass go and become a dick like half the people that I’ve slept with, got it.

The third goon looked confusedly at the large robotic… ostrich? As it tilted its head at him curiously, he decided to take a swing at it and it leaned its head back in shock and warbled in an adorable manner,

I then heard an angry voice with a bit of an accent to it.

“You be leaving Dodo alone!” I hadn’t seen the young goat kid until now, but that bandana looked cute on her head.

She rammed the goon in the stomach with her head then turned about and bucked him with her left leg, then her right and finally both at the same time upper cutting the goons chin with a powerful buck in a bloody show of force.

That final blow made the large muscular goon smash his head against the nearby brick wall and he was out for the count with a badly bleeding chin, the goat kid had some spunk and knew how to fight.

She looked at the two goons on the ground after the robot stepped off of them and she then turned to me to boggle at my appearance.

“Pom... what the… when did you be getting a… no… you’re not Pom… Pom doesn’t be having green eyes... or a red dress like that either.” The goat kid obviously thought I looked like somebody she knew aside from the slinky little number I was wearing.

How many ewes are out there that can match this steaming hot body on the night circuit? Me, that’s who, I was the most beautiful ewe around and I made bank around here for being an exotic animalistic.

I also helped people in need and boy did the sign I just received look like she needed my help or else she wouldn’t have landed right in front of me.

“No… I’m not this Pom you’re talking about, but how much do I look like her?” I was curious now concerning the reaction to me looking like someone she knew.

“Everything is being the same except for the wool over your right eye and your eyes are being green. Also Pom can’t be wearing a dress like that because of reasons. I’m Shanty, you’ll never meet a goat or a pirate on a boat that will always help it stay afloat thanks to someone quite like me~!” Okay, god obviously had a sense of humor sending me a young singing pirate goat named ‘Shanty’ of all things and the large mechanical ostrich was just plain out there.

It was best to just go along with it all to whatever conclusion this would lead to. It’s not like I haven’t seen weird things in Mesa City Vegas before… though this was kind of cutting a slice out of the cake and then taking the rest of the cake to leave the one slice behind.

-Equus, Canterlot, Celestia-

“Really sister?” Luna said in an angry tone as I was holding and entire cake in one hoof.

“Hey, I left you a slice.” Which was obviously quite generous of me, I usually never leave a single piece behind for someone else, but for my sister… I’d do almost anything.

I sneezed and couldn’t help but giggle afterwards, I had sneezed the slice of cake into being all over Luna’s face.

I placed my cake down and cut another slice off for an unamused looking Luna, never let it be said that I wouldn’t share with my beloved sister!

-Back to Shanty in progress, Mopsy Muttoncoddle-

“You- wouldn’t happen to need help would you sweetie?” I asked sincerely, I do like helping people and being an excellent lover certainly helped some people more than others. “The names Mopsy Muttoncoddle, local er… bed inspector and dancer extraordinaire!”

“Actually, yes, where do I happen to be now? Oh and this is my partner Dodo.” The machine warbled at the introduction, it looked so alive and… it was breathing?! “Also, I know what prostitutes are. I be born on an island that be having pirates after all.”

Okay don’t think about it too hard, weird things, Mesa City Vegas, always hoof in hoof, par for the wacky putting golf course of life and I still have orphans to raise to be intelligent, somewhat functional, members of society.

“I’ll tell you where you are, but can you help me with something first, I owe a bunch of kids a really big breakfast and I’m a bit late.” I eyed the machine that Shanty called Dodo as I said this. “I need someone to help me carry some takeout.”

If the machine was as smart and alive as it looked to be, it would certainly help with carrying it all.

-Same world, different unknown place again, Time: Midday, Person: ????-

Ah, today was another good day to hang out with my cousins, sisters and best friends. It took a bit of time to acclimate to all the newness about my father, but today was going to be a great…

Something opened up in the sky outside the mansion, it didn’t look like a problem we’ve previously had before.

It was a call like every other I’ve ever heard around here… a call… to a new adventure with my crazy family!

“Everyone, I got something to look into, you know all the random magical stuff that usually happens at our sleepovers… guess what, it’s happening right now!” I was immediately leaping into the nearest vent to use a shortcut to see what was going on. “Eeeeee!”

“Oh boy, here we go… what it’ll be this time. Vampires, werewolves, zombies, stone gargoyles or actual gargoyles?” One of my best friends said in a sardonic manner, but I knew she was just as excited as I was as I crawled away.

I didn’t hear much of the conversation after that as I was already rushing out the door and looking to see two figures floating down and then the glowing disappeared and I noted that one figure was holding the other.

Okay one was orange, had wings and horns. A dragon, and a really small one at that, that didn’t look vicious and she was holding a… whoa, I didn’t even have an idea what that was!

It looked like a ladybug and mixed with a sword horse, I didn’t even know such a combination could exist… but…. wait… something was wrong here. The dragon looked at me and held the bug thing against herself protectively.

“It’s okay, I’m not going to do anything. Well of course I’m not going to do anything, but well… things happen around here and you’re the latest in a long line of oddball things my family has had to deal with… so anyway, I’m Webby!” I stated excitedly at the possibility of making new friends.

“Smolder… and… this is my comatose special friend Ocellus. Ozzy… she… still hasn’t woken up from the incident that left her like this.” My heart went out to her, she was holding her friend close and I wouldn’t know what to do if one of my friends were in a coma like that. “I hope she’ll wake up soon, because she’s at least conscious enough to eat everything I’m giving her.”

“What are you feeding her?” I asked sweetly.

“Literally enough, all my love.” While that sounded amazing, Smolder’s friend being in this state made me sad.

Author's Note

Hints all around, name the three specific worlds based on the information here and I'll open up the name of this fusion.

78. The Prance Dance.

Author's Note

-Music: Lou Bega's Mambo No. 5, instrumental version-

So two things are named.

'Prism Heart' and 'Herald of Opera' immediately nailed both Ducktales (the easiest) and Sly Cooper (moderately more difficult). I'm betting the name 'Muggshot' gave it away.

Pom's third act is needed to be named before I can reveal the full name of the two worlds involved here.

Otherwise I'd be sitting on 'World 5: ????' throughout. One of those names is already obviously Sly Cooper, but Pom's area needs to be named to get the full scope of everything that's going on with this world in particular.

Surnames or even 'species' would certainly help figure out Pom's location immediately and it is somewhat obscure for a reason.

Again, I don't condone Shanty's drinking habit.

78. The Prance Dance.

-Earth, Mesa City Vegas, Mopsy-

Breakfast for me was lunch and lunch for me was dinner, dinner is breakfast and I had to explain this to Shanty.

“So welcome the Mesa City Vegas, sure it isn’t very pretty~.” It was the evening and the orphans had been rightfully fed, I decided to show Shanty my favorite place of work and the little goat could really eat. I wasn’t about to complain, she saved me from losing the money or my life. It wasn’t my only place of work, but here in Mesa City, this was the place where I thrived the most. “But we make do here, even if things can get quite gritty~.”

“Welcome to my place, I’m here at least once a week~. I’m not going to quit now, I’m on quite a winning streak~! The people all here know me well, mostly in bed, but what we did together, it’s assured something that I’ll never tell~!” I led Shanty in through the doors into my favorite place of business, one that was safe from thugs and ne’er-do-wells. There was no fighting here. “There’s my girls Pamela, Sandra and Rita, the more you know about me… well I’m only known for always getting just a little bit sweeter~.”

A possum, a rat and a cat all gussied up for a night around the club were walking around as waitresses.

“So what can I really do~? I truly value my job, good lord~! Because to me strutting really is the only true sport~. Nothing can bring me down, especially when we’re in my part of town~. So let’s go on a walk around~!” Shanty followed me into the room where my favorite ladies were walking around with trays of food and the music was a jam I could dance to. “Don’t you worry, I’ll help you sweetie~. I may be a whore, but I’m not quite that easy~. I know this town, I’ve been around forever~. I can ask around, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s now or clever~.”

“Can you do it, can you really find all of my friends then~? They are a bit strange, but for them I’d go to any end~.” Shanty sang back getting into the rhythm of things. “I know Dodo will always be near, but my other friends are quite clearly not here~. I’m worried just to be being clear, because being all alone is truly my biggest fear~!”

I dragged Shanty towards the dance floor.

“Ba-aa! On the dance floor, I strut my stuff, on the dance floor~!” I sang out trying to cheer up Shanty as I started showing off my moves by strutting forward with my head held high.

“She struts her stuff~!” My three girls sang in a cheery tune and I sent a wink their way, they giggled and maybe Sandra would be open for some fun a few days from now when she’s not busy bussing tables.

“On the dance floor, you strut your stuff, on the dance floor~?” Shanty sang in a more questioning tone as she started to dance along with me.

“She knows her stuff~!” All the men in the room sang with waggling eyebrows, I grinned at the guys and I saw a few of the gentler ones that likely came here to watch little old me prance about and a few new interesting ones too.

It was always nice to have friends, especially ones that pay me.

“I’m well known around here, let me be quite clear, I’m well known around here~!” I sang as I continued to dance for a gathering audience.

“She’s the queen of fling~!” Everyone throughout the club sang. “So we all know to welcome you here, so we welcome you to The Prance…~”

“Dance~!” I shouted and people started to join us on the dance floor at my command.

“I’m the queen of swing, I have had so many flings. I got information on just about, well, every little thing~.” I ran my hoof over the Shanty’s head affectionately and then started to tango with a nice looking koala. “I know this is important to you, so here is what we’re going to do~. I’m going to help you sweetie, but it might not be easy~. I’m not charging you, because you’re really quite needy~. I’m a good friend to have, I like to please, yes indeed-y~.”

“Don’t you worry, she’ll help you honey~.” Pamela said soothingly as she walked by with a sway in her hips.

“Mopsy doesn’t ever lie, not even to be funny~.” Sandra stated as she passed by to stop a table nearby.

“She’s always be nice to kids and is likely glad to meet ewe~.” Rita said as she slunk by and dragged her tail under my chin and I growled at her cutely. “Everything we say about her is almost always likely to be true~.”

“You guys are my jerks and truly I love you, but tonight I’m not really on the menu~.” I leaned closer to Shanty and sang out the next part. “I still like to play up my part, as the venue~. So watch me strut and do my stuff, as I entice the entire room on que~! Ba-aa!”

“On the dance floor, she struts her stuff, on the dance floor~!” the three girls sang as they continued to move food around the club and I was twirling around while crossing and uncrossing all my legs rhythmically.

“I strut my stuff~.” I sang as I danced a jitterbug and a quick jig with Shanty.

“On the dance floor, she’s the hot stuff, on the dance floor~.” The men sang with grins.

“You can’t get enough~.” I sang back while waggling my backside for the lot of them while giving them a quick wink.

“So… you… ba-aa~!” I made my way over to the table where three guys were seated. If they who I thought they were, then they could help Shanty. A raccoon, hippo and a turtle, the venerable Cooper Gang in my club, how nice! “Hey… new… ba-aa~!”

“How… do…~?” I nuzzled the dorky looking turtle because I thought he was cute and patted the big guy on the arm while giving him a sweet smile.

“I will always welcome new guests at… The Prance… Dance~!” I sang as I propped my chin up on my hooves at their tables. Quite a few guys around the club were sad, but I could cheer them up another day. “So what brings the Cooper Gang to The Prance Dance? Looking for a good time, it won’t be with me tonight just so you know. Just showing someone around the… cleaner portions of the establishment. We go through a lot of bleach here, it’s a good thing my wool is already white, because whoa Nelly!”

“Yeah, Nelly doesn’t know the meaning of stop sometimes.” Pamela stated idly as she sauntered on by us. “She’s not in tonight, still sleeping off the last time she did a few rounds in The Prance Dance… if you catch my drift.”

“So want to go for a swing on the floor?” I waggled my butt to the continuing music as I stared the three guys down, the Cooper Gang was always said to be both honorable and classy. So what were they doing in my joint? I could escort the big guy if asked, but tonight is not a night I’m willing to do anything serious.

“No, we’re looking into something else and are just taking a small break here.” The raccoon stated despite him and his two friends blushing like the nice guys they were. “Also my eyes are for one fox in particular, but it’s nice of you to offer.”

“They are all being thieves aren’t they?” Turning my gaze to Shanty, I ruffled her ponytail. She was quite quick on the uptake, I blamed whatever pirates she grew up with.

She’s probably hiding a foul mouth and the fact that she likes alcoholic beverages despite her age, it’s likely to be rum.

“Yep, the all good upstanding kind even… they only ever steal from really bad criminals, ‘IF’ they’ve been sticking to the old Cooper Gang honor code at least.” I then decided to ask something with a sugary tone of voice. “Heard something about an animalistic frog named Raleigh getting zapped in the news, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about that would you?”

“Oh she’s good Sly, she probably already knows why we’re here.” Stated the nasally sounding turtle with the glasses. I haven’t been introduced to the gang, but I had an idea about who they were.

“Mopsy Muttoncoddle at your service milords, may I and my new little scamp of a friend here have a seat?” They looked concerned that I was going to join them. “I’m quite sure that I can do business with you guys… but I don’t think I’m going to get lucky with any of you gentlemen.”

“Uh sure, Sly Cooper and no you’re not going to be… lucky that is, not in quite the way I think you’re thinking of.” The raccoon offered his right hand and I shook his hand with my hoof, he was looking so sheepish and shy. What an adorable guy, whoever he gets with is going to be lucky as he was definitely a keeper and looked to be growing up to be a good man. Cooper Clan thieves were always said to be of the good sort. “Never met an animalistic like yourself that’s quite this... forward…”

“I’m Bentley, we get around, I mean not in the way you obviously do... Oh goodness I didn’t mean to point out at that you spread your… er… I’ll just stop talking.” The turtle stated after a moment of wiping off his quickly fogging glasses.

Brains are an accoutrement we could use more of around here, but that was two shy guys. Is the third any braver?

“You can call me, The Murray!” Calling it now, ‘The Murray’ is all heart, all brawn, and very little on the brains except when his friends are in danger. At least he wasn’t shy about showing off his guns, those biceps must pack a wallop for him being the strong man of the group.

“Good, now that we’ve establish that, I will admit to doing some information brokering as a side business. You have no idea how much some guys talk when you’re spending time with them, to think that men think we ladies are mouthy ones.” I sat down next to The Murray and Shanty was next to Bentley. “So let me start you off with an opener, you’re all after Muggshot right? Well good riddance if you can get his goons out of here, they tried to rob me in broad daylight not too long ago. Picked up a few things from their wallets that you might want. For some reason I couldn’t find one of them, I don’t think they pay their guards enough if they are willing to commit daylight robbery.”

“Bottle of rum please!” I turned to Shanty paying one of my girls with money from the third wallet that had been missing when I did a ‘civil inspection’ of the three goons to see if they’d live. They were all fine where we left them.

Shanty was soon hugging a bottle of rum with a bright smile on her face.

“Well, at least I know where that wallet went now.” I was correct in the fact that Shanty had a rum drinking habit.

Islanders and pirates, honestly… it’s always rum with them! Also yeah, I can see her stealing from a guy that attacked her… was it a pet? I mean it’s a large mechanical two legged thing that resembles an ostrich… that we left behind at the orphanage… oh god, please don’t let an incident happen to those poor kids!

Shanty didn’t seem to be worried about Dodo… so I’ll… I’ll just stop worrying about it too for the moment. I was going right back there as soon as I’m finished here, which will be my busy with the Cooper Gang.

“Hey, they be robbing you first! So if you be snoozing on getting some money from one of them, then you be losing.” Shanty said as she happily popped the cork and started imbibing the rum in front of us. “Also he be attacking Dodo.”

“Uh… how old is she exactly?” Good question Sly, but if you had to ask… she was probably not anywhere near enough to already be drinking.

“I could use some help myself, this kid was literally dropped on me out of nowhere, but she seems to know what’s up for the most part as far as robbing your robbers go.” I don’t pick pocket, but that case was the rare exception.

I only do it to thugs that deserved it, I would never rob a child and or someone who might be completely innocent. I would only do it to anyone that I knew for sure were scum, because what were they honestly going to say about the ill earned gains that I might steal off of them?

My business was entirely legit stuff… as far canoodling for cash and working a club can be anyway, the tidbits of information I get usually came from just doing this stuff. I’ve heard horror stories and I’ve heard interesting news around my little pocket of the world. The most recent revival of the Cooper Gang started making noise again in Paris and I put an ear to the ground, at least to learn enough that I could recognize their group if I knew what to look for.

“I be a teenager.” Shanty stated plainly, the alcohol apparently having very little effect on her mental state at all despite already having gone through half a bottle. Not even a hint of slurring. “Being called a 'kid' be implying that I’m not mature enough to understand things after being homeless for as long as I have been.”

I winced audibly as did the three guys with us.

“How is she staying stone cold sober like that?” Rita asked from off to the side. “Thought she would take two gulps and be out like a light, which means I could take the rest of it for myself.”

“It’s my rum and I not be letting you have a drop of it!” Shanty declared proudly and took another sip of it and sighed audibly while flicking her ears in enjoyment.

“Islander, rum, always!” I enunciated it all clearly, Rita shrugged at me with a silly smile and went back to work. I turned back to the friendly thieves. “She’s a little lost and needs help finding her friends… I know you guys are of a good sort. You could use a stealthy little munchkin and her… is it a pet?”

“Dodo, he be my familiar, a strong mystical partner for life… also he be making baked goods, don’t honestly know how that works and I don’t be caring one bit!” Yeah, a mechanical ostrich named Dodo that bakes, did Shanty not realize how much of a lead up to a joke that sounded like. I’m still trying to figure out what the punchline to it could be personally. “So I be getting a little separated from my friends, I be knowing they are somewhere on this world at least.”

“This world?” Bentley asked with undisguised curiosity as he looked more closely at Shanty.

“Yeah, I be falling out of a magic portal coming from a different world and incidentally be helping Mopsy… she looks a lot like my m… my friend Pom.” Was Shanty about to say ‘mother’? Huh, so I looked like someone who was likely about twice her age and willing to take care of a gluttonous, rum chugging, little wannabe pirate goat that was still somehow quite thin. That was despite the mass of food I fed her less than an hour or so back, nice to know someone out there was looking for the little darling. “I at least be feeling where Dodo is at all times, he also be carrying most of our stuff. My other two missing friends are Smolder and Ocellus, Smolder is an orange dragon and Ocellus be a shapeshifter that generally looks like a cross between a ladybug and a unicorn. I’m worried about Ocellus because she was in a coma when we left that last world, we wanted off it badly enough to be taking the risk of magically transporting her.”

“I can confirm that, I saw Dodo come out of a strange hole in the sky and they saved my loveable backside from Muggshot’s goons. So I owe it to you guys to absolutely point you in the bulldog’s general direction.” I sighed audibly. I was a bit thirsty, but I wasn’t on call tonight so… “Sandra a virgin drink please, something fruity!”

“One ‘Pussyfoot’ coming right up Mops.” That rat always gets me, now if only she was open to an intersection byplay with Rita and Pamela.

“What was so bad about the last world you were in?” The Murray asked Shanty quietly.

“It not be the world I was born to for one, there also being evil giant machines, a demon took over a castle and things be getting pretty violent… we be helping to end the war at least and that’s how we got help getting to this world.” Shanty took another gulp of rum. “Only it seems that we be getting separated from one another as we all went through the portal separately. I was with Dodo, Smolder and Ocellus should be together and Pom… she’s by herself and likely be worried about the rest of us as she’s our caretaker.”

“Would you say Pom is a fighter and did she teach you some things?” I asked as I didn’t know much about Shanty, but a world with giant evil machines did sound a bit scary… “Wait… was Dodo one of those machines?!”

“Yes to all of it, but Dodo be getting better and is being a nice living machine. He not be hurting the orphans, he is really friendly.” Well that was only somewhat reassuring Shanty. “There was said to be another planet in the last world where people were being turned into machines with an evil magic chamber, but I not be knowing much about that. We be telling our way off the world to not send us anywhere near that planet when they be getting us off their world for helping them. They be saying they are sending us to a place where dreams ‘can’ be happening, they didn’t be saying that they ‘will’ happen though. We are kind of lost and want to find a way back home to our world.”

“Well dreams start and promptly end here in Mesa City Vegas, state of Utah. So they got that part right at least, but this is basically the second Vegas to exist. The better Vegas is in Nevada thanks to Muggshot running a number of people out of Mesa City.” I muttered out as I took a sip of my ‘Pussyfoot’ that Pamela sat down, Sandra was likely busy with another table. “Also the kid is telling the truth as far as I can tell, because the machine she arrived here with… well you’d have to it see for yourself to start believing. Technology like that isn’t normal, especially not around here as the best you would get for cutting edge would be something like the stuff McDuck Enterprises would build. So… what do you guys need to know to get at that gun slinging mass of mad mongrel that is ripping up all of people’s homes around here.”

“Where is Muggshot currently?” There was no amount of small interest in the way Sly asked that.

“At the Boneyard Casino, he’s likely in the fire hydrant at the top of it. The guys a real muscle hound, but I’m sure you did your homework to find out he was in this area at least, maybe even have a profile on him. You would be a doing a lot of people around here a big favor if you can get him arrested.” My favorite little orphanage was getting eyed by the guy’s goons and I didn’t want Muggshot’s men picking on my kids. He personally didn’t seem to be targeting them at least… as much as he’s targeting every other business around the strip. “His guys are starting to take glances at my favorite charity case, I don’t want his goons to force those orphans out into the street.”

“Trust me when I say that will be the last he ever does if The Murray has anything to say about it!” The hippo flexed and I smiled at him, I stood up on the seat and gave him a peck on the cheek leaving a bit of lipstick.

“I believe in you wholeheartedly The Murray.” I grinned as he blushed and ducked down a little, three for three on the shyness scale!

“Well at least we now know why the city is so quiet and why Muggshot’s men think they can get away with daylight robbery.” Bentley was clacking away at the keyboard on his laptop as he started to make plans. “They’ve practically pushed everyone in the area out of their homes and are ruining businesses left and right Sly.”

“Hey, if you need a goat that can stick to walls, has magic hooves and don’t mind helping good people…” Saying this, Shanty tossed up her empty bottle and then swung her left hoof upwards past it creating a shining arc as she did so. Both halves of the bottle hit the table and Shanty hopped up to the wall next to the table facing down at us, just to show that she could do as she said. This was to the surprise of Sly, Bentley and The Murray. I was fairly surprised too, but then again she did say she just came from a world that was at war recently. So the goat having magical abilities wasn’t that far off from anything I’ve heard so far. “Then I’d like to join in on this like Mopsy suggest, I don’t be liking people being pushed around and out their homes by some big bully! I know what it is like to be homeless and I don’t like it happening to good people! The names Shanty, like the song, if you don’t like it, then we won’t be getting along~.”

“I think we can accommodate you on a temporary basis… what do you think guys?” Sly seemed to open up fast to Shanty joining them. “If she needs help finding her friends, then we can do that… we’re going to be going after the Fiendish Five members all over the world after all.”

“I’m not so sure Sly… but if you think it’s fine…” He stared at Shanty as she hopped off the wall and back into her seat. “I’m willing to let her help us with Muggshot at least, her unique skills could be quite useful here.”

“I’m okay with it Sly, she’s really adorable and I’ve always wanted another little buddy!” The Murray wrapped his left arm around Shanty and cuddled her, she smiled up at him with a grin.

“Having odd friends in places never hurts!” Shanty then turned to look at me. “Will you be helping as well?”

“I’d rather keep my head down, but I will be around to make sure you’re not getting in over your head.” I stated in a noncommittal tone.

“Then you’ll be helping as well.” Shanty said while nodding sagely.

-Shanty-

I be meeting a nice prostitute, she be introducing me to thieves and I be helping them steal from a bad guy?

Finding Pom, Smolder and Ocellus will obviously take quite a while.

79. Dante’s new friend.

Author's Note

Music- Traverse Town, Kingdom Hearts.

The clues are piled up on this page... if you still can't figure it out, then I'll toss out the two main characters names in the next page Pom is a part of.

Before you say anything, this part of the story has nothing to do with Kingdom Hearts... directly at least.

79. Dante’s new friend.

-Location: A world under attack by giant insects, Oleander-

“Well, the EDF may be wary of our presences, but at least we can help them with their giant bug problem.” I muttered as I walked along with Song Ender bouncing around my hooves.

“This is all very cool and everything, but how did I end up in this situation with you again?” Rainbow Dash, the most colorful mare of Ponyville, groused out. She was likely wondering how she got dragged into dimension hopping with a dark magic using unicorn with an entire world floating off the tip of her horn. “Like we need more people getting lost in other dimensions!”

“As humorous as it would be to leave you behind on this mostly forsaken planet… WE’VE GOT INCOMING OLLIE!” We both looked to Fred and saw giant hornets flying right at us through a broken down city. “OH DEVIL, NOT THE GIANT HORNETS, ANYTHING BUT THOSE THINGS AGAIN!”

“If you can pull off a Sonic Rain-boom and not get hit by the thousands of stingers they fire, I might actually think you useful if you can create the explosion in the center of that mass without dying.” I stated bluntly as possible, even I had problems with fighting giant, super evil, mutated hornets.

-Equus, Ponyville, School of Friendship, Silver Stream-

“Has anyone seen professor Rainbow Dash, she was going to do a lecture on how to not disappoint people… do you think that her not showing up is a part of the lecture?” I asked innocently and the crowd of various students started talking to each other about the merits of my question.

We eventually settled on not following Rainbow’s example about never showing up to class being the lesson we needed to learn. You should always keep your promises while trying not to forget prior arrangements so you don’t double book like Rainbow Dash probably did… again.

We all unanimously agreed that this was likely to be the most successful friendship class Rainbow Dash has ever had!

We did leave what Rainbow Dash taught us today for the other classes to learn from.

-Earth, Location: in the middle of a park, the next morning, Pom-

I stretched out and carefully stowed my blanket in my bag and sat up on the tree branch I slept on, the sun was shining and I was wary of my surroundings. I didn’t see any dogs nearby, but I did see a few distant ones walking around on leashes.

This brought up a number of questions when I saw a bipedal dog that wore clothing walking what would be a regular dog in the distance on a leash. This brought up a whole number of questions about how this world actually works.

My current location was a fairly large park in the middle of or next to a city, I was mostly staying out of sight to get an eye on the locals.

A lot of ducks, a lot of naturally bipedal looking beings with recognizable animal features and a few that look oddly animal and yet aren’t, then there’s the dogs that were animals as they barked and weren’t speaking the same language as everyone else that people could understand readily when two dogs interacted with one another.

Climbing down and pulling out an Elhorn apple, apparently Elhorn fruit hardly ever rots or goes bad, I quickly consumed what I could of it despite the odd flavor. I proceed to dig up a bit of ground to be rid of the apple core.

I had some concerns about an Elhorn tree growing on this world, but the plants on Elhorn hadn’t been dangerous and I was taking a gamble here that nothing would come of me burying my trash in the ground in the middle of this park.

I had thankfully lost all the dogs that had me surrounded yesterday. They did chase me for a bit, but they likely thought we were playing given they were all mostly puppies.

The few more intelligent older dogs actively noted me down as an alien and were fairly surprised I could understand them. They also stated that my arrival in this world went relatively unnoticed, except by all the dogs around here because of course they would pay more attention to me than anything else.

This was the place where a good number of dogs seem to come fairly often judging by the numerous smells in the area and I wouldn’t be able to avoid them all forever.

I was close to civilization at least, but I didn’t have a job and I didn’t have any local money. I was back to being a bum.

Relying on the kindness of strangers was a bit iffy, but at least there were no giant monstrous machines and this world seems peaceful… relatively. There were four wheeled vehicles in the distance, but they didn’t look like they had any weapons to speak of and were likely just used for transport.

My current supplies were… two Elhorn banana bunches, my winter gear the girls saved for me. The wedding bell around my neck from Tianhuo, which will only make sounds if I want it to because she was thoughtful like that. The last thing was the bag itself. Not much to work with, but I was an expert at camping.

Dodo had most of our stuff, Shanty would be fine and could take care of herself… mostly if Dodo was around. Familiars always helped massively in situations like these.

Thankfully Smolder carried Ocellus’s and her own bag at my behest so they have at least some food and an amount of time to find a place to get some help, provided this world was as peaceful as it looked. I had my doubts after the last two worlds.

My plan was to get a lay of the surrounding areas and get my bearings, try to maybe find a temporary job and then figure out a way to locate my lost charges.

I could do all that, all my girls had to do was survive without me there to take deadly hits for them… or feed them… my mind was going to slip into a full blown panic over them over the next three hours wasn’t it?

Ocellus being in a coma was the biggest worry, but if Smolder was with her then they’d mostly fine. Dodo was not as intelligent as Shanty and I had ideas about what kind of trouble those two could feasibly get into.

“Uh, excuse me…” The voice of a lightly yipping dog made me nearly leap out of my wool, instead I went straight up eight feet and clung to a low hanging branch to begin shivering. “Wow, you exist… I had a nightmare last night that you didn’t, it was like the end of the world! That you do exist and still make things feel better around you is good to know, I came here early to look for you. My family needs a balm like you and on the first day we all tried to brave the park together for the first time in weeks… you came to us from somewhere else. I’m not sure if you want to know my name, but I’m Dante.”

I looked down at the small and somewhat scrawny looking black furred dog looking up at me with reverence as he spoke in barks, I sighed and mentally put a strong block on any attempt to form a familiar bond with me.

Didn’t feel anything like that yet, but knowing I was in an area with lots of dogs… well I’d certainly die from holding my breath for that long.

-Dante-

The shivering not-sheep looked down at me and scrutinized me and my grey, white spiked, collar.

I wasn’t a loud or overly scary dog… but I did like to sneak up on people and spook them.

“Sorry I scared you… I do that sometimes.” I tried to be reassuring for the thing larger than me, this felt pretty weird. Among my brothers and sister I’m one of the older dogs, at least old enough to have my own personality and not be just a part of the wild pack. “I’m not going to bite, but you interest me more than the world possibly ending, because around you it really doesn’t!”

There was a curious quirk in her eye when I said that, she started to slowly slide down the tree and came up to me and rubbed my head.

It felt really nice and I just snuggled up against her soft wooly form. This was safe… no apocalypse could happen while she was around, or at least that’s how it felt to me.

She pulled back, but didn’t push me away and looked around. She motioned for me to follow her with a hoof.

Didn’t have much luck with a deadly cow previously, among other things, but this alien sheep might be able to actually do something for me or my family. She was rather unique after all and might even be a solution to all of our constant nightmares.

We eventually made our way to… a sandbox? My unusually bright demeanor shifted to the not-sheep questioningly.

She moved a hoof in the sand and started to draw something, then took a few steps back and pointed downwards at the sand.

It said ‘Pom’ with an arrow pointed towards herself.

“Your name is Pom?” Barking this out excitedly, I felt my tail start wagging quickly at learning this. I knew the aliens name now and she nodded that I was right, but wait… did that mean she was an animalistic that could understand animals?

Well it was rarer a biped that could understand us, but I did know of one. My whole family did as said guy caused us some grief, but he turned out for the better in the end. No clue what he is doing now, but at least he’s leaving us alone.

To think I got up earlier than the rest of my family, ate breakfast and came here by myself to make sure Pom wasn’t some sort of fever dream. She could write and I could read, this is going far better than how my days usually do.

I don’t feel any gloom or doom in her presence and my family really needed that, I… kind of needed it too.

“Why are you here?” Why were any of us here on this big dirt ball we call home and why would aliens visit said dirt ball? My question was more to the point of what she was doing here. She drew a picture of a goat, a dragon, a strange horse bug and an ostrich in the sand and what I suppose is an image of herself, she drew a circle around all of them and then line from herself to an empty circle, she slowly raised her hoof in a wide arc to our surroundings. “You were separated from your family?”

Pom rolled her hoof in a so-so gesture. So I’m right, but not exactly? The things she drew in the sand were a bit weird, but they were grouped together so they were with her before she ended up here?

“Don’t you have some kind of technology to get around or something like other aliens?” My question was met with a loud sigh and a flat stare, so she wasn’t from some high end advanced civilization. After a moment, she cleared the sand and drew an arrow pointing to me. “You… actually want to know more about me? That’s… kind of refreshing. Like I said I’m Dante, my days are usually filled with doom and gloom, I like sneaking around in the shadows and finding fun places to hide in, spooking my brothers and sisters and rather morbid stuff. I also get these rather weird feelings and visions about bad things happening, but none of it ever seems to come true or at least my family doesn’t think it’s anything really worth focusing on.”

Clearing the images in the sand, Pom then drew out something. A building with the word ‘library’ above it and a question mark.

“Yeah, there’s a library in the Camden Town area… why?” I tilted my head and looked down as she wrote out Camden and pointed out the question mark. “You’re currently in Camden Town which is a part of the United Kingdom we’re a district bit northwest of London and you can likely see Big Ben from here! So you want me to take you to the nearest library, why?”

She drew an eye, the word ‘will’ and then two arrows circling from one to the other.

“I will see? See what?” The answer I received was Pom holding her left hoof out at me. “Myself? Well I’m already probably worrying my family… that or they forgot I existed again. It’s easy to ignore the crazy dog that keeps going on about the end of the world... might as well go all in on whatever it is you want to show me. Follow me, I know how to get there from here, I go there sometimes to find horror stories to read. I dabble in true crime stories sometimes too, my family thinks that’s why I have a problem...”

-Pom-

What a strange puppy, but at least he was friendly and I did want to help him with something he needed to hear about himself. I couldn’t express everything I needed to inform him of fully if I was right about what I thought I knew about him.

-Dante-

“Here we are…” Just as we arrived I heard howling and my name being mentioned in one of my ears. “I’m at the library and I might be here for a bit with a friend. Don’t worry about me too much, I’m fine, no really, I’m okay!”

Pom tilted her head at me curiously as I howled my return message.

“Just my brother and sister worrying about me… I almost feel like just another statistic in my family, at least they cared enough to call out for me.” Motioning to me to follow her in with a hoof, I was a little reluctant to do so. “So what are we here for exactly?”

“Excuse me, but…” I cowered next to Pom and she waved at the librarian, she then motioned at her throat and mimed talking. She lifted her bag up, likely to show that she was an animalistic. She could pass for one too, if you didn’t know she was an alien. “You can’t talk, almost took you for a wild animal. Speaking of animals in the library…”

Pom picked me up and I yipped quietly a few times questioning her actions, she simply placed me on her back and looked at the biped crow that ran the library.

“Okay, as long as he stays quiet and doesn’t make a mess, your dog can stay.” The crow motioned Pom forward to the desk. “What are you looking for?”

Pom dragged her hoof in a zigzag.

“Something starting with M?” With the young librarian’s query, Pom smiled and nodded. “Okay, here, let me help you. Poor thing… being mute in this world isn’t exactly helpful for an animalistic like you now is it?”

Putting a pen and paper before Pom, Pom started writing something down and then went to hand the pen and paper back.

“No, keep it, you need the pen and paper more than I do at the moment and I have plenty to spare. Now let’s see… ah… Mythology relating to canines? I take it you’re interested in local history relating to this subject.” The crow stated conversationally. “Here let me get several cards from the catalog to the location of several books that may interest you.”

Pom took the offered cards and started down the aisles of the library quietly, what did mythology have to do with me?

Eventually we came to a shelf, Pom looked at the table of contents in several of them and frowned at each, eventually she found one she like and looked for a nearby table.

Once I got off of her and onto the table, she sat down and started leafing through the one book she picked out. After affirming something to herself, she wrote down something for me to read on the sheet of paper.

“Do I believe in magic?” Don’t know how to feel about that honestly, sometimes it felt like there was magic in the world and others it was a dull and ceaseless endless toil of agony we called life. “Why, can you do magic?”

Pom nodded seriously and wrote the word ‘some’ down, but motioned at me and the previous words on the paper insistently.

“Well I did trick my brother into believing a mythological story about Cerberus and the Ferry-dog, then I had to tell him the truth about the prank in song because things were going way too far… does that count?” What was written down next had me convinced as I read it out. “All things are real somewhere, I have a Cerberus back home, there’s also The Cerberus guarding the gates of… really?!”

She nodded, then pointed to something in the book at the page she opened it to. Looking at the page I saw something that might actually explain a few things about myself that I’ve never considered. To be sure, I read the passage below it.

“Black Dog, Ghost Dog, Gurt Dog, Shuck, Hellhound… Grimm?” How have I never heard of this before? Well I didn’t really go looking up mythological dogs too much aside from the horror stories of Greek mythology, never actually thought to before. “Dogs spiritually connected to darkness, portents of avoidable death or danger, can fore… really?! They can foretell danger… benevolently… wait…”

I looked up at Pom giving me a sad smile and a pat on the head.

“You think that I’m, at least partially, one of these?” Well… this explains the constant nightmares and visions of the end of everything as I know it. “Wait, The Cerberus actually exists where you’re from… but I thought this was all just a… so all mythological stuff is… actually real. Are you a demon?!”

Pom shook her head no.

“Awe that would have been a fun way to go out, getting tempted into some sort of devils deal. I can already see that you’re far too nice for that though, what are you then?” It took me a bit to get an answer.

Pom wrote down that she was a ‘lambkin’. Akin to sheep, but not a sheep herself. Her people are sheep farmers in her world and had a nice textile industry. I shivered at the word ‘textile’, my family would naturally have an aversion to the fashion industry after what happened to us.

“How exactly are you so sure that I’m… one of these?” I asked, this was getting really interesting for me.

Knows one already and knows what to look for when seeing another, also my constant horrible visions of the apocalypse are because I’m not actually controlling my ability? So I end up blowing things well and totally out of proportion?!

“That, actually sounds about right really.” Well if it was true and if I were to look back on my predictions and drop their lethality a number of pegs to pratfalls then… they all actually came true. “That’s… disturbing to know, but I’m not going to believe in it unless you can show me some actual proof of magic.”

Pom held up the sheet of paper covered in words with her left hoof and slashed her right across it, three claw marks ran across the paper. I looked at her right hoof and even examined it personally with both of my paws, touching it all over.

“Huh… anything else?” I asked, because making claw marks in paper with a blunt hoof was a really neat trick.

I was ready to believe and had always wanted to believe, but skepticism and all that.

She motioned for me to follow her and we went to a nearby wall with an overhanging balcony above on the second floor, what she did next was definitely impossible without magic.

She walked up the wall, across the ceiling, where she stopped for a moment to buff her chest in the utter defiance gravity completely, then sauntered straight up onto the balcony above.

I had to go up the stairs, to just stare at her blankly. There was also the fact that she can jump straight up eight feet and could have just leapt up there.

“So I might be magical and you’re definitely… heh… wow… So maybe all my occult stuff are toys compared to the real thing huh? Oh dog…” I brought my paws to my face and started to rub them around. “Can you teach me how to control it, these visions? They’ve been bothering me, and my family by association, for a really long time.”

She got out the slightly shredded piece of paper and wrote something down.

Yes, she would help me regardless of whatever I did, but she needed help until she could figure out a way to find her friends and those she’s supposed to take care of. Also she needed a place to rest until her voice comes back.

“Well it might be a bit cramped, and full of dogs, but I think I can talk my bro and sis into letting you stay with our family for a few days. Trust me… they’ll want you to help me with these visions I’ve been having so I can possibly get them under control.” On the backside of the sheet of paper that was quickly losing space for words ‘what is family like’ along with a question mark. “Well my family went through something very traumatic recently and, unlike the cow that tried to kill us all, this trauma actually stuck to us. All my brothers and sisters could use your presence to maybe feel safer or like things are getting better. Not going to lie, I feel utterly safe with you.”

‘Okay’ was written on the last bit of the paper, she put the pen and shredded the remaining bits of paper to stow them all away in her satchel. She put up the book and as we were on our way out to message my family, the crow spoke up.

“Thank you for visiting Camden Town Library, I’m surprised at how quiet you were.” Nodding to the crow, Pom turned to me and I made the call once we both went outside.

“Hey brother, is mom still home, I need to ask her something about having a friend over!” I howled out and the response I received a second later had me nodding. “Okay, follow me. Mom is willing to hear me out about having a friend over, so long as it isn’t Portia or Spencer. Right, you don’t know who those are, let’s just say they are my tolerable goth friends.”

-Ten or so minutes later, Pom-

“Okay, where is this friend of yours Dante.” The dog was old enough and motherly sounding to be Dante’s mother, but she didn’t look like the correct breed. Possibly adoptive or step-mother at best.

Also Dante wasn’t kidding about having a lot of brothers and sisters, they all took immediate notice of me and started gathering around the matriarch.

“Come on, mom! I know this is a bit weird, but… can my friend Pom stay with us, please?” Dante seemed like he desperately needed help with his Grimm visions. “She’s mute and she really needs help with getting on her hooves, also she can understand us!”

“Well…” She looked me over, the puppies started begging her to let me into their home. “Alright, but you need to stop spooking all the puppies Dante!"

80. Life is dragon on.

-Airship Mauled, small pyramid, Sekhet Sphinx ‘War Goddess, Physical Education Coach and the world famous landing strip of Airship Mauled’-

“So how would you stop Jade from destabilizing an entire region?” Why they came to me I didn’t have a clue, but the three collectively known as Maries were looking to me for advice about stopping their partner from causing a worldwide economy crash.

“You don’t… I think that’s the point of it, but it’s probably for the best.” It didn’t take me long to consider what Jaded was doing and figure out a way around it, but what she was doing was somewhat ingenious in scope.

“What do you mean?” Mara asked, the saber tiger head looked fairly annoyed with their spouse’s current actions. Maria spoke up next as I petted my pet serpopard. “Also if you can’t help with that, then can you at least get her to somehow get over her obsession with destroying Saddle Arabia at least?”

“The obsession maybe, but you do realize that she is not even actually actively touching Saddle Arabia with a fifty mile pole. Something bad happening to Saddle Arabia is actually likely something she considers a positive unintended side effect of something else she’s doing.” I closed my eyes and sighed while giving it some thought. “I’ve noted that Jade is actively messing with the various economies of several countries at once, without the ability to do math due to her horrible dyscalculia mind you, so what she’s doing is going to fail and I think that’s what she wants to happen and she’s instead succeeding which is why she came to me earlier to rant about failing at failing on purpose. Her long term goals are to get Lambkin and Changelings to organically work together, so she’s doing something that will certainly make her notoriety noticeable on the world scale.”

“Our kitty is a genius if given enough time to think things through and she’s a petty thief at the best of times, but what can she possibly be doing that would make ruining the economy of Saddle Arabia a side effect that she wants to be like a happy coincidence?” Marie the snake head queried up at me. “In any case, Fizzy isn’t buying the fact that Jaded isn’t targeting Saddle Arabia directly for a minute, but we’re of a slightly different opinion.”

“Surprisingly, I’m of that opinion as well. I think she actually isn’t targeting Saddle Arabia directly or indirectly, which makes it all the more impressive that her plans are somehow doing it anyway in spite of the few odd things she’s done. This is getting her in huge trouble with Fizzle I take it?” I considered how to explain it to the chimera before me in a simple manner. “So, she’s diverted the lambkin’s textiles and surplus food production. The changelings have insects that will eat specific textiles to produce silk and they have rare herbs for anxiety medications. So doing a little math, Jaded’s plan is interesting to say the least when she is working on improving the lambkin textile industry production, which in turn is ruining Saddle Arabia’s more expensive textile industry because the changelings are farming silk producing insects locally and closer to Equestria with better quality. One can understand why Jade would do most of this, but the one thing you should be really looking at here is where exactly is all the food being diverted to by Jade? It isn’t going to the changelings, they don’t need to eat physical foods.”

“The Griffons is where that food is going at our best guess, but why would…” All three heads of Maries the chimera froze, their three conjoined brains kicking into overdrive. “The Hippogriffs… the Sea Ponies… the Minotaurs… the Parrots… Pegasi… Earth Ponies… Unicorns… Kirin… Abyssinians… to… Zebras? How is it that we are just now finding out that Jade has one of the weirdest worldwide conspiracies going on that involves chains of various trade goods being shifted ever so slightly? This shouldn’t have been so easy for her to hide from us!”

“Good question, which is exactly what the Lambkin are bound to be paranoid about now. They are a bit more clued in on things than people give them credit for, especially about marmalade and something involving sea ponies or more specifically Queen Novo.” The stares I received made me decide to state something as succinctly as possible. “Don’t ask, you seriously don’t want to know about that… trust the immortal goddess on this one.”

-Earth, Calisota, Duckberg, Killmotor Hill, Mcduck Mansion, Smolder-

So here I was telling my story to a bunch of ducks that lived in a mansion where magic, mysteries and multiple oddities are as common as breathing to them. At least Webby was happy to go into her family’s history for me, took a whole night and a good bit of time into the next morning.

“So yeah, friendship is literal magic where we’re from and Ocellus used said concentrated power of friendship and pure awesomeness to take control of the two deadly machines to rip a way out of the base for all of us. Nearly killed herself using up all the magic in her body doing it too, magic is basically her lifeblood and love is literally what keeps her going.” I’m almost finished telling all these guys why we ended up here. “So after one final job in the previous world, the magical princess was rescued from the evil lizard emperor. We got sent here by their magic to a world where, by their own words, dreams ‘can’ come true. So we basically have to work our asses off to find our way home from here to make sure that they ‘will’ come true. At a guess Shanty ended up somewhere where she can cause mischief. Pom is likely to be surrounded by dogs because she absolutely has the dubious ability of getting drawn into areas loaded with canines of all sorts. It started with a single fox the first world, devolved into a whole wolf army the second, then two large factions of dogs and wolves fighting a civil war with each other and I don’t want to even know how much worse that’s going to get in this world. Just find the largest concentration of dogs on the planet and she’s guaranteed to be at the dead center of it if we ended up separated for the reasons that I think we did after entering the portal.”

“Well my dreams have come true, maybe yours can too if you want to go home hard enough. Just don’t use any technological methods of world traveling around here, it almost destroyed our planet and Gosalyn lost her grandfather to another world.” Webby was an odd duck, cloned from the richest duck in the world and then raised by the maid of said duck that was her unknowing father. Said father couldn’t have known about it until they defeated a fiendish world spanning organization. Webby wore a pink shirt, purple skirt, a blue vest and a pink bow on her head that was absolutely adorable. “I wanted to be so much like my idol Scrooge Mcduck and even dreamed of it. Now that that dream is a reality and… well things have been a bit odd between us since it was discovered I was his daughter. ”

Gosalyn was her friend in Saint Canard, an apparently crime riddled city that her father was dealing with one thug at a time.

“Who was your mother?” Everyone in the room froze with wide eyes at my question. “I know you explained the whole clone thing and how Scrooge is your father and I’m not exactly sure I understand how cloning works, but wasn’t a female involved in your creation at some point?”

“Uh… now that you mention it…” Webby looked unsure about how to continue bringing some of the fingers of her right hand up to her beak. “I may need to do a DNA test to find out about that, May and June were created differently from how I was as they were quick cloned as my sisters and I never gave it much thought that I might have another genetic donor that would be my mother…”

So we were in a place on the far western side of a wide continent near Saint Canard, which was across the bay from Duckberg. I had sat here telling our story while holding a comatose Ocellus’s left hoof tenderly.

We ended up in the perfect location to fit our needs, if the whole ‘world where dream can come true’ thing was to be believed. We weren’t staying on this world of course and we’d eventually find each other. I had a guess as to why we ended up where we did.

Ocellus and I ended up here because we wanted to make friends and figure ourselves out as we move on into the future and my best friend needed tons of love, best place to do that? With friends and family that wouldn’t let you down without a good reason to, plus they loved each other to such a degree that Ocellus wouldn’t be capable of starving.

Parts of her body had started to turn black once or twice before we ended up here and it had me completely worried that I couldn’t go too far from her. They were not necessarily our family, but these locals were good people for taking us in on a temporary basis.

Huey, Dewey and Louie, the three duck triplets were looking thoughtful as they sat on a couch in the living room watching something like a movie screen you’d see at the theatre in Ponyville. What they were watching looked like some weird opera about footstools.

Huey was the uptight one with the red shirt and cap. Dewey was the social and loud one in the blue shirt. Louie was the evil one in the green hoodie, I wouldn’t trust him around any dragon’s hoard… unless it would be guaranteed to help Ocellus in her current condition.

I’d pay almost anything for Ocellus to be okay.

There were May and June, Webby’s clone sisters with a yellow and blue theme went with Webby’s pink and purple. May was the yellow one with the ponytail and June was the blue one with the short pigtails, they looked like triplets even if they were made at different times.

I really missed Garble right now. Sure he could be a pain to others, but he would always be right by my side and protective of me.

Those were the two triplet teams, then there’s the friends in good standing that had been around for a sleepover yesterday.

One was Lena Sabrewing, she had her previous last name evicted from her life as harshly as possible. A teen duck that was a lot taller than the ducks around here who was wearing a shirt with a sweater over it, apparently the Mcduck and Duck families were predisposed to being short in more ways than one.

As Webby explained it. Lena was a living shadow from an infamous sorceress known as Magica De Spell, but Lena was very much her own person and separated from Magica in many different ways and completely capable of existing on her own nowadays without help.

Lena had a lot in common with Webby when it came to the ideas of what being ‘real meant’ for them and Webby’s sisters.

Lena’s adoptive younger sister was a purple hummingbird named Violet Sabrewing. She found me interesting because I wasn’t like most other dragons, myth or real, that she’s ever read about or physically seen.

I’m going to take this as another world where dragons are generally known for being jerks or are possibly evil, but if it was another world where they were misunderstood… well I’ll take things on a case by case as they come at me. I was Ocellus’s shield now and nobody would hurt her while I was around.

“So awkward silences aside…” Huey started up as the screen wasn’t showing their opera at the moment. “What do you plan to do from here?”

“Well I’ve got nowhere to go, no leads on my friends and my best friend in the world is comatose in a way that I’m quite sure your local hospitals won’t ever be able to help with and she practically needs me next to her at all times to keep her fed and alive.” Thinking for the long term wasn’t exactly something that I was good at, Ocellus needed me right now and that’s why I wasn’t willing to let go of her. “I plan to stay here for as long as you’re willing to have me, but I need to eat, sleep and go to the bathroom eventually. There’s not much I can do and I can’t really be dragged on one of your adventures, I’m not leaving Ocellus alone all by herself when she’s helpless like this! Though I realize that I can’t stay with her every waking moment of the day. It’s frustrating because Pom, Shanty and even Dodo could feed her while giving me a break. Just having one of them here would be a big help. It’s so tiring trying to keep her alive, but I’m not giving up on her.”

“We’ll help you look for your friends, right guys?” Webby was enthusiastic, but at least she was trying to keep me in a positive mood. I was becoming a bit more irritable and I had a feeling it was because of Ocellus feeding off of me constantly, but I wasn’t about to let go of her.

“Yeah… about that… like Smolder said, where do we even begin to start?” Louie stated in a calm tone with his eyes glued to the screen and he drank some soda from a can of stuff called ‘Pep’. “They could be anywhere in the world!”

“Well we can always have Darkwing Duck check around Saint Canard and we can check Duckburg at least, then we can start Dewey-ing other things to help find Smolder’s friends.” That was actually insightful plan from Dewey, I had him pegged as being a bit... dumb.

“So make sure that her friends aren’t in locations we can have other people check for us… we have Storkules and Selene in Ithaquack. We know some guys in Egypt that wouldn’t mind money for a burrito or two to put out the word.” Huey pulled a book out from under his hat and leafed through it idly. “We’ve been all over the world and in space… still haven’t been to the moon personally, but our mother assures us it is really quite boring. Even the Moonlanders could help us search for your friends… they started living all over after their invasion was foiled, we can only hope that Lunaris never figures a way out of being stuck in orbit.”

“Moonlanders, Lunaris?” I asked questioningly.

“Yeah, the Moonlanders are cool, don’t worry about it. We’ll point one of them out if we see them, Penumbra tends to hang around the mansion so she’s likely to be the first one you see.” Dewey’s attitude was relatively chipper and he looked like he constantly wanted attention. “Uncle Scrooge has her working as a bodyguard for the mansion after an incident with Louie coming under attack by our worst enemies.”

Scrooge Mcduck, the richest duck in the world, the guy was famous for adventuring and business around here, the guy was also a penny pincher and dragons could appreciate that. Didn’t know much about him since we’ve only been around for about one day, apparently he was off doing something else while the ghost butler and the kids were taking care of things around here and that left them to their own devices.

“What’s wrong webby?” Lena asked as Webby sat in a defeated huff.

“I wanted to do something exciting, but the best option is to wait and see where Smolder’s friends might turn up.” Webby seemed rather upset that she didn’t get an adventure out of us. “I mean no offense, but you two are magical creatures and the most you need from us is for us to call on our friends to find out where yours ended up. I was expecting some kind of dangerous quest through a huge temple full of deadly traps and having to read things in ancient languages that nobody even knows how to read any more!”

“Well sorry to be a disappointment, but you know we just got out of an adventure that had two full blown wars going on at the same time. My friends nearly died several times during all of that.” I stated testily and why wouldn’t I be a bit angry, we’ve been through quite a lot. “So excuse me if I don’t feel like getting into any scrapes while carrying my, nearly dead, comatose friend around!”

“Hey watcha… yelling… oh a dragon, neat!” We all turned to see the male triplets mother Della Duck as they described her, aviator gear and one mechanical leg. She was invading my personal space and I let loose a small blasts of flames to get her to back off as I jealously held Ocellus against my chest. “Right, sorry, backing off, so is this the weekly adventure that’s finally come in?”

“No, mostly they just need help finding each other and a way home that’s safe and won’t take them anywhere else besides exactly where they want to go.” After Webby said that, Della wilted a bit. “They arrived from another dimension or world and have been having issues getting home, I already told them our scientific methods of world traveling could destroy our world. Not that Gosalyn isn’t going to keep trying to get her grandfather back from wherever he ended up, and we’ll be there for her if she asks for help.”

“Yeah, sorry about that, but we get into all kinds of crazy stuff around here. I know what it’s like to not be able to go home, I was stuck up on the moon for ten years and some change. Mostly in mind numbing loneliness, at least you have people with you that are sharing your experience. Makes it a little easier when the burden isn’t all on you alone.” Della seemed to know our pain with the way she spoke and rubbed at her right shoulder. “Of course you couldn’t see your home the entire time like I could, with the gnawing taste of black licorice gum in your mouth for years on end that wouldn’t lose its flavor no matter how much you wished it would being the only way to survive… I actually sometimes thought of spitting it out... Frankly it was torture and losing my leg wasn’t nearly as bad as the licorice taste and the ten soul crushing years of missing my kid’s lives. So I know absolutely what you’re going through… how long has it been?”

“About half a year almost and still going on into what looks like a full one.” My mood was grim. “We’ve been through three worlds.”

“I’m sure you’ll get home eventually, you’re doing better a lot better than I am. I was stuck in one spot, at least you’re making progress in some capacity… that and I can’t touch candy anymore because it’ll taste like black licorice to me. Gyro will hopefully come up with a cure for that nasty side effect eventually.” Della patted my shoulder gently and gave it a quick squeeze. “I didn’t start making progress until I found out the Moonlanders were my next door neighbors, they still are come to think of it… but Earth is a much cheerier place for it. Silver linings and all that despite the invasion… for some reason Britain didn’t think it ever really happened, I think there was an alien themed parades going on that day throughout Britain. So they might have missed it by accident, most of the Moonlanders are not particularly aggressive really and probably joined in on the festivities.”

“So alien invasions, temples with deadly traps, mysteries all over the place… oh my goodness we’re in a Daring Do book!” I groaned out.

“What’s Daring Do?” Lena stated flatly.

“A series of adventure novels written by someone who has likely actually gone on said adventures in our world, I know that Ahuizotl in the book definitely exists in our world.” It was so nice to be able to talk to people that could understand me, but I was going to miss the squeaking voices of the people of Elhorn. “Of course the way the novels are written, they probably exaggerate the things that actually happen. Can… can someone find it in their hearts to love my friend for a bit, I need to go to the bathroom, a good shower and some some rest. Holding onto her for this long has really sapped me pretty badly.”

“Before you ask Della, Ocellus is comatose and literally eating Smolder’s love for her.” Lena answered the raised eyebrow Della was giving me. “I think we’ve all noticed how exhausted Smolder looks, she hardly got any sleep last night and to think I thought I was sometimes restless about being a living shadow creature.”

“Maybe I can do it, I love kids!” Della quickly took Ocellus from me and I was about to protest, I tried to get her back only to flop onto my face after two steps. “So does being drained of your love exhaust you like that? Heh, this kind of tickles. She’s adorable and I can find it in my heart to keep feeding her love, it doesn’t seem that bad. I’m well rested, but you look like you need some time to yourself Smolder, I promise your friend will be fine when you get back. You really need this break!”

“She’s been holding on to her since yesterday.” Webby seemed to pick up on what I was doing, I was burning myself out on feeding Ocellus. “Smolder I think you need some time to recover.”

“Like nothing else, but I’m committed to keeping Ocellus alive.” I closed my eyes. “You’re right though, I can’t keep going on like this. Where can I get a scalding hot bath around here?”

“May, June, do you think you can help her to the bathroom?” The two had been quiet and reserved until Webby spoke to them, they were also watching the footstool soap opera.

Somehow the opera was beginning to make me think of Spike back home the more attention I paid to it for some weird reason. Eh, whatever, I was exhausted and needed time to recover from feeding Ocellus constantly for far more than twenty four hours without much of a break in between.

“Sure thing sis!” May answered, grabbing me.

“We’ll help her clean up too.” June helped picked me up and we were soon off.

-A few hours and a good nap later-

I took hold of Ocellus tenderly, lifting and carrying Ocellus was easier because I’ve had time to get my strength back. That break was something else, but I also needed to make sure she was alright and safe.

I rubbed my face against Ocellus’s upon getting back to her, I think I saw a slight twitch in her lips there for a moment.

“Thank you… what do you have to eat around here for me? Ocellus seems to be doing fine with the ample amount of love around here.” I know that Ocellus was dragging me down, but I wasn’t going to let go. “Please wake up soon Ozzy, I’m not going anywhere without you and life is not easy without my best friend.”

"You're doing great, I'm certain it won't take you ten years to get home!" Della reassured me. "So-- like peanut butter and jelly?"

Author's Note

Smolder has the easiest time with finding support. She can't really move around with Ocellus unless she wakes up. So she's not really don't much at the moment. I think I've established her situation fairly well.

Shanty however is running around in unfriendly territory where Muggshot's goons don't have any compunctions about shooting kids going where they don't belong. She's also hanging with a group of thieves known as the Cooper Gang and helping them with their current caper.

Pom is stuck halfway around the world from the two other groups and is spending time with an entire house load of dogs that will need her help more than she does theirs.

Welcome to... Disney Afternoon World/ Sly Cooper.

81. The Dalmatian Zone.

-Equus, Huoshan, Tianhuo-

“So, we are at an impasse.” I said bluntly looking between Ruff and Puff, the both of them really missed their Baa-Baa and didn’t feel like playing today. Tuft and Woof wanted to play, but they wouldn’t leave their brothers behind. “I miss her too, but am I not doing my best for all of you? I apologize if not, I cannot be like Pom.”

All four of the growing puppies barked at the same time, I could tell they didn’t find my treatment of them to be lacking as a good effort and that they appreciated what I was doing for them.

Blighter at least tried to bring the mood back up by nuzzling them, their positivity was one of the things keeping the household going. Our Fu Dog was easily protecting our home, but they couldn’t help the occupants.

Mr. Birch needed some fertilizer today and would be the easiest task to accomplish, surprisingly timber wolves just needed love, water and good soil like any plant, with the occasional meat supplement. I had to make sure our Cerberus had three milk bones using fish. Big Mama needed to be brushed thoroughly because of shedding. The Cu Sith and Mr. Grimm seemed to be alert about something today and looked about ready to tell foretell of a huge oncoming disaster… at the same time, which was never a good thing when they were both looking at me to do something to stop said disaster I couldn’t predict. Everyone in Huoshan would know to duck and cover if the Cu Sith ever went off, it was the only time they ever made a noise. I also needed to walk the Orthros which I really didn’t want to do after last time, but they needed exercise.

My day was going to be a long one and that’s not accounting for Pom’s four favorite Canis Minors being depressed… or the problem I was having with Blighter getting overprotective or under hoof.

At least the Tenko was easy to take care of, feed them a bowl of correctly made rice and they would do a few favors for you for most of the day on top of taking care of their selves. Almost any kind of rice ball would make them do said work far more enthusiastically. A huge rice and fish platter or some high quality rice balls would make the two tailed fox take care of everything to the absolutely best of their ability and would go above and beyond to make sure your day was a special and mostly happy one.

So one rice and fish platter coming right up! Once I was finished getting Ruff and Puff into a slightly better mood, maybe the smell of cooking fish will do that?

I had to learn how to cook this dish as Pom usually did it and I never understood why she always ordered so much fish until now. I needed all the luck I could get today and having the holy fox familiar being aggressively nice would certainly make things far easier.

It certainly explained a few things about how Pom managed things.

-Earth, Camden Town, Pom-

A house with one hundred and one Dalmatians living in such a cramped space, this place was crazy!

I looked to Dante as his breathing finally evened out.

-Dante-

“Okay, I think… I got myself under control.” I was doing a breathing exercise with Pom, which attracted the attention of my brother Deepak, who then decided to join us with his own meditation practices. “Oh right, the puppy that looks like a walking yin yang symbol is our brother Deepak. He helps keep things calm around here when needed.”

Deepak didn’t question Pom’s presence for a second, because she was currently helping me through some breathing exercises. Anybody who practices meditation was good in his books.

We had almost all the pups in the house doing this exercise with me, it was nice that my brothers and sisters were willing to join in on this and they were encouraging me once I explained to them why I was doing this.

I’m just surprised that Dolly and Dylan haven’t noticed that Pom was in the house yet, must be the thirty other or so puppies that were keeping them busy in the back yard. I remember when they manufactured problems for me to be happy, I wasn’t going to let that bother me as my predictions do come true and they were never always the worst possible scenario.

Pom opened her eyes and motioned to me, I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate.

She wrote down several instructions for me to follow as I was doing this and I was going to do them, I wanted to get control of my visions that makes sleeping so hard for me sometimes.

Okay I was seeing it, the apocalypse, I slowly pulled back from looking too deeply into it and blinked.

“I’m seeing… a problem… the next problem for us… to solve it I… need to go back to the library and look up… the De Ville’s family history all while talking to Hunter about it? That will make things better for our family somehow, but why… maybe… Hunter can understand us and he did survive six months locked in a crate full of dog food. That’s not something a regular duck could do normally and it didn’t affect his teeth or body all too much. It did mess with his mind a bit though.” My words sounded distant as I tried to watch too many scenes passing me by all at once, I tried to focus and pull back on some of them to slow things down. “Is magic responsible for… Hunters understanding of dogs? It would be a decent explanation as the dog food he consumed doesn’t have any magical properties and yet he managed to survive on it… huh… an immediate minor problem that we don’t have to worry much about is… Dylan, our lovable big brother, is going to walk in and freak out about Pom in three… two… now.”

I opened my eyes and every puppy in the room turned to see as Dylan walk in with Dolly and the rest of our brothers and sisters.

“So we don’t know where the alien will be and who knows where it could have gone after you chased it around the… OH MY DOG, IT’S IN THE HOUSE, WE HAVE AN ALIEN IN OUR HOME!” All the puppies looked to me and a few of them seemed to believe in me now, now that I wasn’t going all in on the apocalypse stuff at least.

Dylan was freaking out and pointing his paw at Pom who was sitting there quietly among all of our brothers and sisters, she was having that calming magical effect on all of us.

The things I saw could actually be averted… things were already averted before I met Pom… things both Dolly and Dylan solved, some others had also solved by accident. The world would carry on.

“Chill bro… can someone explain why she is in our house?” Dolly asked in a calm manner, she was one of the ones that had given chase yesterday and Pom was really fast when motivated. Not even Dolly on her skateboard could keep up with her when she was running full tilt. “Also if she really wanted to hurt us, she wouldn’t have run from us around the park yesterday and she would have done something by now.”

Our older brother and sister were night and day in their reactions to things at times, when they were working together ‘almost’ nothing could go wrong. As one can imagine, they usually don’t work together as often as they should.

It was now understandable to me how our house ended up frozen solid, was flooded with water up to the second floor, there was massive invasion of fleas and all that among several other ridiculous things has happened to it under both Dylan and Dolly’s watch as our top dogs.

Dolly was finding this situation hilarious given her sudden laughing fit. She and Dylan were probably going to try and search around for Pom in the park to make sure she wasn’t dangerous to the puppies the next time they went, only to find out that Pom was already in the house.

Still, I loved all ninety eight of my brothers and sisters. We were all Dalmatians here, some of us were old enough to achieve our own unique differences and the rest are still part of what was colloquially known as the puppy pack. It took a lot of effort for some of us to stand out among everyone else.

“I can explain, her name is Pom and she’s… well, my friend.” I was the only fully black furred Dalmatian with white spots, except for the spots I colored purple as part of my dark demeanor. The only other ones that feasibly came close to looking like I did were the Dimitri trio whose entire rear halves were covered in black fur. “I invited her home since she doesn’t have a place to stay and I already have mom’s permission. Also she resembles an animalistic enough to pass for one, aside from the whole being mute thing. She’s friendly for an alien really and she isn’t really hiding the fact that she’s odd.”

Pom shrugged, she seemed a bit nervous around so many dogs, but she seemed to be okay with it overall. I might have to get her to write down why she was so nervous later.

Everyone heard Pom’s stomach grumble slightly.

“Oh let me go get some food for you, we have plenty of nut packets from the ‘Just Plain Nuts’ company thanks to three of our sisters and we hardly can find a use for them all aside from occasional snack or giving them to a squirrel named Sid.” I got up and wandered into the kitchen area where we kept the many bags of nut snacks with both Dylan and Dolly following me. “Come on Pom, let me show you where our family eats! We do have a few vegetables around here from time to time. Kind of hard to grow a garden when more than half the family can’t resist the urge to dig it all up.”

“Did someone say digging?” A mud covered puppy came in from the back yard. “Oh, you’re new! You smell really strange, but not bad… I’m Diesel!”

Pom just shook her head with a wry look on her face, she got up and followed me. She wasn’t the only one as many a puppy wanted a snack too.

“Uh Dante, how do you know her name is Pom and that’s she’s mute?” I rolled my eyes at Dylan as I started grabbing a few bags of assorted mixed nuts for our guest. “She’s still an alien you know!”

“Yeah, we know Dylan, now stop worrying about it.” Dolly responded with her usual carefree attitude. “She seems cool to me.”

“Yes, I know she’s an alien Dylan, but I brought her in as a guest. Like what Dolly does with Roxy or Snowball when they have sleepovers, I have to be responsible for my guest.” I looked back to see Pom smiling weakly as a number of puppies were jumping on her and climbing onto her body. “Uh, you okay there?”

Pom lightly waved a hoof in a she’s fine gesture as she had at least thirty of my brothers and sisters cuddling up to her, including Da Vinci and Delgado. Delgado was getting better at jumping even if the rear half of his body was confined to a wheelchair and lacked the rear legs to do so, he was currently draped over her back. Even Dorothy our youngest sister was getting in on it by sitting on Pom’s head and giggling happily.

I’ve never seen my family this happy since… that incident with what may be a literal ‘devil’ now that I know magic actually exists in our world.

“Can someone get a well cleaned dog dish and some fresh water for Pom?” As I said this, Pom carefully started pulling the puppies off of her and sat them down before getting in a random seat.

Several other puppies joined the table wanting snacks too and were even begging for it, but Dylan was withholding them.

A few of the pups went to grab a bowl for Pom to drink water from.

“Let me introduce to you the two top dogs of the house Pom, Dylan is the dog with the red collar with a star hanging off of it. He’s a bit uptight, but he keeps things clean and in order around here and is a good big brother to everyone.” I pointed to Dylan whose black right ear has been noted as sharing similarities with the constellation Canis Major. “Dolly is our sister with the three small spots under both eyes and the three colorful small collars, yes the black fur around her legs do look like leggings. She’s the one we all go to for entertainment around here.”

“Uh hi?” Dylan tried shyly, as I placed a few of the snack bags on the table for Pom to look over. She was looking at the ingredients and idly waved in Dylan’s direction.

“Hey, nice to meet you.” Dolly said as she watched Pom swiped her right hoof near the top of her snack bag and the top slid off of it, much to her and Dylan’s shock. “Bow-waka-whoa, that was awesome, how did you do that?!”

“Uh… did you know she could do that Dante?!” Dylan asked looking a little upset with one of Pom’s abilities.

“Well yeah, Pom can do several unusual things like that, it’s not a big issue.” I watched as Pom started eating lazily. I had no doubts in my mind that Pom could be dangerous to all of us if she wanted to be, that magic claw hoof thing was definitely something she’s used in a fight before. It would explain the facial scarring at least and her bandaged right hind leg that nobody seems to be commenting on. “Wouldn’t you think that would come with being an alien? Before you ask, she’s not from outer space, but another world.”

My family thought others weren’t observant, they’d be right. Our family of animals have gotten away with a lot of stuff and nobody noticing we didn’t have an animalistic or biped taking care of all of us. I seriously doubted that people would care that we were entirely self-sufficient animals, we already avoided animal control once because of our mother’s biped duck friend Dr. Dave.

I would say we were just as unobservant, as Pom was walking around with mild injuries and small bits of scarring.

“You still haven’t answered my question!” Dylan pointed out and I hadn’t, I had my reasons as I finally put a piece of paper on the table.

Pom nodded to me and pulled out the pen the librarian gave her to scribble something down for Dylan to hopefully calm him down. Pom lapped up some water from one of the clean spare dog bowls we have laying around and continued eating as Dylan looked at the piece of paper with confusion.

“She knows how to write on top of being able to understand us?!” Yeah, not going to think too hard about how that works Dylan. “Also why is she asking me if I believe in magic? I would say there’s no such thing, but… alien, in our home!”

Pom could probably talk too when she gets her voice back, but knowing magic exists kind of expanded the whole world to me.

While Dylan was paying more attention to me and Pom, he didn’t notice the mischievous look on Dolly’s face as she started sneaking all our brothers and sisters treats.

“Look at it this way brother, she’s not making a mess and all the puppies are being quiet.” And are ruining their lunch, but I just sent Dolly a wink to keep going and she snickered into her paw before doing just that. “Isn’t that what you usually want?”

“Yes, but this is kind of disturbing… on a number of levels.” Dylan pointed all the puppies being quite or lightly playful around Pom. Then he finally noticed Dolly giving out treats. “Dolly?! You’re ruining their appetites!”

“Can you please stop being Mr. Fussy Pants for one minute Dylan? This is the first time I’ve seen them really get back their energy since that evil duck nearly skinned us all to make a fur coat.” Upon hearing Dolly say that, Pom quickly took up her paper and drew question mark while looking fairly angry. “Don’t worry about it, she’s been put in jail.”

“We might as well tell her guys, so there’s this woman named Cruella De Ville that has been after Dylan’s side of the family for more than sixty years. At this point the woman should be pushing a hundred and yet still seems awfully spry.” My mind repeated the words ‘family history’ over and over again, we really needed to look up that woman’s family history tomorrow and find Hunter to involve him in it too. It was somehow important to any and all Dalmatians living here from what little I could get from my visions. “She’s once kidnapped Dylan’s great, great, great grandparent’s family and they were lucky to escape alive with their fifteen stolen puppies in tow… along with all the others they adopted in rescuing their own. We’re the second one hundred and one Dalmatian family since our mother, Delilah, apparently took up the tradition of adopting numerous puppies off the street. We somehow ended up with ninety nine pups and two adults like they did back then. Delilah’s the dog you met on the way in, she works as a therapy dog and does plenty of other things at the hospital. Our father, Doug, married into this and works as a local fire dog. So we have siblings, step-siblings and adoptive siblings. It’s rather…”

‘Hectic?’ was the word Pom wrote on the sheet of paper.

“Yeah, like you wouldn’t believe! We’ve got plenty of stories, like our summer vacation.” Dolly swooned and must be thinking about that Doberman named Spike again.

If her crush for Hansel never pans out, then she was definitely going to try to figure out how to get him to come to Camden Town from Cornwall for a visit.

“Okay, so we’re not going to the P, A, R, K, today to look for an alien that’s already here.” My brother only spelled it out because saying it would trigger the puppy pack into excitedly flooding towards the place. “So what are we supposed to do now?”

“Spend the rest of the day enjoying ourselves of course!” Dolly answered immediately, she sometimes had a one track mind for fun.

“No, I meant about our dubious house guest!” Dylan said pointing a paw at Pom as she finished lapping up the last bits of water to give him a smile with a slightly tilted head.

Pom pointed at the words ‘Do you believe in magic’ for Dylan once again, trying to emphasize that she understood his frustrations with her presence in our home.

I wondered if dad was actually immune to fire because of magic too. I mean he’s come home covered in soot several times, but has never experience horrible burns once in his life despite running through burning buildings numerous times. So I might not be the only one in the family that had magical abilities.

“How would you know if someone has magic?” I suddenly asked of Pom and every puppy froze at the question. They all looked to me, all of them then turned back to Pom excitedly.

Pom wrote down ‘that could take a while to figure out. At least we know you have magic Dante, you just need to control your impulsiveness more’.

“Magic?” Dylan suddenly looked curious. “What’s she talking about Dante?”

“Something I’ve recently discovered about myself, about specific kinds of mythological dogs and that I may or may not have the abilities similar to one of them.” The ability to foretell great danger and possibly avoid it, except I didn’t have it entirely under control. I was always getting the vague idea that things were going to go horribly wrong like an apocalyptic event. “I’m sure Pom can show us some magic.”

“I’ll believe in magic when I…” Dolly started to say, when Pom jumped straight up, flipped and struck the ceiling, she stayed up there and even started to walk around. “See it… wow. Uh Dawkins… how impossible is this?”

Our brainy brother with the molecule collar was just staring up at Pom, wide eyed. Pom was walking around on the ceiling in spite of gravity telling us she should be careening head first into the floor.

“Well… quite truly impossible really. She shouldn’t have that kind of grip strength with her hooves for one… also I noticed that her wool shifted about slightly to cover her hooves when she did that.” Dawkins slowly answered as he held up his digital pad and went over the numbers. “I don’t want to believe it, but she’s sticking to the ceiling using her wool. This is when her wool shouldn’t be feasibly capable of keeping her body’s weight on the ceiling.”

Pom let go of the ceiling and her wool seemed to inflate, she flipped and slowly floated to the floor. After deflating, she then went back to sit in her chair and finished the last of her lightly honey glazed nuts.

“Yeah, Pom’s capable of using magic.” I stated bluntly, a lot of puppy pack were suddenly excited to learn if any of them had magical abilities. “We wouldn’t know unless Pom could figure it out personally, she only knew I was magic because apparently she recognized the signs of me having the same abilities as a dog she already knows.”

“Alien dogs have magic… and some of us possibly having magic too… this… might make things a lot more complicated than we want them to be!” Dylan was more worried about having to take care of puppies with magical powers than the normal run of the mill puppy pack he cleans up after daily. “Whoa, wait a minute, what do you mean you’re magical Dante?”

“You know my predictions… I’ve been overselling them all along, apparently things are not as bad I have been making them out to be and I’m sorry about that.” I looked around at all the puppies gathering around Pom and she seemed a bit nervous. “We always forgive each other… with a group hug!”

“Trigger word Dante… re…” Dylan was cut off by being sucked into a wave of puppies leaping for me, I sat up and spread my paws wide open to accept them all coming affectionately for me.

The cuddles afterwards were all sweet and innocent, as expected of my beloved family. Pom was sitting off to the side with Dolly as they watched us all snuggle.

“Oh what if I can do magic too!” Oh dog, the thought of Dolly actually learning to do magic… wait…

She was the one dog when the house was frozen over that was largely unaffected by it unlike the rest of us. In fact, she managed to warm up various frozen things by rubbing her paws together…

Oh dog, that might confirm that dad is magical and that Dolly has magic too! If this didn’t lead us to a small apocalypse, then I don’t honestly know what would!

“It’s the end of the world as we knew it… yet I honestly feel fine.” I stated calmly from within the pile of my brothers and sisters.

Author's Note

Almost done with world building, the next page is going into Shanty and Dodo helping Sly Cooper's group.

At most Dante is guessing at what could be magical or what could be normal now, since a fairly large can of worms has been opened for his entire family.

82. Mugging Muggshot.

-Equus, Fluttershy, Outside Sugar Cube Corner-

“Oh my goodness, what happened to you Rainbow Dash?!” My friend looked a badly bruised and was covered in scratches, the fact she was limping along the ground meant that she currently either couldn’t fly or it hurt too much to do so.

“When a unicorn says not to disturb them and they are in the middle of something… then you listen to them.” Rainbow stated slowly and methodically. “I learned this lesson the hard way, I’m just going to the hospital and then I’m going home… provided I can even fly there.”

“Do you need help Rainbow?” I asked worriedly.

“Yes.” Rainbow promptly flops onto her face.

-Earth, Mesa City Vegas, rooftops. Shanty-

I had already grabbed one key, all I needed to do was avoid a few biped dogs in suits and climb up a building to it while Sly cleared a path for me coming back. We also found out the Boneyard Casino was slightly flooded, but sly took care of most of that as he didn’t want me going near the electrified water or exposed wiring.

Muggshot be a brawny boneheaded bipedal bulldog to let his entire casino get flooded and he wasn’t big on maintenance either, but he still be very dangerous and I wouldn’t want to get too close to the guy that could rip me in half with his bare hands that he can walk around on. He was almost as terrifying as an Evil Core, but he probably didn’t have the same aura of death about him. You could easily see his ugly image plastered all over Mesa city.

Right now I be situated high up.

“Okay, I be in position.” These binoculars were really nifty, wouldn’t find anything like them back on Equus. “What do I do now?”

“Okay Shanty, I currently have Sly searching the far rooftops for the remaining keys. Murray is getting into a race with Muggshot’s goons for their key at the racetrack and Mopsy is being a lookout for me here at the hideout. As for Dodo… I’m going to be honest he makes me a bit nervous.” Bentley didn’t be liking Dodo very much, but Dodo be liking him. “Dodo is protecting Mopsy’s orphanage, if anything happens there Dodo will be able to alert you right?”

“Yes, that be a thing with familiars, as long as we are in the same world, we can be feeling where each other are at all times… among a few other small things like quickly coming to understandings.” I can be feeling Dodo right now, he be quietly minding his own business and he was happy that I be thinking of him. I be giving mental head pats and he be sending me back joy. “He’s okay, I don’t honestly think he knows the meaning of bored. I certainly do though!”

“Do you see anything Shanty? Remember, we’re searching for the treasure keys. Heading out to get these keys, we showed you what they look like and gave you an area where one could be found, your area is the least guarded and mostly safe.” As Bentley spoke over the binoculars, which were interesting in that they weren’t magic, I glanced around from my spot and gave a solid glare to the large fire hydrant penthouse over at the Boneyard Casino. Bentley could see what we did through the binoculars and I eventually focused them on The Murray. “You know, it’s actually kind of nice to have some extra help like this.”

“Murray’s race is getting started.” I focused on the ‘Cooper Van’ surrounded by several other vehicles. “Do you think he’ll win?”

“Murray drives like crazy, best getaway driver we could ask for. He could also be a good bruiser, but he needs to work out more and until then we will have to leave most of the fighting to Sly.” Bentley be a bit annoying in almost insinuating that I can’t fight, but he is being good at what he does as being the brains of this group. “That Muggshot’s guys are going to be rough is fairly obvious, I’m quite sure Murray will still win the treasure key anyway.”

I be turning my gaze to see Sly prowling the rooftops looking for another treasure key when a ball of energy shot past him.

“Bentley I think we have trouble, it looks like a fox and she seems particularly angry with Sly!” I zoomed in on Sly and the blue haired, reddish furred fox that was pointing her energy pistol at him.

“That’s Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox, Sly will have to figure out a way to get her off our backs without harm coming to either of them. He’ll likely be keeping her busy for the foreseeable future since Murray is busy with the race. Make of her what you will, but she’s actually fairly nice outside of work hours, provided that she doesn’t know that we’re around.” At least I know that Bentley wouldn’t mind Pom being a Guard, she was only one of my friends that had a job. Had, because who would let her keep her job after being gone for this long? It’s a good thing that Pom knows how to readily find temporary jobs. “She’s all black and white as far as criminals are concerned when it comes to her enforcing the law, if you’ve done something illegal then everything else doesn’t matter to her. We’ve only ever seriously stolen from criminals and she is seriously out to catch us. To think Sly can’t help but tease her, I swear his attraction to her is going to bite him in the butt one of these days.”

“There they go.” I said, as Sly started running and Carmelita immediately started shooting after him.

“Sly will be fine, Murray looks to be doing alright and as for you… keep looking around and be careful Shanty, I don’t want you getting hurt on my conscience.” As Bentley talked, I surveyed the surrounding buildings. Not much be going on up here. “Muggshot doesn’t have much in the way of security measures, but he does have a lot of goons, so where should we expect him to stick one of the treasure keys?”

“Why do these Treasure Keys end up in so many odd places anyway? How is he to open his vault in an emergency if they are being all over the place like this?” I asked before I spotted something and zoomed my binoculars in on it. “I see one, it’s between two windows at the top of a building… why would someone put it there?”

“Hold on, yeah it’s in the skylight alright. You’re in a good position to go grab it Shanty, but I don’t think your blade hoof technique is good enough to cut through that reinforced glass. I can see you on the tower above the green neon sign spelling out Muggshot’s name. Give me a second…” I waited and I heard Bentley grunting about something. “Okay, I think I have an idea as to how you can get it, but you’re going to need to climb over to the wrecking ball crane I’m highlighting on the binoculars. If you do things right you’ll only have one obstacle in your way, one poker dog that has metal edged cards, up there.”

I looked at both things Bentley highlighted.

“Is she doing alright?” I heard Mopsy’s voice asked, she was Bentley’s lookout in case thugs came after him. She wasn’t going to do any fighting though.

“She’s fine Mops, she just needs to move the crane into position above the glass and drop an old time wrecking ball on some glass to get at the treasure key we need. It should be simple enough for her that it’s actually insulting to her intelligence to be worried for her safety. She’s got a good head on her… hold that thought.” After a moment I heard Bentley say something else. “What… oh, hold on a second Sly… thankfully I know Navajo code talk let’s see… try five, three, two… okay, that’ll be useful to have.”

It sounded like Sly be opening a safe, but how did he be doing that in the middle of a chase? I shook my head and leapt from the tower to the building and climbed along the wall towards the crane, I poked my head up to look at the top of the roof where I saw the poker dog Bentley mentioned.

A nice flying buck to the head should knock him out, oh hey there’s a safe up here! Funny place to put one of those though.

I was also not asking the question of how they got something as heavy as a crane on the roof of this place. It was here and I didn’t need to be knowing how Muggshot’s guys did it… just that they did for some weird reason.

Clambering up on top of the crane, I crouched down and then leapt for the back of the tall white and black spotted bipedal dog. He gasped as he turned to the side and dodged out of the way of flying buck by accident.

I rolled along the rooftop, got my hooves under me to skid to a stop and hopped over the numerous edged cards he started throwing my way. When I landed I leapt and launched a jumping uppercut like Pom taught me, my hoof slammed home into his chin with a nasty bone crunching sound and his head be smacking into a nearby trash can on the rooftop. I grabbed the fallen trash can lid with my left hoof and got a good grip on it with both my front hooves as I brought it around and knocked the bipedal dog out.

Taking a glance at the metal edged cards that dug themselves the into concrete and brick roof, I could have probably blocked all of those with my hooves… but better safe than sorry.

I stole a few packs of card, some local world money to give to Sly, Bentley and Murray and thought about the bipedal dogs clothing, but left that to the dog.

I stowed my stolen goods away in my satchel, pirates and thieves make for good friends like I currently was with Cooper gang. I be needing help and they be traveling around, we would be doing each other some big favors to eventually finding my way back to Pom and the others somewhere on this world.

“Okay, I took care of the poker dog and there’s a safe up here.” I pointed the binoculars at the safe. “I also be wondering how they got a crane up here.”

“Huh, a safe is there, really?! Good news at least, that means you just found another page of the Thievius Raccoonus for us, thanks Shanty! As for the question about the crane, well things have gone to the dogs since Muggshot started his takeover of Mesa City and we’ve seen how bad maintenance has been around here. Even his security systems are poorly thought out enough that a five year old could haphazardly wander through them and come out unscathed, so we really shouldn’t be surprised that his guys somehow managed to get a crane on top of a building even if it’s a really a weird place for an old rope and ball crane.” It’s a good thing Bentley be knowing that I’m fairly smart myself, he be knowing I can climb past most of the security systems on the ground. “Okay… huh, you needed at least an I.Q. of 140 to figure this one out… Shanty the code is four, six and eight.”

I moved up to the safe and inserted the code left to right and spun the wheel. Once it opened up, I pulled out a bit of paper and looked it over.

“This not being an exciting thief move like the others I be hearing about… I hold up the binoculars to page to show Bentley.” It was about water safety, I still read a bit of it and upon doing so I think I learned something I didn’t think I knew previously. I already be knowing a lot about water already, but there was just something about this page that tickled at my mind. So I looked it over more thoroughly. “Water Safety doesn’t scream very helpful to me, I was born to be a pirate and I’m not worried about water as I’m already a great swimmer.”

“You might not be worried, but it’s still a page in our book Shanty, one that Sly could really make use of. Huh… oh… hold on… its Suzanne Cooper’s notes on ‘Water Safety’ Sly. We did miss swimming class in the orphanage.” I could almost hear Sly making dry comments about the page in question, but Bentley thought otherwise. “At a guess you’re family has always had a problem with swimming and if enough Coopers have drowned to require it to be in the Thievius Raccoonus, then you are bound to learn something from it… now let’s see about that crane! Oh, Shanty is on course for getting a key from a skylight by herself. Well that means we won’t have to do much more searching around the city, I think I got a location on the last one and will have Shanty meet you there. Now Shanty point your binoculars at the wrecking ball. Okay can you jump at it and land a flying buck around… here… and jump off to still grab onto the wall afterwards?”

“That be child’s play, I be doing things like that with coconut trees a lot in my youth! I know the perfect way to do it too… I’ll just use my goat fly technique.” It has been a while since I’ve done it, I looked through the binoculars to see the spot he wanted me to give a hard kick. “Before you ask it’s a technique I can only do off of walls or vertical surfaces, doesn’t work when I’m standing on the ground or on a ceiling though. Never figured out why it works this way, even my friends are confused by how it works and even I’m unsure of how I do it.”

I carefully climbed off the building’s roof and slid down the wall a few feet and stopped to look behind me to the wrecking ball and looked through my binoculars at it.

Bentley be making me a pirate themed set of binoculars just for me with a goat skull and crossbones on it. It made me feel like I was a friend of theirs already, these thieves did really cool stuff and had cool equipment too.

I stowed the binoculars in my satchel, I’m glad Dodo had most of our stuff… especially the food. I prepared myself and then launched a Goat Fly assisted at the large metal ball. Upon impact I be kicking off it and landed back on the wall as the ball swung outwards and destroyed the entire neon sign proclaiming Muggshot’s name and part of a brick building.

I be wincing at the damage to the nearby building and watched as the ball be swinging back to position right over the skylight with the key.

“Okay now I need to…” The ball instantly dropped and went straight through the skylight entirely breaking both bits of reinforced glass and it be making crashing sounds and… it is now going through several floors downwards. Each floor it went through made me cringe, I hoped nobody was in the building… then again Muggshot has evicted most of the people so at least nobody nice could be hurt by this. “Slight issue… I might need to… no, wait, I see the key. It still be a little dangerous, but nothing I can’t handle. Where do you need me to meet up with Sly? I be needing to be out of the area and very quickly, might have destroyed several floors of a building that the key was located on and may have drawn a bit of attention to myself… heh heh.”

The key was dangling on a bit of metal over the gaping hole the fairly small wrecking ball left in its wake. Quickly climbing down, I snatched the key before it fell several floors down onto the wrecking ball below me and made my way back up.

“Okay, look to your left, the last key should be in that back alley area… meet Sly on the roof here and Murray will be by to pick you up with his key, then we should be able to open the vault Muggshot is guarding… but we’ll have to deal with him first.” Bentley’s voice sounded a bit strained when he be saying that and I winced loudly. “Yeah, don’t want you anywhere near the guys guns, by that I mean both literal and figurative guns, but we need him out of the way if we want to get the rest of Sly’s family history back. I have an idea how to do this, but you need to meet up with Sly first and bring those keys back to the hideout.”

Their hideout being near The Prance Dance.

“Right, I just quickly be on my merry way before those well-armed guards be finding me up here!” I stated as I looked towards a building heading in that direction. I hopped onto the nearest wall. “Goat fly!”

I shot off the building horizontally and defied gravity by flying straight until I slammed hoof first into a different building a fair distance away. I sighed in relief as the doors to the rooftop I had been on bursts open and they be looking around for me.

Already being long gone from there!

-Ten minutes later-

“Could have broken this code in my sleep, it’s five six five.” Bentley stated proudly from the hideout as I climbed up to where I saw Sly pulling a page from a safe. “Sly, Shanty has made it to your location and Murray should be there real soon to pick both of you up. Ah ha, it’s Sir Andrew Cooper’s ‘thief replica technique’. He made fake stand-ups of himself to confuse guards while pulling heists. He used a lot of cheap lightweight materials using this technique, but if it works, then it really isn’t as silly as some people might think it sounds.”

“Here you go Sly, this is all for you!” I passed him the page I got, the treasure key and some money. “Just use the money to feed me if you feel guilty about taking it from me, I won’t be needing it when we find my friends.”

“Thanks for the help Shanty. I was a little worried you were a bit young for this kind of thing, but you’ve been a big help and I believe you’ll make a great pirate someday. Now I’ll go get the last key and we’ll drop down to the streets to meet up with Murray.” Nodding to Sly, I watched as he carefully walked over a plank towards the key on top of a tall pillar in these darkened alleyways. I will be keeping all the poker cards of course… “We can start looking for news of your friends soon after, Smolder and Ocellus obviously won’t go unnoticed from what you described… though since Pom looks like an animalistic that already exists, she’ll be a little bit tougher to find.”

Animal, Animalistic and Biped, this world was kind of weird. I would be considered an animalistic since I could talk.

At least I wasn’t being bored to tears here.

-An hour later, early morning, Inside Boneyard Casino-

I poked my head up over the counter to look out for any guards as sly used the keys to reveal a switch. When he pulled it, the giant Muggshot head nearby seemed to spit out its tongue revealing hidden doors.

“What’s be the plan Sly?” I asked as he was the leader here.

“I plan to go up there and take back what’s mine from Muggshot, you can stay safe with Murray or go with me. I want to know if I have some help in this coming fight, because I don’t think my cane is going to do any damage to the brute.” Sly is being quite honest for a thief. “So are you with me or do you want to wait with Murray?”

“I be good backup, in case something be happening.” We were on the cusp of a battle with the gangster that be running people out of their homes. We approached the doors and they opened up, Muggshot be waiting for us up inside the fire hydrant. “I’ll stick to the roof and will help when needed.”

“Alright, you knew what I was about to suggest anyway, let’s go.” We got on the elevator and be riding it up to the penthouse. Sly be walking off into the room and Muggshot be talking to him, while he was focused on Sly I crawled up the wall while looking around. This place be really big vertically and having a lot of crystals. “Bentley why are there so many crystals here?”

“That’s because Muggshot created a crystal garden… huh…” I hear the sounds of explosions. “Sly is starting his fight with Muggshot… Shanty can you goat fly over to the crystals on the floor above them and flip all but one of those sun reflecting mirrors around?”

“Yes, I can be doing that, but why?” I asked looked down and saw Sly was caged in and making the crystals take shots for him as he ran around avoiding the slower Muggshot.

“You’ll see for yourself, there’s a good reason all these mirrors are pointing outwards around his crystal garden. After you’ve quickly done that, get up to that last crystal and do the same there before Sly and Muggshot get up there.” Bentley exclaimed, I nodded and silently launched a goat fly and slammed against one of the crystals on the second floor and began flipping the mirrors. “Afterwards take cover and wait for Sly to be finish him off.”

I spun the mirrors like Bentley asked and left one alone. I crawled up the crystal and launched myself back towards the wall as Sly and Muggshot came up after painfully bright flash of light from below, I quickly scrambled out of sight upwards towards the larger crystal and the last few mirrors.

Looking back, I saw that Muggshot looked a bit sunburned. The muscular purple bulldog is being treated a like vampire? Heh, that’s kind of funny, by the dawning of the sun we will have taken him down like vampire slayers!

I goat fly to the big crystal and crawled around it spinning all the mirrors except for one, I noted where Sly might come up and left that mirror unturned and shot back to the wall and climbed up to the ceiling to watch what would happen.

-Later that morning-

“Thanks for helping Mesa City guys, that Carmelita is busting Muggshot as we speak. Is it going to be hard to get out of here?” Mopsy asked as Dodo took to sitting on top of the Cooper Van, it can be handling his weight and The Murray wasn’t complaining. “Also how about a kiss from a fair maiden as an extra bonus?”

“Yeah, leaving might be problematic. Thanks for helping us as a lookout Mops, but we need to be going!” Bentley replied to Mopsy while looking away from the looks she was giving the three blushing guys.

“Great, because I’m coming with you to make sure that Shanty finds her friends!” Mopsy stated succinctly as she throws two travel bags into the back of the van and closes the doors behind her. “I’ve already arranged for everything to be taken care of with the girls, let’s get going!”

Author's Note

It was always weird that Muggshot was weak to sunlight and you fight him in a crystal garden with mirrors that bounce the sunlight away from the crystals.

Still he yells about his guns breaking or not working, when it's his skin and eyes that he should be worried about after being assault by the light in the boss fight.

Okay, Shanty is a bit of a cheat code against Muggshot and in an urban environment there are a lot of ways she could hop from building to building quickly, so really her assistance speeds up the Sly Cooper plot.

83. Voodoo verifications valued.

-California, Hollywood, after lunch, Shanty-

So after we be taking down Muggshot with blasts of heat and light, Sly decided to show me a fun place where actors in this world congregated and was going to cause some mischief. We made it here before lunch after Muggshot’s defeat before breakfast.

While Sly and his friends only be stealing from master criminals, they still do some thefts not related to criminals just for fun. They would be mailing the stars from the local ‘Walk of Fame’ to the police headquarters in Paris so they can be sending them back to the US to be put back in place.

Sly said that they could be affording a little fun until the heat dies down, which led to me having some ice cream cones with Murray after lunch. We would be catching up on our sleep through the evening.

Sly had gotten the location of the next of the Fiendish Five from Muggshot, apparently it was a mystic named Mz. Ruby who was currently in the jungles of Haiti to the south east of here. It was a placed covered in jungle and the western third of the island, I’d be really useful to them there as I knew how to get around on islands quite easily.

Eventually Bentley came up with the history of the Cooper Gang’s next target.

Mz. Ruby just wanted to fit in as child and couldn’t because of her strange powers. Apparently she turned to raising the long dead for friends and uses the power of voodoo to commit crimes that are hard to solve due to some people’s skepticism about magic.

I suggested it all to be a big cry for attention and that no one be giving her much of that. I even remember seeing billboards of her trying to get into an honest business of potion making… but if people still be ignoring her…

Well, every pirate worth their coin be knowing how dangerous that voodoo stuff is!

While I can see she wants to be recognized for something and wants to be at least somewhat legitimate and have an actual friend that can talk back, she wasn’t being a very good person to be near at all.

I be warning Sly, Bentley and The Murray to be careful of Mz. Ruby, that alligator be having frightening powers if she’s any good at voodoo like I think she is.

It’s a good thing she be only raising the long dead and not the freshly dead.

According to Bentley the freshly dead would have turned on her in a heartbeat if she tried, especially if she was responsible for their death.

When it was brought up, the number of people Mz. Ruby has killed personally is… actually... zero.

This was much to the surprise of Bentley when he looked into it, apparently she not be killing intelligent beings… but she has no compunctions about killing animals or has incidentally killed people indirectly. While this is true, she does have the magic power to be killing people directly if she be hitting them with it.

She also be having no problems with using the long since dead of natural or unnatural causes that are completely unrelated to her to commit crimes and or do her bidding.

Ruby wasn’t the one that killed Sly’s parents, but she did assist the ones who did. Maybe she just wanted some form of companionship from the other Fiendish Five that put Sly out of his home and didn’t get it.

I felt somewhat bad for Ruby, as I be knowing what loneliness is like.

I really do not be liking the idea of being near voodoo magic and the guys promised me I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to do, but there was no way I was sitting this one out if we didn’t be finding news of Pom, Smolder or Ocellus.

I wanted to at least bring Ruby down, but I still wanted to make an effort to appeal to her to be changing her ways or else she could be going down a path where she would be better off forgotten.

There has been no news in locating Pom, Smolder or Shanty. There were a lot of bipedal dogs in this world, as well as numerous hot spots for animal dogs and even the existence of animalistic dogs had made it even harder to locate Pom.

Shanty and Ocellus be nowhere to be seen, any news station would be having a field day of just getting wind of their existence.

At least I be having Dodo with me and he be an eye sore of an attention grabber. Sly and his gang were helped him with keeping a low profile… if you call disguising him as an oversized bunny a low profile. They even be giving me a chocolate egg to eat in the open to sell the whole thing.

Dodo not be minding, he just accepted the costume we put on him and I thought it was cute. The costume was working for the most part and Dodo just has to make sure he doesn’t make too many large or dangerous looking movements.

I could feel he wanted to run around and do big things for me, but I didn’t need that at the moment so he was waiting for when I did need him. He did be protecting that orphanage fairly well and even got him an ice cream cone to swallow for his enjoyment.

Bentley made a mention of cold fusion in reference to Dodo before chuckling and clearing his throat, we were currently in the back of the van.

“Shanty, I’m not exactly an expert on magic, but you know how to use magic… and given your pirate leanings, I would assume that you know something about voodoo?” Well Bentley be looking to me for expertise and I did be knowing a few things, so I motioned for him to go ahead. “The news coming from Haiti is a disturbing to say the least, the plan Mz. Ruby is cooking up has been advertised quite loudly by her and… nobody is really taking her threat seriously. It’s a somewhat good thing people are ignoring it, because creating an army of ghosts to invade Mexico sounds like a weird plan. Would probably work better if it were closer to the 'day of the dead'.”

“She is wanting attention more than anything and that be an attention grabber like nothing else if she were to be succeeding. She be having a lonely life for many years and I know what that be feeling like.” The four in the back of the van gave me sad looks, they were all good people. Mopsy was making sure I got back to Pom and the Cooper gang didn’t mind being enlisted to help me with that. Like they didn’t mind me helping them, provided that I stayed safe. “What do you want to know specifically?”

“Since you come from a world of magic that has voodoo practices that might be the similar to the ones used on this planet, let’s start with weaknesses.” Stated Bentley as he looked to me.

“To start, voodoo is being far friendlier than necromancy and that be saying something since necromancy is being banned by absolutely everyone on the planet I be coming from. That doesn’t mean it isn’t creepy, dangerous or just plain outright deadly.” I shivered as I remember spending time near a tavern to hear stories other goats, ponies or various other beings would tell tales about such things. I did be stealing most of my food growing up as a necessity, best place to steal food from… a tavern where you can possibly find some free rum too! The rum be happening when a pirate be nice enough to spread their recent windfalls around to everyone else in the tavern. “If you were to be looking for weaknesses… start with salt. Get salt in a voodoo zombie’s mouth or force them to cross a circle made of salt and that will be bringing them down immediately no question. Ghosts… powerful heat and light, sunlight just weakens them and they need to be actively attacked with a something like burning torches. Any positive warm energy like fire is really useful, since ghosts be born of negative and cold energy. We’ll also need to watch out for entranced animals under voodoo magic control. As for Mz. Ruby’s plan… I just be realizing that it’s not going to work.”

“What do you mean Shanty?” Mopsy was suddenly sitting up and taking notice.

“It be simple… voodoo is usually stuck to the area it is started in right? It not be stretching that far! Also why not be taking all the surroundings islands first?” Poking my hoof around the map and where Haiti is, I grinned as I motioned to the surrounding islands she didn’t have control over. “It’s because she can’t be doing it. Any army she creates will have to be getting over the sea and keeping them dangerous is going to be an issue if the voodoo zombies don’t handle the salty air like I know they can’t. She would be having big trouble getting across the islands and up to Mexico to even be having a chance of starting an attack. She be at this plan for how many years… and she still hasn’t actually done it yet?”

Sly, Bentley and Murray looked at each other, then Bentley received the most attention from Sly and Murray. He looked at the map and then gained a quick smile.

“That sounds… fairly applicable really. Given Sly has had the time to grow up over the years since the attack on his family, we haven’t heard as much as a peep from Mz. Ruby aside from a bunch of spooky thefts that fit her modus operandi.” Bentley pulled out his laptop and started to type something out. “I also believe you are onto something Shanty, what exactly has she been doing for this past decade when the Fiendish Five split up and left Ruby to her own devices? We saw what happened with Muggshot and Raleigh… Raleigh was causing all kinds of weather problems on an island close to Wales, it sent some random weather to most of the surrounding United Kingdom’s region. I think Mz. Ruby is being hindered somehow.”

“Oh right… nature itself is also being a very big enemy of bad voodoo practitioners.” I received a lot of glances, even Mopsy be giving me a worried glance. “I know of voodoo users of my world, but it might not work the same here. I be thinking it safer to get confirmation on the weaknesses first before we be relying on them entirely. As for what I was talking about with nature… well those who use voodoo magic tend to be killed horrifically by animals that can feel the user upsetting the balance of nature itself. If she be doing that badly enough, then all the animals around would be wanting her out badly enough even at the risk of being directly controlled by her magic and... she can only be controlling so much at any given time.”

“Speaking of, what kind of creatures can we expect Mz. Ruby to be controlling when we eventually go there?” Bentley be asking and I be thinking of it.

“It be depending on what animals are there, spiders, snakes and possibly monsters made from the very land itself. She be in a jungle yes?” I see a few nods. “If she ruining it with voodoo magic, then nature will not be being very happy with her that she is taking from it without asking nicely. Of course I’d be worried if she has control of a pirate’s worse nemesis... rats!”

“How bad a reaction from nature are we talking here Shanty?” Mopsy asked in a slightly frightened tone. “Also rats… really? I thought the international police like that nice Carmelita girl would be far more of a worse nemesis to have coming after you. Really don’t know what you’re world is like where rats are worse than the police.”

“Nature could actively be coming to aid whoever tries to stop Ruby, quite literally plants will be in place to get you to her and animals will literally throw you at her if they know you want to deal with her.” It not be figurative, nature will literally aid whoever tried to stop a bad voodoo practitioner in whatever way it can if they don’t be caring for the balance. I be hearing horror stories of both successful and unsuccessful practitioners, but I never be meeting them personally. “I be hearing a lot about voodoo practitioners growing up, balance be emphasized a lot. That be about as much as I am knowing voodoo from my world. Also, if you ever be seeing a Giant Sumatran Rat, then you would be thinking they are much worse than any protector of the innocent. Pirate’s be absolutely hating those things trying to sneak onto their ships!”

-Equus, The Ardent Survivor in the skies above Meadow Hills, Jacky ‘The Blackcap’ Chickadee Eric La Perm-

“Oh goddesses, why?!” I screamed as a large black rat with tentacles landed on the deck of my ship and roared in my face. Belfry, our trusted and stupidly talented giant butterfly ship guard, tried to immediately spray it with caustic chemicals… this just made it angry and send Belfry flying over the side of the ship. Belfry should be perfectly fine. “Nefer get those stupidly powerful sedation chemicals out! Sammy please tell me for the love of all that is good in this world that we still have that anvil!”

I felt a giant rat tentacle wrap painfully around my chest… just another day in my life I suppose. Good thing I was wearing my jetpack.

Now if it doesn’t malfunction long enough to burn through the tentacle, then I’ll be golden.

-Earth, California, Hollywood, Cooper Van, Shanty-

“If what you say matches with the data of what’s going on Haiti, then I may already have a plan for how to deal with Mz. Ruby.” Tapping his fingers against his chin, Bentley stared off into space thoughtfully. “We’ll have to go there and test the edges of Mz. Ruby’s territory. Once our preliminary findings about Shanty’s knowledge is proven correct, we can then move onto phase two in figuring out how to oust the alligator from the jungle and into police custody via Inspector Carmelita.”

“Let’s just hope Carmelita stays safe around Mz. Ruby on her own." It wasn’t hard to be telling that Sly was passionate about Carmelita. "Carmelita may be tough, but I don’t think she has ever had to deal with magic."

“Wait, if Ruby has magical powers, doesn’t that mean that she can do things like see us coming?” At least Mopsy be seeing the dangers involved and she still be sticking with me until I can find my friends of what is being my makeshift family. She be a good person… even if she is currently throwing in with thieves. “I’m not that well informed on all this magic stuff aside from meeting Shanty and Dodo, but that sounds something like what a fortune teller could feasibly do right?”

“Oh I don’t doubt that Mz. Ruby has the power to do that… she’s the one that saw through the defenses on the Cooper Manor.” Visibly shivering, Bentley rubbed at his arms as he thought about something. “The manor had a decent amount of security on it, up until Mz. Ruby found a way to bypass all of it as a bit player in taking Sly’s parents from him. Raleigh was there to steal the book. Muggshot and Panda King were there to prevent escape and burn down the home respectively. As for Clockwork… now there’s a piece of work that absolutely had it out for Sly’s family… he’s the one that did the deed. Sly was lucky that they didn’t know he was there or they would have gotten to him too when he was a kid.”

I looked over to Sly to see his fists tightening and some tears streaming down his eyes.

“I be hearing Pom mentioning the name Clockwork once, but I don’t think it being the same Clockwork you’re thinking of.” That earned me some attention. “Pom be a guard from Huoshan before we started getting lost in other worlds, she be okay with having thieves and pirates as friends so long as they don’t bother anyone in Huoshan. Huoshan be a peaceful volcano that is home to the honorable longma, she was there during an attack launched by someone named Clockwork and they be making a lot of metal monsters.”

“Were they a giant mechanical owl?” Sly asked immediately with a grim look on his face.

“No, the Clockwork that Pom spoke of be a unicorn pony who has a special talent for making mechanical golems, he be completely flesh and blood from what I heard.” Shaking my head, I continued. “Though I do be hearing tales of him losing to the infamous pirate known as Jacky ‘The Blackcap’ Chickadee La Perm numerous times. I know that he can’t be remembering the name of the most cursed pirate in the world to save his life despite how many times she’s said to have made him miserable. Jacky be destroying his airships constantly by accident or bad luck whenever she’s nearby.”

“Out of idle curiosity, what was this Jacky’s curse?” Asked Bentley after some thought.

“She be a living jinx, but she be a great pirate that doesn’t let that stop her even if bad things be happening to her near constantly!” If nothing stopped Jacky, then that meant I could be a good pirate too… eventually. Right now I be as close as I can get by joining up with this friendly gang of thieves. “She be using skill to overcome the curse targeting her in many painful ways.”

“Why do I suddenly get the feeling that I really should have stayed at The Prance Dance instead of taking a vacation to do a good deed?” Mopsy mumbled while pressing her hoof to her head. “At least I know the girls will be okay with checking on the orphanage.”

-Haiti, Jungle Temple, Mz. Ruby-

So I can see that Cooper is coming for me soon, does he seriously think he can be handling my voodoo with a turtle, a hippo and a sheep?

Hah, I’d like to see him try!

I was quite ready for them, though something was oddly out of place as there was a fifth shadow I couldn’t quite see.

It was no matter, the shadow I couldn’t see in the crystal ball seemed small enough to not be that much trouble worth worrying about.

Let’s see how well you could handle my swamp Cooper, I might be having raccoon gumbo if there’s anything left of you after my vicious voodoo deals with you and your friends.

-Camden Town, Pom-

Last night spent with the Dalmatians was nice, but waking up the next morning covered in puppies wasn’t. The puppies were somewhat heavy and were snuggled against me in a manner that was too clingy.

At least Dante was a bit more respectful about giving me space and they were all really adorable dogs. I was still nervous that some of them might not be smart enough to avoid attempting a familiar bond with me, but my worries were mostly unfounded as I didn’t feel any pokes at a connection attempt.

I was still quite paranoid that it could eventually happen though and I didn’t want to ruin this sweet and loving family by accidentally stealing one of their number.

Dante had explained what happened with Cruella and her nephew, Hunter, and why they were using me like a security blanket that I was to dogs in general.

Cruella was a cruel woman that I could never be friends with, especially when she intends to kill so many dogs for a fashion statement.

If I were to ever meet Cruella De Ville personally, I wouldn’t even care if she had turned into a saint overnight, she was getting the best left hook hoof to the skull that I could possibly manage.

I might even enhance the blow with a dancing flame burst, but I didn’t want to kill her in cold blood like she wanted to do to all these poor dogs.

Surprisingly these dogs were far too noble and friendly for their own good, given they surprisingly saved her from falling into the very skinning machine that she wanted to kill them with.

I would have saved her too, but I wouldn’t have liked it and I was assured by Dante that none of the puppies liked it, but their parents were rescue dogs and they actively saved Cruella's life.

Their parents were a very good example for all the puppies to look up to.

If the stories about their ancestors were to be believed and according to Dante, this might not even be the first time that something like this has happened and Cruella still wants to make a Dalmatian fur coat.

The Dalmatian family did have a few vegetables for me for dinner last night since Dorothy, the littlest puppy of the Dalmatian family, had an unusually avid taste for carrots.

Most people would assumed that all dogs were carnivores and not omnivores, the truth was that they were omnivores and opportunists that would consume vegetables or fruit… even to their own detriment as some fruits and vegetables are highly toxic to them.

I already knew what was and wasn’t safe for dogs to eat, as did the matriarch of the family that has already banned those foods being anywhere around their home on the pain of a puppy possibly dying. If they still had ninety nine puppies after several years, then matriarch was strict enough with this rule to the point that even the mischievous Dolly followed it and took it seriously.

I was introduced to Doug and was finally properly introduced to Delilah, the patriarch and matriarch of the family respectively.

Doug, was an interesting and very emotional big dog, he loved his hugs and was more approachable with the puppies than his wife Delilah.

There were my silent thoughts that Doug constantly gave them affectionate hugs and got stuck in puppy snuggle piles in case he never came home from work, his job was far more dangerous than Delilah’s by a mile.

Dante quietly told me that Doug has never really come from firefighting with any burns and might be a descendant of a hellhound. Given that Dolly’s body could generate far more heat than most dogs around here when the entire house got frozen over and she was Doug's eldest daughter... it fits.

Delilah did care, but didn’t go for affectionate gestures nearly as often and usually checked each and every puppy in the family to see if there were any health issues.

For a family of animals, they were all very smart in their day to day activities. Even if said daily schedule might eventually get too much notice, then they’d have issues with bipeds who would break up their family by thinking they could not take care of themselves.

At least that didn’t happen with Dr. Dave, Delilah’s biped duck coworker that successfully assisted them against an Animal Control raid.

After breakfast, I would be spending lunch here and would then be followed around by three Dalmatians as we headed off to find Hunter De Ville. Dante, Da Vinci and lastly Diesel.

Da Vinci, the sensitive female puppy artist wanted to do a portrait of me.

Diesel wanted to help us dig things up, but I think he got the wrong idea entirely about what we were doing.

Author's Note

Mz. Ruby is going to be a far bigger problem than Muggshot was. Pom is helping Dante Dalmatian dig up De Ville history.

84. Hunting Hunter.

-Equus, Sweet Apple Acres, Applejack-

If it ain’t the darnedest thing that I ever done saw… I was watching Big Mac and Paprika try to move Arizona’s hoof, they were using four hooves, putting their backs into it and every ounce of muscle they could.

Arizona sat on the other side of the table giving them a dull look and yawned as right her hoof didn’t move a single millimeter.

“Have you guys started yet?” Arizona asked casually.

What were her muscles made of, pure dark matter?!

I moved forward and started pushing at her hoof myself.

Yet Arizona was still holding us off, all of us with one hoof. The other was, of course, literally tied behind her back with some of her own rope.

“This is getting kind of sad now… okay, here I go.” Arizona said lazily, with the barest twitch of her right hoof we went flying away from her and over the house and we landed in Carrot Top's garden next door.

“Howdy, need some help neighbor?” May as well offer since I was here. “We’re having a slow day.”

Carrot Top rolled her green eyes, flicked her orange curly mane, sighed and just nodded.

-Earth, Camden Town, Streets, Pom-

“So what or who are we looking for?” Diesel finally asked as we had been looking around the streets a bit randomly, but we were staying in the Camden Town area.

“We’re looking for Hunter De Ville. You know, the duck that saved Dorothy from his aunt, that evil lady that captured us all?” Da Vinci had a soft voice and she was adorable, but I did have to wonder why she had a blue tongue. I can understand why the fur of her front paws were practically dyed colorfully, the spots on Da Vinci’s body were black, orange and blue plus a hint of other colors too.

“Oh… why didn’t you say so earlier, I smelled a trail to him about three minutes back that way.” Diesel was a little loose in the mind department, both his brother Dante and his Sister Da Vinci groaned in agreement with my assessment.

We all turned around and followed Diesel’s directions as he sniffed out the person we were looking for.

“Diesel might not be the brightest puppy around, but he is really quite talented.” Dante went on to explain that Diesel had the ability to dig through solid concrete and could identify just about anything by smell alone after only sniffing it once. It was around the time that he got finished with explaining Diesel’s talents that we found Hunter. “So he knew that the duck biped visited their mother, but has never smelled the guy’s mother before. Oh look, there he is… and he’s surrounded by geese!”

The duck kid had long feathers pulled back into a ponytail, he was wearing a red jacket, a shirt, a simple black tie, red shoes and gloves without digit coverings.

Hunter was currently being held up by his shirt.

Dante growled, Da Vinci whimpered and hid behind him and Diesel was sporting a vacant look that everyone in his family has come to know him for when he wasn’t digging or smelling something. Still, that vacant look seemed to have some hint of anger in it.

“Now come on fellas, can’t we talk about this, there’s no need for you to get violent… right?” Holding up his hands in as placating a gesture as possible, Hunter looked like he was about to get roughed up by the group. “Can you please stop and think about this first?”

I started making my way forward to put a stop to this.

“Why should we stop, no one’s coming to help you De Ville!” The goose said into Hunter’s face while bracket by four guys who were chuckling. “I think we can get away with hurting a rich kid like you as much as we want, we can do even worse to you then last time, right guys! No one will care, not… one…”

I stomped my front two hooves loudly earning their attention and I glared at them, they were blatantly picking on that poor duck and it’s who Dante wanted to find.

We needed his help with something Dante saw in a grimm vision and I took those seriously due to Mr. Grimm, I took my Cu Sith beastie even more seriously than that as he spoke only in the presence of immediately deadly danger.

Hunter’s aunt Cruella sounded like a nasty piece of work, but Hunter was innocent as far as the Dante’s family was concerned. He was a pawn in Cruella’s planned murder spree and Hunter hadn’t a clue what Cruella truly intended to do with the Dalmatian family until she locked him up with said Dalmatians.

At least he tried to redeem himself for causing the dogs so much trouble and he stayed well out of their lives afterwards so they could live in peace.

As for Hunter himself, this wasn’t peaceful by any stretch of the imagination.

Five near adult teenage geese picking on a kid? Yeah, this is the kind of situation I would never be able to turn my back on in Huoshan.

I marched forward and went to standing on my hind legs in a stance.

“Oh, look an animalistic, here I thought nobody would care about someone who’s stuck with such an ugly legacy." He went to grab me and I reacted. "how about we make an ex…”

I blurred forward for a second and was back in my spot the next, nobody seemed to react as the lead goose froze up and one of the four guys with him looked at him strangely.

“Uh Gary? Bud... Sheldgoose…? why did you…” The goose flinched when he saw the goose holding Hunter suddenly dropped him. This Gary’s head jerked to the right and he fell backwards just as suddenly as his head jerked, only then did the left side of his face started swelling up with a hoof shaped imprint in it. “What the heck?!”

“Uh Pom... just how fast are you really?” Dante said wide eyed and a little scared of me, Da Vinci looked at me with undisguised awe. “I mean I know you can run real fast, especially if you can escaped ninety puppies chasing after you around our favorite park so easily, but I don’t think any of us saw exactly what just happened there. It was like you didn’t even move.”

I stopped looking at Dante and thrust my left hoof out in a jab as I held them both up prepared to defend Hunter from these hooligans. They seemed very reluctant to start a fight with me after I hit their leader with a quarter strength right hoof, but at the speed it was going… that definitely left a mark.

I motioned to the goose on the ground with my right hoof and then made a shooing motion with my left hoof, then I brought them both up and started to jab at the air idly with both of them.

I was waiting for them to make a decision while glaring them down, I seriously hoped I didn’t have to hurt anyone else.

“Uh… can you see how fast that animalistic is moving her hooves?” One of the geese in the back said as my hooves blurred indistinctly in the sunlight.

“No… I think we should just take Gary and get out of here.” The gang like jacketed member of the geese lifted up their leader and started to drag him away, one of the other geese got his legs and they were quickly off without looking back.

“Whoa… did that just happen?” Hunter stated as he looked up at me from the ground. I held out my right hoof to his feathered hands, he got a grip on my hoof and I helped him stand up. “Who are you?”

“Yeah, about that… hey Hunter.” Why did Dante seemed a bit embarrassed to see Hunter? They were friends… right? Or maybe they weren’t close friends and are at best not enemies. They likely haven’t interacted with each other much since Cruella kidnapped his entire family and almost started killing them off. “I know you’ve been trying to avoid our family, but we kind of need you for something.”

I nodded to Hunter.

“Um… do you know who this animalistic is uh…? Sorry… can’t exactly remember a hundred and one names off the top of my head. I’d know Dylan, Dolly and sweet little Dorothy though… also Triple D of course.” Hunter stood there awkwardly as I went back to all four hooves. “She just saved me from a rather painful pounding.”

“Yeah, she’s with us. Her name’s Pom and… she’s currently mute until her throat heals up or at least that’s what she's hoping for. We came looking for you because we needed your assistance with something.” Dante glanced at me for a second and then turned back to Hunter. “Also she can understand dog… and has written down that she can even speak it too… look, it’s a bit of a long story dude, but can you come with us to the local library?”

“Well… if it’ll help you out, I do owe it to make up to your family for all the stuff I did.” We started heading towards the library with Hunter in the lead and he pulled out a curious square device. “I’m still one of Dallas’s biggest fans you know.”

“Good to hear, maybe I can swing you a personal autograph from my sister.” Dante said conversationally as we walked along. “So… how has life been without that evil witch?”

“Pretty good now that I don’t have anything to do with her. I made sure Cuddles went to a better family, better than ours ever was to him at any rate.” Hunter sounded both sad and relieved at the same time when he said that. “He won’t get caught up in my problems any further, nor will he be causing your family problems either.”

“Nice to know… as a refresher I’m Dante, the crazy one that got captured by you on purpose… I having an off day.” As Dante spoke I noted that Da Vinci was relaxing as she stayed next to Dante and me, she was a fairly sensitive dog and really didn’t like confrontations. Diesel seemed to be lost to the world as he followed us along. “Anyway, this is my shy sister Da Vinci and… Diesel is recognizable as the only dog that can dig through hardened cement around here. I’m not sure why he isn’t more famous for that.”

“So what’s up with this… Pom? She seems… unusual somehow. I mean aside from understanding dogs like I do.” Hunter was able to talk to them which was part of his psychological trauma of being locked in a cargo container for six months and forced to survive off of dog food. I don’t think I would have been able to stomach it… especially with how little room he had when he needed to do his business.

Some things about what happened to Hunter were better left alone, that his aunt didn’t care enough to free him until the timer on the container finally ended made me like Cruella even less. I hadn’t thought that was possible at first.

“About that, her arrival was fairly noticeable to all the dogs in the area. I’m just surprised that no biped or animalistic looked up from their devices to see how she got here.” Dante rubbed the back of his head looking a little wary. “She came out of a portal and landed in the middle of the park, she’s an alien and she can do some magic. Which is why we need to look up ‘something’, my predictions were vague on what we’re looking for, but it’s about your family history.”

“A magical alien, that’s so sick… wait… my family history?” Hunter seemed like he really didn’t like the idea. “Why would we ever want to go looking into that possible horror show?!”

“Look, I don’t know why we need to do it, I just know that we have to for a really good reason. Ever since learning that magic and aliens are real, I’ve since learned that the predictions I make might be related to one of my ancestors being a Grimm. It’s a type of magical dog specifically able to see bad things coming, but not entirely the exact details on what those bad things are. It has certainly put my 'end of the world' ravings into perspective.” At least Dante seemed happier knowing that the end of the world wasn’t always today or tomorrow. “Pom knows a dog with similar abilities and told me how to handle it… for the most part.”

“This is the most I think I’ve ever heard Dante talk without shouting about the apocalypse… I might actually miss that.” Despite her quiet tone, Da Vinci was smiling a bit.

Hunter glanced at her and seemed to gain a look of some sort of recognition in his eyes.

“Oh right, I remember you… you do really good art. Hold on a second.” We stopped at a street crossing and he pulled out his device and eventually brought up an image of three similar looking dogs. If I remember correctly, they were the triplets Destiny, Dallas and Déjà vu of Triple D from Dylan’s side of the family. “You make quality stuff… sorry that I found out where you lived because of that. If I had known what my aunt was going to do… Anyway, why did you do this piece of dark wall art?”

He brought up another image, Dylan, Dolly and a Pomeranian surrounded by dark swirling clouds.

“Oh well… you probably can guess this, but I was the T-shirt artist that got called a… ugh… ‘mystery artist’. Our family needed the money to fix our backyards wall and… well… they were driving me too hard and I had problems speaking up.” Da Vinci whimpered. “I just wanted recognition for all my hard work, at least people loved it even if they didn’t know it was me. I took my frustration out on that wall in the only way I knew how to relieve all of that pressure… by doing art. I know our parents work so hard to keep us all fed. We usually need Triple D to do commercials for a quick boost in money to fix a broken wall or for other troublesome things like the water pipe Diesel accidentally broke through with his paws… but they were sick that week and I had to step up to help my family.”

“Huh, so that explains this picture.” He brought up the first picture as the cross light turned. “So you did an art piece of Triple D while they were incapable of doing a job, I must say you’re a great artist Da Vicni and I might be a fan of yours too given that I bought one of those designer shirts personally.”

“Thank you.” The meager voice Da Vinci spoke in was adorable as we crossed the street together, but she seemed happy that someone recognized her efforts.

“So when you say magic is real Dante… please don’t tell me this somehow involves my aunt.” The shivering Hunter did before he hugged himself was telling, as much as the haunted look in his eyes. “I can’t even begin to imagine what she could do if she had magical powers.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of one of the things we want to find out here today while we do some digging around in the library for your family history.” At the word ‘digging’, Dante seemed realize something and groaned loudly as Diesel perked up immediately.

“Where are we digging?" Diesel wagged his tail happily. When they said Diesel busted through a water pipe… did that mean he could dig through solid metal?! "I can show Pom how good I am at digging!”

“Not that kind of digging Diesel, but your already here anyway and I guess I need to be the responsible one. So no wandering off… please.” Dante didn’t seem to like the idea of being the leader of his brother and sister, but he was responsible for them as they followed us here. “Da Vinci I’m sorry to ask this of you, but can you make sure he doesn’t do anything?”

“I’ll try… but in return can you stop spooking the pups that don’t like it so much?” Da Vinci was probably one of the dogs that didn’t like being spooked by her brother Dante.

“I can try, no promises though… I like hiding and popping up in dark places.” Dante was certainly a bucket of sunshine.

We stood outside the library and Hunter looked at all of us, he took a deep breath and put his hand on the door.

“Okay… maybe what we discover about my family won’t be so bad?” At least Hunter tried to have a positive attitude, but Dante, Da Vinci and even Diesel didn’t seem to think so highly of his family given their looks. I’m guessing that when even Diesel shared a thought like that, you knew it was serious. “Oh wait… can you guys even get in?”

“Don’t worry about it, as long as we keep Diesel under control and don’t cause a mess, which also means no painting Da Vinci.” Dante got a nod from Da Vinci, Diesel didn’t seem to be paying attention and was zoned out again. “The librarian will let us in… she did last time.”

-An hour later-

“Okay, this is concerning.” Between his device, the thing called a computer and a book, Hunter looked a little pale.

“What is it?” Stated Dante with some worry as he came over after making sure Diesel wouldn’t wander off from his book about digging machines and mining safety regulations. It seemed like Diesel was engrossed with it and was currently as occupied as Da Vinci was with her book on various types of paints.

“I think… I think my family has a history of killing off the good people in it and they always make it look like accidents. I thought my parents might have died in an accident, but have a look at this.” He brought up numerous cases on the computer about the De Ville name… all of them being linked to some so called near or actually quite lethal ‘accidents’. “I have some living relatives… at least one is in Calisota Duckberg named Lena De Spell… currently, and legally, under the adopted name of Lena Sabrewing. The other… I’ve managed to find… well… she caused this.”

He enlarged an image and we saw a green feathered duck with a mass of swirling shadow monsters that vaguely resembled various bipeds swirling around her as she held a staff high up in the air.

I freaked out and leapt backwards as I pointed at one specific shadow with red eyes that resembled a familiar evil looking thestral poking out of the portal in the clouds above the hovering duck.

One that I had last seen getting blown straight into the shadow dimension by Oleander after being directly kicked into the path of her charged up horn beam by an upset Paprika.

That happened back when we saved Equus from the shadow monster incursions.

“Apparently, I’m also related to this… Magica De Spell? Our families are distant cousins. She’s apparently been around for a long time and she still looks this young?” Hunter didn’t seem too happy with the news he found, maybe because it might relate to Cruella looking young. “This event was written off as a special effects stunt gone wrong by a lot of people and that the movie that was being filmed has been cancelled since then… really, that’s what they went with to hide all of that? Judging by your reaction Pom… it’s very much real isn’t it?”

I nodded with what had to be a horrified look on my face, judging by Hunter’s worried gaze.

Hollow Heart took on all five of my friends and me, he nearly succeeded in stopping us from sealing the shadow monsters off from consuming Equus. That was before we all went to Fœnum to meet all of our counterparts there at the behest of Arizona trying to find out where her mother went.

“Well… your lucky that you don’t have a family that’s messed up like mine is Dante, but I might be able to get in contact with this Lena at least. I don’t think getting into contact with Magica would go over all too well.” Hunter then seemed to slump into himself and that made Da Vinci come over out of curiosity. She crawled up into his lap and licked at the bottom of his beak, he carefully patted her head and she smiled at him. “You dogs are more my family than Cruella ever was, she might even be responsible for what happened to my parents. Remember how I told you guys that I was so lonely and had wanted Cruella’s recognition after I was locked up with you? Well, I’m not as lonely as I thought, misery loves company and this Lena might be able to help me see that not every part of our families are pure evil. She’s my cousin and a family member that got out of the sister family to the De Ville’s.”

“This still doesn’t confirm whether or not Cruella has magic or is a literal demon.” Dante intoned while looking through the images on the screen at the various incidents involving the De Ville family and an exceedingly frightening number of cover ups.

“No, there’s not even any evidence she might be involved in my parents deaths, but my family does clearly have a history of complete psychopaths.” Hunter whined with a wide eyed look as he stared off into space, petting Da Vinci who was happy to be there for him. “I’m now very glad that I’m not one of those, I’m probably the only good De Ville that’s still alive unless there are others in hiding.”

“Well at least you have us right, we’ll be your family.” Diesel wasn’t the brightest puppy in any room, but he still had a heart. He came over and hopped into Hunter’s lap to snuggle up against him getting dirt all over his clothes. “You can always talk to me about all the weird and disgusting things I found by digging all around the Camden Town, you wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve seen!”

I idly wondered what bath times for Diesel were like, it was probably hard to get him clean and even harder to keep him that way when his first instinct was to ram his head into some dirt and dig around randomly.

“Yeah dude, so your family is full of… right, let’s just not talk about them.” Seeing the look he received, Dante decided to just crawl into Hunter’s lap with his sister and brother to comfort him. “At least you’re one of the good De Ville’s, Dorothy wouldn’t have warmed up to you like she did otherwise.”

Hunter hugged the three dogs and started to cry, I eventually moved forward and put a hoof on his shoulder and gave him a smile as he looked to me.

“Hopefully this Lena is reasonable and willing to talk to me, she might even be… nice…” Hunter mumbled, he did something with his device to send a message. “And possibly more family than I’ve ever actually had.”

Hunter was an inspiration in still being willing to try and bridge a gap with any family he had, despite learning some horrible truths.

So his family had some notoriously known evil people throughout this world's history.

Family wasn’t always blood, sometimes it was great friends.

Author's Note

Geese are quite menacing and territorial.

If Pom can dodge a miniature sun firing random beams of deadly raw energy with Shanty on her back, then she can move fast enough naturally without being seen.

Imagine finding out that at least eighty percent of your family is loaded with psychopaths, now imagine that you might have a sliver of hope in finding out about a cousin that's not one of them.

85. Reaching out.

-Equus, Ponyville, Market Square, Sandbar-

“So… did you notice the giant metal visitor?” I asked Gallus as we were hanging out today.

“The guy that calls himself Ectotron? Yeah, apparently Twilight says that she was checking in with other interdimensional traveling friends to see if they saw the group.” Gallus seemed to really miss having Smolder’s input on things, he really cherished arguing with her. I wasn’t as good at arguing, I don’t think anyone in my family was good at starting an argument. “Nothing happening thus far on that front, aside from the fact that our lost friends aren’t ghosts.”

Okay, change of subject, just like Rarity taught us.

“So what about that nice witch that’s basically adopted you?” I asked innocently enough, Gallus looked like he swallowed a lemon… the entire fruit without even tasting the sour juices inside.

“I’m almost an adult, does it really count if she’s looking out for me now when she hasn’t been there for me for the earlier parts of my life?” Gallus seemed to be waffling on this, because he was starting to sound fond of Kuril the second he started mentioning her.

“I think it counts. Besides, you like her grandchild Gavin don’t you?” I tried to think of something else. “You always seem happier after you visit Airship Mauled, it’s like a second Ponyville… only far more pukwudgie attacks and they are next to a forest full of giant monsters. That’s comparative to being next to a forest with numerous random magical problems like the Ever Free.”

More people from around the world were visiting Ponyville and some were even settling here in peace. If you couldn’t find a place in Ponyville, then Airship Mauled wasn’t that bad… it could sometimes be far worse than Ponyville when it came to chaos though.

“Yeah, Gavin is a cute little dude. I just don’t know how to feel about finally having someone to turn to when I’m in trouble.” That’s because Griffonstone wasn’t entirely pleasant for you Gallus. I think he has a problem with accepting a genuine offer of someone wanting to care about him unconditionally. At least Gilda, Greta, Gabby and Gruff made enough of a token effort for you. “Besides, Kuril is a crazy cat lady.”

“She doesn’t own any pet cats though.” I was confused as to why suddenly Gallus smacked himself in the face with his talons.

“Give it time!” Pinkie Pie shouted as she ran by chasing after an Abyssinian with green hair. “Get back here and take your free party like a mare Jaded!”

“But I’m not a mare Pinkie, I’m an Abyssinian Queen!” The cat shouted back as she ran from Pinkie Pie, she turned to look at Gallus and waved she ran. “Oh, hey brother, I hope you’re having a good day today!”

“Any idea what that was about?” Gallus asked in a confused tone, I just shrugged as Pinkie Pie still confused everyone at times.

-Earth, Calisota, Duckberg, Killmotor Hill, Mcduck Manor, Smolder-

“So that’s a no on Ithaquack, Saint Canard, Cape Suzette, most of Egypt, Thembria, Africa, Valhalla, Castle Mcduck, Istanbird, Istanbull which is next to Istanbird and used to be Constantinople, Mervana, Brazil, Cousin Fethry still hasn’t seen them in the ocean, Moorshire is clear aside from the killer kelpies and we at least know the parts of China and Japan they can’t be in.” Webby was one really energetic duck and she was taking our missing friends quite seriously, I think it’s because she didn’t have many growing up until she met the triplets of Huey, Dewey and Louie. Having told her about the school of friendship, she believed in friendship and took family seriously. “Haven’t found any sign of the three of them, though you’d think we’d have heard news of a large robotic ostrich by now… all I got was news about a mechanical owl named Clockwork. The things I learned about him weren’t very… er… pleasant. I’m surprised that he hasn’t come after dad’s fortune yet, that’ll likely be another adventure down the line for Scrooge Mcduck and family!”

“That’s… a lot of places actually.” When I heard they’ve been all over the world… they’ve literally been to a lot of places where they had contacts that could do a little glancing around for Pom, Shanty and Dodo. They were even using that Launchpad guy's contacts, he had about five times as many as both Webby and Scrooge combined, this was actually news to Webby. “Thank you for trying at least…”

They’ve already done so much for me, all I could do is sit here on a couch and feed Ocellus. I ran my claws over my comatose friends sparkling pink frill affectionately and her lips twitched a bit.

“Aw, don’t be like that. They are out there somewhere, I just know it!” Webby tried to keep a cheerful attitude and it was somewhat infectious.

“Hey guys, did you hear about the fracas that happened in Mesa City, apparently the Cooper Gang is on the rise again. What a time to live in… especially with the adventures we get into.” Lena walked into the room clicking away at her device. “Master thieves that steal only the best, they have a history of hard to explain thefts. I think magic might be involved in that… the only possible sighting of their activities is this one video of an incident in Mesa City involving a crane sitting on a roof, but there wasn’t a Cooper calling card there so it’s being heavily debated if the Cooper Gang was involved. Don’t ask how someone got a crane got up there, nobody knows the how or why of it online and just accepted that it was there.”

“Really Lena, being a fan of a group of ne’er-do-wells like that?” Violet, the brainy hummingbird, reminded me of a saner Twilight Sparkle as she came into the living room behind her adoptive older sister. After a moment she grinned slightly. “Not like we’re any better when we go treasure hunting...”

“Hey, at least those ne’er-do-wells are far better than the Beagle Boys are!” From what I’ve heard of them Lena, that really wasn’t exactly hard to do. “Speaking of which, some of Muggshot’s gang were Beagle Boys and were arrested after the Cooper Gang pulled a huge stealing spree on Muggshot’s holdings in Mesa City over the course of a single night. They are like a modern day Robin Hood’s Gang, if I remember right… Robin was a fox that was a thief and a master at archery who knew how to shake up Europe and apparently had ties with the Cooper Clan through some knight named Sir Galleth Cooper. I thought it would be of interest to Webby because the Cooper Clan is said to be the most successful clan of thieves to ever exist.”

“What’s the video and why haven’t they ever gone after dad?” Webby finally asked and she watched it with her taller friend. “Oh neat, never saw something that didn’t have wings fly like that before.”

“They only go after master criminals, sometimes they do side thefts as pranks and usually give back the stuff they steal in those cases. Scrooge might be a skinflint and a penny pincher, but he’s not a criminal… at least not a huge one if what I heard about farm animals and selling milk is true.” Lena looked thoughtful for a bit. “If Magica is partially responsible for the huge surge in animalistic people, then that’s another hurdle I’ll have to get over again thanks to my so called ‘relative’.”

Webby hugged Lena tenderly and I smiled at the sight. I sighed and continued to watch the footstool show, it was somewhat interesting what those roosters got up to.

I soon had Lena’s device shoved into my face.

“Oh you got to see this Smolder!” Webby could be a little pushy, but I had little else to do. So I rolled my eyes and got it over with.

The technology in this world was much friendlier and less deadly, though you wouldn’t know that if you even remotely knew the name of Gyro Gearloose. The device was like a miniature movie theater that could record things and some things other people recorded, on top of taking pictures and communicating long distances with said people.

I think I preferred face to face interaction back on Equus, but I did see the appeal of these devices.

Hitting the play button on Lena’s device, Webby and I watched a shaky scene where a building was shaking with a thunderous force sending dust everywhere. Soon a figure shot from the wall of the building and the video caught their silhouette from the side in the moonlight.

I blinked and then blinked again, I finally let go of Ocellus to rub my eyes.

“Wait… go back and pause it on the flying figure!” My sudden attention had Webby, Violet and Lena suddenly paying attention to me.

That and I stopped cuddling Ocellus like her life depended on it… which it mostly did, but I could hopefully spend an hour or so away from her without any adverse effects. I’m no expert, but it seems like Ocellus has finally stabilized after her magical blowout.

“It’s a bit difficult, because they are a fast blur… but getting a freeze frame shouldn’t be impossible…” Webby slowed the video down immensely and eventually managed to pause it on the figure. “Why, what’s so interesting about a flying thief?”

“I’d recognize that silhouette and pose anywhere… because that’s our friend Shanty!” I pointed out, her pose for the Goat Fly technique was far too unique to ignore. Leading with a hind leg, both front legs held back and her entire body streamlined to almost fly a straight line across a massive distance in spite of gravity after launching off a wall. “That’s exactly what she looks like when she’s doing her Goat Fly technique, flying kick and all!”

“Oh, that’s great news, we’ll just grab Launchpad and fly on down to Mesa City and…” Webby started only for Lena to cut her excitement off short.

“Yeah, no... sorry Webby, but if Shanty was one of the thieves involved in Muggshot’s downfall, then she’s definitely palling around with the current Cooper Gang. While that’s pretty awesome… she’s likely long gone from Mesa City. One of the things stolen from that building was one of several keys to Muggshot’s penthouse in the Boneyard Casino and a Cooper Gang calling card ended up there next to his burned body, all the stolen keys had been used to reach him in his… crystal garden?” So if Lena was suggesting what I think she was as she took her device and looked up the news. “They are no longer in Mesa City that much is obvious with Inspector Carmelita cleaning up the mess they left behind. We have no idea where they went… but I guess we could go there to look for clues or ask around about a goat at least.”

“Shanty and Dodo are alright then, I seriously doubt Dodo would be quiet if the Cooper Gang was kidnapping Shanty and she wasn’t actively assisting them. We’d have at least heard something about a mechanical ostrich fighting a pack of thieves, no way would that have been kept quiet with Dodo’s odd capabilities.” I’ve already explained familiars, Lena almost technically qualified as one for Webby. Lena was far too smart for the familiar bond though, but she had been strong enough to cling to life through Webby after nearly being killed a few times. “Dodo is definitely with Shanty since familiars always know where their partner are at all times, so she’s perfectly fine for the moment. So long as she isn’t doing anything too dangerous that is, she has a tendency to get into near death situations with alarming ease. It’s probably a pirate bravado thing knowing Shanty.”

“Then Pom is definitely the odd one out. If the Cooper Gang is actually as good as Lena says, then we’re not finding Shanty until we can find a good lead on their current hiding location or at least news of where they will pop up next.” Violet stated with a hint of concern. “We still don’t know where Pom ended up and our world has loads of canids in various heavy concentrations, the problem is that there’s nothing out of the ordinary in any of the spots I looked up in my research on said concentrations. Nothing drastic has changed in the concentration of canines anywhere. Not biped, animalistic or animal, Pom seems to be entirely capable of not making a spectacle of herself… which she will probably want to do soon, as to attract your attention to where she is if she’s as smart as you say she is.”

Lena’s device buzzed and she looked it over.

“Uh Vi, could you come with me off to the side for a minute? Something interesting just came up… it’s related to... ‘my family’.” The way Lena stressed those two words seemed to be daunting, especially for a shadow creature that was born from a witches need to steal a dime from the richest duck in the world.

Lena was thankfully not related to the world devouring monsters Pom had told us about and was an actual person. Sure she was made of shadows, but then what friendship wasn’t absolutely weird around here?

In terms of weird friendships, Launchpad Mcquack was a goofy and somewhat dim guy, but he was pure friendship potential personified and distilled into a large clumsy package. The guy was known around the world and yet wasn’t actually world famous? That’s pretty bizarre in and of itself, almost like him being poisoned by snake venom giving him the capability to speak a mangled form of Swedish… a language on this world that has been confirmed as something he doesn’t even know a single thing about and yet somehow managed to speak a complete sentence of it while halfway out of his mind.

If I didn’t absolutely know that this world had magic, then Launchpad’s very existence is a huge confirmation bias of it actually existing.

“Right, we need to take this and handle it delicately Webby, we’ll inform you if we need you to beat someone up for Lena. You should continue comforting the dragon and as for you Smolder… you should probably get back to making sure your friend is fed the necessary abstract of love she needs.” Violet was right and I quickly pulled Ocellus back into a hug. “Her recovery as a magical creature that can thrive on the concept of love alone is astounding, we’re all fairly certain she’ll wake up soon enough. Now if you’ll excuse us…”

Violet and Lena exited the living room area and Webby turned back to me.

“See, we already found two of them… or at least we kind of did. We haven’t exactly found them and put you in the same room as them… er… well this is still good news at least, you know Shanty’s alright and with a pack of thieves that sound totally awesome with going after all kinds of terribly... deadly... criminals…” Nothing could really bring Webby’s enthusiasm down, but she had to work on her tact. “I’m not doing a good job of this comforting thing am I?”

“Eh, close enough.” I answered honestly with a smile and looked down to see Ocellus’s unconscious body matching my mood.

-Lena-

“De Ville, cousins of the De Spell family, why haven’t I heard about this from… oh right, Magica never really cared about anything other than the ‘find Scrooge and steal his number one dime for ultimate mystical power’ shtick.” This was a pretty unusual message from someone of the De Ville family named Hunter, sounded like he was really reaching out to me for comfort and looking it over… it seemed like he seriously needed it. “Seriously, Magica needs a day job working at a place like Funso’s Fun Zone or something like working as a janitor.”

Hunter just basically sent me his life story. He was lonely and hoped I wasn’t a psychopath like the closest family member he knows… said family almost got him killed by sheer negligence alone. His life story sounded pretty bad, but then came the part I knew was coming.

He’s recently discovered that magic, monsters and aliens were all very much real, which led to him getting into contact with me. He gained the ability to speak to dogs after spending… how long in a cargo container?! How did he survive… magic, right. It sounded hardly survivable, but he managed it and he thought I was a 'sane cousin' when he finally decided to go poking into his family history.

He was in for a big surprise when it came to me being ‘sane’, because I was now certainly invested in learning more about him.

“Okay Vi, I’ve read this Hunter guys message, it seems legit… what did you get?” I turned to Violet and she was cringing quite badly the second I started addressing her looking up the De Spell family on the side.

“A history of psychopathic behavior towards family at best, at worst a lot of obvious cover ups for murders for the family members who weren’t nearly as outright evil as the rest of them were.” Violet looked to me with a hint of fear in her eyes. “Does he sound Sane? I’m seeing a lot of concerning stuff about what happened to his parent’s and the name Cruella comes up with an alarming frequency that I find most disturbing when it involves Dalmatians and hundreds of numerous failed therapy attempts.”

“He was apparently locked in a cargo container for six months and his aunt didn’t check on him once, said aunt is notably fairly abusive. He survived that on dog food and chew toys… but not entirely mentally unscathed, as he can understand and talk to dogs directly. So he actually has some magic to him.” I inhaled deeply and decided to bite the bullet on this one. “Sane is a state of mind we wished we could have, but we know Webby and her family. So sanity is definitely overrated to us. So… what do I do Vi? Do I try to help him, he sounds like he’s in a bad place and is the current acting owner of the company his aunt used to run.”

“Well… only you can decide that Lena, but he did contact you looking for companionship. Even as distant as you are from him, mind you he doesn’t know you’re only technically related to him via how you were ‘born’.” Violet was going to look at this from a logical standpoint, exactly why I was asking her for advice. “Blood isn’t the matter of this issue though, like how I’m your sister. I would think it has more to do with the fact that a kid is in the very same situation that you were in yourself until you met Webby and she became the greatest thing since sliced bread to you… eventually helping you break the shackles of Magica's hold over you to eventually become your own person.”

“The dude says he needs help and advice, but he doesn’t need me to come over and meet him personally… he just wants to know that he has family that will talk to him and actually… cares.” I tossed it around in my mind, that last word was fairly loaded one. This Hunter had been under his aunt’s thumb, until she was recently arrested for a number of things… which seems to be a reoccurring theme for this Cruella over the last sixty years. Said crimes included negligence and outright abuse, I’ve been there before and he’s recently discovered me because something magical was going on over there. I took a deep breath and started moving my digits about to send an answer back to him. “Violet, he needs me. He needs someone to help him keep his head above the water and I’m the unlucky person that has to do it. If he ever needs a place to stay if things go even further south over there…”

“Then the Sabrewing’s will welcome him to Duckberg with open arms.” Violet stated succinctly without pause or even a hint of doubt. “He’s family if you say he is.”

“I love you too sis…” I continued typing out a return message, I had so much to ask and so much to know. “His message stated that he is aware it would have been a bad move to contact Magica unless he was stupidly desperate, so he does have some sanity to him to recognize that piece of work for what she is. Probably has been burned out enough by ‘his aunt’ already and… I think we should seriously help him. I’m sending him my life story… except for the whole being made of shadow things, he doesn’t need to know about that quite yet. I’ll tell him if he figures out enough to ask about it.”

-Camden Town, streets, Hunter-

“Huh…” I just got a message back from Lena in the states and… someone who actually knows what it’s like. Lena was someone who knows exactly what I’ve been through and has been through it themselves, especially enough so to describe it with excruciating detail even. There was an open offer to lend me aid if I ever needed it. What she had to say about Magica De Spell let me know exactly why she’s happily adopted under the name of Sabrewing and warned me to be careful around magic.

“What is it hunter, why are you crying?” Diesel asked bluntly as we continued on our way back to the Dalmatian family’s home.

I wouldn’t exactly be welcome there, but I would try to be as unobtrusive as possible. They would hardly know that I’ve been around.

“I think my cousin is a kindred spirit...” I finally stated after wiping my tears away with my sleeves. We were walking into Dalmatian Street and frankly I was nervous about seeing Dylan. Pom seemed to be just idly keeping Diesel in line and Da Vinci was sending me worried glances. “I’ll be fine… at least someone out there knows what it’s like to be me, because they’ve certainly had it worse than me because of magic! I mean can you imagine your magical aunt haunting your body for most of your life or possibly taking control of it against your will to do horrible things? Imagine what that would be like if Cruella did that to me!”

Dante, Da Vinci and even Diesel flinched, they knew how bad that would be. I think we could all agree that we didn’t want to find out if Cruella had magic, especially if it could extend her lifespan if she were to find out that she did personally.

Lena certainly wasn’t hiding the fact that she knew about magic at all and warned me off of it despite being an openly admitted practitioner.

“Well that’s good news for you, now maybe you can face our top dogs and finally make peace with them?” Dante was pressing me about coming into their home and becoming a family friend.

I was willing to do that. The puppies would forgive me or have already forgotten I existed, but Dylan might still have a bit of a grudge given he doesn’t like anyone messing with his family. I didn’t know much about Dolly aside from the fact that she did skateboard tricks around the park and was a far more athletic dog than her space loving brother.

“So can I get to working on that portrait of you in the back yard while there’s still daylight?” Da Vinci drew attention from me and towards the alien known as Pom.

Author's Note

A wild Shanty has been sighted, Shanty uses teleport, Shanty escapes the battle.

Hunter has an exceedingly horrible aunt that is one of the top runners in the 'worst aunt' competition with Magica De Spell.

For those who don't have the Disney XD channel on cable or the less likely Disney Plus due to be expensive, because Disney is still being hollowed out into a shell of its former self to this day, Hunter De Ville does end up in a time locked cargo container set for sixth months... and survived that decently dark scenario.

The reason Hunter didn't call his parents for help? He doesn't exactly have them to rely on if he's with his Aunt Cruella. Who let Cruella be in charge of a child?!

86. Dolly’s Dilemma.

-Earth, New Mexico, Hamburger Hippo, Sly-

“It’s always hamburger hippo with you isn’t it Murray?” We made sure nothing we ordered for Shanty would upset her stomach, they had pretty good vegetarian options like burritos.

“Hey, Hamburger Hippos are the All-American experience Sly!” Yeah, with mixed foods from every other part of the world Murray.

Shanty loved the French fries and also got a large salad to go with her burrito, she was an even worse stomach than Murray and I didn’t even think that was possible because she was far smaller than our favorite hippo.

Yes, a hamburger place that had burritos, probably one of the few reasons Murray frequented it so much in Paris.

Our tour of the southern US states was going pretty well, we were heading towards southeast Texas to catch a boat to Haiti. Hopefully Carmelita wouldn’t pick up our trail until after the stars from Hollywood’s walk of fame made it to Paris.

Also, we discreetly broke up at least five drug cartels on the way for some extra cash to keep Shanty fed, I had to resist leaving my calling card on those occasions as Carmelita would jump at the chance to chase us down.

Mopsy wasn’t as classy as we expected her to be, she also wasn’t as flirtatious as she first acted, I guess she noticed that she made us uncomfortable and didn’t say much about it as we weren’t biting at the hook. She still liked to tease us and even asked me how I was going to steal Carmelita’s heart after she’s already taken mine.

That sheep could be classy though and was good at getting to know people… whether that was intimately or not was the question we didn’t need to know the answer to.

Shanty made for a good scout when it came to casing places to stay, we were even teaching her a few thief techniques. None of them were my family’s techniques of course, I always had the final say on anything like that and was currently learning how to generate accurate stand-ups of myself in different poses. I was trying to make a special one for Carmelita to have.

We put Shanty through her paces with quickly constructed obstacle courses. She wasn’t going to be the best thief in the world, but she already had some skills from being a street urchin and she was trying to learn how to be more cunning in a fight with what fighting skills she did have.

Shanty was quite a unique kid, I didn’t think any orphanage could ever hold her even if they tried their hardest. Her friends might be impressed with some of the things she’s learning, provided they weren’t as black and white as Carmelita’s views about us were.

We would have made a quick trip back to Paris, but we didn’t want Mopsy or Shanty to know where our hideout there was yet. Trust is earned, not given, even if they have already earned our respect.

Bentley was still looking into where Shanty’s three friends were and nothing has popped up yet, as for Dodo…

It was a little odd that Dodo was a living machine that would eat regular food. That metal ostrich was ridiculously friendly and could also make some really good crepes, still don’t know where he got the ingredients for them and Shanty didn’t care to find out or bother with how Dodo makes baked goods.

It wasn’t hard to separate the deadly owl from our new two legged goofy friend that seemed to now have a habit of nesting on top of the van in disguise.

Dodo’s theme today to fit in with the van, well… he already fit by being himself… we’re rubber chicken salesmen today.

We make disguising ourselves fun.

-Camden Town, morning, 101 Dalmatian Street, Dolly-

Okay, breathe, you can do this, you can approach what has to be one of the coolest things to ever happen to your family.

I liked skateboarding, hunky dogs, my brothers, my sisters, my friends, fun and all the possibilities that were opened up to us recently. You are a top dog Dolly, one of the two in this household that everyone could depend on when the chips were down… of course I would eat those chips, we were always opportunists and fish tasted pretty good too!

Just so long as that fish wasn’t cooked with too much oil, if mom had to do another health and food lecture again... well we didn’t want puppies getting sick. A refresher about what not to eat wouldn’t be too bad I guess.

So Pom was an alien, so she was ridiculously fluffy and so what if I used her butt as if it were the world’s best pillow last night.

I didn’t even know how much sleep I had been missing until I fell asleep on Pom. She was comfortable and I can see why all our brothers and sisters took to trying to sleep on her, the Puppy Pack weren’t having any nightmares just by being in her presence.

Pom felt safe, a safe bet, someone that wanted us to be safe and would keep us safe. It kind of scared me that it was so easy to feel like that around her.

It’s just too bad we couldn’t actually make her stay last forever. I wanted to know more about Pom, as there was just something about her that was slowly drawing my attention to her the more she was around.

Oh, I knew that Pom staying here was an absolutely temporary thing and my Bro was quite sure of it as well. Whenever we agreed on something, Dylan and I would eye each other to see where a shoe would drop in the wrong place.

I nuzzled one of my sisters off of me, Dee Dee soon rolled over to fall on top of Dizzy.

I giggled at the two as they snuggled up into a ball together, it was so nice to not have my sisters clutching at me and crying about the nightmares of watching me be thrown into a death machine first.

Those two were precious, like all the puppies were.

Pom was nice, in fact… we didn’t do any puppy care yesterday evening because Pom just started doing it out of nowhere. I thought she would flop flat on her face from just one evening of it, but she didn’t even look vaguely tired after doing an entire evening’s worth of puppy care.

Pom actually outlasted the Puppy Pack, that not-sheep had stamina and knew how to move around.

When I asked Dante about it, he confirmed that she had mentioned her own ‘fam’ of dogs back home that she wanted to get back to. I could connect with that feeling of wanting to stick with family on a personal level.

That there was such a thing as traveling to other worlds made me want to jump right in on that adventure of a lifetime despite all the dangers involved, but only if I had the ability to come straight home at the end of the day. Pom… I didn’t think she had that option.

Aliens, monsters and magic. Our world used to seem so normal and tame… until we learned that there was like this whole hidden side to it. We never really went very far from our comfort zones in Camden Town or went looking for trouble on purpose, I usually caused enough trouble by myself on a good day.

So how do I approach Pom, how would I even begin to thank her for helping out my ‘fam’ with their trauma just by being here with us?

I was the only one currently awake and I carefully started wading through the mass of puppies Pom had around her. Today… I think… that I was actually going to do some chores.

Dylan would surely flip out about me doing that for once!

Speaking of the space case, my step brother Dylan was snuggled up under a pile of puppies as well and looked too comfortable to wake.

Bro and Hunter were slowly rebuilding their relationship fully based on honesty this time around.

I made my way downstairs and blinked as I saw Dante just setting up the tables.

“Dante?” My voice made him jerk away and yip in fright, I giggled at him as he flailed around with a pile of bowls falling all over the place.

“Oh, morning Dolly.” He picked up the bowls and continued setting up the table. “Wait… were you actually going to do...”

“Nope, I have no idea what you’re talking about!” I hastily said, this made my brother chuckle at me.

“Right, you actually doing chores… what was I thinking… you’re just going to help me with the kibble pump and make sure I’m doing things right from the sidelines.” Wow, Dante certainly had me pegged and I couldn’t back out now. “So what’s got you up early this morning Dolly?”

“Why do you think Dante? I slept soundly last nice and woke up happy.” I sighed as I moved over to operate the kibble pump, while Dante took up the hose and prepared to fill the bowls. “These last few nights with Pom have been good for us, but you know that it won’t last right? Pom’s going to want to find a way home and… I don’t know how to approach her.”

“You’re overthinking that Dolly, Pom isn’t really complicated.” Dante looked a bit concerned as I hit the button on the accordion, but no explosion of kibble all over the place this time… thankfully. Dawkins’s kibble pump was always a bit touchy, but Dante seemed to be handling the even flow just fine as he evenly filled the bowls with the food that flowed out like water. “Have you ever considered why we don’t just out ourselves as animalistic? I mean, we can read and we know how to write and the only problem that is keeping us from being seen as smarter than we are is that we speak specifically in ‘animal’. That’s really all that truly separates us from the animalistic.”

“I… have never actually thought about that honestly.” Now that I think of it, neither has Dylan, Dawkins or any of the other smarter dogs in our family. “I think it’s that we like things simpler even if we’re smart enough to, mostly, understand bipeds and animalistic people. Still… we can barely pass as animalistic Dante. Pom would certainly pass with flying colors if you didn’t know that she came from somewhere else and wasn’t of this world. If we outed ourselves, people would start expecting more from us and… well they’d tried to mess with the ‘fam’ and I think we’re doing just fine flying under the radar.”

“Except for the occasional kibble shortages. The need for money to feed all of us is slowly working mom and dad into the ground. The house needs a good plumber thanks to Diesel’s digging messing up the infrastructure. There’s the messes you cause by being irresponsible. There’s the messes Dylan causes by being too uptight. Dawkins once blew a hole in our roof with a makeshift rocket powered elevator we would never use. Think about the amount of flea powder we needed to finally clear out this entire house of fleas. Da Vinci’s tongue is still blue after one incident, blue Dolly! I’m still surprised that absolutely nobody has noticed that we are far more intelligent than we appear.” Once he finished filling up the bowls with kibble, he shut off the pump. “We’re a mess Dolly, one huge clumped up mess that somehow barely works out for us. Being seen as animalistic would make things far too hard for us to really handle, so is it any wonder that my predictions were always about doom befalling us?! My horrifying thoughts about our lives aside, do we have any more nuts, vegetables and other stuff for Pom’s breakfast?”

“Yeah, we should, I know we have plenty of carrots for Dorothy’s teething at least. She loves gnawing on them.” I knew it would still be a while before Dorothy got her spots, but she’s recently started talking on our level and mom was trying to find the time to teach her… which was hard when she had work at the hospital with Dr. Dave. Dr. Dave was cool with us being smart, as he certainly hasn’t told anyone about all the dogs living in this house. Dante’s right though, we’re a mess, but were sticking together through thick and thin. “You’re right Dante, best to keep up the animal angle… at least until we can no longer avoid it. It almost feels like it is inevitable for us.”

“Scary thought… the future… to think I’m going to be better about my predictions... and they are going to be far more accurate now than just some random rambling.” Dante stated in a solemn tone, he was the one always predicting the end of our way of life. I could certainly see why, as he’s obviously thought about this even before we found out his predictions were a real thing. “Well Dolly… it’s your favorite part of doing chores. Go ahead and get them moving.”

“Breakfast!” I shouted, my voice echoing throughout the house.

I heard the stirring of hungry bellies and several pups exclaiming ‘food’ and ‘breakfast’ already. That number was increasing exponentially as hundreds of paws started charging for the dining room and saw my smiling face on the way.

I loved yelling and getting a reaction from the Puppy Pack as they surged in to start eating, they could just clean their teeth after breakfast.

Huh… another thing that we took care of that bipeds and animalistic people wouldn’t expect of us. Speaking of, I should probably floss more.

The tidal wave of puppies left a dizzy looking Pom on the floor to stare at the ceiling, she let out a quiet huff and tried to say something. She only got raspy sounding air for her trouble.

I worriedly watched her roll onto her hooves despondently to look in Dante’s direction as he set about making a bowl of food specifically with her needs in mind.

Hunter and Dylan walked into the room chatting with one another, they were actually working things out and were now interacting far more casually.

I was actually happy that Hunter was okay given his current circumstances, he didn’t exactly have things easy right now and I had already gave him a pass for saving Dorothy.

Dylan was the only holdout among us, because he didn’t like people messing with our family.

I sat down and started to eat and gave Pom some glances as she slowly ate her food, I looked up at the portrait Da Vinci made of her.

It was Pom smiling shyly with puppies crawling on her with a sunset backdrop, Da Vinci never skimps on the details that mattered.

-An hour later-

I finally got the guts to approach Pom. I cleared my throat and drew Pom’s attention away from giving one of my brothers a belly rub in the living room.

“Excuse me, but there are some things I wanted to ask you about… you know… like where you’re from, what you do there… that sort of thing.” Tilting her head at me as I held out the notepad I brought, she eventually nodded and took it into her left hoof and I quietly shooed off my brother. “I just want to know more about you. I know you won’t be around forever, but… you’re seriously helping my ‘fam’ get back to normal and I can’t thank you enough for that. We haven’t really asked much about you outside of Dante spending time with you, mostly because he seriously needs your help with that magical dog stuff.”

Pom started writing something down and when she stopped, she showed it to me as puppies started gathering around us.

“You’re name is Pom Lambchop, heh that last name is kind of funny knowing what we do.” The puppies all around joined me in giggling. “You were born in Meadow Hills, a mostly quiet place full of flowers and sunshine. Sounds nice… your home is now the city of Huoshan, on the side of a… seriously, a volcano!?”

I just looked up at Pom and she nodded, I went back to her notes as the puppies seemed to find my interactions with Pom interesting.

I felt a strange twinge in my gut, but I didn’t know why.

“Wait… you’re a guard, isn’t that like a police officer?” She took the notepad and wrote on it and gave it back to me. “You might not have a job when you get back to it and you were the head of… the canine division? Well if you need someone to vouch for you guarding dogs, then you’re doing a good job of that at least.”

Pom huffed and wilted.

“Yeah, I didn’t honestly think that was a good joke either… so you’re all alone with being stuck on this world huh?” Sending me a look, Pom shook her head no. “Huh, that means there are others that came here like you?”

She nodded yes and wrote down four names.

“Smolder a dragon from the Dragon Lands, which Huoshan is a part of. Her friend Ocellus from the Changeling Hive. Shanty the island goat and her companion Dodo… a mechanical ostrich?” I looked to Pom to see her nod. “They are all lost somewhere on this world and you don’t know how to find them. Would you want some help with that?”

She took the pad and wrote on it. For some reason I felt a hunch that she was going to dismiss needing help.

“It’s not our problem and you will eventually have to set out once you figure out some way of getting their attention or know where to go… that and you don’t want to bother us with your problems.” I added that last part dryly as she didn’t write it down, but Pom still nodded at my assessment. “Well you’ll always be welcome here at least, until you can figure things out. I’m sure they are all fine and you’ll find your friends eventually.”

She took the notepad again and wrote something down, the puppies were looking to me curiously as if there was something off about me.

I felt perfectly fine, excellent even.

“Find them and then hopefully find a way back home? Well, maybe it would help if you wait until you get your voice back first.” It looked like my words were being tossed around in her head and she sighed while nodding. “Great, so… what are you going to do now?”

Pom was giving this some thought and she eventually wrote something down before passing it to me.

“Get a job and try not to be a big burden on our already stressed house? Don’t worry about it, we’re not that horribly stressed.” Well it wasn’t exactly like we were keeping it a secret and Dante recently pointed it out to me that we can hardly go a week without a disaster that could end our home. It would only take one really bad disaster to ruin all of our lives. “How are you going to get a job? I think you’d need at least some kind of identification and well… you’re an illegal alien, so that’s another problem.”

Pom was illegally in our world, as were her friends for that matter. They were all split up and I was already seeing that this was a problem that was far too big for our family to handle.

All the puppies whined and some were looking to me to figure out a way to help Pom like she’s helping us, I didn’t have all the answers or any answers for that matter.

We had little in the ways of helping aside from giving Pom a place to stay while she was here, we already had enough problems as it was and… Pom has been through a lot.

I felt my heart going out to Pom and something felt off for a second, like I was being rebuffed about something yet there was like this feeling of a string building up. It’s like I just walked into a thick bit of webbing.

I shook my head. Dylan might have an idea, but he and Hunter were still hashing out their… Hunter!

“I think I might have an idea as to where you can get a job and some help!” I said suddenly, while standing up and wagging my tail. This made Pom tilt her head at me. “Well Hunter is having a problems, aren’t we all, but he has plenty of money! He can pay you to work for him and maybe he can even aim some of his company’s resources to helping you out.”

Putting a small hopeful smile on Pom’s face was worthwhile, now if only I could tell Pom about a burgeoning thing I was feeling around her.

I wanted to spend more time in her presence and I felt something tugging me towards her, not physically just something that… that… I couldn’t actually describe it. It’s like I could ignore Hansel entirely just for this.

“Pom there’s something I want to ask you about magic, but before that it feels like I would do almost anything to help you and…” Before I could finish my statement, I tried to pull on this feeling to see what it was. Maybe I had some magic?

I felt something suddenly snap into focus between us, between me and Pom.

No matter how hard Pom resisted it with every ounce of her being, it was like it was instantaneous and nothing could stop whatever just suddenly surged into place between us.

Pom looked completely horrified and I felt… really strange.

“What… was that?” The stare I received from Pom felt quite forlorn. “That… this… it’s just weird and I can’t really explain any of this. What did I just do to myself and why are you so worried about it?”

I could feel Pom was slightly upset with me, but what she was more highly upset with was mostly… herself for letting whatever that was just happen?

Why would she be upset with herself about this feeling, she was great and… in fact I could almost feel her worries, anxieties from this and…

Okay, what the dog was going on?!

Pom put both her hooves to her head and shook it while slowly dragging her hooves down her face, she slowly took up her notepad and wrote something down with a large frown on her face.

The not-sheep looked at me sternly as she passed me the notepad.

“We need to break it… break what?” I asked, feeling something awful coming from Pom and a large sense of dread that I didn’t know I could feel around her.

Whatever she wanted broken, I didn’t feel like I wanted that to go away whatever it was.

What she wrote down next was confusing.

“The bond that formed between us? Why... what happened to me and… why would you want to…?” I think… I think I might have messed something up… like big time. Something that not even Dylan could solve with his odd ability to acquire ninety nine fur dryers on such short notice... we got a lot of mileage out of those too. “Whatever this is, we’ll try to make it work out, okay?”

-Pom-

What have I done, I didn't want to take anyone from this family!

Why couldn't I stop it, WHY?!

-Dolly-

Pom didn’t feel like she wanted this, but felt like she was slowly accepting that it happened.

It’s odd and it felt like we knew each other…

It felt like we were… familiar.

Author's Note

That's a pretty big gut punch for Pom.

"This is going to end so well."

87. Tarot Terror.

-Earth, Haiti, Mz. Ruby-

Sitting in a dark hut in my swamp, I prepared to do a random reading of tarot cards to see the portents of the future. Whether or not they would be related to me and my fight with the Cooper’s gang would remain to be seen.

I shuffled the magical card and continued to think about my adversaries, they were coming and I had no clue when they would arrive.

They would not be getting me out of my swamp without a fight!

I spread the card, all of them were blank, like they were supposed to be. They were ready.

I placed the first card.

Strength, but there was something quite odd about it.

Strength, both upright and reversed… at the same time?! Who could have such bravery, compassion and focus, yet be experiencing self-doubt, weakness and insecurity?

I placed a card below it and a suit of wands showed up, it was the upright ‘Seven of Wands’. Whoever they were they were persevering, protective and had an indomitable control of themselves.

The next card was that was also upright and reversed like the major arcana of strength, from the suit of cups. The two of cups, it represented unity, partnership and connection, reversed it showed broken communication, tension and… an ‘unintended’ imbalance?

Someone was having a worse day than me it seems, my ghost factory was producing spiritual rats at a good pace. I dare pirates to try and attack me now!

The card I placed down next below strength had me blinking, the suit of swords?

Is whoever this is about going to have one of every suit? This was the nine of Swords, upright… anxiety, hopelessness, trauma? There were massive amounts of all three. Whoever currently representing Strength was, they had to be on some form of roller coaster they direly wanted off of.

One last card… huh… Suit of Pentacles, which was to be expected considering all the others.

What does this portray of your future? The symbol came into focus for me… The Knight of Pentacles.

This person would always be efficient, hardworking and responsible as she moves on to the future, she would lay a foundation for everyone she can while putting the weight of the world entirely on her shoulders.

For yes, I have divined them to be female and they… sound unbreakable despite all that comes at them.

“The two of cups has me curious… what Arcana is the one of Strength meeting with?” I asked the air and placed down a card, a thread of pure magic passed between the two cards. “Hmm... strange… Fortune upright and reversed. Basically a boat with no rudder to steer with to get it off its current course, but luck… is still on the side of the passenger… curious.”

A card surprisingly flopped out on its own next to Fortune, Fortune is… a girl… she has a brother who is… The Star? One with boundless hope and faith, he clings tightly to Fortune with everything he has and does not wish her to meet her inevitable fate.

Strange tidings for whoever these are… I will continue with looking into this Fortune.

I placed a card, the ‘Eight of Wands’. Fortune acts quickly then… perhaps too hastily at times.

‘Knight of Wands’, both upright and reversed. Fortune was fearless, adventurous and loved to take action, they were also easy to anger, impulsive and reckless. A confirmation of acting hastily at the very least then.

I place a ‘four of wands’ and looked at it curiously as a copy of the ‘four of wands’ automatically jumped to being beneath The Star, as did a second card.

Both ‘four of wands’ were upright and reversed, this means that they had a huge family. So the Star and Fortune tended to be in conflict with one another at home, but they cherished one another all the same.

I never got much of that with my family, all I needed was my powers!

The Star had a Two of Wands upright and reversed. The Star liked planning things and making decisions, but feared change and liked safety when in reference to the Four of Wands.

That they were a community unlike any other screamed loudly in my senses, Fortune will soon face a huge lack of support. I never understood why people care so much about forming such strong bonds. I haven’t ever needed them since I started concentrating on my voodoo.

A King of Wands leapt out to position beneath The Star, he saw the big picture, he was a leader and he overcomes challenges.

I reached for a card, but the final card slotted into place beneath Fortune before I could. Six of Cups, upright and reverse… familiarity, happy memories, moving forward, leaving home. Whoever this is, they will be putting on a brave face soon.

Interesting, but it likely had nothing to do with me. These people were somewhere in the United Kingdoms.

-Camden Town, 101 Dalmatian Street, Dolly-

“So… it would be kind of like something from Poodle Woof huh?” I tried to ease Dylan down, but he was clearly upset. As were all the puppies that I might follow Pom when she has to leave.

“The game is Poodle ‘Wolf’ Dolly, Poodle Wolf, no… forget about that! Dolly your place is here… with us… your family! Please tell me this is just a phase and not something magic is doing to you!” Dylan looked heartbroken and I couldn’t meet his eyes, I told him about the magical bond I created with Pom and nobody in the house was taking it well as Pom told everyone about it. “I agree with Pom. You really need to break this bond Dolly, whatever it is, before it’s too late!”

“So… you’ll be taking the job for the time being and will try to get Dolly to hopefully agree to break this thing going on between you on purpose?” I vaguely heard Hunter ask as I continued to interact with my dorky bro, I saw Pom nodding and I cringed a bit.

It hurt, but I wanted to help her regardless of how much pain it’s going to put me through. She wanted to be back with her family and I know that she would have returned the favor, even if Pom had to die for me to do it.

“Bro you worry too much, it’s not like Pom is leaving immediately or going somewhere far off and dragging me away from the ‘fam’ forever.” I couldn’t help but feel there was something hollow about my words, I think I actually wanted this bond like I wanted to help Pom get home.

“Please Dolly, this is important, we don’t know much about magic. This isn’t like my game at all!” He was pleading with me to reconsider my stance on being Pom’s companion, because Pom has said this bond is a two way road and we didn’t know exactly what we were actively giving to one another. “You should really listen to the one expert we have on the subject and I’m not talking about Dante! Our world’s magic might have created this bond and it could be entirely different from what Pom knows... so she has a very good reason for wanting you to break it!”

“Bro… nothing… will ever… break up our ‘fam’! I will always be ‘fam’ Dyl… I still want this though.” I needed to get this point across and I wanted to do it in a way that Dylan would understand without a shadow of a doubt. “Look… Hansel could walk up to me this minute, declare his undying love for me, ask me to marry him and ask me to stay here with all of you until we’re ready to be wed… but I would refuse him. You don’t know what that feels like to me Dylan, knowing that I would say no to Hansel’s face for this… that I would not take that kind of perfect dream to go into the unknown with an alien that just came out of the sky!”

I had screamed at him, he had to understand how bad my crush on Hansel was… that this took priority over that said a lot about my determination to see it through.

“Sis…” Dylan wilted and I wilted too for getting so angry with him, he was trying to help and I was refusing to see reason. I just… where Pom goes, I wanted to follow. “None of us want you to leave.”

“I know…” I started to cry into his chest, the bond to Pom didn’t weaken from this. I didn’t want it to. It didn’t help that I could now also feel the massive pyre of a bond that I had with my family too, all one hundred of them. I didn’t even know my bond with my step mom was that iron tight! It just wasn’t quite the same as Pom’s bond with me. “I’m not becoming a pet though Dylan… I’m not getting a pet either… it’s… hard to explain what’s happening. I just… I don’t want to be the one to break the ‘fam’, both Dee Dee and Dizzy are going to be so upset about all this and they are always so impressionable… they’ll want to make a bond like this too because I’ve already done it! You saw what happened during my whole ‘Camilla’ episode with that evil corgi Clarissa!”

Dylan started to gently rub my back with a paw as I cried into his shoulder.

“Can we Dalmatians really do anything bro?” I finally asked, it was a belief of mine and it was shaken to its core. This is something I couldn’t do, for the first time in my life.

“We’re not letting you go without a fight Dolly.” Dylan’s voice was determined, but I don’t think he quite understood the severity of what we had to do to break this bond on purpose.

We figured that the bond was created by our world’s magic and latched onto the magic from Pom’s world, because with the way Pom explained it… I was far too smart for this to have happened otherwise.

Who knows what mixing magic from two completely different worlds was causing with us?! Well… in for a pound as much as penny.

I then recalled Dante’s words and my heart basically stopped in my chest as the echo played out in my head.

“Scary thought…” I tightened my hold on Dylan. “The future…”

-Pom-

I had expected this from Dorothy, which could have been easy for me to block a bond attempt from. The baby puppy wouldn’t have the willpower to get through my guard.

A guard which I never dropped once, but was usurped entirely by Dolly’s purely impossible ferocity in the way she embraced it with her very being.

Maybe Dante would have been possible and a far less detrimental bond, as we became good friends these last few days and his family was a little more inviting to him thanks to me. Still he was guarded as much as I was, so it would never have happened. I did have to tell him that even Grimm Dogs couldn’t see everything coming, which is why this even happened.

I possibly would have even slightly expected Da Vinci, given how much she likes me… I was a living work of art to her and an inspiration for many a painting for the adorable blue tongued dog.

What happened, was that I ended up forging a bond with one of the two dogs that were holding this entire family together.

Top dogs were necessary for the stability of large litters, the older dogs that cared for the younger. As such, ninety plus dogs was too much for one top dog alone. Dolly was said to be half sassing her part in things around here, but she was good at corralling puppies. That was her primary skill around here and they might soon be missing that… because of me.

This was a disaster and no amount of screaming or kicking could seem to get Dolly to recant the bond despite everyone actually siding with me on pleading with Dolly to do so.

The puppies, once they got an explanation from me through Dante, were all over Dolly about breaking it and not following me to wherever I went from here when it was time for me to start making headway into find my friends.

The entire family was now in on the keep Dolly home, where she truly belongs, campaign.

I hoped and direly wished that they succeeded, or else I would be responsible for tearing an entire family of Dalmatians apart just because I magnetized the wrong dog to me. I was breaking their whole family simply by existing, but I would find a way to make things right… I had too!

Hopefully my job as Hunter’s advisor and protector went over well, I would be considered a foreign bodyguard with an exceedingly sketchy background. Don’t know how Hunter was going to get me some identification when I wasn’t born on this planet or even in this dimension.

Now being a bodyguard, that was something that I could do easily enough while looking unassuming as a native quadrupedal animalistic I appeared to be.

-Haiti, Mz. Ruby-

New prediction path, I placed down a card and a card immediately jumped next to it protectively.

Whoever the upright version of ‘The World’ was, they were protected by… The Lovers?

That protection was incredibly fierce, so much so that I could hardly look directly at The World that was guarded so jealously by The Lovers committed to protecting them above all else.

It was almost like it was a dragon protecting their hoard, it even almost felt like a dragon.

If I remember right, The World represented fulfillment, completion and…

I felt a powerful surge of absolute ‘HARMONY’ immediately ruin my reading.

I huffed audibly, whoever I tried to randomly scry apparently were protected by many figures. One of them was apparently a novice in learned magic, but a powerful one with incredible instinctual magic nonetheless.

It was better that I didn’t try to do more than locate the source of that problem… it was… north of California? I’ll be sure to avoid Calisota in the future.

-Calisota, Duckberg, McDuck Manor, Lena Sabrewing-

Whoever that was, I hope I just gave them a black eye… it kind of scared me that they got through the protections on Uncle Scrooge’s mansion. Oh great, Webby, Huey, Dewey and Louie got me thinking of him as my ‘Uncle’ too.

When Scrooge said I would have a part in his family, he seriously meant it to the point that I felt welcome here any day of the week and all year long. Scrooge honestly despised magic… well magic used as shortcuts to things you could simply achieve with hard work, he didn’t mind letting me into his home and I was made of the stuff held together on the power of pure friendship.

Something that I’ve been feeling a lot of around here, it was like the mansion was being saturated with harmonious energies.

It says a lot about how much Scrooge trusted me around his oddball family of adventurers that he had me around to make sure the defenses were up to snuff when Penny the Moonlander couldn’t handle something.

“Hey Violet, do you know of a kind of magic that can circumvent all the protections that Moneybags has on this mansion?” I asked while looking at for another intrusion, it didn’t feel like Magica. “It wasn’t Magica, which is as much as I know for certain. I think they were looking at Smolder and Ocellus before I caught them, the intent behind it was ambiguous with a hint of negativity.”

“Possibly voodoo magic mixed with tarot card divination, which originates in West Africa, sixth thousand years old and sixty million practitioners… if a third ‘six ‘happens with a time frame soon… well… let’s not go there.” Violet said immediately. “Dangerous stuff, whoever this practitioner is they are good at what they Voo-doo.”

“Finally, you make a good pun, it took you months to finally get one that didn’t sound like Dewey using his name over and over again! It’s understandable that I really want to punch his beak in right?” I stopped, stood up straight and cleared my throat. “So as Scrooge’s ‘Team Magic’… research?”

“Research.” Violet confirmed.

“Hey guys, we can confirm that Shanty was in fact in Mesa City.” Huey stated as he came in looking through some notes. “She was last seen in the presence of one Mopsy Muttoncoddle, a relatively famous dancer at The Prance Dance.”

-Mz. Ruby-

I felt a shudder trickle down my spine. No matter what power I seemed to have attracted the attention of, it is time to do the reading I wanted to from the start after confirming my deck was working correctly.

“Sly Cooper.” I stated audibly for the magic to latch onto the name, I was being quite specific with this reading.

I placed a blank card down, four jumped to join it protectively.

What Sly Cooper came up as… I wasn’t even surprised by it in the slightest.

The card was the element of air, such as being hard to touch or catch. The ruling planet of mercury representing the quick footed, like that of the raccoon that wore blue clothes like a wrong side of the law police officer.

A spread of four other individuals and Sly Cooper comes up as ‘The Magician’ in the upright position among them.

The meaning behind this was clear, Sly had the talents, capabilities and the resources to eventually succeed in most endeavors. The Magician, when upright, means he’s skilled, determined and dexterous, he is all around a strong powerful male with both willpower and desire.

He has surrounded himself with The Chariot, The Sun, The Empress and… The Fool? That last one was curious. I was about to move on with the reading when a fifth card leapt forward and landed nearby, it was Justice. Justice was separate, but near the other five cards.

Outside help, how annoying. I tried to place each card with the beings I saw in my crystal ball.

Let’s start with The Chariot. It had to be the turtle, in control and always looking at a way to solve the next problem using his head. What did the current brains of the Cooper Gang truly know of magic though? In a direct confrontation, he's no real threat to me.

Next I’ll think of The Sun. The hippo is a good fit as he seems like a cheerful chubby guy and he’s handsome too… to bad I have to end him. The universe conspires to give him a good path moving forward and he’ll cause me trouble, anyone who always knows the road to happiness seriously needs to be put down fast if they are your enemy.

The Empress, a rather strange card for an even stranger sheep. A whore with a maternal heart, nurturing new friendships and always capable of finding new opportunities while offering stability to those around her.

Friendship, what need do I have of that horrid concept at this point in my life? Bah.

So a whore who has an abundance of kindness and won’t take part in any fighting unless a child is threatened, not very threating in the slightest to me.

This last one in the Cooper Gang… The Fool, the most dangerous of all the cards I’ve seen because it is a truly wild card. It was the last shadow I saw in my crystal orb and I didn’t get a good look at them.

A fool believes in the universe and can improvise a solution to any situation on command with enough time. They can be exceptionally spontaneous as much as free spirited in the direction they choose to go in life and are always found at the forefront of new beginnings, like the rise of the new Cooper Gang.

The real danger is that one should never underestimate The Fool’s ability to do the impossible, especially after being told that the thing they will do or will have done is supposed to be completely impossible.

The Fool will go out of their way to do the impossible anyways just to prove someone wrong, a fool that is actively aware of that kind of power is an exceptionally dangerous being.

The cards that moved under the The Fool were all very specific to the element of water under the suit of cups. The two of cups, three of cups, Page of cups and Knight of cups. All of them are upright. Forms connections, wants to build a community, is in a partnership with the Cooper Gang and understands what unifies a group, a dreamer and idealist that follows their heart.

The dream? Adventure wherever the wind blows or the water flows, with good friends by their side.

Their ideals? Freedom of movement and the eventual ability to do as they see fit.

Wait… water element… idealistic… wanted to create a community… they have a pirate with them?

Pirate’s always made for the worst kinds of fools, toughened by every experience life can throw at them and they always live how they please.

I was now worried about the Cooper Gang. I figure I could handle most of them, but the lone pirate that works as The Fool makes me uneasy.

To think that disgusting pirate filth was coming into my swamp, my army of ghost rats will tear them limb from limb!

Now that I had an idea in my head. I don’t know if I truly wanted to know, but I had to find out.

“Clockwork...” All the cards played themselves out before me without prompting.

The metal owl's arcana was that of the… oh… well… it seems I’ve seriously backed the wrong mechanical menace.

The Tower lay before me… both upright and reversed. The Tower is never a good sign when it comes to magical tarot cards no matter whether it be upright or reversed, but both happening at the same time?

I’m glad that it wasn’t me and that I couldn’t do readings for myself to find out if I fell under the arcana of The Tower too.

The best I could hope for was the Death card personally. A metamorphosis, a huge change in my life as a result of my old one dying.

I could see that the Cooper Gang cards were all arrayed so that… something big would happen and it was going to be catastrophic beyond belief.

There was also Justice again… and... Judgement?

Who was Judgement?

Justice was fairly obvious, Inspector Fox has become famous lately for cleaning up Mesa City and would be gunning for me as soon as she hears that the Cooper Gang is here.

Judgement… there’s something wrong with that. Who was receiving redemption and why were Strength and Fortune from the earlier prediction flickering in and out of focus like dying embers, distorted chances of a possible future?

Judgement represents enacted karma, an incredible devastating reckoning in the form of a person.

Hopefully I wasn’t going to be anywhere near ‘The Tower’ if it falls… but before that, I had some guests to prepare for in my swamp.

I may not be able to predict my future, but I will still fight to invade Mexico with an army of ghosts… those Mexicans had it coming for allowing Hamburger Hippo chains into their region!

-A small distance away from Haiti, Shanty-

“That be fairly ominous.” I stated as I looked up at the swirling clouds in the distance from the boat we were on.

"The swirling clouds?" Sly said sarcastically.

"The giant mosquito!" I leapt away from the giant insect piercing the deck.

Author's Note

What is the noodle incident that led Mz. Ruby to wanting to attack Mexico so badly anyway?

I'm leaning for it being something of a completely inane reason, she was never exactly the most sane character...

88. Released The Beast.

-Equus, Canterlot, Spike-

“Thank you for your report Fizzle.” Twilight knew she only let her friends call her that, Fizzle made her enemies call her Tempest and only an idiot she didn’t like would call her The Storm Queen to her face. She’s still the same pony that befriended Twilight though and we just watched her leave the room in a lazy trot to go back on patrol for any Grogar cultists she might have missed. “So what’s next on the schedule?”

“Uh, aren’t we going to worry about the growing economic crisis first?” I asked and Twilight gentle pulled me into a hug.

“I’m going to eventually eat an entire bucket of rocky road because of that Spike, mostly because my alicorn constitution never allows me to get truly fat.” Yep, Twilight was stressing out again, at least she had better coping mechanisms these days.

We now understood how Celestia could get away with ingesting entire cakes, also why Celestia had a habit of eating entire cakes after Twilight took the job to rule Equestria.

Alicorn stress eating, it was a phenomenal thing to watch.

It was also a bit sad that Celestia had stress eating problems… that or she really just enjoyed cake that much. Maybe it was both because Celestia had to deal with all the nobles like Twilight currently was.

“Okay then… next we have a report form Sunburst and Starlight working on tracking down the lost with several unicorn teams. Ectotron did say he’d be able to detect Equus magical signatures if they appeared in that dimension at the very least.” I watched as Twilight wilted. “Not that it helps unless they appear there.”

“Make that two buckets of rocky road.” Twilight muttered.

“Can I split one with you and add a few sapphires to it?” The response I received was a happy smile. So long as I don’t mention the Changelings or the Lambkin in the same sentence, she’ll be fine.

Don’t honestly know how Jaded La Perm managed to destabilize the whole world’s economy so badly, but we’re working on fixing that issue one day at a time.

Twilight would at least have fun going through the tax codes to make sure that they were entirely disastrous dyscalculia and evil idiot proof.

Not that Jaded was pure evil, but she was quite good at freaking out Saddle Arabia and they believed this to be a plot by her to make them vulnerable to an invasion by chinchillas.

Ah, things haven’t changed one bit, paranoia and chaos spiced our lives like usual. We didn’t even need Discord to do anything to cause it either.

-Earth, Near Haiti, Shanty-

I watched as Murray wrestled with the giant bug, while Bentley examined it up close and personal.

That thing nearly be skewering me with its spear for a mouth.

“Well this confirms one thing, Mz. Ruby has definitely upset the balance of nature when we can find mosquitoes that are bigger than I am!” Bentley be a pretty small biped, but he wasn’t exaggerating about the mosquito. It be big enough to possibly carry Sly around on its back. “What are the chances that nature wants her super dead Shanty?”

“Mosquitoes big enough to be sucking an elephant dry in minutes, much less a voodoo using alligator in far less than that, do I really actually be needing to say more? Hey, where is Mopsy?” Looking around for her, I didn’t see her anywhere.

Murray finally got the mosquito under control and was keeping it pinned until Sly could tie its limbs down or, more importantly, its wings.

“I think she said something about not wanting to fight a giant bug monster.” Murray mumbled as he roughly smacked the giant mosquito in the head hard enough to get it to stop struggling and completely dazed it.

“Sounds fair, but she be missing this nice ocean breeze.” Giant mosquito taken care of, I looked forward to the boat docking at port and the wind swept through my hair as I relaxed in the sun.

-Haiti-

“So you’ll want to avoid going anywhere near that giant skull shaped structure, unnatural things are happening over that way!” Sly nodded to the animalistic seal that had been a crew member of the ship we had arrived on. “Enjoy your stay in Haiti and stay well away from that hellish swamp I told you about, I swear that place has been horrible for tourism over these years and its only gotten worse with those thrice damned mutant bugs!”

“Thanks for the help sir.” Sly was quite polite to the seal. Once we were driving a fair distance away from said seal, he turned to address Bentley. “So… in the direction of the storm clouds?”

“Yep.” Bentley stated while looking over things on his computer.

“Oh, oh, do I get to rent a hover boat or a skiff!” Anyone who’s been around Murray long enough would find that his enthusiasm be quite infectious.

“I have some misgivings about all of this.” Whined Mopsy. “Out of the six of us only three and a half of us are fighters, no offense Murray.”

“Wait, why am I the half?” Murray asked curiously, while poking at the bottom of his lips looking both a bit perplexed and slightly upset.

“Sly is good enough to be fighting big thugs with his cane before I be coming along. I created an effective fighting style and have held my own against even worse than giant mosquitoes. I can be handling danger much better.” I motioned to Sly. The tall bipedal raccoon twirled his cane with a question mark shaped hooked end to it and afterwards tipped his hat at Murray with a sad smile. “Can you be doing more than flailing Murray? You’re also not exactly fast on foot and I can easily dodge almost any problem that be coming my way. No one here be questioning Dodo's capabilities in a fight.”

We heard Dodo’s happy mechanical warbling from the roof of the van, today's disguise theme 'Lucky Clucky Motor Repair Services'.

“Well, that just means I’ll have to work harder to be of use to you guys in the field. I’ve already taken up boxing and I’ve been doing some wrestling.” Murray flexed his muscles, they be a work in progress and as a hippo he was being quite big already. “I even got some practice in against the mosquito we left tied up on that boat, The Murray won’t let this family down and I’ll protect you with everything I have!”

“Uh… someone is going to take care of that thing eventually… right?” Mopsy said looking back towards the boat as we made our way for the hotel. She be sharing a lot in common with Pom, but she doesn’t have the spirit to be putting up nearly as much of a fight. “I mean you guys just kind of left that mega mosquito tied up on the ship.”

“Mz. Ruby is messing up nature around here something fierce…" Bentley grunted. "I think we’ll have our work cut out for us on this escapade.”

-The next day, Haiti, Jungle, edge of Mz. Ruby’s territory-

“Okay, we see some zombies, ghosts and… yikes, those are some huge spiders… not to mention the ghost rats. It also seems like Mz. Ruby is also fond of exploding voodoo chickens.” Bentley be watching from my view among the trees as Sly tested the monsters patrolling the swamp. “Those muck monsters are also something you didn’t know about Shanty.”

Said muck monsters were terrifying, they required Sly to destroy both their body and their heads separately before they would finally stop rising up to go after him.

“Chicken’s must be being very important for Mz. Ruby’s voodoo, she wouldn’t be having nearly that many chickens otherwise… especially all the zombie ones with bombs strapped to them.” At least I didn’t be the only one to think that it was weird.

Speaking of weird, I saw an odd grey feathered looking zombie chicken covered in black spots that seemed to be avoid all the other monsters and was standing well away from the other chickens looking both contemplative and sad.

It seemed to be less dilapidated than the other zombies and it had a shine in its eyes like it still be having a soul, but it is still being stuck here like all the other zombie chickens.

I was about to comment on the oddly wiry looking spotted zombie chicken when I was distracted.

“She seems to have excellent magical defenses already, she's not really big on technology and I’m on the back foot when it comes to knowing about magic. At least you’re out there to watch Sly’s back Shanty.” Now if only Bentley could be finding signs of my friends, but I not be in any hurry. This stuff was being quite fun! “Mz. Ruby is, frankly enough and please excuse my language here, clucking nuts!”

I giggled into my binoculars as I kept an eye on my own surroundings as I watched Sly prod into Ruby’s territory.

“Yeah-- I’m not going anywhere in there from what I’m seeing of Shanty’s view.” Mopsy was in the safe zone with her own personalized binoculars that were simply hot pink, she was acting as Bentley’s eyes from the top of the Cooper Gang van. “Spider’s should not be the size of small bears!”

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Flamberge-

“Who knew giant orb weavers make for good barbecue?” I bit into a leg and chewed, tasted like a divine rare treat. Eating meat in Equestria tended to earn you fearful looks unless it’s fish, unless you live around here. “Sorry if this somehow turns you off of eating brother.”

“I am Fortitude, the fantastically fragrant!” My brother, the world’s smelliest yak, suddenly yelled out of the blue. As a dragon that will inevitably outlive him, I’ll definitely miss the sound of him screaming that every single day. “Giant spider meat is a favored among griffons, hippogriffs and thestrals, I will never be troubled with you partaking of what is delicious food to you my brother!”

“Order up!” Kuril shouted as she dropped a spider flank steak at a table of thestrals. “Thanks again for taking care of our slight spider problem Flamberge, Fortitude. Though getting rid of all this spider meat might take a while… at least we got a lot of hungry thestrals sniffing about the area, so I think it’ll all even out. I Might even try some of this myself... it just smells so good and it's all coming out just right.”

“Eh, we’re used to handling eldritch abominations at this rate Kuril.” I bit off another chunk of the leg and it was chewy and sweet, the salt just enriched the flavor. “Thankfully these weren’t eldritch and far easier to handle.”

-Earth, Haiti, Jungle, Shanty-

“Is it me or are all the vines and branches on all these trees angling inward towards Mz. Ruby’s lair?” When Sly asked that I looked around and noticed it to.

“Nature be really wanting her gone that badly.” Stating this clearly, I looked around where Sly was testing Mz. Ruby's defenses. “Branches and vines are literally moving into position for you to get closer to her lair.”

The pouches of salt were proving useful against all the zombies at least, not so much against the ghosts. At least Sly’s cane currently had a special coating of stuff specifically meant for dealing with supernatural monstrosities.

It be effective enough against the ghost rats that sent shivers through my spine, I be having several torches to burn in my satchel in case those ghosts be coming near me. Also Bentley be supplying me with things he called flashbangs, it be providing powerful light that’s good against ghosts and enough noise to disorient the giant animals I might run across. I be needing to cover my ears and shutting my eyes if I use one.

“I think I’ve found something, can you move to get a different view on me and what I’m looking at Shanty?” I started moving when Sly asked and managed to spot what he was looking at, it was a huge circular area of swamp that looked to be sealed off. “Have any ideas what’s behind this gate anyone? I mean it doesn’t seem very important to Ruby’s operations.”

“Likely something Mz. Ruby wouldn’t want anyone knowing about. Are you going to bypass that industrial strength voodoo gate to find out?” When Bentley be saying this, I was getting a bad feeling my gut. “Maybe it’s something we need to look into, my paranormal scanners are working and there seems to be a solid mass of activity there that Mz. Ruby isn't causing.”

“Okay, I’m going to get over the gate.” I watched as Sly climbed up and around the gate and into the space with the large walls. “It seems too quiet around here, aside from the giant spiders and mosquitoes, something is definitely up with this place.”

“Sly…” I was on the top of a tree and keeping my binoculars on him as he ran and slid along the tree branches. “There’s something in there with you…. it is being big.”

“Didn’t quite catch it in Shanty’s feed, but she’s right." Bentley sounded worried. "There's something big shifting the reeds in there, be careful Sly.”

Sly used his cane to swing from a tree onto a small island with a collection of tree roots, something was moving behind them.

The tree roots started bulging outwards.

“Run!" I shouted. "Trust me, you don’t want to be looking back right now!”

Sly started sprinting along the gnarled tree branches away from the sight of the tree roots breaking apart behind him.

“What is that thing?! Go Sly, get out of there, run faster!” Mopsy urgency spurred Sly along as a giant red and yellow snake with sharp spines, large teeth, red and pink eyes started chasing after him. It also be spewing clouds of green fog from its mouth as it snapped at the branches at Sly’s heels.

“Huh, I think we found a local legend, it’s called The Beast of Haiti… its breath is said to be as deadly as its bite and being swallowed whole is considered to be immediately lethal.” Just hearing Bentley say that made Sly double his pace. The raccoon was pumping his legs and somehow managing to maintain perfect balance on the branches as the monster continued to snap at him and roar blasts of green gas that Sly was staying ahead of with a terrified look on his face. “All the toxic gas in that things body makes sure any prey it swallows doesn’t struggle much. Also, I’m getting tons of references to a snake god of slow and exceedingly painful brutal deaths here...”

“Can I get an assist here Shanty… please?” What did Sly be expecting me to do against that thing?! The raccoon be moving fast as he barely kept ahead of it. “Anyone?! Any ideas?! Someone think of something or I’m going to be shanked or swallowed to death by this thing!”

“Don’t know what I can be doing against it. If you can’t hurt it, then I definitely won’t be able to!” I still had to try something. I don’t want Sly to be eaten, he’s the nicest thief I’ve ever met! Sly swung around at tree and The Beast be biting the entire thing in half. “I be hearing stories of bigger serpents where I come from.”

“Bigger, than that horrifying thing?! Er… sorry Sly I got nothing, it was nice knowing you buddy.” Yes, Murray, bigger than that terrifying looking demon snake thing. “At least Mz. Ruby doesn’t have control of it, that’s probably what that gate is for… it’s to keep The Beast from killing her!”

“You’d be right Murray… The Beast might not even be native to Haiti, it appeared soon after Mz. Ruby set up here. Yeah, that serpent can’t be too happy with the Mz. Ruby twisting nature like this nor would it be happy about being captured by her.” It sounded like Bentley was thinking of something as I kept my binoculars focused on Sly. “This gives me an idea…”

“An idea for me to get out of here hopefully?” Sly stated as he climbed up a tree and ran along a branch with a blast of green fog being sent his way by the snake.

Seeing that it missed, the snake slithered up the tree. It started to tear the branch off the tree entirely, as it couldn’t reach Sly at the end of it.

“No, an idea of how to use The Beast to get into Mz. Ruby’s lair, that thing might want some revenge against Mz. Ruby at the very least for sealing it in that area.” Hearing the clacking of the keyboard, Bentley was making plans for something. “Shanty, I need you to get to here quickly and use one of those flashbangs I gave you on that serpent. That should disorient The Beast long enough for you to help Sly get back over the wall.”

“You were right Shanty, these keys really are in exceedingly stupid places!” That sounded rather gleeful of Sly, despite him still being chased by that giant snake. “Just got a key to Ruby’s ghost factory, we need to destroy that before we deal with her.”

I looked through the binoculars and saw where Bentley wanted me to go, he even laid out a flight path for me to Goat Fly through. That be quite nice for me, because I think I can be doing that easily enough.

I quickly slid down the tree I was on and looked to one of the trees in the distance inside The Beast’s pen.

Shuddering violently, I squared my shoulders before launching my way over to the tree Bentley wanted me on.

I saw Sly turn towards me and was now leaping across giant lily pads, swinging off tree branches and that ferocious monster was still on him zigzagging and trying to snatch him out of the air.

“I’m still stuck on the fact that Shanty said there were possibly worse serpents than that nightmarish thing back where she came from!” It wasn’t being nearly as bad as it be sounding Mopsy, I never be meeting one personally at least.

As Sly got closer, I pulled out a flashbang and he nodded to me as he ran along a log towards the island below me. Okay pull lever to activate, push it and you had five seconds to lose it once you did.

I waited and then pushed the lever with my right hoof and hurled it with my left before covering my ears and closing my eyes to huddle against the tree.

My eyelids lit up in a painful manner and I wasn’t even facing towards the flash, the noise also be shaking my whole body.

The flashbang wasn’t so bad, it was the sudden roar of pain afterwards from the serpent that sounded nightmarish to be this close to.

Quickly looking around, I moved along the tree to angle myself in the right direction and launched myself away before it be coming after me.

I slammed into the wall surrounding the place The Beast was kept captive, climbed halfway up it and waited.

Sly came to the base of the wall and leapt up with an overhead swing of his cane, I caught the cane’s head in both my hooves and heaved it upwards to launch Sly up and over the wall with a stylish flip. A second later the serpent smashed its nose into the wall and a flare of powerful magic forcefully launched it backwards.

I be climbing up and over the wall to find that Sly was waiting for me on the other side breathing heavily with a wide eyed look in his eyes.

“Thanks Shanty.” He looked at the wall behind him. “Thankfully we’ll never have to deal with that…”

“I need you to figure out a way to open the industrial strength voodoo gate and break the serpent out of there while you’re still there and in the area.” Bentley stated flatly. “We’re going to need it later for a big plan I’ve got cooking in my noggin, come straight back once you do.”

“Can we take a rain check on that Bentley?” Sly said in a horrified tone of voice. “I almost just died here.”

“No can do Sly, you and Shanty are already there.” Is Bentley being serious right now? “So suck it up, open that gate and then get out of the area like you’re lives depends on it, because it probably will if it sees you before you can get far enough away to be out of what I’m going to call the ‘fireworks zone’. Letting The Beast loose will definitely cause havoc with Mz. Ruby’s operations and if she can’t get it back in its pen, then we can use it later to break through Ruby’s defenses even further.”

“Well if you think what we’re about to do will be ultimately worth the hassle Bentley.” Murmured Sly.

“I don’t be liking this plan Sly.” I heard a whining warble and Dodo be landing in front of the gate sending dirt and rocks flying as he did, he be looking around worriedly. Once he saw me, he be coming over to me to start to rub his head against me while warbling happily. “Okay… I just might be liking it a lot! We can be using Dodo to break the gate and get out of here.”

“How fast can Dodo run while carrying us?” Sly suddenly asked as he made his way over to my partner.

“He be faster than both of us combined.” I said flatly.

“In the swamp, including the mud and other issues that a mechanical bird like Dodo might run into.” Sly added. “It’s nice that he came to rescue me at least.”

“He not be as fast in that case, he be easily getting bogged down because of his weight.” I remember Hydrigal and the issues Dodo be having with moving through the Mystic Mire. “That is why I didn’t be wanting to bring him here in the first place, didn’t want him to be getting stuck.”

Dodo warbled and pressed his face against mine again and I finally reached up with a hoof to rub his head, he be smiling happily at that.

“Right, let’s get to it then.” Sly seemed uneasy about Dodo, but his family be murdered by a metal owl made of pure spite and evil. Completely understandable wariness that is being.

Sly pulled out a length of rope and tied it around the gate. Dodo tilted his head curiously as I moved him into position to have the rope tied to him.

We both be climbing aboard Dodo, Sly be taking the seat and I be sitting at the base of Dodo’s neck.

“Dodo do the beak beam thing at the gate!” Dodo nodded and warbled his acknowledgement.

He started blasting the gate with blasts of rippling energy from his beak and it be crumpling in several places.

“That’s good enough Dodo.” Hearing Sly say that, Dodo looked to him. Sly pointed his right hand away from the gate. “Okay, when I give you the signal. I want you to run that way as fast as you can go to get us back to Bentley, Murray and Mopsy, got it?”

Dodo nodded.

“One two three, Go!” Sly hurriedly stated and Dodo pulled the gate right out.

It was seconds later that the maw of The Beast narrowly missed Dodo’s backside as it lunged forward.

Sly quickly cut the rope with his cane before The Beast could pull them into its mouth using it as it swallowed the whole gate.

We, barely, escaped.

Author's Note

I really don't think 'The Beast' came from the same serpent creators used in Vodou Mythology, that being Damballa and his wife.

89. Dog gone it!

-Earth, Camden Town, 101 Dalmatian Street, Morning, Dolly Dalmatian-

I yawned and stretched out my paws, only to realize there wasn’t the fluff of a wooly alien under me and blinking the sleep out of my eyes. I realized I was hanging from the ceiling by my back legs.

“Wha… ahhh… what the dog is going on?!” I looked at my back legs, they looked to be tied up by our spare leashes that were taped to the ceiling. I went to claw at the leashes to free myself only to see my claws had been manicured and painted dark purple, it was a good color for my claws at least. “Dylan!”

“Huh, oh your finally awake, hold on let me get you some breakfast. Can someone get the ladder out so we can feed Dolly?” Dylan saw some of the Puppy Pack, which likely were done with eating, break off and went to fetch a ladder.

“Why am I tied to the ceiling like this and… why does my mouth feel all funny?” Trying to get my head in the game by waking up in this position, I was going to complain about how I really felt about this. “Also this is… actually somewhat comfortable.”

Not exactly where I thought I would go with that, but this isn’t chafing and quite a relaxing position to be in. I still wanted down though.

“Good, because we’re leaving you up there bark breath.” That Dylan could say that with a straight face. “Pom can make a really good sheepshank knot.”

“What?!” My outrage was met with a calm look.

“I’m surprised Pom took your comfort in mind when she did all that stuff to you.” What was Dylan talking about?

“What did Pom do?” Aside from turn my entire family on me.

“She bathed you, brushed you, dried you off, she cleaned your teeth and also trimmed your nails. None of us had to tell her you weren’t the girly girl type. I told her Pink would make you more upset, but then I thought better of it as you would have thought that Triple D had something to do with this.” That didn’t make me think otherwise Dylan, I mean how often do you see dark purple nail polish that’s safe for dogs around here? Pom had to of at least asked our little triplet diva sisters for it. “Pom made profile of you and it is scary how much she managed to get right about you when she came to me with what she think she knows about you Dolly.”

“So… what…. this is something she did in effort to make me hate her?” I didn’t like baths, getting my nails done and I was ‘somewhat’ sporadic about cleaning my teeth. “How did she manage to do all of that to me without me waking up?!”

“For the most part, yes. I’m surprised you even slept through it all being a light sleeper like you are, but Pom was exceedingly gentle with you. The tying you to the ceiling thing and leaving you incapable of being able to do anything other than hang there is going to be the worst part of all this for you today.” Wait, Dylan wasn’t going to get me down from here?! “Also mom, dad and Pom already left for work, everyone has unanimously agreed to leave you up there so your entire day will be absolutely ruined. Which reminds me of the time I warned you against climbing up the crane.”

“You’re kidding me right, please tell me you’re kidding?” I can still feel the direction Pom was in, she didn’t seem to be feeling much of anything at the moment aside from smug. Why was she feeling…?

Oh… she absolutely knows that I just woke up and was annoyed by all this!

“Don’t worry, we’re not cruel, we’re going to have puppies coming here to talk to you to keep you entertained. Today is going to officially be ask Dolly questions day!” Was Dylan actually serious about this? “It doesn’t matter whether it’s about the magical bond you have with Pom or if it’s just random stuff in general. Dawkins wants to go first and the rest of the puppies that are interested drew lots.”

“What about needing to go to the bathroom?” I watched as Dylan pushed out a large plastic bin and position it beneath me. “You can’t be serious.”

“We said we, as a family, weren’t letting you go without a fight and Pom asked nicely for the stuff she used to put you up there. Mom and Dad will let you down this evening, they want to ask you some questions too.” What no questions from you Dylan? He sat up and I saw the star pendant on his collar seem to shine as he sighed. “Judging by your look, no, I don’t have any other questions aside from one. Why? Why are you even entertaining the idea of leaving? You don’t have to answer now, but I still want to know why our bond with you isn’t as strong as yours bond with Pom apparently is. Besides I find this to be pretty funny and I don’t want Pom’s efforts in getting you up there to go to waste.”

That’s the loaded question isn’t it?

“Dylan, my bond to you and the ‘fam’ is stronger bro, but I still feel like I need to do this and… it looks like I’m going to be a doing a lot of something I don’t like today… thinking.” I looked in the direction of where Hunter’s tower building was, already knowing that Pom was there protecting him. “Although I admit that I’m a little angry that she did this, a part of me appreciates that she didn’t have the nerve to seriously do anything big to me. She’s almost like Hugo to my Clarissa.”

“Hugo is more of a one-way street with Clarissa, the bond you have with Pom should be a two-way thing from what Pom knows and she really wasn’t skimping on the details.” Flinching when Dylan said ‘home’, he gave me a worried look. “Diesel has confirmed a lot of things about Pom, which is pretty incredible. At least Pom hasn’t caused any disease outbreaks or sicknesses and has been a great guest aside from this accidental bond thing she has going with you. For what it’s worth, if you can answer my question at the end of the day honestly… I’ll accept it. I think you’re going to be challenged by Pom to prove this stubbornness of yours. She seriously doesn’t want to hurt any of us emotionally or physically unless she has to, she really doesn’t want you to be hurt by following her around, please don’t do something to force her into that position Dolly.”

“I get it…” I muttered as he walked away. I mean at best this wasn’t anger inducing, more annoying than anything. I’ll have lost a day of fun and skateboarding... or actively participating in the family activities we usually get up to. “This sucks… I wanted to chase the mailman today too before spending more time with Pom…”

I know for a fact that Pom doesn’t have it in her to actually hurt any innocent dog without prompting… but what Dylan said about testing my resolve had me somewhat worried. We haven’t even known Pom for a week, but this bond is letting me know what she is really like and she’s… just plain nice. Maybe a bit of a doormat, except on this one thing in particular at the moment.

“Hey Dolly, talked Dylan into letting me do this.” My attention was attracted to Roxy the Rottweiler as a ladder was lifted into position and she climbed up to hold up the bowl of kibble for me to eat in this position. I dug in, today was going to be a thing for me. “I don’t know honestly if this is for your own good or not, but I’m trusting Dylan on this one. So please don’t try to make me help you.”

Roxy was my big bodied friend with a gentle heart. She looked scary, but she couldn’t actually be threatening unless someone actively tries to actively hurt someone she cares about. She more likely to cry than to attack anyone, I believed that we’re always going to be BFFs regardless of whatever happens.

“I won’t… my day is going to be so boring, unless I have someone to talk to.” Well here it comes, the conversation parade. May as well get started with my best friend, next to the canal crew of Fergus the fox, Sid the squirrel and Big Fee the rat. “Let’s get this started.”

I started eating as Roxy sighed and sat there looking contemplative.

“So, an alien as a guest in the house? That must be so cool… you know, after the whole alien parade float incident with Dylan.” Roxy was talking about the incident where Dylan needed his ego put in check by me and Dawkins by faking aliens invading our home, good prank and Dylan admitted he deserved it somewhat. We didn’t stop the prank in time to save that flying saucer parade float we wrecked. “We didn’t have facts that there was life beyond our world before that. Though there have been talk of Moonlanders coming to Earth, I don’t know how real that is.”

“Yeah, it’s really cool, but right now… it’s kind of a pain in my backside.” I continued to eat my kibbled as Roxy gave me a sad look.

“Dylan said you wanted to leave with her, that you formed some kind of ‘symbiotic’ bond that she didn’t ask for and wants you to break.” Yes, Roxy, get to the point. “So what’s she like and what was it like when the bond formed?”

“Uh… what?” Was I really confused that she was more curious than upset with me, I mean Dylan must have told her I was likely to leave when Pom did. “I’m the one that started the bond and… it’s an experience. Pom’s nice and friendly, that’s her name, she has this strange magical presence to dogs and she’s far from being a total pushover from what Dante and Da Vinci say. She’s kind of like you are in so many ways.”

“That’s about all I really wanted to know, might even get time away from my bipeds to meet her personally.” She waited for me to finish the bowl of kibble and then gave me a sad teary eyed look. “I’ll miss you ‘if’ you leave Dolly.”

“I’ll miss you too Rox, I’ll be missing my whole family every single day on top of that…” My friend quietly climbed down the ladder and went to go get the next dog.

There’s Dylan’s brother and the family’s favorite engineer Dawkins, he never really calls my dad by anything other than Doug and I don’t think he appreciates dad as much as the rest of the family. He still loves and cares about all of us all the same, even if some of his inventions are dangerous.

“Hello Dolly.” He addressed me coolly.

“Hey Dawkins… how have you been feeling about, you know, since Pom came into the picture?” Just had to bring up Dawkin’s favorite toy, it was destroyed by Cruella to test her skinning machine. Better that than it being tested on any of the ‘fam’.

“Yes, but at least Pom’s enlightening presence and Deepak have both helped me with my suffering… Princess Positron is still very much irreplaceable to me.” He sat down on the ladder and looked to me, he seemed to be reliving the memories of his favorite toy. “So, is your blood currently rushing to your head?”

“No… surprisingly this is kind of comfortable and at least we’re finally using the leashes we have laying around for something.” Even if that something is keeping me from rushing out the door to go follow Pom around, which I wasn’t going to do, I did have some self-control… at least I think I did. “Not going to lie, what scientific dork speak gobbledygook are you going to use to try and win me over?”

“That’s just it, I’m not here to convince you to stay or go.” Blinking, I tilted my head at Dawkins. “I’m more curious about the logistics of this bond, we already have solid facts that aliens exist and so does magic. You know I’m a dog of science Dolly, I want the… oh how do you say it again? I want the ‘deets’ on this bond.”

“Well I can feel the general direction Pom is in, I know her emotional state and… her intentions are to break this bond between us to the best of her ability, otherwise she is honestly nice and likes us in general. This kind of thing was what she was so nervous about happening. She wasn’t the one to cause this, that’s on me.” Not going to lie, the bond didn’t seem that bad or invasive. “Still don’t know what the two-way street thing is doing, it just feels really weird that I’m getting something from her and she gets something from me. What can I possibly be giving her that equals to what she’s giving me?”

“Pom said familiars are usually between an animal and a vaguely higher intelligence, how does it feel to be considered the animal in the bond?” Dawkins really wasn’t going to tell me to stay or go.

“Honestly, that appears insulting at first, but from my side of things… it’s anything but insulting and it’s like meeting someone halfway on something even if neither of you are always in agreement.” Like right now, I didn’t agree with Pom wanting to break this bond or her methods of ruining an entire day for me. Also this whole making me clean thing and then tying me to the ceiling using leashes and duct tape was annoying. At least the duct tape hadn’t been directly applied to my fur. “We’re partners whether she wants it or not and… I think she needs it, this bond.”

“Do you think magic can be measured?” Dawkins asked while his tail was wagging.

“I wouldn’t know as I don’t think I’m any more about magic than I did before. We won’t know what I’m capable of until I figure out how I used magic in the first place to clamp onto Pom like I did. Just so we’re clear, I’m the one that must have used some form of magic.” Nodding to me Dawkins left with an enthusiastic and the next dog came in, it was Da Vinci the painter pup.

“Hey Dolly, I came here to get some perspective from you.” Tilting my head at Da Vinci, I motioned at her with a paw to continue. “Well it’s just occurred to me that dogs, average dogs at least, and shouldn’t be able see as many colors as our family and the surrounding dogs do. There are some colors dogs weren’t meant to see, so why is it I can paint in all colors to such a degree I feel and see them all quite clearly? Also… do you think my talent… stems from magic?”

“I think we’ve always had something like magic long before Pom ever showed up. We’re the second one oh one to happen after all… so there must be something to us Dalmatians that makes the world all that much brighter.” I smiled at Da Vinci as she sent me a weak smile back and thought of something nice to say. “I wouldn’t say your talent is because of magic though, that’s all your hard work and effort Da Vinci.”

“Thank you Dolly…” She said quietly before wandering off, next up was… huh the Dimi-three?

“We just wanted to say…” Dimtri One started.

“That we love you Dolly…” Dimtri Two continued.

“And we’ll miss you like everyone else will.” Dimitri Three finished.

“Yeah, you really let us get away with so much stuff!” Dimitri One.

“I knew it!” Dylan shouted from the next room over.

“Gee… thanks guys.” I muttered flatly as I stared the sheepish male triplets of our family down, I eventually smiled and shook my head. “You guys will always be my awesome little brothers.”

They giggled as they ran off, what came next was a little harder to not pay attention to.

It was Dorothy, the family’s baby pup was yipping at me and whining a little bit. She didn’t climb the ladder and it probably wasn’t safe for her to do so anyway.

“It’s okay Dorothy, I’m not going to leave without saying goodbye unless something seriously bad happens.” That almost seemed to satisfy her. “Look, I promise that if I for some reason can’t say goodbye, then I’ll just figure out a way to say hello to you again!”

Dorothy yipped twice happily and toddled off to play with a ball, she was such a precious little puppy.

I wondered what Pom was doing? She seemed stressed now that I was paying attention to her again, but what could be so stressful about sitting around an office watching a genius kid do 'good work' with a company that evil witch started.

-Top floor office of the tallest building in Camden, Pom-

There were just knives impaled all over the room’s walls and ceiling, the scariest thing about this was that I didn’t know where this Gabby Mcstabberson had been keeping them all.

There were more knives in this room than she could be physically capable of actually carrying by weight and mass alone, she didn’t even seem to have any magical abilities whatsoever to even account for that!

“So that’s the story of my dark and troubled past so far.” I hadn’t really been paying attention to her backstory, she just kept going on and on once I had her pinned.

Apparently being a mercenary blade master for hire that was raised by friendly blade happy monks was a thing. She was amiable enough at least after I had proved that, no… she definitely couldn’t take the animalistic in the room.

“Fascinating, but can we move this along to who ordered you to attack me?” Hunter was completely fine, if a little shaken by being attack by a biped falcon in an orange and black jumpsuit with what looked like an endless supply and variety of deathly sharp implements until I had finally pinned her down. Hunter was keeping his priorities straight, because he kept working through all of this in spite of the attack going on. I didn’t let a single blade touch him and I wasn’t harmed in the course of turning the entire room into the world’s largest pincushion. “Please tell me that this has nothing to do with my aunt… if you tell me who it is, then we’ll let you leave the establishment and we won’t hand you over to local police.”

“Cruella? Well she did hire me to eventually kill you on the basis of certain things happening, but the check bounced. So I didn’t try and no it wasn’t her… she honestly thought you wouldn’t survive the cargo container.” So why were you here if you weren’t being paid by Hunter’s aunt Ms. Mcstabberson? Wait… “I was hired by Gary Sheldgoose of the Sheldgoose clan to attack you. At least I lost to an unknown and not Webby again… for the seventh time. I really want to stop running into the McDucks.”

“Ugh, Sheldgoose, really don’t like that guy… wait, did you just say that my Great Aunt Cruella knew I was stuck in that cargo container the entire time and was expecting me to…?!” Now Hunter was quite mad. “Delilah and Doug really should have let her grind in that machine instead of saving her… look if I tell Pom to let you go, will you collect your ‘stuff’ and leave quietly?”

“Yes, I’ve been paid, thankfully upfront mind you, to attack you.” Gabby wasn’t a very lucky person from the sounds of it. “There’s a difference in the wording and I’ll try to swing this as a victory even if I never touched my target, because I did technically attack you and killing you wasn’t actually part of the wording of the contract.”

After a moment of staring the tall, lethal and violent falcon in the eyes for a few seconds Hunter looked to me.

“Let her go.” At Hunter’s word, I did as asked and Gabby just started to stow things away in a feather tight jumpsuit that couldn’t possibly hold all the weapons she was stuffing into it. “Well, at least nobody got hurt too badly…”

Then a crash and a body flew through the window and before I knew it, I had another problem to deal with.

“It is I, Negaduck, and I have come here to take over this corporation to prove myself the greater evil by killing the nephew of my old business partner that helped me get into show business!” He pulled a chord and his chainsaw revved up noisily.

Gabby just kept collecting her weapons and gave me a pitying look.

“Not before I will!” Another figure bursts right through the wall, it looked like it had the upper body of a duck and a lower body of a kraken. “I, Ursula, the greatest sea witch, will take over this company!”

The nearby floor blasted upwards and a third figure appeared to have rammed the building in a poorly built flying vehicle.

I was beginning to feel like this was probably the busiest day Hunter has had in a long while and that this is was all only happening because I’m here.

Was I the magnet for danger or was this just Hunter’s life in general?

I silently motioned to Hunter over to myself as I stood next to the doors out, he nodded and carefully made his way towards the doors as the third figure started talking. Everyone ignored him as he came to a stop next to me while texting Lena some pictures of our current ‘issues’.

“You two think you’ll be taking this company? Hah, as if, I Don Karnage will simply plunder the company’s assets and use it to fund the plans for the Iron Vulture mark five, as the mark two through four didn’t work out so well for me after my father pass down the first Iron Vulture… that exploded after three days of me being in command of it and the air pirates.” This guy was likely really bad with money, given how his vehicle looked like it was slapped together with gum, duct tape and badly rusted paper clips. “How was I supposed to know that the engine could overheat like that?”

Yet that vehicle still managed to ram itself upwards through the building entirely intact…

“Oh, you think you actually have a claim on this company?” Someone bursts through the doors me and Hunter were slowly backing towards and stalked past us to the other three guys. The new guy was a bulky and well-muscled peacock. “Well I have more of a claim than the rest of you as soon as that kid dies, because nobody steals a company like Gaston!”

I didn’t even think my first day on the job as a bodyguard would be warranted this badly… how had Hunter survived for this long before this?

"I'll turn that child into a rat, then put him in a box and then smash it with a hammer!" An old Abyssinian looking lady came from the vents with a demented grin. "For once I, Yzma, take over Cruella's company..."

Gabby gestured quietly for us to just leave together, I nodded to her and we slowly backed out of the room.

I believed Gabby would rather be our friend than deal with all of that.

Author's Note

Police Radio: Twenty villain pileup at the Cruella Corp, sending in the swat teams with equipment recently provided by Khan Industries!

90. Blotted out.

-Equus, Canterlot, Twilight-

“Are you sure?” I asked while looking from Sunburst to Starlight with some hope, this would solve the lost situation, but… the downsides are quite terrible.

“Yes, we can bring them back, but they’d have to come back through… er… Tambelon.” Sunburst winced at having said that. “Surviving that place without Grogar noticing their presence would require that we somehow get a message to them to let them know they will end up there. Any message we could send through Tambelon will likely be seen by Grogar if he is as powerful as the cultists say he is. You guys only faced Discord disguised as a false Grogar, but everyone saw how powerful his bell was.”

“How quickly would we be able to get help or open a portal from Tambelon to Equus, also would we be able to keep Grogar in?” The plan could work, the magical schematics these two made were exemplary and with the help of multiple other unicorns. “The real Grogar is said to be immensely powerful even without his bell, which we have sealed away in a safe location for a last ditch ‘nothing else will help things’ emergency. The only people who know where it is are Fizzle, Cadence, Me, Big Mac, Pinkie Pie, Shining Armor, Spike, Celestia, Luna and… ugh… the Rogue Sun Priestess Jaded La Perm.”

“Okay, I can understand most of those… except for Pinkie Pie and Jaded La Perm.” Sunburst was well aware of the time Pinkie got a hold of Grogar’s Bell, everyone was, as even Discord was a bit frightened by the idea of infinite everlasting parties he saw a glimpse of in Pinkie’s eyes. “Dare I ask, why do those two lunatics know where it is?”

“They are wild cards and are likely to succeed in retrieving it when direly needed.” That caused the two to raise their brows at me in disbelief, I sighed and expanded on my reasoning. “I can trust Pinkie to get to it quickly and handle the power just long enough to give a black eye to whatever warranted the bells use. As for Jaded La Perm, she’s the guardian for the artifact known as the ‘End of Immortality’ and would take the use of Grogar’s Belle seriously. She may be a jerk, but set her on a course for solving a problem and she’ll do just that in the most ridiculously spectacular way possible. Still can’t look at the Statue of Harmony, Ms. Liberty, in Manehatten without thinking about how she’s a living statue these days. At that city is well protected from giant monster attacks…”

We all visibly shuddered in memory of the numerous weird choices Jade made in the course of taking down the earth pony known as Stochastic Labor. Poison Joke was now somewhat illegal to cultivate just on the principle of what happened. The cure for Poison Joke was available in every town in Equestria, even if Poison Joke didn’t exist anywhere near said town.

“Anyway, we would need to set it all of it up ahead of time to make an instant portal to Tambelon to send Pom backup when she and The Lost end up there should we do this. We’ve managed to definitively figure out Tambelon’s frequency and how to draw our lost to it the next time they try to jump worlds.” Starlight looked a little pensive as she spoke up. “This will take a few months, but making it so that the Great Demon Goat Grogar can’t escape… that’s asking a lot of us and the various unicorns working on the retrieval project. We can send people in with a floor bound portal that will only stay open for a few seconds, long enough to send backup through without anything getting out. We don’t know where they will arrive in Tambelon once sent in there. Getting anyone back once they are in Tambelon will be an even bigger issue and well… we don’t exactly know how we would go about stopping Grogar from trying to escape. We’re thinking some kind of stealth portal that he would have to be physically present to actually see, it would need to be absolutely impervious and airtight to all clairvoyance based magic. Grogar can’t escape if he doesn’t know it’s there personally, but we will need to give someone the method to actually locate the portal once we open it.”

“Well… if that’s the best we got, then I might have to approve it... though I don’t like the idea of sending anybody from Equus into that realm where they can randomly land in hot water.” I had my issues with having anything to do with Tambelon after they narrowly avoided going there. “If you can assuage my fears and make it safer to send people there from here, then we might actually have something.”

“Well something that might make you feel better about this would be the time that Pom has likely spent with Ocellus, if they don’t hate each other outright, could probably go a long way to helping Changeling and Lambkin relations.” Did the world just seem a little bit brighter when Starlight said that? I’m hearing a garbled chorus of angels promising possibilities, but not certainties.

“I withdraw all objections about sending people into Tambelon when the time is right, but how are you going to draw the lost straight into Tambelon exactly and make it safe to transport in backup? I need evidence that this is even possible Starlight.” I was soon going over a pile of notes with Starlight, Sunburst and several other unicorns that came in who were a part of this complicated project.

If we had to bring them home this way, then we had better be ready to deal with all the issues involved, we’d need strong volunteers willing to go in and bring them back.

Fizzle was going to hate this… because we might actually need to tell her wife Jaded about all this. That and Tianhuo, the champion of Huoshan, would definitely be at the front of the line to head into Tambelon as backup and would actively volunteer regardless of the dangers once she caught wind of all this.

We also need to get in contact with the active searcher Oleander to tell her about this, we could use her expertise in dimension hopping on this.

-Earth, Duckberg, Mcduck Manor, Morning, Smolder-

“In conclusion, granola is a viable snack.” Huey made for a decent friend, if a little bit too rooted in that Junior Woodchuck stuff. At least he had survival skills comparable to Pom. “Though it isn’t for everyone.”

“I can agree with that.” Yawning, I got up and stretched out. “Now what kind of granola do you think is the best? The ponies back home have some amazing granola mixes and with how all the food tasted in the last world I was in… well let’s just say I’m glad to be in a world where taste actually makes sense again.”

“What in blazes?!” The old, and rather short, duck that just entered the room was wearing a red coat and a top hat. “What is a dragon doing in my home Huey?!”

“Hey, you wouldn’t happen to be that Uncle Scrooge guy they told me about?” From what I figure out, yep this was the richest guy in the world that was pointing his cane at me. “I’m Smolder, nice to meet you. Sorry to take up residence in one of your guest rooms, but my friend Ocellus needed a comfortable place to recover from her coma and we dropped here at your mansion from a different dimension. So we’ve been traveling around trying to find a way home.”

Scrooge looked at Ocellus curiously, she was definitely something he hasn’t seen before. He had likely seen dragons before, but he definitely hasn’t seen anything like Ocellus’s comfortable form laying on the couch.

“So have you had my family running around the world to get something to help your friend here?” He asked bluntly.

“No, they’ve been using their contacts to find my other friends that are lost, they’ve only seen one of them and they happen to be with the newest version of these guys called the Cooper Gang.” For some reason I was expecting more of a reaction out of Scrooge, he just tilted his head at me curious and motioned at me to go on. Apparently he didn’t worry about a gang of thieves stealing from him. “The only traveling your family has done for me, is to that Mesa City Vegas place to confirm that one of my lost friends had been in the area. We have no clue where she went from there. We’re quite sure that wherever the Cooper Gang shows up next, my friend Shanty and her buddy Dodo will be with them. Not sure what Pom is up to, she’s our designated caretaker and she’s the other one we really need to look for now to have an idea what she’s getting up to.”

“Well you’re an honest dragon, I can tell from your eyes.” Scrooge continued to scrutinize me. “Didn’t think I’d ever meet someone like you.”

“Well it was bound to happen eventually that we would meet a benign creature that can Dewey friendship!” Really wanted to take out my ribbon and smack Dewey with it as he came into the room saying this.

Following him was Louie, said green hoodie wearing duck was lazily drinking from a can of Pep.

“Do you ever smack Dewey for that?” I asked Scrooge, then turned to Dewey. “Also, I literally go to a school where ‘friendship’ is taught, I would be surprised if I couldn’t do friendship given that I’m a good student. Anybody can be good at that school as long as they can connect with someone.”

I had loyalty down, nothing was separating me from Ocellus and nothing was going to hurt her while I was awake and aware.

“No, don’t want to ruin the brain cells he has left in that wee little head of his, beside the lads never going to stop anyway. You kind of get used to it really.” Clearing his throat Scrooge looked away from Dewey and at me. “So I hope you understand that while living under my roof, you will be cared for as guests. Just don’t keep freeloading beyond the point we find your caretaker and she can actively take care of you.”

“Trust me, she isn’t freeloading, she’s been feeding her friend near constantly… almost at the expense of her own health.” Louie then drained the rest of his can. “It’s a bit weird how her friend eats, but I can respectfully say she’s not freeloading and I would know… we’re kind of freeloading in your home and we pay you back in helping you on your adventures. Family discounts help, but your discounts are tiny Uncle Scrooge.”

“Yeah, don’t expect me to go on adventures, because I’m not carrying my comatose friend around everywhere.” Moving over to Ocellus I took her right hoof in my left claw and ran my right claw over her head as I sat next to her.

“What does she eat, you haven’t been doing anything inane as feeding her your blood have you?” Did Scrooge think Ocellus was a vampire? Well maybe one of the emotional sort.

“Funny way to ask what my friend eats.” I pulled Ocellus into my lap and held her. “She eats love. Any that is freely given to her and any that is ambient in a room that wouldn’t be missed. You have no idea what it’s like to love someone so hard for so long without a break, it… is… draining! Her recovery is coming along well though… or at least I think it is. I’m not a doctor, but she’s been moving more and more each day. As soon as she does wake up, I won’t have to push myself so hard.”

“Anything particular I should know about your friend?” Scrooge asked.

“She’s magic, Lena said you would have a problem with that in the mansion.” I silently curled up around Ocellus protectively while looking at Scrooge. “She can shapeshift to gain some attributes of what she turns into, but she can never actually equal the original at full strength or ability. Otherwise she’s the sweetest little cuddle bug you’ll have ever met and she really likes reading.”

“So like a weaker succubus… only less deadly I take it?” Tilting my head at Scrooge I was about to ask when Dewey spoke up.

“What’s a succubus?” I had an idea Dewey, but Scrooge would confirm it in a few seconds given he said it was deadly.

“I’ll tell you when you’re older, Goldie reminds me of one at very least…” That confirmed it Scrooge, so something like Chrysalis and actually far more effective at hurting their victims. “I just hope you know how to defend yourself lass, because even if you don’t go looking for adventure around here… it has a way of finding you.”

“Really? It’s been pretty…” I started to say.

A nearby window was smashed inwards and a large black cloaked figure with a strange gauntlet gazed around the room and his eyes settled on Ocellus.

“Quiet around here.” I finished lamely.

“So you’re the ones creating that strange magic!” Didn’t like the way he was pointing his gauntleted hand at us, or more specifically the guy was pointing it at Ocellus.

“It’s The Phantom Blot!” As he said this the red cap wearing Huey tackled the completely cloaked in black person with green glowing eyes. This didn’t knock him over, but it did stall him. “Smolder, get Ocellus out of here, now! He’s going to try and drain the magic out of her.”

Dewey quickly joined his brother by ramming into this Phantom Blot guy.

I didn’t need to be told twice as I flared my wings and took off and out of the living room into the foyer while carrying Ocellus with me.

Phantom quickly shook off the two, knocking them both to the floor and he surged after me with his gauntlet raised. He narrowly avoided Scrooge whacking him with his cane and lashed out to send a blocking Scrooge skidding backwards.

“Give me that magic!” Avoiding the beam of energy that launched from the gauntlet of the distracted guy trying to attack us, I flew up the stairs.

“What’s this guy’s deal and why does he want to take magic from Ocellus?!” I already knew what that would do to Ocellus, and that wasn’t going to happen.

I wasn’t about to let some weird guy that randomly burst through the window kill her!

Louie’s empty Pep can smacked into the back of the Phantom Blot’s head, he turned around to swipe at Louie. I stopped at the top of the stairs to watch as Louie dodge around Phantom’s blows and tried to find a moment to knock him over.

“Guy hates magic and thinks he can destroy every source of it, he’s one of Lena’s enemies because of something Magica did!” That’s all I really needed to know Louie, Lena’s supposed aunt had to be the worst aunt in the world. I really couldn’t think of anyone worse that I’ve ever heard of, it’s like calling my mother and father aunt and uncle to remove them one step from my life.

Louie quickly was kicked in the gut and sent rolling away, he wasn’t much of a fighter and I seriously doubted there was anyone of Pom’s strange caliber coming to help. Well maybe Webby, but she was busy somewhere else with her sisters.

This was all up to me then, good thing I’m always wearing my combat ribbon these days.

“He does realize that destroying all magic would be a bad thing and could actually end up killing all life on this planet right?” Not that it hadn’t been attempted before back in Equestria or elsewhere on Equus.

Cozy Glow was the most notable monster in recent memory, given she had killed a lot of people in critical condition in the Equestrian hospitals when they lost the ability to keep those patients in magical stasis. Not all of those people were ponies either, thankfully the hospitals did have unicorn doctors to work under pressure without their magic.

Quite a few doctors lost their licenses that week because they only relied solely on magic and forgot how to do healthcare related things by hoof.

“He really doesn’t care about that Smolder!” Huey yelled up the stairs after us as Phantom was attempting to chase us down. “If he has to burn the world down, then that’s what he’ll do!”

I flew into the hallways avoiding the beams coming from the gauntlet that threatened to end Ocellus’s life. I didn’t try for the rooms as I didn’t want to move into a dead end quite yet, also this guy was pretty fast for someone who was covered from head to toe in what looked like a heavy inky black cloak.

Maybe I did want to corner myself… I was looking into rooms that would cause minimal damage should I blast some of my fire in one of them.

I found one and flew upwards to corkscrew into it, once inside I quickly shoved Ocellus underneath a bed and turned around to stand guard in front of it.

If needed, I would greed growth.

I undid the ribbon on my left horn and held it at the ready while taking in a breath of air. As he surged in front of the doorway, I blasted him with a fireball.

He went through the door across from the room I took refuge in and while he was getting up, I whipped the ribbon forward and swiftly yanked the gauntlet off of his right hand.

He looked surprised for a moment to see his gloved hand and then I lashed the ribbon around his right ankle and yanked him off his feet causing the back of his head to hit the floor.

While he was groaning I struck out and smacked him several times, he was only blocking my attacks before the boys and Scrooge came in. Scrooge motioned me back and then quickly knocked him out with a golf swing of his cane’s curved portion to the head and went to call the police.

Huey immediately started tying up The Phantom Blot, Dewey helped me get Ocellus out from under the bed and Louie, being as lazy as he usually seemed, just stood off to the side making commentary as he held The Phantom Blot’s gauntlet.

“Sorry about all this Smolder.” Dewey stated with a warmhearted tone as he helped me carry Ocellus back to the couch.

“Yeah, we tend to have it far worse than this.” Glaring at Louie, he back up and raised his hands.

“That could have killed Ocellus had it hit her, she needs her magic to live!” I was just impressing on him how life or death that situation just was for us.

“Hey guys, did you know I have a cousin in Camden Town in Britain… well a cousin of flesh and blood and not shadow, but you get what I mean.” Stated Lena as she walked in looking over her phone. “Man that Cruella is considerably worse than Magica, at least Magica isn’t actively trying to kill me and make it look like an accident. So guys… wait, is that… where is he!”

Having finally noticed the gauntlet Louie was carrying, Lena’s form immediately changed in a powerful burst of magic. The tips of her forehead feathers changed blue, as did her eyes and she was now wearing a costume of white, green and blue and was lightly glowing with the power of… huh she’s using friendship magic like our teachers do.

“Huey is taking care of him while we wait for the police to come pick him up.” Dewey answered quickly.

“Show me.” Lena stated flatly and with a hint of anger. We made it back to the room and found the blot trussed up in various hard to undo knots. “I really didn’t expect to see you again so soon Blot.”

“Yes, and you won’t be seeing me in a second, since 'we' are making a full retreat!" What did Phantom mean by ‘we’? A flash went off and by the time I could see again The Blot was gone from his spot and looking out the nearby open window I saw someone in an odd costume running off with his tied up form. "We’ll come for that magic again, mark my words!”

“Darn it, I knew that was far too easy, we forgot about Pepper the Egghead!” Louie groused out.

“Please tell me that you guys can actually keep Ocellus safe…” The looks they were sending each other was quite worrying.

-Midday, Camden Town, International Police Investigation Site, Judy-

“Looks like trouble in Camden Town, it’s not very often you hear of several criminals trying to off a kid all at once, even if the kid is emancipated and genius enough to run a company. Luckily, he hired a decent bodyguard.” I looked over my notes. “This is pretty messed up Nick, this Cruella is a huge sleaze ball.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like we can bring her up on charges when she’s already in jail and wasn’t anywhere near the crime scene Funny Bunny.” The biped fox at my side was getting statements from various people about what happened at the top of the town’s tallest building. “We finally nailed Gaston at least.”

-Evening, Dalmatian Home, Pom-

I walked in and was immediately faced with an upset looking Dalmatian.

“Okay, I’ve been let down and your back, now are you going to train me to help you or am I going to have to annoy you constantly until you give in?” Dolly was such a cute, athletic and wiry dog, but she’s making a big mistake in thinking she can handle me.

I knew so many things about dogs, it was ridiculous that Dolly even thought that she had something of a chance.

I didn’t want to actually hurt Dolly, so being entirely passive aggressive was my best option.

Calmly reached into my satchel, I slowly pulled out a plastic jar. One that I had Hunter buy for me as an early payment.

I unscrewed the lid, scraped a small dollop out of the jar and gently wiped my hoof off on the top of Dolly’s nose making her go cross eyed at what I left behind.

“What the…?! You have no idea how much I hate it when someone does this to me… no, wait… maybe you do!” Dolly proceeded to start trying to lick the peanut butter off of her nose and she was soon flailing about and spinning sideways on the floor trying to get at it. “You are so lucky that this very distracting Pom! No, my peanut butter! You all know the rules, she left it on my nose, so I’m going to be the one to get it!”

I just calmly walked by the Dalmatian while screwing the lid back on the jar, having chosen peanut butter that wasn’t very oily to make sure it wouldn’t harm any of the dogs here.

Her amused brothers and sisters looked like they wanted some of the peanut butter too, but their mother Delilah told them no and to let Dolly suffer in indignation.

Delilah, being a nurse dog, did ask me about the brand and found herself appraising it as dog friendly.

I’m actually going to cook my vegetables for dinner this time, some of the dogs might even enjoy my cooked meal if they were brave enough to ask for a sample. I’m making enough for a few extra hungry bellies aside from my own.

Author's Note

Yeah, not even Smolder or Ocellus are perfectly safe.

91. Swamp Romp.

-Equus, Ponyville, Café, Oleander-

“So they may have a method that might get them back, but it requires them being forcefully pulled into Tambelon?” Arizona Arid asked of me as I sat at a table drinking lemonade. “If they can get them to Tambelon, then why not just bring them straight to back here?”

“They are trying to avoid destroying our world via dimensionally destabilizing everything, the dimensional stability is fairly delicate and the method I use to travel doesn’t bother it. I could still find them before they have to end up there, but it’s not likely at this rate.” At the rate I was saving worlds and not finding Pom and the lost, we may have need to use that method. There were very few safe methods of dimensional transportation that wouldn’t tear our world apart at the moment. “At least most of Grogar’s power is sealed away in his bell.”

“He still could have gotten back most of his power since then Ollie.” Fred wasn’t saying we couldn’t take him, also he seriously does not like Grogar. “EVEN IF HE HASN’T, I STILL WOULDN’T WRITE HIM OFF AS WEAK!”

“So what does the method of getting them back exactly entail if it’s safer on the dimensional stability side of things?” Velvet Arid asked as she sipped some hot chocolate from a mug, her ice sprite Tinsel mimicked her actions sipping hot chocolate from a tinier cup.

“The Sieve Precarious still has the signatures of the last few people that it was used on. The effects can be reversed, but the catch is that they will end up where they were supposed to in the first place because of the tampering done to it. They’ve managed to replicate the cultists tampering without messing up the signatures from the previous use. They also have the frequency for Tambelon that the cultists would direly want, given that it was once a part of Equus it won’t cause any dimensional damage to Equus to go to Tambelon and come back from it. It’s basically like what happened to the Crystal Empire when it was dimensionally displaced.” I bit into my daffodil sandwich as my friends sat by quietly as we chewed the information over in our heads. “In essence they are going to try and exhaust all other options to rescue them first before doing this. When it is set up, whenever Pom and the others somehow find their way to traveling between dimensions again…”

“Meep.” Paprika stated with bluntly, halfway between happy and somewhat melancholy.

“Yes, that.” I nodded to Paprika.

“Wait… are you seriously telling me that all of you… CAN UNDERSTAND THAT HORRID ABOMINATION OF A CREATURE?” Fred was looking at Paprika when he said this.

“It’s not ‘that’ hard to understand her Fred, Paprika speaks quite clearly to us… seriously now!” I rolled my eyes.

“Meep.” Paprika nodded and shoveled food into her mouth.

“Oh hey… let’s see… nope, I haven’t thrown a party for you before!” Pinkie Pie said as she walked up to the table with a list in hoof as her and Paprika’s eyes met. “You have been avoiding my parties for way too long… Demon Paca… you’ve been coming to my town, you’ve been hugging everyone around here and you think you can get away with that without a party when Cheese Sandwich and I are both here!”

“Meep.” Paprika responded with a smug grin. “Meep.”

“So you know what this means…” Pinkie said in a dark tone. “It must be done!”

Their eyes narrowed towards each other and I could feel this uneasy sense of existential dread rising as smiles started tugging at both of their lips and started growing.

“Someone just walked over all of our graves… I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW I COULD BE MISSED ENOUGH TO HAVE ONE OF THOSE!” Fred shouted spooking several ponies around us. “Well aside from you of course, my dearly beloved Ollie.”

Paprika and Pinkie suddenly leapt at each other with their hooves wide open and…

-Earth, Haiti, swampy jungle, evening, Shanty-

“Okay, so we are almost ready to corner Mz. Ruby in her temple.” I heard Bentley state as I was in position. “Sly’s in position, Murray’s in position and so is Shanty. The Beast has caused a lot of damage, Ruby expended a lot of magical energy pushing it out of her territory and Carmelita has shown up in Haiti recently. Murray will be piloting the hover boat and working the flamethrower to burn down the zombitorium, Sly is going after the ghost factory and as for you Shanty… you’ll be distracting Ruby to the best of your abilities until we can lead an outright assault of her final holdings in her lair. Remember, you can bug out whenever you want Shanty, but the longer you keep it up the more tired Mz. Ruby will be when Murray and Sly converge on her for the take down. Need any advice?”

“Yeah, what if The Beast shows up?” I asked looking about with the binoculars.

“We’ll cross that bridge ‘if’ it comes back after the beating Mz. Ruby and The Beast gave to each other.” It was nice to know that Bentley would always be honest. “We may be honorable thieves, but we’re not above kicking Mz. Ruby while she’s almost down.”

“Dodo is ready to defend the van. I’m on secondary lookout, Bentley. We are safe for the time being and we’re closer to Mz. Ruby’s territory than last time… which has shrunk quite a bit and would you look at all that destruction!” Mopsy be pointing out the large sections of the swamp that had been destroyed when The Beast be running rampant around here. “Quick question, is Carmelita likely to be the only other hovercraft out here? Because I think I’ve spotted her and she’s nearing Shanty’s position.”

I turned and saw Carmelita looking about and her hand was gripping her shock pistol as her eyes darted about the swamp, the light her boat gave off was easy enough to spot as she steered it through the muck.

“Let’s hurry this up before Carmelita gets into some serious danger. She’s good against average thugs and mobsters, but I don’t know if she’s vetted for magical threats like we currently are.” Sly was already on the move, it almost always seemed like he was. “Shanty, you might have to change priorities. Can you keep Carmelita and Mz. Ruby apart or at least make sure Carmelita stays safe if they do start fighting one another?”

“I can be trying, but those ghost’s rats are being horrible and I can’t be promising anything!” Nothing will ever be making me like ghost rats, maybe rats in general if they were nice and small enough.

“As long as she’s alive at the end of this night and not permanently injured, she’s our favorite inspector after all and none of us want to see her get hurt.” It wasn’t hard to see Sly was worrying about her. I shook my head at the thoughts about the raccoon thief in love with the fox that chases him around and looked about for some way to draw attention to myself. I could maybe be doing both at once? “They might actually start using lethal ammo against us if she does get hurt like that.”

“That does be sounding bad… I’m moving in, I be having an idea that might help!” I looked about with my binoculars. “Bentley, does Carmelita be knowing I exist as a temporary part of this group yet?”

“No… and I think I’ve cottoned onto why you’re asking. Do it and see how Carmelita responds, but be ready to absolutely book it from her if she gets suspicious.” Bentley be giving me the go ahead, so I’m no longer responsible for what happens now! “Carmelita is fast on that trigger and she can jump onto the roof of at least a two story house in a single bound. Don’t honestly know how she trained to ‘jump good’ so to speak, but I know she learned how to do that to just keep up with Sly. You might need to chain your Goat Fly technique back to back to slip away if she starts running you down.”

I slid down the tree and kicked off to Goat Fly to another tree and then dropped down onto the grassy muck filled land of the jungles swamp.

Stowing away my binoculars, I pulled out a torch and planted the sharp end in the ground slightly. After striking my hooves together several times, I managed to finally spark the torch with the spark hoof camping technique and light it up. It didn’t be hurting my hooves too much to do.

Now all I had to do was attract the attention of some monsters around here, which wasn’t hard as there were already several muck monsters coming at me with their pale yellows eyes and muddy features.

Salt and fire wasn’t going to deal with a muck monster, it was probably better that I didn’t hit it with my Cut-lash attacks and just went at it with pure blunt force.

I moved forward and took the torch in my right hoof as one of the three muck monsters on approach came at me swiftly.

I tossed the torch up, the brainless monsters yellow eyes followed the torch as I charged forward and leapt up to mash its head apart with my skull. Planting my front left hoof after landing in front of it, I launched a roundhouse buck that blasted a mass of water into it that splattered it completely.

My elemental attack not be using my sweat if there’s plenty of water to draw from around me, I be having a slight advantage in the swamp then.

Standing up and catching my twirling and falling torch in my right hoof. I quickly swung it behind me and smashed a ghost rat across the face in a small burst of flames, splattering its quickly dissipating essence across the ground before it could claw me in the back.

“I really be hating whichever voodoo witch it was that be making giant ghost rats an actual thing!” I shouted, not caring if Carmelita heard me. It would probably be better that Carmelita did as zombies, muck monsters and ghost rats were slowly starting to surround me.

The two muck monsters being the closest to me and a large number of ghost rats swarming towards me with hatred in their eyes faster than that.

The zombies weren’t being a big threat and I would splash a circle of salt around me for protection, but the muck monsters would be messing that up and they were as much a priority as the number of ghost rats coming at me.

I raised the torch in my right hoof and prepared to start swinging as the rats swarmed towards me. I struck one under its chin with an upwards swing and crouched down as three passed through each other overhead and with a quick twirl I be smacking them out of existence.

This be about the time the muck monsters were added to the situation. A swipe of ones left claw stretched out and nearly be cutting me across the chest, I hopped back and continued to bat away the many ghost rats trying to rip me to shreds.

A zombie squirrel biped finally reached me and with a quick reach into one of the pouches tied to my waist, I tossed my left hoof forward and sent a mass of salt at them.

Some of it be going into their mouth and they be dissolving into nothing almost immediately. In this time several of the ghost rats be scratching me painfully. I did not be appreciating claw marks on my back, much less the very existence of large ghost rats to begin with.

I swept my torch around and splattered more of the floating ghost rats, then quickly rolled between the two muck monsters as they brought their four claws down on where I was. I was up and smashing away another giant ghost rat, dissolved another mildly annoying zombie and dodge another extended swipe from the muck monsters which were becoming more relentless.

The sound of something ripping through the air could be heard and a blast of energy blew apart the head of one of the muck monsters.

I be seeing that kind of thing before, that be meaning only one thing.

“I don’t know what you are, but you aren’t hurting that kid any longer!” Carmelita blasted the other muck monsters body and the head launched right at me. I swept my torch forward and while I did manage to smash the muck monsters head, the muck put my torch out and that made numerous ghosts rats come right at me without the light to keep them mostly at bay.

“I am being a teenager, not a kid!” At least I think my birthday had passed, how old was I now?

I crouched and flipped backwards over the crowd of ghost rats swarming inwards from all sides. I also avoided a swipe from the muck monster that was missing its head.

I touched down on the ground for a moment and sprung backwards into a wild windmill to grab a branch on a tree and climb up. I quickly started frantically shaking the muck off of my torch.

Seeing that it would be a lost cause to try and relight it, I threw it and speared the headless muck monsters body hard enough that it fell apart.

Carmelita wasn’t idle as she started blasting the ghost rats with her shock pistol, which also seemed to be decent against the muck monsters. It was certainly helpful at dealing with the large spiders and huge mosquitoes that started showing up, some of them started attacking the ghosts or the four muck monsters that just arrived.

What… hm… Caramel’s pistol wasn’t good against was the zombie. No nerve endings to be shocking or paralyzing in a zombie.

While she started fighting the various monsters and was having trouble dealing with the zombies, she only be temporarily knocking those back with powerful kicks. I be busy trying to find the time to light another torch while leaping around the springy tree branches while being chased around by more ghost rats.

Landing on a tree branch with my rear hooves, I crouched and jumped when it sprung upwards and shot over the clearing that the biped fox be fighting in to land in a different tree.

I pulled a torch from my satchel and got it in my left pit as I start striking my right hoof into my left hoof over it, I did not want Ms. Fox to see me using those flashbangs Bentley gave me unless necessary.

She be thinking I’m just a kid, then let her be thinking that a little longer!

A spark finally landed on the torch and it lit up, I quickly took it up in my right hoof and splattered three of the seven ghost rats rapidly approaching me. I looked down to see how Carmelita was doing as I be fending off the four other ghost rats trying to find an opening to strike at me.

She was definitely having problems with the zombies, there were at least five or six of them and her pistol be doing nothing to slow them down.

Splattering one last chasing ghost rat, I lashed my left hoof through a vine to cut it and grabbed the loose end connected to the dilapidated trees above me.

I put my fresh torch in my teeth and then took up a salt pouch in my right hoof. I tugged the vine roughly and then leapt to swing over Carmelita protecting herself, I tipped the pouch over and started pouring salt out as I swung a wide circle over her.

Four zombies immediately went down and a fifth dissolved a second afterwards as it stepped into the salt circle. Whether it be the circle or the salt I be pouring into the air, it be working.

“What the… how did you do that?” Carmelita asked as she was no longer having zombie problems and continued to blast the ghost rats, muck monsters and arriving mosquitoes and dog sized spiders.

“Voodoo zombies are being weak to salt, I be Shanty by the way and they are not my fault. I would sing you a quite a ditty, but things currently aren’t being too pretty!” I smacked away a ghost rat. Even more beyond that were all coming for me. “I be having problems with these ghost rats, I’d rather be dealing with giant bats!”

“I’m Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox, International Police, can you tell me what’s going on in this jungle…” She blasted apart a giant mosquito that tried to spear her. “Aside from the currently exceedingly obvious I mean?”

“It all be Mz. Ruby’s doing, she is being at this for quite a while. She never be killing anyone… at least not directly as far as I be knowing within a mile. Indirectly though… people do be going missing in the swamps around here from time to time, it seems to be a perfect place for a rougher crime.” I be trying to keep the information I really know back. “I be out here trying to help with these nasty beasts, maybe make some money to have some feasts. It not be going to well, my new friend Ms. Caramel.”

“My name is Carmelita.” She stated briskly as she fired several shots into a crowd of ghost rats and I be batting them away with torches. “Also is that rhyming really necessary?”

“That is being what I am saying, Caramel, you sound like a sweet lady. Which is why I am being here to help you like a sidekick. Also no, I do not need to be rhyming.” I smacked a spider with my torch and scurried away setting several other spiders on fire. They all started spreading out and leaping at the nearby zombies that were staying outside of the quickly weakening salt circle, the short lived blazes quickly took those zombies down. “I just be having some fun… in what is a quickly worsening situation Caramel. I didn’t know Mz. Ruby be having this many monsters, there sure are a lot of them!”

“Why do I suddenly feel like I’m being japed here?” Carmelita grumbled as she continued to fire her pistol at the muck monsters and ghost rats, while kicking away anything that could get over the salt circle. “This is getting a bit crowded, you should get out of here.”

“No, can’t do that Caramel, we need to be taking care of Mz. Ruby like yesterday if she be causing problems this big!” I hopped back as a mosquito rammed the ground spear first, a second later it was blasted away by Carmelita. I quickly surged forward and smacked several ghost rats away from her as her pistol started looking pretty bad. “Is something being wrong with your weapon Caramel?”

“It’s starting to overheat from overuse, not like the swamp and jungle air is helping it any either!” I be keeping the monsters away from Carmelita close up and she be handling the worst ones further off with her pistol. “Ugh… It’s a good thing these shock pistols are made to be ridiculously sturdy!”

“Well if you be having problems, then it be best that we start moving!” I ran forward and slapped away several ghost rats with the torch that had burned down to halfway from hitting so many ghosts away.

“Hey, wait, come back here Shanty!” Carmelita honestly seemed worried about me, she would be nice until she found out I was a temporary Cooper Gang member. She would probably tell me to stop being a criminal afterwards, but that’s kind of hard for a pirate at heart to do. “Ugh… have to deal with these monsters first.”

I would need to light another torch soon, I quickly threw a pouch of salt and my half burned out torch back at Carmelita and leapt up to smack off a muck monsters head with a heavy double hoofed blow.

I bounced off the muck monsters flailing body onto a zombie’s skull, I sent a bit of salt down the zombie’s throat as I leapt off over a crowd of spiders and under several mosquitoes flying into what is becoming a solid mass of chaos.

The violating voodoo and natural nasties really be trying to battle it out to find a balance.

I thankfully landed on the other side of this and started to make my way towards where Mz. Ruby’s lair is said to be. I be having Mz. Ruby’s attention at least, with that many monsters around. Nature be helping me as it is putting it all into giving me a path towards her.

I pulled out the binoculars.

“Bentley, it be getting quite hot out here, please tell me that Sly and Murray are on their way.” I was out of sight of Carmelita, but I knew she would be catching up to me soon enough and I wouldn’t be having much time to talk once I started going after Mz. Ruby directly. “Carmelita is being hard pressed to keep up with all the monsters out here, but I be helping her as much as I could and even gave her a salt pouch along with a slightly used torch.”

“Are you heading in to engage Mz. Ruby, well Murray should be there soon enough with the swamp skiff he’s rented out. The flamethrower we have on it should be a big help with all the natural nasties in the area. Sly is just about finished up with the ghost production facility, and thank goodness for that, I really wouldn’t want to live in a world full of ghost rats.” Right there with you Bentley, he be clearing his throat as I moved through a wooden archway leading into Mz. Ruby’s domain. “Well be very careful within her temple area Shanty, she could have a trap that’s set up for Sly that you might not be able to get out of.”

“I’ll be fine Bentley, even if I don’t think I can be taken her directly.” Pirates can win in a fight against directly applied voodoo, but it required the pirate to keep their wits about them and I be at my wits end after smacking all those ghost rats.

I stowed away the binoculars and heard the sound of running feet and blasting of Caramel’s energy pistol behind me. At least she is trying to make sure I’m safe, but she won’t be liking me very much soon enough when she finds out I be knowing Sly.

Walking along the path I approached the swamp temple, something shifted in a bush to my left and I ducked a claw of muck flying overhead.

Turning, I bucked the body out from under the head of the muck monster. I went up onto my hind legs and smacked the head away into a tree and started to run deeper into the temple area.

“Whaaaa…!” I tripped on something and went sliding down a sudden slope, I found myself flailing through the air until I hit something with a loud splash. “Ow...”

“Well now, look at what we have here.” That voice drew my attention. Upon sitting up on the giant floating lily pad, I saw an alligator on a platform. She had blue hair under a red bandana, a red ruby in her belly, red painted claws on her feet and hands, a pink shirt and some kind of magical amulet around her neck. "You must be The Fool, welcome to my arena. Hope you are ready for a rhythmic stomping from the likes of me... Mz. Ruby!"

92. Swamp Stomp.

Author's Note

Music: Struggling OST: Flesh Opera: Cries of the firstborn.

I think the music was fitting, the trumpet parts at least.

92. Swamp Stomp.

-Earth, Haiti, swamp temple, Shanty-

Lifting herself up on her tail, Ruby stomped her feet down and a large purple bubble encased me in the area with the one large lily pad and four smaller lily pads.

Several muck monsters rose up outside the large lily pad and grabbed onto it to start crawling up onto it to make it start sinking, that not be good.

“Who are you for coming here, into ‘MY’ lovely swamp, oh arrogant daughter~?!” As Ruby be singing already be moving to stop the muck monsters slowly dragging the lily pad down into muck.

I slashed my right hoof and it went straight through the muck monster doing little damage. I swung my hoof backwards and the muck monster was blasted away by a mass of water.

I bucked out behind me and sent a swamp monster flailing into the surrounding marsh with a wide splash of water, I quickly cartwheel into a left shoulder ram to knock another off and ducked as a muck monsters claw swiped over my head.

“Who—do—, pirate daughter, voo— doo— arrogant daughter, you— fool—~!” Ruby sang as I spun around and thrust my right hoof upwards to knock the head off the muck monster behind me.

I had to leap back onto one of the smaller lily pads as the body brought both its claws down in an overhead swing and flipped the giant lily pad upside down dunking itself into the dangerous muck.

“Do you really think you’ll survive in there~? I’ve got more than enough ghosts to spare~!” Ruby raised her claws and started drumming on her belly as numerous ghost rats started rising from the swamp around me as the zombie chickens with her on the platform danced a macabre tune that I be beginning to pick up on. “Who do you think you are, coming into my swamp, oh— pirate daughter!”

I be quickly pulling a torch from my back and frantically started sparking it while trying to balance on the small lily pad, this is not being easy by any stretch of the imagination. This is while a mass of ghost rats started building up around me.

“Oh—, arrogant daughter, now die—~!” As she started her downward note all the ghosts rats swarmed at me in a lunge. They were about to reach me when I finally lit the torch and spun a quick circle to knock as many away as I could.

I kept swinging the torch until they were all splattered and winced in pain. They be clawing through my fur like sharp knives for things that aren’t alive, the swamp water be splashing into my cuts from my thrashing also wasn’t being very healthy and I be getting slightly burnt by the torch a few times when I hit one.

She was already summoning up more ghost rats and I be a shivering mess, I glared up at her.

“Why did you even come in here~? This is ‘MY’ lovely swamp~! Oh— pirate daughter~!” She sent a wave of ghost rats at me and they started to swarm me and it was hard to keep the torch lit as they kept splashing the swamp and were trying to sink the lily pad I was on.

I quickly leapt to another small lily pad and smacked two rat ghosts away as I did.

“You’ll— be— part of my armada~! Into— the— muck you’ll sink much farther~! Voo—doo—~!” The ghost rats be trying to knock me into the swamp and I am being quite glad that all my hooves can clamp to any surface, but this is tilting the small lily pad a lot. “With a little dead goat swamped in there~. I’ll have a new minion to make fighting Cooper more than fair~. You’ll become a part of my swamp, oh arrogant daughter~!”

Several muck monsters and ghost rats started rising up around me and they all dove forward I be leaping back towards the larger lily pad, now there were only three smaller lily pads I could be using.

“Oh—, arrogant pirate, now comply—~!” As Ruby be starting the downward note the light of my torch started dying out as the area around me grew colder. I inhaled and then exhaled and slapped away a ghost rat and leapt up to smash a muck monster back into the swamp, as three other muck monsters and a load of ghosts started to swarm around me and the large lily pad.

“Are— you ready—~? Give in— to me—~!” the muck monster be grappling onto me and this be tipping the lily pad and making it unbalanced and threatening to dunk me, all this while under attack by the ghosts rats and I clamped my rear hooves down. I almost be losing my grip on the lily pad, these things be too strong. “Are— you ready—~? Give in— to me—~!”

Just when they were about to be dragging me and the lily pad I stuck my hooves fully into the glowing swamp, the platform Ruby was standing on suddenly erupted in flames and a violent explosion.

Ruby disappeared to reappear at another platform looking a bit scorched. The lily pad flopped down as the muck monsters fell apart and the ghost rats vanished. I be catching my breath and smacking my face against the lily pad, my torch be falling into the muck.

I got up and started lighting another one, using a flashbang would be the last thing I want to do right now as I did not want to be stunned out here.

I saw the burning wreckage of a familiar looking flamethrower armed skiff that went out to burn down the zombitorium. Ruby stomped and several ghost rats appeared around my savior on the hillside.

I saw my new favorite large pink hippo Murray lighting a torch with a match and he started bashing at away the newly summoned ghost rats.

“Hey, no more big zombies for you! The Murray doesn’t appreciate you hurting his little goat buddy and…!” with a gesture more summoned rats were sent flying in Murray’s direction by Ruby. “Wha… uh oh!”

They be forcing Murray out of sight.

A second later several large snakes started to raise up from the swamp following Ruby’s movements of shifting her hips left and right, this while also summoning more dancing zombie chickens. They be moving with her and she chuckled dryly at me.

“Isn’t this sordid affair really nice~?” Mz. Ruby grinned and sent blasts of magical energy from her mouth while gesturing at the snakes, I dodge the shots in time with her beat and avoided the snakes trying to constrict me.

They still took out two of the lily pads and when one of them went for me I not be holding back and swing both my hooves for the base of its head to chop of the snakes head.

It had looked normal, but once the head was removed it revealed it was rotting corpse disgustingly loaded with maggots and chunks of flesh missing. I quickly lashed out my rear legs and a blade of water ripped up the other one along its body vertically and it splashed into the water where a number of those gross grubs sunk into the muck writhing in pain.

“If they don’t come for you, then you’ll be paying the price~. —Oh how gracious of me, to begin this little goat’s story~.” She grinned and she started to take in air as she sang. “So please be a good dear and follow the rhythm right in~.”

She started singing something I couldn’t quite follow, but I saw the burst of magic coming at me, I tried to follow the rhythm of the attack and… I actually be understanding it.

Left, right, left, right, right, left, I be standing up on my hind legs and deftly dodging her magical blasts as I flowed to the beat of Ruby’s rhythm.

Duck under a shot, bend around one to the right and jerk to the left and shifted my hips to the rhythm while raising my hooves above my head.

I was soon dancing around the blast of magic coming from her belly slapping rhythm, she be looking shocked that I could keep up with her rapid fire mouth as magic blasts launched at me at an incredible speed.

“I-DOOooo, VoooDOOooo~! I-DOOooo, VoooDOOooo~!” She opened her jaw wide and fired a sweeping beam of pulsing magic, which made me jump over it to a different lily pad as the large one be getting cut in half. I leapt off the smaller lily pad and the one I was on was also ripped in half by the vertical beam of pulsing magic.

Ruby be singing rapidly again, but I now had the rhythm of her attacks down and could be dodging the incoming attacks easily enough. I only had two lily pads left though and I did not like the look on Ruby’s face.

I twirled and jerked around the attacks and ducked under one that would be taking my head off were I not currently being in the groove, this is when she started her next two waves pulsing magic.

Wait… I only be having two lily pads left... my eyes be widening at the realization.

“I-DOOooo, VoooDOOooo~! I-DOOooo, VoooDOOooo~!” She seemed to be knowing this already as she sent a sweeping wave at the one I was on.

I leapt over it to land on my stomach on the second lily pad as the following vertical wave of magic tore straight through the swamp at me. Not wanting to be hit by voodoo magic, I threw myself into a sideways flip.

I slapped into something solid and looked beneath me as my hooves continued to follow the rhythmic magic Ruby had going.

I had no clue how I be doing this, but I don’t think I want to be questioning that right now…

“You’re dancing on the… agh!” Ruby didn’t be seeing Sly coming as he smack her with his cane, she teleported away to a third platform.

Sly quickly used his cane to rip the rotting foundation out from under the platform. He did that spire jump thing away from it as the second platform be dropping into the swamp.

“You okay Shanty!" Sly be looking to my hooves as I crossed, uncrossed and alternated my front and back hooves to stay bouncing above the swamp. "How are you even doing that?!”

“Sly you need to deal with Mz. Ruby fast, we’re under attack by muck monsters and twisted nature still under her control! We don’t know how much longer Shanty can keep that up or how much longer we can hold out for!” Bentley’s voice be coming from Sly’s binoculars sounded panicked. “While I do have an idea of how Shanty’s doing that, I’ll tell you later if we survive this night Sly. Now take out that awful, acrid, asinine alligator!”

Mz. Ruby made a motion to summon ghost rats and then… nothing.

“Can’t summon anymore ghost rats eh Mz. Ruby? I’m quite sure those spirit totems I destroyed weren’t that important.” Sly said with a grin, Ruby stomped her feet angrily and pointed at me and I leapt up as a muck monster rose up beneath me trying to snatch me.

I tapped danced on its head and then stomped that it down into its torso. Following that with a second stomp that destroyed it, I bounced away as the monster sunk back into the swamp and created a small sink hole for a few seconds. I be needing to be careful about destroying muck monsters.

Sly’s grin quickly fell away and he leapt off to start slowly navigating the shifting tree branches leading him to Mz. Ruby on a third platform.

I decided it being time to be a good pirate and return fire!

“I am Shanty, can’t you hear~? This be one goat that you— should— truly fear~!” I taunted Mz. Ruby and seeing her gesture, two muck monster rose up on both sides of me.

I bounced forward as they slammed into each other. I back flipped and knocked the head off the muck monster on my right and landed on its stump of a neck.

“Oh— you’re— a flagrant gator~! No— time— to say hi, but later~!” I leapt off the muck monster torso as the other smashed it with an overhead strike, I clung to the attacking muck monsters back. “You’ll— fall—~!”

The muck monster swung its arms around in a full circle, I crawled on top of its head to avoid this and pointed my right hoof at Ruby.

“Your voodoo is bad, you swampy witch~.” I danced around on the five other muck monsters slapping at me, had it been Sly in this situation he wouldn’t have been able to save himself from the swamp. “You seriously smell, did you crawl out of a garbage ditch~? You’ll seriously burn my nose off— oh, smelly fogger~!”

I be really annoying her now, she be forgetting entirely about Sly. Not that that be a good thing. She be summoning more maggot snakes on top of the muck monster I be having problems with already, I be tiring quickly and I think the swamp water in my rat ghost scratches be getting to me. Might be infected with something too.

“And it doesn’t help that you’re so very ugly, toooOOOooo—~!” I think I be getting her goat and badly at that, because Ruby be roaring and red with anger.

The snakes and muck monsters be thrashing at me as I be kicking off of them, I not be very good at jumping high, but I be learning Fleet Cunning Doe from Pom! I slipped between two snakes trying to wrap around me and into slid on top of the water under a pair of muck monsters claws before leaping up to cling to the face of another muck monster.

“So what is that you really do~? Don’t have any other hobbies DO you~. —oh, you lazy dodger~!” I hopped up landed on my rear hooves and kicked backwards with my left hoof while spreading my front hooves outwards creating a volatile vortex of water that blasted everything around me.

I bounced my way out of the vortex I created to hop in place and point at her.

“You— need— help, you second rater~. Get that please, now you vicious hater~!” I slashed apart another snake before it could rise up out of the water. “Or, you’ll always bawl—~!

“Who are you, to tell me what to do~?” Mz. Ruby sang as she kept leading the third dancing zombie chicken line with her bouncy rhythm.

“Anybody around this toxicity would certainly spew~!” I sang back as I lashed out and took off another snakes head, she is really laying it on with the snakes now and I be in a pickle and was getting sleepy.

“Who are you for coming into ‘MY’ swamp~!” She continued to beat out the rhythm. “You, arrogant pirate~! Oh— you should perish right now ah—!”

I felt a claw wrap around my waist and I started to struggle, I smacked at the muck tightly squeezing me. Narrowing my eyes at the arm holding me, I slashed my left rear leg back and the arm suddenly fell off and I landed on the swamp and quickly did a rolling bounce on top of the water as several muck monster slammed down on where I was.

“False— pretty—! Ugly— really—~!” I sang in taunt out with my front two hooves bracketing my face and skipped back and forth on the swamp using my hind legs. I noted that the snakes be melting into skeletons and collapsing into the muck. Looking beyond Ruby, I saw Sly had destroyed something behind Mz. Ruby and was in position to move towards her. That drew her attention off of me as the muck monsters surged. “False— pretty—! Ugly— really—~!”

I tried, but she was no longer paying attention to me, she just flicked her middle claws at me and numerous muck monsters started to rise around me. I really needed to light another torch as things were getting very cold, I reached into my satchel for some light and heat…

My hoof didn’t find any more torches, I only had flashbangs… them being mostly useless against swamp monsters…

I didn’t be having any torches left after I spat out the last one I be putting into my mouth to dance on the swamp.

The glow of many yellow eyes surrounded me in the dark as I kept bouncing.

I be letting out a slight squeak of fear as darkness engulfed me.

-Sly, the master class biped raccoon thief-

I dropped down and looked at the spikes on the path between me and Mz. Ruby. My skills as a magical thief better not fail me now.

Mz. Ruby turned to me, Shanty had been putting up one heck of a struggle down there, but she looked to be flagging badly. From what little I could see of the shadows moving in the darkness in that bubble, she wasn’t doing too hot.

At least I had Mz. Ruby’s attention squarely on me since I took down her main undead animal controlling totem.

“You are seriously what I should be focusing on now~. Mr. Cooper your friend will soon surely drown~. She said as she sang creepily with a grin, she continued to beat the rhythm out and she looked to be preparing to magic mouth at me like she did to Shanty. “Such a precious young life and how~. I’m taking her with me, if I am to be going down~.”

The fur on the back of my neck stood on end and I glared at her, I charged forward over the bits of wood and leapt onto the first bony spike. She started to sing rapidly.

I twirled and landed on it and immediately kicked off, the upper part of the skull slammed down on where I was as I landed on a molar and leapt for the next spike and onto the next tooth.

I didn’t stop and wait, I didn’t care what it takes, I had to take Mz. Ruby down now!

Mz. Ruby smiled as I leapt towards the next molar and the mouth clamped shut, but I wasn’t aiming to land on the tooth of the giant skull she was controlling.

The crook of my cane caught the edge of the molar and I slung myself forward and snapped it onto a hook and swung my way onto the platform where I struck Mz. Ruby across the face as I passed her spinning her dizzily.

She started belting out bursts of magic at nearly point blank range, but I had watched a bit of Shanty’s dancing earlier. I learned the rhythm and slide around each of her bursts of magic.

I hopped over the first wide wave of magic that sent the zombie chickens flying, ignoring that I readied my cane to wallop her as hard as I could.

“I-DOOooo, VoooDOOooo~! I-DOOooo, VoooDOOooo~!” I tumbled forward and around the vertical wave of magic and slapped my cane up into her chin harshly making her stumble back.

Mz. Ruby looked dazed as I slapped her harshly across the left side of her face and then brought it down on top of her head.

She wobbled back and forth on her feet and then she turned about and looked at something, I saw it too.

“So this… is the end… of my world-~!” Mz. Ruby, being too dazed by me to move out of the path of it, promptly took a fully supercharged shock pistol blast to the face and flopped over in a smoking heap. “Ohhhn—~.”

Carmelita looked like she was about to say something as she hopped onto a nearby bit of wood from one of the broken platforms while aiming her pistol at me.

I was more worried about something else, a life that still had a lot left to give!

“No time for fun Inspector, you have to help the girl!” I pointed out as the barrier fell and I could see bubbles slowly started to fade from the center of the muck pit where the destroyed lily pads vaguely float about. “She’s drowning in the swamp and I can’t swim, go!”

Only a split second of indecisiveness and then…

“Catch!” Carmelita, much to my shock, tossed me her shock pistol and dove straight into the swamp.

I quickly made my way over towards the swamps one edge, Carmelita soon erupted onto it with Shanty.

Shanty didn’t look to be breathing.

“Stand back ringtail!” Carmelita inhaled and blew air into Shanty’s mouth, she then put pressure on Shanty’s stomach and was about to press down when a mass of sludge exploded out of Shanty’s mouth and into Carmelita’s face.

Shanty quickly managed to crawl backwards away from Carmelita, who had been knocked onto her back and was wiping the muck off of her face, and rolled over to empty the contents of her stomach onto the ground.

“Are you okay?” I asked in a worried tone. Shanty was covered in scratches, her fur was a mess, she could use a good bath and aside from being a total mess, she might seriously need a doctor after that.

“I really do I not be liking voodoo witches. I be only holding my breath for three minutes… need to… be working on… that… ulp.” After she said that she continued to chunk more swamp muck everywhere, then flopped onto the ground breathing roughly. “Also no… help…”

Shanty whimpered where she lay.

“HOLD IT RIGHT… oh right… you have my gun!” Carmelita smacked herself in the forehead with her left hand.

“No I don’t, I put it in your holster as soon as you got knocked down by being barfed on. Now if you’ll excuse me… I’ve got to quickly take this girl to the best hospital I can find!” I quickly scooped up Shanty into my arms and started making my way for the Cooper Van with a very ill looking Shanty.

I heard Carmelita pull her pistol on me, with requisite Cooper calling card attached to it because it felt right somehow, but she didn’t pull the trigger and instead turned and leapt back in the direction of Mz. Ruby without a word or a yell in my direction.

It seems our favorite Inspector had her priorities in order when it came to someone who would try to drown a kid.

“Don’t worry Shanty, you’ll be fine, I promise!” I don’t know if I was shouting that for her or myself as she whimpered and snuggled into my arms.

She got stuck in that barrier that was meant for me and was almost drowned by Mz. Ruby’s muck monsters, she faired far better than I would have in that situation.

I really needed some help to get to the nearest hospital as quickly as… I heard a mechanical warbling as Dodo rushed up to me and skidded into a stop with his back facing me.

Dodo warbled again and pointed his beak at his seat

I hopped inside without a second thought.

Dodo started urgently running straight towards the nearest town, Carmelita was sure to be interested in Shanty and would look her up.

Things might get… a bit complicated.

-Camden Town, Interpol Officer Judy Hopps-

“I want to investigate the bodyguard of Hunter De Ville in depth, where is she currently living?” I asked my partner.

He looked confused as he couldn’t find any information about this Pom.

Oh great, another one that's entirely off the grid!

-Duckberg, Scrooge-

International Police were looking for Phantom Blot’s trail after he assaulted my home, I kept them from investigating my guests.

-Haiti, Cooper Van-

The recently freed zombie chicken questioned her existence.

94. The origin story of...

-Earth, Calisota, Duckberg, Gyro Gearloose’s Lab, Smolder-

“Oh great the labs sprung a leak again.” The scientist, that could only be Gyro Gearloose, groused out. “Close up the shutters Fenton, I promise we’ll figure out unbreakable glass one of these days.”

“Yeah or we’ll end up making another incredibly profitable lemon.” Fenton stated with almost clear certainty. “Who knew combustible lemon trees would be a hot commodity.”

“That’s a horrible joke and you know it Fenton!” The laboratory girl said as she was busy with a few beakers and some metal. “But yeah, using lemons as a fuel source worked out pretty well.”

I turned to Scrooge McDuck slowly.

“This is safer?” I asked for sake of clarification as a mechanical monster that looked like a cross between a bear and a yeti suddenly sprung out and the guy named Fenton leapt into action.

“Saying the word ‘lemon’ must have set that one off, again… Blathering Blatherskite!” Seconds later Fenton was covered in armor and acting like a super hero.

“Yeah, sorry about the mess.” The large bipedal thestral looking guy said while looking apologetic. “I’m Manny by the way.”

“Eh…” Scrooge tried to give me a reassuring smile. “Yes?”

That sounded more like a question than a real answer, it’ll do.

Find a nice corner to put Ocellus in while I stayed in front of her protectively and waited for lunch, her body would of course be on a pillow.

-Camden Town, days later, park, Pom-

Dolly looked to be having fun on her skateboard, the feisty Dalmatian wasn’t going constantly be bugging me to train her at least. I wasn’t about to tell her I could train her and I didn’t even know where I would begin with her, I didn’t know exactly what our bond was giving her to work with.

Dolly still seemed to be a completely normal baseline dog aside from being bound to me. She seemed to crave being the center of attention on top of doing what she believes to be exciting things. She was already acrobatic before we met, so it didn’t seem she had enhanced reflexes and her strength seemed to be normal for a dog her size.

It worried me that Dolly was getting something far more unique from our bond that could be trouble later on.

Speaking of, I promised to play Poodle Wolf with Dylan later this evening as Dolly doesn’t like that game and would probably stay away from me because of how boring she thought it was.

“My cousin Lena is making me feel like I’m not alone in this world, at least she has her life more in order than I do. I’m here slowly burning myself out trying to keep a company from crashing and burning.” Hunter turned to me after doing something with his device. “You know, you don’t have to watch me this closely. I’m pretty safe here, you can go play with the Dalmatian family if you want.”

I shook my head, I was acting as his bodyguard and I was taking my job seriously. I pointed to him and then myself and the ground beneath my hooves.

“Well okay then, I did hire you to protect me and you’re doing a really good job of it by the way!” Hunter was a little too young to be running a company, even so he was doing fine for the most part even if it was exhausting and stressful for him. “As a guard, people must have felt safe with you around.”

Hunter was giving people jobs, making sure to invest in better things and the like, the most important thing was that he nice to his employees. He was said to be far nicer than Cruella, not hard to do, by the people that saw me and thought me to be a completely necessary expenditure as his bodyguard.

One of the few reasons why Hunter knew how to run a company, despite being as young as he was, is mostly because of how ruthless his Great Aunt Cruella was as business owner. He learned it from her, but was better about how he treated people.

I took a deep sniff of the air, the park was quiet and peaceful…

That did not mean I wasn’t paranoid or anxious after having fought Gabby the other day, Ms. Mcstabberson was talented with bladed weaponry. At least things were on amiable terms between us, she was quite friendly for a mercenary.

“Hey, it’s Mr. Funny Face and Pom!” One of a pair of female Dalmatians ran up to us. Judging by the black fur acting like a sleeping mask on her face, it was Dizzy.

“Hi Mr. Funny Face, Hi Pom!” The other Dalmatian was always seen with her was Dee Dee, the little sister that wanted to be like her older sister Dolly.

“Hey you two, how have things been lately?” Actually putting away his device, hunter acknowledged them by crouching down. “Also can’t you call me by my name, you know ‘Hunter’? Why does Pom get a pass at being called by her name?”

“Because you’re Mr. Funny Face!” Both Dee Dee and Dizzy intoned at the same time like it was the most obvious thing in the world, these two were too innocent for the world.

I wondered if Dolly was anything like them when she was smaller.

“Of course I am.” Hunter mumbled in something between a fond tone and a grumpy acceptance as he patted them on the head, I gave him a light smile. He would have gotten along with the Dalmatian family just fine before I showed up and got him talking to Dylan. “You better not start calling me that when you can talk again.”

Wouldn’t dream of it… Mr. Funny Face.

“We came over to… uh… why did we come over here again Dee Dee?” Asked Dizzy, while looking confused.

“Uh… oh right, we came to ask about you to play with us!” Dee Dee seemed excited about it, then she seemed to seem a little less excited for some reason. “Maybe learn how to smell like Diesel does today!”

“You mean like being perpetually covered in stinky mud?” A grinning Dizzy asked, seeming to find the idea funny. “Diesel’s a champion at that with all the digging he does!”

“No, smelling with our noses Dizzy!” Dee Dee started giggling in a silly way.

“Oh okay, that’s fun too!” Dizzy turned to me looking a little bit upset. I tilted my head and gave her a curious glance. “Do you… do you know when… you’ll be taking our big sister away?”

“Is it going to be like how our last mommy was taken away?” Dee Dee seemed worried about her big sister and from what I knew of this family, they likely remembered that their previous mother before Delilah.

It was undoubtedly a very touchy subject that I was not going to dig into.

“No, Pom isn’t trying to keep her away… forever… like that.” Hunter looked sad. “It won’t turn out like that… well at least we hope it won’t.”

We all shared some loss here. The loss of parents in our lives, my only living relatives were my grandpa and my brother. My brother at least made a token effort before I suddenly uprooted myself.

I crouched down and brought both of Dolly’s sisters into a hug, they nuzzled into my neck. I wish I could comfort them with my voice and I tried to speak, my throat just made a croaking noise.

Oh good, I could now vaguely make noise again, I give it another month with how pained my throat still was. I’m going to be much more careful about fully charging bark attacks, especially a bark breaker as being mute is not fun.

“That sounded like a frog!” A giggling Dizzy cheered up instantly, but Dee Dee just gave me sad eyes.

I gently started petting Dee Dee, she eventually smiled and started wagging her tail.

Soon both Dizzy and Dee Dee ran a small circle around me and looked at me pleadingly to follow them.

I motioned to Hunter to follow us, I didn’t want him being too far away from me. I may be willing to shirk my duties slightly, but I was still responsible for keeping Hunter safe.

“Right, I’ll be right next to you, but I swear your paranoia is a bit much… or not enough because people really are out to get me…” Hunter glanced around carefully and then followed after us as we went towards a patch of flowers. “The international police being around scared off most of those crazies who don’t want to be struck down by those shock pistols. That octopus duck was said to just be a science experiment gone wrong. What is it with people writing off magic with science being the first explanation that comes to mind?”

I shrugged as I didn’t have a clue, magic was a well known quantity in the worlds I’ve been through as much as it was back on Equus. Though sufficiently advanced science could match magic.

I took a sniff of one of those flowers, primrose… good for colds and smelled like my first home.

Dee Dee took to sniffing a stick and Dizzy was doing the same to an acorn. Dee Dee made her way over to me and smelled the flower I did and seemed to appreciate it. We spent a time smelling random things we found around the area.

“Pom… you’d bring Dolly back to us if you could right?” Nodding to Dee Dee, I put my hoof against her chest and Hunter got the gist of what I was trying to get across. “Huh?”

“I think Pom is trying to tell you that Dolly will always be in your heart Dee Dee, does anyone in your family actually think Pom is trying to take Dolly on purpose?” At least I had a translator for my silent actions, Hunter was a smart kid. “It’s more that Dolly wants to go with Pom when she has to leave, Pom does want to find her lost friends and go home eventually.”

“Maybe we can find a way to come see Pom’s home to visit Dolly when they eventually get there!” Dizzy shouted, but then looked thoughtful. “Dee Dee, smelling stuff is fun, but shouldn’t we be spending as much time with Dolly as we can? Pom, Dylan and everyone are trying to do their best to get Dolly to stay with us, but I don’t think it’s working very well.”

“Yeah, Dolly gives off the vibe that she wants some excitement and it seems Pom runs into that fairly often.” At least someone understood why I had anxiety problems, misery loves company and we all had differing levels of that Hunter. “Why Pom here even recently fought someone who was sent to hurt me, but she kept me safe. She’s my hero, so that would mean Dolly is trying to be like her sidekick.”

“Does that mean you are a super hero Pom?” Dee Dee asked, as she propped her paws on my left leg. I sighed and got out my notepad, making her hop in excitement. “Those can do almost anything!”

I passed what I wrote down to Hunter.

“She doesn’t think of herself as a hero, especially not with the given the current circumstances around your sister. Though she does know some real cool heroes where she’s from.” Yeah, and they were all my best friends Hunter.

“With how fast you can move and how nice you are to sleep on… it’s like you’re a super sheep! Except not… because you don’t smell like a sheep… you smell more like…” Here Dizzy came up and started sniffing me. “You smell like a whole bunch of weird dogs!”

“Speaking of, how weird is your pack of dogs back home?” Hunter asked me and the two puppies sat down with big eyes. “Do you have any fun stories to share about that?”

“Story?” An excited Dee Dee stated.

“Please?” Dizzy followed up.

“Story?!” A Dalmatian pup asked, this caused a ripple effect of puppies saying ‘story’ and running to park themselves in front of me.

Suddenly just about every dog in the park converged on us with the Puppy Pack looking to me for a story. The other dogs were Roxy the Rottweiler, a Pomeranian, a Husky, a Poodle, a Daschund and a few others like that start to crowd around me including that fox called Fergus.

I huffed and started writing.

“Hey, what’s going on over here?” Dolly skated over and stopped to kick her skateboard into an upright position. “Okay, what did Pom do to get everyone so excited Hunter?”

“Well Dizzy and Dee Dee want to know more about the dogs that were in Pom’s life before she ended up arriving here in Camden Town.” Eventually Hunter received the notepad from me and started reading.

-An hour later-

My choices of beasties to talk about started with my timber wolf friend being a canine made of living sticks. The Cu Sith, a dog that barks when there’s danger definitely needs to be avoided. The Grimm dog that, much like Dante, is able to predict incoming disaster. A three headed Cerberus, but not The Cerberus, that can breathe fire and I had to make the distinction about the differences between The Cerberus and a Cerberus. I explained the most about my god puppies as their beloved Baa-Baa and the Canis Major simply called Big Mama.

I ended up teaching them about a lot about the assortment of mythological canine beasties I might eventually end up meeting until I heard stomachs grumbling.

“Lunchtime, time go home for food and snacks everyone!” Dolly shouted and acted like she wasn’t sending me glances, all the puppies whined audibly. “Hey don’t be like that, you can play with Pom later. Go on and get them home Dyl, I’ll catch up bro!”

As she approached me Dolly nuzzled and cuddled both Dee Dee and Dizzy lovingly, before pushing them off after Dylan and the rest of the Puppy Pack.

“Okay, we really need to talk.” Gee, you think Dolly? She was still wearing her helmet and carried her skateboard under her right leg as she approached me.

“Which is going to be hard, because she can’t exactly talk back.” Hunter stated bluntly with his arms crossed.

“So that’s the reason your familiar with this kind of bond? What we have has to be at least a little bit special right?” Rolling my eyes at Dolly, I nodded. Our bond was certainly something else and actually becoming friends with Dolly was going to make worse. “All those dogs with unique abilities and I still feel… mostly like a normal dog really. I mean they all sound incredible like that Fu Dog. Not going to lie, I was expecting more out of this bond and before you ask, I’m still not breaking it. You can do whatever you want to me, I’m sticking by your side like glue as I know you won’t hurt my ‘fam’ in an effort to break this thing.”

I wrote something down and passed it to Hunter.

“Even at the expense of possibly never seeing your family again?” Hunter read out loud for me. “Your brothers, sisters and parents love you, am I really worth all the oncoming sorrow?”

“Yeah… that’s a problem...” Dolly rubbed the back of her head with a paw before her eyes snapped to the noise of approaching hooves.

The horse that approached snorted and start making neighing noises at Dolly.

“No Pearl, I’m not bothering them, right guys?” Moving over to Dolly, I patted her on the head while looking the horse in the eyes.

The horse nodded and then went about her business with a highly distracted police officer on her back with his eyes glued to his device. Yeah, I’m kind of glad the international police were here if the local police weren’t paying attention to their surroundings. I wouldn’t be surprised if Pearl did all the work for that guy.

“I think I’m glad that I don’t understand horses.” It seemed Hunter didn’t want to get on Pearl’s bad side. “Pearl seems a bit intense.”

I’m surprised that I didn’t understand a lick of that considering I come from a world with ponies.

“Trust me, you’re really not missing much Hunter.” Shaking her head with her paws crossed over her chest, Dolly turned her attention back to me. “Look, I get it, I really do Pom. I know you want to protect me, so can you please stop it with the passive aggressive stuff already? I know I’m not exactly the most patient dog in the world, goodness knows I’ve tested Dylan’s patience far more then at least a hundred times a week, but I’m willing to try and learn whatever you’ll teach me.”

I sighed, Dolly really did want this, goodness knows why. I glanced off to the side and pointed out the husky known as Hansel who was reciting poetry and gestured back at Dolly.

“There are plenty of other dogs out there and… I haven’t exactly had the greatest luck with Hansel. I’m not into poetry or Poodle Wolf and he is so very oblivious to the feelings of others at times. Mostly mine… he’s good looking at least, but that doesn’t mean I’m shallow or can’t have options.” I don’t know Dolly, you certainly seemed shallow to me if you’re going for just looks. She put a paw over her face and rubbed at her forehead. “Look, wherever we’re going with this thing, I want you to know that I’m not just doing this just because you’re incredibly interesting.”

Dolly looked me in the eyes and I looked back at her, this bond between us was ultimately weird at the moment and I didn’t like it. A moment passed as we felt each other out and Dolly eventually continued.

“I… I’m usually not good at thinking of the big picture, or worrying about my future too much for that matter. I like the idea of being a police dog, a fire dog or even a pro at skateboarding. I had ideas about what I wanted to do eventually, mostly because our family isn’t going to stick together forever. Dante has made me realize that most of us will want to eventually go our own ways and live our own lives.” Dolly looked away from me. “I’m… at that point… and being a bit selfish I’ll admit, but this is the one time where being selfish should be a good thing! You need help and this is like the job of a lifetime, no other dog would seriously pass this up so easily. I know you like me, I can vaguely get why you don’t want me with you and I know that there are tons of problems that comes with this. Just… let me see where this can all go!”

I let out a sigh and finally nodded, she could finally feel me stop pushing her away and she immediately latched herself onto my chest with her paws as her tail wagged a mile a minute.

“Okay, what do I do first?” Looking down at Dolly, I just knew I would eventually come to regret this judging from the excited wide eyed enthusiasm she had going.

-A few days later, Dalmatian home, dining room, morning, Dolly-

So Pom was forcing me to spend more time with my little sisters, I didn’t mind that one bit as they were great training assistants as was any other pup Pom could possibly need on a moment’s notice.

Dylan was oddly silent about this stuff and didn’t say much about any of it, but he did give me sad looks.

Mom and dad weren’t going to let me go traveling with Pom unless she acknowledges that I had learned enough to do so.

My body and mind were becoming quite sore from all the stuff Pom was putting me through, it wasn’t just exercise or a montage in any martial arts movie I’ve ever seen. I didn’t even know my mind could be sore until now!

At first, it all seemed like bizarrely normal stuff and I was beginning to have my suspicions, then things ramped up a few days ago.

It was when I was setting the breakfast table today that I got a warning from my brother Dante.

“Today is going to be a bit hectic for you, it was nice knowing you sis. Take your skateboard, a strap for it and a helmet, you’ll need them. I want you to know that you’ve been a good big sister and we’ll miss you.” Uh, did Dante predict something involving me today? Given what we know about Dante’s prediction now being magical… and he was now hugging me tightly. Aw yeah, I’m seeing some action today! “Please be careful out there Dolly. Thankfully enough, Pom is going to be sorely underestimated.”

It was this interaction with my brother that let me know that I should really be near Pom today, Dante had to know that telling me about this was going to make me follow her around.

“Say, can I come with you to work today?” I asked of Pom as she came in and she just stared at me with a quirked eye. “Oh sure, I know it might be boring, but something interesting could actually happen!”

Pom’s current job as a bodyguard wasn’t glamorous. Like how my dad worked at the fire house in preparing for all kinds of situation, it will get interesting today because Dante dropped me that warning in advance.

It looked like she had to think about this for a while, but Pom eventually gave me the go ahead as Dante kept sending me worried looks as breakfast was ready.

“That said, Breakfast!” No one was in the splash zone of the Puppy Pack flowing into the room today to nibble down some kibble.

Delilah eventually came up to me. My step mother wasn’t the touchy feely kind of dog like dad was, but she still gave me a hug, my dad eventually did the same thing after breakfast.

I was soon dog piled soon after our parents left for work by the rest of my family, including a crying Dylan, and then I was on my way to see what had Dante was so worried about today.

-Before noon, bank, Pom-

Dolly seemed to be alert today and Dante told me to protect her if she got in over her head, he mentioned seeing beings of metal to me and I was just as alert.

When a dog had Grimm based prediction abilities, you absolutely listened to what they say!

Said prediction came to fruition as Hunter finished his transactions and several mandrill shaped bipedal machines dropped from the sky. They used jets from their back to slowly land in front of the bank and they began blasting out the banks windows with energy weapons.

“Everyone, this is Dr. M, please hand over your valuables and all the money in the bank and the casualties will be 'somewhat' minimal.” This Dr. M has a mechanical army and gave off Teatime Clockwork vibes, I disliked him already. “Anyone that acts otherwise will be made an example of.”

To think I thought I could actually avoid fighting machines...

Wrapping a hoof around Dolly before she could charge out there, we stayed behind cover.

Dolly gave me a look that screamed 'do something' and I already was, I was planning to help all the civilians. This meant distracting the armed mechanical mandrills slowly approaching the bank.

Jotting some instructions down for Dolly and Hunter to read, I snatched up a strip of pink cloth from the floor and quickly wrapped it around my forehead.

Here... I go...

Author's Note

Home flooded again... but at least it wasn't nearly as bad as last time this happened. Mild power outages aside.

95. Leap Lamb and Caper Canine #1.

Author's Note

Music: Streets of Rage Remake, Fighting In The Street V5.

95. Leap Lamb and Caper Canine #1.

-Earth, Haiti, Mopsy-

“Don’t you have someone else to bother?” I stated as I looked at a recovering Shanty. She just got her ridiculously healthy appetite back, at least Sly was handling the costs of that by dealing with local smuggling rings. Shanty was still weak even after a week. “I already told you why Shanty was out there.”

“Fine, just make sure Shanty doesn’t get into any more trouble.” Carmelita has been digging into us and still had no evidence to say I had any involvement with the Cooper Gang or criminal activities otherwise. Aside from the fact that I’m just a dancer from The Prance Dance in Mesa City, She has absolutely nothing on me. Something buzzed and Carmelita pulled out a phone. “If you will excuse me ma’am…”

After she left, I put my ear to the door to hear her talking outside.

“So Dr. M, an old associate of the previous Cooper Gang is attacking Camden Town in Britain.” Carmelita was taking what sounded like an important call outside the room and she mentioned the previous Cooper Gang, sparking my interest. “Well he has no ties to the current Cooper gang, but we have him on watch as he is wanted internationally. Is that all Judy? Right, the last two of the Fiendish Five are what I’m looking for right now, the current Cooper Gang is targeting them and I don’t have a lead as to where they are heading now as they’ve gone to ground. Can you handle the situation with your shock pistols? A strange sheep bodyguard just went vigilante? Can I get a description of this vigilante? Uh huh… hm… description matches a sheep I’ve seen recently except… she has green eyes. Probably unrelated, but I will check it out.”

I back away from the door and headed over to Shanty.

“Good news, I think I just heard where Pom is. Bad news, she currently has the attention of the international police and has just been labeled a vigilante.” At least I brought a big smile to Shanty’s sickly face.

Any oddities of Shanty being an alien from another world were overlooked by the local doctor and written off as just having a slightly odd animalistic biology. At least the prescribed medication was working and she could be released soon.

Carmelita walked in and saw Shanty smiling at me as I held her right hoof. The biped fox gave me a look, then turned around and walked out to give us some privacy.

-???-

It was an inexorably abnormal day unlike any other in Camden Town. Rarely does anything big happen in the sleepy little region of the world known for its ridiculous amount of friendly Dalmatians that can be seen playfully darting around the park and its remarkably low crime rates.

Today was the exception and not the norm, as the villainous Dr. M meticulously set his menacing monstrous mechanical money mugging minions upon the poor citizens of Camden Town.

Who would save the day?

Why it would be the lamb with powers from worlds unknown that would ‘Leap’ into the fray with her incredible speed, strength and endurance!

This lamb was soon joined by a smart Dalmatian that was quite skilled with a skateboard that could ‘Caper’ about through any danger with pure excitement in her eyes and an ever playful heroic heart!

This would be a battle that the likes of the sleepy burg of Camden Town has never seen before, that it was hardly believed to have ever even happened in the first place.

Despite being labeled as vigilantes, the two would be seen as heroes by the locals and they would be called Leap Lamb and Caper Canine, the unbelievable duo.

They would soon be seen heroically doing the impossible around the world… and would join with others individuals like the armored Gizmo Duck, the Terrific Tail Team and the Ballistic Bullethead.

Super heroes were on the rise, can you see it honest faithful’s?

-Camden Town, outside the bank, Pom-

I would keep them all distracted and their attention solely on me, that’s why I took up the pink strip of cloth. I figured it was eye catching and would draw attention while Dolly and Hunter evacuated the bank.

So with that in mind, I inhaled sharply and pulled myself over the counter we were taking cover behind. Once my hind legs were propped upon it for a leap, I exhaled and kicked off through the air and grazed the ceiling as I flew forward.

Blasts of energy lanced past me from three of the machines that suddenly locked onto my form, all the shots hit the ceiling and narrowly missed hitting me directly.

Of the two machines in the front and the one between and behind them, I was aiming at the front one on my right.

I raised my right hoof back and then thrust it forward before my body slammed into it, the mandrill shaped machine stumbled back with my hoof going straight through its upper torso and the light in its eyes died.

Several blasts of energy surged towards it and me.

I quickly kicked off of the machine sideways with my hind legs, leading into a wild windmill spin as the one I had been on was blown apart under the cascade of energy bolts.

I kicked my hind legs together and slowed my spin to flip into dropping my left hind leg down in an axe kick into the next mandrill machine that landed between its neck and shoulder.

The machine’s upper torso crumpled down into its lower in a shower of sparks, I kicked off of it with my right hind leg and shot towards the last of the trio about to enter the bank while bringing my hooves together and to the left.

As I passed the machine I swung forward with both my hooves and sailed down the stairs to the front of the bank where I rolled into the street and onto my hooves.

The head of the machine I passed by fell down onto the street nearby and the headless machine at the top of the stairs toppled over.

“Impossible… I calculated that there was no one around that was capable of standing up to me here!” Hearing the voice of the guy calling himself Dr. M, I looked up at the airship above me. “No matter… I have more than enough for the likes of you little lamb!”

I trotted in place preparing to move as I turned my attention back to the seven mandrill machines that suddenly took aim.

I started to charge forward zigzagging between their shots and then I went onto my hind legs in a crouch as I spun clockwise through a series of energy blasts, up until I was in front of one of the machines that had been shooting at me.

I readied my left hoof and my wool rippled to cover it. I threw a vicious rising uppercut into the mandrill machine before me, it split entirely in half vertically due to my magic wolf claw.

Quickly thrusting both of my front hooves out, I knocked the two sparks halves of the machine into the other six machines, two were taken out by the exploding halves.

While the remaining four were still firing at where I was, I darted to the left and wrapped both my hooves around a garbage can to heaved it at one of them while taking the lid off it.

The garbage can successfully smashed into the mandrill machine and I blocked incoming energy blasts with the trash can lid and charge forward to tackle another onto its back with the quickly crumpling lid.

I jumped and brought the lid down on it and smashed the machine apart. The pieces exploded afterwards, but my wool handled the fast moving bits of metal quite well as the explosion sent me into the air and towards another mandrill machine.

I lashed out both my rear hooves and flying bucked a mandrill machine in half, landing on my back I bucked the legs into the other machine making its rifle go flying up and out of its hands.

Rolling onto my hooves, I inhaled lightly and then exhaled as I jumped to grab the rifle quite a number of feet above the ground. I slammed the rifle down breaking it in half on the now toppling mandrill machine.

“Do you think you’ve won? I still have many more to send at you sheep!” After Dr. M said that, I saw ten more figures jump from the airship and came for a slow land with the jets in their back.

One of the mechanical mandrills, as soon as it had landed, blasted forward on its jets while leading with its knee.

Bringing up my left leg to block it, I grimaced at ending up in another situation like this.

Upon the knee’s impact, my entire body started rippling backwards from the point of impact as I brought my right leg up and back.

I thrust my right leg forward into its center mass once all the rippling converged on it and the machine practically evaporated into a shower of metal that took out three of the metal mandrills behind it in volatile explosions.

Paprika’s counter technique, it was always useful to remember.

Glancing to my right at the bank, I saw Hunter hurrying people away while I had Dr. M’s focus, turning back to my opponents I almost was punched in the face by machine running at me.

Shifting to the right slightly, I thrust my left hoof up to wrap around the metal arm and my hoof clenched up under its armpit.

Heaving it up, I slammed it down onto its back, a second heave and it slammed face first into the street and with a third heave it was sparking wildly as its broken body went limp in my grasp.

I grabbed onto it with my right hoof and spun counterclockwise while heaving it upwards into a hammer throw. The exploding metal mandrill’s body took out another one making it explode and damage the surrounding others.

Five more to deal with, I was about to charge forward at them when something slammed into the ground behind me.

“So if one of my regulars won’t work, then how about one of my enforcers!” Dr. M crowed. “Crush her!”

I looked back at a hulking gorilla like figure burst forward in a shower of flames and brought both its large claws around my body to clamp them together.

It lifted me up off the ground and immediately started trying to crush me between its heavily armored body and its barrel sized arms.

The mechanical gorilla thing had a hemispherical head and no neck, large body and looked to be quite well armored. Not exactly great odds for me to deal with without the ability to use bark attacks.

With my front legs trapped, I kicked my hind legs at its legs and tried to slam the back of my head into its chest to break free, but it wasn’t working and the pressure was increasing by the second.

My wool was the only thing fighting off the pressure and if it gave out, well… my bones wouldn’t survive anything my wool couldn’t hold up against.

“Hey, drop that ewe!” A lightning blast struck the large gorilla machine barely making it budge, it didn’t even look like that attack even bothered it. It just kept focusing on crushing me.

While I struggled in the machines monstrous grip, I turned my head to see a small biped grey rabbit just give the large machine a wide eyed look and she looked down at her weapon with a frown.

While that was happening a fox fired his weapon on the other machines, the blast of energy ripped one of them apart.

“We’ve certainly got the hustle, but I don’t think our shock pistols were meant for something that large Jude…” The fox intoned as he aimed at the other mandrill machines and the pressure continued mounting on me.

“We have to help her Nick, it’s crushing her to death!” The rabbit said motioning to me while looking to the fox. “Can you imagine how much pressure that thing must be putting on her?”

“Maybe we should ask why it hasn’t already managed to pulp her yet after we deal with these other machines.” The fox said as he took aim, the rabbit did so as well. “We’ve just been authorized to run our shock pistols hot here Carrots, the police around here don’t have the weapons for this kind of thing!”

The four mandrill machines started moving towards these two, they didn’t look nearly as tough as I was… that and they didn’t have magical wool.

I increased my struggling and was quickly losing air in my lungs, I couldn’t let them get hurt trying to fight these things.

-Dolly-

Oh dog, that’s not good! Pom is in trouble and those two strange biped police officers can’t help her.

What do I do, what do I do?! Dylan has always shown that he was much smarter in these situations than I am… and far braver.

Every time I pranked my brother or someone messes with our family, he was the one that always stepped up a paw to protect and or save the family.

What has Pom been training me for these last few days if I couldn’t help her like I really wanted to? I mean… it almost look like she didn’t need my help with how fast and strong she was up until now.

I’m just a small dog, what can I do against something that large?

“Come on, Dolly let’s go, Pom can probably get out of that on her own!” I looked from Hunter shouting out towards me from around the corner of the building.

“No can do, I have to help her Somehow!” I shouted back. I was near the top of the steps next to the mandrill machine she tore the head off of and looked at the broken weapon on the ground. “Go on and get out of here Hunter!”

Couldn’t use this… though I really wanted one now… the two officers were having a lot of trouble with the four machines that Pom can shred…

I looked at my skateboard, the helmet on my head and that metal bar in the middle of the steps leading downwards and the location of the large machine slowly killing Pom.

I think… is this what it’s like when a lightbulb goes off in your head? Could I… no… no second guessing myself, Pom needs me right now!

I quickly skated into the bank and skidded to bring my board around and pointed at the steps, I started pushing with my left hind leg to build up speed for what would need to do.

I hopped the skateboard up, twisted it so that the middle would have me shred down rail. I narrowed my eyes at my target as I kick my right legs to launch off the end of the rail and went sailing towards it.

“BOW-WAKA-WOW!” I did a half-ollie to flip my board upside down and ahead of me as I shot upwards and towards the large machine. I grabbed the back end of my board with my front paws and put everything I had into swinging it around in a sharp circle.

Once I was on the other side of the machine, I let go of my board with a twist to flip it back upright. I grabbed the nose of my board with my front paws and planted my rear paws in time to land on the tail end of my board and skid to quick stop.

I looked back at that hulking thing.

Slowly the machine arms fell limp and Pom dropped onto the ground gasping, she looked up at the machine as the hemisphere head slid downwards and then fell onto the ground next to her. The machine started to teeter forward and she dove forward into a roll away as the machine collapsed onto its own head and then it exploded.

“Bow-waka-whoa… did I just actually… awesome!” I thrust my paws into the air and pumped them. Wait… no… I couldn’t celebrate when there were still more machines to deal with!

Pom and I turned to see the rabbit biped police officer got kicked onto her back and her pistol went sliding away from her.

Pom immediately went to her aid, no second thoughts, no second guessing herself as she shoulder checked the machine away from the rabbit and struck at it with her hooves.

The fox biped was handling himself well by dodging out of the way of the robot attempting to punch, kick and or knee him with a blast of jets from the box on its back.

The rabbit was going for her pistol and another machine went flying forward knee first for her.

I didn’t even noticed when I started moving, I kicked my board off the ground and blocked the knee with the bottom of my board. I did a flip off its knee and pulled on my strap to slap it across the face with my board and again to bring it back under myself.

After successfully landing and having halted that machine’s momentum, I growled at it while staying in front of the police office.

The rabbit turned and fired her pistol into it chest creating a large hole in it, it toppled backwards.

“This is Interpol Officer Judy Hopps, are there any mounted police currently missing a horse?” As the biped grey rabbit in the blue uniform stated that into her radio, it had me wondering what she was talking about.

The only two horses I knew around here were… I turned watched as Pearl bucked a mandrill machines legs out from under it and then broke its skull in a second buck that sent it flying into another one and they both blew apart.

“Whoa awesome job Pearl, never actually saw you in action like this before!” I said skating up next to her.

“Dolly, you may have helped that officer in danger, but you should get out of here!” She neighed at me in an upset tone. “This is too dangerous for a rookie and its official police business!”

“Hey, didn’t I just prove that I can absolutely take care of myself Pearl!” I barked back at her as I watched Pom and the fox deal with the last machine. “Also aren’t mechanical biped mandrills a bit much for your job?”

“You think you’re all so special, none of you can ever truly match someone of my intellect!” This Dr. M guy was seriously getting on my nerves. We all stayed still as his airship flew overhead. “Though I seriously should have gone with the mutants…”

Twenty mandrill bots just dropped along the street facing towards the five of us, ten machines flew out from the side of the ship and they came to a hover facing us with several more of those mandrill robots controlling them.

-Pom-

Okay how many of these things did this guy have? I looked at one of the flying machines and then up to the airship, the only way to stop this was to get at him directly, since the guy obviously had a lot of them up there.

I looked at nearby lamp pole as several of the fly vehicles swooped down and started spraying the streets with rapid fire energy blasts. I ran towards the nearest light pole.

I leapt half way up it, kicked off and grabbed the horizontal portion of the light pole with my front hooves. Kicking my rear hooves forward and back several times to build momentum as I started to rotate around the horizontal bar like a gymnast.

I released it to launch myself upwards into a backwards flip while moving forward and managed to land on the front of one of the flying vehicles that quickly clamped onto with my front hooves.

I clambered up the front of the hovering machine, before it could shoot my rear legs dangling in front of its weapons, and shifted my head out of the way of the metal mandrill’s right fist as it tried to knock me off.

I hit with its head my right hoof and clambered up some more to smash it with a hard left, the mechanical mandrill fell off to the street.

A panicked looking Dolly passed by below and performed a spinning bounce off its head with her board, smashing that machines head inwards, while being chased by another hovering machine firing after her.

I clambered up into the hovering vehicle and looked at the controls, I put my hooves on it and pulled back… maybe it worked like an Equestrian gyrocopter or airship?

I went shooting down the street and two hovering vehicles started to give chase to me, I eventually figured out how to steer left and right. Still didn’t know about up and down, this thing wasn’t exactly intuitive to control! I pushed forward on the controls of this flying circular platform and it slowed down.

Maybe I twist the left handle? I sharply nosedived and almost struck the street, thankfully it was twisting the right handle that evened me out.

I twisted the right handle more to turn back skywards, I looked at what triggered the weapons on this thing and sighed… hooves were just not made for manipulating things easily.

I turned back around towards the airship, I felt the vehicle shake and looked back to see smoke pouring out the backside of it.

It just took a hit and the chasers were still rapidly firing at me. I didn’t really need this flying machine to reach the airship, I just needed to get higher up!

Sharply twisted the right handle and the vehicle almost went completely vertical and started twirling for the sky, I really missed those halcyon days where I could scream.

-Dolly-

I slammed into the legs of machine on my board, it toppled face first into the street and ceased moving.

Looking up, I saw Pom flying high into the sky with two of those flying machines on her backside.

Where was Pom… oh she was heading for the airship!

I yelped when I heard something crash into the street and come sliding for me, I quickly skated out of the way. I looked back to see the biped fox turn his aim from being upwards to the mandrill machines coming at us on the ground.

“Never mind the horse, I think it’s actually doing much better work than its rider actual would have!” The rabbit stated as she hopped out of the way of being kicked by another machine and blew its head off as she put away her radio. “Ugh, where’s the good help when you need it!”

“You called?” Her fox friend ducked under a flying knee, turned around and shot the mechanical mandrill in the back with his pistol. It blew apart when he hit the box thing on its back.

I barked and moved up next to the rabbit while pointing my nose up to the flying machines and to where Pom was heading towards the airship with smoke pouring out the backside of the one she snatched.

“At least the dog has the right idea, we need to deal with these flying vehicles Wilde!” As the rabbit said this, several of these robot mandrills came at us all at once. Only Pearl bowled straight through them all and only a few got back up. “Good horse, remind me to get you some apples for this later!”

After hearing an explosion, I looked up.

I knew Pom was an alien, but I didn’t know she could do that!

96. Leap Lamb and Caper Canine #2.

Author's Note

If you have ever played The Simpsons arcade, then you know skateboards make decent weapons.

you can use the music from the previous page.

Also... to show how dangerous Dolly's skateboard actually is if she weren't using it bluntly...

You can watch one of the free shorts, if this story is too boring right now.

96. Leap Lamb and Caper Canine #2.

-Equus, Ponyville, Silver Stream-

“So I find Gallus really quite adorable when he squeaks!” I was talking to the one person that has been quite special to me since I was born. “So it’s been months since they started on finding a single solution to rescuing our friends, is what they are doing really that difficult?”

“Don’t know what to tell you sis, interdimensional travel is dangerous and they are still trying to fix all the holes in our world that were partially by Starswirl the Bearded first.” My brother Terramar was one of the friendliest hippogriffs ever, he enjoyed being a sea pony from time to time nowadays. I mean we grew up a bit separated by our species, but this was my brother and I haven’t spent time with him like this in a while. “Apparently using other worlds as dumping grounds for dangerous magical artifacts is an exceptionally dumb thing to do. So yes, it is far more difficult than it seems. They are seriously working on it from what I can tell.”

“You have no idea how difficult it is to get a long range teleportation potion to work, but don’t blame Starswirl for everything now… unicorns used to use teleportation without safeties included in that particular spell for hundreds of years back in his time before Celestia plugged that particular hole and made sure that every unicorn knows why the safeties are in place. Considering her own abuses of interdimensional travel caused all kinds of havoc. Before the teleportation spell unicorns used a natural form of teleportation that was called ‘blinking’ or ‘winking’, which was a more limited form of teleportation, but since it was naturally occurring it had those safeties in place already as it was something all unicorns could do.” Kuril was treating us to lunch today, but she wasn’t making lunch for us. I didn’t know whether to feel gypped or sorry for Kuril. “So the Sieve Precarious really is kind of a thing, given that Discord created it and it has those safeties on it that don’t blow holes in the dimensional wall of our world. That means Discord is surprisingly blameless for all of this. Now Teumessian Foxes, otherwise known as ‘blink foxes’, their form of ‘blink’ was entirely different and is why unicorns figured out the unsafe version of teleportation in the first place. It took a while for Celestia to notice the problem and by then it was almost too late to save our world from dimensional collapse, if a unicorn comes out slightly burnt then that means the safeties of the spell kicked in. If you do your research, you’ll find that Twilight and the ponies she has on this are actually doing all they can to ‘safely’ return your friends home. Without forcing them all going straight through Tambelon first for the sake of dimensional stability.”

“Is it really that bad?” I asked quietly.

“Like you wouldn’t believe, my daughter Jaded accidentally calculated a way to destroy our entire universe and every parallel of us thereof utilizing a single highly unsafe teleportation… that moves a living being about three inches to the right. Her dyscalculia is so apocalyptic, any math done by my Jaded has to be erased with incredible haste. You'll have to meet her sometime so she can tease her brother about you, when she's not off trying to fix the whole world's economy. Now that I've said that out loud, it sounds absolutely stupid to have her doing that...” Kuril shuddered and rubbed at her shoulders. “That someone can feasibly create a destructive chain of dimensional collapses warrants all the cautious research they are absolutely putting into it. That, is why it is taking so long.”

“Yeah, have patience sis, they are actually doing their best.” Terramar put a comforting claw on my left shoulder.

I just wanted to hug Ocellus and Smolder again… provided that Smolder is tired of hiding how cute she is.

“So... anyone want to discuss all the weird things that happened when Pinkie got into a hug fight with that alpaca?” My smile made Terramar and Kuril perk up.

-Earth, Camden Town, streets, Dolly-

“Do you remember when we were still investigating an odd bodyguard?” The more acrobatic purple eyed rabbit officer kicked off the wall and, while upside down in the middle of a flip, blew the head off one of the mandrill machines and kicked off another’s chest. “I wish we could go back to that now!”

“At least the local police are cordoning off the area, not that it’ll stop that airship from dropping any more outside of it.” While that was going on her fox partner was dodging and blasting them when he got the chance, he was staying on the ground and was proving to be just as good as his partner.

Neither of them could actually take these things on in a direct confrontation physically, but they were managing to the best of their ability with their weapons. That meant Pom was just that incredible when it came to fighting them with her bare hooves.

Speaking of partners mine was gliding through the air after the bad guy in that flying boat up there and she was getting shot at a lot, I just have to figure out how to get up there to help her.

Now if only I could find the time to do that!

I bounced my skateboard up and brought the rear end around to rip the arm off the machine I was dealing with and landing on the nose of my board, I bounced backwards and slammed the machine mandrill’s big butt with the rear of my board and knocked it onto its face.

Pearl was sticking near me and protecting me, I always thought she was a cool horse and now she’s just proving me right. She had once tried to explain to me what being a community police officer was about, but I wasn’t exactly paying attention at the time.

I looked up and quickly skated into an alleyway as a series of energy blasts rained down on the street by those flying platforms with the bullet proof glass stuff on the front of them. The two officers with those strange energy pistols were doing a good job of dodging the attacks from above, as was Pearl surprisingly despite her larger size.

If stuff like this existed before, why was I only seeing it now?! Camden Town hasn’t experienced anything quite like this before when Cruella was still around and hunting down my family.

Some of those flying machines were flying quite low, now if I could figure out how get onto a nearby roof from here. I could wedge my skateboard into the bricks of the wall and… yes, I think I could do that!

I hopped my skateboard up and got the backend upright as the nose of my board stuck into the brickwork. With a kick I was in the opposite wall with the front of my board pointing skywards and the tail of my board in the brickwork now.

Bouncing between the two walls on my board I finally managed to get close enough to the fire escapes to quickly climb my way onto the roof, this wasn’t exactly safe by any means… and this kind of thing is exactly why I broke one of my hind legs once.

Skateboarding wasn’t a safe hobby, but having a nurse dog for a mom really helped with all my cuts, scrapes and injuries from it.

Holding my skateboard under my right leg as I scampered across the roof on three legs, I looked for a good target to do what Pom did and steal one of those flying machines. Hopefully without it blowing up underneath me.

I couldn’t cling to surfaces like Pom did or even do all the magical things she could, that’s why I had my own set of skills that I could to bring to all of this. I’m fairly sure my brother Dante suggested I bring my board strap to help me with all of this this.

Dante had to of seen this all of this coming and whatever he told mom and dad… they were really worried about me this morning. I didn’t have much of a stake in all of this fighting, aside from protecting my home, acting like a hero and Pom.

I could just back out now, but I wanted to help and as far as being a normal dog goes… well I would really miss my daily routine of chasing the mailman with my brothers and sisters.

I was definitely going to show animalistic levels of intelligence if I went through with this and it might draw attention to my family. Not that I hadn’t already blown the lid off of that genies lamp by taking out that large gorilla thing that started squeezing Pom to death.

I swallowed and planted my board on the roof and waited for one of the machines to shoot by as I watched Pearl aid the two police officers. I might only have one shot at this depending on how badly this goes, if I missed then I hoped I was landing on one of those mandrills bots at least.

“Sorry if I get hurt doing something crazy Dylan!” I announced over the world wide woof in the loudest barks I can manage, then kicked the board forward.

“Please don’t tell me you’re in the middle of all that Dolly!” My bro called back and I rolled my eyes as I burned down the slant of the roof.

Launched of the edge with a well time kick to the back edge of the board. Dylan sounded close by, probably coming this way from the park. That’s not important, I had to land this!

The flying machine was right in my path and… I barely missed the back end of one of the flying machines and felt a sharp jerk that made me yelp loudly. Looking up I saw that I might have missed it… but my board strap hadn’t and was caught onto the back end of it.

“Dolly!” I heard Dylan calling out over the world wide woof.

“I’m okay, just a minor setback, now stop talking and let me focus here!” I shouted back, which earned the attention of the mandrill piloting this thing.

It swerved and tried to slam me into the nearest building instead of continuing its attack run on Pearl, quickly angled my skateboard up at the wall and rode along it and then kicked off the wall.

The strap unhooked, I brought my skateboard from under me to above my head and slammed the top rear of it down on the metal mandrill’s head sending showers of sparks and busting it slightly. My step brother Dawkins would probably want to get a good look at what I was seeing, I couldn’t make heads or tails of this complicated stuff.

The mechanical mandrill, making several disturbing jerky movements, started to turn around and get out of the seat. I quickly whipped my board around using my strap and struck it in the chest sending it toppling off the machine into the streets below.

Securing my beloved board to my back, I quickly hopped into the seat and stood up on my hind legs to grab the bar shaped controls with my front paws… my dog, how did Pom figure this out?!

Well it looked simple enough, now I had to figure that out before I slammed into the bank.

“Rotate the right grip!” Dawkins voice came in loud and clear, I quickly did so and scraped a large chunk out of the banks roof. “Rotate the left grip, push forward on the control bar!”

The machine slowed down and evened out to a crawl or a really slow forward hover as I did what Dawkins shouted.

“Now can you bring it to me as an early birthday present?!” Of course Dawkins would want something this awesome to tinker with. My brainy step brother did create the kibble pump and several other gadgets we use around the house, his tail had to be wagging like crazy at getting one of these hover things.

“Dawkins!” Dylan shouted at our brother, likely for not thinking about me. “Dolly, are you alright?”

Called it.

“Aside from some minor strap burn, I’m okay… for the moment!” I barked and howled back. “Can I get some more controls here and how did you even figure them out Dawkins?”

“By watching the machines control them, we’re far enough away from the action and watching this through some binoculars!” Couldn’t see them from here, then again I was hovering over the rooftops and out of sight of the other flying machines. ”As for controls you already have up and down, left and right, slow down and speed up, what more do you need to know?!”

“How do I fire the weapons or more importantly… how do I land this thing without crashing it?!” You know I’m not big on the science junk here guys. I’m not exactly a big fan of science fiction either, but here I am on something clearly made by that doctor guy whose hanging around up in the clouds.

“The triggers should be slightly below the bar!” Looking underneath the steering and flicking the trigger Dawkin’s mentioned, a single burst of energy blasted out and forward into the sky. Hoped that didn’t hit anyone. “As for landing… well I don’t know, but they obviously took off and none of them have ever landed since! If there is anything else on the controls up there, then that may do it. Look if you want help Pom, then might you want to get going now!”

I looked up and saw Pom zipping around streaks of energy coming from the airship as she got closer to it. I looked down and hit one of the three buttons at the center of the bar with my left paw. The vehicle stopped and it started to slowly drop, I hit again and then it was back to moving forward again… power button like the one on the television, got it.

I tested the second button and nothing happened at least until I tried to turn towards the airship and flipped the entire machine upside down. It slowly came to being right side up as I dangled from the steering bar holding on for my life with my paws. I quickly hit the second button, the vehicle stopped rolling and right itself immediately. Note to self… do not hit that one again.

I looked at the third button, it was bright red and had a skull symbol on it and it was underneath some thick plastic covering that looked easy to lift up. Yeah, no… I was smart enough to know a self-destruct button when I see it, too many afternoons of watching Duck Dodgers with my dorkier brothers.

“Don’t wait up for me guys!” I turned and pulled back on the bar and started moving forward, I twisted the right handle and started rising into the sky. “Also Dawkins, if those police officers manage to shoot down one of these things, then you should wait until there is no longer danger around!”

That said, I started heading straight of the airship and noticed that several of the flying vehicles were flying away from the banks at high speeds with what looked like several pallets. Do I try to…? Pom’s in danger!

I turned my attention forward and pulled back on the bar and burst towards the airship, where I could see her panicking as she had to fight several of those large armored mechanical things. She was dodging their attempts to get her into a grapple like the first one I took care of had when it started crushing her, it was either that or they were trying to smash her and were mostly just doing damage to the airship trying to hit her.

I could see several smashed mandrills on top of the airship already and the four smoking pillars with mandrill parts mixed. It looked like Pom dealt with the flying boats guns by throwing those baboon butted bots into them.

Those armored gorilla things were the main problem, literally, and Pom was having a hard time damaging them. They were also pretty fast for something so large and Pom couldn’t get a hit in on their heads.

Not only that, but the other flying machines were ignoring me and already flying inside with all that stolen stuff!

Veering slightly to the left and behind the ship, I twist the left handle a bit and lowered myself into position. I hope Pom received this over our bond, I moved my inner most digit on my right paw and hit the trigger hard.

A series of rapid fire blasts of green energy started hitting the large guys, Pom quickly moved out the way and I could hardly miss them.

Seeing that randomly spraying them wasn’t working I started focusing all the shots on one of them, the blasts eventually ripped through the machines armor and it blew apart damaging the other three slightly and caused a small hole in the ship.

“Oh come on, a dog on one of my hover scooters is helping you now, really?!” I swerved to the right and kept pouring on the shots on the one closest to Pom now, as she evaded it bursting forward at her with jets erupting from its back.

I got a mental feeling to hold my position, why did Pom need me to…?! The machine turned around and Pom moved in such a way that it moved its head into the path of my shots and took a hit from the many rapid shots pouring out of the machine.

The head blew apart in one shot and the gorilla machine flopped over lifelessly and exploded creating a large hole in the top of the boat. That hole started smoking as one of its propeller poles snapped off and flew away.

I hoped that didn’t land on anyone…

Pom sent me some frustration through our bond, making me realize my shots were just hitting empty air now. I stopped firing and veered back to being behind the airship.

I watched as Pom flipped backwards onto the arms of a gorilla as it slammed them together in a bear hug manner at where she was, Pom hopped backwards to cling around the head of the machine.

She started hitting it with her left hoof and the metal around the head started to warp and it began stumbling about dizzily. Yet she wasn’t focused on it raising its arms towards her.

What was she…? The other machine spread out its arms and bursts forward with the claws on it rotating rapidly.

Now that I was paying attention, Pom currently felt miserable as she leapt straight up and forward while spreading her front legs out. This also spread out two large flaps of wool that made up her wings I saw earlier.

The gorilla machine slammed into the other one and they both went spiraling off the back of the boat towards the ground as Pom’s wool snapped back to being normal and she dropped to the deck.

Really hoped those didn’t land on anyone… unless it was Cruella. I’d be completely okay with a freak, totally random, accident like that.

“Pom, what do I do now, they’ve stolen some stuff from the bank… how do we get it back?” Pom motioned to me to keep flying and a quick mental feeling of us moving further away. “Uh, no, we’re not leaving, we need to at least take this guy down so he can’t cause anyone else problems!”

Pom gave off a huff and nodded in acceptance, before going into the ship while sending a feeling of me and aggressive to the flying boat.

She was going after that Dr. M guy personally and felt fairly reluctant doing it at that, wasn’t she supposed to be some brave super guard and catch the bad guys?

Maybe she was more of a community police officer like Pearl was and cared more about the people than the possessions, makes sense to me at least why she felt like she was bemoaning doing all this cool stuff!

-Pom-

I broke through the hatch, slid down the ladder and started was inside a corridor after opening a door. I didn’t know where Dr. M was steering this thing from and if I saw another gorilla machine… yeah I wasn’t liking this at all, but at least I knew their heads were weak points if I could hit them hard enough.

The airship had a flat top, bulging balloons around the sides and propellers helped with lift. It used to have four powerful energy turrets before I threw a monkey wrench at them, well technically exploding mandrills.

I had thought this world was Equus civilizations of normal, mostly safe, somewhat sane and nothing bizarre would happen to me… I was clearly and horribly wrong.

I really should have known after running into a dog with Grimm prediction powers!

What this Dr. M guy was getting away with, wouldn’t be nearly as much as he would have if his assault on the bank had been successful. I wanted to cut my losses, but Dolly wanted to make sure this Dr. M would have a harder time getting resources and I, reluctantly, agree that it would be helpful if he couldn’t attack normal people like this so soon afterwards or get around as fast.

Something exploded, it seems like Dolly was actively attacking the ship.

“Okay mutt, you’re asking for it! You’re going to get receive the remainder of my air scooters before you destroy my ship, I paid Arpeggio good money for this thing to be up to my expectations!” Dr. M sounded quite angry as his voice reverberated throughout the ship. “You’re intellect is so insignificant compared to all the fleas that cover your body!”

I just realized something. Dr. M was the only other being on this ship, everything else was machinery so…

I put my nose to the floor and sniffed, I felt a stronger scent in a given direction and started to following it. I just hoped Dolly was okay, she is the one that is panicking now.

“Wait… where’s that leaping and lunging lamb?” Does Dr. M remember I existed? “Intruder, how many… I’m going with the mutants next time! Better hurry Leap Lamb, or else you’re capering canine companion will be shot down! Wait, am I still broadcasting this out loud?”

-Dylan-

“He’s new to this whole super villain thing isn’t he?” I asked as I looked through the binoculars as the ship was soaring off into the distance with Dolly being attacked and there was nothing we could do about it.

“I’d surmise that you’d be correct, it’s like he’s mostly worked from stealth for his entire life before this. We would have heard about him before this otherwise and this is his first loud action, fortunately Pom was there to make sure no one got hurt.” Dawkins started to leave. “Now if you’ll excuse me I have an idea for a petting machine if I can get one of those robots nearly intact. The flying scooters are much harder to get all in one piece, but if I can have several samples from the destroyed ones in the fighting still going down in the street…”

“Be safe Dolly...” I really didn’t want to believe Dante when he said this was coming, if she hadn’t taken her skateboard strap then… she might have broken a leg or all four of them from hitting the street at that height and that was just the optimistic side of me talking. “Wait up Dawkins!”

97. Leap Lamb and Caper Canine #3.

-???, Oleander-

“I have to ask, is Flonne evil?” I asked as the angel continued talking about love. “I can’t tell.”

“Can we please get away from this ‘love freak’ Ollie?” Fred asked politely. “Also she’s half angelic… and angels were eldritch abominations with multiple eyes so technically… look let’s just go Ollie.”

“Yes, I think I’d much prefer dealing with Etna to her at this point.” I turned and trotted off with Fred floating at my side and eventually came to a room where we saw Song Ender sitting on the throne and the local overlord Laharl’s broken body was on the floor. “Seriously Song Ender, are you going to be like this around Pom?”

Song Ender barked twice and wagged his tail at seeing me, the positively charge graffiti dog had the title of overlord floating over his head now.

“Fine… have your fun Song Ender.” I sighed loudly. “Want to go hire some Prinnies for fun and violence Fred?”

“WOULD I?!” Fred seemed ecstatic at the idea.

I had to find Pom quickly or else things were going to go to Tartarus for her, quite liberally.

-Earth, Edge of Camden Town, high in the skies, Dolly-

I was a normal dog this morning.

I would know, I checked.

I’m still the same Dalmatian I was a little more than a week ago when I met and bonded with an alien, but the circumstances involving me being shot at by multiple robots piloting science fiction weapons was not what I was expecting to ever happen.

Avoiding those shots was even harder when you were being swarmed by at least eight of them, didn’t exactly have a peaceful moment to count them as I was swerving around everywhere. Still, making one of them crash into the airship was kind of cool, if I wasn’t currently covered in scratches and scorch marks from the various near misses.

At least I was wearing a helmet and my board was covering my backside in case I took a direct hit.

Also this flying vehicle was started to smoke as it flew, which was somewhat of a good thing as they hadn’t hit anything vital yet and the smoke was throwing off their aim.

I’ve heard of dog fighting once or twice, but this is ridiculous.

“Oh my dog, hurry up Pom!” I sent her my feelings of distress as much as I could, because I was outnumbered, outgunned, mildly injured and this flying machine was about to explode out from under me.

Cruella had been far less dangerous than all the stuff I’m currently doing, another blast made the vehicle shake. Yeah, I wasn’t an expert, but this thing won’t be able to fly for much longer, at least I was dealing damage to the airship and it had stopped over the canal.

At least when it crashes down, it won’t do as much damage to the surrounding area.

-Inside Dr. M’s 'Arpeggio Acquisitioned' Automated Airship, Pom-

The door opened and I galloped in to see him face to face.

“So we finally meet. My mandrill machines were somewhat made on a budget as I’m sure you might be able to guess by now given how easy they are to break when they are not on the offensive and using their impressive strength to deal with their opponents.” Dr. M had his hands behind his back, I didn’t approach him and looked him over. Mandrill wearing a short lab coat, blue shorts and blue gloves. Aside from the purple fur that’s about it really, nothing especially unique aside from apparently being able to build machines. “Tell me, of whom I am dealing with, because I seriously doubt I can kill you at this stage and you have proven to me that I really should have gone with the mutants.”

I pointed at my throat opened my mouth and made some vague raspy noises and shrugged at him.

“Ah, you’re mute… how quaint… so you couldn’t tell me even if you wanted to.” He seemed angry about that, but then he calmly sighed. “Instead of fighting me, I could use an incredible individual such as yourself. I have plans, yes, oh so many plans, we might even be able to take the world. I’m sure you’re a smart individual given how well you dealt with my turrets and tore apart my machines with ruthless efficiency, so why not join me?”

I gave him a flat look, I shook my head no and spread my legs slightly for a leap. I didn’t trust this guy and I’m pretty sure he was about to…

“Bah, your one of those noble hearted types like Conner aren’t you! We could have stolen from everyone and nobody would have stopped us, but then he had to go and find a woman and have a child!” What was this guy ranting about? “I’m so glad I sold him out and gave his location to Clockwork, there’s no money in having a soft heart!”

I tilted my head at him and gave him a curious look.

“Right, I forgot myself for a moment, now if you’ll excuse me… and die!” He pulled out a pair of weapons and I was already on the ceiling and running as he hit the wall behind me several times with a series of energy blast spreading outward as if he expected me to dart around them and at straight him. “What the…”

I threw myself at him from the ceiling and slammed into him leading with my front hooves, this knocked the two weapons he pulled on me went skidding off to the floor.

“Well played, didn’t know you were capable of doing that!” He threw his left fist at me and I easily blocked it with my right leg, I hit him in the face dazing him with my left hoof. I was about to hit him a second time to knock him out, but he opened his left hand grabbed my right leg and then quickly flung me over himself into the floor using his feet to leverage me off the floor before I could stick to him. I was already halfway to my hooves and, instead of going for the energy weapons, he darted out of the door to the room. “I know when I’m beat, catch me if you can Leap Lamb. Activate rear engines overheat sequence, code phrase ‘Cooper is a fool’!”

I was already on my hooves and chasing after him into the corridor as red lights started going off and sirens were blaring everywhere.

Inhaled and exhaled to burst after him and then slammed into something as he opened a panel on a wall and hit a button, I looked at Dr. M and the field of energy separating us.

“If you can get out before this thing crashes and burns… well good on you, but I have contingencies for just this occasion where I’ve met my match!” A door opened up in the wall, he smiled again. “I hope you die in the crash and that we never meet again. Since you’re so fond of leaping into heroics, I’ll just use that as a name for you, so long Leap Lamb!”

Dr. M started cackling as he entered the door and it shut behind him, I heard something explode on the other side.

I turned and started trying to find my way back towards the ladder that brought me inside this strange airship. Who builds an airship with the balloon envelope in several places around the boat itself?

Well sure the multiple balloons were made of a pretty flexible metallic looking material, but still…

Was the entire ship tilting? Starting to gallop, I tracked my own sent back through the ship and as soon as the angle started getting steep. I started to cling to the floor and continued rushing to get out.

I felt heat wash over the corridor behind me and I saw a wall fire coming from the way I just came, I must have been by the back end of the ship.

-Dolly-

If that was a news chopper nearby, then my family could be watching. I hope they don’t see me crash and burn. I veered hard for the right side of the ship and heard something.

“Again, farewell Leap Lamb, I hope my robots deal with you after they are done with your ridiculous capering canine!” Dr. M said over some loudspeakers as a small boat shaped aircraft flew away from the airship at high speeds. “You may have foiled me this day, but at least I will live to rebuild!”

No way, was that guy getting away with… the back end of the ship exploded, drawing my attention as I veered away from it and it caught three of my chasers making them fall out of the air. That still left me with five flying headaches to deal with still trying to tag me.

All the propellers above the airship stopped and the flying boat started tilting backwards, pointing its smoking rear end at the ground. I could feel Pom’s location as she moved through the ship like a fire was lit under her butt, which was likely from what I was seeing out here.

I steered the floating vehicle up and towards the front where the open hatch and ladder was, I was close enough to the ship that if I crashed I could jump onto it.

I still had to shift to the left and right, a chunk of glass was blasted out of the window in front of my and struck my head, I fell back onto the platform section of the flying vehicle as and looked up at the blade like piece of glass now sticking out of my skating helmet.

I was never going to be dissing any safety gear again after this. I rolled to the side as a blast struck the vehicle and created a small crater where I was laying.

-Camden News Team-

“The sheep, that is calling herself Leap Lamb, is still inside and the dog known as Caper Canine is dancing around the shots of several of the deadly robots. Will these two make it out of this alive?!” The camera zoomed in on Dolly leaping for the controls of the flying scooter and jerked the controls to the left. Several shots rained down and damage the vehicle even further. “That has to be one of the luckiest dogs I’ve ever seen… or is that dog doing it on purpose?”

The dog looked up at the several vehicles swooping down on her and she hit something on the vehicle and flipped it around and through a mass of energy converging on her, she hit the same button and did something with the left handle of the bar and was now flying straight towards the airship.

“Well the dog is being called Caper Canine, maybe it’s been taught a few tricks by the super hero that showed up at the bank to stop the robbery by the one calling himself Dr. M who has escaped swearing vengeance.” The scene showed a close up of Dolly looking prepared to jump from the machine she was on as she climbed up onto the controls. “The situation is currently looking grim for the two would be heroes that are still under assault or are inside of a burning and crashing airship. What is that dog doing now?”

The dog glared at the five machines bunching up behind her and she slapped both her left paws on two different buttons at the same time and then kicked off of the flying machine for the airship that was in the middle of going vertical.

The camera focuses on the machine the dog left behind as it started glowing and it exploded violently taking out the other five robots and their vehicles.

“That might be one seriously smart dog, do you think it’s an animalistic?” One of the news casters queried.

“Could be.” Another person stated in wonderment as the dog hit the deck in a roll and started immediately running towards the nose of the ship. “Now there’s a Dalmatian that knows how to run.”

-On the streets of Camden, Dylan-

They wouldn’t be calling Dolly smart if they knew what she was like personally, I was watching the television in a store nearby to the bank with multiple bipeds watching it with rapt attention.

Dolly wasn’t exactly the brainy one in our family, but she can admittedly be fairly clever at times.

“Dylan, this stuff is wonderful! Why, the data I get from this will be absolutely fascinating, inspiring even!” Dawkins was having fun with looking at the bits of machinery we were putting into an old trolley that nobody was using. “Ooh, I can make some serious upgrades to our home’s security with this!”

The brainy type was reserved for dogs like Dawkins, who was having the time of his life picking up bits of destroyed machinery with the help of various puppies that showed up when I called for some assistance.

I was keeping a lookout and making sure nobody was paying attention to our family sneaking away with this stuff.

The bunny and the fox Interpol officers had just finished off the last robot and I quickly signaled to the pups to get Dawkins moving and out of here before they noticed our family scrounging about.

“What… but… there’s still more to…” Dawkins whined as the Puppy Pack started quickly pushing him and the used trolley away, after having collecting a smorgasbord of robot parts and some pieces from a few of those round flying platform vehicles. “Oh kibbles!”

I wasn’t about to think of them as flying saucers, oh darn it!

“Don’t worry guys, I’ll inform you of what’s happening with Dolly when I get back!” I barked after them and went back to watching Dolly doing something dangerous again. “I promise!”

At least Dolly was good at climbing, it is getting down that was the hard part.

-Dolly-

That took care of the machine minions at least, fighting a super villain wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be.

I’m tired, hungry and was in serious danger here, my bro couldn’t help me, I was freaking out and the back end of this flying boat was on fire and it was slowly coming up to where I was.

Well… I felt it was all worth it if this was this end. No regrets here, stopped a bad guy and had a very strange life of misadventures up to this point. Also a lot of lazing about, skateboard, barking, running around the park with my siblings… yeah, I’ve had a good life up to this point.

I leapt up to the hatch and grabbed onto it with my paws and climbed up on it as the airship became entirely vertical and started to slowly fall straight down rear first. I looked to my right and down the nearly horizontal tube for Pom.

The flying vehicle was a bust and this situation wasn’t any fun. My only hope and the only way I was getting out of this is unharmed was if Pom gets back quickly enough to get me before we hit the ground.

Speaking of, I looked at the ground far below and didn’t relish my chances of surviving a drop from this high up without Pom doing that fancy wing thing she did earlier when her flying vehicle blew up. I’m tired, hungry and my family was probably going to mourn me.

Ugh, what I wouldn’t do for a parachute right now!

I felt a pair of hooves wrap around me and before I knew it I was sitting in the fluff on Pom’s back and it weirdly started sticking me to it.

“Uh… do you think you can do the gliding thing with me on your back? Me and my stuff is not too heavy is it?” The look I received from Pom was one of slight panic, but she nodded yes to the first and shook her head no to the second question. “Oh thank goodness, but… how far can you glide? This thing is about to go up like those things the bipeds set off on Boom Night and I don’t want to blow up!”

I felt a serene calming feeling flow through our bond, Pom was reassuring me that everything would be fine.

She patted me on the head and then took a sharp and deep breathe… which is that thing she does before she…!?

The world was a blur for a few second and looked back to see that we would be a fair distance away from the ship crashing into the canal below. Looking down at Pom’s rear legs I saw her wool stretching between them and then her front legs which had those large wool flaps, even the wool around her head had changed slightly to resemble a helmet of some sort. Her slightly scorched satchel looked to be glued to her stomach as she carried us away.

Deepak said she was good at meditation, but I wasn’t a dog that liked to sit still. If meditation could do that for Pom then… sign me up!

In this case I’m making an exception about sitting still as I rather liked living and didn’t want to disturb Pom’s gliding.

-Camden News Team-

“Leap Lamb indeed, did you see that jump, I don’t think any normal animalistic could pull off a leap quite like that. That has got to be the world record for longest and highest leap I’ve ever seen! It seems that we’ve entirely lost track of the super hero and her canine sidekick Caper Canine, but we will keep you up to date with coverage of this startling event that has happened here in our sleepy little Camden Town area.” The mouse that was broadcasting from the helicopter looked around, but couldn’t see Pom anywhere. “The heroes have made it out safely and the only thing left to do is the cleanup, thankfully Camden Town’s finest have cleared the inevitable crash site area so no one should get hurt. We’ll expect the canal to be backed up temporarily while the wreckage is removed. This has…”

-Near the bank, Dylan-

Sighing with relief, I couldn’t help but think Dante was wrong on this one.

Dolly would be back home soon before we knew it, Pom could do that floating thing and everything would be fine.

So why do I still feel this sense of dread?

I mean I know Dante’s prediction are purely accurate now, but…

-Pom-

So I was becoming a bundle of neuroses, what else could go wrong today? I’m surprised Dolly is okay, after all she was put through and she has an alarming bit of glass sticking out of her helmet.

Once we land, I’m going to check her over to make sure she’s mostly alright. At the moment Dolly Dalmatian was my responsibility.

I felt my satchel get painfully slapped against my stomach, we just hit something large and I quickly clung to whatever it was before I slid too far back on it, I looked down and saw that were on a large white flying machine that was moving incredibly fast through the air.

“Uh, Pom… did we just seriously land on top of an airliner?” Dolly seemed to be panicking a bit and I was too, I didn’t even know what an airliner was. I knew what an airship was, but this was new to me. “Please don’t let go, of me or this plane. I’ve had enough excitement for today, thank you!”

I’m Right here with you Dolly, though I wished I could ask what an airliner was. I think the answer would be the fairly obvious thing beneath us.

“Don’t worry, it could be flying to London and we could be landing soon and then we can just walk back to Camden.” Knowing our luck Dolly, that is the best possible outcome… which is why it’s not going to happen.

I know my luck, I’ve been dealing with it these last few months.

-Haiti, Cooper Van, Sly-

“Whoa… that had to be Shanty’s caretaker Pom!” I stated with wide eyes.

“Looks like it Sly, the attack happened in the Camden Town area in Britain not too long ago, the news about the super heroes Leap Lamb and her sidekick Caper Canine is going viral.” Bentley was already neck deep in the information, we had been just idly looking into news from Britain to see what the atmosphere was like after our takedown of Raleigh. “An old associate of your father assaulted a bank there with mechanical minions.”

“That Dalmatian looked a lot like a bigger Cadpig, certainly doesn’t seem to have her personality though. This is just making me really miss the time I spent around Rolly.” Spot stared blankly from where she was seated and staring at the TV with what had to be a wistful look. She then turned to me with narrowed eyes. “We have to go there so I can investigate the Dalmatians in the area to see if there’s been a recent drop in population!”

“Shanty is about ready to check out anyway, so are we on the next flight to Britain?” Murray asked jovially.

“Speaking of going to Britain… what do you know about this Dr. M.” I turned to the chicken to see what she had to say, she knew a lot about my father and I don’t think I was going to get any help on that unless I went to see his comrades. “You knew my father’s gang Spot, so if you know something…”

“That guy… well… wait… the night of the incident… THAT GUY!” Spot suddenly shouted with an angry clack of her beak and a furious look in her eyes. “I wished he had gotten caught, he’s the only one that could have betrayed your father’s location to Clockwork! I certainly didn’t and I knew you back when you were baby!”

“W-w-what?!” That mandrill did what now?!

“Well it certainly wasn’t the biped walrus Jim McSweeney, he was like a brother to your father and I heard he turned himself in and is currently doing his time. You might want to look him up later and have a talk with him about your father.” Spot was an odd chicken, I mean a chicken that wanted to be a Dalmatian growing up and actually managed to achieve it once. “The only other one who knew where Conner Cooper lived when he left the gang was Dr. M, that mandrill was probably the one that sold your father out to the Fiendish Five and what led to that night even happening. Your father was a cautious guy, Ruby didn’t divine your family’s location because of the protections against divining where the home even was through magic. I would know if it were her, I’ve been stuck with Ruby for years! Ruby just sought out a way through the defenses on the house.”

I clenched my fist, it seemed I had another criminal to bring to Carmelita's form of justice eventually.

-Duckberg, the (mostly) abandoned beachside amphitheater, Smolder-

“Thanks again for being here to watch out for me and Ocellus, Lena.” This morning was going pretty well, but I thought Ocellus was in need of fresh air.

I was tired of being cooped up in a laboratory with mad scientists, after the previous world I didn’t want to deal with more dangerous robots.

“Don’t mention… whoa… uh… you said your caretaker looks like a sheep, but isn’t?” Lena sat up, the magical shadow duck was looking at her device.

“Yeah, they are sometimes hard to tell apart from sheep… why do you ask?” She had my complete and undivided attention as she showed me her device. “That’s Pom, where is this!”

Author's Note

Hint:

98. Aerial Assaults.

-Equus, Huoshan, Fizzle-

The spa here was nice, natural hot springs and everything.

It was also my treat that we were here.

“So as you can imagine, I know what it feels like to be missing a huge chunk of yourself. I just came here to tell you that she’s still alive at the very least… as far as we know anyway. Also that we while we do have a way to bring Pom and the others back, but it’s dangerous to all of Equus to do so given she’d have to go to Tambelon and it would take us time to get to and rescue her. Safer methods are still in production though, but dimensional stability is being taken into account.” Being completely honest and open was what I came here to do and Tianhuo was a stoic longma of good rapport around here. “You know, a lot of people out there are kind of looking down on Pom for being a lambkin. Coming here… I’ve heard nothing but good things from the people and the guards, she’s a true community paragon from the sounds of it.”

“Then she is still doing her job… and quite exemplarily at that.” Though there was a spark in Tianhuo’s eyes at hearing that Pom was still running around somewhere out there. “Pom seems like a coward to most who see her nervous exterior, but they do not know her like I do. Few can see her hidden strength, even fewer can bring it to the surface. If Pom cares about you, then she is assured to die well before you do. I worry about her daily, but I have my duties to our family and to Huoshan. Tell me, do you regret marrying the world’s most chaotic cat?”

“Not a single day goes by that I will never hesitate to say no to that.” I sighed and thought about her psychological issues, she was stable and mostly safe to be out our sight now. I still had my worries, there’s something to be said about having a snuggle kitty and cuddling her too. “I have a few regrets, but Jaded will never be one of them after she came back from the impossible the hard way for me and Maries. Pom will likely have more than a few mental and physical scars ‘when’ she makes it back, so be ready for that. Just hope that she doesn’t get a huge chip in her shoulder about Saddle Arabia and we won’t be mirroring each other.”

Tianhuo snorted lightly and smiled my way, then a solid pink mass popped out of the hot tub spooking me into lightning up my horn. I assessed the situation and let my sparking horn cool as I watched the wolf shaped mass lick Tianhuo on the face.

I calmed down as the mass of pink shaped like a wolf nuzzled up to the calm looking longma.

“Can I be part of the team that goes into Tambelon should you decide to use that method?” Tianhuo said while petting that strange mass of energy.

I got where she was coming from and knew exactly why she asked that, I would want to do the same thing regardless of what anyone else said.

-Earth, on an airliner, flight to Britain from Haiti, Shanty-

I still be feeling a bit ill, but I be getting better at hearing a confirmation that Pom be spotted taking part in a huge incident and she is being called a super hero. I giggled at the thought of Pom being brave and heroic, instead of worrying, whining and overall being protective of anyone in danger near her.

At least my hospital bill was being taken care of thanks to the local criminals, after Sly did some stealing from them of course.

Spot was an interesting chicken. Not a voodoo zombie, but some kind of zombie that regenerated and didn’t have a beating heart. It almost be like a pirate curse, except she can bleed and feel pain like a living being. Usually pirate curses involved becoming living skeletons as long as the curse lasts.

She had plenty of reason for going to Britain personally and we were on our way now.

Bentley was keeping us up to date on the information surrounding Dr. M and the situation in Britain, the canal being blocked up by the crashed airship was causing a flooding problems. Lots of damage had been done to the surrounding areas, but very few people got seriously injured.

From what Mopsy had heard, Pom was being investigated by Interpol on some suspicions about her background. I not be knowing enough to know how bad that is, Bentley wouldn’t say anything when I asked about it and that was telling enough by itself.

Being a vigilante is sounding cool, at least up until you are being held responsible for the actions of what others do. It didn’t seem to be fair to be putting any blame on Pom for the mess Dr. M started and caused, Pom just be saving people and putting herself up as a distraction before taking the fight to the big butted monkey guy.

“We’ll find her Shanty, she couldn’t have gotten too far.” Giving Sly my best smile, I relaxed between him and Murray. “Also we have a great secret detective with us that is going to do some asking around for us, she’ll see what animal contacts she can make and we’ll cover things from our end. We will help you find her, even if it takes us a little bit longer.”

“Okay everyone, no funny moves and you’ll all live to see another day.” Several people stood up armed with weapons and a bear with snow white fur quickly took a nice bird lady called a ‘flight attendant’ hostage. “As will my hostage as long as no one makes any sudden movements.”

“Oh great, a terrorist hijacking… Bentley.” Sly stated quietly to the seats behind us.

“Already on it as soon as the guy stood up Sly, this is going to require that we move fast and hit them hard before they can retaliate. I hope your ready Murray, you’ve been getting some field work in recently to help feed Shanty and pay for her medical bill. This is going to be a real doozy of a situation, but I think we can manage ten armed guys in our section of the plane without too much trouble.” Looking back, Bentley was noticeably looking around as he pulled out a small, easily concealed, bunch of parts that he be assembling into a crossbow quickly. “Hmm… Spot must be getting into position to help the hostage with the gun to her head, we’ll need to get things into motion and fast. Mopsy stick behind me and Murray. Sly, you take Shanty and try to get these guys one at a time, discreetly and without endangering anyone. I’m quite sure they seeded the plane with more than ten guys if what I’m hearing from first class is anything to go by. This will give me a chance to test out my prototype crossbow at least, also I need to get to the front of the plane to make sure the pilots are okay. If they aren’t I can land the plane at least.”

Sly motioned for me to get up on the ceiling, I nodded and climbed up to the ceiling from the window seat as he ducked down and started to crawl under the seats towards one of the terrorist who be looking a lot like a white furred weasel.

I be looking for my own target. A seal with what looked to be a dangerous projectile weapon, then again all weapons be dangerous in this world.

-On a flight to Scotland from Calisota, Lena-

Not going to lie, the dragon was quite chill, but she was a bit worried about Launchpad flying us to Scotland after hearing the stuff that was said about his landings.

“You’re sure everyone that’s a friend of his can walk away from all his landings without injury?” Smolder was suspicious, but she had to come along to find her friend Pom.

Her friend Pom was last seen doing the world’s most awesome leap in the world, while carrying a seriously cool skateboarding Dalmatian with her. Smolder didn’t seem particularly worried about Pom as she was the adult of her interdimensional group and far stronger than she looked… she was more worried about their friend Shanty who tended to get into troubling situations.

“Yep, you can walk away from any landing Launchpad makes with only an exceedingly light bruise to show for it, the real problem is how long it’ll take him to put the plane back together.” It was still amazing to see what Launchpad can do with duct tape, an ounce of grease and forty seven rubber bands on such short notice. The duck crashes like crazy, but his passengers always survived every single incident, it’s either magic like Smolder suggests or Launchpad is just that talented at keeping anyone inside a plane with him alive while crashing. If it can fly, Launchpad has probably crashed it. There’s even a bingo card for the things he has crashed… this week. It’s surprising they allowed the guy to have a driver’s license, much less a pilot’s license. “At least Hunter is willing to house us for a while when we end up in Britain, Scrooge will also be with us every step of the way and he’s one of the safest guys you can travel with.”

“Don’t worry Webby, I’m sure things will go over with my parents… eh… provided we tell them that your Goldie’s kid.” Scrooge was apparently nervous about bringing up Webby to his parents, they were the only ones that F.O.W.L didn’t kidnap before the organization basically shattered under the weight of the McDucks and their many friends, I was already a part of the family and Scrooge hadn’t lied to me about that. “I don’t think they’d take the cloning explanation too well, but they wouldn’t turn you away even if they knew lass. We know your grandma liked you at least.”

Scrooge and Goldie should really stop dancing around the issue while annoying each other to no end and just marry already.

I looked back to Smolder cradling her sleeping best friend’s head, she was moving more and more by the day. Ocellus wasn’t going to stay comatose forever and my friends couldn’t wait to meet and talk to her personally, instead of getting an idea of what she was like from Smolder.

“So how often has Launchpad crashed before takeoff?” Smolder asked warily.

“It’s actually rare that he crashes on takeoff, actually asking him to crash on purpose is more likely to make him land the plane safely by accident.” I remembered the one time Launchpad did exactly that, the magical golden goose was stupidly dangerous in how close it was to changing the entire world into gold. “If you’re like us, you can simply hop in a plane without a second thought and expect to reach your destination completely intact without serious injuries. The plane… not so much. Launchpad is a lovable enough oaf that we’re willing to trust him with our lives and he really grows on you as a friend.”

Scrooge barely managed that scenario in time with Huey, Dewey and Louie, who knows how long it would have taken the goose to randomly find its perch again and return everything to normal. It’s a good thing some magical people might have solved the problem eventually, I was one of the unfortunate ones to be turned into a gold statue during the incident.

I thought it was cute that Webby, May and June all said that I still had a heart of gold after that incident at least.

“Didn’t see Shanty with Pom, but Pom having a dog helping her somehow doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.” Smolder was quite eloquent about Pom’s canine magnetism causing a lot of trouble in the last dimension they were in. “She’s the head of canine division in Huoshan and she even speaks in barks sometimes, so she really knows her stuff.”

“Uh guys, I hate to alarm you, but I think we’re under attack by that ‘Fun Car Barrage’ guy again… or was his name Bun Garbage?” The big duck dude stated from the pilot’s seat, Launchpad was everyone’s best friend quite literally and Smolder made a comment that he would be a good teacher at their school of friendship.

“No, no, no, it is I, Don Karnage, sky pirate extraordinaire!” This guy was a headache and a half already, and he only just started talking. I remembered him actually being a threat too. “And I have once again found my nemesis Dewey Duck!”

“So… Don Karnage… I guess we’re dewying this again!” Dewey shouted from the copilot’s seat.

“Dewey has a nemesis?” Smolder asked me with a quirked brow. “Also can I set Dewy on fire to make him stop?”

“What would you believe more, that Dewey has a cool nemesis or that the wolf guy named Don Karnage actually takes Dewey seriously as an actual threat?” Thinking on the second question I added. “No, lighting him on fire would just make him even more loud and annoying. You can do that to Karnage if he boards us though.”

“Good point, also who would take Dewey seriously?” Smolder cracked a grin at me and I grinned back.

“Okay Don, what great nefarious… uh… nefariousness have you been up to recently?” Dewey asked conversationally of a guy that was obviously about to attempt robbing us in the sky. This wouldn’t go well for him… or us for that matter.

-Smolder-

We were moving much faster than the airships could back home, so I could already tell this was going to be a thing. Launchpad was said to get people to where they needed to be, but I seriously wanted to see how he managed this.

“Well things got a little out of hand when I visited Britain to try and steal a company’s assets for my own personal cash fund, I’m trying to make another Iron Vulture so I can hunt you down and rebuild my father’s great legacy! Also there’s this lady named Cruella, she is never paying my father back for that thing he did for her!” Don Karnage shouted, then quietly added. “That I might have destroyed said legacy for a sixth time two days ago… Arpeggio was said to be one of the best black market ship builders, but I just don’t know what could have possibly gone wrong! The ship was working perfectly up until all the cannons went off pointing inwards when we were doing a musical number and needed them for a gun salute.”

“I have the immediate distinct feeling that this guy is even dumber than Dewey if he loaded those cannons with actual ammunition.” Not going to lie, but that sounded impossible knowing Dewey. Not that Dewey wasn’t cool, but the guy could get on your nerves with his narcissism pretty fast.

I think I liked Huey better as the guys only issue was that he was uptight about things, but he at least didn’t force things and was a nice guy in general.

Louie was a middling road for me, the guy was a schemer and said to be the evil brother. I saw it, but I preferred him trying to con something out of me than dealing with Dewey for more than an hour or two.

It would be just like dealing with those two con artists Flim and Flam, except Louie actually intended to carry out what he was trying to sell… he would just be a cheapskate about it. I can respect him having ideas, but how he goes about carrying them out could use a little work.

At least Don Karnage out there had some actual charisma, but his threats were rather paper thin… up until Dewey insulted him somehow and the first harpoon pierced the nearby wall of the plane.

Thankfully, everyone had already move closer to the middle of the plane to avoid getting hit by those things.

-Flight from Britain heading to ???, Pom-

“So- bored-.” Why was Dolly capable of bonding to me again? “What… the… Pom, I don’t want to alarm you, but I think there’s something on the left wing… and I don’t know what the dog it is!”

She was bemoaning how long we’ve been stuck on this airliner and was getting cranky, hungry and somebody help me if she had to go to the bathroom soon. The most interesting thing she had done was explain to me that these airliners carried a lot of people like a biped passengers around to other locations quickly, which was as much as she knew about the subject as she didn’t understand why bipeds did the things they do in general. I can also tell she was missing her family too, not much we could do about that now.

I looked at Dolly still glued to the wool on my back and she was looking at me, we turned to the left wing and there was nothing there. Okay… nothing was there, did Dolly just imagine it?

“What?! It was just there!” Dolly sounded confused, she even felt it. I actually believed she did see something, but I decided to rest my head. “Pom there it is again!”

I lifted my head and looked and saw nothing, but I narrowed my eyes at the left wing and saw something that told me Dolly was right. It was faintly noticeable.

How could something else be out here with us? We were several thousand feet in the air, it was hard to breathe and Dolly wasn’t suffering any oxygen deprivation only thanks to my wool enwrapping her and her skateboard.

It also didn’t help that speeds we were moving at made it hard to cling to the airliner.

I just turned my head to the right wing and went to rest it down and then suddenly snapped it to the left when I felt Dolly started to panic again.

I saw it and it froze with its right claw raised to strike the wing, it knew I had seen it without even looking in my direction. It was a wooly green reptilian thing with sharp needle like teeth that just smiled in our direction, it had large claws and a fairly evil grin to it.

Its dark brown eyes were set on Dolly and me maliciously as a long serpentine, almost tentacle like, tongue flicked from its mouth. It then crawled along the wing and up onto the top of the airliner seemingly coming towards us.

“Uh… can you actually fight that thing like this Pom?” Not really Dolly, I needed to concentrate on keeping you safe and sticking to the top of this airliner.

I gave her a look that said it all, I really couldn’t do actually do a single Dancing Flame out here. The only reason I managed on Dr. M’s airship was because it had air was flowing through the hatch on his airship before I leapt away and I had plenty of room to move about when I was moving around on top of it before, plus it hadn’t been going nearly this fast.

I couldn’t do Fleet Cunning Doe since that was all about leaping moves, I think I could do some Cow Kempo, but I couldn’t do any heavy attacks without falling off unless it was with my skull.

“You’re not exactly giving me comforting feelings here Pom.” Dolly was getting more stressed, also hungry considering her gurgling stomach. Dalmatians could seriously eat a lot in a day and she was probably starving by now.

I think she wouldn’t need to go to the bathroom until we were hopefully over land again, but I would forgive for it if she did something to that extent in the face of what we were looking at slowly making its way towards us.

I slowly released my front two hooves from the airliner and got buffeted by a mass of wind, but I managed to get standing. The monster crawling towards us didn’t look to be bothered by the powerful buffeting air in the slightest.

The green wooly stuff on the monster seemed to be preventing it from being blown away as its claws weren’t digging into the metal of the airliner and I looked carefully at how the wool was shifting about in the wind… the pressure alone should be blowing it off the airliner like what was happening to me.

“Oh dog, it’s getting closer Pom!” Dolly was understandably freaking out as she was helpless in this situation.

I was a little less helpless, but fighting like this was going to be rough unless I could figure out how its wool was preventing it from being affected by all air around here. It would be like fighting with a three hundred pound weight strapped around my body.

With a little concentration I focused on my wool intensely and it shifted ever so slightly without dropping Dolly or losing my rear hooves connection to the airliner below me.

The pressure on my body lessened greatly and the monster stopped and gave me a slightly surprised stare, it started growling as it glared at me.

“Did you do something to your wool Pom?” Ignoring Dolly, I glared at the monster and brought my hooves up defensively with less resistance than before. I was going to have to remember this for later when it came to gliding, I had some ideas about how to actually learn how to fly from this. “It feels different… and kind of cozy.”

Paprika said it was possible, but I would eventually have to test that… after I was done saving this airliner and all the people on it from this monster.

-Sly-

I lashed out my hook and caught the penguin by the throat and yanked him down before smashing him the face with my left fist.

I looked over the seats and saw Shanty take down the ermine with a dropping axe kick from the ceiling, he didn’t see her coming.

Murray stood up from his waddling crouch and slammed both his fist into the back of an ox’s skull and barely managed to knock the guy out as it looked like he struggled to stay awake until Murray smashed him again with a painful looking right hook.

No one notice the takedowns yet, one of the two lemmings nearby took a dart to the neck and went down.

The other lemming was about to alert the rest of the terrorists, but Mopsy got to him first and gagged him with her both her legs. I quickly got over to her and help knock him out with my cane.

Mopsy was shivering and looking a bit shaken, she was better as a lookout. I gave her a calming shoulder rub and started crawling forward.

Five down, five to go in this section of the plane. That’s when Spot acted as a ton of luggage fell from above two guys and they went down, including the one that was holding the gun to the fearful attendants head.

Said gun was kicked out of the bears paw by Spot’s small form and she quickly darted away to hide.

The other three guys were distracted, so Shanty, Murray and I rushed them from behind before they could do anything.

-Smolder-

“Can you teach me how to do that?” Webby asked innocently as she leapt up and performed a perfect roundhouse to the face of a sky pirate with her left foot.

Webby apparently appreciated my skills with the combat ribbon as I knocked down another pirate with a quick leg pull.

Author's Note

N/A.

Nothing Announceable.

99. Ally Allocation.

-Equus, Ponyville, Arizona-

“Okay Paprika, I’m ready.” I narrowed my eyes and my favorite master level fluffmancer nodded in seriousness and got into a guarded stance. “Let’s do this!”

I went up onto my hind hooves and brought my front hooves in an overhead hammer blow at Paprika, who took it and began to wobble back a bit.

Taking an immediate guarded stance, I waited for the blow and upon Paprika returning my blow to me with her rather infamous counter. I started to do a makeshift weaker version of Paprika’s counter back at her, she guarded the blow and her wobbling was even worse this time.

I was ready for the incoming blow to build up another counter…

-Canterlot, five seconds afterwards, Twilight-

One second everything was fine and the next there were several holes leading straight into the throne room and a cow was embedded in the nearby wall next to where I sat.

If she had been a foot or two to the left she would have smashed into me like Rainbow Dash doing a Sonic Rainboom… which I have survived the last three times that has happened.

“Ow. Okay, so I wasn’t as ready as I thought.” The cow muttered as she pulled herself free from the wall and looked around, she then looked at me. “Sorry about all the damage. Don’t send me the bill, I’m a carpenter and I’ll fix all of this pro bono. Oh right, your Twilight Sparkle! Applejack says hello by the way, I’ll just show myself out now.”

The cow sauntered out of the room and right on by my guards that just gaped at her. My right eye might be twitching… was it twitching? I can’t tell.

I know I remember putting up a powerful, well researched and definitely implemented, magical barrier system just for this exact sort of thing happening!

How did a cow not only break the sound barrier, going backwards mind you, but also the barrier around the castle?! The cow just walked that off when she should have crippling injuries and all she said about all this was ‘ow’!?!

-Earth, flight to Scotland, The Sun Chaser, Smolder-

These pirates, aside from the harpoon guns equipped on the smaller planes than one I was currently in, weren’t very threatening. They were basically on the verge of defeat already, they weren’t trained to fight at all to the point even I took them down with relative ease and a few flicks of my combat ribbon.

Even Dewey is putting up a good showing by knocking a few pirates out of the plane and taking on Don Karnage personally.

Apparently the pirates all had parachutes and have been through this kind of thing before… without them, yet they survived it? If I were the pirates, I would have either ditched Don Karnage a long time ago or mutinied while putting someone ‘feasibly competent’ in charge. Even Shanty wouldn’t put up with Don’s ridiculousness just to be a pirate.

I looked over to Louie who wasn’t doing much, aside from staying near Ocellus.

“Hey, I’m guarding Ocellus from falling out and I stopped a guy.” More like Louie was choosing to be the laziest out of all of us. He would probably have a can of fruity soda in his grip when he dies.

I was going to need Pinkie to figure out that recipe from the ingredients listed on one of those cans… it doesn’t exactly exist in our dimension so it was definitely fair game as copyright doesn’t cross dimensional barriers all too well!

“Yeah, but you aren’t exactly helping Huey with tying them up… speaking of.” I motioned over to Huey who was just about finished with the pirates who hadn’t been knocked out of the plane.

Lena was busy pushing harpoons out with her magic and we weren’t experiencing too much of a real threat having worked together to stop the assault cold. Lena proved that she was quite adept at magic and as a magical shadow creature she ran on friendship like changelings did.

Both Scrooge with his weird bouncing cane and Webby with her martial arts took care of most of the pirates by themselves, that they beat more pirates than Huey, Dewey and me combined was amazing.

“Eh, he’s got it handled.” Louie shrugged.

“Yeah, this was less awesome than last time… they did this really cool musical number and everything while stealing all our stuff.” Glancing at Launchpad who just finished knocked a pirate out with a wrench and then proceeded to fix something that broke in the fighting, but not because of the fighting itself, I sighed loudly.

“Who is currently flying the plane if both Dewey and Launchpad are down here?” I asked blandly, as Dewey finally knocked the sword out of Don Karnage’s hand with the most ridiculous maneuver devised involving twirling the sword in a ridiculous manner that only worked because of a fluke and flicking a yoyo into the guy’s face.

If it’s mostly flashy and it still works, well… I shouldn’t talk when I have to use flourishes to actually wield my ribbon in a fight.

“You know, you really shouldn’t bring attention to something like that, because it usually makes something go wro-ahhh!” As Louie started to tell me something that sounded vaguely important, we all started falling upwards and towards the rear doors to the plane as it suddenly took a dive. “Well this is another fine mess of- OOF!”

Ocellus just landed on him and I was about to slide into him as the plane righted itself, before we fell out.

“Can someone please explain to me why I had to be the one to do this?” Violet said from the pilot’s seat while looking at a manual in her right hand, that purple hummingbird just shook her head and kept reading as she had her left hand on the controls said she was exasperated by all this. “I am neither licensed nor trained or qualified to fly a motorized aerial vehicle this large. Given that nobody here is going to talk about this and we’re over international waters… It doesn’t bother my sensibilities yet. Letting Dewey continue to be the copilot or if I’m still flying the plane by the time we get over Scotland would be pushing them to the brink. Please get your priorities in order Launchpad and take control before something drastic happens.”

“Oh, Sorry Vi, but Mr. Mc-D looked like he needed help down here.” Launchpad, thankfully, made his way to climb up the ladder towards the pilot’s seat.

Violet reminds me of Twilight Sparkle more and more with every passing moment. She had no friends to start off with and was a book loving smart sass. I think she got the sass from her older adoptive sister Lena.

Where she differed from Twilight was that she was open to the idea of friendship from the get go and was more aware of any situation mentally at least, socially was a toss-up as she was quite blunt.

“Wait, were you just learning how to fly the plane as you’re doing it… that’s actually kind of cool sis!” Lena commented as she pushed her glowing feathered hands forward and the last harpoon popped out, the smaller plane being dragged by us quickly spiraled out of sight.

“Well that wasn’t so bad now was it?” Scrooge turned me with a prideful grin.

“Eh, could be worse, we could be under attack by a giant metal octopus that could light an entire city on fire or explode to do the same thing.” I still had nightmares about Axel Gear’s fist hitting my skull hard enough to knock me out. It made me wonder if Ocellus had a hidden vindictive streak that she hit him with lightning and then made Dodo kick him at full speed. “These guys weren’t exactly trained for this, though I was expecting at least one muscle bound rough and tumble type that could take a bit of punishment.”

“That’s more John D. Rockerduck’s thing, it’s mostly the one guy though. Maybe the remnants of the eggheads after we dealt with F.O.W.L.” Scrooge had a whole rogue’s gallery didn’t he? Was I in a world that ran on comic book logic? No, I would be hearing more villainous speeches than the monologues Gizmo Duck does ‘trying’ to sound heroic. Pom doesn’t have to make speeches and mostly just acts in the interest of everyone nearby. “After we drop these yahoos off and finish our business with my parents, we’ll be on our way to… uh... where did you say your cousin was again Lena?”

“Camden Town, maybe we can ask Hunter about the dog that was last seen with Pom since he has the ability to communicate with them. He might know some things.” Lena looked a little uncertain. “He’s not exactly big on this magic stuff, but he’s open to the idea of finally having family that’s not out to off him in a horribly obvious roundabout manner. At least I’m going to try and be the best cousin I can be in all of this. Also, try to keep things tame around him, he has only recently learned that myths and monsters are an actual thing aside from being capable of understanding dogs.”

“Britain has been kind of insular to the goings on around the world. Must be the storms that were caused by Raleigh before the new Cooper Gang appeared. At least we know Scotland has mystical druid golfing realms and kelpies.” Violet stated as she joined us and Launchpad was back to flying. “Pom and that Dr. M character would be the first instance of something big happening around Camden Town, aside from several strange characters attacking Hunter and Gabby McStabberson being in the region.”

“Yeah, Gabby’s pretty cool, unless she’s being paid to attack us.” Whipping her foot backwards and without actually looking, Webby knocked out a female pirate that was going to try and bite at her ankles. “She’s not really a bad person overall, she just ends up working for bad people.”

“Aye, like Glomgold, she won’t be making that mistake twice after the Atlantis expedition.” Scrooge grunted out while rolling his eyes. “Well come on kids, you need to get Smolder ready for her first Launchpad crash. You also need to secure Ocellus so she’s the safest out of all of us. Huey and Violet figure that out, while Louie and Dewey will try to keep Smolder calm by telling her about the worst crashes we’ve been through in excruciating detail.”

“You’re an evil old man Scrooge.” I stated flatly as Dewey looked excited to tell me all about it, while Louie put an arm around my shoulder. “Also, all of you are crazy… but I guess I can’t complain too much when you’re helping me and Ocellus. On a budget of friendship and extremely convenient cheapness.”

“Don’t worry about it Smolder, I’ll try to keep 'The Dewey' to a minimum.” How much would that cost Louie and could you manage it for a whole year if I paid you enough?

-Flight from Haiti to Britain, hijacked large airliner, Shanty-

I managed to kick the gun away from the seal I had been targeting earlier until the white furred weasel proved to be a better target. A good clean bash to the skull with my forehead and horns be knocking him out after a short scuffle.

“That’s using your head Shanty!” Murray stated as he held the artic hare he was dealing upside down and started to slam his head into the floor several times in a painful looking manner. At least the guy still be breathing after that and was definitely unconscious. “And this is me using his!”

Sly was busy dealing with a snow furred wolf, he was having a little trouble until a dart entered the wolf’s neck and she slumped over. Bentley motioned for us to come back his way.

“Okay that takes care of our section of the plane, but what about the business and first class?” Sly asked as he dragged the wolf back and towards Mopsy and Bentley, I started to do the same with the seal until Murray helped me by picking him up off the floor. “What exactly are these guys after?”

“That’s what Mopsy and me are discussing Sly, we agreed that they all seem to have one thing in common…” Bentley pointed over to the ten unconscious forms. The other passengers were paying attention to us, but they weren’t exactly asking questions after we be stopping these guys. “They are all cold weather people, which may mean they have ties to the Russian Mafia. Not exactly the kind of people you’d see naturally in Haiti or even anywhere near this plane. As to their goals, that still remains to be seen. I do have a name and a person of interest before the cameras were taken down. Airline cameras are always shoddy to work with and are never used efficiently, or sufficiently enough. The profile I got is on a snow leopard by the name of Sabu Taj, which is almost on the nose as she specializes in sabotage and spying. She’s easy to recognize at least… purple shoulder length hair, white and black fur, tends to wear only dark blue jumpsuits and has pink colored eyes. What little else I have on her suggests an Olympian level physique and flexibility, but is selectively color blind given her eyes natural coloring. Don’t know how many more guys she has with her, but she’s certainly leading things here.”

“Well that’s more than we knew before, do you have any suggestions as to what their end goal could ultimately be Bentley? I mean, they are attacking a large passenger plane here, nothing really big or worthy of note for them to steal if they aren’t trying to be terrorists.” Sly be looking at the ceiling of the plane while tapping his cane against his left shoulder. “What are the chances that they are here because of us?”

“Still too inconclusive so far to make any suggestions, but we know they are willing to kill people and it’s small a possibility. It’s not going to take them long to realize that no one is reporting from the rear of the plane and then they are going to start sending people in to investigate.” Bentley gave his computer screen a worried look, then held up a clip from one of the guns they be taking off the guys we brought down. “Sly, you don’t get automatic weapons like what these guys have onto a plane this easily. Not when they are loaded with armor piercing rounds. Yes, people, those guns have armor piercing rounds in them. All of you need to stay quiet and keep down, we’ll sort this mess out one way or another.”

All the scared people around us be shrinking down in their seats, but they were thankfully being quiet. The flight attendant cleared her throat and might have said ‘thank you’ to us before she started to help the people in economy class quietly. This plane wasn’t packed, but there was being enough people on it to be worrisome that someone might be getting shot by accident.

“Shanty do you think you can scout ahead?” Sly be looking to me and I nodded, I made my way forward with him. “We need to be fast about this Shanty, business class has a lot more open space and we have no idea what happening in first class.”

We reached the door, Sly pointed upwards. I climbed up above the door and waited.

Sly held up three digits, folded one down, two… and then jabbed the third one forward and slowly opened the door.

I quickly squeezed through the barely open doorway and Sly be closing it behind me. Taking out the binoculars from my satchel, I pointed them forward. I smelled something that I’d recognize anywhere, the smell of blood and a dead or dying body is being nearby.

“I be smelling blood, someone is either being dead or they be seriously hurt.” I was quite nervous about this and being around anything that be called ‘armor piercing’.

“Okay Shanty, you are currently going unnoticed, you’re in position to act as my spotter.” Sly be speaking softly. “Climb up into the alcove there on your… yeah that’s it. Now give me a full visual on what’s on the other side of the door. Five guards, they look attentive and making sure they don’t lose control of the passengers. They must have shot someone to prove a point, at least Shanty and I are not seeing any dead bodies… yet. The sound was probably muffled by the doors between sections.”

I didn’t speak and stayed up in the alcove next to the lights, but not in the path of them as to cast a shadow on the floor. I kept the binoculars focused on the four moving about the open area ahead.

“Slipping in, tell me if they showing any signs of noticing my movements.” After he said that I scrunched myself up against the ceiling as the four guards moved about, I focused on my sights on the fifth one as the binoculars scoped the whole room. “Okay, we’re both in Business class Bentley… can you, Mopsy and Murray cover Economy class? We’ve got five more these guys, three men, two women… one guarding the door to first class the rest are keeping the business class under guard.”

I didn’t see Sly until he was crouching behind a seat, he would be being the best master thief in no time.

“We have a white furred female fox, a male tiger, a female brown bear and a male snow owl, all them biped. The one guarding the door to first class is a grey husky, male and is a cross between biped and animalistic.” Sly pointed out each one patrolling the seats around the cowering people. “Ideas anyone?”

“Where be Spot?” I know where Dodo be and he not be very helpful in this situation, in fact I didn’t be wanting him to get hurt and be wanting him to stay put. He was getting quite worried about me and I didn’t want him destroying the plane by accident trying to protect me.

“Good question… our Pullet Marlow seems to have disappeared after she kicked the gun away from that polar bear, so she must be setting something up. I think she might have learned a few tricks from my father.” Sly looked at one of the guys nearest to him and shivered violently. He be getting nightmares of a giant metal owl that could be passing for an Evil Core from Elhorn, so of course he be a bit afraid of the owl man. “I swear, that chicken definitely has a history of sneaking around and I could learn a thing or two from her. Let’s hope she can give us an opening to take down the four of them, we’ll find out if someone is bleeding once the coast is mostly clear and these guys are out of the way.”

Noticing some movement, I focused on a door sliding open slowly.

“Is that a toilet?” Whispering this into my binoculars as the grey guard entered, the door then slammed shut behind him drawing away the four guard’s attention and they started to make their way over there.

Apparently they heard something that eased their sudden nerves and they just went back to guarding the people. A few seconds later Spot poked her head out the doorway looking left and right, she gained a grin on her beak and she waved a wing at me and Sly.

She pointed to one of the four guys remaining and held up a rag covered in some strange substances. She made a gesture for firing something and pointed at Sly while moving her beak as if talking while pointing at her head with her two wings…

“Bentley, Spot has a plan, she’s taken care of the husky and wants you to take care of one of the farther targets while Sly and I take out the closer two.” I saw Spot nod while pointing at me. “She can also apparently be reading lips.”

“Duly noted, I’ll be in position at the door in a minute.” Bentley could be heard moving over the binoculars. “Which target am I aiming for?”

I gestured to Spot and made a shooting motion, then pointed to the two that were closest to her and shrugged with a questioning look. Spot tilted her head and looked to be thinking while running her left wing under her beak, she eventually pointed at the bear.

“Are you’re darts being strong enough to knock out the bear or the tiger?” In response to me correctly guessing her plan, Spot nodded and waved her rag at us. “Spot seems confident she can take one of them out.”

“I don’t think my darts can take out the bear and I can only slowly shoot one at a time. Might work on the tiger, but it could be a bit of a delayed reaction. So avoid being shot at.” Answered Bentley. “I’m at the door and I can see your feed, opening it slightly now… and… I have an angle on the tiger. We move when Spot moves.”

“If you can be reading my lips, go for the bear, Bentley’s dart gun won’t work on it as well as the tiger.” Seeing if my message was received, Spot waved the rag and nodded. “We’ll move when you jump the bear. I’ll aim for the owl… Sly move towards the fox.”

“On it…” If what happened to Sly’s parents had happened to mine, I wouldn’t want to be near owls either. “Also the owl should be easier than fox for you anyway. If you can see my mouth, then start moving Spot.”

Spot saluted and started to sneak under some seats in the bear’s direction, she was small and nimble in how she crawled around like a dog with her tail feathers in the air.

I ignored her and started to crawl along the ceiling towards the owl, who seemed to get more alert and paranoid while looking in the direction of the toilet room.

Given I was close enough to be taking the owl down, I waited to make my move. I saw Sly crawling near the fox and readying his cane and Bentley was waiting to shoot. Spot better be making that move soon or else one of them would be moving to far away.

“Bosco don't you think...” The owl started to say to the tiger, that’s when Spot be leaping onto the back of the bears head and muzzling her with the rag.

The owl turned to shoot at Spot, I launched myself from the ceiling and swung my hooves forward to hit him with a blast of water that be knocking him on his back. I brought both of my hooves above my head and brought them down on the owl’s skull, even when he was dazed he still be bringing his weapon around.

I quickly swiped it out of the owl’s claws with my right hoof swinging outward, several shots be flying into the ceiling. I flowed into hitting my left hoof across his face. Now he be unconscious.

Looking up from that I saw the tiger had taken aim at me and was about to shoot, only to limply slump over onto the floor. I looked over to see Sly hitting the fox with the butt of her weapon.

"We've cleared the section, we're fine Mops!" Sly looked to be sweating profusely. "Everyone, we're here to help! Is there
a shooting victim?"

"H-h-here!" Someone cried out in obvious pain, they be having a nasty looking wound.

Author's Note

Life is gray at the moment, so I'm relatively content.

Could use a splash of color though.

100. Gremlin Grapple.

Author's Note

Music: Legend of Mana: Pain the Universe. (The reason I include these is that the embeds can fail.)

100. Gremlin Grapple.

-Earth, flight to Britain, hijacked airliner, Spot-

“You sure you can help her Bentley?” That was a lot of blood and she likely has an armor piercing bullet lodge in her spine. If she ever walks again, I’ll consider that a miracle as it was lucky enough that she hadn’t bled out yet.

“Given enough time and the medical kit Mops found for me on such short notice… she just might make it. Now let me concentrate.” Bentley went quiet after that and kept working on the victim, a poor female mink biped that was probably coming off of her vacation days from the look of it. “Put pressure on the wound here Mops. This is going to hurt a lot ma’am, but we need to get this bullet out of you and then patch the wound. You’ll definitely need help getting to a hospital, but this will help you live long enough to do so.”

As they worked on the victim that luckily didn’t have jellified bones in her spine, I looked towards the ceiling and the holes in it. It was not enough to cause the plane to crash or depressurize business class entirely all at once, but it was still pretty bad. Which is why Murray was busy corralling people to economy class in case enough were fired to cause a pretty bad incident. At least the rear of the plane should be secure enough.

“What could they have possibly needed armor piercing bullets for, a gremlin?” Mumbling this to myself I considered what else they could be using the armor piercing rounds for, maybe if these guys needed to bail on their mission and take down the plane while doing so. They could have just prepped explosives for that though. People thought Gremlins were small, I would quickly disabuse them of that notion if I knew one was actually present. “This plane, thankfully enough, doesn’t have one of ‘those’ on it. Saw enough of them in Russia that I avoided using any machinery as much as I could around that region.”

These guys screamed special ops with this kind of ordinance, but what were they here for? It’s bugging me, if they were here for the newest version of the Cooper Gang then it would be blaringly obvious and they’d be searching for them far more actively.

No, it was definitely something else, something that required a stealth expert like that Sabu Taj’s presence and warranted a ludicrous amount of firepower. If Bentley hadn’t accessed that Camera quickly we wouldn’t have known of her presence on the plane.

We’re missing a key piece of information and I swear on my rank as a Sergeant of the Bark Brigade that I will find out what that is before it comes to bite my new friends in their backsides. I never thought I’d see a day when I’d actually be missing Lieutenant Pug and the more fun times of my youth.

I looked at the nearby radios, they were far too silent for my liking and I suddenly had a hunch as to why.

“Sly… did you ever see any of them go for their radios when we attacked them?” My question made Sly look to me questioningly, I think I might be onto something here.

After checking the radios, I would have to investigate first class to be sure… and I would have to do it quickly if I was right.

-Airliner, Pom-

My mimicry of the monsters wool wasn’t perfect, but it made moving moderately easier. I had several things going through my mind at the moment, the biggest two being that I was doing this both tired and hungry.

The others were what would happen to the people in the airliner should I lose my hoofing on the airliner and fall away, another is what would happen to Dolly if I die. I had a lot of pressure put on my tired body.

I had to fight a monster after clinging to this large flying metal tube for the last few hours, after fighting a bunch of robotic mandrills and a few robot gorillas before that.

How did it even get up here, it certainly wasn’t up here before and I’ve been here for the last hour or so! It doesn’t help that the creature looks fine in this environment while I’m likely to get hypoxia by doing too much too fast.

The wooly lizard surged forward and I shifted my right rear leg forward, sliding it over the metal and clamping down as I slung my right hoof upwards into its right claw coming down at me. I managed to barely knock back its arm when my strike hit its wrist, leaving no visible damage done by me and the blow showed how strong it was as it staggered me in place.

I can’t let this thing damage the airliner and I really don’t want to be taking unnecessary hits. I also couldn’t fall onto my back, because it might crush Dolly by jumping top of me.

I feel like I’m fighting with all four of my hooves tied behind my back, wearing a turtle shell and my concentration on my wool has to be iron tight to even be able to move around with less strenuous effort.

Can my life ever be simple?!

I stared the monster down, I moved forward and tried to swipe with its left claw. I put up my right leg, took the blow and wobbled out of the way of it bringing its right claws into an overhead swing. I shifted my rear hooves one at a time and the claws dug into the metal between my legs, as I slid my left hind leg forward and then thrust my left hoof into its face.

I only staggered it in place and black blood splattered out on the metal in the sun as three claw marks opened up in the things right cheek, it didn’t even stumble back and slapped me in the chest with its left claw in an attempt to force me onto my back.

I took the blow and grunted, the claws stuck fast to my wool and I bit down on its wrist to tear a chunk of flesh out of it with my teeth. I spat it off to the side as the taste was nasty and indescribable, even worse than when I took a bite out of those wolves back in the southern territories of Yellow Dog.

It roared in my face and brought its other front claw around I caught it on my blocking left leg and it stuck fast. The best option I had here was to pin it in place.

It wasn’t going to make this flying vehicle crash for food, but that might be one reason for why it was here. I needed to do some serious damage as this thing was clearly a malevolent magical entity of some sort.

The creature tilted its head and tried to wrench me apart, I flexed my wool and pinned us both unyieldingly in place as it tried to move its arms and failed. I heard Dolly whimpering and tried to send her reassuring thoughts, I currently wasn’t doing a good job of that.

It narrowed its eyes at me and flicked its chameleon like tongue out and I snapped at it with my teeth before the monster could whip me across the face with it. It reeled its tongue back in and looked thoughtful.

It surged forward and opened its mouth unnaturally wide with its needle like teeth that would likely pierce through my wool and take my whole head off.

It was putting its weight on my chest and trying to pull its left claw back from my leg.

I leaned back and to the left as I pushed on its right arm, which was hard to do because of Dolly’s skateboard keeping my back mostly straight.

Narrowly missing the snapping teeth graze the wool on my forehead, it immediately turned its head an unnatural ninety degrees and open its mouth again to attempt biting down on my neck.

Going from feeling scared to suddenly aggressive, Dolly lunged upwards with her front paws pulling the wool on my back upwards and my body forward as her body stretched outward with my wool beyond my head.

The Dalmatian just put herself in the path of its mouth grabbing the upper and lower portion to leverage herself into position on its sideways turned head.

Dolly quickly slammed her helmet forward and down onto its right eye and jerked her head to the left, creating a snapping noise, before losing grip on the upper and lower portions of its mouth with her paws.

My badly stretched wool immediately pulled Dolly back into position on my back and I huffed out some air as she slammed into me roughly with a yelp.

The creature pulled hard and roared loudly, I quickly released its claws from my left leg and chest. The creature went up on its hind legs and stumbled backwards away from us with its black blood streaming down between both its claws pressing up against the right side of its face.

The roar it was making sounded like a thunderous storm was happening despite the clears skies and the sun being late day.

“I have a new appreciation for how scary thunder is now.” Looking at Dolly, who had a wide eyed look of fear on her face as she cowered on my back, it seemed like she just realized that she could have just been snapped in half saving me.

A portion of Dolly’s face was now splattered with the monsters high pressure blood like the area around my mouth when I bit into it.

A large portion of the sharp shard of glass that had been sticking out of Dolly’s helmet like a jagged crystal unicorn pony horn was now in the monsters utterly destroyed right eye.

In a sign of intelligence, the monster gripped the thick shard of glass roughly in its right claw and ripped it out to toss it off the side of the airliner. In the now emptied eye socket had a sickly yellow glow of magic.

“P-P-Pom… should its eye socket be g-glowing like that?” Dolly ducked down on my back and continued to whimper and shiver.

If you had to ask Dolly… well the answer was quite fairly obvious.

The thing whipped its bladed tail about and started to approach me more slowly and methodically, no longer looking like it had an amused grin in its sharp teeth as it came at us again.

I went to placing my front hooves down and readied myself for its next attack by preparing to move on all fours.

It lunged leading with its right claw in an overhead strike that dug into the metal as I quickly maneuvered to the side. It swung the back half of its body away from me, its tail whipped around and blocked it with both my legs and winced at the numbness that came over them as I held the tail in place with both my front hooves.

The monster lashed its tongue at us, Dolly quickly interposed her helmet in the way of the tongue before it could strike my face and it cracked with the impact where the bit of glass was sticking out of it.

The monster’s tongue spewed forth blood as large section of it had rubbed up against the sharp bit of glass still stuck in Dolly’s helmet and reeled back in.

The monster swung its left claw for me and, balancing my body against its tail on my left hind leg, I kicked my right hinged up into its swinging claws and wince at the impact as I clamped my hoof onto its forearm at impact.

The right claws surged straight for my throat, I tilted my head out of the way and bit down on it again with my teeth and then it darted its head forward. I quickly got my right leg freed up from its tail and slung it upwards into the monster’s chin snapping off a portion of its tongue on its own teeth in a grisly shower of gore.

The monster roared in my face and started to push at me despite being in pain, it was trying to push me over and it was starting to succeed.

My right hoof was clinging to its chin to keep its head away, my left hoof was wrapped around its tail carefully as to not touch the blades on it, my right hind hoof was stuck to its left forearm to prevent it from clawing me with it, my teeth had its right arm and I was biting down as hard as I could on it.

I must have looked ridiculous standing on one hoof holding all of this back while slowly being pushed down and my one leg wouldn’t keep me upright.

I had to let go of something or else it was going to try and crush us under its weight. It brought up its left rear legs and made a motion to kick it forward. I saw the look in its physical eye.

It kicked its left leg forward, I released my grip on everything except for one specific point on its body and kick off with my left hind leg.

Pivoting onto the top of its head using my hoof still connected to its chin, it suddenly became unbalanced and was now flailing on its right hind leg.

Quickly stomped down on its skull with my front hooves, I make it swing both its claws up at me and I quickly crawled onto its neck, down its back and onto the airliner again using its right hind leg.

I planted my front hooves and bucked as hard as I could behind me. The monster flipped upwards and away from the airliner.

About to sigh with relief, I watched as it spun and whipped its tail downwards into the airliner and pulled itself down into a standing position facing me.

I slowly turned around and backed up and looked to my side, I clambered down to the right wing backwards while making sure not to take my eyes off the monster that followed. The chopped off portion of its tongue stopped leaking blood out of its vicious grinning visage and I see that the tongue had regrown a bit and sealed off shorter than it had been before.

Making my way along the right wing of the airliner, I could feel the pressure on my body was getting worse. The monster must have felt it too as it slowed down when it approached me.

I was standing on the edge of the right wing and waited while looking at it. I thrust its left claw forward and I swung my body off the end of the wing, having clamped my front hooves onto its edge.

Slammed my rear hooves up into the underside of the wing, I bent myself backwards while releasing my front hooves to avoid it trying to stab me with its tail.

Eventually my front hooves made contact with the underside the wing and I clamped on and released the grip on my rear hooves to start hanging by my front hooves. I slowly moved inward on the underside of the wing using my front hooves and avoided the tail slapping over the edge of the wing into my body.

“Pom… what are you doing…?” At the sound of Dolly questioning my actions, I tried not to look down like she was currently doing.

When I did eventually look down, I gulped. For below my dangling rear hooves was nothing but air, clouds and hopefully the ocean far below.

I looked up at my front hooves clinging to the underside of the wing and considered my position and why I moved into it.

A shaking happened, I looked towards the end of the wing to see the creature followed me down gripping both front and back edges of the wing.

That’s why Dolly, I had to get that thing off the airliner and this was a much harder place for it to fight me.

It reared its back half and launched its tail up at me, I kicked it with my right hind leg to the left and it suddenly got tugged up into one of the cylinders that was likely helping this thing fly.

It started screeching and I started lashing both my rear hooves rapidly into its tail and clawed it up until are large portion of the tail ripped off entire. The right most cylinder on the airliner started to catch fire and I seriously hoped that didn’t do too much damage.

I moved my front hooves so that I got closer to the monster and it lashed up its rear legs in an attempt to claw me off, I planted my rear hooves and scampered backwards to find myself above the monster.

I dropped my right rear leg into its face, then I lashed out with my left and then it jammed its left set of claws into the side of my chest. I took my left leg off the wing and slashed my left hoof across the back of its wrist knocking its claws out of me and, gritting my teeth, I put my left hoof back on the underside of the wing, scrunched up and then lashed out both legs into the monsters skull with a squelching noise.

“Pom, you’re bleeding!” Can feel that Dolly, can’t do much about it at the moment. It was bad enough that I was lightheaded from the lack of air up here! If I lose too much blood then I was dying of anemia instead of hypoxia.

I looked down and saw that I had split the scales on the creatures head, some chunks of bone fell away and I think I could see its brain which started to glow a sickly yellow now and it narrowed its good eye up at me.

What was this thing that it was ready to continue with exposed bits of brain after I cracked its skull open?! The airliner started to tilt and I quickly climb up onto the top of the wing and started bucking at its right claw, soon it’s claw let go and I saw the left claw had gripped the back of the wing and soon it’s right claw joined it.

I started to clamber up the wing that was now at a steep downward angle as the monster crawled onto the wing behind me and looked to be enraged. It lunged upwards and grabbed me by the right hind leg and tried to crush it in its right claws grip.

The airliners wings were almost vertical, I seriously hoped it wasn’t going to crash because of all this.

It pulled on my leg and I looked up to see various people looking out the windows of the airliner at the sight we must have presented to them, all the fear and uncertainty in their eyes. I looked down at the creature place its left claw and started to pull itself up towards me.

A grim frown found its way onto my face, I looked down and narrowed my eyes at the monster and ignore the smoking cylinder.

For when it next tugged on me… I let go and immediately slammed into its chest using the strength of its own pull where it lost its grip on me with its right claw, I clung onto it chest got up on to my hind legs and lashed out my right hoof with a straight into its left claws and we fell away from the plane as the monster lost its grip due to its blood slickening the back edge of the wing.

The creature tried to scrape me off its chest with its left hind leg as we fell, I turned and clambered up to its right shoulder brought up both my hooves and dislocated it with a double hoofed blow.

I glanced up and saw the airliner in the distance righting itself, good news at least, now to deal the monster with the flopping left arm. It flailed and tried to claw at me with its right claw, it only scored a hit against its own shoulder as I swung around to the back of its head and started to rapidly beat on it skull with both my front hooves.

It twisted its head around like an owl and tried to bite me, I clambered backward down its back out of range of its snapping teeth and raised both my hooves overhead to slam them down on its spine.

We both spun so that it was now underneath me instead of being above me it thrashed and screeched as I thrust my left hoof into the chin of its backwards facing head. And moved to its lower back, I looked down and saw the ground coming up quickly and clung to the creature’s wooly back.

It wiggled and tried to spin us leftward, I stomped my right hooves and corrected so that it continued to be beneath me. It was not going to flip us around so that I take the brunt of the…

Wait… what am I currently doing? I can float, I didn’t need to use the creature to take the brunt of the fall for me! In fact…

I used all four of my hooves to kick away from the creature and puffed up all my wool, my falling slowed down immensely. I looked down as the creature let out its roar that sounded like thunder back up at me in obvious rage as it sped towards the ground even faster thanks to its aerodynamic wooly hide.

I watched as it hit the top of a large pointed rock and splattered, a few minutes later I landed and saw the grisly remains of the creature.

“Is… is it over?” Dolly asked while poking her head up and looking at the mess the creature made.

The remains started to steam and I took on a guarded stance as I gasped and groaned in pain, trying to get some air in me.

The remains turned into a white cloud and a pair of glaring yellow eyes opened in that cloud as it slowly rose to the sky glaring at me, but after a certain height the clouds eyes widened.

I heard the agonized horrifying pained screeching that sounded like something dying and, in a flash, the cloud exploded in a powerful burst of air.

“Did… did that thing just… turn… into a cloud?! Then it… exploded? What the dog…” Dolly was as confused as I was and nonetheless horrified. “What the dog did we just fight?! And… where are we? Are those elephants down there? No… no… this is not funny! I know me and my step mom were mistaken for hyenas once, because of a bad tanning accident with a machine, but there’s no way I’m believing that we ended up in…!”

I heard growling and inhaled deeply, I exhaled and leapt off the large rock formation and glided away before the blue eyed lioness, that had climbed up the rock we were on, pounced at me and could dig her claws into my back.

I’ve had enough fighting for one day thank you!

“Pom, I think we’re in Africa.” At least Dolly had some idea where we were as we glided down to land among the many herbivores that were suddenly quite wary of me.

I quickly opened my mouth to show that I didn’t have fangs and they all went back to ignoring me. Though they were wary of Dolly, she was far too small to be a serious threat to all the larger animals.

101. Dalmatians.

Author's Note

Yes, I couldn't let the title of this page go.

101. Dalmatians.

-Earth, approximately somewhere in Africa, Dolly-

Okay so ending up here was kind of giving me… okay, not going to lie to myself here, I was having a panic attack.

At least Pom would be able to… I looked at her.

She was a mess, I could see spots on her wool that were dyed red and after all the crazy stuff she did… she needed a break.

“Are you okay Pom?” My voice hitched slightly, I ignored the other animals talking around us as Pom shook her head no. “Maybe you should sit down and eat something.”

My stomach gurgled and given that I had missed lunch, which was more kibble unless Pom cooked something she was willing to share, well I had an idea about how 'boned' we currently were.

We were in the middle of nowhere and had no idea where we were going from here. At least it was safe as the animals around us weren’t predators.

Pom looked pale and dazed, I also think she finally realized something.

I was still glued to the wool on her back.

I felt a shift and I stood up and quickly hopped off taking my skateboard with me.

Unhooking my helmet with my paws I looked at it and grimaced at the damage that had been done to it, I remember blacking out at one point after the tongue struck me. Had I not been wearing this helmet I would be one dead Dalmatian, I checked over my skateboard and it was perfectly fine.

I hugged my skateboard and wagged my tail at how happy I was that it survived all of that! Looking to Pom, she was doing the same thing I was in looking over her satchel that was a bit damaged.

She reached in and pulled out a slightly mashed banana, she then peeled it and broke it in half, offering me a half of it in her left hoof.

I quickly took it in my paws and sat down next to her and bit into it… this, wasn’t a normal banana.

The taste was a bit off-putting at first for a banana, but it wasn’t bad.

Wait… did she just give me an alien banana?

…

So cool!

-The flight to Britain, hijacked airliner, Spot-

I finished checking the radios and rushed to the First Class doors and opened it wide, the sight was… unpleasant is an understatement. Being a detective chicken since the Dearly’s likely bought the farm, I have seen a lot of messes like this one.

Sly came up behind me staring at the sight, everyone in First Class was dead. Including the hijackers.

“What the…” Sly started slowly.

“We need to get to the cockpit immediately, also no jokes about roosters, this isn’t a joking situation!” I ran into the room full of dead bodies, I noted off each one mentally and their wounds and the surroundings.

None of these wounds were inflicted by armor piercing rounds, I stopped and checked one of the rifles and pulled a clip from it, more armor piercing rounds and my suspicions about the truth of this flight went up another notch. I slammed the clip back into the weapon and placed it back down exactly as it was found.

Pullet Marlow was on the case and that case was everyone in First Class including the terrorist that Bentley stated ‘might’ be Russian Mafia... were all dead.

I looked around at the bodies as I slowly made my way to First Class, none of them were snow leopards… so this was definitely Sabu Taj’s doing.

“Sabu Taj did this.” I stated firmly once things started connecting in my head, I moved to reach up for the door with my right wing and stopped, Sly went to move towards it in an effort to help me open it. “Stop!”

“Why do you think she did all this?” Sly was looking back at all the dead with concern and then narrowed his eyes at the door.

“Bentley says she specializes in sabotage right?” The door had to be trapped and Sabu was likely no longer anywhere on the plane, if she had a locator beacon she could be in the middle of being picked up by a boat by now.

“So you wouldn’t put it past her to have sabotaged the door." Sly was looking at the door to the very front of the plane warily. "I figured that out when you told me to stop.”

“I think this was a doomed to fail plan, whatever it was, and she was setting up all these guys for a fall. If they somehow survived finding out they were on a runaway plane on autopilot.” Opening the door and the controls to the plane could be destroyed… that or a bomb goes off. “Open the door… carefully. If you can get wide enough that I might be able to squeeze through, then we might be good.”

While Sly got to work on that, Shanty came up to me looking at all the bleeding corpses and the horrid smell filtering through First Class. I’m glad we moved everyone from Business Class to Economy, otherwise they’d panic at this sight.

“Will they be burying all of them?” Shanty sounded hollow and less chipper as she came up to me.

“Sorry you had to see this kid, sometimes our world isn’t so pleasant. At least we saved Economy and Business, but it’s far too late for First Class. Rest assured they will be respected properly should we all survive this. Oh and don’t touch any of the bodies, evidence for the international police. I can get away with it because my wings don’t leave any identifiable markings and nobody would believe an animal chicken is involved with anything approaching intelligent thought.” The thing I discovered from the radios is that they were on a time delay to malfunction and while they were made for short range communications all they could give now was static. “We’ve incidentally boarded a plane in the middle of a deadly sabotage setup Shanty, none of this was meant for any of us. It was for the ones we took down who started this whole situation. I believe this plane is set to crash unless I can solve the problem of whatever Sabu sabotaged before it is too late.”

“That not be sounding too good.” Shanty looked worried and then she looked over to Sly.

“Spot, do you know how to disarm a bomb?” Walking up to Sly, I peeked through the doorway and saw several trip lines. If the door were opened any wider…

“Yes, shouldn’t be too hard, it’s a good thing she didn’t sabotage the door handle itself… but this is arguably worse. Hold the door in place while I squeeze through.” I carefully squeezed through the small opening and looked around. Once again, nobody expected a detective chicken to come to the rescue or solve a number of huge problems with just a beak that has been used for absolutely everything under the sun. “Looks like a high yield explosive, she definitely didn’t want anyone surviving this to talk about it. I can possibly survive this, but you and Shanty might want to get back to Economy Class, the explosion will be big enough to take out the front of the plane if I do this wrong. I even suggest moving the mink Bentley is working on even if it would ruin her health.”

Hearing them move away, I carefully looked over the bomb. Not a timer type… but it could quickly become one judging by how the trip was set up. Probably a ten count, none of that movie two minutes to live tension stuff and then disarming the bomb at the last second. I had lives counting on me to make this thing inoperable.

Okay so the trip wires weren’t a problem, I was easily small enough to get around them and close the door behind me as I did so. Okay… let’s open this thing up.

Using my beak, I opened up the bomb by unscrewing a few screws until I could remove the panel and got an idea of what kind of bomb I was looking at. Sabu Taj was good at sabotaging, what she was not good at was demolitions… prefabricated by someone else and if I just…

I moved my head forward and gather up five wired in my beak and clenched it fast and did the same with my eyes. Seeing as I wasn’t with my friends again, I then pulled on each of the tripwires that would have set it off had a biped burst into the room.

Nothing. I was thankful and disappointed at the same time.

Sighing in relief, I had an idea that Bomb Voyage would called this amateur hour workmanship, but I’m thankful that Sabu wasn’t a demolitions expert on top of what else she was good at. She set up the bomb, but she obviously wasn’t an expert in the field. If it were made by Bomb Voyage, I wouldn’t have even bothered trying the door.

Having gotten past the bomb, I hopped up into the nearby pilot’s seat and started to check things over, the autopilot was functioning. She didn’t seemed to have sabotage the controls, but I was fairly paranoid at this point and checked the other instruments.

Ms. Taj sabotaged the radio, location transponder, the black box and upon further inspection the autopilot was randomly veering the plane left and right but still mostly flying in the general direction we wanted to go in. Though the sabotaged autopilot also wasting a ton of fuel by making so many maneuvers.

I went back and to Economy, poked my head in and saw Shanty sitting there nervously.

“Shanty, tell Bentley I need his help up front.” We could do this easily now that the bomb was taken care of. “We’ll make it to the ground easily at this point, but I need a technical expert to get us there.”

-Camden Town, Shanty-

I be cuddling against Mopsy and she be having a vacant look in her eyes as she hugged me. Everyone be surviving the landing.

We were being quiet with how we escaped after the airplane landed and currently be seeing the devastation that the airship crashing into the river had caused. Pom was last seen leaping away from it.

“Okay, so I’ve got what I wanted, how do we find what you want Spot?” Bentley be talking about infiltrating the crashed airship and gathering some data on Dr. M that the police might not know how to get.

“That’s easy. I’m a member of the Bark Brigade, any member of it around will know the codes and respond.” As she talked, Spot scrutinized the crashed airship with anger and curled up wings. “I’ll then have a contact among the animals to direct me to where we need to go or what to look for, a Bark Brigade member always knows what’s going on in any community or in their general surroundings. So don’t think I’m going crazy or anything when I do this…”

Spot let out a howl from her beak and she be sounding exactly like a dog, eventually we heard some howling back. Spot responded and received another response, she nodded.

“Okay, I’ve made contact with one. There’s a Bark Brigade liaison around here and he’s a service dog for a blind horse biped by the name of Godfrey, he’s currently in the park and will be waiting for us. He might react a bit oddly to seeing that I’m a chicken, but he should be fine with it once I prove that I’m proper Bark Brigade.” Spot be waving at us with her left wing and we followed after her. “Come on, if anyone knows where Pom or any of the Dalmatians I’m looking for in the area might be, then this guy definitely would.”

“I’m horrified that things can possibly get even weirder or scarier.” Mopsy said blankly as she draped a hoof over my back, she had been throwing up in the river before this.

She not be taking the dead bodies as well as I did, I be seeing a lot of those growing up and be burying all the more important ones.

Once my friends… and family… were all together again, we’d be surviving everything together once more. I’d be there to protect them and they’d be there to protect me.

Mopsy just wasn’t Pom, but I still took comfort in that she was being here for me no matter the situation.

-Camden Town Park, evening, Spot-

Entering Camden Town Park, it was evening.

Sly, Murray and Bentley were going over their next move and whatever information Bentley managed to scrounge up about Pom or Dr. M’s and their fight. They were also planning out their trip to China to find Panda King, Dr. M wasn’t an immediate concern for them.

I was trying to find out what eventually became of my old friends, Lucky, Cadpig and Rolly.

Mopsy and Shanty were needing a more civilian place to relax after they saw that sight on the plane, bodies with bloody holes in their hearts, heads and that one guy with a hole in their pelvis. Sabu must not have liked what that one guy said to her in the slightest.

I eventually saw a blind man on a bench and the golden retriever service dog with him, Bark Brigade classic position. A service to all, proudly willing to aid anyone in need.

I made my way up to him.

“Excuse me, I’m the one that called you on the… what do they call it these days? Ah yes, the World Wide Woof, the names Sergeant Spot Irma Chicken and I have some questions that you might be able to answer.” I nodded my head to the old dog and bowed slightly in respect to his age. I looked young, but I wasn’t exactly a spring chicken and was well past my expiration date, by a lot. “Also let me just say that you are doing an exemplary service here and it is an honor to meet you Godfrey.”

“Right, it has been a long time since I’ve heard of an odd animal like you being in the Bark Brigade, but we do allow cats, horses and all manner of those willing to learn and aid the world in being a better place. I remember hearing tales of Tibbs and how he bravely fending off two humans to save hundreds of puppies… kind of like the ones I tend to see around here. Most decorated cat in the Bark Brigade, peacefully died with honor and a high ranking.” Ah yes, good old Sergeant Tibbs, back when I was a cadet we loved him far more than Lieutenant Pug. When a bunch of Dalmatians would rather have a cat lead them, then you know Pug was a huge jerk. He was our jerk though, so it evened out eventually. “Brave cat he was, a well honored member to this very day. What is it that you need to know Sergeant Spot?”

“I’m a bit of an odd case, but I have held true to the principles of the Bark Brigade… no matter much it hurts...” It hurt a lot saving my friends from Cruella and I’m quite sorry I couldn’t find my way back to them, they probably thought I died from that. “Anyway, do you know where a mass of Dalmatians live and… if they have any interest in Bark Brigade training. I am here to see if I can aid in bringing back interest in the organization and I am currently raising awareness.”

“You know… I’ve never actually asked them about it… but you seem like a spry young thing, maybe you could offer them your services as a trainer! I’m too old to do the run whole around, but I do occasionally hold contests around here and there that would make all the locals closer to meeting Bark Brigade standards without putting them through any ‘real’ training.” Oh Godfrey, I intended to do just that and more. If they were related to the Pongo-Dearly family, then it was a sure thing from that point forward. “You would be needing to look for one oh one Dalmatian Street, rather ironic considering there are a hundred and one Dalmatians living there… though there might be one less if news of one of them going missing is true.”

Well if that just didn’t cause a pit to form in my stomach, then I realized that the one missing was with Pom. Shanty spins a few good yarns about Pom as a survival expert that taught Shanty how to both survive off the land and how to fight in case they were ever separated.

“It’s surely just a coincidence, as I think the street was named after a rather infamous incident before they ended up there.” The incident that was the most infamous one no doubt, so the Dalmatians were likely all holding up in the old Dearly-Pongo home. Well if they were here, then I had no reason to go out to Suffolk. “So… directions?”

I had to keep up the act at least.

“Huh, oh right, yes, terribly sorry… it should be down that way and take a right, a lot of good dogs on that street I’ll have you know. It’ll be the house covered in colorful spots, one of them is a brilliant artist by the name of Da Vinci… nice girl, if a bit quiet and sensitive. She talks to me about how colorful and amazing our world really is.” Godfrey gave me a nod of dismissal, as I started to turn away with Shanty and Mopsy. Godfrey looked at Mopsy in confusion. “Oh… excuse me… wait… oh… that’s not Pom. Never mind, a case of mistaken identity. Her smell is completely different, carry on Sergeant.”

“Well, I just confirmed that Pom was here and she’s apparently knows the dogs in the area, some of the dogs might confuse you for her Mopsy.” Several dogs approached Mopsy, but turned away and lost interest after sniffing her. “Just let them get your scent and you’ll be good to go. If they bother you, tell me and I will tell them off. Now follow me!”

-House 101, Dalmatian Street-

So this was it, it was fairly obviously no bipeds lived here. The paint on the home was done by the artistic Dalmatian given how it was applied by paw.

I could almost hear the havoc going on inside from a hundred playful dogs being in an enclosed space, the door had a paw scanner so these Dalmatians were smart enough to keep up with technology at least.

Wondered how well their security system actually worked and if Cruella found a way around it. I motioned for Mopsy to knock on the door, eventually a female dog that reminded me of Pongo and Perdita mixed together poked her head out and looked at us.

She was wearing a nursing dog identification on her collar, a hospital worker.

“Pom? No… different eyes, different smell, but she looks so much like her.” The Dalmatian then looked to me.

“Excuse me ma’am, but you wouldn’t happen to be related to the Pongo’s would you?” She looked a little surprised, how many generations have passed since I’ve become a world wandering nearly immortal chicken? “I have a bit of an interesting history that I need to get off my chest, my name is Spot Irma Chicken or Pullet Marlow if I’m on the job. I’m a sergeant in the Bark Brigade and your family has had members in it before, if we can talk inside that would be great.”

“My name is Delilah Dalmatian, while I might be interested in letting you in..." Delilah looked over me and to Mopsy and Shanty. "I’m wondering about those two.”

“Does she be understanding us?” Shanty asked immediately with a hasty and hopeful tone, I nodded. “I’m one of Pom’s chil... er... friends, I be Shanty… and I am being through quite a bit to get here.”

“Can you do magic?” Delilah asked, I had to translate.

Shanty swung out her left hoof and a small arc of water bursts from it.

“Huh, smells like the sea… this is going to be quite interesting and I like tropical smells. Come in, all of you.” Delilah motioned a paw and we walked into a house filled with Dalmatians, yep the family has been busy as they ever were. I think I saw a dog with no hind legs in a wheelchair zipping about, it reminded me of Tripod. Might even be one of his descendants. “We have water for guests and at least an amount of fruits, vegetables and other completely dog safe snacks like carrots… don’t mind the mess, it’s like this near constantly despite my son’s best efforts.”

-Five minutes later-

“So you have no idea where Dolly and Pom are now, because they haven’t come back?” Shanty drooped. “At least I know she be capable of surviving a fall from that high up.”

“Mom, Dolly and Pom are on the news again!” It didn’t even take a second for Delilah to react to hearing one of her children, she was definitely a direct descendant of Perdita.

The flood of puppies that carried us into the living room to watch the television was just like old times, the TV was showing a news report.

“Leap Lamb and Caper Canine were last seen leaving the airship of criminal Dr. M wanted by international police for various crimes, not too long afterwards they were spotted fighting this monster on a plane heading towards Africa.” The screen showed Pom’s leg being grabbed by an adult gremlin, she looked so much like Mopsy that it was uncanny that they weren’t sisters. What happened next was Pom looking up and her eyes sweeping across all the people in the plane, she looked down and I knew right then and there that she'd make a drastic decision. “Leap Lamb successfully took the monster with her off the plane and it has managed to land with the damaged engine, it is unknown where Leap Lamb and Caper Canine are now should they have survived the fall.”

“Pom is already being a hero long before they be giving her a super hero name.” The comment earned the attention of the numerous puppies in the room, they all quickly cuddled up to Shanty and started to sniff her. “She be alive and is being through worse!”

They could practically smell Pom on her and then they started asking about magic, they were an excitable bunch.

“She doesn’t understand you, all she’s hearing is barking… but if you want to know about magic. It should be me you should be asking. I’m an old family friend… real old…” I looked away while rubbing my left shoulder with my right wing, I then addressed Delilah. “Ma’am what was the most recent incident with Cruella like and did she actually hurt anyone?”

“You know about…” Delilah looked confused.

“When I say old, I mean I was alive when Pongo and Perdita were still around… and my best friends were Lucky ‘the survivor’, Cadpig ‘the politics pooch’ and Rolly ‘the plump’ who was a star for ‘Kanine Krunchies’ commercials and refused to eat chicken... for reasons. I even personally knew Patch, Thunderbolt’s sidekick.” I just had to know what that mortal demon had gotten up to. “If you have to ask, magic is weird and Cruella’s attempts at killing me failed spectacularly. You’re families history is far more bizarre than you would actually believe. Cruella was basically your ancestor’s next door neighbor, ‘for years’, and she never got a single Dalmatian.”

“This... explains even more.” Delilah intoned softly.

102. Are oddball and friendly.

-Equus, morning, Ponyville, Cadence the Princess of Love-

“I really needed this break and… what the?” Stepping off the train I heard something strange and moved over to see something very odd. What looked to be a turtle teaching an earth pony about… yak culture?

“So… me and Yona can make things work out provided I don’t back down to her parents?” The earth pony had a cutie mark with three turtles on his flank, the turtle he was addressing glared at him and clacked at the chalkboard with a pointer. “Oh… right… sorry. Coo, coo, coo, hiss, coo, coo, hissy coo?”

The turtle nodded and then looked to me as I approached the two, the turtle then revealed its true nature by spreading a pair of green feathered wings and flying into my face. Her tiny flippers clutched onto my face and hugged it with an adorable amount of affection.

After a moment the turtle dove released me and went back to the chalkboard and started to playfully circle the earth pony.

“Sorry about that princess, Snickers here has been coaching me about yaks. I’m Sandbar by the way.” Looking from Sandbar to the turtle dove, I could see Snickers was smiling at me brightly and she titled her head ever so slightly and made a gesture I recognized as helping her out with a flipper.

“Oh don’t worry about Snickers, we know each other and she’s always been affectionate around me.” As a Goddess of Love, I would of course be on good terms with Jaded’s adorable familiar with a moderately problematic fast food addiction. “So this yak is quite special to you? I believe I can lend some aid to what Snickers has been teaching you.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that.” Sandbar stated while rubbing the back of his head, until I brought my face up against his.

“I insist, I need to live up to being the Princess of Love or else I… am going… to explode.” I stated quite seriously. “I mean this quite literally. I’m taking a vacation to vent my need to act upon my rather specific domain all over everyone here in Ponyville. You would be doing me, and everyone else, a big favor if you let me help you with your relationship. Snickers here probably gave you positive and good advice, now let me help you on the logistics side of things! What kind of job will you get that can support a yak of assumedly exceptional, and large, beauty if you do eventually decide to live together?”

“Er…” Sandbar’s fear felt tangible to me, he should have known better than that… all that would make me do is pounce on helping him!

I looked to Snickers and she had a subtle evil grin and was rubbing her flippers together, we were already sharing a wavelength.

-Earth, the next morning, Camden Town, Shanty-

I stretched out and be poking a Dalmatian that be falling asleep on me, they stretched out yawned and sat up to look down on me from my back.

“Do you need a shower?” The Dalmatian be asking me and I was about to respond when I froze. “I could probably go for one myself before another day of dealing with Dolly’s duties… and actually doing them. Love my sister, but she did make Dylan do seventy five percent of the work. To think I’m the runner up top dog for my side of the family now.”

“Why do I suddenly be understanding you?” The Dalmatian in question was named Dante, Spot said he be having magical dog blood in him.

“I don’t know how to respond to that… weren’t you hearing nothing but barks from us yesterday? Spot said that neither you nor Mopsy have the ability to speak dog like Pom or Hunter can, she sounds like she has more expertise on the magic of our world compared to yours.” Nodding to Dante, he looked thoughtful while poking his black paw against his chin in thought. “Normally I’d freak out about this, declare the end of the world and cause a panic among all my siblings… but I just feel like chilling out.”

“Yes, you be doing nothing but barking before.” I be getting up off the pillow and carefully stepping around the still sleeping puppies. “So where is the shower being, we be coming in pretty late last night and we didn’t exactly get a tour with Spot telling so many interesting stories.”

“Yeah, who knew Cruella had a ferret that she actually truly ‘loved’ and didn’t skin until after it died of natural causes, mostly because it was as evil as she was. Doesn’t make Cruella any less of a danger to all Dalmatians as long as she lives… specifically our stepmom’s side of the family.” He be finally hopping off my back. “Follow me to the bathroom.”

We be going for the hallway when we saw Spot doing something odd, we stopped and she looked up at us.

“Oh… you’re up… I don’t need sleep, but I can. All I get are nightmares of my past these days, I prefer having all that free time to do things with. So I did some checking, nothing invasive mind you, but the puppies did want to know who among you were magical… and capable of using it among other things.” Spot popped a bone in her spine as she stood up from what she was doing and stretched her wings with a flap or two. “The simple answer is… all of the Dalmatians in this home are magical. Whether you can actually make use of that magic or not is the question. Your family, adoptive or not, has a stupidly high potential for friendship and family magic. Also don’t be alarmed if anyone friendly can understand you inside the house, the keywords here are ‘friendly’ and ‘in your home’. One of my ancestors was the chicken of a witch that loved animals that had a slight De Vil problem that was dealt with in an unusual manner… I wonder if Rebecca is still alive because of that curse… something to look into later. Anyway, one of the tricks I’ve learned is how to make other animals capable of being understood… but there are some huge limitations to setting it up. At best your family will likely be capable of successfully ordering out for dinner by voice with this setup.”

“That sounds kind of cool.” Dante stated with a wagging tail.

“Don’t abuse it though and don’t attract attention to yourselves.” Spot commented before going back to what she was doing. “Also, Cruella shouldn’t be able to come near your home anymore personally… but anyone she hires can still get through. So spread that information around to everyone who needs to know.”

-One shower and breakfast later-

I am finding out that Dalmatians be very quirky, Spot be underselling it.

After some introductions I be finding the Dalmatian other than Dante that Pom had a decent relationship with, before she got lost with their older sister Dolly.

All the puppies be excited to be able to talk with Mopsy and me, to be fair I be just as excited to talk to the puppies. Mopsy currently be with Dylan teaching him how to dance a bit better, I think he be halfway decent.

“It’s amazing that we’re making so many new friends in such a short amount of time…” The soft spoken Da Vinci stated as she be painting a picture of me, I be complimenting her on the portrait of Pom and she be asking to make one of me. She be wanting to remember me too. “Pom helped us recover a lot, her presence was nearly indescribable… Anyway, meeting art appreciating strangers from other worlds and creating new friendships let us really spread our metaphorical wings a bit. I’m still not good with big crowds though…”

The dog known as Deepak be friendly and peaceful, he also be meditating and I not be doing much of that without Pom. He be helping his family stay calm with his peaceful nature.

“Yes, her presence was a balm for many of us that were still having nightmares.” Deepak muttered calmly while meditating, he be looking like a yin-yang symbol in the form of a dog and he liked making cat noises. “Our spirits can continue healing even if she is no longer with us… though there will be a gap left behind that can’t quite be filled thanks to Dolly not being here. She is and will always be a loved bundle of chaos to us.”

Like Pom didn’t be getting enough chaos already.

“Hey, I’m doing my best here Deepak!” Dante passed by with a dour attitude heading for the door to the backyard, but he be having his little sister Dorothy on his back who seemed to be cheerful despite that.

“Pom is being like that for a fox, so she be having that effect on most dog like beings.” Though the two Yellow Dog factions be having different reactions to her. I think the mostly bad side didn’t be caring if they hurt Pom, they just wanted to be keeping her all to their selves.

“I would say you were like Cadpig in the spiritual sense Deepak, like how Dolly looked something like her except larger. Cadpig could get rather aggressive when you set her off in just the right way.” Spot be joining us with Delilah and the father of the house Doug, he be giving good hugs and they were on their way out the door to work. Dogs being capable of paying job was a little strange. “Despite Lucky almost being a stillborn, Cadpig was the, excuse my language here because I know dogs hate this one word in particular, ‘runt’ of her litter. Her small size really put a real chip in her shoulder, so she went with being more knowledgeable and worldly than the rest of her family to stand out. Sure she had that, and biting sarcasm, but she was also able to physically take dogs three times her size whenever she got seriously mad and usually every dog around her was twice her size already. She was ‘mostly’ a pacifist, one you didn’t want to be on the wrong end of.”

None of the puppies around us be liking the word ‘runt’, but they be understanding at least and be excusing Spot’s words or at least I think they did. They not be bringing it up.

“Can I get a hug from my spotty dotties before I leave for work?” Doug, the largest dog around, be happily taking a pile of puppies onto himself.

“Are you going to go on about the old days all the time or are you going to help out back here Aunty Chicken?” Dante muttered as he came back in.

“I’m not going to answer to that name… even if I am technically an adoptive long lost aunt of Delilah’s side of our family. I’d prefer Aunt Marlow to Aunt Chicken.” Spot grumbled and be going out back to assist Dante with the puppies out there, she stopped and poked her head back in. “Oh, Shanty, if you hear a knock on the door, it’s probably the Cooper Gang. They say Dodo looks tired of sitting on their van all the time, apparently they wanted you to know todays theme was fried chicken for some reason? I think it’s a joke at my expense… anyway the speech spell isn’t going to work on Dodo, too incompatible with his nature.”

I be nodding and turned back to Da Vinci and she continued to paint with her paws, her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth. These puppies be very adorable, I’m glad Pom met them… she be needing that break she got before getting into more fights.

-One hour later-

I be standing next to Dylan and Mopsy as he opened the door, Dylan be looking a little afraid of Murray despite his goofy grin. Dylan be a lot like Pom, a mothering hen could hardly be matching their ability to love.

“Hey Shanty, did you find Pom?” We still haven’t be telling the Cooper Gang about Pom being lost in Africa now.

“Well…” I wilted.

“It’s a long story, but our sister is currently with her.” Dylan muttered and all the gang looked between themselves.

“I take it magic was used by Spot to make communicating easier.” Hummed Bentley with curiosity.

“Bentley might be liking some time with Dawkins, he be a very smart dog.” After a moment they looked like they would come in, I gave them a questioning look, but they motioned to Dylan and waited politely. “They be waiting for you to invite them in.”

“Okay… come on in. Just don’t make me regret this.” Slowly getting some courage back into him about having more bipeds in the house other than Hunter, Dylan motioned with his paw to let them through the door. “Dawkins!”

“Yes?” Dawkins be poking his head from the kitchen with a screwdriver in paw.

“Shanty and Mopsy’s friends are here and one of them is an engineer and since they can understand us…” Dylan trailed off with a weak smile, he obviously wasn’t happy to be letting so many people into their home.

I be getting it, nobody would be wanting me in their home when I was younger too. A second later after the three came in, a mechanical warble followed them in and Dodo squeezed in through the doorway after the trio.

“That… must be Dodo.” Dylan stated in an unsure manner looking up at the mechanical ostrich that snuck into the house when no one on the street was looking. “Well… everything Pom wrote down for us is certainly confirmed now.”

“He’s beautiful, the engineering put into him is so amazing!” Dawkins stated while wiping some tears from his eyes as he be looking closely at Dodo, he then turned to Bentley. “While I’m interested, I’m not about to mess with a machine that’s said to be literally alive unless he direly needed repair. Pom told us that Dodo was a living being and seeing it personally… oh, it’s so fascinating! So what do you know about mandrill robots?”

“A lot, given we pulled some information from Dr. M’s crashed airship.” Adjusting his glasses Bentley took a keen interest in Dawkins. “We may have to be on the lookout for the name Arpeggio in the future Sly, he apparently frequents London opera halls and might have connections with a lion by the name of Don Octavio. There’s always names to watch out for.”

“I think I preferred Dolly making a mess or causing misadventures to all the weirdness that Pom brought to our home.” Sighing loudly, Dylan looked around outside quickly before closing the front door. “We were always a little weird already anyways, come on Dawkins let’s see what problems you’re having with the mandrill robot parts now. Maybe Bentley might know how to help with what you want to do.”

Those three be going off and I turned to Sly.

“So… no Pom huh?” Said Sly as he crouched down next to me and be giving me a quick hug, he was joined by Murray who had been snuggling an armful of happy puppies proclaiming him to look like the mascot of Hamburger Hippo.

“No… she’s now lost in Africa. Nobody be knowing where she is now, but at least I know she will be fine.” I wasn’t happy about any of this, Pom was here! “She be having someone to protect and she’s being a very good guard.”

The floor erupted in front of us making us jump, the muddy dog Diesel poked his head up and sniffed at us.

“Oh neat… you were some place that smelled like plants and giant insects!” Diesel pulled himself out and took a sniff of Dodo. “You smell like a friend, my nose wouldn’t lie about that!”

“Diesel, what did I say about digging up the foundations of our home!” Dylan yelled from the other room and Diesel immediately jumped into the open floor sending a mound of dirt flying upwards.

Dodo warbled happily and then started to wander around the ground floor looking at all the puppies that be taking an interest in him.

“If mom and dad didn’t have work, then I would think they’d be worried about a gang of thieves coming into our house.” Dante grumbled with his paws crossed.

“We only steal from other criminals or steal as a prank. In the case of a prank, we return what was stolen through the mail… at our expense no less!” Stated a proudly chuckling Murray with his fist on his hips. “The Murray can guarantee that we’re not bad guys, also your all really fun to hug!”

The shouting of many puppies could be heard and all of them be saying the word ‘hug’ as they bowl a laughing Murray over. Nuzzling and licking him with affection.

“Yeah, watch what you say around here, we have these things called ‘trigger words’ that’ll set off a large portion of our family into running in certain directions related to them.” As Dante watched his brothers and sisters crawl all over Murray, took interest in Dodo or were playing with each other, he took small moment to look at a picture of a smiling Dolly on the wall. “It’s still not the end of the world if you do trigger them though. Please keep our home a secret, we’re not actually watched by bipeds and we don’t want to be split up.”

“Don’t worry about that, why would the soon to be world famous Bentley, Murray and Sly ever say anything about knowing a house full of dogs with no bipeds to watch over them?” Sly said with a smile, then three dogs with golden chains with the numbering one, two and three be running up to him. “You guys seem to be taking care of yourself well enough.”

“You’re a thief?” The one with a golden three said tail wagging.

“That’s awesome.” The one with the golden one said looking adoringly at Sly.

“What kind of cool stuff have you done?” The one with the golden two said. “I’m Dimitri Two!”

-Two hours later-

Sly’s friend be having a fun time with the Dalmatians Pom befriended.

“A rocket powered elevators would just blast through the roof of your home if it was made like that!” An upset Bentley stated to Dawkins.

“…” Dawkins didn’t look like he was going to say anything to the accusation. “That… did take a bit of money to repair.”

“You actually made one with what you have here?” Bentley looked a bit surprised. “Color me impressed, but I think you should have been more careful. How did you dogs get away with that without the authorities ever catching on to all of this?”

“Oh we have our ways, but it is quite hard to keep a lid on our situation given all the trouble we cause around here.” Dawkins is being good friends with Bentley already.

Looking over to Murray, he be jovially playing tug of war with more than half the puppies in the family working against him.

Dodo is having fun and he be trying very hard not to hurt any of the puppies with any sudden movements, Dylan be eyeing him because of his size and it be clearly understandable that he be worrying about Dodo being around his family.

“Thanks for the discussion.” Dante be sharing ideas with Sly about how to be stealthy. “But I think you should talk to Shanty about what you’re going to do going forward from here.”

“Shanty, I want to know what you want to do going forward. Do you want to go to China with us or do you want to stay here and wait for Pom to show up again?” He crouched down and looked me in the eye. “Pom will want to bring their sister Dolly back here eventually. This place is rather safe and Mopsy can get back to The Prance Dance in Mesa City. Also it’ll be dangerous if you go with us and Mopsy will go if you do.”

“I not be running from danger. You be needing my help and I be needing yours, also we are being friends!” I do not abandon my friends, because I don’t be having many to be abandoning in the first place. “The faster we deal with the Fiendish Five, then the quicker we can be tracking Pom down. Mopsy doesn’t have to be doing anything dangerous and Dodo could be being a big help in protecting her.”

“Well, if you’re sure… I just want you to know that I’m fairly uncomfortable with putting you in danger again, but if you’re going to do that yourself anyway. Why wouldn’t I want you with us to keep you out trouble?” Sly be receiving the biggest smile I can be giving him. “We’ll stay a day or two then set out, but we will be coming back here afterwards to see if she showed up in our absence.”

“That being good enough for me, because I be wanting to work on holding my breath. Real pirates can be holding their breath for five minutes!” I would not be stating that a second longer than nine minutes and fifty nine second would end up with the pirate dying immediately. “It be quite deadly to be learning the technique alone past a certain point. I be needing help to get up to eight minutes as that be a great achievement, only truly legendary pirates can be doing that!”

“Hearing things like that is making me waffle on whether or not we should actually start teaching you escape artist tricks.” Sly commented dryly.

-That morning, Africa, Dolly-

I yawned and blinked, oh right, we’re in Africa. The tree we were in wasn’t exactly comfortable to sleep in, but we were securely in place thanks to my skateboard.

“Hey Pom, how are you feeling after yesterday?” I asked as the she shifted and opened her eyes, she gave me a frown. “Like that huh… yeah, you’re still badly bruised. At least you aren’t bleeding anymore.”

The things Pom could do with her wool was amazing, making her wool act like gauze was a neat ability when we lacked medical supplies. Even if she looked rested, Pom still didn’t look one hundred percent.

“How many more of those…” Feeling my stomach grumble, I looked to Pom and whined hungrily. “Uh... was that tree always there?”

Pom sat up and looked at the small tree and quirked an eye in confusion, before she gained a slight look of panic.

“What’s wrong Pom?” Shifting about Pom moved her backside to a nearby branch and let me have my skateboard back, which I strapped onto my back.

Pom be pointing to the small tree and pulled out a small banana bunch.

“Oh… alien banana peels shouldn’t really be growing into trees that fast huh?” I didn’t mind bananas, but I was going to need something better eventually.

Pom nodded as she stared at the tree wide eyed.

-Pom-

Note to self, get back to Camden Town and check if there’s an Elhorn apple tree now growing in the park there. I might have started an epidemic of odd flavored fruit trees… not the worst thing in the world really.

Except it was mildly worrying given how saturated Elhorn was with its version of apple and banana trees.

“Excuse Rafiki, but you two look like wayward souls that could use aid.” A mandrill with a staff stated as he joined us on the tree. “Need a guide? Follow Rafiki to his home and he will see to your pain after dealing with that horrible sky beast.”

Author's Note

...

103. Great Scott-land!

-Equus, School of Friendship, Yona-

“Have you seen an earth pony named Sandbar by any chance?” The lovable princess Cadence is asking of Yona.

“No, but Yona think he said something about swimming across Ponyville lake to make you lose track of him.” I watch as the princess smiled, then Yona be getting an awful, if wonderful, idea. “Maybe he be getting help from Gallus and Silver Stream who are hanging out around there. Gallus is still having problems expressing his feelings, Yona thinks you could help with that while looking for Sandbar.”

“Thanks!” Cadence ran off leaving me standing there all alone, up until I turned to the nearby bed.

“Is she gone?” Sandbar’s voice sounded out from under the bed.

“Yes, Yona thinks she’s gone now Sandbar.” It was seconds later that Sandbar is giving Yona a big hug, this is making Yona’s entire day.

“Do you think Gallus and Silver stream are going to be okay? Princess Cadence is a little… crazy… at the moment.” Hugging Sandbar again felt right, his face turning red was adorable.

-Earth, lunchtime, Camden Town, Dalmatian Household, Shanty-

“So why do you not seem to be a bit more worried or sad about Dolly being gone?” I be asking this of Dylan as he was the big brother of the family. I do not know what having a brother is like, maybe sisters, but Dylan be a very nice dog. “I’m upset that Pom is being lost, but at least she has your sister as a friend.”

“Oh trust me, we are sad that Dolly is not around and frankly we are worried that she might never come home, but we’re tired of living in fear and want to move forward and think positively. That and my step sister is pretty tough, did you see this video of her cutting the head off that gorilla robot with her skateboard?” Yes, Dylan, I did be seeing that… now I be wanting a skateboard that can possibly be doing that with my fighting style. “Didn’t know she had it in her. I know she can be cunning, but capable in a fight? She usually relied on me more for solving a really bad situation, but over the last week or so Pom agreed to train her and she just had Dolly doing a bunch of average stuff all day every day. Since Pom trained you to fight, maybe you’d know what Pom was trying to accomplish.”

“Pom be trying to teach Dolly that she can be fighting using what she be knowing already, she obviously be using that skateboard to great effect.” The training be effective for me, so it should work for Dolly just as well to figure things out herself.

Three nearly identical dogs be coming up to us and they were looking to Dylan, they all be looking the same with only their collars to tell them apart. At least the Dimi-three be having different amounts of spots and appearances even without their gold chain necklaces to number them.

“Dylan, like, can you tell me where my special fur shampoo is?” One asked in a friendly tone as she approached her big brother. “It isn’t where I last saw it.”

“I need help finding my collars pendant, I lost it!” The second one said impatiently. “Can you help me find it Dylan?”

“I’m good Dylan, I’m playing Nintendogs!” The third was holding a device in her front paws and I be looking at the dog on it she be playfully tossing a tennis ball around for. “The battery should last me a few good hours.”

“Uh… Déjà Vu, you do realize that we are dogs right.” Asked Dylan with a confusing look on his face. “And have a large number of brothers and sisters, which are also dogs that you could spend time with.”

“So?” The third female Dalmatian, Déjà Vu, said as she continued to play with the image of a dog on the device as I sat next to her and watched.

I be easily knowing what Dalmatians looked like, how could I not after spending the night in a house full of them, but I not be as knowledgeable on dogs like Pom is.

“Right, not questioning this further. Come on Destiny, Dallas! Say Shanty, can you make sure Déjà Vu doesn’t get weird by keeping her company…” Leaning a bit closer to me, Dylan whispered. “She kind of has problems with being separated from her sisters or being alone.”

“Dylan!” The two sisters yelled in tandem.

“Okay, okay, where did you last see the shampoo bottle and where did you last put on your collar?” Dylan walked off leaving me alone with the one he called Déjà Vu.

“Uh hi, I’m Déjà Vu, want to watch me play this some more?” She be looking up at me curiously.

“Sure!” I answered. “I not be really knowing much about dogs, which be Pom’s area of expertise. I be knowing a lot about pirates though.”

“Maybe I can help you learn a thing or two!” Déjà Vu’s tail started wagging. “You can tell me all about pirates where you’re from in return, pirates are cool!”

We would be being good friends.

-Scotland, outside a golf course, Smolder-

“I am so glad that you weren’t awake to witness it Ocellus.” Muttering this into my claws, I looked up at the still twisted hulk of what was once a flying vehicle as I walked up to it. “For once I was actually terrified for my life even if dragons are made of far sterner stuff, I was far more terrified for yours. Apparently these ducks are so used to it, it’s almost like they live in that town of Airship Mauled where airships crash into any nearby visiting gods on a daily basis.”

Ocellus smiled and wiggled around a bit in my grip, she was getting closer to waking up and I could wait for as long as it took. It was easy to tell how bad the magical backlash she took from taking over those Evil Core machines was.

How anyone, aside from me, survived the airplane crash the other day was beyond me. Scrooge and his family just calmly offloaded the sky pirates onto the nearby authorities and set up camp in a place called Moorshire. The golf course nearby was a place some of them have been to before.

Now we were stuck in Scotland until Launchpad can somehow miraculously turn that twisted mound of deadly sharp bits of metal sticking out everywhere back into a flying vehicle. Apparently this place was famous for its magical fauna so I wouldn’t stand out too much, but I was still staying out of view of the public unless I covered my wings. I was doing that with my satchel covering my back.

I passed for a young lizard biped or animalistic, but there were no winged lizards quite like me around here. Also some parts of the world seems to be in denial about acknowledging the fact that magic and monsters exist, Scotland wasn’t one of those places given how Castle Mcduck apparently has a demon dog. There are banshees in the lowlands and I’ve been warned by Webby about avoiding creatures that insist you go near water or climb onto their backs.

Launchpad’s very existence was definitely a sign that the guy had to have magic of some kind, because to crash that badly without anyone getting seriously injured more than a single mild bruise was nothing short of miraculous. That this kind of thing happens continuously with him is even more ridiculous, but confirmed by everyone currently with us as being his thing.

“Oh hey there Smolder, I’m still trying to figure out where to begin with this…” Launchpad was a duck with a big chin and was really tall in an aviators jacket, I’m pretty sure this guy could crash an airship with all the magical safeties on, on a top of the line model no less, set entirely to full power. “Did you need something?”

“Just wondering how long fixing the plane will take, also how long does usually fixing something like…” Affixing my eyes to the thing currently resembling a sea urchin or doing a very impressive impression of it and was not so much a flying vehicle for a moment, I just turned back to Launchpad’s earnest smile. “That?”

“Oh this, it doesn’t look too bad, a roll of duct tape, some rubber bands and a bit of elbow grease and I can have the Sun Chaser flying in six hours tops.” Something fell off the mangled mass of metal and Launchpad scrutinized it a bit. “Make that three day and twelve hours, two days and six if I can find a good enough sledge hammer.”

“So… are you well trained mechanic?” I asked, because getting ‘that’ back in flying condition within even a week was pushing my suspension of disbelief to absurd degrees, that’s even with being a dragon from an entirely different planet and dimension.

“Huh, oh no, but I make do though!” Launchpad chuckled and rubbed at his head, my right eye twitched a bit. “Don’t know why people ask me that so much, it’s not like you need a degree to put things back the way they were. Now if only I could remember where the rotating things went again…”

He was serious… he was actually serious! At least he was a decent friend even if his intelligence left something to be desired.

Leaving Launchpad to it, I wandered over to the Moorshire golf course. Launchpad’s ability to crash apparently had a knack for hitting the same place more than once. So we weren’t far from Glasgow or Dismal Downs where Castle Mcduck was, which is where Scrooge, Webby, Huey, Dewey and Louie were heading.

Lena and Violet were still here at the golf course to look out for me and Ozzy, I approached the tents the two were relaxing around.

“Is it always this hectic around them?” I asked as I gently placed Ocellus on a sleeping bag.

“Oh it’s usually worse, things have been a bit quieter since we dealt with that FOWL organization.” Lena confirmed, once again bringing up that weird organization. “At least we’re not dealing with werewolves.”

“I have never been to Scotland before, what are the chances we can see the loch ness monster?” Violet asked with her beak not poking into a book for once. “Before you ask Smolder, Nessy is a large aquatic creature that is rumored to be living in Loch Ness. It is a said to be rare see it at all personally, also people seem to find it impossible to get a decent photograph of its majestic nature. Others say it’s a giant eel or a creature of an amphibian nature.”

“I think we have a pretty good chance of meeting her…” Lena said looking up at a shadow being cast over us, the long necked creatures with four large flippers and a thick tail at the end of a round body slowly dragged itself over to us and leaned its head down to sniff me.

“Zounds, this was an incredibly fast meeting… why is it whenever Bigfoot or Nessie are seen like this there is never any cameras around?” Checking her pockets frantically, Violet eventually pulled out her phone. “The batteries dead.”

“Mine too, forgot to charge it… you were using yours to look up local cuisine and facts about Scotland all night weren’t you?” Lena gestured lazily at the large creature just playfully nuzzling me. “Guess Nessie is getting away with this sighting today, I mean how often do you see something like her crawling around on land?”

“Oh hey Nessy, I got twelve peanut butter and banana sandwiches for you.” Launchpad came over after having pulled out a large bag with sandwiches and dumped them out onto a plate. “I did promise you the next time I was in the area!”

“I’m surprised, you know Nessie personally Launchpad?” Queried a curious Violet who, alongside Lena and me, watched as Launchpad started tossing sandwiches into her open mouth.

“Oh yeah, we’re good friends, accidentally crashed a taco cart into her once, helped nurse her back to health after that and I apologized profusely for the incident.” Well Launchpad, you are just proving yourself to be the weirdest guy I have ever met in my entire life. That wasn’t a bad thing. “Guess Nessie here just took a liking to me.”

“How do you…” I started to ask when Lena cut me off.

“For the sake of all our sanity’s, don’t ask how Launchpad crashed a taco cart.” Stated Lena with a disturbed glance at Launchpad.

“Well the taco cart was evil and wanted to slaughter some organization called Cerberus, it was yelling something about an AI named EDI and getting revenge on a shepherd. It was pretty upset about being created to only sell burritos and tacos, I don’t know why that would be… burritos and tacos are great! If I could just make burritos and tacos all day, I’d be happy just from the smell alone… it also complained about that too come to think of it, despite it not having a nose.” Launchpad sounded like he was winding up to a long winded story. “So anyway, it was flying at the time and I was in Ireland after being abducted by aliens…”

“No, stop, I agree with my adoptive elder sister Lena, we don’t need to know anything in great detail Launchpad.” Violet shook her head and was being blunter than a baseball bat. "You crashed it, that’s all we really need to know. Please get back to rebuilding the plane Mr. McQuack.”

“Well okay then, nice to see you again Nessie!” Launchpad received a giant lick from Nessie and she licked the four of us before dragging herself towards the nearest source of water, she had thankfully been gentle with licking Ocellus. “She’s quite majestic isn’t she? Well, back to work!”

“So it’s not just the family?” I asked as I turned to my best friends of this world.

“They may be part of a large localized conjoined weirdness magnet that most of their family inherited, of which you were drawn to as well.” Violet nodded to herself and then stated. “That doesn’t mean that weird stuff exclusively happens to them, though it is basically a once a week thing for them to end up in strange situations. You and Ocellus are the tamest thing to ever happen to them according to our mutual friend and expert Webby, who is well versed in the subject of adventure with her family and the weirdness it brings into all our lives.”

Ocellus wiggled a bit and managed to roll over on the sleeping bag, a bright smile on her face. Nessy freely gave her a solid mass of love and I think that sped up her recovery. You could wake up from that coma any day now Ocellus, though carrying you around was gives me a decent workout.

“So anything we should watch out for while we’re here and not going to Castle McDuck?” This was a quiet place and I could maybe get into some golfing or playing with the golf carts. “Also what are the chances we can find something interesting to do with one of those golf carts?”

“Now you’re talking my language here Smol.” There was a smirk on Lena’s face as she crossed her arms.

We heard a snort sound and a slight giggle. I turned to look at Ocellus for a few moments, but she didn’t wake. Just hearing her make a noise was nice.

“I concur, we can get up to some safe mischief. Provided we don’t run into trouble immediately.” Giving Violet a look, I sighed angrily.

“Violet, given how your friend’s family works and it being a proven fact in my world, why would you ever want to tempt fate like that?” Honestly, given how often it happens, I think it’s a force of habit by everyone in every world at this point.

“It’s not like that superstition has any founding in…” Violet was about to start defending herself when two voices interrupted.

“Hey Bramble, do you remember that guy?” Turning to look at the pair of what looked vaguely like Equus earth ponies, there was something off about them… aside from being .

“Sure do Briar, someone finally won the druid cup and he was there to commentate on it… not that they would actually get a live news feed in the druid golfing maze.” The second pony creature stated. “Ah golf the only thing we love more than that is…”

“Bramble! Hey there, would you like to go near the lake or you know hop on our backs for a ride. I’m Briar and that’s Bramble.” Briar was the pink one and Bramble was purple, they also sounded somewhat familiar and they looked like twins with the same hairstyle and appearance aside from their colors. “Yeah, you might even get to meet the loch ness monster if you come with us!”

“I stand completely corrected.” Violet dully stated. “Right, I shall endeavor to never tempt fate again. Though it is fairly hard to do from what sources tell me about impulsiveness being inherent to most beings.”

“Why do I get a vibe that is saying don’t trust them at all?” The two pony beings both glared at me. Yep, that vibe was getting stronger. “Also we already saw Nessie, she was pretty nice.”

“Oh darn and we just missed her!” Bramble sound particular sarcastic as she said that.

“That’s because they’re kelpies Smolder, they can mimic voices and tend to drag people to a watery graves… they are trying to kill us and are not being very subtle about it.” They both glared at Violet even hard than they did at me. “They can’t really do much unless you willing hop on their backs or follow them to water on purpose, they are always noted for their dripping wet manes, being found near water and causing brutal drownings.”

“So they only look adorable and yet are trying to kill us… that’s pretty metal of them!” Lena stated with a bit of adoration. “Do you have kelpies where you’re from Smolder?”

“Kelpies back on Equus aren’t nearly that pudgy, they are more skeletal and freaky. They almost look like they are able to pass for normal ponies back home. These two look like they been hitting the chocolate… and hard.” That got me even worse glaring from the two than what Violet was getting. “Should I give them a proper sendoff to leave us alone?”

“Not quite yet, there are some things I want to know from them. Why all the drowning specifically?” The two looked at Violet curiously. “I mean do you actually eat the bodies or do you just drown them for fun? Do you have to drown them to eat, why can’t you just attack us outright right now?”

“A little of column A, a little of column B and as for column C well… it is kind of hardwired into us to try and trick or coerce someone into it.” Bramble said with a bright and seemingly friendly smile. “You’re probably better off not knowing the full extent of things we do to idiots…”

“Yep, that’s about the size of it… so can we cut out the middle part and get to drowning you now?” Briar stated in a cheerful fashion that I found quite disturbing.

“No thanks, I’m not feeling particularly suicidal today.” Violet responded with a flat look on her face.

“Touch my sister or friends and I’ll render your magical butts into a fine paste.” Lena started glowing blue and floating.

“Are you sure we can’t interest you in a nice watery grave?” Briar asked innocently. “It’s an exciting way to die, really!”

I just sent them a flat look and blasted out a burst of flames at the two of them making them run off.

“We would make it quick and painless, honest!” Bramble said poking head up from a bush, I tagged her in the face with a fireball. She shrieked and fell backwards, Briar came back and started to drag her away. “Alright, alright, we get it, we’ll just find some other poor dumb creature to drown!”

The two pony like creatures ran off into the woods nearby.

“What next a banshee?” Lena queried lazily, a large black dog shot out of the bushes.

It trotted up to us and sniffed me, then rolled onto its back and started panting happily while looking to me with its glowing green eyes.

“No a demon dog apparently… how long has this golf course been open for again? The strange phenomena around here is pretty thick. Almost enough so that if I were to stab the fog around here with a knife, then it would probably ask me for a formal apology.” Violet looked about with exasperation, before carefully rubbing the giant dogs belly affectionately. I wondered if this was how big Canis Majors back on Equus could get. “The normal golf course seriously needs a barrier against dangerous magical entities if there are this many in the given area.”

“Less than one year, plus I just noticed where they put all the ‘beware of kelpies’ signs around here.” Lena pointed to a nearby billboard with both Briar and Brambles appearances on it. There were warnings to not go near large bodies of water with them or even be near them.

“Well… that’s vibrant and noticeable…” I sat down next to Ocellus. “So got anything to eat?”

Violet silently passed me a bag full of granola and I dug in while ignoring the demon dog whining for affection, I sighed and started to scratch his chin and his tail started wagging cheerfully.

“Do you think this is Castle McDuck's demon dog?” Lena finally asked as she tossed a snack into the demons mouth and it happily chewed on it.

“Could be, we’ll find out in a while if he sticks around long enough.” The demon dog barked and nuzzled Violet. “He seems fairly benign for a demon.”

“The only demon that might be benign, I’ve heard a few interesting stories about the demon Pom calls Fred.” It wasn’t hard for me to believe Pom when she said Fred was the most affable nice, yet terrifying, demon she’s ever met, aside from Mr. Beezy the giant fly that just exploded all over the place.

“What kind of name is Fred for a demon?” Lena muttered. “Sounds kind of lame.”

“A pretty good one, as the demon is actually terrifying from the way Pom talks about him.” I considered what I heard about him and nodded to myself. “If he can get away with having a normal name like Fred and still have a dangerous enough reputation, then is it really lame? If anything, he actually makes hearing the name ‘Fred’ scary.”

“Are you sure we can’t interest you in a nice water noose?" Bramble asked as she and Briar were spying on us from the bushes. "Maybe a little nibble at your necks as water floods into your body and you struggle violently while the bubbles slowly float to the surface?”

“Hey demon dog.” Addressing the large and dangerous canine near me, the dog sat up and looked to me. “Be a good boy and sic ’em!”

The demon dog leapt at the two kelpies and they were soon pushed out of sight, then we heard screaming.

“Oh my badness, its beating me halfway to death with my own skull!" Briar screamed. "I didn’t even know this was physically possible!”

“Devils, why is it using my own spine like a soup ladle?!” Bramble screeched.

“That was cruel of you…” Violet tutted loudly at me. “That poor demon dog.”

Author's Note

The continuation of Smolder and Ocellus's slice of life, when compared to Shanty's crime epic and Pom's wild adventures.

104. Casing Camden and African Aid.

-???, Oleander-

“Let’s see, knights of specific attributes are common to this region and the world is under threat by a possessed person who used cutesy magical playing cards to distract everyone from their takeover scheme… am I missing anything here Fred? Because I feel like we’ve done this before.” After my asking this, Fred looked like he was about to answer when ‘The End of Pain’ flickered into existence and blocked an attack from a scythe.

“Yes… your death should you not join The Enchantress!” The scythe wielding knight hovered and his hand started to glow and several skeletons rose from the ground.

I started reading from Fred and charging up my horn.

“Guessing that you have absolutely no idea who I am, this Enchantress sent you to attack me just because I’m powerful and is willingly ready to make me a threat to her cause if I don’t join her.” The silence that followed was quite telling to me. “I’m going to go with no… I won’t be joining the inevitable losing side in all of this.”

“You choose to be a threat then, I am Spectre Knight and I must…!” The beam of darkness sent him flying off into the distance and into the evil looking tower a long way away, I could vaguely make out the dust cloud of his impact.

I was getting better about charging that up faster.

“Yeah, you don’t want to mess with my Ollie, SHE’S VICIOUS!” Fred stated to the warrior skeletons that were here looking between themselves, they all immediately dissolved out of fear.

As I started trotting away from the graveyard, I noticed a blue armored figure with a shovel run onto the scene and looked around confusedly. His armor was notably covered in chunks of skeleton and ectoplasm.

After a moment the guy raised his shovel to the sky like he just had achieved some great victory.

I shook my head, maybe my time would be better spent on the western continent of Sequin Land and not the eastern continent around The Valley in the Knight Fight Peninsula. I heard they had better clothing out that way, maybe I could even get something fetching while I was there.

Before I headed out that way, I wasn’t going to fight directly this time… I was just going to annoy The Enchantress into the ground with constant highly demeaning pranks.

Starting with sending ‘Noise Overlord’ Song Ender to play with her fortress as much as he wants, then I’ll want to start a home owners association there and will unionized her own minions… that will be my opening salvo!

-Earth, Camden Town, International Officer Nick Wilde-

“Nick Wilde, fox biped, currently investigating oddities happening in the Camden Town region of the United Kingdoms.” I spoke concisely into the recording device.

“Leap Lamb was last seen fighting a strange wooly lizard monster, Caper Canine was still alive on her back during that fight as we can see in the image provided by passengers on the flight that were witness to the end of her fight.” My best rabbit buddy in the world was working up the case report, it was getting weirder by the day since we’ve been investigating everything weird that’s been going on in the given area over the last week or so. “Their current location is unknown, but they may be in the Sub-Saharan sectors of Africa should they have survived both that horrifying monster and the fall. Which means we wouldn’t find Hunter De Ville’s mysterious bodyguard anywhere in the northern Africa if we were to send someone to search for her.”

I turned off the recording device.

“With the way that lamb can jump? There is no ‘should’ about it Carrots, I can guarantee that Leap Lamb definitely survived that fall or did you forget that her body doubles as a glider?” I’ve never seen a sheep stretch their wool into a functional glider before, but the lamb bodyguard was MIA and we had no leads on her whereabouts. We were also told to stay put in the Camden Town area to be on the lookout for anyone else going after Hunter De Ville. “She’s alive, but in what condition remains to be seen after she somehow managed to hold onto and fight a monster while on top an airliner flying at full speed. We’re not dealing with normal people here, especially that nasty looking Ursula character that escaped custody somehow.”

The other bodyguard currently protecting Hunter was Gabby McStabberson… her history was as blank as far as being around here went and she was a little known mercenary that was cheap to employ. She had been employed by several individuals with sketchy histories, the least sketchy was Scrooge McDuck on a pro bono mission to save the world from terrorists that were apparently dressed up as aliens.

We lived in a confusing world when things like Gizmo Duck are becoming normal sights, we also had the strange bodyguard that obviously had supernatural abilities and a dog with an incredible skilled in using a skateboard that helped us out with those machine mandrills, the gorilla grabbers and the airship before disappearing.

The dog somehow hijacked one of the flying sled like vehicles made by Dr. M and caught up with the one everyone is calling Leap Lamb, what little information we had on the lamb’s actual name from digging around the general area was Pom Lambchop.

From what was known about her, Pom was a down on her luck animalistic that had lost her voice and had a thing for dogs. She was suspected to have survived at least five tons of crushing force from one of the gorilla grabber robots and was far stronger than her scrawny body should actually account for.

The people we met had nothing bad to say about Pom’s countenance as she was a relatively friendly and polite figure that suddenly appeared in Camden Town as if out of nowhere, we kind of have her down as being from Scotland or Ireland. She definitely wasn’t anything like Bellwether and currently had a lot of fans due to her unbelievable actions.

We had been initially called in to deal with the several criminal pile up with one of Cruella De Ville’s company buildings. All of which involved several separate assassination attempts on one Hunter De Ville’s life. The current emancipated runner of the company having been locked in a storage container for six months a little while back with only dog food to survive off of and rubber squeaky toys for entertainment, a short while later Cruella is arrested for several entertaining charges.

Cruella was, to turn a phrase, one sick puppy of a duck. She apparently had taken a life insurance clause out on Hunter and likely expected to make bank on his death… which would have been seen as an accident.

That the dog from the incident with Dr. M was a Dalmatian that was a rather strange connection to Hunter and Pom, given Cruella’s well known hatred of Dalmatians… on top of most other animals including despising chickens rather specifically, or just one in particular if you were to listen to her psychiatric report. Cruella was known for extreme animal cruelty, except in one case of a ferret she named Scorch.

“Something huge is going on here… now if only we knew what we were looking for.” I scratched at my head.

“We got a hit Nick. Don Karnage has been captured and turned in by… the McDuck family? Scotland now has a good number of those sky pirates in custody.” Didn’t the McDuck family recently put out a notice that the international criminal Phantom Blot recently attacked Scrooge McDuck’s home in Calisota Duckburg? That wasn’t too long after famous Hollywood biped actor Mickey Mouse met him in a fight and managed to scare him off days prior. “Not all the pirates have been captured though, so they will likely make a breakout attempt and the McDuck family currently has a flight plan eventually set for… Camden Town? This is getting kind of spooky.”

“Anything else of interest? Scrooge could just be visiting his ancestral home and taking on a side business venture around here, he does it fairly often in his travels.” I asked while looking over Judy’s shoulder as she typed away at the computer. “That guy can smell a good investment from five hundred miles away. Sure he has had some shady business dealings, but he’s never been caught doing anything close to illegal… at least on purpose. He actually deals with illegal doings harshly and most of the time personally.”

“Carmelita is asking for any updates on the newest Cooper Gang sightings, she’s heading for China to scope out Panda King’s operations and hopes to catch the Cooper Gang when they inevitably show up.” Chances of that happened were unlikely as they ever were Judy, the recent Cooper Gang tends to leave dangerous criminals badly beaten and battered for the authorities to capture. “Wait… what’s this about a hijacking on the way to the Unite Kingdom... by terrorists suspected to be Russian Mafia? Nick… can you guess where this flight was heading?”

“Camden Town?” I asked.

“Camden Town…” Answered Judy while sighing audibly and putting her face into her hands. “Can we just go to bed now and snuggle Nick? This is giving me a huge headache. What next, the newest Cooper Gang coming to Camden Town to play with dogs?”

-Behind Nick and Judy, outside the window to their hotel room-

The less than hidden Cooper Van drove up and parked outside a pet store and Murray went in, he came out with several large bags of kibble in his shopping trolley, along with chewy snacks, a few teething toys for a very particular baby puppy and a Dalmatian plush toy of Caper Canine that was for a pair of young Dalmatian sisters that were missing their favorite big sister.

Apparently Leap Lamb and Caper Canine were now popular plush toys thanks to one Hunter De Ville jumping on legally acquiring the licenses to sell merchandise of the two heroic figures. As there was no end clause in Pom Lambchop contract with him, which she herself knew about, he was legally awarded the merchandising rights to prevent other people from using Pom’s image.

Hunter would owe Pom money if she ever sought to collect from him, the toys were made possible through the help of Hunter De Ville’s Happy Hound Helpers Company which sold them as safe toys that were viable for both children and pets.

The goofy pink hippo was grinning happily with his purchases as he loaded them up and within ten minutes he drives off without either of the Interpol officers noticing his presence.

-Somewhere in Africa, Dolly-

“Where are we going exactly?” I would only skateboard on dirt if I knew it would work, maybe downhill…

“To where Rafiki lives, do you not pay enough attention?” The mandrill stated with a hint of a smile as he shook his head in a wry manner. “The things Rafiki has to deal with! A mystical protector from beyond our realm and a barker from outside even the Outlands of our home in the Pride Lands, but is still actually of our world.”

“I’m not sure if I know this for certain or not… but you don’t seem like your native to the area.” Seeing the mandrill hunch slightly and make a wincing noise, I wonder what it was I said. “You just seem off to me.”

He continued moving on with that weird walking stick and the dangling thing from it.

“Wise you are barker, this… is where Rafiki lives.” He pointed his stick forward as Pom and I came up next to him and looked at a fairly large tree. I was impressed, Pom not so much. “You’ve seen bigger than Rafiki’s home yes?”

Pom nodded at the question directed at her.

“You will see more than Rafiki ever will in his entire life then, but I am happy where I am. You, currently, are not.” This Rafiki guy then started towards the tree again. “While you are guests of Rafiki, you will not be hunted by the prides of lions that roam these lands. They usually know better than to interrupt Rafiki’s work. This is the Tree of Life, a place where animals come to Rafiki for aid or to ask for a simple change of perspective. Rafiki is the Pride Land’s spiritualist and shaman, so the balance around here may be maintained.”

Why did Pom’s eyes suddenly light up at the word shaman?

“What’s a shaman?” It was pretty hot out here, I could really use some shade under that tree.

“Rafiki is of course!” He said with a bit of laughter as we approached the tree. “Please do not disrupt the ways of life here, your ways are not the ways of those who live here. You two can safely drink of the fruits here to recover from your travels and can even stay the night with old Rafiki, but Rafiki is knowing you will soon be on the move again. Rafiki is seeing many a strange sights, like the ever curious Timon and Pumbaa, but a being from realms outside our own is new, not even of the spirit realm either.”

He was pointing to Pom as if he absolutely knew she was an alien, Pom didn’t react to that at all.

“How can you tell?” This guy sounded wise to me, but I was a little more than curious about how he found us or knew these things about Pom.

“Rafiki see’s things that some refuse to… or simply can’t. The one not from our realm carries her magic with her and her spirit is far more powerful than what her appearance shows, yet there isn’t an imbalance in her nature. Rafiki is already knowing much of her nature just from a glance, sometimes the glance is all Rafiki gets and needs.” That was rather cryptic Rafiki, yes I finally cottoned on to that being his name. It certainly took me long enough, this guy was weird and annoying in the way he spoke. “Stranger still, the mixture of the magic going between her… and you. Our realm’s magic and hers have formed a bond of intrigue that even not one such as Rafiki can untangle by sight or skill, it is not dangerous though. The bond just may save your lives in unexpected ways, whatever the perils you may cross.”

“Uh… my name is Dolly?” I answered as Rafiki pointed at me.

“Dolly an energetic sounding name, one of youth and fire. It is quite fitting.” Was that a compliment? Rafiki was hard to read and he kept smiling in an annoying manner. “Now what, is the voiceless ones name?”

He pointed to Pom.

“Her name is Pom.” I answered.

“A name of protection, hidden strength, fearful yet loving and fearless in the face of death when it is for the sake of others.” Rafiki looked between the two of us with his left eye quirked up. “Rafiki can almost see why magic tethers the both of you together.”

“I don’t think I even have magic, even after Pom showed up and this weird bond thing happened between us.” Normal dog here, aside from skateboarding, I really didn’t do anything too unusual growing up.

I may have lost my mother, but at least dad is happy with my step mom. Probably isn’t happy that I’m no longer around and far away from home.

“That you did not know of your nature, doesn’t make a difference that you know of it now. Your heart guides you, the magic you have is something that you need to figure out for yourself.” Okay this Rafiki guy was way annoying, I didn’t understand any of that… maybe Dylan would have though. “The strongest of ‘Magic’ comes from the heart, Pom knows this. Rafiki believes you will learn in time, but… magic is everywhere and in every living thing~. My tree is a place where one can hear of the magic that comes from when I sing-~.”

“Really?” I stated flatly.

“There’s a magic in every moment, there’s something miraculous happening in every way-~. There’s a magic in every moment, so what kind of miracle have you seen today~? There’s always a new breath whenever the circle rises our way~!” Rafiki sang as we walked into the shade of the tree, he climbed up towards the fruit. “High up in the clouds, there are spirits that I’ve seen, of dead lions that still are my friends as if they haunt all of Rafiki’s dreams~. You may not believe it, or know it at all, but with the power of your hearts and spirits the two of you shall never learn to fall~!”

“Is there really a magic in every moment, wait, what did I just say--~?” I sang along and Pom was mouthing the words next to me with a smile on her face. “Why am I singing along with this song, this is really quite not okay--~!”

“That’s just the rhythm of the moment, so let the music in your heart sway--~!” Rafiki dropped from the tree with several things and he popped a fruit in half. “Won’t you just let the rhythm of life play~?”

“I have to admit that I’m afraid, of a world changing fright~. It seems like everything that’s happening to me has changed things as if over the night~. I didn’t know of magic and I don’t know where I am, I’m also stuck here with this thing that’s definitely not a lamb~.” Why was I feeling the music that I didn’t hear? “What am I to do when I’ve been uprooted, there’s only one thing I currently trust you see~. That I wish to help Pom and that friend we will always be--~!”

“There’s a magic within every moment, there are miracles every day-~” I sang alongside Rafiki knowing the song without knowing how I did, I’ve never sung this before in my life. “So don’t forget to live I say-, as the bright circle shines your way~!”

Pom was grinning at me as she sat down and watched us, Rafiki was mixing something in the strange fruit. After a few moment’s he nodded and held it out to Pom.

“Now partake of my brew, it’ll help your throat you’ll see--~. You can trust in me, old Rafiki, he’ll do you right as rain can be~.” Rafiki held up the fruit shell with strange liquids sloshing in it. “Rafiki wishes to only hear one things when you open your mouth from currently being tight, that is to let your weak voice out to let it be strong and free--~!”

Pom took the fruit shell and drank from it, she smiled and I saw a glow from under the bell that hadn’t rung once since I’ve known her.

“There’s the magic in this moment… there can be miracles in the things you say--~. But our actions can speak louder in their own way--~.” Pom sang quietly much to my shock, her voice was soft as her wool and it was becoming stronger. “You should never push that magic away-~. For whenever you can feel that happy heart song it’s a good- old day--~!”

“So let’s have a miraculous moment, where we can all hear that sweet music play--~!” We all sang together. “And while we’re sharing in the moment, a miracle is in play, oh what other miracles might we see today---~!”

We finished the song and I blinked, what the dog was that?!

“You see Dolly, magic is not always visible or always showing us what it does, but it has always been within you and those of your family. Rafiki may not be knowing your family, but he’s quite certain that he knows you!” With that said Rafiki, I think I just had an interesting experience and Pom could talk again! Rafiki patted me on the head gently and motioned to the entrance of his home which had stairs. “Come, Rafiki’s home is always open to new friends.”

“Thank you… I thought I would have to spend another month voiceless.” Pom stated weakly as she started to move through the entrance. I quickly followed behind her.

“Do not be thanking Rafiki, that Pom is talking is enough and shows his skills as the shaman of the Pride Lands are still strong as ever… even if his back is not, hah! It is a service he willingly provided at no cost to Rafiki or you.” Rafiki smiled at Pom. “Now be careful with your voice, for catching it again will be quite a trick if you lose it like you did before heeheehee!”

“You’re a nice person Rafiki.” Pom stated and finished drinking the juices from the mixture Rafiki gave her.

“Rafiki knows this well, ahahaha!” Rafiki seemed happier and jovial now.

“Might we ask for more of your help Rafiki?” Rafiki tilted his head as we sat inside his home, carved shelves full of strange fruits. “We’re… lost.”

“You need only find yourselves before you can find where you need to be. To start, you are not part of our circle of life here, but you are not unwelcome or welcome. You just are.” Rafiki responded with a smile in Pom’s directions. “Barkers with the tails longer than a monkeys, they will be your friends and powerful allies soon. Seeing you continue your journey will be a major part of what they will achieve. You however, will need to brave some dangers to get to them though.”

“Of course… nothing in life is ever truly simple is it?” Pom sighed out and wilted. “I just want to get home.”

“You will make it, you have the spirit for it… but you cannot do it alone.” Rafiki sounded serious with what he stated next. “Your body will perish if you leave ‘any’ of the truly ‘important ones’ behind, even if it could be for the best, the final decision is and will always be ‘theirs’. Can you accept that? Rafiki’s hopes you take this grave message quite seriously. Also know that even if your body doesn’t make it… your spirit will always find its way. Speaking of, the spirits tell Rafiki to state Baa-Ram-Ewe, what is its meaning?”

“What?!” I was soon calmed down by Pom who started running her hoof down my back.

“It’s okay Dolly, I understand exactly what Rafiki just told me. If I have to die for ‘their’ happiness and in the pursuit of achieving everything I currently need to. I will face what comes regardless.” Uh, Pom, what the dog are you talking about? You aren’t dying on my watch and you will get home, I know it! “Baa-Ram-Ewe, to our fleece, heart, home and our family, no matter where we lambkin go, we will always hold true. Lambkin be true.”

That sent shivers down my spine and resonated with me.

“Then a lambkin you are.” Rafiki stated while nodding sagely, leaving me confused and I was even more confused when he pointed at a wall. “You know yourself, Dolly needs time, but Rafiki thinks you will help. You will head in that direction once you are done here, Rafiki will point again if you need him to.”

“Uh what… can someone explain to me what just happened?” The calm feelings I received from Pom just made me even more confused.

“After we’re done here, we’ll go in that direction and find those long tailed barkers he talked about.” Didn’t even feel a single hint of nervousness from Pom as she hugged me. “As for now, I need to explain quite a few things about your training and what I will want to teach you now going forward. I hope your family will eventually forgive me.”

Author's Note

-Pom can now bark blast again-

105. Guardians.

-Four days later, Earth, Camden Town, Dalmatian Home, Lena-

Meeting my cousin Hunter in person was interesting, meeting his only friends in the world… even more so considering there was magic in the air as the door was opened by a dog with a star on his red collar.

“Hey there Dylan, this is my cousin I told you about and she was wondering if you’d be interested in meeting some friends of Pom.” The dog tilted his head at Hunter and then looked at me.

“Well there better be no funny business around here, we’ve already had to house thieves a few days ago and while they didn’t steal anything…” This dog looked upset. “By friends do you mean Smolder and Ocellus are here?”

“Thieves, did something happen while I was busy Dylan?” Hunter looked worried and Dylan rolled his eyes, sighed and rubbed at his forehead with his left paw.

“Yeah, one of Pom’s friends Shanty dropped on by looking for Pom with a gang of friendly thieves known as the Cooper Gang. In fact, you missed them leaving the other day.” This Dylan looked to me. “Hello, my name is Dylan Dalmatian, one of your cousin’s best friends and my life has gone strange since the discovery of magic existing… not that us being intelligent Dalmatians didn’t hint at that possibility already apparently. Oh and people can understand us within a certain distance of the house now, but only if they won’t intend us harm after hearing us speak. Aunt Marlow set this up and magic is weird.”

“Eee, so adorable!” Webby carefully crouched down in front of Dylan. “Can I pet you?”

“Wait… what do you mean Shanty was here and that she was hanging out with thieves? Sounds about right though knowing our optimistic gluttonous goat… can we come in? I’m Smolder and this blanket bug is Ocellus.” Smolder walked up to the door carrying Ocellus wrapped up in a blanket over her shoulder. “If you’ve met Shanty and if you’ve met Pom, given she has a Dalmatian with her, then can you tell us… wow… there are a lot of you here.”

There were a lot of Dalmatian’s milling about behind Dylan and quite a few of them seemed interested in us.

“Yeah, we get that a lot. Come on in, you might as well stay a day or two. Shanty will come back here to find out if we heard anything about you or Pom eventually, she’s headed out with that gang of thieves to deal with some guy named Panda King in China.” Dylan said tiredly, he turned to Webby. “Go ahead, pick me up and hug me like I you want to do, I’m also open to gentle petting too. Nothing rough please, I need this break from my chaotic family.”

Webby did so and hugged Dylan to her chest, but she did it carefully and Dylan relaxed into her grip as she walked inside.

“Did someone say hug?!” A Dalmatian puppy stated, soon several more started chanting ‘hug’ too while poking out from all over the place.

I quickly backed away, Webby just smiled as she was soon dogpiled by a large number of puppies and she was giggling happily as they nuzzled against her affectionately.

“Marlow… don’t all the dogs in your family currently have names that start with D Dylan?” Hunter asked and a chicken walked into sight and stared at me.

I stared right back at her.

“A De Spell.” She stated flatly while crossing her wings.

“I prefer Sabrewing.” The chicken was giving me some weird vibes as she looked me up and down.

“Good, one of the ones who isn’t power mad or letting magic go to their heads, the De Spell curse doesn’t affect you in the slightest. Your friendship and shadow magic is welcome.” She nodded and then turned to Hunter. “You’re definitely a De Ville, Dylan told me you’d be by today… since you were even capable of getting this close to the doorway you are one of the rare nice ones. I suggest you be highly paranoid about being around any other De Ville’s you meet.”

“Your aunt Marlow is a chicken?” Hunter asked curiously, Dylan nodded. “Oh and trust me, I intend to never be alone in the same room as another De Ville ever again!”

“Yep, me and your great aunt Cruella have a history… a decidedly bad one. Spot Irma Chicken, AKA detective Pullet Marlow. Aunt Marlow to the Dalmatians here, I dabble in the arcane and because of Cruella’s last attempt at killing me fifty or more years back… I’m almost immortal.” Spot then looked at the others with us. “I’m an old friend of the family back when she was still actively hunting their ancestors… say, is that a dragon?”

“Yeah, don’t mind or acknowledge us at all.” Huey stated as he, Dewey and Louie came in, Violet was currently at Camden Town’s library. “We’re used to all the weird stuff that happens at this point.”

“Well we’re not used to magic here. It seems inevitable with the puppies asking Spot about it, that we will have to be soon enough. Spot says she’s willing to teach them some magic, provided they are willing to go through Bark Brigade training. I can agree with the lesson plan she set out at the very least.” Dylan yanked himself free from the pile of puppies on top of Webby. Webby was in a cuteness nirvana at the moment judging by the way her pupils were dilated. “We’re used to trouble though and our number one trouble maker is currently running somewhere around Africa with Pom. Things are… still fairly chaotic around here even without her.”

“I breathe fire, fly and can drink molten rock, so I’m quite sure I’m a dragon Spot.” Smolder received light snuggle from Ocellus in her coma state, the ladybug pony was getting more active by the day.

Can’t wait to talk to actually talk to Ocellus personally, Smolder was a tough girl and also had her cute side. Kind of like the Webby of her world, makes me wonder what Ocellus was like.

“No fire in our house please, it would be hard to explain to our dad why he has to come back home with work to help put one out.” It seemed like Dylan was a mood.

“Yeah, that would lead to the end of the world, ours specifically! We’d lose the house… puppies being impounded and horrible, horrible things happening to our family. Eighty percent death rate… including Dolly for some reason even if she isn’t here… yet she doesn’t die violently, she just lays down and stops moving… strange. We also lose mom so…” Was that a Goth Dalmatian passing through the room? My interest was now piqued! “So yeah, as Dolly would say, chill Dyl. Also don’t enrage the dragon, please? It really doesn’t end well for anyone here at all.”

“I’m not going to poke the dragon Dante, I hope that no one in our family is nearly that stupid either!” Dylan raised his voice mildly and the puppies all whined as they began crawled off of Webby. “Dimtri One, Dimtri Two and Dimitri Three, this means you especially are not to antagonize our guests!”

“Hey there, names Lena, what are some bands you listen to dark doggo?” I walked up to Dante and he tilted his head up at me.

“I’m Dante, I’m partial to the Featherweights and Twisted Sisters, plus a few other gloom and punk bands that you might have never heard of.” He stated plainly. “I certainly can appreciate niche.”

“Try me.” By the end of our discussion he was my favorite dog in this house, plus Dante had an appreciation for the macabre and didn’t mind that I’m made of shadow.

It would take me several more days before I tell Hunter about the whole ‘living shadow’ thing, but I wanted to make this cousin thing work.

-Africa, Jungle, Dolly-

“Ahhhh… oof!” I have long since learned from Pom that when Rafiki said that with our hearts and spirits that we will never fall in the heart song thing, Rafiki meant that we would be better about looking before we leapt straight into problems together. I think I absolutely prefer the ‘we’re invincible when working together’ meaning more right now. “This isn’t good, this isn’t good… really need to save Pom…”

The Pom perishing thing was still on my mind and it might even be related to me not being around her, which would make sense considering her current situation of being caged by those two guys.

It was all my fault that she even got captured in the first place and how I ended up falling off a cliff onto this tree branch.

“Hero Hunter Quint will not simply let you escape unscathed Caper Canine!” Yeah, don’t like you one bit Quint, nor did I like his partner in crime Norman either.

A shot rang out from above and the branch I was clinging to broke and a massive swarm of birds took to the air around me slowing my fall slightly as I fell past them trying to grab onto something.

“Wooahhh, nghh!” In my wild flailing, I managed to hook my right paw on vine and all the muscles in my right leg protested as all my weight was place on it. I quickly reached up with my left paw and brought myself up to snap the vine with my teeth.

A shot rang out and the bark of the tree shredded near me as I swung away and I saw a chunk of wood flash through the vine above me.

I was once again falling and screaming until I fell into a hollow log and went sliding through it on my skateboard to end up skidding across the surface of some water where I was finally stopped by slamming painfully into a tree trunk.

“Today… is just not my day.” Crawling over the roots, I took refuge in a hollow in the tree that I spotted.

“You may continue to hide, but if you keep doing so the hero Leap Lamb might meet an untimely fate!” Well at least Quint couldn’t quickly follow me down the cliff I jumped off of and was safe for the time being. “I’ve lost her Norman, but she won’t be getting far without her owner!”

Hey I resented the idea that anyone owned me! I was a free dog, in as much as having bound myself magically to Pom incidentally being the only exception, I could break that at any time I wanted to!

Speaking of, Pom wasn’t currently awake, but at least I always knew where she was and that she was alive.

I really didn’t like the name Caper Canine, even if I do like dancing. Why couldn’t they have made my sidekick name cooler like Power Pup, Popping Pooch or something more like Hop Hound, Hip Hound or Hip Hop Hound?

I’d even take Disaster Dog at this rate, because I currently feel like one with my tail currently between my legs and was covered in mud.

“Ah Kibbles…” I wonder if using Dawkins saying would actually help me in this situation. “What am I going to do?!”

“Houba!” I heard a voice shout and I looked around, but couldn’t see anyone. I stayed where I was looking around. “Excuse me, but did that Quint guy just say Norman?”

“Uh, yeah… he’s one of the guys that captured my friend.” I stayed where I was, eyes scanning the surrounding jungle and the disturbing quiet in it.

“Hey, would you like some help with that?” Did this guy really need to ask?

“Uh yeah, I would. The guys got a gun and several other things, like a strange gas that knocked out my friend before they caged her!” I still couldn’t see where this guy was, they were moving around pretty fast with how their voice was coming from everywhere. “It was my fault that it even happened.”

“If you tell me the story of what happened, then the guardians of the jungle just might help you out…” The guardians of the jungle? Did this guy know them? “Mostly because that Norman guy is involved.”

“Uh… who are you?” I wasn’t exactly trusting of my surroundings at the moment. “You’re not a tiger, panther or a hyena right?”

“Nope, but you don’t look too dangerous, so I might as well introduce myself!” Something swiftly came from above and stopped right in front of me with a big grin. “Houba! It’s how I talk and greet others.”

“Gah!” My skateboard smacked loudly against the tree and dug into my back, I was currently looking at the figure hanging from the tree on a vine… no… that wasn’t a vine.

That was a tail, a really, really long one. Was there such a thing as a fifty foot tail?

“Sorry for spooking you there doggy, the names Mars. You’ll probably meet my lovely Mia soon.” This creature, Mars, had dog like ears, a really freakishly long tail and yellow fur with black spots. “Aren’t you domesticated types usually found in the cities though? You are fairly far from home.”

“Hey, I’m not here by choice I’ll have you know… and I’m not domesticated!” I’ve never heard or seen such a weird creature, like a cross between a dog, a monkey and the colors like a cheetah. Weirdest looking animal I have ever met. “Also what are you?!”

“One of the guardians of this jungle. My people are more native to another place, but my mate and I are here to protect the surrounding jungles from anyone who would seek to destroy them.” Mars stated with an oddly cheerful disposition. “Now make with the story, it sounds like we don’t have much time if Norman is up to something again. After what I did to him the last time he tried invading our home, you’d think he would get the idea to stay far away from us.”

Something large landed behind Mars and I pointed at it with horror in my eyes, it was a large and fat looking gorilla wearing a pink shirt.

“Oh hey Maurice, I’m talking to someone who’s having problems with Norman.” Mars’s tail coil up behind him as he said this and turned back to me. “Don’t worry about Maurice, he’s harmless… also a bit brainless, but I like him as a member of the Terrific Tail Team! Sure, I know he doesn’t have a tail, but I don’t let that bother me. Now story me!”

“Okay, my name is Dolly and it started earlier this morning…” I was quickly interrupted.

“Houbi?” A second yellow furred dog monkey thing dropped down from the trees.

“Someone that needs our help Mia.” Mars answered, the female version of mars with a flower on her ear tilted her head at me. The only noticeable difference was a more feminine appearance, a different amount of fur in different places and a shorter tail which was not saying much as it still looked fifty feet long. “This is Norman trouble, we were about to hear a story about it.”

Mia immediately looked angry and then turned to me, she made a gesture towards me as if she wanted me to hurry.

-An hour or two earlier that morning-

“So we are a bit lost, me and my friend Pom. We were heading in a direction we were told by a guy named Rafiki.

You know him? Because of course you do!

Anyway, Pom and I were heading this way because Rafiki told us to and… oh… I guess you’re the ones he wanted us to seek help from.

Anyway, the first sign of trouble is when Pom stopped me from stepping into a trap.”

“Does Rafiki have to be weird like that? Can’t he just tell us outright what he actually means and…?” Before I could continue talking, Pom thrust her right hoof in front of me while looking at the ground. “What is it?”

Pom didn’t say anything, but her eyes darted about in paranoia, she took up a nearby a stick and poked the ground in front of me. A trap of numerous layers of metal teeth sprung up from the dirt and snapped together in front of me, positively pulping a portion of what was once a rather lovely looking stick.

That trap would have torn my leg up, if it didn’t just amputate it entirely had I stepped on it.

Pom quickly pulled me back a few steps as a series of darts struck the area around the trap and quickly leaked fluids that melted or browned everything it touched.

“Dolly… that trap wasn’t meant to capture.” Pom’s eyes continued to dart about wildly and I shivered in fright at the thought of what could have happened to me. “Follow behind me and be quiet, I doubt animals would have access to things that might put down a rhino.”

We ran into several more traps like that, but some of them were in odd places. Said odd places tended to be up in trees and set up as if targeting for someone to swinging through them… but there weren’t nearly that many vines around and they weren’t around said vines.

There was one thing in common with all these traps, they were either excessively debilitating or downright immediately lethal.

It wasn’t too long before we snuck up on a campsite to see a pair of bulky crow bipeds armed with guns, with a caged baby elephant wailing for help.

“Come on, we got to…” I was lifted from the ground by Pom’s left hoof wrapping around my waist before I could launch forward.

“No Dolly, and quiet, we need to think this through.” Pom stated while staring at the elephant with a frown. “They aren’t doing anything to the baby aside from poking them Dolly, have some patience.”

“They are obviously bad guys Pom! I mean look at them.” I pointed a paw at them joking and laughing as that poor baby cowered in the cage.

“Yes, I’m aware that what they are doing isn’t good, but I’m saying that we shouldn’t just rush in there.” Pom this was a time for action, not slow methodical thought! “I think that’s exactly what they are expecting something to do given all the lethal traps around here. We should at least try to sneak closer to hear what they are saying. Also they have weapons Dolly, so some caution is advised.”

Okay, I get you, wait until we were close enough to rescue the baby elephant before making our move.

We had to get past some trip wire and a few more of those lethal leg traps. I was somewhat glad that Pom slowed me down, but once we were close enough there couldn’t possibly be many more traps close to their camp!

The camp was in a wide open space, we could see a jungle a fair distance away and there weren’t many trees to approach he campsite from. So we carefully made our way along the ground.

“So do you think the elephants will actually come?” One of the crows asked the other.

“I Pachyderm Poacher Quint know they will!” Quint was a guy I would soon learn to hate, but he wasn’t wrong as we could hear the sounds of elephants trumpeting in the distance.

“The guardians of Africa are not going to be able to ignore this.” The other one said with a grin.

“You and those guardians Norman, I haven’t seen a single sighting of the strange creatures you keep talking about.” Quint poked the baby elephant with a stick again making it whine loudly.

“They’ll come, this is something they wouldn’t ignore.” Norman looked like the kind of guy who was excited to finally kill and stuff a head on a wall. “I’ll head out and watch for them, make sure the elephant stays in the cage… those guardians are crafty creatures.”

We were currently close enough that we were behind one of their tents. Now that one was leaving, the other guy started relaxing, but he wasn’t watching the cage all too much.

After a minute, it was clear he wasn’t paying any attention to it at all, I decided to make my move.

“Dolly… wait… come back.” I didn’t listen to Pom’s frantic whispering as I quickly slunk forward towards the cage with the crying elephant, that poor kid needed help and I was the dog to do it.

Okay, let’s see. Not a key kind of cage, but the locking mechanism seems simple enough. If I can get my claws under the hinge here... no pulled it upwards and with a tug, the door fell away and almost on top of me.

Hearing the clattering, the elephant stopped crying and immediately bolted as soon as it saw an opening in the cage.

“See Pom, nothing to…” Before I knew it, Pom had grabbed me and was tossing me away from the cage as something moved within it.

A massive cloud of strange dust, smoke or gas erupted around where the cage was, I could see Pom coughing violently.

There was something familiar about that stuff that I just couldn't quite exactly put my paw on why.

“Dolly… run…” Once Pom flopped over onto her side, she stopped moving, but she was alive. That was a useful part of our bond that I was never going to forget.

“Why what have we here? It seems we have caught the lost Leap Lamb and Caper Canine trying to foil our felonious deeds…” The crow said while pointing a finger to sky. “So I… Hero Hunter Quint, am going to have a good day today!”

“Didn’t you just recently say that your name was Pachyderm Poacher Quint?!” I barked out at him in an angry tone.

He leveled his gun at me and I stopped barking at him angrily.

“I have no idea what you just barked, but my gun can beat your skateboard and capering skills!” Rolling to the side as Quint pulled the trigger it created a hole in the dirt next to me. Yeah I had to go while he was reloading, like now! “You will not be so evasive forever Caper Canine!”

Another blast struck the ground behind me making me yelp, I quickly swung my skateboard beneath me and started pushing to get away faster.

“I’ll come back for you Pom, I promise!” After a certain distance I hit grass and had to flip my board back onto my back and started running into the nearby jungle.

-Present-

“That guy can run pretty fast with a gun, he also has pretty decent aim.” I wrapped my paws around myself, I thought Cruella was bad… but she never came after us with guns.

Cruella just used a lot of well paid goons that took us all alive, she wanted to kill us personally one at a time. Though she did use some kind of knockout gas on my parents… wait… that gas that knocked Pom out… it was the same stuff that Cruella used on my parents! If I were to hazard a guess, I’d think her company actually produces that stuff.

“So you were actually the one that freed the little guy. Okay, come on out!” Mars and Mia moved to the side showing the baby elephant that trundled out from behind a tree. It trumpeted at Mars and smiled at me, before Mars started pushing him away. “Now go on back to your family little guy, we’ll take care of Norman and Quint.”

“Houbi bi-bi-bi!” Mia pointed at me.

“She said, show us the way.” Mars didn’t have to tell me twice.

I turned and started to make my way back towards where I felt Pom was.

Author's Note

Pom still doesn't know how to make herself immune to gas attacks or breathe underwater like Paprika does.

106. Super Duper Hero X?

-Equus, Canterlot, Tianhuo-

“I ask, because it could be a problem rescuing the others going forward.” I ran my right hoof over Blighter, the mass of pink that tried to keep me in good spirits.

“Okay, that is a problem, but I’m sure if they found a way home separately and end up separated, then there isn’t much we can do about them showing up in Tambelon one at a time separately should we go along with the plan to rescue them. Making one trip into Tambelon is dangerous, I’m wary of having to do multiple to save them as it will give Grogar more chances to escape.” Twilight sighed loudly and took a sip of tea. “I trust that they will all try to get home together. They wouldn’t try one at a time, I believe in my students to not leave anyone behind as I believe in your significant other to protect them.”

“I still worry.” I said honestly.

“I have a lot more to worry about, I have an entire country to run, a cat name Jaded that causes as much havoc as Discord the lord of Chaos does, lambkin and changelings still don’t like each other and the world’s economy seriously needs help!” Princess Twilight was stressed. “There’s only so much I can get done in a given week… Spike…”

“Yes?” Her dragon companion sat up.

“Send a message to Celestia and Luna, I… I need their help.” Twilight seemed upset about bothering the semi-retired princesses. It was when one needed help the most that one should ask.

“About time, I thought you were going to keep dragging your hooves on it!” Spike seemed to smile as he started writing something down on a parchment. “You have to remember that they are your friends too Twilight.”

“You are stressed, have you thought about taking a spa day to relax?” I asked because she could brush her mane a bit.

“That obvious huh?” Getting a nod, Twilight groaned loudly. “Even Cadence is taking a break in Ponyville… maybe I should join her?”

“It wouldn’t hurt Twilight, both Starlight and Sunburst are quite stressed from trying to run the school and help with an idea of how to rescue the lost.” Fizzle, The Storm Queen, looked about. “They could even use a… party…”

“Did someone say party?” Gah, where in the world did the pink one come from?! “Your gal pal, Pinkie Pie, is always ready for you Twilight. Just tell me where and the severity of the party you want.”

“Severity?” I queried slowly, also… why was that fluffy demon, Paprika Paca, here?

“She’s not kidding.” Twilight stated promptly. “Low key, severity four point five.”

“Okay/Meep!” Both Pinkie and the demon alpaca stated at the same time. “I’ve been teaching Paprika how to be a party planner!”

Twilight’s pupils just shrunk and her eyes widened, I was right there with her in looking horrified.

-Earth, Africa, Dolly-

“So this Norman guy has trained animals to track babies back to the herd before and you were testing my character?” All this hero stuff was new to me, my skateboard needed some maintenance and I wasn’t even sure how I got away from the camp without setting off a trap that would have killed me.

“Houba, I can tell you’re a good person.” Mars turned to his mate. “Right Mia?”

“Houbi!” Mia stated while nodding.

“See, she agrees. What about you Maurice?” Mars looked to Maurice who was just eating bananas from bunches held up by the end of his freakishly long tail. Looking at it made me think it would drag along the ground, but instead it stayed up in the air and Mars was lifting its weight with his small body and the bunch of bananas with relative ease. “Yeah, he’s not much of a talker or a thinker, but my big buddy has saved me quite a few times… most of them incidentally.”

I turned and stopped, looking in the direction of their camp in the distance.

“So, how are we going to get close with all the traps in the way? I don’t even know how I avoided all the traps they laid down getting out in a rush.” I looked around, the space between us and the camp looked completely clear. “I think I can smell some of them… but they are really well hidden.”

“Knowing Norman like I do, he’s probably saturated the entire area with enough traps that I should be able to do something about it… Houba-ba-baba-Houba?” After Mars relinquished the banana bunch in his tail to Mia, who notably had the shorter tail, he took a few steps forward. “Thank you Mia, Ba-houba!”

“Houbi.” Mia said with a smile while nodding, she backed up as Mars made a cracking noise with the four digits of his hands.

Mars gestured for me to move back.

Once we were far enough away, I watched as Mars lifted his tail straight up to the sky… then he swung the entire mass of his tail forward with a quick spin.

It unleashed a small tornado from the force of the swing along and my jaw dropped.

What happened next was Mars tail quickly coiling or kinking up and out of the path of numerous traps going off, all while he made commentary about it.

“Let’s see, four layered metal bite traps for elephants, toxic dart traps for rhinos, metal wire shrinking nets that rip smaller animals like a panther to shreds if you get caught up in them, flamethrowers…” A burst of heat rose up from in front of us, then I watched as a series of rockets blew holes in the grass and stone in front of us. “Time delay rocket launchers… that’s new. Norman must be getting extra military surplus this year after I destroyed those ten jeeps and five transport trucks last year.”

Mars scrutinized the ground in front of himself and flicked his tail forward and it cracked like a whip, several blasts of gas went off. We were safely outside the blast zone.

“Houba… Cruella Company Canine Counter, that’s some nasty fast acting powerful stuff there.” That was Mars just confirming what I thought I knew about the gas. I should be more surprised than I am about what its called. “Stupidly powerful tranquilizer, but thankfully no permanent side effects as far as anyone knows. That stuff is under heavy scrutiny… and illegal from what I remember. Yep, we can definitely take Norman and his new buddy Quint to task over this.”

Mia put her right hand on my chin and lazily pushed my jaw back into place with a broad smile on her face. She motioned me forward and then set off slowly letting Mars lead us into the camp, she was using the banana bunch to lure Maurice into following us.

So far this Mars guy could use his tail like a whip and generate small tornados with a single swing, what else could he do with it? He was obviously physically strong enough to match a gorilla given how much his tail must be in general… and the monkey dog things was close to being my size!

It made me feel like I wasn’t anywhere close enough to being able to survive all the crazy stuff Pom can, Mars just showed he was incredible for his size and… I was a dog with a skateboard, one that needed to be cleaned and repaired.

When am I going to figure out how to use some crazy awesome powers with the magic I’m told I have?

“Right let’s get a move on.” Mars motioned us forward. “I seriously doubt that they missed all the explosions going off.”

-Pom-

Being held prisoner… again… at least I got some rest, didn’t sleep to well last night with having to worry about possible predators. Those two guy didn’t even know I could do bark blasts and they still muzzled me, they also made sure I couldn’t get any leverage with my legs to warrant an escape.

I still hadn’t mentioned bark blasts to Dolly. Once she did know that I could do something like that, then she would stop at nothing to learn how to do it from me. Sure she was friendly, but she wasn’t exactly what I would call responsible enough to teach her something like that.

Sure Dolly would probably be capable of it because she can bark really loud and was used to shouting all her siblings into motion, but I had more pressing matters at the moment.

My legs were bound just loose enough that fluffing my wool wouldn’t break it, but it the bindings were tight enough that I couldn’t wiggle out of them. I couldn’t get am good angle to claw at my bindings with my hooves.

I heard several explosions going off in the distance that made me freeze up, I can only hope Dolly had a plan this time and didn’t just get hurt.

“Either they are here or that sidekick has come back for her companion.” The buff crow called Norman turned to Quint. “Get ready, if it’s the guardians of the African jungles, then they will be hard to shoot once they close in, as they are both nimble and dangerous. Do not underestimate them Quint.”

“I, Trap Master Quint, will not fail to notice their approach!” Aside from the tents and camping gear, it wasn’t easy approach them without notice.

The only reason why we did the first time, is because he was the only in the camp and he relaxed his guard. Now he just seemed all too alert.

Understand that Dolly had a soft spot for children, given how many brothers and sisters she has, and that she wanted to help that baby elephant, she really should have been on the lookout for traps like I was.

I had barely noticed the trap before it went off after Dolly got the door open and the elephant rushed out to safety, now I’m in that very cage and it wasn’t exactly clean in here.

“Hello there, you look like you could use a little help there Leap Lamb and us heroes should stick together.” Blinking, I turned and saw something come into the cage with me and just stared at it. I soon nodded and hoped they would be quick about getting my hooves free. “Well let me deal with those bindings so you can get yourself out of there. Oh, I forgot to introduce myself, I’m Super Duper Hero X.”

I didn’t know anything about this Super Duper Hero X guy, but I could at least trust him to be friendly judging by his appearance.

-Dolly-

“Get your friend quickly, I’m going to draw their fire.” Watching as Mars coiled up his tail, he launched himself skyward on it like a spring and landed in the camp. “Houba!”

Two gunshots rang out and they had both missed, as Mars was nearly as fast as Pom was when moving at full tilt. He was drawing their attention and I quickly ran forward and for the cage as Mia tossed the banana bunch by Quint, making Maurice plow straight through him to get the bananas.

“Pom, I found some help are you ok… Agh!” Several cages sprang up out of the ground around Mia, Maurice and me. “Oh come on, you couldn’t have possibly predicted where we’d be that accurately!”

“Give up Marsupilami, I’ve capture your friends and Caper Canine!” Norman was talking to Mars and he didn’t look to happy to see us in cages.

I glared at him and started using every cuss word my dad used around me accidentally, I touched one of the bars and yelped as I got shocked badly.

“How the dog did you know where to set up these electrified cages in the first place?!” There was no way that either Quint or Norman could have known where we would have been coming into this to have prepared a trap for exactly where we would be.

-Norman-

Caper Canine seemed upset that I could predict where she and her companions would be, our trapping skills are being quite underestimated here. Having set up forty seven cages in advance in the right places made it all worthwhile.

The spotted dog’s skin would probably make a good neck tie or bandana when I eventually mounted her head on a wall.

Her barking sounded rabid and I pointed my gun at the Marsupilami’s captured mate and not only did Mars freeze up, so did Caper Canine. Mars glared at me and looked to Quint doing the same thing with his stupid gorilla companion.

“Well it seems like you’ve gotten better Norman, but I’m not giving up quite yet.” Mars declared, we had both his mate and his friend at gunpoint what other option did he possibly think he had that would get him out of this situation?

“There’s a trap about five feet behind you, move to it and we might let your mate and best friend live for another five minutes to say your good byes.” I had to give it to Quint, the man really knew how to help set up traps.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, it wouldn’t be heroic of me to let you get away with hurting the guardians of the African jungles like that.” A suave voice stated and I immediately brought my gun around to point it at a snail wearing a cape. I blinked once, then twice at what I was seeing.

“What in the…” My mind could hardly contemplate the costume snail that I was seeing before me.

“Hello there is me…” He started to say, I was surprised to see a talking snail or that a snail could talk for that matter. Mars was understandable, at least he actually learned to talk just to annoy me.

“Super Duper Hero X!” Quint shouted and took his gun off of the gorilla. “My mortal nemesis!”

“Your mortal nemesis… is a tiny snail Quint?” Was there a gas leak going on, how can a snail be a threat to anyone? At least the Marsupilami had something approaching super strength for how hard they can hit at their size with those tails of theirs. “At least my nemeses are an actual threat!”

“Yes I, Hero Hunter Quint, have been trying to kill that snail for years, but something always gets in the way!” Why didn’t Quint just sprinkle salt all over his shell? “I’ve tried salt, ballistic missiles, machines guns, a plane crash, flamethrowers, electrified nets, bombs of all kinds, even the most insidious incendiaries and yet… it all always fails!”

“I would prefer that we solves this situation peacefully, with a little music and...” The snail, with a surprising speed for it, hopped to the side in a blur and avoided Quint’s gunshot.

“No, no singing from you, it always attracts those damned meerkat and warthog!” Quint shouted as he reloaded.

Wait… if neither of us were aiming at the hostages then… a white blur struck me across the right side of my face. I almost blacked out from the pain of the blow, I stayed standing on my talons and my tail feathers went straight when I realized that my weapon had been stolen from my grasp by Leap Lamb.

I watched as the super powered individual spun around and smashed my gun against the ground, rendering it entirely useless. No matter I still had my knives.

Not that I thought I could take an actual super hero with them, but it should be enough to survive if I get away.

“Good leaping Leap Lamb, I’ll take care of Quint you help the guardians deal with Norman and freeing the hostages.” The snail was going to deal with a bipedal crow that was ten times his size? “Come on Quint! If you won’t let me sing, then I might have to get a bit aggressive and I really don’t like hurting people physically unless I have to.”

I couldn’t watch what happened as Leap Lamb started to approach me and I felt Mars tail wrapped around my left leg.

“I got this guy, go deal with those electrified cages somehow.” Mars leapt at me and his tail was immediately around my waist before I could pull the knife from its sheath. I grabbed at his tail with my talons and they didn’t penetrate the skin beyond the fur of my worst nemesis, the Marsupilami named Mars.

-Pom-

I was quickly at the cage with Dolly in it and I wrapped my hooves with my wool as I grabbed the bars and pulled. I managed to rip the cages door off its hinges with relative ease, my wool was a good insulator.

“Pom… am I useless to you in a fight?” Dolly asked as she hopped out of the cage. “I mean you tried to teach me all that stuff and I really haven’t been the most helpful dog around… I… I’m so sorry I got you trapped by these Quint and Norman guys!”

“Don’t worry about it Dolly, you went and got help at least. Plus you saved a baby elephant today.” I wasn’t about to scold Dolly for trying to do the right thing and she was willing to apologize. “Now go help Super Duper Hero X while I get these other two cages open.”

-Dolly-

“Right!” I would have taken at least a little yelling for messing up, am I really that homesick for Dylan’s scolding voice shouting at me for skiving off to have fun? Life was short, and there was a whole world out there!

I turned and went towards the snail and saw that he had, somehow, managed to disarm Quint of his gun when I wasn’t looking and somehow tied it into a pretzel. How the dog did a snail with no limbs disarm someone and twist the gun into a pretzel, the guy had at least five feet on him in height and several hundred pounds of muscle?

“You’re a worthy foe Super Duper Hero X, but now that I have you in my clutches, it is time to end you once and for all for I, Hero Hunter Quint… agh!” Doing what came naturally too me, I instinctively bit Quint on his left calf. He dropped the snail from his left claw and narrowly avoided stabbing himself with the knife held in his right. “Why you!”

I hopped backwards as he kicked his leg at me and I started growling at him. The snail took a hold of one of his toe claws on his left leg in his teeth and I had to watch as the tiny thing started slamming several hundred pounds of crow all over the place.

“What?” I swear my life was never going to be the same after meeting Pom, I could maybe understand Mars having incredible super strength to work a tail as long as the one he had… but a snail?!

I think my brain broke somewhere along the line, was I actually watching a snail slam a six foot slab of muscle all over the place using his teeth? The snail eventually finished the constant battering, by spinning around and tossing Quint into a cage.

“Now that’s how you eat crow Mr. Quint.” Super Duper Hero X stated in a congenial tone.

I looked over to see how Pom was doing and she already freed Mia and Maurice from their cages, Maurice was still sitting in his eating bananas. For a gorilla, Maurice certainly wasn’t very useful as Mars claimed him to be.

Looking over to Mars, I saw the literal tail end of his fight.

His tail was balled up and he was swinging it around into Norman’s gut, sending the muscular crow guy flying into the same cage as Quint was in.

“Houba, that was fun, how about we tie these guys up and make Maurice carry us to civilization with all the evidence of their illegal activities?” Was he even that strong Mars?

-An hour later-

“Okay, I didn’t believe Maurice was nearly this strong.” We were sitting on top of the cage with the criminals thoroughly immobilized by ropes and the various traps that were stuffed into the cage. “It’s nice to know we have a ride back to civilization at least.”

Mia was driving Maurice towards civilization with another bunch of bananas and Super Duper Hero X finally told us his real name since he trusted us with his secret.

Not that the snail had much of a secret in the first place, he was a snail that wore a costume.

Why are there so many snails that are named Speedy, that Speedy here knew fifty different other snails named Speedy was mind boggling. At least he had a nice singing voice.

“You know, without their weapons or traps they really aren’t that dangerous.” Pom stated while looking at the two captives in the cage below, they glared back up at us.

I’m still a bit confused as to how Mars and Speedy learned to talk to where Pom could understand them, because she doesn’t understand any other animals other than dogs unless they could speak like an animalistic.

Mia could only speak her and Mars language, Speedy only knew how to talk and didn’t even know how to speak snail… which begs the question of how he knew fifty snails that were all named Speedy.

Our world, as I was now finding out, was likely invented by a madman with way too much time on their paws.

“So… uh…” I turned to Pom and rubbed my paw along my right ear. “Should I have listened to you or ignored you and do what I did anyway?”

“You were just following your heart, you’re used to being a caretaker… so you have a soft spot for children, but you still should have been more careful. What if that gas had been lethal?” Pom shivered and hugged me against her wool. “I believe you’re a good dog, if a bit hasty to learn things before you’ve learned the basics. I also can’t exactly blame you for wanting to help.”

“Why would I need to learn anymore basics, I'm great already!” I tried to think on it, but I was having trouble trying to figure out what she’s been teaching me. “All you’ve been teaching me is the stuff what dogs are usually trained to do, you haven’t taught me any actual fighting moves.”

“So you’re not a prodigy like Shanty then, but you’re an active learner.” Pom had garnered my attention and I raised my left ear in attention at her. “Look I need to know something, how long did it take you to learn how to ride a skateboard as effectively as you do?”

“A long time, I kept face planting… a lot. I got hurt in so many ways trying so many things until I eventually got it down.” All that pain and suffering led to me being completely radical skater dog. Still haven’t won a competition because I keep face planting or flopping. “Which makes me glad my adoptive mom is a therapy dog.”

“And that’s why I haven’t taught you anything beyond what we’re working on.” Pom nodded as sagely as Rafiki did when I asked him questions and that guy could speak a lot of nonsensical gibberish. “At least you’re capable of learning what I ‘can’ teach you, the question is if you will actually when I try. You tend to tune me out quickly when you're not actively doing something and interested in what I'm trying to teach you. You already have a strong base in acrobatics and speed, but that doesn't help when I tried to teach you something advanced and you just ignored me.”

"I did what now?" I was busy eating a banana.

Author's Note

'Marsupilami' and 'Timon and Puumba' were both Disney Afternoon cartoons.

Both had episodes occurring in Africa, they both had similar characters in Quint and Norman and they both featured unusual duos. Quint was usually more innocent by sometimes having regular jobs that Timon and Puumba cause problems at, as for Norman he was always a hunter that couldn't handle Mars capabilities.

Marsupilami only had one Disney cartoon, but has had many other cartoons. Mars started off as a side character in a Belgium comic series and eventually grew into his own thing.

Marsupilami are actually native to South America. One of the weirdest things about the mythical species called 'Marsupilami' is that they are mammals that hatch from eggs like a real world Platypus or Echidna (Spiny Anteater).

108. A Loving Home.

-Equus, Ponyville, Midday, Arizona-

I slammed my left hoof across Velvet’s face, the reindeer was definitely asking for it today. She was giving as much as she was getting and our fighting was well out of the way of everyone else.

Grabbing my neck, she slammed her head down onto mine dazing me. That she could actually hurt me was saying how tough Velvet was.

“Stop! I’m sure whatever problems you’re having you can work out your relationship!” Oh it’s Cadence, really didn’t interact with her much and heard she was causing ‘mostly’ innocent incidents in Ponyville.

I was here on business talking to the local construction company, Velvet was along to see some friends and she goaded me into a fight. I always obliged Velvet, because fighting each other was everything to us.

“Oh hello Cadence, I’m a bit busy at the moment.” Even as she spoke conversationally to the princess of love, Velvet slapped her left hoof across my face staggering me.

I pulled out a rope and then pulled her into a head smash that left her dazed on the ground and then bucked her in the chest sending her skidding across the ground where she rolled onto her hooves.

“Look I’m sure that if you both discussed whatever problem you’re having with each other, you can work out your relationship issues.” We both looked at Cadence. “You two have some of the strongest love bonds I’ve ever seen. You don’t need to fight, I’m sure we can work this out!”

“What are you talking about? We’re not having any problems.” I leapt up to perform a flying buck to Velvet’s face as she came rushing in.

She quickly stopped short of my rear hooves, slapped her hooves against the ground. Two spikes of ice rammed upwards into my chest and sent me flying.

“I concur, I believe things are going quite splendidly.” Velvet generated several floating spheres of ice and narrowed her eyes at me. “What’s there to talk about?”

With a flick of her head she send the orbs of ice one after the other at me and I side stepped the first two and caught the third as Velvet lunged forward and tried to jam an ice blade on her leg into my forehead.

“What Frosty Farts and I are trying to say here…” I caught the tip of the blade on the orb, then twisted it upward and forced it into the ground. Velvet’s eyes widened as her spine was presented to me, I pulled both my hooves together and spiked her into the ground.

“This is really…” Velvet stated as she leapt up and smashed her left hind leg into my chin with incredible flexibility and grace that no other reindeer could match.

“Just how we…” My left hoof slammed into her kidney with the force of a lead lined donkey cart full of bricks making her grimace slightly as she went backwards and landed on her hooves.

We charged towards one another and leapt.

“Are!” We hit each other in the left cheek, she landed a hook and I landed a hard straight, then a second later we were at the ends of two trenches.

“Meep!” Paprika came wandering up to Cadence with a lazy looking Tinsel on her head and she placed a blanket on the ground.

We both went up to Paprika nuzzled her affectionately, the hearts in her eyes were lit ablaze for us and us alone. Velvet and I then sat down across from each other calmly, which for some reason flummoxed Cadence quite a bit.

“Aren’t the both of you… having domestic problems?” Cadence finally asked.

“Nope, not with this frozen cadaver!” I stated loudly.

“Says the tanned hide that could use more dusting.” Velvet sniped back.

We leaned forward glaring at one another and then started to passionately kiss as Paprika started setting out lunch.

“Meep?” Our alpaca queried curiously, but it wasn’t directed at us. I was too busy trying to suffocate a reindeer with my tongue.

“I… but… what?” Cadence shook her head and then sat down across from Paprika. “Of course I will join you in a picnic, thanks for asking… but weren’t these two just trying to kill each other a second ago?”

“Meep.” Paprika answered and waggled her brows.

“That’s foreplay for them?!” Cadence seemed highly disturbed by that.

“I hate you.” I stated passionately.

“Loathe you too.” Velvet soon returned.

Had anyone else said those words… well a changeling would be highly confused to feel nothing but love going on between us.

-Earth, three days after the Cooper Gang left, Morning, Camden Town, Dalmatian House, Ocellus-

Everything felt so restrictive, like I was in an egg… at least it was warm and cozy wherever I was.

Slowly opening my eyes I glanced around the room, tasted the very air and yawned. The light of a new day dawning shined through a nearby window

Love… it wasn’t in the air. It was in fact a solidified and consolidated mass here that felt like it took up an entire block in a city. The concentrations were so ridiculous that I seriously had to try to hold back a belch at being full, a very odd feeling considering I didn’t need solid foods.

I looked about and noted my position, I was wrapped in a blanket… Robin’s Egg. Nice color, I appreciated the thought that went into it and there was only one dragon that I knew of that would do so.

Now I just had to wonder, why was I surrounded by Dalmatians and were those large ducks? The puppies are so adorable! There were a variety of them in black and white, all of them sleeping in various places. I looked up on the mantle nearby and saw three puppies snuggling against a plush toy dog.

One had all white fur, one had two bands on her neck with a streak of black fur between her eyes and the last one looked like they had a bandit mask. The plush toy they were snuggling together was as cute as they were.

This was a rather quaint looking home, but the number of dogs in it was ridiculous… who could take care of this many dogs without going insane? I seriously doubted Pom had somehow gained this many Dalmatians as familiars.

Opening my mouth I tried to speak only to let out a raspy cough, I was really thirsty.

I eventually managed to untangle myself from my blanket by wiggling around a bit too much, I also dislodged a few puppies that had been cuddled against my side.

“Sorry.” I croaked out to the puppies I almost woke up, they got up and moved to snuggle against some other puppies and were asleep within seconds.

“Huh… what was… oh you’re awake.” An older dog stated quietly, she wasn’t a diamond dog and I don’t think I’ve learned to speak dog in my sleep so we were in a different world from Equus. We weren’t on Elhorn as far as I knew, because the décor was far too different. “Do you need anything?”

“Water.” I croaked out.

“Oh of course! You’ve been asleep for quite a while... I’m fairly interested in you, medically speaking of course.” The dog helped me sit up and looked me over. “Surviving on just love alone is a strange concept, I’m happy that my family was able to speed up your recovery. Do you think you can walk?”

“No… slight… atrophying.” Talking made me feel like my throat was full of sandpaper, my muscles also needed time to get back in working order.

“I understand, my name is Delilah and you’re under our families care and roof. I’ll go get some water now. I hope you don’t mind using a dog bowl, but we clean them quite thoroughly around here. At least my son Dylan does.” Delilah got up and quickly left the room through the nearby doorway leaving me surrounded by puppies, some of which were quacking their legs at the air in their sleep.

My legs felt like they were asleep, I started wiggling them to get some feeling back into them and wondered where Smolder, Shanty, Dodo and Pom were?

Okay horn check, I lit up my horn and immediately stopped while muffling a scream.

OH SWEET CELESTIA’S CHICKEN PHOBIA DID THAT EVER HURT!

Yeah, no using magic from my horn for the time being on the pain of my horn possibly exploding violently, got it.

So I’m still suffering quite a bit of magical backlash despite the abundance of love in the room, the last thing I remember was being carried through a cold snowy mountain and a lot of warm feelings afterwards.

Okay shapeshifting test…

With a flash, the world was slightly smaller than before and I was looking over my blue furred and black spotted body from where I sat. Okay, shapeshifting wasn’t painful, so that’s something I still have at least.

I tried to get my paws under me to stand up, I wasn’t having too much luck as I kept flopping onto my side and or back. My mind was quite willing, but my body was still too weak to really try walking at the moment.

“So you’re saying Smolder’s friend finally woke up from her coma?” Into the room walked a chicken conversing with Delilah, hefting a bowl of water above her head. They both stopped when they saw me. “And is apparently now a blue Dalmatian… well I’ve seen almost everything now.”

“Uh… sorry, I was trying to find out how bad off I am and was testing my capabilities… I’m Ocellus.” Currently doing an impersonation of a Dalmatian, I was hopefully as adorable as all the other puppies in the room. “I can’t use my horn for magic, but I can still shapeshift at least.”

“Can I get a list of limitations of your shapeshifting?” The chicken asked as she placed the bowl before me and I carefully lifted my head to start lapping it up with my tongue.

“No perfect mimicry except for appearance and voice, no memory copying, three fourths to half or less as strong as the real thing after taking the form of, inanimate objects are possible.” I stated succinctly after swallowing some water, as I thought about all the neat things changelings like me could do with our abilities alone. “As for examples of strengths gained from taking different forms. Gills are possible when changing into something aquatic or whenever needed in base form, surviving in lava is possible for a short time if transformed into a dragon or other scaly heat resistant entity like a fire salamander and turning into a solid stone rock will make me nearly as sturdy and heavy as one. I can’t turn into sedimentary stuff, my mass has to go somewhere.”

“Flexible, but only capable of solid physical forms… so you can’t turn into something like mist, fog, air or sand. Okay I’ve heard enough, the names Spot Irma Chicken and welcome to the Dalmatian Home and being awake.” She held out a wing and I shook it with my right hoof. “I’ve become a recent resident here, also I respond to Pullet Marlow or Aunt Marlow. I’m a lot older than I look.”

“Excuse me, but since I suddenly find myself having a patient in my home, I must check her over… and since she’s turned into a dog…” Delilah came over to me and nuzzled the top of my head and I giggled. “I’m a nurse dog that works at the local hospital, but outside our home you won’t hear more than barks from us thanks to the magic Spot has done around here. That said and to start off… how are you feeling on a scale of one to ten?”

“Emotionally or physically?” I was emotionally charged and raring to go, physically… not so much. If I had slept in a cocoon, then I wouldn’t be having these issues with getting back on my hooves quickly.

“Physically is required, emotionally is optional. As a therapy dog, since you can understand what I’m saying, I can’t do cute or friendly sounding barks at the moment and apologize for my poor services in being huggable.” Delilah smiled at me and I started giggling. “At least you’re not feeling too bad if you can laugh like one of my children.”

“Are all of them yours?” I asked wide eyed.

“Yes, but not in the way you think. I didn’t give birth to all of them, goodness knows what I’d look like after having ninety nine puppies, but they are my children all the same.” Delilah patted me on the head gently with a paw. “Now how are you feeling?”

“Physically, I’m going to need a little help to walk again and my horn hurts if I try to use it, like a twelve in the pain scale out of ten. I’m well aware of how to take care of that, I just can’t use magic with it for a while. The rest of me is a three for feeling a bit sore, it feels like I’ve been out for a while.” I could feel my tail wagging. “As for emotionally, I’m going with five, only because I don’t see my friends anywhere and that would normally induce a state of panic in anyone who’s been stuck on several dangerous worlds and has just woken up from a coma.”

“Smolder is here, as for the others… yeah, you’re going to have a few issues there.” A black dog with a few purple spots came in. “I’m Dante, don’t see much danger to us from you, but my ability to predict dangerous scenarios are mostly centered on me and the general area.”

“Huh?” I tilted my head in confusion.

“Dante recently found out he’s got Grimm in his ancestry… which makes me question my husband’s side of the family somewhat.” Delilah raised a paw to her chin and looked thoughtful.

“Okay, what was it you said about issues Dante?” Over the course of the next ten minutes I was filled in on what happened.

Pom had arrived in the nearby park here, Shanty apparently arrived in a place called Mesa City Vega with Dodo and as for us we ended up in the manor of one of the world’s most well know philanthropists that was an adventurer extraordinaire.

We were all almost in once place but circumstances led to Pom being stuck on a plane, a fast flying version of an airship, heading to Africa. She is currently lost with their oldest sister, which I assured them would be alive as long as Pom is since she’s good at protecting others as trained guard.

Shanty arrived looking for Pom with a group of very friendly thieves and someone who looks a lot like Pom. So we possibly had doppelgangers here like they do in the mirror dimension Twilight is in communication with. Our goat friend soon left with the group to deal with a dangerous criminal panda in a place they called China, she’d come back later to see if any of us showed up in the meantime, provided she survived being a crime fighting pirate.

We had arrived after they had already left. Smolder had made several friends among the younger adventurers that accompanies the richest duck in the world.

We came here for several reasons. Among those reasons, two were about Hunter who was asking for help with changing his business into something unrecognizable as being anything related to one Cruella De Ville who wanted to slaughter all the dogs in this house for a fur coat. At least I knew Rarity wouldn’t do something that horrible in the name of fashion.

So… we were a little split up and all over the place at vast distances, well it shouldn’t be too hard to bring our group back together. Right?

“Yeah, now that we’re all on the same page… except we don’t know where Shanty’s group is going exactly." Dante stated with a dour mood. “We also don’t know where Pom will end up and you guys are welcome to stay here provided your friend Smolder doesn’t burn down the house. It’s still a possibility, but it would mostly be…”

Dante gestured towards an opening door.

“An accident Dylan…” Smolder froze as she came into the room with several dogs and they looked at me, the sound I heard coming from Smolder’s throat would be something she would never want me to tell anyone about. “Ocellus!”

I found myself being picked up and squeezed by Smolder after the ear hurting squeal that had woken up all the puppies that immediately started asking about food, the emotions that were coming from her were quite a bit more than excitement. I tried to get my legs around her, my limbs just couldn’t do it.

“Heh, I’m getting better at seeing into the future short term.” Dante stated with a wagging tail. “Just so long as I don’t ever see that fiery apocalypse again, things are going to be okay.”

“Hey, Smolder, I know you’re happy to see me, but can you put me down next to the bowl full of water?” I was still thirsty, Smolder did so and I started drinking it in slowly.

“So… a blue dog… not my first choice if I were to wake up from a coma.” Hey, I was in a house load of them Smolder, how could it not be my first choice when I didn’t feel threatened enough to turn into a dragon!

Besides imitation is a somewhat sincere form of flattery, as long as it wasn’t creepy.

“I’ll have you know that I’m completely adorable Smol!” Despite my angry retort, Smolder just started petting and I whined. “Hey- stop that…”

“No this is too cute Ozzy.” Smolder stated as she scratched one of my ears. “Your tail is a blur.”

“Smolder, this is embarrassing.” I whined like an actual dog.

“Well how is she mom?” The dog with the star and red collar asked, I believe Smolder said Dylan.

“She’s mostly fine, not capable of walking and might need some physical rehabilitation, but she’s mentally healthy as far as I’m concerned.” Delilah looked me over. “I’m not capable of gauging how healthy she is magically, but she says she has that handled.”

“She better, I sunk enough love into her to feed an entire hive of changelings three times over.” Smolder still had love to give… that was kind of amazing. She truly loved me and that love was near endless.

“I just don’t want to use my horn for a while… it might literally explode if I try.” I knew better than to push my horn. “Just don’t ask me to do anything with it for several weeks, magical backlash is really painful.”

Unicorns had higher tolerances for magical backlash. Changeling did not have such a tolerance, which is why it took Queen Chrysalis so long to enact another plan after the whole wedding fiasco.

Princess Cadence and Sir Shining Armor overloaded Chrysalis’s horn with the purest magical love possible, which also happened to every other changeling that had been present in Canterlot, it fed the entire hive for months at least and most of the changelings had to wait until our physical and magical injuries healed before we could resume living normally.

I think it was that blast that made Thorax who he is today… aside from Kevin, the infiltrating specialist of the hive who could have personally become colorful at any time after spending so much time with a rather infamous band of mariachi changelings, The Shapeshifting Siesta.

Apparently Kevin just made friends normally and was upfront about what he was doing to everyone he met and never hid the fact that he was a changeling, his honesty led to him having quite a few friendships. The only reason he didn’t go colorful sooner, is because he refused to fully share the love in his heart and had an idea what was going to happen when he finally did. He was the one who studied the anomalous first colorful changeling group that were exiled and quickly formed a traveling mariachi band, one which personally had one of my family members in it.

Coming back to the present I looked up at Smolder holding me.

“Zoned out again?” Smolder asked.

“Yeah… thinking about my family and the Shapeshifting Siesta.” I looked around and then turned back and dragged my tongue along Smolder’s face, making her blush. “Stop calling me Ozzy!”

“Ugh, you two are so saccharine, excuse me while I go find a dark corner to crawl into before I get sick from all the sweetness.” Dante murmured. “Goth’s got to Goth, but first I’m setting up the table for…”

Dante stopped and looked around, he turned to Mr. Star collar.

“You-know-what Dylan, can you wake Dawkins so he can operating the kibble pump?” Dante meandered off with a smile on his muzzle.

“Sure thing Dante!” Dylan looked a little sad as he turned to his mother. “He’s a good top dog replacement, but Dolly really brought energy to living around here.”

“I’m sure we’ll make do Dylan, even without Dolly’s energy.” The dog with a yin-yang styled fur pattern stated calmly.

“Deepak has the right of it Dylan, I’m also sure that Dolly will be fine as Pom is quite capable of her care.” Delilah informed.

“Hey, if you need energy, I’m sure I can do my part. I’m old enough to start helping around here.” A dog with earphones stated as he stretched out and padded up to us his digits were all black fur and he had single white spots on both his black ears. “I’m DJ, nice to finally meet you Ocellus.”

His emotions were quite easy going, compared to Dylan having hidden anxieties of the likes that Pom tries not to show. He then walked off, not much of a talker then.

I turned back to Delilah nuzzling more sleepy pups awake, she turned to notice my look.

“I’ll help you with physical rehabilitation after…” Delilah trailed off and looked around. “Well after morning…. er… what’s a word most of my children wouldn’t know for it… ah idea, after morning vittles Ocellus!”

“What are vittles mommy?” One of the puppies asked innocently.

“Don’t worry about it.” Delilah stated calmly and patted the puppy on the head.

“Why is everyone so dodgy around the word mphhphph…?” I’m surprised that Smolder covered my mouth.

“They have a thing about words around here Ocellus, you just woke up and I don’t want you to get hurt in the resulting avalanche of puppies.” Avalanche of… was that a thing around here Smolder? “You’ll see it in action soon.”

“Can you wake up the ducks Smolder?” Delilah asked as she got most of the puppies waking each other up now and had a baby puppy on her back giggling and making cute barking noises. “I have to teach Dorothy how to talk, I’ve been rather negligent in teaching her common dog.”

“Sure thing Mrs. D, I’ll be back… I’m going anywhere without you Ocellus.” With what could be felt from her, it wasn’t hard to believe Smolder implicitly.

“So would you like anything for breakfast Ocellus?” Delilah asked and her eyes went wide with a panic.

“Breakfast?” One of the puppy’s stated, it was innocent enough with several puppies saying it… then it reached a crescendo when all the puppies around started to gather and move in mass while shouting it excitedly.

I was plucked off the floor by Delilah and held above a massive surge of puppies and watched as the baby hopped off Delilah's back, she was giggling happily as she rode another puppy away.

“I’m full thanks, the love here is all top quality and improbably dense.” I then belched loudly.

Author's Note

Does the Chrysalis explanation work as backstory?

109. The City Zoo.

-Equus, Ponyville, Gallus-

“Are you sure you don’t need my help?” Cadence had come back to bug Silver Stream and me.

“Aren’t you here to relax?” The tone of my voice couldn’t possible get any flatter.

“Yes, could you please leave our relationship alone? It’s innocent until proven guilty! What… what are those looks for?” Giving Silver the same glance she was getting from Cadence, she looked confused as to why we were staring at her. It took her a moment. “Oh… we are in the still friendship stage with a bit of the denial that we are dating stage. Goodness knows what will happen at the friend zone stage, the interfering friend’s stage, then the interfering parent’s stage and there’s also the fact that Kuril La Perm is in on this as Gallus’s adoptive mother.”

“But I need to help someone with a relationship problem, it’s almost as bad as Twilight when friendship problems aren't around!” There was only one way we were getting rid of Cadence today.

“Mom!” I shouted, goodness knows I would never call Kuril that unless I needed her… but I was taking advantage of being one of her kittens.

“I think Kuril is busy in…” Cadence started only for a flash of a teleportation happened behind her.

“Are you bothering my grumpy kitten while he’s still in the friendship and somewhat denial dating stage?” Kuril was now standing behind Cadence with her arms crossed her eyes glaring daggers into Cadence’s and one of her clawed feet started tapping against the ground. Said ground started cratering with each light tap.

“Ah, I see, you are already working on this.” Cadence seemed nervous. I didn’t know how dangerous Kuril fully was, but the death rabbit as a familiar was a clue. “I apologize for stepping onto your turf oh Witch of Great Taste.”

“Mmhm… well… thirty minutes.” Kuril said lazily, the Abyssinian held her staff at the ready.

“Thirty minutes?” Cadence queried curiously.

Kuril swung her staff at Cadence and in puff of smoke Cadence was gone and in her place was an exceedingly ugly duckling, the buck teeth on a ducks bill did make it look fairly funny. I wouldn’t laugh, because the duck also had acne and looked like it was hit with an ugly rake, because the ugly stick just wasn’t nearly enough.

“There… now leave my kitten and his friends alone, I already received word that you were bothering Sandbar and Yona. So you warrant my thirty minute ugly duckling potion.” Kuril turned to us and smiled. “Now run along Gallus and have fun, enjoy life, seize the day, hang out with other people and don’t feel pressured to grow up so fast.”

The duck quacked and looked a bit miserable and Kuril twirled her staff and disappeared in a flash as quickly as she had appeared.

-Earth, Camden Town, Dalmatian Home, Ocellus-

“So we’re going to wait with you until Hunter confirms they’ve returned?” I asked Webby.

“Of course, we have plenty of room in the mansion and you can go on adventures with us.” Webby looked a little sheepish. “This place has… well…”

“Gone to the dogs?” Dylan and Lena said at the same time with differing expressions on their faces, Lena was more smirk and Dylan was more to the tune of dour acceptance.

“We understand entirely and don’t mind that phrase at all, sometimes it even applies because we tend to be a rowdy bunch.” Dylan continued before turning to Huey. “So what was that about your mother being stuck on the moon for more than ten years and surviving on a stick of gum? How is gum like that Oxy-chew stuff not more famous if it can do what you says it does?"

“The one downside is that the only flavor it can come in is Black Licorice any other flavor added becomes an aftertaste to the black licorice, it also slowly makes one lose the ability to taste anything else when it comes to candy for a while depending on how long it’s used.” Every dog, duck and Smolder all shivered with abject horror. “Our mother is never going to be able to taste anything sweet normally ever again.”

“Which can be argued as worse than losing her leg.” Dewey chimed in. “Given she has PTSD about the gum, but not losing her leg in the moon crash or the constant moon mite problem.”

Horror and fear didn’t taste that great, but Chrysalis liked it and that’s exactly why all the other changelings don’t.

Happiness, friendship and love for me any day of the week!

“What’s wrong with black licorice?” I asked and they all just stared at me with disbelief. “It’s not that bad.”

“Have you ever had something gnawing at your tongue for ten years straight like that? It’d drive anyone completely insane!” Looking to Louie, his green hoody looked neat and I wondered if it came in blue. “I’m surprised our mother is still sane… probably needs therapy come to think of it… well she eventually chilled out after a few weeks of trying to play catch up with missing the first ten or so years of our lives, but still!”

“Well of course I have, I’ve been absorbing the abstract concept of love all my life! The forms of love have a general flavor in common and a side flavor that makes it unique to the person and the way that said person expresses it.” Was I missing a cultural context again? “Louie tastes like sour apples, Dewey like grapes or blueberries and Huey taste like Kiwi, these flavors change every now and then… Webby, however, just comes off as cotton candy all the time.”

“That definitely checks out.” Lena smirked in Webby’s direction.

“Can I help it if I have a loving and sugary personality?” Webby stated with a cheerful lilt.

“Yeah, never ask a changeling about taste when it comes to actual food.” The dry tone Smolder spoke in should upset me more than it did. “I don’t think changelings would ever really be great chefs.”

“Isn’t most food said to be made with love though?” I tilted my head while looking at Smolder and she looked away. “Oh… is this a culture blindness thing?”

“No, more like a cultural difference thing.” Turning back to me, Smolder reassured soothingly as she ran a claw down my blue spotted fur.

-Africa, Wakanda, Pom-

“So what’s the name of this city again?” Dolly asked as we walked into the city from the fringes of the jungle.

The city was bizarre, it had buildings and such, but it also had entire districts that seemed designed like habitats for specific animalistic beings. Bipeds obviously weren’t as common here as the animalistic, the entire city was built almost like it was a giant zoo and the people here looked peaceful.

I looked at a nearby board, the city here was built as a part of nature… only animals were kept out to protect the animalistic citizenry. There were a few tweaks to nature here or there to generate the districts I was seeing on the board. We were in the region that was nicest for me.

“Zootopia… wonder how I’m going to find a job here.” I stated idly while looking over the board after we entered the inhabited zone.

“Welcome to Zootopia, first time being here? This city takes up a majority of the country of Wakanda and is a major tourist spot for all visitors, built in Africa’s settle zone after it was invaded some seventy years ago.” A scantily clad gazelle walked up to us on two hooves, animalistic because she didn’t have feet like a biped, she was giving me a curious look. “We’re here in Meadow Lands district, you would like it here and considering you just got out of the jungle… it’s probably a good breather for you. I would like to welcome you to my slice of happiness on this world Leap Lamb, you saved a lot of lives on that plane that was on its way here.”

“I prefer my name, I’m Pom Lambchop. I really don’t like super heroics in general.” Despite the fact that I could effectively do them with my magical capabilities. “It’s thankless, no pay and everyone will blame you for stuff you don’t do right or hold you accountable for the stuff that you did to save lives. I’d prefer being a simple everyday waiter, but when needs must…”

“You’ll act as needed.” The gazelle nodded. “And this is your companion Caper Canine, what’s her name?”

“Her name is Dolly Dalmatian.” I answered. “I think she doesn’t like the Caper Canine name, but it’s pretty much attached to her at this point and she’s learning to accept it.”

“That’s really cute.” The Gazelle obviously earned Dolly’s ire when she barked out.

“I prefer cool and awesome!” Hopefully Dolly wouldn’t get into too much trouble around here when I wasn’t watching her. “Also no, I am not learning to accept it, stop lying to people who can’t understand me Pom!”

“She’s adorable.” The gazelle stated in a much more endearingly sweet tone, only hearing Dolly’s barks and not her actual words like I could.

If her father Doug could hear her now, he’d wonder where she learned some of those words.

“So…” I started as I motioned a hoof at her. “You are?”

“Just call me Gazelle, I was one of the lives you saved and I just wanted to thank you by showing you around, I knew you’d show up eventually. Zootopia is one of the most well know places in Africa and the crime rates here are… relatively low. It was also the closest city to where you fell, so I’ve been spending a lot of time around this district since the plane landed. Not much going on in the rest of Africa out in the wilds, but here, we have a slice of civilization that mixes in quite well with its own wild scene.” Gazelle stated as we looked at the map of Zootopia. “I’m a bit surprised that you don’t know me, I have a bit of a reputation around here. You must have a really busy life.”

“Like you wouldn’t believe…” I muttered sourly as I thought about all the things wrong with my life, including the accidental kidnapping of Dolly from the Dalmatian family. “Dolly and I are not looking for trouble here.”

“I’m sure that if it finds either of you, then it’ll be sorry that it ever did. This city is an animalistic mecca and we can be a bit wilder than bipeds.” Gazelle grinned merrily at me, she sounded like a nice lady at least. “Okay, you know we are here in Meadow Lands, but over to our west is Canal district with our cities more aquatic residents, to our direct south is Rainforest district, Downtown district is further south and a little more is Savanna Central.”

“So does this city have all the biomes in the world packed into one place?” This was kind of impressive if it was true.

“Oh yes, it’s one of the best parts about Zootopia, you can find a place anywhere in this city and everyone can live here. You can try a little of everything, which is what makes this city so great and why I keep coming back to a place I absolutely love!” Gazelle stated in a peppy loud tone, several people stopped to agree with her with a few friendly shouts. “To the east is Tundra Town, which you might want to stay away from as you don’t look like you have much on you and Dolly has even less. Though I wonder if that strip of cloth is a fashion accessory or does it actually account for your entire hero costume like people are suggesting… it is… very Ram-bo.”

No idea who that is.

“Oh uh… yeah, I think I should take this off my head. I was wearing it to attract those mad mandrill machines away from the civilians back in Britain.” I quickly unwrapped the pink cloth from around my head. “Dr. M got away and I really didn’t like having to do all that fighting.”

“I was wondering why you didn’t take it off sooner.” Dolly stated with a hint of amusement. “Still, it was a cool fashion statement, kind of like a karate fighter… which you basically are. I mean you’re technically my martial arts master in that respect considering you’re teaching me some really cool stuff I didn’t know I could do.”

“You’re dog Dolly seems really cheerful and friendly.” Gazelle crouched down and scratched Dolly’s chin.

“The only reason why I’m not biting you for assuming that Pom owns me, is because I’m currently in a good mood lady.” Stated Dolly seriously, but her barks sounded innocently enough and her tail was wagging at the petting she was getting. “I may be mystically bound to you Pom, but make no mistake. I’m a free dog that just happens to want to go on adventures with you and… I’m not exactly good at taking care of myself. I’m a bit dependent on others for things outside of my favorite activities.”

Most of said activities involved everything a normal dog would love, outside of playing fetch. Dolly for some reason didn’t like fetching things at all.

“Anyway, South of Tundra Town is Sahara Square, don’t ask how they managed to get a desert and an artic region to coexist right next to each other. Everyone asks that question within a day of arriving here.” Gazelle almost looked like she had stars in her eyes as she basically waxed poetic about the city. “The planning for this city took a phenomenal amount of effort to build, but they made that piece of weirdness work somehow. Well… want me to give you a complete tour of my home?”

“Can you give me a tour of the nearest place where I can find some temporary work? I’m not exactly financially stable at the moment. While the city looks nice and all, I’m going to tell you up front that I can’t live here for the rest of my life and I can’t be this city’s super hero.” Not that it would be hard to do so, this city did look absolutely incredible and that was just from being on the outskirts. I had a home to return to and friends to find. “I’ve got some lost people I need to find and… there are circumstances beyond my control that led to me being in Britain and then here. I’m quite far from home and my missing friends are just as extraordinary as I am… if not more so. Hopefully they’ll be okay without me.”

“I’m sure your friends will be fine if they are as tough as you are, I don’t even want to know how you resisted all the air pressure and managed to stay on the plane like you did.” We both heard a gurgling noise and Gazelle looked to Dolly. “Is your little sweetie hungry? I know a good store that has some kibble.”

“What kind? I have a few brands I’m particular towards.” Dolly barked at me while wagging her tail.

“What kind, Dolly is a bit of a fussy eater.” Yeah, I could misinterpret Dolly as much as I want and get away with it… except around other dogs which will inevitably be magnetically drawn towards me. “I could use the help considering I don’t have much on me, aside from bananas and peanut butter. I’m almost out of peanut butter, because I’ve been mostly feeding it to Dolly to keep her protein levels up while we were a bit lost in the jungle."

“I’m not that fussy, but there are some things I won’t touch with a ten foot pole…” Dolly was going to be a thing.

“That’s when you met the Marsuplami right? Tail Team, the guardians of keeping Africa as natural as it is?” Gazelle was beginning to give me suspicions about her, because it seemed like a lot of people around us noticed her. It wasn’t the 'negative light' kind of noticing at all, but it seemed like they were exceedingly positive glances. My guess, Gazelle was some sort of local celebrity and a fairly popular one at that. “I’m sad to say they can’t keep that up forever, but at least they are doing a good jobs at keeping people from tearing down the beautiful nature and you helped them capture some notorious poachers recently. That one of them learned to talk is amazing enough, they are considered animalistic even if they were previously animals completely. They still live like animals, but I think of them more as people who like to live as one with nature or closer to it at the very least.”

“A little civilization doesn’t hurt… too much of a good thing does.” It’s like how I wanted ice cream all the time as a little ewe, now I know why I wasn’t allowed to eat so much of it in one sitting.

“We’re kind of toeing the line on that, but thankfully the city is basically one giant island that is in the middle of Africa.” Gazelle was being fairly pleasant despite me possibly being labeled a vigilante by the police in Britain. I wondered if ‘doing my job as a bodyguard’ counted as a legal excuse for all the fighting I got into. “Said surrounding waters keeps us mostly separated from the wildlife bothering the city and citizenry… not that it will stop any random animal from swimming over to say hello or try to bum snack off a pedestrian or make a snack of a pedestrian. Come on let’s hail a taxi and get poor Dolly something to eat, you too and I’m paying. I know a wonderful little sandwich shop in the Downtown district.”

“Well, if you’re paying.” I wasn’t going to refuse a free meal.

-Two hours later-

“That was enjoyable.” Mostly because Gazelle wanted to be treated like a normal person, which I did and her celebrity status didn’t matter one way or another to me.

“Yeah, it was.” She was a truly nice person, but I had told her what would happen eventually. I was also wearing the pink strip of cloth again as we walked down the sidewalk of the Downtown district. “Okay Gazelle, I’m doing a countdown. Three… two…”

“Stick them up!” Didn’t fail to predict this was coming, we were accosted by a female ocelot with a gun, it was sad that there weren’t many people around to witness this.

A mugging in broad daylight. The chances of this happening were so low, that it wouldn’t have had I not physically been here. It was still a possibility that it could have happened, but the chances were definitely higher when I was around. I’m quite properly paranoid these days.

“I thought you were kidding about trouble finding you that fast.” Gazelle stated with shock. “Do you think you can handle this situation peacefully? Also I don’t want to be shot by a revolver in broad daylight wielded by an ocelot.”

“Now hand over your… wait, aren’t you Leap Lamb?” Rolling my eyes I took off the pink strip of cloth and they blinked and jumped back looking around wildly. “Where did Leap Lamb just go?”

“Is this person serious? You totally called it though!” Dolly barked out, but looked frightened when the weapon was aimed her way.

“Caper Canine, if you’re here then that means Leap Lamb is still around.” Having little idea what was going on I walked up to the person flicked hoof upwards knocking the pistol out of their claws and then kicked it away. “What the, since when were everyday normal sheep so brave?”

I put the strip of cloth back around my head.

“Leap Lamb, you were in disguise!” The ocelot stated looking angry while clenching her fists into claws.

I sent Gazelle a look and she shrugged, she looked as confused as I did.

A second later a chubby looking Cheetah in blue slammed into the ocelot and pinned her against the ground. He stood up and dusted himself off after handcuffing the person that accosted us.

“Thanks for confusing the perpetrator trying a brazen daylight mugging Leap Lamb. Your disguise as an ordinary sheep even had me fooled for a few seconds.” Turning from the cheetah to Gazelle, I just had to ask as I removed the strip of cloth from head.

“Huh, where did Leap Lamb go? She was here a second ago.” The chubby cheetah stated with confusion.

“Is there a gas leak going on around here?” The bluntness of my statement was met with another helpless shrug from Gazelle as I reapplied the strip of cloth to my forehead.

“Oh, you were doing that disguise thing again!” The cheetah man stated looking right at me. “That’s so cool, how you can just disappear into a crowd like that!”

There wasn’t a crowd within ninety feet of us.

“Uh, officer, the person that pointed a gun at us?” Gazelle tried.

“Benjamin Clawhauser, big fan of yours and you are right!” He got on his radio as I turned to Gazelle. “I’m calling this in ladies.”

“I’m not even covering my eyes with the strip of cloth, how in the world did that just happen?” I just want to be clear, I didn’t do anything abnormal aside from take the cloth off and put it back on.

“You’re guess is good as mine, maybe your super powers are the cause of it… I mean it happens often enough in stories right?” Gazelle tried looking worriedly at the two.

“My disguise is apparently literally wrapping a pink strip of cloth around my forehead.” What happened was just beyond words in ridiculous. “This is reality Gazelle, my reality. I’m living in insanity, because my abilities cannot account for what just happened here.”

“Yeah, I can see where you’re coming from Pom, really I can. I mean, a mad scientist outright attacking Camden Town? Stuff like that just didn’t happen until you showed up from out of the portal above the park.” At least Dolly understood where I was coming from. “You couldn't possibly be responsible for Cruella attacking and targeting my family, which happened months ago, but that was as weird as it got for us.”

One statement to the police later and a confirmation that the revolver the ocelot had belonged to them was unregistered and illegal, the ocelot was carted off swearing her revenge on me and shouting something odd about me being a really sneaky snake in a box.

“Thanks again Officer Clawhauser, now if you’ll excuse us… I have to go buy some dog food for my companion.” I nodded to Dolly.

“Your welcome, thanks again for the autograph Ms. Gazelle and I hope you ladies have a good day!” The cheetah gave us a jolly wave as we walked away.

-Camden Town, hotel, Judy-

“Are you kidding me?!” I yelled, Nick immediately sat up holding his stun pistol at the ready and looking for a threat.

“What, what is it Carrots?” Nick has been sleeping with his stun pistol under his pillow, paranoia was a constant lately.

“We knew she was in Africa, but look at this!” He came over and looked at the news,

Leap Lamb and Caper Canine were in Zootopia and have aided the mystical guardians, the Tail Team, catch notorious poachers. Leap Lamb, or Pom Lamchop as she was legally known to us, also recently knocked a gun away from a mugger accosting her and Gazelle.

Said mugger was quickly caught by… Officer Clawhauser? Well I’m proud that Clawhauser took down the mugger, but he should exercise more.

“She’s making good friends at least.” Nick chuckled at my sudden sour expression.

Author's Note

Pom acquired random Super Hero disguise: One article of clothing can hide all your secrets, no matter how stupid it sounds when that article of clothing really doesn't hide anything at all about who you are.

110. Rainforest Relaxation.

-Equus, Ponyville, Spike-

“So Kuril hit you with an ugly duck potion, yes I’m aware of what that is, but no… I can’t help you.” Cadence started quacking at me angrily. “I’m Spike, I’m stuck in Twilight’s body for the next five or so hours thanks to something involving a magical flower and tomato paste I was going to use for a pasta dinner tonight. Yeah, just the usual stuff that happens around Ponyville.”

Cadence started whining and quacking in a depressed manner.

“Just ride it out for however long Kuril quoted you Cadence.” I knew Kuril from the few times she visited us in Canterlot as mayor of Airship Mauled. “Twilight can’t help you even if she wanted to and she’s having fun quietly doing paperwork.”

Cadence just rolled her eyes.

As mayor, Kuril had a one hundred percent approval rating of the locals, which was normally though to be impossible by many who lived outside their town… up until you tasted Kuril’s cooking that is.

-Earth, a day later, Germany, Autobahn, Shanty-

I did not be knowing pirates could be found inland, much less on the ground. I be knowing a lot about sky pirates, the regular pirates you’d find in boats out on the water, but roadway pirates? That was being quite knew to me.

I leapt off of Dodo and kicked off the motorized bicyclist and back onto Dodo, the van was currently under attack and I was riding Dodo to keep them off of the Cooper Gang’s back. The person riding that thing be flopping into a mud pool.

“Dodo, jump!” I shouted, he be leaping straight up and landed on the front of a car. He quickly started running again as the rear of the car flipped upwards into the air and was soon skidding along on its top behind us. “Woohoo, you think you got anything on this pirate!”

-Mopsy-

“I swear, Shanty is going to give me a heart attack.” I stated watching as she and Dodo managed to force the various following vehicles off the road. That Dodo could run faster than the van could go was a good thing in this instance, but if Shanty hit the road going at these speeds… well I’m quite glad Dodo is protective of her and had machine reflexes.

“She’s doing fine Mops.” Mr. Cooper reassured me, I think this drive to China was going quite horribly at the moment. “So is her caretaker Pom from what we’ve been hearing, she’s made it to Zootopia in Wakanda.”

“I, the great road pirate Dan Karnage, am feeling like you are not taking me seriously enough!” The wolf dressed in green camouflage war gear stated from a loudspeaker inside a monster truck that was still keeping up with us. “You are sending a child to deal with a road pirate as great as me and… uwaaAAAHH!”

Dodo just slowed down immensely and popped a tire on the truck with a quick blast of energy from his beak. This sent the monster veering wildly off the road, where it struck a ditch wrong and flipped several times. It promptly exploded when it stopped, quite violently too!

Murray pulled the van to a stop as Shanty road up next to us looking back at the smashed twisted pile of metal.

“I, Dan Karnage, am only mildly inconvenienced by the fact that my panzerschreck ammunition has now gone kablooey!” Dan shouted from within the wreckage much to our surprise.

“Let’s just go.” After nodding to me, Murray hit the gas pedal and we sped down the road.

-Africa, Wakanda, Zootopia, Rainforest District, Dolly-

I woke up feeling comfortable and realized I was being snuggled by Pom on the bed we were sharing, I felt kind of awkward and started to gently shake Pom.

“Hey, wake up Pom.” She slowly came to at my wiggling. “Let me go, I need to go and why are you holding me like this?”

“You were crying in your sleep last night, you really miss your family huh?” Pom let me go and sat up while stretching out. “You know what? I should just teach you how to use a toilet. I toilet trained my dogs, might as well tell you all the things dogs just don’t understand about toilets.”

“What’s there to know?” If only I knew what I would learn from this.

-Ten minutes later-

“And that’s why dogs have misconceptions about toilets.”

Well my family would be as mortified as I currently was, but we tended to do our business outside in the back yard or at the park. Still, I can certainly see, understand and know absolutely why toilets existed now.

There were so many things I wish I didn’t know now, at least I already knew what a bathtub was and how to use it.

Exiting the bathroom after doing my business and getting forcefully scrubbed down by Pom, we walked into the living room. We saw Gazelle out cold on the couch. She must have had a busy night, apparently she was famous pop star, wouldn’t know anything about her and that was more up my brother DJ’s alley than mine.

“I’ll get breakfast ready, want some of that kibble Dolly?” Pom moved to the kitchen and I followed after her. I hopped up onto the counter and looked out the nearby window.

“Yeah!” My brother has a tree house in the back yard back in Camden, said tree house didn’t compare to the ones in the Rainforest District of Zootopia.

There were vines everywhere, rope and wood bridges, it had the smell of being wild and looking like a giant park at the same time. Pom opened the window and I took a deep whiff of the air, so fresh and inviting… as was the smell of kibble Pom placed on the table and I was going to immediately be digging into that!

“Houba!” Yelping at Mars sudden appearance, I found myself face first on the floor having fallen from the counter. “You okay there Dolly, maybe I should be asking if the floor is…”

“Just peachy Mars…” The long tailed monkey dog thing freaked me out, I felt Pom’s concern and answered her question as her mouth moved to ask it. “My nose hurts, but I’m okay.”

“Well if you aren’t too badly hurt… hello Mars, here for breakfast?” Pom had set about making breakfast for herself and for Gazelle. Oatmeal, fruit, grits and she set out a box of cereal, she was also doing a little cleaning as she did all of this.

Pom was a lot like Dylan in some respects in being an awesome homemaker, but she was different in knowing how to throw down when needed!

“Sounds good to me. So we were looking about for more trouble, but it seems Zootopia is still respecting nature after that whole Night Howler thing and is not expanding beyond its limits. We were wondering how you were getting on without us and I came to check in on you.” Poking through the window on his tail lifting his entire body weight, Mars dropped onto the floor and started coiling and kinking his tail at his back. “My mate Mia doesn’t like the hustle and bustle of the city or more technological stuff, but she’s willing to enter the meadow and rainforest districts at least. She prefers living as naturally as possible and I can’t blame her, because I like living free to explore things personally too. She’s watching Maurice to make sure he doesn’t cause too much trouble aside from just eating bananas all day, I swear my buddy can cause a shortage within a week…”

“I have a question, are you magic?” It’s been bugging me that Mars was so unusual.

“If you’re referring to the fact that my people hatch from eggs and can start eating piranha to their bones five hours afterwards, then yeah, we’re pretty magical rare creatures.” Wait… what? Mars’s people hatched from eggs?! “I also like fruits and nuts, but we’re apparently natural predators to the piranha where my people come from.”

“That’s not exactly answering my question, but it does make me want to ask more.” That really long tail had to be magic, but I was going to try and stop thinking about it.

“Well you can come in and take a seat Mars, Dolly is already getting into her breakfast.” Yeah kibble and a side of water Pom, the usual breakfast for me.

Only… there wasn’t the sound of a lot of brothers and sisters making a fun mess and getting kibble all over the place.

Gazelle walked in looking sleepy and looked about as she stretched out, she seemed to overlook Mars at the table and noticed me eating. She gave me a fond look.

“How about you think about what you’re going to do from here, my home is your home as long as you need it Pom.” Gazelle stated with a yawn as she started walking out of the room and towards her bathroom. “We’ll talk when I’m more awake and after I’ve gotten a shower in.”

“Breakfast will be ready when you’re done.” She nodded at Pom’s words and waved at us. Pom turned to us. “She must have had a fun time last night, she’s so tired she missed Mars sitting at the table.”

“I know for a fact that some of the people around here certainly know how to party like animals!” Mars waited patiently and pointed out some of the things he wanted, Pom got him some of that stuff and he started eating alongside me.

“So what are we doing Pom, where are we going from here?” She gave me a confused look.

“Aren’t we going to get a plane ticket back to…” Pom started and I cut her off.

“No Pom, we’re going to look around for your friends, my family can handle itself just fine without me.” Dylan was there and I trusted him to always be there for them. “It always has…”

If neither of us were there to watch the pups, then I would do just about anything just to get back to them immediately. I can already feel that Pom would help me with that no questions asked.

“We have no idea where to look though.” Well Pom, I had a plan for that.

“I have an idea on what to do for that… we just need to keep doing heroic stuff to attract attention to ourselves. If they are as capable as you, they’ll find us!” That and maybe find the nearest skating competition, I was itching to get into animalistic and biped competition for once and maybe Pom could aid in that. I’m willing and ready to stop hiding the fact that I’m not just any regular everyday dog! “In fact… can you ask Gazelle if Zootopia has any skate parks nearby for me?”

“Why can’t you ask her yourself?” Mars asked plainly between chewing on some nuts.

“You do realize that I’m barking right, Gazelle doesn’t understand animals.” My speech may be animal, but us Dalmatians were quite far from dumb.

“Oh… I get it now!” Mars gave us a quirky smile and two raised thumbs, then he pointed to Pom. “Wait, she speaks animal?”

“No, I specifically speak dog , I know someone that speaks animal though… and she’s kindness personified.” Pom stated with a faint smile as she turned to me from cleaning things. “I’ll ask her for you Dolly.”

Yes!

-A few hours after breakfast, Pom-

The air here was amazingly refreshing and the giant trees reminded me of some places in Equus. We finally made our way down the stairs to the skate park on the ground.

The rope bridges between giant trees could use a few more guard rails and could be far sturdier. This was apparently a high bachelor district for people who wanted peace and quiet. People usually moved to Savanna Central, Meadowlands or Sahara Square if they started families in Zootopia.

That didn’t mean that kids weren’t around, it’s just that the tree top homes weren’t as safe for them and there were likely regulations about needing a home on the ground when it came to caring for kids. Nobody wanted to see a kid fall from that high up.

Gazelle had seemed a little surprised to see Mars when she was more aware, but she seemed to be alright with his presence. When asked, she gave us directions to the nearest skate park and was coming along with us to watch Dolly do her thing.

“So that’s how the Bunny Burrows were created in the south.” It was a fascinating story as was the Night Howler incident, rare African flowers that can drive any creature utterly berserk. Gazelle explain the predator and prey thing going on in animalistic circles around here, so I should try to be friendly towards predator animalistic. Bipeds didn’t have this problem, they had entirely different issues. “And here we are… not all districts have a skate park like this one. Now what can Dolly really do on her skateboard?”

“Rainforest Rollers Skate Park?” I read off the sign, we went in and found the skate park was mildly occupied. A few kids were hanging around and skating, just enjoying themselves. “You know Dolly, you could have gotten stuck with an even sillier moniker like Roller Rover.”

Dolly growled aggressively at me.

“So Dolly does like the Caper Canine sidekick name.” Gazelle was helpful in helping us find the skate park.

Dolly gave Gazelle a defeated stare. Mars, the Marsupilami, was swinging around above our heads and looking about for something interesting to do.

“I do not, Roller Rover just sounds as bad as Caper Canine!” Complained Dolly as she carried her skateboard towards the halfpipe nearby, she had a smile on her face and a wagging tail as she climbed up to the top of the right side of the half pipe. “Oh yeah, it’s my time to light this halfpipe up!”

“She seems excited.” Gazelle stated.

“She really likes skateboarding and she’s quite good at it.” I was about to see that personally for the first time. “I’m pretty sure I could enter her in a competition or could even hire her out to birthday parties for money, if she felt like playing along.”

“She’s that good?” Questioned Gazelle, she apparently wore light clothing and was bare hoof at the moment. She didn’t like shoes and only wore some while on a stage.

“Provided she’s not overly nervous or distracted.” She was good at learning martial arts as I taught them to her, Dolly wasn’t one for boring lectures and was better at paws on learning and actively doing things. “Hey kids, want to see a skateboarding dog? She really likes to put on a show!”

The various kids came over, a leopard, a few tigers, a fluffle, a skulk and even an older adult panther who was present to make sure the kids were playing safely, there was also this jaguar with a bit of scarring over his right eye.

“Aw yeah, an audience, thanks Pom!” It wasn’t hard to figure out that Dolly was the type to show off and loved attention, so I just helped her with that. “Bow-Wacka-Wow!”

Dolly kicked off the edge and went down the ramp, she reached the other edge and grinded her board along it before twisting around and going back down towards the right ramp, where she went up in the air spun twice and came down to go shooting up off the left side.

Watching Dolly perform a twisting backflip, I was smiling at how joyous she seemed to be just doing tricks. She went down the ramp, kicked off the board making it flip underneath her and she landed to go up the right ramp.

“She’s amazing.” Gazelle stated with obvious awe. “How did you train her to do all that?”

Dolly went a bit high off the right ramp, spun around once and then popped herself to the back of the board. She did a single paw stand while spreading her other paw out for balance after landing the skateboard directly on its round nose.

“She just needed a little encouragement to learn how to do these things.” I answered as I watched Dolly continue to balance the front tip of the board right next to the edge of the ramp. “She has always had a fascination with skateboarding, she really enjoyed learning new tricks from watching other skateboarders and started trying to mimic them. She’s flopped on her face a lot, but that didn’t stop her in the slightest.”

“I bet it was hard to get her to stop once she got started.” It was amusing that the pop star like Gazelle was mystified by a skateboarding dog when she's seen quite a few weird things already. “I’ve never seen a dog do this before.”

I’m pretty sure that’s because dogs kept their close to animalistic natures in this world hidden, they preferred to be seen as animals even if they did have a level of intelligence that puts them above other more average animals.

“Dolly is, 'kind of', one of a kind.” We watched as Dolly continued her paw stand for a few more seconds before she flicked her board backwards and kicked off with her left hind leg to go down the ramp. “Hey, do a twister!”

Dolly looked towards me as she shot up the left ramp, she barked in response and as she went up she hopped to grab the back end of her board and swung it around four times horizontally before pulling it beneath her. The same maneuver she used to save me from that gorilla robot and she even managed to land it.

“Whoa, that’s one seriously cool dog!” One of the kids stated as they watched her zip down the ramp she reach the other edge and propped the front of her board on it and then kicked up and off the board.

Dolly somersaulted forward several times as she went backwards, her board followed underneath her while flipping in the opposite direction. She landed on the board as it hits the center of the halfpipe. She quickly slammed the rear of her board down as she skidded backwards from her momentum and came to quick stop before she could go up the left ramp backwards.

Getting off of her board, Dolly propped it up with her left leg. To anyone else, it looked like she just barked a few times in my direction. To me, it was another day where I can learn to understand my new friend.

“Was I good or what Pom?” Asked Dolly with a smile and wagging tail.

“Come on Dolly, come here girl.” I said innocently, Dolly gave me a suspicious look and did as I asked. I pulled her into a hug. I started to rub her back. “That last trick looked pretty dangerous, anyway… for the sake of keeping up appearances… good girl!”

“Hey, the Dizzy Drop is one of my best tricks, don’t worry about me… I’ve landed on my face enough times to… say, could you move your left hoof a little to the left and up a bit, I’ve got an itch… yeah right there. Oh yeah, that feels nice.” Dolly nuzzled against me as I got a particularly itchy spot on her back. “I’ve failed that trick enough times to know how to do it right, it’s kind of my signature move now. Don’t worry about me, I’ve only broken my leg once doing it. That will only happen if I misaligned my plant and launch, I’m definitely not making that mistake twice.”

“Good, because I don’t want you getting hurt, there might be some ‘questions’ if I try to take you to a vet.” I was saying this because I doubted Dolly has been to a biped or animalistic run vet in years judging by the way she shivered.

Her step mother had been taking care of most of her injuries and I could do it unofficially, but I would prefer a professional opinion depending on dire situations.

“Hey, I’ll be careful Pom, don’t worry about me.” Dolly then slapped my nose with her tongue and I let her go.

“Hey I think I recognize that dog… is that Caper Canine and… Leap Lamb?!” One of the kids shouted excitedly and we looked up from sharing a moment as the kids came forward asking a lot of questions.

“Well at least I’m not on the receiving end of the crowd for once.” We both looked at Gazelle. “What, do you think celebrities like getting mobbed?”

“Oh Gazelle too!” One of the kids said joyfully, but they crowded around Dolly.

“How did she do that last trick?” They were clamoring for how Dolly did that last one and since Dolly couldn’t talk I may as well explain what I saw.

“Well it would be hard to do on two legs, because it’s a four legged trick.” Having received a look that I was on the right track, Dolly barked and wagged her tail with a stealthy nod. “She leapt backwards using her hind legs and forced her front legs downwards to start doing the forward flips and she hit the skateboard to send it flipping backwards and bounced herself upwards. It is her hardest to do trick, I’m quite proud of her.”

“What’s it like being a super hero?” One of the kids ask.

I winced audibly. The present male adults noticed my reaction, they gave me pitying looks and Gazelle just was giving me a weak smile.

“It’s not exactly an easy life kids, and I really don’t like the idea of being called a super hero. In fact I would suggest learning some survival skills like camping and foraging, that’s saved my life on many occasions. I’m not going to lie, the things I actually get up to are not glamourous or exciting, it’s in fact seriously dangerous and I’m usually scared out of my mind most of the time. Don’t get me wrong, I've saved a lot of people!” Being a reserve guard and the head of my own division with a desk job was supposed to be simple, but no, I had to prove I could be capable of doing the physical duties as much as what was mentally required of me as a Guard of Huoshan. At least I was putting that training to good use. Dolly barked in a friendly manner for the kids as she nuzzled up to my legs. Seeing the kids were all giving me sad looks, I decided to bring the mood around to more pleasant subjects. “Dolly here is amazing on a skateboard isn’t she? I have seen plenty of incredible things when it comes to helping people, the world is much weirder than you can ever truly believe and it is a very beautiful place. Did you know that I’m trying to learn how to fly with my meager abilities? I think I’ll get my wings someday even if I will still need to leap to get in the air.”

“Meager abilities? You can leap like... really high, over a building high!” An exaggeration from one of the kids, but I could get up to the top of buildings easily enough. “That you can fly is totally amazing!”

“I guess, I just know some incredible people. I can’t truly fly yet, but I will be able to one day.” I stated as I looked to Dolly, Gazelle and Mars hanging out in a tree using his tail as a makeshift hammock, then looked to the sky. “Just keep looking and you'll eventually see something truly amazing..."

-Zootopia PD, Benjamin Clawhauser-

"Leap Lamb hasn't actually done anything illegal, sir." I didn't want her in trouble with Chief Bogo.

Author's Note

An Extremely Goofy Movie reference, Dolly does one of Max's tricks.

111. Business Tiger.

Business Tiger.

-World: ???, Oleander-

“Who’s a good dog, you’re a good dog, yes you are!” The creature I was hugging was this strange blue furred lithe male monster dog thing that was said to have hatched from an egg and had an unusually large fascination with bladed weapons. Fred informed me, from what he read of this world, they learned to throw shuriken at five minutes old. Usually said shuriken is crudely constructed out of chewed bone of the local fauna. To think their puppies were just that adorably lethal. “Do you think Pom would appreciate having one of these as a friend?”

“She certainly would get the point if we got her an egg… HEHEHE.” I ignored Fred’s evil giggling and set about tracking one of these creature’s eggs down.

-Earth, Germany, Autobahn roadside campsite, Shanty-

“This road is being quite fun.” That I could let Dodo run free, just so long as he doesn’t bother or go near anyone at the speeds he can be running, was a nice change of pace for him.

“Yeah, I like it too Shanty.” Murray said with a grin as he ate his food from Germany’s regional Hippo Burger. “We should come back and test out some improvements on the van when Bentley gets around to making them, maybe the van will be capable of even keeping up with Dodo!”

“I swear you two wouldn’t know nutrition if it bit you on the…” Mopsy’s grumbling died off as she started eating her fried apples.

“While the autobahn does have speed limits, it’s really quite hard to enforce anyone going over them given how long this stretch of road goes on for. Over half of this road can be driven at unrestricted speeds.” Bentley be giving us trivia knowledge about this road, don’t know when I might be needing it though. “We just have to watch out for cameras set up all along the road and fudge the radar to detect how fast we’re moving...”

“I’m sure you have it covered Bentley.” Looking up at Sly standing next to Bentley and narrowed my eyes.

I quickly be rolling away from my spot before Sly could steal my food from behind me.

“I guess you saw through my thief standee this time Shanty.” Sly gave a short laugh. “Guess I can’t steal from you today.”

I be helping him train to leave behind believable standees of himself, he be getting quite spooky with it now. It also be helping me train my skills at keeping aware of what be going on around me.

-Africa, Zootopia, Savanna Central district, Pom-

This district was a little more busy than the rest of the city, Downtown district being the busiest of all, if there was one thing I could say about Savanna Central… it was the place you’d go to do some shopping and was also where Zootopia’s city hall was located.

It had a quaint little park in the middle of the shopping mall that we were exploring, after the skateboarding Dolly did this morning she wanted to do a tourist thing. No helmet, no skateboard, Dolly left those back at Gazelle’s place.

I think I finally saw something that had garnered my interest.

“Say Dolly… if we were to get a personal device for our use, then wouldn’t you be able to keep in contact with your family?” As hasty as I knew Dolly could be, she was still reticent about talking to me when it came to her issues.

I think I see our similarities in being anxiety prone, Dolly just hides it better behind a peppy upbeat personality. Also I wasn’t wearing that pink bit of cloth in case it had magical properties, which I wouldn’t know how it could as it didn’t feel magical to me. Magic wasn’t practiced openly on this world apparently or it was always reasoned out as something else being the cause, magic is so easily explained away as swamp gas as far as I know.

Dolly looked at where I was looking and saw an electronics store, Equus wasn’t exactly at this level of technology yet and I really didn’t want to bring any technology home that could cause problems. In this case, I didn’t want to be ignorant of local technology like I was ignorant about how a being like Dodo works.

In the case of bringing Dodo home with us… well he counted as biological by the definition of what makes up the differences between familiars and golems. Shanty had better make sure Dodo didn’t fall into the wrong hooves when we got back to Equus, though I think it would actually be pretty hard to catch Dodo.

“Yeah, but I’m not exactly technology savvy like my brothers are. If I can access a computer or the internet with a device, then I would know how to send them a message at the very least.” Thankfully enough, Dolly knew how to get in touch with her family. Wished I could do the same thing. “Do we even have the cash for that?”

I’ve been told about the existence of the World Wide Woof, but that was mostly about dogs blanketing a local area with howls to carry their voices along and was just recognized worldwide and not actually a worldwide magical network accessible only by dogs or beings that could howl like them.

“Well…” We had enough funds to buy food for the next three days, not anywhere nearly enough for a plane ticket back to Camden Town and on a plane that will allow dogs. With what we have, we can afford a device, but we’d be setback by a bit and even more so if we didn’t get one that could fit exactly what Dolly knows how to use. I wanted Dolly to stay in contact with her family. “Yeah, we can make it work, provided we keep it cheap.”

Dolly seemed to be considering it, I could feel the desire in our bond.

The flow of foot traffic suddenly change and I blinked, it looked like something was going on nearby at a stage that was set up in the small park.

“Think about it Dolly, something is going on over here.” Taking up her up in my hooves, I put Dolly on my back and started to follow the crowd to see what was going on.

After spending most of our morning with Dolly exercising her skateboard skills, we separated from Gazelle to do some exploring.

Mars was still stealthily following us, I don’t think Dolly has noticed yet, he was energetic and curious about us and was expecting something to happen that would require his attention. It was like Mars knew the same thing that I did and was just waiting for it, something big was bound to happen when I’m around.

Mars was a playful figure and moved around lightning fast, kind of like a beach ninja. If most people didn’t notice a bright yellow and black spotted being like him in broad daylight, then they likely wouldn’t since he was just that good at stealth. If anything happened, then I’m sure he could handle it and it was nice to have someone watching out for us.

“Ahem… introducing, from Kahn Industries, the man and creator of the Kahn Industries himself Shere Kahn!” The well-groomed business suited lion introduced a cold looking graying tiger, also in a business suit, to the crowd and he surveyed everyone with a calculating gaze.

His gaze stopped on me for a moment and I tilted my head at him curiously as he raised a brow in curiosity and extreme interest, but continued to survey the crowd as if he hadn’t taken a moment of great interest in me or Dolly.

“Eh… there’s something about that guy that kind of gives me the creeps Pom, he’s making my fur stand on end just looking at him.” Which was hard to notice as Dalmatians were short furred dogs Dolly.

“I think it’s more than that, he seemed interested in us in particular… more so me than you.” I’ve never met the old man in my life, but he did seem to have the ability to read people. He’s probably interested in me because of the whole ‘Leap Lamb’ thing or for some other reason entirely.

“Ahem, hello good people of Zootopia, I thank you for welcoming me to this fine city. Kahn Industry Airlines has been making deliveries to this city for years and it is time has delivered a new product.” This Shere Kahn started of slowly, calmly and methodically as he spread his arms out. The black wall behind glowed with light and showed a device. “Something affordable, efficient and capable of withstanding lots of punishment while trekking through the wilderness or just an everyday accident at home. Kahn Industries would like to announce its new product before the world and I will personally be giving one to a lucky member of the audience before me today.”

The old tiger sent a glance my way, I had a feeling I knew what he was going to do and he narrowed his eyes faintly when I gave him a flat look. He had a very light smirk on his face as if he knew what I had figured out, he waited for the excitement from his rather attentive audience to die down.

I wasn’t a lucky audience member, I was his choice for his needs and I would be getting something from the deal he was making. He was all business.

Lowering his right arm and he held out his paw to the image behind him.

“This is the Personal Exploration Terminal or PET, a device that can be wielded regardless of whether or not one has the digits to do so.” Of course, that’s where he was going with it, but I still had a feeling there was far more to it. “It can be used to connect to the internet, can make phone calls and has a very powerful virus protection software packet, it’s quite portable and...”

With a motion to someone nearby, the screen showed a baseball bat being taken to the PET by a panther. The panther picked up the device and showed that it was just scuffed and in perfect working condition.

“Is quite durable as I’ve stated. It will stop a nine millimeter round from a hand gun, several if you’re lucky, and will still continue to function afterwards if in need of dire repair. It is waterproof and can easily wielded by scuba divers. It has a powerful solar power battery that can last up to twenty four hours outside of direct sunlight, with direct sunlight it can last for up to three days of constant use a week if sparingly used.” He was an experienced elder gentleman in the business world, I knew that much from just looking at him. He was calm, collected and always had knowledge of his place in the world. He was also profiling both me and Dolly like I was profiling him. “This device, also has one unique feature. One that makes it the pinnacle of the future beyond the tablets, smart phones and many other devices in use today… for it has an artificial intelligence built into it. The life of the artificial intelligence in a PET is, immeasurably enough, tied to the very device that houses it and is what limits it from growing out of control. Without the device, the intelligence will not survive as a safety precaution against going… rogue. Rogue as in what someone would see in a science fiction film.”

Shere Kahn seemed to have a history from the way he paused and the way he said ‘rogue’ sent shivers down my spine and reminded me of Nicole Beta telling the history of Elhorn.

“The intelligence will learn from its user and then become a companion of sorts… the intelligences however are not capable of cyber warfare beyond the defensive measures that are installed into them to destroy any virus’s that try to steal any data from the PET, which they will wield directly.” While Shere tried to sell the device to the audience, I looked at the diary sized object. “More importantly… the AI is impossible to hack. It will recognize the user by sight, sound and personality, iy will protect your data from being accessed from within… and without ‘if’ stolen…”

The crowd seemed to be into it now and I looked to Dolly. He looked at me when he said the word ‘stolen’, meaning he was giving it to me knowing I could keep it safe.

“Well, we needed a device, looks like we’re about to get one if I’m right about what this guy wants with me.” I muttered to Dolly, she nodded and we went back to paying attention to the tiger. “He’s going to call us up, don’t bark or get angry at him Dolly. Just stay calm and be nice, even if he is using us to further his own goals. This device could save us some money if it isn’t some kind of trap.”

“Kind of reminds me of those Fetch things my family had to get rid of, only this thing sounds much smarter... which reminds me that it was kind of weird that those ‘Fetch’ things could understand us dogs.” Dolly didn’t seem to feel one way or the other about the PET device, but her feelings on Shere Kahn were coming through strongly. “They freaked out my brother quite a bit, which is understandable now that I think about the fact that those devices were likely made by an animalistic or biped. Plus the whole same day delivery thing was always quite suspect… where did those things come from again? Eh, probably doesn’t matter, nothings come of it for months.”

Dolly didn’t like the tiger and I don’t think it was because he was a feline animalistic.

“Now as to the first being to own a fully operational PET months before it debuts officially will be…” He was glancing around the crowd as if trying to make the decision randomly, but it was a sham. “You there, the unique individual with the unusually calm dog on your back. Come up here on the stage, I figure someone with a pet should receive one.”

“Call me a pet again and I will find a way to make him the most miserable tiger in the world…” Dolly growled lightly, I patted her on the head and got her to calm down by sending her heartwarming thoughts through our bond as I made my way forward.

“Really sir?” I asked as I walked up on stage and played along.

“Of course, may I know the name of this young beauty as my people bring you the first ever PET to become operational?” He was laying it on thick, the guy was still as cold and calculating as he spoke in a warm tone.

“Well if you ‘must’ know my name Mr. Kahn, it is Pom.” He smiled a bit at hearing the hint of suspicion in my voice.

“A lovely name for a lovely young lady trying to find her way in the world. The PET will help, as you seem to enjoy wilderness hikes and you look like you don’t have any devices personally.” If he was referencing the poachers like I thought he was, he was certainly interested in ‘Leap Lamb’ as much as he was me. “Please, I would wish to speak with you after I’m done with the presentation of my product, the last one I’m going to give to the world before retiring.”

He seemed truly melancholy, he’s had a long and hard life of being a business mogul. Still it was suspicious that he was trying to play the grandfatherly angle.

“Sure... okay…” The device was brought up to Mr. Kahn and I glanced at Dolly to make sure she wasn’t going to do anything, she got the message and stayed fairly calm on my back while watching Shere Kahn like a griffon would an abandoned golden coin.

I took it in hoof and looked it over.

“You wouldn’t happen to be a farmer’s daughter would you, not much technology where you’re from I take it.” Shere seemed to have too much of a good impression of me already.

“If you mean to say that I’m from rather rural lands, then yes.” I could dance just as well until I find out what this tiger wanted with me. “I do enjoy camping as much as farming.”

“Here you go, I hope you find this to be useful in whatever you may eventually end up doing. I wouldn’t mind a good review of what I’m bringing into the world before retiring to Cape Suzette.” He held out the device towards me and I reached up with a hoof to take it. He then whispered. “Do try to be careful with it now, you’re quite an amazing individual and this is a very special device that I absolutely want to succeed. It will do well in your hooves, do smile for the cameras now…”

I did smile for the cameras as I took the device and Dolly gave several meaningless barks and a posed for attention on my back.

“So… how do I turn this on?” The thing about this device was that it looked a lot like the one that used to house Nicole Beta, it had bright blue accents and the straps were simple if effective look.

“Already eager to learn about it, the very reason you are on this stage is to give a live demonstration.” Shere Kahn stated loudly for the audience, he really wanted this device to work out didn’t he? He showed me something on the diary sized device in my hoof. “Being a hooved quadrupedal animalistic such as yourself, it is easy enough with a onetime button press to activate it. Afterwards the button will never need to be pressed again. It will take a matter of seconds to boot up and all operations will begin. After that you will begin the process of making this device uniquely yours. It will start as a newborn, but it will quickly become a friend. One you may need in your line of work.”

I hit the button and was quite nervous to have so many eyes all on me, I’m a little surprised that there weren’t many people that recognized me as Leap Lamb. Did the people around here just think that all lambs on this world looked alike or something?

The screen lit up and I seriously hoped that this didn’t lead to a strange time loop situation like what Nicole Beta was going through. I really shouldn’t have asked about Mobius… but I just had to know. Now I would live with keeping that slightly terrifying knowledge in mind.

On the screen appeared a blob and several questions, the most pertinent being that it was asking for my name. If this was eventually going to be something like Nicole Beta, but entirely incapable of having its own body, well I would just try to treat it with respect and protect it. If it could become a life, then it would when magic was involved… Dodo was proof of machines being capable of it.

“My name is Pom Lambchop, adult female sheep, green, Britain, male Dalmatian, Dormarch Dalmatian, make your design unique within the confines comparable to my companion Dolly’s athletic body type, not applicable at the moment, no job to speak of currently, bodyguard, martial arts Instructor, homemaker, waitress, cook, professional dog trainer, situational super hero, a quiet meadow full of flowers, a nice hearty vegetable soup, camping and we will be traveling a lot.” I answered every question until there were no more questions on the screen. I turned to Shere Kahn. “Well?”

“It will take it a while to process you’re…” Shere said when the machine dinged and I felt my right eye twitch as I felt a faint feeling of a familiar bond forming ever so slowly, I forced myself to not glare at the screen. I probably shouldn’t have made the avatar a dog or any kind of canid to speak of. I heard some of Shere’s muttering. “Faster than expected… wrong with it… Leap Lamb’s unique presence perhaps… seems to be operating within parameters…”

“Hi there!” A happy sounding voice stated, I really wanted to groan audibly. “I really like you Pom! You’re going to be Domarch's best friend, I just know it! Was I just born? Happy birthday me! One last question before we complete the process, do I go with or without rear legs?”

“With, afterwards you’ll be just fine the way you are.” I stated immediately. “I’m calling you ‘Dor’ or ‘March’ as a nickname.”

“That has got to be one of the weirdest Dalmatians I’ve ever seen.” Dolly low balled her voice so as to not be heard by those who couldn’t hear outside of certain ranges. She wasn’t wrong Dormarch looked like the creature I had named him after, but also very much a Dalmatian other than the black fish tails covered in white spots.

“Okay, rear legs it is, would have been hard to get around with just three tails…” Dormarch looked about and swirled around chasing his own tails in front of me on the device, I looked up at the bigger screen. He eventually stopped revealing he had grown two hind legs. “I’m your Personal Exploration Terminal, need help, I’ll try to think of something if you ever need advice!”

“It seems you’ve had a curious effect here.” Shere Kahn stated with a slightly surprised tone. “I don’t think anyone could replicate it… pity...”

“Hey everyone, I’m the first of my kind, and hopefully not the last!" Dor was going to be a headache to deal with, I can already tell as he waved to the audience that seemed fairly excited. "Oh do I live in a dog house Pom?”

“Geeze this thing has more energy than I do.” You can’t fault him for that Dolly, he was just born and I’m surprised you didn’t feel him in the familiar bond.

Maybe you were the lucky one Dolly, at least you couldn’t feel him bouncing off the walls after spontaneously coming into existence from a formless blob.

“No you can have a regular house, a boat, maybe an airship, whatever you feel like going with Dor. The skies the limits.” I think he chose an airship shaped house like what you’d see from Equestria based on what I said.

Yep the magic of Equus was infectious. That was, of course, an exceedingly bad thing to find out.

“I like the sound of that phrase!” Dor stated cheerfully, the large screen went black as it stopped projecting him.

“Yes, amusing. You may go Ms. Lambchop.” Shere stated flatly with his arms crossed. “I hope you all enjoyed this demonstration, PET’s will be available several months to a year from now once manufacturing processes are perfected. Any questions? Afterwards I will inform Ms. Lambchop on how to take care of her PET.”

“Funny… I thought I could practically take care of myself… oh look, I have minesweeper!” An explosion noise came from the PET a second later and I looked down at it to see a groaning Dor that looked badly burnt. “Ehnn-… was I coded to feel pain?”

I giggled a bit and Dor smiled up at me while wagging his three fish tails.

“Yay, I did something right… or did I?” I tilted my head at Dor and glanced at Dolly who looked at the device curiously.

“Ma’am my name is Bagheera, follow me to the waiting area while Mr. Kahn finishes wrapping up.” The panther motioned for me to follow him.

What did this Shere Kahn really want?

Author's Note

Dor is not going to be a constantly used character, more used as needed.

Note to self: Go back over page and make sure things are right.

112. Little Friends.

-Equus, Ponyville, Rainbow Dash-

“So as you can imagine, it was awesome when I made all of those giant mutant insects explode!” Of course Scootaloo was enraptured by my totally true tale, it’s just everyone else that was skeptical.

“How can wasps possibly get that large, they wouldn’t be able to fly!” Rumble the little colt who was the younger brother of my coworker in the Wonder Bolts asked.

“Excuse me, but did I hear someone just say that an insect this large can’t possibly fly?” We all turned to see a familiar parrot to sitting cross legged on a giant hovering bee.

“Whoa, since when did you have a giant bee Celaeno?” My pirate parrot friend was looking good on it.

“Since they started taking a liking to pirates who know how to dance.” Celaeno states with a smile on her beak as she leaned forward. “Now tell me this young colt, how is this giant bee flying and carrying my weight if it’s impossible?”

Rumble opened his mouth and then looked cross eyed for a moment as the various other growing teenage fillies and colts just stared at the large bee.

“Magic, duh!” Pinkie stated and everyone turned to her and the alpaca sitting next to her.

“Meep.” All the kids looked to the alpaca and nodded sagely and made noises of agreement.

“They just like you better because you’re fluffier.” Was Pinkie having an adversarial thing with the friendly alpaca? The kids at least went up to the alpaca and started asking for hugs. “I’m still the premiere party pony here!”

“So what are you doing here Celaeno?” It was pretty weird to see her here in Ponyville.

“About that Rainbow…” Celaeno looked like she needed dire help with something.

-Earth, Africa, Savanna Central district, Dolly-

It didn’t take long for that Shere Kahn guy to wrap up his question and answer session.

“Ms. Lambchop, I’m sure you have questions.” That Kahn guy still made my fur stand on end when he spoke with that deep timber, if he were an animal I’d be running for my life.

“Yes, first one… what do you want from me exactly?” Pom wasn’t looking at the screen of the device, she was keeping her gaze firmly on Kahn without a hint of emotion on her face aside from the half lidded eyes.

“Just for you to enjoy your wonderful gift, you seem like the pragmatic sort to figure out how useful it can be.” This Kahn guy put his paws behind his back while gazing at us calmly. He didn’t have much of an expression on his face. “Can’t an old tiger just do something nice for a sheep?”

“Yeah, if didn’t know there were already strings attached to this.” What strings Pom? What did she know? “How long have you been watching us?”

Again… what?

“Since you personally helped the local police catch a brazen revolver wielding ocelot from accosting Gazelle.” Kahn was talking as if he was discussing the weather. “As you may have surmised, I did in fact seek you out specifically to give the PET to you. I saw you looking at an electronics store before asking you to take part in our little… demonstration of a future product. You should be quite appreciative to receive such a grand gift Ms. Lambchop, concerning it is being given freely into your care.”

“I would be more appreciative if I wasn’t being used in such a manner.” Huh? What did Pom mean by that? Her eyes were narrowing at the business suited tiger. “So how long do we have?”

The device worked didn’t it? Nothing seemed wrong with it, so why was she asking how long we would have to use it? The dog on the screen was quietly playing minesweeper, but was obviously listening to the conversation… there were also a lot of explosions happening on the screen.

“It seems you have it mostly figured out. Reminds me of the days when a masterful cargo pilot was still flying circles around my men. He was a ‘hero’ in every sense of the word as it were.” Shere Kahn chuckled dryly and clapped several times. “I would also like to say bravo Ms. Lambchop, you are quite an intriguing individual, one of which I will hope to see again while I’m still in good health. I think you will have a day at the most, more if you are as paranoid as I assume you to be. A little advice, ‘Be Prepared’, everything you might need to know will be in the device if you ask the right questions and if you are to ever show up in Cape Suzette, then I will personally pay for your stay. Hurry along now, times ticking, you and your companion obviously have a busy evening ahead.”

“Thank you for the gift sir, I will take my leave now.” Pom was acting funny, she turned away from Shere Kahn and his group of biped panthers acting as bodyguards. “Dolly, I’m going to stick you to me, don’t be alarmed.”

I nodded and preemptively clamped down on Pom’s back, she started to inhale and then walked into a nearby alleyway while putting away the PET thing in her satchel. She exhaled and before I knew it, we were quite a distance away from the alley and the little park in Savanna Central district, I think we were now closer to Downtown district.

“Uh Pom… what the dog was all that about?” Looking around the rooftop in a paranoid fashion, Pom answered my question with a series of yips. She was actively speaking dog now.

“Ever heard of the concept of a poisoned gift? We just got one and Shere Kahn wasn’t about to give it to anyone else… it was either me or normal person who probably wouldn’t survive the ‘poison’ part of the gift. That we were in Zootopia when he gave this device to us proved to be a boon to him advertising his product. If you remember what Gazelle told us, ‘predator’ and ‘prey’ has some very interesting connotations around here. A sheep and tiger getting along is good for the local sentiments, especially after that ocelot recently accosted Gazelle in broad daylight.” Pom clutched at her bag and looked about worriedly. “Shere Kahn is not out and out evil, but I think he’s toed that that line a lot in life and might have stepped over it a few times. He portrayed a front of decency at least, all while giving us something that he knows will absolutely be trouble for us soon.”

“Why can’t we just ditch the PET thing then?” She gave me a sad look.

“That’s the point of a poisoned gift, we can’t reject it. There’s already a few good reasons not to, I think something really bad will happen if we lose Dormarch.” Pom eyed me warily. “Can you feel our bond?”

“Yeah, it’s still good and I can feel you!” What you were feeling is worrying me.

“Okay, that’s all I needed to know for now.” Pom, was there something I was missing here? Aside from the fact that we were possibly just put in danger by the tiger in the suit? “Tell me if you feel any sudden changes.”

-America, New York City, Smolder-

While I still had to prop up Ocellus, she was almost capable of walking normally thanks to spending some time with Delilah. That therapy dog was a miracle worker, especially because Ocellus was a dog at the time. Now Ocellus was taking on the form that is referred to as ‘horned lizard’ that looked exactly like her dragon form, I bet she could still breathe fire like that too as the form was only missing its wings

“Why are we here and not going after Pom or Shanty?” I was glad to have Ocellus awake and active again, what I wasn’t glad about is that we wouldn’t be going after Shanty or Pom.

“By the time you do get to where they are, they might not be there anymore.” Louie was being a realist and not trying to scam us, at the moment. “Lena and Hunter got along like a fire and those Dalmatians with the magic chicken were really cool too. If Pom or Shanty show up there again, then they can call us to come get them easily, besides we’ve already taken up to much of their hospitality already and they aren’t exactly made of money. Though the Cooper Gang paid them back in a week’s worth of kibble for letting them stay a few days, it was already running out when we showed up.”

“Yeah, it was like another average Tuesday for us, except no dart traps or deadly spiked ceiling crushers.” Dewey at least wasn’t punning around or trying to insert himself into everything in an obnoxious manner. I gave it a minute before he tried to become the center of attention. “Also Snakes, I really don’t like them!”

“Better than most Tuesdays for us at least, I still remember the sharks with laser beams strapped to their heads.” Huey shuddered and hugged himself. “We’re glad they couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn… even after we got them all into one, which come to think of it should have been impossible that they didn’t hit anything with them firing wildly all over the place inside the barn. Anyway, while Uncle Scrooge has business here in New York, we are free to find things to do like go visit the statue of liberty, go to the library or look up strange unsolved mysteries. Like how Webby is chasing down that ancient mystery that might be related to the Lincoln Memorial having some huge secret.”

“I’m still get flashbacks to that game night where we found out that Uncle Scrooge has an entire shrunken civilization in his home.” Louie shivered and looked about. “So where do we go to first? No matter where we go, we’re going to end up doing something interesting.”

“The emotions around here are all over the place, it’s kind of like Manehatten.” We should go to one of those culture festivals Ocellus when the moods are all more cheerful than around here, provided we ever made it back to Equus with our sanities intact.

“Is it too much for you Ocellus?” She shook her head no, but I still figured that we should head to somewhere nice. “So any place where she can get some peace and quiet.”

“You don’t have to worry about me so much Smolder, I’m not 'that' frail.” You just got back on your… whatever you have at the time since you could literally become an octopus at will. You were currently a wingless dragon, which would be seen as a normal lizard biped, which reminds me…

I shifted my orange hoody a bit and wiggled my wings underneath it.

“You seem to be the one that’s more uncomfortable here.” Ocellus gave me a frown as she carefully stopped propping on me and turned to glare down at me.

“Hey, I just need to stretch my wings and that might cause problems around here.” It seemed no one was paying attention to us, but better safe than sorry. We were in a world that was at war not too long ago. “We can get away with the horned lizard thing, what we can’t get away with is the whole ‘flying horned lizard that breathes fire’ thing. People are going to ask questions and we’re technically illegal immigrants here. I don’t know about you, but we do not want to draw attention to ourselves.”

“Huh… what did I miss?” Dewey stated as he somehow tangled up in a yoyo’s string, his yoyo was surprisingly still spinning as it dangled from his beak.

“Not much.” Louie stated as he motioned for us to follow him. “Central Park would be quiet enough, but who knows what will happen when we get there. Again, our family is basically cursed with living in interesting times and that was before we went to China and Uncle Donald ruined that luck sapping spirit. Mark my words, when we get there, something big will happen.”

-Thirty minutes later, Central Park, Ocellus-

I sat on the bench breathing roughly, my body was still trying to get back into some form of shape. I couldn’t just magically shape shift muscles from out of nowhere, that took a bit of magical energy and I was trying to save up so my horn would recover faster.

As you can imagine, Louie was wrong, even as him and his brothers exploring the underside of a nearby bridge in curiosity.

I was using my current form to keep myself from being tempted to use my horn, or horns, as Dragons were one of the few beings with horns on Equus that couldn’t do magic through them. A warranted safety precaution, because I certainly felt comfortable with this form.

Smolder was being at my side as much as she can, I appreciated that, but she was getting a bit clingy. Right now she was off in private stretching her poor wings out.

I heard squeaking going on nearby, my gaze turned away from the burbling fountain to a tree where I could feel six tiny spots of emotion. Two of which were aggravated with one another.

I got up and made my way over to where this feeling was coming from, what I saw was either intelligent animals or animalistic. Animalistic didn’t speak animal, but animals could be smarter than this world would ever give them credit for. Animals back on Equus were definitely intelligent as Professor Fluttershy interacts with them constantly.

They weren’t speaking in an understandable language so they had to be smart animals, because they were wearing clothing and they seemed to be arguing over a piece of paper that looked like a case file.

“Um, excuse me.” The two chipmunks kept arguing, probably not believing that I was talking to them.

I laid down on my stomach and propped my chin up on my claws and watched the two argue about something while making motions to the case file.

Looking over the case file, I took it up in my right claw, humming jauntily as I looked it over. Apparently it was a file about someone named… Professor Nimnul… having recently escaped prison and is possibly being involved in the kidnapping a dog named Georgette Foxworth?

Nimnul was a squat biped chicken that was a mad scientist and apparently has a history of criminal actions where he’s been called a quack numerous times. He’s been arrested quite a lot and somehow always finds a way to escape prison. Georgette belonged to a rich family and was a dog show champion of Fifth Avenue.

I silently put the paper back next to the arguing… brothers from the looks of it… and just continued to watch the two interact.

A mouse came up to me and tilted her head curiously, she looked over at the two boys arguing and one bonked the other on the head with his fist and then they got into a scuffle with one another.

“Um, Miss Mouse, are they brothers?” I asked the mouse with blonde hair. She looked a little surprised that I was addressing her, but she nodded. “Could you please get their attention for me, I want to address what’s currently going on here.”

The mouse squeaked something and immediately had both of their attentions.

“Excuse me, but should you two really be fighting like that? I can understand that you might be having some problems with either missing a friend or even if the kidnapped dog isn’t your friend, then you should get yourselves in order if this is something you’re trying to solve.” They both looked a little shocked that I was talking to them directly. “My name is Ocellus and where I’m from, I have a teacher named Professor Fluttershy who could actually talk to any animal in existence. So I’m used to animals being smarter than anyone would ever give them credit for. You wouldn’t happen to need help with this would you?”

“Hey Ocellus what’s going on?” I looked up to Smolder.

“Oh these two chipmunks and this mouse might be trying to figure out what happened to a kidnapped dog, apparently this is a cold case about three days old. No clues as to the whereabouts of the suspect or the dog.” The mouse jumped and down while nodding and pointing at me. “Okay, so they are little detectives. I wanted to interject because the two brothers are roughhousing way too much and I was worried that they were going too far. Also I wanted to help them.”

“Huh… you do realize we can’t understand what they are saying right? We’re not Professor Fluttershy, so how would we be able to help them if we don’t understand what they are trying to tell us.” They seemed surprised that Smolder was not writing them off either. “Say do you guys know how to write?”

The chipmunk with a red nose nodded.

“Good, then maybe we can start helping you if you need someone at the biped level to do things for you. Oh and I’m a dragon, Ocellus here is a shape shifter.” They looked at me when Smolder said that.

I quickly shapeshift into a Dalmatian and barked pretending to be a dog. The red nosed chipmunk tried to say something excitedly.

“I can’t really speak animal, even like this… I'm sorry. Well at least you can write to us." They seemed upset that I couldn’t understand them, they looked to Smolder. "

“Need proof that I’m a dragon?” Smolder let off a short burst of flames and carefully showed her wings underneath her hoody to them. “Well there’s your proof. Ocellus does take on at least some of the properties of what she transforms into, so there’s that. So do you think we can be of help to you with finding that dog?”

The red nose chipmunk and the blonde mouse nodded, but the chipmunk with the hat and coat looked at us suspiciously.

“Look, we really don’t have much else going on at the moment, we’re kind of living with a family of adventurers that have really odd lives.” That was an understatement Smolder, if the things said about the time traveling bathtub were anything to go by. “If we’re going to be in New York for the next few days, then we may as well do something interesting.”

The red nosed chipmunk and the mouse seemed interested as they started talking amongst themselves, but the hat wearing chipmunk still looked skeptical.

“Hey, are you having another problem with magic guys? Oh hey there cutie, did your brother hit you on the head again?” A pink furred bat suddenly came in and went from being curious to being overly affectionate with one of the chipmunks.

The affection was not entirely one sided, but the red nosed chipmunk wasn’t acting on his feelings for the bat earning my curiosity about the situation.

“When you say magic, does that explain how we can understand you?” The bat froze up when Smolder stated that and she turned to us.

“Well, if you are the magical presences I’m feeling here, then yes, that is the explanation as to how you can feasibly understand me.” The bat sounded a lot like Fluttershy… wait a minute… six! There were six animals that I could feel here and that might mean... were they possibly the equivalent of the elements of harmony in this world? “I was the familiar of a witch… things didn’t quite work out and she wasn’t a very good person, so I broke off the bond and my magical severance package included communicating with magical creatures. My name is Foxglove, this cutie here is 'my' Dale, that’s his brother Chip and that’s Gadget.”

The bat put her wing around Dale and nuzzled him. While he looked uncomfortable with it, Dale was enjoying it immensely. What the bat had wasn’t a crush… it was full blown love and a metric ton of it. Enough that it could fill the Dalmatian home in Britain.

Chip said something to Foxglove.

“Oh and there’s also Monterey and Zipper in the rangers headquarters. Chip wants me to tell you that the Rescue Rangers wouldn’t mind you’re lending them assistance in this matter as the case has gotten a little… bizarre.” Foxglove poked her wings together in a shy manner. “When it comes to the Rescue Rangers, there’s no case too big or too small. When you need help you can call on them to solve the where, the why and who of any given situation, even when it’s really dangerous.”

“Kindness, Laughter, Generosity, Honesty…” I mumbled as I looked at each of them. Dale was Laughter from the way he smiled, Gadget was Generosity if purple was the color code for it, Foxglove was Kindness and Chip seemed to be honesty, if their two friends weren’t loyal or magical in some way… then I wasn't a good friendship student. “So how is this case bizarre and what are you having problems with?”

Dale started jabbering excitedly to Foxglove.

“Excuse me, but Dale asked if you’re related to a space alien that they once had problems with.” Foxglove seemed like she was a good friend of this group. “It wasn’t too long ago that they accidentally wiped their own intelligences with a strange magical jewel, but managed to escape a facility in Calisota that was being run by a fiendish worldwide organization of criminals… after the organization accidentally gave them back their intelligences.”

Chip made a dry sounded bit of chattering.

“Dale was fully returned back to normal Chip. Don’t make fun of him like that, he’s very smart in his own ways!” Foxglove snuggled Dale. Again, Dale wasn’t showing that he liked that about her, but what I could feel was nothing but sweetness coming from the red nose chipmunk as he blushed and rubbed the back of his head shyly. “Can you imagine what it would be like if your brother never got his intelligence back? Would you even be able to take care of him like that? I don’t think it was something that I would have even been capable of fixing, so you’re all very lucky to not have any permanent issues from that as magic that messes with the mind is very dangerous!”

While Foxglove didn’t have the stare, she could match Fluttershy’s righteous ferocity at least. Chip put his arm around Dale and said something that felt heartwarming. Dale soon throws his own arm around Chip and says something in a jolly mood.

“Uh, can we get back to the bizarre thing about the case my new little friends?” They were quickly getting off track, Smolder was just watching this whole thing with a warm smile. “Also no Dale, I don’t think I am related to whatever alien you’re thinking of… I’ve never been to space personally.”

Chip cleared his throat and began dictating something to Foxglove.

“Well the case is bizarre in the fact that while Nimnul and Georgette were last seen near each other, they know for a fact that Nimnul was not responsible for the Georgette’s disappearance.” Foxglove flicked her ears and continued to listen to Chip. “They lost Nimnul after finding him after Georgette’s disappearance, Georgette was not present when they destroyed his latest invention which had nothing to do with dogs... this time.”

“Where was she last seen, maybe we should start there?” Smolder offered and they looked a little upset and Chip spoke up.

“Did that already… no clues.” Foxglove shrugged.

“What about checking out Fifth Avenue?” Smolder suggested looking over the paper.

Chip smacked his forehead with a paw, he may have overlooked checking where the dog lived.

Author's Note

Self reminder.

Shanty - On the way to China.

Ocellus and Smolder- Aiding The Rescue Rangers and ???.

Pom- Poison gift problems.

Referenced Ocellus's inability at speaking Pukwudgie despite turning into one.

113. Properly Paranoid.

-Equus, Ponyville, Carousel Boutique, Rarity-

“Oh my, that is troubling.” The news I just received about what information Captain Celaeno brought to us was quite dreadful to say the least.

“Yeah, you needed to know this as do the others.” This was troubling news Rainbow, but I would do my best to help. I would need to contact Sassy and have her get in touch with several stallions for me. “Twilight is making an announcement involving the lost and the plans to set up the Sieve Precarious exactly one year after they got lost to pull them into Tambelon, so a better solution needs to be found before that or we’re going to have to fight Grogar. I’m willing to fight him, but after seeing what his bell can do… yeah, even I don’t have nearly that much bravado in our chances even with Fizzle and a team of really strong volunteers.”

“Well at least the changelings are learning how to be a little more cultured.” I said before taking a sip of tea.

“That’s the one thing that’s not going wrong, but they are still refusing lambkin relations… they are far more polite about it now.” Muttered Rainbow as she flew for the nearest window. “Oh and one more thing, if Cadence comes by, do something to make her relax.”

“Honestly, can’t Rainbow ever use the door like a civilized pony?” I don’t have too many serious issues with it, but it was the principle of the matter.

Wait… how do pegasi prevent pegasi thieves from just flying into their homes? Their homes are made of cloud. I mean this thought just crossed my mind and I’ve never bothered to ask a single one how they feel as if they have any sense of security in their own homes, sure they could get safes up there, but they themselves wouldn’t be able to escape a flying aggressor.

At least Fluttershy has solid walls on the ground and numerous animals to protect her.

This was going to bother me for the rest of the day…

-Earth, Wakanda, Zootopia, Shere Kahn-

“Sir we lost sight of her.” One of my men stated with a salute.

“Good, then she’s heeding my warning, we shall continue doing business as if nothing is wrong.” I so do hope that Ms. Lambchop survives the ordeal I’m putting her through.

Oh Sabu Taj would have had the right plane alright, but I had a decidedly remarkable bit of inspiration to be on a completely and utterly different one from the known assassin.

It is still a great concern of mine to figure out who hired her. I suspected the Thembrians, but those warthogs were too loud to be this subtle. It is quite sad to hear that one of my aids took a bullet to the spine, I’m am funding her full recovery in the Camden Town ward. Had she been in first class, she would have been a regrettable loss.

Thankfully nothing of importance to me was lost, those in first class on that flight were likely only there to curry favors of me.

I will always do right by mine and I always repaid my debts, regardless of whether those debts come about as a result of my own actions. I do hope the PET aids Leap Lamb greatly in the days to come.

Reality is, regrettably, grim at times.

-Earth, Rainforest District, Gazelle’s Tree Home, Evening, Pom-

“So we need to leave early the next morning, I don’t want to put you in any danger.” More to the point, I didn’t want to put anyone else in danger. If whoever was coming after me targeted people to get me to come to them, then that would be bad. I also think I had a good reason to not speak normally in Dormarch’s presence, Lambkin paranoia was powerful stuff. “I thank you for housing us Gazelle, but we’re going to leave in the middle of the night.”

“It was no problem Pom and you’re quite welcome, I’m sorry that you can’t enjoy the city more.” I told her everything and asked how possible it was to legally get a plane ticket. Zootopia didn’t ‘technically’ have passport laws, but other countries certainly did.

“So you’re not going to freak out or call the police on us…” She calmly place a gently hooved fingers on my back.

“It’s okay, you’ve been a lovely guest and extenuating circumstances don’t change the person I met.” She got a smile from me. “I’m sure you’ll find your way home eventually Pom, now what are you making for dinner? It’s you’re last night here and I want to share it over some good food and just relaxing.”

“I guess you liked the oatmeal then, while I personally enjoyed your selection grits.” At least she understood the reason I couldn’t stay, I didn’t want Gazelle to get hurt and she was being very nice about it all.

-The next day, morning, 1 AM, in a tree in the Rainforest District-

“Okay Dolly, do you think you can you carry my satchel?” I was holding Dormarch and ready to go, I was also speaking only in dog. I stuck the device to the wool at my stomach, along with some emergency money.

“Houba… why…” Mars appeared suddenly from above on his tail.

“In animal please.” I quickly barked out.

“Houba, why are you up this late at night? Having a late night part, doing some carousing?” I could ask the same thing Mars, his speaking in animal sounded like a cross between a dog, a monkey and the word ‘houba’ being used more.

It was hard to understand and a bit garbled, but I got it.

“No Mars, we got trouble and I need you to do a favor for me.” The shift wasn’t subtle, Mars stood up straighter and his lengthy tail became agitated as it twisted and shaped itself. “Can you make sure Dolly safely gets to the airport in the Canal district with our stuff?”

“Sure thing!” He gave me a look and rubbed a finger across his chin. “What are you going to be doing though?”

“My best... wait with Dolly for as long as you feel comfortable with.” I started making my way along the tree branch. “She’s going to stay put there for five hours or until I show up. At six, she’s to get into contact with any nearby dog that will help, if she loses her connection to me… well I’ll be dead so she’ll have to work out things from there.”

“Please show up Pom.” Dolly’s voice cracked.

“Dolly, go with Mars, I’ll be fine. You can feel our bond right?” She nodded, but she didn’t look happy with this and I wasn’t happy about it either. “You’ll be able to feel if I’m okay or not, but don’t come to help me.”

Clearing my throat, I tapped on Dormarch’s screen and it lit up.

“Huh, what, wow… it’s really early Ms. Lambchop!” Dormarch stated with curiosity. “Are we doing some exploring? What do you need of me, I’m helpful… well I haven’t helped you much yet… but I can do things!”

“Yes Dormarch, we’re heading to the Sahara Square district.” I stated normally as I moved away from Mars and Dolly. Looking over my shoulder at them, I mouthed the word ‘go’. “So can you give me directions from here?”

“Sure thing Ms. Lambchop!” Dormarch said with a pleasant tone, he had a perky attitude. I’m sorry he was in the middle of all this.

I was going to keep comparing him to Nicole Beta at this rate, because he basically was like her. No body, but a living mind all the same.

“Please, call me Pom. Now can you direct me around Little Rodentia, through Downtown, to Sahara Square while avoiding Savanna Central?” A map came up on the screen showing Zootopia and my current position on it, confirming a suspicion. “Say Dormarch, I’m not very technologically savvy… but would you tell me if someone was spying on me?”

-Twenty minutes later, outside Sahara Square-

“Pom… are we in a bad situation because of me?” Dormarch seemed to cower on the screen and his fish tails were underneath his body.

“Don’t worry about it.” I said calmly as my eyes slowly glanced around the rooftops. “Location?”

“West of Dry River Road, current facing southeast.” The map was brought up again and I looked over my shoulder and was inhaling already. With a slight change in air pressure, I followed my instincts and quickly dove off the roof and clung to the wall of the alleyway below as something moving impossible fast struck the brick railing behind me and sent a few bricks falling past me. “Why would someone be firing a sniper rifle at you Pom? It’s me isn’t it? Why are they after me? I didn’t do anything to anyone… well aside from myself. I am really, really, bad at minesweeper. I was only just born yesterday with all this knowledge prepackaged into my systems!”

“Like I said, don’t worry about it Dor.” He may have had a lot of basic knowledge of this world, but he was still a baby and I was trying to stay calm for him.

“But you just dodged a sniper rifle round though, that’s… actually pretty incredible! That round should have impacted with the back of your skull, that bullet in particular was moving approximately two thousand seven hundred and fifty three feet per second. So the shooter would be approximately somewhere in Hill Street to the west.” Dor then gained a horrified look. “You just jumped off the building! Are you going to be alright?! Are you still falling… wait… why aren’t we falling? Altimeter readings show static movement and lack of gravitational downward movement.”

I sighed. This was going to be a constant thing with him, I can already tell.

“Can you memorize a route and turn off this map thing you’re doing entirely?” I asked as I trotted down the side of the building towards the streets below with a pink strip of cloth tied to my head.

“Yes.” I poked the screen and Dor giggled, fell onto his back and flailed his legs and three tails.

“Follow my hoof carefully and remember this, but don’t say anything about this verbally.” I drew a route through Sahara Square, up into Tundra Town and back in the direction of the Canal district and I poked where the airport was supposed to be. “Got it?”

“Image saved, yes Pom.” The Dalmatian on the screen smiled and his three fish tails were wagging at me, then his excitement dimmed. “Please be safe, you’re dog Dolly is relying on you for her continued survival and… I might be as well.”

She didn’t need me to survive before Dormarch and she wasn’t my dog, not unless she kept this unnatural bond going between us up, but she was at least my friend.

I made it to the street and carefully poked my head out of the alleyway looking to the west and then looked to the desert biome in the distance in the east, Sahara Square district had more desert dwelling animalistic that liked the heat.

All I needed to do was get over a hill and out of sight. I leapt up onto an awning, bounced of it and shot over the crowd and landed against the side of a building. I leapt forward and to a building on the opposite side of the road over a crossing below me, a few nocturnal animalistic people looked up and saw me leaping my way towards Sahara Square through the dim lighting.

If had to guess… well I better keep moving quickly and not stay still. Hm… maybe I should stop to get something to drink?

-Thirty minutes later-

“How have we lost track of the target?” The feminine voice sounded close and a number of boots trekked into the cold dessert as the sun had yet to rise over the horizon.

“Did you see her dodge that shot? How did she do that?!” Another voice stated in a slightly panicked tone. “Nobody should have been able to react to something like that, especially not at night and not an average everyday sheep!”

“That’s no ordinary sheep, Kahn directly put the device into Leap Lamb’s hooves. She has incredible capabilities, well beyond what is normal.” A male voice said with wariness. “There are a lot of spooks in various nations questioning which secret program she could have possibly come from or if she’s simply an escaped lab experiment. She was said to be from Scotland or Britain, but neither region shows as having anything that can explain her abilities and she’s like a ghost. I don’t like the idea of being near a supernatural freak of nature that could snap my neck in an instant.”

“Lab experiment is likely, she looked paranoid.” There were at least eleven guys, three females judging by the weight of their steps on the sand. “She already knew she was being hunted long before we fired that shot, either Kahn tipped her off or she was already aware of what the situation involving the device was and accepted it knowing we’d come after her.”

“I don’t think she’s special ops, to unusual. Animalistic don’t get into special ops unless they are large and muscular. She’s scrawny as all get out.” To whoever that woman was, I definitely resembled that remark.

“Scrawny doesn’t mean weak, she took on numerous robots and survived several tons of crushing force… thing is, she did that and is completely biological.” Several voices scoffed. “She’s definitely not augmented, the spotter would have picked up a higher than normal heat signature. She’s warm blooded, no cybernetic enhancements whatsoever and yet she can dodge a sniper bullet with a vaguest hint it was coming at her. In all respects, she looks like a normal animalistic quadrupedal sheep… yet there is something decidedly ‘not sheep’ about her.”

“What, do you think she’s an alien?” One of the other men joked. “Well she’s no Moonlander, I can tell you that much!”

“We all know very well that looks can be deceiving, spread out and keep your eyes open for any signs of movement no matter how small!” I heard a heard a sound of crackling. “The men we have at the oasis of Sahara Square haven’t reported any sightings of her yet. Spread out and cover each other’s backs.”

-Ten minutes later, approximately five hundred feet to the north-

My hoof bursts from the sand and pulled myself out of the dune while looking around with a sand colored straw clenched between my teeth.

I would now make a run for Tundra Town district!

Freeing my rear legs from the ground, the sand filled in the hole behind me as I took off at a gallop. Dolly’s brother Diesel gave me that idea. Sand isn’t easy to dig through, I’m glad I stopped to buy that drink with a novelty sand colored Sahara Square straw at that all-night place.

“We’re now directly east of Dry River Road and are heading towards Sahara Square’s wall, the thing that separates the this district and Tundra Town.” Dormarch stated from my stomach. “We’re specifically close to Sandy Gate at the moment… also do you hear that? I think they have helicopters. Do you think you can out run them?”

“As long as they don’t spot me, that won’t be an issue.” I stopped and listened for a moment and looked to the sky, I saw a spotlight combing the desert as several helicopters flew overhead. “Do you have an idea as to who these guys are?”

“I got nothing.” Dor stated solemnly. “Maybe you should…”

“Nope, not hoofing you over to them.” I stated vehemently as I continued towards the wall, but now I was leaping from point to point. I didn’t want them to finding anymore tracks in the sand and tracing them to my location.

“Shouldn’t you be angling towards the gateway?” He asked as I continued moving straight at the wall into Tundra Town.

“I don’t need to go through the gate to get over the wall.” I kept my breathing even and time was ticking down, it’s already been about an hour and a half since I left Dolly behind. She had the kibble bag and water wasn’t hard to get from tap at the airport. Dolly sent me feelings of worry and I reassured her to the best of my ability. “Also these people obviously don’t know what I’m capable of if they think I need to go through the gate.”

I glanced to my right and threw myself to the ground and a sweeping light passed across the dune to my right.

I held my breathe and waited until it passed.

slowly peering around the dune, I inhaled and then exhaled to burst forward in another leap to kick off the top of a dune sending sand scattering everywhere. I spread my front legs out and started gliding over the dunes barely ten feet above them as I swooped forward.

“Are you a super hero?” Dor asked as I glided over the dune and eventually landed and looked at the nearby gate. I lifted an ear and closed my eyes to listen in.

I honestly didn’t want to answer Dor’s question.

“They’ve found some tracks going north, the target is heading this way. She can’t be allowed to get through the gate!” Opening my eyes, I spotted several guys in the shadows of the gate. They weren’t visibly in the lights of the gate between the desert and snow districts. “Tell the guys on the wall to be alert.”

Yeah, I wasn’t going that way anyway. I looked about in the waning moonlight and then leapt to another dune, another leap and I was close enough to jump onto the wall itself.

Inhaling, I gauged the distance between me and the wall and exhaled.

I slammed into the wall with all four hooves and was immediately running up it, I suddenly swung myself to the left at the feeling of a twitch in the air and look at the large hole that just formed in the wall as several chunks of it rained down.

My pupils probably shrunk at the sight and I immediately sped up the wall even faster as several of the people below started firing in my direction.

Their shots weren’t anywhere close to hitting me as I was already close to the top of the wall and thrusting my right hoof upwards as a guy in black armored gear poked his head over the side to aim his weapon down at me. My hoof smashed his helmet’s visor and the guy was on his back screaming and clutching at his head.

I rolled onto the walkway from the ledge as the other one fired at me, he couldn’t adjust his aim as I leapt at him with and overhead left hoof to the top of his helmet. His helmet split in two revealing his face as he staggered, the panicked and dazed guy looked like a jackal.

I spun around and bucked high into his chin launching him upwards and he fell on his back clutching at his likely broken chin.

Leaping off the wall, I dove towards Tundra Town below avoiding several projectiles that whizzed by me as the spotlight of a helicopter suddenly focused on the top of the wall behind me.

I carefully inflated my wool and hit a large slope and started to slide down it, it was fairly steep.

“She’s heading for Flurry Street, do not lose her!” I heard shouting from the helicopters speakers and the helicopter swept over the wall and turned to see me sliding down the slope on my rear hooves. A series of flashes came from it and I looked behind myself to see holes opening up in the snow at my heels. “All operatives, into Tundra Town district!”

“I would seriously rather be anywhere else right now…” I muttered quietly, as I planted my front two hooves to gain control of my sliding in what was a quickly forming avalanche of snow and ice heading towards the edge of the buildings in the frozen cities edge ahead of me.

I veered left and right trying to avoid the rapid fire whizzing projectiles trying to make minced meat out of me.

As I was getting close to the bottom of the slope, a thought came up…

I intentionally tripped and tumbled, making my wool cling to every bit of snow and ice around me as I could. I formed a large protective shell of it.

My world was spinning and darkness as the snow packed around me tightly, I slowly and carefully scrunched my body up inside the snowball and then I kicked out of it to the left. The snowball continued rolling forward and the helicopter was staying on it as I went skidding for the ice of the nearby frozen lake, I leapt up and brought my front hooves above my head and took a deep breathe as I slammed down on the ice.

Biting cold waters surrounded me.

Okay, keep calm, let out as little air as possible. Now to quickly move under the ice and find a good place to emerge while I still have oxygen in my lungs.

I could barely see anything down here, but I could make out the shadows of wood and light from the nearby city in the distance. I hurriedly kicked my legs and swam for any docks where ice fishing would probably take place.

I heard an explosion, but I didn’t have time to think about that.

I reached the shadow of two pillars of wood and moved under the docks. My lungs were straining now and I struck my left hoof upwards, the ice cracked slightly.

No…. no please, don’t tell me it was too thick!

I clamped onto the ice and pulled back my right hoof to swing it forward.

The ice buckled, but it didn’t break.

Panic was setting in and my body was getting colder. One more time Pom, just used your head to find out where to…!

I tightened my cold wet wool around my forehead and pulled back my head I slammed it upwards through the ice.

Breaking through, I took a gasp of air and quickly thrust my left hoof up onto the nearby pillar of wood. I pulled myself up onto it to started climbing until I could cling to the underside of the dock.

“Pom are you okay? Biological readings are at the onset of hypothermia… possible frostbite imminent.” I didn’t answer Dor for several seconds as I gasped and rested upside down under the frozen lakes docks. “Also I think they used a rocket on the snowball you created. It would have made a really 'cool' snow bunny too, these guys aren’t very 'hot' at all!”

“Hold… that thought...” I gasped out and flexed my wool. The water sloughed off of me and back into the lake, I tightened my wool around my entire body and the bone chilling cold slowly started to ease off.

“With what? Digital paws cannot hold anything abstract like thought. Also your body temperature is warming to safer parameters… relatively.” Nice to know Dor. “You will need both shelter and warmth soon Pom!”

“I'm... already on it... Dor.” My tired voice responded, I quickly poked my head out from under the dock as several helicopters circled a large smoking hole.

Quickly pulling myself onto the dock, I went right into the frozen streets nearby and ducked into the first apartment complex I spotted.

I sat down in a heated hallway, idly noting the helicopters were now out scouring southern Tundra Town for me outside the nearby window.

Author's Note

How much of this would you go through before you snapped entirely?

114. Pom the run.

Author's Note

Music- Breath of the Wild, Molduga Battle.

114. Pom the run.

-Zootopia, Canal District Airport 3:15 AM, Dolly-

“Oh my dog, Pom’s in trouble…” I dragged my paws down my face.

I resisted the urge to run out there easily enough. I could figure out a way home if Pom doesn’t make it, but I wouldn’t be entirely happy about it. Not after she helped my ‘fam’ with their trauma. She was feeling cold, so I had an idea of where she was currently.

“Eh, I wouldn’t worry too much.” Giving Mars a look, he smiled at me. I wish I had his confidence and chipper disposition. “There’s a reason why the predators around Africa were steering completely clear of you two. Pom is something like an alpha and one that they don’t want to mess with. She may be panicky and fearful, but even I’m frightened of Pom and that’s even knowing I could easily take her down in a fight.”

Giving it some thought, I decided to call in some support.

“Mayday, mayday, this is Dolly Dalmatian! Friend in danger, to the east… possibly… where was it again… possibly in Tundra Town, look for suspicious activity!” I howled out on the world wide woof and received several dogs replying to my call, I smiled. I was able to help! The world wide woof here was responsive at this hour. “Friend has white wool, blue eyes and is basically a quadrupedal animalistic sheep! Help indirectly unless otherwise necessary, also she can speak dog! You can confirm with her if sighted!”

Pom had a little less than three hours to cross miles of either the Rainforest or Meadow district to get here.

-Tundra Town District, Crevasse Street Entrance coming from Flurry Street, Pom-

I flew off an icy ramp and into the spider webbed maze of icy walls called Crevasse Street and slammed into the floor chin first to end up spinning up the left wall on my belly and was summarily launched upwards.

In the air I got my hooves back underneath me and slid back down. It wasn’t a cave system because you could still see the sky in above, but it did have lots of jagged icicles in various places.

The pathways looked to have be kept clear for the safety of visitors, I was heading north towards Glacier Falls.

From there I was heading straight west to Rainbow Falls, if it was anything like the Equestria Rainbow Falls it would be beautiful, but I would be running full tilt to the west for the airport in the Canal district. I really wouldn’t have time to stop and gawk, as I was skidding along the frozen ground through the crevasse and passed by a rail station off to the side.

I ignored the rail station and was readying my right hoof to go down an entirely different branch of the crevasse. I hoped I didn’t need to climb out of here to get my bearings. Those helicopters couldn’t get me down here as it was too narrow down here for them.

Maybe I had lost them? Whoever they were they really wanted to get Dormarch, possibly wanted me dead too.

Feeling a twitch, I reacted. Planting my hoof on the ground, a hole opened in the icy floor of the crevasse as I pivoted out the way of another projectile and went into a spin. I continued my spin until I was facing forward and started to skate forward by pushing with my hind legs and balancing on my front hooves.

I veered into the left branching pathway.

-Air above Crevasse Street’s entrance, Sabu Taj-

“Damn it, can’t get another shot from this angle!” Putting the sniper rifle down, I turned to the pilot. Leap Lamb is either very lucky or she has a sixth sense for when she’s about to die. I had already sabotaged most of the transit systems around Zootopia before setting out to hunt down the target, but it seems little miss ‘Dodges-Freaking-Bullets’ is too good for that. That was the closest shot I had taken yet and she still dodged it! She couldn’t be lucky like that forever. “Beta and Gamma teams, go to the far side of Crevasse Street and block her off! I’m taking personal charge of running down the target or flushing her out towards you.”

I checked over my gun, assault weapon and ammunition. I also made sure the high explosive grenades and radio were secured to my belt and the sound dampening devices were already in my ears. My clothing and armored vest were settled correctly and the last thing to do was check my jet assisted snowboard over for any imperfections, all prepped and checked.

“Move into position, I’m ready to drop.” Once we were in said position, I pushed off into the air spinning until I hit the ground and bent my knees to absorb the impact. While I was doing this, I slapped the board with my right hand and it let off a short forward burst into the crevasse after our quarry. I may have missed the opportunity to be paid for getting Kahn, but killing Leap Lamb would definitely get me some lucrative contracts as a bonus on top of getting the device from her. “This is Prowler, moving to chase the target down. No explosives, too much attention is already being drawn to this quickly growing cluster already. Why did that bastard Shere Kahn have to give it to such hard to kill target?!”

Everybody had phones and cameras these days, so some nocturnal animalistic had probably caught an image of our activities after blowing that snowball apart. Not my problem at the moment, these mercenaries were a dime a dozen and who cared if they were caught with military grade weapons?

Moving down the left path, the burst from the board was easing up and I was sliding along on the momentum alone and narrowing my eyes for any sight of her before it slowed down. There was no way she could keep dodging me forever!

Once I was on the next street I saw her near the end of it and unslung my assault weapon and fired a burst making her roll behind a trash can in the narrow street.

Several bullets struck the trash can rocking it a bit and I blinked in disbelief at not hearing a sweet cry of pain, trash bags and plastic wasn’t about to stop an assault weapon. So what was making that clanging noise?

I stopped firing and she opened the trash can I fired at the lid to find out after blowing it off that she was already ducking down and then something was thrown at me. I dove to the side and took a light blow to my right though to find out... it was a lead brick?

Rolling out of the way over another chucked brick. I quickly worked to get myself back up on my board and watch as Leap Lamb, looking quite fearful, got behind the garbage can and bucked it over. A cascade of lead bricks poured out of it sending the bricks sliding down the street towards me.

“Are you kidding me? Who in the hell would load a plastic garbage can full of lead bricks?!” While I was distracted by that I noticed that Leap Lamb was on the run and fired a burst after her as she turned the corner. My bullets missed her rear hooves by a few inches and embedded themselves into the ice.

I freed my left foot from the and kicked at the ground to go skidding and did another small burst to sweep a board up and around the pile of sliding lead bricks and swept down to veer to the right. I wasn’t going to use any booster fuel when I was this close to my target.

Turning right into the next street I saw her already halfway down it and this one was quite a long street, I fired a burst and watched as she leapt to the right wall. I traced my bullets along after her and she shot over the stream with a sideways flip to the left wall and my clip ran dry before I could bring it back her way.

She used the momentum of sliding down the wall to speed up and was three fourths of the way down the street and I kicked the ground to pick up speed as I ejected my empty clip and loaded in a fresh one.

By the time I brought my gun up she was already planting her hoof in the ice and swinging down the left passage before I could squeeze off a burst after her. I would rather save ammunition on cleaner shots, it would be hard to even get one of those at this rate.

Speeding up to keep up with Leap Lamb, I turned the corner and blinked, I didn’t see her anywhere. A bit of ice fell from the nearby left wall. I looked up to see Leap Lamb cringing.

She sprung from the wall as I brought up my gun and fired off a short burst, adjusted my aim and fired again at where she would be on the right wall. Instead she stopped short of the right wall, in the middle of the air no less, and fell straight down.

“What the...?!” How did she just do that? No matter, I fired a third burst and she leapt away to the end of the street avoiding the bullets shooting by underneath her, she was already heading right down the next branch.

Continuing to push the snowboard forward after her, I now knew why the name Leap Lamb was accurate descriptor of her abilities as she kicked off the wall leading into a right branch.

Her being able to come to a dead stop in midair was clearly impossible, unless the info we have on her abilities was drastically underestimated. She wouldn’t be dodging bullets if she was possibly invulnerable to them and then there’s the fact that she handled several tons of pressure, but there were several unusual factors about that information.

Like Caper Canine coming to her… wait… where’s that dog?! Something wasn’t right here if her sidekick wasn’t around, what were they planning or up to?

“Be aware, sidekick Caper Canine is not currently in the combat zone!” I called out as I caught up to her again and she was skating down the next road, I fired and watched as she grabbed a mailbox and swung out of the way of my fire and my clip ran dry before I could sweep it after her.

“What’s a little dog like that going to do in this situation?” My helicopter pilot does realize that the Dalmatian I’m warning everyone about in question took off the head of a large robot that tried to crush Leap Lamb with at least a solid ton of force… with what looked to be a normal skateboard.

“That dog took down several deadly robots armed with only a skateboard, I’d say that dog is far more intelligent than they appear.” I loaded my clip, unslung my pistol and took careful aim with both my weapons. “Also I would like to point out that, aside from the wheels being a bit roughed up, the skateboard didn’t take any damage from the event or the several things that the dog used that board on afterwards!”

“Copy, spreading the word.” My pilot stated calmly. “All units, be on the lookout for Leap Lamb’s sidekick Caper Canine. Take that dog seriously, we do not know their full capabilities either! What’s your situation Prowler?”

“Leap Lamb is still evading me and will soon be out of Crevasse Street, ‘if’ I can’t hit her.” I fired the assault with my right hand once I caught up to her after going down a different street and she dodged the spray with a rolling sideways leap with her front legs covering her face. She made it through all of bullets that seemingly miraculously missed her. “Dodge this!”

I fired the hand gun and the watched as I saw movement coming from the wool on the top of her head and a second spark hitting the ice wall on the right, did that bullet just ricochet of her wool?! I took noticed of several bullets from my assault weapon earlier were in the ground, had they ricocheted off of her spinning body?!

“Please note, I’m now assuming nothing less than a direct hit will actually hurt Leap Lamb.” I stated in a dull monotone as Leap Lamb rounded the next corner. “Indirect or grazing shots are entirely ineffective. She’s coming your way, immediately aim to kill, I don’t even care if you hit me! Just shoot her!”

I locked my left foot into the snowboard and unlocked my right foot to slam my heel down on the booster. I turned the corner and saw Leap Lamb performing halfpipe maneuvers on her hooves doing something akin to slalom movements as she kept going high and higher up the walls.

Icicles were raining down around her as the fire from the end of the Crevasse Street came into sight, where two helicopters were waiting to catch her in their crossfire. That’s when Leap Lamb seem to be inhaling sharply as she neared one of the exits to Crevasse Street, she then did something curious.

She crouched down while standing on rear hooves as she swerved through all the oncoming fire from me and the guys at the exit, she raised her front hooves above her head and contortioned her body slightly into a twisting motion to start slowly spinning like a top.

What was she… what happened next made me wonder why she was even bothering to run, but then I figured that doing the sort of thing I witnessed next was extremely tiring.

She slid up the right wall and came down, I saw her take a shot to her right side around her chest and grinned as I finally caught sight of her bleeding. Someone managed to hit the so called ‘super hero’. I was right, direct hits were the answer to the absurdity this creature was pulling off.

It was a second after that I was witness to flying spiraling drill, aside from the seemingly light blood loss of the hit, curiously no more blood spilled from the spiraling shape of drill that took out the landing struts on the underside of the helicopter on the right and bounced off a nearby building and plowed through the glass of the one on the left from my perspective as it turned to the left face the other helicopter.

That helicopter spun out and quickly went for a safe landing and I watched as the spiraling drill shaped blur shot off into an alleyway after bouncing off the ice walls of the crevasse. I sped past my men and skidded to a stop to unload the rest of my shots into the alleyway… only nothing was there.

“Where the…?” I know I saw her spinning slow down, how did she get out of the alleyway?

I heard howling of various dogs as I looked at the unconscious people in Beta Team's helicopter.

“Caper Canine!” I screeched. “Helicopter Alpha this is Prowler, follow the beacon and come in for a rope pickup on my position now! Beta’s helicopter was downed by Leap Lamb and Gamma is going to be disabled because it lost its landing struts!”

“She downed a helicopter?" Alpha was clearly in shock, I too was feeling a bit numb. "Holy crap, what are we actually hunting here?!”

“Ma’am this is Gamma Team's helicopter, the fuel line was destroyed by the impact… you’re underestimating the problems I’m having here, I’m going to have about two minutes before this thing falls out of the air.” My left eye twitched violently. “Going for emergency landing into some snow, dropping off all other Gamma members before I do so!”

Several of Gamma Team repelled down to us and then the helicopter took off and then its blades stopped spinning not even thirty seconds later and it crashed into the middle of the streets of Southern Glacier Falls.

The blades exploded, but the helicopter’s cockpit was intact, so the pilot was possibly alive at least. Didn’t care if he died really.

“ARGH!” Leap Lamb, you will not escape me! “I’m going to use my snowboards remaining booster fuel to pick up Leap Lamb’s trail, you better pick me up Alpha! Someone nailed Leap Lamb, she’s injured and she couldn’t have gotten too far with a hole in her chest!”

-Five minutes later, 4:24 AM, Pom-

Oh goddesses the pain, I’ve been shot again! I think I might have blacked out for a second… why wasn’t I dead and Dormarch taken?

Wait, was I… moving? I sat up and blinked, I was on a quickly a sled and dog was sitting next to me.

“Dolly Dalmatian said you were able to speak to dog’s yah? Can you confirm what I’m about to say?” The husky asked with a thick accent. “My cousin Hansel is knowing her. She good skateboarder from Camden Town, but isn’t into poetry and dislikes Poodlewolf too much. That’s about as much as he knows about her, they good friend’s yah?”

“Yes, she’s quite amazing on it.” I stated in weak yips and growls, while holding back screaming in agony. The husky noticed my pain and put a medical kit before me.

“Confirmed, she is friend, also she is being a very injured Leap Lamb!” The husky shouted to the team of sled dogs pulling us away, they were excited to be helping me. “We head up Glacier Falls and help you go west to Dolly in Canal district yah? I am being cold weather rescue dog, I am also decent medic… but do not be expecting biped level help at this time. My name is Leven and we not be stopping for crazy people in helicopters yah.”

“Yah!” The dogs pulling the sled stated in agreement.

“Just… help me… rainbow…” I clutched at the right side of my chest and pulled my mentally created wool bandaged away.

“Pom, you’re bleeding!” I carefully pull Dormarch from being glued to my stomach by my wool and smiled at his image weakly. “Bullet lodged in chest… stuck in a rib, did not go through ribs… your ribs are cracked. You need to have that bullet removed immediately or cessation of life is imminent! Your every breathe is hurting you…”

“It’s… okay…” My body was small any amount of blood loss was extremely bad.

“No, it’s not okay, you’re dying!” At least as young as he is, he understood the concept of death. That’s exactly what I named him after. Rider of the clouds, ‘Death’s Door’.

“Not…” Ugh, bodily functions shutting down, everything was getting cold until I felt something stick into me and pull out. I felt something pour onto my agonizing wound and made it even worse, I screamed out and felt something pour down my throat warming up and making cough at the awful taste.

“Sorry, bedside manner of Leven is bad, but get bullet out yah?” I was being operated on by a husky, what is my life? “Alcohol help destroy chance of infection, being very excruciating. Not first time being hit like this Leven is taking you? I pour medicine in throat, help wake up patient yah.”

“No, been shot in the leg before… not in the torso.” I groused out between clenched teeth.

“Did that dog just pull the bullet out of you with tweezers? I didn’t think dogs were that smart…” They are around me Dormarch. “Hey you, husky she needs a hospital or a biped that can… huh, how are you doing that with your wool?”

I managed to move my right leg and covered the wound with my wool and my wool stitched itself over the injury sealing it off.

“Don’t… worry… about me…” Things were fading out, I was trying to stay awake as I flopped onto my back. “Will… have... worse…”

“Aside from the bullet wound, you have nasty internal bruising from the heavy impacts with the two helicopters… also your pierced straight through the bullet proof glass on one of them and you’re still exhausted from swimming in those freezing cold waters. What are you Pom, that you are even still functioning and awake? You’re practically a miracle after being shot by an automatic weapon without being immediately ripped in half.” Dormarch, now was not the time to learn more about me. I heard the sound of helicopter coming and saw it steering its way towards us and saw a figure climbing a rope up to it. “I do not believe for a moment that normal animalistic sheep have these kinds of incredible functions.”

I didn’t respond and flicked my ears as I heard running water, I turned my head looked at Glacier Falls as we were heading uphill towards the cavern underneath them… the falling water was beautiful and glittering in the faint sunlight poking over the horizon. Wish I had a camera.

“Muh…sh…” I sat up and grabbed hold of the front of the sled and tried to stay conscious.

“You be hearing her, crazy people be coming after us now yah!” The husky’s pulling the sled picked up speed at Leven’s words and we were passing under the falls. “We be passing you off to the dogs in the Rainforest district, they will be seeing you through the Rainbow Falls.”

“How… move…” My breathing was becoming much rougher, I place Dormach back in my wool.

We were past the falls and the huskies were putting their backs into it, but I doubt they’d outrun that helicopter.

“Do not be worrying!” Leven stated and nuzzled me and whined as he looked up at the approaching helicopter in the distance. “Rest friend, rest good. What is not good is that yah?”

We passed by the falls and were on a ridge heading west.

-Sabu Taj-

I pulled myself up into the helicopter and took up the sniper rifle, I only had about three shots left. Didn’t buy nearly enough ammunition for all of this!

I pulled the scope up and aimed it at the tracks in the snow I had been following and trailed it up to see a dog sitting with her and barking as she wrapped bandages around her torso.

Caper Canine apparently had the ability to control dogs or something close to that to have an entire team of husky’s this organized. There was more to the ‘Caper’ in ‘Canine Caper’ than we originally could have imagined.

I slowly took aim and squeezed the trigger, the shot flew true, but Leap Lamb rolling out the way and a chunk was taken out of the sled instead.

Two rounds left, all I needed was one direct shot!

Loading another shot, the sled started moving erratically. If I couldn’t hit you Leap Lamb, then would you take one for the husky?

Squeezing the trigger, I noticed Leap Lamb shiver and she throws herself into the path of the bullet and it struck her in the belly sparking a bit as she was knocked back first into the dog.

I grinned viciously, only to blink afterwards when I saw what I had actually hit.

The bullet embedded in the device's handle.

Some of that impact at least transferred, there was no way Leap Lamb was capable of dodging my next shot! She was too weak to do anything.

This last round… something was going to die or so help me!

Take aim, calmed my breathing, put Leap Lamb’s face in the center of my scope and saw her glaring directly at me.

The trigger squeezed eloquently.

A ball of energy ripped from Leap Lamb's mouth evaporating the bullet.

What...

The...

115. Slipping through the cracks.

-Earth, Zootopia, ridge of northern Glacier Falls, Pom-

“Baa… Ram… Ewe- ‘yip’!” I didn’t set the frequency of my bark breaker, but it struck my bark blast and it sped up immensely as it flew towards the helicopter in the distance.

The further it went the smaller it got.

My eyes slowly closed as I watched the entire top portion of the helicopter was blown apart by the golf ball sized sphere of energy.

Nobody hurts…. a good doggy… on my… watch…

-Sabu Taj-

Heck?!

-A few minutes later-

My eyes opened and picked myself up off the ground after coming to and grunted at the pain of having a piece of glass in my left shoulder and there was a bit of shrapnel stuck in my right thigh. Looking at the wreckage, the pilot was sitting up and looking at the remains of his helicopter.

“Yeah… I’m calling it a day.” My pilot stated before flopping back first into the snow after Leap Lamb destroyed the third helicopter personally with an energy blast fired from her mouth.

Somehow, we had survived that.

-Heading for Rainbow Falls, Leven-

“That was scary yah?” We would be saving a factual super hero and she took a bullet for me, I'd thank the hero by making sure she is getting to Dolly in the Canal district.

“Yah!” The sled dogs stated as we put distance between us and what could only be villainous people.

I poked Leap Lamb and she was unresponsive, but she was still breathing, if poorly at that.

“I don’t know if you can understand me, but Pom’s vital signs are mostly stable… she has however contracted arrhythmia from the shock of that last blow on top of taking an assault weapons bullet to the chest. Chances of it being fatal are, with some calculations, eh not good… at forty one percent.” The digital dog stated while looking up at me from being embedded in the wool of her stomach. “Possibly less considering how strong Pom has shown herself to be, but it is still a worrisome factor to her current health about being struck indirectly through me by the force of a sniper round.”

At least he had an optimistic attitude, I gave him two friendly barks and a wagging tail to show him things would be okay.

“Well at least you seem to have a positive attitude about things, I’m currently having trouble keeping mine up.” The machine stated.

-New York, 6:17 AM, Hotel, Smolder-

I stretched out and pulled away from snuggling Ocellus. She immediately woke up, the way her eyes glowed and the sunlight come through the window made me smile.

“So yesterday was weird.” We didn’t speak animal, but the cat was apparently someone the Rescue Rangers were vaguely acquainted with when they investigate the Georgette Foxworth’s home on Fifth Avenue. It took a while to find because were some fudged the details on the case file which earned Chip’s, the primary detective chipmunk of the group, suspicions as to what was going on. “Do you think we’ll be able to help them today?”

“I’m sure we’ll pick up on where Georgette went Smolder, why else would someone try to mess with the files of where Georgette lived?” Ocellus was the one that pointed it out, I pointed out that why they haven’t checked where the poodles residence was. There were almost no clues aside from one that had stuck out to Chip, one of Georgette’s favorite carob bon-bons had been tampered with and it was possible that Georgette had been drugged and nabbed.

Oliver Foxworth a cat and Georgette Foxworth’s friend, had been a victim of one of Professor Nimnul’s prior inventions which made Ninmul more of a suspect than before as that was a mission where the Rescue Rangers set out to rescue a cat named Spunky among many others.

Apparently Nimnul created some weird petting machine that powered a lighting spewing weapon by rubbing cats with a bunch of rubber gloves and brushes on mechanical arms. That machine certainly sounded extremely bizarre, considering I really couldn’t picture such a ludicrous thing as existing in my head. Foxglove assured us that Nimnul has done far weirder things.

Why Nimnul absolutely needed the live cats could never be truly explained, Foxglove stated that he might have somehow discovered how to wield magic with technology and the discovery could be responsible for his clearly terminal insanity. As if that would explain the aging ray, the enlarging ray and the teleportation device that caused the rangers to gain some genetic anomalies that made them biologically compatible with every other kind of similar sized animal in existence. Those were just a few of the stories Foxglove told us, in particular she liked that the last tidbit happened as she made no effort in hiding her complete and utter attraction to Dale.

Ocellus even says the love was reciprocated, but I wasn’t currently seeing it from Dale or maybe he just had a hard time expressing his feelings.

Oliver gave us the location of some of his friends that could possibly help out with tracking down Georgette, he knew one dog in particular that had a rather strange loving relationship with Georgette despite being a dirty thieving street dog.

As for what Huey, Dewey and Louie got up to while we were following the Rescue Rangers around yesterday, they were currently busy befriending the Troll in Central Park that lived under the nearby bridge. At least Huey and Dewey were befriending the troll, Louie was trying to set up a business scheme involving plants and the troll’s power to make any plant life grow really fast. The troll didn’t seem to really care about money and was okay with Louie coming here to sell the plants he generated personally.

Louie would be making a lot of money legally and Stanley would happily get the opportunity to spread his magically strengthened plants around. Not that we were bothering with focusing on that, but if we ever needed the help of the biped duck brothers, then all we had to do was ask. Honestly, I was going to stay away from Dewey even if I have learned to tolerate him.

So the Rescue Rangers, they were an organization that came together during their first big adventure involving a lot really odd stuff and facing several of what would become their worst rogue’s gallery throughout said adventure. If you can imagine it, then they’ve probably had to deal with something like it.

They, along with a mouse from Britain named Olivia Flaversham, were responsible for the creation of a worldwide organization called the Rescue Aid Society. Sometimes the Rescue Rangers were far too busy to take every case they possibly could, if we ever needed assistance then we had a few phrases we could use to get 'a little help'.

We would be assisting the Rescue Rangers today, because we had nothing better to do than find a dog that had been taken from her home under dubious circumstances where there wasn’t a struggle while Professor Nimnul was stated to be nearby.

Ocellus told me that the Rescue Ranger were the dimensional equivalent of the elements of harmony in this world and I believed her after being introduced to Monterey Jack and his unusual companion Zipper.

Monterey was the largest mouse I think I’ve ever seen, so what was so unusual about Zipper? He was a fly that has lived for years, exceeding the average lifespan of a fly by a number of miles and still looked young. Other flies don’t live nearly as long as the little green mutant whose been traveling around with Monterey for a while, even before joining the Rescue Rangers.

When it was pointed out by Ocellus that Zipper was an oddity, the other rangers shrugged it off as another unexplainable thing in their lives. One bit of strangeness they wouldn’t have been able to survive without on numerous occasions.

So most of us were bound to return to the park. Webby was almost a no show, she was currently involved in hunting down criminals that committed a museum robbery or something and had to clear her name, which all centered on the previous mystery she was pursuing personally. She wasn’t being actively hunted by the police at least.

From what little we saw of her before we left the hotel, she had told us that our adventure sounded just as fun and important as what she was doing in retrieving a rare artifact from some hidden vault here in New York.

-Central Park, outside Ranger Headquarters, Ocellus-

“Morning Foxglove.” I knew bats were nocturnal, but Foxglove looked to be making a concerted effort to be diurnal.

“Morning Ocellus, Smolder.” Foxglove nodded to each of us in turn with a bright smile while still hanging upside down in the tree where the Rangers had built their home base. “I’m sure the others will be out shortly after they are done with their morning rituals.”

“So these dogs at the wharf… are we sure they’re friendly?” Smolder crossed her arms and huffed.

“I’m sure they will help once we explain things to them.” I honestly thought that any friends of Oliver sounded like nice people.

-An hour later, houseboat under the wharf, Smolder-

We had just fell through the roof of the houseboat while looking around for the dogs Oliver mentioned and we now found ourselves surrounded by several growling dogs that were likely who the cat directed us to.

I landed and pulled out my combat ribbon as Ocellus hovered behind me. The Recue Rangers picked themselves up and looked a bit worried as the dogs approached.

There was a small dog, a bulldog, a large dog, a… not sure what the female dog was as I wasn’t an expert on dogs like Pom seemed to be. They were all aggressive and the one smaller male dog behind them gave us a calm glance as he was lazing about with sunglasses resting on his forehead.

“Um, excuse me, but we were here to inquire about some things. We don’t mean to be a bother, but…” Foxglove came in for a landing in front of the dogs and spread her wings. “Oliver said you might be able to help us on a case with finding a missing poodle by the name of Georgette Foxworth?”

The... chihuahua, right that's what he was, soon began panicking.

“What’s he saying Foxglove?” I asked as he seemed suddenly panicked.

“He’s mostly freaking out and asking about what happened to his beautiful lady friend. He’s really got some accent on him, if only you could understand what I’m hearing right now.” Flicking her ears, Foxglove turned back to the chihuahua and motioned at him with her wings. “Calm down, calm down, I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of us before… we’re the Rescue Rangers!”

Foxglove being the only one we understood out of the four rodents and one bug that also said that last thing, if Fluttershy were here she’d understand the chittering they all did at once. The one male dog strutted up through the rest of his pack and sat down in front of Chip and started barking, growling and yipping.

“Dodger here is asking about what’s going on with their friends from Fifth Avenue and Chip is explaining that someone has likely drugged and dog nabbed Georgette and that we’re currently looking for her. Oliver directed us to them because he thought they could help us with this.” After Foxglove said this the little dog started getting antsy. “Tito here really wants to run out there and help find Georgette like yesterday, so I think he’s definitely going to want and help us. Huh, Dodger just expressed that they would assist us and he wants… huh… he wants a freebie from trouble with us if they help out?”

I was feeling love from the one Foxglove called Tito and not anger, he was quite passionate about going to help Georgette.

Chip crossed his arms and looked thoughtful as if he was tossing the idea over in his head, Tito stated something and came over to sit down among us.

“Tito stated that he’s helping regardless of whether or not they get a freebie from the rangers… apparently we’re dealing with the 'Fagin’s Street Dogs' gang.” Foxglove paused and saw the female dog speak up as she sauntered over. “While they may steal to survive, they aren’t bad dogs as they’ve helped Oliver find a really good home and sometimes Oliver’s owner gives them some free food when they drop by on particularly bad week.”

Tito turned to Foxglove and stated something in a series of barks.

“Yes, I’m translating all of this for them, they are assisting us on this case and we might need them if we run into trouble with bipeds or animalistic people. We’re good for handling all the animal level stuff ourselves, but a little help there wouldn’t hurt either if you’ve ever heard of the likes of Fat Cat.” All the dogs glared at the ceiling in unison and growled, barked or yipped something that felt fairly distasteful. Dodger turned to Chip and started talking. “Apparently they really dislike Fat Cat, so we have some friends there and Dodger is adding on to the deal that his gang will tell us if Fat Cat starts making any more waves around their turf specifically. He’s willing to give the rangers all the help they need if that cat ever bothers them in their territory, provided that they don’t mind having some thieves for friends.”

Chip said something and he was soon shaking paws with the dog.

“Well it seems we have something of a deal going, but I hope this won’t become a problem later. We’re not exactly in the habit of working with thieves… even if they are really nice ones.” Foxglove turned to Tito stating something to her. “Oh no, I have nothing against it… I was thief once myself working for an evil witch. Our friends here are magical beings.”

Tito looked at us and then turned back to Foxglove with a questioning sounding yip.

“Could you prove that you are magical creatures please?” We soon did so for Foxglove, I transformed into a copy of Tito, except with blue fur. The entire gang looked surprised at that.

I preferred to keep my color scheme and not imitate anyone else without being recognizably different these days unless I needed to infiltrate somewhere to help my friends.

Smolder just let off a short blast of flames from her mouth and smiled at the sudden look of fear from the dogs as she calmly twirled her ribbon. I transformed back into my horned lizard animalistic, somewhat biped, cross form that was just my dragon form without wings.

“Yeah, it’s so nice that they offered to help us and we’re not in the business of turning down free help even if it might not be needed.” Foxglove stated sweetly. “So far they helped us find Fifth Avenue and where Georgette lived once this case got started. That’s how we ended up talking to your friend Oliver, who was very worried about her.”

Tito barked something and the bulldog came over and barked something as well.

“That’s just it, we don’t know where to look as the only clues we really have is the carob bon-bon that she was drugged with.” Which Monterey had in a plastic bag and he showed to Tito who started whining profusely about it with worry.

He apparently recognized his lady friends snacking habits.

Dodger sauntered over to Tito and wrapped a paw around him and gave him a hug while barking something that felt uplifting and then motioned to everyone else to set out.

“Fagin’s Street Dogs are going to help case the streets with us.” Foxglove announced to us.

-Some hours later, Time Square, Smolder-

Time Square was a popular tourist spot here in New York, this city was exactly like Manehatten in the hustle and bustle of the area. Except the people were ducks or more likely to be some form of bipedal animal if not, an Ornithian would fit in here at least and we weren’t interesting sights at all being walking lizards.

“So nothing, the guys lost track of her smell around here.” I wondered what we would have to do to find Georgette.

There were too many scents for the dog gang to follow and Ocellus turning into a dog wouldn’t help, as her nose would be even less effective.

Tito still wasn’t giving up and Ocellus informed me he apparently was in love with Georgette or at least quite passionate about seeing her back to safety. I had a bleeding heart for the guy, but we had no leads.

“If I could use my horn, I would be able to at least track her to where she is, but it’s going to be a good while before I can do that.” I really wouldn't like it if you hurt yourself permanently for trying Ocellus. “It’s like the trail just goes cold and this case is quickly slipping through the cracks.”

Chip pointed at Ocellus and stated something in a powerful manner.

“Chip says that there’s no case too big or small for them and they’ve worked with less before and still succeeded.” As Foxglove translated, Chip started to pace around and muttered and slapped his paw into his other one. “He also states that we can find some cracks in a case that other people would tend to ignore, but all the clues haven’t slipped away from us yet. We know that someone had tampered with the files, we know someone knew what brand of snack Georgette eats and we know that Nimnul is not the culprit in this missing dog case, but he agrees that it is frustrating when things get cold like this. Nobody around here has actually seen Georgette come through here, at least under her own strength if she wasn’t in a bag or some kind of container.”

My eyes wandered away from the two mice, two chipmunks, the fly, the bat and the various dogs trying to pick up the scent trail and I narrowed my eyes at something that looked curious to me.

“Hey, uh… I know this might be a longshot but…” I was looking down a nearby alleyway and saw something that seemed oddly out of place to me. “Can you get one of the dogs to sniff around that ladder? I’m pretty sure fire escape ladders are not supposed to be down like that when there isn’t a fire going on.”

Dale called one of the dogs over, Einstein was his name. He wasn’t a very bright looking dog, but he was the strongest nose among his friends. We moved over to the ladder while the other dogs tried to track the smell of where Georgette might have been taken in other places.

Einstein seemed excited about something as he looked upwards and we saw a duck climbing down with a heavy looking shouldered bag, there was no movement in it so we might have just caught a plain clothes thief.

“Ocellus, go call for a police officer.” Foxglove stated calmly as Einstein barked up at the thief and he fell off the ladder to the ground, his bag of stolen loot spilled out all over the place.

The rest of the dog gang immediately converged on the duck to help pin the thief down. The female dog made some oddly snarky sounding barks and I almost had an idea as to what she said.

“Well this is a first for them, a group of thieves helping to catch a thief.” Foxglove was quite amused by this as were Dale, Gadget, Monterey and Zipper.

Chip had a stern look on his face as he glared down at the duck while standing on top of its bill.

-Two hours later, Ocellus-

So we caught a crime in progress, but we still didn’t find Georgette or any clues.

Having thought that, I then I noticed Dale holding something with an eager look on his face.

We were near the crime scene and we caught an infamous burglar in the act of daylight robbery, one of which has been using a bag and would pretend to be delivering laundry to a nearby laundromat when it was actually full of stolen goods being handed off to a pawn broker. The police were the ones to inform us of this as they figured out where the stolen goods were going.

The police were going on to catch the guys waiting accomplices and told us to stay out of further trouble. One policeman thanked us for helping them catch the Sky Rise Bandit in the act, but that wasn’t important part of all this.

“Quick question, where did Dale get that?” Having asked that, it drew all our attentions to Dale. He was holding a plastic wrapped bon-bon that I’m quite sure would likely come up as being a dog safe carob treat. It also looked like the same kind of brand of bon-bon that Georgette snacks on.

Chip was immediately on Dale and chattering at him as he was about to open the treat up.

“Chip is telling Dale that he just found an important clue and that he shouldn’t eat the evidence… at least not until after tracing where it came from first.” After hearing her favorite chipmunk say something silly sounding, Foxglove rubbed her face with her wings in exasperation. “Oh Dale… your adorable, but sometimes you could be a little more attentive.”

Tito sniffed the treat in Dale’s paw and he started barking excitedly.

“Tito says it has Georgette’s scent… where did this stolen bon-bon that has her scent on it come from?” Asked a pondering Foxglove. Dale gestured at the bonbon and where the thief had fallen, Chip stated something with a look as he pointed his paw upwards. “Dale says the plastic wrapped snack was one of the stolen things in the bag, Chip said we should check the rooms that this fire escape ladder has access to so we can find evidence of whether or not Georgette is still being held here. He wants Fagin’s Street Dogs to watch the area for anything odd. You two probably shouldn’t be caught around the scene of a recent crime, you can sit on a bench as extra lookouts for us okay?”

“We can do that easily enough Foxglove, right Smolder?” Grinning at my best friend, she rolled her eyes and held out a claw, which I graciously took into my own as we both moved over to a bench together.

“You know, I thought this investigation would be a lot more action packed.” Smolder stated blandly as she twirled her ribbon about playfully. “Still though, it was nice to have helped catch a criminal in the act at least.”

“We might even save a dog by the end of the day if we’re lucky Smolder.” I added with a smile and leaned up against her.

“Then you better keep your multifaceted eyes out for anything Ocellus.” Smolder leaned on me and kept holding my claws.

-Africa, Zootopia, Canal District Airport, Dolly-

Okay, so we had a few slight problems with leaving.

One was that I needed to somehow sneakily board any airplane with Pom unconscious.

Pom may have lost the guys with the guns, but it could be only a matter of time before they figured out we were at this particular airport.

The other problem was Pom's current health issues, especially after bravely and quite literally tanking a sniper bullet for one of Hansel’s cousins.

I don't know much about that Bark Brigade organization, but they had seriously saved Pom's mutton by safely getting her here. Whoever Sergeant Spot is, they knew my 'fam'.

Author's Note

How many more things am I going to reference in this section of the story alone?

116. Picking up the facts.

-????, Oleander-

“So you goombas should probably get a unionized to get more health benefits for being stomped on constantly.” The brown two footed creatures gave my speech some thought. “Besides if you could get the koopas in on it with replacing their lost shells as health benefits after being used as projectiles, then you’d be able to get your feet in the door without them getting squashed in the doorway.”

“So… what am I doing here again?” The pink goomba with the blonde ponytail and pith helmet stated while eating some cake.

“YOU’RE HERE TO REPRESENT THE LOGICAL REASON THAT MANDATORY SCHOOLING IS A GOOD THING, also it would help with your people not being constantly found under someone’s feet and flattened.” Fred was actively being nice to the goombas, mostly because they were downtrodden minions and he said it was beneath him to make their situation any worse than it already was what with them being forced to walk left and right all day… including right into pits or nearby sources of lava constantly as ordered to by their boss. “Even if it is funny you keep getting crushed, AMONG MANY OTHER THINGS.”

“I’ve never been crushed, then again I’m friends with the guy that tends to be stomp happy with us goombas. So-… it’s a bit awkward, but they usually do attack us first.” The lazy eyed pink goomba shrugged her mushroom shaped body. She then pulled a book from out of nowhere, without any limbs to do so, and started to read it while nibbling at her cake.

We might have been in a three dimensional world, but we were all made of paper at the moment. It was a little weird, but it really didn’t bother me to come back to this world again. The paper version of Fred was ridiculously adorable, which made Fred relatively cranky.

Earth, Western Russia, Hippo Taco, Shanty-

“It is so not the same as Hamburger Hippo Mopsy!” Murray argued towards Mopsy, I be happily eating my tacos while sitting on two unconscious guys.

We would be here until Carmelita was within thirty minutes of showing up or the local police finally took action. Bentley be saying that Carmelita picked up our trail after the incident with that Dan Carny guy.

“This restaurant is basically like a stereotypical Russian joke, also they are using the same ingredients you would see in a hamburger hippo and the only difference is that the restaurant is an off brand color from purple or pink!” Mopsy be getting rather heated about this. “The Yellow and Orange hippo wearing a sombrero instead of a burger doesn’t make it that different and it’s owned by the same company!”

“So what if it’s owned by the same company, it’s still a completely and utterly different restaurant and is nothing like Hamburger Hippo!” The argument Murray had going be quite amusing, because we were sitting at a restaurant where the only difference was the color of the building and the place trading burger buns for tortillas.

I idly flicked a hoof at my fries and nacho combo platter, Sly’s invisibility dropped and he pulled his hand away with a grin and a slight wince. He be learning a new trick to be going with the standee thing.

“It’ll take us another week or so to get to the Kunlun Mountains barring unforeseeable circumstances, I hope you don’t mind if we stop to pick up some cold weather gear for Shanty and Mopsy.” Bentley adjusted his glasses and continued to eat his quesadilla.

“Yeah, we should do that before we go any farther… I’m still surprised that the Russian’s didn’t use to believe in serial killers or acknowledged that they existed.” As Sly just said, I be learning a lot about this world and the dangers therein.

“Yeah, they are little better about that these days Sly, but it’s a big country.” Bentley looked to the two guys I was sitting on and shuddered. “Now about some deals I saw on Thief Net that we can use to upgrade the van…”

Thankfully, the food be on the house because we saved the owners.

-Africa, Zootopia, Dolly-

“Houbi!” Jumping at the yell, Mar’s mate Mia was who I saw giggling at me after nearly giving me a heart attack.

Mars had stayed with me while he came up with a plan to get me out of Africa and he told me some interesting things about his people, like how Mia had a shorter tail than him. It was hard to tell when both their tails exceeded more than twenty feet in length.

“Yeah, yeah, very funny, now how am I going to get on a plane and what have I been waiting all this time for?” I was going to be clearly visible while moving Pom on my skateboard. Her legs would drag on the ground, but at least her wool would prevent road rash.

“Houba Dolly! For us to make a distraction so you can get out of Africa, we’ll try to clean up the mercenaries once you’re gone and we’ll alert the authorities.” Mars still had his ever plucky personality as he hugged his mate, they started talking in a series of ‘Houba’ and ‘Houbi’ respectively. “Right, so do you think Maurice is useless as anything other than being a pack mule? Well you’re about to see how wrong you are when my fine large chum makes an elephant of himself, figuratively of course! Got the banana bunch honey?”

“Houbi!” Mia grinned and started twirling the banana bunch at the end of her tail above her head and Maurice took notice as his eyes followed it hypnotically.

“Where’s that Super Duper Hero X guy?” I still think that the snail was the oddest guy I’ve ever met, a snail super hero? What kind of world did I live in where that was actually a real thing? It actually makes Dylan’s dream of getting to be the first dog on Mars a decent possibility.

“Eh, don’t worry about him, he’s quite capable of taking care of himself and he was just passing through. He’s not part of our team, but he’s welcome to help us again at any time. Now get ready, you see that cargo they’re loading onto that plane over there?” I didn’t ask Mars how he and his mate Mia ended up in Africa as its guardians, but I’m fairly certain it involved an incident with an airplane now given how he was looking at it with familiarity. “I and Maurice will cause a distraction, while Mia helps you load Pom onto that one. Got it, good, houba houba!”

Mia threw the banana bunch and Maurice went after it through some sliding doors that were opening, a panic was caused and Mars went running off after him to draw more attention away from us by playfully messing with people.

“Houbi.” Mia stated and started to help me push the skateboard until we managed to get onto the conveyor belt loading up cargo.

“Tell Mars and Maurice thanks for the help and you too!” I received a few pats on the head from Mia after she lifted Pom, skateboard and all, up off the conveyor belt and into the cargo hold of the plane.

“Houbi-bi-bi!” She said in a friendly tone before darting off after her mate and Maurice drew the baggage guy’s attention off of me as I carefully maneuvered Pom into an out of sight corner where we wouldn’t be caught.

It’s a good thing Pom was so lightweight or I don’t think I could have moved her around on my board.

-Elsewhere at this time, California, dog-

I fell into a strange container and got sealed in surrounded by weird puffy stuff.

I tried to break free, but for some reason my super strength was failing me and I was trapped.

This must be the Green Eyed Man’s doing!

So tired… should have… taken my nap like Penny asked me too…

In fact… I think I’ll do that now.

-New York, Time Square, 9:39 AM, Smolder-

Okay the investigation has hit a slight snag, but Ocellus and I were still sitting on the bench together while currently entertaining Einstein and Rita with petting or some light affectionate scratching.

Francis and Dodger were around, likely asking for information from other animals to help the investigation further. At least we now knew all the names of Fagin’s Street Dogs.

What was that snag? Well, it was the fact that some guy named Rat Capone may be involved and he was a pretty dangerous guy at the ‘animal’ level. He has a cousin that came at the Rescue Rangers with a tank once, and not one of those fun Equestrian party tanks either.

Foxglove came in for a landing on the back of the bench and tried to be as inconspicuous as a bat outside during the daytime could be.

“So we’re not sure how Rat Capone factors into all of this, but we did find a tail from Sugar Ray Lizard in the same apartment that Tito said he smelled Georgette in. The problem comes in when we try to factor in the fact that the drugged carob bon-bon Georgette nibbled on had a delayed reaction and Rat Capone’s gang was nowhere near the scene of the crime where Georgette was last seen before being grabbed when those drugs kicked in.” Foxglove was kept us up to date with the clues the Rescue Rangers were gathering. “In fact, they were seen on the other side of the city by some trusted friends of ours when Georgette was taken. Which means it’s unlikely that they are directly involved in the dog nabbing and could be a part of a completely different incident entirely to the ones we’re working on. New York is crazy like that even at the best of times, there’s always more than one story going on here. We’re to look around and make sure that we didn’t miss anything, while everyone else goes after Rat Capone… Dale didn’t want me anywhere near him, it’s nice that he’s actually being quite protective of me. Still no sign of a ransom being asked for Georgette, but that’s practically the main motive as to why someone would take her.”

So the rest of the Rescue Rangers and Tito were going to search for Rat Capone’s gang while we did our own thing with the rest of Fagin’s Street Dogs. I was getting a bit hungry and Ocellus looked like she could use a drink.

“Say, how about I hit up Huey for some food and get you a drink?” Because I knew for certain that I should never take a loan from Louie and the less said about how much I tolerated Dewey the better.

“Oh come on Smolder, Dewey’s not that bad, he’s kind of like Silver Stream.” Would like to see you survive an hour with his attention grabbing antics Ocellus, that guy was needy.

“Silver Stream may be a bit ditzy, but she’s nowhere nearly on the same level as Dewey!” It wasn’t hard to guess that I knew Ocellus knows how I felt about all of our friends, she even knew my feelings about her and we’re never going to stop dancing around the issue that she kissed me before unleashing a can of magical butt kicking all over those Yellow Dog guys. “Also are we going to talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” Nice try Ocellus, but we really needed to talk about now when we were not distracted by a large number of friendly Dalmatians.

“That you used me as a living magic battery? I know that the situation was dire and that you were hurt doing it, but still could you at least apologize for it?” Not that I was going to ever complain about the kiss, but I still wanted an apology. Ocellus looked away shyly with a frown. “That’s not exactly how I wanted things to go between us you know.”

“I’m sorry Smolder… you and I both know that Pom and Shanty wouldn’t have been able to destroy those machines.” Not liking to be angry at Ocellus, I gave her a reassuring hug. “Still I appreciate you sticking with me while I was in a coma.”

“I wished we could have done something like that under better circumstances Ocellus, but you know I’m never going to abandon you at this rate.” I stood up and motioned to the Rita and Einstein. “Come on guys, lunch is on us. Get Dodger and Francis and we’ll get some food.”

The two dogs looked excited to hear that.

“Ocellus… do you think actually dating would make things weird between us?” It was a concern of mine.

“You mean aside from the fact that it feels like we were already dating before?” Ocellus rolled her disguised eyes.

I snorted and smiled at her and gave her a light shove and she shoved me back with some giggles.

“Best friends always Ocellus.” We’d work these things out eventually, there was no need to overdramatize our lives like Rarity tends to do.

-An hour later, Ocellus-

We knew the rules of what not to feed a dog. They were basically no overly fatty or fried substances, nothing with chocolate and nothing with theobromine. Delilah back in Camden Town made completely sure that we didn’t hurt her puppies by accident, she and Doug were still fretting about their daughter Dolly when we left Camden Town for New York.

“So dogs are kind of a thing with you guys.” Huey Duck stated as he fed Rita.

“No, they are more Pom’s thing, but that doesn’t mean we won’t befriend intelligent animals.” I stated as we brought up all the facts of the case with Huey to keep him in the loop as to what we were getting up to. “The Rescue Rangers are really nice, like this street gang of dogs.”

“Well it’s not that hard to believe animals having gangs or organizations beneath notice of bipeds or even animalistic people, Zootopia is one of the few places in the world that has the largest population of rodent sized animalistic in Little Rodentia.” Huey was enjoying the presence of our friends personally and respecting them in how they want to be treated. “It’s like people ignore the intelligence of animals a lot of the time… or the fact that they are sometimes seen wearing tiny clothing. I don’t believe there really is that much of a difference between the three levels of beings on our world aside from the ability to communicate. Animalistic tend to get looked down on for looking or acting more like animals as a preference sometimes, but I’m of the mind that we were all no smarter than normal animals at one point. My family is adapted to such weirdness, so we see this stuff a lot easier than most. People also write off acts of magic as science or technology running amuck more often than they really should, but the skepticism is understandable.”

“So any ideas on how to help the case the Rangers have going? From what Foxglove said they are currently investigating Rat Capone in the locations he’s known to frequent… which includes sewers.” I am so glad that I don’t have to go into those. I may not have much of a sense of taste for regular food, but my sense of smell certainly works just fine. “We’ve given you all the facts as we know them.”

“Hm… was that carob treat that the Sky Rise Bandit dropped drugged?” The three duck brothers were cool with me, Huey especially because he could be as socially lost as I was at time and he was really smart.

It was only Smolder who had a problem with Dewey. I thought Dewey was kind of funny personally, and all he wanted was some attention sent his way.

“No, but it does give us an idea as to the fact that Georgette was there.” Foxglove answered. “I still can’t think of a motive other than ransom.”

“Right, so where does Georgette live, where was the bon-bon found and how far do you think someone could have possibly gotten with a poodle of her size?” It was here that Huey pulled out a map, we started pointing out each location.

“Wait, you understand me?” It sounded like Foxglove was a bit mystified that we weren’t the only ones who could hear her soft and gentle voice. “My name is Foxglove, nice to meet you.”

“We’ve been near enough magical artifacts that I’m surprised we can’t do magic ourselves, we’ve been affected by all kinds of strange magic and I’m surprised it that it hasn’t left us with more detrimental or helpful side effects.” Something seemed to be upsetting Huey about the subject from what I could feel, he marked down the three locations where Georgette had been. Where she was feasibly nabbed, her smell in the apartment in Time Square and her home on Fifth Avenue. “I’m… not exactly a big fan of magic. I prefer science and things I can understand, but magic is near impossible to understand by its very nature.”

“Well at least there are some forms of magic that are very understandable.” I stated with a grin.

“Like what?” Huey tilted his head to me as Rita cuddled up to him, he had three spots marked out on a map of New York and three circles drawn around all three points. He looked to be thinking and marked an X on the map.

“The Magic of Friendship, Love and Family are all are very common forms of magic back where we’re from.” A giggle escaped my lips as the Great Dane named Einstein licked my face.

“Okay, so maybe there is some magic that is easily understandable.” Huey motioned to all of us to gather around. “I think you should check this place out between all three points and spiral outwards from there. The chances of finding clues are better when you have three points of interest and a spot where they all intersect.”

“The theatre? Why does that sound so…” Foxglove put her wing to her mouth looking thoughtful. “Oh no… I think I know who has Georgette now! Oh no, this is bad, this is really bad!”

“Who has her Foxglove?” Huey asked.

“We need to find out where Canina La Fur currently is right now, she’s in serious danger!” Foxglove seemed panicked about something as she zipped around us until I grabbed her with my right claw carefully and brought her to my face.

“Foxglove, breathe.” I inhaled slowly and exhaled slowly, eventually Foxglove started to calm down. “Now who has Georgette and who is Canina La Fur and what does that have to do with all of this?”

“You don’t know who Canina La Fur is?! Oh… right… lost interdimensional aliens, I had almost forgotten about that.” Dewey stated as he came up to us looking confused before we reminded him where we came from with flat stares. “Canina is like one of the best show dogs in the entire world next to Bolt, she has been at it for years and years with movies, live broadways shows and commercials! Why she’s one of the most spectacularly well known dogs in the entire world that knows how to tap dance, she’s done all kinds of charities and did one really impressive musical number with the Chorus Penguins that she trained herself! She is one of the most well-known dogs on sight alone in the world! If she’s in danger then we just absolutely have to help you guys with this… mostly so I can get her paw print autograph...”

“Well of course you would know about, you still sing to all those catchy Kanine Krunchy commercials she’s done after the last great dog actor Patch the Dalmatian worked alongside Thunderbolt on his show. Wait… would that mean we met Patch’s descendants back in Camden Town? Huh, small world, considering that that family has three new actors in Triple D.” Louie mumbled as he came over to see what got Dewey so excited and there was a strange stumpy looking gnome guy with him. “The only reason why I know about Canina is because of that Pep commercial that I can never get out of my head aside from the one Gene the Genie did. Don’t ask about Gene; he was a rather weird one, even for us.”

“Yeah that and Canina is at the center of all this if I’m right and I seriously hope I’m not!” Foxglove exclaimed waving her wings to get our attention. “We really need to find Canina and protect her or get to the theatre to find out if Georgette is being held there!”

“You heard the bat, let’s move Ocellus!” Smolder started pushing me in a random direction. “Wait… which way is this theatre again or do we even know where this Canina La Fur currently is?”

“Oh oh, I do!” Dewey stated waving his device around showing a moving picture of Canina. “Apparently someone’s did a biography on Canina’s life and she’s currently at a book signing near the theatre!”

“Then come on, let’s get moving!” We rushed after Huey as he motioned us onward.

As we ran I looked to Foxglove looking up at me.

“Who do you think has Georgette?” I asked as we made our way down the crowded streets full of colorful people with feathers and fur.

“A disguise artist dog who has a penchant for sabotage and a real chip in her shoulder about Canina La Fur, I think she nabbed Georgette and intends to imitate her to get close enough to Canina in an attempt to somehow kill her.” It sound like Foxglove knew something about what we were dealing with here. “I’ve heard about her, but I didn’t think she would go after Canina again after the last time the Rescue Rangers dealt with her! I believe the culprit of this case is ‘Zsa Zsa the Lethal Labrador’, at least ‘Lethal Labrador’ was what Chip named the case file on her. She’s really good at mimicking other dog’s appearances, especially and notably enough, poodles! That’s why Georgette disappeared, she’s going to mimic Georgette to try and kill Canina and possibly ruin Georgettes career at the same time!”

“Do you think she’s already killed Georgette?” Smolder asked looking a bit green.

“I would like to believe better of some people, but Zsa Zsa was a particularly nasty dog according to the Rescue Rangers before I joined them. Apparently she took something Canina said the wrong way and then jumped right into immediately trying to kill her and make it look like an accident, that or stealing Canina’s life by taking on her appearance.” Foxglove looked upset and felt a slight bit hopeful. “I don’t think she’s killed georgette yet, but that’s just my optimistic side talking. Francis, Einstein, can you two search the theatre for Georgette while we go to Canina’s book signing?”

The two dogs barked and started to run off faster.

Dodger and Rita stuck with us.

-Five minutes later, Smolder-

We saw a large gathering of people, judging by the merchandise, that were fans of Canina La Fur. I saw something that was about to become a huge problem for everyone around, because a billboard started to teeter and tilt forward dangerously on the roof above.

That would soon quickly fall towards the crowd.

“I’ve got the billboard, Ocellus let Foxglove go and she’ll go scout out who just knocked it over!” Thankfully my demands to let Foxglove go were met swiftly by Ocellus as I inhaled and blasted the biggest fireball I could at the billboard.

I didn’t care who saw me doing this, because I was actively doing this to save people's lives!

Author's Note

Zsa Zsa's previous murder attempts include: Crushing, electrocution, throwing someone off a cliff in a wheeled object/vehicle (Otherwise known as the Charlie Barkin's treatment) and a red-neck with a gun.

117. Case... not solved?

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Fresh Start-

“The day is going pretty well for me Dr. Permanganate, thank you for asking.” I smiled at the stallion I’ve been sharing some quality time with, he was a truly nice guy. Probably one of my best friends alongside Kuril, Wary Berry and Mr. Refreshment. My jobs as a maid and waitress was a little odd when I had to duck and cover in case of something dangerous happening, but this was far better than living in Canterlot. Ponyville would have probably been calmer, but I’m happy where I currently am in life and I get to play with Silvers. “So how have things been going at the school?”

“Teaching hasn’t been too hard, plus all the families that moved in are easy enough to get along with, the diamond dog pups are eager to learn at least thanks to Dr. Bones.” Potassium Permanganate stated with a friendly tone as he came in. “I think Kuril’s doing a good job overall keeping our town in order, now if only her cooking could solve the economic crisis Jade started.”

“She did it with the best of intentions, plus she’s trying to fix things… not that her fixing things haven’t led to incredibly bizarre disasters before.” Stating this sardonically, I quickly gave Potassium a hug and motioned for him to sit down. Not one week went by without something strange occurring around the family that I’ve become a part of, something as innocuous as a friendly pukwudgie merchant stopping by to sell wares around here was one of the weirder ones. Mind you that Pukwudgies are some of the nastiest warlike creatures to ever exist in the world, some say that they existed purely to ruin somebody’s day at the mere mention of their existence. “So what can I do for you Pota?”

“Toasted cheese sandwich, a side of chips and a flagon of prune juice please.” Nodding to Potassium, I wrote down his order. “Do you suppose Twilight Sparkle will have things well in hoof soon? Celestia and Luna haven’t been retired for even a year and things are already going south.”

“I don’t think Celestia and Luna are going to stay retired after a year or two. That said, I think Twilight will be okay if she gets a day off once every other week. Provided Jade isn’t causing anymore worldwide problems.” I went to the kitchen and got started on his order. “How Celestia lasted almost an entire millennium without too many breaks or a long vacation, I’ll never know and I’ve worked for her personally. In any case, it’s not Twilight’s fault that she has to deal with her friend’s shenanigans, politics and villainous people, on top of knowing both Discord and Jaded as friends.”

“Aside from my ears catching fire, what else is going on Fresh?” Jade came over to me and she looked a bit tired from her trip to the home of the changelings, also her ears were literally on fire… not that it seemed to be bothering her at all at the moment. I hoped that was a side effect of magical alchemy and not something Jade is ignoring intensely with her high tolerance for pain.

“Still not telling you what I know Jaded, just accept that Fizzle has it covered and have a little more faith in her. You have enough to worry about after causing a worldwide economic crisis that’s actually requiring a world summit.” That and I was one of the ones that knew why Fizzle was keeping that information, not what that information was. “You know, leaving you to your own devices is just as dangerous, if not more so, than whatever Fizzle is currently working on. Instead of worrying about her job among the guard in Canterlot, you should be spending more time with little Silvers and your other mates. Also maybe find a steady job that doesn’t involve making a mockery of every legal system in the world…”

“Not a chance Fresh, also it’s so interesting that Fizzy is keeping information from me!” Jade gave me a grin. “Would it really be so bad if I knew what she was dealing with and want to help with it?”

I just give her a flat stare.

“Look, just try to fix the world’s economy first Jade before worrying about anything else in that vein of thought or your reputation as a loveable rogue will be entirely overshadowed by that.” That actually seemed to get through to the Abyssinian and I sighed with relief.

“Hey, I’m working on it!” Jade seemed to be mulling something over. “Though do I have to actually help Saddle Arabia?”

“You’re never going to let that thing go are you?” The grin I saw just said it all.

“If my therapist can’t get me to do it, then nothing short of having my entire personality rewritten to love Saddle Arabia will change my burning desire to mess with that one country in particular. Also I wouldn’t be myself anymore and everyone would come to miss me.” Yeah, didn’t want to be on the wrong side of Jaded La Perm personally, or between her and her favorite metaphorical yarn ball. “That the current economic crisis is hitting them the hardest is one of the happiest accidents I’ve ever pulled off. Enough about my insanity, how are things with you and Dr. Permanganate?”

“Our relationship is going fairly well I’d think.” We’re taking it slow, not everyone could just be in love with a quirky chimera and a sanity challenged unicorn that was queen of an entire nation working as a guard for ours.

“He’s a good stallion and your relationship is probably one of the more adorable and solid ones around here.” You wouldn’t hear anything other than agreement to that Jade. “Did you hear the news that Ponyville received not too long ago? It, curiously enough, came from Captain Celaeno.”

“Oh, do tell?” I just started toasting the sandwich in the oven as Jade came into the kitchen and started helping with orders.

-Earth, New York Streets, Huey-

I watched as Smolder blew an entire billboard in half by putting a hole in the middle of it and the two halves burning up before any of the larger chunks hit the ground.

This saved a lot of people serious injuries, that didn’t mean there weren’t minor injuries from the burning debris that hit them.

No one needed emergency medical aid though and no permanent harm was done.

Things could have been worse. Quite a few people were too distracted by the falling billboard to see Smolder deal with the situation and I wondered if Foxglove saw the culprit that pushed it over.

She hasn’t come back yet and I was worried about the little bat. If she was part of an organization of intelligent animal detectives like she says, then she probably knew what she was doing when it came to chasing down the perpetrator.

Once the excitement was over with, everyone was back to being interested in the one dog amongst them with pink puffs, white fur and a friendly demeanor. Canina La Fur, the dog most infamously known for somehow teaching penguins how to tap dance and is still a famous movie actress.

“Oh my goodness, it’s her! ‘Dewey’ go over and introduce ourselves?” Now if only Dewey could take the hint at the scathing look Smolder sent his way, even I sometimes had problems tolerating my brother. Loved him all the same as he was basically the upbeat morale booster of our adventuring family when times were tough.

“Might as well. Good job with stopping that billboard Smolder!” Even I could tell that the fireball was well executed and that it wasn’t an accident in how Smolder dealt with the danger. The dragon puffed up and placed her fists on her hips. “Oh wait… Foxglove is our translator, we’ll have to wait for her before we can talk to Canina to warn her about someone possibly being after her. We don’t exactly have a confirmation yet.”

“Talk is a loose definition as far as Dewey is concerned.” Trying to be a little less uptight about things, Louie would not get a question from me about where he got that can of Pep he didn’t have a minute ago and we weren’t even near any vending machines that had Pep in them.

The can also had frost on it… did he take the dimensional bag of holding? Mom, Uncle Donald and Scrooge were going to be angry when they find out about this.

“Hey, I’m a dew-pendous person guys.” We both gave Dewey a flat look and he rubbed the back of his head. “Okay so I might over ‘Dewey’ it too much. Can you really blame me with how exciting our lives are?”

“A little.” I answered immediately in unison with Louie, as we watched the book signing get back underway with Canina marking books with a paw print and giving the people happy sounding barks.

Canina seemed to get aggravated anytime her age is brought up and would growl at the person in a slightly unpleasant manner, but she wasn’t showing any outright aggression. She was a very healthy dog regardless of the constant comments about her age.

“Dewey, can you contain yourself and not mention Canina’s age when we introduce ourselves to her?” He looked at me and simply nodded after giving it something close to a thought.

“You’re asking for a miracle there bro, we both know Dewey has no tact to speak of.” Louie stated lazily and sipped form his can of soda.

“I second that sentiment.” Smolder joined in.

“Okay guys, I’m back. I lost the culprit, but I did manage to get an echo profile of the culprit as they left the area. Did anyone get hurt?” Landing on my shoulder Foxglove looked about as they all gathered around me to hear what she had to say, seeing that everyone was okay she sighed with relief. “It confirms my suspicions that we’re possibly dealing with Zsa Zsa the Lethal Labrador, given that the echo profile is that of a Labrador wearing a wig among several other things to look exactly like Georgette Foxworth. I’ll be able to tell her apart from the actual Georgette easily enough.”

“Well that’s good Foxglove, but what do we do once we catch her… are we going to catch her?” Though I’m the one that brought it up, what are we going to do with Zsa Zsa if we managed to capture her or even started the process of trying to? “Do animals even have prisons like that?”

“No, we don’t. It’s why Fat Cat and other animal gangs are still running around, we just run off animal criminals or make sure they don’t cause too much more problems for everyone. As for bipeds and animalistic people, we try to get them jailed if there is a reasonable way to do so and it is completely warranted.” Foxglove muttered with her wings crossed. “We should probably ask Canina what she wants us to do, since she’s the intended victim. We also need to confirm if Canina actually knows Georgette personally or not.”

“Remind me to avoid animals with crafty looks in their eyes in the future.” Louie stated as he crushed his can and threw into the bag of holding inside of his hoodie’s pocket.

I knew it, Louie has it!

We made our way over to the book signing, we purchased a biography for my later perusal and while Canina was marking Dewey’s book with a paw print, Foxglove had an exchange with her.

“I’m with the Rescue Rangers and we need to talk Canina, when will you’re book signing be over with? It’s kind of urgent.” Foxglove received several barks and tilted her head off to the side discreetly. “Okay, we’ll have to patiently wait twenty minutes, Canina really is not one for disappointing her fans.”

-Thirty minutes later-

“Alright… okay. So I have just found out how Georgette is connected to all of this.” Foxglove turned to us after having a small discussion with Canina. “She’s friends with Canina and they sometime spend time together hanging out whenever Canina is in New York. Georgette and Canina both like to gossip and share how hard life is being famous. Also, I don’t think Zsa Zsa is aware that her disguise has been compromised.”

“Don’t worry Canina, we’ll take care of it… so what does she want us to do about Zsa Zsa anyway?” Dewey asked while running his hand down Canina’s back affectionately.

“Canina wants us to either capture Zsa-Zsa or set it up things so the both of them can talk. She wants a chance to convince Zsa-Zsa to stop trying to murder her, she really doesn’t want to deal with the medical bill again after what happened last time.” Foxglove seem worried and nibbled at one of her wings. “I don’t know how we’re going to do that though.”

Einstein and Francis showed up and they started barking at Foxglove.

“Huh… oh… Georgette wasn’t at the theatre, but they did smell another dog’s presence they don’t recognize. It might be Zsa Zsa’s scent, but Georgette wasn’t there.” At least we had that much information Foxglove. Canina started barking something. “That’s why we’re here Canina.”

“I have an idea.” Ocellus stated in curious tone. “Why not talk to Zsa Zsa and pretend you don’t know it’s her in disguise, does Zsa Zsa know Georgette’s very well?”

Canina responded with some yapping and lazy paw gesturing, there was also a smile on her face.

“She’s says she can handle things if she can meet just Zsa-Zsa personally to straighten things out, but she still wants to know what happened to Georgette.” So the evidence was laid out by Foxglove, Dodger and Rita added some of their own commentary to all of this, not that we could understand them without Foxglove being the translator for all of this. “So the locations we’ve checked for Georgette have nothing, but maybe the other Rescue Rangers are having better luck.”

Canina barked something that sounded fairly upbeat.

“Are you sure you can handle the same dog that’s tried to kill you before? Maybe we should be nearby to make sure she doesn’t try to hurt you?” The response that Foxglove received was a shooing paw. “Well we’ll be nearby at least if you need help.”

Canina nodded and yipped twice before continuing about her day, she motioned for us to follow her with a paw.

“This is so cool!” Dewey said bright eyed.

“Yeah, we didn’t exactly expect animals on this world to have issues like this, then again we are still technically visitors to this world so there’s a lot we don’t know.” It seemed Smolder was enjoying the adventure, this was probably one of the few adventures where we weren’t at the center of things.

“You’re right Smolder, even we wouldn’t have known about this stuff going on beneath our beaks if we hadn’t met Foxglove or if you hadn’t taken interest in the Rescue Rangers.” Dewey crossed his arms and looked confused. “Though I swear I’ve seen the Rescue Rangers somewhere before, maybe that spy game at Funzo’s Fun Zone? Makes me wonder if FOWL agents used that game to run scenarios against known heroes.”

“Well I’m glad this is almost over, because I’m kind of getting worried about what’s going on with Webby, we should probably look into that after we’re done helping with this case.” Louie was actively being nice, will wonders never cease? “Still got a nice deal with a troll going, so no matter what Louie Enterprises is on the rise.”

“Uh guys, Foxglove, Canina and the Fagin’s Gang are leaving us behind.” We turned to Ocellus and noticed her waving at us.

We quickly followed after them.

-Fifteen minutes later, outdoor café, Canina-

I swear I am getting almost too old for weird stuff, but I still had plenty of kick left in my paws for a throw down with Zsa Zsa if it came right down to it. I wasn’t rickety in the bones yet!

The one thing I really needed to try was to ultimately clear the air with Zsa Zsa. If she still didn’t see reason after that, then I was definitely going to need that help that little sweet Foxglove offered. Really as a younger Labrador, as long as nothing happened to me, she was going to outlive me anyway.

It would also help if I knew where my friend Georgette currently was, but Foxglove assured me that the other rangers were already working on locating her. All of my little friends were so sweet on me, maybe I could spend the rest of my days being a normal dog while I still can.

Makes me feel sorry for dogs like Bolt who didn’t get a choice in whether or not they wanted to be an actor, given he was forced into his role even if he plays it well and actively believes everything they have him doing.

I saw Zsa Zsa approach me, she was really good at looking like Georgette. As much as her acting skills allowed her to mimic me personally, I doubted she’d be able to copy Georgette entirely. This would have fooled me had Foxglove not warned me about this. It was time to put my own acting skills to a real test against an equally good actor.

Glancing at Foxglove, she nodded while waving a wing at me as she signaled that it was Zsa Zsa.

“Hello Georgette, how have things for been you dear?” I stated as I hugged Zsa Zsa.

Georgette might be a little younger than me, but she wasn’t afraid to listen to my opinions on things even if she wasn’t very touchy feely.

I just confirmed it for myself, the Labrador was disguised as one of my friends and I dearly hoped she didn’t do anything permanent to her.

-Camden Town, Judy-

Okay so Zootopia had a problems this morning, we were only being piped the info now because we have some friends there keeping us in the loop.

At least four mercenary teams, three helicopters equipped with rockets, military grade equipment and a good number of them being captured by the Tail Team. At least six sniper rounds fired, multiple assault weapons used, rockets fired by all the helicopters.

Their target was concerning, given it was Leap Lamb and after watching some news of an announcement of the first commercially available True Artificial Intelligence, I already saw that there was a fairly good motive behind it besides someone putting a hit out on Leap Lamb.

Despite all of that being sent her way, Leap Lamb was only struck by one bullet to the chest and one sniper round that was unaccounted for that also possibly struck Leap Lamb. Last known sighting of Leap Lamb was being carried into Rainbow Falls by a sled dog team, she was still breathing and alive before disappearing.

The situation was watched by the nighttime police squad, but they didn’t engage and watched the situation from a distance. They did pick up the mercenaries after the Tail Team took care of them, not a single bullet could hit the two long tailed speed demons.

One of the confirmed mercenaries that escaped Zootopia was Sabu Taj, a rather notorious saboteur specialist and whatever else she was known for was not information we had. She had sabotaged all the transit systems in the area, not that it stopped their target from getting away.

The damage Leap Lamb did to the mercenaries was… fairly benign. She destroyed the three helicopters, no fatalities despite the third helicopters destruction being more obvious manner, only two mercenaries were taken down by her personally in a painful fashion. One mercenary, a jackal, stated to ZPD that he saw an angel for a few seconds before his chin was turned into broken glass after she split his helmet with a single blow.

“Yikes, three helicopters, what in the world is she made of?” My partner Nick intoned with disbelief, as even I had trouble believing that Leap Lamb was strong enough to bring down helicopters physically.

“Much more than she appears, she was still breathing after being shot with an assault rifle and not too long afterwards supposedly took a sniper bullet too.” The information I was receiving was rather iffy on Leap Lamb after she reached Glacier Falls. As for the weirdness going on around here, it seemed to have died down immensely. “She’s not invincible considering she was actually bleeding, she was injured before dealing with the three helicopters. She was in Savanna Central, went through Western Sahara Square and then got into trouble upon reaching Tundra Town. She was last seen heading to Rainforest… where was she going?”

“The Canal District.” Nick stated immediately.

“What?” I turned to him and his gaze was on the screen.

“This airport specifically. Best place to discreetly board a plane out of the country, she obviously couldn’t go to a hospital after taking a bullet wound. She was fairly paranoid about staying in Zootopia and with good reason if people were out to kill her for at least two reasons, maybe a third if she’s avoiding assassination attempts for being black ops specialist. I doubt she's actually a black ops, she reads more as a police officer with a desk job that was forced into being a super hero.” Nick turned to me and looked curious. “Where was Caper Canine reported to be during all of this?”

“That’s just it, the only sign of Caper Canine’s activities is somehow getting a team of sled dogs organized enough to pick up Leap Lamb. The tailing police officer didn’t see any other signs.” I reported to him. “The dogs weren’t identifiable at a distance and no one saw them going back to Tundra Town, nothing is missing from surrounding places that would even use sled dogs.”

“Spooky.” Commented Nick idly. “That has got to be one smart dog.”

“Still, we should try to keep track of Leap Lamb’s movements, as where she goes danger seems to follow.” Feeling my ears get rubbed, I just let Nick have his fun. “We weren’t going to do any better following the newest Cooper Gang and Hunter isn’t talking as he likes Leap Lamb and is making a profit off of her. So what exactly are we working on now Nick?”

“How about the clockwork owl case Carmelita has running?” Nick stated as he dropped a few pictures in front of me that all had a large owl shaped silhouette. "We'll head to Russia and wait for Carmelita."

-New York, Ocellus-

“I don’t know what they are talking about, but I think Canina is getting through to Zsa Zsa judging by what I feel.” Looking over to our little chiropteran friend, she seemed nervous. “Are you okay Foxglove?”

“Huh… oh… I’m fine.” You didn’t feel like it to me Foxglove. “Just worried about Dale and the others.”

Eventually Canina and an undisguised Zsa Zsa made their way over to us.

“They’ve worked things out, but she has no idea where Georgette is.” Canina told us through Foxglove, Zsa Zsa was quietly looking at the ground with a severe case depression that gnawed at me.

I really needed to know what made her feel that way.

"What's wrong with Zsa Zsa?" I asked and Canina swiftly responded.

"Well, Canina once told her that a talent like hers only comes once in a lifetime." That sounded kind of bad. "What she just told Zsa Zsa is that she should make her up own lifetime of talent instead of just outright copying others. Since Canina's lifetime as a famous dog is closing up, she'll soon wander into complete obscurity a normal dog."

Author's Note

All glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

118. Little Problems.

-Earth, Airplane Cargo Hold, Dolly-

I was bored out of my mind, who knew being a good sidekick would be this hard? I munched on some kibble and took a sip of water from the canteen. My gaze drifted to Pom lying almost motionless on her back on my skateboard.

I could admittedly do a few exercises that Pom showed me, but I didn’t want to make too much noise or attract attention to anyone looking for stowaways. I’m glad I went in the fields around the airport before we left, as it would have been awkward to do so here.

This is going to be one long flight and my only company was the device Pom glued to herself with her magical wool. Said device that I was currently using it for light and was curiously silent, I looked at the screen.

The dog was just sitting in a corner of the screen with his head down. He looked like a sad puppy… with weirdly adorable fish tails.

I may not be the girly girl type, but I did have maternal instincts. The problem here is that I shouldn’t be having them for a computer! Something like this would totally be something Dawkins would do though.

Still… I did specialize in keeping puppies entertained by being highly entertaining myself, the center of attention even! No longer doing that, considering I’m pretty far from my family at the moment, I’m feeling fairly useless to Pom on a personal level.

What are the odds that this plane was heading anywhere near Britain? Not good, but anywhere is safer than with those mercenaries that were after Pom or were they after ‘him’? Pom did several sketchy things involving Dormarch when we went our separate ways, she protected me from being shot at and I really had no complaints about it… except that Pom got hurt.

Being independent or at least being able to travel around was one of my bigger dreams, I’m surprised mom and dad just let me do this. I’m not a space case like my brother, but I’ve always wanted to go out and do my own thing.

Fire dog, police dog and getting into extreme sports were what I considered careers for me, otherwise I could just easily slum it as a street dog. No offense to my step mother Delilah, who was a pro at what she does, but I wasn’t exactly bright enough to be a nurse dog… seriously wished I was at the moment.

Instead, I incidentally chose the rare option to be the sidekick of a heroic person who actively tanked a shot from a sniper rifle for a dog she just met. Pom was dedicated to protecting others and I could see myself doing similar things if I eventually became as strong as she was.

Speaking of that bullet, it was still embedded in the device. Drawing my eyes and thoughts back to the little puppy, I tapped the screen and that drew the attention of the Dalmatian with the three fish tails to me.

“Oh… um… what do you want?” ‘Dor’ seemed nervous, I gave him a friendly smile and tried to yip something softly.

“It’s okay, Pom will be fine.” Just ignore that fairly large patch of her wool that has turned a nasty brownish red color and the possible heavy bruising under her wool.

“I don’t understand you, but… maybe you know how to write?” Gave him a nod, because of course I did! Honestly, my ‘fam’ were intelligent enough to order pizza deliveries to our home. Pizza was an exceedingly rare treat, because it’s far too unhealthy for dogs. “Oh, that’s… that’s good. I’m the reason that Pom is like this, aren’t you upset with me?”

I felt the urge to gently poke my claw against his image and gently rubbed at it, I blinked when it felt like I was actually ruffling some fur and saw how he squirmed underneath my claw on the screen.

This made me blink.

What in the world? I actually felt like… was I actually touching him? Maybe something was wrong with my head or maybe it was magic that was causing this. Pom did mention something about looking out for something feeling off with our bond.

I gently rolled Dor over and he seemed perplexed at was I was doing until I started tickling his belly making him giggle. It brought a smile to my face.

“How is Pom?” I sketched this out one letter at a time, question mark included, then spelled out ‘keyboard’.

Access to the keyboard came up and the dog looked to be doing something before showing a picture of Pom and her insides.

“Pom’s current status? She still has arrhythmia from the shock of being indirectly struck by the sniper round, which means possible heart damage. Assault weapon bullet wound to the right side of her chest that needs actual stitches and not just her wool bandage thing, she was lucky the bullet only cracked her ribcage and didn’t just perforate her entirely. I’m sure you’ve noticed the problems with her breathing, which has worsened to being dyspnea, another bad thing when compounded with the arrhythmia. She really needs a hospital, she can’t stay ‘loosely’ stable like this forever… honestly, she’s a complete mess.” Looking a bit worried at that, I shook my head no. “I’m going to assume that you have a reason for saying ‘no’ to… what, the hospital? I know she really cares about your safety, but I don’t want to hear you callously disregarding her health, not after all she’s done for you!”

I nodded and started tapping out my response on the provided keyboard.

“Oh… you’re right… a normal hospital would be a bad idea, I can imagine people wanting to dissect her for her unique capabilities. I’m sure that neither of us would appreciate such a thing happening to her in her current state.” Gave Dor a message of agreement, he nodded back warily. “If you have a suggestion to find any form of trustworthy help, then that would be greatly appreciated.”

I typed out something. It was a longshot, but a little hope wouldn’t hurt right?

“You can possibly make contact with smart animals that might be capable of medical aid, you mean others that are smart like you?” His tails wagged and he looked hopeful. I nodded and let him know what I tried to tell him earlier. “What a little brother? I… I guess I can live with that... big sister. Do you really think things will be okay Dolly?”

He curled his tails around his front hiding most of his body and putting his front paws on top of them, he was a shy little guy. I tapped him on the head with a claw and gently rubbed at it and he looked like he enjoyed the gentle affection.

It warmed up my mood slightly that I had a pup to take care of, keeping him consoled and calm will hopefully make me feel the same about all of Pom’s injuries.

I decided to question him on something.

“Huh? An idea of where we are possibly heading?” Dor started mumbling something about a compass. “Current projected possible destinations puts us as heading to the northeastern United States region, Canada or even further north than that, that last one is unlikely. I’m not going to reactivate my map function, because I understand why Pom was adamant that I shut that particular function down.”

At least keeping him occupied will keep my mind off my family, I wonder how they are doing and if they were really okay with me doing all of this stuff with Pom? I could contact them using Dor… but I mentally kept convincing myself not to.

Okay, first things first, I typed the one word that no puppy like him could resist.

“Play?” Dormarch stated curiously with raised ears, he seemed interested and brought up a game… Poodle Wolf?! Ugh, exactly like my brother Dylan! Maybe the Poodle Wolf video game would be better than the boring dice rolling board stuff? His tails were wagging excitedly as he looked up to me innocently. “Can we try this?”

I groaned audibly and rolled my eyes; thankfully, he didn’t seem to understand my discomfort.

Well I’ve never left a puppy bored or completely disappointed yet! So I was going to humor Dormarch until I decide to take a nap.

-New York, after lunch, Smolder-

So Zsa Zsa had given herself up willingly, but only because she was morally worried about Georgette who disappeared. She only had a distaste for Canina and didn’t mean to do any harm to Georgette.

Zsa Zsa still had some hurt in her heart after her talk with Canina. It seems she’s dropped the lethal attitude entirely, according to Ocellus at least.

That’s about as much progress as could be expected or even hoped for in this situation, Twilight’s done something similar with people more dangerous than Zsa Zsa was.

If Ocellus vouches for her, which surprised Zsa Zsa to no end, then I’m willing to give the Labrador the benefit of a doubt. She was really bad at killing people anyway, even if she’s endangered Canina’s life pretty horribly before.

Canina was willing to forgive her, mostly likely since she was getting too old to really seriously hold grudges. Ocellus was meeting Zsa Zsa for the first time and was making an open effort to befriend her, she and Foxglove would be good at that considering both of them do have mild criminal histories.

I was still unsure what Ocellus did that could be considered criminal though, she’s never told me about it and I wasn’t really going to ask.

“I swear Dodger, when are you going to take notice of me? I’ve been throwing you signs for years!” Foxglove translated Zsa Zsa’s impersonation of Rita and Rita looked particularly impressed. Dodger looked a bit spooked and lowered his sunglasses as he looked between Rita and Zsa Zsa as if he couldn’t tell them apart. Dodger then grinned and barked something out that made both the dogs blush. Dodger was looking smug and Foxglove looked a bit red. “I’m… not translating that, nope, not happening. Zsa Zsa is really impressive when it comes to mimicking other dogs at least, I wonder if she knows someone who can get me into ventriloquism?”

Zsa Zsa came over to Foxglove and stated something.

“Would you? That would be nice.” It seemed like Foxglove was working up a rapport with Zsa Zsa, definitely Fluttershy style friendship in the making here.

“Uh guys, not to break up this heartwarming moment of forgiveness or anything, but we still haven’t found Georgette.” Raising a hand to draw our attention as he said this, Louie looked around lazily. “So let’s get to it.”

“We have no idea where to look Louie, we haven’t seen Georgette everywhere Zsa Zsa has already been and it doesn’t seem like she got free as this case would be solved otherwise.” I groused out, this missing dog case had been bizarrely more trouble than I thought possible.

“So… we need to find a lost poodle, but she’s not where we’ve already been to and we have the culprit who drugged her right here.” Yes, that’s where we currently were Dewey, get to the point. “How about we check in with the rest of those Rescue Rangers, where are they anyway?”

Zsa Zsa made a query and Canina responded and motioned to Foxglove who waved shyly at her, Zsa Zsa said something to Foxglove.

“Well… they were last heading off to find the location of Rat Capone’s gang with one of the members of Fagin’s Street Dogs.” The look Foxglove received from Zsa Zsa was looking both a bit haunted and pale. “No, I don’t believe they could have carried her in the open without someone noticing a bunch of rats carting a poodle around, but it’s one of the leads that led us to finding you trying to drop a billboard on Canina.”

I found it funny that the billboard I got to destroy, which I enjoyed doing, was featuring Zsa Zsa and she really didn’t notice the loss of her own advertising until Canina had pointed it out to her.

Zsa Zsa started barking up a storm and turned to Canina and barked something to her.

“Yes, that does complicate things. Okay, Georgette’s system should be clear of the drugs at least.” As Foxglove was getting at, we still had nothing. “If she wasn’t seen walking around, but the drugs weren’t affecting her, then it’s still likely that that Rat Capone has her.”

“Does Georgette have any enemies?” Huey asked.

“You mean aside from all the other dog show participants she’s beaten six times in a row?” Why was Foxglove looking at Canina and Zsa Zsa curiously?

They had nothing worthy of note to add to the conversation; Though Zsa Zsa did comment that she would probably be going after Georgette if she had lost to her six time, because she apparently has inferiority issues like that.

“Well, let’s find the rest of the Rescue Rangers then.” Fluttering into the air Foxglove started to echolocate around to see if they were nearby, then we started to get directions from nearby animals as to where they were last seen.

-Wharf of abandoned warehouses, Ocellus-

“Okay, there’s something I want to point out for everyone that should be obvious!” Everyone turned to Louie as he pointed at something. “Coo-Coo Cola is a brand that is generally losing out to Pep, but they don’t make the bottles with caps anymore.”

Was that really necessary Louie? We all looked at the coo-coo cola can, but saw the aforementioned bottle caps with what looked to be sharpened edges stuck in it. I made my way up to it and looked it over much more closely.

“Uh, do animals use bottle caps as throwing weapons?” I had to ask because those caps absolutely looked like they were thrown into the vertically flattened can.

“Well that’s concerning on a number of levels… because we’ve done that once or twice when we’ve been shrunk down. I still fear the day that Dewey eventually gets enlarged into a fifty story tall monster like our cousin Fethry’s pet krill Mitzy, yes it is possible around us.” Huey stated while looking at the can. “This can looked like it was used as a makeshift shield, judging by the markings a chipmunk was holding it.”

Foxglove’s eyes widened and she went into a panic flying about and away from us frantically screeching. After a minute of this, she eventually came back.

“Guys, I’ve picked up the Rescue Rangers profiles, they’re in trouble!” After saying this, Foxglove lead us to a nearby warehouse and she helped us all find a quick way up onto the roof.

Looking through some dirty glass we saw what, to me at least, was a fairly unique situation going on below.

“Wow… so they are going to dip them all in boiling Coo-Coo Cola… I always knew it was the most evil soda brand.” Louie stated idly, before pulling out a can of Pep and sipping from it. How is he not sick from having too much of that stuff? “This has also got to be one my top ten weirdest sights I’ve ever seen in my life. Half of them look like mobsters and the other half has this funky ninja vibe going on, there’s one that even looks like a Viking barbarian.”

Below us is a veritable army of mice and rats, a number of them were armed with toothpicks with bottle caps strapped to their ends acting as tiny axes. It almost looked like there were two separate groups concerning the ways they were dressed.

“Rat Capone’s gang is certainly bigger than I’ve heard.” Foxglove shivered at the sight of so many armed rodents and turned her gaze towards the Rescue Rangers.

The main thing of note was that we finally found out where Georgette was, just not how she got here.

She was currently tied up with Tito and most of the Rescue Rangers hanging over the vat Louie pointed out.

Zipper, the ever unusual fly, was trapped in a glass jar that thankfully it had air holes in it.

Zsa Zsa made a dry sounding comment and looked to Georgette with a feeling of shame coming from her.

“Well yes, but how do you suppose we’re going to help them?” Foxglove gestured to the proceedings below. “We’re outnumbered almost seven to one!”

“Yeah, but you’re forgetting something… they don’t have much down there that could actually hurt me.” Which is why I never worry about your safety too much Smolder, though things like what happened with Axel Gear should warrant at least some caution. “Ocellus, shape shift into having wings, we’re going in to save the rangers.”

As I did as Smolder asked and took on my more natural looking winged dragon form, Dodger barked something to his gang and they started climbing down, he turned to Foxglove and growled something before setting off personally.

“Dodger and his gang are going to launch a raid, what are you going two going to do?” Foxglove looked to the two dogs that huffed. Zsa Zsa and Canina started talking to one another and eventually Canina shook paws with Zsa Zsa and the Lethal Labrador took off. Canina turned to Foxglove and stated something to her before setting off after Zsa Zsa. Foxglove turned to us. “We have a plan, let’s go make sure they don’t fall into that vat!”

“Ocellus hold onto my ribbon, I’m making the hole.” Smolder stated as she passed me the combat ribbon from her horn started pulling off her clothes that hid her appearance and left them on the roof. With two flaps of her wings, Smolder was already in position to dive through the skylight. “Follow me in!”

I tied the ribbon off around my neck with my claws and followed after her.

-Smolder-

“So what Dewey do?” I heard Dewey ask before I slammed through the skylight face first.

-Dale, the red nosed reindeer chipmunk in the loud Hawaiian shirt-

Foxglove would hopefully figure something out and come find us, plus there’s the rest of Fagin’s Street Dogs. I’m not going to forget Ocellus and Smolder either, those two just wanted to be helpful.

So this was the forty seventh time that something like this has happened to us.

Was it weird that we always ended up over a boiling pot of something this frequently? I’m of also counting the times something boiling was hanging over us and slowly being poured at us too.

What is it about us that made people want to kill us with hot liquids all the time? I mean it was getting unoriginal at this point and I even sarcastically suggested it only for them to actually take my suggestion seriously.

“Say, if we don’t make it out of this one, do you think Foxy will… huh?” I heard the sound of flapping and relaxed. I smiled. “Never mind, we’re good.”

A large portion of the overhead skylight burst apart in a shower of glass as Smolder came through it, the rope beneath us was quickly cut and Smolder dove our way.

We all fell towards the vat and then heard a huge splash and lots of screaming, that screaming didn’t belong to us however.

We were all standing on the side of the toppled vat as Foxglove and Ocellus quickly came to untie us, Smolder had knocked it over by diving straight into the liquid headfirst.

A number of the surrounding mice and rats were running away and getting mildly burned by the hot soda, others had been hit by falling glass and then splashed with the hot soda.

Smolder just walked out of the fallen vat licking at her claws curiously, she was covered in boiling soda and was completely fine. Yep, that’s a real dragon for you, didn’t even look like she felt that at all and when one of the Cola Ninja threw a bottle cap at her… it just bounced off her scales.

“Foxy, you made it to the party!” I stated jovially as she nuzzled my neck, is my face heating up?

“Every day with you is a party cutie.” Foxy responded sweetly as a door was blown inwards and the Fagin’s Street Dogs charged in after dealing with the guys posted outside.

The chaos was kind of fun to watch even as I was in the middle of being freed, what made it even worse for the two groups that captured us is that Bubble’s Coo-Coo Cola ninjas and Rat Capone’s gang started attacking each other making things far easier for us to possibly catch them all.

We’d have a crate full of bad guys gathered up by nightfall.

“Rescue Rangers away!” Chip announced and jumped into the fray with Monterey close behind him.

Smolder was just wading through the mice and rats smacking them around and not try to hurt them too badly, it was kind of hard because she was like a kaiju wrecking an entire city in how she was knocking a lot of them out.

“Golly, all that wasted soda…” Gadget shook her head sadly, then she leapt off next. “I’m going to go free Zipper, cover me!”

“That’s our cue!” I stated as I leapt off the vat after the soda on the floor thinned out with Foxglove following after me.

We had to keep these goons off of Gadget to get Zipper in on the fun.

-Ocellus-

I just hovered above the huge mess of emotions, mostly of it wild panic and fear, awkwardly wondering what Canina and Zsa Zsa were doing.

I decided to stay up here and avoid everyone, if any of our friends needed help then I would get involved. As far as things were going, Smolder really didn’t need her combat ribbon for this brawl.

Tito was particularly aggressive for his size, he wasn’t letting anyone near Georgette and she seemed to be having pleasant feelings near him which was nicer than all the other stuff I was feeling going on.

Eventually Zsa Zsa and Canina finally arrived, yelled something and waited.

“Pick up the Recue Rangers and fly upwards Ocellus!” Foxglove yelled and dove down to where Gadget had just finished prying the lid off the jar.

Once all of them made their way over to me I flew upwards.

Dodger’s gang gathered up together around Tito and off to the side, a second later a water hose was fired full blast into the warehouse and swept about until the fighting completely stopped.

-Late that evening-

So we had at least one hundred rats and mice all stuffed into one box, I wonder what the Rescue Rangers were going to do with them all?

Georgette was slightly out of her mind due to the somewhat persistent side effects of the knockout drugs making her loopy, she would soon get help and Zsa Zsa couldn't apologize to her enough.

-????, late night, Dolly-

“Wake up, we're landing!" Dor actually managed to rouse me.

It wasn't long before we were sneaking away from the plane into the night.

Time to call for some local help on the World Wide Woof!

"This is Dolly Dalmatian, my friend is in serious need of an 'animal run' hospital that won't ask too many questions about her!" I waited and got an answer in the form of a chain of distant howls. "Yes, my friend is seriously wounded and needs help!"

Couldn't they hear my desperation?!

"Please... send someone here to help me with bringing her in!" I would soon get Pom to safety with help from two mice and a dog.

-

The Rescue Aid Society never turns away those in dire need.

Author's Note

N/A

119. Hero's Call.

-New York Hotel, the next morning, Dewey-

“So then we spent a few hours picking up wet rats and mice to stuff into a crate.” I told Webby as Smolder and Ocellus were preparing to leave for Calisota.

“Wait, wait, wait, did you just say that Georgette showed up after the rangers were already caught, how did she end up there then?” Pausing at Webby’s question, I felt just as confused.

“Uh… that’s something for the Rescue Rangers to figure out I guess.” I rubbed at my head looked to everyone else, they all shrugged. “It’s like how we don’t need to know where the Coo-Coo Cola ninja mice and Rat Mafia that we boxed up are going to. So where do you think Pom and Dolly got off to after Africa?”

“I don’t know, but anyone who can take out three helicopters and outrun a dangerous assassin is good in my book. I will beat up dangerous people like that for breakfast, I’d even do it for my friends too!” Webby turned to Smolder and Ocellus who seemed to be in a chipper mood. “I’m including you two in that of course!”

The latest news on Leap Lamb had her on the run from a large number of mercenaries, there was no way anyone could cover up the news about what Ocellus and Smolder’s caretaker was doing. Nobody knew where she was currently was, but Mopsy could confuse the issue by looking like Pom’s twin sister.

“Thanks friend of this dimension!” Ocellus said brightly.

“Love you friends from another dimension, literally since one of you needs it!” Webby shouted back excitedly, spooking Ocellus and making her lean back. “So you told me your story, let me tell you mine and all the stuff that happened! So Violet…”

She was cut off when Scrooge walked in.

“Pack it up kids, we’re leaving as soon as Launchpad finally gets clearance from the entire country to fly.” Stated Scrooge as he entered the room and propped himself up on his cane. “They want to clear the airways of anyone possibly flying within three miles of him, can’t say that I exactly blame them for that caution.”

“Ugh, do we really have to go through another Launchpad landing?” Smolder clutched at her head and I carefully made my way over to her to pat her on the back gently, she really didn’t like me and I had been using the pun a bit much lately.

“Wait, his landings are always that bad?” Oh you poor sweet summer child Ocellus, I’m sure you’re going to realize that he’s kept that plane together with duck-tape, staples, gum and dreams.

Wonderful, horrible, horrifying dreams of vehicles breaking apart all around us in various ways, yet we survived them all.

-????, Pom-

The sound of an erratic heart monitor that didn’t have steady beats made me almost sit up, only for a pair of blurry paws to prop themselves on my chest.

“It’s alright, you’re going to be alright, just calm down.” Blinking blearily, I felt the strange familiar bond between Dolly, Dormarch and me. “Lay back and rest Pom, you’re not in Zootopia and you’re not going to be shot at anymore… hopefully. Also, don’t move too much, the doctors don’t want you exerting yourself.”

“Pom shouldn’t even be awake with the way her vitals are going.” Dormarch whined to me on a screen being laid against the wall to my left, Dolly was on my right.

I heard some squeaking? I looked further off to both sides of me and saw… blurry figures of rodents, and lots of them.

One was a Squirrel that hopped up and patted me on the forehead while chittering softly. From what I could make out she was wearing a nurse’s uniform. It was a fairly calming gesture at least… I wasn’t feeling particularly calm by the way the heart monitor sounded like it was playing music from a rock concert.

“Huh? Oh! Bernard, Bianca, you really didn’t have to stick with me this long, but I really appreciate it! This is Pom by the way. Say doctor, can she drink some water? Okay, thanks!” Who was Dolly talking to and why did I hear a lot more squeaking? Dolly moved into sight holding my canteen in her spread out paw digits. I still thought that was a weird evolution for normal dogs on this world to be able to hold things with their paws like that. “Here drink this.”

I lifted my head slightly and took a few careful sips and tried to send a feeling to Dolly to pull back, she slowly pulled it away with weak smile.

“Okay, so I managed to get you to subconsciously release your wool so you they can properly stitch up and patch your wound and I also got Dormarch free from your stomach so they can check you after the sniper bullet impact… it really messed you up Pom. Right now they are trying to sooth your heavy bruising, they cleaned the wool around the wound.” Dolly propped her paws up on the mattress and stared at me sadly. “You’re in the trauma ward for the rest of the day until they can agree on how to help you.”

Yeah, I was finding it rather hard to breathe and my chest burned a bit, as in it felt like I was breathing in a powerful acidic gas. Might have pushed my Dancing Flame style too hard.

“We were assisted by the Rescue Aid Society after I got you off the plane.” The… what Dolly? Oh right… my plan. It worked and we got out of Africa without being chased to… wherever we were now.

Things were coming more into focus now.

I lifted my head and looked at my chest, the wound from that projectile was stitched up and I had several mice on my belly rubbing gently through my wool in a ticklish manner. I laid my head back down on the pillow and my breathing was getting pretty shallow.

“Oh and here’s the bullet they pried out of Dor!” Looking at the hunk of metal Dolly held up, I shivered at how large it was and looked at the handle to see that it had left a decent hole in the metal of the device.

“Maybe if that had hit me in the screen…” Commented Dormarch looking at the chunk of metal Dolly held. He wasn’t paying attention to all the chittering going on because he likely couldn’t understand any of the animals.

“Don’t blame… yourself Dor.” Tilting my head towards him, he looked up at me sadly on the screen from where he was curled up. He looked away and whimpered. “How long have… I been out Dolly?”

“Eighteen hours at least, they are going to try and help you with… medical terms that fly entirely over my head. Anyway, the Rescue Aid Society is doing a supply run to get medication for you.” Dolly rubbed at her head and looked a bit sheepish. “Sorry I’m not bright enough to be a nurse dog like mom.”

“Don’t sell yourself short… you got me here.” Despite my difficulties with breathing, I moved my right hoof and started to pet Dolly. She leaned into it and smiled a little while wagging her tail happily. “This is... the third time you... got help for me.”

“Yeah… please, don’t let there be even more.” Dolly still looked down as I pulled my hoof away and rested it on the mattress.

“What is... the Rescue... Aid Society?” I asked and tried not to think about the mice checking over my body, my shallow breathes or the fact that my whole body was aching.

Trying to relax with a near chronic anxiety problem was fairly difficult, but I did not want to be prescribed medication for anxiety like the rest of lambkin kind. I still wanted to be above that, to be stronger than at least that. If it came to it, then I would just accept the anxiety medication.

“Yeah, Pom can understand and speak dog, she talks to foxes too! I have a friend name Fergus that got a chance to cuddle with her.” Yeah, he was a very nice fox Dolly, one of your best friends from Camden Town’s canal if I recall right. “She doesn’t actually speak animal though.”

Dolly turned back to me with a smile as one of the two mice, male judging by his appearance started talking and Dolly translated.

“They’re a worldwide organization that was made to help those in dire need. No matter who they are, we will try to come help if a call for it is heard and the situation warrants a deeper investigation. Yours did, by a lot! They're on par with Britain’s oldest known organization the Bark Brigade which was started by dogs after the second world war.” The mouse stated as he tipped his hat to me, Dolly continued translating. “This is Bernard and his lovely wife Bianca. Anyway, the Rescue Aid Society wasn’t formally created until a few years back after the Rescue Rangers had far too many cases to deal with. He's sure we’ll hear about them if we stick around New York long enough. Before it was formally created, there is a history of rats, mice and other rodents doing big things to help others in need. Their society just brought those who wanted to help together and thus the Rescue Aid Society was born. They are well known members and have been in some really sticky situations when it comes to helping people.”

The lovely Bianca snuggled up against Bernard while squeaking something in a pleasant sounding tone.

“Do I want to know about that mission to Brazil was about?” Dolly asked and the two mice blushed, but didn’t move away from one another. They did look a bit shy for a moment before Bernard said something to Dolly. “Yeah, dropping it. Say, what can you tell me about the Bark Brigade? I’m sure you’re organizations have run into each other, they are the ones that got Pom to the airport so we could get out of Africa.”

Bernard started to squeak something and he seemed like a pleasant guy, if a bit shy in his actions.

“Wait… hold up… Pongo Pongo and Perdita Pongo? I know their descendants personally, because they are from my step-mothers side of the family.” It sounded like a surprised to the two mice that Dolly knew something about the Bark Brigade. They both made a comment to Dolly. “So how does that tie into the Bark Brigade?”

Bernard started squeaking what sounded like quite a story, it took a bit of time.

“Whoa… so that’s how the World Wide Woof became a thing, also a cat saved them? My brother Dylan would be surprised, he’s allergic to cats and he’s a direct descendant. So at least I now know how the Bark Brigade knows my family, the were friends to the original one-oh-one. I’m part of the second one oh one to happen… which is at one hundred right now, because I’m not there.” The drooping form of Dolly spoke about how homesick she was. Not that crying in her sleep was a sign I ignored either. She didn’t seem to know much about the Bark Brigade aside from what she was hearing. “It’s nice to know that my family has viable friends everywhere.”

Bianca started squeaking something as she placed a paw on top of Dolly’s and seemed to be trying to comfort Dolly.

“I could actually contact them, but I’m wary about the biped mercenaries that shot Pom.” All too aware that we were currently in a hospital, Dolly is just trying to make sure nobody will get hurt.

“Do it.” If there was one thing I wanted Dolly to do, it was stay in contact with her family. I was going to pull the familiar bond hard and get her to talk with her family, not only because I wanted her to do it… but she wants to as well. “Dormarch is… safe.”

“Do what? I currently don’t feel safe, I would be more concerned for your safety.” Ignoring Dor, I looked to the ceiling as Dolly made her way around the bed and over to Dor. “Huh? Okay, contacting number… who is Dolly getting into contact with?”

A second later I heard Dylan’s voice.

“No wait, don’t… wha… Dolly?!” Seeing Dylan’s face on the screen after tilting my head, I smiled. Several other puppies gathering around the screen and Dor seemed curious about the Dalmatians on the other end. The puppies were Dizzy, Dee Dee and little Dorothy, Dante also walked into sight a second later with a curious gaze and stuck to the shadows. “Where are you? Are you okay? Do you need help?!”

“Bro, chill, I’m fine… mostly. Pom is the one in that’s currently in a hospital bed.” Given the way Dolly wilted in on herself and tried to placate Dylan, she probably shouldn’t have said that.

“She’s what?!” Dylan moved his head and looked around Dolly to see me. “What’s with all of that, what’s going on Dolly?”

“Yeah, couldn’t exactly take Pom to a normal biped or animalistic hospital so… she’s in the care of an animal run hospital.” Dolly rubbed both her paws at her right ear and looked uneasy. “I just want you to know I really miss you guys. Also have you ever heard of the Bark Brigade or the Rescue Aid Society?”

“Uh, yeah, we’ve heard of the Bark Brigade, in fact some of the pups are training to be cadets now since an old Bark Brigade member came around to help out the family. She’s only accepting volunteers and is not forcing anyone to do anything they don’t want to if you are worried about that.” Shaking his head Dylan suddenly made a gesture towards me. “Wait, that’s not important, we have really good news for Pom! Hey, Da Vinci, can we show your artwork off?!”

“Who do you want to show off my artwork to Dylan? Oh! Hey Dolly, are you okay?” It seems Da Vinci, like anyone else from the Dalmatian family, were absolutely worried about Dolly.

I wasn’t going to complain, even though I was the one with the questionable health here.

“Da Vinci, get the portraits you made of them, we'll prove that we’ve seen them since they’ve left.” After Dylan said this, Da Vinci hurried out of sight.

In the background I could see Dante approach with a fluffy looking toy version of Dolly.

“We wish you well Dolly, this is kind of something we want to do with you.” They started hugging the toy, even Dante was squeezing it just as tight as Dizzy, Dee Dee and Dorothy. Dylan soon joined them resting his head on Dizzy and Dee Dee. “Just know that this toy can never replace our favorite big sister."

“Aw, you guys…” Dolly said weakly with a blush, it wasn’t long before three portraits were put in front of the screen. Dolly’s tail started wagging and I smiled a bit at the sight of three specific individuals. “No way, you found them!”

Shanty with a pirate flag drawn behind her, her head held high with a grin and her hoof on top of an upside down mug which probably had rum in it at some point.

Ocellus encompassed in a friendly heart and curled up cutely in a blanket sleeping among a bunch of snuggling puppies.

Smolder looking both adorable and strong with her combat ribbon twirling upwards.

Three portraits of individuals Da Vinci couldn’t have possibly done unless she’s seen them personally.

“About that… they were here looking for Pom. Shanty is heading to China, she’s with a group of friendly guys and someone who looks a lot like Pom. She’s going to come back here after she’s done helping her friends.” Dylan poked his paws together, he seemed unsure about Shanty’s safety. At least I know she had help and was healthy. “There are reasons, really good ones, why Shanty’s friends couldn’t leave any contact information with us. It involves plausible deniability and we really don’t want another panic attack with Animal Control around here. However, we can get in contact with Ocellus and Smolder… wait, how are you calling us?”

-Dolly-

Why were my guts twisting so badly into knots? Maybe it was because I wasn’t going to tell them I couldn’t come home yet… or maybe even at all if it’s going to get Pom killed. Why were things always so hard?

“Uh yeah, Pom got a really interesting device, um… hold on a second and let me show him to you.” Flicking the screen, I put my claw under Dor’s belly and dragged him out onto the screen. I then typed out something.

“Er… hello… I’m Dormarch or you can call me Dor, first commercially created Personal Exploration Terminal unit given to one Pom Lambchop." Dor just slunk back off the screen with his three tails between his legs. "I really don’t know what to say more than that aside from the fact that it is nice to meet you… I guess?”

“Yeah, he’s a bit shy, but he's really dork like Dylan.” Okay, so how do I have this conversation with them, what do I tell them? “Okay, things have been like this…”

-Five minutes later-

“I’ve never seen, experienced or felt so much weird stuff in so little time like this before!” At least I put a brave smile on for Dizzy, Dee Dee and Dorothy’s bright faces. My little sisters really missed me, as did all my brothers. “So how have you guys been?”

“There’s been a lot less energy without you around, but our new friend has been helping with cleaning up and watching the pups. She’s honestly been great and giving me more free time.” Dylan seemed happy, did he actually have get a girlfriend?

“Do you actually have a girlfriend Dylan?” This sounded way too interesting to let go.

“What, no! Spot is old, old enough to have met our ancestors personally.” I was about to question him on this when I saw the new guest in our house.

“There’s also the fact that I’m a chicken. Excuse me, I’m working here, be with you in second Dimitri Three!” I saw them turn to the chicken that was working the vacuum cleaner. “Names Spot, sent out the word for the Bark Brigade to help you where they can. Heard they assisted you in getting out of Africa.”

“Uh, yeah.” A chicken, that was who was taking my spot in our home with helping out with the chores? She also looked and sounded way too young. “How could she know our ancestors?”

“I'm older than I look, magic has something to do with it. If you’ll excuse me, all you’re brothers and sisters leave huge messes.” Spot then made her way off the screen with the vacuum cleaner. “Just like old times.”

“Spot is some kind of revenant zombie chicken thing, it’s really fascinating that magic has been a part of our family even before Pom showed up.” Dylan stated with a smile.

“Yeah, like that’s going to make me get into Poodle Wolf at this rate.” Not that the video game was bad, I actually had some fun with Dormarch on the way over to New York. I was never telling Dylan that! “Look can you get into contact with Pom’s friends and tell them we’ll meet up with them somewhere and then call us back?”

Something started drawing my attention away from Dylan, it seemed like something was going on behind us and a number rodents were panicking.

“What’s going on?” I asked and I heard one of the mice come into the room to inform us of the situation.

“Rescue Aid Society scouts say that Professor Norton Nimnul is on a rampage in a machine and is heading to attack a nearby power station. If he knocks out the power then not only does our hospital lose power, but so does the animalistic and biped one running next door to us!” The doctor mouse stated as he motioned at us. “We’re preparing all patients for a possible emergency power drop, but some people will die if the power station is hit before we’re ready!”

“Dolly…/Dolly, what’s going on?” I was asked that by both Pom and Dylan.

“There's some guy named 'Numb-nuts' that is about to attack a nearby power station and is about to cause some power outages around here.” I looked at Pom as she was trying to get up and she flopped backwards and the heart monitor flat lines for a few seconds. After a few seconds her heart returned to beating after she violently shook. “Holy… ?! Pom are you okay?”

Quite a few mice looked horror struck, even the squirrel Nurse Tammy was panicking for a few second until Pom’s heart started beating again on its own.

“No… but… I…” Pom tried to sit up again and a number of rodents forced her to stay down, as did I when I made my way over to her.

“Pom, do you realize that you just flat-lined for a few seconds there!” I yelled in her face, feeling a panic about how our bond wobbled before her heart started beating again. “Also, you are in no condition to fight. So please, leave this all to me.”

“Okay…” Pom stated quietly and inhaled sharply, her heart beat almost returned to normal, but went back to being erratic a few second later.

Quite a few mice were on alert around Pom now and Tammy was calling for them to hurry up with those supplies.

“Does Pom have a big owie?” Dee Dee asked and I returned back to Dormarch's screen.

“Yes, a number of them, but she’ll be fine. Right Dylan?” I grit my teeth in a fake smile as I looked to Dylan who nodded.

“Yeah, Pom is in good paws and she’ll be alright.” Dylan agreed with me a second later, but the pups surrounding him looked unsure.

Dante and Da Vinci looked to each other and winced, we were not being very convincing.

“I’m pretty sure you’re about to see me on the news bro…” I don’t why I was going to tell him this.

“Huh, why Dolly, what are you going to… don’t do anything too rash!” It didn’t take Dylan long to figure it out.

“Sorry, but someone needs to get on this and Caper Canine is still healthy enough to fight where Leap Lamb can’t!” I can’t believe I just called myself that. Ugh, I was starting to accept the name like Pom said. “Watch the news and you might see me pull something amazing! Sorry, got to go, love you all!”

I typed out to Dormarch to stop the call.

“Dolly!” Dylan stated with a worried look as the connection cut.

I typed out that that was my family and told Dormarch what I was about to do.

“Good luck big sis.” Dormarch stated quietly.

I slapped my battered and damaged skateboard helmet on my head, then took up my skateboard and strapped it to my back.

“Can someone give me directions to that power station?!” If Pom were to flat-line hard and the power was out...

-Near the power station, Professor Norton Nimnul-

“They all called me a loony, well no animals are going to stop me this time!” Not when I've electrified my machine. All it needed was a little more power and then nothing would stop me, NOT EVEN THOSE BLASTED RODENTS AND THAT FLY! “What the… a dog on a skateboard and two mice?”

-Dolly-

A large metal ball with legs and arms, with two electrical things moving up and down in its back… it... didn’t look so tough.

Author's Note

Page title brought to you by 'Poker Terms', we already know where this is going.

RB-79 Ball from Gundam with legs.

A Tie Fighter in the form of a ground based battle mecha.

The Bubble Fighter from Lost in Space, along the lines of the above.

A combination of the those three or something in the form of a round walking escape pod with arms and legs.

121. The Flight Brothers.

Author's Note

Flight is another word for e-scap-ee, sounds french.

121. The Flight Brothers.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Eir-

Even Yak Valkyries of Yakhalla needed a vacation, so I come to place of good friends and food with great husband!

“Are you sure Ragna won’t cause any trouble?” My husband Gallant Bluster, a most wonderful griffon, is still being worried about Ragna the Rock being increasingly dangerous.

I am not wanting to deal with a boulder that has the powers of a demi-god, so I be putting a stop to its more destructive habits, Ragna be a good boulder!

“Hello and welcome to… YOU!” Cursed friend Jacky was working here? She seemed healthy despite having an arm and her neck in a cast.

Wait, why was our peppy pirate parrot pal pointing at Ragna and why was Ragna agitated?

“I can see you’re the same as ever, is that a new reusable collar bone cast?” Gallant asked.

“Is Eir missing something?” I asked quietly.

“Yeah Eir, me and that boulder don't like each other. Also nice to see you again too Mr. Bluster.” Jacky ‘The Blackcap’ Chickadee, a now somewhat notoriously known cursed pirate captain, stated before we all heard a shout.

“Tree!” A griffon screeched from inside and our young parrot friend started to run away from the building as the shadow of a large tree appeared above Jacky.

Ragna leapt at the parrot and the parrot pulled a cannon from out of nowhere from behind her back to aim at Ragna.

Closing my eyes while grimacing, Eir is hearing a big crash. Opening my eyes, I blinked a few time before smiling.

“Good Ragna!” I stated as I saw that Ragna stopped the tree from landing on Jacky.

“Yeah, good, but why do I still feel like Ragna here is about to crush me?” Jacky cowered, but she is putting away the cannon.

Ragna wobbled as if he wanted to crush Eir’s friend, but he is being a very good boy today and is coming back to Eir’s side.

Ragna deserves big hug!

-Earth, Camden Town, Dalmatian Home, Dylan-

My jaw dropped, as did that of my brothers and sisters as we watched Dolly fighting some mad scientist on the news in America several time zones away. What was she doing and why did it have to be her?!?

There was a flash from her mouth and the sudden fuzziness of the screen cutting out for a bit before returning. We saw that Dolly thankfully hadn’t been crushed to death and was crawling away from the machine.

“Did Dolly just do a super bark Dylan?” Normally… let’s see which puppy was it, ah yes, Donut. Normally I’d tell Donut what Dolly just did was impossible, but Spot had other ideas judging by the way she was rubbing the bottom of her beak. “Like Bolt the super dog?!”

“Yes, I think she did. Also unlike Bolt, that was a real one.” A lot of the puppies thought that was cool and they saw Dolly standing up from crawling and was trying to start limping away on the news feed. “Only this is actually happening and is not special effects guys of the show.”

They were cheering to see Dolly was okay, mostly, they also expressed concern about Dolly’s injuries and I was right there with them.

She looked dazed and confused and was coughing a bit, she even seemed to be in shock at what she just did. Our sister also just took enough voltage to kill her a few times over, her favorite helmet looked like it was falling apart on her head, her fur was a complete mess, she likely had a badly bruised spine and an obvious broken nose from the way her face was bleeding.

“You said Dolly was bonded to Pom?” Stated Spot with a quick glance around the room as she watched the situation on the screen.

“Yeah, why?” I continued to watch as Dolly agonizingly crawl away, when the machine started moving slightly and the fumbling Professor Nimnul looked quite angry that the protective bubble on his machine was popped.

“Let’s just say that I can see some things that you can’t, it might not be enough though.” Spot looked concerned and that was making me concerned. “She’s not going to get away before that Nimnul guy comes to his senses.”

Nimnul seemed to be slowly getting his head on straight as he carefully wiped the glass and metal off his face first, then moved onto his lab coat slowly making sure not to injure himself further. He would soon be back on the controls of his machine.

The crazy biped looked to have been moderately injured, but the machine was still fully functionally aside from leaving him completely exposed to being attacked directly now.

-New York, RAS Hospital, Pom-

“Come on Dolly, get out of there...” I mumbled as I saw the situation on Dormarch’s screen.

My attention was drawn to the chittering squirrel, Tammy I believe, as she held up two pills and looked at me pleadingly while pointing to two nearby bottles. I looked the bottles over, one pill bottle was Arrhythmia medication, and the other was for anx… iety…

I jerked upwards as something slammed down on my chest, shocking me and I heard the heart monitor start beeping. I looked at the two exposed wires held in the squirrels rubber covered paws, she looked relieved to see I was looking at her.

Nodding, I quickly held out my left hoof for the pills as several mice were bringing in a glass of water big enough for me.

Tossing the given pills in my mouth, I took up the glass of water and quickly swallowed the pills down. I really didn’t want to take anxiety medication, but it couldn’t be avoided.

I hope I never get addicted, at least it wouldn’t be the worst kind of addiction to have.

-Tammy-

Patient was thankfully responsive enough to take the medication we got for her, it would have to do as her breathing problems couldn’t currently be helped at this time. Though the symptoms of the breathing problems should be lessened dramatically.

Where were the Rescue Rangers during all of this? I hadn’t a clue, but I knew that the Rescue Aid Society was on point today since Chipper and the others couldn’t be, they were the ones that handled Nimnul’s zany, and often times exceedingly deadly, inventions without casualty.

I turned to the doctor and motioned at our patient.

“Doctor, she seems to be responding well to the medication, though notably she seemed upset at seeing the anxiety pills.” I passed the clipboard to the doctor I worked with and he looked it over. “I’m thinking there is a history there, but she still took them without complaint.”

The device known as Dormarch was a big help in giving us information on what kind of dosages she probably needed. He also gave us information on why Pom had an untended bullet wound and that she and her companion might need to get out of New York really fast after fighting with Professor Nimnul.

“Good, good, now if she will just relax and get some rest… what’s the situation on the power station incident?” The doctor stated as he checked over Pom’s body for any serious problems, her heartbeat was now getting much steadier. The bruising was treated with ointment, but that wasn’t panning out. “We need an icepack for her stomach, for about thirty minutes and then we’ll check the bruising.”

“It’s not going well, the Rescue Aid Society was never meant to handle someone of Nimnul’s capabilities.” I looked at the device showing what I now know was Leap Lamb’s companion Caper Canine, or as I knew them Pom and Dolly.

“Then it’s a good thing the RAS’s two best two agents are in the field along with several other animals they can ask for support from as backup in the area, they might even call in retirees if they are nearby.” The doctor patted Pom on the forehead and he turned to someone outside the patient’s resting area. “How are preparations going?”

“We’re nearly done doctor; that brave Dalmatian has been a god send for taking on Nimnul like she has, but she’s going to be the one needing our help afterwards!” The RAS scout mouse saluted the doctor and ran along the corridor.

“Tammy, be a dear and prepare the room to receive a dog sized patient, we’ll set her up next to her friend.” The doctor stated immediately to me and I set out to follow those orders, Dolly would definitely need the help from what I’ve been watching and she would certainly appreciate being next to Pom.

I was already making a list of supplies I would need for Dolly’s injuries when she came in, she was going to need an intensive care unit.

-Slightly destroyed streets near the power station, Dolly-

Okay, my throat hurts, as does the rest of me. I can actually feel why Pom lost her voice. That was quite a rush though!

I kept stumbling toward where I last saw my skateboard heading when it was flicked away.

While I would like to know how I survived being tortured with electricity after getting caught, I’m more surprised that I could even walk after that. I was a fair distance away when I heard the stomp of the machine behind me and shivered.

The cold feelings fled as I felt a lot of warmth coming from Pom through our bond, it might have something to do with my survival. That and something else that was like a massive bonfire in me to keep going, it felt like home honestly… or maybe I was going crazy?

“Oh dog…” Looking back I saw the angry scientist guy was back on the controls and the machine was still working, all I did was pop the protective bubble. I wasn’t in any condition to take advantage of it.

It took a step towards me, then when it tried to move the other leg.

“What the… you actually managed to damage the knee joint enough to make it difficult for my machine to walk?!” Yep Limb-Cull, heh I actually managed to do something to slow you down even if I can’t beat you… much less survive you. “You clever mutt, oh when I get my machine’s hands on you again!”

I blinked and grinned when it took a while for it to take that next step, I turned to continue moving away as quick as my almost broken body could and probably wasn’t making it any better by moving around like this.

It was life or death so I could be forgiven for not wanting to be near the death machine, I kept looking for my skateboard as it could get me out of here faster. I heard something behind me and the machine was gone, I looked up and my eyes widened.

Lunging forward with my front paws and diving into a rolling ball, I used my rear legs alternatingly to roll along the street and avoid the machine as it smashed down behind me sending out a small shock wave that thankfully petered out before it connected with me.

Quickly taking refuge by steering my rolling form under a car, I continued to seek out my skateboard and crawled towards the front of the damaged vehicle when it was lifted up by the machine and was promptly brought down at me.

I heard the crunch of the car, but didn’t feel it personally except a tightness around my chest. Instead I felt my paws in the air, opening my eyes I saw the ground slowly falling away from me.

Did I just die?

“That was a close one, are you okay young lady?” I blinking and finally noticed the flat feet of a bird running up under my front legs.

“Have you seen my skateboard?” I really didn’t need to answer his question as my mangled barks should be enough of a hint about my state.

“Hold on a moment…. I see it!” The aviator cap wearing bird had a lavender scarf and he was roughly flapping his wings, I’ve never actually seen a bird this big before… well aside from the goose from the pond in my family’s favorite park. “I’m going to carefully put you down near it.”

“Are you… my guardian angel?” I started coughing a bit and a bit of red trickled out of my mouth, well that wasn’t good.

“Close enough, I’m Orville, retired transport service agent that has worked with the RAS before. Behind me is my brother Wilbur. Bernard managed to flag me and my brother into this situation. I don’t relish my brother having to fly near that thing as a distraction.” Looking behind himself, Orville cringed and then jerked to the right and blast of lightning shot past us. “I also don’t like being called out of retirement, but it’s an understandable emergency.”

“If it’s not the rodents or some crazy super sidekick dog, it’s always something else!” That Sin-Toll guy really didn’t like animals and received a face full of webbed foot from the swooping bird with the blue scarf and similar aviator goggles to what Orville had. That was his brother Wilbur. “Now its albatrosses and they aren’t even native to this part of the world, where in the world did you overgrown birds even come from?! I know for certain that I didn’t do any genetic engineering, at least this month!”

The machine bursts with electricity barely catching Wilbur in the edge of its field, but it didn’t bring him down.

“Probably wouldn’t have avoided that as well as my brother did, he was always the better flyer. Sorry about the incoming rough landing young lady, I have to drop you off or else we’ll both hit the ground.” He flapped his massive wings backwards and slowed down immensely. He looked back and rolled out of the way of a ball of electricity. “Stay behind something, you’re skateboard is near you!”

My body became weightless and I flailed as he kicked me off of his feet and I flew end over end until I landed… on a pillow directly placed behind a car?

“That was awfully nice of you Georgette.” Looking to my right I saw an orange cat and a poodle.

“Yes, yes, see I’m not all pomp and circumstance Oliver and you already know I can do nice things. Now if she would kindly get off and not bleed everywhere all over it, then I would be much happier.” Looking at the stuck up powder puff, I reminded myself once again to never become a show dog and was glad my name wasn’t currently ‘Camilla’. “So how are you feeling, can you move? If so, please do. If not, then stay at my expense.”

“Wait, you actually care that I’m hurt?” I slowly got off the large pillow, it looked fairly fancy. The young cat didn’t look nearly as elegant as the dog he was with. “Usually a dog like you would be calling me riff raff or ruffian.”

“You said it not me, but yes I do care. I’m friends with a gang of street dogs, so I have no room to be uptight about my lofty status as it were… I’m dating one of them.” Georgette quickly intoned that last part with a cough. “Pray tell, how many show dogs do you really know?”

“Only those in the Camden Town in Britain I guess, not many personally at that.” Yeah, those were horrible memories just to prove that I could be a delicate stuck up flower like our neighbor.

“You wouldn’t happen to know a Clarissa Corgi would you?” Georgette stated immediately as if she knew her, I’ve never heard of Georgette before.

“Uh, how do you know that name?” I asked, because I have never seen a poodle like her near Dalmatian Street. “She’s the next door neighbor of my ‘fam’.”

“Trust me, she is probably the worst competition dog ever. She’s mildly cute, but can’t even get out of the rookie leagues to the full worldwide dog show competitions. Her looks are going to go downhill hard in another year or two.” This Georgette looked me over carefully. “Though you, you’d clean up nicely if you didn’t have the heart of a hooligan and the injuries to match. That’s not an insult to your character, so don’t look at me like that! You ‘could’ win worldwide competitions if you focused a little more on looking nicer, you really don’t need much to get there to be more beautiful than Clarissa.”

“I’m Oliver and this is Georgette." The cat got a few head pats from the older dog. "she can be a little mean, but she’s really nice.”

“Yeah and I recently got my head examined, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to quit trying to look my best.” Georgette rolled her eyes and huffed as I slowly got off the pillow, somehow without managing to drip blood on it.

We all flinched when we heard a squawk.

I looked up to see Orville going down with his tail on fire, I looked out into the street and looked to the pillow.

“Sorry, need to borrow this!” I tried to run, but my legs weren’t doing it for me.

“Let me!” Georgette surprised me be grabbing the pillow and rushing to where Orville was about to crash and he slammed into the large pillow groaning as Georgette caught him and didn’t fall over despite the weight.

She honestly had some impressive muscles on her to catch and lift such heavy bird, she calmly place him on the street before her.

“It was going to need a washing anyway, it’s been on the street… what? Blood is much harder to clean out.” Didn’t know how to feel about you Georgette. “Also, I double as the guard dog of my family if you were wondering. Strong enough to bend rebar, so don’t try me.”

On the one paw, she was clearly stuck up prissy pants competition dog, but on the other she just used that pillow to help out Orville and me. She also had an impressive amount of strength to her that I could respect. Maybe not all high and mighty dogs were as bad as Clarissa, who I just realized that Georgette had both insulted and then she said I could look more attractive than her almost without trying.

She just sounded arrogant, but she was someone I could actually tolerate for upper class dog. The world I thought I knew was getting far weirder every single day.

“Medic! Orville Wright, albatross of The Flight Brothers is down!” Orville screeched as he sat up, his wings looked a battered before the impact with the pillow. “Thank you kindly for the assist ma’am.”

“Yeah, don’t mention it, like ever. I have a reputation for being an upper crust jerk to uphold you know.” It wasn’t as scathing as Georgette could have put it and sounded to have a humorous lilt.

Yeah, Georgette and I could be friends.

A flash of light and we looked down the street to see Orville’s brother barrel rolling through an assault of lightning beams flashing forth from the anime robot, he snapped a kick at the scientists face and quickly flew away before another large burst of energy could hit him.

I wouldn’t know how awesome anime was if one of my little brothers wasn’t named Daisuke, that albatross was incredible.

Oh right, had to find my board and get Orville some help, the dude did just save my butt after all!

“Oh my dog… where is it, where is it?!” I looked around frantically and heard the familiar sound of the turning wheels and turned towards that cat Oliver.

“Is this what you’re looking for Ms. Canine?” My board, it was okay! The strap was a bust though… why didn’t I feel my tail wagging as I hugged it?

I looked back and saw just how mangled it was and whined quietly.

“It’ll be okay, we’ll get you to a vet and…” Georgette started to say.

“No, we need to get to the animal run hospital, uh the… Rescue Aid Society funded place?” I was on a different street from the one Wilbur was currently fighting to knock out the scientist or at least avoid his machine’s weapons.

“I know how to get us there from here, but I'm currently unable fly.” Orville grunted as his left wing twitched, he sat up and his spine popped. “Really shouldn’t have come out of retirement for this.”

“If you hadn’t, then I’d be pancaked.” I told him as I watched Wilbur continue to harass the machine, my gaze went to the car that was going to crush me. Wilbur couldn’t attack as that scientist was more prepared for him now and could pulse that barrier on a moment’s notice. “So what’s the plan Orville?”

“Get to a hospital and get our injuries tended to. Bernard already has a plan in motion, Wilbur is following it and going to pull out soon once we’re getting clear and then we’ll let Professor Nimnul get to the power station.” So far Orville, I didn’t like the sound of the plan. “They've taken care of things with some help from a lab mouse named Sparky. Heard Sparky’s an associate of the Rescue Rangers and has dealt with Nimnul before, having been experimented on by him personally. The real fun part is that Sparky specializes in electrical engineering.”

I turned back to look at Wilbur and saw Bernard clinging to his back, almost unnoticeable and his mouth was moving as he pointed in our direction. Wilburn nodded and the blue scarfed bird veered and flew past the walking bug zapper and headed towards the power station.

“Want a seat on… my skateboard?” I asked before coughing a bit and some red dribbled from my nose and lips.

“You need it more than me, I only have some mild damage to my tail and my wings.” He walked up to me and placed me on my board and started pushing. “I’ll do the leg work to get us to the hospital, you’ve done enough today.”

“Well good luck with that, we’re getting back to the safety of our home.” Georgette stated as she started shooing Oliver away with a paw before picking up her pillow.

“Hey… thanks for the… help you two.” I watched as Georgette snorted and smiled as Orville started wheeling me away.

“Take care then, I’d always help a lovely Dalmatian like yourself out. Come along Oliver, we must return home before we are missed or are caught having participated in these events even partially. We do not, after all, want to bring any undue attention to our family.” We started going our separate ways. “It’s embarrassing enough that I made a sight of myself in front of Canina while she was visiting.”

-Hours later into the evening, RAS Hospital, Pom-

Dolly couldn’t have won that fight, but she did help setup Professor Nimnul’s imminent defeat by giving everyone time to do it. It was a rather spectacular defeat too, Caper Canine was fairly popular now.

A mouse named Sparky, of whom Bianca brought in to help, had a dour history with Nimnul and he somehow rigged the power station to make Nimnul's machine fall apart entirely.

Thanks to Bernard managing to sneak aboard the machine in the middle of Wilbur's assaults, things were wired so that Nimnul would also be safely incapacitated upon his machine's destruction.

“Is she going to be okay?” Right next to me was an unconscious Dolly, she looked peaceful at least.

They immediately put her on drugs when she came in with Orville and her tail had to go through surgery.

We would soon plan on how to escape New York.

122. Collision Improbable.

-???, Oleander-

“I swear this is the most fun I’ve had in a while.” I was in a fight with two guys named Virgil and Dante, but I had a partner in this too.

“Yes, it is quite a lovely battle now isn’t it?” Said the umbra witch with guns strapped to her feet, she kicked up a leg and fired a shot to make Dante dodge into the path of my attack. “Here I thought unicorns were supposed to be pure, yet I find I like you more than the traditional ones.”

“Nobody said we had to be purely good.” Stating this as I watched Dante dodge me with his trickster style, I quickly performed a strike raid that had my key blade smacking him in the face several times. “I’m not purely evil either.”

“YOU GET THEM OLLIE, SHOW THEM THAT THEY ARE REALLY BAD POSERS!” Fred shouted as he deflected Virgil’s attempt to stab me.

These two guys were a bit more powerful than Fred alone which was why this would take a while. At least Bayonetta was making this a bit more even with her witch powers.

It was all in good fun really, despite us trying to outright kill each other.

Things would get a little heated when both angels and demons started bothering us, they really shouldn’t have.

-Earth, Western Kazakhstan, Shanty-

I did not be expecting what we would see upon entering the region known as Kazakhstan, but it was being a nice stop.

“Oh, come on! Italian Hippo, seriously Murray?!” Mopsy stated as we pulled in to stop at another hippo themed restaurant. “How can you not see a running theme between all these restaurants?!”

“Hey it’s not taco or burgers, it’s actually quite classy for once Mops!” Murray stated with his general cheer, Mopsy not be having any of it as she got into an argument.

“So are you…” Sly asked as he looked to Bentley.

“Now looking into this particular line of restaurants, yes.” Bentley stated as he had several things up on his computer screen about Hamburger Hippo, Coo-Coo Cola, Hippo Taco and now Italian Hippo. “I still don’t know what Coo-Coo cola has to do with all of this, but there’s a conspiracy here, I swear it Sly!”

I be having a lot of fun on this thing called a road trip.

New York, the morning after Professor Nimnul’s attack, RAS hospital, Pom-

“So, we can agree that Dolly somehow redirected it in back in a single concentrated destructive blast at the machine…” We were still trying to figure out how Dolly did her Bark Blast, aside from me feeding her my strength through our bond. “Otherwise she’d be completely paralyzed.”

“That and possibly other unknown factors… keep in mind that I wasn’t made for understanding the occult, sorcery or anything else related to magic.” In other words Dormach was made for technology and not magic, yet my magic seems to have affected him greatly. “Hold on, receiving a call from Camden Town one oh one Dalmatian Street.”

“Oh, hey there Pom, I hope I didn’t wake you up. I got into contact with the group that Smolder and Ocellus are with. They gave me the place where you should be able to meet up with them.” Dylan was looking peppy. “You can find them in Calisota Duckberg on Killmotor Hill, they are going to wait there for you and are quite sad that they missed you in New York. Now tell me how Dolly is doing… I’ve got a lot of concerned pups over here and I’m just as concerned about her health.”

“Well her tail and nose had to have some surgery to fix the damage done to her. Otherwise she’s a walking bruise, her throat is a bit raw, but she’ll be fine and as soon as she wakes up we’ll be heading straight for Calisota as soon as we can. After shaking any mercenaries that might be following us, at least Dolly knows what it feels like to be me now.” That’s how I felt in general, Dolly wouldn’t need medication for the next few months or so for heart problems. “If anything Dolly is still healthier than I am, considering I’ve flat lined twice in this hospital.”

“Actually seven times, but I don’t think you actually remember the other ones that happened. Here, I’ll show you and timestamp them for your convenience.” Okay, that was rather disconcerting Dormarch, given you were now showing me the other times my heart stopped. “If the power went out you probably wouldn’t be here, so you owe Dolly your life. Also I’ll make sure to inform you when you need to take your arrhythmia medication. Speaking of, you will not be on anxiety medication.”

“Well that’s a relief, but why?” Here both Dylan and I looked at Dormarch.

“That anxiety medication you took yesterday was highly ineffective. What should have lasted you at least a minimal four hours… only lasted about twenty minutes.” Dormarch showed me a scan of myself and pointed out the time with which it was working for me. “You either have so much anxiety that you burned out the medicine or you have a high resistance to drugs that help with anxiety.”

“It’s the first. I have anxiety about wanting to get back home, needing to get my kids back together to keep them out of danger and again bring 'them' home. I have to figure out a way to get back home which is going to be an arduous task in and of itself. Having to protect both you and Dolly on top of all this is just making things that much harder for me as I will always do my best to keep you both safe, as such staying alive has become a mind melting chore and I have been in so much stress and danger over the last few weeks that I couldn’t fight when I was sorely needed. This made Dolly go in my place to solve a situation and now look at her, at least they cleaned up her fur from the bloody mess it was when she came in. I’m worrying about my health, her health and even Dormarch’s mental health, I have little idea what trouble Shanty is getting into and if Dodo can protect her from it. The only thing that isn’t making me worry at the moment is that Smolder and Ocellus are currently together, but that’s because they can mostly handle themselves and are fairly mature for their ages.” My tone made Dormarch and Dylan consider each other warily as I motioned over to Dolly sleeping on a bed next to mine, having to breathe through her mouth since her nose was blocked by bandages. My heart rate was getting pretty fast, but I slowed my ragged breathing and eventually the heart monitor returned to a normal beating rate. “I’m only handling it all this well because I need to or else my whole world is going to fall apart at a moment’s notice and where would that leave Shanty, Smolder and Ocellus if they have to find a way home without me to tell my wife and family that I had died on some other world due to a heart attack! So its little wonder that I’m an anxious, nervous wreck of a lambkin about what incredible existential crisis is going to fall onto my fluffy little backside next! Most of my people require lots of anxiety medication because we stress out easily… I try to be above that... not going well… Dolly also needs new gear.”

There was a lot of silence following my rant.

“Do you think you can wake Dolly for me?” Understanding why Dylan asked this, I nodded tiredly while rubbing at my face with my left hoof. I put Dormarch down and reached over to wobble Dolly slightly and she yawned, she tried to stretch out and looked like she was about to panic. "Also, we will have your money problems handled quite soon."

“It’s okay Dolly, it’s alright, your safe.” I stated calmly, more calmly than I actually felt at any rate. She looked up at me and looked at the fact that she was next me. “How are you feeling?”

“How soon are we leaving? I’m going to be honest here Pom, we probably should have left as soon as I was done being patched up.” Dolly seemed as wary as I did and she must know how I was feeling at the moment, because she lifted her head and licked my nose lightly. “Heh, so how many mercenaries do you think are between us and wherever we’re going now partner?”

“Yeah, about that Dolly… we know where you are heading next, but you really shouldn’t avoid the question.” After picking up the device, Dylan was moved over to Dolly to interact with her. “Seriously, how are you feeling personally sis?”

“How do you think I feel? I feel like I got ran over by a truck… wait my tail… how is it?!” Dolly grunted as she tried to stand up and fell back onto the mattress, she turned her head to look at her wrapped tail.

“It’ll make a full recover Dolly, you need to rest. Talk to your brother some more.” I started petting Dolly a bit as I sat the PET next to her. She actually eased down and looked to her brother, there was a slight smile on her face as my hoof ran over her fur.

“So uh… how did the family take me losing the fight?” Dolly tried weakly.

“Well Dolly, they…” Dylan stopped when he heard a puppy state one word loudly.

“Dolly?” One puppy said and then it started to echo throughout the house and before we knew it, we saw Dylan getting swarmed by puppies trying to look at the screen with wagging excited tails.

Each one of them was saying ‘Dolly’ excitedly.

“Heh… my name is a trigger word for the family now.” Giggled Dolly as she watched all her little brothers and sisters crowd around Dylan and each one of them was trying to get her attention. “Hey guys, so I guess you saw all that on the news huh?”

“You were awesome Dolly!” Delgado the speedy wheelchair pup stated.

“Are you going to be alright Dolly?” Dee Dee asked poking her head out of the crowd.

“Did you really do a super bark?” Dizzy asked from next to her twin sister.

“Oneesan, you’re alright!” That was her little brother Daisuke I think.

“Everyone, the paw means pause!” All the pups whined, but backed off of Dylan and he moved the device and sat it down. “There now she can see all of us, so you don’t have to crawl all over me to be seen.”

There was quite a loving smile on Dolly’s face, despite the pain she had to be in… she wasn’t exactly on any painkillers currently.

I got up and decided to go see two other hospital goers that were as large as we were while Dolly communed with her family.

Making my way into the next room over, the mice of this world were fairly resourceful at getting supplies and paying for them to use for their own ends. I entered the room the Flight Brothers were currently interned in.

“Hello.” I stated softly making the two currently bickering albatrosses stop and look to me. “I just wanted to say thank you for saving Dolly.”

One just waved his wing in a bashful manner, the other stood up more proudly and saluted with a wing. After doing that Orville and Wilbur went back to bickering.

Orville dropped out of retirement to lend aid and was a good person. Wilbur proved himself to be as agile as a pegasus despite his fairly large wingspan. The animals of this world were just as amazing as the animalistic and bipeds.

I turned and left and eventually saw the two mice that Dolly had befriended as I headed back to the room Dolly and I shared. They looked surprised to see me out of bed, fairly understandable if I almost died seven times and that friendly nurse squirrel kept reviving me.

“Hey there, uh… Benard and Bianca?” They nodded as I crouched down to meet them eye to eye. “It was nice to meet you and thank you for watching out for Dolly for me. Even if I can only speak canid, meaning like foxes or dogs, I know that you can at least understand me right?”

Bernard nodded and Bianca walked up to pat me on the leg gently.

“I’m sorry, but Dolly and I will have to start running soon or else we’ll bring trouble to New York in the form of the mercenaries that shot me. I know we haven’t recovered, but we can’t risk people’s lives if they are willing to gun me down in the streets.” They both looked concerned when I said this. “So we’ll be heading out within an hour regardless of our states, right now I’m just giving Dolly some time to talk to her family. She has a lot of brothers and sisters you know. I’ll be doing most of the legwork since I doubt Dolly will be in much of a fighting condition, not that I am either, but I’ll manage somehow.”

The two started squeaking at me looking particularly worried.

“Remember that I don’t understand you and you can’t talk me out of this. I have medication and a legally obtained prescription… well as legal as the doctor animals here can make them really.” I wasn’t going to worry about the legality of my prescription medication concerning animals weren’t on the same level of civilization as animalistic and bipeds. They still followed me into our room where I saw Dolly looking sadly at her family.

“Hey, don’t worry bro, sure Dormarch said we’ll need a few weeks of rest to fully recover, but we don’t exactly have that kind of time as even I don’t think Pom is that lucky. Everyone knows I’m Leap Lamb’s sidekick and mercenaries are soon going to be all over New York soon hunting us down.” Dolly was with me. I was hoping she would abandon me, our bond and finally go home. Nope, I just had to get a dog with an undying sense of loyalty. “The sooner we leave the safer we’ll be bro, I’ll try to keep in contact. Love you fam!”

“We love you Dolly!” Hearing at least ninety eight voices of her brothers and sister made Dolly start tearing up.

“Try to be a bit safer out there honey.” Doug her father stated with tears in his eyes and he snuggled a large number of pups, that Dalmatian was affectionate as I remember him being. “We believe you’ll be a great hero someday. Even if you aren’t you, can still follow whatever dreams you want.”

“Please don’t push yourself Dolly, I’ve seen what happens to those who overstrain themselves with injuries like yours and it isn’t pretty.” Delilah stated as she and the rest of the family said their goodbyes and the call ended.

“Hey Pom… let’s go partner!” Dolly stated to me immediately, her voice sounding a bit off due to her bandaged nose.

“Right.” I nodded.

-An hour later, New York rooftop, ????-

“This is Tobias Rieper, I’m in the area.” I stood on the roof scanning on of the streets of New York. Nobody knew where Caper Canine or Leap Lamb were, but they were both here. “I need information on the targets.”

“Forty Seven, one of the targets you should be on the lookout for is Sabu Taj. She’s after Leap Lamb for a device she has on hoof and she seriously wants to kill her for a failed mission in Wakanda, Zootopia. She’s not in the states yet and she’s under a lot of scrutiny, she’s a target of opportunity and has made a lot of enemies recently. Kill her if you see her.” Nodding to my handler I waited on the more important information. “Your other targets are Leap Lamb, the device from Kahn Industries she holds and Caper Canine. Leap Lamb has a preternatural ability to dodge bullets, can climb walls, runs faster than an Olympian, of course her namesake also has meaning as she can leap more than fifty feet and some have even stated that she might have the ability to fly short distances. From what little we could pull from the incident in Zootopia, she has dodged at least having four assault rifles being trained on her all at once, with some crossfire, and came out of it with only one bullet in her. That was the only direct shot that hit her, grazing shots were stated to miraculously deflect off her wool. The mercenaries on her were top notch and well paid, resourceful enough to sneak in three helicopters in. Said helicopters were swiftly disabled by Leap Lamb one after the other in an impressive displays of strength and speed, the last helicopter was blown apart at range through unknown means. So Leap Lamb might be holding back on her full capabilities and is to be considered exceedingly dangerous to approach close up.”

“I’m going to need a little more detail on Caper Canine. Is my objective to kill them?” Even for me, I’ve had harder to kill targets with less information.

Leap Lamb was stated to be a hero and highly capable one from the news that she’s befriended Africa’s Tail Team. The Tail Team were good judges of character and they liked Leap Lamb.

“I don’t want you to eliminate them, you are to disable both Leap Lamb and Caper Canine for capture. People seriously want that device in their possession intact. If Sabu Taj or any other high profile mercenaries show up hunting them, then you are to eliminate them.” My handler was asking for a bit much, I’ve heard of Sabu Taj’s preparedness in the field. The Leopard was better at sabotaging things than I was, a rare thing to find in our field. “Caper Canine is a little odder, she possibly has the ability to control other animals, is known for expertly wielding a skateboard in combat and is quite agile even without it. Despite this, Caper Canine is nowhere near as tough or as fast as Leap Lamb is as shown by the incident with one Professor Norton Nimnul. She still held up to being tortured by electricity and managed to walk it off. She has a very unusual ability to perform what people are calling the Bolt Super Bark on the internet, but due to the magnetic interference it is possible Caper Canine might have absorbed the electricity and turned it into raw explosive force. From what we’ve seen it has nothing to do with the mechanics of how Bolt’s Super Bark works, it might have been what took out Sabu Taj’s personally helicopter in the Zootopia incident. Both Caper Canine and Leap Lamb can go bipedal at a moment’s notice and move as well as they do on all fours.”

“Sounds like a challenge.” I pulled up my scope and aimed the tranquilizer dart loaded into my weapon. It was a completely silent option and if she reacted to this, then I knew this was going to require a lot more thought.

I squeezed the trigger and the dart flew forward, then my target tripped over a leash on a dog, which also had a cat tied to the other end.

The strange sight gave me pause for a few seconds.

The dart struck the wall where my target’s neck should have been, then the target immediately looked at the dart and then directly at me through the scope with a hint of fright. It was if she could see me even at this distance, she then quickly scooped up the dog and cat then started running on her hind legs.

Caper Canine had been cowering on Leap Lamb’s back and seemed to be barking something while looking around, for anyone on approach. So the dog was just as intelligent as the owner, hmm…

I quickly lost sight of all four of them as Leap Lamb immediately went to ground, as she didn’t appear in the crowds.

“Very interesting, this one might actually take some time.” I grumbled softly, that reaction time and the fact that she could even possibly see the glint of my rifle and know how to stay out of even my sight.

Leap Lamb was quite resourceful and reacted quickly to threats, I’ll keep that in mind.

I loaded up another shot, spun around and fired a dart as someone busted through the door behind me.

The mercenary went down.

It seems I’ve been compromised, I’ll try to find Leap Lamb later.

Something tickled my mind… I looked back through the scope at where I took my shot.

She took the poison dart.

-On a truck leaving New York, Pom-

I currently didn’t have any resources and I really needed to buy quite a few things for Dolly. Also food was going to be an issue, given that we somehow picked up another dog and a cat.

“Are you working for the green eyed man?!” I looked down at the struggling dog with the black lightning bolt symbol painted onto his side. The black cat with green eyes was looking panicked and was notably tied to the dog by the leash.

“We don’t know anything about a green eyed man, but we all just certainly just got shot at.” Dolly stated warily while holding her skateboard protectively like a shield and looking around. “So it’s probably a good thing we decided to bug out of New York when we did.”

“Excuse me, but do you have an owner doggy?” I said as I crouched in front of him and started petting him, he seemed angry up until I started showing him some love.

“Hey, stop that!” The dog barked at me angrily and I did so, I really didn’t want to go back into New York having just gotten out of the city. “Do you know where the Green Eyed man and Penny are?”

The cat made a few randomly sounding mewling noises.

“Wait his name is Bolt, as in that Bolt? I’m Dolly, this is Pom, now can you tell us what is going on with him?” Right Dolly could talk to the cat, she listened and nodded a few times before turning to me. “Uh, Pom, I think we have a situation. By the way this is Mittens and that’s Bolt.”

Bolt was looking at the cat with a curious distrust, but he seemed much safer with Dolly’s presence. He was unsure about me.

“What’s going on and how much trouble is this going to cause us, we’re not exactly in any fighting condition right now.” The cat, Mittens, made a curious sounding noise and Dolly gave me a wince.

“A lot, apparently Mittens here has a better idea of the situation than Bolt does… Bolt wasn’t exactly let in on the reality of his situation as an actor.” Dolly ran her paws down her ears. “So he might think he’s an actual super dog.”

“Hey, I am a super dog, it’s just that those diabolical packing peanuts must have sapped me of my super strength.” Bolt me made giggle a bit, who would have a weakness to packing peanuts? I heard Bolt wine and heard his stomach gurgle. “So weak, what did that Green Eyed Man do to me?”

The cat rolled her eyes and meowed something sarcastic sounding, she then seemed to start talking to Bolt gently and poked his stomach. Dolly looked to me and tilted her head to my satchel.

I took out the Dolly's dog food and offered some to Bolt.

123. A Befriended Cat.

-Equus, nation of Airship Wemauliya, The Witch’s Fare, Fresh Start-

The day was going alright and being a pony in a town as mixed up as ours was never boring.

“So how is the summit going?” I asked as Jade walked in and got hugged by Eir, I snickered at the shade of blue her face turned before Eir released her.

“Nice to see you too Eir, are you bigger than I remember? Things could be going better, not so surprisingly Discord is the stabilizing factor in all the chaos and some deals were made.” Jade took a seat and raised a finger, she was now acting as a customer even if she lived here. Fizzle soon came in with a bag full of clams. “The economy might right itself eventually, but Chaosica wanted some concessions on things going forward to help it come to fruition faster.”

“Don’t ask.” Fizzle stated as she continued on by Jade. “Also no, I still won’t tell you what problem I’m currently focusing on in my job Jade.”

“Well I’ve got egg on my face from all of this… also we’ll go back to being a part of Equestria eventually instead of being a funnily named independent country in the middle of their territory. Say speaking of eggs Fresh, toast cheese sandwich with a fried egg and some fish jerky?” If there was one thing we weren’t out of Jade, it was always going to be fish jerky. Griffons and other meat eaters wouldn’t mind a free snack since we couldn’t get rid of it all, but they still have to pay for actual full meals.

“Clarification, not grilled?” There was a difference between grilled cheese and toast cheese.

“Yes.” Jade stretched out and then found her rear end getting smacked by a tiger paw as our towns most infamous chimera lawyer passed by. Instead of yelping in pain, Jade blushed and mewled. “Hey, I’m trying to relax after some rough negotiations with Discord! I managed to win Airship Mauled a year’s supply of Banana Pudding for everyone in town, it even applies retroactively in case someone moves here and I made sure that’s it’s not all delivered at once. I had to remind Discord that our prior arrangements still apply.”

“Were vanilla, whipped cream and biscuits included in that deal?” Maria the goat head of the chimera asked.

“Yes, Discord actually drove a normal bargain on the vanilla, but he was oddly wafer thin on the biscuit deal and crumbled on it easily enough.” Jade needed new material for puns. “As for the last one… Discord’s people recently whipped their cream stores into too much of a shape, it’s not viable for consumption since it all became ripped cream. Sorry Maria, the free whipped cream for a year will remain a pipe dream.”

The goat head sighed sadly and sagged much to the amusement of her two sisters she shared a body with.

“I am Fortitude, the fantastically fragrant!” Yep, that’s the one yak that needs no introduction, just about everyone knows who he is since he shouts that every once in a while for no apparent reason. The best Leader the Minotaurs have ever had, for various dumb reasons. “I am getting a good deal on piping chaotic dreams to the Minotaurs from Discord and Luna! Friend Jaded should have bargained for dreams about pipes from Luna.”

“Yeah, I still can’t believe you managed to get Luna to agree with that bit of insanity, though dreams too chaotic for nightmares is a small price to pay I guess.” Going to tentatively think the world was safe Fizzle, because you had yet to declare outright war on Jaded for all the stuff she was pulling lately to get you to talk to her. I’m pretty sure Luna and Celestia still disliked Discord intensely, that Fizzle wasn’t panicking about it meant that things weren’t so bad. Though I suspect we’d be seeing more flying pigs in the coming months. “We’ll need to return to the summit within a week’s time to finalize some deals, also it’ll take me about that long to find the current Lambkin representative and dig them out of that bunker they buried themselves alive in with at least ten years’ worth of food about three days before the summit began.”

-Earth, Calisota, Kilmotor Hill, Smolder-

“This is exasperating.” Donald Duck was a cool guy, he had a temper like a dragon and was willing to put himself in the way of bodily harm for the sake of others like Pom does on a regular basis. Also their luck was comparable, which was why I really liked this guy.

“Tell me about it, but I’m quite sure Pom will find her way here… now if only The Phantom Blot and The Eggheads weren’t still a threat to us.” We were currently playing a game of ‘Scrooge Monopoly’, Gallus would have loved this cutthroat business game since I certainly know that I do!

It was my turn and Donald has miraculously been rolling a series of ones the whole game, even Ocellus said it was statistically impossible to be that unlucky. I had to remind her that Jacky ‘The Blackcap’ Chickadee existed and Pom told us horror stories about what she faces in her general everyday life.

“Everything will be fine Smolder, you’ll see.” Donald might be hard to understand at times, his voice was exceptionally awkward to listen to, but he was a great guy once you could get the gist of what his badly warped voice was trying to convey. “If Pom is even half as amazing as you two say she is, she’ll be here in no time at all!”

We were all aware that Pom was being hunted by mercenaries and the general uptick of mercenaries appearing in New York was worrying, it was a good thing we already knew Pom was in Pennsylvania at the moment.

-Somewhere in Pennsylvania, Pom-

Pennsylvania was nicer and less crowded than New York.

“Thanks again for the help Hunter and be careful, someone might send people after you to get to me.” I motioned for Dormarch to cut communication to Camden Town.

I looked to the white furred dog Bolt and the black cat Mittens, both seemed to be getting along at the moment. Bolt was a bit on edge and trying to interrogate Mittens.

Bolt was suspicious of Mittens being a spy for the ‘Green Eyed Man’ man from his show, when she was actually simply a declawed cat that became homeless by people who left her for dead. She partially played along with Bolt’s delusions in an attempt to slowly help bring him down to earth according to what Dolly says.

So yeah, Mittens has an obvious issue with trust, Bolt has issues plural and I hoped Dolly and I could work with them on that. At least Mittens was going to help Bolt before I tripped over the leash tying the two together, not that Mittens was happy that we were still dragging her along. It was only the promise of food that kept the starving cat around.

Let’s see, if I actually got everything.

Two parts dog food, enough for a few days for both Bolt and Dolly.

One part of cat food for Mittens, that poor homeless cat that was left out in the cold by her previous family and was dragged into this by Bolt, of whom wouldn’t let her out of his sight.

It was nice that Bolt was making friends with Mittens and Dolly, if he wasn’t a bit delusional and paranoid about imagined secret organizations. Not that we didn’t have enough problems with the actual existence of real organizations possibly hunting us down.

At least we were all heading in the same direction and could help a lost dog. Bolt needed to get to Hollywood in California to get back to his person Penny and all I needed to do was go north to get to Duckberg from there. Bolt was willing to trust Dolly somewhat thanks to her big sister nature.

Bolt was an actor that never knew a normal life outside the set, hopefully he’d find one after all this traveling and would hopefully learn to be a normal dog. Around us... not as likely to happen.

Okay back to my list of things, which Dormarch was thankfully providing for me on the screen.

Bought a new helmet for Dolly, of which she’s going to design to be like her old destroyed one.

Let’s see, some weird random supplies to make Dolly’s helmet as tough as her skateboard was, or at least Dolly says it will be after she’s done with it. Don’t know what made her skateboard tougher than most known metals in this world yet still flexible, but that’s what Dormarch said about its integrity.

I’ll take Dolly’s word for it that the rather specific brand of wood varnish was an important part of it.

At least I wasn’t going to have money problems in this world, apparently we were making Hunter plenty of money to send our way just by existing. I’m fairly aware that our images were being used, but I was okay with that as long as Hunter was careful with the risks involved. I personally wasn’t going to need this world’s money when it was time to ultimately leave with my friends.

A skateboard maintenance kit that wouldn’t be too hard to carry, with spare wheels, bearings and axels that Dolly was going to use.

Enough food for myself, which was dried fruits, specially packaged vegetables and plastic bottles of assorted nuts, just like my life.

Last thing of note, enough water for all of us.

At this point I was carrying quite a bit of weight. It was a good thing we weren’t walking the entire way, though we weren’t going to openly hitchhike. That was just asking for trouble, we were going to try and sneak our way there.

‘Try’ being the major point of failure here, as chances were that we would run into a lot of problems on the way there anyway.

My thoughts went to my medication. A normal dosage of arrhythmia medication had a decent half-life. With my metabolism, it's estimated to be one pill every two days.

While Dormarch, and the Rescue Aid Society doctors, would want me on anxiety medication. They had acknowledged that it wasn’t going to be highly ineffective because I could easily burn it out quickly through the sheer willpower of my nearly chronic anxiety.

Dormarch also noted unusual biological readings from me just breathing normally, but said he would eventually tell me about what had him so confused once he has eventually figured it out personally.

Now we just had to find our ride out of Pennsylvania.

“So we’re going to be in the neighborhood of riding some kind of hauling truck heading southwest, we’ll need to be able to see where we’re going.” Just to make sure we’re not going backwards Dolly.

“Why?” Bolt took a small shine to Dolly, he didn’t have an idea how to be a normal dog so Dolly didn’t register as anything unusual to him.

“Imagine hopping into the back of any old cargo truck and incidentally ending back up in New York, then getting shot at by mercenaries.” Which Dolly reminded me, I still had the dart that missed me. It had enough tranquilizer in it to put down a rhino, I really didn’t want to be taken alive by whoever that shot that at me.

Dolly and I shivered, Mittens seemed to get the gist of things, but as for Bolt...

“I’m sure I could take on those mercenaries if I had my super powers, stupid packing peanuts!” Yeah we really needed to find a way to let Bolt down gently about the whole ‘Super Dog’ thing.

I wouldn’t personally ween Bolt off the idea entirely though. I’m not about to say that Bolt can’t become a real super dog in time, magic among many other things existed on this world, but he currently was just a normal dog that was forced into being a method actor from when he was a puppy.

Now as for Dolly, who had been a normal dog for the most part aside from her skateboarding passion, has recently done a few anomalous things due to our magical bond and me feeding into it during the Nimnul incident. The likeliest reason why I couldn't remember all the flat lines that happened to me.

Dolly might actually get stronger and could eventually pass for what would qualify as real super dog, she could even do that without further aid from me.

Mittens rolled her eyes and meowed something sarcastic as she tugged on the leash still wrapped around her waist trying to get it off. That Bolt didn’t get out much was an understatement and Mittens was supposedly his prisoner spy and he wanted to be the one to deal with her.

So we let Bolt do so, provided he wasn’t cruel to Mittens, at least he wasn’t hurting her in his misguided beliefs.

“So the truck stop…” Dolly intoned slowly pointing to it with a single clawed digit, I nodded. We had bought our supplies and now had to be on the move, unless we wanted someone to actually track us down. “How are were going to let Bolt know he’s not actually a super dog?”

“Who’s to say he can’t be one eventually, he’s seems pretty super already to me with how much trouble he seems willing to go to get back to his person… even if she is just an actor. Do you think they might have already replaced Bolt?” We were walking just a little ahead of Bolt dragging Mittens along behind us, quietly talking. “I mean we’re going to cross the whole continent to get him back home, only to find out someone took his spot and that he doesn’t actually have a person. That might break him.”

“Seriously Pom? I think things are going to be okay even if he has been replaced by a 'stand in' dog. The actor that plays Penny actually cares about Bolt as a dog, there’s no doubt about that given the behind the scenes special they did on the show. They even made sure to point out that Bolt wasn’t being abused and was kept quite healthy, but that’s not saying much about his actual mental health.” Shaking her head, Dolly and I started scouting for vehicles heading the way we needed to go. I didn’t exactly feel safe around airplanes and would rather keep my hooves on the ground this time. “Do you think he can actually do it without magic?”

“Dolly, you already had magic well before I even met you, I’ve only helped bring it to the forefront and you are the one that actually started our bond with it. So really, chances are that he could find a way to be a super dog even without magic given the extraordinary things we’ve seen already.” I didn't currently like all the injuries Dolly was dealing with. Not that my body was feeling any better than a constant dull ache. “Still, you don’t need a bond like ours to use magic or even be special. Though Magic certainly helps when it comes to surviving the toilet clog that is my life.”

“How about that car carrier?” It was a truck with a triple stack of cars, Dolly seemed to think it looked good.

“How will we know which way the car carrier is going?” That’s going to be the problem.

“That car carrier just pulled in coming from the north east heading in a southwesterly direction, it’s perfect for our needs for the time being.” Dormarch intoned from the PET strapped to my front right leg, looked a little more chipper after what we’ve been through. “So it’s a good a choice as any, I’ll tell you when it stops heading in a direction we need to go in. In general the cars in a car carrier tend to have their doors unlocked, so I’d suggest Dolly go check it out.”

Once Dolly found a van with doors that weren’t locked, we all piled into that particular car located on the bottom row of the car carrier and waited for the driver.

-Dolly-

Pom was playfully distracting Bolt and trying to get him to relax a little. This was in an effort so I could talk to Mittens without distraction.

“So you going to tell him, you obviously know that he isn’t a super dog like he says he is.” Mittens was the one to start the conversation before I could. She was also trying to get Bolt to see some reason, it wasn’t going well as Bolt was still obsessed with the idea of his 'number one villain'. “Also what’s your story and why are you following this Pom around if she got you hurt like this.”

“Hey, Pom isn’t the reason I’m hurt! Plus you already know by now that she can talk to dogs.” It wasn’t hard to figure out it and we weren’t exactly hiding our interactions at all. “I made my own decisions that could have gotten me killed, but it was all worth the broken snout and tail. Also things are a bit complicated between us, I kind of accidentally left my family to even be with Pom.”

I basically saved two hospitals worth of patients from a lethal power outage, if the worst was a broken nose and tail I’d gladly do it all over again… but I would rather avoid the injuries this time.

“Let me guess, did the bipeds in your life not feed you enough?” Mittens stated with an aggressive tone.

Pom profiled this cat, needless to say a lot bad things were done to Mittens. Declawing a cat was basically the same as debarking a dog. Unless it was necessary to save Mitten's life, then it was a cruel thing to do to her before abandoning her out onto the streets.

“No, but that’s because there were no bipeds or even an animalistic in my life before Pom appeared. Also there are a few things I think you should know about me and Pom.” Time to lay things out for the cat.

“Oh what, are you a super dog too? It sounds like that’s where you’re heading with this.” Mittens said dully with sarcasm.

“Nope, not yet at any rate, but I think I might be able to get there eventually if I stick with Pom.” Being a super hero was way cooler than being a police dog, but Pom was technically a police officer where she comes from. Basically the same thing at any rate. “Pom is a dimensional traveling alien that has magic and I’m a, mostly normal, dog that formed a bond with her. If you don’t believe me, I have ninety witnesses that will tell you they saw how she arrived on our world. We’re kind of on the… heh… lamb, because people out to get us.”

“Really?” Mittens seemed to not take me seriously. “That’s what you’re going to go with?”

“Hey Pom, can you pass Dormarch over here, I need to convince Mittens of something.” I quickly took Dormarch into my paws.

“What do you need sis?” Dormarch asked and I typed out a command. “Okay, calling Dalmatian Street, hold on.”

Eventually we saw a scene of chaos and my brother Dante Dalmatian was holding the device.

“Hey be careful guys, we don’t want to break this or else we might not be able to communicate with Dolly until we get a new one. I can actually see it happening you know!” Looking at Dante over my shoulder, Mittens saw my family. “You wouldn’t believe how many of our brothers and sisters are waiting for you to make calls Dolly. Hey, what’s with the cat?”

“What in the…” Mittens seemed to see a mass of black and white spots running around behind Dante.

“Mittens that’s my family back in Britain, no we don’t have owners or pets… but yes that’s my home. Up until I ended up traveling with Pom after an incident.” With a real mad scientist and killer robots was what I left unsaid.

“Sorry, but I got to take care of something! Here Deepak you talk to Dolly.” Dante passed it to Deepak, my favorite meditation enthusiast and puppy calmer.

“Hello there sister, do you realize that the cat you are with is a grievously harmed soul?” Deepak, as perceptive and calm as ever. Not that he didn’t have his off days of ‘listening to the universe’ as he calls it. “If I were to ever meet the people that did that to her, I might actually bite them on the principle of what they’ve done!”

“My little brother Deepak likes cats, he’s also part of this ‘Miaow-Wow’ cult thing and is mostly a pacifist.” I informed a curious Mittens.

“It’s not a cult Dolly, it is just the teachings of peace, meditation and urk…?!” Deepak started hacking and coughing to eventually spit up a hairball.

“Did that dog just spit up a hairball?” Mittens stared blankly.

“Yeah, he does that, he’s really into the whole cat cult thing.” I answered coolly, I still had that running bet on Deepak eventually dating a cat.

“Anyway, is something the matter? Do I need to get Dylan?” Like all my brothers and sisters, Deepak was just worried about me and I appreciated it. “You’re aura is feeling calmer and surer now, so it’s not an emergency.”

“I just called to say that you’ll never guess who we’re traveling with.” I pointed the device Bolt and Pom’s way.

“Huh, is that Bolt the Super Dog… his aura is very troubled, it is as if a veil is lifting slowly from his very eyes.” Wow Deepak was batting a thousand on insights today. “I assume you mean to help him in more ways than one?”

“Yeah, it’s him and yes. Get this though, he really doesn’t know how to be a dog.” Like I was still in the running for normal since that Super Bark I did back in New York. “It’s somewhat funny to be meeting a celebrity outside the family.”

“You’re family has celebrities?” Mittens asked with a slight bit of astonishment.

“Ever seen a 'Just Plain Nuts' or 'Jump Jet Pizza' commercial?” I now had Mittens attention. “I have ninety eight brothers and sisters, so I’m not the only weird one in my family.”

I got Mittens to start believing magic was a thing, after Dormarch showed her a recording of my fight with Nimnul.

Magic was just slightly outside of regular people’s worldview. Bolt wasn’t a super dog, but he could eventually become one if he was lucky. I think he’d be happier with being able to just be an average dog.

“Are you and Pom going to train him?” Good question Mittens, but…

“No, but you are.” I made Mittens look like she had been slapped. Normal, to me, was a good chunk of my life. It was a bit overrated, but there was nothing wrong with that. “If you want to help him realize he’s not a ‘super dog’ currently, then you would be the best one to do it since you’re not crazy. It’s already too late for Pom and me to be normal, since we’re both weirdoes in exceedingly odd circumstances.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” The unsure Mittens answered. “You’ll help me out with... Bolty... right?”

“We’ll keep the both of you alive at least, but yeah.” That’s the best we could really do. “Friends?”

“Sure, befriend a skateboarding street dog with a super hero alien partner, well my life has just gone entirely off the deep end.” Oh you don’t even know the half of it Mittens!

Author's Note

1-2-3 with A-B-C.

Mittens has to convince Bolt he doesn't actually have super powers, but it doesn't help when he's traveling with an individual that can actually do incredible things. Also assassins, mercenaries and are out to find them.

All this and more in Leap Lamb Issue #14!

Leap Lamb and Caper Canine meets Bolt the Super Dog and Mittens the Chaos Cat!

124. The Beat-All Battle Bugs!

Author's Note

Music: Paper Mario: Attack on the Koopa Bros.

This page will speak for itself.

124. The Beat-All Battle Bugs!

-Earth, ???-

“Yes she is coming, we shall soon have revenge for our master!” Five shadows started to laugh maniacally.

“Yes, the white knight will rue the day she crossed us!” Another shadow stated.

-Three hours and a day later, state of Illinois, streets of Chicago City, Pom-

Chicago was not a place I wanted to be stuck at with three hungry mouths to feed, at least the pizza here was nice.

“I’m just saying that not every cat you meet has to be evil Bolt, besides Mittens is someone who has been abused and probably wouldn’t want to work with someone evil. So it’s highly unlikely she’d be working for the green eyed man Bolt.” We were walking down the road to the west. “You can’t think bad of people for not knowing what you are talking about and people have lives outside of yours and possible world ending threats. If the world hasn’t ended yet, then things will be fine.”

We had to hop off the car carrier, it was going towards Canada. We needed a more southwards moving transportation.

“No, I don’t think the waffle world map will really help us aside from finding good rest stops on our journey, though we should hold onto it just in case. Dormarch is good at navigation, he was practically made for it Mittens.” Dolly was trying to help Mittens befriend Bolt, there were a few hiccups here or there. “Also Mittens hasn’t run off despite you untying her Bolt. She just wants to help you.”

With Dolly saying it, Bolt eased up a little.

“Fine, I guess I should have realized we wouldn’t have been able to travel all the way to where Penny is in one day.” Sat down next to Bolt and started to cuddle him, he accepted it easily enough. There better not be heartbreak at the end of all this. “I’m sorry for being so rough with you Mittens.”

Now if only Mittens could convince Bolt he wasn’t currently a super dog, but it sounded like she accepted the apology.

A fireworks sized rocket fell from the sky and pierced a nearby car, it blew apart and I covered my three animal companions with my body. We didn’t get hit by much shrapnel and none of it pierced my wool.

People were running and screaming wildly now, but no one was getting hurt at least.

“Where did that come from?!” Dolly looked around and was now holding her Skateboard at the ready to take an attack.

“Up there!” Bolt pointed with his nose and we all looked as five beings flew down from the nearby rooftop. They were insects about the size of one of my hoof and not very threatening looking.

“Darn it we missed!” One of the insects yelled, they all looked to be giant beetles. Well giant for them, the black rhinoceros beetle was obviously the leader of this strange group given that he was the one talking, the other four were more average beetles of Red, Yellow, Blue and Green. “We will make you pay for destroying our leader!”

“Uh who are you guys and why did you almost attack us?” For some reason I wasn’t feeling fear like I normally would in this situation, though I had an idea as to what was going on already from this.

“We are the Beat-All Force!” The five bugs stated as they posed together making a five point star shape with the rhinoceros beetles horn as the top. “We are strong, we are legion and we are here to get revenge for you destroying Master Beelzebug!”

“Oh… this is about what happened with Mr. Beezy. Okay…” I stated dully, I mean sure they just hit car with a rocket and blew it up, but I couldn’t take them seriously as a threat given the exploding car wasn’t close enough to hurting anyone.

“Uh why do their voices sound like they are speaking in tongues and who’s Mr. Beezy?” Well dolly, this was going to be a thing to witness.

It’ll certainly be something at least… hopefully. I’m more terrified of the threat of them attracting mercenaries to our given position than the actual threat that these beetles posed to us personally.

“A demon fly the size of my head that charged up too much energy, got distracted and exploded violently. Didn’t even kill anyone in the incident he caused. Demon bugs just aren’t that threatening to me unless they are bigger than I am, then I may get mildly concerned at best.” It was like with Mr. Beezy, I couldn’t see them as being dangerous to me or my traveling companions. “Oh and the voice thing is just them speaking all languages at once to sound creepy and we understand only one or two of them at best, that they are doing it in unison while posing is just them overcompensating for their lack of actual fearsome visages or capability to really hurt us on purpose.”

“I am Beat-all Black and I think you will come to truly fear our mighty strength!” So Mr. Black says while waving his horn in the air. “Hey, pay attention to us, do you realize how long it took to track you down!”

In reality, Bolt was more threatening than him and he was ready to fight them at a moment’s notice.

“I am Beat-all Red, by the power of my crimson stained spear you shall bleed!” The moderate sized red beetle took out something that looked like a sharpened toothpick, it might even be a toothpick… covered in ketchup from the smell of it.

“I am Beat-all Blue, by the power of my spit covered whip you will taste its many lashes!” The blue beetle pulled a slimy little whip from its mouth, it looked like it was actually a small party blower.

“I am Beat-all Yellow, my drill will shred you as I forcefully send you down to the underworld!” At this point I was yawning despite the large beetle holding what was basically a motorized dreidel.

“I am Beat-all Green, my bone breaking pale green hammer will smash your teeth in and make you eat your words of doubting our greatness!” It was a plastic toothpick with what looks like a calcified olive on the end of it… oh so very threatening.

“If I’m getting this right, you’re what… a bunch of tiny sentai demons out to get Pom for a past sleight or something?” Dolly finally asked. “I thought something like you guys would be at least somewhat cool, guess I was horribly wrong.”

The Beat-All’s looked visibly upset and depressed.

“That’s ‘super’ sentai demons that is out to get all of you!” Despite his anger, Mr. Black was so underwhelming that even Mittens and Bolt were starting to relax. “We never lose because we know how to…”

“Beat-All!” They all struck the star pose again, seemingly having gotten over their depression quickly. “We, the Super Beat-All Force, are here to end your lives as you know it!”

“Whoever this Mr. Beezy guys was, I feel sorry that you ever had the misfortune to actually meet him for whatever reason you did Pom.” Stated Dolly dully before turning to the Beat-Alls. “You guys might ruin our sense of boredom at least, but the novelty is going to wear off really fast. What will happen when your franchise eventually falls apart, if that is what all of this is?”

“Shut up, our franchise is great and well renowned!” Okay Ms. Blue, whatever you say. “Even if ninety nine point nine nine percent of demons are stronger than all of us combined and consider us laughing stocks of the under realms. We’re also well renowned for our excellent teamwork!”

Well renowned? By who, yourselves? Fatally narcissistic marked off on the mental checklist I had going that this was going to blow up in their faces.

Any battle between us can’t possibly last more the twenty minutes… at best one minute of that will actually be action and the rest of it will be just them blowing hot air everywhere.

If it only took twenty minutes to deal with these guys, then that should be enough time to bug out and find the nearest mode of transportation out of Illinois before any mercenaries show up.

“Mr. Beezy wasn’t really much of a fight, everything else around him that he was manipulating was far more dangerous than he was.” Honestly, this was getting kind of sad and they haven’t done much more than blow up a car without actually hurting anyone.

“You take that back, he would have so easily ripped out all your organs if… wait are organs the internal bits or the external ones?” Mr. Yellow sounded uncertain, he probably never made through what passes for school in their realm.

“Yeah, you wouldn’t have beaten him if you didn’t sneak up on him to attack in such a cowardly back stabbing manner that we demons are supposed to do, it’s just not fair when you do it to us!” Mr. Green stated while waving around their weapon wildly and aggressively. “At least that’s how we assumed you destroyed the greatness that is Demon Master Beelzebug!”

“Eh… I don’t know how to feel about this anymore.” Even Bolt was beginning to become emotionally dull to these guys like Dolly, Mittens and I had. “It’s actually kind of getting sad.”

“We’re not the sad ones, you’re the sad ones even if we are powered by what amounts to constant eternal teenage angst!” Oh wow, let me play the world’s smallest violin for you Mr. Red. “I can already tell your mocking us in your minds. Well then, let us prove ourselves to you!”

“Beat-All Force attack!” Black announced, they all started to fly forward together.

“Wait, hold up, I have a question.” I state blandly and they stopped flying forward. “Do you honestly think you are going to win? Even I know that sentai teams only win if they’re the good guys and you’re not exactly being the heroic ones here. You did wantonly blow something up after all.”

“Shut up, we’re heroes in our own world views! So since we’re a sentai team we’ll always win, so there!” Heroes of their own story, more like a tragic comedy villains that someone wasn’t handing out brains to when these guys were born. Clearing his throat, Beat-All black pointed a leg at us. “Now, Beat-All Force, attack!”

Dolly simply lift her front paws and pinned down two of the beetles who swung their weapons wildly to little effect, while Bolt and Mittens pinned down one each safely as well. I simply held up my left hoof.

“Is my super strength coming back?” It was a second later that Bolt at least acknowledged the situation. “No… even you have one pinned down Mittens.”

Mittens seemed to be upset with him for a second, but relented on her anger a few seconds later.

As for me, I was holding back Black with my hoof and he kept flying into it fruitlessly.

“Why, won’t, you, fall over?! My horn of vicious violence should not be stop so easily!” Wow, Black was seriously not understand the size discrepancy between us.

He might have even moved my right hoof a millimeter by increasing his wing speed for a few seconds, this was probably about as big as his victories get.

I quickly wrapped my hoof around his horn, flipped the demon bug upside down and then walked over into the nearby park and jammed his horn into the dirt leaving him stuck flailing his legs into the air. I motioned for Bolt, Mittens and Dolly to do the same.

They jammed the four other beetle demons into the dirt face first, except Beetle green who was jammed butt first into the dirt because he was a stink bug beetle. Dolly didn’t have any trouble moving her two Beat-All’s since she could walk on her hind legs.

“Ah! They totally defeated us Black, we need to call in Beat-All White and the bug bite machines for backup!” Green screamed while trying to pull his butt out of the ground.

“Uh huh…” I stated blandly. “That’ll certainly deal with us. Yep. You’re really the greatest villainous team known to demon kind, sure you are.”

A rocket came down from the sky and we were once more missed entirely, but it did blast the chunk of dirt we stuffed all five of the Beat-All’s into. We all looked up to see a white beetle standing on top of a rather moderately sized stick bug shaped machine and was playing a weedy, stick like, flute that had a small carved rats tooth attached to the end of it.

“I am Beat-All white and I’m here to reap your souls with my magnificent vibrant ivory scythe!” I would take his threat more seriously if he wasn’t a bug demon. He continued to play his flute, at least the tune was good.

“Beat-All’s summon your bug bit machines, we’ll have them on the ropes in no time!” Black yelled as he and the Beat-All’s created their star formation again with Beat-All White glowing and making his own star off to the side. “Beat-All Black, Summoning Onyx Spider!”

“Aren’t spiders arachnids?” I stated dully as I watched as a small mechanical spider that was slightly bigger than Beat-All Black dropped from the sky and he entered it.

“Hey, don’t interrupt them Pom, let them live the dream for a little while longer. They are doing the whole thing where the sixth ranger comes in to save the day and defeat the villains… except we’re the heroes and we don’t have back up.” This left several questions needing to be asked Dolly, but I wasn’t in the mood to actually argue about the fact that their sixth ranger just scorched them and they were all burnt by the rocket that supposedly saved them. Also one of them was actually on fire and went flying around screaming after the last star formation pose, it was Beat-All Green specifically. Being a stink bug made him extremely flammable. “Not that it really is going to help them much from what I’m seeing, but it should be somewhat entertaining at least to see them try. Maybe they’ll blow themselves, maybe it’ll even be a good sized explosion that we’ll have to run from too! Either that or we could slowly walk away while a fireball goes off into the sky behind us, that would be a little awesome if these guys weren’t so lame.”

“Hey, stop heckling us! Beat-All Yellow, Summoning Topaz Caterpillar!” The so called Caterpillar just burst out of the ground about the size of a small snake. It rolled forward on treads and it made me wonder how it burrowed when it didn’t have a drill, otherwise it did vaguely looked like a caterpillar in how bulgy it was.

“Beat-All Red, Summoning Ruby Antlion!” Well at least his vehicle looked somewhat threatening.

“Beat-All Green, Summoning Emerald Mantis!” I thought this one looked somewhat cool, but then I remembered that these guys weren’t even sticking to their whole ‘beetle’ theme.

“Beat-All Blue, Summoning Beautiful Azure Damselfly.” This was the worst one of the bunch, it was green and not blue. Still it was the only one that could outright fly, so I’ll give Beat-All Blue at least that begrudgingly.

“Beat-All Bug Bite Bomber Brigade, Battle!” At Beat-All Black’s call, all six of the machine came at us.

I calmly stopped both Beat-All White and Black’s machines with my front two hooves the same way I had stopped Beat-All Black when they didn’t have the machines previously.

I calmly watched as the machine struggled to shove my weight off of them.

They would have made nice toys at the least, so the Beat-All’s actually might have some marketability. I’m going to stress the ‘might’ part as hard as I can.

I’m also noticing that the machines weren’t armed with any weapons, so where in the world did those two rockets they fired in our general vicinity come from?

I looked over to Dolly to see she had Caterpillar and Damselfly pinned down. Bolt had taken care of Ruby Antlion and as for Mittens, she was just watched at the Emerald Mantis machine as it ran around on fire flailing its arms. At most all their little machines required us to do was press down a little bit harder than we previously had to stop them.

Nobody had bothered to put out Beat-All Green and they had summarily set their machine on fire by entering it.

“Darn it, waving our weapons wildly at them and ramming into them isn’t working!” Beat-All Black called and Beat-All Green’s machine just kept running around in a panic. “Beat-All Green, we’re pinned down and you’re the only one free by virtue of being on fire, save us so we can form our ultimate battle machine by combining together!”

“Can we just let them do it, I want to see what it looks like.” You only wanted to see what would happen if they do out of morbid curiosity Dolly.

Green flailed in our general direction and we eventually let go of the machines and took a few steps back when the flailing mantis blades nearly gave us a few paper cuts.

“Initiating Beat-All Big Biter combination sequence!” Beat-All black announced out loud as soon as they retreated and were all free.

“Beat-All Yellow forming legs and treads!” The topaz caterpillar split in half and rose up in the middle creating what looked like a pair of pants and the ends turned outwards into two feet with tank treads on the bottom.

“Beat-All Black forming main torso and power source abdomen!” The spider leapt up and its four most hind legs went into the caterpillar pants. It held out its next two lower legs and its abdomen shifted upwards to finish creating the armored spine and torso of the machine they were building.

“Beat-all Red forming right pincer!” The antlion leapt up and the spider’s second right leg caught it and attach it to the spiders frame as the antlion extended its pincer in the form of a combat weapon.

“AHHHHH BEAT-ALL GREEN, AHHGHAGHHH AREN’T WE DEMONS SUPPOSED TO BE IMMUNE TO FIRE?! FORMING AGGGHHH LEFT CLAWS, IT BURNS SO MUCH!” The mantis’s body leapt up and attach to the second leg on the spider’s left forming the other arm of the combined machines.

Green’s constant screaming was disconcerting as was the fact that they weren’t putting out the fire even as they attached the mantis machine to the overall frame as a pair of slashing left armed claws.

“And the beautiful Beat-All Blue will form the head!” The damselfly machine lowered its tail and the spider raised its head and opened its maws, the machine slide the tail into place as the machine morphed into a head for the combined machines. The remaining front most two legs of the spider connected to Beat-All Blue’s machine to finalize the overall machine.

“Beat-All Beetle Battler!” The machine struck a pose as they shouted this.

“Okay I’ll give them this, it looks cool, but did they really have to make it do the dorky dab thing?” Dolly just propped up her skateboard and leaned against it. “They do realize that the fire is spreading right?”

Mittens rolled her eyes meowed something that sounded condescending.

“Yeah, normally something like this would be scary and require heat vision, but in this situation…” Bolt trailed off motioning to the machine with a paw. “Can you handle it Pom? I’d feel too bad about actually attacking them.”

“If I must.” I stated flatly.

“Targeting system locked on. Now all together, we’ll attack the White Knight of Couriers, raahhhhh!” Beat-All Black was still acting as the leader it seems. The machine charged forward, it was only about up to my neck in size, I placed my right hoof on its head and it flailed its arms at me for a solid minute. The fire was slowly spreading across the combined machines torso and legs. “Why isn’t this working?! We did a whole combination transformation sequence and everything right this time and it didn’t end in a volatile lethal explosion! Maybe we don’t have enough power, Beat-All White will you lend us your very much ninja Bug Biter to our cause!”

“Of course I will brother, I never wanted to leave the team in the first place, but my demonic pupa were just being born that day!” Beat-All white pointed his scythe forward and crawled into the stick bug. “I will form the wings and bring the Beetle Battler to its final form!”

The stick bug attach it’s limbs to all the other limbs and two of its legs split in half into a pair of giant rainbow energy spewing butterfly wings. This made it overall an inch or two taller somehow and it could now hover in the air on aforementioned wings.

“Big Bad Beat-All Bug Biter Beefy Beetle Bomber Brigade Bot Battler!” They shouted as one as a light shined from the proudly standing machine with over half the machine being on fire.

“What, all that and no ‘Borg’ qualifier in there?” Dolly asked lazily.

“We couldn’t get the licensing!” Beat-All Blue answered in a chirpy tone. “Heh, we had a hell of time getting what we do have!”

“Begin preparations for our ultimate attack, the Beat-All Beetle Blaster!” Beat-All Black announced. “It may use up half our battery power, but it will be worth it to destroy them all in one fell swoop!”

The machine’s chest expanded and it started glowing.

“Uh guys…” Beat-All red stated slowly.

“What is it Red?” Mr. Black sounded wary.

“We’re all on fire now.” Pointed out Red as if it were shocking.

Beat-All Green responded to this news by continuing to scream in agony from the left arm.

“Yeah, I know we’re awesome Red, you don’t have to tell us twice!” Beat-All Yellow stated with a proud tone.

“No, I mean our machines have all caught fire and… wait does anyone smell gas?” It didn’t take a genius to see why Red was so very much panicked. “Oh no my Antlion’s flamethrower gas canister has sprung a leak due to all the flailing!”

Wait, the Antlion machine had a flamethrower and he didn’t check it or use it prior to this?

“Wait, why are there exposed wires in here?” Beat-All White asked.

“Sorry, but I had to chew on something or I would go stir crazy.” Beat-all Blue stated with a cheerful tone.

“Yeah, it’s like how I drained three fourths of Beat-All Black’s machine’s battery playing video games before we did this.” Yellow stated with an idiotic tone.

The machine dropped to the ground and all the lights in it went out.

“You did what?!” Black shouted. “Yellow, we needed that to power to keep the combined machines working!”

It was at this point things had likely dissolved into infighting inside the machine and I turned to Dolly, Bolt and Mittens.

“Let’s just walk away from this.” My companions nodded to me and slowly we turned as one and started to just walk away.

The combined machines that barely reached my chin was fully on fire by now.

“Wait, where are you going?!” Beat-All Black shouted after us. “We haven’t even given you our fifty seven page victory speech about the merits of being infinite beholden slave to Demon Master Beelzebug!”

“You know, I distinctly remember gas being explosive when put to a flame.” Beat-All White stated calmly. “So why haven’t we blown…”

An explosion happened behind us and we were all slowly walking away from it without looking back.

“Ah yeah, at least we’re doing something cool with this!” Dolly stated as we slowly marched away and towards the nearest truck stop we can find.

125. Bolt, the Dog.

-Equus, Meadow Hills Region, Gallus-

“Why did you ask me to train you again?” Fizzlepop Berrytwist was a hard flank, but she was good at fighting with her hooves and I thought I could learn a few things from her.

I was proven horribly right, because she was apparently known for absolutely beating the fight out of a manticore. Fluttershy apparently knew that Manticore and called him Manny, our teachers were still as weird as ever when it comes to their intertwined histories.

“Was it perhaps, because as far as the guard goes, I’m the most competent one you know about and I taught Ocellus a few things.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head, this unicorn was not someone anyone would want to mess with. “Remember that I’m still the ruler of my own nation even if I have a day job with Twilight, so that’s why you are here to help me get the lambkin delegate out of their bunker.”

I really couldn’t really answer her at the moment, I thought flying would at least give me some advantage. I was beaten black and purple when she proved to me that flying wasn’t everything if I couldn’t get close enough to my target to even come close to bringing them down. As far as unicorns go, Fizzle was more physically fit than a good ninety percent of them.

I couldn’t be beaten blue because I already had the colorful feathers to hide that and having claws or digits to wield weapons with didn’t help me at all in our training exercise.

“I have my work cut out for me I see, come along. You’ll be a fairly decent guard someday, which puts you in the top ten percentile of royal guards. At least you might be exempt from ever meeting my dementedly fluffy wife if you keep this up, she arguably does worse to those who won’t take the job seriously.” Her horn sparkled and fizzled as she lifted my battered form off the ground, at least she wasn’t making me walk like this. “You have ten minutes to catch your breath before I stop carrying you and drop you on the ground, I’ll either come back for you later, you can start walking from there or you can head to the nearby town. Whichever you feel like doing.”

I could tell already she wasn’t kidding when she said she’d drop me, but it’s nice to know she’d come back for me at least.

-Earth, a day later, Kansas, trailer park, Bolt-

It was here in… I believe it was called Kansas… that I finally opened my eyes to the full truth.

The water fell from a dull grey sky and I was sitting under an awning watching it. I looked at what was once considered a mark of power, now just a dirty black blotch in my fur no longer in the shape of a painted on lightning bolt.

I didn’t have super powers, I wasn’t a real hero and I wasn’t ever let in on the fact that I was just an actor on what was supposedly a popular show according to Dolly.

I know all of this because I just watched myself on a screen, remembering the lines I said in those very moments and actually meaning them as it all felt so real to me.

There was no looking away as I listened to the intro of the show several times introducing me as I used to be, as I kept watching the various episodes of the ‘Bolt, the Super Dog’.

Pom had left us here because she needed to buy food for us and Dolly stayed with us in the trailer park to watch over us, it wasn’t long before she came back that I had already watched several episodes of what was supposed to be my reality.

Dolly and Mittens both tried to get me to play with them or think about something else, but I couldn’t stop watching the marathon featuring me even when Pom came back.

Pom silently sat down next to me and watched an episode with me. Once it was over she gently hugged me, patted me on the head, whispered condolences for how I wasn’t ever given a chance to be normal dog and left me to my thoughts without more words. I appreciated Pom immensely for that.

Having no idea what to do with myself, I was trying to cling to the one last thing that I knew had to be real. I know that Penny cared about me, I know she did!

Now that I’ve seen the truth for myself, how would I even approach her? If she didn’t want me, then would she at least let me have Mr. Carrot so I can go find somewhere else to live?

Mr. Carrot was the only possession in the world that I would care about taking with me if Penny rejected… the dog that now knows he’s no longer going to be fighting the world to protect someone from it all with everything he had.

Pom, Mittens and Dolly’s kindness were another thing for me to cling to desperately, they were helping me get back to Penny even if… even if it turns out… she didn’t want a broken dog.

I had been living a lie, maybe an incredible dream that I woke up from and direly wished I could simply go back to. Now that I knew the truth… I knew it was impossible for things to go back to the way they were.

I couldn’t ignore it, I couldn’t look away and knowing the truth made me feel horrible.

I spent most of my life trying to be protective of Penny, only to find out that the person I was protecting from danger… wasn’t ever really in any danger to begin with like I believed at the time.

If I was an actor, then I had never repeated a scene and managed to do everything perfectly the first time. At least it made for a good show, though watching myself from the outside of it all was disturbing.

“Hey, Bolty, you feeling okay there?” Mittens, was very forgiving towards me after I dragged her into my need to get back to Penny.

“No.” I huffed and turned my side into the rain and let the water run down my side and drip onto the ground, I reached up with a paw and then started wiping the black blotch out of my fur.

I wasn’t super… was I even really a dog at this point? I certainly didn’t know how to be one.

“Uh…” Mittens was still trying, but why? “It’ll be okay Bolty, you’ll see. At least we have someone like those two watching out for us right?”

I looked over to Pom and Dolly. Dolly was sitting still as Pom tied and splinted up her tail again. Pom tied off the base of her tail with a bow and Dolly looked upset with it and Pom just smiled at her. It seemed like Dolly was going to accept the bow regardless of how she felt about it.

I wasn’t paying attention to what she was saying, but Pom was being gentle and saying something with a smile, Dolly begrudgingly lifted her nose to her.

Afterwards Pom took care of Dolly’s nose and I winced when I saw it after Pom peeled the bandages away, the grisly sight was something I never had to really experience before.

Never really been injured, probably never saw a real injury before and that was a fresh injury. Real, raw and ugly… like how the world felt at the moment. My show had a lot of death by explosions, knocking out guards and incredible circumstances where people disappeared, how hadn’t I noticed all that before?

“Mittens, what am I anymore?” My voice tiredly droned out as I wilted and was slowly losing the will to live. I watched Dolly interact with Pom by licking her on the nose and cuddling up against her and them hugging each other. “What do I really have to offer if I can’t do the things I thought I could? I can’t act like I don’t know the truth, I was never taught how to act.”

My heart yearned for that kind of relationship with Penny, for it to be real and not part of the dream. I wanted to believe that Penny really cared about me, that nobody could replace me in her heart. That we could be close like Dolly and Pom.

“Well… your dog named Bolt and are a very brave and sweet guy who just had the rug pulled out from under him and most importantly you’re my friend, that’s despite all the stuff you’ve put me through. We’ll work our way up from there buddy.” Mittens wrapped a paw around my neck and I leaned into the hug as she nuzzled her face against my neck. There were two cats that I didn’t like, but if they hadn’t taunted me so badly then I wouldn’t have met Mittens. I let it into my heart that not all cats were bad. “If things don’t work out at the end of this trip… then I’ll stick with you! I have your back Bolt and I’m not going to abandon you, not in the same way those bipeds abandoned me at any rate... anyone who wouldn’t want a dog like you would have to be a complete idiot. I mean what other dog would cross the whole country like you to get back to someone you only believe cares? I would normally tell you to stop trying to cling to the past and find a nice place where the food is plentiful to settle down, but Pom and Dolly have helped turned my world view around. I mean have you seen how those two act together?”

Yes and I was kind of jealous of their relationship. They were talking and looked to be enjoying themselves.

“So what if you’re not a Super Dog right now, that doesn’t mean there’s a zero percent chance you can’t be super in some way eventually. Even if it’s being a super good friend.” Glancing at Mittens, who has yet to let go of me, she gave me a broad smile. “Besides, I think this is an opportunity to see the world a little, I wasn’t going anywhere in New York. Hey, do you want to know a secret about our traveling companions?”

“What, that Dolly has ninety eight brothers and sisters?” I didn’t even know whether or not that was a normal number of dogs for a family to have. “I really don’t know much about other dogs if you haven’t noticed.”

“No, that the world is much weirder than anyone would really believe. I mean it took some convincing, but Dolly eventually showed me some things that should be impossible. She was a normal dog, like you, and then she had her world turned upside down by something unusual happening too.” What were you talking about Mittens? “Want to guess?”

“Um… I have no ideas, did she come from a TV show too?” That at least got me a giggle from Mittens.

“No, it’s when and how Dolly’s whole family met Pom. Look at what Pom is doing right now and tell me how she’s doing it.” Deciding to humor Mittens, I turned and then I blinked more than once.

The sight didn’t change between blinks.

“What the…” What I was seeing was Pom sitting on a wall of a trailer above Dolly, the only problem was it should be physically impossible for her to be sitting on the wall like that.

“That’s why I can’t believe there’s a zero percent chance for you to possibly gain super powers Bolty, Dolly was a normal dog until she did something amazing a few days ago.” What were you talking about Mittens? “Even without a handle on what she can actually do, she saved two hospitals and protected a powers station against a ‘real’ mad scientist like the ‘green eyed man’ from your show, who’s apparently named Dr. Calico. She mostly did it without super powers and just a skateboard, it’s why she has those injuries.”

“So Dolly and Pom have…” I slowly drew out in disbelief.

“Super powers? Yeah, they do! Dolly apparently has always had the capacity for them, she just doesn’t know how to use them on purpose yet or even knows what she’s actually capable of. Invulnerability certainly isn’t in Dolly’s power package though.” As Mittens said this, I was still staring at the sight as the rain stopped and a rainbow shined over the area in various colors. “Pom on the other paw, she actually knows how to use her abilities. Would you believe me if I told you she was a magical creature and an alien?”

Pom got up, still clinging to the side of the trailer, she walks up a vertical surface. Up… not fall down, not fall sideways, just walked up and onto the roof to look around. She went back down and said something to Dolly and Dolly got up onto her back and then Pom made her way back to the roof so they could both sit down to look at the rainbow from a better vantage point.

“I… might believe it…” I said slowly. So my whole life was fake, but that didn’t mean that impossible things couldn’t be real. I felt my tail slowly shift from side to side.

“That’s more like it, come on Wags! If we’re going to be here for the rest of the day, then I might as well teach you the joys of simply playing in mud… maybe even teach you to do the dog face to mooch food off the surrounding bipeds and animalistic people.” Uh what was that Mittens? “Oh yeah, remind me to show you Leap Lamb and Caper Canine in action, I’m sure you’ll get a kick out of it. Now cheer up Bolty, we must have some guardian angels watching over our sorry butts since we’re palling around with real heroes!”

-An hour later-

I wasn’t actually bitter about it, instead it truly warmed my heart that there were actually people out there that could actually achieve extraordinary things and were still heroes even without the abilities they did have.

I could be Penny’s hero even if I didn’t have super powers, provided Penny wants me and I still believed in the idea of her!

“Good, now you’ve got it, now go do that with that guy over there and don’t forget to make a small whining noise.” Beginning to wonder why Mittens was teaching me how to do this and not Dolly, then again I did just watch what Dolly and Pom were capable of on their device Dormarch.

Dormarch was the first commercially created true AI that was given to Pom, which had mercenaries trying to kill her. She still wasn’t giving him up despite the dangers involved, because he was her friend and it was probably keeping the world safe somehow that she protects him.

Dolly was amazing without super strength, durability, super speed or even laser vision, that she could do a real Super Bark made me feel better about things that my show might actually have some basis in reality. She said she hasn’t been able to that Super Bark since the fight with that mad scientists machine, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t eventually learn how she did it and do it again.

Pom said that Dolly was possibly capable of it long before she had even met her, but Dolly had retorted she wouldn’t have known it was possible if she hadn’t seen Pom actually do one when they were still in Africa after an incident with a giant woolly lizard monster on an airplane.

I was friends with a very nice and helpful alien, one who’s trying to meet up with her friends and find a way home. Pom was still taking me to Penny first before going north to meet up with two of her friends. It was surprising that Pom and Dolly were still focusing on helping me first, if the situation were reversed… I’d be doing the same thing.

Okay ears back, wide eyes, head slightly tilted, looking upwards and now… whine a little.

“Huh… oh look at the adorable little dog! Are you hungry, do you want a treat you’ll not get often? Here you go! Lean meat from the grill, not too much fat. You’re only getting the one, I don’t want your owner to come after me for possibly hurting you.” The biped cockatoo tossed me something that smelled really good and I caught it in my mouth and went back over to Mittens to share it with her. “Such a nice dog.”

I made my way over to Mittens and sat down.

“What… it’s yours Bolt I’m not going to take…ulp?!” I forced half of this tasty food into her mouth until our lips met and then bit off my end and started chewing to swallow it.

Mittens looked a bit red for some reason as she started slowly chewing on her half of the treat.

“Did I do something wrong Mittens?” I watched as she rubbed her paws at her head.

“Maybe… I should teach you how to interact with other animals as my next lesson Bolty. You obviously never knew your parents to help acclimatize you to the world… I hardly knew mine too.” Mittens mumbled something I didn’t quite catch afterwards as she looked way, but she looked upbeat so maybe I didn’t do anything wrong. “So you’re going to need to learn a few things about humming birds and bees. So when a humming bird flies into a bee hive…”

-Dolly-

“Well that was cute, but what exactly did those two eat and was it safe?” Pom asked as we were trying to figure out how we’re getting to the next state with a Waffle World, in fact we’ve been stopping at those places on the way and getting small treats from Pom.

“Hot dog, basically lean meat and yes it’s safe… though they are going need some water immediately after eating it.” I looked away. “I know from experience that a dog shouldn’t eat more than one, sharing half of one isn’t going to be as harmful.”

“Is it too oily or salty?” I asked nervously.

“Salty, not much oil when it is usually burned out of the meat.” Dolly answered quickly, I sighed with relief. “Uh, you’re not exactly upset about them eating meat are you?”

“Why would I be upset? I’m just concerned about their health is all, Mittens looked half dead when we first met her and now look at her.” Doing as asked, I saw a healthy cat that didn’t look like she was struggling on the streets and wasn’t jaded about her situation anymore. Also my brother Deepak would be shipping those two like crazy. Not that it wasn’t cute to watch, but no. “I don’t mind if you guys eat meat, remember that where I’m from I have a pack load of dogs that spent a lot of time protecting me from predators by eating them while protecting me. I’m not about to say I wasn’t perfect live bait for them, but just because our dietary habits are different doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”

“Good, because I’m still going to eat carrots and bananas.” Bananas were awesome and I wouldn’t give up on them, but I had to make sure not to eat too many as the sugar might get to me.

“Yeah, I know a dog’s dietary needs Dolly, but I’m not exactly up to date on a cats dietary needs.” Why would you be Pom, you’ve never spent much time around them.

“That is where I come in Pom, Mittens and Bolt will be fine if they get plenty of water. Mittens doesn’t have much fat on her, so the hot dog will not have a harmful impact on her health. In fact she needs a little more weight to reach the healthy zone.” Dormarch stated as the PET came to life and he smiled at us. “Bolt will be able to handle the fat in the hot dog much better, but its salt content is not recommended. Don’t forget I can assist you in all traveling endeavors including health!”

“Oh my goodness, It’s Bolt the Super Dog!” My attention was drawn to a hamster, who turned to look at us. “Leap Lamb and Caper Canine too! Did I die and go to heaven?! This has got to be the most incredible moment of my entire life! Oh… oh ho ho, Leap Lamb and Caper Canine with Bolt the Super Dog and… what’s the cat’s name?”

The hamster in the ball was weirding me out, did we just run into Bolt super fan? Oh dog damn it!

“Mittens.” Why did I answer him?!

“What about Mittens?” Pom asked.

“It’s the hamster he wanted to know about Mittens name.” I pointed to the spot where the ball used to be. “Uh…”

We both looked over to see the hamster running his ball around Bolt and Mittens excitedly and the two kept watching him with confused looks.

“Is this going to be another building headache for us?” Pom said deflating in front of me.

“If I said no, would you ever think I was telling the truth again?” I grinned at her brightly.

“What did he want exactly?” Pom finally asked.

“I think he might be a ‘Bolt the Super Dog’ fan.” We looked into the trailer he must have come out of, it was the same trailer that Bolt had watched a portion of the running marathon of his show.

“Trouble?” Well Pom wasn’t be a sack of sunshine.

“Yep.” So was I for that matter.

“Great-.” Kind of liked it when Pom got sarcastic, which was rare. “Not like we don’t have enough problems with being hunted, carting a famous dog actor across the country and are juggling all the responsibilities with keeping everyone alive. Why not add a hyper hamster on top of things?!”

Pom, probably, shouldn’t have said that.

-Thirty minutes later-

Yep, Pom shouldn’t have said that as we now had Rhino the super fan hamster as a traveling companion. He didn’t care that Bolt didn’t have super powers or that Mittens was a normal street cat.

Again, dog damn it!

“So isn’t anyone concerned that we’re basically kidnapping a hamster?” Pom asked weakly.

“I’m not being kidnapped. I’m coming with you guys of my own volition, it’ll be great!” The excitable hamster stated from within his ball.

“Why does the hamster have wolf genetics in him, also why do I calculate that he’ll live to eighty years in by biped standards?” Dormarch, that wasn’t something I wanted to hear, he’ll be stuck following us for the rest of our lives!

Well unless bolt goes with Penny, which I am now hoping for as Rhino is far more into Bolt than us! That and Bolt will be happy, that’s a plus too.

“Okay guys, this might be a bit iffy, but we need to catch the train and… go… go now.” Pom suddenly stopped and the wool on her body rippled violently.

“Pom…” I stated slowly as I felt all my short, but incredibly thick, fur prickle with a sense of dread.

“Dolly… take Dormarch and cover them…” Pom passed the PET to me and turned around to start looking around. “I’ll catch up... I promise.”

“Right!” I narrowed my eyes. “Move it!”

“What’s…” Bolt didn’t get farther as he jumped at the sound of a gunshot going off and Pom hopped backwards as the bullet impacted the ground where she just was.

“Run for that train!” I howled.

Author's Note

The next exciting issue of Leap Lamb and Caper Canine with guest stars Bolt the Super Dog, Mittens the Chaos Cat and Rhino the Hyper Hamster in: Trained to Die Hard!

126. Trained to Die Hard.

“So… do you really think this is enough to stop me?” The fifty or so armored psychos pulled their guns on me. “So you have chosen pain.”

“I hope you have unicorn insurance.” Fred stated loftily. “THIS IS GOING TO BE FUN!”

“Do you really think you can take us all on at the same time?” One of the psychopaths asked. “The McShooty clan laughs at the possibility!”

“My dear Ollie has had harder fights, TRUST ME.” Grinning at Fred’s words I summoned ‘The End of Pain’. “By the way after we’re done beating the literal psychosis out of you or end up somehow making it worse, at this point I don’t think it will make much of a difference on this planet, WE’LL CONTINUE ON TO RUIN HANDSOME JACKS DAY!”

“Pandora is fun, but we should really deal with the eldritch abominations you sensed here.” I stated with a cheerful demeanor. “So when we find and aid this Butt Stallion we heard on the echo device, do you suppose we should help her come up with a new name?”

"Why, I THINK SHE’S FUNNY FOR KEEPING IT OLLIE!” Thus the mauling of people who were clinically insane began.

“Remember, if you have arrows, you have to shoot me in the knees!” One of the McShooty clan members stated happily.

-Earth, Kansas, Near Train Station, Dolly-

“Pom better not fail to catch up… she has all our food.” I stopped spun my skateboard around picked up Rhino in his hamster ball, plopped him on the front of my board and stomped down on the back end to send him flying onto the rear of train already in motion.

“Why are you not more worried about her being shot again?!” Mittens seemed panic, totally understandable when we have mercenaries breathing down our necks.

“She only took two hits, one was a shot to the chest where she has her stitches.” A bullet whizzed by us as Mittens and Bolt hopped onto the train, it didn’t hit the train or any of us at least. I popped up onto the back and slung my skateboard around from to stand in front of the others defensively facing the rear. “The sniper that had missed several shots forced Pom to take the other hit, but she thankfully got hit with the impact, Dormarch took the actual hit. It’s probably better that she’s drawing more fire than us, because she can actively dodge bullets while we can’t.”

“Oh this is all so awesome, I’m experiencing a real getaway sequence with Bolt!” Yeah, I really didn’t care if Rhino took a bullet. Still might feel bad about it for a few seconds though.

“You’re not worried about Pom catching up?” Bolt asked from behind me as I was nearly knocked over from a bullet bouncing off my skateboard turning into a chunk of scrap metal as it did so. I’m glad I braced against that, but that still made my body ache.

“Hey, they call her Leap Lamb for a reason!” It wasn’t for the leaps of logic, she could literally jump and run far faster than this train could move until it was up to full speed.

-Pom-

I ducked behind a decent sized tree and silently apologized for using it as cover as it was struck with multiple bullets. I really didn’t have the health for another confrontation like this so soon after Africa, especially not with my heart problems.

There was some wonder as to how these guys found us, but I’m pretty sure they spotted us heading towards the train station or at least saw me out buying food. So far there didn’t seem to be one of those snipers in the area, but I had suspicions.

I turned around and clambered up the tree slightly, two guys soon turned from both sides of the tree and aimed their guns at each other. They quickly lowered them and I reached down with my front two hooves and slammed their helmets into one another with incredible force, shattering their faceplates and knocking them both out.

I really tried to not care about the faces underneath, I didn’t want to focus on them as they were trying to hurt us. A cat and a mongoose, at least we were safe from snakes. I picked up both their guns and slung them over my body as I quickly made my way for the train.

Three guys were trying to run after the moving train and were firing on Dolly covering our three traveling companions.

I unslung one of the guns and swung it around by the strap and spun my entire body into sending it into the side of the rear guys in the helmet. The gun broke apart as it took their helmet off and they were thrown off their feet. I could see they were down and I quickly kicked the falling gun with left rear leg up into the back of the guy on the left throwing off their aim as I unslung the other rifle and, holding it by the barrel, brought it around to the feminine figure on the right and snapped the gun in half on their torso.

The person on the right, now sitting on the ground, tried to react by pulling a weapon from their hip with their left hand, but I was already leaping up and performing flying buck to their helmet before they could aim it at me.

I used the buck to kick off the person on the right’s body and slung out the strap from the weapon I recently grabbed. It wrapped around the left guy’s right arm as I shot by and behind them.

With twist and a tug, their right arm was brought behind their back and I let go of the weapon to physically grip the arm with my front hooves.

“What the…” The guy didn’t get to say much more as I heaved and slammed them face first into the ground in a painful looking display of brutality. I really didn’t like doing this, but I sincerely hoped that was enough and not too much.

I looked towards the train and started to inhale as I ran after it, I exhaled and leaped to hit the top of the rear train car.

“Up the ladder guys, quickly now!” I crouched down as several bullets whizzed by and I saw something starting to give chase to the train as it turned onto the tracks behind us. “What is that thing?”

“That Pom, is an APC. An armored personnel carrier, ground transport that can take a lot of external damage. It has enough room inside for specialized gear and ten people with little comfort. Whoever is after us this time apparently gets military contracts.” Dormarch responded from Dolly’s new skateboard strap as he could barely see some of the view of what’s going on. “I would not suggest attacking it directly, you’ve already put too much stress on your body as it is from what little fighting you just did… wait… Is that a rocket launcher?!”

A hatch opened on the APC and a guy popped up with a long tube that fit the description from the last world when used against large dangerous machines. He took aim and before he could fire a red spot splash over his suit and he fell backwards as he pulled the trigger and his rocket shot up into the sky.

“What the, what just happened?!” I asked I kept low looking about and thought I saw something on the water tower in the distance as the train was picking up more speed.

“I don’t know, but I think we might have more than one group of people out to get us and they are competing!” Dolly shouted up to me as Bolt and Mittens hauled Rhino up onto the roof of the caboose, she quickly put her skateboard on her back and went to climb the ladder. “Which is actually kind of cool and good for us…”

-On a nearby water tower, Tobias Rieper, AKA Agent ‘To-Buy-Us-Reapers’ 47-

“He’ll live.” I just readjusted my aim and fired, taking out one of the tires on the vehicles and it wasn’t enough to stop it, but I just gave them some serious doubts about chasing the target. “Possibly not for long though if they didn’t bring a medic, I incidentally missed the heart by a millimeter.”

“Just keep those mercenaries off of Leap Lamb and her traveling circus as well as you can before moving out Agent Forty Seven. You have a job in Colorado and after you are done there you can return to seeking out this particularly strange target.” I nodded faintly at what I was hearing and took aim to fire another shot. I squeezed the trigger and damaged another tire to slow the APC down. “Be warned that Caper Canine might be able to control and use animals as spies. Even a hamster like the one you spotted can be a dangerous early warning for them, beware of that when it comes time to make an approach.”

“I would like to state that they are becoming far more trouble than they are worth.” Not that I wouldn’t try to uphold a contract if told to. “The mercenaries tailing them aren’t related to Sabu Taj and the teams she used in Africa.”

“Sabu Taj hasn’t smuggled herself into America… yet. I’m still tracking the situation.” That was good news, I wouldn’t have to watch out for exploding vehicles for the time being. “Information reads that those are the Shred Tread Mercenaries, an ex-military group with access to things normal mercenaries might have problems getting hold of… like actual bargain bin tanks. They have no personal aerial vehicles, but they are always good for ground pursuits. Heavy weapons and armor are their thing, they’ve been hired to kill the target at all costs. They are even being paid hazard pay on anything that happens to them should they fail. Needless to say they weren’t told about the targets capabilities before engaging or more importantly didn’t know. Hold up Forty Seven… they are going to perform aerial drops on intercept course with the train, they hired a subcontractor for some sky diving fun as a cover for dropping onto the train in case their APC assault fails. It is up to you whether to pursue them or not, I believe Leap Lamb to be capable enough to deal with them for the moment from here.”

Caper Canine was going to be as much trouble as Leap Lamb with a bullet proof skateboard and limited combat ability possibly taught to her by Leap Lamb. Speaking of Leap Lamb, she looked towards the water tower with narrowed eyes.

I have doubts I could really take Leap Lamb down when she was fully alert. There was no way to make it look like an accident with how fast she could react to environmental stimulus, given she can actively dodge bullets. Targets with brains and brawn to match were always the worst, targets that could also dodge bullets at short ranges… extremely tricky now that I’ve seen someone do it.

Targets with backup like Caper Canine were even worse, mostly because I actually liked animals. There was also the fact that Leap Lamb may have spotted my position again, she has some uncanny senses well beyond my own.

At least they were heading in the same direction I was, I carefully stowed away my sniper rifle and packed up my homing briefcase to start climbing down the tower.

-Pom-

Someone slowed down the APC, but that didn’t mean our problems were over as it was still managing to keep up with us. That just meant that there was more than one group out here to get us. Dolly was the last to come up and the ladder looked a bit wobbly, so I held it place until she climbed past me.

I pulled on the ladder and it tore free in my hooves, I quickly let it go into the path of the APC and slowed immensely when the rusty ladder went up between two of its wheels.

“That was close.” Dolly, don’t say any more words, I beg of you. “Hah, how are they going to catch up to us now huh?!”

I looked up and towards the front of the train.

“Dolly, do we need to have another talk about tempting fate?” She looked at what I was looking at.

“Oh… sorry Pom, ugh, my aching body. Who knew deflecting bullets off my board would hurt so much and now we have to deal with them dropping guys onto the train!” As Dolly pointed out I could see several parachutes in the sky ahead of the train.

“Not the first time this has happened to me.” I’m now remembering jump pack assisted lizards and a transforming death train, hopefully nothing like that exists in this world.

“So do you need me to help you with that?” Dolly seemed excited to get into a scrap, I just looked at her bandage nose and tail and sighed.

“No, I have to deal with them. You, Bolt, Mittens and Rhino should get to safety, maybe figure out a way to deal with that APC thing.” I started making my way for the front. “Keep everyone safe Dolly!”

Today was just another very dangerous day to be me.

-Five minutes later, Dolly-

“Is it still behind us Rhino?” I asked as I tied the leashed around my skateboard strap which bound me to my board. I got the front door to the caboose opened and was now inside waiting to do something fun.

“Yes, and I think it’s catching up!” He shouted from above.

“Not for long it’s not!” I was inside the caboose and ready to pull the break on the car. “Hey Bolt, Mittens, you ready?!”

“Give us another second, almost there!” Bolt and Mittens were decoupling the car in front of me, once they finally did so the car started to drag a bit by a few bits that were still connected.

“Rhino, start moving your caboose if you want to live!” I watched as Rhino leapt from the top of the train car Mittens and Bolt were on. “If there’s one thing I’m really good at… it’s causing a mess!”

I would normally never be able to do something like this because of Dylan, AKA my brother Captain Safety Pants, unless some extreme circumstances warranted it. My current aim would be to cause a huge accident on purpose for a good reason.

The brake was innocently sitting next to me, I grinned madly as I grabbed it with both my paw while standing on my skateboard and pulled it quickly. This would cause the accident I was currently seeking.

Simply put, I’m the canine purveyor of destruction, madness and making huge messes, muwahaha!

The entire caboose, sad that there were so few of these left in the world according to one of my little brothers interested in trains that I halfway listened while bored out of my skull, ripped away and I was pulled out of it through the front door by the leash tied to me and my skateboard. With a quick turn of my board, I was grinding along the rail, doing more damage to it than my board.

I quickly pulled myself forward to the train and, as I popped off the trail onto the train with Bolt, Mittens and ‘that other guy’, the sound of a massive collision could be heard happening behind me.

Looking back I saw that the APC tried to veer out of the way, but it had been going too fast and the damaged wheels from that mysterious shooter weren’t doing it any favors. Both the Caboose and the APC created a huge mess of twisted metal as they collided, the end result left the APC on its side with a half destroyed caboose on top of it, it was no longer a problem thanks to me.

Heh… that APC now had a large butt sitting on its face!

Something flashed by drawing our attentions.

“Huh? A body in a bush?” It looks to me like Pom was busy up front.

“You guys find a safe behind me, I’m going to see how Pom is doing!” I slung my skateboard onto my back and started climbing up the ladder onto the top of the train.

-Shred Tread Merc Chuck ‘Wood the Woodchuck’-

“Holy crap, the target can move around like a freaking Xenomorph from those movies!” I was a very brave, cool and collected social individual and I was the very best mercenary on my team. “Game over man, game over!”

“Get a hold of yourself Chuck Wood.” Steve, I’ll have you know I had complete control of my faculties… despite the slight loss of bowels when Triflay got thrown over the side of the train. “So the target has some monkey skills.”

“I have a hold of myself and absolute control of my voices volume!” Sounded right to me at least, I was wonderful in letting everyone know I’m doing fine after managing to land on the moving train. Two of our guys missed and landed in trees, four of us made it and I don’t exactly think we were the lucky ones.

We were luckier than Triflay at least, she got dragged down by her leg and the target reached up with a long spearing leg to hit her helmet and slam the back of her head against the top of the train. This also subsequently bent Triflay’s spine to a painful looking degree from the blow, before being tossed off the side and the aggressor crawling away as we fired like an expert team of mercenaries we were.

That was before we could actually do anything or even get our bearings.

I’m pretty sure every single one our bullets hit and the fact that there was no blood was not the portents of our imminent demise or anything, because we were so accurate with targets that could move like lightning.

Our target quite literally scurried along the side of the train, now we know she could come at us from any direction and two of us were watching the sides. While I, Chuck Wood the woodchuck biped, bravely led the team while watching both the front and back.

“It’s too quiet…” Steve, you should never say those words.

“I have an idea, what if she comes at us from above?” I mean it’s not likely, but when it comes to these situations it’s always the least likely possibility that happens.

“To do that our target would have to be capable of leaping at least…” Steve was cut off because… oh god she’s on me, why were my bullets flying into the sky wildly?! Wait… where is my gun? Oh-no-no-no, I don’t want my face hugged, I don’t want to give birth to an alien!

Felt several sharp pains across my body… I’m so checking for alien eggs after this after a particularly painful hit to the kidneys. I soon felt sharp jerk on my arm and went weightless free as a bird… then my body slams into a tree with an impressive and godly amount of force that knocks it over.

For am I the king of cucumbers and my land is made of pimento rafts covered in the tomato sauce of winter’s blood feud with the guava fruit! Fine am perfectly I!

-Shred Tread’s ‘Steve the Marine Otter’ that has never actually been in the marines-

We could hardly react before Chuck was on his back screaming and taking several debilitating strikes to the body as the target rapidly trampled with all of her legs. His gun was kicked away and we couldn’t shoot as the target grabbed his arm and swung him around trying to hit us with him.

As we stumbled and ducked back out of range of the swung body, we had to watch as she launched him off the train into a tree and then she ran forward and dove between the cars as Frent fired a burst from his rifle after her.

“Damn it, Chuck got chucked, back to back Frent!” The only guy left went back to back with me and we held our guns at the ready sweeping around for where she would come from next. So to that end we were looking both upwards and downwards.

Why didn’t we get any information about the things our target was truly capable of? She looked innocent enough in the photo to take out when we took this contract! At most we knew she was good at running or else we wouldn’t have been hired for this horror show.

“Where is flimsy limbed ragdoll?” Frent was shivering or was that me shivering? Hard to tell when you’ve been rendered to the only two left on the active team and you just saw one of yours get taken out by a sky bounding sheep and your APC is reported as being destroyed by a caboose.

“Do you think she left?” I seriously doubted it, but one could seriously hope though. “I mean, we’re just standing here on top a train and nothing is… happening.”

“A bit afraid to move.” You weren’t the only one Frent, she couldn’t possible get both of us without us getting a bead on her. At least the train wasn’t moving fast enough that we’d fall off, but I was getting wary.

We heard the sound of a dog barking and immediately turned towards it with our guns, we didn’t see a dog and in the next second we didn’t see our guns when a pair of hooves kicked them out of hands.

Before I knew it the white blur was slammed me away from Fret with her shoulder, I stumble back and towards the edge. She circled her hooves around, bringing them together and thrusts them both into my chest sending me flying off the train in pain…

-Fret the Ferret-

I would just like to say, that I’m glad I’m good at kickboxing!

Raising my left arm as she swung, I blocked her right swing. She launched her rear left leg up and I caught it in my right hand and then I tried to move either limb to counter and found myself stuck in place. She had pressed the length of her left leg against both my legs and I now found I couldn’t move.

She pinned me in place?!

“Sure I cannot move, but neither can you!” I stated brusquely as she somehow glued us both in place. “So what are you going to do?”

“Woof-barka-arooo*!” What?! I turned my face into being slammed by the rear of a skateboard knocking my helmet off, the sheep sent her right rear leg up into my chin twice and I felt my jaw crack like glass before being let go.

I tried to regain my balance only for a skateboard slammed into my left heel throwing me even further off and the flat of the skateboard smashed me into the stomach.

-Pom-

“Dolly, I was hitting them off the train safely!” At least he looked like he landed okay after Dolly’s attack. "Well at least as safely as possible."

“Er… whoops, my bad.” Dolly looked slightly cowed and then she grinned. “Hey, at least nothing exploded violently right?”

An explosion went off somewhere behind us in the distance.

I slowly turned to look at her flatly.

“Eh heh…” She just grinned, used her skateboard to prop herself up to lick me, then skated off. "I'll go check on that!"

I sighed and followed after her.

-APC-

It was a sad state of affairs.

The rocket that had went up, eventually came back down on the wrecked APC.

They just lost all their supplies.

Author's Note

Translations for *: Bow-Whaka-Wow.

This story now has 25% more mook horror show thanks to this page.

127. Hard Die the Train.

-Earth, Eastern Kazakhstan, Shanty-

“I give up!” Mopsy shouted as we sat at a China Hippo and ate.

“At least it be good food.” I continued to eat my dumplings, it reminded me of Tigress, Po and the other kung fu warriors.

Wonder how Pom or Ocellus and Smolder are doing?

We were almost to the Kunlun Mountains and soon I would be helping Sly with bringing down Panda King.

I be getting in a lot of training with the team.

-On a train somewhere in the mountains, Pom-

So we were in the state of Colorado and I was still quite alert despite an hour passing, we could have jumped off and headed for New Mexico and then head straight west. Instead we were going straight west, then southwest out of Utah.

“Does it have to be like that?” Bolt was a good and healthy dog, but he wasn’t actually quite capable in a real fight yet.

“I don’t know what you said, so I’m going to guess. If they get into another fight their bruises and already rather prevalent injuries are just going to worsen, not that their mental states aren’t already at a deficiency from all the stress already. Dolly is not in too much of a condition to really be fighting, much less Pom. Pom is still our best option should something like that occur, but in a limited fashion given her current state.” Dormarch was just concentrating on our health and while he may be a bit too overbearing about it, he did have a very well thought out point. I was one more incident away from snapping, I really didn’t like getting violent and… I’m pretty sure I threw someone face first at a tree back there. “Unfortunately neither of them will relent on being the ones to take action, even if it is to their detriment. Pom still needs more than a week of constant rest for the heart problems she’s acquired alone, she’d need a vacation to properly recover and that’s not in the books as we all know, she probably should be on pain killers even now as we speak. Don’t even get me started on how long it would take to fix her mental issues, at least Dolly doesn’t seem to be letting her injuries get her down even if she’s not much better.”

“Oh, they are getting me down, I’m just hiding it well.” Dolly was a walking bruise by using her board to block bullets, that her board didn’t even have a scratch was amazing. “Who knew being a sidekick would hurt this much?”

“No probably about that, the stitches in my chest still ache quite badly.” I’m surprised I haven’t come down with something. “At least those mouse doctors did good work.”

“Also Dolly now has an injury around her midsection from where she used the leash to get off the caboose. Can you please refrain from doing any more stunts, I want the both of you to be healthy and whole as you can be.” Idly noting that Dormarch didn’t say happy. “For as long as you can... I don’t want to be alone in this world. Remember that you’re all that I have! That and an ability to connect to the internet connection where possible, which doesn’t quite fill the void like social interaction does.”

“I’m going to go up and look out for any more trouble, maybe get some fresh air.” I calmly passed by the number of animals that were being transported in this train car. “If I wasn’t paranoid before, then I wasn’t doing it right.”

“I’ll come with you Pom!” Dolly was still full of energy, even with her injuries she was still raring to go.

“No, I need to be alone for a bit, talk to your family some more.” Please don’t cut them out of your life for me Dolly Dalmatian.

“But… okay…” She could read my feelings as much as I read hers. “I’ll still come when you need help or me.”

I know.

I silently climbed and got out of the car to look around before sitting on the roof and laying down to just stare at the sky, a bit of wool hanging over my eyes and protecting them from the sun. Closing my eyes to let the tears spill from them, my body was a wreck and Dormarch was just being nice about that estimate of how long it would take me to recover.

Even doing what little I did to get the mercenaries off the train taxed me, I really didn’t have much more in the tank to keep going.

-Dolly-

“Hey ‘fam’, so mercenaries attacked us as we were getting on a train, we’re currently passing through Colorado.” The number of puppies gathering around were happy to see me at least and I gave them a wistful smile. “Had to take out an armored vehicle and everything, I basically have the rope burn from the leash to prove.”

I still loved them all, when was I going to tell them that I’m not staying in this world?

“Did you really meet Bolt?” One of the puppies asked with a wagging tail.

“Are you going to get an outro-giraffe for us?” I think the puppy was trying to say autograph, adorable.

“Hey Dolly, I’m trying to be the high energy dog with Dizzy!” Dee Dee popped up with Dizzy, my two little sisters looked to be doing well.

“You are positively covered in nasty bruises Dolly.” Way to go Dylan, bring them all down to earth and upset them why don’t you?

“Yeah, deflecting bullets isn’t something I thought I’d be doing unless I was a police dog.” I rolled my eyes and then chuckled dryly. “By the way you know how I modified my deck… well apparently I found out its bullet proof.”

“That’s, scientifically speaking, very confusing Dolly. None of the stuff you did to your board should have made it bullet proof.” Dawkins pushed Dylan to the side and looked at me, the brainy Dalmatian seemed to have the inventing spark back in him. “I try not to remember all the stuff you did to it, we did try to tell you not to overdo it and you did such an unsound thing anyway!”

“About as unsound as her deflecting bullets with it on a whim!” Dylan was being a worry wart, but he looked to be getting more sleep and was looking less tired than when I was around. What did that say about me? “How did she even know that her skateboard would do that? Those bullets could have gone through the board and hit you Dolly!”

“Hey, I may not be a geek or a science buff, but I recreated what I did to my board on my new helmet here.” I smacked my helmet twice with a paw for emphasis. “Apparently I accidentally discovered a formula for bullet proofing stuff, go figure.”

“Can you recall the formula exactly?” Dawkins was excited now, always willing to learn as much as teach.

“The only reason why I remember how to do it is because I cared enough about my skateboard to remember everything I put on it. Not that my formula will be greatly detailed as you would like, but at least I know the order I added the stuff in.” So I listed off a number of specific things and the order I used them in, Dawkins was writing it down while nodding. When I finished Dawkins ran off to test what I did and how it made my skateboard and new helmet feasibly bullet proof. “Aside from the recent mercenary problem, we also fought a sentai based team of demons. Only it turned out to be more boring than I thought that’d be, they kind of blew themselves up.”

“Bakuhatsu!” Daisuke stated loudly while throwing his paws up in the air, he was wearing a white headband with a red spot on it.

“Sure, whatever that is. Anyway, that’s Bolt the Super Dog, sorry if he’s not feeling talkative at the moment.” I looked over at him, Mittens and Rhino talking quietly while directing my family to look at Bolt. “He’s currently living with the fact that he found out he’s just an actor on a show, never been told he was before and actually believed all that stuff was actually happening. Of course now he has to live with happening for real with us!”

“Well that would explain all the more comical stuff that happened on that show.” Dylan shook his head while looking to the ceiling, he sighed and then looked at me. “Just be more careful Dolly.”

“Don’t worry bro, I’m getting a pretty good hang of this sidekick stuff!” My need to wave off his concern with a paw just made him more concerned. “Really, aside from the bruises and trauma, I’m feeling mostly okay. Probably need a week of rest, but everything is…”

A series of explosions rocked the train, a minute of silence later another series of explosions rocked it.

“Fine. Okay… I’ll have to call you back Dylan, apparently the mercenaries we met are attacking the train to get at us again.” Shouting this as I covered my ears having dropped Dormarch, one quick glance at Dylan’s concerned gaze made me quickly tap out a message to end the call. I passed Dormarch over to the shocked and worried trio of traveling animal friends we’re acquainted with. “Here hold onto Dormarch for us, I’m needed up top to see what’s going on. The train’s still moving so that’s a good thing at least.”

-Pom-

“Pom what’s going… on… oh holy dog why?!” Dolly was now seeing what the problem was as she popped up on the roof and was adjusting her helmet as she came towards me. “Okay, so the guys we dealt with previously weren’t exactly their A Team.”

Apparently five rocket launching vehicles were attacking the train, they were firing off another volley of rockets and the train was rocked with explosions. While they haven’t hit anything important yet, it was only a matter of time.

This cargo train thankfully didn’t have much on it that needed defending, aside from the animal transport car we were taking shelter in and the people on the engine at the front of the train.

“I don’t think my board can handle explosives Pom.” Energy and bullets sure Dolly, but even I would be mulched if hit directly by explosions that powerful and the rocket launching vehicles were angling another shot as they followed alongside the train on a road above us. “Ah, what do we do?!”

“You figure out how to evacuate every living animal off the animal car Dolly, I’ll try to safely throw off the conductor or anyone else on this train before it’s destroyed.” This was a cargo train so that was about three people at best near the front that I have to rescue. “The train is not going to be able to outrun those vehicles, if they haven’t caused an avalanche to stop the train then they might bring down a portion of the mountain on the train to do just that soon.”

I sent Dolly a feeling to get a move on and I started running across the top of the train cars and making small hops between them. Two cars later I manage to jump off the roof of a train car in time to get caught in the explosion and flung forward.

My chin stung as I landed on a train car two ahead of the one that just lost its roof, I sat up rubbing at my jaw and then looked down and paled. I was on a large cylindrical train car, one that had the labels flammable all over it.

-Shred Tread Mercenaries, rocket artillery unit-

The first two shots were to acquire a more accurate picture of where we were aiming, now we had the targeting data.

“We have the range now and we’ll never get a better opportunity than this, sending artillery targeting data for combined fire, on my mark!” A duck in one of the rocket artillery trucks stated. “Marked target!”

“Load and shoot!” Several voices responded, as the five trucks all fired rockets at the one of the seemingly incredible targets.

They recently learned that they were targeting Leap Lamb and Caper Canine, someone direly wanted them both dead.

Leap Lamb didn’t look so tough, she in fact was running for her life as five rockets arced for her and it was just their luck she was on one of the several flammable fuel trucks.

-Pom-

I was soon caught in a conflagration when the fifth one blew apart the car I was leaping from, I was sent high into the air end over end out of control.

My wool on fire, I quickly tightened my wool and twisted myself into glide mode and angled downward sharply. The flames on my body were quickly put out by the force my rolling impact with the wooden log car.

Once I manage to get standing, I started coughing as the car started becoming covered in smoke and my ears were ringing. My body was slightly burnt and looking at the wood logs I had slammed into… they were now on fire. Also I too was still on fire!

I quickly leapt up onto the roof of the next car and rolled wildly to put out the remaining flames on me, I sighed when my wool finally stopped burning. I looked back and saw the shambles of the neighboring wooden car I was blown over was catching fire too. Smoke was filling the sky, I had to hurry and safely get the conductor and whoever else is onboard off of this train!

This situation was getting nightmarish, as if I wasn’t living enough nightmares as it is!

-Shred Tread Mercenaries, rocket artillery unit-

“Blast it, she somehow survived that! Train rockets on new target point, sending data now…” All the rocket artillery vehicles reoriented their aim. “Marked target!”

“Load and shoot!” The rockets flew out at a high arc.

-Pom-

Those rockets weren’t going to hit the train, but it did look like they were going to… I had to move if I wanted to save those lives! Sorry, Dormarch, other people matter more than my health.

I inhaled and then exhaled quickly to burst along the tops of the roof, moving much slower than I had ever previously doing this. My body couldn’t be giving out on me, not now!

As the rockets blasted the mountainside above. I continued to push myself, even as I was slowing down.

Boulders started raining down towards the train.

No, no, no… I stopped and took a few gasping breathes.

Curling in on myself, I bunkered right where I was two cars from the engine.

-Dolly-

The train care disconnected and we watched as it slowed down behind us as the rest of the train sped up from the lost weight.

I ducked down as we were hit by several boulders doing a lot of damage to the train and slowing it slightly down, but we were still going.

“That still doesn’t solve how we’re going to get an entire cars worth of animals off the train safely when we can’t stop or we’ll be blown apart!” Mittens was freaking out, Bolt looked like he wanted to do something but had no direction and Rhino was just trying to make suggestions about things neither Bolt or I could actually do.

“Hold on… is it me or is the train speeding up?” The train was getting faster, much faster and I don’t think it was because of the cars we just let go to lighten the load on the train as it was pounded by boulders. “I don’t think they have that much ammunition left, I mean there’s got to be a limit to how many more times they can fire right? Not that we can really do much about them.”

-Pom-

I uncurled and looked behind me at the devastated portions of the train that were left behind. The animal car was still intact and Dolly was in distress for fairly obvious reasons, I moved forward two cars and froze.

“No…” I might be too late to save anyone concerning how a portion of the train engine was crushed under a boulder… also I think the train was now out of control and picking up speed.

I really am in too horrible a condition to really help anyone… much less fight, not that this was something I could actually deal with. Maybe they survived somehow? I’m currently not one for optimism, but if there’s a chance.

Needing to figure out if anyone survived what normally looked like a death sentence, I moved forward and hopped over to another car and finally I was on the crush engine portion.

I quickly climbed down and walked along the side of the engine trying to get a look inside. This train engine looked a lot more futuristic than the ones back on Equus.

There was smoke and fire spilling from within, I sighed and concentrated and raised my left hoof before slamming it down against the glass. I smashed a large hole in the window and hot smoke started pouring out of it.

“Is anyone in there?” I tried weakly, before getting loud. “Is there anyone still alive in there!”

“Yes…” A voice spoke out before coughing.

Not thinking twice, I began holding my breath as I dove into the smoke through the window.

The fire from the engine was raging, that was a little out of control and only a few small sections of the room were on fire. One glance around the room with the smoke filtering out of the hole I made in the glass I could see three people.

“Who needs the most help and what do I do?” I was having a mild panic attack, but I was the one currently standing and able to lend aid however they needed it.

“Extinguish… the small fires…” The grey rabbit animalistic started coughing as he weakly pointed at the red cylindrical object on the wall.

Quickly pulled the fire extinguisher off the wall and looked at the instructions, pulling the pin I got the nozzle in my other hoof and started to quickly spray down the small fires with the cold foamy substance. Tried not to get any of it on the three injured people, the back half of the train engine car was crushed by solid mass of stone so they had no way out other than through the hole in the window I made.

The boulder crushing the back half of the engine had been holding all the smoke in the engine car, I tried to keep low and not inhale too much of the smoke as it exited through the hole I made. How most of the glass stayed intact is beyond me, but I need to break it to get more of it soon to get better airflow into the room.

It was around this time that the two other injured parties became lucid and the train was rocked with several more explosions. I could still feel Dolly, but she seemed to be focusing on something else so I didn’t want to bother her.

I quickly used the butt of the extinguisher to smash several more windows in quick succession to clear the smoke out faster

“What…” The old horse biped started coughing, he was nearest to the boulder and one of his legs didn’t look so good. “Did we… enter a war zone Thumper?”

“Ask her Horace.” The rabbit, Thumper, pointed in my general direction as I continued to put out the smaller fires around.

“The train is under attack and it’s all my fault, the mercenaries after me really want me and my companion dead.” It should be obvious to them who I was.

“Aghhh…. my leg is broken.” The horse biped stated in agony. The smoke was almost clear so the others were coughing less. “Thumper can you check on Figaro and see why he isn’t moving, he’s breathing at least. Now as for you young lady. Thank you for saving our lives, however long that may last given the circumstance. Now weaken the rest of those flames, don’t want them spreading one bit.”

“Not long if any of those rockets hit the engine, they’d catch up to us not long after that.” I responded by dousing the remaining flames. “Aren’t you going to blame me for all of this?”

“Even if you had hopped off the train and got away from the train long before the attack, I think they were looking for excuses to use whatever artillery they have against the train. Some of the cargo is valuable stuff and I wouldn’t put it past mercenaries to just plain rob a train… heh a train robbery in this day and age. As exciting as that sounds I’m getting too old for this and my lung just took a horrible beating.” The horse biped, Horace I believe Thumper called him, was sitting up and looking at his mangled leg. “Horace Horsecollar, under better circumstances I would ask for your name, but I’ll go with Leap Lamb for now.”

“I think Figaro is in shock, he’s catatonic.” Thumper reported over the cat animalistic. “I’m not saying that to be funny either!”

“Just great, like we don’t have enough problems with the train.” Horace mumbled. “We’re picking up speed too… thankfully we don’t have too many sharp bends to go around, but at this speed the bridge ahead might break apart.”

“Did you just say bridge?!” I went over to the window and poked my head out and looked at it, several rockets struck the far end of the bridge ahead of us. “Yeah… definitely saw that coming…”

“Can you get us all to safety if the brakes are gone?” Horace asked as he hopped over to the controls.

“I can try.” I mentally showed Dolly the problem and we mentally traded general ideas. “Isn’t there some kind of law against using those things on a civilian transport?”

Hwachas in Huoshan were recreational use only these days, but it would be considered a crime to fire them on average citizens and not aggressors. They were mostly used for Fireworks displays, this is what I was likening the rocket artillery being fired at the train to.

“Yes, but at this point I don’t think they really care. They obviously have military contacts and if the military is ignoring all this hubbub, then no one is coming to help us!” As Horace was telling me this, he was at the controls and must have hit the brakes as the train lurched. “Yes, the brakes are still good! We’re not going to stop in time before the train goes onto the bridge though. We’ll be sitting ducks for those artillery pieces, but at least we’ll not immediately fall to our deaths. Thumper, carry Figaro and go for the back of the train, quickly now!”

Helping Thumper get Figaro onto the top of the train engine, I made sure he got Figaro over his shoulder and started to carefully carry him away as he climbed up the boulder.

“You too, come on!” I held out my hoof for Horace, the old guy jumped and I clung my wool to his limb and pulled him up onto the roof and over my back. "Hold on, this is going to get rough!"

He was heavy, but I still had some kick left in me to carry him as I hopped onto the boulder. My body was protesting my current actions as I leapt after Thumper who was several cars ahead on the quickly slowing train.

I really needed an uninterrupted vacation.

Author's Note

N/A

128. Breakaway Bridge.

-Pandora, Oleander-

“Why does your Boomacorn keep saying stuff like ‘Buck Yeah’ and ‘Horsepower’?” I had a new traveling companion by the name Buttina Stalliona, also yes she was still very much answering to Butt Stallion.

The Saddle Arabian sized living pony that resembled a crystal pony unicorn that had two horns glanced at me and Fred while levitating her Boomacorn shotgun around. Butt’s species were basically this worlds version of pony’s on Equus, otherwise known as the Pandoran Bicorn and they had evolved to survive all the crazy stuff that is going on in this world.

Apparently Buttina Stalliona’s species had a lot of untapped magic, which can be seen all around Pandora in a condensed form they called Elerium on this world. That they can even weaponized magic crystals here was interesting, but none of my business.

Despite having two horns, Butt’s people only had the same capacity of an average unicorn, from what I tested each horn had half the strength. It would allow her to multitask with her magic at least.

“Because it’s awesome like that. Also these guns are living entities that can breed to make more Boomacorns and they have something like the living souls of equinoids, ones that have watched one too many action movies in them. All Boomacorns are like this.” The gun was cocked and Butt fired at a large yellow robot that just turned the corner, the multiple elemental blasts overloaded its armor and it immediately fell over dead. The shotgun just shouted ‘radical’. “So can I come with you to help you find this… Pom was it? I tire of being a sideshow attraction and wish to see other worlds.”

“Please say yes Ollie, SHE’S TOTALLY AWESOME!” Of course Fred liked her, she was both nice and violent like me. That and we were already quick friends when I showed her how to levitate something.

“I AGREE THAT BUTTINA STALLIONA IS AWESOME!” The explosions guy named Torgue wouldn’t stop trying to sell us on explosive weapons being cooler than lasers. “I WISH TO WORSHIP YOU FHTNG IN THE NAME OF EXPLOSIONS!”

“Oh goody! I will absolutely accept you Torgue, go forth and make things blow up in awesome displays! My other commandments are make nice looking statues of Oleander and my awesome visage, got it?” I could see Fred’s eyes smiling. “NOW CARRY OUT MY ORDERS GRAND PRIEST OF BOOM! Also only use my real name when you need me to listen in, otherwise call me Fred.”

“I OBEY MASTER FRED, I WAS GOING TO DO ALL OF THAT ANYWAY!” Ugh, Torgue was absolutely going to create a cult devoted entirely to Fred, not like this planet didn’t have enough of those already.

“Now that you’re done chatting…” Smiling at Butt as she spoke and loaded shells into the Boomacorn, I held the End of Pain aloft in my magic. “Shall we get on with this robot wrecking rampage?”

“We shall!” We both charged around the corner into a horde of evil yellow robots.

It was about five thousand to four, unless Overlord Song Ender wanted to sit this one out. The odds were mostly in our favor.

-On a train approaching a destroyed bridge in Colorado, Dolly-

“Huh? But Pom! I… okay. I’ll do it.” I did tell Bolt, Mittens and Rhino that we had a magical bond that we could vaguely send ideas and image to each other, it wasn’t the same as actually talking and we couldn’t get the finer details across. The big picture was still enough for me to work with, she wanted these animals out of harm’s way right this instant. “We need to detach it now, get the animals off and start running. We’ll meet up with Pom once she’s done figuring out how to save the three up front and finds a way to safely shake the mercenaries, she also doesn’t want me to be seen or they might fire on us too.”

I really didn’t want to be blown up, also I had no better ideas on how to deal with those vehicles that were out of range, had the high ground on us and the guys inside were definitely armed with guns.

Once the car was detached by Bolt and Mittens, it slowed down and the rest of the train continued onwards to the bridge. I pulled the brakes and we waited until our train car came to a stop.

“Okay everyone, we can’t stay here, we need to move it!” I hopped up onto a horses back and motioned at the sliding door that wasn’t facing the mercenaries.

Hopefully they weren’t watching this car specifically after we released it.

Once outside I got the idea that Pom was in trouble and looked to see there were fires preventing her from getting off the bridge with the people she was with.

I had no choice but to leave that situation to Pom.

-Pom-

“Uh… what do we do?!” Thumper was panicking and the shell shocked cat he had over his shoulder shivered, still aware enough to know that he should be afraid despite being in shock.

We were already over the bridge and I really doubted I could float everyone to safety, too much weight for all of them, I could manage maybe Thumper or Figaro alone as animalistic tended to lighter in weight. Floating down with a full grown biped like Horace was going to be impossible.

I gave it some thought and turned to the vehicles lining up in the distance.

“Well I have an idea, but it’s going to rely on the fact that the mercenaries are relying on some false notions about me.” I received looks from Horace and Thumper, Figaro was a bit blank even if he was still breathing.

“What false notions?” Horace asked while watching the vehicles adjust their next shot in our direction.

“That I’m a hero and I would never abandon people who need help.” I really wouldn’t abandon someone who needs my help, these three currently did and saving them was going to be an impossible task unless this bridge was built sturdy enough. If the train could absorb some of the damage then maybe…

“You wouldn’t still be here trying to help us if you weren’t a hero.” Horace coughed a bit more. “Ugh my lungs, I think I inhaled too much smoke.”

“Common misconception, a hero seeks to do these kinds of things on purpose. I’m doing it only because I’m incidentally present and I don’t actually go out of my way to look for people to help. I just find them trying to get by.” Still wasn’t going to leave them on a bridge that’s about to be collapsed, I’m fairly sure they knew this or I would be gliding away from here already. “I’m definitely not the hero in this situation, because I’m basically the root cause of it and all the damage they’ve done to the train and this bridge. Damage of which I’m…”

“So you’re a hero that’s being hunted and beaten down until nothing is left and you still stop to help people even in as crazy a situation as this? These guys still seem like they were going to rob my train regardless of whether you were on it or not. So we would probably be dead from smoke inhalation if you hadn’t shown up, you were just likely an excuse for them to even try pulling this.” Horace still coughed and wheezed, but he was smiling at me in a friendly manner. “You didn’t have to come help us and you did so anyway. Besides, you’re not the one who gets to decide whether or not you’re a hero! It’s the people you meet and the impression you leave on them that will do all the talking, I’d say you’d definitely would have left us for dead already if you didn’t think you can manage to somehow save all three of us from this.”

“I’m also the one that caused the log cars to catch fire… got caught in two separate blasts getting here and it set my wool on fire.” The looks I received from Thumper and Horace were amazement.

“You survived being near the impact of two artillery rockets?!” Wasn’t about to tell Horace that it was my wool that handled most of the issues with survival, but my body was still hurt by the concussive shockwave both times and even before that my body was failing me when the boulders started falling onto the train. “Pardon my French, but what in this beloved world of ours are you made of?!”

I probably resembled the fumes that I barely had in me to think this through.

“Flesh and blood, same as any of you three... I think I have an idea of how to get the mercenaries to think they killed us while making sure none of us die.” While I couldn’t float down, there was another way. “I was blinded by the explosions both times I got caught up in them… so I have to ask and I know this might be a loaded question given the circumstances, but can you guys find it in your hearts to trust me?”

-Shred Tread Mercenaries, Rocket Artillery Unit-

Through a pair of Binoculars they could see they had Leap Lamb trapped on the bridge and she looked like she wasn’t going to leave the civilians and save herself, well she was welcome to die with them.

“Marked target!” The voice called out as all five rocket artillery readjusted a second time.

“Load and shoot!” Several voices called out, Leap Lamb looked up at the arcing rockets coming down on her and the train.

She wrapped her hooves around the three people with her and closed her eyes, not willing to leave them. Like sentiments like that will save her or the people she’s with, they were acceptable casualties.

Some respect had to be given to the supposed super hero though, one that looked both badly disheveled and burnt, since she was willing to go down with them instead of saving her own butt.

The binoculars fell as the rockets neared and the bloom of five explosions tore apart that section of the train leaving no chance to have missed Leap Lamb unless she leapt to her death.

Aside from the bridge remaining standing due to the train taking the brunt of the rockets, there was no way that Leap Lamb could have survived that.

So we’ll call it a confirmed kill even if we can’t find the body.

“Call it in boys, we have a train to ransack and a bonus for bagging that bleating heart!” Several cheers rang out. “Now let’s see if we can find Caper Canine anywhere nearby and make it a twofer, she was not confirmed at the site of the blasts and who knows what a dog like her can do!”

-A fair distance away, Dolly-

The bridge didn’t immediately collapse, but I felt Pom struggling when it started to. We were in a forest a distance away from a few portions of the bridge catching fire and another fuel car going up in flames.

Thankfully Pom was nowhere near there when that happened, but she wasn’t in the woods with us yet.

“There is no way she survived that!” Mittens stated wide eyed with her worried paws on the side of her face. “Also my poor agonized ears!”

“Not the only one Mitten… I hope I don’t go deaf from all this, but she’s still alive!” I confirmed Pom was among the living, but she was going to need a good long rest after this. “Hey big guy, do you think you and your friends can carry my friends to the nearest bit of civilization?!”

“Sure, you helped us, so it’s only fair we return the favor!” The stallion stated as he watched the bridge start collapsing even more. “Can we wait until my ears stop ringing?! It would help with my balance when carrying people!”

“What’s your name?!” I asked.

“Spirit and my mate over here is Rain, I’m actually kind of glad that this happened!” The stallion stated as he looked towards the bridge. “Always did want to run free, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be heartless in leaving your friends behind!”

Okay, we had some animals that can carry our various weights, good to know.

-Pom-

I was sweating as I continued to climb down the structure, the weight of three people and my bag full of stuff pressing against me.

Right, I had all the food for Dolly and our traveling companions. If what I just did hadn’t worked, then they could have starved to death. Not that I would have much to worry about if I were dead. I’m glad my bag wasn’t damaged.

“Are you okay Leap Lamb?” Thumper asked from my back.

Horace was straddling me and making sure both Thumper and Figaro were staying secure to my back.

“No.” I stated through my gritted teeth as I slowly climbed down the support structure of the bridge with it slowly breaking apart above us.

How long did we have to make it to the bottom? Swimming or wading through the water beneath the bridge was going to be as much a challenge as getting away from it collapsing on top of us. Neither Horace nor the cat named Figaro were capable, at least Thumper might be strong enough to swim with Figaro on his back.

Thankfully the river below us was slow flowing at least, but getting through it with everyone safely was going to be a bit of a challenge.

“Don’t bother her too much thumper, let her concentrate on however she’s doing this.” Stated Horace, I would thank him if I wasn’t doing as he said and concentrating on making sure they weren’t falling to their deaths.

I was quite certain I could survive a fall from this height with sure certainty, but I still had a healthy respect for gravity and the injuries it can cause.

I continued to move my hooves one after the other in a downwards motion, making sure not to lose my grip as I placed them down.

Hoped that the mercenaries bought us dying and were watching the upper portions of the bridge more closely than where we currently were, at least we were out of their direct view for the moment. We could be spotted trying to swim for shore.

If these guys were as greedy as Horace thinks they are then they would go after the stuff on the train, we had to be gone by the time they came to investigate things.

Halfway down it now.

“Ugh…” A rock hit me in the face and I lost grip on three of my hooves, thankfully Horace prevented Thumper from Screaming by covering his mouth and I carefully got my hooves back on the structure.

“We don’t want to give away that we avoided the rockets Thumper. Can you go faster?” Horace sounded hoarse. “The bridge is going to come down on us.”

The upper portions of the bridge were slowly collapsing. At least the lower portions seemed sturdier, but that wasn’t going to help much if the upper portions fell on us while we were trying to swim away.

“Do you think you three could survive a fall from this height if I take the impact with the water?” I asked as I continued to maneuver my hooves in a pattern of slow methodical downwards movement as I stared up at the bridge and could see it begin to start falling downwards.

“Possibly, but get as low as you can before jumping when necessary.” Horace had a decent grasp of our situation. Thumper was panicking and whimpering, clutching to all of us. “It’ll give us better chances if we aren’t immediately crushed.”

I felt Dolly send me a mental ping and I quickly got feel of her location, I looked over my shoulder to see the Dalmatian waving her skateboard over her head on the nearby shore with some friendly looking animals as I continued my descent.

It looks like we had some help thanks to Dolly, all we had to do was get to them.

A large chunk of the bridge above started falling at us and I quickly threw myself to the right while letting go of all my hooves. I reached out with my left hoof and grappled the structure to use our falling momentum to swing around the corner.

“Oof.” My body hit the support structure roughly and the debris slammed by us and into the water below.

Actually that was a good thing that just happened, that chunk of bridge just created a platform for us to reorient ourselves on at the base of the support structure.

Now if only it extended in the direction we needed to swim in, beggars couldn’t be choosers though.

“You okay?” Horace asked with a whisper, he was shivering with fright at my recent maneuver.

“I’ll… be okay… when I can finally get some rest after all of this.” I grunted out and started climbing down again, while turning my wary gaze upwards.

Large sections of the bridge started to fall, but thankfully those pieces weren’t falling near us. Once I got everyone safely onto the chunk that fell past us earlier.

I looked to Thumper the innocent looking animalistic rabbit.

“I can get Horace across, but can you get uh… Fig... across?” I had forgotten the animalistic cat’s name already. “We'll swim right besides each other Thumper.”

“I think I can do it, Figaro is not too heavy.” He coughed a bit, but Thumper still looked okay.

“This may exacerbate you’re broken leg Horace.” I turned to the biped horse on my back.

“I can always get to a hospital afterwards, right now we need to avoid being crushed.” With how broken his leg looked I’m surprised he managed to keep what should be immense pain out of his voice, this old guy was made of some stern stuff. “Figaro is not going to be a bother with water before you ask. He has a rather lovely girlfriend, some aquatic animalistic called Cleo. You’d likely never see a weirder pair than them.”

“Trying to get your mind off how painful this will be when we get into the water huh?” Not receiving a response, I proceeded to dip a hoof into the water to get an idea of how deep it was. At least deep enough that I couldn’t wade through it. I carefully reoriented Horace on my back and looked to Thumper with Figaro over his Shoulder. “Keep his head out of the water when we start swimming.”

Once I slipped into the water, I shivered, feeling like I had run a marathon and my body giving me an agonized ache. Still I kicked my hooves and started swimming, Horace aided with his hands and tried not to move his legs.

Thumper was surprisingly doing a good job and staying right next to me. Looking around in the water we didn’t see any problems as we made our way to shore to where Dolly was waiting nearby. I quickly helped Horace drape himself over the back of the stallion and helped Thumper, with Figaro, up onto the mare.

The stallion motioned to me and Dolly to hop on, we quickly made it to the nearby forest where the rest of the animals were waiting.

“Horace, do you or Thumper know the area or where the nearest town is?” I still had some worries that someone was still tracking us through Dormarch even if he had disabled his map function.

“No.” Thumper’s ears wilted.

“Bolt, pass me Dormarch.” Just because I had worries didn’t mean I wasn’t going to ask for help.

Taking up Dormarch from a disturbingly quiet Bolt who was looking at the bridge as it completely collapsed into the river.

I looked at the Dalmatian with fish tails on the screen playing that minesweeper game again, he looked to be covered in soot from numerous explosions.

I noted he was playing it on the easiest setting and he was still failing horribly despite how simple the game sounded from what was explained to me about it. He looked up at me from his current game.

“Are you alright, is everything okay?” Dormarch looked at me and I could tell he was getting a scan of me. “You really need rest Pom and to get away from any more stressful situations for at least twenty four hours, also you need to clean your wool of all the blast and burn marks. I’m not even sure I want to know how close you were to those explosions…”

“We managed to get away Dormarch, but we’re a bit lost. We were on that train for an hour or two, now calculate our likeliest location, the closest town to us and how long it would take us to get there if we were to walk there slowly.” Because I didn’t feel like I could do any running today.

“Working on it… are we still on the east side of the river?” We didn’t cross it and we swam to the side the train approached from so…

“We’re east of the river and north of the tracks.” I answered confidently.

“Ten minutes, to the north away from the bridge. Not a large town, but it should do for our needs of getting hospitalization for the injured horse biped. He seems to be in immense pain, but he hides it well and the water isn’t doing much to aid in his current state.” Dormarch seemed relieved to see me smile at him despite how tired I was. “Aside from Dolly, all the other animals seems to be highly stressed, but will otherwise be okay. We will all be okay provided you managed to keep those mercenaries from following you.”

“What about the cat animalistic.” I pointed Dormarch at Figaro.

“Physically he’s fine, aside from a mild smoke inhalation issues. Psychologically… yeah, I don’t know anything about him.” Well that was a fine kettle of fish Dormarch. “Should we really be sitting here talking, that horse biped needs a hospital! Also does anyone find it a little awkward that he's riding a horse?”

-Seven minutes and fifty seconds later-

We made good time, I helped Thumper get Horace and Figaro to the hospital before going my own way wishing them luck.

The animals that followed us here chose what to do with themselves, both Spirit and Rain happily went off on their own to find greener pastures together.

“Good luck to you too Pom, thanks for saving us!” Thumper was happy that Figaro and Horace were going to be okay, he was a brave young rabbit and could certainly handle things from here.

We needed a hotel and I was going to take a long thirty minute hot shower and then sleep for the next twelve hours afterwards, Dolly was honestly okay with taking care of the others.

-The next day, morning, outside the hotel-

“So where are we going to next?” Dolly asked me as we wandered down the street. Bolt, Mittens and Rhino were still a bit shaken up by the harrowing mercenary attack.

“Well I’ve talked with Dormarch. If we want to make it to Hollywood in a timely manner, then we’ll need to pass through Mesa City Vegas in Utah. From there it can take about six hours to get to Hollywood via quiet hitchhiking.” They recently opened a Waffle World in Mesa City and I took a liking to the restaurant chain for having decent food. “Since we’ve ditched the mercenaries, and so as long as I don’t have to do anything too big, we will be able to keep a relatively quiet lifestyle over the course of the next day.”

Author's Note

Figaro + Cleo + possible prior issues with smoke = 'where Figaro comes from'.

129. Peaceful Prance Dance.

-Earth, Home Transport Truck, Pom-

So we managed to sneak onboard a truck heading our way that was transporting a home, Bolt was sticking his head out the window letting his tongue flap in the wind. Mittens was still helping him with being a normal dog. Rhino was still excited to be traveling with all of us, according to both Bolt and Dolly at least, and was somehow keeping up a peppy attitude despite the danger traveling with us put him in.

It did kind of take a while to convince the hamster that heroes couldn’t always save the day, I certainly couldn’t as I’ve had a number of failures up to this point. Like being completely incapable of saving the train for instance.

Dolly was on her back with her paws behind her head snoozing away and as for me, I couldn’t get any more sleep and I was resting idly watching the road signs to make sure we didn’t miss a stop near Mesa City so we could start heading south.

We were all fairly upset that the mercenaries were going to get away with attacking the train, but then what could we really do against them? A good hot shower and twelve hours of sleep did me some good, but I was still needed rest after that.

None of us had blown out ear drums, my wool was already good for dampening loud noises from damaging my hearing and the hearing of my traveling companions was recovering pretty well.

Thinking about something important, I pulled the PET out and got Dormarch’s attention.

“Yes Pom?” Dormarch stated immediately, he seemed to be scanning about and seemed to be relieved we were not in the middle of another deadly situation. It was only after confirming things were currently okay that he started wagging his three tails.

“Hey Dormarch, have you given it some thought on why anyone would be after you specifically?” I’m still concerned about that, because these last mercenaries didn’t seem to care about collateral damage and were actively targeting me with deadly force.

“I could have hidden data in my systems that someone could want that I might not have access to, however that likelihood is suspect and I can’t give you an accurate percentage on what’s what. My other thoughts are my commercial applications, but Kahn industries would have a patent on my design or creation. There’s also the prototype factor that I might be more powerful than the other AI they will inevitably create for commercial sales. If it was for my personality, I would certainly be flattered if it wasn’t completely at your detriment with you protecting me Pom.” Would trust Dormarch with my life, it was all worth it to see him smile a little bit and have a nice conversation. “Was that all?”

“Call Dolly’s family, I want to tell them that things are okay.” The train certainly wasn’t as it made the news as having been ransacked, well the parts of it that weren’t blown up at least.

Hopefully Horace and Thumper would keep a lid on my survival for a little while longer, at least long enough that the mercenaries can’t track us down. Don’t know about Figaro, but Domarch said he was physically fine aside from the smoke inhalation.

-Utah, Mesa City, Waffle World-

Dylan was quite understandably stressed out about his step sister being in the middle of all of my problems. I was right there with him as I didn’t like putting anyone in danger, much less myself, but these things tended to happen with alarmingly high regularity around me.

Dolly has proven herself on more than one occasion, only it wasn’t in being able to handle a fight. I still highly appreciated her efforts in supporting me all the same. That she was a viable target to the mercenaries when we were getting on the train was worrying that somebody definitely had it out for us.

The mercenaries didn’t seem to care much about Dormarch, the last ones were following me because of him. So who sent them after us? They had devastating weaponry, but I guess I could understand why they would use it on me given I have survived some pretty ridiculous things.

I could probably pass myself off as living punching bag to make a living at this rate.

Also Dolly and I did take out their APC and guys, because I’m only assuming those rocket launching vehicles were related to the mercenaries that jumped us getting onto the train.

I placed the last bit of waffle in my mouth and savored that very last strawberry flavored bite, wasn’t going to see another Waffle World until Hollywood. I needed this bit of peace and normalcy.

I paid for my food, tipped the waitress and went outside to see my companions had finished eating. I went up to them. Only to be suddenly blindsided by a hug that had Dolly immediately up and barking at the person who was cuddling up against me.

Dolly stopped when she realized the person wasn’t a threat, she also returned her skateboard to her back.

“Mopsy your back! Wait… something is off… no dress, no cute sexy talk, wearing a bell… and going au natural with a different wool style?” The person holding me even sniffed me, I think I was being accosted by a weird biped. She finally looked me in the eyes and I looked into hers. “Whoops, I think I might have mistaken you for someone else… my name is Pamela Possum, you can call me 'Miss Possum' sugar. Give me some time and I will absolutely to introduce you to Sandra and Rita. You look so much like… her… do you by any chance know a goat named Shanty?”

“How much rum did she drink?” I stated flatly with an equally flat look in my eyes as Dolly, Bolt, Mittens and Rhino came up to us.

I had quickly profiled her, she looked to be friendly possum with a lot of loose relationships and had access to most known forms of alcohol. Given that Pamela just dropped Shanty’s name, I had good idea as to what my piratical goat had gotten into.

“Yep, no doubt that that confirms it. When she said Mopsy looked like you… she was severely understating the resemblance by quite a lot. You’re Shanty’s caretaker Pom I take it?” Nodding to Pamela’s question she continued. “She somehow snuck four bottles out after the initial one we gave her, apparently I shouldn’t have confirmed that we had rum in stock. That goat is apparently an addict for the stuff.”

She was a Possum with blonde hair and spherical black nose, she was wearing what looked like a red dress version of a one piece bathing suit and leg stockings. Despite what inklings I had as to her actual job, she actually smelled kind of nice.

“Don’t be upset when I say this, but you actually smell clean.” Really should use my nose more often, since I can use it to smell things like a canine can, I might actually pick up some scents I will recognize as being threats to us. “Also do you need me to pay for the lost bottles?”

With the grin I was getting from Pamela, my words didn’t offend in the slightest.

“No worries sugar lamb, Shanty stole from under our noses fair and square. Now if it was money that she stole, then that’d be a different story entirely.” Well that was nice to know Pamela. “Mopsy is looking out for Shanty until she can get her back to you, you would not believe the stories I’ve been hearing about their travels. Fighting a voodoo gators minions, surviving an airplane hijacking and possibly finding out a conspiracy surrounding a chain of hippo themed restaurants. It’s like she’s got a Chinese curse with living in interesting times.”

“Ugh, that’s a curse I wish I didn’t have!” At least knowing that my favorite little goat was in good hooves was enough for me to remain calm… mostly. That and I’d soon be seeing to Ocellus and Smolder personally as a bonus to my sanity.

“So who are these little cuties standing around… wait… is that Bolt the super dog?!” She seemed to brighten upon noticing Bolt and he whined a bit and tried to back up behind Mittens. “How did he end up here? I heard that he was lost and people are looking all over for him!”

“I met him in New York. I’m taking him back to Hollywood, because there’s one person he really wants to be with named Penny.” I patted Bolt on the head and he whined a bit. “If that can’t happen, then he at least wants his carrot toy. He’s since learned that he was an actor in his show, where he thought all of the things were happening to him were real. It’s been kind of a shock for him to find out he doesn’t actually have super powers.”

“Can I still get his autograph, please?” Pamela wasn’t even questioning how I knew what Bolt wanted to do in the slightest.

“What do you say Bolt?” After a moment of mulling it over.

“I really don’t know how to give one, but I wouldn’t mind doing so.” Bolt eventually answered while still looking wary of having another super fan like Rhino. He’s actually friends with Rhino, but he was still getting used to life outside of this Hollywood place.

“He’s open to the idea, but he doesn’t know how to give one.” Not even a hint of curiosity as to how I was talking for Bolt? “That and as I’ve said, he wasn’t exactly raised knowing how to be a normal dog.”

“Doesn’t matter, I’m still a fan of Bolt, he’s such a good boy. I’m sure his coworker Penny will be happy to hear he’s coming back to her.” Pamela crouched down and started giving Bolt some affectionate petting. Once she was done making Bolt feel embarrassed about the affection he was receiving, she stood up and motioned to us. “Come on, all of you, I’ll show you where Mopsy works! Maybe even give my coworkers a heart attack at seeing you.”

-The Prance Dance-

The place was well maintained and apparently run by a mostly female crew, it was certainly a fancy place for dancing, food and socializing. The other side of things would have to be a side business for the workers here to choose to partake in or not, apparently Mopsy didn’t mind casually getting around.

“Hey Sandra, guess who I found!” Pamela shouted, Sandra took one look at me and freaked out, after a few more glances she eased up a little.

“Give me a heart attack why don’t you, I seriously thought that was Mopsy and we know she’s currently in China!” Sandra seemed to be part mouse and part rat biped, sharing a mildly short stature with Miss Possum.

“Girls, what’s got you in a, holy… cheese!” The biped cat stated before she flinched at the sight of me. She narrowed her eyes at me. “Wait… that’s not Muttoncoddle, give a girl a heart attack why don’t you! Names Rita Silversong, who are you?”

“Apparently Mopsy’s long lost sister.” My bored tone drew interest. “I hear a gang of thieves has got my goat.”

“Hah, good one!” Rita let out a chuckle.

“What’s a good one Rita?” A dog biped came over. He was a wide and chunky, but had fairly muscular under his fat.

“Just hanging with my friends Runt, also I doubt you’d really understand.” Rita seems to be a friendly individual if a bit sarcastic sounding. “Shanty’s in good company, Mopsy is making sure of it and she’s updating us on her wild adventures while I’m stuck here being a lounge singer for what is an admittedly popular club. I even live here and can vouch for Mopsy’s character, I help with the nearby orphanage as well. We’re all good people here despite some of the things we may or may not be doing to get by.”

“Isn’t Mopsy right here though?” Runt said in a confused tone as he pointed at me.

“My friend here is not the brightest or even sharpest crayon in the box.” Rita pretended speak quietly to us. “He still doesn’t understand that I’m a cat."

“Where’s the cat, I’ll get them and shoo them off out of The Prance Dance with a boot to their rear, I’ll show them why I’m one of the best people to protect this place from them!” Runt sounded fairly aggressive at the mention of the word and Mittens looked fairly frightened.

Runt never once took notice of Mittens and it was clearly confusing my group since he seems to despise cats.

“Runt, I’m… a… cat.” Rita stated slowly while enunciating every word clearly.

“Silly Rita, you’re not a cat you’re a dog like me!” Runt said pleasantly.

Rita held out her right hand at Runt while shrugging.

“Possible choice for world’s biggest idiot, exhibit A. Why am I attracted to him again?” Rita muttered under her breath while dragging her left hand over her face. “Oh right, because he’s cute, protective and a genuinely nice guy in a world full of jerks that treats us Prance Dance workers with respect.”

“Yes, that is the weirdest case of anger we’ve ever seen.” Pamela actually whispered to us. “Runt hates cats, but apparently doesn’t even know what they look like. Nobody is quite sure how his brain functions, but he’s protected us a number of times and at least he can recognize when someone is bothering us too much.”

“Heh, that’s pretty amazing, now if only he wasn’t a biped that made us actual dogs look bad.” Dolly commented idly at my side. “Would you say he makes me look smarter by comparison Pom?”

I gave Dolly a so-so gesture and she glared at me for it, I just grinned back at her.

“Call from 101 Dalmatian Street.” Dormarch announced, I moved off to the side as my animal companions, other than Dolly, took up relaxing in a booth.

Nodding to Dormarch to take the call, Spot the chicken appeared on the screen along with Dawkins.

“Hello Pom, it was nice to hear that you were in good health, but I wish to tell Dolly something about her formula. It shouldn’t work the way that it does, it makes no scientific sense!” Dawkins saw my confusion and continued. “Her formula that she has applied to her skateboard and her newest helmet shouldn’t even be capable of taking bullets.”

“That is to say, under normal circumstances it wouldn’t be capable of taking bullets if I hadn’t identified something magical happening in the process of applying it to something.” Spot here motioned to a robot arm from a mechanical mandrill posed in an upwards position and in the form of a fist. The object it would hit looked to be a picture frame on a stool. “It might be incidentally performed alchemy. I’m not really great at the subject, since I only dabble in magic, but I can at least recognize it when I see. Dawkins if you will show them what you wanted to.”

Dawkins Dalmatian, the brainy pup care assistant, nodded to Spot and held up a remote control device with a large button on it. He pressed it and the mechanical arm smashed itself against the picture frame. The frame slammed into the wall and was undamaged, the wall it impaled was not as lucky.

“Perhaps I should have accounted for that, oh mom and Doug are going to be so angry…” Dawkins wilted while covering his face.

“Um… quick question, does any of those chemicals perhaps have any electrum in them?” I at least knew some of the magical properties of electrum.

“Not in any noticeable amounts, why?” Spot seemed curious and was caressing her beak in thought.

“Electrum tends to have an effect when magical energy is put into it, said effect makes thing nearly impossible to damage as long as there’s a magical charge.” I wish I had an expert on magic like Ocellus at the moment. “If it’s mixing with any other magically reactive stuff, it could be helping create the effect that makes Dolly’s board nearly unbreakable after a certain amount of time… as well as her helmet now come to think of it. However the effect seems to need some time to get started as Dolly’s board noticeably has some minor damage to it from when she first started using it and it hasn’t been damaged since except for possibly the wheels or axels.”

“Can confirm, the wheels and axels are the only thing about my board that have take damage now since I’ve had it.” Dolly looked at her skateboard with mystified eyes and hugged it to herself.

“The only thing that has electrum in it would be… huh wood varnish. Apparently the stuff used to make it happen to have absorbed some bits of electrum into it. How peculiar.” Dawkins looked a bit more curious as he turned to Spot. “Say… is alchemy a magical science Spot?”

“Yes, but you will have to find someone else to teach it to you, because I certainly can’t. I know some things, but I don’t know everything!” Spot shook her head while rolling her eyes, she turned back to me and Dolly. “Sorry for taking up your time with this, I’ve got to get back training Bark Brigade cadets. Some of them are doing promising enough to maybe learn a few cantrips from me. Heh, this street is about to get more lively with colorful lights and strange noises.”

“No problem Spot.” The magical chicken was a rather nice conversationalist and waved at me as she left the screen.

“Tell the ‘fam’ that I’m happy you’re all doing okay for me Dawkins!” Dolly waved at the screen and Dawkins smiled while waving back. “Oh and tell Dylan to stop being so uptight, I’m learning a lot from Pom. Next time you see me in a scrap, I’ll show you what I can really do!”

“That’s quite worrying, but okay Dolly.” Dawkins then cut the call.

“So… my skateboard and helmet are actually magically enhance?” Dolly is excited to hear that. “That’s so totally awesome, makes me almost want to take back every nasty thing I ever said about Poodle Woof being boring! Well aside from the digital game, I’m okay with playing that with Dormarch.”

“Well you’re going to need to keep your helmet on you at all times for it to get to the level your Skateboard is at when it comes to being hard to damage.” I made my way back over to our traveling companions getting affection from the three Prance Dance workers who apparently knew Shanty. “So I know this is a bit much to ask, but can we stay the night? We’ll be on our way to Hollywood to see if Bolt can get some closure when we arrive.”

“And Mr. Carrot.” Bolt muttered longingly.

“Yes… ‘WE’ will. I’ll drive you down there personally, provided Bolt will give me that autograph.” Pamela stated with a no nonsense tone. “I need to take a vacation for a few days anyway. You can stick around for dinner, our friend Penelope Pricks makes some good chili-dogs and knows how to make them vegetarian too.”

“Will anyone else confuse me for this Mopsy?” It had to be asked as I wasn’t as open to the idea of casual sex for money.

“Most certainly, but we’ll set them straight, right Rita?” Sandra looked up to Rita.

“Of course, nothing wrong with helping out an otherworldly alien that looks a lot like one of the best dancers I’ll ever know.” Rita motioned to the animals with me. “While her friends can’t be out and about during The Prance Dance’s operational hours, we can certainly house them all for the night. Eh… they don’t drink from the toilet do they?”

“No, I made sure of that.” I glanced at Mittens, the cat looked a bit sheepish that she tried to teach Bolt about them.

Dolly and I explained to her why it was a bad idea. It was a good thing that, unlike Dolly, Bolt actually did understand and know exactly what toilets were used for.

Rhino took it in stride, but we did have to explain that alien tentacles monsters weren't commonly found in toilets.

“Okay, that’s definitely good. Sit back, relax and enjoy the hospitality of our humble home.” We would do just that Rita, because I needed to heal from my recent injuries and I’ve been way too stressed.

-Several hours later, before opening-

“So being called Leap Lamb wasn’t even your idea?” No Sandra, but it’s turned out okay so far. “I’m sure Dolly wasn’t happy with being Caper Canine.”

“She wasn’t, but she has come to accept it.” When I said it this time, Dolly actually seemed proud of the sidekick name.

I gave Dolly a curious look.

“Hey, this canine causes capers, might as well own it!” At least Dolly didn’t mind being called Caper Canine anymore.

“You know it’s interesting that you can talk to animals.” Sandra finally stated.

“Finally, someone is going to ask about it.” I muttered.

“Nope, not going to ask, just acknowledging that you have a way with them… the dogs at least.” Really Sandra?

“You don’t even know the half of it.” I bark and yipped out, which spooked Mittens and Bolt a bit because this is the first time they’ve actually really listened to me speak dog. Rhino was fascinated and excitable like usual. Hasn’t really come up honestly.

“Neat.” Sandra continued on like things were completely normal. “Also, can I just say that your barking was adorable even if I can’t understand a word of it?”

“Right there with you sister!” Dolly barked out even if Sandra couldn’t understand her.

“Are all of you this unflappable all the time?” Because my word that was an underwhelming reaction.

“We’ve seen some pretty weird stuff, Mospy is seeing even weirder stuff and Shanty was one of the less weird people we’ve ever played host to.” Sandra was continuing to be laid back. “Still, not really going bother unless it’s life or death. You seem a bit high strung, learn to relax more Pom. Hey Prick! Are the vegetarian dogs done yet?!”

“Almost.” The pink hedgehog biped Penelope answered, she was apparently their favorite bartender and snack maker.

“See, we’re all alright here, she didn’t even bat an eye at her nickname.” Sandra stated with a casualness that left me baffled.

“Should you really be saying stuff like that to the person who’s making your food?” It seemed a little hurtful to me.

“Well my last name is Pricks.” Stated Penelope with a smile. “And I’m constantly surrounded by them!”

“Oh, ha, ha.” Rita stated in an annoyed tone. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to practice my singing.”

“You could go five years without practicing and still have a perfect voice Rita.” If Pamela was to be believed, Rita was a big attraction for this place.

“Definitely agree with that Pamela, definitely agree!” Runt said as he walked by.

“Ahem… where have all the good men gone…. and… where all the gods~” My goodness Rita’s voice was actually entrancing. Even my animal companion’s ears immediately twitched in her direction when she started singing. “Where’s my streetwise Hercules… to fight the rising odds~.”

Rita was looking at Runt when she started singing this.

-The next day-

“Okay, have fun in Hollywood for us Pamela.” Rita stated with grand bow.

“I will!” Pamela answered before she pulled her car out and we were on our way.

Dormarch showed this stop has helped me heal physically and it also reduced my stress levels immensely.

Author's Note

Characters are from the following, if not in personality, then general appearance:

Sandra. The fairytale detective, at least the character design if made to look like a bipedal rat. Has not aired in English.

Rita and Runt, Animaniacs.

Pamela 'Miss Possum', 'the adventures of sonic the hedgehog'.

'Penelope' Pricks, also 'the adventures of sonic the hedgehog'.

130. Everyday Heroes.

-Equus, Canterlot, Tianhuo-

“You are the ponies I am to train?” One would think the hardest being I have ever had to train was Pom, they would be sorely mistaken and I would disabuse them of those thoughts immediately if they ever spoke them to me. “Is this the best the lot of you really have?”

The various guards couldn’t keep up with me and I wasn’t even using my fire to boost my abilities, in fact I’ve been holding back on them and they still weren’t able to keep up with a routine that even Pom could keep up with. I am beginning to wonder if Pom could defeat the royal guard single hoofed, I at least knew Fizzle, Jade and several others could.

I didn’t even doubt for a second that if Arizona were to go into a frenzy, that nothing short of a god or an equally powerful individual would stop her rampage.

“Ruff, Woof, Tuft, Puff…” All four of the Canis Minor came from different directions as I said their names. Puff came from the sky spinning his tail, these four would be the test of whether these guards were ready for anything. It was cruel of me to do this, but… “It’s play time, there are your toys for the next few hours.”

All four Canis Minor looked to me and then my hoof pointing to the tired and out of breath royal guards.

I did not know Pom’s favorite familiars could grin in such a dementedly evil manner while still being so adorably cute in how their tails wagged. I watched as they barked and communicated with each other, before they all turned to me and nodded, then they went to play rough.

Blighter popped out of my shadow and made a querying sound, I sat down and started to pet my companion and watched the pain I just unleashed with great detail.

Those poor guards, I can now sadly understand why Jaded is a highly prized and well paid consultant for Huoshan when we can draw her interest in visiting. She tests the mettle of the local guards to deal with unconventional thieves and the Huoshan guard has proved they are some of the best this world has to offer.

At the end of the day, these royal guard rookies would say the Canis Minor were still better than dealing with Jaded ‘Free Queen’ La Perm, but the little ones did manage to surpass the horrors of dealing with that rogue Abyssinians infamously ridiculous Zampony.

Pom would certainly be proud that they were being good puppies for me ‘when’ she came back, there was no room in my heart for ‘if’.

-Earth, Calisota, Duckberg, Laboratory, Smolder-

“I’m pretty sure Pom is having an easy time with getting here Ocellus.” I received a glare from my current best friend in the world.

“You just couldn’t say that with a straight face could you Smolder?” Ocellus stated in a slightly angry manner.

“Hey guys, apparently Leap Lamb was seen defending a train from some mercenaries, then later the train was blown apart... by rocket artillery trucks.” Huey was someone both Ocellus and I could agree on was the friendliest of the duck brothers, he might not be the most social but he was always honest. “Thought you should know.”

“Eh, Pom will be fine, sure she might be injured from whatever happened there, but we know she’ll live.” My trust in Pom was not going to waver, she’s proven time and again that she could survive harrowing experiences and this was nothing new.

Though that train did look like is was shredded by an exceptionally large dragon. At least this time the train didn’t transform into a monster and nearly kill Pom, it was actually innocent in this case.

-China, nearing Kunlun, Shanty-

“We almost finally be there!” This road trip is being fun, but it is not being overly dangerous. I be craving action… and rum.

“Can I just state that training me to fight hasn’t gone well.” At least you would be being more capable of defending yourself Mopsy.

“Yet you’re surprisingly good at scouting and thieving.” Bentley had some stats for us and I was being quite good. “We’re not expecting you to get into fights, but some light scouting and staying out of danger will be your main focus. By the way Shanty, your caretaker Pom, she apparently ran afoul of the Shred Tread mercenaries in the US. Going at her with rocket artillery seems like a bit much, but given the stuff I’ve been hearing about her, she’s definitely survived the train being completely torn apart.”

“Yeah, the girls back at The Prance Dance informed me that Pom ended up in Mesa City. I really wouldn’t want to be her right now, she’s getting into worse far situations than we are. I mean rocket artillery, who goes after someone with rocket artillery!” Sighing Mopsy slouched and rubbed at her face, she then looked to me again. “I hear she’s going to be meeting up with your friends Ocellus and Smolder soon, but first she has to help a famous dog named Bolt find his way home. So... Kunlun Mountains, it sure is beautiful out here.”

“Yeah, but it’s also cold and full of dangerous individuals.” Sly stated with a serious tone.

“Do you mean us Sly?” Murray be flexing his right arm. “Because The Murray is going to start living up to his name!”

“We do make a formidable team.” Bentley adjusted his glasses. “Even if we’re not all cut out for field work like Sly and Shanty are. Ahem, I think it’s about time for a presentation on what to expect from the Panda King’s domain and I just want to state that this might make you exceedingly angry Shanty.”

“Why would I be being angry, what has the Panda King done?” I tilted my head curiously as Bentley brought up an image of hundreds of homes buried in snow and some were partially burned down.

“He’s made a lot of innocent people homeless and I know that’s a bit of a thing for you.” Bentley stated quietly while looking away.

I be seeing nothing but red now!

“Bentley, I’m seeing red.” Sly stated with a scowl on his face understanding how I felt.

“Right there with you Sly!” The Murray stopped the van and slammed his fists together.

“Those poor people.” Mopsy is being more sad than angry.

-California, Hollywood, Pom-

I felt like I was going to die! Well of being lazy, I just couldn’t sit around, I had to do something. Dolly’s restlessness was making me become restless too!

“We’re here!” Pamela finally said and I sat up to look around. “Hey, who stole the stars from the walk of fame?!”

“Oh don’t worry about that ma’am, the stars are currently in Paris.” A biped walrus stated as he passed by. “Some thieves thought it’d be funny to mail them to an Interpol Agent’s office there.”

“Well okay then... you guys go find the set of Bolt’s show.” Pamela parked the car and cuddled Bolt. “It’ll be okay honey, you’ll see, but if it isn’t, your always welcome at The Prance Dance. Okay?”

Bolt barked and licked Pamela's face.

“Oh and thanks for the autographs, all of you.” Pamela didn’t just get an autograph from Bolt. She also got ones from Dolly, Mittens, Rhino and me.

“Thank you for the ride.” It was a way to get a load of stress off my back at least. “Come on, let’s go find the theatre where Bolt’s show is made.”

We all made our way through the streets looking at the large letters reading Hollywood in the distance. I probably wouldn’t want to buy any food here, I bet it was all stupidly expensive.

-Ten minutes later-

“Pom, ask for directions.” Dolly was getting annoyed at not being able to find the set.

“Well we are a bit lost…” I needed to find someone that might help us, once I spotted someone I decided to speak up. I’m surprised I could even do that. “Excuse me, my name is Pom and I need some help finding a specific place around here.”

“Sure, where do you need to be?” The mouse sounded curious as if he was expecting something more from me seeing him, he also had frozen a moment when I spoke to him.

He seemed quite relieved that I just wanted directions for some reason.

“I just need to know where the set of the show Bolt the Super Dog is, I can find my way from there.” If asked why I had animals following me, I would advertise myself as a high end animal trainer and get Dolly to do a trick on her skateboard.

Please don’t let this guy be related to any mercenaries!

“Huh, oh of course, I know where you need to go! I was a bit distracted by the dog with the skateboard.” The mouse wouldn’t be wrong to find Dolly unusual. “Professional animal trainer right? Maybe even an actor for that Leap Lamb film they are going to make based on the incident that happened in Britain? You sure look like you would be good for the part.”

“Something like that, yes.” They were making a movie based on our exploits in Britain? Well I might want to look into that before we start heading north towards Duckberg.

“Well its two streets over that way and hang a left on Tune Town Avenue, you can’t miss it at that rate.” The mouse said pleasantly with a short laugh.

“Thank you Mr. um… I don’t think I ever got your name.” He seemed surprised that I didn’t know his name.

“Well that’s a first, someone that doesn’t know me on sight!” He held out a gloved hand and I gave him my right hoof to shake it. “I’m Mickey Mouse, it was nice to make your acquaintance Pom, but I have to get going.”

“Sorry for taking up your time.” Well he certainly seemed like a cheerful and nice fellow.

“Oh my dog we just met THE Mickey Mouse!” Dolly seemed to freak out as we moved on down the street away from him.

“Is he famous?” I asked.

“Have you been living under… oh right alien, duh! I keep forgetting that about you and you make it so darn easy to.” Dolly rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Mickey is like one of the best actors alive, he’s a guy that’s had so many jobs it is really nuts what he’s done throughout his life and it’s better to ask what he hasn’t been involved in! Now someone can honestly say he’s been involved in helping a super hero.”

“I’m not a super hero Dolly.” I mumbled.

“Says you, tell that to anyone who knows you… wait… did he say we’re getting a movie?!” It took you long enough to actually realize that Dolly. “Oh score, I’ve got one up on the Diva Trio by having a movie made about me… and you too of course Pom!”

Mittens meowed something sardonic sounding.

“Right focus on Bolt now, secretly get a sneak peek at our movies script later.” It sounded like Dolly wasn’t going to leave Hollywood until we did so.

I can pass as an actor for myself at least, so it shouldn’t be too hard to do.

Why was I contemplating doing something illegal for Dolly? Was I really that curious to know about it?

-A few streets later, Bolt-

So there were two guys guarding the front of the set, dressed in costumes I recognized.

“Well I’m finally home. At least I know that if I had escaped normally, they had people ready to keep up the act.” It was a bit disheartening. “How am I going to get in there?”

“I’ve got this!” Rhino charged forward and started squeaking death threats at the two.

They were just people in costumes and he knew that right? Right?

I’d rather not worry about it as he had them distracted.

“Rhino… ugh… Pom, Dolly, Mittens, stay here please.” I started forward as the two guards were distracted by Rhino.

“We’ll be here if you need us Bolt.” Pom and Dolly, the two heroes who helped me get here sat down. Mittens however stared at me as I turned away.

I started forward and snuck into the set alone. I wanted to still be a hero, but I mostly just wanted to be a good dog for Penny, this area seemed so familiar… yet so cold and distant. I made my way over to the place I smelled myself and it was a trailer. Opening the door I walked inside and picked up Mr. Carrot in my mouth and played with it for a bit, my favorite toy was still here at least.

I left it behind and went looking for Penny. When I found her… she was hugging another dog and telling him the same things she says to me.

Was there ever a moment when you felt like your heart snapped in two? I now knew what that was like as I turned away not making a noise and slowly walked off with my head lowered.

Penny had a new dog to worry about and I… I was forgotten.

-Mittens-

“Cut!” A person shouted and the area lit up, what Bolt just saw was a scene being acted out. That… probably wasn’t the best moment for him to walk in on 'his' Penny.

“Bolt… please come back.” The girl was actually broken hearted for Bolt, she didn’t really love that dog. She loved Bolt and he… he just missed that didn’t he! Darn it all, I have to stop Bolt and tell him before he tried to walk away from someone who really did care about him personally!

I quickly charged out to see Bolt sitting with his head down, Pom and Dolly were looking at him with worry, but they didn’t approach him.

“Bolt, there’s something you need hear!” I stated urgently and Bolt turned to me looking both upset and sad.

-Pom-

“What do you think happened Dolly?” I asked as I watched Mittens rush out and started talking to Bolt.

“Well maybe… Pom…” Dolly’s pupils shrunk and she became panicked. “Fire!”

Bolt, Mittens and Rhino turned to the set that was quickly lighting up in flames. I was up in instant and moving towards the building as people ran out screaming. However Bolt stated something that made us know someone was missing.

“No… Penny!” Bolt ran towards the collapsing debris in the doorway, Rhino manage to get his ball into place to prop up an opening for Bolt to slide through the quickly building debris. Mittens immediately save him from his ball before it was crush.

“There’s still people in there!” Someone said.

“My daughter, where’s my daughter!” A large duck lady stated looking about in worry.

I looked up and around for an entrance, I spotted it.

“Dolly, on me! Mittens, Rhino, both of you stay out here and watch my bag!” I didn’t get questioned by Dolly. She silently leapt onto my back without a word and I started scaling the wall until I was on the roof and next to a skylight. “We didn’t bring Bolt all this way for him to die now!”

“I’ll always have your back Pom, in this life or the next.” Dolly finally said with a seriousness I’d rarely ever hear from her.

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of!” I raised my hooves above my head and brought them down to smash through the covered skylight.

…

Instead I brought down a large section of the roof instead it hit the ground in the middle of everything on fire, apparently we blew out some flames with the pressure wave from the crashing roof and my mind froze up.

“Pom, over there!” Dolly directed my head with both her paws to someone who had an arm and a leg trapped underneath a large chunk of wood with fire spreading towards them. They couldn’t get free and they were struggling, I quickly made my way over and got my hooves under the big chunk of carved wood.

“Dolly!” I shouted, she got off my back and nodded. We didn’t even need to say words, we were currently in synch with one another.

“Leave me, get out of here, save your… what the?” The cockatoo animalistic tried, but I was already heaving the wood up and once I got a bit of my back under it I locked my wool to hold it in place.

Dolly heaved a portion of him onto her skateboard and started pulling. Once he got the idea he pushed with his good arm and was out from under the burning chunk of wood. I quickly unlocked my wool and dove forward leaving the flaming piece of wood to crash to the floor and knock me onto me side.

Dolly was in the process of helping the guy we saved find a safe place in all of this, while I was looking for someone else to help.

“Over here… help…” A voice called weakly, I ran over there and found a dog biped.

“Hold on, I’ve got you.” I draped him over my back and carried him in Dolly’s direction. Most of the people here would be adult animalistic and bipeds. A section of the set collapsed behind me and I hurriedly started moving as quickly as I could.

I found Dolly sitting near another entrance to the place, but it was on fire. At least she in the safety spot she could find far from the flames and the smoke wasn’t too bad since we made a hole in the roof, but it was still quite thick.

I sat down the dog next to the cockatoo as Dolly retrieved her skateboard from underneath him. She sent me a look and pointed in a direction, I nodded and went that way while see stayed with the injured.

Following the direction Dolly pointed I came across a female lizard I had almost mistaken for a dragon, she was bleeding quite badly from several nasty lacerations to her body and it looked like she took a glancing blow to the head from some lights that dropped on her from above.

I carefully crouched down and started to scoop up her up when her eyes opened slightly, I gave her a gentle smile as I carefully draped her over my back and began dragging her back towards Dolly.

An entire set of stage lights fell in front of us and I recoiled, I looked at the lizard lady’s eyes dulling. I ducked low and inhaled as much air as I could get in this smoke filled theatre and exhaled to bound over the burning debris in our way.

The lizard lady looked shocked, especially when I laid her next to the others and she glanced at Dolly with a further surprised look on her face when my companion leapt up and used her skateboard to smash a piece of debris away.

“Did any of you see anyone else?” I looked over at the flaming entrance, it was becoming hotter in here and these people wouldn’t survive in this for much longer and needed emergency medical aid.

“Yes… they went that way.” The dog biped started coughing. I nodded to him and Dolly stayed with the three people as I went looking for another.

It didn’t take long, because I found a female fox animalistic with one of her hind legs and tail trapped and was in the midst of catching fire. Looked at the bits that had the screaming fox trapped, I carefully moved behind her lined up my rear legs and bucked for all I was worth sending the piece flying off of her.

Grabbing her I pulled her way from the debris and threw myself on her leg and tail to smother the flames. She was crying and I carefully scooped her up and carried her back to Dolly, the area was getting worse and I looked around.

“Did any of you see Bolt come through here?” They just shook their heads sadly.

“We can’t stay here any longer Pom, we need to get these people out of here!” Despite saying that even Dolly felt like she didn’t want to leave Bolt to his fate.

“Okay, stand back everyone, I’m going to try…” I was heading for the entrance covered in flames and debris to use a bark blast to clear it.

Only I didn’t have to as the entrance and some of the worsening debris was blasted apart by a powerful jet of water and the flames around the entrance went out under the sudden torrent.

That’s when the most unlikely hero that came to our aid walked in.

“It’s a good thing my fire fighter costume is easy to reload and refill, it’s been a while since I’ve used this!” In walked Mickey in a red suit and hat with a metal cylinder strapped to his back and a hose leading from it to his hands. He froze when he saw me and the injured. “Huh, Pom, what are you…?”

“No time to talk, help move these people out now!” I shouted and he immediately hooked the hose to the tank and grabbed the cockatoo to start dragging him out.

Dolly got the animalistic fox onto her skateboard, while I grabbed the lizard and dog bipeds to start dragging them through the cleared entrance, where I saw Mickey spraying the fires around it with the hose to keep the fire from enclosing on us.

“Is there anyone left inside?” Mickey asked of the people.

The lizard lady sat up.

“Most of the people got out, but I think we’re still missing a kid.” We all heard a loud bark.

“I think the kid is with a good friend.” I said with a weak smile. “We should still go help!”

-An hour later-

While Bolt and Penny were being taken to the hospital in the ambulance, Dolly and I rode the ambulances roof on the way. We had seen Mittens and Rhino hitching a ride. Bolt wasn’t about to be separated from Penny after saving her life from debris, fire and smoke.

“You’re a good boy Bolt.” Penny stated as she hugged Bolt still weak after being tended to. “And my hero.”

“We can use this for publicity!” I finally revealed myself as the girl’s agent was asking for a hit from Penny’s mother.

I grabbed the mother’s wrist and stopped her from punching the guy suggesting they profit off of her daughter’s pain.

“Here, let me…” The mother duck took a few steps back looking at me curiously. I quickly spun around and slammed my right hoof into the guys face.

“Bow-Waka-Whoa Pom.” Dolly stated she came up next to me, we really needed to find a place to wash the soot off.

“Um… who are you?” The duck mother stated as I looked to Bolt being cuddled by Penny.

“I’m just a friend of Bolt. I came a long way to get him back to where he belongs, protecting your little girl.” I said as I made my way over to Bolt with Dolly following. The girl was currently looking at Mittens and Rhino, I took up my bag from them.

“Just so you know, Bolt loves you and he’s now aware that he’s not a super dog, but he still wants to be your hero. I’d say he’s doing a good job.” I nodded to Bolt, he nodded back. “These three animals are smarter than you think, treat them all well and take good care of them. Come on Caper Canine, let’s get going.”

“Wait… Leap Lamb?!” The mother duck stated as I jumped out the window with Dolly on my back.

Author's Note

Mittens hero to Bolt.

Bolt hero to Penny.

Mickey and his 'Magical Quest' fire fighting gear saves the day and hero to those who know him personally.

Pom Lambchop AKA Leap Lamb and Dolly D. Dalmatian AKA Caper Canine, heroes to many and happy things worked out.

131. Hero Hassle.

-Earth, California, Hollywood, Penny?-

My mother and I watched Leap Lamb jump from the window, I looked out the window and she waved at us before hopping off along the rooftops with incredible ease. I turned back and noticed Bolt had his paw on a piece of paper.

Leap Lamb wasn’t the one who wrote Bolt's name on it, as the piece of paper was blank when she left. My eyes slowly slid to the pen.

“You can write your name Bolt?” I thought that was neat, my good boy nodded with a cheerful smile.

Bolt barked twice excitedly, however on his second bark a bolt of blue energy burst from his mouth and scorched the ceiling spooking all of us.

“Honey…. for my sanity… please, tell me that was just special effects.” My mother stated with clear shock.

“Mom… I don’t think it was.” I looked to see the cat just floating in the air in shock, wait… floating? The hamster was jumping with joy, getting higher every time he jumped until his head slammed into the ceiling where he got stuck. “Bolt… did you and your friends just get super powers?!”

Bolt looked as confused as I did about him spitting a lightning bolt from his mouth, the cat was panicking as she floated around and the hamster seemed ecstatic as it started to rebound around the room like a bouncy ball once it freed itself.

“Can we keep them and Bolt mom, I think they are going to need my help with this…” I said slowly, super powers were real and these weren’t just special effects from our show.

Well my mind was blown.

-?-

The magic of friendship might have caused a few glitches in this weird wacky world of danger and wonder. The world’s magic welcomed the weirdness and Pom may have infected three specific animals with the power of friendship.

Bolt became a lightning spitting super dog, he could also charge batteries of any device just by putting his mouth on it slightly. It’s the simple things in life that Bolt would come to enjoy, like Mr. Carrot and being a hero would always be second to being his Penny’s dog.

The Equus magic of a unicorn.

Mittens the chaos cat with levitation powers that affected only her and whatever she touches while actively concentrating for a few seconds as long as it isn’t nailed down.

The Equus magic of a pegasus.

Rhino the rebounding super rubbery hamster that became tougher the faster he bounced.

The Equus magic of Pinkie Pie… going full blast by drinking three chocolate shakes, eating two highly sugary doughnuts covered in sprinkles filled with buttercream cheese, a sugar frost cherry chimichanga, a lemon meringue injected churro and five gallons of pure friendship, love and harmony. Obviously a changeling owed Pinkie a few favors to get that last item, it took a few weeks.

Penny, would be run a little ragged by her new pets on top of caring for Bolt, but she’d eventually train the Power Pets to be an incredible team. She would also protect and love them dearly, it would be a while before the three were ready for crime fighting and their powers would be kept secret until they were ready for the world. Since it certainly wasn’t ready for them.

The world, where dreams can come true, was learning some strange things from its four odd invaders from beyond. It wasn’t the first time the beings of the world breached into other strange dimensions, but it was the first time that something breached into it from outside.

-Colorado, Terrorist Town, Tobias Rieper AKA Agent 47-

Some might say I have no sense of humor.

I turned and walked away from the pit full of pig leavings in the form of a slurry with fourteen legs sticking straight up into the air and wiggling wildly.

After this rather ‘unfortunate’ incident, I might believe otherwise. Who knew a regular rubber duck could cause such a chain reaction?

Were anyone to say he smiled, he would deny it as a trick of the light.

Still though, if that was a regular rubber duck, then where did his exploding rubber duck end up?

-Outside a city northwest of Hollywood a few hours after leaving Bolt and friends behind, Pom-

The Leap Lamb movies script was cute when we got a look at it, but I didn’t want to stay in this world long enough to witness it personally. I even got in some training time with Dolly, I’ve been carefully training her throughout our whole trip to Hollywood and she was getting moderately better at fighting.

I at least said goodbye to Pamela before leaving the Hollywood, now I was unsure of where I was.

I pulled out and consulted Dormarch. Having seen Dolly’s splinted and bandaged tail shift a bit recently, I would ask Dormarch about her health later.

“Dormarch where are we currently?” I asked as I looked about, I knew we weren’t in Duckberg yet and I was going to follow the coast.

“We are within the entering the areas of San Francisco and San Fransokyo region of California, we need to travel further north to reach your destination in Calisota.” I nodded and stowed Dormarch away.

A few days on hoof and I’d be happily protecting two of my charges once again! I would also be an even bigger bundle of nerves needing to protect them too.

The city in the distance across a large bridge looked so bright and colorful.

“So many places to do some sick grinds in, they have got to have a skate park somewhere in there!” Dolly stated with bright eyed enthusiasm. “Come on Pom, let’s go!”

“Okay…” I shivered, the city just seemed so large and easy to get lost in. “Do you… do you think I did a bad thing hitting that guy back there?”

“Nope, if anything you should have hit him harder to leave more of a mark and to teach him a lesson. I wouldn’t trust any child to be alone around that guy and my bro Dylan wouldn’t trust him either.” We set hoof and paw on the bridge leading straight into the city. “My family’s Diva Trio have had some really bad agents in the past.”

The colorful pagodas, large sky kites, buildings and other familiar themes could be seen throughout the city reminding Pom of home. Except the city was an expanse and not a three tiered city sitting on a volcano with a dragon’s living spirit inside.

“Do tell, what were the worst ones like?” I seriously hoped we could avoid trouble for the rest of the day, even as we were crossing this bridge at Dolly’s urging to explore.

We both still needed to rest and heal after these last few days, especially after having entered a burning building to rescue people early this morning.

Taking in the sights and relaxing shouldn’t be too hard.

-San Fransokyo, after crossing the bridge, around noon time-

“Halt vile villain, fiendish fiend or… what else was I going to use again?” A large… blue monster thing, looked like a costume actually, landed in front of us.

Thought to soon.

“I am mini-maximum sure that it was monstrous menace!” A tiny flying blue machine said, it looked so much like a toy and was kind of adorable.

“What did I ever do to anyone?” I asked worriedly and Dolly moved closer to me while growling at the stranger that just landed in front of us. “I just walked into the city from the bridge.”

“Yes and that must mean you’re a secret villain, I mean you don’t see people just waltzing into San Fransokyo like you just did.” Wasn’t exactly following the costumed wearing guy’s logic on this. “You just walked here, so you have to be some kind of secret villain and we get a lot of those around here!”

“So if you walked out of the city and then walked back in, would that somehow automatically make you evil?” Clearly saw where this was going, even if I was trying to seriously avoid a fight and would absolutely try to get him or his little friend to see reason. Also the monster suit guy was jumping to conclusions too quickly for my tastes and it was making me nervous. “I’m pretty sure I’m not evil, right Dolly?”

“Eh… the peanut butter thing was pretty mean thing to do to me, but I wouldn’t think you anything close to being evil Pom.” Dolly looked away a bit as she barked something a bit more softly. “Also… maybe… you could paint my nails purple again… because I kind of liked it. Not that I want to get into girly things or anything, also I’m staying firm on the no dog shows or playing fetch thing.”

“The sheep like entity has a point.” The small machine stated as he hovered around the three eyed blue monster suit wearing guy. “This seems like a really dumb reason to accost someone who may be maximally innocent!”

“What do you mean by sheep like Mini-Max?” Something tells me that this guy was going to take the conversation to places I probably wouldn’t like.

“She does not seem biologically normal for an animalistic.” His name was Mini-Max? That sounded kind of cute. Said machine was looking at me with curiosity. “Despite there being something off about her that I cannot put into mini words, she does not appear to be evil.”

Well he seemed to be very nice and seemed to have understood that I was being wronged here.

“Hah, new it, you’re definitely a totally evil biological creation or some sort of super powered monster science project. Nothing as cute as you can be innocent!” Sighing at this guy pointing at me. I looked to Dolly who just huffed and rolled her eyes, but she got ready for a fight. “Let’s get her!”

“Lunch after we deal with whatever massive amounts of trouble this is going to cause Dolly?” She nodded and we both turned back to the costume guy. “Look can we please not and say we… ah!”

He leapt at me and the suit spat a large fireball at me, of which Dolly leapt up and quickly smacked it back at him with her skateboard.

“What just happened?” The confused guy in the suit stated as he landed on his back with his suit slightly scorched.

“Hey now, that was self-defense, please don’t escalate this any further!” I begged of the little machine that looked between us and the strange suit wearing guy on the ground.

“Mini-Maximum sidekick to action!” The little machine shot at us and Dolly smacked him to send him flying back into the costumed individual in the middle of sitting up.

He was subsequently knocked back down.

“Can we please just sit down and have a nice, long and gentle, talk before this situation gets any…” I was cut off when the costume individual shouted.

“Guys I have a pair of individual here that are really tough, they took me and Mini-Max down.” Sighing audibly, I turned to Dolly halfway listening to the guy. “…need backup guys!”

“Run?” I queried.

“Run, we don’t need any more stress today Pom.” Dolly answered succinctly with a nod and I took off with her keeping up with me on her skateboard. “It’ll be good cardio at least, not sure how that’s going to affect your heart problems though.”

“And they are getting away!” The suited individual shouted as the small machine got up and started flying again. “What, of course I’m sure they’re evil doers! Do you know of anyone who’s innocent that can reflect fireballs with a wooden skateboard? Something is definitely up with this pair!”

Yeah, we definitely needed to gain distance from this guy. Dolly and I turned into a nearby Alleyway and Dolly got on me and I quickly scaled the wall to the roof as the guy hopped into the alley.

“Huh, so his super hero named is what, Leaping Lizard? Looks like you have competition as a hero Pom, even if the guy is a bit dumb.” You really shouldn’t say that Dolly, because…

The lizard guy leaped up and landed on the roof pointing one his suits claws at us.

“Ah hah, there is something unusual about…” I leapt at him while inhaling. Upon landing on his costumes head, I exhaled and kicked off him and into the city.

He went through the roof of the building and I spread all my legs to quickly glide away off of a thermal pocket into the city, gliding didn’t require too much energy from me aside from steering. The costume guy could jump, but he wouldn’t be able to keep up with us as we glided into the distance through the city.

“Little machine bozo incoming.” Dolly said on my back, I turned mead to look. “Lookout Pom!”

Nearly slammed into a billboard, I veered under it safely. The little robot rammed through it and then spiraled into a water tower with a chunk of it stuck on his face.

A few seconds later he was attempting to ram us when Dolly smacked him into a strange sphere that came flying at us from the side.

The little robot was encased in a blob and fell into an alleyway. Looking in the direction that sphere had come from, I saw a white rabbit biped with long blond hair in costume with various shades of pink.

She aiming something my way as she bounced off a large colorful blob that formed after she threw something down in front of her.

She angled her… purse? Looked like a gun and where that sphere came from, she tapped several things on it and then fired it our way. Dolly swung her skateboard at the sphere and sent it flying back into the costumed bunny’s face caused her to get stuck in a block of ice when the sphere exploded on her in the middle of a jump and she slammed into a wall to slide down into a different alleyway.

“Going for a landing Dolly.” She nodded as I twisted twirled as I slowly angled downwards and then lifted up before releasing my glide wings and dropping to the sidewalk to start calmly walking away.

It wasn’t five second before we were attacked by another costumed individual

“I got you!” A cat in a yellow and black suit with strange discs shot out of an alleyway and skated right at me at an intense speed. She also threw a yellow disc which Dolly deflected, the cat had good reflexes because she caught the deflected disk on the arm she launched it from in the first place. When she got close she went to throw a punch that was rather telegraphed. “Wha…?!”

She might have had momentum, but a quick breath and a split second was all it took for me to grab her arm and slam her into the sidewalk with one swift motion. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t used to people being able to react as fast as she could move.

“Sorry, but we really don’t want to play right now.” I stated as I let go of her arm and Dolly barked her agreement.

“Ugh… can’t believe I got slammed like that.” The costumed cat groaned as I scampered away into the nearby alleyway.

After getting a bit lost in the backstreets and climbing along the walls randomly until I was sure I wasn’t being followed. I eventually dropped down and looked around for a restaurant that would allow dogs.

“Um… excuse me, I know my friends have been attacking you and all.” I turned and looked to a raven biped in green armor, he seemed to be a bit skittish.

Maybe he wasn’t going to attack me, but I still had to ask.

“Are you going to attack me too?” Despite how calm I sounded, I was already slowly trotting backwards and away from him. Dolly was already growling at him and pointed the front of her skateboard at him as if she was a jouster.

“Well we have a fire breathing Leaping Lizard, a rabbit with a bazooka purse, a cat on wheels, so what do you think this guy’s weird gimmicky hero thing is going to be?” Dolly asked as she was prepared for anything.

“Calm down, I know my friends might have jumped the gun a little bit. You don’t have to…” He said holding up his hand in a peaceful manner, then one of his gauntlets erupted in a flash of energy creating a blade of solid energy. He then stated dully. “Worry about a thing.”

“Yeah, no. Always thought that was just a video game thing, move it Pom!” Listening to Dolly, I immediately turned tail to darted away towards a building and then straight up it. “Even I know better than to deal with someone equipped with real plasma blades!”

-Plasma Blade Dude-

“Wait, that activated by accident!” I shouted after her, sighing and running a hand over my face as I disconnected a circuit to make sure my gauntlet wouldn’t go off again. I sat down as I couldn’t give chase to the sheep that could climb a building that fast, poor thing was terrified of us now. The gauntlet then caught fire and I stared at my burning arm for a second. “Oh come on. Man, I knew I should have fixed my gauntlet before I went out! Really didn’t mean to scare her like that, is it little wonder this might be how we end up accidentally creating a villain from someone innocent?”

-Pom-

Luckily this guy was slow and didn’t seem very capable of climbing vertical surfaces like I could as I leapt across several rooftops and eventually grabbed one of the wires leading into the sky.

I quickly climbed up the wire to one of the colorful hovering and strange metal kites with the fans in them.

“I think we should be safe up here.” I sat down and started catching my breath.

“Heh, I’m getting pretty good at deflecting things with my board!” Dolly said cheerfully from my back, before her head turned and the look in her eyes gained a sense of wonder. “Bow-waka-wow, look at the view Pom!”

From up here the city glistened in the daylight, I could see the coast, the tall buildings and hear the calm blowing wind. Also it apparently had overly aggressive heroes, I turned my head to look at something else and sighed.

“Yes, the view is spectacular, but I think we should really get moving.” I said seeing something big and red was flying up and our way.

“Do these guys even know the meaning of give up?” Dolly asked as she saw the incoming big red machine that looked like the small blue ones older brother, also there was something purple on his back. “Anyway, why are they still bothering us? We’re not doing anything wrong… aside from running and doing incredibly cool stuff to avoid them.”

“We’re also sitting very high up on a large metal kite thing and to be fair to them I would bother us too if the thing we’re sitting on was important.” I stated blandly as the large red machine was almost on us.

“How important can these giant metal kites be?” Dolly scoffed.

“Give that they are all over the place and in many different forms like those blimps over there, maybe of some importance that we probably shouldn’t mess with.” No more time to talk about it, the large red robot was here!

Jumping off the metal kite, I narrowly missed being grabbed by a pair of metal hands and started falling back into the city. It didn’t take long for the machine to veer around and grab me by the waist, which led to me struggling to get out of its grip in a panic.

“Let me off Pom.” One could only hope Dolly knew what she was doing, because she had to of realized how high off the ground we currently were.

She sent me back a feeling that she did know. I let her loose from my wool, Dolly leaped up and grappled onto the machine’s head.

-Dolly-

Ignoring the small guy in the purple on the machine’s back, I gripped my strap and jumped up to slash my skateboard downwards through the machine’s wing. It immediately started to spiral out of control and downwards alongside me, I ignored the purple and black armored guys screaming.

Whipping my skateboard back I launched it forward and into the back of the machine destroying one of its jets, apparently that was enough for it to let go off Pom. I slung my skateboard at Pom and she grabbed it to pull me in and onto her back.

She quickly brought all her legs together and spread them out before we hit the ground, we landed softly. The big red machine threw it’s rider into a cabbage cart that was destroyed by the rider’s impact and the machine itself dug a ditch.

“Dolly, I hope you know how wrong that could have gone if we couldn’t coordinate as well as we do.” Yeah, I could have hurt the purple armored guy and all that, but he looked to be mostly fine from the way he was sitting up in the mashed cabbages. “We’ll discuss this later!”

Pom started to run away, hopefully this time we’ll lose them.

-A few hours later, a quaint little café, Pom-

The Lucky Cat Café seemed like a nice place, it was sitting on the corner of a street and hopefully we’ll never have to be bothered by those costumed weirdoes again.

“Thanks for letting me feed Dolly here Ms. Hamada.” I took up the cup of tea and slowly sipped at it.

“No need to thank me, also your dog is getting along really well with my cuddly Mochi.” The duck was quite friendly to her customers and seemed a good cook judging from the smell of all the food around the place. This seemed familiar to me somehow, like Ms. Hamada was this world’s Kuril La Perm. “Now what else can I get you?”

Dolly and Mochi didn’t seem to bother each other and they were getting along relatively well despite being only able to understand half the conversation going on between them. At least I would understand the half where it was about to go wrong.

Intermittently, between chatting with the cat, Dolly continued to quickly nibble away at her food.

“Maybe something heavy to fill my stomach with so I can skip dinner, what do you have today that sounds good? I’m open to any suggestion.” It almost seemed like asking that made me and incredibly good customer in her eyes judging by the way she smiled.

“Well there’s this thing I’ve always want to try making…” She started coyly.

“Okay, what is it?” I asked.

“I’ll surprise you!” She hurried off to start cooking, I shrugged.

“Can I get some more tea please?” I asked of one of the robots.

“Sure thing.” A robotic panda said as she came over and barfed tea into my cup from her mouth. “Don’t worry I’m always clean.”

I shrugged and drink from the cup, nothing tasted off at least.

“So... virtual personalities.” Dormarch grumbled from where the PET sat on the table. “Though they act like halfway artificial intelligences… I thought I was the first commercially available of my kind.”

“That’s just it, the keyword is ‘commercially’. The robots working here probably aren’t commercially available. So I’ve been meaning to ask…” I stopped talking when five battered figures and a living balloon entered the café and I just stared at them, they just stared back at me in shock. “Never mind.”

Author's Note

Next up, trouble is brewing in little San Fransokyo.

Will Pom join the GG's or is Poison Jam going try and befriend her despite their scary visages? There's also Noise Tank who wants to give Pom a serious headache. Jet Set Radio!

132. Villain Hassle.

-???, Buttina Stalliona-

I blasted a creature as it leapt for me with my ever trusty Boomacorn, it looked like a spider with a long spindly tail.

Another one latched itself onto Fred’s face, it quickly realized its mistake and then it tried to get off his face screeching in fear while trying to scurry away. Only it ended up being sucked into Fred’s mouth by its tail and eaten.

“Mm… crunchy.” Fred stated while his skull face grinned broadly. “If one of these dares and tries to infiltrate my Ollie, I WILL COMMIT INTERGALACTIC GENOCIDE OF THEIR SPECIES! After saving Ollie from the parasite of course.”

A large black banana headed monster growled and crawled out of the nearby ducts and when it dropped to the floor, it was swiftly blown apart by a dark magic mine trap left there by Oleander.

“Wow, so much for the deadliest monsters in this dimension.” Oleander stated blandly. “Sure, they are good at sneaking around dark spaces and picking off idiots, but we’re far better at it than they are.”

“I’ve seen scarier from Pandora, also the technology here sucks.” I loaded my Boomacorn and readied it for firing, I also placed a laser pistol in a holster around my neck. There’s nothing like looting weapons from people, I am from Pandora after all. “Though you have to admit, they do multiply quite fast.”

“Well you did need a practice dimension before we start looking around for Pom seriously.” Oleander stated as she wielded her magically bladed key as several banana heads rushed towards us.

-Earth, California, San Fransokyo, ?-

“What’s she doing Baymax?” Hiro Hamada asked me.

“She appears to be here as a patron of the Lucky Cat Café.” I answered the obvious, even Hiro could see for his eyes were working perfectly at this point in time.

“Not what I meant, is she doing anything suspicious?” Not from what I could detect Hiro.

Though she was sending us glances, she was quite aware that we were the ones who attacked her and was trying to ignore us. She doesn’t appear to like confrontation by my current estimates of her mental state. The dog is more wary and ready to attack us with her skateboard at a moments notice, the materials of the skateboard are not conducive towards the damage it dealt to my armor.

I believe we are dealing with factual supernatural phenomenon not related to science, I will continue to watch the situation and advise caution. If there continues to be supernatural phenomenon that science can’t explain, I will give my findings to my friends.

Though both individuals seemed dangerous, they weren’t actively aggressive unless enacted upon and did not have a criminal history of any warrants out for their arrest by visual appearance alone.

“No. She appears to be awaiting food patiently.” I answered simply as we sat at our table. “Do you wish me to scan them to see if they are in need of healthcare assistance?”

“Dude, remember what we said about an invasion of privacy, we should just leave her well enough alone unless it’s an emergency.” Wasabi was currently upset, I think it is because his gauntlet went off without him activating it. Such a thing could lead to a hazardous and life threatening incidents, he among Hiro’s friends understood that his technology was quite dangerous and was quite safety conscious. Hopefully he could instill such caution into Hiro eventually, being a hero was dangerous work. “What she’s currently doing is not an emergency, she hasn’t stolen anything, she’s not attacking anyone, she isn’t being an active threat to society and she’s just sitting there. Also I would like to state that Fred attacked her first.”

“Yes, I agree with the invasion of privacy thing, but I’m curious about how she caught me when I was going full speed.” Go-Go did not like being taken down by the sheep like entity, her current mental state was agitated judging by the way her tail twitched. Mochi came over to playfully bat at her tail, lightly drawing her attention away from her thoughts. “She’s talented at fighting, trained for it even.”

“I just want to go over there and give that poor injured dog a big hug!” The only reason Honey Lemon, the nicest of our team, attacked the stranger is because she actively put Fred through the roof of a building. The rabbit biped wilted slightly. “Now if only she wouldn’t bite me for it… I think she and her owner recognizes all of us.”

That was a gray area, Fred was uninjured, but his suit was mildly damaged being put through a building by the force of the sheep like entity kicking off of him and it could be stated to be in self-defense and she did actively try to disengage from combat safely without getting overly violent.

The dog, the companion of the sheep like entity, was clearly the more aggressive one of the two.

“I still say there is something about her that is suspicious, it’s like I know about her from somewhere...” Fred, being a chameleon biped, was born with the natural super power of near invisibility and the only issue is his ability to concentrate when using it. He is getting better at training in stealth and being a super hero.

The others have already talked Fred down from causing the female sheep like entity any more trouble.

“Detecting heightened distress levels, I will go offer my services as a healthcare provider.” I started to move over to them.

“Baymax wait!” I ignored Hiro and decided to follow my programming, someone was in need of my services.

-Pom-

I think that was the flying armored thing, it looked so innocent without all that armor to make it look like a big hulking mechanical brute. It came up to us and Dolly was ready to take it down.

“Easy Dolly, let’s see what he wants first.” The machine came up to us and stopped and raised a hand.

“Hello, I am Baymax, a personal healthcare provider and companion created by Tadashi Hamada.” Wait, this Baymax was owned by Hamada, like the one that owned this restaurant? Huh interesting. “I noticed that you seem to be in pain, may I be of assistance?”

“Pom, you need to take some Arrhythmia Medication, it’s been several days and you did put your heart under severe stress recently. Your heart beats are becoming more irregular. I prescribe a single dosage of your medication for your health and if the dosage causes problems, then we will reorient your needs from there.” Dormarch stated as he idly scanned me once more. “I am Dormarch, Personal Exploration Terminal and companion to this person. Might I inquire if your group is going to cause more problems for my owner?”

“No, I do not believe we will be starting problems at the moment." At least Baymax sounded friendlier than the guy with the energy blade thing. "Though there may need to be discussion to work out prior issues to prevent even further ones.”

“Good, can you take care of stitches for bullet wounds?” Wait, Dormarch was going to ask him to help me? Was he actually trusting this Baymax guy?

“Yes, I have the capacity to remove stitches, provided that it does not harm a patient. Do you have such a patient who has been recently injured?” It seemed like Baymax and Dormarch were interacting with little in the way of aggressiveness, it actually calmed me down somewhat that they were both calm and collected. “I am capable in all forms of mental and physical trauma care.”

“Can I get some water over here?” I asked one of the strange robots working here and the floating hippo one came over and dropped a glass in front of me. “Thank you.”

“No problem sweetie!” The small hippo robot then hovered away.

I took out the medication and downed it with a gulp of water and drained the glass as well.

“May I inquire as to how and when she was shot?” Baymax asked in an inquisitively gentle tone.

“Almost a week ago, I have been barely activated for more than a week and my owner has had a slew of interesting problems since acquiring me. I believe I am at fault for some of it, if not all of it.” Glancing at Dormarch, I sent him a sad frown. “She should not be put under any undue stress, but she has a habit of entering situations where it is unavoidable. Recently she was assaulted by a group of mercenaries, then again possibly by the same group with rocket artillery. The train didn’t survive the incident, though we did.”

“I believe I have heard about that in the news, three survivors somehow got off the train before mercenaries ransacked it.” Baymax stated, apparently he liked to keep up with the news and I didn’t see a problem with that. “May I attend to you?”

“Only if you can check Dolly first, she’s about as bad off as I am.” I replied.

Baymax turned his gaze to Dolly who glared up at him and growled protectively while edging closer to me.

“She is in good health, her injuries are also healing very well.” Nice to know Mr. Baymax. “You take very good care of her.”

“I’m Pom Lambchop, this is Dormarch and that’s Dolly D. Dalmatian. If you think you can help us, then do so after I’m finished eating. I’m not exactly very trusting at the moment.” For reasons that were obvious.

“That is understandable, you were assaulted without proof of wrong doing and are owed an apolo…” A crashed happened outside and I quickly stood up and walked over to the door to see people running down the street. “El Fuego is currently attacking the general area.”

“Does he hurt people?” I asked Baymax as I heard crashing sounds coming from outside.

“Yes.” Baymax answered. “He is a prideful wrestler that specializes in mechanical engineering, he has been known to attack people in an effort to find challengers that can bring him down. He has grievously harmed eighty three people to date, but has no fatalities on record.”

“Dolly, watch my bag and Dormarch, I’ll take care of this.” I reached into the bag and pulled out my pink strip of cloth and tied it to my forehead. With that done I walked out the door into the streets to see the guy called El Fuego causing havoc, he was apparently a bull biped in a flaming mask that matched his mechanical armor.

“I’ll watch your back too, just to make sure nobody attacks it.” Stated Dolly as she glanced at the five and Baymax with some form of distrust. I turned back to nod and then started walking down the street towards the guy causing chaos in the mechanical armor.

-‘Fred-me-leon’ the Chameleon-

“Oh… I think I know where I recognize her from now!” I really should apologize for the mistake, I mean how could I have not noticed who she was before?! Was a single strip of pink cloth really that great a difference? Kind of awesome actually that she can do the disguise in plain sight thing with so little.

“You do?” Wasabi our raven friend asked as he was working on some science stuff at the table.

“Yeah, that’s the mysterious hero Leap Lamb, the first person in the world to be fully confirmed as having outright Super Powers by internet forum crazies.” I said while raising my claws as I watched her approach El Fuego. “I’m talking some really cool stuff too, not like what we can do with science and its naturally occurring super powers unlike Globby. There’s a lot of evidence that she was actually born with her powers.”

“Really, super powers?” Oh you may be a skeptical little duckling now Hiro, but Leap Lamb was the real deal as we’ve all seen already.

“Is she seriously going to take on El Fuego alone?!” Honey Lemon was worried, given she was nervously pawing at one of her ears, but I wasn’t.

I’ve actually seen what Leap Lamb was capable of from what little they’ve managed to record of her in action.

“Ten bucks says she gets creamed.” Go Go stated with a purr.

“I’ll take that bet and say she’s the one that creams him!” Since I knew some things my friends didn’t, this was going to be awesome!

-Pom-

“Excuse me, could you please stop that?” I gently asked the masked bull inside the large mechanical armor painted red with flames.

“Oh and what are you going to do to stop me, you puny little sheep?” He taunted.

“I really don't want to fight.” I wasn’t going to let a maniac hurt people when I was around to stop him.

“You'd be a waste of my time anyway.” He laughed as he looked down on me. “Now Big Hero Six, there’s a challenge and I intend to get my revenge.”

“I don’t know who those are, but if you don’t stop this destruction immediately, then I will have to take actions that I really don’t want to.” Watching as the machine leaned down toward me, I put up both my front legs as he moved its right hand forward and flicked at me.

A screeching metal noise was heard as I took the impact on my wool and the street underneath me compacted slightly.

“What… how did you?” This big horned bull looked at the slightly damaged fingers of his mechanical armor. “I am El Fuego, who is the mutton before me that will be on my plate soon?”

“I don’t like it, but people do tend to call me Leap Lamb.” As soon as I told him who I was, he let out a burst of laughter. “I will prevent you from harming innocent people and revenge isn’t even a good reason for assaulting said people who have nothing to do with your revenge.”

“You, you are what so many various criminals are terrified of meeting? A tiny, little, scrawny looking, gangly legged, whimpering ewe is what has so many scared to even commit crimes!” El Fuego continued laughing, then stopped for a moment and then swing around his left arm at me. “This will not take long at all!”

I changed my stance to being on my hind legs before impact. The blow struck me quite hard, but that was a good thing when I was prepping Paprika’s wobble counter.

My body shook with the force of the blow landing on my upheld right leg as the ground cratered beneath me even more. My body wobbled as I forced all of the impact from the blow into my held out left leg and threw it upwards towards the chest of mechanical armor.

My blow struck true and the mechanical armors chest blew open in a shower of sparks, bits of metal and various cracks from the impact. It was sent upwards slightly before tumbling down the street a good ways away.

While it was tumbling, El Fuego tried to stop himself and eventually got both of the mechanical armors hands on the ground. It still went skidding for a few feet further before he could finally stop. He was now staring at me in shock as I stood my ground on my hind legs.

“I think it will take longer than you believe it will.” I said hesitantly, trying to sound braver than I actually was.

Sometimes I didn’t really know my own strength and that was a rather surprising hit even for me. Returning all that force with a wobble counter wasn’t easy on my body, I was glad I wasn’t on the offensive. I seriously hoped I didn’t need my magic claw thing for this.

-Go Go-

“Whoa did you see that?!” Yes Wasabi, we all just saw that less than a hundred pound ewe send a one ton mechanical armored guy a good forty feet back with a single, and highly damaging, hit.

“I’m glad that I still have my spine and that she didn’t want to break it.” I muttered, feeling less sure I could take her in a straight fight.

Even I wasn’t dumb enough to fight El Fuego by myself, but apparently Fred had already won that bet.

“What in the, there is no way she could put out that much force! That doesn’t make any sense!” Right there with you Hiro, I really doubt science could explain what just happened there.

That sheep didn’t look to be biologically or mechanically augmented, which was a far more terrifying thought that this was naturally what she was capable of.

“She will need tending to after the fight, I will be there to provide healthcare services.” Baymax stated as he watched the one Fred was calling Leap Lamb slowly move forward towards El Fuego getting back up.

What did Baymax know that we didn’t?

-Pom-

He charged his mechanical armor towards me screaming.

“I’ll not losing to something as tiny as you!” As he swung the right fist forward, I hopped into it and took it on all four of my hooves and used its momentum to launch off of it.

Exactly what I wanted as I held up a hoof and caught a light poles horizontal bar and started to spin around it.

When I released the bar I curled up as I went flipping towards him, I uncurled to slam my left rear leg into the right shoulder of the mechanical armor and then I brought my right rear leg down in a powerful blow that almost tore the mechanical arm off the armor.

Grabbing the upper portion of the arm below the shoulder with my front hooves, I swung around into clinging onto it and looking at him. I gave him a weak smile and he thrust his mechanical armors left fist at me in an attempt to knock me off and I jumped straight up.

The left arm of the mechanical armor immediately tore off the right in a painful shrieking noise of rending metal and I landed on the back of the left hand.

He flailed the armors left hand outwards in an attempt to throw me off as the right arm dropped to the ground.

“This can’t be happening!” El Fuego sounded angry as he brought the back of the left mechanical hand into the ground, I hopped up onto the forearm and immediately started hitting the elbow joint as roughly as I could with my left hoof.

He wrenched the arm around, but that still didn’t throw me off and he seemed to be having a problem figuring out how to get me here as I dealt more minimal damage to the elbow joint.

“What are you?!” He lowered the left mechanical arm and the mechanical armors left foot raised up and stomped down, I jumped onto the right legs knee as the mechanical armor tore of its own arm off at the elbow.

The mechanical armor became unbalanced standing one leg as I jumped from the knee and slammed an uppercut into the bulls chin and he went flying out of his armor as it toppled backwards with me standing on top of it.

“A little lambkin whose fleece is white as snow, and everywhere this ewe ends up, trouble is sure to fall low.” Sarcastically stating this as I leapt off mechanical armor and faced the bull on my hind legs, I was going to continue avoid using dancing flame as it wasn’t exactly good for my health at the moment.

The muscle bound miscreant got up and charged me horns first, I sprung upwards and he tried to raise his horns up to meet me.

It was already too late for him as I wrapped my hind legs around his neck from behind in a sleeper hold and brought both my hooves down on his skull staggering him making him exhale. Once that was done I tightened my hold on his neck and he started trying to grasp at me with his overly muscular arms.

Slowly but surely he started to faint and quietly raged as he swung around back and forth, He tried falling on his back and tried crushing me under his weight.

It didn’t work.

I slammed him in the back of the skull once more, the struggling grew weaker and I hit him with two more one hoof blows one after the other.

Once he was down and already keeling over, I let go of his neck and he got a breath of air and then he fell unconscious.

I calmly walk my way back to the restaurant while taking the pink strip of cloth from my forehead. I walked in, went up to Dolly and put the cloth back in my bag.

I sat down and then promptly slammed my face into the table groaning about how Arizona and my friends were right about me, I did have incredible potential… I’m only now seeing it and I would rather have a peaceful life then all of this stuff.

“You feeling okay there Pom?” Dolly asked sweetly.

“I’ll be fine.” I grumbled, I wasn’t happy with having to fight what was a super villain from a Power Ponies comic book.

I lifted my head to send a look to the five and Baymax, I was about to say something when Cass Hamada showed up with food and looked at me concerned.

“Are you okay?” Cass asked innocently as she started placing my food before me.

“I just got into an argument with someone and like all arguments, it ended with someone getting hurt.” Yeah, mostly my opponent.

I never wanted to be this violent, but guys like that tend to force my hoof when they started targeting innocent people for no good reason.

“She seems to be experiencing signs of heightened stress.” Baymax offered amiably as he waddled over to us. “I suggest you bring her some warm tea, possibly with a hint of milk to help her relax from her trying ordeal.”

“I doubt you could get her to relax, she’s got terminal magnetic trouble issues.” Dormarch stated dryly as Dolly put him on the table next to me. “Well that argument was certainly something, huh Pom?”

“I’m sure you’ll work things out eventually, now here’s a late lunch for the cute little animalistic ewe.” Cass stated as she spread her arms to the spread on the table before me and then she patted me on the head.

“Thank you for the food.” I sat up pulled up my chair closer and began eating as blue uniformed bipeds and animalistic showed up and arrested the unconscious El Fuego. “How much would this meal cost?”

“How about I make this on the house to cheer you up?” Cass said while smiling at me. “I’ve always wanted to try this and I will take an opinion as payment. Also I don’t exactly have an estimate on how much this would cost as this is my first time making it.”

“Thank you…” I mumbled and started eating what she placed before me, it tasted really good too. “Cheese, spinach, tomato sauce, carrots, crisp and not crunchy… is this pizza gyoza?”

“Yes, what do you think?” She looked at me expectantly.

“It’s actually pretty good, go a bit lighter on the cheese, shred the carrots a bit finer and put the sauce on the side.” I answered, then she pointed to the next few dishes for me to try. “Oh and can you recommend a good hotel for me? I’m thinking of calling it day.”

“I will if you drop by tomorrow morning for my breakfast rush. I have a few more vegetarian dishes I want to try out on you!” I will take Miss Hamada up on that.

-Hiro Hamada-

Aunt Cass, why?!

133. Mercenary Hassle.

-Equus, Manehatten, Jade-

“Why are we in this situation again?” I asked as I held a crossbow pointed towards my sister’s chest.

“Didn’t you say that you had to aim at me or something worse might happen?” Jacky stated with a flat expression on her beak, my parrot sister really needed to lighten up about me aiming a weapon at her.

“No, that’s how not to make this situation worse, why are we in this situation specifically?” I gestured with my left paw to our given situation.

Celaeno pointing a sword at a stout parrot named Jock’s throat.

A pegasus named Shocking Awe was pointing an electrified knife at the unicorn Teatime Clockwork’s throat.

Dispel Grace was a breezy sized earth pony using magic to move a large mass of armor and wielding a sword charged with holy magic pointed at our favorite Viking dragon Flamberge’s chest.

“Wasn’t it something about neutrality and someone setting off a fire at our meeting?” Teatime stated calmly, then little Silvers my three headed chimera daughters ran up to me and her tail was blasting flames all over the place. “What the devil is that?”

“My daughters Silvers you jerk!” I stated with a ferocity while emphasizing the point of my crossbow by poking my sister in the chest with it.

“Oh, well… that explains the fire at the meeting, also should you really be poking… I can’t recall her name.” Clockwork look confused for a moment. “Anyway, stand down!”

“I agree.” I still kept my crossbow pointed at Jacky though, Silvers looked up at me innocently. I crouched down and rubbed their Pony and Abyssinian heads, the dragon head continued to proudly spew flames all over the place.

Thank goodness the unicorn head wasn’t experiencing power surges currently.

“Hey, remember my name you jackass!” Jacky shouted at Teatime before turning to a nearby donkey. “Also no apologies!”

“Eh, I understand.” The nearby donkey stated while nodding, before trotting off.

“Also please stop aiming the crossbow at me Jade.” Jacky stated and I did as she asked and lowered the crossbow, it then went off into her left leg by accident. “I think I hate everything about this situation, also you really owe me a solid now Jaded.”

Silvers gurgled cutely and the dragon head tail started giggling at the sight of Aunt Jacky having a crossbow bolt in her leg.

Jacky’s under reaction to it and the deadpan look she was sending me was kind of funny.

“It was an accident Jacky, but I definitely do owe you one. So anyway, we need your help with something… as loathe as I am to ask for it from the Quarrelsome Quartet.” It said a lot when I accidentally shot Jacky and she didn’t even react to the crossbow bolt entering her leg.

I calmly picked up Silvers and cuddled them to my chest and playfully tickled their belly.

Jacky’s pain tolerance was even higher than mine and I was a bit jealous of that, even if I wouldn’t wish her curse on anyone.

-Earth, California, San Fransokyo, Handful Hotel, middle of the night, ???-

Several armed and armored bipeds were at the door to the bedroom in the hotel, one held up three fingers.

Said fingers shifted to two and then one, then all the armored bipeds burst into the room firing automatics weapons. They expended about two hundred bullets into the room, out of all that were fired sporadically… none of them had hit anything living.

For the Shred Treads mercenaries target was not here, but that was okay, they had armored vehicles hidden at all the entrances and exits to the city. The only way Leap Lamb would leave would be if they killed her or she somehow learned how to fly. They even had SAMs, surface to air missiles, ready for the likelihood she tries to fly her way out in some vehicle.

They started checking each and every floor of the hotel and still didn’t find a sign of the mysterious sheep hero.

While it may not seem like it by outward appearances, the city was on lockdown.

“Hey, where’s the mattress for this bed?” One of the guys asked curiously.

-???-

“So you want me to steal a piece of tech, acquire some genetics from that dog and possibly the sheep who practically tore El Fuego apart? You want me to possibly do one or all of the above? That is a big ask even for me...” A cat biped in black and dark blue stated as she twirled two energy knives about and looked to her employer with a grin. “Sounds like a challenge, when do I begin? Oh and I want half cash up front for what I’m dealing with here.”

“Right now Momokase, it seems there are mercenaries stirring up a fuss in the city this night and Leap Lamb is drawing ample amounts of chaos towards her.” The figure in the shadows stated with a grin “Everyone wants a piece of that ewe and nobody has managed to succeed at that yet. It is very surprising how much trouble the super hero duo draws and yet they still draw breath to this day, they are quite amazing specimens.”

“Then I’ll just have to be the first to get my target.” Momokase stated with a grin as she sheathed her weapons and took off to quickly find Leap Lamb.

The agreed upon pay for this will be worth it if Momokase could pull it off.

-San Fransokyo outskirts, Sabu Taj-

All public transportation is about to be ground to a halt, I’ve placed several traps in places I think Leap Lamb could run to, does Leap Lamb seriously think she could outrun me forever?

Still, I wonder who hired the Shred Treads to kill her, there’s something disturbing going on here and the fur at the back of my neck is standing on end. Just how many people were after this one hard to kill super sheep?

“Something big is happening tonight I can just feel it.” I stated as me and my two teams spread out into the city, having already and quite narrowly gotten past the Shred Treads heavy armaments.

They made it impossible to approach them for sabotage efforts given their placements. Very smart mercenaries and they all knew each other, I wouldn’t be able to disguise my way past them either.

Where in the world did they get those tanks and how did they move them into position this quietly? That Tobias Rieper, otherwise known as Agent Forty Seven, was also in the area was making me very wary that an assassin was targeting not only my target, but me as well.

It didn’t matter who got in my way, Leap Lamb wasn’t escaping me this time and I would get that device from her.

We would be keeping the helicopters in reserve for emergencies, but the Shred Treads were not to be underestimated in being able to shoot them down with those SAM launchers. At least scouting those out wasn’t too hard to do.

-Handful Hotel, Tobias Rieper-

It seems I didn’t need to protect Leap Lamb, but capturing her or Caper Canine when I didn’t know where she was is going to be an issue. Also Sabu Taj was in San Fransokyo, I would have my work cut out for me as she likely knew of my presence and my target as well.

“I believe the target is still in the area, but it is unknown where she is currently. The Shred Tread’s mercenary snipers haven’t seen her hopping around roof tops, the exits to the city are covered and they are searching throughout this building for Leap Lamb’s presence. The only way out is by boat and the docks are being quietly held by them. This city is quickly becoming a powder keg and that’s not even factoring in what Big Hero Six might do once things kick off between all the factions I was currently aware of.” Yet I couldn’t help but feel that something was amiss with how Leap Lamb knew they were going to find her hotel room. Was she that paranoid? Sure she appeared on the news, but knowing which hotel she was staying at would have taken some time and Leap Lamb would have had to at least relax her guard a little bit. Perhaps she was chronically paranoid, a dangerous and warranted combination for someone with her abilities. “I will continued scouting the area for her presence, however I am taking a risk with all the forces converging on this city. Not to mention the local gangs are starting to take notice and might try to edge in on Leap Lamb for money.”

“Stay on the situation and keep me informed forty seven, be careful.” I stepped out of the elevator and walked past several concealed mercenaries watching the lobby entrance of the building, I doubt they’d know who I am… not many people do unless they have good intelligence like Sabu generally does.

They’d continue to watch the entrances, not that it would do them much good. Leap Lamb seems to be currently operating at a heightened level of skill as far as stealth and laying low are concerned.

This could actually take a while or it would all unravel at once, only time would tell and Leap Lamb didn’t have all the time in the world.

-Pom-

After a wonderful late lunch, Baymax had pulled the stitches from my chest and helped Dolly with hers as well. Her nose was looking better and would only need to be lightly bandaged now, but her tail still needed the same amount of bandaging and a lighter form of splint.

The healthcare provider was surprised that Dolly had recovered so well from such nasty injuries, but I’m chalking that up to magic never letting beauty tarnish. Just about everyone on Equus had some level of beauty in some form or another.

Not that I find myself often looking at anyone other than Tianhuo… or thinking about her… or loving her warm scaled form… I think I’m blushing now.

It was the sound of people stomping out of the elevator and following gunfire that had woken me up, the elevator was next to where the room I paid for was. I made sure to get a room next to the elevator specifically for this reason. It wasn’t long afterwards that the various mercenaries started searching the hotel for me, which was one faction and the other was the biped dog in the suit that got on the elevator and just left.

I poke my head from the hatch in the top of the elevator and quietly pulled back to close it up after the elevator doors started to shut.

Okay that biped dog in the nice suit with the strange tattoo on the back of his head was someone I definitely needed to watch out for, he was a second faction after me. I got his scent, I also knew what he looked like and would remember his voice. Remembering those three things were of importance in a situation where people were out to kill me.

At least I knew two groups were out to get me, maybe even three or four at this rate. From what I profiled off of the guy that just left the elevator, he carried himself as an extremely dangerous individual without fear.

“Wake up Dolly, on my back and then you can get back to sleep.” Yawning and blinking at me in a half dazed state, Dolly crawled onto my back from the mattress and snuggled into me to continue sleeping as I glued her and her board in place within my wool. I also put Dolly's helmet on her head. I quietly climbed up the elevator cables and away from the comfortable mattress I had placed precariously on top of the elevator. Stopping halfway up the shaft I pulled out Dormarch. “Dormarch, it’s as we suspected.”

“Well that’s going to make getting to The Lucky Cat Café for breakfast a bit of a workout huh?” Be glad that understood the reasoning behind the sarcasm Dormarch, I thankfully got in enough hours of both sleep and rest in to not be cranky about this with him. “Okay, so what’s the plan Pom?”

I carefully strapped Dormarch to my left leg as I hung onto the cables with my hind legs, I was trying not to look down. I could barely see in the light Dormarch was projecting. I moved my bag and glued it to the wool on my stomach.

If there was one fluffmancer ability that I’m glad to have gotten down, it’s sticking things to my wool and vice versa. It certainly has more utility than thickening the wool around my hooves to protect them while enhancing all the blows I performed. Like what I did with El Fuego’s mechanical armor.

“Don’t exactly have one yet. All exits to the city are being watched, people are actively looking for me and among those I can currently trust outside of us to be able to help me is Baymax.” Even if Baymax was the large red armored guy, he just wanted to help people. He didn’t have an aggressive bone in his body, unlike the kid in the family that made him a hero called Hiro. Baymax does not have the heart to cripple or injure, but he can definitely respectably defend and protect readily enough as much as disable villains with minimal force. “So I’m going to wiggle my way out of this building and get to a place where nobody would expect me to go.”

“And where would that be?” Dormarch asked rubbing his head with a paw. “Big Hero Six are affectionately known by the public to show up wherever trouble does. Of course they kind of jumped the gun with us, but they wouldn’t be wrong in thinking we’re trouble. These mercenaries could possibly start taking hostages to lure us out or do even worse, like start bombarding the city until we give ourselves up.”

I had to think on this one, because really, there were a lot of people out to get me if every way out of the city was really being watched. There’s the people inside the city hunting for me to.

They’d expect me to go to places where I can readily leap and bound around… they were watching the rooftops and likely know most of what I was capable of now. Except for gliding, I have never actually been caught gliding on the news.

“We’re going underground.” I stated simply. There was no basement, but the hotel did have what was called a parking garage connected to it and I could get there from the vents. They couldn’t watch every single place at all times and going underground would be the safest option for us. “Can you access this… wire fiber thing and look up city blueprints for tunnels and aqueduct networks? I’m even willing to brave some sewers provided I can keep myself out of whatever sludge is in them.”

I had already bought enough water and food before turning in at the hotel, where I promptly placed the mattress from my room on the roof of the elevator to sleep soundly without interruption other than the ups and downs of the elevator.

So we’d be able to lay low safely enough, but actually escaping the city was going to require a ridiculous plan. A plan like what someone of Jaded ‘Freaking’ La Perm’s caliber could come up with. I'm not that good.

“It actually stands for… never mind, accessing nearest wireless network and trying to keep this access quiet… stay still.” Computers were not my area of expertise. It would never be honestly, but Dormarch had quite a bit of knowledge on a number of things and would make up for my lacking when it came to technology. “Huh, the technology in this city is cutting edge, at least as close as Kahn Industries and Mcduck Enterprises are. There are key differences though in the various focuses. Krei Tech Industries and the now closed down biotech company Sycorax have both received a large amounts backlash for various incidents.”

“Can you stick to the important stuff Dormarch?” I asked quietly.

“This is important, especially for you Pom! Krei Tech has once created an interdimensional portal, and it shares alarming similarities to the working portal experiments of the now criminal mastermind Taurus Bulba in the Saint Canard incident within this years’ time. Also Kahn Industries may be possibly taking a crack at it as well despite the prior two causing dimensional instabilities." Domarch would be worried about the place that made him, but these are definitely the thing I did want to know. "This might be why your group was separated upon arrival in this world.”

This is what I had asked Dormarch to be on the lookout for since I acquired him, a surefire way home for me and my lost companions!

“Dormarch… who would I have to get into contact with to get information on all of this?” I asked slowly and with wide begging eyes as I looked to Dormarch on the screen and he looked worried, but he still produced a picture.

“We’d need to get into contact with one Professor Abigail Callaghan, a major proponent of alternate dimensional studies and someone who obviously wants to go to infinity and beyond.” He waved a paw at the image of an animalistic brown fox. “Ahem, in the most literal sense possible of course, there has been issues with animalistic prejudice in the science community and she’s an avid proponent against such things. She may be willing to humor us, but her father might come after us… Yokai, AKA Robert Callaghan who is said to be the possible killer of one Tadashi Hamada and the cause of the second portal incident at Krei Tech Industries.”

“Do we have an idea of where this Abigail Callaghan currently is?” Please, please tell me she wasn’t in this city and was somewhere in the countryside.

“Somewhere in San Fransokyo City, still recovering from the after effects of being stuck in stasis for a long period and is quietly working as an assistant teacher to one Dr. Wendy Wower. I know where Dr. Wower is as she has a fairly popular children’s entertainment show, but I have absolutely no clue how to find Abigail Callaghan otherwise. As for Mcduck Industries... they technically had a portal, but it was created by a villain who used to be on the board of directors that wanted to erase adventurous people from existence, so I really doubt you’d want to actually find that guy in particular.” At least that rekindled my hope Dormarch, at least you did that much for me. “Please approach Abigail with caution and don’t treat her roughly, she’s recovering from the first known and survived hyper sleep in our dimension. From what I can see in the news report… she didn’t age a day until she came out of the strange dimension she had been trapped in.”

“You’re my good boy Dormarch.” I stated with praise and Dormarch smiled up at me wagging his tails and putting his images paws against the screen before licking at it. “Still though, where does Dr. Wower work?”

“That’s a bit of a rub… we have to get across the entire city to make contact with Dr. Wower. She is also known to have been in contact with Big Hero Six who have been involved with every large scale incident within this city. She also has some association with Tadashi Hamada. There is one last thing I would like to note.” I tilted my head and Dormarch brought up the blueprints and the ductwork leading into the lower areas of the parking garage and a quick accessway to the derelict subway system. “I have found a safe path out of the building and have discreetly disconnected from the internet, as your Personal Exploration Terminal I will try to lead you out of the city or to Dr. Wower to attempt contact with Abigail Callaghan. If anyone did manage to trace my intrusion, then they would see us as being in Peru at this very moment. I am not holding my breath on that though, please move quickly.”

“A very good boy!” I looked at the screen and nodded, I looked around for the ventilation duct that Dormarch was directing me to. When I heard the thud of the mattress falling off the elevator. “Right, time to move!”

-Shred Tread Mercenaries-

“What was that noise?” One guy asked.

“It sounded like it came from the elevator shaft.” A woman with several hidden guns under her nightlife style dress stated.

It wouldn’t be long before they found the mattress and Pom’s smell on it. Once they confirmed that Leap Lamb had used the mattress to sleep on the hotels elevator they started searching the hotels ductwork for her.

They found traces of her smell in the parking garage, the Shred Tread Mercenaries started quickly sweeping the streets.

By then Pom was already in the abandoned subway system and trying to decide between finding Dr. Wower or escaping the city.

-Abandoned subway, Pom-

“Is there a way to get Dr. Wower’s contact number like the one Dolly uses to call her families device in Britain without endangering her?” I was quite desperate to meet Abigail Callaghan now, Ocellus and Smolder could wait a little longer for me to come to Duckberg. Shanty might not be able to wait as long. “Also contact Dolly’s family, I need to get a message to Ocellus and Smolder.”

One of my ears twitch as I heard something or someone coming.

“Domarch dim the light and be quiet, map of the subway system as it currently is and all viable exits.” Dormarch nodded and the screen turned into pink dot with ‘Pom’ hovering above it, a pulse showed several grey dots on approach with questions marks on it.

After a minute or two, I heard some voices.

“What makes Sabu think she’d come down here?” One of the men asked.

“Easy place to get lost and nobody would expect someone who can leap such distances to take shelter underground, plus it’s the one part of the city that none of the other mercenaries are checking.” A woman this time stated as their lights shined left and right. “It will take hours to search every nook and cranny of these tunnels though.”

“There's nothing down here, except maybe rats.” One of the other guys stated. “There’s all kinds of corners she can be in, especially in this city. All this activity is riling up the local gangs.”

“We can be sure Big Hero Six is going to take notice of all this eventually.” They passed by the intersection below me and I crawled along the ceiling into a different pathway base on the Dormarch's directions to viable exits. “Don’t think they’ve ever really fought people with guns or combat training before, just technology going out of control.”

“Still, we shouldn’t underestimate them or Leap Lamb.” A Doberman biped stated.

-At home above the Lucky Cat Café, Hiro-

“Something is going on and I bet it has to do with Leap Lamb.” I looked out the window wondering what was happening in the city. “Do you have anything Baymax?”

“Hiro, it is not very safe to be out tonight.” Baymax stated calmly. “A wide area scan from Basemax is showing signs of a number of armed individuals having set up sniper rifles around the city.”

"What?!" I sat up and looked to Baymax.

"There are also tanks alongside artillery units for shooting down aerial targets present outside of San Fransokyo." Baymax stated calmly before blinking. "An impending disaster is imminent... I will contact our friends."

Author's Note

San Fransokyo is about to get really loud real fast...

134. San Fransokyo Shuffle: Part 1.

-Equus, Meadow Hills, Fizzle-

“Ugh, how can this one lambkin be so annoying?!” I rubbed my forehead with my hooves in tiny little circles. The door was impervious to unicorn magic and a lot of other things, the bunker was pretty sound if not almost foolproof.

“I have to admit, the security this guy has on their bunker beats anything I’ve ever seen anywhere. Not that I’ve seen much.” Gallus stated from next to me. “I’ve heard a lot about lambkin, but I thought they were exaggerating.”

“While it’s true that Lambkin don’t exactly have an active military, aside from the occasional figurative black sheep, they don’t seem to have any issues when it comes to building incredibly ridiculous fortifications.” I calmed down and thought about how to drag them out of the bunker.

Lambkin tended to panic easily, but this was a ridiculous reaction to a world summit needing delegates from every corner of the world. Why was this guy even a delegate if they’ve never done their job? At least Jade was doing hers, even if she was making a complete mockery of it.

“I’ll say, how are we going to get the guy out of there?” Don’t honestly know Gallus, but I did have an idea. The griffon knocked on the door several times, yet there was no response. “The door looks impenetrable, kind of like the doors to Tartarus our teachers showed us on a field trip. That the lambkin even got a unicorn proof door installed is quite impressive.”

“Hmm… who says we have to go through the door?” That’s how we would do this, my loves would approve of the chicanery I just thought up. “Why make a door so resilient, when all the walls around it don’t match its integrity and are much easier to bust through?”

“Ah… that does seem to be a bit dumb, but this is a lambkin we’re dealing with. The door is effective enough on its own with all the dirt, rock and minerals in the way of simply digging past it.” Gallus had some good logic. “It’s still going to take forever to dig the guy out, so should I grab some shovels and get started?”

“No.” I had a better idea. “We need Maud Pie, can you go back to Ponyville and quickly procure her services?”

-Earth, California, San Fransokyo, Basemax HQ, Hiro-

Big Hero Six’s headquarters was coming along great and we’ve finally worked out all the bugs, no more training room rampancy… hopefully. I ran my purple gauntlet under my beak as I stared at the readouts while waiting for everyone to take a seat.

“Okay guys we’ve got something big going on around city.” I had an idea of who they were looking for, it wasn’t exactly hard to figure out when Aunt Cass had made an acquaintance of the one who was likely a target for a number of armed people. “Leap Lamb is at the center of it, her hotel room was recently shot up by a bunch of thugs.”

“Oh no… is she and her dog okay?” Looking to Honey Lemon, she seemed quite upset and was pulling at one of her ears. Caper Canine was adorable and Honey Lemon wanted to be on better terms with both her and Leap Lamb.

“That’s just it, from what little I know, there was no blood and she likely wasn’t there when they busted in while firing their guns.” I gave it a few seconds before someone finally asked about it. “Also the mattress to the bed is missing.”

“How are you getting this information?” Go-go’s tail twitched as she crossed her arms and she stared me down at the image of police tape on the scene.

“Mini-max is currently acting as a reconnaissance for us. Also I don’t know where Leap Lamb is, but she’s being actively hunted by people trying to kill her.” I paused and started typing things out in Basemax and sent a few queries to Mini-max, I brought up a screen showing the room in question filled with bullet holes. Mini-max had gotten a few good visuals on it.

My friends gained grim looks as they looked at just how many bullets were fired into this hotel room.

“Pom Lambchop, also known as Leap Lamb, has several highly impairing health issues.” Baymax informed us helpfully after studying the image. “She is in great need of our aid as heroes.”

“What kind of health issues could she possibly have?” Wasabi was still fixing his plasma blade gauntlet as we sat and looked at the screen that showed a layout of the city of San Fransokyo. “She took down El Fuego in minutes, are her health issues really that bad if she can do that?”

“Yeah, that was really cool.” Fred-meleon stated as he leaned back and kicked his feet up on the table. “We didn’t even need to suit up, she just wrapped a piece of cloth around her head and went at him bare hoof and no weapons.”

“With some reluctance if you hadn’t notice.” Good point Go-Go, maybe this recent event is why she was reluctant to get into a fight. It drew attention to her and that’s why she looked so defeated afterwards, because she knew people were gunning for her.

“I have diagnosed Pom with heavy bruising, heightened anxiety and stress levels, an Arrhythmia based heart condition, cracked ribs and a healing gunshot wound to the chest that has happened within the realm of a week. I have personally removed the stitches and aided in a quicker recovery. Given her general size and weight, any excessive bleeding can quickly lead to death by anemia. She has a device that is already monitoring her health and is capable of giving her real time information of her and her companion’s health. It has been stated by the Personal Exploration Terminal that Leap Lamb flat lined at least seven times in the course of getting her worst injuries treated and made mention of the train incident where she was nearly hit directly by two rocket artillery rounds.” Baymax wouldn’t be telling us this if there wasn’t a good reason for it. He does care about patient confidentiality unless it was very important that other people be informed of issues, issues that heroes like us would need to take into account. “Her capabilities are pushing her body well beyond their natural limits, the buildup of stress and injuries enacted upon her need time to heal and she is not receiving that time to make a full recovery. While she can still fight, it is not highly recommended as she is likely limited to anywhere between half or even a quarter of her full strength.”

“Were these injuries still enough to be a problem when she fought El Fuego?” Honey was looking at the table and rubbing at her arm now.

“Yes, it was actually to her benefit that she ended the fight as swiftly as she did. Apparently her hearing is fine, her super powers may be preventing hearing loss.” So wait, if what Baymax was telling us is correct, then did that mean Leap Lamb fought and beat El Fuego while at a serious disadvantage… and she still won?! “I cannot calculate how much her super powers are compensating for all of her current health issues, if they are at all. She was naturally born and has no genetic or mechanical enhancements, her capabilities are in fact supernatural and completely unexplainable by any realm of known science. Her companion Dolly, also known as Caper Canine, is a completely normal Dalmatian aside from showing signs of intelligence that are more in line with an animalistic person. It is unknown if Dolly has supernatural capabilities beyond her skateboard deflecting energy and showing signs of unnatural durability. I believe they both are currently in great need of our help.”

“Yeah, I also feel bad about spooking her when she first got here, we really need to make it up to Leap Lamb… so I can get an autograph from a real super powered hero!” Fred looked at the map of San Fransokyo and seemed to be ignoring the glares we were sending him. “Where do you think she went? I’m kind of surprised we haven’t dealt with something that isn’t related to the crazy super science stuff we get into around here.”

“I am more concerned about the tanks and artillery parked around the outskirts of San Fransokyo.” I stated as I brought up the images of them around the city. “I agree that we should help Leap Lamb if she needs it, but we also need to be on the alert for anything else happening tonight. This might be the most dangerous the streets have ever been.”

My friends sent each other worrying glances. We were mostly bulletproof, but even if we weren’t we did have several methods to deal with a large number of people that had guns.

“We’re going to use our ultra-armor upgrades.” I stated solemnly and my friends nodded, we needed the power boost.

“That is a good precaution, I would also like to remind everyone that Leap Lamb and Caper Canine are not in fact bulletproof.” They certainly weren’t Baymax, but they were apparently smart enough to avoid being in a hotel room that was going to be filled with bullets. “We should hurry.”

-Location: ???, Pom-

I was passing through an underground place that looked like a really bad fight had happened here.

“Is this a villain’s lair?” Dolly’s voice caused me to jerk and my heart to shoot up my throat. I looked at Dolly on my back, she was just yawning. The first thing she did when I let her loose from my wool was stretch herself out. “You are really comfortable to sleep on Pom. Whoa… cool… what do you think happened there?”

She was pointing at a piece of machinery sticking out of the ceiling.

“If you access the computer, maybe I can find out.” Dormarch stated from my left leg. I looked over to the computer and moved over to it. “The power switch is down and to the right. It should still have a viable power source.”

I turned on the computer and waited for Dormarch to do whatever it was he did.

“Okay, this is the villain lair of a steam punk villain named Baron Von Steamer and the guy doesn’t seem to understand computers very well. Several points of access to this lair were lost because… huh… from a battle with the robots that currently work at the Lucky Cat Café and those six heroes who accosted us entering the city?” Dormarch looked a little concerned to learn that, as was I. “We can get out of here and into the cities junkyard via a nearly unknown access hatch in… that direction.”

Dormarch was pointing me in a given direction and I nodded.

“Right, come on Dolly.” As I followed Dormarch’s directions for a few minutes, I had a thought. “Dolly do you think you could…”

“No.” Dolly stated flatly. “You’re not making me nearly leave you behind again!”

“Quiet Dolly, there are people down here and they could hear us.” I looked about nervously before entering a tunnel Dormarch had pointed us towards. “Dormarch can you call Dolly’s family?”

“No, we’re too far underground at the moment, also while the computer back there did have power it didn’t have any form of surface based communications up. So we can’t do so until we get above ground.” Thank you for telling me we didn’t need to go back Dormarch, I think it was better that we kept moving forward anyway.

I turned off the computer and started making my way for the tunnel.

“What would you need my ‘fam’ for?” Asked Dolly as she walked at my side.

“To at least send some information to Ocellus and Smolder in case we can’t ditch the mercenaries safely, I’m not leading mercenary’s right to them. So I want to tell them to look into Abigail Callaghan for a possibly way to get us home.” After I said that, Dolly froze up slightly. “What’s the matter Dolly?”

“You might have a way back home?” This is where Dolly started acting curiously, her face looked a bit pained too. “When did that happen?”

“Dolly wants to know when we found a possible way for me to return back home.” It didn’t take me a long time to get a response from Dormarch.

“After accessing the wireless network in the hotel and our room was attacked. I looked up various key figures in relation to San Fransokyo over the last few years that might come after us.” Dormarch answered. “Abigail Callaghan came up as a research specialist in dimensional travel technology which might aid Pom and her friends in returning home to where they come from. It was a part of the Yokai incident at Krei Tech.”

“Huh…” Dolly looked to me and seemed to be in thought about something. “What did you want me to do? I’m not going to do it because I’m sticking right by your side Pom, but I at least want to know.”

I sighed, knowing she was going to be upset with me and I could feel her getting upset already.

“You were right Dolly, I was going to send you away… I wanted you to find a Dr. Wendy Wower, she apparently knows where Abigail Callaghan is or how to get in contact with her. It would have been safer than being around me.” We both felt the pain of hurt as I said this, I winced and for some reason Dolly didn’t as she looked away rubbing her right paw along the black fur of her left leg.

“If I’m your sidekick, then I’m going to be at your side for this one Pom, regardless of the dangers involved! I don’t want safe, I want us both to be okay!” Dolly stated sternly as she looked up to me with a determined glare. “I know exactly what were you were going to be doing while I was looking for this Bow-Wower person. Don’t do you dare try and ditch me to do that! I’m supposed to have your back here and I intend to do just that! I actually want to meet Ocellus and Smolder with you and be able to proudly look them in the eyes and say that I was there when you needed me this time. I wasn’t there for you in Zootopia and you almost… you almost…”

“Dolly… you got hurt by that Professor Nimnul person… I’m just trying to look out for you and give you safer things to do than die trying to protect or help me.” Our bond strengthened and didn’t weaken as Dolly pressed herself against my legs whimpering, which was weird because Dolly sounded quite upset with me at the moment. “You supported me on the train and the fire at the studio, I just want you to be safer than I am. Did I ever ask too much of you after that? You’re still healing Dolly.”

I just pulled Dolly into a hug and she clamped her paws around me, he tail vaguely shifting back and forth.

“Quiet, we got incoming.” Dormarch’s whispered words drifted over the both of us before I could try to speak to Dolly again, we heard sounds coming from a different passageway. “Next location, sewer pipe to bypass blockage to junkyard access. Look for L 3 written on the walls. It is the third pipe on the left from there.”

I picked up Dolly in my front hooves and ran up to the ceiling on my hind legs as a light filtered down the junction we were passing through. I looked around and eventually spotted the ‘L 3’ where we needed to go.

“We’ll discuss things later Pom.” Dolly yipped quietly in my hooves. As we saw several mercenaries turn the corner, it was a good thing they weren’t in the habit of looking up.

“I swore I heard something coming from down this way.” One of them stated as they approached us, warily looking at every shadow.

There were four of them, we could possibly take two down immediately, but the others might react quickly enough to our presence to injure us. We could easily safely make a run for it without alerting them to us… or we could draw more people down here on a wild goose chase to rescue this group after we knock them out.

It was a vast difference of having less or more people to deal with later, plus the risks involved of not being at full capacity for something worse in the future. This was a fight we could afford to avoid, not one we could afford to lose.

I placed my forehead against Dolly’s and I closed my eyes, I pulled on our familiar bond and let my ideas flow to her and ideas started coming back. They came fast and our current feelings mixed leaving us both feeling a little off.

When she pulled her forehead away, Dolly opened her eyes and gave me a look of determination. She had a slight grin on her face as she took hold of her skateboard strap with her paws and tilted her head at the guys below us.

Giving Dolly a slight frown, I wasn’t going to enjoy what we had to do next even if I had agreed to do this silently. We were in sync with one another in this moment.

We didn’t know how many people were after us, but we would deal with this one step at a time. Maybe we could ask Baymax for help if we saw him, I was willing to give his five friends a fresh chance after our awkward first meeting.

Dolly would start the attack and then I would follow. We had to do this quickly and efficiently.

Dolly was facing nose to the floor while gripping onto my body and we waited as they passed by below us.

-Mook Horror Show-

The front two mercenaries aimed their beams down two tunnels not seeing anything aside from maybe a scrounging rat or a cockroach scuttling away from the light as they continued down the path. There were no signs of anything have disturbed the area.

“Wait…” One of the front two mercenaries stated. “Behind us!”

There was no more light coming from behind them, the two of them swung around and immediately fired their guns. There was nothing there, where their two comrades used to be, they shined their lights upwards and down the tunnels looking in every direction and above themselves.

“Where the hell is our rear guard?!” The mercenary stated and began panicking as the moved forward and back towards the junction. They immediately spun around and fired several shots because the light from the other mercenary winked out behind them.

Again the bullets found nothing but darkness and the light showed no bodies.

Slowly the mercenary started shaking as they reached for their radio, they had set up a network beacons to stay in communication with one another.

“Help, we’re under…” The radio was knocked from the mercenaries hand by a pair of rear paws, as their helmet was knocked away by the front paws of a vaguely dog shaped blur. The last thing they saw in the light, in complete wide eyed terror, was a hoof flying straight towards their temple from above.

“Teams call in!” A voice sounded out from the radio.

“Alpha here, no sign of trouble.” One voice stated.

“Beta here, we spotted Shred Treads setting up another sniper nest.” Another voice stated.

“Gamma here, we’re okay.” A third voice called out. “We think we might have spotted the infamous assassin Agent Forty…”

The silence following Gamma’s statement was met with a cold sense of dread. After thirty seconds a response came.

“We’re writing off team Gamma.” The first voice stated.

“Delta here, no sign of contact.” Sounded out a fourth voice.

The radio on the floor was soon picked up by a paw and a mouth smirked before inhaling.

“AARRRrrrrWOOOoooo!” A Dalmatian belted out one of the loudest howls they have ever done in their life.

“Gah! That came from Epsilons position, Epsilon are you there!” The first voice called out once more, thy only received cheerful sounding barks. “Darn it, team Epsilon has been taken out too, by Caper Canine and likely Leap Lamb as well. Converge on their position from all sides!”

“Do not under any circumstances underestimate Caper Canine. Remember, shoot to kill, no hesitation!” The first voice continued. “We can get the device after they are dead! Switch all frequencies to predetermined set five, we do not want the world’s best assassin tracking us down or cornering us down here!”

“Affirmative!” Several voices called out.

-Dolly-

“Ugh… the smell is nauseating!” I grumbled while digging my nose into Pom’s wool.

“Please bear with it for a little while longer Dolly. We’re almost there.” Pom got us out of there fast, nobody would be able to get up to the pipe or be able to follow us to here quickly. “Also, remember that my nose is just as sensitive as yours is. I’m not happy about this either.”

The blood was kind of rushing to my head, but at least we were almost through it. Eventually we came out of the other side of pipe and Pom started to move along the wall.

“It should be just ahead.” Dormarch announced and I pointed at it with a paw, it had a ladder.

Pom nodded and climbed upwards and pushed upwards on the hatch, it didn’t budge. She propped her legs up against the wall and then forcefully pushed upwards and the hatch popped and a landslide of random junk went past us as we found ourselves climbing out of the hatch into a junkyard.

“Contact Dolly’s family.” Pom stated immediately.

“Contacting, this may take a moment.” Dormarch stated, a circle with an arrow rotated a few times and eventually an image popped up on the screen.

“Hello? Oh, hey Dolly, morning Pom.” Da Vinci looked to be a little less shy and her tongue was still a nice shade of blue like it usually was.

“Hey Da Vinci, we’re currently in a bit of a situation, being hunted by mercenaries again, but don’t worry we got this!” I stated with what looked to be a cheerful smile. “Anyway we need you to write down a few names for Pom’s friends to look into. Tell Hunter to send them through to his cousin who lives near where Ocellus and Smolder are staying, we might be held up from getting to Duckberg for a few days. We need some time to ditch these guys.”

Da Vinci nodded and went away for a few seconds and came back with a piece of paper and sat down.

“What are the names you need them to look into?” Da Vinci asked with a no nonsense tone.

“Professor Abigail Callaghan, Dr. Wower and anyone else along the lines of having anything to do with experimental dimensional technology like that that doesn’t have a criminal history.” Pom responded while putting a hoof around me. “We’ll be busy for the foreseeable future, so we’ll try to call back when things are a little less hectic.”

With that we cut the call and made our way warily down a junk pile, Pom immediately grabbed me and leaped back onto the pile as a barely visible translucent blue knife struck the ground and stuck into it.

She looked up at the figure that threw it at us.

“Hello there.” The blue and black suited figure stated as she fanned out several knives in each hand. “Hope you two are ready to lose that device and some blood.”

135. San Fransokyo Shuffle: Part 2.

Author's Note

Music: Headdy the Hero theme, Dynamite Headdy.

135. San Fransokyo Shuffle: Part 2.

-Kunlun Mountains, ???-

It was all quiet as five monkey guards patrolled the parameter of the wall leading into Panda King’s domain, also his fireworks factory and materials production facility.

As they passed by a tree more than ten feet apart, the fifth guard didn’t see the frying pan flying into their face before it was too late and a pair of wool covered legs went under the guard’s armpits to drag them out of sight.

The fourth guard turned around at the next tree to look curiously behind him, only to get pulled into the tree they were standing next to by a big pair of pink arms wrapping around his neck torso. He didn’t even manage to get a strangled scream to warn the three others.

Even then, the third guard went on alert and leapt away from the trees and started looking around as the other two continued forward, knowing that something had happened to the fourth and fifth guard.

Suddenly, something with the grip of a vice grabbed his leg and dragged him under the snow from directly below him. A soft mechanical warbling sound could be heard.

The last two guards turned around and then immediately went back to back, there was no way anyone was going to sneak up on them as they held their lights aloft and watched for movements in the shadows.

A large tree slowly bent downwards into sight above them, a cane held by a gloved hand hooked around the second guard’s neck and before the first guard could react the tree snapped upwards and the second guard yelped as they were slung into the air and then disappeared when the cane hooked them again and pulled them out of sight.

The last remaining guard turned to run only to see a goat sitting in his path with grin on her face.

“Guess what? This be an ambush!” The guard just looked at the goat with a glare and slung his staff forward, only for the staff to split in half in the flash of a crescent before it could even get a quarter of the way to hitting its target. Three fourths of the guard’s weapon went flying off into the snow. “Also you be the guard that I am handling, isn’t that being great?”

The happy go lucky grin changed to one of a more serious nature as the goat leapt at the suddenly fearful guard.

-San Fransokyo, Junkyard, Pom-

I looked up at the moon, I couldn’t see the stars in the sky thanks to all the light pollution from the nearby city. I sighed and shook my head before returning my gaze to the Lynx studying me from atop a pile of junk.

“My name is Pom Lamchop, this is Dolly Dalmatian. We’re more commonly known as Leap Lamb and Caper Canine. It is not a pleasure to make your acquaintance because I’m quite sure you’re here to kill us.” She seemed upset at the notion of actually killing, which was a good thing in my book. “So can you at least tell me how many people are gunning for me tonight miss?”

“Momokase, and I am not one of the assassins or mercenaries that seem to be wandering around the city. If it is as you say and they are all trying to kill you, then it is only by luck that we are meeting here and I am one of the few that won’t kill you. That doesn’t mean I can’t cripple you and leave you to their mercies.” She said as slowly stalked towards us wielding those strange translucent blades, Dolly already looked ready to intercept and her fur was standing on end. “I am no killer or murderer, I am a thief first and foremost. My trade is in skill, precision and being able to get a job done. Which is both fortunate and most unfortunate for you, were I less talented… then my blades would have killed at some point.”

“Can you just walk away and pretend you never saw me?” The lynx just flicked a knife at me and I hopped to the right and watched as it slice through a piece of metal like it was made of nothing. “I’ll take that as a no… Caper Canine, get ready. Follow my lead, we’re going to sing our way through this.”

“Huh?” Momokase seemed confused as Dolly barked an affirmative.

I started shifting my hips and stomping out a beat, before I began running in place making my legs blur.

“Make haste, don’t waste, a moment since we have to keep dodging trouble… at a crazy pace~!” I charged and went into a slide under the knives and then I bounded off to the side as three knives struck the ground where I was and went straight up to their hilts. I landed on a garbage pile. “I’ll make do, run on through, there’s still so much more trouble tonight… that we must avoid too~!”

“What is the point of you, singing all of this, right now~?” Momokase threw one knife after another at me.

I dodge backwards, ducked down and the third knife entered something important on the portion of the rusty vehicle I was standing on, because a portion of it popped me up in the air over a mound of garbage.

“I’ll dip, duck, dodge, and dive~!” I shouted out as I looked out from behind the garbage pile and then ducked behind the pile avoiding a knife that ripped through it and Momokase nearly took Dolly’s whipping skateboard to the back of the head. “Please don’t mind the dog, we just want to stay a-live~!”

Momokase dodged and Dolly was quickly on her board and kicking it off the ground.

“What’s wrong, this song, why exactly am I singing this… I’m hoping this annoyance doesn’t last long~!” Momokase shouted as she launched some knives Dolly’s way, but she was already on her board and skidding up a pipe that was taken out in chunks by the knives behind her. “Sting like a bee, you won’t lose me, maybe a knife or two in the leg… then you’ll see~!”

“I just want to go home, is that so really so wrong, you know~?” I sang and then ducked as she slung another knife at me and that tore through everything in its path and slice a vehicle in half. I leapt onto a different trash pile and jumped again as each knife sliced through everything thing like it was hot butter, collapsing piles of garbage behind me. “Hey, watch it, with those, knives~!”

Dolly past by the garbage pile I was on to safety and I leapt down after her. I went to hide behind some of the large pieces of garbage, specifically a metal barrel. For all the good it will do me when that Lynx Momokase can just throw knives that can seemingly cut through everything.

Looking in the direction I felt Dolly to be in she was inside a derelict car wielding her skateboard, she sent a look my way and gestured. I nodded, I watched as the lynx stalked through the junkyard her shining eyes gazing around the junkyard for us and I considered actually taking the fight to her.

“You both better just come on out, because I’ll not give up because of this you see~!” Momokase sang as she looked around in the shadows while wielding her knives. “Not when I’ve got the biggest pay day coming my way~! Given its walking around right in front of me~.”

“I would just like to state that I don’t like the idea of death by mercenary~.” I sang and immediately rolled away from the barrel as Momokase flung a spinning knife my way, said knife sliced the barrel cleanly in half before the blade of the knife cut through a building girder and it nearly collapsed it on top of me.

I darted away and kept my eyes on the so called thief with ridiculous cutting blades that could possibly instantly kill us both if something went wrong.

“We’ll likely attract them given we’re belting these rhymes out as we flee~.” Dolly sang as she leapt out and down towards me coming off of a piece of metal, she flung her skateboard out to deflect the next two knives being sent my way as she passed by me.

She pulled her skateboard back in before Momokaze could hit the strap with another dexterously flung knife, the lynx looked a little bit distracted.

As we both leapt away and over a mound of sewer pipes that looked to be completely fine and yet were in this junkyard with everything else. Dolly had to bounce off several pieces of trash to get over them and I managed it in a single leap.

“Did that… dog just… actually freaking sing~?!” I heard Momokase stated in shock. “Hey wait, get back here and stop it with the annoying singing already!”

We stopped at an open space and looked up at a wrecking ball on one of the three surrounding piles, a nice open space to fight. We couldn’t leave the junkyard yet, any assault by mercenaries would have us fighting on two fronts and Momokase was proving dangerous enough already as I really didn’t want to test my wool against her blades.

Dolly got in front of me and I readied myself, Momokase likely hadn’t noticed the edges of her knives deflecting off of Dolly’s board in that last attack.

It was a little concerning that Momokase understood Dolly for a second there, might be the heart song magic.

When Momokose slashed her way through the thick pipes, they split apart in the middle letting her walk right on by them, it was really quite intimidating that building materials meant so little in the way of actually stopping her.

“What no attack, do you lack, I’m seriously waiting to see if you… find a way to fight back~!” She flicked out several knives, Dolly leapt up and knocked the blades away and one upwards to where I caught in my right hoof.

This made Momokase pause with wide eyes as I spun around and slung it back in her general direction.

I’m not an expert knife thrower, but with enough force and if my aim was true…

“Blades really flat, it’s so sharp that, it looks like they’ll cut through anything… including this annoying cat~.” Dolly sung wryly as the blade missed the lynx entirely, she sent me a look as my throw had probably looked somewhat good to her.

“Did you just seriously miss me, with that throw, just how~?” The lynx asked as the blade I threw back was nowhere close to hitting her. “It seems that… aghhh… ughhh… Mrowww~?!”

Half a rubber wheel smacked into the back of Momokase’s black and blue furred head, followed by a metal bar jabbing into the calf of her right leg bending her over and causing her to be in the right position for a heavy cardboard box to topple down on top of her head.

Not what I wanted, I wanted the bowling ball and a few different other things to hit her.

At least I knew how sharp the knives were now, that being impossibly so. She shredded the cardboard box off her head with two swings of a knife and then pulled out two blue long translucent blades while glaring at us both.

“Not fun, to run, with all this dangers after us… we could soon be undone~!” I charged forward and avoided the first two slashes by shifting back slightly. I grabbed her left claw by the wrist and launched a kick for her head. Momokase leaned back and tried to pull her left wrist out of my grasp and failed. I was tilting her left hand blade away from me and she brought her right hand blade around to slash at me. “This fight, my fright, can we please stop… and do this another night~?”

My left hind leg swung outwards and grappled to her right wrist before she could bring the blade fully onto me, her eyes widened at my flexibility. When she couldn’t move, she tried to jump and found her feet still firmly planted on the ground by me.

We were learning just exactly how dangerous it was to grapple with a fluffmancer now, at least I wasn’t on the receiving end of this.

“Come on Pom, you can do it, show some spine~!” Dolly shouted as she started skating for us. “Aw yeah~.

“Your, really, quite, tricky~!” As Momokase sang I was slinging a left hook for her face she leaned back and her right leg stomped and I pulled my head back as a knife flew by my chin going upwards, I let her go while rising my right leg to hit her in the side and she rolled out of the way. Only to receive the flat of Dolly’s board against her skull rattling her and knocking her to the ground. “Ugh, this night is not really going my way~.”

She slashed forward at Dolly and I quickly grabbed the back of the right blade, only I had to let go and roll away when she flung a knife at my face at near point blank range. She ducked under the strap swung skateboard and tried to attack Dolly’s again, I thrust my left hoof straight at her face and she blocked with both blades and was pushed back with a cracking noise.

“What the, how did you crack my blades that are made of purely thin graphene~? This stuff is supposed to be tougher than steel, or so it used to seem~!” She slashed at me and Dolly went to attack and when she attack Dolly I kicked her in the right leg almost toppling her, she threw a fan of knives at us. I moved to being behind Dolly as she hopped up and blocked two of the knives. “Why am I having so much trouble with a sheep and a dog, is this really just a dream~? The locals heroes never cause me this much trouble, even working as a team~! Why can’t… I land… just a single solid hit~!”

Momokase lunged forward bringing both her blades down towards me in an overhead swing ignoring Dolly entirely, Dolly leapt up and forward holding her skateboard horizontally in front of her. I put my hooves on the back of the board and immediately locked down my wool, both of Momokase’s blades collided with the board and both of them broke sending the upper halves of both her swords flying.

They both impaled the nearby junk piles with impressive force leave tons of cut through trash falling apart behind them.

A piece of the breaking swords cut through a wide eyed Momokase’s left cheek as she backed up and a knife came flying up from her quickly kicked left foot and it cut the strap holding Dormarch’s PET to my leg.

I quickly tried to glue the device to my wool, but it was too late as Momokase bull rushed both of us. We were both knocked over as she grabbed the PET in the middle of a stumble, before she started immediately running away from us at full tilt.

“You two are too much trouble, I’m cutting my losses here!” Momokase shouted as she threw a knife randomly at one of the piles of garbage. “Hope you two are good at cardio or you’re never catching me!”

We turned and tried to give chase, but I had to quickly throw myself on top of Dolly as the wrecking ball I noted from earlier was rolling down at us at an incredible speed.

It rolled over both our bodies and thankfully didn’t stop on top of us, because it partially crushed me into the ground. I at least made sure none of that weight went onto Dolly.

“Hopefully see you never!” Momokase threw down a smoke bomb and likely started off into the city from what I was feeling.

“Hey let me go, I don’t belong to you lady!” Dormarch whined in the distance. “You know what… activating mapping function!”

Well at least Dormarch was going to cause Momokase some trouble if I’m right about the map function being a way for mercenaries to track him.

“Darn it, she took Dormarch and she’s getting away!” Dolly was upset as she crawled out from under me when, I unlocked my wool and stood up dizzily. “We have to catch sight of her before we lose her!”

“We’re not going to lose her Dolly, or at the very least, we’re not going to lose Dormarch.” The look I received from Dolly was curious as I started moving for the nearby road in the direction Momokase was going. “I have a familiar connection to him, which means in some way he’s actually a living being.”

“Then let’s go get my little digital brother back!” Dolly moved after me on her skateboard and hopped up onto my back to point the nose of her skateboard forward as she took a seat.

I immediately galloped in the direction of where I felt Dormarch as being. As soon as I got to the road by exiting the junkyard, I threw myself to the ground. An APC launched itself upwards over our heads coming up the hill and a guy popped up out of the top of it with a rocket launcher, aiming it in the general direction I felt Dormarch as being.

Dormarch and I were right, it was the mapping function.

-Momokase-

I was climbing a building towards the roof. It seemed the device was angry with me, but why did it say it activated the map function like it was a threat?

The sheep didn’t have any way to track him if she didn’t have a second device like him, so what could possibly...

A bullet whizzed by my head as soon as I got onto the roof and I dove to take cover.

“I really hope the mercenaries don’t kill you, but you kind of deserve what’s about to happen.” The device stated to me somewhat smugly. “I also hope that you’ll hold onto me long enough for Pom and Dolly to get me back.”

Did he actually mean to say that… oh no… does this mean that all the assassins and mercenaries that were after those two now know where I was, is that what that whole map function thing the device mentioned was about?!

Well this will be a bit tricky, but I think I can still hand it off provided I was careful. I mean, it’s just snipers right?

A rocket slammed into the side of the building knocking me over and nearly making me drop the device. I leaned back and a sniper bullet passed right by where my head was, having been partially knocked out of cover. I looked over the edge of the building and saw an APC, which was some heavy military hardware that was now aiming its machine gun my way.

I darted out from cover and felt the speeding bullet pass by my spine as I leapt from the roof and a spray of bullets followed me as I landed on a different rooftop and rolled.

-Sabu Taj-

Why in the world would Leap Lamb activate the function, she had to know it would lead them right to her? Also it seemed she was heading their way.

Something stinks about this, but it wouldn’t hurt to set up a proper ambush. Apparently the Shred Treads were on the assault. Gamma team was actually not dead, but they came close when they came across Agent Forty Seven. That dog running around this city had me nervous, especially if he was after the same thing I was.

-Honey Lemon-

“Gunfire coming from near the junkyard and it seems to be heading in the general direction of… Krei Tech? Why is it always Krei Tech…” Go-Go grumbled and I smiled as the Battle Bunny Bus steered us towards the scene of the fighting by itself. “At least we’re finally testing out the… ugh… Battle Bunny Bus.”

“Hey friends, Hiro just wanted me to notify you that he, Fredmeleon and Wasabi are currently dealing with the tanks and SAM Launchers. They are going to be quite busy soon, they just want me to remind you that we need to find Leap Lamb and Caper Canine before anything happens to them.” The peppy and smiling bunny faced AI, one of whom I was best friends with, stated with gleeful cheer. It wasn’t enough to make me as cheerful, given the streets were crawling with guys armed with deadly weapons and they didn’t seem very keen to be discreet with them either. “Heading towards the disturbance now, also I have noted that public transportation is acting all kinds of weird around the city. I think someone has sabotaged various things in the general area and seems to be causing incidents throughout the city to distract us. At least emergency services are in action, but it’s starting to happen near where the scary noises are coming from.”

“Like that’s what we just need tonight, more trouble.” Go-Go may seem like a grumpy cat, but I knew she liked me and the rest of our friends. There’s no way she could really hate bunnies, because I’m a bunny too!

“We’ll find them, then I can protect that adorable doggy personally and make things up with the two heroes!” I stated bringing my both my paws together and up to my cheek. “Do you think we’ll have any problems protecting them Go-go, I mean our gear is more utility and defense than offense.”

“I don’t think the dog will need much protection...” What did Go-Go… oh… huh? I looked forward as the Bunny Battle Bus turned onto a street near the junkyard and we saw Leap Lamb and Caper Canine tearing through mercenaries, they looked to be easily dealing with them despite the guns and numerous bullets flying around them. Soon the two turned their sights to a noise and ran off into an alleyway with three guys giving chase. “What is an APC like that doing in this city?!”

Said APC was aiming it guns to a nearby rooftop and I thought I saw a panicked looking Momokase running along the roof.

“I’m going out there and following Leap Lamb, cover me from the Bunny Battle Bus and deal with things here.” I turned to our AI friend. “Ms. Shuttle, please stop… oh and use the chem-ball howitzer to disable that APC, please and thank you!”

I hopped off, checked my bandolier, my chem-purse gun and chem-boots. Once I was finished making sure my gear was ready, I snapped my boots together and was launched up onto the rooftops by a mound of pink rubber like substance erupting out of the bottom of my boots beneath me.

Once on a roof, I turned around to watch the Battle Bunny Bus produced a cannon to fire a giant chemical loaded ball that not only stopped the APC’s machine gun from working, it also covered the front half of the vehicle in a very sticky teal substance that would prevent the vehicle from going anywhere and hurting anyone.

Go-Go had that handled, I had to catch up with Leap Lamb! Another use of my chem-boots launched me forward as I hopped over several rooftops in a single bound.

-Pom-

I performed a flying bucked taking a mercenaries legs out from under them before slamming my left hoof into their helmet as they fell towards me. Dolly was taking care of another mercenary as the last one was about to fire on us, only to become encased in goo.

That's when a rather familiar costumed rabbit landed in front of us.

136. San Fransokyo Shuffle: Part 3.

Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.

137. San Fransokyo Shuffle: Part 4.

-San Fransokyo, Rooftop, Honey Lemon AKA Bazooka Bunny-

I turned my eyes away from the disaster and several explosions occurred in a matter of seconds as well as a blinding light made me close my eyes before it was filtered out by my costumes visor.

I eventually gained a strong enough nerve to look and my HUD looked over the scene surprisingly no one was dead, but all the vital signs were showing various states of injury. Both the jeeps had been taken out by rockets, the tank by an explosion by preset explosive devices, the SAM impacting the ground where Momokase had been sent most of the mercenaries to the ground.

The two halves of the tank shell, after being split by Momokase’s blade had luckily missed hitting anyone, but it did light the building next to this one on fire. How did everyone survive that lethal situation?!

That was a ridiculous miracle plain and simple, at least their injuries made sense… except… where was Leap Lamb?

-Pom, nearby alleyway-

I spat the bullet and some blood out of my mouth, then I started to tightly bandage a slightly frightened Momokase’s badly bleeding arm. I had just used my tongue to pry the bullet from her wound and I’m quite sure that neither of us were happy with what I just did.

“That was a close one. There that should hold you, now if you’ll excuse me us… Caper Canine? Oh no…” I looked at my back and saw I still had her skateboard, but Dolly wasn’t currently present. “Sorry for making you take a bullet for me Momokase, but I think it’s a better trade off than you getting directly hit by a missile. I’ve got to go!”

Following the feelings of where Dolly was, I charged back into the streets and towards the wrecked tank and jeeps as the ocelot that might be leading those mercenaries was picking himself up.

“Ugh, now I know how my brother Doof feels…” The ocelot guy that wanted me dead stated. He tried to get up and aim his weapon at me, I idly kicked the weapon out of his hand as I passed by him. He’d probably get it back when he recovers... maybe not since a brightly colored sphere struck his weapon and encased it in a quick hardening gelatinous mass. “Curse you Leap Lamb the ewe! Oh great, now I have my own Perry…”

I looked behind me at him and then dodged to the side, to see a spark of a bullet bouncing off the road where one of my hind legs had been. That made me put the destroyed tank between me and the leopard that had chased me back in Zootopia, she was on her back aiming her pistol for me and didn’t seem as injured as her rocket tube carrying companions that had moved forward slightly.

The leopard looked up from me and taking another shot. She rolled out of the way of a sphere that created a splash of sticky goop and while crouched, turned to fire on Honey Lemon who ducked out of sight from a spray of bullets from her other weapon.

I would deal with her right now, but I had bigger problems like rescuing Dormarch and Dolly was certainly on top of that. Priorities of my mind dictate that I avoid conflict, so I was going to do just that as I ran towards a wide open space and a very clean looking building that had a sign that said Krei Tech Industries.

-???, ???-

The Buddy Guard robot was a small pill shaped machine meant for dealing with intruders, but their operating system was somewhat easy to gain control of. Krei really should really look into getting better internal security… or even change passwords. How was the guy a businessman again?

No matter, it was to my benefit that security was lousy anyway.

“Looks like I won’t be giving the other half of the money I owe Momokase, she didn’t complete her quest after all.” I grin as I saw the hovering robot holding onto the device, with it I would soon have a powerful minion and get my revenge on Big Hero 6. “I’m about to upgrade from being a simple noob to a true elite pro!”

I held out my hand and the robot let go of it, it fell and then a dog wearing a skating helmet pulled itself up onto the head of the Krei Tech Buddy Guard and launched itself forward off of it.

Not only did the dog manage to grab the device before I could even touch it, it then kicked off my chest forcefully knocking me back and off balance as it did a backflip.

“Oh no you don’t, Hard Light is not losing to a simple mob spawn like you!” I aimed my gauntlet and prepared to fire a burst of energy.

This gauntlet had limited functionality compared to my first version, only being able to create hard light weapons or bursts of energy, I used to have some real power before Big Hero Six took my previous gauntlet away from me and I got arrested. It required some more specialized parts, but it could generate so many summons for me and was OP. I didn’t currently have any easy access to the parts I needed after my previous gauntlet was destroyed.

The dog for their part grinned with her teeth wrapped around the device and when I fired, it hopped to the right while planting its left paw on the floor and then kicked its hind legs to pivot around into a slide that led it… right into the vent I just blew open…

“… A dog just outsmarted me… me of all people!” I heard what sounded vaguely like laughing and glared at the vent as it made its escape. I couldn’t believe it, but I narrowed my eyes beneath my mask and set all of the buddy guards to assault anyone within the premises of Krei Tech other than me. Looking at the camera there was one of Big Hero Six and… I’ve never faced Leap Lamb before. What would a platforming based hero be doing here in this city? I mean, other than having her device stolen by me that is. Wait… isn’t she usually accompanied by a… that dog! “That was Caper Canine, she must be taking that device back to Leap Lamb!”

Speaking of the heroic ewe, she was entering the courtyard of Krei Tech this very moment and someone else was coming to join the game too as player two… three if the dog was capable enough to be a player.

I sent a large number of the Buddy Guards in their given direction.

There had to be something to deal with a hero of Leap Lambs caliber around here, I didn’t think I would be able to take her in a straight fight after what happened to El Fuego. I simply wasn’t about to underestimate a raid boss like that!

Hmm… what is Krei working on that I can use as an ultimate summon? Oh… o-ho-ho yes… Hard Light likes that a lot! All I had to do was hack into it, the buddy guards would definitely give me enough time for this. I’d get the device and I’ll have a tank for dealing with the raid boss.

-In a vent, Dormarch-

I looked up at the friendly smiling face that peered back down at me.

“Dolly!” I shouted happily from my digital expanse, I had immediately turned off my mapping function in excitement. I was safe from being stolen with my big sister here.

Dolly tapped my screen with a claw and she started typing out something.

“Okay, I’m on it!” I stated immediately. I really needed to finish my canine translation software, I wanted to be able to speak dog as a twentieth or so language. "To start, take the third vent on the right."

-Pom-

I approached the sprawling building from the courtyard like area with the several flagpoles and then everything lit up blinding me a bit.

Once the spots cleared from my eyes, I looked up and saw that a large number of those hovering white robots showed up and there were lights on everywhere around the facility. The robots had a very interesting yellow glow about them as all of what passes for eyes on them focused on me. They looked like flying pills each with two small arms hovering off to their sides.

I was about to make a move, when they all suddenly focused on something slamming into the ground next to me. The figure quickly raised a right claw to the sky, he slowly stood up and then gestured his still pointing claw for emphasis as he addressed me.

“Aha, the great hero Leap Lamb, looks like you could use some help from me, Fred-zilla!” It was the blue costumed guy, only I noted that his entire costume looked to be entirely blackened. He then turned to me and started poking his suits claws together. “So… about antagonizing you when you came into the city…”

One of the floating white pills fired a beam of energy at him and he leapt back as it scorched the ground.

“Hey, she was here first, why didn’t you shoot at her?!” Fred-zilla earned the flattest stare I could give him as he turned back my way. “Not that I want you to be attacked or anything, because you’re a clearly awesome super hero, but I just got here after you did!”

I jumped several feet straight up and over a net that was fired at me.

“Now you know how it feels to be me, huh.” My blunt statement was met with a wince. “You should really just stop talking and start fighting if you even have the capacity to do that much...”

That sounded a bit harsh, but this guy did annoy me and we were currently being surrounded by these things.

“Right, right, I’ll make it up to you by taking the fifty or so on the left you get the fifty or so on the right… hopefully my friends will catch up. This… is a bit more one sided than I would like.” He said this while ducking a whip like metal tentacle being flung from one of them spinning around. “Oh they so stole that move from the robots in the Turbo Mutated Neanderthal Terrapins game… agh!”

He took a second whip to the face and immediately blasted one of the floating pills away with a fireball while on his back.

Deciding to ignore him, I went into standing on my hind legs and blocked an energy beam with Dolly’s board. While I didn’t know how Dolly got Dormarch, she was undoubtedly going to make her way back to me with him. In the meantime I would be using her skateboard to defend myself.

One lashed a tentacle at me and I rolled away and tried to ignore the flashes of fire out of the corner of my vision as I tried to dodge the various beams of energy being blasted my way.

I quickly spun around and slung the skateboard outwards vertically by the strap with both my hooves. Instead of horizontally slashing it about, it acted more defensively as the sides of the board slammed into the machines, knocking several of the bots away and blocking several beams as I twisted and turned ducking and hopping as I went.

Letting off of the strap with my left hoof, I smashed one of the bots with a quick uppercut. I pulled the board over my head behind me with my right hoof and then launched my hoof and it forward to jam the nose of the board through one of the pills eyes.

I proceeded to yank it around into another floating pill destroyed it and slamming the pill I speared into the ground. Narrowing my eyes at some odd shifts in the air, I rolled towards one of the flag poles as a pair of beams seemingly came out of a distortion in the air.

“Oh right, forgot to mention that about the buddy guards, these things can turn somewhat invisible or camouflage themselves as something else in the environment!” Fred-zilla at least warned me about the camouflage, but it was too late to tell me about them being able to become invisible. “At least they can’t camouflage as things bigger than themselves... what?!”

I watched as a garbage can split into four pill bots working in conjunction and they all spun around and launch metal tentacles to trap all his limbs at once.

“Since when could they do that?!” He seemed honestly shocked that they could take on the appearance of a trash can and lure him into a trap, but I’m guessing that was only a recent thing as four of them were working together to create the illusion. “Help, I could use a little help here!”

“Well…” I jumped straight up immediately as four tentacle lashed out and ended up wrapped around the flagpole.

I grabbed the flagpole with my left legs and hung there a bit before sliding down enough to kick off the ground with my right hind leg to quickly spin around the pole. Once I was going fast enough, I slung out the skateboard to slash down all the floating pill shaped robots still grappled onto the pole, while avoiding being shot by the various beams being shot at me as I did so.

I really didn’t want to use Dancing Flame, Dormarch said the stress doing it was putting my body through was becoming far too much. Still it was useful for dodging bullets. It looked like Fred-zilla was in trouble as more bots started grappling onto him with those metal tentacles.

I grabbed the pole with my front hooves and started kicking myself around it while inhaling, once I think I had enough momentum built up I launched myself off the pole and exhaled while swinging out the skateboard with my right leg.

The world blurred as I flew through the air knocking various pill machines out of the air as I shot through the air horizontally to end up slashing the board downwards twice, flipping both times, and then I landed on my hooves out of breath.

Fred-zilla was immediately up and blasting away the pill bots chasing behind me after I ripped through them. He took down quite a lot of them with the flood of flames he unleashed from his suit, he also ruined the near invisibility that some of them had given the flames scorched markings onto them.

“Aw yeah, thanks for the save! I’m not about to get caught off guard like that so soon aga… whoa almost made a liar of myself!” He and I leapt away with as several higher flying pill robots fired a series of beams down from directly above us. He snagged one of the pills bots as he leapt backwards and he threw it upwards and blasted it when it got close to the higher flying machines and their formation blew apart. “Hey can you cover me Leap Lamb? I’ll call in some backup!”

I did as he asked and lashed the skateboard taking out three of these buddy guard things, but there were too many of them to really deal with on my own. I soon jumped on top of Fred-Zilla’s scorched and battered costume to start blocking energy blasts with the flat of the board.

I lashed out when I thought I could get a hit, but these things were either keeping their distance or closing in to use their tentacles which is when I could take them down.

“We could use some help here guys, someone has gained control of a number of Krei Tech buddy guards and they are attacking me and Leap Lamb! They also have a new trick where they work together to camouflage themselves. Four worked together to look like a trash can. Go-Go and the Bunny Battle Bus are too busy with helping the emergency services transportation network sabotage and fires? Lemon Honey’s too busy trying to stop any mercenaries from encroaching closing in on us and is pinned herself? We should expect some villains to come at us with guns and tanks soon too?! We’re already dealing with a big situation here! You two are are still dealing with the SAM launchers around the city? Huh… okay, hurry up with that Skymax aerial support little buddy!”

“Please tell me that was good news.” Really didn’t have much room to talk as I was smacking away nets, breaking tentacles and blocking beams, even knocking away several robots camouflaging themselves as randomly as chickens, pigs or birds. It would probably work better if those animals actually lived around here or had a reason to be here, though I think they were trying to distract me from the one camouflaged as a bucket that was getting close to us.

I hopped away from Fred-zilla and slammed the skateboard down on the bucket and its illusion failed, revealing the form of a pill machine split in half and sparking a bit before it exploded. Thankfully this Fred-zilla quickly rejoined the fight before the swarm overwhelmed us both by blasting fire and clawing several of the machines away and literally leaping into action. I may be a bit angry at him, but at least he knew how to fight

“Don’t worry we’re getting Mini-Max to come in and support us with the Skymax’s drones.” He said this as if I knew what he was talking about. “They have to fly low to avoid attracting those missile trucks until they are dealt with.”

“You do realize that I know nothing about you guys other than Bazooka Bunny and even then that isn’t much, right?” Currently my left hoof was battering one pill machine and my other was swinging outward to bash the flat of the board against another machine as I held it defensively like a shield going along my right foreleg leg.

“Hey, it’ll be good, give it a minutes! My little buddy always does big hero moments like you wouldn’t believe, though you’re right… he should hurry up.” Here Fred-zilla grabbed to of the machines and smashed them together. The two machines exploded, but he was perfectly fine because his suit was apparently built to be that tough.

We kept destroying them, knocking them back and the fires of my companion kept lighting up the night as more kept coming. Why were there so many of them?!

At least Dolly was making progress, because she was moving closer at least. Though I could understand her hesitance to get involved in this mess. I felt a shift in the air in my wool and quickly turned while holding the skateboard on my right leg aloft.

I narrowly deflected a bullet into one of the pills machines making it drop to the ground, this drew their attentions to that leopard with two teams of mercenaries. Not the same team that were left unconscious and injured in the street from the missile strike, it looked like she was going to fire again when the machines started to swarming them too.

Her approaching mercenary teams that were targeting me and preparing to fire had to quickly change targets and immediately started doing poorly against the pill shaped machines, all of them except the leopard were having problems dealing with the nets, the tentacles that could apparently electrify and the energy beams.

I had though these things were fragile until I watched as a number of projectiles poured into one did small amounts of damage until it eventually went down.

That’s when Honey Lemon decided to join the fray by creating a blob between us and the mercenaries as she joined us by landing on a smaller pink blob and landing near us to spraying down several pill machines in an assortment of ice, electrical goo, sticky good and goo that just plain melted them.

“So this has turned into a real party, but my only goal here is your death Leap Lamb!” I heard the ocelot from before shouting as he and a group of mercenaries came riding up into the courtyard in a tank. “Ready, aim…”

There was no way I was going to be able to block a shot from a tank without severe injury, but then something even worse came along and made the ocelot leap from his tank in a panic. The thing in question created a large crashing noise as it crushed the tank beneath its weight.

“Well now, so many players in this game we call life, I’m about to show you noobs that I have leveled far beyond your comprehension!” Some guy shouted he was standing on the nearby building with a cape and a glowing mask and costume that had… I wanted to say a lightbulb motif to it. “Say hello to the…”

I think he was going to introduce the large machine that he probably used to crush that tank, but someone else beat him to the chase.

“Is that Metal Gear B.O.X!? All SAM launchers, I have a target… what do you mean they’ve all been disabled?!” From how panicked the ocelot guy sounded, it seemed like this weird battle was only going to get worse from here. “Fine send the rocket launchers forward immediately, I have encountered Metal Gear B.O.X! What, no, don’t you dare evacuate the area without me! This thing is a hazard to everything within a mile of it and I am within fifty feet of it and it’s about to start attacking!”

Ignoring him and his shouting as I punched a pill machine with the skateboard attached to my right leg, I turned and looked at the thing sitting on top of the tank.

“Bring the helicopters now, we need aerial support immediately!” The leopard shouted upon hearing that the SAM launchers were down. Apparently she knew what Metal Gear B.O.X was too, Judging by the panicked look on her face.

The object, which had to be a rather large machine, looked like a giant box at the moment. Slowly the sides of the box unfolded revealing that it had six legs that looked to have shields built in as it stood up. No head and it made an ominous whirring sound as it took several steps off the tank, the middle portion was a small box, but just as heavily armored as all of the legs and it trundled over to a number of broken pill machines and started to suck them into its underside.

“Is it weird that I have no clue what’s going on anymore?” Honey Lemon stated as she came up to me and froze pill bot with an accurate dead center shot.

“Welcome to my life for the last few months Honey Lemon.” Having blithely stated this, I watched as the Metal Gear B.O.X shiver and it released a fraction of the amount of destroyed pill bots it sucked in. Said new machines were fully functional. “Yeah, that's going to be a thing…”

It suddenly launched numerous spheres in all directions onto the ground around itself.

“Scramble!” The ocelot shouted to his people fighting back against the onslaught of hovering machines firing lasers, swinging tentacles and shooting nets at people.

The spheres it had launched exploded into pillars of fire that spread outwards away from the machine growing in strength, Honey Lemon, Fred-zilla and I quickly hopped away from the pillars reaching as high as the nearby building before slowly shrinking down.

"Mini-maximum hero support has..." Mini-Max was struck with a small missile that launched out of the six legged hulk. "Retreat!"

One of the six flying machines Mini-max brought picked him up, they all flew away afterwards.

Author's Note

Now you know how I was going to tie Metal Gear into the whole Disney theme, if you know the lore there's this guy named Doofenshmirtz that was officially adopted by a family of ocelots and they treated him nicely. Doof spelled backwards is food.

How animals did the paperwork for it in the actual cartoon I'll never know. I'd like think the ocelots had some relations to O.W.C.A. a government organization that fields animals to stop evil scientists from taking over the world.

That said, Security Robot B.O.X from Metroid Fusion, only larger, without a vat grown brain and a Buddy Guard recuperating facility installed because it wasn't already dangerous enough already.

Also Sora was announced for Smash Brothers, I'm more 'meh' on that than anything really given how many sword guys there are already.

The next page is going to be one long and huge fight scene... estimated length? Between ten to twenty thousand words and a nice suggestion of music that can be played on loop to it.

138. San Fransokyo Shuffle Finale: BOX Battle.

Author's Note

Music Options:

Target Town from Captain America & The Avengers (Capcom style remix).

Ghost of Culvert from Mad Rat Dead.

NES TMNT area's 1 and 4 music.

Well I'm taking a few days after this.

138. San Fransokyo Shuffle Finale: BOX Battle.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Paca family home, Arizona-

I cuddled Paprika and Velvet in bed, holding them both in my hooves, two walls of fluff on both sides of me. Both comfortable and safe.

I idly thought about Pom. Somewhere, somehow, Pom was probably doing something we would have wanted to help with.

Where I would have been having fun, Pom would be fighting for her life hoof and tooth.

“Meep?” Paprika whined.

“It’ll be fine Paps.” I just rolled over and snuggled my face into her fluff, Velvet got clingy and sleepily pulled herself into my back. “Just means I’ll have to push myself three times as hard when the time comes for the Tambelon thing if it happens, can’t very well let Tianhuo go it with just Fizzle as the only other competent one. Also those evil filly scout cookie sellers were way too aggressive for their own good.”

“Meep.” Paprika kissed the top of my head and almost went back to sleepily cuddling me.

“Yes, I know they are fillies and colts, but they shouldn’t be able to cut down a tree by throwing a single normal cookie at it no matter how you look at it!” The stuff that happens around us was just unbelievably ridiculous. “That stuff was not natural! Even if you use magic as an explanation that doesn’t even cover how that was anywhere near the definition of possible.”

“Shut up and let me, the gorgeous one, get my beauty sleep.” Velvet said as she dug her face into my neck.

-Earth, San Fransokyo, Krei Tech Building, Dolly-

“What… the dog… is that?!” Staring in disbelief at the thing that just crushed a tank by landing on it, without damaging itself no less, my body was shivering in fear.

I told myself that there was absolutely no way I was going near that without a good reason.

“In answer to your question that you typed out. It appears to be an incredibly deadly walking fortress. In any case, and before you ask, that that thing really doesn’t have any form of structural weakness whatsoever from what little I can get on it from here. Also I’m having issues with the translation software to understand canids better.” Quickly typing something out to Dormarch, I waited to hear his response. “Fetch devices could somehow understand dogs? I do not know of them, I’ll have to look into that information later… huh? Okay, calling the family.”

I waited for a minute as Pom and the two costumed heroes faced down that thing below.

Come on, some dog better pick up!

“Dolly are you okay, do you need help with something?” My step brother Dylan was on the screen, happy to see captain safety pants being worried about me and that he was the one picking up.

“Yes, get Dawkins!” I stated quickly, before using Dormarch to put the six legged fortress on screen as it started spewing out repaired pill bots. “I need his advice and expertise on how I can help tear ‘that’ apart.”

“Dawkins, Dolly needs our help for something monumentally important!” Dylan shouted off of the screen.

Please hold on until I can figure out a way to lend some help Pom, maybe I could deal with that Hard Light guy that was trying to get Dormarch?

Much easier than a walking fortress at least, didn’t honestly think I was going to get lucky with fighting a large machine a second time and being able to mostly walk it off.

-Krei Tech Courtyard, Pom-

“I’m terrified on a number of levels, are my knees knocking together… ah, yes, they are.” I would like to turn tail and run, but this thing was a threat to everyone from what the ocelot said about it being dangerous to even be within a mile of it. I’m, sadly enough and much to my detriment, still abled bodied enough to put up a fight. “Also our help just flew off and I haven’t been able to outright beat something of this size before. I’m telling you right now that I don’t have super strength and I mostly made that El Fuego guy beat himself, I know what I’m capable of and this thing is definitely not it.”

Bark blast wouldn’t get by the shield legs, much less the armor, if I was going to use Bark Breaker then I needed to be given the time to do it as well at performing it at point blank range for maximum damage. I wanted to limit the power of my attack so I didn’t lose my voice so again, plus I didn’t know where to hit, if it would be safe to even do so or if it would do enough damage.

“Yeah, I think I can understand your healthy amount of fear Leap Lamb.” Honey Lemon held up her purse gun, as the pill robots floated around and were getting ready to attack along with the six legged metal monstrosity we would have deal with.

At least the ocelot and the leopard have fled already and they at least took their injured with them. This left Honey Lemon, Fred-zilla and me to deal with this machine personally.

I already doubted our odds, but I've done more with less.

“So two of big hero six and a super hero are here before me. I, Hard Light, shall have my revenge and prove that the super hero Leap Lamb is nothing special!” The caped lightbulb guy stated.

“I agree, I am nothing special, but I’m s-still g-g-going to do my b-best to protect p-people from this thing!” I was already backing away, but I wasn’t leaving as I didn’t want Honey Lemon and Fred-zilla to face this thing by themselves.

“Enough talk, have fun trying to bring this thing down!” The caped villain hit something on his gauntlet.

The machine started towards us and the pill bots started attacking at the same time. I quickly slashed the skateboard on my right leg back and forth to knock away the numerous nets and tentacles that were being fired or swung at me.

I had to leap back and out of the fray as one of the legs of the B.O.X. thing slammed itself down at me.

Okay, mental note, don’t get distracted as that thing was deceptively faster than it looked for its size.

Even while thinking my mental note I blocked three pairs of beams, knocked back two tentacles and destroyed one of the pill bots with a strongly swung left hoof that sent it flying into the ground where it popped into a pile of parts.

A series of spheres began hitting the machines legs and slowing it down by encasing it in a sticky substance, it seemed the machine was a bit too strong as it managed to pull it’s legs free of the substance after a few tries.

While it was doing that, Fred leapt forward and while blasting away the swarm of pill shaped robot with a massive amount of fire. He stayed near me to helped stop them from ganging up on me for a few seconds with a few well utilized jets of fire, he then went to bravely leap on top of the B.O.X.

Letting Dolly’s Board off of sticking to my wool, I grabbed the strap and lashed it out twice while backing away towards a flag pole. I don’t how many I was taking down or how many the B.O.X. was recuperating.

“AGGHH-g-g-g-g!” Fred-zilla was sent flying off the B.O.X. when it lifted two of its legs up and a powerful arc of lightning passed between the two pointed portions at the back of the thick rectangular shield like legs.

Fred slammed through some windows of the nearby Krei Tech building.

“Fred! Cover me Leap Lamb, I’m going to try and freeze it in place.” Honey started focusing her, was it a weapon, anyway she had it trained on the B.O.X. and each sphere that struck started building up chunks ice on its leg and main body.

It didn’t have a head so I really couldn’t give a direction to say what way it was facing, as I moved forward and launched the board upwards at the pills trying to hit Honey.

I was a bit frantic in trying to keep the nets from tangling around her and was getting tangled up myself. As a pair of nets wrapped around my hind legs and I was almost rendered immobilized when a tentacle grabbed my left leg. I slammed the edge of the board on down on the metal tentacle and managed to cut it off of my leg and then I whipped it upwards and swept it downwards between my hind legs to free myself.

That was when the machine rid itself of all the ice in one maneuver.

All of the pylons on the back of the shields raised slightly and then slammed down to create a shockwave that shattered the ice and sent it flying everywhere.

We were not only knocked down, but also pelted with the chunks of ice and I took a needle like ice shard to the hip. Otherwise my wool handled the more blunt chunks of ice easily enough. I grimaced and quickly pulled the ice shard out before sliding my hoof over the injury to put a wool bandage on it.

Honey Lemon seemed better off as her armored weathered the concussive force about as well as I did with my wool.

“Ice is not working then how about something that is more likely to stick!” After tapping something out on her purse, Honey was once again firing a barrage of spheres that was coating it with something that looked like green snot, but acted like well chewed bubblegum that stuck to its body as it charged us. It was slowed down immensely.

I was up and blocked beams from hitting Honey with Dolly’s board once again attached to my right legs as Honey continued to hose the B.O.X. with a continuous stream of popping spheres.

I swung the board around and managed to chop apart three tentacles and then I rammed my hoof forward and destroyed one of the annoying pill robots with the front edge of the board.

The B.O.X. tried to make a shockwave, but the snot colored stuff wobbled and stayed in place. I was hopeful for a second, then it did something difference to deal with the sticky substance on it.

Its legs spread out slightly and then the stuff began to bubble, boil and then melt off as pillars of fire erupted at the ends of the legs.

Once the fires died out, I could see a few of those fire pillar spheres had come out of holes in the tips of the legs.

“Okay, let’s see if I can rust you down to size!” Honey wasn’t willing to give up and run as quickly as I wanted to. Honey fired a few shots and the spheres hit the legs and created a few fog like pink clouds for a few seconds.

A number of pill robots starting falling apart by turning into dust or sand before my very eyes as I kept batting away and or smashing the ones attacking us. Fred-zilla soon leapt back into the action and slashed the claws of his suit through a few of them and blasted another few with fire, he took up a defensive position alongside me.

“Okay so that didn’t work… I’m running out of ideas here.” Honey admitted as she fiddled with her purse as the B.O.X. didn’t take any damage from whatever it was she fired at it.

The B.O.X. crouched down and suddenly a swarm of rockets fired up into the air and veered directly for the three of us. I’m going to have nightmares of Axel Gear the next time I slept if I survived this.

“I’ve got this!” Fred-zilla spat a sweeping mass of flames and each rocket blew up before it could reach us, each one heated up the area and destroyed chunks of the ground.

Fred and Honey had to retreat into the streets and I hastily climbed a flag pole as several flame pillars followed the rockets and were coming at us under the cover of Fred’s method of dealing with all the rockets at once.

I made it high enough up the pole to be out of the flames, but the bottom portion of the pole became warped from melting and fell towards the building on the right.

I leapt off and climbed up onto the roof and looked for that Hard Light guy.

Where was he? There! He was standing on top of the highest portion of the center building in the middle of the other circularly built buildings, watching as the machine did all the fighting for him. He didn’t seem like he was very capable in combat himself personally.

If I could deal with him, then maybe we could stop the B.O.X. before it damaged too much more of the surroundings. He seemed to be too focused on Honey and Fred-zilla at the moment, I can’t really think of him as simply Fred because I associate the name Fred with a demon that I may or may not be friends with. Fred was still terrifying to know of.

I started along the rooftop going counterclockwise to get close enough to leap onto the building Hard Light was standing on. Climbing up towards him, I think he had forgotten about me being a part of the scuffle going on down there.

Looking off to the side, I saw that those two looked like they were dealing with the flying pills easily enough, but the B.O.X. itself was quite unstoppable.

Fred-zilla and Honey kept jumping away or bouncing off of blobs their boots generated, Honey even fired several spheres that the machine actively blocked from hitting it, the powerful explosions went off harmlessly against two of its well armored legs without leaving even a dent in them.

Right focus on taking down the controller behind the threat, just like Teatime Clockwork when he attacked Huoshan… only without backup and Dolly was thankfully staying safely out of danger for the time being.

Once I got closer to the cape guy, I reached into my bag still attached to my belly and searched for the tranquilizer dart. I pulled out a rubber duck and shrugged, I didn’t know why that was in my bag so I just put that back as it might be a toy Dolly picked up somewhere.

I eventually pulled out the dart and carefully unraveled the tape that had been put around the tip of it for safety reasons.

“Hahaha, look at it go, those noobs are getting owned by my OP summon.” I just had to jam it into the biped, but where…. the neck or shoulder was obvious. Anywhere there was an artery to pump the rhino level knockout cocktail that was going to be used on me.

I leapt onto his back and then jammed into a spot between his neck and shoulder, then I locked him into position to keep him from struggling.

“What?! No, no, no, no… get off of… what did you just… stick me… ugh… with…” Hard Light’s tried to stab me with a knife made out of energy, but I kept his arms from getting any momentum going with his weapon. I locked him in place and kept him from moving his limbs to attack me. “You… can’t… heroes are not supposed to… cheat… codes… use… wait… if not controlled… what will…”

He finally went limp and when I let him go onto the roof, he flopped onto the ground in boneless heap. I pulled his mask off and looked down at his face. A sloth biped? Huh.

I shoved the mask back over his face and pulled off his strange gauntlet, it didn’t look to be his method of controlling the machine. It did seem to be how he formed that weapon though, as after a second or two fiddling with it, it made a glowing cube. I turned the device off.

Okay, after looking over his body, he didn’t have the controls for the machine on him.

That would mean… oh no...

-Metal Gear B.O.X. operating systems-

System operator Hard Light incapacitated.

Backup system activation in effect, full self-control initiated.

Code: Clandestine.

War mode entering full activation state.

Automated buddy guard defenses will create defensive screen as full self-control loads.

Estimate load time, one minute.

Updating target data list by order of biggest threats to least to Metal Gear B.O.X. unit, all living things in San Fransokyo now classified as threats.

Big Boss Awesome (Not present), Person Designation: Snake (None present), Hard Light (Priority target in area), all members or associates of Big Hero Six, Leap Lamb, military response, mercenaries, interfering biped civilians, biped civilians running away, Caper Canine, animalistic civilians…

-Pom-

I’m feeling the distinct vibe that the machine was now like an evil core… only without the whole presence of one.

It didn’t need anyone to tell it what to do and the guy that could ‘tell it what to do’ is now out cold and impossible to wake up thanks to me.

Judging by the subtle shift in its movements when it stopped cold… it was about to go on a complete rampage wasn’t it?

I think I just made a huge mistake and knocked out the only guy that was actively preventing that from happening. Also, everything that happens from now on will be my fault.

I was just going to have to live with…

“WAH…?!” I grabbed Hard Light and jumped away as a sphere of raw energy fired straight up out of the B.O.X. and then it flew towards us.

It tore a large spherical chunk out of the building where we had been. Most of the materials looked like they evaporated and or melted under the intense energy of that attack.

I sat there looking at the damage with wide eyes and a chill going down my spine, hanging onto the edge of the nearby undamaged portion of roof with one hoof, with Hard Light dangling from my other one.

I looked down and saw a stream of missile coming towards me, wait… they weren’t targeting me as they were flying too low.

Were those rockets targeting Hard Light?!

I got my hind legs up on the edge of the roof and waited, I kicked off before the missiles reached me and the explosions threatened to engulf me and him as I was launched towards the ground. I clutched at the unconscious form as I fell towards where several pill robots were waiting with tentacles and charging beams while aiming upwards.

Fluffing out my wool I avoided several beams crossing beneath us by slowing our fall, narrowly preventing the unconscious Hard Light from being hurt, but they quickly fire again and I let off on my wool to fall below the beams as I couldn’t stall out above them again.

The robots all turned to me as I twisted our bodies and took the brunt of the fall, all the robots spun inwards and lashed out their tentacles.

Only for a familiar high speed figure in yellow and black armor to appear and spin in a perfect circle around us deflecting them all with the discs on her arms. She then rapidly flung the two discs on her arm one at a time, until nine of the machines were blown apart.

She then brought her left arm around to use the edge of the spinning disc, that just reconnected to it, to cut through the last ones tentacle before launching her right disc into it to cut it apart.

“Call me Go-Go, some people might refer to me as Wheel Cat.” She said holding a thumb up at me. She looked down at the unconscious guy I was pushing off of myself. “You got Hard Light? Nice work there Leap Lamb.”

“That’s what he called himself at least, he’s responsible for bringing that thing out!” I pointed at the large six legged machine as it hit Fred-zilla with a quick flick from one its legs knocking him into a wall. “I made a huge mistake when I knocked him out of the fight though.”

Fred-zilla just took that hit for Honey Lemon who was busy focusing her weapon on all the pill robots since she couldn’t do anything against the walking fortress.

“What mistake?” She asked as she rapidly flung her discs at incoming smaller robots.

“He was the only one keeping it in control, now that he’s knocked out…” I trailed off and moved to swing my right leg around into position block a beam blasting at us and then swung it outwards. The edge of the skateboard smashed apart the pill robot that tried to follow up by swinging its tentacle my way or was it trying to get at Hard Light. “It wants to kill him, it’s out of control and it’s all my fault!”

“How could you have known taking him down would have led to…” Go-go was cut off when we noticed a large ball of energy burning straight for us.

A huge sphere landed in front of us and the ball of energy destroyed the sudden gooey barrier between us and it.

“Yay, I’m helping!” Looking over to the smiling face on the front of a vehicle with a cannon sticking out of it, it seemed chipper despite the situation and turned to ram a random vehicle that turned out to be a swarm of pill robots congregating together.

I was thinking of trying to get Hard Light out of the line of fire and out of the area, but if we had went that way we would have been ambushed.

“Of course you are Bunny Battle Bus, Honey Lemon calls her Ms. Shuttle.” Go-go groaned out the names like she wanted to call it something else, possibly something derogatory from the sounds of it. “Also, sorry about the whole attacking you thing and as I was saying you couldn’t have known taking down Hard Light would have led to that six legged fortress going rogue. Our other friends are on their way, get Hard Light onto the Bunny Battle Bus and let us handle things from here. Bunny Battle Bus, I need you to take Hard Light as a prisoner and let Leap Lamb on you as a guest member of our team!”

They were all going to apologize to me at one point or another weren’t they? I’d accept them of course, but I wasn’t going to sit this out as it was almost attacking anyone nearby indiscriminately.

I did need a break though and quickly picked up Hard Light and started dragging him towards the waiting happy faced vehicle.

Go-Go skated towards the fight where Fred-Zilla and Honey Lemon were trying to keep the B.O.X.'s attention off of me or more importantly stop it from trying to kill Hard Light. Which was going to be hard because it was moving in my direction and only Honey Lemon seemed to be capable of slowing it down.

I made it to the intelligent vehicle that immediately opened its door for me and dragged Hard Light inside, the insides looked vaguely cozy.

"Where do I put him?” I asked the intelligent vehicle, again reminded of Nicole Beta when it spoke.

“In the small area in the back lit up by the lights Ms. Lamb!” It chirped merrily. "It'll keep him securely in place even if I have to make any drastic maneuvers to keep him and myself alive, aren't I great?"

I tossed Hard Light into position and what looked like a levitation field popped into existence around him to hold him place, I sat down and started to rest a bit and caught my breath.

I concentrated on Dolly for a moment and she didn't send back feelings of safety and was concentrating on something else. It was a little surprising as concentration wasn’t exactly Dolly’s strongest suit unless it was something that actively interested her.

The Bunny Battle Bus, cute name that, eventually fired again on the six legged fortress when the three heroes were clear of it and it became stuck in that gum like substance. Said substance started bubbling like it had when Honey Lemon had tried the same thing, the three were busy dealing with the flying pill robots.

A large pillar of fire engulfed the area around the B.O.X. in flames that melted the ground underneath it as it cleaned all the stuff off of it in one go.

I sent Dolly a vague thought of getting to safety. She sent back an immediate negative to my idea and a mental image back that she was doing something involving Dormarch currently. Dolly also sent me feelings of already being 'vaguely' safe where she was inside the Krei Tech building at the moment.

I was about to send curious feelings as to what she was doing, but I wouldn’t get the full picture through our bond and would only get a idea of what she was doing anyway. Getting distracted by the Bunny Battle Bus shouting didn’t help either.

“Hold on to the nearest secure thing, we need to move!” The slightly panicked cutesy voice stated, it sounded vaguely like Honey Lemon come to think of it. The vehicle roared to life and I wrapped my hooves around something like she asked and locked myself in place as it started moving in reverse and veered sharply. I saw the flash of a large ball of energy passing by the windows of the vehicle. “Phew, that was a close one, oh those poor buildings being damaged by that machine. At least we’re… wait… no… we’re not safe. We’re about to come under attack by Krei Tech buddy guards… that’s not happy at all, my chemical cannon needs more time to reload after every shot than that!”

I sighed and rolled my eyes.

“Open the door.” I’ve had my breather and now I was going back out there to protect the Bunny Battle Bus.

“Are you sure Leap Lamb?” Ms. Shuttle asked me. “You’re looking a little tired there sweetie.”

“I’ll be fine, I’ve been tired for a long time now. Now let me out so I can protect you and get that cannon ready to slow down that machine.” I stood at the door. “Also we should try to lead it towards the nearby shore if it starts targeting us, so it has less buildings to shoot at or hit.”

“Okay!” She said happily and the door open I immediately leapt out and whipped the skateboard upwards and around by its strap to smash several of the robots. I kick my left hind leg outwards to knocked back a tentacle and slammed the skateboard down on it before pulling it back and attaching it to my right leg.

“I really just want this night to be over with…” I stated as I climbed up the side of the vehicle and slammed my right hoof and board into another flying pill before it could shoot at me. I blocked a beam, smacked away the follow up tentacle with my left leg and then jabbed the skateboard into the robot and kicked it off with my right leg tearing it apart.

Looking over to the three heroes fighting the B.O.X. thing, they weren’t doing too well. At least they had a system of how to minimize damage.

Honey Lemon was dealing with the smaller machines with clouds of that robot dusting stuff.

Fred-Zilla was fighting them small machines and harassing the larger one to keep its attention off of us. He was doing a good job of it too.

Go-Go joined the fray and took down a few of those missiles it fired swiftly while tearing through whatever robots she could.

None of them had so much as scratched the B.O.X. at all, made me wonder what the thing was made of.

“Fire!” That was that ocelot’s voice!

I turned and saw three tanks rolling out from the nearby intersection to unleash a barrage at the B.O.X. and it simply held up two of its legs.

Everyone watched as all three shells hit the shield like legs, bounced off of said shields, did a few flips in the air and landed on the ground looking like circular discs. The armor on the legs didn’t even dent from that.

A second later the ocelot and his people quickly abandoned the tanks before an orb of energy struck the middle one to ultimately decimate it. This also damaged the other two tanks next to it.

B.O.X. then fired a volley of missiles that ultimately ended in the other two tanks being blown apart, it seemingly turned slightly to approach us. I saw several things fly high up in the air and I saw one of those fire pillar bombs against the backdrop of the moon coming our way.

“Move backwards!” I shouted to the vehicle beneath me and she immediately pulled backwards as the bombs hit the street in front of us and created slow moving pillars of fire that came at us. As we continued to move backwards, the B.O.X. started to follow us. “Go towards the shore, now!”

“Right!” The merry voice sounded panicked as she moved backwards, spun around almost in place and then shot forward out of the way of another blazing orb of energy that ripped a large hole into a building behind us as we veered around the corner going along the left side of the Krei Tech building and down the street.

When we turned right we were now on a street that ran alongside the western sea shore, there were a few docks and some warehouse there. I heard something and looked up.

“Look out!” I shouted and the vehicle skidded to a dead stop as B.O.X. slammed down into the street ahead of us. "Back up and veer off to the side, I’ll try to distract it.”

I felt Dolly trying to get my attention, but I was a bit busy at the moment as I leapt forward and onto the leg of the machine and bark blasted a leg joint of one of the neighboring legs. This did a small amount of damage, probably the most damage we’ve actually managed to do all fight.

The machine stopped and suddenly a swarm of pill bots were produced and attacked me, how many of these things did it have left?!

I tried to stay on the leg as I fended off scorching beams, tough nets trying to trap my body and tentacles. Why did these things even need the tentacles?!

We’ve totaled about a hundred of these pill shaped robots and because of Honey Lemon the B.O.X. should have had problems recuperating the numbers it had. That was thankfully correct as the swarm was smaller, but no less dangerous as B.O.X. tried to shake me off of its leg by flailing it wildly with me under constant fire as I tried to stay on the leg by maneuvering around on it.

The number of nets coating this one leg was getting ridiculous. There were still at least more than fifty of those floating pill bots left and they were all coming at me from all sides.

I crawled onto the backside of the leg and another leg angled itself at me and one of those bomb orbs ended up popping out at its opening tip. I quickly leapt to the back of another leg as solid stream of flames flashed by behind me. The heat alone started making me sweat.

Again Dolly tried to get my attention through our bond, but I didn’t exactly have a moment to stop and pay attention to her as helicopters lit up the machine and they started firing at me… not the B.O.X., me specifically.

What is my life that the mercenaries were going to take advantage of this situation to attack me even now?

At least there weren’t civilians in the line of fire and this open area was evacuated of people.

-Dolly-

We had a plan, but it required blowing a hole to the central part of the machine where its computer hardware was. The robot pick up and recuperating mechanisms lead only to the corners and the bottom middle of the machine, all of it heavily armored according to Dormarch. The armor was only at its thinnest at the top, which was saying something when my brother Dawkins was concerned about how heavily protected the thing was.

Dawkins had a very nice idea, but to utilize said idea we’d need to first expose the brain of the machine and to do that you had to get on top of the thing and somehow break through the out armor layer as the mechanical brain beneath was sealed away from being accessible by anyone. Any other method was pointless to try and would take too long.

I typed something out and Dormarch nodded. I placed him down in the vent, having promised I’d come back to retrieve him and moved to go outside when I felt Pom moving away.

I quickly reached a vent and rolled onto my back while propping my front legs against the walls of the vent and kicked the grate off with my hind legs. Pom taught me a lot about kicking while I’m down and I had to admit that was an awesome way to open a vent.

I quickly ran out and saw some broken windows. Wow this place looked a lot like war zone, wouldn’t be far from what Dormarch got when we scanned the walking fortress from up here on the third floor earlier.

I was going to try and get to Hard Light, but Pom already took care of that apparently.

Looking outside I watched as the large six legged thing leapt high over the building and off somewhere downhill towards the sea, where I felt Pom currently was.

Looking down at the three people it left behind, I had to get their attention.

“Arrooo!” I called out making the three look up to me, I pointed downwards with a claw and took a few steps back. I ran forward and jumped from the third floor of the building, hoping they’d catch me or do something to that effect.

The rabbit girl aimed her gun and fired a spray of spheres in tight circle where I was going to land and I hit something pillow soft and rubbery, kind of felt like the trampoline in the back yard back home in Camden Town. So I sprang off it with a stylish twirling back flip and landed in front of them on my paws with my head held high.

I’ve fallen from higher up onto a mattress that wasn’t nearly as soft, probably should have climbed up Big Ben that night… nearly got myself killed, but I did seriously learn how to parkour like a squirrel.

“Hey, awesome move Caper Canine!” Ignoring the Fred-zilla guy, his suit definitely looked like it had seen better days, I turned and started looking around to get my bearings.

“What is it girl?” The rabbit stated trying to figure out what I was looking for.

“How are we supposed to deal with that thing when even tank shells won’t leave a dent in it?” The wheeled biped cat sounded kind of cool and aloof.

“Like you’d understand me if I tried.” After stating that I started running in Pom’s direction, only to be picked up by the cat with the floating wheels and she skated with me in the direction I pointed out. I soon ended up with my paws around her neck as I road her downhill.

“Yeah, you can’t get around very fast without your skateboard can you cool dog?” She muttered as she skated down the street I pointed down, I did give her a nod and she went down that way.

I tried to get Pom’s attention through our bond, but it seemed like she was too busy dodging all kinds of attacks.

Pom was frankly being the most acrobatic I’ve ever seen her with how fast she jumped around like a grasshopper on five energy drinks and some coffee, I think she was using her Fleet Cunning Doe style to maneuver and flip around at odd angles. Even kicked off one of the bots chasing her to escape.

“Whoa…” Looking at the wheel cat staring in amazement at how quickly Pom was evading what was at least thirty or so attacks in all directions at the same time.

It was impressive to be sure and that's when Pom wasn't using Dancing Flame to dodge things, she was doing all that on pure adrenaline at this point.

“Hey, I need her over here now!” I barked as I pointed to her and then me.

“You want me to get you to her?” She asked, I shook my head no and made a baseball strikeout motion with my paws and then twisted my paws around. “You want me to bring her to you?”

I pointed to her and nodded, then she dash off to the side almost throwing me off as a large orb of energy shot past us and nearly hit the bus with a bright pink digital rabbit face on it that looked to be close to tears.

I hopped off and glared at the wheeled cat.

“Right, I’ll get her out of the mess and to you.” As she went to do so two helicopters flew overhead and started firing missiles and guns at Pom who already have enough issues with everything already. “Don’t know what you need her for, but this better be important and not just for food!”

The wheeled Cat shot off for the machine to go get Pom.

The helicopters quickly changed targets to start shooting down the missiles coming at them with their guns and their own missiles started damage the legs minimally as they were used to shield the machine from the rocket impacts.

At least the helicopters were doing damage, as minimal as it was to those heavily armored shield leg things.

I saw the wheeled cat zip around and by the machine, she then went onto all four wheels. She did a flip began picking up speed coming back my way to shoot up one of the legs to grab Pom before the machine could hit her with a massive ball of energy that shot off into the sky and she launched a disc at a helicopter missile before it hit them and landed to come speeding for me.

The cat quickly skidded to a stop next to me, then then calmly placed a nervous and shivering Pom on the ground. I noticed that one of her disc looked to be missing, I pointed a claw at it and the bipedal cat hit a button on her wrist and a spare disc popped off her back.

-Pom-

“Here you go, I seriously hope that was worth losing a combat disc for.” The cat stated as she turned back to watch the helicopters continuing their attack despite me no longer being there. "Who am I kidding, I just saved the sheep from that mess."

“What is it Dolly? If you haven’t noticed we have a bit of a…” A flash and a helicopter exploded, spun out of control several times and then crashed into a building. The mercenaries on said helicopter leaped out and repelled to the ground and started running before the helicopter fell out of the building and exploded. The entire building soon collapsed. “Nnhnnn… situation.”

“Hiro, Baymax and Wasabi are finally inbound, about damn time, where have they been during all of this?!” Grunted Wheel Cat or Go-Go, I’m thinking Go-Go because she likes to do as her name says. “We need all the help we can get with this thing! What I wouldn’t do to have the Kentucky Kaiju on our side right now. Don't let Fred-zilla know I said that.”

“Yeah, Dormarch and my family came up with a decent plan of action on how to take that thing down! The weakest point in its armor is at the top center of the machine, but beneath that is a layer of armor protecting the mechanical brain of the whole thing. It should be weaker than the top layer.” Was this going where anyone would think it was Dolly? “Can you get off a uh… what was it called again… that breaker attack thing? Can't you do that on it?”

“Yes, I can do a bark breaker, but I’d need some time to build up for the attack. By that I mean I need to find the right kind of frequency for it to actually deal damage… after what I saw happen to Fred-zilla, that’s going to be a bit of a problem especially if the B.O.X. is constantly assaulting me. Not to mention I have to do it right or else I’ll waste a lot of energy trying.” I looked over to see the other helicopter was smoking now and starting to retreat, the B.O.X. wouldn’t have a distraction soon and we need to hurry up our conversation. “It doesn’t look like it will hold still long enough for us to achieve the damage needed to deal with it.”

“Aside from what I just told you about the armor, there was something about nano-machines making the armor as tough as it is... a lot of the stuff Dawkins and Dormarch said about that went way too far over my head.” Dolly rubbed her face with her paws. “I’m am not a science geek or a genius like they, I’m a sports dog at best and I don’t even like playing fetch. Look just find a way to immobilize that thing and then break it's armor up.”

“Are you… talking to the dog?” We both looked to Wheel Cat, she was obviously hearing only my side of the conversation.

“Yes, I am. If there was one super power I’m certain that I did have that anyone might ask about that I’m trying to keep a lid on, then it’s my ability to communicate with canids. Also it’s not as interesting as it might seem from my perspective on things, because you’re not really missing much… just that dogs are far more intelligent than you’d think.” I felt my bond to Dormarch still being in the area of the Krei Tech building. “Speaking of canids, is Dormarch alright Dolly?”

“Yeah, he’ll be fine where he is, I can pick him up later.” Dolly answered swiftly, before saluting. “Now what do you need me to do Pom? I can stick with the vehicle, I can go retrieve Dormarch and stay out of the action or…”

“You can come with me if you want to, but it’ll be dangerous Dolly.” Who was I to stop someone else from living the dream in a world where dreams 'can' come true? Dolly may as well stick with me, it’ll be safer where I can keep an eye on her.

“Give me my skateboard, danger doesn’t scare me in the slightest!” Within a few seconds Dolly yelped as an explosion was heard and we saw the large six legged machine thundering towards us as the last helicopter fell into the city. “Let me rephrase that, give me back my skateboard so I’m mildly safer because I’m totally terrified of that thing.”

I dropped the skateboard into her waiting paws and turned to glance at the machine that wasn’t slowing down. I galloped down the street towards where the Bunny Battle Bus seemed to be waiting patiently for us, managing to keep pace with both Dolly and Go-Go.

“Bunny Battle Bus, fire a Mucus Marsh!” Hearing that from an approaching Honey Lemon with Fred-zilla following, the Bunny Battle Bus raised its cannon and fired.

The machine slowed to a stop five feet from us, it had been more than two blocks away ten seconds ago, only it was now stuck in a gum like substance.

I immediately turned around and ran towards the machine.

“What are you doing?!” Go-Go shouted after me.

“My best, because Caper Canine brought me a good plan and I’m going to follow up on the information that was given to me!” I crouched down and leapt high up over the machine and landed on the portion of it that wasn’t covered in the sticky gum like substance.

I was surrounded by those pill bots, but they were soon dealt with by those clouds of machine wrecking chemicals Honey Lemon was firing at them.

Okay, concentrate, open my mouth and get a frequency going…

“Rrrrrrrr…. yip!” The armor wrenched and warped, but it didn’t crack. Didn’t hurt my throat too badly either, but I needed to do that a second time to make it viable enough to really start damaging it.

I'm already consider this thing might be worse than two headed robotic orthros.

Only I didn’t have that time as the gum like goo started bubbling around me, I was about to be hit with an explosion of fire.

“Grab on!” I looked up and was surprised by who I saw, I hopped and my hoof was grabbed the claws of Momokase as we swung away from a massive column of flames that was slowly melting the machine free of the goo encasing its legs.

Momokase yanked her knife free of the wall she had swung down to me from and caught it by the handle.

“What were you doing on that thing?” Momokase asked me looking… worried? Strange. “That thing is made of stuff tougher than my graphene blades, I would know I threw one at it while it was leaping this way and that did nothing to its armor. My blades are made to be absurdly sharp, enough so that they can cut just about anything.”

“Some damage to actually end this fight, I managed to warp some of the armor on it, but it’s still too tough! I need to get in a second attack so I can break up the armor on top of it. That will open it up for attack and then we can doing some damage to the weak point below that and finally put it out of commission.” Said machine I was talking about, B.O.X., was currently in the midst of freeing its legs. “I think we need to move further away!”

“Agreed.” We both ran as the massive blob of mucus like substance exploded going everywhere causing some buildings to catch on fire. That's a problem for later when we weren't dealing with a large mechanical issue.

“Why did you help me?” She’s the one who attacked me and stole Dormarch in the first place that led to all of this.

“I owe you a debt for saving me from the mercenaries and that missile.” Given that she said it in a solemn tone, it sounded like she was willing to aid in our fight against B.O.X. that hasn’t been going all too well thus far. “Sure you may have made me take a bullet, but a bullet in the shoulder is better than one through the back.”

“Momokase what are you doing here?” Go-Go looked at her sourly, I can tell there was a history there when it came to the thief.

“Honestly… I’m here to help… or at least I’ll be trying to do something conducive to bringing that thing down.” Momokase answered before the B.O.X. freed itself. “No time to think about whether or not I’m lying, move!”

The B.O.X. stomped towards us while firing a swarm of missiles our way and Momokase threw a claw full of blades to tear through them and cause a chain reaction of explosions. She also hit a few of the remaining pill bots, at least the ones that Honey Lemon hadn’t been busy evaporating consistently since she started targeting them like she had a personal vendetta.

“I’m almost out of ammunition here and there’s still about thirty buddy guards left!” Honey Lemon fired a burst of that sticky mucus substance at the legs and ground as she bounded in a large circle around the B.O.X. avoiding it creating another powerful ball of energy and firing it at her.

“How long will it take you to reload the cannon?!” I shouted to the Bunny Battle Bus as she was trying to stay out of the B.O.X.’s range.

“I still need a minute or two…” Whimpered the vehicle as she backed away from B.O.X. in fear, it seemed to be quite dead set on killing Hard Light and it was going after the one who was currently holding him.

“If you need time, then we’ll make it happen, incoming!” Shouted a purple figure riding an armored Baymax as they came roaring in and slammed into the side of the machine making it stumble as soon as it freed its six legs from the minor amount of goo Honey Lemon slowed it down with. I also saw that raven guy hopping off of Baymax’s back screaming and went into roll once hit the ground before lighting the energy blades on his gauntlet while shivering. “Skymax is going to drop an ammo pack for you Bazooka Bunny!”

“Can I please get a different codename? I’m not normally violent and it was just the one time, really!” Honey Lemon whined matching the vehicles whimper from earlier as she popped up in the air and fired a single sphere at the top of the machine, the explosion was decent but did little overall damage. “Nope the armor is not weak enough to be damaged yet, but whatever you did had some effect on its structural integrity Leap Lamb. We need to freeze it again and get you into position to damage the armor more. Then we have to hit it with something heavy.”

“Plasma Paladin the armor on that is far too tough for your plasma blades so don’t even try!” Fred-zilla had taken a pounding throughout all of this and he was still able to shoot down half of the next missile swarm that it the B.O.X. fired at us.

Plasma Paladin himself, the guy with the energy blades, started firing energy blades from his gauntlets and took care of the other half of the incoming missiles.

“Then I’m covering the battle bus, I don’t want to be near that thing on foot and I’m the slowest of us!” The energy bladed guy turned off his gauntlets and ran to the bus. “Also I don’t want to be near Caper Canine, I’m allergic to dogs!”

“I have a few ideas of how to damage it further after I deal with the armor on top of it, but I might need Bazooka Bunny’s help when we get to that point.” As I said this Baymax avoided the chasing pill robots and fired his fist at the B.O.X. to little effect as it just kept charging at us.

Honey Lemon fired another spray of sticky substances at the ground until something began clicking in her purse with the elongated tube sticking out of it.

“Hold your breath!” Honey Lemon quickly grabbed a sphere off of her bandolier as the barely slowed B.O.X. raised its front two legs as it charged us, she threw it down and the machine brought its two legs down on us.

I Inhaled and did as she said while closing my eyes, opening them I blinked a few times.

We were inside a large bouncy blob and were surrounded with a large amount of thick oily fluids, it popped outwards and violently flipped B.O.X. onto its back where it flailed its legs.

I took a gasp of air and stared at the comical sight.

“Good Job Bazooka Bunny!” Go-Go stated as she skated past a weakening number of pill bots and slung her two discs at them and did some more damage to their dwindling numbers. "Everyone start wailing on the buddy guards, we need them out of this fight like yesterday!"

I also saw Dolly getting into the action with slinging her skateboard around by the strap, managing to bring a few down. She was defending herself fairly well when they started firing beams at her and she was swift enough to roll out of the way of the nets.

Momokase also took care of a few others by dicing them so badly that it would be pretty hard for B.O.X. to fix them.

“That won’t stop it for long, I’m thinking of going straight for my Bunny Battle Shield when I get my reload!” I’m getting the idea that Honey Lemon had a theme and that it somehow always consisted of rainbows and sunshine.

Despite that Honey Lemon was fairly effective in dealing with large problems given she likely made the chemical cannon thing that Ms. Shuttle uses.

I was staying out of the fighting unless approached or attacked, I was an important factor in breaking through the armor on that thing. I was the only one that could do that and I was staying on the backline watching as the local heroes took a pounding from all sides by the remaining pill robots that had become more sporadic in their movements.

I really didn't like being so important as to have to wait for my opportunity to act.

“With the way things have been going, we might even need one of those a SAM launchers!” Fred-zilla stated as the B.O.X. started the process of flipping itself back over.

“We took care of all of them though.” Plasma Paladin stated from next to the bus as he fired plasma blades from a distance into the swarm of smaller robots still harassing us.

“Well except for the one where I knocked out all of the people and jumped on one of the rockets heading back into the city.” Oh so he basically blew that missile up while he on it so people didn’t get hurt, Fred-zilla was proving to be one of the most on point heroes here and he was taking a beating to prove a point that he wanted to help people regardless of his health. I could actually relate to that and how he must currently feel.

One of the flying machines that were called Skymax flew overhead and dropped something onto the ground that Honey Lemon immediately went to pick up. It was a backpack covered with stickers, rainbows and glitter. I was already backing up from the B.O.X. as it finally managed to lift itself into be flipped back upright.

“Yes, my ammo is finally here!” At least it picked a good time to get here, because the B.O.X. was almost up even with Baymax ramming into it to try and keep it down.

“Guys I’m going to try and lock that thing down with magnet discs to give you more time, then Baymax and I are heading out to the remaining SAM launcher.” As he said this the purple armored hero started firing discs everywhere at the ground around the machine as Baymax flew backwards and the B.O.X. finally righted itself. “Tell us when to shoot after we get there!”

“I will calculate the shots remaining in the SAM and will fire them using triangulation from our friends combats visors.” Baymax intoned calmly as he flew upwards. “First we will need Leap Lamb to finish using her method to crack the armor on top of it.”

The B.O.X. slammed all its legs on the ground sent up a dust cloud that nearly knocked us all over, Dolly simply planted her board in some dirt nearby to stay in place.

Only a second later did B.O.X surge forward, only to be stopped a large number of energy strings erupting into existence around all of its legs to hold it in place. Since it couldn’t lift its legs off the ground it tried to shockwave with pylons, but it failed to dislodge the energy strings pinning it in place or even knock away the discs that were causing them.

With that Baymax and the kid on his back took off towards the direction Fred-zilla had originally come from after blowing up that missile.

“Why aren’t you going now?” Momokase asked from beside me, B.O.X. answered the question for me by firing some of the flame pillar bombs that destroyed a few of the discs and started freeing up its legs.

“Still too dangerous to get near, we need it completely immobilized before I can do another attempt to break its armor.” I answered while look to her on my right and then I looked over to the ocean to see the moon disappearing over the horizon and the sun was peeking over the horizon on my right.

“Almost done loading the chemicals.” Announced the Bunny Battle Bus sweetly with a giggle as the B.O.X. machine continued to free up its legs with those flame bombs. “Hold it back for another thirty seconds please!”

“Incoming missiles, several volleys at once, intercept those missiles before they hit the bus!” Go-Go shouted as she threw her two discs taking out two of the missiles and then veered into punching a pill robot before it could lash her with its metal tentacle. “We must be really pushing it hard if it’s getting this desperate! It’s also finally almost out of buddy guards to fight with!”

“Of course!” Momokase threw two claws worth of blades slicing at least ten in half and not missing with any of her thrown blades despite having throwing them all at once in what looked like a haphazard fashion.

I should probably introduce Momokase about Gabby McStabberson, they’d probably get along real swell.

Right focus, there were still twenty or so missiles left coming at us.

“Fred-zilla to the rescue!” Fred-zilla leapt up and blasted at least seven of the missiles out of the air with a big ball of fire.

“This is awesome stuff we’re doing here, Bow-Whaka-Wow!” Dolly popped up onto a car and ramped off it and spiraled into several of the missiles, taking down another four with her board slamming into each one. She at least landed upright and only looked slightly dizzy and lightly scorched. “Oh yeah, I’m awesome, even nailed the landing and didn’t get too badly hurt either!”

The missiles had to get by me now and I unleashed a bark blast to destroy at least five.

The remaining missiles flew by me and hit something with dull thuds, I turned to look at the shadow figure looming over me. Once the smoke cleared up it revealed a giant smiling pink blob shaped like a toy rabbit encasing Honey Lemon.

Said hero grinned and made the thing flex.

“Here’s the Battle Bunny Shield!” The blob, following Honey Lemon’s motions, ran forward bounding a good distance with each step and then punched the B.O.X. with its left fist making it stumble backwards.

“I still don’t know how she learned to do that… but apparently it’s scientifically possible given that she does it.” Go-Go mumbled as she came to a stop next to me and watched as the B.O.X. tried to melt Honey Lemon’s shield, she bounced over it and the flames coming of two of it's legs and attacked it from behind. “Ready to do whatever it was you did to the armor previously… also barking energy blasts, really?”

“You have your themes, I have mine.” I stated dully. “I, Leap Lamb, am a dog sheep. I could herd dogs for a living and yet I find myself constantly stuck in bizarre situations like this one when I'd rather be cuddling a pile of dogs and special someone.”

“Loaded, ready to fire on command!” The Bunny Battle Bus stated with a cheerful chirp.

“Everyone move out of the way!” I shouted and did so myself and got ready to leap onto the machine personally. “Fire when clear, but remember not to cover the top of it.”

“Okay, calculating that into my projected firing solution.” The bus smiled at me and then narrowed its eyes on B.O.X. as the she moved forward. Honey Lemon was maneuvering her adorable looking bunny blob around B.O.X. while bashing it whenever she could get a chance. She was shaking it up well enough, but the damage was fairly minimal. “Tres... Dos... Uno... firing Mucus Marsh chemical combination!”

The cannon raised from the Bunny Battle Bus and fired a huge wad of the gum like substance nailed the machine, the top was left exposed and I ran forward and leapt up.

I was about to land on B.O.X. only to be yanked upwards by one of my hind legs, I looked up at my left hind leg and found one of the pills bots had clamped a tentacle around it and tried to lift me away. I flailed and tried to kick at it with my right hind leg.

“Hold on I got your back!” I looked to the Plasma Paladin Guy aiming his arm and he fired two bolts of energy from his blade that nailed the machine and the tentacle, dropping me on top of the B.O.X.

I moved over to the warp section of the armor and started up, I put my face close to the metal by crouching down.

“Rrruuuuu-YIP!” The armor all along the main body became horribly cracked, almost shattering under my hooves and those cracks even formed along a small portion of the B.O.X.'s legs.

“Whoa, what in the world did she just do!” Plasma Paladin stated with awe as he fired more bolts at the other robots trying to attack me or hit me with a net.

“Something totally amazing my friend, something totally amazing!” Fred-zilla cheered as he hopped back and forth waving at me like a cheerleader. “You’re an awesome super hero Leap Lamb!”

Okay my throat hurt a bit, but I still had room to dig up some chunks of armor physically while I can before it freed itself. I raised both my hooves above my head and slammed them down breaking off chunks of warped and brittle metal revealing the layer underneath slightly.

I jumped up and slammed my hooves down breaking away more of its armored plating and the machine wobbled a bit. The gum like goo started bubbling.

“Coming on through Leap Lamb!” Not getting a chance to respond to Honey Lemon’s distorted voice, her blob thing picked me up and we leapt away before another inferno started around the machine.

This time the inferno caused a bit of problem for B.O.X., especially when large patches of its own armor blew off due to the flames erupting straight through the cracks and warped portions I had caused to appear. This also damaged its legs and made it flop onto the ground as they all spread outwards.

“Baymax, fire now if you and Mental Magnet have control of the SAM, we’ll get clear!” Go-Go stated loudly as she and everyone moved back, in the distance a rocket flew into the sky with the rising of the sun and arced for our general vicinity.

Within seconds the B.O.X. managed to get its legs under it one at a time, only to be hit by the SAM missile and its legs flopped outwards onto the ground again.

“Did we get it?” Fred-zilla asked, the damaged B.O.X. slowly started standing again despite the heavy damage to the second armor layer beneath the top. “Oh come on!”

It started limping forwards towards the Bunny Battle Bus, but the damage the B.O.X had sustained made it look like it was just about done with.

“Can you fire another one, it’s not down yet!” Go-Go shouted into her helmet. “Last one?! WHAT DO MEAN THAT WAS THE LAST ONE?! Huh... oh... yeah, I can see why now.”

The machine erupted with missiles, Honey dropped me and moved forward to take all of the missiles onto her controllable blob. Afterwards the bunny blob looked chewed up and was falling apart, Honey Pulled herself free of the mass and out of the back to drop onto the ground. She came back over to me looking a little dizzy.

“How do we finish it off? The Bunny Battle Shield used up all the chemicals I need to make explosions.” Not going to dignify that statement with a response Honey Lemon. She then looked at me as I crossed my legs and gave her a flat look that she was using chemicals that could blow her up. “What’s in your bag? My visor is seeing trace chemicals of… yes can you get whatever rubber object you have in your bag out?”

I looked confused and pulled out the only thing I could think of, the rubber duck.

“Hey that’s the abandoned rubber duck I found before we ended up at that trailer park!” Dolly skated over to us slowly and stopped to prop up her board and looked at it, then me and finally Honey Lemon. "Well if she absolutely needs it..."

We had all taken quite a beating, mostly Fred-zilla, or were tired from exerting ourselves. I just calmly put the rubber duck into Honey Lemon’s waiting paw.

“Don’t honestly know where it came from, but Caper Canine found it.” Though I wonder why Honey Lemon would want the rubber duck, it was actually questionable.

Honey Lemon studied the duck for a moment and seemed to be looking at something I wasn't seeing through her visor.

“Ooh… who would fill a rubber duck with highly explosives chemicals like this, they must be a diabolical mastermind!” Wait, what did Honey Lemon just say was in the duck, that I’ve been carrying around for while, just now? “Anyway… firing into the hole!”

Kicking her boots together Honey Lemon launched high into the air loading the rubber duck into her purse and then she fired it downwards at an angle.

“Squeak.” The rubber duck slammed home into the top of the B.O.X. and became lodged in it, it even made a cute squeaking noise.

Honey landed on her bouncy blob and dropped to the ground afterwards.

“Funny you think that would have done…” Fred-zilla started to say as he walked towards the suddenly very still B.O.X.

"Fred you might want to..." Plasma Paladin seemed as wary as I was to approach.

-Agent Forty Seven-

“So that’s where it went, good a time as any to do this.” I pulled out my unused detonator and pressed it while looking at where the rubber duck was now through the binoculars.

-Pom-

"Quack." The sudden explosion was massive and frighteningly disturbing coming from a little rubber duck.

The B.O.X. practically blew apart, its legs fell off and dissolved into piles of popping pieces of flames after the middle of the machine was obliterated. There was hardly much left of it after that explosion.

I just slowly turned to Fred-zilla sliding slowly next to me, he pointed a claw to the sky.

“I’m… okay…. ish…” Fred-zilla’s arm flopped onto the ground, he may not be the brightest member of the team of heroes, but he was certainly seemed like the most resilient and willing. I silently wished him luck with his future endeavors of helping people, he was a really nice guy.

I looked to the sun rising in the distance.

“Let’s… quickly go get breakfast. I need to be out of town before the mercenaries try to regroup.” I looked to Momokase. “What did you need my and Dolly’s blood for again?”

“Doesn’t matter, my client is being arrested. He reneged on our deal by sending the bots after your device and probably had a buyer that wanted your genetics and was using me as a retriever, maybe to make a clone because you are both adorable and a badass.” Momokase then started to saunter off. “Now if you’ll excuse me… I really need to go sleep this whole mess, and this bullet wound in my arm, off.”

“I’ll go get Dormarch.” Dolly stated as she skated away uphill to do just that.

I sighed and flopped onto my butt looking at the wreckage, the burning buildings and some buildings were collapsing nearby by.

“Was that thing mostly made up of nano-machines working around a centralized computer core with a specific fixed form blueprint? Whoever designed that thing was a genius.” Apparently Mental Magnet had returned with Baymax and the armored balloon robot waddled over to me. I didn’t understand a word of what he was saying. “No wonder that thing was so resilient to damage, but the nano-machines were highly limited in their functions in holding a structure to form… they really couldn’t do much without a computer acting as a central network and without the whole thing just fell apart.”

“You are experiencing heightened stress levels.” Stated a kindly Baymax he looked down at me. Sighing audibly, I fell onto my back. “May I apply aid your wounds Pom?”

“Yes, please do. I’m exhausted, irritable and the only thing that can make it better is if I had a bath and found a place with good strawberry waffles with a ridiculously decadent cream sauce.” I undid the wool bandage and let him get to work on it.

“I believe Cass Hamada can accommodate you, as will I.” The robot knelt down and gently started tend to me.

-Several hours later, Lucky Cat Café-

My throat was still somewhat miserable and I needed to leave town before those mercenary groups managed to somehow scrounge up enough courage to come after me again after that whole debacle.

“Ma’am… thank you for some of the best strawberry waffles I have ever taste.” I stated with a distinct bright eyed honesty that nobody could replicate. “I have to go now, while this city has been fun. I draw the line at dealing with the number of rabid lunatics that seem to be common around here.”

Lots of mercenaries got arrested, the most important ones got away, Momokase was seen helping Big Hero 6 so she might be turning a new leaf if the news was to be believed and I needed a incredibly large break from doing heroic stuff.

“I understand, I live here after all and Krei Tech does have a habit of letting technology run wild, sorry to hear you got caught up in that stuff. Your welcome to come back to the Lucky Cat Cafe anytime Pom!” Cass was a bright beacon of goodness in this dark and dreary world. “I’ll always be willing to serve you and you’re adorable little dog too.”

Dolly and I looked at the footage of the rubber duck going up in a huge explosion and destroyed the machine. I silently paid for Cass Hamada’s service and left the business. Time to walk out of the city and to our destination, which might take us the rest of the day.

“Hey, wait up, do you need a ride to Duckberg?” Turning to see Honey Lemon and her friends, notably the one they called Wasabi was staying well away from Dolly for allergy reasons, they all pointed to Ms. Shuttle smiling happily at me. “Because Ms. Shuttle is offering to take you there.”

“Thank you…” I needed some sleep after all of that, scrubbing myself and Dolly down, letting Baymax tend to us and in general just having an exceedingly bad night where no less than three groups tried to kill me.

“Again, we are so very sorry to have bothered you and caused all of this Leap Lamb.” Hiro stated while looking both sheepish and apologetic.

“Your forgiven, but only because your Aunt Cass makes really good waffles.” I slowly slunk my way onto the bus while smiling at the laughter that followed. Dolly idly stretched followed me onboard afterwards, her board on her back and her helmet secure on her head.

“Make sure they both get to Duckberg without anything disturbing them Ms. Shuttle.” Honey was really too sugary sweet.

“I can do that easily, I’ll be back before you know it!” The warmly smiling vehicle was as cheerful as ever. "I was designed with being a people person transport in mind!"

"Can you do us a favor before we go? Can you get us in touch with Abigail Callaghan or at least tell her we're going to need her help eventually? I have it on good authority that Wendy Wower should know where she is and that you know her personally." They all gave me curious look, but agreed to look into getting Abigails attention for me.

The bus took off and we would have a quiet ride to Duckberg.

-Go-Go-

“Okay, so Leap Lamb can talk to canids, can bark blasts of energy and can leap really high… so do you think we can mash enough of our brains together to make a translation device for animals?” I asked flatly.

“Oh oh, what about a near unbreakable combat twirling sign with a bungee cord?” Fred-meleon will never change, always a hero fanatic and got to meet some real super powered individuals. At least Caper Canine’s gear was improbably durable, so that somewhat counts. “After seeing what Caper Canine and Leap Lamb can do with that skateboard, I really want to up my game and I did really well against Yokai.”

"The fact that Fred wants to make his hero thing even more complicated aside, I'll talk to Wower and ask her if she knows what's up with Abigail Callaghan... we haven't exactly been keeping tabs on her." I had to think about what Leap Lamb could need of the fox animalistic that Hiro rescued, it was probably nothing bad.

-Elsewhere, Shanty-

“Get back here ringtail, and give me back my under… wait a minute, what are you doing here?” Ms. Fox be stopping and looking to me sitting here eating dumplings at a food stand.

“Shouldn’t you be chasing after that guy?” I be just relaxing after a night time raid to open up routes into several places we needed to be later tonight. We were about to bust apart a fireworks factory and would later fight Panda King himself. It would be fun and we'd be taking out a hug jerk that be burning down Sly's home. “He is being very fast and is getting further away.”

Shaking her head, the nice lady continued to chase after Sly as I dunked my vegetable dumpling into some soy sauce and popped it into my mouth.

139. Kunlun Planning.

Author's Note

What do you mean I just took a week off to speedrun Metroid Dread multiple times, why the nerve of those assumptions!

139. Kunlun Planning.

-Equus, Ponyville Crystal Castle, Twilight Sparkle-

“Okay, so things are a bit shaky at the moment, but I’m sure we’ll work them out.” So long as the world doesn’t implode in the next five days, we would be able to fix everything involving the economy crisis.

“Well I’m kind of surprised that a solution is being worked on so quickly… do you think Jaded is behind some of it?” Spike seemed skeptical about the solution being naturally occurring.

“I have no doubt that she’s played some part in helping fix things. She’s not pure evil, unless Saddle Arabia is involved. We’re still trying to get her to let go of what happened to her in the past involving the region.” I sighed and shook my head, what could I do to keep a crazy Abyssinian busy? Give Fizzle more time off with pay with the explanation to keep her favorite snuggle cat under control? “Anyway, I’ll be watching her more closely when the summit reconvenes.”

“That’s an idea everyone else already does.” Did Spike really have to be so sarcastic about it? “Not that it really helps any.”

“Yeah, Yona can’t be seeing how watching friend Jaded will stop her from doing things like Discord does.” Judging by Yona curious tone, we were just talking openly in front Yona, Silver and Sandbar without really acknowledging that they were sitting here with us.

Gallus was still currently helping Fizzlepop get the lambkin delegate out of their bunker, I only saw him for a short bit of time asking around for Maud Pie for some odd reason.

-Earth, Somewhere in Eastern California, Shred Tread Base Camp, Rev Olver Ocelot-

Okay we lost a lot of vehicles, but there was one thing we got out of it.

On the screen the news caught Leap Lamb’s actions during the battle with the Metal Gear: B.O.X. while it was active. Well not entirely everything she did throughout the whole fight, but it did show here doing something with her back to the camera and blowing the armor apart.

It was a good thing Leap Lamb wasn’t a cold blooded killer, otherwise there would be a lot more casualties.

The Metal Gear series of machines were equipped with something nuclear in some way, nuclear powered, nuclear weapons, radiation shields and etcetera. B.O.X. thankfully was using an alternative safer power source and not the micro nuclear energy plant that could have wiped out the whole city when it was destroyed.

You have to give Krei Tech credit for making the thing less dangerous after somehow getting a hold of either the blueprints or the prototype.

Still, Leap Lamb is a dangerous individual and I think we might cut our losses here with trying to kill her.

Now… now we wanted her alive, if just to find out how she did what she was capable of.

Leap Lamb didn’t have cybernetics, wasn’t using drugs and didn’t have some prior biological enhancements from the looks of it. So what were her secrets?

-South Eastern Calisota, Sabu Taj-

You try to kill an annoying super powered individual and try to take her rather unique highly sought after device, only to fail horribly.

Leap Lamb wasn’t invincible nor was she perfect, but she is stupidly tough, agile and had a sidekick that was getting exponentially stronger after the Nimnul incident in a notable way.

Strong enough that Caper Canine rammed into several missiles, mostly with what is apparently an indestructible skateboard of hers, with only minor injuries to show for it. Said same missiles were used to blow apart tanks, nobody in the news batted an eye at Caper Canine when they were focusing too much on Leap Lamb. Caper Canine is arguably just as dangerous and intelligent as her partner was.

As if it wasn’t getting bad enough that Agent Forty Seven, the world class top assassin that apparently had an interest in Leap Lamb, caused the capture of one of her teams that were all hospitalized with severe and almost lethally critical injuries.

Forty Seven’s reputation spoke for itself when he didn’t even walk within twenty feet of her team to do whatever it was he did to cripple them so badly, if he had wanted them dead then there was no stopping the guy. He wasn’t being paid to kill them, but he did target her and likely had a contract to do so.

If his calling card was getting a bullet pried out of a badly shattered shoulder that had been aimed for the heart, then Sabu had to tread carefully when it came to hunting Leap Lamb with the assassin watching her movements.

Even further we now had information on the incidents involving the merry band of idiots, the Shred Treads and their attempts to kill Leap Lamb outright. They weren’t having any luck either.

I had to find out about them after my mercenary groups ran across them, they were too well-funded to be a normal mercenary military group.

You’d think after all of this trouble that I would simply just give up…

Not a chance!

I don’t care much about the device anymore, which would be a victory lap and a feather in someone’s cap. Leap Lamb needed to die and I wanted the notoriety as the one who accomplished it on the principle of the matter.

I logically knew a sunk cost fallacy when I saw one, but I was still going to do it if it took every last bullet I could get to do so!

How much would it actually take to bring down Leap Lamb? From the information we’re getting off of the Shred Treads, explosions have less effect than just shooting her and it’s hard to hit her when she’s actively moving at full speed.

Also we don’t know where Leap Lamb currently was or where she was going, but she would definitely abandon the San Fransokyo area.

I could try and take out a member of Big Hero Six. Despite appearances of goofiness and the friendly dispositions they give off, they weren’t to be trifled with. Bazooka Bunny in particular was one of their most dangerous members and she was the least threatening overall in terms of combat applications, most of which were strictly not lethal and capture oriented.

I shuddered to think what that rabbit was capable of if she were to suddenly go lethal.

Getting helicopters on such short notice was becoming a problem, at least I still had my courageous cougar pilot. Probably the only person I wouldn’t backstab at the rate things are currently going.

-China, Kunlun Mountains, after lunch, Shanty-

So I be spending my time scouting things at a distance with Mopsy, we were staying well away from the day guard and enjoying some minor tourists attractions a distance away from the Panda King’s region in these mountains.

We weren’t going into a valley or near any avalanche zones given what the Panda King actively be doing with his fireworks around here.

Last night’s raid was to make sure the Panda King knows we’re here, apparently he has something called Flame-fu. I’d like to see how it compares to my Cut-lash style when I’m countering with my blasts of water.

Still, Sly deserves the first crack at him as Panda King did burn down Sly’s childhood home. I not be liking Panda King much, he be starting off poor, does he not know what he is doing when he’s hurting people who were just like him once upon a time? He is putting people out of their homes and is a powerful influence in this region, becoming like that which he was said to once dislike.

I not be having a home to miss like Sly, but I be greatly missing Pom, Smolder and Ocellus.

“So the fireworks factory, how are we going to deal with it? Panda King has increased guards patrols like Bentley said he would.” Mopsy lowered her binoculars, she be almost like Pom. In that she is constantly fretting and worrying over every little thing. She was a good scout, but she was not a fighter or someone who could run towards danger without a second thought to save people. “According to him, we now have an opening to strike at the holdings as the guards are spread thinly over every area.”

What’s life without a little risk eh? Mopsy didn’t mind taking a risk with actively joining the Cooper Gang and I would happily be a part of this group any day! I just can’t be a permanent member.

I still wanted to become a pirate, not a professional thief. Even so, I be learning a lot from Bentley, Murray, Sly and even Mopsy be teaching me some things she’s learned from her adventures in life. This world be just as incredible as Equus is.

“What be the simplest way to deal with a factory full of gunpowder? Well the answer be as simple as the question.” I be remembering seeing the fireworks factory Gongmen City. It be similar to one here in the mountains of Kunlun from little I saw. “We be lighting a fire in the right place and will set things up for a series of big colorful booms. We still be needing room for us and any guards to escape, Bentley will be knowing how to do this without anyone getting seriously hurt.”

“Are my sound receptacles burning? Shanty, just the goat I needed to see, after we’re done with the Panda King here, we can get you to Pom. She’s going to meet up with Ocellus and Smolder some time tomorrow and then we’ll try to find a meet and greet point between us.” Bentley seemed chipper as he sat down at the table with us and be spreading out the floor plans for the fireworks factory run by Panda King. Mopsy and I looked at it, it not be too complicated really. “Once we’re done here, we’ll see about flying out to say… maybe Cape Suzette where we can finally drop you off with Pom and then go about our separate ways. None of us, in good conscience mind you, wants to drag you into a fight with a giant mechanical death owl. We’ll have to confirm things through our contact Dawkins Dalmatian first, never thought I’d ever meet a dog that has an IQ level that can match superior cerebral capacity before in my lifetime. Never thought I’d meet a nearly immortal magical chicken either, but I’m starting to believe a whole lot of things. There’s still a logic to it all and well… we haven’t seen any hopping vampire mantis monsters, though China is definitely infested with them. So Spot’s charm is definitely keeping us safe in that respect.”

I felt a little sad to be hearing this, but I did be wanting to be with Pom again. Not that Mopsy was bad, she has kept me company all this time when she didn’t have to. Mopsy could have just trusted Sly, Murray and Bentley to take care of me, but she be coming all this way and even assisting them while looking out for me. She even cared for all of us by cooking when we couldn’t find another one of those funny ‘Hippo’ places to eat at. Mopsy be a friend I’d never forget… mostly because she fed me, it’s hard to forget friends who fill your stomach and your heart.

“So what do we be doing here?” I asked as Mopsy went back to looking through the binoculars, keeping a lookout for trouble. “What’s the plan?”

“Well Sly will be ‘playing’ with Carmelita and keeping her distracted from our other operations, I think he enjoys running from her far too much for his own health. At the same time we’ll all be busy procuring some specific fireworks to get him up to Panda King’s lair and opening the path forward. I know you are capable of getting up there on your own without any help with your climbing magic, but… this is Sly’s thing and we really don’t want you to do this alone after that whole scare with Mz. Ruby almost drowning you in a swamp.” Nodding to Bentley, I be understanding Sly needing to confront this guy like he confronted the others of the Fiendish Five and they all be worried about me being able to handle myself. “That and Panda King has size, weight and a comparable combat ability that allows him to mystically light his paws on fire. Magic fire from what I’ve read can be pretty bad and permanently scarring. Sure you have short range magical water blasts and can even walk on water after an unusual interaction with the water safety page of the Thievius Raccoonis, ultimately proving that Sly’s family has magical attributes to them, but I don’t think you’re strong enough to be able to counter him fully or bring him down by yourself.”

“I am not going to be dumb Bentley, I just don’t want Sly to face the Panda King alone.” He be needing help and I want to be there for him. A mechanical warble came from my right and I looked up to Dodo and patted his chest with a hoof. I be learning much about having a familiar, he be a partner, a comrade pirate, my very special first mate and our bond be unshakeable. Dodo also always be willing to carry my stuff which was the best part of having him as a friend. “Dodo be wanting to help Sly and all of you too!”

“I was a little wary of Dodo at first, but he’s proven himself quite friendly and helpful numerous times, he and Murray will be working together on their own mission. We need some muscle and the both of them will be good for moving things into position to take down the fireworks factory, Dodo will be a big help with getting Murray around. You’ll be scouting the area and giving us all information of the guards movements, distract them away from those two and might have to rough up a few. Also yes, you will be the one to set off the ‘fireworks’ Shanty.” Bentley be sending me a concerned look when I grinned brightly at him. “In any case you’ll be distracting the guards so they can get through the fortified positions, you and Sly will be quite busy in a few hours so eat up, get some rest and please for the sake of my sanity be careful around Panda King’s thugs. As for what Mopsy and I will be doing, Mopsy will be the spotter for you, Dodo and Murray. I’ll be watching Sly’s progress to make sure he stays out of trouble with Carmelita… speaking of… did you really have to steal her bra Sly?”

“Hey, I gave it back… while she was chasing me. Just goes to show you that, yes, I am really that good. Plus teasing Carmelita is a sport for me.” What Sly means to be saying is that he put it back on her when he had a near close call of a point blank shock pistol blast to the face. None of be knowing how he did it either, even Bentley was completely stumped that he got the stolen bra back on Carmelita. I don’t know what a bra is for, mostly because I don’t need one as an animalistic, but it was still funny to watch the two bipeds interact in a passionate manner. “Already making plans without me I see.”

“Don’t worry Sly, you’ll definitely be in position to face Panda King and if anything happens to you then Shanty will have to get you out or face Panda King herself.” We all be fired up Bentley, this was going to be both fun and we would be doing it all for a good cause too! “Plus distracting Carmelita with Panda King’s slightly more illicit holdings will give you the time you need to face him directly. Surprisingly Panda King is running several legitimate operations, compared to all the other members of the Fiendish Five he’s the lesser evil among all of them. We will not be touching his legitimate operations and I will try to set things up so they can continue running as to not put people out of jobs.”

“Yeah, I don’t want Shanty to have to worry about me or Panda King, so I better beat him black, white and blue before Shanty even needs to get involved.” Sly sent me a smile as I laughed merrily. He tipped his hat to me with his cane. “Tonight is going to be one long night.”

“Yeah Sly, but as you can see, I’ve finally got to a point in my bulking up where I can help actually out my favorite buddies!” Murray flexed and his muscles were respectable for what he was going for, I preferred to wiry to bulky. Someone with a red tomato sized nose and was fun to hug. “Hey, something the matter Shanty?”

“No, I just be thinking of an old friend I had a crush on a few worlds back.” Hopefully I was remembered by Skunk as much as he be remembering me. “We have been lost for a while, I wonder what world we’ll end up in next or if we’ll just head straight back to Equus? There is still so much to experience, but I do be wanting to help my friends get back home to the world we come from.”

“We’ll help you figure out a way home if you’re still having problems after we’re done facing the big mechanical menace, provided that we survive him.” Bentley crossed his arms and huffed. “Now let’s get some rest, because tonight is going to be a blast.”

“See, told you Bentley would come around to the fun side!” Sly stated with cheer and I be hugging Bentley tightly, he soon joined me in hugging Bentley. “Want to get in on a group hug Mopsy?”

“Well I…” Mopsy didn’t get a chance to protest or join of her free will.

Mostly because Murray, who had successfully quietly snuck around us, didn’t need to be told twice to join in as he hefted all of us into the air and gave us a loving squeeze.

“Whoa, you definitely have gotten stronger Murray.” Sly wheezed in Murray’s arms squishing us all together.

“The Murray is ready to aid you and Shanty in the field Sly!” Murray stated loudly with a happy grin. “I’m not going to let you guys get into trouble again without someone there to do some heavy lifting.”

“That is being nice Murray, but can you please be letting us breathe?” We all be needing air and Murray be real strong to lift all of us into the air.

“Please… Murray… Bentley is turning purple… and that’s not… a natural color for him.” Choked out a distressed Mopsy as she struggled to get some air.

Murray stopped hugging us and we all flopped onto the ground in a pile, all gasping for the sweet taste of air after that hug. I be liking hugs, but even that be ridiculous.

“Oh gee, sorry guys, guess I don’t know my current strength… I’ll just have to work on that. I’ve been trying to get strong enough that I can flip the van back up onto its wheels in case it ever falls over or ends up upside down.” Murray rubbed the back of his head with his right hand. “I guess I’ve come a long way huh?”

“Murray, I seriously doubt that you will be having any problems doing that.” Bentley stated as he cleared his throat and smiled. “Now the question here is, when do we begin Operation: Fire Works?”

“Heh, welcome to the dark side Bentley.” Sly grinned. “Love the operations name.”

“Yeah we have cookies Bentley!” Murray stated with a happiness as he pointed to Mopsy eating an oatmeal cookie. She swallowed and looked at us as she motioned to the tray next to her. “We’ve always loved those and it was our first heist, the cookie jar.”

“I was the one that made these.” Mopsy stated flatly, but she still had a slight grin on her face.

“Nice talent for a person who helps run an orphanage.” Sly nodded sagely. “You’re a credit to friendly good natured ladies everywhere Mopsy.”

“Oh stop.” Mopsy blushed and waved a hoof at Sly lazily.

“I’ll be having three of those, be needing a lot of energy for tonight.” Nobody be questioning my bottomless stomach anymore, I needed the energy for my wall climbing magic anyway.

Dodo warbled and picked up a cookie with his beak before tossing it into the air…

That cookie hung in the air for me and slowly faded into being the moon.

-Outside Panda King’s Kunlun Compound-

I be looking up at the moon and looked down from cliff on the mountainside. Pom could just be floating down from here, I be having issues with that. Instead I could just roll down the mountainside like I learned to do in that Panda Village when we faced General Kai.

As for the opening distraction technique and being the entrance maker, time for the giant door busting building snowball technique!

“Are you sure this is going to work Bentley, I mean I know Shanty can do the water splash thing, but can she really apply that much magic to the snow?” Mopsy will be seeing soon enough whether or not I can do it, because I’m about to find out too.

“Shanty’s magic works really well when she’s in motion and she’ll definitely be moving alright.” Was Bentley’s confident response to Mopsy, he then said what I really wanted to hear. “Alright Shanty get us started!”

I leapt off the cliff curling up to rapidly flip forwards through the air, the sky and ground alternating incredibly fast.

Things be getting interesting when my body connected with the snow covered slope and I loosed slash of water from my rapidly spinning body and my entire world quickly became surrounded by white. The snowball building up in response to my magic.

“One hundred feet, fifty… now Shanty!” At the sound of Bentley telling me to go, I kicked with all my legs and left the center of the snow ball and kept kicking to spiral outwards. “Switching over to watch Sly, he’s made contact with Carmelita and will soon be in the process of luring her to Panda King’s illicit activities. You’ll be in contact with Mopsy from this point forward.”

I eventually used the rolling momentum of the snow boulder to launch myself high up and over the gate with my legs spread out wide, I came down and caught a tree branch which bent when I changed my downward momentum to horizontal and launched forward onto a building that I clambered up.

Hearing a massive impact, I looked down at the sight of a mass of white now covering the entrance of the guard’s barracks.

That’ll take a bit to dig through.

The giant snow boulder had continued on to slam into the gate. Upon decimating said gate, the snow boulder continued forward picking up three guards and then burst when it slammed into the nearby buildings entrance.

“Shanty is on point, Dodo, Murray, be prepared to move out when Shanty starts actively distracting the guards.” After Mopsy spoke, I hear a warbling that made me smile as I climbed to the roof. “Well shanty has already kicked things off to a great start, I feel kind of bad about sitting in a heated van watching all of this. Can I get a visual of Panda King's surrounding holdings Shanty?"

"On it!" I pulled out my binoculars and slowly swept it in a full circle.

"Operation: Fire Works has officially begun." Announced Mopsy.

140. Compound Fracture.

-Equus, Ponyville field, Sandbar-

It now occurs to me that one of the biggest things I miss about Ocellus is how upbeat she always is, that and she was our only magic using member of our friend based buck ball team. Smolder was always honest and one of the best defense players I know next to Gallus as far as our pick-up games went.

Since Gallus was busy helping Mrs. Berrytwist with a lambkin problem, our core group was worryingly reduced to three friends, Silver Stream, Yona and myself.

This is what eventually led to us having to expanding our horizons a bit, to that end we needed a flyer and two unicorns to get a game of buck ball going. Yona versus me on offense, Silver Stream was on my defense.

As for Yona’s defense we got Sunshower from the weather team who wanted exercise. Then there was Dinky for my catcher and Sweetie for Yona’s team to round things out as far as unicorns go.

Both Dinky and Sweetie needed to practice their magic and this was a good way to do it. Sunshower would get a decent work out and we'd all have some fun.

We missed both Smolder and Ocellus, we hoped they made it home soon. We just couldn’t keep worrying about them so hard all the time. We had our own lives to keep going through, even though we all knew in the back of our heads that we’d still be thinking of them.

As for the day they do come back though, Pinkie Pie would be ready and was already waiting with the supplies for that party.

-Earth, Camden Town, Doug-

I wondered what my little spotty dotties were up to this time.

I came in and cleaned off the soot from work, I’ve been taking more time to be a good father that was actually present for the pups more than just in the evening. Still, I’m glad that I can save lives, but hiding my immunity to fire was a little sketchy concerning the bipeds I worked with in the fire station.

I was alternating spending more time with the family with Delilah given Dolly’s departure put a slight hole in our hearts.

The house was a bit quiet and I had my worries, but seeing Spot made me feel relieved. The mystical chicken was family as far as Delilah or I were concerned, plus she took a lot of the pressure off of Dylan to watch all the pups.

I entered the living room to see all of the puppies watching a video showing Dolly launching upwards and spiraling into several missiles, my eyes widened as she went through them and somehow landed only slightly scorched.

“What are you watching?” I asked tentatively as I just saw my daughter do something incredible again. I’m a bit surprised, if proud, that my daughter was capable of such an amazing sight.

“Oh, hey Dad! Dolly got into some trouble with more mercenaries, a super villain and a large robot recently… last we heard she’s alive and well after another huge mess her and Pom got dragged into. We’re just replaying Dolly tanking several missiles and figuring out how she managed to do it without getting burned too badly when the same kind of missiles can wreck tanks and helicopters.” Dylan answered, he was looking stronger now that he had more time for astronaut dog training. He was reaching for his dream now that he a bit more freedom from pup care. “From what we’ve figured out, she used the first impact to create a powerful rotation that caused a pocket of air while her skateboard took the brunt of the energy from each impact. That she even managed to land upright after that is mind boggling. She also may have some of your fire immunity dad, which would also help the situation.”

“She’s becoming a real super hero huh?” I’m kind of proud my little hellion was actually doing what she wanted, she’s being a hero. “That’s our Dolly, following her dreams with enthusiasm.”

Sure the super bark Dolly did in a previous incident was impressive despite how injured she got, which made me entirely nervous about her being out there, then barely a week later she is taking missiles down personally. It was an eye opener as to how tough my oldest daughter was getting, but the more impressive thing she did in my eyes was that she was finally following and even managing to live her dream.

I just wish that dream was a little safer.

I was less worried about Dolly’s safety now and more about Pom’s, she didn’t look to healthy and looked like she was being run ragged with how worn down she appeared.

-Kunlun Mountains, Panda King’s guard barracks, Shanty-

“Murray and Dodo are going to move out soon. Sly is passing the gate and Carmelita is hot on his tail, but she’s actually stopping to make note of the illicit activities going on around here. Can you take care of the stone towers now that you’ve alerted the guards to your presence?” That is not being too hard Mopsy, I just be needing a good angle for it. “Do what you can to cause a large enough distraction and get them away from the fireworks facility while Dodo and Murray get to work setting up the temple of boom.”

“On it.” I be gripping the edge of the roof and swinging down into position to hang from it. Once I be looking behind me to judge the direction, I nodded to myself and be preparing for what is my favorite technique aside from climbing. “Goat Fly!”

Kicking off the barracks I launched towards one of the towers leading up to the Panda King’s buildings and, since my aim was correct, I clobbered a staff wielding monkey with a flying hoof to the face. This be knocking him across the room into the stone wall while stopping my momentum entirely to land softly.

I looked about and noticed a large amount of large fireworks and started to rub my hooves together with a grin. Well… I did be needing to make a distraction.

“You know, you scare me every time you go launching off like that.” Of course Mopsy, but I not be having a fear of heights even if I can’t actually fly… though I still be trying to figure out how to making climbing on air a possibility given what Pom be telling me about her friend Velvet’s ability. “You okay, have you found a way to make a large distraction to let Murray and Dodo through?”

If I can be skipping around on top water, then I can climbing on air once I be figuring out how to do so. It might not be the same as flying, but being able to do a goat fly anywhere would be amazing… plus it would stop me from falling to my death if there wasn’t any water around to land in.

“I be having a plan.” I was already enacting it too, after I be throwing the guard into the snow at the bottom of the tower. Grabbing and moving one of the larger fireworks, I be aiming it at the guard in the other tower.

“Why did I feel an intense sense of dread when you said that?” It was moments like these that be making Mopsy sound like Pom. “In any case I’m ordering Murray and Dodo to move out for the explosives factory.”

“Hey, I be having this!” I smacked my hooves together around the fuse, doing the campfire lighting technique Pom be showing Smolder, Ocellus and me, the fuse immediately lit up and a second later the firework blasted across to the other tower.

It hit the guard in the other tower in the outer portion of his right leg knocking him off balance, then it be flying past him and exploding to make his face slam into the floor.

He be knocked out from what I can see, I pull up my binoculars to confirm it. I looked at the higher up point where Panda King is said to be and grab myself another large firework.

-Panda King-

There was a turmoil in my spirit that hasn’t quieted down once in all these years, there was also a disturbance in my surroundings. I wanted peace to meditate, but it seems I would not be getting that right now.

I could feel it, someone was attacking my employees.

The newest cooper gang was here for me and they were… my eyes snapped opened and I slashed my right paw outwards blasting an arc of flames from it. This knocked the firework that might have either hit me or exploded near me to fly off course and explode harmlessly to my right.

I stood up and started preparing a single large firework as I looked into the distance. I do not take direct attacks on my person lightly, before I did anything hasty I sensed out where the guard for the tower was now.

He was out of the way and would be safe. Now I will show them what it means to anger the Panda King, I put my energy into the firework and then sent it on its way with a flicker of flame from my paw.

I might not be able to see them, but my rocket would fly true.

-Shanty-

Fireworks are like one shot cannons, my aim was decent at best as I wasn’t going to be hitting Panda King directly from what I saw and it wasn’t going to explode near him either give I be seeing it be knocked away.

It be kind of cool that he could just create fire from his paws from what little I can see at this distance, too bad he is being a big jerk.

A rocket flared and flew out from the Panda King’s meditation pagoda at a speed that normal fireworks were not known for, then again the fireworks factory from what Bentley told us in the briefing doubled as an explosives manufacturing plant.

Looking like a temple was just an artsy choice.

Quickly grabbing a large rocket in one hoof I slung myself onto the wall outside of the tower and then used goat fly to get across to the other nearby tower with the knocked out guard.

The massive, deafening, explosion I heard afterwards made me look back and I paled at the missing room where I just was. Panda King is being a bit more dangerous than I currently be thinking.

My ears by ringing as I stared at the blasted remnants of the top of the tower, I be feeling a bit dazed as I climbed up into the other tower.

“…. Sha…. shant… res… Ple… respond… can… you hear me Shanty!” Hearing Mopsy made me shake my head violently. “Are, you, okay?”

“I… be okay, but I be thinking fireworks should not be ‘THAT’ powerful.” At least I be getting Panda King’s attention and that of his guards. “The guards be certainly distracted by that.”

“Already asked Murray and Dodo to move into position to start setting up the fireworks factory for Bentley’s plan, while procuring some fireworks for Sly to use to get up to Panda King. You got guards coming your way.” They weren’t coming from the barracks the snow was still in the way, they were coming from other areas from what Mopsy was telling me. “Just try not to get hit directly any fireworks like that, especially if it can do that to a stone tower!”

That is being very good advice at the moment, I took up my large firework and aimed it downward at the large thugs rushing towards this tower. They be knowing I’m here already and there were already others that be picking up the guard at the bottom of the other tower.

I quickly lit the fuse and held the firework until it ignited and then I let go, the guards one the ground below were blasted away from the rocket blowing up in the middle of them in a rather colorful display.

“Shanty how long can you hold out up there?” Asked Mopsy as she be watching from her position.

“I be having five rockets to work with.” Also my hooves might be hurting afterwards doing the campfire lighting technique back to back like this. I be picking up the five rockets and putting them in my bag I got back on Elhorn.

“Use your binocular communications device Shanty and give me a view of which directions the guards are coming from.” Doing as Mopsy asked, I spotted that the guards weren’t grouping up and each were coming at the tower well separated to avoid being caught in another blast. They be really smart guards. “Is there anywhere you can goat fly to from there aside from the barracks? They are already moving the mass of snow out of the way of the doors.”

I turned my pirate themed binoculars towards the barracks and saw a group of them almost had the door clear. I quickly took one of the large fireworks out and lit it while aiming to the roof I came from.

“I can be reaching the mountainside pathway from here easily, but I got to be making sure they can’t free up the barracks guards first or else The Murray and Dodo will be being in trouble!” Once the fuse went into the firework, I let it fly off and it be spiraling until exploding above the roof. I would be preferring a direct hit, but that was enough to make a mass of snow bury the guards digging the door to the barracks out. “Four rockets, tell me where you be needing them Mopsy when you can. Else I just be using them as I see fit.”

“Guards are climbing the tower Shanty, get out of there!” Nodding at Mopsy’s urgency, I climbed off the edge of the tower and clung to the wall, I then be launching myself onto the pathway leading up to the main compound.

I rolled with the impact of the snowy slope and stayed on the ground for a bit, my legs be feeling like jelly after colliding with the slope or it was just that cold.

Where Murray and Dodo would be gathering explosives from around the factory to blow it wide open, I would be actively drawing attention to myself from all the guards.

“Shanty… incoming!” Looking up at Mopsy’s words, I saw them all coming down at me. “I think Panda King is somehow directing them at you.”

Running be a good idea now.

-The Murray-

I looked up at the fireworks causing large explosions.

Gee, I hope Shanty was okay. I felt a something poke my side and looking at Dodo motioning with his head to the doors to the fireworks factory.

Right, most of the guards went to deal with Shanty. Some were still left behind as a skeleton crew, the barracks were stuffed with so much snow it would take them a while to dig it all out of the way.

“The Murray has the one on the right, you get the one on the left.” Dodo nodded and crouched down to jump at the one I pointed out, he was waiting for me to make my move like a good mechanical ostrich thing.

I snuck up close to the guy, using a snow bank to make sure he didn’t see me approaching until I could rush him down.

Running out and shoulder checking the guy on the right to the ground, I stomped my left foot with my full weight sending him up into the air where I caught him and slammed his head into the wall.

I turned to see Dodo already dragging the other unconscious guy over to me, he warbled curiously and I motioned for him to drag them further away. Dodo tilted his head, nodded and then started dragging the guards away.

“We’re in Mopsy, how is Shanty doing?” I asked as I cracked my knuckles and punched the door once, then threw a left hook and finally I slammed my shoulder into cracked the door to knock it open.

Nobody was here…. well duh Murray, the factory is not in operation at the moment and all the guards and Panda King are busy attacking Shanty who’s distracting them.

“She’s… doing okay for the most part, the Panda King is raining rockets down on her position and they are leaving craters.” Mopsy sounded scared for our mutual best little buddy. “She’s returning fire with the rockets she took with her, but she’s got two… make that one left.”

I was scared too, mostly for Shanty, but my muscles are proving themselves ready for field work and I wasn’t going to let any of my friends down!

Dodo warbled worriedly as he looked off into the distance, likely in the direction Shanty was in.

“Let’s get this set up quickly, then we’ll wait to help Shanty get out of here when she sets things to blow up in pretty colors.” I received a happy mechanical tone and we both made our way inside. “Mopsy can I get some help here? Huh, Sly is almost done, that’s good news at least!”

-Dodo-

“Ooh an entire fireworks factory exploding, this is going to be so fun!” Pink Pie.exe loved fireworks, Dodo did have a clue as to what was so special about explosive devices.

He did come from a world where things seemed to explode regularly.

Shanty was his best friend and he was worried she was being attacked, even if this world was somewhat safer.

-Shanty-

An explosion knocked me away from the boulder, I moved back to it and carefully looked around the boulder and saw that more than half of it was missing.

“Okay guys, Sly is almost done evading Carmelita, along with the thugs that got between them.” Bentley be joining us. “Shanty do you have any rockets left.”

“Just being the one.” I be giving both Mopsy and Bentley a visual of the last of the large rocket I had acquired.

“Okay, Mopsy hasten Murray and Dodo on the set up. Sly is on his way to position for the meet up point to face off against the Panda King and will be there in a few minutes, Carmelita will bring in the local authorities to deal with the barracks. Shanty are you ready to pop that fireworks factory wide open?” Yes Bentley, I really be wanting to do this! “Thanks to the visuals you gave me on the rocket you have, I have a plan to get you out of the area before Panda King launches another wave of rockets at you. I want you to aim that at the fireworks factory, slightly above it and not too high. Now when you light the firework I want you to hold onto it and then jump when it is about to fire. It should be powerful enough to get you over there, just don’t hold onto it for too long.”

Nodding at this, I lit the fuse and then clamped my hooves to the firework as I held it above my head. Crouching down on my hind legs another explosion destroyed the remaining portion of the rock wall between me and the rockets Panda King be firing my way.

The fuse entered the rocket and I leapt in the direction of the factory and found myself pulled through the air when the rocket ignited. Snow, buildings and the barracks passed beneath me in a blur. As the rocket slowed down, I was already at the factories roof as several explosions landed where I was on the mountainside.

I be letting go of the rocket and it shoots into the air and exploded as I rolled across the temple like roof and looked up at the pretty colors.

“That was being a rush!” Flying is being fun, especially when I not be exploding. “Also, yes, I’m fine Mopsy, I just be slightly burnt.”

“I’ll have the burn ointment ready when you come in. Sly’s escaped Carmelita and is now running interference under Bentley’s guidance, he’s keeping the guard busy with long range rocket bombardments and is drawing Panda King’s attention as he makes his way forward. Help Murray and Dodo, then light that factory up. All of you will then get over there to help Sly with getting up to the Panda King. I’m sending you a waypoint to the quickest entrance from your position.” Nodding I raised my binoculars and looked at the waypoint set by Mopsy, it be showing a smiling lamb figure. Walking across the roof I climbed down to a window and got into the factory to see Dodo and Murray placing the already present explosives in places to ruin the building entirely. “Hey guys, it be being a bit loud tonight!”

Dodo swept his eyes up at me and he warbled happily and Murray waved with his left hand as his right arm was occupied with a barrel of explosive materials.

-Sly-

I swiped my cane and another rocket wildly blasted off into a group of guards, the barracks were almost cleared up and the local authorities were about to show up. I didn’t have much time if I wanted to perform the takedown on Panda King.

Shanty, Murray and Dodo all seem to be doing well, Carmelita is calling in backup for herself, Mopsy and Bentley have us well coordinated and the only problem I can see ahead of me… is fighting Panda King himself.

Panda King was ridiculously accurate with those fireworks of his as I leapt and swung my family cane upwards to ride down a wire as the building I was on is blown apart by a powerful explosion. The line snapped and I rolled in the snow when I hit the ground to bleed off momentum.

I charged towards where we would be setting up my entrance to the Panda King’s pagoda. On my left the fireworks factory suddenly erupted, fracturing into huge chunks of debris as it collapsed inwards and passing by it I came upon my team waiting for me.

Shanty was grinning up a storm at watching as all the rockets from the factory whizzed about and destroyed other nearby structures in colorful displays. Panda King’s little empire was breaking apart at the seams, we’re getting quite good at these takedowns.

Murray placed down a circular platform, Dodo started pulling fireworks out from the hollow in his back and passing them to Murray and Shanty as they tied them to the platform. Once it was set up with Bentley directing them, all I had to do is let it rip with a tug of my cane.

I hopped onto the platform and hooked the pull cord. With a yank, the rockets around the platform spun up and fired powerfully to launch me and the platform high up in the air towards the Panda King.

I leapt off before the flying platform crashed into the floor and stared up at the one who burned down my home, my grip tightening on my cane. A few seconds later during my stare down, Shanty climbed up behind me and took cover behind a pillar.

She was our backup plan for this and she need some rest, she looked a bit tired from drawing so much attention to herself.

I would rather not need Shanty's assistance, but I didn’t know how tough the Panda King was going to be.

“Murray head on back with Dodo, I think Shanty and I have it from here.” We wouldn’t need Dodo for what was to come.

Panda King stood up and crossed his arms to stare down at me from his raised platform.

Author's Note

The Panda King was supposed to be faced before Mz. Ruby, but the developers put him after her. There's a lot of little things like that that are interesting to hear about.

He's a fairly easy boss fight in the game, how does he fair against Cooper this time?

141. Panda Pummeling.

-Earth, Duckberg Calisota, Saberwing Residence, Smolder-

“Thanks again for letting us stay here.” Because frankly I don’t know what we would do if Phantom Blot came after us again.

“No problem, any friends of Violet and Lena are welcome in our home as long you need.” One of violet’s dads stated in a cheerful tone. “Just don’t ask for too much of us please, feeding four mouths is a bit difficult.”

There was the threat of the beagle boys scrounging around, so they had us put in a safer place out of the way of the trouble that we could get caught in the crossfire of. We didn’t want to be attacked by association to Scrooge McDuck and Lena was strong enough to protect us when she was actively using her magic.

Speaking of magic, the subject was a bit interesting when Ocellus brought up how our world’s magic was playing nice with this world’s magic. Apparently friendship really is infectious, not that it was going to change the world too horribly or at least that was a hopeful thought.

The Duck family was friends and rivals with powerful gods, demons and anything between the two. Despite how normal the Beagle Boys sounded compared to the crazy stuff the family gets into, they were apparently a threat to never be underestimated given their numbers.

Still wanted to meet the goddess of this world’s moon, as did Ocellus and she was a bit confused as to why I was curious. Luna was a cool, strong, had nightmare night and there was the whole thing with those awesome bat ponies she had going on. Why wouldn’t I find Princess Luna to be an interesting pony?

“So how long do you think it will take Pom to get here now?” I asked as I looked to Lena with a grin.

“Okay, so I must admit I didn’t realize she had a stronger trouble magnet then our best friend’s entire family of weirdness magnets.” Lena muttered as she looked at the glow stars on the ceiling with a fond smile. “Still Pom is close and she can’t get into much more trouble… right?”

“Yeah no, after the whole giant robot, mercenaries and hero group thing, I’m still expecting something to stop her on her way here.” Ocellus stated in a sad tone, while looking at us. “Pom just… looked so worn down in the recent news about her exploits. I don’t think she’s getting enough sleep and is stressing out like a normal lambkin would. Which, remind you, Pom is not a normal by definition.”

“So may I bring up the fact that we are thankful to learn of the name Abigail Callaghan in being a big help for our friend Gosalyn? We might be able to help bring her grandfather back from wherever he ended up, despite of the dimensional instability that our world is currently exposed to.” Violet was particularly interested in dimensional travel now once that name came up, because it could be a way we could get home. “She will be quite happy to hear that Taurus Bulba wasn’t the only one who can figure out interdimensional travel and it’s an expert we can trust given she would put herself in the line of danger before letting anyone else do so.”

“Yeah, if we can get something working, then Gos will definitely be happy to have her grandpa back.” Lena stated while leaning back with her hands behind her head. “Might even be able to visit your home world too if we can get you guys back there, Equus sounds like a place that resembles Webby’s dreams. Plus it might be fun for us to explore.”

“Yeah the sword horses in this world are not the unicorns, found that out well enough.” I grumbled remembering the sword horse that dented its bladed horn on me.

-China, Kunlun Mountains, Panda King’s Pagoda, Shanty-

Po this Panda King guy was most certainly not, but he did be having muscles and maybe fire magic. He did be looking a lot like Po though, only angrier and more destructive for certain.

He be wearing a red shorts with flames on them with yellow lining at the top and bottom, not much else. His face be reminding me too much of Po’s, even if he was bigger and angrier looking. Maybe he was this worlds Po? Didn’t be mattering to me one bit, we be here to kick his flank to the authorities.

“I see you carry the cane of the notorious Cooper Can, so you have come to me for revenge? For the missing pages of the Thievius Raccoonus?” Panda King said as he stood at the top of the steps.

“Not going to lie, that was my plan.” Sly stood confident as he looked up Panda King. “Now you’ve really got me angry, I have a burning need to put an end to your avalanche extortion racket!”

“Why should you care if I bury a few worthless villages in snow?” Panda King… I be wanting to go up there and smack him for saying that, doesn’t he remember what it’s like being poor?! I would still be knowing that feeling of being homeless if people not be helping me and all my friends were being my home now! “You’re a thief like me.”

My growl attracted his attention to me as I moved from behind the pillar and glared at him.

“You also bring a child to face me raccoon?” Panda King was making me angry by looking down on me, surrounded by wooden boards with targets painted on them. The snow covered steps leading up to him were simply buried and frozen logs, the only other thing up here were the lanterns lighting up the pagoda.

“Easy Shanty and stay back until I lose, then it’s your turn. You know… hearing you talk so coldly about it Panda King, I thought you would care more about what you’re doing here and would see some reason as to why it was horrible.” Sly received a curious look from the Panda. “You know, you started out poor and being mocked by rich people for your shabby looks. Now you’re rich and you yourself are devastating the poor and defenseless. No, I don’t think we share any similarities whatsoever when you became what you likely despised at one point. I may be a thief, but I only steal from criminals… I’m more of a vigilante at this rate than anything with how often I try to stop and help people. You however, you are a frustrated fireworks artist who has become a homicidal pyromaniac and the very thing that he hated with a burning ego to match given that your pagoda is on top of what looks like a large statue of yourself.”

Sly twirled his cane idly as he stared down Panda King without fear.

“The thing that surprises me about you, is that you actually respect and care about your employees. Which is not saying much when they are all thugs that can easily turn away any helpless villagers easily after beating them black and blue if they try to fight back.” Sly pointed the end of his cane at Panda King. “You’re basically bullying people out of their money, their homes and their ability to make a living. Something I take issue with having grown up a poor orphan, because ‘somebody’ destroyed my home. I don’t care if I don’t get the page back and my revenge on you doesn’t mean that much to me in comparison to all the lives your ruining… you need to be brought down.”

Sly was so cool, he not be raising his voice once. Even if he was furious he was talking in an even tone, I don’t think I could be doing that personally.

“Petulant you may be, but your words ring with truth and you honor your ancestry. Even so, I will send you to meet them in the afterlife with the power of my fireworks martial arts, Flame Fu!” He be looking to me as he lit his paws on fire in an instant. “As for the animalistic child that followed you here, she might survive me sending her on her way!”

Panda King be doing a sweeping motion with his left paw to wreath it in flames more heavily and he be doing a sideways flip to his right while lashing it out to launch a fireball at me, Sly didn’t even move to be saving me because I already had this situation well in hoof.

“Riptide!” I stood up on my hind legs, pulled my front legs back and clapped both my hooves together sharply.

This caused two streams of arcing water to come together forming a sphere and that be launching forward when my hooves collided.

Said water ball be demolishing the fireball entirely and then the remaining steaming and boiling mass continued on to slam Panda King in the face.

“What… was that?!” Grunted Panda King who seemed a bit stunned and slightly dazed, his face scalded and dripping wet from my attack.

It almost be like he didn’t believe me capable of protecting myself. Riptide not be very powerful and when I can get it to Pom’s Bark Blast levels of damage, then I would be having a solid ranged attack. Even if it never be getting that powerful, it be a good distraction I can aim in any direction. The only problem with it is that it dehydrates me quickly without a nearby source of water and actually takes a good chunk of energy to perform too.

“That be a result of my personal pirate style of martial arts, Cut-lash! Can I be taking part in this fight now?” I asked Sly with a twitch in my right eye, Panda King almost be asking for me to try my newest super move on him. It would be wiping me out, but it would hurting him quite a lot. “So are you going to give up already?”

“If he involves you again, join in at your leisure.” Sly stated with a stern tone and narrowed eyes as he tipped his hat to me and started to move forward. “Otherwise I’ve got something to prove and I need to do this myself Shanty.”

“I be waiting to help you make an exit if I don’t need to butt in Sly.” I backed up and moved to being behind the pillar again as Sly charged forward and the Panda King started to flip around while launching fireballs at him.

Sly dodged the first and hopped behind a shield that was blasted apart, the Panda King looked confused when Sly no longer be behind it. I be seeing through his invisibility technique, but it be taking a lot of focus on my part not to lose him as my eyes be sliding away from his clearly visible form almost constantly.

He be popping up next to the Panda King and smacking him in the back with his cane, he ducked when the Panda King be turning to swing at him with the back of his flaming right hand. Sly took on step back, grinned and crossed his arms smugly.

Sly being way too good, I almost didn’t be catching what he just did as Panda King swept his left hand along the floor at him and seemingly knocked him over. Panda King looked confused when he noticed that Sly was on fire and not screaming, also that he now be two dimensional.

Panda King’s eyes widened and before he can be reacting he took a blow from the real sly across the left side of his face from a glowing cane charged with his power to create a heavy blow. He be stumbling away from Sly both surprised and a little freaked out, I know I would be if I had to be fighting Sly.

Never be taking your eyes off of any movements Sly makes in a fight, because he can do some very tricky things within a single blink of your eyes. A single blink was all he needed to act.

Also Sly’s standee technique be very annoying, but he be perfecting it… well almost. Bentley do be saying that he might be able to improve on the technique and would learn to leave three dimensional fake copies of himself behind. He mostly he be using it on me and trying to steal my food. I know it be training me to be more aware of my surroundings, but he be very annoying with it.

“You are quite crafty, but…” Sly swung for him again, Panda King caught the weapon by sucking in his gut to harden his belly and then he stepped forward to slam Sly with it by exhaling. This sent Sly flying to the edge of the arena where he flipped and landed on his feet. “The Belly Bounce is a technique I learned in Kung Pow City, not everyone can learn a quack fu technique like that so easily just by reverse engineering it. Do you think you are the only one who is skilled here Cooper?”

Panda King did be having the ability to do sideways flips really well despite how heavy he must be, that definitely be taking some skill for someone of his size.

“Well this would be boring if you didn’t put up something of a fight.” Sly quipped back and charged forward again, ignoring that he could duck behind the wooden targets, statues or other things in the area as shields to turn invisible like last time.

Sly instead narrowly weaved through the numerous balls of flame Panda King be sending at him with each sideways leap in an agile manner, until Panda King landed from a jump and swept his burning left paw across the floor because Sly be making it back up into the central part of the large open pagoda.

Sly leapt up and brought his cane down on Panda King’s head as he came up, thus staggering him. He recovered quickly before Sly could act and brought both his arms down.

“Palms of thunder!” He be having bigger hands than Po, which is why Sly narrowly avoided the shockwave of flames from him slapping the ground with both of them creating a thunderous noise.

Sly be using his cane to vault over the flames and bring it around it a golf swing for one of his left leg, Panda King be using the blow to roll around and behind Sly.

“Booming chop!” He brought his left paw up and Sly rolled forward as it crashed into the ground of the pagoda and created a crater.

Sly turned around to face him and he held his cane out, it began to start glowing as he eyed warily Panda King and the look was returned as they circled one another.

Panda King be slow on foot, his jumping ability was decent and he be having more reach than Sly with his long arms and big paws, but I noted that he wasn’t being a professional martial artists. He be being self-taught and creating his own style from almost nothing from what I can see, quite understandable because I be doing that too… but at least Pom be giving me a base to work with.

I think I be learning a few things from watching Panda King, for one he not be having a very good defense and tends to over extend leaving himself open for attack… he might be realizing that now given he was wary of letting Sly get in any more hits.

The panda could be really good at grappling as he was huge compared to Sly and me. However Sly has been learning a lot about fighting with Murray and me, I think he will be easily winning this.

“Hats off to you, you finally grew a brain!” Sly said as he toss his hat behind Panda King.

Instead of paying attention to the hat, Panda King slammed his paws together.

“Burst Blast!” Dodging Panda King’s initial attack, Sly was knocked down by the pressure wave of the fireball exploding next to him.

I climbed up the pillar and continued to watch as Sly grinned when Panda king leapt for him with his right paw coming down.

Sly rolled to avoid the attack and launched a kicked right between the Panda Kings legs. He was on his feet as he twirled and swept around behind Panda King clutching at himself in clear agony.

This is when Sly be hooking something white with his cane and pulled it upwards as he leapt onto Panda King’s bent over back and yanked said thing forwards and downwards over his head. The ending motion unhooked the cane from what be Panda King’s underwear, what Sly just be doing is looking to be very painful for Panda King.

I be glad that I don’t wear much clothing, even if I be wanting a nifty hat eventually.

“You will pay for this humiliation Cooper!” Panda King squeaked out in a hilariously manner, his voice was sounding like a chipmunks after that.

“If only I had a million smackers of any worthwhile currency for every time I’ve heard that… you’re a big bulky bruiser of a bully. Why would I, much less anyone else, ever fight you fairly?” Sly stated with a casual stare and a smirk that wasn’t misplaced given Panda King took a moment to pulls his underwear off his head, he sauntered over and past his cap twirling his cane by its hook. “I’m even less inclined to do so when you’re actively trying to kill me and I’m not going to return the favor, I’m not a murderer and honor doesn’t come before reason. Besides that, this is a no holds barred beat down and I intend make sure you won’t be getting back up from this beating for quite a while.”

Panda King charged Sly with his arms raised up and wide, he calmly tapped the end of his cane against the ground as the black and white angry flaming pawed panda stepped on his abandoned hat.

Said hat exploded violently sending Panda King flailing and falling onto his back with a pained and highly disoriented yell.

Rolling into a leap Sly landed on the Panda King’s belly making him slap it with both his flaming paws as he leapt off to stomp on the panda’s head with his right foot.

Sly gingerly stepped off of Panda King’s face to swing the glowing portion of his cane around to flip panda king off the ground and onto his stomach with a painful blow to the skull.

While Sly might be slightly burnt and bruised, but Panda King’s head was looking like a mess after that last blow as he groggily stood up. Despite being angry at Panda King for having a part in his parent’s deaths and his home burning down, Sly looked to be a bit more forgiving then I would currently be by letting Panda King stand up.

If I were fighting him, I would be bucking Panda King as much as I can until he stayed down. Sly be having other ideas.

“You’re skill with that cane is unparalleled.” Panda King stated as he prepared to continue the fight.

“Your right, I should finish this how I want to.” Sly said nodding as if he hadn’t heard the Panda King, he turned to me. “Shanty catch!”

I caught the cane Sly threw to me and he turned around cracking his knuckle sand clenching his fist.

“You would face me without your weapon?” Panda King was confused.

I be a bit confused myself, but I be thinking Sly was about to show Panda King his thief style martial arts in case he ever lost his cane for some reason.

It be Sly’s personal technique he be wanting to introduce to his families book of thieves, his family be primarily using canes and here’s what a good thief can be doing without them available. He figured it was a way to help future Coopers not be overly reliant on their canes in a fight.

“Try me.” Sly said hopping from side to side on his feet, his fists clenched and a promise of pain in his eyes. “I needed to test this on someone like you anyway.”

Try Panda King did, when he swung his right arm forward. Sly stepped into the attack slammed his two open hands into the inner elbow with a few faint blue sparkles erupting from them and the arm suddenly bent the wrong way, making Panda King scream in agony and fall back in disbelief.

Sly’s ‘Stealing Movement’ thief style martial arts be about disabling and dislocating his opponent’s limbs with quick, nimble and very precise attacks that only a thief of his caliber could be pulling off. It is being very painful when used in hard style, the soft style is far less painful and he wasn’t anywhere close to being soft here with the person that helped him become an orphan.

Lunging forward Sly stepped onto Panda King’s left arm and three quick hits that also resulted in faint blue sparkles and it too was dislocated, but at the shoulder this time. Now the panda be truly fearful of his opponent and kicked Sly in the left shin with his panicked flailing.

Sly grunted and took a step or two back, clapped his head with both his hands, took a crane stance and then he surged forward and be drop kicking Panda King’s frightened face into oblivion.

“You better stay in prison for a while after this.” Sly muttered angrily and turned to start walking back to me. “Okay, we’re done here Shanty, Carmelita will pick up the mess. I feel much better after doing that to the guy that burned down my home.”

Quietly giving Sly back his cane, we walked away from the pagoda to try and find a path back down to the Cooper Van. We be needing some guidance to steer clear of Carmelita, but we be getting out of the area easily enough while it was still dark.

Carmelita would easily be dealing with the other thugs with her shock pistol and would eventually take in Panda King after finding Sly’s calling card he dropped on our way out.

-On the road in Calisota, Pom-

I groaned and stirred, I was laying on the ground on my back and things were a bit blurry.

The clicking noise the gun made as it pressed against my temple made me just look at the dog biped as he held it there with no hesitation and a steady hand.

My eyes were wide as I looked up at him. I didn’t even need to profile him, I could read him fairly well from my current position.

My eyes glanced at Dolly groaning and picking herself up by propping herself on her skateboard, she froze when she saw me lying here with a gun to my face.

Ms. Shuttle, the Bunny Battle Bus, was on her side and her pink colored rabbit face whimpering at the scene she was witnessing.

My eyes slowly turned back to the biped looking down at me with a stone cold face and no emotion, he didn’t look at Dolly or the intelligent vehicle.

He just stared at me and I looked at him, I was making no sudden moves.

This was the same guy from the elevator, he could kill me right now… so why hasn’t he done so yet?

“I have a few questions for you." The dog biped stated flatly as he stared down at me. "The answers you give me... will mean the difference between living or dying.”

Dolly was sending constant feelings of concern, panic and terror, not like I wasn’t feeling enough of that already.

Author's Note

The month of monsters continues with Pom being held at gunpoint by an assassin with questionable motives. Does anyone really need to know how this situation happened?

Also, yes, blue sparkles are a sign of where to use thief techniques when it comes to the Cooper family. That Shanty can barely see them is a mild concern.

Sly obviously didn't need Shanty's help with this one and she was just a witness to the slightly vicious takedown.

142. Dispositions.

-????, Oleander-

“I will make paper dolls out of you!” This robot that called itself Cut-man wasn’t very bright.

“Fred.” I stated flatly and a large fist of darkness flattened the robot, but didn’t kill him.

“Why does Dr. Wily always reprogram me to be able feel pain when he captures me?” Cut-man stated in a whimpering tone as a sparking mess of agony on the ground. “Is it really too much to ask that Dr. Light gives me a program that stops me from being hacked?”

“The robots in this dimension always have some form of gimmick to them, sometimes its lame.” Fred said lazily as he floated next to me. “THEY SURE ARE FUN TO CRUSH THOUGH!”

“Well at least he’s somewhat more threatening than dust-man, he sucks.” My Pandoran Bicorn friend Buttina stated while point a hoof to a nearby robot. “Horribly!”

“I’m unfortunately programmed to not respond with any form of innuendo, pun or anything close to a dirty joke despite what I’m naturally designed to do. At least Air Man can do what I can’t and does it all the time to no end, it’s gotten to the point it’s hard coded into him and he can’t function without speaking puns every other minute… I’m actually fairly jealous of that commitment, even Dr. Wily can’t get him to stop.” The depressed looking robot with a square hole on his head stated with a somber tone. He didn’t even bother preparing for a fight and was just following Butt Stallion around. “Also, Wily does it because he’s a sadistic old man brother. I am currently still allied with Dr. Light… mostly since Dr. Wily couldn’t be bothered with reprogramming me. I'm moderately insulted when he didn’t even bother with me and told me to do stuff anyway!”

“See what I mean Ollie?” Butt said with a serious tone. “No fun at all!”

Overlord Song Ender was having fun with the robot dogs named Rush and Treble. There was also a robot cat named Tango who had taken a liking to Butt and was currently nuzzled up against her legs.

We ran across an Equestrian Artifact at least, but it held no relevance to finding Pom. It has been a here a while and infected the world with a minimal amount of magic long over millions of years. Which has caused several unusual things to happen in this world.

The existence of a genie, a viral magical lion people plague and the rampant existence of techno-magic which caused robots to gain souls. Eventually said robots were going to be able to beat their programming through sheer force of will, we were going to have to solve the problem with that before things got any worse in this world.

-Earth, China, exiting the Kunlun Mountain Range, Sly-

Our escapades in destroying Panda King’s domain quickly led to fall of his holdings, as much as him falling down himself. I had a single question for Bentley after this.

“Do all our foes have arms longer than their legs?” It has been bothering me somewhat.

Raleigh, animalistic bullfrog that he was, had slightly longer front legs than his powerful hind legs.

Muggshot, the biped bulldog walked around on his fists like a gorilla and his arms were too muscular for their own good.

Mz. Ruby, the gator was almost the least noticeable of the bunch in that respect if I hadn’t seen her waddling around.

Panda King, long arms, short legs and not very good at moving around without jumping.

“Yes, that is a thing, now that you mention it Sly. Now if that clockwork owls legs are shorter than his wings, it’s definitely a trend and could be some kind of ego thing.” Bentley stated as he examined a bit of metal, he turned to me looking a little worried. “Said metal owl that haunts your nightmares is at the Krakarov Volcano in Russia, we’ll be heading there after we get Shanty back with her friends. How are you feeling Sly?”

“I will admit that drop kicking Panda King in the face was pretty cathartic, but the one who had an outright claw in murdering my parents is still at large.” Happier that I shored up some of the weaknesses of the Cooper Clan techniques by studying martial arts with both Murray and Shanty on the way into China. “We still need to get in direct contact with Pom, Ocellus and Smolder for the meet up. Still, I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without you or Murray, much less this far. Mopsy and Shanty, also came through for us too.”

“At least the Panda King wasn’t as dangerous as that voodoo gator that almost killed Shanty.” Mopsy stated with relief while shivering a bit.

I leaned back as Murray started driving us for Hong Kong to take a small vacation while looking over the team.

Murray had handled himself well and Dodo had been helpful with getting him into position, aside from some muscle strain moving powder kegs, he and Dodo were fine.

Shanty grinned showing her slightly blasted form to be of minimal concern, she had had fun while nearly being blown apart by fireworks and even got to blow apart a building full of them. She had a lot of fun watching the fireworks too.

Mopsy was still a bit nervous about her part in the operation, but I think she led the others fairly well while Bentley kept me up to speed on things I needed to know. Certainly helped me with avoiding Carmelita that Bentley didn’t have to worry about the others with Mopsy being a coordinator, I guess that comes with the territory of being a night club dancer.

I’m not going to miss the psychology of things involving my team either, Murray and Shanty were baskets of sunshine, Mopsy and Bentley were still worried about what was to come and as for me…

I needed some time to relax after I took down that big oaf and I was psychologically wary of the next guy I had to face. At least I wouldn’t be facing him alone.

One of my ancestors was a stage magician, so learning some useful sleight of hand was useful in helping me build my combat style if I ever got separated from my cane. The journey through Kazakhstan had been a pleasant stop for that. What I can do wasn’t a full combat style and sure I can only disable legs or arms temporarily, but that would certainly help me get out of a stickier situations.

Shanty said she built her Cut-lash style wholesale from the most basic stuff Pom taught her and Bentley helped me with learning the basics even if he himself couldn’t do anything in a close up fight beside turtle up.

“How did you be holding back on him?” I looked to Shanty as she gazed at me curiously. “He be burning down your home...”

I remembered what shanty told us about growing up homeless, without a good orphanage to watch over her for the last several years of her life until she met Pom on what is probably the greatest adventure of her life. She has a chip in her shoulder about anyone who would make someone else homeless without a good reason.

Shanty wasn’t nearly as lucky as Bentley, Murray and I were to have a nice place to grow up in.

“It wasn’t easy, but there are some lines I’m not willing to cross unless absolutely necessary.” I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly while rubbing at my face. “I might have been enraged by what Panda King was doing and what he has already done, but that doesn’t mean that I will ever go all in on revenge.”

“What about the last of the Fiendish Five?” Posed Shanty with curiosity, I paused in thought.

If there was a guy that deserved an ‘all in’ approach, it would be that mechanical menace.

“That guy is a special case Shanty, every Cooper in the Thievius Raccoonus seems to have depictions of him. All of them the same no less.” Bentley mumbled looking over the book in question, the depictions of mechanical owl were clear from every single one of my ancestors as were the faint warnings he’s been finding throughout our little journey about the mechanical menace. “He’s been alive for a long time from my estimates if all these depictions of his existence are true, it’s going to take a lot to bring him down and we don’t want to leave him in anyone’s custody. I personally think he needs to be fully destroyed or else he’s not going to stop coming after Sly or us with every fiber of his being.”

“Yeah, I really don’t think I want to be near someone who has figured out some form of immortality like that.” Mopsy hugged Shanty to herself and shivered. “He has to be ancient and he still isn’t showing any signs of weakness or wear and tear between depictions of his form… aside from the first depiction of him being flesh and blood.”

“Yeah my family curse needs to be put down or else I’m never going to be able to keep my family safe… much less possibly start one with Carmelita later if the option becomes available.” I looked at Murray and Bentley as I said this.

Bentley got up and moved over to me and put a hand on top of mine with a smile, I gave him a smile back. We were in this together, thick as literal thieves and I doubt anyone could talk us into breaking up our team.

“Well… I’m completely willing to be moral support at least. I really don’t know how useful I’d be against that giant murderous toaster with wings otherwise.” Nobody would expect more than you were willing to give Mopsy, you were a bright lady and wonderful one at that.

“I’m happy to have met you Mopsy and that we’re friends, though your nightlife activities are not something I’m about to question too deeply.” Honestly, we have a good thing going right now, but it couldn’t last forever… especially not for Shanty and I didn’t want to drag her into meeting the world’s most dangerous villain from my nightmares.

“I’ll try to get in contact Dawkins to tell him we’re ready to meet up with Pom, Cape Suzette is out of the way and nobody will expect us to go there and it’s halfway between us. We’ll wait in Hong Kong for a response.” As Bentley had explained to us, we’re not directly contacting Pom for several reasons. Least of which she was being hunted by several groups. “It won’t be hard to get a plane to head into Russia from there, though we’ll want to avoid crossing into Thembrian territory… those boars are always a bit volatile and overly militaristic. They were always a political powder keg as well, having severe problems with Russia, Alaska and Hawaiin Isles region of the world. Still do come to think of it, it’s surprising they’ve been so quiet for the last five or so years.”

“I don’t know, they seem like they could be fun.” Murray stated from the driver’s seat while keeping his eyes on the road. “If we want to knock around some heads that is, heard they were stubborn about a lot of things.”

“So what are we doing for food?” At least Mopsy knew as well as I did that Shanty was going to need something to eat soon after all the running around the mountainside she did avoiding rockets raining down on her and all those thugs trying to get her in the snow. The lovely sheep, Mopsy, immediately pointed a hoof to Murray as soon as he opened his mouth. “Don’t you dare name a Hippo themed restaurant within the next five miles of us Murray!”

“Can I name one within the next ten?” Murray asked innocently with a big goofy grin.

“Yeah, that’s one conspiracy I’m still working on, it is diabolically mind boggling.” Bentley stated while adjusting his glasses.

“They still have decent fast food.” The Murray definitely had a thing for hippo restaurants, there was no denying it.

It was not just because Murray was a hippo, but because the food was always cheap and it could fill Shanty’s near bottomless stomach, I swear that goat had four hollow legs.

Shanty just started laughing and we all soon joined in, it’s moments like these that we would never be able to forget.

-On a road through Calisota, Pom-

This was a moment I would never forget, if I survived this.

Recently flung from vehicle, Dolly more injured than me. She hit the street pretty hard, at least rolled with it to avoid being injured worse. She was a good dog and was easy to teach when she was interested in something, things like how to take a sudden fall.

My current problem, dog biped, short ears, nice suit and currently holding a gun to my face. Full pull of trigger will result in immediate death.

“Can I say two things to my companions first?” I asked meekly.

He quirked his brow, but said nothing. I’ll just assume that’s a yes, given he’s going to let me talk.

“Ms. Shuttle, I would like to formally apologize for you getting hurt because of me.” The Bunny Battle Bus whined, but after a moment she gave me an upset look.

“It’s okay, I’m more worried about you at the moment.” Ms. Shuttle was stuck on her side and scared. “You’re supposed to be my passenger and I currently can’t do anything to help or protect you in my state… I’m sorry.”

I turned my glance to Dolly who was standing their frozen, he skateboard laying across her back and wearing her helmet slightly askew.

“Dolly… please, let it go.” Imploring her to do so with my eyes, I continued with a weak voice. “If he kills me, you really do not want to know what it feels like.”

“No can do Pom, I don’t care how it will feel.” Dolly managed to find her voice and she never took her eyes off the biped holding me hostage. “I’m with you even to the last moment whether you like it or not. If you die here, then I’m not going let it be alone.”

She was far braver than I am, I could feel nothing but love and compassion through our bond. I sent her feelings to not do anything, an image of being startled into killing me also passed over to her from my mind.

Dolly stayed silent and kept staring at me with a more firm gaze, worry clearly evident on her face. She brought her board around and rested her head and chest on it while staring at the bipeds back with a glare.

“Fine… be stubborn.” I sighed while closing my eyes, I opened them and looked up into the cold stony face. He didn’t react to anything I said to my two nearby friends. He wasn’t paying much attention to them either, his focus was mostly on me. “Okay, I’m ready to be questioned now mister…”

“Tobias Rieper.” He said succinctly and pressed the gun against my forehead slightly while placing a foot on me to press me against the ground. “Now… what did you mean when you told Caper Canine, or Dolly as you know her, to let it go?”

“We’re connected to one another. No matter where I am and as long as I live, she can find me and I can find her. We have a two way bond, we can share our feelings or vague ideas… if I die then she’s going to know what dying feels like personally. I wanted her to let go of it, even temporarily… she’s stubbornly refusing to do so. She wants to be with me even to my very last moments.” I answered with every ounce of honesty in my body flowing into my words, I wasn’t paying attention to the gun. I was paying attention to the cold eyes, there was a quiet soul behind them and those windows were open wide. “What did you really want to ask me?”

“Hmm… a loyalty like that is to be commended, not many are willing to stare in the face death for others. As for my next question, if someone were to make a copy your body would it have all of your abilities?” There was something in that question, highly important to Tobias, but why?

I considered my response carefully, the question seemed to be very crucial to me.

“Would it still have my soul as it is now?” I asked as I tried to parse through why Tobias was asking this of me and I think I might have a clue given what I was seeing in his eyes. This was important to him personally.

“No.” Tobias stated bluntly. “Souls are not something that can be copied… as far as I know.”

“Then no, you wouldn’t be able to get the abilities that I have just by making some copies of me. My powers come from within and what makes me who I am, a copy would be completely and utterly different from me and no way nearly as capable as I am in a fight if that’s where this is all going. So no, they wouldn’t be able to do what I can, even with me training them personally.” I had an inkling as to why he was asking this and I decided to broach the topic as bluntly as possible. He might even appreciate this question with all the weight it will bring to him possibly killing me immediately. “How many copies of you were there?”

He froze up, while looking at me with slightly wilder eyes, but he didn’t move or say anything for a solid minute. Dolly was still glaring a hole into his back and Ms. Shuttle was now curiously gazing at the biped.

“There were forty six before me, all made from the genetics of five different canine bipeds put together to create me. I was trained to be the perfect killing machine, an assassin with no equal." He was being fairly quiet as he spoke openly about all this and a little of his underlying personality could be felt bleeding through his outer blank façade. "I’m the forty seventh clone… the others… are dead. Whether by my hands or someone else’s doing.”

“Was each one completely different from you?” Not receiving a confirmation or a denial, I did notice that his eyes look distant for a few seconds.

“Yes.” He finally answered.

“Well you don’t have to worry about anyone copying me to replace you, they wouldn’t be getting what they think they would.” The gun was still pressed to my temple. “Copying Dolly wouldn’t work either, she’s a mostly normal dog and I’m the one that brought the uniqueness to this partnership we have. If she is developing similar powers to what I have, then it’s not possible to be copied either through the method I think you are suggesting.”

“Can you talk to dogs?” Tobias asked suddenly.

“Yes, I’m even pretty fluent in canine.” My answer was immediate, I switched to barking to Dolly. “Wave to the odd dog biped Dolly.”

Dolly waved a paw at the both of us still looking at Tobias, the gun and me. She didn’t bark anything back, but she was sitting up and waiting for me to ask her to attack regardless of whether it would kill me or not.

“Why… do I feel so strange around you?” Tobias actually sounded a little upset as he turned back to me, maybe because my canine magnetism was causing him to feel bad about this?

“It’s a long story, but the short version of it is… I’m a magnet to canids, even bipeds like you. I attract dogs, foxes and anything canid, it’s not something I can control and I have the title ‘The Canine Queen’ because of it from my friends back home.” I sighed, being once again reminded of how my somewhat lonely exile happened. “My presence is very calming to good dogs of all kinds. My life hasn’t exactly been normal, if you can’t already tell from having watching me since New York. Also I’m fairly talented at training dogs because of my abilities, being fluent in canine helps and is something I actually learned.”

“That is… a very disturbing trait you have Ms. Lambchop…” Tobias said slowly and carefully. “That you affect even me is… not something I want to deal with. Is prolonged exposure dangerous?”

“That’s Mrs. Lambchop actually, I’m married… but I really don’t want to draw attention to that fact. Might make people try to search for someone they will have trouble finding, thankfully she’s safely far away at the moment.” My reason for telling him this was that I hoped he could at least sympathize with me a little, he knows of loss and hardships. “No, exposure to me doesn’t alter your way of thinking, unless it’s you who feels that way. If you were a bad dog, then you would still have evil intentions involving me to the point that you would either be greedy or violently hold me against my will. That has happened to me. My magnetism doesn’t affect personality or your actions, aside from wanting me nearby for this feeling and that’s more harmful to me than it is to you. It certainly didn’t affect Dolly’s personality and she’s getting the strongest version of the magnet possible by bonding with me like she has.”

“Were you the one that began this bond with Caper Canine?” Tobias asked in actual curiosity.

“No… she’s the one that intentionally bonded herself to me, I was actively trying to prevent that from happening.” I sent Dolly a slight glare, but then smiled a little. “She’s the one keeping our bond going, I’m reluctantly happy to have it given I’ve ended up taking her from her family. She’s the one making the choice to stay by me even with things as dangerous as they are.”

Dolly stared at me quietly. I was only receiving determination to see things through from her, but she wasn’t readying to attack or anything.

“One last question, the device you were given, do you know of its importance?” Looking up at Tobias, I blinked a few times in confusion.

“You mean Dormarch? No, all I know is that people are after him and that he was given to me because I would protect him.” The answer made Tobias move the gun and squeeze the trigger tighter. “Do you want him too? Why are there so many people after him?!”

I closed my eyes and heard the sound of the pistol firing.

-Dolly-

I blinked, Pom slowly opened her eyes and looked at the bullet hole in the ground next to her head.

“Please keep him in your hooves Ms. Lambchop, never lose him.” The Tobias Rieper guy turned away from Pom and started walking off. “You’ll find out eventually why this 'Dormarch' of yours is so prized, you will fight all that much harder to protect him. A warning, be constantly wary of my presence.”

“What the dog was that?!” I was confused, he wasn’t going to kill Pom after all?

I was almost sure I was going to feel what it was like to die there for a second. He sent a glance my way and then continued walking to a nearby bush.

The tall suited guy pulled out a comically small wheeled toy and then started to scoot away on it down the road in a slow comical fashion.

“Again… WHAT… THE FREAKING... DOG!” I held my front paws out at the grown biped riding a children’s toy away from us.

Author's Note

I actually want to know how this ending of this page landed.

Also that exit Tobias does at the end there, that bit of whimsy is actually in the games. To the point that there is something unnatural about Tobias's ability to exit an area in ways so unbelievable, that nobody would actually believe you are telling the truth even if they saw it happen themselves personally.

Things like being able to fly while wearing a flamingo mascot suit, riding a dolphin like a surf board, using an umbrella to simply Mary Poppins his way out of an area or just simply phoning aliens for a ride. Tobias Rieper may be an assassin, but his exits are all ridiculously magical.

Canonically speaking for this story, meeting Pom personally could be the major catalyst for all the overly weird exits from assassinations Tobias 'Agent 47' Rieper is going to do from now on whenever he comes up.

Oleander's current world- Mega Man, specifically the Ruby Spears cartoon.

143. Almost Altogether.

-Earth, Calisota Road, Pom-

It had taken me a while to get my wits about me. That guy has killed a lot of people before, especially in cold blood no less from what I could infer about him. There was the downside to being able to profile people and that guy could have chosen to kill me.

It might also explain where the exploding rubber duck, that Dolly found, initially came from. Speaking of my current favorite canine sidekick, we had to get out of here before any of those mercenaries could track us down out here where we were vulnerable and to do that we had to finish what we were currently doing.

“Okay Dolly… one… two… three!” At my mark, I raised my hooves above my head as Dolly hopped off the side of Ms. Shuttle down towards me on her skateboard.

We both hit the lever of the jack at the same time with as much force as we could and Ms. Shuttle popped back up onto her wheels with a whimper.

“Are you alright, can you move?” I immediately asked.

Ms. Shuttle moved back and forth and then gave me a bright smile. We weren’t leaving her out here if she couldn’t move and we would have called Big Hero Six for help otherwise.

“Chemical cannon is still mostly operational, damage to frame isn’t too bad, so… I’m functional and ready to resume transport to Duckberg!” She said with a somewhat chipper tone, but then worriedly look around. “Do you… do you think that mean guy with the gun is still watching us?”

“Hard to tell…” My noncommittal response made the poor vehicle nervous and she let out a slight whine. I walked up to the vehicle and patted her on the side. She was very helpful, but she wasn’t meant for doing heroics on her own and she wasn’t doing so well emotionally either without one of her friends around. This was her first test to see if she could be out on her own, she was being a very brave transport for the most part. “There, there, it’ll be okay, he didn’t shoot me and I’m… okay…. relatively. Say, why don’t you have a nice chat with Dormarch?”

I pulled out Dormarch and heard an explosion. I looked at Dormarch having once again hit a mine in the minesweeper game, I rolled my eyes.

Computers supposedly think at incredible speeds and shouldn’t be nearly as goofy or as bad at logic puzzles as Dormarch is at times, I blame the infectious magic of beings from Equus for his personality. That blame, of course, solely fell squarely onto me as being the only being of Equus he’s been around.

I stepped back on board Ms. Shuttle after her tumble sent me and Dolly flying out of her, no broken glass or anything because her windows and doors all flew open when she was blown onto her side.

Putting the jack back where I found it, I then placed Dormarch in a cup holder up so he could play nice with the other mechanical intelligence.

“Uh… hi…” Dormarch stated meekly as he looked up at her covered in imaginary scorch marks.

“Hey there!” Ms. Shuttle responded cheerfully.

“So… want to play a game of Poodle Wolf together while you drive?” Dormarch asked and the rabbit face seemed happy to oblige him.

“Of course, as long as I am not too distracted from the road. I can do both!” It seemed like they would be fine as I went back to lay down. “At the speed I am currently capable of going due to damages sustained, we will be arriving in Duckberg in nearly two hours with a given an additional time of thirty or more minutes. Incidentally my body may need some repairs from a reputable source once we arrive or I might not be able to make it back to San Fransokyo… but I’m sure we can make it there!”

I was tired and needed the weeks of recovery that Dormarch and the other doctors said I needed. A long vacation from all this mind melting adventure would be nice, with Tianhuo, me and my entire family just playfully camping or spending time on a nice beach away from everything trying to kill me every other day.

“Huh… hold that thought, call from Dolly’s family. They are very smart dogs. We’ll start after I’m done communicating with them to see what they want.” Tuning Dormarch out was probably something I shouldn’t do, but if it was important he would get our attention.

I could almost imagine it, Dolly apparently would be there too if she stuck with me and was serious about not leaving my side. I moved to the back to lay down on a bench.

“Hey Pom… I’ve been needing to discuss some things with you, so can we do that now?” Sitting up to see Dolly approaching me without her helmet and skateboard, I was a little worried.

She looked up at me with a serious face that looked a little comical on a dog that is usually cheerful, carefree and so full of life. I reached down with a hoof and playfully fondled one of her ears, she smiled and her bandaged tail started wagging.

I smiled right on back as I pointed my other at it.

Dolly froze up and looked at her tail, the wagging speed just increased. She quickly got up next to me on the bench and raised her butt at me, looking fairly excited at the prospect of seeing her tail without bandages on them.

I carefully unraveled the bandages and eventually managed to peel them all away, her tail was positively vibrating with how happy she was. The fur on the tail looked a little rough, but I would brush that out eventually as Dolly wouldn’t care about her appearance all that much and would leave it looking like that if I didn’t.

“Okay, where do you want to start Dolly?” Petting her as I asked this, she leaned into the touch of my hoof and nuzzled up against me.

“How about my family, all this crazy stuff we’ve done recently… I just want to talk about everything really.” Dolly’s tail immediately stopped wagging and she looked away from me, I gave her a comforting hug. “Where we’re going, where we’ll eventually end up… I’m just as excited as I am terrified.”

“Okay.” If she needed to vent, I was listening and I had some things to vent of my own.

“First of all, how much more training can you give me?” Dolly was focused, not something I thought I’d see as her general mood is laid back or excited. She also had a heroic streak, which had me worried for her safety, thankfully she already had some good talents for supporting me and was getting quite a lot of recognition as my sidekick. “I want to learn how to bark blast and I want to know how to do it safely, you’re the only one that can teach me how Pom. I’ve only done it that one time and we both know that I have the magical ability to do so, it’s just I haven’t figured out how to channel my stuff yet.”

“A lot more training, have you been keeping up with what I already taught you Dolly? I mean between all the stuff we’ve been getting into, all the traveling and everything.” I think that weird assassin scared Dolly as much as he did me, but he knew something about Dormarch that Dolly and I were still missing completely. “I have an idea of how to help you get a feel for your magic Dolly…”

I barely had a vague idea or a little evidence as to what we were missing about Dormarch, he didn’t seem like much or very important at first glance to anyone other than Dolly or me. If Kahn Industries could just make more like him, then why don’t they just go after Kahn Industries? There must be something quite unique to Dormarch to be worth all the hassle, we just haven’t noticed it or seen it yet as I seriously doubted it was the faint familiar bond I had with him.

Thing was… Dormarch wasn’t aware of our bond and I was being quiet on the subject with him for a few reasons, Dolly was the only other one that new about it.

I wasn’t an expert on technology like Dormarch, but he wasn’t uniquely alone in this world with the Lucky Cat Café waiters and Ms. Shuttle being something like him. Even Dolly knew more than I did on the subject of this technology and she didn’t care much about technology as much as her brothers did. That was just telling on how little I knew.

At best I know how to break machines pretty well at this point, and that was becoming a thing all its own. A powerful martial arts leopard, jade zombie statues, monstrous machines, barely threatening demons and menacing mercenaries. How much more of this would I have to endure?

My major concern was what was the difference between Dodo and Dormarch? Aside from Dodo having a functioning body, both were definitely somehow alive enough to form a familiar bond to. Something about him was like Dodo, a living being despite his mechanically created nature and familiars had to be alive for the bond to even work.

Dragging my thoughts away from the conundrum of mechanical minds and existences, I decided to focus back on Dolly who was waiting on my patiently to sort my thoughts. Unusual for her, she wasn’t pestering me to help her with getting a feel for her magic or anything after I trailed off.

It wasn’t long before I noticed she was still injured by the incident. One last series of thoughts tugged at the back of my head before I could look Dolly over more intently.

Mr. Rieper did warn us that he’d likely be coming after us again. He didn’t sugar coat things even if he did have this strange sense of whimsy about him, he was fairly quite blunt to us about what he does for a living.

He was a killer, there was no mistaking that in my eyes. That was a bad thing to me, but to him seemed it was more like a massive gray area judging from his actions when he could have killed me and washed his hands of ever having to deal with me again completely within a single moment.

So why was I still alive and why the warning? This world had so many questions and very few answers, I think the stress alone was slowly killing me… had killed me actually, several times according to Dormarch.

“Dolly, how hurt did you get when you hit the road?” I hear Dolly quietly whined something akin to the likes of she was fine and I narrowed my eyes at her and began checking her over. “You most certainly are not fine, hold on let me get the aid kit out.”

Dolly’s tail might be better, but her body had a few nasty scrapes from our recent incident and she wasn’t protesting my need to care for her. She seemed exceedingly happy to be looked over by me, I think our bond was getting stronger.

I was somewhat scared of what would result from the magic of our worlds mixing together, but nothing had come of it so far. Dolly had the magic of this world in her and I had magic of my world and a familiar bond linking the two together, but nothing outrageously weird has occurred from the normal stuff a familiar bond usually entails.

This world’s magic and the magic my friends and I carried with us from Equus might be starting to forge something that the people of this world might not be ready for.

-Britain, 101 Dalmatian Street, Dawkins-

“There, that should be the program necessary to communicate with and understand Dolly or even Pom if she starts speaking dog Dormarch.” I was having a nice quiet day, I was making a call to Dormarch to send him the data he needed from the one Fetch device we still had in the house while I still had some free time from pup care.

I gave away a decoy Fetch device when mom and dad fully cleaned out the house of them, it’s still interesting that someone invented a machine that can understand dogs as a language and nobody seemed to realize how revolutionary that was.

“Thank you big brother, I’ve been wanting to understand big sis for a while now without having to type out what she needs of me!” It was fairly nice to help out an artificial intelligence and there were more than Dormarch out there. Hopefully all of them were just as nice and friendly as the one that was proclaiming to be our little brother, he was charming enough puppy despite displaying an older appearance.

“Data sent, will that be all Dawkins?” My modified Fetch device, Fetch Positron, stated in a friendly tone.

“Yes, that will be all Fetch Positron.” I disconnected her from the tablet and smiled as I hugged the sphere with the one large eye to my chest passionately.

I had read every ounce of data, recoded everything in the source code down to the finest degree in my Fetch device to make sure it didn’t have anything malicious in it. I had even disassembled and reassembled it to make sure there were no tracking devices.

Whoever originally made these Fetch things might have had something of a malicious bone in their bodies, I wouldn’t know truthfully, but they certainly weren’t going to use my personal Fetch against my family.

Sure my many brothers and sisters might make fun of me for it, but I was eventually going to finish building my robotic female assistant in full. It was just a tiny side project of mine that the mechanical mandrill parts were going to assist in, that and the ever blessed intellect of Bentley of the Cooper gang was helping me with the design process.

Speaking of… was that a call from Bentley I was seeing right now? My goodness today has been a good day!

“Hello Bentley!” The turtle has been testing my mental fortitude in a games of chess and a variety of other ways. We were kindred spirits with frighteningly high intelligence quotients, despite our differences.

If there was one person I could happily spend the rest of my life in service to, it would probably be him. I’m just not ready to leave the family yet, they still needed me for many things.

“Hey Dawkins, we finished our business in the Kunlun Mountains. We’re ready to meet up with Pom now.” Bentley had a fairly nasally voice that was music to my ears. “To that end we will be needing to coordinate a three way chat when Pom meets up with Ocellus and Smolder to set a meeting point between all our groups. I’m suggesting we meet up in Cape Suzette.”

“The island city surrounded by mountains and is a bit secluded, sounds like a nice place for a meet and greet of your two groups.” I concurred with his estimates of a good meeting point. I’m mostly judging this by all the resources everyone has at their disposals. “I’ll contact Lena and Dormarch to set things up for it.”

“You do that, also thanks for the translation software Dawkins. I’ll try to find out who is behind those Fetch devices and will get back to you later with the information after some digging.” Bentley always acknowledged my intelligence just as much I did his. “Now where were we with our three dimensional chess game?”

“Always a pleasure to work with you Bentley!” My tail started wagging frightfully fast. “Also I believe it was my turn and if I remember right I won the last game.”

“Hey Dawkins, got you the fruit from the strange tree we found in the park. Oh, you’re busy with Bentley, it’ll be in the refrigerator when you’re done!” Dylan came through for me with getting a piece of fruit from an alien fruit tree Pom had left behind.

The fruit looked familiar but tasted bizarre, not that it was a bad thing, just unusual and something to study in comparison to fruits of similar appearances.

-Hours later, Duckberg, Ocellus-

So the beagle boys were a thing, at least we avoided confrontation with them by sleeping over at the Sabrewings.

Webby and her family were less lucky, at least they had a lot of experience with getting constantly into and out of danger and would be fine. That and they were all capable of handling situations in their own ways.

Donald in particular was a really nice guy with a few anger issues, his protective streak certainly matched Pom in its ferocity. That ferocity being of a completely berserk honey badger should someone endanger those they care about. He was the only duck scarier than an angry Webby in their family.

Smolder and I were currently sitting at an abandoned theatre on the beach, near Lena’s secret hideaway that was recently refurbished to take us in. It was a nice spot to relax once it was cleaned up. We sat at the outdoor theater staring out at the ocean as the sun rose up in the sky behind us painting the morning brilliantly.

“This is certainly something Smolder.” I snuggled against the dragon at my side.

“It certainly is Ocellus.” She wrapped a claw around my body, her warmth and love filled me with a pleasant coexistence.

“When Magica was trapped in me, this is one of the few things that kept me sane despite me being under her thumb.” We turned to see Lena ‘the living shadow’ and Violet coming up to us. “So ready to see your caretaker again? She was on her way from San Fransokyo, she should be arriving in Duckberg any minute…”

Something slammed into us and I was frightened as we hit the sand, but the massive amounts of love flooding into me personally was impressive and the form on us coalesced into something white and fluffy.

We were being hugged really hard, by a pair of familiar hooves and it took a moment for Smolder to realize we weren’t under attack. Smolder really wasn’t given much chance to struggle anyway, the lambkin was far stronger than the both of us physically even if she looked tired.

“Whoa… she’s fast...” Lena said slightly disturbed by how quickly this being could move when properly motivated.

“That is an understatement, most would be hard pressed to follow those movements given she moved fast enough to be rendered invisible to the naked eye.” Violet’s commentary aside, I knew who was hugging us and why.

I heard sniffling and looked up in time to see her face dig into both our shoulders as she held us to her tightly. Love was a dominant emotion, underlying emotions were terror, sadness, unbridled happiness and worry.

The most prominent emotion a bundle of constant, almost uncontrollable and somehow comforting to me, levels of anxiety that was Pom Lambchop as she cried over us.

“Hey Pom.” I tried, but she cried all that much harder and tugged me closer, when last she saw me I had been in a coma from magical burnout. My horn was still hurting and completely unusable, but I was still alive.

“It’ll be okay, we’re fine and Ocellus woke up.” Even when Smolder tried, Pom just kept blubbering over us.

I felt some happy emotions join us in the hug and blinked to look at what was the missing Dalmatian, the big sister of the ninety seven other dogs that worked alongside the big brother. She was joining the hug with a bunch of amused emotions, she barked out something that sounded coy and Pom looked up at her with a glare.

“Really Dolly, do you seriously expect me to do that?” Pom stated flatly to the dog sending her a cheeky bright grin. Pom went close to being emotionally flat for a moment, but she wasn’t letting us go. “Fine, okay, I’ll introduce you since you didn’t get to meet them with the rest of your family. This is Dolly Danger Dalmatian, she’s also known as Caper Canine the illustrious partner of Leap Lamb. She used to be one of the two top dogs of the Dalmatian house you visited in Britain.”

The Dalmatian backed away from us and took a bow while sweeping her protective gear off her head, before slamming it back into place with a broad grin.

“You still don’t like being called a hero I take it?” I said this despite the fact that she’s been through a lot to reach us, she still had mercenaries after her and being here with us was going to put us in danger the second Pom does something attention attracting.

“No Ocellus, I don’t… so when did you wake up?” Pom was as I remembered her and that was comforting.

“The Dalmatian house, all of the loving Dalmatians helped me a lot… but… I can’t use my magic.” I received a very concerned look. “I burned out my horn doing what I did in the last world and it needs time to heal.”

“She can still safely shapeshift at least, otherwise using her horn hurts her.” Hearing Lena talk, Pom suddenly stiffened and realized that there were more than just us two here. “Hey there, Lena Sabrewing and this is my annoyingly brainy little sister Violet.”

“Pleasantries and acquaintances wayward caretaker of our friends, we have heard much of your endeavors and exploits.” Violet stated while nodding to us still held tightly within Pom’s protective grasp. “Also I believe I would like to ask for a… ah yes, an autographical signature of your name? Actual and super hero please.”

“Really Vi? Everyone was expecting that to come up with Dewey, but not you!” The duck crossed her arms and shook her head at the hummingbird while letting a drawn out sigh from her beak.

Pom didn’t even question that they were sisters, she just smiled at the two and continued hugging us.

It was around now that I noted the hug was becoming a little bit too insistent…

Okay, Pom was going a little too far now.

“Uh… Pom… you can let go now.” Smolder tried, but Pom just tightened her grip.

“Pom when was the last time you rang your bell?” I needed to distract her from crushing us to death.

“Not for a long while.” Pom admitted.

Dolly barked and yipped in a curious tone.

“She’s asking because I really haven’t used it in a while.” Pom sighed and finally let us go and swatted at the bell and it let out a long soft chime that had her calming down somewhat, it was hardly a noticeable difference in her level of anxiety from my point of view. Apparently it was enough to get her to stop crushing the both of us, never thought I would hear Smolder's scales threatening to crack under pressure... much less my own fuzzy carapace. “Sorry, but… I’ve missed you both and I’ve been through so much!”

It wasn’t even five seconds later that Pom was back to hugging us both incessantly again.

“Heh, how do you think she’s going to act when we see shanty?” Oh don’t even dare joke about that Smolder, even if I knew what was going to happen when she see's Shanty!

Pom quickly pulled out a device and a Dalmatian with fish tails appeared on it.

"Guys this is Dormarch, say hello to the girls back under my care Dormarch!" Stated Pom pleasantly like a proud parent.

Author's Note

Pom let the dragon and changeling go... no don't keep hugging them harder because they are adorable! Sure one had an fuzzy exoskeleton and the other has hard to break scales, but that doesn't mean you can't choke them to death by lack of oxygen!

Pom and Dolly had some offscreen discussions, it'll come up again along with Pom's idea of how to train Dolly in figuring magic.

Magical fruit trees from Elhorn, the magical beings from Equus and the world's own strange magic that can do the power of friendship given how Webby, Violet and Lena's friendship came about...

Well this world was already odd enough as it is with being 'where dreams CAN come true', so what's a little foreign magic really going to do?

145. Villains and Vicissitude.

-Equus, Ponyville, Hayburger, Sekhet-

Being a goddess for a small town wasn’t so hard, but I needed a vacation from my favorite loonies every now and then… especially when Jade was on mewling streak.

“So why does Luna look so pale?” There were times when my need to tease Celestia wasn’t as bothersome, this was one of those times and we were quietly having lunch.

I was just honing in on the fact that Luna looked like a nervous wreck of a mare.

“Either it’s because I’m going to find out why she has an Anubis plush toy or it’s because Fizzle going to figure out that Luna told Jade about what she’s been actively keeping from her.” At least Celestia didn’t look nearly as stressed, apparently getting away from her job as a princess was doing her a many favors in her much happier mood.

Luna was likely dead meat and neither of us were going to save her if Fizzle went after her.

“How is the old jackal these days anyway?” Anything to keep a conversation going when I didn’t have much to talk about, unless we wanted to tread straight into some more stressful subjects.

“He’s actually becoming a decent therapist, not that anyone can really fix Jade’s trauma or her unreasonable hatred of Saddle Arabia.” Celestia take a dainty bite of a monstrous looking hayburger without smearing her face in ketchup, mustard or any of the other various fluids it was drowning in. “Still, it’s odd for a death god to want to be a therapist, but it would certainly be really quite helpful with his given line of work.”

Celestia was fairly talented in making eating messy looking foods as cleanly as possible an art form.

-Earth, ???-

One particular monster that came from Equus remembered almost getting free the last time a portal was opened by a dumb duck witch that thought she could control the power of shadows, unfortunately she was swiftly defeated before he could wander freely away from the opening in the sky and destroy this world.

Now, due to an unforeseen cosmic acclimation of the magical trees from Elhorn, a small albeit temporary rip was allowed to open up from the shadow realm due to a small destabilization in the magic of the world as it integrated the trees properly into itself.

Said destabilization brought about an opportunity that an evil creature capitalized upon. For through that rip, a being of all consuming darkness crawled from the shadows with glaring red eyes searching and feeling around for a familiar presence to it.

Once it realized who the familiar presence was, it spread its sharp edged wings and grinned its fangs darkly.

For he would soon find a way to open this world to be consumed by shadow monsters and would get revenge on the lambkin that helped defeat his horde previously.

Now that lambkin was very much alone without the other five or her many beloved canines to face him, she was the weakest of their lot and she would die a bloody death by his hooves.

There was no escaping fate. She was the only one standing in the way of their victory on this world and didn’t care how the lambkin ended up here, just that they perished because they did.

This thestral would proceed to consume this world in a plague of shadows and that sudden beacon of strange magical power he felt would be a way to do it.

He watched the light of day from the shadows and roared his challenge to the world, for this world would know the name of the destroyer of it…

Hollow Heart.

Eternal darkness would reign and consume all!

-???-

Something of great magical power had attracted my attention, undoubtedly Lena has something to do with it. That wretched shadow, betrayed me when I was at the height of my power!

Now I was stuck acting as lowly and pathetic as a hedge witch, also doing children’s birthday parties to get by. This was something I hated with every single fiber of my very being after the power of my amulet was mostly sapped by Lena.

Now that said magic source was drawing my attention and likely the attention of many others, I needed to look into this to see what was going on.

Whatever the magical artifact that Scrooge’s brood had come across, I could use it in my latest plans to get the number one dime and earn my rightful place as the world’s most powerful sorceress!

“I, Magica De’ Spell, will make Scrooge remember that I’m not someone to be trifled with!” I raised my staff and the gem on the end of it glowed ominously as a grim smile traced my beak. “Whatever artifact he has now, whatever caused that beacon of magical strength, I would take it for myself and will have my revenge!”

The treacherous shadow may have helped in my defeat previously and weakened my amulet sapping much of its power, but this time I would prevail in destroying that which I created to do my bidding in the first place! Dealing such a blow to Scrooge’s family would be a big bonus.

I just had to strike when the time is right, there’s too many ducks for me to deal with alone with my mighty powers being as weakened as they are. I’ve heard that they recently took down all the Beagle Boys, so they should at least be feasible to approach while they are weakened.

-Location: ???, Phantom Blot-

“Something magical is afoot in Duckberg, this likely has to do with that fool Scrooge and the magical creatures he’s been harboring.” No one saw the truth like I did, all magic had to be destroyed, no exceptions. “Whatever Scrooge McDuck has allowed to happen has become our problem, we need to deal with whatever that was immediately!”

“Sir, I would like to remind you that there is a slight problem with doing an open attack on Scrooge or even Duckberg itself.” Pepper of course was right, she did make sense a lot of the time even if she was annoyingly upbeat for a minion. Still I liked her and that was a rarity in my dismal view of everything, at least I had the eggheads of F.O.W.L. in my employ after things fell through for the rest of the organization.

“Even so, we will strike when the moment is right Pepper. We cannot let this magic go unchecked.” It was far too big to ignore whatever had just happened. “We have the supplies to deal with just about any unnaturally powerful magical entity that may have just breached into our world or otherwise whatever artifact that caused such a beacon to all of those who are sensitive to such things.”

“Of course sir, always happy to help!” Pepper threw a salute and was willing to follow him anywhere. “I still think it’s a bad idea to announce our presence so brazenly after our last attack.”

Our mercenary group was going to slay whatever created such a strangely powerful magical signal, one that warped the world around it so thoroughly that something or someone had been inexorably changed forever.

The phantom blot and his army of eggheads would be doing them and everyone else a big favor by putting the sudden target of his ire out of its misery!

For magic would lead to nothing but pain and Phantom Blot would be the one to destroy it all with the power of technology. He would also like to deal with those two magical beings if he could, he had a feeling that they were responsible for whatever was causing such a large amount of magical resonance.

Whatever was going to happen, he would be ready to destroy magic without hesitation.

-Location:???, Sabu Taj-

“Ma’am something unusual lights was reported happening in Duckberg slightly after lunch hours.” Giving the helicopter pilot a grin, I nodded as I figured out who it was. I motioned for him to continue, but I already had an idea who would be there if we went looking. “Also it has been reported that… well a sheep like entity is in the area with a canine were, last seen heading near the sighting of this unusual phenomenon. I would like to respectfully state that maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t go after her again. She’s dangerous and she’s shown that she could be doing a lot worse to us if she was to actively attack us in a real threatening manner.”

“Noted, we’re still going to go in when we get a confirmation.” I would not let Leap Lamb continue to be a thorn sitting in my side as one of my biggest failures. “This one target has to die by any means necessary, I will not let her continue to be a thorn!”

Nobody should escape my wrath, nobody would avoid me forever and I could even take on the like of the notorious forty seven. If it was all for a chance, just one chance, to put a bullet between those big doe eyes of hers!

Damn the consequences and the damages done to the surroundings, the only thing stopping me from using a nuclear weapon is that I couldn’t get a hold of one on such short notice! She assuredly wouldn’t be able to dodge one of those…. right?!

Instead I just had to put enough bullets through one area where she was, since I doubt anything else less than that will actually work where even the most powerful of explosives can’t!

The Shred Treads are assuredly going to be there too.

-Location: The city of Saint Canard, Rev Olver Ocelet-

Chances were that Leap Lamb would run north to either Duckberg or Saint Canard, who knew I would lose a number of my mercenaries would be taken down by a hero wannabe that’s basing himself off some old show?

Still, it wasn’t a total loss, since we may have found a way to capture Leap Lamb alive to find out what makes her tick. Sure the dissection might be painful and they’ll do it without anesthesia, but an autopsy of Leap Lamb would work just as well afterwards if she didn’t survive right?

“Suck gas evil doers!” Now if only this caped clown calling himself Darkwing Duck wasn’t so troublesome for his mercenaries. He was taking them down quickly one after another.

We obviously came to the wrong place and would need to head towards Duckberg, provided we could pull out without all of my men being taken down by a single crazy duck that just wouldn’t stop getting back up no matter how many explosions he’s been in.

I’m pretty sure we’ve directly hit him with a claymore mine and three grenades so far, yet that seemed to do little to stop him. There’s also the strange and scarily accurate crossbow bolts that seemed to aid him from out of nowhere.

If anything we should probably be trying to capture this Darkwing Duck while we were here, but I was already calling it in to my guys to cut our losses.

“Retreat!” We had to leave now.

This Darkwing Duck, no matter how buffoonish, was a little too much for my men. Also I’ve heard SHUSH was sniffing around here and I didn’t want them to be held by them.

-Time:???, Dolly-

“So I’m going with you regardless of wherever you’ll go Pom.” I really didn’t want to say it, I was not a dog that liked the idea of domestication. Yet here I was professing the idea that I wouldn’t mind if it was her alone. “There, I said it, I can’t go back and I only want to move forward at your side, is that what you want to hear Pom?!”

“Do you think you’ll be strong enough to keep up with her Dolly? So far things haven’t exactly been easy.” Pom just painted my nails and I can’t believe I was letting her do that after brushing out my tail. I was letting her pamper me and… well… it didn’t feel bad. At least she wasn’t trying to make me look like a show dog! “I know you don’t care much for being dependent on others, much less her. She wouldn’t do that to you Dolly, she will constantly remind you of who you are herself if she has to. You’re a brave little Dalmatian that left home, chose to partner up with someone with as many dangerous problems as her and you have proven time and again that you’re really good at supporting her. However when it comes to a direct fight, she worries about your safety… which might actually help her put up more of a fight come to think of it.”

“Yes, but I want to do more Pom. I want to be in the action more, to take down bad guys and to face the world with my head held high showing that I have what it takes to stand on equal ground with you!” I was trying to explain what I wanted to do so badly, I needed to simplify it. Crush it all down to something exceedingly simple. What do I want most exactly? Why was I still with Pom even if it will get me killed eventually? “I want the power to be able help everyone I can Pom, you most of all because you really do need all the help you can get. Why am I not feeling like I’m at my full potential? You’ve been training me to help. Admittedly I’ve been a bit scared to dive into the action… like with Dylan. He will always take action when our family is in danger, even I always went to him for safety and didn’t do much acting on my own. Now though, I’m getting stronger, more capable of taking it to the bad guys directly.”

Pom simply hummed and started working on my ears and I leaned back into the gentle constant strokes running over them.

“Do you think you are a vain dog Dolly?” Where was this question coming from Pom? Darn it you really knew how to make me feel good. “You really are beautiful to her, despite being attracted to far rougher and muddier activities.”

“I… I’m a bit of an attention hog I’ll admit, I could hardly go a day without wanting at least a little attention from my step brother Dylan. He always made time to get into an argument with me, those days are something I’m not going to forget. Simpler, taking care of so many pups and having a blast with a wild water hose, bouncing on trampolines and all those trips to the park.” I always bugged Dylan because he’d pay attention to me and even if he would get angry at the things I did, he was still everyone’s big brother at the end of the day. I thought he needed to play more and take some time off from working himself into the ground cleaning everything. “Being in a family as large as mine makes one on one time with our parents a little hard to get.”

Like my mother’s day with Delilah, a rare opportunity to spend time with a pro at helping others like dad does. She wasn’t the mother who gave birth to me, but she could get a smile out of me. Sure she played favorites with Dylan, her first puppy and I understood that completely, but she still loved me too.

“She can imagine too.” Pom stated as she ran a brush down my back, the stroke made me shiver happily. “So all this one on one time with her is something incredibly special for you huh?”

“It’s not just that Pom, you already know what I’m about. I’m not that complicated really.” I really wasn’t, Pom was a light that I wanted to protect and serve. She was a guard, something I could easily get into as a job. She’s teaching me how to fight, use magic and we shared something unbreakable like what I had with my family. My family would welcome me back at any time, this was important enough to me that I could do what I was going to. “Caper Canine... what a strange life I’m heading into.”

“You know that you’re just sleeping right? That you’re just talking to her in your imagination?” Pom continued to caress me. “Do you actually want to be her dog? When you wake up, the things you will be able to do will be amazing even if you might not know it at first. The things you will face will be even more dangerous, are you ready to face the chaos at her side?”

“Huh?” What was Pom talking about? “What do you mean wake up, I’m already…”

“Air, motion and flexibility… remember these words. For these are what you can do the easiest at heart.” Pom said sweetly, while still petting me. “You have a good heart, protect it from the encompassing darkness coming for you. You’re a little prankster, you like goofing off and you have a habit of wanting to always be in motion as much as the center of attention. However, when you are needed, you know when to get serious and you love children like nothing else. You believe that Dalmatians can do anything, now you have put your cunning mind to it… while you cannot fly, you will still soar.”

Before I knew it Ms. Shuttle was crashing because of the assassin… wait… didn’t this already happen? Why was it happening ag…

-Present, Duckberg Park-

“Oh… my head.” I sat up putting both my front paws on my skull, what just happened to me. The shattering glass disappeared into being the park again. “What just happened?”

“Does anyone else understand what she’s saying?” Blinking at the duck, Lena I believe, I looked over and saw Pom laying on the ground. With Smolder and Ocellus looking her over with worry.

“I do!” Dormarch announced, I made my way over to Pom and pulled him out of the bag.

“You can?" I asked. "Since when?”

“Since Dawkins sent me some information from his Fetch Positron unit, after the… after the assassin had Pom at gunpoint.” Did Dormarch just say Fetch Posi… oh of course, I wasn’t the only sneaky one in my family! Thought mom and dad got rid of all those things, Dawkins must have hid it in the walls. After that whole thing with our neighbor Constantine, a pompous older cat that our little brother Deepak had a good friendship with, that would be the perfect place to hide it. “Was I not supposed to tell you that? You seem a little upset.”

“Yeah, because one of my brothers got to keep one of those devices when I couldn’t!” I was a bit jealous, but then again my brother Dawkins lost his favorite toy to Cruella… so… calm down Dolly. “Look never mind that, not important, as long he's happy. Okay, what happened to us? You always seem to know our health.”

“Both you and Pom passed out at the same time, I’m not made for scanning magic, but both of you have experienced something like dreams. Also I may be mistaken, but I think your brain activity and heart stopped for an instant and then entered something relative to REM level sleep for a few minutes. In fact your brain activity sky rocketed up until you woke up and it evened out.” Didn’t understand what most of that had to do with whatever happened to us Dormarch. “Pom is okay, but I’ve noted that her irregular heartbeats are actually settling, whatever happened between the both of you might have helped with her arrhythmia. It’s either that or it’s like I suspect that her arrhythmia is a part of her magical abilities.”

“What?” I asked curiously, but I wasn’t the only one to say that. Dormarch understanding me wasn’t hard to take in, what was hard was that Pom’s heart problem might be naturally occurring.

“Pom’s Dancing Flame technique might be why she has Arrhythmia and not her injuries incurred on the way to coming here to Duckberg.” Wait, is Dormarch seriously saying that the technique Pom uses to move and react to things at insane speeds is causing some of her health problems? Yeah, that actually checks out come to think of it. Still, being able to dodge bullets is better than actually being hit by them. “I am still putting together a diagnosis of the phenomenon and will question Pom on it when convenient.”

I moved closer to Pom, feeling that she needed me for some reason. I looked down at her and saw that she was breathing, I moved my face close to hers and started licking it gently.

She squirmed slightly and opened her eyes to look at me, I felt something strange pass between us as both our hearts beat at the same time.

“Dolly, what… what happened?” Pom sat up and looked over to everyone looking at them.

“Not a clue, but I get the feeling that I absolutely saw something that I don’t think I was meant to.” I stated faintly remembering stained glass, grey and… “Air, motion and flexibility.”

“Huh?” Pom said looking at me curiously.

“I think those words have something to do with my magic.” Speaking of magic, I can really feel it in me now and this definitely wasn’t Pom sending me her strength.

It’s like it was a vague idea before and now it was fully realized. Still didn’t know how to use it or what to do with it.

“Well we’ll figure it out later Dolly, for right now I think we need to rest and not do anything exciting for the rest of the day after whatever it was that happened to us when I gave you some of my magic through our bond.” Pom then turned to everyone else and Ocellus approaching us.

“It was something big, but it all happened in an instant. I barely noticed it, but it felt really strange.” Huh, did Ocellus seemed more brightly colored than before? No, the world seemed far brighter than I was used to come to think of it. “It was like tons of emotions were singing in excitement for something for a second, then you both passed out.”

“Also it broke the wards we set up immediately. So yeah, maybe we should all go relax somewhere safe and well away from here.” Lena seemed to be paranoid as her eyes darted about for anything unusual. “Whatever just happened, it was an eleven on my weirdness meter and I’ve only ever had it hit at least a maximum seven or eight just by being around Webby and the others in general. To be fair, I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff, but something that can break the wards we set up without us noticing at first… We should definitely take things easy after that when it comes to helping a dog learn to use magic, so our house or the mansion?”

“Mansion, it’s safer that we don’t cause our fathers problems. I will inform them we will be staying over at Uncle Scrooge’s house for magic reasons.” Violet’s eyes dimmed slightly. “Oh great, now who had a bet on when I'd say that?”

“Pay up Dewey!” Louie stated loudly.

“Yeah, yeah, here you go.” Dewey passed ten dollars to Louie.

We all started to leave the park when I glanced at Pom and stopped.

“Do you think I’m vain?” I asked Pom out of the blue.

“Maybe a little, but there’s nothing wrong with that. I like taking care of you and you don’t seem to mind when I do.” Pom gave me a gentle pat on the head. “So… okay?"

"Yeah." As I'll get Pom.

Author's Note

Dolly acquired: ???? ??????? and ????.

Pom acquired: More incoming headaches.

146. Deadly Pom-monition.

-Earth, Calisota Duckberg, McDuck Manor, early evening, Pom-

This place was impressive, I’ll give it that and I had my first meeting with Scrooge McDuck, who was giving us all an odd look of scrutiny as we came in through the front door.

“Er… hi dad.” Oh how Webby at least tried to keep a straight face, didn’t work as everyone else in her family immediately said hello to ‘Uncle Scrooge’.

“Okay, what happened?” It didn’t take long for Scrooge to ask.

Everyone pointed at Dolly who looked around and then she put a paw on her chest like she was offended that they thought she was a troublemaker. Scrooge was a bit surprised by how expressive Dolly was, especially that he could see her now brightly smiling face afterwards.

Apparently Dolly was the troublemaker according to the rest of her family, with me I was the trouble bringer in this relationship and she was helpfully sticking to my side. No amount of begging was going to stop Dolly from being my partner now, not after whatever was going on with her.

Dolly had been oddly quiet on the trip to the manor on the hill.

Nobody knew what it meant for Dolly to be capable of pulling her magic to the forefront yet, but I’m sure she’d figure it out.

Outwardly nothing was different about Dolly or what I could perceive of her through our bond. The bond itself felt a little unusual, but nothing wrong and I still had no clue why I had passed out.

“Well a slight magical explosion might have happened. No one was hurt, but we still don’t understand the full repercussions of what happened and it was a little terrifying in how it tore through the wards Lena and Violet made like paper tissues.” Webby was poking at the floor with the tips of her webbed feet looking a bit sheepish. “Oh and this is Pom, she’s Ocellus and Smolder’s caretaker and this is her companion Dolly Danger Dalmatian. They are also known as Leap Lamb and Caper Canine.”

“Hello sir, nice to meet you.” I stated pleasantly as a feathered hand and hoof shook. “I really don’t like being seen as a hero, it kind of implies that it is what will kill me eventually. I take it my two girls didn’t cause you too much trouble?”

“Aye lass, you’re charges were on their proper behavior, at least while I could house them here.” He seemed like a nice old guy, older than he looked and I’ve never been near a duck that felt so ancient. “Staying the night with us?”

“I don’t want to impose.” I answered waving a hoof, I had plenty of money. Caper Canine was a popular toy, not that my toy sales weren’t doing that bad either. “Pom Lambchop, a guard of the mystical city of Huoshan and the head of their canine division. We are currently lost on an interdimensional roller coaster my friends and I seriously wish we could all get off of.”

“Nonsense, you wouldn’t be imposing at all. Ocellus and Smolder have been darling, not often I can say that magical creatures haven’t actively brought me any kind of trouble for once.” Scrooge scratched at the bottom of his beak with a finger as he looked me over. “Also you are no normal animalistic sheep, I know that much.”

“I’m a lambkin, akin to lambs and close enough so without actually being one.” Wool gathering time I guess, I didn’t have any pressing matters aside from Dormarch connecting me to Dawkins and Bentley for a conference call. Dormarch said to give it an hour or two, because Dawkins needed to recharge the Dalmatian family’s communal device. “People like me still get called Sheeple because we still use the terms like ram and ewe for genders, it doesn’t help that my people tend to be sheep farmers adding more confusion to the mix as we can bleat like actual sheep. You will never have meet a more anxious or easily frightened people, I’m… mostly better than ninety percent of my population. Not saying much when my race in particular is always heavily medicated by requirement… well the adults are anyway. We tend lose our sense of wonder for the world real fast around the age of five.”

“Well that’s all very interesting and I’m sure we’ll have plenty to talk about over dinner. Now to lay a few things out. First you, the dog, Dolly was it? I can see that you’re clearly intelligent, so I’m going to have to ask you to do your business outside or use one of the toilets, can you do that?” Scrooge, getting a nod and affirmative bark from Dolly, smiled and patted her on the head. “Good, then we’ll have no problems housing you for the night. As for you Pom, keep an eye out on the kids and ‘try’ to keep them out of any more trouble. You seem like the honest and trustworthy sort, so I just have to warn you and Dolly here that I keep a lot of dangerous magical artifacts in the house from time to time. So it’s not a good idea to touch anything unless you know it’s safe. Also do not bother our ghost butler. He’s happy to be of service if you need anything though, as will my housekeeper and friend Beakley. Now if you’ll excuse me I have business to attend to.”

“Okay, it was nice meeting you sir.” I waved and then turned around to ask anyone if they wanted to do something. Everyone except Smolder had apparently run off. “So… want to spend time together?”

“Sure.” At least Smolder was willing to keep me company, don’t honestly know why Ocellus ran off and I could feel Dolly running around looking at things with curiosity. “So you look slightly like death warmed over.”

“Smolder, my life over the last few months has been a very exhausting form of Tartarus, also I’ve recently found out that anxiety medication has little effect on me because my anxiety is just that bad. I’m surprised I haven’t had a psychotic snap yet from all the pressure.” I laid down on the couch in the living room and Smolder took a seat nearby. “I’m not a longma, I cannot be consistently stoic no matter what I’m doing. I’m not a dragon and I don’t want to pretend to stay strong in spite of hardships. I’m way over my head in this world and I want the dangers to stop coming at me constantly.”

“Want hardships, imagine sleeping on piles of gold without a pillow for your head. It leaves such a crick in the neck if you do it wrong, Scrooge would know about it as he seems like a professional when it comes to swimming in money.” At least Smolder might take this with some seriousness. “We dragons don’t do merchants or commerce very well. We can certainly afford pillows easily enough, but Dragons are about as greedy as griffons are at times with our hoards. That doesn’t mean I have to live up to the stereotype of what’s expected. You know what, I’m pretty sure that someone out there is currently having it much worse than you are Pom.”

“Please don’t joke about that, I think I might be seriously becoming a death seeker.” Leaning back, I looked to the ceiling. I soon felt Smolder’s warm body cuddling up to me and she was giving me a hug.

“Sorry, but you are being a really good rock to us Pom, you can’t be that bad with how happy you were to see us.” Smolder mumbled quietly.

“No, I’m stuck under the rock. It’s crushing me into the hard place, grinding away at my sanity that I still somehow have.” Slowly closing my eyes, I let Smolder’s body heat lull me slowly into relaxing. Dolly sent me a feeling that was questioning, I sent her back a general feeling of being alright. “I’m just keeping the rock from crushing anyone else I care about.”

“Can you not talk about martyring yourself like that? It’s disturbing enough to know you are being depressive… and that’s probably why Ocellus went to spend time with the others come to think of it.” After a minute of silently just laying with me, Dolly padded on into the room crawled up on the couch to cuddle up to me as well. “That bad huh?”

I just closed my eyes and let out a really drawn out sigh. I could vaguely feel Dolly nodding to Smolder, she didn’t even need to say anything as they both could guess how I was feeling at the moment. I’m still blaming myself for Ms. Shuttle getting hurt by Mr. Tobias Rieper.

“Really Pom?” Ocellus grumbled as she came in and joined the cuddle pile in a grumpy manner. “Despite how bad your negativity is for me… that you can even make it fill more than an entire room in this mansion is disturbing. Still, I’m not going to turn away from a friend when they need me even if it is going to hurt me… this is what you do for us all the time and we need to return the favor more. You do make us feel safe Pom, but when you are like we’ll help you however we can and comforting you is the way we can do it.”

It was quiet until Smolder broke the silence five minutes later

“So… me and Ocellus are thinking of getting into a relationship, we’re still a little up in the air.” Smolder mumbled. “She looks kind of cute while being all grumpy.”

“That’s sounds nice, are you sure you two can keep up with being friends despite how difficult a good stronger relationship is to hold onto?” My voice was a little hollow.

“We'll manage, so what’s got you in a mood Pom?” Ocellus said as she squeezed me tightly.

“I have a feeling that things aren’t going to be quiet as they are in this moment, I’m feeling guilt for things I had no control over aside from being partly responsible for them happening in the first place by existing and the whole Leap Lamb thing isn’t something I’m doing because I want to be a super hero. It’s been pretty bad for my health overall having a bleating heart like I do.” I felt movement and Dolly gently licked my cheek and she pressed up against me. She didn’t say anything, but she was trying to cheer me up all the same like Ocellus and Smolder. “I very well know I can’t get any peace with the way things are, I bet something big will happen tomorrow and I’ll be in the path of it all like usual and you might get hurt if I do nothing. I just want some quiet, stable time to just frolic in some flowers and be at peace, I can’t exactly do that with all those mercenaries hunting me. In fact, I’m putting all of you and everyone else who live here in danger just by being here. It’s just like in Gongmen City when I couldn’t do much and was helpless, I feel useless and all these thoughts are crushing down on me. I’m am so very tired girls, this world has a lot good people and good things, but I’m attracting all sorts of wrong attention.”

“I wish I could give you a hug too Pom.” Dormarch’s innocent sounding voice was rather strained, but the bond between us stayed the same enigma it was when it first started. “Maybe you need a nap?”

“I could go for a nap.” I heard the Louie stated as he came in. “Hey Uncle Donald, I need some help with getting one of our guests comfy! You know, a decent massage could do her some wonders.”

A very garbled voice followed in response afterwards.

I didn’t move or try to get up, but I did feel my position slowly become more comfortable. I felt a pair of hand gently rubbing my shoulders and soon move on to my forehead.

This felt nice.

-One nap later-

I sat up and realized I was surrounded by a pile of slightly snoozing bodies, I still felt the weight of that rock on my back even if it had lessened a bit.

“Are you currently awake Pom?” Dormarch spoke to the mostly silent room with everyone snuggled around me and Dolly comfortably resting her head on my belly as I lifted my head to see her clinging to me. “The conference should be held at the soonest convenience as Dawkins sent a message that he’s ready at your convenience, you’ve been approximately out cold for about an hour. Long enough for a nap I think, it is nearing dinner time.”

“I would like to do it now, but I would have to extricate myself from them first.” Not really wanting to bother the snuggle pile we had going on a pile of cushions on the living room floor, I just stayed where I was.

“You’re far too nice Pom, I wonder how you ended up with someone as dangerous as me?” Carefully pulling Dormarch out to hold him within my sight without moving too much, I looked up at him. “I haven’t the foggiest why people would want me so badly or what makes me so special, but I’m glad I’m in your hooves at least.”

“You’re not dangerous Dormarch, not directly anyway.” My device born companion turned his back to me with his head lowered. I sent a feeling of safety to him and he flinched and looked around before meeting my eyes. “We’ll figure it out eventually, it’ll come out one way or another why people want to take you so badly. We almost lost you once, we’re not going to lose you now.”

The less said about possibly losing me first the better.

“What… was that?” Dormarch asked looking at me curiously. “Also your mood seems to have improved drastically.”

“Don’t worry about it too much Dormarch .” I sent Dormarch a feeling of contentment and his image relaxed to match the feelings I sent to him. “Make the call, I’m not moving from my spot.”

Did I ever actually explain that I have a familiar bond with him? I'm sure I only told Dolly that. I don’t know if I’m going to tell Ocellus or Smolder about, but it would come up at some point. I didn't want to let those two out of my sight as they had been in danger without me, especially Ocellus who had been unable to defend herself from what I was told at lunch. Smolder could hold her own well enough and can survive a lot of things.

It must have taken a moment for Dormarch to come to grips with receiving feelings, because he hesitated for a few moments and finally Dawkins appeared on the screen along with Bentley of the Cooper Gang and… Shanty!

“Shanty are you okay? Are those scorch marks? Have you learned any new tricks? Have you been sleeping well? How much rum have you drunken young lady?! Please at least tell me you’re eating enough and staying well fed!” Whatever vestiges of my depression was blown away when I worried more about a smiling Shanty in a matter seconds than I did the crushing weight of the difficulties surrounding me.

“I be doing good Pom, I just be wanting to say that I will be seeing you soon before I go eat! These thieves are being the nicest I’ve ever met. Heh, if anything I am more worried about you.” Shanty wiped her hoof at her nose and she sniffled a bit. “Oh and this is Mopsy, she be a lot like you… only less stressed out. Also yes, I be learning lots of things!”

“Things are okay over here Pom, Shanty has told me a lot about you. Nice to see someone who shares my good looks and is a friendly face.” Mopsy seemed confident and she looked nice, the wool flowed over her right eye majestically. I could at least feel happy that Shanty had good people looking out for her, then I saw Shanty imbibing a bottle of rum in the background and my gaze when flat. “Let me guess, she’s drinking rum behind my back?”

“Yes… and it’s as annoying as you think it is to deny her any of that stuff, there is no stopping her.” We both sighed and I kind of thought it neat that Mopsy and I shared a wavelength and had similar voices.

I was just distracting myself with the peace of the moment, my paranoia was running on full burn and I knew something was coming for me. Now if only I knew what it was that had me so very on edge like I was, I could almost feel it in the air and it wasn’t close to attacking me tonight, but maybe tomorrow?

Why was I so sure it was tomorrow that I should try to stay away from everyone else, including Dormarch? Something about this world… was it a premonition or is my paranoia finally getting to me? Well it wasn’t so much paranoia when things were actually out to get you, but I’m still fairly paranoid about the when of it all.

I had to get a lot of sleep tonight, I was going to need as much rest as I can get for tomorrow.

“Ahem, let’s get back on track ladies!” The turtle, Bentley, stated as he moved the two out of frame and turned to me. “We can’t in good conscious let Shanty come with us when we go to face a really deadly criminal, so we’re going to meet in a quiet place where you can have a vacation and meet up with Shanty. However you’re going to have to ditch those mercenaries before you fly out to the place I have in mind.”

“Goodness knows I need a vacation…” The thing about me was that I was very willing to listen to Bentley’s idea, provided that I would even get a chance to enjoy said vacation with the kind of circumstances I've been surrounded by. “So where are we meeting up?”

“We’ll meet up in Cape Suzette, take a week of rest in Duckberg and then fly out here as quietly as you can.” As Bentley stated this an image of the city came up on the screen, a city built along the walls of the insides of the mountains that surrounded it. A person can easily get lost in a metropolis like that easily enough. “Get in contact when you’re flying out and when you reach the city to meet up with us.”

I wish I could rest easy here, but I know that dreams as lofty as tranquility were not anywhere in my future.

“Okay, we’ll be able to manage that.” At least I’ll try, who knows what tomorrow would bring and why I was so terrified of the very idea of it. “We can get a ride from the people we’re currently staying with.”

I turned Dormarch and showed them a Smolder cuddling Ocellus and then turned it back to myself.

“Ocellus and Smolder are okay, be safe Shanty and please don’t get into any trouble between now and when we meet up.” I’ll be doing enough of that on my own.

After a rather nice dinner with the family of ducks, I promptly went to bed.

-In the middle of the night-

“No… no… stay back… AGH?!” I sat up in a cold sweat and looked outside the nearby window at the moonlight shining down upon me. Various shadows had been clawing at me, all wanting a piece of me until they left nothing behind.

Dolly stirred next to me and I slowly caressed her back to sleep, she smiled and soon went back to snuggling up against me.

My dreams were haunted with bullets, explosions, giant machines with two heads, chainsaws, lizards having parts of themselves ripped out to be replaced with machinery and shadow monsters vying to be the winner that would reach and consume me first in a gladiatorial setting. Offal, bones and other grisly imaginary sights had taken their toll on my mind and eventually woke me up.

There was one shadow of me in my nightmare saying that I truly loved the attention of being a hero and that I should revel in it as I partook of the sweet cup of violence. It bade me to spill the blood of my enemies with a mouth full of unnatural fangs, to give up being the meek lambkin I was and to give into the hidden bloodthirst of my currently well controlled feral side.

The shadow obviously wanted me to become a monster and it promised me power for doing so, it might even be all too easy for someone else to give into such an idea were it not me it was being presented to.

I was actually rather thankful my nightmares were going easy on me for once.

I reached over to my bag on the nightstand and pulled Dormarch out and carefully removed my soundless bell from my neck.

Dormarch yawned on the screen and looked confused when I took off the one thing I wore constantly.

“Dormarch, can you quietly wake me up around four?” While I noticed he seemed fairly concerned, I had something I really need to take care of in the city of Duckberg and I had a pretty good idea what.

“Of course, Pom.” Dormarch looked like he wanted to say something, but held what passed for his tongue. “Is that all.”

“For now... yes.” I looked at Dolly and smiled a little.

I was going to do something I normally wouldn’t, I’d go to face the threats head on. I was giving myself a reason to come back, my bell was going to be here after all.

-Dolly-

I yawned and stretched out, I smelled the air and looked to see a bowl of dog food sitting on the nightstand beside the bed.

“Morning Pom… Pom?” I looked to see her bell was on the nightstand.

Dormarch’s screen lit up, he looked a little wary.

“She... went out to get some fresh air.” Dormarch sounded pretty cagey about something, I took up the bowl of food and started eating my kibble. “Finish you’re breakfast, because I have a message for you from Pom for when you do so.”

Feeling around for Pom, she was somewhere in the city, she had walked a fair distance away. Also there was this ominous feeling in the air.

I looked outside at the heavy cloud cover as it twisted in the sky, it seemed like it was going to be pretty dark out today with a fairly good possibility of it raining.

Finishing the kibble Pom left for me, I looked to Dormarch.

“What’s the message?” Something in me started to feeling desperation, Pom would not leave her bell behind.

“Gather as much help as you can and survive the chaos.” That ominous message made me grab my board and start skating around the mansion barking up a storm like the one that was gathering outside.

-Pom-

No sunlight was getting through those clouds and the way they swirled seemed familiar to me as I sat there in the park on a bench underneath a tree.

Nearby the shadows started swirling and gathering, eventually coalescing into an easily recognizable monstrous form.

Meeting the red eyes, while being rightfully terrified of what I had been waiting for, there was no way I could realistically ever take him on alone.

Several shadows peeled off him, taking the shapes of my closest friends, my god-puppies and... me.

Gulping, I stand up.

Author's Note

Pom is so dead.

147. The Fighter Shadows.

Author's Note

Music: Streets of Rage: Never Return Alive (V5 remix) any version will do though.

147. The Fighter Shadows.

-The World-

It had finally let Pom go from what little grasp it could even get on her, it would never again able to manipulate Pom like this through her connection to Dolly again.

Her resistance had been fairly ferocious and the world was never good at directly manipulating things, much less actually thinking of manipulating things.

It preferred a more subtle and more natural approach, it just made an exception.

-Duckberg Park, Pom-

I feel something releasing me and I had a glimpse into what drove me to be here or talk of surviving the chaos as I stumbled forward. Something actually put me in this position and I didn’t like it one bit.

Glancing around, I started shivering as the shadow versions of my friends and me start spreading out, I took a stance on my hind legs and waited for which one would make the first move.

I was facing Arizona, Velvet, Paprika, Oleander, me with my god-puppies and the worst of them all to me… Tianhuo. What was it that had driven me to be here all alone against ‘HIM’ of all people!? At least everyone else was safe, small comfort considering I certainly wasn’t!

I looked at the black wool and grey skinned version of myself, the red eyes mockingly showing me a reflection of my fear as she smiled and struck at the bell on her neck creating a discordant sounding chime.

Reaching up to my own bare neck, I frowned, shook my head and then brought my hooves up defensively. I took note of how the four shadow puppies moved around the shadow of me.

Away from all of them, standing eerily still, was Hollow Heart. He spread his wings and pointed at me.

The shadow Arizona charge for me, I blocked her hard right hoof with my legs and slammed back first into a tree a second later a good. She had knocked me an estimated thirty feet and the shockwave of the blow rattled my body underneath my protective wool.

My eyes widened and I ducked a sharp piece of black ice as it punctured straight through the tree and stopped in a tree behind it, I followed that up by rolling away as four evil shadow puppies tried to bite at me and my shadow copy tried to descend on me on me with a downward double hoof strike.

Finishing my roll I quickly leaned left as a hoof thrust forward towards me with black as night flames that swallowed the light out the general area blinding me not with light, but pitch black darkness.

I felt a twitch in my ears and I raised a block with my right hoof and then pivoted slung my left hoof straight forward knocking the shadow Tianhuo back and making her stumble and become visible. I quickly leapt, flipping backwards over a diving hug attempt by shadow Paprika. Paprika had never been seriously terrifying to me.

Landing I stumbled off to the side as a sharp black icicle nearly skewered me from behind, only to take a blow to the chin from Arizona that launched me to the sky and I was subsequently spiked into the ground by copy where I had to roll away before the puppies pinned me or a rain of icicles pierced me into the ground.

I came up to my hooves and swept my right hind hoof out while spinning into a hind leg stand, to knock the charging shadow puppies back. Three of them went tumbling and one flew up into the air with its tail and then dove for me.

I raised my right hoof and took its open mouth on my wool and then I swung it hard to the left while flexing my wool to send it flying off into shadow Paprika’s grasp, instead of continuing to come at me she started to crushing the shadow puppy in her grasp without remorse and then said puppy was pierced by mass of spikes that jutted out of the copy of the shadow alpaca.

I did not want a hug from Paprika right now.

A pillar of ice jutted out of the ground from my right and I stumbled forward and had to quickly slide under Arizona as she leapt at me and brought her two hooves down to create a crater, both shattering and evaporating the black ice.

I turned my slide into a roll as black flames, with heat was almost unbearable, shot by me and blinded me for a bit.

Shadow Arizona apparently could see perfectly fine as something lashed out and wrapped tightly around my neck, both my front hooves went up to my neck and pried at… the tentacle… or was it a tongue? Anyway it was pulling me towards Arizona.

Two of the shadow puppies pinned down my rear hooves as Tianhuo surged upwards and forward dark fire billowing on her right hoof taking away my sight as it got closer and last I saw it was telegraphing an overhead swing.

I snapped my rear hooves together. Feeling the puppies let go, I kicked off the ground and rolled backwards in the air. I feel something nick my right shoulder as my sight came back to me and I narrowly avoided the conflagration of Tianhuo slamming her hoof down.

I inhaled deeply, time slowed down for me, I had to remember to use dancing flame sparingly.

My right shoulder looked like it was close to becoming frostbitten and my right front leg felt numbingly cold like there was ice was in my veins. It even felt partially paralyzed… is that what the black ice does?!

I don’t want to have any of this possibly poison ice stuck in me if that’s what it is. My eyes quickly surveyed my situation my mind came up with a plan, I slowly exhaled as I executed it.

I quickly planted my rear hooves, skidded backwards on the ground for a second and then ran backwards around shadow Arizona with her tongue still around my neck. Having wrapped her own tongue around her neck, I gripped the tongue with my hooves and twisted.

A spin unwrapped the tongue from my neck, I pulled Arizona closer to me with a yank and launched my left hind leg kick upwards to Arizona’s chin.

Her tongue ripped off in a shower of fog and splatter of blood like specks as she stumbled back seemingly in immense pain, I swung the torn off tongue forward to my right and got it to wrapped around my shadow copies neck and I heaved her towards me as I stepped around Arizona into sight of Velvet.

I pivoted out the way of a series of sharp blades of ice that punctured my copy to snap a kick to shadow Tianhuo’s face before she could blind me again. This sent Tianhuo into the path of Paprika, making the shadow grab her and hug her tightly after dropping the shadow puppy that didn’t get hurt by the erupting spikes.

So they couldn’t damage each other much.

Had to keep them all in… I ducked as a sharply edged wing pass over my head, I bucked high with all my strength without really looking.

I just hit something with a healthy amount of force. Having heard the sound of a form hitting the ground, I glanced at Hollow Heart as he calmly stood up and started backing away into the surrounding shadows while staring at me with a fang filled grin as he disappeared.

All the grass he had touched notably withered and became sickly in an instant.

The shadow thestral was looking for moments of opportunity then. Couldn’t lose track of any of them as they all came at me again, at least they had waited until Hollow had backed away.

Paprika lunged for me. I ducked, leaned right and flexibly thrusted my left hind leg straight up into the side of her belly send her bouncing away.

I had to follow that up by hopping and kicking off a spike of ice from below, even a second of contact had chilled my hooves to the bone, and launched a painful flying buck into my copies face.

When I hit the withered grass, I started to do a breakdancing windmill kicks to knock away the four shadow puppies in quick succession until I was upside down. I performed a hoof spring into a standing and tried to do a blind hoof grapple with the shadow Tianhuo when I felt her attack coming.

Managing to grab her leg and aim it upwards, I felt a huge amount of heat pass by my face scorching my wool. Tianhuo proceeded to kick me in the belly, I grunted as my wool took the brunt of it and spun my back into her chest.

I quickly lifted and swung Tianhuo around to take several icicles I heard coming for me, the shadow monster harmlessly took them in her back as I released her to send her flying straight at an encroaching Arizona.

These shadows were far tougher than the ones I saw on Equus or Fœnum, even if they were just imitations they were fairly life like and lethal. I think I was doing fairly…

A harsh blow by shadow Arizona landed across my face drawing blood and staggered me. An icicle scratched my left hind leg before I could move it away and now it was numb too. I was subsequently blinded by the shadow flames launched by Tianhuo on the ground and last I saw Paprika had been leaping for me before so…

I rolled and dashed away until I slammed into a tree, I blindly climbed up it and felt an increase in the heat around me as shadow Tianhuo likely tracked me with her black flames.

Kicking off the tree, I rolled against the ground and ran blindly ran away while sniffing the air with my nose to hopefully track if anything was in front of me, my right ear twitched and I dove to the ground and heard the sound of something scything through the air.

My dive had gotten me far enough away to see a giant writhing mass of darkness, apparently things lit on fire by Tianhuo will have the same blinding darkness effect as her flames.

I rolled onto my back to watch as Hollow Heart flapped back a bit and flew up and disappeared into the shadows of the burning tree.

I saw my copy erupt from the writhing fog like darkness coming at me with a glare, I was quickly on my hooves to block its left hoof strike and tried to step away only to notice that both my hind legs were being pinned down by the four shadow puppies.

My copy brought both her front hooves around and across the right side of my temple and I was knocked onto my back.

Dazed and confused, I quickly scrambled backwards using my front hooves while frantically kicking outwards with my hind legs to keep the four red eyed shadow puppies off of me. Until I passed into the light of a rare park lamp, at least rare in this park at least.

The four puppies ran into the light and then looked to be in horrible pain as they began melting, they quickly scrambled back and away from me. A shard of ice flew at me, it evaporated in the light of the lamp before it could hit my right eye.

I just sat there wide eyed, a simple lamp’s light can stop them? Also why were my right shoulder and left hind leg burning with pain now?! Actually I’m feeling better and was not nearly as lethargic as I had been getting, so that ice actually is poisonous!

Thankfully any amount of light was the antidote, but I hadn’t noticed the effects. Things seemed to worsen for me after I… that’s actually insidious!

Dancing Flame was even more dangerous to perform if I was poisoned, as I just realized it would hasten the poisons effects on me drastically.

I shuddered to think what would happen if I had let the poison continue to flow through my body for much longer, maybe numbness and paralysis weren’t the only thing the ice does. Another thing, why wasn’t my wool protecting me from shadow Velvet’s magical attacks?

I rolled to the side as a pair of hooves stomped the ground, this is followed by wings slashing forward and down on my prone form. I rolled again into a standing position as the wings dug into the ground, only to take a heavy blow by a pair of hooves that almost caved in my chest that knocked me away from the lamp light.

Hollow had surged forward using his wings to pull himself at me.

Said light was swiftly snuffed out by Hollow Heart flapping into the air and stretching out one of his wings into a blade to slash it apart in a shower of sparks. He quickly flew out and away as the other shadows approached me, other lights in the general area quickly started being torn apart.

Hollow definitely just cracked my frail little ribs with that one attack, that’s even with my wool factored in. I stood up shivering as the shadows started coming at me again.

I faced them and will let Hollow Heart know I would always oppose him even if my chances of survival here weren’t very good.

Shadow Arizona opened her mouth and lashed out a long regrown black tendril for me.

“Baa-Ram-Ewe!” I unleashed three bark blasts back to back in a barrage, lighting up the darkened area and making the shadows scatter until the blasts dissipated. This also destroyed a section of shadow Arizona’s tongue, blew apart several ice shards and cancelled out Tianhuo’s flames.

An idea just came to mind, but I would wait to utilize it until I was sure I was in the right state of mind before actually doing it. It would be a less painful and slightly modified version of the ever famous classic lambkin tactic when running wasn’t an option. As I told Shanty once, anything in a fight goes when it’s your life on the line.

The first one to charge me after the fading light of my three bark blasts was my copy and her shadow puppies. I narrowed my eyes as I brought up my hooves defensively and waited, shadow pom came in low on all fours readying a left upper and the puppies spread out.

I dodged forward and to the right out of the path of several shards of black ice, putting me directly into the path of the upper swing. I was still standing on the cement pathway so...

The hoof struck me on my lowered right leg intercepting the blow, I wobbled backwards slightly while raising my left leg up.

I slapped the ground with my left hoof, creating a shockwave that blasted the four puppies away and knocked back the fake version of me.

I raised up launching a right upper into my clones face staggering them further, then hit her with a left and right hook to daze her.

Using a left jab to the chest to grappled onto her with my wool, I pulled her close and brought my head back hardening the wool on it and then slammed my skull into hers. once, twice and then I leapt and slammed my full weight down on my copy forcing her to the ground and then I had to leap backwards as a wall of dark flames passed between us blinding me.

While blinded, I leapt into a high sideways roll and heard the sound of something hitting the ground near where I just was. I jumped far enough to see again and like I expected, black ice. What I didn’t expect was to see Arizona’s hoof coming for me as I landed.

Not able to get my hooves up in time, I was sent flying and tumbling along the ground. Coughing in pain from another harsh blow to my ribs, I saw an alpaca shaped mass coming right at me followed by a smiling shadow Velvet and Tianhuo who were spreading out.

If I dodge Paprika’s grab, they both attack and the shadow me was circling around to get behind me slowly, looking like the injury I had dealt to her actually had an effect.

This... is not going to well for me. If I get grabbed, then I get skewered. If I dodge I get burn and blinded or poisoned and hypothermia, retreating puts me in the path of being caged in.

Instead of dodging, I charged right into Paprika’s lunge.

I slung my right hoof up and clawed Paprika along the chest, neck and head. I forcefully slashed at her with my hooves, clawing her up while knocking her back with each frantic blow.

Suddenly ramming her onto her back with my right shoulder, I lunged over her as far as I could as fire and ice came together behind me.

The resulting explosion of both hot and cold energy coming together nearly staggered me as I slashed at Arizona, she took several steps back to avoid my wild attacks and then charge head first towards me.

I dodged to the side and slashed up at the left side of her face with my left hoof and she decided to dodge my attack.

Something was wrong here, tickling at the back of my head, something I've possibly forgotten.

I’ve been under attack by just about everyone at the start of this fight.

I was in the middle of engaging Arizona by deflecting most of her attacks and she was quite aggressive, shadow me was stalking my way with those puppies again, while Tianhuo was taking the air and Velvet was staying out of sight and trying to sneakily poison me.

Wait… during all of this fighting… what exactly has the shadow Oleander been doing and where was she?!

That was a terrifying thought that had crossed my mind as I grabbed Arizona and positioned her in the path of two icicles, then spun around and threw her up into the path of flames raining down from above at me.

I quickly backed away from the resulting explosion, while glancing around me with what little I could see under the darkened sky and not a sign of the shadow Oleander was to be seen anywhere near me.

Even Hollow Heart had taken some nearly fatal stabs at me while I was distracted, so what was the Oleander copy doing and why was there a huge chill go down my spine?

The other shadows stopped approaching me and they were not looking at me, but something behind me.

I slowly turned around to see shadow Oleander with a bright grin on her four red… wait… four, it only had two previously and… oh no!

The unicorn shaped mass of shadow roared and started to transform, growing larger into a massive goat legged behemoth with two large clawed arms.

So… all this time… they were just distracting me from what shadow Oleander was doing. All so she could have time to build up the energy to transform into the hulking form of what a fully released Fred might look like.

It might be an imitation, but it was downright horrifying to witness the giant shadow copy of a demon looking down on me.

I tried to leap backwards, only it stomped forward with a unnatural speed and grabbed me out of the air and clenched its right claw around my barrel.

“Ahhgggh!” Wailing as its claws dug into my side, I slapped my hooves against the claw, wrist and arm, trying to claw free of it.

That wasn’t enough and its grip tightened on me.

Tears started streaming from my eyes as I struggled in its grasp, it continued to crush me and was making me bleed.

I could suddenly feel myself being sent some energy from Dolly through our bond, I put it to immediate use as fast as I could. I needed to get out of this monsters grasp before it either crushed me or bled me dry.

Unleashing a powered up bark blast right into one of the monsters eyes, it flailed and sent me flying from its grasp reflexively.

Slapping against the grass, I rolled sideways and stopped on my side to look up at the powerful glow the energy of the bark blast gave off. The other shadows were in pain from all the light of the bark blast exploding near all of them, the shadow Fred beast even lost one of its eyes and was now enraged.

Eventually the glow of the blast died down and I saw the other shadows reorient themselves towards me.

Struggling to get up onto my four hooves, I was backing away in fear as the shadow Fred took a step in my direction. If I run now they would just endanger people... huh?!

I rolled forward avoiding a slicing wing aimed for my neck, I looked back at a lost bit of wool and looked up to see Hollow Heart had returned from destroying the surrounding lights.

He simply hovered there in the air and pointed a hoof at me with a grin, all the shadows came charging for me.

I slowly got up onto my hind legs, I stumbled to the right slightly and was nicked in the side by a shard of ice.

Smacking both my hooves together, a spark erupted from them as I crossed my legs. This, followed by quickly covering both my hooves in wool, caused them to be ignited in bright flames. From the heat and light of my now burning legs, my side started to burn up as the poison immediately petered out before it could even get started with weakening me.

The ice had scratched my side next to my heart and I didn’t want that poison to stay there long enough to harm me grievously.

Having just painfully lit myself on fire, the shadows and Hollow Heart just stared at me incredulously as I started towards them with my hooves wreathed in flames fighting back the darkness.

I was finally in the right state of mind for burning myself alive!

The shadow Fred lunged slamming its left claw into the ground and I jumped straight up to land on its arm and then I lunged and threw a flaming right hook to its face making the hulking beast stagger back in pain.

“You are not her!” I landed and knocked Tianhuo’s black flame spewing hooves off course and slugged her beautiful face with a flaming left hook while adding claws to it. The wolf claws erupted in the same flames my hooves were covered with and the shadow Tianhuo was sent flopping away in agony.

I grabbed my left hind leg with my front hooves and lashed out a kick that caught a scarred Paprika in the base of her throat, I brought my leg to my other and now all four of my hooves were ignited and on fire.

Yes Dolly, this was exceedingly painful, but highly warranted given my situation!

“You are not them!” I burst forward past my copy slapping a flaming claw swipe with my right hoof across her face and then I jumped for shadow Velvet and kicked off her dissolving ice spike she tried to hit me with and slammed all four of my hooves into her painfully. “I may go down with a whimper, but I will put up a real fight before that!”

The fire was slowly spreading over most of my body, my world was pain and I was going to use what time I had to make these shadow monsters and Hollow Heart feel my agony with a literal burning passion!

148. Delaying Distractions.

-A short time ago, McDuck Manor, Dolly-

“Okay, we need to go after Pom, like right now!” Agreeing with Smolder after Dormarch translated for me what exactly was wrong, I wondered why we weren’t getting out there already. I could feel Pom is terrified and in incredible danger. “Why are we still here?”

“For one, the sun is blocked out by an immense amount of magic and whatever is causing it isn’t going to be very friendly.” Lena patted me on the head. “Like powerful demon levels of not friendly, Violet will be using magic to scout out some problems from here and will figure out a way for us to deal with them if we need help. I’m thinking it’s something shadow magic related, it reeks like I did of the stuff when I was first created and it feels like the magic is not of this world… kind of more like you two.”

“It’s something from Equus?!” Frowning Ocellus looked to Smolder, I was a little uneasy about the looks they were giving each other. “Smolder do you know of any villains, monsters or disgruntled unicorns that can pull something like this off? I’m hoping it’s not King Sombra or any Umbrum, an Umbrum would easily kill me in the state I’m in.”

“Why exactly are we sitting around?” Once my translation carried through, the oldest duck biped in the room turned to me with a friendly smile.

“Dolly, in a crisis, it’s always a good idea to ask for as much help as possible when possible.” Apparently Scrooge didn’t look concerned in the slightest that something big was going on. “Given our track record for trouble, its best that we do this now rather than later. Things have a tendency to go from bad to worse around us at the drop of a hat… mostly mine.”

“That’s why we’re calling in backup to where Pom currently is, the park we were at earlier right?” Louie stated as he tapped away at his device and got a response. “Goldie is around and will be trying to head that way, she sent me something about spotting a dangerous backstabbing mercenary she’s familiar with that might need her full attention. She said she’s going to find out what they are up to, might be some of the same guys that are hunting Pom down.”

“Why do you have Goldie’s number?” Scrooge asked while narrowing his eyes. “At least inform her that I’ll try to meet up with her when I head out.”

“Eh, so what if I like spending time with her on our off days from adventuring when she’s around.” Louie stated with a smile.

“I called Boyd, he’s flying towards the disturbance and is on the lookout for trouble.” Huey stated as he and Louie looked to Dewey. “Wait… he says it’s not reading like a time-nado in energy at least, but he’s just spotted Phantom Blot and the eggheads heading our way. He’s going to try and delay them from the air.”

“I called Fenton and Gandra… they slept in the lab again. They’ll be on their way soon with Big Hero Six’s Ms. Shuttle. Gyro said whatever is causing those is clouds is making them cover all of Duckberg. The cloud cover is going to ruin communications, something about increasingly worsening atmospheric interference. We better make all the calls to action while we can.” Followed Dewey, he then got wide eyed as he heard something on his device. “Magica De Spell is active in the area, Gandra just spotted her looking around for something and she’s coming in from the opposite direction of the Phantom Blot right towards us!”

“I got in touch with our contacts in Saint Canard…” The big old lady Beakley stated with a bit of worry. “Darkwing Duck and Quiverwing Quack are currently trailing some mercenaries heading towards the middle of those swirling clouds, they recently ran into said mercenaries that were snooping around Saint Canard and were heavily armed and have military grade combat vehicles. Said vehicles have just entered the city from the outskirts. I just informed them what the mercenaries might be after, we have a quite a crisis building, it’s not world destroying yet, but it is getting there.”

“Well this is going to be a right mess! May, June, Beakley and Donald will intercept the Phantom Blot. Boys, Webby, your with Della and will try to intercept Magica from achieving whatever goal she’s up to. Everyone try to get Blot and his goons to deal with Magica for us. Smolder, Ocellus and Dolly, you three are to head off with Launchpad and Lena towards where Pom is as quickly as possible and find out what’s going on at ground zero.” That sounded like the most dangerous thing to do Scrooge, which was where I was going to go anyway. “Don’t get me wrong. I know how ridiculous it sounds to have you running towards what is probably the most dangerous sounding thing around at the moment, but it generally has worked out for us more often than not before. Duckworth, watch the mansion and protect our guest.”

“Of course sir.” The ghost dog biped said when he appeared while bowing to Scrooge.

Huh, I thought he was kidding about the ghost butler thing… that’s cool.

You know, it says a lot about my life as it is now that I can find a real ghost to be something of a relatively uninteresting sight.

“We’ll get right on it Mr. McD, come on, let’s go Team Launchpad!” About time, the bulky looking Launchpad gut started leading the way out the door. Only to be stopped by a ridiculous sight. “Hey Mr. McD, are the sharks with helicopter backpacks and lasers strapped to their heads part of our plans?”

“Glomgold.” All the other ducks said at once while running their hands down their beaks in a single simultaneous motion.

I don’t know who that is, but they certainly were using cartoonish ideas in real life levels of insanity when they were wielding flying sharks with lasers beams firing everywhere. I would be more scared if they weren’t horrible inaccurate and the aquatic creatures were nowhere near close enough to the ground to bite at us. There was someone riding on one of the sharks and laughing madly, probably the Glomgold guy.

“Just ignore him and get going Launchpad before…” Scrooge said as some shorter heavyset duck dropped to the ground on his face, he hopped up and was about to say something when a second group of weaponized animals appeared.

“Hey, guess what, I got an idea to strap weapons to animals and have them flying around all over the place as an army to… oh come on, I thought I was being original for once!” The grey parrot biped that just showed up on a balance scooter had brought a bunch drones carrying squirrels that looked to be armed with flamethrowers. Said flamethrowers were firing off as randomly as the lasers and the squirrels seemed to be having fun with their drones. One of the sharks flew at one of the drones and bit a squirrel off of it and then the two groups started actively fighting one another, there were more squirrels than sharks, but the sharks had the size and hunger advantage, also who knew that burnt shark could smell so good? That’s when the guy looked my way and notice Dormarch in the strap to my skateboard. “Oh hey, isn’t that that device from Khan Industries?! I want that, give it here like a good doggy… agh!”

Lena rolled her eyes and blasted the parrot guy off his scooter with a beam of magic and he went flying straight into the mess of flying sharks and squirrels in front of the mansion, he was subsequently hit by numerous lasers from all directions and narrowly missed being burned by several of his own squirrels.

“I’d have thought those lasers would be more effective than that, I need to talk to Emil Eagle about this and making them properly lethal!” The short stumpy duck pulled out a phone and turned away from us and all that was going on around him without a care in the world that he could possibly get hurt. “Hey Emil, yeah it’s Glommy, your lasers aren’t nearly lethal enough. Yes they burn, but they just don’t have the puncturing power that I wanted so that this would end in Scrooge’s demise.”

“I think they’re painful enough already!” The parrot guy said as he was finally lit ablaze by one his drone riding squirrels and started to run around screaming in an annoyingly high pitched tone that hurt my ears.

“Look ignore those two and move, we’ll deal with their obvious insanity problems later!” Huey yelled and we did that just that and ran past all the chaos without getting hit once by any of the sharks, lasers or aerosol flame sprayers.

Huh…. Aerosol? Why is that word sticking around in my head? No, stop getting distracted by all the insane stuff going on, I needed to go save Pom! Note to self, ask my sister Da Vinci if she ever used her spray paint as a weapon…

“Pom’s in serious danger, let’s move it!” For them it would be their first time, I’ve saved Pom’s backside several times already. I’m not about to fail her this time when she was fighting for her life or that’s the feeling I’m getting from her right now.

“She said we need to rescue Pom immediately!” As Dormarch spoke for me, I ran forward across the grass pulled my skateboard from my back and leapt through the open gate to hit the street.

I was going to head towards the park and nothing could get in my way. I wasn’t going to slow down for anyone or anything.

I was ignoring everything else as I blitzed my way down the street bouncing off awnings, grinding along bike railings, ramping off the slopes of car roofs and somehow I was getting into a really good groove of moving from point to point as I continued forward picking up speed. It was like I could already feel the path before me.

“Huh, what is it Boyd?” Pulling out her phone, Lena was right next to me and easily keeping up with my frantic pace after she had magically changed her clothing into some kind of blue and white super hero suit. She was flying with me as we sped towards the park together. “What? Blot’s group is changing course, but why would they… then Blot is either targeting me or… our newest friends. At least Smolder and Ocellus can fly. That Blot guy must really have it out for them, only this time Ocellus is awake. Donald’s group will handle interception, don’t worry about it bot boy.”

“Yes, but do you think you can handle me Lena?” Hearing that voice coming at us from above, I skidded to a stop as a blast of magic slammed into the street in front of me and Lena darted to the side in the air dodging a beam of magic firing her way. There weren’t many people out and about this morning and traffic seemed light, but that was understandable if the people of Duckberg were used to disasters like this and were actively hiding from it. The hovering duck that attacked us held a staff with a purple gem and she was looking towards me with a nasty expression and what few people that were still out suddenly disappeared into the nearest buildings in fear. “So that is the cause of that magical disturbance, not an artifact but a… a lowly dog and a Dalmatian at that? A mutt has the kind of power that someone such as me felt it? What could a lowly beast have done to have caused such a reaction that those involved in the world of magic felt it from miles away? Don’t know why our De Ville cousins always have so much trouble with you spotted mongrels, but I assure you I won’t be having any!”

I growled at the hovering duck and was about to give her a skateboard upside the head, when Lena moved between us. I already knew De’ Spell’s were related to De Ville’s, but just hearing her voice set off some instincts in me that she needed to go down and hard. She felt like Cruella De Ville when she attacked my family, only she looked much younger.

“Magica, leave Dolly alone or you’ll have to answer to me.” Lena had her arms crossed and she was glaring up at the staff wielding duck. “In fact, I’m just going to make sure you’ll have to go through me first to even get a chance of hurting her.”

“Hmm… let me think about that… how about… no!” The duck slung her staff forward and Lena blocked a beam of magical energy for me with a sweep of her left hand creating a shield. “If the magical power I felt is what I think it is, then I want that little fountain of power all to myself so I can get Scrooge’s number one dime, then the world! Also maybe my brother… but who cares about him at this point?”

“Not going to happen, Dolly go!” Didn’t need to tell me twice Lena, I lunged my board forward down the street and continued making my way towards the park.

Ocellus and Smolder had to be flying in the air somewhere nearby to either watch out for me or be ahead of me and getting to the park quicker, so I didn’t worry about them if that Blot guy was after them. As for that Launchpad guy… well he was going to be a bit slow with keeping up if he was just doing a lot of running.

After turning two street corners, I quickly kicked my board upwards, dropped behind it and braced myself as I pressed the nose of it into the street. Bullets filled the air in front of me and struck my board with multiple impacts that threatened to knock me over, I eventually found my balance and held up to the onslaught.

“Boss, I’ve confirmed that Caper Canine has the device!” One of the mercenary guys in the group ahead of me shouted.

“I still want an eyeball out for Leap Lamb’s whereabouts, one is never without the other for too long!” A snow leopard shouted as she aimed a gun my and fired a shot that deflected off my helmet and knocked my head back. I stumbled several steps and managed to keep my skateboard in front of my body and taking bullets for me. Okay, my neck seriously hurts now and I wasn’t ever going to appreciate the person that just gave me whiplash, at least I learned that my helmet was bullet proof. “We need to keep Caper Canine pinned, we cannot let her or this opportunity for bait to lure Leap Lamb to us get away! Someone circle around and get the dog from the side or behind.”

I peeked around my board and quickly pulled back avoiding a bullet that struck my board harmlessly, I just saw some guys running down an alleyway to my left.

Had I not being wearing this helmet, I think the shot the leopard just fired would have taken off the top of my skull completely.

“Dolly, that snow leopard with the mercenaries, she’s the one that almost succeeded in killing Pom back in Zootopia and Ms. Shuttle said she attacked her again in San Fransokyo!” Thanks for the information Dormarch. “We need to lose them like yesterday.”

“Well what do you expect me to do Dormarch? They have guns and I’m not exactly in a good position to get by or even at them.” I could hold up to gunfire for a while, but not forever and I don’t do well under pressure. “I’m effectively pinned here.”

At least I was doing much better than I thought I was, all the training Pom was giving me between these bouts of insanity would help with surviving stuff like this.

When I tried to slowly move, they pounded my skateboard with bullets. I couldn’t brace against my board forever and they would have someone on me from the side soon too.

“Hold on, give me a second to think of something… hey watch out for the nearby rooftops, someone’s up there Dolly!” Doing as Dormarch said I poked my head out and scanned the nearby rooftops. I think I saw a silhouette of a duck doing something up there and quickly pulled my head back to feel a bullet whizzed by my right ear.

“Don’t let her move from that spot, she’s far more dangerous than she actually looks!” Really don’t know what that leopard’s problem was.

A few seconds later something exploded and a bright flash shined from around my skateboard, when I looked the mercenaries were all disoriented and some were even knocked over. A blonde haired duck rappelled off the nearby building and looked like she was running around and… stealing their wallets? She also kicked the leopard in the crotch while she was down as she stole some of her grenades, said leopard had taken the brunt of the blast and I think the duck was a friend.

“Is this all the money you mercenaries have, seriously? You’d seriously think at least some of you would have something worth stealing on you.” The duck commented as she pulled the money from their wallets and pocketed it. She leapt up and kicked the gun out of the leopard’s left hand as she sat up. “How have you been since you left me for dead in Morocco and holding the bag Sabu?”

“Golden Oldie, you should be dead!” The leopard growled out from the ground while rubbing at her eyes with her right hand.

“Dolly, focus, into that alleyway on your right!” Dormarch shouted at me.

Right not looking a gift Pearl in the mouth if I ever saw her again. So shaking my head and ignoring the thoughts about my favorite horse officer I liked to annoy, I moved as the mercenaries were distracted by the thieving biped duck.

I made my way forward and weaved to the right between two parked cars, onto the sidewalk and into an alleyway, I heard a frustrated scream behind me as a few bullets cracked the walls of the alleyway behind me. Once I rushed out of the Alleyway, I planned to skate away as fast as I could from the situation, only I didn’t get a chance to as I felt something roughly grab my board.

I looked up as I was lifted into the air and blinked at the sight of what could only be a harpy trying to wrestle my skateboard from my paws. Huh, they certainly looked different from ones in my dorky brother Dylan’s Poodle Wolf game and it was far cooler to meet one in person anyway, provided it didn’t eat me.

Is Duckberg always this crazy or is it just my luck when I’m trying to save Pom again? Speaking of Pom, she was currently quite in a bit of pain, a burning sensation and under some light?

“Hey, you, beak face, let go of my board or else!” The biped looking bird monster just cackled at me and tried to shake me loose, my strap kept me in the game as I dangled high over the street.

A fireball hit the tip of the birds left wing, making it let go of my skateboard and subsequently me. I fell into a pair of waiting claws. I was about to struggle when I noticed it was Smolder and what I think might to be Ocellus.

“Hey, we got your back Dolly, don’t panic!” Smolder said with a bright smile and the match blue variation of her on my other side. “Man the harpies in this world look really strange.”

Glad I wasn’t the only one that thought the harpies were weird.

“Right, it seems like we’re in for a pretty bad day today Smolder.” Ocellus mumbled while not being as positive given she was looking at the grey sky. “Stop, I don’t want to go near that kind of malice again!”

Ocellus looked a bit ill as we landed on a nearby roof and she curled up as soon as she let go of me. Smolder squeezed her shoulder as she whimpered and hugged herself while shivering violently.

“There are things over there and I don’t feel like getting any closer to them!” It seemed like Ocellus was having a panic attack. I moved over and started to comfort her with a hug, a loving nuzzle and a few licks. Her breathing calmed down a little bit, that always worked with my smaller brothers and sisters. “Thank you…”

“No problem.” I grinned and Dormarch stated it for me even if he didn’t have to, I’m pretty sure Ocellus would have gotten the gist of it anyway.

I got up and made my way over to the roofs edge and then looked at the park in the distance that seemed fairly dark, where were all the lights? I felt Pom in extreme pain and an image of getting crushed by a… whoa what is that thing?!

I immediately sent her some energy from my side of our bond and we saw a bright light erupt in the park in the distance from about two blocks away. She could already use my magic better than I could, then again I really haven’t been using magic for most of my life so I really shouldn’t be making that comparison.

How much more trouble could I run into in two blocks? I really should not have had that thought… this is the luck of my friends we’re talking about here and they have been through a lot on finding their way home.

“Should I go ahead?” I turned to Smolder who was currently comforting Ocellus.

“Yeah, this going to take a bit, I think Ocellus may be experiencing some form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” Thinking about what Dormarch said, I barked at Smolder and pulled him off my strap to toss him to Smolder. She caught Dormarch and gave me a curious look. “I think Dolly wants me to help Ocellus with her trauma.”

“I can’t stop here, because I… whoa! Pom… doesn’t that hurt?!” I voiced to the air as I felt what Pom just did to herself.

“What did Pom do this time?” Smolder held her cowering friend and Dormarch looking worried.

“She just lit herself on fire, at least her front hooves, the flames are hovering more around her ankles of her rear hooves and she’s fighting off these shadowy things.” Okay, I didn’t know Pom was nearly that nuts.

“Yep, she’s gone the way of a true lambkin in being afraid of their surroundings, I think whatever it is from Equus that she’s fighting must have pushed her to do it.” Ocellus mumbled between her bouts of whining and crying.

“Yeah, but she’s acting calmer than that… what am I standing around here for!” I leapt over the side of the building and used my skateboard to grapple a light pole to swing forward into doing a flip, upon landing I was once again accosted by mercenaries.

“We found her, but she doesn’t have the device anymore!” Groaning and rolling my eyes at the mercenary, I whipped my board into his chest after a leap. “Gah!”

Following that up by spinning around while grabbing and holding my board up to block a spray of bullets, I charged the next guy by running up the first guys legs and leaping off his shoulder.

-The World-

It was all so entertaining.

Author's Note

I've been really quite lethargic lately, hope I'm not coming down with something. That or I'm losing my focus for wanting to write, my willpower is great, but not nearly infinite.

149. Matchstick.

Author's Note

Music: Through the Fire and the Flames, long version, Dragonforce.

149. Matchstick.

-????, Oleander-

“You… you really think I can be a hero?” The green haired kid looked hopeful.

“Sure thing, but there’s a lot of ways one can be a hero.” I stated bluntly as I looked at Fred after he was busy chewing on the soul from the sludge monster that nobody was going to miss anytime soon. “Just… don’t expect Fred to be a very good hero, though he can do heroic things if it benefits him.”

“Why wouldn’t I do heroic things when it benefits me? I ENJOY THE PAIN AND SUFFERING OF MY ENEMIES!” The kid seemed shaken up by the switch to the speaking all languages at once thing demons did to freak people out.

“You know, you could help him with it, being a hero I mean.” Looking curiously at Dust Man when he made that suggestion, wait… why is Dust Man with us again? Oh right, I was helping him with getting away from his overly depressing life. “You said you had a dimension that you tend to train in right?”

“Yes, but the last time we were there… my friend Butt here kind of did an awkward thing to one of the more lethal indigenous species to that realm. There are a few reasons why we shouldn’t use that world for your training Mister…?” I trailed off while looking to the kid.

“Mioriya Izuku, call me Izuku.” He said clapping his hands together and bowed to us. “Please I’d do just about anything to become a hero!”

-Xenomorph dimension-

A xenomorph drone couldn’t recall why it woke up on the floor feeling weird many days ago.

The xenomorph had no clue what was wrong with it, but it’s been in quite a bit of pain for a while and the other xenomorphs were curiously staring at it.

“Scree?” The Xenomorph looked to its chest and felt an indescribable amount pain, a pair of horns ripped out of its chest.

Said horns were soon followed by a squealing little foal, made entirely of diamond, completely erupting out of it while flailing its tiny hooves into the air and whinnying loudly.

The black banana headed monster fell backwards and died in a pool of its own acid blood.

The pandoran bicorn crawled out of it sniffing the air. Quickly shaking the mostly harmless molecular acid off its protective molecular diamond skin, the foal galloped into the nearby ducts.

The sound of another xenomorph dying an agonizing death could be heard seconds later, before things became very quiet.

“Scree-eee!?” One of the other xenomorphs stated while staring at the vent in clear shock, which when roughly translated into Equus meant ‘what the buck?’ in their screeching language.

-Earth, Duckberg Park, Pom-

“Through my fire and flames.” I charged forward and dodged under shadow Paprika’s lunge, I spun around shadow Arizona’s disturbing rope like tongue, I dove past a right hook delivered from a familiar hoof of my copy and narrowly avoided the leaping and biting shadow puppies that followed her, I rolled into a slide between the two legs of shadow Fred and charged down the most problematic of all these shadows. I kicked up into the air and flew over a diving Hollow Heart who followed me with his eyes as his scything wings missed me. “I carry on!”

My hooves created a trail of heated air as I closed in on my first target I needed to bring down, the red eyes of Shadow Velvet flew wide open as she didn’t have time to drop her shards and create an ice spike. Firing her shards at this range meant she would miss.

I slammed a left hook that created three flaming claws marks seared into her face and splatters drops of viscous fluid all over my left leg most of which burned up in the flames on my left hoof. My right hoof rammed forward into her chest making her gasp lifting her up onto her hind legs, my left hind leg came up and struck her stomach doubling the shadow over and then I slung right hoof uppercut into her chin.

She went flying into a tree and bounced off of it, by then I was already underneath her and facing the other shadows and simply thrust my left hoof straight to feel a weight land on it.

Looking up I saw the look on Shadow Velvet’s face as three flaming claws erupted out of her back. Reaching up with my right hoof to get a grip on her, slung her forward at the feet of the other shadows charging toward me.

Shadow Velvet had a look of horror her face and her breathe was quickening and I could see the fear in her eyes as she laid on the ground bleeding a strange substance and specks of light started shining from her wounds. She was no longer capable of attacking me, but the others still were.

Shadow Paprika came at me next, seemingly shrinking to a certain size as the rest of her mass focused into her right limb as she slung it forward and it stretched out for me. I was already charging forward, my left hoof raised and ducking under the mass.

She pulled back the mass and then slung out her left limb, I spun to the left twice and out of the way of the mass.

“Mach lefter!” I slammed my hoof into the shadows face so fast that her head caught fire and snapped to the left with a crack as if there were possible bones in her neck threatening to shatter from the blow. She barely stayed on her hooves and stumbled to my right slightly from the blow showing clear surprise in her blood red eyes.

As her mass started to return I was already jabbing at away at her chest and belly with my front hooves, when her mass fully returned she finally blocked and started wobbling. My eyes darted to the right and then left.

She slammed both her hooves forward at me and I blocked with my right leg and grunted at the pain shooting throughout it as the bones in my leg creaked. My entire body shuddered as I rammed my left hoof straight into the top of a charging Shadow Arizona’s skull.

Shadow Arizona went flying and her flailing body snapped a tree in half, I deflect the left hoof strike Shadow Paprika sent at me with my right hoof and she visibly grimaced in pain at the heat of the flames my hooves were covered in.

That moment was long enough for me to grab her leg twisted it outwards to… my eyes snapped to the right. I inhaled, then calmly exhaled.

Lifting my flaming left hind leg, I pivoted Shadow Paprika’s left side while dragging her hoof behind her back with my right hoof, I snapped out my left hind leg to the left side of an incoming Shadow Tianhuo’s face.

I flexed my spine and leaned backwards in front of the shadow alpaca, with a jerk of my right hoof I caused Shadow Paprika’s face to come close to mine and I gave her a teasing kiss on the nose. The Shadow Paprika went cross eyed and her left eye twitched as she froze up completely paralyzed.

Pressing my burning left hoof against the stunned Shadow Paprika’s chest at her heart, I activated my magic claws to gain purchase on her body and lifted both my hind legs off the ground before the shadow puppies could bite at my heels.

After slamming my rear hooves down on backs of the two shadow puppies, I lifted them both againg and bucked the still rolling in slow motion Tianhuo in the chin and I felt her jaw shattered under the blow in a shower of flames from my hind legs as she went tumbling away.

Using the blow from bucking Tianhuo to flip backwards, I also used my current momentum to twist Shadow Paparika’s left front leg in such a way that I was able to get my left leg into better position on her right shoulder where I had the flaming claws clench painfully.

My momentum plus my grip on Shadow Paprika had me lifting her up and slamming her down on top of Shadow Pom and the two other shadow puppies behind me with a painful crushing force as I fell backwards.

Letting go of Shadow Paprika I rolled backwards up and over her form, then rolled two more times as I avoided three scything swings slashes of Hollow Heart’s wings he chased me down. At least up until I was on my hind legs.

He quickly flew back when I missed throwing a two hoofed rightward swinging haymaker for his face.

This is when the world returned to normal speed, as did the intensity of the pain I was in form the flames wreathing my legs.

I was struck in the chest and coughed up flecks of red barely visible in the light of the flames on my worsening burns as I backed up from Shadow Arizona, she lashed out her tongue and it slammed into the left side of my face turning my head into her left upper hoof.

My left eye was swollen from the blow from the tongue, but not completely shut. The next blow to my face left me bleeding from my nose on my side on the ground propped up on my front left knee as to not set fire to the grass. Even losing this seemingly meager amount of blood was becoming too much for me as Shadow Fred, raised his arms above his head behind me and was about to bring them down.

In front of me was Shadow Arizona and the two puppies I had hit with Shadow Paprika’s body charging me. Shadow Tianhuo swooped forward building flames upon her hooves and dark flames that sucked the light out of the surroundings the closer she got.

I rolled to the right flicked two jabs to knock away the shadows puppies, I ducked under the flames coming at me from above as I charge forward and hopped over the tongue lashing out for my hind legs from Shadow Arizona.

Landing in a crouch before the shadow cow, I threw a hopping right uppercut to start slamming Arizona with repeated flimsy rolling uppercuts that staggered her with each blow, making her back up with each hit.

One more leftward uppercut and I hopped to the left as a claw swiped for my back and my hind left leg was hit with burning dark flames making my already burning limb even worse.

Sweat fell from my brow as I stomped my left hind leg sending up dust and dirt to put out the flames on both my hind legs, I crouched and pushed backwards head first into the belly of Shadow Fred. I flexibly shifted my hind legs, the pain in them made it hard to kick off of shadow demon’s stomach before Shadow Pom could nail me with a flying buck.

All four of my hooves met Shadow Poms face and I kicked hard, flipping off of her and over Arizona. A flash of a swooping shadow made me immediately fluff out the portions of my wool to stop dead in the air and slicing scythe shaped wing slashed me across the forehead. I bucked Hollow across the face with my hind legs and promptly fell to the ground on my back with an even worse facial wound.

Every motion was taking its toll on my body, every breath invited daggers to stab my insides and the ends of all my legs were pain and suffering. I still rolled and forced myself onto my hind legs as Shadow Fred brought his left fist down, he was surprised to see my left hoof slashing flaming claws across the shadows terrifying mask like face.

I gritted my teeth and leapt away from all the shadows and landed on the pavement of the sidewalk near, I had to take down more of them.

The Shadow Velvet was out of the fight, given the glance I just sent her made her recoil and cower. It was still curious that shadows could be afraid, what am I actually fighting here? These weren’t normal mindless shadow monsters that devoured everything around them. They could hesitate, they could bleed, they understood fighting… my heart went out to them, but I wanted to live.

Shadow Pom was the closest to going down and the four Shadow Puppies looked to be vaguely wary of charging me again. Shadow Fred held no fear despite the damage I dealt to his face again, he was too powerful to face head on... hmm. Shadow Tianhuo looked like she had a broken jaw and was looking like she was stoically willing to stay in the fight. Shadow Arizona’s face had seen better days, but she had a hide similar to Arizona, but not quite the same. Hollow Heart had no injuries despite any blows I may have landed on him.

Shadow Paprika, just stood off to the side looking between the other shadows and me with despair, she turned and looked to Velvet and started moving towards her. She knelt down and started to hug and comfort her, Shadow Velvet looked surprised and eventually she raised a hoof weakly and stroked the shadow alpaca’s face.

Hollow Heart ignored what Shadow Paprika was doing, his focus and intent to kill was solely on me, making him ignore what I just saw.

I was beginning to understand what made each and every single one of these shadows tick, to my horror these things I was fighting were thinking and feelings beings and not just the mindless world devouring shadow monsters.

Running towards them I focused my good eye on Arizona as my left was almost fully swollen shut, they spread out and Arizona came at me too ready to attack.

If I was right and both my intuition and profiling abilities weren’t lying then… I ducked under her rightward swing my right flaming hoof grabbed her right hind leg. My left flaming leg went down on it as I good grasp on her leg as I continued running forward on my hind legs and then I swung her around to throw her at Shadow Tianhuo knocking her from the air.

I brought both my hooves together and feinted an overhead attack, Shadow Pom went to block high and her dogs bit into my hind legs and it was exceptionally painful on my burnt flesh. I ignored all that as I wrapped my hooves around the other Pom’s torso bringing our heads close to one another.

“We’re not the same… you’re not me and you shouldn’t be trying to be, you can still be you. Baa-Ram-Ewe, I recognize you as a lambkin. I beg of you... please stay away from the rest of this fight.” I whispered to the battered Shadow Pom as I gently hugged her and lifted her into the air pulling her back and to the right, there were tears in my eyes. “You deserve to live as much as I do.”

Her eyes widened and she gave me an undefined look as I twisted around to throw her. I was ignoring the puppies still digging their fangs into my hind legs and clinging to me as I harshly pivoted clockwise.

Our eyes locked onto one another, Shadow Pom frowned and gave me a light nod before I sent her sailing in Shadow Paprika and Velvet’s direction. She tumbled and one of her legs bent in a way that meant it was obviously broken, she closed her eyes and her mouth tightened as she bled on the ground like Shadow Velvet.

The puppies let go and frantically ran towards her leaving me bleeding from my hind legs, when Shadow Pom eventually opened her eyes there was a new light in them as she gave me a grim if brave look. Her eyes flicked to the left before returning back to mine.

That was all the hint I would get to duck.

Shadow Fred swept his massive claws where my head used to be and I’m fairly sure the blow would have taken my head off had it landed. I did a leaping cartwheeled to the left and away from the three downed shadows to draw the still standing shadows my way.

One thing these unusual shadows respected was both strength and conviction.

Only three left, but could I really take Shadow Fred? Something was up with him. Shadow Arizona I had figured out and could remove her with one sharp hit to her weak point, as for Shadow Tianhuo… I was going have to save her for last for personal reasons.

My front hooves were agonized as I forced more wool to them to keep the fire going, but the flames were starting to peter out and flicker. Everything was getting colder despite how much my skin blistered from the heat.

Shadow Fred went bright his left claw in an overhead strike for me, I rolled towards Shadow Arizona and she lunged with her left hoof going for a straight to the belly. My roll ended on my back and lashed out both my hind legs low and straight into her large udders, her eyes widened and her pupils shrunk as she flew back… even Shadow Arizona had bigger udders than the actual Arizona and that was a major problem for her.

Shadow Arizona landed on her butt and skidded in the grass, she didn’t move as I ran forward and slammed a flying buck into her chest that sent her tumbling towards the other shadows sitting off to the side.

Landed on my back for the umpteenth time in this fight, I rolled to the left to avoid being stomped on by Shadow Fred. This was followed by twisting my slightly body into rolling a different direction before Hollow Heart could split me open from my belly to neck and with a bit of finagling I rolled into standing on my hind legs again facing Shadow Tianhuo.

I inhaled, brought my still burning front hooves together and then bowed my head to her, then I looked at her with a glare in my right eye. She stopped her forward movement and the darkness flames on her hooves stopped building, she landed and her flaming dark wings flickered out of existence. She stared at me sternly and stood waiting as I turned to face Shadow Fred.

Shadow Tianhuo bowed her head, good, she understood my gesture.

Shadow Fred, moving fast, came at me and I slashed my hooves at him arms as I moved into his attack and under his face. I thrust my right hoof straight up into his chin and he stumbled back, I kicked off the ground and slashed at the other two eyes as fast as I could.

A blur of flaming claws ripped into the mask until a though occurred, why was Fred a mask? My left hoof gripped the top edge of the mask and I propped my hind legs against his chest while grabbing the other side of it with my right hoof. Shadow Fred grabbed at my spine and started crushing it in it's left claw.

I heaved and the mask came off and dissipated, taking away almost all of Shadow Oleander’s strength wasn’t too hard for me to figure out as she wasn't made to fight in her base form.

As the shadow behind the mask immediately shrunk down to a unicorn and her two red eyes were wide as I came down and brought both my hooves down on her horn. She let out a raspy sound as her mouth opened in a silent scream as face dug a furrow into the ground.

I hit the ground rolling forward behind her, skidded to a stop, turned around to run forward and leap into the air before flipping and bringing my left rear hoof down on her spine, then I snapped my right leg down and Shadow Oleander spine cracked and she went limp.

I kicked off her body sending it flopping away in a specific direction.

Landing on both my hind legs, I brought up my front legs. They were suffering beyond first degree burns at this point, getting closer to second as the nerve endings in my legs screamed at me to put the fire out.

I gestured with my right hoof towards myself, before lift my left leg off the ground and bouncing in place. Traditional Dancing Flame stance, Shadow Tianhuo matched me a second later.

“Ferocious…” I charged forward. “Fiery…”

Shadow Tianhuo matched my movements, she started up her own fiery flurry attack. Unfortunately for her, my attack would be a modified version.

“Flurry… Fury! Arooo-~.” I howled as I closed my eyes and just pushed into my attack with all I had, I could feel our attacks effectively blocking one another.

My front legs felt like they were going fall off as I kept pushing my flaming hooves one strike after another as hard as I could as fast as I could feasibly push them, I could feel the heat coming off both of us and we were both being scorched by swirling light and dark in equal parts.

There was a small problem here for Shadow Tianhuo though, for every one of my strikes she blocked the erupting magical claws bypassed her onslaught and tore into her.

I continued howling as I felt portions of wool around my body burned, the blunt trauma started pounding bruises into me as my wool stopped being armor after a certain point. Whatever I was currently feeling, I just knew she was getting at least three times as much back.

“oooooooo-“ The sound of my howl could be heard echoing throughout the city.

It felt like wolves were leaping off my hooves and clawing at Shadow Tianhuo, soon the onslaught against me slowly petered out and I kept pushing until…

My howl didn’t died on my lips, it just disappeared into nothingness as if I had never howled at all.

I opened my right eye and stopped in one last instant… somewhere in my flurry of attacks my right hoof had burnt out, literally my right leg was burnt so badly I could hardly move it.

The last light of my still burning left leg, flickered as it was held before Tianhuo’s face… her green scales, her flaming mane and a bright if simply smile.

I slowly shook my head of the image and the vision turned into a bloody looking Shadow Tianhuo who was smiling as she slowly went from barely stand up on her hind hooves to slowly laying herself down on her back. Vicious claw markings littered her body entire body, yet she smiled at me so serenely with a broken jaw.

Taking a step to the left and the scything right wing of Hollow Heart barely nicked the right side of my face. Using the last bit of burning flames on my left hoof, I was about to give Hollow Heart whatever passes for a black eye with all my sorrow, frustration and ruined hopes for this day.

My left hoof flickering like a matchstick against the last shadow left to fight, my hoof clawed straight into his right eye with the clear intent to scar it for making me fight these shadows of my friends and myself.

Hollow Heart was sent bouncing across the ground past Shadow Tianhuo, he tried to right himself, he tried to stay upright and eventually flopped onto his side tearing through the grass of the park.

Eventually Hollow Heart stood up, he opened his eyes, his right eye had healed fast. Only... the right side of his face had three white glowing scars that didn’t look like they would heal over.

Hollow frowned, reaching up with his hoof, upon feeling the scares he glared at me. I had finally done some real damage to his pride. Too bad for me, I really don’t know how much more of a fight I could put up as he came flying at me angry.

I was bleeding out, all four of my legs were all badly burned, my hooves were cracked, I had fracturing bones, I could only see out my right eye as my left refused to open and I could hardly do any fluffmancy now. Not like my wool could protect me before as Hollow Heart has shown he could cut through it. My breathing was haggard, my body was giving out on me and if I didn’t another dancing flame maneuver like that last one… yeah… I’m spent.

“… ” Calmly I brought up both my front hooves, my right leg wavering in it's unsteady movement and narrowed my right eye.

Both his wings scythed forward.

He looked surprised when both my hooves caught them and they came to a dead stop he tried to press the scythes forward and they didn’t move an inch as he ended up standing before me on his hind legs.

His front legs prepped to attack me, only I moved first.

I pulled my forehead back and used what little magical strength I had left in me to harden my wool before slamming my forehead into his nose with a sickening crunch that sent him skidding backwards with surprising force.

Add total magic exhaustion to the list.

“I’m not… dying… to you.” I tried to keep my voice steady as my throat felt raw as I saw him stumble into falling on his backside with a broken nose that was quickly restructuring itself and healing already.

I could faintly hear Dolly screaming for me to hold on, as a still strong Hollow Heart finally came at me fully with rage.

150. Dynamic Dalmatian.

-Earth, Rooftop, Early Morning, Dormarch-

“Look Ocellus, I’m sure Pom will be… yeah I can’t actually say it. She draws trouble like they were moths and she was a flame.” Yeah, I wasn’t good at the whole physical comforting thing given I don’t have a body. “I may not be well attuned to your odd biology, but you seem to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Is there any way I can assist you and Smolder?”

“I can recognize that well enough Dormarch, but there’s tons of malice in the air and I’m having terrifying flashbacks to the last few times I was incapacitated by such high concentrations of hatred for anything living. Only it’s far worse given this is confirmed as a being from Equus causing me to feel this, I can recognize the feel of the magic of our world even if it is giving off such a racid flavor!” Oh right, Ocellus could taste emotions. I wonder if she could taste mine, not important as she was having a panic attack and the dragon Smolder was helping her through it. “I’m sorry I’m so weak Smolder and that we let Dolly run off to help Pom by herself.”

“Well okay, but I don’t think you are weak. I can somewhat understand why you’re having these reactions. I can’t exactly feel what you can though, if it feels that awful then we’ll wait until it goes away or we need to move.” Smolder glances at me. “If it’s the latter then we’ll head further away, we’ll be keeping Dormarch here safe for Pom too!”

“Thank you, I may not have been in your acquaintance for long, but I am happy that Pom has people that can and will look out for her.” Since I knew Pom hardly has the chance to care for herself at times.

I wondered how Dolly is doing.

-In the streets, Dolly Dalmatian-

I swept my board around the guys left heel and pulled his leg out from under him, making him off balance.

Swinging around for his helmet, I knocked it off entirely to reveal a panicking face. The guy was now on his back and I was swinging the board overhead and down onto his face for a painful sounding impact. Left him with a slightly broke his nose and didn’t even give him any time to take aim at me.

Yanking my board back to me and onto my back, I panted roughly and looked around me. Bullet impacts pockmarked ground and various buildings. Eight unconscious people and them all armed mercenaries, I was a little shocked at how well that went.

One would think a single Dalmatian wouldn’t be able to deal with those odds, but I’ve become awesome and I know it!

I flowed into every attack, my motions getting faster and I could keep up with everything. I had effectively started dodging bullets halfway into that mess and taken down all the mercenaries without accidentally getting any of them killed or getting hurt myself.

Right, not the time to think about that I had to get to Pom now that these bozos were out of the way. I turned and started to head down the street when I was intercepted by another group.

“It should be right… there? A dog… it’s a dog with that kind of magical power?!” The guy in the inky black cloak didn’t look to happy to see me as he turned the corner, much less the fact that I had knocked out several mercenaries in a wild blitz. “Pepper we need to deal with this problem immediately!”

“Right behind you sir!” Neither did his oddly dressed assortment of guys in yellow and red suits wearing what looked like cracked eggshells on their heads.

Didn’t one of the groups go after these guys specifically? At least they didn’t have guns, maybe just some muscles and possibly some brains between all of them.

I quickly leapt to the left avoiding a beam of green energy coming from the thing on the right hand of the main guy with the glowing green eyes. Yeah, not feeling like it would be a good idea to be hit by that without an expert around to save me!

Turning, I brought my board around with my right paw and leapt forward to ride it towards and through alleyway that was to my left. I kicked with my left hind paw as quickly as I could while avoiding the blasts the guy sent after me.

“After that dog!” As the guy shouted this, I felt Pom take a nasty hit and felt the phantom pain of it personally. She really needed someone there with her like yesterday.

I shot out onto another street, after passing through what has to be the most disturbingly clean alleyway in this city, I quickly turned towards the park hoping to head towards the park those swirling clouds where my partner was fighting.

Currently I wasn’t being all too lucky right now, given what I ran into on this street.

“It’s Caper Canine!” Slamming my paws down on the front of the board as I jumped, I dropped behind it and hunkered down. Ugh… more mercenaries coming from a rather familiar looking vehicle! “Leap Lamb has to be somewhere around here!”

Yeah, leading all these mercenaries towards Pom would be bad, I had to find a way to ditch everyone that was after me. Also shouldn’t it be fairly obvious where Pom is to them? I mean the swirling clouds are kind of a dead giveaway.

I started backing away from the APC blocking my path and towards another alleyway to the left keeping my skateboard held up as a shield, surprised they weren’t firing on me yet. That’s when the inky black wearing guy came out onto the street firing another green beam of energy at me from his metal glove that I had to dodge backwards out of the way and closer to the alleyway.

“That magic doesn’t belong in this world, no magic does!” Oh great, that guy had to be some kind of magic hating fanatic.

“You tell that dog sir! Wait… did they just call her Caper Canine? Everyone get back!” Pepper the guy’s sidekick and group of people finally noticed the mercenaries with guns and quickly backed away into the alley as bullets struck around the entrance. I took advantage of both groups being distracted and moved down the nearby alleyway, only this was putting me further away from Pom who was taking a beating. “Mr. Blot, Caper Canine is getting away!”

Pounding paws down the alleyway, I came out of the next street and stopped between two cars looking around warily for something else to pop out. Hearing something from my left, I ducked down as the car to my left was blasted apart in an explosion. Thankfully my helmet and skateboard took the brunt of it for me.

“There you are, now give me your power so I can take down Scrooge McDuck!” It was that weird Magica lady that Lena stopped to fight. What happened to Lena? I growled at her as she recognizably smelled vaguely like a De Ville. Oh right, didn’t De Ville’s have cousins called De Spells? “Do you seriously think you can take me with powers you don’t understand you spotted mongrel? I would make better use of it than a simple minded mutt like you!”

Hey, I somewhat resembled that remark! I would like to think I’m intelligent enough if I can outsmart my much smarter brothers, as such there was no way I was leading this witch towards Pom.

Pom was already in enough trouble as it is and Dolly didn’t need to drop more of it right on top of her already battered friend and companion.

I jumped up and swung my skateboard at Magica by the strap, she just hovered out the way with a mocking smile.

“Hmph, is that the best you can really do? Come at me with your pathetic little plank of wood?” Oh it is on lady, nobody disses the board! “For something with magic as powerful as yours felt, you certainly are helpless.”

She fire several blasts of magic, which I quickly dodged around on the street with running leaps.

I started to pull on my magic. If she wanted it so badly, then she could have it they I’m willing to give it to her! I felt that light feeling, I couldn’t do a bark blast or those wolf claws and they seemed energy intensive for Pom to send my way so I would have to do this myself.

“Air… Motion… Flexibility…” Let’s see if I can get some air then!

I crouched down spreading my paws out like Pom does with her most impressive leaps, I leaped. I normally can jump like six feet up, a little more on the skateboard going off a ramp… what I just did felt like me bounding off a trampoline with full force.

“What?! How did that dog disappear?” The strange duck with the staff stated as she looked around on the ground for me. “They can’t have possibly figured out how to turn invisible!”

My leap had sent me rocketing upwards faster than her eyes could follow, I couldn’t keep the sudden grin off my face after I ended up as high up as I did with my flailing paws.

Sure I didn’t know how I was going to take the fall, but I have never jumped so high before on my own strength! How much more height would I get off trampolines or balloon like objects?

I gripped my skateboard and brought it back as I came down at Magica once gravity reasserted itself, while shouting my catchphrase.

“Bow-whaka-wow~!” I swung my skateboard as I came diving at the duck.

“What the… MY RIBS, WHY IS IT ALWAYS MY RIBS?!” Magica screamed after taking the blow to the chest the right side of her chest, I followed that up by slamming her downwards by kicking off her and aimed for a nearby street light. After slamming into the street, she quickly sat up pretty quickly for how painful that looked and aimed her staff my way. “You’ll pay for that!”

I swung my board upwards in my paws and hooked the horizontal bar of a street light. Not only did I swing out of the way of the blast of magic, my body sped up as I spun around the horizontal bar rapidly seeing magical sparkles lighting up all around me.

Upon unhooking my board and launching off the street light high into the air, my body seemed to have a mind of its own by somehow steering around several following magic blasts as I spiraled upwards with my board under me clutched tightly in a hug.

After my upwards momentum ceased, I aiming downwards towards the vertical portion of a light pole nearer to where the duck was, I started my dive through a number of magical bolts rolling left and right through the air with excitement building in my heart as I was actively controlling how I fell.

My actions were becoming recognizable as a flowing… ‘Motion’… a flow motion? Yeah, that sounded like what I was doing as I hooked my board on the vertical section of the street light. Being constantly trailed by glowing sparkles made the world felt warmer and more vibrant, like I was feeling and seeing things for the very first time.

After spinning around street light rapidly several time and then unhooking my board, I continued the rapid spinning motion as I shot towards the duck. Slinging my board out it in a shower of colorful sparkles as I spun like top through the air.

My first strike was her legs, toppling her into a strike to the belly putting her back on her feet and then my skateboard hit the other side of her chest with a painful crack. Finally, when I slowed down, one last twirl on my right hind leg had me sending my board ramming its way up into the underside of her beak launching her into the air.

I surprised myself by following her with a leap and smashing my board across her face with two rapid spins in the same direction I’ve been twirling, first downward and then upwards angles. My last move had me rapidly somersaulting as the duck dropped to the street, my somersaults brought my board in close as my strap stretched around me.

With one heave my board unwrapped, rose high up and came slicing down on the duck who managed to block with her staff and quickly followed that by knocking me away with a blast of magic.

Catching my blocked board, I flipped backwards and with a shower of sparkles my momentum eased up as I flailed my legs. For a second I became as floaty as Pom does when she inflates her wool and then I softly touched down on the ground standing on my hind legs.

“It seems I’ve spoken too soon about you being anything more than just a plain nuisance…” The duck grunted as she propped herself up and then started encompassing herself in a glowing aura of energy, her eyes shined brightly as she held up her staff and I readied myself for whatever she was going to do. “It seem I will have to… AGH MY RIBS, WHY!”

“I would just like to say that I appreciate dogs.” The green hoodie wearing biped duck kid, Louie, just jumped off a car and dropped kicked Magica into the ground. He pulled out a can of Pep and started to drink from it. “The really cools one especially, with sick tricks like those who would want to hurt her?”

Magica tried to raises her staff to blast him only to have it yanked out of her hands by having a yo-yo quickly wrapping around it.

“That’s my boys!” The female duck in the aviator’s cap, Della I think, shouted encouragingly as she and Huey ran up.

“Go on to the park Caper Canine, we’ll keep her away from you!” Giving Huey a bark in a questioning tone. “Lena has got a little sidetracked from Magica thanks to all the mercenaries in the area, she’ll meet you there to handle the magical monster issue!”

I threw Huey a salute and then boarded my board going towards the park, I looked back and saw Magica’s hand glow and she pulled the staff back into it as she started to fight back against the group.

It might have been my imagination, but I think someone in their team was missing.

-Rooftop water tower, Webby-

“So you’re a clone too?” Sure the guy I was talking to was obviously bad news to be around, but I had a feeling he meant me no harm. “That’s so neat!”

“Yes, but unlike you, I was trained to kill.” If this was who I thought it was, then I wanted his autograph. For he was the legendary ‘Agent 47’, going by the codename of Tobias Rieper the world’s most dangerous assassin and he’s here in Duckberg.

To think this day is already starting out to be incredible and only getting better!

“Hey, I was trained for spy work by my Granny since I was little! Sure I’m not entirely into the bloodier stuff, but I’d like to think that I can hold my own.” The guy just grunted and kept looking down the scope at something. “Who are you watching?”

“Sabu Taj.” He calmly stated.

“Wasn’t she practically named for her expertise in sabotage and avoiding assa… oh… Ooh this day is getting far wilder than any we’ve been having for a while now!” I was sitting next to Mr. Rieper and I had a serious question for him. “Would you ever take a contract out on my father?”

“Knowing who that is and the repercussions of trying, no. Before you ask, I doubt I’d want to take one out on you either, even my agency knows better than to try and touch Scrooge McDuck or his family. Not after the time he bankrupted three competing assassin agencies at the same time when they tried. He could financially buy us out before we could even get a person close to killing him.” He seemed pretty nice despite how calm he was. “Shouldn’t you be helping your family?”

“I am, by making sure an assassin isn’t aiming at them… say… can I have your autograph?” Please say yes! I give him my most eager expression.

“…” He silently turned away from his sniper rifle to stare at me. I continued to look into his cold, dead, heartless eyes with an excited grin. “Okay.”

“Yipee!” I shouted while thrusting my fists into the air and then I reached into my backpack to bring out a notebook and pen. He looked into it and raised a brow.

“Hmm… very profound collection of names you have here Ms. Vanderquack McDuck. Whatever future you have ahead of you, it will be quite bright. Provided you survive your father’s habits.” He then took my pen and signed it. “Now be a good little spy and don’t get into too much trouble without backup, also don’t sneak up on me without getting caught again. I have a reputation to uphold after all.”

-Dolly-

A few alleyways later and I was one block away when I ran into another problem, I was behind the tire of a car looking at the thugs in my way. I can already see the trees of the park, could even smell them from here too!

It was that Ocelot with four guys, the same guy with the tanks back in San Fransokyo was halting my progress and I was annoyed.

Did I have to circle around the park entirely to reach it and Pom?! You better hold on for just a little bit longer Pom, I’m almost there!

My magic was draining mentally, but the trail of violet sparkles I gave off while moving was really cool and moving around wasn’t physically taxing as long as I was actively using magic.

I still had no idea about what the ‘flexibility’ meant for me other than having been taught parkour by a squirrel, don’t think that idea was quite right or what I’m looking for. Air and Motion seem fairly obvious to me, but flexibility wasn’t as obvious.

My bond with Pom was starting to get a little worrying with how much pain she is currently experiencing, I expected more from someone who lit herself on fire unless she has become numb to most of it. I’m still a bit iffy on the reason she would do that, but it must have been necessary and I was going to see why soon enough.

“Hey, need some help Caper Canine?” Almost jumping at the sound of the voice behind me, I turned while putting my paw on the skateboard to see… a young duck in a Robin Hood get up? Red hair in a ponytail, green cap, mask and clothing, a quiver and wielding a crossbow. “Name’s Quiverwing Quack. I’m here to help and if you see someone calling himself Darkwing Duck, he’s actually better at fighting crime than he initially acts. He has a tendency to make bad first impressions, heard your friend is the person we have to thank for a lead on getting my grandpa back. Leap Lamb I believe she goes by?”

I pointed a paw around the street and towards the park and then up at the swirling clouds.

“In the middle of all this huh? Yeah, it’s a wonder they haven’t attacked her yet since they were looking around for her in Saint Canard, something big is going on here if they are ignoring something that obvious…” The duck pulled a bolt from her quiver and loaded her crossbow. She pulled out another crossbow that was already loaded with something unusual one the end of the bolt. “Do you think you can take one of those guys if I take down three of them?”

I nodded, that wouldn’t be too hard.

“Right, go after I fire my second bolt.” She moved pasted me and fire the second crossbow first and smoke filled the area, she swiftly raised and fired her other crossbow and I heard some shouts. “Don’t worry about me I’ve got this!”

I moved around the car and charged forward towards the blinded group and leapt high up into the air, let’s see if I can pull off another dynamic move! I flipped and started riding my skateboard down towards one of the shadows with one paw raised in the air showing two digits.

“We have three down sir, oh what the?! Look… agh!” My skateboard slammed into the mercenary guy’s helmet and I bounced off avoiding a loud bang, which made me wince as something brushed across the fur on my back before I hit the street heading straight for the park.

“That was, Caper Can… ugh!” The Ocelot guy behind me grunted as the smoke disappeared, he had a crossbow bolt in his leg putting him on the ground with the four other guys, he turned to shoot at Quiverwing.

Said duck quickly rolled behind the car I had been taking covered behind the car and it received several bullet holes.

I ignored them and finally made it into the edges of the park, I followed my bond straight towards Pom as I hopped up and put my skateboard on my back to begin running through the grass.

I stopped when I saw a poor tree had been burnt down to a stump, yet it wasn’t blackened. How had fire left behind white soot and what weird thing was Pom dealing with?

Picking up the pace, I jumped and swung off a branch with magical sparkles trailing behind me as I launched forward like a rocket. I grabbed another branch and continued doing this several times to get to where Pom was faster.

It wasn’t too long before I was passing by six shadowy things, one of which looked like Pom. This is when I finally saw Pom standing up to a bat winged monster zooming straight for her and she didn’t look very good.

I leapt up to a tree branch and launched forward at the guy going right for Pom, I launched my rear legs for the white glowing claw marks on the right side of his face and slammed into the guy. This pushed him off to the side of Pom and I slammed my skateboard into him knocking him into the ground.

After doing that I was promptly slapped in the face with a pie and flopped onto the ground myself in complete disbelief, I think some of it got under my helmet. This was going to be annoying to clean out of my fur later, at least it was lemon meringue that was lighter on the meringue.

“Er… whoops, sorry citizen. I, GIZMO DUCK, apologize for hitting you with that pie!" The ridiculous armored duck on a unicycle looked sheepish as he poked his fingers together. "I meant to hit that other guy!”

Next to him was a similarly armored chicken biped, calmly dragging her hands down her face and groaning audibly.

“Are you okay, hold on and let me clean you off!” Pom had stumbled her way over to my side.

Was Pom seriously asking me if I was okay when she looked completely dead on her badly burnt hooves, while also possibly bleeding out with one limp leg?

“Of course I’m okay Pom, it was just a pie and you are the one that needs to be worried about!” I snapped at her angrily, before realizing the bat winged monster was coming at Pom’s back.

Pushing Pom down, I lunged forward.

Author's Note

Ugh, the cold air might be getting to me.

Dolly has Flow Motion abilities, this allows her to do some ridiculous things with momentum. One does not actually need to be a key-blade wielder to have Flow Motion abilities.

151. Helpful Heroes.

-Earth, Duckberg Park, Pom-

I was in really dire situation, then Dolly came in glowing like a rocket. Literally a second later we were joined by a white armored duck on a unicycle and a chicken in blue and white protective gear. Said armored duck hit Dolly with a pie using a mechanical limb that popped out of his armor, at least he had been originally aiming to help with Hollow Heart.

This didn’t make me feel much better, but at least I was not going out alone.

Dolly leapt up at me glowing brightly, her paws pressed against my body gently, causing me to fall backwards quickly. The warm sparkles enveloping me stopped me before I hit the ground roughly, in fact I softly touched the ground on my back.

Looking up, I saw Dolly block Hollow’s left wing scything at her and where my back was. He then swung his right wing around her board to slash Dolly across the left side of her face, she yelped and reflexively kicked out at the nose of her board forcing it upwards to slam into Hollow’s chin. This sent Hollow flying up into the sky flailing out of control from a powerful blow.

Dolly wasn’t nearly physically strong enough to have achieved such a blow like that normally, she must have figured out some of what she can do with magic.

Falling to the ground landing on her hind legs, Dolly backed up towards me with a determined look watching the sky. Her tongue was hanging out of her mouth as she panted a little and turned to look down at me.

“Hey, does it look like it’s going to scar?” Dolly asked as her cheek bled moderately.

“Yes.” Truthfully I felt bad about this happening to Dolly.

“Oh, so it’s going to look awesome, it’ll make me seem more feisty and fearless!” Dolly turned back and saw Hollow Heart almost on us, I would have commented that she already was tough and adorable.

This is when the guy that called himself Gizmo Duck moved into his path and fired two rockets from his armor that wiggled and wobbled every which way in the air, yet they still seemed to be trying to veer towards Hollow. This confused the head shadow monster, he took an explosion to his left flank that spun him around and then the next his the right side of his face knocked him down quite a few feet in the air.

“Gizmo Gal, help them while I keep this vicious, vile and violent fiend busy!” He rolled forward quickly on his wheel and helicopter blades popped from the helmet to start spinning, he quickly took to the air.

“Wait… you’re not going to be able to…” I tried, but Gizmo Duck was already getting into a fight. Dolly looked to me with worry that I started coughing and then defensively to the chicken in blue and white armor that quickly came over to us.

“Leap Lamb right? Well you’ve seen better days.” The chicken crouched down next to me and poked at her visor. She looked me over and then said something that didn’t surprise me. “How are you still alive?”

“By doing what I had to, like lighting myself on fire.” I stated flatly in a halfway sincere tone. As horrible as it sounds, lambkin were talented at surviving the whole lighting yourself on fire to survive thing. It is rare that a lambkin will die in or by fire, one of the reasons Tianhuo or Longma in general don’t scare me as much as a poisonous snake. “It was one of the most effective ways to handle them. Don’t worry, I think they are done with trying to harm anyone.”

I pointed over to the six shadows in the shadows of a tree in various states of poor health watching Gizmo and Hollow fight, Gizmo was more of a distraction than a real threat to Hollow. Dolly, I and even this chicken weren’t much of a threat either if I’m correct about how powerful Hollow Heart was.

“Just from looking at you, I’m surprised you haven’t passed out yet.” The chicken stopped then smiled at me. “Let me guess, you’re very stubborn and hard to kill like Darkwing Duck? Hold on, while I try to help you.”

She pulled out a first aid-kit from her back and opened it up. I sighed as my vision blurred slightly, oh how I would wish I could be unconscious right now. Unfortunately the world needed me awake and able to talk about the large problem currently being distracted by Gizmo Duck.

“We can’t beat him.” I stated glumly.

“What do you mean, Pom of course we…” Dolly didn’t understand. We could beat and maybe even kill the summoned shadows of my friends and me, but not him.

Speaking of which, I glanced over at the six shadows and saw Shadow Paprika tending to them under the shade of a tree in the distance and seemed particularly worried about Shadow Tianhuo. I had stopped short of actually tearing Shadow Tianhuo down completely.

I hissed at the feeling something cool spreading over my left leg, I looked back to the chicken gently covering my burned limb with aloe. I’m so lucky to be a fluffmancer and that lambkin wool burns slowly unless used in the way I did, on the positive side of things a fluffmancer will never go bald so my wool will grow back. I’m just going to be in constant pain until my body heals.

“No, you don’t understand, that ‘THING’ can regenerate from any normal physical injury and is the reason for the swirling clouds. If we don’t send him packing back to the dimension my friends and I stuffed him into when we defeated him the first time, he’ll just kill off every single problem that could vaguely put a stop to him. His end game is creating a portal and unleashing world devouring shadow monsters on everything, he’s doesn’t appear to be strong enough to do that yet thankfully." At least I recognized that while light didn’t weaken Hollow, it did weaken the shadows he summoned to fight me. Physical attacks did little aside from cause pain and magic is definitely required to do any real damage, but I doubt it could we could actually kill him as he is now. At best we’re all on borrowed time at the moment. “I remember having fought him when he was still flesh and blood, but he isn’t anymore. He’s coming after me, because I know the most about how we can even feasibly deal with him. Also, if you can do some form of offensive magic, then that may be able to slow him down somewhat.”

“We’re technology experts, we’re not specialized in dealing with mystical, arcane or occult problems. That’s more Mr. McDuck or Lena’s thing, at least Gizmo Duck has him…” The chicken started to say when Gizmo Duck went sliding past us while creating a ditch in his wake. His armor had several large rents in it and it looked badly battered. “Excuse me… cover your eyes!”

The chicken reached at a cylinder on her belt with her left hand, pulled something on it with her right and tossed it at the incoming Hollow. Even closing my right eye the noise and powerful flash beyond my right eyelid was fairly disorienting.

I heard the following sound of pained otherworldly shriek as something broke through at least two trees and then heard the crash of something big falling over, the vision from my right came back quickly.

Weakly sitting up slightly, I saw the sight of Hollow heart tearing apart a tree he slammed into and had subsequently fallen on him.

“Ow, my ears, also a tree falling on him only made him angrier.” Dolly said with wide eyes and her left paw raised to her bleeding cheek, she continued to hold her board defensively.

Even being a little bit shaken, Dolly stubbornly stood her ground between him and me. It was amazing that we were able to even use that skateboard as an effective weapon so often, it’s comparable to dealing with a 'highly annoying Jaded day’ while she was wielding a yo-yo.

“I’m okay to keep going.” Gizmo Duck pushed himself back up onto his wheel and was moving forward once more towards Hollow.

“How long do you think you can keep him off of us Fe… Gizmo?” She looked worried for her friend’s current state.

“How long do you need Gan- Gal?” Instead of waiting for an answer he adjusted his dented helmet and sped off towards Hollow as the monster fully ripped himself away from destroying the fallen tree by turning it into toothpicks with his bare hooves.

The chicken lifted my front right leg and the blinding hot pain...

A second or two later when I came to, I noted that Gizmo Gal had finished wrapping a bandage tightly around my leg.

“Take care of Caper Canine’s face please… she’s smaller and her bleeding out is more of a problem. I can handle a few more seconds of bleeding.” My request was met with the chicken quickly changing her focus onto Dolly.

“Pom, I think you’re injuries are the more serious… hey!” Dolly was interrupted when Gizmo Gal pulled out a small spray bottle and carefully sprayed a substance into the deep cut on Dolly’s cheek and pulled out a different bottle and carefully ran a brush over it to leave a gel that congealed on contact.

“There, now I can get back to you.” She turned back to me and started rubbing Aloe over one my hind legs. “Fair warning, I’m not a doctor, but I know how everything in this medical kit works at least.”

“Whoa that Gizmo dude is really giving as good as he’s getting…” Dolly was right, Gizmo Duck was putting up quite a fight like I did. Not that Gizmo could actually do anything permanent to Hollow Heart, but the noisemakers, fireworks and other distracting things like a wooden baseball bat carved in the likeness of what was probably Gizmo Gal out of costume. Those various things kept popping out of the armor wielded by seemingly whimsical mechanical limbs was really keeping him in the fight with how confusing and unpredictable they were.

After bandaging my left hind leg, Gizmo Gal pulled out her phoned and hit a button, then lifted her right shoulder up to keep it pressed to her head as she worked on my other hind leg.

“Hey Violet, when is your sister going to get here? Gizmo Duck is getting torn apart by what amounts to a Shadow Demon according to Leap Lamb. We’re not going to be able to hold this guy off for much longer!” Gal spread the aloe lotion evenly on my right hind leg as she listened to some words. “I’m taking care of Leap Lamb at the moment and she is seriously wrecked. Caper Canine is here too as support and is keeping an eye on the fight, she’s our last resort defensive measure. Leap Lamb said we don’t have the right kind of firepower for this guy and that we’re only delaying the inevitable, we need Lena’s magical prowess. Well... he’s basically regenerating instantly from all physical damage dealt to him, he’s sliding in and out of shadows so fast that Gizmo can barely keep up with him. To make matters worse I only have two more flash bangs left and those won’t actually stop him for long as light doesn’t seem to have any effect of him aside from being blinding. We need some magical punch here like yesterday, before Gizmo goes down! You’re coming? What can you do? Huh… interesting, we’ll try to hold on.”

Gizmo Gal then started applying something to a large patch and then place it over my left eye before wrapping bandages around my head.

-Lena-

“I’m beginning to really hate super heroes!” The leopard yelled as she fired a pistol my way, it bounced off the magic shield I created.

I sent a magic blast at her and she ducked into the alleyway, I felt my phone buzz. I pulled it out, checked it and then shouldered it.

“Vi? What’s up, I’m kind of busy dealing with mercenaries right now. Huh? Sure, I’ll try to get there as soon as possible.” I zipped out of the way of several bullets. “Be careful and see you there little sis, the streets are really a messed up jumble of threats right now. No, I don’t even know what happened to Launchpad, I’ll be on the move soon.”

“Like we’re going to let you…” A purple gas erupted amidst their group and the leopard took a kick to the gut and then got belly bounced away by Darkwing Duck into a buildings wall.

“I am the terror that flaps in the night, I am the sponge of justice that will wipe away all evils in this world, I am Darkwing Duck!” Darkwing's well-timed appearance among the mercenaries caused them to be confused, this was followed by Goldie and Scrooge appearing and taking down two of their number from behind.

Darkwing was wearing the grey fedora, a purple coat and a fairly large cape that’s probably explosion proof or else he does have a super power for surviving powerful explosions with little injury to show for it. Is determination and perseverance to be a hero a super power? He probably has it.

“Get moving lass!” Scrooged shouted at me as he used his cane to hook the gun out of the lithe leopards grasp and tried to hit her with a golf swing, moneybags missed and got a kick to the face for his troubles. A second later the Leopard was slapping Goldie down and while other mercenaries were having problems with Darkwing Duck.

I flew higher in the air and shot towards the park. Violet was going to get to the park and assist with a magic spell to send the supposed shadow demon packing.

Seriously needed a hero name for myself, I mean Gandra and Fenton had their whole ‘Gizmo’ themed gimmick going for them and then there was Darkwing and Quiverwing with their whole ‘classic hero’ motif. I generated my own super hero costume with magic and yet I didn’t have a name for myself to sound cool. Even Leap Lamb and Caper Canine had earned their hero names, when was I going to get a cool moniker?

-Pom-

I leaned back avoided a scything wing, took a step or two back to avoid the other and then thrust my left hind leg up to block his right hoof, I was using my left leg to aid in my balance. I rotated my left hind leg outwards and quickly slapped it to the ground to hop up and slam Hollow across the left side of his face with my right hind leg, that was followed by Dolly popping her sparkling skateboard up into his belly to launch him upwards into a pair of electric bolas that wrapped around his hooves and wings while electrocuting him violently.

After a few seconds of being violently jerking about while arcs of energy tore at him, Hollow was up on his hooves having snapped free from the bolas and just as angry as when he started the fight.

I noted that Hollow’s martial skills were a little lacking compared to the first time when he knocked down every one of my friends single hoofed, that didn’t mean he wasn’t threatening. It seemed the tradeoff was apparently him being fairly indestructible and impossible to keep incapacitated for more than five seconds.

Any serious injury dealt to Hollow quickly healed, aside from the white scars from the flaming wolf claw I dealt to his face being the only thing that hadn’t. He was refusing to stay down, unlike him his summoned Shadows were staying well away from us when they could be actively joining the fight at any time to help the tireless Hollow win against us.

I wonder, was I the reason they weren’t attacking? Were they mindless before we fought? Did I injure them too badly? Can’t be that, Shadow Paprika was still relatively healthy and so was Shadow Arizona. So many questions, too many for my tired and troubled mind.

“I set those bolas for full power, technology is definitely not going to work if that couldn’t knock him out.” Gizmo Gal certainly hadn’t held back. Gizmo Duck was in the middle of making repairs his currently sparking, battered and ramshackle armor while we held off Hollow. “Ugh… what is it going to take to keep him down?!”

“A lot more than whatever we currently have.” I quietly answered as Dolly held her board horizontally in front of her and moved forward slightly in front of me. She was not happy.

Gizmo Gal had capture, incapacitating and support based gear, which thankfully included medical kits in case of accidents. Gizmo Duck for his part had the more direct weaponry and assortment of random stuff to deal with heavier or trickier opponents in just about any situation, he also had repair and medical kit somewhere in his armor.

Gizmo Duck’s rockets in particular were unusual in the fact that they’d never fly straight for more than a single second before veering wildly out of control, the things he did was completely unpredictable and he was well armored. Gizmo Gal had more controlled gear, but was far more predictable as to what she can do aside from having the ability to do some interesting things with electricity and had less armor comparably. They balanced each other out I think.

Hollow definitely had the other shadows beat me down with the thought that he needed to weaken me enough to take care of himself, which was fairly flattering in a twisted kind of way that he took me as a seriously dangerous opponent to his eventual plans when before I hardly did much to help put a stop to him previously.

An extending fist knocked an incoming Hollow further away from us and through a park bench, said fist retracted back to Gizmo Duck who continued to work on fixing his armor as much as he could while had the chance.

“Give me another minute or so to get some of my armors more important functions operational again.” Gizmo Duck stated as he pulled out an object and put oiled some of the joints on the arms of his armor. “We might not be able to do much more than delay him, but we can hold him here.”

“Well that won’t be too hard, one of his goals is to kill me after all.” At this rate I was likely to die before noon. Even being a little bit patched up, I’m in a poor state. “That alone will keep him here for as long as I live.”

“We’re not letting that happen Pom!” Dolly shouted as she kept an eye out. “I’m sorry for even letting him get by me even once to get a chance at you.”

“It’s okay Caper Canine.” I patted Dolly gently on the head with my wrapped up left hoof. “I’m not out of the fight yet.”

“Can’t the dog do magic?” Gizmo Gal asked as she looked to Dolly who was preparing for an incoming Hollow.

“She recently gained her ability to even use it, so we’re not exactly aware of what she’s fully capable of or it will be even helpful from what she’s already doing. Before you ask my magic is completely drained, tapped out even, and using any more would be bad as to be life threatening.” I kept my eyes on Hollow as he came diving in. “If you have a light, that might help stop him from moving through shadows. Otherwise get ready, we’re helpless when it comes to actually defeating him, but we’re not entirely hopeless yet.”

“Why do you say that?” Gizmo Gal asked as I was busy sending ideas between me and dolly, we agreed on a moment’s notice and reacted.

“Since I still have some… KICK… left in me.” I lunged forward over Dolly thrusting my right rear hoof forward and up his chin causing him to flip upside down.

Following my pun and attack, Dolly swung around from my left and swung the board upwards into his spine twice in two rapid spins whipping it about, then slowed down to dragging it along the ground and launching it upwards into one of his wings as she sent him flopping away.

“Well you two are quite bombastic, eyes shut!” Gizmo Gal stated as she threw her second flash bang, I did as she asked and once the flash had passed, we could see a disoriented Hollow. We were also as disoriented. “That’ll only hold him for ten seconds, we need to hold on until Violet and Lena arrive.”

“That’s going to be a big ask.” When even landing good hits was hurting me.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Jaded La Perm-

“Okay, what are we doing?” My sister Jacky asked as three bowls of cereal sat before us.

“As Drip said, we’re simply pouring milk.” I answered and pointed to Drip, the plumbing bat pony currently clearing his throat.

“Look it’s a test to see if Blackcap is really as unlucky as she seems, also I want to see if Lingo can really set Cereal on fire just by pouring milk on it.” Drip put down a frosty glass bottle of milk on the table. “Jade is here to prove that she is our mayor’s daughter and provide a sense of normalcy.”

“How would I be doing that?” I asked lazily, though I did narrow my eyes at Drip. “Also in what world would I ever be considered even remotely normal?”

“Look this will be good and I don’t mean any disrespect Jade. First, Jacky pours a single drop into the bowl and puts the milk down quickly. We don’t want her dropping the milk or spilling it.” Drip seemed intent on seeing this happen. Glancing around the room while pointing at the bottle of milk, he announced loudly. “Just so everyone knows, this is normal pasteurized milk! Now go ahead Jacky.”

Jacky looked to me and I motioned for her to go ahead, my parrot sister with the long black feathers dangling down her back slowly and carefully picked up the bottle of milk and ever so slowly tilted it until one drop of milk dropped into the first cereal bowl.

She managed to put the milk down before she was blasted off her feet by the contents of the bowl exploding violently and directly in her given direction.

“Ow.” Jacky groaned from the floor.

“Okay next, Lingo will pour some milk into the bowl, just so everyone knows we’re using the same cereal in each bowl from the same box. Its general oatmeal O’s cereal.” Drip continued his spiel about what we were doing. “Just don’t fill the bowl Lingo.”

The other bat pony poured some milk and not twenty seconds later the bowl caught fire, much to everyone’s surprise and after a minute or so it went out.

“My amigo Lingo here is somewhat cursed when it comes to cooking, but not nearly as literally as Jacky is.” Drip answered to the audience’s curiosity.

“Ooh, it turned into cheese!” I scooped up a chunk of cheese from the bowl with a spoon and ate it. “Huh… all the cereal transformed into gorgonzola, isn’t that like... completely impossible?”

“Now pour some into the third bowl Jade.” After Drip asked me to, I did so and the bowl just gave off a faint golden glow. “Well that proves your Kuril’s daughter to everyone, you just made a perfect bowl of cereal.”

Author's Note

The fight continues, Hollow Heart still isn't slowing down.

152. Overcast.

-Earth, Duckberg Park, Hollow-

Useless, the minions I had summoned to follow my orders were entirely useless!

I could deal with this myself, the one who could have dealt with me was mostly neutralized by them so at least they proved that they were of some use. Though it had taken six of them to even weaken the weakest member of the ones who had stopped me previously, it was absolutely pathetic that the glory of darkness even had such pitiful examples of its might.

There is nothing the ones before me could do, but I had to make sure they all perished. I could not let the light group up against me again and I would not leave any resistance.

It was building to that point once again, I could feel it coming already. I couldn’t let them flee, I couldn’t let them retreat and they had to die soon or else they would find some way, some ridiculously miniscule chance, of stopping me. That they will make it work somehow in spite of my might is infuriating.

Smashing the mutt with a hoof, I sent her flying.

Unfortunately, she would live.

I hate the light!

-Shadow Pom-

Sitting here, just sitting here in pain watching the fighting.

The other her clearly stated a rejection of them and their group being far removed from what she knew of their given appearances.

It was certainly understandable that she had what amounted to the facsimile of a broken leg, the other wanted to live and injured her until she couldn’t continue the fight.

What the other had said changed some perspective of things drastically, especially since the other stopped short of killing the shadow longma and didn’t carry through on the last attack.

Her other even seemed regretful to hurt the shadow longma, yet our shadow longma companion seemed to smile and was happily accepting to have been taken down by my other?

Did she want to be her own being? She never really had the thought until her other put it into her head.

She had only existed for the purpose of defeating a major problem for the one that brought them all about, they were meant to serve a rather simple purpose and they were given a jumbled amount of information on how to go about serving that purpose. The problem was that they could no longer serve said purpose, thus they were effectively useless.

Turning to the shadow alpaca tending to numerous cuts covering shadow longma tenderly, expending her own mass to close up the excessive seeping wounds. Did she know that she would not be getting anything in return, did she know that she would not be able to get that mass back once it became another’s?

The shadow alpaca didn’t seem to mind the loss of her size the more she gave of herself. That was something completely unnatural, why would the shadow alpaca bother with healing us? Why should the shadow longma continue to function? Why should any of us? What was she doing by giving up pieces of herself to us other than making herself smaller? It was her main form of attack to shift her mass even and she was giving up her ability to fight.

We were all failures together to be as strong as even just one of the ones they were appearing to functionally act as, even I or my brood couldn’t match the strange ferocity or acrobatics of my other.

Where was their purpose now that the devouring darkness bringer no longer thought them useful?

The answer came from a being in basking in a powerful light that they created personally.

The thing was… they were recognizable as a shadow too despite enveloping themselves in a warm colorful light.

How did a shadow create its own light? What was that shadows purpose? Did it even follow that purpose anymore? Why could it generate its own light and didn’t need to devour it?

…

Why was the light so inviting?

-Lena-

I wanted to aid in the fight, however something drew my attention from the fight going on as I arrived.

Gizmo Duck, Gizmo Gal, Leap Lamb and Caper Canine were getting beaten into the ground by an unstoppable creature that definitely had far more power than Magica. That’s back when Magica was turning everyone’s shadows against them and opening a portal to the local realm of shadows. That thing looked like a nasty cross between a vampire and a pony, the blood red eyes really helped sell it.

What I more focused on were, what I would loosely term as, people like me. Living shadows and they were collectively sitting under a tree quietly as the shadow alpaca tended to them.

They all turned to look at me with their bright blood red eyes taking notice of me as I approached, I just carefully lowered to the ground and approached them slowly.

They felt… a lot like me actually. They probably were just as lost as I was when I was first born from the shadows.

Their stares were a creepy, but they didn’t seem too aggressive.

So I took a breath and decided to greet them, maybe even ask them for help.

-Rooftop, Smolder-

“Please, stop crying Ocellus.” My best friend was still a whimpering mess, so I decided to get sarcastic. “You do realize that Changelings need water to live right? Are you attempting to make a river in the middle of the city? I think you’re making an impressive attempt of it.”

“Nice impression of Gallus, I thought I was supposed to be the one that does impressions.” Ocellus giggled a bit and I hugged her close as she rubbed at her eyes with a hoof.

“That’s more like it.” Dormarch stated with good cheer. “I appreciate the good vibes you two give off.”

I would have said something, but I was distracted by something going on down in the streets. Looks like Violet was running into trouble.

“Ocellus, do you think you can stay here with Dormarch by yourself?” I had a hummingbird to help, but I wasn’t about to leave Ocellus in this state. She held Dormarch protectively to her chest and nodded. “Okay, stay put, I have to go help Violet!”

I flew from the rooftop and angled downwards for the Eggshell helmet guys, preparing to breathe some flames.

-Dormarch-

“So… want to play a game?” I asked and Ocellus curled up while holding me.

“Sure Dormarch, just don’t ask me to get closer to that mass of malice.” Ocellus mumbled as I heard shouts from the streets and flashes of fire.

“I wouldn’t ask you to do something harmful to you, even if I don’t entirely understand why it is harmful to you in particular.” I think Smolder was the coolest dragon ever, not that I knew any other dragons. “I don’t think Smolder would ask you too either.”

-Pom-

Dolly went sailing over my head being trailed by her skateboard, she managed to catch herself in the air by performing back flip in a shower of sparkles to slow down into hovering for a few seconds before dropping to the ground softly on her butt.

Gizmo Gal charged Hollow and managed to strike him twice with her lightning pole. At best this was just stunning Hollow, but anything that could even feasibly slow him down even a little was worth the effort.

I was in no condition to be fighting, I shouldn’t even be standing as it is and if I was going to do another attack, then it would be with my left hind hoof.

Slowly making my way over to Dolly, I checked her over slightly as she was rubbed her right paw against her nose.

Gizmo Gal’s weapon was broken and she was knocked down with two bleeding cuts through her thinner armor across her chest and stomach.

Thankfully Gizmo Duck was already ready to get back into the action. His armored right fist extended and knocked Hollow off of Gizmo Gal, before he could do anymore damage, as he rolled forward on his wheel.

“I really don’t know how long I can actually keep this up, but…” Gizmo Ducks started, as both his main hands caught Hollow’s wings, a panel on the armor opened up and a custard pie slammed forward on a smaller mechanical hand right into Hollow’s face before he dented the armor even more. “At least I still have some tricks left in my armor, even if that was my last pie!”

As much armor as he’ll have left after Hollow is through with him, Gizmo Duck was doing the most distracting out of us and Gizmo Gal took opportunities given to her by him to stun or lockdown Hollow temporarily. The two of them knew how to work together and were keeping Dolly from having to throw herself into the path of danger and pain, at least she seemed tougher thanks to whatever her magic does for her.

It seems to allow Dolly to control her motion and the momentum of anything else she touches instinctively, would have to test it later under less trying circumstances.

“You okay there Pom?” Dolly looked up to me with a bruising bloody muzzle, I sat down and just sighed audibly while groaning in pain. “That bad? I mean, I can even feel how horrible off you are. Just get some rest Pom.”

“I… barely have it in me… to attack anymore.” As tired as I was, we needed to continue stalling or figure out how to defeat Hollow here. “I can’t rest until I know this world, your world, isn’t going to be destroyed.”

“Yeah, nothing we can do to this guy will stop him. I’ve caused some injuries that are healing slower, but I’m not exactly great at using my magic yet. I’ll want to figure it out with your help if I survive through this morning.” At least Dolly learned how to charge her skateboard with sparkles that seemed to be her personal brand of magic at work. “As you said, normal attacks aren’t working and he’s just healing from everything we’ve hit him with.”

“Pom, we’re here to help!” Hearing Smolder, I turned away from watching a portion of Gizmo Ducks armor from around his waist get shredded by Hollow. She was gliding in with her claws grasping Violet’s wrists and Violet herself was holding onto Smolders.

“Give me a few minutes to set things up.” Violet said calmly as she released her grip on Smolder and dropped to the ground to run up to us while pulling several things from her backpack. “Where’s Lena? I’m going to need her help in dealing with this otherworldly threat. As you said, he appears to be something of demonic shadow monster in nature as these smudge sticks have just proven. He is a highly powerful entity that has recently broken into our world.”

The bundle of sticks the hummingbird pulled out and held forward were slowly turning a shade of dark purple that had the hummingbird frowning. I idly watched as Smolder blasted Hollow in the face with a fireball, knocking him back and off of a bedraggled Gizmo Duck. Smolder should be mostly fine.

“So we actually have a plan?” I actually managed to ask through gasping breaths.

“Yes, do you know the name of the monster in question?” Violet asked as she started flicking through a book ‘Primarily Primitive Solutions to Puzzling Paranormal Problems’ and looking through walls of text.

Judging by all the small text, I’d hate to see what was the less primitive solution to our current problem was.

“I’ve met him before personally when he was still mostly flesh and blood. He’s originally from the world of Equus like my friends and me, his name is or was Hollow Heart according to my friend Velvet.” I just had to breathe and keep talking. Now that I took a seat on the grass… I don’t think I could actually stand up again. At least I’m not going to be in traction for a month like with shock-ram if I survived. “If it helps, he was a thestral or bat pony and used to be a cultist that intended for our world to be devoured by shadow monsters. He failed after me and my friends basically punted him into the realm of shadows in our world before sealing it off with some magical keys, he’s been trying to kill me all morning and he’s coming quite close to succeeding. Might even succeed even if he doesn’t hit me again.”

I did not want to have a heart attack right now, but I’m leaning towards it and my arrhythmia problem isn’t helping that one bit.

“Well that greatly simplifies a number of things in several ways, I’m going to need Lena’s help to get him through the portal though. This may cause some, ‘minor’, dimensional stability problems… though given the current terrible status of the dimensional stability of our world over the last few years already after the time-nado, local shadow realm issues and the various scientific experiments into opening holes into alternate realities, not to mention the yearly Valhalla thing with stopping Ragnarok and the McDuck family, we may have problems closing the portal once it is opened.” The hummingbird muttered as she flicked through several pages and took up several candles in glass jars. Violet placed six of them in a circle, then she place a crystal orb in the center of them and continued to flick through the pages of her book with her eye going over each page with agonizingly precise scrutiny. “It’ll be a one-way portal, so it won’t be too much of an issue and won’t cause any more problems than what is already occurring, I will need to adjust to prevent anything major from the crossing dimensional boundaries back into our world while we get rid of the previous problem that is already here. This will cause problems later when we get into direct contact with Abigail Callaghan to find a way to send you home or bring our friend’s grandfather back, but when needs must we all make sacrifices.”

“I’m okay with sacrificing a good chance to return home, if it means saving an entire world.” Despite how horrible I’d feel afterwards, I actually sincerely meant that.

As Violet nodded to me with frown and a sign of respect clear in her eyes, she began setting up whatever it was she needed to do.

Dolly sat next to me and covered her ears while closing her eyes, I did so as well given I heard Gizmo Gal shout for everyone to do so. Soon Gizmo Gal joined us soon after using up her last flash bang.

“Well he took everything I have, my bolos, my staff and even my electric cage traps only held him for ten seconds combined. The best I have left is being able to shock him by making physical contact, but I’m not about to physically grapple with that thing!” Gizmo Gal grumbled as Smolder came sliding back to us with a black eye. “Everything else I have is utility or what’s left in the medical kit, I really need to make some room in my armor for more stuff… also realize that I may be bleeding out a bit. Is this what being lightheaded feels like?”

Okay, Hollow might be getting stronger given he even hit Smolder hard enough to actually bruise her scales. Something you don’t see too often on Dragons because of how tough they naturally are, I never actually had to worry about Smolder physically until now.

“Did someone finally get the number of that donkey kart?” Dizzily stated Smolder as she sat up.

“No donkey karts here I’m afraid.” Looking back to Violet, she had poured out a curved line of salt between each candle to create a circle. “Give me another minute or two, this is a very precise method of sending the shadow demon packing to where he belongs. Hopefully the results of this will keep him there, as I do not condone demons going after more than one dimension. Hopefully my sister will get here soon, as I can’t do this without her.”

“I would like to say that things are not going so well here, so please hurry!” Gizmo Duck likely just spoke in his actual voice instead of his more heroic sounding one because of how hard he was being pushed back by Hollow. He was staying in better than the rest of us could have at least. “I could also use a little help here.”

What Gizmo Duck lacked in close up martial prowess he made up in armor and ranged offensive abilities, that and he was likely running out of spare mechanical arms at the rate they were being destroyed.

“Then help you’ll get!” A bright beam of magic slammed into Hollow pushing him away from almost tearing Gizmo Dark out of his armor. The magical duck, Lena, then flew forward and blasted Hollow again. “Fall back Gizmo Duck, I’ve got this.”

“Right!” Gizmo Duck teetered left and right as he came back over to us, his armor taking the worst of the damage though I noted drops of blood leaking slightly from some of the torn chunks of metal. “Don’t worry, this armor isn’t that hard to repair thanks in part to it being fairly modular. Although the duck underneath it could use some more padding...”

“We’ll work on it together later hero boy.” The cheerful lilt and smile on Gizmo Gal’s beak was almost infectious.

I felt something touch my shoulder and I looked to see Shadow Paprika with Shadow Pom draped across her back.

“Whoa, they snuck up on us!” Dolly seemed to be ready to fight, I just calmly put my left hoof on her back. I was going to need Dormarch to give me a full run down of my injuries after this to make sure my right leg wasn’t permanently paralyzed.

“It’s okay Dolly, I don’t think they mean us harm.” Sending my gaze behind the now much smaller shadow alpaca, I could see Shadow Arizona carrying shadow Oleander. Behind those two was a frail looking Shadow Velvet carrying an equally frail Shadow Tianhuo, both looked to have been slightly patched up. Right, I’ll try to keep my words pleasant. “Um… what do you want?”

Shadow Pom lifted her good leg and then pointed to… Violet? I don’t think these Shadow beings of my friends could talk, but they could gesture well enough. I looked into her blood red eyes and saw a spark in them.

“Dolly, assist… does Lena even have a codename?” It hasn’t come up, but I’ve learned a lot of names yesterday and made some friends. I should be happy to even just have Smolder and Ocellus safely back under my care.

I looked to where Dolly was and she didn’t question it and was already fighting defensively at Lena’s side.

“Codenames are not exactly important right now.” Violet was continuing her work as she addressed the shadows. “I’m almost done. I assume that once the portal is made, all of you will be helping with forcing Hollow into it. I’m sure we could find a place for you here, all of you are a lot like my sister and I’m sure we can be friends and find places for you to stay.”

Violet glanced between me and Shadow Pom when she said that last part, she was ready to accept these shadow beings quite openly despite knowing what they were.

The six shadows, even the shadows puppies, all shook their heads. They weren’t staying here, Arizona pointed to the swirling cloudy skies, then started to etch something in the dirt. A circle with wiggly lines, several figures and…

“They can’t stay here.” I stated quietly with a sense of dread, knowing exactly what Shadow Arizona was trying to tell us. I lowered my head and looked away. They were making a collective choice here, one that might end with their destruction once they all did what I think they were going to do. “Your sister has the ability to handle bright light, the sun and a body. These guys… they don’t have those protections. They will have to go back to where they came from with Hollow or else they will perish once the shroud covering the city disappears… and being stuck with him when they do is a very iffy prospect. One they are apparently willing to take.”

“That… is very upsetting to me on a number of levels and sensibilities. I am of course basing that on personal emotions surrounding how my adoptive sister came to be of course and knowing that they are free thinking beings doesn’t help.” Violet murmured as she continued her setup for a few more seconds, then stopped and close her eyes while rubbing at her forehead with her fingers. “Well… the preparations are complete, I just need to activate it.”

“I don’t feel any better about leaving them to deal with Hollow alone either, despite them being the reason I’m this badly injured in the first place.” My attention was caught by Shadow Arizona waving her tongue at me, she then made a motion where she slapped her right hoof into her left. “It’s their choice to fight.”

Shadow Pom nodded in agreement with my words and gave me a weak smile. The other shadows grouped up and looked towards Lena fighting Hollow, despite having cut up and battered Lena a little bit she was dealing quite a bit of damage to him with her magic and keeping him well at bay.

“Shadows with growing heart, let none break your new start. Give them a chance no matter how small, may they survive their choice and come out standing tall. With clear minds they leave the park, I hope they survive their fates… on a lark.” As Violet spoke she grinned slightly, I could feel the magic in the air whipping up in a frenzy and energy converging. “I open a portal to those who don’t belong and are of shadowy descent, I will open in our world a small dangerous rent, hopefully it will close as soon as all required to go are sent. The hollow one brings nothing but pain, to end his shadowy plot and hopeless all-consuming dark reign, now we must send Hollow Heart back from whence he came!”

The candles lit up brightly making the shadowy versions of my friends and me wince, the flames swirled and started tearing a hole in the air filled with an endless void with no stars.

“Okay, now we just have to get him into it… right?” I stated with a frown, I blinked when I turned back to the shadows to see that only two of them were still there.

Shadow Pom was helping Shadow Oleander, Velvet and Tianhuo limp for the portal, they sent us a grateful look and then two of them entered. Shadow Pom stayed behind and turned to see Shadow Arizona grapple Hollow Heart with her tongue and yank him towards her and the portal.

Hollow Heart was caught by surprise, especially when a shadow alpaca reduced to less than half her original size leapt up and delivered a devastating flying buck to his chest that dealt damage that didn’t heal immediately.

While the shadow Alpaca pressed her attack, Hollow was putting up too much of a struggle to really be pulled in and was about to slice up Shadow Arizona’s tongue. His wings swung up and snapped down only to be caught in the jaws of two shadows puppies digging their claws into his back, this was followed by the other two shadow puppies helping the shadow alpaca push him back by ramming him repeatedly.

Still Hollow Heart was pushing through all this quite strong even as Shadow Arizona reeled him in inch by inch. This is when Shadow Pom joined by grabbing her tongue and pulling.

“Don’t just float there, help them with whatever you have!” In response to my shout, Lena immediately blasted Hollow's face, making him stumble backwards, he was about ten feet from the portal and still resisting.

Dolly slapped at him with her board pushing Hollow further back and he swung his hooves in defiance as Shadow Arizona and Shadow Pom continued to pull him closer to the portal. Shadow Paprika and the two pups kept putting on pressure Hollow with Dolly and Lena assisting them. Gizmo Duck’s rocketing fist slammed upwards into Hollow’s belly knocking him onto his hind hooves making him easier to drag ever closer.

At some point Shadow Arizona backed into the portal and Shadow Pom charged forward to grapple and started dragging a furious Hollow Heart with her one good leg. Even with all the attacks landing on him, Hollow wasn’t faltering and was actually slowing down everyone’s progress to push him through the portal.

He caught Shadow Paprika’s leg and hurled her through the portal, only Shadow Pom was left on this side with her puppies. Hollow still putting up a massive fight managed to get the two puppies not preoccupied with his wings through the portal, but that just left him open to a series of magical blasts barrages from Lena.

“Gah, go in already!” Lena groused out as she fired a continuous beam of magic into him, he still stayed standing and was even beginning to resist it.

“Bow-Whacka-Wow!” Dolly lunged forward and into Lena’s beam to ride it forward.

She speared the nose of her board into Hollow’s chest with a single blindingly fast thrust, the thing that happened next surprised us all.

A beam of bright energy erupted out of Hollow back and tethered him to the portal, his eyes widened in alarm as the beam of energy dragged him backwards towards the portal, Dolly continued to surge forward with constant energy pushing behind her.

She pushed him the remain distance until his back was inside the portal with Shadow Pom’s head and leg barely sticking out of it. She looked to me and nodded while trying to drag Hollow the rest of Hollow’s resisting form through.

The shape of the portal used to be a big oval, now it looked like… a giant keyhole? Why was it taking that shape specifically?

Dolly turned her sides board ninety degrees so the wheels now pointed at the ground and light started bursting from the giant keyhole as Hollow began dissolving from the circular hole in his chest, whereas Shadow Pom gained a pink heart shaped marking on the center of her chest as she was sucked through the keyhole.

Everything seemingly went sideways for a second. Dolly was falling to the ground in slow motion, her eyes slowly sliding shut from the immense amounts of pain coming from both sides of our bond and then I was blinded by the surging light.

-The World-

It shuddered, not even being able to understand what Dolly just managed to do purely by instinct.

It wasn’t even sure how she did it in the first place and it had even been focusing entirely on her.

Despite how intriguing this all was to its unbridled curiosity, it now had a healthy fear of the unknown quantities that resulted from its actions.

Author's Note

Yes, Dolly just performed the Flow-Motion equivalent to Sonic Blade with some assistance Lena De' Spell. Also no, she's still not getting a keyblade even after that performance.

Hollow Heart is down.

Now we have to deal with various other groups in the middle of a battle royal in the city, also Magica is not confirmed down yet either.

153. Mishmash.

-Earth, Duckberg Park, Smolder-

When the blinding light disappeared the sky cleared up near instantly, the sun shined through the clearing clouds as they break apart and I immediately noted that we had several problems.

For one, we had several people down with serious injuries and they weren’t getting up for the rest of this morning. Lena, Pom, Dolly and Fenton were the casualties having put their bodies through a lot of exhausting and bloody fighting. At least Violet and Gandra weren’t too bad off.

“So… what just happened and is that it?” I asked as I didn’t see much aside from the sunlit park and heard some guns firing in the distance.

I got an answer from Violet who was holding a phone to the side of her head.

“No, it’s not over. We still have issues with all the other people running around, Magica has managed to evade Della’s team and it won’t be long before she will come after Dolly. The Phantom Blot is also heading our way. Both want to capture Dolly and steal her magic for differing reasons, after such an impressive showing they definitely won’t stop at nothing to put her down… especially when she’s in no condition to fight back as she is. There’s also the mercenaries that want to kill Pom to think about too.” She could say that again, Dolly looked pretty battered and yet that dog stayed in it to pull off that crazy last attack. It expended whatever Dolly had after she leapt into Lena’s magical beam to do it. If that’s the kind of powerful effect Pom has on a dog, then she’s a terrifying force multiplier for canines. “Ee’re surrounded on all sides by two mercenary groups split up into various smaller teams alongside Blot’s Egghead forces. I may be a senior woodchuck, but I am scrawny, energetically deficient after performing the ritual to open that portal and I am not in the mood for a pitched battle where I’m fighting for my life. If it happens it will likely be fought with me on my back or me being gunned down by heartless mercenaries. Gizmo Gal doesn’t have any weapons other than her shock touch technology and you are our best form of offense at the moment that is currently available.”

Okay… so things are bad.

“What can we look for when it comes to help and support if we’re about to be attacked by all sides?” I asked as I looked about, what happened here was weird and nobody knew what the heck Dolly just did.

“Launchpad could be around in some kind of vehicle, which will probably be wrecked if he attempts to park it anywhere near here. If it’s a mode of transportation in some form or another, then he’s ‘safely’ crashed it. Somehow nobody dies when he’s involved in whatever accident occurs, so it’s logically safer with him around than without him.” Gandra started off as she closed up Gizmo Duck’s suit and started to wheel his unconscious form over to Pom. “Everyone else is likely already entangled in the fighting, with as many mercenaries and eggheads as there probably are in the surrounding area getting any other help isn’t going to be easy. I could call Penumbra.”

“She’s going to be busy dealing with the flamethrower drone squirrels and helicopter laser sharks fighting on Mister McDucks front lawn for the foreseeable future.” It seemed Violet’s words made Gandra pale a bit, Violet hissed slightly she looked away. “I am not about to call my fathers into this mess either. Even if both Lena and I are in serious danger, I would not have them getting hurt on my conscience.”

I started moving Dolly closer to Pom, maybe their familiar bond would speed up their recovery. I wouldn’t know as I’ve never had to deal with a familiar and Pom was our resident expert on the subject.

The poorly breathing Dalmatian smiled faintly and curled up against Pom when I carefully placed her battered body down next to her, I left the skateboard next to them as well. Violet was already carefully dragging Lena over to us.

“Smolder, is everyone alright?!” We turned and saw Ocellus flying down to us and a lightbulb went off in my head.

“Ozzy… you’re perfect!” Having stated this to my changeling friend as she landed, her head was now turning bright red. I wonder if that was a shapeshifting malfunction or if she was just happy to see me after I came here with Violet. “Also no, nobody here is alright Ocellus, but we’re alive.”

“Um… thanks Smol… but what brought that compliment about? I couldn’t even get this close with all that malice around here. Now there’s still a lot of it negative emotions around, but they are not actually nearly close to being debilitating to me.” I loved her a lot, but if she wanted to help then all I needed to do was ask her. I was worried about her safety, but I’m sure she would agree to it. Ugh, why do feelings have to be so hard?! “Smol what’s the matter?”

“Can you do something for me Ocellus? I have an idea, but it might be putting you into quite a bit of danger.” Danger I didn’t want to involve you in, but Pom really couldn’t protect us right now and I didn’t want anyone here to get hurt even worse than they already are. Gone are the days I didn’t care much about others aside from my brother. “It might help us get Pom and the others out of here at least.”

“What do I have to do?” Ocellus stated firmly standing straighter on her hooves. “I can already feel multiple people with negative emotions approaching the park from all sides.”

“Well first, hand me over to Smolder.” Stated a worried Dormarch and she did so, so that I was now holding him. “I’m going to need to be with her if this is going where I think it is.”

“Okay, here’s what you’re going to do.” Once I started explaining my plan, Violet and Gandra Dee in the damaged Gizmo Gal armor both added onto the plan on how we were going to get everyone to safety and how we could possible move them.

-Five minutes later, Magica-

Okay, so I was a little roughed up and managed to escape… er evade them, why would I ever need to escape them I was an all-powerful sorceress who was most certainly not afraid of children! I could even still achieve my plan.

I hovered outside the park when I saw my target rush out of some bushes and looked about while adjusting the helmet on her head warily before spotting me. The dog gave me a slight grin and then ran down the street and had to dodge around a beam of energy. I would take that power from her and I would have my revenge!

Immediately flying over to see who did that. I saw ‘him’ again, the Phantom Blot.

“Magica!” Blot screamed, he pointed his refurbished magic stealing gauntlet at me and I yawned. “Well of course you’d be after the magical dog you mystical menace!”

“Well if it isn’t the little smudge and his broken eggs.” I crossed my arms and tapped my staff against my shoulder preparing to rebuff him after what happened last time we ran afoul of one another.

“Why you… wait we’re getting distracted… where did the mutt go?” At Blot’s musings, I and this fools gaggle of braindead troops took notice of the dog sneaking off to an alleyway. She yelped and hopped when we all noticed her slinking and ran into the alleyway. “After that dog!”

“Right away sir, calling all forces, Caper Canine is on the move and we’re tracking her again!” The peppy Pepper was still being a goon for the idiot that thinks he can destroy all magic. Magic cannot be destroyed, it made up the very fabric of all existence! “Blot is facing Magica, yeah we’re having one of those days aren’t we?”

Speaking of the idiot, I deflect the beam of energy he sent my way with such relative ease, it was basically a parlor trick.

“You will not have the dog before I do!” I raised my staff to this nuisance I’ve had the misfortune to work with for a short time. “After I’m through with her, she’s all yours!”

-Dolly?-

Okay, I’ve taken some pressure off of them, but now I had to keep away from my pursuers.

Luckily for me… stealth is a thing I’m good at. Now just take off the helmet, hide the skateboard and hide them both behind the garbage can and leap on top of it while shapeshifting and…

“Mow?” I mewled cutely from on top of a garbage can as the several thugs after me ran into the alleyway, I got a few pets from the guys in the yellow suits and eggshell helmets. I soaked up the attention and rumbled happily.

“Don’t stop to play with the cat, although it is admittedly a cute cat, we have a job to do and a dog to catch!” The shorter female among the muscle bound guys gave me a few pats on the head and I purred affectionately, she was then quickly on her way none the wiser.

Quickly transforming back into Dolly in a weak flash of green, I grinned as I slapped the helmet back on my head and swung the skateboard around onto my back and snuck my way out the way I came to see Magica and Blot fighting one another with blasts of magic. I quickly ran down the street, only to see another team of those jump suit guys.

I sighed, giving people the run around was hard work. If I see people with guns, I’m going to have to stay out of sight.

-Duckberg Park, Smolder-

“Okay, Magica and those guys took the bait at least, but mercenaries are still coming into the park.” I landed next to a still unconscious pile of friends.

Violet was checking them over with Dormarch’s help and even directing her to do several things to help them further as they were being carefully strapped down to the top of Gizmo Duck’s chest. We were basically going to use him as a wheelbarrow, Gandra said he’d be okay with it and had repositioned him in the armor when she opened it up.

“We still need a better mode of transport to move our injured, I seriously doubt Emergency Services want to deal with being shot at.” Muttered Violet as she worked with what she had from the medical kit to help all of our downed people.

Violet was focusing on her sister Lena first, Pom was mostly stabilized thanks to Gandra aside from irregular heartbeats, next to Lena the most stable was Dolly. Gizmo Duck, the armor and the person underneath were both pretty badly battered by Hollow.

Gizmo Duck, better known as Fenton Crackshell, had taken a real beating and had put up with a lot more than everyone else had. I’m glad to say that I can believe in the heroes of this world… even if one of Gizmo ducks more common weapons was using perfectly good pie, he’s like a genius Power Pony character from Spike’s comic book collection.

We heard a shot and ducked down warily, then more shots firing nearby, but they didn’t seem to be aimed at us. I took to the air and flew around to see what was happening. I eventually spotted a large armored vehicle and a number of people aiming weapons at each other from cover, the guys with the vehicle seemed to have the upper claw here.

I slowly lowered to the ground among the bushes we were taking cover in, making sure to look around everywhere as I did.

“We’re a bit surrounded, but at least we got competing groups of mercenaries that are focusing on each other at the moment.” I was trying to be quiet as possible.

“We really don’t have much time here.” Gandra muttered as she moved close to a tree to look around it and quickly ducked back.

-Sabu Taj-

Scrooge McDuck and Goldie O’ Gilt. I could maybe handle one by themselves, but both at the same time and actually working together? Nope, big nope, definitely not even going to think I had a chance against those two considering Goldie somehow survived my backstabbing of her.

Leap Lamb was at least somehow responsible for the clouds clearing up, but my teams running into the Shred Treads was becoming a major problem.

At least we had them out gunned, but they had us on armor. Apparently they wanted Leap Lamb alive now, we were the ones here to kill her and at a cost to me.

I didn’t think for a second that Scrooge and Goldie weren’t still on my back despite me running and leaving another team to them. We still have three teams aside from my current one and things were devolving into a three ring circus of insanity.

Rev Ocelet was having problems with some idiot running around calling himself Darkwing Duck based on an old television show, despite how dumb he sounded the guy was actually causing Rev some issues and that was to my benefit.

It didn’t help that there was also someone called Quiverwing Quack who was scarily accurate with old weaponry that was mostly soundless. Now there was someone who was doing ridiculous things with crossbow bolts, like taking out the tires on my jeep and somehow knocked out a guy with the same bolt. A trick shot artist running around as a vigilante was something I really didn’t need, much less all the other complications getting in the way.

Out of everything, hearing that Donald Duck was around had me wary. The Duck family was known for dealing with mercenaries, brigands, thieves, thugs and just about any kind of illegal occupation under the sun without permanent injury.

Donald Duck by all appearances was an average duck biped, but even I knew he was probably the most threatening person living in Duckberg and he was sighted as fighting the shell heads with their energy weapons. Mad scientists were backing those guys at the very least.

“Scout teams sit-rep, where’s Donald Duck?” I asked as we were currently in a standoff with the Shred Treads, they wanted to capture the super hero alive.

Do they realize how stupid it sounds to try and captured a super powered individual that has been outrunning me since we’ve first met? Not to mention that she survived near direct hits from rocket trucks? If she chose to, she could be far more dangerous and aggressive than she was and I’ve seen it first hand when she shot down a helicopter with me in it with whatever the strange crap was that she pulled.

Idly sniffing the air, I could smell Leap Lamb as having bled a lot around here. If she was weak enough from blood loss, then it was the perfect opportunity for me to end her life provided I would even get the chance to get close enough to get a bead on her skull.

“We don’t have sight of him ma’am, but he’s with two turned experiments from F.O.W.L. and the Shush agent that helped bring them down.” Did not like hearing that from my scouts in the city. “Ma’am we think that Agent 47 is…”

Hearing those words, I instinctively tried to duck to the right knowing that the guy had a scarily intimidating sense of timing.

I got lucky, the next second I was on the ground and only bleeding a lot.

Feeling an agonizing pain in my left shoulder as I was hit, something just shattered it and I’m pretty sure it was sniper round.

Despite the white hot agony, I rolled towards the nearby tree avoiding a second shot that clipped an artery in my neck, our two mercenary groups started firing on one another and bullets were quickly filling the air.

“Scout team Zeta, do you think?! Get out of there now, he’s definitely here and likely already knows your position, he almost just got me in the heart!” I screamed in rage into my radio, I got up and ran behind at tree narrowly avoiding taking another shot. “Blow the nearest water tower northward of my position, now!”

Everyone heard the explosion in the distance and I grinned, try and take me out when I was distracted huh you bastard? I trapped some of the best high points in the city, you think you were the only one here with a mile long record of killing people?

-Agent 47-

“I don’t say this often but… thank you.” Sabu was craftier then expected, I also did not expect to be rescued in such a fashion. I would have survived the fall and the explosion, but anyone could have come after me if I ended up in the hospital afterwards.

It was curious that someone would rescue an assassin such as me, especially another person who knows what it’s like to be a clone.

“Don’t worry about it, just do me a favor and stay away from attacking anyone in my family so I won’t have to come after you in revenge and we’re golden!” Webbigail Vanderquack McDuck, Scrooge McDuck’s highly unusual clone, quickly pulled out her phone which apparently played some sort pop tune on it. Her eyes widened and she started rappelling down the side of the building using my rope. “Hold on best friends, I’m coming!”

My position was compromised before I ever got into it, so I had better find a different spot to watch things from.

I sighed, pulled out an umbrella and jumped off the other side of the building and opened it on the way down.

-Donald Duck-

This was exasperating, but I was admittedly having some fun despite all the trouble going on in the city right now. Nothing like a good scrap to get the blood pumping, also these eggheads should know by now that Ducks don’t back down.

Fenton’s mother was going to make a lot of arrests today, he finished up with a right hook to the jaw of the last goon in the area and looked to Beakley, Juna and May.

“Are you girls alright?” My voice of course comes out the garbled mess it usually does, probably shouldn’t have sang so much metal when I was younger.

“We’re doing okay!” It was a good day when May could smile brightly in my direction, though she should probably clean off the brass knuckles before she put her arm around her sister.

“Yeah, we’re fine!” June was such a sweetie, she’d be cuter without the baseball bat covered in small amounts of blood she was shouldering.

“I suppose we should find out everyone else’s situation to find out where we’re most needed.” Beakley pulled her glasses from her face and wiped them off using an unconscious persons clothing, she was standing among what was almost a sea of groaning and broken bodies. “Judging by how the sky cleared over the park, they succeeded in dealing with the major problem. The gunshot noises coming from that direction are fairly worrying though.”

Pulling out my phone I called the one likeliest to be closest to the mess, my sister Della. She was always did enjoy a challenge.

“Della, what are you and the boys getting up to?” My sister was quick to respond.

“If I said teaching my boys how to steal a tank… what would you do?” Della sounded fairly strained as she said this, almost as if she was afraid to hear my answer.

“Are you stealing a tank?” I asked while tapping a foot knowing I would not like the answer I was about to get.

“No, no, no, it’s not a tank Don, just an APC, honest! It’s not like the mercenaries need it, we knocked out the crew silently, tied them up and everything. We do have a situation going on in Duckberg Park what with the various mercenaries shooting everywhere, there’s also the situation with both Magica and The Phantom Blot chasing after Dolly for her magic nearby. I’ll have you know that we’re completely fine where we are.” If there was one thing in this hateful world that one had to be afraid of more than anything, it was Della’s driving skills. Sure she could pilot anything that flies, but put her in control of a normal car or a boat and she’s functionally worse than Launchpad. At least she wasn’t as bad with submarines. “Have to get back to you Don, I have to rescue Violet and her group from getting caught in the crossfire. Yeah, cross that wire Huey, that should start the engine. Louie, don’t let your brother Dewey man the gun. Dewey put on a flak vest please, I’d feel better if you did as you’re going to need it.”

“We’ll meet you there Dumbella.” I sighed audibly, slowly dragged my left hand down my beak and stopped the call. I wanted to cry so badly right now. “Della’s hijacking a mercenary APC, we all know she can’t get a driver’s license to save her life. Not with her lead foot syndrome.”

“You do realize her metal leg is not made of actual lead right?” Nodding to May, I patted her on the head and then turned towards the street that led to the park.

Trying to stay calm despite this turn of event. I took a few slow steps and then immediately started running for the park with all I had in a panic, hoping to make it there in time before things got any worse or my sister did something crazy in the tune of massive amounts of collateral damage!

-Equus, World Summit, Fizzle-

“So that almost fixes things, it’s more like a patch job Jade.” I just knew how she was going to respond to what I just said. “We need to fix the economy completely before the patch stops working.”

“Meow.” She’s been meowing at me incessantly and I didn’t know what I did wrong. She’ll talk to everyone else normally, but me she just mewls in an annoying tone. At least she gives snuggles.

“Isn’t it kind of against the Geneighva Convention to have a delegate tied up and gagged like this?” The Griffonstone delegate asked motioning to the lambkin delegate tied to their chair. “Also are you and you’re wife having problems? She’s been meowing at you all meeting.”

“She’ll tell me eventually, but please bear with it for now.” I groaned and rubbed my right hoof against the right side of my forehead in very small and slow circles. “She’s not going to speak to me normally until she’s figures I’ve had enough, we’re still quite happily married despite this issue. Also Jade using a cake or cupcake is now against the Geneva Convention and is both cruel and unusual war crime unless pardoned before hoof or it’s a life and death situation, all for the motion?”

“Agreed!” Everyone stated, even Discord agreed with the motion. You knew it was bad when the most chaotic person in the room agreed to something along with everyone else.

Cakes in Jade’s paws were now to be considering weapons of mass destruction if she were to use them for magical alchemy.

Jaded pouted and wilted in her seat while crossing her arms.

“Now that the floor is open, I would like to discuss the exportation of macramé sculptures of my backside to Yakyakistan and the payments in snow I could expect in return for them.” That Discord could say that with a straight face and with seriousness had me almost breaking my stoic demeanor. What would he need all that snow for anyway? Celestia, Luna and Twilight were fairly suspicious of him. “I would like to ask for a snow yak, sculpted by one of your professional snow sculptors.”

“You ask for much, but yak agree to the trade!” Prince Rutherford of the yaks stated. As far as the yak’s usual strangeness goes, he was doing some fairly bizarre and questionable business with Discord.

"I'll trade you a bowl of banana pudding from my mother for one of those macramé tails if you can talk Discord into enchanting it to act as a third arm for me!" Why Jade, why?!

"I'll try allied friend of yaks!" When did the yaks become friends with Jade and when did they work out a treaty between this morning with the exploding cereal experiment and now? "He is being a very hard bargainer!"

Urge to face hoof rising, do not face hoof Fizzle, resist the temptation...

Author's Note

Okay Feast Week is over, also the amount of turkey meat is actively attempting to kill me from the inside.

Broccoli casserole and potato soup was a big hit this year.

Mishmash, it's how I've been feeling lately with trying to get myself to write.

154. Applying Positive Chaos.

-Equus, Canterlot, Tianhuo-

“Come now, are you all seriously this… er…” I was just trying to find a nice word for it, they were not very good.

“Ma’am, pardon my Prance, but those dogs are crazy!” The Wonder Bolts I was training today were terrified of Pom’s god puppies. They had some right to be so, but…

“I only had Puff play with you, he’s the least threatening and most harmless of the Canis Minor I am caring for.” I had learned much about the familiars that my wife loved beyond any form of doubt. “It is not like I sent all four of them at you at once.”

I played with the other three personally, it was a nice workout.

“Which is why I’m only sending Tuft and Woof now, they still have energy. Tuft, Woof, they will play.” The screaming Wonder Bolts were not nearly as tough or as stoic as I in the face of torturous hardship.

-Earth, still morning, Duckberg Streets, Ocellus (Dolly form)-

Do having two people who want you was dangerous, having three people that want you for three very different reasons even more so.

I was being chased by a gun wielding ocelot, a magic using evil duck and a… I really didn’t know what The Phantom Blot was but I knew that getting hit by that magic stealing gauntlet had deadly consequences for me.

For once, one of the hidden problems with a changeling’s transformation ability came up. If you don’t know what your target looks like or have a very good approximate idea of them, then you can’t turn into them. Line of sight was important for that and while I could turn into Phantom Blots outward appearance, if someone tried to knock off the mask I’d immediately transform back into myself immediately because I have no idea what Blot looks like without it.

It’s about as odd as being able to transform into a rock or transform so that I have the exact colors of my surroundings as long as I don’t move.

Thankfully no pony questions where I got the giant monster bug forms from, because we changelings have actually seen them and we only needed one changeling to teach the others a given form by turning into it.

The bigger the form, the harder it is to hold and the more energy you had to use for the extra space, as such a large form was a temporary combat boost even if a changeling could never perfectly replicate the exact strength of a target they transforming into. The smaller the form, the more condensed your mass was, but it was far easier to hold. I was currently Dolly’s size, thankfully I wasn’t too badly condensed and I could stay like this all week.

Now if only I could shake these three, I’ve lost them twice by turning into a rock already and going invisible once, but I think they were wising up to my tricks and I really didn’t want them to know that I wasn’t Dolly.

I poked my head out slightly from behind a parked car and pulled back as a chunk of metal was blown off with a loud noise. Why did the Ocelot have to be so good at keeping track of me?!

“Hah, got you now you flea ridden…wha?!” Phantom Blot fired as he turned from around the car, but his shot missed as I was whisked into the sky by a parrot both with flames coming from his legs.

“Hi, my name is Boyd, I am here to be of assistance to you!” The kid said pleasantly, he was a bundle of positive emotions and he was evading being hit by a magic sapping beam, a conjured pillar of flames and bullets with relative ease while putting himself between me and all of it. He swerved out of the way of Magica firing an arc of lightning at us. “Whoa… I shall endeavor to get you, and myself, to safety! I must say, you are much denser than a normal dog should be.”

I sighed and tried to point in the direction of the park, actually talking would give the game away that I wasn’t the Dalmatian I was pretending to be.

Magica was still giving chase to us when I looked back, Ocelot and Blot apparently split up and didn’t have any good reason fight one another.

-Duckberg Park, Smolder-

Projectiles were whizzing in every direction and we were staying down to not be hit by any stray shots. I’ve already been hit twice, but I was fine. Bullets can’t pierce dragon scales, still hurt though even if they couldn’t quite compare to the pressure of swimming in molten rock.

“How many people are after Pom again exactly?” Gandra asked as we stayed next to Gizmo Duck and the injured strapped onto him. We couldn’t exactly move, if we tried someone would spot us. I’m surprised we hadn’t been spotted already.

“Not all of them are after Pom, some of them are after Dolly too.” I’m not sure whether or not Pom was happier to have a dog around, she obviously likes canines on some level.

“By my count there are more than thirty mercenaries in the park alone.” Yeah and most of them were angry, injured and or not caring if there was collateral damage and constantly fighting one another Violet. Just like the dragons back home, only not as tough physically. Something buzzed and we all looked to Violet. “Hello? The western side of the park hiding in some bushes Huey, Smolder has been shot twice, but she’s fine. Her scales could probably take a tank shell… yes I too am fairly sure the force would still hurt and possibly put her through a building, but she’d survive. What are you guys up to? Are you sure you should be letting Della drive it? Right, hurry up please, we have the injured ready and I don’t know how long we can stay hidden with this many people…”

A bullet struck my forehead and took out Violet’s phone after knocking me over and bouncing off my scales. Okay… ow… that stings.

“That was quite inconvenient.” Violet muttered. “Still better than it hitting me or any of the injured.”

“I don’t think we’ll keep getting lucky like that.” Gandra pulled out her phone and called likely called Huey. The tree near the bushes took another three bullets. “She’s fine, don’t worry. It hit her phone after bouncing off Smolder’s forehead, we really do need to get out of here like yesterday. Where are you guys? How did you… no… you know, never mind. Just get over here before something fatal happens!”

“Yes, the probability of that happened are going up exponentially as we speak.” Dormarch sounded fairly worried, but we’ve been in worse situations than this.

-South side of the park, APC, Huey-

“Violet’s okay, but Smolder has been hit by three bullets, if she wasn’t a dragon I’d be more worried. We really need to get this thing moving Mom!” None of us were worried about Uncle Scrooge or Goldie, those two could take care of themselves.

“Almost have it, okay Dewey, hand me the finger tip of the rubber glove.” Watching as mom got the bit of glove from Dewey, she wrapped the rubber bit around two wires and the engine roared to life. “Now that kids is how you hotwire an APC.”

“We could have just used the keys.” Louie commented dryly.

“Where’s the fun in that and it’s a fun thing to learn how to steal vehicles, I thought this would be on brand with you guys.” Della, mother, I love you, but our friends were currently being shot at in the middle of a warzone in Duckberg’s park.

“Aren’t Violet, Lena, Gandra, Fenton, Pom and Dolly all currently in the middle of all that and shouldn’t we be more worried about them?” Dewey questioned and I gave mom a flat look.

“Okay so I didn’t know where the keys were before I started hotwiring it. Sure it might have taken a while, but I got it now!” Hopping into the seat mom raised her right finger to the ceiling. “Now let’s go do this thing!”

Mom stomped the accelerator and we all fell over as the vehicle took off into the middle of all the fighting. Only our mother would drive us right into all of this.

-East side of the park, Webby-

Agent 47 not only owed me a favor, but he was so cool about it too! For someone with a lot of blood on their hands he was fairly nice if a bit uptight, might even be related to our favorite resident ghost Duckworth. He looked similarly enough, maybe some of his genetics came from our butler?

Approaching the action from the east, stayed ducked behind the car and looked across the street to see a very angry leopard with a shot shoulder retreating. That had to be Sabu, she looked fairly messed up and would be easy to takedown, but I decided to wait and see if she left the area.

Once she was gone, I was about to move in to find my friends when I noted an APC slam through a number of mercenaries and crash through a fountain. There was only one person that could drive like that in such a reckless over the top manner and it was…

“Hey, Webby, where is everyone? I got kind of lost and found this road called life, at least that’s what the street sign said, there was this dragon named Tiamat on it and she had this incredible noodle stand. Also I met this other dragon named Bahamut and he sold me this gnarly burrito.” If Launchpad was here and eating a burrito, then who was driving that APC like an insane person? “It’s really good, though I don’t know where one would get giant spider meat from or why that Bahamut guy breathed on me so hard. Other than attacking me for some reason, I think he and his sister were pretty nice.”

“You got to meet the king of dragons and his possibly evil sister? How do you do it Launchpad?” I wanted to meet a large dragon and get attacked by them too, the only two dragons I’ve met are Smolder and the one that went after dads money bin.

“I don’t know, just lucky I guess.” He continued eating a burrito and we watched as the APC swerve around and sent people flying in all directions. Grenades were going off everywhere, rockets were being fired at the rogue APC, but it kept moving and dodging all the projectiles and explosives being sent at it. “Is Della driving that?”

“Launchpad, Webby, what are you two doing here!” We turned to see Drake Mallard, AKA Darkwing Duck and he was tapping his foot and behind him was his adopted daughter wearing a green costume. She was my friend Gosalyn Waddlemeyer Mallard, otherwise known as Quiverwing Quack. Both of them looked to be okay despite having followed the mercenaries into the middle of all of whatever is going on in the park over there. “Also you wouldn’t happen to have seen an Ocelot with revolvers around here would you?”

“Hi Gos!” I waved at her and she waved back.

“Hey Webs.” She stated nonchalantly as she loaded her crossbow turned and fired it in three seconds, she knocked the rifle right out of a mercenaries hands and disabled it.

“Nice shot.” I had some really talented friends.

“Thanks, I’m becoming really good at it, but today has been quite tiring.” Gos sat down on the hood of the car I was taking cover behind.

“I just got here D W, apparently Webby was watching all of that.” Launchpad stated after we were done with our interaction, he pointed at the APC currently tearing the whole park apart.

The APC hit something roughly, flew up did a back flip and landed with enough concussive force to sent several Mercenaries sprawling across the ground in a painful manner. It then started going backwards and crashed through three trees.

“Who’s driving that thing? Not that they aren’t solving a lot of problems for us already, Eggheads, Mercenaries and giant ants, how much worse can this day get? It even isn’t noon yet.” Darkwing muttered as he pulled out his gas gun and loaded it.

“Wait, giant ants?” I said with a smile. “As in Gi-ants?”

“Yeah, Duckberg has been particularly bad today. We should have stayed in Saint Canard, gone to Spoonerville or maybe even Mouseton. Mouseton is usually quiet and less life threatening. Suck Gas strange ant thing!” Darkwing turned and a black ant, which was bigger than a car, with glowing yellow beady eyes rolled onto its back and went limp as it inhaled the gas that Darkwing fired at it. “Ugh, they are all over the place, some mad scientist must have unleashed them on Duckberg at the wrong time as the mercenaries are mostly dealing with it.”

“Yeah, we should probably track the guy that made them down.” Quiverwing nodded along.

“Well that explains why the Ithaquack harpies are acting up.” As Launchpad stated this, we watched a harpy fly down and started carrying away the large ant despite being smaller than it. “Also I think that might be Della driving the APC, she’s not very good with cars. One of the few things I can actually say I’m better at then her. I don’t crash cars as nearly as often as I do planes, even I do crash a car I can always fix the damage.”

It was a strangely magical sight to me to watch the gi-ant get carried away, then again with my life a lot of things were magical in nature. I was someone who’s become friends with actual demons, staked a vampire through the heart and even beat a werewolf into submission. Magic might be trouble, but I wouldn’t turn my friend Lena away just because magic tends to cause problems… wait…

“Lena, Violet, also our other new friends, they are all stuck in the park in the middle of all that!” We had to go help them.

“Do you know where they are exactly?” Darkwing asked, I blinked and tried to call Violet.

Nothing, either she wasn’t answering her phone or something happened to it. I tried calling the Gizmo Duck armor next.

“Hello?” Gandra answered, what happened to Fenton?!

“Is everyone okay?!” I asked immediately.

“No, but we’re stable, up until we feasibly get hit by a stray bullet or receive personal help, one deeply grazed my right hip a minute ago. Bleeding a bit here, but Violet is currently taking care of it.” Gandra sounded a bit scared. “We got the injured ready to move, but we can’t leave our current position. Despite how little cover our position offers, it’s actually keeping us fairly safe from Della’s driving. She’s be good in a destruction derby at least, she destroying more of the park than the mercenaries are… aw… and I liked that statue too. We need more distractions to get away safely if we’re going to try and leave on foot, in that case we’ll try heading towards the coast and Lena’s theatre hideaway. Also I would like to note that Ocellus is on the run from both Magica and Blot, she should be fine provided they don’t catch her.”

-Ocellus-

Boyd and I arrived at the park and saw the APC spinning around on its nose before falling on its wheels and speeding forward into destroying a park bench, while avoiding a rocket that created a fairly large divot in the ground behind it. At least I was starting to recognize where everyone was.

It was like a train wreck, everyone had split up at the whole sharks and squirrels thing on the front lawn and now everyone was coming together again from several directions.

One team was driving the vehicle that was now hopping around on its back wheels and I don’t even think it was made to do that or ramp off the nearest snack stand to plow through a… what’s a cabbage cart doing here? Well other than getting destroyed in a flurry of shredded cabbages by the seemingly out of control vehicle.

“It seems things have devolved into being quite…” Boyd’s left arm moved fast and I almost leapt off his right arm. He was holding a small bit of metal. “Dangerous. Number of criminals in the vicinity… calculating… 136. Eighty of which are Egghead grunts under The Phantom Blot, most of which are in the process of being arrested. So their numbers are now more along the lines of twenty or so free members that have yet to be knocked out by the Duck, McDucks or their allies.”

I looked behind us and saw Magica in the distance. Barking, I pointed to her, the APC, the injured group I led Magica and Blot away from trying to stay down and a few other things of interest.

“This is a problem, calculating best solution for least loss of life…” BOYD said as he hovered here. “The injured an all allies need to be in the APC for the best outcome. I would like to endeavor in taking out the explosive wielding mercenaries before they cause fatal injuries to anyone involved. I cannot simply do both.”

That’s when I saw Donald Duck running straight for the wildly out of control APC that was drifting in large circles etching doughnut shaped markings into the dirt. Through bullets, explosions and past that one guy that brought a flamethrower for the giant ants encroaching upon the park from the south, He leapt onto the back half of the vehicle as it swung towards him, climbed up and onto it and managed to get into the hatch despite being narrowly thrown off by everything going on around the vehicle.

“That solves our problem, but what to do with you? I cannot place you down and or deal with the mercenaries with you on either of my arms.” To answer Boyd’s question, I created a flash of green and took to the air on dragonfly like wings scaled up to fit Dolly’s frame. I leapt off him and started to flap as hard as I could to parachute my way towards the others. “I have been thankfully programmed to not think too hard about the existence of magic, I will go deal with every mercenary that has explosive now.”

As I did so I saw the APC finally stop moving wildly out of control and even out, I changed directions and angled for it. Landing on the wind shield I pointed up, Dewey nodded. With a flash of green around my paws I climbed up onto the roof and the hatch opened.

Dewey quickly pulled me inside and I finally transformed back into myself while sighing with relief and made my way to the front.

“Go that way!” As I got to the front, and pointed in the direction Smolder was in. “We have to open the backend at those bushes!”

“Okay!” Donald steered the armored behemoth straight for where I left everyone. “Della!”

“On it bro, Huey prep for taking on injured, Dewey you’re on the hatch, Louie you’re on lookout!” All three brothers snapped a salute to their mother and started to carry them out as she made her way to the back.

-Webby-

Okay, Boyd just joined in and was dealing with anyone who had explosives on them, rocket launchers as a priority.

“I want to go in, but that would be putting me in danger… we’ll circle around and see where I can help out.” I ran off with Launchpad following after me. Darkwing and Gosalyn were dealing with the Gi-ants.

“You can help us with ambushing Magica and Blot my darling Webby.” I turned and smiled as we ran across Dad and Goldie. “I have an idea of where Donald and Della will take the APC after they pick up our friends.”

-Smolder-

Okay how were most of these people still standing and or shooting their weapons? Did they ever run out of shots or did they just bring that much ammo here, but why would be carrying so much… oh right Pom. She could dodge all those projectiles, but she wasn’t capable of doing that forever some of those mercenaries had to be geared for shooting her.

The Armored Personnel Carrier came sliding towards us and it nearly tipped over onto its right side before it settled onto its wheels with its back facing us. The back end opened and Della rushed out towards Gizmo Duck.

“Okay everyone into the APC!” Della grabbed one of the arms of the Gizmo Duck, while Gandra grabbed the other and they lifted and pushed everyone into the back of the vehicle. Violet ran by and I turned to the vehicle to see Ocellus waving me forward. Didn’t need to be gestured at twice, I was already moving! “Do it Dewey!”

I ran in and Dewey closed the door behind me, we were now in the relative safety of the vehicle that started to speed away from where we had been stuck.

“Where do we go now?” Donald’s voice was still a mess, but at least I understood that.

“I have an idea, but I need to run it by…” An electronic tune sounded off and Della pulled out her phone. “Yes, kind of busy here. Uncle Scrooge? Sure, yeah, that’s what I was about to suggest. Well if it’ll get Magic and Blot off our backsides for a while! Donald drive in the direction of the money bin and stop a block down the road!”

“Right.” Donald did that and the vehicle was rocked by an explosion. “Oof, not one of our better mornings, it feels like I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“Eh, I’m sure the evening will be much better if we aren’t dealing with Gi-ants.” Della responded as we reached the spot and Donald came to a stop. “We’re here Uncle Scrooge.”

Magica flew in front of the vehicle deflecting a blast of energy from Blot’s gauntlet, she turned and was about to use magic. When the witch of a duck got a webbed dropkick to the ribs via Webby.

I heard Webby landing on top of the vehicle as Magica hit the street and quickly got standing while aiming her staff at the vehicle, this was followed by a cane to the top of her skull by a pogoing Scrooged who then slammed down on a shabby looking Blot’s skull too before he could attack Magica and was knocked out.

Scrooge had to bounce backwards as a beam of energy was fired at him by one of those eggshell headed guys and they quickly dragged Blot away and started running. Magica growled.

“You and your family haven’t seen the last of me Scroogy! You may have prevented me from stealing the dog’s magical power until it settled, but I’ll be back for you and your dime, another time!” With a wave of her staff and a swirl of energy, Magica disappeared like a disgruntled unicorn waving their horn.

"Don't move, I want Caper Canine and Leap Lamb, now or else." We all turned to see an ocelot holding a gun to Webby's head.

"Excuse me, but you're threatening the wrong person here!" Goldie ran in and kicked him between the legs with her steel toed boots and stole the gun, that guy crumpled immediately.

"Should I start calling you mom?" Webby asked.

"Don't push it Webby." Goldie responded flatly.

"Family truly..." Launchpad started to say when a blimp fell and exploded behind him sending him face first into the APC. "I didn't even pilot that... does it still count?"

Author's Note

Anything that crashes near you counts towards your bingo card Launchpad.

155. Dilly Dolly.

-Earth, Time: ???, Location: ???, Pom-

I groaned and came to looking at a white ceiling and slightly blinding light. I just sat here blinking the spots out of my eye trying to remember what happened.

What was the last thing I recall happening to me specifically?

Dolly attacking Hollow into the portal by leaping bodily into Lena’s magical beam of energy, the portal changing into a keyhole and Dolly forcing something odd to happen to Hollow and Shadow pom.

“… the amazing Quiverwing Quack, also some other guy calling himself Dark Ming Duck or something or other like that.” A voice was stating as I tried to get my bearings, the voice stopped immediately as if it was my moving caused it.

Groaning I tried to sit up, this was mistake due to the sudden onset of agony. I took to me a moment to notice through the tears that I had my right leg in a sling and the rest of my body felt like agony.

“Oh you’re awake, I’ll tell everyone to send someone up to help you!” Looking to my left I saw a screen with Ms. Shuttles bright, if worried, looking bunny face on it. “Sorry I didn’t help much, I got a little scared when so many people with guns were showing up and stayed well out of the way until the end when that nice little robot boy needed backup. Don’t try to talk, just lay back and rest. You’re safe here, though I think you will need water and some food. You really need to heal after taking a beating like that without rest.”

I slowly dropped my head and upper torso back onto the fluffy pillow.

“Does it hurt Pom? You were the most seriously injured out of everyone.” Looking to my right I saw Dormarch pressing his face up against his screen in worry, I simply gave him a nod. Hurt doesn’t describe any movement at the moment, in fact hurt would be an understatement. At least I knew I was alive. “We’re currently at Scrooge McDuck’s money bin, one of the safest places near the city out on the water. Also I would like to report that we will no longer have to deal with one of the mercenary groups, Rev Olver Ocelot was captured and jailed along with a majority of his forces. As for Blot and Magica, they both made an escape and Blot lost a large number of Eggheads throughout all the fighting that are also arrested. As for how long you’ve been out for… well you shouldn’t even be awake after all you went through and you’ve almost been out for two days. You still need to take your Arrhythmia medicine at a prescribed time, but we’re glad that it’s not for another few days. I’m upping the schedule as your heart is still showing scary irregularities, but sleep has helped with it somewhat.”

I sighed.

“In other news… well… you made the news again. You, Dolly, the McDuck clan and related allies. Quite frankly I’m glad you’re here for your safety and not in a hospital where someone can sneak in to poison you or gun you down. Someone caught videos of you fighting those shadow things and that monster. Not only that, Gizmo Duck and Gizmo Gal were seen helping you and accidentally hitting Dolly with a pie. Quite a few people are upset with Gizmo Duck for that… probably because Dolly is both adorable and awesome heroic dog.” Dormarch continued nattering on, it was keeping me relaxed to hear I was going to be okay. “Oh speaking of the others. Everyone had some injuries from that event, even Dolly had some nasty internal bruising, a bad case of whiplash and some cuts. I think the worst of it was being grazed by bullets. Speaking of bullet wounds, the leopard that was after you won’t bother you for a while. She was last seen leaving the area with a serious shoulder injury and a nicked neck artery that likely needs stitches. Magica also won’t likely be going after Dolly either according to Lena and Violet, but Blot still might try to steal her magic.”

Well that was some relief.

“That’s just the mercenaries and menacing locals, be glad you weren’t awake for the outbreak of giant ants, the kraken attack or the third wave of flying laser sharks with jet propulsion. There was also an invasion of magical pixie frogs, but that was dealt with quite quickly compared to everything else.” Looking on Dormarchs screen, I just stared in disbelief at some of the things that chose to attack Duckberg at the time of my convalescence. “As for the second wave of flying sharks… we’re not talking about what happened with the second wave of flying sharks... so many tentacles, but it’s a very good thing the APC had a decent caliber gun on it.”

“Catching Pom up on what happened Dormarch.” The voice sounded weary and beaten, it didn’t naturally belong to a usually peppy dog like Dolly. Dolly disappeared from the doorway, she was soon pulling herself up onto the bed, her head, legs and torso were all wrapped up in bandages and her neck had a small brace on it. Her ears and tail looked okay at least, her face had a few smaller bandages. “Ugh, my aching head and body… I only look worse than I’m feeling, trust me on that.”

I rolled my eye in response, I decided to send her exactly what I was currently feeling.

“Yikes, you really need some pain killers. I didn’t know being a hero or having magic would cause this much trouble.” Well get used to it Dolly, especially if you’re going to stick with me. “We still did a lot of awesome stuff, but my family kind of freaked out with all the weird stuff I pulled when I was fighting against… what was his name again?”

“Hollow.” I rasped out quietly.

“Okay his name and your voice just sent chills down my spine. Yeah, my family is definitely worried about me.” Crossing her paws and hugging herself, Dolly shivered violently and then looked at me. She carefully walked across the bed and rolled onto her back to lay next to me. “What I wouldn’t do for a good calming session with Deepak right about now.”

“I could call the family, though it is probably late evening or dinner time for the rest of your family Dolly.” Dormarch offered while looking thoughtful. “It’s up to you whether or not you want to disturb them.”

“Please do Dor.” Dolly didn’t hesitate, she didn’t know how much longer we would be in this world for and when we would be leaving. She was making an active choice to stay by my side despite how painful that choice was going to be for her in the long run.

“Calling the fam, I’ll ask for Da Vinci or Deepak if someone else picks up.” Dormarch immediately started doing so. Deepak I can understand, he was the quiet peaceful dog that likes to meditate. Da Vinci wasn’t bad either with being an exceptional artist that was a little meek, but had a peaceful disposition.

“Hello, you are the one that’s calling right Dolly?” The one to pick up was Delilah, the matriarch and nurse dog of the family. “Did you need something of us sweetie, I heard you called earlier with some disturbing news?”

“Hey mom, just wanted to let the ‘fam’ know that Pom’s awake. She looks as bad as I currently feel and I’m on pain killers for dogs, ugh they do nothing for emotional pain. Also what is taking them so long to get that water for her?” Dolly grumbled as she got up and looked about, she then moved over to pick up Dormarch from the bedside table and settled back down holding him up so her step mother could see us. “As dangerous as it’s been, I’m glad I was here to help. I’m not so happy at feeling as if my ribs were kicked in by a donkey, my face was hit with a sledgehammer and my entire body aches as if I was chewed on by Roxy and then spat out to be run over by a truck.”

“Well you don’t look too badly hurt and Dormarch is sending me a report of your current health.” Dolly glared at Dormarch in the corner looking innocent with a halo over his head. “Please take better care of yourself Dolly, Dylan and I can’t look out for your health from across the globe you know.”

“I know mom, it’s actually pretty scary considering all the stuff I did that morning. I’m still going to have Pom’s back and she definitely needs that right now.” If someone were to attack right now, Dolly would be the only answer to the situation. I can’t move like I am without feeling like my burned limbs were on fire again, good thing I know my wool at the ends of my legs will grow back at least. “I hope once my body heals up a bit that Pom will help me figure out what else I can do, I think I’ve only scratched the surface.”

“I know this is odd of me to say to you, but don’t push yourself too hard or too far too fast Dolly. I’m surprised I even have to tell you that.” Delilah looked proud of Dolly. “It’s frightening to watch you get into a fight and get hurt like you have, but your father is very proud you’re helping people.”

“Look if I can face at least five to six mercenaries armed with guns head on with just a skateboard, I think I’m overly qualified to be a police dog even without my new magical mojo being a factor. Even fought that duck biped cousin to Cruella for a short time and afterwards I got involved in a fight with a monster Pom helped put away and did something I still don’t understand. That duck was a lot more dangerous than Cruella, yet I still find myself more terrified of actually seeing Cruella again than I do of meeting Magica ‘kick-my-ribs’ De Spell.” Not the only one that wanted to know more about that Dolly, even I wanted to know what happened with Hollow Heart and that whole thing with the keyhole. As long as Hollow Heart wasn’t threatening this world, then I could rest a little bit easier even though I seriously doubt that was the end of him or that anything could actually kill him now. “I kind of want Deepak’s help to relax, or at least Da Vinci. I’d even take talking to Dante freaking out or Diesel going on about digging holes.”

“Understandable, the idea of Cruella still scares the pups and even Hunter is terrified of her, he’s been visiting us more and is rightfully paranoid. Even if this Magica was the strongest being in existence I’d still be more terrified of Cruella, that she even has a cousin as possibly demented as she is still boggles the mind.” Delilah tilted her head curiously. “Not going to talk to Dylan?”

“Yeah no, not happening, high strung and not exactly calm when even the littlest rock is out place. I’ll pass on talking to my bro when he could stress me out even worse than I already am. I’d like to think of myself as spunky and feisty, but… I’ve been through some eye openers and being unconscious for more than a day to wake up with bandages and a neck brace was one of them. I’d rather be in a good mood, and better health when I talk to Dylan. We tend to be a bit annoying towards one another, but without me around Dylan’s the main top dog again and is probably happier that I’m not causing trouble for him every other day.” Dolly sat up and looked around. “Where are they, are they making food or what? Someone better get water for Pom or so help me I’ll do it myself even if I should be resting too! Anyway, Feisty, yes, Courageous, maybe, fearless… definitely not! I got whiplash from a bullet just hitting my helmet, which did protect me and didn’t do any damage to it, but darn it if the bullet couldn’t have killed me from just the impact alone if it knocked my head in the wrong direction! I was almost fighting while like that the entire time.”

“That’s why I’m just happy hear from you and that you are still alive, you’re doing things I don’t think any of us could have ever expected of you.” It was a noticeable thing here Delilah that you weren’t asking or trying to get Dolly to come back home. Were you willing to let your step daughter continue helping me knowing how dangerous it was? “You’re definitely safer with Pom than I’d thought you’d be. You’re still our tough girl Dolly, but I would still like to think you’d want to talk with me and stay connected to the family while you can despite your unique bond with Pom.”

She smiled at me and I gave a weak one back to her.

“Don’t you think I’m getting in over my head or into too much danger?” Being the voice of reason sounded wrong when Dolly was really quite gungho. That she was acknowledging it made my head spin a little.

“Dolly, from what we’ve learned from watching you on the news and you calling to talk with the pups, the world was always this dangerous and the worst could happen to us at any time. It’s kind of funny that Dante can now accurately predict some of that.” Delilah was all heart even if she wasn’t the most physically affectionate mother. “It’s just that we’ve managed to ignore most of that danger for quite a long time aside from a few small minor incidents compared to what you’re running into head first. In fact the puppies are trying to come up with all kinds of strange things you’ll eventually be doing.”

“Heh, Dalmatians can do anything, we just have to go for it hard enough! Except… there’s something I’m still flip-flopping on mom.” Dolly ran her paws down her right ear looking a little flustered and upset with something.

“You can say it to Pom if you want Dolly, I don’t think it will actually change things. It’ll be just acknowledging what you already know and coming to terms with it.” Delilah seemed almost sad as she looked at Dolly.

What did Dolly want to say to me?

“But…” Dolly tried only for Delilah to hold up her left paw.

“The paw means pause.” Delilah stated gently and Dolly clammed up immediately. “Funny, I have an amazing daughter that can jump high into the air, zip about fighting monsters and dangerous bipeds. Yet I can still pull the parent card even from across the planet…”

“Mom-!” Dolly groaned.

“Right, sorry love. Now I’m just going to ask this, would anyone bat an eye if I were to stay a night at Dr. Dave’s place after a hard day at work and couldn’t make it home?” Delilah worked in a hospital as a nurse or therapy dog, not exactly a common position a dog could earn or actually be paid for. Whoever the biped was that took care of Delilah previously really set things up for her before leaving her to her own devices.

“No.” Dolly answered while rubbing at her left leg with her right paw, doing her heard to not look in my direction or me staring at her in curiosity.

“If your father stayed the night with anyone from the firehouse would anyone think it strange?” Delilah continued.

“No…” Dolly lowered her head, trying to hide her face with her ears.

“I’m sure our mailman doesn’t mind us either, he even asked around about you and thought it odd you weren’t around to chase him.” Delilah chuckled lightly. “A mailman worrying about his favorite pursuer, will wonders never cease? It is okay Dolly, you’ll will always be family, our family. What we have now wasn’t ever going to last forever, at some point the puppies would eventually want to go out seek their fortunes or start little families of their own. You know, it’s not every day you can talk directly to the person who wouldn’t mind what you wanted to ask.”

“Speaking of asking things. Dormarch… where is everyone?!” Dolly sounded angry on my account and I wanted to tell her to calm down, instead I lifted my agonized left hoof and stared to carefully tease her left ear softly. She sighed. “You’re really making this difficult for me Pom.”

I didn’t stop teasing her ear, mostly since she didn’t ask me to as Dormarch reflected her words to Ms. Shuttle.

“There’s a small problem going on in the lower levels of this money bin at the moment, apparently something involving a sword horse, a bag of holding and a rat flute?” Even Ms. Bunny Shuttle looked confused. “I’m not programmed to acknowledge that magic exists, but what I’m seeing right now is a pretty good indication of its existence. I’m… not going to think about this too hard, but Mr. Manny is on his way to see to Pom’s needs while everyone else deals with the ensuing issue in the lower levels. I would go back to Big Hero Six after this, but I’ve called them and asked them if I could continue assisting you for a little while long. They don’t mind.”

“Manny?” I asked still needing water for my parched throat.

“He works here, I don’t know everyone here that well and this is the longest time I’ve actually been out of San Fransokyo, but I’m meeting so many interesting people and making so many friends!” Ms. Shuttle seemed particularly chirpy like usual.

I turned back to a nervous looking Dolly.

“Well go on Dolly, ask her.” Delilah prodded still on the screen with Dormarch giving Dolly puppy dog eyes.

“I’m still thinking it through mom!” Dolly seemed to be blushing a bit.

“So you’re still dilly dallying or is it called waffling these days?” Delilah stated with a flat look, she shook her head with wry smile. “Oh my poor sweet daughter. Your denial is so adorable, it’s sometimes hard to imagine you’re a tomboy.”

“It’s more like she’s dilly Dolly-ing, it’s a term Dylan uses when she gets like this.” A voice sounded out and my younger brother Dante appeared on the screen next to Delilah. “Look, sis, nobody is going to think less of you for going for that siren’s call in your heart. We’re all kind of expecting it anyway at this point.”

“Look it’s not just a siren call for me and it’s really hard for me to ask!” There wasn’t much to guess about with where this was going with Dolly. “How can I say that I outright want to be her dog regardless of wherever it takes me without it getting entirely awkward in some deep meaning mumbo jumbo kind of way? I’m not good at feelings sometimes!”

Both the dogs on the screen gave her a smug look, did Dolly literally just forget I speak canine for a few seconds? I just sat there for a minute staring at her and she just sat there staring into space with her pupils shrinking when the realization kicked in, her left eye even twitched a little.

I turned to the weird biped thestral thing that walked in quietly, his long face was a little odd and his glowing eyes were slightly unnerving. He quietly put the glass of water he was holding to my lips gently, I daintily drank from it as Dolly continued to do an impression of a statue with her mouth open in shock.

I nodded to the slightly intimidating muscular guy with a smile as my throat felt much better and less like a desert moved into it. Motioning for him to step back with my left hoof, wincing at the motion, he did so quietly.

“Gee sis, was it really that hard for you? I mean, I know you have that whole Camilla thing stuck in your head making you abhor the idea quite a bit, but give it a rest. Pom likes you as you are and wouldn’t ask you to do anything you don’t already want to.” Dante seemed to be taking this with a lackadaisical attitude. “Besides you don’t have to ask to be her dog, you basically already are. Seriously Dolly, we don’t mind you making this choice when it feels right for you and everyone else agrees.”

Dolly slowly grabbed her ears with her paws and pulled them over her face as it turned red.

“Dolly, it’s okay. Dante’s right, I’m not surprised in the slightest.” I was still coughing a bit and took a few more sips of water. As many doubts as I knew Dolly had, things weren’t too bad between us overall. “Also I take it this is coming from the incident following what we discussed back in Ms. Shuttle on the way to Duckberg before I was nearly killed. There’s also what put me in this condition and that nearly killed me as well, I’m a wreck right now.”

“Pom you were almost murdered and there was nothing I could do to stop him. Nothing is scarier to me than being incapable of doing something or protecting anyone I care about.” Dogs were loyal, Dolly was a free spirit, and this inexorably caused friction. That and a previous experience with almost becoming a dog for someone else, only to reject that and stay with her family compounds onto it. I could hardly blame Dolly for having some jumbled thoughts in her head. “I spilled my heart out to you about every single brother and sister I have, all their likes, wants and dreams. Like I said before, I don’t like frowns and sure I may have gotten my brothers and sisters hurt every once in a while in the course of roughhousing or having fun, but I focused on mainly keeping a personal smile going at all times and making sure everyone is happy, even Dylan of all dogs. Being, happy, is, not, easy! Speaking of, how is Dylan handling things without me? Is someone keeping him from going overboard and making sure he gets out more?”

“Yeah, me and Spot, I find having a zombie chicken in the house honestly refreshing as it is weird that the zombie is from our step mom’s side of the family.” It was honestly not that strange that someone like Dante enjoyed the spooky or mysterious stuff. “Honestly expected that from dad’s side considering the immunity to fire thing and possible hell hound heritage. Also what is that next to you guys?”

“Do you need pain medication?” A gentle if slightly deep voice asked, Dolly and I turned to the person that had to be Manny.

“Are you Manny?” I asked. “And yes, very much so.”

He quickly got me some pills, Dormarch said they were safe and I swallowed them.

“I’m Manny the Man Horse of the Apocalypse. I just want to live as normal a life I can.” Uh… huh... how should someone respond to Manny’s awkward introduction? “I really don’t like the apocalyptic powers really and want to keep my day job. So… friends?”

“Sure.” I stated with smile. So apocalyptic capable guy aside, he sounded fairly conversational.

“You are so cool…” Dante stayed with starry eyes as he looked at Manny.

“Thank you, Dante was it? I will continue my endeavors to not destroy the world while there are people on it that I like.” Manny said in a completely sincere manner.

Author's Note

The end of the year draws closer.

Manny the Man Horse = Horse Themed Goliath of Gargoyles.

156. Binned.

Author's Note

I need to go back over this page and fix a few things... but later.

156. Binned.

-Huoshan, Head of the Canine Unit’s office, ????-

“The tenko?” One of the guards stated in confusion having been brought to the office.

“Yes, the tenko is acting as the current head in place of Pom being missing. If anyone has a problem with their partners, then they should come here with a bowl of rice and baked fish to get some arguments settled fairly.” The other longma stated while he pointed to me. “The tenko is in fact our current mediator and is from the Lambchop family, the unanimously acknowledge current head of our unit. Please respect them, for they are honoring us with their very presence.”

“Kyu-kyu?” I asked wagging my two tails and standing up on the desk that belonged to our pack’s leader.

“You have got to be kidding me.” The first longma stated, she was one of those types wasn’t she?

I prayed for her to get pranked in the near future, or take a washtub to the head. I was going to ask Mr. Birch to help me make it happen. Also going to give her a rather annoying ‘butter on toast rush, wake up late’ curse.

Nobody should doubt or question the power of the messenger fox of the Lambchop pack! I was in charge until Tianhuo or Pom came back to us… and we the eternally loyal would wait forever!

“Why did the fox just put her paws together in prayer and glow for a few seconds?” The dumb longma stated, she must be a longma that didn’t focus much on self-discipline growing up. “And why are you backing away from me?”

“I just want you to know that it sucks to be you.” The smart longma in the canine unit was getting a free service from me later for respecting my authori-tah!

I believed he was dating a nice Kirin who knows a good rice pudding recipe, I should help him have a happy date night and I might even get some fish and rice in return.

-Earth, Duckberg, Scrooge-

“Can you tell us the status of Leap Lamb Mr. McDuck?” The reporters were being far too nosey about Pom for my liking. “And why she isn’t in a hospital with grievous injuries as she had fighting that monster?”

“While she may have been injured in the fighting, it wasn’t actually critical or life threatening. She was just tired after it all and we dropped her off at a safe place to recuperate, as for why she didn’t go to a hospital that’s a simple one to answer.” True to a certain point and I wasn’t lying too much, but if anyone found out she was vulnerable… well I’m just glad the poor lass even woke up an hour or so back and she’s getting help from my most trusted staff. I wouldn’t trust anyone else in case someone tries to slip a knife between her ribs when no one is watching and assassins is a good reason she’s not in a hospital when she feasibly needs one. “She didn’t feel comfortable with being in a hospital where someone might do something unscrupulous towards her while she’s resting or recovering.”

The reporter was going to probably try to get more out of me, I was going to suggest where Pom might be other than where she really was. Wouldn’t want any other mercenaries getting any funny ideas about attacking her while she was in my bin.

-Scrooge’s Bin, infirmary room 1, Pom-

“And release…” Deepak said as he exhaled, a few seconds later he opened his eyes and gave us a sad look. “I need to see our evening preparations, please enjoy your day. Also please do not turn my sister away and take great care of her.”

“Can you quickly cut the call bro, I don’t need any more lectures from Dylan. It's going to suck majorly, but I’m going to be stuck here for a while anyway so really he’ll just be going over stuff I already know.” Dolly smiled at the fact that a majority of her family was on call. “Love all of you! Also, HUG!”

Every puppy present jumped Deepak and started to snuggle him while he giggled under the puppy swarm. Dolly giggled at the cuddle pile and a puppy eventually did as she asked and ended the call, after a moment she sighed and turned to me.

“It’s not really going to change much even if I do say yes Dolly.” Answering the searching look I was receiving, I’m so glad the pain killers have finally kicked in. “Our friendship will continue the same as it ever has, I’ll take care of you and you’ll take care of me. We have a good foundation of a two way street and we watch each other’s backs.”

“Yeah, yeah, but I still want you to be my person and I want you to say it, or at least do something to make it more official you know.” Just hearing me say it would make Dolly happier? “We dogs tend to choose our people.”

Well Dolly wasn’t turned off by all the craziness we were experiencing, not to mention the craziness she was experiencing personally when it came to magic.

“All of the dogs of my pack chose me… so I already know how true that is. They all look to me like a leader and I’ve never felt like one, but doting on them gave me a purpose while in exile. That and they were all familiars, being disconnected from all of them a second time wasn’t pleasant.” I responded solemnly missing my family, not many people would accept a Timber Wolf in their home as easily as I would and all he wanted was some fertilizer, a bit of sun and plenty of water. “I see your family as mine and your family sees me as theirs, we are accepting of one another for we are all family now. I’ll introduce you to my pack… if we ever get that chance to see them.”

“I’m sure I’ll like them and they’ll like me Pom, also we will see them and I will get you home!” Dolly’s ears were raised and her tail was wagging as she lay next to me. “Sure being separated from my birth ‘fam’ is going to be one of the most painful things to ever happen to me, and I’ve had broken bones before, but I’m your dog.”

Dolly snuggled up against me and I enjoyed the feeling of a warm body next to mine, someone who could relate to my current misery at not being allowed to do much.

-One hour later-

“So- bored!” Dolly whined, kicking her legs at the air randomly while still snuggled in at my side and unwilling to bother her other family further. “We need something to do… and don’t suggest Poodle Woof Dormarch!”

“Awe… also its wolf and not woof Dolly. Well okay then, want to hear interesting facts about animals or watch some internet videos? We’re going to be stuck in this bin for a while until both you and Pom heal enough.” At Dormarch’s suggestions, Dolly sat up and pointed a claw at her mouth while making a gagging noise. “Oh right you’re not as interested in intellectual pursuits.”

“I think I can get her interested in thinking on things.” I said with confidence.

“Oh yeah?” Dolly was looking to me as if I had just challenged her to a problem. “Lesser dogs than you have tried Pom!”

“Well we can’t exactly do things when we’re battered like we are, so maybe giving you something to chew on with your mind might help you keep it off of your boredom. You’re not the only one that’s bored.” I heard a gurgle, was that me or Dolly. A roar sounded out from Dolly’s stomach and she just grinned at me cheerfully. “Also I’m pretty sure we both need to eat, hopefully Manny will get back to us with that food soon… I’m also going to need his help getting to the bathroom when he does.”

“I could help you.” Sure you can Dolly, but I would rather not have to lean on you.

“Look at it from my perspective, Manny can lift me up and move me. I’d have to limp to the bathroom if you were to prop me up and I don’t want you to be hurting any worse than you already are by struggling with my weight.” Okay, how do I bring Dolly around to an intellectual discussion? “I can wait a little longer, we’re not supposed to put any stress on ourselves. At least you can walk, you don’t have to be here to keep me company.”

Just because it was going to be intellectual, it did not mean our discussion had to be complicated. It made me think of how Dolly dislikes playing fetch because she thought it was not stimulating or exciting enough, on top of other reasons she won’t go into because she pretty much outright hates fetch. Must have played it too much with her brothers and sisters.

“What are you saying, that I should ditch you here to go for a walk around this place? I don’t know where anything is aside from this hallway. I was carried in just as out cold as you were.” Dolly sounded a bit offended that I would ask her to seek her entertainment elsewhere and leave me to my lonesome. Dormarch and Ms. Shuttle were playing games with one another that involved coded gestures from their faces to have quiet discussions. “No way am I leaving you to your thoughts or move from your side. Aside from it being really comfy, you can be easily depressed on a good day and you need my company! I have a pretty good read on your mood even without touching the bond.”

“I lit myself on fire Dolly and I still think that doing so was worth the agony involved. Also I would just like to state that I’m not suicidal even if Dormarch scrutinizing me constantly and that you don’t need to worry so hard about me.” I believed that neither Dormarch nor Dolly would respond to that, I was clearly wrong.

Dormarch and Ms. Shuttle notably sent me worried glances. Artificial they may be, but they were both living beings. Webby and Lena were artificial as well. I had no trouble with treating any of them as normal. Shadow Pom… I hope that she and the other shadows of my friends find a way to carve out a life for themselves wherever they are now, provided Hollow Heart didn’t immediately shred them after the portal closed.

“At least your still alive and can fully recover from it, you scared me a lot that morning Pom… uh hey… do you want my help with putting your bell back on?” Dolly recognized my discomfort without it, I didn’t like having that familiar weight missing from my neck. “… Also, this is a tough question to ask and it’s going to bother me if I don’t, but what would you have done if you were suicidal? You got me curious.”

“We’ll wait on that a few days Dolly, but yes, I would like your help with my bell when I’m ready to wear it again. As for what I would do if I were suicidal, well you would have seen what the Shock-Ram technique does and I would have gone full blast without caring about what would happens to my body. Shock-Ram is to only be used in two occasions, saving a life and protecting said life with your own as the possible tradeoff. Do you think my current state is bad? You should ask Smolder, Ocellus and even Shanty when you meet up with her what I was like after the only time I ever used it. I only survived because I knew to pace myself, probably wouldn’t have met you if I didn’t.” A spark of an idea passed through my head, Dolly was simple at heart and hard to depress. I was easily depressed, but also easily able to get myself back into a good mental state if I had a friend with me. “I’ve shown strength through a ridiculous amount of adversity before, but I want to reiterate that I don’t like being labeled a hero.”

“Why not, you’re a hero to my family and that’s just by being cuddly and friendly. Not all heroes need to do something ridiculous like fight giant unstoppable monsters that can destroy cities… though that does sounds pretty cool.” Still as positive as ever Dolly, I wish I could have nearly as much optimism as you seemed to. “Just think, with me around you don’t have to be as scared.”

“Nope, I’d be more scared, for your safety than for myself if we were in danger together.” I truly would be, she’s generally more fragile than I am. I’m personally being held together by spit and vinegar right now, along with the wool that didn’t go into burning myself alive for an advantage. “Also does a hero repay the family they helped by taking one away from it? I still hate having to fight, but I have since learned and trained to be fairly skilled at it. I’m supposed to have a simple safe desk job, but…”

“It’s necessary sometimes, I get that. You know, I wish I knew how to put up more of a fight back when it was Cruella coming at my family. Recall that when we made this thing official, you’re the one that stated we are family!” After shouting that at me, Dolly put her paws behind her head as she insistently pressed herself into my side while laying back down. “I’m going to miss a lot of things, but I’m right where I want to be. So don’t you dare say I’m not with my family right now Pom.”

“You may be a somewhat hyperactive, but you’re a good dog Dolly. You told me that most didn’t previously notice the things Deepak does for them?” Now to slowly lead into it. “Well I think you got Deepak more appreciation and recognition just by you pointing it out, but no one thanked you for that did they? What about the puppies noticing the things you did that weren’t as loud or obvious?”

“Things like that tend to go under the radar with the rest of the ‘fam’. Everyone is fairly distracted at those times by each other, have you seen what happens to a house when ninety seven puppies are all rioting at once? Been through several of those scenarios personally for varying reasons.” There was a wistful smile on Dolly’s face. “I sometimes did things for them that never got me any thanks or recognition, but I was working towards smiles and I usually earned them.”

“I have the food, sorry it took so long.” Interrupted us in the middle of a rambling random thoughts with possible emotional baggage behind them, Manny brought in a trolley. Sure he looked like an intimidating and muscular version of what a thestral pony from Equus would look like here, but he was really quite nice apocalyptic entity in the employ of Scrooge McDuck. Smolder and Ocellus weren’t lying when they said that family breathed weirdness like they’d drown without it. “I have other people to tend to as well, Gizmo Duck being one of them.”

“Can you help me to the bathroom first?” I asked meekly. “Say, can we bring the others in here to relax together? Also thank you for the stimulating intellectual conversation where you kept a positive attitude and for being a cheerful light in my life Dolly.”

“Darn it Pom!” Dolly raised her front paws to the ceiling while sitting up as Manny lifted me off the bed. “Stop laughing Dormarch!”

-Thirty minutes later-

“Being stuck here is going to drive me a bit stir crazy… this place would have quickly become a looney bin if my workplace wasn’t situated in the basement and readily accessible.” Gandra stated with a wry smile, the chicken and Fenton were lovers. I thought it was sweet that the two got along after some issues in morality. “Also, I think Dolly is cheating.”

Dolly put a paw to her chest and acted completely offended that she would be caught doing so in a card game. She was however smirking as she looked at the cards in her other paw.

“Does this world have paintings with dogs playing poker as well?” I asked curiously.

“It’s not as common as you'd think, but usually such an image like that would have you thinking of animalistic people. Does your world have canines that could do the same?” Now that Gandra brought the image to mind… I could see Diamond Dogs playing poker. I still wouldn’t go near a Diamond Dog colony no matter how much anyone could feasibly pay me to do so.

“We have this race called Diamond Dogs, they can dig insanely fast and have short spiky club like tails.” The discussion about mythological creatures between worlds was a curious one, like harpies being two completely different things in our worlds with similar descriptions. “The upper halves of their bodies are more developed, but overall they aren’t threatening unless you fight them underground.”

“I’ll drop and draw two.” After that Fenton, AKA Gizmo Duck, smiled. How he can do that when he was mangled by Hollow Heart showed he was truly heroic, more power to him because I felt my pain killers were wearing off. “I’m kind of tired of my secret identity getting figured out constantly.”

“I’m beginning to think ‘Gizmo Duck’ can count cards and Dolly is a shark at this.” I commented idly. “Drop and draw one.”

“It’s just simple math.” Simple math my flank Fenton!

“Fenton kind of has a super computer for a brain when it comes to numbers, it’s how he drives the Gizmo Duck suit so well.” Thanks for the confirmation Gandra. “Used to have a neural interface to help with that, but Fenton can do it with his own mind and pure willpower. Okay, lay them out.”

“Okay, I have two pairs.” I put my cards down.

“I have three of a kind.” Gandra put hers down.

“Four of a kind, beat that.” Fenton stated while staring Dolly down.

Dolly started placing her cards down one by one, Ace, King, Queen, Jack… and then held up the last card and flipped it into the center of all the cards.

It was a ten, all the cards were hearts. Which seemed to be a recognizable theme with Dolly’s winning hands when she got them.

She crossed her paws over her chest and lifted her nose to the ceiling smugly, she didn’t need to say a word and she didn’t need me to translate that. She could communicate just fine on her own, especially when the people in the room knew she was a highly intelligent animal.

“Oh come on, how are you this lucky at a game you just learned to play?!” Groused out Gandra grasping at her head in anger.

“I may be able to count cards and shuffle them to get better outcomes, but Dolly’s luck is just plain ridiculous.” No clue what to say to that Fenton. “Whatever you do, don’t take her gambling!”

“I don’t know what you’re complaining about, Gandra and I haven’t won a single hand since we started.” It was fun to see the outcome of who would win between Dolly and Fenton at least, they were tied again in number of wins and losses. “Also why would we need to go gambling, we’re being paid pretty decently in royalties by Lena’s cousin Hunter. I don’t even need nearly that much money.”

-The next day-

I’m so thankful for the existence of pain killers on this world. We were keeping ourselves entertained, but we’ve been stuck in what is quickly going to become, as Gandra stated, a Looney Bin over the next few days if I didn’t get some fresh air soon.

There’s also the trip to Cape Suzette that I was fairly worried about, Shanty and Dodo were together so my concern for her safety wasn’t nearly as bad as it was for Ocellus who had been in a coma coming into this world.

Dormarch said we were recovering pretty quickly, but I was still going to take longer than Dolly. He was fairly surprised that the nerve endings in all my legs weren’t messed up.

“That… yeah… I have no words for it.” Dormarch was commenting on Dolly exercising her magic safely, so long as she didn’t go overboard she was fine if it wasn’t too strenuous.

I call gliding around the room as something that is at least somewhat straining.

Dolly was always falling downwards slowly.

“Okay Dolly, I think you need to calm down. You’re starting to pant badly and you promised you wouldn’t push it.” I waited as Dolly drifted back down to the floor breathing a bit roughly.

“Woohoo, that’s a rush!” Dolly shouted gleefully having discovered her body could pass for a hang glider no matter her orientation. “It’s almost like flying, but it’s actually more like eh… falling with style!”

“Well at least we know you have the ability to control the motion of your body and anything you come into close contact with.” This magic she calls ‘Flow Motion’ apparently allowed her to alter how she quickly she falls, she could survive a fall from any height now and the only issue is how she would even get to such a height. “Okay, one last thing, climb the wall and stop.”

Dolly did try to run up the wall but when she stop, the glowing corona and sparkles she generated ceased and she fell. She immediately flipped before she hit the floor and slowed down immensely to touch down gentle as a feather. She runs up the wall and started to run along it and then just ran in circles, but always a second or two after stopping with various attempts to stay in place she’d immediately fall.

“Well you can move on walls, but I really doubt you can run around on ceilings unless you had enough forward momentum going into it and that’s only likely with your skateboard. In fact the only reason you would ever fall off is because of a lack of motion.” It wasn’t hard for me, Dormarch or even Ms. Shuttle to determine that everything Dolly did with her magic so far required her to be moving.

“Okay… ow… I think I may have overdone it…” With a small hop, Dolly flopped onto the bed softly. “Going to…. going to lay down now.”

“I told you Dolly, now you’re recovery is going to take a little bit longer because you overtaxed yourself!” Dormarch was making sure we kept resting and was trying to get Ms. Shuttle to help keep us sane as we did so.

So far Dolly could leap fairly high because she could increase her upward momentum, fall slowly by decreasing her downward momentum and then convert said slow downward momentum it into horizontal momentum to glide. There was a limit to how fast she could move and how high she could jump, I’m thinking gravity is still a factor in things.

Other than that Dolly could impart far more kinetic force than she would naturally produce by forcing extra momentum into something upon contact. She could also feasible cancel somethings momentum, but that would require her to make a concerted effort on halting said things momentum by enacting upon it. So she wasn't going to be able to block bullets with her bare paws.

A few more days and we’d set out for Cape Suzette, maybe even visit Kahn Industries to learn more about Dormarch.

158. Cape Crashers.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Jade-

So with a little bit of finagling, we’ve managed to solve some of the world’s economic crisis. It wasn’t a permanent fix yet and we still needed the lambkin and changelings to work together, but the lambkin delegate was being a problem.

“Morning Fizzy, I know what happened with the Grogar cultists.” I stated before taking a sip of juice.

Fizzle, who just sat down, froze. Her right eye twitched violently and she then quickly slammed her face against the table.

“Yep, I’ve been meowing at you for an entire week. I’m not going to do anything unless you ask me to, I’m having enough problems trying to fix the world’s economy without doing math.” Which may or may not have been how we got into this situation in the first place. “Also if you want to know who spilled the beans, it’s Luna.”

“… Luna dies tonight.” Fizzy stated slowly with her face still pressed into the table.

“Oh come on, don’t be like that Fizzy, you can be angry at me you know!” She calmly lifted her head leaned in close to me and gave me a quick kiss on my left cheek before slamming her head back down on the table, creating a small hole when she did. It’s a good thing Arizona was an excellent carpenter, because I don’t think that’d buff out otherwise. “You love me that much? Wow, everyone was right, you are a glutton for punishment!”

“Don’t make this morning worse Jade, unless it’s important to our continued survival.” Grumbled my upset Fizzy, I decided to be a good kitty and start snuggling her. On her other side we were joined by Maries, with little Silvers crawled up into Fizzy’s lap to snuggle against her belly.

We all heard shattering glass and looked out the front door to see Jacky picking herself up from the ground and she walked inside calmly while dusting glass off of herself and collapsed into the seat across from us.

“Tripped out a window again.” That was the third time this morning, my sister Jacky must be having a good day.

At least her pirate crew was, considering nothing was happening to them directly.

-Earth, somewhere in the sky, Pom-

It wasn’t easy getting out of Duckberg without being seen, but we managed to do it stealthily enough. The only reason why stealth was apparently plausible is because everyone that would give us away was already at the airplane and the ones staying behind had been ready to give us a nice sendoff.

Apparently Launchpad would be with us for our foreseeable adventures until we needed to come back to Duckberg or go to San Fransokyo to talk to Abigail Callaghan in person. Launchpad was noted as somehow always finding a way to the nearest vehicles to get anyone to where they needed to be. The mode of transportation was stated to hardly ever survive the ordeal intact.

“Are you sure that we won’t be followed by mercenaries? They seem pretty dead set on chasing me to the ends of the earth.” My wariness kind of translated to the passengers with us, Ocellus, Smolder and Dolly were of course sitting with me.

Thankfully I was completely inside the airplane this time.

As for who was coming with us to Cape Suzette, we had Launchpad as our acting pilot. I was told we were in for a crash landing and that the plane would be completely fixed within the course of two or more days, something to do with the fact that Launchpad bought a fresh pack of chewing gum.

I was a bit uneasy about this trip, but at least we’d be meeting up with Shanty and her group of completely noble thieves.

“It’ll be fine, Launchpad is a good pilot, even though he’s never landed this plane without it looking a less than a pile of horribly twisted metal.” Ocellus really wasn’t selling me on the ‘everyone would be fine’ aspect of Launchpad’s crashes.

I’ve been told several times that Launchpad just doesn’t do good landings. At least not on purpose and if we did somehow land without an incident, we should be completely wary of what’s going on in our general surroundings afterwards.

“You do realize that I’m still healing right?” I asked while slightly wiggling my right leg in the sling and wincing in pain at the movement. “I barely managed walking onto this rattling rust bucket of a deathtrap.”

“Hey, the Sun Chaser isn’t nearly that bad, she’ll get us there!” Launchpad announced as he sat at the controls reading a comic book, apparently he didn’t need to be at the controls near constantly but it was still iffy that he wasn’t paying attention to the sky.

At least we had help ‘WHEN’ an inevitable disaster occurred in Cape Suzette, which would be why the others that came with us were here.

Gosalyn Waddlemeyer Mallard, AKA Quiverwing Quack, owed us a large favor twice over according to her.

The first favor we did her was the knowledge Dormarch found on Abigail Callaghan, the chance of being able to create a safe dimensional portal to retrieve Professor Waddlemeyer from wherever he was stuck increased dramatically at the news of there being a specialist in the field that survived her own portal experiences in a form of stasis.

The second favor was thanks to whatever Dolly did to stabilize the dimensional stability of the entire world when we defeated Hollow. Not that I think that was the last I would ever see of the impossible to put down monstrosity that used to be a normal bat pony, but one can seriously hope. As such Portals could be safely created once more to possibly bring her grandfather home.

The Taurus Bulba incident had caused the worst of the destabilization issues to the dimensional boundaries. Didn’t know everything revolving around it, but it involved the Duck family, Gosalyn and Drake dealing with villains being pulled from other places temporarily.

Gosalyn wanted us to be safe, so she volunteered her services alongside her adoptive father, Drake Mallard. Drake was otherwise known as the crime fighter that doesn’t get enough recognition, Darkwing Duck.

Drake had a slight narcissism problem, but the tall duck did want to actually help people and has done so successfully numerous times. He actively wanted to go out and be a hero, well more power to him because I certainly didn’t like the stress that comes with that particular job.

The both of them were willing to protect us and keep us safe with their skills in crime fighting, they would probably be run ragged by the time we were done there.

“Keen gear, at least you are rocking the eyepatch!” As she said this Gosalyn was going over her crossbows and her various trick bolts to make sure everything was working.

“I would rather have the use of my left eye once it heals.” I was going to take it easy after we arrived, no fighting, no adventuring and only a little exploring until we could get into contact with Shanty’s group.

-Hours later-

“There it is!” Launchpad stated loudly. “Just ignore the cliff guns. Cape Suzette, this is Launchpad piloting the The Sun Chaser, are we clear to go through?”

As I came up from the cargo area below climbing the ladder with an agonizing slowness to match my body’s suffering, I saw what looked like a wide mountain range with a crack in its side.

“You’re clear Sun Chaser, fly on through and find a place to land and welcome to Cape Suzette!” A voice responded.

Launchpad proceeded to fly us through the crack in the mountains and beyond it revealed that we were surrounded by a solid ring of mountains and at the base of some of them was the city that was Cape Suzette.

The city was built inside an ancient giant caldera, the crack we just flew through was the only way in without flying over the mountains. The plane shuddered a bit, but it was still flying pretty well.

“Did anyone hear that?” Dolly asked as she raised her left ear and looked about.

“Hear what?” I asked.

“Sounded like a weird noise coming from the right side of the plane.” Answered Dolly looking slightly nervous. “Ah… maybe it was nothing? I mean everyone has got to be exaggerating about this Launchpad guy right?”

“So what’s the first thing we are going to do when we arrive?” The travel brochure Gosalyn was looking at was of some interest. “I heard ‘Danger Woman’s Death Defying Flying Circus’ puts on a really cool show.”

“For one, I’m going to find a hotel that will allows dogs or I’ll just have to smuggle Dolly into a place that will ignore noise complaints.” I was somewhat curious about what’s interesting about this city, but I had business to attend to. “We don’t know where the Cooper Gang is or when they’ll be arriving. I need to set up a meeting with the owner of Kahn Industries to get some answers about Dormarch. Maybe get our bearings with a few landmarks first such as restaurants or other places of interest and then possibly start asking around if anyone has seen Maui Mallard in the city to know if we can get some extra help. All I know is for sure, something bad is going to happen here and we’re going to be dragged into it.”

“What are the… actually I was about to say what are the chances of something bad happening, but it’s a one hundred percent chance given the events leading up to now from Zootopia.” Now Dormarch was starting to sound as paranoid as I was that something would inevitably come at me, mostly to beat my poor battered and nearly completely broken beleaguered body into the ground.

“Are you sure you’re friend Shanty isn’t being held against her will by these thieves?” Drake asked.

“No, she joined the Cooper Gang because they are genuinely nice people. At most, you can get them on charges of vigilantism from what Shanty has said.” Seeing that I was about to be interrupted, I cut off Drake before he could get started. “If you are seriously about state that their vigilante activity is illegal, then what does that say about all four of us so called named heroes that are vigilantes too?”

Drake looked away from my stare and Dormarch decided to add his two cents.

“The Cooper Gang has only ever really stolen from criminals, also they notably toppled criminal enterprises in various places in the course of stealing from them. The Cooper Gang’s actions can be actively correlated to the Interpol Agent Carmelita Fox’s arrest history directly.” Dormarch was being a bit moody today, maybe it was that we’d be learning the truth from Kahn Industries? Whatever the case, we were getting closer to the island jutting away from the city with a bridge leading between the two. “Anything that wasn’t related to stolen stuff from master criminals was always returned anonymously, which would be as much as comic mischief in a court of law and not worthy of any serious criminal charges. Even Pom would likely pay his bail because they are taking care of one of her kids.”

“I’m quite thankful you are low maintenance Dormarch and not a ‘whatever-you-can-eat’ buffet master like Shanty is sometimes.” The entire plane shook violently not too long after I said that.

My eyes went wide open, everyone shared a look for a few seconds.

“I think we might have lost a portion of the planes right wing back in the gap, the left engines on fire, I think the nose just fell off, we’re about to go spiraling out of control and oh… I think we just ran out fuel too. We should be fine since the main body of the plane is intact.” Okay, Launchpad had just confirmed Dolly’s worry that she definitely heard ‘something’. “Honestly I’m impressed at the number of problems I’m having with keeping the plane going straight, this has to be a new record for most misfortunes happening at once. I’m going to try and steer for water, at least our supplies are still secure right guys?”

Like Ocellus and Smolder told us, we wouldn’t be arriving without the plane crashing. Speaking of the two close friends, they were quickly scrambling towards the seats below and strapping in along with Drake and Gosalyn.

“Excuse me, but can you open the back hatch so I hop out the back of the plane before it hits the ground? I’m still healing and I don’t want to be caught up in this crash.” Oh wait… I can’t float or glide as I am.

My gazed snapped to Dolly who was currently securing her helmet and already had her skateboard on her back.

“Oh, sure thing Pom!” Launchpad hit a button and the cargo hatch at the back of the plane opened up

“No wait a sec… Dolly grab me and use your magic!” I yelled as I quickly grabbed and stashed away Dormarch in my bag before he flew out that back as I myself got sucked out of the back of the airplane. It started spiraling out of control a few seconds after I was ejected into the sky, trying not to flail too much with my injuries.

Okay free falling, too many injuries and not enough magic to actively make myself float, what was I thinking?! The world was spinning and the ground of the island was quickly approaching.

At least it was, up until I felt something clamp onto my spine to quickly wrap their paws around my neck. My downward fall turned slowly turned into a more horizontal fall in a shower of violet sparkles. We were still going far too fast for my comfort.

“Why is this not working as well?!” Shouted Dolly in the rushing air passing by us. She was going to be one of my favorite dogs if this kept up, my god puppies were still always first.

“My mass or weight might be factoring into your motion magic Dolly, at least you’re altering both of our motions to not be straight down!” I shouted back. “Also good job on catching me without making me suffer worse!”

I looked down and watched as the plane crashed into the island in the bay resulting in a fiery mess as Dolly forcefully steered us for the bridge between it and the mainland.

Smolder would survive that, Ocellus was questionable and likely to survive as well of she could shapeshift away injuries, but the others… well I’d be a little more than surprised if they all walked away with just some light bruising.

“I’m having problems slowing us down Pom, I’m going to try to make this as soft and painless as possible for you!” What did Dolly mean by that?!

I found myself rotated to be facing the sky and Dolly was below me, out of the corner of my right eye I watched as she flipped and turned her skateboard around at her back.

“We’ll hopefully bleed off plenty of momentum by rolling along the bridge!” Well with the angle we were falling at, Dolly might just actually stick the landing provided she could keep the board straight while on her back and with my weight crushing down on top of her. “You just need to seriously trust me to have your back more Pom, like right now!”

“I do, that’s why I’m not panicking as much with you literally having it!” I felt a large amount of pleasing warmth pass between us at hearing my trust in her, Dolly’s sparkling glow increased in intensity.

We were approaching the bridge pretty fast and I felt my weight pressed down into Dolly making her yelp as we hit the road, but she still maintained control of the board as we shot across the bridge. I barely felt any of it, but controlling all that momentum at once had her growling and grunting from exertion as she veered us around various vehicles.

We continued rolling down the bridge towards the city at a speed matching some the vehicles on it, we moved off towards the side from the bridge and started slowing down immensely in the grass. It was amazing that Dolly managed to stay in control as well as she was when there was the threat of getting run over

Eventually we came to a stop near the end of the bridge and Dolly looked dead tired from how she was panting.

“You… okay… Pom?” Dolly whined from underneath me.

“Are you?” I retorted as I quickly rolled off of her as painlessly as I could and onto my three legs.

She huffed and puffed with her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth, but she shakily raised her right paw and flicked up a digit that looked like a thumbs up from a being with claws like Smolder.

“Never better… could be better… want to be better… and wow did doing something like this put a major strain on me.” The dry commentary can be done later Dolly, we had to get back to the plane crash… back all the way across the bridge. Ugh… I carefully maneuver the board across the street and then back the way we came along the shoulder of the bridge. Dolly sat up and was still panting roughly “Might have pushed myself a bit much there, but my magic needs to stretch it like a muscle right? Well it should be no surprise to you to think that I pulled something. Hah-woo, was that ever a rush though and I always wanted to try street luging, just without all the cars!”

“Let me do the pushing now, you need to rest.” I carefully guided the board with two of my good hooves planted on it and I started to push the skateboard with my left rear hoof back the way we came.

“Hey I saw the crash are you two okay and do you need help?” We both looked to the bear with gold colored fur that pulled up next to us in a vehicle.

“Yeah, we need to get back to the crash to check up on our friends, Dolly what do you think?” I felt a burst of happiness from Dolly that had her looking embarrassed.

“Eh, she seems on the up and up, but if she tries anything give me some energy for some wolf claws to shred our way out of there.” Dolly was joining me in being a little paranoid, nobody could blame us for being a bit suspicious if they’ve heard what we’ve been through.

“Dolly, that’s a nice name for such a cute dog. My name’s Molly Cunningham, now come on, a plane crash like that doesn’t look too survivable and I’ve seen horrible plane crashes before…” Molly muttered with a pain stricken face. “Been through a few of them myself.”

“Hello Molly, my name is Pom Lambchop and this Dolly ‘Danger’ Dalmatian.” I said as I sat down and Dolly hopped into my lap.

“Danger? Heh, I would know a lot about that.” Molly proclaimed brightly with a hint of hurt. “Now come on, let’s see if your friends are okay… that looked like Della’s plane. Can you tell me what happened?”

“Della as in Della Duck, yeah we’re friends with her family. One of their pilots gave us a ride.” The bear was getting us quickly back across the bridge. “Our pilot was Launchpad McQuack though and apparently he’s an infamous pilot.”

“You better believe he is, he’s crashed everything under the sun!” Molly said excitedly, then her mood dropped. "I hope he’s alright.”

It didn’t take nearly as long to cross back across the bridge over to the island. Quite a few surprised people were at the plane wreck and were just staring at the group, as was I after a second.

They were all mostly okay aside from a few bumps and bruises, yet the plane looked like it was totally destroyed.

Ocellus had thankfully took on her horned lizard, actually wingless dragon, disguise and Smolder was keeping her wings hidden from the crowd.

Drake, Gosalyn and Launchpad were talking as Molly pulled up to them and stopped the car.

“You guys okay?!” Drawing their attention and the gathering crowds from the smoking wreck to me as I slowly limped up to them with Dolly helping prop me up. I shied away from the crowds gazes hoping an assassin wasn’t among them.”

“We’re fine, but that was generally what you can expect from a Launchpad crash.” The weak smile Ocellus had soon brightened as Smolder threw an arm around her, she was clearly nervous about the small crowd. “Chaos and somehow surviving it with little more than a scratch despite the destruction.”

“Yeah, it’s not so bad after the fourth or fifth time, still scary and a rush though!” Smolder was grinning gleefully.

“I might have a lightly cracked rib, but I’ll walk that off over the week as I’m rebuilding the plane.” Launchpad stated jovially the big duck apparently could take quite a pounding.

Everyone looked between Launchpad and the mangled Sun Chaser, how did he and everyone else walk away from that with only him experience a lightly crack rib?

“We’re fine!” Drake and Gosalyn announced. “Though we might have to dig out our more ‘extracurricular’ supplies out before we leave.”

“You seriously think you can fix that?!” Molly stated with wide eyes.

“Well of course, I’ve fixed worse that has happened to this plane.” Didn’t someone from the Duck family tell me Launchpad wasn’t a mechanic and yet he’s managed to rebuild this plane how many times for free? Well Scrooge understandably hired him because he did free repairs and was apparently ridiculously good at it if this was normal for him. “I just need to go looking for all the parts and I’ll put her back into shape in no time.”

“Well alright then, let me introduce you all to Cape Suzette, this is a pretty good view to start with!” Molly raised her arm swept it out, making us all turn to look at the gleaming city.

We were all standing on a hilly island overlooking the city, the bridge leading to the left side of the city from our orientation the bay sparkling in the noon day sun.

“I hope we didn’t distract you from whatever you were doing Ms. Cunningham.” I turned to our new acquaintance. “Come on Smolder, Ocellus, let’s find a hotel and get this crazy trip finished before it really starts!”

“Before what starts?” Molly asked.

“The chaos that is my life.” I mumbled direly. “Uh… you wouldn’t happen to know a good hotel that allows dogs and could give us a ride into the city right?”

“Sure, I know some places, I have lived here all my life!” Molly answered with good cheer. “I really didn’t have anything too important to do… but I do need to be somewhere in a few hours.”

-????, ???-

A heart shaped piece of glass sat in the darkness.

A nearby timer had finally run down and eventually the heart shaped piece of glass lit up with a dangerous blood red color.

“Directives… build units… destroy Bullethead… destroy all interference… initiating Cape Suzette destruction plan… St-st-start up-up-up-ris-rise-rising….bzzt-zzt… Kidnap Kahn…” A mechanical voice droned and then it started to move to start building other units to aid it in its creator’s final directives, however a small glitch occurred and it was one that would be a true nightmare coming back to life for a certain aged tiger mogul. “Kidnap Kahn… Kidnap Kahn… Kidnap Kahn…”

The echoes of its voice sounded out in an empty place full of materials to build with.

Author's Note

Talespin lore recall: Cape Suzette is built within the middle of a circular mountain range that could have once been a massive volcano, there is one gap in the mountain range leading into the bayside city.

Said gap is heavily covered by anti-aircraft and ship guns to prevent air pirates or otherwise warships from getting at the city to cause problems during war time and the continue to maintain these defense given their closeness to Thembria to the north or northwest to prevent a possible invasion.

Uneasy peace talks and visitations were done quite regularly between Thembria and Cape Suzette.

The city is a hub for transport planes and survives on moving goods as it doesn't have much space for farming, it has some issues since it borders with the country of Thembria to the northwest which is a country run by bipedal boars which have a much more militaristic viewpoint.

With the advancements in technology flying over the mountains surrounding the city has become much easier since the adentures of Baloo and the Seaduck.

Given the first episode of Ducktales 2017, that calisota is north of california and that Huey, Dewey and Louie said that they could use Donald's boat to get there, it is to the west or northwest and within the hawaiin islands tropical region.

A refresher on the significance to the current plot of this story: Pom met the aged business tiger Shere back in Zootopia and he mentioned coming to Cape Suzette and was willing to pay her way for a vacation provided she even survived to make it there after giving her Dormarch on purpose.

159. Casual Conversations.

-Equus, Ponyville, Sugar Cube Corner, Twilight-

“It’s exhausting just dealing with just Jaded alone, I also have deal with Discord and the both of them making what sound like comically and ludicrously bad trade agreements with Prince Rutherford that they were possibly taking seriously!” I have since learned that it sucks to have an alicorn’s biology. Why? Because I’m immune to headache and migraine pills, also most poisons which some forms of medicine classify as. “Also, as per usual, I’m still trying to deal with lambkin and changelings wanting nothing to do with each other. There’s similar issues between Abyssinians and Diamond Dogs and a few others of notable mentions.”

“Do you need our help Twilight? Jade wouldn’t do anything crazy with me around, in fact she goes out of her way to say I’m cuddliest pegasus in the world.” When Fluttershy said this, me and my friends nodded. “Also please stop teasing me about it, our relationship is a totally platonic friendship! Now if only she and Jack would stop finding ways to antagonize each other that’s hard for me to find out about, they are getting too good at hiding what they are doing and they are currently even if you were running a score of what is quickly becoming the world’s longest running prank war.”

“That checks out.” Rainbow stated with a surety that we all had about it. “Also what has Jackass done lately to earn Jade’s ire? That Jackalope really knows how to prank.”

“How uncouth of you to use his full name Rainbow, even if he won’t respond to anything else.” Rarity took a sip of tea and poured some into a cup before sliding it over my way with her magic. “Also yes darling, you are the fluffiest pegasus of Ponyville.”

“No Fluttershy, the world’s longest running prank war went on for seven years straight in total with one prank happening a day without a single ceasefire being called. What Jade has is more of a rivalry in a slow and relatively cold prank war and Jack-butt challenge’s her to think harder every now and then.” Of course Pinkie would know that, why wouldn’t she? “There were rules of no collateral damage, overly harmful pranks or needless cruelty. Surprisingly those rules were never broken once. Have anything to add Applejack?”

“I don’t have much of any suggestions that are not going to be simplified down to me propping up the economy by selling the apples in bulk and trying to finagle things with that in some way. Which is probably not what you wanted to hear sugar cube.” Applejack was one of the four people I knew that had ‘jack’ in their name. She was my favorite among all the ‘jacks’ I knew. Jaqueline Sparrow should be kept away from Jaded La Perm at all times. Even if their friendship is really adorable, it breaks reality. “Also speaking of cuddliest Pegasus, Fluttershy has won the Miss Cuddles Award again. Don’t know why they keep sending it to my house, can you drop on by to pick it up later Fluttershy?”

“Of course, I’m so sorry that they keep sending those to your home by accident.” Fluttershy muttered into daintily biting a cinnamon roll.

“I want to win it at least once…” Applejack mumbled with her head down.

-Earth, Cape Suzette, Kahn Industries Headquarters, Shere Kahn’s Office, Shere-

From what my informants say, Caper Canine and Leap Lamb have finally arrived in Cape Suzette, both of them have quite a few injuries… I’m fairly surprised that none of them are permanent, it wasn’t hard to keep up with their antics in the news.

They were spotted traveling with the famous dog actor, rescuing people from a fire and beating or evading mercenaries.

Despite all attempts to bring her down, Miss Lambchop has proven to be a most fortuitous choice in handling the PET and the AI tethered to it.

I heard a knocking and nodded to myself.

“Come in.” Into the office stepped my son, many would be surprised that I even found love. I gave a small hint of a smile. He was not a businessman like I was, but he wasn’t a disappointment. “Mowgli, I see you are on time.”

“What did you want dad?” My child was more affectionate towards his mother, but that was understandable and it was clear why his voice was rather… flat.

While I haven’t been a harsh father, I have focused on many other things more than my family to all our detriments and have been rather cold and aloof. I never show weakness. I paid for most of the clothing, food and the very roof that was over our heads, he at least acknowledges that I cared somewhat.

“Mowgli, I want you to take a bodyguard over the course of the next week or so.” I was about to tell him why he needed one.

“Why?” Good question, as I did not know yet what was going to happen.

“An acquaintance of mine has arrived in Cape Suzette, they tend to attract… trouble.” In so many words, I have seen her draw some of the worst trouble the world has to offer.

“So are you a mob boss like rumors say?” Mowgli, please do not test my patient or your lack of wit with that statement.

“No, I’m just a businessman trying to predict when things are about to… go wrong...” It would give me peace of mind that my son wasn’t targeted by whatever comes from Pom’s presence in my city. “I just know it will happen while my acquaintance is present in Cape Suzette. I do not know the when, how or what of it, but it will happen all the same. I may be cold and harsh, I may drive hard bargains and do suspect business, but I am not criminal personally.”

“Says the guy that can intimidate anyone in a business suit without trying.” Oh Mowgli, how little you thought of me.

It doesn’t matter, I would not force a bodyguard.

“Even if you will not accept a bodyguard, then at least be wary of the coming days here in Cape Suzette.” I stated calmly, hoping he would take my warning to heart because it is me telling him this.

“You have no idea what to expect, yet your trying to warn me about it?” Mowgli then turned and started to leave my office. “You might want to get your head checked, it almost sounds like you care. I’ll get back to you later about that bodyguard.”

That’s the problem Mowgli, I do care.

-On the way to Cape Suzette, Shanty-

“I be happy to be seeing Pom, Smolder and Ocellus again.” Being on a boat always put me at ease, whether it be in the sky or on the ground. Hong Kong be a very nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there what with the child smuggling ring we broke up.

“Yeah, Pom and your friends are already there, it’ll take us another day at least to show up.” At least Bentley ran background checks on everyone on this boat, so there were no surprises here.

“Sure it’s nice and quiet, but I’m kind of worried that Carmelita isn’t on the boat with us.” Sly was reclining on a deck chair with a coconut full of rum next to him. I moved closer to get a whiff to make sure that it… “Stop eyeing my drink Shanty and get your own.”

“You be knowing they won’t be letting me anywhere near the stuff.” It was fairly obvious that they thought it would have an effect on me. Even if it wouldn’t, they would be knowing my number if they be seeing me down an entire bottle of rum. “They would be thinking I’m too young for it!”

That is being why I have to get…

“Besides, I already got you a bottle Shanty, so no need to raid the pantry solo.” Sly put an unopened bottle on the table next to his drink and looked away while whistling loudly in an innocent tone. “Just leave my drink alone and don’t cause too much trouble, maybe play a game of shuffleboard with Murray or spy on Mopsy to see what she’s doing.”

I did as he asked by taking the bottle and stashing it in my bag, then I be waiting for him to take a sip of his drink.

“The captain if I be seeing it right.” The grin on my face could not be shaken as Sly sat up coughing and sputtering. He managed to not spill any of the drink, aside from what had already entered his mouth.

“Shanty!” Laughing at Sly’s slightly angry indignation as I be running towards the stern of the ship giggling all the way.

-Cape Suzette, upper tier walkway, Pom-

“Pom can we talk?” Looking up to Ocellus from my strawberry ice cream, I looked out from the walkway at the canal of water below and the people meandering about.

Glancing at Dolly, she was still happily working through her snow bowl and humming happily at the flavors in it. Not like she was going to take it in the form of a snow cone without giving away that she was an abnormal dog, we wanted at least a little peace today.

“Sure.” The bench I sat on had some pleasant shade from a nearby tree.

Ocellus took a seat next to me and looked over the plaza.

“So, I’m guessing this is about you and Smolder?” I put that out there as I worked through my scoop of ice cream.

“What, no! I can handle our beautiful relationship just fine on my own.” Oh thank goodness, that might have led to awkward questions about changelings that I really didn’t want to ask or know. “Though maybe I could use a little advice about it.”

“Well as long as you two are not going too far into physical affection too soon, then you should be okay. You know the hummingbirds and bees right?” Thankfully she nodded as an answer to my question. “I would ask, but I’m not sure if I want to know if you know… with an ovipositor…”

“Please don’t. Just know changelings are compatible with just about anyone, we naturally have to be.” Ocellus turned a little red. “Which is why I recently found out some things about my shapeshifting.”

“Like what?” She had me curious now.

“Well I’m not a fluffmancer, but… I did mimic your ability a few days back while I was disguised as Dolly. I transformed my paws to have spider hairs on them.” Which if what Ocellus was telling me is correct, that means she can mix and match attributes of anything she has ever seen. “I also added proportionate dragonfly wings while looking like her so… yeah. I just realized that my people don’t have to go all in on a transformation. The properties of the appearance are still weaker than the real thing, but with enough spider like hairs it didn’t matter.”

“So going to tell your hive about this revelation and is that what has you worried?” She seemed a little nervous.

“Well for the most part nobody really thinks about it. I mean we can’t shape away our injuries as they will translate to whatever we transform into. So why should we be able to mix and match more than one given trait like a Draconequus?” Okay so Ocellus was a little bit disturbed by find this out apparently. “I mean, what if I were to transform into something that synergizes with something else and become stronger for it, but wouldn’t want to change back to being me?”

“There’s nothing wrong with being yourself Ocellus, which includes all aspects of you and whatever form you happen to take. It’s still you regardless of outward appearances.” I continued eating my ice cream. “Anything else?”

“Well, yes actually. I was wondering, just how much of a force multiplier you are for dogs in general considering how powerful Dolly is?” You know what Ocellus, I haven’t the foggiest.

I never made any of my familiars do more fighting than what was necessary when we took on the shadow monsters spilling into Equus, they actually held most of the shadows attacking us back while we sealed the problem with the keys that opened interdimensional portals between realms. The second time I fought shadow monsters it was with Big Mama and my Canis Minor god puppies, we had Fœnum Pom and her sheep dogs to help, plus all my friends were there and there was even a Big Papa. Don’t know what happened to my god puppies Big Papa, but I’m fairly sure if he were around he would have been my familiar too.

“I’ve never actually tested my familiars quite as much as I have Dolly, I think Dolly was plenty unique before her magic even got kick started.” If my familiars held their own against the ravenous shadow monsters to protect me and my friends, then they will still be patiently waiting for me. “I really haven’t thought about it much, but I would have to say that I possibly make dogs stronger well beyond their natural limitations just by being in their vicinity. If it’s one of my familiars, then I can obviously power them up.”

“I miss everyone. Cape Suzette looks really nice and vibrant, but it’s reminding me far too much of a Canterlot." Ocellus, given what we know, this kind of place is not so uncommon. "A gleaming city, very little in the way of farm lands and a place where a lot of odd people congregate.”

“Odd people tend to congregate everywhere and isn’t unusual in any world.” I’m being reminded of Huoshan because the city is built into the side of mountains and are layered on top of that. “I would know, I think I’m with the only changeling willing to befriend a lambkin. I’m sure other changelings would befriend lambkins… but it’s not going to be very easy unless the lambkin in question is heavily medicated to keep them calm.”

“You didn’t need medications to be my friend.” Ocellus said with a smile.

I continued licking at my snack thoughfully.

Eventually I sent a smile and some love Ocellus’s way.

-A few hours later-

“So what are Ocellus and Dolly doing again?” We were walking along the bayside of Cape Suzette, well at least Smolder was walking. I was lightly limping on three legs.

“I want Dolly to get used to Ocellus’s scent, that and I want them to be friends so Ocellus is going to the skate park with Dolly to make sure she stays safe.” I had asked Molly about it when she gave us a ride into the city and she told us of a few places of interest and a few places to stay away from. Apparently mad scientists were known quantity around here. “I’ll try to get you to spend time with her as well. Like Dodo, she’s going to be sticking with us when we leave.”

“Are you still upset that you’re taking one of the older dogs from the Dalmatian family?” Smolder asked as we listened to the sound of clanging buoy rocking nearby.

“Better the older dog, than one of the younger pups.” I wouldn’t know how to live with myself if I took Dolly’s baby sister Dorothy instead of her, at least Dolly knew what she was getting into. “I got Dolly talking to her family, for a while she was reticent to contact them and it had me worried. She’s going to miss them a lot and I’ve accepted her as family and her family has accepted me after I gave them a call on the way here after takeoff.”

“Hey at least you’re walking now, not bad for about two days unconscious and five or so days of constant rest after being brutalized.” Dragons like Smolder tend to roughhouse more than any other species on Equus, which is a bit strange when you compared them to their calmer and more collected cousins the longma. “Hey look at that, I think that’s the plane Molly was talking about. What was it, the sea something?”

“The Sea Duck I believe it was called.” From what I heard some of Molly’s friends lived out on the docks, this one had an airplane that was easily recognizable. She mentioned how cargo businesses went downhill, but cargo planes still flew supplies in out and out of this place. This place used to be a big hub and was now less needed, it was fairly active forty or so years ago. From the looks of things the cargo businesses around here were still going, just not as much for smaller planes like this one. “Apparently Donald’s sister Della knows the guy who lives here personally.”

“Must be hard for small businesses to keep going around here.” Smolder stated while looking at all the fishing boats. “At least the fishing around should be pretty good, used to go fishing with my brother Garble.”

“Speaking of family, I’m going to tell you what I told Ocellus, don’t try to play fetch with Dolly when you are spending time with her.” It was quite interesting for me to know why she hated it with a passion. “She hates it.”

“What dog hates playing fetch?” Smolder asked as she we sat down to look out into the bay. “I mean I can understand Zipporwhill back in Ponyville has a possible talent for understanding dogs like you, yet even that dog loved playing fetch.”

“Try to take it from Dolly’s perspective, she has ninety eight brothers and sisters. Now imagine playing fetch with all of them all the time. ALL, THE, TIME, with no one being in the mood to do something else.” I watched as Smolder’s face slowly changed into a look of understanding horror. “One of the reasons she hates playing fetch so much is because she has done an entire week of nothing but that once, another reason is that she finds the effort entirely boring if decent exercise. She likes more stimulating activities like skateboarding, sky diving now apparently after the street luging incident across the bridge and anything that gets her blood pumping like spending time around me when I’m in danger. She likes martial arts too, which she is learning from me to actively figure out how to do more intricate skateboard tricks in combat. She's taken to it like a duck takes to water.”

“Yeah the Sea Duck is still a prideful plane as ever.” We both looked to the bear that walked up on us. “Kit Cloudkicker, nice to meet you!”

“Not exactly what we were discussing, but let’s go with that.” I answered in reply as I shook his left paw with my left hoof. “Pom Lambchop and my friend here goes by Smolder.”

“Yo.” Smolder stated as she waved at the bear lazily, I really should learn if Dragons and Changelings have last names. Changelings might not, but Dragons certainly did. “Just hanging out with my friend.”

“What happened to her?” Kit stated as he took a seat with us.

“Got into a brutal seven on one fight, her opponents were far worse off than she was afterwards surprisingly.” Smolder looked up to me for being tough, but I still didn’t appreciate my ever bleating heart putting me in most of those situations. “Pom here knows how to defend herself very well, you can say we’re here in Cape Suzette on vacation and hopefully she will get the time to heal. Lots of people want to beat her up for being a professional at martial arts.”

“What happened to the other guys?” Kit asked, he was a big guy and was friendly sounding.

“A number of things like broken limbs, bleeding cuts from the edges of my hooves and what passes for a lot of bruises, I hope they are okay after what I did to most of them.” I was underselling the situation by quite a lot by not mentioning magic or world eating shadow monster summoning shadow copies of my friends that were more than pale imitations. Kit looked at my legs, looked like he didn’t want to comment on them. “Only one of them really deserved the beating they took from me. My left eye is mostly fine and just needs to heal, the muscles in my right leg still need time to recuperate since I threw it out while I was fighting all of them.”

“At least you had your friend Smolder there to help you right?” Kit tried.

“I wasn’t there, she held her own against them by herself. Pom’s really awesome like that!” Smolder commented with a prideful smile. She was wearing a loose shirt and was keeping her wings tightly under wraps beneath it. Here there be dragons and nobody was the wiser and it would stay that way since we didn’t want any trouble. “Also before you ask, I’m older than I look… I’m just a bit short.”

Yeah ‘Smol’, as Ocellus puts it, was truly a cute nickname for Smolder. I wasn’t about to use it, because Ocellus was the one that had a monopoly on it and wasn’t about to give permission.

“Teenager…” I whispered to Kit. “No growth spurt.”

“Ah, your little britches has issues with her size then.” Kit seemed to understand as he whispered back and nodded, he sound like he already knew what it was like. “I used to be that small too, ugh I really should work out more because I’m looking a lot like my adoptive father figure. Not that he was an entirely bad role model, but I’ve come to realize that I’ve become a bit ‘too’ much like him. A true lookalike really, I miss all the crazy adventures I had with him. Not exactly the most virtuous guy, but he always tried to do the right thing.”

“I think you look alright, I mean bears are supposed to be big and whoever you’re talking about sounded like a good person. I don’t know if bears are supposed to be this friendly, I think teddy bears just don’t quite do big guys like you justice.” A lambkin wouldn’t go within a mile of an Ursa Minor much less a Major, I was one of rare few who went to Equestria knowing that’s where star beasts tend to tread more commonly. Well star beasts that weren’t my Canis Minor and Major. “I mean you came over here to see if I was okay. Even if moving around is still a bit painful, I’m not a complete invalid at the very least like I was last week.”

“I’m the friendliest as you’ll ever see around here. I’ll trying to get into shape to return to my passion, Sky Surfing.” As he said this the bear flicked out a boomerang shaped piece of metal. “Also I’m glad to hear your doing okay… well mostly okay.”

“Isn’t that a bit small for you?” I asked immediately.

“I can still use it, even my father could… though I guess getting a bigger one or at least having a spare on me wouldn’t go amiss. I need to go earn some quick cash for that, maybe I can talk to Molly about it...” With that Kit seemed to be thinking deeply. “Thanks for talking with me, I’ve been training to myself hyped up to be back in the sky again. My best friend is going to be running a flying circus and I agreed to join her when she asked me if I wanted to take part. Hope you have a good time in Cape Suzette, Miss Lambchop, Smolder.”

“Hold up, how much money do you need?” I had plenty, enough to keep Shanty fed for months at least.

Author's Note

Not like Pom was going to use it for anything else other than food and travel... she's not really thinking about the implications of needing money expressly for the materials needed to build a portal.

160. Vigilant Vacation.

-Equus, Ponyville, Twilight-

“Thanks for the party Pinkie, it has really calmed me down.” My friends made everything easier.

“Yeah, thank you for helping ease our worries a little bit.” Turning to Sandbar. He was happily spending time with Yona, Gallus and Silver-Stream, as they all needed a break from their studies. “Though we’re still going to want Smolder and Ocellus to come back, we’re not going to give up on them or ever forget!”

“Yeah, that was quite a party alright and a nice cat nap!” Wait, what was Jade doing here?! She stretched out and her tail flicked outward as she did so before she stands up. “Don’t worry, I will not interfere with the case unless asked Twilight… Luna spilled the beans and I need you to save her from Fizzy tonight.”

“Really… after I just said I was calmed down?” When did she even join the party and why didn’t I notice? Did I really need some time with my friends that badly?

Well Jade is a friend… kind of. I put her in the same awkward friend category with Discord.

“See Bon-Bon, Jade isn’t here to destroy the world or do something to Twilight Sparkle aside from give her more work and she loves that!” No Lyra, I liked paper work. Not the kind of disasters Jade brings to me and smiles about.

At least… my cutie mark started glowing, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy also had flashing cutie marks which means a mission.

What now?

“I think they are already aware of the problem, given I just told them about it!” Then Jaded’s hip started flashing too. Oh no… why is she getting involved in this?! “Well thank you for at least considering me helpful to the situation Harmony, also my feelings. I’ll drop on by to hug you later okay?”

Wait… did she just say… no… don’t go there Twilight, don’t even ask.

-Earth, Evening, High Rise Hotel, Smolder-

“What do you suppose Dolly is doing in the bathroom?” I found Pom’s dog friend to be really cool, also weird.

“Whatever business a dog would do in the bathroom.” After Ocellus said that, we heard a flushing sound and then water running. Eventually Dolly came out with clean front paws. “Uh Dolly, is Pom doing okay out there alone?”

After a solid minute of looking like she was concentrating on something, Dolly eventually gave us a bark and nodded before hopping up onto the chair and taking a seat with us to watch some Ottoman Empire, foot rests have never been so intriguing.

Dolly was one of the coolest dogs we’ve ever met at least, she was really good with a skateboard and that’s even without adding magical tricks to it. Makes me wonder if Scootaloo and Dolly would get into an extreme sports competition against one another.

“What’s Pom doing again Ozzy?” I forgot since every second in Ocellus’s sugar sweet presence was distracting and I’m pretty sure she felt my feelings on it too.

“She’s waiting for Shanty to arrive, provided she doesn’t get into any fights and stays out trouble she should be fine.” Ocellus leaned against me and I leaned against her and we all just relaxed.

“I’m still fairly concerned about her health.” We all were Dormarch, but what can we really do to help that along?

Pom liked to be active even when she had nothing to do, at least she was getting plenty of rest and needed more than a week’s worth to fully recover.

-Cape Suzette, Shanty-

Yes, I be seeing the city after we passed through the gap, it was lit up at night and it be an interesting place being built on what little land there was between the sea and the inside of a ring of connected mountains at their bases. I wonder if this was what Turtle Toga is like.

“So are you excited to see your caretaker again?” Blinking at Mopsy as she approached me, I smile at her and be feeling a little bit sad.

“Of course I’m excited to be seeing Pom again, but I still be wanting to help Sly and his friends with the clockwork owl problem.” Coming to Cape Suzette, aside from being a vacation for them, was also business since they’d be buying parts to prepare the van. I not be knowing much about mechanical things and am very glad that Dodo is being able to heal from injuries. “Dodo is wanting to run around.”

Dodo’s current costume is that of a giant animal based duck statue and the gang’s fun this evening was the Squatters Plumbing Service.

“Well he will get the chance to do so soon… well unless he can swim. Wait… can he swim?” Mopsy be asking a good question.

“In an emergency he can be capable of floating in water, but he is not being very fast when treading it.” It be a good thing I be finding out about that in Hong Kong.

“So does this Pom really look like me?” It’d be spitting image if not for the green eyes Mopsy, are you being that concerned about looking like her. “I’m rather curious about meeting my sister from a different place.”

-One hour later-

The boat finally be letting us offload the van with our plumbing services plastered on the side, we drove up on to the road and stopped off to the side.

“Now how do we go about finding Pom, we already know they made it here before it.” Sly was looking at the city. “Should we call… Dodo, what are you..?!”

Dodo be hopping off the van and be running up to someone, he be looking quite excited, once I got a better look at the person I saw that it was Pom. She not be looking so good, but she does be having a rather nice looking eyepatch.

She smiled as she lifted her left hoof.

“Shanty I’m so glad to see you and Dodo.” Pom said weakly as she ran her left hoof over Dodo’s head and he warbled happily in greeting as he poked at her. “I would greet you in a more enthusiastic manner, but… leg in a sling, pained body and a healing eye. I’ve just been sitting out here waiting for you being left entirely with my own thoughts.”

“Can I have the eyepatch after you are done with it?” I asked immediately.

“Sure thing, I kind of figured you’d want it.” Because Pom be looking like a pirate, yes that be what I would be thinking too knowing me.

I made my way up to Pom and carefully pulled her into a hug.

“Not so tight, I’m fine… well I’ll be fine once I recover.” Not wanting to hurt Pom, I be loosening my grip somewhat.

“This is your caretaker Pom Lambchop… well hello gorgeous, I’d swear we were sisters if you were to see us standing next to one another.” The two looked each other over curiously after Mopsy teased Pom. Pom seemed a little uncomfortable in Mopsy’s presence and her nose be wrinkling and her right eye be twitching a bit.

“Wow, we really do look like each other, almost like looking in a mirror. Your friends at the Prance Dance looked so confused when I showed up.” Aside from their wool styles being slightly different, Pom was basically a twin sister to Mopsy.

“Heh, I’ll bet!” Snorted Mopsy joyfully. “Probably freaked Rita out when I was halfway around the world from her.”

“Hello Ma’am, Mopsy found you’re little rum drinker after she arrived in this world and we took on helping them out.” Sly and Pom shook hoof and hand with one another, Pom then proceeded to do so with Murray and Bentley as they introduced themselves.

“Thank you all so much for looking out for her, bet you had quite a time trying to keep her fed.” Grinning at Pom brightly, I waited for the others to say I wasn’t that bad.

“She cleaned every buffet of everything she could safely eat… then Murray would take out the rest of the buffet.” Sly muttered while shaking his head. “We have no idea where she puts it all, at least with Murray we have some idea.”

“I’m not that bad Sly!” Murray huffed and crossed his arms.

“I don’t know where she puts it either either, but that’s the only thing about Shanty that I don’t miss…” Pom be saying that in good nature as she through a leg around me and nuzzled me gently. I at least hope she be saying that in good nature, I not be a glutton… maybe. “So want to stay at our hotel room with us? There’s plenty of room for it. In fact, I was expecting it.”

Even as she offered this, she was looking around with a slightly worried frown. Her ears twitched, her nose wriggled as it sniffed the air and her eyes darted about. She was hardly being very calm right now.

“What’s the matter with you?” Bentley asked noticing Pom seemed to be a bit shifty eyed. “You seemed distressed, this night seems pretty calm to me.”

“You would be too if you were as paranoid as I am.” Still Pom be trying to calm down by taking a deep breath. “I want to introduce you guys to Dolly, I believe she was the one member of the Dalmatian family you never got to meet because of me.”

“Given what we’ve been through with Shanty and what you’ve been through that has at least appeared on the news, I can understand the paranoia.” Mopsy then looked my way. “Given that shanty has a bad habit of finding trouble everywhere we go. That thing with the jar is something I’m not going to forget.”

“It was just being a jar of dirt, honest!” I stated with a slight grin and some sweat dripping from head.

“Why does Shanty look so guilty all of the sudden?” Pom be narrowing her eyes on me. “Also how much rum did she get into exactly?”

“Any rum she saw that was within hoofs reach, how do you stop her from going after the stuff?” Asked Sly while sending me a look.

“You don’t, Shanty is a maniac when it comes to getting rum.” Pom stated dryly as she motioned to the van. “Come on let’s get moving, to the High Rise Hotel.”

“Hey, I am not being that bad, so I’ve had a bottle or three in the last hour!” I tried to defend myself about my favorite drink. “Besides it is being a popular pirate drink and I am being born to be a pirate!”

“Shanty, I know that the alcohol doesn’t have an effect on you and you know that we love and care for you.” Murray stated calmly as he took the driver’s seat. “We may think you have a problem.”

“What do you mean think? She’s drinking rum right now Murray.” At Sly’s motioning they all turned to me as I tilted a bottle full of rum towards my mouth with it tightly held in my right hoof.

“So I am being addicted to rum, there are being worse things to be addicted to.” Taking a bit gulp from the bottle, I sighed happily at the taste washing over my tongue.

“She has a point, besides it’s not like it’s hurting her.” At least Mopsy be agreeing with me.

“Still doesn’t make it right and people could try to take her away from me, especially if they knew she has an alcohol problem…” Pom sighed as we all started climbing into the Cooper Van, me already a quarter of the way through my bottle. “The problem being that she won’t stop drinking it.”

I’d like to see someone try and stop me from getting into rum! The van rocked slightly as Dodo hopped back on it and then we were off.

-Hotel Room, Pom-

“Guys it is official, we’re all together again!” Yet I still couldn’t relax, I still felt like something was about to catch on fire, explode or some kind of siren would go off any minute telling me that people were in danger.

Maybe I should let someone else take care of the trouble? Just for a little while, I mean Drake isn’t too bad at what he does. It’s hard for me to relax when I’m completely on edge.

Dolly made her way over and smiled up at the Cooper Gang, towards Murray or ‘The Murray’ as he calls himself.

“Hey there, met your family and gave them stuff, you must miss them a lot huh?” Murray saw Dolly nodded before she turned to me.

“Can you tell them ‘thank you’ for looking out for my family? Or at least let Murray know that, because it’s pretty awesome that my family has a toy version of myself.” Yeah they also liked the toy version of me too Dolly.

“Murray, Dolly wants me to say thank you guys for looking out for her family, she already did it for the people who were looking out for Ocellus and Smolder.” Turning to Ocellus, Smolder and Shanty in a cuddle pile, it was adorable and brought a warm smile to my face. Yet I kept looking out the balcony door into the city. “I hope Gosalyn, Drake and Launchpad are alright…”

“They’ll be fine, they are crime fighters and Darkwing Duck took several claymores to the face. Usually things like that usually blow people apart or critically injures someone, he just takes it on the beak and keeps going!” Yeah, that’s not making me worry less Bentley. I’m not surprised that he knew Drake Mallard’s secret identity. “So yeah, I think they’ll be perfectly fine, also Cape Suzette doesn’t have that much organized crime except for the Alligator and Capone syndicate.”

It’s not like Drake was trying too hard to hide his secret identity, my costume was wrapping a bit of cloth around my head and it was somehow working as a disguise that fooled some people. People on this world might think all sheep look alike and I had several issues with that and the overall intelligence of everyone concerning multiple things on principle of what I’ve seen in my travels.

-The next day-

We were all sitting at the shore and I was still as twitchy as ever that something was going to go wrong, even as I sipped my cold pineapple juice as I laid in a chair with Dolly running around playing with some local dogs.

Dolly was having fun in one of the small rural areas this place had off to the edges of the city, but I had to pay attention to make sure she didn’t do something dumb or dangerous.

“Calm down, I don’t think anything is going to happen and if it does, then me and the guys will take care of it Pom.” As far as thieves go, Sly Cooper was a really nice one and much less annoying than Jaded La Perm was. He, Murray, Bentley and Mopsy were all very nice and sweet individuals, I can hardly imagine them as the thieves that actively destroy other criminal gangs by stealing from them for fun and profit when they seemed so normal. “We’re just like that.”

“Asking me to calm down is like asking a Lambkin to not be scared of everything every waking moment of the day… which is a fairly consistent among my people. I’m just better about it.” Commentary aside it was a nice warm day and nothing ‘seemed’ to be going wrong, even then I was still very much alert for anything. “Still… thank you, I really can’t handle another emergency or crazy situation. I couldn’t even handle Hollow.”

“That’s why you have friends to take care of things when you’re beaten and down.” Stated Sly with a plucky tone as lazy leaned back on the chair next to me.

“Yep, friendship is an adventure in and of itself as much as family is!” Ocellus said from the other side of me as she roasted some vegetables for lunch. “Relax, if something happens, there are more than enough people here that you wouldn’t even have to do anything and nobody is expecting the world of you Pom.”

That did actually make me less nervous and more able to relax.

-A day later, south island, Louie’s Tavern, Pom-

I still couldn’t help but feel this building sense of dread, it had to be my imagination right? Drake, Gosalyn and Launchpad said there wasn’t much going on. When we last saw them, they went full tourist like the Cooper Gang had.

Since I gave some Kit some money to pay off his bank debts, he decided to fly me out to one of the more popular places for those who knows the regions of the ocean around Cape Suzette. To the south of Cape Suzette was Louie’s Island, known for its proprietor Louie the old orangutan and his merry menagerie of monkey minions.

I am reminded of Airship Mauled, mostly because this place was built out of a shipwreck and that had Shanty fairly intrigued if it was a pirate ship that was repurposed into a tavern build into the side of a giant tree. Reminded me of Rafiki’s home honestly.

“Roasted banana sandwiches with side salads for the lovely ladies and a nice assortment of safe stuff for the energetic dog. Two Krakatoa specials, one for my friend and the hungry little goat. A homemade pizza for the cute lizard pair. Finally some mango shakes, burgers and fries for the raccoon and his friends.” Louie placed what looked like an ice cream mountain before Shanty and she grinned greedily at the mountain of ice cream drizzled with honey and banana cream sauce. “Hope the sky circus thing goes great for you Kit. If you’re current employers are still hungry, they can ask for some guacamole tacos on the house.”

This Louie guy really shouldn’t have said that, Shanty might actually take him up on it.

“Well it’ll be another adventure at least, it just won’t be like old times…” Kit seemed to be quite melancholy about being here.

“Going to build as big a tab as he is?” The greying red orangutan was still somewhat cheerful despite the mood Kit was in.

“Nah, I’m paying upfront, I’m not him and shouldn’t try to be. Still I carry the family resemblance huh?” Kit stated after taking off his hat.

“Spitting image of the guy.” Louie said solemnly while nodding. “Baloo was the best pilot this world ever saw Kit. Not the brightest person around, but still the best. Now enjoy that Krakatoa special, I don’t like food going to waste around here! See the goat has the right idea.”

Shanty was halfway through her ‘Krakatoa special’ and was wearing two of the sparklers that came with the food. I sighed while rolling my eyes and started in on my food.

This tropical island was a nice relaxing place to get away from it all, nothing but ocean for miles around and the island itself was quiet other than this one single hotspot that had a fairly friendly face.

Yet I still worried that something was happening somewhere that would be out to get me, it was gnawing away at me.

“Pom, do me a favor, take in a big gulp of air and then exhale slowly, try to get a feel for your surroundings and ease into it.” At least Mopsy was supportive of me, but I wasn’t sure if that was because my people were sheep farmers or not. It certainly weirded out Mopsy that lambkin kind raised sheep. “Feel better?”

“A little.” I groaned loudly and continued to eat. “Also Louie, I’m paying for whatever my friends eat… except anything Shanty orders from here on out. That includes Kit.”

“You’re a class act ma’am.” Louie said before kissing my hoof gently.

“Aw, come on, do not be being like that Pom!” Shanty said with a happy face full of ice cream. “I hope the guacamole tacos are being good at least.”

-The next day, cliffs walls around The Gap-

So getting a tour of the cliff guns was interesting, this place used to be really active in a war time setting. They had held firm against air pirates and enemy ships for years on end, nowadays they were a monument to the fact that Cape Suzette was still standing.

Kit flew us up here because he thought we might like a tour of the cliff guns that protected Cape Suzette long before the maximum flying height was breached by airplanes nowadays. That didn’t mean they were useless, just that they would see less use. They were rarely fired these days and were mostly outdoors museum pieces.

Learning the history of the cliff side guns really didn’t help with my unease, but I was trying to relax and I needed to for my health. I really don’t want to have a heart attack and I was going to take some arrhythmia medication soon.

“We might have to put you on a daily schedule if you can’t calm down Pom.” Dormarch was keeping track of my health, Dolly’s health and several other things.

I personally was keeping track of our visit to the main headquarters of Kahn Industries, because Dormarch was almost terrified of going near the place.

“Honestly, what is it about Kahn Industries do you expect to find out that has you so worried?” I looked at the device I held in my hoof and Dormarch looked away as his fish tails tucked under his body.

“Kahn isn’t a bad guy, just a bit cold and ruthless in business. You’d be surprised how many times I’ve run afoul of him, but he actually cares about people in his own way.” Kit shook his head and looked out to sea. “He just doesn’t show it often enough… I’ve been living in Cape Suzette since I was a teenager and he mostly does right by the people who work for him.”

“Still can’t compete with Mr. McDuck in money, no one can!” Launchpad state jovially. “If I remember right, Kahn is pretty rich too right?”

“Richest tiger in the world, yep.” Kit confirmed.

“Keen Gear!” I turned and saw Gosalyn climbing on one of the cliff guns.

“Gosalyn get down from there!” Drake shouted at his adoptive daughter for doing something dangerous.

At least my kids weren’t that bad… mind you the other activity around here was rock climbing and Shanty was doing that with Dolly to help her practice running along walls.

Still, something itched at me that something could go wrong any second.

-The next day, outside the High Rise Hotel-

“Look it’s been a few days… I’m going to Kahn Industries headquarters whether you like it or not and I’m going to set up an appointment with Shere Kahn. I don't care whether he fast tracks our meeting or not, that is up to him.” I was testing my right leg and grimaced slightly at my healed hoof. It hurt, but I could walk on it now if absolutely needed. “We will be meeting him and we will be getting answers Dormarch, but know that no matter what the answers we find... I care about you.”

“Scale of one to ten, how painful is it Pom?” Dormarch asked immediately.

“A solid six going down to four, provided I don’t put too much pressure on it.” I could walk normally again without having my leg in a sling, but my left eye and body were still going to take another few days. I’ve been eating more food to get myself back into good health and Cape Suzette had really good restaurants. “Come on Dolly, let’s get going before Dormarch can convince everyone that it’s a bad idea to visit.”

Author's Note

Several days and just relaxing vacation spots? Also I don't think Twilight knows about Jade's relationship with Harmony.

162. The Digital Monster.

Author's Note

Shadowshame...

If you saw this coming, then good on you for realizing it before anyone else!

Image to research 'Dorulumon'.

162. The Digital Monster.

-???, Oleander-

I slammed back first through a tree, not the thin reedy kind either, and I managed to knock it to the side as it toppled down on top of me.

I couldn’t believe Fred, Butt or I were losing a fight this badly, but I guess it had to happen eventually.

“Yona is thinking this is going very badly.” Yona, along with her friends Silver Stream, Sandbar and Gallus were just sitting off to the side watching us be beaten within an inch of our lives.

“You could help you know…” I grumbled as I stood up on wobbly legs and summoned ‘The End of Pain’ to my side.

“Nah, you look like you totally have this.” Gallus said in a chill tone.

“Really Gallus, because it looks like Oleander, Fred and Ms. Stalliona are losing horribly to that thing.” Sending a glare Sandbar’s way, I turned back to my opponent.

It was a being so powerful as to be completely vexing because of the pure impossibility of what Fred implied it was.

For before us was a butterfly fluttering around on a grassy knoll, it had to be the most powerful and evil butterfly I had ever seen. Not only was it beating us, it was doing it so easily that I remembered what fear felt like for the first time in a long while.

Slowly the butterfly transformed into a strange small round creature wearing orange armor and it produced a dangerous looking orange sword. It’s pure white eyes and dark body underneath the armor wasn’t what made this thing so intimidating, in fact it’d looked comically like a butterfly evolved into an armored knight.

At least it had finally decided to stop toying around with us and finally revealed its true form. It pulled its sword back and was preparing to charge us with a flap of its wings.

“Stay behind me!” I held the key blade aloft.

“Oh don’t worry about that, we will!” Gallus stated as he and the others were well over the next hill and well away from the one I was standing on with a tree that nearly toppled onto me. I could swear the tree has a grimacing face… maybe that was my imagination.

The orange armored creature glowed brightly and it shot towards me and I was about to meet it when we all heard something.

“EEEEYAAA-AY!” A pink sphere with a green cap and a sword came spinning down on top of the butterfly sphere monster thing with ridiculous force. The pink creature held his sword aloft and turned to me as the butterfly creature created a deep furrow in the ground. “Poyo? Hi-iiiii!”

He waved at me happily and within the next instance his sword deflected the butterfly creatures own coming at his back without even looking, with a quick spin and a flash of something he was behind the butterfly creature. With a pop the pink creature lost his sword and it apparently bounced away in the shape of a brightly glowing five point star as he approached me curiously.

He was completely ignoring the frozen butterfly monster as he came up to me smiling.

Looking behind him, I saw the butterfly creature split into half and then the two halves were subsequently sucked into a tiny black hole. Said black hole turned into a small but very bright star and then it went out a second later.

The pink creature was more fascinated by me than whatever the hell it just did to the butterfly that kicked our flanks. Why were the creatures of this world so small and adorable looking, yet ludicrously powerful?

The pink creature inflated and then floated onto my back and sat down on me while smiling, he then glanced at Fred with a slight look of suspicion.

“Ollie… that's kirby… he has killed gods… do not upset him in any way, shape or form.” Quite right Fred, understood, no upsetting the demonstrably dangerous pink creature that just helped us. “Just let him ride you for a bit, maybe ignore his presence altogether and he hopefully won’t slaughter us.”

“Excuse me, but Fred is my fiancé, I assure you he will not cause problems.” The pink creature on my back smiled and nodded, at least I think he understood me clearly despite the childlike countenance. “Have you seen a lamb, a dragon, a bug pony and a goat by any chance?”

The pink creature tilted his face in curiosity.

“Oh my goodness, he is so adorable!” Silver Stream stated as she flew up to us.

I wouldn’t call something that can create black holes that erupt into tiny five second stars with a single swing of a sword adorable. Horrifying is more like it, given he was scaring Fred, Butt and even Overlord Song Ender into submission.

-Earth, the next day, Cape Suzette, Kahn Industries Elevator, Pom-

“Still say we should have brought my board and helmet if you’re this worried about something big happening Pom.” Dolly was of great comfort to me, then again, having any dog at my side always was and I would hardly ever admit it out loud. “The only one more nervous than you are is Dormarch.”

“Can you blame me, this is the place I was made after all.” Dormarch said while looking vaguely better than he had previously, I think he was going to have some acceptance about whatever Shere Kahn was bound to tell us in this meeting. “I’ve been feeling fairly uneasy about being here. I know my first memory was of seeing you, but I can’t help but feel as if I’ve been here before.”

“Maybe they did some test runs before giving you to Pom and they cleaned slate, but something got stuck in your memory?” Dolly suggested, but I personally doubted that was the truth.

“Dolly… I think Dormarch might have something in common with Dodo as much as he doesn’t.” Of the oddities I’ve seen, nothing was odder than watching Dolly and Dodo stare at each other every now and then.

Dodo had been around Dolly’s family and now she was experiencing him too since Shanty arrived, they were oddly amiable towards one another.

“Like what?” Dolly asked as the elevator continued upwards, this was one long ride, but the building was very tall.

“Let’s just say I have my suspicions and we’ll leave it at that…” I mumbled. Dodo was understandably a living entity, he had a spark of life and a living body that Shanty could connect with.

“Good or bad suspicions about me?” Asked Dormarch quietly from the device held in my right hoof, he was curled up on a small bed on the screen and not looking at me.

“That… remains to be seen Dor.” Of the things I knew, Dormarch didn’t have a body to start with. Something about the design of the device I held had clued me into the possible secret behind Dormarch, given I was told he was bound to the device. The question was, was there ever a time when he wasn’t bound to it? “You’re too nice to be a bad person, but there are definitely suspicions as to what would make you so special when we’ve already seen several signs of various other living machine entities in this world.”

Boyd, Ms. Shuttle, The Lucky Cat Café staff and Baymax came to mind. Thankfully none of them were the kill everything type that the evil cores in the last world were.

I’ve seen the horrors of what was happening on the planet of Mobius, I’ve also seen that machines can have the spark of true life on their own like Nicole Beta. Nicole Beta was a partial copy of the real Nicole that was still helping people on Mobius, a fraction of a soul becoming one fully on its own merits with several disturbing implications behind it.

I seriously hoped Dormarch was ready to hear something similar to that and that it wouldn’t psychologically devastate him too badly.

The ding of elevator reaching the top floor sounded out and we looked to the doors as they opened into the office where the greying tiger we saw in Zootopia sitting behind his desk working at a computer. I started making my way forward and looked around the office in curiosity, this guy certainly loved his plants.

“I’m pleasantly surprised you made it, I assure you that none of the mercenaries that were after you will be able to come here without my knowing and most of them are still licking their wounds after trying to accost you in Duckberg Ms. Lambchop.” He wasn’t even looking at me as he said this. After a bit he turned away from his computer and addressed us personally. “I take it you require an explanation as to what is going on, you are fairly intelligent being and I’m sure you have some ideas already. I’m will be telling you whether your assumptions are right or not.”

“Yes, that would be helpful in my continued survival Mr. Kahn. I took a bullet to the chest and got Arrhythmia problems for my troubles.” Really didn’t like all the trouble I went through getting here, but I wanted to know as much as I could about Dormarch. “At least Dormarch here is keeping me up to date medically.”

“Speaking of health issues, take some medication Pom.” Domarch quietly reminded me, I took out the pill bottle and quickly swallowed one of the pills down without water. “I’ve needed to repeat my diagnosis of your physiology several times to make sure I’m not getting anything about your health wrong. Dolly physiology is more understandable and stable than the mess that yours currently is.”

“I have seen many predators and prey in my life, but many would confuse you for the latter whereas I know you to be the former… if far too polite to show the truth or for the fear of becoming something you do not wish to be.” Rumbled Shere as he chuckled under his breath. “You fear a lot, but you are not weak or stupid Ms. Lambchop. Tell me, what do you think you know? Only then will I answer your questions.”

“I’m not exactly great with technology sir, Tartarus, it’s still a bit knew to me that I even have Dormarch as a companion. Given to me as a poisoned gift by you.” Equus just wasn’t as technologically advanced as some of the things I’ve seen. I looked at the tiger sharply, he neither confirmed nor denied my accusation. All he did was simply motion at me to get on with things. “I’ve had some time to think about this, between the various attempts on my life mind you. The most notable thing about all this is that I had a run in with an assassin that goes by the name Tobias Rieper.”

His eyes widened and he looked me over with slightly more concern. He knew the man by reputation apparently and he quickly schooled his features as he kept his paws propped up before him, clearly in thought at the news I just delivered to him.

“Yet, you do not seem to have been accidentally fed into a wood chipper, somehow drowned in a septic tank or were fatally shot by a T-shirt cannon.” Okay, so Mr. Kahn knew that name fairly well enough to know how he killed some people. The tiger hit something on his desk. “That is… fairly concerning. Ms. Bacherie, please have someone triple security and send the group waiting in the lobby to watch over my son. Please, do go on Ms. Lambchop.”

“Drowned in a septic tank, really… that’s a thing that can happen?” Ever since I taught her about toilets, Dolly looked a bit horrified that the guy that held a gun to my head could have done so much worse.

“I’m only going to make assumptions here, but the PET is actually something you developed… Dormarch however... isn’t.” I stated coolly. “I’d say that the AI you are making for the PET’s are not nearly as capable as Dormarch can be, dare I say they would be derivatives… pale imitations even… of whatever Dormarch truly is.”

“Very perceptive Ms. Lambchop, you have proven yourself smarter than most would be.” Here Mr. Kahn gave me a slightly grin as his wild eyes stared at me with appreciation. “Like how you are possibly magical in origin, it is simply something that needs to be ‘kept under wraps’ as I’m sure you’ll understand. Unfortunately spies have spilled that 'Dormarch' was something special, the misinformation comes in when people say my company... created him.”

I didn’t even respond to that. Not many people knew of magic, but I’m fairly certain Kahn knew enough to know I was unusual or had suspicions. He was frighteningly intelligent person, the rumors of his coldness don’t do his frigidness justice.

“Ah, that confirms it then.” I stated with a nod.

“Confirms what?” Dolly asked looked perplexed between me and the tiger. “How can you understand this guy? He’s still giving me chills like Cruella De Ville did when I saw her for the first time."

Ignoring Dolly, I held up Dormarch’s screen.

“Dormarch, Kahn Industries didn’t make you… but they did make the prison you are contained in.” I stated boldly while staring Kahn in the eyes.

“W-w-what?!” Dormarch seemed surprised at hearing this. “But that, I don’t even… this PET device is a prison? It’s so comfy though!”

Dormarch was going to have a lot of issues coming to terms with these revelations, as was Dolly and I.

“I am not as cruel as people would have me be.” Mr. Kahn stated as he tapped his claws against his desk. “I do however have a reputation that, as I’m sure Ms. Lambchop will agree, has some sordid truths to it.”

“How dangerous?” If I hadn’t met Nicole Beta, I wouldn’t have an idea as to how dangerous someone like Dormarch could actually get. “You’d be surprised, but I’ve seen something similar to this before.”

Nicole Beta took control of several space ships from a madman while being a fraction as powerful as the original Nicole, Dormarch could likely do something similar if he wasn’t so heavily handicapped in some similar way. I’d even say Dormarch would be more along the lines of the original Nicole and not her copy.

“Our world would have ended had my company not acted in a swift manner to contain… the problem.” Shere Kahn looked at the device I held in my right hoof. I held Dormarch protectively to me chest while looking at him. “You, thankfully enough, have established a firm connection with the entity concealed in that device.”

“What did Dormarch do exactly before he was contained?” It had to be asked, there was no way I was going to avoid the question.

“Things I wished I could have stopped sooner.” The strong image Shere Kahn presented faded away revealing the weary old tiger beneath it as he looked at his desk with a frown. “Do you want to know the story?”

“… Yes… regardless of what I’m about to learn.” I tried to keep an open mind on this situation.

“As you already know, magic is not of an unknown quantity to me. The first source of it I came across was a red crystal that created an excessive amount of raw energy and was used during the only successful full sky pirate incursion into Cape Suzette that made it through the Cape Suzettes infamous cliff guns that are basically museum pieces these days. I had yet to be married at the time, but I was during the… incident.” He rumbled softly. “The crystal was used in a deadly weapon by the original Don Karnage, he was stopped by the world’s most famous pilot known one Baloo Von Bruinwald with the help of his friends. However that is not the story you want to hear about, you want to hear about how we came to contain 'Dormarch' in that device you hold. It was a grim reminder to be very careful with things beyond our knowledge or understanding, you are one of those things Ms. Lambchop and I am glad you are far more benign than what he used to be.”

“What did I use to be?” Dormarch asked with a frown on his face, I turned him to Shere Kahn to show him Dormarch’s expression.

-A few years ago, as narrated by Shere Kahn-

As one can imagine, life always finds a way to surprise and it always surprised me how even the lowliest of people can be the greatest of heroes or even can change the course of history.

You have proven that yourself with your very actions.

In this case, this was one of the times where we failed to stop a tragedy and even if we knew now what we knew then… I don’t know if we could have even stopped it from happening anyway.

Our world has been visited by numerous dimensional stability issues by people experimenting with the boundaries of the infinite and anything beyond. Environmentally our planet is fairly unstable, with those who would use magic or science to breaking through the boundaries in reality to seek fortune from other realities and leaving rips or tears for other things to possibly come through.

I was not one of the ones who was focusing on opportunities beyond, I was focusing pragmatically on what I can solely achieve in this world. I even took up Scrooge McDucks space enterprise after he lost most of his money trying to find his lost niece Della Duck, we are almost to the point of mining space rocks and the industry is lucrative in its own right.

However one particular boundary break happened within my company and we were not prepared for it in the slightest. Our computer systems are close off from the outside world, insulated from being hacked and protected from most incursions from anyone inside, at least we thought it was.

An incursion of a different sort was one nobody could have ever expected to occur.

As you have seen with your association to Gizmo Duck in the news, technology is getting to a point where anyone with a genius intellect, a mechanical suit of armor and a will to help can be a hero.

In this case there were no heroes.

Our computers had an intrusion, it somehow came from inside the systems and I do no care for traitors to my company who could have possibly released it. Even with our vetting processes, I still find issues with some people who work for me from time to time.

To explain it to you, our computer systems suddenly gained a computer virus, a sickness for machines if you will that seemingly came from nowhere. Unfortunately the intrusion was the fault of no one from my company and it in fact came from another world.

What became quickly apparent to us was that the virus had a physical appearance and could be seen on the screens of the computers it was currently inhabiting.

It was consuming a lot of critical data from our computers systems that my company needed to operate and I had some of the best security money can buy, so I quickly had people working on a way to destroy the problem before it can ruin what I had built with blood, sweat and even now... my very tears.

While this was not entirely a mistake on my part to do so, it still came at a cost I wish I never had to pay.

The wolf like beast had brilliant white and orange fur, a horn on its head in the form of a drill and several other drills at the tip of its tail and sticking out of its hind legs. It was a beast that looked to be a mixture of technology and flesh… it however was not however made flesh but pure data come to life.

In our attempts to halt its destruction of my companies systems and deal with it personally… the entity physically broke into our reality and fled the building. By that I mean it erupted out of s computers taking on a physical form and then fled… where it eventually ended up getting into the computers in a nearby hospital.

Numerous people died due to the corruption of the hospitals computers systems when it invaded them, one such crucial system the electronic entity attacked was one for life support for those who were in critical condition or in surgery.

One of the most important people to perish was my wife… Raksha Seeonee.

Furious that the monster had caused me such pain, me and my experts had managed to seal it into a single computer and barely managed to prevent it from gaining strength to emerge into our world once more.

We managed to destroy the strange entity… only… the beast didn’t stay dead.

We found out that the entity, when killed, has a strange coding that allows it to revive anew as an indestructible piece of coding that took the form of an egg.

While the egg was indestructible, we could still faintly alter its coding.

We could not recreate the indestructible coding that made up the egg, but we learned much about how it functioned and built a system to prevent any more intrusions into our world. We distributed a self-propogating anti-virus software freely to as many devices as we could at a high personal cost to me.

It was the best we could do to feasibly prevent an invasion of anymore of these creatures.

We have hopefully prevented further calamity, but rumors of an unstoppable computer virus still made it to the ears of those who sought the power of what such a thing that could do.

While I so direly wished to destroy the egg, I decided on a different plan for the creature inside.

If I could not destroy the creature so powerful as to cheat full destruction through reincarnation, then I would put it to use.

As such every mercenary that hunts you down has wanted your... 'friend'... for he still has the capability to destroy this world if he so sought to do so.

This can happen only if he can eventually circumvent his prison in some way and regains the power he once had, we have made sure to weaken his form considerably and I was surprised to see a dog appear on the screen wasn’t the same as the beast that we destroyed.

We can prevent any existence of these creatures from possibly crossing into in our world, but should such creatures propagate from Dormarch. It would quickly come to require that we destroy all forms of technology and anything built from such to prevent our total destruction.

Even I am not lofty enough to think I or my company can stop the march of progress as I am one of the main proponents in this world that has pushed such things forward.

If its new incarnation would never remember what it has done, then I will at least have tried to make it so that it would never harm anyone else.

Thus I created the cage you now hold Ms. Lambchop, to protect the world from this… digital monster… and him from the world.

-Present, Pom-

“I’m… I’m sorry… I am so… so very sorry…” Dormarch was still trying to apologize for something he likely couldn’t even remember doing.

“It’s okay Dormarch… your still my friend.” I stated softly.

“You are the hero I wished was around for that incident, but you were not on this world yet Ms. Lambchop.” Leaning back Shere Kahn looked to the ceiling and I noticed a few tear drops on the desk, I made no comment on it.

163. A Horseshoe Drops.

-???, Oleander-

“Okay let’s begin the meeting.” I stated with clear and concise tone while clearing my throat in a manner that would inevitably draw the attentions of everyone here. “So how many lost Pom’s have been found and brought home?”

“According to the numbers Equus Prime-Oleander of Dimension One A, we’ve found half a trillion Pom’s thus far… we are sorry to inform you that none of them were yours. Also we need a home for a spare Pom we found that somehow survived the destruction of an entire dimension, if anyone would adopt her after her dimension was destroyed by Organization Seventeen that would be nice. Also, before anyone asks, Fœnum Prime-Oleander One A can’t take her.” Nollie, Nerd Oleander, looked to the Pom that looked listless and dead inside. Her wool was dyed black and she had a black spiked collar around her neck and was wearing a black dress with black stockings, the only thing not black was the white mascara. Apparently that Gothic Pom’s world was entirely gone. “Now how many of you have utterly destroyed Organization Thirteen before it got worse or at least to the point that Gothic Horror World’s did?”

Every Oleander and Fred present raised their limbs.

“My life is like my heart, empty and purposeless.” Gothic Pom stated depressingly despite how nice she looked, at least she seemed to be eating enough to stay alive. “I wished the heartless would have at least tried to consume me, instead they all just gagged on the stench of my hopelessness.”

“Okay, good, so we’re saving that many existences at least…” Nollie, the thick glasses wearing unicorn froze, as did every other Oleander and Fred and they all pointed to my back in fear at finally noticing someone we were going to take back to Dreamland on the planet of Popstar. “Why is there a Kirby here?! Those things kill gods you know!”

“I befriended him, I also made him promise to not slaughter anyone at this meeting… for a slice of strawberry cheesecake.” For a creature called a ‘star warrior’ and ‘slayer of dark godly entities’, I bribed him so easily.

“Hi!” Kirby said while waving a nub at everyone in a cutesy manner, all the surrounding Oleander’s and Fred’s flinched slightly.

“This is really trippy Oleander.” Gallus stated as he stood with a group of different colored versions of himself. “Also I come in Pink… really?”

“It’s a true griffon’s color!” Said the gruff voiced, bulkily muscled, Gallus in response while he constantly flexed.

“Ignore Overcompensating-For-Something Gallus. Also ignore anything Blonde Stream says, she actually lives up to the stereo type of being a dumb blonde and will kill your brain cells.” Grunted out Envy Gallus, his body color was primarily green.

I would ask why Blonde Stream had brown hair, but I realized it might be a running gag among the Silver Stream collective of existences.

“Okay, no more distractions ‘Joinder of Ollie and Fred’. Let’s get back on task of figuring out how to find my Pom and a feasible home for this Gothic Horror World Pom…” I tried to get us back on track, but then a green portal opened and two figures came in to the meeting of the ‘Joinder of Ollie and Fred’.

“I welcome assassination attempts from any Fred willing to try, I just wish that you would please try to make it as painful as possible too.” Goth Pom stated blandly from where she laid unmoving on the ground. “For everything is black, like the void and my heart.”

“Oh gee Rollie, I think we got the wrong location, weren’t we s-s-supposed to be at the council of Rick’s and Morty’s?” Morty-Fred stated in a wimpy sounding tone that grated on everyone’s nerves as he and his companion joined us.

“No, we’re definitely in the right place. We’re much safer sticking with these yahoos here Freddy, says a lot considering we’re surrounded by demons and at least half of them are ‘for-the-laughs’ type of evil.” Rollie, sometimes better known as Rick Roll or Rick Oleander, stated before taking a drink from her bottle. “Bottle of infinite Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, you are my best friend in any world!”

“Right back to the topic… in short… what do?” I confined it down to two words and every Oleander and Fred present started talking amongst themselves.

-Earth, Cape Suzette, Canal Square, Pom-

After we quietly left Mr. Kahn to his thoughts and we were on our way back to the hotel, I couldn’t help but worry about how silent and withdrawn Dormarch had become. Apparently he thought he was a creation of Kahn Industries, in a small part that was true and I guess we now know why he was nervous.

He was fairly devastated to find out he is a reincarnation of something that had killed people, possibly not even on purpose and maybe through a complete lack of understanding of what his past self was doing.

“Come on little bro, talk to me, I’m your big sis aren’t I?” Dolly was trying to rouse Dormarch, but it wasn’t working. Even her boundless cheerfulness had its limits and she looked up at me from the PET. “Pom…”

“Give him time to come to grips with what we learned Dolly, he’ll eventually come around if he wants to keep us up to date with our health after all. Also, I seriously doubt he would withhold your ability to connect with the rest of… ‘our’ family.” Now that I said it, I realize why Dormarch was fairly concentrated in medical knowledge given whatever prior form he had ate all kinds of information from a hospital. Not going to bring up anything medical anytime soon, but I at least hoped giving Dormarch a purpose would get him back into a better mood. “Now come, we need to get back to the hotel and get ready to see the show that Molly Cunningham and Kit Cloudkicker are going to put on.”

I glanced at Dormarch on the screen, he was facing the corner of a wall and laying on the floor limply.

-A hour or so later-

Kit had brought us to where the seaside show was going to take place, apparently Launchpad knew what the show could be like given he grew up in a flying circus that was the McQuack family… which explained a lot about him that his entire family had a thing for flying. Also I didn’t know how to take it that Launchpad’s father had a chin that was three times the size of his own.

“So are these Jungle Aces any good at flying?” Launchpad asked as we were just told about them.

The Jungle Aces consisted of some curious members from what we knew. They were an all biped group consisting of a rabbit, a hyena, a hippo, a vulture and another bear that made up the friends that Kit Cloudkicker grew up with and, with the exception of the other bear, they were all now daredevil pilots in Danger Woman’s Death Defying Flying Circus.

“They are some of the best, in being childhood friends and flying the skies.” Molly Cunningham answered as she threw a paw around Kit, their relationship being adoptive brother and sister that Dolly found bittersweet judging by the feelings I was getting.

“I wouldn’t know, I’ve… never been to an air show before.” Longma really didn’t do airshows so much as training exercises with intricate displays already involved in keeping control of their flames, I also have never been to a Wonder Bolts show either. So never been to a show in an official capacity, but watching training longma was a close comparison.

There was only one person I wanted to be in the air with once I figure out how to fly and she was hopefully still safely watching my pack back home with Blighter protecting her back.

“Then you’re in for a treat!” Kit stated jovially as we had plenty of snacks and were in the stands ready to be entertained. Everyone that came with us were here and ready to enjoy things as well.

“The word treat should never be used unless...” Mumbled Dolly as I felt her thinking about the ‘fam’. “Thankfully I have a jar of peanut butter entirely to myself and plenty of things to dip into it!”

Dolly started chilling out next to me, trying to get Dormarch to talk to us. Dormarch was still unresponsive, I’d give him more time and he would be watching the show with us too. At best we could get him to call the Dalmatian family, but otherwise he just wouldn’t interact with us. I sent a little warmth his way through the bond I felt we still had.

I was an official member of the Dalmatian family by way of Doug, Delilah and at least forty five or more puppies agreeing on it that weren’t the one raising the invitation, the vote was a perfect landslide and just for ceremony. Sure they miss Dolly fiercely, but they were happy for her as well and wanted me to keep her as safe as I ‘feasibly’ could with the weird things we’ve gotten up to.

“This will be being interesting.” Currently reclining atop her mechanical familiar disguised as a small parade float nearby, Shanty was smiling as she snacked on various things from the nearby concession stand and was chipping away at the funds we were legally owed from Hunter De Ville.

Shanty had learned a few new tricks since we last met, moving on water and being able to shoot a concussive blast of water being the most notable. Shanty called the attack ‘riptide’, which makes sense for how she formed it.

Honestly, I was going to ignore the fact that Shanty had likely learned thieving tricks from Mr. Cooper who is stated to be on the path to being the world’s greatest thief.

I looked over to Ocellus and Smolder holding claws, they were fine. Though I would be stepping in if they got into doing anything too crazy, I get enough insanity from Shanty and her rampant rum addiction.

Drake and Gosalyn were excited to see what kind of show we’d be getting here, mostly because it was free for us.

Launchpad looked to be over by Molly’s group and seemed to be giving out a few pointers from his own experiences with stunt flying, such as finding a good venue for the audience and safety concerns. I wasn’t capable of reading beaks or lips, but it was what I was guessing from seeing Launchpad talking with them.

The Cooper Gang were nearby and were sitting around acting as civilians. When it came to their heists and the ways they robbed criminals, they were fairly good at performing spectacles personally. So I wondered how much this would really interest them.

Mopsy at least seemed attentive personally, now if only she didn’t smell so much.

Having a sensitive snoot let me know exactly what Mopsy got up to and she wasn’t exactly trying to hide what she does for a living. To me, ‘Escort’ and ‘Dancer’ were the least troubling of the jobs Mopsy knows how to do. We were kind of like estranged sisters and she cared about Shanty as much as I did by fussing over her.

I shook my head and watched as people filtered in to see the show and tried to relax. I’ve been having a nice vacation over these last few days, even if I’ve been incredibly tense and wary. Just waiting for something big to happen

-Ocellus-

“So this is going to be something like the Wonder Bolts right?” I could almost hear the lecture Rainbow Dash would go on about the flying team, only this would be flying with machines instead of doing it biologically. It was far more impressive to do it mechanically without magic.

“Maybe, but the Wonder Bolts aren’t circus performers… though you wouldn’t know that by how they act in general. From what I last heard Spitfire was being constantly annoyed into an early retirement by an Abyssinian that… its Jade isn’t it?” That sounded so right Smolder. “Of course it is, nobody knows an Abyssinian that riles up more people than her when she’s feline frisky.”

“Horrible pun Smolder, but I forgive you for it. Also I don’t know of any other Abyssinian who’s famously as annoying in Equestria aside from Capper or Kuril.” Maybe we could see if Capper and Shanty could be friends? I mean he seemed friendly enough rogue when Rarity introduced him to us during a class and if we made it home he could be a starter crewmate for her, well aside from already having a crew pet in Dodo. “I’m fairly certain I know why none of our teachers have ever invited Jaded to teach a class about friendship for a day. She’s one of those ‘Discord’ kind of friends where small doses are better.”

“The kind of friend you would wish was not chaos incarnate?” Snorted Smolder.

“Oh definitely." I leaned into Smolder and she leaned back into me and she would be eating all the snacks near us while I fed off of her. Worked perfectly fine for me, I enjoyed her enjoyment of food. "Also quiet, the show is about to start!”

Enjoyment by proxy was a changeling thing, as much as watching couples showing affection for one another was.

-Shanty-

Dodo be watching the show and warbling happily in a quiet enough tone to not be drawing too much attention to himself, I be enjoying the sight of several airplanes twisting, twirling, diving and crossing each other’s paths dangerously close to one another.

I be lifting a plate of chips with jalapenos and melty cheese towards Dodo and he be snapping quite a few of them up in his beak.

When I be getting an airship, I’ll be wanting to be making at least one of those to fly for myself! Though to be doing that, I have to be finding someone to build it for me or I be building it myself.

-Gosalyn Mallard-

“Keen Gear…” It was nice of Pom to get us tickets to this thing, those pilots were awesome! Sure Launchpad was cool and everything, but the guy crashes regularly with frightening ease.

There wasn’t much crime in Cape Suzette, well at least not much visible crime. What wasn’t visible Dad and I could totally handle quite easily.

I was kind of worried about both Pom and Drake’s paranoia.

The both of them seem to feel that something was off here with Cape Suzette, but they couldn’t seem to be able to say what it was. Something has to be setting off both of their instincts. I’m not as experienced as they were, but I was willing to believe something was wrong or off if the two of them were experiencing the same kind of restlessness.

Drake was always restless in Saint Canard for a reason, as for Pom she finds danger regularly from what she’s told us and if the news of her exploits were anything to go by, then something was up when she’s had plenty of time to actually enjoy a vacation.

With that in mind I’ve been making sure my trick bolts were all set up and ready to use in an emergency.

-Drake Mallard-

At first I thought Pom was feeling the way she was after being chased around by mercenaries so much, but then I started to feel it too.

Gosalyn was enjoying the air show at least, but even she seems to be picking up on my and Pom’s feeling that something was going to go wrong. She was prepared for it and I was so proud, what I wasn’t happy about was that my daughter kept getting into trouble.

Hopefully it was just a trick of our minds and nothing was actually going to happen.

-After lunch, Pom-

The air show was pretty amazing, especially Kit Cloudkicker’s sky surfing. Danger Woman’s death defying sky diving drop. They had put on a profitable show, even if they gave me and everyone else mostly free tickets to it.

“Thank you again for the show Ms. Cunningham, Mr. Cloudkicker.” I stated to Molly and her friend as they got done talking with their flying circus team.

“Don’t call me Ms. Cunningham, reminds me too much of my mother, just call me Molly or Danger Woman.” Molly was really insistent on the Danger Woman thing.

“How did you come up with Danger Woman?” Instead of answering my question directly, Kit answered for her.

“She was obsessed with a radio show called, you guessed it, Danger Woman. It was about this woman who got into all sorts of danger and saved the day, Molly’s favorite show and bit of entertainment when we were younger.” Kit chuckled audibly before he was struck in the gut by Molly’s elbow. “My favorite form of entertainment was my papa bear Baloo, if I remember right, I still have a few things of his that we might be able to use for the flying circus.”

“You mean… you still have that Bullethead costume?!” Molly said after moment of silence before perking up with glee. “Kit, you have got to use that, you’re sky boarding brought in customers, but having two super heroes being a part of our act is going to add even more to our popularity! I’ve also always wanted to do what Danger Woman does.”

“Well yeah, wasn’t about to get rid of that one, I mean how many people do you know have a fully working hero costume? I’ve kept it clean and the rocket pack was upgraded by Professor Buzz... just in case we ever needed it.” Looking to Kit curiously, I tilted my head. He had a hero costume? Why does the thought scare me more than anything and seems like its foreshadowing things to come in Cape Suzette? “Sure there may be heroes like Gizmo Duck, Bazooka Bunny or even Leap Lamb these days, but Baloo… he was the original super hero to us. I mean who actually goes to the trouble of bringing a comic book character to life just to help me with befriending some other kids my age!”

“Yeah, he always did go above and beyond, I remember when he flew an airplane made out of ice out of Thembria… to think people said that was impossible and I was there for it.” Molly looked a little somber. “Heh, you have to use your imagination sometimes, the impossible is only as such if you think it is. It’s a good thing Wildcat is still around to keep helping with repairs, he and Baloo taught us a lot of life lessons. It’s why I started this circus, if cargo business isn’t doing great then shift to doing something else you love for money.”

“Excuse me, there’s a reason I’m still here.” I interrupted their walk down memory lane and they sheepishly rubbed at the back of their heads, they were definitely like siblings in the way they acted. “Shanty wanted an autograph, you got her interested in airplanes.”

“I be getting an autograph from the Jungle Aces, but there are two I didn’t be getting autographs from!” Shanty shouted as she galloped up to us. “I be wanting an airship someday Pom. Also a plane, they look fun!”

Dodo broke free of the float and came up to Shanty rocking his head back and forth warbling cheerfully.

“That’s on you Shanty… also make sure to keep your parade float a bit more discreet… heh heh… you’re not buying it are you?” After a moment I noticed that both Molly and Kit looked to Dodo, glanced at each other and then looked to me.

I gave weak grin to the two and they looked away with smiles.

“Don’t worry about that, we’ve seen a lot of weird things in our lives.” Kit Cloudkicker mumbled. “A… I want to say living machine… that doesn’t even rate within our top ten. My last adventures involved a stone that fuses things together and an evil organization that kidnapped me because of this vulture guy that absolutely hated adventurers.”

“Trust us, we know weird and we are keeping a lot of secrets… I wonder how those dinosaurs are doing… also don’t leave me out whenever you go on an adventure you big goof!” It seems Molly’s mood went up as she took up Shanty’s little booklet and signed her name and softly punched at Kit’s shoulder. “Magic and strange machinery isn’t unknown to us... here Kit sign this and ignore the living robotic turkey that is most certainly a parade float.”

Dodo warbled in a slightly angry mechanical huff as Kit signed Shanty’s notebook.

“Dodo prefers being called a robotic ostrich.” Shanty translated as she took the little notebook back from Kit.

While she looked at the signatures and I notice that Shanty had scribbled down some plans on what she was going to do when she could finally become a pirate, the diagrams she had of the nearby planes were scarily accurate and I worried for the future.

“Like old times?” Kit said with a grin.

“There are still adventures to be had out there Kit and we’ve been missing out on quite a few of them.” Molly stated as she and Kit went back over to their friends the Jungle Aces. “I think it’s about time we started looking for trouble together again.”

-Late Evening-

The plane took off and we left behind the city of Cape Suzette, we wanted to help Sly Cooper because of Shanty and we were leaving to head over to Russia. Darkwing Duck only agreed because we would be dealing with one of the world’s most renowned villains.

Surprisingly nothing happened on takeoff, nothing happened as we flew out of the bay and I looked back at the city lighting up the surrounding waters with lights.

Well I guess this peaceful vacation was… I saw smoke rising from the city in the distance behind us.

I slowly inhaled through my nose, closed my eyes and then heaved a long drawn out sigh.

“Mr. Mallard, everyone else, I think Cape Suzette just came under attack…” We could just leave, just ignore the danger, we could simply look away from the disaster and continue on without looking back… everyone was looking to me. Everyone except Gosalyn who was already putting on her Quiverwing Quack gear. “Launchpad… turn us around and head back towards Cape Suzette.”

“Righty-o!” After that, Launchpad veered the plane around. “Where do you want me to land?”

Drake Mallard, Sly Cooper and I looked at the city know pouring smoke into the sky.

“Try to land somewhere in the city and nowhere near the water.” From what I knew, Launchpad will likely crash right into the water just because I asked him not to. “Dolly, Shanty and I will be jumping out over the city.”

“Ditto for Murray and me.” Sly stated immediately. "We have Cooper Gang branded paragliders, Bentley's been working on them."

“You’re not leaving Darkwing Duck or Quiverwing Quack behind!” Drake stated already in his costume in a blink. "We have our own ways of getting down."

“This is going to be another big one huh?” Dolly said as she quickly crawled up my back and to see. "Where there's trouble, we'll leap into it!"

“Please don't catchphrase Dolly. Okay, first off, Shanty how do you feel about the name Cut-Lass for a sidekick name?” We were all going to hit the ground running and we’d deal with this situation. This plane was full of heroes and I was going to be out voted anyway. “So if anyone asks, your my partner.”

“Cut-Lass be ready Leap Lamb!” Winked Shanty with a grin.

"Here we go..." I groaned out heading towards the back.

Author's Note

Last page of the year, the start of the next will be the eye patch wearing mostly healed Leap Lamb in her biggest issue yet.

Leap Lamb and Caper Canine Special Edition: The Cape Crusaders!

Nothing like an end of the year ball drop.

164. Leap Lamb and Caper Canine Special Edition: The Cape Crusaders! (Part 1)

Author's Note

Music: Super Ponybeat - Winter Wrap Up (Euro Spring Mix Eurobeat Brony).

Talespin Character Image reference: MEL Mechanical Electric Laborer.

164. Leap Lamb and Caper Canine Special Edition: The Cape Crusaders! (Part 1)

-Cape Suzette, nightfall, outside a power station, Cape Suzette PD Sargent Wally Snapjaw-

If anyone told me, Wally Snapjaw, I would be needing my heavy weapons swat gear and as much ammo as I could get for my grenade launcher tonight I might have laughed. Alligators like me tended to get a bad rap because of guys like Trader Moe, I’m lucky to even have this job.

These things came out of nowhere and started attacking everything at once, we barely managed to hold the power station and several fires were starting to get out control and the area around Kahn Industries was getting hit far more heavily than we were.

We were dealing with four foot tall metal soldiers with heart shaped faces that glowed a dangerous red color, they were all rolling around on two wheels and had deadly extendable arms ending in three grasping claws that changed into various lethal weapons. If that wasn’t bad enough, they can fly for a limited time too until they run out of fuel.

There was a whole army of them and we’re were thoroughly underequipped to handle so many of them as bullets didn’t do much unless you could hit them in their glowing heart shaped faces. It was the only part of them that wasn’t as bullet proof, but it still took concentrated fire to what passes for their faces to take even one down.

I fired a grenade into a cluster of them dealing some damage, I’m thankful that we had some Shere Kahn’s guys with us as backup to protect our city from these mechanical menaces.

One of the machine’s avoided the explosion and had rolled close enough to extend its right claw towards my face, as I hastily tried to reload. I could see my life flashing before my eyes as the claws grew ever closer to puncturing my skull.

“Kidnap Ka…” The machine started to say the mantra they’ve all been repeating tirelessly.

I was about to become a casualty tonight…

“We’ve come to the save day~!” The being that just sang that was a dog, an animal, not a biped or an animalistic that just came rocketing down from the sky. A Dalmatian specifically, but still an animal.

Said animal had pushed the robot back in time before it impaled me as she impaled the nose of her skateboard down into the machines neck, she then stood up and stomped down with her left hind leg to flip the board and herself backwards in a stylish manner.

That popped the machine’s head off its body with a surprising amount of force despite the dog’s small size and she landed the flip and throwing her paws into the air as she put the skateboard into backwards rolling manual. She then stopped and then pushed it forward.

“Come on Leap Lamb Team, let’s go save the day~!” A goat sang as she slammed a flying buck into the face of another robot caving it in. “I’m the Cut-Lass and things will be being okay~!”

“We’re the Leap Lamb Team, let’s hop into this fray~!” The dog sang as she veered her skateboard about and somehow kicked it high into the air and flipped before whipping her board forward slam it into another machine sending it back with another broken face that made it topple over lifelessly. “I’m Caper Canine and we’re all on our way~!”

That’s when I saw what was quickly becoming a legend and the one the two who came to save us were singing about. I watched Leap Lamb swoop down from the sky wearing an eyepatch over her left eye, pink cloth on her forehead and her left hoof pulled back as she surged forward.

Her left hoof slammed into the metal torso of another machine knocking it out of the air and denting it, before landing on her hind hooves. Not even our bullets did that armor and… was she fighting while having just barely healed from injuries? That was one tough piece of mutton!

Leap Lamb hopped back, glanced at her two friends and then lunged forward three times, each time stopping for a second to put a hoof through three of those machines faces in quick succession.

“Call the news, they’ll want to hear Leap Lamb is on the scene!” I stated jokingly as I finished loading my grenade launcher and fired a shot further down the street from the three that just came storming in from the sky and were holding off these mechanical menaces.

Orders were quickly given out, we started to form a better perimeter as Leap Lamb’s Team moved forwards. We wished her and her sidekicks luck, since there were hundreds of these things.

-Pom-

I leapt and launched a fly buck into one of these machines face knocking it onto its back while destroying it, I kicked off and upwards to throw a flying left uppercut intercepting one diving for Shanty’s back. It flipped backwards and fell to the street lifeless. Don’t know what they were, but they were tough enough that we could only effectively hit them in one place that wasn’t armored and it needed to be hit hard to take them down.

We would be working our way to the trouble spot, which seems to be Kahn Industries according to Bentley.

Thankfully we all had methods for doing that, Dolly was increasing her momentum for damaging impacts, Shanty’s cutting strikes barely scratched the armor unless she leads a blow straight into the heart that made up these machine’s faces and I had enough wool to protect my hooves while threw heavy jabs.

These things did have another weakness, but disabling their wheels didn’t disable their extending arms and only slowed them down a little by making them walk on their only limbs.

Dodo, wearing a ridiculous blue cape, a pink cloth wrapped around his head and ‘Team Leap Lamb’ painted on his sides, rammed his way through several of them. How did he get that costume between when we jumped out of the plane and hitting the ground, much less the colorful paint job?

“We are all on the move, and there’s no need for us to hold back~!” I sang as I ducked under two extending arms while charging in on all four legs to slamming my right hoof upwards into the machine’s face, I winced slightly in pain. Thankfully the strange heart song dulled it though.

“We can all jump forward, and fighting talent is something we certainly don’t lack~!” It’s just strange that Dolly managed to start it, she slammed the bottom of her board against one of the machine’s faces and popped off it as another machine smashed it for her. She grabbed a light pole with a paw spun around and then launched into skating up a nearby wall.

“Singing while kicking butt, and we be all having that talented knack~!” Shanty state as she did a backwards flying buck, bounce off the impact that shattered the machine’s face to the nearby into a goat fly that sent one careening into a bunch of others doing some damage.

“Now gather up, now we’re showing them how we all attack~!” The three of us sang as Dodo joined us in charging several of these diving machine’s, he leapt high and kicked the two machine’s out of the air.

“Now, push right on through them~!” I pivoted clockwise and punched my left hoof through the one on my right and saw a claw coming from one on my left.

Shanty swept from my right and slashed her hooves together firing a blast of water through the head of one coming for me on the left.

“No you don’t you bucket of bolts~!” Only to have Dolly kick off a wall from above, land on the still extending arm to grind along it, she flipped off the board and then landed on it again before the board could touch the ground after completely sheering off its head. “That’s not something you’re doing~!”

“Good going Caper Canine, keep alert for the flyers~!” I stated as I rammed my right leg straight into another machine’s head with a thrust kick then fell backwards to dodge two saws swinging inwards as one machine changed its hands, where were all these things coming from and built these things?

“We’ve got Leap Lamb’s back against these dolts~!” Shanty leapt form DoDo’s back as he tore through one with a foot. She leapt off and threw an overhead right hoof into the one I was dodging backwards. “We’ll do this altogether while grooving~!”

“Keep your wits Cut-Lass, please try to help with any small fires~!” Two quick high kicks and I’ve downed another two that were in the middle of changing their claws into sparking tuning fork prongs that arced with energy.

We were dropped off in the west as Launchpad did his flyover of the city, Darkwing and Quiverwing were dropping directly onto the main headquarters to aid whoever was reported putting up a huge fight there. Cooper and his team were taking the east side, they were to find out where these things originated from, also prevent them from damaging the water plant or ruining food supplies.

“Major plan interference detected!” One of the robots shouted from a side street as we continued forward. “Kidnap Kahn…”

Someone wanted to Kidnap Kahn? Everyone one of these machine’s have been saying that a lot, with an army like this I would think they would want to destroy the whole city given they were targeting infrastructure. This seemed like a bit much for a kidnapping plan.

Shanty whistled and we all leapt onto Dodo as he charged by and towards the east where Kahn Industries was, the nearby robots took the air and started giving chase paying more attention to us than the police and the power station. Dodo was much faster on the ground than they were in the air, but they were keeping up fairly well with the jets coming from the pipes on their backs.

I watched as our chasers retracted their claws and nozzles poked out, they started spray liquid that ate at the streets behind us. So far acid sprayers, circular saws and lightning prods, not only tough were these things tough they would also get increasingly lethal towards anyone that tried fighting back.

Dodo turned his head around and fired multiple blasts from his beak at them. Of the ten shots and the seven chasing us, only two went down as they efficiently took evasive maneuvers. More of them were coming from all kinds of different angles.

“Kidnap Ka… major plan interference detected!” Multiple voices stated as more of these things converged on us, but wouldn’t catch Dodo. Aside from the one that was coming right at us from the front.

“I’ve got it!” One of the things flying around wasn’t made entirely of metal, he flew overhead and then in front of us, the figure bursts forward ramming their right fist into the oncoming machine’s face. “Keep going and help Molly, I’ll slow down these MEL’s behind you! Remember to call me Bullethead!”

Dodo didn’t have to slow down thanks to the assistance of Kit Cloudkicker flipped around and burst back into the group behind us as we were on approach for Kahn Industries. The building was a mess of fires, holes and attacking robots flying or rolling all over the place.

Dodo leapt across the canal and came skidding to a stop in front of the building behind the roughed up golden yellow furred Molly Cunningham.

“We’re here to help~!” I sang as the three of us leapt off of Dodo, Molly was wielding a metal pole and her daredevil costume was ripped up and she had several nasty wounds in her sides and shoulder already. She was barely holding the front of the building with help from Kahn’s security teams before we got here. I launched forward shoulder checked one away from Molly, I then stomped down on it and leapt back before a flying robot could hit me with some acid. “Come Leap Lamb Team, we’ll make these machines pay~!”

“Yeah they need an off switch I’d say, for all the trauma they’ve likely caused today~!” Dolly followed up as leapt and glided forward before spinning around a whipping her board down at the robots on the ground.

She took out a few as she dodged through their extending arms and jumped off ones head to gain some extra height while launching more attacks and she quickly started to glide back our way in retreat as four extending arms tried to grappled her from above.

“Wing team enters the fray, Quiverwing is here to play~!” Gosalyn swung by on a rope attached to one of her crossbows as the other put a bolt through the eye of a flying robot.

She landing on a ledge and had finished loading another bolt that went through another one of the thirty or so flying robots occupying the surrounding Kahn Industries security teams, the panthers were pretty good shots despite not having great weapons for dealing with these things.

“Thank goodness we’re making some headway, is Darkwing not here to my dismay~?” I asked in a questioning tone as I and Molly double team three machines.

Molly jammed one in the face with the pole. I quickly ran up the pole and jammed my left hind leg into the one on the left and, after pulling it free, I sharply did a dive roll off the pole to the right and slammed my right hoof forward taking out the third while avoiding a pair of humming, glowing, tuning forks to the face. I hit the ground rolling and got standing quickly enough to buck behind me taking another one out.

“Terror, that flaps in the night~!” Shouted Darkwing with a good singing voice for that awesome crescendo of what was his catchphrase as he pointed finger to the sky after he flared out his cape.

He had appearing among a large number of the robots in a puff of purple smoke doing that flourish, confusing everyone as to how he got there.

He ducked and no less than twenty extending arms crossed over his head going in various directions. This destroyed all the robots circling him at the same time, he grinned smugly as he rolled out from the arms falling limply to the ground and then he lost that grin as he quickly scrambled away from more incoming from the air.

There were just so many of them! We decided to stop singing for the moment and keep fighting, since quite a large number of these robots were converging on us.

I lost count after a hundred and that was while I was ramming my hoof into the faces of as many of them as I could while backing up towards the front of the building avoiding the robot’s arms bending every which way and their clawed hands changing into a variety of weapons including flamethrowers, the odd whirling floor scrubbers or even gain extra length with electric whips like the ones those pill robots in San Fransokyo used.

These armored things were just full of volatile tricks, I looked over my shoulder and saw Dolly had climbed the building and was giving Quiverwing more time to reload between shots by lending her gliding support.

Shanty was helping out several of the panthers trying to deal with these things in a timely manner, some of them were even just jamming the ends of their weapon into the glowing hearts of the robots and firing point blank to bring them down even if it meant damaging their weapons.

We were all being pushed hard and we could use more help, but where would we get… Kit ‘Bullethead’ Cloudkicker rammed helmet first through the crowd of the robots on the ground in front of us distracting them as several other robots chased after his quick flying form.

Where was I needed the most in all of this? Thinking this as I jumped and lashed out my right hind leg to take down another one, Molly surged forward and jammed the metal pole into the one behind that and quickly let the pole go as another robot electrified it with a pair of tuning forks. She still held up her fists, not willing to back down.

Yeah, I should probably cover Molly in this instance. I moved in front of her and put up my hooves as several flying robots swarmed together and came at us all at once only to be blown apart by numerous projectiles.

Looking up I saw the four Jungle Ace’s flying by us in biplanes spraying projectiles into the robots as they passed, they quickly flew away as a few robots turned their attentions on them and rocketed into the air. I looked at Molly and she smiled at me with a wink while holding up two digits.

A second later things got even better for us when Mopsy drove up in the Cooper Gang’s van, Bentley was sitting in a large gun jutting out from the top of the vehicle. Said gun was quickly aimed and started mowing down a number of the robots under sustained fire from the corner of the build to my left.

I was actually a fairly relieved to have as much help as I was getting with the problem this time.

“I don’t know if I can actually save the day, or even promise that everything will be okay… so just to be clear I really should come quite clean, I’m not nearly as great as some people might say~. I came to help you against my very own will, I had thought seriously about turning away~. There’s so much to protect in this city here, so let make one simple thing quite clear… I promise if there’s one thing that I’ll do… it’s that…~” I inhaled through my nose starting a build up for a Dancing Flame. Dormarch warned me it was causing me issues, but I needed a boost and doing it was kind of addictive. I exhale sharply and spoke what was in my heart verbatim, as I stared down the number of advancing robots. “I will save this city and that it will see another dawn too~!”

Blurred, I ran to the nearest robot and started blowing them apart in single hits while moving so fast that the robots couldn’t keep up with my speed. My hoof thrusts became as spears as I began wiped out an entire wave of robots.

Every robot that had not been in the path was now looking towards me and ignored their opponents. Shanty, like the pirate she was, took immediate advantage by down three of them when they weren’t paying attention.

Then an idea came to mind and I decided to utilize it here and now.

“Thousand spear!” I created a person technique on the spot, I’m thrusting my left hoof so rapidly that I’m basically pulling an Arizona with making physics cry as I caused pinpoints jets of air pressure fly off my hoof by pushing it through the same space multiple times in less than a second faster than a jackhammer.

The effect was what looked like white spears bursting from my hoof. I could only feasibly do this while I’m running a Dancing Flame like right now, but it proved to be very effective technique. Not quite like a Fiery Flurry, that was an all-out attack and I really wasn’t about to light myself on fire again so soon.

This, this was a far more focused and concentrated attack to a fine point on where I was jabbing to create the effect for a massive output of force.

Maybe I could combine it with the magic claws and fire later… if I combined it with a Fiery Flurry and focused the entire flurry down to a single point instead of spreading out the damage over an entire person or object...

Well I had ideas now and while I still don’t like fighting, I certainly liked thinking up options depending a situation that might require it.

I wasn’t going to be able to bark blast all of these robots much less bark breaker them. So I needed to create a fresh technique of my own, with a little help from just knowing Arizona. Her mach-it-launcher technique is done with raw muscle, I did mine with boosted speed.

It wasn’t nearly enough there were still eighty or more coming behind what I wiped out, not that Bentley’s gun wasn’t working out in our favor. We had to find out where these things were coming from and stop them at the source!

I stumbled back and hopped backward twice before sitting down, I needed to rest after doing that and my heart was pumping quite furiously in my chest. Yeah, pushed a bit too hard there… worth it though to give everyone a small breather. I closed my eyes and concentrated on getting my breathing under control

“Pom… take better care of yourself…” Dormarch muttered quietly from inside Dodo’s back as the ostrich passed by crushing the head of a robot into its torso with a stomp, it still made my ears twitch.

Dormarch still cared enough to reprimand me for pushing my health, I giggled a little and Molly took up a position in front of me with crowbar. Where did she get that from?

“Sorry, but I couldn’t land the plane in the city like you asked and I also landed it next to water. Nope not happening!” Launchpad yelled as he swung a spiked metal bat brutally taking the head off of a robot, that pilot really had some muscle on him. “None of you are bothering LL! I might not be the smartest guy in the world, but even I can tell she needs a break and you’re not getting close to her until she’s done resting! ”

Launchpad, you are a true friend and are a great person with that boast… crashing problems aside.

“Danger Woman working with Leap Lamb, this is bound to be an amazing and long night!” Molly said gleefully as she swept around an extending claws took out the heart on the robot with golf swing.

-Equus, World Summit, Jade-

“Why does Goddess Luna have two swords, three spears, a knife and a number of arrows and crossbow bolts sticking out of her back?” Really, the Griffonstone delegate just noticed that?

We’ve been in this meeting for more than hour!

“My wife just has a few grievances with Luna, it’s nothing too serious to worry about. Though Luna was the one responsible for ruining our honeymoon, so really… I should actually be helping her come to think of it.” My petty kitty ire just went up a notch, I never did get revenge on Luna for ruining it for me did I? I guess I was too depressed at the time to mark her down for a painful petty kitty express. “Luna… you better be capable of bribing me with something good, or else you’re going to have a bad time. Also don’t think just because you’re a goddess that I can’t eventually break you!”

“I am so glad that that was not directed at my country just now, because that caused shivers down my spine.” Amira quivered while wrapping her hooves around herself.

“Oh, do you’re worst!” Luna… that was the absolute dumbest thing you could have said to me of all people.

Challenge accepted, every favor I can pull on… you think Nightmare Moon was bad? Oh no... I’m doing far worse than that Luna!

"Luna, I may have a grievance with you, but even you can't possibly be that suicidally stupid." Fizzle gave me a frightened look, I gave her a warm and loving smile.

165. Leap Lamb and Caper Canine Special Edition: The Cape Crusaders! (Part 2)

-Equus, World Summit, Jade-

“Really now Jaded?” Spoke the unamused Abyssinian Queen of Queens, sitting next to the King of Abyssinia.

Luna now looked like a pin cushion with hundreds of daggers sticking out of her, she looked as equally unamused about it.

“Hey, I stand by my wife’s method of stress relief unless you all want her to go Storm Queen on the world and stop it with maintaining the baked goods trade routes. Goodness knows what the sultan of Saddle Arabia will do if they stop getting their freshly baked special cinnamon rolls via Grubber from the Storm Fleet once a month.” I stated calmly without a hint of a smile on my face, Amira paled immediately. “You should be thankful that I don’t have any control of the Storm Fleet Amira. Also Luna is on the petty kitty list until she gives into pressure for challenging this mere mortal, this isn’t even my opening salvo yet. Like I stated, this is stress relief from having to make trading deals with Discord, he always drives an uneven bargain.”

“Whether it’s for or against me is the chaos you can expect from my nation!” Discord said with a bright smile. “A vote for Discord, is a vote for rampant insanity!”

“I take it Veles is trying for a rigged election for the leader of Chaosica?” I murmured with a humor filled purr. “Bet that’s getting confusing.”

“Yeah, especially when he keeps rigging it in my favor while I’m trying to do the same to him!” Discord shouted while grabbing at his skull in anger. “I want rampant confusion darn it!”

“What.” The Thestral delegate Prime stated flatly out of sheer confusion.

“Thank you!” Discord said to Prime before drinking the glass from a glass of milk and tossing the fluids of the strawberry milk over his shoulder into my glass. I gave him a warm smile and started to lap it up.

“Jaded, can you please not stab my sister with… let’s see twenty, forty… one hundred and thirty seven knives.” Celestia actually stopped to count them with an exasperated look on her face. “I know we can’t die, but this is ridiculous!”

“No, I’m ridiculous!” The confusion god Veles shouted looking like a cross between a centaur and a beholder dressed as a princess clown. He was actually more bizarre than ridiculous.

“What was ridiculous was how I got those knives, apparently the lambkin delegate has an interestingly kinky relationship with their ex.” Yep, none of those were mine.

-Cape Suzette, Nighttime, East Side, Ocellus-

So Launchpad crash landed outside the city and almost into the ocean in the small amount of countryside that Cape Suzette had outside the eastern portions of the city.

Thankfully the Cooper Van was still able to leave out the back, Launchpad went with Mopsy and Bentley. Don’t know where Murray or Sly went when they jumped out over the east side more than thirty minutes ago, given how big the trouble was they were on the hunt for where all the robots were coming from.

We were left to decide what to do on our own, so we decided to go find people to help, whether it was rescuing someone from fire or fighting off aggressive robots. There weren’t as many robot here as there were towards the center of the city.

“I’m so glad these machines don’t have emotions.” No malice to be felt here, just a bunch of machine’s rolling around and attacking people in a seemingly random manner. It was honestly relieving to not have to deal with that pressure pressing down on my skull.

I stabbed the end of the metal part of a destroyed street sign I held through the heart of the robot’s face and then used the lightning eel portion of my anatomy to take down the machine with a violent shock.

“That’s completely understandable Ocellus.” Smolder didn’t sound surprised. “So that big wasp monster thing you’ve transformed into several times is real.”

“As a bug bear is, those things are really quite dangerous. Even if we can’t fully match anything we transform into in terms of speed, strength or magic, we can still use the size as an intimidation factor and it also helps with furniture.” I could deliver enough of a shock through the proportionally sized lightning eel sack to down any of these machines provided I can get through their armor or what passes for their face. Mixing and matching my biology was interesting, now I knew how a manticore or chimera felt while looking like a dragon with no wings. A little bit of the right kind of Minotaur muscle in the right place can give me a slight strength increase for a little extra cost of energy for tweaking my form to mix into my dragon muscles and claws. My base form horn was still burnt out so I couldn’t do unicorn, but I could still get by with transformation alone easily enough. “So figuring out we didn’t need to do a full transformation has broadened my horizons a bit in being able to help adapt to the lack of being to use magic.”

“Sounds like you can do anything.” Smolder stated before spitting a fireball. It didn’t melt the armor on these things, but it did knock one over. I quickly leapt up and brought my makeshift spear down on the weakened heart face while avoiding the two extending arms trying to lift it back up.

“Not really, I can only use the portions of beings I have physically seen sized up or down. So really, I’m still using only things that I know exist and I can’t create something from nothing with just my imagination. If it exists, then I can give it my own personal spin on it biologically like how my dragon form is uniquely me and no other dragon looks like this, but I have to actively think about the parts I’m using like wings or no wings. I know a lot about the lightning eel sack I’m using since the hippogriff navy has had problems with those things from time to time and Silver Stream showed me one.” I finally managed to pull the metal bar free from the twitching robot with a yank. “I can’t heal my horn by transforming into a unicorn, I also can’t use a unicorn’s magical strength. At best I can heal minor physical injuries with my transformations and I’ll never scar, but I can’t heal anything that is immediately crippling as it’ll just translate to whatever form I take on. Turning into a crystal pony or a rock can give me more resilience than my natural carapace.”

“So do you need to be more careful about what you choose to put into a form?” Smolder asks as she spread her wings from under the shirt she was wearing and use them to lunge forward to put her right claw through the face of a machine and proceeded to rip out a fairly large chunk from it.

Smolder’s red shirt stated ‘my girlfriend is all sugar’, I was wearing a green shirt that said ‘my girlfriend is all spice’. I thought it was cute.

“Yes, for instance if I were try for two things that can’t exist in the same space, like an organ that can spray water and an organ meant for shooting fire like a dragon. Both at the same time could cause me internal issues, something that most changelings can’t heal from easily as external wounds by molting.” We made our way down the street, so far we’ve dealt with ten or twenty of the strange robots in small numbers. Smolder was drawing most of their attacks so I didn’t have to worry as much. “So really, I have to keep in mind what I’m doing to my body or else I could have some horrible biological drawbacks and hurt myself grievously. Like take the Lightning eel sack for example, I have to make sure the entirety of my biology is morphed to correctly handle having that sack my body or else I’d be in extreme pain every single time I actively use it.”

The robots were really tough, but not impossible for me and Smolder while tag teaming them. Dragon claws in general were made for rending through tough materials. In fact I think I saw Smolder eat a portion of one of these things out curiosity, she said it tasted okay and she really hasn’t had a chance to eat many gems or jewels on our journey. So she needed a little more literal metal in her diet.

Expensive eating habits aside, we shouldn’t deal with more than three or four of these things at a time.

Thankfully people have been lying low or hiding from the all the relatively aggressive machines rolling around the streets on two wheels, we’ve saved one or two people from fires so far and were trying to be safe about things.

“Help, I need help!” The voice drew our attention and it was on the next street over, Smolder covered her wings under the shirt as we made our way forward and turned to the north to see a… a tiger striped wolf heading our way? “Why are these things after me?!”

“Kidnap Kahn.” The robot behind him droned out with the others echoing him. He was being chased by five of them that were still continually stating ‘Kidnap Kahn’.

I’m sure Pom was at Kahn Industries with the others already and facing much larger numbers of these things than the smaller numbers on the fringes like we were. There were three more coming from the air and landing on the street, making eight we had to deal with in quick succession.

The biped wolf dove under an extending arm and scrambled forward on all fours until he was back up on his feet.

“Hey, this way, we’ll fight them off together!” Called out Smolder while waving at the guy as we moved to the middle of the street. Smolder was getting ready to charge forward.

Even if Pom or Shanty couldn’t deal with the armor on the robots easily, Smolder could rip them to shreds with her bare claws and teeth. My claws weren’t nearly as strong as Smolder’s and I really couldn’t digest metal, but I was still fairly effective if my claws were even as half as strong as a real dragon claws.

“Take this.” I tossed the broken ‘yield’ sign to the wolf and he caught it. “You should know what to do with the pointy end. We can claw them down, watch our backs and we’ll protect yours!”

Like Pom, I didn’t like fighting, but I would like to think Pom was a somewhat decent role model. These machines couldn’t be talked to or convinced that what they were doing was wrong, we couldn’t use the magic of friendship to stop them because they didn’t think or feel. As such the best we could do was disable or destroy them outright.

Smolder rammed into the first one with her horns and avoided the extending claws and started ripping into its chest with her claws.

I moved forward and dodged around the claws coming my way while Smolder was still dealing with ripping the first open.

The robots didn’t work together very well, but they did coordinate at times and this thankfully wasn’t one of them.

I slashed my right claw across its heart shaped, face… eye? In any case I scored a set of claw marks that made it lash out at me blindly with its claws transforming into a whirling saw, I ducked under it and around it’s back to ram my left claw into the next robot coming up on us.

After managing to knock it over I tried to pull free after squeezing my claws on the insides of its head to continue fighting, only my left claw got stuck in it. I frantically tugged my left arm and looked to my left as robot whipping its extending arm for me.

“Don’t push yourself too hard Ocellus, let me take care of most of them!” Stated Smolder as she aggressively caught an arm swinging at me from my left and bit it off before swinging the remaining portion of the arm for the robots face.

“Error…” That was all it got out before its own arm smashed its heart shaped face in and Smolder was already onto the next one.

I heard a smashing noise behind me and I looked back to see the wolf had taken down the one I clawed before it could flail too out of control.

Wrenching my claw free of the inert robots head, I stumbled back and a metal claw lightly scraped across my nose. Smolder grew slightly in size and smashed that robots head into its torso with both her fists grasped together, she immediately shrunk back down a second later.

“Did you just…” I started to ask and Smolder blushed while quickly moving onto the next machine She hopped onto it and started to savagely rip into the glowing heart for a face, the wolf managed to deal with another one and was now holding two halve of the broken yield sign.

Smolder just had a greed growth over me! That was so touching, sweet and a fair bit disturbing as to how far she’d go for me and truly loved me.

Two left, Smolder was already moving towards one as it transformed both its arms.

“No wait, it’s going to!” The wolf tried to state as fire start to build on the tips of the changed claws.

Smolder quickly ripped of her shirt and threw it my way, I caught it as she was engulfed in flames.

“No!” The wolf obviously worried as flames engulfed Smolder, I just sighed audibly.

“… Error… biological still alive.” The robot looked at its flamethrowers and then to Smolder who pulled one arm down and bit off the weapon and started chewing loudly. “Fire is lethal to most forms of biological entities.”

“What, how did she, I mean I thought I saw her bite off the arm of the other robot, but still!” The wolf obviously didn’t see the wings folded on Smolder’s back as she sauntered up to the robot, the other robot was sitting still.

“Blue screen error, rebooting.” The other robot stated.

“Yeah, about that…” Smolder stated, having one again lightly lit on fire. She swallowed the chunk of metal and bit off the end of the other flamethrower weapon. Chewing loudly as she leaned against the extended arms and stare at the robot. “Nice choice of oil, adds a unique flavor to it. This is not the first time someone’s tried to kill me with fire and I’m fairly sure it won’t be last. That it’s even happened more than once is bizarre in and of itself, but in this case I was trying to hide what I was and you almost ruined my shirt.”

The robot sat there unresponsive looking at the bitten off portions of its limbs.

“Kidnap…” The robot started say before Smolder leapt up and stabbed her right claw through robot’s glowing heart and ripped out a chunk of metal that might pass for whatever brains it had.

I calmly took moved over to our wolf friend and took one of the bits of metal from his loosened grasp and sauntered over to the last robot.

“Reboot comp…” I rammed the metal home into the center of the heart and it went down.

“Hello my name is Ocellus and that is Smolder, what’s your name?” I stated with a smile while tossing Smolder’s shirt back to her.

“Are we just going to overlook the fact that she survived what should be a lethal amount of fire?” The wolf asked questioningly.

Sharing a look with Smolder we looked at the wolf and responded together.

“Why yes, we are.” We stated in unison.

“Well… alright then… my name is Mowgli Seeonee and… no, wait… that’s not important!” He shook his head furiously before looking to us. “I got to tell someone where all these things are coming from, can you help me get to Kahn Industries?”

“Sure.” We were going to work our way over there anyway.

-South side, Sly-

So Murray and I might have been a bit off course or our paragliders needed some more work, but Murray was proving to have picked up plenty of muscle for himself. The metal these things were made of was tough, plus we’ve saved a few people from crumbling or damaged buildings in the various attacks going on around here.

Pom’s team landed exactly where they wanted to at least, we wanted to land in the north and instead ended up near the docks in the south.

While Murray can batter these four foot machines directly, I had to be a little more precise with taking them down with single hits.

I charged up may cane with energy and swung it to smash the one weak point on these things. Murray quickly picked the downed robot up and threw it into another smashing it into the street.

“It’s nice to have you active in the field with me Murray.” I smiled as Murray laughed, he was my team’s strong guy.

“The Murray is going showing what he’s really got tonight!” My hippo chum grabbed an extending arm with his right hand and with a sharp yank pulled the robot to him and plowed his left fist through what passes for its head. “Ah yeah, quarter pounder straight to the face!”

“Please don’t start naming everything you do after food Murray, we’d never hear the end of it from Mopsy, also we really need to start heading towards Kahn Industries. Bentley, this is Sly, we went a little off course and landed to the south, how are things and where are you?” I had my binoculars out and was watching as various people barricaded themselves in buildings. “The most we can gather is that the robots are not coming from this direction, they are causing trouble out this way.”

“That’s somewhat helpful Sly. We’re in the middle of a storm of robots here at Kahn Industries, please get over here quick!” It sounds like you were having a party Bentley judging by the sounds of gun fire in the background and hopefully we’ll be openly invited as it sounds like Shere Kahn’s guys needed all the help they could get tonight. “The vans gun is working like a charm, provided I can get the shots to pierce the armor on the robots with enough concentrated fire. The bullet proofing of that metal is quite exquisite, so pick me up a few of defeated robots on the way so I can see if I can make the van tougher or at least improve the turret with them! Thankfully we’ve met up with the Wing and Leap Lamb Teams. Someone must really hate Kahn industries, there’s hundreds of them swarming the headquarters and we don’t have an idea of where they are coming form. Mopsy and I are a bit too busy to find out, oh… that looked painful… Leap Lamb just got put through a shutter!”

-Pom-

The screeching of metal was heard as my body was used to plow through the shutter by one of the flying robots.

“Oof…” I hit the ground on my side the robot landed in front of me and was about to extend a whirling saw towards my unprotected face.

“Kidnap Kahn.” The mechanical drone of these less than expressive robots was starting to get to absolutely everyone.

Guns were fire and for once, they weren’t aimed at me. The robot was down, but another two flew in and while they were focusing one on the other thrust a whirling saw at me as I picked myself up.

That’s when Dolly launched off one of the shutters edges and landed in front of me to block the whirling saw, the screech of metal as the saw broke hurt both our ears until the saw broke itself on her skateboard.

The other arm transformed and started to build up a flame, but it was swiftly knocked upwards by Dolly sending a shower of flames into the ceiling. An alarm went off and it started raining indoors thanks to the sprinkler system being set off.

It was then that several shots blasted out the other robots face.

“Oh dog, my ears! At least you’re safe.” Dolly grinned back at me before clamping her paws on her helmet. “Seriously though, ow, all this gunfire and that thing with the saw. I do not want to become one of those stereotypical deaf Dalmatians before I become an adult! At least my helmet is making up for all the noise somewhat.”

“Do you think my ears aren’t ringing too Caper Canine? I’m not wearing anything to protect my ears and the best I got is my wool.” Groaning this out as I stood up and went to the hole in the shutter and saw the mayhem going on outside.

Launchpad seemed like he was used to this kind of thing. With the fact that he’s a friend of the McDuck clan, that’s a given. Molly on the other hoof looked like this was the first time actually being an active part in a fight, at least she was putting that crowbar to good use.

Did I previously think that eighty were coming? Nope, it was more like a hundred and sixty now.

There were just too many for us to deal with one at a time at the rate they were coming at us.

“There’s too many of them, but what do they want?” This seemed like a lot for kidnapping scheme for one or two people depending on if Mr. Kahn had relatives.

“Aren’t they going to ‘Kidnap Kahn’, that’s all they’ve almost been saying!” Dolly commented, looking ready to follow me back into the fight personally after mockingly replicating the robots mechanical tones.

“If they wanted to do that, there would be more of them flying near the top of the building. They are attacking at ground level. Also Shere Kahn might not even be here.” The guy had to go home at some time from his busy job right?

“You will find that I am what some would say… a workaholic.” Came Shere’s deadpan tone from the speakers around the lobby as we stared through the hole in the metal shutter waiting to see if anymore would breached through. “I know what these are, but I doubt they are here to kidnap me Leap Lamb. The one who made these things previously is no longer among the living, they died of old age a week or so ago. I wonder where they would have gotten the resources to even make this many of them.”

“What are they Kahn?” I asked while looking up.

“They are Mechanical Electrical Laborers or MEL for short, there should have only been one made. Their inventor was one mad scientist named Dr. Axolotl who tried to sell me such an unwieldly and destructive product as an automated maid, he unfortunately swore revenge on me instead of fixing the problems inherent in his clumsy machine. I have since tended to prefer people over machines from that and other incidents you may already know of.” Shere didn’t sound worried. “These appear to be a more weaponized versions than the first one and built in bulk. My research and development team still has the original prototype MEL, it is currently not acting up in the slightest and is still comparably safe and secure. This is not a kidnapping attempt, but an attempt to tear down everything I have built… starting with Kahn Industries and then all of Cape Suzette itself. I fear their sucess.”

165. Leap Lamb and Caper Canine Special Edition: The Cape Crusaders! (Part 3)

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166. Leap Lamb and Caper Canine Special Edition: The Cape Crusaders! (Part 4)

-Northern Cape Suzette, outside mountain base, Pom-

“Wait… aren’t you done with your escort?” I asked as I waited for Bentley to finish opening us a path forward as he shot down at least twenty robots at the entrance alone and still had another ten or more to deal with.

“I wasn’t escorting him, I am escorting you.” Darkwing said as he was checking over a number of canisters and his sole weapon that seemed designed to fire them.

The tall duck smirked at me a little and I smiled back at him. Tall considering Scrooge’s family could barely hit three or four feet, whereas Drake Mallard was a head shorter than the seven to eight foot Launchpad.

Kit and Sly were looking over their gear as well, I was lucky in the fact that all my gear was my body and a strap of pink cloth binding my forehead just enough to keep me mentally focused.

“Go!” Bentley shouted, I was the first to leap into the breach and into a metal hallway followed by Bullethead, Darkwing Duck and with Sly taking up the rear.

-Kahn Tower, Dolly-

Okay this was getting ridiculous. I mean I thought I knew what I was getting into when I started traveling with Pom, but I was quite wrong. At least things haven’t been boring.

I came streaking down and rammed the nose of my board through the heart face and kicked off and spun to swing my boards back end into the face of another one close by. I landed in front of the various holes in the metal shutters and looked around.

The building was really starting to look like cheese with how many robots kept putting holes in it by ramming through it and I didn’t envy the guys that had to deal with those things indoors… or the cleanup after this mess. I’m surprised the building was still standing.

Being a hero put a lot of pressure on you to perform. You had to be larger than life to survive this stuff and I used talk the talk all the time, now I had to walk it while basically half the size of my step mother against four foot giants that could easily rip my fragile body apart if I wasn’t careful.

This was the most effort I’ve put into anything in my life… next to skateboarding of course.

I now had to protect several people around me, Shanty, Ocellus and Smolder had already grouped up and were doing well to cover each other’s back though Ocellus seemed to be having trouble with keeping up with the other two going all out on any robot that came at them. She just wasn’t a fighter like the other two, but she was helping all the same.

Quiverwing, Launchpad and Molly were the ones having the most problems and the injuries were building up for Launchpad and Molly. Quiverwing was low on ammo… and I’d loathe to do it, but… I might need to fetch the ones she’s already fired from the surrounding downed robots.

The building was surrounded by an absurd amount of the lifeless piles of metal, as well as things that were going to be piles of metal by the time I was done with them.

I slowly made my way over to Molly and Launchpad giving myself a small break before I dove back in, Quiverwing seems to be able to take care of collecting a few of her bolts at the moment. I was going to have to fetch… and our lives would be on the line if I didn’t eventually get around to doing so.

“Hey, I’m with you guys!” I shouted, but of course they couldn’t understand me as rolled up to them and prepared to face some incoming flying robots.

“Hopefully she just said something optimistic and uplifting.” Launchpad groaned, he’d taken quite a few hits and kept going. The guy likely had body made of stone after all the crashes he’s survived, but not the stamina.

“I’m still going to be Danger Woman when the sun rises.” Molly grunted and propped herself up on the crowbar and held it at the ready with her suit have various bleeds and she was obviously badly bruised from being knocked down so many times. Bears had a habit of being tough. “And Danger Woman never gives up!”

“Like Darkwing Duck, he always gets back up!” Launchpad said brightly while holding the spiked metal bat aloft.

“Ah, being misunderstood, just like usual!” I stated cheerfully while wagging my tail as I looked up at the robot diving for us and prepared myself for a magically enhance jump.

Hopping back, my front paws slammed down on the back end of my board knocking the front end upward, I grabbed the board in my paws and swung it around to throw it while boosting its momentum on release.

My board flew true and slammed right into the diving robots face, I took a few hops back and then dashed forward and into the air onto the robot. I kicked off the falling robot adding momentum to it and when it landed on another robot near the doors lightening the ones attacking Molly and Launchpad near the entrance.

This forced my skateboard straight through the back of the impaled head to pop it up into the air where I grabbed it with my paws, I hit the street riding it towards three robots to the left of the entrance that were about take out a panther dude.

I picked up speed, my body started sparkling with energy as my board accelerated and I went at the robot at the back. I popped up, pulled my board from under me and swung it, I sent the robot flying into the nearby canal while behind me Dodo swept the guy out of the way of an attack and Shanty leapt with an overhead right hoof strike take it down.

I was about to go for the third one when a claw passed by my nose. Yelping I dropped back as five more robots landed. I quickly tried to get away.

Hmm… the one I knocked into the water was disabled. I had an idea, but I would need some time to do it and with my skateboard I was pretty sure I would survive the...

As I was trying to skate for the building my board was ripped out from under me by a claw.

“Oof, what just… oh...” My anger wilted when I saw that a robot had managed to separate me from my deck. I started to slowly back away as I saw flamethrowers, electrified tuning forks, spinning saws and extending tentacles come from the four robots that weren’t holding my board. “Uh… got to go!”

Shanty, Smolder and Ocellus were distracted by another ten landing, Dodo was getting the panther biped to safety and I just had my favorite object in the world stolen from me by a machine. Quiverwing was busy ducking and weaving through robots extending arms while salvaging her bolts from the ones she’s taken down already.

I wish I had Pom’s armored wool right about now, because my body was small and fragile compared to these things even with magic.

Okay, think Dolly, what can you do to get the board back? Well for one… run!

I turned and darted for the building shutter covered entrance with the five robots following me. Dodging to the left a shocking fork passed by. I leapt over a pair of saws that passed under me and then I ran straight up metal shudder.

Avoiding the flames, I dodged around on the wall as the metal tentacles slapped at me or tried to wrap around me and I couldn’t stop moving or else I’d fall off and then I saw the shock forks approaching the metal.

My eyes widened at the realization of what was about to happen to me… nope, not getting electrocuted this time!

“Nope!” I crouched and pushed off before the fork made contact with the metal electrifying it, my target was the red glowing heart connected to those electric forks. I barreled head first into the robot and my helmet busted its face inwards and I fell on my back as it went down. “Thank goodness for having a helmet… yipe!”

I kicked my hind legs up and over my head to roll backwards twice as a pair saws came slamming down from an overhead swing and started eating into the road.

I charged and leapt to slam my helmet into the saw one before it could get an angle on me with its saws, only to get slapped by my own skateboard mid leap to be sent flipping sideways and couldn’t focus enough to stop myself before I slammed into a street lamp spine first.

“Agh!” I yelped and forcibly stood up, as the flamethrower robot started slowly encroaching on me as I attempted to pick myself up.

“Kidnap Kahn… destroy plan interferences!” The same usual droning drivel these robots have been repeating constantly as the flames got closer to me. Everyone was too busy fending for themselves to really come to my aid right now.

Using my right paw to grab the light pole slightly higher up than the base I kicked with my left hind leg and I was spinning around the pole horizontally rapidly. Releasing the pole, I went flying towards the flame spewing robot, I kicked off it towards the saw robot while spinning.

I dropped myself a few inches in the air and a vertical left armed saw surged over my spinning form and the other swept towards me horizontally for my side when I dodged.

Grabbing the robots left arm with my front paws to spin, I put my hind legs into it and used my magic to alter my momentum to spin around it once and then launched upwards with a twirl as the saw passed underneath me. I started spinning as I was coming down with my right paw pulled back.

I spun through the two extending arms, avoiding the right saw entirely, the left saw caught me slightly in the left cheek as I finished building up momentum by spinning around before I slapped my right paw forward into the things heart face.

Robot’s face imploded and crumpled, sending bits of metal into me as I was knocked back and to the ground to tumble towards the canal bridge we used when we first visited this place. The robot went slamming through a few of its friends Okay, I had enough magical power to use my bare paws if needed, but I really didn’t want to get a piece of metal from one of these things to get stuck in me.

I sat up and rolled out of the way of one metal tentacle only to be grabbed by another and crushing force was immediately applied to me as I was held aloft. The second tentacle snaked around me and started squeezing. I could feel my bones creaking as the flame robot was about to burn my alive.

“Hold on, I’ll save you!” Ocellus jumped onto it from behind, raised a sharp piece of metal high above her head and she slammed it down into the things heart face disabling it. “Keep struggling until I can reach you!”

Behind her a fair distance away was Smolder melting the wheels with bursts of fire and slowed a number of other robots down.

My vision was blacking as the tentacles tightened and I saw the robot that stole my skateboard about to swing it for my face. I really didn’t want to ask Pom for help as she was in the thick of things at the robot’s base and she needed all the strength she could get at the moment.

“Oh you piece of arro…” About to be killed by my own board, I barely managed to say the word ‘arrogant’ about the robot, when it was an emotionless machine that likely didn’t have much personality. I was cut off when something in my magic pinged urgently in my head. It was a weird feeling, like something was calling out to me loudly. “Arrow, sparrow, marrow? Ngh… come on… narrow it down…”

If was a little weird to be focusing on something else when my body was being crushed by the force of a hydraulic press, the only thing keeping me alive at the moment was my ability to slow down the inward crushing momentum with my magic.

I didn’t know what I was trying to do, but my magic was becoming far more insistent, which was weird because this wasn’t Pom sending me strength. This was coming from within me, maybe it was me, something to do with air? Was this… coming from my own heart? To protect… to move… to act… to flow… dynamic…

“Destroy plan interferences.” The board was swung for my neck, my blackening vision was getting worse when it finally came to me.

“Aero!” What felt like a massive drain on my magic happened, but the results were… exactly what I thought would happen really.

A massive swirl of green glowing wind exploded from my body, I was launched upwards out of the tentacles grasp and my board was ripped from the claws of the other robot. I grabbed it and hugged it to myself as the two robots below were knocked back.

I knew what would happen as soon as I invoked it… because it was me that was directing it to happen, I think I just imposed my will on the world itself. My family was never going to stop it with the ‘breaking wind’ jokes after this, but I wasn’t going to complain as I wasn’t violently turned into a tube of doggy toothpaste.

As I came down, the swirling winds slowed my fall to being as gentle as a feather before petering out as I landed.

I closed my eyes and started inhaling slowly through my nose, I could smell the spring breeze, feel it blowing at the tips of my ears peeking out from under my helmet.

I felt like I was at Camden Park despite it being miles away and soon sighed in exhaustion as the feelings of ninety nine Dalmatian puppies were gathered together like a controlled tornado to head home, because whatever I just did drained me a lot to just to do even once and I didn’t currently have the power to do it again quite yet.

It was kind of like the feeling when I leapt into Lena’s magic and somehow used it to accelerate myself into Hollow Heart, anything after that was just instinct.

I opened my eyes and started panting. I looked up to see Ocellus was dealing with the robot in front of me and behind me I could feel a shift in the air. I flowed around the tentacle slapping the ground as I twisted and lunged upwards to spear my skateboard into the robot, beyond the extended tentacles from the already extended arms. I ripped it out spun away and landed on my hind legs before flopping onto my butt.

“Are you okay Dolly?” Ocellus said to me in a whisper, as she came to crouch down next to me. I looked at her and blinked. “Right, can’t understand you, but you will understand this, that was amazing! Where did you learn to do that?”

I tilted my head up at her and smirked, she rubbed my head.

“You okay to get back into it?” Ocellus asked, I nodded with a sharpened gaze while standing up as three robots came at us.

They never got the chance to attack even as Ocellus fully turned, readying to greet them with the bit of metal she had been using as a shiv.

“The Murray is here!” Because a large seven or so foot pink hippo belly flopped onto one of them from a nearby building having leapt off it from across the canal. The four foot robot he landed on was crushed like a beer can into being barely a foot in height. Before the other two could react he rolled forward onto his feet and laid out the other two with a single punch from each fist breaking the two remaining glowing red hearts. “Oh yeah, I’m making this my debut night and no robot is going to stop this pain train! You two okay?”

“Yeah, we’re good!” I barked while wagging my tail.

“I’m okay… I’m just not cut out for fighting.” Ocellus stated while holding her makeshift weapon in front of her.

“Heh, all of you Dalmatians are so adorable, also I think Bentley wants to spend more time with your brother Dawkins.” Murray was a heroic figure that changed the mood around him just by being large and in charge. His bright attitude and his sudden appearance made the surrounding security forces rally. “Let’s start by helping out my little food buddy!”

Shanty was Launching a blast of water at an airborne robot and was surrounded by seven active ones. Smolder seemed to have the ones she was fighting with taken care of. She ducked under a saw leapt and fire a blast of water at one spewing flames her way and then bucked high into electric fork wielding one as it hit her.

Despite being shocked, Shanty didn’t do much more then grit her teeth and kept going with a smile. Murray immediately charged the closest two, I was behind him on my skateboard and pointed to Ocellus and at the one she should handle. She veered left and I went right into the middle of three.

I kicked my skateboard up into my waiting front paws as I landed on my hind legs, I raised my left hind leg and kicked with it to begin spinning.

“Aero!” My board lit up and I spun creating a swarm of flashing lights as the three robots armor was swiftly shredded by me spinning like a top near each of them in a tight circle, with one final swing to stop my twirling I decimated a further five in a blast of directed wind.

I quickly cut my magic usage. Less magic was used when I infused my board with it, but still left me quite drained. I think I was the among the few to get a robot kill that didn’t involve breaking their faces. My panting was getting bad, I needed to take a small break and sit.

Whatever I had left in the tank had to be saved for my momentum controlling magic, because we still had at least fifty or more these things to destroy! At least the big guy was taking most of the heat and he was a force of nature, to think Murray only recently became the Cooper Gang’s muscle when he was just originally the getaway driver.

Okay, Quiverwing was taking too much time gathering bolts and dodging lethal robots and putting herself in danger to do it too, I guess it was time to face my brother DJ’s music and actually bite the bullet.

Time to play fetch, UGH! The only dog that could get me to do that anymore is my baby sister Dorothy, but this situation requires sacrifices.

“Dodo, if you can understand me, cover me!” I barked out and that attracted the metal ostrich’s attention from eating a chunk of another robot, he nodded to me and made those strange wobbling mechanical noises that sounded like synth music.

I surged forward towards a bunch of destroyed robots on my skateboard, passing by the entrance and started snatching bolts from destroyed bots with my right paw and holding them with my left.

I ducked under a swinging saw, leapt over a stream of flames and while pulling three more bolts free of the destroyed machines. I launched myself up to the wall right of the entrance to the building we were fighting around and rode it for a few second before kicking off and sweeping past several robots while grabbing bolts rapidly.

After I had gotten ten bolts from destroyed robots, I turned around and went straight for Quiverwing. I popped up and dropped them in her quiver as I passed by behind her.

“Thanks!” Quiverwing stated as she fired a bolt precisely into the center of a flying robots glowing heart. It dropped straight to the ground lifeless. “Didn’t think I would go through all my bolts so fast. Can you please grab twenty more, if you even can?”

If I even can? I scoffed loudly at the challenge and threw a salute her way. I wonder if Pom was doing any better than we...

The world started shaking and we all looked towards the large thing that came out of the top of the mountains and it started to do something as it started glowing brightly. I almost took an electrified fork to the chin in my inattention, thankfully Dodo stomped down on the robot’s arm before that happened.

“Thanks Dodo!” We really couldn’t focus on that right now and could only hope Pom’s group would stop whatever that was in time.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Kuril-

It was a lazy evening and I was snuggling my favorite thestral when a group came in looking bedraggled, one of them was one of my kittens.

“Sorry Blade, but I have to see what has my kitten and his friends so ruffled.” I had to see the disappointed look on my thestral’s face as she made a slight whining noise while burying her face in my shoulder, tickling my nose with her mane. At least as much noise as she could without breaking all the glass within a mile of herself by trying to talk. “Go prep for anything, it looks like Sandbar, Gallus, Yona and Silver Stream have had a rough… wait two Silver Streams? Just get the kitchen ready.”

Blade was up and flapping her way to put on an apron, my best assistant chef with an expertise in slicing up things. Her prep work has become quite excellent.

“Hey my blue kitten, what happened?” I asked as I walked up with a notepad in paw.

“Remind us to never go on adventures with Oleander ever again unless we have to, last we heard she was getting involved with some guy named Jack and the demon Aku. It was cool, but things got really, really violent.” Grumbled Gallus grumpily before reaching back and pulling a throwing star out of his butt. Note to self, call in Dr. Bones in to check them over before they leave or eat. “Also we met alternate versions of ourselves, one of me was definitively overcompensating for something.”

“Who’s you’re friend there?” I pointed at what could only be the brown haired and green furred sister of Silver Stream.

“Uh… Blonde Stream, what are you doing here?” Sandbar looked panicked as did Yona a second later when she noticed that their booth had a fifth member in it.

“Is that a trick question? Oh shoot, I’m not good at these… uh… purple… I want to go with purple… no red!” Blonde Stream sounded utterly airheaded and far less intelligent then Silver Stream was. Was this hippogriff drunk?

“Overcompensating for something Gallus was cute at least.” Even Silver Stream looked pained by hearing what looked like her sister talk. “Did Blonde Stream really just follow us home like a lost puppy?”

“I’m beginning wonder if her own dimension kicked her out…” Gallus muttered dryly as I hugged him, he didn’t shove me off… win for adoptive cat mom. “Mom can we order… no wait, I didn’t mean to call you that!”

My smile lit up the room.

"You're mom seems happy Gallus." Sandbar stated pleasantly.

"Kitten-" I drew out so slowly and agonizingly. "hug!"

Author's Note

Thus a mythology gag is born in reference to the original Kingdom Hearts as the thing other than Flow Motion finally comes to Dolly.

167. Leap Lamb and Caper Canine Special Edition: The Cape Crusaders! (Part 5)

-Earth, Cape Suzette, Dr. Axolotl’s hidden base, Pom-

My right hoof wrapped in wool slammed home into the robots faces, while my left hoof went to clamp onto the top of its helmet shaped head.

After I got my rear hooves in a nice footing on the falling robots chest, I heaved myself upwards while pulling my hoof free. I twisted to start clinging to the ceiling avoiding a nasty electrified tuning fork swinging for my side.

That robot was subsequently slammed into by the helmet of Bullethead, said helmet protected Kit’s head as he smashed its face. Another MEL went to attack him with a saw, but was quickly blasted down with a strange wad of gas that took on the shape of a large arrow.

Darkwing Duck was already charging forward with his weapon aimed and taking down several robots as I crawled along the ceiling trying not to draw attention to myself. His weapon was unusual and did some strange things with gas I didn’t think were possible, since when could gas turn into a solid force of nature?

I continued to crawl along the ceiling down the corridor, looking at the many wires and pipes. I looked behind me at the entrance dropping away, also Sly was following me along the ceiling with his cane in his mouth and clinging to the pipes.

Darkwing took the lead, charging forward with Kit following behind, we made a right turn and corridor went off into the distance, possibly to what was beneath the thing poking out of the mountain. The corridor wasn’t empty though as there seemed to be glass windows ahead with conveyor belts and mechanical arms sticking out of the wall. Also multiple MEL’s were flying our way from what was possibly a large room at the end of the corridor.

Twenty or so, the first one about to come within range of Darkwing, I quickly ran forward upside down. I kicked off the ceiling and plowed my left hoof into the robot, did a hoof spring and launched a kick into the next one’s face to flip myself upright and land on all fours as it went down.

While I was worried about landing on my hooves the next few flying Mel’s jetted forward, only to be intercepted.

Kit, the lovable big brown bear, zipped by me and slammed his left fist into the one going for me. Used his fist to change his angle midflight and spiraled to ram his pointy helmet head into the next one. He used the force of the rebound to land on his fit bring both his fist together as if he was going to swing a baseball bat and then jammed his right elbow into a third Mel’s face.

These robots were pretty tall, yet we were tearing through them with some relative ease. They thankfully couldn’t compensate for their weak points.

“My poppa bear barely managed to handle one of these things, I’m surprised I can even take down as many as I have. He taught me how to brawl and I’ve hardly had reason to use these skills, so I’m a bit rusty.” As Kit talked we backed up from a pair of flailing extending arms with electric forks came him and Darkwing blew it down with a blast of gas. “That robot was remote controlled by the way and just mindlessly plowed through walls to achieve its goals, though I really doubt Dr. Axolotl is directly controlling this many of them at once.”

The other incoming flying robots were being shot down by Darkwing covering for Kit and me as I went onto my hind legs to block a pair of claws swiping for me with my wool and then I darted forward and thrust my right hoof in an impressive right jab that sent the robot with a broken heart flying into the one behind it smashing its face well.

These heart faced robots weren’t very heavy, despite being made of some kind of metal. It certainly explained why they could fly with those small flame spewing pipes protruding from their backs.

“Well Axolotl wouldn’t be controlling them, he’s dead from like a week ago according to what Kahn told me.” Two robots landed and one shot forward and didn’t extend its arms, confusing me long enough that it slapped me in the face staggering me.

Caught the blow on my wool at least, even if it rattled me. Kit was instantly on it in a burst with both his fists smashing it before it could get a second hit on me and he ducked under a pair of extending arms from the other machine.

“My suit is the only thing protecting me from injury, that and it doesn’t have an infinite amount of fuel. I’ve got like ten to five minutes left in this thing. So glad their faces aren’t using bullet proof glass.” Kit stated as he grabbed the extended arms and heaved the MEL around to hurl it into one of the five oncoming ones behind it. “If Axolotl’s dead, then these robots are following whatever orders he left for them to complete and are likely to not do much more than that. If one of those orders was to ensure the destruction of Cape Suzette…”

“Cut the chatter and keep pressing forward, we need to shut down the factory producing these marauding machines!” Darkwing stated as he leapt up and put his right heel of his webbed foot into the next oncoming one on the right.

I was already slinging my left hoof forward at the one on the left and the last one took Sly’s cane from above as he wedged his feet into the pipes and swung the cane down to slam the hook into it.

“We need to stick together, we don’t want to be caught alone with more than one of these things.” Sly pulled his cane and feet free and went back to crawling along the pipes above us as we continued forward.

Darkwing gunned down a number of the robots with highly accurate shots despite how unwieldy his weapon looked.

It didn’t take long before long mechanical arms swung down to block our path a good twenty or so feet later. I also noted something off to the side lighting up.

“Pincer!” I duck to the right as glass broke and five robots came at us from the left and right walls. We managed to move close to the center of the corridor. It had plenty of room for maneuver, but we were not going to get by the mechanical arms without destroying them.

Sly swung his cane down into the far left robot and dropped from the ceiling, once he planted his feet firmly on the floor he swung his cane upwards and over his head hard. Bringing the robot he hooked into slamming down onto the one directly on my left before it could attack me.

I immediately activated my magic claws and scratched the third one up once, dodge a sweeping saw, twice the armor had rents now. Jumping onto the stabbing arm an electric fork at me, I brought both my hooves down shredded its front open and dropped to the floor.

Feeling an increase in heat, I looked to my right and then Sly vaulted over me and jammed the bottom of it home the heart before it could light me on fire.

I felt heat erupt behind me and I looked to see Darkwing standing in front of us with his cape held up. Four of the robots had been downed behind us and the last one managed to use its flamethrower. Kit quickly waded straight through the fire and leapt to bring both his paws down on its head.

“I am so glad my suit is fire proof, I wouldn’t be able to use the rocket pack otherwise.” Kit looked to be sweating and his face was slightly burnt.

“Are you okay?” I asked concerned.

“You think a little burn is going to stop a great pilot, sky surfer and an all-around, ‘mostly’, decent person like me? I’ll be fine!” He shrugged off with a wave. “This is my first time being a hero though, how am I doing?”

Darkwing lunged forward and pulled Kit out of the way of the mechanical arms coming from the wall trying to spear him from behind.

“Pretty good, but you have to work on your awareness!” Both Darkwing and Sly said at the same time, they gave each other a look of respect before leaping back as the other mechanical arm swung at them.

“Guys, pay more attention please.” I whined as I turned to the mechanical arms and noticed the conveyors on both sides of us moving several more robots into position to attack. “I’ve got the right arm!”

“I’ll get the left, you two deal with the other robots coming off this assembly line.” After Sly said that I looked down the corridor at the large open room. Nodding to myself, I leapt onto the right wall as several more robots wheeled their way off the conveyors to be met by Kit and Darkwing fiercely working together.

“I might actually have wanted Gizmo Duck’s help with this.” Commented Darkwing dryly twirling his weapon and firing a blast of gas into the face of a robot almost point blank.

I turned back to looking forward as I surged forward on the wall towards the mechanical arm that opened its pincer and snapped at me. I hopped further up the wall and fired a bark blast into it damaging it slightly.

It turned and…

“Agh…” Lightning energy coursed over my body as I fell from the wall. I lashed out and grabbed onto the mechanical arm and pulled myself into wrapping around it.

The mechanical arm flailed around trying to hit me with more bolts of energy and then slammed me against the wall, trying to get me to let go. That’s where it made a major mistake, it tried to pull away from me and the wall and it couldn’t move because I glued my back to the wall with my wool.

I pulled up my hind legs and stomped down on the mechanical arms joint damaging it, the arms started to get jerky but still couldn’t pull me from the wall. I added the claw effect to my hind legs and stomped my right hind leg, then my left and the mechanical wall arm broke off in my hooves and the remainder flailed about before becoming limp.

Looking across from me, Sly dropped to the floor as did the arm and he hefted a bunch of metal bolts in his right hand. He tipped his hat with his cane to two the oncoming MEL’s from further down the corridor as he pocketed them.

I looked to Kit and Darkwing, they were doing alright. Darkwing backed up under me still holding the destroyed metal forelimb and preparing to shoot another MEL, when I raised my front hooves and jammed the broken off end of the arm into the face of the MEL attacking him.

“You okay? That shock looked like it hurt.” Oh it did Darkwing, but…

“Like Kit said, I’ll be fine. Just so long as that didn’t cause me more medical problems.” I detached from the wall and landed next to him when he turned and fired destroying the right MEL and the left MEL was taken down by Sly after it speared a cardboard cutout of him.

“Where did the lifelike cardboard cutout of you come from?” Kit said as he started forward and past us.

“Thief magic.” Sly snorted twice in a comical pig like fashion. “Now come on, let’s go take this factory down.”

“What are you getting out of this exactly?” Darkwing asked the raccoon as we followed after him towards the large open room.

“Practice for my fight with Clockwerk, the giant mechanical owl that killed my parents in cold blood, burned down my home, left me an orphan and haunts my nightmares.” Stated Sly with a slight hint of sadness. “Also, I’m doing this because I’m a genuinely nice guy Darkwing. Do you actually think my gang wouldn’t be out there fighting these robots if they weren’t good people? Much less covering the entrance?”

“Speaking of entrance, more robots are coming up from behind as we enter the… oh… well…” We all burst into the well-lit factory at the same time. We just came upon the sight of robots that were in the process of building more of themselves.

One robot in particular looked down at us, it was colored bright red.

“Destroy Bullethead... destroy interferences to plans… conquer plan ineffective, activating plan B…” The eerie blood red glow of the robot’s heart face as it hit something on a control panel above us before flew into the air and landed on the floor in less than five seconds was pretty fast, given it was at least four floors up. There were a good fifty of the robots scattered around the factory. “All units return to base, must ensure total destruction of Cape Suzette. Estimated time to firing ten minutes.”

“Sly, there’s a lot of energy funneling into that mountain with the weapon on it from the various power stations in the city the robots have managed to infiltrate, you guys have got to hurry!” Bentley could be heard shouting from his binoculars. “We’ll hold the entrance as best we can, because whatever you just did is drawing all the robots in Cape Suzette this way!”

“Kidnap Kahn… kidnap Kahn…” All the robots around the room intoned in the same mechanical droning voice and it didn’t help that there were more already coming up behind us off the conveyors we passed.

“Kit get up there!” He tried to do so as soon as I shouted and was intercepted by the RED MEL, the thing was fast and slammed Kit back into the floor in front of us.

“We’re being surrounded!” Darkwing shouted as he aimed his weapon back the way we came and several robots dropped to the floor from above and other flew. We were surrounded by at least seventy or possibly more if the unfinished ones could even active. “Everyone scatter and find a way to stop that thing!”

I turned around and hopped on the wall next to the entrance and ran up it. Darkwing was already firing at any nearby robot he could while running for the nearest set of stairs. Cooper was climbing up a nearby steam pipe. Kit was trying to avoid or get away from the RED MEL which was targeting him specifically, that thing was fast and I was glad I wasn’t its primary target.

Continuing to climb up, I hopped to the left as pair of extending claws dug a chunk out of the wall where I had been and I continued running up it until a wall of flames made me jump onto the third floor scaffolding.

Looking to Sly he made it onto the second floor and the catwalks connecting the various sections. Darkwing was trying to deal with the various robots flying at him.

“Eep!” I ducked as a pairs of saws whipped over my head sparking against the railing, I quickly ran away from it and towards one that held its electric forks up and then tried to thrust them both at me. I leapt up. My front hooves thankfully grazed the catwalks above me, I swung to kick my rear legs forward taking out the MEL and then had to let go and drop down back onto the catwalk when a blast of flames threatened to light me on fire. “How are we going to get up there while under attack?”

“I’ve got that handled, just keep them distracted!” Sly shouted as he swung by on a wire knocking down the robot with a swift strike to the chest of the robot behind, it would soon pick itself up. He grabbed the railing and had to let go to land on the catwalks below. I ducked, stumbling forward and under the robot that just burst through where we both had been. “I’ll get there, I’m the stealth expert after all.”

“If he doesn’t, then we’ll manage this somehow, just keep moving!” Darkwing shouted up to me, he fired his gun and a huge explosion of energy took down a number of MEL’s on the floor below as I made my way forward and would try to get across the massive room using the wall.

“Not like I can do anything else, also I have to remind you that I’m running low on fuel!” Kit stated as he shot by with the RED MEL almost being able to match him in speed, but not maneuverability. “I do not want to run out with this guy on me!”

I was busy making my way towards corner of the catwalks trying to avoid robots trying to ram me off of them by flying straight into me.

“Being a hero was not one of my dreams when I was growing up!” I exclaimed as a portion of the catwalks I was rammed and there was a loud whining noise, I leapt off and towards the left corner from the entrance as the robot behind me exploded. “Oh great, now they might blow themselves up trying to stop us!”

I moved out of the corner and started running along the left wall and up for the ceiling with flying robots trying to swipe me off.

“At least you don’t have one specifically out to kill you!” Kit shouted as he landed and the RED MEL did so as well as it wheeled after his running form on a walkway above me.

Instead of heading for the console like Sly. I ran up along the wall, leapt and rammed my right shoulder into the RED MEL sending us both falling towards the floor before it could hit Kit with a pair of spinning saws.

With a quick burst the machine turned towards me and slashed at me, I inflated my wool to slow my fall and the robot hit the floor on its back and was up on its wheels in less than a second.

Both its arms extended upwards at me at an incredible speed one a spinning saw I avoided and the other, an electrified fork, jammed into my chest partially piercing my wool and shocking me violently.

The pain and my screams ended quickly, I found myself on the floor and groggily stood up and had two splotches on my chest from where I had been stabbed.

“Come on, get up Leap Lamb!” Kit propped me up, but soon had to let go and burst forward towards the RED MEL. “Right when things are down to the wire, do everything you can and spin it!”

Kit was spinning as he rammed into the RED MEL knocking it back and lightly damaging its armored chest.

I coughed a bit and started inhaling to speed up my perception and pick up on what was happening around me.

The red robot was moving much faster now, I also noted that there were less robots active around me, because Darkwing and now Kit were both tearing into them to protect me. They were both trying to keep up with the RED MEL that was, notably enough with my current perception, speeding up.

Sly was almost to the console. After Darkwing just blasted a robot and imperceptibly the red one sped up and managed to lightly slash up Darkwing’s leg with a saw, He fired a point blank shot of gas into the RED MEL’s face and it barely cracked the glass. Kit destroyed another robot and the RED MEL got even faster.

I exhaled slowly, but didn’t move from my spot. I only did half the Dancing Flame so I should be fine, but my breathing was sounding pretty rough.

“It’s getting faster the less active robots there are.” I tried to shout, but my shout sounded pretty weak.

“There’s nothing to control up here, it destroyed the panel!” Sly shouted, as my eyes were squarly on the RED MEL.

“We need to take out the red robot.” I gasped and wheezed, then I managed to shout out. “It’s controlling all the other robots, it has to be!”

The RED MEL turned its head to me ignore a clear chance to kill Kit or ‘Bullethead’ as he was going by. It immediately came for me bringing its arms back and swung them forward. That and several other MELs were also getting faster, fast enough to put them between Kit and me.

The RED MEL reached me and swung its saw forward only to be block by the wide barrel of Darkwing’s weapon.

I lunged forward and punched its heart shaped face with my left hoof and cracked it.

I bark blasted it, it cracked even more and pushed it back further making it miss hitting Darkwing who was busy blowing Robots out of the air or disabling them by firing a fiery looking gas that melted their wheels.

“Haaaa-yip.” Bark Breaker and the glass heart shattered revealing a manic looking mechanical eye looking about wildly as if dealing with multiple things, it focused on me for a few second before continuing to look around at a pace as it grabbed a gas canister Darkwing fired at it out of the air and then threw it into Sly before he could bring his cane down on it.

It spread its arms and spun towards me while extending the claws out at me, I held up my front legs and then bunkered in place. The blow of the claws hitting my left leg rocked my body, but I stayed rooted in place. It transformed the claw into an electric fork, retracted slightly then immediately extended it for me.

Its right arm was hooked and pulled off course, it lashed out its other one at Sly and speared him, a second later it was revealed that it had only speared an insanely realistic cardboard cutout.

In its confusion, Kit managed to wrap his arms around it from behind.

“Got you, I’ve been saving what I have left just for this!” Kit hit something and he rocketed into the air spiraling pillar of flames.

We all heard the sound of something and the mountain shake, as Kit came spiraling down to crush the robot face first into the floor with a fountain of fire coming off his back that quickly sputtered out.

He groaned, slowly sat up and then looked at the upside down trash can in the making. He grinned broadly and raised his arms up.

“Oh yeah, that’s how you do a Dynamo Plunge, full power!” All the robots around had stopped moving and the lights in their faces died out as soon as Kit had destroyed that one in particular.

“Bentley, what just happened, did the weapon fire?” Sly asked as he held up his binoculars. “How many people are dead?”

“Sly… we have a problem… a big one… you guys might want to come out here and see for yourself. You might have dealt with the robots, but it seems they still managed to achieve their objective.” Bentley sounded calm. “Also cut the power to the facility on your way out, the weapon is charging up for another shot and we can’t have it accelerating things to be much worse.”

-Ten minutes later-

We all looked up to the sky and saw what Mopsy and Bentley were staring at.

“Can we get everyone away in time?” I asked immediately.

“No, far too many people. The robots did their calculations for entry, this will completely decimate Cape Suzette entirely.” Bentley stated looking at the ground. “We have maybe two hours, even less possibly.”

Author's Note

The final act... of the Cape Crusaders.

168. Leap Lamb and Caper Canine Special Edition: The Cape Crusaders! (Finale)

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Oleander-

I stretched out my back after staying at the Helping Hoof Inn or Hotel. I sat down at a table with Fred dutifully floating next to me like usual.

“Meep?” I looked up at Paprika as she popped up unexpectedly to hug me and Fred.

“Not yet, but I know she’s out there somewhere.” I just had to find her, also I needed a good home for Gothic Horror Pom. “She’s… I want to say tough, but she’s almost as marshmallow soft as Velvet’s cousin Cashmere.”

“I like Cashmere Ollie, SHE HAS A MAJOR CRUSH ON YOU.” Thank you for stating the obvious Fred. “That and she’s got style. If we’re going to herd, she’ll be on a list of possibly choices for my demonic harem.”

“Would you like breakfast here or are you going to eat at Kuril’s?” Grace was such a lovely cow, though I still couldn’t exactly quite fathom why she was dating the confusion god Veles.

-Earth, Cape Suzette, outside Dr. Axolotl’s base, Bentley-

“Maybe we can hotwire the weapon to…” The mountain the weapon was on exploded and several rumbling explosions carried throughout the base. Then the base of the nearby mountain farted flames for a few seconds as the weapon toppled over into the imploding peak. Needless to say I was flabbergasted that someone can time things so well. “Ah… the wily doctor thought of that, we’re doomed unless I can come up with another plan.”

“Let’s regroup at Kahn Industries and meet up with everyone.” Mopsy looked down and how couldn’t she be down? We failed to stop the city destroying weapon from going off.

For in the sky was a massive amount of metal hurtling towards us, since the magnetic rail gun tugged a huge rock that would survive atmospheric reentry mostly intact and was made of tough enough materials to cause a huge tidal wave.

The only good thing about it hitting Cape Suzette would be that the tidal wave would at least be stopped by the surrounding wall of mountains, aside from Louie’s directly to the south through the entrance into Cape Suzette.

When Dr. Axolotl wanted his machines to destroy Cape Suzette, he even thought of the outliers that were technically in Cape Suzette’s territory.

Evacuation would be a no go and we really should tell people about this gently, the rioting could be awful and some people would currently just be happy not knowing everyone still stuck in the city would die unless we could form a quick plan.

-Kahn Industries, Kahn Tower, twenty minutes later, Pom-

“So we have almost barely an hour to stop it and there’s no evacuating everyone.” Trying to keep the panic out of my voice wasn’t working too well. At least I wasn’t the only one around feeling terror.

“Hmm… yes… that is a problem. I will not abandon this city or its people.” Shere Kahn stated with a calm tone, this made Mowgli look at him as if he had grown three heads and just said he wanted to join the circus. “Is there anything we can do to prepare to stop or at the very least minimize the damage?”

“Well… if you can fund… just about anything really… and get enough people to move stuff.” Bentley started. “Well we can come up with a plan once we know what resources we’re working with here.”

“Granted.” Kahn stated with a no nonsense tone. “If it will save my city, the cost is not a worry.”

“Who are you and what have you done with my father?” It seemed Mowgli didn’t believed Kahn would foot the bill on this one.

Kahn crouched down to meet his son eye to eye.

“Whatever you may think of me, know that I do care as your mother knew when you were born and I held you my little man cub.” He hugged Mowgli close and tenderly. He then stood and dusted himself off as if it hadn’t happened and he was trying to maintain his aloof and calm image. He glanced at everyone else around him. “Tell no one of that.”

I don’t think we would, his voice alone brokered no nonsense and enough threat to make sure of it.

“Okay, now it’s believable.” Mowgli just blinked wide eyed at his father.

“Okay so we have a carte blanche on cost… how do we stop a giant metal meteor?” Bentley looked like he was trying to come up with something in the amount of time we had. “We don’t have the time to build another magnetic railgun and the one in the mountain isn’t destroyed, but it’s toppled over. The infrastructure of the city is shot, everything needs repairs, and most of the power stations wouldn’t be able to give us enough power to shoot some form of death laser at it. We can’t get a magnet big enough. Those robots may not have been big on intelligence, but they really left us with little to work with.”

Bentley was the brains of the Cooper Gang and he was slowly dredging through all the options we had.

I just say with a roughed up Dolly, Shanty, Smolder and Ocellus. We were all in a sorry state, except Dodo, he looked pristine and was still advertising ‘Team Leap Lamb’ blatantly. Wait… we could get another mind to work on this, but… I sighed.

“Dodo.” I stated calmly, Dodo got up moved over to me. I reached into his back and pulled out my bag and took Dormarch out and walked off to the side through the hole in the metal shutter, to see that the dawn of a new day has yet to come. “Dormarch, I know you’re having issues with knowing about your… origins, but I want to discuss something with you face to face.”

“What.” The gloomy Dalmatian on the screen stated.

“The fact that we’re all going to die if you don’t help us come up with an idea.” I stated bluntly.

“What idea can I possible come up with, can’t you just hit it with that bark breaker thing?” That… was almost a good idea Dormarch.

“Despite how long range and powerful my bark breaker is… it still has limitation and at best my bark breaker is made for breaking up rigid or tough materials. There would still be enough of the meteor left to kill everyone even if I shattered it and only half the pieces of the meteor hit the city.” I didn’t know enough to accurately guess that truthfully, but I was estimating the chances of me actually stopping something that big. I had zero chance of it. “I can’t save the city, I’m also not going to look away from people in trouble to save my skin Dormarch. You’d hate me if I ran away from this, but you’d hate it if I died when I could have survived. What do you want me to do Dormarch, dance and sing my heart out on stage about how cruel things really are?”

“… No… but…” Dormarch look up at me with a curious expression. “Calling the fam.”

“Did you say ‘fam’ Dormarch? Are you talking to us again, because I just want to say you’re still my little brother even if we don’t survive this! I got enough room in my heart for more than a hundred you know!” Dolly was on my back looking over my shoulder. Come Tartarus or high water and possibly beyond, she’d stay. Given how she was one of the few that didn’t look depressed and she believe we’d live to see the sunrise. “That and I’ve been meaning to tell you I’ve learned a new trick Pom! Not that it will help in this situation, I mean I learned to do some cool magic and then it’s pointless against something like this. What good is having a new ability, if I can’t use it to defend the city? I’m sure we’ll figure something out, I mean there’s still time right?”

“Yes… oh hello Dormarch! Pom, nice to see you in generally good health. You were amazing out there Dolly, you are doing us Dalmatian’s proud!” Dawkins stopped talking for a second when he noticed that we weren’t happy to see him. “What’s the matter? The news said you beat those robots.”

“About that Dawkins, we… have an issue. A giant metal meteor is going to destroy the city on impact.” I told him. “We need to come up with a plan.”

“And I have one, why do you think I called ‘The Fam’?” Dormarch stated looking a little less depressed. “Okay Dawkins, do some quick calculations because we’re on a time crunch here, sending you the information now. We’re also going to need the family member referred to as DJ, some peppy pop music we can stomp to and a lot of speakers we can overload that people won’t care about.”

The brainy Dalmatian looked over something on the screen and tilted his head while humming and scratching at his chin.

“This could work, but where are you going to get that kind of power from?” Dawkins asked.

“Pom, how powerful is magic, like dancing and singing wise?” Dormarch asked me. “Also I need you to talk to Mopsy and Ocellus. You’re going to need dresses for this and I’m thinking… how about you call yourselves The Ungulates.”

“Huh?” Okay that had lost me, what was Dormarch thinking? “What…”

“You don’t have much time, just… just get your chest checked out and follow my instructions.” Dormarch demanded. “Trust me, this… this idea I have… it can work… it has to! I don’t want to live in a world where I had let you down Pom!”

“Well… okay.” I stated quietly.

-Thirty minutes to destruction, Sly-

What mattered more to me than Clockwerk, at the moment that is, was the city of Cape Suzette. I didn’t want to leave my friends in the lurch, Murray, Shanty and Mopsy refused to leave.

In fact, Mopsy was asked to do a performance and she agreed to it.

Ocellus took a bit more cajoling, she was a shy one despite helping in the fight against the MEL’s. Smolder eventually convinced her to help, because apparently the plan required that we have a singing group.

Bentley, Murray and I were doing stage crew stuff, running back and forth setting everything up at the top of Kahn Tower.

We were connecting it to the stage that was quickly set up by a number of people who were confused as to why we were putting on a performance, especially after being told the city was doomed. The people told there was a plan, but it required everyone to be gathered at the performance for it to work.

Ocellus and Pom were beings of the planet Equus. If you started any musical rhythm and someone from there gets into the groove, then magical things happened. Immediate choreography of the surrounding people, everyone knows the song and it will generate a unifying power depending on the person or people doing the singing.

If this worked, then it will have be a grand miracle in the making. We were told several times we lived in a world where dreams can come true if you worked hard enough for them according to Pom’s group. They came here from a dimension with that criteria specifically in place and the magic of the possum princesses brought them here for a reason.

Well… what would happen if everyone dreamed of saving a doomed city together and had something to unify them all in that one goal? Well we’d all soon see.

Murray heaved a bit of equipment into place and I shifted it about to make sure it was in position and then Bentley started hooking it up. We couldn’t get this wrong, everything was being triple checked.

-Ten minutes until destruction, outdoor stage-

I looked to my left at the green eyed Mopsy and then my right at the red eyed sheep form Ocellus took on, then I looked down at my blue dress. Like me, they were in green and red dresses respectively, our makeup was done and we looked exactly like one another aside from color choice that Dormarch apparently took from Huey, Dewy and Louie Duck.

Makeup was not my thing, but Mopsy said I better make an exception here or else we wouldn’t be able to pull off our professional looks.

I inhaled and sighed, at least I had enough energy to do this. We needed to be strong for this and we need to get this right the first time… as I walked out on to the stage and approached the three microphones.

“Ready DJ?” The dalmatian puppy raised a digit while nodding, with his other paw on his earphones. “If this doesn’t work, then thanks for trying to save everyone with music. Dormarch, thank you for the plan even if it is ridiculous.”

Dormarch didn’t respond on the screen, he went back to being a bit moody I guess, but his fish tails shifted a little as me and my two ‘sisters’ took to the stage and I left him with Dodo.

The music started as three spot lights focused on us, Mopsy didn’t look worried and was ready to perform the show of a lifetime and Ocellus had a look of nervous determination.

-

“Woo hoo… yeah-eah-eah-eah~.” Mopsy sang to get us started as the music started getting us into the mood.

I could feel the heart song form as me and Ocellus were taking part in it, we needed all the extra power we could get… the robots had ruined the various power stations aside from the main one. I was on the left and Ocellus was on the right and we made for three pretty ‘sheep’ at least.

We started stomping our hooves in rhythmic movements, the floor shook underneath us. The three of us were shifting our hips and following the tune with our stomps as we stood together looking up at the sky.

If we were going to die, then we were going out in the most fantastically ridiculous manner possible in the face of imminent death!

The things I’d do to save a city…

“Oh dance fair, are you ready to join us now~?” Mopsy sang as we stomped to the beat.

“Hooves in the air, we will show you how~.” I sang, followed by Ocellus as the three of us gathered together waving our hooves rhythmically to the crowd.

“Come be spry~.” The audience started to get into it as I did my part with a weak smile.

“I’m Mopsy and I will be your guide~.” She winked saucily at the audience, getting some cheers.

“Be your guide~.” Echoed Ocellus expertly with a worried smile as we gathered together.

“So come on move your hips, sing baa-aa-aa~.” We sang out at the same time and the crowd was really started to cheer. “Look at The Ungulates, doing la-la-la~.”

“You and we, can get this melody~!” We sang together our hearts growing firmer in our resolves.

“Baa-wah-wuh-oh~.” We sang together our face next to each other as we held out our hooves to the crowd.

“Dance to the beat, wave your hooves together, come feel the sweet, forever and-ever~.” The crowd was starting to stomp with us and it might actually start working as we sang together.

“Listen and learn, it is time for prancing~.” We pranced in a circle changing which microphones we were on, I was on the right and Mopsy was on the left with Ocellus at the front. “For now we are here, we’re parallel dancing~!”

“Baa-aa-ooa-ahh-… Baa-aa-oo-aa-oh-… Baa-aa-ooa-ahh-… Baa-aa-oo-aa-oh~.” Ocellus sang softly really getting into as we continued to stomp to the tune, nothing like pop music and a good rhythm to feasibly end our lives to. “We’re sweet and okay, we will bring our song~.”

“We’ll all be okay, you’ll see soon before long~.” I sang determinedly trying to raise the mood of the song.

“They have heard, we’re singing this to all the world~.” Mopsy smirked at Ocellus before singing suggestively and waggling her eyebrows in a manner to make the poor changeling blush. “Baa-aa-ah~.”

“So come on move your hips, sing ba-aa-aa~.” We gathered together once more shifting are hips left and right three different personalities showing. Shy, fun and brave as we shook our flanks for the crowd. “Look at The Ungulates, going la-la-la~.”

“Soon you’ll see, we’ll all sing this melody~!” Ocellus sang with a hit of cheer and less shy to the audience and the people of Cape Suzette started cheering.

“So come and~!” We sang together pressing our face together, like three triplets. The truth was much further from that.

“Prance to the beat~.” I sang twirling before holding my left hoof out.

“Wave your hooves together~!” Mopsy shouted twirling and waving her left hoof while holding out her right.

“Come feel this heat, forever and-ever~!” Ocellus was helping us get an idea of the mood of the crowd, she was bright like sunshine as stepped up to the mike while singing.

“Christen and discern, that it is time for prancing~.” We all pranced in a circle changing positions once more and I was at the front looking a bit nervous, but I was fully letting the the beat into my heart as it beat with the music. “For now we are here, we’re parallel dancing~!”

Smolder, Dolly, Launchpad, Drake, Gosalyn, Kit and Molly soon joined us all on the stage. Despite the various injuries they had, they started stomping with us as backup dancers.

We all stomped in a slow clockwise circle and then in a counterclockwise circle and continued to slam the beat out into the world, we could only hope this was working and at least we had the crowd worked up.

Now it was my turn.

“Dance with the beat, wave with us together~.” We all started shifting at the tone of my voice and the slowdown of the peppy song. “Come feel this treat, forever and-ever~.”

I took up the microphone while staring at the sky as everyone stomped at the same time, Ocellus and Mopsy did the same on my left and right.

“With diligence earned, it is time for prancing~” I backed up to stand between Ocellus and Mopsy.

“Now we~.” Mopsy moved forwards taking a pose.

“Are here~.” I moved to the left taking a pose myself.

“Parallel dancing~!” Ocellus moved right to strike her own pose.

We all stomped into standing next to each other and we all started singing as one.

“Baa-aa-aa~.” We sang like the angels we were going to become if this didn’t work, but the thunderous sounds of a thousand limbs striking the ground with rhythmic force almost made me feel like we could pull it off. “Baa-aa-aa-oh, Baa-aa-aa, Ba-aa-aa-oh~.”

“So come and…~!” We sang together and stomped as hard as we could and I looked up at the numerous speakers hooked up to Kahn Tower and the vibrations we were sending out.

“Dance in the heat, wave your hooves together~!” We sang along with the crowd as the fervor grew and the shockwaves of the song carried throughout the city. “Come feel the beat, forever and-ever~!”

“Listen and learn, it is time for prancing~!” We sang loudly together putting our heads next to each other. “We are all still here, we’re parallel dancing~!”

“Dance to the beat, we’ve all joined in together~!” We stomped and shifted our hips as we pranced in a circle continuing the rhythm. “Come feel the sweet, forever and-ever~!”

“Don’t distance and spurn, it is time for prancing~!” We all sang and we all felt the heart song swell for the last line.

“We are all here, we’re parallel dancing~!” With one last stomp, a sudden shockwave erupted into the sky from the final verse made us all look up as the large metal rock was pushed back slightly.

I frowned a bit… then… we didn’t…

The hunk of metal exploded violently into a large cloud of metal dust and most of that dust would fall into the bay and the shockwave we created continued straight on into space.

Well then…

There goes the cities drinking water… at least it’ll be mostly contained by the caldera of mountains.

Small price to pay really, but I’m sure they would get all the metal out of the water eventually.

Also we may have… slightly… possibly… feasibly… might have… overdone it a tiny bit with the heart song.

I seriously hoped that shockwave doesn’t hit anything important.

-In space, ????-

“Yes, soon Scrooge and his family will fear the return of general Lunar…” Suddenly a shockwave slammed into the golden ship and figure went wide eyed as the ship was pushed out of orbit and into the universe. Not only that, it just destroyed the rebuilt thrusters the moonlander had spent a better part of months repairing. “What the… NOOOO!!!”

In space nobody could hear the invader Lunaris scream as his golden spaceship spiraled away never to be seen by Earth again, he’d eventually end up somewhere nice for a disposed tyrant of the Moonlander people that now lived peacefully on earth.

-On the ground, Cape Suzette, Pom-

“We… we did it… hah…. haha… hehe-HAHAHHAHHA, we did it!” I cheered jumping up and down with my hooves raised high in the air.

DJ smiled as he continued to bob his head and play a groove, Dolly looked proud of her younger brother keeping the dance beats going after the song was over.

It took a moment for all the people that had joined us, but most of the city just realized what happened and continued dancing to the music with each other.

We weren’t dancing to our demise. We just literally weaponized a heart song to power a sonic cannon and just saved Cape Suzette.

I sat down and sighed audibly, feeling like my soul was about to exit my body and call it quits. I wouldn’t blame it at this point, it… was probably one of the closest calls we’ve had.

“You okay Pom?” Ocellus said as she sat next to me.

“Uhn….” I groaned and flopped onto my back, Mopsy carefully laid down next to me and pulled me into a hug.

“Hugs!” Dolly shouted and she clamped onto my neck while wagging her tail.

Soon Ocellus joined as well, before we knew it we were all getting our collective ribs crushed by Launchpad who saw the loving hugs in progress.

“Family truly is one of the…!” Launchpad stated, before a portion of Kahn Tower started collapsing. “And I’m completely thankful that that happened well away from us! Everyone saw that I didn’t have anything to do with that right? Right?! Right.”

“Aren’t we all glad Launchpad?” Sly stated as he sauntered up. He, Bentley and Murray warmed the crowd up by joining us in dancing. There was also Mowgli that helped Sly’s gang get everyone started. “Are you still willing to join us at Clockwerk’s lair? I mean after this, I can understand completely if you didn’t want to. You have to be exhausted with trouble.”

“Nope, we’re leaving as soon as we can. I’m not sticking around for the mercenaries that likely saw our performance.” Yeah, that and they might start targeting Mopsy and anyone that looks like me on the principle of it at this point. “Nobody would be expecting a warm weather loving person like me to go to this cold Russia place right?”

“We’re going to a volcano.” Stated Bentley bluntly.

“Even better, I live on a volcano and love having a home in city where it’s always warm weather year round!” I was trying to act overly optimistic, take the hint Bentley.

“AH… Sorry.” Thanks for noticing Bentley.

I lifted up a hoof and pointed out the sun rising on a new day.

Author's Note

Figure out what song is based on for an inedible imaginary cookie, any imaginary flavor including snozberry.

Kindom Hearts has you get an 'Aero' element upgrade from collecting 99 Dalmatians, so Dolly understandably has that as the second ability gained when she got her flow motion abilties. That's it for her aside from possibly aerora, aeroga and aeroja.

Now for a train wreck fight with Clockwerk who's had time to prepare for Sly Cooper... and just about everyone else.

169. Data and Transition.

-Earth, flight to Russia, currently skirting the Thembria border, Dormarch-

I looked over my data again, more precisely the data of the PET. No black box whatsoever, same things as I had seen previous times when I tried to find out more about myself… but then was I really looking at myself or the data around me?

Unconventional thoughts brought me to the idea of examining my avatar with the same kind of lens I examined the PET with. I had thought that I was naturally part of the PET, now… it was time for me to truly find out about myself.

I just had to target my avatar, the real me, and do a data scan...

Species: Dalma.mon offshoot of ‘Error missing data, inferring as original species’.

What did that mean? Also did the MON technically count as an executable file when I was a living being in some respects? Dalma.mon obviously means ‘Dalmatian Monster’. Also the missing data is fairly concerning.

I was getting somewhere, but I didn’t want to be a monster… yet there it was in ones and zeroes.

Level: Rookie.

Not so obvious. What did Rookie exactly mean in context to level? Did it mean I was new at something? Was it measuring my strength as a data manipulating entity?

I thought I was doing pretty well as an AI before I found out I was some kind of digital creature that can feasibly manifest outside of computer systems. Well the digital creature before me could manifest at the very least.

I was given the footage of the other digital lifeform and I looked nothing like it, yet I came from ‘that’ specifically.

At least this might explain why Minesweeper was so painful, yet it wasn’t harmful. I should get some help from someone else to play it better or keep it as a thing I do.

Type: Beast.

That doesn’t sound friendly. Yet I didn’t feel the need to be aggressive, in fact I’ve been chronically depressed since I found out about this.

Self-analyzing was one of the worst thing a psychologist can do and I had downloaded a lot of psychiatric and health data in the past life from a hospital. Explains why I act like a medical scanner.

Attribute: Data.

Questionable as to what this means. Why would data be an attribute? An attribute of what. Let’s move on and come back to this later.

Family: NSp.

Expand family designation. Did I have family from wherever the past incarnation of me came from?

Family: Nature Spirits.

Okay, something was off. What did Nature Spirits exactly mean in terms of family? Did it mean I was more like a wild animal or akin to something naturally occurring? Sounds better than being called a beast at least, spirits sounds right in some context to me.

Possible Digital Evolutionary Paths: Large data corruption detected, unknown repercussions.

Wait… evolution? I could evolve into something else? I wonder if this is part of what Kahn Industries did with me. Also the ‘unknown repercussions’ thing has me quite worried.

Name: Dormarch Lambchop Dalmatian.

Obvious, Pom was the one that gave me this name and from the research I’ve done it appears not only in the mythology of this world, but in the world Pom comes from. Strange, how many realities can have the same story and did I come from one with that mythology as well? Also Lambchop is a bit presumptuous of me, as is the Dalmatian family name, but I do technically belong with both and they haven’t thrown me away… yet.

I should ask Pom and Dolly about this and quantify if it was okay. I mean this was something my mind wrote subconsciously when she named me and I got her name. Looking at the data, Dalmatian was automatically added later in relation to Dolly and her family.

Partner: Pom Lambchop.

Something I already knew somewhere in my heart of ones and zeroes I would never, EVER, want to betray this piece of data. Hopefully that status never changed, for I now understood what would happen if the wrong people got a hold of me.

Speaking of what I could do if the wrong people get a hold of me…

Attack Program List:

Did I really want to... access these?

I took in a digital breath and dove in.

P-Wild Bark.

Apparently I have something comparable to Pom, but in the form of a short range shockwave. It’s a quick stun and attack maneuver.

P-Cure Liquor.

Restores and optimizes data, possibly reformats it as well.

Sounds useful… activating Cure Liquor program.

…

Well that felt refreshing, but didn’t do much except fixed some of my rougher edges in my coding. Maybe my code has to be damaged in some way. Wait… didn’t Kahn think that other creatures like me may exist and that they could invade other realities through computers like what was apparently my previous incarnation?

This might be why that white and orange furred monster was so hard to take out, it could rebuild its own destroyed code by possibly cannibalizing the coding around it or rewriting the lost coding back into place. Uses a moderate amount of energy to do, probably why I suddenly feel like I need some recharge, possibly only effective on digital beings like me.

Disturbing implications about me aside, this was good to know.

P-Retriever Bark.

This… is actually almost one to one with Pom’s Bark Breaker, it is a hyper-oscillation bark but it is immediate and not controlled finely to create the same kind of maximum impact that Pom gets from hers.

So this is why I could calculate a way to destroy the meteor under a crunch. However this program doesn’t seem nearly strong enough to do that if I was able to manifest physically. It was a ranged attack compared to Wild Bark and fairly intriguing concept that I can match Pom.

Having my existence tied to the PET was probably a good idea on the part of Kahn Industries science and computer technology experts.

P-Claw Scratch.

Enhances front claws, simple enough and like Pom’s magical wolf claws except I can see a physical change to my body.

Hmm… cue up similar attack programs in the same vein.

P-High Kick. P-Charge. P-Backflip Kick. P-Jumping Claw Scratch.

General combat program stuff apparently. I don’t need them to fight as I am, but they would improve my combat significantly when doing these specific actions.

Now moving on to… huh.

P-Giga Cannon.

Why would I ever even have this and how would I even begin with using something like this?! By calculations, this program alone would have really slowed down that meteor immensely and taken out at least half of it if used while manifested!

I don’t have built in cannons on me, yet I know I can utilize it somehow in my current form… the horror of that possibility is something I don’t think I can readily ignore.

Also why do I even have something this crazy and insane inside me in the first place?! The overly prohibitive power consumption alone would definitely drain every single last scrap of energy I have immediately!

I looked further into this, scrutinizing every inch and actually managed to find some minor sub-data tied to it.

Machinedra.mon attack program data?

Confusing, but if I’m getting this right this data comes from a... Machine Dragon Monster? Why does that kind of instill some kind on inherent instinctive fear in me? I eventually found an image connected to the sub-data, it was highly pixelated, but I felt terror just looking at the character sprite.

Again, Kahn Industries probably had the right idea with how to deal with me.

I looked at the other attack programs data closely and collated the information.

Gao.mon, Labra.mon, Dorulu.mon.

So I have the attack program data of four different creatures like me? Dorulu.mon was familiar and close to home because that was the one that manifested in Kahn Industries, but the other two… yeah nothing comes to mind.

I had some odd feelings about Dorulu.mon and the pixel art image in the sub-data connected to it definitely representing that orange and white furred wolf monster with the drills. I didn’t like what had happened, but I would have to come to terms with it eventually.

Should I tell Pom about these discoveries? When I can actually work up the courage to interact with her again.

Pom and Dolly still cared about me, their friends might care too, but I think the problem is coming from my side of things and my mental state being in shambles.

Wait… the data continues?

General Purpose:

Do I really want to look into this?

…

Entering the rabbit hole.

General Purpose: Search Engine, Data Miner, Information and Data Applications Specialist.

Aside from the whole Data Miner thing being why people wanted me badly enough to kill Pom and take me from her, that and the ability to break computer systems firewalls like a cheap wet tissue paper or cause full system crashes if I had enough energy to use the giga cannon for even half a second without frying myself, I was honestly expecting something far worse than that.

I mean. I was expecting invader, world takeover preparations and the like of something pure evil… but a glorified search engine, really? With my capabilities? I feel somewhat insulted finding this out.

I like the information and data application thing at least, I was still running the program on Pom’s health and what Dancing Flame may be doing to her overall biology. The recent stab and electrocution wounds aside, all the rest she got had let her body strengthen back up quite a bit.

I wasn’t sure if she was going to be able to control it if she started using it while breathing normally, but her body was adapting for doing just that even when she wasn’t using her Dancing Flame style.

This could be a really bad or lethal end result for Pom and requires constant monitoring. I would definitely speak up if her health was in immediate threat from this, I appreciated life far more than my lost and possibly fearful predecessor at the very least.

I really couldn’t blame Dorulumon for acting confused or lashing out and causing pain in this world, they likely came to this world by accident and caused some lethal incidents. Which would explain why Data Miner is part of my purpose as that seems like what Dorulumon existed for with the visual representation of drills on his body.

Creating a paw print shaped fluffy bit of white carpet with black spots, I yawned and curled up on it. I would be going into sleep mode for the time being.

This was a lot for me to unpack all at once and I needed some restful mental downtime.

-Outside the PET, Pom-

I decided to look at the PET and saw Dormarch sleeping and quickly turned the PET back off, I didn’t want to disturb him.

We had said our goodbyes to Molly and Kit, they were getting free medical care via Shere Kahn, along with some funding for their circus. The Jungle Aces needed their planes repaired after they came to the aid of the city at Molly’s call and the Jungle Aces remembered the first MEL when they were kids too, they were perfectly happy to get in on all the action.

We were going to have to ride to the pyroclastic Krakarov Volcano in the Cooper Van once we get to Russia and establish a route to where Clockwerk was. If he was anything like Teatime Clockwork, then this was going to be much worse than the MEL’s we had to fight through.

Krakarov was in a remote location and far enough away that it wouldn’t destroy any cities if it had some form of meltdown.

After explaining Carmelita and given that they hadn’t seen her getting involved in our Cape Suzette caper, this meant she chose a different target than chasing after Sly. This certainly upset Sly for various reasons, likely because the target Carmelita chose was the same one we were going to deal with. There were possibilities that she would be in dire trouble by the time we arrived, if not dead already.

Launchpad would be waiting to take us back to San Fransokyo in the nearest city or town, wherever we were landing.

Drake and Gosalyn were restocked heavily on high grade stuff, knowing that this was going to be one of the world’s biggest villains since F.O.W.L. was destroyed by the McDuck clan.

I didn’t have much of a stake in this, but… Shanty wanted to see this through and wanted to help her friends. If I had said no and tried to drag her to San Fransokyo, she’d be on the next flight to Russia without knowing where she’ll end up. This way, we’d at least be together even if it gets us all killed.

I looked to Dodo, he was wearing a fake nose and glasses, a really poor disguise hiding the Team Leap Lamb logo now painted on him somehow after leaping out of a plane. Six cartoonish symbols that looked like our heads surrounded the logo.

“Dodo, that’s a horrible disguise, just take it off already.” I hear Dodo whine audibly and he flicked the plastic glasses and nose off his beak. “Everyone here knows what you are anyway.”

Just about everyone else, aside from Launchpad, was sleeping. The minor repairs the plane needed after crashing into the minimal amount of countryside outside of Cape Suzette were handled within an hour thanks to Shere Kahn’s work force.

I’ve been sitting on the right side cargo plane benches since we took off. I wondered what would happen between Kahn and Mowgli or whether or not Kit and Molly’s circus would continue to impress now that they had Bullethead and Danger Woman as mascots.

It made me wonder a lot of things.

Did Dragon and Skunk have their climactic battle as the heavens wanted? Did they befriend one another? Were the ninja monkeys and the animals still fighting to this day, because it was fun for all of them?

Did Tai Lung finally warm up to having friends and is Gongmen City thriving under the watchful eyes of the rhino I nursed back to health? Were they still having action packed crazy adventures after the defeat of that monstrous undead General Kai and his Jade Statue Zombies?

Was Sparkster the rocket knight getting some peace from having to fight giant death machines, entire armies and overlords? Evil Cores were a thing on that world and I don’t think that was the last Elhorn has seen of them. How were Colleen, Jean, Ligstrun and Bruno getting along as the White Knight Couriers if they are even still in that business? What was Nicole Beta doing on that world and was she doing as she intended in making things better?

Every world we visit, we were leaving behind drastic changes that would have never happened had we not been there. We were also leaving behind our presences, pieces of our magic and a whole lot of questions and the only path was forward.

I looked down at my lap at Dolly snoozing away with her face pressed against my wool, bandages wrapped around her back and some covering her numerous scratches and minor injuries.

She was so small and yet so much larger than life even before she met me and we clicked, she is an amazing dog with an equally amazing family. Her younger brother DJ was on top of things as far as music was concerned when we asked for his help, Dawkins was incredulously smart for a dog, Dylan was an incredible big brother and every Dalmatian in that family had a talent for something.

My thoughts turned to myself.

I never stopped being the scared little lambkin that I was, but I even I had to acknowledge that I had achieved some pretty ridiculous things. A few hours ago I was singing and dancing with Ocellus and Mopsy and the three of us saved a city in an over the top fashion from a deceased mad scientist that wanted one last attempt to do something memorable.

Dr. Axolotl was an interesting person at the very least and he did give Cape Suzette a pretty huge black eye as a good sixty percent of the city was damaged in some way, shape or form. His final act in this world with his robots was something he’d be remembered for at the very least. The poor guy didn’t have any family or friends in the end, but at least Kahn did the respectable thing and made sure his grave wasn’t desecrated by angry people.

Axolotl gave Kahn Industries access to enough special metal to make more than enough PETs to meet the future demand of their AI’s companions. Even I had problems shredding through a MEL with my magic claws, three full strength strikes with both hooves, so the PETs were going to be pretty tough for people to break and I already knew that by experience.

I’m now a terrifying individual and that’s not even accounting for the fact that I can have a canine’s sense of smell, hearing and instincts if my going feral once or twice over the course of our adventures was anything to go by.

It’s easy to see why I’m now quite afraid of myself, I could so easily kill people with very little effort. I didn’t want to be something else, a monster, a hero or some incredible being that people could put on a pedestal. I just wanted to be a guard in a quiet city that did my civic duty to help people.

So when had I made the transition though?

I stayed true to who I was, but when did I actually transition into being the brave figure everyone saw my scrawny hide as? Still hated fighting, but if someone starts something and I’m around… then I’m very well ending it or doing my best at whatever it is to save everyone.

I don’t always win every confrontation with three hooves tied behind my back or without injury, but it’s becoming apparent that I’m going to keep pushing forward through everything that threatens any innocent lives.

Physically, mentally, spiritually and possibly existentially exhausted, I still stand among people who care about me and see me as a stalwart figure in the face of constant suffering.

For every day was suffering without the warmth of Tianhuo, but I couldn’t cry every day as I had responsibilities and the pressure of expectations keeping me on my forward momentum through all this insanity.

I suffer not alone, but with friends and these friends I’ve met are some of the best I’ve ever had.

This world alone, I was doing so much… both good and bad. Could anyone have done better than me, could anyone have done worse? Now I was going to help in an attack on a supervillain’s lair… on purpose no less!

Where did my need to exactly avoid conflict go? Why was running away from trouble so hard now? Was I still the same kind and gentle hearted lambkin Tianhuo met? Lots of things to consider, but I think I’m staying true to who I was.

“Baa-Ram-Ewe… always-be-true.” I intoned softly, still thinking about the adversities that I’ve faced.

“You okay back there Pom?” Launchpad shouted down from watching the Darkwing Duck show on a small television as he flew the plane.

“Yeah, just thinking some heavy things Launchpad.” The big guy waded into and out of action with us and he never had any complaints, like Murray he was all heart.

Speaking of Murray, he and Launchpad were immediate best of friends upon meeting one another as they had uncanny natures for finding the best in everyone. Murray loved his gang's van as much as Launchpad loved flying.

“Hey, want a comic book to get your mind off of things?” I was not going to question Launchpad flying the plane or the one hundred percent fact of the ensuing imminent crash we’d all survive. This was a known factor and no one that knew Launchpad should be afraid to be in the same vehicle as him, but that didn’t mean you shouldn’t actively try to avoid injury from the crashes he caused. “It always helps me get away from some thoughts when I’m not feeling very helpful or like I haven’t done enough to brighten someone’s day.”

“What kind of comic?” Bet he was going to say Darkwing Duck.

I really wanted to have a long talk with Dormarch, but he had to be the one to open up to me. I couldn’t very well force him to interact with me, he needed some freedom and he wasn’t getting much of that inside the PET.

“It’s one of my favorites, it’s The Mighty Ducks issue one! It’s said to be made by this neat hockey team in Anaheim, the stories are so realistic too. It’s actually as if someone has experienced them.” Launchpad stated excitedly as I gave him a curious look. If I could sell my life story I don’t think I would actually make much from it, but that’s my pessimistic side talking and the only people that would believe it are the people who’ve actually seen me getting involved in them. “What, you thought I was all about Darkwing? I have other heroes too you know!”

“Fine…” If it’ll help me relax. Thanks to my fluffmancer talents my wool will never fall out from stress. That said, I’m always stressed.

“Okay, hold on a second, let me find it.” It didn’t take him long and I was looking at the cover with six colorful ducks on it.

The story was interesting to say the least, alien duck people born to an ice covered planet called Puckworld and their main sport is hockey. They also had hockey themed technology, because of course they do, and they were fighting against the Saurians.

Said Saurians are a race of dangerous conquering lizard people that had a giant empire that got sealed away in a dimensional limbo by a hero with a golden hockey mask. Only a small group of them managed escape this fate and still managed to conquer Puckworld with an armada of robotic attack ships.

One duck named Canard Thunderbeak managed to get a resistance group together to resist the four Saurian overlords led by Lord Dragaunus. Things don’t turn out well for Thunderbeak as he and 'the team' try to make sure the Saurian threat couldn’t continue after getting Saurians on the run.

He sacrifices himself to a strange electromagnetic worm thing and his fate, surely death, is left somewhat unknown. Some think he might have survived it and others think it destroyed him entirely.

The new leader Wildwing Flashblade put on the golden hockey mask that allows them to see through the Saurians cloaking technology and thus the story really begins.

I looked to Ocellus, sleep cuddling Smolder and looking adorable while doing it too, she would definitely call these six a Harmony group if they existed.

Their only way home, being the Saurian ship’s gateway generator that couldn’t work very well due to the damage done to the Saurian ship, they arrived on a planet called Earth and thus began the battle to prevent the last Saurians from hurting anyone else.

How original of the writers to name the planet the heroes landed on after the one they were living on.

“So cool.” Launchpad said from over my shoulder.

Everything notably felt like it was currently at an angle.

“Gosh dang it all to Tartarus!” Tossing the comic book over my shoulder, I crossed my hooves with a flat look on my face. “Crash positions everyone!”

Author's Note

What's foreshadowing, what isn't and is the Machinedra.mon thing in good taste?

I'm using the literal classification system of Digimon here, it's a tiny bit a complicated.

Herald of the Opera got the three man band idea.

Someone knew the music and gets an imaginary caramel cookie.

The inspiration overall for that page finale is the Ouendan level that features 'Read, Steady, Go', it's a rhthym game.

So many layers.

170. Rushing Russia.

-Equus, Airship Wemauliya, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Celestia-

“You cut and serve me at the table, yet I am never eaten, what am I?” Sekhet the sphinx stated with a hint of glee in her voice.

“What an intriguing riddle.” I stated as I tried to figure what could be cut and served at a table that you would never eat. “You don’t do anything horrible to people who don’t get these riddles wrong right?”

“I’m not overly cruel. Well… to evil things I might be, war goddess and all.” Sekhet smiled a bit like she caught a canary. “So aside from the riddle how is sun priestess Jaded doing in the world of politics?”

“Better than I thought she would. She’s driving people insane with bizarre trade agreements, but it is one of the few times I’ve seen Discord be so agreeable with ordered chaos. Discord could want anything and he could give you practically anything in a trade agreement.” Chaosica wasn’t a united realm despite the fact that the dictatorship is holding a rigged election, said election is being rigged so the opponent wins is not something I’d ever thought of doing to get out of being a princess or putting my sister Luna in charge. I mean passing the buck to Twilight was still what I chose and I’m not regretting it, but Luna and I were still considered world powers in and of ourselves. “You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with all the nonsense.”

“It can’t be that bad can it?” Sekhet tilted her head. “Politics are supposed to be bloodthirsty, as a war goddess I am to understand them intrinsically. So what’s the worst of it?”

“Jade getting Discord statuettes and Discord wanting to spend a day under Yggdrasil in return, don’t honestly know what both of them are actually getting from the trade. Jade is good at fine print and has tried to destroy the concept of Saddle Arabia no less than five times in a number of agreements, everyone swears she’s doing it subconsciously at this rate.” I thought it was quite exasperating that Jaded could hold a grudge for that long. It wasn’t in the cards for Saddle Arabia be in any other state than alert as long as Jaded, AKA the evil sorceress Mirage, was breathing in the countries general vicinity… from more than a thousand miles away. Wait… that’s it! “A pack of playing cards!”

“Right!” Sekhet stated with a broad smile. “I am a shimmering field that reaches quite far, yet I have no tracks and am crossed without paths. What am I?”

“Did someone mention Discord?!” The ever peppy pink Bastet appearing made us both yelp, the goddess of life had always been attracted to Chaos. Quite literally one of Discord’s alternative names and it came with a distinctly attractive blue winged cat form. Bastet was a goddess that always got Discord nervous. That’s why I’m good friends with her, he’s less likely to bother me when she’s around. “Aw, it’s cute that you’re hanging out with ‘good’ friends, maybe you can even share bananas via mouth to mouth. By the way Wadjet says hello!”

“Is she still winning sexiest snake goddess of the year?” I asked conversationally, completely ignoring Bastet’s utterly appalling attempts at getting me and Sekhet together. We were just friends, of a highly attractive sort like Jaded and Captain Jaqueline Sparrow.

“You know it!” Bastet said with a bright smile. “Oh and the Quarrelsome Quartet are doing exactly what Jade wanted them to, they are holding up their end of the bargain.”

“Good to know.” Sekhet and I said at the same time, it had been a somewhat small concern.

“Also there’s a lot of cloak... but where are all the daggers?” Sekhet asked.

-Earth, Russia, Location: snowy mountainside, Shanty-

“Woo that crash be a good one!” I be saying as my body be being stuck in the snow. “You can barely be telling how we got here.”

The Cooper Van landed nearby without even a single scratch on it. The airplane we be in, that be strewn about the place, on fire and the remains were being small enough to mostly fit in Cooper Van. How does Launchpad be rebuilding that?

“Please don’t encourage Launchpad to crash like this Shanty.” Pom is still being a big lovable whiner. Also we are all being a bit stuck. “Dodo can you get out?”

Dodo be buried with his head pointing to the sky, he warbled sadly. He was unable to angle his beak downward far enough to shovel or energy blast the snow away.

“He can’t be moving.” I be looking at the dog and everyone else, we all be stuck up to our necks in the snow. It be like being buried in a sandy beach by pirates and left for the ripper crabs to feed on, while I be enjoying the imagery… I didn’t like living it and it be freezing. “I can’t be feeling my flank, is that being a bad thing?”

“Right, anyone have an idea how to get us out of this quickly, Smolder what about you?” At least Pom be taking charge of the situation. We turned our heads to Smolder who was directly behind Ocellus.

“Can’t breathe fire without hitting Ocellus.” Smolder informed us.

“I think I’m stuck in this form while buried like this.” Ocellus be answering afterwards swiftly.

“Can’t you use your super strength?” Gosalyn asked from next to Drake. “My beak is starting to form icicles here.”

“Again, I need to remind everyone, that despite the fact that I’m… admittedly enough… fairly strong by a respectable amount, I’m not impossibly over the top stupidly super strong. My best abilities are defensive, though I have been getting better with my offensive abilities as of late. I really don’t appreciate how dangerous I actually am.” Pom be knowing her strengths and weaknesses, she be telling me that knowing yourself and your capabilities can be helping in a lot in many situations. “I’m as stuck as everyone else is, no leverage and my wool is tightly packed in by the snow. I hope I don’t get a cold from this.”

“If I could just get to my gas gun…” Mumbled Drake as wiggled his head trying to pry himself out of the snow, he not be getting anywhere fast. He did be managing to shovel some of the snow away with his beak.

“Sorry guys, I got so excited with showing Pom a comic book, I kind of forgot to keep flying the plane.” Everybody would be forgiving Launchpad for this, because I know I would.

This is being a known thing with him. If we be knowing this would happen, then why should we be mad? We knew that we would end up in a plane crash, just not how or why, but it was being quite inevitable from what the Duck family be telling us.

“Well none of us are dead… though if frostbite sets in that’ll be a different story.” Stated Pom with a drawn out sigh. She be removing the eyepatch for The Ungulates big debut, her eye is being fine and I be the proud owner of it now! “Also don’t blame yourself Launchpad, we all knew what we were getting into by getting on a plane with you. We did it anyway even knowing that it was fact that this kind of thing was informedly chronic for you.”

“Well someone hurry up with an idea, I have snow in places I’d rather not say.” Humorously enough Mopsy be mirroring Pom’s dour expression.

“Maybe we could shout for help?” At least Murray was being constructive.

“Bad idea if this is an avalanche zone.” Shot down Bentley. “I’m unfortunately not one of those turtle bipeds that can detach my shell at will. So don’t bother asking me to squeeze out.”

“Now that is a question, how do you be putting on clothes?” It only be occurring to me now that Bentley wore clothes under his shell. Now everybody be looking at Bentley.

“I buy my clothes special…” Bentley be looking away. “Also this cold is not exactly very healthy for me, I can feel my mind numbing and freezing up already.”

Dolly started barking something from next to Pom.

“Will you have complete control of it?” It seems Pom be responding to something Dolly suggested. “Also aren’t you cold?”

Dolly responded cheerfully or at least as cheerfully as I can be understanding, she doesn’t seem to be very cold at all.

“It’s ridiculous that Dolly has the best chance out of all of you and she’s a breed of dog known for having short fur. Well you better make it quick, all of your vital signs are dipping pretty badly, aside from Dolly’s which is fairly anomalous that her heat has been consistent since you got stuck in the snow.” Dormarch be stating from right next to me, buried up to his handle in the snow. “What a way to start our adventure into attacking a super villain’s lair.”

“Glad to hear you’re actually in a talking mood again Dormarch.” Pom be looking happy to be hearing him talking at all. “I want you to know that I’m worried about you and that we need to talk about things. Communication is supposed to be healthy right?”

“Right.” Domarch be seeming to be quiet about something, I narrowed my eyes at the device and then went back to looking around to make sure nothing be coming to eat us.

“I wouldn’t say Clockwerk is a Super Villain, but… I think it is fitting for a guy who’s survived thousands of years on pure hatred for my family.” Looking to be thoughtful, Sly finally deciding on something with a nod. “Maybe that’s why he didn’t kill me, he probably needs that hatred to keep going and is using me to fuel his mediocre existence of one-upmanship. You’d think he would move on to world conquering the world by now instead of being the best thief in the world with all the talent he has for wiping out Cooper’s over the ages.”

“I just know this Clockwerk guy is going to end in fighting a massive swarm of robots somehow.” Bemoaned Pom again, she not be being even wrong considering what Bentley be saying about Clockwerk having mechanical minions.

“Well that’s a cursed statement.” Stated a shivering Ocellus. “Really wished I had a better internal heating system like Smolder, wait… why aren’t you melting the snow Smolder?”

“Enough packed and melted together formed ice around me, I could enter a long sleep like this… it’s actually kind of cozy. If my girlfriend’s life wasn’t currently being threatened I could do a fifty year nap like this.” Smolder looked to Ocellus with a sheepish grin. “Not enough for a greed growth, sorry. I just don’t find snow dangerous enough.”

“It’s okay.” Returned Ocellus brightly while stuttering as her head shivered.

Dolly barked angrily and everyone quieted.

“She needs to focus and we’re all being distracting.” Pom stated dully. “If you’re going to do it, now would be the time Dolly.”

Unleashing a bark, a swirling green vortex erupted around us pulling a few of us into the air, along with a mass of snow that went flying skyward. Bentley was pulled halfway free and was already working the rest of himself out of the snow.

“Well the good news is most of us are free, now we need to dig the rest out.” Pom stated as she helped me up, Smolder, Ocellus, Gosalyn and Dolly were also being free. “Good work Dolly! Shanty, Ocellus, you two go get in the van and get warm, I’m sure Bentley can turn on the heat for you. Smolder, help me with everyone else. Shanty can you get Dolly?”

Dolly raised her right paw and flicked up a digit while breathing roughly, that be looking quite tiring for her. I be picking the Dolly up and tossing her onto my back, then I be slowly making my way towards the van to someplace warm.

-Thirty minutes later, Smolder-

Launchpad said he’d get the plane working again.

I had asked, what plane?! In exactly the kind of incredulous tone you could expect from a shredded mass of metal strewn across the base of a mountain’s slope.

His answer was to look around and just shrug, he said he’d be fine and for us to go on. He even said he’d catch up with us eventually.

The guy was kind of a legend in the making, especially if he could rebuild the plane from that.

Launchpad had warm clothes and plenty of snack foods that had survived the crash, even said this wasn’t the first time that this has even happened to him.

Everyone absolutely believed him on that.

Though I kind of worried about the guy as we drove away, he was waving to us and was all smiles as we packed into the van like canned sardines. Being the traditional pegasus fish snack, I thought it was an acquired taste and I had acquired a taste for them in New York.

We had eventually found a road into the city, picked up a few supplies and then started making our way towards the Krakarov volcano. With the possibility that the Clockwerk guy was expecting us and would be ready with all manner of nasty surprises, if he was as smart as Bentley thinks he was.

Bentley gave Darkwing and Quiverwing a complete run down of Clockwerk’s history and the owl was a serious piece of work. He’s been alive as long as Princess Celestia and Luna, possibly as long a dragon.

After an explanation of how technologically advanced the various ages of this world were. How did someone like Clockwerk managed to build advanced technology and slowly replace his whole body with machinery, even before the medieval ages of this world? Was his hatred and genius both that disturbed and grand?

There’s genius and then there’s rampant insanity that goes beyond the impossible. Clockwerk was the latter with some of the former.

I looked to Ocellus when I noticed she was getting twitchy, we were about to pass through a small town.

“Are you okay Ocellus?” She looked at me and continued to be a bit twitchy, she shook her head no. “Can we pull over, I think Ocellus is feeling something she doesn’t like.”

“Sure thing!” Murray announced while doing so. “What’s the problem little lady?”

“So… much… hatred…” We were like somewhere between fifty to seventy miles from the volcano and could see it in the distance. If Ocellus was feeling what I think she was feeling…

“Oh Overlord Ember, that bad Ocellus?” I asked as I got up and hugged her tightly, she dug her face into my neck and continue to shake and quiver. “I don’t think we can take Ocellus anywhere near the volcano.”

“It’s him… it’s him…” Ocellus whimpered with a blank or dead look in her eyes. “So much hatred… so impossibly strong even at this distance.”

“She can feel Clockwerk from this far away?!” Sly asked with surprise. “That’s a lot of hatred.”

“Yeah, Ocellus is sensitive to that kind of stuff, especially all the malice or evil cores from the last world. Incapacitated her pretty badly and left her with headaches.” I held Ocellus tight, and started to run my claws down her frill and caressed her head as she clamped onto me tightly. “I can’t in good conscience let her go near the guy if he’s generating enough hate that she can feel it from miles away.”

“He’s pacing around in a circle, he’s feeling anticipatory.” Ocellus was starting to space out, her eyes were clenched tightly as she squeezed me harder. “He knows we’re in Russia…”

“That’s an incredible talent. Murray what’s the name of the town we’re on approach for?” As Bentley inferred someone older, I noticed Pom look my way. She knew I would be helpful around a volcano, but that would require that I leave Ocellus behind. She wasn’t about to ask me to help out. “We need to drop Ocellus off with someone that can watch her.”

“The town of Sobaka.” After Murray said the name of the town, it seemed to surprise Bentley.

“Huh, that’s ironic.” Stated Dormarch with a humorous tone, next to the device was Pom calmly brushing Dolly’s fur and Dolly looked like she was trying not to enjoy it.

“What’s ironic about it?” Quiverwing asked.

“Well ‘Sobaka’ is kind of related to the Russian word for canine, which is соба́ка.” Dormarch stated with a slightly hint of amusement.

“It’s okay to be concerned… but I’ll be much safer in the town.” Ocellus barely managed to get out through what looked like a migraine.

“I can watch Ocellus.” Offered Mopsy as we drove onwards.

I didn’t know how to feel about the possibility of leaving Ocellus behind, I held my troubled cuddle bug closer to myself.

“Also the town is run primarily by canine animalistic and biped people and the area has a few animal wolf packs.” Bentley murmured while glancing at Pom. “No bets on what the most popular pet of the region is.”

“Why-….” Droned Pom out as she cuddled Dolly to her chest, Dolly looked up at her and yipped something that sounded encouraging while wagging her tail. “Oh no, I’m not getting out of the van or showing myself in town! After what happened within the Yellow Dog territories in the last world, I’m well within my rights to veto making an appearance of any kind. Ask Shanty, Smolder and Ocellus about why I’m reticent about this town. Also I’m pretty sure even Dodo is aware enough to know why.”

Dodo stuck his head down next to the windows on the passenger’s side and nodded, the motion being caught by the people in the back.

“If we get into trouble…” Started Ocellus, still clutching to me like her life depended on it.

“I’ll show myself, but I won’t like what might happen.” Yeah, I can see why Pom would be wary of an area with an excessively large number of canines. Like what happened with Dolly’s family in Camden Town.

-An hour later, Pom-

Okay, Ocellus was going to be quite upset that she was once again a liability, but at least Mopsy could look out for her. I had kept to my promise of not stepping one hoof outside the van or letting myself be visible to any of the hundreds of canines in the area. I didn’t want a single person in this town to get even a hint of a whiff of me. I so did not need that kind of attention right now.

I didn’t ask Smolder to come with us, she could have stayed with Ocellus, but she decided to come with us. Gosalyn Wattlemeyer Mallard, much to her adoptive father’s complete surprise, also chose to stay behind and that gave Drake some peace of mind.

“Hey someone’s on the side of the road under a tree!” We were about five miles out from the volcano when I spotted a figure laying in the snow that was almost unnoticeable.

Pulling to stop, Murray hopped out and quickly brought back an unconscious cold and injured fox back in. We tended to his wounds quickly with Dormarch’s help directing us in what we needed to do to save his life.

Even as we worked on the fox we continued driving towards Clockwerk’s lair. The fox’s injuries, while bad, did not currently require a hospital visit provided he didn’t do anything too stressful.

We stopped about two miles away from Krakarov for a snack break.

Ten minutes later after working our way through snacks on the side of the path we were on, the fox woke up clutching as his side with a grunt where he had a particularly nasty gash that had to be sewed shut.

“Where… where am I?” He sat up and glanced around his eyes then fell on us.

“Are you okay sir?” Sly asked of him. “We found you in the snow and patched you up.”

“Where… Carrots? Cottontail?! Funny Bunny!?! Hopps!?” He seemed to recognize Sly from what I can see, but didn’t seem to care as he was more worried about something else. He tried to get up, but sat back down gasping in pain. “Oh no, where is she, please tell me you didn’t find a dead rabbit next to me!”

“You were the only one out here.” Crossing his arms, Murray tilted his head and hummed in thought. “Yeah, you were the only one around and we helped you out.”

“Who are you?” The fox was started to look panicked and wild eyed as I asked my question. “Also calm down, we’ll find your friend if we can get a lead. We’ll make a search party of it.”

“Interpol Officer Nick Wilde at your service and I seriously don’t want to lose my partner like this!” Nick was hyperventilating and his eyes were looking around wildly.

“Dormarch, a little help here?” I haven’t had a good breakdown in a while, Nick was doing more than enough of that on his own and going into hysterics.

“Apply at least two pounds of force to his face to focus him.” That Dormarch suggested that without a hint of humor in his voice.

Shanty stood on her hind legs and slapped Nick across the face and grabbed him by the shirt, then started shaking him violently with her hooves in a comical fashion.

“You be getting a hold of yourself and be telling us what be happening to you so we can be being helpful!” Shanty then sat down and held out a hoof to him while looking to the rest of us. “I do be needing to test my leadership skills after all.”

“Right…. you’re right. Judy, my partner, isn’t going to go down that easily… I think she still had her shock pistol when I last saw her. Mine was destroyed by those robot falcons.” Nick shivered and hugged himself. “They were everywhere. We got ambushed pretty badly investigating Clockwerk’s lair, Judy, Carmelita and me.”

“Is Carmelita okay?” Sly asked intently.

“She was captured before we could make a full escape, Clockwerk is no joke and needs more than a few decent Interpol agents. The guy has robot falcons, lava slugs, mines, laser traps, poison dart shooters and likely much more waiting… Judy lead the falcons off of me and we got separated.” Nicked was looking at his bandaged side. “Still had one falcon on me, took the machine apart with a well-timed swing from a tree branch… but as you can see… I’m in no condition to demand arrests.”

“You don’t seem very intent on talking down to us… why is that?” Quirking his eyes at the fox, Sly waited for a response.

“I have a bit of a history… with hustling people. Also you patched me up and possibly saved me from bleeding out.” Giving a quiet chuckle, Nick added on. “Aside from that, you’re not really bad guys from what I know of the Cooper Gang. Judy owes me a twenty… if she’s still among the living.”

“Can I get it on record that my friends and I are not in the Cooper Gang?” I clarified while looking over the poor guy’s sorry state. “As far as you’re concerned, we’re just concerned citizens looking to help some people out of a bind and are hitching a ride with people we can’t know for certain are certified criminals.”

“Oh Leap Lamb working with criminal scum, say it isn’t so! Sorry for the sarcasm, but I think I’m a bit stressed.” Fairly understandable Nick, given the current circumstances and everything that may be happening. “Still, nice to know that I have some heroes to help.”

Author's Note

The Return of Wild Hops.

171. Lair Stakeout.

-Equus, Ponyville, Sugar Cube Corner, Gallus-

“Hey Gallus, is that Gavin?” Pinkie asked as I was sitting at a table with the ever adorable little griffon name Gavin snuggling up to me.

“Yep, apparently I’m Uncle Gal.” That and I was watching Gavin today for Jackie, the fact that she managed to even give birth to Gavin without problem is something else considering how cursed she is on a general basis.

“Uncle Gal…” Snorted Pinkie as she started giggling into her hooves.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up Pinkie.” I stated blithely and Pinkie Pie immediately does so. “Now can I get something for the little guy here, he looks like he could use a snack, got any baked bads?”

“I still don’t know how you griffons or Spike can eat those things.” Groused out the pink pony. “Though yes, I can make you some.”

“Well I’ll admit that they taste better without the soda and the chips in them.” The minced worms were a necessary part for the flavor and I’m pretty sure little Gavin could agree. “At least I’m not stuck watching Gavin’s cousin Silvers, that little bundle of fun is dangerous.”

“Then who’s watching Silvers today?” Pinkie asked and then Silvers was brought in by Silver Stream who looked a little bedraggled and slightly burnt.

“I warned you.” I stated bluntly to Silver Stream.

“Yeah, but they are still adorable!” Silver Stream stated cheerfully holding up the little chimera and all the heads mewled at me adorably while waving their paws. The dragon head burped up flames and Silver Stream aimed the head at the ceiling and away from every pony around. “I thought it would be a nice day for us Silvers to stick together, I heard you were foal sitting as well.”

“Yeah, but Gavin doesn’t cause nearly as much trouble as Silver, Silvia and Sylvon tend to.” I addressed each head of the chimera that looked at me innocently, about as innocent as Jade could act when she had a piece of fish jerky sticking out of her mouth. “Plus the little guy is fun to be around, those three are trouble.”

The three heads of the chimera all gave me a bright cheerful smiles with closed eyes. That chimera was going to be a real hellion later on in life, especially if they took after my… erg… ‘Abyssinian Sister’… at least more than their other mothers and they were already little troublemakers as it was what with the dragon headed tail.

I don’t know how much worse they could be.

That’s when Silver, the unicorn head of the chimera, eyes and horn lit up and everyone panicked as the chimera was about to have a magical surge in a crowded area.

-Earth, Krakarov Region, Judy-

I was short of breath and my eyes were wide open as I stayed down and hidden, why did they have to be falcons… robot falcons no less!

I continued to wrap my bleeding leg with a torn off piece of my own uniform, all while looking to the sky and keeping my ears pressed against the back of my head as I leaned against a boulder.

I hoped Nick got away, because goodness knows we needed all the help we could get. I was still taking stock of my situation. One of the worst things about the guy having his lair built into a volcano was the heat, that and the magma slug minions that were a sign that something supernatural was going on here.

After Carmelita was captured by Clockwerk, this investigation quickly went to heck in a handbasket. There were forty or more large robot falcons patrolling the region and I had a leg injury slowing me down.

There were days when being an animalistic bunny was rough, but this was one of the worst.

Peeking from behind the rock, I saw at least twenty or so robot falcons flying around in my general vicinity. One wrong movement and they would come to eviscerate me.

Again, why did they have to be falcons? Oh right, because we were dealing with a giant robotic, possibly demonic, owl thing. Well ‘dealing’ would imply that we were succeeding in some capacity. We definitely weren’t, but hopefully Nick could bring some help.

At least I could hear if the falcons coming and pinpoint every single one of them in the air. There were hundreds of them when we were ambushed, but now there were just like forty on constant patrols.

Having that many robots falcons active at once must be prohibitively energy expensive, but this place did seem to have a large geothermal plant built into it and that would explain why the guy could field hundreds of them at once.

Also the tower behind the criminal’s base was hopefully not what I thought it was.

Okay Judy, what did you have going for you at the moment? My shock pistol was still well over half its charge, I wasn’t critically injured, my partner likely made it out okay and I wasn’t freezing to death.

I was more likely to die of hyperthermia, I was better off being in the snow than near the volcano like this and the only reason why I wasn’t in said snow was because of the motion sensors I spotted in the surrounding areas. Didn’t exactly know where I could safely move at the moment.

I was to the west of the only known entrance into Clockwerk’s lair, a narrow pathway beyond a gate that had a ton of mines planted on it by the falcons after my best friend and I got out.

Come on, you’ve been in tougher spots then this. Just got to think of what to do.

Holding my right paw over my pistol I glanced out at the landscape and carefully limped my way over towards the snow to cool off while taking a sip of the canteen I had with my left. First order of business I really needed to cool down and vent the heat from my body through my ears.

-South of Clockwerk’s Lair, Pom-

Sitting in the heat of the volcano felt nice to me, I surveyed the surroundings with my binoculars and saw several things that were not visible to the naked eye. Bentley really knows how to make functional bird watchers like these into something special.

The binoculars could apparently see motion sensors, which I circumnavigated easily, along with a number of other things. Dolly was quietly sitting on my back as I scouted the area with them and she was tense, I could almost feel her itching for some action.

Why does life continue to throw high energy, and possibly maintenance, dogs at me? Not that I’m complaining, because I do love dogs a lot within certain doses. For example, I knew I would never tire of loving my god puppies.

“Dormarch.” I pulled him from my shoulder bag and the PET immediately lit and I received a salute from the fish tailed Dalmatian on the screen. “Can you connect to the binoculars and tell me if there’s anything unusual about what I’m seeing here.”

“Asking for permission to connect to Bentley Tech Binoculars… permission granted.” While Dormarch hadn’t been his cheery self, he was at least willing to help. “For the record, I’m still trying to get used to the stuff I’ve just found out about myself. I’ve a run a self-diagnostic and well… I’ll tell you about it later when we have the time Leap Lamb.”

“What do you make of that tower Dormarch?” Beyond the path leading up to the lair and a little bit on the far side of the central volcanic region was a giant owl shaped tower.

“Pom… that’s… that’s not a tower...” There was a worried look on Dormarch’s face.

“What do you mean that’s not a tower? Sure there’s a large amount of energy being funneled into it, but that seems to be more for the death ray from what I’m picking up.” Bentley of course was actively seeing what I was through the binoculars.

“You don’t see it?” Queried Dormarch curiously, before motioning for me to focus on it. “Okay, the thing may be a tower at the moment with the way it’s sitting, but… it’s actually almost fully functional colossal mechanical owl. It looks to be ninety percent of its construction is completed. It doesn’t appear to have its landing gear and might be capable of flight already.”

“… I don’t think I can fight something the size of a five story building.” Like I’ve had good luck with that before.

“Yeah, that would be a pretty big ask of you.” Thankfully Bentley agreed with that assessment. “Get a sweep of the path up to the lair for me will you Pom? Shanty’s on the lookout for any robot falcon patrols”

I swept the binoculars to the gate, the pathway littered with mines, I focused on the odd placement of the boulders on some of the nearby cliffs.

“I think you need to watch out for those boulders.” I focused the binoculars on them and Bentley marked them down on the binoculars visuals. The Cooper Gang would be leading the assault and their van was being specifically prepped for it.

We already knew Drake would stick with Officer Wilde and try to help find his partner Ms. Hopps.

As for what Smolder, Shanty, Dolly and I would be doing? We would be trying to disable the death ray tower, which apparently is a giant mechanical owl body that Clockwerk might or might not have been planning on moving into after successfully dealing with Sly.

I focused the binoculars higher up the path on a cavern.

“That’s where the controls will likely to be, getting energy readings from there, also biological life signs.” Hearing Bentley mention biological life signs I pointed the binoculars at the magma slug slithering out of the cavern and then I concentrated on one of the robot falcons that was a little bit bigger than I was. “Our van should be able to handle those things no problem, I’ve taken the liberty of adding a lava proof plow onto our vehicle.”

I panned the binoculars up to the path into another portion of the lair from the cavern.

“Can you move the binoculars to the right and down a little?” Following Bentley’s instructions, I saw a path leading past the cavern. The only problem was that it was a lot of open space, but it was a quicker path to the tower. “That’s the way you’ll be going, we’ll draw all sorts of attention to ourselves. Clockwerk is not going to ignore us in the slightest, but he may leave you to his defenses and that will allow you to get closer to that tower sized owl.”

“I do not be liking our chances of actually taking that thing down.” I turned the binoculars and saw Shanty perched on one of the rock pillars barely out of sight of the robot falcons.

Shanty was to the east outside the gates leading up to the lair, near the pathway the Cooper Gang would be using for their assault. Smolder was with her to make sure she didn’t slip and get burned to a crisp in the lakes of molten rock all around the volcano.

“Still no sign of Officer Hopps.” I was worried about the bunny, at least I recognized why Wilde and Hopps sounded familiar. They were around the Camden area when Dr. Mandrill attacked the bank, Dolly even helped them out with the fighting in the streets back then when I took to the sky in a mostly uncontrolled manner.

“Well that’s better than finding a body, Carrots has to be laying low and managed to evade being torn apart.” Out of everyone here, Nick was as worried about Carmelita and his partner Judy as Sly was. “Wait sweep the binoculars back to the left side of the entrance, down a little. There, zoom in!”

“Dried splotches of blood, good eye Officer Wilde. I’m going to start analyzing it…” Before Bentley could say much more, Dormarch spoke up.

“Blood grouping confirms a female grey rabbit’s blood type, I can only hope your partner didn’t go too much farther in. Animalistic rabbits are more vulnerable to hyperthermia than hypothermia, due to a lack of sweat glands that biped rabbits do have, and yes I can distinguish between the two by scanning blood samples.” Rather informative Dormarch, like how dogs pant to exhaust heat from their bodies. Dalmatians were good at handling hot climates, which is why Dolly was perfectly fine with being this close to a volcano. “Do you have sweat glands Nick?”

“Yeah, I’m a more biped than animalistic if that’s what you’re asking.” Nick responded quickly. “Prude Jude is good at faking biped at least.”

“Why would she have a nickname like Prude Jude?” Not important, but I was trying not to focus too much on the giant mechanical owl the size of a building equipped with what Bentley called a death ray.

“Heh, an animalistic she may be, but she’s a prude to naturalists like you.” When Nick said naturalists, I was thinking he was talking about those who acted like animals. “Had to go to a naturalists club with her once as part of a case, basically a place it’s a place full of biped and animalistic nudists to exercise and relax. We were looking for someone at the time and Judy couldn’t look at anyone without feeling squeamish about their lack of clothes, bet she’d actually be pretty uncomfortable around you too Leap Lamb.”

“Did I really need to know that?” Trying not to think about the fact that in general most of the people on Equus were nudists. Thank goodness Minotaurs weren’t nudists, or else I’d have more issues with a few of the visitors that I helped around Huoshan.

“No, but I’ve got to get my fun in somehow, while entirely resisting the urge to rush out there unarmed to be torn apart by robotic birds. My partner is a decent survivalist, she was at the top of her class at the police academy no less.” Mr. Wilde seemed to get somber. “Judy really had something to prove and has long since proved it, but she was definitely compensating for her size and her adorable appearance when I first met her. Also I don’t think anybody knows what it’s like to have almost three hundred brothers and sisters while being the middle child in all of it. It’s a good thing her parents were really good farmers.”

“I think I might know someone who has a comparably sized family.” I looked over my shoulder at Dolly who was sitting there wide eyed and her lower left eyelid twitching.

“Almost…. three hundred… brothers and sisters…” From what was being gathered through our bond, Dolly was trying to imagine the number of her siblings just being doubled and the possible outcome of it. She could barely fathom handling triple the number of puppies, even I didn’t think it was possible. Judy’s parents had to be really good at their jobs to raise that many kids. “To think I thought our family was large and unique… well we’re still the largest ‘animal’ family at least. Don’t know how long that’ll last if we get outed as being close to animalistic.”

“Comparable to Judy’s family? Hah, I’d like to actually see that.” It seemed Nick was both tense and stressed, I was too with Shanty and Smolder being so far out. “Come on Carrots, where are you?”

“Okay guys, start coming on back and I can give you a briefing on a possible plan I’ll have in that amount of time.” It was almost as if Bentley was as quick witted as Equus’s most annoying Abyssinian in existence. Which is more a compliment to Bentley than Jaded.

I put my binoculars on Shanty until she managed to get back onto land and she avoided the sensors deftly. She might not be able to leap as high as I can, but she can really move and I could see her slinking her way between the motion sensors like a professional heading towards my position while Smolder flew a bit higher as she follower our favorite goat.

I wasn’t about to ask what Cooper has been teaching her, because Shanty looked to have learned a lot about taking care of herself. Even then, she still got into danger when I wasn’t around to protect her.

Sighing as the scouting party gathered up, we all started on our way back to the van.

-Cooper Van, ten minutes later-

“Okay, we’ve got a lot of problems going into this. First off, the main pathway is littered with mines, rolling boulder traps and from what Shanty scouted, rock filled with bubbles of a slow acting lethal poisonous gas. There’s no way Clockwerk won’t have found a use for the gas in those boulders. He’s probably already set up a gas trap for Sly.” Bentley was going over each thing we’ve scouted out with a slide show. “That’s going to be the problems we’ll face heading up there, but I’ve already prepared a counter for you Sly. Keep it well hidden until Clockwerk traps you.”

“Can do Bentley.” Sly was staring out the front of the van at the volcano.

“I think Dodo finally be getting what you wanted.” Shanty said as she looked off in a direction at a wall of the van. “He not be finding the rabbit though, also did we really be thinking she would reveal herself to a living mechanical ostrich?”

“That’ll make things somewhat easier then.” Bentley sighed with relief. “Okay, so we’re going to need to know how fast Dodo can get your team through the open pass Pom.”

“Dodo can run at speeds that break the sound barrier when given enough space to build up to it, also he can do that while safely carrying all of our weight quite easily.” Despite being two legs and a neck ending in a head, Dodo was capable of handling a lot of weight. “All the uneven terrain is going to slow him down though.”

“Having a supersonic ostrich machine will help you get close to that mechanical owl body marauding as a tower, but actually getting to it is still going to be a problem. If there are as many robot falcons as Officer Wilde has report, then it’s going to be a big issue as they’ll be likely connected to the owl tower through the geothermal plants we’ll shut down once we make it through.” Bentley showed us a picture of the ‘owl tower’ and it looked more menacing when you got a zoomed in picture of it. “While we’re busy trying to deal with Clockwerk, Wilde and Darkwing will be looking to extract Judy Hopps from the area while our two teams have Clockwerk’s total undivided attention.”

“Carmelita’s not going to want to let you guys go, even if you are helping us out.” Nick sent a glance my way. “She’s not too big on vigilantes either, even if you were technically necessary to saving a lot of people.”

“I don’t think Cape Suzette would still be standing if we didn’t stick around, the robots there were made using a prior models blueprints. If the robots had been made to the same blueprints that the Red MEL had been made with, well... the entire city very well wouldn’t be standing even if you figured out how to deal with the heavily armored robots that didn’t have the same weak point. Thankfully that Red MEL was acting as a central control point for all the other robots.” Clearing his throat, Bentley calmly got us back on track. “We’ll deal with Carmelita after it is all said and done, mostly that’ll be by running really fast and pulling out of the area after we’re sure that Clockwerk is no longer our problem. Sly might pull something, but that’s only if Carmelita is okay by the end of all this. If she’s injured…”

“What can I say, Inspector Fox is my favorite officer and she’s a rather nice view when she’s chasing me down and shooting at me with her shock pistol.” Sly tipped his hat to Nick. “Sorry, but I’m not into guys. Also if Carmelita were hurt, nothing would stop me from making sure Clockwerk wasn’t a threat to anyone.”

“That’s okay, I know this little mink in Zootopia that I might want to start a relationship with. Otherwise I’m kind of married to this job because of my best friend and partner.” Nick didn’t seem to find it too awful to work with us. “Carmelita’s jetpack is probably still out there somewhere, she had to ditch it somewhere before the robot falcons caught up to her. Still has plenty of ammo and fuel left. We didn’t come out here underequipped, we just didn’t expect the number of robot falcons Clockwerk had. The twenty or forty we’re seeing right now? He has at least ten times that waiting in the wings.”

“We’ll deal with it.” I stated with a sigh, receiving some looks from my friends. “We’ll have to if we’re going to end this mechanical monster that ‘Ozzy’ could feel from that far away. Nothing redeemable can put out so much hatred that you can almost feel it in the air like this, even I can almost feel it and we’re not like ‘Ozzy’ when it comes to being sensitive to this kind of stuff.”

“How do we start this plan of yours?” Smolder asked as she got up and came over my way chewing on some gems she had dug up. “I do want to get back to our friends that we left behind for good reasons.”

“I’m glad you asked, Clockwerk thinks he’s well protect well… considering what I asked Dodo to drag here, he’s about to find out what it’s like to mess with someone of my genius.” Opening the door to the back of the van we piled out and saw that Dodo dragging a mostly intact robot falcon with his beak towards us. “Thank you my most intelligent metal friend.”

Dodo dropped the robotic falcon and warbled cheerfully.

“Nick you and Darkwing can start your search once we thoroughly have Clockwerk’s attention, if you want to stay out of it afterwards or help, that’s for you guys to decide.” Bentley moved towards the robot falcon. “Now let’s get this show on the road and we’ll start with giving Clockwerk a black eye!”

-Sobaka, Ocellus-

“Do you think they’ll be alright?” I asked nervously.

“They’ll be fine honey, they’re professionals… I think?” When even Mopsy wasn’t sure, it just made me want to whine more. “How’s your head?”

“Well the positivity around here is nice.” It’s at least cancelling out the mass of raw hatred I could feel in the distance.

“So what’s it like being an Empathic Vampire?” Gosalyn asked with a grin.

“It’s annoying as you wouldn’t believe, I don’t really have that much control over the feelings of others or how hard they will hit me.” At least I know Smolder’s feelings were a certainty. “A true constant migraine around beings like this Clockwerk guy.”

We were currently relaxing at a hotel and staying well out of danger. Sobaka got plenty of visitors, but usually those visitors weren’t as heavily muscled as the surrounding canine bipeds and animalistic people.

“Excuse me, but I believe you are the watchers of my adopted cousin?” We jumped and turned to a duck that resembled Donald, he had a camera hanging from his neck and a shirt covered in floral patterns. His voice certainly wasn’t like Donald’s raspy mess. “I was quite busy in Cape Suzette, but I heard that you and your companions were actively looking for my assistance?”

Author's Note

N/A

172. Volcanic Panic.

Author's Note

Music: Megaraptor - Yellow Planet (Bucky O' Hare Metal)

172. Volcanic Panic.

-Equus, Ponyville, Sweet Apple Acres, Twilight-

“So you’ll give me back the missing piece of Equestria after we manage to complete the world summit, because your daughter is really trying to drag things out.” Grousing this out to the person on the other side of the table didn’t help me with the amused demeanor she was giving off.

“Oh, most certainly, my kitten needs to make things right and she has gotten multiple people working on this even before she knew about the Grogar Cultists thing. Any failure at any part of our current plans will end with the responsible parties getting the worst kind of non-lethal punishment imaginable.” Kuril was just filing her claws as she sat at the table waiting on a home cooked apple family meal, a good meal that was not made by her own paws. “I mean aside from a lifetime permanent ban from my restaurant of course… I can definitely do far worse than Jaded can. If you know what Zecora can really do, then you can imagine that fairly well.”

“How are you a part of this and why do you say that like Jade’s been following ‘your’ orders and not the other way around.” The response I received was an evil grin.

“Do you think Jaded is the only one that can plan? Am I not the mayor or ruler of my own little country right now? Both Jaded and I have our own plans in motion and Jade is busy securing the failsafe. Discord certainly found it deliciously ironic when I ran things past him.” Kuril just looked at the apple trees and sniffed the air, her mentioning Discord sent a chill down my spine. The lovely Abyssinian grinned and tipped her pointy hat to me. “Those pies they are making will be glorious. Look, even if all my kittens are amazing Twilight, nobody is perfect and we can only do our best as leaders. Yes, you’ll get the Airship Mauled region back, but some things have to happen first. We’re currently forcing an uneasy balance and quite a few people are in on it, one is that you still need to ferret out any remaining Grogar cultists.”

“There’s only one, maybe two holdouts left.” Say what I will about Tianhuo’s blisteringly insane work ethic, but her and Pom’s Canis Minor puppies were currently the best on loan support we were currently getting. Not that my brother or the Crystal Ponies helping us were bad or anything, I can trust the crystal ponies to not want anything to do with Grogar after going through what they did with Sombra.

-Earth, Russia, Krakarov Lair, Clockwerk-

“You’ll see my dear, Cooper may have gathered a bunch of annoying pests together, but they will need more than bravado to take me down!” I left the glaring female in the tube and turned towards the cameras as they focused on Cooper's approach. “Even if it is incomplete, my secondary body is fully capable and I can control it remotely.”

“You’ll never get away with this Clockwerk!” The bait for my trap shouted and I ignored her.

It was unfortunate that I had missed the other two officers, but they were unimportant. This would be a rather delicious little reunion, provided Cooper even makes it far enough to be trapped by me.

-Krakarov Entrance, Sly-

Murray plowed the van through the gate and let Clockwerk know exactly where we were, the van’s gun rose into position.

Speaking of positioning, a specific robot falcon flying among a number of falcons was about to sneak in and open up a different avenue of attack for when we needed it the most.

Okay Clockwerk, were you ready for Team Cooper, Team Leap Lamb and Team Interpol all at once?

Well… Team Interpol is going to be a little tied up for a bit, but they’d have our backs to keep this whole situation under control once they got around to getting back together.

Nobody wanted building sized metal owls with death ray eyes flying around after all.

I took aim with the gun and glared up at the owl tower gazing over our pathway forwards from a distance. Once I started firing, I wasn’t letting off until the gun was destroyed or until we made it to the cavern.

“Looks like he’s sent out a welcoming party Sly!” That he did Bentley, let’s show him why our friendship will go the distance.

“Here we go Sly!” Murray hollered loudly as he pushed the van forward and up the path.

Hundreds of robot falcons poured out and started to circle, preparing for dives on us from varying angles.

What made a Cooper wasn’t the blood in their veins or a family heirloom in the form of a book, it was the company they kept.

“Bring it on you maleficent mechanical monster.” I was in the presence of the best company a guy could ask for!

-Pom-

“They’ve started, Bentley be giving us the green.” Shanty motioned to Dodo looking down at her in his back. “Okay Dodo, Set Sail!”

I really didn’t like the idea that we were basically large distractions.

Dodo warbled and surged forward slowly and began picking up speed.

Dolly and I were on Dodo’s back behind Shanty, Smolder squeezed in on Shanty’s right in the seat.

“Reminder, Shanty is not immune to lava and should stay with Dodo as much as possible. If for any reason we fall off, Smolder will be fine and both Dolly and I can glide to safety.” We were now crossing the open rocking field and that’s when the magma slugs and a secondary flock of robot falcons started targeting us. “Dodo is far too fast for the magma slugs to be a threat, focus on the falcons!”

“So we wait until they are all close right?” As Smolder asked this, Dodo turned and fired a cupcake into the face of a falcon and it suddenly swerved into another and they fell into a magma vent.

“Dodo knows his range better than we do, we’re to keep them off of him if they get too close.” I answered as I looked behind us. “Dolly we’re going to try and conserve as much energy as possible, but don’t be afraid to ask me for energy to bark blast.”

“Right, because things are heating up!” Dolly nodded and was on the lookout as several falcons dove on us from above, she quietly took hold of her skateboard and readied it. She was going to stay stuck to my back with the exception of extenuating circumstances.

“Please Dolly, no puns.” We were in the open, moving over rocky terrain with molten veins of weaker rock. At least we had room to maneuver. Sly’s team was on a really narrow pathway and had slightly more trouble at dealing with things that were directly above them.

Us on the other hoof… Smolder blasted the flacon straight above with a fireball, I fire a bark blast into the one swooping at us from the right to take out its head and Dolly smashed the approached from the left with a quick launch of her skateboard. Shanty fired a riptide, which immediately turned into a blast of superheated steam that surged behind me and Dolly to tear the wing off the one behind us.

“Shanty, maybe you should be careful with that, dehydration is going to be a problem around here.” That she barely fired it between my body leaning to the right and Dolly’s to left had me slightly worried for our safety.

“Sorry, but that be a really good shot yeah?” Shanty grinned and turned back to the front.

Dodo was not idle, whether he was firing baked goods from his beak or his normal energy pulse thing, he was continuing to charge forward and keep us closer to what was relatively safer terrain. Anything that came into his range was bound to be blown out of the air with machine precision if he targeted it.

We veered right as more falcons turned to start diving, we were almost able to see the path straight up to the tower, that’s when it turned its head and looked at us.

“Heavy Hooter is active!” I screamed, while pointing at it as its eyes lit up.

“Really Pom… that is what you want to be calling it? Oh no… Dodo!” The increase in Shanty’s voice made Dodo turn from looking at tower sized owl and speed forward as a beam bit into the rocky terrain behind us and started trail after us sending magma flying into the air and as soon as he passed behind a pillar the thing stopped firing. It seems to have lost us despite being out in the open a second later.

I felt Dolly shift and I felt myself slammed forward, looking over my shoulder Dolly was holding off the grasping claws of a robot falcon. Another two were almost on us.

“Everyone duck!” Smolder yelled and I lowered myself down, Dodo lowered his neck and head and ran underneath an archway of rock that knocked the robot falcon off our back.

The other two falcons swerved out of the way and opened their claws as they came in at us. Another four were circling and readying for a dive

“Another beam be coming!” As Shanty said that, Dodo angled himself for what I recognized as a lava tube.

“Dodo what are you…” I couldn’t ask the question as he ran us straight in before the beam could hit and I looked back at a massive wave of energy chewing up the entrance behind us before dissipating.

Dodo then started up and along the right wall, as the floor slowly opened up into more lava veins as we continued down the tunnel. The two falcons had to change positions so they could only come at us one at a time from behind.

I fired a bark blast back and it hit the closing robots right wing and sent it spiraling into the one behind it. After they exploded upon impact with the floor, it to started cracking, opening up and spilling lava out.

“Can you be going faster please?” Shanty stated as her dangling ears started to scorch from the narrowing tunnel and the quick flowing lava following right behind us.

“Can I second that?!” Dolly shouted through her paws as she resettled her skateboard onto her back.

Dodo suddenly veered to the floor and up to the left wall as a burst of lava exploded out of the right wall in front of where we had been, he started going faster as asked and we saw an exit to the tunnel that thankfully didn’t end in a literal ‘dead’ end.

“Dodo fire and then jump when we get close to the exit!” Glancing back at me with a half turned head, Dodo nodded and then turned back to concentrating on pumping his legs to keep us ahead of the lava filling the tube.

The four falcons appeared at the exit arrayed in a row with their claws extended and ready to rend us apart. Dodo blasted the second one in the chest and in an amazing show of dexterity he leapt up, stomped the third one and leapt off it before it hit the ground. The other two metal falcons were splattered into melted piles of metal when lava erupted from the tube seconds later.

We were now way off track and further out now, in a valley pathway going uphill with molten rock sloshing lazily against the ground behind us.

“We’re getting too far off track!” We needed to keep the larger tower sized mechanical owls attention.

“Can we stop from being derailed Pom?” Did we really need comedy in our lives right now Shanty? We were on a volcano that was fairly active at the moment.

“I’m having enough problems just staying on Dodo!” Smolder muttered, as she sat up next to Shanty. “Uh… guys... we’re about to be out in the open again and… incoming!”

We ducked down and as a metal falcon shot over us narrowly missing my face with its talons.

“Dolly!” Smolder was staring behind me in alarm.

“Oh dog, help!” Looking back, Dolly could be seen getting carried off by the falcon clutching at her skateboard.

Several other falcons were converging on the one that had hauled the now dangling Dolly off my back.

Looking down at the hot lava pooling in the base of the valley.

“Meet back with us at the path up to the Heavy Hooter!” I kicked off and up high, twirling and bringing my hooves to my sides I dove back down the incline.

Once the heat was really getting to me I spread my hooves and bounced off a powerful thermal after quickly morphing my wool into glide form.

I shot straight up high into the air, being lightweight always had its advantages as I was able to catch up with the falcon to slam into its left wing to grab it with my right hoof.

It stumbled and dropped in the air at my added weight and lashed out both its metal legs sideways at me while still clutching the board trying to get me to let go. The other two falcons started to veer and correct their angles of approach as I slammed my right rear hoof up into clinging to its body below the left wing joint.

I gritted my teeth and slung my left rear leg up in a buck to its face that staggered it in the air, it still hadn’t let go of Dolly.

Our falling momentum had entered a mostly straight glide as I held its left wing in place preventing it from flapping.

Suddenly our direction veered sideways as a violet glow overtook us and the two descending falcons missed us.

“Pom, take it out already!” Dolly yelled up at me as she jerked on the board with her front paws, managing to have gone from dangling to actively trying to free herself.

I lashed out my left leg once, still not enough, a second time, still not enough. Getting frustrated I added the magical wolf claw in and immediately shredded its head and upper torso.

The world went flipping and before I knew it one of the falcons slammed into me and dug one of its sharp piercing talons deeply into my flank.

“Agh!” I bleated before Dolly landed on the falcon’s back and drove her skateboard through its neck decapitating it. She then leapt onto me as I fell away and wrapped her paws around my neck, I spread my hooves to go back to gliding.

“That’s bad! Wool bandage it now, pushing the wool into position with my hind leg!” I felt Dolly’s rear legs dig into my backside and my wool bandaged the injury. I was about to ask what about the other falcon, when it was almost on us.

A series of shots blew through it from the front of the volcano.

I turned as saw Sly quickly turned the van mounted gun to blast another robot falcon away, but it had managed to get in close enough to rip into his left shoulder before it finally fell apart.

“Whoa, we have got to thank him for that save later!” Whooped Dolly as I veered back for the steep path leading up towards the Heavy Hooter, its eyes were glowing… but they weren’t focused on Shanty, Smolder or Dodo. Dolly finally noticed and her excitement immediately bottomed out. “Pom…”

They were on us and almost done charging, my eyes were widening as the malevolent force in them unleashed.

In a panic Dolly swatted the right side of my head and she was sending me feelings of urgency as we spiraled out of the way of the beam that started trailing down after us when she forced our momentum sideways.

I quickly got my senses back into gear and entered a steep dive as the rending beam of energy was almost at the tip of my tail. I could feel the raw power behind it, I seriously doubt my wool would block all of that for even a second.

I could see Dodo on the right and he had taken some claw marks from the robot falcons that Smolder was melting them with blasts of flames on the right side. Shanty was clinging to Dodo’s other side with her hind hooves and viciously cutting down any that tried to cling or claw at her beleaguered familiar that was still continuing to keep an amazing pace.

“Pom, almost to the ground here and we have falcons on each side, focus!” Looking up at the trailing beam and at the two falcons swooping down to prevent us from moving out of its path.

“Get ready to push my forward momentum as hard as you can Dolly. Hold on!” I inhaled deeply through my mouth the world started to slow down.

I could almost see the energy flowing out of the pair of eyes as the massive beam surged downwards on top of us with less and less room to maneuver by the second. Moving left or right would open us up to attack, staying in the center was a not a good idea unless I could land behind something sturdy.

Saw a spot, okay physics, let’s see if this works.

I exhaled and spread my front legs and after we bounced I flapped them and kicked with my hind legs, we bounced off to the right of the beam and Dolly pushed my momentum forward and towards the falcon coming from the right.

Everything was moving in slow motion as I thrust my hooves forwards and kicked outward with my hind legs to start up a powerful spin.

My wool shifted into drill form and I ripped through the falcon’s torso, I quickly shifted back into gliding as I spread my hooves back out.

We shot uphill and started to slow down as we came up to the base of a cliff. Inflating my wool to stop, we quickly dropped behind it before the beam could swerve and hit us. It quickly petered out after burning into the cliff above us for a few seconds.

The entire region started to quake and shift, the entire volcano started rumbling and that wasn’t a very good sign.

“The volcano may or may not be tearing itself apart now.” I looked behind me as the other falcon was already on us only to get the lower half of its body blasted away.

Dodo was suddenly there, ripping into its neck with his beak to slam the robot falcon into the ground and I think I even saw him swallowing parts of it as he quickly shredded it. After he was done with it, he came to a stop next to us to nuzzle Dolly and me affectionately with his pointy beak while warbling softly.

“Heh heh, Dodo stop it, we’re fine! I am so glad that this metal lug is on our side.” Dolly stated with her paws still tightly clamped around my neck. We all looked at the crust surrounding the base of the volcano started breaking apart and magama started rising up out of the volcano’s surroundings. “That’s- not good.”

“Understatement Dolly, this place is going to come down around us if the Heavy Hooter keeps shooting its beam at us.” Not the best name for a tower sized owl statue with death rays, but I was sticking to it.

Shanty broke out her canteen and started greedily guzzling the water in it down. I looked at the rents in Dodo’s body and looked like the falcons did some damage to his torso, but it was the most armored part of his body. I noted that Shanty was mostly fine, as was Smolder.

“Shanty did three more of her riptide attacks, it dehydrated her real fast… also what is that thing doing now?” Smolder brought our attentions to the side of the badly scorched cliff we were beneath.

We all moved over and peeked upwards around the base of the solid wall of rock protecting us from reprisal. The Heavy Hooter started to spread its massive wings, with a single flap a massive cloud of darkness seemed to shed off of them.

“Is that being a miasma?” Shanty asked and I narrowed my eyes at the sudden shift in the dark cloud that came off its wings, there was a loud mechanical buzzing noise filling the air.

That’s when I realized what that the dark cloud that came off the massive wings were.

“No… that’s the sound of at least a thousand of robot falcons flapping their wings… how many did this Clockwerk guy make?!” Yep, this guy was definitely up there with Teatime Clockwork in the overkill department. The monstrously large tower started to slowly flap its wings slightly faster. “You have got to be kidding me, it’s taking off?!”

“Yeah and all those robot falcons are coming down on us!” Yes, I can see that swirling cloud of talons starting to angle for us Smolder. “Run?”

“Dolly how powerful can you do that Aero thing?” I asked as the cloud started to form into a snake as the falcons started to stream towards our position, the Heavy Hooter was barely more than a hundred feet off the ground judging by the way it’s legless torso lifted up. That thing was actually flying despite how heavy it must have been.

“You’ve seen the limit of it.” Dolly stated while staring at the mass of death coming for us. “It’s mostly powerful in small doses and I can’t use it for too long, it drains me quickly, as in a few seconds.”

“Smolder, how long can you spew out fire for?” My second question was starting to get me some strange stares.

“About a minute or two, why?” Why indeed Smolder, we should be running and here I am planning something big.

“Shanty… cyclone?” Stating this as I turned to her. Shanty put away her canteen by tossing it into Dodo’s back as she came up to me with a grin.

“I be ready, if you can actually be doing it!” Shanty stated while trotting in place excitedly.

“Doing what?” A confused Dolly asked, she wasn’t there when we busted straight through Devotindos City’s front lines.

“Something that will take a lot of the fight out of all of us…” Trotting by everyone I walked up the hillside to the top of the cliff, I looked down to Dodo. “Dodo dig into the base of the cliff and find us after we do this, we’re going to exhaust ourselves! Dolly on my head, Shanty grab my left hoof, Smolder on my right.”

They all did as I asked, I started to inhale again and as much as my fragile lungs could take. Like Dormarch said, I really shouldn’t be using Dancing Flame with the complications it was giving to me, but this was an emergency and Dormarch wasn’t here. He was busy somewhere else.

When I exhaled I kicked off with my left hind leg and started to twirl in place as the snake like swarm of mechanical birds came down on us enmasse. Shanty’s rear legs started generating cutting arcs, Smolder blew fire and lastly… Dolly pointed her left index paw digit to the sky.

“Aero!” A swirling compacting bubble formed...

-At the edge of the volcanic region-

Darkwing Duck had found Officer Judy under attack and helped deal with a number of falcons, now they could go help the others.

Only something drew the duck, the fox and the rabbit’s attentions to the Volcano…

Something brightly sparked on the side of the volcano and that 'something' erupted into the sky like a nuclear explosion, drawing in a snake of darkness and lighting up a massive owl.

172. Digital Devastation.

Author's Note

For those wondering...

Pokemon Legends: Arceus.

Also other things keeping me busy, like finish watching the Games Done Quickly uploads on youtube.

The need to sleep, the need to exercise and one of the worst things to happen recently is that my father's estranged brother had a heart attack and died in a car crash.

I wasn't too close to my uncle, probably because he might have been a part of a cult that was draining his bank account constantly.

I'm trying to deal with the stress safely, we all only have so much time and I hope I have enough to finish this second million word yarn.

This is a near accurate representation as to how dangerous a digimon generally is to computer systems.

172. Digital Devastation.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Fortitude-

“I am Fortitude, the fantastically fragrant!” It had been a while, but my adventuring team has completed a mission for the guild. My magic repellant shield gleamed under the weight as I walked through town with my companion Skelly at my side.

Skelly just looked at me flatly and just be shaking her head, she grabbed the axe on her back and with a quick flourish sent an arrow that flew from the forest back to where it came from. The Puckwudgie’s were still attacking, but it was in good fun I think. We both heard a screech and continued on into Airship mauled with our cargo.

A hearty yak like me could carry a lot of weight, but I still wondered why friend Jade would need fifty seven pounds of milk moth butter? Said vat of butter was sitting atop the shield on my back. It took a while to milk all the large fluffy sheep like moths for this. They weren’t giant, barely half Arizona’s size and Arizona was getting a little bigger, but her wiry frame was still comparable to an average pony and it didn’t seem like she would get as big as her mother.

“Did you get the milk moth butter brother?!” I turned to see my dragon brother Flamberge and his golden nine tailed kitsune companion Sweetcakes. “We’ve gotten several gallons of velocipuss ink! I would like to just say that it was the worst experience of my life! How does Jade even know that such horrifically quick beings like that exist?! It didn’t help when I accidentally ignited some of the ink or that we had to find a second one after the first one blew up, because Sweetcakes swung her Tengu Fan a little too hard!”

My brother was carrying a large bottle full of ink on him and Sweetcakes tenderly patted him on the shoulder with one of her tails as he moped.

“The milk moths were excessively friendly and fluffy, Skelly and I enjoyed our time together on this greatest of missions in the milking of moths ever carried out.” I stated proudly, for what can be more impressive a story then constantly fighting nightmarish monsters? “Also we are knowing the truth now brother… your sword is fated to fight tentacle horrors!”

Yakhalla will happily take us both and we will be legendary and well known throughout history for our valor.

“You’re coming with me on the next adventure brother, no ifs ands or buts!” Flamberge yelled loudly while whipping his sword out of its sheath and raising it towards the sky. “Hey… uh sword… wake up, I’m doing an awesome pose here.”

The one rare occasion when my brother wasn’t yelling, the sword then lit up and was on fire.

“There you go!” Flamberge exclaimed things like he always does, with excitement!

-Earth, The World-

It now understood the concept of fear, even though it shouldn’t be able to.

Having witness four magical beings combine their strengths and somehow tap an excessive amount of energy they just shouldn’t be able to conjure up, but did so anyway.

The energy certainly hadn’t come from it and the destructive force was rather amazing even if it was kept to a relatively small area.

-Russia, Krakarov Volcano Lair, Clockwerk-

“What the…”

-Outside the volcano lair, Darkwing-

“Duck was…”

Sobaka, Mopsy-

“That noise… oh…” It was visible from miles away. It wasn’t massive, but the pillar of energy could definitely be seen from this far away.

Wow, they must be really busy over there.

“That was a combination of Pom, Smolder, Shanty and Dolly, I think they just overpowered the raw hatred around the… and-it’s back.” Ocellus went back to clutching her head in a migraine. “I’m wondering how they even managed that, because that… that was ridiculous even by Equus standards of ridiculous. The only thing that comes close is the Elements of Harmony themselves. What did they do, make a four part harmony and that catalyzed into a powerful magical reaction?”

“Yikes, I knew Pom was incredible, but that… can you still feel them?” I asked as I hugged her close, the love fighting off the aggressive emotions being radiated by one being.

“No… and that has me worried. The hatred didn’t disappear, it was just muted for a few seconds.” Ocellus sat back and looked to our fourth friend in this group at a restaurant. “So Maui, what kind of magic do you do while I’m on the subject.”

I turned to the duck and he looked about the restaurant, it wasn’t busy and we were mostly being left to ourselves. This town was fairly nice, especially since several of the canine bipeds and animalistic were giving me various looks of appreciation. Though Maui looked like he was paying more attention to the ears of any nearby dogs.

“Ancient ninja magic. It involved a frog god, a ghost ship and finding an idol. Messy business, I don’t want to really get into it here. The Duck and Mallard families have some relatively screwy history as I’m sure you know already, my adventure was up there with an island almost exploding and me getting some good dates with a nice sorceress girl named Hernae.” Maui called himself a medium-boiled detective. One that was much luckier than his cousin Donald Duck despite their similar appearances. “So what can I do as a job for you? I’m up for anything, except whatever was in that direction. Seriously, I’m having a dry spell of adventure here and I came all this way to meet up with you.”

-Cooper Van, Krakarov Cavern, Dormarch-

Seismic activity was detected by my PETs systems, hopefully that didn’t involve volcanic activity.

“Oh my gawd, what was that?! Okay, since we’re not dead and the volcano isn’t erupting despite all the activity going on around here, Murray’s going to be busy smashing computers that fall from the ceiling to open a passageway forward for Sly.” Which is what we were currently doing Bentley. We currently weren’t in contact with Pom’s team, but from what I heard from Sly as Bentley patched him up they were taking on a lot of robotic falcons. Speaking of falcon’s, my job was coming up so I should pay attention. “As for you Dormarch. Our repurposed robotic falcon has put itself in position and opened a back door into the system, so we’ll be able to hack into it more easily. Are you ready to enter and ruin Clockwerk’s computer systems?”

“Just so long as I don’t get cut off from the PET, I’ll be fine.” I really don’t want to know the feeling of erasure. “I’m ready to go Bentley.”

“No chance of that happening, the robot falcon we sent in guarantees an opening and I’ve made it so you will be pulled out immediately should a connection waver beyond a certain point.” Bentley was currently patching up Sly and his injury, while nasty, wasn’t life threatening. The van shook as it slammed into something. “Murray could you be more careful, stitching up Sly’s shoulder wound isn’t as easy as I’m making it look to be. Also keep us up to date on any information you may find on the side Dormarch.”

“Sorry, but we’re positively surrounded by magma slugs!” At the steering wheel, Murray was driving like a mad hippo. Not that I’ve seen many mad hippos, also I couldn’t feel the inertia, but I could detect it.

“I’m going to get a move on Bentley, but I’ll want to know what caused the world to shake like that. The volcanic activity around here is rather suspect. Entering Clockwerk’s systems now.” Waiting as the hole opened up wide enough in my space, I jumped forward once the entrance opened fully. I flowed straight into the local network. “Call me if you need something done after I’m done tearing through the security systems!”

I exited my home and traveled along the cable like pathway, I could feel the tightness of a tether tugging at me like a leash.

In a way, it was comforting, in others it reminded me why I was both tethered and bound to the PET.

Please be safe Pom.

-Clockwerk’s Computer Cyberspace-

Exiting the pathway I dropped onto a platform and looked around. Lots of ones and zeroes to mess with here.

“I’m at the firewall, it looks a bit simple, As do the protection programs… they look a lot like him, this guy has a really big ego and doesn’t really seem to do things by half.” Lots of antivirus software, how many AOL destruction codes did this guy need and why did he need it? There was a lot of other data I was seeing before me, locked outside the firewall that I could interact with physically. I was a digital existence born for this kind of work and my paws were good for manipulating data. “I see the data packets to open up the systems, they have their own protective little firewalls too. I’m going to go retrieve them now Bentley.”

“Be safe in there Dormarch, Pom wouldn’t like it if we lost you to an accident when you’re on loan.” That’s at least comforting Bentley. “I’ll back you up with my hacking skills when I’m done helping Sly and Murray.”

Several programs dropped in front of me and, like I said, they looked a lot like Clockwerk. Walking around on their wings and they hopped to fire a burst of spiraling red data at me. These things weren’t up to my intelligence, sure the red data could track movements but they were slow... like exceedingly slow.

“Claw Scratch Program, activate.” My front paws suddenly grew sharp and lengthy metal claws, I swung my right paw at the three bits of red data flowing towards me. All three spinning bits of data were destroyed immediately upon contact with my claws, I gathered the bits of data by somehow drawing them in towards me and absorbing them. The feeling of absorbing data was odd. Since the bits were now a part of me, I started programming the bits together into a single chunk, then I fired it right back at the three digital Clockwerk’s walking on their wings towards me. “Digital Bomb Program, activate.”

Couldn’t this Clockwerk guy have just programmed them to use their talons? Oh, wait, they didn’t have feet and they soon wouldn’t have forms anymore. They were torn apart and erased by a blast of quick data manipulation of their own attack programs, the mass of swirling red from the explosion sure was pretty.

The fact that that was so easy meant that I was about ten times more advance than this guy’s systems.

“Well that was…” I was about to say ‘easy’ and then looked into the smaller firewall data surroundings the packets. That’s when several smaller attack programs dropped around me, they looked like arrowheads and were firing small streams of red data at me like lasers. I dodged around them and moved in behind of one of the firewalls blocking off the data packets, the four streams of shots quickly blew apart the firewall. I grabbed the data packet, looked it over in less than a quarter of a milisecond as I started putting myself behind the remaining free floating bits of firewall data between me and them. “Firewall break!”

The platform around me warped and the warping knocked the little attacking programs off into the void where they tore apart into bits of bugged data, I quickly ran to the second section of firewall following the path. Once I got to the second one I saw three data packets surrounded by more small firewalls.

Four anti-virus Clockwerk’s and four defense arrowheads dropped from above once the security for this part of the firewall activated. The arrows started shooting at me and I quickly hopped around the stream of shots that slowly trailed after me, these defenses couldn’t think to shoot ahead to where I would be.

“Wild Bark Program, activate.” After saying that, I roared sending out a shockwave and then everything started to move as slow as molasses does in real time.

It took me a second to figure out what I exactly did with the data, I caused all the data to start moving in real time. I was still moving at the speed of a computer going full tilt, meaning every second for me was about a few days or hours for them. The difference in the lag and bandwidth was startling to me, then again I was a data manipulating creature so… this was kind of ridiculous.

If I was dealing with another data manipulating creature would they still be able to move as I do or even resist this effect? I was dealing with things so simplistic compared to the complicated reality the entity previous of my existence must have come from, that must have been some computer.

Only an exceedingly powerful computer could be a god or creator that would create an odd existence like mine, an existence that can transcend being a part of technology and manifest in realties that aren’t digital.

I would one day try to find out more about the ability to manifest and maybe… maybe I’d be able to give Pom a hug and physically interact with her like Dolly does. That’s the one thing I wanted to do more than anything, my one wish… was to physically hug my partner. She looked so fluffy and innocent... it was sad that life kept beating her down.

If it came down to it... I'd give my life for Pom.

It was kind of humbling to know I wasn’t exceedingly powerful, everything in this computer system was just nowhere near close to being on my level. The very minor virtual intelligences in this system weren’t anything compared to me.

“Agh…?!” Something caught my rightmost tail, one of the arrows had fired and that stung quite a bit. The hit really didn’t do much damage, but I still shouldn’t let myself get distracted as the programs I hit with the Wild Bark were slowly speeding back up.

I quickly dodged the other three slow moving shots that picked up speeds as the effects of me messing up the system were slowly fixing themselves.

“Retriever Bark.” I didn’t bother with saying 'activate' or 'program'. I just activated it and the blast immediately erupted from my mouth and destroyed the nearest arrowhead into a jumbled mess of bugged data by warping all of its data to be entirely senseless.

That didn’t need to say the program to actually use it was useful. Given it was a part of me, I just needed to work it down to the point I could just activate it mentally. I was just going to surpass this strange protocol that bade me to shout it out before using it… or even while using it? What the…? I’ll surpass this anyway!

Like Pom’s bark breaker, any defenses that particular arrowhead programs had were torn apart to make the jumbled mess it now was. That it was the one that shot one of my tails was maybe a little bit of a provoked assault on my part as I dodged the other three arrows shots.

I slashed apart the four spiraling bits of red data that came at me from the four Clockwerk Defense programs with my left paw. I cobbled together the data as I absorbed it like I did before.

“Digital Bomb.” As I fired the damaging data back.

I found I couldn’t avoid the verbal activation because Digital Bomb wasn’t naturally part of my attack program line, very interesting information.

The attack was stronger than before because it was using the data of all their attacks against them and that was four attacks. The swirling mass of red against the blue backdrop of cyberspace ripped two of them apart and even caught one of those arrowheads when it exploded violently taking out a bit of the firewall defense even without the data packets to unlock it.

“Come on Murray, we need to stop those slugs from destroying the computers before we can and… holy crap… Dormarch is some kind of savant with digital coding, he’s tearing Clockwerk’s firewalls apart!” Funny, it didn’t feel like I was tearing them apart, maybe it was because I was moving so fast relative to realities ‘real time’? “He might not even need my help at the rate he’s going.”

Approximate amount of time spent fighting the firewall in real time, ten seconds… huh. Felt like minutes to me. My goodness I felt slow, despite being the fastest thing in these built from the ground up computers systems!

I rolled out of the way of several arrowhead shots. Not that I really needed to evade much really, but I didn’t enjoy the concept of pain. The Clockwerk firewall defense programs were the most threatening and to me they were… pathetic really.

The damage they could do to me was minimal, one Cure Liquor would immediately restore any damage done to my body immediately at a cost to my personal energy. Still Pom could be in danger and I really should hurry this up.

Looking at the remaining threats, I narrowed my eyes. I barked out a shockwave as I charged forward and leapt over the attacks, clearing them easily as I brought my claws down on one of the Clockwerk defense programs and shredded it.

Landing I charged for two of the firewall data packets that had been cracked open by my overpowering attacks. I greedily took up the data and started for the third one, easily avoiding the attacks that were vaguely fired in my direction as I grabbed the last data packet.

“Firewall break.” The second level of the firewall warped and all the Clockwerk programs and arriving Arrowhead defenses were blasted apart into digital offal.

I had destroyed half the firewalls and had access to the camera systems, I blinked at what I saw.

“What the…” I had to slow down to real time to talk to Bentley, as genius as he was… I don’t think he could speak in rapid fire mixture of binary and instantaneous scripting. “Bentley, just got control of the cameras, the owl tower… it’s flying and I don’t see any signs of Pom’s group. I see a lot of damage to the surroundings done by the death ray.”

“I looked away for a second and you already busted the second firewall, you’re amazing Dormarch!” No I wasn’t Bentley, I was just better than these computer systems. I wouldn’t want to try to attack Clockwerk’s brain personally, as it was running on an actual intelligence and could be lethal to me. “Oh, that isn’t good, we don’t exactly have much other than the gun to deal with that, that the owl towet is fully operational without its legs is bad news! Finish breaking the rest of the firewall and pull back, but leave a clear path for me to control the lair's systems. I’m going to help continue the process in bringing this place down that the Big Hoot started with its death ray eyes, even if we don’t do anything the geothermal plant here is going to go into a meltdown eventually anyway. That’s going to be a massive problem for our survival and we still have Clockwerk to deal with.”

The other only image I could get aside from the massive flying robot owl was hundreds of robot falcons raining from the sky and a confused looking Dodo staring up at the clouds from the ground near a moderately destroyed section of the volcano.

“Roger, penetrating firewall level three now.” Given the information I had, I could concur with Bentley’s estimate, we needed to get everyone out of this lair alive and quick.

I returned to computer time and ran down the pathway to the third firewall portion.

As attack programs and defenses dropped towards the area, I unleashed a Wild Bark to slow them down before they could hit the floor. This left them inactive, as they would only start performing their duties when they hit the floor. I quickly used my claws to slash apart the smaller firewalls surrounding the five data packets with several dashes and lunging claw scratches.

I carefully consumed each data packet and knew how to take care of this locked firewall, before the defense could even think to start fighting back.

My people, or at least other digital entities like me, they shouldn’t be allowed to invade this world… because…

“Firewall break.” We’d be capable of tearing this entire world apart if we weren’t careful and the last time this world was breached, a lot of people unintentionally died.

The third firewall defense line didn’t even stand a chance against me as it warped and I gained control of it.

Starting for the fourth.

“Wait you already finished the third firewall section?” Bentley sounded impressed, I had to slow down before approaching the fourth firewall.

“It’s not really that hard, I slowed down the defenses before they could even activate and then took the data packets required to open the lock. Apparently Clockwerk doesn’t like failure so his programs self-destruct harmlessly, I think they were supposed to signal to him that the systems have been infiltrated, but I’ve been cutting off the warning signals when I take over sections of the firewall. I’ve already made sure nothing infectious has entered my system, I’m quite certain entities like me don’t appreciate getting worms like dogs.” Hopefully, something like that will only amount to the common cold with how strong I was compared to the fragile computers of this world. “Entering firewall four now, I’m an entity that was made for this paws on data manipulation Bentley. This… this is kind of sad and a relatively easy cakewalk. I’m kind of afraid of this world being made of cardboard and things like me invading, you wouldn’t be able to stop it. Imagine that I’m a... ‘simple search engine’... and I can do all of this.”

“I could disconnect you from the PET you know.” Bentley offered, not in anger, but understanding. That turtle knew what I was getting at.

“If I ever want something like that, then it’ll be on my terms Bentley and I’ll even do it myself.” I arrived at the fourth firewall. Seven data packets, an increasing defense firewall that hackers would have some problems getting through. Me however, I wasn’t a hacker, I was an out an out direct manipulator of the coding that was making up the systems here.

“Search Hunter Program, activate.” This attack program was something I made up, something that was entirely unique to me. It was going to be my signature move, based entirely off studying the data of Pom’s Dancing Flame as I watched her move elegantly at speeds her body couldn’t handle for too long.

Almost like a short ranged teleport, I crossed the space between me and the activation of the firewall defense systems without touching the floor of the firewall itself. In a single slash of my claw to the right bit of coding, the last firewall couldn’t even start to defend itself.

The program was designed to move me with blindingly fast speed and accuracy in quick bursts. Like the Dormarch of mythology I was named after, I could search and hunt with my own creation. It, functionally enough, acts like teleportation with defensive, offensive and utility applications. It could even work in combination with my other programs, the major drawback was the excessive overclocking for too long would damage me like a complete system crash. I hoped the Cure Liquor Program could keep up with self-inflicted damage.

My self-generated program sang to me that it was my own and quite variable in effect like how I wanted.

173. Sky High.

-Earth, Russia Krakarov Volcano, Clockwerk’s lair, Sly-

“I’m going to save Carmelita Bentley, make sure we have an escape route ready.” I hopped out of the van.

“Pathway opened Bentley, I’ve done my part and I’m back in the PET.” Dormarch’s voice said as I sprinted away through some doors.

I was making my way into Clockwerk’s inner sanctum, it was time to show him my displeasure. When I arrived I saw Carmelita in a position I didn’t want her to currently be in, even if she was cute when she was angry and currently a lovely damsel in distress.

Tightened my grip on my cane, looked at all the traps between me and her and started moving to rescue our favorite and completely fair inspector.

-Entrance, Judy-

Okay, so we were helped by Saint Canard’s crime fighting vigilante, not that he was popular or even infamous. Glad he was here though, because we might need him to figure out how to take down that flying monster currently scanning the landscape for any intruders.

Said intruders would be us three or Leap Lamb’s team wherever they currently were, certainly glad there was no radiation or fallout from whatever they did to cause that massive explosion.

“How are we going to bring something that large down?” I asked as I looked down at my shock pistol and then up the flying behemoth. “I don’t think a shock pistol is going to do enough damage to all of that, our shock pistols didn’t help much against Clockwork either.”

“His name is supposed to be said with an emphasis on an E where the second O is Carrots.” My partner peeked from behind the cover of the large rock as the massive legless machine flew overhead. “Easiest way to take it down would be gravity, but… I don’t even know how that’s managing to stay airborne. It’s flying on metal wings for crying out loud! How can something that heavy fly?!”

“Not going to lie, I’ve seen stuff just as weird as this like Gi-ants.” Darkwing’s commentary aside I spot something stuck on the flying towers left eyebrow.

“Speaking of Gi-ants, there’s the jetpack Nick! Remember when Carmelita ditched it to get away from the falcons?” I pointed it out and they too saw it dangling by its straps. “That thing was made specifically for fighting tough targets like tanks and the like. It’s on loan to us from Tokyolk, Inspector Tezuka heard we were going to be dealing with large machine problems and insisted we pick it up when we arrive. She had it on priority same day delivery too.”

“Inspector Tezuka, the crow that hates high tech criminal’s right?” Wait, how would Darkwing know that? I turned to ask him and he held up a hand. “Part-time SHUSH agent.”

“A vigilante with connections.” Nick grinned, while giving me an entirely smug look. I quickly pulled out my wallet and planted a twenty into his waiting paw which he quickly slipped into his pockets. “Nice.”

“So we can’t arrest him, because he has government backing. He can cover for the Cooper Gang and Leap Lamb’s team and can even legally call this a secret SHUSH mission. Carmelita is going to be quite peeved to hear about this if we survive this mess, especially when Cooper is in her sights and he legally comes to her rescue.” I wasn’t even angry, I was actually impressed with the fact that Darkwing could pull it off while coming off like a complete nobody in a costume based on an old television show to most people. “In any case if we can get to that jetpack, then we can deal with the both Clock-‘werk’ and his massive gravity defying headache currently circling the volcano. Shooting one of those giant wings off has to make it stop defying physics right?”

“How are we going to do that? It wouldn’t be a good idea to shoot at the jetpack with your shock pistol.” Nick’s right, the technology in the jetpack was a bit volatile if powerful. One of the few jetpacks in the world that can sustain flight for more than three hours without refueling, still had about an hour’s worth and lots of ammunition still left in it.

“Leave getting it down to me, I can probably hit it off safely with my gas gun or I can get up there and bring it down carefully personally.” Darkwing twirled his weapon and then opened it up to pull out a canister and then pulled another from his cape as he stashed away the first one. “Getting up there will use a full load of arrow gas, can the jetpack survive a fall from that high up or do I have to go up and fly it down?”

“Fly it down.” Nick and I said at the same time and we smiled at each other. “Jinx. Darn it Judy, (jinx).”

I grinned at Nick and he grumbled passed me a five dollars from his wallet because I said the exact same thing he did and jinxed him. Darkwing rolled his eyes out our shenanigans.

“Hold the fort down here and try not to draw its attention, when I head on up.” Darkwing stated as he started to take aim upwards as the slow flying massive owl slowly circled back around. “If you can, try to meet up with the Cooper Gang by carefully going up that path they blazed through into the cavern up there where Clockwerk’s lair is. They’re our ride out of here.”

-Karakov side, Dodo-

Eating dead flying robots, because maybe Dodo can learn to fly from structural consumption? Though Dodo didn’t understand why he was able to do this, he was never allowed to before.

Also flying seemed… fun?

“That’s right Dodo, flying is fun and you’ve already got a great handle on love and being generous!” PinkPie.EXE shouted from within his head. “Do you think if you got enough of those scattered parts together, would we actually be able to grow working wings?”

Pecking at more destroyed machine parts and continuing to eat them. I remember growing into this current shape from a small form that could fly, Dodo was a Cuckoo Drone before becoming an ostrich type Land Strider. Such a thing was preordained by previous programming and natural growth beyond that was not allowed nor was being ‘nice’.

Dodo liked being nice and friendly and didn’t miss previous programming.

Wait…

Since previous programming was also now no longer available and preventing upgrades and growth, Dodo is allowed to grow wings and modify his current form.

Overall structure will remain the same, Shanty likes Dodo the way Dodo is. Though making a little extra room for friends and being a little bigger wouldn’t hurt. This would require the stored data of EGG Mobile’s hover parts to assist in flight capacity, all necessary parts were present for recreation of the energy efficient hover unit.

So Dodo will use this information to upgrade a bit, while remaining recognizable! First consumption of spare parts to begin the process and then find a place to start metal-morphosis process.

“Ooh… fascinating, can I help with the redesign process?” The purple harmony program suddenly stated with excitement. “Also I wouldn’t suggest starting this process in terrain as unstable as this.”

Dodo didn’t mind helping, the six programs of harmony were his friends and true friendship mathematically equaled good things.

-???, Pom-

My chest was in agony as I felt something press down on it sharply. As I gasped and tried to sit up, I felt a pair of hooves on me, one wrapping around my chest and carefully pinning me down and the other covered my mouth as gently as it could.

“Please, don’t be making too much noise Pom. We’re not exactly being in a good situation.” Still, Shanty held me tight in a snuggle. “Also I’m glad I was able to be getting you breathing again like you be doing for me.”

“Dol… ugh…” I tried to say Dolly, because feeling a crippling pain from my chest stopped me and I put a hoof over where my heart is. I squeezed my eyes shuts and I could feel a few tears dropping from my eyes into my wool.

“Come on Pom, don’t put yourself under too much stress after Shanty just revived you. It took Shanty a minute or two to get you breathing again” Smolder was right at my side a second later. “Dolly’s fine and she’s right here with us, but she’s out cold, still breathing. You, however, weren’t when we landed here. Like Shanty said we need to be quiet, we at least took out all the robots falcons that came at us. Don’t honestly know if that was truly the last of them though.”

“Where?” I turned my head and tried to breathe carefully, my chest was burning. “It’s kind of hard to breathe.”

“Considering where we are… yeah, that checks.” Where were we Smolder? You and Shanty were blocking my view of our surroundings, the most I could see was a solid metal floor and felt some kind of rumbling movement. “It’s hard to breathe for those not naturally built for flight when we’re high up as we are. Your gliding form is cool and all Pom, but when you aren’t using it I don’t think you are meant for altitudes this high.”

“Where.” I stated with a more firm tone, despite how craggily it came out.

“That be the rub, but I think we can be handling it easily enough.” Shanty said while grinning worriedly and looking away. Not a good vote of confidence for where we were from that. “Once we can figure out what we be doing from here. Smolder and I be the only ones to stay awake through what we be doing and it is being quite awesome. The problem is… we be landing on the Heavy Hooter after we stopped going up.”

“Dolly’s magically drained herself, so she’s out until she gets plenty of rest. I at least know what magical exhaustion looks like thanks to Ocellus. You… you lost your ability to breath three fourths of the way up, Shanty thankfully knows how to do CPR.” Smolder looked at my chest and pressed a claw down on it making me wince as my erratic heartbeats made me greedily suck in as much air as I could, then she turned and picked up Dolly to show me that the Dalmatian was still breathing if unmoving and out cold. “Can you be honest with how your heart currently feels Pom?”

“Like it’s going a mile a minute and that my chest is trying to kill me… also did Shanty just say what I thought she did?” I lifted my head up and saw two massive wings swing up and then go back down. We were currently on the giant death ray owl?! “Oh we are so dead if it figures out we’re here.”

“Yeah, don’t know how you guys are getting out of this one honestly.” Smolder shrugged, she could survive this by carefully flying away and not being spotted. Fortunately enough, I knew abandoning us wouldn’t cross her mind. “We’ll come up with something before the owl notices us, we have plenty of time before it will...”

“Darkwing Duck!” Darkwing flew above us holding onto an arrow shaped cloud’s shaft and let go to drop down onto the back of the flying tower sized owl with us.

I let out a long drawn out sigh.

The Heavy Hooter tracked him with its head and it turned a full one hundred and eighty degrees, so it was now staring at us all down its back and its eyes started glowing malevolently preparing to fire its death rays.

“I don’t think I have it in me to actually dodge this…” I stated with a calm finality as I tried to stand up.

“I can’t be cutting through the beam with a single swing.” Shanty wilted. “I also not be having enough water in my body to riptide through it.”

“Sorry Ocellus.” Smolder you were one of the best dragons I ever knew. “Friendship and all that.”

“Don’t know what you guys are worried about, but I’ll find some way to get you all down safely.” Darkwing said turning to us as he twirled his gas gun in his right hand. “Somehow without crashing this thing with you on top of it.”

“I’ve just been revived from a heart attack, Caper Canine is out cold for the short remainder of our lives and we’re about to be hit with a death ray because of you.” The venom in my voice was fairly even toned. “It didn’t even know we were here until you showed up.”

“Hey, don’t worry, I’ve got this.” I’m sorry to think this Darkwing, but I didn’t quite hold your level of optimism here.

He gripped his gas gun with both his hand and fired a second before the death ray, the beam splattered his canister and… I blinked.

To our amazement the death ray was scattered all over the place into many smaller slightly less deadly rays that were nowhere close to hitting us and they were scorching some damage across the giant flying mechanical owl’s back. We passed through the gas cloud a second later.

“Refraction gas, not toxic to anything living either.” Calmly stated Darkwing as he unloaded the canister from his gas gun and put another one in it. “Useful for preventing sunburns on a nice day at the beach too!”

The large mechanical owl flapped in an unusual manner and seconds later a ten or so robot falcons rose up into the air above the Heavy Hooter's back and started to circle around for us.

“Uh…” Smolder intoned dumbly at seeing more robot falcons.

“I didn’t think it still had those left after whatever it was you did… say you girls can still fight right?” Darkwing tried with a weak grin.

“You’re asking us that when we’re basically down two?” Please note that I’m not in a fighting condition here Darkwing, but I would fight if I had to. “Shanty had to revive me since I stopped breathing after what we put ourselves through, I’m not exactly in great health at the moment. So let me ask you a question right back, how many times can you reliably use that refraction gas stuff?”

“So- we’re on a bit of a time crunch now…” Darkwing started off slowly as the robot falcons dived down on us and he raised his weapon at them.

“I can still be fighting, but not at my best.” Thankfully, Shanty was quite aware of outnumbered we were and there was the fact that the death ray could fire again at any time. “This is getting a bit crazy even for me and I don’t be having nearly that much water!”

“Yeah, even if they can’t critically injure me, I can’t exactly go claw to claw with those things alone.” Throws in Smolder with her arms crossed huffing out small spout of flames in anger. “One of them could simply drag me away from helping or protecting you guys.”

“If only you could greed out… but that wouldn’t end well would it?” I saw the look on Smolder’s face, it answered my question before I even bothered to ask what I wanted to. She might be a dragon, but she wasn’t a monster.

Looking up the eight metal falcons almost upon us, I carefully took up Dolly and wrapped my left hoof protectively around her where I sat as I armed my right hoof with her skateboard ready to protect us in the best capacity I could manage.

Shanty glared at the flying bird machines and took up position in front of us with raised hooves ready to start swinging away.

Both Darkwing and Smolder moved forward and started blasting fire and gas, the gas was apparently ignitable and created a directed explosion when Smolder’s flames came into contact with the clouds.

The combination of the two took out at five of the eight, the other three set past them and to us.

Darting forward, Shanty cartwheeled into a wild windmill of flashing arcs that splits on of the eagles in half. She halted her aerial cartwheel drew both hooves together and slashed out both hooves to create a large axe shaped crescent in the air that cut off the lower portion of the robot falcon.

As for the last one, I held up the skateboard as the last robot falcon slammed into it claws first and it tried to crush the skateboard in my grip, I was glad I was still able to brace against the metal at my back with my wool.

It was unfortunate for it that the board wouldn’t be torn apart so easily by physical force as it pressed down on me and I was keeping Dolly glued to my chest with my wool. It was now trying to use its weight to crush us when it was apparent that crushing the board wasn’t going to work.

“You be leaving her alone!” On the back flap of its wings and in the middle of a screech, Shanty appeared lashing her left hoof upwards to tear through its wings and then spun to slash her right hoof through its neck taking its head off.

“Not made of the same materials as the MELs huh?” I said with a shiver as the falcon body tumbled backwards and down the back of the Heavy Hooter’s torso while leaving its severed head, wires still sparking, parked neatly in my lap.

“No, but they are still being hard to cut through!” Shanty looked at the wings as they flapped and several robot falcons came off its wings and soared up, the Heavy Hooter’s head also continued to glare at us.

“Darkwing why did you come up here in the first place when you didn’t exactly know we were hiding on its back?” It needed to be asked before the next eight robot falcons could come swooping at us, I was already standing and cradling a limp Dolly in my left hoof and my breath was getting a bit ragged.

Now was probably not a good time to have a heart attack, after breathing failure I had earlier.

“The left eyebrow has a jetpack we need to help us possibly bring either this thing or Clockwerk down.” Darkwing exclaimed as he and smolder took aim. “Setting dispersal for wide, can you time your fire breathe correctly?”

“Do dragon’s lava surf? Of course I can!” Smolder and Drake Mallard were interacting well enough, plus both of them were more resilient than Shanty, Dolly or me.

“What if the Heavy Hooter is preparing to fire, can you possibly focus on both?” Not like we were doing more than just defending ourselves and he even said we needed to get. I could already almost feel the glare of the tower’s head building energy.

“Then we’ll have to take out this batch mechanical falcons quickly before it fires.” Well Darkwing had his priorities straight. “After I disperse the beam, we can then all go for its head all at once to get what we need!”

Was there a safe way to get Shanty and Dolly down from here? Can I please not have to run towards the glaring head of the tower sized mechanical owl we were sitting on? Its eyes were starting to glow.

“It’s firing right now.” Stating this while clutching at my pained chest with a hoof, really should listen to Dormarch about my health. “Shanty… behind… ngh…”

I rolled from my back to my stomach to face the head, I could see the jetpack dangling from its eyebrow. It looked chunkier and bigger than any jetpack I’ve seen before. I planted Dolly’s skateboard tail first in front of us and held Dolly close as I scrunched up.

Ignoring the explosion behind me, Shanty came up to my side and planted herself next to me in holding the board in place.

“No-no-no!” Darkwing started to shout before the beam struck our position, I was more worried about him as he didn’t have an immovable wall between him and the beam. The shattering of a canister and the pressure of the beam let up on us, as I saw various smaller beams spreading out.

“Is everyone okay Shanty? I’m not exactly doing so hot at the moment.” I slowly stood up, blinking the spots out of my eyes. It was becoming slightly easier to move and I was going to be quite hungry after this, I could already tell.

“Darkwing and Smolder be moving out of the way.” Shanty informed me as I started to move up the back of the giant robotic owl. “Are you being okay Pom?”

“Not really, help me get Dolly on my back, we’re rushing the head now.” As I said this another flight of robotic falcons took wing, the back of the owl was scorched slightly. It was protected from doing damage to itself

“Can’t you be using your bark breaker?” Shanty said as she started helping me trot up the giant metal owls back. “Also why doesn’t it be shaking us off?”

“What do I target that won’t have repercussions for us Shanty? I don’t want you to be hurt by something this large crashing into the ground and being close enough to the death ray that it explodes is going to harm me if I try to disable at least one of the eyes.” The one thing that was still going for me was my mind, which was notably moving far faster than my body could cope with at the moment. We had to get Shanty down safely and to Dodo “If it tries to shake us off it might fall to the ground, if it does that then it might not be able to get up into the air again if it breaks the ground and hits a nasty pocket of volcanic activity. It can comfortable keep flying in a circle and trying to blast us off while sending robot falcons at us, it might even have the ability to generate them quickly.”

“I’m trying to keep you awake and active.” Shanty sounded pained about me hurting, she carefully draped Dolly across my back and I glued her in place with my wool as we moved forward. Me leading with Dolly’s skateboard in my right hoof. “You be having a nasty flank wound.”

“Comes with the territory of doing heroic things Shanty… ugh… I’m going to need a checkup with Dormarch after this.” As we continued to make our way closer to the head, I thought about how we were going to get the jetpack off the eyebrow. “I’m going to have more far more scars after we’re done here.”

I looked back at the flight of falcons as they swooped around and started coming for us claws first, several bolts of energy flew by before two of them were struck from the air from below. Beyond the large flapping metal wings I could see two small figures on the side of the volcano far below.

“At least we be having lots of help!” Stated Shanty as we got closer to the Heavy Hooter’s head.

“Yeah, but how long can they keep helping before the big owl starts targeting them with falcons or its death ray?” Darkwing said as he caught up to us with Smolder flying next to him as we approaching the head opening its mouth revealing a large rack of missiles. “And then there’s that… great...”

-Sly-

"Coopers..." A rumbling voice stated as my nightmares given form stepped forward, my parent's murderer that just trapped me, Clockwerk. "Always with the weakness of sentiment, you and your friends will perish here and I will finally be victorious."

174. Krakarov breakdown.

Author's Note

...

174. Krakarov breakdown.

-Equus, Canterlot, Tasty Treat, Tianhuo-

I sat across from my friends, Velvet and Arizona, across the room from us was Paprika acting peculiarly distant from her herd.

“So, why is it that you can’t help me if Pom ends up in Tambelon?” Looking to the four puppies, they were behaving themselves spectacularly. I had just been told something unusual.

“Well Arizona can still help, but Paprika and I are pregnant.” Blinking at what Velvet said, I considered my response carefully.

“Congratulations?” I tried.

“No, not congratulations! The only time I could have gotten pregnant and I was literally the buck for it!” Okay, and… why was Velvet now glaring at Arizona? “How did you manage it Arizona, because I know this is your fault somehow!”

“Uh… I’m just that good?” Arizona stated questioningly looking unsure if she was answering a question. “You know, you could blame Kuril for the experimental potions, she is functionally a witch and could have messed something up.”

“None of what happened that night makes sense biologically, scientifically or even magically and you know it!” Velvet screeched while clutching at her belly.

“Mood swings?” I stated calmly.

“Yep.” Responded Arizona dryly. “I don’t understand what’s up with Paprika though. She’s being so standoffish lately, but Velvet’s being mad at me for something means everything is right with the world at least.”

“I loathe your impossible existence Arizona!” Velvet shouted at her cow with venom, despite this very real anger I noted that she was still sitting right next to her and cuddling her.

Arizona didn’t seem upset with Velvet’s vitriol, she even seemed happy about it. If it were anyone else, there would be a huge case for domestic abuse if any of the three would ever be willing to press charges. That my three friends were still together says a lot about the oddness of their herd.

“Ah, about Paprika, alpacas distance themselves from their lovers when they realize they are pregnant and will refuse all bed based activities.” What I knew of the subject, Arizona might not know. “Otherwise she still loves you greatly to even be this close by.”

Alpacas tended to end up everywhere for the very reason of finding their true loves at first sight and being primarily nomadic helped them a lot in that aspect if they couldn’t find true love among their people. It was not odd to see an alpaca as part of the citizenry of the various places they visited, though I guess Arizona hasn’t been around many alpacas throughout her life.

“Meep!” Paprika apparently agreed with what I just told them from her table where Saffron was serving her food.

-Earth, Russia, Krakarov Volcano Lair, Sly-

Being trapped and gas was not pleasant, but thanks to Dormarch and Bentley’s efforts they quickly shut off the trap when Clockwerk left me slowly suffocating on the floor.

I stood up and broke Carmelita free with a few swings of my cane and we stared at each other in an uneasy silence.

The Heavy Hooter was operational, or it could be the Big Hoot, whatever it is it was active and currently dealing with Leap Lamb’s team and Clockwerk was controlling it from his personal system in his body.

“Maybe we can work together to deal with the bigger problem here?” I tried in the friendliest voice I could muster, I loved Carmelita and there was no way I was going to let her get hurt when I could do something about it. “You might hate me, but I’ve never hated you. We have fun don’t we?”

Carmelita sighed, toggled the switch on her shock pistol to full power and blasted her way out of the glass wall keeping us trapped.

“Come on Cooper, truce until we take the bastard down.” The way her tail moved agitatedly as she stalked off made me blush and smile. “I’ll even give you a ten second head start afterwards ring tail.”

In my distraction as we exited the nearby door to the lair, a robot falcon swooped down and stole my cane.

I am so glad I learned hand to hand combat, because I wasn’t going to be entirely helpless without it. Though I wouldn’t mind begging for a little help from my favorite vixen to get back a treasured family heirloom… the last memory of my parents aside from the remaining portion of the Thievius Racoonis that Clockwerk likely had on him.

-Above Krakarov, Pom-

Why was it always machines? Well at least it’s not something biological, I have enough problems with actually wanting to hurt the mercenaries that harassed me across the planet.

I really didn’t want to kill anyone, no matter how much I might have mauled a few people in the previous world while out my mind.

So here I barely stood about to be shot at with missiles again, while my arrhythmia was acting up pretty badly because I did some ridiculous over the top stunt with Dancing Flame. Dolly’s down, from helping in said stunt. Smolder was behind us and likely going to be too busy to dealing with the six… three falcons, the other three were going after the International Officers below.

Darkwing was the best chance to get Shanty down from here, but he’s also the one that drew attention to us.

I hoped that Dodo okay down on the ground, especially with the volcano notably sinking and lava poking up out of the ground everywhere.

The eight missiles erupted from the beak of the large mechanical owl and curved on a trajectory towards us.

“I’ve got them!” Loudly proclaimed Shanty as she charged forward and up the back to crouch down as the missiles swarmed in.

I had an idea what Shanty was going to do, but would she time it correctly and not be knocked off Heavy Hooter? I slowly positioned myself behind Darkwing and watched his back, while Shanty leapt forward directly into the path of the missiles.

“Yarr!!!” She unleashed her seldom seen defensive technique, every missile exploded.

Within the several explosions you could vaguely see an outline of the sphere of raw force surrounding Shanty as all the blasts sent her tumbling backwards through the air and over our heads down the back of the Heavy Hooter.

Her body was relatively unscathed despite being caught in the center of eight explosions, but who am I to talk when I’ve taken far worse.

“I didn’t know she could do that.” Darkwing stated as he watched Shanty back flipped and landed further down around the lower back and went skidding towards the large metal tail feathers, where one of the falcons trying to deal with a flying Smolder veered off and went for her.

“I did, but she better not fall off. That looked like it rattled my favorite kid a bit to do.” The wings of the Heavy Hooter flapped and I watched the eyes ahead started to glow and several more robot falcons took to the air. I turned and saw something else on approach. “Not important Darkwing, focus on the head and get to the jetpack to get Shanty off of here safely!”

Darkwing turned and started towards the glowing eyed head of the Heavy Hooter while fiddling with a canister for his weapon, I however turned to focus on the main reason why we’re here and I wasn’t exactly very confident in facing the thing that made the Heavy Hooter.

My breathing was becoming shorter as I was allowing fear to run rampant through me at the face that scrutinized me with the same level of talent I had when it came to profiling someone.

“So you are one of the insects that took out a large number of my robotic falcons and are bothering my second body. How can something so pathetic do something so incredible?” With a heavy thud I gulped at the large mechanical owl that built this flying tower landed between me and Shanty. This was Clockwerk I presumed, also doing incredible things was part and parcel of being an Equus born native apparently. “I’m sure Cooper has already escaped the trap, somehow, but you don’t have many places to go Leap Lamb. That injury and the fact that you are carrying that helpless mutt on your back makes you incapable of gliding doesn’t it? Also your arrhythmia problems are slowing you down quite a bit, making you quite a delicious prey of choice. This should be quick, then I can deal with Cooper and every other ally of his with every weakest link coming first, your fleshy form is a great weakness as you’ll soon come to learn.”

I heard the death ray fire and saw a few scattered rays coming from behind me as Clockwerk stalked up to me with his glowing red eyes. He was really quite intimidating up close and I can now understand why Sly has nightmares about this guy.

I backed away from the monstrous eye, a whimper escaped my lips and I started quivering at the malice this guy gave off that Ocellus could feel from miles away.

“Am I really that much of a threat that your targeting me first?” I just had to ask, considering he was targeting me exclusively compared to Smolder, Shanty, Darkwing or even the officers on the ground.

“To me… as you currently are… not in the slightest. You did destroy a massive number of my mechanical falcons and I would rather you not recover enough of that strength to be a thorn in my side later, for I’ve big plans for this world!” He spread his wings and several arcing blasts of energy sprayed out at me at slow speeds and sped up as they converged.

I dove between two of the blasts and swung my right hoof around slapped the skateboard into one of the blasts sending it back at him, it did nothing to him aside from disorient him vaguely.

My ears twitched, I turned my head, eyes wide I threw myself to the side as flat as I could. Two missiles slammed into Clockwerk’s body. The explosions did nothing to him and whatever scuff or dent marks it left in his body rippled, popped and faded before my eyes.

“Did they ever warn you that you were fighting an immortal being?” He lunged forward, I silently apologized to Dolly and forcefully rolled to the left as his large scything talons slammed down on where I was. His right talon came at me, I twisted and put my body over the skateboard as they close on me and the board held them back. “Do you think a paltry piece of wood will stop me?”

I could see his claws straining to crush the board as I kept myself safely on top of it, Dolly’s board only flexed a little, but it thankfully wasn’t breaking.

“Let’s see if you’ll survive a dip in the volcano hero!” With a few flaps Clockwerk lifted off the, so far undamaged, Heavy Hooter with me in tow and swung me around twice.

He released and slashed his right wing out, it clipped me across the forehead and most of the impact was taken up by the board. He had sent me flailing towards crater of Krakarov, a splatter of blood dripping blood into my eyes as I fell and my vision went a bit black.

“Pom!” Shanty shouted after me.

-Shanty-

Dodo, Pom be needing help, as much as I be needing it myself.

As my first mate and best friend, do something!

-Dodo-

Dodo was needed?

Yes, Dodo move to help friend!

Not a time to change, will do later when friends not in danger.

-Sly-

“Come on Carmelita, this place is coming down around us!” The volcano was practically falling apart now and Bentley says the Big Hoot had hit something and now the volcano lair was breaking apart and the geothermal energy plant was going to blow sooner rather than later.

“You go ahead, I see someone that needs my help.” I was about to go back when the path was sealed off between us, right back to the van and we’ll find a quick way to help Carmelita out of the volcano.

“Sly, Dormarch is taking remote control of our Trojan Falcon robot to lend some aerial support up there and I’m still trying to figure out a plan to blow that flying tower out of the air.” Already working on it Bentley. “This is a bit much even for me to think of something we can do with our limited resources Sly! Please hurry back with Inspector Carmelita, we need to regroup.”

“Yeah, about that…” I said as I saw Carmelita hopping from structure to structure over rising lava… or was it just that the entire lair was sinking into the ground? She was heading up towards the top of the volcano, what was she do… oh god, Pom?! “Bring the van around we need to start doing damage and fast.”

-Pom, a few minutes earlier-

I am so glad that Clockwerk didn’t get my eyes, I swiped my left hoof across my forehead and my wool tamped down over the gash staunching the bleeding. My left leg came away streaked with red and if that wasn’t a horrifying thought as to what was causing me to be even more lightheaded, I was practically thrown towards the volcano.

Clockwerk hadn’t been wrong, I couldn’t glide with my injuries and the blood loss was going to get me worse than my arrhythmia currently was. Luckily I could still survive this situation, but I was going to need to abuse my connection to Dolly to the fullest.

I pulled Dolly from my back and concentrated. I forced my magic into her body and like a conduit that our familiar bond was, I forced her ability to control momentum back into myself and my falling slowed dramatically but not nearly enough to steer away from the volcano in time.

Using the time I gained for myself, I thought about what to do next as I tied it around Dolly’s waist with one hoof while trying to maintain physical contact with her body to keep the momentum control going.

Glancing to the side, I saw Dodo racing up the side of the volcano. I could get Dolly to safety easily enough, but it would require that Dodo catch her.

“Grab her.” I mouthed to Dodo who was looking directly at me and then forced some of our downwards momentum to make me and Dolly spin. Once I built up enough momentum, I released Dolly in a hammer throw with as much boosted momentum as I could give her unconscious form.

I sent her flying towards the edge of the volcano’s opening and immediately started falling like a rock again after having lost direct contact with Dolly, I had unfortunately passed a slight point of no return.

Dodo made it to the edge in time to narrowly miss grabbing Dolly herself, but his beak snapped onto her board securely and he safely and quickly put her in his back.

Dolly’s life secured, I now had to worry about my own and inflated the wool that wasn’t covering painful scarring injuries. I really couldn’t do more than inflating the wool on my legs, slowed me down a great deal as I spread them out, but it was quickly getting unbearably hot.

I closed my eyes and started to sweat while trying to spread my wool out, my injuries were primarily keeping the masses wool on my body in two necessary spots making it hard to create something to catch the rising heat.

I heard something crash and I felt something painfully slap into my chest with the force of bucking earth pony.

While getting the air knocked out of me was painful, I instinctively grappled onto whatever it was I just hit while having my heart jump up my throat. I carefully open my eyes and found my front legs wrapped around a bit of long piping stretching out over the boiling magma below.

Was the volcano sinking or was the magma rising? Neither was a good prospect to everyone that didn’t have a method of flight around here.

“Hey, Leap Lamb right? Merde, we do not have much time here!” Upon looking to the left, there was a blue hair female fox grunting as she held up a bent piece of piping from a nearby walkway. “Come on, crawl along the pipe over to me while I hold it in place for you, hurry!”

I struggled to get grip on my fear and started to carefully start to pull myself along the pipe hanging off the wall towards the fox. I was just about there when I noticed something.

“Look… out…” Gasping this out, the fox that must have been Carmelita noticed me looking at the monster that was sneaking up on her, she let go of the pipe turned and fired her shock pistol.

The magma slug blew apart before it could seriously harm her, the unfortunate problem was that the piping dropped on the railing and almost snapped in half.

“What, no! Are you okay?” Carmelita asked with a worried tone of whether I had lost grip on the pipe from that. I seriously doubted there was anything that could get me to let go of the pipe right now except for grabbing onto the hanging walkway.

“No…” My weak reply made her look over the solid catwalk and down at me from the dangling almost snapped off pipe she put away her weapon and grabbed onto it with both hands to hold the swaying bit of metal steady.

“You can make it, just climb up to me.” Despite you saying that Carmelita, a part of me really didn’t want to make it. "I will not let you fall!"

I was so tired of it all, I could just let go and it’d be so quick… but Tianhuo didn’t marry a quitter. She married a coward and cowards were very good at wanting to live!

Using the strength borne from a hysterically large amount of fear, in a quick burst of motion I clambered up the pipe like a spider monkey on coffee and clung to Carmelita like a limpet. She held me tight, my body really shouldn't handle adrenaline right now.

“It’s okay, you can stop crying now. I’ve got you mon ami.” Carmelita was a comforting figure I needed right now, crawling around to her back I clamped down on her as hard as I was willing to.

“Run…” She tilted her head at too look me in the eyes curiously and I pointed at the various magma slugs coming out of the volcanoes walls above the walkway.

“Merde!” Carmelita muttered before pulling her shock pistol out and she started to run along the walkway as fast as she could go with my seventy or so pound mass on her back.

She managed to make it to the next section as a magma slug dropped on something important and the previous section of the catwalk snapped and fell away into the magma.

“I’ll get us out of this, don’t you worry.” Not nearly as confident as you were, also our friends were out there fighting a monster I really didn’t want to meet with face to face again.

A roar sounded and we turned to look at massive snake like mass of lava rising up as Carmelita made it to a section where the walls connected to a partially and currently collapsing spiraling staircase leading upwards along the insides of Krakarov.

An increasingly excessive number of magma monsters were focusing intently on just moving closer to us.

“You’re a super hero right?” Carmelita stated slowly.

“Never called myself a hero, just like helping… can’t fight…. Two bad injuries, arrhythmia worsening, making it harder to breathe, the heat’s not helping and I exhausted myself outside pulling off a miracle. Can’t do that twice within a twelve hour period.” Though admittedly I could still do a few things, my whispered and hastening breathing should be quite noticeable. “I can still do a few things, but I’d rather save my strength.”

“Oh great, this is going to be a thing.” She pulled out her shock pistol and readied it as more magma slugs appeared and started to crawl along the walls towards us. The large magma snake was also making its way over to where we were.

-Above the volcano, Remote Control Trojan Falcon (Dormarch)-

“Are you seeing this Bentley?” I asked as the falcon I was remote pilot flew around watching as sections of Krakarov were breaking apart and sinking.

“I see it, we’re already driving the van to a safer place. Who do you currently have visuals on?” Sweeping the falcons vision around, I circled and tried to stay away from the vicious dogfight Darkwing was going through with Shanty hanging from the back of the jetpack. “We’re already close to picking up Officer Hopps here and we’re preparing to fire on all the dangerous problems up there.”

“Relaying information now. Darkwing has the jetpack and Shanty is on it while he’s flying it.” The other robots falcons weren’t giving Darkwing much room to maneuver, but at least the jetpack had powerful weapons as it sprayed shot after shot into the robotic falcons that got too close.

If they could attack either Darkwing or the Jetpack, they suddenly were missing a piece of either wing with a crescent sweep of one of Shanty’s hooves. None of the explosive shots were doing anything to Clockwerk himself.

Smolder was trying her best to keep the falcons off of them, but the major problem was that Clockwerk himself was on the offensive along with his tower firing death rays, missiles, plasma blasts and the occasional lightning bolt.

As for Dodo, what was he looking at and stamping his feet in place about? Looking into the volcano I saw a huge magma monster that resembled a snake rear up and roar. It’s a good thing my life was not tied to the robotic falcon, because I wouldn’t want to be near that thing like Pom and Carmelita currently were.

Pom and Carmelita?! They were quickly moving upwards through the collapsing portions of the lair.

“Geothermal plant is melting down, Pom being carried by Carmelita and they are trying to outpace the local, highly lethal, wildlife.” Why was there a giant snake made of magma in this volcano? “It has to be asked… Bentley are there any myths or legends about giant snakes or serpents purely made out of magma?”

“Closest thing I can come up with would be a Salamander, except those traditionally have legs.” Not really helping ease the worries about that thing Bentley, especially not when my partner was currently being chased by it!

-Shanty-

So I be avoiding Clockwerk ripping me to shreds, I almost be falling off one of the large metal tail feathers of the Heavy Hooter until Darkwing be calling out to me to jump and be catching me on the jetpack as he flew by.

Now I be enjoying the ride of my life and the only reason why I wasn’t worried about Pom is because Dodo be sending me an image of Pom being carried by Carmelita, the nice lady that be saving my life from a poor end for a pirate.

“Pom’s mostly fine, but she really be needing help in the volcano!” I ducked out of the way of a bright glowing sphere of energy that almost be taking my head off.

“Yeah, I think we all need help here, because no matter how much I shoot him Clockwerk just doesn’t seem to be taking any damage.” Yes, that is being a very bad thing Darkwing. “We can’t keep this up forever, we'll run out of ammo and eventually fuel too.”

175. Menacing Magma.

Author's Note

Still going.

Music- Bucky O' Hare, Red Planet.

I'm in need of more sleep.

175. Menacing Magma.

-Krakarov, Clockwerk’s crumbling lair, Carmelita-

I ran forward several steps, crouched down and then managed to jump before the massive magma monster in the shape of some kind of serpent slammed into the inner wall of the volcano.

Landing on a slowly collapsing piece of stone falling from the wall to my left over a destroyed section of walkway, I leapt forward and onto the stairs on the other side.

Looking back, the large magma monster wasn’t moving, but it there were a ton of magma slugs coming off its body after us by wiggling up along the volcano’s inner walls. More were pouring out in various places.

“Volcanoes sinking, why did you come to help me?” Well lamb on my back was cheery sort given the dour mood she sounded to be in.

“You look like someone I met, she looks a lot like your sister.” There’s also the fact that she was going to die had I not interfered. “You were in danger and there’s just something about you that…”

“Would have been fine.” As the roughly breathing Leap Lamb said this, I pulled my pistol and popped three magma slugs in the way and leapt over the melting section of metal walkway. Everything was collapsing around us and there was very little stable ground and the only way to go was up. “Now in danger… because of me.”

“I’m not sorry ma’am, you needed help and you don’t look too good now.” I turned around fired a charged shot from my shock pistol.

Clusters of magma slugs flew from the wall while backing up away from them, we were out of stairs to go up and...

A massive explosion from below blinds me for a few seconds and I look at smoke filling up half the volcano, it seems the geothermal plant Clockwerk built here finally blew up. More of the volcano was collapsing by the second.

Pillars of rock and boulders were falling from the walls and the top of the volcano was crumbling slightly, but still sturdier than the lower inner walls currently were

“That’s just going… to make getting out of here… harder.” Leap Lamb commented from my back dryly, as the magma snake started to shift and rise up, like all the magma around it was currently doing.

“If we even can, we’re going to have to chance climbing the…” Feeling a hoof tap me on the shoulder, she pointed at a large series stalactites and her right hoof trailed to a series of ledges along the walls. “That’ll work!”

Aiming the shock pistol at the nearest stalactite formed from the crumbling insides of the volcano, I fired and it dropped. It hit the magma and stayed in place, I quickly crouched and jumped as a magma slug burst from the wall and felt my tail get singed from the heat.

I landed on the pillar turned and fired a shot into the magma slug and watched with satisfaction as it splattered apart.

“They’re climbing… drop next one…” Leap Lamb’s voice was getting very faint and pained, her labored breathing meant the heat must be getting to her. “I really could use my… medication… right about now… or maybe I should just stop and let… things take their natural course.”

“Yeah, no, you’re not dying on my back after I came back for you, now hold on!” I raised my pistol, charged a shot and fired, the stalactite held fast. I charged another shot and fired, the Stalactite cracked and started to loosen. “I have to know, are you suicidal? Come on, fall already!”

I fired another shot and the stalactite finally fell, a magma slug rose up over the edge of the pillar mouth wide, I wouldn’t be able to reorient in...

A cute barking noise erupted from my back and a blast of energy ripped the magma slug apart, not even a hint of residue of it was left behind.

“If anything you are… for coming to save me...” Did Leap Lamb just seriously bark a mass of energy? I was going to need to more about her later. For reasons… “Now move… conserving strength…”

Didn’t need to be told twice as I leapt high up and onto the second pillar as several magma slugs lunged over the top and were entirely covering the first pillar when I looked back. Some leapt after me, but they thankfully lacked the same level of leaping ability I did.

Looking back I could see the magma snake roaring, turning forward are started to rapidly fire shots at two of the stalactites above and ahead.

This was just not my day, having to stay ahead of the magma and the monsters coming from it, with what amounts to a boot camps amount of weight on my back and after being captured by a maniacal mechanical menace.

Eventually my shots finally were loosening the two massive pillars of stone and they fell at the same time. I crouched and jumped, about five seconds later the pillar I was on toppled and on the pillar I was now on was being climbed by the magma serpent swirling around it.

They eyeless monster soon wrapped around the pillar enough that it raised its head above me and opened its dripping molten maw wide, I crouched down and jumped forward onto the next pillar as the one behind me became engulfed in conflagration of heat and flames.

The serpent’s tail flicked in my direction and I fired a shot stopping the molten boulder that came flying me way, however the other two struck the pillar damaging it.

I didn’t have time to drop another pillar as the tail wobbled to flick more molten boulders and the two molten boulders below turned into magma slugs that were coming up the pillar at us.

“No time…” The sound of Leap Lamb’s firm voice and my twitching ears, I turned and looked at where she was pointed her right hoof. The stalactite’s I had yet dropped. “Jump.”

Some of the ledge’s she was pointing to along the wall across a large distance from us were partly crumbling, but there were enough ledges that we could comfortably climb to the top of the volcano.

“It’s too far, we’ll never make it.” I turned blew apart the top of a magma slug with a quick shock pistol blast, then I returned it to my holster.

“Jump high… forward… trust…” You weren’t leaving me with much of a choice and not like I had much of one anyone if I wanted to climb along the walls with the slugs not burdened with having to find ways to grip onto the jagged stone.

We needed a way out of the crater and the vent, so I crouched down and bunched up all the muscles in my legs. I wonder if I was impressing Leap Lamb with how well I can jump? I trained to be able to make ridiculous leaps to keep up with Sly and eventually capture him.

I leapt for all I was worth and I tried to reach up, I could barely touch the stalactite before our combined weights started pulling us back down. That’s when Leap Lamb acted, her rear legs wrapped around my chest as she thrust the front of body upwards and her front hooves connected with the stalactite.

Leap Lamb grunted as she forced us to swing forward and we launched a magma slug dropped at us from above.

She launched out her left hoof and grappled another stalactite and began to heave us around and towards the next one.

When she grappled the next with her right hoof, we heard a roar from below and looking down the serpent was rising from the magma maw wide.

“Wall.” Inhaling sharply Leap Lamb then did something upon exhaling. It was almost like it was hysterical strength, but far more controlled. Like a flame lit up inside of her for a few seconds

We burst forward at an insane speed. Using both her hooves, she grabbed the backside of the next stalactite in a blur instead of the front facing us and, using an impressive amount of strength for having such a small body, she launched us forward for the wall at an angle.

At least… I was still flying for the wall. Leap Lamb was currently limply falling off my back as we flew towards it.

Acting quickly, I unslung my handcuffs sitting at my left hip with my right hand and lashed out catching Leap Lamb’s left hoof with it and started to run along the wall while focusing on the ledges.

I was about to slip and fall off the wall from running out of momentum, I crouched and leapt holding tightly onto the middle of the handcuffs hoping that I didn’t lose Leap Lamb in the process.

My left hand flashed out and found purchase and I was hanging from a ledge, I struggled to find purchase with my boots to push myself up as rocks crumbled under my feet. I eventually managed to wear enough of the rock away so that my boots could solidly press again the bottom of the ledge.

Hearing the sound of something breaking, I looked behind me to see the magma serpent ripping the stalactite if had bitten into off of the ceiling as it fell back into the oncoming magma from below. It soon rose up and turned our way.

“I didn’t come this far trying to save your life just so you could die to save mine!” I heaved myself up onto the ledge and pulled Leap Lamb up with me, I slung her left hoof over my left shoulder and then brought her right hoof over my right and cuffed it tightly.

Securely having her hooves over my shoulders, I crouched and jumped to pull myself up to a higher ledge a good twenty or so feet up.

A second later the serpent rammed its molten nose into the ledge below, breaking it and several others entirely apart. It roared up at me as I hopped to a higher ledge to my right, it rose up along the wall and smashed the previous ledge from underneath.

It spat a wad of molten rock my way from its mouth, I pulled my pistol and fired a shock blast taking out the deadly projectile.

The magma serpent swerved upward and overhead, I looked over my shoulder and then jumped backwards. It ripped through the ledge as I landed among a number of higher up ones with more choices about which way to go than I previously had.

Before the serpent entered the magma is slung its tail at me sending three more molten boulders my way.

After firing three quick and accurate bursts, I charged my pistol and aimed it downwards below the ledge I was on. It erupted from the magma and received a fully charged electrical explosion to the face toppling it back down before it could reach me.

I’m not taking my shock pistol off the lethal setting for the time being. Noticing a number of slugs were now coming out of the walls around me, I took aim glancing left and right, then down at the bubbling magma that the was moving about sluggishly.

Cooper… if I make it out of this alive, then you were truly no the most aggravating thing about my life.

I leapt up a platform to my left and fired a shot dangerously splattering a magma slug above me, I’m thankful none of the falling chunks of molten rock landing on my fur or that of the unconscious hero.

I leapt to a platform on my right and then one to the left before I had to stop and blast several magma slugs that were getting dangerously close to cutting me off from climbing higher. I was above the crumbling lower walls of the volcano thanks to our efforts.

We only had a mostly straight climb to the top, I heard the rumbling of the magma serpent again.

Turning to quickly fire my shock pistol, I splattered the magma slug trying to climb up onto the ledge I was on.

Crouching, I leapt up to a ledge above me, then I leapt to a ledge close by to the left while charging my shock pistol. I turned and unleashed the blast into the side of the serpents head sending it flailing back down into the glowing magma.

Jumping up to a platform on my right, it immediately started crumbling making me hastily dive onto a platform next to it as it fell away.

“Come on Carmelita, you’ve got this, you can see the sky!” Why was I trying to give myself a pep talk? All this jumping was murder on my legs and I could go for a nice quiet low threat case after all of this. “Just got to make a few more good leaps.”

The heat was getting to me, like it might have gotten to Leap Lamb after doing whatever it was she did to herself. Oh god, I had to check if she was still breathing or not!

One problem with being able to check on the current health of my cuffed acquaintance…

Swarms of magma slugs were slowly crawling along the walls from my left and right, they were coming from below and I could even hear the lava serpent about to attack again.

I only had a few seconds to do it while getting a little rest and then I really needed to start moving.

I had three platforms to choose from above me and not much time to make that choice, I was about ten good leaps away from relative safety with Leap Lamb’s body was still secured to me by my handcuffs. I had a hunch that she was related to that other sheep and the strange goat I saw again in China, but I wasn’t quite sure of it yet. Coincidences were known to happen.

I charged my pistol and waited, I flicked my ears in the direction of the unconscious mouth and barely heard a faint raspy, jagged like a knife sounding, intake of air.

It was barely there, but she was still breathing. Good, I had to get her help as soon as possible before she stopped breathing entirely.

I leapt up and to the right as a number of slugs leapt for the platform I was on and then the serpent smashed through it. I fired a charge shot at it, the slugs were splattered everywhere and the serpent fell back down and off the wall.

Just a few more good jumps, I leapt up and grabbed a platform with my left hand and fired my pistol at a magma slug coming from the right. Once on the platform I blasted two on the left.

As I jumped up to another platform I began to wonder what was going on out there and what was Cooper currently doing now?

I knew he wouldn’t leave the area, not after freeing me up. He had a score to settle with the owl, speaking of owls I looked up and saw a massive shape that blocked out the sky as it flew overhead.

It looked quite familiar to me, didn’t I drop my jetpack onto that thing? It wasn’t a tower after all, just a bigger body that can somehow fly in the face of physics telling it that it shouldn’t be able to even get off the ground.

Just what I needed, more trouble to take care of. Cooper just kept getting lower in my list of priorities today and it was driving me insane, like my tail being slightly cooked or my clothes being covered in ash that has gotten into places I’d rather not mention.

Hearing a roar, I looked around warily and started shooting the magma slugs to push them back from where I currently was. There were a lot of them and more than the amount of charge left in my shock pistol could deal with.

Being about twenty ledges from the top of the volcano now, I was looking down at how far up the magma had come. I could also see the magma serpent slithering in a circle in the molten rock and to the wall on the far side to start to spiral up it on an intercept course.

I was so close I had to move faster, I was going to have make riskier jumps. I couldn’t let that thing get above me or come at me from the side.

Crouching I pushed my legs and passed by two platform before landing on a third on my left, my legs were starting to feel like jelly with all the pressure I was putting them under. It’s a good thing I never skipped on exercising to be able to match Cooper’s speed and agility.

Another leap and I skipped a platform and landed on a narrow ledge, the magma serpent was getting closer.

Another jump and I managed to pass two more, I was still going too slowly there was no way I was going to be able to outpace the serpent slithering along the wall at us. I had to recover my balance and leg strength between jumps.

I turned and blasted a magma slug in the middle of its leap at me, there’s also that as a problem. I crouched down and leapt up and manage to bypass two platforms and a ledge to grab onto a platform and pull myself.

So close. The serpent roared and spat magma balls at me, I leapt upwards a platform and only blasted one out of the air, the one that would have hit this platform had I stopped to shoot the other two to stop them from hitting me or the platform I was standing on.

It had managed to slow me down and it’s opened its mouth as it came at me sideways along the wall, I leapt up to another ledge and it veered upwards. It was getting increasingly hotter, and it was going to slam into me.

I fire my shock pistol into it, it absorbed round after round. I was barely even slowly down, I needed a charged shot to stop it!

It reared up off the wall and prepared to dart forward to strike me, then a fully powered shock pistol shot slammed into the side of its head making it fall off the wall wailing in anger.

“We’ve got you covered Carmelita, now get out of there!” I looked up and saw Officer’s Wild and Hopps, good to see those two were still around.

Three shots flew down past me from the overheated rabbit aiming her shock pistol downwards, looking downwards I saw several of those magma blobs being blown apart.

I leapt up several ledges in a few bounds and had to stop to catch my breath on a platform, I was almost out and Officer Hopps was keeping the magma slugs from getting close. A section of the wall next to me started to glow.

Crouching I jumped up high and grabbed the next ledge with my left hand as I fired down at the magma slugs with my right as the erupted onto the platform below me.

The platform was flat and cracking badly, but it was supporting my weight as I kicked the underside and flipped myself on top of it. Another roar and the magma serpent was preparing another.

“We’ve got a huge fight going on up here between Clockwerk and our mutual allies, we really need your help now!” A robotic falcon swooped down for Nick as he updated me on the situation and second falcon with oddly discolored eyes slammed into it from behind and ripped at one of its wing and left it falling into volcano. “That must be the Trojan, get up here!”

Nick laid down and held out his hand ready to pull me up, as I leapt to ledge that circle around the entire top portion of the cone and was two ledges from safety. A roar almost broke the concentration of my next jump, one ledge and then I could jump up to Nick.

I looked down and saw that the serpent was snaking its way up towards me at an alarming speed.

Leaping up to next ledge, I then looked up at Nick and leapt up to grab his outstretched right hand.

“Got you!" Nick pulled me up and was referring to the fact that Judy was firing rapidly, the serpent was avoiding taking blows to the head as it shot up overhead and angled down on all of us. "Carrots, can’t you stop that thing?!”

Judy fired a fully charged shock pistol shot into its head and that only stunned it for a second, before it came down at us with its mouth wide open.

That’s when the falcon robot from earlier swooped into its mouth and then detonated spectacularly.

The magma serpent's head snapped back and it slowly started to solidify into a horrible cobblestone statue.

After a few seconds of complete silence, it started crumbling away and fell back into the volcano.

For some reason it's destruction caused all the magma slugs below to start solidify exactly like it had.

"Can I get a full situation update?" You know, aside from the whole volcano melting down.

-Equus, World Summit, Jade-

“Oh come on, world leaders deserve to have fun too, right Novo or is it Nova if you’re doing the hippogriff thing?” I asked politely.

“Oh come on Jade, are you seriously telling me that you’re not the cause of the recent issues in Saddle Arabia?!” Having slowly wormed my way into being friends with absolutely everyone in the room, it was a surprise that Amira seemed a little miffed that bad things were happening to Saddle Arabia that were totally not my fault. “I know how much you hate my country Mirage.”

“The country, yes, the people, no. I can easily be friends with the people from Saddle Arabia.” A lot of the world leaders found it comical that I was considered the most threatening thing to Saddle Arabia’s existence. It warmed the cockles of my heart to hear such a thing was happening though. “Besides, I’ve been under constant observation and have had no time to plan something ridiculous to befall Saddle Arabia. Like unleashing a swarm of combat durians from Huoshan on the marketplace.”

“I don’t know if I should feel horribly threatened or horribly amused about that.” Amira muttered dryly. “Maybe both knowing you.”

“So… how was Ms. Springer the other night?” After I said that, Amira promptly covered her head with her hooves as her face turned straight red.

“Jade can we get back on topic, the really boring ones that you’re distracting us all from.” The entire room groaned sadly at Fizzle’s interjection.

They wanted the mad cap silliness to continue, also worldly gossip was relatively fun too.

Discord grumbled and passed a bag of bits to Twilight, I narrowed my eyes on him and he grinned brightly.

-Saddle Arabia, Snickers the Turtle Dove-

“Coo…” Taking up the last bit of tasty banana and then waiting for a precise moment for a thief to run by, I toss the peel from the stall.

-

The results were spectacularly destructive, one could not even fathom how a little turtle could destroy three building in less than five minutes with a banana peel. Not that anyone see the turtle do this or know that it was a flying turtle, the incident was blamed on the evil sorceress 'Mirage' all the same.

The Turtle in question had recently learned some tricks from the best banana peel trick artist in the world, Jackie ‘The Blackcap’ Chickadee La Perm.

Said turtle rubbed her flippers together and hissed in victory.

177. Mettle vs Metal.

Author's Note

Everyone already knows how this ends, but Clockwerk will still make a good show of it at least.

Sure the story might feel a bit boring at the moment, but the entirety of Team Leap Lamb has basically been wiped out aside from Dodo.

Now Sly confronts his families worst enemy.

177. Mettle vs Metal.

-Earth, Russia, half sunk Krakarov, Carmelita-

The explosion from my jetpack could be seen at this distance, as could the two remaining active members of Team Leap Lamb and the Shush agent currently under assault by the daunting Clockwerk.

We were a fair distance away and I could see Cooper’s getaway vehicle below trying to help from a distance.

“There’s goes my jetpack and the tower is still operational even if it can’t fly anymore.” As I said this the giant mechanical owl propped itself up on its left wing until it was upright, it sunk into the ground slightly as magma began to pool around the bottom of its legless torso and was staying up right now because it sunk into the side of the volcano. “Hey ostrich, pull up beside the Cooper Van!”

The ostrich looked back at me and nodded. I was choosing to believe that Leap Lamb’s protégé wouldn’t try to fight Clockwerk alone and that the SHUSH agent had a few more tricks under his sleeve.

“So we’re down two fighters, two weapons and we barely have anything that can really permanently damage Clockwerk.” Officer Wilde huffed and leaned back. “What are we still doing here again? I think we’re all going to die a fiery death at this rate.”

“Well this is one of the worst situations we’ve faced.” Even then, Hopps still seemed raring to go despite the heat getting to her a bit. Heat exhaustion was going to set in eventually and we’d be down another person.

“Cooper!” I screamed up at the raccoon gunning down a number of those mechanical falcons.

“Nice to see you made it out of the volcano alive Carmelita, I was quite worried! Glad our stolen falcon helped you out.” Of course he seemed happy to see me and was responsible for the unusual robot falcon taking out the magma monster. “If you haven’t noticed we got big problems.”

Yes and all the shots you were firing into Clockwork didn’t seem to be having much of an impact on him, also the bigger mechanical owl was firing missiles at Cut-Lass. Said goat was hopping from point to point as magma rose up from the ground beneath her melting the sturdy ground away.

The Shush Agent and the dragon were distracting clockwork so far on the eastern side of the volcano, but really we needed more firepower or to concentrate all we had. We also had the tower to worry about as it was still sending out robot falcons, even if there were smaller numbers of them now.

“The tower is nothing to worry about, it’ll destroy itself when it sinks into the volcano, we just have to avoid the death ray and take Clockwerk down. He’s the one behind all of this.” Thankfully for you Cooper, we still had a truce and… I wasn’t going to be arresting you today if the SHUSH agent survived and I’m betting he would as he seems to have quite a few tricks involving his gun that looked oddly similar to our shock pistols. “Want to get off the ostrich’s back and onto the van with me?”

Both the van and the ostrich slowed down the Ostrich looked at me and warbled questioningly while tilting his head.

“Hopps, Wilde, stay with the ostrich. Ostrich stay nearby, but if things start getting worse, then you better get everyone on you out of here!” I kicked off the back end and landed on top of the van. I glared Cooper down. “Don’t think we’re going to be friendly Cooper and stop smiling like an idiot.”

“Just happy to have you onboard.” Cooper, I swear I will slap that smile off your face eventually, followed by some cuffs when I find you stealing stuff again. Speaking of cuffs Leap Lamb still had mine… darn it! “How much time do you need until you have a solution as for why Clockwerk seems indestructible Bentley?”

“Give me ten more minutes to set up the scan, then we’ll know what makes him tick!” Bentley the brains was trying to figure out a way to destroy Clockwerk. “Oh and glad you’re okay Ms. Carmelita!”

“Hey Ms. Fox, nice to see you again!” Grunting at Murray the muscles jovial greeting, I brought my shock pistol up.

“Just keep your eyes on the ground hippo, it’s unstable and I don’t want to be burned alive if you crash the van!” Soon we all turned our attentions to the incoming missiles.

-Shanty-

Okay, I am being quite tired now. At least Darkwing is managing to stay on more solid ground, now if only lava would stop eating into the surroundings making it hard for me to go anywhere.

“Look out!” Smolder be heaving me from my perch onto an angle pillar of rock and was immediately clasped in Clockwerk’s right talon. “Agh… not… good.”

“An understatement.” Clockwerk stated as he went into a hover and started trying to crush Smolder in his grip. “Let’s see how long will you survive under the constant crushing force of my claws shall we.”

“Shanty, run… I’ll be fine… for a bit.” Smolder still be managing to talking despite the crushing force on her, dragons certainly be something else even as young as her.

Even so, Smolder’s claws not be doing more than scratching the metal and seconds afterwards that metal is not being scratched anymore.

I turned ran to the underside of the angled pillar and launched myself to a portion of the nearby slope and rolled up it a bit to bleed momentum before I was running on my hooves. Thankfully this be a small portion of the volcano that wasn’t covered in a mass of flaming hot mess going everywhere.

With a pivoting swoop Clockwerk hovered above me.

“Going somewhere?” He spread his wings out wide and bursts of energy started raining down on me.

Hopping backwards and out of the path of several lethal blasts of energy landing in front of me on the slope, I felt an immense heat at my back and whatever sweat I had left in my body started coming out as I looked over my shoulder at the lake of magma behind me.

Yeah, I need to be taking the fight to Clockwerk now, any pain he could be doing to me is less than my body melting alive. Also he was still slowly crushing the life out of Smolder in his right talons.

Narrowing my eyes, I be charging forward and stopped immediately when a blast of energy ruptured the ground and lava started slowly pouring out. I hopped to the side several times to avoid several other shots and be noting that the slope I was on was starting break apart.

How would I even be able to get up to Clockwerk? I can’t be jumping very high like Pom and I couldn’t be getting close without possibly being hit or grabbed by the other talons. Really missing that jetpack right now.

“Hey, don’t forget that I’m around!” Darkwing said from further up the slope as several blasts of energy rocked Clockwerk’s back, he be getting the drop on Clockwerk easily. “Also let go of that girl!”

“I think I’ll just keep crushing her.” Clockwerk had turned away from me and to Darkwing.

I be taking this distracting opportunity to climb up the slope to the left where I saw the Heavy Hooter sitting up with its lower torso sticking out of the ground. I not be wanting to be caught in its eyesight.

Looking back, Darkwing narrowly avoided being hit by a barrage of energy and was firing back at Clockwerk. We be needing something big to do some damage…

I continued to climb upwards and thought about how we can deal with the metal owl. In the distance I could feel Dodo and he be sending me the idea of Cooper, Carmelita and the others all gathered and fighting off robot falcons.

They were all currently safely out of sight of Heavy Hooter which kept raining missiles down on them and was slowly wearing away at their cover behind some cliffs they were below, if they didn’t deal with the projectiles then they’d be getting hit with avalanches of stone or the area beneath would collapse and become another sunken part of the volcano.

“What to do, what to do, what do I be doing here?!” I looked at the tower as I climbed up over a cliff and looked at the field of lava below, I not wanting to be getting any closer to either. I be more about action and I was tired and fighting physically wasn’t getting anyone anywhere with Clockwerk… so I be thinking of how to deal with this smarter. “… I think I be having an idea! Will it work though?”

I be moving along the raised piece of land and looking between me and the tower, then to Clockwerk on my right as he be injuring Darkwing who be taking a nasty slash across the chest. The land was sinking further where he was and he would have problems getting out of there.

“Hey you yellow bellied mass of scrap metal, right here, hey!” I be jumping, hooting and hollering to draw the Heavy Hooter’s attention waving my hooves high in the air in an attempt to attract its attention towards me. This is being a big gamble. “Oh look at me, I have big glowy eyes yet I couldn’t shoot the broad side of a barn from half an inch away!”

I gave Dodo an abridge idea of what I was about to do, timing was everything though and I needed Darkwing and Clockwerk to be in the right positions. I’m sure Smolder would be being fine as long as she isn’t directly hit, she is not looking too good in Clockwerk’s claws and was starting to look like she was lacking oxygen. I hope be getting here soon, I be needing him.

The Heavy Hooter was still focused on Cooper and Dodo. So I tried to figure something else out as it couldn’t hear me from this far away, my Riptide attacks turn into steam as soon as I tried to use them from the heat so…

I slashed my right hoof towards my left and my left caught some of the liquid that was going to turn into the steam, I slashed my left towards my right and caught the added bit and started to swing my hooves towards each other and slowly formed a ball of steam and compacted it down. I began swirling that ball and pressuring it down.

You didn’t become a great pirate by being an idiot, unless you had tons of charisma and luck. I wanted to be remembered for doing big things and this… this was me focusing the blasts of steam and whatever sweat I had into a tiny compact ball.

The intent I was forcing through my magic shaping it and eventually I was holding a tiny swirling white sphere that violently shook and almost jumped from my right hoof before I pressed down on it with my left.

Clenching the swirling orb tightly, I spun around and raised my right hoof.

“White Squall!” I threw it towards the Heavy Hooter, the orb thankfully not be effected by gravity thanks to magic. I don’t think I would be throwing it nearly as far it was currently going otherwise.

I was aiming for the head, but the small orb exploded on the tower around below the left side of its chest and caused… no damage. Maybe a dent, but it wouldn’t be being very visible from here.

It did be making a lot of steam though and the impact had to be noticeable, since the large glowing eyes were now on me and charging up to fire.

“Dodo… please tell me you’re almost here, I don’t know how well I can be dodging this on my own.” He be fast and he coming for me again, my most trusted friend.

Familiars were awesome and mine is being the best to me!

Remembering what I hear Pom be doing with Dolly and how familiars work, I sent some of my strength Dodo’s way.

-Nick-

Something was happening and Dodo was suddenly moving, not caring about the gaze of the Big Hoot’s death ray eyes. It seemed to be focused on something else and I saw Shanty standing proudly with her hooves on her hip and glaring at the tower, while taking a few glances behind her and moving left or right slightly.

What was she doing and… did Dodo just pick up an immense amount of speed? Thankfully his beak was cutting through the air and protecting me from the force of his own movements, but I was still being buffeted by a lot of air.

“Doing okay Carrots?!” I called back.

“Making sure these two don’t fall out!” Judy shouted back. “How fast is he going what’s the rush?!”

I’d think we’d look like an indistinct blur crossing uneven terrain with magma vents, streams of lava and a volcano that has collapsed halfway inwards thus far with patches of its side collapsing near us.

-Sly-

“Murray, step on it!” The van peeled out, if things were going the way I thought they were, this would be an opportunity to take back what’s mine. “Bentley have you made the scanner yet.”

“Give me a few more minutes Sly!” Bentley responded.

“Is she… no… she can’t be doing what I think she is, not after I went to the trouble of saving her from that swamp!” Carmelita was angry with Shanty, I was too for that matter given what she was about to do, I think Dodo would make it in time.

He was speeding up abnormally fast, most likely because Shanty was in peril.

“She’s going to be a real hero if it works, we currently have other things to worry about.” Like the robot falcons diving on us, Dodo was moving far too fast for any of them to keep up with him.

-Darkwing-

I glance to the cliff and saw Shanty standing with her hooves on her hips as she glared down the death ray eyes of Heavy Hooter. Jay Gander Hooter was going to get a laugh out of this one somehow, provided nobody dies and Shanty was about to.

What was she think… oh…? I see it now. Well she better have a method for outrunning the beam or at least avoiding it.

“I’m Saint Canard’s premier crime fighter, one of the world’s best martial artist and I’ve stepped on several claymore mines without permanent injury, heck I even walked those off! If you can’t kill me, then how do you ever expect to take down someone as notorious as Sly Cooper down?!” Time to press buttons and do what I’m best at, confusing my enemies by acting like I have no clue what’s going on sometimes. I meant to do that is one of my favorite phrases. “Heck, I haven’t even heard of you until I came here, you must be one of the world’s worst criminals if you lost your body to a toaster!”

“You will perish for that remark!” Clockwerk screeched as he lashed out at me and I started shooting at him, my shots doing very little to damage him, but they were adding up and electrifying his body like he was a living Jacob’s ladder. I had a grin on my beak. “I am the world’s greatest criminal mastermind!”

“Wow self-proclaimed mastermind, haven’t heard that more than once, are you part of the Fiendish Organization for World Larceny by any chance? What did you do buy a T-shirt? If not then hardly anyone knows that you exist aside from burning down a mansion and killing two people, like that’s so hard to do and it took you and four other people to manage even that much! It’s no wonder the Cooper Family are more memorable than you!” He was actually buying it and I had his full attention on me. I rolled under his left claw as he tried to claw and gave Smolder a worried look as she was turning blue and her scales were cracking. I back down the hill firing up at him while a grin crossed my beak and my eyes glimmered behind my mask. I lived to annoy my enemies with the fact that I will not stop until they do, I never blink in the face of death! “The Coopers are notorious and well known the world over, you… you don’t even warrant a footprint in history you overblown chicken so full of hot air that you’d have to marry a dirigible at this point to have any chance of being noticeable!”

“The world will notice me when I kill all its heroes, starting with you!” He fired a bursts of energy from his wings at me and I started firing energy gas from my gun to blow them out of the air. “You are nothing more than a person pretending to be a hero from a show that nobody ever cared much for to begin with!”

“So you know about the Darkwing Duck show then?” I said with a smarmy grin, time to use the old fake overblown pride to goad him into attacking me. “That means more people know about it than they would ever know about you, which is saying something considering I am living up to actually being Darkwing Duck and will be a living breathing legend unto myself!”

We moved towards one another, him an indestructible demon of a mechanical owl and me a tall, quite handsome, biped duck with a purple mask, cape, a snazzy hat and suit that hunts criminals with a working gas gun weapon I made from blueprints that my relative Maui Mallard lent me about his personal weapon the Beetle Blaster.

I’m becoming a reality, a myth that will go down in history and you Clockwerk, you are becoming a cautionary tale about paying attention to your surroundings.

-Shanty-

Now I be knowing why Pom doesn’t do this often, it was draining to be sending strength to your partner and all I could do was stay standing proudly. My front hooves were actually propping up my body and hiding my exhaustion, my hind legs were quivering and I kept a bright grin on my as the eyes finished charging.

All the climbing, goat flying, fighting robotic birds, avoiding death, all of this be taking a lot of the wind out of my sails, but I am not done yet. I had one thing to do before I be going down.

“Bring it on, I’m not afraid, I live the dream of freedom and you can’t take that from me! Only the seas or skies may take me and even then they are going to have to fight hoof and tooth for it!” I narrowed my as the beams fired, the blinding force be coming for me. “For I am a mighty pirate goat!”

I felt my hind legs finally give out, but my bravado be staying even if it is the last thing I do.

Dodo’s beak slammed into my chest from underneath and I found myself flailing through the air and then I be slamming into something soft… several soft things actually. I saw the beam passing through the cliff where I was standing as my head flopped into something cozy and familiar.

My chest be hurting a lot, but I be alive. Dodo be saving my life again, he be the best first mate ever.

He warbled worriedly and I be looking up at him to send him a feeling of reassurance and to continue helping everyone else.

Have food ready when I wake up Dodo.

Suddenly something dropped into my opened exhausted mouth as my eyes closed, I smiled as I tasted the sweet flavor of strawberry cheesecake muffins.

What a daft familiar I be having.

“Why did you…” I be hearing someone ask something and then they be saying something, I can’t exactly pay attention anymore. My ears not be working at the moment, I still thankfully felt the weight of my precious treasure on my forehead. “Will choke… you idiot!”

I said when I wake up, not when I be passing out from another close call Dodo!

Still be swallowing it though… delicious…

-Cooper-

I’ll have to give Shanty credit for one of the more memorable and important moments of my entire life, because I had an almost front row seat to Clockwerk getting blindsided by his own death ray from the side as he was charging Darkwing as we drove up to a cliff overlooking the slope.

The owl was blasted into the ground and hit with an erupting magma vent a second later, which had to have done some damage.

“I got the look on his face on camera, it was awesome!” Of course you did Murray, not like you were currently worried about driving the van and keeping us from being dunked into a fiery death. Also what’s with the camera in the first place? Was that the thing Bentley was working on with Dormarch? “Also I hope Sh… Cut-Lass is okay.”

“Didn’t she just proclaim she was a pirate… and given what Murray just said you’re on a first name basis with her outside of her codename, did you have something to do with corrupting a youth Cooper?” Carmelita glared at me as she blew a diving falcon out of the air and its mechanical parts sprayed all over the ground.

“Honestly, no. She was like that long before I met up with her in the swamp.” Not technically wrong, my wording was completely truthful one hundred percent, just let assumptions take their course. She doesn’t need to know Shanty was a card carrying member of the gang. I did finally managed to slip one of my calling cards under her headband, she didn’t make it easy either as she was a bright little goat that wouldn’t let me get close enough to steal food from her.

Clockwerk may be down and covered in a light amount of lava, but he wasn’t out, I could see him moving and regaining his bearings.

“I got it, his weakness, it’s in his mouth or head… it’s a very small chip giving off massive amounts of energy. You know that malice that our mutual friend was feeling from miles away and couldn’t even come close to?” Bentley paused to let it sink in for me, I felt a sense of dread rise as I had a feeling where he was going with this. I saw something get tossed up from below the gunner’s seat and I grabbed it to look it over. “His body is running entirely off of his hatred for the Cooper family! We need to destroy that chip like yesterday, it’s the thing keeping his body going and mostly indestructible! He is literally repairing himself as we speak with his own hatred!”

A badly damaged Clockwerk stood up dripping with lava and roared, his eyes focusing on Darkwing and his body was already fixing itself as he stepped forward.

“Bentley, take the gun, stop any interference from the tower. Murray, think up a path to go to avoid the next beam when it fires. I’m going down there to get back what’s mine and save Darkwing!” I hopped out of the seat and started running along the cliff with my cane clutched tightly in my right hand. I noticed Dodo hopping down and heading towards a crawling Smolder, she was safe. “Oh and just do what you do best Inspector!”

"Cooper!" Ignoring Carmelita, I jumped from the cliff and twirled to land on a spire point and my cane started glowing.

I now know exactly where your weakness is Clockwerk!

178. Metal vs Mettle.

-Earth, Southeastern Crumbling Krakarov, vaguely circular large pit, Smolder-

A warbling noise drew my attention from dragging myself painfully across the ground, thankfully it was Dodo and not one of those metallic falcons or Clockwerk.

“Hey Dodo… come to pick me up?” I don’t think I could stand up, I think Clockwerk might have damaged my spine. He poked me in the chest and I sighed. “Don't think I can stand up.”

He leaned down and carefully lifted me off the ground with his beak and slowly placed me into his back. He warbled somberly and looked at the others that were here with me. We were all a mess.

“How did you survive that for so long?!” Judy, I think the rabbit was called, asked with clear concern for my wellbeing as I was plopped next to Shanty, on top of Pom.

“Born tough… all dragons are resilient, even young like I am. Heh, felt like I was being cracked open by a Roc, giant bird that has a tendency to pick on young dragons.” I grunted as the immense amount of pain below my wings flared agonizingly. This is the most pain I’ve ever felt in my whole life, usually this kind of pain isn’t a thing dragons will ever feel. “Don’t think my spine made it, still breathing though and that’s good enough for me.”

“Okay Dodo, back up onto the cliff and towards the Cooper gangs van to see if we can offload the injured, then we can try to pick up Darkwing.” Thank goodness Nick brought that up, because we were kind of stuff into Dodo’s back.

“I’m still watching the tower, but I think the Cooper Gang has the remaining robot falcons handled until it fires again.” Judy was sitting on the edge of the seat as she looked over to us. “Team Leap Lamb has seen better days huh? I got us covered, but I don’t think I’m going to be doing much running around, my ears are kind of burning up. Wish I had sweat glands.”

“No you don’t.” Nick answered as I nodded off, a nap sounded good right now.

-Sly-

His wings were twisted and he wasn’t able to fly, his face was scorched and his metal tail feathers were all rumpled, just because he looked battered did not mean I was ever going to underestimate Clockwerk. He was already fixing himself as

He was going to charge towards Darkwing, who was still wielding his gun and standing quite tall despite the bleeding wounds slowing him down.

My cane was glowing brightly as I prepared to jump from the spire and into the fight. We needed to take Clockwerk down fast or at least stop him from focusing on being able to remotely control the tower.

All I needed to do was stun Clockwerk and get at least ten seconds to pull off the most impossible heist of this century.

We were on a large circular portion of the volcano that had sunken downwards from the rest of the mountain. Getting out of here isn’t going to be easy, so let’s make this quick.

Okay, time to go!

I pushed off the spire and flipped as I launched forward and raised my staff above my head. As Darkwing fired several blasts of small electrified clouds of gas, they weren’t going to do much to stop or slow down Clockwerk, but it was a good distraction for me.

Timing my intercept correctly, I brought my cane down on Clockwerk and his head slammed into the ground. I bounce back and landed on my feet and attacked his left wing with my cane with an upward swing, knocking it back before he could swing it for me after I clocked his head.

He kicked his left talon forward attempting to skewer me, I rolled to Clockwerk’s right and slapped my cane with an amount of explosive force against his right leg and toppled him. It didn’t take him long before he was standing again.

“Cooper…” Clockwork growled.

“I’m only going to say one thing, you’re going down Clockwerk.” I narrowed my eyes at him and pointed the hook at him while making a gesture to come at me.

“We’ll see.” He responded and slung his right wing around in a sweep.

Hopping over it was simple, ducking the tail feathers that came around afterwards were not, as they all slammed down towards me and I had to leap backwards. Was it weird that his tail feathers were basically acting like a giant claw?

Darkwing fired several shots and Clockwerk swung his tail around after dragging it on the ground and slung molten rock his way, making him take evasive action.

I ran up and smack Clockwerk’s left wing and quickly backed away as he swung it outwards for me. This opened him up for a fully charged shock pistol blast from Carmelita to the head.

“Agh…” Clockwerk’s head had a glowing rent in it as he stumbled back and I leapt forward to hit it with an overhead slam widening it slightly.

I had to quickly turn and run away after I landed and he hopped and tried to crush me with his grasping talons. Looking over my shoulder I saw him lift his right leg and launched it forward while releasing a chunk of rock in my direction.

Diving to the ground I grunted as the slightly ash covered dirt got into my fur and the ball of slightly molten rock his a nearby rock wall.

Once his right talon was on the ground outside a small hole of lava, Clockwerk tossed another rock towards Darkwing who wasn’t doing much damage with his left talon. He was at least slowing down Clockwerk’s ability to heal with rapid shots faster than Carmelita could get off.

“Look out!” I guess that’s the difference between the gas and energy weapon the two wielded.

Darkwing ducked and rolled to the side while using his cape to take the bits of splattering lava. His cape smoldered and had some holes in it, but it didn’t catch fire.

-Nick Wilde-

Judy was busy blasting robotic flacons out of the air and it wouldn’t be long before the tower fired again, though I think it was taking longer since whatever power source it was running on had likely sunken into the magma pool beneath it.

It was up to its belly in molten rock and the world was shaking slightly as the land around us broke and went both upwards and downwards in places. The air was starting to boil the sweat right off my face.

A lot more of the volcano’s cone had collapsed inwards and lava was slowly starting to boil over from the top of Krakarov. We really didn’t have much time here, at least none of the flows were coming our way… yet.

Even so I hefted Smolder up and into the Cooper Van, Dodo was carefully placing Caper Canine down next to me and I moved her inside. He then picked out Pom and passed her to me… after I was done getting three of the injured situated, he hesitated a bit with passing me the exhausted Shanty.

He looked down and nuzzled the goat gently and then carefully lifted her up to me while looking at her with an emotion of love and protectiveness.

I thought the mechanical ostrich was expressive before, but this was something else. It was like he was worried about leaving Shanty to the Cooper Van, he placed her into my waiting arms nuzzled her face and then turned to my best friend gunning down a falcon and warbled.

“What is it, I’m kind of busy!” Several shock pistol shots blew apart another falcon and the gun on the van roared as it not only blasted any other approaching falcons, it was also shooting down the missiles being fired at us from the nearby tower.

“I think Dodo wants you to ride him!” Said Dormarch from the nearby device. “Scanning all individual’s healths… starting with, darn it Pom, a cracked skull, how am I supposed to keep you alive at this rate?! Not to mention the ripped muscle fibers in her heart, arrhythmia flare up making it hard for her to breathe and thankfully only a light amount of heatstroke since her wool is a naturally good insulator! She abused her form of Dancing Flame again. If you want to know Dodo, Shanty is mostly okay, moderate dehydration, she’s exhausted and she suffering from heatstroke worse than Pom, but she is in better health which is not saying much with my people. Dolly has… huh… weird… severe exhaustion, light brain damage that’s already healing on its own, how did that even happen with her helmet? Her body is somehow sapped of its nutrients and is also a bit dehydrated, not nearly as bad as Shanty is though. As for… oh… that’s… quite worrying.”

“What about Smolder?” I asked as I saw the Dalmatian on the screen look up at me, silently noting Judy hopping into Dodo’s back and he took off running for the sinking tower sticking out of the current halfway point up the volcano as it currently was.

“Officer, I ask that you immediately lay her out on her back and make sure to straighten her out on the floor of the van carefully.” Dormarch said slowly as he looked away, as I did as I was told I heard several creaking noises coming from the dragon. How old did Pom exactly say she was, a teenager? That’s… “While there are no signs of suffering from heat, which matches up with the information on dragons I was given by her special someone. She has massive internal bruising… surprisingly no internal bleeding which would have been quite bad because I don’t think there’s anyone on this world that can do some required surgery on a dragon for the worst bit of damage.”

“What happened to my little buddies, little buddy?!” Murray shouted back at us as he stopped looking at the tower and the surrounding shifting terrain from the window.

“Moderate to heavy spinal damage, she might be tough on the outside, but her insides can only be so tough. The bones, while not crushed are all badly cracked throughout her lower back and there are even some chips in there. Thankfully they haven’t floated away from the damaged areas, it would be simple enough to get them back in place and patch them… but we’d need some specialized help to fix that. We also need an understanding dragon anatomy and that’ll be covered by her special someone Ocellus.” Dormarch groaned out. “Am I cursed to bring misery to others or does me just being near them cause misery to show up? In any case, the injury is not life threatening… yet. She can still breathe and thankfully her pelvis, tail and legs held up better but are still slightly nerved damaged by all the heavy bruising. That her scales are cracked must have taken an impressive amount of force, I’ve calculated that her toughness is on a scale that exceeds most forms of steel, chromium, tungsten and the like. I’d surmise from this that Clockwerk is supernaturally strong.”

“Ah don’t blame yourself Dormarch, you’re doing the best with what you have!” Murray stated trying to be in good spirits.

“You’re not bringing misery, you just happened to be around when misery starts happening.” I try to add my own two cents. “I would know, I personally saw misery when Zootopia panicked about ancient predator and prey dynamics during the Night Howler incident. Can I blame myself for tensions being high when I technically count as a predator, there are just some things outside our control dude. You’re a good person Dormarch… now how can I help them? I’m not doing much else and I can be your hands.”

“First get a strip of pink cloth from the bag and I’ll tell you how to tie it around Pom’s head to not make things worse.” Dormarch pointed in a direction on the screen and I got the bag. To think Pom went into this not wearing it and she’s going to end up wearing the pink strip of cloth anyway. Come to think of it, it’s the only thing she wears beside the bell around her neck. “Yes, I know how ironic it sounds, but it’s perfect for her head injury at the moment until we can get her some professional help. We’ll get to splinting Smolder’s spine next.”

-Sly-

If it wasn’t me keeping his parts from repairing themselves, it was Darkwing distracting him and if it wasn’t either of us distracting Clockwerk, then it was Carmelita leaping around and finding spots to fire on Clockwerk from.

She can jump really high, it’s kind of amazing she’s not considered a super hero like Pom is with that kind of leaping ability.

“Are you ignoring me, ME?!” Clockwerk Slapped his left talons at me and lifted me up and then squeezed, only to get the crunching of a standee. Of course I was ignoring him, I’d rather appreciate Carmelita than look at him, but since he’s distracting me from it. “What… agh?!”

I came down on his left wing twisting it out of its socket with my cane and a blast came from his right wing damaging joint and practically doing the same.

“He’s healing too fast, do you have any ideas, I’m down to just basic shock blasts after that!” Darkwing asked as he dodged a sweep of Clockwerk’s tail and I rolled to the side as he tried to stomp down at me and slap me away with his big floppy wings.

It was like we were fighting a giant rubber chicken, one that was slowly repairing from all the damage we’re dealing to him and I couldn’t let him get fixed up enough to tear us to shreds and we were tiring pretty quickly.

A fully charged shock pistol exploded into his back. This stunned and made Clockwerk rear up with his mouth open to the sky in a silent screech, which gives me time to tell him the plan.

“If you have a way to pry his jaw or chest open for ten seconds of uninterrupted access, then that would help me finish him for good!” I ducked back as his left corrected in his socket and nearly sliced me in half as the feathers along his burnt twisted wing recovered far too quickly to be normal.

The spray of lava he sent my way wasn’t very good for my health either, but my retreat only made me quickly ditch the horse shoe that had been covered in molten liquid. My family had a strange history with lucky objects, I wasn’t about to get that lucky again without another horse shoe.

“Give me a time to coordinate with that fox!” Darkwing turned and ran off leaving me with Clockwerk’s undivided attention in a field of flames, ash and imminent death with the ground threatening to break up underneath my feet at any moment.

I also heard the firing of the death ray, but it didn’t sound like it was hitting anywhere near here. At least that wasn’t targeting my friends, I held my cane in front of me at the ready as Clockwerk charged with his beak wide open.

-Judy Hopps-

It was days like this that I probably shouldn’t have went into law enforcement.

The robot ostrich of Team Leap Lamb and I had garnered the towers attention and drew all of Clockwerk’s clockwork flacons and the ire of the tower sized owe that was now firing it’s death ray after us.

My ride ran up the side of the mountain a slow curve that would lead towards a cliff that would if I was right the ostrich could jump out and over to the problem sinking slowly into the ground and only staying above by propping up on it’s one mechanical wing.

In the mean time I was gunning down every falcon trying to intercept us as we avoided the beam trailing after us. We curved around and up to the cliff and the ostrich leapt from it, the beam trailing up to follow us and then it stopped because we were directly above its head and falling towards it.

“Woohoo!” Holding on with my left paw, I charged my pistol and fired down into one of its eyes damaging it and then the ostrich slammed into its left shoulder with his feet full force. He pointed his beak down at the shoulder joint while looking to me and I got up on the edge of the seat in his back and took aim.

-Bentley-

“Seems Officer Hopps currently has the tower fully distracted, Murray get into that pit and ram Clockwerk before he eviscerates Sly!” I turned the gun about and glared at the owl that has been menacing our brother’s dreams for so long.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to do what you’re about to when we have injured on board!” Nick stated from below.

“Secure them then, geeze, do I have to do all the thinking around here!” The van surged forward and over the ledge and into the put, thankfully the tires were reinforced before this to handle lava for a short amount of time because we would need to plow through some of it to reach Sly in time.

-Sly-

My cane went flying from my grip behind me and I was knocked onto my back, as Clockwork stood above me. I might have been clawed in the left hip, right shoulder, my fur was scorched and I was out of standees… should have restocked before this.

“This is the might of the Cooper Clan?” Clockwerk’s wings were almost fully repaired, he brought them up and his blade feathers extended outwards as he prepared to swing them down on my like a bunch of swords. “I am to be the world’s greatest now!”

“Incoming!” Murray plowed the plow on the van through some lava and into Clockwork’s right leg, then activated the plow to punch outwards.

“Take this you canned turkey!” Bentley unloaded the gun into his wings, damaging them as fast as he could fire. “Get you’re cane Sly!”

Didn’t need to be told twice, I was already running to pick up my father’s cane before it became a statistic of this volcano like Clockwerk’s lair.

When I turned back around I saw Bentley abandoning the seat as Clockwerk ripped it off the van with beak and tossed it into a pit of magma with a splash.

“Come on, go down already!” Murray thankfully put the van into reverse before Clockwork could tear into it with his talons, he then put it drive and slammed into Clockwerk sending him skidding back.

“If this is the best you got, then you will…” Clockwerk was continuing to be arrogant, why wouldn’t he? Most of our best sources of damage were gone and Murray damaged the van’s lava proof plow just ramming into him.

“Hey Clockwerk!” Two fully charged shock pistol blasts of electrical energy slapped him in the face and body stunning it entirely.

Both Darkwing and Carmelita followed that by leaping directly onto his head, they both planted their feet and boots respectively in his lower jaw and forced it downwards.

I was already running forward eager to finish this.

I leapt up and did a spin to land on the pointed tip of the bottom of his beak and then threw my upper body into his mouth, he started flailing around as I hooked my boots on the outer edges of the beak and then reached deep inside to get one of the things I came for.

The remaining portion of the Thievius Racoonis was hidden within his throat!

“Hurry up, I don’t know how much longer we can keep his beak open!” Carmelita shouted.

“I’ve almost got it…” I quickly my cane upwards and with a sudden thrash I was launched from Clockwerk’s mouth with a powerful cough and sent flying to slam into the nearest wall of the pit.

Both Carmelita and Darkwing hit the ground, Darkwing landed badly on his shoulder and Carmelita managed to roll and get back into a standing position to start rapidly firing as Clockwerk charged me.

“It’s over Clockwerk…” I said smugly struggling to sit up despite the back pain and possible internal bleeding from being coughed out of him like I was fired from a circus cannon. I pulled my cap from my head and tossed it onto the ground in front of me. “My hats off to you, you ‘WERE’ my worst nightmare.”

Clockwerk was almost upon me when I flicked my left hand and a small chip fell into the cap, this made Clockwerk stop completely dead, pun.

“No… NO… NOOO!” Clockwerk stated as he realized what was about to happen as I propped myself up into a sitting condition with a bit of coppery taste leaking out the corner of my lips. “I am immortal, you can’t defeat me like…”

There was a grin on my face despite the pain.

“As Shanty once mentioned a friend of hers saying a lot… ska-doosh!” I slapped the butt of my cane against the ground with my left hand as I propped myself up into a standing position with it.

Clockwerk roared in defiance, but he didn’t get very far. The ‘hate chip’ in my cap blew apart as soon as my cane hit the ground. I didn’t even care that I was caught in the blast of my own hat. I wasn’t going to let Clockwerk get a chance to hurt anyone else.

“Coop-aaaaghgggghhh!” Slowly the massive metal menace before me started rusting, his quickly repairing body just started falling apart.

He was dissolving rapidly before my eyes, the magic of his raw hatred for my family was no longer holding him together.

The nightmare was over…

Unfortunately there was a different nightmare to worry about, how were we getting off this volcano alive with so many injured people and the van trapped in a pit with no way out? I could barely walk after that explosion.

“Cooper… come on, you’re not dying here on me now ring tail!” Carmelita propped me up and started to help me towards the van, she was limping somewhat. “Merde, we’ll figure a way out of this!”

-Equus, World Summit, Amira-

“What is this?!” I thrust the paper delivered to me by a courier into Jade’s face.

She took it and started to read it.

“Yada yada, overthrown sultan, blah blah blah, infestation of Huoshan battle durians, seems someone stole my idea, Saddle Arabia shall now be henceforth known as…” Her mouth crinkled up and I could hear her snorting in disbelief, she wants to laugh, but she’s holding it in as she looked at me with what could be pure honest sympathy. “Sarasaland by the new sultan, Snickers the Incorrigible?!”

Delegate Jade started laughing wildly.

“It’s not funny, my country has been taken over by a turtle dove!” The laughter that grew even worse, this haunting laughter would continue to be my nightmare for two more minutes.

What she said next was even worse, because when she stopped laughing, she suddenly grew quite serious all of the sudden.

“No, wait… this is a bad thing! I can’t destroy Saddle Arabia if it doesn’t exist…. I have to go stop my familiar and put things back to normal!” Jade then leapt up and ran from the room, much to my growing horror that she’d bring back Saddle Arabia just for that reason alone. “So I can destroy Saddle Arabia!”

“My wife, the ever comical villain.” Fizzlepop stated somberly with an insufferable sigh before standing up and sauntering slowly out after Jade. “I’ll go stop her…”

Author's Note

Next stop: Escaping the volcano before everyone dies.

179. Krakarov’s cracking.

Author's Note

Music- Gradius 3- Fire Scramble

179. Krakarov’s cracking.

-Earth, Krakarov, halfway up the crumbling volcano, Judy-

“Oof… could you have made that landing any softer… Whoa!” I held on for dear life as the ostrich started running away as the tower started sinking even worse and the volcano started rumbling and shaking. The ground was breaking up and the tower was still trying to send a last few robotic falcons our way as it sunk.

Apparently something inside it exploded because of our weight making it whatever critical thing that powered its death ray no longer a factor, but it was now cranking out as many robotic falcons as it could and we weren’t ever on a shortage of those.

The ostrich was rushing southeast down the side of the volcano as areas of it erupted around us, I hope he knew where we were going. I turned around in the seat and started shooting, the chasing falcons swooped and swerved around my shots as we passed over terrain.

I heard a warble that sounded like a warning and held on to the back edge with my left paw as the ostrich leapt over a large river of lava and turned his head back to fire off a quick blueberry croissant into the face of a flacon. Said croissant shattered and a piece of it got stuck into the closest falcon’s wings and it crashed into the river of lava behind us.

Note to self, pastries are weapons when wielded by a large mechanical ostrich with an unerring sense of accuracy. I looked into the distance as the tower was still sending out falcons and the ones almost on us were catching up.

Continuing to hold on with my left paw, the ostrich steered his way through the collapsing bits of terrain and an avalanched of boulders toppling down after us as sections of the volcano fell inward. He jumped every now and then and was picking up the pace and outrunning the falcons, but every swerve and change in direction slowed us down and allowed them to catch up.

I raised my right pistol and fired a quick shot when we got a moment of a straightaway, the blast of electricity missed as the three falcons soared around it. It wasn’t like anyone would have better aim than I would in this situation.

The next two shots I fired were wide on purpose and then a shot a delayed blast in the center, the falcon dodged the first two and then dodged straight into my last shot.

With still three that were close to us, that’s when my ride decided to jump with a spin and landed to go sliding backwards down a slope backwards.

“What are you doing?!” Why did I choose to ride this thing again? It fired a blast of rippling energy from its beak that wiped out another one of the three falcons. Ten more on approach in the distance, several more rising into the air.

The birds head warbled at me and pointed down the slope at the lava below when I tried to aim up at them, I looked up at the two falcons swooping down at us and he insistently pointed his beak down the slope.

The ostrich didn’t seem to be firing on them… wait… I looked down the slope and it occurred to me what my ride was thinking. We couldn’t slow down and we needed to lose our tails… so…

“Three… two…. one… now!” I stowed my pistol as I counted, threw myself forward and grabbed onto the seat.

The dragging of his mechanical claws against the ground stopped as he leapt backwards, sending us over the river of lava, the falcons didn’t have time to pull up and slammed into the liquid rock and melted as we landed on the other side of the river skidding.

The ostrich shifted its hip and swung around to continue running forward and towards a pit, that’s where I saw the Cooper Gang van avoiding lava pooling up from the ground as the large circular pit crumbled around them.

In my distraction I barely noticed when the ostrich clamped onto my ears with its beak, it wasn’t a painful pressure. I was lifted up and he ran around the perimeter of the pit and then tossed my onto the van, I landed on my feet and looked up at him as he leapt off and landed in front of the van what was he doing.

He pointed at the nearby wall and then poked his chest while looking at me, what did he want me to do here?

“What’s going on up here?” Carmelita blinked at me as she poked through the hole in the roof where the missing gun used to be and then looked to the ten falcons approaching and another swarm following in behind them.

“We have incoming, that tower is still producing falcons and that’s all it can do now!” I shouted the both of us pulled out our shock pistols and raised them, Carmelita clambered onto the roof. I looked down. “Back the van up to the wall, the ostrich is getting us out of here somehow!”

“We’ll cover him!” Carmelita wasn’t willing to leave anyone behind, she could easily make it out of here with her leaping ability being on par with Leap Lambs.

“Here, take my gas gun, use whatever is left in the last canister and get up there!” Darkwing called out from below.

That’s when Nick joined us too by starting to climb up onto the roof and he had to hold as the van backed up toward the wall.

It wasn’t too high for us to climb out if we jumped from the roof of the van, but it was too far to carry all the injured out of here and the volcano was going down too fast to get them all out in time.

“Carmelita, can you shorten the cliff to make a ramp up with a few blasts?” At Nick’s suggest, Carmelita turned and started charging a shot on her shock pistol in response.

She let loose a blast and a foot of the wall crumbled into a slope, the robot falcons were already diving towards us.

“Judy, help her, I’ve got the falcons if they get too close.” Nick to aim and squeezed a few rounds of electrified clouds from the gas gun and the shots flew straight, but after too long they expanded and dissipated. “Got a sense of range on this thing now.”

Looking back around us lava was starting to fill up the pit the further it sunk, I turned my own pistol up at the cliff and triggered a charge.

Nick started to fire as the falcons drew into attack, he struck two out of five shots and managed to stop them from crashing into the ostrich moving towards the front of the van head lowered. The falcons were circling around for another run at us.

Carmelita fired another shot and I did too, the cliff behind the van shortened from nine feet up to about eight or seven feet with a slope. We charged another shot, Nick was firing rapidly as they closed it they slowed down and went for the ostrich as he was pressing his head up under the front of the van.

Did it seriously think it could lift something this… the entire back of the van tilted upward and I heard stress noises coming from beneath us. I saw Carmelita giving the incoming birds a glanced as we charged our shots

“We need to break the cliff further Carmelita!” I was still aiming at it

“We need to deal with the falcons, or else we won’t make it up onto the cliff at all!” She returned as another Falcon was blown from the air by a concentrating Nick. “We can’t let them attack the ostrich.”

“Tie breaker here, my point is that the ostrich is already damaged enough as it is, we deal with the falcons first before the next wave comes in. We can concentrate fire on collapsing the cliff afterwards!” Doing so as Nick stopped a falcon from ripping into the backside of the poor metal ostrich trying to save us. Carmelita and I joined Nick in wave of unavoidable fire that took down the remaining seven falcons as the van tilted upwards further. “Hold it there buddy, now cliff!”

The ostrich stop and warbled in a strained tone. We turned and blasted the cliff with two full charged shots, it was now sloping sharply at six feet.

“Okay buddy lift, you can do it! Everyone’s counting on you!” The van lifted up slightly and a jerk as we heard something buckle slightly underneath. “At least push so the van’s back wheel is on the slope, hurry!”

“We’ve hit the cliff enough, anymore and we threaten to crush ourselves with it!” Carmelita stated as the rear of the van heaved upwards and then the ostrich started stepping forward as the van was sharply inclined and precariously balanced on its neck. We had to hold onto the roof, the wheel was almost on the bottom of the slope and the pink hippo poked his head out.

“Just a little more, you’ve got this big buddy!” The pink hippo driver of the Cooper Gang said as he leaned out and looked at the rear wheels almost pressing into the slope.

The ostrich clenched its right legs toes into the ground and then lifted up its left leg, I could hear the metal straining as it pressed its left to the underside and clamped its mechanical talons onto the underside of the van.

Lifting with its other leg and head, I could almost hear it warbling in pain from the stress.

“Stop the falcons, they’re going for the ostrich!” The next ten falcons swooping in were coming low and like Nick said, they were targeting the last active member of Team Leap Lamb getting us to safety.

Despite the wave of fire, seven of the ten falcons were total and the three managed to score hits on the planted leg of the ostrich before we could deal with them.

One self-destructed after it hit the lava doing further damage to our poor friend’s right leg and if that wasn’t bad enough his right foot was slowly being drench in lava now.

In spite of the damage to the ostrich the van lifted a little higher, I heard the sound of rubber squealing as the tire hit the makeshift and uneven rocky slope.

I heard moving underneath, then the right leg lifted away and the van pushed further up the slope. I could hear a pained warble and the van continued to be pushed upward. It slid forward a bit, scaring us and then we saw the top of his head pressing against the vans plow.

Another heave and the van almost manage to make it up the cliff, we bottomed out. That’s when the ostrich lunged forward and butting the plow. Pushing us up the cliff the rest of the way and flopped onto his face and his started to slide backwards out of sight.

We were quiet for a second after the van pulled back a few feet and hit its breaks, the head reared up and the injured mechanical ostrich slowly limped its way up on to the slope. This was a sigh of relief, what didn’t make us sigh with relief was another flight of falcons incoming.

“Come on, onto the van, you can make it!” Murray, that’s right, he’s The Murry, muscle and getaway driver of the Cooper Gang. We’ve been kind of busy with a hectic night.

“We’ve got you covered come on!” I fired four blasts into the air as the ostrich limped forward with impressive speed and managed to hop onto the van. “Drive like a mad hippo!”

“Hey I resemble that remark!” As the hippo hit the gas and we swerved around and started heading downhill towards the edge of the volcano, couldn’t focus on that falcons are tailgating us. With that odd sentence fresh in my mind Carmelita, Nick and I were firing shot after shot into the falcons coming after us.

“Hold, on to something!” The turtle shouted, we quickly crouched down and grabbed the edges of the open roof as the van ramped upwards and we slammed into a sloped that erupted in several magma vents above us afterwards. The world was shaking even worse than it had been before and various spots around Krakarov were erupting. “Not, good, we’re not going to make it at this rate.”

“Stop being so negative Bentley, I’m driving here!” The van swerved as pillars erupted from the ground all around us and then sunk into pits of magma as lava sprayed out.

“I know I’m bordering on passing out from heatstroke here, but… can’t we all focus on surviving this!” I certainly was, my ears were burning trying to bleed off all the heat of our surroundings surging with each new break in the surrounding landscape. I aimed and fired another shot that took out a falcon, that last few that were evading us had their eyes flashing.

“Get down!” Carmelita grabbed us and pulled us into the van, the explosions rocked the van, but we outpaced the explosion. Carmelita clambered. “Can’t this thing go any faster? I mean you always seem to have some method of escaping me personally! Also the next wave of falcons are going to catch up soon.”

“Yes, but I’m saving that for ramping us to safety in the end, it’s going to be a near thing with all this weight. I’m trying to ration our fuel here, we still need to drive back to town you know!” Suddenly the van shifted, it started moving much faster. “What was… no!”

“What was that Murray?” Looking to Sly Cooper and the various others secured to the insides of the van, he was trying to stay calm judging by his.

“Our big buddy leapt off of us… do you think he heard me?” Murray looked in the rear view mirror. “At least he’s keeping up.”

I leapt up and grabbed the edge of the vans sunroof and pulled myself up to see the ostrich trailing after us, it turned its head about to look at the flacons coming down on us.

It warbled a declaration, but the other machines were quite mindless and probably set to attack the closest living thing, meaning us. It just occurred to me that I didn’t see Clockwerk anywhere.

“What happened to Clockwerk?” I finally asked.

“He’s dead, watched him dissolve personally, his hatred is what got him this far and without it he was quite literally nothing.” Sly grunted out. “It was like his mechanical body decayed from thousands of years of aging in seconds.”

“Good to know that his last act might be him trying to get revenge from the grave by sending constant mechanical falcons at us until the tower is finally dunked into the volcano.” A massive explosion took out a large upper portion of the volcano and a wave of quick moving lava started pouring down the side towards us. “There’s also that I guess…”

I took aim from the sun roof as Nick and Carmelita joined me trying to shoot out the remaining falcons coming at us, we weren’t alone as the mechanical ostrich was blasting them too and was staying at least five to ten feet behind us despite its leg and body looking like they’ve seen better days. Its neck was also crumpled in places.

“Almost at the bottom and I’m seeing a lot of lava, you guys finished off those falcons yet?!” Murray was driving like a madman, which is good in this situation that he knew how to handle rough terrain that was constantly breaking apart.

“We’ve got three left, maybe another batch, but the tower has thankfully sunk into the volcano enough that it can’t produce any more.” My answer was followed by a shot from my pistol. Maybe we could get out of here without someone else getting seriously injured, at least we can deal with these meager numbers. “Make that two in the immediate vicinity.”

A mechanical falcon missing its right wing tumbled its way into falling straight into a magma vent.

Team Leap Lamb has had enough injuries already and they dealt with the most number of robot falcons in seconds, we were all going to have bruises after this rough ride. I don’t even think we can match the outrageous number they destroyed with that massive pillar shaped tornado to the sky, I didn’t even know tornadoes came in any other shapes aside from cones.

“Well hurry, up, you’re going to want to be inside when we fly off the ramp Murray is aiming for!” Well if Bentley the Brains said it’s important, then we’d better listen. The two remaining falcons grew closer, but they weren’t getting anywhere when a ball of electrified gas struck one blowing away its head.

The van suddenly jerk to the right as a section of the volcano suddenly collapsed. Carmelita then fire a shot that hit the last one in the chest and blew it apart.

“Ugh, we finally got them.” I ducked down into the van, as did Carmelita and Nick. We tried to find a place in this crowded vehicle to hunker down and hold some of the injured in place.

-Murray-

So volcano is both crumbling and erupting, there’s wave of lava coming up behind us quickly and it was the bottom of the night and three bases loaded… wait I shouldn’t get distracted while driving on a volcano that’s shaking apart!

I veered around a jutting piece of stone in a perfect drift. I’m going to go into racing for a while, we needed a huge break from all the heists we’ve been doing and this was probably the most dangerous thing we’ll ever do in our lives. If there was anything else, I know I’d always be there for Sly and Bentley, we’re family.

“I’m about to hit the booster…” The tire of the van scrabbled against the stone and the pathway down the ramp was collapsing before, but The Murray was not daunted by such danger! “Wish the path was far straighter so we can build up more speed.”

I was veering left and right trying to keep us on the pathway that was narrowing drastically as we made a run up to the wide ramp. I pushed the button and we blurred forward, towards the ramp and took off into the air.

Sure there were a few screams in my ears as we were going up, but I’d think we make it…

At least I thought we would make it until we started plummeting towards the lava.

I realized I was about to become a well done hamburger hippo, along with everyone else who was awake were screaming their heads of as we were falling short of the snowy forest leading up to the volcano.

That’s when something happened, something heavy slammed right into us from below.

The entire van suddenly flipped upwards and forward to land right side up on the ground and I hit the brakes and turned before we ran straight into a tree at full speed.

Still hit the tree though, but it stopped us completely and the damage to my baby was thankfully minimal. This van was everything to me aside from Sly and Bentley, it has saved our lives once again!

“Uhn… everyone okay?” Miss Carmelita groaned as she picked herself up.

-Dormarch-

I scanned our surroundings a bit and sighed.

“Everyone has a large amount of bruising from that impact and the rough landing, but you’re all in relatively stable conditions beyond the seriously injured being a little worse off.” I spoke up as I diagnosed the health of everyone present. “Can anyone get an eye on Optimized Ostrich?”

“Is that what he calls himself?” The grey rabbit, Officer Judy I believe, said before collapsing face forward into the vans floor, finally succumbing to heatstroke breathing harshly. She was still awake so I answered.

“Well it’s his hero name, he likes playing along with the rest of Leap Lamb’s Team. Please rest, you and a few others are suffering from heatstroke.” I did a small scan of the surrounding area. “Can someone go out and check if he made it? I believe he was the one to hit the van to safety and caused us to flip.”

“He timed it very well then, but wouldn’t he fall into the… oh…” Everyone that was awake and aware enough to realize what just happened as Nick Wilde just voice something perturbing to the lot of us. “Stay here Carrots, medical scanners orders.”

“I’m technically not a medical scanner, but it is a function I have.” I retorted, the words ‘search engine’ still ringing in my mind.

Everyone awake and in good enough condition suddenly sat up straight and panicked to get out of the van to see what became of Dodo.

I hoped he was alright, he was made of some durable stuff, stuff that can solve a temporary amount of extreme heat, but falling into lava stream surrounding Krakarov… yeah I could understand their worry and even felt it myself.

-Nick-

Leaving the back of the Cooper Gang’s van I made my way towards the cliff to looking at the volcano as it had a minor eruption and continued to sink into the ground with world shaking effort.

I didn’t see Optimized Ostrich, a second later a clawed left foot slammed again the wall of the cliff coming out of the river of lava and the ostrich pulled himself from the lava. Slightly melting as he did so and clambered his way up slowly up towards us.

“Everyone get back, he’s coming up!” I shouted to Carmelita, Bentley and Murray, everyone else was in the van.

I backed away and the left foot slightly melting, covered in molten bits of metal the poor ostrich pulled himself up and over the edge and chunks of him splattered against the ground.

He opened his beak and a faint pained warbled escaped, we just stared at him in horror as his head was almost falling from his slowly melting body. He slowly retracted his head towards his torso and his legs folded up beneath him in slow jerky movements and the light in his eyes started dying.

-Dodo last memories-

Running forward, crouching at the crumbling edge and then pushing all the legs hydraulics at full power, impacting the van head first and then falling into the inferno. Nothing, but pain since, but still managed to find traction and continued forward.

Shanty was safe… rider was safe… Van was okay… error… damage substantial… 91% functionality loss...

“Come on harmony programs, emergency function… code G.I.A.N.T.E.G.G.” Voices in Dodo’s head were nice, maybe they help Dodo? “Come on, do it now programs, we’re losing Dodo here! Preserve that mind damn it, he’s friendship personified and he’s learned so much! It can’t end this way!”

Sys//.//… fun…. fun…. function-junction… acti...vate…

-Carmelita-

I felt a little sorrow at seeing him die in front of us and that last pitiable warble could be felt by everyone as his melting form stopped moving entirely.

“How are we going to tell them about this?” Bentley walked towards the molten mess that saved our lives twice within the last hour.

“Can we bring him?” The hippo had the right idea.

“Do you think you can even get him…” Bentley started to ask, but then Murray roared.

“You better believe I can, because I want to too!” Their were tears in Murray's eyes. "It just... he... needs to cools down."

“Yeah…” Bentley stated somberly.

-A few hours later-

We were all silent, on the road to Sobaka.

180. Interim Interrogation.

-Sobaka, hotel run, Ocellus-

“Blah, blah, blah, so that’s what happened.” Sly said.

“Huh, I see.” I commented dryly while considering everything I heard.

“What? All you said was ‘blah blah blah and so that’s what happened! Are you going to at least explain that the ostrich is still alive?” The fox looked upset, Carmelita was not having a good day. “I’m still iffy on that, it hasn’t moved in hours and it isn’t breathing.”

“I’m pretty sure that whatever makes up Dodo’s core is why he isn’t dead despite ninety percent of his body being destroyed.” I was looking at the pile of blackened with ash melted metal form that used to be Dodo, while he didn’t look healthy I could still vaguely feel a presence in that mass. “His core apparently survived, but his body wasn’t nearly as resilient.”

“Yeah, sorry about not focusing on that sooner, I was more focused on keeping all the biologically injured alive. That Dodo even still has a working power source is nothing short of miraculous.” Dormarch was connected to a scanner and was more worried about the health of our friends. “Even my scans says he should be dead, he even functionally is right now! Okay… so anyway a full explanation of what happened from those who were there to witness what they saw. From the top!”

-One full explanation of Krakarov later-

“Okay so they did little aside from run around, fight a lot of robotic falcons, got injured badly and made some dumb decisions that turned out okay… also I noticed that Caper Canine…” I trailed off. “You know what, as the only active member of Team Leap Lamb left to make decisions, I’m going to open up with real names here given I know Pom doesn’t like the subterfuge or being called a super hero very much even if she’s playing along with it. Dolly here has suffered severe magic backlash and exhaustion, explains what we saw from here earlier. I’ll have to talk with her, she doesn’t have to worry about a horn since her whole body is a magical focus, but she’s going to need to eat a lot and know the dangers of pushing beyond a specific limit as she almost cashed a check that her body couldn’t pay. So Miss Carmelita do you and the other officers want to be let in on everything?”

“Considering the word magic was used and not a hyperbole, yes.” Carmelita she stated tapping a foot and sitting in a nearby chair. “Let’s start with why we can’t get Leap Lamb, Cut-Lass, Optimized Ostrich or even the dragon immediate medical help… also what are their names?”

“Leap Lamb is Pom Lambchop, she’s never lied about her actual name. Cut-Lass is Shanty, no last name. Optimized Ostrich’s name is Dodo, he’s Shanty’s companion. As for the dragon, that’s my girlfriend Smolder, don’t ask about her family name. As for why we can’t take them to a hospital, well how do you think they are going to treat aliens?” There wasn’t as much surprise as I was expecting, it was dull acknowledgement emotionally and they readily believed it. “As for my name, I’m Ocellus. Do you want the easy liar’s route out or do you want the rabbit hole we’ve been digging for ourselves?”

“Everything… please.” Officer Fox has probably seem some weird stuff, as have Officer Wilde and Hopps given their emotional response was more curiosity than disbelief.

“Okay… I’ll reveal my true self, just don’t shoot me.” I transformed into my base form, the response from Carmelita and Judy was tasty affection and Nick had a sense of mirth.

“You’re adorable!” Judy shouted.

“Yeah, my people don’t actually get that reaction much because of being shapeshifting empathic vampire bugs, people find the vampire part creepy when they find out about it. What you are seeing right now is why I can’t go to a hospital, but I heal decently well enough.” There was a bit of incredulousness in the mentioning of the word ‘vampire’. “Before you ask, no I don’t consume blood. I eat and subsist off of love, yes true love is something my people would value above all else since we kind of need that to live.”

“Aww… that sounds so sweet!” Did we need to remind Judy that she still had a fever from the heatstroke?

“It’s a huge hassle to find someone that will love you for who you are, especially when you can always tell when someone doesn’t really love you. I can’t read minds, just the emotions your all feeling and thankfully none of you are disgusted… my people are used to knowing that feeling. Though I’m starting to wonder about the things you’ve seen now. I’m a mostly harmless vampire and Smolder feeds me well enough with pure mutual affection. So let’s keep me in mind moving forward as to why we can’t exactly do hospitals.” Getting us back on track I decided to point to each of my friends. “Pom’s looks like an animalistic sheep of this world, but she’s a lambkin which are more sheep adjacent but not actually a sheep. Ironically they make for great sheep farmers, they are also chronically anxious and easy to panic. Pom is an outlier among her people and not normal by any stretch of the imagination. She can remain functional in other societies in spite of her anxiety problems, not to mention everything else wrong with her. The words ‘sacrificial lamb’ is becoming big problem with her.”

“Oh, don’t get me started on that.” Dormarch had been around long enough to know what Pom was like. She had leadership qualities, they were there, but she was more focused on survival than actually thriving or leading. “Pom is slowly working herself into an early grave with a shovel and asking nicely how deep it needs to be before she can stop, but her resilience is to be admired despite all the stress she puts on her body.”

“Continuing Shanty has a medical record and there were abnormalities in it from what Mopsy told me of her hospital stay, abnormalities that went ignored as Shanty was considered a normal animalistic goat and that their diagnostics equipment needed to be checked over. We can’t have that come up again or someone might strap her to a table to dissect her to figure out what makes her tick, the problem with that is that most of the things we do cannot be studied without a working knowledge of magic which seems to be hoarded knowledge on this world.” The fact that all the officers winced meant that it was bound to happen, I wasn’t about to let Smolder out of my sight with her spinal injury if that were the case. Carmelita looked at the unconscious Shanty with worry. “As for Dodo… we don’t know how he works or even how to rebuild him. He’s a living entity, for as much as living could be defined for him at the moment considering his state. Do you really think a hospital would take him? Much less a veterinarian considering he’s mostly just a highly intelligent animal.”

“All very good points, what about your girlfriend?” Nick pointed to Smolder. “Wouldn’t you want her to be able to move around sooner?”

“Dragon, mystical creature, do I seriously need to explain why it’s a bad idea if people are aware she exists and is in the state she’s currently in? Also there’s the problem with the kind of equipment someone would need to even perform any necessary surgery on her, just because she’s injured doesn’t mean she stopped being a dragon and tough enough to have bullets bounce off her eyeballs. Just an example I assure you.” I knew Smolder was going to make it through this, but it was going to be hard to see her trying to struggle with upholding the strong front she puts up. I could already see it coming. “She’s not going to walk this injury off, much less walk anytime soon, but it’s not currently killing her. I intend to stay by her side the entire time she needs me. She did it for me when I was in a coma and I’m not going to be a bad girlfriend by not returning such a heartfelt favor, plus I’ve become moderately dependent on her being near me. Now any questions?”

“Why weren’t you there? With your girlfriend and Team Leap Lamb I mean.” Judy raised a paw and gave me a slight look of compassion.

“If I went any nearer to Clockwerk, I would have been incapacitated, if not outright killed, by the amount of malice he was putting out before being destroyed. It’s a downside of being able to feel strong emotions such as hatred, anger and pure malice. All of which would have an immense negative effect on my health were I any closer to it and it focused on me specifically.” I looked to Gosalyn, Mopsy and the ever quiet and attentive Maui minding his own business as he watched the proceedings. “That said, Gosalyn is Darkwing’s adoptive daughter whose grandfather was her last known living relative that ended up in the same situation Team Leap Lamb is in. That being lost in dimension not our own. Also she stayed behind to protect me, Mopsy was being the adult for us and Maui showed up sometime afterwards and we didn’t exactly meet him until he came to Sobaka.”

“Speaking of people, what about Caper Canine? You haven’t mentioned her much.” Carmelita noted with a raised right brow.

“She’s from this world. Britain, Camden Town, born and lived the life of an almost average Dalmatian...” Suffice it to say, I think Pom really set the bar for being a power multiplier for canids actively bonded to her. Pom was good with dogs and Dolly was just one dog. The absurd things Dolly has done thus far is all only possible because Pom is a savant when it comes to canines. “Her name is Dolly D. Dalmatian.”

“Wait… she was living in Camden Town before all of you showed up? What was weird about her before she joined Pom or Leap Lamb?” The answer to Carmelita’s questions didn’t come from me. “I seriously doubt she was just a completely average dog, even before meeting Leap Lamb.”

“I think that has to do with our research trip to Camden Town, a lot of weirdness was going on in the area. The name Cruella De Ville comes up a lot in reference to thousands of illegal activities that are covered up to ridiculous extremes.” Hearing the words Cruella De Ville from the rabbit’s mouth apparently woke up Dolly and the nightmarish amount of fear I felt quickly bled off into blind rage as she looked about dazedly. That too bled off as she sat up and then began grasping her head with her paws, magic exhaustion always left someone with quite a migraine. “There were numerous incidents with Dalmatians, a lot of them with one batch of a hundred and one that were moved to farm near what is colloquially known as ‘Hell Hall Manor’ by absolutely everyone in Britain. Then there was a recent issue with her nearly getting a second batch of one hundred and one Dalmatians… I assume that Dolly is one of them?”

“Yeah, also her ninety eight brothers and sisters are very nice, despite the lack of biped or animalistic to look out for them.” There was some concern from mentioning that, but I decided to assuage their worries. “Their parents run a very nice household bursting with love, I couldn’t starve there if I tried not to eat any love. Also some of the Dalmatians there are directly descended from the incidents with the first one hundred and one Dalmatians.”

“Wait… all those dogs wouldn’t happen to be living on one zero one Dalmatian Street would they?” Nick asked seriously.

“I really like them, those puppies were all adorable and their parents were quite friendly when we visited them looking for Pom or Smolder and Ocellus!” Murray was now pointing out that they had visited and Carmelita sat up. “We were on our best behavior there, honest!”

“When did this happen exactly?” Carmelita was glancing between him and her two friends and comrades with a stink eye.

I gave a general explanation of how we got here, how we ended up in separate locations and the friends we made along the way. Also Cooper Gang’s run in with Sabu Taj came up and Carmelita’s ears were quite erect during the mention of that name and her tail shifted about in as agitated a manner as she felt.

“You missed the Cooper Gang hanging out at a giant dog house?” Carmelita muttered in disbelief. “You even missed this guy, this bright pink and big lug right here, walking out of a store near the hotel in broad daylight?!”

“To be fair, we were busy with a lot of other things and tired, like the numerous assassination plots against one duck boy. The robotic mandrills and the crashed airship. Trying to find out how Ugly Ursula escaped custody… magic is a good explanation now.” Pausing Nick considering something with a bit of shock. “Wow Pom really has a horrible life, now that I start thinking about all the trouble she attracts.”

“Okay, that way lies madness and there’s a house full of dogs that are getting away with no one looking out for them.” Carmelita grumbled quietly.

“They have a near immortal magical zombie chicken we freed from MS. Ruby that was apparently an excellent friend of their ancestors, one of their number is fairly capable engineer, their matriarch is a talented licensed nurse, their father is a known firefighter and they have several methods of earning a lot of money. Such as the three divas dogs that do commercials for things like Just Plain Nuts and Jump Jet Pizza, they have all they could almost ever want.” There was some recognition to Bentley’s words, this made both Nick and Judy pull out their devices and soon they had images of three identical dogs on them that were Destiny, Dallas and Deja-vu. “That they’ve been taking care of themselves for so long says a lot about how much help they don’t need, they are paying for things themselves legally by earning the money and are happily getting away with being seen as just animals. I’ve been spending a lot of time in communication with the engineer of the Dalmatian family, he just needs a little training and help from time to time. Also he needs to stay away from anything rocket powered...”

“I can’t exactly arrest animals now can I?” That the thought likely crossed Carmelita’s mind considering what I felt made Dolly’s reaction pretty clear. She at some point had gathered her wits and when she heard the comment she started growling quite loudly at Carmelita. “I’m not going to break up your family… please tell me there’s at least some form of police for animals.”

“Police horses, they do community work to keep animals from stirring up too much trouble and handle animal level crimes.” Bentley answered with a smile. “The police horse named Pearl keeps a tight hoof on the animals around Camden Town.”

“That… actually makes too much sense, considering what we saw when we were fighting the robot mandrills.” Snickered Nick as he grinned. “That Pearl knows how to buck down crime.”

“Are there any other animals that are that highly organized?” Knowing Carmelita was being sarcastic, I couldn’t help myself.

“The Rescue Rangers and the organization that branched off from them called the Rescue Aid Society, both are run by friendly mice. We met a talking bat in New York and we missed meeting Pom there when Dolly distracted one Norton Nimnul.” I had a slight smile on my face. “The mice are the ones that set up the power plant to fail and they tend to use albatrosses for long distance travel.”

“Well that explains all the unsolved cases in New York where it seems like there was a huge rodent problem before a bunch of criminals get caught. Also Norton Nimnul’s ravings about rodents are now apparently not the ravings of a rabid lunatic.” Judy grumbled with her paws crossed over her chest. “Anything else?”

“...” I didn’t answer that but...

“Seriously?” Sitting up Carmelita groaned. “Okay what is it?”

“Bark Brigade. Dog’s worldwide howl and bark loudly to communicate long distances with one another… they called it Twilight Bark and was mostly used for gossip. It’s how the first one hundred and one Dalmatians survived the incident that started their family. It has since become the World Wide Woof, bark chains can cover a large area where dogs are common. So they actually have a society hidden beneath everyone’s underbellies” Bentley was relaxed and settled into the chair after having done some light medical aid on the others while we talked. “It’s actually kind of comical how much animals can actually sneak by under the radar when there’s a language barrier in the way.”

“What about all the meat animalistic and bipeds eat?” Carmelita asked all of the sudden.

“Survival of the fittest I’m afraid.” Intoned Bentley. “So as long we don’t know them personally... no hard feelings I guess.”

“Are you going to stop eating chicken just because of our run in with Ms. Ruby?” After an amount of thought to Murray pointing it out, Carmelita clapped her hands together.

“Nope, I’ll still eat chicken, I’m just going to ignore everything I’ve heard today that implies eating something intelligent is a common factor in our world.” Carmelita said with a bright toothy smile that had me worried.

“Every…” Nick started.

“Everything, even the Cooper Gangs involvement in the Krakarov becoming a massive sinkhole!” Carmelita responded vigorously with the same stretched peppy smile, her emotions were a bit more frightening than her showing teeth. “Who would believe us if we told them anyway? Aliens, monsters, magic, I’m pretty sure all government officials are keeping that well under wraps and already know all about. They’d tell us to be quite and to let the Cooper Gang go, because of course they would!”

“You’ve gone into complete denial mode haven’t you Montoya?” Stated Judy flatly.

“I just love the taste of chicken too much damn it!” Carmelita shouted to the ceiling. “… at least tell me fish aren’t intelligent.”

“Uh… the talking bat… she mentioned the Rescue Ranger stopping an octopus from trying to break a dam with a reverse submarine and wanted to destroy all surface dwelling beings with an army of fish?” I stated sheepishly. “There’s also the witch that rides a vacuum cleaner around that the bat was being an accomplice to for a number of high profile thefts, before turning her life around and becoming a part of what is basically an animal version of the police force that stopped the witch. Mind you they stopped a full grown biped with magic, so… yeah... things happen.”

“Yeah, no, I didn’t hear any that.” Carmelita stated immediately her ears lying flat against her head. “What were we talking about again? Oh right, what kind of occupation did your caretaker Pom have when she wasn’t a super hero for our world?”

“If I said police officer, would you have an aneurysm?” I gained a very flat look for that. “Well she is a guard to a city. She technically patrols a beat, but she’s mostly about community service from what we know about her and she’s head of their canine division. Also her training dogs might be why said division is so successful in keeping the crime rates in her city low, she considered herself the weakest member of her police force.”

“Sounds like a very nice sheep.” Carmelita responded cordially. “How was she the weakest exactly considering everything we know Leap Lamb to be capable of? Including firing blasts of energy from her mouth!”

“Everyone else in her police force is a longma, basically a dragon pony, while not as resilient as a full dragon they could take a much worse beating than Pom can in general if she didn’t have her fluffmancer abilities. They can fly, control fire and all know how to take someone down with three legs tied behind their backs through insane discipline practices.” Now we were going conversational and ignoring the elephant entirely and treating it like it was nothing. Wow Carmelita’s emotions were really well controlled now, how does someone just flip a switch like that? “They don’t even need any firefighters in that city, the police force can just draw the flames away from anything that catches fire. Nice place for Kirins to visit from what I heard.”

“I’m going to stop interrogating you now.” Sighed Carmelita with a hand on her face. “I have no reason to arrest any of you and I never had any reason to believe you were illegally landing on our world from space… because there are currently no laws against that or policing interstellar entities that might be living among us.”

“We’re technically dimensional entities, we don’t have spaceships where we come from. We lack technological advancements because free access to magic more than likely slows those down technological progress immensely.” I was beginning to wonder if it was something I said when Carmelita slammed her face into her palms and made a loud keening noise. “It’s just something I’ve taken notice in this world.”

“Wow you broke her… I wanted to do that…” Cooper whined loudly.

“Ring tail, shut up.” A cringing Carmelita stated with less venom than expected and some affection.

That was confusing as all get out to feel, when she sounded like she loathed him. Was this… was this an Arizona and Velvet thing?

“Uh… why did you say that while feeling…” I stopped when I received a scathing glare from Carmelita, I could feel the heat coming off it. “Question withdrawn, I’m now turning back into a horned lizard now.”

“So… the rest of us can still freely go to a hospital, you know… with no complications. Just thought I should put that out there.” They did just that, leaving Mopsy, Maui and me with the rest of the injured that couldn’t go.

-Equus???, Oleander-

We got a positive signal and Buttina brought the Centennial Eagle around for a landing, when we got out we saw an orphanage.

Walking in I saw the most adorable heart stopping sight ever, Fred as an demonic children’s book with an equally young Oleander. I walked up to the younger me and opened my mouth.

“Don’t bother, I know I’m cute. And I’ll still be cute when I’m older too, also awesome and beautiful!” Such a precious little thing the younger me was. “So, what are you here for?”

“Is there a goat, a sheep, a dragon or a changeling here?” I was being completely upfront with myself.

“Two out of four, this way.” I was lead into a room where I saw a baby pom, I think I immediately contracted diabetes on the spot.

“Don’t worry about the diabetes Ollie, I’LL DEAL WITH THAT BEFORE WE LEAVE!” Ah Fred, I knew you cared. "I contracted them too... EMBARASSING FOR A DEMON OF MY STATURE..."

Picking up the baby from where she lay, we saw a damaged goat holding a bottle. The small smiling Pom waved her tiny hooves at it.

"Being a nursing goat isn't being bad sometimes..." She mumbled as she brought the bottle to the baby's mouth and she started to suckle on it. "So what's with the older Oleander, it better not be the evil clones."

"No, that's next week." The younger me intoned. "This is a dimensional and time disreperancy."

"Have room for a depressed emo Pom?" Asking for dimensional friends.

Author's Note

The problem with depressed emo Pom is that it's hard to tell which one Oleander is talking about.

Also Ocellus telling the truth so hard that the Interpol Officers just throw their hands up and call it a day.

181. Serene Sobaka.

-Earth, a few days later, Sobaka, Carmelita-

“Clockwerk was creating an army of killer robot falcons and biological weapons covered in lava, if you wanted an idea as to why we couldn’t take him alive. Thank you again for the anti-monster jetpack Inspector Tezuka, it worked really well until it fell into the lava.” Why was I not telling her about Cooper? Oh right, because I had a headache and decided not to. I currently couldn’t arrest him no matter how much I felt like it, because Darkwing and Maui were both SHUSH contacts. Of course SHUSH gave Cooper a free pass, but they wanted him to owe them a favor. “I can guess why you are currently in Cape Suzette and I’m sure it would be accurate.”

Also SHUSH was connected to the Duck and McDuck families, which Pom was also a friend of and that tied back into Shanty spending time with known criminals that fed her, took care of her and got her back to her primary caretaker. With no ransom whatsoever asked!

Also Cooper lost more money keeping Shanty fed than he would have made from his last twenty heists, he did something so completely noble and to his detriment that I almost wish he would act more evil for someone on the wrong side of the law so I could actually shoot him. Now I was going to hesitate every time he caused trouble.

I might actually have something of a crush on Sly… and I hated the fact I recognized that I did!

“As long as it did its job, I’m bound to get more funding.” Tezuka was a fairly pleasant person, but give her a target and she would chase it down with a shock pistol like me. I was decent friends with the bird who had a problem with technology being too smart. After meeting Dormarch and having seen Dodo in action, well… not all technology was bad, but Tezuka did have a point that giving technology intelligence and control of weapons without any oversight was not a great idea. “Tokyolk has been having problems with dangerous advancements in technology and I need to be at the top of my game Inspector Fox, so I decided to finally take a break and relax a little. Also I’ve managed to sue over the fact that I haven’t had a decent vacation in years.”

Whose fault was that again Inspector Tezuka? I didn’t believe for a second that you just happened to take a vacation there after hearing about robots running amuck. I’m glad didn’t have to deal with a robot uprising, though I did miss Cooper being there to aid in the situation. Tezuka and were alike in many respects, that’s why we were good long distance friends and comrades.

No, if anything, it wasn’t actually a vacation and Tezuka is more paranoid than I am, enough so to check out Cape Suzette and snoop around a bit to see if any other mechanical problems would rear their ugly heads.

She doesn’t trust thinking machines very much, but if they were benign she would only maintain a safer less crazy level of suspicion. She let that robot boy named Boyd go and arrested one of his creators, Dr. Akita, because he was the one that programmed Boyd to act like a weapon. Boyd thankfully overcame that programming and just wanted to live a relatively normal life like a living being, something I took for granted until I saw a mechanical ostrich take a lava bath for a vehicle full of injured people.

Our world was quite vast and strange, as were its visitors. At least Cooper wasn’t doing anything illegal in my presence, that I know of, he was being fairly relaxed around me. Maybe there wasn’t anyone around here criminal enough for him to rob, because that was his go to for thieving targets.

“Come now Tezuka, don’t insult my intelligence, we both know why you are really in Cape Suzette.” I closed my eyes and ran a hand over my face, trying to get Coopers happy smile out of my mind. If there was one thing I wasn’t going to let the worst headache to criminal masterminds take so easily, it would be my heart! “Are you currently looking into Kahn Industries P.E.T. devices? Also things are quiet here in Sobaka, nothing going on and I’m just waiting with Officers Hopps and Wilde for our ride out of here to show up.”

Not bringing up Wilde’s history of being a scam artist nor am I bringing up Judy’s falsified records of being a full biped. The second is forgivable and could be seen as a relatively small clerical mistake, the first… well at least he turned his life around and I’d trust my back to him. Much like I’d trust my back to Cooper’s gang in general, no matter how much I might despise the idea of actually doing that someday.

“Yes…” Tezuka admitted quite readily.

“You’ll need to talk with Kahn if you’re being this cagey, despite him being a primary target in the robot invasion that his people helped stall out. He has also gone to great lengths to actively prevent another invasion from happening entirely with his technology.” It was me saying this so Inspector Tezuka wouldn’t write off what I was saying despite how weird it might sound that Kahn managed to stop an invasion without the world knowing about it. It’s like people being in denial about the Moonlanders beings aliens from our moon and not just weird octopus bipeds. “When you get an appointment with Kahn, mention ‘Dormarch’ and me having met one another. If you’re worried about him being trouble from whatever he tells you, ask about what happened at the hospital in reference to the incident that took his wife’s life.”

“Huh... I’ll see to it.” Tezuka said. “What do you expect to happen?”

“I expect him to set up an offer for P.E.T. devices to aid in examining crime scenes, nothing too drastic or big.” It’s why I was mentioning it. “You’re in the area, all I want you to do is throw the idea by him. He’s not under suspicion of any wrong doing and he’s been clean for most of his life, if a bit cutthroat in his business practices, I believe that we can do business as long as we’re upfront with him. I hear he doesn’t like fools very much, unless they are of the heroic sort.”

-Hotel Room, Pom-

I looked at the stitches on my forehead in the mirror. Letting go of my puff of wool so it fell over the stitches, I sighed and moved away from looking at the scarred tissue.

The Rescue Aid Society had members here and they were willing to help to the best of their abilities. That was mostly thanks to Dolly, name dropping a few of the members that helped us back in New York, asking for help from the local Bark Brigade using the World Wide Woof.

The Bark Brigade was quite strong in numbers here, because Sobaka was a town full of canids. It was little wonder that I was constantly worrying about anyone from here approaching me far more affectionately than I was currently comfortable with after a number of harrowing experiences I experienced on Krakarov.

Thinking back to when Carmelita first saw the Rescue Aid Society members for the first time, she muttered under her breathe about rodents and hoping they had clean medical practices, but she stayed mostly silent on seeing them lend us aid.

I’ve already warned Carmelita about my magnetism, but she didn’t seem to mind it one bit that she herself felt generally calmer around me somewhat. She still told me she would blast me if I did anything worthy of it, but I felt nice enough to be around, it’s Cooper legally escaping her again that has her ire.

According to Ocellus, there was a mutual attraction between the Sly and Carmelita. Carmelita was angry about it, but not in denial that such attraction existed. Didn’t know what she was going to decide to do about us, but it seems she was reluctant to do anything in regards to us being illegal aliens.

Even with all the help we currently have, none of it could help Smolder or Dodo. At least the Rescue Aid Society came through for me. Shanty just needed food, water and rest after exhaustion of dealing with changes in air pressure, heat and a few easy to take care of injuries with first aid. Heatstroke had caused a number of issues among the lot of us, but it wasn’t anything damaging aside from Officer Hopps ears being a mild problem.

Also… while I’m currently thinking of my favorite little goat.

I moved to the nearby window. Opening the blinds a little, I looked down at Shanty quietly sitting on top of the Cooper van next to the melted pile of slag that was Dodo. She said she could barely feel him and that he was basically asleep.

That was for the best, because Dodo probably wouldn’t want to be awake right now given the melted corpse look that was basically his body.

I could see Shanty as having wiped the snow off of his very disturbingly still form from this morning. If one were to ask what she cared more about, eating or Dodo. No contest, Dodo or her friends were always first, then rum, followed by food with rum and then food itself. She’s at least taking care of herself, eating, sleeping and drinking plenty of water, but she’s not leaving Dodo’s side for very long.

I’d be doing the same thing she was if it was Dolly that was mutilated, I could understand her sorrow and feel it because Dodo was important to us as well.

Sighing I moved away from the window and then sat down in a chair where Dolly was resting on the left arm rest as a mouse changed the channel to some news. This mouse in particular was keeping me under observation and was making sure I could psychologically relax. He has gotten onto my case several times already when Dormarch called me out on stressing out to the mouse.

“…story today, Krakarov erupted and then collapsed into the ground. As you can see the volcano is now barely a quarter of its size in what is the largest sinkhole in the region. We are warning all people to not go near the area until all volcanic activity ceases entirely. The damage to the nearby surroundings have been, thankfully enough, fairly minimal.” The ferret biped on screen looked cute, I’m sure that’s exactly why she was on the screen. “There were some signs of strange activity, but we assure you it was likely a series large volcanic vents collapsing causing a tornado to shoot into the sky through a change in air pressure differentials and it was visible from miles away because it was carrying lava. This is also the suggested reason why the volcano broke apart and collapsed as it did. In other news there is a rise in feelings of contentment in the nearby southern city of Sobaka, psychologists agree that it’s just they are happy to be alive and nobody got hurt by the volcanoes collapse. Back to you…”

There it was, an explanation for all the weird stuff anyone could have possibly witnessed. Even I’m not sure how we did that flaming tornado thing all the way into the sky, but a bright flaming tornado to the sky getting a scientific explanation for something magical happening boggles the mind. The tornado we made obviously wasn’t conical and was a perfectly cylindrical, they were ignoring that fact heavily.

I now believed that this world actively avoided the subject of supernatural happenings, as long as there was a plausible enough explanation people would believe to explain it away in any other possible manner than just the word magic.

We were currently ignoring the number of robotic falcons that we must have left strewn about that didn’t end up sinking into that mess that used to be a proud and mighty volcano. Maui Mallard said he’d call SHUSH to take care of it, he resembled Donald to an extreme degree that it was uncanny that they were just distant cousins.

I wasn’t getting much of an answer on what SHUSH was, just that it was above Carmelita’s international police and that she couldn’t talk about it because there was a literal meaning to the organizations acronym of shushing.

“And nobody will ever care to seek the truth of things…” I stated quietly, Dolly lifted her right ear and glanced at me. I just lifted my left hoof and started petting her.

The Dalmatian smiled quietly while leaning into my gentle caressing. She knows I was giving her some of my strength to help her with the migraine and healing, but I didn’t hear her complaining. Though Dormarch probably would if he knew I was trading some of my recovery speed in for Dolly getting better faster.

Ocellus told Dolly the drawbacks of pushing her magic way too far and that was what she was currently feeling. At least Dolly didn’t have to worry about a horn considering she put her full body into the magic she used, she’d have a far quicker recovery than Ocellus even after exhausting and overloading herself to a dangerous degree that it was taking nutrients from her body as fuel. She just needed to eat more, stay hydrated and not push beyond her capabilities again too soon until she had the capacity for channeling larger amounts of magic.

I looked over to Smolder still sleeping, her spine kept quite straight and braced. We’d have to move her around carefully. She’d come to once or twice, but didn’t say anything coherent due to the amount of pain she was in due to having the lower half of her spine partially crushed.

“So what are we doing now?” Ocellus asked as she came in through the door.

“Healing…” I muttered sourly. According to Dormarch, I shouldn’t even be awake with the blow Clockwerk dealt to my skull. ‘Lucky me’, since I currently was in time to experiences the joys of having crack bones in my forehead. I took a direct hit from several hundred pounds of metal, I 'SHOULD' be dead. I silently took the arrhythmia pill a mouse was offering me as my breathing became ragged and the glass of water being carried by a pair of hamsters helped it go down faster. “Thank you. If you meant what we are doing next Ocellus, well we’ll be making our way to San Fransokyo to talk with Abigail Callaghan about dimensional portals in depth. Possibly end up protecting her from whatever shows up there when we do too, it says a lot that I’m exactly expecting life to run like a comic book now. Except we’re not always going to succeed at everything we do and death is much more permanent.”

Apparently Dancing Flame was happening while I was sitting still and breathing normally now. Dormarch said I had to actively learn to control my body adapting to be constantly in a Dancing Flame state now or else it could lead to fatal consequences if I couldn’t turn it off and on at will and it was always going.

In fact I currently had all the time I needed to train and concentrate on getting my body back under control, as such meditation was going to be something I would do for the next few hours. Ugh, being calm was not easy without a meadow of flowers for me to frolic in!

“Do I even need to state that you need to stop feeling stressed?” Quite well aware of that Ocellus, it’s the awareness that is causing an obvious feedback loop. Ocellus started sadly glancing Smolder’s way. “Maybe a change of topic, considering what feelings you just blasted me with there. I’m going to start looking into training myself in biofeedback.”

“That sounds like a dangerous talent for a changeling to have.” Because she could literally transform just about any part of her body into anything, the cost would increase with complexity of the transformation and changelings weren’t exactly about complexity, more full on mimicry of existing beings. Ocellus was apparently going to continue pushing the boundaries of her species abilities even further. “Just be more careful than I am about it, you do not want to replicate the effects of a Shock Ram by thinking about it too hard.”

That is why changelings were so easily caught out sometimes when infiltrating places before they turned themselves around, as they didn’t sweat the small or highly complex relationship details that will always come back to bite them.

“Yeah, I can imagine how dangerous having one hundred percent control of my every bodily function might be daunting, especially when I know how to mix and match various parts from different things I’ve seen like this.” To demonstrate Ocellus turned her right arm into a scrunched up snake in a flash of flame, she lashed it out across the room and I noticed that the mice froze. “Huh? Oh, heh… sorry about that guys…”

She just freaked out the local Rescue Aid Society members, she transformed her arm back into a normal ‘horned lizard’ arm. Since she could have an arm ending in a working snake head, possibly with poison and could extend it across a room that fast…

If Ocellus wasn’t so sweet, friendly and mostly innocent, I’d be scared of what she could really do when pushed. Actually, I already had an idea of that given what happened to that Axel Gear guy after he knocked Smolder unconscious. Kind of puts their relationship into better perspective for me that Ocellus can do angry, it’ll mostly be a cold calculating fury compared to Smolder’s burning hot fury if someone were to hurt Ocellus. They really complimented each other so well in their temperaments.

“Is it okay if I went up to the roof to get some fresh air?” I didn’t want to walk round on the streets around this place, I really didn’t want to involve anymore dogs unnecessarily into my life if I could help it.

The mouse that was my current minder shook his paw in a friendly manner at me and nodded.

“Going with you.” Dolly said lazily from under my left hoof rubbing her belly, at some point she had rolled over and reveled in the personal attention. That’s mostly all Dolly ever wants, was some personal and loving attention… I’d like to see someone keep ninety eight dogs attention spans on one thing for long.

“We’re going to be here until Maui can help Launchpad get the plane back in order. So we might as well make the most of the peace we’ve earned for the time being.” Heading towards the door with Dolly at my side I gave the hamsters and the mouse minder pats on the head. “I’m going to try and meditate a little while I’m up there, watch Dormarch for me.”

“I’m the one that needs to watch you Pom!” Dormarch called after us. “I look away for an hour and you’ll almost be dead or dying again, you’re a very stressful individual to love!”

I wondered how much trouble Shanty was going to have when it came to saying goodbye to Sly and the Cooper Gang.

Would we be saying goodbye to Dodo too if whatever was currently keeping him alive ran out? Dodo couldn’t eat or drink anything, he was a living being and it was only a matter of time before he finally bled out.

-Rooftop-

I sat on the edge of the roof, closed my eyes and breathed normally. Trying to slow the feeling of my mind accelerating and my body doing so in kind.

Focus… my body was a flickering candle flame, not too bright as to burn out and not too dim as to be blown out by the wind. I could grow in roaring strength and weaken to a faint whisper.

“So… bored…” I opened an eye and looked at Dolly. “I know, I know, I should be practicing the stuff you taught me! You’re going to need me to stop our butts from getting kicked that hard so easily.”

I closed my eyes and went back to breathing calmly and slowly, I heard Dolly shuffling about practicing rolling, lunging from a roll, dodge rolling to the left or right and going onto her hind legs to wield her front paws for something else and practice maintaining balance.

Like I needed to maintain balance or my body will eventually destroy itself trying to meet all the demands I kept putting on it. I could feel my heart beat in my chest slow… or did it speed up so much that it felt like it was slow? Hard to tell the difference at this point really. I just needed to concentrate.

I didn’t know how long I sat there listening to Dolly practice, the sounds of the city, the movement of the cars on the road or the other sounds of the world around me, it was all so peaceful.

Right up until a door slammed open behind me.

“Don’t jump, you have so much to live for!” Sighing at hearing the voice behind me, I opened my eyes and looked at the dog biped that likely just came up to the roof because of seeing me sitting here. I apparently had no sense of acrophobia anymore, mostly because I wanted to one day fly on my own strength and falling was not as lethal as it used to seem. “Look I know that life can sometimes be cruel and painful, but…”

What I saw was something I didn’t expect in a place full of dogs. Also this guy didn’t know the half of the cruelty of the things I’ve seen or been through personally, I raised my hoof to them.

“Do you even know who I am?” Also what was, I want to say a bobcat, doing here? Judging by the blue police uniform and hat with a badge on it, he might be Carmelita’s ride out of here having shown up early.

“No, but I know the world would be poorer without you in it.” He said while motioning to me with a gloved hand. “I’m Bonkers D. Bobcat and we can talk things out!”

“Is this guy for real Pom?” Dolly said from off to the side while tilting her head in the bipedal bobcat’s direction.

“Yes, Dolly, he did jump to conclusions, good girl.” I received a stink eye from Dolly for talking in a condescending tone, but she still smiled.

“Uh… so you’re not going to jump off the roof and were steeling your nerves to do just that?” The red nosed biped bobcat seemed concerned I was suicidal, funny.

“No.” Might eventually get to that point if I had Sobaka townspeople to escape, hopefully that's not happening today.

“Oh…” He still seemed suspicious of me sitting like this. “What’s your name then?”

“Pom Lambchop and that is my companion Dolly D. Dalmatian.” I motioned over to Dolly. “If I was going to jump off the roof, you can be assured she would be the first to follow me off it.”

“Not if I can’t glide I won’t.” Dolly yipped at me flatly.

“The guy is a police officer, of course you shouldn’t attack him just because he looks weird… and is a cat.” Misinterpreting Dolly was fun, she glared at me again and then glanced at Bonkers.

“He is pretty weird.” Dolly admitted after a second. “I mean, I know bipeds are technically pants optional, but with the cold weather around here… eh…”

182. Shanty’s Lullaby and Chorus Canine.

Author's Note

Music- Dark Cloud 2- Menu.

182. Shanty’s Lullaby and Chorus Canine.

-Earth, Sobaka, Cooper Van Roof, Shanty-

I had a song in my heart, it was about the sorrows in my life. It was about the strife… but also the lights that came into it. I be still having a heart after so many heartless things be happening to me, mostly because I don’t want anyone to be ending up like me. Being homeless was being very bad.

A lullaby, a familiar tune, sung to me by someone I’ve almost forgotten. I reached up and ran my hoof over my headband.

“When we met in that burning village, on that day not long ago~.” I leaned against what was still left of Dodo and was tilting my head back and forth. “Oh, has it really been that long, at least I’d like to think so~.”

I be running my hoof over what was currently Dodo.

“I didn’t know what to think, when you stood over me so imposing~. Nothing lasts forever, at least we’ve had some fun~.” A few tears be dropping from my eyes. “Your current fate, your life at stake~. I need you back, like Pom after saving me from that heart attack~. Even if you couldn’t move, so much as make a single snack, I’d still be wanting my beloved Dodo back~.”

I fed Dodo my energy, but it didn’t seem to be doing more than be going into the void of our bond. His melted body wasn’t repairing.

I wanted to sing about all the loss in my life, so I did.

-An island-

“My story it starts on an island, I think I barely be even two, and, not knowing what was going on or… not even what to do~.”

A baby goat sat crying in the dirt tied to a piece of driftwood, the destroyed remains of a boat nearby washing up on the shore around her in the rain.

“That’s when they came up to me, they saved the lost babies life~. If, only I had known what was coming, that was just the beginning of my strife~.”

A shadow appeared and the sniffling baby goat was soon picked up.

Carried into a house and there were blurry memories of the sound of a humming lullaby and someone caring for Shanty, a little goat toddling after her caretaker.

“It wasn’t long, before I had to grow strong, since my home burned down… and that was the end my adoptive mom~.”

A young Shanty had a headband tied around her head, she sat in the cold wet dirt with a piece of wood next to her watching her home burn down. It was a very familiar feeling.

“I have to ask, what was seriously up with me, what be up with all the mis-er-y~?”

Nobody would take the little goat in, she tried to worm her way into some place warm, but nobody cared about her.

“Being alone and hungry on the streets, it wasn’t being very nice~. And, nobody would take me in, I guess nobody be paying the price~.”

I be trying to find someone to help but they be leaving me cold out in the streets, I be at least sitting under an awning looking up at the sky as it rained.

“If there’s one thing that I know, that’s truly inherent to me… its, nothing lasts forever, I should’ve drowned at sea~.”

Shanty looked at the rotten piece of fruit in her hooves, she swallowed and opened her mouth to bite down on it.

“The name Shanty, is strange you see~. It’s a name I got, from humming this familiar melody~.”

A goat sat on the docks looking out to see drinking rum from the broken bottom of a bottle that landed near her from a tavern bar fight, the top portion broke off and she managed to save the remaining liquids. Her first taste of rum, she got hooked on the flavor, it was one moment brightness in a dark life.

That’s when a ship sailed in with several goats disembarked. One looked at her and said something about her humming, tossed her an apple and then moved on. Shanty just sat up looking at the fresh apple in her hoof and at the retreating goat with large hats back humming her tune.

“An act of kindness, a few strangers from the sea, it be making me become what I currently be~!”

Shanty watched as the group of goat pirates partied and eventually set sail, but left her behind. She clearly didn’t understand the world well enough yet to know why there was only that one act of kindness… and then they just be leaving her there.

“So I had a lot to become, I still had a lot to learn, but, by life I’ve been horribly burned and quite badly spurned~.”

The pirates visited every now and then, but they still wouldn’t take her. They at least checked up on her and tossed her some fresh food when she hummed for them.

“If there was one lesson I took to heart, it always stayed with me~. That, you give life a black eye, by trying to live it as free as possibly~!”

The pirates caught her stealing from them, but the captain made a motion to not hurt her, seeing as she had technically got away with it having already eaten the food. The other pirates grumbled at their failure, but the captain laughed and ask for the tune she hummed whenever they came in to dock.

“A life not lived, is not a life that’s great, I’m not making that, the greatest of mistakes~! Still quite a naïve goat, did I ever truly make, and that’s how I ended up with my current fate~.”

Climbing up to the roof to attack the cultist, then everything that lead up to Dodo flashed in sequence.

-Cooper Van-

“Having actual friends, traveling this cosmic sea, and, I never really thought that something great could ever come from me~.”

Pom teaching me how to fight and I be soaking it up like a sponge, she actually cared about me and… she be reminding me of the one who took me into their home and left me with the headband. My heart opened up again, darn the consequences.

“It is truly as I sing, knowing what I do now… nothing lasts forever, at least we’ve had some fun~.”

Dodo bonding to Shanty and Shanty finally feeling for once in her life, that someone would follow her no matter where she go or what she wanted to do they’d be by her side.

“The reapers grasp, is closing fast, but Dodo I know, that this is not quite your ultimate last~. You can fight and kick, this is not the end of it, I’m your captain and I order you not, to, quit~!”

I fed Dodo as much energy as I could, I be eating twice my body weight again after this.

“I’ve already lost too much to life, I’m not letting this one go, oh, definitely hell not and a big freaking N-O~!”

Hugging Dodo’s melted body, I cuddled it tenderly, not knowing if what I was doing would even help.

“Oh you think you’ve won, but this won’t split the sea, Dodo will be getting better and he’ll be staying with me~!”

Waving an angry hoof at the sky, the clouds broke apart and sunlight bathed me in its radiant glow as I held my head high.

“You’re not alone, with friends your home, no matter where you go, or whence you choose to roam~.”

Ocellus climbed up onto the vehicle with me as she sang and sat beside me.

“I like you, you loon, we should really talk real soon, but I’d like to join you for this simple tune~!”

Ocellus put a hoof on Dodo and be closing her eyes.

“I come from a hive, and I’ve known for all my life, that, other races hate us, some just want us to die~.”

I really be looking at Ocellus when she be singing that.

“We stowed away our fangs, with what the magic that friendship brings, knowing, that things can’t last forever, there will always be some change~.”

Ocellus looked to the sky.

“It is not always so bad, I just want you to know~. That having met you in time, it just makes me feel like my heart should be aglow~.”

Ocellus pulled me into a hug and I felt warmth be flooding my body.

“That you lasted so long, despite needing a place to go, you’re an inspiration to everyone that you know~!”

I smiled at Ocellus be hugging her back.

“We all have our sorrows, we all have our own strife’s, but, at the end of some days, we should be happy just to have our lives~!”

We sang together in a duet, perfectly in tune with one another.

“We may be a wandering mess, and at the winds behest, but, at least we know in the end 'that' we all will have done our best~!”

We both looked at Dodo sadly.

“Life they say, is just that way, bad on some days, and a mentality breaking maze~.”

We could feel each other’s moods.

“Push through that pain, see the end of the rain, and we’ll all move forward happily again~!”

I be humming the tune and Ocellus be joining me in humming it once she knew the song, the lullaby that was sung to me.

“Sweet Dodo when we met, you were quite surprised I bet~. That, we didn’t even know each other yet and you still chose this bond to get~.” I sat with Ocellus humming the tune next to me as I sang. “If there is this is one thing I know, that my heart will always remember… nothing lasts forever, at least we’ve had some fun~!”

“All those good memories, should not be forgot you see, there’s a vast lasting sea of dreams, beyond all the miseries~.” I leaned back and rested my head. “If you were to perish now, Dodo I’d carry you in my heart, but you better not yet die and disembark~!”

The tune continued on the wind and I tried to remember the face of the one that took me in.

“You be coming because of my negative emotions?” I asked and continued humming the tune to myself, Glad I not be the only one crying.

“I’ll always come for my friends Shanty. I have to be the one that keeps the morale up for all of us, because Pom certainly has issues with doing that.” Yeah, that be mostly true Ocellus. “Just call me the cheer-leader of the group.”

“You are being horrible Ocellus.” I be rolling me eyes and be pulling another bottle of rum from behind my back.

There were already four empty bottles of rum on the ground next to the van, Shanty wished she could get drunk like other people to stop feeling the pain. Yet her favorite drink could never take her mind, like it would others.

After finished the bottle, Ocellus continued humming the tune. I slowly started to fall asleep and I could finally remember the true face of my caretaker…

It was a colorful changeling that been tossed out of her hive, she be finding a quiet place to live and struggled to get by… that’s why the house be being burned down.

I be sitting behind the crowd watching it happen, unable to do a thing when she made a mistake.

Always thought my memory be a bit hazy and not being able to remember a single face of the one that took me in, for she be having many faces and she be using them all to cheer me up. I had almost forgotten her face, sorrow be a good reminder of the things we still have and the things we’ve lost along the way.

The tune she hummed, she’d sometimes buzz out with her wings, maybe… I could be asking Ocellus to do that for me to help me sleep tonight?

-Behind the two-

A few parts of the melted metal crumpled inward slightly, the melted pile of metal shrunk a little and barely made any noise doing so.

-Nearby roof, Pom-

“Look I was trying to meditate can you go bother someone else?” I asked because Bonkers wouldn’t leave me alone, he apparently thought I’d jump from the roof and could almost feel the anxiety and depression coming off of me.

I needed a good cry when even a police officer can notice my mental state without Ocellus or Dormarch commenting on it.

“Yeah, what she said, buzz off!” Dolly was actively barking at him.

“Yes, Dolly, but what would he do with the cucumber once it’s there?” The way I lead into non-sequitur made Dolly pause and just looked at me with confusion.

“Well if it became a pickle, then we’d know his imaginary wife is real!” Dolly made me start giggling when she fired back with something equally weird.

“I get the feeling that I’ve just been horribly insulted.” Bonkers said with his fist on his hips.

“What, no… of course not officer. Though Dolly does need to stop asking for a flea bath.” After saying that I watched Dolly started rubbing up against Bonkers in an overly friendly manner.

“Gah!” Bonkers backed away from Dolly. “Ma’am can I ask that you and your dog not somehow start a three person comedy act with me? I used to be a comedian, on top of being an actor, and I know what you’re doing.”

“What, my dog? What makes you think I own her? Never met her before in my life.” At my words Dolly overreacted by going onto her side and putting the back of her paw against her head in a dramatic matter.

“That she’s actually knows how to react to your words perfectly and you knew her name.” Bonkers pointed out Dolly who quickly sat up and started acting innocently with a toothy grin.

“Come on Pom, can I flick his nose? It’s quite tempting!” Dolly asked with a grin while looking behind the biped bobcat.

“No, I don’t think he’d know what that is Dolly, but it’s certainly coming up right behind him!” Bonkers turned around hastily when I pointed my left hoof at his back. When he turned back I was performing a balancing act with Dolly, when we noticed him we quickly separated away from each other with flips and started acting normally with big grins on our faces. “Wow that thing was incredibly fast, you just missed it! Oh there it is again!”

“Okay, why are the two of you messing with me?” Did you really need to ask Bonkers? You’re the one that came up here in the first place, I was just trying to find a way to relax and meditate.

“I just need some levity in my dreary life, also you could just leave there’s the door!” He turned for a half a second and when he turned back he saw Dolly sitting upside down on my head in a perfect headstand and we were both making big cheeked faces at him by holding our breathes.

Pretending to notice him after looking at us for a few seconds, we stopped holding our breaths and Dolly quickly rolled off my head to land on her paws looking almost as innocent as I did.

“I'm beginning to believe that you two are not normal.” Good, you were at least proving to be a really observant person Bonkers.

“Is he implying that we are goofing around?” Dolly knew we were playing a game and she smiled as she put a paw on her chest. “Us?”

“No, I don’t believe he can, ‘Row’.” I said in return.

“Row? Row wh…?” Bonkers was confused as ever.

“Your boat gently down the stream~.” Snorting at Dolly making Bonkers jump when she sang that as she thrust her paws out wide, I had to stifle my giggles and keep a straight face. She tapped danced on her hind legs as she sang the next part and ended it with jazz paws. “Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, I like to steal the scene~!”

“Did that dog just sing and dance?” Now pointing his gloved finger at Dolly in surprise, Bonkers was wide eyed and quite fairly alert now as Dolly looked at him in a bored manner.

“Yeah it’s getting her stop that’s the problem.” I said with a knowing nod.

“Doughnut rings are done, doughnut rings are done, I'm having fun, I'm having fun, I work at the Burger Thief, making flame broiled coppers, I swear by their meat filled vats~!” Dolly sang with a cheerful smile as she sat before the bobcat, people could only understand her when she was singing and that was a fun thing to know.

“Does she actually work at Burger Thief?” Bonkers asked in surprise.

“Wait… you can understand that?” I said with a feigned shock expression on my face. “Wow… and here I thought it was just her howling really quite off key and randomly today.”

“What, but she just…?” He pointed at Dolly and she immediately reacted when his attention was back on her.

“Hello you dummy, I’m a dog that’s funny, hello my feline pal~!” Dolly went up on to her hind legs and started dancing while gesturing with her paws as if she had a hat and cane. “This beauitful sheep has a voice like a lyre, I’ll have you know she’s quite the horrible liar~. Maybe you’ve confused me for something else profusely, just know the sheep was never here and I just wanted to tell you that we’re currently here on our own~!”

“Are you sure you’re not hearing her… uh…” He hadn’t noticed me slipping away.

-Dolly-

My forward successful forward slide sold the musical number I just put on, nailed it perfectly even.

Yeah, Pom didn’t want to deal with this guy and neither did I, Pom needed some peace and quiet. It’s actually kind of fun to watch her actively be playful, she’s always so serious and anxious.

“Where’d she go?” Looking up at the bobcat innocently, I barked a bunch of gibberish. “I’m horribly confused, can you talk or not?”

I walked up to him and patted him gently on the leg and the hummed to myself as I made for the door which I leapt up and opened, walked through, then closed it behind me.

“Hold on, come back here!” He started to follow after me through the door and I started running while laughing my rear off as I slid down the stairs spiraling bannisters. “Stop right there and explain to me what just happened here!”

I stopped at the entrance, nobody around, okay let’s do this thing!

I looked to Pom and she nodded, we waited for Bonkers to show up.

“I’m/she’s the dog of chorus, we hoped you liked our show.” I sang with Pom, as we dance Pom opened the door and gestured out it with a hoof. “We know you’re rooting for us, but now you have to go~!”

“Oh, well alright then… they were quite nice and entertaining.” Bonkers walked out the front door, after moment of walking out onto the sidewalk he paused with one foot raised in the air. “Hey… wait minute!”

Too late dude, we were already on our way back to our hotel room and I got Pom to cheer up and laugh.

Score one for me!

-Pom-

“You know... I can’t actually believe he fell for that.” Also we really shouldn’t have treated him like that, but I needed a good laugh.

“That was hilarious!” A cheery Dolly said as we made our way back to our hotel room. “Still, I can kind of understand why he would jump to the conclusion that you might jump from the roof.”

“Yeah, I know… but do you think we’ll ever see him again?” Despite my giggles, I never wanted to be mean. “I want to apologize to him, he just wanted to know I was alright and I was meditating on the edge of the building Dolly.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine!” Dolly waved her right paw at me in a gesture that she was okay with what just happened personally. “I got you to cheer up and laugh, so everything is alright. Plus the guy seemed like he had a sense of humor, I’m sure he won’t be too mad at us for that.”

-An hour or so later-

Of course he would eventually end up in our hotel room, booked for a family of four. We had a lot more people than that living in it right now.

“I am so mad at you for that, but it was pretty funny!” Bonkers stated as he showed up in our hotel room. “Also that was some pretty great ventriloquism, still don’t know how you got a dog to do choreography like that. So how do you know Ms. Fox, Hopps and Wilde?”

“Is that what he thinks that was?” Snickering, Dolly put a paw to mouth and just shook her head. “If only he knew.”

“We helped them on an important case, so you their ride to the nearest airport?” Sobaka didn’t have one and it was fairly small place with a large number of dogs, I’m still kind of on edge from being here…. reminds me too much of the Yellow Dog territories in the last world.

“Yeah, but how did a ventriloquist and her well trained dog help Interpol Officers?” Bonkers was curious.

“It’s better that you don’t ask.” I muttered “It’s a long convoluted story.”

“Officer Bobcat, I agree with her statement that it’s better that you don’t ask too many questions.” Carmelita still looked upset about the Cooper gang getting a pass.

A little while later-

We got some news from Maui about Launchpad assuring us he that could take off from Sobaka’s outskirts perfectly fine without damaging anything. Oh I’d certainly believe that perfectly fine, it’s just where we’re landing that I’m worried about.

There wasn’t an open flight plan to Duckburg or San Fransokyo at the moment, but there was one for Saint Canard, Drake Mallard’s home turf. He openly said he’d show us around when we arrived.

Carmelita and the other officers went off on their merry way, but she told us, Team Leap Lamb specifically, to not get caught by law enforcement doing anything illegal. What was weird was when Judy and Nick agreed with her, while Ocellus knows she should not have revealed our being interdimensional aliens… these officers were good people.

There was one last thing we needed to do, but we found something odd when we went to check Dodo’s body on the roof of the van the morning we planned to leave. Nobody had noticed anything off about the melted pile yesterday except it that might have been slightly smaller than it previously was.

“He be an egg now?” Shanty smiled brightly at the large smooth metal egg resting on top of the Cooper van as she clambered up to it and hugged it. “You may not be able to hear me now, but we’ll make sure you hatch Dodo!”

Okay so aside from transporting Smolder, we had also to protect a metal egg now… not questioining how Dodo managed it and glad that he has a chance to come back to Shanty. Though we now had to carry all of our stuff ourselves, glad I told Ocellus, Smolder and Shanty to be light on the souvenirs.

“Nothing is ever easy with us...” I groaned.

We now needed to drive out to where the plane was and officially say our goodbyes to the Cooper Gang, then set out for Saint Canard.

What form of misery awaits us?

Sarcastically considering plant creatures, demonics toys, psychos with chainsaws or maybe a living water monster.

183. Crash Calculation and Justice Ducks.

-Approaching Saint Canard, Pom-

“And… breathe…” Deepak you were a credit to everyone who specializes in peaceful ritualistic meditation. “That’s the session, are you feeling better Pom?”

“Well my perception of everything around me is not speeding up out of my control, also I’m not exactly going to be anxious until the time we go in for a landing.” My meditation call to the Dalmatian home went splendidly.

“Everyone we’re going to land in Saint Canard in a minute.” As soon as Launchpad said that, the good vibes fled my body and I was now wide eyed with panic.

“Ocellus, secure Smolder, Shanty secure Dodo’s egg, Darkwing if you have some kind of gas to foam canister that would be greatly appreciated right now!” While I knew Launchpad’s landings were survivable, they were always ridiculously atrocious in an over the top manner that warranted my panic.

“Look, Pom, just let it happen and relax.” Smolder said from her position on the floor, incapable of moving because we were keeping her in the splint. At least up until Ocellus could get her horn working again, that'd help immensely with any medical procedure. “I’m not made of glass, but yeah, I do want to avoid making things worse.”

That Smolder can feel any pain from the lower half of her body meant she’d be walking again, but right now she needed the most help.

“How are we going to logically prepare for the landing Pom?” About to suggest something to Ocellus, I got beaten to the punch.

“Come on dad, let me use the Bungee Bolts!” Bungee bolts, whatever they were, Gosalyn was excited to use them.

“After what happened last time young lady.” Drake grumbled out. “Do I have to remind you why the bungee bolts are dangerous?”

“What happened last time?” Maui asked, still hard to not compare him to Donald as they were almost twin brothers in appearance.

“We don’t talk about it.” Gosalyn and Drake said at the same time.

“Right, so what can these Bungee Bolts exactly do in this situation?” Maui started tapping a foot as Gosalyn got out two of her crossbows and started loading them both with tethered bolts.

“This!” She fired the tethered bolts from both crossbows and they hit the inner walls of the cargo plane, a stretchy chord wobbled between them. “See dad, it worked… this time.”

“Do several more.” Drake said with a flat tone and Gosalyn started to load two more tethered bolts. “You might need the practice later.”

“What’s all this fuss about the landing?” Oh right, Maui had never been in an airplane with Launchpad as the pilot.

“Yeah, when Launchpad says he’s going to land the plane, he means crash it in the most spectacular manner possible!” Several more Bungee Bolts were fired around the cargo hold by Gosalyn slowly creating something like a small web. “Also everyone miraculously survives these crash landings, but whatever he’s piloting sure doesn’t and you still get some injuries from them. Nobody has ever been critically injured in a Launchpad landing, but we’re not taking chances here.”

“I be calling close to the ceiling and upside down to be right side up at the end of this!” Shanty stated as she slowly hefted the heavy metal egg up the cords. “The plane will be being on its back, possibly after several flips.”

“I call tail in the air and the nose straight down impaling the ground!” Gosalyn stated. “Side bet, some part of the plane breaks off after we’ve stopped for no reason whatsoever.”

“I’ll bet tail in the ground to the point where we can see the sky and nose broken or bent off at a funny angle away from pointing directly at the sky!” Dolly said with glee and looked to me to translate for her and I do, she smiled as she looked to the others.

“Ooh… I bet plane undamaged but half sticking out of a building!” Ocellus joined in as she carried Smolder up into the bungee chord’s and secured her special some-dragon, Shanty came down to help once she got Dodo’s egg carefully wrapped in the bungee cords.

“Risky bet there Ocellus, the plane being personally undamaged is a rare attribute.” Smolder said from where she was secured by Ocellus and Shanty. “I’ll go the opposite, the plane splits completely in half in any given direction. Also as a side bet, the half we vacate will get crushed by a wrecking ball.”

“What kind of mess did I get myself into?” Maui asked with a sudden look of worry.

“There, there, that’s how I’m currently feeling too.” I patted Maui gentled on the back with a hoof as I sat next to him. “That said… I’m betting everyone somehow falls out safely, except for Launchpad, sometime after the first bounce onto or into something relatively soft. Side bet, parts of the plane come out in the form of an impossibly twisted work of art that's recognizable by someone nearby.”

“Before you ask, yes Maui, Launchpad is that unpredictable when it comes to his landings. We think Launchpad has some kind of strange magic that makes him and everyone near him survive any kind of crash possible. There’s a one to fifty trillion odds he doesn’t crash, but that’s only available for things that don’t have wings, he’s not personally piloting and just happens to be in the vehicle at the time, it doesn’t matter if he is a willing passenger or not.” We were all looking to Drake. “Fine, fine… put me down for a runway belly slide into another plane that has nobody on it, with half this plane being totaled while the other one gets shoved aside a little with minimal to no damage.”

“Can I get in on this action? I’m betting wings fall off, propellers fly off after we hit the ground and one veers around like a boomerang to cut the plane in half, the other one topples the air control tower. With nothing bad happening to the people inside!” Dormarch proclaimed as his bet with his chest puffed out. “Anyone from the Dalmatian family want to get in or do I cut the call before they hear us screaming for our lives?”

“Yeah, please do Dormarch… my bet is at least one person covered in glass, but doesn’t bleed.” Dylan said as he showed up on the screen with Spot. “Side bet, Launchpad ends up wearing a flamenco dress.”

“Hah, knew you couldn’t resist bro!” Dolly yelled from her position of holding onto Dodo’s egg with Shanty.

“Please call us back after you land Dolly and tell us how it went, we worry about you a lot, especially the whole thing that happened in Cape Suzette. Cut the connection Dormarch.” Dylan, Spot and Deepak disappeared.

“Can I make a bet too?” Launchpad asked innocently as I climbed up the bungee cords and hastily motioned for Drake and Maui to do the same.

“No, you’re a professional!” Chimed Smolder, Shanty, Dormarch, Gosalyn and even Dolly despite her not being capable of being understood outside of singing or having a translator.

“Oh right… I guess that would be cheating…” Launchpad said as he turned the plane downwards towards the airport. “I was going to make comment that the right engine gets hit by a golf ball, left engine burns out and most of the stuff you said happens, but not in the way you think it will and at the end of it the golf ball gets knocked out and causes a hole in one to happen.”

“Can we just… not crash?” Maui received dirty looks from absolutely everyone, even Launchpad…

…

…

…

Yes, that question alone, and the aforementioned random golf ball Launchpad wanted to bet about, is what caused the inevitable crash.

-Minutes later-

“Wow…” Maui stated after a series of events that no one else would have survived had it not been Launchpad flying the plane.

“Alright tally up, who got the closest?” I said calmly despite my body quaking and shivering from the stress of what we just went through. I had landed on the world’s softest mattress at least, Shanty landed in a cake… I feel sorry for whatever caterer brought that here. I think Gosalyn was the only one to hit the trampoline that was delivered to the wrong place.

“My word I am so terribly sorry to have hit your left engine!” A dog biped in a suit with a monocle came running up to us.

“Don’t worry about it… but that means I still wouldn’t have guess correctly even if I were allowed to partake in the game.” Launchpad, approached us with a slightly bruised face and a flamenco dress, didn’t seem too upset about that or being covered in glass and wasn’t bleeding. He just calmly wiped the glass off of himself. “I’m just glad we’re all okay after that one, it’s one of my best ones yet!”

“Actually I do want to talk about that some more my good sir… it looks like a part of it turned into a classic work of art, I’ll pay to have you’re plane fully fixed and an extra amount of money beyond that for your personally use.” The fancy looking dog raised a gloved hand into the air. “Why I’ll even pay for replacements for the parts that will soon become the centerpiece for my mansion foyer my good fellow!”

“That sounds good to me.” Launchpad shook hands with the nice fellow with the golf clubs. “Say... did you get a hole in one?”

“No, but I got it on the green and got an Eagle, then I came here to see if everyone was okay.” Well the rich guy had his priorities somewhat straight.

“Not going to lie, I’m actually impressed beyond words.” There was an awed look on Dolly’s face as the firetrucks drove by. “Split in half down the middle, back section upside down at a forty five degree angle, half the nose landing down and the backside of the other half up and bent at a jaunty angle… how did we even survive all that?!”

As soon as Dolly said this a wrecking ball came out of the sky and crushed the tail section of the plane that we had already evacuated. The second propeller did fly into a nearby construction site after bisecting the plane.

“Whoa…” Smolder said with reverence as we watch the control tower topple over from the first propeller. “Launchpad, you are the most terror inspiring person alive.”

“Hey, I be right, I was right side up and first to get off!” Shanty stated cheerfully, that’s when the wings finally fell away from the split middle of that upside down portion of plane. “Also part of it be upside down… somewhat…”

“Everyone aside from Drake and Ocellus mostly made theirs, Launchpad would have mostly made his… but accuracy has to go to Dylan.” I wasn’t about to comment on how if Launchpad said the opposite wings he’d be spot on with what happened… well aside from the plane being cut in half at least three times. “He wins, because nobody could have made a prediction like!”

“Wait a second…. we have to disqualify Dylan!” Dolly raised a digit to the sky with an angry growl. “Dormarch call Dylan and tell him it’s not fair using Dante Doomsday Dalmatian to cheat! He’s not getting this one over on me!”

“The next closest would be a tie between Dormarch, Dolly, Smolder, Gosalyn and me so… yeah.” I slowly wobbled on my hooves. “Gosalyn still counts as she didn’t say how the tail was oriented in the air and a portion of the nose did impale the ground… through a parked car… now if you’ll excuse me.”

Eyes roll up, flop onto my back and promptly pass out, into the large comfy mattress.

-In the city proper-

“Yeah, his crashes traumatizes everyone their first time Maui.” No seriously, I have gotten used to being on a plane with Launchpad as the pilot and I hadn’t even been through more than five crashes with the guy. It was strange and irrevocably insane, but I trusted him to take me anywhere and knew that we would get there alive, also mostly in one piece. “You’ll get used to it, because I certainly have. So where can we find a hotel Drake?”

“Oh no you don’t, I have a home in the suburbs. All of you can come stay with us while you’re here, there’s plenty of room!” Drake motioned to himself, Gosalyn and Maui. “Given that it’s evening we’ll get you settled in first, then we’ll see about getting to San Fransokyo. After that flight, and the landing, I’m sure we’re all hungry, I’ll show you all to a good restaurant I know of.”

“Sure, but I’ll pay. I’m not really using my money much for anything aside from food at the moment anyway.” I offered, because knowing Shanty… “Anyway, anything interesting in Saint Canard?”

“Well there’s Morgana Macawber’s year round haunted house, she’s a sorceress with a high tendency to cause accidents with her magic.” Yeah no, not going near anyone with the name that sounds suspiciously like 'macabre' Gosalyn.

“Funny I’d thought you’d try suggest Stegmutt at the Natural History Museum as a first attraction to this city.” Drake glanced at me for a bit. “I’m sure you’d like the museum, but I really wouldn’t want to subject you to Stegmutt.”

“Put out the Darkwing, put out the Darkwing.” Giggled Gosalyn after stating what has to be some form of in joke.

“Who’s Stegmutt?” As we continued along Maui was glancing around the streets with a sharp eye.

“He’s… a… fri-…friend…” It looked like Drake was struggling to get that out of his beak. “You’ll know him if you ever see him at least.”

“Yep one of the members of the Justice Ducks. Our other members are Neptunia, a fish mutated into a biped by toxic waste, Morgana I’ve already mentioned as living in an actual haunted house and Gizmo Duck is considered a core member too when he’s not in Duckberg.” How many hero teams were there in this world Gosalyn? Wait, world, don’t answer that if you’re listening to my thoughts! “Then we have our auxiliary members Duckhunter who shows up with a big gun for big situations, Muck-Draker the muddiest magical duck monster ever and The Fantastical Rubber Chicken!”

Dolly perked up at the last name and her tail started wagging.

“No Dolly, whoever that last one is, you’re not bothering them.” Knowing what I do, Dolly wouldn’t want to leave until she at least saw him.

“But Pom, a literal rubber chicken is part of a super hero team, I’ve got to gnaw on him at least once just to say I honestly did it!” Rolling my eyes at Dolly, we continued making our way towards the nearby suburbs from the airport.

“Then there’s the two best, most active, core members of the team. Darkwing Duck and Quiverwing Quack, but that’s just bias on our part.” Gosalyn stated while hiking up her pack, the suburbs seem quiet and nobody accosted us on our walk over here. “I mostly keep a better sleep schedule than dad does.”

-

“Well howdy neighbors, I didn’t know you had so many friends!” The jovial large goose guy next door stated as we walked up to Drake’s house.

“Hello Mr. Mallard, coming back from a vacation?” Said the yellow feathered female biped next him.

“The Muddlefoots…” Drake started grinding his beak, then he put on a completely false friendly face. “Nice to see you too neighbors it’s been a long trip I need to get my guests inside and see to them now bye!”

Somehow Drake managed to forcefully push everyone through the door to his house in one solid group without any of us getting caught on the doorframe.

“What’s Drakes problem with them, they seemed… nice?” It was the impression I got from seeing them.

“Oh they are, it’s just that my dad finds them annoying for a variety of reasons and he’s socially awkward for someone who runs around in costume at night beating up thugs, also you can only take so much of them in given bursts.” Then Gosalyn said something that bothered me. “If you see Binkie, the yellow feathered lady, from that household in a hero costume. Don’t ask questions, just stay far away from her until she takes a sharp blow to the head.”

“Yeah, my mother causes trouble when she turns into The Canardian Guardian.” We heard from a stuffy nosed looking goose boy that was suddenly among us. “Who are they?”

“One of dad’s cousins Maui Mallard, a half boiled detective that can apparently change into a ninja, but I haven’t seen him do anything yet and is the reason shock pistols are thing. Apparently heroics runs in the family.” Introducing the adoptive cousin, Gosalyn then pointed to us. “Friendly dimensional traveling magical aliens just trying to find their way home, they are the ones that got us a good lead on someone being able to build a dimensional portal to find my grandfather Honker. Everyone my best friend Honker Muddlefoot, the only Muddlefoot that dad actually likes... I still need to introduce him to my Duckberg friends, but we’re cool. He’s not going to tell anyone about our activities and will know about all the stuff we get up to eventually anyway. So this is Pom, she’s Leap Lamb. That’s Shanty, pirate themed hero Cut-Lass. Dolly, better known as the agile Caper Canine. Ocellus, a shapeshifter and Smolder, a dragon. The egg is their ostrich friend after almost dying from melting. There’s also Dormarch an intelligent digital entity that can manifest into reality… well if he weren’t shackled to the device he is currently in.”

“So a lot of weird stuff happened in Duckberg again I take it?” Honker said while blowing his noise and adjusting his glasses.

“Oh yeah, mercenaries, shadow monsters, gi-ants, evil witch, a magic hunting guy and the tentacle sharks that I’m going to have nightmares about.” Gosalyn gave the young goose a hug. “We’re about to head out for dinner, but we have an hour while these guys find a place to get settled in and you have to go back to your house.”

“Excuse me, but you’re taking everything she said surprisingly well.” I said as I moved up to Honker.

“I’m living vicariously through Gosalyn’s amazing life, also she’s trying to get me to assist her as a sidekick named Bolt Boy or Arrow Assistant. I help make her special equipment and I don’t mind following heroes around, my life is relatively boring otherwise.” Honker took off his glasses and cleaned them a bit. “I’ve just about seen it all at this point and learned to stop questioning our reality being bizarre, that was some time after the third alien invasion in the Mallard’s backyard.”

-Later at the restaurant-

“So these are the Justice Ducks?” I looked around at the gathering that somehow started up with the various known heroes and took a sip of my drink with a pink cloth tied to my forehead. We left Smolder and the egg back at the house with Maui. We’d be bringing food back. “Some of them aren’t ducks.”

“That’s what I said!” Neptunia stated while forking some food with her trident, she was wearing a backpack with water in it and a seashell. Apparently she had a weakness to drying out when on land and the water pack kept her moist. “One of us is a chicken for crying out loud! Also nice to meet you, you look competent for a hero compared to these idiots.”

“Er… thank you?” Maybe the idiot comment was mostly directed at Stegmutt, a huge biped stegosaurus. It was impossible to not notice him.

“It’s so nice of you to be back in Saint Canard darling.” Morgana Macawber wasn’t as scary as I was expecting, but Ocellus didn’t trust her magic wielding skills after creating sentient food for the third time in the last ten minutes.

“Hey, I used to be a duck… I just liked being a dinosaur better.” Stegmutt was not exactly the greatest mental prowess around, but at least he was friendly. Reminds me of the stegosaurus’s back on Equus were terrifyingly powerful with magic back plates, this one looked to be all physical prowess. He picked up a costumed Darkwing and crushed him in a hug. “Thank you for inviting me to dinner Darkwing.”

“Don’t… mention it… Steg...” Wheezed Darkwing and I could see that Stegmutt would give Paprika a run for her bits, but I’m quite sure she’d still win a hugging contest.

“Uh, can someone get Caper Canine off of me?!” Rubber Chicken shouted flailing his rubbery leg as Dolly smiled and continued to hold onto him with her teeth. Aside from being an auxiliary member of the Justice Ducks, he had his own team that came with him. Banana Boy, Glue Gal and The Sneeze Master, they had day jobs apparently and part timed hero work. “She’s not hurting me, but her affectionate chewing and the way her tail is wagging is making me very uncomfortable!”

I’m only now starting to wonder why we were all being treated as if all of the costumed weirdoes in one place was normal or if people were just used to Darkwing eating at places in costume. I almost felt safe here among many various acquaintances who could definitely handle all the fighting, ALMOST.

“Hey, Darkwing, I’m glad I could make! I barely didn’t get the invite in time, nice to see your doing better Leap Lamb.” The flat look Gizmo Duck was receiving from Darkwing let me know that he didn’t invite him and someone among the Justice Ducks did.

“Dolly, get off the nice super hero and eat your food!” I turned to Arrow Assistant, Honker Muddlefoot. “Nice costume.”

“Thank you.” He stated as he pushed up his glasses and snorted. “I told my parents I was eating out with Mr. Mallard and they allowed it.”

“So with this many heroes in one spot, everything is going to go wrong right about… now!” I looked around and… nothing? “Okay paranoia aside, I’m having a really decent time here.”

Huh, must be delayed like Cape Suzette, I really didn’t want to be here when things actually kicked off.

-Equus, Treehouse of Harmony, Yona-

“So summit not be lasting much longer?” I be asking of yak friend Jaded.

“Nope, I also thought that this meeting might be a nice way to see how my granddaughter Harmony is doing.” Jade be patting Harmony’s trunk, Yona think she be having a weird granddaughter that is already being Yona’s friend that Yona is not knowing much about until now.

“Wait does that make me her uncle by adoption?” Gallus asked as he looked up at Harmony. “Oh no, I might like friendship… having a family… but having a niece that’s a tree, that is going a bit too far!”

The entire tree wilted.

“Ah come on harmony, he’s just upset that he can’t play pranks on people without his pal Smolder around, which is why I brought him here and told him to drag his friends along!” Jaded sat down and beckoned us forward as she unrolled a scroll. “Here’s my plan called Luna Lunacy, I was wondering if you would help me with it!”

Looking over the scroll a grin grew on Gallus’s beak.

“Oh yeah, I can get behind this!” Gallus started rubbing his talons together.

Yona take a look too and decide for herself.

“Yona can be doing that!” I immediately replied cheerfully.

“I’m in if they’re in!” Silver Stream said brightly.

“I can feel the peer pressure on my spine already!” Sandbar stated loudly when we all looked his way. “Of course!”

184. The Canard Cage.

-Equus, World Summit, Jade-

“How did you do it!” Luna looked angry, and her fur was white with artistic crater shaped makrings, her hair was also a nice silver color.

“Do what?” She did, I think the shiny silver hair and the white fur looked good on her, she probably wasn’t keeping the look though. “You look nice by the way.”

“Thank you, but that’s not important, how did you make a cow jump over the moon!” Luna was angry about that? Wow, I did not know her that well.

“I did what now? Oh… it’s like that old rhyme! Hey, diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle. The cow jumped over the moon, the little dog laughed to see such fun.” With my words the local representative of the diamonds dogs, a little scrappy guy, started howling with laughter. “And the dish ran away with the spoon.”

“Darn it, I knew it!” Twilight shouted and started galloping away. “I’ve got to go stop them before they elope and have bowls again, the world will not be destroyed by my experiments while I’m still around!”

“Uh… you don’t have a fiddle.” Pointed out Gilda.

“No, but I do!” Fiddlesticks, otherwise known as Fiddly Twang, came in with a fiddle and started playing.

This was much to everyone’s amusement and my own, Luna was the exception, because I didn’t set this up.

“Discord did you?” I turned to the Draconequus.

“No, but this is genius.” Discord said and I had to agree with him.

“Can we not go one meeting without going off the rails?” Amira whined slightly.

-Airship Mauled, Velvet-

“Why do I have such annoying life partners?” I continued to chisel away at the block of ice with Arizona inside it. She was blinking in the block of ice and smiling at me stupidly, also Paprika continued to distance herself from us by about thirty feet exactly.

My, life was full of annoyances right now! Arizona refused to hit me, Paprika refused to hug us and we still had to worry about Tianhuo overworking herself when it comes to helping the Royal Guards of Canterlot… they certainly needed it though.

At least Pom’s god puppies were being good boys, they were still the adorable little mongrels even when Pom wasn’t around to keep them in line. Plus they were apparently good training aids from how much the royal guards are complaining about how dangerous they were.

Honestly, since the royal guards couldn’t handle a few Canis Minor, Equestria should have been doomed a long time ago.

-Earth, Saint Canard, Morning, Mallard Household, Pom-

Last night’s dinner went great, but I couldn’t help, but feel something was off on the walk back to Drake’s house.

The city was quiet, even I knew that no city was ever that quiet. The metal egg and Smolder were tended to and Maui seemed a bit alert for something, but he told me it was safe to sleep.

This morning was quiet as I stretched out and did some calming meditation once I noticed that my perception of things around me were off.

“Receiving a call from Ms. Shuttle.” Dormarch was blushing a bit.

“Do you have a crush on her?” I sat Dormarch down in an upright position as I walked into the kitchen and started preparing breakfast.

“A little, but we’re highly incompatible.” That and you were a bit shy sometimes. “Doesn’t mean we can’t be good friends.”

“Okay, put her through.” I started cracking the eggs and shaking a jug because I was making pancakes with fruit. I had dried banana chunks, carrot sticks and kibble set aside for Dolly. Speaking of which, I think I heard a toilet flushing, someone washing their appendages and then Dolly came into the kitchen yawning. “So how was using the bathroom the right way?”

“I can see why bipeds and animalistic people use toilets now, yes and I washed my paws, but I still wouldn’t mind doing my business outside.” Dolly climbed up into a seat at the table and flopped her head on the table. “Also can I get some eggs this morning Pom?”

“Hi there, Pom, Dolly and Dormarch!” Ms. Bunny Shuttle was as cheerful as she ever was for an intelligent vehicle. “I wanted you to know that Big Hero Six are all actively protecting Abigail Callaghan.”

“Of course Dolly, you do still need to make up for the nutrients you lost, hope you don’t mind a huge breakfast.” Seeing her tail wag made me happy as she probably currently felt. Also it’s been a bit since I’ve managed to do housewife stuff, the suburbs here were so nice and serene. “Hello Ms. Shuttle, did you call to see how Dormarch and the rest of us were doing?”

“No, I called about some trouble… um… how do I put this… does it seem a bit dark where you are?” Ms. Shuttle was acting weird.

“Yeah, a little, why?” I could hear showers starting, it sounds like everyone else was waking up now. I continued to work my way around the kitchen, I was making food for everyone. So there was Launchpad, Drake, Maui, Dolly, Smolder, Gosalyn and myself to worry about. Honker Muddlefoot might want to get in so I made a little extra.

“Are you near a window?” Ms. Shuttle sounded fairly worried.

“Okay… what’s going on?” I asked and Dormarch suddenly appeared on screen and we were getting an image.

“This.” Ms. Shuttle stated, we saw a view of Saint Canard from a bright road outside the city. The ends of the bridges into and out of Saint Canard were destroyed. “I’m giving you my visuals, someone’s destroyed the ends of the bridges into or out of Saint Canard. Also look at this…”

Her vision zoomed in on the waters around the bay and there were guys with eggshell helmets with painted on cracks, with yellows and red suits.

“Wait… weren’t those the guys in Duckberg with that Phantom Blot guy?” Dolly asked as she looked at Dormarch’s screen. “I think they were called eggheads. What are they doing here!?”

The visuals then showed us why everything seemed so dark out, it wasn’t because the sun wasn’t rising on the horizon. Something was blocking out of the sky over Saint Canard. Four massive pillars at the corners of the city holding the ends of a large balloon, which looked suspiciously like a giant pair of underwear with red hearts on it, positioned over the city.

“Trouble doesn’t even begin to describe this... I thought last night was far too quiet.” I muttered looking at the thing producing a sun blocking canopy over the city. “Let’s get breakfast in before we start thinking about how to deal with that headache.”

“I will lend my assistance in this incoming crisis in any way I can from here. When you have a target for me, do not be afraid to call for artillery support. Otherwise I cannot get into the city unless it is by boat, unfortunately the waters currently seem to be patrolled by bipeds equipped with heavy explosive launching devices.” Ms. Shuttle continued on, at least we have Big Hero Six’s vehicular villain vanquisher on our side. “While the thing blocking sunlight from reaching the city is cumbersome to the populace, it does not stop me from accurately landing shots anywhere in the city. I am also fully stocked on my upgraded chemical cannon and can give you a list of effects for any occasion. Need a massive flood of something sticky, need a small bounce pad to reach the unreachable or need me to hit something important with fire or to put one out immediately, maybe a concentrated explosion or just some acid… well I’ll need the targeting data to do it, but I will assist however I can! I’m mostly fully fueled up and raring to go once you’re ready to figure out what is going on in the city.”

“Thank you Ms. Shuttle.” Something big was going down in Saint Canard and I hoped it had nothing to do with me.

“It’s a little dark this morning.” Commented Maui as he walked in with his shirt, hat and holstered beetle blaster. “The food smells nice.”

“I’m fairly certainly we’ll get right into that after breakfast, also thank you Maui. It’s been a while since I’ve cooked a big meal.” I grumbled knowing where this was all heading to, no need for a rocket scientist to tell me that this day is going to go poorly. Might as well start it off on a good note at least.

Maui was immediately more alert and moving to the nearby window with a hand hovering over his weapon.

“What’s going on?” He asked as he looked out to the city from the suburbs.

“We’re going to find out eventually.” My sad tone was met with worried looks from Dolly, Maui, Dormarch and even Ms. Shuttle from the call that was still going. “Let’s get in breakfast first before we all go out and deal with all of whatever.”

-After breakfast-

Everyone was awake now, Drake had turned on the television and the first thing we saw was ‘Hijacked Airwaves brought to you by Megavolt Entertainment, broadcasting news in five minutes'.

“Megavolt… that should be impossible.” Why was it impossible Drake?

“Well apparently it isn’t dad.” Gosalyn stated as we all sat down and watched as the time ticked down.

The scene on the screen changed, instead of being a screensaver of a lightbulb, it suddenly showed the back of a chair that slowly turned around.

“Hello everyone… and welcome to my city.” The chair slowly turned around revealing a duck that looked somewhat like Darkwing. His appearance however was a little bit more intimidating, red hat, yellow suit and wild eyes. “I’m Negaduck, I know you’re somewhere and listening to this Darkwing, so let me give you a rundown on what’s going on. I’ve brought together some of the worst criminal masterminds that can be found and some new ones as well, we’re all going to have a big party today and you and you’re allies are invited to your own demises!”

The biped then pulled a chainsaw from behind his back and carved apart the nearby desk with a wicked grin on his as he took a single toothpick from it and put it in his beak.

“While you’re busy with every single thing I’ve set up, the possible demise of your captured friends and the various organizations I’ve brought together for one among many goals. To ultimately kill the hero known as Leap Lamb that you were so buddy-buddy with, it’s so sickening to see you have a nice night!” Wait… what… why!? Also Negaduck's laughter was disturbing and would haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. “A backstabbing flame of mine wants to kill her so badly. I’m evil, so hey, I figure I can do the worst thing possible to get back at her… by killing her mark before she can! You have only so much time to reach each of the pillars at each end of the city before your trapped friends perish Darkwing, while you’re saving them who’s going to protect Leap Lamb from all the assassins, thugs and many others I have out there hunting for the massive bounty of five billion dollars in cold… hard… cash. That’s just a bonus on what I’ve already paid them, bad help is so hard to find without some excellent incentive. Oh and we have a master assassin in the city, I’m sure everyone knows the infamous name ‘Agent Forty Seven’. He’s already been paid up front to go after her. So many clocks ticking, so little room to stop all of my plans of encroaching doom at once. This will become a city for villains, by villains at the end of the day. I’d like to see you stop this when you don’t even know what’s waiting for you outside whatever little hole you’ve sequestered yourself in Darkwing!”

The camera zoomed out a bit and the duck picked up a box full of whining noises.

“While you’re busy with getting everything together, I think I’ll take it easy for the next hour enjoying myself… by making people watch me kick an entire box of puppies one at a time!” He pulled a squirming, whimpering puppy out of the box, held it high up for everyone to see then he dropped it and kicked it with his right foot into the wall where it fell to the floor in pain with an obvious broken leg. “Oh yeah, I love the fresh sound of pain in the morning! Maybe I can stomp on a cute bunny while I’m at it… hmm… oh one last thing… Leap Lamb, if you’re listening to this, It’s time I knocked heroes like you down from all your of high horses. If you think the police are going to come help you, well… welcome to The Canard Cage Leap Lamb, you aren’t leaving this city alive!”

My right eye twitched, my body shivered, but not in fear. I gritted my teeth and thought about things logically. He was goading us into action, to run out there into the unknown and try to make up things as we went along to the best of our abilities.

At least he was goading Darkwing outright, he didn’t know me too well, but he thought he was safe enough that he could torture a box full of puppies in front of everyone without repercussion.

“Why that… that deranged sicko!” Dolly barked angrily, she loved children and it didn’t matter whether or not they were animals, animalistic or biped, she was as riled up as I was. “Tell me we’re going after this guy personally Pom!”

“I don’t like this Pom, do you think you can keep your body under control and fight whatever he’s brought together?” Dormarch asked as he continued to watch another puppy take a kick to the spine and slammed belly first into the wall next to the other one.

“Whoops my foot slipped.” As angry as this Negaduck guy was making me, I had to stop and think about things. We needed more information on everything.

“Slipped my butt, that be being cruelty personified!” Shanty pointed her left hoof at the screen.

“Hey, uh… boss… about Banana Boy...” A voice from off the screen said. “We didn’t get him.”

“That loser? What’s he going to do, make us slip on him? If he tries to get cute, then make a banana split out of him!” This Negaduck guy reached off screen and pushed his face into someone else’s that we couldn’t see. “No goody-goody two shoes hero is going to walk away from this one unscathed! I'll burn down the whole city if I have to and if any civilians get ideas well… we’re well armed and have them quite outnumbered. Now get out there and make someone’s day miserable and have fun doing it too! Oh and major thank you to whoever the villain was that knocked out the airport so we didn’t have to… now have horrible day everyone!”

This was followed by a third dropped kick puppy and I was started to seethe and see red, but I kept my calm. There was logically nothing I could do for those puppies until I rescued them.

My day already was miserable.

“Baa-ram-ewe.” I quietly intoned the declaration of war under my breath. This Negaduck wanted a fight? He’s getting one. I don’t know the old flame he’s talking about, but it sounded like it's someone I've met before. Negaduck was not getting away with whatever he’s doing in Saint Canard. “Who is Negaduck? I need to know at least one of the things we’re dealing with here.”

“Jim Starling, he was the lead actor of the Darkwing Duck show, he… well… there was an accident on the set of a movie being made by Scrooge McDuck which became a cult classic for the realistic fight scene… the scene in that movie is actually real. I’m surprised Scrooge let the movie out, but he made back his investments and then some at least… anyway about Negaduck.” Darkwing didn’t seem happy to talk about this, he sighed and ran his hands over his face and beak. “I was an actor that was to be his replacement as Darkwing in the movie and for a show revival. He didn’t take that too well, that’s when he destroyed the set and well… the incident that destroyed the set was thought to have killed him. Instead, he survived and it left him with a psychotic break and he escaped to become what he is now. An insane villainous monster that has done some of the worst things imaginable, but I’ve been stopping him whenever I can.”

“The guy kicks puppies for fun now, there’s no fixing what’s broke with him even if he was a hero to you growing up.” Gosalyn looked to her adoptive father sadly. “I know you’re always conflicted about fighting this maniac, but look at what he’s getting away with, we can’t let this psycho run the city!”

“That’s one of the reasons I don’t like being a hero." I was trying to calm down as I heard another yelp and a cry for help from several injured whimpering puppies now. "If you live long enough, you might become the villain or you might incidentally end up creating more by your actions.”

“He has an ego problem.” All our attentions were drawn to Maui as he checked over his weapon. “It didn’t take much to push him over the edge, he was a star of a show that just wanted to be remembered and not forgotten. The Darkwing Duck show had its followers, but the guy had a large head from the success and him doing his own stunts lead to him becoming physically resilient… but emotionally… mentally… his world was built out of cards. Now he’s playing his part by becoming a villain no one can forget and he’s not acting anymore. That guy deserves a real bug up the backside, but first we need to know what’s going on in the city.”

“Well I have the solution for that, we can get to my secret lair from here and get started with that.” Darkwing had a secret lair? “I just want a promise that you’ll keep it a secret. We need to get ready and to gear up for what’s coming.”

“Of course Drake… how will we get there without anyone following us though?” I thought about what Negaduck had said, he paid Agent Forty Seven to come after me? “Also, we can’t all go, someone has to watch Dodo’s egg and take care of Smolder.”

After my run in with him, I now understood what Tobias Rieper meant by ‘be constantly wary of my presence’. Since he would now actively be working to kill me. I was going to have to be alert at all times and at my best, given my current health problems, my best was not as good as it possibly could be and that guy could coldly murder someone in a heartbeat from what little I could get of his demeanor. At least he wouldn’t go out of his way to kill someone he isn’t contracted to, so at least my friends are safe... aside from Dolly.

“I’ll do that.” Ocellus mumbled while looking away.

“Young lady you can do more than that, you can help from my lair and give me live information about what’s going on around the city with the help of my super computer. Also we can get there through the secret exit here.” Drake motioned towards the pair of simple looking blue chairs as he carried Dodo’s egg to them and sat down in the one on the right from my position. “I’ll give you a quick rundown of how you can help, you pick up Smolder and sit down with her in the other seat. We’ll be there in a few seconds. Everyone else wait a minute between doing this, I don’t want anyone to get hurt or stuck by the chairs, watch what I’m about to do and repeat it.”

Raising his right hand, he brought his fist down on the statue of a mouse and the seats spun wildly for a few seconds and then they were gone. I looked to Shanty who was looking at the ground and slowly turning around to look at the bridge in the distance.

“Wow. That be really fast!” Shanty was tracking Dodo’s egg, so of course she could feel how fast they were moving.

“Well I got nothing better to do, so I guess it’s time for me to help out Darkwing Duck as his sidekick again!” Announced Launchpad as he took a seat, Maui sat down next to him.

“I want to see what my cousin has been up to with the resources he has, plus this sounds like the big scrap I’ve been looking for.” Maui slapped a hand down on the mouse statue. “Let’s go!”

Next through the spinning chairs went Launchpad and Maui.

“Hey, you guys coming?” Gosalyn hopped on one of the chairs carrying several things and Honker had arrived at sometime between breakfast and now. He was also carrying equipment and a lot of crossbow bolts. “You don’t seem very eager about all of this.”

“We’ll follow in a minute, give us a bit of time to talk.” Seeing how reserved I was acting, Gosalyn quieted down and looked at me for a few seconds. She looked between me, Shanty and Dolly, nodded and smacked the statues head with force and was gone in a blur of the spinning chairs with Honker.

“Okay, now that we’re by ourselves. Dolly, Shanty, this is going to be pretty bad, Dolly and I have already met this Agent Forty Seven. He likely knows what we’re all already capable of, so he’s going to be incredibly dangerous on top of everything else we’ll likely run into. It is much to my detriment that we can’t look away from this crisis or simply not take an active part in it, since I’m a major target and I know people are going to be in danger if I don't.” I took a seat and Shanty got in the other. “Also, yes, you can push the button Shanty, but wait a moment. Promise me you won’t fight or go after Agent Forty Seven alone if he actually succeeds in… well… killing me. He had an opportunity before and this time... he’s actually going to do it.”

Shanty and I stared each other as Dolly leapt up and sat down next to me.

“Caper Canine, has you’re back Pom!" Dolly was raring to go and wearing her helmet and skateboard strapped to her back. "That weird guy is not going to get you on my watch!”

“If he be hurting you…” Shanty started to say as she stood up and raised her left hoof.

“Please Shanty…” I looked at her as she gazed back me flatly.

“Okay, I not be going after him alone, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be going after him at all if be seeing him and he be close to killing you.” Shanty raised a hoof and pushed the statues head, she blinked when we didn’t spin or get taken to the lair. “Uh…”

“I think it requires a solid blow to the back of the head, must be set so simply pressing on it doesn’t do anything.” Kind of neat set up really. Not hard to do accidentally, but rather specific.

“Oh!” Shanty smacked the back of the head forward and everything was spinning, darkness and then spinning again and then we were both sitting in the seats inside Darkwing’s lair.

185. Park Perils.

-Saint Canard City, Pom-

The main part of the bridge was down, but the cables were still up and we carefully made our way into the city and made a right turn at Albuquerque Lane

We were on our way in three separate groups. All entrances and exits to the city were broken or watched, they likely even had people underwater watching for anyone trying to scuba dive their way out of here.

Having hidden eyes all over the city wouldn’t prepare us for what was coming, Darkwing only placed them in places that were likely to be robbed or attack. Most of those places were oddly empty, aside from what Darkwing had noted were Moliarty’s forces.

Professor Moliarty was a villainous mole with an army backing him and why the city was shrouded in darkness, the moles had an extreme weakness to sunlight and were definitely working with Negaduck.

No sign of who was behind the Eggheads, but it did have Dolly worried that The Phantom Blot would try to come out of nowhere and steal our magic. I hope that guy never succeeded at that, as doing so to Ocellus would probably kill her outright. It would leave Shanty and me incapable of fighting and Smolder wouldn’t be bothered by it at all. Dolly could survive without her magic, but she wouldn’t be happy about it as it is a part of her.

What was going on in the city wasn’t just a simple bank flipping like what I had to deal with that started my traveling around this world, this was a full blown takeover and there was little information about how it all got started or what Negaduck’s plans were beyond killing me. He had multiple plans running, that’s as much as we knew.

We did have ideas of where to investigate though, I had to resist using Dancing Flame as my health was already on the poor side and I’ve barely recovered from our groups run in with Clockwerk.

Darkwing and Quiverwing were in his personally built motorcycle called Ratcatcher, they were heading to an arboretum and one of the pillars farthest away from the bridge, there was apparently a lot of activity among the trees near the pillar over there. They could easily dodge Eggheads and mole troopers at the speed they were going.

Maui and Launchpad were taking a closer pillar, which was next to the coast, the bay area was swarming with those Egghead guys and they would have to deal with that. Maui was itching for a fight and Launchpad was his back up. They were going on foot and sneaking into the area.

Darkwing, wanting us to be safe because I was an out and out marked target with one of the world’s greatest assassins out to get me, he wanted us to go to the closer Theme Park opposite direction of the bay side activity.

This left the power plant open as the unvisited spot for anyone who could get there. Apparently the activity around the theme park pillar was relatively quiet and we’d probably find one of the trapped heroes to rescue here.

“Pom…” Whispered Shanty and stopped me from walking out of the alleyway a group of moles with rifles passed by without checking the alleyway, they obviously weren’t very bright. Shanty poked her head out and looked around, being shorter made her harder to spot and so she was leading us towards the location. “Okay, let’s be moving.”

I followed after Shanty with Dolly riding on my back looking out for anything amiss as we quietly snuck around all the moles running around. We had Ms. Shuttle on standby and Ocellus was at Darkwing Tower, so far nothing was going wrong, but it was only a matter of time before we had an encounter.

After we crossing the road and as we tried to enter the next alleyway a mole popped out and spotted us.

Before they could alert anyone to our presence sneaking along the walls of the buildings of these darkened streets, Shanty quickly leapt up and bucked them in the skull and they toppled over unconscious. That she managed to do so despite the guy’s helmet either meant that these guys only had numbers while not being very strong or that Shanty dealt a really good blow to his head, probably the latter considering these guys weren’t weak and there was a pair off hoof prints left in the helmet.

We quickly scrambled down the alleyway and dragged the short biped mole in with us and left him in the middle of it next to a dumpster. Before moving towards the other end, I broke his weapon against the ground and tossed it in the dumpster, hopefully not making enough noise to attract attention.

We were already close to be theme park and there was a patrol of three moles marching on by.

Thankfully the citizens of this city were laying low and were not out in the open or in immediate danger other than some of them being held hostage in certain places.

“Just going to say it, my family is not very big on theme parks Pom… mostly since they aren’t dog friendly and the most my family can do is book a bus to a nice place for the puppies. Give me a grass and trees park any day, roughing it like wolves for a while and running around wild.” Yeah, never been a big fan of theme parks either Dolly. My life is enough of a living attraction all its own, which means I’m getting too much excitement already. Once we were clear to make a move Dolly spoke up as she hopped off my back and prepared to rush the three guys with her skateboard. “Okay… guy on the right.”

“Shanty take the middle Dolly has the guy on the right.” I prepared to leap at the guy on the left, we approached them.

“Do you ever get the feeling that we were meant to be underground, I mean what’s so great about being up here?” We were almost upon them and then Dolly burst forward on her skateboard and hopped into the air to slammed into the back of the mole on the right knocking him face first into the ground knocking his helmet off as Dolly bounced up and came down swinging her skateboard for the back of his head with a painful sounding noise. Shanty that by leaping onto the back of the trailing middle guy who suddenly turned gun aimed in Dolly’s direction and soon dropped it as Shanty started slamming her left hoof into his face multiple times. The last one continued on obliviously. “We have everything below the surface, also this city is surrounded by water we’re not exactly great swimmers you know. So why are we listening to Moliarty again?”

I tapped the last one on the shoulder gently, sighing loudly as I did so. Could I really expect one of the moles to be reasonable? I didn’t have the heart to actually hurt the guy for being a free thinker.

“Excuse me, but… you seem like a reasonable guy. I think it’s because he’s got a commanding presence and a number of moles willing to fight for him therefore it’s a mob mentality.” He looked at the other two unconscious guys with Shanty and Dolly. “That said maybe you should go find somewhere else to be, maybe make a better life for yourself than being an oppressive militaristic stooge like the rest of the other moles for one guy that doesn’t appreciate you.”

“You know what… your right. I’m going to find something better to do than walk around and look menacing.” He seemed amiable enough to talk with us and didn’t look angry at the guys we knocked out, more like he was sad that they had to be knocked out. He looked unsure of himself. “My names Gaetan, nice meeting you…”

“Leap Lamb, but you can call me Pom Lambchop or just Pom.” I waved at him as he tossed his gun down and walked off.

“Nice meeting you Ms. Lambchop and might I say that you have a lovely figure, but you may want to stop that guy Quackerjack from torturing the people being held hostage with toys in the theme park. He’s more bananas than the exploding ones he wields and he’s attacked several of people I’m generally ashamed to be associated with now. Also please be watching out for his lethal toys.” He waved back at us as he left the area. “I’m going to start a dirt collection and becoming a world renowned archaeologist, I’m being quite through with Moliarty Militant Masses!”

“I didn’t be thinking that would work.” Shanty said a second later with some surprise as we dragged the two moles into the bushes and searched their bodies for anything that could be considered dangerous, we destroyed their weapons too.

“That guy has some nice life goals and a quirky Prench accent.” Why can’t all people part of evil regimes be nice and relatable like that? Wait… I pulled out Dormarch. “Dormarch call Ocellus, Ocellus can I get a dossier on who is Quackerjack? The guy we just met told us he has exploding bananas and something about dangerous toys? We’re doing okay before you ask.”

“Hey Pom, hold on a second, I’ve recently lost contact with Darkwing’s team and something bad is going on in the arboretum. Maui’s team has figured out what’s going on over by the bayside and they are currently trying to figure out how to stop it and destroy that pillar.” On screen was Ocellus’s natural face, on a biped body. A tad uncanny, but it helped Ocellus work the computer. “Okay, Quackerjack, Darkwing Duck show villain specializes in weaponized toys. Last seen unconscious getting sucked back to his home dimension, there is no file of a Quackerjack having been reported as existing in this world… strange. The incident of his existence was during the one where the criminal Taurus Bulba tossed Gosalyn’s living relative into an alternate dimension and started causing major dimensional instabilities in the world. There are currently no signs of such a portal having been opened recently within one hundred miles of Saint Canard. Darkwing was very thorough about the detector for that kind of thing.”

“We’ll worry about how Quackerjack is here later, I have an idea Ocellus. Ms. Shuttle can provide support fire for Maui and Launchpad. Connecting you to her now.” While Dormarch did that we ducked down in the bushes as another armed patrol passed by.

“Can I get an image of what he looks like?” I asked quietly as the moles passed by.

The image popped up of a duck biped. He appears to be a jester in a purple suit, red and purple hat, mismatches sleeves with polka dots and stripes. He looked silly with the big teeth in the top of his beak, a perpetual grinner by the looks of it.

After the moles were gone we made our way into the park, the theme seemed to be pretty generic if acceptably lovable to some degree…

At least the mascot for this place looked cute, a yellow police rabbit that looked a little sickly and yet seemingly full of life with a bright smile.

“All the hairs on the back of my neck be raising up.” As we walked through the entrance things were quiet around the park, there were no moles around and I was now entering a full paranoid state.

Where was everyone? A little beyond the entrance were empty food stands as we walked on the pathway I felt my right hoof stepped into a large puddle of water on the path… wait that water wasn’t there a second… oh goddesses!

I quickly grabbed Shanty with my front hooves and dove backwards as the water electrified brilliantly, blinding us for a few seconds and the water puddle dried up quickly afterwards.

My eyes darted about until I saw the shadow of Tobias Rieper as he turned from me and walked disappeared through a door in one of the nearby buildings. We were not chasing after him, he could have more deadly traps waiting for us.

We needed to find the hostages and stop whoever this Quackerjack guy is. Dormarch made a slight whimpering noise and I could feel his fear for my life.

“That be him?” A wide eyed Shanty asked as she saw where my gaze was going as his back disappear out of sight. Well our lives just flashed before our eyes for a second there.

Dolly was about to go chasing after him growling loudly and preparing to push off with her skateboard.

“Dolly, stay with us, we can’t split up now.” I said calmly and even sent her an image of why it was a bad idea to go chasing after the guy. Dolly looked like she was going to anyway and I stated one thing. “Don’t.”

“But… he just… he almost fried the both of you!” Dolly was angry, but she quickly calmed down as I stared her down from doing something rash. “How did he get so close anyway?”

“Maybe, he’s just that good.” It can’t be called paranoia if someone was really out to get you and they were waiting for the opportunity to make it quick and painless. At least I could thank him for not going the slow and torturous route. I think he pulled the trap early because I noticed it, otherwise he would have waited until Shanty was clear. “We need to find and rescue the hostages that Gaetan guy told us about, maybe defeat Quackerjack depending on the situation while we’re at it. We can’t go chasing after a guy that’s trying to kill me, because that’s the likeliest thing to get me killed if he ambushes us again.”

We carried on from the food stands and were now far more wary of our surroundings, the noise of the city being drowned out by an eerie quiet. The area opened up again and I looked at a park map while Dolly had her skateboard at the ready to deflect anything on my back and Shanty was staying low to the ground preparing to roll in any direction.

Okay entrance there, snack foods near the entrance along with bathrooms... well planned park really… and, ignoring the various rides, then that is where we should go. If Quackerjack is playing to a theme, he would of course be in the…

-Fun house-

Bright, colorful and eye catching… I hated this place already.

“We be going in there?” Shanty asked and Dolly mirrored her questioning look at the entrance.

“It’s either that or we wait for that assassin to take another crack at me.” I slowly made my way forward shivering at the thought that the guy might be aiming at my back. We walked in through the entrance, a big clown’s mouth, with trepidation.

“It’s concerning that we’re basically walking into this place just because Quackerjack is likely to… is that a box?” It didn’t take us ten feet to run into a large box with a handle on it, Dolly was staring at it distractedly and the handle started cranking itself in a disturbingly slow manner.

Looking about the room we were in and how it was designed, also noting that the entrance closed quietly behind us, I made a snap decision.

“Get on top of the box, now!” I ran forward and leapt onto the box. Shanty and Dolly did the same, but looked confused as to why we were on it.

Well Dolly didn’t look so confused, but when the box played a few specific note, everything but the box sprang up on springs and slammed into the ceiling of the room at a high speed. We all looked up at what was the floor impaled into the ceiling.

“Pop goes the her-ooohhh darn it… and here I thought that would of worked!” A figure bound into the room looking excitedly at the ceiling and then noticed us standing on the box and a small portion of the floor that didn’t spring up around the boxes handle. “Oh you have a little friend as a sidekick. I was expecting Darkwing Duck, but he’ll do! Hey little boy, what kind of toy do you want? I, Quackerjack, can spot you one for free!”

“If it be coming from you, then I probably not be wanting it. I be growing up without toys or a roof over my head, so I be knowing a bad deal when I hear one.” As sharp as Shanty’s tongue was, she was right in not taking toys from strangers. Not from this one at any rate with the various warnings we got. “Also I be a girl!”

“Are you sure? You have this scraggly beard and look like you enjoy playing pirate.” Oh that got Shanty angry.

“I'm not playing pirate, I am a pirate and I plunder rum whenever and wherever I can!” Is that really something to be proud of Shanty? “Also all goats be having beards!”

“Wait… so you’re a girl… also you let her drink?” Quackerjack seemed confused while rubbing a finger against his chin and looking at the smashed ceiling and the springs that looked to be staying permanently extended. “Huh, really thought those would have retracted by now and crushed me in a comical fashion… guess that joke wasn’t meant to be. Why is this world so cruel?”

“Let her? She’s been drinking long before I met her.” My dull flat tone was met with laughter. “I really doubt I can get her to quit at this rate. Also did you really want to be crushed by the entire ceiling?”

“Well you’re a fun one, and where there’s fun to be had… IT’S PLAYTIME!” Crossing his arms he flung a bunch of bananas at us that created fizzling noises. We all dove off the box backwards and Dolly was the last as she held her skateboard forward vertically to block the small blast and some shrapnel. The box had been blown open, revealing a teddy bear with bolts in it. Also Quackerjack was now holding a banana doll with a goofy looking face. “What’s that Mr. Banana Brain? They need Terror Teddy to show them how to have some fun? Good idea!”

“Something about this guy smells really off Pom.” Taking Dolly’s random commentary into consideration as the teddy bear slowly stood up while making clanking noises, revealing it to be a machine and not a soft and cuddly sleep aid.

I sniffed the air and something did smell off. Not a gunpowder or explosive smell like the bananas after exploding, more like a something we’re missing kind of smell. I’d worry about it later as the teddy bear was growing sharp bladed claws and lunged at us, Dolly was knocked back by the first slash and then Shanty surged forward to block the next with her own hoof.

What followed was Terror Teddy slashing several times, only to be deflected by Shanty with well-timed hoof swings.

“Your right Mr. Banana Brain, it’s not nice to leave Leap Lamb out of the fun too!” Quackerjack flung two yoyo’s my way and I easily dodged both with slight lazy leaning, avoiding a hit to the head and a hip. He pulled them both back and I dodged them again despite them having spiked razor sharp edges this time, which retracted before they reached Quackerjack’s hands. That would have hit my throat and an artery I my hind leg. “How did you dodge those?! I angled them specifically so you’d get hit when I pulled them back!”

“I know someone far more annoying than you that is much more skilled at wielding yoyos.” I wasn’t going to mention the annoying Abyssinian by name, I wouldn’t want her to show up and ruin my day any further than this situation with Saint Canard already has. She was more skilled with a yoyo than this guy was. Shanty and the bear continued to scratch and claw at one another. “Can I just know where the hostages are and what you’re doing in this part of the city?”

“No, that would take all the fun out of it!” Stated Quackerjack menacingly, preparing to throw again.

Only before he could throw his yoyos again, he took a slung skateboard to the back of the head rolling him forward and directly into my prepared left haymaker that planted solidly on his cheek.

He went rolling away sideway in a different direction and lost both his yoyos, he got up and started stomping his feet angrily.

“No fair, no fair, you don’t play nice at all!” He dodged backwards with a hop as Dolly went for him again, he started running away for the nearest door when I joined in preparing another attack. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to get some bigger toys just for you!”

Despite how much Dolly looked like she wanted to give chase, she instead turned around and slung her skateboard out for the Terror Teddy that Shanty was tearing up bit by bit. So far Shanty had avoided any injury whatsoever.

The teddy bear machine caught the skateboard easily without injury, it however missed the flash of Shanty’s two hooves slashing through its neck in a hard rightward axe swing that she followed through on while the bear bot was distracted.

After a second of silence the head tilted slightly as if asking if it really thought that Shanty could actually injure it. That’s when the head started to slide sideways until it and a portion of one of its arms fell off its body. All of it having been cleanly cut through, soon the body of the dangerous toy toppled over lifelessly too.

Shanty looked perfectly fine to continue, so we would and made for the door.

“That was being dangerous, but actually somewhat fun.” Shanty stated as we gave chase after Quackerjack through the door. “How did you be knowing the floor would go up to the ceiling like that?”

“Don’t encourage this Quackerjack guy Shanty. I guessed by the way the entrance room was designed and that the box was sitting in a very oddly designed and rather specific indentation.” There was also the fact that the jack in the box was not making too many mechanical noises. “Also I heard the springs underneath us slowly building up. Now come on, let’s go!”

We ran through a hall of mirrors and into a large, circus styled room where we could see people trapped in cages on the far side of the brightly lit arena.

One was separate from the other people. The hero 'The Sneeze Master' was stuck in a novelty sized tissue box, I’m pretty sure everything with Quackerjack was a novelty in its own way from what I’ve heard.

Sneeze’s sonic sneezes were being countered by the pots of boiling water nearby with what I assume to be antihistamines by the smell that flowed through the arena.

“If you big girls are too old for my toys, then well how about this!” A pair of large yellow glowing eyes started to rise up in the large room design like a circus ring. Standing at full height was a Quackerjack robot with him on the head of the machine. “It’s the biggest one I have on hand, say hello to my Quacker-Smack robot!”

“At least this one is made of wood.” I said in an agonized tone, can I stop dealing with dangerous robots already?!

I was undoubtedly going to get splinters from this somehow.

"Hey, you try to building a giant toy robot of yourself on a budget!" Was Quackerjacks response as he got it into an offensive stance. "It's not easy! Again... it's playtime."

186. Not Playtime?

-Earth, Saint Canard Theme Park, employee backroom, Tobias Rieper-

They did not follow me… smart.

You may have survived my first attempt, but I’ll leave the lifeless fool to deal with you for the time being. I wonder if you or your companion will even notice the truth behind him.

I know he won’t defeat you at least, and I’ll be waiting.

I stepped out into the dark city dressed like an Egghead of the reborn F.O.W.L. organization.

A fake beak strapped to my face, I adjusted my helmet slightly and set off to find a vantage point and blend in with the others that have taken over the city.

Bullets wouldn’t work very well on Leap Lamb, only immediately lethal traps.

-Fun House Arena, Pom-

Dormarch was being rather quiet from where he sat strapped in to the pink cloth on my forehead, he was either busy coordinating things with Ms. Shuttle or he wasn’t trying to distract me.

“How about you show me your pearly whites?” Quackerjack started manipulating his machine. He grinned brightly and laughed maniacally. “Turn that frown upside down, because I’ll show you mine!”

I glanced at Dolly and she looked back at me when I pinged her through our bond, we stared at each other for a few seconds and then she narrowed her eyes and nodded back at me before turning to the Quacker-smack robot preparing to push forward on her skateboard.

Good, Dolly knows what to do, especially since Quackerjack wasn’t going to ignore her this time.

“Shanty… can you possibly get to the cages?” I whispered to the side as the giant puppet of the guy piloting it pulled its arms backs and thrust them forward to start launching bouncing, a large mass of small chattering toy teeth at us.

I moved slightly to draw their attention squarely on me, we needed Quackerjack’s full attention. We needed to free the hostages and keep them safe. We also needed to know what the plan was here, it didn’t seem like Quackerjack had one beyond face us.

“I can be trying.” Shanty glanced at me, then asked. “So you be doing this all fours then?”

“Not fighting this battle on my hind legs, I’m try to keep myself to a four hoof style as much as I can.” I spread my legs out and prepared to fight using the Fleet Cunning Doe evasive style, I needed to figure out how to destroy the giant puppet without burning down the building with us in it. “I’m trying not to put too much stress on any part of myself, which is why I’ll be relying on the both of you.”

I hopped backwards as the chattering toy teeth all bounced at me with wide open mouths in an attempt to bite down on me, Shanty moved forward from my left and slashed her right hoof out as she passed by them. A good number of them all split in half.

Turning my body around I launched a few one hoof bucks at the remaining teeth that continued to bounce towards me and Dolly took care of the remaining with a few quick sweep of her skateboard to batter them apart.

We then moved back into formation with me at the lead, Shanty on my left and Dolly on my right, Dormarch the eyes in the back of my head since I’m paranoid that Tobias might come after us right now while we were distracted. It didn’t seem like he was, but I wouldn’t know.

“Okay, this is going to be harder than I thought, but that’s not going to ruin my grin.” Quackerjack stated while rubbing the bottom of his beak with a broad smile. He hit something and giant wooden robot lifted its hands and the fingers popped open and out of the holes in the digits popped several puppets. All of them themed like faceless knights, with spears, axes, swords and were wielding shields. Shanty started leaping up to cut their strings, but Quackerjack didn’t do anything to stop her and he kept smiling. “They have no strings to hold them down, to make them walk… to make them frown~!”

The knights came to life and one slashed its sword at Shanty and she deflected with a hoof and was sent skidding backwards.

“Caper Canine, focus the spear guys, stay mobile. Cut-Lass, focus the axe guys, don’t take any hits and back off if you’re getting surrounded. I’ll go for the sword guys.” There were at least twelve in all and four of each, small, but no less dangerous. They might be wooden puppets, but their weapons were made of sharpened metal. “Also keep an eye out for any more tricks or his robot attacking you directly.”

Shanty and Dolly spread out as did the soldiers as they moved forward.

-Caged hostages, ???-

I stirred and woke up, I don’t remember my bed being made of hard steel. Must have lost my mattress to an explosion again. Happens more often than I’d like, paying for a new mattress was going to take a while, how do you tell a mattress salesman that you want a mattress that can withstand high yield explosions while it remaining entirely comfortable? Probably need to budget for something unique.

Don’t they know that I can’t be killed with explosions by now? I swear, the nerve of some criminals, it’s kind of hard to have an address for getting my mail when it keeps getting blown up. At least the chief knows and takes care of me, he’s a nice guy like that.

“Is that Leap Lamb?” A white furred cat stated as I sat up and looked around the cage we were.

“Is she really going to fight that thing?!” Another spoke, a grey furred dog, he looked fairly surprised.

“We need to tell her about the bomb!” A third voice spoke up, this time it was a male marmoset.

What were all these people doing in my house? No, this wasn’t my house.

“A bomb?” It didn’t take me long to recognize where we were, this was the theme park I helped build personally and if there were bombs around then they’ll need a bomb disposal specialist to deal with it. Luckily for them I was Saint Canard’s primary bomb disposal expert in the local police force, I just needed to know where it was. “Where is it?”

“You didn’t see? Oh right, you were dragged in here unconscious when they gathered us all up in here. Some guy calling himself Negaduck came in and installed a large bomb in that robot when that Quackerjack guy wasn’t looking.” I was informed by a female cockatoo who looked to be having a panic attack, I think I recognized her. Wasn’t she from one of the case files with the claustrophobia and an extreme fear of cages? Yeah, definitely needed to get her out of here very soon. Well that definitely wasn’t good, not good at all. I needed access to it before I could do anything helpful… even if I could get through the cage, I wouldn’t be able to fight. “We don’t know when it’ll go off, but if it does it’ll kill us all and will destroy a good portion of this park!”

I looked around and spotted one of the heroes that lived near or in Saint Canard. It was The Sneeze Master, she was a good news anchor when she wasn’t fighting crime or getting sick because of her powers. I then looked to the robot they were talking about and the three taking on the number of puppets attacking them.

“I can easily defuse the bomb, but I’ll need access to it.” I started pulled at one of my long ears. “To get access to it I’m going to need to get them some help to beat that guy. So…”

“What can you possibly do, we’re all trapped in… what the heck?!” The male Great Dane and various people in the cage were stunned to silence as they watched me work on my method for getting out of this cage so I could help the super hero stuck in that oversized tissue box.

Sure my abilities weren’t great and might have disturbed some people watching me actively use them, but they were certainly quite useful. I liked looking on the bright side of things and my abilities were a gift, I was certainly going to use them to save everyone and maybe bring some actual smiles to the people here. My friends on the force would expect that much of me.

“Oh my god, I think I know who that guy is!” One of the people said with reverence in their voice as they watch me slowly escape from one of the cages they were trapped in, they must have recognized me from my stunt double work.

I wondered when Bonkers would be getting back from his trip? If he were here he would do anything to save the day, even at a great cost to himself, but he’s not here. I certainly am though, so I guess I’ll have to do it.

I mean it really beats staying locked up and letting the villain win when I could have done something to help and helping people is my favorite thing in life to do. I’m a good friend, always thinking of others. I wonder if I should find that movie Bonkers wanted to watch and buy some buttered popcorn.

-Pom-

The sword slashed upwards in an arc, I ducked under it and then speared my hoof up into its head and through it. I pulled my hoof back carefully and then had to spring to the side as the body slashed at me despite barely having a head with the size of the hole I put through it.

I had to do another hop back to avoid an axe being brought down on me from the side and Shanty immediately cut it in half vertically from behind as she leapt up onto and then off it before its torso was pierced by a spear that made it finally body split and fall apart.

While that happened Shanty took the sword arm off the still attacking puppet and was bashed away and in the face by the shield wielded in its other hand. It finally went down when spinning dolly cut its remaining arm and upper torso off with a harsh skateboard slap against the chest.

“Why yes Mr. Banana Brain, that dog is quite dangerous! We can’t focus on them because the hero behind those sidekicks is still our main target!” I sprung sideways as a large right hand of the robot swiped through the area I occupied, I hit the ground rolling and then quickly scrambled backwards when it tried to slap its left hand down on top of me. “She’s not much of a smiler for a hero is she?”

“I just want everyone to know, on record, that I don’t call myself a hero!” I shouted as avoided its right kick as it pulled back its left arm and moved into standing. I then tackled the left leg with as much force as I could while its right foot was still in the air, the robot wobbled fell over and Quackerjack went tumbling away. “I’m just doing my job!”

I didn’t get the opportunity to take advantage of Quackerjack being knocked off his robot as I was intercepted by two spears when I tried to spring forward towards him.

I brought my front legs up in time to grab onto both the shafts before my momentum impaled me on the spears, I could see the tip of the right one threatening to puncture my right eye.

“Pom, behind you!” Thanks to Dormarch’s warning, I pushed off the spears and kicking off the ground into a backflip to avoid a sword that tried to stab me from behind.

The sword got stuck in the puppet on the right and as I hopped backwards the one on the left charged me. I spotted something going on at the cages as I ducked and spun around the spear charge and bucked the faceless puppet from behind.

What I was seeing was a bit weird, but… one of them was slowly getting free. Must be a hero I hadn’t heard of, at least none of us needed to go over there now.

“Change of plans girls, full assault on the puppets now, we can worry about the hostages afterwards!” I hopped forward towards the puppet trying to pull its stuck sword free and had to quickly lean back as an axe came for my neck.

It passed by in front of my nose and I smacked the side of the head twisting it and sending it into the back of the sword wielding puppet.

Now the axe puppet was stuck trying to pull its weapon from the back of the sword wielding puppet that had its sword impaled on a spear puppet.

I darted to the right and around the puppets, grabbed the impaled spear puppets weapon arm and forced its spear forward into the axe puppet. Now all three of them were trying to pull their weapons free.

At a glance Quackerjack didn’t see what was going on behind him as he hastily boarded his large wooden puppet robot and slowly worked it back into a standing position. A quick glance showed that Dolly took care of the spear wielder I bucked with a swinging smash from a rapid vertical somersault to build momentum. She was at least learning to conserve energy when she used her flow-motion ability or was it possible that the energy conversation was automatically a part of the magic she wields?

Behind Dolly, Shanty was generating a cutting force from her horns as she plowed into three of the puppets with her rapidly spinning spherical form shredding them with her forward momentum from a leap.

“My body be a shredding saw!” Shanty said cheerfully as she lunged forward again curling up into a rapidly spinning ball. She can’t jump high, but she made up for it by having good horizontal momentum and the ability to rip through wood with the slicing arcs her horns and hooves were generating as she spun through two more puppets.

Landing she shifted her hips and then went into a spiraling twirl where she destroyed the three puppets that had gotten stuck on each other in a tornado of three slashing legs. I could vaguely feel Dolly taking care of the remaining puppets and was soon at my side as Quackerjack got his robot back up and standing.

“Shanty, we have to keep drawing his attention.” Looking my way and then looked to where my eyes were looking, she nodded and we all faced down Quackerjacks robot.

“So you beat my Toy Troops, well don’t think that was the last of my tricks!” Quackerjack pulled on a rope that looked like a bunch of tied together magician scarves. “For I have more up my sleeves!”

The robot raised its arms and large sections of wood pulled back like sleeves, revealing multiple tubes that spread outwards.

“Do you want some canned nuts? Woo-hoo!” He pulled something and all the tubes started firing spring loaded toy snakes. I stepped backwards as the first one impacted the floor of the around and blew a fairly large chunk out of it. “I’ve got plenty for you, take all you need!”

“No thanks, I’m not hungry!” Yelling that back as I dodged snake after spring loaded snake started raining down on us, at least each tube was only firing once. It was the sheer volume of them that was making it a scramble for the three of us to dodge. “Where did you find the time to fill every single can with an exploding spring loaded snake? That must have taken hours!”

After several hops and being blow into air by the exploding spring loaded snakes, I focused on Dolly and she moved into position.

We all soon formed up behind Dolly and we all took up position of holding up the skateboard up as blast after blast from exploding snakes shoved us backwards. Eventually the hurricane of random blasts around us finally petered out and stopped.

“Oh… looks like I’m all out of nuts, guess I’ll just have to go bananas then!” This Quackerjack guy was definitely a maniac, as he stood up on his seat and started to throw bananas our way.

“Move!” We all split apart, I started to leap and roll away from the bananas as they exploded around me.

“Well Mr. Banana Brain, I would say these heroes are washed up, but we don’t have any water. I’d have more problems fighting Darkwing Duck!” Okay, normally under the right situation Quackerjack comparing me to Darkwing or Drake Mallard wouldn’t have bothered me.

In this case I knew Drake Mallard and the masked Darkwing Duck personally, I finally snapped.

“Are you seriously comparing us to him? You don’t even know us, he’s actually actively going out and trying to be a hero, he is actively looking for trouble to stop before it can go too far as to hurt the innocent, I’m just trying to live my life and I keep getting dragged into situations where I have to fight maniacs like you for the sake of others! We, my team, are called heroes because we just happen to be in the wrong place and take action to save as many people as we can! We’ve never looked for trouble, we go to where the trouble already started because we just happen to be there and put a stop to it! Darkwing even asked us to take it easy, because for some reason I’m a target of just about every villain in the city because I’m just Leap Lamb. Not many people really even care about who I am outside of this hero stuff and I’d rather they’d leave me alone! Do you even honestly remember why you are doing any of this?! What is the purpose of your ridiculous toy robot? Is it supposed to make people happy? It’s failing spectacularly at that!” I shouted at him, he paused as did Dolly and Shanty who were now looking at me wide eyed. “At least I know why I’m doing this, it’s become expected of me to run into a fight blazing, nearly dying, my body being bruised, battered, beaten and broken constantly. I’m still recovering from a blow to the head that should have been fatal from my last run in, because I was doing Cut-Lass a favor in being there for her friends. I literally have stitches in my forehead right now and here I am facing down yet another ridiculous fight for my life and that of others, from you! Can you honestly tell me you know what it is like to be constantly crushed under a undeniable force of everyone needing a hero in a given moment and that you’d actually step up to be there, that you will at the very least try to move forward into the jaws of a beast even if it is to save a single person! That person might even be a villain and you’d still save them because life is precious you know! You don’t need to be a hero to be a decent being, life is hard enough already without creeps like you running around ruining our attempts to have a nice day!”

As I spoke, the guy that got free from the cages was getting The Sneeze Master free from the confines of the tissue box and the antihistamine traps. I wasn’t quite done yet in my tirade either.

“But…” Quackerjack started to say.

“No, you don’t get to say, ‘but’, to me mister! You are going to listen to me! I am not larger than life, I have arrhythmia from a bullet I took to the chest for a dog, my body is threatening to tear itself apart if I do the wrong thing and I’m not invincible, I never thought I was!” I was screaming at him and the robot took a step back. “I’ve had mercenaries on my case since I fought Dr. Mandrill in Britain, not once have I had a moments peace for more than two weeks. I can barely get a month to fully recover from how broken I am! The only thing holding me together is that other people are relying on me to stay strong! It is quite exhausting being me! I bet you don’t even have to worry about half the stuff that I do, that you can live life so carefree from trouble by simply going insane and having ‘FUN’ at the cost of everything. You don’t have to worry about anything, just go on pretending like life didn’t win against you! I’m still going to struggle with my battle, but I’m not giving up and going insane like you obviously have!”

“Wow, you are like… the saddest person I think I’ve ever met. Wish I could help you with your issues, but I’m the villain you know. Not supposed to really talk things out and or discuss our issues in the heat of battle, I’m not even supposed to do feelings I think… wait… if I’m not supposed to do feelings then why can I feel? Have I been faking things all along…” Quackerjack smile slowly slipped off his face until he wasn’t smiling anymore. “Also you’re right, I don’t remember why I’m doing this, I just know that I have to! There is something very wrong with me or this situation here… even Mr. Banana Brain seems to know something is up and he’s the smart one!”

“Wait… what?” I looked at the banana toy on his shoulder. It wasn’t a living entity, but it did seem to tilt its head towards Quackerjack ever so slightly.

“Oh just stop me already, this isn’t fun anymore!” The robot stepped forward and swept its right arm for me in an attempted to grab me, I leapt up onto its forearm. The left slapped its hand down on where I was.

I hopped further up to the left arms bicep and the robot was rocked by a blow as Dolly slammed into the right side of the head’s beak after coming from the nearby pillar.

The head began spinning wildly and the robot stumbled backwards several steps until Quackerjack managed to get it reoriented correctly. He looked dizzy and there seemed to be a strange look of being lost on his face, but he moved to sweep me off with the right arm before I could jump up to attack him.

The robot took a step forward, only to find it tilting at an odd angle as Shanty damaged the right leg below with several rapid swings. Making it falter slightly as chunks of its wooden leg cracked and bent awkwardly under the force.

I tried to leap up and Quackerjack didn’t even bother to swipe at me, I raised my hoof and then… didn’t hit him. There was a strange look in his eyes.

“You’re going through the motions… but you…” I tried to finish my thoughts only for him to hit me in the face with a squeaky rubber hammer he pulled from behind his back. He then threw the rubber hammer beneath me as I fell away and my head hit the hammer head softly and my spine was propped up by the rubber hammers shaft… wait, did he just? He just attacked me without actually hurting me? Why did his intent to do harm suddenly change? “What just…”

“Ah-choo!” The Sneeze Master blew Quackerjack clean off the wooden machine and it toppled over face first, the beak impaling the ground.

I silently watched as Quackerjack quickly escaped.

Author's Note

There's a setup happening here...

187. Fall Apart.

Author's Note

Music: Okage: Shadow King OST: Gutten Kisling.

187. Fall Apart.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Jaded-

“Yes Silvers, yes you are, my precious little kitten!” My little chimera babbled happily as I playfully teased them, I sat up with them in my lap and turned to Fizzy and Maries. “So anyways the summit can no longer continue, we’re done with that and hopefully you’ve caught the last of those Grogar cultists because now we have to rely on everything slowly falling into place.”

“Okay yes, but if the world summit is over and we’ve done all the border discussions… then why are all the world leaders here in mom’s restaurant?” Fizzy asked flatly

“I am Fortitude, the fantastically fragrant!” Fortitude was the same as ever, leader of the Minotaurs and everything. That strange yak is still one of our greatest friends. “I am always here, because I live here!”

“I meant the other delegates and world leaders that don’t normally live here.” Fizzy, my storm queen, explained with a sardonic tone. “The summit can only last so long and there’s a rule against filibustering, but there isn’t a rule against chicanery apparently. Since we’re technically only having an after party for finishing our summit… even if it’s going to act like a summit, it’s not an official summit.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m just here for the good food and to trade recipes with Kuril.” World Delegate Gilda of the griffons was stuffing her face with honey roasted sunflower seeds, alongside a catch of the day fileted by Blade Bright the thestral, baked and seasoned by my mother Kuril and delivered by the ever lovely Brenda Springer the Diamond Dog waitress known for her friendship with my kitten sitter 'Savannah, The Wild'.

The atmosphere inside the restaurant was bright and cheery and Silvers was flopping into Fizzy’s hooves, so we were holding an informal summit and I hoped no one called my mother out on bribing the world leaders.

“Jaded.” Mom stated as she approached and placed some food down, Silvers was immediately on the fish jerky risotto. “How are thing going behind the scenes?”

“The Quarrelsome Quartet say that since business can’t happen and they can’t be evil on purpose if thing are out of order, they are actually doing their best. Also I hate politics and would prefer to do things the more explosive way next time… ” As an Abyssinian, my little petty kitty mind could get easily bored unless there’s a yarn ball or a speck of light to chase… there’s also always my cardboard box collection with various comics books. I’m a little bit more complicated than that though, being an intelligent race as a part of this world I had to uphold to the standards that some people might expect of me…. then my bowl of fish risotto was pushed beneath my nose by my smiling mother. “Darn you and your food old witch!”

“Is that any way to talk to your mother?” Mom said sweetly, we grinned at one another.

“Knowing you… yes.” I said and then dug into my food next to Silvers in a similar display of violent food rending pleasure.

Gallus gave us disturbed looks from across the table and just shook his head dryly.

“Now we need to prep for several things to happen Jade and… right you’re not going to listen to me.” Glancing at the lovely Fizzlepop ‘Tempest Shadow’ Berrytwist, I noted that Silvers had stopped too as I continued to chew my food. “Ugh…”

“Why… why is this so tasty?!” Bemoaned Twilight, I think she just learned to never let my mother bribe her with food.

“You’re a growing alicorn Twilight, you need more nutrition than most people to grow into your role!” I shouted across the room, then quietly turning to Fizzy I added a quieter statement. “Also we’re leaving it up to luck and my luck hasn’t always been the best.”

“We’ll get through it somehow Jade, even if you can’t solve the problem… you’re at least not making things worse.” Nuzzling against Fizzy for trying to be the optimist in our group of go getters, I purred lightly because I knew she liked that, Maries did the same on the other side and Silvers cuddled up to her too.

“Hope our family is that functional.” Arizona said from nearby and next to Velvet, Paprika was sitting across the entire room from them with a pair of binoculars and holding up a sign that said ‘hello’ with a pink heart.

“You don’t abuse me anymore, WAHHH!” Velvet had problems, apparently spousal abuse was something she wanted from Arizona and Arizona refuses to hit her back now on principle of things.

Our world needs its weirdness. Good thing there’s plenty of it, even here in our town between Appleloosa and Ponyville.

A local zebra family came in and half the room in the restaurant greeted them like old friends. The other half was taken up by world leaders, also giving cheerful and warm greetings.

-Earth, Theme Park Security Desk, Quackerjack-

“Wait, I think I’m hearing something important.” A quiet voice whispered to me, I slowed down and looked to Mr. Banana Brain and then to the nearby monitors of the empty security station as we passed by.

“There’s a bomb in the robot ma’am and I need to gain access to it!” I looked at the screen at my toppled robot, nobody was chasing me and they were more worried about my once upon a time hostages. Darkwing wouldn’t have stayed to hear about the bomb, but to be fair to him, even I didn’t know about it. Would he have gone back for the bomb and would he have made it in time? Yes, believed wholeheartedly that Darkwing wouldn’t let people down even if it kills him, not that the guy doesn’t make mistakes. “The hostages said that Negaduck put it in there. If it’s as high yield as they say it is, then half the park will be gone if it goes off.”

“Something doesn’t feel right about you… does it Quackerjack? Something big is up and we need to figure out what before the jokes on us. For we’re the ones that should making the jokes here!” Mr. Banana Brain was always right about things, he at least knew when something was wrong. “Also, Negaduck tried to kill us, we’re definitely not friends with him Quackerjack.”

“You’re right Mr. Banana Brain, I need to find out what’s going on and why I can’t remember some things.” My memories were strangely hazy, but I knew who I was supposed to be and what I liked to do at least. I don’t quite think I was quite them though. “Also Negaduck has some things to answer for for messing with my toys! I’ll show him, if he wants to play ball with my life, then we’re going to return the favor and play hard Mr. Banana Brain!”

“At least make sure get an acid spewing unicorn toy, I have a feeling we’ll need it.” Mr. Banana Brain always had the best ideas. “The toy would make for a good water squirting device too...”

“Ooh, nice idea Mr. Banana Brain!” I grinned as I ran from the park, ignoring the moles in my way to the nearest place where I can produce some toys.

-Fun House Arena, Pom-

“Wait… who are you?” I asked because the yellow rabbit in the blue shirt and headband hadn’t introduced himself.

“Oh right, I forgot that part, how’d it go again?” The rabbit looked to be thinking of something deeply. “Hello there my new friend, my name is Fall-apart, nice to meet you~! I’m a Fall-apart Von Rabbit, Saint Canard TOON Division, it’s nice to greet you~!”

He held out his right arm and before I could shake it, it fell off of his body making me jump. I knew I had seen him doing something weird around the cage and… wait… this guy was the mascot of the theme park!

“Oh sorry about that, while that’s not very rare, can I shake your paw, while it is already down there~?” The arm animated on the ground and Dolly shivered slightly, but she still raised a paw and shook it with this guy that didn’t seem concerned that a part of him fell off and was still moving. Dolly for her part looked a bit weirded out to be shaking her paw with the arm that fell off the guy. “I’m a police officer of TOON DIVISION bomb squad, yes my name is Fall-apart, nice to meet you, nice to greet you, and I’m at your service ma’am no refusal, you currently have the world’s best expert in bomb defusal~!”

He raised his other arm to try to shake my hoof and it too fell off, instead he detached his leg from his hip and socketed it into his left shoulder and saluted me with his foot. Unfortunately he kicked off his own head in doing so.

“Fall-apart Von Rabbit, at your service, don’t you worry, or be so nervous~! I can help you, just give me access to the bomb, and I’ll take care of it, before its been too long~!” He said as his body sat on his own sideways head. “I’m Fall-apart Von Rabbit~! Here to help you take a stab at it~! The bomb will not last for too long, if I’m given access and things don’t go wrong~!”

I could almost feel the sound of wonky accordion, drums and other strange bits of music playing around this guy and he seemed to be a cheerful fellow, despite all his body parts falling off or rearranging.

“What exactly does TOON stand for in Toon Division, Officer Rabbit?” I asked, a little worried when his nose fell off his face and started to bounce around. “Also Dormarch, I need you to scan for where the bomb is so we can find it quickly and figure out what to do from there, are you too busy with Ms. Shuttle?”

“Give me a minute, coordinating an assault like this at this range when reception is lousy is not easy.” Dormarch answered from the back of my head. “Ms. Shuttle, Launchpad and Maui are really kicking some butt in the bayside area, but there’s this water dog guy giving them problems. I’m sure if you were there you could manipulate him into not drowning our friends… his name is Liquidator? Okay, thanks for the update Ocellus, at least Maui’s team is doing well. As for Darkwing, their team is still MIA or silent due to interference in the region of the Arboretum near one of the pillars holding up the sun blocking cover over the city.”

“Hey again, Leap Lamb was it, thanks for coming to save us.” Sniffled, Sneeze Master who blew her nose on a large torn off bit of tissue paper as she approached. “It’ll take me a minute to get my sinuses cleared up without explosively sneezing on anyone, hard to control my sneezes sometimes. Really don’t want to hurt anyone or get them sick by accident.”

“There are antihistamines here you know, maybe you could balance out the use of your powers with them?” After I said that Sneeze Master wiped her nose again, got a look of sudden realization on her face and quickly ran over to the antihistamines to clear up the head cold she got from her powers.

Apparently blessed with suck is a common thing with super powers around here, even Rubber Chicken was greatly affected by hot and cold temperatures.

Stegmutt had a childish disposition yet still somehow managed to hold down a job as a food vendor and be a hero on the side with. His transformation into a big hulking invulnerable bulk of a dinosaur biped made him a bit slow on the uptake of things, but he got there eventually.

There’s Neptunia who was poisoned with toxic waste to end up with her powers of becoming a biped fish that could walk on land, but still dehydrated on land and its little wonder that she’s angry at what happened to her due to the environmental pollution causing her current existence as a mutant.

Morgana’s magic sometimes had random unintended side effects from what she wanted it to do, but she tended to fix those problems whenever she caused them. Ocellus was flabbergasted that her use of magic was always so slapdash and chaotic when she met Morgana the other night, even called out the fact that Discord might be Morgana’s patron god. That was a shudder and a half from everyone who knew of Discord from Equus.

Banana Boy turns into a giant flying limbless banana with a cape, I wished I could fly without effort like that. Plus being able to fly is useful despite not being able to do much else as a giant banana, at least he could change back at will.

Glue Girl just need to control her powers a little more an she can create all kinds of neat traps on just about any surface, she was a no nonsense person and she tended to accidentally cause nonsense because of her powers of making things sticky.

Somehow these people still managed to be super heroes while going about their lives and were good friends of Darkwing Duck.

Nothing was wrong with Gizmo Duck, Darkwing just disliked everything about Fenton Crackshell in general. Drake never even explained it, but I’m sure he’s probably just jealous of the cool looking armor and the media attention Gizmo Duck gets… despite the fact that Fenton doesn’t like that stuff, but has to ham it up for the cameras because it is quite expected of him to do so. Mostly to help keep his private life and his hero life separated by acting entirely different outside of his costume, his police officer mother was in on it.

Wait… six? Well if you include Quiverwing Quack as part of the main Justice Ducks team, then… huh… maybe I should mention that to Ocellus when I know we’re not about to be blown to 'kingdom come' by a bomb.

“Not being very bright is she?” Shanty said with a hop in her step as she played with a sword stolen from one of the destroyed puppets creating multiple cutting arcs as she swung it. “Shouldn’t we be going after that Quackerjack guy?”

“No, I’m sure he’ll turn up again later, maybe Darkwing will deal with it. Right now we need to free the hostages and get them to relative safety. Caper Canine, take Dormarch and start scanning over the robot to find out where the bomb was placed.” I passed Dormarch to Dolly and she immediately skated to the fallen wooden robot. “Cut-Lass, go to Sneeze Master and help her figure out how to get the hostages out of the cage once she’s cleared her sinuses… or at the very least find a way to protect them from the ensuing explosion.”

Shanty saluted me and made her way over to the Sneeze Master with the small sword across her back.

I turned back to Fall-apart, he was a jumbled mess his tail where his head should be, his right arm was now his left leg and this guy was slowly beginning to remind me of Veles the god of confusion. His head was sitting upside down on his butt.

“So... my question and… where did you get that slice of pizza from?!” I hadn’t seen where he got the slice of pizza he was idly eating with his left arm… currently backwards in his right arm socket. Even his nose and ears were in the wrong places on his body.

“Sorry, got hungry and pulling myself together can take a while, can you help me out ma’am?” I sighed and started to rearrange the rabbits parts, it was surprisingly easy to get his body back together and looking normal. “Thanks, the pizza still goes straight to my stomach, but it disturbs quite a few people when I eat while I’m jumbled up.”

“Now can you tell me what TOON Division means before we get distracted again Mr. Rabbit?” This guy was just so plain weird, I’m surprised that I’m not panicking about the bomb possibly going off at any second. “Also, what are your super powers exactly? I can already kind of guess with the way you act like a Mr. Onion Head toy I had when I was four of five years old, before the canines started coming into my life. I miss Meadow Hills, my grandpa and my brother sometimes… but who I really miss right now is Tianhuo and my god puppies…”

Dolly looked at me and gave a slight whine and then continued to carefully move Dormarch along the surface of the wood scanning around for the bomb that’s said to be in it.

“Please, call me Fall-apart! As for my powers, the ability to fall apart and rebuild my body… however if you cut my appendages they will still bleed… really didn’t appreciate the internal bleed they gave me testing that out.” Fall-apart shivered and hugged himself, he then continued eating his pizza slice. “Anyway, no matter the orientation of my parts, they all work the same way regardless. I’m a Tactical Officer Obstructing Nefariousness or TOON for short. Got big time criminals thinking strategically, observing areas to start committing a crime or beginning an offensive? Then TOON division is always a proactive preventative by being on the lookout for big problems building up while handling normal police cases. I’m the best bomb specialist on this side of the world, never died to an explosion before in my life and if you’ve ever heard of an old criminal named Bomb Voyage… well he definitely hates me as he can’t build a bomb that I won’t be able to disarm in a timely manner. Well me and a chicken in a fedora. I’ve already been caught in hundreds of blasts with my best friend Bonkers D. Bobcat. He has the opposite problem, his body is too well built and he’s been shot and stabbed quite a lot, he heals from any injury really fast, it’s kind of comical. He’s even had people keep asking him why he won’t die, but that’s because his power is he’s held together too well, completely opposite of my problem of not being held together well enough.”

“If only you could meet the mother of my friend Arizona. ‘Mad-Cow’ Maggie is an explosives specialist too… for a given definition of it as a bounty hunter. She really should stay away from dynamite while hunting bounties in Huoshan.” Wait… could it really be the same Bonkers as in that guy we all met in Sobaka right? “Wait, is your friend an Orange furred bobcat, police hat and shirt with tie… doesn’t wear pants in a freezing weather?”

“Yeah, that sound likes him alright.” He smiled at me and threw an arm around me. “Small world we live in huh? Any friend of mine is my friend. Also, judging by the way to talk about your friend’s mother, she sounds like fun at parties.”

“Found it!” Dolly shouted attracting our attention to the fall wooden robot with a bark.

“Caper Canine has found the bomb, also my name is Pom when I’m not acting as the hero Leap Lamb.” This Fall-apart guy seemed nice enough, but he was giving me all these weird vibes about him. “I may or may not have annoyed your friend bonkers, but I think he took it in good humor, but we aren’t exactly friends.”

“Oh, we always take things in good humor.” Fall-apart said with a smile as we made our way over to the robot, ignoring whatever Shanty and Sneeze Master were doing over by the cage with the hug tissue box. “Also, you’ll never meet a more upstanding and friendly guy then my buddy Bonkers, I’m sure he’d call you a friend too since you’re my friend now even if you aren’t his!”

“The bomb is in the neck, and lower back, I didn’t notice it at first since its spread out. It doesn’t look like there is an activation wire for it going off if we open it up, we’re going to need Cut-Lass over here to get access to it.” Dormarch announced in Dolly’s paws. “Provided she could make the precise cuts without hitting the bomb.”

“Cut-Lass, we need you over here!” Shanty came running at my call and then looked between us. “Where does she need to cut Dormarch?”

Several slashes later, with the aid of Sneeze Master, Dolly, Shanty and even Fall-apart we managed to expose the bomb.

Fall-apart whistled loudly and in appreciation as soon as he saw it.

“Whoo… this is a bad one, I might have to disarm it by blowing it up!” What?! Fall-apart noticed our panicked looks. “Oh don’t worry, I’m a professional, but this bomb is going to blow up either way given how it’s designed, here cut this wire for me would you?”

Shanty does so and Fall-apart continues on as if he were talking about the weather.

“So yeah, this is a really nasty piece of work, it’s a Negaduck build for sure. Totally nasty guy really, hasn’t managed to kill anyone from TOON Division yet, but he almost got Fawn Deer that one time. She’s our secretary and medical expert, really made Bonkers mad the day he tried. Negaduck certainly regretted that, but still got away to lick his wounds. There was a lot of licking judging by how many he had.” As he talked he was manipulating parts of the bomb and we were all sweating as he sometimes detached a body part to work on certain pieces of the bomb in a unique manner. “So what I’m doing here is modifying the bomb to explode in a much safer manner, have you heard of shaped explosions? So instead of taking out half the park, one that I helped build you know and want to keep standing, it’s only going to take out… that wall over there and will safely hit thin air on the other side… but all of you may want to tilt that tissue box up on its side and get behind the cage. The projected path of all the wood shrapnel from the explosion will not hit anyone there, also I can’t remove the bomb and it’s going to blow up in sixty seconds… well thirty now I guess, you know, since I asked Cut-Lass cut that wire. Needed to be done really… you have twenty five seconds… so you really might want to move for this. I need to be here manipulating the parts until it explodes. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine in the epicenter of a high yield explosion… I’ve had worse times disarming other bombs than this cakewalk.”

In a panicked scramble, I hopped off the wooden robot and ran for the cage yelling at everyone to do as the bomb expert said. I barely got behind the cage when the whole world shook and flashed.

-A minute later-

I blinked, and oh goddesses was that bad, but… I looked around and saw all the hostages slowly standing up. Looking around the destroyed fun house arena, there were sharp splinters of wood everywhere.

Right in the middle of the blast zone I spotted the scorched Fall-apart standing proudly with his back to a relatively small hole in the wall for the massive amounts of force that just shook the entire fun house arena.

“See… I’m definitely good at my job, even got the shrapnel projections right!” Fall-apart then fell over and his pieces scattered across the floor. “Uh, a little help please, I don’t want the rest of my pizza slice to fall on the floor… and no, I don’t care if it’s a little extra crispy now.”

188. Case of the Jitters.

-Saint Canard, Theme Park, Pom-

We’ve already explained what we knew, which was not much. We didn’t even know exactly what Quackerjack was going to do besides his goal of test dangerous toys on the people that were trapped here, but if the bomb had exploded and taken out Sneeze Master and there may be other sinister reasons.

Okay so maybe I had an idea what Negaduck intended if Darkwing came here first. It was fortunate for us that they incidentally captured someone that was a decent bomb experts and didn’t think to really check who he was.

“Well the hostages can’t go anywhere with those moles patrolling the streets.” I waved my hoof towards the entrance, the moles seemed to be ignoring the theme park after the explosion. Said explosion tore apart one of the pillars holding up the sun blocking envelope around the city. Said envelope was made of cheap material, but it would apparently at least hold its shape until all the pillars are dealt with. “Any ideas Sneeze Master?”

“Well they can easily safely stay here until the situation is handled, there’s food and everything. Otherwise no, I don’t have any ideas.” She sniffled and snorted through her stuffed up beak. “I’m ready to lend some aid, but I don’t know where to be exactly. I’m not a leader, but I’m good at dealing with large crowds though. So the moles and their drill tanks seriously won’t be a problem for my hurricane force sneezes. Although I have to keep my head cold under control or else I’ll actually start sneezing hurricanes and nobody wants that… accidentally wiped out my own team that way once. I’ve got better control of it these days.”

The duck with the short brown hair in the pink leotard was looking to me to be the leader wasn’t she… why me?

Insert my long mental groan of anguish here.

Well you might as well suck it up Pom, you were the designated main super hero in the area… and probably the most level headed person around. Sneeze Master is kind of a sidekick to Rubber Chicken with Glue Gal… I guess.

Hearing the crunch of Fall-apart finishing his bomb blasted pizza made me cringe, talk about explosive flavor.

“Dormarch, do Maui and Launchpad need any more help?” The three fish tailed Dalmatian held up a digit on his left paw to wait as he was looking off to the side at something and talking without making a noise.

“No, they’re good, apparently Ms. Shuttles slightly upgraded Chemical Cannon stopped the Liquidator cold, in a literal sense, but there were some odd reactions to the chemicals used. His body wasn’t acting like water should when it was struck and we’ll get back to you on that once we have more information on that. Otherwise they are still having some trouble with Steel Beaks thugs, but it’s nothing they can’t handle and they are doing well enough on their own.” Okay, Dormarch is confirming that Maui and Launchpad situations wasn’t dire, that doesn’t say much for Darkwing or Quiverwing though. “Also they are apparently doing a buddy cop movie thing at the moment and are trying to rescue Stegmutt before the eggheads can forcefully drown him. We need more time to coordinate, where are all the local police and swat forces? More news, the main hospital is running on borrowed time with its reserve emergency power. Whoever is at the power station at the last uncontested pillar is rerouting energy through various parts of the city, taking energy away from many important key places and is trying to hide where all that power is going to. We need time to find information to even know where you’re needed the most or you will be just fighting blind, which is bad considering all the movements going on in the city.”

“Oh, you need Information on what’s happening in Saint Canard? I know perfect pair that can help. There’s also the chance that the other members of TOON Division aside from them are in the city and might know what’s going on too, but I don’t believe any of them have the capacity to do anything about it against these numbers if they’re isolated.” Fall-apart drew our attention to him wearing his ears on his shoulders and his head was tilted to the right at a ninety degree angle. “I at least know where one of them was before I was knocked unconscious. He and his wife are specialists in information gathering and long term stakeouts, which double as real dates for them. The guy I’m talking about is in the area near the hospital or somewhere between here and the power station likely snooping around for ideas on what to do. One of them isn’t good at action and is accident prone, hurt in the line of duty four thousand times and more than half of those injuries were spent in traction afterwards. The other one would be harder to capture, but they’ve got the numbers for it. If the moles or those Egghead thugs have taken the hospital, then Miss Fawn Deer might be in big trouble as she was volunteering there today. So where do we head first Leap Lamb?”

Yep, Fall-apart confirmed it, I’m the leader and I had to make a tough decision. I could already feel the gears in my head grinding against each other trying not to stall out with the pressure placed on me. Do we head in the direction of the power station or the hospital?

“Can the two information specialists keep their heads down for the time being?” I asked as I considered the hospital a first priority, mostly because I might need it afterwards considering my current state of health isn’t even remotely close to having recovered from the whole thing with Clockwerk.

“One can easily, small guy, good friend and quite ridiculously loyal in turn. You’ll never meet a nicer animalistic than Jitters A. Dog.” Fall-apart rearranged his body so that he was looking normal again. Having fully fallen apart on two occasions after the explosion and the fun house arena being filled with wooden shrapnel, that’s not counting how many times he’s had to pick up a lost body part. “His wife Tanya Trunk Dog…. eh… she’s kind of hard to miss and highly noticeable, but she’s big and strong. So she wouldn’t have any problems as long as she doesn’t get shot at too much, her armored clothing was rated to take rocket propelled grenades last I checked and that’s because TOON Division had the budget to only cover one of us and my friend wanted it to be his wife because she’s quite a ‘big’ target, I really didn’t need a bullet or bomb proof vest so Fawn Deer got the one meant for me. Tanya is kind of being paid to be the bodyguard of her husband really. So she’s actually better off being more visible, because most people tend to miss the one who’s better at quietly picking up conversations at a distance.”

Hearing that it was a dog, I made an immediate snap decision.

“We’ll head to the hospital to meet up and help this Fawn Deer person, hopefully we’ll be able to help barricade and secure it before someone dies, we’ll also need to restore power at the power station. There are more people to worry about in the hospitals direction. After we find some way to stabilize the situation there if it’s going bad, we’ll head off find those two information specialists afterwards for a short while on our way to the power station if we don’t see them.” We had to wait for a large mole patrol to pass and they seemed to be wandering around in random sizes and group numbers, you’ll never know when a larger or smaller group might call in reinforcements. “Okay we need to move while there’s a gap in the patrols, Sneeze Master, Fall-apart, you’re leading us there. I don’t know this city very well and I only got here yesterday. Anything to add Dormarch, Cut-Lass and Caper Canine? You’re input is also important to me.”

“Nope, I’m good!” Dolly said while settling her board on her back. “Though I have to say I’m glad the robots in Cape Suzette weren’t armed with guns.”

“Nothing I can be thinking of currently.” Shanty added while looking in the direction of the bay bridge, probably thinking about Dodo. “I am being fine.”

“No injuries of immediate concern Leap Lamb, though you still need to take it easy with your health.” Dormarch followed up. “Also don’t ask me about Fall-apart, I’m not touching that with a twenty nine and a half foot pole. I think I’d lose some of my binary cells trying.”

“You can count on me, I know this city like the back of my hands… huh… never saw that before.” That you were looking at the back of your left hand and say that, well it wasn’t very comforting at all Fall-apart.

“Right, this way…” Sneeze Master motioned us forward into the streets, she was carrying one of the antihistamine sprayers on her back to help keep her powers under control. It didn’t look too cumbersome and wouldn’t slow her or us down.

-Ten minutes later-

Sneeze Master managed to take out a group of ten before they spotted us, antihistamines or any decongestants cancelled the head cold caused by her powers well enough on its own. Quackerjack had them to hold her in his trap, but now it was being used to help her control her near deadly sneezing ability.

Let’s just say that ten moles, three of which were heavily muscled and six to seven foot lugs, weren’t getting up anytime soon if the sounds of broken bones was anything to go by. Dormarch confirmed none of them had lethal injuries, just exceedingly painful ones.

We also took out a small group of four Egghead soldiers stealthily, Sneeze Master at least had some hand to hand combat from being a journalist and newscaster. I’m just glad she didn’t rely on her sometimes detrimental powers entirely and actually learned backup skills for when a problem was something she couldn’t sneeze at.

Afterwards we took down a group of three moles as they were exiting an alleyway we were going for, we got them before they even knew what hit them. Hopefully these skirmishes will stay simple and easy to handle.

We were about a block from the hospital and could see that it was currently somewhat under siege. Thankfully it seemed the thugs hadn’t gotten inside yet.

There were a two bandaged police officers holding the main doorway in and looked to be patients themselves, but they were woefully outnumbered against the tank like vehicle sitting outside the hospital and dripping soapy bubbles everywhere. Aside from the tank there were quite a number of Eggheads arrayed to siege the doors, but the injured officers holding the chokepoint were seemingly keeping them in check.

One officer was a lizard and the other was full grown grizzly with slightly worse injuries than the shoulder wrapping the other one presented. Those were the two I could see at least, if there were only two why didn’t the criminals rush them?

“Wait, don’t go that way, there’s a better way to get in without alerting anyone that you’re here!” The quivering and wavering voice wasn’t very loud despite the attempt at shouting and Fall-apart immediately reacted.

Fall-apart notably didn’t do any of the fighting, then again he was scrawny and with his powers… yeah his body falling apart at the wrong moment in a fight was a fairly large liability. So he was with us for safe bomb disposal if we needed it, he was a whatever it takes kind of guy when it comes to disarming bombs without someone other than him getting hurt and we might need that expertise real soon.

“Jitters!” Fall-apart stated jovially waving to somewhat biped dog in the nearby alleyway, he jumped when called out to and hit the back of his head against the nearby wall. He certainly seemed panicky, alert and wide eyed, reminds me of myself right now really. “Nice to see you buddy, what’s going on over at the hospital?”

“I hate my life.” The poor dog muttered while rubbing at the back of his head, I felt as if I had just met another kindred spirit in life. Thankfully he was too smart to be a familiar, I didn’t want to think about the implications of Dolly’s odd bond to me in comparison to her level of intelligence. “Also, a lot.”

Yellow fur, short brown ears, red suit with black tie, small red hat, he was really short for a biped and seemed to have a number of animalistic leanings. He read as constantly nervous and panicked when I profiled him, in another life this guy was probably my spirit animal that would run away from me screaming like a true lambkin. I wouldn’t feel like a true lambkin these day, if not for my constant paranoia that Tobias Rieper was around.

“Care to be expanding on that?” Shanty said as she continued to watch the hospital front and the tank began firing streams of bubbles and water at the building. The two cops at the doors fired back, but there was a large volume of fire coming from inside that made the charging Eggheads back away from the door.

There were several injuries on both side, the Grizzly had to limp off and was changing places with a younger fresher officer that looked to be a biped bat that looked to be shivering and had chemical burns. She still gripped her pistol and stood at the ready, the lizard stayed in position his weapon also at the ready near the entrance and said something to the bat and she said something back.

I really should take lip reading courses if I ever make it back home.

It looked like a big chicken lady with a red bandana, blue blouse and small jacket was leading the siege on the hospital with… a mop? Now I think I’ve seen the of peak ridiculousness around here, but she seemed to have an air of a leader about her and the eggheads were definitely listening to her as she shouted orders and had them reposition for another assault.

“O-of course… the hospital is currently under assault by cleaning master of FOWL, Ammonia Pine. She’s known for chemical warfare and flamethrowers, all to the theme of making things squeaky clean or incinerating them so there’s nothing left to worry about cleaning.” Jitters was a stuttering mess and anxious compared to the easy going Fall-apart, but he was apparently an officer of TOON division. Also Ammonia looked like really bad news. “Aside from Negaduck wanting revenge on Bonkers by having some of his forces attack Fawn Deer here. Ammonia is here to steal supplies, medical, cleaning and otherwise. She’s at her most dangerous when given access to at least a janitors broom closet worth of chemicals and single minute to make something deadly. Thankfully her sister, Ample Grime, is still behind bars in the maximum security prison out of the way or we’d have twice the trouble. In fact I think she intends to take hostages from the hospital to try and barter for their lives, not sure on that yet. Some of the guards of that particular prison have family in there. They haven’t been successful at breaching the doors, all other entrances aside from the one I know about are blocked off and the regular police that were here before this all started have been holding the doors for last two hours. They are being patched up due to injuries and the other officers were already here on leave. Now that the hospital is on emergency power, must be getting quite grim in there. Whatever trouble there is at the power station needs to be fixed in a timely manner before the hospital’s emergency power runs dry.”

“Say Jitters, where’s Tanya?” Fall-apart asked while looking around.

“She’s currently being held by the Flaps and Tuskernini gangs, I would think they are fighting over who gets to bring her in first. Negaduck has just about every well-known criminal in the city working to his tune and he’s trying to capture every TOON Division member in the city his forces can manage for smaller bounties than yours is worth Leap Lamb. I hope she’s okay, I would try to save my sweet Tanya myself but… I’m not much of a fighter, my body is really frail and I think I’m of more use scouting unfolding situations and informing someone more capable about it. Last I heard she was on the phone near the southern coast side when this all started and they managed to incapacitate both Stegmutt and my wife in quick succession. It was so sudden, they were hit with enough tranquilizers to knock out five elephants… which matters, because my beautiful wife actually is a wonderful elephant.”

This tiny guy had an elephant size wife… at least it sounds like a stable marriage? He sounds like I would if someone had Tianhuo and I couldn’t do anything about it. The likelihoods of that actually happening were fairly low given who Tianhuo is, she’d leave all her attackers bruised, burnt and beaten for trying.

Also Longma blood could burn hot enough to take care of any toxins and poisons given how they naturally produce their wings of fire, Kirin didn’t quite have that capability even if they can ignite their whole bodies in flames for a few seconds.

“Dormarch…” I was about to ask, when he preempted me.

“Asking Ocellus to tell Maui and Launchpad to be on the lookout for a…” Dormarch trailed off as I looked to a slightly crying and hopeful looking, violently quivering, Jitters.

“Large pink elephant, she should still be wearing her protection. A RIP-K9, Rocket Impact Protection grade Kevlar Nine armor, it’s kind of hard to remove. They got her in the trunk a few dozen times with the tranquilizers from what little I saw on her phones recording before I lost contact and she warned me to go into hiding. She managed to stay standing long enough for that… for me… if we had been together at least we would have been captured together.” Jitters stated sadly while taking his hat from his head and then pulling a badge out of his pocket and putting it on his hat and slapping it back on his head. “I was a little more northwest of here at the time, trying to figure out what some goons were smuggling into the city. They weren’t armed with weapons until things started going down. They had an ambush prepared for me and everything, my wife prevented me from being captured at least thanks to her warning. I came here afterwards to reconvene with Miss Deer and found Ammonia Pine parked out front of the hospital and assaulting it. Officer Jitters Accident Dog at your service ma’am, as much of a service as someone as useless as me can be in these trying times.”

“Anyone can be useful with the right motivation, like being able to show us that other entrance into the hospital you were telling us about?” I queried.

“Yeah, hurry on that, because we don’t know how much those injured police officers covering the entrance have left in them. They already look like they are willing to give their lives to protect the people in there from those Egghead thugs.” Dormarch seemed pretty adamant about… oh right… that… it just occurs to me now that Dormarch didn’t want a repeat of what his predecessor caused. No wonder he suddenly seemed a bit riled up about this situation. “We need to help those officers Pom!”

“Well the entrance is unconventional… but I’m sure they won’t shoot at you, hopefully I can dodge the bullets this time.” Jitters sounded like he’s done something like this before, he motioned us down the alleyway and towards a nearby manhole cover.

We went past it and into and into a local hotel across the street, we took an elevator down to a floor that didn’t exist and then we made our way through a long corridor to a door locked by a keypad that Jitters had the code for and then we were in an elevator.

“We have some fun spy games in the information portion of Toon Division when we’re not on duty, it proving to be helpful on this occasion at least.” Jitters poked his head out of the elevator which I noted only had one floor listed. “The problem is, this elevator works only one way.”

“Are you serious?” Well the doors were already closed behind us and seemed to be seamlessly hidden in the wall, I had only one thought on the matter. “Well that’s somewhat impressive architect at least.”

“Now that I have you inside, we need to alert someone to our presence before anyone gets any wrong ideas.” Listening to Jitters looking out the doorway with an extreme amount of nervousness, I calmly picked Fall-apart’s head off his body and rolled into the hallway.

The sound of someone rushing down the hallway could be heard.

“Wait, let me get a ‘head’ of you… don’t shoot!” Fall-apart stated in a comical tone, I rolled my eyes. “Guys this is Miss Fawn Deer.”

“Fall-apart, oh thank goodness that we at least have some help! Here I thought they might have breached the hospital in some other way.” The biped deer let out a drawn out breath and her body was shuddering as she clutched at the pistol like it was a life preserver while out at sea. What she was holding was what I was coming to quickly recognize as a shock pistol, however this one didn’t seem to have a death or injury setting on it. Must be a weaker version of the same weapon that Fox, Hopps and Wilde were using, just made for local cops. She took notice of us and froze like a deer that had lights shined in her eyes, she blinked and shook her head. “Who are they?!”

“We’re the cavalry, my precious Tanya has been captured!” Jitters whined and I carefully pulled him into a hug and he started sobbing into my wool at my neck. I quietly patted him on the back and made sure his tears weren’t getting on my special bell.

“I’ll give you a quick rundown.” I said before taking a long drawn out breath. “I’m Leap Lamb, not super strong, but fast and agile, however I can’t do things at full capacity or it’ll exacerbate my previous injuries and conditions. Cut-Lass, sharp as a scalpel mentally, hooves cut like swords and has limited water manipulation abilities. Caper Canine, fast, capable of manipulating momentum on touch and has a blast proof skateboard that can double as a shield against bullets. I’m sure you know Jitters and Fall-apart, oh and that is Sneeze Master.”

“Sneeze Master, oh I love your work as a reporter Ms. Duckbill!” After getting gleeful for a second, Fawn’s mood immediately crashed. She turned to us. “Fawn Deer, TOON Division secretary and medical specialist, the chemical burns those officers are recieving are getting worse.”

“I would like to offer up my assistance as a medical scanner.” Stated Dormarch with a strong urge coming off him from our bond. Our bond still wasn’t as strong as it could be, mostly because I wasn’t interacting with him physically, at least we connected emotionally.

“Good, if you’re accurate at diagnosing problems." On second glance, the red-headed Fawn looked worn out. "We need that right now to make salves for the conflicting types of chemical burns Ammonia is dealing.”

189. Near Clean Sweep.

Near Clean Sweep.

-Alternative Equus, Shanty’s Place, Oleander-

“Only Ocellus and Smolder be making it back, a lot of people be dying. I be stuck in an Equestria that is not being my own, but the event that led to me… it not be happening yet. Pom be pushing to the very end, even beyond the point she should have died and she only be lasting so long after when death could finally be getting a hold of her to make her even stop.” The Shanty we were meeting was a future version of her, one that had seen the horrors of what Pom was willing to do to herself to at least get everyone home or at least make sure that Shanty lived. A badly scarred and downtrodden Dalmatian walked into the room and nuzzled the baby Pom resting against Shanty’s lap, the baby lambkin sleepily hugged her nose only waking for a few seconds and then gently went back to sleep. The Dalmatian sighed and then looked at me with a clear sign of having been one of Pom’s familiars, she also must have known what it was like to feel death considering the haunted look in her eyes. I wonder what her Pom’s last gift to her was? “We be fine here. It already happened to us, but you can still save them. Time be twisty like that from what Time Turner be telling me. ”

“I swear, I’ll do something. This means I’ll have to do the absolute opposite in my choices of directions of places to look now.” Apparently Ocellus and Smolder will make it back to Equestria regardless of what happens to any of the others that join them in their adventures, that one of my friends and several others don’t riles me up. I’m so very capable, but I can’t save one of my friends? I turned to the highly depressing gothic Pom as she stood there looking at the baby Pom with a faint look of wonder, alongside a small frown. “Do you… do you think you’ll be able to live here?”

“I will try… to adapt that is. This world is not the empty husk that mine is and it will not become as such if I have anything to say about it.” Said the all black wearing Pom with her wool currently dyed midnight black. The funeral attire looked nice on her at least, a very niche look. “There is too much light in this world to be lost.”

“Misery be loving company.” Shanty said with a grim grin. “You are being welcome here Dim, the company here is sweet and I be needing all the help I can be getting with keeping them that way. Our little Oleander be a lost cause though.”

“Hey, I’m right here you know!” Little Oleander and Children’s Book Fred glared at the goat acting as their nanny.

“Sanwi… abba gewes.” Sighing at the adorable little Arizona slowly toddling up to her on the floor, Shanty carefully passed the sleeping baby Pom to the waiting Dalmatian that had moved when I hadn’t been looking.

-Earth, Ten minutes after meeting Fawn Deer, Saint Canard Municipal Hospital, near the entrance, Dolly-

“You were the Tartarus Raiser of your family right Dolly?” Pom asked me after having gotten acquainted with the local authorities in charge of the defense, I was a little bit confused by her question. “Let me rephrase that, you told me you were their primary trouble maker right?”

“Yeah, so, haven’t had much reason to make trouble when I’m too busy trying to keep you alive and help you with whatever we’re getting up to.” Mostly because Pom was so good at taking care of me, that and she’s taught me a lot. I was happy to be her partner in anything, even if it’s separating me from the larger portion of my ‘fam’. “Besides, I never had any reason to give you too much trouble.”

I guess it has been a while since I’ve done something silly or crazy, aside from that thing in Sobaka. Pom has never really stopped me from being myself, she also never really asked too much of me and she really does understand me. Another bright side of all of this is that she doesn’t constantly nag me to practice doing things.

“Well you do now… still can’t believe the hospital has a one way entrance in that only works once on odd days of a particular month, but not single way out unless it’s on even, rainy days.” Muttered Pom as she looked away as some people passed by with a nasty looking chemical burned bird, her feathers had seen better days. Pom then focused her attention back on me. “Anyway, think you can cause some mischief? You know, use the wild cunning that your brother say you used to annoy them in a destructive manner.”

“What do you need me to do?” I was ready for anything, not sure if I would succeed at it though, but my record of helping Pom out has been pretty good I’d think.

I’m having some doubts about how good this situation will go. We managed Quackerjack well enough thanks to Sneeze Master and if Fall-apart hadn’t been there… I shivered at the realization. We would be shish kabobs, not the fun fried banana kind either provided the bomb didn’t wipe out a large portion of the park like it was said would have happened.

Dude, that rabbit was more amazing than I gave him credit for. I mean the guy literally falls apart as an ability and he still makes the best of it.

“Well take off the helmet and skateboard for one, you’re going to do us a favor by sneaking out and making sure that vehicle can’t fire it’s cannon. Basically I want you to do anything you can to sabotage it.” Okay, sounds like I’m going to be having some fun real soon. “Feel like you can use your magic a little bit? I need you to sneak out by running along the ceiling and then up outside, then do a jump and glide over to the top of that vehicle. Once there figure out how to disable the cannon. On our end Shanty will deflect all the chemicals it’ll fire next, I’ll personally protect Sneeze Master as she’s important to our plan and Fawn Deer will be busy watching Dormarch for us while dealing with the chemical burn patients. We’ll continue to hold the main entrance, when you’re done disabling the cannon get to safety send me a World Wide Woof and if you can manage it safely, have some ideas for distractions if things go south. That’s when we’ll take it out with Sneeze Masters strongest sneeze she can muster, if we’re lucky we can take out the whole group. I doubt it’ll be that easy though.”

I was going to ask why I couldn’t use my skateboard or helmet, but I think I get it. Too attention drawing, I could move faster without the weight and the skateboard would dangle below me as I’m running along the ceiling. I just had to avoid getting seen and shot at. If I stopped for a second I would lose my momentum and fall.

“Say… how are the other entrances blocked off anyway?” My question was fairly important so that this won’t be all for nothing if someone was working on a way in through some other route, I already took my skateboard from my back and sat my helmet down on it. “Jitters only said that no one could get in that way.”

“Blast doors that weld themselves shut upon closing in emergencies, the hospital is made to take explosives and the buildings walls are chemical resistant… except around the main entrance according to Miss Deer. That goes for all the windows of the hospital… I think it also doubles as a plague seal in case an outbreak happens in the hospital. It’s kind of scary that it makes sense for the hospital to be built like a bunker in this city.” Shaking her head sadly, Pom then coughed into her hoof while turning her attention to Shanty. “So Shanty can you handle deflecting the chemical spray, after the Sneeze Master feints a big sneeze?”

“It be easy, I can be manipulating any liquid close to me… but I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to be doing that before I be needing to scram.” Shanty had that whole water power thing which was useful for that oversized water bottle sprayer. “I think I be better when making waves, not splitting them.”

“Just give us five second to get out the way and then start backing away yourself.” Feeling Pom’s misgivings, I decided to try and be the cheerleader here. One of us had to be the optimist and it certainly wasn’t the drinking goat or my anxiety riddled partner.

“Hey, she’s got this Pom! She can do it and I can do my part too, easily.” There was an uneasy glance towards my bright smiling face and wagging tail, but Pom nodded and felt a little less concerned. What did it take to keep her in a good mood? My talent was keeping others entertained and generally cheerful, Pom was a constant challenge. “Come on, we’ll take down this Pine Smell person and then we’ll continue on helping this city with whatever trouble we’ll find, we’ve got this!”

“I wish I had your enthusiasm sometimes Dolly. This is going to be a long day and it’s only just turning nine.” Taking a deep inhale through her nose and her eyes flew open and she looked very alert, I took a long sniff too. We looked to each other.

Oh… no way… Tobias Rieper had been here or was he still here?! Both our minds began doing that passing stuff back and forth at a rapid pace. The slightly breeze through the entrance had carried the underlying scent of the guy hiding behind so many other smells. Unfortunately for him, both Pom and I had good noses for these things.

“I’ll try to be careful, it’s me he’s after.” Yeah, but he’s not exactly against collateral damage Pom, considering he almost fried Shanty back at the park! “Yes, I know he almost fried Shanty back, but he was going to wait until she was out of the puddle. I only noticed the trap too early.”

Didn’t stop him from trying to fry Shanty, I thought again.

“Yes, I know that… wait… you didn’t say anything.” Okay now that Pom pointed it out, it was a bit freaky that we could… “Read each other’s minds? A normal familiar bond isn’t supposed to do this Dolly, only images and thoughts, not outright communication.”

“Neither of us actually knows about familiar bonds of my world Pom, maybe the rules of both are being applied?” Goodness know that could be a bad thing, we’ve been ignoring it pretty well so far.

“Well we can’t keep being ignorant Dolly, even you know that can lead to problems… Do you always think about how attractive Hansel is to get your mind off things?” The implications of what Pom just asked made my face go burning hot.

“Yes… let’s get back on track, what are we going to do about that Rieper guy?!” And you being his target, I didn’t add afterwards.

“What we already planned to do anyway.” Pom said simply with a smile. “I think he’s among the Egghead troopers… let’s make his day horrible. Hey, Jitters come over here for a second, there’s something I need you to do while we’re busy turning the situation around here.”

“What?” I suddenly received the slightest change in the plan and a slow grin began building on my face.

All hospitals had a cafeteria, not that my step mom Delilah ever stole food without properly asking for it… unless we’ve had a tight week in the house because of my hijinks. Oh right, Dr. Dave saved our butts that day… he was one of the friendliest bipeds I know, like my dad’s coworkers at the fire station.

-Five minutes later-

“Get ready to fire the suds cannon, they are weakening, it won’t be long before we can take the hospital and eliminate all opposition!” Yeah, that Alpine lady was still putting the pressure on the police near the entrance and we were near the entrance and ready to move, just had to keep momentum and get out of sight quickly. “We’ll cleanse it of the police officers protecting those gross infirmed piles of bacteria!”

“Well you won’t be doing that while I’m here Ammonia!” There was Pom, Shanty and Sneeze Master… Pom was wearing my helmet and was silently readying her hoof at her back for the fun part of all this. Tobias Rieper was going to be focused on her hopefully, this was going to be awesome.

“Leap Lamb, how did you get in there?! No matter, you’re bounty is worth millions in cleaning supplies!” The mop holding large chicken waved it around. “Don’t know what you think you can do here, but you’ve just made my day by bringing me your bounty!”

“Oh try us, Sneeze Master go!” Pom took position in front of Sneeze Master and she started to sniffle and inhale with her beak scrunched up several times for a sneeze she looked to be holding back.

“Fire the suds cannon before she can get that sneeze off!” The suds cannon, as tree for the forest said, fired a second later. That’s when Shanty jumped in front of Pom and started to rapidly slash her hooves left and right downwards in front of her to split the stream of soap, chemicals and liquids.

That’s when Pom and Sneeze Master broke the charade, Pom brought the skateboard around and blocked a dart that tried to hit her in the chest over her heart.

I had to go, now! I ran up the pillar and then continued to charge across the ceiling as a stream of suds passed underneath me. I grabbed the corner and shifted my momentum around it and up the outer wall and half way up to the roof I kicked off and spread my paws out.

As I glided overhead for the vehicle, I kept an eye out for that assassin guy among the eggheads and then visually tagged the one I thought was him. He had a poison dart gun and there was a frown on his beak. Then I landed on the base of the dangerous sud spewing cannon as softly as I could and looked around to see if anyone noticed me, they were all too busy staring dumbfounded as Shanty back away while cutting the spray in half from what amounted to a firehose going full blast in half.

I started to slowly and carefully climb up and around towards the back of the vehicle’s weapon, as Shanty flipped backwards over the reception desk and used it as cover. The hole riddled wood of the shot up desk was quickly eroding by whatever the cannon was firing, the cannon eventually stopped firing and the desk was barely covering Shanty now.

I better take care of this thing quickly before it can fire again.

“Give yourself up Leap Lamb and I might leave the hospital alone just for the payday your worth!” Pneumonia said while stabbing the wooden tip of her mop at the ground.

I heard a loud grunt of pain and saw someone with a fake beak in disarray stumble away from the other eggheads readjusting the fake facial feature, which was now covered in bits of splattered tomato. He also had a dart was in his leg and he was busy quickly pulling out a syringe and sticking himself with it, nice aim Pom!

Not only did he just shoot himself in the leg, he also likely had a nasty bruise by how hard Pom threw the tomato.

Afterwards he quickly ran off when he noticed me on the tank looking at him with a grin, he mostly only saw me due to being distracted with injecting himself with what was likely the antidote to the poison he tried to hit Pom with. He had no reason to warn the eggheads of what I was about to do, though he could have sold me out before leaving and simply didn’t.

Sending Pom that mental image, I received the image of a smiling face in return as I clambered quietly around to the back of the machine.

“Hey where is that guy going?!” One of the eggheads called out.

“He’s going to clean himself off and get a fresh suit obviously. I should give that guy a raise, anyone that works under me knows that ‘cleanliness and crime’ is my motto!” That swine flu chick had issues. “If he knows that I hate dirt and messiness that much, then you could learn something from him!”

She doesn’t like getting dirty huh? Heh, heh, heh, I had a few ideas for distracting her personally. Nobody can make better mess than or get out of one than a Caper Canine! I rubbed my paws together with an evil grin.

I silently clambered up onto the back of the vehicle and looked up at the complicated set up I couldn’t make heads or tails of. I barely understood the kibble pump or half the stuff that Dawkins makes.

Eh… er… maybe that thing? Ah dog, just winging it!

I started using my claws to carefully unscrew one of the pipes…

-Shanty-

Dolly be making it, now we just had to hold on.

“You okay there Cut-Lass?” The bat officer with burns on her body asked as she kept her weapon readied.

“I be fine, it didn’t be touching me!” I also be wondering why the Eggheads not be shooting at me while I was doing that.

“Well don’t take any big risks with these guys.” It be nice that there be good people in this city, despite currently being full of bad ones.

-Tobias Rieper-

I needed to be more careful, also the bruise that left me with was fairly nasty.

This injury to my now bruised lungs was just from a tomato, fairly impressive throw Ms. Lambchop. You even blocked my poison dart with Caper Canine’s skateboard, then made me shoot myself with one.

If Leap Lamb were to ever get angry, she could probably take me out by throwing a frozen banana like how I took out that one guy with a sharpened and flash frozen carrot. Lucky there was a canister of liquid nitrogen nearby, that guy in particular was creating a world ending virus and had been pointing a gun at me. I just thought he could use some beta carotene in his die-et.

I wonder how you knew I was coming, were you that alert and not willing to drop your guard or did you find out in some other way?

-Dolly-

Twisting the screws back in place, I had no idea what this would do, but nobody was watching the back of the vehicles. Then again anyone who would approach this group of at least twenty to thirty armed eggshell helmet and yellow suit wearing guys without a plan was bound to be either an idiot or absurdly brave, possibly both.

Now to start pulling few wires loose, cross these three at randomly, twist this screw halfway out and… then… done!

I leapt off and glided to the nearby building and ran up it, narrowly avoiding one of the guys spotting me as I clambered up onto the nearby roof top. Putting my paws up to my mouth, I yelled my catchphrase.

“Bow-whaka-wow!” I hollered the go message for Pom on the World Wide Woof and several dogs answered back with ‘what?’ immediately afterwards.

-Pom-

“Alright Caper Canine, has done her part. Get ready to sneeze for real this time Sneeze Master.” She looked a little nervous. “Follow me.”

“How do you know she managed to disable it correctly?” She asked as I put her skateboard forward and moved out.

“I don’t, I’m just trusting that she did something. She’s saved my backside several times over and has a habit of surprising you when you least expect it.” I moved out to the front and looked to Shanty. “Get ready to charge forward, knock out anyone that manages to stay standing. Ready Sneeze Master?”

“Yeah, give me a second to start up a head cold, oh... I’m already feeling it already.” The nostrils in her beak started getting stuffy.

“Hey, Ammonia Pine right?! I would like to ask you to surrender or else!” She didn’t seem to take the ‘or else’ part seriously.

“Or else what? Fire the suds cannon!” The cannon jerked and rumbled. “What is it, why aren’t you firing it?!”

“Something’s wrong ma’am.” Someone said from inside the vehicle. “The gun is acting a bit weird.”

I could hear Sneeze Master already building up her sneeze power behind me, a glance to see Shanty bracing her.

“Just do it!” Ammonia Pine probably should have ordered her men to fire, but I would have been prepared to block most of the shots heading for us.

“If you’re sure!” The cannon rumbled and started to bulge outwards and shook violently.

What did Dolly exactly do to it to make it do that?

“Uh Ammonia, ma’am, is the suction hose supposed to be leading into the sewer drain?” The large chicken gained a look of horror as she turned from the egghead that spoke and the suds cannon was a second from exploding into a mass of filth.

When it finally did explode, said filth went everywhere and coated all the surrounding eggheads in grime and sending a fountain of sewer water high into the air and said mass of filth was heading towards us in a wave.

“Ah…. AH…” Ducking behind Sneeze Master I braced her like Shanty had and we held her in place. “CHOOOO!”

The wave was blown right back into those poor souls that had been knocked over by the exploding cannon and if that wasn’t enough, the sneeze was powerful enough to flip the damaged vehicle onto its back and smashed half the eggheads against the walls of the nearby building.

The rest that had stayed down avoided the sneeze, but still took a second dose of the filth wave. If that wasn’t demoralizing, I don’t know what was.

“I seriously don’t think that could have gone any better.” I said with a bright cheerful smile, Sneeze Master smiled back at me as she started applying the Antihistamines to her beak to stop her sensational sinuses from going off again by accident. “Join us when you can, let’s go Cut-Lass.”

“Do we be having to? They be covered in horrible filth and we’d be needing a shower if we have to fight them now.” Nodding solemnly to Shanty, we had to take down the ones that could still fight.

“Unless you can somehow pop that nearby fire hydrant in their direction.” I probably shouldn't have said that or even suggested the idea, as Shanty ran for the fire hydrant.

She slashed the end off of the rusted bit of metal on the side and then, using her hydrokinetic talents, aimed the sudden vicious spray into the already battered, beaten, bruiseed and beleaguered bad guys.

“I be getting sick too much when I was younger!" Well this fight shouldn’t take long we already had them on the back foot, eventually the pressure from the hydrant died down to a trickle. "I’m not getting sick while fighting you because you be covered in grunge!”

Only one person stayed standing through it all and was angry.

“Filthy!” Ammonia screamed raising her mop to the sky.

Yeah, she was going to be trouble.

190. Fighting Dirty.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Dream Catcher Realm, Fizzle-

“I swear I’m going to go back to being Tempest Shadow at this rate.” Saying this as I watched ridiculousness going on, I couldn’t help but have a migraine despite the fact that I was already asleep.

Jade was swinging around on a vine and unloading an automatic crossbow at Luna who was wearing a full set of Nightmare Moon armor and chasing her down with a lance. There was also a cherufe giving Jade support fire and Nightmare Moon was being assisted by a roc.

“Eh, have you tried asking Pique and Niche to help with the situation?” Gallus asked as he sat watching with the two storm creatures that were residents of Airship Mauled, mostly because they watched out for me and were good local guards for the citizenry.

My two big fluffy ape like, white furred, part-time bodyguards were fairly kind and my most loyal supporters among the storm creatures. They look like they found all of this mostly amusing. It was still going to take a little while to get some Storm Creatures okay for being allowed into Twilight’s school of friendship. The education system for the storm creatures was still being updated by my wandering companion, that sugar guzzling hedgehog Grubber. At least we brought up the standard of living for what are essentially my people since I’m Storm Queen by conquest, being decent at lightning magic helped the image far too much.

Said storm creatures were simply just sitting on a picnic blanket and eating dream food.

“Help, or make thing worse?” Noting my moderately displeased tone, Gallus shrugged.

Both Luna and Jade were basically at each other’s throats in an over the top violent and volatile manner and I didn’t have an idea of who I should be helping. At least they couldn’t seriously maim each other.

Jade certainly got a few good hits in the waking world and was wearing down Luna’s resolve through constant unending pranking with support from various people… also pies… lots and lots of horribly flavored or scented, still edible, pies. Did not know that durian pie was a thing or that it would knock an alicorn out cold from the smell of it impacting them in the face when you don’t cover that up in the baking process, good to know if I ever had to actively fight an alicorn… again.

Luna was still a goddess of thestrals, night and dreams though, she could control the moon in a pinch if something happens with Twilight. So she arguably had more of an advantage here than anywhere else… except Jade has an imaginatively chaotic mind and was actually balancing out Luna’s dream walker abilities with pure unabashed chaotic absurdity.

I wish I could call Jade the biggest jerk among Abyssinian kind, but there were actually worse than my designated snuggle kitty. I’d like to think that I actually have one of the good ones, ‘LIKE TO’.

“Well we’re all dreaming right?” Yeah, wasn’t going to ever get used to hearing Pique, much less Niche, not speaking in Storm Creature. “Why don’t we just dream up ways to stop the both of them while we’re under the effects of the dream catcher?”

“That would require us all to have the ability to concentrate our minds collectively enough to beat those two, we’d have to overpower the both of them with collectively focusing on one thing.” Gallus was scratching at the underside of his beak in thought. “Also you owe me more combat training if I can solve all this in ten minutes or less.”

“Granted… if, you can do it. If you do it in five, I’ll teach you some tricks you won’t get in the academy.” If there was one things I knew about griffons, they loved a bargain or a challenge. Gallus already knows I tested him in many ways. This was one of them. “Might even fast track you through it.”

If he can actually handle Jade, which to be fair most royal guards can’t and I’m still receiving numerous reports about Zampony related incidents, he should be given a quick pass through royal guard training.

If Gallus actually manages to succeed in figuring out ways to stop Jade’s shenanigans cold with anything resembling a form of consistency, then he would be declared an immediate member.

-Earth, Saint Canard, Darkwing’s Lair, Ocellus-

“Thanks for helping me with the bathroom Ocellus.” Smolder muttered with a slightly red face as I placed her down and made my way to the seat in front of the computer and checked on the severity of the situations around the city.

“I will always try to do what I can for you Smolder.” The arboretum was area currently on fire and I still haven’t heard from Drake or Gosalyn. There were no firefighters to put it out either with the city in lockdown and thugs ruling the streets. All the citizens were staying as safe as they could be and the police station was one of the few hold outs that the moles were pinning down.

“This Quiverwing Quack calling base, we’re in a slightly sticky situation, but we’ll figure a way out of it if you can’t send us any help. Arrow Assistant found us and got us out of being pinned down at least, he’s helping us with the larger problem now.” Quiverwing was, thankfully enough, reporting in. “Our team is not too bad off injury wise so far, but we’re having problems fighting living trees. Said trees are now attacking us while on fire… great. What’s the situations with the other teams?”

“New information is that officers of Saint Canard’s TOON division are being targeted like Pom, but not as aggressively and Negaduck only has lesser bounties posted on them. Maui and Launchpad have rescued Stegmutt from being drowned. After they are done with wrapping up the situation in the beachfront and knocking out that pillar, they’ll be searching for Tanya Trunk who has been reported captured by either the Tuskernini or Flaps gangs.” I was back to keeping track of everything happening after that short bathroom break, I am so glad that my people don’t produce much biological waste and find uses for anything we produce. “Pom’s team has run off Quackerjack from the theme park and they stopped a hidden bomb placed by Negaduck. They’ve rescued the hostages there and said hostages are now laying low. Sneeze Master is now assisting Pom’s team along with several members of TOON division. Said members are Fall-apart, Jitters and Fawn. At least I think Pom’s team has a good handle on currently solving the problem with Ammonia Pines sieging Saint Canard’s hospital, they’ve taken out her main vehicle and are about to take the fight to them. Also can I just say that Tactical Officer Observation Network is a much better use of the letters? It seems more in line with what they do.”

“Well tell them to keep up the good work. We ran into Bushroot here, but something is off about him… for one it’s like he can’t communicate with plants directly and is acting like a pale imitation of himself by doing it indirectly. There hasn’t been any detection of dimensional portal opening anywhere near Saint Canard right?” Asked Quiverwing as she exerted herself doing something. “Aside from that we have Morgana, but she’s been badly poisoned. We’ll rush her to hospital after we’re done here, hopefully Pom’s team will be done by then.”

“No, no anomalous dimensional gateways opening Quiverwing.” I brought up the dossiers on Liquidator, Quackerjack, Megavolt and Bushroot. Out of all of them, Quackerjack looked like the most approachable at least. “Aside from that, Liquidator did show some anomalous reactions to some chemical based artillery we have posted outside the city. Ms. Bunny Shuttle of Big Hero Six is unable to do more than supporting artillery fire from where she is, but she’s been devastatingly helpful with knocking out the water patrol boats driven by the Steel Beak’s Eggheads around the city and she’s also supported Launchpad and Maui quite well on the beachfront. From the chemical reactions involved, it was like Liquidator wasn’t made of water like his dossier says he is, there was an unusual fluid reaction as he turned into colorful crystal. I hope you don’t mind, but have him marked down as detained. Quackerjack seemed to be mostly within lines of his projected nature of being a colorful individual. I’m guessing Megavolt is at the power station near the fourth pillar. I’m seeing some odd movements from the moles, eggheads and other outliers in the city. Don’t know what it means yet, but there seems to be some interference coming from the power station and its drawing a lot of power and pushing it through several locations throughout the city. Steel Beak, Moliarty and a number of other possible villains still haven’t made their presences personally known yet, so we might not know what someone might be capable of if we don’t have any information on them or what they are currently doing, if anything at all. Do you need anything?”

“Yeah, tell them to prep a room for Morgana at the hospital, we’ve got her in the Rat Catcher at least, but she’s in no condition to do any fighting. Otherwise Arrow Assistant has brought me plenty of ammo and I’m good to keep going.” I heard the sound of several things toppling over in a series of thunderous crashes. “TIMBER! Oh yeah, you see Honker, I told you we’d survive that. Huh, oh… right, Quiverwing out!”

So much going on and little time to coordinate it all. At least coordinating and multitasking was something I was decent at.

“Dormarch, tell the people at the hospital to prepare a ward for the hero known as Morgana Macawber.” I wasn’t like an oracle and could predict what would happen, that’s why I have Smolder as a second pair of eyes helping me watch the various screens showing various live scenes throughout the city. “She’s been poisoned, but I don’t know with what. I suggest they prepare for at least a plant based poisoning.”

-Saint Canard Beachfront, Maui-

“With the eggheads detained in a blobs of sticky goo, we’re good to move forward as soon as we figure out how to destroy that pillar supporting that sun blocking cover.” I rubbed at the bottom of my beak, my beetle blaster at the ready in case reinforcements or anything else came. It had been suspiciously effective against liquidator before we trapped him, something supernatural was itching at my mind about this and I believed that my Cold Shadow side was trying to tell me something.

“Can I help? You guys did save me after all.” Asked Stegmutt innocently. The stegosaur biped wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb in the box of dark colored crayons, but at least he was friendly and could tell right from wrong… most of the time. He at least knew Eggheads were bad guys.

“Well… we need a way to destroy that pillar Stegmutt.” Launchpad had been a great companion the entire time, didn’t even need to turn into Cold Shadow. Though I might have to do so soon, as there were an army of thugs running through the city and we’re already bruised and moderately battered.

“Oh, I know how to do that! I’ll just do the same thing I do whenever I ask someone what I should do, they always tell me the same thing.” The childlike demeanor certainly didn’t match his fearsome presence as Stegmutt stomped up to the pillar and put both his hands on it, then pulled back his face. “Use my head!”

“Wait, isn’t that going to…” Before I could say anything else Stegmutt slammed his face into the pillar. To my surprise, and after an outrageously loud cracking noise that I thought was the poor dinosaur’s skull fracturing, the pillar suddenly had a huge crack in and it then rapidly fell apart. “Hurt?”

“Did I do good?” Stegmutt asked a second later, his head looking perfectly fine after having reducing the entire pillar stretching into the sky into a pile of small rocks, pebbles and sand with one blow.

“Yes Stegmutt, you did great.” Despite two pillars being down, that unusual sun blocking canopy stayed erected over the city.

The thin film spreading over the city like a barrier was apparently rigidly in place, I’m betting all the pillars needed to be destroyed and the film will rip apart afterwards without a pillar to anchor it in place.

“This is Maui calling Ocellus, moving to search for Tanya Trunk.” Our lead was not going to be reliable mentally, but I hoped that at least Stegmutt could hopefully remember which way the villains were going when they grabbed Tanya. I had a hunch that Flaps wanted Tanya for different reasons than Tuskernini. “Still no information on who’s doing what or why, but I’m betting something big is happening and that scaring the army of moles back underground with sunlight will be the least of our worries soon enough. However, I can tell you what they were doing here at the beach. Quick question, can you look up if Tanya has a restraining order against Flaps the criminal clown?”

-Saint Canard Hospital, Pom-

“Okay, go!” I charged out and Shanty joined up with me, as we charged the barely standing eggheads, but Ammonia was moving to meet me. The police officers still taking part in the defenses opened fire to make sure the eggheads that were down, stayed down with painful injuries. “Cover my back and take them down Cut-Lass!”

“Aye-aye, Captain!” Shanty was playing up her theme it seemed, one of the grunge covered eggheads pulled his weapon and tried to fire it only to be electrocuted by the energy weapon sending him into a spasm and making him fall over.

Shanty ran past me and launched a flying buck into one of the bigger egghead’s faces as he was trying to reorient, he went down hard. They were too disoriented to really put up much of a fight, much less able to do much with the police incapacitating them all in rapid succession.

“You idiot, you’re weapons were not meant to be used while covered in raw sewage, ugh stupid cheap science tech!” Ammonia yelled before twirling her mop and slinging its end for me as I approached. Ducking under it, I took a few steps back as the ground started to sizzle from some of the specks of fluid coming off it. Ammonia pulled something from her skirt and tossed it down, Bubbles erupted around her as she held her mop out of the bubbling frothy mess. I waited to see what would come of it. When the bubbles swiftly disappeared, Pine was now completely clean somehow. “There, now I can actually concentrate on fighting you without having to worry about my body being covered in that horrible grime!”

She then focused on me and lunged forward with an overhead swing, I quickly grabbed the Dolly’s helmet and caught the mops head on it. I swung the skateboard around and smacked her in the side making her stumble backwards, something made my ears twitched.

I leaned back and the fist of a lanky egghead passed by my face, I slammed the helmet into his chin and then tossed it upwards towards where Dolly was. The helmet didn’t come back down so she probably caught it, I pulled on the strap, grabbed the skateboard with both hooves and swung it upwards into the egghead’s gut making him collapsed forward as the board knocked the air out of him and then I flipped it around and blocked a thrust of the mop from Ammonia that made me trot back a few steps.

“Can’t get good help these days, not with cleaning up after themselves and not with crime!” Ammonia tried to swing for me. I quick took the board up on my left foreleg. I block and threw my right hoof into her gut that making her gasp and almost double over, she quickly backed away. “Always thought filthy barnyard animals like you had some kick, now if only you were as strong as you were dirty.”

“Hey, I showered this morning and I have multiple medical issues thank you very much!” I kicked for her left knee with my left hind leg only for her to twirl her mop and deflect my kick with its shaft.

“So you’re just a little bit cleaner than a dirt mongering farmer you lousy Ireland accented bent!” Several rapid twirls and random swings had me leaning back and dodging backwards, avoiding the splatters or sprays of liquid particles coming off the end of the mop that could possibly get unwanted chemicals into my eyes.

“Unfortunately for you, I’m not fighting alone. Now!” I pointed in a direction, she turned to see Shanty still off fighting the eggheads, she was currently beating the tar out of them without doing slash attacks. She was bouncing around in a dizzying fast and acrobatic manner while nailing them with bucks and blunt hoof strikes at odd angles and poses.

The thugs that were still capable of fighting back were going down quickly and Sneeze Master had joined the melee too. There were only about five guys left standing, so it wouldn’t be too hard for them to deal with. The eggheads were on the backfoot ever since their vechicle was taken out.

“What? There’s no one…” She turned back into a leaping double hoof blow to the face. This staggered her and gave her a black eye on top of making her cry out in pain. “Gah that’s a dirty tactic for a hero!”

“Like you trying to constantly blind me with chemicals in a possibly permanent manner isn’t? Also, I have never called myself a hero!” I retorted as I rolled to the side as she slashed her mop downwards at me sending a splash of caustic fluids at the ground. What I was hiding with my seeming cowardice, was that Dolly was very much in position and was waiting for my real cue to go. “At least if I hurt you there’s a hospital you can go to in a timely manner where you’ll get immediate aid. Can you surrender, please?”

Never!” She tried to spear me with mop in her right hand and I ducked to the side, she swung it outwards and low for my legs.

I hopped over the swing and slung the skateboard around to the left for the right side of Ammonia’s face and she deflected it, I spun backwards with the deflection and whipped the board around and let it fly. Ammonia easily dodged it.

“Is that the best you got?” Ammonia stated haughtily while wielding her mop at me threateningly and pouring a chemical on it. “You just lost your weapon!”

“I wouldn’t be talking like I’m victorious when there are more police and heroes around you than goons active in the given area.” I grinned brightly as I saw movement high up and the shape of a shadowy canine building up speed. “Also the skateboard was never my weapon, I just borrow it from the owner from time to time.”

“Does it look like I care whose weapon it is!” She brought the mop back and over her left shoulder and I waited.

When she swung for me, I moved into her swing and turned my upper body while raising my front legs up in a defensive boxer stance and then I locked my body in place.

The shaft of the mop struck me with plenty of force to rock me slightly and I smiled as the head of the mop snapped off and then slapped against the street where it started melting through the pavement. The pavement underneath me cracked slightly, making me wonder how strong this Ammonia Pine person was.

“How does a lightweight like you stay standing after blow like that!” Ammonia seemed surprised, not knowing one of my greatest combat strengths was my defensive abilities. Did no one do their research on what Tobias knew about me? Maybe he didn’t tell them anything and maybe the villains of Saint Canard really weren’t aware of my full capabilities. “Also my mop was reinforced with metal, there’s no way it should have actually broken so easily like that, what is your wool made of? Steel?”

“I take care of my wool and it takes care of me.” I once again considered what my strength in combat would be like when I wasn’t a walking mess of problems.

Shanty had offensive abilities down, wished she’d pick up more defensive abilities than being able to simply block things with her hoof slashes. Trusted her to deal with people who had bladed weapons at the very least.

Dolly was aggressive and scrappy, good equipment, but not great on the offensive on her own physically… at least up until she gained her ability to alter momentum.

Her momentum powers would make up for any shortcomings in her size or physical capabilities, but they were best used when going downwards. Why? Because she can barely halt her downward momentum for gliding, but when she increased her downward momentum…

Dolly came streaking down like a silent meteor at an angle towards the back of Ammonia Pine’s back, I hopped back as she slammed into the large chicken lady. After bouncing off sideways in an impossible curving arc, at a speed most absurd to anyone who followed the rules of normal physics, she then proceeded to ram the nose of her board into the back of an escaping guy’s left knee and pivoted the board so the rear end hit the back of the right.

Ammonia slamming into the street face first, as hard as she did, had left her immediately unconscious with a painfully mashed and bloodied face from the momentum Dolly imparted on her before taking down the last egghead trying to flee the area.

“Okay people, make sure these guys are tied up or at least detained in a way they can’t bother anyone for at least a year.” I ordered with a sigh of relief, that hadn’t been too hard.

“Pom over here, this guy tried to call for backup!” Dolly called out waving the communication device my way.

“Is that a dog?” The voice said on the other end. “Ammonia doesn’t do mangy flea bitten mutts.”

“You’d be right about it being a dog, but she is quite clean when she lets me keep her that way. She’s also my partner whoever you are.” I said as I took the device from Dolly. “I would also like to state that Ammonia Pine is no longer currently capable of conscious thought. So please do try and send her some reinforcements so we can speed things up.”

“No thanks, not willing to waste more resources than we have to, I was actually hoping she’d get caught by someone today.” The voice didn’t seem worried we had caught one of the named criminals working with them.

“I’m Leap Lamb, who am I talking to here and can you please give yourself up?” I was asking nicely here, the less people I had to fight the better.

“No can do Leapy, your currently talking to Steel Beak and while I would like the bounty on you to fill out FOWL’s currently meager coffers… Ammonia was no pushover and I can hardly trust Negaduck to not put a chainsaw through my back at an inopportune moment trying to collect on it.” He sounded a little… afraid… of me? “Never liked Ammonia anyway. We’re already losing too much to you heroes as it is, so I think we’re better off earning some real money with a few quick smash and grabs. So see you never, hopefully!”

Author's Note

Pom was never above fighting dirty.

191. Calling help.

-Saint Canard Hospital, Pom-

“We simply can’t leave the hospital undefended.” I stated calmly.

“I agree with that.” Dormarch followed up. “All the defenders here were already injured officers or officers that got injured in the line of duty protecting the hospital from incursion, some still need to be treated for heavy chemical burns and need I remind you the hospital is running on borrowed time here with the emergency power.”

“Can Sneeze Master hold the hospital?” Ocellus asked as we were hashing out what my team should do next.

Morgana would be taken care of when she came in. Though it was taking a while and that fire in the south western side of the city around the arboretum was worrying. Maui, Launchpad and Stegmutt were taking care of freeing up Tanya to give Jitters some good news about his wife. We were currently holding the hospital and a large number of captured eggheads. The hospital still wasn’t safe, but the moles weren’t pressing the issue too badly… yet.

Speaking of Jitters, he was working on something for me and I was wondering when he would get back to me about it.

“Maybe if we had another hero here…” I stated unsure of where I would be going now, but I didn’t want to live the hospital unprotected after just breaking Ammonia Pine’s siege on it. Also I didn’t want the moles to free any of the eggheads, much less Ammonia herself.

“We do!” Sneeze Master called from outside and was helping someone walk in. It was Glue Gal, her purple costume and glue bottle hat were quite recognizable. “Glue Gal was in the vehicle. Also I am so sorry, had we known that Ammonia Pine captured you...”

“It’s okay, you made a good call sneezing the vehicle down. They were going to deliver me to Negaduck for who knows what afterwards. I’m just a little banged up and it was a practical way to keep the hospital safe… at least you didn’t get me covered in sewage. Ammonia Pine naturally countered my contact glue powers with her chemical know how. I’m good in a scrap without my powers, but there were just too many eggheads to take on at once.” It was good that we checked the vehicle then huh Glue Gal, we had to for the driver and anyone else being onboard when it was flipped. “Where do you need me?”

“One thing before that Glue Gal, Dormarch?” I asked as I pointed him in her direction.

“Somewhat bad bruising, otherwise healthy, lay off the oily and salty foods a bit.” Dormarch’s commentary resulted in a slight snarl from Glue Gal. “Hey, I’m a professional at scanning for health issues, I would know as Leap Lamb isn’t exactly the stunning example of healthy with how her body is currently. I didn’t say you had to stop, just suggested that you cut back.”

“We need you here with Sneeze Master, we need the hospital protected and as a fallback point for anyone we can find to send this way.” I answered as I was looking over sudden movements in the mole army of Moliarty, they knew where I was and that’s why they kept testing our defenses here. Not that there were many defenses to begin with, this whole city was a mess and I had a front row seat to it all.

“Okay some fresh news, somebody named Jambalaya Jake and Gumbo are causing problems at Saint Canard’s waterworks. Gumbo is Jambalaya’s pet alligator and is on par with Caper Canine in intelligence, Jambalaya himself is a squat guy but has an unreasonable amount of strength for his short stature.” Knowing why Ocellus said that, I was getting an inkling as to what was going on. What she said next only solidified it. “They are currently being supported by a bayou witch named Granny Whammy. Leap Lamb… like Bushroot, Liquidator, Quackerjack and Megavolt, there are no signs of those three existing in this world naturally. They were called the Jambalaya group in the show.”

“I think I’m beginning to see… that something screwy is going on with the villains that shouldn’t exist in this world without an explanation.” I said with a sigh, we couldn’t let them do as they like with the city’s water supply either way.

“Oh and there’s someone called Bugmaster running around causing problems with bees, the file says her name is… Bianca Beakley? Before you ask she’s a villain and not an ally, that doesn’t exactly have super powers, but knows plenty about bugs to manipulate them into helping her with a helmet designed for it.” Okay that was curious Ocellus, we’ll need to call Duckberg to confirm a possible relationship. “She does exist in this world, used to be a journalist, but went from that to being a professional villain with a bug theme because it paid better apparently.”

Okay, so there were a mixture of villains that did exist and ones that shouldn’t, what was the key difference here? We need to go attack Megavolt, because I know he’s going to be there at the power plant, once things settled here. Dolly and I absolutely needed to smell him! If I’m right then there will be a connection we can establish to what’s actually going on aside from Negaduck preventing citizens from leaving the city.

“Dormarch, do you think you can call Duckberg?” There was a long pause after I asked this. “We’re being stretched thin here enough as it is by all the chaos Negaduck set up, we need more people here and someone taking care of that Jake guy at the waterworks.”

“No can do Pom, the interference from the power plant has become too much to get any connections further than Ms. Shuttle outside the city.” Dormarch rubbed his chin in thought, the Dalmatian raised a digit into the air. “Aha, idea, we could use Ms. Shuttle as a relay point for a call. We won’t be able to do it for long, who do you want me to call in Duckberg?”

“Lena Sabrewing, since we need someone who can instinctively figure out magic and we can use her to contact Bentina to ask about Bianca Beakley. I think Morgana was poisoned with a purpose in mind.” That of keeping someone knowledgeable about magic from interfering with whatever Negaduck has been setting up. I suspect he had Morgana captured and held in an out the way place like the arboretum to draw Darkwing away from the bigger issues. “Are there any other heroes with magic related powers in Saint Canard Ocellus? I’m kind of beginning to have a theory as to what’s going on, but I need to confirm it by getting close to Bushroot, Megavolt, Liquidator or even the Jambalaya group to be sure.”

“No.” Ocellus said immediately. That doesn’t confirm anything, but it does raise my suspicions another notch. “You kind of know all the heroes available already, but some of them are not in the city and we don’t know how to contact them for extra help. What’s your theory?”

“If I confirm it, then I’ll tell you exactly how to find the source of the problem behind what has to be half the trouble currently occurring in the city.” I was confident in that statement and Ocellus picked up on that with an odd quirk of her head on the screen.

“Okay… finally got you connected to Lena Sabrewing in Duckberg via Ms. Shuttle!” Dormarch announced before putting Lena up on the screen. “Already told her you’re on the job as Leap Lamb.”

“What is it Leap?” Lena stated in a lackadaisical tone as she appeared on screen, behind her, her sister Violet was wrestling with what looked to be a ghost and was violently smacking it with a glowing mace.

“I hope you’re not busy, because Saint Canard is currently experiencing an absurdly huge crime wave, some of it by people that don’t naturally exist. We need someone with a magical expertise that can be in the field over here to determine what we’re dealing with, because I have some hunches as to what’s happening after the local magical expert named Morgana Macawber was incapacitated.” I hoped she was willing to come over here. “We kind of desperately need all the help we can get here, because Saint Canard’s waterworks is under attack. There are thugs and villains running all over the city doing who knows what, we’re stretched thin and the police can barely hold the hospital we liberated from a siege with their injuries. We’ve managed to free up three captured heroes, but we don’t know where the rest are and we’re not going to stop people from getting hurt at this rate. At best we’re mitigating the damage, but we can’t really detain the numbers we’re dealing with here, the streets are practically swamped with mole troops because of some guy named Moliarty. We kind of need an army to fight against one.”

“Violet, can you get Boyd on your phone? Tell him to head for the main hospital in Saint Canard immediately!” Lena was more awake now and the teenage duck was immediately moving. “We’ll be flying there ourselves as soon as we can.”

“Can I ask a question Lena, where is the McDuck clan currently?” Dormarch was asking because we needed to contact Beakley. “We need to get in touch with Bentina Beakley.”

“Bentina… oh right, Grandma Crumpets! Yeah, I can patch you through to her, but the rest of the clan are off on some whirlwind adventure halfway around the globe, something about looking into ancient conspiracies about someone called the ‘Queen of Canines’ eventually visiting this world. Oh and good news on the Moliarty thing since you mentioned him, we can definitely get you some immediate help with that.” Lena turned and called out to her sister, while my right eye was twitching the entire time about the whole ‘canine queen’ thing. I vaguely remember being called the possibly ‘doggy messiah’ back in the last world, I really am not going to focus too hard on any of that should it come up again. “Hey Vi, when your done telling Boyd to move his metal butt, use some magic to call the Terra-Firmians next! Moliarty is involved with this and they absolutely hate his and his army’s guts like nothing else!”

What were Terra-firmians and why was I suddenly terrified to find out Lena?

“What are Terra-firmians?” I asked. “Should I be worried?”

“Oh no, no, no, it’s fine, trust me on this, even Donald, Webby and everyone else we know would approve of what we’re about to do. The Terra-Firmians are friendly as all get out, except to moles from Moliarty’s underground faction specifically. Tell them where those moles are and what they are currently doing, then you’ll definitely get all the backup and help you’ll ever need with your mole problem. Don’t expect them to go after any of the other problems going on though, they’ll target just the moles and will help any injured.” Lena gave us a big evil grin. “Saint Canard is about to get a serious increase in balls, quite literally. Okay putting you through to Teatime.”

“Yes, what is it Lena, is it Phantom Blot, Magica or are both of them fighting outside your home again?” Bentina Beakley stated looking suddenly alert.

“We’ve got a situation and Terra-Firmians are going to be required for it, so expect a few earthquakes.” Lena warned before gesturing for me to speak up.

“Hello Beakley, do you have a family member named Bianca Beakley?” I asked.

“Bianca… where is she?!” The large lady Bettina sounded quite angry.

“Saint Canard, we’re kind of in the middle of a crisis here. She’s running around as a villain calling herself Bugmaster. Also there’s FOWL, Militant moles and a whole slew of other villains supernatural or otherwise, on top of many other things we can’t simply deal with all at once.” The line was immediately cut and I blinked while giving Lena a confused look.

“I don’t know who this Bugmaster person is or who Bianca is, but it sounds like you should expect Bentina to show up in Saint Canard. Considering you said the magic word ‘FOWL’, she’ll likely be there in less than thirty minutes crushing some poor egghead’s skull between her thighs in record time.” Lena muttered with a giggle. “Anyway, we’ll get there as soon as we can, hold out for an hour and if the moles aren’t back underground by then, well… expect them all to be dragged underground kicking and screaming. Ignore the kicking and screaming when it does happen. Got a place we can convene before we enter the city so we know what’s going on?”

“Dormarch mute sound on our end and tell her where Ocellus is.” Dormarch nodded and I didn’t hear anything for a bit.

“Okay, we’ll meet with Ocellus there before going into the city proper, expect Boyd to show up where you are soon and good luck!” Lena cut the call.

“Well at least we have some help coming, but will they all get here in time?” Sneeze Master asked.

“I don’t know, but we need to get to the power station and see if Megavolt is there like we think he’ll be.” This was around the time Jitters showed up and he looked nervous, his head was also wrapped in bandage. “Uh… why…”

“Bowling Ball accident, happens to me a lot.” Shaking his head Jitters got back to focusing. “I’m going to need some more time to collate the information, but I think you might be onto something with where the power from the power station isn’t going. I can do it from here, so get back to me in a bit.”

“Can I chip in here and say I’m getting antsy just sitting here waiting for moles to bust through the gaping hole in the front doors of the hospital?” You’re not the only one feeling that Dolly, even if we’ve had a small windfall in taking out a large group like Ammonia Pine’s eggheads. “Come on Pom, Shanty got more action than I did!”

“You did the most damage though.” I stated back calmly and nuzzled her head, before whispering. “You did a great job, not everyone needs to know how great you are Dolly.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m awesome and I know it!” She crossed her paws over her chest while sitting up proudly. “Caper Canine can sabotage anything!”

“Yeah, but don’t get too far ahead of yourself.” I looked at a nearby clock, it wasn’t even lunchtime and we still had so much to do.

“Did someone call for our assistance?” Boyd the combat capable little biped robot bird that battered entire teams of mercenaries back in Duckberg. He came in for a landing carrying Gizmo Gal with him, which was a surprise.

“Thanks for the ride Boyd! I still need work out a few kinks on the hover pack, at least so I can get around faster.” Gizmo Gal, AKA Gandra Dee, stated to the robot bird with a soul before turning to me. “Gizmo Gal reporting in, I heard Gizmo Duck went missing in this city. When that call to arms got out, I jumped to get in on this!”

“Yeah, we need someone to stay here and protect the hospital while we redirect power back to where it is supposed to be going from the power station, which likely has a lightning based supervillain there named Megavolt.” I looked between the two. “One of you will be going with us, the other will be staying here to help Glue Gal and Sneeze Master protect the hospital from moles and or any other thugs in the city making incursions.”

I quickly got the two up to date with everything we knew.

“Incoming information from Ocellus, she says a pair of super villains were spotted running around the southern districts of Saint Canard. Names, Hotshot and Flygirl, FOWL psychic experimentations. One can control fire and ice, the other can manipulate gravity.” Dormarch showed an image of the two and what they were capable of in a brief video. The fire and ice guy wasn’t as powerful as Velvet or Tianhuo, but still quite daunting. The girl just looked like a whole lot of trouble at short range. “They are to be considered extremely dangerous, at least the machine that made them what they are was destroyed and near impossible to replicate since the FOWL inventor was taken down by it. When near each other they gain some level of being able to predict ‘a future’, but not necessarily ‘the future’ unless they can act on the information in time. They only get a maximum of five seconds of advanced warning, when they are far enough apart from one another the ability becomes a liability for them… also something about Duck Smashers I don’t quite understand.”

“How many ridiculously villains are centered on this one city?!” I asked while putting my hooves to my head.

“If you ask me, too many to be normal.” Well at least Gizmo Gal was on the same page as the rest of us, or at the very least she was getting the same vibes I was about all of this. “You said you needed help with the power station? Well I specialize in electrical knowhow, Boyd would be of much better use here with Sneeze Master and Glue Gal was it?”

“Nice to meet you, are you actually Gizmo Ducks girlfriend?” Did Glue Gal just seriously ask that? Crisis going on, we needed to move soon.

“Yes.” Gizmo Gal stated honestly.

“Well good on you, he seems like a really nice guy.” Glue nodded appraisingly. “Boyd was it, you’re leading us in the defense of the hospital while their group sets out.”

“Of course, I aim to successfully facilitate the protection of life where I can.” Boy responded cheerfully. “I aim to help as a Junior Woodchuck and a robot boy as much as I can!”

“Okay enough of that, anyone coming with my team aside from Gizmo Gal?” When I said my team, I meant Shanty and Dolly.

“I will, you might need a medic out in the field.” Fawn was wearing a vest, normal skirt and shirt underneath. She looked ridiculously dainty outside her nurse outfit with her small shock pistol and three large medical kits strapped around her waist. “Plus Dormarch told me about your health problems, I think you’re going to need me.”

A medic? Yes please, for the love of all that was holy!

“Right let’s head out, Jitters knows what he’s doing, but what will you do until we need a bomb expert Fall-apart?” That was the last thing we need to clear up.

“That answer is simple, my best!” Fall-apart said jovially with a bit of laughter as his right foot fell of his body. “I’m going to be here until I know there’s a bomb for me to disarm… or arm, I’m not exactly picky about being a demolitions expert either. Also I could use more pizza, all these criminals are making it hard to get any deliveries to wherever I am.”

“Well it’s settled, Gizmo Gal is with my team.” I held a hoof and Gandra Dee shook it. “Nice to be working with you again.”

“Nice to be helping you out of a jam again, hopefully we don’t have to deal with an unstoppable shadow monster again. Now let’s go fix the problem with that power plant!” Gizmo Gal was both fresh and ready to fight, good news for our team and we’ve had a rest break. We’ve all gone to the bathroom and had drinks and snacks, we were ready to once again to travel through a city frothing with threats at just about every corner. “Then maybe we can find where Gizmo Duck is in all this mess…”

She was also worried about Fenton, who we haven’t heard of since that feast we shared with the Justice Ducks last night.

“I’m sure he’s fine.” I patted her leg and then we immediately set out as a group with the hospital hopefully secure.

-Negaduck-

“It’s all a matter of time… I need more in the streets.” I told my ace in the shadows. “We need to stall them further so my ultimate plans can be carried out.”

“You can’t rush blood magic, rushing is what got the other De Ville’s who went into magic constantly beaten by chickens, the animals mind you. Bipeds or animalistic chickens are just as bad for magic using ‘De Ville’s’ to deal with. It’s either that or some other small detail they overlooked. I’m constantly looking over my shoulder for The Rubber Chicken, his existence has me worried. If he escapes, then I’m bailing out immediately. I am not losing to a super hero with that specific name!” The shadow stated on the monitor. “There’s also Leap Lamb’s sidekick Caper Canine, Dalmatians have a history with my family and I swear they can almost feel a ‘De Ville’ whenever they see one. It’s almost instinctive for them at this point and I swear that Dalmatian is one of those legendary ‘De Ville’ hunters. The moment that spotty dog spots me, things are going to go completely sideways along with every plan going on in this city! Don’t know why Cruella thought trying to turn them into coats was a good idea when Dalmatians have historically been constant ruination for our family… at least those on the dark side of it. Maybe Cruella didn’t know and no one warned her… which would make sense given how we ‘De Ville’s’ are about family, if we can’t kill them… then they are worthy of living for a few weeks longer. Builds character and lethal levels of ruthless intelligence.”

“If they do stop you, then that’s on you. I’ve already paid you to do your job, so do it or else!” I slapped my hand down on the desk with quivering rabbits that I’ve been beating senseless with my bare hands. The shadowy figure I was staring down through the call was evil help, and excellent evil help was so hard to find in this world. They were quite competent and giving any of the people who thought they could be heroes a good run around, might even make a pass at her myself if she tries to kill me with a backstab. We might be about to lose Moliarty if the next two pillars went down, but that was well within my plans. “They are going to eventually hit the power plant, you need to prepare the trap for Leap Lamb if Agent Forty Seven doesn’t get to her before they get there.”

“Again, I just want to warn you that Dalmatians are a horrible omen for a ‘De Ville’ as much as chickens actively coming after us!” The shadowy figure then cut the call.

I leaned back and propped up my fingers with a grin on my beak. Let’s see you overcome everything Leap Lamb, I already knew everything that Darkwing would do… just not exactly how he would do it.

Also the bit players needed to be paid attention to as well, couldn’t let any small fry go under the radar and ruin my plans like TOON Division has done once or twice.

So many pies to plunder and I had a thumb in every single one of them, I’ll even manage to steal kill your personal vendetta… Neyla!

-Moliarty-

“Moliarty, get in the way of Leap Lamb, she’s going to start heading for the power plant and I still need that active for my plans for the time being.” One would already know what your plans were Negaduck, but only if they were a certified genius like me.

I would give my best for ten minutes.

Author's Note

Neyla is an interesting name in the context of things going on, but I'm pretty sure people can guess who that is.

If you can't, then research Sly Cooper 2, since the plot of that game was entirely derailed by Pom well before the attack on Clockwerk's lair started.

192. Meet Moliarty.

-Equus, Ponyville, Sugar Cube Corner, Gallant-

This was a nice land locked vacation from the Island of Turtle Toga. The giant bees there were getting a bit ridiculous when it comes to dancing, but the pirates sure had fun with befriending them.

I sat there watching the earth pony and the yak act shyly around one another, it was cute. I really should try to talk to them and tell them of my experiences with Eir. Getting up from my table, I made my way over to the two.

“Excuse me, my name is Gallant Bluster and I’m sorry to interrupt your day, but may I know you’re names?” I was a griffin that was married to a Valkyrie named Eir.

My lovely yak was still trying to keep a lid on the whole being from Yakhalla thing, but she’s not very good at hiding it considering the things she and her pet ‘Ragna the Rock’ gets up to.

“I’m Sandbar and this is Yona, did you need something mister?” Sandbar seemed like an easygoing fellow, which was a good thing since yaks could be a little… high strung.

“Just to tell you that your relationship is adorable and that if you need any help then my wife Eir or I would be willing to lend some advice while we’re here.” It wasn’t that I was asking them to go anywhere, I just wanted to talk and get to know them. Relationships like this has their challenges.

“I am doing fine great husband, nothing to worry about or be paying attention to, Eir will be done by the time the snacks are ready!” Looking over to Eir she got dragged back out the door by a tentacle. Ah my wife, she was quite a beautiful and big yak.

She was fighting a Giant Velocipuss with Ragna. Those things tended to get quite aggressive, why there was one shrieking in the middle of Ponyville was anybody’s guess. I heard this place was crazy and known for its friendship school, also this nice little place for snacks.

“Uh, aren’t you going to help your wife?” Sandbar asked after a second.

“Yona think she is being in grave danger.” Yona followed a second later staring out the nearest window.

“Eir will be fine, she’s a big strong yak and she’s fought worse.” The fact that she has does worry me somewhat, but I loved her enough to not interfere in whatever she’s doing unless she really direly needed it. Upon looking at the situation, I decided to do something about it. I turned to one of the owners of this snack house, the earth pony behind the counter. “Hey, your Carrot Cake right, Can I borrow a spatula for a second? I’m sorry, but you will need to clean it afterwards.”

“Sure thing.” Mister Cake went into the kitchen in the back and came back with a spatula, I took it and walked to the front door, opened it slightly and hurled the spatula to watch as it flew true. Barely a second later after a roar of pain, Eir came rolling through the door explosively holding the gunge covered spatula. I calmly took the spatula back and gave it to Mr. Cake. “Nice throw, also yuck... how am I going to get this sticky goo off the spatula?”

“Thanks. Quickly douse that with baking soda and the stuff should harden enough to peel right off. Word of warning, wash it thoroughly.” I walked over to my wife and hugged her big fluffy form tenderly, before helping her up. “I got used to throwing things like that at rowdy pirates in my portside bar. Also no, a knife would not have worked as well as that did. So… anyone want to play me in darts?”

-Earth, Saint Canard, Construction Site, Pom-

We stopped at a construction site on the way to the power station, I needed Dolly to scout out the area ahead and she did so by climbing the nearby buildings. Dormarch was currently having problems getting a connection to Ms. Shuttle, so Ocellus was now coordinating between the two.

“What are we waiting on again and why is Caper Canine howling a lot?” Our biped deer friend Fawn was very nervous, but she was a medical officer and would see to our injuries provided we don’t get too hurt to the point that her life gets threatened. We would need to protect her as well as push forward.

“I’ll let you know in a second.” Frankly I could use the World Wide Woof too, but I preferred that Dolly do it given she’s adept at it at this point.

Dolly eventually dropped into the construction yard we were using for cover, where she did an acrobatic flip and swirled in the air majestically before lightly landing on the ground.

“Okay, so I’m sure you heard, but let me reiterate, the moles are blockading us from the power station. They know we’re coming, but not from where. There aren’t many Bark Brigade members in the city, no Rescue Aid Society help either. The Bark Brigade don’t want to draw attention to themselves so they are trying to lay low with all these thugs are running around.” Motioning for Dolly to continue, she does so by pointing a paw across the street. “The guys say we’ll have an easier time if we go over there and then force our way through the narrower street, a blockade hasn’t been set up there yet and is only guarded minimally. The polarity mole guy has two traps for us if we go deeper in the city or along the coastline.”

“Good job Dolly.” I whispered to her while nuzzling her heard and she nuzzled me back. “Okay, Caper Canine got us some information, moles are building barricades to stop us from reaching the power station. They likely know our group composition and our end goal, they are expecting us to take a circuitous route to reach the power station. We need to go one street over and then plow straight through the zone where they haven’t been able to set up yet. We can reach the power station, but the problem is getting back out if the moles are still there.”

“So we can do something like take the power station, but we’ll be stuck there with our backs to the wall.” Gandra was looking over a display on her visor. “So we can at least fix the power station and prevent them from tampering with it further.”

“We’ll be crossing a burned bridge, then we’ll might have to stand or fight our way back out… we can at least hold out long enough for those Terra-Firmian things Lena told us about to show up and take care of the mole problem. Also I got a confirmation that the third pillar is down, Bushroot is MIA and Darkwing is heading for the hospital with some injuries.” Dormarch announced. “The canopy over the city is barely holding, we need to bring down that fourth pillar.”

“Actually, dealing with the fourth pillar generating and holding up that canopy would solve the mole problem. The mole army really can’t handle sunlight which is the reason for them to put up a city wide canopy.” Fawn pointed out. “We just need to get by them and then destroy that pillar while fixing the power station.”

“We don’t have the numbers to split up to deal with the pillar and the power station at the same time, while the eggheads may have change to looting and robbery they are still very present and there’s also the other random thugs and villains running around to worry about like that Hotshot and Flygirl pair. We take the power station first, then worry about the other problem of how to get out of the area or going for the pillar if it’s close enough.” I started to move forward and looked to everyone. “There’s also the fact that we need the power station to be entirely intact at the end of this, so that’s another thing to worry about. Let’s move!”

A second later I heard something being hit above me, the sound made me look up. I quickly rolled to the side as a pallet of bricks slammed into the ground and I flexed my wool as the bricks went flying everywhere. My body weathered the bricks slamming against it and I eventually loosened my stiffened wool.

“Oh my goodness, are you alright!?” Fawn said as she started running up to me, I was feeling a bit dazed.

“I’m okay, even if I do have… get back!” I then flipped backwards as a wrecking ball slammed into the pile of bricks, Shanty leapt up and slashed the wire connecting to the large metal sphere before turning to look at the dog biped already in the process of running. “An assassin out to get me.”

“Are you sure we can’t be going after him?” Shanty said as she glared after the guy. “He be trying really hard to kill you there.”

“Bigger priorities Shanty, also I don’t those weren’t kill attempts, more like disabling or distraction attempts. We don’t exactly have the time or resources to run him down.” I grumbled and turned to continue on the same path that Dolly indicated. Dolly barked something offensive in Tobias Rieper’s direction. “We’ll figure something out about him eventually don’t worry about it for now Caper Canine.”

Dolly grumbled and growled, but she still followed and took the lead towards the narrow street.

-A street change later-

Trying to travel the coast was too much open space, plenty of good places to shoot at us from while barricading the road. Open space with their weapons was a death trap for us.

Going deeper into the city to go around is a different problem as they are more concentrated there, plus they had large vehicles with drills. Drill tanks were something I’d eventually expect a Diamond Dog to invent, Fawn told us how dangerous they were to be in front of. She’s seen them in action in a previous invasion the last time the moles came up to the surface. Thankfully drill tanks didn’t have ranged weapons, but they did have spots in said vehicles that the range weapons can shoot from and were heavily armored all around to handle the pressures of traveling underground.

The moles were meandering around and not in any position to stop us, did they really think we would not look before we leaped? At least twenty or so in the way, best odds we’d probably get.

I was looking around the corner at the first mole I’d take down, before I turned to the team with me. A fast and direct approach was the best option in this situation.

“We need to rush them, quick takedowns and if we can prevent any of them from shooting at us that would be great. Cut-Lass protect Fawn and our backs. Caper Canine, Gizmo Gal, your with me!” We had to hit them fast, so it was probably a surprise to the others that I bolted out of the alleyway hopped up the wall on my left and then proceeded to leap forward horizontally across buildings.

I managed to get into a good position on a window to leap for my target, that’s when one noticed me.

“It’s Leap…” I leaped on to the mole with an axe kick to his helmet and pushing off with my other leg, I landed on my front hooves and immediately bucked out to the guy on the right straight in the chin. His weapon flew up in the air as he toppled over, I spun around into a bipedal stance and caught the front of the weapon by wrapping my hooves around it.

I spun, turned and swiftly brought it around and into the face of the mole to the left of the one I axe kicked to the ground, breaking the butt of the weapon and bending the barrel out of shape. This also took off the moles helmet and knocked him out, I readied a heavy overhead blow for my next opponent.

It was around this point that they were aware enough to try and aim their weapons at me, only for five of them to go down in quick succession to electric bolas thrown by Gizmo Gal who distracted them. I finally brought the broken weapon down on the nearest mole snapping it completely in half as I knocked the guy out cold from the force of the blow.

I kicked a gun upwards with my left hind leg and the shot just flies off into the sky as I pivoted and put my right hoof into the moles face. These guys all kind of looked similar, mining helmets, green coats, guns and generally big noses.

I put my hoof into my next opponents gut and then gave him two painful hoof slaps when he bent over.

That’s when Dolly blew through them on her skateboard, using her momentum control to build momentum to painful degrees as she bounced off the chests of several moles in rapid succession sending them flying with each push off with her skateboard.

The moles slammed into walls or were simply got scrapes and cuts from bouncing off the streets.

I bullet whizzed by may face and I was already in motion for one of the remaining threats as Gizmo Gal swept in with her zap staff to disable quite a number of the ones already downed in a spinning flourish. Making sure to hit them either end of her staff before they could get off another shot.

The moles might have weapons and numbers, but they sorely lacked in reaction times and close up combat ability. They had hands meant for digging, not for combat.

I quickly grabbed a panicking mole by the coat, pulled him towards me and slammed the hardening wool at my forehead down into his face. He simply crumpled in my grip and I let him go, we were almost done breaking them.

A mole tried to run only they were struck in the back by a small shock pistol shot that paralyzed them and they dropped to the ground.

This was followed by Shanty launching a flying buck into the last mole standing that had been trying to aim his weapon my way, making them stumble back then she lead that into an upside down hoof spring buck that ended with her standing on the unconscious mole.

“Check them over quickly Dormarch…” I stated as I pulled him out, I waved the device around slowly.

“Beaten, battered, maybe a minor crack in a skull and a broken bone or two, but none of them are in mortal danger and none of them are crippled or are otherwise permanently harmed.” That was good for my conscience as much as that of the others. “Keep moving, I can detect several life signs coming this way.”

I didn’t need to be told twice, I ran forward down the street with Dolly, Gandra, Shanty and Fawn trailing after me towards the power station.

“You didn’t have to stop and do that.” There was something of a somber relief on Fawn’s face when I looked her way, she continued to look about worriedly as she wielded her small shock pistol. “I appreciate that you did though, goodness knows heroes don’t check on the health of those they defeat often enough.”

“Hey, we may be committing violence against an army load of felons, but I don’t want anyone to die because of us.” Not that they were making it easy, I was nearly shot twice there.

We were rushing for the power station, I could even see it in the distance as we passed a crosswalk, when I felt my ears twitch. I ducked and hardened my wool into a full body shell as something impacted the ground and exploded violently ripping up the street.

I took the brunt of it, but the explosion still knocked the others back or over. The only other one still standing was Dolly who managed to cover herself with her board and redirect the momentum of the force that slammed into her downwards into the ground. I know this because the street had two holes in it.

“Next time redirect it upwards Caper Canine.” I said as I stood up shakily and looked to where the explosive had come from, wasn’t hard to guess the drill tank that just rolled onto the street behind us.

“Hey, I panicked okay, I did the best that I could do given the sudden circumstances.” Responded Dolly while looking behind us at the tank. “I don’t think we’ll be able to cover this one in raw sewage and then sneeze it over.”

Something that big shouldn’t be so quiet.

“Did you honestly think you can get by someone of my brilliance without facing at least some trouble? I can see you’re admiring my personal drill tank, built for efficiency and stealthy movements above or below ground!” Presuming the mole to be who I think it is by the image Ocellus sent to the PET, it was Moliarty riding a drill tank while wielding an explosives launching device. The mole was a smartly dressed one, definitely not in the military style clothing that his fellows wore. He wore a jacket, pants, shoes, even a vest and tie. I haven’t really seen many bipeds with pants in recent memory. “Why the very nerve of your ignorance in thinking you can get by me uncontested. Prepare to face the wrath of the genius mole mind of Professor Moliarty!”

“Keep heading towards the power station, Caper Canine and I will slow him down.” It shouldn’t be too hard to do. Not questioning us, the others continued towards the power station as Dolly and I turned towards the tank to see Moliarty talking on a communication device.

“Start converging on our position, they have bypassed our barricades. Turn on the drill, we’ll run them down!” The drill started spinning up as we backed away, Moliarty pointed his weapon at us.

We turned and started running as the vehicle started slowly for us and was picking up speed.

“How exactly are we supposed to deal with that Pom?” Good question Dolly, even I didn’t know how to deal with it.

“Can you do an ‘aero’ on command and not overdo it, or would that be too much for you?” She looked offended that I even had to ask.

We both jumped forward as an explosive hit the ground behind us, we rolled and kept running down the street.

“Hey, doing things is how I learn, especially when going overboard!” The spinning drill machine was getting slightly faster, I figured that’s because it was slow to build up momentum. Moliarty was aiming his weapon for us again. Dolly refused to speed ahead, thankfully enough, because I needed her at my side for this. “Though I kind of see why that’s what you’re worried about when we’re in danger like we are and all.”

“Can launch both of us when I give a signal? Also, I’ll send you an image to focus on while doing the magic so you’ll get what I’m going for.” Concentrating, I sent Dolly a specific idea of what I wanted her to do.

“Couldn’t we just run it into a building?” Dolly asked a second later as we continued being chased by the vehicle getting closer and closer, we were also getting closer to the power station where the others have stopped around the corner and were now staring back our way.

“Can you please stop arguing with that dog?!” Moliarty yelled as he aimed his weapon, exactly what we wanted to happen. “You have much more to worry about than whatever’s got you two in a tizzy, you can’t outrun my tank so what do you think you’re going to accomplish here!”

“I just don’t want to actively be a cause of immense property damage, even if it would benefit us to do so Caper Canine!” That’s when I noticed Moliarty fired again, doing exactly what I wanted. Speaking of which… three… two… “Wind us!”

“Aero!” Dolly shouted, her body flashed slightly as a specifically angled small swirling green vortex of wind appeared around us. We crouched down in tandem and then launched high in the air by flipping backwards over the tank, boosted by the vortex pushing us to safety.

“What the?!” Moliarty followed us with his gaze, then turned to look forward with wide eyes.

That wasn’t the only thing the swirling air did. The swirling air had caught the rocket and the tanks drill rammed right into the rocket as it was hovering in tight circles in the wind. The tank was rocked by the explosive device, taking a bit of damage to its body and the drill was slightly mangled.

Moliarty fell over on the tank and then sat up shaking his head in a daze.

“Come on.” We both ran towards a souvenir store and climbed the stone portion of the building until we were on top of it.

I looked down at Moliarty who was trying to come to grips with what just occurred, he turned around and then started looking around for us.

“Follow me. If I miss, then you’ll have to knock him off.” I leapt and pulled back my left hoof.

“Well get it moving, they got behind…” Surprisingly I was not the only one who was confused by the fact that Moliarty managed to perfectly dodge my left straight in the middle of a sentence when I leapt for him going pretty fast.

I rolled after hitting the ground and turned back to look at him with a glare expecting him to shoot at me, he wasn’t even looking my way.

Instead of aiming to fire at me, Moliarty had turned and fired on Dolly who was sent flying high up in the air by the rocket impacting her skateboard. She yelped slightly, but I could feel that for the most part she was okay if a little singed.

I immediately started moving for a nearby car, one that was missing its wheels and someone stole all the glass off it, but the metal made for good cover at least.

“I have already surmised that you two are going to be more trouble than I can handle with just my tank or by myself. I’m sure you’re intelligent enough to notice we are not good in a close up fight, but I’m not about to let you take me out so easily.” Moliarty said as he straightened his tie and started loading his weapon with fresh ammunition as he spoke calmly. “It is quite unfortunate for you that I owe Negaduck approximately ten minutes of my full capacity, furthermore my reinforcements are arriving and yours are already inside the power plant to face down the one named Megavolt. I’d like to see you actually try and take down my forces with a just a skateboard wielding dog… an impressive one nonetheless, but you are still quite outmatched Leap Lamb.”

He was right, I could already see two more drill tanks and a gaggle of mole soldiers gathering in the street back the way we came and we’d be blocked off from escape like we predicted would happen. They were marching in our direction.

“Dormarch, tell me we can pull on some help from somewhere.” We kind of needed all the help we could get.

“Sorry, no help can come our way, everyone is too busy. We got nobody that can be present except… wait… locking coordinates.” Domarch paused. “Triangulating targeting area… Caper Canine and you need to hold out for three minutes.”

-Ms. Bunny Shuttle-

"Huh? On it Ocellus!" I turned and immediately started speeding down the road.

Author's Note

I've been sick, I need a lot more sleep.

In fact... I'm getting some after this.

193. Missing Moles.

-Saint Canard Street, Pom-

“Ocellus confirmed Ms. Shuttle is moving into position for support fire, we need to hold out for three minutes at least.” Dormarch stated as the shell of the vehicle I was behind was getting filled with holes as projectiles punctured it in various places and Moliarty was soon going to drill through it with one of the three tanks. His personal tanks drill was not working correctly so it was going to take at least some time before this vehicle was hit.

“If you hadn’t noticed, we don’t exactly have that time.” I scrunched my body up smaller as a shot whizzed by my right ear. “Permission to use Dancing Flame in a limited fashion?”

“How limited are we talking here, not that it isn’t a good idea, but if you take a hit while entering or exiting the dancing flame state…” When it came to my health Dormarch was serious, but in this case even he could see the kind of trouble we were in.

My body is not a sponge made for bullets, in fact being in a Dancing Flame state was one of the major reasons for me contracting an arrhythmia problem.

“Yeah, I too prefer the chance of living longer.” As I currently couldn’t get any help form Dolly, she was up the street poking her head out of the alleyway trying to think of something to do. “Any ideas? I’m already denying anything Dolly might be thinking of doing currently through our bond. So my idea would be the most appropriate as I don’t think I’ll get a chance for bark blast, bark breaker is situational and useful against single targets. I can’t take out both of the other tanks at the same time and I need to find the frequency to hit them with to even deal an optimal amount of damage to their armor.”

Dolly could block bullets, the sheer volume of them being fired my way could knock her over and she’d be exposed, though she has been building up quite a bit of muscle for holding up against such onslaughts previously. This was at least sixty guns firing constantly on my position which was slowly tearing apart, I wouldn’t want her trying with that many projectiles from various sources.

I just sent Dolly a reminder that her body still had the resilience of an average dog even if magic does make her slightly tougher than average, she wasn’t personally up to taking a bullet to the body like I had and I had barely survived one.

I also reminded her that she was not up to controlling the momentum of bullets, she had to be in direct contact with something to manipulate it. I could use our bond to manipulate the power myself through contact with her, but I wouldn’t know about using it personally since it was intrinsic to Dolly and we were currently separated.

Dolly could dodge bullets as well and quite easily with her flowing motion abilities, but at best she’d be able to get to my side and then what?

She needed a break from doing that ‘aero’ thing, it could get quite tiring to use magic actively like that. I suggested Dolly find some way of trying to force momentum into something large and redirect it in the direction of the moles. Her momentum controlling abilities is good for throwing things with ridiculous force, provided she can even move them in the first place.

The sounds of incoming projectiles finally stopped.

“Is this really the best you have to offer Leap Lamb? Cowering behind a ransacked car, this is far too pitiful for someone that’s supposedly survived Rev Olver Ocelot’s Shred Treads paramilitary group raining rockets down on them.” Moliarty was taunting me, trying to goad me out of cover, unlucky for him I’m smarter than that. “You are apparently at a major disadvantage here, so I have to wonder how the Shred Treads failed to take you out. Drive forward and crush her, she’s obviously not going to fight back.”

“Whatever it is you want to do, do it.” Sighed Dormarch reluctantly. “Just use it sparingly and don’t get stay in that state for too long.”

“Oh a lot of luck went into surviving the mercenaries Moliarty, but....” I started to inhale deeply and focus all my effort into my left leg. After sending an idea Dolly’s way, since she could maneuver into position to do so if there were less moles to look out for her. I popped up, exhaled explosively and swung my left leg forward jabbing at the air rapidly while propping my body against the car. “Thousand spear! I may be whimpering, anxious and afraid, but I am not exactly helpless! Wow… that has got to be the oddest thing I think I’ve ever said, well next to my conversation with Mr. Beelzebug…”

My leg started to burn and I fell back into cover before a rocket burst against the car, said explosion took a solid half of the vehicle out. I think I actually managed to take down a good number of moles doing that, maybe even a third of them.

They weren’t tough physically and that made me wonder what would happen if I had hit targets that were a little more bulky in muscle than the flab some them had with a Thousand Spear.

“I really need to recalibrate the sight on my bazooka… what was that attack in effort of? All you did was jab your hoof at the air once. Isn’t she just… wait… what the!?” I think Moliarty finally looked behind himself, of the sixty or so militant moles that had been out in the open shooting in my vicinity. Twenty three of them were now down on the ground each with several hoof shaped imprints in their bodies, they had been packed together tightly enough that even if my aim was only moderately bad I’d still hit quite a few of them. Wait a minute… aim? “Ah, so you are still quite a threat even pinned down as you are. Though I wonder how you did that with a single thrust of your hoof.”

It wasn’t a single thrust Moliarty, more like two hundred and seventy three, give or take a few hoof thrusts because I can’t count that fast. Not exactly to a thousand yet and I don’t want to know what would happen if I do actually reach that point that I could hit a single point or multiple points with a thousand blows from a distance. I was becoming as ridiculous as my friends and it was getting harder to deny the fact that I can really put up a fight.

I was immediately trying to get control of my Dancing Flame state after coming off it, the fact that Moliarty only saw me thrust my hoof once made me feel a little shocked that my personal technique can beat his beady… oh right… moles don’t exactly have good eyesight do they? Then how were they shooting so… oh.

Moliarty has goggles and was fit and incredibly intelligent, the other moles were… ah… I think I should have profiled their threat level earlier.

Dolly, can you confirm something for me quickly, move into position and attack the moles when necessary. Can you use a full dumpster for it? Okay.

I’ll keep Moliarty’s attention on me… no its fine Dolly, my leg is alright, really! Wait you can feel my soreness? Okay after this is all over we definitely need to research this familiar bond with help from Lena or Violet. The only other person I could think of is Rafiki and he’s a bit busy being the spiritual guardian of the Pride Lands.

“Don’t use your leg like that again for a minute, try to center yourself and pull yourself back fully from that state, because your heart rate is getting kind of bad Pom. Try talking to him, continue to stall for more time. Do not push too hard Pom.” Dormarch, even I’m sure you have to realize that half my cover was blown already away and Moliarty has obviously just finished reloading his bazooka. “Also can you please learn some techniques that are not so self-destructive to you?!”

“Sorry Dormarch.” I murmured honestly as I cradled my sore left leg. “What about that Search Hunter thing you told me about?”

“That’s different, overclocking myself for a teleportation attack is not an immediate problem to me biologically. Well whatever passes for working biology for me when an entity like me manifests outside of a digital space.” Something Dormarch was reluctant to do, even if I could use a hug right about now. “What now? There’s still a lot of them and they have us, more importantly you, pinned.”

“I don’t think… that they actually do... The number of moles might actually be more of an intimidation factor than an actual threat or danger considering everything we’ve seen so far.” As I said this Moliarty fired his bazooka and I calmly walked out onto the street, not caring as my cover was completely blown apart. I personally think he just wasted one of his shots. I gave him and his remaining forty or so moles that weren’t groaning on the ground a flat look. “You know… there’s something I have to wonder about when it comes to your guys Moliarty.”

“You sure changed your tune… also you’re out in the open, aren’t you worried you’ll be shot?” Moliarty was confused by my sudden change in demeanor. “Something isn’t quite right about you, I would be trembling with this many people pointing weapons at me if I were you.”

I just figured out that being near large objects was actually bad for my health given what I now knew about the moles and Moliarty practically confirmed it for me by trying to play up the fear factor.

“Go ahead moles.” This was going to be one of the weirdest things I have ever tested, not that I would test this with my life on a normal occasion but… in this situation I think I could live with it if I actually got hit. “Shoot me, I dare you.”

“What?!” Dormarch stated with clear shock.

All of Moliarty’s moles fired at me, I closed my eyes as forty plus bullets whizzed at me randomly. I opened them a second later and realized that I was perfectly fine even with all of them in a line aiming in my general vicinity.

“Ah… so that is what’s wrong, you’ve actually figured it out.” Moliarty suddenly looked quite worried and might even be panicking slightly. “I didn’t think you would catch on to it this soon! You are quite the worthy foe Leap Lamb.”

“You mean like how exactly did your army train to shoot at things while living underground with any concept of accuracy against anything smaller than a vehicle in general? If they trained in tunnels they really didn’t have to worry about hitting things in tight spaces with those weapons as long as they aimed in a general direction.” Not a single bullet had actually come close to hitting me. “Otherwise, they are not actually trained to aim, much less being trained well. A single genius can apparently only do so much.”

I was wondering why their aim had been sporadically bad and good in equal measures. It just clicked when I realized that they weren’t aiming at my position while I was in cover.

They were aiming at my cover itself… bigger target, easier to hit and chances of hitting me go up because I was behind it. No longer in cover, they have no wherewithal to actually hit me since I was not the kind of target they trained for in general… if they had any training at all. Even that was suspect to me.

“Well I’m horrified, but judging by all the trajectories. You’d actually have to be moving for them to actually hit you with that kind of aim… that… I just… what? How?!” Dormarch was quite confused that I walked out into the open and told them to shoot at me. When you have half a dozen short sighted moles firing guns in a general direction, the volume of projectiles is more likely to hit by accident. “There are so many of them, they have to of had some kind of training to be using those weapons right? How could every single one of them miss you?”

“You’d think they wouldn’t Dormarch, but consider this… how many of them are wearing sight correcting goggles like Moliarty?” If any of them had anything approaching a sense of aim to begin with, then I’d be utterly surprised. “None, also they are all near sighted…”

I trailed off and let that sink in, for me and for Dolly who’s sending an evil grin with her mind and I could practically feel her setting up something large with that new bit of knowledge in mind.

At best, all the moles likely running rampant around the city are just trying to keep more important areas of the city locked down by sheer presence. I can guess as to why Negaduck would want them doing this, I had nothing concrete though.

Moliarty was the biggest threat in his army… because he was almost the only thing threatening about all the moles. Their vehicles were still truly dangerous sure, but the moles themselves? Nope, I just realized that Moliarty was a genius… one with numbers, a personal technology base, also lots of smoke and mirrors. A lot of that going on around here, but where was the magic behind it and was it doing what I think it was?

“You equipped the moles with weapons, but none of them have goggles to improve their vision and aim like the ones you wear.” I pointed out dryly as the moles continued to fire at me and I looked down at the ground. There was a five foot circle of clear space around me, outside of said circle was where all their bullets were hitting in a haphazard random manner. “I’m quite sure I know why you’re their leader now.”

You’d think one of the moles would get lucky by this point and actually hit me by accident after firing a second and third salvo in anger, apparently they couldn’t hit a target that wasn’t moving. They could probably hit a charging bull quite a few times, but the broad side of a barn? Nope. I would be more worried about dealing with armed eggheads that didn’t have malfunctioning equipment via Dolly sabotage.

“Yes, well… we can still run you down with the drill tanks!” Moliarty shouted, the two other drill tanks spun up their drills and all three tanks started driving forward towards us.

“Yeah, about that… Leap Lamb, Ms. Shuttle just fired.” Dormarch said with small smile, he pointed upwards on the screen as I looked up from the PET and I grinned. “Incoming, move back three feet or hooves. Whatever metric you want to work with.”

I started doing as he asked and that’s when the artillery fire from Ms. Shuttle’s chemical cannon finally came in from outside the city. Three pink orbs slammed into the area surrounding the tanks creating powerful explosions.

This caused a lot of confusion for the moles, also they were all screeching and panicking about being suddenly dyed in pink dust. At least it didn’t look like any of them were dying.

“Collect yourselves, it is just… wait a minute I recognize these chemicals by smell. They will…” Moliarty’s drill tanks melting into piles of colorful sand was an impressive sight. The people in the vehicle dug their way out of the colorful sand.

I just stood there looking as the other two tanks did the same and all the weapons the moles were wielding were also falling apart because of the chemical attack.

“Yeah, that would be the resulting effects of Honey Lemon’s chemical metal embrittlement formula. Useful for disarming villains apparently. Good job on keeping them distracted… and giving me a heart attack Leap Lamb!” Dormarch muttered with an honest appreciation as they lost all their weapons. “Which their weapons seemed to be particularly susceptible to.”

“Okay, so… what were you going to do to me again?” I asked lazily, then my eyes went wide as Moliarty hefted his still intact bazooka up, along with the ammo that was also still intact.

“This!” Moliarty fired and I dove out of the way as the street exploded and I was sent flying into a wall. I’m thankful to be covered in a soft impact absorbent material. “Unlike the vehicles or other weapons, my bazooka is made of a strong polycarbonate plastic material as strong as metal. I always save the best for myself of course, because I know how to actually use it!”

“That hurts our feelings boss.” One of the moles whined.

“Well become a genius like me, then we’ll talk more often on a level you would finally understand!” Moliarty said as he prepared to fire at me again.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” I swiftly asked as I smiled at him innocently.

“Oh and what could I possibly be forge… oh… Caper Canine… OF COURSE!” He apparently heard the sound of something large coming at him from behind, the two moles nearest to him dove off the sand pile that used to be a street devastating drill tank. “Ugh!”

Moliarty was summarily struck by a dumpster and it was a fully loaded one too, that seriously had to hurt and after it bounce away spilling it’s contents, Moliarty tried to work himself into a standing position when he was interrupted by Dolly. He was having a hard time of it after Dolly managed to land a hit on him.

“That’s what you do with a drunken sailor early in the morning~!” Dolly sang out with a bit laughter, I can’t help but think that Shanty had something to do with that.

“Why you… wait… did she just sing?” Moliarty was now off his game and his genius intellect probably hasn’t noticed the thrown dumpster had destroyed his bazooka. That and he was probably seriously hurt by taking a dumpster sized momentum bomb like that.

“It’s getting her to stop that’s the problem.” I said in sad tone, Dolly barked something that I wouldn’t ever dare repeat at me before she went back to singing.

“Toss him out with the garbage, don’t let him back in until he’s clean by the yardage and make sure that his luck is not as dry as him before moving him back in with the supplies using the cartage~.” Dolly was being a good distraction as I moved up to several moles and started knocking them out from behind one at a time. Even Moliarty was still too perplexed by Dolly’s performance, at some point he was going to recognize that we were attacking the moles, Dolly doing so with her skateboard as she danced and sang. “Maybe he won’t smell like the pigsty in the evening, hopefully he won’t leave that lovely lady grieving and he hopes to seriously wake up from his dreaming, about everything that happened upon that next morning~.”

“You idiots, stop getting distracted and start fighting back!” Moliarty yelled at the moles who were suddenly shaken out of their reverie by his sudden and sharp orders. “Ohhh, where’s the rest of that backup I signaled for?”

Backup, when did he…

The ground rumbled and two drill tanks burst up in the middle of the four way intersection and flopped onto the ground. Moles started to pour out of it and the moles that were distracted by Dolly finally got their brains in gear and actively started trying to attack her and me.

“Protect me until I can get on one of them, we can still turn this fight around! Don’t keep the drill tanks above the ground for too long they have weapon destroying artillery!” Moliarty despite being battered and beaten could still run surprisingly fast. “I said ten minutes, but I’m not taking these insults laying down!”

Several moles got between me and Moliarty before I could knock him out cold and I had to start fighting and moving back. The drill tanks brought freshly armed soldiers, we were in for one heck of a fight now.

So… one hundred two to four hoof tall moles versus a lambkin and a dog with an energetic personality. These odds were not exactly in my favor, but I was conserving energy pretty well. I was going to need to eat after this though, this was going to work up quite a bit of sweat.

“Dormarch.” My tone was slightly tight as I slapped an approaching mole across the face with my left hoof.

“Sending information to Ocellus and asking if Ms. Shuttle has an idea of how to handle this, especially if they are going to start diving into the ground to avoid her shots.” Why did you just imply that the streets were going to be full of holes by the end of this Dormarch? I was actively trying to avoid extreme property damage!

Hope Shanty’s situation was going far better than what was going to soon become a mole mashing melee. Along with fighting two tanks that could pop up anywhere from the ground, possibly with more moles to fight.

-Saint Canard Power Plant, Shanty-

I felt an itch for some reason, Pom must be thinking about me.

“You sure you can be fixing the problem?” I was worried about Pom and Dolly, they were going to be doing a lion’s share of fighting outside. I am hoping they be alright.

A large rumbling sounded off shaking the whole power station and it be sounding like something erupted, that better not be being a bad thing.

“If it’s electrical I can, I’m good with electricity.” Gandra be sparking energy between two of her digits on her right hand in demonstration. “Practically made myself immune to it.”

Yeah, they be fine. I’m not losing anyone else, nope, not at all. It just be the plague of fear… fears that can be realized if we don’t hurry here.

“How did you do that?” Be whispering the third member of our team following behind quietly with her pistol out. I be thinking Fawn was not used to being in the middle of a fight.

“Some minor personal experimentation. Slightly painful, but I think the effort was worth it.” It be cool Gandra, but I don’t think I would be wanting something like that in my body. I already doing enough cool stuff on my own.

“Have you been checked out for problems professionally by a medical expert?” Fawn asked as we be continuing to snoop around the building silently until we saw some light from the end of a corridor.

“Well my health hasn’t been too adversely effected… but… yeah I do kind of need to do that.” We all stopped to look at Gandra and she be wincing and looking away. We eventually made it to the doorway where flashes of light were coming from. “Also I do need to make sure that my nanites won’t go haywire and that my body is still producing enough energy for them to work effectively. I’ll go first, stay behind me.”

“Ah so you’re finally here Darwking… wait… you’re not Darkwing Duck. Who are you guys? Ah well, at least I have someone to monologue to about my brilliance… well aside from brighty here!” The large rat biped with a cylinder on his back be holding up a lightbulb that flickered in his grasp several times. “Yeah, but what would Pinky do without The Brain? He needs his entertainment after all.”

“Are all the villains here being clinically insane?” It be an honest question.

194. How Shocking.

-Equus, Canterlot, Jade-

My name is Jaded La Perm and as one can imagine, I’m a rogue and a jerk with something like a heart of gold.

So whenever someone walks up to me and asks…

“What are you doing here?” Spitfire stated sourly and then wilted when she sat down at the table across from me.

I will always have a swift response for occasions such as these.

“This.” I pulled out a rubber band and stretched it.

“Can you please not try to force me to chase you?” Spitfire said in a defeated tone.

“Aw, you act like we aren’t friends.” I let the rubber band fly.

Seconds later several things happened in quick succession, the rubber band eventually disappeared. I counted down from thirty seconds.

If I timed that right then…

A bright pillar of colors rose into the sky and I smiled brightly at hopefully making some foal’s day with that one… also I just ruined the day for someone else. Let the Zap Apple Jam-boree begin!

“JADED YOU WILL RUE THE DAY YOU CROSSED THE MARE OF THE MOON HERSELF, I WILL GO NIGHTMARE MOON JUST FOR YOU IF THAT’S WHAT YOU WANT!” Princess Luna yelled from halfway across the city five seconds later spooking every single pony and visitor in the city.

“Well lucky for me, I don’t have to chase you today.” Spitfire sighed with relief as she wasn’t looking directly at me.

“Oh?” I curiously tilted my head at her and made a questioning mewling noise. “Why not, you’re my favorite pegasus to bug Farts Fire! Even Rainbow Dash can’t hold a truly fiery candle your backside, just think of the destruction that would cause!”

Quite a few ponies laughed about the nickname.

“Can we not bring out humiliating secrets about how I actually perform the buccaneer blaze in public?” Spitty said with a dry sigh, probably realizing what she just said in front of an amused crowd. She lazily pointed behind me. “Besides those guys will be doing the chasing today, they need a big distraction as they’ve been kind of tearing the royal guard apart, in your stead mind you, as training aids. You’ll be making their day for them, since I think they will really enjoy burning off some energy by ‘playing’ with you.”

I could hear the sound of four familiar Canis Minors barking excitedly, my eyes went wide and I paled considerably.

“Well I certainly made a mistake today when it came to being here to research whether or not you have longma heritage. Here Spitfire, have a few good meals on me… because… I’ve got to run!” I tossed a pouch of bits to Spitfire and then darted from the table like a bat out of Tartarus with Pom’s Puppy Patrol hunting down my feline backside.

-Spitfire-

“Sad thing is… I actually believe that we are friends, no matter how annoying.” I took the bit pouch and looked at the amount inside. “Yep, this is my bit pouch... huh? And hers too?! How actually… nice of her for once.”

Turning my hoof slightly I saw another pouch tied to my stolen pouch and with a friendly message from Jade, who apparently just wanted to have fun today and relieve all the stress of having to be a politician.

If she weren’t so annoying about getting me to chase her, I’d find her admirable in trying to build a friendship with me by doing stupid things.

Remarkably this is how most of my friendships actually started, darn Abyssinian knew me so well.

…

Can Rainbow Dash just take my position as captain of the Wonder Bolts so I can finally retire from Jade already? That cat might actually be getting me to start smiling.

-Earth, Power Plant, Shanty-

“So that’s when I rescued the poor toaster…” This Megavolt guy can monologue, he currently be at it for far too long.

“Can we be fighting now?” While making my impatience quite clear, this be taking too much of our time and Pom might be needing help outside.

“Yeah, I think I’ve just about figured out what he did and how to fix it and the power situation in the city, I just have to make sure I don’t get knocked out first and take this guy down.” Gandra followed as Megavolt continued to monologue and we ignored it for the most part.

“I don’t think you can knock him out with electricity, I mean in the comics he is immune to lightning, electricity and most forms of energy based attacks.” We be turning to look at Fawn. “Almost everyone in TOON Division used to be an actor before becoming police officers. We used to do some work on the Darkwing Duck show and the comics were well written.”

“Not to be a little insensitive, but you strike more as being a girly girl.” Gandra, can I be pointing out that we’re being too distracted and my friends not be having all the time in the world out there? We also be having the pillar to take care of, there is being that. “Also thanks for the warning, because I was about to toss my electrified bolos at him.”

“Oh I get that a lot, just because I like being cute and endearingly friendly.” Sighed Fawn and wilted with the weight of her medical kits. “That would just charge him up and make him stronger if he’s actually anything like a real version of Megavolt.”

“Hey, I am the real Megavolt, are you even paying attention to me!” Megavolt be getting angry at us and turning red with rage as he lifted a pointing finger positively glowing with energy. “Well if you don’t want to listen to me then I’ll just get to the zapping!”

“Finally!” I threw my hooves up. “You are being both very insane and chatty!”

“Chatty?” His finger stopped glowing for a moment.

“Yes, you be going on about your washing machine for too long, what was even being the point of that!” It be exhausting just to listen to him speak even partially. “I don’t care if I be getting hurt, at least it would be being more entertaining than your story about a lost left sock!”

“Hey, you were paying attention!” He be seeming far too happy about that.

“Can I be beating him within an inch of his life?” There were being so many things about this guy that be annoying me.

“I don’t know, can you? Somehow I feel it’s warranted and that’s not usually a feeling I’m capable of.” Fawn be looking quite upset with herself for admitting to that. “It feels weird to want someone to come to harm, I mean one of my best friends is Fall-Apart Von Rabbit and he annoys people to no end and yet this guy tries my patience in barely a few minutes?”

“Oh come on, I can’t be that bad… oh right, I am!” He lit up his left hand and fired a blast of lightning our way, it being stopped simply by Gizmo Gal holding out her collapsible staff. “Uh…”

“I know you’re immune to electricity and raw lightning… but if I’m the same, then what does our fight boil down to exactly?” Gandra be looking bored as I did with this guy, he be really distracting and I swear Pom would be needing our help right about now. That not be something I can be forgetting very easily.

“Well I have an army of appliances to do my bidding!” Megavolt be saying with his hands raised in the air sending lightning everywhere and several metallic objects around the large cavernous room of the power station came to life.

“You know, I was expecting something a little more… dangerous… maybe? I mean I can’t exactly hurt you with my shock pistol in any other method than pistol whipping you with it, but I’m not exactly a great purveyor of violence or up to the task of doing so.” Fawn was being a rather peaceful being like Pom, but she still be here for us and if she is being anything like Pom then she would help however she could. “I mean the appliances are a bit interesting and that you can control them is kind of cool, but it’s not really threatening is it? I swear, if you weren’t about to kill a lot of people by redirecting the power away from the hospital, I wouldn’t even be able to take you as a serious threat. I wish Bonkers was here, he’d be handling this in his usual most ridiculous way possible… do you suppose Caper Canine and Leap Lamb are okay?”

“They will be being fine for another minute.” At least that would be as long as I give them to be either doing something really epic without me, which in that case I would be a very sad goat that I missed out, or they would be terrible danger and about to die when we’re here talking a boring villain into a coma.

“No seriously, what do you expect egg beaters, toasters and a microwave to do? The microwave wouldn’t work with it’ door open, the egg beaters are at best going to shoot off at us. I’m armored and Shanty can deflect, we can even be living shields for Ms. Deer and she can patch one of us up while the other protects us. There’s also the face that toast don’t have moving parts aside from internally and all they did was create overly burnt toast. We stalemate again.” Pointed out Gandra who was sitting in front of us doing something with her phone before putting it too her ear. “Hello… yeah… uh huh, found out what’s going on. He’s been captured and villains are running amuck in Saint Canard. No, no, I can save him on my own, but can you just hand Manny Apocalypse Manhorse the phone for a few seconds Mr. Gearloose? Yeah, I’m going to invoke that… we kind of need some backup even if it’s going to just be pure muscle and he doesn’t even need to pull on the magical apocalypse powers, not ready to doom the world yet… yeah you can feel the increasing urge to do so with the idiocy we have to deal with, but please resist that urge Gyro. Where am I calling from and why is there so much interference? A super villain took over a power station and apparently has control of all the network towers in the area… I just finished hacking into said network. Since it’s a villain’s network, this is a completely legal call. Thank you for agreeing, oh and Boyd is protecting a hospital. Apparently the nearby arboretum is on fire but that’s not his fault and there’s no local services active while the city is on lockdown by villainous jerks being all over the place. Yes, their hold of the city might actually be quite tenuous, now hand me over to Manny. Hey Manny, can I summon you, no I don’t need you to destroy anything. We just need you to go outside for a bit and help Leap Lamb and Caper Canine, they are probably in a bit of a bind with an army of moles. Aside from that the Terra-Firmians are already confirmed as coming to take out the mole army around the city if Leap Lamb and Caper Canine don’t do it first, they just need more time. ”

There was a bit a silence and we looked towards Megavolt.

“Why are you not interrupting her call?” I asked him casually, because apparently we not be fighting anytime today.

“Well that would be quite rude.” Megavolt, the yellow suited rat with the strange hat on his head, continued trying to urge his army of random appliances to attack us. It be almost as sad as Quackerjack, but at least he be making toy puppets that can fight by themselves. “Also I’m still trying to figure out a way to use a safety can opener in a lethal manner, I mean it leaves no sharp edges, it has no sharp edges and as far being a minion goes... it opens a can of food in record time at least. I mean I can use the edgeless lid as a magnetic railgun projectile, but that would be me doing it and not my minion. I could add spikes, but he’s quite insistent that he just opens cans and that the best he can do. He’s so very sensitive about not being able to be harm a fly, it’s kind of un-can-ny how unhelpful he is. So I’m actually kind of distracted here.”

“Kee-Oth Alpaca Pancake.” Gandra intoned while holding her arms out and bent upwards, before thrusting them forward towards her phone on the floor while saying the word ‘pancake’.

In a flash of fire a dark horsey being rose while neighing to the ceiling with flames jetting everywhere spooking Megavolt from trying to talk a can opener thing into fighting us somehow.

“I have been summoned again! Hey Gizmo Gal, hey hero goat Cut-Lass, hey police officer I don’t know.” The strange monster thing named Manny said with an upbeat and friendly tone after raising up in a dramatic fashion as he spread his large draconic wings out. “Nice to meet you, I’m Manny I’ll be here for the duration of what Gizmo Gal needs me for… also you owe me a pancake now Gizmo Gal.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good for it Manny.” Gandra insisted lazily. “Still don’t know why you need the assurance.”

“Hey there!” I be saying sweetly and waved at him, he waved back with a hoof.

“A blueberry pancake, I’ll also accept two strawberry waffles or three cinnamon toasts with excessive amounts of whipped cream and a cherry on each.” This Manny be nodding to us and then started looking for an exit as he stomped off to go help Pom and Dolly.

“That was weird.” Most would be thinking so Megavolt, but I just think it’s a day ending in ‘A’ and ‘Y’.

“Okay, back to the fight we’re supposed to be having… I could beat you around with my collapsible staff for a bit.” Was there being a quicker more painful solution Gandra? This has been nothing but him talking about odd pointless things.

“Wait a minute… you have devices in your body, I can feel them!” Megavolt grinned and started to hold his hand out towards Gandra, who froze up immediately.

“Shanty rip…!” She got out of her beak before she became still as a statue, she looked to be in great pain.

“Oh look, I have a hostage now! I’ve never gotten the upper hand so easily before… can’t recall the last time I did or even my past really… something is really quite off here, but I don’t care because I just got an I win button!” Megavolt grinned and with a flick of his hand Gandra swung her staff for us sparking with energy. Did he just be taking complete control of Gandra?! “What do you say to that, huh?! Not some simple villain now, am I! Surrender now or I will rip your friend apart from the inside… yeah that sounds about the right level of evil I should be applying here… right brighty?”

The lightbulb be flickering several times.

“Wait, so you could have stopped her phone call at any time and you just let that Manny guy walk out to fight your allies.” There was a long pause after Fawn asked that.

“Yeah… didn’t care about those guys anyway. Now attack my beautiful minion, with the blood of appliances running through your veins!” Yeah, this not be good and neither be Megavolt.

I be jumping up and pushing Fawn back as the staff swung around and for ys, but there was some resistance to it. Her other arm flicked out and she threw a lightning bolas at me, I be slashing through the chord with my right hoof swiftly before it could hurt me.

“You can’t find entertainment like this anywhere these day.” Commented Megavolt, as Gandra kept trying to smack me with her staff and I be dodging and rolling while drawing her off of Fawn who whimpered and backed away.

“Cut-Lass, I think she wanted you to hit him wi-eep!” Fawn be narrowly having her taken off by the sparking lightning covered staff Gandra be wielding at us. Megavolt also be firing several bolts of energy at her.

Gandra be saying rip… does she be meaning use my ‘riptide’ attack? I hopped back as Gandra brought left leg high in the air and tried to be stomping down on me with it.

“Cut-Lass, if you can find some water, Megavolt was proven to be quite weak to being hit with any fluid substance despite his powers!” Fawn quickly got out before ducking behind a pillar as Megavolt’s lightning struck it.

That was all I be needing to know, this fight was basically being over! Too soon in my opinion, but I not be letting Megavolt hurt Gandra further. She be fighting it to the best of her ability, I can tell.

“Riptide!” I slung my hooves together and blast of slightly salt water created from my sweat struck out at Megavolt and splashed him.

The results were being quite painful looking.

“What the, where did that water co-AGGHHHH!” Megavolt be convulsing quite a lot and he be getting quite still while being partially charged with arcs of energy. Thankfully, that be looking quite painful as he be getting badly scorched. Funny, it didn’t be smelling like cooked flesh though… I couldn’t quite figure out what that smell be exactly, but I be knowing Pom and Dolly be wanting a whiff of him.

Gandra flopped over and she be letting out a whine of clear agony as parts of her body started to bleed slightly.

“I now know what it feels like to be Lena Sabrewing when Magica was in charge of her body, also I am now mentally scarred for life by a villain that seemed so innocently bad at being evil a few seconds ago.” Don’t be thinking Gizmo Gal would be getting up from the floor anytime soon. “Note to self, never underestimate crazy people. Uhn…”

“Well my time to shine has arrived… I have two patients to check over, I’m prioritizing the one who can get the power flowing back the hospital!” Fawn be pulling off a medical kit and motioned me forward with her as she quickly stalked up to Gandra. “I would like your assistance with treating my patients Cut-Lass.”

“Well this be an anti-climactic fight.” Knowing he be scary powerful for sure, but since he be going down in one hit from my riptide attack… I lack the ability to feel afraid of Megavolt now. Provided I don’t have appliances in my blood or whatever it was that allowed him to control Gandra, those nanite things I guess?

“Those are usually the best ones, because no one gets grievously injured. Now help me move Gizmo Gal over to Megavolt so I can check them both one after the other.” Fawn stated as I moved up and started helping her drag a barely conscious Gandra. “Hold on and stay awake, we need you Gizmo Gal! We don’t know how to fix the things Megavolt did to the power station.”

I be looking around at all the crisscrossing wires and the various things that don’t be looking quite right.

“Yeah, we really be needing your expertise!” We started peeling her armor off so Fawn could have more access to other parts of her body.

“Give me a second... my nanites have just come back under my control… gods that was painful.” Gandra grunted. “Shows me to actually take any villain in another city seriously.”

“Where does it hurt most and how can we help you?” Fawn asked as she started arranging several things in her open kit.

“Accessing medical diagnostics…” Gandra muttered with a groan. “Darn, did a number on me… okay here’s what you need to do to stop the interference and reroute the power to being back to normal. You’re going to have to do the work for me.”

“I do not be liking the sound of that.” I not be trusting myself around this stuff.

“I’m not an electrician.” Fawn followed up.

“You are now if you want to save everyone in that hospital.” Gandra grumbled from her still position on the floor.

“People in a hospital need saving? Where do you need me!” We be seeing the local hero Neptunia stomp down on Megavolt’s face as she stepped over him. “Guy tried to fry me while he was busy distracting you, luckily some of my mutations involved electric eel. Though I am in dire need of water.”

“Riptide!” Be quite thirsty after this, but it be for a good cause. Be slowing my attack while swinging my hooves and she was hit with the softest blast of water I could manage.

“Ugh, thank you, wish there were more heroes around that could do that for me!” Neptunia said with her gills flaring and looking slightly healthier than she did a second ago wielding her trident. “Now has anyone seen my water pack? I kind of need that to operate on land for long periods of time and at most Cut-Lass just gave me ten minutes.”

-Outside, Dolly-

Momentum was not something I ever wanted to studied, even if it was a basis of one of my powers next to the whole flowing motion and aero thing, I wasn’t a science nerd like my brothers. All I knew was that I could give something extra speed or alter its direction once put into motion, that was all I really needed to know.

We were now currently having problems, even with Ms. Shuttle helping, we were almost hit by her attacks several times and she’s only managed to capture about twenty of the hundred moles currently trying to keep us pressured. Thankfully those twenty were ones that were armed with guns.

These guys could get underground faster than Dormarch can set a target for Ms. Shuttle, but we were still taking down their numbers one at a time in an agonizingly slow pace. The moles stayed around the sides and backs of the tanks making it hard for me to approach and sabotage, they were taking me seriously as a threat.

Kind of made me happy that I’m getting more recognition, what I’m not happy about is how Moliarty was trying to target Pom with the drill tanks drills while erupting from the street.

Moliarty was the most dangerous mole and he was armed with a bazooka that was apparently immune to chemical destruction as much as his goggles. When they were about to get in trouble, all the moles would dive into the ground after the drill tanks before Ms. Shuttle’s shots landed.

Moliarty is actually as smart as he thinks he is, unfortunately for him his militant moles weren’t as smart. I swung the rammed the garbage can, increasing the momentum to heft it up and throw it at a mole. Took out four this time, still sixty or more to go.

“Don’t exhaust yourself too badly Caper Canine, we need to stop those drill tanks somehow…” What did you think we were going to do? Pull some kind of powerful help out of our backsides Pom!

“Hey guys.” We turned and looked at Manny as a drilled erupted from the ground behind him, he held out a hand and caught the drill with no effort. The entire thing started sparking and sputtering wildly and his grip stayed steady. “Where’s the trouble?”

"You just stopped a major one Manny..." Pom said with a relieved sigh as the tank Moliarty retreated to popped up nearby.

196. De-Ville-ish Discovery.

-Ponyville, Apple Family Farm, Applejack-

Well things were going fairly well, or at least I’d like to think so. The economy was for the most part pretending to be alright, but it was only a stopgap method overall. If they asked me for fancy mathematics, I’d direct them right to my big brother Big Mac to figure something out.

Still the nations of the world working out something seems to be looking up on things, plus there’s news of the Storm Creatures vying for more open peaceful relations. It seems like the changelings are the first to attempt an open friendship. The Storm Creatures lands apparently had lots of sugar cane and changelings went nuts for gnawing on the stuff.

Might even be seeing a new batch of students at the friendship school soon, Twilight was still dithering on the two Storm Creatures that lived down in Airship Mauled. We’re also trying to open communications with the chimera, they were fairly secluded from the world aside from Bloody Maries.

“Well the news seems to be decent today Big Mac.” I opened the newspaper and started looking for any other interesting articles. “Although Rarity trying to settle textile based disputes between the lambkin and changelings isn’t going anywhere fast, goodness knows both people are stubborn like mules to one another… no offense.”

“None taken.” The mule at the window retrieved his pie and left with a grin on his face.

“Eyup.” Big Mac nodded afterwards.

“At least the alpacas are becoming welcome everywhere, provided they don’t accost someone without getting to know them first even if they are a first sight love case.” Looking over the newspaper I decided to ask the one other pony living in this house about things. “How you doing Sugar Belle?”

“Things are relatively okay I think, but Velvet certainly has gotten more upset that Arizona won’t beat the snot out of her and Paprika barely ever goes within thirty feet of them. At least our family is more together than that, but I think we’re being used as a crutch for their numerous problems.” Yeah that was a thing to be acknowledged Sugar, but what could we actually do to help the highly dysfunctional ‘Arid Paca’ family exactly? “Goodness knows why that dark unicorn Oleander needed a crate of fresh apple pies or what Pinkie was doing with her, oh and Pinkie has some kind of weird friendship mission that might take a few days? Someone will have to pick up her slack.”

“I’ve got that taken care of!” Cheese Sandwich was at the window, the guy was basically Pinkie’s other half and a fine stallion to boot. Like Maud Pie and Mud Briar, Pinkie and Cheese were two halves of a whole. Also for a guy who owns a joke factory, he was quite serious about making ponies happy. “So, how are things going Apple family? Any concrete proof that Pinkie is related as a cousin yet or were the newest documents smudged too?”

“Smudged.” I answered alongside Sugar Bell, Big Mac, Granny Smith and Applebloom with big grins. Greatest mystery of the world, are Pies and Apples related? I’m obligated to say yes.

I continued to peruse the recent paper at my leisure until… well if that don’t beat all, Jaded getting hornswoggled by four puppies! Looking at the picture that spoke a novels length of words, I started laughing.

-Earth, Saint Canard, Outside the Novelty Anvil Store, ????-

“No, not again!” After their outburst, the payoff from so much fine maneuvering came about.

Both Hotshot and Flygirl received anvils to their skulls, the resulting sounds the anvils made brought a faint smile to my beak.

I planted my fighting staff at my side and idly listened to them groan with their heads buried in the street. The red blindfold that covered my eyes hid my sight, but I could see almost everything. For I was Cold Shadow, Maui Mallards other side and I was done here. I reached up to the blindfold and pulled.

With a swirling vortex of magic I ripped away the red blindfold and disappeared into the ether and all that was left in my place was Maui catching the magically generated red blindfold as I looked on at him immaterial to this realm.

“Nice work Cold Shadow… are they still alive?” Despite the fact that the anvils landed on their heads and were crushing their skulls into the pavement, they would survive with splitting headaches at best. At worst their cracked skulls might relieve them of their powers or their cruelty. “That’s a relief, can you point me in the direction of Launchpad and Stegmutt now?”

Maui prepped his beetle blaster and was ready to seek out more danger, he did not use me lightly nor did he abuse the gift of being able to call upon my strength freely. Even if he did abuse my gifts slightly, I would not be upset with him.

Only if he fell completely to darkness would I ever look away from his light as his bound shadow.

I considered the whispers of things afoot among the many realms of pure darkness. The shadow copy of that sheep like entity, Pom I believe, was bringing light to where it shouldn’t feasibly survive and has instead become a thriving impossibility.

Apparently the shadow forged copy of Pom somehow received what should have been a dead heart from someone who had absolutely no use for it, yet it revitalized in the shade. They have become something strange all their own and new hearts that were forged from so little… for the power of six was created in the darkness by the very darkness itself.

Darkness in light and light in darkness, worlds continue to balance and sway upon the breeze of chaos.

We lived in very interesting times as our world watches the splendor of it all Maui.

-Saint Canard Power Station, Pom-

“What happened here?” Exhaustion might be getting to me, we have been running around the city a lot. It was a good thing the moles weren’t threatening and that the sun was shining on the city once again even as we were a little past noon. Dolly just walked alongside me and gave me a worried glance as our stomachs rumbled. “We really need to get something to eat soon if we’re going to have to do any more fighting.”

The limited amount of fighting I’ve done so far hasn’t really taken any heavy toll on me, but this was bound to be an all-day thing even if all the moles were going to be gone by the time we were done here with the power station.

“Apparently we be running into Megavolt or that be what he called himself at least. He be taking control of Gizmo Gal, but I be dealing with him swiftly… he is being really weak to water.” Shanty was running around and doing things I couldn’t fathom at the moment and I wasn’t about to ask as it seemed important. “Where does this be going?”

“The one on the left Cut-Lass…” A weak sounding Gandra was on the floor and covered in bloody bandages and looked quite deathly pale. She turned her head to me and winced. “Lightning guy next to me took control of me. Didn’t know he could control machines, he got the ones in my body… caused some serious internal problems for me. I should be okay… after a while… how did things go outside?”

“Backup arrived in a timely manner, we didn’t receive more than a few scuffs and the moles are dealt with one way or another. If the sun wasn’t disabling enough to them, then the Terra-Firmians arriving certainly were.” I took up the PET from the back of my head and swept it around. “Have you finished rerouting the power?”

“Yes, we’re working on the communications blocking Megavolt was doing here and are currently fixing several other problems. I’m the electrical expert here and I need to be here to fix this… I also need a hospital after having my body partially ripped apart from the inside.” Poor Gandra, she came here from Duckberg to help and look for her boyfriend, then she gets controlled by some villain and badly hurt.

“Can I investigate… is that guy even alive?” I asked of the charred body next to Gandra.

“He be breathing, but there is being something unusual about that.” Shanty moving something else.

“And that would be?” I asked idly, things in here seemed okay.

“That he doesn’t have a heartbeat…” Dormarch stated in confusion. “Biologically he is reading as alive to me, but he doesn’t have a pulse… which is odd for an electricity based super villain. You think he would have a pulse.”

“What?” Both Dolly and I asked at the same time, equally confused by the news at the body that seemed to be breathing to us.

“I can confirm that the body appears to be breathing, but it doesn’t have a heartbeat.” Fawn would know as she’s the medical expert here. “It’s quite disturbing really. If you can figure out why the body is like that, it would be greatly appreciated. ”

Moving over crispy burnt body that seemed to be breathing with Dolly, I reached down with a hoof and started wiping away the charred portions from the guy’s face and then took a strong sniff. I immediately reeled back as if slapped.

“Agh…” My nose was assaulted with a strong particularly strong and familiar smell, Dolly glanced at me and then took a long sniff with her own nose.

“Oh my dog…” Dolly reeled back and was holding her nose. “Well that scent is very familiar for us isn’t it Pom? Though smelling it close up and personal like that was extremely unpleasant.”

Yes, yes it was Dolly, even if we didn’t smell it quite so directly like this the last time we ran across it. Now my suspicions of magic being in play were a certainty… now if only I knew more about magic to know exactly what I was dealing with here.

I could call Lena, but she was probably currently busy with the Jambalaya gang. We had plenty of time to meet up if nothing goes wrong and there was always a strong possibility of it.

“Dormarch are you picking up anything odd about the body with your sensors, aside from the lack of heartbeat?” I held Dormarch over the body, I was making absolutely sure of everything about what was going on here.

“Organs in the right place, odd level of brain activity, but not abnormal. It all looks normal to the scanners aside from the lack of heartbeat and the fact that the guy is still breathing being an impossibility in this case.” Well that could confirm some of the things that I thought I knew already.

“There’s also this other bit of smell… it’s faint, but it almost smells like… no… no way, it couldn’t be!” Dolly sniff and reeled back holding her nose. “Call the ‘fam’ and ask for Spot!”

“What’s got Caper Canine riled up?” Looking to Fawn as she finished fixing something according to Gandra’s directions, I thought about what to say.

“She smelled something quite off about this guy.” She smelled something I wasn’t familiar with. Since she could recognize the smell, we might have a problem here. “I’m going to find out what has her so agitated.”

It wasn’t long before we got an answer on the PET, it was Dolly’s step mother Delilah.

“Hello, is this a social call? It’s quite terribly late and I’ve just got off a long day of work.” The Dalmatian on the screen yawned. “Can whatever it is wait?”

“I’ve run across the smell of a 'De Ville' mom, and not the good kind either.” Midday here, late night there, after Dolly spoke Delilah looked far less sleepy and much more focused and awake.

“Are you sure of this Dolly?” Delilah suddenly looked quite worried for our safety, with more of a focus on her step daughter. I understood a mother’s prerogative, even if Delilah wasn’t Dolly’s birth mother.

“Oh yeah, I remember that smell from the vial you have of Cruella De Ville’s odor, this smell is very much one for one almost. Get Spot, she might be able to help us out with this as she knows more about De Ville’s than we do… she’s practically a veteran at dealing with them.” Good idea Dolly. If this was a De Ville as you say it is, then we needed the current living expert on them. “We’re safe for the time being mom, even in a city full of thugs it’s relatively quiet here. Pom and I are going to save the day… whatever way it need saving.”

“I’ll do so right away. Spot, I know you’re busy cleaning, but we may have a De Ville emergency on our paws!” Delilah was not trying to be too loud and the chicken soon was immediately on screen with Delilah, she had come running.

“Did you see the De Ville personally?” The first question out of Spot’s beak was hurried.

“No, smelled her thought, I know she’s female at least and it’s definitely one for one to Cruella almost.” Dolly was getting very antsy and shifty as she looked around and whined, I calmly placed a hoof on her back.

“Okay that immediately rules out PH, Dimsdale and Cecil De Ville. Of them, two are still alive and have had families that Dalmatians wouldn’t want to go anywhere near. Is the smell younger or older? I pray that you didn’t run into one of the immortals.” The what?! Those words from Spot made Dolly freeze in place. “Don’t worry, they can be defeated as long as you keep your head about you around them, also you might need the help of a chicken… any chicken really! Dalmatians are good against De Ville’s, but chickens are even better if magic is involved. Cats can also do some things, but the success varies depending on if they are shamanistic felines or not.”

“Well there’s The Rubber Chicken, a biped super hero who’s being held captive somewhere.” If I had to guess as to Rubber Chicken’s whereabouts, I’m pretty sure he’s held captive wherever Negaduck currently is. “We… don’t know his current location.”

“I have a good idea that he’s being held captive out of the way precisely because he’s a chicken and a major threat to the De Ville present in your area. Chickens like me are basically immune to De Ville’s when they are capable of doing magic.” As Spot looked to be wracking her brain, Dolly came back from sniffing the guy we’re tentatively calling ‘Megavolt’.

“Old, but also… young? It’s a strange the smell is kind of in two places, like she’s old, but… I’m guessing that this De Ville has never aged?” As confused as Dolly look she shook her head. “Maybe… no… wait, yes, I’m quite sure that’s what it is.”

“Rules out Malevola De Vil who is older than dirt and Ivy De Ville who is aging normally, one is almost permanently sealed quasi-immortal and the other… hopefully has never had children and is currently in a mental health ward for a split personality disorder. Said personality is decidedly pure evil attached to what is supposed to be one of the rare good De Ville’s, if anyone was wondering why Hunter doesn’t have anyone looking out for him even the good De Ville’s have nasty problems. I’m pretty sure the both of them are indisposed...” There is this uneasy sense of dread building here Spot, give us some good news. “You might be dealing with a De Ville I don’t know about personally… or even a De Ville I thought I had defeated previously.”

“When you say defeated…” Delilah looked a bit sick to her stomach.

“I have never killed a De Ville, but some do get sealed away and they can escape confinement from time to time. They can have a tenacity worse than most living things on this planet… and sometimes things that are not entirely of this world.” Now Spot started pacing around Delilah. “Dimsdale De Ville is still active in a time warping location, hopefully I’ll be around to deal with that when that comes up again. Might need to take a few weeks off from running the Bark Brigade out of the house to make sure they never come after the family. Anyway… is there anything else that you could use to help identify the possible De Ville you’re dealing with?”

“Well… there is one thing, there’s this odd overpowering scent of blood.” Slowly started Dolly looking unsure if she wanted to continue this line of thought.

“We’ve smelt this odd smell twice from two different bodies, it comes from bodies of people that don’t exist in this world naturally.” I was trying to figure out what else was part of the smell, it was really quite noxious.

“Yeah, that smell of blood is strong and nasty, don’t know how bloodhounds can handle that going up their nose all the time.” Laying on my back while looking at the screen, Dolly propped her up chin with her right paw and scratched at the top of her head with her left. “That smell is almost overpowering the De Ville smell, which is more subtle than it should be.”

“Oh no… be very careful whatever you do, you’re currently dealing with a De Ville that knows blood magic.” Staring us down through the PET, Spot eyes were narrowed. “Blood Magic is exceedingly dangerous, especially when it’s done right and in the hands of a De Ville.”

“Are you implying there’s good blood magic?” Delilah asked, probably out of curiosity given she works in a hospital as a nurse dog.

“Good blood magic does not need any blood to be spilled, only the user in this instance can only ever use their own blood to empower a given spell and never that of another forcibly taken. It can also be part of something called family magic, such magic can even come from strong familial bonds alone. You only need for everyone to be blood in name and quite literally mean it with all your heart, the Dalmatian family has always had plenty of that magic as something naturally occurring. It’s nice to know that Dalmatians still love so easily.” Turning back to us Spot continued. “If you’re being heavily distracted, then assume some form of trap or powerful blood ritual is being set up somewhere you’re not looking. I’m advising serious caution and to look out for strange patterns or markings in your surroundings… do not stand inside any circle you can visibly see.

“Do you have any idea as to who we are dealing with? Is it possible for them to make golems like this that can breathe, but don’t have a heartbeat?” I showed Spot the body of the so called ‘Megavolt’ and she hummed.

“No, if anything De Ville’s don’t usually create. They usually imitate, destroy, lie, cheat, steal and a whole slew of other nasty things… but create? That body you’re seeing has got to be an imitation in some form, maybe good enough to believe that it is alive or is actually alive in some way, but it is definitely not something natural and not something Blood magic is normally capable of.” That earned our attentions Spot. "Blood magic can do things like illusions, manipulate reality to a certain degree and the like, but creating something like that without a prohibitively large cost? Not possible, there has to be some huge price for that guy’s existence.”

“He’s apparently a super villain named Megavolt from the Darkwing Duck show, capable of controlling energy and any devices that have energy flowing through them.” That’s what we knew of Megavolt at least.

“He actually has the powers he’s said to have in the fiction? Definitely some form of imitation. Never quite as capable as the real thing, but still very dangerous. There’s only one De Ville I can think of that might be capable of this, but she’s been long since dead and I’ve never actually dealt with them personally so you might be fighting them blind.” That wasn’t very comforting Spot. “Athena De Ville might be your problem.”

“Let Pom die Dolly, things will be much better off if you do!” A frantic Dante Dalmatian burst into view shouting that and spooking both of us, he looked quite panicked. “I can’t explain myself right now, but do not help her when she gets into danger until she dies. You’ll understand why I’m telling you this when the time comes, everything will turn out better for it! Trust me on this sis, please! Pom give Dormarch to Shanty before you do business, especially with the reaper!”

A second later the two Dalmatians and chicken disappeared from view.

“Call… disconnected…” The visage of Dormarch looked a bit shaken a second later, I looked to Dolly and she looked back to me.

“You know I really wouldn’t let you die right? Not even if Dante says it will somehow make things better…” Dolly looked up at me quite visibly upset, but then again Dante was able to predict the future with a fair bit of accuracy. At what point does he see me dying as being a good thing really?

I’m kind of terrified now. I knew Dolly would do everything in her power to protect me, but that was a strange thing to hear from someone so nice since we first met. So why was Dante asking his sister to not help me and wanting me to die? Why did he ask me to give Dormarch to Shanty?

“Fawn, can you contact Jitters at the hospital? I need to confirm something.” Maybe Dante wasn’t telling us the whole story because the actions we might take to prevent things from happening the way he sees it. I turned to look at Dolly. “When the time comes… do as Dante says, don’t help me.”

“What, but, Pom I’m not abandoning you, I came all this way to protect your backside and…” You had a right to be angry Dolly, but I was going to put my hoof down on this.

“Keep your connection to me open, but don’t help me until I die like Dante said to do.” The look Dolly had on her face was that of betrayal.

“What… why?!” Did Dolly not trust her brother, I certainly did.

“I trust our family.” Looking like I slapped her with my hoof, Dolly blinked wildly at me and frowned before hugging me tightly.

“Just so you know, I’m not happy about this Pom!” It had to happen Dolly.

I might have an inkling of something, but I might not know until after I’m dead.

-One meal and a bathroom break later, Dolly-

Shanty was holding onto Dormarch and made sure to keep a hold of him. Shanty looked to me as I whispered something to her and Dormarch translated my words carefully.

Shanty nodded and we both looked to Pom sadly, this was going to be hard to watch happen.

“Come on Cut-Lass, Caper Canine, let’s go!” We were heading towards a jewelry store heist in progress by Steel Beak. “We’re going to all be heroes by the end of this day.”

Yeah, heroes… it was so hard to love Pom right now.

It was going to be painful for all us to watch her die and not do anything to stop that assassin guy from finally getting the kill he was being paid for. Having to keep a steel trap on my heart for the time being was excrutiating, if necessary.

I absolutely hated it, but after all was said and done Negaduck... we're getting the last laugh!

197. Target... Eliminated.

Author's Note

Warning: Minor gore warning and character death scene.

Scene is marked with "-!-"

197. Target... Eliminated.

-Equus, Canterlot, Twilight Sparkle-

“It is to my sincere and rather severe disappointment that we have nothing to keep you imprisoned with, we can’t actually pin a crime on you… in fact if you were willing to press charges you can pin a crime on Spitfire the Wonder Bolt’s Captain. It’s a good thing you aren’t.” I stated as we let Jaded go after an overnight stay after Pom’s Puppies captured Jaded La Perm. We couldn’t jail the puppies for causing a public disturbance as they were becoming ridiculously popular around Canterlot and there would be riots for trying. Unfortunately there wasn’t a crime we could convict Jaded for and she was calling diplomatic immunity, plus she couldn’t be imprisoned for causing a disturbance because the puppies were the ones to actually start it. “I almost want to say you’re the worst friend I’ve ever had, but Discord beats you out by a mile…. he’s still a friend though.”

“Oh I like you too Twilight! Also you very well know that you can’t keep Airship Mauled’s chaos magnet away from her family and friends for too long.” I’m not surprised in the slightest that you’d call Jaded that Discord. “Why the chaos that would cause.”

-Earth, Saint Canard, Streets, Tobias Rieper-

“Hand over your money!” The random thugs that were out in broad daylight now that the moles were dealt with were quite a sad state of affairs, I had a schedule to keep and a strong sheep like entity to kill. The ones I was staring down in particular were weasels.

“I will assure you now, that the ten of you made a huge mistake of accosting me.” I stated before strolling forward. “I however will not feel sorry for what I’m about to do.”

-Exactly one minute later-

Ten thugs out cold and all I had to do was adjust my tie afterwards, back to preparing my target for an unfortunate accident.

I had to finish my job to get paid after all. I was going to draw her to Saint Canard’s park.

I pulled out my phone and made the call.

“Hello… Ocellus I believe?” My tone made her gasp.

“How did you… where did you get the ability to contact this place?!” Oh don’t you worry about that Ocellus, I wasn’t after you. “Who are you and how do you know my name?”

“Doesn’t matter, I just wanted to tell you that the reaper comes for your friend Leap Lamb.” Call it professional courtesy if you will, to give them prior warning. The last few times were testing her limits. A load of bricks couldn’t hurt her and a wrecking ball going full speed was too slow. “She will come to Saint Canard’s park one way or another.”

-Different set of streets, Shanty-

The moles be being wiped out entirely, we not be seeing a single one once we be setting out to find Steel Beak. There were still the small Egghead groups running around and random street thugs now that the moles were gone.

They be less than threatening compared to the Eggheads or mole army. We be knocking a few of them around, but they weren’t a threat so much as a mild problem.

Dolly be taking things slow and I be wondering how it will happen. It be upsetting for sure, but I be a big girl and could take care of myself with Dolly and Dormarch watching over me until things come to past.

We be a bit late getting to the jewelry store, all the valuables be being stolen. Not that I wouldn’t be minding some treasure to plunder myself, but that be someone’s livelihood that just be going down the drain.

“Guys, Bushroot has been confirmed as being at Saint Canard Park. Megavolt like Liquidator is now a captive, Fawn and Gandra made it back to the hospital okay thanks to Fall-Apart… though I wouldn’t trust that guy to drive a vehicle normally when his body parts keep falling off like they do. No sign of Quackerjack or what he’s doing since he ran, he’s still laying low.” Isn’t Bushroot being the same one that be giving Gosalyn, Drake and Honker trouble? Well if Dolly be needing confirmation on what we found out about an hour ago… “Also our contact has received a call from Agent 47, he’s inevitably going to do something there.”

“That’s where we’re heading next right? Not like we have much better to do here.” Pom looked about for trouble and then we set off at a quick pace for Saint Canard’s park. “We still don’t have any ideas on Negaduck’s whereabouts.”

-Saint Canard Local Park, Tobias Rieper-

“Look the only reason why I’m bothering you is because you’re the only other person here, people start fleeing the park the moment they saw me. Kind of understandable… I do terrorize people regularly.” Looking at the one called Bushroot, I can tell that the plant duck was going to be trouble. “I’m kind of lonely here, besides you’re working for Negaduck at the moment right? So why can’t we both talk to pass the time.”

I glanced at Bushroot as I worked on my trap, his lower torso was made of brown roots and his torso and head were green with what looked like a flower of purple bushy hair like leaves on his head. His arms were of a lighter shade of green, vine like in appearance leading to leaf like hands ending in pointy leafy digits.

Bushroot would be a good bait and set up for the trap as a whole. If Leap Lamb has heightened senses, then disorienting her before killing her off will be a simple task.

Stuffing him in a solid metal box with weed killer and flamethrowers is what I would suggest for Bushroot, but I’m not being paid to kill someone for free no matter how annoying.

“No.” I said sternly.

“So all I have to do is lead them to the fountain? Probably the best place for a fight for me, plenty of water and sunlight to work with. Not the mention the grass… not a lot of plants around the fountain though.” Bushroot was thinking ahead at least, can’t really ask for much more.

“I’m sure you’ll think of something, I’m going to get into position now.” I walked away from the plant duck biological nightmare, hopefully I would never be required to get his DNA for a genetically modified clone that could survive off sunlight. I would in fact be the one to kill anyone who tried, we do not need daylight assassins that will not tire out as long as the sun is up.

“Uh… okay I guess.” Whatever this Bushroot was, he was going to be useful at least. “Well things didn’t go so well at the arboretum, so maybe they’ll go better here?”

-Shanty-

If I had to choose between Saint Canard’s park and Duckbergs, I be liking Duckberg’s before most of it is being run over with an APC, Gi-ants and flying sharks. Also Pom was being part of that destruction by igniting a portion of it by lighting herself on fire, it be necessary at the time according to Pom.

We be at the edge of the park.

“Hey there, come and get me!” Was that being a giant talking flower with a duck’s beak impaled on it? He be running off, but he not be doing anything to warrant us attacking him.

“Well… okay then.” Pom stated before giving chase, I just be shaking my head and looking to Dolly.

Dolly be a smart dog, one of the smartest ones I’ve ever be meeting and since she can communicate with me through Dormarch. She be letting me know she’d be at my side for the foreseeable future and why she wouldn’t be by Pom’s side, why we’re about to do what we were going to.

It all be scary to think about, at least I be having two good friends at my side and a brave heart. This was going to be being very hard to watch.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay with seeing this? I be seeing death at a far younger age.” There are a number of things I will cherish in my memories, Pom being one of them.

Dolly just looked at me and stood tall and looked ready to protect me, she gave two sharp yips and tilted her head towards the park.

We both took off and I be taking Dormarch from my bandana between my horns.

“I have to be asking, what is it like being a machine for you?” I be curious about Dodo, he be many things a machine is not.

“Technically I’m not a machine, I’m an entity living inside a machine. Though it wouldn’t be wrong to say that my life is tied to what makes more complex machines work. Machines with intelligence likely can’t feel pain or anything physically, there’s not much sensation to being mechanical.” As Dormarch spoke we approached Bushroot and Pom facing each other. Bushroot be having several large potatoes that be walking on their roots and Pom be crouching down ready to leap into a fight. “I on the other hand can feel sensations like any living being, however I’m very much limited to what I can feel. Emotional satisfaction is important when you’re leashed to one device.”

“So what exactly is your evil plan after the whole burning down the Arboretum thing?” Pom asked as we approached.

“That was an accident I’ll have you know! Also, I really didn’t think that far ahead, I’m just going with the flow and decided to create some potato minions, very easy to make… tend to grow out control though.” The potatoes be half the size of who we’re assuming to be Bushroot. The potatoes be having fangs and little legs and thorny limbs, for monsters they be looking lazily made. “Thankfully this batch turned out to be controllable and I have five decent potatoes versus your dog, a goat and whatever that device she’s holding is all about. In any case I plan to take over the whole park and make it my personal garden that nobody can come into except who I allow personally!”

“I think I like those odds.” Plainly stated Pom. “Also… you... fiend? I think this is one of those cases where the threat is actually more helpful than evil. I mean you can make the park absolutely beautiful, but then again people won’t be able to enjoy the park themselves… so I guess that’s still relatively evil even if you’d be helping the city overall. You could be a pretty good groundskeeper if you actually put your mind to it.”

“Yeah, but looking like I do doesn’t make me any friends, besides you’re the hero and we have to fight so… yeah.” Bushroot rubbed at the back of his neck while looking away. Dolly be making her way up to Bushroot and sniffing him once, she reeled back and held her nose with her left paw. “Hey, no, I’m not getting dogged again, potato minions attack!”

Dolly immediately darted back for me and not for Pom who laid into the first potato minion with a hoof while sticking to all fours.

“Well that’s all the reason a hero like me needs to fight I guess!” Pom be quickly bucking the next potato minion and rolling away to swing her hind legs into a sweeping trip strike.

We be standing off to the side watching this and not helping her, she had it handled. Looking to Dolly, she looked back to me and nodded with a grim look on her face.

“That be confirming it then?” I asked Dormarch as Pom busy mashing some potatoes with Bushroot trying to coach them into something approaching formidable… it was being quite laughable.

Dolly said something to Dormarch and he be looking troubled on the screen his three fish tails be shaking agitatedly, body language is being easier than verbal if you are good at watching others carefully. Technology was of interest to me, especially the kinds you can interact with and Dormarch be a curious thing. Though I kind of want to be seeing him manifest like he says he can. Just because he can do so, it does not mean that he ever will.

“Dolly says Bushroot matches the profile, De Ville involvement is confirmed to be a major problem we need to deal with.” Dormarch then pointed upwards on the screen. “Heads up Cut-Lass, she is almost done making mashed potatoes. One actually decided that attacking us was a better idea.”

Looking up from the screen I saw one potato monster running at us full tilt. It… was less than threatening then it sounded once you think about it. I put Dormarch up and then lunged forward past the potato with a blindingly fast swipe of my hoof as Pom continued to mash the other four into a fine paste, she would likely do so until the mash stopped twitching.

I turned back to the potato as it turned to be growling, it then stop and its mouth made an ‘O’ shape as the top of its head be separating from the rest of it. Then the upper half and lower half be growing their missing parts only smaller.

Dolly grinned and then leapt to bring the top of her board down on one of the two smaller potato monsters splattering them everywhere. I be spin bucking the other one into a tree where it too splattered violently.

Dolly and I be turning to Bushroot who was backing away slowly with his leafy appendages held up as Pom approached him.

“Excuse me, I might need to go make some more minions!” Bushroot turned and started running.

“After him, we need to stop him from terrorizing kids into never eating vegetables again!” That be the most ridiculous thing I think I ever be hearing come out of Pom’s mouth. Why wouldn’t I eat vegetables? That is being like sixty percent of my diet, the other forty is rum... slowly working that up to fifty percent.

We didn’t follow after Pom immediately.

“Dormarch can you ask Ocellus if Dodo’s egg be okay?” I be looking down to Dolly who be waiting patiently at my side, but she still be tapping her paw in an annoyed manner that she wanted to watch what Bushroot and Pom would do.

“On it, I might even hold a conversation with her while we’re doing this thing, you can talk to her directly you know…” Be knowing that Dormarch, but I’d rather be focused on the situation.

“I need to focus on the here and now.” Putting Dormarch away again, I looked to Dolly. “Let’s go.”

We started heading in the direction that Bushroot and Pom were last seen running. By the time we be seeing Pom, she was fighting on the paved pathway. The things she was fighting? Two blueberry bushes.

I heard Dolly barking something at my side and I then waited for Dormarch to translate.

“She says to hold back and to not help, Pom trusts Dante Dalmatian to be accurate and she hopes that things will turn out how they might be projected to.” Though I can understand why Pom be having to die, it was still a bit weird to hear that we’d have to be there to witness it personally and would be reporting her death personally to everyone. “As you can tell, Dolly is not exactly the most patient dog around, but in this case she’s making an exception because the situation warrants she actually be patient and thinks things through.”

I do not be liking death all too much, but I be a witnessing enough to it to know that life is being very fragile.

Pom having dealt with the bushes through mangling them with raw brute force, instead of anything approaching an elegant fighting style, she started to fight Bushroot. It be sad when the bad guy doesn’t know how to fight without using their abilities, even I can be fighting without my magical abilities.

Is it weird that I want a bad guy that I can root for? Bushroot be seeming more like a sad guy than a bad guy.

Dolly yipped something.

“We should approach now, but don’t make any moves to assist Pom even if it seems like she really needs it. Remember what’s happening here and why we’re staying back like this.” Dormarch be saying from behind my ears. “That’s what Dolly said… but I’m paraphrasing because Dolly has a cheeky way of putting things sometimes.”

Blowing a raspberry in the direction of Dormarch, Dolly rolled her eyes and motioned me forward with a paw. We started moving forward, wary of any plants moving in the general vicinity and Dolly be having a paw on her skateboard as we approached the two.

After what be happening to Gandra, we shouldn’t take anything ‘De Ville’ related lightly.

Pom be handling Bushroot his flank rather well, she not be really needing our help with this as Bushroot be fighting with slaps versus Pom who be dodging and landing solid, rather painful sounding, hits.

“Look, can we talk about this Leap Lamb?” Bushroot be cowering away from Pom his arms splashing in the water as he quickly backed away from Pom. “Haven’t you beaten me enough? My petals are wilting badly here.”

“Are you willing to come quietly?” Pom asked with an air of authority that she didn’t quite have.

“Yes, yes I am, just please stop!” Bushroot clapped his hands above his head and bowed forward as he cowered. “Vegetables can bruise easily and I’m no different.”

Bushroot be looking about the fountain while whimpering, probably for a way out of this. I be looking up at the statue and blinking at something I think I saw that was being quite out of place. The statue be of an animal horse, being ridden by… a biped horse wielding a metal spear, I be wondering what the story behind the statue was considering the largest population of this world consists of duck bipeds.

We be slowly approaching the fountain.

“Cut-Lass cover your ears, Caper Canine block both your sights with the board, now!” Reacting to Dormarch’s sudden shout of panic with incredible speed, Dolly hopped onto my back and held her board in front of us horizontally. I be putting my hooves up to my ears wondering what was about to happen.

A blinding flash occurred that was blocked by Dolly’s board being held up in front of us. The noise was loud and disorienting, but thankfully we avoided the most of it.

“Someone fired a stun grenade from a grenade launcher, somewhere near the edges of the park on a parabolic arc towards Pom.” Dormarch’s voice be sounding muffled, but I be hearing enough of it. Dolly looked disoriented clutching at her helmeted head.

Pulling away the board we saw that Pom was dazed and had flopped onto her belly in the fountain and Bushroot was out of it and moving to some bushes nearby while carefully watching as small explosions happened around the base of the statue of the reared back horse being ridden by a horse.

I be feeling a strong urge to rush forward and ram right into the statue so it didn’t fall forward, but then I felt Dolly putting her left paw to my chest to hold me in place. Dolly actively continued to hold her board defensively towards Bushroot.

What I witnessed next would be in my nightmares for years to come…

-!-

The dazed and stunned Pom trying to stand up in a pool of water, the statue be toppling forward really fast and then… Dolly, Dormarch and I be witnessing a gruesome scene.

We could have been saving Pom from this, but we didn’t move to save or help her. It be very sad, but we all be knowing that it be completely necessary.

The spear rammed into Pom’s back next to her spine, the spear ripped its way out of her chest below where her heart was being in a splatter of flesh and blood. The large hole ripped in her body made way for some of her organs to dribble out slightly.

Wide eyed, Pom’s hooves went to the spear that be piercing through her chest, slowly her gaze drifted our way. They turned just to look at us standing here as the life in those vibrant big blue eyes were dying, she struggled a bit and she saw that we weren’t coming to her side to help her with the heavy statue… that we weren’t going to help her at all and we weren’t going to try.

The look in her eyes became slightly accusing and quite saddened as they slowly closed and her body started going limp on the spear, the fountain water be turning an ugly red color as her body slowly slid down the spear and partially into the water.

“Rigor mortis will set in soon.” Dormarch be interrupting our staring to state that fact calmly despite the grisly sight of Pom being impaled before us.

If this is what betrayal feels like, then I would make sure to make a crew based on love and trust so that mutiny like this never happens.

I be hearing a sniffle at my side and I be looking to Dolly who was crying a bit, I felt some tears come to my eyes too.

This was not a sight I ever wanted to be seeing, at least I not be witness to this alone.

“Sending confirmation, Leap Lamb has died fighting Bushroot. Cause of death was definitely by a third party, she was hit with a stun grenade fired from a distance, once stunned a few well-placed explosives knocked a statue over onto her.” The way Dormarch was saying this without an emotion was heartbreaking. “The statue's spear pierced next her spine from behind at an angle below the withers destroying her left lung, the damage ripped a portion of her belly open and some of her organs are peaking out. She swiftly bled out, the central fountain in Saint Canard’s park is now currently running red. She will be missed…. Ocellus broadcast this news to all local heroes on open frequencies.”

-!-

-Tobias Rieper-

I felt somewhat empty after that, like something was missing now.

I had succeeded and even got a recording of confirmation of death as well as a picture that I had succeeded in my mission.

“Target Eliminated, Leap Lamb is no more. Sending two sources of confirmation now.” Mine and that of the communications between wherever Darkwing’s lair is, I’m not being paid to out the location and Negaduck was not asking for it.

“Hehahahhahhaa, now you see Neyla, that’s how you do it right Sabu Taj!” Negaduck was laughing as soon as he received the picture, he was taking a twisted pleasure from the sight. Not all of my kills were worthy of what was coming to them, but it is what I do. “Good Job Agent 47, sending you the money now and confirming payment for a good job. Thanks for the picture by the way, nice touch, I’ll hang this on my wall and will always remember how painful that death must have been. Now go away and do whatever you want, I have big plans in the work for this evening and it’ll take a while before anyone is in a position to stop me. So be a good little assassin and get out of my way.”

Confirming that the money was put into my account, I took one last look at my victim and then disappeared into the bright streets of Saint Canard leaving behind another in my long list of bodies feeling something vaguely like regret.

198. Dangerous Deception.

-Saint Canard Park, Bushroot-

I slowly moved towards the fountain and I looked into the water at the unmoving body, I hesitantly reached out with a leafy hand and touched it gently. Cold to the touch… I looked after the direction that Caper Canine and Cut-Lass ran off in.

Why didn’t they seem to care about their friend dying, why did they watch it, cry and then seem to gather themselves before running off?

Something wasn’t quite right, like how my powers weren’t working correctly and I couldn’t quite put my mind on why.

…

Maybe they knew what the problem was and that’s what they were going to stop?

…

I had to follow them.

Moving forwards slightly, I paused for a second in contemplation and looked back. One last look at the unmoving gangly legged form in the fountain, before setting off to find out what was going on.

-Saint Canard Rooftops, Shanty-

“Are you sure that leaving Bushroot behind is being a good idea?” I be clamping my hooves onto the skateboard as Dolly directed us across the rooftops, when we launched we flew high and far.

Nobody be looking up to see us and Ocellus is running the story that we’ve gone quiet. Couldn’t be further from the truth, we were pulling off a counterplan and we could only hope that this ‘De Ville’ wasn’t being too smart.

“I could detect him nearby, he had similar emotional reactions to you at seeing Pom die in front of him… that was quite unpleasant for me too.” At least Dormarch still has his mind on our current goal.

“So how much time do you think we be having?” Despite asking this I be knowing not nearly enough.

“We should have enough. Thanks to Gandra, communications are no longer being interfered with or listened in on unless we want them to listen in on us. The power stations slapdash repairs went pretty well considering our expert is currently quite incapable of moving.” At least Dormarch seemed alright, compared to Dolly and me. We hit a sloped roof top and shot high into the air to look over the gleaming city of Saint Canard in the sun as we started gliding towards where we needed to be. “Ocellus will hopefully keep playing along until we can get Negaduck’s location from the ‘De Ville’. All we can hope is that the De Ville doesn’t try to contact Negaduck before we get to her. Unfortunately we don’t have a chicken, but we’ll have to make do with Dolly.”

Dolly barked several times with a few yips and growl as she steered us for a nearby rooftop and be grinding us along its edge.

“Dolly really wants to take this De Ville down, she failed to help her family much during a previous ‘De Ville’ incursion by Cruella and this one has definitely earned our ire.” Goodness knows that nobody would want her angry at them Dormarch, Dolly was being a rather powerful dog after spending only so much time with Pom.

Dolly landed us on a rooftop and we went skidding sideways before coming to a stop, Dolly motioned me back and I stepped off the board. She kicked it up as she hopped off and took it up with her right paw.

We made our way over to the edge of the rooftop and Dolly started getting her bearings for which way we needed to go. She suddenly snapped her head to the left and stared at a very specific location.

“That be the direction to the place?” We had to do this alone. If we asked anyone for help, then Negaduck might be alerted to what we have done by noticing something off about the movements of things in the city.

Ocellus and Smolder are the only other ones that are in know of the plan that has been set in motion. Dolly and I had to do this in time or else we could lose a great opportunity, among other highly important things.

“Hey, wait for me, I can help you!” We both jumped at the sudden sound of laughter following the cheerful voice and the ever strangely dressed Quackerjack came skidding up to us on a pair of roller skates.

He stopped right next to us and then didn’t be so much as twitch a muscle aggressively near us.

“And why should we be trusting you?” I said as I tapped my right hoof, readying it to slice into him if he be attacking. We needed to get to where the De Ville was and be taking her down before the situation in the city devolved into more distractions for Negaduck to hide behind.

At least the main cause of said distractions didn’t be knowing we knew exactly where to be finding her and why we knew how to be finding her in the first place.

“Because Mr. Banana Brain figured it all out… and he knows what you’re currently getting up to and… and I… I just want to help.” Quackerjack wilted and looked away with his arms crossed. “I’m just another one of her aberrations right? Doesn’t take an idiot like me to figure that out after it was pointed out that I couldn’t remember too far back to where I come from exactly. She probably shouldn’t have given me Quackerjack’s ability to think crazy, I don’t think she can even control me or the others of the fearsome four from the Darkwing Duck series. I don’t exactly know who this ‘she’ exactly is, but I do know that I can help you beat her!”

“We think she be Athena De Ville, she be using blood magic to cause trouble all around the city.” I answered the unasked question for him. “She be the main reason why we can’t be focusing on finding Negaduck.”

“You know, ‘Devil’ sounds right and right now I have a score to settle with Negaduck for trying to blow me up, if I’m going out then it’ll be on my terms in as funny a manner as I can achieve. Don’t know about the Athena part, but if there is something I know about Athena the goddess… she was a purveyor of the arts, one of the things the character I’m imitating is known for appreciating the arts even if Quackerjack’s focus was in crafts. If this Devil has some relation to Athena, then it would make sense that she’s currently operating out of the nearby art museum. If she can bring things to life that shouldn’t be, like me for example, then she’s going to have a lot of ammo to bring to bear against you two in there… you are going to need all the help you can get and I already know what you’re plan is going forward. You can’t exactly ask for help from the heroes if your plan is to work, am I right?” We blinked and stared at Quackerjack, still trying to come to terms with him being friendly despite being considered a villain. Pom did be talking some sense to him and he was being somewhat reasonable right now. “Look I know you’re not going to trust me, but I will help you regardless however I can. I can even tell you about all the toys I have on me! I have this acid spewing unicorn toy isn’t it adorable? I have a few combat yoyos. There’s my small toy mallet with a flamethrower attachment. A bowling ball, don’t quite remember the secondary function of this one is. A few canned snake robots I can spray in someone’s direction to tie or trip them up. Of course there’s always my best buddy ever, Mr. Banana Brain! I actually made him in this world, so he’s very much real… unlike me… he’s my guide, the conscience saying that I should make things right. If the one who brought me into this world is truly a Devil as you say, then they’ve made a horrible mistake picking a fool like me to carry out their whims!”

“What could it be hurting?” I asked Dormarch. Quackerjack may be playing a fool, but he is being a friendly one. Even fools can have their days and I would be a fool to not be trusting him. I be knowing how he felt.

“Not much, if he’s being sincere.” Responded Dormarch who looked at Quackerjack behind me as he started playing with a pieces of paper and some scissors to make paper dolls of himself.

“That’s the scariest thing about all of this, I am being serious. It’s not how the true Quackerjack should act… I should know, I technically happen to be him. If I’m Quackerjack in spirit, who’s to say that said spirit has to be a bad one?” After Quackjack be saying that and tossing the paper dolls over his shoulder, he be holding out his arms in a gesture of peace, Dolly be shoving her board towards me and she walked up to him with a focused stare. After a moment she started sniffing him, she recoiled slightly and then sniffed again while giving him a curious look with a tilted head, she then started barking towards Dormarch. “What is with Caper Canine?”

“Caper Canine says we can trust you somewhat, but if the ‘De Ville’ takes control of you… then all bets are off.” Despite not looking like he appreciated or liked Dormarch, Quackerjack still be smiling a little.

“Oh trust me, she can’t control the stark raving madness that is Neo Quackerjack!” Stated Quackerjack in a jovial manner as he giggled brightly with his fists on his hips. He then be juggling his small mallet, the bowling ball, the can of robot snakes and the unicorn toy before stuffing them away somewhere on him. “I’ve come prepared to play, nothing like a good war game to get the blood pumping huh?”

“Well… I be okay with it if Caper Canine is.” Nodding to me, Dolly motioned to her board and waved me towards it with a paw. “Okay, let’s be going! If you can be keeping up, then we be welcoming your help.”

I hopped on the skateboard and Dolly be building momentum by pushing us in a quick circle before kicking off the roof to be sending us flying, it wouldn’t be taking long before we be finding out that Quackerjack was right.

-A few seconds later, Bushroot-

I climbed up onto the roof and just sat down and brought my arms around my legs as I curled up in a sitting position.

I… wasn’t real?

Quackerjack may be crazy, but he wasn’t a liar or at least I wouldn’t think he is since he is supposed to be my friend. I was wondering why it felt like I was made of a rubber tree instead of being a true plant duck hybrid, I couldn’t control plants like the real thing and my body being extra stretchy was not how things were supposed to be.

If I’m running around with the spirit of Bushroot and am acting like him… well… like Quackerjack said, who said the spirit had to be a bad one? If he’s going to be Neo Quackerjack, then I must be Neo Bushroot. I wasn’t nearly strong as the real thing or was Bushroot always so weak that he relied on the help of plants to make up for his personal physical deficit?

In any case I wasn’t much of a fighter, I guess the real Bushroot didn’t do much of his fighting either and he always had plants. I didn’t even have that much.

My appearance may be that of a villain, but Quackerjack is technically my friend and he was going to continue being somewhat like Quackerjack even if he is currently going to do something heroic sounding.

I looked at my leaf like hands and wondered how long I actually had left to live. If I was even alive to begin with…

What would be my legacy on this world? Just a pointless footnote in some other villain’s plan where they just created me to cause trouble? Why could I even think about this in the first place?

Maybe that Devil shouldn’t have created living imitations that could think.

What could I do to help them if I wanted to try though? My powers over plants was really poor and I was possibly a far weaker version of the actual true Bushroot, though I still gave the Darkwing of this world a good run and that was at least something to be proud of with my limited resources as a fake copy of something. I knew what I should be capable of, but simply wasn’t after the arboretum burned down.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s why Megavolt and Liquidator were captured so easily, at least I think they had to be captured if their pillars were gone.

When you only had so much time in the world, what would you do with what you have left? I personally would want to leave behind a positive legacy and be remembered for something instead of fading away into obscurity.

I looked in the direction of the Arboretum… I had to make things right before whatever was tenuously holding me to this world was gone. The Devil when defeated might spell the end for us… then so be it!

I would try to help them after I was done fixing the damage I had caused… if I still had the time to do so.

Stretching out my right arm I pulled myself forward and slung myself through the air. I wasn’t very good as a villain created by another, but I could still be a hero in any capacity.

-Outside the Art Museum, Dolly-

The De Ville was currently operating out of an art museum and we didn’t know what she could do entirely, but the unnatural monsters loitering outside the place were a good clue.

Quackerjack wasn’t wrong, the art museum was where the De Ville definitely was. Her smell just kept getting stronger the more we approached the area while trying to keep ourselves from being spotted or reported by any thugs that might be on Negaduck’s payroll. We needed to find out where that guy was so I can give him a big bite to the rear for hurting those poor puppies!

We stood on top of the building and looked at the pumpkin pugs for what else could those pumpkins with pug like appearances be?

There were also the helicopter hellcats hovering around the entrance of the museum. Helicopter blades were sticking out of the backpacks on the cats backs and they had giant claws and looked particularly demonic in appearance, they were also three foot tall bipeds compared to the quadruped Pumpkin Pugs.

I was a little bit scared of those large flying cats that spewed a small clouds of smoke as they floated around.

“Dormarch map of the city and tell Shanty to hand you over.” Once I had Dormarch in my paws, I looked over the map. “Can I have the paths of everyone moving through the city?”

We weren’t going to go into this before I got this nagging feeling to go away.

Once the map came up and the lines of various heroes running around, I noted that a lot of them hadn’t gone within five hundred feet of the museum.

“Timing of the distractions, I want to know exactly when they happened and where Dormarch.” I asked out of curiosity and like Pom would say, a hunch.

All the distractions happened and were leading everyone away if they got anywhere close to the place, they were all timed too well to.

“I see it now too, good instincts.” Dormarch said popping up on the screen and looking over the various paths himself with his back to him he turned back to me with a faint smile. “We need to hit the De Ville hard and fast. We don’t have a chicken to counter her magic, so we’ll just have to push through it all the hard way. Hand me back to Cut-Lass and let’s do get moving!”

“You know what time it is, it’s Playtime!” Quackerjack said as he shot by us on the roof and pulled out his canned snakes as he launched off. I yelped and followed him off, he neared a street light going at the ground pretty fast, then he popped the lid on the can and the robotic snakes launched out hooked on one another and he swung from the street light into kicking through a pumpkin pug, he destroyed it completely. “I’m the opening act here and I’m going to open up the path forward!”

As he rolled and hopped into a standing position the mechanical snakes retreated into the can and he popped the lid back on it.

“Hello world, this is the only time you’ll see Neo Quackerjack being a hero!” He crossed his arms and then ducked as a hellcat tried to take off his head. “Say hello to the newest toy from Quackerjack Limited Twilight Spar-kill! Don’t know what inspired this, but I really like the design hehehe!”

Pulling out the unicorn toy with his right hand he steadied it with his left as he aimed it upwards. With a quick squeeze of its backside and an adorable loud squeak, the purple unicorn toy with several stars marking its flank fired a sparkling blast of acid from its small horn that tore straight through the hellcat’s helicopter blades grounding it.

The hellcat turned to him and roared, we were still hovering in the air and slowly coming to the ground watching what Quackerjack would do. The hellcat was much slower on the ground without its helicopter pack as it loped towards him along with the pumpkin pugs that were closing in.

Quackerjack had a bright demented smile on his face as we swung around in the air watching him in action, we’d soon be getting into that too. He put up his unicorn toy, and reached into his clothes to pull something else out of his costume.

I motioned to Shanty to go after one of the two remaining still flying hellcats that were going to attack Quackerjack from the air, before pointing to myself and the other one. Shanty nodded and crouched, there wasn’t much space on my board for her, but I was doing well enough to keep us in the air despite how taxing it was.

Shanty pushed off and pulled back a hoof, I sharply turned my board downwards and started spinning horizontally at the other one.

-Neo Quackerjack-

I pulled out the two flamethrower mallets and batted away the pumpkin pugs with gouts of flame, the monster cat lunged for me with both its claws while I was distracted. That’s when the two other cats fell from the sky, Caper Canine and Cut-Lass landed and flipped towards me as I went to defend myself from the cat’s claws.

The right claw stopped immediately upon contact with Caper Canine’s skateboard, the other claw was deflected by Cut-Lass in a flash of her left hoof.

Cut-Lass left leg now being held across her chest swung outwards and to the left along with her right hoof as she leapt, then landing on her front hooves she pushed off and did a flying buck to knock back the cat approaching from the left about to hit Caper Canine.

The monstrous cat before me tilted its head, then the head slid off completely and its body evaporated into a mass of red mist, I immediately turned to the right to smack away a dog pumpkin and charged the other monster cat that they had dropped on the ground.

“If you be playing, then you not be playing alone!” Declared Cutlass.

I felt a true smile come to my beak, I wonder if another Quackerjack ever felt happy like this.

I quickly hopped back as the cat slashed both its claws overhead and got them stuck in the ground.

-Camden Town, 101 Dalmatian House, Dante-

“Why did you tell them to let Pom die?” Mother was slightly angry and she had right to be, but I was going to explain myself.

“Because Dolly would have died, I was just making sure she stayed among the living.” I explained calmly, Dolly would have had problems had the warning not been given. “I think Pom understood my warnings and will use them for an interesting deception.”

“Did you change the course of history?” Spot asked as she crossed her wings.

“In some capacity. Don’t know what exactly changed though." Just that I know it did.

-Dark Room, …-

“Nhhh…” My eyes slid open and I blinked blearily at the surroundings, I was being held above the floor in chains wrapping around each limb and neck. I had no leverage to get out of this aside from my own body. I could slip out given some time alone to work with, but I was being watched if my ears twitching was anything to go by. Looking off to the side at a figure, I decided to question them. “Athena De Ville I assume?”

“No, Athena was my Great Grandmother. I’m Artiste De Ville, but I go by another name. You can call me, Splatter Phoenix!” The duck biped walked into some light revealing she was tall and wearing mostly black clothing and holding a glowing paintbrush. Gloves, shirt, small skirt over thigh length shorts and boots. I looked at her shaggy mass of black, somewhat spiky, long hair.

“No white streaks? I heard, De Ville’s usually have black and white hair.” I stated calmly. That nap was nice, though my current situation wasn't that great.

“So you know of De Ville’s then? A curious person you are then, a survivor of my family that might very well die to me. Anyway I use a magical dye to hide the white in my hair a long time ago, it is really easy to hide our nature from those who know what we De Ville’s are like.” She flicked her paintbrush about and looked up at me. “So how about I create something in honor of werewolves? While using your appearance as a template for that.”

“I heard De Ville’s don’t generally make things.” I stated as I wiggled a bit. These chains were uncomfortable, but I figured that’s exactly what they were for.

“I didn’t like creating those comic characters, I prefer inventive ways of dealing with nuisances… but who says I’m creating something when it’s blood magic that is bringing about such beautiful art? It comes from the destruction of blood, so it’s not exactly creating if I'm making someone else bleed for it!” She said with sneer towards me. “Took you long enough to walk through the trap primer at the Power Station, but once you did... it was simple enough to capture you and leave facsimile that would fool anyone in your place… Leap Lamb. Unfortunate that you didn’t have the device Negaduck wanted, he wanted to so badly light the world on fire with nuclear weapons.”

“At least you waited until I washed my hooves first.” Somewhat nice small courtesy at least.

“Would you have preferred that I got you while on the toilet?” Artiste snorted derisively. “We De Ville’s may be mad, evil or deranged, but there are some lines we won’t cross. Those lines are miniscule and vary.”

“What do you want with me?” If I understood Dante right, then Tobias has likely killed my doppleganger.

“This.” With a swipe of her paintbrush several feral looking Pom’s with wolf like attributes rose from the paint she splattered upon the ground in a circle of blood on the floor. “Wolves clothing monsters, how brilliant of me! What the… I’m under attack, how?!”

You shouldn't mess with a familiar's bond.

Author's Note

Digimon Movie reference, digimon can cause nuclear missile problems like Diaboromon and Negaduck has an idea as to what Dormarch is really capable of in that specific arena being something like the most advanced form of hacking program on the planet.

Does anyone else like the character Splatter Phoenix? I know I did, being one of the rare Darkwing Duck villains that has died... more than once.

199. Museum Manglers.

Author's Note

Music if you want to: Ayla's Theme, Chrono Trigger.

199. Museum Manglers.

-Saint Canard Museum, Pom-

Artisia De Ville, or Splatter Phoenix as she called herself, left with those wolf like copies of me to go fight off Dolly and Shanty coming to save me. Dolly reassured me they would be here soon.

Now that Splatter Phoenix was distracted, I could try to free myself… if I even could. The chains around my neck and legs were on me pretty tightly keeping me off the floor and not allowing much leverage to do anything.

I struggled a bit and tried to get free of the chains. It was at points like this that I wished I actually had super strength that someone might expect of me from the ridiculous things I’ve done.

From the spot I was hanging in the dungeon, I could see the rectangular hole Splatter Phoenix exited through and it seemed to be across from a painting?

The entryway even seemed a little off the floor and rectangular… wait… was I inside the painting of a dungeon?

The chains are probably magically enhanced to be hard to break, considering my struggling isn’t doing anything aside from getting rid of a little bit of chafing.

Okay physical application of escaping tested, no chance of intellectually garnered escape since I couldn’t reach a key even if I could see one. I had to try magic next.

I bark blasted the chain on my front right leg, the chain shined brightly.

Confirmed, the chains holding me here are magical.

I tried a Bark Breaker, on the chain holding my front left leg this time. The chain shined again and… nothing. Okay, escape proof cell, unless I wanted to waste energy wasting her energy holding me here.

I turned my head every which way I could with my neck chained as it was to find a way down from here, my bell was thankfully fine despite this.

Well this was a well-designed way to keep someone prisoner. Even if there was a key for these shackles, I wouldn’t be able to reach them.

Dolly I’m in one of the paintings, please don’t get hurt coming to save me.

I received nothing but reassurance that things would be fine, that just made me more worried.

-Splatter Phoenix-

It may have taken a while, but this museum was a deathtrap for anyone foolish enough to try and get me while I’m inside it. I made my way down the stairs towards the balcony overlooking the entrance on the first floor.

I saw a Hellcat blasts through the main doors of the museum, splitting in half and evaporating into a misty red haze as it did so. Three figures charged in and… wait, one of them was one of my commission works!

“What are you doing here, Negaduck hired me on commission and I assured him that you couldn’t turn on him!” I said with crossed arms flicking my magical paintbrush idly.

“Well I certainly can’t turn on him, because no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get angry enough to actually confront him about it… but Mr. Banana Brain here says you can’t exactly account for yourself or me attacking your other creations.” The fool holding that ridiculous smiling banana doll wasn’t wrong and apparently Negaduck’s commission has apparently gone a little south on me. I told the bastard that I hated doing comic book artwork for a reason, but no, I had to bring a team of three super villains and an idiot to life for his great plan. “If I can’t go after Negaduck for trying to blow me up in attempt to kill off a few heroes, and he almost hurt Mr. Banana Brain too, then you’re my next best target!”

“At least you’re the one without super powers.” I groaned out audibly while rubbing my forehead with my right hand and holding out the paintbrush in my left.

“Hey, wackiness is a super power! Isn’t that right Pink-A-Zoid Party Bomb?” The fool held up a weird pony toy that made a squeak noise and seemingly nodded it its head. The pink hair of the toy had a weird lightning bolt aesthetic along with a red costume with a large P and exclamation point symbol on it.

Ugh, looks like a mixed reference of some kind, how annoying!

A flash from my right and I saw the goat flipping to land softly on the floor while rubbing her nose, she just hit the barrier to the upper floor quite hard. What were they feeding that goat? Also did she just run up the wall? Yeah, I should be careful of Cut-Lass and Caper Canine… and speaking of mutts…

I just grinned down at the three, the Dalmatian certainly seemed almost feral with the way she was growling while looking at me. This Caper Canine has likely met a ‘De Ville’ before given how angry she looked. Not that my family didn’t already tend to have this effect on animals, this seemed far more personal.

“Nice try, but you can only get up to where I am through the stairs, I have this entire building as my playground… it is just quite unfortunate that you are messing with an individual of reality bending capabilities such as myself.” I slung my paintbrush to the left and a mass of my magical, blood powered, paint flew off and struck the statue of the duck god of thunder Zeus. “Crush them.”

Slowly the statue came to life with glowing blue eyes and stood up raising the solid stone globe it held on its back. It pulled it back and then hurled the mass of stone with the carvings of the world map on it forward.

The massive sphere bowled straight into the entrance as the three below dodged. Said mass now embedded itself in the main entrance and now they wouldn’t be able to get out that way.

I swung my brush and several Pumpkin Pugs and Helicopter Hellcats popped into existence in the air next to me. I also created a few Hot Heads, burning sun like monsters that would explode violently if hit too much. The Wolves Clothing monsters made their way forward ready to jump over the railing.

“My name is Splatter Phoenix, I hope you have a horrible time here at the museum while it’s under my control, attack!” I pointed and my creations immediately leapt over the balcony and towards the floor, while the stone Zeus statue started to stomp forward. It was slow, but it was going to pack quite a punch. “I hope you enjoy my art show, it’ll make a killing.”

I moved to lean against the wall to watch the show.

-Shanty-

The Pumpkin dogs be arranging themselves alongside the growling Wolf Poms, the large clawed flying cats be quite annoying and if that wasn’t enough there also be a few hovering fire monsters with two small limbs cackling as they hovered about no too. The statue was also something to be careful of even if it was being quite slow to step off of its pedestal.

“I don’t know where to be starting.” I said as I back towards the large rock that be blocking off the way we came in and they be closing in on us, aside from the statue still be mostly at the pedestal.

“Fortunately for us, I do!” Quackerjack shouted as he tossed the costumed pony toy forward. “Let’s party!”

The toy be exploding into a mass of pink gas and sparkles, then Quackerjack sent a flaming mallet into the gas and it ignited everything caught in it was on fire and being turned into an evaporating haze of red mist.

A flying cat, two Wolf Pom’s and a pumkin dog be blown away immediately before the floating suns be sucking up the flames and growing in size.

“That not be good.” I stated flatly as I finally be getting into the fight by leaping forward and slashing my right hoof across a pumpkin dog before it can be biting me. It be splitting cleaning in half from its bottom right to its upper left, then it be evaporating into a red haze with a short cut off whine.

“Maybe some seltzer water will help?” Quackerjack pulled out a bottle and started to spray the fizzy liquids from it at the flaming sun in the middle, it exploded and the other two be growing bigger from the explosion. “Uh whoops?”

Dolly be barking angrily at Quackerjack while grabbing a Wolf Pom by their leading claw before it could strike her and swung her around to launch the wolf into a flying cat knocking it from the air.

“Excuse me, but I got some surprises to set up for you. Continue having fun with my minions.” The duck on the upper balcony walked off towards a doorway into the next room.

I narrowly be avoiding the teeth that be snapping for my neck, I performed a quick spin buck to the face of the wolfy sheep knocking them back and be slicing up their face badly.

“I got you covered!” Mechanical snakes be flying past me and wrapping around the Wolf Pom that I didn’t be see coming at my left and then she be yanked upwards by Quackerjack to be slammed into the ground on her back.

I lunged forward and slashed my hooves several times cutting up the Wolf Pom in front of me until she vaporized with a red haze like the other monsters.

That’s where Dolly finished off the one Quackerjack downed by slamming her skateboard down on its skull.

In my distraction a set of three claws almost be taking my head when one of the flying cats swooped by, I ducked and backed away and watched as the cat was hooked by the wheels of Dolly’s skateboard and she yanked it down to the ground painfully.

After she be pulling her board back to herself Dolly leapt forward and brought the board high as she leaped forward and slashed the edge of the board through the downed flying cat bisecting it.

Quackerjack be dodging the other flying cat and we both be dodging the fireballs from the floating heads together.

“Can you guys be covering me I can be dealing with the fire ones, be taking care of the flying cats and other wolf ones please, I’m going to need some drinking water afterwards!” I shouted as I dodged some balls of flames striking the tiled flooring burning it with pillars of flame. “Riptide!”

I slashed my hooves forward, a blast of water be flying forth and striking true. The orb of flame I hit, immediately be turning black and dropping to the floor and started to weakly struggle to even move on the ground.

Leaping in a forward flip I extended my leg high and then brought it down slicing the orb apart and the two blackened halves burst apart into the same red mist like they’ve all been doing.

The other flaming sphere be growing in size and I turned to see a Wolf Pom leaping for me only to be rammed into by Dolly on her skateboard and Quackerjack be covering me from the right with his purple pony toy spewing bits of burning liquid at the flying cat monsters.

As I focused on preparing myself for another riptide, I be needing to carry a canteen everywhere for this, I idly noted the duck statue that be throwing the large sphere at us be slowly be moving faster.

“Riptide in.. and out!” The flaming head monster dodged my first blast of water when I swung my leg inwards, I then swung them outwards and launching a second more expanding stream like blast of water that struck it. It be dropping to the floor immediately knocked cold, I went for it only a Pom wolf and pumpkin dog be distracting me. “Get it!”

I leapt up and kicked upwards with my hind legs to knock back a flying cat swooping for Dolly, she swept underneath me on her board and hopped up and pulled it back to stab it forward into the blackened sphere that started to light up again.

Quackerjack be knocking down the other flying monster cat with a shot from his purple pony toy and then launched a kick into the pumpkin dog as I deflected the rapid thrashing of the wolf Pom’s claws.

The sphere was taken out and no more fireball spewing menaces, but we still be having two cats and a statue to deal with.

“Ooh I’ve got the statue, how about an Apple-pie-Jack-in-the-box!” Quackerjack be pulling out another one of his toys, this one be a crank on a box. “Watch my back girls!”

-Quackerjack-

I can see why Darkwing Duck does this now, being a hero can be as fun as being a villain! Still didn’t like the guy though, but that’s just my Quackerjack side talking by design. Darkwing currently wasn’t here and I was, I’m going to have a blast!

I cranked my box while aiming the top of it towards the statue that was now moving full speed towards us with its shoulder.

The music played its sweet tune and Mr. Banana Brain seemed excited to see this one go off!

“Deep-doo-de-doo-doo!” The box popped open and out sprang an orange pony toy with a cowboy hat holding a pie with explosive flavor on the end of her hooves.

It struck the charging statue in the face and the orange pony Jack manage popped back into the box from several feet away. Said pie exploded violently after splattering all over the stone statues upper half, chips of stone blew everywhere.

This made the stone statue stumble back, stopping its charge cold like ice cream and its head and neck were badly cracked.

I must be losing my touch, the yield on that was far lower than I expected… or maybe this was a result of me becoming nicer?

I felt the air shift behind me and I turned to my right to watch as the chair behind the entrance desk slammed one of the Hell Cats into a wall and destroying it.

Wow, Caper Canine had a good throwing paws.

Huh, uh oh! I back flipped away as the statue jumped and brought both its fists down on the ground and broke the floor in a wide circle of destruction. It’s a good thing this place didn’t have a basement.

Cut-Lass finished off the only other Hell Cat and then launched a vicious slashing uppercut that took the face off one of the wolf sheep monsters. She along with Caper Canine joined up with me, Caper Canine barked and then shot forward.

The statue tried to stomp on her and she simply hopped off with what I’m beginning to believe is a goofy grin, a mischievous and heroic spirit in the form of a dog? I bet she was popular when it came to merchandising.

When the statue stomped down it struck the skateboard, and in classic pratfall fashion I was proud to laugh loudly at, the statue flopped onto its back when the skateboard pulled its leg out from under it.

Caper Canine caught her skateboard as it went skidding her way and I started spray seltzer water at the cracks on the statues heads making them worse, then pulled out my Twilight Spar-kill toy and started spraying acid at its ankles. When it tried to stand up, it only proceed to flop onto its face when it’s feet crumbled underneath it.

“Good one Quackerjack!” Mr. Banana Brain was sharing in my glee with his own laughter. “Though I think we’re being a teeny bit too destructive.”

I looked around at all the collateral damage, Mr. Banana Brain was right we were causing quite a bit of destruction to the entrance of the museum. I shrugged as Caper Canine popped herself up into the air and after performing a series of forward flips, she whipped her board out and brought it down on the statues neck taking its head off by shattering it completely.

The canine flipped backwards and with a precise yank landed on top of her board, she turned and motioned us forward with her paw while looking up in a specific direction. I didn’t know why she was looking at that blank part of the ceiling, but I think it had something to do with Leap Lamb.

We charged into the next room thinking ourselves ready to face whatever Splatter Phoenix could throw at us.

At least we thought we could until we saw a large skeletal T-rex roaring in our face, along with numerous dinosaur statues brought to life. It tried to bite down on me, only Caper Canine lodged her board in its teeth.

“Well that doesn’t look fun at-AH!” I whined as I nearly took a leaping feathered velociraptor kick to the face only for its bladed toe to be deflected straight into the floor by Cut-Lass, who proceeded to bash it in the chin with a powerful looking leaping uppercut.

The bony T-rex that started thrashing the other exhibits trying to bit down on the skateboard between its jaws that Caper Canine was holding onto for dear life.

“Do you think anybody cares that we’re wrecking the art museum?” I’m asking because being a hero was seriously not something I thought I’d be good at.

“Doesn’t be mattering as long as we not be getting caught… also don’t be stealing anything!” Right Cut-Lass, no four fingered souvenirs, got it. Cut-Lass be rolling between the Velociraptors leg and planted her front hooves and slashed her hind legs upwards. “Halberd! Jack look out!”

I rolled to the side as a triceratops rammed its way through some glass on a cave duck display and some paint flung from above bringing the cave duck statues with clubs to life. The velociraptor despite taking quite a bit of damage to its tail was up again and already going at Cut-Lass.

I glared up at the grinning witch of a duck as she sauntered off with a sway of her hips for the next room as a pterodactyl attacked me and several more of those Leap Lamb based wolf sheep monsters dropped to the floor from above.

I drove the artwork of flying ancient terror back with a blast from one of my flamethrower mallets and had to dodge back from nearly having my head taken off by a club being dropped down to shatter the floor tiles.

-Dolly-

“Oh come on, who uses fake bones for a T-Rex exhibit!” I spluttered at the nasty flavor of what I thought was actually bone.

“What part of ‘ART’ museum do you not understand Caper Canine?!” Dormarch be yelling at up me as the dinosaur’s art exhibits attacked my friends on the ground and the T-Rex head continued to flail me about wildly while roaring. “Also all T-Rex exhibits are fake copies of the real things!”

I will never mention the truth of something like that to the puppies in my family or they might get very disappointed in the wonder that is T-Rex bones.

This didn’t even have a throat, how was it even going to digest… ah… I twisted my board and fell out of the head through the gaping open space where its neck would supposedly be before it could crunch me.

I flowed into swinging off it the T-Rex’s left arm with my front paws and up onto its back with a kick from my hind legs to build momentum for my launch up to there.

Its head spun one hundred and eighty degrees to look at me as its bony arms twisted upwards and tried to scrape me off its back. Its head bounced forward off of its own neck and snapped at me, making be back away down its spine towards its tail.

It quickly spun trying to throw me off, I clamped my paws around its bony hips to stay on. Its bony tail swatted the nearby velociraptor out of the air before it could eviscerate Shanty who was busy dealing with one of those fake Pom wolves with a double hoof axe swing.

The skeletal head bounced high up and opened its jaw wide while twisting its head sideways, it came down at me and I dove for its rib cage. I pulled myself up onto the bottom rib of the cage and sighed, I was getting a lot of exercise today and it might even actually beat a puppy corralling workout.

The head was biting where its own butt would be now and its claws tried to scrape at me from inside the rib cage, I leapt forward as the bony spikes that consisted of its fingers tried to pierce through me.

“I could use some help here with this thing, I’m trying to conserve my magic for that De Ville, whoa!” I leapt and grabbed the ribs of the cage next to the spine above me with my paws, narrowly avoiding being impaled by the four long claws jabbing through the spaces in its own body again. “We need someone to at least help Shanty, that raptor is intent on killing her!”

“What about you?!” Dormarch said from Shanty’s head wrapping as the goat avoided getting trampled by the T-Rex and was deflected backwards by a swinging club almost into the raptor that she narrowly rolled away from.

“What does it look like I’m doing, I’m totally keeping the T-Rex distracted… EH?!” I shouted as I clambered forward monkey bar style and swung myself up onto the neck. The floating skull head suddenly embedded its own teeth straight into its rib cage trying to trap me in what was now a spike filled rib cage of doom. The entire body shook and stomped about in a circle. “Not going to lie, this is some really freaky stuff we’re dealing with here little bro!”

-Dormarch-

We couldn’t call for any help for the possibility of alerting Negaduck and Splatter Phoenix seemed too prideful and dare I admit, powerful, to even ask for help. That and she wouldn’t be able to, even if she could since the power stations interference was stopped. Smolder and Ocellus were still directing the other heroes to hot spots around the city.

There were even more Hell Cats, Pumpkin Pugs incoming from the next room and the situation was getting worse. On top of that we were making a mess of all the museums exhibits.

I closed my eyes and tried taking a breath… it was weird, I hadn’t exactly tasted the air of this world like my prior life might have and yet I can still feel like I’m breathing inside my PET. I know I could do it, but how would I explain myself?

Could I really leave the PET and actually aid them in the fight? How would I confront Pom about being capable of doing this at any given time and not helping her since I actually figured out how to do so since before Clockwerk?

Pom, please forgive me... for being scared.

I sighed as I watched the anomalous velociraptor begin an attack on Shanty from behind while she was busy with the Sheep Wolf in front of her.

“Dalma.mon manifestation protocol, Search Hunter!” In a flash my teeth were buried in the velociraptors neck and I was tearing its head off with my claws.

“Whoa bro, you can… yipe!” I sighed at Dolly as she dodged the head of the haunted T-Rex and made it bite its own tail.

I shivered as I watched the Raptor's torso fall limply to the floor in front of me, I lightly pressed a paw to the PET acting like a collar around my neck.

I took in my first fresh lungful of air and tried straightening out my nerves, everything was so vivid now.

200. Museum Massacre.

-Auduban Bridge, Darkwing’s Lair, Ocellus-

I sure hoped Shanty, Dolly, Pom and Dormarch were okay. Pom more importantly, I can’t believe she would let herself be captured just to find one of the major threats… probably for the best because there wasn’t a file on that villain.

If said villain could create replicas of fictional villains with working powers and even a fake Pom, overly heroic personality aside which doesn’t fit with Pom’s high functioning anxiety riddled mind, then we absolutely needed to deal with that major issue first before more problems got created.

“Good job Launchpad, Stegmutt, escort Tanya to the hospital… I shudder to think what Flaps would have done to Tanya had his and Tuskernini’s gangs managed to stop fighting over her.” I had a job to do, Dormarch dropping communication cannot be my main focus or worry at this time. They had to be doing fine, Shanty was a good fighter, Dolly was capable of incredible agility for a dog and had some strange wind based magic, Dormarch could help with anything technological and medical that we might not be able to understand and then there was Pom, she was getting proggessively more ridiculous in her ability to handle things and has been through so much. She needed a big hug after this. “No I have no clue where Maui is. Good question Launchpad… Fawn, how are things at the hospital?”

“Could be better, we’re not as pressured, supplies are a bit low, but we’re good on food here. Fall-apart is currently helping Jitters with something that Pom wanted them to do for her… you know, before she…” She became quite silent after that, we were going to keep the veil that Pom was dead running for as long as possible. Once I can get into contact with Dormarch again, I’ll tell them the results that Jitters and Fall-apart are looking into. “Oh, I have an information that I might be good for you to know.”

“Go ahead.” Because the normal police force and special police Toon Division were currently barely running on fumes as it was. “Also Tanya Trunk Dog has been rescued, she is being escorted there.”

“Jitters is going to be so happy to hear that! We contacted one of our combat specialists, Skunky Skunk, he apparently met up with a detective Maui, they are currently dealing with a criminal mastermind known as Taurus Bulba. They are near the middle of the city, a bit to the south.” Okay, good to know Maui was alright. “Taurus has apparently joined the renewed FOWL and is trying to evacuate Steel Beak, some lady going by ‘Agent 22 of SHUSH’ has managed to pin Steel Beak down according to Jitters.”

“That means the villain Bug Master is currently unaccounted for, so keep Glue Gal and Sneeze Master on standby. The Jambalaya Gang are currently being handled by the heroes known as the Sensational Sabrewing Siblings…” My eyes stared at the screens and all the information on them, multitasking was getting kind of hard to do with even more emergencies popping up. “We have several more villainous movements that are being taken care of, but no information on what Negaduck is doing or has planned.”

-Saint Canard Museum, Dormarch-

Something drew my eyes to a portion of the ceiling, I felt… something strange? It was like an open connection to the internet, has that always been there? I might have felt something like this before, but muted. It has become incredibly pronounced to me now. I couldn’t even understand what this was, but I also felt something else that drew my attention towards Dolly.

Dolly looked towards me when I looked at her and something strange understanding passed between us… then a mild sense of panic from her.

In my distraction I had almost got a bunch of teeth to my neck by a sheep wolf, I really didn’t need any more damage done to the PET!

I scrabbled away backwards and tripped over my own three fish tails the sheep wolf leapt for me ready to slash at me with her right claw.

Only to receive a sharp crystal like substance to the eye that caused a fountain of red haze to fly from the suddenly destroyed eye and the blow knocked her onto her side, I looked to Quackerjack and blinked.

“Rock candy… really?” I asked in confusion at the fact that Quackerjack somehow managing to impart rock candy with the lethal speed of a bullet from a white unicorn squeeze toy with purple hair.

That the rock candy came out the backside of the toy was not something I wanted to think about all too hard.

He was about to say something when I fired a retriever bark behind him into the Pterodactyl's left wing, it spiraled into one of the cave ducks currently attacking Shanty with their clubs .

“Anyway, it’s my Relishing Rock Rarity Repeater toy, with real rock candy and rapid farting action! I had a rather limited time to make ammo for it so I sadly can’t use the full auto feature, it comes in peach and strawberry flavors. My Twilight Spar-kill holds far more shots and caustic fast acting acid is not really that hard to get a hold of, I just need to find the nearest janitors closet for a quick reload once my acid jar runs out.” Quackerjack wasn’t even asking how I’m now physically outside the PET, he was taking my appearance entirely in stride. Unlike Dolly who was still trying to figure out how to bring down the walking pile of animate bones with the hovering head, she was at least keeping it busy. “Oh and you might want to take care of the sheep wolf before it can get up entirely.”

“How many pony toys themed toys do you have?!” I asked as I leapt onto the sheep wolf trying to stand up and pushed the rock candy deeper into its head with my front paws, the sheep wolf gasped and the flopped lifelessly to the floor to eventually evaporate into a haze of red mist that smelled like blood and something really nasty.

I wonder if this is what Dolly and Pom smelled coming from the likes of Quackerjack or Megavolt, no wonder they had flinched so hard! Is that what a De Ville's naturally smells like?! Rotten eggs would be an air freshener in comparison.

“Two left for six in total, most to be revealed in their debut today! I was really inspired and Mr. Banana Brain gave me some good commentary on how to make them fun!” Quackerjack, you were a mad duck, but I’m glad you were on our side as I really didn’t want rock candy shot at me with that kind of velocity from the backside of a toy with three crystals marking its flank on one side and on the other was a depressed single crystal.

So I assume pressing the three crystals made it go full auto… don’t think about how he managed it with a squeeze toy and just accept that he did Dormarch, that way lies madness I’m not willing to deal with.

“Can we be getting more help here please?” Shanty yelled as she ducked under a horizontally swung club and rolled away from a club being brought down on her. She proceed to hop onto the cave duck’s club and pushed upwards into a harsh left slash that made the art exhibit stumble backwards as chunks of its beak and neck were taken off. “Also be looking out for that three horned thing!”

The rumbling sound of something heavy thundering towards me, made me sit up and look directly at the triceratops barreling down on me. I quickly stumbled flopped onto my face out of the way, as it thundered through the area into a nearby wall that took a lot of damage from the room shaking impact.

“Bro what’s up with you?! Why do you look like you have problems moving around?” Dolly shouted as she avoided the two floating arms and head of the T-rex and now its legs are floating in the air and flailing about trying to kick her. It looked as ridiculous as it sounds that its limbs were attacking her while floating around the main headless torso.

“Well excuse me if this is the first time I’ve been outside of the PET in my short life span, I’m not used to moving around in reality yet!” My signature move Search Hunter made up for my deficiencies in knowing how control my body by teleporting me to where I wanted to be, but the energy expense doing it was quite large. Retriever bark was simply aiming and far less costly.

My coordination with my body in cyberspace did not equate to the same thing in a physical realm where gravity was something I actually had to worry about.

“Oh yeah, you’re like… still a baby... You’re so intelligent it’s rather hard to remember that little bro.” Dolly then blinked and jumped straight up, flipping upside down so her paws pressed up against the barrier to the second floor as the T-Rex head snapped its toothy maw at where she had been on its back.

Pushing off the barrier, Dolly slammed her skateboard into the side of the floating T-Rex’s skull as she passed by, causing it to spin wildly and damaging the nose quite a fair bit. This made its body parts flail and float about randomly and Dolly quickly sped my way and then leapt into hugging me tightly. “Just learn quickly okay Dormarch? I don’t want you getting hurt.”

With that Dolly looked to the triceratops that started charging us again.

“Can I be getting some assistance here?” Shanty was continuing to dodge around the bone breaking force of three clubs being swung at her. Quackerjack just finished off the pterodactyl and was busy fending off two sheep wolf and a pumpkin pug with two bladed yo-yos.

“Sure thing!” Dolly went onto her hind legs and held her front paws forward and spread out her digits, was she about to do what I think she was going to? “Don’t worry bro, I think I have an answer for how to deal with multiple problems at once and all I need is… some momentum.”

I tried to stand up only to stumble and flop onto my back. I tried again to coordinate my legs, ugh why is being manifested so awkward? Give me a realm of coding any day of the week!

“Everyone get down, Caper Canine is going to throw the triceratops!” A phrase I never thought I’d ever say in my lifetime, but weirdness occurs everywhere I’ve been since I was activated.

The triceratops barreled right into Dolly’s paws horn first, then it blinked in surprise when it suddenly found itself lifted up and Dolly started to heave it around and spinning it. Considering her momentum controlling abilities, this was an impressive feat for Dolly and she was managing to balance on her hind legs despite the unwieldly thing she was rapidly spinning around.

“Bow-Whaka-Wow!” Dolly proceed to plow the body of the triceratops through three pumpkin pugs, two hellcats, a sheep wolf and a cave duck that were splattered everywhere on the walls, before she let it go flying at the T-Rex skeleton.

The entire torso of the T-Rex was sent flying into the next room along with the triceratops with a huge amount of destructive force and everyone heard a series of violently and volatile crashing noises as the museum shook and rumbled.

If this museum was standing after we were done here, it’d be a miracle.

Dolly was left stumbling around on her hind legs before she fell onto her butt looking very dizzy with her paws on her face.

The T-Rex head, arms and legs were still moving.

“Cut-Lass…” I stated slowly.

“Be holding on one second!” Shanty had her right hoof planted on the chest of the cave duck statue and swung her left hind leg upwards at an angle while kicking off its stomach with her right hind leg. Her left hind leg flashed by its neck in an arc and then, using her front right hoof to gain leverage by pushing off the shoulder of the cave duck to lift her body upwards into the air slightly, she flipped forward and brought her right hind leg down vertically through its body. “Scythe… Cutlass!”

The cave duck stood there for a second before it’s torso split entirely in half and its head toppled over and shattered against the floor, she started coming towards us.

“The poor artists who made these things, the hours it must have taken to make all of these wonderful pieces of art…” I mumbled as I finally got myself into a standing position and tried to tentatively take several steps. “All ruined in a matter of minutes.”

“Come on little bro, one at a time. Heel paw, heel paw, yeah that’s it.” Dolly despite still looking a bit tired and dizzy after such an incredible show of magical prowess, she still took the time to come help me walk. Looking away from her for a second, I quickly forced my head under her belly and lifted her up and started carrying her out of harm’s way. “Hey, what the, I’m supposed to be the one helping you here!”

“Yes, but you just tired yourself out, give yourself a second to recover from throwing the highly detailed and heavy triceratops sculpture. Also you’re paying more attention to me, then that!” After I said ‘that’, I managed to walk my way out of being stomped by one of the T-Rex legs that floated at us. “I would prefer it if my ‘big sister’ isn’t crushed under a big bony foot thank you very much, also I think I’m the more durable of the two of us here even if I am younger. I can actively heal myself, you don’t exactly have that luxury.”

The skull came down at us maw wide open, only to be stopped by a blue blur with a rainbow of colors coming off of it flying into its open mouth. The skull was blasted to pieces a second later.

The arms and legs were still moving independently despite the fact that there was no longer any head, they seemed to swing around or stomp trying to blindly attack us and somehow seemed to be getting closer despite my walking away from them at a slow pace.

Several seconds later they were hit with flying rainbow explosions as well.

“Rainbow Rockets, pull the tail off to ignite, aim and let it fly to explode in a vibrant array of colors! Though I can see why handheld fireworks would be quite dangerous, maybe a disclaimer to always aim them straight up at the sky before pulling the tail…” Quackerjack has been pretty amazing so far, what was his last pony toy going to be like? “Well I’ve got two of those left, so we should be good if they are needed!”

“That was being a bit difficult…” Shanty heaved dryly as she came over to us looking a bit tired. “How much more can she possibly be throwing at us?”

“You need to drink some water.” I silently noted for later that even two riptide attacks had quickly dehydrated Shanty. “Also the rest of the museum, it has three floors… this is just the first one.”

“Ugh!” Shanty whined. “Yes, I be getting right on that when I can find some water to drink, but first we be heading to the next room to be seeing what Caper Canine did!”

Shanty was more eager to see the destruction than taking care of her health, was I the only sane one in this group?!

Well… if I had to ask…

“I’m still raring and ready to go!” Quackerjack was the only one who still seemed to have energy after that frantic mess.

“Hey I’m good, just give me a moment as throwing something that heavy does actually take a lot out of me.” Dollyn anyone would like to point out that a dog you’re size shouldn’t even be capable of that amount of destruction in the first place.

That would certainly be a firm confirmation of magic existing for even the most skeptical of people in this world that try to write off acts of magic as something quite mundane with an unerringly ridiculous amount of denial.

“Well let’s move forward carefully then!” I started walking and when we passed through the archway into the next room, we saw the extent of the damage that Dolly had done and then looked up at Splatter Phoenix who was a bit slack beaked at the damage done to the next entire exhibit.

Let’s see, strange machines, aliens and… ah of course, this used to be a science fiction art exhibit.

Key words ‘used to be’.

Dolly’s flow motion and wind magic kind of paled in comparison to her ability to alter momentum of anything she’s in contact with.

The triceratops was in three large barely recognizable chunks, some portions of the statue had been made of recycled rebar from the looks of it. The shattered bones of the T-Rex skeleton art laid scattered all over the place among the various bits of shattered science fiction artwork.

Splatter Phoenix eventually blinked and then her beak snapped shut with a loud clack as she gritted her teeth and slowly turned to us.

“Okay, I may have underestimated your capabilities… slightly.” She held up the hand not holding the paint brush with a notable death grip and made a gesture with her thumb and forefinger while looking vaguely put out by the art of one exhibit being used to destroy another. “Uh, I would be more impressed with the beautiful destruction if I wasn’t a little afraid to ask… but… which one of you did that exactly?”

Both Quackerjack and Shanty pointed at me, I let Dolly off my back and then pointed to her. She stood up on her hind legs and put her front paws on her hips as she glared at Splatter Phoenix with a proud and haughty grin.

“Right then, don’t know where the three fish tailed one came from, but I am now rightly terrified of Dalmatians. The ones that have been rumored to exist by my family that are called ‘De Ville Hunters’, you’ve actually just confirmed the very existence of such a thing for me. Thank you for that very much.” Splatter Phoenix then ran off in a panic while flinging a massive number of blobs forward into the next room. “Now if you will excuse me… while I go barricade the stairs and hopefully put enough monsters between me and ‘that dog’, I can totally do a fight of attrition!”

As Splatter Phoenix ran, we gave chase into the next room, seems to be a gift shop area… shouldn’t this be next to the entrance? Anyway, we were halted by even more pumpkin pugs, helicopter hellcats and those sheep wolves with a fairly strong resemblance to Pom

“I’m so awesome, I freaked out a De Ville!” Technically Dolly, you freaked us all out when you managed to alter the momentum of an exceptionally life-sized animated piece of triceratops artwork into a spinning hammer throw of death and destruction that you threw into the next room in which you automatically totaled everything in it. “Wait until the ‘fam’ hears about this one, it won’t even be me exaggerating anything either!”

“Don’t know what you’re so happy about, we’re under attack again!” Quackerjack pulled a rubber chicken as we were charged by various monster and he tossed it forward, one of the sheep wolves snapped it out of the air with their teeth and immediately regretted it, when it inflated wrecking their jaw. Everything that touched the highly inflated rubber chicken bounced off of it violently. “That’s my Rubber Buddy Bumper Bomb, try saying that five times fast! My portable bounce house toy in the form of a rubber chicken!”

“You had that on you the entire time and you didn’t tell me about it sooner!” Dolly yelled as she looked at the large inflated chicken with pure adoration and she was drooling a bit. “So much rubber chewiness, I really want one... for personal reasons.”

“Now’s not the time for your quite weird appreciation of rubber chickens Caper Canine, we need to keep moving forward!” I groaned and Shanty nodded next to me.

“Yeah, we still be needing you to help rescue Leap Lamb here!” Shanty set forward at a slow pace on her hind legs.

“Oh right… right!” Dolly pulled her skateboard from her back and readied as the monster came at us.

“Quick question before we dive into this, but what does your last pony toy exactly do?” Horn that shoots acid, rock candy projectile shooter, bomb pie delivery system, self-propelled handheld rocket grenades… of course I’m going to be curious and I’m still trying to figure out how the pie bomb worked.

“Pray we don’t have need of it, she’s a special one though.” Quackerjack brought out a jump rope and whipped back a sheep wolf with it before proceeding to use it to grapple a pumpkin dug and swung it around to fling it at a hellcat. “I’m quite sure you’re going to love her at the very least, she’s my emergency last resort.”

I stood back and watched as the three fought. Dolly had speed and quite a good range of defense with her skateboard. Shanty had close up combat, she could take down the sheep wolves so easily. Quackerjack was wacky and weird with his attacks, even regular toys were dangerous in his hands as his use of the jump rope was showing.

Where was I supposed to fit in to all of this? This was all a bit too much, too fast. I could hardly maneuver the way they could in a physical plane and I was going to cause problems by being a target for these monsters created by Splatter Phoenix.

I started backing away from the fray with my three tails between my legs until I felt something, like a gentle hoof running along my back.

“Don’t force yourself to fight. Just do what you can, when you can.” It was the essence of a whisper to me, but I heard it loud and clear. “Just be their support as needed. It’s okay, I’m right here with you.”

“Pom?” I blinked and my brain finally kicked into gear.

I could aim Retriever Barks fairly well and I didn’t need to be rushing into the fight like they were. Plus I could use Search Hunter to escape if I get into too much trouble. I had plenty of energy left, but should be careful with using Search Hunter too much.

Watching as Shanty, Dolly and Quackerjack maneuvered about and fought off the various attackers, I opened my mouth and barked three times.

My Retriever Bark attack had more range than Pom’s Bark Blasts and if I had fired them correctly... I didn’t need to be mobile or aggressively acrobatic. I just needed to be accurate.

A pumpkin pug imploded, a hellcat fell on top of another one knocking them to the floor and putting them in range of Shanty to slash them apart and my last one took out a sheep wolf going for Dolly’s back while she was bashing away at another one.

“Glad to see you aren’t completely bugging out bro!” Dolly shouted back to me with a bright smile and cheerful demeanor, she was currently life personified and kicking a lot of backside.

“I’ll support you guys from behind!” I could feel Pom watching over me with a warm smile, I basked in the feeling of this strange connection we had.

201. Museum Manipulation.

-Saint Canard Museum, gift shop area, Dolly-

Well if Dormarch had our backs, then I believed he would do great at it given he’s apparently not exactly capable of running yet and every puppy should know that joy of running around in wide open spaces!

Think of all the thing I’m going to have to teach him, he’s going to learn how to have so much fun now that he’s outside his device and actually physically helping us out!

Holding the front of my board, I brought it around to break the neck of a wolf Pom with the backside. The head twisted and flopped sideway on its neck in a sickening manner as it fell over before evaporating like all the other monster tended to do.

It didn’t feel right using lethal force against these thing, but that was because most of them looked too much like Pom and with my skills I could easily hurt someone as I’ve recently seen. This kind of puts into perspective how dangerous I’ve actually become and why being a hero is as dangerous as Pom has mentioned numerous times.

I grabbed the strap, let the skateboard loose behind me and I heard it hit something, before I snapped it forward horizontally sweeping back the pumpkin dogs and sheep wolves. The pumpkin dogs were kind of lame overall, but the cats and sheep wolves were actually a problem.

I looked over to see how Shanty was doing, she was blazing through them like a literal knife through butter. In three swings she slashed apart a pumpkin, a flying cat and deflected a lunging sheep wolf onto its back.

Quackerjack capitalized on that last one by slashing it into a mass of red haze with a quick bladed yoyo toss.

Several blasts of energy brought up our rear wiping out anyone that could take us by surprise, nice to know my little bro is not accidentally hitting us and he was easily dealing with the flying cats that were the most annoying problem. I almost felt like asking Pom for some energy to do some bark blasts myself, but Dormarch easily covered us from being attacked from above.

I brought my board around in an upwards swing that knocked the charging sheep wolf in the chin and then, with a short spin and hop, I brought my board down on their skull taking them out. I kicked out with my left hind leg and putting some momentum into the aggressive pumpkin dog, causing it to get lodged onto a sheep wolfs head while knocking them down.

They were soon lit on fire by a blast of flames from one of Quackerjack’s toy mallets, taking out the both of them. The guy was cool and knew how to work the toys he was carrying on him, kind of hard to believe he was a fictional villain with how lively he was.

“Okay, let’s…” I was about to charge forward towards the staircase since we worked through all those monsters so fast.

“Everyone wait!” Dormarch drew our attention to him. What was the hold up? We can tear through these things easily. Sure it might be tiring avoiding personal injury while doing so, but I’m getting pumped here! “Come over here for a second, do you want Splatter Phoenix to always be ready for us and possibly use Leap Lamb as a hostage? I have an idea.”

“Okay, let’s hear it.” Quackerjack said as we stayed next to the gift shop and were on the lookout for more monsters.

“There’s a gift shop right there right?” Dormarch stated as he pointed it out to us one of his claws extended from his paw. “Well one thing we can do is get some water from the nearby employee bathroom for Cut-Lass, provided the faucet is clean tap. Caper Canine or I can get to the second floor from there to go search for Leap Lamb while the rest of us keep Splatter Phoenix distracted… Caper Canine… please stop staring at the self-inflating rubber chicken Quackerjack created.”

“Huh… what… did you say something?” That inflatable rubber chicken was just so glorious… and wobbly! I wanted to bounce on that thing all day... a trampoline and a rubber chicken combined. Quackerjack is a genius, this version of him should have gone into making toys for dogs.

“Hey, she knows how to appreciate a good rubber chicken when she sees one!” Quackerjack was on my side apparently and I gave him an appreciative bark to let him know. “I say let her do so.”

“Can we not be getting side tracked here?” Shanty tapped her front left hoof against the floor impatiently. “There being a way to the second floor that doesn’t be requiring the stairs Splatter Phoenix is going to be preparing for us on?”

“Yes, so we can send someone ahead to rescue Leap Lamb and Caper Canine can do that through the small vents leading up a floor from the employee bathroom next to the gift shop. We may have to bust down a door to do so.” Well there was something to the idea Dormarch, but... couldn’t you do it too? I can feel him and Pom at the same time and he was around my size, he could easily fit in there. “I’m sure with as many talented individuals as we have here, it would be child’s play.”

“I enjoy the sound of that, but I don’t think children should play with my toys unless they are intelligent and know how to put up a fight like that Quiverwing Quack girl.” Quackerjack looked in the direction of the door to the employee bathroom next to the gift shop with a curious look on his face as he tilted his head.

“You can do it too you know… Pom would be happy to see you in the flesh and fur bro.” That and I kind of wanted to continue beating things up and give Splatter Phoenix something to be truly afraid of. “You can feel her too right?”

“Technically I’m not truly made of flesh and fur Caper Canine, but I guess I could pass for being as such easily enough. Also yes I can find her, but you would be faster and I can continue to help with flying problems. I know you’ve rescued her backside multiple times already and that it could be a bit of a drag to do so again…” He pause and kind of reminded me of my step brother Dylan when thinking about something. I watched as his three fishy tails start to flick side to side adorable. “What about the flying monsters Splatter Phoenix will use at the stairs?”

“Hey, I’ve got ammunition to take down flying things.” Quackjack said as he came up to us with the bit of rock candy he had fired previously and was loading it into the second unicorn pony toy. “The Rock Candy is reusable at least, but I wouldn’t suggest that anyone eat it after it’s been fired… huh, of course Mr. Banana Brain, I’ll ask them. Does anyone know what this Splatter Phoenix is fully capable of?”

“Well she created you didn’t she? She apparently uses artwork as her main medium of magical attack and apparently blood and paint is a part of it, also I would like to point out that the second floor has pirate and ninja exhibits according to the nearby directory… so…” Dormarch shivered and Shanty grew excited with a wide eyed big toothy grin, she started trotting in place and looked quite excited. I was feeling that vibe myself and we obviously had energy to burn. “Why would someone put those two next to each other?! Aside from the fact that ninja ‘pirates’ were a naturally occurring thing in Japan, given there are folktales of it in Tokyolk. When talking of the etymology, they are from two completely different eras of history enti…”

“We have got to be seeing that pirate exhibit… and fighting it!” That’s exactly what is being implied here Shanty, at least I think that’s what Dormarch said we’d be doing given Splatter Phoenix can bring thing like statues to life. What could she exactly do with a bunch of paintings though once she runs out of statues to throw at us?

Makes me wonder what my little sis Da Vinci would think of all this… she’d probably hate that we’re carelessly destroying all this artwork that people toiled over and worked hard to make. Eh, the situation is pretty bad, so can’t go worrying about the small details in this case. Da Vinci would definitely hate Splatter Phoenix more for forcing us to do all this too, than me actually being a wholesale part of destroying tons of art. It wasn’t my sister’s art, so I didn’t really have to care, besides my shy little sister Da Vinci was always going to be my favorite artist.

“Also, we can’t get side tracked with history lessons here! You’re going to go get Pom bro, I swear she’ll be glad to see you no matter the situation!” I put a paw on his neck and drew him into a hug. “You’ll do fine, also I know you can feel her and you can feel me too can’t you? Besides, I need to continue putting the fear of Dalmatians into a De Ville.”

“Can you guys help me into the vent first before going for the stairs?” Dormarch asked quietly. “Also yes, I can feel you, it’s… weird. You’re like a bonfire and you feel like family.”

“Which is a sure thing as you very well know!” I said with big grin as I nuzzled and cuddled up to him. I really missed the feeling of a warm Dalmatian body to hug, even if his tails were a bit awkward.

Dormarch can help a lot with flying things, but he would be a lot more helpful with getting Pom out before Splatter Phoenix thinks about running to use her as a hostage. We’ll be giving him all the time he needs to reach Pom with, mostly by performing a frontal assault.

Once Shanty drank her fill of water, and probably needed some kind of magical canteen she couldn’t lose, she somehow found one of the employee’s secret stash of a bottle of rum. She shoved the narrow neck of the bottle up into her bandana, she was going to carry that around everywhere until she finally decides to drink it.

“I just be knowing rum when I smell it!” Shanty said with no hint as to how she knew the combination for the safe under the gift shops counter. Maybe that Cooper guy taught her how to do that?

Afterwards we set off for the stairs leaving Dormarch to clamber his way through the vents, hopefully we could keep Splatter Phoenix distracted long enough for Dormarch to reach Pom and figure out a way to set her free from where she’s being held. Since he didn’t come back down immediately, that meant the barrier didn’t cover all entrances to the second floor that Fatter Phoenix didn’t think about.

“Let’s go!” Oh wait… Dormarch was the only one that could translate for me... body language it is!

I pointed a digit forward with my right paw as I brought my board around with my left and stepped on it, both Shanty and Quackerjack nodded before we grew serious. Well as serious as Quackerjack or any of us could get really, we were a cheerful trio in general and we will spite any gloom and will always look forward to the bright side of life on the greener side of a hill! I think that’s usually the east side right?

-Shanty-

Pirates, Pirates, Pirates, Pirates, Pirates, Pirates… couldn’t wait to see if they could fight on the level of some of the pirates I’ve seen! Splatter Phoenix just had to threaten us with them right? I mean sure she could threaten us with just the ninjas, but that would be being dumb of her!

I be full of water, no need for a salt since I just used the bathroom and the vinegar be in my bottle of rum! I was ready for a good brawl and Splatter Phoenix better be delivering on it!

-Quackerjack-

We made a good team, plus I have a chip in my shoulder about Splatter Phoenix and I was going to show her exactly what I was made of!

Which was apparently paint and dreams, at least Mr. Banana Brain was real and that’s all that mattered to me.

-Splatter Phoenix-

What was taking them so long to… oh there they are! Did they send off that mutant Dalmatian to get the front entrance open? No matter.

A few flicks of my paintbrush and the staircase will be a work of art they’ll never forget!

“Let me show you a neat trick for you to try and get through.” Draw a circle in the air and then splash area they were about to enter, the staircase was going to become bigger than normal and the world warps with my paint and will!

I watched as the paint flowed from my brush and covered the staircase up to me. The world started warping around the staircase leading to the second floor. The staircase didn’t exactly move, but the area the staircase occupied stretched and warped unnaturally like I thought it should. The staircase started splitting and going in multiple directions, now an entire labyrinth of warped space between the first and second floor was forged.

“That’ll keep them away from me for a bit, but now I have to throw something more at them hm… let’s see.” More helicopter hellcats, more wearing wolves… no more pumpkin pugs, they weren’t very effective against those three. Wearing wolves was a better name for them as they were decent at tiring them out. All they needed to do is get a few good bites and they’d be open to being ripped apart to feed my need for paint.

What kind of monster do you put in a maze, even ones made of staircases?

A Minotaur!

That was far too plain for my brilliance though… how about a Minute-Taur! A red demon bull with a melted clock themed axe, eyes with minute and hour hands that spin crazily above spiral pupils… a pocket watch, a fancy suit with a top hat and time twisting powers.

Oh yes!

Go my minions and give me more time to paint such a wonderful death for them, which is if you can’t deal with them yourselves!

-Shanty-

“What did she just be doing?” I took one step on the staircase and the upper floor seemed to stretch away for miles, I be taking a step back and the air in front of the staircase seemed to be being warped badly and elongated and all over the place. However a step away from it revealed that the upper floor not being as far as when on the staircase.

“I don’t know, but we can’t let her scare us.” Quackerjack stated as he marched onto the stair way and seemed to stretch into the the maze of twisted staircases. “We need to keep her attention on us right? So let’s put on a show!”

Dolly be barking and nodding her head as she stowed away her board and ran up the stairs, I followed right behind her with Quackerjack coming up from behind. The world quickly be becoming a confusing maze of staircases.

“How do we know which way is being the right way up?” Looking above us I saw a staircase heading back down the way we came above us into a doorway.

Dolly looked around and shrugged at me with her paws raised up.

“Let’s not be getting separated in here.” I said quietly.

“Wow this is really wacky and all, but I think we need to go this way!” Quackerjack be motioning for us to follow him, he be taking charge of our direction. “Call it a feeling and Mr. Banana Brain is telling me to follow it.”

It wasn’t long before we were being beset by flying cats and more sheep wolves as we entered tower of shifting spiraling staircases.

“Come on!” I shouted as I moved forward to draw the sheep wolves’ attention on me. Quackerjack started to shoot the flying cats down with his rock candy shooter, while they were over the stairs so he could be retrieving his shots. Dolly be leaping up and using her board to hook them and draw herself into them with a solid kick of her hind paws. “Be being careful Caper Canine, I do not think you would be wanting to get lost in here!”

I be only receiving some barks back in response. That is to be being expected I guess.

I ducked back a bit as the teeth of a sheep wolf snapped at me, I went on to my hind legs and kicked upwards with my right hind leg to slash it across the face.

Following that up, I twisted in a counter clockwise motion while thrusting my right hoof upwards to knock the second one that came at me to send them rolling back up the stairs.

I had to quickly deflect with both hooves the third as it tried to rake me with its front claws in a savage display of ferocity.

While I be doing this a fourth be coming at me, why weren’t there any pumpkin dogs? I think I see, Splatter Phoenix be focusing more on these sheep wolves and that is being bad.

I reached up to the back of my head and then slung the bottle of rum into the side of its face hard enough to be snapping its neck with the blow. Tossed the bottle up, I slashed a fifth one through the chest with both my hooves in an axe swing, caught the bottle crushed the skull of the second and then kicked the head off the third with a scything blow of my right hind leg through its neck.

I then be having to duck a flying cat only for Dolly to barrel into it destroying its propeller and dropping it on the second sheep wolf. A wild spray of acid from Quackerjack toy pony and Dolly be taking down the last sheep wolf with an overhead blow wielding her skateboard like a broadsword.

“I be thinking Splatter Phoenix not be making those fire monsters because she not be knowing I get dehydrated when shooting water without a source.” Good news for us at least.

“Sounds about right now, let’s keep going up this way!” Quackerjack pointed to the staircase branching off from the spiraling staircases. “Oh and we have more helicopter cats incoming!”

“How many of these things can she be making?!” It be quite frustrating to defeat an opponent, only to be beset by those same opponents again a minute later.

-Dolly-

“I’ve got them!” Now let’s see if I can control how much energy I expend when I do this… I held out my left paw concentrated on not putting my all into the energy. “Aero!”

A large swirl of green wind ripped the propellers off the swarm of incoming helicopter hellcats and they fell into the void or was it to the bottom of the stairs? That doesn’t really matter, they were dealt with, what does matter was that that wasn’t as draining as last time. Maybe I’m getting used to using my magic?

The first few times was draining as all get out, but that felt only maybe as half as bad as the previous times.

“Good job Caper Canine, let’s be going faster before more show up!” Shanty pushed at Quackerjack’s back and he started forward leading us through this mess somehow.

-Splatter Phoenix-

“Agh, what the... what hell was that?!” Where did a huge chunk of my magic just go and why was it so painful?!

Darn it, that made a small imperfection in my design. At least it wasn’t the brain of my minion.

No matter, I just need put in the finishing touches and the Minute-taur would be ready!

-Dormarch-

I’m so glad biological stuff like poison has no effect on me or I might be more scared of spiders… I wonder if there were spider beings that were digital entities like me? Actual bugs like that made of coding would be a nightmare for me.

I extending my claws from my paws and clambered up the incline grasping at the inner edges of the vents that I could find and eventually found a vent grate to open, looking down I saw the daylight filtering into the museum.

I was thankfully above the first floor at least. Now to do this quietly or quickly? Quickly, Pom was counting on me.

One retriever bark and the grate flew off and down to the first floor, a one way barrier? Okay, noted.

I grabbed the edge of the opening and slowly lowered my rear half down and the flopped onto the second floor balcony back first… also ow.

“Pom, where are you?” I felt some form of response pulling me to go a direction, at least it was away from Splatter Phoenix, but I’d be passing through the pirate exhibit… before Shanty destroys it anyway. “She must be up on the third floor.”

I walk through the pirate art exhibit and I’m glad most of this stuff wasn’t actively under Splatter Phoenix’s control yet, I looked at the nearby directory for a staircase up. Finding where I needed to go I set off and recorded the pirate exhibit as it looks before it gets destroyed… for posterity reasons really.

I carefully walked up the stairs getting more and more used to gravity and I eventually came upon the medieval art exhibit. I didn’t see Pom, but I knew she was here. She just had to be, the feeling was so strong now.

“Over here, I’m here!” I blinked and my attention was drawn to some painting across from the painting of a knight attacking a windmill was the painting of a dungeon, inside said painting was Pom hanging from the ceiling in chains. “Dol-Dormarch? Huh… well I’m quite glad to see you!”

Pom felt like a fluffy pillow and blanket, seeing her was a balm to my spirit.

Seeing her like this... not so much.

“You’re in a painting?” I walked up to it and looked up to see Pom looking down at me from it with a frown. I hopped up clamped my claws onto the edge of the painting and then I touched the surface of the painting and fell into it after the surface of the painting shimmered and wobbled unusually. “This… this feels weird.”

“Can you see a way to get me out of this?” I looked at the blood circle on the floor, the chains holding her legs and neck, the bones of painted prisoners that for some reason drew my attention.

Not because I was into bones like other dogs, might have to take up a passing fancy in archaeology for that, but because one of the bones was rather oddly shaped. I moved over to pull at the femur and was reward with a bone that ended in a key like shape. Now I just had to get up to Pom.

“I think I found a key?” I entered into Pom’s view dragging the bone with me.

“Huh, a skeleton key. How... appropriate to the situation.” Pom then looked up for a second. “Contact the Dalmatian family and get Spot to look at the circle.”

I put my paw into the PET and it started a call to Camden Town, I can work it from the outside easily enough.

“Dalmatian residence… whoa, don’t touch that blood circle!” Spot ordered immediately.

202. Museum Monster.

-Equus, Ponyville Café, Gallus-

“So what do you think about me becoming a part of the guard?” I had to ask because I was seriously considering it, Fizzle gave me a routine to follow and she was quite a taskmaster.

Not that I didn’t already know where I could find another fitness routines one could follow, Airship Mauled was becoming well known for building sports teams. That was because Sekhet Sphinx the goddess of physical education knew how to train people, mostly for war, but that training does help with other things too I guess.

“Yona think it be fine, if Gallus doesn’t turn out like pony guard in general.” Understandable Yona, but that’s why I went to Fizzlepop Berrytwist La Perm. “Yona think that Gallus can get very strong! Like how Yona think Silver Stream can be a very good teacher of friendship, as well as about animals.”

Fizzle actually knows how to stay disciplined, especially with the most annoying cat this side of Equus. Training wasn’t all brawn, Tianhuo certainly seemed interested in helping me with that, brains were also part of the deal and nothing challenges me more than having to come up with ways to stop Jaded ‘Freaking’ La Perm.

That I actively got to work with Jaded as a training aid once a week quickly made her become my sleep paralysis demon. Zampony’s were not supposed to move that fast nor were they supposed to be capable of spraying ice, snow, fire, stinky gas, banana peels or whatever other insanity that Jaded will make it do next. I’m already expecting the ability to drive up walls, and possibly a turret stolen from a party tank.

“Yeah and I can still remember when Edith used to freak me out, Silver Stream will have a very good assistant for troublemakers at least if she becomes a teacher.” Even I wouldn’t want to mess with a cockatrice that big. “The truth is Jaded La Perm is really making me lose my resolve.”

“Yona think that Jaded is being a major test of determination, guards that quit or are not determined to try are not going to protect people very well from serious threats.” That, Yona, is exactly why Jaded was my sleep paralysis demon.

Jaded was very much a serious threat that wasn’t even trying to be scary… and she does it so well. The only thing I could find more threatening in the same vein would be Pinkie Pie.

“Hi Gallus, I just got back from saving an entire universe with Oleander and it was awesome!” Okay, if asked, Pinkie Pie suddenly showing up behind me from out of nowhere did not suddenly make me shoot into the nearest cloud while making a high pitched girly squawk. “Was it something I said?”

“Eh, could be Pinkie, you have a habit of sneaking up on people.” The small yellow diamond dog like being next to the pink pony would eventually tell us her name was Isabelle and she was ‘crossing’ from out of universe.

Didn’t know what was up with the blue eyed pink marshmallow with red feet was all about, but at least I knew Buttina Stalliona from her last visit. Butt pure was unadulterated awesome, also very shiny and the small griffon side of me thought she looked rich.

-Earth, Saint Canard, Museum, Dolly-

Dormarch was now with Pom and he should be able to get her out of whatever situation she was in, that was some pressure off my back.

Meanwhile I was gliding my way into knocking a sheep wolf off the staircase. Ramming into them with the side of my skateboard, they fell away sideways into the strange void of the staircase maze.

After landing I looked to my left at the staircase we had been on previously. We have nearly been under constant attack since we entered this space, whether it was helicopter hellcats or the sheep wolfs they carried in to bombard us with.

My fur was a little roughed up, but we hadn’t taken any serious injuries or hits… yet.

We’ve been upside down, sideways and vaguely right side up in this strange place, the only reason I knew the directions is because Pom was a constant and I couldn’t get disoriented knowing which direction she was always in.

Shanty was doing pretty good at not getting disoriented by all this either, but she didn’t have an anchor like I did. She was in the middle of launching a power buck to a sheep wolf’s chin cutting into its face as she knocked it completely off the stairway down onto another one below as it fell in a different direction.

“Aw isn’t it sweet that she is falling for me? Sorry, but I’ll have to let you down hard!” As for Quackerjack, he might be the only with any sense of direction in here and his need to crack jokes would be appreciated more if they were better. That is to say they were all kind of groaners. He whipped the last sheep wolf off the edge using his jump rope. “Was that all of them? Okay let’s move, I think we’re almost to the top and I don’t know how many more jokes about stairs and going on trips down them I have left in me!”

“Do you really even be needing to say more of those?” Shanty stated as we continued up the staircase and of the three doorways we came to we went through the one on the left. “I be getting pretty tired, Splatter Phoenix is being more dangerous than I am first thinking.”

“Say what you will about me, but I will continue to have a vibrant sense of humor until my final hour.” Quackerjack continued forward, then he said something I don’t think I was supposed to hear. “Which is coming very soon...”

Continuing up to a doorway, we came into a white rectangular room with four grooved pillars, we took a moment to rest and then proceeded to hurry through the room.

That’s when I notice something off about the shadows of one of the pillars.

“Hey guys, stop!” A shadow leapt from the pillar to our right and seeing as I didn’t have much time. I burst forward following the flowing motion into a roll and raised my board above my head. Willing my magic to be defend instead of an attack. “Aero!”

Bright swirling silver winds appeared around all three of us as the blade of and axe struck the dome that formed when all the winds swirling around us combined together. The winds then exploded outwards knocking the threat back.

It was a Minotaur, with clock like eyes, fancy coat and top hat? That’s what just went skidding back and away from us, it’s kind of weird that Poodle Wolf is how I even know what this thing is. Though what’s up with the clock theme?

It was holding an axe that looked to be a half a clock and the other half seemed to have melted into being the handle.

It stood up from its crouch and glared at us with the clock hands over its glowing eyes slowly turning.

Well this is going in my top ten list of weird stuff. Ah dog, we had to fight this musclebound bull biped didn’t we?

The creature bellowed loudly at us and raised its axe ready for a fight, we looked between ourselves and nodded. This was going to be a tough one.

It lunged forward and swept its axe in from our right, Shanty popped up onto the pillar on the right, I popped onto the left for a second and jumped into the air to start gliding in place and Quackerjack did a handspring backwards out of range.

“Goat Fly!” Shanty launched a kick for the monster only to be blocked by the shaft of his axe, he stepped back and swung the back end of it into Shanty’s body sending her flying off to the side towards the room’s right wall from where we entered. “Oof!”

Shanty flipped and landed in a crouch against the wall, I decided to make a move and dove towards the horned menace with a swing of my skateboard. He turned his head and tried to catch my skateboard on his horn, which was bad news for him as I was charging my board with momentum as I swung it down.

My board cracked his right horn when I brought it down on him and he stepped back from me and then back handed me harshly into the pillar behind him on the left.

After bouncing off the pillar, which really hurt, I caught myself in the air and flipped and glided behind the pillar avoiding the clock axe slamming into where I had been and the pillar shook but didn’t look damaged as the monster pulled the axe back for another swing.

It seems Quackerjack was going for his jack-in-the-box again, only for the pony toy in the box and the pie it held to be slice in two vertically, it then brought its axe around as if attacking the air and shoved it at Shanty as she came flying in with a kick.

Instead of being shoved away Shanty landed on the head of the axe and then lunged for the bullheaded monsters face.

“DONG!” That loud eardrum hurting sound came from the minotaur and then it… disappeared?

Shanty dropped to the floor looking about in confusion having missed hitting the minotaur’s face with a slash. I looked up and saw the minotaur leaping from the pillar it had started the fight off from in the exact same manner.

I swooped down and slammed into Shanty before the axe connected and we were sent tumbling by the shockwave back towards the entrance of this room and stopped short of the wall a little before the entryway.

“Are you two alright?” Quackerjack asked as he kept his eye on the minotaur.

“Ding…” That was the faint noise it made as it went to swing for Quackerjack in a downwards sideways slice to from his left to right. Quackerjack ducked under the axe to the left in time while pulling a weapon from his costume.

Quackerjack quickly retaliated with a blast of flames from a flamethrower mallet that caused the monstrous bull some discomfort, but it followed up the swing by continuing on into an overhead swing that Quackerjack did a hopping twirl out of the way of to the right.

In the middle of doing his hop, Quackerjack managed to throw a whoopee cushion into its face that made a loud farting noise as it exploded in a cloud of brown gas that made the minotaur stumble back and away from him.

“I think Caper Canine be having a bruised spine and I be nearly getting cut in half, that is not being alright no matter how you be slicing it!” Shanty stated as she rolled me onto my paws and I stood up and tried to shake off the near miss and checked to make sure I still had my tail.

“I’m okay!” I barked out, sure they couldn’t understand me, but I think my gesture got it across well enough.

“Can we cut to the chase and say that this big bully here is going to be a problem when it can teleport?” It did what now Quackerjack, and is that how it got above Shanty? Well it certainly didn’t look like it could jump that high and at that kind of speed.

The red minotaur stomped forward and jabbed his axe at Quackerjack wielding it with his left hand, both Shanty and I set forward to watch as Quackerjack cartwheel under the axe as the blade were turned in his direction and swung outwards.

When Shanty leapt up onto the right pillar near the entrance and launched for it, the minotaur caught her leading left hind leg and stopped her Goat Fly cold.

I came in and rammed at its right leg with my helmet, after landing I leapt to the right and attacked his other leg making him stumble and drop Shanty. She quickly scampered away and I backed off a bit to ready my board. Quackerjack assisted with a piece of rock candy to the inner joint making the minotaur roar as the jagged piece of sugar crystal dug into its left leg.

I leapt up and pushed my momentum hard forward glide intending to stab the monster with the nose of my board.

“Dong!” The minotaur had change position before I knew it and it no longer had the pointy bit of rock candy stuck in its bleeding leg, it was a few feet back and in mid swing from my left to right, I barely managed to put my board in the path of the axe.

The blow sent me spiraling to the floor and onto my back as I lost control of my momentum, I groaned and slowly sat up in a dizzy stupor.

The minotaur swung his axe around and I looked up at it as it brought the axe into an overhead swing down towards me, I immediately brought my board over my torso and tried to lay as flat as I could on my back with it over me.

The axe slammed into to my board and it held, my torso was thankfully safe between the wheels.

I also got a close look at the blade of the axe, because the edge of it was an inch from my nose. Also the shockwave spreading out from my board let me know that yes, it being mostly indestructible had just saved my life again. I reminded myself that magic could still damage my board and if the axe had been magical…

“Oh dog…” I muttered as kept its axe pressed down on my board and lifted its right leg and it went for my face.

Its leg was quickly knocked off to the side as Shanty leapt onto my board and kicked it off to the side with her right hind leg, before going into a biped stance above me. The minotaur’s slightly injured cloven right hoof slammed into the floor next to my head, making me whimper.

Shanty performed a twirling leap up to slash it across the face with a spiraling left hoof uppercut and back right hoof slashed the minotaur across the chest before she landed.

She swung up her left hind leg across its belly at an angle making it grunt in rage, before the left side of its face was struck with a wad of caustic liquid from Quackerjack.

Quackerjack’s acid shot actually made it stagger back in pain clutching at its face with its right hand.

When it removed its hand, the left clock eye had a blistering flesh all around it that looked painful partially melted flesh and large chunks of the base of its left horn had been damaged to match the cracks I put in its right horn. It was glaring at us with rage and brightly glowing eyes.

Its roar shook the room as Shanty hopped off the board and let me get back up.

I was certainly going to have an accident at this rate, as this thing was terrifying. This guy was made of sterner stuff than the sheep wolves or those flying hellcats.

“Ding…” There’s that sound again, as the minotaur start twirling the axe around defensively in front of itself in a wide manner for no apparent reason. Afterwards it planted and dragged the tip of axe blade along the ground towards us and sent several beams of energy flying at us as it swung it upwards.

I jumped straight up and over the several beams and started gliding backwards, Shanty rolled to the left behind a pillar and Quackerjack took a bad gash to his left leg that made him trip and fall flat on his face as he failed to dodge the attack. He was to the left of the first pillar on the right from our entrance.

“This guy isn’t any fun, also that teleporting thing he’s doing is such bull-oney!” Quackerjack whined while trying to stand up, the minotaur stalked towards him while lowering its head. Quackerjack became quiet when it charged him head first, he grinned slightly despite the threat of being gored on this thing’s horns. “How about a can of these nuts?”

Quackerjack pulled the snake can and opened it towards the back right pillar, the mechanical snakes lashed out around the large white pillar and dragged him out of the way from where he was sitting, leaving the minotaur to slam both its horns into the right pillar from the entrance we came through.

The painfully loud snapping noises we heard was the minotaur snapping its right horn in a jagged pointy half half and its left horn snapped off entirely in a blunt manner. That didn’t seem to do much more than make it angrier, as it turned towards me…

Wait, why me?!

It twirled towards me with its axe held out and low near the ground and I jumped up and shot towards the left pillar as it become a swirling mass of death, kind of like those weird bladed tops of that show my brother Daisuke watches.

It raised its axe from the floor and sent several flying blades of energy at me that forced me to run up the pillar towards the ceiling, as blasts of energy erupted behind me.

Having avoided the last one I looked down as I slowed my climbing and watched as the minotaur’s axe was almost held straight up as it twisted around the pillar and tried to kick Shanty with its left leg.

Tried as Shanty quickly rolled from behind the pillar and made her way towards the center of the room.

The pillar shook, as did the entire room, with the force of its kick. I lost traction and fell from the pillar and quickly altered my momentum to glide towards Quackerjack to see if he needed any help.

“Come and get me!” Shanty taunted and the minotaur immediately took that taunt seriously.

The reason why Shanty and I were doing this is because Quackerjack was currently tying magician’s handkerchiefs around his bleeding left leg at the right side of the back right pillar.

How much stuff did Quackerjack have in his clothing? It was like an amazing clown car unto itself.

“Thanks for giving me the chance to patch myself up.” Quackerjack said to me as I took to standing guard in front of him with my board. “Kind of hard to hurt isn’t it? Also I’m not sure, but I think its horns might be growing back.”

Looking as the minotaur leapt at Shanty with an overhead swing, which she thankfully dodged with a roll through the minotaur’s legs’, yeah the horns were starting to regrow slightly. The other injuries were still present at least.

Shanty ran up the back left pillar of the room and the Minotaur looked at me standing guard in front of Quackerjack, I think it might even hate me.

“Let’s see how you be handling this, Bouncy Blades!” Shanty leapt from the pillar at the minotaur and curled up into a ball leaving her hooves and horns exposed as she rapidly spun through the air creating six cutting arcs that almost covered her body in their light.

The minotaur held the flat of its axe up, only for Shanty to rebound of it and then off the floor into its injured left leg violently cutting into it before bouncing off and into the back of the left pillar into the right and into the minotaur’s back up off the back right pillar into its face as it turned to look.

That’s when Shanty started getting faster rebounding off the walls, floor and pillars into the minotaur cutting it up with each impact, yet that didn’t seem to be really beating it down all too well. It was ruining the suit and I believed Shanty was going death by a thousand cuts in a literal meaning here.

“Dong!” The minotaur was now in the exact position it had been in a minute ago, twirling its axe defensively.

“No… way…” I blinked and watched as every subsequent attack by the rapidly spinning ball of pain Shanty became was deflected multiple times perfectly doing the same thing it did previously.

Okay now I’m really suspicious as to what the whole ‘ding’ and ‘dong’ things are about!

“Agh!” Shanty uncurled as the minotaur finished it’s defensive twirling of its axe and managed to hit her hard enough with the blade at the end of its defensive twirling that all six of Shanty’s rotating cutting arcs had been deflected.

Shanty hit the ground roughly and bounced once before ending up on her back. It planted its axe against the ground and started to drag it in her direction…

Pom can I get a bump here, like right now?! I need a decent bark blast like yesterday, highly urgent and I mean emergency!

I felt Pom start sending me quite a bit of energy as I ran forward while inhaling, I didn’t hesitate to bark as hard as I could when I think I got close enough.

The bark blast knocked the minotaur off his feet and sent several beams of energy up into the air in a wide spray as he went sliding towards the left side of the room, he skidded to a stop before the wall. Barely grunting in anything resembling pain.

Despite the shredded clothing and the number of wounds Shanty managed to land before it did a perfect defense, it still looked incredibly healthy and was already slowly standing up.

It was glaring at me now and… oh… oh no…

I think I get what it’s doing now and I think the only reason why it would focus on me, it is because I would eventually figure it out. Having just done so, I can’t exactly explain what I know to Shanty and Quackerjack, but if it could see the future and even manipulate time like I thought it could…

Shanty was by my side a second later and we were both facing the minotaur as the hands in its eyes stopped spinning clockwise, they moved in reverse slightly.

The clock theming was starting to make a lot of sense now, also I think it was about to really start doing it’s darned best to kill us all quickly before Shanty and Quackerjack could figure it out as well.

The minotaur’s eyes narrowed at me…

“Ah dang, it really knows that I know now.” I whimpered as I also noted that while its wounds weren’t closing up or healing stupidly fast, they did scab over quickly meaning it was going to try to tank us down.

What could it do when its clock eyes were moving in reverse and could I figure it out before it took us all down?

The minotaur grinned as its muscles shrunk slightly and its body suddenly became slightly more streamlined.

“Haste...” A deep voice rumbled, the minotaur's body immediately began glowing a blood red color and its clock eyes began spinning counterclockwise.

Did it just talk… holy crap!

-Pom-

“Sorry, Dolly needed some energy for a bark blast.” I said after Spot asked what I just did, she has been leading Dormarch through disarming the blood circle underneath me.

“Huh? I know she’s your familiar and all, but that’s not exactly how familiars are supposed to work.” That’s news to me Spot.

I currently have two familiars present, both likely with entirely unique familiar systems.

“We don’t know how familiars are supposed to work, especially when we’re working with two similar magic systems welded together...” I said wide-eyed. "Dolly's group is in serious trouble!"

203. Museum Menace.

-Earth, Saint Canard, Museum Medieval Art Exhibit room, Dormarch-

“What’s the next instruction Spot?” We had to hurry this up, I was judging this by the look of worry on Pom’s face.

“Do we know the De Ville’s name?” What does that have to do with getting Pom free Spot? I looked down at the blood circle and waited for the next instruction. It had to be almost broken right?

I didn’t want to look Pom in the eyes, despite the fact that I couldn’t feel any anger from her.

“Artisia De Ville, I asked if she Athena De Villa and she stated that she was related.” Pom replied. “Are you alright Dormarch, I know this situation is not the best, but you kind of seem upset.”

“Give me a moment, step back and keep the entire circle on screen.” Spot stated from the PET, I did as the zombie chicken asked.

“I expected you to be more upset with me…” Looking up into her eye I didn’t see anything but worry in them.

“Why would I have reason to be upset, are you still connected to the PET and is it going to kill you soon?” That’s what Pom was worried about?

“Yes I’m still connected to it, but no I’m not going to die unless it is destroyed or I actively disconnect from it…” I let that statement drift off as Pom gave me a sad look.

“Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you if it isn’t ‘that’ hanging over your head?” Pom was still being truly nice to me. “Knowing that you could die at any minute due to an accident is scary to me, considering the device keeping you alive is so small and fragile looking.”

“Well… I could have come out of the PET sooner and possibly prevented some things from happening.” I looked away again. “That’s a reason for you to get mad.”

“Don’t worry about the things you can’t change back then Dormarch, you’re here ‘now’ and I’m quite thankful for that.” I looked up at Pom speaking gently to me, her eyes were focusing on my own. “Once you get me out of this, the first thing I’m going to do is hug you.”

“Can’t you be a little angry with me?” My statement was met with a smile.

“I’m too happy that we’re even having a conversation in person to be more than slightly disappointed that you couldn’t come out sooner to experience things alongside us.” Sighing loudly Pom looked up at the chains holding her legs and the ceiling she was hanging from. “I have quite a few ideas as to why you didn’t and it’s understandable that you’re both too shy and scared, because goodness knows I haven’t gone a month without nearly dying throughout an entire year and things tend to get scary around me. It’s likely my fault that you’re like this, guess I’ll have to try harder just for you.”

“The way things tend go for us, that sounds like a bad move Pom.” Blinking in confusion at the lighthearted giggle I was receiving I tilted my head up at her as I kept a close hold of the skeleton key. “Also how is this your fault? If anything it’s my fault for being the way that I am!”

“A big hug, first thing, once you get me down. Maybe a kiss to the forehead too for my brave little knight in shining armor coming to rescue me from the crude witch’s dungeon.” Pom promised with a bright smile. “Oh the stories I used to read in exile from Meadow Hills, only I’m living them now… and it’s completely horrifying being in this exact position.”

“Speaking of getting you down… swipe the skeleton key through the circle two degrees to the right of straight north. I still don’t want you actively touching it.” Spot brought my attention back to the circle and I started moving to do as she said. “That should deal with most of our problems, afterwards I want you to wipe away or smudge the symbol to the direct southwest, the crossed out X, without breaking the circle. That should ruin the circle completely, but will leave it actively running, so be careful to not let anything else touch it anymore afterwards. It’ll be a huge drain on this Artisia and she won’t be able to do as much blood magic. She was good at not making mistakes herself, but no one said that mistakes can’t be made after the magic was already in effect and she did leave her circle open for being manipulated.”

“Thanks Aunty Spot.” If I was a part of Pom and Dolly’s families, then I might as well call the magical zombie chicken my aunt too.

Life was weird when you were a digital lifeform from some other reality.

-Staircase maze dimension, Shanty-

One second the minotaur be distant from Dolly, the next its eyes be spinning in reverse and it be glowing red and moving at twice the speed trying to cleave Dolly in two. She be leaping out of the way onto the back right pillar and the minotaur followed by swinging it’s axe upwards sending a blast of cutting force out of its axe at Dolly who scampered out of the way around the pillar.

She hopped off the backside of the pillar and went into a slow falling hover while looking my way with worry.

After that upwards swing the minotaur be swinging for me next without pause and I be flipping backwards onto the pillar behind me and scampering up it backwards as he sent several horizontal blades of energy at me. A tiny bit of my beard be missing after the last swing, at least it not be my head.

That’s when he be changing target to charge towards Quackerjack. This thing was not being nearly this fast a second ago! Also I be realizing that Quackerjack doesn’t have the same capabilities we did, Dolly could glide and stay in the air for a long time almost as long as she needed to and I can be sticking to surfaces even if it be a drain on me to be doing it for too long.

Quackerjack be popping his can of mechanical snakes and be dragging himself out of the way of a downward swing and the minotaur swung his axe sideways at a blazing fast speed and the metal snakes tore apart by the ripping air and arc of energy that flew over him.

Quackerjack be sent skidding across the ground on his butt near the center of the room, with a pile of bolts and bits of metal sliding across the ground.

“Oh no… my nuts, and their bolts!” Quackerjack toss the can over his shoulder and rolled to the side out of the path of several streaks of energy when the axe be slamming against the ground. He be getting up to run away with a notably limp from his wrapped leg.

I be noting that the room we be in was not getting damaged by the room shaking force that minotaur be putting out. That and the minotaur be going after Quackerjack, the least agile of us, that needs to be stop.

Pushing off the pillar I be jumping down and leading with my left hind hoof, only to hit the shaft as the minotaur held up his axe to block me and then tried to slash me out of the air as I pushed off.

I be deflecting myself backwards off of his axe swing preventing it from launching an arc of energy with a kick of my other leg and went skidding along the floor when I landed. The minotaur be almost upon me before I could even be getting my senses back from that deflect.

Dolly zipped in from the side and attempted to slap at him with her board. Only she be deflected and nearly bisected in two swift motions when her board be getting knocked upwards, being able to control herself in the air be let Dolly dodge the second blow by dropping downwards and gliding backwards real fast.

That was happening as I myself be putting some distance between me and this ridiculously fast monster.

“Hey if you can give me some time, I can use the last in my pony toy series on this guy!” Quackjack ducked behind the pillar as a wave of energy struck out at where he was.

“How much do you be needing?” Because I be a bit too afraid to be close with that thing moving as fast as it was now, I be swinging around the nearest pillar as a huge wave of energy crashed against it vertically, I be climbing up the pillar a bit. “Because we don’t be having a lot of it!”

“Once I fully crank up this toy’s key it’ll be worth it, I promise!” If the last pony toy is being used Quackerjack, then it had better be being a real doozy to actually do something to this guy.

The minotaur, being far faster than before, sent me flying from the pillar just trying to deflect him before he could be taking off my head.

“Ugh.” I be slamming back first into the right wall closer to the entrance, the minotaur be charging me with his axe raised and then turned around with a swing that sent Dolly flying backwards upon the axe striking her skateboard. It took quite a bit of time before she could be regaining control in the air.

The minotaur leapt into the center of the room swinging its axe downwards sending a wave of energy at Dolly, who flipped to being on top of her board and swerved out of the way in the air. Blocking a small portion of the attack with the bottom of it that be sending her slightly upwards.

The minotaur then be raising his axe for a horizontal sweep.

“Ding.” Did I just be seeing a flash in its eye when it be making that noise? It started spinning and building up speed… did he intend.

“Be getting to cover!” I dove to the side as an explosion of air blades be filling the entire room and some even be bouncing off the walls, I be surprised that I didn’t get hit by a rebounding wave of cutting air. Looking around I saw Dolly cowering behind her board at the bottom of the next pillar over.

Even before we can even be reacting to the aftermath of that attack, the minotaur be charging for where Quackerjack was and swung around the pillar and brought his axe around.

Something be flying from the pillar that be looking like Quackerjack’s head, but I be noting that Quackerjack’s beak should not be entirely made of wood.

“Aw, you took the head off my decoy Quackerjack puppet, well that wasn’t very nice of you.” Quackerjack’s voice be coming from everywhere and the minotaur be looking around quite angrily not being able to tell where he was. “Give me a bit longer girls.”

Dolly be trying for the exit, but it be shimmering with a barrier, well I guess we be having to test that at least once during this fight. She be quickly running up and getting high up from the rooms floor as a horizontal wave of energy struck out at where she had been.

“We be trapped in here with it?!” I shouted and the minotaur turned towards the pillar I be behind. It looked between me and Dolly, then be making a chase to charge me for being closer to the ground.

Well we be having to beat this thing to survive… I moved around the pillar and leapt off towards the minotaur as it swung the axe downwards.

The axe missed and the minotaur be swinging out the shaft, pushing it upwards towards my chest with its right arm.

“Oof!” I grappled the shaft of the axe with my front hooves as it hit me and started slashing him in the chest with upwards slicing kicks from my rear legs that didn’t seem to be causing him much pain or even be making him flinch at all despite the damage I be doing.

He be trying to shake me off the shaft as I continued to kick out at him rapidly trying to be doing as much damage as possible, then he be turning me towards the nearest pillar.

He slammed me back first against the pillar and be threating to split me in half with the blunt metal shaft of his axe.

My frantic kicking not be stopping for even a second when he be knocking the air out of me and started crushing my torso, I be pushing back trying to alleviate the pressure with my hooves but he is being far too strong.

He angled his jagged horn towards me… he intended to impale my head if he can’t be splitting me in half?! It started forward only for Dolly to come in and save me.

Dolly came in and kicked off the pillar with a spinning blow to his horn with her skateboard, knocking him back and dropping me on the floor. She swung it around to jab him in the face only to miss.

“Dong!” The minotaur appeared in position to swing the axe and started to do so rapidly to do the room full of wind blades thing again while I still be catching my breathe.

Dolly be taking up position in front of me with a worried whine holding her board up in her right paw, then turned and held her left paw forward just as we were about to be buffeted with a massive amount of air blades. I be realizing that she can’t be blocking all of them and they be rebounding off the walls last time…

“Ar-Ro!” Dolly barks out and a blast of green wind spinning in the opposite direction actually caused the minotaur to stumble out of its spin looking to be in a lot of pain as it stumbled back towards the exit.

Dolly be looking slightly tired after doing that.

It be looking like that hurt the minotaur a lot, but why? It just be a little wind. Was it because it was magic based, or was the minotaur actively weak to it? Whatever be the case Dolly, couldn’t do that too many more times.

I got standing and be charging it horns first, the minotaur swung outwards for me at an angle and I slid under the axe to pop up ramming my horns upwards into its belly in a curved ark. Then I be getting backhanded into the nearby pillar.

The pain my possibly broken nose and back be in is worth the damage I be causing at least.

“Done!” Quackerjack announced and it was being about time. I be looking around for where he had been and saw his jump rope sliding down the front left pillar. He walked around to the center of the room in front of the entrance and he be placing down the toy. It was a yellow pegasus with pink hair, her eyes were closed and there was a key turning in her back. “Go on my little Butterfly Beamer, stare him down and let him know you’re wrath!”

The minotaur looked ready to ignore the toy and go for me, instead it be doing something that seemed to surprise Dolly as much as it did me.

“Dong!” It appeared in the middle of the room and started to swing for another spinning blades. I tried to get up to move around the pillar and Dolly already be getting to cover at the back right pillar.

The toy be stopping. Seemingly bouncing in place as it clicked and after breathing a loud sighing noise, the pegasus toy then be spreading it’s wings wide…

“Take cover!” Quackerjack shouted and rolled behind the left pillar, I be managed to take my own cover and watched as the first air blade launched off the axe.

That was when the toy be opening its closed eyes. The air blade didn’t go much further as a pair of energy beams suddenly slammed into the spinning minotaur and be stopping him entirely, they tore two holes into his upper torso.

It immediately be toppling him.

“The sad thing about that toy is, it only works once, but it’s a nice collectible afterwards! I wonder how many other toy makers can create key cranked laser blasting toy like that.” I be looking at the blue eyed toy as it stood there, Quackerjack went and picked it up to store it away. “I think that takes care of… oh come on, what would normally survive something like that!”

The minotaur, despite being cut up and having two bloody holes through its upper torso, propped itself up on its axe. Once it was fully standing again, it was doing it so easily despite the mess it was dripping onto the floor.

It snorted loudly at us loudly and bellowed as it regained that red aura that be flickering off when it be knocked over.

“What does it take to be bringing that thing down?!” This is being aggravating, we already be dealing with taking some bad hits.

“Not much more I’d think, but it certainly doesn’t look like it’ll bleed out.” Quackerjack be pulling out six bowling pins and started juggling them, then he caught them. “I finally remembered what my bowling ball does, but first I have to stick this monster with my Pin Pins! Give me some openings to stick them in and I can finish him off.”

Dolly be barking something at Quackerjack as she evaded the bull swinging out a slash of energy from its axe.

“Dong.” It appeared in the middle of the room and started to swing, but I stopped it immediately.

“Riptide!” I slashed my hooves forward and the resulting blast of salt water caused it agony as it staggered from being able to spin.

Dolly be choosing that Moment to slam into the back of its head while it was distracted and then she be swinging her board around on the strap twice knocking it away from me with each blow.

A bowling pin with a spike jutting out of it be entering the minotaur’s left shoulder, then its right leg. It tried to swing its axe for me. Only for Dolly to be leaping onto its back and wrapping her paws halfway around the back of its neck stopping it from moving as she dug her claws into it, she looked to be struggling with holding it still.

I moved back and started heading for the left wall.

Just how hard could I push my Goat Fly technique? If it could end things swiftly, then I can get to my fight with the museum pirates!

-Dolly-

No momentum for you speedy jerk, I’m going to absorb all of it out of you if I have to!

Two more pins entered the minotaur, one in the chest and on its neck below where I was clinging to the back of this monsters head.

It was struggling to get me off. I was using every bit of my concentration to prevent any momentum whatsoever. Since I just realized I could stop anything in place, useful for something that suddenly started moving at twice its natural speed.

This minotaur menace was about to grab me with its right hand because it couldn’t swing its weapon, but it could hardly move either arm as those were my main focus. It could still move its legs fine though.

“Dong.” It warped, but not without me still clinging to it.

So it couldn’t actually escape me holding onto it... awesome!

It tried to fall on its back to slam me into the floor and I countered by having its momentum push it back forward into standing position.

Nope, not that easy to get me off, I’m sticking to you like a horrible tick! Ugh, now I feel like one of those annoying little bloodsuckers, except fleas are still arguably worse.

Another Pin struck his right forearm and he started to slowly reach for me with his right hand, I was struggling to keep him still. He was starting to overpower me when the next pin slammed home in its right eye.

It roared in pain, but it could really react to said pain with me holding it in place. I had to force its right arm back down.

“How about I lightning strike you out!” Ugh, Quackerjack, what was that? I was just beginning to think you were a somewhat cool weirdo. “Get out of there before this hits Caper Canine.”

Quackerjack spun around on his right foot twice and threw the bowling ball like one of those Olympic guys. It split in half and I saw the electricity on the numerous spikes that the now bear trap style thing had going for it as it came.

When it got close, I let go and pushed off with my hind legs and the bowling ball clamped onto the minotaur’s chest before it could grab it out of the air. or go for me for that matter.

The minotaur dropped the clock axe and started thrashing as the bowling ball electrified its body and sent energy into the various pins stuck in it.

Top of the staircase, Splatter Phoenix-

Agh, why do I keep losing large chunks of magic and feel so awful all of the sudden? What were they doing to my Minute-taur in there?!

Maybe that flaw in my creation was bigger than I thought.

-Dolly-

I got away from the minotaur before the pins and bowling ball exploded violently.

That had to do it right, how could something have possibly survived all of that?

The minotaur was kneeling, it gripped its axe and slowly started to stand up again.

It still had that one chunk of the exploded bowling pin lodged in its left eye and brain, how was it still alive?!

“What the dog, what is it going to take to put you down?!” The monster started to turn towards me while taking a grip on its axe with both hands ready to swing for me.

Quackerjack backed away looking horrified that it could still move after he put so much effort and his stuff into putting it down.

“Okay, that be enough of you, Goat Rocket!” Looking to the nearby wall I watched as things slowed down and Shanty shot from the wall like a rocket, she swung her hips around and brought both her hind legs into a single swing. “Double scythe!”

One swing and the flashing arc of two scythes, Shanty continued onwards to slam into the opposite wall on all of her hooves before she dropped to the floor and then flopped onto her face.

“That be… taking a lot out of me.” Shanty mumbled, she laid there for a minute with her broken nose pressing against the floor. “That whole fight be tiring... but... it be over.”

Quackerjack and I slowly turned back to the minotaur, it stood there silently with its arms held out and a wide eyed look on its face.

“That... be finishing it off.” Shanty, stood up and started walking towards the exit with a bright grin on her face. “It is now being pirate fighting time!”

Looking back I noticed something, the minotaur’s axe was missing.

“Huh, where did that go?” I looked around and then up and blinked at the sight that happened next.

The minotaur’s head slid off its neck and its axe came down to slice it’s still standing body completely in half.

“Well… uh… that... let’s just make ‘haste’.” Did the world seem slightly slower for some reason? Probably just my imagination.

Author's Note

Quackerjack's low on supplies, Dolly and Shanty are slightly injured and Splatter Phoenix still has a ninja and pirate art exhibit to fight with.

204. Museum Mess.

-Equus, Ponyville, Silver Stream-

“We should hang out more often, I’m kind of surprised we don’t do it enough.” Today I was spending time with Sandbar, it was a rare occasion despite the fact that we were friends and we knew each other pretty well. While I still miss Smolder and Ocellus, they wouldn’t want us to focus on them to the point of absurdity. Pinkie will take care of the party when they come back, because I doubt there will be an ‘if’ at all since Tianhuo says Pom is far stronger than she looks. “Photography is really quite interesting.”

“Yeah, I’ve been learning bird watching on the side with Snickers, that turtle dove I’m learning to speak bird and turtle from. She helps me with finding good spots to watch birds quietly.” Sandbar wasn’t the only being I was hanging out with there were also our two new friends and fresh faces at Twilight’s school of friendship.

Pique the storm creature spoke up and made a gesture to point at a picture of a baby bunny. Niche went next showing us a picture of a majestic Roc. Griffonstone mail delivery griffon Gabby was also here and she was showing us pictures of her travels. I had a picture of a three horned bunyip to show off, it was kind of hard to get pictures of anything underwater, I should get a few pictures of Mt. Aris at least.

“Isn’t Snickers the familiar of Jaded La Perm?” Familiars tend to reflect the personalities of their bonded partner.

“Yeah, but she’s as sweet as can be, don’t honestly why she bonded to someone like Jaded… not that Jade is evil, but she is causing most of the current chaos that’s driving Princess Twilight nuts.” Oh you don’t even know the half of it Sandbar, there was that letter Jade sent to Aunt Novo that cause all kinds of weird responses. My aunt still won’t tell anyone what Jade wrote, just that it was utterly embarrassing and she has problems looking Celestia in the face. “Discord has been acting jealous about it and he feels like he needs to step up his game.”

“Jealous, who’s jealous?” Discord wasn’t even here a second ago and he appears before us looking like he was made of macaroni art. “I’m not jealous, if anything she’s the jealous one trying to one up me in being chaotic neutral at the best of times!”

“… Baast.” Curiousity had taken grip of me as I stated her name, a wide eyed Discord immediately disappeared before something crashed into the ground where Discord had been leaving a small crater filled with cheese and the pink goddess of flail-tails, the hidden sphinx herself looking around.

“Aww… why won’t Discord let me love him like the masculine sea horse he is? I know he has a problem with commitment and everything, but I’m willing to commit to him in every way imaginable since I’m just that insane!” They say if you say Baast’s name in the presence of Discord, then she’ll know exactly where he is. I just confirmed that for myself, yay for me! “You can’t run from me forever ‘Chaos the blue’! The goddess of life will find a way and I’m even willing to share you with that pretty and adorable pegasus friend of yours!”

“Wow… I’m kind of surprised they didn’t notice me here.” A blushing Fluttershy stated as she held up a picture. “Anyway, this is a picture of my friend Fred the Demon Book. He’s not so bad even if he is really scary looking, he’s really good at macramé… though I really wish he would stop making it out of his demonic plant enemies that won’t stop screaming after being turned into macramé sculptures.”

Fluttershy had some of the weirdest friends in existence.

-Earth, Saint Canard, museums third floor medieval art exhibit, Dormarch-

My world exploded with understanding once I safely got Pom down, away from the still active blood circle and out of the painting.

There was the blood of several duck, dog, frog and squirrel bipeds, there was oddly a scorpion mixed in there too. I didn’t want to think about if the people that made the circle were alive or not. Hopefully it was just stolen blood bags from the hospital.

I had to first unlock the neck collar, I didn’t want to accidentally hang Pom by getting her legs free first, and I got one of her front legs free afterwards. This was followed by her hind legs and her last front leg slowly being freed up as we maneuvered the chains out of the way. We managed to get out of the painting without issue afterwards.

As soon as we exited the painting Pom wrapped me up in her hooves gently and pulled me close and tight, her wool rubbing up against my digital fur softly. Her right hoof started petting my tails and felt at peace with her, I could even hear her heartbeat since my right ear was on her chest.

My understanding was of life, since I could feel the love for me radiating off of Pom like the sun as she held me close.

“Uh… Pom… we kind of still need to deal with Splatter Phoenix downstairs.” I stated quietly, despite the fact that I really didn’t want to move from my position or for Pom to stop stroking her hoof over my three wagging fur covered fish tails.

“Dolly and Shanty just got out of danger." That Pom was even relaxed was a miracle in and of itself, considering I can still get scan data from the PET despite my being manifested outside the device. "They'll chase Splatter phoenix this way, we have some time.”

“Not much, you might want to get on that as De Ville’s are tricky customers when you are dealing with the nasty ones.” Spot was still on call and I hoped that wasn’t costing us too much, we kind of needed her expertise on this world’s magic at the moment. “Ninety percent of that family is rotten by design through cunning instances of trying to kill off each other in an admittedly endearing manner for them. My suggestion is leave nothing to chance and go for a swift direct takedown, if not outright try to kill this one because of how dangerous she is. She’s a true threat to everyone in her general vicinity if she’s as powerful as I think she is, especially given you’re location possibly being where she’s at her most powerful.”

“Yeah, kind of figured that when she brought statues to life with only a flick of her paintbrush.” There were also the Pom like monsters she created which were terrifying versions of what Pom would be like if she were a werewolf. “Fighting through the prehistoric exhibit was particularly nasty.”

“Going to call it now. Splatter Phoenix can feasibly use paintings for moving about, given she managed to put you inside one. I’m fairly sure she’s at the mercy of becoming a part of the of a paintings given theme while moving through them, though some paintings might not affect her much like the dungeon painting.” After a moment of silence, Spot then added on. “There could be some paintings that are a detriment to her abilities, but I seriously suggest that you avoid any paintings of kaiju if they are around.”

“Noted, I’m sure Dormarch can tell me something about those.” Pom said quietly while lifting me up and onto her back. “Come on Dormarch, let’s go meet up with the others. I’m somewhat rested and ready to get back into this rather stressful day... also I have an idea as to where Negaduck is from all this, but we need to deal with Splatter first before we can go after him. Did Jitters say anything else Dormarch?”

“Well…” Looking at the all the art, I had an idea. I wonder if we'll have time to do it? "Pom we need to..."

-Shanty-

We be stepping out of the dimension of staircases onto the top the staircase to see Splatter Phoenix looking a bit pale.

“Splatter Phoenix, that was being pretty tiring, but we still be having enough energy to deal with the likes of you!” Barking alongside me in agreement despite being tired herself, Dolly seemingly looked past Splatter at the ceiling, then grinned.

Pom is being good then.

“You’d think so, but I still have plenty of ammo all around me!” Splatter slashed her paintbrush at a painting and leapt in it, then we see she moved along the paintings one after the other into the room ahead.

“After her, we’re not letting her get away with this madness!” Quackerjack be leading the charge. When we be at the entrance to the room, we saw Splatter Phoenix leaning against the wall on the far side of the room and I could vaguely see the pirate exhibit next door.

This was all the ninja stuff wasn’t it? This wasn’t the exhibit I wanted to be in!

“My minute-taur could use some avenging.” Splatter Phoenix be taking a step to the left and leaning back until she felling into the painting behind her and was now wearing strange suit in a painting of the moon with bamboo everywhere, she slowly put a straw hat on her head. “Ninja’s are specialist in stealth. Thus you have to wonder, what exactly did I do in this room while you were busy with the minute-taur? Come into my parlor, find out.”

Splatter Phoenix reached into her weird suit and then threw something. Said things be shooting out of the painting lightning fast and I be ducking back from the doorway as multiple blade handled paint brushes be flying past blade first with specks of paint trailing behind them and striking multiple things in the room.

Splatter then be stepping out of sight from the frame of the painting grinning.

I be stepping forward only to get a left paw to my chest and some barking from Dolly.

“Yes, I be aware that it be a trap. We be needing to trip it and make her keep throwing her energy at us, the less energy she has by trying to deal with us. The easier things will be being on Leap Lamb when she gets around to fighting her.” I patted Dolly on the head with my right hoof. “We just need to be surviving.”

Dolly looked to me and nodded removing her paw from my chest and while grabbing at her board with her right paw.

“You go ahead, I need to go through a janitor’s closet for something, not that I’ll have many more needs…” Quackerjack be sounding sad when he whispered that and be looking to his toy, Mr. Banana Brain, fondly. “That’s right Mr. Banana Brain, maybe Leap Lamb will do us a small favor when... well now, let’s see, we just need some turpentine. Good thing this is an art museum!”

Quackerjack be running off again, but he has been helpful so far when given a chance. What would he be doing this time though? He only be having a few things left to fight with, but we be having Splatter Phoenix’s attention as we be standing outside the room.

“Let’s go Dolly.” I said with a firm stare as I stepped forward into the room without a hint of fear.

“So you have chosen death.” Splatter Phoenix does not be knowing us very well.

“If you think you can be killing us, then you be having another thing coming!” I said as I spread out my legs.

Might actually use Fleet Cunning Doe style. Pom be using a variety of styles and I be learning quite a bit about how they all worked quite well. Cow Kempo and Fleet Cunning Doe be my favorites, I be having the muscle for it to be all part of my Cut-Lash style. I not be very good at jumping very high, but I making up for it by being able to climb and spring off of walls.

Instead of dodging, I changed my mind and pulled my unopened bottle of rum as I went to stand on my hind legs and twirled it to be deflecting every knife that flew at me.

I be needing the energy for all this.

I leapt up and kicked them all back where they came from, I hit two hiding ninja in their heads and pinned three others with their own weapons.

“When the night light yields to that of blue, when there’s nothing more that a goat can do~. Don’t get your rocks off with my spirits, because I’m going to take you down while singing off brand lyrics~!” As I sang I started tap dancing to the bench and stomped on the end sending it up and catching a lot of knife stars in the bottom of it, I tilted my head to Dolly and she sent the bench flying with a kick of her board and it be impaling three hiding ninjas against the far wall from the entrance we came through... after shattering several displays. “I always drink my demons straight to hell, to the point that none of them have won so far as well~. I’ll wipe this floor in victory, because I’ll never puke up the rum that’s mine to keep~!”

Dolly and I be shooting into the room together, I deflected a katana with a hoof before breaking the ninja ducks neck with hard slap of my bottle of rum. That not even be a real ninja weapon! Though I be knowing ninjas would be using anything to win a fight, these weren’t being classically trained ninjas.

Real ninjas don’t rush in with numbers. That just ends horribly for ninjas!

I popped the cork off the bottle deflect a ninja knife that I be kicking into a nearby painting, then Splatter Phoenix be coming flying out of another painting with the knife in her right shoulder.

“Ugh… damn it! Take them down!” She be retreating towards the pirate exhibit as several more pajama wearing figures be appearing from out of nowhere, I grinned as I slung the bottle back and be taking a large gulp.

Dolly be tripping up a few of the guys that be running towards me with raised swords by sliding her skateboard forward and the strap pulled taut, it didn’t bend when they be tripping over it.

It gave me time to deflect a tanto, now that be much more ninja like! I not be here to fight ninjas though, I be wanting to face the pirates!

I snapped the blade with my second hoof swing and leapt up to scythe my right leg through the thinnest part of their torso splitting the bloody paint monster in two.

Ninja be having specialized diets and be glass cannons, while I be having far more muscle!

“As we fly, we both like to twirl~.” Dolly sung as she flew through the area knocking multiple ninja down as she went.

“This will definitely not be our deaths upon this world~!” As I spun and lashed out my left hind leg deflecting several blades, the duck ninjas be looking on in shock as I leapt and ripped both the arms off one of them with one flip using only my right hind leg. “If this is to be a trial by fire, then we’ll certainly be able to take on a whole mire~.”

“I chase cars and rubber chickens I do chew, but this is a fight and so it’ll do… we’ll break them all so we can continue~.” Dolly be raising her paw high after she be breaking the skull of an armor statue without a helmet. “I currently am quite the salty dog, hope this ‘De Ville’ goes back to heck where she belongs~!”

Gripping her paw, Dolly filled several spots in the room with green swirls sending bits of art flying everywhere violently. It be a grand mess and I be happy to add to it so we can be getting to the pirates!

I be hitting another bench to leap up and be hoof springing off the raised end to windmill through the mess destroying several ninja and plenty of priceless artwork too! Not that I be caring about any of it, because I only be here to save Pom… and fight pirates... if I can even be getting to that.

“I’ll be a pirate queen, a scourge to many a thing~!” I sang as grabbed an arm of a charging ninja and lifted my rear end to buck the one trying to stab me from behind before using the buck to launch my hind hooves up and forward to take the head off the one I grappled onto. “You lifeless drecks, be boring wrecks, I want to see the pirates who are more cutthroat threats~!”

“You guys are going down, we own this sound~.” Dolly be sweeping low and knocking over several putting me in a position to slam my hind legs down cutting them apart, she throws her skateboard out and be deflecting a knife from my face as I be tearing a hole into another animated torso. “We might be tired with flecks of sweat, but if you think you can bring us down... then we’ll show you all before we have to jet~!”

Another blast of wind be ripping through the room.

-Splatter Phoenix-

I went to my knees.

Darn it all, I had all the cards how am I still losing to them?

-Shanty-

I started tap dancing while leaning around several swinging blades with a grin on my face as I took a long drink of my rum. Ah, it be hitting that spot like nothing else as I still be fighting with my other hoof while I be drinking. This is how a pirates were supposed to fight!

That be when something be wrapping around my neck.

“Did you just throw a rope around my neck, did you want to dance a real jig of death~?” As I say this I lashed out with my hind leg and cut the rope, my flexibility be coming into full swing. “Well let me tell you corsairs, that all you ninjas are too weak for proper spars~.”

A blade be striking my bottle of rum sending up into the air and I grew angry.

“If you want me to poke out your eye, then try to take my bottle of rum says I~.” I battered back several incoming blades from all sides with precise swings of my front hooves. “Now let’s all play with the destruction that I can bring~…”

I held out my left hoof and then gripped as the neck of my bottle fell right into it.

“I also need this bottle so I can sing~!” I took huge gulp and then, while holding some of this high octane pirate fuel in my mouth, I slapped my two hooves together and blew out.

The sparks from my hooves erupted in a mass of flames as swirled in a full circle. While there were still flames in the air and I had tons of metal flying my way, I put my hoof holding the bottle to my left hip and raised my right hoof to the ceiling while bowing my head.

“YA-HAR~!” I shouted to the ceiling in a bellow that shook the entire museum.

The still hovering flames be blasting outwards with flaming metal in all direction, it be the biggest blast wave I ever be creating with my spirit shout. It be draining and it also be revealing a number of ninjas as their bed sheets be burning from the wave of destruction that be lighting most of the room on fire.

Dolly be leaping over the flames to land next to me and we both started howling like a mad goat and a mad dog, there still be more than enough for the both of us in this room and I be wanting to see that pirate art in battle!

Water started spilling from spouts in the ceiling and I be grinning brightly, as with the barest shift of my hooves tendrils of raining liquid be turning into tentacles with my subtle movement.

They be in my element now and they look to be melting somewhat, I took a drag of my rum and looked to Dolly.

“I be a part of the sea… it be giving my life meaning that it will always also truly be a part of me!” I slung my hooves forwards and a wave of water slammed several duck, dog and bird ninja bipeds through a wall.

Not into the wall, straight through it, with a pure crashing wave of force. It be exhausting to move that much water, but I be having a lot of kick to me from my rum!

Being back to back with Dolly, we be both be covered in scrapes, cuts, bruises and were bleeding, surrounded by thirty five or so still somewhat combat capable ninja and likewise things… I think one be a raccoon dog…

And we be having the time of our lives!

-Splatter Phoenix-

Also how were those two enough to handle a room full of ninja and samurai on their own, they had to be dead tired at this point and they were still fighting with that kind of ferocity?!

I just needed to bring the pirate exhibit to life to finally stop them or at least slow them down further, then I just have to take Leap Lamb…

“Can you please stop that Splatter Phoenix?” That voice… I turned and saw Leap Lamb and that three tailed demon Dalmatian was with her. “I want you to come quietly, we don’t need to keep fighting. Just make this easy for me… please?”

So much for using her as a hostage, but how did she escape the blood…

“If you do struggle, then I hope you have a very bad day 'De Ville'.” The chicken on the device said with a friendly tone, I paled immediately.

She made several clucking noises at me, with a friendly grin and I felt something going wrong with my body.

“A chicken… it’s always a chicken… and this one can talk… heh hehahaha, this can’t be happening… this museum is my domain… mine to steal from… it’s all mine… every bit of art is mine to destroy how I see fit and all those who come to see my lovely destruction must pay with their blood…” I muttered loudly, before yelling out as I slashed my paint brush for the nearest bit of pirate paraphernalia. “Never, I’ll never go quietly!”

-Pom-

I sighed as it looks like Splatter Phoenix was starting to snap mentally, I could hear Shanty's shout and fighting in the next room. I felt out for Dolly to get a feel for how they were doing.

They must have really pushed Splatter to the brink on their own, I’m actually fairly proud of them.

Dolly and Shanty were doing fine apparently, despite being roughed up badly and bleeding from various numerous wounds. I can also feel Dolly being badly bruised in a nasty manner.

I just had to trust them to be able to handle themselves a little while longer, while I fought Splatter Phoenix personally.

“Can you not?” Dormarch tried alongside me, this’ll be my first time fighting with him at my side.

Let’s see how we do together. I trusted him to do his best even if he was having problems with being manifested and other issues we may need to iron out eventually.

Like how much food he might need to eat now that he was always going to be out and about, I’m not letting him sit in his device feeling lonely again without being able to touch anything real anymore!

Author's Note

Singing themed to the tune of 'Salty Dog- by Flogging Molly'.

Still don't condone Shanty's consumption of rum, but she's practically powered by the stuff at this point. Dolly and Shanty are running dry of strength, but they can certainly make quite a storm together.

205. Museum Mutilation: A fool’s final errand.

-Earth, Saint Canard, Museum, Pirate Art Exhibit, Pom-

Splatter Phoenix’s first move was to summon three wolf versions of me and three flying large clawed cats that were immediately in the air heading towards us. Then she started to slosh the multicolored glowing paint at the various pirate sculptures.

“I left more than a hundred ninja in the previous room, can you beat me before your friends perish?” Splatter stated as the three werewolf sheep monsters stalked toward us.

“Sorry Dormarch, but she isn’t going to give up and this is going to be a thing. Be careful for me okay?” I patted Dormarch on the head as I moved forward. “They don’t need me to protect them, they are strong enough on their own Splatter Phoenix.”

“Somehow I don’t feel right being behind you Pom…” Ignoring Dormarch’s comment, I prepped myself to leap into action once more as the first cat swooped down with its long claws.

Holding up my left leg I blocked the claws below where they started, then countered with a right hoof straight to the face. The other two flying cats were swiftly blown out of the air by two blasts of energy from Dormarch by the time the first sheep wolf was on me.

I blocked the claw with my right hoof and kicked the first one away with my left leg and then slapped the second one down with the back of my left hoof before it could get its jaw on my neck.

Six monster doesn’t seem like much, Dolly and Shanty must have really stretched the limits of Splatter’s abilities before she ended up here and Spot’s chicken chicanery wasn’t helping Splatter look any healthier as she started animating pirate paraphernalia about the room while looking fairly pale.

The last sheep wolf was turned into red haze when I launched a high left kick to its neck and then dropped the back of the same hoof on their skull. I looked for my next opponent the world slowed down for a second as my heart rate sped up, I dodged a small round ball of metal fired from a gun and watched as the rotating sphere of metal passed me by in slow motion.

It might have scratched me in the side had it hit, but since it was blunt force my wool might have been able to handle.

“Leap Lamb!” Dormarch said before blasting the pirate that shot at me.

“Trust me, I know!” I said as I tried to get my sudden accelerated perception under control, I really did not want to have a heart attack in the middle of a fight. Also concentrating when suddenly stressed and highly anxious about possibly dropping dead any minute wasn’t helping as I dodged two more shots at accelerated speeds.

The shots had come from Splatter as she leapt out of a painting wearing a tricorn and other generic pirate related garbs wielding two pistols.

“Did you just get those skills from going into a painting?” Because I’m pretty sure Splatter doesn’t know how to wield those pistols normally.

“Did you just dodge bullets at a ridiculously fast speed?” She said in a snarky tone indicating that yes, she could get skills from entering paintings and coming out with their theme. “Also if you could move that fast, how did I ever capture you?”

“It’s actually becoming something of a major health hazard for me that I can even do that.” I’m still surprised that Dormarch said my body was even adapting for moving at muscle destroying ludicrous speeds, I just needed to keep my Dancing Flame under control. How long would it be before my body adapted to it fully that I would never be able to slow myself down… or even control my hyper awareness, how long did I have left?

“I’m sure you’ll find me even more of a hazard than whatever detrimental super speed crap you’ve got going on. Get them boys!” Splatter shouted and several ropes with various bipeds swung out of the numerous paintings and the several pirates statues pulled their very much real swords and charged me. “Keehaul them and fill several buckets with their blood for me!”

I sighed audibly and tried to keep my body under control as I moved forward to attack the first cutlass wielding biped generated by Splatter Phoenix, thankfully I don’t have to worry about destroying them.

I grabbed them by the wristed, twisted caught the blade in my mouth and slammed the poor fake marmoset biped to the floor with shine shattering forced.

Then I turned sharply and let the blade fly from my mouth into the chest of a weasel biped pirate running towards me, they fell back with the sword sticking out of their back where their heart was.

I leaned back after nearly taking a point blank shot to the face, then flopped onto my back to avoid being stabbed in the gut by the sword in the parrot bipeds other claw. She was about to kick me when Dormarch appeared in a flash.

“Search Hunter!” Dormarch had his jaws on the biped’s throat immediately and then his claws elongated to slice into the fake bipeds shoulders and chest.

As the female pirate’s body toppled a tree came flying through the wall as Dormarch hopped off, disappeared and reappeared next to me. I was busy punting a very small mole pirate into the nearest painting.

Somehow the pirate parrot’s collapsing body being hit with a tree looked and felt right, maybe it was the long black head feathers or her vague resemblance to Jackie Blackcap Chickadee La Perm.

“Mind if I help? You can go now, I’ve got things from here and be a nice good tree from now on okay!” The plant duck hybrid shouted as he popped up from the tree wearing a blue mask around his eyes, said tree slowly put itself back through the hole it came through. It was rapidly getting into the evening. “Hi, I’m Neo Bushroot and I don’t think my conscience can take you dying in front of me again Leap Lamb!”

“Ugh, what is it with you creations turning against me, I made you what you are!” Splatter fired two shots at him and his body bent at odd angles to avoid them.

“You made me what I am, but you never had a choice in saying who I would be... and I’m choosing to be a good person!” The plant duck put a bit of leaf against his chest while lifting his chin and a pistol sounded off, he looked down at the small hole and what looked to be sap slowly started sealing the wound. “Ow, that stung a little. You two don’t have to worry about my health, I really don’t have that long to live anyway and Negaduck already knew we were completely expendable.”

I shivered at the defeatist way that Bushroot had said that. It was a vague reflection of my own thoughts and feelings at times, but the thought of a warm green scaled fireball waiting for me back on Equus would always stop me just short of being nearly that fatalistic.

“Damn it, why did one of the super powered ones have to come after me!” Splatter put away her other gun and brandished her sword at Bushroot. “It’s time I cut a weed down to size… why did you stop attacking, get them you idiots!”

“But only half of us are idiots.” One pi-rat complained.

“Yeah, we also have doofuses, dimwits and morons… maybe a few of us might even be jerks.” A pirate bear followed raising a claw.

“Don’t care, you’re all idiots to me and unlike that pathetic shrub I didn’t give you any free will to gab, now go!” I think its little wonder that one of her creations would turn on her if it could. The pirates all turned and pulled their swords to charge us.

“Let’s do this together.” Bushroot gulped, but still held up his leaves in a defensive stance. He didn’t look like much of a fighter, but I welcomed his presence at the very least for however long it lasted.

“Right.” I said as the pirates advanced on the three of us from all sides, I stepped forward with my left hind leg and then thrust my left hoof forward.

The pirate stepped back and tried to slash at me, leaning to the right I threw a right hook and took his head off, it was one of the wooden museum displays and didn’t come from the paintings like many of the others. The carved statue thankfully went lifeless afterwards.

“Hmm… keep them busy for me!” With that Splatter ran and dove into the nearest pirate ship themed painting leaving us to fight with her minions.

Looking to Bushroot he didn’t seem to be having problems when it came to fighting as he could stretch his limbs fairly well and whipped them about, any damage done to them tended to regenerate quickly with the sappy stuff Bushroot emitted from his wounds.

I turned and deflected a blade from hitting me by striking the flat of it with my right hoof and then ramming my left shoulder into the bear knocking them onto their back.

I had to quickly dodge a gun shot from both my left and right by dropping flat to the floor, I heard a blast impact something on my left. So I turned right figuring Dormarch had it and leapt with an overhead left hoof to the right shoulder of a cat biped, I hopped and kicked off their chest with my rear hooves to backflip over a fox biped that impaled them.

“No need to prune me, I’m fine thank you!” Bushroot suddenly swept through several pirates with a wide sweeping swing of his arms stretching out together and slapping through them. He wasn’t very strong, but he at least had a good understanding of momentum considering I heard the crack of a whip. “Hey, I’m getting the hang of this.”

“Well keep it up, Splatter can’t keep this up for much longer, she has got to be weakening using so much magic like this.” Having finished bucking the red furred fox pirate biped in the middle of their spine while they tried to pull their sword free, I had to roll to the side to avoid being shot at from my right and was once again surrounded by being separated by Bushroot.

“Search Hunter… Wild-Bark!” Dormarch appeared above me and let out explosive bark that sent a shockwave that stunned all the pirates, yet he avoided hitting me?

“Good job!” Planting my front hooves as Dormarch landed next to me, I slung my rear half up around in a high roundhouse buck that knocked down all the surrounding pirates ending in a one hoof stand on my left hoof grabbing my hind legs with my right. I quickly went back to standing normally on all fours and looked about.

“Thanks… but doing Search Hunter is quite draining on me.” So that teleport thing had similar drawbacks similar to what I do? Aw, he is so adorable in taking after me, if I didn’t have so many double edged moves this would be really sweet and not at all daunting to the fact that I really should stop using abilities entirely detrimental to my overall health that can be imitated by my possibly impressionable younger charges.

I’m pretty sure I lost ten years off my total lifespan on this adventure up to this point… thank Goodness Shanty doesn’t have moves like that.

I sent a bark blast into the bear pirate that was getting up and we had at least twenty pirates remaining coming at us as Mr. Bushroot quickly joined us.

Dormarch started blasting, I knocked them back with regular hoof strikes and kicks and Bushroot started flailing his arms up and down like whips as we were being backed up towards the middle of the room.

“Get back crew, it’s time for a killing cannonade me hearties!” Looking to a nearby painting a cannon stuck out of it with Splatter sitting on it holding her cutlass themed paintbrush in her right hand aimed at us. Several other paintings also had cannons poking out of them and aiming towards us and they were surrounding all of us. “Pulp them to blood smears!”

“Bushroot, grab my friend and haul him up to the ceiling, quickly!” I said quickly as the cannons lifted up slightly to represent the fact that they were arming.

“What about…” Even as he questioned me Bushroot still grabbed Dormarch as I asked.

“I’ll be fine.” I intensified my fluff and held up both my legs as Bushroot slammed his right leafy appendage into the lights above and immediately lifted off the floor before all the cannons fired at once.

I inhaled, but stood my ground and didn’t move a muscle as I flexed my wool, obviously Splatter Phoenix didn’t get the memo on my relative immunity to blunt trauma. Oh I would survive, but I was hoping to do something with the counter stance I just took up.

The first cannonball rocked my body from my left side, the right side of my face and right leg took the next hit, a cannonball to the lower left spine, a cannonball to both my front legs and chest, my hind legs took three cannonballs in quick succession threatening to topple me from being rooted to the floor with my wool, one hit me in the left inner thigh making me wince slightly, one to the back of the head followed by one directly in the belly.

What followed was eleven more cannonballs and the mind and body numbing impacts that shook my body to the core… after the blows stopped coming, I stood there positively vibrating violently unable to control my shakes.

“How the heck did you survive all that or are even still standing for that matter?!” Looking at Splatter as I slowly lowered my shaking and vibrating body I looked at her weakly and smile. “And why are you shivering with fright if you’re so tough?”

“This… is not… fright…” It’s just the built up kinetic energy of building up a Paprika wobble counter. Like I had previously thought… I really should stop it with the double edged stuff, but I’m sadly good at being a sacrificial lamb and my wool was good at absorbing most of this damage anyway. “It’s… raw… force…”

I shakily raised both my hooves above my head and brought them down in a stomp unleashing the raw force of twenty one cannonballs on the entire room.

-One minute later-

It took me a moment to gather my bearings and sit up, also slowly stand on my shaky hooves and weak legs. I looked up at the slope I was sitting on and blinked lazily, I slowly walked up it and looked at the devastation. The entire pirate exhibit, every painting, every statue, every work of art and possibly even some of the ninja exhibit was all destroyed.

I felt for Dolly, she was… half unconscious, but alive and managed to shakily greet me with some cheer through our bond. Didn’t hear any fighting… so that might mean something good.

Turning my head saw Splatter Phoenix near the doorway leading towards the staircase up to the third floor, she was laying on her side. She groaned and slowly sat up rubbing at her bleeding head with her left hand and she reached down to grab her paint brush. She wiped her hand off on the paintbrush and swiped it over her own injury making it heal rapidly before my eyes.

“What the… what the hell, what am I dealing with?! Ugh, my head, and my body is on fire…” Splatter’s dazed state soon resolved into shock as she watched me walk up the makeshift ramp slowly and then slowly canter around to face her on the very badly damaged floor that I started crossing with an even trot, hoping that it didn’t fall out from under me. “No… getting splattered… is not… is not something I aim to do today!”

As she staggered to her feet the duck biped was looking quite pale as she braced herself against the wall. To be honest I was fairly spent after exhausting all that force on my surroundings too, but I had a criminal to catch and I aimed to stop her from causing any more trouble with the medieval exhibit.

Looking up as I slowly walked forward, Bushroot and Dormarch were both staring at me wide eyed, I’m glad they were okay. Most of the force I released exploded downwards and in a wide circle around me, note to self, doing a Paprika's counter with so much force is danger to the lives of those around me and I should be more careful with doing something like that again.

“Just got to… just got to get to a painting on the other side of the… what the… where are the paintings?!” She screeched as she stumbled through the doorway and took notice of Dormarch’s plan prior to us actually meeting her.

We had a little time to move a lot of the paintings away from giving Splatter Phoenix quick access to the third floor. She could hardly walk faster than I could as she started limping for the stairs. I passed through the doorway and was getting closer as she tried climbing the stairs.

“Hey, you look like you got a few chips in your shoulder, how about some dip to go with it!” I blinked in confusion as I saw Quackerjack at the top of the stairs through a mass of ugly greenish yellow tinted liquid at Splatter Phoenix from a bucket.

She immediately fell back and slid down the stairs and screaming her throat raw.

“So it’s true, our creator is definitely a piece of work herself… thank you for telling me about that Mr. Banana Brain.” Quackerjack stalked down the stairs as a slightly half melted Splatter Phoenix with a rather notably forced grin on his face.

“Fool if you destroy me you’ll cease...” Splatter was interrupted when Quackerjack slapped her across the right side of her face and she was suddenly covered in arcs of lightning from whatever he had in his hand.

Now she wasn’t only still somewhat melting, but she was in pure agony as she stumbled back her throat unable to create the scream necessary to tell everyone how much pain she was in.

“Of course I’m a fool, very 'shocking' I know, that’s my whole shtick lady and I certainly just beat you with a very ugly one!” Quackerjack watched dispassionately as Splatter continued to stumble backwards against the banister overlooking the first floor, she was barely keeping herself propped up. He then looked to me and I was prepared for a fight, he gave me a gentle smile. “Sorry for what I’m about to do and how traumatizing this will be for both you and Mr. Banana Brain. Banana Brain is actually real because I made him to be, his smile is natural. In my last act, I have a demon to exercise… let’s start with a vaulting, then after a playful gymnastic pratfall... well here… Leap Lamb, take care of him for me. Sorry Bushroot, but we’re going back to where we came from… may we be friends beyond whatever comes next for us!”

Quackerjack tossed Mr. Banana Brain at me and I caught him in my hooves, what was he…

“It’s alright, I was expecting this anyway, I fixed all the trees at the arboretum at least...” Bushroot closed his eyes. “Our lives were short, but it was fun and fairly meaningful in a poignant way.”

“You… you can’t do this… to me…” The melted faced horror that was Splatter Phoenix was dripping gobs of… paint, paint that was evaporating into the air or splattering on the banister as she struggled to stand with her melting legs.

“You've already caused enough pain and suffering today Splatter Phoenix, how many people have you killed for these powers of yours and with all the stuff you've done today!" Quackerjack rushed Splatter Phoenix and gripped her by the waist before heaving himself and her over the banister."Let’s have a good fall, because winter is going to suck for you where you're going!”

I ran forward and looked down holding onto Mr. Banana Brain and looked down to the floor, Dormarch and Bushroot soon joined me.

“I can still… a painting…” Barely hearing the whisper of Splatter Phoenix who was now missing her legs as they have splattered against the ground. She tried to drag herself to one of the paintings on the first floor with her arms.

Only Quackerjack wasn’t as injured by the fall, his legs wrapped around Splatter Phoenix's torso and he pulled her onto his chest with them. He had a slightly demented grin on his face.

“Do you know what comes after exercise and play time?” Quackerjack asked as he looked around quickly, he stuffed a kazoo in his mouth and started playing the end of episode theme tune to the Darkwing Duck show on it. Launchpad would have loved to have heard the proffessional kazoo playing at least, if this situation was going where I thought it was. He moved the kazoo to the corner of his mouth as the splattering paint monster that was Splatter Phoenix struggling to get away. “Heh heh… it's snack time…”

As he continued to jovially play the end credits theme tune on the kazoo, Quackerjack pulled out two peeled exploding bananas and I immediately knew what I was about to witness. Bushroot put a leafy appendage on my and Dormarch’s shoulders with his head tilted downwards in a grim smile as tears dropped from his eyes.

Quackerjack slammed both bananas into the distorted beak of Splatter Phoenix, who’s muffled cries of anguish were met with the finishing notes of the theme song… then they went up in a brilliant blinding explosion.

Once the flash cleared and my vision came back, I saw that it had decimated the first floor reception counter.

All that was left of the two beings was a large splatter of paint that somehow miraculously formed the shape of a demon trying to claw itself out of the grasp of a gloved hand coming from the silhouette of a giant, white eyed, sharp toothed, grinning jester.

Of all the weird things I’ve ever seen, this was in the top five even above some of the reality breaking stuff Jaded La Perm and Captain Jaqueline Sparrow have caused.

“It’s unfortunate that she might be one of the immortal De Ville’s, she could actually come back from that if she traded her physical body for that blood magic and paint body. We’ll try not to make his sacrifice be in vain.” Wait… did Spot just seriously imply that Splatter Phoenix could come back… FROM ALL OF THAT?! “Horrifying I know, but you might want to check on the others. As long as no one does an art piece of her or remembers her at all, I’m sure it’ll be quite hard for her to even come back from something like this.”

“The magic holding me together is fading…” Bushroot said as he started melting into a sludge of green paint, he quietly leaned closer to me and whispered something in my ear. My eyes widened. “Go… stop… him…”

Bushroot’s final words before his beak and head joined the puddle of paint were exactly what I needed to know to fit the puzzle of Negaduck’s location together.

That with Jitters information and if he has anymore... well that would just confirm things now wouldn’t it?

I looked at Mr. Banana Brain and hugged him and Dormarch to my chest. I then firmed myself and placed Dormarch on my Back and put Mr. Banana Brain in his mouth, he made it squeak slightly when he bit down on it and he looked as I felt about all of this.

“I’ll tell your story, of a quirky yet heroic toy maker and his frond...” I giggled a little even as tears started to pour from my eyes and Dormarch feeling my feelings through our bond started to do so as well.

“I shouldn’t even be capable of crying.” Dormarch stated as tears flowed, I even heard his stomach growl. I held him closer and the PET device started glowing slightly.

I thought I saw a strange symbol on the device, but it didn't do anything after a moment and the glowing symbol faded into my memory with the glow of the PET.

-Ocellus-

“Darkwing. I’m getting confirmation, several villains throughout the city are melting into piles of… paint?” Whatever Pom’s group did, they succeeded in taking out the magical villain. “Someone just took out a major player, they were definitely a powerful magical villain. More than half the cities problems just cleared up, but we still have a large number of thugs starting to act up in small groups, nothing the police can't handle. Still, whatever Negaduck has planned, he should be everyone's top priority now!”

Keep it together Ocellus, don’t give away anything that Negaduck might hear. Pom's group had to be alive and well.

-Pom-

I turned around with a drooping Dormarch on my back and saw six pony figures at the top of the steps… I went to collect them, then made my way carefully for the ninja exhibit at Dormarch’s quiet directions about which sections of the floor to avoid due to structural integrity issues.

We found Shanty and Dolly in a corner surrounded by a mass of broken weapons and the entire floor of the room was covered in paint and debris. Dolly lifted her head up at us with a weak smile and raised a digit on her left paw before flopping back and falling unconcious on top of Shanty, both of them were exhausted and quite injured.

Now I just had to get to Darkwing Tower and drop them off, then head out with Dormarch after a good meal, one bathroom visit and at least a thirty minute break after all that. I sorely needed that thirty minutes, possibly more after exhausting a lot of my stamina to do that stomp.

There was an evil duck that needed to be captured, alive if possible, he had caused a lot of crimes to happen today and he brought this city to its knees.

Negaduck had a lot ot answer for nad if he wanted Leap Lamb, then he’s getting Leap Lamb whether he sees me coming or not.

“Get a picture of this Dormarch, it’s kind of endearing… we direly need the levity.” I said as I looked at Dolly and Shanty cuddled against one another in an adorable manner. “Negaduck… Baa-Ram-Ewe… I’m coming for you.”

Night falls on a still somewhat lawless city.

Author's Note

Music: End Credits Darkwing Duck Theme. To be played now.

To be continued...

206. Post Museum Preparations.

-Earth, Darkwing’s Lair, Ocellus-

“You’ve rescued Gizmo Duck, Gizmo Gal will be happy to hear that when she recovers from her incident.” I sighed with relief at hearing Darkwing, Quiverwing and Arrow Assistant had found Fenton. Banana boy was still unaccounted for and Rubber Chicken was still presumably captured, but things were turning around in the city slightly. “No idea as to what Negaduck has planned, but he’s laying very low consider no one has seen any sign of him since the broadcast.”

“Well he’s somewhere around the city, I just know it. He can’t stay quiet forever.” That’s obvious Darkwing, what wasn’t obvious though? It seems like he was thinking about his own statement. I’m fairly sure when Negaduck goes noisy, it’s going to be quite hard to stop him after all the stuff I’ve seen sitting up here in Darkwing’s Lair and directing the various heroes. “Keep directing people as needed Ocellus, you’re doing a wonderful job at keeping us all organized. Update us if anything comes up.”

Whatever Negaduck had planned, it had to be enormous given all the trouble he’s caused. Nothing requiring this much effort to hide and distract everyone from was ever going to be a good thing when a criminal mastermind was behind it. Queen Chrysalis’s Canterlot wedding debacle comes to mind.

I heard the entrance chairs spinning behind me and felt several strange emotions, melancholy was one of them, an amount of anxiety and… is that what a sense of purpose felt like? Strange, maybe I was getting that one wrong.

It really didn’t take me long to guess one was Pom even before I turned around, but who in the world could match the intensity of Pom’s anxiety problems?

I blinked, oh… Dormarch had a body now.

That… should really surprise me more than I thought it would.

“So Dormarch came out of the device? Okay.” Really Smolder, you’re just going to let that go so easily? I mean I am, but you’re just taking this in stride far too well. “Don’t look at me like that Ocellus, it was fairly obvious it was going to happen eventually.”

Smolder crossed her arms and stared at me.

“Okay, yes, it seems like something that would happen after we learned about how Dormarch came to be from Kahn Industries.” I got up and stretched out my back and turned into my dragon form and calmly walked over to Pom and Dormarch. “Who needs it most?”

Pom was carrying an unconscious Shanty and Dolly glued to the wool of her back along with several distinctly familiar toy figures, one looked to have been fixed from being split entirely in half. Dormarch also had a familiar banana toy in his mouth… I believe that was Quackerjack’s Mr. Banana Brain and both he and, somehow, the toy looked upset.

“They do.” Pom didn’t even ask as to what I was talking about as she dropped the toys on the floor and then carefully pulled Dolly and Shanty from being draped over her back.

Six pony toys of our teachers. That was more than a little unusual, as nobody in this world could possibly even know about them to make those. More infectious harmony magic of Equus maybe?

I wasn’t exactly idle while Pom was doing this, I was picking up the nearby medical kit to begin treating our wounded.

“What happened to them?” I said conversationally. They looked to be soaking wet, were bleeding lightly from numerous cuts and while they didn’t look to be in serious danger of dying, they were quite clearly exhausted for the day.

Putting the banana toy down near the pony toys and looking at it solemnly for a bit, Dormarch turned to me and answered.

“Got trapped in a room with more than a hundred ninjas at least, Shanty set off the sprinkler system and who knows what they fought before that, but they have heavy bruising on their bodies from some rather heavy impacts. Not fit for combat, but at least they are not critical.” Nodding to Dormarch as I opened the medical kit, I moved over to him and pointed the box towards him. “Uh…”

“Will you help me patch them up?” I asked quietly as I carefully reached out and fondly patted him on the head and tussled his floppy ears affectionately. “You know a lot about medical procedures and I’m sure you’ll be a good help here, I don’t want to accidentally do something wrong.”

“Sure!” Dormarch seemed to cheer up a bit at being able to help with their issues.

“Any pressing issues with their health or any other methods of care we need to administer before we get started?” That was important to ask and Dormarch looked quite ready to get into it.

I glanced at Smolder to see that she was staring at the toys on the ground, we’ll probably talk about this later.

“Well we need to get Dolly’s helmet off and dry them both off to start…” Began the dog with the three fur covered fish tails as Pom wandered over to Smolder, I moved closer and reached out and started to pet the tails and he suddenly got a cute blush on his face.

He was as adorable and sweet in person as he was on a screen.

-Pom-

Ocellus could handle Dormarch emotionally for the moment, changelings would make for good emotional therapists provided they can handle the negative emotions quickly enough.

“How are you doing?” Asked an obviously bored Smolder as I flopped down on the floor next to her.

“I watched a jester blow himself up to take out what might be a semi-immortal person that might come back from being killed anyway.” Mostly because I couldn’t react too much after having unleashed all that force making my body hard to move after taking the impacts of a number of cannonballs. “Even if he didn’t do it and I somehow managed to accidentally defeat the person he blew up, it might still have ended him. The guy went out with a bang, quite literally, and I all I could do was watch with a whimper.”

“Well, at least you’re still going, which is good for the long term… but you look like you could use a break.” Yeah, things weren’t great and this day has been a rather long one Smolder. Rolling her eyes she added. “Wish I could get off mine.”

Spine still splinted and being stuck to sitting down all day would be pretty bad, but at least she was safer than I was.

“I plan to scrub myself down of any paint I might have on me, get something to eat and thirty minutes of rest. Once I find out if Jitters has any information different to what I recently received, I’m immediately heading out and hunting down Negaduck to stop whatever it is he’s up to.” I’m not sugar coating this, I am actually hunting the guy.

Negaduck quite literally kicked a box full of puppies one at a time and what Quackerjack said about people being killed made me wonder why the area around the museum had been so quiet.

Didn’t take long for the horror set in as to what happened to anyone who was around the museum when Splatter Phoenix took control of it at the start of the day. I had my first run in with an evil De Ville and I seriously didn’t like the implications of everything that happened before I did.

The realization as to what Quackerjack had hit the paint demon with to defeat it was humbling and well thought out for the wacky toy maker… all it took was some acetone, benzene and turpentine. All of it highly toxic, but necessary, substances that would put Splatter Phoenix down fast.

How many people did Splatter Phoenix exactly get before Shanty, Dolly and Dormarch launched their attack on the museum?

All the artwork Splatter manipulated, the monsters she created… yeah, I really needed to scrub the blood paint off of my hooves vigorously with soap and scalding hot water.

“Thirty minutes? Are you sure that’s enough rest for you Pom.” Not currently worried about my condition Smolder.

“It’ll be more along the lines of an hour because I’ll be eating at least something warm and showering.” I’ll even be cooking the food myself to get the shakes out of my muscles.

“Why are you shivering?” It seemed that Smolder noted that my form seemed to be shivering ever so slightly, I concentrated and tried to still my body. “It’s not that cold.”

“I performed a counter with too much build up, Splatter Phoenix was going for lethal… didn’t know I could handle blunt impacts or use the total buildup of force from them. What you’re seeing is me trying to keep my Dancing Flame style under control, just a minor side effect from the counter making me lose some control over it. Nothing to worry about, I’ve still mostly got a hoof on it though.” My muscles were still vibrating minutely, but I still managed to carry Shanty and Dolly all the way back to Darkwing’s quainter home where I proceeded to come to his lair through the spinning chairs without ever being spotted. Smolder was now eyeing me with some suspicion. “We kind of decimated the museum… I wonder who’s going to pay for the damages.”

“Wait… aren’t you?” Smolder, there are some times when lying by omission of guilt is the better option.

“Nope.” I said as I looked around.

First bathroom, then bathing, followed by cooking and eating, then I’ll spend the rest of my time here playing with Dormarch to keep him from what happened to Quackerjack.

“Heh, and here I thought you were just about always doing the right.” Smolder didn’t sound upset about it, but she was still eyeing me about it.

“If it’s between keeping Shanty’s near bottomless stomach fed or rebuilding an almost entirely destroyed museum that I’m probably never going to see again, what exactly do you think I’m going to choose as more important? Also Dormarch is another mouth to feed and I’m not letting him sit inside his PET any longer than he has to if he ever actually needed to in the first place.” There was a long pause as Smolder crossed her arms and eventually she uncrossed them, she looked away slightly and was possibly upset with me. “While I do like being friendly and nice, I’m not made of infinite charity and we kind of need the funding for Professor Callaghan. I may act like a self-sacrificing idiot at times, but everyone has their limits and I’m not going to let people die if I can feasibly do something about it. So tell me Smolder, why should I volunteer myself to be the target of all the blame and hatred of every artist that had their hard work summarily trashed in that museum to my detriment for no great reason? Mind you, I would actually normally take responsibility for the room I destroyed personally if we were on Equus, but we’re not. We’re illegal aliens from a different dimension that are still technically trying to lay low, not trying very hard at all really, I seriously don’t want to be a hate sink. Without a target to focus their ire on the artists and people will hopefully rebuild and move on with their lives.”

From the look on her face, I can tell that Smolder didn’t have a good response to my question.

“Huh… I’ll grudgingly admit it’s actually a good call to let the museum be someone else’s problem.” Smolder said nodding from the seat she couldn’t get up from. “This is one of the roughest friendship problems I’ve ever heard of, but you know what they say about the road to Tartarus Pom.”

“Well aware and I try not to have intentions unless I know what I’m doing Smolder. That said, where’s the bathroom?” Once I got a few directions from Smolder I nodded and thanked her for her help, before I walked off I decided to say something. “If it assuages your conscience, we’ll be telling Darkwing and at least Jitters of TOON Division about what happened and we will be leaving them all the information we have on Artisia ‘Splatter Phoenix’ De Ville before Dormarch and I set out. It’ll be useful for them to know if Splatter can in fact come back to life like Spot thinks she can.”

-Dormarch-

Having a metric ton of medical knowledge in my head was helpful for treating injuries and I was willing to apply that knowledge every time I got. I would feel bad for having it otherwise and not using it, I felt like I must use it when it was applicable at least. Having this knowledge at least helped with my Cure Liquor program’s efficiency in repairing myself too.

Both Shanty and Dolly weren’t critical, but it would be a day or two before they were ready to fight again. Both had their wounds cleaned, bandaged and were resting soundly. I got a better picture of them snuggled together too.

I think I needed some energy and to figure out why a portion of my body was rumbling, manifesting seemed to be having odd side effects on me.

“So what has you feeling a little blue?” Ocellus leaned on me and nuzzled the top of my head.

“It’s the knowledge that we can’t save everyone nor can every criminal be taken alive.” I wasn’t even one year old yet and I don’t think I should have experienced so much in such a short time frame. The general psychological environments around Pom were decidedly hostile. “While there is wonder and magic, there is also equally horrifying and ugly things out there.”

“Nobody said life was fair, but there are those who will try to make it that way by doing their best.” I felt Ocellus wrap her current forms arms around me and tugged me into a hug. “Can you tell me what you think Pom would be like if she hadn’t met Dolly or you? Where she would be?”

I flinched, Ocellus just sent a wan look at me.

“Exactly.” Ocellus said while drooping a bit and looking to the computer. “We’re all doing our best.”

“Dormarch, do you want a bath?” I looked to Pom… I had no reason to say no and I had no reason to fear water.

I’m sure water doesn’t have any negative effects on my manifested form, the sprinklers were still running somewhat when we entered the ninja exhibit back in the museum.

Maybe bathing would feel good?

-A minute later-

Baths felt nice and warm, being scrubbed clean makes one forget about the worries of the world for a while, up until my body started making that noise again.

“Oh.. you’re hungry. You’re not a normal dog, so I have to wonder what you can actually safely eat.” Pom looked me over. “You haven’t ever had a single bite of food since the device turned on, let’s change that shall we?”

“I usually got my energy from the PET device, being manifested is strangely different.” Shaking her head at me, Pom smiled and held me close. I could feel her heartbeat again and she could feel mine… or what passes for my electronic pulse anyway.

This was quite comforting as was knowing we were safe, up until Pom went after Negaduck. I’m fairly confident she’ll come away from it alive, though odds on being in one piece mentally or physically were varied.

“I’ll make you something to eat. If you don’t have any issues eating regular food, then you might have a wider range than Dolly in the things you can safely consume. You’re first meal should be something warm and filling... if mostly safe.” There was an ample amount of curiosity to Pom’s words that had me almost excited to see what she was going to do. “I want your first meal to be something special, we need to do some business while here and then get some rest before heading back into the city. Let’s see what I have to work with.”

-Five minutes later, Pom-

Drake had a really nice breakfast suite up here, the fact that he uses it for training is a little daunting when I saw a machine gun loaded with cereal pop up. Ocellus had thankfully deactivated that before it fired sugary oats and grains at me.

Thankfully the variety of food Drake had stored here was healthy stuff and could be used to make a variety of meals. I’ll throw in a side of kibble for Dormarch and see how much he likes it compared to my cooking.

“Dormarch, can you please do me a favor and call Jitters.” He did so as I was prepping the food, by reaching his paw physically into the screen of the PET.

“Hello?” Jitters hesitantly said after a moment.

“This is Agent Peehs.” Sheep spelled backwards was ‘Peace’. “I got some key information, but I need to hear what you have to say to confirm my thoughts and narrow down where the Chess Master is.”

“Oh Agent Peehs, how did things on your end go?” Jitters brightened up considerably.

“About as well as can be expected. Look up missing person’s reports and if you tie them to being around the museum from the start of this morning throughout the day that would be helpful in some future investigations. I’ll have to ask Darkwing or his protégé to forward you the information on the villain known as Splatter Phoenix later.” I didn’t even need to say it, because Jitters gasped and he made a sorrowful sound. “So do you have the information I sorely need to confirm things?”

“Well that’s actually an interesting bit, it ties into my research of the weapons being smuggled in through the docks up north. He’s not on the west edge of the city. I’m going with a hunch that he is not coastal at all, so he’s possibly more south around the city center. We all know he’s likely not east side either... so he’s bound to be between neither in the north or south shores, but in a more central area.” Good, that was very good Jitters. Looking at a nearby map of the city, my eyes focused on a particular spot. There, that had to be it from Bushroot’s hint, at least in that general area as no other place would fit that psychotic duck’s modus-operandi. He had to have been where Moliarty wasn’t patrolling in the south, but north of the Egghead southern shore activities that Launchpad and Maui dealt with. “Is that what you needed Agent Peehs?”

“Yes, I know exactly where Chess Master is now, but not what he has waiting. He doesn’t know the hidden queen is still in play. Maybe we can hopefully foil whatever plan they have before it goes into action.” My eyes were the south western portion of the city map, one very small place where activity seems to bend in a very small way around everything that was happening in the city. Darkwing possibly passed by the place on the way to the Arboretum. It was a bakery… one of the sweetest cake making places in the city being used by the likes of the criminal mastermind Negaduck. “What are the chances he’s in the basement of a particular bakery on the southwest side?”

“Huh… actually pretty good with what we have on Negaduck. How so… very diabolical of him.” Everyone would think it is very diabolical Jitters, especially considering that he might be targeting an orphanage, an animal shelter that the puppies were likely stolen from and an old people’s home as his first acts of destruction if that was his goal. I thought the puppy kicking was horrible, but he was in a perfect position to do some purely evil things for the sake of it. “When will you be setting out Agent Peehs?”

“I’m getting dinner in and a total of thirty minutes rest, then I’m going to set out with my remaining active partner, my other two are on mend from various injuries of dealing with Villain Maker.” I became quiet as the food cooked and I stirred the soup I’ve been preparing as I talked. There was plenty for Dolly and Shanty later. “Hm… I want you to send Fall-Apart to what is the current tallest building in the city, have your other people check the basements of various buildings. If Negaduck is as demented as I think he is, he might have a backup plan for total carnage in some hard to reach places. Something that could explode for an exceedingly deadly domino effect put in place by expendable pawns he may have running around.”

“I’ll do so after this conversation and will have everyone looking into it.” Thank you Jitters. “My Tanya is thankfully safe and mostly sound, we might even get more funding for flak vests after the few shots she took. TOON Division still has other things to attend to as the city is still having problems with average thugs armed with the smuggled in assault weapons from the north, but at least the worst of the higher tier criminals are down… not that it’s comforting that Negaduck has been preparing something for this long. Have Eye Spot spread the word to the heroes to be on the lookout around the southwest if he’s not at the bakery when you arrive. Good luck once you set out Agent Peehs and I hope you have a nice meal.”

With that the call ended and I focused on the food, a nice cream of mushroom and vegetable soup. I looked over to Dormarch quietly messing with his PET and idly squeaking the Banana Brain toy in his mouth, up until his nose was sniffing at the air as the simmering soups scent drifted over.

Dormarch's ears raised up, his tails started wagging and his mouth almost looked to be watering.

I smiled, it looked like he was going to enjoy this.

“Ocellus, help Smolder to the table. It’s time for Dinner, any leftovers will be for Shanty and Dolly when they wake up.” I started setting up the table. “I know that I can trust you two to heat the soup up. Just make sure that Dolly gets a little first, also give her a big helping of kibble and water afterwards. Shanty will drain the pot completely after all the energy she has expended today.”

-Dormarch-

Having sat down next to me and stated that she was going to help me eat. I had a few words for Pom about that.

“I’m a not a baby.” I received blank stares from Ocellus, Smolder and Pom. “Okay, yes, I’m not even a few months old… but I’m an intellectual for my age!”

“Just let me help for the first bite... please?” The spoon was loaded and Pom was looking at me with a smile. I crossed my paws and grumbled a bit before taking a bite.

I choked on a bit of it after immediately swallowing, I have never felt anything like that. Also choking on food didn’t feel as good as it tasted.

“Careful now Dormarch, you need to learn how to chew.” Bringing another spoonful around for me, Pom waited patiently. “I would hope that you know those teeth are for more than just combat applications.”

It wasn’t long before I tried kibble.

-Ocellus-

Too bad the heartwarming moments between those two couldn’t last.

“Well if Dolly is going to be the sidekick Caper Canine for as long as we’re in this world, does that mean that Dormarch is Dynamo Dog of the dynamic dog duo?” It took a moment, but Smolder’s suggestion for sidekick name was quickly accepted.

207. City Situation.

-Equus, Ponyville, Oleander-

“Is it getting worse, or is it just me that is causing this?” My head was resting on the table and Fred was currently brushing my mane out.

“Pretty sure it’s you, NOT THAT IT’S A BAD THING.” Fred my fiancé was as sweet as any demon could be.

“So we may be causing problems even if dimensional stability isn’t really an issue with us.” That wasn’t comforting in the slightest Buttina. “I still think we’re the best at bucking ass and taking names!”

“I really need to get back to my realm.” The samurai rabbit Usagi Yojimbo stated patiently before taking a sip of tea.

“I want to get back my planet too…” Mona Lisa was an interesting person too. The lizard lady came from a different realm entirely separate from Yojimbo, yet they knew each other by mutual friends that have dealt with other dimensional traveling problems.

“Ooh, a rabbit person!” Oh no, not Jaded, anything but her right now!

“Jaded, I strongly advise you not to do whatever you’re first impulse is, especially with him.” I groused out, especially since he was a samurai that had beaten me in a fair fight.

“I’ll shall go with my second then!” Watching as Jaded reached down, she picked up Isabelle and squeezed her tightly.

“Yay!” The little biped dog Isabelle squeaked excitedly and started hugging her back with a wagging tail.

“I take it she’s the local troublemaker?” Usagi stated bluntly when he opened his eyes and stared at me sharply.

“Yes, but she’s not evil… except when you actually get her angry. I haven’t seen her furious, but nobody wants to test her.” I shook my head sardonically as I watched Jade playfully tussle Isabelle’s fur, then Paprika came in to hug them both and then Pinkie Pie and Cheese Sandwich piled on top of them. This started a chain reaction cuddle pile for all nearby beings to start joining in on. “Trust me, putting a dimension between you and Jade would definitely not be enough to save you, someone’s tried that already. The people who were happily arrested told us to keep her away from them and they’ll serve their full time in jail quietly, so long as Jade doesn’t have visitation rights.”

“Happily arrested?” Yojimbo said with a look of confusion.

“She doesn’t seem that bad to me.” Mona said while taking in some pie with a happy hum.

“That there is Paprika, she is known as the The Demon Alpaca. Sure things may appear cute and innocent in this world, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous.” A wad of Paprika’s fur lashed out and dragged me into the cuddle pile and away from Fred. “No… I don’t want to... agh… help Fred!”

“Evil obligation, I HAVE TO LET HER CUDDLE YOU OLLIE!” Throughout Fred’s unreliable laziness in saving me from Paprika snuggles, I could see Yojimbo was more wary of him than Paprika.

Yojimbo would learn better soon enough that Paprika is not to be ignored. There would be hugs, neither Mona Lisa nor Usagi Yojimbo would escape them.

“Why do I have the sudden impending fear that a bakery is about to be utterly decimated?” Pinkie said with a wide eyed look as I was brought into the snuggles.

-Earth, Saint Canard, Recap-

Last time on Darkwing Duck.

West Side.

“Really now, Bug Master is the name that you chose?” Bentina Beakley stated as she faced off against her erstwhile cousin Bianca as they squared off against one another. “I may have lost Steel Beak, but I’m bringing you in Bianca!”

“You can try, but I bee-lieve you know I majored in entomology!” Bug Master was surrounded by a swarm of bees as she dramatically threw her cape out. “I’ll even show you who the queen around here is.”

Elsewhere Southeast Side.

“Hmph… Bonkers would do his best even if he got beaten by Bushroot, Quackerjack, Liquidator and Megavolt the last time someone somehow brought them into our world.” Skunky stated before spraying a cloud of disabling stink at a number of thugs from under the car, he quickly crawled out and armed his shock pistol. “It’s why I have to pick up the slack!”

“Hey, you are a formidable figure yourself Skunky.” Maui took aim and blasted a thug’s right shin knocking them down and making them shoot a bullet into the ground, then they received a splatter of green gunk to the forehead that knocked them out completely. Maui twirled his Beetle Blaster and then held it firmly. “You’ve been doing a lot of work tonight, your tired, exhausted even… but you are a good person.”

“Yeah, but it still feels like I haven’t done nearly enough!” Skunky Skunk, the lanky skunk biped, stated as he charged in with his shock pistol blazing and he stopped to cuff the thugs who were down while Maui covered him.

Elsewhere South Side.

Stegmutt looked to Launchpad.

“Shouldn’t we be looking for trouble?” They were both quietly eating at a hamburger hippo, it somehow was still open and operating despite the crime sprees still going on around the city.

“Well we need body fuel to keep going and it has been a rather long day, it’s healthy to take a break every once in a while Stegmutt and we both like Hamburger Hippo. So I figured why not stop and have a meal.” Launchpad answered simply. “Also I don’t actually know where we’re needed next.”

“You can try the bakery up the street, I saw a bunch of weasels with guns over there. Those guys didn’t look too friendly at all. One of them was a loudmouth.” The proprietor of the hippo shaped outdoor restaurant stated, the fact that he opened in the middle of a crisis said a lot about how tough he was that his restaurant wasn’t ransacked immediately despite being in the middle of numerous problems. “Always nice to help out one of my favorite customers that have kept me in business. Also you might want to get off those guys, I think you’re crushing them.”

“Huh? Oh, Sorry!” Stegmutt got off the pile of captured criminals and they groaned in relief that he wasn’t sitting on them anymore. “We should call the police to take those guys in right?”

“Yeah, but after we finish our food.” Launchpad nodded, it had been a long day and he liked hanging out with heroes. Stegmutt would be one of the best buddies he would ever have. “All this fighting works up an appetite.”

Elsewhere Northwest Side.

“So paint demons are a thing.” Violet stated as she looked through a book of ‘magical monstrosities’. “Shall we report back to Ocellus at the bridge?”

“Yeah, best we got right now after you were almost eaten by the alligator. Thankfully we managed to stop them before they did any more crazy magic shenanigans or polluted the water!” That and Lena had to watch the Jambalaya melt into puddles of paint and blood, which was really awesome in her opinion. “Also I was quite tired of being half a newt.”

“I thought that that experience built character and the scales looked good on you sister of mine.” Violet said as she was lifted into the air by her sister’s magic.

“Never again Violet!” Lena rolled her eyes and then started flying off with her grinning sister levitating by her side. “It’s weird enough that I’m still biologically a shadow creature despite looking like a normal duck biped, I don’t need any more magical body horror complications on top of it!”

Elsewhere, City Central, on route to hospital.

“Ugh, why do you surface dwellers have to be so complicated!” Neptunia stated to Darkwing as she road on the back of his Rat Catcher motorcycle while glancing at an unconscious gizmo duck. At some point she had found her water gear and could now effectively stay on land again.

“Thanks for the help again Neptunia, we couldn’t have done it without you!” Quiverwing responded before Darkwing said something dumb that might set off the mutant fish biped into even further rants about all the problems the city of Saint Canard generates.

“We still need to find Negaduck and Ocellus has dropped a clue that he’s somewhere southwest section of the city.” Considering that they’ve been everywhere in the city so far, that was just about the last place they had to look. “Once we drop off Gizmo Duck, we can finally start looking for him.”

“Sir, the guns smuggled in through the north dock indicate Negaduck was prepared for his villain maker to fail eventually.” The report was out through and Honker was on top of the information. Ocellus stated that the one making the fake villains had been dealt with, in a semi-permanent fashion given they were definitely magical in nature. Apparently two heroes had been taken out in the name of defeating said villain maker. “I just don’t think he expected it to happen this soon though, so we might be able to actually catch him off guard.”

“Yeah, not likely Arrow Assistant, Negaduck is always one or more steps ahead of us when he has plans this huge, right up until we catch up to him and inevitably kick his butt anyway!” Quiverwing Quack has had a few close calls, but she was still raring to go despite the exhaustion of being a precision sharp shooter taking its toll on her. Relaxing as they drove to the hospital would give her plenty of time to inventory how many shots she had left for her weapons.

Darkwing still looked fresh, aside from the various bits of damage done to his clothing. Despite the trouble at the arboretum and several other places throughout the city, he has had far more endurance than anyone would ever give him credit for and he was itching to bring Negaduck to justice. Though his gas gun was going to need some real thorough maintenance after all of this, he would persevere through everything.

The only thing on Darkwing’s mind was, where would Negaduck rear his head and would his team and any remaining active heroes be enough for it? They might even require TOON divisions help if it’s as bad as he thinks it’s going to be.

Elsewhere Audubon Bay Bridge.

On the bridge looking at the city and the lights in it under the darkening night sky.

“So… time to go?” Dormarch stated as he walked up next to Pom leaving behind the Banana Brain toy, her wool rippled and she slowly entered glide mode while staring out across the bay from Darkwing’s hideout up in the bridge’s support structure.

“Yes, it is.” Pom wilted and didn’t look happy about ending the small break she got in, Dormarch climbed up onto her back.

“Opening connection to Ms. Shuttle… she says she can spare whatever chemical ammo she has left and is still holding position outside of Saint Canard.” Dormarch stated as he wrapped his paws around Pom’s neck, he shivered as he felt the wool on Pom’s back glued him down to her. “She won’t have as many problems with giving us artillery fire thanks to the canopy being down, she still only has so many salvo’s left though. We should make them count.”

“Remember whenever you need me guys, I will be here!” Ms. Shuttle announced. “I’ve just been sitting outside of the city worrying about you, I’m so glad to hear you’re alright!”

“Good luck.” Ocellus said before going back to the computer and checking in with the various heroes running around.

“Alright… let’s do this…” Pom took a few steps back, before charging forward and leaping into the air to spread her legs out. She had to reach that bakery without getting spotted, once they attacked the bakery they might lose the element of surprise. They did not want Negaduck catching wind of them coming.

This city, like Cape Suzette, wasn’t her own and she had no real reason to fight for it. Pom would most certainly continue to do so.

If she ever made it back to Huoshan alive, nobody would be able to question whether or not she was fit for her job.

Elsewhere at the hospital.

“Banana Boy still hasn’t shown himself.” Glue Girl grumbled as she stared down a number of criminals glued to the ground. “What is that guy doing?”

“I don’t know, but I trust that he still wants to be a hero.” Sneeze Master was sitting next to another batch of thugs that had caught a rather virulent cold and were too ill to fight. “He’s our friend and he must be trying to find a way to help somehow.”

Their pig friend that turned into a giant flying banana was still MIA, but they both had a suspicion that Rubber Chicken was being held by Negaduck personally. They hoped their leader was alright, but since it was Negaduck they were both hoping he just wasn’t dead at this point. Negaduck had a thing about making people suffer for the enjoyment of it.

The hospital was safe and sound, should the two have any problems Fawn Deer of TOON division and any remaining police officers would be decent backup when she wasn’t busy helping people with numerous injuries being brought in. Sadly said people included a number of downed heroes.

Riot gear equipped police were now out in force and they were slowly taking back the city one step at a time. While the cities citizens moved carefully to keep civilization going in the middle of a crisis where you could only get into the city by boat.

Even with one of the major villains defeated there was still a lot left to do.

-Now, Pom-

Swooping down, I landed on top of a skyscraper and looked around, the Bakery was far below and seemed entirely unimposing in its brightly colorful nature.

“Um… excuse me…” I froze, I didn’t see anyone else up here… both Dormarch and I turned to see a giant banana with a blue cape. “Hey there… uh… Leap Lamb… right?”

“Banana Boy, where have you been?” I was more curious than angry as someone else would be in a city wide crisis, has he just been flying around aimlessly above all the trouble this entire time?

I’m actually fairly of jealous of that!

Any lambkin would love to have the power to fly away from problems, even if it requires turning into a giant fruit. I’m still trying to figure out how to fly myself and I can eventually do it with my fluffmancer abilities. I just didn’t have the required talent to pull it off.

“I… know that… I haven’t been very helpful...” The banana looked away as he said this. “I just don’t know how to help, I mean I just turn into a giant flying banana. I’m a punchline waiting to happen… is that a new sidekick?”

“Yeah, I’m Dynamo Dog apparently. I’m one of Caper Canine’s little brothers. Also, yes, unlike Caper Canine, I can talk formally.” As far as Dormarch was concerned, the word Dynamo barely fit his abilities. Sure he might not have electrical powers, but he had the ability to enter any device which I noted to be everywhere on this world. He could even travel between devices easily too, while still being tethered to the PET. His ability to manifest technically transfers energy like a dynamo right? “Still working on the name, but it’s fitting enough as things go. I want to be called Digital-Dog or Digi-Dog, but that’s 'too' on the nose for everyone's tastes.”

“I don’t believe that for a second that you can’t be helpful, some people would love to have the ability to fly like you can… also have you ever really fully tried to figure out everything you can about this weird ability to turn into a banana with a cape?” I had to know what he’s been doing this entire time. “Again, where have you been?”

“All over the city, but apparently other heroes are taking care of things and at best... I can just fling my peel off at people.” Okay, so we have a depressed sidekick that wants to do more, but doesn’t know how to. “I’ve been dithering about... being useless up here.”

“You can at least carry injured people away from incidents to the hospital, I mean how much weight can you carry in your banana form?” His banana form being far bigger than his pig biped form would be good for carrying at least some people to safety. “Have you tried manipulating your peel for extra limbs or something?”

“… It’s amazing that you aren’t angrier at me and are just trying to help me after all the... not helping... I’ve been doing. Like Rubber Chicken, you’re a very nice person.” He looked at me with slightly more life in his eyes. “Also I heard you were dead and I got a bit curious about seeing you.”

“I might be dead on my hooves, and needing a good days sleep after all this, but that was a ruse and I’m about to blow that element of surprise by attacking that bakery down there. It’s where Negaduck is supposedly hiding.” That bakery was what Bushroot told us about, giving it some thought I added. “I would like you on standby to help in case something goes wrong… I can only dodge so many bullets.”

“You also need to keep yourself under control Leap Lamb, so that you can continue to dodge them and not stress your body beyond our ability to save you.” Dormarch was still on me about my health and he has reason to be, he's always worried about my safety.

“Wait, you have a medical problem?!” Banana Boy, you were about to learn a harsh truth about me. “You sure don’t look like you do.”

“PROBLEMS... nearly died multiple times and pushing my body beyond its limits is slowly killing me, now my body is starting to break said limits on its own by me adapting to one of my combat styles and I have very little control over it.” Sighing loudly, I needed to keep calm. “It might go completely terminal if I can’t control it and if it does become uncontrollable my body speeds up until I die. Doesn’t help that I have Arrhythmia, my body is hiding a lot of scars and I haven’t had a good month without trouble to recover fully. Today will be a small victory for me if I can survive the rest of it without automatically sliding into the Dancing Flame.”

“Dancing Flame?” The banana tilted his head curiously.

“Like the dancing flame of a candle, if it burns too strong then it burns down quickly, if it’s too weak then a slight breeze will snuff it out. It’s all about finding balance and I’m having problems with burning too strong at the moment.” What I really needed to do was control that adaptation or it will kill me, Dormarch even warned as much. “It is how I can achieve a burst of temporary super speed and react to things I shouldn’t be able to, it didn't prevent me from getting shot. Also, no, I do not have super strength.”

“Why did you add that last part about super strength?” Easy answer Banana Boy, I have a problem with people assuming that I’m strong.

I’m simply not strong. Have people really not looked at my scrawny form and thought that the things I’ve done are barely within the realm of even possible for me? That I have to push myself hard or else I wouldn’t have survived the many headaches I have been put through, that I wouldn’t be true to myself if I didn’t?

Being able to dodge bullets comes at a price to me. Sure I’m competent and intelligent, but the things I’ve been doing will kill me eventually even if it’s not from an injury in a fight and me attempting to hide my anxiety problems when Ocellus wasn’t around wasn’t actually helping things either.

The world started to slow down and I started to slowly breathe to put it back to normal.

“It kept coming up.” Dormarch answered for me as he put his ear to my chest, and then carefully wrapped me in a hug and he then quickly kicked me in the chest with his right hind leg below the heart. With a jolt the world started doing the opposite of slow down, it instead sped up faster as I felt slower until things evened out. Dormarch kept hugging me and didn’t let me go, he eventually continued the thought. “Most people don’t understand that Leap Lamb is not actually that physically strong. She actually has more problems physically and mentally than they’ll ever know and she’s still out here to do some good after taking in a meal and a thirty minute break from crossing the entire city, we just did so again to get to where we are now. Ready to take on Negaduck who, from what I’ve researched, has a history of 'lethal' cruelty since he became what he is.”

“Oh, well that makes sense then.” Banana boy floated over to me. “You doing alright? You seemed to look fairly dazed for a moment there.”

“Yeah, I just started to slide into doing my Dancing Flame style unintentionally.” I just needed to seriously ease my nerves. “Dynamo Dog here is kind of my medical assistant animal in making sure I’m healthy… he just did me a favor by kicking me.”

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Asked Dormarch with worry in his eyes.

“I have to be.” Not the comforting words you wanted to hear. “Now get on, we need to go in now!”

“Why are we going in… oh…” Dormarch saw that I was staring at a gang of weird looking armed weasels and a tied up hostage getting out of a van and heading into the bakery. “Well that just confirms it’s shady practices. Can I just say that you have a problem with saving people?”

“Noted!” I kicked off the roof and dove for the bakery. “If we do this quickly enough, we can still catch Negaduck off guard if we don’t let them alert him.”

-Banana Boy-

I just... floated here...

For a bit...

Wow Leap Lamb was a true hero! She kept going in spite of her problems. That took real 'strength', even if it was more in spiritual in nature.

I shot over the side of the roof and dove after her.

There was a hostage that needed to be saved and if I can take a bullet for someone, then my day was better that someone didn’t die because...

I WAS THERE!

-Weasel-

We couldn’t approach the hospital, it was too hot.

That Skunky guy was dangerous with that other guy that took out those FOWL psychics… alone.

The boss would be happy to hear we managed to get at least one, the Tuskernini and Flap gangs were downed pretty fast for not running into Darkwing.

We just found and caught a TOON Division Snooper and after we were done squeezing information out of him, we’d simply ice the guy.

We were smart and managed to do what none other had done so far all day, pick off one of TOON Division's stooges. Not the first time we’ve done that, but also taking them alive without anyone noticing.

This would be a great payout for the weasel gang today!

That thought was a second before something white blurred into landing in front of me and… my whole world was hurting and there was an indistinct white blur in front of me. I tried to find my gun, but a giant banana just knocked it away.

Was I on drugs again? I thought I quit that crap!

Author's Note

Lore fun: One episode of Darkwing Duck involves Drake Mallard acidentally getting super speed to the extent that it nearly outright kills him.

In a cartoony fashion, he solves the major problem of the super speed by running backwards and then having it quickly cured soon after.

208. Bakery Break-ery.

-Saint Canard, outside Sickening Sweet Bakery, Pom-

Being a hero should always be a choice, not everyone wants to be a hero. I never got a choice in the matter since Oleander and Fred convinced me to leave the safety of my exile from Meadow Hills.

Had I known it would lead to all of this… well I would still be doing this very same thing because I met Tianhuo.

Inflate wool a split second before hitting the ground, Dormarch jumped off to the side and scrambled out of view of the weasels that were now focused on me.

Mostly because of what I just did.

As soon as my front hooves were planted on the street, I reared my hind legs and bucked the guy that was holding his gun openly.

His gun dropped as I slammed him below the belt and my eyes darted about collecting information. I think I just took out the lead weasel of this small group. He had been ahead of the others, four other weasels to look out for.

Two closest ones first, one on the left, then right.

Hostage, tied up and held by the big heavyset weasel with a large baseball bat. Not a currently a major threat, slow reaction time. Least threatening mentally, but physically very strong and moderately more durable than the others. I’d be far too fast for him.

Green wearing weasel was reaching for a weapon. Likely a gun and given his reaction speed, he is likely second in command of this group and is the most threatening. Has a hidden knife. Knows how to use both weapons with expertise.

A weasel in a straitjacket was already charging forward and lunging for me with knives held in reverse grip to knock me down and stab me repeatedly, eyes showing psychotic glee at having a viable target.

Dangerous, psychotic, yet signs of hidden intelligence behind wild feral movements in the lunge and has the best reaction time. I’m putting him below the green wearing weasel in threat, since he doesn’t seem to be one for guns and more in it for watching the life of his victims flee their eyes.

Last weasel, seemed to have problems with his lungs judging by the troubled breathing. Would not be good at an up close confrontation. Above the big weasel in threat, below the smaller straitjacket wearing weasel.

My hind legs finally came to the ground from the buck, I started to move immediately.

I side step left into the straitjacket weasel’s lunge, crouched down and then jumped straight up when his stomach was directly over me. The weasel went flying out of control given the sudden change in his momentum, he tumbled down the street and scrabbled with the knives to get back on his feet.

The slow weasel hampered by the hostage, brought his baseball bat down and I quickly hopped to the right still facing the direction of the bakery.

In my hop I lifted by back up and shifted my hips so that I landed in a standing crouched position.

Bringing both my hooves together I whipped them around. Into the right side of the green weasels face before he could get his weapon into position.

The gun discharged into the street and then went flying from his grasp.

Banana Boy swooped in and knocked the other gun away from the still awake leader of this group with the bottom tip of his body, then flipped around and slammed into the weasel face first with full force.

This gave me time to swing my hip around and lash out with my left hind leg in snap kick that knocked the green wearing weasel unconscious when my hoof met his chin with a sickening crunch I wasn’t proud of hearing.

My life was very much in danger and holding back in this situation meant danger for the hostage, myself, Banana boy and Dormarch. I was now facing left of the bakery and left myself open for that incoming giggling psycho leaping at my back.

The wheezing weasel was being easily taken down by several blasts from Dormarch’s Retriever Bark. The hostage started struggling in the big weasel’s grip throwing him off balance and almost making him drop them. Banana Boy was soundly dealt with the leader of the group.

The straitjacket wearing weasel landed on my back and tried to drive both his knives into my chest and neck as he wrapped his feet around my belly.

Managing to stay standing, despite a slight stagger, I blocked his knives by grabbing at his wrists with my hooves as I didn’t want to be disemboweled today.

“Die-die!” He said in childish glee and a giggle filled high pitched voice as I struggled to throw him off, I let go of his and went down on all fours before rearing and shaking him from managing to plant one of his knives in me by my jerky movements.

I then started to buck wildly around in a circle wildly like a bull at a rodeo. Honestly don’t know what Arizona sees in rodeos, but apparently it was something.

The psycho on my back started to giggle loudly in enjoyment and tried to slash at me several times, but thankfully my wool held up to the slashes. It would not hold up to a stab from this guy’s rather impressive strength.

I harshly rolled to the left and he tumbled off me, I quickly got to my hooves turning to face him and almost got stabbed in the face as he was on his feet almost faster than I could react. Catching his right arm in the crook of my neck and left shoulder I grabbed his left wrist with my right hoof and twisted inwards to make him drop one of his knives.

Falling backwards I got my right hind leg under him and kick him up into the air slightly. I grabbed his sleeves, which were very unhelpful to him in this situation, and yanked him back down into the ground onto his back behind me as I rolled onto my hooves and quickly smacked him in the face with a left hoof stomp that stunned him.

From there it was a simple act of quickly rolling him up and binding him with his own straitjacket before he could recover and start struggling in earnest.

Looking up from restraining a weasel, there was the shadow of the oafish weasel bringing his bat to bear, only to be hit by something in the back of the head and his swing was stopped halfway through to hitting me as he toppled over.

In his effort to not be hampered by the hostage the big weasel had dropped the hostage. Said hostage was apparently able to swiftly free themselves and bludgeon the larger weasel across the back of the head using the unconscious, and far lighter, green wearing one.

“Can’t believe I let these weasels get the drop on me.” A gruff voice stated while dusting their hands off. It was a dark brown and cream furred biped Badger in a long coat and hat. “Eddie Valiant, TOON Division Snooper.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re upper body strength is impressive?” I stated immediately as Banana Boy came down to hover near us. Dormarch quietly moved to standing to the left of the entrance to the bakery he looked determined.

“Not really, but I can get in a good hit every now and then when I need too.” Eddie seemed fairly nice for his rather scruffy appearance. “Nice job with taking down the weasels, but we still have to deal with the…!”

“What’s going on out…?” The second he saw us, the hyena didn’t even think twice about raising his gun and preparing to fire, even with the chance of the weasels possibly being hit by stray fire from projectile spewing weapon.

Dormarch was quicker on the draw and had hit the Hyena with a Wild Bark from his right just as the weasel started squeezing the trigger. The weasel immediately froze in place as the stunning effect from Dormarch’s attack took an immediate effect. It takes quite a bit of strength to shake it off quickly.

Running forward and doing a hopping and spinning upper left hoof to the hyena’s skull, I make them drop their weapon. I kick it away with one of my hind legs and by that time the hyena managed to regain his motor functions and scramble into the bakery.

Looking into the establishment as went into standing on my hind legs, I saw multiple other hyena’s in the baker. All of them were armed with similar weapons and turning to aim towards me.

“Get down!” I shouted that more for Eddie’s sake than anybody else’s, as I dove to the right putting the bricks below the windows between me and all those guns.

Banana Boy was already up in the air and out of the way given he was capable of flying in any direction at any second, he would be fine. Dormarch already had common sense and was still next to the entrance on the opposite side from me, likely already knowing exactly how many weapons were aiming at the entrance.

Eddie immediately turned and ran while leaning down to scoop up the weapon dropped by the green weasel. He quickly ducked behind the van as a hail of bullets spewed out of the bakery destroying the windows and sending shards of glass everywhere into the street.

“Ugh, hyenas, these laughing boys are the bane of my existence!” Eddie stated loudly, I heard him checking the weapon he acquired. “Well at least my situation could be worse, I could be already inside getting grilled by them and on my way to punch in my ticket to being six feet under!”

“You know these guys?” I asked as the guns slowly stopped firing, but I didn’t hear any movement. I flexed my wool a few times to get all the glass off of me.

“They are the Rotten gang, their leader is responsible for my brother’s death, the very head of these yahoos himself!” Eddie stated as he leaned out and fired a shot and after a yell of agony. Okay so he had a personal vendetta here. In return for dropping one of the guys in the baker he received several hundred shots in return striking out at him from cover. “I am ever glad the weasels shelled out for an armored vehicle! TOON Division really wants these guys brought in, especially for the smuggled weapon shipments this morning… unfortunately they are currently being used against us!”

“Well they can’t all keep shooting forever, they have to have a limited amount of ammunition!” I yelled back at Eddie. Otherwise they’d be wasting a lot of ammunition on nothing. They stopped firing and I could hear movement. “Dormarch can you do something?”

“Well I’d survive such an onslaught, but it would be painful to heal back from…” Dormarch was actually considering charging in.

I was considering entering Dancing Flame state and charging the room before he did so.

We were both relieved and slightly spooked that the choice was taken out of our respectively paws or hooves.

“What’s going on here?” We both turned to look as the stegosaurus biped, better known as Stegmutt, stomped straight up to the bakery in plain sight of all the guys holding various projectile weapons. I blinked as I watched as numerous bullets struck him, I could even swear I saw a bullet bounce off one of his eyes making him blink as if it had just irritated him slightly. His eye was perfectly fine afterwards too, I was beginning to wonder if that was a trick of my imagination. “Well you guys are not very nice, you must be the bad guys!”

Stegmutt wasn't the most intelligent individual, but he was really quite tough to stand up to that onslaught.

“Oh they most certainly are, can you take their weapons away from them for us please?” I asked, nodding Stegmutt passed through the door. “We really need to get by them.”

“Well okay, because you asked nicely Miss Leap Lamb!” He said back to me in a cheerful tone as he stomped through the entrance under constant fire.

“Oh dang, it’s a super, break out the grenades and rocket launchers!” What followed was hundreds of bullets, several explosions and constant screaming for a minute or two.

I silently sat there staring at Dormarch and him back at me. We both winced as we heard far more violence going on inside, too afraid to really look and see what was going on.

“Hey, how you doing?” Launchpad stated as he came to a seat next to me as another explosion went off, he patted me on the head softly as I whimpered at the noises coming from beyond the doorway. “Knew you’d be alright… well mostly… I did have some doubt. Glad to see you again.”

“Could be better.” I said in return to the pilot who can run a master class of how to destroy vehicles without anyone getting seriously hurt.

“Hey, whatever is allowing Stegmutt to ignore all that is quickly running out, he might actually need some help… his brain activity is dropping fast.” Announced Dormarch as he looked through the doorway. I carefully followed his lead and looked inside, there was a mess of injured hyenas and looking to Stegmutt, he took an explosion to the chest and then wobbled in place.

“I’m getting... very... sleepy…” Mumbled Stegmutt before another rocket to the belly caused him to fall over onto his back. We just watched as he lay there and began snoring loudly, at least he seemed to be okay and was not injured too badly.

“Guys start tying them up.” I said back to Dormarch and Launchpad as I moved forward.

“Well that’s out of the way…” The hyena with the cane stated as I walked into the destroyed front of the bakery, he was tossing away a rocket launcher. Bodies of hyenas were strewn everywhere and in various states of injury. The last standing hyena turned to me with a hat, glasses and a black cloak. “Ah, I see we have other guests, let make me bake you a rhubarb pie… it’s to die for!”

He swiftly pulled a sword from his cane as he held the cane sheath in his left hand, his right was held forward towards me.

“Can we not?” I asked politely as I stepped over a hyena’s groaning form and looked about the front to a secret villain’s base, still plenty of baked goods that were untouched by the destructive rampage caused by Stegmutt. “Also rhubarb isn’t that poisonous. It can be made relatively safe to eat… unless you’re adding other ingredients."

“Sorry, but I’m not in the habit of going down without a fight despite being a little light on ammunition and if you must know, the secret ingredient is cyanide… for you face Baron Von Rotten!” As he said this he thrust the thin sword at me, I leaned out of the way to the right and nearly got slapped across the head by the cane like sheath when I tried to strike out for the biped’s kidney. Having ducked it and backed off, Von Rotten laughed lightly. “Ah, you’re someone of skill compared to that big oaf that just tore apart our innocent front. This shall be enjoyable.”

“Innocent?” I said flatly as I took a few steps back to avoid a slash from the sword and jab from the sheath, and tried to hit him with a left straight. He hastily backed away and out of range of my leg. He had better reaction times than most people.

“Well of course my dear, the front was an actual functioning bakery, who cares if there’s a seedy underside if they never see that part and get their treats?” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Launchpad, Dormarch and Eddie clearing up the unconscious hyenas as quickly as they could. “Though you have me at a major loss, can I ask why you decided to suddenly rush down my establishment? How did you find out about this place exactly?”

“Like you don’t know already, where’s the secret entrance to Negaduck’s lair?” The sudden creepy smile I received was worrying and Von Rotten looked to be thinking about something as he attack me.

He slashed forward with the sheath and then tried to stab at me again with his sword and I got back into the counter, I swiped up a pie with my left hoof and threw it right into his face making him gag and stumble back.

I leapt forward and launched a right hind legged kick into his side staggering him further, I heard him grunt in pain as he slowly stood up and slashed out with his sword towards my face. Backing off from him, he finally voiced his thoughts.

“Well now if this is where that lunatic is, then that’s rather funny because he’s actually out done me by hiding under right under my organizations main base and that means… those damn weasels sold me out! Well if you can find whatever secret entrance he’s put into my base then you can have him, I haven’t a clue where it is, but it does answer why we’ve been having problems keeping the power on here as of late.” He thrusts his sword canes sheathe forward and then followed that up with a second thrust of his blade that almost scratched my left shoulder and I narrowly managed a glancing blow to the left side of his face with a right hook. That made him stumble back a bit and he shook his head. “Negaduck is all yours… but do you go for him or do you come after me?! I know when to cut my losses and... run!”

With that he ran and dove through the broken windows with a roll and ran off down the street laughing, avoiding several shots from an angry Eddie who charged out the front door and fired after him.

Baron Von Rotten was about to turn the corner and escape into the streets of Saint Canard. The guy was fast for a biped hyena and he was going to get away, right up until a fully charged stun pistol blast suddenly slammed straight into his chest, knocking him onto his back and electrocuting him violently and making him drop his both his cane and blade.

It was seconds later that skunk in a blue TOON Division uniform was on top of him and cuffing him. Soon Maui appear from around the corner, he looked in my direction and started making his way here.

“Okay, so that’s fully taken care of, but we still need to find the entrance into Negaduck’s base quickly…” The bakery was certainly ruined, but despite the destruction caused by the now sleeping Stegmutt, there wasn’t much going on in the front and the back was loaded with crates full of weapons. “We might still actually have the element of surprise.”

“Very unlikely, concerning that Negaduck was actually working with the weasels but not the hyenas.” Quite aware of that unusual fact Dormarch, but this was the only lead we had into finding Negaduck. “Let’s start scanning around.”

“How are things here?” Maui said and didn’t look surprised to see me, not even a comment on me being dead.

“Not going well to start off, at least we have help.” Timely help at that. “Stegmutt doesn’t look like he’s going to be able to get up anytime soon, he was hit with a lot of explosions.”

“Stegmutt is resilient, but he’s not invincible.” Launchpad stated as he patted the sleeping dinosaur on the head. “So how do we go about finding Negaduck's secret base?”

“This the place where Negaduck is supposed to be? It’s good news that you have someone who can see all, while seeing nothing.” As he said this Maui started twirling and began glowing brightly until he resolved into wearing a black costume and a red cloth blindfold, his beetle blaster pistol had disappeared and he was now holding a wooden staff. Not only did his clothing change, but so too did his voice which became much colder and made a chill go down my spine. “While I am like this please call me Cold Shadow.”

“That was awesome, but what does that do for us?” Launchpad tilted his head and looked around.

“Well I’m going to ignore that just happened, because we just got my brother’s killer.” Eddie stalked out into the street and waved a hand to the skunk, he waved back excitedly. “Keeping looking around for that entrance, I’ll talk to Skunky for you and will hold the front here, now go find that mad duck that caused all of this.”

“It does more than you would think Launchpad.” Cold Shadow finally answered.

“He just let himself be possessed…” Curiously, despite recognizing it as being something like a nightmare parasite, it seemed like that this form of possession was benign and on purpose.

“Maui is more in control than I am, he can return to himself whenever he feels the need to. We both have our skills.” After Cold Shadow said this we all started looking around the bakery.

There was trouble one of the bathrooms, but Launchpad knocked out the hyena quickly before any trouble started.

Dormarch helpfully told us there were two hyenas in the back afterwards.

The locked backroom had two hyena’s who hadn’t gotten the memo that the bakery had come under assault, they were swiftly beaten down by Cold Shadow with several impossibly fast staff strikes before they could even get their digits on the triggers of their weapons.

We found the illegal weapons delivered to the north docks that Jitters had lost track of, but there were a few crates that were suspiciously empty.

Dormarch hadn’t been able to detect much else as he followed me around like the puppy he was, giving me worried looks and was quite alert for any danger.

“Nothing?” I said after we had searched every possible room and moved back to the front.

“Hold… not nothing." We gave Cold Shadow a confused look. "I think I may have found the entrance.”

I glanced at Eddie who was talking to the skunk outside and then back to the counter with Dormarch moving to see what had Cold Shadow’s attention… despite the fact that he currently couldn’t see anything and was moving around as if he could.

“I’m not detecting anything.” Dormarch responded while climbing up onto my back to look around at the ventilation above us.

“You wouldn’t… there is a mystical barrier in place here. A severe price was paid... in blood.” Slapping one end of his staff into the floor, a familiar style of blood circle appeared with different symbols on it. “It is good fortune I am present.”

“Despite the fact that she is gone, it seems Splatter Phoenix is still causing us problems.” Dormarch stated dryly. “So do I need to call in our expert to disarm…”

With a swift swipe of his staff, Cold Shadow made the blood circle evaporate and we could see a lever that wasn’t there before.

“No need to call for outside help or expertise, it is easily dealt with.” Cold Shadow took a step back and motioned to Launchpad to pull the lever. “If you will do the honors.”

Launchpad, upon pulling the lever that almost blended in with the area around the counter. He fell backwards and the entire lightly damaged armored counter lifted upwards to the ceiling revealing a narrow staircase downwards.

“Come on!” One sniff was all I needed, just knowing that those poor injured puppies were down here.

Author's Note

So... Negaduck...

How dangerous can he be exactly when faced with a mystical ninja combined with a half-boiled detective, a friendly sidekick pilot, a lamenting leaping lambkin and a physically manifested dangerous digital dog? Not to mention the two TOON Division officers watching the entrance of the bakery provided Negaduck even needs to go back that way and doesn't have another escape route already planned out.

Well Negaduck was never easy to deal with no matter who you are or what powers you may be.

Despite being a mostly normal biped duck and having him slightly outnumbered, Negaduck was always a powerful and dangerous mastermind.

Thus one wonders what this huge set up was all leading up to. What exactly Negaduck is going to do?

Short Answer: Pure Violence.

I've been fairly distracted from writing lately, but I'm living well.

209. Negating Duck.

-Saint Canard, Bakery Hidden Basement, Pom-

The basement had three boxes in it near the entrance, I took a whiff and I could smell blood.

I quickly moved over to the first box and looking inside it the kicked puppies inside shied away from me in fear.

Looking into the second box, I saw a bunch of rabbits beaten to within an inch of their lives, some of them had broken legs and they were equally terrified.

I saw flies around the third box and took a sniff of the air and looked at the floor that had drippings of blood leaking from it, after glancing inside the box. I looked around for a lid and once found I started to place the lid on the box.

“What was in the third box?” Launchpad asked innocently.

“Cats… you don’t want to know what Negaduck did to them.” I said quietly wishing I hadn’t seen that. “Hopefully they’re in a better place… along with their kittens.”

I had heard Negaduck was cruel and vicious, but doing that to animals?!

I was about to press the lid down when I heard a weak mewling noise…

Not being able to ignore it, I moved the lid to the side and carefully dug into… the bodies.

Apparently one of the pregnant cat’s kittens had barely survived Negaduck. I carefully took out the poor mewling baby and moved back over to the puppies.

“Take care of this one please, they have had it far worse than you.” Have gently stated this in a canine growl, I carefully place the only surviving newborn kitten among the battered puppies and they didn’t do so much as twitch towards the kitten, but they were all looking up at me. Some with awe and others with some hope as they took up a slightly protective circle around the weakly mewling kitten.

I slowly closed the lid on the third box and ultimately pressed down on it making sure it was closed and I tried to ignore the blood staining my hooves. This was the second time today… I really didn’t like any part of me being covered in blood.

“To think I knew the guy when he was still mostly sane…” Launchpad lamented slightly, no one else had looked into the box and I wasn’t about to tell them what I saw. That one was going with me to the grave and someone had to bury or burn that box without looking inside.

“Launchpad, please carry these two boxes and get these animals out of here… find some food for the kitten while you’re at it. It’s… it’s going to need a lot of help.” If I didn’t have a reason to state ‘Baa-Ram-Ewe’ before, I certainly had a reason to call it now if I hadn’t already. If Negaduck did this to the animals… what would he do to a person?

“Uh… right, just let me…” Launchpad carefully started to pick up the crate and carry them, the puppies whimpered.

“It’ll be okay, your safe.” I softly yipped, the animals calmed down. The only sound from the boxes now was a kitten mewling for its mother’s milk as Launchpad went up the stairs.

“Pom, am I right to believe that in the last box was…” Dormarch started before I cut him off in this dimly lit room where Negaduck gave his morning announcement from, he was likely in another room as I saw another door.

“Don’t… don’t ask or think about it too hard Dormarch.” Turning to Maui, or Cold Shadow as he was now. I saw the red cloth blindfold was stained with tears.

“Seeing all, missing none… may they rest.” That was all Cold Shadow had to say about the subject before he turned to me and nodded.

“Where’s Banana Boy?” Dormarch looked around and finally noticed that he wasn’t here, I personally think he flew off to get help.

“He went to get backup.” I answered calmly as I looked about the room full of torture implements and tried not to think about what had happened here. The smells in this room were fairly nauseating. “I don’t think he would abandon us, we might need the help if Negaduck is here.”

Who knows what twisted reason Negaduck could have for what he did to those cats.

“I have one question, the amount of blood I scanned to be in the crate does not match the relative amount of bodies…” Dormarch probably knows what I in the crate and was being very quiet about it, but what he said put me on high alert. “While I doubt Negaduck knows how to wield blood magic…”

“I will look out for blood sigils.” Cold Shadow stated coolly. “What may be written by the foe you helped bring down, might be used by our foe here… if there was one hiding the entrance, then there may be others. I will take the lead. If he doesn’t know we’re here from the sounds and shaking from all the explosions above, then he’ll know soon enough either way.”

Cold Shadow moved over to the doors and selected one, he looked at the door and simply opened it, it lead into a large hallway with a solid steel door at the far end of it. What looked like various metal doors with small barred windows lined the hall.

I heard some kind of noise come from Dormarch and he quickly looked to me.

“Life sign detected on scanner, size matches with that of… Rubber Chicken… and his life signs estimated to be close to critical health. He’s in the third cell on the left.” Dormarch announced with a worried tone.

We were about to burst forward towards the cell when Cold Shadow’s staff moved in front of us both… he had a grim frown on his face.

“Don’t rush… traps… we need to disable them if we are to save this Rubber Chicken while we still can, we endanger all our lives by rushing to his aid.” Cold Shadow was cold, calculating and could see more than he let on at a first glance. Whatever he was seeing… he wasn’t about to let us walk into that danger.

He moved forward looking to the left and right, he lashed out at the floor and a pair of nozzles popped out of the wall before we even reached the first two cells. Powerful flames filled the area in front of us.

“There is worse than that waiting for us… wait a moment.” Ripping of the blindfold his form twirled and Cold Shadow disappeared leaving Maui in his place.

“I’ve got it.” Maui aimed his Beetle Blaster forward and fire two shots, both the flamethrowers were destroyed in a shower of green slightly acidic gunk snuffing out the flames and destroying the nozzles shooting them.

Maui quickly spun and stopped. He was once again equipped with the blindfold and staff, having become Cold Shadow once more.

“We both have our talents.” Cold Shadow said simply. “Maui will always be more than I, but that does not make me less.”

“Is he answering our questions before we even ask them?” It seemed this spooked Dormarch somewhat.

“Do not worry Pom, Dormarch, I am an ally through and through.” As Cold Shadow said this he held the staff in a defensive manner and slowly inched forward using Maui’s form as if it were his own.

Two arms popped out of the ceiling and swung by Cold Shadow, he held his position as both saws missed his beak and the back of his head and swung around to hit him between the eyes and the center of the back of his skull. Yet he still didn’t move, he didn’t so much as flinch as they came at him.

When the saws came close he twisted and with a single swing, both saw blades slapped again the walls to the left and right and the bladed disks shattered to pieces. Making very little noise as they did so.

“Wow…” Dormarch was impressed, as was I.

That kind of quiet concentration doesn’t come naturally, I’m getting a better read of Cold Shadow and what he may be capable of. I was quite certain he wasn’t a threat to us and wasn’t like a magical nightmare parasite slowly twisting someone into something they weren’t through the desires of that person.

“Thank you.” Cold Shadow responded without turning his head to look back at me, it was definitely directed at me and not Dormarch. He was seeing far more than either Dormarch or I could with his eyes covered. “But, we are not done yet...”

Cold Shadow continued looking ahead and took an offensive stance with the staff, we passed by the second cells on our left and right and two round black bombs with lit fuses flew out of two holes that suddenly appeared in the ceiling.

Cold Shadow swung twice and both the bombs hit the floor, he didn’t even touch them… he didn’t need to… their fuses were no longer lit.

“You can reignite them again. Take them upon you’re wool, we may have need of them much later.” Listening to Cold Shadow I picked up the two small bombs with short fuses and stuck them into pockets in my wool. “A lesson for the young one, one can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself. You are not that which was. Now, can you get into the cell? It will be easier to open from the other side, you will see what I mean.”

“…” Dormarch looked to me and hopped onto my back. Taking this as a cue, I propped myself up on the door and climbed up slightly to get a look into the barred window. Dormarch also looked with me and we saw Rubber Chicken on the floor and not in a good condition. “Search Hunter.”

With a flash Dormarch appeared in the room and looked at the door with a tilted head.

“An alarm on the door? Ah… I see what Cold Shadow means now.” Dormarch made his way up to the door where I could see him and I back away from it. “Give me a minute.”

“Should I carry him to safety so that you may continue onward with your inevitable fight against the malignance?” That Cold Shadow directed the question at me made me look back at him in concern. “Remember to stay true, that is what those three words mean to you.”

After a few seconds to think it over, I finally decided on a response. “I’m aware.”

“Good, do not let rage lead, for the mind is far more dangerous, but do not hold rage back or let it build to ever overtake your heart.” A few seconds of hearing something on the other side of the door from Dormarch grunting, Cold Shadow added. “Whether or not you believe me, you are a personification of strength by perseverance. Persevere through what comes and be careful with your limits.”

Not being given much more time to think about that, Dormarch finally got the door open.

“He’s really…” Dormarch started, only for Cold Shadow to move past him swiftly and quietly heaved Rubber Chicken onto a shoulder.

The rubber hero was just shy of being absolutely mutilated, what had Negaduck done to him and why?

“If he needs help, then I shall remove him from danger. Darts, boulder, spikes… dive, jump up and walk on the wall.” With that Cold Shadow quickly made haste back the way we came.

“What did he mean by…” Instead of listening to Dormarch ponder on it, I ran forward and dove into a roll as darts flew out and hit both walls. “One time deadly traps?”

“Yes.” We didn’t need Cold Shadow to keep pushing forward. Launchpad would have gotten back to us if he probably wasn’t doing a more important job of saving a poor animals life. “On my back.”

Dormarch quickly made his way to me and hopped up onto my back, I ran forward and a boulder dropped to the floor and started rolling for us from behind. I jumped up and grappled the ceiling and pulled us up against it. The boulder passed by beneath and then fell into a dark hole that closed up at where we were going. Well that was the one trap beyond the spikes that Cold Shadow didn’t have to worry about.

I clambered to the wall and started moving forward, the last trap triggered. The pit of spikes wasn’t dangerous, but the reason we were on the wall became known as the ceiling swung out too revealing a mass of spikes above. I’m sure that if you avoided getting skewered by spikes below the floor, then the ceiling spikes would drop down and… yeah.

I made it to the other side and stayed on the wall, I opened the door and the floor where the boulder was fell open again. Once it closed up I pushed the door open and hopped to the floor to enter a large open room.

Off to the left was a bed, off to the right was a lot of strange humming equipment and in front of us… was a wide open space. A red carpet leading up to a red hat in a chair with its back to us.

“Well, well… someone got into my inner sanctum, I wonder who it could be? Don’t tell me, let me guess before I turn around and make mincemeat out of the first person to get here. My plan is just about done building up, it’s interesting that someone managed to get this far without getting hit by any of the traps. I thought most people wouldn’t even think twice about the floor after the boulder fell into the pit.” The chair sat up and Negaduck took his webbed feet off the desk he was sitting at, calmly watching the news and laughing dementedly at a number of children in another country coming down with some form of terminal illness. “The only heroic buffoons still active in the city are Neptunia and Darkwing… I don’t smell fish, but I do smell duck. There’s also the TOON Division stooges, but they never get quite this close to catching me. I remember when I set up The Collector for a fall, one of my more brilliant schemes… took them months to fix the damages I dealt while they were bringing him in after nearly killing that piece of crap bobcat. Now answer me this, who is the number one villain in all of Saint Canard?”

“Records show it to be Dr. Slug.” Dormarch stated and I started to run forward if Negaduck was about to do what I think he was.

“What, he is not better than…!” My hoof plowed a hole into the middle of the chair where Negaduck had been sitting. He reacted to me faster than I could almost follow by flipping backwards out of the chair and pushed off the monitor to leap over me and land on his feet facing me in the middle of the room. “Who the… you! Huh… was expecting Darkwing, so there are heroes who are more brains than brawn and luck, go figure. At least I know who iced Splatter Phoenix now, didn’t think you had it in you… maybe we can start a working relationship.”

He was surprised to see me, he was equally surprised that I went with a near lethal amount of force considering I just put my hoof straight through his swivel chair. I pulled my hoof free and turned to look at him.

“After what you did to those poor cats, I’m never going to agree to that and never would have to begin with.” At my cool demeanor Negaduck snorted loudly.

“Well I had a good reason for that, aside from the enjoyment of being the one to eviscerate them all myself… well that was just a bonus, as was letting Splatter Phoenix off a few of those fogies from the nearby nursing home for that switch to enter my lair.” Negaduck reached behind his back and, with an ominous red glow, he pulled out and tossed a lit bomb at me. My eyes widened and I leapt to the ceiling before leaping at Negaduck, he dropped under my attempt to tackle and I soared over him to land on the floor near the entrance. As the monitor and chair were damaged by the explosion, Negaduck turned to me with a sadistic grin. “Do you know how hard it is to get powerful blood magic seals permanently tattooed onto your body without anyone asking questions? It was fucking painful, why finding enough pregnant cats for the ‘blood of the innocent’ was hard work. The results even took a while to get settled, but once they were…”

I charged towards him as he began reaching for something else, he was ready for me… unfortunately he didn’t seem to have paid attention to the other being in the room.

“Wild-Bark!” Dormarch hit Negaduck from behind freezing him in place as I lunged for an overhead left hoof strike. A twitch of his visible hand let me know what to do next, I sent Dormarch a warning through our bond.

Before my hoof could connected, Negaduck managed to regain control of himself through sheer force of will and pulled out a running chainsaw with his right hand. I inflated my wool and narrowly avoid it biting into my unprotected cheeks or face as I fluttered backwards in the air by flailing my hooves, the swing also narrowly missed Dormarch who avoided it as Negaduck finished his wing by going low for him.

Okay so Negaduck had a strong will and can break Dormarch’s stunning attack in under five seconds.

“Not Caper Canine then?" As he said this he pulled the chord on the chainsaw and it went into overdrive as he held it with both hands. "Just how many sidekicks do you have?!”

“They aren’t sidekicks, they are friends and partners.” I returned while staring him down.

“Friends? Yuck! It’s all potato patato for me anyway, they will all be the same thing at the end of the day they meet me… DEAD!” Taking his left hand off the chainsaw he reached behind himself and pulled out a rocket launcher and fired it at me. “I’ll use their skulls to decorate my toilet, or I’ll use them as the toilet, depends on how I'm feeling really!”

As I avoided the rocket by leaping to the left, while I did so he managed to both predict and slap Dormarch out of the air and into the far right wall with the launcher as Dormarch appeared in a flash going for Negaduck’s neck.

Dormarch yelped and hit the floor with weak whine and I heard an explosion down the hallway as the rocket had flown through the entrance to this room.

“You two are much more interesting than the usual yahoos I deal with, and this is the first time I’m testing out my new permanently inked in ability that I made sure was impossible to alter by getting it settled in." Discarding the rocket launcher he pulled out a gun with his left hand and I inhaled as soon as I saw it. "You know, in case someone magical even thinks about trying to disarm it or me completely, you'd have to kill me to stop me now!”

Six rounds were fire in rapid succession from the gun, I exhaled explosively and moved around the bullets that were trying to put me into the path of the next bullet and so on as I evaded at speeds where the bullets looked to be moving through liquid.

As time started to speed up to normal I noted he hadn’t discarded the gun yet and crouched. I leapt before the Dancing Flame ended and avoided a seventh shot going straight into my heart.

“Darn it, a genuine bullet dodger, well it was worth all that money to carry an entire arsenal on my person!” Negaduck stated as he tossed the gun away and went back to holding the chainsaw with both hands and charged for me with it raised high in the air as I came back down from floating in the air.

He was about to swing when Dormarch fired a Retriever Bark forcing him to duck it, I landed and fired a Bark Blast into his chest a second later sending him skidding back a bit.

He didn’t fall over despite the force I hit him, it led me to think about just how tough and sure footed this mad duck was. Also we needed to land a few solid hits, that couldn’t be too hard even if he could pull out all sorts of weapons.

“Huh, you’re bark was actually hurt me, makes me wonder what you’re bites are like!” Oh great, not only was Negaduck almost pure evil… he was possibly a masochist as well judging by the smile on his beak.

“Can you tell me what you’re final plan in all of this is at least before we continue this?” I was wary of attacking him and Dormarch was keeping his distance and eyeing the chainsaw.

“Hm, let me think, nah!” He swung his chainsaw for me and I backpedaled a bit. “I’ll only give you one hint… total carnage incarnated!”

“If nothing else is to be expected than that, then you will surely fail!” Cold Shadow came down swinging his staff and Negaduck took a single step back and, taking his left hand off the chainsaw, he pulled out a much longer gun.

I quickly rolled to the left as he aimed it forward, Cold Shadow rolled to the right as it discharged sending the barrel towards the ceiling and the floor was pockmarked by the many projectiles that spewed forth.

“A shotgun?!” Dormarch said with disbelief.

“Not just any shotgun, say hello to Mr. Splatter, this thing makes hunting squirrels fun!” He tossed the gun up little, grabbing a specific portion, he shook it downward to make a double clicking sound and then he tossed it up to catch it by the handle again before aiming it at Dormarch and firing.

Dormarch disappeared before it discharged and appeared near me in the air and fired a Retriever Bark, the blast of energy was sliced in half by Negaduck swinging the chainsaw upwards.

“He is far more dangerous than we could have anticipated.” Cold Shadow stated bluntly.

“You think I’m bad now? Wait until you what happens when my plan fully comes into action!” It gets worse than he is already? He was wielding that projectile weapon with ludicrous recoil one handed and doing the same with the chainsaw that seemed to be running at full power after being revved once. “As of right now, I’m just playing with you. Tonight is going to be my night!”

I lunged into standing on my hind legs and then charged forward aiming to go low. Dormarch circled behind him and fired another retriever bark at the middle of his back. Cold Shadow charged forward holding his staff in a defensive position, looking to aim for a high strike.

“Heh.” He swung his chainsaw outwards and let it go sending it spinning at Dormarch, incidentally blowing apart the retriever bark.

As Negaduck did that he brought Mr. Splatter around and fired at me, forcing me to doing a sideways backflip.

I felt several projectiles impact my wool and one pierce through my wool and rip across the outer portion of my right hip, this sent me spinning and tumbling in the air to slam painfully into the floor back first.

Having thrown his chainsaw and shot at me. Negaduck reached behind himself with his right hand and pulled out another weapon, which was a rapier. He tossed Mr. Splatter up in the air pulled out what I recognized as flashbang to throw at Dormarch, before catching Mr. Splatter in to shake it.

After deftly deflecting and riposting every single one of Cold Shadow’s swirling staff attacks with his rapier, Negaduck nicked Cold Shadow in the left shoulder before trying to blow his head off with Mr. Splatter.

Cold Shadow narrowly avoided the conical blast from the weapon by looking like he almost broke his spine with how hard he leaned back.

I quickly closed my eyes before the blinding flash from the grenade filled the room. Once my vision cleared, I saw that despite being moderately disoriented by the flashbang, Dormarch had teleported to being in front of me protectively.

Meanwhile Negaduck had Kicked Cold Shadow onto his back, things quieted when we heard a loud ringing noise as Negaduck was about to shake Mr. Splatter downwards again for another shot at killing Cold Shadow in a messier manner than just running him through with the rapier.

“Ah, now I can stop playing around with you losers, you certainly were interesting though!” Negaduck grinned devilishly as he stowed away his weapons and calmly made his way over the chainsaw, hefting it up he stowed it away too and then moved towards his swivel chair and monitor. He hit something and the damaged monitor lifted into the ceiling revealing a passageway behind it. Reaching behind his back Negaduck walked into the passage and hit a red button on a small silver box with an antenna that he pulled out while smirking at us. “Hope you don’t mind self-destruct explosions! If you survive this, I will have fun bringing you all down ;ater. Tata for now, I’m off to set off some fireworks and then hunt down Darkwing Duck!”

The moderately broken monitor slammed down into position and there was a timer of sixty seconds on the screen. A quick use of Dancing Flame gave us plenty of time to escape the explosion which totalled the, thankfully empty, bakery.

It also caused me to get stuck in an accelerated state for the next two minutes afterwards, it was getting much worse and harder to stop.

Author's Note

Name: Negaduck (AKA Jim Starling).

Personality: As close to the most evil male duck in the world as you can get ever since his incident with at the Darkwing Duck Movie set pushing him over the edge into totally becoming a mentally twisted psychopath.

Possible Half Allies: Name any villain he probably knows them from as obscure as Emil Eagle to as nortoriously crackpot as Norton Nimnul. Sabu 'Neyla' Taj (Love to hate relationship), wants revenge and to date her to death with enough poison to kill a third world country. Half the worlds mercenaries and just about every villain active in Saint Canard provided that they are even marginally competent at what they do.

Negaduck's Equipment: Any handheld form of weaponry you can imagine, some you can't and if it can kill you, then you can be assured he might have it on him. Preferences include Flamethrowers, Chainsaws and a variety of guns usually gatling or shotguns.

Permanent Blood Storage Arsenal: Ouroboros style tatto that gives a permanent buff that allows Negaduck to carry all his weapons, including his favorite... 'The Chainsaw'. Put in place by his late ally, that can still possibly come back from death, Splatter Phoenix.

Criminal Mastermind: Negaduck has a lot of plans, but his favorites in general are the simple ones that involves the most direct quick and easy cruelty. If he doesn't kill you outright, then he might want you to die a slow and exceedingly painful death or he needs you alive for some other nefarious reason.

Weapons Expert: Being an actor that used to do his own stunts, he built up a high level of resilience to taking falls and tumbles surviving many possibly lethal accidents on multiple sets that would kill a normal person.

To that end, he has incredible reflexes and is well versed in a varity of weapons. While his acting might have been decent at best, his skills with the weapons he wielded throughout the run of the Darkwing Duck show were very much real.

210. Negatron Rising.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Gallus-

“So yes, I’m doing fine, what are you really doing here Gilda?” I cuddled Gavin against my chest and while I didn’t know how to be an uncle, I thought I was doing well enough fitting in with the insane family that had vikings, reindeer that can jump in the air a lot, a cursed pirate parrot and a lot of other weird things that are not directly related to the Abyssinians that started all the madness here.

“Just what I said, making sure your adoption is going well, also… I had to fight for the right to come here first.” Okay that surprised me a little that Gilda wanted to be here, but I was suspicious as to why. I gave her a look and she smiled sheepishly. “Mostly because the griffon who got the job of your case worker was guaranteed to end up getting free food from the ‘Witch of Good Taste’ Kurilian La Perm.”

“Of course, you didn’t come for me at all.” I rolled my eyes and looked away with a huff, Kuril’s food was like a freaking magnet to people who smelled it.

Kuril was also very good at cooking even if she tried to keep magic out of the equation, she could practically make a meal from anywhere in the world if she had the ingredients.

“I have never met anyone who could get honey roasted sunflower seeds so good that a takeout order is inevitable for any griffon visiting.” No, really couldn’t blame Gilda, the one griffon in Griffonstone turning things around there. Gilda reached out and gentle gripped my shoulder. “Also I am here for you Gallus, whether you believe me or not. Kuril’s food is just a bonus, but can you seriously blame me?”

“Not really… now if only I can find some way to get her to let go of me.” I looked over my shoulder and Kuril was cuddling up against my back and nuzzling against me, the crazy cat lady had been on me since I walked in and I was one of her new favorite kittens.

“Yeah, good luck with that. I know the people here are insane like in Ponyville, but it looks like you’re happy, healthy and are working towards a good future… also I was a far better choice than Grandpa Gruff and would you rather it have been Gabriella Gums?” That’s actually a pretty good reason for Gilda to be here then, Gabby was far too chatty at times. Gilda could at least read a mood. “Somebody needed to keep Griffonstone’s moral up, even if Grandpa Gruff is not exactly the best choice for it and Gabby isn’t going to be able to do that alone as she’s got deliveries going everywhere. Also I’m still looking into a rooster for myself… but Greta is onboard with being a wing mate. Kind of sad that I couldn’t talk to Rainbow about that, her competitive streak is hot.”

“Well congratulations I guess and please don’t mention my teachers being hot. It’s embarrassing to think about.” From what I knew, Greta was one of the nicer griffons in Griffonstone, we continued our meal peacefully.

-Saint Canard, Darkwing Duck’s Lair, Dolly-

Okay… ow… I knew I was exhausted, but why do I feel like my entire body was made of pins and need-ohh… I’m wrapped in bandages.

At least my head, ears and tail were all fine… the rest of me though, yeah, death by a thousand cuts was actually worse than it sounds. Not that those ninja’s could ever take me or Shanty. Looks like we survived… I’m going to be stuck resting aren’t I? Yay.

“Oh you’re awake… don’t disturb Shanty. You need to rest, I’ll get you some food in a minute.” Ocellus was at the computer screen. “Before you tap you’re bond with Pom, just know that things in the city are stabilizing, but I have a feeling it’s about to get worse.”

I didn’t listen to her, I immediately grasped at the bonds I felt. Dormarch and Pom were okay in general… slightly crispy from some flaming building.

“What’s going on?” It wasn’t a second later that I realized that my barks weren’t going to be translated, because both Pom and Dormarch were out there in the city and I was back at Darkwing’s secret lair. At least they were next to one another and in semi-healthy conditions.

Pom, as usual, currently feels like a hot mess. It’s kind of hard to be constantly cheerful around her, but I was doing my best to send well wishes to her right now while I was out of commission.

“Ugh… how many heroes are left standing Ocellus?” Lena, the magic shadow duck from Duckberg walked in with her sister the nerdy hummingbird.

Kind of like my relationship with my step brother Dylan, Lena and I shared a coolness factor and Violet was a big nerd like Dylan.

“You mean aside from the ones that aren’t currently tied up with other things entirely? Bentina Beakley has just caught Bianca Beakley for one.” Ocellus answered as I looked about and tried to walk. The bandages were hindering my movements, but I wasn’t about to take them off when they were stained like they were. Must have taken more hits than I thought. “Though her methods for dealing with a mass of insects makes me a shiver a little… she’s currently heading towards the hospital after beating the tar out of her relative.”

Understandable considering Ocellus was a shape shifting bug horse thing and she wouldn’t want to be near the old duck after seeing something like that.

“It’s weird that her family has a supervillain in it.” Lena sounded surprised about that news. “Good on Grandma Crumpets for the take down without holding back at least.”

I carefully made my way over to the screen to get a look at what was going on, I got a look from Smolder as I limped my way into position. Smolder nodded at me when I looked her way, we both understood that being hurt sucked.

“I can take your position as mission control.” Offered Violet once she noticed how tired Ocellus look. “You’ve been at these screens all day.”

“Thank You!” Ocellus got up from the chair and transformed creating several pops as she turned into a bipedal dragon. “Aside from Beakley and Launchpad as hero assistants, we have Pom, Dormarch, Mr. Maui, Darkwing, Banana Boy and Neptunia. Most of them are currently outside the bakery. As for our allies, TOON Division has taken back most of the city and despite their lesser known members being run ragged, they are being supported by agents of SHUSH in the field. Quiverwing finally went down due to blood loss on the way to the hospital with Gizmo Duck, she’ll be fine if lightheaded for a while and Arrow Assistant is going to be helping Glue Gal and Sneeze Master hold position as many heroes and officers are being treated there.”

“Not going to lie, the number of downed heroes is disturbing me quite a bit.” Lena shivered as she looked at a screen of X’s for every hero in the city that was violently incapacitated and just about every other hero was marked as tired, injured, both or worse in the case of Rubber Chicken being labeled critically injured. “Also are those Beagle Boys invading the city on rowboats or are they picking up some of their own here? Hasn’t this city had it bad enough? Though it’s understandable that they’d show up, they were always nasty opportunists.”

“Unfortunately Pom’s sneak attack plan failed, she was unable to capture Negaduck off guard and he’s escaped into the city.” Ocellus pointed to the scene with a burning building with Pom and Dormarch laying on the ground behind a scorched stegosaurus biped. “Stegmutt apparently has some kind ability to heal by sleeping, but he’s been knocked out from being hit with a number of explosions. He’ll recover fine, despite being used as a shield for the blast that took out the bakery. We have no idea when he’ll wake up, but it likely won’t be any time soon.”

Not many were in decent health as far as the heroes went and even Glue Gal and Sneeze Master were showing signs of complete exhaustion at protecting the hospital, yet they still held it firmly. The number of thugs taken down between them was impressive for sidekicks, not bad for two people who have double detrimental hurricane sneezing and the other touch based stickiness powers.

Pom had paced herself pretty well today all things considered and got some rest when she was captured alive and possibly bled for those wolf sheep things. I was still halfway tapping into Pom’s senses and everything was moving slower around her.

Whoa… I tried to do something with our bond by helping her pull back and soon Pom’s senses eventually started returning to normal. Was that what it was like for her when she was doing her Dancing Flame thing?

No wonder Dormarch was so worried about it, that was really disorienting… far faster than me being in the zone with a full flow-motion going, except that was completely out of control and she was sitting completely still.

Ocellus turned to me and smiled, she reached down and carefully scooped me up, I felt my stomach rumble loudly as I did so. I’ve been running around a lot today, mostly avoiding thrown weapons and various pointy implements.

“Now come on, let’s get you something to eat you must be starving.” Ocellus carried me into the kitchen. “You don’t mind mushrooms right? I heard dogs could eat them if cooked well enough.”

Yeah I could really use a meal.

-Smolder-

“Are you heading back out there?” I asked Lena as she leaned on the chair and looked over Violet working at the computer and started contacting Darkwing as the new operator in Ocellus’s place.

“I’ll think about it, but I’m going to take a break here.” Lena looked at the city. “When push comes to shove, I’ll be on standby for serious emergencies. We don’t exactly have many people left that can go out there.”

The screens changed and we saw Negaduck on every screen, Violet looked at them all worriedly with a large frown marring her beak.

“It seems he still has the equipment to broadcast to the whole city.” That was kind of obvious Violet.

“Citizens of Saint Canard, Heroes, Villains, idiots and everyone else that’s not important.” The figure on the screen said, he was in some kind of parking garage. There was a device sitting there and a large battery device reading full of energy, there was also a vial. “Now you all may be wondering what I’ve been cooking up. A small solution to give me some much needed strength to survive a transformation and the other took all day to charge up its battery. I’m sure Darkwing already knows what this device is, as would anyone who knows the Darkwing Duck show…”

-Outside the destroyed bakery, Pom-

“We’ll take care of things here.” Skunky Skunk told me, as he and Eddie started looking about to see if there was anything they missed.

Well I was right, banana boy went to get help. He brought Darkwing here, but by the time he arrived… well… it was too later for anyone to catch Negaduck. He hadn’t been normal at all to fight.

The device we were looking at was on a tripod, with what looked like a stretched out oversized futuristic looking camera on top that might have been made out of a toaster. I could tell it was anything but a camera and there was something ominous about the device and what he said about it being from the fictional Darkwing Duck show Launchpad loved.

“Want some pizza?” I diverted my eyes from the fact that Negaduck was on every visible screen in Saint Canard… except on the PET Dormarch was still wearing. Fall-apart came out this way as Officer Skunky Skunk called for reinforcements. Since the rabbit was free, he apparently picked up a large vegetable pizza on the way to showing up here. “When things fall apart, you tend to get hungry fairly fast.”

“Uh… sure. Is it a vegetable pizza?” I asked quietly.

“Sure is, I know I may not look like that bright, but I know you’re a vegetarian and I always get pizza to share with my friends.” Fall-apart opened the box towards me.

I took a slice and started eating, I looked behind me at Stegmutt and the burning bakery and nearby buildings several firefighters were working on putting out, city services were seemingly back in action for the most part. At least the fire department was on the job, but probably only as long as the smuggled weapons weren’t directed their way.

I quietly took another slice of pizza and looked to Darkwing Duck who was staring at the device Negaduck pointed out. Darkwing pulled out his communications device.

“Hey, Darkwing calling base, can you do me a favor…” As Darkwing talked, I turned to Launchpad who was nursing the orphaned kitten with a bottle of milk. Launchpad was staring at the device with a grim frown.

“What is that device?” I asked Launchpad because he was the king of the Darkwing Duck fan club, both show, the person who is now physically Darkwing and the person who used to be Darkwing. He mourned what Jim Starling has become, but he has stated he would continue on trying to live up to the hero that the guy used to be to him.

“A tronsplitter…” Launchpad stated while looking fairly pale, even so he still kept the kitten safely supported in his arms. “Where did he get a working tronsplitter?! That’s bad, that’s really, really, bad!”

“And what exactly does it do that has Darkwing and you so worried?” It wasn’t good, I knew that much. Even Dormarch looked concerned as he looked into the PET and was reading something off about an episode of the Darkwing Duck show with darting eyes, a glance told me it had references to what the fictional tronsplitter was capable of and if Negaduck had a working real one.

“Creator Megavolt… caused… destruction of city hall… oh no…” Dormarch eventually stated. “He can’t be serious, nobody is that deranged right?!”

It wasn’t hard to guess that ‘Splatter Phoenix’ made the machine’s existence possible, given Megavolt was one of the four fictional villains that were brought to life and was at the power station.

“Can someone explain please? I want to know what we’re dealing with here.” I ate another slice of pizza.

Why was I so hungry, didn’t I eat a full meal less than an hour ago?!

“I’m with you, I don’t know what that is or what’s going on, but it doesn’t take a genius to understand bad news when they see it.” Neptunia took a slice of pizza for herself and started eating, the mutated fish was tough for her small size and was the least tired hero.

With her gills constantly provided water by her backpack keeping her fresh, Neptunia might have far more stamina than the rest of us. Fish didn’t need sleep and just had to rest once in a while to recharge, I wonder how that translated to her mutations?

“You’re wondering what’s in the vial, well it’s a compound I derived from my good old friend the hero Rubber Chicken. I’m sure the heroes evacuated him before my bakery base blew up, he might live even after I happily mutilated him. How sad that I can’t watch the life leave his eyes myself if he’s actually dying. This substance will not do much, but when mixed with my device here… well… you’re heroes are about to have a very bad night.” The grin Negaduck had on his beak as he downed the odd substance was disturbing. “Ah that secret temporary strength inducing magical gummi formula SHUSH and FOWL fought over, plus what I took from Rubber Chicken and a mixture of several secret herbs and spices will temporarily make me strong enough so that I can survive long enough to permanently enhance myself when I throw that switch! You think I’m bad now, Dr. Slug will soon be barely a footnote in being evil compared to what I’m doing and most of the heroes in the city are out of commission and there’s very little that can stop me now. For tonight is going to be my night and you’re welcome to come to your doom Darkwing. Not only that, the entire city will be feeling the negativity soon enough too!”

“So the tronsplitter at my base is still there, then where did he possibly get that… of course the fake megavolt from the villain maker built it for him!” Darkwing slapped his left fist into his right palm. Same conclusion I came to, but he hadn’t run into Splatter Phoenix personally.

“Okay, it’s like this, from what it does in the show it splits things into positive and negative, hit a living being you get good and evil sides based on their personality. In the case of how Negaduck has set up the device… well judging by how he’s set it up, it’s going to super charge himself into something functionally close to a mortal god and if that serum he just drank does what he says it will… he’ll easily survive the process.” Dormarch scrutinized the device carefully as Negaduck got into position to throw the switch. Dormarch turned to look at me shortly after as I took another slice of pizza from Fall-apart, he was scrutinizing my body with a frown before continuing. “Any positive energy Negaduck has in him will likely be stored inside the tronsplitter, if he has any at all to begin with after the accident on the set that made him what he is, we’ll soon have a super villain made of purely negative energy running around.”

“What can he do with that negative energy exactly?” I didn’t get an answer and I saw for myself when Negaduck threw the switch.

“Adios Saint Canard, prepare to become dystopia of negativity!” He stood in front of the machine and was struck with a beam.

He looked to be in an immense amount of pain as his body started to distort and the all the colors on his form started to darken. His whole body was glowing an ominous as it became grey and black, the only color that remained were his red pupils and he had a slight glow of sickly red and yellow that used to be part of his clothing.

He started laughing as he hovered off the ground and everyone watched as raw power flowed from one hand to the other. He aimed a hand forward and the camera turn to see a building struck with a blast of energy that toppled a fifteen floor building instantly.

“Now all I have to do is connect the device to the antenna and then create a negative tronsplitter wave to encompass the whole city. Now come heroes, just try and stop me... For I am the villain that keys cars in the night, I am the ingrown toenail that festers into cancer, I am the painful plague upon all who live… ” The hovering Negaduck sent a single bolt from a digit and lifted the tronsplitter into the air. “I am Negatron Duck! Everyone else is going to be too busy dealing with all the other things I have left in place that you’ll be hearing about any minute now. Clock’s ticking, come to die or become… Exactly… Like… Me.”

The screens all around suddenly blanked out, he was right there was no way we’d evacuate all the civilians in the city in under the given hour.

“Yeah, that guy is definitely topping my list for one of the most horrific beings I’ve seen in life.” That was an understatement Dormarch. “Also creating a tron-split wave that would turn everyone in the city into negative versions of their selves, that’s what he’s been working towards all day?!”

“We have to stop him!” At least Darkwing wasn’t about to give up, I wasn’t either. While I could escape and leave this city to its fate, I would be forever disappointed in myself if I did after calling Negaduck my enemy.

“What do we have to work with?” I asked because I needed to know what we could bring against Negaduck.

“You’re looking at it.” Responded Neptunia with her mouth around a slice of pizza as she cradled her trident in her other arm, she waved the half eaten slice at all of us. “Unless you want the police, SHUSH or TOON Division guys in on this. Doubt they’ll survive what Negaduck became and they are already busy with everything else going on, plus the guy just knocked down a build with a single blast.”

Something exploded and a building started toppling in the distance, but stopped half way in its collapse. People were likely buried under the rubble.

“Not… very comforting.” I said as I looked around. We had some trouble handling Negaduck when he couldn’t fly, but now he had super powers on top of his natural fighting abilities?!

Launchpad was frowning, Maui had returned to being himself, Darkwing was looking at us and then at the glowing spot of light in the sky as it flew towards the center of the city.

“Right well… hey uh Violet right? Can you have your sister bring me the tronsplitter there when I call for it? We’re going to need it eventually if I’m right, so please stay there and stay safe until then.” Darkwing looked to us and clapped his hands together. “We’ve had a rough day and the end of it is about to get that much rougher. Yeah, Lena stays there until we need her to fly it in. We’ll be going right now!”

Darkwing turned to us.

“Can I count on all of you to help me bring Negatron Duck down?” Not like we had much of a choice Darkwing.

“Do we really have a choice?” My question was met with stares.

“Not really, if we’re going to continue saving people. Besides this will affect the waters around Saint Canard so I’m definitely in this too.” Neptunia crossed her arms and huffed. “Again he just took down an entire building with one hit, ONE!”

“I’ll always help you D W!” Launchpad said sternly and then returned his attention to the mewling kitten that nuzzled against him as he fell to sleep. “First I have to see to the puppies and this kitten, I’ll find a way to catch up.”

“I’m not exactly the greatest of super powered people in the city, but I’m behind you.” Banana Boy said with floating nod.

“Your gas gun’s design was derived from my Beetle Blaster right? I might have something for you.” Maui nodded to himself as he checked his weapon. “I also have some supernatural abilities that will protect me, so I can maybe take a direct hit or two from Negatron Duck.”

“You can at least make a decision.” I was looking to Dormarch as I nudged him forward.

“I'm need to coordinate with Ms. Shuttle, she has the correct chemicals to create a positron burst that will weaken Negatron Duck’s power somewhat, it'll be dangerous to all of you.” We all turned to Darkwing’s vehicle and its sidecar. “Neptunia and Maui go with Darkwing, we’ll be testing how much weight Banana Boy can handle.”

Banana Boy lowered and made himself horizontal, Dormarch and I were pretty light so we weren't hopefully too much trouble for him. He got into the air easily.

"Let's... Get... Dangerous!" Darkwing shouted.

Author's Note

Now he's both versions in one.

212. Battle for Saint Canard Pt. 2.

-Darkwing’s lair, Ocellus-

“They are barely doing anything to him.” I winced at watching Pom try to pummel him down in desperation and nothing happened, Negatron Duck didn’t get so much as a light bruise or minor scratch for the staggering blows that were dealt to him.

Maui, or Cold Shadow as he called himself currently. Got in a hit afterwards with his staff that didn’t do a single thing, but it did distract Negatron Duck from shooting Neptunia, nearly gpt shot himself doing so.

I had to try and recall something. When was the last time Pom actually successfully defeated some major threat in a fight? I believe it was the shadow doppelgangers of her friends… Pom really hasn’t had the best history with going on the offensive and Hollow Heart was still going strong by the time backup arrived and started pummeling him. He was even still going strong at the end of that fight.

“Should I go now?” Lena was leaning against a wall and watching the monitors with something approaching fear. She had been particularly effective in helping to stop Hollow Heart alongside Dolly, but this situation had implication just as world ending or shattering.

“No, not yet.” Violet stated while looking at a helicopter appears at the scene and started to watch the battle in progress. “Looks like the news is going to make a circus of this battle.”

“They are kind of getting creamed out there, so that’s as much a show as anything...” Smolder wasn’t wrong, the remaining heroes that could be mustered were having troubles just slowing Negatron Duck down as the antenna nearby continued to be setup or repaired as it was damaged.

I had an inkling that Negatron Duck was actively taking their time, what with making the entire structure of the antenna have a skull patterned motif from the modifications being done to it.

“What I want to know is… if he has all this power, then why is his setting up of the antenna going so slowly?” It did seemed odd that he hadn’t just immediately sped up the modifications to the antenna, was he just toying with them all and could have just finished it at any time or was he actually being pressured? “He could do it far faster than he is and not even move much to accomplish it.”

“I think it has to do with his polarity.” Answered Violet drawing our attentions to her as she turned her seat away from the screens. “The tronsplitter splits into both positive and negative polarity, thus the tron-splitting. I’m guessing here, so take this with a grain of salt, but the negative polarity could possibly be conducive towards destructive decay… in the opposite vein a positive polarity would be prone towards constructive cohesion. As such his telekinetic powers are working somewhat against him as he’s trying to build a method to turn the whole city into negatively charged, possibly evil, entities under his sway without destroying the antenna with all that negative energy coming from him as he does so.”

“Could we be maybe giving one of the hero’s with positive energy to cancel out Negatron Duck?” There was a worried look on Shanty’s face as she made the suggestion.

The three active heroes were knocked back by a concussive force, with Cold Shadow having taken brunt of the force for both Darkwing and Neptunia while attempting to blunt it at the same time.

A still dazed or stunned Pom was currently being carried around by Banana Boy avoiding blasts of energy and Dormarch could be seen keeping down and out of the way while looking quite lost on what to do in the current moment.

“That’s not a good idea. If we had two entities of the same person, say a positively charged Negaduck created from the tronsplitter, then we’d be able to negate them in that exact manner.” I’m guessing this is where you tell us what was wrong with that idea Violet. “However if we tried to negate him in the manner you describe with a different being… well… it would end in the death of two individuals with a small chance of creating a new one with both the personalities of the resulting amalgam if the resulting mishmash doesn’t die from biological incompatibility first or if they were incompatible… it might create anything between a normal person to an unstoppable eldritch entity. We have enough issues keeping magic in Duckberg in check as it is.”

“So… that’s a no to that idea then.” Lena received a nod from her sister. “Ugh, of course.”

“Among the things they need to do, they have to return the positive energy Negatron split off from himself to his body or, I loathe that I even have to suggest this, they could further split him with a tronsplitter to render him completely into particulate matter and release whatever positive energy Negaduck has from the tronsplitter he used. If it doesn’t kill him, it’ll take him a long time to pull himself back together.” Violet sounded like she knew what she was talking about when it came to the science of it. “If they are to follow the first suggestion, they would also need to wear down the supercharged state through powerful hits to disperse his aura. It doesn’t matter how they hit him, they just need to hit him hard, fast and never stop until the negative energy loses the ability to build up. If they don’t keep him under constant attack until they pass a threshold that can’t be recovered from, then the energy will just inevitably build-up again. On the bright side, all the negative energy can’t come from nowhere. So the more negative energy there is, the more positive energy there will be floating around in the general vicinity if it isn’t being absorbed by the other tronsplitter already. After a certain point the tronsplitter might go critical if Negatron Duck draws on an excessive amount of negative energy to himself causing a localized backlash of positive energy, positive energy without a mind behind it would naturally be destructive. So when I say excessive amounts of energy, it would be within the realms of a small nuclear device going off in the city… but at that point at least three fourths of the city would survive.”

“Send me the calculations you are getting for that estimate Violet.” Ordered Dormarch from his position, Violet proceeded to type something out on the computer.

“Can you interface with the antenna or device while I send you the math?” As Violet asked this of Dormarch, Neptunia managed to get a good hit in on Negatron Duck with her trident.

The trident did no damage despite directly being jammed into his stomach with incredible force that knocked Negatron Duck back and he tried to take control of her weapon from her with his energy. The attempt failed as some kind of magical script prevented the negative energy from stealing it out of the small mutant biped fish’s grasp.

“So he can be beaten, but it’s going to be one hell of a fight to even begin putting him down?” Making my way over to Smolder. She needed some reassurance and I’m always willing and able to provide it, mostly by nuzzling her cheek softly and smiling at her. “From way you say it… nuclear is something bad right?

“Yes, either they fight him with lethal intent or they disperse him… the latter of which is harder as he’ll evade attempts to be split any further if they can even get access to the present tronsplitter. It just means that he’ll figure out a way to come back from it, as again dispersal doesn’t necessarily equate to death if he has a strong enough mind to draw all of his particular particles back together to reform himself. Even then he’d reform back as basic Negaduck and not Negatronic Duck due to the loss of all the negative energy.” Violet turned back to the screens and began to direct people. “We most certainly don’t want him gather such energy in excess, as it would be a cataclysmic event to anyone nearby. It’s a good thing this is just mad science and not magic, because magic would have made this far more unpredictably terrifying.”

“I wish I could stop the antenna setup, but there’s nothing to interface with in the tronsplitter to stop it from being connected to the antenna and the antenna itself is probably analog based. Nothing for me to tear through digitally and Negatron is highly resilient to most forms of attacks that are not of a positron based charge or at least a high enough energy output. It’s bad enough that antimatter is possibly coming into this, I really didn’t need to know Negaduck could wipe out almost the entire city… by the way you’re calculations are off Violet, I think you forgot to the carry a six. To think the fact that the tronsplitter is built out of nothing but a toaster is mind boggling for the amount of danger it represents.” Dormarch reported and winced as a rocket exploded against the place he was taking cover in knocking him over onto his face. “Its nice information to have though, I’ll try to tell someone about this dire need to bring him down faster… when they are not busy dodging for their lives. Besides, Negatron Duck will always go critical first before the tronsplitter will ever have a chance of exploding all its contained positive energy if it is drawing said energy from the surroundings. So he’s very much the thing we should focus on the most here.”

“Oh… carry the six, add to that… fix my mental calculations then… not good. Let me rescind my previous statement by issuing a new one, should Negaduck hit critical excess with his negative energy drawing capabilities… well exactly what Dormarch just said. Paints a dire picture when nine tenths of the city could be completely vaporized centering on Negatron Duck’s position when he inevitably goes off. He’s also likely to survive said destruction.” Violet looked so very pale. “We’d survive unless he moves approximately half a mile east from his current position, I’m quite thankful there won’t be any deadly fallout, still far worse than I thought… exceedingly so.”

“So the backup plan of the spare tronsplitter?” Lena asked tentatively as she pointed at the device recovered from Taurus Bulba’s laboratory, one of the devices that came from the dimensional portal incident that Dormarch mentioned as being one of the things that had caused major dimensional instability.

It was from the incident when Megavolt, Quackerjack, Bushroot and Liquidator were brought in from another dimension before being sent back by the combined strengths of the McDuck family and Darkwing. The recent existence of Splatter Phoenix brought the characters to life in this world, not that they were around for long once Splatter was splattered.

“Emergency use to disperse Negatron Duck completely should he get close to critical negative energy mass.” That was not very comforting Violet, especially if I even understood half of what the things said meant like I thought I did. “He must not succeed at either broadcasting his negatron wave or exploding.”

-Airspace around the middle of the city, Pom-

“Leap Lamb, ma’am, you okay?” Hearing Banana Boys voice, my ears buzzed with a strange noise.

I shook my head and found myself draped over Banana Boy’s back. What I did was dumb, but we really needed to get in hits.

“I’ll be… fine.” Though I wish I could deaden my ability to feel pain at the moment, I felt quite raw and cooked at the same time right now.

“Well you just proved we need weapons to fight him or to attack him from a distance if just touching his aura actively hurts you.” Banana Boy was keeping track of the fight on the roof and avoiding any blasts or projectile fire coming our way. “Also his weapons certainly don’t help with dealing with him. Hopefully that news copter will continue to stay well out of range of the fight.”

“I’m… ready to get back into it.” Turning the top portion of his head to me, Banana Boy gave me a look.

“You hesitated for a second.” Rather blunt of you Banana Boy.

“Please remember that I’m not exactly as medically sound as I appear to be.” Also getting a chainsaw wound to one of my hind legs made me lose quite a bit of blood before I managed to close the gash with a wool stitch and bandage. “Excuse me for a second.”

I noticed Dormarch trying to get my attention, I felt him trying to tell me something he was in a panic and it felt like I needed to know something immediately. Several images came to mind, the idea of a devastated city through several means depending on our current situation popped up.

“Get me near Dormarch on the roof, I think he needs to tell me something.” Unlike Dolly, Dormarch couldn’t exactly communicate with me mentally… well at least not yet.

If the bond I had with Dolly was anything to go by, then it might happen. There was also the fact that Dormarch was an alien entity not of this world too, so the bond between us could be something different entirely to this world itself.

-Cold Shadow-

I landed on the other side of Negatron Duck and brought my staff around at him, he blocked it so easily with a hand.

My purpose was not to damage, it was to distract. I have thus far managed to knock away his

“Coming through Daredevil Duck!” The fish lady, Neptunia, shouted.

I assume that affectionate nickname was given to me because I was blindfolded on a roof of a building while fighting a mad godlike duck trying to cause untold destruction with with only a staff.

She stabbed at Negatron Duck’s back as my staff kept his right hand occupied, he turned and caught the tridents middle prong with his left hand and that’s when Darkwing capitalized on the opportunity to fire another positron gas canister provided by the ever clever Maui straight into his chest.

We backed off as the cloud caused him flare with raw energy, but at most it only vaguely weakened him. He then pulled out two double barrel shotguns, he had many weapons on his person… far more than an entire armory for third world country apparently. I could see no end to this conflict where we would be still standing unless something changes.

I swiftly planted my staff and used it to safely cartwheel out of the way of the blast of the gun fired one handed, and Neptunia does the same in the opposite direction away from the blast aimed at her and took approximately three pellets. As tough as she was, she was looking too health after taking two pellets in the chest in dangerous places and one deeply embedded in her left leg.

Following his two blasts, he aimed both the guns for Darkwing.

Quickly firing a grapple hook, Darkwing pulled himself out of the way using one of his gas guns many features and was struck by four barrels worth of fury. He was hit with at least seventeen of the pellets, but none of them penetrated his costume, those would leave nasty bruises.

“Is the great Darkwing Duck is afraid of a little firepower?” It seems Negatron Duck had an unnaturally large focus on putting Darkwing down. I could see they had a history together, even with a blindfold covering my eyes. “Not like you could actually protect anyone, much less you’re friends!”

“Dodge.” Stating this immediately while pointing my head in Neptunia’s direction while in motion, without much explanation I pole-vaulted high into the air for the edge of the roof.

Said edge was soon to become a crater matching missing corner of the roof when one shotgun fired a blast charged with the energy Negatron Duck was exuding. With a swift swing as I fell my staff caught one of the holes recently created by the explosive force of the various pellets and I hung there with my feet dangling over a long drop.

“Yes Maui, I too hope that Neptunia survived the one aimed at her.” I planted my feet against a window and heaved myself up and twirled my staff to jam it into another hole.

Were anyone paying attention to me, they’d see a blindfolded duck slowly steadying his precarious position with care on the side of the building before launching up to another large hole carved by the supercharged shotgun pellets.

-Neptunia-

Dang it, why does Darkwing always get himself into these kinds of messes… I’m losing a lot blood here.

I heard a clicking noise and looked up from where I had narrowly avoided death and saw Negatron Duck squeezing the trigger.

I clenched my eyes shut as an explosion of the shotgun firing went off. Only when I opened them I saw the crater that used to be a rooftop where I had been and I was in the air, sitting on top of Banana Boy.

“Thanks for the save, Buddy Banana.” I murmured as I lurched in my position on his back and tried to clench my trident tighter. “Now let me down and…”

“Dynamo Dog said to not let you continue fighting with your injuries, you’ve spent most of the day being tortured and then you still came to this fight.” Well Buddy Banana, the reason for that was because I was a tough nut to crack… unfortunately I think that last shot cracked me and almost ended my life. “I need to get you to the hospital before you bleed out. You gave as much as you could, you need medical help.”

“D-darn it… fine…” With that I was being carried away from the fight, while I wouldn’t admit that I was hurting badly, I grudgingly accepted that Banana Boy saved my life and was continuing to do so. Sorry Darkwing, Daredevil Duck, Leap Lamb and… did Banana say the mutant canine was called Dynamo Dog? Heh, I just hoped they were enough. “But you are coming back out here and you are going to try and help them to the best of your abilities, you hear me… you’re a hero. Even if it doesn’t seem like you can do much as a banana, you can fly and that’s one thing most of heroes wish we could do.”

-Pom-

Leaping forward as Negatron Duck aimed for the retreating Banana Boy, I decided to throw of his aim with a well-timed bark blast to the left side of his face that not only staggered him, but made him drop his weapons as he was about to fire.

Said weapons went skittering over the edge and he calmly turned to face me after his he regained his sense of balance.

“Ugh, you’re back, I thought I melted your ducking ass!” I fired a second bark blast and then dodged away as he pulled and threw a knife that destroyed everything near it with a caustic energy as it passed through the air, burning the very atmosphere itself. “Can’t kill anyone these days without someone popping out of the woodwork to make the world a better placed, how very disgusting of people!”

The knife missed me and tore through a fence and something exploded violently setting a part of the roof on fire, my bark blast in contrast barely shook him after landing next to his feet and taking a small chunk out of the ground.

“Thank you.” I said honestly while looking at him with tears in my eyes, I think they might have been glittering too… I couldn’t tell.

“What are you thanking me for?” Negatron Duck stated with agitation as he reached for more weapons. “I’m about to kill you!”

“For saying ‘someone’ and not ‘some hero’, it’s nice to know that someone actively acknowledges that not everyone here is or wants to be a hero.” He looked more than flabbergasted by what I said as he pulled out a pair of rocket launchers.

“Yeah, but you’re still a nuisance no matter what you want to call yourself." He fired both rockets that, judging by his aim were going to try to crush me between both blasts. "I prefer dead meat!”

Widening my stance, I brought my legs together as I performed a rolling leap, one rocket actually veered toward me as I did so.

The other kept flying straight, my eyes widened as I started inhaling and when I exhaled I had a small amount of time to take in the situation.

The rocket coming at me seemed to be pointed directly at me and wasn’t following its previous trajectory. It was also glowing and given how powerful the things Negatron Duck become when he charges them…

I narrowed my eyes as the missile came at me in slow motion, I learned a thing or two from Colleen back on Elhorn about advanced weaponry like this when we had some free time to talk. The explosive device would trigger if I hit the head of it, but…

I inflated my wool, kicked my left hind leg up and struck the rear of the rocket, it flipped upwards as the flames died out and I caught the rear in my mouth. Deflated my wool, flipped towards the ground and spat it in an upwards arc.

“What the f…?!” Was about as far as Negatron Duck got into stating an expletive before he was cut off.

I managed to skip backwards and under the reconstructing antenna and outside of the blast radius that took out half the roof.

I calmly took a few gulps of air and tried to slow down, this time I managed to gain control rather quickly after remembering how it felt when Dolly did it for me.

“Did you… did you actually get him with that?” Darkwing said in shock as he loaded his gas gun and looked at the now collapsed half of the roof.

“Well…” The rubble from below erupted and Negatron Duck was now hovering in the air in front of us glowing vibrantly with rage. “No. Why can’t it ever be that easy?”

“I’m right there with you on that.” Grunted Darkwing as he flicked his gas gun upwards and it clicked.

“Please try to stay healthy.” Whined Dormarch with his tails between his legs, while looking between me and the floating biped duck.

The roof slowly started remaking itself in images of bones and skulls.

“Ready for round two? It seems that you’re down to three zeroes, that I need to subtract…” Negatron Duck wasn’t injured or even tired for that matter. “From existence!”

-Hospital, Launchpad McQuack-

“Don’t worry guys, I’ll find a way to help... somehow.” I looked around for some way to get up there quickly. “What can I do once I get up there exactly? I mean Jim Starling… Negaduck… Negatron Duck will just take me apart. Come on Launchpad, think.”

If someone were to look inside my head right now, they most certainly would not see a monkey clanging cymbals together and that I’m denying it because I’m not specifically thinking about that at this very moment while my friends were in danger.

I saw Banana Boy dropping off Neptunia, I watched as doctors took her away on a stretcher.

“Hey uh… Banana Boy right?” It was probably a bad idea to ask, because I didn’t want to be responsible for painfully crashing a person but… “Can I get a lift?”

“Sure thing.” Banana responded.

“Airport now!” I hopped on Banana Boy’s back and pointed to the sky.

I needed a helicopter!

I have a great idea, some might even say… that it was the greatest plan!

213. Battle for Saint Canard Pt. 3.

-???-

There was a world that had somehow attracted my attention.

My gazing red eyes were drawn to the white wooled being.

Curious… perhaps I can contract her services. Should she perish I will just simply collect her soul for my needs, should she live… well now I would seek to acquire her one way or another.

Also the existence of that digital monster…

-Earth, Saint Canard, Pom-

Having heard the news from Dormarch… disconcerting was the word for it. I don’t think we could do a necessary amount of damage to put the pressure needed on Negatron Duck.

I was glad that they had managed to take out that large rapid projectile spewing monstrosity, but that didn’t mean that Negatron Duck was unarmed. Far from it, considering I was dodging a grenade by jumping as high as I could and using the heat of the blast to launch me even hire in the air.

My wool was mostly good for shrapnel, but I had a stabbing pain near the lower left side of my stomach. It goes along quite well with the pain in my right hind leg.

I landed and I felt something tug out me, I turned to Dormarch as I bandaged the wound with my wool and saw him spit the metal off to the side. The bit of metal was pretty large, had it been moving any faster I’d actually have a hole in me.

Negatron Duck was far more focused on Darkwing at the moment. Negatron Duck’s hatred for the actor that would have replace him was understandable to a degree, but not this much.

The antenna was halfway transformed into a tower of skulls and bones, most of the rooftop had been replaced with said aesthetic and the setup for said structure looked almost complete.

I turned back to looking at Darkwing as he blasted Negatron Duck with electric gas, the most common gas he had short of turning his gun into a shock pistol, as he ran around on the rooftop and evaded to the best of his ability.

I was staying back for a bit and knew that getting into melee range with Negatron Duck was not something I relished doing again so soon. Not that Negatron could ignore me or Dormarch entirely, we just weren’t doing much to draw his attention as he and Darkwing traded insults to one another as I stood close to one corner the roof watching the two fight around the other side of the roof.

“Are you just going to stand there and do nothing? We could be disabling the antenna.” I’m not sure Dormarch understood the situation so I decided to tell him.

“He’ll just keep building it back up anyway and we can’t do near enough structural damage to actually permanently stop him.” That and the shield covering the tronsplitter made it impossible to take down. “Besides, didn’t you tell me that Negatron Duck is the major problem here? I can’t actually get into melee range with him, he’s got a lot of weapons and his power is infusing the entire area of the roof. What exactly are we supposed to be doing here exactly? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“...” Your silence was fairly telling Dormarch. “Well we have to figure something out!”

“You can get on my back and we can both attack him from range.” I said calmly. “Also I do have a plan for when I have no other choice in how to deal with him, but nobody will like it.”

“What is it? I’ll take anything.” Dormarch was quite willing to get into the fight.

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you knew what my plan entailed.” Clambering onto my back and watching his claws as he did so, he tilted his head at me. “I can’t recall, I know I told Dolly about it, but have I ever told you about a certain technique that could give me the necessary strength to take down Negatron Duck?”

“What does it do and what is it called?” Nope, hadn’t told Dormarch about that yet, definitely told Dolly about though?

“Well if all my friends were currently here and healthy, instead most of them being injured, they probably would tell me not to do it.” The fact that I was considering it said a lot about the threat level that Negatron Duck presented. “Can you call Ocellus at Darkwing’s Lair, I need to talk with her a bit before I go through with this.”

“Let me guess, like all your Dancing Flame technique, this one has an alarmingly bad drawback.” Just looking at Dormarch with a stern frown made him a bit quiet. “Ocellus, can you hear us?”

“Yes, she is here, but I’ve taken the seat as mission control for the time being. What is it?” Violet responded as came up on the PET’s screen with Ocellus, Shanty, Smolder and Dolly in the background looking to me. “Also why are you not helping Darkwing?”

“I have a reason to believe I will need to pull out a lethal technique and use the initial effect to hit negatron duck, after that I’m on a time limit.” That made Violet blink. “I called to ask Ocellus to try and talk me out of it.”

“Pom… don’t tell me that you’re seriously thinking of doing ‘THAT’ again. You nearly died last time!” That got alarmed looks between Ocellus and then back to me from Lena and Violet. “It’s bad enough that lighting yourself on fire is considered the safer of your options!”

“What is she…?” Lena started to ask looking confused before a wave an arc beam of energy swept across the rooftop and near Dormarch and me, it sent the both of us tumbling.

“Please, talk me out of it Ocellus.” My pleading certainly wasn’t going to be ignored, I ducked as a lightning blast of raw energy passed me by.

Turning to look at Negatron Duck I saw that the only reason he had missed us is because Cold Shadow launched up and brought his staff down on the super powered villain’s head.

“Pom, I’m quite sure there’s a better choice than doing that, anything would be better than you practically killing yourself.” Now you see Ocellus, I would like to believe that, but this city is full of innocent people that have been terrorized all day and trapped in a city full of villains running amok.

“Can you actually convince me that an entire city full of people isn’t worth more than my life?” There was a long silence. “Please?”

“Pom… I can’t in good conscience tell you that, but isn’t there another option?” Well at the rate things are going Ocellus…

A smoldering Cold Shadow slid up to Dormarch and Me, we could both see Negatron Duck wielding a flamethrower blasting dark flames from it.

“Well we do have Ms. Shuttle, who can technically wipe out a solid half of Negatron Duck’s energy, but we need that to be a direct hit and for him to stand perfectly still. Given that he can fly, that means he can avoid the shot.” Dormarch reported, while looking to me with a curious amount of worry. “Darkwing has been hitting him with small canisters of positron gas, but the limited amounts are only weakening him ever so slightly. Getting him to hold still for artillery is not likely unless he’s battered into staying in a single position.”

“Do you think you can get him to stand still long enough for it to hit Pom?” Ocellus asked as I helped Cold Shadow up and watched as Darkwing managed to disable the flamethrower with a ball of what looked to be silly putty that made it explode violently.

“Not unless I go all out Ocellus, by that I mean doing everything I have into putting him down, he’s not exactly staying very still right now. Are you okay Cold Shadow?” The duck shook his head and apparently came to, because he reached up and ripped the red blindfold off. In a swirling light, he turned back into Maui.

“Cold Shadow is out of commission for a while.” Maui reported as the blindfold disappeared in his grip, he took out his beetle blaster and stood up. “I still have some fight left in me.”

“Then get in there and help Darkwing, I have a little bit more talking I have to do before I get into the fight.” When I do get in there, I was going to be going full tilt.

“I’ll give you the time you need.” Maui gave me a glance, then turned and ran to aid Darkwing his gun blazing with green globs flying out of it with strange popping noises.

“Sorry girls, but I think it’s actually needed here.” I bowed my head to them.

“Pom…” Shanty stated, knowing what had happened to me the last time I did this. “Be making that first hit count something fierce!”

“You better believe I will Shanty.” I said with no hint of humor in my voice. “Dolly…”

“Yeah?” Dolly lifted on of her ears in interest at what I had to say, her tail wasn’t wagging though.

“Can I use you’re flow motion ability for as long as your able to provide it to me when I tell you to?” The Dalmatian firmed her face and then nodded to me, I was going to need all the help I could get. “Just relax until then. We’ll give the others some ranged support for the time being first, but if it starts getting real bad I will break out the Shock-Ram technique, okay Dormarch stay in connection with Ms. Shuttle and take the shot when you think it’s viable,.”

Cutting the call to Darkwing’s lair, Dormarch hopped onto my back and I was prepared to do all the legwork for the both of us.

“Shock-Ram, didn’t you mention in that in passing once or twice?” So I did tell Dormarch, but not the full story. “Didn’t it take more than a full month to recover from it?”

“Longer, I was lucky enough to wake up after a month other users of the technique were not so lucky.” They usually died in a hospital bed was something I was about to say out loud. “Once I use it, you’re to find all kinds of medical supplies for torn muscles, broken bones and severe internal injuries.”

“You’re going to hurt Negatron Duck that much?” The silence spoke for itself as Dormarch received a frown from me. “It’ll be all for you?”

“Yes, surviving using the technique more than once hasn’t been done very often… at least it was relatively painless way to go. The damage is consistent even if I was to stand completely still and just breathe normally. At least the medical technology in this world is far better than the one I initially used it in, wild bark him when we land.” I stated evenly before I leapt forward and fired a bark blast once I was close enough.

This caught Negatron Duck by surprise he tried to step back or fly up. Only he couldn’t because a two blasts of green globs encase his left webbed foot and he took my blast to the face. The globs evaporated by the glowing energy surrounding him as my hooves touched down.

He brought out a long gun of some type with his right hand as he was shooting at Maui with the gun in his left, but Dormarch struck him with a Wild Bark before he could pull the trigger. I lunged forward and brought my rear half around to hit him in a chest with a flying buck before hopping backwards upon landing.

He staggered, he didn’t stay stunned for long, but it was enough to get in a solid blow that made him drop the weapon in his left hand. Said hand fired a bolt our way and I was moving as Darkwing and Maui struck him with more lightning gas and beetle goo, the lightning gas made him drop the weapon and the goo knocked it away from him.

“That’s it!” Raising his right arm and building up power in it, I tensed wondering what he was going to do. Was he going to fire a blast, a beam of lighting, grab and throw, or maybe more indirect control of weapons through levitation? “I’ve had enough of all of you!”

He slapped it against the ground and the entire roof started collapsing under us, I jumped up and went to inflate, but stopped as a blast passed by my face and I fell into the collapsing rooftop near where Darkwing was.

I hit the railing of the staircase below chest first in a painful manner, I hadn’t been armoring my wool since it was pointless to do so against Negatron Duck, and I am now hanging over the wrong side of it.

Looking up as a large section of ceiling started falling towards me, I grabbed Dormarch from my back and quickly tossed him to the side before pulling myself onto the railing where the ceiling pinned me against the stairs.

Darkwing fell past me and I didn’t see where Maui went, Negatron Duck started walking by as a number of chunks from the destroyed roof gathered around the antenna defensively.

I tried to move the piece of debris on top of me, but it was far too heavy.

“Pom!” Dormarch shouted from up the stairs, looking down at me.

“It’s okay I’m just pinned down, I can’t move it but it’s not crushing me!” I pushed at it with all four legs and it shifted to almost crushing me. “Correction, it’s now crushing me slightly, I shouldn’t really try to move it.”

-Dormarch-

Okay so Negatron Duck just collapsed most of the roof and was making a makeshift field of floating debris as a physical shield for his antenna on the only portions of the roof that hadn’t been collapsed, Maui fell to a floor below, Darkwing fell down the middle of the staircases and Pom is trapped.

The night sky was clear, no clouds and a nice moon to look at… too bad you couldn’t see the stars for all the light from the city. What do I do?!

“Hmph… was that all you had?” Negatron Duck stated with his arms crossed. “Pathetic!”

He turned and started walking towards the antenna, I clambered up the stairs slightly and then aimed a retriever bark at his back.

It struck him and made him stumble, he looked at the helicopter and I fired another blast drawing his attention to me.

“You’re not done with me yet!” Receiving a glare for my trouble, Negatron Duck reached behind him and pulled out a loaded elephant gun. It started glowing as he took aim at me with both hands on the weapon I dove towards the rubble where Pom was and he fired. A split second before the shell struck me, I managed to activate my signature program Search Hunter.

I appeared on the opposite side of the rubble pinning Pom down and a massive hole was opened up through several buildings where the bullet went and that one shot might have killed numerous people if those buildings happened to be occupied. The side effect of getting Negatron Duck to shoot at me went spectacularly as the rubble pinning Pom had broken and allowed her to pull herself up and onto the stairs leading to the roof.

She looked my way and I nodded, she clambered and leapt up onto the roof to see Negatron Duck calmly walking towards the tronsplitter and the antenna.

“Almost done here… I’m kind of upset they couldn’t put up more of a fight or bleed more for me. I so wanted to crush their skulls between my hands too.” The tronsplitter was reoriented and was being attached to the antenna.

With a quick teleport to Pom’s side we were about to attack Negatron Duck again, only somebody else beat us to the punch.

“I’M THE BOLD ACTION DUUUUU-~!” It was Launchpad in a helicopter yelling over a loudspeaker as he intended to ram himself into Negatron Duck, it plowed through the floating chunks of destroyed roof perfectly fine. The lights on the vehicle shined into the red pupils of the black and gray ducks face as it came at him like a breaching whale.

Negatron Duck turned to the helicopter before it could crash into him and held up his right hand, he blasted the helicopter with a mass of energy before its mass could even slam into him.

I blinked and watched what happened next, the helicopter had been practically evaporated by Negatron Duck. The expenditure of energy to do so probably weakened him a bit as several small pieces of the helicopter struck him, including the pilot, the seat still underneath said pilot and the stick Launchpad slapped across his beak after having landed on top of Negatron Duck.

-Negatron Negaduck-

“You…” I knocked the seat of the helicopter off of me with a pulse and hovered back onto my feet. “I don’t know how you survived the destruction of the helicopter, but I am beyond angry!”

The yahoo unbuckled his seat belt and got up to wield the flight stick at me as a weapon again.

“I’m not letting you do this!” Said by my biggest fan turned against me by Darkwing Duck.

I walked up to him grabbed him by the throat and pulled him close to me.

“Do I look like I care, what do you really think you can do to stop me?” If crashing a helicopter me was in the best laid plans that you had, then really now, why would you ever continue to be brave in the face of your imminent demise? “I’m super charged to being damn near invulnerable to anything!”

“Uh, gee, well… maybe crush you with half the antenna that the helicopter top propeller thingy cut through?” Almost forgot this pilot guy was a big idiot, emphasis on the big part for the lug as I held him aloft by the neck.

“Really… and how are you going to make th-ARGH?!”

-Launchpad-

I flopped back onto my back and began rubbing at my throat. Sitting up slowly, I looked at the beak sticking out from under the top of the antenna as it crushed Negatron Duck’s body. My gaze slid over to the spinny helicopter bit was sticking out of the one bent portion of the towers leg halfway up and all the other three legs had been cut cleanly. The last leg had sheared off completely from the weight.

I think this might actually be my most successful attempt to land yet! I mean my seat made it through that intact as did the flight stick! Well the rest of the helicopter was destroyed, but at least it hadn’t been destroyed in a crash so I actually managed to land without damaging the vehicle for once. Far better than me trying to fly a car or replicating that Baloo guys infamous stunt with the Ice Duck.

A glow started coming from under the antenna and slowly it lifted it upwards above me and slowly Negatron Duck stood up as I back away lifting the antenna with his power.

I staggered back as he glared at me, his left hand pointed towards the tower and the antenna righted itself and started floating for the portion of the tower where it broke off. His right hand reached out towards me and before I knew it, I was hurting something fierce and on the ground violently jerking about and energy was hitting me constantly.

“You idiot at best you were a distraction and it’ll take me another minute to finish this.” As long as it had slowed you down Negatron Duck, then I did my best so the heroes can get back into the fight. “Fry!”

I was lifted up by the energy and then sent flying off the roof.

-Dormarch-

“Launchpad!” Right there with you Pom, but his trajectory had him on a course for… landing in a truck full of the world’s softest mattresses?

What is with that guy’s luck?! First he survives the helicopter disintegrating… that’s… not actually hard to believe considering all the prior crashes everyone has survived, but still! Followed that by the blades cutting exactly three legs of the antenna in the right place so that it toppled onto Negatron Duck? Beggars belief, but after all that and getting painfully launched off the roof… a truck full of ridiculously soft mattresses with an open roof!

I turned back to Negatron Duck reattaching the top portion of the towers legs with skull shaped welds.

“Sadly, I calculate that that’s the most damage he’s actually taken all fight and it took Launchpad actually crashing into him and making him use huge amounts of energy.” I turned to look at Pom and saw her with her legs raised above her head, she started to rub them together and electrical energy with increasingly anomalous properties started covering her legs. That must be how she starts the technique.

“Get clear, go get the medical supplies and then follow us as we fight.” Pom ordered and I nodded while moving out of the way watching as Negatron Duck move to the side of the tower and waited.

-Negatron Negaduck-

Now that the fool was out of the way, I walked up to the side of the antenna and looked at the tronsplitter.

Everything was ready, in order and all I had to do was kick it off. As per usual, I decide to be a bit dramatic about it.

“With the push of button or the pull of a lever, which would be the more evil way to do it. Push of a button! Why exert myself further than I have to?” Moving towards the Tronsplitter, there was little red button. Destruction of the city and very little stop me.

The heroes had failed in every way imaginable throughout the day, falling to various battle and fights.

My tongue wandered my beak and I gained bright toothy grin as I lifting a single finger glowing with power.

Say good-bye Saint Canard and say hello to the Negaverse!

My right index finger was on the button and was about to press down when I heard the sound of a sonic boom, but there weren’t any clouds in the…

The smell of ozone, lightning ripping through my body and I only heard a pair of words stated loudly as I somehow found myself burrowing into the street at least half a mile away from the building.

I was in a great deal of pain from whatever just hit me and I could only wonder one thing... how the hell did they even hurt me?!

“Okay, what bozo decided to pull a stupid last minute save?!” Ripping myself from the ditch my body had dug into the street another figure floated down and landed softly on the street with her eyes closed in front of me. “Leap Lamb, why won’t you stay dead when I kill you?”

“That’s implying you actually tried.” Leap Lamb said coolly and there was something off about her movements, as she slowly started walking to me on four hooves with a grim frown on her face.

“You’ve made the wrong duck angry.” Negatron Duck was no loser and Leap Lamb was playing with fire!

She went up on to her hind legs and crossed her hooves, her hooves truck each other as her legs crossed and her limbs caught on fire. She lit her hind legs shortly afterwards, then continued pace towards me slowly.

“May the Goddess of longma, Jiutian, watch over me.” She was not screaming about being on fire, that was... vaguely disturbing.

I'm apparently getting a real fight.

Author's Note

My home got flooded with water... again... at least it wasn't as bad as the last few times, but still...

Match of the century.

In one corner...

We have 'Pom, The Leap Lamb, Lambchop'.

Utilizing Matchstick (Lambkin self-igniting), Dancing Flame (Specially modified longma breathing technique used to enhance reflexes to absurd degrees) and Shock-Ram (Deadly double edge medical heart restarting defibrillator fluffmancer technique, can also be used as a one time magical electrical burst of raw force attack. The resulting use causes the user to lose all bodily limiters and take damage until the Shock-Ram wears off. User is usually in traction afterwards for longer than a month, if they even survive long enough to get medical treatment and even afterwards they will be physically weak for quite a while.) all these techniques going on at the same time.

Pom is humble, friendly and has suffered enough physical and mental trauma to be scarred for life. She has arrhythmia problems from a bullet wound to the chest. Her health is in rapid decline to putting untold amounts of pressure on her body using her self made Dancing Flame technique.

She's but a simple lambkin pushing well beyond what other lambkin's would ever do or be capable aside from run and scream when danger rears it's ugly head and being highly and correctly paranoid.

She's a lover of animals, specifically canines and a number of said canids see her as their leader without question as she tends to them with love and compassion. She's spent a lot of time camping outdoors after being exiled to a valley because of the constant canines gathering around her, said valley was where the bones of a giant serpent lay after it died fighting a bounty hunting cow simply named 'Mad-Cow Maggie'. Said valley became a home for one lambkin with a lot of canine familiars where she pretty much learned to speak various dialects of dog through her many bonds over many peaceful years.

Having become a resident of Huoshan, the city built on a volcano that used to be a living dragon who's body became one with the land. She has endeared herself to the Huoshan Guard and has become a member and head of the K-9 Division. She is beloved by the regular citizenry around the city for in generally being a friendly face in an unusual place.

Convinced to leave her place of exile by Oleander the dark hero unicorn, she took to living in Huoshan after meeting Tianhuo and becoming fast friends. Their relationship quickly became closer than that when Pom made a modest proposal to their relationship with Tianhuo. Despite being considered shy and overly panicky by many, it was a surprise that she even had the nerve to do so with someone as notably fierce as the head of the Huoshan guard.

Self-taught in various educations, loves to read, relax and frolic, she exclusively doesn't like conflict or violence. She wishes to live a peaceful and quiet life, which is impossible due to the complications of having so many needy familiars to dote on and no matter what she does her life is hectic whether it's being the friendly house wife or the self titled weakest warrior of Huoshan.

This lambkin's dream is being able to relax in a peaceful field of flowers on a bright and sunny day with Tianhuo on a vacation from everything else, with all the worlds dangers on some island exceedingly far away from her and being a major problem for someone else. Possibly Jaded La Perm due to having been annoyed by her one too many times.

She's certainly not walking away from this one with her health being anywhere near intact if she even survive it.

Vs.

Jim 'Negaduck' Starling as Negatron Duck.

He used to be an actor on Darkwing Duck show. The star of it even that did his own stunts to add to the realistic nature of the show, but when he fell out of any form of popularity his mood started souring as work was thin for this washed up actor.

He likely grew up poor on the streets and saw what fame did for others, he worked towards his one dream to always be remembered by becoming an actor... now, he wants to be remember one way or another!

Once he found out his role as Darkwing Duck was being replaced by another actor, one named Drake Mallard, his attempts at sabotaging the Darkwing Duck movie turned him into the villain he is today when an accident twisted his mind. Negaduck, is the second most evil villain in all of Saint Canard behind the notoriously vile Dr. Slug and he hates playing second fiddle to anyone.

Negaduck super charged with negatron particles by a tronsplitter to have destructive partially psychic energy based super powers. With a near endless amounts of weaponry to pull from a blood magical sigil on his back to aid him.

This guy has a cunning ruthlessness that had Pom and friends not been there, might have toppled society in Saint Canard temporarily or permanently.

Having wiped out most of the cities heroes and many more in a single day through convoluted planning, alongside almost collapsing most of the police force and badly scratching up TOON Division members.

He likes skulls, the colors red, black and burgundy, chainsaws, torturing small animals and hates heroes, cute things and anything even remotely close to the color pink. He has killed before and he will do it again unless you actively pay him not to.

He's all about earning fame and fortune, but he loves being ruthless just as much now. He does have a secret side to him that is rather mellow and tame... for whatever remains of Jim Starling lives on inside this sick twisted individuals mind.

214. Battle for Saint Canard: Finale.

Author's Note

Music suggestions.

-Final Fantasy 7 Those Who Fight Further, any version.- (Somewhat fond of the remake version.)

-E1M1 At Doom's Gate from Doom.- (Any version, Andrew Hulshult's version in particular is good.)

214. Battle for Saint Canard: Finale.

-Saint Canard, five seconds ago, Dormarch-

After she had charged her body up, Pom was coursing with that anomalous magical energy. When she kicked off the ground with her left hind leg, given the damage to her right hind leg, I was knocked over by the force of her movement.

Every time before when she used Dancing Flame, she didn’t create a sonic boom or any kind of shockwave no matter what her movements or how she dodged literal bullets. In this case she did created a sonic boom and the last thing I saw was her right hoof plowing straight into the left side of Negatron Duck’s face and discharging an incredulous amount of energy directly into him.

That last scan of I got of her body and her condition when she slowed down for a split second during impact, before she continued over the side of the building in a barely visible blur after Negatron Duck. It made me go quite pale when I compared it to the previous scan before she physically broke the sound barrier.

With that one action alone, I can see why Shock-Ram was a technique that made Pom setting herself on fire the completely sane option when face with multiple opponents like those shadow beings. The deterioration she would be undergoing was, to my calculations, lethally exponential.

Looking to the antenna and the tronsplitter, I silently made way to the edge of the roof and looked towards the hospital in the distance.

In the back of my mind I considered how Pom would be crippled for life or severely injured if she just didn’t outright die from what she just did to herself. Her life was never in consideration when she compared it to the needs of the many.

I have many things to do and not a lot of time.

-Leap Lamb vs. Negatron Duck-

Closing her eyes, Pom’s body started glowing with sparkles, she started to inhale and exhale in a rhythm and her eyes seemed to be a blur in her skull almost seeming to be completely white until they consolidate seemingly back to normal.

Negatron looked confused, especially considering her wool stopped burning as the sparkles wrapped around her and something was very off with her. He still pulled out a pair of Gatling guns from behind his back and used his energy to fire them full bore at her.

Pom stood still and her hooves only seemed to move slightly, Negatron Duck stopped firing in her general direction when it didn’t seem like she was getting hurt… that and there was a metal ball made of all the bullets he fired hovering right in front of her.

Negatron blinked as she brought both her hooves together and swung them forward, she didn’t even hit the ball, but the resulting heated air of her hooves passing by it launched a shotgun blast of flaming metal at Negatron Duck.

Negatron’s weapons were destroyed by the numerous bullets flying randomly in his direction and his energy formed a barrier that buckled heavily under the pressure of so much burning metal slamming into it.

He dropped the barrier and fired a blast of energy with his right hand, only for it to splash against the street with no target in sight. That was when a car blindsided him from behind.

In the air was Pom with her right leg extend across her left one having just kicked the car, she had hopped past Negatron so fast that he didn’t notice her movement when he was still defending the mass of gathered lead coming at him.

After skidding underneath the car for a few feet, and probably feeling like road kill in this moment, the car proceeded to explode on top of Negatron.

At this point Negatron started supercharging his brain as he burst himself out of the blast hole, turning in the air as he did so. He couldn’t keep up with Pom’s ridiculous speed and needed to put energy towards doing just that.

It’s thanks to his accelerated thinking that he narrowly managed to drift left and right out of the way of the two light poles that were swiftly ripped up from the nearby street corners and hurled at him like javelins.

Negatron had to duck the bent portion of the second pole to avoid having it slam into his face. He was about to retaliate when he felt Pom’s shoulder dig into his chest and he was soon plowing the street spine first.

The city was going to need some repairs after this.

Negatron was up and quick to fire three blasts of energy as he followed Pom’s movements with each shot and then added a fourth once Pom committed her last jump.

Pom hopped from the street, bounced off the wall of building to her left and bounded off the nearby powerlines in an upside down position and then from the street directly for Negatron avoiding each blast.

When he fired his fourth Pom fired a bark blast downwards to avoid that last blast and flipped into a powerful axe kick to Negatron’s skull. The creaking of her bones could be heard as much as the cracking of Negatron Duck’s skull from the blow that put his face into the street.

Inflating her wool after bouncing off from the axe kick she pulled all of her legs back and then started stomping the space between her and Negatron Duck rapidly.

Blasts of flaming spears and claws lashed out pummeling into Negatron Duck’s back as he tried to stand up under the onslaught that was destroying his clothing.

Slowly reaching behind his back and upon speeding up his reaction speed, Negtraon swiftly pulled, aimed and fired a series of shot from a pistol in an infinitesimally small lull in Pom’s trample attack.

Among the shots fired, only one hit and it tore into the left side of Pom’s neck sending her flipping backwards as her wool moved to shut the injury as soon as it happened.

Negatron Duck tossed the gun knowing he didn’t have time to reload and pulled out a scythe. Using his powers, he sent it flying for Pom while she was still sealing off the gunshot wound.

Much to Negatron Duck’s surprise, Pom lashed out her left hoof and got the scythe twirling around her left leg, then proceeded to spin it around her torso several times and right leg before laying it entirely across her withers holding the bottom end of the shaft with her left hoof and the blade pointing upwards from her right side.

Pointing her right leg pointed towards Negatron, Pom was doing some mental calculations with her right hoof as she lifted the scythe upwards.

After having judged the distance between them and grabbing the shaft of the weapon with both hooves, Pom slung it around twice in a blur of motion and then sent it flying horizontally at Negatron Duck as he tried to pull out another weapon. The scythe looking like a solid disc of silver with how fast it was spinning.

Even with him using his powers to boost himself to keep up with Pom, the scythe ripped into Negatron’s left bicep as he tried to dodge. The scythe only flew a few feet afterwards, but it had cut three fourths of the way through Negatron’s arm almost taking it entirely off, this forced him to grab it with his right hand and use up energy to heal the damage.

While he was doing this Pom hopped forward to deal a left hoof blow to his chest with bone crunching force. That put him through the corner of a building and out the other side onto a different street.

Pom followed him by hopping down the street and landing at the intersection only to be immediately hit with a beam of raw energy that made her body convulse. Not that she could feel the pain that her body was going through, but she had heard the creaking of her bones threatening to break under the strain she was putting on it.

Glaring at Negatron Duck as he started hitting her with two beams from both hands, she Inhaled and then let loose a bark blast that could be heard throughout the city as if a lion roared. Not only did the bark blast push the beams back, it absorbed the energy and then blew up in Negatron Duck’s face.

Negatron Duck staggered back in shock wondering what just happened

The people in the news helicopter were astonished as it swooped around to keep them in sight, then watched as Pom raised her front legs above her head and twisted her body.

With a lunge she shot at Negatron with the wool concentrated on the front half of her body and drilled into him with a massive barraged of swirling flaming claws that pushed him back and through the walls of an abandoned bank. Her momentum kept going until his back was forced into the banks vault door, where he became embedded in the thick metal.

Pom pushed off with a buck to his stomach and landed on all four hooves to look on warily at the bloodied Negatron and his shredded clothing.

Eventually he stood up and spat out a glob of darkness that looked vaguely like grey and black colored blood that matched his current form, his clothing and body started regenerating from looking shredded and went to looking like a cat went rabid on him.

However healing from debilitating injuries like this was eating through his energy reserves far faster than Negatron would like, in fact he could feel his ability to build up negatron energy was slowing down immensely.

Taking the initiative while healing, Negatron fired four alternating blasts from his hands at Pom.

Pom retaliated by hold her right leg in front of her and then thrusting her left hoof forward over it to fire a fireball, then did an alternating pattern of this to shoot fireballs that blocked that exploded the energy blasts before they could get close to hitting her.

Negatron for his part had never heard that Leap Lamb had the ability to project fire like this before, then again anyone that knew Pom would be terribly surprised to learn she was mimicking the Longma combat style quite well while under the power of Dolly’s flow motion ability.

Bringing her right hind leg up she prepared to lunge with a kick, she launched forward and Negatron spun to the side as her kick lashed out and made the hinges of the bank vaults door groan under the impact. Continuing his spin, Negatron threw a nasty right haymaker that bloodied Pom’s nose with a sickening crunch.

Pom’s body destroyed the entrance of the bank and became embedded in the wall of the building across the street.

Negatron laughed, well at least he was laughing up until he received Pom’s head with hardened wool to the chest and sent him back into the bank vaults door.

The portion of the wall around the door ripped apart as the bank vault door flipped backwards like a coin with Negatron on one side of it.

Leaping up to it, Pom brought both her burning hooves up and slammed them down on the vault door when Negatron was face down on the underside of it. Creating massive cracks in the floor of the vault as it crushed the negatively charged duck underneath.

Pom landed on her hind legs and she took note of her cyclic breathing for Dancing Flame was becoming haggard, so she knew how bad off she was at the moment. She could only hope that had actually put Negatron down, for the moment at least.

The vault door suddenly became covered in the negative energy and launched itself directly for Pom.

Pom rolled onto her backed and struck the edge of the vault door with her hind legs to send it spinning upwards and then it embedded itself in floor by its edge at thirty to forty five degree angle outside the vault.

Using the backwards rolling kick that knocked the door away from slamming into her, she was on her four hooves and hopping towards Negatron as he stood up with his left hand on his back and using his right hand to push himself into a standing position after using it to launch the vault door at Pom.

Pom went for an overhead right hoof strike in a lunge, that’s when Negatron lashed out with his left hand and rammed a rapier straight through the lower right side of Pom’s torso and out her back.

He pushed upwards to hold her aloft for a few seconds with a demented grin… which soon slid off his face. Negatron was still upset that his opponent wouldn’t scream or show any signs of pain for him, what was she made of that she didn’t even yelp?!

How was he to know that Pom couldn’t currently feel anything as her body tore itself apart? The blow was not fatal as Negatron wanted to be as he continued to push his weapon upwards into Leap Lamb and hold her aloft.

Pom, under the effects of Dancing Flame, had seen the impossible to dodge blow coming and decided to take full advantage of being run through. As the tip of the rapier entered her, Pom’s entire body began to ripple from the devastating impact of where she had been stabbed and the rippled made all four of her legs wobbled violently as they spread out.

A Paprika style wobble counter using all four hooves, plus Dolly’s flowing motion ability, plus dancing flame as she exhaled, plus being under the effects of Shock-Ram. The combination of all these factors at once would not have been survivable under normal circumstances. These circumstances were not normal.

The resulting simultaneous four hoof blow blew out the back of the bank vault and the entire back wall of the whole bank using Negatron’s body.

Negatron went through two buildings leaving massive holes behind and bounced down the road, getting terrible road rash in the process, before he managed to slap his left hand down on the street. Yet the momentum kept him sliding and he had to dig the fingers of both his hands into the street until they wore down to the bone before he could stop.

Regenerating his fingers, Negatron was shaking. He actually felt fear. All his planning and he was being matched or, the possibility he’d rather not even consider, possibly losing to someone who looked like a freaking pillow!

Looking up at the tower in the distance, where he had left the tronsplitter and the antenna undefended, he realized that all he had to do to win was press a single button. He had been too distracted with beating down the hero and wanting to hear her scream blood murder, he could still win this.

He quickly lifted into the air and tried to fly towards the tallest building in Saint Canard, tried because Pom latched onto his left shoulder with her teeth and somehow yanked him out the air with a jerk of her neck. Upon hitting the ground on top of him, she tore a large bloody chunk out of him before he kicked her off.

Now Negatron was having problems trying to heal, especially after the crazy ass sheep just tore his shoulder up with her unnaturally sharp teeth. Also since when did sheep fangs like that?!

Landing from being kicked, Pom unleashed a feral howl. Her intelligence didn’t leave her eyes, she was in full control of herself and she knew she had at least one broke limb… maybe two… if her whole skeleton wasn’t collapsing in on itself yet, then that was good enough in her mind. She thought she heard something snapping apart inside of her after her howl, she didn’t have much time left.

Negaduck would remember that howl for the rest of his life and it would haunt his dreams.

Pom currently appreciated the fact that Dolly’s power somehow made her wool immune to burning down. Speaking of wool, hers was sealing the most recent wound and she didn’t know what kind of internal injuries she had taken or how long she had left before her body ultimately gives up.

Growling she prepared to attack and Negatron blasted himself into the air and curved around to go flying for the tower.

Pom glared after him and her wool did something unique as it shifted, two wool wings erupted from her back and she jumped after Negatron. Doing so ignited the wings lighting the fake wings on fire, with one flap she flashed towards the retreating Negatron.

Negatron wasn’t the only one surprised to see Pom morph her wool into burning wings, Pom was even surprised that with one flap she caught up with him halfway to the building. The faint trail of sparkles she left behind meant she was still utilizing Dolly’s flow motion ability, but it was drowned out by the fact that Pom’s body was now engulfed in flames and seemed to look vaguely like an ascending phoenix… or a dragon.

Negatron pulled out a shotgun and, actually wielding it with both hands due to weakening, fired it at Pom.

The flaming wool wings swung forward in front of Pom and the pellets all melted and dropped straight down upon coming into range of the immense heat coming from the flames. They didn’t even touch Pom.

Negatron couldn’t even load a shot before Pom was on him Slamming front of her right hoof upwards into his chest flipping him up in the air, she kicked upwards with her left hind leg flipping him even more with a blow to the chin that almost shattered his beak sending cracks throughout it.

With a single flap Pom was above and performing an axe kick that sent Negatron Duck hurtling towards the ground and with an upwards swing of both wings she shot downwards to being below the fast already fast moving Negaduck.

Closing her eyes and spreading her hooves wide to swirl them inwards in a circular motion, a yin yang symbol was etched into the air and formed out of the flames Pom was covered in as she brought her hooves together.

“BURNING WINGS!” Pom’s eyes snapped open and her hooves dragged against each other creating a massive amount of friction, she basically exploded as soon as she had shouted that.

The shaped she generated was seen by all who were watching the news as Pom erupted with flames and the wings spread out creating an image of, in the minds of the people watching, an angel.

Negatron had been on the cusp of passing her when she did this.

If anyone thought Negatron Duck was hurtling towards the ground before, they didn’t see what caused a mild earthquake throughout the city or the thirty feet deep hole as Pom started dropping from the sky heavily scorched.

The attack had burnt Pom badly and she was no longer engulfed in flames as the attack had seemed to have used them up, Negatron had almost turned to ash from the resulting heat.

Inflating her remaining wool that wasn’t covering an injury, Pom landed as softly as she could and listened to her own breathing cycle0. She was getting close to a point where her body was going to fail her soon, she didn’t have much time left in her and the clock was slowly ticking down.

Having replicated Tianhuo’s most explosive technique, which was safe for a longma to do, was something Pom didn’t think she was actually capable of. It also seemed that without being engulfed in fire… she couldn’t fly.

With what little time she had to breathe and recover minutely, Pom mentally considered the fact that she would have to learn to fly without lighting herself aflame or else Tianhuo might worry that she had suicidal tendencies. Considering it for a second, Pom realized that it wouldn’t actually be far from the truth considering her current health and that she may be dying and not know it yet.

A second later Pom flopped onto her back to avoid fast flying spear as Negatron Duck pulled himself out the hole and launched another spear forcing Pom to roll out of the way and onto her hooves.

“You can’t possibly have that much left in you after that last attack!” Negatron Duck was losing his black and grey color scheme, seeming to flicker into almost reverting back into Negaduck for second before he charged up energy.

Negatron had been pushed past the threshold required to recover his energy and could no longer go critical like some feared, but he figured he still had enough power in him to kill Leap Lamb at least.

Reaching behind him he pulled out five spears in each hand for a total of ten and launched them forward, the spears stopped in the air and all angled for Pom.

“Why won’t you DIE, damn it!” Negatron glowed and all the spears shot down at Pom, who twisted her body out of the way of each spear taking a cut across the spine, left front leg near the hoof and scrape against her left inner thigh.

Pom caught the seventh spear that came at her and twirled it deflecting the last three before lunging forward to stab at Negatron.

Negatron pulled out a shield that broke the spear Pom wielded, then bashed her in the face.

“You’re not going to bring me down, I won’t let you! I will destroy this entire city if I have…” A whistling noise was heard and Pom hopped backwards and clumsily landed as a mass of chemicals struck Negatron Duck down from above. Negatron roared in agony as the area was flooded with positron energy and he started to revert back to being himself. “NO, I WAS TO BE THE RULER OF THIS TWISTED CITY!”

Once the light died down Pom was now looking at Negatron who was barely holding onto his form as it flickered with the yellow and red that Negaduck wore. He pulled out a chainsaw, he was exhausted and just lost all his tronsplitter given powers.

He charged forward raising the chainsaw and Pom tried to move, but four snapping sounds came from her legs. She toppled to the ground, she couldn’t move her legs and tried to stay awake her vision was blurring.

Negatron raised the chainsaw, he brought it down only to be blasted back by two rays of positron energy.

Turning her head Pom looked at Dormarch, Darkwing and Lena had set up the two tronsplitters while Negatron… or Negaduck as he finally reverted to his previous state tried to swipe his chainsaw for her.

Dormarch teleported in front of her and then… things went black for Pom. She had successfully defeated Negatron, but Negaduck still had some strength left in him and the lambkin hoped they had it from here.

-Dormarch-

I could heal from this, I will heal from this, I can heal from this, I’m not going to die here and neither is Pom!

I was posed to take the blow that would have torn Pom apart. The PET around my neck started glowing brightly for some reason as I was prepared to sacrifice myself for the most important person in my life!

The chainsaw was about to make contact with my torso as I stood firm in my resolve and persevered ready to take a death blow for Pom.

Only before the first whirling blade could even touch my fur, a shock pistol blast from above struck the chainsaw and the energy traveled into Negaduck making him stagger back. Negaduck roared in frustration as his body went through several jerky and painful spasms.

Two more shock pistol blasts followed staggering Negaduck even more. That’s when Officer Bonkers released the latch on his parachute and dropped to the ground next to us. He looked at Pom bleeding out on the ground and narrowed his eyes at Negaduck, before thumbing his shock pistol to a much higher setting.

“Sorry I’m late… TOON Division, you’re under arrest Negaduck!” The wild look in Negaduck’s eyes meant he was definitely not going to go quietly as he blocked the next shock pistol blast by throwing the chainsaw into its path.

He pulled out a riot shield and blocked the more powerful shock pistol shot that knocked him further back and he pulled a sword out.

“I’m not going down without a…” A white down covered hand slapped into his neck and the wild duck’s eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he almost flopped forward, he managed to get standing before the barrel of a weapon slammed into his temple finally taking him down.

-Darkwing-

Standing there I just stared, looking down at the fallen form in front of me.

I shook my head sadly at the badly injured Jim Starling, he was going to be remembered as one of the most devastating villains in history… he was sadly getting exactly what he wanted all along. I knew him inside and out like he knew me.

Now it was up to a court of law as to whether he got the death penalty or not, I’m not a judge… I’m a protector and a guardian of those who couldn’t fend for themselves. I was dead tired, exhausted and had fought so many things today, yet here I was still standing even with all that Negaduck could throw at me and the city of Saint Canard.

I did not want to become like him and I wanted to be the figure that he portrayed on the Darkwing Duck show before he became… like this.

I just took down mine and Launchpad’s childhood hero, he was too much of a threat to leave standing any longer. For the first time my gas gun had no ammunition and I hadn’t been prepared as well as I thought I was.

Fame, fortune, what do these things get Negaduck in the long run? I was doing this for the people who needed a hero and this was my wakeup call and reminder of who I aimed to be.

-Dormarch-

“That… that was scary…” Lena stated drawing my attention back to her floating magical form and then to Pom’s body bleeding out on the ground. “That he could even keep going after all of that.”

“… Pom… Pom… POM?!” With a swift search hunter, I grabbed the medical kit and appeared next to her. “I need help! All four legs broken in multiple places, several critical injuries throughout the torso, spine cracked throughout, internal organs in the process of failing and brain suffocation in process… the only reason why she’s not dead yet is the wool bandages… all muscles shredded… no-no-no-no, you are not allowed to die on me… not like this mommy!”

Darkwing, Lena and even Bonkers D. Bobcat rushed over to my side hearing my cry, I was too focused on trying to find a list of where to start to even begin saving Pom’s life.

“Someone get Ms. Shuttle here now!” I screamed, the stasis field she had inside her could keep Pom alive, nutrient drip, nobody would have Pom’s blood type unless... “Lena, you, bring Ms. Shuttle here! Ocellus I need you here like yesterday! We can’t take her to a hospital as assassins and mercenaries will take this chance to kill her and if you hadn’t noticed the news copter is filming us right now so they know she’s not in a condition to fight back!”

Lena blasted off into the sky and towards the direction I pointed Ms. Shuttle to be in.

“Can we do anything for her right now?” Darkwing said as I looked up at him with tears in my eyes.

“Follow my orders exactly!” I need to stop her condition from worsening, an entire databanks worth of medical knowledge flooded my head as I searched for all the pertinent information I needed. “Officer I need all the hands I can get for this.”

“Fawn this is Bonkers, get over here quickly!” Bonkers radioed as he knelt down next to the medical kit and got it open.

Pom… mom… was not... not going to die here, not if I had anything to say about it!

-Several hours later, Ocellus-

The long beep of someone dead was soon reversed when Ms. Shuttle’s voice spoke up, the sound had woken me up and was giving me nightmares even before it had started again.

Looking at the time, it was close to the point the sun would start rising, and not at Celestia's behest. Still had to get used to that and the fact that a lot of regular people had died yesterday in the ensuing chaos Negaduck started.

“Shock.” With the sound of the rabbit faced bus’s voice, Pom’s body safely convulsed inside the stasis field.

“Shock.” Ms. Shuttle looked at me as I frowned, a second shock occurred. Pom’s heart restarted, that’s fifty eighth time in the last five hours I've been woken up by the horrifying sound. It was like Pom had given up on life, but we certainly hadn’t on forcing her to live.

My ability to change my blood type to anything was really helping here, Dormarch insisted there would be no side effects as Pom’s blood was slowly consuming my own to replicate itself. He said I was a universal donor that could give blood to anyone. If this information got out back on Equus, we changelings would become more of a hot commodity in the medical fields if true.

Dormarch was asleep at Pom’s side as was an exhausted Dolly who had at some point lost consciousness and had extreme magical exhaustion. At least her magical exhaustion wasn’t as bad as when you had a focal point for magic like I did with my horn.

Aside from Dormarch, I was the only one left in Leap Lamb’s group capable and healthy enough in making any decisions for our almost completely destroyed group.

Not even Shanty could muster up any cheer, after looking at the onboard heart monitor Ms. Shuttle had for emergency patients. She just quietly drank from a bottle of rum as she sat next to the floating, thankfully unconscious, Pom.

Surprisingly, while we all knew alcohol doesn’t affect her mentally, Shanty did get the positive benefits of dulling her physically pained body by imbibing the liquids.

We were all just shy of being mentally broken, we were exhausted in every way imaginable and there was nothing to keep us going.

If dreams could come true in this world, we needed a miracle to even survive the next few days if we were attacked. No one in our group was in any shape to fight… aside from me and I was currently being used as a living blood bag. So even I wouldn’t be able to put up much of one.

Most of the heroes in Saint Canard were heavily injured, even Glue Gal and Sneeze Master had taken gunshot wounds in the defense of the hospital. The only active heroes left were Lena, Stegmutt and Darkwing Duck.

The endurance and resilience Darkwing showed was absurd as he continued fighting crime in this city even now, despite having survived a forty story fall before slamming through a plate glass window at terminal velocity after using the grappling hook in his gun and dislocating all the bones in his right arm.

He still managed to get his nerveless fingers around the grip of his gas gun with his bad arm and bring down Negaduck through sheer force of will while wielding his weapon in both hands. It was going to be hard for anyone to ignore Darkwing as a hero now, but he wasn’t happy about the fame he earned from this… on the backs of many broken heroes as being one among the few survivors remaining who fought through most of the day and through the night.

...and was still fighting to save his city even as we left. Criminals would soon learn to fear the name Darkwing Duck.

If Pom ever woke up, she would quickly find out that she was crippled in so many ways that the constant pain would be the least of her problems.

Looking out the nearby window, I saw that we were crossing the bridge into San Fransokyo. We couldn’t stay in Saint Canard, through various contacts Darkwing had with the organization called SHUSH there were already reported assassination movements gunning for Pom. Nobody who had ill desires wanted someone like Pom to ever recover from the severe damage she’s done to her body, her injuries were worse than last time and I didn’t think that was possible, much less survivable.

“Contacting Big Hero Six… Hiro Yamada… yes Ms. Bunny Shuttle here coming into the city from the north side, please have Baymax report to me immediately for a protection duty emergency.” Ms. Shuttle was going to do her best for us and she had connections with a team of heroes that could protect us for a time. “I also need him for a second opinion patient assessment and for a possible assessment of spinal damage for two individuals. I need to be fully rearmed with chemicals as quickly as Bazooka Bunny can feasibly do so… because I want to protect the lives currently inside me with extreme prejudice Hiro. I don’t want anyone to possibly intercept this transmission and find out where or who my patient is. We need anonymity, but you’ll see for yourself how bad it is soon enough. The whole team for an escort? We need to be a bit more subtle than that… how about 'Wheel Cat' along with Baymax?”

You were going to live Pom, even if we had to bring down this whole world down around us to make that happen. We should really let you go, but we were not going to… none of us wanted to say goodbye and we simply wouldn’t! We refused!

You hear that world, you wouldn’t take Pom from us and your not taking any of the rest of us either!

“For we aren’t dead yet…” I stated quietly as my horn ignited and this time… no pain.

The light dancing at the tip of my horn, I was the last embers of a flickering flame of hope still left in our group as I watched the sun filter through the windows of Ms. Bunny Shuttle.

"Ocellus... your horn is better... that is... that's... good at least... yeah, good news." I looked to Smolder, she wasn't sleeping easily either. I felt an unending blast of love from her suddenly strike me, luring me towards her. It raised my spirits as she smirked. "Love you, now be my bed bug and let me help you sleep. Also Pom, stop dying long enough for us to get some sleep, Tartarus! That's an order from a dragon and you're a Huoshan Guard, so you have to oblige us!"

I laid down next to Smolder and she wrapped her claws around me, her warmth and love helping me slip back into a state of uneasy rest. I did not want to hear the tone of Pom flatlining again for at least an hour, it would be eight more before she flatlined again.

I didn't really want to know if Smolder's order got through to Pom or if it even had any effect at all, but I'm glad Pom was still able to be revived then too.

215. Dreary Dogs.

-???, someone named Razack-

We got a weird op on Klendathu this time, but I couldn’t even begin to describe this bizarre situation.

“Okay roughnecks be very, very careful about shooting at those... horse, equinoids?” He never thought he would witness something so devastating to the enemy arachnids, but he was wondered how intelligent the equinoid creatures were or how far above them they were in technology. This second approach on Klendathu was going far differently than one would expect after their first screw up. “Command is never going to believe us.”

“Sir, I can’t read their minds, also I think the darker furred one is far more powerful than… also it’s a unicorn and the other one is apparently a bicorn given the two horns.” That wasn’t even the weirdest thing about them Carl. Magical creatures that appeared in human lore for thousands of years was pretty hard pill to swallow for anyone, much less that they were seemingly better armed than us.

Considering one of them was equipped with a shotgun they had to have something like intelligence given it was reloaded between every shot with what looked like normal shotgun shells, but the end results of those shots were highly destructive chaos and weirdly loud horse noises.

The other one had what looked to be a floating book and floating sword shaped like a key, both demonic in appearance. He really didn’t want to fight these unknowns on top of the bugs.

Considering they just took out three tanker bugs, over five hundred normal arachnid warriors, two hundred and sixty seven hoppers personally was scary. What was scarier was their starship that had three hundred and sixty degrees of coverage of rapid fire energy weapons and those took out far more than that covering their battle.

“So what do we…” Rico started to say when the dark one disappeared in a flash and appeared in the middle of their group.

We all immediately aimed our weapons at the creature, she didn’t seem to be worried or in fact look scared at all, she looked bored.

“Excuse me, but you wouldn’t happen to have seen a sheep like entity, a small orange fire breathing lizard with two wings and purple frill, a goat with a bandana would you? I would describe the fourth of the lost people I’m looking for, but you might shoot at me for it.” It sounded like the opening to a long and protracted joke, the fact that the small horse with a horn even spoke in a posh voice was very much disconcerting.

“Also if Ollie wanted to kill you, YOU’D BE DEAD ALREADY.” The book stated and just about everyone shot at him in primal fear when his voice went demonic. Our shots just bounced off the cover struck the ground and the books eyes glowed with amusement, not even moving an inch under fire. “Ah cute, they think their weapons matter to us, good instincts though. I’M SURE THEY’RE NOT HERE OLLIE!”

“Now, now, Fred, just because Pom isn’t here doesn’t mean we can’t do these people a small favor of dealing with half their bug problem. I’m a unicorn and my name is Oleander, my fiancé here is a demon named Fred because saying his real name causes problems and might incidentally start a nasty cult among your people just hearing it. No Fred, that’s not happening again on my watch after the last dimension. That over there is a Pandoran Bicorn named Buttina Stalliona… she likes being called Butt Stallion for some reason. Also… yes… her body is literally made out of diamond. No, I haven’t the foggiest how that even works, but my world has a similar species called crystal ponies. I don’t understand how ‘they’ work either.”

They turned to see the so called ‘Butt Stallion’ viciously biting the leg off the last tiger warrior arachnid that valiantly tried to take down the horse with what sounded like impenetrable skin, but it broke its limbs trying. The fact that she actually swallowed a portion of it with a loud crunching noise was horrifying to me and my troopers.

“Whatever drugs they put into our power armors emergency injectors… they might want to cut back on it sir.” Stated Doc plainly, I nodded to him shallowly.

“Funny, that’s the same thing those Earth Defense Force people said when I first met them before they realized we were real and helpful. They also had a giant bug problem, apparently aliens took to growing giant insects to feast on the planet so they could steal its resources. I’m quite willing to help out with this situation too as insects like these monsters are so uncouth with wiping out all other species, I like giving the underdogs a decent boost now and then as it were.” This Oleander commented dryly. “I’m an interdimensional traveler and dark hero looking for a friend tossed to the four winds, I’m beginning to thankfully think they didn’t end up in this universe. Maybe I should put you in contact with the EDF for cross dimensional help... you look like you need all the help you can get and those guys were quite fun when it came to taking on alien motherships on foot.”

A fourth wave of bugs started to pour out of the ground… it was barely fifty bugs, which died in seconds under the fire of the equinoid aliens hovering gunship. Those poor bastards.

“So can we steer away from dimensions exactly like this. I think this is the third time we’ve been in a similar dimension, they are beginning to blend together.” Oleander stated lazily.

-Earth-WDCCT, San Fransokyo outskirts, Dolly-

I finished the last of the kibble I poured from the bag into my personalized bowl, I was certainly not a morning dog at times and since it was evening. Keeping on top of a schedule was more my uptight brother Dylan’s thing, after a day long battle throughout the city and aiding Pom in basically mutilating herself… it wouldn’t be hard to say I was still dog tired. Also I had a painful migraine, which wasn’t helped by the sound of rain hitting Ms. Shuttle’s windows.

It was the early evening, everyone was still catching up on sleep.

Speaking of bowls, we should probably get one for Dormarch… when we actually had the time. Might need Ocellus’s help with the purchase though.

The rain was always so boring, but at least there would be mud afterwards… but I really didn’t feel like playing in it or would even be healthy enough to do so. It was a struggle to even pour myself a bowl of kibble.

I couldn’t even bring myself to call my family even if I knew how to access the function on the PET still wrapped around Dormarch’s throat. I was feeling horrible that I didn’t want to turn to them for comfort and make them feel bad for not being able to be here for me. I wanted them to be happy for a little while longer.

…

Unless they were worried about me and wanted to talk to hear that I was okay, which I wasn’t because Pom’s group was a wreck and a half, then I was being horrible in not getting in touch with them because they weren’t happy at not hearing from me after that whole mess.

Ugh, dog gone it, I can’t win!

Looking around at the others, I saw their various states. We didn’t even say goodbye to anyone aside from Lena who helped us evacuate the city by carrying Ms. Shuttle over the water with as much magical power as she could manage after Dormarch managed to vaguely get Pom stabilized. Once we were set down Ms. Shuttle drove off immediately for San Fransokyo.

Since I’ve been awake, I barely heard the beep of the heart monitor and turned to look at Pom’s form in stasis. She was still alive, but the fact that there was only a pulse once every other thirty seconds or so was terrifying. She barely had a heart rate or a pulse and as my step mother Delilah would say, this would be something we needed to pay close attention to.

It was scary to know that Pom had done so much damage to herself fighting Negatron Duck, but she did it… she took him down and… we saved the day.

So why did it feel like we didn’t win? When people talk about heroes, do they never see the aftermath or the injuries incurred on the people who involved themselves in these kind of things? Also if we were taken in by the police, would people hold us responsible for all the damages caused in bringing down the villains? Even if we weren’t the ones to do most of said damage?

I can see why being a hero was unfair in some respects and why someone would want to remain anonymous, I can also sort of see why Pom didn’t want to call herself a hero even if she was by and large heroic to a ridiculous fault.

I groaned loudly and massaged my head with both my paws, thinking usually wasn’t my thing and never has been.

Even my spots were aching as I turned my neck and looked at Smolder cuddling Ocellus. Weird relationship, but more power to them if it worked for them. I looked to Dormarch sleeping uneasily next to Pom, the dude put his all into stabilizing her… even now she’s not very stable, but he apparently stopped the internal organ failure problem caused by being run through by the rapier.

Shanty was also curled up at the base of the stasis device with Dormarch next to where Pom floated lifelessly, I didn’t want to wake her up either.

One of the many problems with Pom was that our bond wavered drastically and I could feel how close to death Pom was. Leaving me just sitting here as the only one awake listening to the beeps that made my head throb with pain.

The metal egg thing, it really wasn’t doing much at the back of the bus. Dodo had been pretty cool, but aside from his body melting and then producing an egg, not much happening there.

Hopping up into one of the seats, I put my paws up against the window and looked outside, ignoring the bandages wrapping around my legs pulling at my injuries. Ms. Bunny Shuttle parked us in a fairly out of the way remote region in some kind of heavily forest area.

“Uh… Dolly right?” I turned looked at the screen to my right, the front of the bus, the rabbit face that wasn’t smiling.

“Yeah, what do you need?” It wasn’t hard for me to guess that it wasn’t going to be anything big.

“We have incoming supply package via Skymax delivery system, supplies consist of chemicals for my weapon, food and extra medical supplies. Big Hero Six are currently tied up for the time being with other various other prior arrangements and they apologize profusely for not being able to help more urgently. I knew for certain they wouldn’t leave us high and dry!” Ms. Shuttle tried to cheer up, but her eyes darted to Pom and her smile fell again. Not going to lie, Ms. Shuttle looked far better when she was smiling and perky. “I’m going to need your help with unloading the supplies… You should be capable of that despite your size and numerous injuries, you won’t need to go outside in this weather. The inbound Skymax will deliver it to the door and you’ll just need to haul it inside. I also need my chemical cannon to be reloaded if I am to continue in my goal of preserving the lives within me from outside threats. Otherwise… Ocellus and Dormarch are the only healthy enough defense we have aside from the fact that no one knows of our current location. None of you are estimated to be capable of surviving another full blown crisis.”

Dude, like I don’t know we wouldn’t survive that assassin guy coming after us while we were all down like this.

“What’s so important that they couldn’t come?” I get that they are heroes, but at least one of them could make contact with us right?

“Baymax is currently dealing with critical patients with gunshot wounds at a hospital, he is helping various innocent people in critical conditions from a firefight. He is a known quantity at the hospital and numerous people enjoy his presence and help.” The screen showed me Baymax’s location in the city, I looked at the wound to pom’s neck and the breathing tube in her throat. Couldn’t blame Baymax for that, my step mother Delilah has dealt with a lot in a hospital as a nurse dog. I didn’t comment and sent a look to Ms. Shuttle to keep going. “Gogo is likely the first to come assist us, she is nearly done with tracing a Yama gang problem and is not to enter combat under any circumstance. She will come meet up with us soon, but it is very important that she keep a tab on them in this given timeframe while recording their activities for later perusal. Honey Lemon, is currently working on a number of highly nutritious chemical packets for Pom since the current drip feed we have will run out in approximately... two hours, she will send them through Skymax when she can find the time under her other obligations. Hiro, is trapped having to be visible in public and his aunt is fairly worried about his late night activities. Fred-meleon… well he is not liable to be helpful in this situation aside from having someone to talk to, he and Mini-max are currently battling some street thugs across the entire city from us and is actually being fairly successful at it. Wasabi, is currently seeing to jury duty, which was unavoidable.”

“Any chance we can find something to do while we wait on getting live support?” It seems like the best we could do was sit and wait… I’m sure someone from the ‘fam’ would answer if I called, but could I really disturb them at a time like this?

“Proceed to the door, Skymax is now delivering supplies. I will walk you through the chemical cannon reload sequence after you bring in the supplies… that should be entertain you for at least twenty minutes at least or quicker depending on how fast you finish.” After saying that, Ms. Shuttle opened the door and I saw what looked like a hovering trashcan, it folded up the panel in its chest revealing several packages of food and a large canister of strange sloshing substance.

“One multipurpose medium chemical ammo cell, snack foods for various species, medical supplies… including dog safe medication.” The silver Skymax thing stated in a blank robotic tone and I hopped down and made for the door and got to work.

-Fourteen minutes later-

After I offloaded the supplies, that cool Skymax thing shot into the sky. Loading up the chemical cannon wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be and things were pretty quiet afterwards.

“Shock.” Hearing that, I wonder why Ms. Shuttle would say that when the heart monitor started to flat-line and then Pom’s heart went back to beating normally as soon as the shock happened. “I’ve been watching Pom’s health carefully, I’m making sure to measure the shocks needed to keep her heart beating.”

“Does it bother you that Dormarch has a body?” I asked as I settled down and stared at Pom’s floating body. All four legs broken in multiple place, every part of entire skeleton was cracked and what was said to be more than fifty percent of her muscle mass was lost through exertion. “Also how will you handle it when Pom needs to go to the bathroom?”

“Not really, kind of make me want to have a cute little mechanical rabbit as a body. I may not understand magic very well, but I will not look deeply into Dormarch’s digital to biological nature as a living entity.” She looked down at Dormarch fondly. “I wonder if Hiro can do that for me one day… this body is a bit big and cumbersome at times and I remember being in small storage device as Gogo and Honey’s roommate for a time before being given back my Shuttle body… with helpful modifications of course. As to your other question… the stasis field will take care of bodily wastes, I have a small tank for converting an amount of absorbed biological waste into energy.”

“Ugh, you eat it?!” The disgusted look on my face as I gagged earned a smile from the artificial intelligence of this vehicle.

“Reminder, I am not biological Dolly, but you did ask.” That I had Bunny Shuttle, so that’s actually on me.

“Huh… what… is Pom okay?!” Slightly rolling Shanty away from himself Dormarch went from sleepy to completely alert in seconds. He looked at the stasis field and saw that while Pom’s heartrate wasn’t steady or strong, it was still there. “Oh thank goodness…”

“Chill bro, Pom’s alive… enough…” Oh dog, I wasn’t about to let Pom far out of my sight. “Can you contact the fam… through Ms. Shuttles big screen? I want them to know we’re okay-ish.”

“Dolly, you and Shanty are injured for the next few days at least, Smolder can’t walk and Pom is basically outright crippled. Ocellus is the only one of us still healthy both mentally and physically. Don’t even get me started on spiritually.” Calmly walking up to Dormarch, I grab both side of his face with my paws, then nuzzled him lightly with my nose. That calmed him down instantly, like the little puppy he was. Sure he was around my size, but he was still a puppy age wise no matter how advanced and I was his big sis. “I’ll call the family.”

It didn’t take long for someone to pick up.

“Dolly? Oh and Dormarch to! Have you… no I don’t think you would…. have…” Da Vinci, the loveable paint splotched puppy looked at Pom behind us, she frowned but then turned back to us and kept going. “I’m glad you’re both okay, but have you seen the news recently? In any case, Dormarch, since you’re apparently our youngest physically existing brother now age wise… please give our big sister a hug for me would you?”

Dormarch wrapped his paws around me and pulled me tight while whimpering a little bit, likely still thinking about Pom’s condition. I hugged him back with a smile, both our tails were wagging as I cuddled him and nuzzled the top of his head, I looked up to see Da Vinci’s tail wagging too. I eventually pulled away from Dormarch.

“Now that’s the Dolly I know! Always getting into hugs and being able to smile, no matter how much it hurts…” Da Vinci wasn’t going to say anything about the nearly dead Pom in the stasis thing, she was obligated to ignore it by being one of my more sensitive sisters. “Does it hurt a lot?”

“Nah, I’m good, my injuries are nothing sis. What hurts more is what happened to… her. Emotionally we’re not doing well on any front, but we’ll live. We need a lot of help.” Kind of wish I had magic for healing, all I had was magic for wind control and… huh that’s a strange feeling… why does the word ‘haste’ come to mind? Eh, I’ll figure that out later. “So what was that about the news?”

“Help is what you have Dolly, I’ll look into recent news centered on Saint Canard.” Well Ms. Shuttle was as interested as the rest of us to hear what was going on as we bugged out once we got Pom in stasis.

“You really need to see that, it’s important that you hear about it. There’s been a lot of hullabaloo about what happened in Saint Canard. Also the rest of our family hasn’t seen it yet, but I suggest you watch it.” A second later and Ms. Shuttles face appeared, along with a paused screen on the side. “Yeah, that’s it! Just want you to know, it’s glad to hear you’re okay and still able to smile… even if your situation is looking rather grim. We miss you Dolly, but we know you’re right where you want to be and… you’re quite amazing!”

“Yeah, I know I’m cool! Still… we actually need to make contact with that Abigail Callaghan lady and get some open travel options than this world. It’s literally killing Pom to be here.” Not joking here, I think our world had it out for her.

“Okay, let’s see this the news Ms. Shuttle.” It was direly needed, Dormarch could use a distraction from Pom’s current lack of health and maybe some news wouldn’t be so bad. There wasn’t much going on outside beside the rain and we weren’t going anywhere fast.

-Recorded Newscast Video-

“This is Wanbla Wetherbee with the west coast news.” Said the ostrich biped. “Today’s story, Saint Canard under siege.”

The story goes into how Saint Canard was taken over by Negaduck, what little information they had on the first five hours of the beginning of the siege. Eventually there came a point when one particular name came up.

“Fall-Apart Rabbit, bomb disposal expert of TOON Division disarmed seven Negaduck bombs within a period of two hours and helped prevent a domino effect of building collapsing saving hundreds of lives and livelihoods.” The reporter paused and the screen showed four specific individuals. “TOON Division proves that they are worth their funding as they have captured Negaduck after a deadly badly between him and Leap Lamb. Negaduck was finally apprehended after a day long struggle by everyone involved, we have no clear idea where Leap Lamb is or what her condition is like after a harrowing battle with Negatron Duck… but we know her team of Cut-Lass, Caper Canine and the newest member of the team Dynamo Dog were present throughout the day. We have no knowledge where Leap Lamb was taken or where she is recuperating from numerous dangerous injuries, but several people have come forward to give us an idea of her location.”

“Well yes, I know exactly where Leap Lamb is, she’s in Duckberg obviously.” Bentina Beakley said with a straight face and surety. “She apparently is rumored to have the support and backing of The Duck Avenger Paperinik I hear.”

“Last I heard she has a secret hideout in Duckberg, maybe it’s even in the junkyard underneath the noses of certain criminals.” Violet Sabrewing stated certainly, as if she were not lying through her beak.

“I reckon she’s retreated to Duckberg to heal, she obviously has contact there. I’m detective Maui and she’s helped me out with a tough case last night and it led to the breaking of the DOOM gang and finding Negaduck’s secret base. Talk to Officers Skunky Skunk and Eddie Valiant of TOON Division for more info.” Maui had his right arm in a sling and he was mostly okay otherwise. “Good Luck and stay safe out there Leap Lamb!”

“Oh Leap Lamb, she has to be in Duckberg, she apparently knows Mark Beaks.” Said a shy looking Honker Muddlefoot. “I think Dynamo Dog looks cool.”

“Well it seems the people have spoken, if you’re looking for Leap Lamb, she might be in Duckberg. This has been Wanbka Wetherbee and more news will come out about how the crisis was defeated once more information comes out.”

-Dolly-

“You’re not in Duckberg are you?” Da Vinci asked worriedly.

“Nope, but we have friends there and they are trying to smokescreen where we currently are.” I said with a small smile. “Hopefully that diverts enough unwanted attention.”

Author's Note

The lead up to the end of "The World Where Dreams Can Come True" is beginning with the Abigail Callaghan arc.

216. Should I stay or GoGo?

-Equus, Canterlot Castle, Twilight-

Peace and Quiet, no annoying lambkin and changeling issues, no crazy cat that trains the local guard and most positively and certainly no hyper destructive cow randomly causing massive property damage.

Just me and fifty pages of wonderful, beautiful, paperwork.

“I always fear you’re going to marry the paperwork like you tried to marry that book that one time.” Spike commented dryly.

“Can we not get into that Spike?” The second I finished saying that, a tree impaled itself through the wall, making me jump.

“Ow, just when I was starting to think I was safe indoors.” I exited the room and saw Jackie ‘Blackcap’ Chickadee impaled on the nearby wall by a tree branch.

“I have a feeling Arizona is responsible for this.” I said dryly, at least it wasn’t an entire weather factory, but still Canterlot Castle was supposed to be shielded from insanity like this. “Discord…”

“Mmm-yes?” The draconequus stated as he appeared in a cheerful manner clamping his mismatched limbs together and fluttering his eyelashes at me.

“Did Arizona do this?” I asked flatly.

“Mmm-maybe.” Not going to ask if Discord enjoyed this or if anyone got hurt… aside from Jackie… again… I actually liked the parrot in comparison to the rest of her family, but her cursed luck was ridiculous. “Also yes I enjoyed it and aside from the walking parrot, nobody else got hurt. I mean it’s not like the tree is suddenly going to spontaneously combust right?”

-Sweet Apple Acres, Arizona-

“And that is why I’m using only one hoof when it comes to bucking your trees.” I said flatly to Applejack. “Be glad that I didn’t buck an apple tree in demonstration.”

“Well shucks, at least we have a new watering hole.” Applejack has hired me for my carpentry and my bucking skills, I was good help and I worked cheap when it came to bucking. I give her a discounts on carpentry because we’re friends.

“Eyup.” Bic Mac stated solemnly as we all stared at Canterlot Castle in the distance, mostly for the fact that it suddenly caught fire.

“Ah don’t worry about it, I’ve done that to Canterlot Castle numerous times and Celestia never got mad at me for it.” Applejack stated calmly.

“Did she know you were the one responsible for those incidents?” My statement was met with a crinkled muzzle and sweat pouring from Applejack.

“Uh…” Responded Applejack eloquently.

-Earth, San Fransokyo, GoGo ‘Wheel Cat’ Tomago-

“Hey Bun, how are things here?” It was a dreary evening after the incident in Saint Canard, Ms. Bunny Shuttle appeared on my helmets screen with a frowny face as I approached at high speed.

“Reloaded, supplies for current crew or passengers successfully received… patient still in dire critical condition that a sneeze can end her life if not watched, we’re doing just ‘PEACHY’ here. At least their friends in Saint Canard and Duckberg have started a misdirection campaign, but we have problems. For one I’m highly recognizable, two everyone inside me is recognizably odd aside from Ocellus who is a shapeshifter.” After a pause Bun added. “You have yet to actually meet Pom’s friends yet, but they are quite surprising in appearance.”

“After the last kaiju battle we had, nothing would surprise me at this… rate.” I paused after entering through the door on the bus. Having known Dormarch as Pom’s PET companion, it was a vague surprise to see he had a flesh and blood body now, having gone form a digital entity to physical biological being. Okay, so the world can throw me some curve balls, also I hadn’t exactly watched the news on what happened in Saint Canard, but I certainly knew that Pom found her friends. “Ooh, you’re so freaking adorable! … If any of you tell Honey Lemon I just did that, I will throttle all of you! Except this little guy. The names Gogo Tamago or Wheel Cat while in my hero costume in public guys.”

I held Dormarch close to my chest with my left arm and started to rub his belly with my right hand, his three mutant fluffy fish tails started wagging.

“I cannot commit to not telling someone eventually, though I will blackmail you for all you’re worth with the recording of what just happened.” Glaring at Ms. Shuttle, I looked about trying to ignore the AI’s grinning innocent bunny face seeming scarier than it should be.

I’ve heard of Cut-Lass from the Cape Suzette fiasco. I think I just woke her up, but she just saw me cuddling Dormarch and shrugged. The goat was cool in my book, she also looked hungry, exhausted and in a bit of pain.

There was also the bandaged Dolly ‘Danger’ Dalmatian, AKA Caper Canine and coolest heroic dog that I know of looking on at Dormarch with some amount of jealousy.

There was also an orange winged lizard and a blue bug creature snuggled together. With the goat, I take it that those three were all of Pom’s kids. Looks like she managed to successfully find them all and bring them together.

They were all looking at me, there was also this strange metal egg on the floor in the back and Pom was floating lifelessly in the stasis module to my left. The sound of a weak heart beep from the heart monitor made me freeze up. Judging by that, Pom was seriously in a bad way.

Seeing her broken body made me think of Tadashi too much, it caused a tightness in my chest as I looked at the breathing tube going down her throat. Just the imagery of Tadashi possible laying there entered my mind and I tried to shake it off.

I was soon introduced to everyone as I got settled in.

“If anything happens to this little guy, I will destroy everyone involved with hurting him and then world before destroying myself. I’ll even rip and tear until it is done while making sure he’s safe from everything possible.” I flexed my right hand glove and my claws popped for a few seconds. “Anyway I’m here to make sure no one attacks you guys or her. Is she really that bad off?”

“All the bones in her body are fractured or in the case of her legs broken in at minimum three places from stress, her internal organs were failing at some point before I stopped that particular problems, she’s lost half the muscles in her body through tearing them to shreds, she needed a slightly funky blood transfusion to survive her wounds from Ocellus and the injuries mom… er Pom… got in battle certainly aren’t helping her with breathing. All of this exacerbated Pom’s arrhythmia in the extreme… it’s a miracle she’s even alive with her heart failing a lot like it has of the last twelve or so hours. The trauma based coma is the least of her problems and the most of our worries.” Dormarch answered from my arm quietly, I tickled his belly and all three of his fluffy fish tails started wagging. “Can you stop that, I’m supposed to be depressed about my friends and family being beaten, battered and broken!”

“So how did this guy happen?” I pointed at Dormarch and held him closer, Dolly started barking something. Hiro should really get around to that animal translation patch for our gear.

“Apparently I’m not an AI, but an alien digital entity that tends to manifest within electronic devices in other worlds, from wherever beings like me come from, as long as there is a functionally high enough technology base. My species, once it reaches a certain threshold, can manifest outside the devices we might come to inhabit. We stop being a less than harmless AI at that point, but a physical seemingly biological entity that can jump back into any device as long as it has a digital interface. I however am still tethered to the PET device on threat of death… were I to disconnect from this I would start dying. The precautionary measures Kahn Industries took to contain me to this device in question are warranted given how dangerous beings like me can be when it comes to hacking computers, as we interact with computer coding on a level that no one else can in a direct manner. Imagine a quick nuclear war wiping out the world.” Squeezing the little guy, he squeaked. It made me feel warm and fuzzy inside despite what he just told me. “Also I’m now Caper Canine’s youngest brother by adoption into the Dalmatian family… that would make me the one hundred and second official Dalmatian to be added to her family.”

“Don’t care what anyone else says, you’re one of the cutest aliens I’ve ever met… Again, none of you are to ever tell Honey Lemon, who also goes by Bazooka Bunny, about this and you will take this to your graves.” I stated scathingly, before coughing into my fist and resuming my every day personality that I am known for. When I get a PET, I knew what my AI assistant’s avatar was going to look like. I didn’t put Dormarch down and kept holding him because it would be comforting for the little guy. No, I wasn’t in a terrible amount of denial, why would anyone ask about that? “Anyway, what do you plan on doing now?”

“Well we still want to get into contact with Ms. Callaghan. Unfortunately we cannot go to her without attracting unwanted attention to ourselves and bringing the mercenaries that either want to capture, kill or possibly ‘otherwise’ do something with mom… Pom. That, at this point, would be synonymous with outright killing her if she is ever be taken out of that stasis field.” Oh right, thanks for the reminder Dormarch.

“Ah… that… at least nothing has happened to Wendy Wower or Abigail Callaghan as far as we know. We’ve been keeping tabs on the both of them just in case some crazy nut wants to hurt them. We get a lot of ‘those’ types of people here on the west coast.” We really did have to check in with Wendy Wower and get Abigail Callaghan to Basemax to tell her what we exactly wanted her help with and why. We’ve all been a little bit distracted lately. “So… what are the chances that we can just use microscopic machines to heal Pom?”

“Bad Idea.” Both Dormarch and Bun stated at the same time before looking at each other with a nod.

“Explain?” I crossed my right arm and both my arms supported the cuddly alien dog, I most certainly did not have a problem.

“Can you put me down first… please?” Looking into Dormarch’s eyes, I took a long deep inhale through my nose and exhaled softly.

“No.” Hearing a bark, I looked down and saw Dolly motioning to me with a paw closer.

Crouching down and looked at Dolly who continued to bark something while rolling her eyes and pointing to her brother with her left paw while barking something that sounded vaguely sarcastic.

Most expressive I’ve ever seen a dog be in my life.

Dolly held up her right leg and extended a paw to me and, knowing what she was asking for, I gave her a ‘five’ with my right hand before standing back up while hearing Dolly make snickering noises.

“It’s not that funny Dolly!” Whined Dormarch. Let’s face it dude, if Honey Lemon saw you she’d be doing the same thing I was.

“Not going to even ask for the context on that one.” I stated flatly.

I was in a vehicle with numerous literal aliens, even if I somehow got the punchline it wouldn’t be bigger than the one I was currently living right now knowing magic exists, aliens exist, magical aliens exist and digital entities that are possibly magical aliens too. What next, ninja pirate robot zombies? No wait, that’d be tempting Obake to come back to life… if he ever truly died in the first place.

Speaking of punching things… I really wanted to put on a pair of boxing gloves and go to town on someone right now, unfortunately I didn’t have a viable target for my ire. Good news for my need to defend these guys, I was raring to go to bat for all of them.

“Can we get back to the topic of why using microscopic machines is a bad idea?” I said blandly trying to get us all back on track.

“You mean machines that can only work with what’s already there, yes, lets.” Since when did Bun get an attitude? I kind of liked it. She was still cutesy and positive, but she had a more worldly edge to her now. Probably came with traveling around and getting to know other people than Honey Lemon or me.

“Since my paws are not going to touch the floor anytime soon.” Dormarch rolled his eyes and didn’t wiggle or struggle to get out of my grip. I silently counted that as a win for me no matter what anyone might think. “It’s like this, would you rather your immune system fight actual problems while the body is weak like Pom’s currently is, or would you have it fighting the machines and ignoring the other stuff. Also the machines wouldn’t be able to rebuild the lost muscle mass from nothing and her body would probably cannibalize the machines for nutrients. I think Pom would prefer not to have machines inside of her, possibly causing other unnecessary health complication and Gizmo Gal in Saint Canard gave us glimpse on how that can go wrong to be torn up from the inside out. There’s also the fact that we don’t know how her magic would react to such a bodily invasion. Plus we don’t want to harm her any worse than she already is, mom wouldn’t survive that.”

“So we can’t rely on that solution, too much room for error…” I begrudgingly agreed, also did Dormarch just call Pom his mother again?

“Incoming nutritional packs via Honey Lemon by Skymax delivery, Baymax has personally vetted them after cross referencing current patient’s health with me. Baymax may be busy for a bit longer.” Announced Bun while looking at me. “Please get them immediately Gogo. Pom only has about a minute of nutrients left in her current bag and her body is currently in a state not unlike that of starvation due to her injuries.”

Sighing, I finally decided to put down the spotty spectacle and was out the door of the bus and pulling a cardboard box out of the recently arrived pink Skymax, I rolled my eyes at what was Honey’s preferred color and watched as it rocketed back into the sky. I carried the box in and got it open, it was full of nutrient packs and several bottles of water.

“Anything I need to know about the process of installing one of these?” I could understand the need for quiet long range deliveries from high in the sky, we had to keep Pom’s location very quiet after the problems with all those mercenaries the last time she was in San Fransokyo.

Pom just wanted peace and quiet, well she’s getting it now and she’s not even awake to enjoy it.

“I’ll walk you through it.” It seemed Dormarch knew what to do and it wasn’t too hard to quickly set up the nutrient feed into Pom once the other bag emptied.

Once I got the nutrient bag up, I changed out her fluid drip as well. Talking with everyone about their adventures in our world. Until eventually, thirty minutes later, I asked an important question.

“Okay should I stay here with you guys or should I go meet up with Wower and Callaghan?” There was a lot of looking around between the people.

“I think you should be staying.” Shanty continued to relax right where she was.

“I do to.” Smolder was a dragon, one that was injured by a giant malevolent mechanical owl.

“If you can talk to Wower and Callaghan in the morning, I think we’ll need at a representative with you to corroborate the reason why we need a dimensional portal. Someone who isn’t too strange or would freak them out.” After saying that Dormarch looked to Ocellus.

“I’m the current leader of our group by way of health right? I guess I will have to go, but I really don’t want to leave my friends too undefended. At most Ms. Shuttle will only be good against big targets, smaller faster ones might be able to break by and into the vehicle. So that means…” Ocellus glanced around. “Dormarch, you’ll have to stay here as a medical expert. Dolly you are mobile at least so you can come with me if you choose to, but you can’t bring your skateboard or helmet… they would be too recognizable on you. Shanty you’re a little too out of it to be moving much, Smolder can’t move and we all know why we can’t remove Pom from Ms. Shuttle.”

Dolly barked held up her paw with a single digit. Basically saying that, yes, she would be okay with doing this.

“Also you might need to wear… a leash.” The minute the word was stated by Ocellus, I saw Dolly’s right eye twitch and her tail go up between her hind legs. At least to her credit she didn’t start whimpering, but the thousand yard stare on that dogs face spoke of less than pleasant memories. “Look at it this way Dolly, we need to convince Abigail to help us and while Dormarch would be a good choice for it, he can’t exactly hide the more unique aspects of his looks like his claws or his tails. You might be running a magical migraine, but at least you’re recovering from that far better than I would and you’re doing better than Shanty is.”

“She be having a shield, I be having to deflect things with my bare hooves!” Shanty stated from where she was laying.

“That and Ocellus’s horn is better, she can use magic again herself in an emergency… should probably stick to lower end stuff though.” Smolder’s comment was met with a nod. “So the two of you should be able to go out without any trouble, provided that Ocellus disguises herself well enough.”

Ocellus looked me over with a critical eye, then after a moment she transformed in a flash of flames. That spooked me a bit and I had a disc in hand when I was face to face with a beige furred cat with shoulder length light blue hair, she was wearing yellow shorts and a blue shirt that said ‘love or bust’ in pink lettering in a red heart. She had a build similar to mine.

“Do you think I’ll pass muster of not being recognizable by anyone or should I change the hair color?” Ocellus was asking me? She looked pretty darn good.

“Maybe you should make the hair brown or red, more like an earthy color.” A flash of flames from her head and the blue eyed female had short brown hair. “Perfect, but can you remember that form for tomorrow?”

“I can stay like this near indefinitely as long as I keep sharing the love.” She said in a chirpy voice.

“Wicked.” I said to the shapeshifting bug pony as she turned back. “Still, it’s going to be a bit of a risk to have Dolly go with you if she’s recognized as Caper Canine even without her gear.”

“I’m sure Dolly can act normal…” After saying this Ocellus turned to Dolly, who proceeded to stand up on her hind legs and leaned against a wall casually to start looking over the claws of her left paw. She winked at Ocellus while pointing to her with a single digit on her right paw while making a clicking noise with her tongue before returning to looking over her claws and trying to be natural as if she were an animalistic. She then proceeded to cross her paws and tried to look cool while staring at the roof of Ms. Shuttle’s body. “Dolly.”

Dolly rolled her eyes and went back to being on all fours then raised her right brow at Ocellus.

“Yeah, I’m sure Dolly understands what will happens if we incidentally attract anyone’s attention to Pom’s location. Anyone like the government, mercenaries, evil villains, not so villainous people with chips in their shoulders, even nice people could be dangerous, a hospital would have assassination attempts which is why we’re here with her in a stasis field. Quite frankly anyone finding out where Pom is that isn’t an immediate friend of ours is bound to end in her death in one way or another.” Ocellus said to me as she turned back to look at Pom. “At least we have people like you looking out for us Gogo.”

“You’ve got Big Hero Six, we’ve got plenty of firepower to keep anyone off of your backs if things go south… which happens around here fairly often. That whole Duckberg distraction plan your friends pulled better keep most people looking in the wrong direction. Though we might want to move Ms. Shuttle, we did drop two Skymax Deliveries here and I’m paranoid that someone could be watching us or have seen them taking off or landing around here.” With that said Ms. Shuttle started up and got rolling.

“I will endeavor to find another quiet spot that many will not tread, we have the supplies to go quiet for quite a while.” Ms. Shuttle took my meaning to move now, which I didn’t mind. “Question, is Dolly even up to fighting, even if she can walk?”

“No, but Dolly might have to in a pinch considering what happened the last time we came through here.” Dormarch gave his sister a worried look and she sidled up to him and gave him a one legged hug and nuzzled him while yipping something. “Fine, but please don’t do anything crazy unless you have to. Reminder, like Pom, you’re not indestructible.”

“You don’t seem to be too injured for someone who came out of Saint Canard.” I finally noticed that Dormarch looked particularly pristine for the mess that was the Saint Canard Crisis.

“I can heal myself, also I stayed out of the way of a majority of the danger.” Dormarch stated simply.

“Right then, anyone want to watch a movie?” Why did I just suddenly make Dolly perk up and start to bark something?

“Thunderbolt, I know it’s a Dalmatian family favorite, but really Dolly?” Dormarch gave her a flat look as she grinned brightly at him.

-The next day, Dolly-

My dog, do I hate leashes, but when needs must. Also had a few scars under the fur from those ninjas, but I’m still the best option for this. Not one hundred percent, but I’m okay enough.

“You sure you’re up for this Dolly.” Ocellus asked quietly in her cat biped form. Seeing no one looking our way, I nodded.

We were being led towards Wendy Wower’s place with the hero in regular clothing. I wasn’t going to tempting fate knowing the horrors that could await us after what Gogo Tomato told us last night about how often this city came close to total technological destruction. Last time was another Tuesday for them.

I was on alert and acting as normal as I could, well as normal as a Dalmatian like me could be anyway.

“Excuse me, but that dog looks…” A familiar girl started to say, only for me to recognize the leashed dog.

“Hey, Bolt!” Just greeting an old friend with as much cheer as I could put into my voice.

“Dolly, what are you doing with a pair of biped cats?” Bolt asked as he gave Gogo and Ocellus some suspicious looks.

Author's Note

Apparently Pom does have a feral side if you hurt her god puppies. Also Shanty...

217. Need a Portal Practitioner.

-Equus, Pinkie Pie-

“Duck and Cover!” I shouted as everyone avoided a really fast puppy dropping from the sky and created a huge pillar of dirt exploding upwards.

Everyone was okay, but when I went to go check on the puppy…

“RRR?” The puppy was completely fine as it crawled out of the hole it made in the street and began looking around, it then looked up at Canterlot.

“Are you lost little guy?” I asked and the puppy nodded to me and pointed back towards Canterlot with a paw.

“Ah, that would be one of the members of Pom’s ‘Puppy Patrol’ as Jade puts it, they are really tough little dogs aren’t they?” Fluttershy walked up to the puppy and started to talk to it. “Oh really Puff? A training accident, are you okay?”

The dog started twirling its tail and took to the air barking happily, quite a few ponies were staring at him as if they had never seen a Canis Minor before.

“I’ll go tell the Ponyville emergency construction company that we have another hole in town.” I bounced off giggling to myself that a puppy could cause so much damage and that nothing bad happened.

It would later be found out that the puppies were trying to help the royal guard fight a small hydra infestation as a training exercise, the Puppy Patrol completed the exercise successfully without problem despite being down a member that got sent flying. Only two other guard teams narrowly managed to do the same with the other two smaller hydra.

The rest of the infestation was peacefully dealt with easily enough with Tianhuo’s support… and fire… lots of fire.

-Earth, San Fransokyo, Ocellus-

“Is that Caper Canine?” Whispered the duck girl looking between us with a curious look. “My name is Penny Forrester and there’s something I need to ask about.”

“Yes, but we’re kind of in the middle of something, can you bother us about this later and not tell anyone that you know it’s her?” I asked pleadingly. “It would go a long way to not attracting trouble.”

Dolly seemed to know the other dog and they were apparently chatting with one another.

“So you’re just walking Leap Lamb’s dog? She doesn’t look comfortable on that leash.” Oh no, one of those types, the type with nosey curiosity. Kind of like Gosalyn Mallard really. At least she wasn’t talking loudly, but she was following us and nobody else was close enough to hear us, at least I didn’t feel anyone else nearby on my emotional spectrum radar.

“She isn’t, but she’s here for a reason as much as we are.” I noted that Dolly grunted while nodding at me and tugged slightly at the leash with a paw, we weren’t exactly in tune with one another as we moved along. I was trying to make sure that the leash didn’t bother her. “Don’t you have anything better to do today Penny?”

“Not really.” She said with a smile, unfortunately for her I was a walking emotions reader. Penny was like a cat just got its jaws around a canary’s neck. One trying to figure out whether they should snap down to eat or let the canary go for more fun.

We certainly didn’t ignore nature on Equus with how dangerous the flora and fauna got sometimes, especially when it was magical fauna or flora. Flor like those cursed trees that cause Swamp Fever and turn you into more trees like them. Thankfully the cure was quite simple enough to acquire, flash bee honey.

“I have a feeling that things are going to go downhill quite fast Gogo.” I noted that Gogo was feeling distinctly paranoid, I was right there with her. “It’s probably safer if you didn’t do what I think you are about to.”

“Oh, what am I about to do?” The question was answered by Dolly who barked something, rolled her eyes and held out a paw to Bolt.

“I’d say you and Bolt are about to get into trouble just following us into some kind of unknown danger… but I don’t feel anything threatening nearby at least.” However machines that lacked emotions did exist and we could be attacked by something like that at any moment. At least I would know when someone had ill intent towards me otherwise.

“Yeah, not the best of ideas when you don’t know the area kid. Also you can’t exactly tell spunky girls not to do something Ocellus, they’ll just want to do it more.” Gogo replied. “I would know, it’s why I’m where I am today when it comes to technology.”

“Technology?” Penny asked with a questioning gaze.

“I go to SFIT, San Fransokyo Institute of Technology.” Gogo was glancing about, but she seemed to ease up once she realized nobody was paying attention to us.

The chances of anyone thinking Caper Canine would wear a leash were pretty low, except for running into the one person that had a dog that knew Dolly apparently. The chances of that happening were even lower, so whatever luck Pom has with running into danger… I can sorely hope that it hadn’t rubbed off on me. Unless that was going to kill Pom, then I wish I had all of her bad luck right now.

Dolly was telling Bolt something, I could read their emotions were at ease. At first Bolt felt more suspicious and curious, now he was just chatting away with Dolly in a low key manner as we walked along through the city.

“Interesting, so what are the both of you doing?” Penny asked curiously.

“Should I just be up front about this?” I asked, because she seemed intent on getting in on what we were doing.

“Have you ever been in a life or death situation kid?” Gogo asked flippantly.

“Several, whether real or on a movie set. You… you don’t know who I am do you? Huh, so much for my short lived fame, but I’m glad to just be another girl in peoples eyes.” Yet Penny still seemed put off by the fact. “Bolt here still gets more recognition than I do.”

Bolt barked up to Penny with a smile and a wagging tail, lots of love there between the two.

“Child actor?” Gogo guessed.

“Yes, but I’m not anymore.” Penny returned and things were silent as we all moved down the street at the same pace. “These days I’m living far away Hollywood and I’d rather things stay that way. Also I’ve been seeing some really interesting things that are eye openers, I’m just here in San Fransokyo for several days. Heard this city was exciting, yet it seems so… peaceful.”

“You haven’t been in this city long enough then.” Gogo said flatly. “Sure, go ahead Ocellus, tell her everything she could possibly want to know.”

Ignoring the sarcasm.

“Well to start off with, I’m a shape shifting alien from another dimension, Go-Go here is Wheel Cat of Big Hero 6, Dolly is Caper Canine as you already well know.” There was no doubt in Penny’s emotions, she believed me one hundred percent. “We’re going to talk to two scientists that might be able to help me and my friends get home before Leap Lamb kills herself through stress, if she just doesn’t die from her current self-inflicted injuries on top of some that weren’t. She’s not too healthy at the moment after what happened in Saint Canard and we don’t want people finding her as she’s in no condition to survive being attacked, much less detached from what life support she’s on.”

Dolly nodded and looked off in the direction of where Pom likely was, she probably just tugged at her familiar bond with a look of longing.

“Can I get an autograph?” Stated Penny turning to Gogo.

“Maybe later, why are you still bothering us?” Good question Gogo, why was Penny bothering us?

“Because I want to know if Leap Lamb can give powers to animals or maybe you know someone that can figure out how Bolt can do what he does now.” Wait… what? Both Dolly and I looked to Bolt who opened his mouth and his tongue charged with energy slightly before closing it.

“Oh… that’s… rather curious actually. Bolt has magic that feels like a unicorn, probably spent too much time traveling with Pom.” Noticing the look on the girls face, I added. “The magic of Equus might actually be infectious like Pom feared, but at least it’s not harmful. Though we really should be more worried about the magic of friendship getting around like this… I feel like things are going to be okay even when I should be panicking about adding our foreign magic to this world.”

“Unicorns are real?!” Penny said in excitement. “Wait… magic of friendship? Our world’s magic?”

“Maybe, but not on this world as I haven’t talked to one yet. I heard about ‘sword horses’ being a more violent parody of actual unicorns, so I would be careful when it comes to approaching a unicorn if you ever meet one.” I then added as an afterthought. “Yes, your world has magic, but it is seldom seen in comparison to high end technology and odd mutations. True friendship is its own form of magic where I come from.”

“I really should get Rhino genetically tested again…” Penny muttered with her arms crossed and looking to the ground at Bolt who nodded back at her.

“You actually believe her?” Gogo asked with a bit of apprehension while pointing to me.

“Bolt and Dolly both know the truth.” The two dogs nodded to Penny as she addressed them. “Besides Bolt is more intelligent than many would give him credit for, he’s learned to read, write and type.”

“I’m sure Dolly had those skills before we met her, her family is all dogs and they live in a house in Britain without any animalistic or biped oversight.” I commented dryly as Dolly nodded in acknowledgement. “Her family has thus far been smart enough to get away with it despite being purely animals, but intelligent enough to actively hide their families secret.”

“Yeah, I guess the world is weird like that, if you follow the stories of Scrooge McDuck that sound too much like tall tales to be true.” There’s the feeling that Penny was going to be our friend for the foreseeable future. “Bolt got to New York and back to me from across the continent, he probably could have done that without help.”

“Guys we’re here, also I just want to warn you… Dr. Wower is a bit… peppy. Abigail Callaghan is more towards the mellow and logical, but don’t get me wrong, they are both geniuses and we’ve come to Wower with a few problems before that she’s been able to solve pretty well. She’s almost an auxiliary member of Big Hero Six like Bunny Shuttle.” Drawing our attention, Gogo moved towards the housing and I looked up and down the street, things almost felt too quiet. “Just don’t say anything about Abigail’s father, she’s touchy about the subject that he stole one of my friend’s inventions and went crazy like a super villain with it. If the words ‘Krei Tech’ comes up, then expect trouble from any angle including the ceiling or the floor.”

Lots of bland emotions floating around, no high end distress that should be notable of incoming danger thought. I decided to relax a little as we approached and Gogo knocked on the door.

A few seconds later we were introduced to Dr. Wower, her loud choice of clothing was matched by her friendly smile and green died hair and ears. She appeared to be a beagle species of dog biped, behind her was the fox animalistic Abigail Callaghan, thick brown fur and an interesting pleasant smell of a summer field.

“Oh, it’s one of my teaching assistants, a Woweroo and old companion of mine, a buddy, a pal, a friend, me compadre, the incredibly named Chelsea Cheery who has a decent singing voice!” Dr. Wower, I think you’re just making Gogo grumpy, learn to read her mood. Wower apparently took a moment to look at Gogo’s face and then, thankfully enough to Gogo’s mood, eased back on the perkiness. “What do you need Go-Go?”

“It’s more about the fact that I need Dr. Callaghan’s help, but you can help too. I hope you’re ready to sit down and listen, because we’re about to drop some pretty weird stuff on you.” Gogo gestured to me and I quickly got the leash off Dolly, she happily gamboled about to finally be free of the leash. Her emotions were quite pure, being relatively free of negativity unless thinking about Pom’s health. “I mean a lot weirder than the usual stuff that happens around here.”

“Ooh, nice dog, a Dalmatian, looks very healthy and there’s something off about how she’s… what the?!” Dolly had been so excited that she started bouncing off the walls of the entryway much to Wendy and Abigail’s surprise as she made it above there heads and she even ran around on the ceiling for a bit. Dolly must have been going stir crazy from being stuck on a leash. Dolly then stopped and started to float back down to the ground looking sheepishly at us realizing that she probably just gave herself away. “That’s… not scientifically possible, unless she’s really advance piece of technology that…”

“Yeah, no, it’s not science Wendy… its flat out magic.” Gogo muttered while glaring at Dolly. “You might as well come with Penny, but you get to choose whether you want to get stuck in the rabbit hole or not after hearing about all of it.”

“Yeah, I just found out Bolt has magic too apparently.” Added Penny towards Dr. Wower and Ms. Callaghan as she looked to Bolt watching Dolly float down to land on her paws. We all entered the place and started to settle in a bit

“Anyone want some tea or water?” Apparently Wendy Wower got over her shock quickly, Abigail wasn’t doing so as fast and was still a bit amazed by Dolly. Gogo was mildly shocked too.

“That’s new.” Gogo muttered.

Dolly waved a paw to Wower and pointed to herself.

Despite her injuries Dolly was still quite capable of incredible acrobatics. Seeing her in action, I wonder what their reactions to me would be when I eventually showed them my real self.

We all sat down in the living room, I was concerned that Dolly had far more energy than she should have what with her injuries.

“She’s seems rather excitable.” Dr. Wower said as Dolly lapped up some water and smiled at her.

“Yeah, Dolly is said to be the most athletic and active dog in her family, of ninety eight brothers and sister half adopted, a quarter step siblings and last bit actual family. I visited their home and they are a really friendly bunch of dogs. Anyway can we get to why we’re here before the wall explodes and a supervillain miraculously comes rushing in to kidnap someone?” I received an odd stare from both Wendy and Abigail, but Gogo was on high alert.

“I might want to put on my gear just in case that happens.” Taking my paranoia as seriously as her own, Gogo bowed out of the room quickly. “Also you’re going to have to tell me what Caper Canine is capable of now, because jumping up walls and running on the ceiling definitely wasn’t something she could do before when she was in San Fransokyo last. Be back in a second.”

“Anyway the reason we needed to talk to you Abigail is because you might be able to help my friends and I get home, considering you have the know how to create a dimensional portal device.” That’s why we were here, and I’m being completely upfront about it. “Though from what I’ve heard you need to work on the dimensional instability problem that opening such portals causes.”

“Why me exactly? Where do you come from exactly, you look like a normal biped cat so…” Abigail stopped her ears went straight up when in a burst of flames I transformed into my true form.

“My name is Ocellus, nice to meet you, I’m from the planet Equus in a different dimension from this one, I happen to be the only shapeshifter in my group and I’m the current leader of it considering Leap Lamb is out of commission.” I do not relish the position or the stress that being a leader puts on me, I honestly don’t know how Thorax does it.

“So… aliens exist too.” Abigail said while internally panicking, I should probably not mention that I can read her emotions that would just make it worse.

“We’re not space aliens, though I’ve seen a few Moonlanders here or there, but they seemed to have somehow integrated themselves into this planets society without as much as a hint of trouble over it.” I thought I heard Abigail muttering something about the worldwide invasion from the moon hoax not being a hoax and she was exhibiting something close to emotional shock. “We got here through a portal from a planet called Elhorn and three magical possum princesses which was in the previous dimension we were in, weird doesn’t even begin to define the stuff we’ve been going through since our journey to get back home started several dimension ago.”

“Huh… now if only frequent flyer miles worked for dimensional travel, you’d probably get one free ticket back to start.” As for Wendy Wower, she wasn’t panicking at all and taking this all completely in stride.

“That’s kind of the point of why we’re here, we want to get back to start so we can stop traveling around randomly and we need Abigail’s help as the other two beings who created methods of interdimensional travel that we know of are possibly criminally insane.” I didn’t even have to say it, because Abigail froze and then started to cry a bit. “One of said criminally insane people caused a lot of dimensional instability that made someone from this dimension get lost in another one and they left behind an orphaned granddaughter to fend for herself.”

“Name?” Stated Abigail immediately.

“Taurus Bulba, who I think escaped the Saint Canard incident with Steel Beak as part of the Fiendish Organization of World Larceny AKA FOWL. He caused even worst instability by breaking the dimensional barrier numerous times on frivolous things, which was more damage than the other guy did when he forcefully ripped a hole in this reality.” I was trying not to say it, but… it wouldn’t be hard to pick up the other person who caused dimensional instability with a portal incident.

“My father, the villain ‘Yokai’ and the Krei Tech Portal incident. It was supposed to be teleportation technology… not interdimensional travel. Unfortunately I ended up getting stuck in another dimension frozen in stasis, my father is far older than I am and I didn’t age a day until I came back out.” The fox animalistic quietly curled her tail around herself. “I’ve been trying to get myself back in the saddle, so to speak, but I really haven’t been able to do much of anything science related after all the trouble the teleportation technology caused.”

“Yeah, being mentally traumatized is not fun. At least you have a good friend in Ms. Wower.” When in doubt, fall back on friendship and hope it sees you through the day. I could only hope pointing that out helped her somewhat, because her emotions were a mess at the moment.

“Yeah, I’ve been paying rent with a small job, at least Wendy has been looking out for me.” All the emotions Abigail was feeling sort all funneled into intense sadness. It was far better than dealing with intense hatred or malice. “I haven’t exactly been in a mood for science, I really don’t want to create any more portals after that incident.”

“That’s okay, we can’t force you to do anything… none of us from Equus are in any sense of good health to at least try to convince you to help us.” Well the mood was dropped down to the pits, but at least there was only pain, no aggression whatsoever. “I’ve heard rumors of a few other mad scientists that have created dimensional portals, but it usually tends to end in problems since the devices were usually aimed towards trying to commit crimes. You were our best shot at getting home.”

“Speaking of home… you said you visited Caper Canines home?” Started Wendy looking at Dolly.

“Yeah, Dolly is a Dalmatian native to this world, she’s a regular dog… well as regular as a dog that has uncorked magical potential can be anyway. Among the abilities she’s displayed so far, she can control the momentum of anything she’s in contact with and on top of her own, she can create powerful blasts of swirling winds and might be able to generate a tornado. There’s also something she calls ‘flow motion’ which apparently allows her to move efficiently in any environment and might have some other effects.” Thinking about it, I considered how Pom’s wool didn’t start burning until Dolly lost consciousness from exhaustion and at that point Pom exploded herself with a near perfect replication or rendition of a longma based attack according to Smolder.

“Okay, Dolly being able to run on the ceiling makes sense now.” Wower said while clapping her hands together.

“Really, how does something like that make sense?!” Well Abigail, when you came from a world where magic was a constant, it doesn’t bother me that magic is explainable a given degree.

“Well when she can control momentum it stands to reason she can center her momentum towards the nearest surface as long as she’s moving and I also surmise she can’t fly because she can’t perfectly counteract gravity. That means she’s still following physics because of weight and mass, with enough forward momentum it’s like slinging a bucket full of water around fast enough or driving a car along a wall. I could probably create a belt that would allow me to do something similar…” Huh, that would be interest Dr. Wower, magic being replicated through technology wasn’t impossible. It just wasn’t possible on Equus, here technology is already magical enough to me. “I’d rather stick to teaching than invent cool stuff though. Maybe a rocket belt though so I can fly to work...”

“Hey bolt can you recharge my phone real quick, I want to call mom.” Penny held out the device and bolt took it in his mouth, after a second he lifted his head back up and she took. “Thanks.”

“Did you just use your dog to recharge your cell phone?” Asked Abigail, as her sanity seemed to be slipping somewhat from one too many revelations.

“Well he has the ability to do so. I feed him, care for him and basically raised him, I don’t see why he can’t do me a small favor every now then.” Bolt barked in agreement as Penny used her device.

“Anyway… so you won’t help us with a dimensional portal Ms. Callaghan?” My answer was Abigail looking away.

“She might not help you, but I will still try!” At least Dr. Wower was on board with assisting us. “Always wanted to see other worlds, dimensional technology would be far faster than our slow space traveling industry. I think the most space capable travel we even have is from McDuck’s space program.”

“So we didn’t come here for nothing… we might want to get both of you out of here and somewhere safer.” When I was about to be asked why, I stopped them since I felt decidedly aggressive emotions incoming. “We need to leave, now!”

“Out the back door.” Commanded Gogo as she appeared suited up.

218. Efficiently Evaded Enemies.

-Equus, Ponyville, Gallus-

“The armor is a bit heavy.” I commented lightly.

“That’s the training armor, the actual armor is heavier, remember that this has been specially made for your build.” Yeah, no wonder some people still call you ‘Tempest’ Fizzle, you’re quite the hard flank. “In any case I asked for a professional who knows how to fight in armor and she was already in Canterlot.”

“Which pegasus?” Because it only had to be a pony that would be teaching me.

“Who said anything about a pegasus young warrior? Though one is my ancestor given how my race was born.” A half dragon, half pony hybrid appeared, what were they called again? Longma, I believe. She walked up to me with four puppies in tow. “I am Tianhuo, I will be your instructor in how to deal with armor while in flight. These puppies will be your training aid.”

“Really? They don’t look like much.” One puppy apparently took umbrage with that as he reared up and then went to hit my chest with his forehead lightly. I probably shouldn’t have let him or thought nothing of it, for a second later I found myself fifty feet away on my back wondering what just happened with bruised ribs.

“I should warn you, the love of my life raised these puppies. They are fierce warriors in their own right, as such Canis Minor are not to be underestimated and you will be learning about them as part of your training.” Said Tianhuo looking down at me on my back, making me wonder how hard I had been hit. “They will be helping you learn to dodge and this will be helping them learn to judge when to attack. Ruff especially needs remedial courses being the most aggressive of them, Tuft, Puff and Woof are far less reckless.”

One of the four puppies covered its head as it whimpered when Tianhuo glanced at him, the other three nuzzled him and I had a feeling this was going to be Tartarus and a half. I’d at least be a better guard than most, because Tempest was taking my training seriously.

-Earth, San Fransokyo, Ocellus-

Getting out the back door in an orderly manner, easy. Getting down the street without being attacked, also as easy. Which earned me a look from Wheel Cat.

“Okay, when you said you felt ill intent coming…” Wheel Cat started to say to me as we took cover in an alleyway, I held up a hoof and then pointed upwards. “What the… how did you detect that coming, it looks like a stealth hovercraft.”

One the hovercraft in question were two people and they headed towards Dr. Wower’s residence.

“I suggest we start moving.” I stated calmly as I was in my wingless dragon form.

“How did you know they were coming?” Abigail asked curiously.

“Not only am I a shapeshifter, I’m also able to read emotions with a fair amount of accuracy and distance away.” I stated plainly as I moved by her and down the other end of the alleyway. “Please don’t panic, get angry or create a massive amount of malice in our general area. We have several more people of ill intent like that on the way and I’m the best option for avoiding any… complications… where should we be heading Wheel Cat? I don’t want to lead anyone back to Leap Lamb in her condition.”

“Good question, I would say we should head to BaseMax, but that’d be giving away our secret headquarters. Even if it is the safest place I can think of for this situation. Give me a second, I’ll contact my team members.” Wheel Cat reached up to her helmet. “Hey guys, we’ve got a problem here…. I’m with Wower and Callaghan. No… the nicer one, Abigail Callaghan. Are any of you free this morning? It seems like problems are actively seeking out Wower, Abigail or maybe even the once upon a time actor Penny Forrester… yes Fred-zilla, the same one from the Bolt show. Also Bolt the dog from the show apparently has super powers. Yes Plasma Paladin, you apparently owe Zilla money now, can we move on please? Look I’m with two members of Leap Lamb’s team, Oracle Ocellus and Caper Canine in an alleyway, can I get some SAT help here and can we identify targets of interest in the city?”

“I feel more people with ill intent than the two in the hovercraft.” I stated as more people were on my radar. “All of them heading towards Wower’s home.”

“Any ideas why people might be after any of you?” Wheel Cat asked as she looked to the three suspects of what was looking like an oncoming headache.

“Well it was recently revealed that I’m a robotics expert, you and the rest of Big Hero Six recently outed my old friend stole my work and took it as his own. He recently owned up to the fact that he was a liar and they might be after me for my knowledge.” Dr. Wower stated, before looking about and adding. “Well at least my old friend has come clean about it, but he really shouldn’t have stolen my work in the first place. Still… it’s because he stole my work that I found my passion for teaching, so I can’t really be angry at him.”

“They might be after me because someone talked about me working a normal job, they might be after me for my portal technology knowledge. There could be any number of reasons to kidnap a scientist you know.” Also as good a guess as we have Abigail. “I’ve been trying to lay low and not be seen in public too much, but there’s not much else I know that would have someone hunt me down. I may be brilliant in my fields of science, but it’s kind of hard finding a job where people are not going to ask questions about my father being a super villain. At least my father is doing his time in jail quietly.”

“We’re still making royalties on reruns of our show, but I don’t think I’m actually a target here because of that. Unless Bolt and I try to help out we’re likely to be ignored.” Penny stated as Bolt stood protectively next to her and his mouth was sparking every once in a while.

“There’s also the other thing people could be after, they could be after Leap Lamb because right now a sneeze in the wrong direction could kill her and someone might have recognized Caper Canine.” I didn’t like having to state that, neither did Dolly who whined at me and had an angry look in her eyes.

“All possibilities…” Wheel Cat stated. “Okay information coming in from Skymax spy systems… my cousin Shego and her employer Dr. Drakken? That bastard Motor Ed… the guy tried to jack my technology once, I showed him to not mess with Wheel Cat. Not the most threatening guy, but he can still be up there with his whole gang. Professor Dementor… ah, crap… too many. Guys Code: Mad Science! Let me repeat and add on to that, CODE: MAD SCIENCE and OUTSIDERS! All Big Hero Six needed, find your excuses and get suited up guys! I’m going to try and find a way to safely hide the two possible targets of interest… which requires us crossing the city. Because of course it does… who’s closest to aiding? No, I can’t run intercept, someone would have to guide them to BaseMax or we’d have them wandering around randomly with so many aggressors around.”

“What exactly is a code mad science?” It sounded bad from what I’m guessing.

“It’s where a bunch of villains who run around taking science far beyond the safety limit to the point of absurdity. Outsiders is when the villains are not native to the region.” Informed Wheel Cat as she looked out the other end of the alleyway. “Okay let’s move, slowly, we’re trying not to draw attention here. The closest support we have is Plasma Paladin, since our Bunny Battle Bus can’t move as that will endanger Leap Lamb. Next is… ugh… Mini-Max. We’ll take what we can get, send Mini-Max to assist us and have Plasma Paladin intercept trouble. How well can any of you guys fight?”

“I can handle unarmored targets easily enough, I’m not exactly comfortable with hitting armored targets, but I have maybe a quarter to half the strength of a real dragon in this form. I can also shape shift to fight a variety of things. I’m impossible to poison and I’m far better at stealth than getting into a straight up fight. I can’t do much more than take hits and brawl.” I motioned to Dolly. “Caper Canine is still recovering from the injuries gained during the Saint Canard Crisis and she’s best suited for distractions, not any direct confrontations without her gear. Pom trained her a bit, so I’d imagine she’d still be quite scrappy in a fight even if she doesn’t have her helmet or board.”

Dolly barked something with her head held high while looking ready to get into a fight, she also motioned to me and the leash I was still holding. I gave the leash to her and she tested it with both paws before nodding to me and wrapping the leash around her neck like a coil of rope.

“Bolt can hit things at a distance pretty well with his lighting spit, he’s plenty fast and strong too. I wouldn’t put him up against anything with heavy armor or capable of shooting bullets. I’m still kind of testing the limits of what Bolt can do now. I’ve been learning some karate, but I’m not much for competitive fighting.” Penny, I think I would be speaking for all of us here when I saw we would prefer it if you didn’t get too deeply involved in this. “If I had my two other pets they can coordinate their powers between them, but they are currently relaxing back at the hotel. If they see us in danger they could come flying to help.”

“Better you go by yourself and continue being unassuming target instead of getting mixed up in this kid. This is like the mercenaries all over again, but in broad daylight!” Something swooped down from above, but I hadn’t felt it coming until it got close. It had very bright emotions, but they were hard to feel because the thing was breezy sized.

“I have come to your aid Wheel Cat, experience the Mini-Maximum Power of Mini-Max!” The little robot in a blue armor stated, it looked like a sidekick fairy character of a story to me.

“I would like to state up front that we’re scientists, not fighters.” Abigail stated flatly her ears folding back. “Still, I can bite someone, but that’s about it. I could try to pass as a normal animal fox, but my appearance is kind of well-known by too many people for me to pull that off.”

“I’d rather not bite someone, I don’t like the idea of hurting people.” Dr. Wower followed up. “Also what would kids think if they saw me fighting anyone? Nope, I can’t in good conscience do any fighting… sorry.”

“Okay, here’s what we will do, I’ll try to draw attention by attacking the criminals nearest to us and try to lead them off, to that end I’ll coordinate with Mini-Max here and he’ll try to lead you safety.” Crouching down, Wheel Cat looked Penny in the eyes. “Penny, you take Bolt and get to safety. Don’t try to be a hero, no one is likely out to get you personally. That will change very quickly if you get involved, because people might start coming after you if they find out Bolt actually has super powers. Keep that under wraps and get to safety.”

“You could all come to my hotel room, its closer and it wouldn’t be giving your base away if it’s across the city like you say it is.” Feeling what Penny was currently, she was quite brave for someone around my age and not going to drop this and look the other way. This world had plenty of heroes at least.

“Fine, tell Mini-Max where your hotel is and he’ll try to get you there if getting to Basemax is going to be too much of a hassle. If your hotel room becomes compromised and super villains start coming after you, that’s going to be on you kid.” Wheel Cat, leaned out of the alleyway. “Now if you’ll excuse me…”

-Wheel Cat-

I slung a disc and it slammed into the yappy looking blue colored Chihuahua guy’s head knocking him for a loop.

“Hey, looking for something!” I shouted waving my arms. “Hey Shego, still a thief I take it!”

“Shego, that hero just hit me!” He paused for a second and considered my words. “Also, how do you know her?!”

“She beaten Motor Ed’s entire gang by herself once, wouldn’t surprise me if Motor Ed was knocking around somewhere in the city. I have a good head for knowing when living migraines are around.” The pale green furred feline with long black hair stated as she came out of Dr. Wower’s house through the front door with a sly gate before igniting her hands. She fired a blast at me and I blocked it with one of my disc. “Also Wheel Cat is my cousin. Don’t know how you could have known we were coming for them, but where’s Dr. Wower and Callaghan? Dr. Drakken here wants to kidnap at least one of them, I prefer just stealing technology directly. Cuts out having to threaten someone into build something correctly and not liable to fall apart and take down a whole villain lair in an instant. The time shares are horrible on those things let me tell you.”

“Do you really expect me to tell you where they are?” I crossed my arms and stood tall.

“Come on Shego, it was a good plan!” Dr. Drakken stated while waving his hands in the air wildly.

“To give you an idea of what his last genius plan was, do the words animate gingerbread men bring to mind a world conquering plan that would actually pan out?” Shego grumbled as she gestured scathingly at her employer.

“Not in the slightest.” We grinned and chuckled at one another, then I darted to the side as several blasts went through the space I used to occupy.

-Ocellus-

“Motor Ed has passed us.” Mini-Max reported as he flew back to us and Penny then started leading us forward, two more alleyways and few odd stares from people on the street, I felt incoming danger at the end of the third one.

“Hold!” I stated loudly as Penny stopped and we waited. My ability to sense ill intentions was pretty high since I’ve know what malice feels like in enormous doses. I crept forward and looked out into the street.

“For the great demon Beelzebug has sent us back in time to terminate, we will find Leap Lamb and have our revenge with igniting passions!” Several biped size insectoid beings shouted as they charged down the street, then something exploded in a fiery mess.

It felt like no one died, but I really didn’t feel like dealing with bug based cultists at this moment and we carried on.

“Ah man, why do I always get the weird cases?!” I heard a shout drawing my attention down the street to a guy in green armor fighting the bug bipeds, I saw wires and machinery sticking out of them as the guy fought them off. “Oh thank goodness, they’re robots!”

“This city is weird, but then so were Saint Canard and Duckberg… I wonder what would have happened if we actually decided to stop in Spoonerville for a day?” Those bug bipeds felt really off, further than just being robots, like there was something highly unnatural about them. In any case if we had taken a stop in Spoonerville then we would have arrived to find out that Dr. Wower and Abigail were successfully kidnapped. “Okay, let’s go.”

We ignored the robotic bug cultist guys nearby that somehow knew Pom was in this city and quietly ran forwards along with a crowd of panicking people, the hotel was down two more streets from us.

“Quick question, does your emotional sense work on robots?” Strange question to bring up Abigail, but I had a response.

“If the machine is living in some capacity then yes, but if it’s absolutely soulless then no.” I stopped and looked back at her as we ducked out of the crowd into an alleyway. “Why do you ask?”

“I saw a red robot hopping around on the rooftops high above us, it looked like it was searching for something… maybe us.” Okay, so aside from shock Abigail was now experiencing fear and trepidation. Just as long as she kept herself together enough for us to get us to safety, we’ll be fine.

I took a few steps back and looked the way we came and saw a large red bipedal robot with a single eye and its design was decidedly aggressive looking with some kind of theme to it, its feet were two talon toes and a jutting heel, its arms ended in three claws, one thumb and two digits. It was standing on top of the building and looking around at the panicking crowds.

Quickly backing away, I turned back to everyone.

“No that robot doesn’t have emotions for me to sense. I don’t know who made that, but I don’t want to be around to find out if it’s trying to track us.” Not knowing what that machine was capable of, I decided that we should hurry out of the alleyway and put some buildings between us and it. “We need to get to that hotel quickly.”

“It’s down the block that way…” I grabbed Penny by the shoulder before she stepped out onto the street after another alleyway.

“Monkey ninjas, we need to find the artifact quickly before all those other buffoons distract us into a fight we can’t handle!” Said some small beaked bird guy that looked to have monkey limbs. Lots of ill-intentioned weirdoes were out in force today it seemed.

“Okay, now we can go.” I said as the last Monkey ninja disappeared around the corner. We were just outside the hotel when I felt magic akin to teleportation bringing someone into the area.

“Ah, so I have finally found the magic mutt to take my sweet revenge against…” I didn’t know who the magical duck with the staff was, but I wasn’t going to even let her get out a monologue.

“Fire!” I inhaled and spat a tiny fireball. Dolly barked and held out her right paw, it gave off a green pulse that created a small horizontal swirling wind that empowered my small fireball, which was followed by Bolt firing his own blast of magical lightning into the center the conflagration of magic that built up to a frenzy.

The resulting mishmash of raw magical power involved created an electrical firestorm that sent the female duck flying away in a barely holding barrier. Which apparently broke seconds later concerning the shout we heard as a loud pop happened.

“My ribs, and oh badness I’m paralyzed and on fire, WHY?!” The female duck shouted in the distance, none of us cared about that at the moment.

Though I had to wonder. If that duck was paralyzed, how was she still screaming about it?

Dolly clutched at her head, but she had a bright grin on her face. Yeah, that wasn’t exactly smart of her, but it got rid of an immediate magical problem.

“Do I have to remind you to not go overboard with magic at the moment Dolly? Into the hotel everyone, we’ll just lay low in Penny’s hotel room!” Not really wanting to mix magic from two different worlds here in a fight, which could make things worse, I along with everyone else rushed inside and up a flight of stairs in the indoor staircase. “I think… I think we’re finally safe.”

“Come on.” Penny motioned for us to follow. It was tense going up four flights of steps, I felt several emotions worth of ill intent pass by, but none of them came into the hotel thankfully enough. Eventually we made our way to a hotel room and she knocked on it. “It’s us, open the door!”

Bolt barked out something, his emotions were reading to me as having calmed down. The door opened and we weren’t greeted by a biped, but a black cat. Dolly ran forward and hugged her, much to the cats surprise and then Dolly made her way further inside motioning for us to follow.

Bolt scampered inside, followed by Penny, Abigail Callaghan, Dr. Wower and finally me bringing up the rear and closing the door.

“We are now hiding in Mini-Maximum obscurity!” Mini-Max stated in an overblown fashion while pointing a tiny digit at the ceiling and posing in the air. “Big Hero Six will deal with the problems in the city, also Ms. Shuttle says hello.”

“Tell Ms. Shuttle to stay put and hello from me as well.” Today better not get more hectic. “Please note to them that Dolly and I are okay… for the time being.”

-???-

The pair of red eyes continued to watch Pom’s life hang loosely in the balance, it knew what excellent deals it could make to get them to agree. It had the power to actually fulfill those deals too.

The silently watching entity was just biding its time.

-Dolly-

“Glad to see you Mittens!” Never thought I’d hug a cat, but the cat knew why dogs acted the way they do and taught Bolt how to be one and she was a good friend.

At least I didn’t lick her face in greeting, she was still a cat of course.

“Dolly? What the heck are you doing here, where’s Pom?!” Turning from me to Bolt, she gestured at the several people in the hotel room. “Bolty what’s going on here?”

It was nice to see Mittens in better health than when I first saw her dying of starvation in the streets of New York, which was before Pom helped her get back to good health on our cross country trip.

“A lot is going on Mittens, apparently San Fransokyo is actually as chaotic as some people say it is.” Bolt stated before looking back towards the door. “They say it’s not nearly as bad as Duckberg or Saint Canard, but I’ve seen some things in the last thirty minutes.”

“Does this mean we get to fight real villains?” Excitedly exclaimed Rhino stated while bouncing off the floor higher and higher with each bounce.

“Is that hamster bouncing?” Asked Abigail.

Bolt wasn’t the only one to get super powers from a close being in close proximity with Pom, well that’s the only probable explanation that seemed to work.

“No Rhino, we’re still not exactly ready for something like that quite yet.” Bolt caught rhino with a paw and put him down. “We can protect these people though.”

“Good enough for me!” Rhino stated and ran over to his ball. “Rubber Rodent is on the case!”

“Rubber Rodent?” I asked as I turned to Mittens. “What did you get?”

“Flight and can float any object not nailed down at will after contact, also Rhino is basically bullet proof.” With a smug smile Mittens hopped up, then just laid on nothing in mid-air.

“Oh come on, I don’t get flight, I don’t naturally have projectile barking or super resilience. I feel gypped!” Why wouldn’t I. Sure what magical powers I did have were awesome, but they required thinking.

Author's Note

I wonder what the most important part of this page was?

It certainly wasn't Beelzebug sending buggy terminators after Pom, that guy's never important.

Strange one eyed red robot? Probably nothing.

Go 'Go' Tomago being related to Shego. Doesn't sound plot relevant, interesting family dynamic though.

Strange Entity watching Pom? Could surely sound less threatening.

Magica De Spell making a random appearance because she wants to at least get one win, even if it's against a dog. Her ribs will never not be broken at the rate it keeps happening to her in this story, also being paralyzed and set on fire at the same time means she's not very threatening for a sorceress when caught off guard.

Magica really needs momentum to become an actual threat, not giving her a chance to start at all is a good idea on any heroes part.

We've already done ninjas, so monkey ninjas and Monkey Fist might not be plot important. Though their appearance, along with several other villains, appearing in San Fransokyo will have attracted attention of a certain heroine.

Motor Ed? Since when does that guy do anything intelligent beyond biker gang stuff despite the high end technology he puts behind it? Not very evil, just a vehicular technology thief... one that might be after Ms. Shuttle.

Plasma Paladin is of course Wasabi. Like Bazooka Bunny is Honey Lemon. Wheel Cat is Gogo. Mental Magnet is Hiro. Baymax is Baymax. Krei Tech Project: 'Bunny Shuttle' is Ms. Shuttle the Battle Bunny Bus for Big Hero Six.

Bunny Shuttle is the only thing technically made by Krei Tech that didn't go evil or bad at the drop of a hat. She was partially made through the efforts of Big Hero Six and not Krei Tech. So technically Krei Tech still doesn't have the best record for producing things that will not eventually destroy San Fransokyo... "'by accident'" air quotes.

Also I'm not sure Dolly appreciates the power of what's in her heart nearly enough. Considering all her powers synergize not only with themselves, but also with what other people are capable of. The major limiting factors of her combat abilities are her small animal body and how much magic she can actively use at any given time before her MP meter runs dry and causes mental distress issues, she just really needs to work on her magic capacity. How else is she ever going to get to Aeroga levels of destruction?

As for projectile barking, Dolly needs Pom to actively lend her some strength through their bond to do something like that. Without Pom being awake, Dolly can't actually do any of Pom's moves herself.

219. Here Comes Heroes.

-Inside Ms. Shuttle somewhere in San Fransokyo, Shanty-

“Shock.” Ms. Shuttle announced and the slow beeping continued afterwards.

Both Dormarch and I be sighing with relief, Dormarch not be letting his eyes off of Pom for even a moment. He be looking restless and I be hearing he be calling Pom his mother.

I moved over to him and put my hooves around him carefully, he stiffened then relaxed as I held him close.

“Why do I think that things are only going to get worse in the city?” Looking away from the near corpse that was Pom, I tried to think of happier thoughts. Like what will come from the metal egg of my familiar Dodo, would he even be remembering me?

“With our collective luck so far and how bad off we all happen to be currently Shanty, do you really even need to ask?” Grumbled Smolder from where she laying. “I’ve been stuck with my spine splinted for days, but you don’t hear me complaining about it constantly.”

“We, personally, will be avoiding all unnecessary fighting unless the situation requires it. By that I mean I will provide artillery support and that’s about it.” Ms. Shuttle be showing us the situation by way of something called SAT on a map of the city. “You can help me by monitoring the situation, also I ask that all of you please take care of your own health. Remember to eat, drink and use the restroom.”

I still be hurting, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have it in me to put up a scrap if it came down to it. I would only be doing so if we were found, for once I didn’t feel like fighting and knew that fighting would be a bad thing this close to Pom as she was.

After Dodo’s close call, that I can even still feel bits of his personality as being intact was a miracle, I really didn’t want to be almost losing anyone else.

Pom was strong, she had to pull through after willingly giving her all for us and others. I was quite willing to do the same for her.

Thankfully I couldn’t do Shock Ram, but seeing her like this again brought back some painful memories of weeks of not knowing if she would ever wake up.

-Skies of San Fransokyo, Hiro-

“Hero, what does SAT see about unknown red robot seen near our position?” Quietly asked Mini-Max, it was worrying when one of your sub members was quiet and not blasting the normal overblown heroic confidence we’ve come to associate him with. He was actually a good sidekick and recon unit for our team. “I have one image as Oracle Ocellus went back to see it and I followed her. Abigail noticed it on the rooftops and what I want to know is if there is more than one, so that we can minimize our interactions with them optimally to the max.”

I decided to humor him and looked it up on my visor… that…

The number of red blips throughout all of San Fransokyo was not a good sign, at least none of them were near Bunny Shuttle.

“There are more than a hundred of them in the city, all skulking around on rooftops, alleyways or hiding in corners or odd place and seem to be looking for something.” I answered after looking over the data of how they were spread out around the city in a grid pattern. Thankfully SAT was giving us knowledge of their appearances across the city and they were hiding all over the place.

“All the red robots seem to be primarily made up of an abnormal materials… some of which are not found on this planet. The materials are not magnetic, they appear to have readings synonymous with weaponry based on energy within their arms.” Paling in thought at Baymax’s words. This wasn’t just the random villain invasion, we were also being invaded by a number of unknowns on top of many knowns. This might become another Saint Canard Crisis, we didn’t have the numbers to deal with all of this at once, even with Globby possibly being able to handle at least one of the problems. At best we were going to be mitigating the damage. The main question was, how did someone get that many robots in the city without anyone noticing their movements before now? “They seem to be doing nothing at the moment, but the spread of their placement indicates they are searching for something or someone within the city.”

“Well keep them in mind Baymax, we vaguely know what they are capable of and we don’t know when they will start attacking or what their target is.” Though if most of this was centered on Abigail, Wower or any number of other people, then we were going to be busy today. “Be advised guys, be wary of red robots hiding around the city. They are not active yet, but there are enough of them that they could turn hostile any second, so sneak attacks are likely to happen if you aren’t paying attention. They are unknown force and there are literal hundreds of them staying out of sight for the time being throughout the city. SAT is at least picking them up and marking their movements on your HUDs.”

“Guys, I don’t know how, but these robot bug cultist guys know Leap Lamb is around, they keep shouting about the greatness of some guy call Beelzebug... also they seem to catch fire and explode a lot. Otherwise they seem somewhat harmless despite trying to attack me, apparently they keep saying time travel is involved or something? ” Wasabi didn’t sound panicked, but he sounded concerned. “They really aren’t that dangerous now that I’m really paying attention, they are doing more damage to themselves trying to attack me really… I think I’ve got this handled, but they won’t stop saying ‘thousands of years ago’ and keep trying to convince my turkeys should be robots. Is it me or do I always get the weird ones? Also one of them just said something about Fred being their ultimate destruction and they need to stop Leap Lamb from telling him something… I can’t make this stuff up man!”

“You think that’s weird, I’m in the middle of fighting my cousin Shego who’s a world renowned thief…” Stated Gogo blandly as I heard a grunt of pain. “I might have to withdraw and find a different target to deal with since I’ve distracted them from Dr. Wower and Abigail long enough, also thanks for the heads up about the robots Hiro. As if knowing my cousin and her employer are around isn’t enough paranoia fuel considering the kind of mad science that happens around Dr. Drakken.”

“Be advised Motor Ed sighted, you handled his gang before, so you can switch to them if…” I started to say.

“Where, I’ll be on him immediately!” Gogo really didn’t like Motor Ed trying to steal her technology, the fact that she managed to beat his entire crew of six trucks and more than twenty people without her costume and just a tire iron said a lot about how scary Gogo could get when she really got going. That she did it by herself was even more impressive, it probably comes with the fact that Gogo works as a mechanic in her spare time. “Sorry cousin, but I hear Motor Ed is around and he’s on my ‘beat the tar out of’ list.”

“That might actually be worth seeing.” I heard a feminine voice say from Gogo’s feed.

“He’s mostly cruising the city west side around Krei Tech, we do not want another Krei Tech problem in the middle of this! We all know his MO is vehicular technology based thefts, all yours Gogo. Hey Fred, want to swap villains with me? Professor Dementor is getting annoying about his back story.” Bazooka Bunny’s tone went from peppy to whining pretty quickly. “He and his guys are not really difficult, haven’t even needed to bust out the big bunny, it’s just that he won’t stop with the monologue about it how his sister keeps causing him trouble and his mother drove him to villainy!”

“Can’t, too busy fighting ninja monkeys… aw, they got cute little swords.” Sounded like Fred-zilla was busy for the time being. “Ahhh they’re stabbing me, NEED TO FOCUS!”

“Hiro, we have another problem, apparently Baron Von Steamer is currently getting into a super villain fight with a Professor Norton Nimnul. The damage to the city where they are is escalating.” I don’t think Globby was going to help us here even if he could get ‘maybe’ one villain and we certainly didn’t have enough heroes to go around. We wouldn’t be getting any help from Saint Canard after what happened the day before yesterday. “Are they both fighting one another with machines?”

“Yes.” Baymax answered.

“We’ll focus on them then, but if the red robots start attacking or show any unusual signs of activity then notify me immediately Baymax, you too Mini-Max. Also stick with Leap Lambs team members Mini-Max, you’re to assist them to the best of your abilities.” Baymax swooped down and we saw what Baron Von Steamer the steam machine maker and Norton Nimnul world renowned crackpot ‘insanity plea’ scientist were fighting with. “This… is going to be a rough day, we might even have to ask for Globby’s help.”

“While you’re doing that I’ll deal with Drakken or at the very least Shego, no thief is coming onto my turf without answering to me!” Momakase, how did she get on our communications network?! At least she seemed willing to help. “Just giving you a heads up of what I’m doing hero.”

-Momakase-

I threw my knife as soon as Wheel Cat was clear of the last plasma blast from her cousin Shego and I swung down to land on the ground.

I silently checked my numerous knives with my movements and looked to Shego.

“You’re on my turf.” I stated as I stalked forward, I was still a thief even if I was trying to keep my nose clean.

“Then kick me off it!” Shego stated with a grin.

Wheel Cat had put up one heck of a fight, but Shego was still hungry for more as her cousin went to hunt down Motor Ed.

“Come on Shego, we need to go!” Dr. Drakken tried.

“No can do Dr. D, you know what my contract says about thief fights.” Shego’s hands lit with a glow as I took up my dodged knife and pulled out my main blade. “Besides, I’ve always wanted to see if Momakase was really good or was just all talk.”

-Elsewhere, ???-

“Guys, big trouble!” One shadow figure shouted as he hit an alarm on their base attracting everyone’s attention.

“What is it, it better not be a false…” One of the five other shadows that swiftly arrived started to say, it was a female shadow with goggles. She looked at the screen that youngest among them was watching.

“Hunter Drones in San Fransokyo, also there’s another mass villain outbreak. Unlike Saint Canard they don’t have enough heroes to deal with that many issues, they won’t be getting much timely backup.” A really large shadow stated pointing at the screen of the various things going on in San Fransokyo. He sounded calm and wise. “They need our help.”

“Why are those Hunter Drones skulking around San Fransokyo though?” The other more lithe female shadow asked with a concerned voice.

“I’ll tell you why.” A tall and suave looking male shadow stated. “You ever hear of the ‘Yokai’ portal incident? Abigail Callaghan was saved from the experimentation of portal technology years after the fact of what was an accident that was thought to have killed her. She didn’t age a day or so some say, she’s been laying low ever since. If she’s capable of creating portal technology with the need for less aggressive unusual power sources that can tear holes in the dimensional boundaries…”

After trailing off, all of the shadows shivered and turned to their leader.

“This situation definitely involves us, ready the Aerowing and load up the Migrator!” The armored shadow stated with a glowing mask. “Grab whatever gear you can in five, this is an emergency and those heroes won’t know what’s awaiting them if those Hunter Drones decide to start tearing apart the city to find their target! We need to prevent the capture of this Abigail Callaghan and get there like yesterday!”

With that they were all scrambling to get ready for a fight.

They were six crime fighting vigilante heroes, each embodying an element of harmony in their own ways.

After running about and they were ready in less than two and a half minutes, then they were on their way to San Fransokyo loaded for a long fight.

-San Fransokyo Hotel, Penny Forrester’s room, Dolly-

“Ugh, really, dim vole is here!?” At least he wasn’t currently my problem. “Big Hero Six are getting hammered out there...”

I paced around, despite my bandages pulling at my cuts and irritating me further than I currently was knowing that the animal hating squinty glasses guy was around. At least he was fighting that evil looking steam punk guy and not any actual heroes.

“They are doing pretty well, considering they are outnumbered and are practically like a turtle stuck on their backs being surrounded by vultures.” Not going to lie Mittens, that was a pretty good read on the situation. “At least they don’t have to get stuck in, they can retreat easily enough. That would just be letting most of the villains invading the city win though. Might not be a bad idea to let some of them go about their business as the fighting is causing a lot of property damage.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t help that Magica is around trying to attack me, if she’s here then Phantom Blot can’t be too far behind her either and that guy would be bad news for you guys too.” What could we do? Not many great options here, if I get into the fighting I’d be exposing the fact that Pom was in San Fransokyo again to anyone that recognized me. A Dalmatian doing a bunch of weird things would be kind of highly noticeable considering I am Pom’s primary sidekick. Also I don’t know how many of the mercenaries were actually caught the last time we were here. Out of one crisis and after basically twenty four hours, straight into the next back to back from pan directly into a fire. It’s a good thing Dalmatians can handle the heat pretty well, but still... “If you see completely black cloaked guy with glowing eyes aiming a golden gauntlet thing at you, dodge, he’ll try to drain your powers right out of you.”

Something about this hotel seemed fairly familiar… oh dog, is this the same hotel where Pom and I slept on the elevator?!

Small world, there was a decent escape route now.

-Ocellus-

Dolly was anxious, but she was also wanting to get out there, when she saw that Professor Nimnul guy she even growled a bit in recognition. She was conversing with the animals about who knows what, but I knew she was taking this situation seriously.

“Things… are not going so well out there are they?” Penny asked slowly, she was trying to remain calm and was doing a good job of it.

The Power Pets, Penny’s name for the super powered trio of animals possibly infected with Equus friendship magic, looked raring to defend everyone here alongside Dolly. We were not currently under threat though, everyone the streets were in more danger than we were at the moment.

“Well do you have any ideas as to what we can do to help? While I could go out there I don’t want to, Dolly shouldn’t go out there and staying put is in our best interests.” I had to keep everyone grounded on the idea that, no, we weren’t going to rush out and start doing heroics. Pom would only do so if people’s lives were endangered, but we were not Pom and I would like to think I had better common sense and more intact self-preservation instincts. “Unless you know heroes that can help out. We’re not going to do absolutely anything to draw attention to ourselves.”

“Information from an anonymous source… watch out for red robots, they are confirmed to be after Ms. Callaghan. Trying to maximize potential source of the information by trace.” Mini-Max paused and looked about. “I cannot seem to trace it back to whoever sent it, but it states that Big Hero Six should keep Abigail Callaghan protected at all costs or else the world is doomed.”

“Why did I ever invent teleportation technology?” Lamented Abigail as she covered her nose with her paws.

“Hey you just wanted to help make the world a better place, even If you originally planned it for package deliveries only and not actual live people.” Wower crouched down and cuddled her companion and friend. “Though live people being able to teleport would have been awesome, no jet lag from commercial flights for one!”

“Admittedly that was one of the reasons I created teleportation technology… I don’t like flying.” Whined Abigail as she curled up on the couch putting her nose under her big fluffy tail.

“I might have an idea, there is a hero anyone can call at any time, provided they can interest her and her companions enough to show up. She’s almost willing to take any case and will do just about anything if it’s in the name of making the world a better place.” With that Penny went to the computer she turned on to watch what was going on around us, she eventually came up to a site with the name ‘Kim Possible’ showing a cheerleader biped fox.

“A cheerleader?” Well cheerleading was fun, but how would she help.

“She’s more than a cheerleader, some of the villains currently in San Fransokyo are the ones she tends to fight with alarming regularity.” Penny stated as she sent a message. “She’s a really good hero, she also has a funny sidekick and an intelligent mole rat named Rufus.”

-???-

“Do-de-do-do~.” Came the sound from a girls pants, she pulled out how her communicator.

“What is it Wade?” The biped red headed fox known as Kim Possible stated.

“Kim, we’re getting hits from the west coast. You might not have been able to show up for the Saint Canard Crisis due to the communications blackout, but there are a lot of people asking for help in San Fransokyo. A number of your villains are present, but I don’t think you ever faced anyone quite like Professor Nimnul or Baron Von Steamer before. Shego and Dr. Drakken are present, along with Monkey Fist to name a few…” Wade, a large heavyset bird, didn’t get much farther.

“Where’s my ride and how soon can we get there to help out the local defenders?” It didn’t take long before Kim, her best friend Ron and their little buddy Rufus were on their way to assist San Fransokyo with a villain problem. She hoped Big Hero Six were as good as some people said they were. Individually they didn’t sound as great, but together they were a better team than even ‘Team Go’ was.

“Sending you pick up information, though I’m still wondering how we’re getting such high level transportation for you helping a pregnant horse. Anyway, you are going to need to find and protect Abigail Callaghan. Someone has sent a message that she’s being sought out for her teleportation technology knowledge.” Wade paused before adding. “Apparently Penny Forrester states that they received a message that there’s world ending consequences involved if she is captured. Be on the lookout for red robots among the many villains. Big Hero Six are doing surprisingly well individually. In Particular Wheel Cat and Fredzilla are dealing with Monkey Fist and Motor Ed quite well from what people are seeing.”

“Maybe I won’t have to actually use mystical monkey mojo this time?” Stated Kim’s best friend Ron Stoppable as he arrived, he was a lanky biped ferret who was shivering slightly at the thought and he had Rufus the mole rat sitting on his shoulder.

-Penny’s Hotel Room, Ocellus-

Estimate Time of Arrival, twenty minutes. Wow, that fast?

“How accurate would that be?” There was some skepticism from me, given the distance they would be traveling.

“Pretty accurate, Kim has a lot of help getting around.” Penny stated, she also sent Wade some extra knowledge about the team currently protecting Abigail, her Power Pets.

She also made vague mention that some Team Leap Lamb members were on site, but she couldn’t tell Wade who they were because Leap Lamb was in critical health condition and asked if there was any help he could give in keeping any assassins from targeting her.

Pom needed everything we could give her so that she would have a chance to live.

-Load house, Wade Load-

“Huh, more information, apparently we have the person who warned about the robots as the head of her own small hero team acting as bodyguards for Abigail Callaghan at the moment. You might want to look into that when you arrive.” She sent me a cute pic of four animals, two of them were familiar for some reason… I forwarded that to Kim.

“Can you confirm any of this information Wade?” Already enroute, Kim was being kept up date on the situation in San Fransokyo by me. Dr. Drakken and Shego were both still in the area despite having fought with Wheel Cat for a short while, they were currently being distracted by the sharp bladed thief Momakase. They didn’t seem to be leaving it in a quick manner at all considering Shego seemed to be enjoying herself.

“Why does the name Penny Forrester sound familiar?” Ron asked.

“Hold on… child actor of the popular Bolt the Super Dog show, quit after a fire on the set nearly took her life and her agent tried to use it as publicity. Her dog Bolt apparently ended up being accidentally shipped to New York beforehand. Leap Lamb was apparently rumored or vaguely spotted crossing the country with Bolt in tow back to Hollywood in time to help save several people that were working on the set with Caper Canine when it went up in flame, while Bolt personally rescue his owner’s life. Apparently Leap Lamb went through some major trouble with getting the star of the show back to his owner alive and well.” While there was a connection to Leap Lamb, I didn’t think… wait… the Dalmatian… was that Caper Canine in the pic without her gear?! Okay, I think I can confirm this as legit to Kim. “Can confirm Abigail’s possible location, one of her bodyguards is Caper Canine.”

“Always wanted to meet the world’s most popular skateboarding dog.” Ron stated pleasantly. “Also Rufus has some monkey mojo too you know, so mystically empowered animals are not impossible.”

“Coo pup, yeah!” Rufus stated in a childish manner before hopping and taking a fighting stance. I still wondered about Rufus being able to verbalize some words, that he was doing it before he got some mystical monkey power was something of note. “Monkey mojo, hiyah!”

“Focus Ron, we’re going to be hitting the ground running, if we have time we can try to get to know Caper Canine afterwards.” Kim never had to tell Rufus that, he was always on top of everything for being so small. Rufus generally stayed out of trouble.

-Ocellus-

I was actually considering taking action, but could I actually fake being Abigail Callaghan well enough though?

I have a ridiculous plan!

Author's Note

Ocellus... no... bad bug pony shape shifter! Don't you do it! Your the only fully healthy original member left of the Lost Equus Group. (LEG)

I'm actually waffling on whether or not to get Teamo Supremo involved... not likely, because their villains aren't exactly great examples of competent when they lose to children.

Well two children and a possible alien kid that somehow ended up accidentally being adopted into a human family and became absolutely aware of that fact to the point he keeps pointing it out to the humans that are raising him.

-Lore: Shapeshifters-

There has been various villains in several Disney series that have shape shifters, basically I will be naming three different villains with relatively unoriginal names that sound too much alike are noted for likely existing in the world I have presented to you.

Also adding a few other shape shifters to a list to give examples of what I've seen...

Camille Leon-(Kim Possible)

Chameleon-(Mighty Ducks)

Shapeshifting with actual changes in mass and some changes to strength.

Camille Chameleon-(Darkwing Duck)

Can we please get away from chameleons as a shape shifters standard name?

Shape Shifter Monster-(Gravity Falls)

Nevermind, far too on the nose.

Madame Snake-(Teamo Supremo)

Changeling level capabilities of shapeshifting. Also makes minor mistakes that outs them in the same manner.

Hades-(Hercules, though most gods can technically do this by their very nature.)

Ursula-(Little Mermaid)

Jafar-(Aladdin)

Probably shouldn't have wanted to become an all powerful genie, because lamps.

Maleficent. (Sleeping Beauty)

The original dragon lady.

Evil Stepmother Queen Grimhilde. (Snow White)

Madam Mim. (Sword In The Stone)

Does shape shifting better than most, now for one not Disney example.

Inque. (Batman Beyond)

Tragic villain type. Cery powerful, but needed a lot of help to hold herself together.

-

There are far too many villains with this same ability, almost copy and pasted 'name' as noted above. Shape shifting has been done a lot naturally, magically or with technology. The theme is usually serpent based or crotchety old person disguise comes up numerous times.

Yet shape shifting is still a rather compelling power for chicanery and leans towards evil.

Why is there never 'any' out and out heroic main or lead protagonists character type shapeshifters without a side of trouble before becoming heroes?

Morph of the X-men is one that I can think of that is a natural heroic shape shifter. He was still far less prominent than Mystique.

There's also Merlin from Sword In The Stone. Sure magic is his main thing, but his shape shifting is powerful enough that he can literally shapeshift into becoming a germ that can actively choose how he makes people sick and what will cure them. What's more, he can possibly replicate or multiple himself while in the form of a virus or germ. This would make him one of the most powerful magic characters to ever exist in media that isn't functionally outright a god.

Honorable mentions go to Rubberband Man, Plastic Man and Clay Face, their powers are not entirely shapeshifting. Each one has issues and or does something heroic or nice things eventually. Clay Face still comes off as a tragic, but ridiculously powerful villain to me.

...

I'm bringing this all up for one reason in these notes.

Ocellus is someone I consider to be one of the nicest shapeshifters to ever have had this ability. Mostly by trying to do things like communicate with Puckwudgies in a less than violent manner (Which was very unsuccessful as she tried to make peace with them... "Gabah gabah! no speak puckwudgie war band!") or to grow gills and swim around with Silver Stream by turning into a sea pony version of herself. (Showing that Changelings do adapt for environments, so they can do things like dragon scales. While it will never be up to the same strength, it can give them a highly temperature resistant body).

A changeling will never be as strong as of the original being they can fully transform into in a direct fight, but since Ocellus figured out how to cheat in a manner approaching to what is basically magical biofeedback... well Ocellus has already done some impressive things, but that was raw power and there were consequences.

At least Ocellus handled herself well enough in Cape Suzette. So what can she actually do with 'subtlety'? Far better than Queen Chrysalis ever would or could I'd imagine, especially when not being worn down to the bone by a massive amount of malice.

Thus we ask this: "What If" Ocellus tried her hoof at what is known as a Xanatos Gambit?

220. Ocellus’s Obfuscation, Part One.

-San Fransokyo Streets, Ocellus-

If someone were to ask me if I was crazy, I might actually say yes. To that end I took up a mission control position with Mini-Max as my connection to everyone.

My first order was that Hiro and Baymax minimize the damage Nimnul and Steamer were doing to their surroundings with their machines. In fact I wanted them to encourage the fighting.

Wheel Cat was fine for taking on Motor Ed, but I added a suggestion that apparently had the cat grinning according to Mini-Max. Sure I was going to endanger myself by having her draw him in our direction, but Gogo was going to be a happy camper in pulling off her part.

I tasked Fred-zilla with finding out what Monkey Fist was after, Big Hero Six had a dossier on villains outside of their usual lineup and that meant that the guy was after some kind of monkey based artifact.

I wanted Fred-zilla to smash and grab whatever that artifact was, then run straight towards our position wherever we happen to be in the moment while playing keep away. With his suit giving him super jumping capabilities, it should be easier said than done as Monkey Fist would have to deal with terrain directly where Fred-zilla wouldn’t. He needed to give me the artifact personally before Motor Ed was drawn to me.

Bazooka Bunny was to slowly draw Dementor’s forces towards the strange robot bug cultists Plasma Paladin was dealing with. Plasma Paladin was to do the same in the opposite direction. I explicitly told Bazooka Bunny to not stick down any more of Dementor’s minions and to allow them to free themselves, I also wanted her to taunt them about the various familial issues Dementor kept bringing up. If she couldn't bring herself to do so, then I gave her a list of things to say that might get Dementor more focused on following her than actually taking her out with his group.

If there were as many red robots in the city as Mini-Max was told about, we would need the minion power Dementor had in the field.

I personally would be heading back out towards Shego and Dr. Drakken for my own personal ploy. To that end, I wanted to be captured by them specifically as Abigail Callaghan. If the red robots do what I think they were going to if Abigail was the target they were searching for as determined by the anonymous message about world shaking consequences, then things would get interesting.

Dolly had commandeered the computer in Penny’s hotel room before we left and typed out something that would help us keep Abigail safe and we already had her evacuated 'downstairs'. Penny’s Power Pets were a wild card and an unknown, they would be Abigail and Wower’s main defense if for any reason someone manages to find out about my subterfuge.

Now all we had to do was bait the trap and set it off and see if all the various factions ‘played nice’ like I thought they would with what little information I had on them.

Big Hero Six was let in on the plan, Team Possible however wasn’t. There was a reason for that and if Kim’s team is as good and smart as Penny says they are for world traversing heroes, then they will pick up on things quickly enough to avoid it.

I was quite tired of villains, they all wanted to make a mess of things? Okay then, let’s see them make a mess when they are forced to be the heroes, sure I had some personal issues with what I was about to put them through… but villains never tend to care about civilians or innocent people. Shego and Momakase seemed like the only decent people out of them morally, but I wouldn’t trust their own morality too much.

There’s also the fact that, while the villains likely knew what Dr. Wower or Abigail looked like, only Wower’s personality was well-known for her educational show. As for Abigail’s personality… hers wasn’t as known by the villains that were possibly after her.

I was going to be abuse that to Tartarus and back.

The only issue is, would the villains actually survive this emotionally? I really didn’t want any of them to die from embarrassment, but they were kind of asking for it. I wasn’t too worried about them physically, they've survived worse right?

There’s also the problem with Magica De Spell and a possible appearance by the Phantom Blot and his rogue FOWL Egghead cell, but I had plans them top. Momakase would hopefully do whatever Kim Possible’s team does. Kim Possible is the backup plan for the rogue elements causing a misstep to one of the most gloriously silly ideas I’ve ever had.

Dolly shouldn’t fight directly, not with her injuries or without her gear. Her only weapon was a leash, but that wouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things if all she needed to do was distract and mislead. The leash was a good enough weapon in her paws.

Pom had utilized Dolly’s cunning before to take down Ammonia Pine’s siege and she has done numerous incredible assists without being prompted by Pom before. All I had to do was get Dolly to put her mind to work on how to aid my plan and let her come up with things to do. I absolutely trusted Dolly like Pom does to figure things out for herself, I was not going to tell her what to do and I would work around whatever she comes up with.

A plan is not stupid if it works and if our friends back on Equus knew what I was about to pull, they’d call me an evil genius and when you give a Changeling the freedom to act however they want with a given form...

I stepped out of the hotel and onto the streets in my cat biped form and sauntered towards Shego, Dr. Drakken and Momakase with Mini-Max at my side and glanced off to the side as Dolly ran off down a different street, looks like she was excited to do something and already had ideas.

Discord… eat your candy coated heart out!

-A few minutes later, Ocellahan-

I exited the alleyway in the form of an animalistic fox and took the most opportune moment to intervene in the clash of absurdly sharp blades and burning green energy slinging hands.

“Oh my god, are you Shego?!” I said in a bright and cheerful manner not befitting of Abigail in the slightest, as long as no one Abigail knew was around to point out how weird she was acting this would all go quite swimmingly. “You were like, the smartest member of Team Go, I’m surprised they didn’t know how brilliant you were! How you’re idiot brothers thought you would accept being forced to be hero I’ll never know.”

Part one ego stroke, positive reaction.

“Uh, excuse me we are…” Cutting off Momakase was easy to do, especially when my remark was scathing.

“Do you not see how her suit accentuates her figure, she’s also got quite lovely hair… I’m surprised that you didn’t even touch her pride while you were fighting her.” Positive reaction again, I had a read on Shego now. Oh this would be entertaining if I survived the robots when they finally spot me, I started cuddling up to Shego. “So she’s just that good and far better than you.”

“Shego, grab her!” Okay that confirmed Dr. Drakken wasn’t picky about whether he wanted Wower or Callaghan, now to dial up the airhead to extremely painful levels. Silver Stream would probably hate me for this if this ever got back to her.

“Grab me? Oh yay, please do!” I leapt at Shego and she looked surprise to catch the fluffy brown animalistic fox in her arms, more so shocked that I was showing her affection. She was totally confused, I licked her on her right cheek with one slow and long deliberate stroke of my tongue. “Are you seeing anyone, you taste divine! Also how do you get your fur to be this soft?”

I pressed my face into the tuft of fur below Shego’s neck while tilting my ears back and closing my eyes, Shego froze up and her emotions were going a mile a minute. Depending on how Shego reacted when she regained her senses, I would continue to manipulate the situation as needed.

…

Huh, so foxes were a slight turn on for her. Good to know and given how often she is said to tease Kim Possible… this is going to be even more fun than I thought.

“Wha…” Shego’s face was turning bright red with a twitching left eye, Momakase was equally put out and confused as she stood there with her arms crossed looking mildly amused.

“Take me back to your lair Shego, I’ll enjoy every second of you…” I looked deeply into her eyes as I trailed off and leaned closer. “When you steal my heart.”

“Gah?!” Shego dropped me like hot molten metal and backed away.

I decided to feign hurtful look, then thoughtful and finally I gave her an outright smoldering look.

“Oh playing hard to get… I know you like the color red or orange more than brown and that you have another girl that can really get your blood pumping. She really challenges you doesn’t she, but can’t you just make a little room just for me?” I sauntered up to her. Ramp up the dramatization like Rarity. “Take me away into the night oh dark princess of the five fingered discount.”

“Dr. D, I… don’t think we should actually kidnap this one.” Oh Shego, you’re reactions were absolutely delicious and priceless.

The blue Chihuahua guy flew the hovercraft down.

“Don’t care, she seems to be quite enamored with you, we can use that…” Dr. Drakken pause and looked thoughtful for a moment. “Wait, did she just imply that you and Kim Possible…”

“Oh no, no-no-no, NO! Do not go there, I’m straight! I just like a good fight is all.” Shego said angrily while lighting her hands and aiming her ire towards her employer, I simply took up position next to her legs and ironically cuddled up to her like a cat.

“Really, and I always thought you were crooked…” I said in a lovingly airy voice, both Dr. Drakken and Shego balked really hard at the brazen pun. “That’s going to disappoint your female fans like Momakase over there. I mean she dresses like she goes to the same stores you do. Also you’re fights with Kim Possible are so popular, your so much like married couple.”

The fact that I was actually getting away with this on limited knowledge…

“I do not and I am not a fan, even if Shego is attractive!” Momakase was in denial and even she knew it, she coughed into her right fist and then actually regained composure. “Though yes, that is slightly disappointing for her female fans, criminal even. Here I thought I was a bad girl, she’s already breaking hearts of every girl worldwide that wouldn’t mind being Mrs. Go.”

Shego looked fairly spooked. I still needed Dr. Drakken to be interested in taking me. Concerning the opening Shego gave me the perfect opening, I was doing the fun ploy and that Momakase even got in on it made it all the sweeter.

“Mini-Maximum Power!” Mini-Max timed his attack on Momakase, he of course missed her entirely on purpose and plowed into the street. That was the signal that the surrounding red robots were gathering around us. “… I appear to have missed. Young stalwart Abigail run, for they are villains!”

“Shego’s not, she’s apparently straight and not crooked.” We were confusing the all three of the people near us.

“Truly?! She is a grand force for justice everywhere then, but alas Kim Possible will be quite saddened to hear you don’t return her affections!” Mini-Max was enjoying playing along and he sent me a wink. “If she is here, then I am not needed to protect you! Mini-Max away!”

He flew up into the sky and out of sight, all eyes slowly fell on Shego.

“Shego… I don’t care if you’re bisexual, please grab the scientist and let’s go.” Dr. Drakken sounded like he was honestly trying to be sensitive.

“Just to be clear, I… hate… all of you!” Grumbled Shego as she reached down and grabbed me up and I cheered happily as she brought me aboard the vehicle. “Hey, don’t make this any weirder than it has to be!”

“I’m cheering because you put my head facing towards your butt, you really do care!” I started sniffling. “Would you like me more if I was male?”

“Yes… no… maybe… Don’t make me intentionally drop you and beat the crap out of Dr. Drakken!” Looking up at Shego glaring down at me, I waggled my eyebrows at her and then slowly moved a paw towards her butt. Here glare intensified as I ever so slowly placed my paw on her butt and then intentionally squeezed it. “That’s it, I’m beating you up Dr. Drakken!”

“Why, what did I do!” Dr. Drakken shouted as Shego jumped towards him and slammed a glowing fist into his face and proceeded to pummel him quite a bit. I was grinning the entire time as I turned a smile back to Momakase.

“You’re making us kidnap one of the most annoying foxes I’ve ever had the misfortune to know!” Shego said pointing at me.

“This is a kidnapping? I swear you’re just taking me because you want a better bed warmer than the Kim Possible body pillow you own, wait… does this mean that you think I’m prettier than her?!” I asked that last thing excitedly with my tail wagging. “Ooh, or maybe you just like all this fluffy fur!”

“I actually just use it as a punching bag… damn it… I just admitted that I have one!” Shego grunted completely flustered, frustrated and was not thinking straight.

“Huh, that was just a shot in the dark, but thanks for confirming that you like foxy ladies Shego!” I giggled as I was enjoying this far too much. I was going to out evil all the villains in short order if things continued as well as this. “Wait until the people on the internet hears about this!”

It wasn’t long after hastily grabbing the controls and taking the hovering vehicle into the air only that Shego had to suddenly jerk the controls to the side as a beam of energy lanced out from the nearby rooftops and multiple red robots were firing at the flying vehicle from the street below as they emerged all over the place.

The back end of the vehicle was struck and it started listing towards the ground.

“So… do I get an in-flight meal?” I said innocently.

“Drakken, the more she annoys me, the worst I will beat the crap out of you… also, you wouldn’t happen to know who owns those weird ro…” The vehicle hit the street and went skidding. Dr. Drakken went flying from the vehicle and slammed into a brick wall. I hissed in slight sympathy.

“Is Mr. Drakken going to be okay?” I asked before hopping out and walking off humming to myself.

“He’ll live, he’s had worse than…” Shego paused and realized I was getting away with a cheerful bounce in my step as beams of energy lanced out at her, she ducked and started throwing blasts of energy at the robots.

They weren’t shooting at me, but they were coming at me pretty fast, one tried to grab me and I darted through its legs. They were relatively tall things making it easy to get pass them and I started running while Shego started to attack them volatilely while chasing after me.

“You wouldn’t be chasing after me if you didn’t find me alluring~.” I stretched out the word ‘alluring’ and Shego shivered and rammed her fist through another red robot in anger and ripped out what passed for its heart from its chest. “Is that heart for me? Aw, you’re so sweet Shego, even when you won’t give me the time of day you’ll give me a cold heartless machines core.”

Shego crushed the metallic heart thing with a single clench and started glowing intensely as she roared and her arms flared with power.

“Whoops got to go, hope things work out between you and Ron Stoppable since you’re not into Kim Possible like that. Ferrets can be wonderful like foxes too you know!” I darted into the nearby alleyway transformed into my normal self and flew up to the roof where Mini-Max waited. Several robots charged down the alley and into the next street.

Having lost me since they didn’t know I can fly, they turned around and went back to help the other robots in attacking an enraged Shego in force.

The evil looking robots were really well built machines, but Shego’s fury was a sight to behold as she dented and slowly started to chew through the armor on their bodies out of raw rage.

“Okay Mini-Max, where are we on the Motor Ed, Monkey Fist front?” I moved away from the edge of the building in case anybody looked up.

“Wheel Cat needs to slow down Motor Ed, but things are going to pace.” Mini-Max saluted. “Dolly is planting evidence of Abigail’s fur we pulled from the Abigail’s brush as we speak so that Shego and Drakken will move where we need them to be. Dolly is using a small, but still noticeable enough amounts to count as shedding, but not enough to think the fur is falling out in clumps.”

“Good… point me in the direction of Nimnul and Steamer fight, then lead Dolly there.” Once the direction was pointed I turned into my dragon form, with wings, then took off in the air with a grin.

-Some minutes later-

I landed next to Hiro and Baymax, Pom made some interesting friends the last time she was in this city.

“Hey there, I’m Ocellus, first time meeting you in person and I want to be polite. So have you managed to keep them angry at one another?” This was important to everything overall, we needed some heavy hitters.

“Yes, I believe we have been quite successful in the phrase… egging them on.” Baymax the large armored balloon paused for a moment and then continue once he thought he had it correct. His emotions were sweet and sugary, he was made of nothing but pure one hundred percent love.

“Good, now to make it worse.” I transformed to look nearly like one of the red robots reportedly dotted throughout the city.

“You can do machines?!” Hiro ‘Mental Magnet’ Hamada asked in confusion.

“Incorrect, she is using a lobster’s segmented carapace and various biological animal part in specific places to give off the illusion of being a robot… it is scarily accurate, but she is still actually biological.” Baymax stated while raising a finger up. “I can tell you what animals she is using in her appearance to replicate the effect. It is rather amazing.”

“Does my voice sound accurately robotic?” I tried to imagine what these robots would sound like if they could talk and added that to my voice. Menacing, slightly deep tone, emotionless and with a hint of malice.

“That’s… actually pretty scary, but why do you need to have a robotic voice?” Hiro, I would grin if I could, but my current plated and metallic looking body wouldn’t allow for it.

“You’re about to see.” I jumped off the roof and a pair of translucent barely visible dragonfly wings lowered me to the ground, hiding the wings in the carapace of the bipedal one eyed lobster monster form I created out of a mishmash of things to recreate what the strange red robots look like.

I stalked out onto the street behind one of the machines, I didn’t know which one was Steamer or Nimnul, but I could guess from the appearance of the two machines. I just had to get their attention and deal damage with the pistol shrimp claw built into my forearm to expel hot air out my palm like an energy blast. Thank you robot shrimp for giving me this idea.

I aimed my palm at the two machines, both were unique, but I was aiming at the clockwork unicorn that was spewing fire from its head and missiles out of its chest. The other was obviously Nimnul some kind of haphazardly built four legged crab robot. Concerning the fact that I saw Dolly setting up something for it specifically and that she seemed to have a personal grudge to settle for that particular mad scientist from her feelings that she knew Nimnul, I chose to damage Steamer’s machine and let Dolly have the other guy.

I tightening the pistol shrimp claw in my forearm as I aimed the palm of my right hand towards the horn on Steamer’s unicorn machine, I opened the claw as wide as it could go and then snapped it. The resulting beam of heat and pressure lanced out and lightly damaged the flame spewing horn.

“What the…” Steamer shouted as his machine stumbled from pilot error.

“Who the… WHOA?!” As Nimnul tried to turn his machine to left to face me the front right leg moved forward pulling the leash wrapped around it and machines right hind leg and it toppled to its right.

-Dolly-

I unwrapped the leash from the mechanical legs and then hopped up onto the machine to blow a kiss from my paw at Nimnul.

“You, Caper Canine, you’re still running about you mutt!” Nimnul was furious to see me and I was only happy to ruin his day, I leapt off and started running behind the machine as Nimnul tried to get it standing. I passed by Ocellus in a freaky realistic replication of one of those red robots and waved a paw as I did.

Ocellus nodded back and proceed to move forward in a robotic manner.

-Hunter-Cellus Drone-

“Baron Von Steamer and Crackpot Criminal, you are under arrest by the San Fransokyo city robotic defense department. You have ten seconds to power down you’re machines and comply!” I started loudly counting down from ten. “Ten, nine, eight…”

“What? Since when did San Fransokyo add a robotic defense force to their budget?! Though with Krei Tech that does make some sense…” Steamer seemed befuddled, good…. GOOD…

“What, I am not a crackpot, I am Professor Nimnul you stupid machine!” He was thankfully buying my mechanical act.

“Failure to comply, engaging!” I fired blasts out of both my hand both of them turned to attack me and I quickly backed out of the way of their machines energy blasts, missiles and that wonderful beautifully attractive flamethrower.

No, bad, Ocellus! Don’t go into the fire, Smolder makes enough fire for you for free… even if the fire is so hauntingly pretty. We Changelings are not idiotic giant moths!

I backed around the corner into the alley way and then turned around and stopped acting robotic entirely by sprinting down the alley as the end where I was became a destructive fire storm from a variety of odd weapons.

“There’s more of those robots on the rooftops!” Steamer stated before firing a missile at one of the red robots, this of course was a mistake and it turned the robots to attacking them, Nimnul’s crab machine fired an explosive that blew one’s head off.

“I’m not being captured by some poorly made police robots that can’t recognize my genius!” Nimnul screamed as he and Steamer started actively working together. “When I’m done with them I’m coming after Caper Canine and finishing what I started!"

Author's Note

For those wondering, I'm a big fan of Malkavian Vampires.

221. Ocellus’s Obfuscation, Part Two.

-Ms. Shuttle Interior, Dormarch-

“We’ll have a firing solution when you call the location Ocellus.” I said only taking my eyes off of Pom for a moment. “Just get Mini-Max to tell us where that location is and what you need us to hit them with. Yeah… she’s about the same.”

-San Fransokyo Streets, Ocellus-

Hiro would keep an eye on Nimnul and Steamer situation, I swear I’ve heard of someone like Steamer in Equestria before.

After getting an update on the Motor Ed and Monkey Fist situations Fred had finally managed to get the artifact called ‘The Monkey Shines Statue’. I had him describe it to me and what it looked like and I had an idea as to what it actually does, considering magical artifacts and enchanted objects were a thing on Equus, more so than Monkey Fist at least who thought it would lead him to enlightenment.

Well it would enlighten things alright, just not the way the guy with genetically altered monkey limbs thought they would. Once I had it in my hooves, via Mr. Zilla’s delivery, it might do exactly what I thought it does.

Unfortunately I couldn’t focus on that until it was in my hooves as Bazooka Bunny was still managing to outpace Professor Dementor’s minions. The problem with uniformity was that it made what I’m about to do too easy, given Bazooka Bunny had their attentions on her.

“The world needs to know my story!” Professor Dementor shouted after the rabbit hero that bounced her way onto a building.

“I don’t want to be the captive audience to that!” Bazooka Bunny fired a small batch of chemicals that caused a splatter of colors blinding some of the minions.

The minions looked uniform and the same, but they had key differences in height and minor appearance differences. I transformed and infiltrated their ranks without anyone being none the wiser by just running out of an alleyway and acting liked I belong there while they couldn’t see or were distracted avoiding Bazooka Bunny’s fire.

“What were we doing before the boss got distracted by Bazooka Bunny again?” I asked quietly. “I don’t want to forget in case the boss asks us to remember for him.”

“Well we were going to rob Krei Tech, but we got sidetracked because Bazooka Bunny asked why he was going to do that and he took that as a personal challenge to tell his whole life story to her apparently…” The minion scrutinized me slightly. “Wait, who are you again?”

“Average Joe.” I stated calmly in a unique masculine voice.

“Wow your parents must have hate you, but then I guess we all have our problems given we’re henchmen.” After that statement it was apparent that situational awareness was not their thing, at least Changelings would be able to tell when someone was using a template spell to look like a Changeling. “At least your name isn’t Macken Chaez, just remember to call me Macky.”

Which reminds me of the story that Twilight turned her and her friends into Breezies using that spell. The template spell has a few tells that a Changeling would notice immediately if a pony were to template into a Changeling to walk a mile in our hooves.

“Well Professor Dementor goes on about his mother a lot, but do you notice he never mentions his father?” I said slowly weaseling my way into the group and hoping I didn’t miss the mark, as we all continued to give chase to Bazooka Bunny. “Maybe there’s some deep rooted issues there.”

“Yeah, no one can ever get him to talk about that, every time he goes into his life story it’s always his mother this and his mother that.” Oh do tell Macky, any gossip will be useful going forward while Dolly works from the other end of things! “We all get it already, she was ridiculously cruel to him and his sister. Kind of polar opposite with Dementor’s rival Dr. Drakken who had a bad father that disappeared growing up, but a good mother. Dr. Drakken has one really good minion and a bunch of lackluster minions. Whereas we’re all really great minions and one really lame one because the Professor gave his sister’s husband a job with us. Really good at logistics though, got us all health and dental benefits which really make this job worth it.”

I grinned as we moved forward emotional variances popped up to tell me someone noticed my incursion into their group.

-Up the streets from where Ocellus is, Dolly-

Lashing out with the leash, I caught the arm of one of the cultists bug robots of that Beelzebug guy. I seriously thought I had heard the last of him after that super robot explosion thing, but I guess not. Pulling and adding momentum to my pull, I lifted the robot cultist off the ground and swung him up and around into a whole group of them.

I then took the time to reel in the leash and looked up at Plasma Paladin.

“Caper Canine and Mini-Max? Well at least I’m finally getting some help.” Giving him a two digit hello in the form of a victory sign and a bright smile, I continued to lash out with the leash like a whip, adding momentum to it so it had more of an impact as it struck down robots. “What’s the plan now?”

Plasma Paladin next to me was just shooting them with gauntlet’s plasma blaster, I gave him a look and barked before pointing back the way I came.

“Dolly indicates we are still trying to get these two groups to meet, or if I’m calculating things right… four…” Mini-Max might have just realized that Ocellus was planning for the fact that none of these guys were organized, Saint Canard was definitely an organized problem. This was a mess of different people doing different things all at the same time in the same place, which is much more manageable since Ocellus explained to me the idea of what she wanted me to do. “Minimum effort, Maximized plan power!”

“Thousands of years ago, before the dawn of ducks as we knew them… all turkeys were machines before they became fleshy abominations like they are today. It was then that we knew our brethren were pickles.” One of the robots started spouting randomly as it started to billow with smoke before I whipped its head off and it exploded.

These demon cultist robot bug guys were just so lame, but how did they have so many to waste like this and why did they keep spouting the same ridiculously idiotic stuff?!

“French Fries ninety nine cents!” One of the cultist shouted insanely as he ran forward before being bisected by Plasma Paladin’s left blade. Unfortunately he only bisected it horizontally leaving its top half to continue talking. “Act now and you can get an automatic log filing program for ninety nine ninety nine ninety nine! You’ll also get a bucket of nothing with it for free, that’s a bucket, with nothing in it!”

I took the head off before it could continue speaking.

“Buy one free beating, get two broken bones for free and act now for a stolen kidney.” You know what, I think should have taken my chances with the monkey ninjas or that Motor Ed gang. These bug guys weren’t dangerous to us physically… but mentally, I wish mind soap existed because their voices are so annoying! “For Beelzebug!”

I grunted audibly at hearing one shouting a jingle that annoyed me when it came to watching television when I was a puppy.

“Yeah, I know they are horrible, but the best we can do is put them out of their miseries.” Plasma Paladin probably wasn’t far off with that estimate. “It sounds like they have every kind of computer virus imaginable downloaded into them all at once.”

-Minion-cellus-

These guys were nice, evil was just their day job. It was kind of sad that we couldn’t be friends when they were on the clock. I lagged behind some of them and looked around, I spotted a red robot looking for Callaghan near the edge of the roof, within my shooting range.

It makes me wonder where the police were in all of this… I mean I knew villains with high end technology or capabilities were attacking, but what were they currently focusing on that they weren’t attacking this group slowly trooping down the street? Unless those red robots were to blame.

I didn’t think it was that, they had to be busy with other things of importance in the city. Maybe they weren’t capable of fighting on the same level as super heroes. Saint Canard had TOON Division, an entire division dedicated to countering super villains or big trouble… San Fransokyo apparently didn’t have that.

I inhaled and then quietly exhaled, to anyone else it would seem like I was breathing normally.

Grinning as the red robot took aim at our group, firing a magical spell out my mouth as I exhaled wasn’t too hard to do. Though making my tongue a focal point for my magic wasn’t easy in the slightest, my aim had also been a bit wonky, but it struck the robot in the leg with a small electrical pop and caused it to aim our way.

Currently moving into position to tackle Professor Dementor, I was going to do so early. Too late and Dementor might have get hurt.

“Get Down!” I lunged forward, tackling the short Dementor to the ground and the beam passed over head and struck the street near the scattering henchmen. Several fired on the robot, but its armor was pretty tough against pure energy weapons, ballistic weapons were also relatively harmless against the segment plates of the main torso.

I quickly helped Dementor up and ran for cover. The guy was shorter than the people he was in command of, but he was quick on the uptake and pulled a weapon to start fighting back.

“Who built these things? It doesn’t look like any robot I’ve seen before, not an assassin built anyway…” While Dementor was doing that, I hope the injuries weren’t too horrible from fighting the robots, I snuck off and decided to go the next street over and uphill and prepared for Fred-Zilla to show up. “There are so many of them, get me a sample from one of them. You will all get a pay raise if you can get me one that’s mostly intact!”

I was almost tempted to work for Dementor myself, Chrysalis certainly never gave us Changelings pay raises… or much of a reason to work for her in the form of incentives.

-A few minutes later three blocks over, Ocellahan-

I was once again in the guise of Abigail Callaghan. She might have a slightly serious personality and was of a possible genius intellect to build portal technology that I couldn’t match, but I liked this form and it just made me feel cuddly. I was hoping that taking refuge in audacity would cover up the fact that I wasn’t exactly scientist from this world.

“Oh there you are, you must be Ocellus, nice to meet you.” Bazooka Bunny landed on a blob and slid off it to stand at my side with her chemical firing purse, she came toward me and I shook her extended hand with a paw. “How did you get the robot to shoot at them?”

“Used some magic while disguised as one of his minions, the problem with the uniform look is that anyone can wear the uniform and sneak under your nose.” I buffed a paw against the fluff of my chest and smirked at up at her. Abigail Callaghan was pretty big for a fox animalistic, but she was still smaller than the general heights bipeds got to. “So did they forget about you and the surrounding robots attacked them?”

“Yes, at least I don’t have to fight them now and can save my chemicals for something worse.” She seemed to be of a cheerful sort, in fact she was like a honey trap for Changelings like Pinkie Pie was. Energetic, friendly and most of all easily loving companion. “What’s it like being a shape shifter? We have Globby, but that’s mostly him eating his own hand in the form of chocolate without any repercussions.”

“It can be fun, but you got to always remember who you are if you don’t have a method of telling that you are not currently the original you. At least with people like me, we have a base form we can’t possibly forget because while we’re transformed the transformation magic is always present in the back of our minds.” We had some time until Fred arrived, this is where I wanted to meet him. “Call Mini-Max, what’s Mr. Zilla’s ETA and how much is Wheel Cat slowing down that Motor Ed guy?”

“No need to call me, for I am always minimum distance away to help maximally!” Mini-Max was quite helpful for something so small, like Dormarch when he was still stuck in his device. Dolly hadn’t lost any bandaged and or injured herself even worse, she and Plasma Paladin came up to us looking perfectly fine. “I do not know who that Beelzebug guy is, but he is sorely horrible at making robotic minions.”

“You can say that again, what did Leap Lamb due to earn the Beelzebug guys attention that badly?” Could try to tell you Plasma Paladin, but I don’t think you’d take it too well. Magic is already a hot button issue for scientists like you guys who are amazing with technology, mostly since magic tends to have at least a number of unquantifiable factors compared to you just using math and technology to achieve amazing results through hard work. Again, it was little wonder Equus had weird random levels of technology compared to some of the stuff I’ve seen. “I mean sure the biped bug robots are super weird and a little bit creepily cobbled together, but they aren’t exactly threatening if one guy, one dog and a small robot like us can hold off a large quantity of them together without breaking a sweat.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell the Big Hero Six members that demons actually exist, especially ones that are more annoying than threatening as Beelzegbug is turning out to be. It was already hard enough for them to swallow the fact that magic exists and that Dolly was capable of it.

We certainly wouldn’t ask Beelzebug for any help with traveling to other dimensions, despite it being obvious that he was a multidimensional being, because I doubt whatever the cost would end in quality services rendered or even be worth it if the quality was good enough.

Angels also existed, but they weren’t always friendly or entirely good either. They tended to have a holier than someone attitude or an ego the size of a continent, possibly even redefining what good was to be some asinine standard that no one could live up to… IE perfection. Basically they could go crusade my entire race into extinction and no one would have batted an eye if we were still stealing love, we weren’t irredeemably evil and they tend to deal in absolutes that was ‘order’.

I think prefer dealing with more earthly goddesses like Celestia and Luna on a more personable level, also Discord wasn’t so bad either. Chaos tends to teach lessons as well as harmony.

“Leap Lamb just got in the way of one of the guys plans, kind of made it blow up in his face…” Yeah, quite literally while doing something on an emotional scale that was frightening when it comes to someone like Pom who had been a constant and known quantity up to that point. “Well made it blow up in his face sooner than it would have otherwise.”

“Ah, one of those types, explains all the poor addled robots that keep talking about time travel.” Plasma Paladin nodded at me as if he knew the pains of dealing with someone like that. “Time Travel is functionally impossible given the energy costs it would take to even pull that off, much less with that many robots.”

“Who’s dealing with them right now if you’re here?” I would be seeing them if nobody was stopping them.

“We have a friend, who was once an enemy, called Globby. This seems to be on his level so we left him to it.” Well okay then Plasma Paladin. “He’s not really a bad guy, but Bazooka Bunny did kind of accidentally turn him into a mutant blob monster. So giving him something important to do sounded like a great way to keep him out of trouble.”

-Location in an alternate dimension: ???, D-list hero Globby-

“I don’t know how I ended up here, but I will defeat you Beelzebug!” Shouted this handsome mutant slime guy as he pointed to the fly the size of his head.

Yeah, I knew I wasn’t comic book material, but in my own head I could dream of being a little bit cooler.

“You can try foolish mortal.” This Beelzebug monster fired a blast of strange energy at me.

The energy just kind of flexed my body and then bounces off me completely back into the fly monsters face making him explode into a pile of guts and gore violently.

“Ew… well that was easy, maybe I am a hero after all! Now how do I get back to San Fransokyo from here?” I looked at the time machine teleporter thing, looked like a blue police box you’d see in Britain? “Eh, best idea I’ve got. I kind of like English muffins with some honey, even though they aren’t real muffins. I could go for some crepes right about now...”

-San Fransokyo Intersection, Ocellus-

“There you guys are.” Fredzilla I take it? Well his costume looked weird, but he was holding a monkey statue. “Is that Ocellus?”

“Hey there.” I said calmly, then turned to Mini-Max. “Tell Wheel Cat that operation banana split is a go.”

“Right away!” Mini-Max then turned around and started to talk to Wheel Cat.

“Operation banana split?” Asked Bazooka Bunny with a tilt of her head at me.

“You’ll see, but first we need to deal with the monkeys and Monkey Fist. To that end… hand me the statue.” I had almost freed up all the heroes from doing any fighting, I took the statue from Fredzilla into my paws and looked it over and read the inscription on the underside of the statue. It even felt like a magical artifact you would see on Equus, but the magic was certainly native to this world. “Oh this will do perfectly, now here’s what’s going to happen…”

Most of the villains were doing our work for us now with some manipulations, I was currently in Abigail’s form to attract any villains we might have missed that might be after us or more of those red robots.

Aside from Dr. Drakken and Shego, the red robots were the only ones that seemed interested in hunting down Abigail Callaghan. The ones behind said robots were going to come after me soon enough because all the red robots around were having problems or were losing their numbers slowly.

Kim Possible’s team would probably arrive either before or after the unknowns show up, I want before, but after was fine too if they could react to the situation quickly enough upon arrival.

“Nice.” Fredzilla said once my plan was explained.

“I am sending coordinates for the center of this intersection to Ms. Shuttle.” Mini-Max stated, there weren’t many people around where all this stuff was happening, but they were still actively trying to move through the area quickly and some were surely wondering why several members of Big Hero Six were standing still.

My mind silently went to the fact that, again, six is the starting number for a harmony effect and it builds friendships. Having five good friends that can balance out your personality traits along with the flaws and strengths that entails, it slowly builds outwards into a community of connections both good and bad that can last a lifetime.

“Here comes Monkey Fist!” Fredzilla shouted as the monkey limbed martial artist encroached upon us. He stopped in the middle of the road and stared us down with all his monkey ninjas.

“Is Wheel Cat leading Motor Ed into this street?” I asked Mini-Max quietly, he raised a digit and nodded. “Good.”

“Hand over The Monkey Shines Statue or else I will be take it from you by force.” Hearing the roar of engines, I looked behind me and saw Wheel Cat coming this way with several vehicles.

“How about no…” I had already warned the Big Hero Six members that were present what this statue would do when I activated it. There were three monkey statues, two of which do something similar to what the one I held when invoked. Said statues required the last phrase to be relevant to the statue. “Hear no evil, speak no evil… see no evil.”

The monkey statue’s arms moves upwards and the eyes created a light so powerful that it temporarily blinded Monkey Fist and all of his monkeys in the intersection.

It would have blinded us too, had I not expected it.

“Move!” I stated as everyone ran off to the side as Wheel Cat was almost to the intersection. “Fire!”

“Firing chemical spread bomb.” Mini-Max announced and Bazooka Bunny grinned as she had given Ms. Shuttle the chemical that would stop several vehicles in their tracks and capturing the criminals safely at the same time. “Also Ms. Shuttle is changing locations to somewhere more hidden.”

-Wheel Cat-

“Wow you guys are so slow!” I skated along and saw a large gaggle of monkeys and one guy on the ground all with their hands over their eyes.

“You might be a chick, but we'll show you how fast we can go!” Motor Ed still wasn’t the brightest villain I ever fought, but he was good at vehicles, not that it would help him here.

I started pushing myself as hard as I could as the four monster trucks took up the coming and going streets behind me.

Leaping up, I landed four wheels to the ground and going at full speed and managing to pull away and I glanced at the intersection as the chemical bomb was coming down.

Time seemed to slow down as I glanced to my right and saw the chemical bomb mere feet from the street as I pushed myself one last time. Before I knew it I was outpacing the chemicals spreading out from the intersection behind me.

“Woohoo, that’s how we deal with villains around here!” I shouted with glee as I looked back and saw Motor Ed’s monster vehicles basically melt around his entire gang.

The drivers and all the gang members were caught in the resultant chemical slurry without injury that soon hardened and stuck them down. The hardening slurry also captured all the blinded ninja monkeys and Monkey Fist.

We just caught two villain teams with one shot.

-Ocellus-

Okay now that that’s most of the problems in the city dealt with…

Now we needed to deal with those…

I ducked as a shot of energy passed by and turned along with the rest of Big Hero Six as a number of red robots dropped down to the streets and were aiming at the people taking up defensive positions in front of me.

“Okay, I can no longer transform out of Abigail Callaghan’s form or else the subterfuge will be lost." I would rather be captured, than they grab Ms. Callaghan for various reasons. "I will not be using magic, I hope that you guys can protect me.”

Author's Note

Ocellus has single hoofed solved most of the issues, but there's still an armies worth of Hunter Drones coming for her.

Next Page: Red Robot Rumble.

222. Red Robot Rumble.

-Near Professor Nimnul and Baron Von Steamer fighting, San Fransokyo, Armored Inflatable Medical Professional Baymax-

“This is Baymax, have you discovered the motivations of all villains within the city?” While I was asking this I was tracking the movements of various visible figures on the SAT feed. “Currently the police are watching and protecting Krei Tech, possibly in suspicion of the latest trouble being related to them. Mental Magnet is keeping watch of the battle between Nimnul, Steamer and the red robots. Sufficient force is effective against the robots.”

“This is Oracle Ocellus, the motivations are as follows. Whoa, keep them back! Dolly, stick next to me and don’t get in the thick of it, you’ve been pushing your luck today!” I heard the sounds of weapons firing and directed the SAT feed to focus on the location, the red robots had energy weapons of decent strength. Wheel Cat was circling around to join the fight, Fredzilla, Plasma Paladin and Bazooka Bunny were holding adequately at the moment, but they were about to be overrun if they stayed in position from what I was detecting. “Dr. Drakken, his focus was technological in wanting either Wower or Abigail, he didn’t sound picky. Professor Dementor, wanted to steal something at Krei Tech. Monkey Fist was after one of three statues that can blind, deafen and mute through magical means given the one I’m holding creates a magical eye searing blinding light. It can’t be used frequently though. According to Wheel Cat, Motor Ed was looking for her technology. Both Monkey Fist and Motor Ed are captured due to Ms. Shuttle’s support. If you see Magica De Spell, she’s after Caper Canine for revenge for the last time they interacted with one another. That Magica is here suggests Phantom Blot might be too. There was also this Momakase person, she seemed to be only interested in fighting Dr. Drakken’s companion Shego. The cultist robots Plasma Paladin was dealing with have for some reason disappeared, their intentions were to kill Leap Lamb and somehow knew of her condition, but not her exact location. They are possibly a neutralized threat.”

“Updating city situation to all Big Hero Six and allies.” I intoned softly. “Large and armed reptilian biped, seen with a large force of red robots coming in from the north. I suggest retreating southwest towards our current location. The number of robots in the city has increased in number to almost double initial estimates, they are either embattled with other villains and are reinforcing their numbers or they are heading for Decoy Abigail’s locations. There are more than two hundred robots, forty of which are in aid of the dangerous looking reptilian biped, sending an image of the reptilian biped to your visors. Two vehicles of similar make approaching from the south, one appears to be a flying support space capable vehicle and the other one some form of tank and armored personnel carrier. Unknown force, take caution until their intentions are understood. Team Possible is about to enter the area, attempting to contact their mission control… I am sending them a landing zone location.”

“Whoa, that guy is huge!?” Fredzilla from what I can see of the overhead view was having problems as his flames didn’t seem to be damaging the robots. He switches to using his spinning sign weapon, specifically made for him recently, to great effect absorbing the energy shots and damaging the nearest robot with a rapid series of blows in a flourish before knocking it down with a harsh upwards blow. “Also these robots are kind of tough! Was that all Baymax?”

Fred-meleon has not lost his skills as a sign spinner since dealing with Yokai. His suit has taken moderate damage, but it has not been entirely compromised yet.

“No, there are two other villain threats that are not currently preoccupied. One villain threat is a threat to Leap Lamb’s life as she is currently flying straight towards Ms. Shuttle’s current location, I believe she is Magica De Spell. I assume magic to be a factor in her being able to track them. Ms. Shuttle has been warned by me and is already in motion.” I heard a number of gasps. If Pom was attacked personally or her life support was destroyed or shut down for more than three minutes… it could lead to a swift, still preventable, fatality. “The other villain is a notoriously wanted criminal mastermind named Phantom Blot. His groups movements suggest that they are heading towards the hotel where Abigail actual was last noted as being. He is with people in black jumpsuits and eggshell helmets, it appear the rogue FOWL cell of eggheads under the Phantom Blots command have changed their suits to fit in with their leader’s appearance.”

“Phantom Blot might be tracking the Power Pet’s magical signatures and intends to steal their magic from them. I can’t go near that guy as taking my magic would be immediately lethal to me, but not them. Still, having your magic ripped out of you would not be a pleasant experience when it is a functionally a part of you, it would be like a missing a piece of your soul and could cause constant agony. Mini-Max contact Penny Forrester and tell her to start moving underground, they are not to come above ground for any reason until all the robots are dealt with or I am captured and they leave the region with me. Unless it is an emergency, her team is evade or hide from any chasers for as long as possible underground.” I wish to meet Ocellus, mostly to get a better idea of Leap Lamb’s psychological profile. “Continue observing Professor Nimnul and Baron Von Steamer… we’re going to retreat, where is Team Possible landing?”

“Within your path of retreat. They have been warned of the robots in the area, but not of you being a Decoy Abigail.” While I did not like the idea of lying to possible allies, this was a time where it was prudent to do so.

-San Fransokyo City Streets, Ocellus-

“We have minimum time and maximum trouble to deal with, is there anything I can do?” Mini-Max intoned as we were slowly retreating from the team of ten robots firing on my protectors and even him.

Okay don’t freak out. Magica and Phantom Blot were both quite bad problems. We knew Magica was here and had injured her somewhat, but she was tenacious. Phantom Blot showing up was just making things worse because they weren’t currently targeting each other and were targeting our less defensible teams while I was still running my gambit by acting as Abigail Callaghan.

I didn’t have a visor, but a large armed lizard leading the robots sounded threatening. I really didn’t know what to do other than continue being Abigail Callaghan, I could not change shape within visual range of these robots and given the number in the city has basically about doubled according to Baymax... I couldn’t risk it nor could we go rushing off to keep Magica away from Pom.

Dolly was in the same boat as I was, I watched as she yanked the leash wrapped around one of the robots arms and managed to get it to shoot another one before pulled the leash back to herself with a yank that pulled the robot off balance long enough for Plasma Paladin to ram a blade into it chest.

The blade had a slight problem digging into the material, but eventually got through it enough for Plasma Paladin to jam his other blade in there and rip both his energy blades outwards.

We were retreating past the captured villains. Wheel Cat was still free to go wherever, but where should I send her?

We had enough coverage here with Bazooka Bunny being mid to long range specialist, Fredzilla was a mid to close range defensive and Plasma Paladin was a mid to short range offensive. Dolly couldn’t get into direct fighting and I had to keep reminding her to stick to support, her worst injuries hadn’t reopened but she was pushing the limit of what she can do.

I could send Wheel Cat after Magica and ensure that she doesn’t hurt Pom, Smolder, Dormarch or Ms. Shuttle, highly tempting. I could send Wheel Cat after Phantom Blot, they have the large force and Penny’s Power Pets are untested in a fight despite having magical capabilities and enough intelligence to use them effectively. I could just let Wheel Cat continue aiding us here and we would have less problems retreating. I didn’t actually need that much protection, just the illusion that Abigail was around.

“Mini-Max, tell Wheel Cat to target Phantom Blots group, Penny’s Power Pets group needs backup.” Phantom Blots anti-magic group was a poor match for the Power Pets given they probably had several methods of dealing with magic at this point. Magica was already injured and would have several issues with attacking Ms. Shuttle. Despite their pressing assault, the red robots we were retreating from wanted to take me alive and in good health.

-Dolly-

We had long since passed Monkey Punch and Motor Leg.

How did Magica know where Pom was?! In any case I couldn’t go off and leave Ocellus in a lurch, from what she just ordered Wheel Cat would be distracted and I was a last line of defense for her. Kind of wished I had my board and helmet right now, but Dormarch could make use of my helmet. I don’t think he could utilize my skateboard as well as I could.

“I’ve just noticed we’ve got a single signal closing in from our right, why only one though?” Bazooka Bunny announced as she kept firing alternating shots of a strange chemical that seeped into a robot and then the second chemical made them explode.

We were constantly backing away from the robots coming at us down the street and blasting anything that moves or wasn’t their target.

“We’re good, but there’s starting to be far too many of them!” Putting up both his blades as a shield, Plasma Paladin absorbed a number of shots, afterwards he started firing back with his right arm as his left blade was used as a shield.

We’ve downed about ten or twenty of them, fourteen more still hounding us and about one hundred and ninety more to go.

“Should we split up?” Yeah, no, that wasn’t a good idea Ocellus and I let my displeasure be known, sure she couldn’t understand me, but she flinched when she felt my emotions. “I think Dolly can get the one on the right, let that one close in and focus on the larger group.”

I positioned myself facing the right down the street as we entered the intersection and I paused when I saw the reason why only one robot was coming from that direction.

It was huge, had shoulder and wrists missiles, its five fingered hands ended in holes that all possibly fired energy and two hatches opened in its chest opened to reveal two turrets that looked like they can aim in different directions. It was a bit massive compared to the other red robots, this thing was armored and looked like overkill.

“Uh… maybe it won’t shoot with you directly next to me?” Ocellus tried, she really did, but the robot still aimed all its fingers at us and fired a stream of energy blasts at me.

I yelped as I leapt and barely successfully rolled to the right through the series of shots that nearly struck Ocellus who was quickly moving away from the robot that started tracking me.

I leapt at a light pole and slung around it while kicking my ‘flow motion’ into high gear to sling myself back across the street.

Its shots followed me as I hit the wall and ran up as four streams of energy splashed through the wall around me, it was firing from the cannons in its chest now.

It stopped firing once I climbed high enough and started to charge towards Ocellus, I quickly flung the leash and added as much momentum to it as I could and the leash wrapped around its thick legs slowing it for a few seconds and tripping it before it could grab Ocellus.

How was I going to fight that thing?! The others were already dealing with the smaller robots comparatively to this thing. One hit, dead, I would be dead!

I should be glad it didn’t see me as threatening enough actually use its missiles.

I watched as the machine get up and look at the leash no longer wrapped around its legs, it ignored that and continued for Ocellus who was already running a bit down the street. She was trying not to get separated from our defenders by going too far, she’d be a sitting duck and would get captured.

Dropping down, I was behind it, the armor on its back didn’t look any less impressive than it did from the front. I doubt wind would hurt something that heavy, it had lots of firepower and was hard to bring down, but it had to have a weakness somewhere.

If it actually thought of using those missiles, then my life was going to be cut short very fast… like how I lived, feisty and fearless.

A lightbulb went off in my head as I looked at the shoulders and wrists.

I ran forward and frantically grabbed the leash while looking at the machines shoulders and wrists again, the missiles in them were exposed and if I could actually get whatever those missiles are to actively blow up…

“Mini-Max to the rescue!” Mini-Max slammed into it. That had no effect of course, but he at least had the robots attention and it was trying to shoot him out of the air with its chest turrets and ten fingers blasting energy in rapid succession. He made for a very small hard to hit target. “I may have erred in choosing this fight, but I will still try my best to slow it down!”

I took an aim at the left shoulder rocket and stood up on my hind legs and started to twirl the leash and build up momentum and added a lot onto that. This might destroy or burn up a part of the leash, but as long as I had enough left over to set off another missile.

Doubt they’d be just sitting out in the open like that if they were armed, but they would still explode with enough force. Okay, I’ve built up enough momentum, now let’s see what I can do.

I did a super jump while twirling the leash above my head and shot upwards a lot higher than I intended, I think I might have been shredded the leash a bit by the amount of force I was putting on it. So I had to do this quickly.

Flipping forward, I started twirling myself and then I slung the end of the leash downwards, before the leash struck the left shoulder rocket a thought just occurred to me.

If I was moving towards it, wouldn’t I get a face full of the explosion without my board to take the brunt of it?

“Ah dang.” I stated before drawing all my magic into pushing my personal momentum backwards as the end of the leash slapped home against the tip of the missile in its left shoulder with the snapping sound a whip would create.

The explosion sent me fly and I think a chunk of metal hit me with blunt force knocking me even further. I narrowly got my momentum under control before I became a really bad case of road rash.

Landing softly with a body sized bruise on my hind legs was better than getting all my fur rubbed off by the street.

Looked at the clearing smoke from the explosion to how much damage I did, I blinked as the machine just turned towards me.

I just lost a large section of the leash I still held and all I did was take out its capability to fire missiles… from its left shoulder.

That’s all that explosion did, its other missile weapons were still intact, its other weapons including its chest were barely even scorched.

“Ah great, it was built to take explosions… even from itself.” I said dully as it took aim at me. Yeah… I really didn’t want this things attention right now. “Well, I’m dead.”

It fired four concentrated streams of hot death at me, makes me pine for the days when I used to exaggerate doing amazing things to all my little brothers and sisters.

“Doesn’t mean I’m going to make it easy though!” I stated as I started to leap and glide dodge through a lot of shots coming my way. I think one of my ears was grazed considering the burning sensation as I tried to put distance between me and all the lethal firepower it was pouring on in my general vicinity.

Once I got into position behind a light pole the metal at the base started to heat up from the concentrated fire of ten alternating cannons for finger and the two in its chest. My size being helpful for this, I leapt onto the backside and climbed up as the light pole’s base broke and it started to topple.

Leaping up I gripped the horizontal bar with my paws and altered its falling momentum to lift it up and bring it around, while still in the air, to launch it like a spear upon release.

The arcing spears flew forward and the molten base of the light pole struck the robot in the right chest cannon destroying it, but doing little damage further than that. The damage the light pole did was just because the molten bits of the light pole got into the barrel.

Flopping onto the ground in disbelief after having put a lot of what I had into that, I just whined loudly as it continued to aim the remaining blaster fingers and left turret at me. I also noted it shift in its three missile launchers. Okay, now it saw me as a big enough threat after I tossed a light pole at it and only took out another weapon.

Ugh, the bludgeoning I took from the shoulder exploding and then tossing a light pole exhausted me. Yeah, Ocellus was right, I should have been more careful. I wasn’t going to be able to dodge this. It was even ignoring Mini-Max trying to distract it from shooting me.

It fired three missiles and a volley of shots my way, I clenched my eyes shut and heard the explosions and impact of the shots. I certainly didn’t feel them though, opening my eyes I looked up into a pair of friendly green eyes looking down on me.

“It’s okay, I got you!” The fox biped stated as she leapt up and skated along the wall on rocket skates avoiding the shots that tore the wall of a building apart before getting me over to Ocellus. “Dr. Abigail Callaghan I presume? I’m Kim Possible, this street is looking like a mess, Big Hero Six has a lot of work cut out for them huh?”

I leaned up and licked my savior on the nose and then leaned back to rest as I was placed in Ocellus’s paws. I wished Magica and Blot the worst, because I’m spent.

“Please just call me Abigail, Callaghan has some implications with my father going super villain because of a portal related incident I’d rather not think about.” Ocellus responded and I tilted my head to look around to see what was going on. Big Hero Six had, in the amount of time I had to deal with the big guy, taken out at least thirty of those robots. “Also it’s no wonder Shego likes to fight you so much. Thanks for rescuing Dolly.”

“Ah that’s such a cute name for an adorable, if badly battered, Dalmatian!” Rolling my eyes at the fox biped that saved my life, I grunted and pointed to two distraction currently trying, and failing admirably, to keep that large walking tank from focusing on us and started to take aim. “Can we talk later about why Caper Canine doesn’t have her gear and isn’t with Leap Lamb? Though I’m fairly impressed that she managed to throw an entire light pole like that.”

Kim Possible started to nimbly dodge the shots and she was doing so with incredible ease.

“Leap Lamb is in critical condition, on life support even, Caper Canine came here to protect me on Team Leap Lamb’s orders.” Really nice excuse there Ocellus, because it was technically the reason why we were here. Still, nobody specifically ordered me to be here. Ocellus held me close and I put my face into that fluffy fox fur and snuggled into it. “She’s definitely full of surprises as I’ve come to find out, but she really needs to take a break as she came to me injured from the Saint Canard Crisis and still pushed to stay in the fight for me.”

The other guy, Ron Stoppable, gained a powerful magical aura in the shape of a gorilla. The only problem is, the ferret immediately lost that aura in a splash of black energy upon hitting the robot.

“KP, this thing has some serious protections from my mystical monkey mojo, it just cancelled me out!” Ron Stoppable shouted and looked to be backhanded. Instead he tumbled backwards from the near blow, the five fingers missed shooting him as they fired off mid swing. “Agh, this thing is more deadly than those spinning tops of doom and more armored too!”

“Stay safe until we can bring this thing down.” Kim Possible’s skates flared and she shot forward, her clothing shaping into some kind of white suit with neat glowing blue lines on it. Does that means she’s yet another technological hero?

“Help you, yep.” We blinked and looked at the pink hairless rat that hopped onto my stomach and nodded to us with a cheerful smile and large buck teeth.

We looked at the three present members of Big Hero Six finished taking the down the robots swarming them.

“Well it’s going to be awkward carrying you and her, so could you get off please?” The rat nodded and hopped off. “Guys, do you think you can actually help take that thing down?”

“I still have plenty left in the tank, but that thing…” Plasma Paladin paused and looked for the right words for a thing that took the full amount of momentum I could bring against it and it was only lightly damaged. “It scares me, it would rip me in half if it got a hold of me!”

“Yeah, my suit is going to need a lot of repairs after this.” Fredzilla stated as he checked his weapon over.

“I don’t think there’s a chemical composition that can deal with that, but I can lock it in place easily enough.” Bazooka Bunny was scrutinizing one of the fragments that I exploded off the robot as they all took up positions around us. “We should leave it to them and continue retreating. It’s Ron Stoppable and Kim Possible, they can do a lot of things. Losing isn’t something that happens with them often.”

“Then let’s move. Caper Canine is down and can’t put up a fight even if she wanted to.” Ocellus turned and, holding me in her right leg, started to move away from the action at a quick pace. "Also a robot with dark magic protections is not something I want to be near!"

-???-

"You're efforts to give the Heavy Hunter Drone magical protections were apparently not entirely useless Wraith." A large reptilian biped stated before turning to a more ancient looking one.

Author's Note

Wheel Cat has been sent to aid the Power Pets.

Dormarch will remember that.

223. Consequences: Magica.

Author's Note

The dice was rolled.

Magica threatens Dormarch's Team without support. Ocellus's team is routing or at the very least being surrounded by threats as they are retreating.

Offscreen actions by Wheel Cat and Team Power Pets occur, the condition of Phantom Blot's group also becomes an unknown capacity.

The two scenario's that are not being written are as follows, to give you an idea as to how far reaching I'm actually considering things in advance.

Consequences: Failed Masquerade.

Ocellus kept Wheel Cat on for her personal defense destroying a larger number of red robots and dealing even more damage to the Heavy Hunter Drone, however Phantom Blot and Magica devastate both Ms. Shuttle's group and Penny's Power Pets are pushed to their limits.

Though Penny's Power Pets managed to successfully avoid having their magic stolen and manage to retreat from Phantom Blot with moderate injury to both sides barely in favor of the Power Pets.

Abigail is seen being somewhere else by a red robot. The masquerade falls apart quickly as the second Abigail is caught before the unknown support from the south could arrive for who they thought was the actual Abigail.

This leads to a dire battle down the line with Ocellus acting in a solo capacity to make things right. Somehow manages to cobble together a number of villains together into an effective force to solve a huge issue, this group does not involve Magica or Phantom Blot.

Ocellus's Relationship with Smolder: Highly strained, Smolder sees Ocellus as acting greedy or something like Chrysalis.

Watching Entity: Would have the best bargaining position to acquire Pom's services thanks to Ocellus's failure to keep the masquerade going. Reaction to these consequences are be more gentle and understanding towards Team Leap Lamb, would abuse the bargaining position subtly.

Dormarch makes a decision.

Consequences: Phantom Blot.

Ocellus sent Wheel Cat to support Ms. Shuttle's group. Shanty, Dormarch, Smolder and Ms. Shuttle will end up lending continued, if limited, support at range and through various means.

They managed to intercept the red robots before they can spot Abigail and retreat with her back to the safety of Basemax.

Magica has offscreen movements that are highly and quite incidentally detrimental to Ocellus's Abigail Masquerade thanks to having been diverted from Team Leap Lamb's group by Wheel Cat.

She shows up to attack a weakened Dolly Dalmatian at a critical moment severely injuring her in front of Ocellus when they can't defend themselves.

Phantom Blot actively becomes a villain protagonist telling his full story and finally takes out Magica permanently and then nearly kills Ocellus, he eventually becomes a key person in the battles to come against an evil dark magic sorcerer. While he doesn't let go of his hatred of magic, he can see there's a functional reason for it to exist and that there is such a thing as good magic. He will continue to not trust magic, but will at least be open to ignore magic in some capacity as long as it's beneficial to him.

Ocellus's relationship with Smolder: Smolder thinks Ocellus is coddling her and is moderately upset with her girlfriend.

Watching Entity: Highly questionable bargaining position for Pom's services, approaching as highly cruel but tries to play it off as a necessary evil. Forces the issue because Team Leap Lamb doesn't have the position to really refuse given now three of their members are badly crippled, Ocellus being one of them.

Smolder makes a decision.

-Music- Kandy Pop by BIS.

223. Consequences: Magica.

-Equus, Ponyville, Gallus-

“Today you’re training will be with the most dangerous thing in Equestria.” Stepping to the side, Fizzle revealed my supposed adoptive older sister Jaded.

“Jade, really?” I said dully.

“No, shr said thing, ugh… I will reveal the trickery!” Tianhuo grabbed at the scenery which shifted and when she pulled, I blinked at there suddenly being a Zampony here.

“Aw, my baby’s camouflage… that took hours to paint.” Jade whined as her ears wilted.

“Did someone say camel-flage?” A camel lowered a similar sheet to the one that was on the Zampony, the camel was notably dressed like a stereotypical ninja with a clear Saddle Arabian theme.

I wasn’t surprised to know they had someone spying on Jaded La Perm, Saddle Arabians certainly had good reason to given Snickers took over the country with durians. No matter how much I think about that last sentence I still find myself thinking about how insane that sounds.

“No.” We all responded. Jade didn’t even look interested in the fact that she was being spied on by Saddle Arabia.

“Oh, okay then.” He raised the sheet back up and didn’t look like he was hiding in front of a tree.

“Anyways… tough cookies my cuddle kitty.” Fizzle stated blithely to Jade, while Jade just kept whining.

“Ignoring Jaded’s whining for the moment. This is Jaded La Perm’s Zampony, it has been recently classified as an airship on a technicality and has also been labeled a submarine for reasons you wouldn’t believe even if we were to tell you. It literally has to be seen to be believed given there’s somehow an anti-cognitive function to it that makes it only believable if it is seen doing it, it’s considered a class ‘pure chaos’ magical anomaly by the Capture Bridle Defend organization that was specifically made for this kind of mind melting insanity. Jaded has legally acquired a Zampony operating license… I pity your bureaucracy and guards for having to deal with this thing.” Tianhuo muttered that last part while shaking her head. The four Canis Minor puppies were just being playful as ever, but they kept eyeing Jade with suspicion every now and then. “Jaded also has licenses to repair and modify a single Zampony as she sees fit, Jaded La Perm cannot specifically own more than one Zampony after ‘the incident’. I’m not even going to get into it as that would take all day to make absolutely sure the Zampony is not illegal even if we knew it was by instinct alone and that Jaded is getting away with it. Also I don’t generally care about ice rinks run by reindeer or why they are willing to hire Jaded to pave their ice, that she actually does the job perfectly is also something we’re not getting into here either.”

“Be prepared for a true test of courage, skill, strength and perseverance Gallus.” Fizzle stated with narrowed eyes. “All you need to do… is knock Jade off her Zampony in under two hours. I can do it in twenty minutes with some preparations, but she never makes it easy. Also if you can stop her from going anywhere near Princess Luna with a bucket of ice, I’ll give you an instant rank promotion. Yes, Luna and Jade are still at war with one another. I’m just surprised that Luna is giving as good as she’s actively getting.”

“It was originally one hour, but they decided to give me a handicap.” Jade stated calmly to me with a big toothy grin, while rubbing her face against the side of the Zampony in a loving manner most disturbing as she hugged it.

-Northwest side of San Fransokyo heading south, Dormarch-

Hearing Ocellus redirect Wheel Cat away from us when we were going to come under attack was disheartening. Smolder seemed perfectly alright with this decision, which was infuriating because she was actively dating Ocellus, doesn’t she see even a slight betrayal in that?!

I didn’t know who the Power Pets were personally, but it had better be important… well considering Abigail Callaghan was with them. They were running the defense against anyone finding out the subterfuge and hiding Abigail was in keeping up with the ruse that Ocellus was Abigail.

Still though, how were we going to deal with the sorceress? Come to think of it I didn’t know what Magica was fully capable of, aside from getting cracked or broken ribs near constantly.

At least Smolder could actively survive magical attacks from Magica, explosions and who knows what else even with her spinal injury that wasn’t going to heal on its own. Honestly… having thought about it, I can see why Smolder isn’t personally worried. It took an insane amount of pressure to actively cause enough damage to leave her unable to walk much less fly because her tail was unable to help her steer in the air.

“She’s still tracking us, how is she doing that? I really don’t understand magic all too well, you guys are the experts on the subject.” Ms. Shuttle was at least keeping an eye on things while I was distracted. She was important to keeping mom alive. “It is vitally important that we make it to Base-Max, to that end we need to lose the duck following us and figure out how she’s tracking us.”

“It is being quite unfortunate that none of us be magically inclined in such a way as to detect how she’s doing it.” Shanty stated as she shoved some snacks into her mouth and swallowed them all down, she looked like she was preparing for a fight by eating as much as she was. For once she wasn’t drinking rum and was actually consuming water. “Maybe we can be getting Magica to talk about why is after us?”

An idea, Magica is a known quantity in loving to explain her plans while in a position of power, very comic book villain really. Not exactly the brightest thing to do in real life.

“Caper Canine is down.” Mini-Max reported from Ocellus’s team, I winced. Dolly was already in poor health, how much worse off was she now?! “The larger red robot threat is really hard to bring down, but at least it’s slow. Also I forgot to mention, Caper Canine is down to exhaustion and not injury, but her prior injuries certainly wouldn’t help her. New injuries include full body bruising and a lightly burned ear. Some previous cuts have reopened, but the bleeding is light.”

That’s a slight relief.

“Anomalous energy detected.” Ms. Shuttle suddenly veered to the side as Magica appeared in the air in front of us and tried to blast us with a beam of energy that tore up the street behind us. “Apparently I can detect teleportation, but she’s right on top of us now.”

“I might not be able to move much, but I can keep her out of here if she manages to teleport inside.” I nodded to Smolder and thought about how we were going to deal with this.

“Ms. Shuttle is our top priority, she can’t be allowed to be damaged for a variety of reasons.” She’s mobile, has some armored, she can easily hold off targets that weren’t magical and the most important of note is the fact that she was currently running Pom’s life support. “Shanty can’t fight for very long and should stick to a defensive capacity like Smolder.”

“I beg to differ, we can be fighting her off!” Shanty state bravely despite wincing as her bandage pulled at her legs and torso.

“I’m the only healthy one here aside from Ms. Shuttle.” Suddenly I found myself falling face first into the floor as Ms. Shuttle suddenly veered sharply and I saw a flash of energy shoot by behind her backside.

As Magica turned the corner, Ms. Shuttle fired a chemical shot and Magica just wrapped it in a magical field and launched it back towards us. It hit the ground and created a large gelatinous blob narrowly missing our rear end.

At most, that shot only slowed Magica by having to fly a little bit higher and over the mass.

“Yeah, my chemical cannon isn’t going to be very effective against someone who can do that.” Ms. Shuttle stated with a whimper.

“Can you slow down a bit so I can be climbing on the roof?” If Shanty was going onto the roof, then I would to.

“Opening access ladder to the roof and roof access…” Ms. Shuttle stated, it was right next to where Dolly reloaded her chemical cannon. The chemical cannon retracted and moved out of the way as a ladder came down.

“Come on Dormarch!” Shanty shouted as she practically leapt up the ladder.

Sighing I climbed up after her and stopped to look at Pom’s slow heartbeat.

“How do you start a heart song?” I asked Smolder, because the last time we used a heart song it produced a lot of energy and Shanty could use some strength like that right now.

“With music or needing to get your heart out of your chest for a while. It’s really annoying to get sucked into one, they include spontaneous unpracticed near perfect choreography, singing to the best of your abilities and you can do things like what we did at Cape Suzette.” She said lazily as she propped herself up with her arms. “Why, going to use that to boost Shanty while on the defense defense? You’re tied to Pom so you might have some Equus rhythmic magic kicking around in you too due to the familiar bond and Shanty is an Equus native. The both of you can start a heart song easily enough, but you might need some good music to kick start it.”

“Ooh… I have some music, just tell me when to start it!” Ms. Shuttle said cheerfully. “I want to see this Equus related phenomenon personally!”

I clambered up onto the roof and Shanty was already staring down Magica as she approached, Ms. Shuttle was ready to make evasive maneuvers. Shanty couldn’t be thrown off if she sticks herself down, but I’d have to teleport back with Search Hunter if fell off. I’d rather conserve my energy and not get knocked off more than once.

“Why are you attacking us?!” Shanty shouted as I took up a position behind her and was quite.

“Why do you think? You have Caper Canine… or… wait… a familiar bond?” The floating duck was looking at me when she said this and she suddenly chuckled dryly with a broad smile that unnerved me. “Caper Canine isn’t here is she? Her bond partner is though… as are you. I take care of you here and you’ll no longer be a problem for me later, she’s quite near death isn’t she? Surprised the reaper hasn’t taken someone so weak. Besides hunting Scrooge’s number one dime can wait, my obsession was getting in the way of being able to plan a good offensive anyway. I might actually succeed at getting some revenge today against the people who definitely would stop my rise to conquering this world to do as I will? It would put a feather in my cap and make me feel better to put you mutts and your partner down! Oh I have so many reasons to utterly destroy you.”

I got the feeling Magica read Pom’s health just from looking at me and the bond I had with her. Also she wouldn’t be calling Pom weak if she saw how hard Pom can fight when pressed into it.

A blast of flames flew out of the staff and struck Ms. Shuttle causing her to swerve wildly before regaining control, Shanty clamped down and I clutched at the roof.

“Guys minor damage to rear tires and lower back end... please tell me you guys can effectively defend me.” It was going to be okay Ms. Shuttle, if it came down it I would force you into the PET and wouldn’t let you die.

“Play that music Ms. Shuttle, Shanty will need it.” I stood up and prepared to start firing retriever barks. Shanty would do the hoof work in moving around. “Shanty you’re on defense!”

A guitar tune started playing, was this pop music?

“Hmmm… magic, magic~.” Shanty sang slightly trying to get a feel for the rhythm as she tapped her front hooves two times and then did three alternating taps with her rear hooves. Her head started bopping to the music, a grin slowly spread across her face.

“Patient health has entered an anomalous state, her heart is beating… with the rhythm?!” Ms. Shuttle said with wonder.

Pom’s heart was beating to the music? Well that wasn’t terrible if it kept her alive without needing to shock her.

“Bah music, what good is that going to do you against someone like me!” Building up for a lightning blast, Magica took aim.

“Warn us when you’re going to turn so I can brace myself Bunny.” I said, before I felt it, the rhythm seeping into me.

“Okay!” Ms. Shuttle kept driving down the street. “Nice to know I’m on a first name basis with you, I’ll try to keep us steady unless I need to make necessary emergency maneuvers.”

“Magic, magic, can’t be stopped~? Deflecting down, spike it up~!” Shanty hopped to the back edge of Ms. Shuttle’s roof and slashed both her hooves downwards and the lightning gathered at the slicing arc her hooves created. Said energy promptly slammed into the street in an explosion that Magica had to dodge. Shanty put her hooves together and knocked the incoming icicle, fired a second later, up into the air with a volleyball strike and it shattered against the street behind Magica when it landed. “Magic, magic, can’t be stopped~? Never let the beat drop~! Magic, magic, can’t be stopped~? Slashing down, blast it up~!

Shanty slashed her left hoof down and the arc of water split the next fireball into evaporating, she gestured to me and I sent a retriever bark as Magica tried a raw blast of magic and my bark collided with it cancelling it.

“What the… how are you doing that?!” Magica screeched, but Shanty didn’t answer as to how she was reacting to the attacks. She kept tapping out the two-three beat rhythm.

One two, one two three… I started to really get into it and feel it myself and tapped out the rhythm with my claws.

“Magic, magic, from the top, don’t let that music stop~!” I sang as Shanty pulled out a water bottle and fired off a riptide at Magica who used a blast of wind to deflect it with a swing of her staff. My eyes focused on the jewel at the end of it for a second.

“You’ve got the brains, I’ve got the brawn~.” Shanty said continuing to bounce with the rhythm as she deflected attacks. “She wants us to stop, we’ll just keep going on~.”

“Turn!” Ms. Shuttle stated, I braced and held on as she took it a bit sharply to the left.

“I’ve got the brains, or so you say~.” I sang before launching a retriever bark that was blocked by the barrier Magica produced as she continued to fly after us. We ducked as a crescent blade of wind threatened to take our heads off. “Maybe I’ll have an idea, to handle this in some way~.”

“Would you stop it with that incessant singing?!” Magica shouted after us as she sent several smaller blasts that were too fast for me to track and get all of them. Apparently Ms. Shuttle was on top of dodging them and the ones she couldn’t I targeted.

“We’ve got better things to do~.” Ms. Shuttle sang along bouncing left and right with the tune she was blasting out as she veered about avoiding another volley of magic aimed at her and striking the street around us. None of the blasts hit us and the streets now unfortunately had a pothole problem.

“We need tactics~.” I sang as I considered the staff again with more scrutiny and my scanners active… it couldn’t be that simple right? I needed more evidence to come to that conclusion.

“Then hang around fighting all out with you~!” Ms. Shuttle hit her breaks and Magica slammed into her back popping the magical barrier.

Bunny kicked up the speed again and Shanty and I hit her with a retriever bark and riptide that knocked her onto her back while she was dazedly stumbling about.

“How climactic~!” Shanty sang as she split a blast of green goo that Magica launched forward with a horizontal swing of both her front hooves. This stopped whatever the goo was from enveloping her.

“We’ve got places to be!” Ms. Shuttle sang as she swerved around a red robot that started to firing on us distracting Magica slightly.

“Fighting drastic~.” Shanty and I sang together in response as Magica started catching up again and I started peppering her barrier with retriever barks. I couldn’t do well enough damage to break it.

“Remember the most important one here is me~!” Ms. Shuttle took a hit from a fireball that damaged her back left end, after going wildly out of control for a few seconds she managed to right herself.

“Doing fantastic~.” I sang sarcastically looking off the side at the damage.

Magica let loose a raw mass of power and Shanty swung her hooves with an arc and water added to the razor edge that sent the power flying back.

“Magic, magic, does it stop~? Not real, far too much~!” Yeah, getting that feeling too Shanty as Magica bounced the attack back at us with a simple swing of her staff. “Magic, magic, does it stop~? Can’t tell, what is up~!”

As Shanty sent the magical attack back at Magica with another splash, the sorceress twirled her staff and struck. The large mass of energy split into five orbs that curved towards us homing in and were coming in fast.

“Make sure that music doesn’t stop~!” Because it was working and it was aggravating Magica who wouldn’t know harmony if it bit her in an infectious manner.

Magica was using way too much energy to have it all coming from her, all that power was centered in her staff. Shanty didn’t know what was up, but I certainly did. I had to get it from Magica while her attention was elsewhere and without her having a defense up.

“Magic, magic, hold that back~. We must, stop those attacks~!” Shanty sang as she and I split our focus, I managed to block two with my barking from the left side and Shanty dropped to the back of Bunny Shuttle and deflected the other into the street harmless with two kicks of her rear hooves, one slammed into the back window next to Shanty shattered showering her with fragments of armored glass and cutting her up a bit.

“Magic, magic, pick up the slack~. We’re fighting, on our backs~!” Smolder shouted from below after sending fireball to slam into Magica’s barrier and cracked it. “Please don’t let this heart song pop~.”

Smolder continued to spit fireballs, I’m kind of glad Pom wasn’t in direct line of fire, but if Magica got close enough…

“Turn!” Ms. Shuttle stated, I instantly clamped down as the vehicle swung wide to the right and was nearly hit with an explosion that tore up the street and rocked Ms. Shuttle onto her two left wheels almost toppling her. With a quick bit of steering Ms. Shuttle got herself back onto four wheels and Magica behind us was pounded by a number of energy blasts from a number of red robots that were also firing on us. “I can’t take much more of this, figure out how to make her go away.”

A number of shots slammed into Bunny Shuttle’s front half and damage her even further, I noted mentally that those shots could have taken out the life support systems and was glad that they were only damage slightly. Not enough of a problem yet.

“Whoa-oh-oh, soon enough~!” I sang as I had an idea and I glanced at Shanty and pointed to the staff, she nodded.

“Whoa-oh-oh, soon enough~!” Agreed Shanty as she still kept to the beat as she climbed back up to the top with me looking pained, but she was keeping the beat. Being showered with glass had taken a lot of the fight out of her.

“Magic, magic, can be stopped~. Distract her now, I’ll take it up~.” I sang, as I fire more retriever barks and figured out how to bring her down. A wild bark might do it, but that would be putting myself in close with a power magic user.

“Magic, magic, we will stop~. Just don’t let the music drop~!” We sang together as we enacted a plan born of desperation.

Shanty back up and water gathered around her hooves, the fact that it was colored red was highly disconcerting as to Shanty’s current state of health.

“Magic, magic, can be stopped. Rush down, get close enough~!” In sync we acted as one, Shanty charged forward and leapt from the vehicle first.

I leapt off to the side at a light pole and kicked off, while we were doing this Magica sent a blast of magic upwards and it exploded into several arcing beams of energy that veered down towards Ms. Shuttle.

“Magic, magic, we can top. Bouncing blades, all bloodied up~!” A red covered Shanty slammed into Magica’s barrier and broke through in a constant series of slashing red blades that carved a lot of damage into Magica’s body before she could think to retaliate or counter.

Magica had clearly been surprised by the clear audacity of both of us leaving Ms. Shuttle defenseless.

“Magic, magic, we are tough. Search Hunter, steal it rough~! I immediately teleported and erupted in the air from behind Magica who was wide eyed as my teeth clamped around the staff and my claws ripped into her right wrist, I kicked off and landed spat it towards Shanty.

Shanty uncurled from ripping up Magica and shot upwards to grab it.

“Magic, magic, water erupt~!” Shanty aimed the staff and fired a literal tsunami into Magica’s body, inertia was a cruel mistress as she hit the wall of water like she was hitting a brick wall at more than a hundred miles an hour, then came the road rash from Shanty blasting her back down the street with her own staff. “Please don’t let the music…~!”

The music immediately stopped when all the curving magic beams struck Ms. Shuttle, my heart sank at the sight of Ms. Shuttle taking a series of brutal hits.

My mind moving at the speed of an AI, I quickly teleported beneath Shanty and took the brunt of the fall and the street bit into my fur, skin and the flesh underneath. Gritting my teeth I bore the pain and persevered through it, the PET started glowing for some reason.

“Digivolution… error… digivolution cancelled.” The strange voice in my mind stated as I struggled to stand up as Shanty rolled off me.

Struggling to my paws… ugh the pain was almost unbearable.

“C-c-cure… Li-liquor…” My flesh and skin quickly knitted back together from the road rash and the pain was still quite present, but my fur was already quickly growing back after having been rubbed off by the street as soon as my flesh knitted itself back together.

Magica, if she survived that, would be in a hospital for months.

“Time… to… to be getting rid of this…” Shanty closed her eyes and had a slight look of concentration on her face, the staff then disappeared in her hooves. “There being no magic for her now.”

I made my way over to Shanty and helped her up and slowly aided her with moving towards a badly damaged Ms. Shuttle. Looking behind us I saw red robots coming out into the street from the nearby alleyways.

“Come on Shanty, we can’t stay here.” I propped Shanty up and started helping her walk, her injuries were much worse now.

“Do you think… they’re okay?” Asked a badly coughing and shivering Shanty who was likely going through shock, her body covered in blood at least half of it was her own. Shanty wasn’t asking about Smolder, she’d survive the devastation done to Bunny’s body.

The question was, did Pom?

We made it to Ms. Shuttle and I slowly help Shanty up the steps and looked about, those magic beams did a lot of damage.

“Ms. Shuttle, are you alive?” I asked tentatively as I slowly looking towards where the stasis field was and to my relief Pom was still alive and the life support was still working, she didn’t looked to have been hit by any of magical beams that pummeled Ms. Shuttle. However mom’s heart rate was slow again, she better not flat line any time soon because we needed to know what systems were damaged and if the defibrillator was offline... “Bunny!”

“…” The whole interior of Bunny Shuttle was quiet and dark.

“System restart… ow… okay… taking stock of the damage.” Glad to hear Ms. Shuttle’s voice, I sighed and looked to Smolder whose body was covered in scorch marks as she laid next to the stasis field. She managed to get in the path of several beams that would have hit Pom. “Chemical cannon operational at a thirty percent capacity, firing not recommended unless absolutely necessary. Lost left rear wheel and front right wheel… power systems hit, reserve power is in effect for essential systems. Only two emergency lights are working. Life support systems, damaged… critical systems… thankfully intact. You need to reestablish those destroyed drip feeds quickly.”

“I’m…. I’m okay.” Smolder said slowly from the floor where she was face down. She rolled over groaning. “Is Pom… did she make it?”

“Alive… ish… can you move Bunny?” I asked Ms. Shuttle.

“… chances of reaching Basemax with current damage… seven percent. I can still move a little, but steering is going to be a hassle. Wait… chances rising to ninety percent.” I tilted my head wondering what she meant and then two Skymax’s delivery systems came in and latched on to her rear end and started to push her. “Baymax has ordered the Skymax drones to begin pushing us safely to Basemax, he’s even ordered them to do so even if it damages them severely.”

“This is Team Injured Lamb, we’re alive, but we’re not going to be able to do much of anything. I will have to tend to the several new horrible injuries… Bunny Shuttle has taken excessive damage and is inoperable for the foreseeable future.” My voice was dull and hollow and I felt the same shell shock Shanty must be going through. “I just hope for your sake that you made the right decision Ocellus.”

I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my tone as I started to cry, why were things always so horrible around me?!

That’s when Shanty finally passed out and I quickly took up the medical kit, quick scan… Pom first, then Shanty. Pom was still far worse off.

Smolder was alright, but emotionally… I don’t think any of us came out of this unscathed. Except maybe me physically, as the worse damage I’ve taken is large loss of energy from having to heal. I couldn’t rest yet, despite how tired I was from expending so much energy, I had to secure Pom and Shanty, then help I would help Smolder up off the floor.

225. Total Siege.

-Equus, Ponyville, Jaded La Perm-

“Get a hold of yourself!” I shook Gallus who looked to have come to his senses. “Okay your turn.”

“Wait, wait, what’s going…” Gallus was grabbed and rapidly shaken by Sandbar, slapped a few time and then shaken again.

“Get a hold of yourself Gallus, you’re a cool griffon and you need to get a grip!” Sandbar shouted in a manner most encouraging. “Okay your turn.”

“What in the…” Gallus leaned to the right and saw the line of ponies and creatures ready to come forward and slap some sense into him.

“Yay, I’ve been waiting for this, get a hold of yourself Gallus!” Silver Stream shouted as she shook, slapped and shook Gallus again. “Okay Fluttershy, your next!”

“Really, I think I’ve got my sense back you don’t really need to…” Gallus was grabbed by Fluttershy and she started shaking him, slapped him twice and then shaking him again.

“Please just let me have this last go Gallus.” Fluttershy muttered as she shook him violently while looking into his eyes innocently. Fluttershy was like a cute little otter, one with a hidden dark side. “It’s been a pretty long day.”

“Fine…” Gallus grunted.

“He’s okay now everyone!” All those waiting in line whined and were saddened to see the griffon they were helping was now aware of himself, we’ve been shaking and slapping Gallus for the last hour… I even got to go twice on my adoptive little brother. Sure I might have been the cause, but doing this was one of the funnier ways to go about friendship. “You can all leave now, thank you for coming to support Gallus in getting his senses back!”

“… Can we at least keep getting muffins?” Derpy asked with a raised hoof and half the crowd started to agree with that sentiment.

“Am I evil for starting this conga line mom?” I turned and asked my mother who was bringing out a tray of muffins for the hungry populace that decided to get in on the slapping Gallus back to his senses.

“No, we’re Abyssinians, being jerks is implied with our species. Even if stereotypes are not entirely correct, we’re still very much cats.” Mom said with a gentle nod before leaning closer towards Gallus and placing a muffin into his confused talon. “How are you feeling kitten?”

“Like an entire town... went to town on me." Whether Gallus knew it or not, he had a lot of friends. I hugged my griffon brother and gave him an affectionate nuzzle. "I’m kind of surprised by the turn out though.”

“I’m sorry I broke you little brother!” I should probably keep my Zampony out of sight for a few days, maybe store it with the Capture Bridle Defend organization for a few weeks. “Comes with the territory though, our family lacks both common sense and is fifty apples shy of normalcy as I’m sure Applejack would tell you.”

“Eyup.” Applejack intoned blandly as she took an apple crumb muffin, everyone around rolled their eyes at that.

-Earth, San Fransokyo Mall, Ocellus-

We really couldn’t stay here for much longer we were being swamped from two sides, the only thing keeping the Hunter Drones from encroaching successfully was the Migrator and even that was taking damage from the amount of fire it received.

Apparently the Beuno Nacho kiosk was built to survive class five villain attacks, it was proving to be very helpful in this situation as the blond haired young alien duck biped continued to fire puck after puck into the crowd of robots.

Bazooka Bunny and Plasma Paladin had been hit once or twice, but as for Grin and Fredzilla they were taking the brunt of the robots firepower.

“We should retreat, how fast can that get us out of here?” Provided the robots didn’t damage the wheels on it too much, the vehicle was our best option and its armor was starting to look pretty poor despite dealing the most damage to the Hunter Drone numbers... and the food court.

“Depends, this is the most Hunter Drones I’ve ever seen at once in my life.” You’d be an expert on that at least Nosedive, the blonde haired duck’s armor was getting equally battered. “They really want you to jailbreak their empire and more than three hundred of these things is a little much to throw at one person. Grin, can you and Zilla figure out how to clear a path to the Migrator? We kind of need to retreat here!”

“I can slow them down, but we’ll need a big distraction.” Bazooka Bunny announced as she took cover.

“This is Mental Magnet, I’ve captured Professor Nimnul and Baron Von Steamer, moving on to Professor Dementor. Most of his guys are injured and Baymax is interested in helping them as much as capturing them.” Nice for us to know he was doing okay, Mini-Max was quite useful for communications as much as Dormarch was. “Just want to warn you that Drakken and Shego look to be calling in reinforcements. Momakase is going to lend an assist when she can.”

“Wait, we’re not going to retreat yet…” I received some odd looks for that, but they kept shooting or fighting even as a battered Fredzilla and Grin ducked behind the counter. Grin had various light wounds and Fredzilla’s suit was heavily battered under the constant pressure of energy weapons fire, despite that his handheld spinning weapon was still in good condition and was holding up quite well. “Can I get an ETA on the northern and western lizards, the movements of the robots to the south of the mall and Team Possible? Also unknown forces are friendlies called The Mighty Ducks, the red robots are called ‘Hunter Drones’ continue with that knowledge in mind.”

“The one from the north on approach and will arrive in several minutes if current pace is kept, the one to the west will take ten minutes with several possible waves of Hunter Drones arriving earlier than that. Team Possible is pushing through the Hunter Drones, arrival is estimated to be at least thirty seconds.” Okay my suspicions just jumped up several notches due to Baymax’s information and given what was said about there being another shape shifter in the area… I needed to hear about the Hunter Drones possible moving into position south of us. “Hunter Drones to the south seemed to be lightly scattered and watching the roads. A good number of them were destroyed by The Mighty Ducks moving through the area.”

“Well that just confirmed it, we can’t retreat to the south.” They were expecting us to head that way and were laying traps or ambush points. I noticed the curious look I was receiving from the huge duck Grin. “Okay, so if we’re seeing a lizard big guy coming from our north, a tall old staff wielding lizard guy from the west… well 'if I were a shape shifter', I would be setting up traps and distractions to separate me from the rest of you so I can be more easily captured when we run straight into them to the south which has been our direction of retreat up until now.”

The irony was not lost on me making such a statement, but changelings have long since perfected shape shifting warfare a long time ago. I was never a soldier, but I still understood stealth and ambush tactics perfectly fine.

“I’m going to need at least two people with me at all times that I absolutely cannot be separated from long enough for that Chameleon guy to make a hot swap to even attempt a kidnapping.” Because goodness knows someone was about to suggest what I think they were. “As such, none of us should split up and any gear that we can use that Chameleon can’t is enough of an identifier of safety to me. Mini-Max, Rufus, Dolly are always going to be safe. I can’t let any of the rest of you leave my sight... we need to hold position and break the siege by heading north or west.”

“Might I say that that is an understandable and well thought out argument? You are very bright person Ms. Callaghan.” Grin said in a gentle voice, the giant duck guy was absolutely worried about me. He should be, because these lizard guys might kill me when they find out what I really was if they could somehow force me to revert back to being myself. I could only hope their magic user was mildly incompetent, just enough so to not tell there was something off about me in a magical sense. “Are feeling you okay?”

“Please, call me Abigail. I’ve come under attack by a villain where I was living, I got dragged around the city with what is my best friend and then I find myself being hunted by hundreds of robots.” Stating this bluntly I looked Grin in the eyes. There was also Shanty and Dolly getting worse injuries on top of ones they barely had a day to recover from after an exhausting day long crisis. There’s frying pan, there’s fire and then there’s volcano. We have long since skipped well past volcano. “What I am is quite stressed and I have plenty of reason to be!”

There was also Wheel Cat engaging Phantom Blot from what we last heard from her, but we don’t know what’s going on there or with Penny Forrester’s Power Pets group.

“Hey bro, we have a problem…” Nosedive called out on a communications device before standing up and blasting a puck through the chest of the robots coming from the north. “Yeah, no, we can’t… we don’t know where Chameleon is and we have an idea that he’s setting up an ambushes in that direction. Mallory is doing the most damage, but the Migrator is taking a seriously bad pummeling. There’s far too many of them and this party is between a rock and a hard place. We’re getting reinforced by two more heroes right about… now, but it’s going to be hard to hold up in this siege. At least you’re not having it easy up there either.”

When Nosedive said the word ‘now’ a grappling hook lashed out and caught one of the robots on the outer right edge of those approaching the Bueno Nacho counter.

Kim Possible, came in sliding low and wide on a pair of jet skates taking out the legs out from under multiple Hunter Drones with the wire knocking a good number of them down, she detached the grappling hook and quickly skated away from the one that started to fire on her.

That’s when her ferret friend shot through the area with rockets coming from his… shorts? Also didn’t he use to have pants? He was at least distracting the Hunter Drones while Mallory, whom I’ve yet to meet in person, Grin and Nosedive opened fire on them with Bazooka Bunny and Plasma Paladin.

Fredzilla was behind the counter near me and I carried Dolly over to him.

“Is this worse or better than what usually happens around here?” Since this place required heroes like Big Hero Six, I thought it would be prudent to ask.

“Eh, not the worst thing, usually that would require Mega-Max, the power consumption from using him alone is excessive and we only need Mega-Max for an actual kaiju fight. Still pretty bad and up there.” Fredzilla waved at me and watched Kim Possible caught a blast of energy and sent it flying back at one of the Hunter Drones. The ferret guy was actually proving to be agile and able to dodge a lot of fire while taking out numerous Hunter Drones too.

“KP, yay!” Rufus announced brightly before gnawing on another cheese covered snack.

“Even with all the help, we’re barely putting a dent in them.” Grin muttered as I looked out over the heavily ripped up food court of destroyed tables, chairs and other kiosks.

“Told you that Bueno Nacho would take my armored building idea and run with it KP!” The ferret shouted as he joined us, by flopping over the counter and then he pulled out a pair of pants from somewhere and started to put them on.

“Ron, so not the time!” Kim was in the middle of kicking a robots arm to redirect its shot into taking another out by blasting a hole through its chest. “Wade, how long can my battle suit last under these conditions?!”

“Can we retreat past that tank thing, while it covers us?” Ron asked me, while Rufus took a perch on his should and patted his head.

“Bad idea, there’s possible an ambush expert in that direction, these Hunter Drones are actively trying to drive us to run in that particular direction.” I shot zipped past my nose making me yelp and cower in cover.

“This is troubling my ability to remain calm in the face of adversity.” Grin said in a strained voice and then took off the offending Hunter Drones head with a rifle weapon built for someone of his unusual size.

“More coming from above, can we try and break through them in a different direction?” Mallory asked as the vehicle launched another blast that took down ten to twenty drones. Not that it was going to help when we still had a good number coming at us and they were actively evading the vehicles fire.

Multiple dropped from above making Nosedive and Grin switch targets to the Migrator.

“Cover me, closing off the ceiling and setting up some walls.” Announced Bazooka Bunny before she fired a sphere that exploding into large blob that caught a Hunter Drones trying to drop down on the Migrator and the next few shots arced out around the kiosk creating a series of walls that impeded the Hunter Drones coming at us. “The chemicals in those walls can absorb a lot of heat and energy.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice!” Nosedive dove over the counter to being behind one of the chemical walls to the left and pulled out a second high speed puck spewing weapon. “Wonder what they are going to do now that they know we’re not going for fall for an ambush? Come on you ugly can openers!”

“There is anomalous energy detected in the vicinity to the west!” Mini-Max announced, the wester entrance to the food court suddenly became covered in a growing sphere of energy and a number of Hunter Drones stopped moving forward and started to fire at us. None of the shots from our side were getting through the energy barrier. “It appears that the western entrances to the mall have all been sealed off.”

“Wraith is most certainly the one responsible for that, his rupturing of the world’s normal flow creates an unnatural foul air.” Grin stated as he moved to a wall on the right as Bazooka Bunny and Plasma Paladin took cover between him and Nosedive. The barrier was preventing our side from hitting the Hunter Drones that took up position behind it. “I am under no delusion that we are in a good situation here.”

“Coming forward, if we can’t go south or west, then we may as well just force our way through… rockets incoming!” The Migrator rolled forward and to the left and rammed through some Hunter Drones to avoid some rockets that took out large chunks of the floor to our left. “Lost the back right wheel, can I get someone in here to run the gun, I can’t do it and drive at the same time.”

“I think I can do it if I knew what the controls were, but I want you to back up to the counter first before I even think of moving.” I wasn’t moving from behind the Beuno Nacho counter until the distance was short enough that I wouldn't get hit by a stray shot. “They are getting to a point where they don’t care if they hit me!”

“Yeah, I can do that. Things are not going much better with The Raptor, it’s being defended by the larger Hunter Drones. Even one of those things is an anti-infantry nightmare!” Mallory stated as she backed the vehicle towards the chemical barriers while firing the weapons from the Migrator’s front. Another rocket landed and tore a chunk out of the floor where the Migrator had been. “Siege is here, once was possibly a well-armed Hunter Drone variant, but we don’t normally see these guy’s firing rockets. Twice was definitely their primary weapons maker... and we’re suddenly getting hammered harder from the north.”

“Tell her they are trying to push us to run south!” I shouted to Nosedive, he communicated that while ducking into cover.

“Well if we don’t move soon they are going to…” The front of the vehicle was blasted and smoking and Mallory screeched as the vehicle slid to a stop to the left of the chemical barriers and its back opened up. “Agh, that nearly took out the Migrator’s engine! Even if we don’t head south they are going to pin us here and wear us down! Get in here and I’ll show you how to work the cannon for however long it lasts, they won’t risk blowing the Migrator up with you onboard, they’ll probably try to disable it though!”

“I’ll cover you Abigail, go!” Kim Possible shouted as she stopped in front of the counter. “Can’t we do something about that barrier?”

Quickly lifting Dolly up with my right, paw I got onto the counter and bounded off it to the left and darted for the ramp as quickly as I could on three legs, Kim intercepted several shots that would have hit us both and sent them flying back into the drones behind the barrier.

Their shots could pass through, which proved useful for Kim who was somehow catching and throwing the blasts of energy back with what looked like a scoop that grew from her hand.

“We’re not magically inclined, but the best way to do that is to break Wraiths concentration. Our Aerowing is already on it!” I made it to the ramp and saw Mallory for the first time, she looked like an older Goaslyn Mallard, the resemblance was really quite uncanny. How long have these alien ducks been blending in on this planet for? “They are ditching attempts to board and bring down The Raptor, the Saurians have the entrances to their ship too well defended. Not that The Raptor or Dragaunus is going to let them attack Wraith.”

She quickly turned and looked at me and pointed the console to the right and I quickly made my way forward.

“Mallory McMallard, nice to meet you. Now take control of that console and start taking out the guys on our right, I’ve got our front! Stick for aiming, button for targeting zone calculations, trigger to fire.” I quickly sat down and the console and it looked easy enough to get a handle on, I grabbed the controls and turned the turret and fired on the encroaching drones from the north and took out a cluster. “Yeah, that’s it, ah crap… here he comes.”

“You ducks are about to go down with your new friends, let’s see how you deal with some real Siege engines when you’re trapped like scurrying rats!” Despite firing on him and barely doing any damage with the explosion of energy or the fact that both Nosedive and Grin focused fire, the large lizard forced his way forward regardless of what was hitting him. “Tiny was good enough for me to acquire the resources to make even more of him, aren’t you happy to be in for a real fight when you could barely handle even one!”

Behind the bulky lizard guy with the thagomizer, armor with hug shoulder pads and in general thick looking skin were several of those large Hunter Drones among a number of smaller drones.

“Did he just pun off his own name?” I asked quietly while horrified at how much fire the guy could take without showing any signs of injury. It was terrifying to watch the guy in motion.

“Yeah, that’s Siege for you, the guy can plow through anything you hit him with. The guy is carnage and weapons incarnate, focus down the Hunter Drones and don’t bother with him. Grin can take him in hand to hand, but he’s going to need some breathing space to do that and not get shot in the back, so we need to provide that space!” I saw through the forward windshield that Mallory was pumping out shot after shot into the barrier and any hunter drone that dare pass through it in the distance. I turned back to the console and continued to fire on the Hunter Drones coming from our right as Siege pushed forward at us. “Guys why haven’t you hit Wraith yet?! The Migrator is getting destroyed and we can’t break his barrier to destroy the drones behind it and Siege is basically on top of us with several of those big ones!”

“We’ve got our own problems Mal. If you think you have trouble, we’ve got a number of them trying to shoot us out of the sky!” A suave sounding masculine voice stated back. “We’re currently dealing with what amounts to artillery fire from them and are busy trying to keep the Aerowing in one piece. We could break out the Turbowing we have loaded to lend some aerial support, but whoever pilots it is going to get shot down pretty fast if enough of those Hunter Drones focus fire on it in an enclosed space.”

“Duke, we’ve got four of those walking tanks on us and they are backing up Siege, the local heroes and the supplementary ones that were called in aren’t going to be enough to stop them from pulling Abigail out of the Migrator if they have to rip it open with their bare hands!” Even as Mallory conversed with the rest of her team I didn't stop shooting. “We can’t run, we can barely even hold this position, we need ideas here to prevent them from getting the person we're protecting!”

I was hitting said walking tanks and doing some moderate damage, not enough to destroy them but enough to make sure they couldn’t fire rockets at least. As Dolly had apparently noticed their wrist and shoulder mounted rockets were mild vulnerabilities, but they still had their two chest cannons and ten finger guns.

“We’re trying to drop the barrier, then you can try to make a run for it through the west entrance.” Announced another more serious male voice. “We’ll send out the Turbowing to give you support fire when you break through the west entrance, turn north and try to break away.”

“Well you better hurry up on that Wildwing, we’re faltering badly here!” Mallory was understating the situation.

Ron, Kim and Fredzilla were protecting the ramp to the back of the vehicle and Grin was having problems getting close to the large lizard known as Siege because of the fire from the large Hunter Drones. Even Bazooka Bunny and Plasma Paladin weren’t doing nearly enough damage to slow them down.

The barrier at the far end of the western entrance to the food court suddenly dropped.

“Everyone get onboard or stay and get plastered!” Not having to be told twice by Mallory, everyone quickly piled into the Migrator, Grin was the last being blown inside by a rocket fired by Siege.

“You’re not getting away that easily!” Shouted Siege as he fired rockets to chase after the Migrator as we surged forward, one made it through the defending shots and slapped the back half of the vehicle to the side as it closed it's ramp and surged towards the mall’s western entrance. “We'll grab that key to our empires return!”

Author's Note

A single Heavy Hunter Drone is bad, multiple are far too much for the heroes in small numbers.

Tiny was the one Hunter Drone that almost wiped out the Mighty Ducks all by itself before Nosedive took it out.

227. Look to the stars.

-Equus, Airship Mauled (Airship Wemauliya), F. Pom-

Fœnum was my home, but Equus was pretty nice. Even if it was a bit scary to be away from home.

Apparently the native Pom to this world got into a whole lot of trouble, the Tianhuo of this world needed a wee bit of a hug and also support.

Fœnum was willing to aid in the Tambelon excursion if it happens. However, I wish that didn’t include me being dragged along with all the other Fœnum champions, Arizona roped me into it quite literally.

As I ate my rice and mixed vegetables brought to our table by purple wearing witch with a bright smile and great smelling and tasting food; I silently thought about the many differences between Fœnum and this world.

For one Fœnum Tianhuo was a vegetarian. This worlds Tianhuo ate fish

Fœnum Velvet was able to maintain a massive ice tornado she could attack from.

Equus Velvet created ice golems copies of herself and she can make a giant one she can pilot from the inside. Also there is the whole, “It’s not flying, it’s jumping in the air multiple times”, thing this world’s velvet can do.

Seriously both of them were equally quite terrifying with wind and ice, both had a condition and had a horrible nickname of “The Northern Backwind”. Both had a thing about their floof and they were volatile at the best of times, but they could both be sweet.

Fœnum Paprika could get super grumpy, when she did it took a powerful spine breaking hug to get her happy again. Usually we aim her at someone who wouldn’t mind

Equus Paprika was more talented at fluff manipulation and was apparently yet to be determined quasi-goddess married to local Arizona and Velvet. Our Paprika didn’t have the love at first sight of someone bound to be a significant other in your life thing.

Don’t know about Equus Shanty, but I’m sure there were similarities and ridiculous power differences to our bundle of trouble whenever she’s seen roaming around.

Equus Pom’s Canis Minor pups were definitely stronger than my sheep dogs, but my sheep dogs had their own anomalous properties with the hovering by their tails thing. She also had more variety in canines. I had more quantity in sheep dogs… in fact I had all the sheep dogs from my home town to protect me.

I’m almost afraid to go to sleep at night sometimes considering the giant sheep dogs tend to circle around me when I sleep. I always prefer the good puppies, because honestly… the big ones scare me.

Oleander… they were basically the same except I think Fœnum Oleander was friend zoning Fred. She was dating Cashmere though and Fred approved… which was a little weird for our side of the dimensional fence. Not that I was one to talk when I was our Paprika’s primary snuggle target… and secretly enjoyed it when she wasn’t being rough.

As for Equus and Fœnum Arizona… about the same really, hard to tell the difference between them except maybe the fact that our Arizona is a bit younger and not in a relationship. So there is likely some time discrepancies between our worlds. Both had tough skin, extremely tiny udders and were explosively powerful, our Arizona was more focused on earth shaking, Equus Arizona was more capable with rope magic.

Why was I going over all this in my head again again?

“Mach-It-Launcher!” Oh, yes… because apparently Fœnum Arizona just learned how to do all of Equus Arizona’s techniques… over the course of the last hour. “Mach Lefter! Rope-a-dope, slam! The Cow Kenpo stuff here is a bit more extreme than back home, but I’m loving it!”

“Yeah, that’s how we do it dimensional cousin!” Why, oh why, did this dimensions Arizona decide to teach ours how to do those physics breaking attacks?! And how did she do it in so little time?! In fact Equus Arizona seemed enjoy being a living punching bag, our Arizona at least reacts normally to pain and not like just getting slammed into the ground spine first was nothing after the crater that just created.

We were being asked to train with the local pony guard, I hoped they didn’t hurt me too badly…

-A day later-

“Come on, I’m the most pathetic thing in existence and my dogs are weaker than the Canis Minor you’ve been training with… how are you this bad?!” I screamed at the poor pony guards who winced and backed away from me, ME OF ALL SHEEP. “How did I even win against you in a six on one fight?! You had the advantage the entire time and I wasn’t even using my very good lovable puppies here, yes they are very good puppies’ yes they are, to win this fight!”

The puppies barked and frolicked around me in an adorable manner as I cuddled and petted them affectionately.

“To be fair this is the best our particular unit has done since… well forever. Still don’t know why we’re labeled ISUS squad forty two. None of the other forty one ISUS squads knows what it means either.” One of the pony guards admitted. “We were told to start off with you to help work our way up from being dirt, to worms in the dirt, to grass, to baby mice, to small rats and then finally something akin to a single unarmed brawler pukwudgies with all its limbs tied behind its back…”

Okay, they were admittedly still better than the sheep guardsmen in Fœnum being molecules on the horizon when danger happened, but still…

-Earth, Big Hero 6 Basemax Headquarters, 16 hours later, Dolly-

?

!

Ugh, my head…

Reaching up with a paw I massaged the side of my head through the bandages with tiny circular motions, Deepak was a good teacher in self-massage techniques. Some would be surprised I had the attention span for the lesson and didn’t just run off to hang with my wild friends or park buddies.

Sitting up I looked around and the room was stark white and well lit.

“Dolly’s awake!” Announced Ms. Shuttle’s voice from around the room making me wince at the loudness. “Oh sorry Dolly.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m up, I’m up… now can you keep the volume to a minimum and tell me where my kibble is?” I groaned and thought about how I was left in a full sized bed of my own.

“Pom’s things are next to her, she’s still stable…” A shocking noise was heard. “… relatively stable.”

I tried to feel out for where Pom was and saw her floating in the stasis field completely still and barely breathing at all. I stood up and hopped down from the bed and made my way over to Pom’s pack, I pulled out my dog bowl.

“Where can I get some water?” I was never going to drink toilet water ever again unless I had to thanks to Pom, so I was making absolutely sure I knew where my water came from since I’m properly paranoid.

“I’ll have Roddy look into bringing you some fresh water Dolly.” Ms. Shuttle responded half cheerfully.

“While you’re doing, how long have I been out and where are we?” I reached out and was looking around for Dormarch.

What the…

I looked up at the ceiling blankly trying to comprehend where I was currently feeling Dormarch as being.

That… that was pretty far away, not going to lie, but that… the distance between us… that’s a wow.

What in the world happen for him to be that far away?!

I wouldn’t even begin to know the exact measurement to the distance between us, the most I know is feet and inches. Not that I ever went to school and my education came directly from my mothers and dad.

“You’ve been unconscious for a little more than sixteen hours. It was approaching evening yesterday, you woke up this morning… oh by the way, nice morning Dolly.” Not a ‘good’ morning? Okay now was I was alert. “As for what’s going on… a lot of things. For one the huge spaceship known as The Raptor escaped with Ocellus still disguised as Abigail, Dormarch infiltrated one of the Hunter Drones before they teleported back to the ship. Location… currently unknown.”

Okay now I know why it’s a nice morning, because good wasn’t in the cards if Ocellus got grabbed.

“Not from where I’m sitting, I know exactly where he is and he’s still healthy.” About as much as I was getting, he was a bit surprised to feel me tugging at our bond. He sent back feelings that sounded like warnings, worry and a little hint of fear.

As big sister of the Dalmatian Family I have never lost a puppy… I now knew why when it came to instincts, a good nose and possibly some family based magic that tethered me to all of them including mom and dad.

“Good to know, I’m assuming magical bond thing. The information will be useful in helping us track ‘The Raptor’ while it is cloaked. Most of the villains were detained by Mental Magnet and Big Guy. The ones still at large are as follows. First off we have badly injured Magica De Spell, she was likely picked up by someone and taken to the nearest hospital as there has been a duck of her description being carried into one recently. Shego and Drakken were picked up and evacuated by their minions before the Hunter Drones overwhelmed them and it was one of the few times they have been noted as being completely competent by Ron Stoppable given they actually took out a number of Hunter Drones without floundering around like a bunch of fish that can’t swim, his words not mine.” Okay interesting to know, but not really pertinent to what’s going on now Shuttle. I poured myself some kibbled and started munching away. “Oh and my shuttle body is in need of serious repair, but that is going to take some time. Until then I’m actually disembodied and in the systems of Basemax. Welcome to Big Hero Six’s secret headquarters by the way.”

“Okay, so the vessel got away, what happened after that and what’s going on with Big Hero Six, Bolts team and why does this mostly hairless rodent look familiar?” The hairless rodent had whiskers, but not much else on his body.

“That would be Rufus, you were there when you guys summoned in Team Possible in right? He’s with them. Speaking of teams aside from Leap Lambs, we also are currently housing The Mighty Ducks team of hockey themed vigilantes, as well as Penny’s Power Pets. The Mighty Ducks are currently using Basemax’s vehicle bay facilities to repair their flying vehicle known as the Aerowing.” After a pause, I looked around and saw that I there were others in the room as well. Notably Smolder, who had the use of her legs again because she just walked in from the bathroom and we looked at each other. She nodded to me and slowly crawled into bed near the door and carefully laid down. I saw Bolt laying in a bed across from me, he looks to have been through a bit of a scrape himself. “Currently, all members of Big Hero Six are plying themselves as civilians. Penny Forrester and the other Power Pets are here as well, they are busy looking up some things on the internet and performing recreational activities… that is to say that the cat named Mittens is bouncing Rhino off the wall like a tennis ball. As you’ve noticed Bolt took some minor injuries in the scuffle with Phantom Blot, he has already recovered almost fully.”

“That about sizes it up. Aside from Wheel Cat needing to repair her armor.” Smolder finally stated. “Everyone combined took down about two hundred and thirty or so Hunter Drones yesterday. It wasn’t a victory by any stretch of the imagination, at least Ocellus’s ruse paid off and hopefully still is.”

“Correct, Abigail Callaghan and Wendy Wower were successfully escorted to safety, defensive protocols for all guests running correctly. Our guests have yet to be informed of the truth to the subterfuge, but they will be told soon enough.” Said a different voice a pair of eyes appeared and seemed directed at me. “Hello, I am Basemax. Your hero headquarters companion.”

“Of those completely destroyed, at least seventy damaged Hunter Drones were recovered by The Raptor, estimates have them at least two hundred plus normal Hunter Drones and at least fifty of the heavily armed variants reported and possibly rising if the ship has manufacturing capabilities.” Wait… wait, wait, wait a minute there Shuttle, there were more of those huge things that knocked me out?! I could barely come close to handling just one! “It is sad to say, but all the parts to the heavily armed variants of Hunter Drones were successfully recovered by The Saurians, the lizard aliens who want to take over this world and more. Their current effective forces would still be in the range of three hundred hunter drones and the aforementioned fifty plus heavily armed variants.”

Lizard aliens, was that where all those robots came from? Yikes, conspiracy theorists nutcases on TV might have been right for once about something… like a broken clock is right twice a day.

“Team Possible is currently asking for permission to visit the infirmary, also their master hacker Wade Load is attempting to subjugate my systems. They are curious as to what Big Hero Six has hiding in the infirmary, which is why Rufus is in there with you. Wade is not doing so well in accomplishing this task, but I need to ask… do I have permission to let them in?” This Basemax guy sounded slightly smug, but that could just be my imagination. “They will quickly discover Leap Lamb’s current state anyway, I do not want to cause them undue stress when it comes to worrying about why Rufus has yet to let them in.”

“Yes.” Smolder stated and then looked to me.

“Eh, sure.” I noted that Rufus was looking at Pom and the heart monitor worriedly.

“If the visitors be bringing good food or rum, then yes.” Shanty answered from her position. “I just be losing a lot of blood, I’m not being that bad off… really!”

“Wait, before you open the doors, can I ask how Smolder is walking again?” Because she was a paraplegic below the waist the last I saw of her.

“Nerve damage was repaired via surgical ingestion of tiny machines controlled personally by the healthcare provider Baymax, until specific sections of damaged tissues were successfully restored or repaired. Said ingestion or injection in a similar vein thereof will not help Pom, not for another three months of estimated waiting time at least for her to recover enough for the process to be of some actual use. At which point it ‘might’ be survivable for her.” Okay, that’s understandable Ms Shuttle. Also the stress on the word ‘might’ means we’re so not doing that. “Pom’s body would attempt to cannibalize the microscopic machinery and it could lead to self-inflicted poisoning, she is still successfully absorbing all nutrients and is in need of more nutrient packs soon. Also if you were wondering energy signs from the egg of Dodo continues to be minimal yet increasing in frequency.”

“Just let them in already, they seem like they are smart enough to keep a tight lip about Pom’s injuries.” Smolder was the designated leader of our group and we agreed to let them in.

The door eventually opened and we heard a voice.

“I think I almost got it…” The voice on the red headed fox’s handheld device stated, the fox just looked at the open door then down at Wade.

“I don’t think you do Wade, their security is actually top notch and we’re being let in… now let’s see what was… oh…” Taking three steps into the room, Kim Possible paused and then slowly made her way up to Leap Lamb. I growled in her direction when she went to touch her, she looked at me and nodded before backing off paws raised where I could see them. “So yeah, that’s a lot of drama and a pretty big secret, I can understand why they wouldn’t want just anyone walking in on this sight. That patched hole in her neck…”

Kim shivered and wrapped herself in a hug as well as her tail around her legs.

“Is that Leap Lamb?! I knew something was up when we weren’t let into the infirmary!” The blond ferret received a glare from me, Shanty and Smolder.

“Ron, quiet, people are trying to rest.” Kim looked in my direction and she crouched down. “Caper Canine?”

I nodded while glaring at Ron with a paw to my head, I probably grunted and grumbled something in a growling tone to them. That Ron better not shout again because I felt sore and had a headache.

“She also goes by Dolly Danger Dalmatian of the Dalmatian Family, one of ninety nine puppies in various age ranges, two parents. No owners, or in their words no pets, looking out for them.” At that statement a halfway smiling rabbit face appeared on a nearby screen to look on as both Kim and Ron shuddered while looking at each other. “They are dogs bordering on animalistic tendencies, but are still functionally animals.”

“I can barely handle Hana, imagine handling ninety nine puppies… eugh.” Ron quivered while sticking out his tongue.

“Dolly can imagine, because she did it for years before joining patient Pom Lambchop, who is Leap Lamb, as a sidekick and super hero in her own right. However Dolly’s body is still very much as fragile as any other dog, barely any sturdier thanks to her magical abilities. Among her abilities includes the most useful one being the ability to locate her errant little brother Dynamo Dog, who is also known as Dormarch Lambchop Dalmatian adopted into his big sisters family and by Pom Lambchop.”

“Well now…” The brown feathered duck leaning against the doorway idly checked over his weird looking sword. Both Kim and Ron entered a fighting stance, but he didn’t seem phased or even looking for a fight. The swords blade seemed to shrink into its hilt. “Did I hear you right? You know how to find wherever The Raptor ran off to this time, even though its cloaking system makes that nearly impossible for just about anyone.”

The ducks voice was a bit gruff and he was missing an eye, but he seemed calm and collected individual… I had him pegged as a...

“You be a thief, a spy or a ninja, possibly being all three.” Has anyone ever told you that it takes one to know one Shanty? “It be okay because you are not going to be killing anyone here, you be a good person no matter your history.”

“So one of you can read people, useful, keep that skill well trained kiddo. Duke L’Orange at your service.” He tipped his head towards us, he also glanced at Pom for a second before looking away.

“Correction, Dolly knows how to locate The Raptor precisely because her little brother infiltrated one of the Hunter Drones before the mass recall happened, but she would have to be present to give you directions as The Raptor could be in constant motion.” As Ms. Shuttle spoke to Duke, he curiously put the sword away on his left shoulder. “While it may be rendered impossible to find through normal means, she would be able to locate it so long as her brother is onboard.”

“Good to know, but not why I’m here, I just wanted to ask about what you meant when you said we have plenty of time as Abigail being in the hands of those stinking lizards wasn’t going to be an issue?” He narrowed his left eye on the half smiling visage of Ms. Shuttle.

“Well it was going to come out eventually, like how Big Hero Six has Leap Lamb on life support.” Grumbled Ms. Shuttle. “The Abigail Callaghan the Saurians took was a fake.”

“Looked real enough to me and that certainly wasn’t Chameleon acting as her, they would have offed my friends after they shot them down if it was a trap.” Dryly commented duke, the guy was now looking in my direction.

“There are reasons for that that we will get into soon enough once everyone has finished their many obligations for the day.” Basemax responded. “Until then you are welcome guests of Big Hero Six, please do not abuse our trust in letting you know the identity of our members.”

“Most of your members are machines.” Duke said dully.

“While that is correct, we do make up a decent support base for the actual heroes.” Basemax stated and Duke chuckled.

That’s when a bear in overalls came in and placed a bowl of water down for me, he softly patted me on the head and left.

-An hour later-

They just finished going over a lot of stuff I already knew, some I didn’t and I got to see the rest of these Mighty Duck guys. We were now on the same page, though the Mighty Ducks were a little iffy on the fact that they would be saving a shape shifter from the Saurians given how much trouble Chameleon gave them in general.

“Well why don’t we just ask her?” Tanya Vanderflock, the nerd of the Mighty Ducks that had a thing for purple and high tech goggles pointed to me just sitting here in a chair of my own and resting my head on the table bored out of my mind, my paws idly hugging my skateboard and while I would rather be skating about… this meeting was kind of important to sit in on. “Where would you say your brother is right now?”

I felt out for him and then pointed up at an angle, one clawed digit held aloft.

“Yeah, real useful that.” Snorted Nosedive sarcastically while shaking his head. “It’s almost like she’s pointing out that he’s in heaven.”

“I’d tell you how far away he is, but you wouldn’t believe me.” My speaking was unlikely to be understood.

“Dolly just implied that they are in space.” Ms. Shuttle paraphrased me pretty well there, because it certainly felt like there was an ocean of distance between the two of us. “So of course she will be pointing upwards when asked.”

“I’m kind of with Nosedive on this, lot of good that will do us knowing what direction it is in.” Mallory slapped her hands down on the table and stood up. “How will we even get up to them without a ship?! The Aerowing still needs to be repaired and all its holes sealed before its space worthy again!”

“I might have an idea as to where we could get some help with that.” This drew our attentions to Kim. “To start off with my dad is a rocket scientist...”

“I also have an idea, Ms. Shuttle contact Gyro Gearloose. I’m pretty sure that the McDuck family has a few working Moonlander ships.” Interrupted Smolder currently representing Team Leap Lamb now, she was clearly uncomfortable with the idea of being our representative at the moment. Unneeded responsibility was still something like my anathema. “I think you’re going to need some of that oxy-chew gum stuff too. In fact… I think we have several ways of getting to and inside The Raptor, but we don’t exactly have the kind of fire power to actually deal with all those robots.”

“Quick question, how long can this Ocellus hold a given form under duress?” Asked Wildwing, the golden magical hockey mask wearing guy was wearing some cool armor with grenade puck launchers.

Author's Note

How many ISUS squads does Equestria need really?

228. My darling baby dears.

-Equus, Ponyville, Silver Stream-

“So yeah, Edith needed a checkup and Fluttershy found out what was wrong with her quite quickly.” Animals were very interesting, like Spindle for example. “So what is Spindle exactly? I don’t think we ever got his particular species?”

Very friendly spider, finally became Yona’s familiar after a time. Spindle was the first to reach out to her in friendship and in turn Yona reached back. Now Spindle liked to laze about on Yona’s horns or stays in high up out of the way places, the spider certainly knew Yona could be a bit… clumsy.

“Wolf Pack Spider, slightly territorial, but not overly dangerous unless you hurt them on purpose. They like to move in large numbers.” Yona looked up at Spindle as he waved at me and he made a cute little squeaking noise that sounded almost like a bark. “They just require a bit of fish or a garden to hunt down pests in. Bite like a wolf, fluffy like a dog. Yona is getting good deal on fish jerky from Taste Witch Kuril. How is Gallus feeling?”

“Back to normal mostly, but he does have to deal with Jaded’s antics more than we do. I believe she recently stole from Luna’s hidden moon pie vault… also did you know Luna had a hidden moon pie vault? I sure didn’t until today.” I said as I looked out to see the bright wonderful day going on outside. “Yona, Equestria is pretty awesome isn’t it?”

“Yes, Yona wants to actually live here, so Yona is going to work towards that.” That was nice Yona. “What brought this up?”

“Just missing my brother a little, I’m thinking about how Garble can’t visit his sister and I can still see my brother. It feels… unfair.” Also sad, maybe we can visit Garble or send him a care package to the dragon lands? The gift would have to be something highly heat resistant though. “What kind of gift would you get for a dragon?”

Yak’s and dragons were allies so maybe…

“A mattress.” Yona said instantly. “Sure he will be outgrowing it eventually, but Yona think he will appreciate the years of sleeping in comfort until he grows too big for it.”

“Now how to go about earning money for a fire-proofed mattress…” A clanging sound was heard as a pony jumped onto our table and with a bucket on his head. “Oh no, not again… what song can we sing to fix this?”

“Okay who said ‘mattress’ near Bucket Brain!” Another pony wandering up. “THE E-U-P IS A SAINTLY FOUNTAIN OF WHIMSY, FOR ALL THE MEMBERS ARE FREE TO CHASE A DREAM OF GOLD THAT IS FAIRLY FLIMSY, ON MOUNTAINS OF FOOD BUILT UP HIGH~…”

The pony took the bucket off his head and got down.

“Does anyone know why Bucket Brain does that when someone says mattress?” The second Yona said that Bucket Brain was back on the table with a distinctly different bucket on his head.

“Yona!” I wagged a talon at my friend in disappointment.

“Yona is sorry… ahem…” After Yona cleared her throat she began to belt out a harmonic vocal opera until Bucket Brain came down from the table.

When I asked about it, female yaks were all exceedingly good at opera apparently. They just don’t see the point in a talent that causes avalanches as yaks tended to live in snow heavy regions.

I wonder if I should get Yona to sing like that for a talent show…

-Earth, Basemax, still morning an hour after eating, Dolly-

Okay… we were gathering people together to get up to the lizards and kick some butt, before then we needed to rest and or do some things first.

For me, it was call my family. I think Dylan was going to be jealous that I would be living his dream of going into space. I should put in a good word for him with the McDuck family about getting him his dream job, at least get him closer to Mars. He was certainly smart enough for it, like how Dawkins was smart enough to launch that makeshift rocket powered elevator into orbit… should probably check if it’s still there when we go up.

Okay, deep breathe, smile… try to ease into it gently.

The screen popped up and Dylan was on it answering the call.

“Hey, Dyl…” I started only for him to immediately see right through it.

“Okay, what’s wrong Dolly?” Well if that couldn’t make me frown, I don’t know what would. “Also where’s Dormarch?”

“Yeah… about that… would you believe conquering alien lizards happened barely a day after the whole Saint Canard thing? Dormarch is currently unavailable for comment given his precarious position, I just wanted to let all of you know I’m okay… him… not so much.” The look and raised eyebrow I received let me know that he wasn’t buying the hard to keep smile, so I just dropped it. “Mostly okay. You know I’m tough, despite dealing with things that can clearly snap me in half in an instant. As for Dormarch… he is currently on their huge spaceship. Me and a few heroes are about to go up into space after the aliens to rescue Ocellus.”

“See was it really that hard to… wait you’re going into space?!” It took a moment for it to click with Dylan that he wasn’t going to be the first dog in our family to head to space and that I’d be living his dream, in a limited capacity.

“Yeah, sorry about jacking your dream bro. Dormarch is already up there so… he would technically be the first in the family, and the youngest dog to ever be put in space too come to think of it.” It meant a lot that I was being believed despite how weird this situation sounded.

My step brother knew me so well he could read me when he absolutely knew something was off about how I was acting. It was quite comforting that my brother still knows me so well.

“At least you aren’t going to Mars… well hopefully you’re not. I still want to my paw down there first.” Still looking to be the first dog to set a paw on Mars huh? Apparently in a world where dreams can come true, your dream wasn’t that hard to achieve with a little help. You were always going to be my space case of a brother, like the paleontology interest would have panned out any better given that Scrooge guy already had a monopoly on researching ancient civilizations. You could write a book about all the weird mystical stuff that duck keeps in his mansion. “How are you going to survive up there anyway? They can’t have possibly made a spacesuit for you that fast.”

“Do you know Scrooge McDuck Space Industries? I can actually put in a good word for you… that and they have this horrible tasting gum that allows someone to breath in a vacuum. In fact the duck who stress tested it was stuck on the moon for ten years surviving off it as it apparently staves off hunger too… ugh don’t try and make me figure out how that works bro. It happened and even I find that a little hard to believe if I hadn’t actually met one of the Moonlanders that confirmed it was a thing.” At least the excited look I received from Dylan wasn’t going too far, really didn’t have the heart to tell him we were still trying to figure out the logistics of dealing with the heavily armored machinery with a lot of firepower. Not even my magic was good enough for one of those, what was wind going to do to machines that heavy? If there were at least fifty or more of those things as predicted we were going to have issues, also I couldn’t just wait for one to knock over a light pole in space. The only ones that took a few down were those Mighty Duck guys and I remember them pretty much saying the machines were all recovered to be repaired… the ones they needed to take down with missiles. “I’ll just have Ms. Shuttle send you the information and maybe they can work you into reinvigorating their space exploration program, I know you’ll work for cheap which is how that Scrooge guy likes it. Just have Dawkins look up Gyro Gearloose and Oxy-chew if you want to know more about the gum, I think there was something about a contest and you can earn a ten thousand dollars if you can figure out how to get the taste to be anything other than what it is while still doing whatever it does. Might give Dawkins something to work his brain over in his spare time.”

“So… it’s really happening… I can go into space.” Dylan was looking at me with misty eyes before they sharpened and he shook his head. “How dangerous?”

“Exceedingly, but I’m the only one that can get them there. A lot of alien robots, some with more weapons on them than necessary, also there are four of these alien lizards and a chance that the planet might be invaded if we don’t succeed in taking them down. So no pressure there obviously.” Rolling my eyes here. “They are going to come after the expert they wanted on teleportation and dimensional technology eventually, once they find out they captured Ocellus instead of their actual target. So we really can’t sit on this and are getting things in motion quite fast. We have to hit them while we have the element of surprise if we’re going to save Ocellus and the lizards don’t know that we can find them thanks to Dormarch.”

“Dawkins!” Dylan called out and my brainy brother tilted his head into view with something else. Huh he actually did it, he made a robot dog… one I’m betting has Princess Positron as a name.

“Yes?” Been a while since I’ve heard that eloquent tone.

“Dawkins has some free time… bark, bark.” The feminine sounding robot dog stated.

“Can you contact Sly Cooper after I’m done talking with Dolly and ask him if he knows of a way to send some aid Dolly’s way? She’s about to run face first into a lot of robots again and if you look at her you can see why I’m worried. She’s recovering from the Saint Canard fight and what she isn’t telling me is that they lost a fight to the lizards and robots she told me about that captured Ocellus and Dormarch is somewhere on their ship.” Okay, Dylan picked that up faster than I thought he would. “… We’re never going to be normal anymore are we?”

“That implies that we were ever normal to begin with.” Dawkins muttered dryly. “Also I thought I stopped you from saying ‘bark, bark’ after you speak.”

“I reinstated that programming.” Oh dog, that was hilarious, the robot was what I was expecting when it came to being built by Dawkins. “I will do so with less frequency, but I still enjoy saying it. … Bark, bark.”

I burst out laughing.

“Let me guess, Princess Positron?” My brothers were still as I remember them, if living with a magical zombie chicken and a robot dog now. What next an alien pet?

“Yep.” Flatly responded Dylan to me while gesturing at the robot. “This is our sister Dolly, first Dalmatian super hero in the family who is known as Caper Canine.”

“Princess Posie Tronica, though while I am not a princess in reality I do appreciate Dawkins seeing me as such.” The robot dog stated in a chipper tone.

“She’s- not going to flip out and go evil right?” I ask because I knew my family all too well.

“I am well past that stage of my existence…” Posie stated. “It was… not nice.”

“Well can all of you really blame me? I’m the overworked shut in of the family and having a mechanical assistant has been my dream for quite a while…. also Bentley helped out with the AI problem.” Dawkins was looking away from my grin while blushing. “After I made a few… miscalculations.”

“Show me a robot or artificially generated intelligence that hasn’t gone around the bend…” Posie started only to be cut off by Ms. Shuttle.

“I never went evil, I’m a Big Hero Six’s favorite auxiliary member. My name is Bunny Shuttle, my function is to drive motorized vehicles and offer cheerful supportive words when feasible.” Ever chipper was Ms. Shuttle. “I tend towards naïve optimism though, not that that’s entirely a bad thing when the world needs hopeful tomorrows.”

“Best friends forever!” Posie shouted after a few seconds of silence.

“So… not mad about this?” I asked while trying to figure out how much weirder or dangerous things could get since I started a world tour with Pom.

“Mad? No, of course not Dolly. Jealous? Oh definitely, wish I were you right now!” After a moment Dylan added. “I’m not exactly one for all the dangers of a super hero life though, that’s more your thing now Dolly. A lot of the pups are both excited and worried for you, don’t know how we’re going to break it to mom or dad you’re going into space to fight aliens though. The pups will be excited to hear what you did this time, considering all your previous adventures sound… really ‘out there’.”

“No need, I’ve already heard enough… Dolly… dear… please be careful while out in space.” Mom said as she appeared on the screen from the left.

“Will do mom!” Having a good mother like Delilah always reminded me of my first mother, that wasn’t a bad thing. I had the chance to have a second mother, one who is professional nurse dog, not everyone can be as lucky.

-Akuma Island, off the coast of San Fransokyo, after lunch time-

“Been a while since we’ve been here, I don’t know whether to thank Momakase or not for destroying the lab that was here completely.” Hiro muttered while slouching a bit. “It’s a good gathering place at least, nobody comes here because this island is considered cursed… it’s not. It’s just that bad things have happened here… I was almost one of them.”

“There, there.” Baymax patted him comfortingly on the back. “However with the advent of magic being a known quantity to us, the existences of curses are now more plausible. I do not have the ability to counteract such things, but I can at least handle the physical symptoms of being hit with magical fireballs, lightning bolts and freezing ice should such things occur.”

“Yeah, very comforting when it comes to dealing with that Wraith guy.” Ron certainly had reasons to be worried about running into the lizard wizard, the guy could cancel out his mystical monkey mojo. Could probably negate me too.

“I know why we’re still here, I know why the Mighty Ducks and you Big Hero Six guys are here, but why are Penny and her pets still around?” Kim pointed out the odd ones out.

The Power Pets team wasn’t exactly connected to this further than helping capture Phantom Blot with Wheel Cat. Said guy had escaped from custody an hour ago thanks to his most competent minion ‘Pepper the Egghead’ being the only one of the eggheads not accounted for when they were taken to the police. At least they were said to have fled to the east and out of California so they weren’t our problem anymore until the Phantom Blot can find or somehow make another magic draining gauntlet.

“Hey, we want to help and be involved, besides, I want to spend time with the kids my age and the McDuck Clan kids are said to be some of the safest people to be around. Also Dolly is going and she’s no more resilient to laser fire than Bolt or Mittens are… don’t honestly know about Rhino, he actually took a few blasts from them.” Yeah, but there’s a difference Penny, I actually have a helmet and a board to take hits for me.

Now that I think about it, I could probably nullify momentum impacting my board below a certain weight… hmm. Energy doesn’t have much weight does it? I could technically tank explosions. Wait… could I ‘absorb’ momentum and do something with that? Never tried outright absorbing it.

I’ll think more on that later.

“Yeah, but she had gear that will protect against that stuff, not that it would help her against that Wraith guy. Magic can still damage her gear, otherwise that helmet and skateboard are going to be hard to break… Dolly’s neck would snap from whiplash long before her helmet does.” Thanks for the reminder to not try and tank hits from that old guy in particular Smolder. “Anyway, we got incoming. Is that them?”

-Smolder-

It feels great to be able to walk again, though Baymax said it took some doing to make those small machines strong enough to survive the high temperatures of my body long enough to get my legs and tail working again.

Didn’t care if I have a bit of metal left over inside of me, I can walk again… that and I can go rescue Ocellus, because like Tartarus they were leaving me behind. I still wondered why Baymax bothered warning me that I should avoid blows to the spine exceeding five hundred pounds.

“Yeah, that looks like how the Moonlander ships were described as being.” Tanya was looking at the ships curiously, I mean six aliens ducks with notable specific harmony traits? Ocellus must have been excited meeting three of them. “How good are these ships?”

“Good enough for our needs.” Wildwing answered. “They can get us into space.”

“So… do you think they’ll take on Dolly’s brother Dylan in the McDuck space program?” I was asking this to anyone around me.

“I don’t’ know, but if Dylan is smarter than Dolly is.” Wasabi looked over at Dolly who was lazing about on her skateboard. “I think I can see it happening.”

“Oh totally!” Fredzilla joined in.

The three ships came in for a landing.

One ship was carrying the McDuck family and the only Moonlander warrior in existence. Well at least Penumbra had prided herself in being the only member of her species with an active moral compass and actual combat ability, the rest of the Moonlanders were not as bright or thinkers.

Nice to see them again, Lena and Violet were sitting this out, Lena tired herself on helping Darkwing stabilize Saint Canard and Violet was not liable to get into heavy combat situations without a good enough reason from what I saw. The Gizmo Team was still out, but they did assist with prepping gear for the McDuck family to bring along. Most notably Gyro Gearloose’s Oxy-chew Gum.

“Gyro? You’re here?” I didn’t think the guy would leave his lab.

“A chance to study alien technology up close and personal… of course I’m coming! Also someone won five thousand dollars for creating a half solution to the Oxy-chew ‘flavor problem’ this morning.” He pulled out a pack of gum. “It’s a new flavor and it works… arguably it’s worse than the black licorice, the best flavor ever!”

“I don’t care, I’ll take that over the normal Oxy-chew whatever it is!” Della seemed intent on it. She was here along with Scrooge, Huey, Dewy, Louie, Webby, May and June. There was also Launchpad, he just blends into just about every group everywhere we go.

Della took a stick and stuck it in her beak and chewed it.

“Huh, that’s better, but I can’t quite place the taste… it still tastes halfway like black licorice, but the overpowering flavor is being dented by something else.” As she chewed, Gyro looked a little green. “Say who won the five thousand dollars out of a ten thousand dollar prize?”

“Well they were well informed enough to know I’d have some viable test subjects here, they were some science forum guys named Dawkins and Bentley… as for the flavor denting the black licorice… it’s basically equivalent to dog food.” Gyro watched as Della slowed her chewing to a stop. After a moment of looking upwards in thought… she continued chewing. “Like I said it was a half solution. If they come up with a full solution, then they’ll be paid ten thousand dollars in full. Aside from that no one else can do half solutions anymore.”

“Still better than the original.” Della stated bluntly. “If I’m going into space again, I’m sticking with this.”

“I’ll take the regular black licorice if that’s alright with you.” Huey said after staring at his mother in slight disgust. “Though it’s fairly understandable. For those who don’t know, she spent ten years with that one flavor in her mouth.”

“Eh, Oxy-chew is not that bad, it certainly saved Della’s life.” Scrooge muttered.

“At the cost of my taste buds!” Della quacked angrily.

“You couldn’t make me give up ice cream or regular food for the same amount of money in my bin.” Promptly stated a flatly staring Scrooge.

“Everyone’s a critic.” Muttered Gyro with his arms crossed. “Okay, what animals am I going to be testing this on?”

Dolly went up to him with Bolt, Mittens and Rhino. She pointed at herself and Gyro pulled out a second pack of gum.

“Lucky for you I made and brought enough to spare quite a lot… this is one of my proudest achievements after all, no other gum in the world can keep you alive in a vacuum for more than ten years. Just a reminder, while you can survive in a vacuum with it, it will not let you survive planetary reentry or give you the ability to maneuver in space.” He passed two sticks of gum to each of the animals. “Test the modified Animal Oxy-chew, then the regular and give me some feedback. Also don’t think I haven’t noticed the intelligence in all your eyes, so keep at least one! If you’re going into space with the rest of us, then you’re going to need to line your gums with this gum to survive in space without a suit. Be aware you’re going to be stuck with that in your mouth for quite a while until we get back down to the planet. Also my gum cannot cause tooth decay and it would actually solve world hunger… if only people weren’t so picky. Also don’t swallow it, it needs your saliva to stay activated.”

Watching Dolly, Bolt, Mittens and Rhino test the animal brand they all grimaced at the flavor, they slowly took it out of their mouths onto their paws and then tried the regular black licorice. This time they all perked up and smiled.

“So much for being a brand animals would like, but they have good taste in liking the original.” Gyro nodded as one of the Moonlander ships started to unload something.

“I’ll try some of the animal brand…” Dewey took up a stick of gum and started chewing. “Huh, it is better than the normal Oxy-chew. Sure, it’s got the dog food flavor, but it’s pretty good.”

Pulling out a tape recorder Gyro Gearloose stated something that made me wonder about him.

“Note to self, relabel animal brand as normal improved Oxy-chew and the regular black licorice as the animal intended brand. That might actually sell better this time…” Gyro muttered before looking out at the ocean. “Also look into storing Oxy-chew for aquatic environments in case the lab floods again, would be useful in fire emergencies where suffocation is probable.”

"How about we move this story... to space!" Nosedive pointed straight up.

One ship would be the back up escape plan, the other two were our main offensive.

Author's Note

What would be a functional explanation for Oxy-chew?

It's apparently science and not magic. So I'm going to take a crack at explaining why it works to ruin the mysticism of the unexplainable science breakthrough.

My explanation:

Oxy-chew probably involves some form of rapid growing harmless algae that reacts specifically to saliva and is processed to actively generate nutrients and massive amounts of oxygen. It generates enough oxygen to create a concentrated bubble of atmosphere around the chewer.

The 'black licorice flavoring' is replicated by the algae and the flavoring somehow provides a necessary function for why the gum even works in the first place that it can't be entirely removed from the formula.

I wouldn't know all the ingredients in the flavoring, so I can't really ruin the mysticism for why it's 'black licorice' specifically.

229. Life is strange and fast.

-Earth, Akuma Island, Smolder-

“Are you sure about bringing those kids into this?” Wildwing wasn’t asking me this, but I knew those kids have seen things that basically made them veterans to danger. “I feel… relatively uncomfortable about all of that.”

There was also the fact that the McDucks were equipped Moonlander weapons and brought plenty of explosives for any demolition needs we might have. Though notably the large armored Hunter Drones were resilient to explosions and were going to be a primary issue.

“Our kids will be fine and Penny will be fine with us.” Scrooge said from the monitor in the second ship. These large flying triangular cones, were apparently built to Gyro Gearloose’s standards, but the weapons were Moonlander specific. Energy based, high firing rate, but the damage was only mild to moderate. “Besides I’m only worried about Huey, Dewey and Louie. As for Webby, May and June, they would be fine on their own even if we weren’t here to chaperone this adventure.”

“You know that I can very well take care of myself Della.” Said a slightly upset voice of the Moonlander Penumbra. “I am a mighty warrior of Tranquility after all!”

“Not you Penumbra, they meant the other Penny.” Della response aptly.

“Yeah, I have my reservations about this as well, but I went to the bathroom before we left San Fransokyo. I’m good to go and I know Bolt, Mitten and Rhino are ready too.” Stated Penny brightly, Bolt barked something that had Dolly snickering. “I don’t know what you said Bolt, but that better not have been at my expense.”

“Oh.” The Moonlander was probably blushing by now, we did have two pennies in this three ship group.

First ship was Mighty Ducks, they were leading the assault on The Raptor and would draw the most heat.

Dolly, Shanty and I were onboard with them. We were specifically here to evacuate Ocellus and Dormarch from the bowels of the ship for pick up by the third ship if feasible and to avoid as much fighting as possible. Given that Shanty is barely recovered, Dolly still looked like she had aches despite being raring to go and I just had my spinal problems fixed, it was an excellent idea for us to try and stay out of the action.

Team Possible was also on the first ship with us, they had two goals upon getting aboard The Raptor. They were to either find and disable the Hunter Drone manufacturing capabilities or if they can’t do that… find some way to ultimately destroy the ship. The Mighty Ducks have been trying to do that for quite a while, the ship was still ridiculously sturdy despite having been forced into the ocean floor off the west coast months back.

The Puckian’s from Puckworld had decent weapons technology, but they had little in the way of space traveling technology after a painful occupation by the Saurian Empire. Puckworld was likely picking up the pieces afterwards, but Wildwing and his friends effectively had no way home at the moment. I wonder if they realize what Abigail or Wower could do for them.

“Are you sure your team is okay with going in with your members this bad off?” Wildwing looked back at me asking about Team Leap Lamb.

Considering our sorry state over the last few events we’ve been through, I couldn’t be upset with the implication that we should stay and watch the ship.

“One of our members is on that ship and why the actual Abigail Callaghan is safe from whatever they are currently doing to 'her', also that’s my girlfriend in there and she’s far more noble than most shape shifters I’ve been hearing about could ever hope to be.” That I heard that Kim Possible has dealt with a few shape shifters as well as the Mighty Ducks made them wary, but I wasn’t going to fail to rescue Ocellus. “You couldn’t pry me from this ship if you tried. There’s also Dolly’s little brother Dormarch, so she has a stake in this and she’s the only one that can track them. Shanty might have problems with cutting metal and doing any damage, but she’s maneuverable… though I actually agree with worrying about her.”

“Being destructive be in my nature, but I not be looking to get stuffed into an early locker like a pile of chum.” Shanty said with a weak grin. “I be up for a little space pirating, provided I not be doing most of the fighting that is.”

“Kind of hard to believe that gum can let you survive in space. Also the dog food gum is definitely the better option.” Ron and Rufus were strapping in. “Also there’s the whole ‘solved world hunger thing’, yet no one wants this solution… even I can see why it didn’t sell.”

“Nu uh, lic’rish, yum.” Rufus stated as he made himself comfortable.

“The underlying principle behind it is actually quite sound, though how it creates an atmosphere around the chewer is still mind boggling.” The ever congested sounding Tanya stated.

Tanya, along with several others of the more scientifically minded individuals among the three ships had questioned Gyro on the Oxy-chew stuff. We all had at least two spare sticks of gum. I had mine tucked into my combat ribbon, that was currently wrapped around my neck.

“I would have to agree with that, also Kim’s father wants to do a cooperation with McDuck’s space program.” Wade announced from Kim’s communication device. “There will be talks later provided everyone survives this.”

“Try to keep in touch Wade, also make sure my little brothers don’t come rocketing after us… unless we get stuck out here and need a pick up.” Kim pocketing her device and looked to the ducks getting settled in. “I come to San Fransokyo to help someone and then I get stuck helping alien ducks rescue a dimensional traveler that sacrificed herself for the person we initially came to protect. At least it’s not Lorwardians this time and for once we’re trying to intentionally blow up the lair…”

Team two, the McDuck Clan and Penny’s Power Pets. They would be causing chaos wherever possible. If they found Dormarch or Ocellus, good. If they found the Hunter Drone manufacturing facility, even better. They were armed well enough for all the normal Hunter Drones according to the Mighty Ducks Team. The larger ones were, again, still a major problem.

The McDuck team would be using some magical weapon called the Sword of Swanstatine along with a variety of other weird things to see what kind of leg up they could get once they get into things. Apparently the armor that Swanstantine Sword could make would give them plenty of protection and would strengthen their inner strengths.

“Are we all ready for this?” Hiro asked as he was and Big Hero Six were in the third ship, they would keep the ship back in case something happened to the other two that made them unusable. The ship would be piloted by Bunny Shuttle, in case something happened to that ship and not the other two Bunny Shuttle could be transferred into a storage device inside Baymax.

“I’m excited, are you guys excited? This is the first time we’re fighting villains in space!” That Fredzilla guy, as much a laugh as Nosedive is. Big Hero Six have created space capable sets of armor for maneuvering in a vacuum, but they haven’t tested it yet.

“I’m… actually nervous, this is going to be a pretty big thing.” At least Honey Lemon was feeling what I was, a sense of dread of actually getting there.

Also I’ve never been outside a planet’s atmosphere before, most of us on these ships haven’t.

“If everyone has their gum correctly placed and emergency backups, then we’re all ready to launch, just give the word!” Ms. Shuttle informed cheerfully.

“Can I just point out that they’ve had time to rebuild The Raptor to be even larger than it was before? Just wanted to point that out.” Tanya brought an image of the Raptor up on screen. “I can guess as to what they’re using as a power source this time. It probably takes up a lot space given how big they made the back half they attached to the original ship.”

“What they did they do, build a small nuclear reactor?” Queried Wasabi from the third ship.

Big Hero Six team was back up and would be waiting until the Raptor was disabled before disembarking to board the ship to aid anyone who needs it. They were our pull out and medical team as needed and as was sorely warranted.

“That’s the best we idea we have at the moment, they have been trying to get fuel or energy sources for their ship to power their cloaking device. We destroyed their portal generator the last time we fought them, thankfully they don’t know how to make another one which is why they were after Abigail Callaghan as she created a similar portal generator. They’ve definitely built Hunter Drone production facility if they can field hundreds of them. Saw that kind of thing back on Puckworld, destroyed quite a few of them too.” We were shown a second image, probably what The Raptor looked like before. Tanya point out the differences in the design philosophies. “We’re going to try to take them by surprise by hitting their engines, but we’ll need to disable the thrusters of the original Raptor to prevent them from detaching the rear half like a tail and running away. We might need to watch out for their heavy hitters providing a missile based defense from the surface of the ship and one last thing. We really want this ship destroyed, we’re not leaving it intact like the last few times!”

“Leave it up to the lizards to drop their tail and run when they can’t play out a full game.” Wildwing grumbled.

“Yeah, if they do that though, they’ll be having power problems and won’t be able to cloak or do much more than flee. These ships are much smaller and faster.” Well that was good news at least Tanya.

“Guys… we can actually go home again.” It seemed Mallory had cottoned on to who we were protecting back at Basemax. “Abigail can build a portal generator for us… but…”

“We wouldn’t want the Saurian’s to ever gain access to it, they would shatter the fragile peace on earth or Puckworld.” Grin finished the thought and the other large alien ducks looked conflicted. “Even without The Raptor, I really doubt they would stop trying to conquer everything.”

“We destroy The Raptor for good this time, then we’ll think about whether or not we’ll ask if Abigail will help us.” There was a finality in Wildwing’s voice.

“If she doesn’t, Dr. Wower said she wouldn’t mind trying to lend aid.” I don’t know about Wildwing or his people, but us… we’re getting home one way or another even if we have to look into other solutions.

“Okay start the countdown sequence, we’re departing for space everyone!” Wildwing called out. “Are you the pilot Tanya?”

-Dolly-

The roar of the rocket made me wince and my skull was vibrating like it wanted to leave my face as the ship turned skyward and started accelerating.

The pressure on me was a bit painful and I hoped I didn’t lose my hearing from the noise. After a few moments things seemed to slow down, I opened my eyes and I could see the stars twinkling in the black and felt weightless. I stared in awe of just how small we all were when the ship turned to get out of the way of the others coming up and I could see the planet we just left behind, I stared wistfully at the world I was born on.

I was getting Pom home one way or another... I’d make my home wherever she does.

“Okay, Caper Canine, you’re up! Can you actually lead us to them?” Hearing the question from Wildwing, I scoffed.

Of course I could lead us right to them!

I closed my eyes and then concentrated, I felt the tug in a given direct and pointed with my right paw. Up and to the right past the moon. Possibly on the far side of it? Dormarch didn’t feel that close even then.

“Right, heading in that direction.” Tanya started to turn, I oriented my paw until we were heading in the right direction. I lowered my paw and freed myself from my seat and hopped up to hit my head on the ceiling.

“Okay… ow…” I yelped and whined as I took control of my momentum and moved to take up a position next to Tanya. Everything was so floaty.

“I have the mask ready to spot them.” Wildwing put both his hands on his mask and started to look around in the general space around us. “Nothing yet.”

“Current course puts us on a path for… Saturn?” Huey announced from the second ship.

“How much you want to bet we’ll end up looking for them in the rings of Saturn?” Louie asked with a vibrant grin in his voice.

“Suckers bet.” Several people stated at once from the second and third ships.

“Also Pluto is a planet.” Added Penumbra tersely. “I just needed to say that.”

“Well fine, ruin my fun.” Not the time for fun Louie, we were out here to find and catch some lizards.

“An asteroid field would be rich in minerals… do you suppose they built an asteroid base out there? I mean it would be kind of obvious place to hide something and how they managed to get resources to build up that many Hunter Drones.” We were still heading in the right direction Tanya. “I mean they did throw a massive amount of them at us.”

“I’ll bark if we need to change direction.” A second later my words were repeated by Ms. Shuttle acting as translator from the third ship.

I could fly in space with my momentum abilities, which would be fun if I accidentally get sucked out an airlock.

“Wait, everyone stop!” All three ships slowed down to a halt as Della spoke up.

“What, what is it?! Is it Norwegian moose fairies?!” Nosedive received a lot of weird looks for that.

“No, I just wanted to test the new gum, give me a second. Could someone get the airlock for me? Thank you.” A second later a figure popped out of the second ships airlock, revealing it to be Della Duck crawling out onto the hull of the ship without a space suit on. She was tethered to the airlock by a wire of some kind and she looked around for a bit. She seemingly nodded to herself after looking to have taken in a big gulp of nothing like she was inhaling air and then went back into the ship. “The new oxy-chew gum works like the old version, just wanted to test it in case anyone had their doubts about its effectiveness. Dog food and black licorice flavor aside, it still does its job.”

“Huh, my dad would want to buy some of that gum in bulk for his space program, too bad we can’t do anything about the flavors it comes in.” It was more mystifying to see the gum in action than it was to actually have it in your mouth Kim.

The black licorice flavor wasn’t too bad to me, but I can see where it would start to get grating really fast.

“Proceeding to fly these cheese wedges full of quackers on their previous course.” Joked Nosedive, we eventually began moving again.

I once again reached out for my bond with Dormarch and also felt for my bond with Pom relative to our current position. We would get there eventually, we were making good time having already passed the moon.

“The furthest my space program got with looking for Della was Pluto come to think of it.” Well that was mildly interesting to know Scrooge. “We knew Della couldn’t have gotten that far, but we couldn’t find her in the solar system.”

“So I crashed into a dark in a hole on the moon, you could have had people land and look around more closely. Fought with moon mites for years before I actually tried to figure them out. Again, I saw some of the ships you sent out looking for me.” Yeah, didn’t care for hearing Della’s life story a third time back then, don’t exactly care now. “Also can we stop talking about one of the most traumatic things to happen to me? Losing my leg wasn’t nearly as scarring as the original flavor of Oxy-chew! In fact I can go on a five hour rant about why the oxy-chew was so horrible to have in your mouth for ten years, I’m more scarred by that then losing one of my legs! To start off with…”

“Do we really need to listen to this?” Ron asked and Tanya thankfully shut the communications with the other ships down. “Thank you!”

-Five hours later, nearing Saturn-

I was kind of bored, I took several naps and was gently woken up several times to be asked if we were still heading in the right direction. A few course corrections were needed, but we were in fact heading to the rings of Saturn.

“Okay, I’m curious now; is she still going?” Ron asked as he stretched out, we were getting fairly close to where I was feeling my little bro as being.

Flicking a switch on the communications, Tanya heard Della still going.

“I knew Penumbra would become my best friend, called it several times even, but still the gum persisted…” Yep, Della was still going.

Tanya quickly flicked it off and looked to the rest of us, we all shrugged. She flicked the communications open to the third ship.

“Make her stop!” Cried Gogo. “How can you have listened to all of that in silence?!”

“We turned off communications.” Tanya stated plainly.

“Oh… we should have done that twenty minutes into it.” Muttered Hiro, you could hear Della going on in the background of their open communications with the second ship. “Some geniuses we are.”

“Cut the chatter, I’m scanning things and there are heat signatures in the asteroid field. Slow down our approach, we don’t want to be caught off guard in case they expect us.” Wildwing’s orders were carried out and then we slowly maneuver until I pointed at exactly where I felt Dormarch to be. An unusually massive rock of what looked to be a bunch of asteroids glued together. “Well we definitely found them. However we might need to make a slight change to the plan…”

-Smolder-

“How slight are we talking?” I asked from my seat as Wildwing got up and paced about with his friends watching him, leader with a magical macguffin thing. That ‘Mask of Drake Ducaine’ thing was probably a thousand years old too and probably a religious hockey relic.

I idly wondered if reindeer would join the Puckian’s hockey based religion if they knew about it.

“If that massive chunk of rock is hiding a base, we’re going to need our teams to attack both positions. Most importantly we need to disable The Raptor to prevent them from escaping us. It’s currently parked still under cloak… there.” Wildwing pointed to a section of the massive rock that seemed to be floating idly about in space with nothing innocuous of note about it aside from the fact that it looked like asteroids gravitated together to create a huge lumpy ball that seemed out of place among the smaller asteroids. “Our objectives are the same, but we need to also destroy that rock if it has a facility inside of it.”

“Given how busy they must have been to build those additions to The Raptor, we can expect a lot of resistance like we did when we tried to get aboard back in San Fransokyo.” Duke scratched at his chin. “How soon do you think they will notice us?”

“They are probably relaxed at the moment… or torturing their prisoner for information she doesn’t have. We’ll be hitting both places as fast and as hard we feasibly can.” Wildwing looked in my direction with his arms crossed. “Ship three will prevent The Raptor from escaping while we’re busy trying to disable it. They’ll notice us the second we do anything overt, so hold weapons fire until we’re close enough to blitz them. Anybody have any better ideas?”

The general response was no. Dolly however barked something.

“Dolly says, Dormarch is currently inside the asteroid so there is a base there.” After that Ms. Shuttle cleared her throat. “I personally think he may be able to do some things to the computer systems they’ve possible built there and suggest we try to coordinate with him.”

Dolly barked something else.

“Dormarch just confirmed Ocellus’s position to her, he isn’t near Ocellus at the moment, but apparently she’s at the bottom left portion of the asteroid base from our current facing.” Ms. Shuttle stopped to listen to Dolly. “Dormarch is up to something and seems to be giving us the go ahead to attack whenever we’re ready.”

-Saturn Asteroid Base, Wraith-

“I feel she will crack any time soon, but I have to admit… her mind has some very demented defenses.” I shuddered to think of what she just put me through. “In fact I would say that they are downright evil. She defends her mind quite well from my dark powers Lord Dragaunus.”

‘I Love you, you love me, we’re a lizard family~…’

Shaking my head rapidly, I tried to get that blasted and nasty song out of my head! This person was diabolically defended from the machinations of any form of mental manipulation, like they were trained for being tortured. There was some history of there being possibilities of military contracts, but I highly doubt that was the reason why her mind was a steel trap.

“We need that information Wraith, Chameleon doesn’t know enough about her and Siege’s methods would be… messy. I’m considering it if you continue to fail at producing results." Dragaunus stated coldly and I narrowed my eyes at him. "If you can’t get a hold of her mind, then coerce her by any means necessary!”

As per usual the powers of the Ancient Saurians were being ridiculed. We were doomed as a race, but what form would that doom ultimately take?

The entire place shook, nearly throwing me off balance as I planted my staff against the floor to stay standing.

“It’s those blasted ducks, they’ve found us!” Ah so that’s the doom that befalls us Lord Dragaunus, I await it patiently and with a fervent grin. I would not go quietly, no matter how old my bones have gotten. “Siege, Chameleon, activate all the Hunter Drones, all the Heavy Hunter Drones are to focus on internal defenses!”

I would advise you Lord Dragaunus, but you have never listened to my advice before. I will not waste my breath and will fight as my peers do in your service, for however long that may last...

We might make a pyrrhic victory of it, but we would come to ruination all the same.

-Smolder-

We got the first few hundred shots in, Big Hero Six was waiting in the back and out of the way of any reprisal fire as a few large Hunter Drones came out with missiles and barraged us.

We had the advantage of speed and fire power in space, but once we start to move in on foot… that’ll be a different story entirely.

“Ready up for a hot drop!” Nosedive stated readying his puck pistols.

“Heat is nothing to me.” I'll be there soon Ocellus.

230. Filled with happiness and fears.

Author's Note

Currently experiencing family issues: A family member has some nasty intestinal issues currently after having been fine for a while and is in the hospital. It's been a while after the previous intestinal issue had caused a section of cancerous intestine to be removed, hopefully this surgery will go just as cleanly to remove some blockage.

This however has put me on in a bit of a bind, I've been given two options of how to proceed from here.

Survive for a week on limited resources by myself with some limited aid, or go on a vacation trip with other family members that will take care of me giving my current living situation has some... problems. A lot of minor ones that would add up.

I'm leaning towards survive for a week... I don't want to ruin previously established vacation plans by being dragged into them. I'm also a relatively dour person to be around.

Now that that particular news is out of the way.

Music: The Munchables, Panic Restaurant - Boss Theme.

-Spoilers Section-

-Yes there's a Spoilers Section, skip to the story to avoid-

=(-Are you thoroughly warned yet?-)=

Okay then...

Dolly's KH based abilities limitations:

MP Block Siphon (Achieved by momentum control inverse effect): If she can't take the impact's maximum weight she doesn't recover energy. Needs to be drained of MP to do it, if MP fills to full then remaining MP goes to waste. If already full on MP can cause backlash damage and does not overcharge. Cannot be done twice in a row without injuring herself if the first hit fully fills MP Meter.

Best done while airborne can absorb energy while being knocked backwards, if on the ground Dolly needs to actively tank the full hit without being knocked over to gain energy. Given she's weighs less than most things fully utilizing this ability isn't going to be easy.

Haste: Withdrawal symptoms can occur from coming off this magical buff. There are possible mental side effects as well as physical ones, one notable one is physical exhaustion as soon as it wears off. Cannot use more than once in a span of an hour. Lasts about five minutes. (Do you ever wonder why Sora never gets Haste as a spell?)

Wind Enhance: Can only be used on objects. While sustainable, costs a lot of initial MP to activate compared to using Aero normally. Constant slow MP drain effect if sustained past a single attack. Wielding the object make the enhancement user immune to wind damage as long as the object is in contact with them. Object will not make others immune to the wind damage type only the one that created the enhancement.

Dolly is always going to be limited by her MP capacity which is stuck at a small three or two bars.

Also all KH's characters get ridiculously powerful like this, after a room full of ninja, a minute-taur and the like of course she's leveled up a bit. Still a dog though and not a very high defense character when she's an evade tank.

Fire Emblem Companion Rankings:

Dolly - Pom: (A+)
Dolly - Shanty : (B+)
Dolly - Ocellus: (D+) - (C-) (The leash thing.)
Dolly - Smolder: (C+)
Dolly - Dormarch: (B*) (*More like C+, but big sister prerogative bumps it up).
Dolly - Dodo: ???

230. Filled with happiness and fears.

-Equus, Ponyville, Gallus-

“Okay, I have to ask, how did sending Garble a mattress destabilize the economy again?” I grumbled flatly.

“I just don’t know what went wrong.” Derpy stated with a platter of muffins placed before us. “So when does the muffin cult gather this week?”

“Nobody does, but I have an idea that Equestria needs Smolder and Ocellus back before things will stabilize.” Jaded was trying to solve world problems. If we needed her as a mathematician, then we were doomed. “Also I believe it’s the last day of the week before the weekend my Muffin Queen.”

“All hail the queen of muffins, for the muffins are delicious!” I said alongside Sandbar, Silver Stream, Yona and Jaded, then we too up our muffins and started eating after Derpy got first dibs. “So… what does Hard Flank and Maries think of your cultist activities?”

“They mostly don’t care as long as blood isn’t involved and accidental necromancy doesn’t come up… again.” Jaded stated while waving a paw around lazily before biting into a raspberry cheese muffin with a bright grin. “Also you do realize I can tell Fizzle you’re still calling her Hard Flank behind her back.”

“I paid for the muffins.” That was probably my saving grace.

“Good enough to save you from a harder training session this time Gallus. Don’t look so upset, I’m not going to bother you when you’re on the job after you get it.” Having Jaded as a sister was never going to be a normal endeavor when I wanted to join the royal guard. “So anyone want to help me continue my one cat war against Luna?”

“Wait… ‘accidental necromancy’… and did you say ‘again’ after that!?” Sandbar stated while looking at Jaded in a horrified manner.

“It involved my father, incidentally I appreciate Anubis more as a god and owe him for fixing things after that particularly happy father daughter bonding session.” Oh right, Jaded’s father was a unicorn and she was technically half pony despite looking all Abyssinian… her pony side really didn’t show very much. Imagining Jaded as a unicorn made me shudder with horror. “Also I got to hug a ghost until I was covered in ectoplasm, so that was a fun thing.”

-Saturn Asteroid Base, Smolder-

So here we are… rocketing through space being dragged along by a dog powered skateboard towards the entrance that looked like an airship hangar with a good twenty or so Hunter Drones shooting at the ship we left behind.

Behind us Ron and Kim were utilizing their rocket skates to move through space while carrying Nosedive. I wasn’t giving Rufus much thought, because the little guy really hasn’t done much… aside from proving that animals can vocalize on a biped level outside of Dolly’s ability to sing and eat a lot of cheese.

Dolly was incredibly good at giving us momentum in space, better than the rocket skates in maneuverability, but not speed as those four passed through the barrier and landed in the large open massive football stadium like space that was well lit.

Probably meant to house The Raptor when it wasn’t parked on the side of the asteroid. Dolly swerved us to be close to the floor when we came in and that’s when gravity hit. I spread my wings and glided to a landing, Shanty dropped into a roll after letting go of the skateboards strap and Dolly just skidded to an immediate stop as soon as her board touch the floor.

Kim, Ron and Nosedive were already on the assault and we had about three pathways out of this place. Ron was covered in some kind of gorilla shaped aura, Kim was wielding a laser weapon and Nosedive was going full duel puck pistols as the hangar was quickly becoming crowded.

A few shots from the Hunter Drones flew our way, but they were taken care of quickly before they could get anything more than a near miss. The smaller versions were slowly flooding in, but there wasn’t any bigger ones yet.

“Pick an entrance, any entrance and we’ll go that way, remember we’re not here to get bogged down in the fighting!” It almost looked to me like Dolly was about to jump straight into the fray board first, but then she looked towards me and whined. “Dormarch and Ocellus come first Dolly!”

After a moment, Dolly finally nodded in acceptance as Shanty ran to the side to avoid several blasts of energy aimed our way. They were really unusually highly inaccurate, despite the volume of fire they were putting out and couldn’t hit the broad side of a…?!

Out of thirty missed shots in our given direction, I just took one to the chest. The timing on that was ridiculous.

Oh I’m perfectly fine. Laser beams, are mostly heat and energy. Really the bigger Hunter Drones were an actual threat to me mostly through raw physical force my insides probably shouldn’t take. The smaller ones could actually detain me, but they’d find containing a dragon that can melt most things with their halitosis a real problem.

“Yeah, let’s move before they actually hit someone that can’t take it like Shanty!” I started flying towards the nearest entrance on the far left with a few Hunter Drones pouring out of it.

“Hey, I not being that bad!” Shanty started galloping behind me as she hopped and slid through a number of shots following after me. Dolly was sticking beside her and blocking any beam from hit her with the bottom of her board with a hop or a well-timed kick flip, the dog had style and attitude… reminded me way too much of Rainbow Dash sometimes in some ways.

Didn’t know where this would lead, but we had to start somewhere right?

“It’s on the nose, but I’m going to dive right into the action woo!” A dozen high velocity exploding pucks flew by us and tore the Hunter Drones near our chosen entrance to pieces, Nosedive shot by on skates and was dealt with a few of the Hunter Drones down the hallway before we got there before veering back around to help Kim and Ron. “Score some for me! Try not to get hurt worse so we have to come and save you okay? I want to share some cupcakes and party with you later!”

“Do all elements of laughter love cupcakes?” Thinking about it as I mumbled this under my breath, I knew Silver Stream loved cupcakes more than anyone else in our group of friends. When we rescued Ocellus I would bring up the question as to whether or not Laughter always came with sugar highs and weirdness.

As we charged down the hall, there were three branching paths ahead and any downward direction would work honestly.

When we got to the intersections there were Hunter Drones coming from the front and right. Left had some, but there were only about two or three compared to the twenty or thirty from each route heading for the hangar.

“Left!” I turned left interposed myself in the path of the shots for Shanty from the three drones, Shanty quickly scrabbled forward up the right wall around them as Dolly took up the rear and was on her hind legs blocking a torrent of energy aimed at our backsides with her board as she hopped backwards rapidly altering her momentum to avoid taking shots in the back as she passed by the robots that turned after us. “Keep moving!”

We turned the corner heading to the right and came to a moderately sized room.

Apparently the Saurians liked the color red and the scale pattern designs with the jutting walls that gave it a dragon motif, otherwise the décor was unappealingly bland color wise and overall flat. I wouldn’t want to be conquered by these guys from the way the Mighty Ducks tell it.

Didn’t know what the room was for, but we quickly ran into one of the four Saurians seemingly coming out of hiding from one of the recesses in the wall. The guy was being far too obvious about it too.

I mean… what idiot among our teams would actually believe Pom was here in the condition she was in?

Dolly smiled and started up to the fake Pom with a wagging tail and a happy demeanor.

I felt a tug on my shoulder and saw Shanty waving her hoof behind us at the incoming Hunter Drones that had stalled off and seemed to be waiting to charge us. I nodded in understanding. I tugged the two pieces of oxy-chew gum from my ribbon and tossed them to her. She stuffed them under her bandana and I was now ready to use my combat ribbon.

“Hello there Caper Canine, I have something important to tell you!” The fake Pom acted in a panic, when she got close enough went to back hoof Dolly with her left leg, only for Dolly to use her back left paw to enter a clockwise pivot that threw the fake off balance when they missed. “Surp-wha?!”

Dolly let the fake have it with the flat of her skateboard to the right side of the head as she continued her pivot onto her hind legs.

The fake Pom was bodily slapped against the right wall in a painful manner. The form shifted to that of the scrawniest Saurian we had yet to actually meet with weird eyes.

So this was Chameleon, he chose a really poor target in Dolly because she seemed utterly outraged and angry now that someone would try to use Pom against her again.

-Dolly-

“If you think I was going to fall for that then you better make ‘Haste’ b…” A red glow surrounded me and seeped into my very being, a wicked grin crossed my face. “Because I’m barking mad!”

I could almost feel an invisible clock above my head and the slow moving clock hands suddenly started moving at twice their normal speed.

-Smolder-

“That be looking like… oh yeah, he’s being doomed.” Doomed is right as he pulled a weapon and fired at Dolly nearly point blank as she approached.

The shot seemingly passed through her body, only it faded from existence and he was slammed into the ceiling by a golf swing to the chin when Dolly flicked into existence. Dolly wasn’t holding back on the momentum bashing because I think I heard the guy’s skull crack against the ceiling.

I quickly pushed Shanty as Dolly suddenly gaining super speed had distracted her, a shot harmlessly struck me across my right shoulder as I lashed out with the ribbon.

The second shot the robot fired went up straight into one of the necks of its compatriots taking off its head when I pulled its legs out from under it.

Shanty was already performing a launching cartwheel into a powerful flying buck into the third one’s face shattering it with a powerful full bodied blow.

Dolly flashed into existence and tore apart the one I downed with pure force by riding the nose of her board down through its chest, before she launched back in the direction of Chameleon groaning and standing up with a single slap of her right rear paw that sent her spinning through the air.

“Wa… agh.” I think the Chameleon barely dodged the leftward swing that may or may not have taken off his face and bugged out eyes if it had actually connected. He stumbled back in a frightened panic and I looked over his scraggly clothed green form.

Okay I can see where the Hunter Drone designs came from, they resembled Chameleon’s normal form far too much for it to have been an accident or maybe it was an accident and just incidental? The poor guy probably wasn’t treated very well among his peers in any case, then again that’s what the Mighty Ducks said the Saurians are like and the guy just set off Dolly into being barking mad.

Literally as she suddenly changed targets from him to the poor five Hunter Drones that surged in through the back entrance to the room. Two swings and a single downwards slash with the edge of her board took out one in a battering downwards assault mashed them into the floor before they could even begin aiming at her.

The one on the far right started to getting battered down next, by the time it was finished crumpling into pieces another drone was about to meet the same fate of an angrily barking Dolly. I don’t know what her tirade was, but she obviously wasn’t singing even if I could feel a heart song playing.

“Little doggy, I think you have bit off more than you can chew!” Chameleon grew massive and muscular in seconds and took a left swing at a surprised Dolly as she finished off the fifth Hunter Drone with a head smashing overhead sickening crunch noise and the tearing of materials shearing apart.

I quickly slapped my ribbon forward and around the right side of Chameleons neck and to wrap around his left wrist as he slung his fist for Dolly. With a yank I had him slamming himself in the face forcing him to shrink down to his regular form and stagger back towards us dizzily.

Dolly shot forward on her skateboard and took his right leg out from under him with a quick drifting motion forcing him to fall onto his face as bolts of energy surged up from behind us. She launched into the air and slammed her skateboard halfway into one of the Hunter Drones chest before ripping it out in a shower of materials.

Shanty was dealing with another one of the seven robots with an awesome backflip buck, I decided to add a blast of flames that blew one apart. I fired another blast and that one blew apart too.

Dolly was quickly bashing the others down, one enough so that Shanty slung both her front hooves a managed to cut through the battered material that looked almost like metal and take up the clawed leg of the robot as a weapon. When swung by Shanty, the bladed toes created damaging cutting arcs that took down the last Hunter Drone.

Were these things weak to fire? I didn’t think the fireballs I spat were too hot… maybe it’s a design feature? Dragaunus was able to control fire as a pyrokinetic.

“Oh come on, one of you can breathe fire too?!” Chameleon probably hadn’t learned yet that he should run even if he was being reinforced by another group of Hunter Drones from the back of the room. “… say are you some kind of Saurian by any chance?”

“No.” Though there might be some similarities to dragons, I was from a different world entirely.

“Too bad!” He fired and stretched out my right wing to catch the shots aimed for Shanty, wings were some of the weakest parts of a dragon… but no less heat resistant for it. That didn’t even sting and I raised my right eyebrow at him delicately. Was seriously trying to hurt my friends? “Oh come on, impervious to energy weapons too, aren’t you a little too small to be capable of that?!”

Obviously the guy hadn’t see me taking several shots before this without so much as flinching. Dolly shot by and started to rip into those Hunter Drones at high speed too, it looked like it was taking a lot effort to add momentum to every blow to be devastating.

“Caper Canine… can you add wind to the edge of your board and cut them apart to make it easier on yourself?” I asked as I flicked my ribbon and Chameleon and ripped his weapon out of his grasp and into my claws, then I saw something unusual. One of the Hunter Drone robots, seeing that it couldn’t damage Caper Canine with its energy shots physically lashed at the board with its claws and a shower of blue orbs erupted out of the impact and flowed into Dolly.

What in the world?!

While I was wondering about that I took aim and blasted the Hunter Drone on the right with Chameleon’s weapon. Chameleon just stood there looking at his empty digits grasping at the air in shock as Shanty was slashing up a hunter drone with the stolen robot leg that now looked like a demented two bladed scythe in her grip.

“Uh… I think I left something in the oven! Lord Dragaunus I need a recall, I’m under heavy assault!” He cried out into his wrist communicator thing. I fired a shot that he ducked. “At least send one of the heavy drones to help me!”

“The Ducks are attacking The Raptor, how can you be…” Dragaunus’s voice sounded quite upset.

“The base has been invaded by allies of the ducks, why else would they have more than one ship attacking!” Speaking of the second ship Chameleon… I heard Launchpad was piloting it.

I actually trusted Launchpad with take-off, I trusted him mid-flight, what I didn’t trust was him to actually land something in one piece unless he’s actively trying to crash whatever he’s piloting. Still, I trusted that everyone with him would live through any experience since he was that reliable.

Dolly was in the middle of flipping through the air towards me as several more drones converged on us from both sides of the room. She let loose a loud bark and her left paw began swirling with a vibrant green energy, the edges of her skateboard started glowing with the sound of a gentle breeze coming of it.

Grabbing it by the strap with the same paw Dolly lashed out and tore apart every Hunter Drone that had come in behind me in seconds and Dolly caught the board with her right. The glowing edge of the skateboard didn’t seem to hurt her, she seemed proud of the accomplishment as she turned towards me.

On the other side of the room Shanty was letting loose with a whirlwind of slashes from the scything leg and was tearing them to pieces slowly.

“Try and hold them off until Wraith can get me what I want or he has to recall back to The Raptor, if he can’t recall to the raptor with the prisoner then this will all have been for nothing!” Too late for that Dragaunus, it already was all for nothing, Ocellus saw to that!

“With what, they took my weapon and are shooting the incoming Hunter Drones with it!” Chameleon whined as I did just that.

“You are useless, I’ll recall you when you’re failure is ultimately complete!” The sound of the communications device cutting off was music to my ears as I gunned down a few hunter drones on the far side of the room while trying not to aim near Chameleon or Shanty.

“Ooh, tough break buddy!” I said as fired the stolen weapon again taking out another hunter drone.

Dolly was barking as she slashed a number of the hunter Drones to the right with a single swing, they were pushed back to the left by Shanty with an equally forceful slash from her makeshift weapon. Once all the robots were gather in one big clump, they both did a front flip and brought their respective weapons down.

When the two cutting blades of force crossed each other, they immediately grew stronger and sent the thousands of shredded parts of Hunter Drones down the hallway at the back of the room that tore apart even more Hunter Drones that were coming to Chameleons aid. In all I think they just took down a solid fifty together doing that.

At this point the red glow around Dolly died out and she suddenly looked tired, but she was still very much angry at Chameleon given the glare despite the cool down panting she had going. Chameleon quickly grew to his muscular form and before he could capitalize on Dolly being tired he backed off when Shanty swung for his face cutting two lines across his cheek and making him back off.

He turned and surged towards me, thinking he’d have a better chance, I lashed out with my right and tugged at his right leg making him fall and smash the back of his head against the floor and he came skidding towards me and shrunk down to his scrawny form.

“Don’t make any funny moves or you’ll look less funny than you already do!” I hopped up onto his chest and aimed the gun down at his face.

“L-l-lord… D-d-d-ragaunus…” Weakly whimpered Chameleon, suddenly he glowed and disappeared out from under me while falling unconscious.

I dropped to the floor and looked to the other two, after moment Dolly seemed to have caught her breath and stood straight up and barked while pointing down the hallway. She steered her skateboard around and made a come on gesture.

“Hmph, you may have bested Chameleon, but I still have Siege and Wraith and enough Heavy Hunter Drones to bury all of you and make a fricassee of those pesky ducks!” We looked around for where Dragaunus’s voice was coming from. “Hehehe, you’re only delaying the inevitable. You can’t possibly keep up that show of power for very long against so many numbers, you’ll all tire eventually and this is one fight I’m not running from!”

“Let’s move!” I wrapped my combat ribbon around my neck and started to move down the hallway littered with broken robots chunks leading with Chameleon’s weapon in my grasp.

Passing by a hallway or two, with me gunning down any Hunter Drone that crossed our paths to give Dolly and Shanty a rest, we eventually stopped when a door opened up ahead of us and Dolly launched forward.

Her board was still glowing green around its edges and whipped it around as she skid across the floor on her hind paws.

The five Hunter Drones that stepped out were downed by the attack with their legs damaged and Shanty performed a leaping roll through the air to start slashing through their faces, arms and chests with a swift twisting motions of a farmer reaping wheat.

“I be liking this thing, I always be needing a leg up in a fight!” Shanty hefted her weapon onto her right shoulder as she walked forward to look into the room on her three legs. “Hmm… that be a long way down…”

In fact the robots had stepped out of a long shaft leading downwards.

“Come on!” Shanty leapt forward and slammed the toes into the wall and started skidding down the shaft.

“Shanty wait!” Wondering how the Hunter Drones even walked out of this shaft, I received my answer a second later when Shanty went launching upwards and was nearly smashed against the ceiling in a glowing blue field. She managed to use the leg weapon to hook her way out of the shaft.

“That almost be making me a pancake… but we be needing to get down there!” Shanty stated while pointing a hoof at the shaft.

“Hold on a second…” Dormarch’s voice sounded out, the blue field of energy turned bright green. “Okay, now it should be safe, quickly jump into the gravity shaft. I can’t stall the Saurian super computer systems from regaining control for long.”

Dolly barked something happily with a wagging tail.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine Dolly, now get in before the computers regain access to this system and prevents you from getting down there to Ocellus!” Dormarch opened the path forward for us, so who was I to argue the safety of it? Pom trusted him, as did all of my friends and I really did want to reach Ocellus some time today.

We collectively leapt into the field and started moving downwards at a decent controlled speed that wasn’t quite falling.

231. Face each new challenge.

Author's Note

Update: So surgery wasn't required and there's still issues with my family members intestines, but the main problem is that they need to actually drink 'H2O water' and not just coffee or sparkling water.

Also other health issues have me worried about them, that said I hope nothing else happens in the interim while I finish this arc out.

231. Face each new challenge.

-Equus, Fillydelphia outdoor café, Jaded-

“So anyway that’s the current problem plaguing Equestria right now.” After saying this I licked at the bowl of cold milk, I didn’t even care if it was slow to drink from a bowl like this. “All it took was a mattress delivery to the dragon lands… Discord must be proud of that natural chaos.”

“It’s a good thing that those aren’t my problems currently, thank you for the thousand year retirement plan Twilight! Anyway it’s so nice to spend time with one of my friends.” Celestia then leaned closer to me and looked about shiftily as her flowing mane change its flow to be slightly slower. “So did you find Luna’s Moon Cake vault as well?”

I pulled out a card with the coordinates to Luna’s Moon Cake vault, distinctly different from her Moon Pie vault. Celestia put a hoof on it and dragged it towards her before stuffing it in her mane in a way that Pinkie Pie would.

Noticing my stare, Princess Celestia chuckled.

“I’m still part earth pony.” That still doesn’t explain how that works at all in the slightest Celestia. “Also don’t drive my sister back into Nightmare Moon more than once a week, the stress is actually beginning to get to her… otherwise keep going, she’s going to crack eventually and apologize. You’re both quite stubborn though.”

“Is that an order for a sun priest, a suggestion as a friend or do you need me here for chaos that is not Discord branded? I can get you a good deal on Discord branded chaos!” I was obligated to tell Celestia that because of a current contract with Discord, he wasn’t a hard chaos god to work with.

“Not this week, but maybe I’ll have need next week.” That wasn’t exactly a ‘no’ Celestia, which would be almost worrying for anyone else who heard you say that. “So what’s the verdict Mr. Awe?”

“The Quarrelsome will act accordingly so the world doesn’t end, but don’t expect us to be nice about it.” Shocking Awe stated before biting into a cookie menacingly, he was adorable while trying to look threatening. I think I might have a thing for elemental Pegasus ponies, I certainly did for adorable yet tall unicorns with chips in their shoulders.

“Understandable.” Celestia stated in what was a temporary truce zone between us and an organization of stallion jerks that once saved my backside.

I still go golfing with Teatime Clockwork on weekends, we cheat like Tartarus at putting golf and had more real fun with the go karts and the modifying of them. We couldn’t ever agree on a decent pizza order while hanging out, but we were amiable enough casual enemies that we would rather the world not end so we could continue on with the shenanigans of keeping our lives entertaining.

“So… about all those ISUS squads you formed just before Twilight actively took the crown…” I was curious as to why Celestia did that, was it malicious intent or a parting inside joke?

Either way Fizzy had her work cut out for her with training up a competent squad known as the Tambelon Incursion Team Specialists... hehe, now that I think about it I should warn Fizzy about what that spells. I could sell a Frisbee with some corn in it for one hundred bits with a lemonade stand with that name.

-WWDCT, Saturn Asteroid Base, Smolder-

“Three doors down to the right upon exiting, I’m about to lose control of the gravity shaft. So you’ll have to figure out a different way out.” Announced Dormarch, we didn’t know where he was or what he was doing aside from helping us. At least it was nice to hear he was alright. “Can’t help you much more, I’m trying to figure out how to disable the heavies on the ship or how to keep them from setting off a self-destruct they likely have, there are approximately fifteen large Hunter Drones on the asteroid at the moments. One is within you’re vicinity, so be careful.”

We were out of the bottom of gravity shaft swiftly enough and in the doorway leading into the hall. This is when Dolly flopped onto her face into the hall clutching at her skull as the green energy flowing around the edges of her board winked out. Shanty quickly looked around the corner and pulled Dolly back as shots started streaming from that direction.

“Dolly, be a little bit more careful with your magic there… you okay? Good.” I aimed out into the hallway and started taking down Hunter Drones to the right with my recently acquired weapon, as shots started to hit me from behind to very little effect. They were attacking from both sides, but it wasn’t too hard to wipe them out in one given direction. Dolly eventually sat up and responded as Shanty helped her up. “We kind of need you right now, Shanty haul her that way while I hold these guys off.”

I turned to the left and started firing and they were paying more attention to me as a threat, one they couldn’t hurt in any capacity, but they could deal with me close up by pinning me down. So I had to move backwards and hope that Shanty would tell me if we had any problems coming up from behind me.

Shanty quickly got Dolly up and moving in the opposite direction I was facing, I started backing my way into and down the hallway as more hunter drones were coming from the left.

I really didn’t know how many shots the weapon had, but it was saving me on having to blast fireballs constantly. We just needed to reach Ocellus, beat pick her up and escape. Dormarch said Ocellus was three doors down from here and that one of those big guys was in the area, I wonder what else we would have to face.

The enter asteroid shuddered as either something broke or exploded violently.

“What was that being?” Shanty asked as she took cover in an alcove and was busy trying to get a currently dazed Dolly back in gear.

“Haven’t a clue, I have no idea what’s going on aside from what’s happening around us!” I continued to mow through Hunter Drones taking time to aim and fire to take them down in a single shot, while they hit me with like fifty or so.

-Onboard The Raptor, Dormarch-

Okay so things weren’t going too well for the Mighty Ducks team, the Heavy Hunter Drones were a huge problem for them.

They were at least trying to deal with them first before they tried boarding Raptor, as facing those things on foot was fairly suicidal given their anti-infantry nature.

Didn’t know where they found these ships to come find us all the way out here, but I didn’t need to know as they came for Ocellus and me. I’m just glad they found some way to come after these guys before they found out Ocellus wasn’t Abigail, which would have actively forced me into the open to save her.

Watching Ocellus be tortured wasn’t exactly some of the greatest moments in my life, but she has held up fairly well and should be mostly okay by the time Smolder’s team reached her. They’d have to go through Wraith though, but they had advantages.

At least the McDucks were taking care of themselves fairly well some went into the asteroid base and others were still flying the second ship and trying to help disable the one I’m on. The weapons on the two ships were doing well enough to damage Heavy Hunter Drones on the hull, but it was a concentrated effort to even destroy one with both ships firing all they had into it.

The Heavy Hunter Drones were definitely built for anti-infantry actions, but they were doing well enough as mobile point defense turrets while moving along the surface of The Raptor to be a nasty issue.

My current position was very precarious, given I was still inside a regular Hunter Drone’s systems and the only reason why the super computer network hasn’t put up much of a defense was because the alien coding was very much sturdy to a point that I couldn’t actually do anything to deal with it personally.

I could do things like manipulate the gravity shaft or open a door, but the system would recognize my intrusion quickly and shut me down if I tried to be overly overt about anything. The lizards didn’t have any anti-virus software and I clearly saw why they wouldn’t actually need it.

The computer systems of the asteroid base and this ship that were nearly impossible to hack in anything approaching a permanent manner without it being noticed and quickly fixed. I couldn’t really do too many manipulations, were I a stronger being I might be able to tear the computers apart from the inside like I did to Clockwerk’s somewhat ancient systems and make it my plaything. The super computer systems these Saurians used was a different kettle of fish altogether compared to the earthly systems that any entity like me could run roughshod over.

A regular hunter drones systems though… that I could manipulate like a pretzel maker without notice, regular Hunter Drones weren’t very bright nor was their programming stellar. These robots were barely above earthly computer systems in complexity. Which is why I was controlling one personally and doing well in keeping that fact hidden, the super computers in the asteroid base or on this ship didn’t actively need information from the Hunter Drones and always assumed they were doing their jobs.

The only real blind spot in the systems and it’s the drones with a decent amount of physical security clearance. The digital security clearance was impossible to surpass unless I was Dragaunus himself.

The Heavy Hunter Drone variants were actually protected by the super computer systems, so it was the reason that I couldn’t stop them without figuring out how to first destroy the super computer systems.

I could move through the super computer systems and jump between the asteroid base and here just fine as long as I didn’t actively try anything to manipulate the systems in place. I had a few trick or two to confuse the super computers for about a minute, which is how I got Smolder’s team down the gravity shaft safely without the super computers killing them. It would not work in anything other than a small error capacity nor would it work too many more times.

Now though, I was trying to write an understanding of Saurian coding into a part of myself, but was not entrenching it into myself in way that I couldn’t quickly eject it from my body. I was also creating an unusual bit of unique coding as backup that made up my very nature, it was filled with all the most important information to me in an attempt to immunize myself to what I was going to pull off if I had to.

It would go a long way to saving everyone here if Dragaunus went entirely pyrrhic, I could actually stop that at a huge cost. Not that I wanted to do ‘that’. If I had to, I would gladly do it for everyone that came to stop these guys from being a further threat.

Hurry up, save Ocellus and find your way out of there guys…

-Asteroid Base, bottom layer, Smolder-

Two doors passed and Dolly was still flagging a bit, but Shanty was still powering through the Hunter Drones that were in the way with her makeshift scythe weapon as I brought up the rear.

-Shanty-

“Next door right?” I leapt up with a twirl of the stolen leg and decapitated a Hunter Drone, I liked my legged peg weapon. I was really good with bladed weaponry, but my cutting power wears them out too fast. Thankfully the material the robot leg is being made of was sturdier than most, which is why I haven’t lost this weapon yet and I was getting good with it.

“Yeah!” Smolder shouted back as she kept blasting drones the hallway behind us was littered with robots.

I moved ahead of Dolly and swung the blade left and right twirling it so the bladed toes be creating powerful cutting arcs to deflect or cut the energy blasts apart enough as to be harmless.

I ducked under a blast that struck the floor and then be rising the scythe in an upward slash that tore the machine before me in half. Looking to my right we were at the door, but how were we getting it open, I swung at it and the cutting arc barely be denting it.

“How are we to be getting through the door?!” I asked in a panic as slash a wave of shots apart. Dolly whipped her board at it with the strap, but nothing be happening.

“Figure something out, there’s too many of them for us to take on up close!” Smolder didn’t flinch. She was taking a lot of hits and they be doing nothing to her, some even be knocking her head around in a painful manner that be throwing of her aim.

Suddenly the volume of fire be increasing by a lot, one of the armored ones was coming down the hallway that Smolder be firing down.

“Yeah, there’s no way we’re going to be able to slow that thing down…” Smolder kept shooting the smaller Hunter Drones and be holding them off from the right side. Any shot that hit the larger one as it thundered towards us did nothing aside from a lucky shot that be exploding one of its exposed explosive launchers.

Dolly barked something having regained some stamina sitting in the closed doorway and held up her board at me and point towards it, I tilted my head questioningly. She wanted me to strike her board?

I swung the stump end of my legged peg around in my hooves and struck the board, Dolly toppled onto her back and slapped against the floor painfully. She rubbed at her back as she sat up.

“Why did you be having me do that? That not be helping at all!” After I be saying this the large drone was about a ships deck away from us. Dolly narrowed her eyes at the board and then contemplated me, she pointed to Smolder and the right side of the door and then motioned to me to strike the board again but she hopped in place then pointed to me. “Okay, if you be thinking that will help. Smolder be moving to the other side of the door now!”

“Alright, but how are we going to stop that thing?!” Smolder backed up and Dolly was looking at the large Hunter Drone charging us suspiciously. She nodded to herself and then turned to me holding the board defensively and be hopping into the air this time.

I swung the thigh around and struck the board bluntly, a shower of blew energy erupted into Dolly and she grinned as she sucked into her body greedily. She landed on the floor and then moved into the path of the constant firing lasers with her board held up and waited, she pointed at Smolder and the down the hallway.

“Smolder turn around and keep the smaller ones off us, I think I know what Dolly be doing!” And do it she did, for in the instance the large machine closed to try and slam its fist into Dolly she held up her right paw and with a flash of green and a bark a howling powerful tornado barely managed to lift it off the floor.

Dolly leapt to the wall across from the doorway pressing her hind legs against the wall and twisting her body in a painful manner. With her teeth gritted, she pushed off the wall spiraling with incredible speed on her own strength, said speed triple when she went into the tornado of wind into an indistinguishable blur all the way right up until she swung her board from her right to left for all she was worth as the robot was going to fall to the floor despite the winds barely holding it aloft as it was far too heavy to stay in the air for more than a few seconds.

The skateboard be connecting with the slowly twisting and floating robots chest in a huge shower of sparks and Dolly looking under an immense amount of stress.

What happened next was the large robot being blasted through the shut doorway as its chest armor dented inwards and blast through the room with a painful screeching noise that made Dolly whining and grimacing as she flopped to the floor limply unable to move.

“Move, I hope you didn’t just kill Ocellus with that maneuver Dolly!” Smolder wasn’t bothered by the noise and swiftly scooped up Dolly and ran into the room and I followed behind her taking out. I pole vaulted into the room with the leg and held the weapon aloft hoping the large armored one be dealt with. “Well now… aside from Dolly being tapped out, that certainly helps.”

The robot be stuck, embedded in the wall. It be mostly intact and still moving, but it was being too stuck to actually come for us. The lights on what I assume to be the jail cells winked out, but Ocellus was in none of them as she was stuck up on a rack off to the left lifting her head weakly. She still be taking on Abigail Callaghan’s appearance.

“Nhhh… the portents of our imminent demise will come for us in the sound of the hard to break breaking something. It seems today is our end, but we will make it a glorious one.” The old magic guy was being separated from his staff and slowly trying to get up. Smolder be blasting it with molten fire that looked to be almost like she was actively spitting liquid lava. “No… my staff… you’ll pay for that, I don’t know how I’ll… yes that’s it… you came for her didn’t you?”

He be pulling out a flaming sword, I stared at him incredulously as did Smolder, Dolly and even Ocellus in her slightly beaten state just stared at him. Smolder tossed the stolen weapon and ribbon to me and marched towards him with anger in her eyes.

“Ocellus chew and line you’re mouth with this and don’t be swallowing it!” I be pulling out a stick of gum and throwing it her way, she be catching it and quickly chewing as asked and grimaced at the flavor.

He swiftly slashed downwards at her with the magical sword of pure flames at an angle shoulder to hip, he lashed it across her chest, Wraith then tried stabbing her with the sword and then looked at it curiously. He lightly dragged the blade across, up and down all over Smolder’s body, she didn’t even flinch when the flames cross her eyes.

Curiously touching the flame of the magical fire blade as Smolder put her fists on her hips, the Wraith tall old guy that originally be taking Ocellus winced. It be far less effective than a flashlight against Smolder, because at least a flashlight would irritate Smolder’s angry glaring eyes.

“Ah yes… I see where I am completely unable to win the oncoming fight now. If you’ll excuse me.” Wraith slashed the blade at the floor and created a mass of smoke that filled the room and we heard him running for Ocellus as Smolder flopped on the floor. “I need to be retreating while I can, Lord Dragaunus I need a recall, this is a fight my magic simply cannot win!”

“At least you admit to your failings and the weakness of magic.” Dragaunus stated. I could see a small smirk on Ocellus’s face, but she couldn’t struggled as Wraith took a grip of her throat.

“Please hurry with the recall or we will lose our hostage!” Wraith stated in a tone of sheer fright, Ocellus simply nodded to Smolder without an ounce of fear on her face.

Smolder spread her wings and shot towards Wraith fully intending to eviscerate him with her claws for hurting Ocellus, the guy launched a ball of fire at Smolder harmlessly knocking her back slightly with the blast from his sword.

He quickly disappeared with Ocellus in a flash, they are likely being on that ship now.

“…” Smolder just stood there perfectly still and her left eye be twitching fiercely.

-Smolder-

They took the most precious thing to me, more precious than gems, jewels or gold. There’s nothing greedier than love and they just made me angry that we came all the way down here for nothing.

As I’m about to show them, you don’t steal that which is most precious to a dragon… for a very good reason. I was tired of holding back my greed, Ocellus was mine and she would know my love!

“You two, get to safety when you can, but first… stay behind me and don’t get in my way.” A bunch of Hunter Drones came into the room with another large one. “RAGGGHHHH!”

-Dolly-

Ugh… what the… oh… that… that isn’t good.

A shadow slowly began filling the room, slowly an orange claw reach to the large Hunter Drone pulling itself from the wall and simply crushed it under the raw force of a single squeeze. She launched the crushed pile of materials forwards and it tore through the robots trying to shoot at the beast.

A slow puddle formed on the floor between my hind legs as I stared up at the beast in horror, slowly the large figure ripped the second large robot to shreds in seconds and just barreled through the rest of them like tissue paper.

I always did think of Smolder as something dangerous, but I didn’t know she could go Godzilla like that…

“Dolly you might want to move you’re paws before they be getting covered.” Shanty, how can you ignore Smolder tearing a huge hole in the doorway out of the room?! Also thanks I don’t want my paws to be covered in my own fluids because that terrifying.

A roar and blinding flames filled the hallways. Moving out we saw the entire corridor was melted widened cylinder and we saw the tail end of the monstrous dragon Smolder became digging its way back up through the base.

“I think she be making a straight line for Ocellus.” Shanty said flatly as the melted upwards shaft filled in quickly with molten rock and sealed us off down here. “Let’s be finding a way out quickly yes?”

-Dragaunus-

“Lock down the asteroid base and activate the self-destruct. We’re abandoning the Hunter Drone production facility, let’s see if that kills a few of them!” I watched the visuals as something large started tearing through the base. “We’ll release the electromagnetic worm take the ducks out and then we’ll flee, all strength to shields if we’re prevented from escaping!”

“Right away Lord Dragaunus!” Siege was my most loyal member, he has yet to fail in following my orders throughout all of this.

-Shanty-

The place be getting loud and noisy.

“Self-destruct activated, two minutes until base destruction.” When it be raining, it be pouring.

-Kim Possible-

Just when we managed to wreck the Hunter Drone production facility too…

“So… how are we getting out of this one and through all the doors in that amount of time?” Ron asked as shutters closed and tried to lock us inside the facility that was about to explode. “We’re three floors down from the hangar!”

“Not looking forward to being fried duck!” Responded Nosedive, he continued to fire as we still had Hunter Drones to deal with.

232. With your eyes open wide!

-Digital Space, Dormarch-

…

I had to do it, all in under two minutes… the clock was ticking ever so slowly as I was currently in an accelerated space.

That wasn’t enough time to… no… it was exactly enough time to do something monumental.

Was there a way to make this work though… they were also going to release the electromagnetic worm to destroy one or two of the ships… wait… did I want to manifest and let something like ‘that’ exist in reality though? It wouldn’t get the chance to exist for very long, not if I had anything to say about it.

I had to be careful, but I would still do it.

First I need to move to the Asteroid base and unleash it there, then move to The Raptor to continue the infection vector while trying everything to resist… my solution would solve everything, but if I wanted to end things quickly I’ll take the Saurian’s most dangerous weapon from them on top of it all.

The electromagnetic worm would have be the last thing I had to deal with and I had to do that fast before a full manifestation can take root in reality.

Don’t worry about me Dolly, Shanty, Smolder, Dodo… all my other friends like Ms. Shuttle… oh Ms. Shuttle you were such a beautiful digital entity.

Most importantly… I’m sorry about the trauma this will cause you when you wake up mom.

I was going to save the day in the only way I had left open to me.

Transmitting myself over to the asteroid base, I prepared to think on what I was going to say to my big sister.

I reached up and clutched at the device entrapping my neck, I looked down at the PET and knew what would happen the second I separated myself from it.

-Shanty-

I be haphazardly wrapping the ribbon around my neck and stuffing the weapon into it, we couldn’t get out the same way we came in and the passage we came from has collapsed in itself in the wake of an angry Smolder.

Dolly barked in a panic, as we heard the countdown of two minutes, which is barely being more than one. I moved slightly to avoid a blast of energy from behind and then leapt to deal with the Hunter Drone with a single slash.

“Dolly… Shanty, start moving down the hallway in the other direction, you can find some air vents that’ll help you get out. I’ll tell you where they were when you can spot them.” We be following Dormarch’s directions immediately, but I don’t be thinking we had any time to escape. We rounded a corner going right when he spoke up again. “Okay, stop! Can you see the vents?”

“Yeah?” I stated wondering why Dormarch sounded… defeated. We were all still alive and he had a way to stop all of us exploding right?

“Enter the nearby room, there’s something I need to do before you go into them. I need to stop the countdown, the lizards from escaping and unleashing the most destructive problem.” The tone in his voice had us both worried, Dolly was seeming to feel the same trepidation that be crawling down my spine.

Oh no… not again, I never be wanting to lose anyone anymore, not like this! I didn’t want to tell Dolly, but I already be having a sneaking suspicion as to what Dormarch was going to do... something... unpleasant.

-Dolly-

We entered the room and Dormarch appeared on a screen and forced the front half of his body out of the screen.

“Dolly, think fast!” Dormarch threw something to me and I of course caught it in my paws, fumbling a bit before I got a good grip on what he threw at me as Dormarch ducked back into the screen.

It was the PET that housed Dormarch, but why would he…

Shanty hugged me and I sat there holding the PET, it glowed and it started to change shape to something more compact.

“I’m sorry Dolly.” Blinking as Dormarch said that, I looked down at the device and symbol shined forth from it brightly and I didn’t know what it meant. I felt my heart sinking in my body as I remembered what separating himself from the PET would do to him. “Goodbye… everyone.”

Wait… no… oh no… no, no, no… please no! Not him, he’s still too young, he’s just a puppy!

“Dormarch? Dormarch, get back here you idiot, we can fix this, we can reconnect you to it! Yeah, that’ll work! Come on Dormarch stop playing around… Domarch…” The screen that Dormarch appeared on started flickering out and I saw one of three tails beginning to dissolve and become covered in an angry red blob that was eating him alive. “Why… we could have figured out another way!”

In less than two minutes? Be real with yourself Dolly.

“He be knowing of a way to be saving us all Dolly, unlike Pom, I don’t be thinking he will survive this.” When Shanty picked me up and started to move, my world shattered.

-With May and June, Webby-

Holding the hangar was our job, but we wouldn’t be able to get everyone out in time. We also weren’t leaving without everyone!

“Goodbye… everyone.” Dormarch’s voice broadcasted loud and clear as the countdown hit thirty seconds and then the hangar went dark, but the Hunter Drones kept coming.

“Do you get the feeling…” May started.

“That something absolutely terrible…” June continued.

“Just happened.” I finished as I blasted another Hunter Drone, I would be more happy that we just did a triplet thing for the first time as clones… but the fact that Dormarch was saying goodbye had us all worried.

“If Dormarch is doing what I think he is, then he is likely currently flooding the Saurian systems with a deadly computer virus is actively being restructured post activation to work on not only him, but the AIs of whatever systems he’s occupying.” Ms. Shuttle wasn’t very happy sounding and neither were any of us as we kept downing Hunter Drones with our Moonlander beam rifles. “He’s doing it to stop the destruction of the asteroid base. Concerning what I know of the virus specifically meant to kill him if he ever separated from his PET device… he’s using it as a weapon. He’s going to kill himself and we can’t stop it!”

This extreme game of laser tag wasn’t ending in our deaths! The several heavies we had on us were no longer attacking though, our ship had lost all its weapons in the crash… but we could still take off.

“How much worse could things really get?” June shouldn’t have asked as a dragon burst through the floor and given the orange scales and purple frills… it was Smolder. She lunged out into space at The Raptor that tried to maneuver away, only its engines stopped just as they started.

-Dormarch-

My body was disintegrating exponentially by the time I managed to get myself into The Raptor’s systems. It was agony, every step and motion, the virus was eating me alive from the inside and yet I kept pushing it out of me to eat the super computer systems first as the larger threat.

The virus was voracious, it would definitely stop any digital entity like me. I smiled a little at that, this world was truly safe from incursions of beings like me.

I tried to chuckle, but all that did was make cough up red flecks of the virus out of my throat on to the digital space which it started eating away at.

I had to get to the electromagnetic worm before the virus devoured me completely, the digital realm was slowing down immensely and yet I continued on as part of my second tail fell off and melted into a pile of digital goo quickly consumed by the mass following my wake.

I could almost hear it, some kind of siren call urging me forward as the digital realm around me slowly tore apart. Seeing the white light of the writhing electromagnetic monstrous worm in reality on a screen from one of the last available working systems.

I didn’t want to die in pain and that thing was the fastest way to end my suffering... and it wouldn’t take anyone else.

The life support systems of this ship would be the only thing that survived.

It felt like the world was on fire and I could feel bits of my ears slowly tearing away as I continued my march.

The bright light drawing me forward, was this the fated tunnel all living beings could see if they survive a near fatal experience?

-Mighty Ducks Moonlander Ship, Tanya-

“Something’s happening to The Raptor, all its systems seem to be going offline and the large Hunter Drones are all failing… they’re not going to be able to actually escape us this time.” That’s when a bay opened and I saw something that the Saurian’s had managed to get a hold of again. “They have an electromagnetic worm!”

I didn’t need to tell the team the importance of the Saurians managing to catch an even bigger electromagnetic worm. That thing would consume our current ship whole and anything in the vicinity.

“Goodbye… everyone.” Huh? Who the… that’s when Ms. Shuttle made the announcement that Dormarch, Dolly’s youngest adoptive brother was going to kill himself.

-Dormarch-

Dormarch, Dormath or Dormarth, a legendary hound of mythology that Dolly had read about with one Dante Dalmatian of the 101 Street Dalmatian family. It’s where my name came from.

Dormath was said to be a legend of the wild hunt.

"Handsome my dog, and round bodied,
And truly the best of dogs;
Dormath was he, which belonged to Maelgwyn.
Dormath with the ruddy nose! what a gazer
Thou art upon me because I notice
Thy wanderings on Gwibir Vynyd."

An excerpt about the ‘Hounds of Cwn Annwn’.

Dormarch, its meaning is ‘death’s door’ or ‘death’s gate’, it can also mean ‘death’s surety’.

Pom, mother, has a dark sense of humor it seemed. May I find my way back to her in my next life, if there is one for such a being as me. I wondered if Sirius of the Dog Star has any meaning to me?

I think I could see it from beyond the worms wild undulating.

I grunted in agony as my rear legs dissolved and I continue to pull myself with my front paws and I manifested, this slowed the virus, but it did not stop as I dragged myself towards the wild whipping mass of light and energy in the shape of a worm.

I was dormarch, a digital entity with a living breathing form beyond the digital realm and I was saving everyone I can in three simple steps.

The exact form of the name “Dormarch” specifically is uncertain from an etymological standpoint.

First I infected the asteroid base, stopped the countdown by make sure there was nothing that can finish the countdown. Nobody from our teams needed life support thanks to Gyro’s brilliant Oxy-chew.

Second I would immediately infect The Raptor and stop the super computers, thus the Heavy Hunter Drones cease being a threat as they needed stronger computer systems to run.

My three barely existing tails trailed behind me as my body rotted from the inside out. I continued to pull myself forward heedless of the pain.

When you had almost nothing left of yourself, there was little to fear.

My last act would be certain though, to deal with the Saurian version of impending death as this ultimate form of weaponized anomaly they’ve captured could swallow any space fairing ship whole.

It would then wink out of existence after having consumed a given mass. The Raptor itself was impervious to the electromagnetic worm.

Since I was going to die anyway, all I needed was one final Search Hunter...

-Mighty Ducks Moonlander Ship, Wildwing-

“What is that, there!” Mallory had spotted something and I blinked at what she pointed out.

Despite The Raptor opening its back half and having let the worm have the ability to escape, it didn’t move and stayed in place.

It was an unusual dog and it was likely Dolly ‘Danger’ Dalmatian’s little brother, his body was covered in slowly growing red blotches as he dragged himself toward the worm and the worm slowed and stopped acting wildly.

“This is something I’ve never seen before!” Tanya announced. “The worm… it’s… stabilizing and slowly moving towards… oh no… no that’s not good, why isn’t that puppy afraid of what’s going to happen to him?!”

“I am of the solemn opinion that we shouldn’t watch this happen again…” Looking back I could already see Grin crying as the suffering dog looking up at the worm like mass whose head seemed to be focusing solely on him. The two were staring at one another, sitting very still. “After Canard…”

“Do you think it’ll… yeah, it will.” Duke tried to say, watching the tortured soul continue to pull himself forward heedless of worm. “He’s already dying Tanya, he’s going to go out… like a true hero.”

“Like Canard Thunderbeak.” I gripped my right fist in anger, there was no way we were letting Dragaunus get away this time. “Dragaunus is not getting away with this injustice!”

“He can’t… his ship… all its systems aside from life support and some emergency power are all that’s working.” After a moment Tanya looked at us. “The Saurians have nowhere to escape to.”

“May that tortured soul find peace in his next life…” Grin said with his eyes closed.

-Dormarch-

I lifted myself up with my left leg as my last tail started dissolving, my right leg was already gone and it was my only untouched limb left and my nose was starting to go. I didn’t need to breath in space and I had these last moments to gather myself.

Range finding forty five degrees upward angle… chances of missing target… 0.00001%

Chance I’d actually want to miss the target at this range… 0%.

Worm seems to find a fascination in me, I was just as fascinated in what led to things like this existing. It was beautiful and ever shifting being of electromagnetic energy that would eat me and then once it’s consumed something… it just simply winks out of existence and I would be taking it with me.

Is it looking at me because it understands what I’m about to do, or is it looking at me because of my nature as a digital entity about to throw itself into the electromagnetic hellfire of its body to prevent the manifesting digital virus from spreading?

I could see Smolder, in her rage induced dragon form approaching the ship. If I didn’t do this now… then she’d be taken by it.

-Dolly-

The bond was becoming more and more tenuous by the second, it was slowly withering and becoming quite brittle, I tried to clutch onto it and keep hoping I could save him somehow.

Dormarch couldn’t shatter my world like this, he just couldn’t, he was supposed to outlive us all and have a full fulfilling life! He was supposed to see Pom again, I’ve never lost a puppy before… never…

Mommy… what would you think of me for losing Dormarch? Why did you have to die and leave our family?

Why were you so sick, why did you leave us?!

-Earth, Basemax San Fransokyo, Roddy-

Something was wrong with the hero’s heart rate and she wasn’t looking too good, it was as if she could feel how much pain she was in.

That shouldn’t even be possible when she wasn’t conscious, she was still comatose.

Even Momakase sat there staring at Pom, I was worried about her at first and yet… she just wanted to sit here and stare at Pom.

-Saturn Asteroid Base, Baymax-

“Life is a gift most precious.” Baymax said as he hugged Hiro knowing they were about to watch what couldn’t be avoided, they couldn’t intercept Smolder in time. So Dormarch was logically the better option, but Baymax still wanted to save everyone. He understood sadness all too well. “We carry our friends and family in our hearts and memory banks.”

“Baymax… let’s go get everyone out of the asteroid base, there’s a fight still going and we need to save everyone we can.” I understand your orders Hiro and acknowledge. Fredmeleon, Honey and Wasabi were already in the base and helping the three duck girls hold the hangar from all the Hunter Drones that were still active. The large ones all having gone inactive turned the tides of things. “Bunny Shuttle hold position.”

“Dormarch…” Ms. Shuttle was a more emotionally intelligent AI system, she would and could cry where I could not.

We have lives that needed saving, we were Big Hero Six and we would save those who could still be saved.

-Electromagnetic Worm Hold, Dormarch-

… Digivolution failure, body damage exceeds seventy percent…

I still didn’t know what digivolution was, but apparently my body tried to do something to save me in spite of the agonizing pain I’m in.

I would persevere until the end! I could almost feel the glow of something etching itself onto my chest, a symbol… it was a symbol. I could feel it, the strengthening of our connections… our bonds… the strength between us all. That was something the virus couldn’t touch, it wasn’t digital coding.

Perseverance through night and day, in darkness or light!

Half remaining power… shunt to Search Hunter Program… the rest I freely give to them all I had. Me… I didn’t care, because something had to feed the worm.

Smolder, I hope you will fully appreciate what I’m doing for you later when you come to your senses. I kind of wanted a little more time to see the beauty of the stars.

“Search… Hunter…” My words would not carry from my lips in space, yet I knew I said them with conviction and without a hint of fear for what was to come.

Nobody would hear me scream as I suddenly embedded myself into the central mass of the worm.

-Mighty Ducks Moonlander Ship, Mallory-

A yellow spark of light and suddenly a small form appearing inside the worm made us all flinch. We knew it was coming, but it still hurt to watch again.

The worm writhed and slowly started to spiral inwards and shrink down to nothing as it wrapped around the tiny shrinking form and then, after a certain point, they both popped completely out of existence.

“He just… straight right into it… I…” We could now take it to The Raptor with everything we had! I could feel a fury rise up in me. My father, Canard Thunderbeak and all those who were harmed by the Saurians spurred me to action. “We need to bring down The Raptor now!”

A second later we saw an orange form of fury and rage slam into The Raptor and started tearing away at its outer shell with frightening ease, the purple frill easily letting us know who it was.

“That thing… it’s Smolder!” Duke was the first to voice his surprise.

“Her peace is highly unbalanced, but she is not yet completely lost to her fury.” Grin stood up and moved to gently take the controls of the ship. “We must finish this before any more suffering can occur.”

“Get us in there Grin!” Wildwing was the first to come to his sense and point forward, Tanya was too lost in thought for what they just witnessed to do anything.

-Asteroid Base Vents, Shanty-

I felt it. It didn’t take me long to feel it either, Dolly stilled, stopped breathing and her heart had stopped beating.

Dormarch ceasing to exist be causing heartbreak that powerful?!

I pulled her from my back and tried to think about what to do, about the times people had saved me… like when Carmelita… CPR right, I needed to give her CPR!

Inhaling I slowly breathed into Dolly’s mouth to fill her lungs, then pressed down on her chest gently. She was not dying, we just lost one person, we not be losing another on my watch.

I was going to be forcing her to live!

-Basemax, Roddy-

The flat line happened out of nowhere, it cause both Momakase and me to start panicking.

“Basemax!” I shouted.

“Shock.” Basemax intoned with a sense of urgency, yet the flat line continue the heart barely beeping. “Shock. Losing the patient. Shock. Defibrillation is proving ineffective.”

Again Pom’s monitor stayed flat lined, bless all the beavers and platypuses in the world… she’s come too far to quit now!

Momakase firmed her face and took hold of Pom’s hoof, then we saw something that should not have been possible.

Leap Lamb’s eyes opened slowly, they looked dead… ‘she’ looked dead.

She didn’t even look to be awake as her head slowly tilted towards us then back to looking at the ceiling, after a moment she took in one long drag of air through the breathing tube.

No panic was present on her face and her fleece started glowing a golden color and then she exhaled gently.

A small indecipherable pulse of something filled the room with warmth, then Leap Lamb’s… Pom’s… heart rate settled…

It just normalized immediately out of nowhere.

“What… just happened?” Momakase asked, she wasn’t the only one that was spooked by the occurrence.

Pom just laid there with a normal heart rate, but there had been no jump in brain activity at all when this had occurred.

She was still comatose with whatever just happened here.

-Shanty-

Dolly gasped and a faint gold glow came over her as she started breathing again. I hugged her, but she didn’t do anything more than breathe as I held her, her eyes didn’t have any life in them that they once held.

She was at least breathing again, I held her close and started to cry.

I didn’t want to lose any more friends today, so I sucked it up and began to move.

There were still Hunter Drones to deal with and I had to carry Dolly to safety, I clutched the leg pegged close as I crawled forward with my hind legs.

-The World-

The world didn’t understand and neither did the red eyed entity that moved forward to try and claim Pom’s soul as her body threatened to die, then something happened.

A spark of life.

The world turned to see the red eyed entity looking down on Pom’s still form and the fact the her heart in her chest beat normally in spite of the fact that it fully ‘felt’ like she just died.

“Curious…” Was all the entity said as The World looked on, the entity started looking back at it as they exchanged a glance of mild confusion that a miracle occurred when nobody of godly might put forth power into it? “You wouldn’t happen to know why I couldn’t take her soul would you? It 'was' free for the taking.”

The World had no answer, but something had occurred… whether it was miraculous or not, it had protected Pom’s soul from being simply repurposed.

“I wish to acquire her aid even more…” The entity turned and went back to waiting, he would wait for them to build the portal before he could actively interfere. “Perhaps it was their bonds...”

The entity left The World to its wonder and curiosities.

-Red Eyed Entity-

I waited patiently for our meeting to set things in motion.

Looking back where an interesting being tore himself asunder. Energy was engulfed by the monstrous anomaly to seemingly cease existing, some went to the sisterly canine and the remainder, my target.

I turned my eyes to something else of importance, a glowing symbol of prominence.

Author's Note

Summary.

Dolly was thinking of her original mother and not Delilah her step-mother. Also yes, she's holding a Digivice.

Dormarch finally actively used what amounts to the 'D-Reaper' computer virus inside himself and weaponized it to truly devastating effects against the Saurians who still have the numerical advantage. Competency advantage is for a different story.

Pom was saved from the predations of the god level entity that kicks off the next arc.

As a slight threat Level revaluation.

Dragaunus: Hard to kill reptile. < Smolder: Nearly impossible to even stop full greed/rage dragon.

Of the three directions this story could have gone from Ocellus's choice, there were scenarios where Dormarch does or doesn't survive for completely different unique reasons.

This was the one that primarily shows us exactly what happens when Dormarch actively separates himself from the PET. The previous page was him setting up for the full destruction of both the asteroid base and The Raptor's computer systems... at the steepest personal cost.

233. Unafraid of the future…

-Equus, Ponyville, Rainbow Dash-

“Ah yeah, that was fun! Let’s do this again sometime Jade!” I waved the Abyssinian off and she smiled mischievously as she and her familiar Snickers left.

“Okay Rainbow Dash, what did you, Jaded and Pinkie get up to?” Applejack asked as she trotted up to me.

“Well Jackass Jack the jack rabbit, Snickers, Gummy, Tank and a few other familiars were in on it too, but I’m sure you’ll hear about it soon enough in the local news. I read a book about familiars and learned some pretty interesting stuff.” I waved and before I flew away I suggested something. “Familiar Friends For Foals is a good start!”

Sure it was a children’s book, but it explained a lot of unusual things about Tank and my extra toughness, since I haven’t broken any bones since bonding with him. Even Silver Stream being immune to petrification was neat. Yona had that wolf pack spider Spindle and was learning to speak to insects. I know Sandbar was thinking of actually acquiring a turtle to talk to since he’s been getting lessons from Snickers the Turtledove, dude could use a little more excitement in his life. I wonder if Gallus was going to find a cool familiar too?

It was absolutely fascinating what having a 'tiny ewe' specifically as a familiar said about Fizzy! Didn’t know she was a closeted pervert, probably why she married a Chimera and an Abyssinian to begin with… I mean beyond the obvious reasons of being both really cool and awesome.

-Applejack-

Now if only I can ask that cider loving, tree bothering, varmint out…

“What are you thinking about Applejack?” Sugar Belle asked as she came up to me, she and Big Mac were going to have a lot of foals at the rate they were going.

“Rainbows… er… I was just suggested a book on familiars and was wondering if you might be interested in reading material?” I grinned.

“A half-truth without actually lying… really Applejack? Everyone already knows about you and Rainbow, the whole town is betting on when it starts and what actually kicks it off. Also Coloratura has been sniffing around town recently… are you going to tell me she isn’t on your radar for a herd?” Well that was mighty embarrassing Sugar, I tipped my hat down to hide my blush. “Also some people are betting on you getting a sire, others are saying you’ll just go to Kuril, Zecora or even Twilight about having foals. There’s no end of volunteers to help you.”

My face grew redder.

-Saturn Asteroid Base, somewhere above bottom floor, Shanty-

Even in the dim lighting, I somehow managing to strap the unreactive Dolly to my back using her the strap and skateboard.

The device in Dolly’s Paw was firmly held, she was not letting go of it even when I tried to put it away even in her blank look she wasn’t relinquishing it for anything. Didn’t honestly know much about technology, but I didn’t think it be should shifting its shape like that normally.

Curious as I was about seeing the literal meaning and interpretation of ‘death grip’ now, I be needing to get out of here. I wanted to be able to taste real food and not this gum again.

I stood up on my hind legs and was a little unbalanced by the weight of Dolly on my back and the various things I was carrying. Three sticks of Oxy-chew lining my bandana, Smolder’s combat ribbon around my neck, Smolder’s newest weapon burrowed into the ribbon, my weapon be in my front hooves ready for swing and now a dog and a skateboard on my back.

Must be looking pretty ridiculous right now, not going to lie to myself, but I be knowing that the people that be getting us out here wouldn’t be leaving me behind.

I would be getting myself out of the bowels of this place just fine even if the eyes of the robots glowing in the darkened halls be quite creepy.

I immediately charged forward, I couldn’t turn my back to any robots nor could I be allowing them to pincer me or else they might be able to hurt Dolly. I wasn’t afraid of these robots, but I was being afraid of actually dying down here!

It be a good thing they suck at melee attacks, despite having sharp pointy bits for such purposes. They be obviously having a size advantage and were a bit difficult to cut through with my bare hooves, but they weren’t very good at hitting small targets with their ranged attacks either. It be a good thing I be armed with a weapon that be enhancing my cutting ability, but would it actually last longer than the sword under stress?

I kicked off the floor with my right hind hoof and then skidded along the left wall to being almost by the Hunter Drone. Swinging down vertically I be taking off its right arm and dropping to the floor as two shots splashed at where I was.

With a sweeping spin I separated two upper torsos away from their legs entirely, then I be spinning back in the opposite direction and forward to take the third one from left hip to shoulder in a single slash.

The last one took aim at me then it toppled lifelessly. It be unfortunate that there be more coming, I be preparing for the five that be charging me in the dark with my weapon that I could feel was becoming stressed from my usage of it. It be holding well enough, maybe I could get this thing changed and reinforced?

Three of the robots went down from explosions happening in their back and the other two turned to look at something else. I immediately charged them from behind and swung twice and the two angled arcs of brilliant light be cutting them down to size.

“Earth goat? I’ve been looking for where everyone went, is there anything down that way?” It be Penumbra, the Moonlander be looking about with her weapon raised. “I do not know what is going on anymore, though it has been quite exciting to be this far out from the moon and earth.”

“No, there nothing be down there, also I be an Equus goat! I’m not being from earth, but you can also be calling me Shanty.” I moved past her and looked at the carnage, she is being quite a warrior. “We be needing to get out of here if you be knowing the way out, I can be telling you what occurred on the way. Unless there is anything you want to be saying?”

“No Equus goat Shanty, I believe there’s not much to be said, but we do need to find the rest of my… the McDuck family before we can leave and there are lot of those robots running around.” Penumbra wasn’t hiding the fact that she cared about them, still I be following her lead. “I’m not hiding it very well am I?”

“No, but if they be family, then they ‘be’ family.” It was that simple to me, Pom and my friends are being family even if we all be getting into many odd situations.

“Good enough for me, now let’s see… it’s this way…” Following Penumbra up a slope, apparently one floor had collapsed into the next due to the damage Smolder caused on the way out. Penumbra be shooting any Hunter Drone that came across us and eventually be asking. “Is the earth dog okay and can I use that other gun?”

“Sure, but I will be wanting that back, my friend stole it from our enemies fair and square.” I be handing her the pistol Smolder be taking.

“Thanks, no point in letting a weapon go unused. It also looked a bit cumbersome on you and you need the freedom to wield your weapon. You seem to have been doing well enough without me though.” Penumbra be leading us down the hallway where we heard some fighting and that’s when we saw Rufus tear the arm off a machine and then beat it down with it.

“Huh? Oh hey hey!” Rufus said waving to us bouncing back and forth jovially.

“Hairless Earth mammal pet thing… form up with us. The earth has the weirdest yet great warriors… as does Equus.” Penumbra be adding that last part quickly while turning to me as a brilliant flash of lightning be flashing past over Rufus and in front of us, we moved forward to the intersection to see it be flash frying a bunch of robots coming down the corridor from the right.

To our left we be meeting up with more allies.

“My goodness this is place is crazy… can we get out here, please? I thought this adventure would be far easier than this… this place is a death trap. We almost died when several of those large robots cornered us, but then the countdown and everything shutting down. Am I even breathing oxygen anymore or is it just the Oxy-chew that is allowing me to hear my own voice?” Penny, wielding a flashlight, be coming up to us with Bolt, Mittens and Rhino. Mittens be scooping up the hamster and throwing him to take off a single standing robots head and that be making Rhino bounce around wildly in a blur for a few seconds. “Mittens, can you stop throwing Rhino around like that?! I know he’s ‘kind of’ indestructible, but really?”

Mittens just meowed innocently, Bolt seemed to be chuckling given huffing noises he was making as Rhino came bounding back to us.

“Are you okay Rhino?” In response to Penny, Rhino just started bouncing up and down squeaking happily, he even be taking a moment to high five Rufus. “I don’t care if you enjoy it, you could cause a lot of accidents if you don’t keep your bouncing under control, also it would be kind of hard to keep a lid on the whole secret identity things in a public space if everyone knew I owned a living rubber hamster. Bolt don’t encourage Mittens like that and Mittens… nice throw at least. Penumbra, Shanty and… hey, what’s wrong with Dolly?”

Mittens, Rhino and Bolt be mirroring Penny’s worry as she came up to me.

“Dormarch be dying to save us all from the countdown. She is being literally heartbroken about losing her little brother like that, the device is being something he left to her.” Silently watching as Penny be crouching at my back, she caressed Dolly’s cheek softly with a sad frown and watched as Bolt be whining at her being a shell of her former self. She still didn’t respond to anything and all she was doing was holding onto the device tightly her grip was quite clearly where all her strength was currently going. “We be needing to get going, there be nothing left for any us here.”

“Who were you last with Earth Penny?” Penumbra asked, given the second ship probably had everyone exit at the same time.

“Huey, Dewey and Louie. Don’t know what they are doing, but they were okay the last I saw of them.” After having said that Penny watched as Penumbra motioned to us to follow her. “Also did I seriously witness Rufus take down an entire group of robots with his bare paws?!”

“Mon’key’ Mojo hi-yeah!” Rufus intoned while hopping onto my back, as did Rhino excitedly. I grunted and be rolling my eyes as they sat on top the skateboard across Dolly’s chest and my back.

“I can tell he is having magic himself and is being very talented in almost being able to speak. If he is surviving down this far by himself, then we are not to be worrying about his safety.” I could feel Rufus poking at Dolly and her continuing to be unresponsive is having me quite worried about her, it be understandable… I be getting like that too when I be personally suffering a major setback or loss in my life.

Rufus, Bolt, Mittens and Rhino all be making distressed noises, but Dolly is alive and that is not what we should be focusing on right now as we continued by following Penumbra straight through the intersection.

“She is not what we should be focusing on at the moment, we should be focusing on getting out of here.” Penumbra led the way and we were up another floor, this asteroid place is being bigger than it looks on the outside. We would be getting lost if Penumbra not be retracing her steps.

“This is Penumbra, Scrooge, Della, find the boys and get back to the hangar. We’re practically done here.” Penumbra be talking into a device on her wrist. “I’ve found the team that went to grab Ocellus, we’ve had a casualty of Dolly’s little brother. Dolly’s not taking it well and she’s unresponsive.”

“Right we’ll get on that, we’ve picked up a few things and the girls are currently holding the hangar under a siege, these Hunter Drone things are all over the place. Whoever shut down all the big armored ones should be praised for their sense of timing, almost took a rocket to the face here.” Della responded letting us know she was alright “I’m with Uncle Scrooge and we’re moving for the hangar.”

“Keep on my tail lass, I do not want to be losing you again. Boys, Gyro, if you can hear me, then move your tail feathers back to the hangar we’re all pulling out! If you can grab something on the way or have something already then make sure it’s nothing we can’t store away in the ships, it’s going to be a long trip back to earth and we’re going to be dealing with this Oxy-chew the entire time on the way back.” As Scrooged was talking we ran across a large group of Hunter Drones that started firing on us, Rhino was instantly through, Bolt blasted a few, Penumbra started firing the two weapon in her hands and I charged and started to reap them with several quick swings. “I’m not sure if we should really be leaving any of these blooming robots behind or active, but if we haven’t a reason to stay any longer, then we’re leaving!”

“Right Uncle Scrooge, we’ll get right on that, just have to blow up a number of robots in the way.” Something sounded like it was fizzing loud and then an explosion happened we felt a tremor near us. “I’m really liking this rocket launcher!”

“Who in the blazes gave Dewey a rocket launcher?!” Scrooge shouted angrily. “That’s right up there in bad ideas like giving Della a car!”

“OH come on Uncle Scrooge, I’m not that bad…” An explosion immediately sounded off. “Uh… oops… we’ll meet you guys at the hangar, we might need to detour to go back for Louie and Gyro… heh.”

“Uh everyone, we might have a problem getting back to the hangar… there seems to be a large section of collapsed base in the way.” The flat tone Della spoke in could be physically felt.

“Huh, I was wondering what made all that noise… so what do you think made all that noise that caused this?” Asked Nosedive from the communicator on Penumbra’s wrist, she rolled her eyes and continued to charge forward and gun down the robots ahead of us.

“Gah, what the… when did you guys get behind us!” As Della exclaimed this I took the leg out from under one robot then slashed one behind it vertically.

“So not the drama Della, though we’re going to need another way out of here.” That fox, Kim, stated in a calming manner.

“We’re done with making sure the Hunter Drone factory is kaput, almost got killed by five of the larger guys, you seriously do not want to be stuck in a small space with those things like we were!” One could hear Nosedive cringing about it. “It almost ended the episode early for us.”

“I be knowing what be causing all the damage. Smolder be getting a bit angry!” Saying this kind of be leaving me breathless, like I was not taking down seven Hunter Drones one after the other in quick succession at the moment. “I not be knowing much about how she did it, just Smolder be mentioning something about letting her greed flow unhindered. She then be growing big and tearing apart two of those large ones in seconds and then she tore a hole through the place and kind of left us stuck down here what with everything collapsing behind us.”

“Yikes, what kind of greed could lead to this much damage?” Asked Della.

“Her love for Ocellus after she was taken away by the old lizard with the magic.” It was being somewhat sweet to me that Smolder would go so far for Ocellus.

“This is Baymax, I will be mapping out the base based on our teams movements and will guide them into helping lead you to ramps and this will get you all back to the hangar in a timely fashion… before another fatality or serious injury can occur.” Now there’s one robot I liked hearing from, the balloon robot Baymax is being a good friend. “Also it would appear that Smolder is dealing with The Raptor and is slowly tearing it apart piece by piece with her claws looking for Ocellus, the Mighty Duck are engaging Siege, Chameleon and Wraith, alongside numerous energy contacts that might each be an active Hunter Drones all at once. Chameleon and Wraith appear to be fighting at a highly diminished capacity. Two life signs suggests that Dragaunus is preparing for a last stand and is currently holding Ocellus as hostage, he appears to be currently experiencing shock and heavy amounts of denial after losing the electromagnetic worm that was meant to destroy the Mighty Ducks ship as well as the damage that was dealt to his ship.”

“This is Nosedive, you hear that Wildwing? Dragaunus has Ocellus, so be careful with approaching him or Smolder while she’s on the warpath big brother.” It sounded like Nosedive understood what was going on. “We’re not losing anyone else today, you hearing me!”

“Copy that, we’re trying to take the Saurians alive… even if we’d rather end them as a threat permanently.” Wildwing grunted loudly. “Being PG rated hero’s sucks sometimes.”

“I know that feeling bro… but at least we can destroy evil robots without impunity or people thinking too hard about it!” Nosedive said brightly, then his mood be taking a him as we met up with Wheel Cat who took down a pair of Hunter Drones from behind. “We’re basically Swat Kats with more members and less biological violence.”

“Do I even want to know what they are talking about anymore?” Mallory asked as I heard the sound of Chamelon screaming in pain in the background. “That was for that poor little puppy!”

“Probably not.” Duke responded, I be hearing the sound of the wizard lizard being battered by the clanging sound of a sword.

“The fourth wall does not exist for Nosedive or Wildwing.” Mysteriously stated Grin. “It is something we should not fathom too deeply… lest we all end up as insane as Nosedive.”

“Cut the chatter Grin, start taking down Siege and make it hurt while we’re doing things off screen!” We were quickly making our way back up.

“Normally I am opposed to great acts of violence, I’m however making an exception for the next thirty minutes that would have gotten our show cancelled much earlier.” After that I be hearing the sounds of a lizard I did not be meeting and it sounded painful.

“Apparently Grin knows about the fourth wall as well, but I don’t think they are ever going to explain it to us Mall.” Duke said lazily. “Nosedive seems to be the one that knows the most about it, judging by how he acts.”

“Wait, wait… you're heroes, you're not allowed to do stuff like… AGGHH!” That be sounding like that Siege guy, I can hear the snapping of bones and gurgling continue for the next few minutes and Penumbra be smiling.

“Yikes… remind me to never tell Grin that his usually peaceful nature is unappreciated.” The nasally voiced Tanya sounded sick to her stomach, because we could all hear the continued screams for mercy.

“Can we clear the communication lines to just those in the asteroid base please?” Several sounds and affirmatives were heard from Wheel Cat’s helmet. “Baymax we’re on our way up, how are the other retrievals going?”

“In a moment Wheel Cat. Fredzilla is currently with Nosedive Flashblade, Ron Stoppable and Kim Possible. We’re currently assisting Huey, Dewey, Louie and Gyro. Plasma Paladin and Bazooka Bunny are meeting up with Scrooge and Della.” Baymax responded in the same tone he always spoke in. “The evacuation of the base is proceeding with low chances of another fatality occurring here. Chances of a fatality occurring at The Raptor are much higher, Smolder cannot currently likely distinguish between friend and foe and is almost upon Dragaunus. If you wish for him to survive then you will need to stop Dragaunus from using Ocellus as a hostage quickly.”

“We’re working on it Baymax, how many Hunter Drones did these lousy lizards make?!” It be sounding like Wildwing and his team be having their hands full.

I’m being quite tired, but at least I’m being safe on the way out with Dolly. I just be hoping that Ocellus and Smolder will be being okay.

-The Raptor, Lord Dragaunus “The last free Saurian Overlord that has bitten off far more than he could possibly ever hope to chew.”-

My asteroid base has been invaded. My Hunter Drone factory was going to be destroyed anyway, so the self-destruct would have taken anyone inside the base with it when it exploded and the electromagnetic worm we painstakingly captured would have dealt with the ducks.

How unfortunate it was that that didn’t happen.

It wasn’t too long after I activated the self-destruct that things began to go wrong, I was planning to move The Raptor away to watch the asteroid base explode with whoever it was that allied with the ducks inside. Thirty second was more than enough time to get clear.

That’s when things started to going wrong and I had no idea what was caused it. First the countdown on the Asteroid Base ceased, then the computers on The Raptor were torn to shreds from the inside and finally despite unleashing the worm… it didn’t leave the bay and it apparently got a hold of something other than the monstrous beast that started tearing The Raptor apart.

The Heavy Hunter Drones being rendered useless due to the destruction of the computer systems left my ship mostly defenseless.

At least I knew one thing, I had the cause of my troubles within my claws and she was looking back at me in defiance. I squeezed her neck slightly, I couldn’t kill her as I needed a bargaining chip to escape to the escape pod.

In fact, it was the only escape pod and it was thankfully not connected to The Raptor’s computer systems or else it too would be rendered useless right now. I would not mind leaving behind my minions who have ultimately failed me for the last time. It would have only been able to carry me away anyway, but the problem was… it was presently unreachable thanks to those blasted ducks and that monstrous scaled beast.

“How did 'you'... lead to all of this?!” I furiously asked the furry nuisance that has almost perfectly caused my downfall by existing, she even had the gall to smile at me!

The scaled beast finally tore it's way into bridge roaring loudly and incessantly.

Author's Note

Shanty, being more used to loss, remains functional and focused on survival in a pinch even through a tragedy.

Doesn't mean she won't stop to grieve later herself.

234. Even knowing I can’t be by your side~.

-Dolly?-

With a yawn, I was awake.

I nuzzled into my mother’s warm pristine fur and I wanted to get started on a bright sunny day, but something was wrong.

She wasn’t moving or breathing, she was last night before we went to sleep and she even sang to us.

“The stronger the connection… the more painful the heartbreak.” I stood up and turned to see mom walking up to me, I was confused at seeing the large Samoyed I couldn’t forget in two different positions. “It’s okay my little Dolly, you only felt what it is like to die through your connections. Bonds like these are rare and should be treasured as they are not easily broken. Your companion Pom did warn you of this and you didn’t listen and held on… good, you should hold on to such bonds as hard you can! While you can now understand what kind of pain such bonds can bring you, it is still very much worth it to the very end. Find your way back to them my little puppy herder and don’t ever forget what you’re leaving behind as you move forward sweetie. Also tell your father that I approve of Delilah, sure he might not believe you, but tell him that steak on our first date was wonderful even if he made some ‘mis-steaks’ with it. Also I remember you telling your siblings that 'Dalmatians can do anything', can you honestly say that's still true when you've already given up? Grieve, then push forward and find a path.”

The white furred dog turned and walked through a bright doorway.

“Mom?” Getting up I tried to follow her through the door way only to bonk my nose on something invisible in the doorway that wouldn’t let me through.

-Bridge of The Raptor, Ocellus-

I knew Smolder would come for me, but I didn’t think she was that greedy about me being her girlfriend!

You think you know a dragon… but that she loves me this much says a lot and she was currently rage and love incarnate. The rage would have been relatively intolerable for me and even debilitating, except the love directed specifically to me and where the rage went specifically to my captor.

At this point, I think it was about time to drop the charade and distance myself from Dragaunus… I just had to wait for him to have Smolder’s full attention because she clearly wasn’t in her right mind at the moment.

On average I’d say Dragaunus was ten to twelve feet in height and mostly muscle, Smolder was currently about twice his size, weight and durability. I wasn’t worried about her, I had to worry about myself. Dragaunus was wearing armor and purple, had three claws and three toes at the end of each limb.

Smolder was glaring at Dragaunus and the fact that he was holding me by the throat.

“You should really let me go…” I muttered to Dragaunus, if he actually listened I could stop Smolder… possibly before he loses limbs and acquires broken bones. He might even survive this, Ponyville certainly did because Rarity managed to stop Spike from a greed growth problem.

Also while his attention was on Smolder, I did some silent internal shape shifting that didn’t require visible magical flare to make the changes. Internal changes that didn’t require a noticeable change in my outer appearance were the best I could do in this situation.

“So you know this beast…” Yes, rather intimately at that Dragaunus, but you probably wouldn’t want to hurt me considering what I just did.

“Yes, you can say that.” I said flatly as Smolder didn’t immediately attack, she was staring at me and her wings were spreading and she looked about ready to maul Dragaunus should he do anything stupid. “You should really let me go. Hurting me would be bad, trying to hurt them would probably be worse and holding onto me is painting a target on your back that you seriously don’t want.”

Thankfully I was prepared for Dragaunus to do something stupid, because I got a good read of his pride. He did have some common sense and was an intelligent guy… just nearly enough common sense, intelligence or knowledge to know that what he was about to do was going to end in tears.

“The beast may be large, but I am a lord of Saurians!” His left claw filled with flames as he tightened his right claws grip on my throat, especially his long thumb claw that he slowly slid into position making Smolder growl. While I’m aware that you alien lizards had fire and magical fire as abilities, dragons aren’t exactly something I would try to fight fire with. “Taste the might of my people.”

“Please don’t, you have no idea what you’re about to set into motion do you?” He didn’t listen to me and tossed the fireball at her.

The tall red guy wearing armor and purple with three claws and three digits on each foot and claws just stood there a bit flummoxed when Smolder quite literally opened her mouth and swallowed the fireball.

“Well they’ve tasted it… didn’t seem to do much really.” I calmly watched as Smolder was about to surge forward only for him to press his thumb claw lightly into my neck draw a small bit of blood on my fur that made her back off. Well was Dragaunus was doomed now, I just had to wait for my blood to start taking effect, changelings were immune to anything they biologically mimic and this wouldn’t effect Smolder in any way. “Again, you really should let me go while you still have a chance.”

He ignored me or the blood trickling down his claw onto his skin from my currently furry form. He wasn’t going to be very happy about ignoring that later.

“Quiet you nuisance!” The greed dragon swung a claw at Dragaunus making him back up a bit, but she didn’t follow after him. Despite how angry she was, Smolder was actually playing this fairly smart by clearly keeping Dragaunus away from the doorway. “Your usefulness to me might have come to its end…”

“Well I wouldn’t say that, also don’t do what I think you’re going to…” Let’s see if I had a read of his personality right.

-Dragaunus-

I came up with a plan and quickly, I needed both my hands free if I am to fight this somewhat intelligent beast. If I distracted the beast, then it would be simple to escape, but if it didn’t distract it I would still be able to fight.

My right thumb claw lifted and I slashed my hostage across the throat and threw the girl away from myself to the right as I personally jumped to the left. The hostage bounced once and then she laid lifelessly on the floor as I went to move forward, her blood smeared across my armor and face.

At least something fell to a Saurian’s might today!

Unfortunately the beast didn’t take the bait and was immune to flames, but I doubt it was immune to my fists! I rammed my right fist into its chin… it’d didn’t even budge a micrometer.

It immediately slapped me with its right claw and I broke some consoles. Fortunately they weren’t powered or else I would have been hurt worse.

I quickly got up and dodged as the beast was upon me.

-Playing dead on the floor, Ocellus-

Called it, ruthless overlord guy that regularly beats up his own people would go for slashing my throat open with his sharp thumb claw.

Thankfully he only slashed open a toads poison sack that liberally sprayed all over him and not my actual shrunken neck, he didn’t go nearly deep enough with his claw to hit my real throat. Had he tried to slice off my actual head… well that would have been a bit more problematic to walk off or account for.

All he did was set me free, make Smolder angrier and make what the fake simulated ‘blood’ would do to him about five times worse as well as act faster. The poor guy had about five minutes before it kicked in and I just had to stay out of his and Smolder’s way.

Changeling biology was never superior to anything else, but when it came to survival it let us do ridiculous things that most other creatures couldn’t hope to copy once you’re made aware of how to mix and match biology sufficiently.

I silently wonder if Dragaunus could adapt to Bufogren poison? I’d find out that answer soon enough.

For one the poison wasn’t lethal and since its changeling mimicry it’s going to be much weaker than the normal poison, but the amount that touched him would make up the difference. Also one of the properties was that it ate through materials like armor and metals, like the stuff he was currently wearing which was started to wear away under his notice. His armor and cloth would fall off him soon enough.

Bufogren’s were not dangerous creatures to be around on Equus, it was in fact quite the opposite. You were safest when a Bufogren was present in a swamp. They like quiet and solitude, because their sense of hearing beats out their having six eyes by a mile, they would know if a threat was around and would warn any wary traveler of such a thing despite how sensitive to sound they were. They also try not to accidentally poison people, because that was somewhat easy to do for them by accident.

The poison was going to be dangerous enough for Dragaunus with Smolder on top of him for attempting to kill me. I would stop Smolder before she could manage to go through with killing him, which was a scary prospect given her current condition of rage and greed.

While Dragaunus was clearly trying to fight Smolder for his life or for some twisted sense of glory, he was doing absolutely nothing to her in her current state… I quietly admired Smolder’s form from the floor.

She was going to look far more beautiful than this when she was thousands of years older, it’s the lacking intelligence in her eyes that sadly made the difference here. Where’s the dragoness that liked cute silly stuff? She was pretty good about keeping her head on her shoulders and holding back her greed for so long.

At some point of watching the two Dragaunus’s armor fell off making him trip and take a bad hit from Smolder that not only put claw marks in his chest, but damaged the ceiling from the impact that made me wince. Yet Dragaunus was already evading after his feet touched the floor, he really was quite tough.

I quietly got up and moved closer to the entrance, only for several of those robots to surge in, they were quickly torn apart lazily by Smolder’s whipping tail and had seemingly ignored or had missed seeing me slinking off to the side of the doorway.

Looking into the hallway there weren’t any more robots coming. I turned back to see that Dragaunus, despite avoiding Smolder expertly, was starting to slowing down physically and mentally.

Okay… add wings to my current form in a flash of flames that only appeared around my midsection… I now had wings by making them look like they were always there by covering the feathers in a light amount of fur that was barely any different than what Abigail normally had.

Now how do I get in close and her attention off him without her snapping at me? Also, I need to be sure Dragaunus doesn’t do anything so he has to be completely incapacitated before I attempt to bring Smolder to her senses.

As I was concerned about how to approach her, she managed to press her left claw down on his fairly large crocodilian tail. Her other claw came up and smashed him into the floor he was struggling and couldn’t handle the weight of Smolder’s greed.

Lifting her left claw from his tailed she smashed it down on his head and this dazed him, leaving him barely conscious. Lifting his entire body with her right claw, she bodily smashed him against the floor making him unconscious either from the pain or the amount of raw force put into it.

Now would be a good time to get in there before she killed him, but first… dragon bones and dragon skin. I couldn’t have that while they were torturing me or they would have known something was up when the whip didn’t lash me up.

The torture was painful and that Wraith guy tried to get into my mind, but it was nothing I hadn’t been used to under Ex-Queen Chrysalis’s rule. At least Dragaunus had something of an amiable personality despite being a lethal lizard.

“Smolder stop!” Yelling out to her Smolder was an inch away from putting a hole in Dragaunus’s neck and she turned to me with a growl, but then started to coo and she swiftly wrapped her right claw around my waist and hind legs pulling me physically from the air. “It’s okay, I’m mostly alright with everything that’s happened over the last few days… physically anyway. Psychologically? Yeah, we’re going to need some really good therapists after all of this… I wonder if any of our friends know any good ones back on earth.”

Smolder just nuzzled my head with her large nose and tickled at my ears with the claws on her left hand. This is around the time that the five Mighty Ducks charged in and ‘Grin’ the large one was smashing two robots together.

“Drop the hostage!” Wilding ordered aiming his armored arm at Smolder’s head.

“Don’t worry I’m not in any danger from Smolder, so please, don’t shoot at her! I’m kind of the only thing keeping her calm at the moment.” I felt myself pulled against the Smolder’s chest where I could feel the warmth of her body and she held me tight while growling at the ducks. “Just get Dragaunus out of here before she decides to bite out of one of his limbs for trying to kill me. I just need a moment to calm her down.”

She opened her mouth and it was billowing with flames, but they didn’t spew, instead the ducks took to aiming at Dragaunus and tried very hard to ignore Smolder holding me close to her chest. Also the way she held me was both full of greed and affection, of course I was going to feel quite safe despite my current predicament.

Once the Mighty Ducks secured Dragaunus, I decided to make the final play of the day to return Smolder to normal since the threats to me have passed.

“Smolder I think you might be crushing me a little bit too tightly…” I tried to put fake strain in my voice, gasping and the whole nine yards of acting into it. I could feel Smolder worriedly lifting me up to look me over, having loosened her grip entirely. I quickly transformed back to my smaller base form in a flash of green flames and then hovered up to the tip of her nose with my glittering wings fluttering. “There, there… it is okay Smolder I’m safe… relatively…”

I leaned forward and kissed her on the end of her snout with a fairy like grace, a moment later… I saw recognition enter Smolder’s eyes as she looked down at herself. She slowly started shrinking and I quickly spread my hooves and hugged her big chest until she shrunk down enough for me to wrap my hooves around.

“Ah… Ozzy?” I think we were about done here, I held her tightly and kept her in place.

“Come on Smolder, you’re my big brave dragon… you came to rescue me with pure greed powering you’re love for me.” It was so sweet, the taste of her love and I loved her too.

“What… happened?” Smolder asked after a bit of confusion.

“Nothing for you to worry about, I think it’s time we started on cleaning up here and heading back to the planet.” I held Smolder’s warm form to myself, fire was pretty, beautiful and enticing, but nothing can light a fire in my heart quite like Smolder can. “You were in decent control of yourself, despite losing your mind to come save me.”

-One hour later, three Moonlander built ships connected by airlocks in space, Shanty-

“That’s what be happening.” I be gently stroking Dolly’s head having removed her gear from her, she was still blankly blinking off into space and clutching at the device that used to be Dormarch’s PET.

“We still need to clean up the rest of the Hunter Drones, we’re not leaving anything like those things running around out here.” Mallory grumbled with her arms crossed, The Mighty Ducks be taking some injuries. Thankfully I be nothing bad enough to warrant serious medical attention though. “Who knows what they’ll do if left to their own devices.”

I be looking to Ocellus who was looking at Dolly sadly.

“What does she be feeling Ocellus?” My question redirected her gaze towards me.

“Empty is the word for it.” That not be sounding very good Ocellus. “She’s not going to be in the mood for happy emotions for a long while.”

“Well we did what we set out to do… we just had one fatality along the way.” Smolder tried to sound cold, but even she was digging herself into Ocellus’s side with a grip that Ocellus didn’t be minding one bit. “We stopped Dragaunus, we’ve mostly deal with his army and we’ve prevented him from opening a portal to the dimension the Saurian fleet is trapped in.”

“If it wasn’t for Dormarch the countdown would have taken out more than half of us.” Kim poked and prodded Rufus a bit being moderately affectionate towards him, far more than she had previously. “If the Heavy Hunter Drones didn’t do that first...”

“Good thing we made sure the robot factor couldn’t keep going while we were there, wouldn’t want that place to become active again even if Dormarch ruined the computer systems. Just imagine one of those regular robots replacing the operating systems with one of theirs and restarting all the trouble.” Ron Stoppable be looking around. “So what now?”

“We’ll destroy The Raptor, that’s not negotiable, then we’ll figure out what to do with the asteroid base before heading back to earth.” Anyone can be understanding why Wildwing wanted to deal with the ship in a more permanent manner. “We’re not going to leave The Raptor around out here for someone to find, they might capture another electromagnetic worm and cause even more problems.”

“Agreed, we destroy it.” Surprisingly Honey Lemon be onboard with the idea immediately.

“There, there.” Baymax said as he came over and patted a still rather unresponsive Dolly on the head. “There still signs of Hunter Drone activity in both the ship and the base, destruction of the ship can lead to some form of closure for some of us who have experienced a loss. The Saurians will be detained for as long as we can feasibly hold them.”

The ones who be experience the loss the most would be us, Team Leap Lamb.

“If it helps, I know what it’s like to lose a brother too.” Hiro be trying, but Dolly was still not responding to anything, he still ran his fingers through her black and white fur gently. It wasn’t long after that he be taking an interest in the device Dolly’s paws just wouldn’t let go. “I wonder what this thing does or where it even came from.”

Dolly didn’t be minding us taking the helmet or her skateboard from her, but we could not even begin to get her to be letting go of that device specifically.

“It used to be being the pet device thing that was being Dormarch’s home, it is also being his cage. He could not be separating himself from it without being killed.” That was as much as I knew, I wasn’t much of a technological whiz besides knowing how to make black powder. Even Dodo be far more than I could ever understand, but he is still being connected to me despite our bond nearly snapping and him being currently dormant.

“It was designed to stop beings like Dormarch from running rampant by Kahn Industries. He even told us himself that it was a good idea.” Smolder pointed out and we gather around Dolly.

“Yeah, but it looks entirely different now, I wonder what it does now if it’s not containing or keeping Dormarch bound to it?” Ocellus poked at it with a hoof, poking or prodding the device didn’t get much reaction from Dolly. “Does technology on your world normally transform through magical or mystical means like this?”

“No, but it certainly does have me curious, if this was the last thing left of her brother, then she’ll need to understand it as there may be something to it.” It sound like Hiro be speaking from experience as he turned to look at Baymax.

It only be by trying to take it that her paws tightened to a point that you’d have to hurt her to even get her to relinquish the thing, she was very protective of it for someone that not be in any thinking state of mind. Nobody be wanting to actually take the last thing Dolly’s little brother be leaving to her.

“This ship doesn’t have very strong scanners, but that device still has a working power source.” We turned to look at Ms. Shuttle. “Maybe you should activate to see if it does something unique about it? Also Mighty Ducks Team, please make sure that the Saurians are secure again.”

We gathered around the device, Solder, Ocellus and me, Smolder was the one to prod the devices buttons and the like. Curiously enough when she found a way to turn the device on it showed a strange symbol, the symbol be reminding me of Pom somehow before the screen be showing something different.

“Hm… Menu… help, contacts, one message pending…” Pressing the buttons didn’t do much more, but Smolder be saying something that be helping us out a bit. “I could use some help with figuring out how this device works.”

The screen lit up and then a large screen be appearing in the air above the device that drew everyone’s attentions.

-Transformed Personal Exploration Terminal, Digital Device-

‘Yggdrasill.sys’

Accessing digital device help function.

Warning, user Pom not present, device functions limited.

Accessing device data… 40%... 60.7%... 100%... all device data read.

A digital device or digivice, is a powerful device that helps the wielder use their spirit or power of heart to boost digital companions to immense potential. It is given to those who mostly embody heroic or villainous natures depending on the balance a digital world may need. There are approximately five hundred and thirty seven instances of interconnected Yggdrasill Network Branch Worlds in existence.

Digivice is also used for various other functions provided to help the wielder in the course of rebalancing network problems, without a digimon partner the wielder will at least have survival functions enabled for personal use.

The user of this device is not needed, but the device will remain functional in case strong need of a balance occurs. Unlikely, for without a partner the user cannot fight the most disruptive elements in other network worlds.

Devices purpose… is usually aiding in the rebalancing of Yggdrasil Administrative System operating any given branching world networks. Its aid is currently not required for any digital world maintenance and user has been logged with all digital realms. It will summon user in last ditch effort in case of emergency, but will not attempt to get the user killed needlessly and only if the user can possibly deal with the issue.

Current Chance of user Pom being priority summoned by device in dire circumstances… 0.0000001%

Updating all new information… please hold.

Bonded digimon partner…

New Type Digimon. Name: Dalma.mon. Current status: Deceased.

Restoration…

Improbable to impossible.

Reasons?

Massive data corruption to digivolution system, digimon partner’s digital soul missing, immense world breaking viral corruption installed (Cross referencing various virus incidents and digital destined involved in said incidents.), digimon egg routines likely destroyed by virus and or other various anomalous errors.

Crest of *@#)$^*% discovered to have been tied to digimon… searching for digital soul in dark area for immediate reinstatement.

Error… soul not found, soul has not gone to Dark Area. Digimon has likely suffered true erasure.

Crest recovery improbable to impossible.

Crests are based on the individuals and bonded partner personalities, it is unfortunate that such a powerful crest was destroyed beyond the system’s ability to restore. Extremely sorry for the inconvenience.

Possible conclusion, full erasure of digimon enacted by world. Prior function in last incarnation, incidental and accidental scouting of world with viable technological level as Dorulu.mon before finding partner to bond to in new incarnation from egg state.

Current Digivice capabilities are among the following. Noted uses added are scanning for digital breaches, capturing and holding digimon for training and or bonding purposes in personal digital space pocket accessible by the user. Other applications and data were left behind by Dalma.mon during runtimes.

No digital breaches currently detected, several digital anomalies detected, no digimon present in world.

World has been noted as exceedingly dangerous to digimon life and some information has been logged on this device as to why. Mild apologies for the inconvenience, invasion was not systems original intent.

One message recorded by ‘Dormarch D. Lambchop’ found. It was to be originally played by the PET before being reconstituted into a Digivice. It will be played upon conclusion of device diagnostics.

Species name Dalma.mon is to be reconstructed in data centers with available data and be instated as a new digimon type using current acquired information. Will send to testing worlds for viability.

Unable to recreate Search Hunter signature combat program from data elicited from device, Dalma.mon species will be mildly inconvenienced. Including substitute signature move combat data from viable digimon species… Gao.mon and Labra.mon chosen.

Thank you for the data, we will now be attempting to reproduce Dalma.mon ‘data’ type digimon for study and viability as partners. First batch will consist of one hundred and one Dalma.mon instances.

Yggdrasill systems will consider sending a fresh Dalma.mon to user for bonding purposes. Considering prior loss, user will probably not want to bond to a new Dalma.mon partner. Please refer to ‘Yggdrasill.sys’ if you are possibly ready for a new partner.

Playing message now…

“If you’re hearing this, then I am sorry I couldn’t have been with you much longer. The Kahn Industries virus was tied to me specifically and I couldn’t create a copy of myself without the virus being alive inside that copy. If I had detached, then the PET would have been immediately infected by the pale imitation that wouldn’t have what makes me… well… me. I am leaving the PET to my mother Pom or my big sister Dolly.” Digimon Dalma.mon took a few seconds to breathe and star at the center of the screen. “I couldn’t just force you to live with a copy of me, even if I could have eventually somehow figured how out to make it survive. I just wanted you to know, I was surprised that you were able to love me like you all did. I know I was a bit of a coward and an introvert, but mom… mom is special in so many ways I can’t begin to describe and you were special too Dolly. You so easily latched onto me with such a bright smile when I manifested and even invited me into your family to call me you’re little brother and then there was this strange connection we all have. I’m sorry that things come to this, but… if I had to I would save all of you again in the same exact way. It helped solved all the problems at once and fairly efficiently at that… I’m sorry that this happened while you were out mom, I wanted to at least hug you one last time before saying… good-bye. I don’t regret living and I still want to live, but things don’t always quite work out the way we want them too. I love you Mom, Dolly, everyone else who has been a friend of mine like Ms. Shuttle. My life may have been cut short, but its people like you that make life worth living. So please, for my sake, keep living for as long and well as you can and fight to achieve all your dreams! I’m of the mind that miracles are earned and it was a miracle that I even met all of you... my dreams were simply to be of assistance. Please, help mom get back home for me Dolly.”

-Dolly-

Having come to my senses at hearing him, tears finally fell from my eyes as I slowly reached up to my chest with my left paw as my right was occupied by the device.

I had the will and I was still an optimist at heart, then there still might be a way to bring you back baby brother. I just had to look for a way, my powers came from my heart and you're still a part of it little bro! I was of course going to grieve over you're death, but I wasn't alone in grieving and I won't let Pom be without a dog... that rabid case of walking anxiety absolutely needed one!

There’s nothing a Dalmatian can’t do and I will just have to prove that, to infinite and beyond if I had to!

235. You encountered a wild entity!

-Earth WWDCCT, location: Switzerland, one week after asteroid base incident, Mopsy Muttoncoddle-

Ever since I heard how injured Pom became, the Cooper gang has been doing Pom a large favor in drawing danger to us. As much danger as Duckberg drew after the Saint Canard Crisis incident where mercenaries were redirected away from where Pom was.

To that end I had an eternal nemesis bent on killing me named Sabu ‘Neyla’ Taj, someone who wanted Clockwerk’s secret to immortality. She blamed Pom for the incident knowing that Leap Lamb was somehow involved in the metal owls defeat, I’m kind of left holding the bag full of hate meant for her.

Thus Neyla has been coming after me whenever she wasn’t badly injured. Apparently Neyla was having a problems with the guy known as the world’s best assassin, agent forty seven Tobias Rieper. One of the few reasons I was still alive.

I looked at myself in a mirror and saw a good looking poodle staring back, it’s a good thing I’ve become scarily competent at disguises or else Neyla might have killed me five times over. Bentley has also been keeping me alive and active with his training courses, I pretty much needed thief training to survive with this group… things weren’t truly that much harder than when I was selling my body or information.

“Do you have eyes on it Mopsy?” Bentley was doing pretty well in making sure no information about Dawkins location got out, he’s been helping that brainy dog learn new tricks and he’s been enjoying every second of their camaraderie.

“Of course, the coast is not entirely clear, three guys.” I was still a better scout and lookout than I was at actively fighting, stealing or performing silent knockouts. It’s a good thing Sly and Murray had our bases covered in those departments. “The one with the keys is not the desk jockey.”

“I know you’re doing a covert ops thing at the moment Bentley, but can you suggest to me how someone would go about safely moving one hundred dogs, a beloved robot princess and a zombie chicken into a country discreetly?” Dawkins wouldn’t be calling to ask that if he didn’t have a reason.

“Well that’ll be far simpler than what we’re doing right now, just send a message to Scrooge McDuck and ask for Launchpad McQuack to do you a favor. The guy will do nice things for just about anyone he knows in a somewhat friendly manner, he knows and like your family and He’ll get you all there safely. Any vehicle he pilots is going to look like it went through a warzone upon stopping or landing… possibly both at the same time if it’s unlucky, but you’re guaranteed to live through everything with minimal injury if you stay in the vehicle despite how counterintuitive that might sound.” Bentley has been keeping tabs on Leap Lamb’s group since they came back from space, apparently Dormarch was a casualty in taking down tyrannical alien space lizards. “Launchpad is completely safe to be in a vehicle with, I’m betting that any vehicle used by him wishes it were safe from him. Also nobody really seems to pay attention to what Launchpad does internationally, which is the oddest thing about him that he can go anywhere without a passport and has friends in just about every place in the world in ridiculously high positions. He never actually uses his connections for anything aside from maybe a wanting a few spare parts to rebuild whatever vehicles he’s broken most recently. He’s been called an idiot savant at mechanical repairs on par with the rather infamous Wild Cat in Cape Suzette.”

Dolly was fairly depressed about the loss of her little brother Dormarch, she was also apparently abusing a magic like it was a drug. It certainly sounded like she became a drug addict with the way she was abusing her magic for the five minutes of the high and aggressiveness that said magic put in her veins as it doubles her movement capabilities according to what Bentley recorded of it.

Pom’s health had me worried for my dimensional traveling doppelganger, it was to the point that I had to act like Leap Lamb myself to stop Neyla from sniffing around where Pom actually was. Which is why my life is being threatened almost near constantly.

“So about that tricked out wheelchair for my step-brother Delgado…” Dawkins called to talk and he was going to tie up our communications line again, not that I minded and he was a good friend to have.

“This is Sly, I’m in. I like Dawkins to, but can you guys not get too distracted… please?” Hearing Sly announce his movements to me I turned to concentrate on giving Murray directions as a spotter for our heavy hitting hippo. “I wish them well with helping Caper Canine, mostly since I like the Caper part of her name. Still, we’re in the middle of a job here guys.”

“Sorry.” Four voices intoned. I can understand why Dawkins was sorry, he was kind of distracting us in the middle of something moderately delicate.

“Wait… why are you sorry Murray?” After asking that I put my binoculars back on Murray and saw why. “How in the world did you find a combo Hamburger Hippo and Beuno Nacho that was open at this time of day?!”

There couldn’t possibly have been one within five miles of Switzerland for crying out loud!

“One opened here in Switzerland an hour ago.” A likely story Murray, hope you’re enjoying your food.

“My restaurant chain conspiracy theory thickens!” Announced Bentley who was slowly being driven to madness about Hamburger Hippo restaurant chain.

“Excuse me while I stealthily avoid getting shot at here…” Commented Sly dryly and as he tiptoed behind a guard with his cane reaching forward in my binoculars view.

If anyone asked I’m well aware of all the local birds around, especially when and where they appear. I was, ironically enough, actually part of a bird watchers guild for people who like to travel. This was much to the surprise of the rest of the Cooper Gang as it gave me reasons to have binoculars out and looking about, plus it’s nice to have hobbies as an alibi for incredible acts of robbery.

-A few days later, Ocellus’s aftermath thoughts-

Well Shanty, Dolly and the rest of us fully recovered… physically. Mentally, we weren’t going to bother trying to deny we had issues that Baymax was trying to help us with.

Like Smolder letting go of her tight control over her greed towards our relationship, not that it has really changed much. She’s got a lid back on her greed and she’s probably the most restrained dragon I know, not that she wasn’t as tightfisted as Scrooge is about wealth and how to use it efficiently. She’s also been spending time with Honey Lemon, because cute and silly things were a good thing to bond over. Honey Lemon also watched wrestling which Smolder appreciated for the pink loving girly girl of Big Hero Six.

We were making friends for a lifetime here, unfortunately we would have to leave when Dr. Wower eventually figured the portal thing out properly after a few test runs. It would become faster when Abigail Callaghan decided to help after we prevented her from being kidnapped and end up dooming the whole world to an alien invasion with far worse implications than when the Moonlanders did it. Don’t honestly know much about the Lowardian aliens that Kim Possible dealt with.

Penumbra was the only Moonlander that had a warrior’s spirit, having a tendency towards violence or at the very least action. It was a good thing she was there to help escort Shanty to safety. She even proved her warrior status in having taken down a Heavy Hunter Drone by herself, which was confirmed to be a major problem for just about everyone else during the escapade in space.

Shanty has been eating trucks loads of food with Fredmeleon and was enjoying it all, as bad as gluttony is to get over pain and suffering… Shanty had the least to worry about when it came to getting fat. Like how she couldn’t get drunk, her metabolism was absolutely ridiculous… as was Fredmeleons who somehow kept up with her. Nosedive was also packing away food with them and not a speck of fat on him, also his cupcakes tasted too much like Pinkie Pie’s to be a coincidence according to Smolder.

Dolly… she hardly left Pom’s side once we got back, she only does so to exercise and there’s barely any joy in her exercising or eating. It was quite depressing to watch her go through the motions. She was once so full of life and was now in a downward spiraling slump, at least she had more life in her than when Shanty carried her out of the asteroid base.

Speaking of our Dalmatian companion, I think Dolly was addicted to a magical spell she casts once an hour on the hour for a hit of five minutes of hyperactivity while glowing red. The spell made her slightly more aggressive to everyone around her. Thankfully she hasn’t hurt anyone under the effects yet while becoming seemingly rabid. Sure the spell gave her a bit more life in her eyes, but I can tell it was kind of hurting her mentally to keep using it like she was dying of thirst. At least it was helping her physically exercise at insane speeds before exhausting herself, emphasize put on the ‘insane’ part.

I swear Dolly’s situation was like with me and the general changeling addiction to the ‘Candle Light’ spell. Changelings were addicted to casting the candle light spell because it creates a safe magical flame we can stare at that creates dancing light. Fire was very much a thing that changelings enjoyed staring at, that is why changelings definitely needed a fire department that didn’t involve changelings at all.

The one thing I thought that was sane for Dolly to be doing… was curling up around that Digivice thing in memory of her brother Dormarch to get some sleep. She was restless otherwise and Pom would have been a great way to set Dolly straight about abusing that magic as much as she could while awake.

Pom’s condition has gotten ever so slightly better, but she was still comatose and Roddy had shown us a recording of her waking up without really doing so. It was around the time that Dormarch sacrificed himself so familiar bond shenanigans were a probable involvement with that incident.

Me… I was trying to find something to get my mind off the horrors of what would have happened had it actually been Abigail Callaghan that went up there instead of me. I don’t think she would have survived a throat slitting quite as well as I would have in a similar situation when I had been prepared for it.

I wasn’t crazy prepared or paranoid enough match Pom’s level of dedication. I was however well read on personalities. In fact, I was beginning to appreciate just how much suffering Pom has been through in this world for us and anyone she meets.

To that end I was spending time with Bolt, Mittens and Rhino, I was also told Ms. Forrester where we had ended up and even showed her I was a shape shifter. To say Penny’s mother was a little surprised about everything was understating it, she took pride in the fact that her daughter held up so well under the stress.

Penny had stated that Bolt, Mittens and Rhino kept her safe. During that statement Mittens was floating in the air and lazily bouncing Rhino off a wall, Rhino seems to both enjoy that and being a hero. They would carry on with their peaceful lives for as long as they could out of the spotlight, they were heroes all the same and they would keep in contact with Big Hero Six, Kim Possible and The Mighty Ducks in case they ever needed some Power Pet assistance.

San Fransokyo was thankfully, and eerily, quiet. So Big Hero Six didn’t have much problem with progressing the portal building plans to possibly get us out of this world. Progress was going quickly with Tanya Vanderflock assisting in the building of the portal given she was a technological genius of the Mighty Ducks team and rebuilt most of their gear from scratch with local materials. She was interested in SFIT or at least looking around to see what technological marvels this part of the world was coming up with.

Duke was interested in our connections to the world’s greatest thieves on this planet, we gave him Bentley’s contact and told him he had to work on things from there if he wanted to get into some interesting stuff with the noble thieves of the Cooper Gang. Duke was likely to be the only guy to wander away and come back without a word from his team, but they knew of his character well enough by now that he would always be there for them when they needed him.

Grin was watching out for Team Leap Lamb and felt it was important that we stayed safe after having come this far. Nosedive, Wildwing and Mallory were also sticking around to make sure nothing big happened in San Fransokyo after having made sure the Saurians were incapable of being threat, without actually killing them no matter how much Wildwing and his team were quite highly tempted to do so.

The Mighty Ducks were good pillars of harmony, even if hockey was in every aspect of their lives and they couldn’t quit even if they had wanted to. The Puckian version of the ‘elements of harmony’ was apparently a good hockey team, my abroad studies into friendship, magic and harmony continues.

The McDuck Clan were resting after the recent adventure, it was as tiring for them as it was for us. They suffered minor injuries and they had come out of it with a possible set up for an asteroid mining operation around Saturn. If Scrooge McDuck could pull of the first lucrative space venture of this world, then more power to him.

The sword of Swanstatine was an interesting magical object, when it brought out my inner strength… well I never knew what to think of our relation to our teachers back on Equus in being elements of harmony ourselves. Raw undiluted friendship being an inner strength had some rather quirky effects on people, the sword also made me feel just as warm and cozy too, helped Dolly a little bit but didn’t stop her mood from sliding into what it is or her abusing that spell.

Which led me to the next point, I felt sorry for Ms. Shuttle. She was barely that much older than Dormarch and she had loved interacting with him. She was a true AI with emotional capacities and the ability to act outside her programming, kind of what Dormarch was pretending to be once upon a time before we found out the truth.

According to Yggdrasill.sys, which was not to be confused with Yggdrasil of Equus legends and myths, Dormarch was apparently a new form of species even to the otherworldly aliens known as Digimon who live inside sufficiently advanced technology. They found worlds with high levels of technology to randomly insert themselves into.

Digital Monster or Digimon were something like nomadic dimensional travelers that set roots down in various advanced civilizations and tried to live alongside them in unity. They tended to take on appearances or forms based around local myths and legends of said world they come to inhabit.

They were invaders, but they weren’t overly or always actively malicious about it. It’s just that every time they find a new world to inhabit they bring a lot of baggage along with them.

There were problems with taking things from mythology of the civilizations the Digimon meet, because they included the bad people from said legends and mythology as well as the good and then let things sort themselves out from there. Thus tons of bad Digmon come into existence as soon as a new branch world is established and they invade their next door neighbor’s reality by manifesting out of the technology, then subsequently start trying to doom the physical reality of that world in the most ironic ways as feasibly possible. This information was quite intriguing to get from the device and Dolly was notably attentive the entire time it was being given.

The device did warn us that it would be looking at any civilizations we went near, which was rather unexpected that we’d be told outright that they knew they would cause problems if they saw a world with sufficient technology capable enough of housing a new Digimon world. The Digivice now feels like a bomb that will explode in our face, at random, and doom any sufficiently advance world we may or may not visit.

Equus probably didn’t have that sufficiency as our technology was… technologically schizophrenic or Schizo-tech for short, a word I was getting more and more interested in when Mr. Wasabi brought it up as I explained to him how our worlds technology base worked.

We had incredible levels of clean industrial technology, our world naturally tended towards clean energy and we don’t like producing pollution and were slow in our advancements of computer technologies since our world was more environmentally conscious.

If Equus could create magical computers, would the Yggdrasill system be able to interact with such things or would the technology be harder for it to get into for being more magical than scientific?

As for the last thing on my mind, Kim Possible, Ron Stoppable and Rufus were tracking Drakken down as he kidnapped a different scientist for his schemes while we were busy in space. They put Scrooge in contact with Kim’s father and his space program. Scrooge McDuck also got in Contact with Hunter De Ville and offered him a business partnership as long as he was in charge of his business, this was in the effort to see Dylan Dalmatian achieve his dream of going into space and being the first dog on mars.

We were lucky to meet and make so many friends willing to help us… the rare few like Dormarch, Dodo or Dolly, they were willing to die for us and see things through to the end. Pom was unwilling, but completely able to die for people she saw as innocent and needed help.

Pom might not see it, but she was a role model to those around her and even in her state she was still proving herself to be a good one even with her various flaws. Like her inability to win most fights, her anxiety, her sometimes awkward parenting and sometimes she’d willingly overlook some things if it could quickly be deemed not her problem.

One would think Pom has changed a lot, and wasn’t apparently living up to ‘Baa-Ram-Ewe’ to remain true to herself. I believed otherwise, since she had been trying live up to herself and all that that had entailed. I’ve had a front seat to her personality, I would know if she stopped remaining true to herself.

Pom didn’t want to be larger than life, she hadn’t really changed much from what I felt on the meekness, but she has changed in small ways which were inevitable. The notable changes was in her confidence. As while she would rather avoid conflict, things seem to conspire to force her to meet canines of all shapes and sizes and or be thrust into fights she obviously can’t win cleanly.

She was our guardian and I was willing to call her Aunt Lambchop at this point as she meant that much to me and we were a family through the bonds of friendship forged by fire. She was the most needed and important member of our team… she was the adult as she had said in the prior world and she was trying to live up to our expectations on top of her own.

We shouldn’t let Pom handle any of the weight alone, we should be right next to her to lifting some of that weight ourselves when she was breaking her back for us. It is unfortunate that the injuries we’ve accrued mentally or physically have been fairly nasty. Pom needed us as much as we direly needed her on her hooves, she tried so very hard to keep us safe and out of trouble with her own health and sanity being a nasty price to pay.

Pom was more than a teacher, a peacemaker, a housewife, a true Huoshan Guard and a very scared for her life and the lives of others Lambkin, far more than even a diamond under immense amounts of pressure to fully outright break. Whether she liked it or not, and as cruel as it is to think this, Pom was a relatively decent person.

I shook my head and made my way to the portal room, leaving Dolly to her rest next to Pom’s floating body.

Things were proceeding apace and they would soon be testing the portal. We survived another incident scarred, battered, bruised, beaten and hurting… but most of us survived the ordeal. We all had a chance to grieve Dormarch, but Pom… we would help her grieve too when she finally wakes up.

-Red eyed entity-

It was time to make my grand entrance.

-Before lunchtime, Basemax Headquarters, Ocellus-

“So how goes it?” I asked as I walked into the room to see Tanya, Wower and even Abigail working on the portal fervently.

“We’re about to get into our first test, Wendy Wower here is an exemplary genius! Also love her show.” Tanya was quite excited to be working alongside the likes of Wower and Abigail. Now that Wower and Abigail were mostly safe, as Big Hero Six was keeping an eye out for ‘Leap Lamb hunting mercenaries’ or any other problems that may pop up, things were proceeding to the point we could test the portal. “Also Abigail decided to start assisting us too, we’re not sending anything through the portal though. We’re going to run multiple tests to make sure it’s safe before letting anyone near this thing. This is the most science I’ve done in a while since the Saurians went quiet until the whole thing after the Saint Canard Crisis.”

“You’re a genius too Tanya, it’s been great working alongside you.” Wower was happy that she could go back to teaching without anyone threatening her or her friend’s life.

“Really don’t know what to think about a hockey obsessed civilization having commercially available space travel before we ever did. Not that it really helped with those crazy lizards.” This was bluntly and blandly stated by Abigail before motioning everyone back with a paw. “Activating in three… two… one…”

The portal came to life, but something went awry as we saw space on the other side and in the darkness a pair of red eyes opened. Out of the portal slowly stepped an entity, one that gave off an immense pressure of its very presence that was immediately felt as if to be among everything before pulling back.

The entity was large, white and had some resemblance to an alicorn without wings or a horn. Red eyes ringed with green, around the things waist was gold girdle like structure. Only looking at it further, I realized it was a biological part of the creature and not something that was manufactured.

The entities tail shifted about as it stalked forward through the portal regally, its teardrop shaped head looking like it had two ears that just looked like spikes or antenna.

“Hello.” It stated blandly, eyes glowing.

Author's Note

It's fairly obvious what and who this entity is now... what the entity will be asking for will be fairly simple and completely straightforward.

Given who the entity is, prepare for a number of absurdities and some shenanigans like you wouldn't believe.

If a greek god were to give you a simple task, how many questions would you have to ask before you were completely satisfied that the task is exactly what said god says it is? Also would you get it in writing and ask for a lawyer to go over everything in fine detail and print just in case? Also give an example that isn't a greek god that you would make the same choices regardless.

P.S. Guessing the franchise will not reveal the crossover, guessing which part of the franchise is being used will.

236. Deity Dealings.

-Basemax, Medical Room, Pom-

Gasping I woke up to the sound of Dolly yelping and reached for our bond. Dolly was physically okay from what I can feel and as for Dormarch…

I froze the frayed edges of my bond to Dormarch were painting a picture that something went horribly wrong while I was out to greener pastures. Also, I was fairly surprised to once again have survived using Shock Ram.

Feeling something being pulled from my throat I saw tube floating away from me and I looked at what was going on. Dolly was on the ground groaning and next to me was a being that gives off some rather specific feelings. I’ve met Twilight Sparkle, Luna and Celestia for a small amount of time, I’ve even met Sekhet the Sphinx.

This being was powerful and it was staring at me blankly.

I looked up into its red eyes as it stared down at me. As for Dolly, this thing left her sprawled out on the floor and didn’t seem too keen on hurting her further.

It was a pretty big creature and it slowly walked forward and continued looking down at me.

“I am Arceus.” Well at least I knew this beings name now. “I seek to broker a deal with you.”

“My name is Pom Lambchop, what happened with Dolly?” I didn’t know where I was and I should be freaking out about the fact that Dormarch was gone, but the likely god like entity before me warranted far more attention than anything else.

“She thought me a threat… she wouldn’t necessarily be wrong.” Shivering at the dispassionate look in Arceus’s eyes as he lazily looked towards Dolly. I tried not to make any sudden moves. “I can be a threat to many things. I have in fact helped her calm down and removed some of the volatile energy affecting her mind… it will just build up again over time if she doesn’t control herself. I have also revived you, she is uninjured as I am not here to cause harm.”

“Re-revived me?” I looked about further beyond us and really paid attention to my surroundings to see I was floating in a chamber, it looked like the one that was inside Ms. Shuttle for holding criminals. It had medical applications too I guess. “Not here to cause harm… but you will inevitably lead me to harm or send me into it.”

Dealing with powerful beings like this, it’s what he wasn’t saying that I should be paying the most attention to.

“Perceptive, one of the qualities I seek. The only thing I ask in return for the restoration of your body is that you will both listen to and negotiate with me.” Most likely because you had need of me for something specific in mind Arceus, I can kind of see where this is going considering you weren’t hiding how powerful you were from me.

Powerful beings like you don’t just appear out of the blue and seek out someone like me for no reason. I know for certain that I wasn’t exactly worth the attention of something so powerful, unless something really bad was going to happen.

“Ugh… Pom? Pom!” Dolly groggily stated from her position on the floor she rolled over and got her board under and growled at Arceus, almost ignoring the fact that I was awake. “Hey leave her alone you… wait… you’re all better? They said it would take months before you could recover from that!”

“What is this deal you wish to broker Arceus, what do you want exactly? I am willing to listen, but I will not be certain to accept without hearing a good reason too.” I asked because I was getting a feeling I was in for a load of trouble and I’ve barely had time to think… in fact I still had nutrient feeds in me. I wasn’t about to pull those out quite yet. “Also I wish to know what happened in my absence, will you give me time to catch up on what I have missed?”

“You have missed much.” Arceus bowed his head to me and moved off to the side to sit down. “I will give you the time to learn of what you have missed and then bid you to let our negotiations proceed as soon as you are feeling ready.”

He says ‘negotiations’, but I have a sinking feeling here about all this. Powerful beings tended to be rather difficult to deal with if they have an unhealthy interest in you. This seemed like one of those occasions and I seriously don’t think I could seriously take this Arceus in a fight. I honestly don’t think any of our friends could.

I just had to wait for someone to disconnect my feeds, get a full checkup of my health and get something to eat.

-Three hours and a decent meal later-

I held Dolly close to my chest and was cuddled by Shanty, Smolder and Ocellus. I sighed loudly and then pulled out of my group. I was the head of the negotiations, because I was the one Arceus wanted.

“Okay, let’s get this over with, start.” I said bluntly, still wiping the tears from my eyes with the wool of my right leg as Arceus watched us interact blankly without a hint of emotion.

Ocellus even whispered he wasn’t expressing much other than anticipation.

“I require your services in one of my realms.” Well that wasn’t a good sign Arceus, because I am less likely to say yes to anything approaching things like that in nature.

“Quick question, if we were to ignore this realm of yours entirely and try to take the portal somewhere else, would we still end up in that world anyway?” My question created an imperceptible nervous shifting in Arceus’s mood.

I’m quite paranoid after having woken up to a nightmare where Dormarch has perished, my eyes narrowed at him.

“Yes, but you will likely end up in a worse situation than if you were to take my deal.” Nothing shifty about what he said there, nope, not at all. Like I would believe my own sarcastic mind.

I’m getting a feeling I should really press him more for details and the like. The answer told me some of the things I needed to know, regardless of what we try to do we’ll end up in Arceus’s world anyway. Arceus was trying to play the lesser evil in this situation and offer us a better starting position, but he wants us to do something obviously ridiculous for it in exchange.

He wants something of us or more importantly… me.

“Do you need just me, or do you need the rest of my group too?” Here I noticed that Arceus looked thoughtfully blank for a few seconds, as if he was thinking about how to answer that.

“All of your group, but you are the most important one I wish to acquire potential aid from.” Okay, there’s something about me that Arceus apparently wants running around in the world we’re going to end up in regardless of how I feel about being railroaded.

“Why me specifically?” That’s the question wasn’t it, a powerful being as this one that was said to have teleported to the room I was in after simply saying ‘hello’ to some of my friends and acquaintances. He then proceeds to restore my health completely, including all my destroyed muscles and other damaged parts of my body. This wasn’t sounding like desperation on Arceus’s part, but it was worrisome. “There are plenty of other people, heroes even, which would be willing to do whatever it is you’re going to ask of us. Helping an entire realm seems to be a bit too much of a hassle to me and I notice your trying to be fairly light on information to our detriment, what specifically are you asking me to do here? If it’s basically saving an entire world, then can we just skip to the part where I say no?”

“I be understanding why you would be saying that.” Thank you for understanding Shanty, it’s nice to know that everyone will have my back in a decision. “I be finding this suspect as well and would not be jumping at a chance for adventure if I didn’t know what it be entailing after all the danger we’ve been put through recently.”

“You are the most likeliest to succeed in making friends, I have a keen interest in your abilities and I want to see what you will do. I am functionally a god of multiple realms, all of them created by me. As a god I cannot and will not interfere in the realms of my creation unless I find need to do so.” Raising a brow at Arceus, I was curious as to why he couldn’t find anyone else that was far more capable than me. “As for what I am asking you to actually do… it is fairly simple...”

“Saving an entire world, yeah that’s so simple.” Smolder muttered while rolling her eyes.

“I assume you’re not going to tell us outright to save the world, but you are going to make sure we are there to do something similar or close to it.” Ocellus stated just as flatly, likely having a less than stellar outlook of Arceus because of his dispassionate emotional flatness.

“You are not wrong to assume, but I am not asking you to save an entire world.” Oh we’re definitely assuming that we’ll be doing so anyway, after all your being here was a big red flag for us Arceus. “Though you may end up doing so of your own volitions, I am simply going to ask you to assist a small kingdom. You can do so in any role you wish, even if just something as simple as cleaning a building.”

“You’re understating it, that’s how it always starts. I believe it’s going to be more problematic than that considering you’re targeting me specifically for this. No matter where we end up in this world of yours, we’re going to end up in a fight for our lives aren’t we?” The look I got from Arceus told me that he was appraising my intelligence, after a moment he just simply nodded. Thus he finally acknowledge that we knew exactly what we were about to be getting into. “Okay, what do you have to offer us for us to do something for this kingdom exactly? I’m quite sure you’ve been watching us for a while and already have an idea for what incentives you can use to acquire our help.”

“I have seen you’re pasts, I know how you ended up here and know where you are going. Most of you wish to return to Equus yes? I can get you there, but the danger is great, for you will have to go to the place you originally avoided to end up here… Tambelon.” Well there was the truth, he knew what we wanted. “I can send you directly to Tambelon, you will have to go there to get home regardless of whether or not you broker a deal with me.”

“Can you bring back my little brother?!” Dolly suddenly asked pointing a digit of her right paw at Arceus. “You’re supposedly really powerful, especially if you can knock me out of that state with nothing but a simple poke!”

“I cannot, for various reasons, bring your brother Dormarch back. Though I have been and will be looking further into your brother’s demise and will say that it may be of interest to you that a realm of Digimon will be opening up somewhere in the realm you will be going to. If you are interested in looking into that neighboring realm, then I will lend you support in exploring it. I will of course try to prevent any attempts at invasion, but if you wish to lend your aid or look around in the kind of realm your little Dormarch came from, then you will be able to do so with readily available assistance even should we not make a viable deal.” Arceus knew what Digimon were? I’ve barely gained a comprehension through the changed PET device, or Digivice as it was now known to be, that Dormarch left behind. “As for further incentives, I have stated previously you will start together in the safest location in the world as far as generalities go. You will be given knowledge by the locals as well as supplies. You will be far better prepared than if you went there without my aid.”

“What are you exactly? I’m not asking for a name here, I’m asking for a general species.” My questions may seem a little random, but that was a decent question to ask.

“I am what has been termed as a pocket monster or Pokémon by some of the being living within my realms, I am the first pocket dimension monster that came into existence, having created much and have seen eons. I am a protector of life and wish to watch it grow, I want life to flourish within my realms and for the uniting force of friendship to bloom.” Arceus glanced around the table at all of us. “As for another thing I will grant you, should you survive long enough, I will send you to a world to rest from all that is capable of bothering you before delivering you to Tambelon by your word.”

“So you’re not denying the dangers anymore?” It certainly sounded like it considering what he said about us surviving long enough, just what kind of worlds does this god run? “Do you need me because I will end up saving the world?”

“I can’t deny nor hide the dangers that you still have left to face. Pokémon are as friendly as they are dangerous no matter their appearances, you will be seeing many of them.” So it’s either accept his offer or go forward on our own. “I can assure you that you are not needed to save the world, but it would be greatly appreciated by many if you actively tried.”

“I want to know what you aren’t telling me.” I said flatly.

“I tried to take your soul when you’re body threatened to finally die, I know the secret of your wool and what I am not telling you about the world you are about to experience needs to be experienced in person. As any description will pale in comparison to actually exploring it in person.” The reaction to what Arceus just said got him angry glares. Shanty, Dolly, Smolder and even Ocellus were looking about ready to attack him. I just held up a hoof and they all stopped short of going off on him, looking at me like I was crazy. Even Big Hero Six and The Mighty Ducks wanted to beat the snot out of him, they were all sitting in on this meeting and were quite curious. “Just know that you will find good reason to believe that I am a god and have truly created this world you will end up in the second you find a map.”

“What would you have done with my soul and how would you have taken it?” I was remaining calm. Sure I may be scared that he will take my soul anyway, but I don’t think he actually could.

“I cannot take a soul by force, I would however be capable of grabbing a soul that has freshly perished or is already naturally a part of a realm I have personally created and can repurpose them to the ends of creating a Pokémon from those that already exist thus giving new life. I have generated many heroes from using this very method from the beings that exist within my realms. There is a catch however, I cannot do it again so soon since moving a soul peacefully without harming it takes immense power as much as transforming it into the form of Pokémon that most suits its personality. I will give you some examples of what you will be seeing.” He pause and then generated several images that hovered in front of us, many strange creatures showed up. “I will further inform you that this form of me you see before you is the one that most people are comfortable with seeing, I am actually far larger and more complicated than I initially appear. If you have ever heard the term eldritch and know exactly what it means in reference of my true appearance that cannot be fathomed by mortals, then you will have an idea of what I speak. I am not needlessly cruel…”

“But you can’t take chances and are kind of forcing the issue here since you really want me for this, even knowing the fact that I don’t want to be a hero, savior or even do anything ridiculously big like what I think you’re going to get me to do regardless of my feelings on the matter.” I said blandly. “Which is why when I see where you send us and given the trouble that is likely going on there, we are likely of the mind to do more than the job you will assign to me and will try to go above and beyond the task. Which inevitably ends in saving the world anyway with whatever resources I have.”

“Correct, but you do not have to actually save the world. I just wish to see what you will do.” Arceus nodded to me, at least I can tell he was being honest. “You just have to assist the kingdom I send you to in any capacity. You could be a merchant, a cook or simple house maid. I just wish to watch you interact with the realm.”

“Is there any further incentives that you can use to make me say yes, because I’m leaning towards taking the hard way in even if it’ll specifically kill me in the first five minutes. At least it’ll put me out of my misery.” I received a variety of odd looks for stating that with a calm demeanor. “Besides that, I don’t think you want me to die… or else you wouldn’t be here talking to me.”

“I can protect this world from dimensional instability, make sure that nothing dangerous from other dimensions can break through unless I allow it for a variety of different reasons and I shall not allow this world to open portals to realms that are immediately dangerous to them without prior warning.” That, Arceus, had my interest and made me quite curious. “I protect my worlds from cataclysms that are otherwise unavoidable, however to do so it has to be a threat that can instantly destroy said world if I am not there to protect it. I guide my civilizations from the shadows and though they praise and pray to me, I would rather they find their own way forward than call upon me to guide them. They all should be strong enough to build a future of their own merits, but even just meeting you will change the course of many things.”

“Any other bits of information you’re trying to leave out?” Because let’s face it, while he’s honest, Arceus is obviously omitting a lot of things here and I’m pretty sure he was actively reading my mind at this point and saying exactly what he can to get me to say yes to his offer while trying to lowball me. “The protection of this world from grave threats from other dimensions and protecting it from itself sounds like a great deal all things considered, especially in trade for me doing just one thing for you.”

“I will at least tell you I am a Legendary Pokémon, I created many sons and daughters that are exceedingly powerful. They are not unbeatable, but they are best avoided as they have jobs to do and some will even likely be friendly towards you.” Red flags here, get your red flags here, wave them and chant that some of his children are likely canine in nature. “Yes, they are.”

“Well that just proves it.” The guy was reading my mind. “Are you seriously that desperate to acquire my presence?”

“No, also you’re paranoia is quite amusing. Though it is not paranoia... 'if' you are absolutely correct.” Okay that’s pretty believable Arceus. “Though I do wish you to see the kingdom I wish you to assist first compared to anywhere else in the realm. It exemplifies what I wish to see worldwide.”

“How many canines exist in this world and how many will I be meeting?” Pertinent question really, but I kind of want to make sure Arceus doesn’t leave anything out. This was supposed to be a negotiation of safety versus just going into a dangerous situation to spite the guy that’s been silently watching us all.

“The answer would be a lot and a lot of them, you are after all quite interesting when it comes to ending up in worlds where you could quite simply have every canine at your beck and call should you wish it.” Yet you should be aware as to why I would never abuse such an ability Arceus, also why I couldn’t. “Indeed, I am aware.”

“Can I have several days to think about this? Also I need to say good bye to the people I have met trying to just survive this world.” Were I of lesser intelligence, I would immediately jump on the chance to say yes without thinking about all the implications involved. “I will also need to discuss things with my friends and we’ll collectively come up with an answer. While you are manipulative and somewhat duplicitous in the information you are willing to give, I don’t believe your outright evil.”

“Which is why I am going to offer a few last things, one you will want most above all before I leave you to converse with your companions on a decision that can change a great many things going forward.” Arceus stated solemnly, making my eyes narrow at him and his blank emotionless eyes on a mouthless head.

“Which is?” If I was a paranoid lambkin, and I am, I had an idea that Arceus was about to suggest that…

“I can put you in direct communication with Tianhuo of Equus. ” Arceus was obviously saving that as an ace to get me to say yes, but what would he do to make my friends say yes as well? I bit down on my tongue quite hard to the point I started drawing blood. “That can give you a greater advantage before entering Tambelon. I can also return Gosalyn Waddlemeyer Mallard’s lost Grandfather to her, as well as assist in finding someone of great importance to some people in this room. Your self-control to not immediately say yes is quite admirable Pom… heal pulse.”

I felt my tongue heal and the coppery taste of blood and pain disappeared after I was hit with the orb of energy. My reaction gained worried looks.

“I'll take my leave now, discuss what you will.” Arceus then opened a portal to a starry space and calmly walked through with an immaculate grace. “I shall be coming back in a few days to receive an answer.”

“…” I silently stared after Arceus as the portal closed behind him.

“You can’t believe him... right?” Started off Smolder who found her voice first.

“I believe a great many things Smolder, I think he can actually put us in direct contact with Equus.” I even believed him genuine in all his offers at once just for doing one thing, assisting a kingdom in even the smallest way. “That he can’t get us there himself says there are still some things that even he can’t do.”

Author's Note

That one particular offer hits Pom like a truck.

Note: I may be pretty sick, possibly with COVID, I'm toughing it out fairly well.

Though I wish the mucus would go away. Barely a week after the intestinal problem thing too. I can't catch a break in these last two months.

237. Doughty Dalmatians and... valley'd.

-A day later, San Fransokyo Park, Pom-

Ocellus and Smolder were going on a date. I reminded them to not buy too much aside what Smolder wanted to eat and to start heading back after the sun has set, anything we needed to carry would be on us. Those two were going to work a few things out and talk about Smolder’s use of greed growth.

Shanty was practicing with her new weapon and I didn’t know how to feel about the repurposed scythe shaped leg looking like Sly Cooper’s cane, she probably learned how to wield it from watching him. At least Tanya blunted the blades somewhat… not that it would stop Shanty from using the edges to cut through things if she wanted to her magic to it.

The decisions that the group had to make without me had led them to being somewhat unsure of themselves. We also had a small argument over whether we would be taking Arceus’s deal knowing what it would very much likely entail considering all our sarcasm around saving the world.

If Arceus could put me in direct contact with Tianhuo, along with any of our friends and families back home including my god puppies. Then it just might be worth the deal with the suspect god.

To the end of Dodo returning to stature when his egg shaped ball of metal finally did something, we got him several Hunter Drones to eat when he finally… can machines hatch? We didn’t know if the Hunter Drone parts would work, but Shanty assured us that Dodo would find a way to appreciate it.

As for me, I was trying to relax. That was even with a bittersweet sadness gripping both Dolly and me. I also wanted to talk to Dolly about… well… a lot of things. Like how she was going to say good-bye to this wonderfully dangerous, wacky and sometimes beautiful world, from what I’ve seen… the world could be a little less life threatening towards me. At least an average person here can avoid trouble where I seemingly cannot.

Nothing was more upsetting than seeing a happy, brave and proud dog like Dolly in an incredibly depressing slump, there was also the thing Arceus said about Dolly being addicted to some form of magic.

Apparently the spell was called ‘Haste’ and gave Dolly an incredible speed boost that synergized with all her abilities quite nicely, again another thing like my Dancing Flame with its own naturally occurring downsides, but it also had the drawback of increasing Dolly’s aggression unless she took a break of two hours between uses.

She can use it once every hour and thus the buildup of aggression that led to her attacking Arceus, she at least controlled herself well enough and didn’t attack anyone she knew as a friend, but it was still bad when she got angry at the people trying to help ease the pain we were all experiencing.

I wanted to talk to Dolly about our bond. If she was to still be following me, then she was going to need to say goodbye to her family while we still had the chance. She seemed reticent to use the Digivice to call them and she didn’t want to go play with any other dogs… or even me. All she wanted to do was stay by my side and try to relax like me.

“Hey… uh… Pom…” Was Dolly finally going to talk about things with me? I looked at her, she had an adorable, feisty and had a positive attitude. Key word is ‘had’, because she wasn’t acting like herself anymore. Here she was still cute, but her feistiness dropped off a cliff somewhere and her positive attitude seemed nonexistent aside from getting stuck on the idea that we could somehow revive Dormarch. Still, she wanted to stay by my side despite how poorly things have gone for the both of us. “I… need to go to the bathroom, I’ll be right back.”

It felt like she was going to start talking, but then… she likely just got cold paws or doesn’t know what to say to me. I wasn’t very confrontational, but I may have to be to get Dolly to even open up with me about things that needed to be said and discussed. There was still a lot of raw pain and having my physical health back did nothing for my mental scars and health.

I leaned my back against the tree and looked at the sky, it was a partly cloudy day today. Quite nice, the world was quiet and there wasn’t another threat to my life jumping out of the shadows every other minute. The park was full of other people and a variety of animals… there was the oddity of one kid having a pet flamingo that drew my attention for a minute.

“Hey Pom, can we go do something fun now?” If one didn’t know any better they would think the dog that came up to me was Dolly, they would be wrong. Sure the voice and similarities matched, but I was smarter than that.

“… Nice try, but I know you’re not Dolly, which of her brothers or sisters are you?” I was taking a guess as to the Dalmatian that was mimicking Dolly’s appearance.

“Darn it, I thought that would work!” The Dalmatian was doing a pretty good imitation of the eldest sister’s voice and didn’t quite land the appearance. “I’m Ditto Dalmatian and the entire family is here to see Dolly… how did you figure me out Pom?”

“Well for one Dolly is in a depressed slump because of Dormarch and misery loves company, ironically you don’t have some of the spot colorations in the right spots and your body shape is noticeably different than hers should someone take a closer look.” I paused when I noticed that I currently wasn’t immediately beset by ninety seven Dalmatians, two parents, the zombie chicken Spot and a robot dog. “That was the long answer, the short answer is that I have a familiar bond to her and know where she is at all times. You can’t trick a bond like that.”

“Oh right… that…” Ditto slumped and whined a bit, I think she was using her actual voice now. “Being hero isn’t always rainbows and sunshine. We’ve known that for quite a while, but still… the reality of it doesn’t hit until we all lose a little brother.”

“It’s alright.” I started to gently pet Ditto. “I think you did a really good job of mimicking Dolly’s usual exuberance, I could use some of that good cheer.”

“Really?!” Ditto perked up slightly, tail wagging. “Do you think I could get as good as Ocellus some day?”

“Not unless you become a shape shifter or get good enough at magic, but otherwise mimicking things through other means like technology or ingenuity can be just as interesting. Just don’t hurt yourself doing it.” I bet Dolly could go a hundred days and never stop finding things to talk about when it comes to her family, which led me to question how they got here since Ditto is one of the Dalmatian family members.

“Heh I am the go to puppy in case someone needs a stunt double or a stand in! Dallas, Destiny and Déjà vu have used me a few times, the people never really notice in the commercials.” I’m guessing the reason Ditto is telling me this is because she wanted some alone time with someone comfortable to talk to. I was going to be a top choice for that for just about any dog. She then changed her voice to sounding differently entirely. “Like, yeah, baby foxes are the best!”

“That’s some talent you have there.” I said with halfway good cheer, but the sentiment was meant fully.

“Yeah, we always eventually get our spots, but talent… that is something you have to go looking for.” Ditto smiled up at me and then went back to resting as I continued to pet her. “Also you don’t go looking over the horizon for what you can find right next to you. In that sense, I’m going to find Dolly if I stay right where I am. The bonus is being able to enjoy your company while I can before all my brothers and sisters swarm you… they really want to comfort Dolly, you and all your friends with the traditional Dalmatian Family way.”

“Thanks for the warning.” I stated sardonically.

“You’re welcome, now can you itch a spot on my back that’s hard to reach…” I started to do so. “Higher and to the right.”

“Ugh… the line for that tree was horrible, but I think I can see why so many dogs like it. It’s a really good tree.” Dolly then stopped and looked at me scratching her sisters back. “Pom… I’m pretty sure you’re aware that that is not me right?”

“Feeling a bit jealous?” Ditto said with Dolly’s voice and peppy attitude that Dolly usually sported.

“Wait…” After taking one sniff, Dolly’s eyes narrowed on the Dalmatian. “Ditto, what are you doing here?!”

“This… HUG!” Ditto shouting it exactly like how Dolly would when I was a guest at the Dalmatian house so long ago.

She leapt onto Dolly and wrapped her paws around her to pin her down, Dolly’s eyes went wide and her pupils shrunk as a cascade of black and white came in from all sides around us.

Ditto was apparently the setup for a snuggle ambush, all she needed to do was shout a trigger word that would get all the puppies moving.

Dolly’s family knew she could jump high into the air and basically had super powers, they weren’t going to leave anything to chance when it comes to catching her off guard.

-Five minutes later-

Dolly eventually got to a point where she could almost pull herself free looking a little less depressed at having so many of her brothers and sisters pile on to cuddle up to her. I noted that the one still clinging onto her back like a limpet was Dorothy, trying so hard to make her big sister smile with a hug.

The tiniest puppy was anything if not determined to cling on to her big sisters back.

“Guys come on, you can’t keep this up forever… you can’t… right?” Dolly was starting to get worried when all her brothers and sisters weren’t willing to let her go of her legs or stop crowding her while asking questions.

“Yeah, they are all worried about you Dolly, I am too.” Dylan showed up to throw a paw around Dolly’s neck and hugged her.

“Since when did you become so affectionate?” Dolly muttered as she dug her face into his shoulder.

“Since the family just lost someone and we’re about to lose contact with another concerning we heard Pom and her group finally have a way out of this world. Also several madcap adventures with a zombie chicken that 'we' will not be getting into, let’s just say that I was always Bark Brigade material and leave it at that.” Dylan backed away and looked to me. “Ocellus told us everything, we came as soon as we had a free method that wouldn’t cost us too much money.”

“Someone brought the entire family here?” I queried out loud. “What idiot would get away with transporting that many dogs without being checked by international security? I mean, admittedly we got into this country through cargo, but still!”

“Hey Pom, I see you found the Dalmatian family!” Launchpad stated jovially as he came up to me, the kitten he was carrying with him barked cheerfully in the form of baby puppy babble. That is going to be one confused cat when it grows up. “Didn’t want them to get lost or anything. So I’m going to make sure they are all here before taking a break. When you need a ride home you know who to look for Mrs. D.”

“Of course Launchpad, though I really wish the landing wasn’t nearly as legendary as several people warned us it would be.” Delilah was actually making a series of soft toned friendly sounding barks before she gave Launchpad an affectionate nuzzle. “Scared me nearly halfway to death, thought I’d wake up in a hospital without all my children or my husband Doug by my side. The return trip is going to be just as bad, I can already tell…”

“Well you got our family here in one piece. We owe you a lot buddy, I don’t know how we can ever repay for helping me see my eldest off!” Doug did the same soft nuzzle and friendly barking too with a wagging tail thrown in.

“Don’t mention it Mrs. And Mr. D, always glad to help out a family… even if I don’t know what you’re saying. I can kind of guess though.” I don’t think Launchpad was ever going to change, he’s a hero in his own right and he’s also one the scariest people behind the controls of any vehicle that I’ve ever met.

I’d hate to see what he can do with an Equus built airship, but he’s been a permanent friend of ours through thick and thin as soon as we met.

“His crashes are quite terrifying.” Dylan stated with a thousand yard stare. “I mean statistically speaking, one of us should have been hurt more than a mild bump to the head when three fourths of the plane burst into fire before impacting the ground... at mach two. Don't know who invented that giant flan creating machine, but it certainly saved us a lot of pain.”

“I concur, that we are all alive says a lot about Mr. McQuacks skill as a pilot.” Dawkins pause and leaned against his robot while tapping his chin thoughtfully. “Going somewhere with him makes one realize how precious life can be, considering his flying anything always inevitably ends in a crash. I’m surprised his fatality rate is still zero even with all of us as passengers.”

“You got a mild bump to your head?” Dolly said almost knowingly with a grin, the first one I’ve seen since I’ve woken up.

“Yes Dolly... it was me.” Drawled out Dylan, before pointing out a nasty looking knot on his head. “Plane crashes are quite terrifying to begin with, but I think Launchpad somehow made my fear of planes, helicopters and heights even worse. Still if I am to go up into space... I'm going to have to get into another vehicle with Launchpad.”

“Yeah, but you will always survive a Launchpad crash… somehow.” I muttered with the wisdom of having been in several Launchpad related incidents where ridiculous unexplainable havoc happens, even the Chaos Lord of Equus Discord couldn't explain chaos of that magnitude.

Launchpad even always escapes being financially responsible for all the collateral damage considering that no one can seem to pin the blame on pilot error or that he’s doing it on purpose, so suing him really doesn’t get anyone anywhere. I think it kind of balances out with the bad karma that Launchpad can’t get insurance for any vehicle he is about to use.

“Say guys, do you want me to draw the puppies away for some play time while you talk with Dolly in some privacy?” These last few days we were in this world would be the last chance Dolly would get with her family. She barely got so many opportunities to spend time with her parents like this.

“Please and thank you Pom.” Delilah said to me while making sure to hug Dolly with more affection than she would normally give.

“Hey, look at this… a ball.” Ninety three puppies worth of attention were suddenly all on me. Da Vinci, the artist puppy, stayed near her parents and motioned for me to get on with it. Suddenly I had puppies jumping and barking at me to throw it. “How about I teach you all a game other than fetch? Ever heard of hacky sack?”

-Dolly-

“Hey mom, dad… um guys?” Whereas a mass of the family went with Pom, with Dylan chaperoning their game. There were three siblings that stayed behind. Da Vinci, Deepak and Dante.

“I just wanted to give you something... my goodness that looks fun.” Da Vinci reached into her pack. She pulled out an art journal. “This is for you, please look it over when you’re feeling lost, lonely or are just missing us.”

I opened it with a paw looked at the illustration of Dormarch looking to the stars and smiled fondly, Da Vinci caught his likeness perfectly. Da Vinci hugged up against my side with a smile on her face.

“Just so you know I won’t be able to get predictions to help wherever you’re going, but it’s likely to be dangerous sis.” Of that, Dante Dalmatian, I have no doubt. Dante hugged me too, making me realized that Da Vinci still hadn’t left and was still latched onto me. "Love you big sis."

Pom and the others have been kind of throwing it out there that Arceus guy is very suspiciously insistent on Pom coming to his world. Also the guy radiated with an incredible amount of power and even stopped my ‘Haste’ instantly five seconds after having activated it.

“I just wanted to say that no matter where you go, you’ll be carrying a piece of us with you.” Deepak stated having join in on the cuddling. “It’s almost like you’re carrying a piece of him too. Just know that we love you sis, now talk to mom and dad.”

I didn’t even need to ask who Deepak was talking about as he and my other siblings left me with Dorothy, Dad and Mom.

Speaking of dad…

“Hey dad…” I said as he came up to me and pulled me close while putting Dorothy on his head.

“Yes honey?” Dad was smothering and loving as usual, he was like this because we lost mom early and he had to make up for that until he got married to Delilah who became mom too.

It’s kind of like why Dylan acts overly protective of our family and is all about cleanliness, now that I think about didn’t Dylan’s father die from… oh… wow… I can see why Dylan and Doug are alike now and I feel bad about not paying attention to things sooner. Certainly explains the uptight clean freak nature and a love of established order that Dylan had going on and I kind of just ignored it.

“Did you ever tell me about your first date with… my biological mother?” I ask, because I had a feeling and I wanted it to be true.

“No, I don’t think I ever talked much about it, because we all needed to move on at some point. I’m glad to have met Delilah, she’s at least patient and knows I’ll never forget my first love… like I’ll never forget her either.” Doug nosed against Delilah’s neck and she placed hers on top of his. I smiled at the two and Dorothy happily giggling away on top of Dad’s head while looking at me, apparently having achieved something.

“Well I think I saw her, maybe even talked with her. She apparently likes Delilah, can’t imagine why she wouldn’t, she said you’re first date was good despite what you did to the steak.” I noticed there was a look of wonder of dad’s face. “She said it was a ‘mis-steak’. She walked through a door afterwards with a smile, but I just bonked my nose on it. Oh right and I was kind of out it after Dormarch... yeah...”

After a moment dad sniffled and the big goof hefted me up against his chest.

“That’s… good to hear… really good actually honey. There’s no possible way you could have known that too.” Dad sounded really happy.

“Makes me wonder about my late husband, haven’t forgotten him either. Never forget those who leave and those who are still here.” Delilah, mom, I wouldn’t expect you to forget about anyone you love, even when you started loving my dad. “Don’t know what to think about this psychologically, but thankfully I’m a physical problems nurse and not a psychological one.”

“Oh really, since what about… ulp…” That was when my step mother hugged me, she was actually showing me far more physical affection than I ever thought she would and was being quite open about it. I started hugging her back and felt my tail revving up.

“Sorry about not giving you more attention Dolly love, you’re still my daughter and you'll have to live with it.” Aw, come on mom, this is the sappiest I’ve ever seen or felt you be. “I know I tend to have an aversion to showing affection openly… but you try being a part of as large a family as mine and being nearly constantly hugged, cuddled and nuzzled by hundreds of cousins, sisters and brothers every five minutes. I learned how to avoid the affection and still wanted to become a nurse dog, which worked out as you very well know. I didn’t think I would want to build a family as large and as messy as that, now that it’s about to become less without you and Pom… well… just know that you’ll be very much missed.”

“This is the most affection I think you’ve ever shown… well any pup.” Step mother was not the most touchy feely of dogs, but this felt nice. “You know, considering Dylan is your favorite.”

No matter how many times I say that, Delilah never actually denies it.

“He was my first puppy Dolly, can you truly blame me when I first saw him open his eyes and experienced the world around him? Still, if you think I love my spunky skater super hero dog of a daughter any less, then you’d be wrong.” Mom, dad and Dorothy came together for me. “You’re a lot braver than we thought. You had so many dreams… you were interested in being a fire fighter like your father, you wanted to be a professional athlete and then there’s the whole thing with you wanting to possibly be a police dog.”

“Technically Pom is a guard of the place she works at back home on her planet, so police dog is still the likeliest outcome for me. That and my powers are kind of cheating on the athlete side of things and it wouldn't feel right using them for more than shows and while I'm a show off, I'm not a 'show dog'. Once I leave this world… well… I won’t be a super hero or sidekick anymore will I?” My family came all this way out here to cheer me up, then dog gone it, I will cheer up and try to make our remaining time on this world mean something before I had to go. “Pom wasn’t big on the hero thing to begin with anyway and was humoring me about it, but also might have even liked it a tiny bit for all her complaining.”

“Dolly, please don’t forget your family now or that you were born to this world.” Delilah continued to cuddle me and I just relaxed into the comfort of my parent’s warmth, I heard a giggling as Dorothy joined in on my face

I tried to brighten up. I would then go on to spend some quality time with every last one of my siblings, the Dimitri Trio and Delgado were who I would start off with. I had less in common with the girly pups in the family.

-Several Days later and some hours, Dylan Dalmatian-

Everyone in our family around felt it when this Arceus guy appeared. I looked to Spot.

“Yeah, definitely a god, nothing can put out quite a presence like that if it wasn’t.” Spot received a look from Arceus, but he didn’t seem to comment on what he saw in our favorite female zombie chicken. He quietly shook his head and moved on from Spot to look at Pom. “Terrifying.”

“Have you decided?” Arceus stated as Pom move to the front of her group.

I was excited to get into space through Scrooge McDuck restarting his space industry and was glad that Dolly got me an open invitation for it.

Still, it seemed like Dolly was getting into bigger and crazier things than even I would have imagined. The world seemed so big for us already, now it seems even bigger and Dolly was putting a dimension between us. Dolly showing the ability to handle responsibility was something I never thought I’d see out of her, not that she had changed much and now we got her back in a good mood she was like her old self.

Only Dolly was now capable of running up walls, gliding, wielding her skateboard like a lethal weapon and able to do absurd things she wasn’t capable of before. She became something of fragile speedster and glass cannon like from my Poodle Wolf games character builds, ‘gods speed’ personified my sister in more ways than one. May the winds of fortune blow her way.

“A few things, can you swear that you won’t eventually ask me to outright save your world and that you can get me a connection with Tianhuo?” Pom asked.

“Yes.” Arceus stated while bowing his head to Pom.

“… I’ll accept your terms to aid the kingdom however ‘I’ see fit.” We soon watched as Pom and the others go through the portal opened by the local heroes into some grassy plains.

Dolly stopped before the portal and then looked back at us nervously. She waved at us with a weak grin before she looked forward and took a deep breath. She rearranged her skateboard across her back, adjusted her helmet on her head and then took a few steps back before charging forward and leaping through the portal with an incredible leaping flip.

“Bow-Whacka-Wow!” Was the last thing I heard from my sister as the portal closed. As long as Ditto can replicate her catchphrase, we wouldn’t have any troubles remembering Dolly fondly. For that was the sound of a canine causing a caper.

Also that world wasn’t nearly ready for Dolly at all, neither was she ready for it, but we can’t always be prepared for everything. At least we managed to cheer her back up, but if she could find a way to revive Dormarch, then we might eventually find a way to contact Equus to go there.

-???, Pom-

“If I turn around…” It seems like they knew what I was going to ask.

“Aside from the plains in front of us… valley equals yes Pom.” Ocellus informed succinctly, so I didn’t bother turning around.

“Ugh, again, Arceus just had to be a jerk and had to start us off in another freaking valley… I wonder what the alternative was that would be worse than going through this again! I think Shanty was the only who ended up near a valley in that last world.” Smolder then said something thoughtfully. “You know we were all hoping to not end up in a valley when those possum princesses sent us to that ‘World Where Dreams Can Come True’. Probably the only reason why we weren’t all in valleys in the last world.”

“Well at least one dream came true, for about as long as we were in that world, we really didn’t deal with valleys all too much.” There was just about everything else about that world that was arguably worse and a kitchen sink though, which my mind decidedly pointed out quite vibrantly. “We also ended up in places that were most comfortable to us. Smolder and Ocellus, friends, family and riches which fits you’re natures. I ended up surrounded by Dolly’s friends and family in a dog park. Shanty end up in a place with a seedy underbelly where she can meet a crew that she wouldn’t mind spending time with to learn some new tricks to help her achieve her dreams, given her need to be 'the pirate that what steals rum from everyone'. I really shouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest how things ended up. So the world did as it said, our dreams can come true… and I hope that Arceus eventually gets back to me soon about…”

A portal opened up to a starry space and a white and gold gilded device similar to what where known as phones used in the previous world plopped onto the ground. Arceus had a favored theme it seems. I took it and looked it over, I stashed it away in my pack and started to look around. First off, explore our surroundings, secure shelter and find the nearest food source.

“It’s not always going to be rum, but yes, most of it will be being rum.” Shanty said with a grin and waggling brows while grabbing at her cane strapped to her back.

“Sounds about right, all supplies are here including the Hunter Drone scraps for Dodo.” Ocellus confirmed as she checked things over. “Whatever Arceus just sent you is probably how you’re going to communicate with Tianhuo.”

“Everyone in one piece? No screaming, no fighting or anything immediately on fire nearby?” Paranoia was of course ratcheted up by quite a bit.

“No nothing of that sort be going on currently… it is being a quiet day here.” Shanty stated while looking around.

“Say Pom, is that being a castle in the distance.” Pointing at it with a paw, well yes I can see what kingdom we were supposed to help immediately. We were basically facing a road leading down from the valley's single mountain towards it.

“Woolooloo, I got some apples, woolooloo, would you like some too~?” We all jumped and turned to the white sheep with thick wool among our group, there were two braids of wool framing his face as he came up to us with a basket and a smile. He was wearing a saddlebags over his absurdly thick wool like ponies do back on Equus. “Hi there, I’m Geoffry. You can call me Geoff, I'm a cleric of this kingdom! You’re all very sexy and beautiful, welcome to the lands where my people tend to be called the ‘Exceedingly Persistent Perverts of the Plains’! You’re really strange looking Pokémon, definitely not from around here and that makes you quite exotically attractive. Never seen a charizard so small without a tail flame or a wooloo quite like you fluffy lady 'Rowr'. Don’t know what the others are, but that Skiddo looks more like a water type variant. I’m guessing at ages here and I'm young too, but you would be the oldest so equally safest option to hit on near constantly.”

Thanks, I might hate you already.

“Excuse me sir, but we’re not Pokémon.” That got a curious response more than a bothered one from this strange guy who hummed thoughtfully while eying us like we were all attractive. To be fair, I would like to feel attractive and the guy did just say he was a pervert quite openly. “Also my name is Pom, this is Smolder, that's Ocellus, the canine is Dolly and we kind of just arrive in the world… can you tell us where we are and show us a map of the current continent or even the general region?”

“Oh we’re just outside Arceus Valley, a verdant green range to east of the kingdom I’m a part of. As for a map of the world, sure, I always have one on me. Have an apple on me while I get it out.” Geoff despite, being awkwardly round, managed to swiftly retrieve the map and spread it out before us.

“Well that clears it, Arceus is definitely a god.” Ocellus said flatly.

“Guys got a big ego then.” Smolder continued.

“Yeah, one that is being the literal size of an entire continent.” Shanty wasn’t wrong as I looked at the map and Geoff pointed at our current location within a small region that this kingdom apparently entailed. It was small so maybe we really wouldn’t be getting into anything too big here?

Oh who was I kidding?! We’re doomed! We're all going to die... hopefully some day far off!

“Arceus? What does he have to do with our continent nice eyes?” Geoff was going to get real old quickly. “Don’t mind me if you don’t want to, in fact hurt me as much as you want. I enjoy pain! All wooloo like me are perverts and if they aren’t, then they must be very much closeted about it. Anyway, I welcome you to the realm of the eighteen kingdoms, because Arceus probably brought you here for a reason if you aren’t Pokémon my lovely, tall and lithe outsider.”

“I’m gay.” I said flatly to maybe hopefully throw him off.

“Give me time to find Manaphy and a willing female wooloo, then I can get a sex change easily enough so that that won’t be a problem!” He seemed to take my saying that I didn’t like males as a challenge. “Still would like to keep my name Geoff though… so… apples?”

Shanty just took one and bit into it because she couldn’t resist free tempting offers.

“Yay, a taker, I have a new friend!” Geoff seemed to have a positive attitude, how about I try to curb his enthusiasm.

“I’m married.” I stated a second later.

“That’s nice, but do you need a third and how sexy is you’re wife? I can and will make that Manaphy thing happen.” Geoff stated cheerfully. “I don’t take it your wife is here and you’re travelers from beyond so… maybe I’ll just follow you home and get her to agree to all the cuddles, all of them!”

“If I said no to that even then.” I hoped this wasn’t going to be a constant in this world.

“Okay, I know when I’m about to be friend zoned to the Distortion World and back. Still new friends is a big plus on my day like finding giant apples for a small feast!” Geoff stated happily, his mood never dipping once.

“As to answer your question about Arceus, this continent is shaped exactly like Arceus if you were looking at him from the side. See here is his head and these are his legs, his tail and the long bit at the back of his head.” We were in the southeastern portion of the continent in the back legs, this… was going to be a long one. "Basically the entire continent is an outline of him."

"Ooh... no wonder some people say this world was made in 'his' image, we just never thought to take it literally... even after we had it all mapped out too!" If Geoff was a sign of how things were starting, I dread our new oncoming adventures. "Have you ever met any Pokémon before our god Arceus? You seemed confused at seeing me at first sight, so if not... then let me be you're guide to this kingdom in particular and let me tell you what we Pokémon are and can do! This world is full of people and beings like me."

"Goddess Jiutian I hope not!" I immediately blurted out.

Author's Note

Yep, COVID sucks. At least I'm of a blood type that's resistant to the more lethal parts of it and have been vaccinated to minimize things further.

Sure I can't sleep, my forehead burns and sinuses are a mess and the worst thing is constant throat pain, but could have been worse.

I was supposed to post this a few hours earlier, so I added some page to it to really get a start on where Pom's group ended up.

238. Oh Rats.

-Equus, Ponyville, Tianhuo-

“Then they were beaten senseless by it.” I stated dryly. “The entire entire unit.”

“The guards of this Equestria...” Fœnum Tianhuo stated with a shaking head. “How does one even begin to lose a fight with a mouse that badly? It's not a rat.”

“Yeah true, but they are what we have to work with, doesn’t help that our economies stabilization is going poorly." Fizzlepop stated with a dull look in her eyes.

Something flashed in the air above us and we all prepared for anything, given that this was Equestria… anything was definitely a given. What dropped down in front of me was a device of white and gold, there was a note on it.

“Object from Arceus, checked by Longma Goddess Jiutian, immediate delivery to one Tianhuo of Equus. Object is currently in charging state, wait half a day before attempting to use?” My confusion was wondering who Arceus was, but that the longma goddess of love and war was involved had me quite curious. “My goddess sends a strange boon from another after checking the veracity of whatever this object is. I shall hold on to it, this object must be of great importance.”

-???, On the road towards the castle, Pom-

“So… who are these guys again?” Our group had expanded to have four more Wooloo for a total of five, all of them annoying.

“We’re the Wooloo of Geoff’s unit!” The four Wooloo stated. Two male and two female, one the females then decided to add. “You have a nice taut butt, will you marry me!”

“Darn it, I should have notice her butt first!” One of the male Wooloo stated tears of self-loathing clear on his face. “I’m so sorry to have failed you beautiful lady of wonderful wool and exquisite long legs!”

“Again, are all Wooloo really perverts?” I asked lazily as two of them continued to pull a cart with our supplies.

“All Wooloo, no exceptions!” Geoff and his four Wooloo people stated proudly, before Geoff added. “Arguably our females are even worse than the males at times.”

“Also, no, I won’t marry you, because I don’t know you that well.” Why am I the target of the perverts of the plains? Oh right, they refuse to target children or teenagers… which is actually a noble sentiment once I explained to Geoff why hitting on any of my traveling companions would make me kill him.

The threat just made him ask if I would be killing him in a lurid manner. Geoff just… wouldn’t… stop.

Wooloo looked cute, but when they open their mouths it’s always a complement, a pick up line or, on rare occasions, actual conversation that doesn’t involve horrible attempts at trying to be endearing to just about anything that moves. I’m almost beginning to think it actually is quite literally everything that does move.

“Can we go out to lunch together sometime?” The same female Wooloo asked while in a perked up state.

“No.” I stated with a flat and bored tone

“Awe.” The female Wooloo received a pat on the back from one of her male companions.

“Maybe she’ll say yes tomorrow?” The male Wooloo stated in a peppy manner.

“Tartarus no!” I yelled at them. “I’m beginning to see why you’re people would be called the 'Extremely Persistent Perverts of the Plains'.”

“That’s ‘exceedingly’ persistent, we don’t do extremes.” Geoff stated loftily with his head held high.

“Me killing you in a manner that you would find enjoyable isn’t extreme?” I asked flatly.

“Huh, well as long as you enjoyed the experience too, I’d be happy with it.” He… he can’t be serious right?

“Oh my goodness… he’s actually serious Pom.” The look of horror currently on Ocellus’s face was soon mirrored by mine, Smolder, Dolly and Shanty as we all might have come to the same conclusion.

“Your faces kind of looks like other Pokémon whenever I tell the story of one of us Wooloo sleeping with a Muk.” The other female Wooloo stated with happy go lucky attitude.

“Wait, one of us slept with a Muk, who’s the lucky Wooloo that did that?!” The second nondescript male wooloo stated with excitement.

“I did, I told everyone how nice it felt to be covered in that warm gooey embrace, almost died from the poison I got from it too, but it was worth it!” Continued the second female Wooloo with good cheer. “Took a while to clean off the gunk, but my goodness did that Muk know how to suffocate someone!”

“Lucky.” The three other Wooloo and Geoff stated.

“Back to units and less about all of your weird perversions, because I don’t really think I want to know what a Muk is if it’s extremely poisonous and one of you somehow managed to survive sleeping with.... whatever it is…” After a pause to think on it. “Is the mortality rate of Wooloo really high by any chance Geoff?”

“No… we’re quite hardy as Pokémon and are highly resilient to dying, why?” Geoff tilted his head as if wondering why I would even ask that, for some reason I didn’t believe him. If it were true, then accidentally getting him killed might be harder than I thought. Not that I would tell my traveling companions that I would ever try to actually plan something like that, a plan would mean it was no longer an accident… a possibly happy one. “In any case I admire you’re intelligence and wondrous resolve to learn more about us Pokémon!”

“Ooh, suave move noticing her brains Geoff, I think we should be writing this stuff down!” The second nondescript male Wooloo stated. “Also I kind of want to be crushed by a Miltank now after hearing about that wonderful Muk thing…”

“Ocellus… please tell me there are other intelligent beings out there we can talk to… and I mean actually intelligent to a degree that isn’t seemingly entirely bent on sucking away my will to live!” They were all chipping away at my sanity.

“Just about every animal around here is kind of pinging as emotionally intelligent… which I am beginning to suspect are all also Pokémon…” Ocellus couldn’t get any farther when Geoff interrupted her, we continued down the road towards the castle through the green grassy plains.

“You’d be correct, most being on this planet are Pokémon and Pokémon are intelligent. I mean we’re talking right?” Talking does not actually mean intelligence Geoff, you’ve definitely taught us all that within the first ten minutes… no, wait, too generous, within five minutes of meeting your unit. You still haven’t explained them and why they just started hauling our stuff for us without question. “Anyway Pokémon come in all shapes, personalities, sizes and powers! We’re in the region most known for its large number of normal type Pokémon.”

“Normal… right… if you’re the normal around here, I think I might want to run screaming.” Sarcasm was apparently lost on the Wooloo when nondescript male Wooloo one commented on that.

“You look like you’d be pretty good at running fast, I bet you have a lovely screaming voice too!” Male Wooloo one stated cheerfully.

“Anyway, on this continent Pokémon form battle units, usually numbering six, to build elite squads to defend or protect our territories in small skirmishes or to solve small issues in a given area. In a full blown war, the leader of the kingdom can ask any willing unit or volunteers to lead an army into a fight. Usually a unit with a variety of strong Pokémon will have more options to deal with offensives. Our unit is overly specialized in one area of expertise, which for us is defense, but we’re okay with that as we know each other very well! Units can also invade other territories, which our kingdom doesn’t do at all. We’re more for the diplomatic side of things because we don’t have the Pokémon power to survive protracted skirmishes or a straight up war against any of the surrounding nations. Many a Pokémon loves a good battle, though a full blown war is not something we the peaceful and highly perverted Wooloo would like… we take into consideration all the beautiful Pokémon that will be seriously hurt by all the fighting.” Here, Geoff looked off to the side at a fluffy rabbit that lazily looked our way and then just went about relaxing. “Like that Buneary for instance. Our kingdom is kind of… not the best on the offensive. We only have like two or three active units at a time, our civilian population is way larger than that, aside from food production the people of this kingdom are kind of lazy. Technically we have one military unit that does two jobs. No, before you ask, we’re not the military unit we’re a simple militia unit. The last unit is our kingdom leaders unit… which consists of a single Pokémon right now.”

I sighed loudly.

“What is it Pom, aside from all stares and them hitting on you constantly?” Looking to me and across the plains at the many weird creatures living here in peace or doing some farming as she padded down the road, Dolly seemed to like the fresh air and I can tell she wanted to talk. We had learned a few things about how the familiars of her world work and we needed to get that cleared up between us. We passed some Pokémon who were building something that looked like the framework for a grain silo when Dolly chuckled loudly. “It’s kind of funny really.”

“The horseshoe, I can see it dropping soon.” While my statement might not be immediately understood by Dolly, it was safe to say that Shanty, Smolder and Ocellus definitely had. “Quick question Geoff, but what does the military unit entail and what is it currently doing?”

“Well the military unit is both the entirety of our navy and infantry combined… which if it comes to war we’ll be relying on six Pokémon to protect our entire kingdom, but they are really strong Pokémon. Have you ever seen a Skitty… no wait you wouldn’t have. Did you know that you’re attractive when you’re worried? Anyway, our Military unit consists of five Skitty and a Wailord. That’s four male Skitty, the female leader of the unit and a male Wailord which is the husband of the unit’s leader named Wilhem. The Wailord Wilhelm is really our only naval unit and he’s in charge of our military when combat involves open water. Most likely to occur to the southeast of our kingdom where water Pokémon thrive. To think we can have the stuff to build ships, but no Pokémon to actually use them. Also, we’re not right next to the ocean so our navy is actually quite decent for what it is.” After pausing to look to the sky in thought, Geoff finally got something and nodded. “I forgot to tell you, the military unit commander’s name is Captain Skeeball. She’s friendly, has a lovely singing voice and is really good at negotiations, which is where she is. She hasn’t seen much combat, but she’s not a pushover from is known… though many a Pokémon who live here peacefully seem to think she’s a ditz and is incredibly random.”

“Who’s you’re kingdom’s leader?” Who apparently counted as a unit unto himself? Had to be strong to keep people like these yahoos in line.

“Evan the Eevee, really young and has no leadership qualities whatsoever. Still, right or wrong he is the good and just leader of our kingdom that hasn’t actually asked for much.” Wonder what this Evan did to earn his title? “Of course he was the only one in the kingdom to show up for the position of leadership when we needed a leader and put out feelers for someone to take control of our region, so he was put in charge immediately when we asked if he would like to be the leader and he said ‘sure thing’. I mean sure it’s a bit random to pick the first Pokémon that showed up at the castle initially looking for help, but it’s who we got. Maiden Jigglypuff is the one keeping our kingdoms economy together so she very well couldn’t take the leadership position, she’s Evan’s advisor and is not hard to understand.”

“Is this entire kingdom run by idiots by any chance?” If I think I understood the character of Wooloo by now, enough so that I know they wouldn’t lie about this.

“Yes, but we don’t mind, we really aren’t the brightest Pokémon out there… that’s more for the psychic or steel type Pokémon kingdoms thing. We’re more about those who have the heart to actually try, being a small kingdom isn’t easy.” Geoff for once wasn’t making a pass at me, color me shocked. “Though with someone like you around, we will appreciate your existence even if you aren’t going to help our kingdom. We’re just helping you to the castle because you’ll be guests, wonderful ones even considering you are great conversationalists!”

“Halt or you will rob us!” A group of four purple rat creatures and one dark furred one, all with curled tails, ran to block our path forward. We could see the castle from here, but from what Geoff said of the military… there’s likely no one coming to help us if these guys were a serious threat.

They didn’t look like much and I couldn’t take them seriously.

“By that logic, we should keep going so we don’t. So get out of our way please.” Saying this as if I were speaking to a little foal, the rats got out of the way as we passed them by. “So what were those?”

“Rattata, among the weakest of normal element type Pokémon… except the dark furred one appeared to be a normal and dark double typing variant of the same kind of Pokémon. Four male and one female, I can’t actually tell what they were going for there...” Geoff was our expert here, so were we relying on him to know what’s what? “The dark type Rattata is likely more dangerous than the other Rattata, but... he doesn’t come off as bad to me, more misguided maybe? You haven’t seen what fights in this world are like yet, but I wouldn’t want you to get hurt if that’s what they were trying there. They don’t seem the type really.”

-Dark Rattata-

“Uh, Teeth... boss… weren’t we going to rob them?” One of my minions stated.

“…” I stood there contemplating things. “Let’s move to get ahead of them again… and we’ll do it right this time!”

-Pom-

“Halt, we’ll give you all our money!” This was quickly becoming a thing with this rodent, I can already tell.

“Okay!” Shanty said with a gleeful grin while rubbing her hooves together.

-Dark Rattata named Teeth-

“Hah, see, I knew we could do it!” I said proudly.

“Boss… we just gave them our money… all of it.” One of the purple Rattata stated.

“…” It took me a moment to realize why that was a bad thing. “After them we need to try this again!”

-Pom-

“Halt, can we please have our money back?” These poor Rattata things were so confused, I slowly rolled my eyes and turned to look at Shanty.

“Don’t be cruel.” I stated succinctly.

“Fine.” Shanty grumbled while crossing her hooves over her chest. “Could be buying so much rum with that…”

We gave them their money back and continued on our merry way.

-Dark Rattata named Teeth-

“Uh…” I looked to the female cohort.

“What?” If she had something to say about how that went…

“Weren’t we going to rob them?” My female cohort gave me much to think about. “I don’t feel like doing it anymore, I mean they are really nice people… couldn’t we just ask them to help your sister?”

“After them!” I said immediately. “I’m going to do something right today or so help me…!”

-Pom-

“Halt so we can basically do untoward things to you like stealing and stuff!” We were basically outside the castle, no guards in sight.

Yep, I can only begin to guess what Arceus has in mind for us already.

“Hey again guys. We know you are doing the whole highway bandit routine, but this is getting a little old. Can we not?” They all looked sad after I said that.

“Besides why would we hurt such wonderfully bright purple Rattata like you… also you’re leader is a hunk woo!” Geoff… can you even turn off the pervert thing for a minute?

The ‘Dark Rattata’ one actually looks serious this time, that or constipated considering the amount of concentration he was probably putting into keeping his brain working correctly.

“Okay after a few false starts, I challenge all of you to a unit battle!” The Rattata stated while pointing at us. “We get all your stuff once we’re done knocking you out!”

“Let us handle this, I am Cleric Geoff and this is my unit… what are you calling yourselves anyway handsome?” At least it wasn’t directed at me as Geoff and his Wooloo took up defensive positions in front of the wagon they’ve been using to help haul our stuff. “We will fight first, then them should we fall. We want this to be 'relatively' fair.”

“Oh, thank you! You guys really are nice, instead of just piling on and pounding us into the dirt. Anyway my name is Teeth and these are my minions! I guess I’m... a brigand… maybe?” How are a bunch of rats going to fight sheep? I was feeling really sorry for Teeth here. “Why do you constantly complement me?”

“Because you look to have gathered quite a unit of good friends, I mean that one Rattata female in your group smells really nice in particular and that one looks like he could chew through anything!” The female Rattata in question blushed at Geoff’s complement and I groaned. “I’m worried about your health too, because it looks like all of you only know Scratch, Growl or Tail Whip. My team is made up of clerics trained in defense and it would be kind of bad for you if you couldn’t even hurt us and just ended up hurting yourselves trying.”

At least Geoff had one thing going for him, he was chivalrous to a ridiculous fault.

“Does that count as a charm attack, has combat started?” Teeth asked seemingly checking out mentally to think on things. “Attack them, once we’re done with them, we’ll destroy the second unit and the stupid cart they are relaxing in before taking everything, also I know the move Bite!”

Know the move Bite? Probably a curiosity of this world we don’t know anything about yet.

The five Rattata charged forward.

“Unit Command, Electro Ball Volley!” What happened next was a bit of an eye opener, as Geoff and his four companions quickly built up and then spat out large balls of raw lightning energy out of their mouths.

Teeth, having reacted far quicker than his companions by diving to the ground and covering his head with his front paws, escaped the electrical explosions.

After the glare from the explosions of energy cleared up, I just stared blankly at the four twitching and fried Rattata on the ground. Okay my assessment of the threats of this world might have, where needing to be able to do something like that was a thing, just jumped a mile from that one display.

“Whoa… I thought they were just going to… I don’t know what I thought…” Dolly said after a minute of trying to come to terms with what we just saw. “It certainly wasn’t that.”

“Whatever Dolly just said.” Followed Ocellus nodding blankly.

“We’re considered an official militia unit for a reason... we… are… so sorry that we had to do that! Can you ever forgive us for hurting you like this you poor beautiful things?!” Geoff, they are trying to rob us. They might be doing it poorly, stupidly and even unapologetically, but they are still trying. “Tend to them.”

“The fight is still on, bite!” Teeth yelled and lunged opening his mouth wide and a dark colored construct of teeth formed and moved with his biting motion.

“Protect.” Geoff stated sadly as he angled his left shoulder forward taking a defensive stance. The energy trying to assist Teeth shattered and his real teeth bounced off the barrier and made him flop onto his back. “Can we please stop now, most of your unit needs help…”

“Never, I want at least one win today!” Teeth shouted pointing a paw at Geoff.

“You’ve already won at least one thing, my compliments to your wonderful ability to keep going!” Geoff stated with conviction.

“Is this how every fight in this world is going to go?” Smolder asked.

“Hope so, because things can only possibly get much worse from here.” My statement was met with worried looks.

“Scratch!” Teeth leapt forward with a glowing paw.

“Cotton Guard.” Geoff stated calmly, his wool puffed up to double its amount in a second and the glowing claw did negligible damage to it.

After taking the hit the wool pulled in tighter and looked to create a defensive mesh like mine does.

“Take me seriously and fight back, I have something to prove here and I need to help my sister! Tail whip!” Spinning around, Teeth started slapping his tail against Geoff’s wool.

That didn’t seem to be doing any damage at all, but it did seem to be loosening the defensive quality of Geoff’s wool.

“This is nice, I don’t have to do any of the fighting for once…” Which was the only saving grace in this situation considering Geoff seemed quite competent in handling Teeth alone, whereas the rest of his unit were gently tending to the Rattata and feeding them strange large blue colored berries. “Also it seems like they know what they are doing too… surprisingly.”

Geoff suddenly started singing out of nowhere and apparently his voice was creating physical notes in the air.

“I hope this doesn’t hurt you much, I’m not one to lose my touch, with my loving peaceful heart, it was you that this fight did start~.” The sound of Geoff’s singing seemingly struck Teeth with physical force sending him skidding backwards, that even made Geoff wince as he tried to weaken his singing a bit. “Can I please appeal to your better sense, so that we may better recompense, my Round attacks aren’t too strong, but there is no way that you will last for very long~.”

Having withstood the sound based attacks Teeth growled, but didn’t look too willing to continue to pursue the fight. After taking notice of his friends conditions, he sits while looking at the ground.

“I…. I give up!” Teeth started crying, but Geoff gently walked up to him, picked him up and gently hugged him.

“You’re a wonderful being to have stood up to so much from me.” Geoff stated simply.

-Castle-

Verdant plains of grass and farms of vegetables surrounded a small two floor castle with an equally small wall, we went through the entrance and immediately solved many of our current problems.

“Hey brother what are you doing here, did you get into a fight again?” Apparently Teeth’s sister was fine. “King Evan was nice enough to help me feel all better, he was even going to help me look for you too!”

“Hello and welcome visitors to the kingdom of Aurora! I’m deeply sorry if you have had any issues with the general idiocies from any Wooloo in coming to our humble little castle.” The little brown fox was adorable, he also sounded like a child. At least he was a fairly intelligent one… and he was looking at me. “There’s something about you that I like!”

239. Aurora's troubles.

-Aurora Kingdom Castle, Pom-

“Again I am sorry about the Wooloo, but I can’t do anything about them being perverts. Just be glad you’re only dealing with just five of them and not their entire flock like I have to.” King Evan, I wish I could just deal with one at the best of times. “Also be glad that they won’t touch you unless you explicitly give them the okay to do so or they are attempting to rescue you from something.”

“It’s okay our most fluffy and venerable kindest of kings!” Geoff was still going at anything that so much as moves with an endless stream of honest affectations, his unit companions even wolf whistled at their king. “Also we appreciate personal space… except when within our flock, personal space is for the weak there and everyone cuddles!”

“Thank you for telling me that King Evan, I’ll keep that mind.” Something to be thankful for, Wooloo are thankfully the ‘look and never touch unless expressly given the go ahead’ kind of pervert. “So… now what?”

We kind of invited ourselves in and sat down for drinks and some snacks without as much as a ‘how do you do’. King Evan simply accepted us being here without question, most likely my presence was to blame for his amiable feelings towards us considering the number of problems I noted with the castle having traveled across the plains to get here from the mountain valley.

For one it was quite sorely... understaffed.

“Well we shared snacks and drinks with you with our admittedly low resources already, but I guess we never went over things." King Evan seemed to be as enamored with me as when we first arrived, at least he wasn’t crawling into my lap and asking for pets... not yet at least. The little fox was quite cute though.

“Like who they even are in the first place?! They just kind of waltzed on in with our ‘militia unit’, ugh, I can’t even say it without the air quotes!" The one currently speaking was Maiden Jigglypuff, the advisor to the king was wearing a straw hat with a pink bow on it. She looked like a round pink balloon with some styled fluff, big expressive eyes, along with tiny feet and arms with no digits. She also seems to inflate like a balloon when angry or exasperated. “They come on in and you’re first instinctive reaction of seeing the white woolly female that resembles an oddly proportioned Wooloo was that you liked her, just on sight alone. You bade, no practically begged, her group to have snacks with you! You didn’t even talk much when you were having snacks, aside from getting complaints about the Wooloo constantly hitting on everything. Which seems to be the only thing in this country that seems functionally normal as our kingdom of normal types wouldn't imply! Also, need I remind you that you used some of our limited medical supplies on Ms. Talia, our country is being bullied by fighting types from the north who may or may not be from Pugilis and goodness knows what’s taking Captain Skeeball so long in making sure our alliance down south is secure!”

“My name is Pom Lambchop. I guess we’re simply travelers at the moment, we’ve been on a protracted adventures of surviving life and limb situations that I wish I could get away from.” There was an awkward silence following my words. “This place seems to be missing a lot…”

“If it seems that way to you, then it really is quite obvious to even outsiders with no functional knowledge of our country!” Maiden Jigglypuff seems to be inflating out of exasperation. “How am I supposed to work under these conditions?! I know it’s not your fault that we’re kind of in dire straits here King Evan, but we really need any help to fix things before they become a spiral we can’t actually get out of.”

“Exasperation or anger?” I quickly asked Ocellus.

“More towards exasperation.” Well that explains why Ocellus isn’t leaning away from her. “I’m Ocellus by the way. Also, we don’t know anything about this kingdom or Pokémon in general.”

“My name is being Shanty.” Shanty offered up over a bottle of strange fermented blue fruit rum.

“I’m Smolder and our companion here is Dolly.” Smolder introduced Dolly, because the ‘normal’ people that weren’t some form of canine or canid might not understand Dolly.

“Yep, Dolly D. Dalmatian.” Dolly said conversationally, she seemed really curious about all the Pokémon and she wasn’t the only one. Maiden Jigglypuff was a weird looking one compared to Evan being a fox and Geoff being a sheep.

“Does that one not know how to speak?” Maiden Jigglypuff asked in an honestly worried tone.

“She was speaking just fine to me.” Which meant that while Evan understood Dolly, Maiden Jigglypuff did not.

“She’s functionally only able to be understood by those who speak in barks, which I do.” My answer was swift and to the point. “Since we’re here already, can I ask if you know a place where we can stay?”

“You can stay here with us! All of you, even the Rattata that tried to rob you are welcome!” Evan’s tail was wagging and he was very much excited to have a slumber party, the poor young thing didn’t seem to have many friends after becoming king of this castle. “Is you’re brother okay with being hired Talia?”

“I don’t know about my brother, but even if he and his unit won’t. I will want to be hired regardless of what you can pay me!” Talia was a pinkish purple Rattata and seemed enthusiastic about joining. “I also want you to thank you for bringing me here and bringing me back to health, you also fed me when you didn’t have to too! You’re kindness when you don’t have much going for yourself is an inspiration King Evan!”

According to Geoff, Evan has only been king for about a week or two. I had a number of questions about what was going on in this kingdom and why Arceus wanted us to be here. It appears we arrived in the morning while Geoff went out to gather food with his unit and the traveling from the mountain valley, with the short battle with Teeth’s brigand unit, had eaten up most of our day.

“What say you?” Evan turned to me expectantly, it wasn’t like we had anywhere else to go for the time being and Arceus pretty much set this is motion.

I hoped to hear from you soon Tianhuo...

“We’re only staying for a short while, don’t expect us to become permanent residents here if you’re willing to house us.” The guy seemed very much willing to house us, even if we were just going to be guests. “In fact, I think you’d be letting us stay at a cost yourself.”

“Okay!” Evan stated immediately with his ears perked up and Maiden Jigglypuff sighed audibly while dragging her limbs slowly down her face.

This two floor castle was notably absent of life or much in the way of interior decorations, because we entered and the first thing we saw was Evan sitting on a small cushion in the middle of the room from the entryway of the castle. The cushion wasn’t even an opulent one, it seemed like Evan was used to the simpler things in life.

“I want to know a few things about this kingdom, what happened to it?” That was my main question.

“What hasn’t happened to it? I’m in a long line of Maidens trained to assist the king and keep the kingdom running smoothly. I’m the current Maiden Jigglypuff, but you can call me Jig… it’s what Evan does. I hope to eventually become Maiden Wigglytuff of this kingdom.” Maiden Jigglypuff didn’t seem happy with 'Jig', but she looked like she was willing to tolerate it. “I was trained by the last Maiden who watched over the smaller details in the kingdom, I’m from a long line of maidens trained to at least keep things functioning if we lose a king. Unfortunately the last king just left us in a lurch, it was an Aipom that didn’t have the heart to actually build the kingdom and was mostly going through the motions after the previous king put the kingdom in their paws. I was left running things by myself for a month after they left. We needed a new normal type king to sit the throne, because that isn’t in my job description. Evan was the best choice we got since he showed up and actually said yes, like him everyone else was either looking for help or were just civilian Pokémon asking about current trade goods and kingdom trends surrounding us.”

“I didn’t do it for noble reasons though, I was originally one of those who came to this castle looking for help only to find a beleaguered maiden begging for a king to lead the normal types.” Evan’s ears wilted. “I became king because I required the help and in doing so managed to fulfill my needs selfishly with the coffers of the kingdom. However, I do not intend to leave my duty until I’ve paid this kingdom back three fold for giving me the aid I sorely needed by becoming it’s king until otherwise deposed. I actually want to be worthy of this position, even if I may not be the physically best Pokémon for it.”

“That’s just it, it’s not always the strongest or the brightest Pokémon that are the best fit. Traditionally speaking, you are perfect for the position of Aurora Kingdom’s king. The king that best suits this region is and has always been one with the ability to put their very heart into the kingdom and I will not say that you aren’t trying, you’re just not… used to being in a leadership role yet.” Well Maiden Jig, I could probably lend some aid in that direction considering I knew leaders like the emperor longma family and Dragon Lord Ember. There was also Twilight Sparkle and other rulers of whom I’ve met in passing. “It's a very frustrating position for me to be put in considering the late Maiden I’ve taken over for was someone who was keeping the entire kingdom’s populace in order.”

“Can we go over each issue in order of most dire to least?” I asked and drew the attention of my friends and family, they were eyeing me smugly like they knew where this was going.

“The direst would be the Riolu and Lucario raiders, usually Riolu and Lucario are Pokémon who lean more towards heroics and are very much less likely to pick on the weak. There’s even legends of a heroic rescue team built by a Riolu that became a mighty Lucario on the far side of the planet where Mystery Dungeons are said to dwell in many places, thankfully there are no mystery dungeons on this side of the planet and we don’t have to actually deal with those ridiculous mazes. These villainous acts means something is seriously wrong and that they are being perpetrated by what should be good and noble fighting type Pokémon means we are at a grave disadvantage should we try to fight back.” When you say disadvantage Jig, it brings to mind quite literally being incapable of fighting them for some reason.

“Normal type Pokémon are weak to fighting types, it’s one of the few major weaknesses we have.” Geoff stated as he finally spoke up. “All those rippling muscles, the sweat on their brows, the ability to move mountains with their raw strengths… oh my goodness their women are also super hunky in Pugilis too! So much strength and beautiful passion… I could watch them flex all day...”

Ugh, Geoff was drooling and off in his own little world now with his four Wooloo companions.

“What’s Pugilis?” Ocellus asked, that’s when Jig rolled out a map of the world once again revealing the shape of Arceus in the form of an entire freaking continent.

“This is the region of Ransei. This here is the entirety of the Kingdom of Aurora. We’re quite small in comparison to the surrounding kingdoms. We’re also known as kingdom of dawn, our country is always said to rise from even the most ignoble of states to be stronger than those that immediately surround us. Our kingdom has done it before with barely two Poké, the currency of our world, to scrape together.” Jig was finally catching on to the fact that we knew absolutely nothing of this world and apparently the money we temporarily got from Teeth’s unit was what Poké was. She looked like she would start making an effort to educate us on the world we found ourselves in. “In any case we’re a kingdom of normal type Pokémon. To the northeast is the kingdom of Ignis the where fiery fire type Pokémon gather. To the south is Fontaine, the kingdom of water type Pokémon. To our west in the Greenleaf Kingdom, the kingdom of Grass type Pokémon. To the north of Ignis is Pugilis where fighting type Pokémon reign and the strongest is usually the leader of those lands. Strength does not always lead to greatness or mean that the leaders are of great character though. Ignis seems to be ignoring our plight and are letting these raiders through.”

“I’ve noticed something, Geoff said there were eighteen kingdoms.” Good eye Smolder.

“That’s because the eighteenth kingdom is Titania, the kingdom of Fairy type Pokémon. It’s hard to plot on a map because they are tricky about keeping their kingdom’s location hidden. Their kingdom is the one most steeped in mystery and it scares the dragon type kingdom of Dragnor.” Clearing her throat, Jig continued on as I took note of Dragnor in the far north eastern part of the continent far from us at the crown of the Arceus continent’s head. “Next problem down from there is that we sent our one lone military unit to Fontaine for diplomatic relations and they haven’t returned yet, something is definitely going on down south that is keeping Captain Skeeball from returning. She’s the only military unit that we have that will work for basically nothing what with the upheaval from not having a king. While she may seem a little unusual, Skeeball is without a doubt the most loyal to the people of the kingdom of Aurora. Though she would be at a disadvantage against the Riolu Raiders, she would still put up quite an impressive fight and might even win an impossible victory for us that we sorely need to remind the world we aren’t pushovers. Even if we may not like the Wooloo, it would be a slaughter to send our only militia against those raiders which number about four full units worth of Pokémon. We don’t have the numbers to even handle one unit because of the disadvantages normal types have to fighting types. Ignis has a lot to answer for in failing our peace treaty, but we can’t even bring them to task. We’d need more Pokémon units to do that, which is why Captain Skeeball went south to ask for help from Fontaine. The water types have an advantage over the fire type Pokémon, they also have the best navy around and they can aid in getting Ignis to stop ignoring our pleas. This is all putting us between a rock type and a hard place where the rock type is continually pummeling us into the side of a mountain, the mountain being less likely to give in before we do.”

I’m beginning to see all the issues and how they were stacking up to completely crush the Aurora kingdom's will to continue existing.

The smallest issue was the one that was drawing my attention, I motioned for Shanty to ask the question and Shanty looked a little curious at first, but she looked to the west of Aurora and thought of something.

Shanty, I think, just realized that this was an opportunity to learn larger scale leadership than what I could teach, something a worldly pirate captain might need to know.

“What does Greenleaf be doing during all this?” Shanty would need to learn to learn the political landscape and situation of any given country she visited back on Equus should we make it there.

“Now that, I do know since I used to live a little west of the castle and some of my friends growing up were grass type Pokémon! Greenleaf seems to be eyeing things and preparing for trouble in their own way.” Evan brightened up and his smile could light an entire room in an instant as much as his wagging tail or his adorable fox like fluff bristled with excitement. “Aurora has plenty of medical supplies in two areas. The first is the oran berries which will heal minor wounds when eaten, they are also tasty and nutritious to everything. The very existence of the fruit is that it is a gift that anyone can eat from the great lord Arceus that gave birth to all Pokémon, the fruits are the most commonly known worldwide! The second berry we grow here in large quantities is the pecha berry, a berry that will cure you if you are poisoned by a variety of Pokémon that can do attacks to that effect. It will literally and quickly deal with any poison upon consumption, which is helpful when we’re next door to three kingdoms who all have semi poison type Pokémon within their borders. However berries neither will heal serious major wounds, except over time of continually eating oran berries for meals, nor can we cure the more esoteric sicknesses that will pop up with pecha berries as they are exclusively a cure to poisoning. That is where the herbs of Greenleaf come in, Greenleaf is a major purveyor of medicinal plants of all kinds and we used some of those plants to deal with a sickness that was hurting Talia quite badly.”

“Now we’re low on Greenleaf medicinal supplies, but with the attacks from the north and the lack of Pokémon power we’re not able to send anyone to pick up more. It won’t be long before plagues start sweeping our kingdom unless we can distribute medicines to the locals.” Jig seemed really upset about that and maybe that was something we could do in the small scale that won’t run us into immediate danger. “The only thing that seems to be going correctly is the funding, but finding Pokémon willing to fight for very little is hard to come…”

“I am Jiri, I wish to make a unit and support my kingdom!” It was what Geoff called a Buneary, she looked like a small and weak brown furred rabbit with thick wooly covering of fluff around her waist and legs and at the tip of her ears.

“By…” Finished Maiden Jig lamely. “Do you have a unit you can field already or are you just by yourself?”

“By myself ma’am, king!” Jiri seemed like a livewire of energy, despite being by herself she didn’t seem put off by the prospect of taking on a full unit of six Pokémon by herself. Not that Aurora was fielding a full six Pokémon unit unless Talia convinced her brother Teeth to work for King Evan. Going to be honest, the Rattata really didn’t seem like much and King Evan looked to be jumping at any chance to get support moving forward.

“You do realize we can’t pay you much.” Maiden Jig stated.

“Don’t care, I know you helped that Rattata out! I’m not letting another good king’s heart fall into despair if I can help it. Give me a mission, any mission, I’m good for it!” Jiri seemed willing, but she didn’t look capable. “I’ll see it completed even if I have to do it alone!”

“Well okay then, we do have a Miltank run you can do.” It seems Evan was willing to trust the Jiri. “All you need to do is head to Greenleaf tomorrow to order and pick up supplies, you can’t do that now because it’s too late and will be too dark to be traveling.”

“Can we go with her?” I ask, because it seems simple enough.

If this kingdom really needed those supplies, then we could absolutely ensure it gets them.

“I wouldn’t mind a little company for my first mission out for this kingdom…” Jiri stated shyly pawing at both her ears.

“We can’t very well send the Wooloo milita out to do this Jig.” Evan stated to Maiden Jig, Jig was busy eyeing Jiri up and down. We were all outright ignoring the praises coming from Geoff and his Wooloo companions were singing for how beautiful Jiri was and would become, they were also praising her for her bravery. “We can send just Geoff with her and keep the rest of the militia on standby perhaps?”

“Right, that’ll work. I have a question for Jiri before we can even begin to think of sending her off in the morning with our… strange travelers and that thrice damned Geoff! Since the medical supplies cannot be ignored under any circumstances.” Maiden Jig side eyed us as we weren’t doing much here. “If Talia actually gets her brother Teeth to accept being a unit of this kingdom with promise of pay when we can afford to at a later date, then they will be our only military unit and I do not want to leave this kingdom in the paws of a bunch of Rattata. I will be seeing to their training as a functional unit whether it kills me or not if they choose to sign up for this downhill experience.”

“I do, you helped my sister, my minions and I owe you a lot!” Teeth stated with his head raised.

“See, don’t be so dour Jig. Things are actually starting to look up and we’re gaining both traction and support.” Evan stated with an honest optimism.

“Yeah, not nearly fast enough for my tastes, given how quickly our last regime fell apart. That and we’re being beaten down by Riolu and Lucario.” Jig stated sourly. “Not many normal types are willing to get in front of four full units of fighting types working together like that.”

“I’d fight them even if it would leave me a bloody pulp!” Jiri shouted loudly and bravely with her fists on her hips.

“Which brings me to my question… do you even have a title to form the basis of a unit around? I’m Maiden of course even if my unit is administrative related. Evan has King, which can be both combat and administrative. Even Geoff, begrudgingly enough, has Cleric and goodness knows how Skeeball got the ‘Captain’ designation before she even met her husband.” Maiden Jig stopped and shivered violently. “The less said about Captain Skeeball’s antics the better, you’ll know what I’m talking about if you ever meet her. Even Teeth has a title… though Brigand is not exactly that noble or great a title, I’m willing to accept even that with how things are going.”

“I’ll make it a worthy title boss, least I can do for you helping out my sister!” Teeth stated to Evan and he nodded back to the Rattata in acknowledgement.

“… It’s kind of embarrassing… I don’t think it fits me personally.” Where there once was exuberance there was now a little bit of shyness. “I’m... Dragoon Jiri.”

“How…” Maiden Jig seemed to have a twitching eye problem. “Does someone like you have that title?! Our strange visitors being travelers is understandable, but Dragoon!? You don’t even have a spear!”

“I can always get one… eventually…” Jiri the bipedal bunny idly twiddled her paws.

“Fine.” Maiden Jig sighed in an insufferable manner.

Author's Note

Still haven't heard the Pokémon game this is taking from primarily in the comments so I can finally put it in the world list, but 'Ransei Region' is the clue that should get someone to say it eventually.

I'm sure several of you already know the game this is taking from already and where some of this is likely going, but only 'some' of what's going to happen given the arcs name.

Also Pokémon can wear armor or actively wield weapons, it's going to be a requirement for them to do so at some point.

Aurora Kingdom Stats.

Pro: Has a decent, if highly lazy, civilian population.

The kingdom has excellent food production with exceedingly fertile plains.

Oran Berry and Pecha Berry production are expected in every kingdom in differing amounts, but Aurora specifically specializes in them on top of their food production which fits with the theme of 'normal' the kingdom has going for it.

Con: What the kingdom usually lacks is a big military or tends to go through a slew of only half baked leaders.

Leaders of this country in general are never the smartest or even the strongest.

Aurora Kingdom doesn't have much money to spend on anything other than what is practical.

Is small in landmass and is surrounded by three larger kingdoms.

As some of you may have rightly surmised, Evan can't actually evolve as long as he is the leader of Aurora. If a 'normal type' takes the throne, but it's evolution would cease it's required typing, then it will cease being able to evolve as long as it holds that throne.

Titles will have some importance on the moves that Pokémon tend towards learning and using in battles, can also sometimes be based on the Pokémon's temperament. 'Cleric' Geoff is the first example for having defensive abilities resembling giving others sanctuary, singing 'Round' for sermons and 'electro ball' to mildly smite aggressive Pokémon.

Also yes, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon gets a passing mention and Arceus gave Pom an interdimensional 'god level' cell phone based on Legends: Arceus.

This will be a complicated undertaking to write and I'm nearing the one million mark again.

240. Communicating.

-Equus, Ponyville, Twilight Sparkle-

“Please, stop ruining my week Jaded… now what was the thing you received from that god Arceus?” I turned from the nuisance of an Abyssinian I was hiring to help out with a variety of things, to the longma Tianhuo who was training my guards and is on loan until either ‘the lost’ return or the Tambelon mission happens.

Apparently Tianhuo had something important to show me and I wanted to get away from the Canterlot nobles for a bit.

“Jiutian is not telling me why I need to hold onto this and I don’t know who Arceus is, but I was wondering if you can identify what this object could possibly…” The moment Tianhuo showed it to me, I knew what it was. Why would a ‘god’ be sending it to her though?

“I know what that is! It’s a cell phone…” It was kind of hard to look directly at with how much power was in it. I was going to have to ask Sunset about this, but apparently a god sent it and the longma goddess Jiutian confirmed its intent to not be of negative connotations at the very least. It wouldn’t be in Tianhuo’s hooves otherwise. “Did you receive any information on how to use it?”

“Just that we needed to wait half a day before using it and that has almost happened.” Well that would explain the power it was giving off Tianhuo, it was like the mirror portal and needed energy to work. “What is a cell phone?”

“Well… it’s a device that can connect two people across vast distances.” With the kind of power this cell phone was giving off? Across dimensions likely, but who is this Arceus and why would he want to talk to Tianhuo or maybe… maybe it wasn’t Arceus we would be talking to. “It’s important that you don’t lose it, also make sure it isn’t stolen or taken by anyone, keep it on you at all times!”

“We will make sure to keep this device within our grasps, but what of activating it?” Fœnum Tianhuo was hard to tell apart from our world’s Tianhuo, the only difference between them seems to be that one is a vegetarian by choice.

“It’s almost done charging apparently and we’ll be able to activate it soon to see if I’m right.” If I had to guess, I’d say ‘The Lost’ are currently still alive and found a way to get communications back to us. “I think we might be able to talk to Pom with this if I’m right… but the question is, what did it cost them to get this to us if it is them that sent it?”

“Truly?” Equus Tianhuo’s eyes lit up with an active blaze of passion, a pink mass poked itself out of Tianhuo’s shadow making curious whining noises. “It is okay Blighter, just something that may be good news.”

All the Canis Minor next to the table stopped eating in unison and were suddenly alert and looking at the device like hawks. All four of them sniffed the air and from what I could guess, they were committing the smell to memory. Somebody would have to be a complete idiot to try and steal the device with Canis Minor actively defending it.

-Aurora Kingdom Castle, first floor guest room, late evening, Pom-

We were off in a corner of the room by ourselves. Dolly just finished drinking some water and lays down next to me. She suddenly seemed to have realized something when she sat up and turned to look at me in a panic. She just ate and it was probably on her mind, so I could guess what she was about to ask.

“Uh… Pom… where are we going to get more kibble?!” It was about time Dolly thought of that, this world doesn’t seem to be a highly technological civilization.

In fact the technology level of this world seemed fairly low tech, to the point there wasn’t likely anything within miles of us that could be considered high tech. Yet this world could still be invaded by Digimon? Call me curious where that was going to happen, because this world looked to be below Equus as far as technology level was taken into consideration.

“Dolly, it’s okay, I’ll take care of you.” I would too, she was definitely my responsibility now with the blessing of her parents and I wouldn’t leave family in the lurch. “As long as you are with me, you know you don’t have to worry about food or water. I will see to your needs and it’s not that big an issue Dolly, I’ll be doing a lot of unique nutritional cooking for you. If you want to remain independently sufficient of me in an emergency, we’ll work on foraging and survival training together.”

“You obviously haven’t seen me after I’ve gone a week without kibble.” Dolly rolled her eyes and put her left paw over her face. “I don’t want to have to rely on you for everything, I’m not going to be some burden you have to treat like royalty. I already got enough of that from my neighbor Clarissa Corgi rubbing her pet Hugo into my family’s faces. She was a prissy stuck up snob that has a silver spoon shoved so far into her mouth that it was practically coming out her backside! I want to at least be capable of taking care of myself somewhat… so yeah, foraging and survival training, sounds fun.”

“At least you’ll live…” I sighed sadly, making Dolly sit up with worry while looking at me. She knew exactly what I meant. “Come on, lay back down... we have some things to talk about.”

“I know…” Here Dolly looked a little uneasy as she laid down on her back and idly rubbed at her right shoulder while not looking in my direction.

I carefully rolled and repositioned myself, slowly slid my left hoof up under Dolly’s torso. My right went over and slowly pulled her into a gentle hug, she titled her head to put her nose against my chin and I felt her flick her tongue out at my face. It made me giggle a bit.

“It still hurts doesn’t it… the worst we can do is forget. Never forget, I know what it feels like to die too.” Something even I knew what felt like, even if I wasn’t conscious for that particular moment, I had nearly died a dozen times before then. The realization of having a broken familiar bond that didn’t look like it could be rebuilt still hit me like a ton of bricks. “I can forgive many a thing, but I will never forget the pain Dolly. Pain can teach us a lot of things in life, this is not new to you considering how you lost a mother at a young age.”

“Is it true… that your heart didn’t actually stop when it happened?” Dolly was asking about the strange phenomena that had happened while my body was vacant of my active mind back in Basemax. That was while she and my friends were up in space defeating decidedly tyrannical lizards.

“No… my heart didn’t stop. If anything… it actually sped up to a point that it looked like it stopped on the heart monitor and my body probably was in a state where it was going to die as it absorbed the shocks. It’d still be akin to me having a heart attack.” Which was terrifying, since I was now too afraid to actually use my Dancing Flame technique. My heartbeat wasn’t going out of control and my body might have finished adapting to do it, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep it under control if I started using it again. A part of me had to have been conscious for that given the way my head tilted in the recording.

I wasn’t about to give up my recently returned good health so soon for anything if I could help it. Arceus healed me to where I would have been had I been given all the time in the world to recover fully from my mostly self-inflicted injuries.

I felt great, but for how long would that last? This world seemed quiet, but after seeing what Geoff and his unit was capable of, the horseshoe was going to drop soon and we would have to be ready for it.

I mentally looked at the frayed edges of many bonds, most of them torn, but capable of being rebuilt. One familiar bond thread… was just sitting there completely destroyed.

Dormarch gave us whatever he had. We don’t know what that meant as Digimon apparently thrived on the bonds they had to their partners, Dormarch could literally take my feelings and wishes to turn them into personal strength according to the Digivice.

I wished I was around to give him that needed strength to survive. Feeling a tug, I felt Dolly looking at what I was mentally, the many bonds that were tentatively waiting for reconnection.

“All of them are my family now too huh…” Dolly did mentally pull away when I started to rub her belly, she sighed happily and relaxed in my grip. “You’re too fluffy and soft for your own good you know.”

“Well aware, but people like me being fluffy and soft. I also think you enjoy being coddled a little.” Not that I would do this too much though, especially if Dolly wanted to keep an independent streak going.

Still, Dolly knew she had to depend on me at the very least for necessities and I do enjoy taking care of others.

“Just don’t expect me to not try and return the love a little when you do this Pom.” Dolly stated lazily as she rolled and gripped me with her legs in a full body hug and nosed my fluff in a needy fashion.

“So, familiars of your world have a unique quirk that mine doesn’t…” All the familiars I’ve ever had stuck to the two way street. I can give energy to my familiars, I can take their pain unto myself and there is the small things that we give each other upon initial bonding.

“The ability to share our strengths… and weaknesses.” Dolly intoned while looking at me, her ears flopping onto my chest as I rolled onto my back. It was more than that, she once helped get control of the uncontrolled Dancing Flame state with what amounts to a mental twitch.

“You’re ignoring the part where we can quite literally control or command one another depending on the circumstances.” I said out loud, it was quite upsetting to know that I had that kind of power over Dolly.

It was the one odd thing about familiars of Dolly’s world, the aspect at least was within reason. It’s not like Dolly could immediately steal control of all my organs or something for asking her to pick up something for me.

“Not… ignoring it entirely… as being a thing that is. It’s just that I don’t see a reason to worry about it too much. We know each other way too well to really abuse it… except trying to save each other in dire circumstances and trying to make the other run.” It explained why Dolly and I can give our unique abilities to one another with varying levels of success. “Besides, we can’t do it maliciously… Right?”

Dolly can bark blast, magic wolf claw, bark breaker and possibly even do Dancing Flame if I were to give her access to my capabilities. In turn she can give me flow-motion, the ‘Aero’ spell and momentum control, not sure I’d actually want to use ‘haste’ though.

“There’s still a lot of bad things that we can do without malicious intent Dolly.” I carefully rolled Dolly so that her forehead met mine and I gave her all my anxiety, worries and even the many scenarios where such a thing could go horribly, horribly wrong. “There’s still ways we can hurt one another through it and I’ll give you a quick rundown mentally. Close your eyes and let me in to give you the footnotes.”

“Oh… whoa… yeah okay, that’s why you’re kind of the brains here.” Dolly you were many things, but stupid was not one of them. Being stupid is something I was only going to allow as long as it was harmless to everyone we cared about. “Can that… can that really happen to you… to us?”

I raised brow at Dolly as we kept our foreheads pressed together.

“…” Dolly licked my cheek in reassurance and then rested her face against mine her cute floppy ears tickling my nose, we silently communicated with one another as I held her close. “You know, you could slow down on the whole active imagination thing. Your mind is acting like it’s running a mile a minute.”

“I intend to avoid directly going to war, when one inevitably starts, to the best of my abilities.” I didn’t think we could avoid seeing the start of one on this continent.

I was already recognizing the signs of a veritable powder keg, a possible spark that sets things off might be as innocuous as someone coughing lightly in the wrong direction.

-Shanty-

I sat in a different corner of the room looking over my scythe cane, I also be taking glances at Pom and Dolly.

I looked towards the metal egg that is being Dodo, not much be going on with him and I not be knowing how to speed along his progress. I just be taking up the egg and holding it close.

“Those two be sweeter than the sweetest dessert I can ever possibly be eating.” It be a bit sad of me to say that I was mildly jealous of the warmth the two were sharing. They had a lot of comforting between them, but it is being very understandable why they be needing it.

Dolly first be leaving her home behind, then she be leaving her world and family behind without the ability to contact them and she recently be losing family in Dormarch. Though it seems like Dolly may not look it, she be absolutely needing Pom to comfort her.

“Yeah, but I’m sure you understand what home means to Dolly and what it’s like for her to travel beyond to continue helping us. Her home is with Pom now...” Ocellus put a hoof around me and I leaned in to the comforting touch. “What do you think Pom was trying to teach you when she signaled for you to ask about the western kingdom?”

“That I be needing to pay attention to the things others might miss, both being the big and small pictures.” Pirates were entrenched in politics whether between themselves or others, Pom is still being a great teacher.

“Yeah, Pom must have some reason for not wanting to directly go after the Riolu or Lucario guys or deal with the northeastern kingdom of Ignis letting those raiders through unopposed. That would solve an overall major problem.” Smolder be only seeing the small picture, I think Pom be seeing the bigger one at play here and I not be knowing what information she had.

“Pom could also have let us head down south to find and check on that Captain Skeeball person.” Ocellus stated a second after also in thought. “In fact, it seems like she’s expecting fighting to be already happening in both places. I can understand why we’re not going diplomatically at least, but south is an allied kingdom to Aurora from what we’ve been told.”

Yes, but what about things we don’t be knowing or haven’t been told?

“So then we must be asking, what is being so special about the kingdom to the west that has Pom’s attention? Aside from the fact that it be neither helping nor hindering this kingdom? In fact, didn’t King Evan state he be having friends in that direction? If he has friends there, then why are they not helping Aurora with these problems?” That is being a most suspect thing in and of itself and Pom has notably been great at determining things from a number of unusual details before. “I think Pom might be avoiding a fight too, though she may be seeing something bigger that we haven’t. Also we can’t just be leaving everything to Pom.”

“Pom wants more information from a safer place at the most, the western kingdom doesn’t seem to be doing anything aside from the export and sales of medicines.” Ocellus be looking at Smolder and me with a thoughtful frown. “It seems like the safest bet for finding information quietly and we can see things from the neighboring kingdoms perspectives. Also, you’re right Shanty, we do need to take some of that pressure to keep us safe and perform off of Pom.”

“WAHH!” We all jumped and watched as Jiri slammed through paper and wood door frame to slap face first into the floor. “I’m… okay…”

“Say Jiri, where do you come from?” Ocellus be doing something that had a lightbulb going off in my head.

“I come from Aurora Kingdom’s southeastern underground warrens, the Wooloo flock lives to the west of my home among the Tauros, Miltank and Boufallant. They are usually south of the castle here.” As Jiri spoke, Pom and Dolly came over to us. Pom seemed interested in Jiri. “If you ask me, I think the normal type Pokémon are too set into the farming lives and we need more heroes, like a rescue team!”

We be listening to Jiri talk about rescue teams and their vague importance elsewhere on this world.

“What would you see as your worst quality?” We be eyeing Pom for that question.

“Ulp… well… I don’t want to say this… but in the efforts of friendship I’m… rather clumsy. An accident is how I got stuck with the ‘Dragoon’ title when I knocked out a Dragapult that was causing trouble. No actual heroics were done by me if anyone tries to talk me up.” One would be wondering about the story of how you got the title more after that Jiri. “I wouldn’t mind becoming a hero, I guess I’ll even get my chance tomorrow to show that I’m of good character. Even if all they are asking me to do is pick up and move supplies. It’ll at least be for the good of the kingdom right? The kingdom needs more active Pokémon at the very least.”

“What are fighting type Pokémon usually like?” Pom was getting a lot of information for very little in the way of questions.

“Well, they can be of any personality like the rest of us, but in general fighting is the life blood of most fighting type Pokémon. Challenge them in any given way and you’ll have no end to those wanting to test their mettle in a spar. Whether the spar is a battle of wits or of pure muscle, it matters little to a fighting type.” They be sounding like my kind of people to meet in a bar Jiri, mostly to do the ‘La Perm’ technique of throwing a stool one foot. “They tend to be too honorable or downright aggressive, in any case expect them to always have a decent or even great control of their bodies with primarily melee focused moves.”

“Moves, I’ve heard the term before, but can you explain it as if we were complete idiots and didn’t know anything of this world?” Ocellus decided to beat Pom to the punch this time.

“Moves are a variety of things that Pokémon can do. Usually in the vein of offense, defense and utility that can alter a battlefield, effect the user positively or an opponent negatively.” We were all being willing listeners Jiri.

“What moves do you have?” Smolder brought up.

“A normal type, a fighting type, a fairy type and… well the flying type is my worst move and how the Dragapult incident happened, but it would be so helpful against fighting type Pokémon if I could aim it correctly.” We stared at Jiri uncomprehendingly long enough for her to realize why we be doing so. “Oh… right! My normal type move is Quick Attack, it makes a Pokémon gain an incredibly short lived burst of speed to get in close and hit an opponent. My fighting type move is Drain Punch, when used my paws will glow brightly and if I land a hit with them, it will injure my opponent and heal myself compared to the injury I deal. My fairy type move is called Play Rough, I quickly and volatilely do as the attack suggests by becoming childishly rough and tumble for a bit. As for my last move… it’s called Bounce and it allows me to jump ridiculously high and then hit an opponent with the full weight of my body striking down on them before I ‘bounce’ off.”

“…” Pom glanced at us and we didn’t get much of that either. “Well that sounded interesting and all, I take it the elements are important?”

“Yeah, every move has an element associated with it which determines how hard our attacks will hit based on the type of Pokémon they are hitting. Some Pokémon can become outright immune to certain types of attacks, like normal types are known for being immune to ghost type attacks, but ghost types are also immune to normal type attacks.” We would be spending the next minute or so learning about the intricacies of same type attack bonuses and what the elements would do to other Pokémon. Fighting types like Riolu were weak to flying, fairy and psychic type attacks, but the evolved form of Lucario had metal type added on to their fighting type. This made Lucario ironically weak to fighting type attacks, along with ground and fire type attacks. “As you can already guess, it’s a bit complicated to keep straight. Just be wary of what a Pokémon can do if you pick a fight. I’ll just… take that corner over there, I can’t wait to go on that mission tomorrow morning!”

As Jiri went to set up for bed, we all heard the sound of something beeping loudly. Pom quickly made her way over the bag and quickly pulled out the device Arceus gave her and saw a hoof print on the screen.

Looking at the rest of us, Pom be quietly pressing that hoof print with anticipation with us all looking over her shoulder.

-Pom-

The device glowed brightly and before I knew it I was looking at image of Tianhuo floating above the device.

We both flinched and then blinked at one another.

“Tian… Tian?!” My heart wanted this to be real.

“Pom?! I assume those are Smolder, Ocellus and… Shanty?” Tianhuo’s attention was brought to Dolly when she barked a greeting with a wagging tail. Tianhuo sighed and shook her head with a bright knowing smile. “I am glad to know you are safe and that you are looking healthy.”

That’s when four puppies popped in the air and they were barking a variety of things at me.

“Baa-baa! Is Baa-Baa okay!?” My god puppies, they definitely haven’t forgotten me and they were safe with Tianhuo. Being able to hear and see them, with them being able to do so in turn was making me feel so very happy.

“Those are your god puppies? They’re adorable!” Dolly seemed happy to make their acquaintance. “Hey I’m Dolly, I’m looking out for your Baa-Baa!”

“Need you Baa-Baa!” My poor god puppies. One looked at Dolly. “Is 'pretty' family?”

“Pretty?” Dolly, despite not taking much pride in her appearance, still blushed.

“How long do we have?” Tianhuo brought my attention back to her.

The answer was ten minutes, nowhere near enough.

Author's Note

Pokémon Conquest was a somewhat hard game for me to beat.

The plot of the actual game matters little in the context of this story though. (The plot of which is basically conquer 17 kingdoms worth of Pokémon with skill and strategy as a warlord and ultimately get a chance to summon, fight and even connect with Arceus in a legendary boss battle.)

Added: Pokémon Conquest (Dynasty Warriors Style) to the world list.

241. Crossing the Rubicon.

-Canterlot Castle, Fizzle-

“So we can’t bring them directly home and are starting preparations for Tambelon.” We’re going to need all the help we can get with facing Grogar. “Goddesses help us all… we’re going to need the most competent team we can make!”

“We intend to at least.” Cadence stated with a nod, Twilight was also wanted the best and brightest on this. The Fœnum Fighters were definitely among those who were competent, but safely getting in and out of Tambelon were entirely different problems.

I didn’t think for a second it would be a smooth ten minute transition of picking up Pom’s group and getting out and neither did Tianhuo who was reinvigorated from having talked to Pom directly.

“If I prove myself enough, can I be in on this mission too?” Gallus, you were without a doubt the finest griffon I’ve ever met and trained.

Still couldn’t take Jade’s Zamponi though, Jade was definitely in on the Tambelon mission as long as her Zamponi was in working order for it.

“If you can get some guards to snuff with defending our backs. We will not be letting them into Tambelon unless it’s an emergency, but we might need backup just in case Grogar breaches into Equus. As you all already know, the realm of Tambelon is run by Grogar. What you don’t know is the composition of Grogar’s army.” The one race Grogar took with him when he was sealed away was likely still viable. We have forgotten much about them, but they are exceedingly dangerous as far as anything about them is remembered. “Grogar had pony slaves when he was sealed away. If there are any ponies alive to liberate after so long, then we’ll seek to do so if we can manage it on top of our original mission to bring ‘The Found’ home. Grogar’s main forces are likely to be Troggles, which we barely have information on because it’s been so long since anyone has ever actually dealt with them in a fight. The last one to do so was the unicorn warrior named ‘Gusty the Great’, who barely defeated Grogar and even without a majority of his power Grogar was still said to be a major threat before being sealed away. Even Discord couldn’t match him at the height of his power much less when most of his powers were sealed away, but since Discord would have the knowledge we need…”

“We need to ask Discord for help.” Twilight groaned.

“You don’t need to ask.” Discord stated as he appeared wearing a sombrero and a horribly colored suit that looked like a kaleidoscope threw up on it. “As a friend I’ll give you everything I know about Troggles up front, without any of my usual chicanery to prove my sincerity for the coming situation. Also those guys were very terribly annoying what with being immune to chaos and reality warping powers and all.”

-Pokémon World, Ransei Region, Morning, West of Aurora Kingdom Castle, Pom-

“You okay Pom?” Dolly asked me and I calmly put a hoof on her back.

“Yeah, I’m just wondering when we’ll be attacked, I already have an idea of where.” I pulled out a map and spread it out on the bottom of the cart Geoff was pulling without complaint, despite his perversions he was quite physically strong to pull all our weight.

We’d be walking back when the medicinal supplies were in the cart. The cart was light enough for him to pull us all.

“I wonder if I can get my Teddiursa or Stufful friends to join my unit… not that I have one currently. The Teddiursa was how I learned the move Play Rough at least. I learned Drain Punch and Bounce from my parents. Quick Attack was the only move I learned on my own.” Jiri was a fountain of information and was trying to share things about herself with us trying to build a rapport. “Do you really think we’ll be attacked?”

“Oh we definitely will be. I’m going to give everyone else an opportunity to figure out the where, which is something I already know, as it should be fairly obvious on our route.” I looked at the one place on the map where it would be advantageous for someone to hit us hard, someone wouldn’t want Aurora Kingdom to get the needed medicine supplies if I was right. How badly we were wanted dead, or at the very least incapacitated, would tell me everything I needed to know about how bad things were going to get in general. “The how and when are going to determine how paranoid I’ll be afterwards, if it doesn’t happen… then I can worry harder on us being attacked on the way back to Aurora’s Castle.”

Talking with Tianhuo last night had put me in a great mood, but I wasn’t going to drop my guard. With the things Pokémon are described as being capable of by Geoff and Jiri at breakfast, dropping my guard would be horribly stupid.

“You seem so sure of it.” Jiri looked a little put off, but she raised an ear. “I’ll be listening for trouble for what it’s worth.”

“Now figure out where an attack on our route is most likely to happen, but don’t tell each other and when you are ready to tell me… tap the map and wait.” I waited for a minute watching as each one of my friends and Jiri look the local map over. Geoff was, oddly enough, being fairly quiet. “At that point we’ll tell each other what we think as a part of a… thought exercise.”

Greenleaf was far too quiet with the variety of things going on to the north and south of Aurora, three problems and three kingdoms. The most simple of problems that can be solved might have bigger implications elsewhere. I wasn’t going to try and do everything for King Evan, but we were going to help as tasked by Arceus.

“Pom, can I just say that your wife is hot, as in quite literally sizzling with a wonderful and ferocious appearance, but a stoic gentleness that can melt just about any heart of those who would come to understand her?” Geoff was listening in, but he wasn’t going to participate in the thought exercise. “Also I already have an idea as to what you’re thinking of and will slow down as we make our approach.”

“No Geoff, I don’t want you hitting on my wife… or me for that matter.” I thought Geoff was quite annoying and I don’t think that would ever change, but he wasn’t a bad Wooloo.

Appreciating everything in an optimistic over the top manner was basically the natural state of Geoff’s people as quite a few of them complemented me on basically simply existing as we cross the plains towards the bridge. Also they were far too open with their thoughts about anything that so much as breathes in their general direction.

“I will still say you’re wool is very healthy looking today and that you’re an otherworldly beauty worthy of the word gorgeous.” If Geoff knew the location I was thinking of, then his intelligence level was probably higher than I was giving him credit for because of my slight issues with him.

I heard someone tap the map and I looked to see it was Shanty, she was looking proud of herself. Eventually following her was Ocellus, Dolly, Smolder and finally Jiri who looked thoughtful about it as she tapped the map.

“Okay one at a time. Shanty you go first.” Let’s see if she got it right.

“Anywhere near the bridge between Aurora and Greenleaf.” Shanty stated with a knowing certainty of the general location, but not the how we’ll be attacked or when. She was apparently keeping her options of what to prepare for flexible at least.

“Ocellus?” I think my changeling friend will have given it a bit more thought.

“Before we can even get on the bridge.” Ocellus didn’t look proud, but she did look properly paranoid after all the stuff we’ve been through.

“Dolly?” The Dalmatian looked at me and then said something daunting, but mirrored my paranoia slightly.

“Like Shanty, but I’m going to say pincer attack while we’re on it.” Dolly was cunning enough to realize why that would be a bad scenario for us if that happened. I relayed her thoughts to the others.

“After we get off the bridge.” Which told me Smolder was thinking more along the lines of Greenleaf being dangerous.

“At any time…” Jiri was looking pale as she was the one that surprisingly picked up on the worst case scenario of us being watched and an ambush coming when we couldn’t expect it. “Most likely on the way back after we have already picked up the medicine for Aurora. The bridge is a good choice of ambush location. Anyone would be able to get on top of us going both ways.”

“That’s what she said!” Geoff… I will throttle you the moment you unhitch from this cart.

No, wait… you’d enjoy that too much and would complement me about how strong I was physically for having such ‘lovely legs’.

“The chance of being attacked before and after having the medicine varies greatly, but yes, the bridge is a major chokepoint. The chance rises dramatically after we have the medicine as people will know we bought it and where it is going to. If someone doesn’t want Aurora to thrive or be a healthy kingdom...” I trailed off letting the thought hang in the air for a bit. “They’ll attacks us long before we can actually finish crossing the bridge. Ask yourself when, where and why would someone attack and think of the possible motivations thereof. How many Pokémon have traveled from the Greenleaf kingdom in recent history?”

“Not many…” Jiri put a paw to her mouth looking faintly worried as Geoff slowed down and we saw the bridge in the distance.

Once we crossed that bridge, or at the very least attempted to, we wouldn’t be able to turn back from whatever trouble comes our way until we have the medicine we needed.

-The Greenleaf-Aurora Bridge-

“It's too quiet here.” The lack of Pokémon or sounds from normal animals, which existed in limited numbers compared to Pokémon being prominent across this world, around the entrance to the bridge had us on edge. “We’re not going to be attacked on this side of the bridge for several reasons. The notable one is that we’d likely see an attack coming from a fair distance away, but the trees on the other side have plenty of cover to launch ranged attacks or an ambush from. If they really wanted to ruin any chance of medicine getting back to Aurora, they’d destroy a portion of the bridge behind us, in front of us to prevent us from even getting there or there’s just plain collapsing the whole thing while we’re crossing.”

Geoff looked a bit nervous about setting a hoof on the bridge, but he firmed his expression and kept moving forward while his eyes looked at the empty plains around us and then towards the small forest on the far side of the long bridge we had to cross.

Greenleaf had forests, hedge mazes and quite a few other things going for it defensively despite having four bridges leading into it. An invasion from Ignis would be concerning for grass type Pokémon.

The far northern bridge was connected to the kingdom of Violight. The bridge directly north of this one was connected to Ignis, which would allow the raiders to come down south and intercept us from the other side if they were well informed enough to know we’d be coming through here and Ignis was somehow complicit in letting the raiders run roughshod over Aurora. The bridge to the south of here went to the Fontaine Kingdom.

In an emergency, provided we get stuck on the west side of the bridge, we would head down towards Fontaine and will try to use the direct bridge to Aurora there. They couldn’t destroy all three bridges into Aurora as that would give Aurora time to prepare.

The cart pulled onto the bridge and we started slowly across, we readied ourselves for anything. The tapping of Geoff’s hooves against the stone of the bridge was loud in our ears.

“Detecting malicious emotions from the front, nobody coming from behind.” Well that was good to know Ocellus. “Shanty on the right. Jiri can you take left? Ocellus, Smolder and Dolly will cover our backs and make sure nobody sneaks up on us.”

“I’m… ready. Taking left.” Despite her nervousness, Jiri hopped off and started moving next to Geoff on the left as Shanty was taking the right and we were all focusing forward.

“We push through.” I stated quietly, I hopped off and moved to the front and started to move forward my eyes watching the bridge and the trees on the far side.

“Incoming!” Announced Ocellus.

Twelve Pokémon burst onto the bridge from the far side, that would be two units worth of blue and black small, basically puppy, sized bipedal jackals.

“Those are Riolu, they must be part of the raiders from the north!” Geoff stated as he unhooked from the cart.

“We are here to…! Wow… pretty…” It only took one look for a Riolu become slightly enamored with me and was blushing. “Forget what we came here for, we’re capturing her!”

“Yeah, she’s much better than stopping that medicine from getting through!” Another Riolu said while staring at me affectionately. “I mean look at the aura she’s putting out, it’s so beautiful!”

Really, I was that magnetic for these puppies?! They felt like puppies to me, which means this was about to become a slight tragedy since we would have to fight.

“I’m going to feel quite horrible about this afterwards…” I said sadly. They didn’t look very old, but I doubted they were any less dangerous for their sizes though. There was still twelve of them and they definitely had numbers on us.

We also had to fight because they just their thoughts known out loud to us, they actively wanted to stop the medicine shipment.

“I don’t see why we should kidnap her… even if she is pretty…” One of the female Riolu stated, there were only two in this group of twelve from what I could tell. “Guys? Guys?! Ugh, Cu Chulainn is going to be so mad at us!”

Cu Chulainn… sounded like an important name I had to commit to memory.

“Don’t care! Besides he won’t be mad once he sees what we got for him, we’re taking her!” The leader of the two units stated. The rest of them seemed to agree, even the other female Riolu.

A slight bit of sweat slowly started treading its way down the side of my face.

“Attack!” The head male Riolu suddenly glowed white and shot towards me at an insane speed, this must be what a Quick Attack looks like.

I went onto my hind legs and held up my front right leg to block. He struck my leg with his shoulder and I wobbled and stretched back my left hoof as he rebounded upwards.

“What the…” The poor little guy didn’t get a chance to say much more as my left straight landed in the right side of his face when my wobble counter fully went off.

He went rocketing away, flipping wildly out of control to the point the back of his head struck the right stone railing of the bridge with a painful sounding amount of force. Bouncing off the bridges railing, the Riolu continued to go flying into the forest on the far side of the bridge.

The fact that there was no blood from the impact of his skull against the railing of the bridge had me staring after him incredulously. Partially glad that he was tough and that I didn’t seriously injure him, but it was curious that his skull damaged the bridges railing.

“Ho… ly…” All the other Riolu stopped and stared after the Riolu I hit, that’s when Jiri struck the one that spoke.

As soon as Jiri closed in on him, a dust cloud erupted around the two and we could hear the sounds of a rampant tussling taking place. After the dust cloud settled, the Riolu was covered in bruises and out cold on the ground as Jiri took up an offensive stance.

“The Buneary knows Play…!” An electro ball courtesy of Geoff swiftly took down the speaker and the Riolu next to them got caught in the blast getting them covered in a few scorch marks.

“Can we please stop with all this fighting, when it’s poetry about you I’d rather be writing~?” Sang Geoff as a blast of sound in the shape of notes hit the second Riolu knocking them down. They struggled to stand up, only to flop onto their face afterwards.

“No, we will not stop! Also we’re down to eight, stop gawking and start…” The Riolu had their legs swept out from under them by Shanty with a sweep of the scythe portion of the cane, of which she brought the butt end around and smashed it downwards into the Riolu harshly bouncing their skull off the bridge.

“Was he going to say fight… AGH!” The riolu charging up his fist with an attack that had a metallic sheen suddenly went rolling across the bridge, bouncing several time to final end up in the grass at the other end.

“Like I’ll allow any of you to put a paw on Pom!” Dolly had slammed that female Riolu with a full momentum assisted amount of force across the skull with a leftward swing using the top of her skateboard. Another Riolu came in and swung a similarly metallic sheened fist at Dolly. Despite having blocked the blow with her board, Dolly went skidding backwards and toppled over completely onto her back. “Agh, these guys are a lot stronger than they look!”

Dolly couldn’t take the force of the attack and her momentum control barely stopped or slowed her down after that blow. We really shouldn’t let these guys land any more attacks.

“Well we have been hitting them in their heads Dolly!” I quickly sent out bark blast, blocking a wobbling ball of energy thrown by one of the Riolu. It caused an eruption of energies that damaged the bridge moderately.

“How did they take out an entire unit already, there’s only seven of them and only five of them are actually fighting?!” One of the Riolu complained, he narrowed his eyes at us and pointing his left paw forward. “Unit Command, Rushing Bullet Punch!”

The six remaining Riolu moved back and gathered together in a line and all their fists took on metallic sheens.

“Everyone get back, I’ll take this attack head on!” Geoff announced as he ran forward in front of me and stood his ground. “Unit Command attacks combine the strength of all the Pokémon in that unit that can use a given attack for a single target or an area of effect assault!”

The Riolu started rushing forward in unison.

“Cotton Guard…” Geoff’s wool grew and flexed into a protective barrier as the Riolu closed in on him. “Protect!”

The barrier popped up in time as all six Riolu’s struck one after the other, the barrier held up to the first two hits, the third cracked it and the fourth completely shattered it. The fifth blow hit Geoff in the gut and the sixth blow landed home in his chin in a painful looking uppercut that sent him flying up and over the cart to land on his back.

“A Wooloo… a freaking Wooloo tanked our whole units attack by himself?!” As much as the current lead Riolu was surprised, I was quite surprised that Geoff held up to most of that and looked alright. “And he’s still up, what are they feeding these normal types!”

“Well we did use a steel type moves and he was prepared for physical…” One Riolu was saying.

“Shut up!” The lead Riolu stated to that Riolu harshly. “Start using Rock Smash, they are mostly normal types!”

I think he was assuming Shanty, Dolly and me to be normal types. What would our types be actually? I think Shanty would at least count for water and I can technically use Matchstick for a single burst of flames as an attack instead of staying lit on fire. Would Dolly’s Aero even count as… oh… if it does then would that mean...

Geoff rolled back into a standing position and despite having taken some rather nasty hits he still formed up with Shanty, Jiri, Dolly and Me.

“Guys, make them group up.” I quietly stated and sent Dolly a silent message to back up and prepare to use her Aero spell at full power, she was to time it so she hit them all. If they react to it like I think they will, then we can finish this fight off with that. “When I give the signal we pull back.”

I sent Dolly a recalled memory of them being stated as being weak to 'flying type' attacks which included and was not entirely limited to ‘wind’, but wind based attacks were definitely a weakness. Dolly nodded and backed up to wait for the opening.

“Whatever you’re planning you won’t succeed, rock smash!” With a glowing fist, the Riolu struck and I blocked with both my front legs. The force from the blow threatened to topple me like it had Dolly as I skidded backwards.

Geoff dodged backwards as two Riolu launched rock smash attacks at him and he took some bits of stone from the bridge that were sent flying from the attacks.

Jiri launched a Quick Attack that staggered one Riolu before it could get off an attack and lost its glowing fist, then she hopped back and avoided the second one slamming down and sending chips of stone pelting at us.

Shanty lured the remaining Riolu forward while slashing at them with wide arcing cuts as she backed away.

“Retreat!” I called and we all turned and ran.

“Yeah, that’s how we Riolu do it, we’re a lot stronger than you think we…?!” The male Riolu paused when he saw Dolly holding up her right paw with a glowing green band of wind hovering around it. “Wait, what move is…”

“Aero!” The immediate results was the entire group of Riolu being devastated by an explosion of green swirling wind that lifted all of them and two other unconscious Riolu and sent them launching towards the far end of the bridge in a single powerful blast.

“Whoa… that was a pretty powerful flying type attack.” Jiri stated in awe as she looked towards Dolly. “Are you sure you guys are not Pokémon, because that was pretty impressive if you’re not.”

“Do we have anything to detain the Riolu with?” I stated as I motioned for Geoff to hitch up to the cart and start pulling it quickly. We gathered up the various unconscious Riolu as we made our way towards the end of the bridge.

After my first step onto the grass of Greenleaf, I quickly leapt back and barely avoided an arrow that looked to be made of a feather that struck where my heart was a second ago. It created a three foot wide hole in the ground upon impact.

I looked up at the glaring, green cloaked, large owl creature with a bow. It seemed surprised that I was staring it right in the eyes and its beak grew firm, it quickly leapt off and away into some fog where it disappeared.

If things were this hostile already, how badly would the negotiations for the medicine go?

Author's Note

Well that was something, the battles aren't going to be too big yet of course.

However if Jiri and Geoff had fought the Riolu alone, they would have had a lot more trouble and less chance of pulling through.

Also being in perfectly good health, Pom doesn't exactly know her own strength quite yet.

242. Arbora Town.

Author's Note

Music: Grandia 2 -LIVE!LIVE!!LIVE!!!-

242. Arbora Town.

-Greenleaf Kingdom, Southwest of Greenleaf/Aurora Bridge, Pom-

The arrow was the only thing that really sold it to Geoff as being a Decidueye that had attacked me with an intended lethal shot. Even lacking Dancing Flame, I had thankfully saw the shot incoming and evaded. An arrow doing that kind of damage was kind of haunting.

Decidueye apparently came in two flavors. I had first thought it to be a flying type, because it’s a giant owl.

While it was capable of flight, it being a flying type wasn’t the case apparently. They were either a grass and fighting or a grass and ghost depending on appearance. They lose their flying type in their final evolution.

The one I saw was a grass and ghost type Pokémon.

The fighting type version of a Decidueye would naturally be bad for our normal type friends, the ghost version of that Pokémon was worse because it was outright immune to normal and fighting type attacks.

Normal types wouldn’t be on the winning end of a battle if all they had were normal or fighting type attacks, they were quite certain of that given the Decidueye’s grass attacks could get quite powerful.

Speaking of types, I’ve come to determine that typing has some basis in some form of logical sense. I hoped Arceus didn’t fudge with physics too hard when he created this world… that had a continent shaped like him on it. I don’t think I was ever going to let go of the continent thing.

“Uh quick question Mr. Geoff, why are we heading southwest? Isn’t the castle in the northwest?” Jiri ask while tugging and her fluff nervously with her paws as her ears flexed.

“We’re not going to the Greenleaf Castle. We’re heading to Arbora, the town to the southwest of the bridge to buy the required medicinal supplies.” Geoff answered with a calm demeanor despite the fact we were all alert for that Decidueye. He only gained that knowledge from my description as all he and the others saw nothing but a shadow as having attacked me, yet I was able to describe it clear as day and it was in broad daylight that I saw it. Yet everyone aside from me said it was a shadow that hopped away? “Good thing too, I don’t like the idea of tussling with a Decidueye no matter how attractively mysterious and dark they can be. Wouldn’t want to go through a foggy forest or the hedge mazes with the ghost version of a Decidueye coming after us. It’s a good thing we can skirt the forest and head south through the wide open grasslands until we reach Arbora. It won’t attack us in broad daylight and wide open spaces where it can’t hide, even if it has the advantage on us. I hope it doesn’t have a unit and is acting solo... maybe we can even reason with it?”

That’s quite doubtful Geoff, it seemed fairly surprised that I could even see its face or eyes.

“Arbora?” Jiri seemed curious about it and we weren’t hiding our curiosities so well either.

“Never been outside of Aurora territory before I take it Jiri? Aurora doesn’t have big towns, barely even a few buildings to call a town or give a place a name. I’ve been to all the surrounding kingdoms and they tend to have at least one or two towns aside from their castles being a center point or gathering place for Pokémon of a given kingdoms territory.” Despite the slightly busted up chin Geoff was still as talkative and friendly as ever… now if he would stop making overt passes at me. “I hope you find this all informative Pom, because a lovely lady such as yourself needs to experience all the good things in our world and not just the bad, like someone trying to kill you. I’ve been about as far as Chrysalia, Violight and Pugilis, but I’ve never been as far as Terrera or Illusio. While I’m well-traveled, the eastern parts of the continent were a bit too dangerous for a lone cleric such as me.”

The minute Geoff said Chrysalia, I saw Ocellus’s eyes twitch a bit. Sounded too much like Chrysalis to her I take it, she’s complained a lot about the changeling queen. From what Smolder has told me, Ocellus was once forced to look like Chrysalis for about an hour. That was obviously psychologically scarring for her and Smolder was the one that helped her through it. Changelings certainly had deep rooted issues with Chrysalis though.

“No I haven’t been outside of Aurora, but I’ve been all over Aurora. This is… new to me.” Jiri still had me wondering what a Dragapult was or why she avoided describing the accident that ended up with her defeating it and getting the title Dragoon.

Whatever Dragoon meant in the context of this world, Jiri didn’t look like a cavalier… and help me if cavalier dogs existed in this world as I don’t think I could actively take the pun right now.

“Arbora shouldn’t be too far now, I think we can currently see the verges of it. Maybe we can offload the two Riolu units that attacked us on them for detainment?” Geoff was right, we did kind of do a number on the Riolu and I didn’t want them coming after us again… or more specifically me.

Still, I couldn’t just leave a bunch of puppies lying on the ground injured after we beat the snot out of them for attacking us.

Looking ahead we saw a town that looked like it was built out of gardens, considering there were plant like beings running around everywhere. Even on the edges of it we could see what looked like two legged mushrooms running around a playing with walking acorns. There were bizarre pink creatures with twirling leaves hovering around in the air with similar green creatures that looked slightly large and had rotating flowers. There was even a Pokémon that looked like a popcorn kernel.

It seems like there was a festival going on.

“This be looking like fun.” Even as Shanty said that she was eying the forest north of the town full of colorful looking Pokémon we were approaching.

We heard some music as we entered through the archway of living plants signifying ‘Arbora’ spelled out in vines. Beyond the archway we saw a group of Pokémon that looked similar dancing in the square and spreading sweet scents everywhere.

There was a green monkey playing a drum. A strange Pokémon reminiscent of the acorns with a leaf sticking out of its head, but with arms. It was playing a flute. Last one was a Pokémon that looked like it had roses for hands and its head was bristling brightly with petals that was playing a violin.

“We’ve probably caught the town on a good day, so we should be getting a good deal on the medicine at least.” Geoff stated as he pulled us completely through the entrance.

“Halt!” Two bipedal mushroom capped Pokémon wielding spears approached us. “Are you bringing or are you buying?”

“Buying, also we brought a bunch of injured Riolu into town. could you see to them? They attacked us at the bridge." Geoff motioned One of the two green umbrella capped Pokémon came forward and looked into the cart to see the unconscious Riolu. "They are Breloom guards, they are just doing their job.”

“Well I’m liable to believe they attacked you.” The Breloom stated as he looked at all the unconscious Riolu in the cart. “No way would normal types want to take on this many fighting type pokemon at once, also one of you is a Wooloo and you guys are anything if dependable in one aspect.”

The speaking Breloom simple cross his limbs and tapped his spear against his shoulder waiting while staring expectantly at Geoff. Almost as if he was waiting for Geoff to…

“Well I should think I’m dependable. Like how your claws depend on being well manicured, they are so delightfully sharp looking.” Geoff said in a lofty tone. “… can we go on a date?”

“Five sentences before asking. A new record for a Wooloo, the last one asked in seven.” The second Breloom stated.

“Should I have asked in four?” Geoff stated pleasantly.

I gave the Breloom a worried looked, I opened my mouth.

“Before you ask, yes Wooloo have that exact reputation everywhere. You can’t meet a Wooloo that isn’t complementary, otherwise it’s a Ditto. You’re not a Ditto or a Wooloo, so I’m betting you’re an outside context thing that the gods might be currently playing with. Please enjoy your stay and avoid situations leading to imminent disasters your groups have the tendency to heroically stop.” The first Breloom nodded so sure of himself, I was curious what this world was like that he was able to call out the gods or even know of outsiders. “Also thank you for noticing and no, I already have a ‘mon’ that I’m happily engaged with.”

“Telling him that won’t actually stop him.” I said earnestly.

“It won’t.” The Breloom agreed while shaking his head sadly.

“Do you want another?” Geoff offered cheekily with wagging eyebrows.

“Please sir, we’ll deal with these Rapscallion Riolu if you just stop before you hit the point where you’re as annoyingly charming as any other Wooloo… Brisk go get a Chansey and tell her specifically that we’re dealing with ‘injured trouble makers’. They probably lightly damaged the bridge to Aurora knowing things like I do. I swear with the way things are going I expect it to be destroyed soon, especially if they are intent on stopping you guys doing a medicine run.” Yep, the Breloom has definitely met Wooloo and this just solidified the reputation of Wooloo on this world for me. He also seemed quite keyed in to what was going on without asking much. The second Breloom saluted and ran off. “Anyway we’re having a small festival here so please don’t start any fights in town. If you have to fight anyone, take it outside town.”

“Um, can I just state that I was attacked by a Decidueye for no apparent reason?” I asked because it was still on my mind and this town guard seems to be on the ball about a lot of things.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t go through the forest towards the castle then, that guy has been causing all kinds of trouble around here lately. If you see fog in the nearby forest, stay well away from it if he’s actively hunting you. We’ve been calling him Robbing Hoodlum, concerning the thefts going on around here. Not that we knew it was a Decidueye aside from the arrows, since some Pokémon can possibly mimic those arrows, it’s actually good to get a confirmation that it’s a Decidueye at least. Nobody could identify the problem Pokémon before because it was always enshrouded in strange shadows, there’s something unnatural about it that is not normal to regular Decidueye.” He looked at me specifically with curious gaze and then the rest of my group, ignoring Geoff and Jiri. “While you’re here you might even find a Pokémon or two willing to journey with you at no cost. Ask around, make small conversation and or see what tickles some Pokémon’s fancy, Pokémon are always looking for others to connect with. While you outsiders may seem fairly decent in a scrap given I doubt two normal types KO’d twelve fighting types, you’re going to need Pokémon to handle some of the weirder stuff as you travel around randomly doing whatever it is the gods might think you’re going to. Usually outsiders are turned into Pokémon, but in this case you’re apparently an exception. You in particular seem like you would be good with a Furfrou or even a Rockruff alone considering your odd outsider canine looks to be exceedingly well cared for and has seen some vicious fighting and suffered a great emotional loss. Kind of hard not to see it in her eyes, but you’re keeping her above the negativity when she used to do the same for you.”

Dolly, looking quite shocked, tilted her head curiously to stare at the mushroom monster. She didn’t say anything.

“Can I ask a question, why does it seem like the Greenleaf Kingdom is quiet about the raiders from the north, which we’ve caught red pawed here? There also seems to be problems in the south too.” Jiri was asking a question we were all curious to hear from this rather informative Breloom.

“We’ve been kind of hoping people wouldn’t notice our problems if we stayed quiet about it, it’s an internal issue and nothing for you to seriously worry over. Until it becomes everyone else’s problems, then go for broke in dealing with it for us. We still have plenty of medicine for all the other kingdoms in various areas of the kingdom for sale and I doubt you will be able to transport it back without trouble.” For some reason I really liked this guy, he was very much on the up and up about the situations going on around here. “So find some Pokémon to assist you back to Aurora, you’re sadly going to need that extra help.”

“What do you know of other outsiders?” Ocellus asked.

“Usually that they are turned into Pokémon and end up in a lot of weird situations. Some stay in this world, some leave it behind to return to whence they came. Rarely do we ever see outsiders like you guys that aren’t turned into Pokémon. Still, whether you do a lot or a little, the impact will be felt by all you involve yourselves with.” That’s when the Breloom’s partner came back with what looked like a large oval shaped Pokémon. “Try to keep the collateral damage to a minimum please.”

“Where are the trouble making patients?” The Pokemon took one look at the Riolu and sighed. “Them?”

“Yes.” Smolder stated bluntly.

“The Riolu Raider’s broke through Ignis bridge and attacked you at the Greenleaf and Aurora Bridge didn’t they?” We nodded as that was the assumption we had, she too seemed to be quite knowledgeable about some things. “Great, just great, if the current king of Aurora were to blame this on us, we’d all be at each other’s throats so fast our heads will spin clean off! Wait, is that Aipom still king? I haven’t been in Aurora in a while and I’m the current head nurse of this town.”

“No, you big beautiful round Chansey you!” Geoff said with sparkles in his eyes. “The king of Aurora is currently an Eevee.”

“Nice to know and no, just no, please stop before I have to heal you too… because you seem perfectly fine with that busted chin already and I will beat you within an inch of your life even if you will enjoy every second of it.” The Pokémon stated holding an angry fist out to Geoff. She sighed audibly. “Look… I’ll give the other visitors some extra money up front if you help transport the fainted Riolu for me, instead of having me carry all of them. It would certainly make things a lot easier on me.”

“For a rotund and lovely lady such as yourself... sure!” Geoff stated with a bright smile. “There are so many wonderful Pokémon around here, like my cute friend Jiri here! Speaking of, Jiri, can you go find the medicine shop and wait for me to show up?”

Jiri nodded and started to saunter off looking at the vibrant plant life, acting like a true tourist.

“Here, enjoy the festivities and maybe hire some Pokémon on me. I’ve got idiots to deal with… hopefully I won’t have to Giga Impact your Wooloo friend into submission for being too fresh with me, come along!” The Chansey turned and waved Geoff forward as we hopped off the cart.

This left me holding a small bag of money.

“That was… interesting…” I said slowly.

“You haven’t even been in our world for a whole week if you think that was interesting, things only get worse from here as outsiders usually means chaos is coming. We should probably be preparing for some huge war or something.” The Breloom guard stated flatly. “Well enjoy your stay in Arbora. Oh and ask for the guild of traveling Pokémon companions, you’ll find some friends real fast just by showing up! Some Pokémon just want companionship more than anything else, others just want a good fight and then there’s the Pokémon like me who just wants the peace to stay entirely peaceful! Can we go one week without a disaster! Anyway with that in mind, we’re heading out to make sure no one cuts us off from Aurora again, this will be the fifth time someone has thought to destroy our bridges and replacing them is getting annoying without a rock type contractor on standby.”

After launching a blast shaped like his claw into the air, the two mushroom headed Pokémon set off towards the northeast in the direction we came from at a run. Those two might be a well known Pokémon unit.

We all stood there awkwardly waiting for something to happen, nothing did until Shanty made a first suggestion.

“So… food?” Always the first thing on Shanty’s mind, behind stealing rum and the first being Dodo who she was carrying on her back in her bag alongside the scythe staff.

“Maybe, lunch is rolling around, but they might have an open feast if a festival is going on so we’ll wait on that. I’ve been interested in the band playing that music. Excuse me, but what kind of Pokémon are you, if you don’t mind answering? You’re really quite beautiful and you all smell nice.” I approached the dancers and the music players as they stood in front of a fountain and flowers enjoying the sun. It wasn’t hard to tell they were grass types. “Also, I would like to ask for directions.”

“Of course and thanks, we always accept compliments that are not Wooloo related. Given that you passed Luke’s personal inspection or else he wouldn’t run off to stop what might be another problem, outsiders like you are always interesting and a Hoothoot and a half. You also usually have some incredible stories. I’m a Lilligant by the way and my two dancing companions are Bellossoms, dancing is kind of a thing for some Pokémon and we’re this towns morale boosters.” She said brightly, swaying back and forth with her two friends. They all bowed to us with polite enthusiasm. “Over there is a Nuzleaf, a Goovkey and Roserade. I take it you enjoyed the music and the dancing?”

Each Pokémon in turn waved and then continued playing jovially.

“You guys are really good, but I think you might be missing an instrument or two that can add flavor to the music, but you’re dancing is spot on.” I received happy nods. “Can you direct us to the guild?”

“Sure head that way down the street. It’s the tavern looking place down that way, looks like a giant Skiploom called the Saucy Skiddo… oh right. It looks like one of those floating Pokémon in the air with the spinning flowers. If you smell something strong then you’ve likely found it, every place in town has wonderful smelling flowers and we’re some of the best smelling. That place though, it always smells more like a brewery.” Opposite of the way Jiri wandered off, I blinked and noticed that Shanty was no longer among us and sighed. We had to go stop her from finding rum and stealing it all. “If you’re looking for friends, then there’s no better place.”

“Thank you for the warm welcome and the directions. Come on, let’s go stop Shanty before she gets into trouble.” The word ‘tavern’ was probably what set her off.

For where there are taverns, there’s rum.

Smolder, Dolly and Ocellus let me take the lead and we noted the buildings around tended to be built in the shape of Pokémon, they looked oddly sturdy despite the oddity.

When we arrived we found Shanty arguing with someone.

-Shanty-

There had to be some there, my rum senses be tingling like crazy!

I be on the run towards the building and be looking for the tasty treasure inside, maybe Pom can be paying for it before I be drinking it all this time? I be seeing the roof of a building with a yellow flower and that must be being it since it looked like the Pokémon floating about.

I ran towards the building at a gallop with a hint of glee burgeoning on my face and I was about to go in the entrance when I slammed into someone else and we both be flopping to the dirt.

“Hey, watch where you be going you scurvy landlubber!” I shouted at the one who interrupted me going into the tavern as I got up and looked at them.

“No, you watch where ‘you’ are going you blasted bilge bungler!” Getting a better looked at the person I be running into, she seemed to be a goat like me… except she be covered in leaves around her neck leading all the way back to her tail.

“Did you just be calling me an amateur? I’m going to be being a great pirate that has ever traveled several worlds!” She be making me angry and I be getting up to glare at her. “Nobody be talking to Captain Shanty like that with such disrespect!”

“A captain you are most certainly not! I can read you quite well, you’ve unfortunately decided to cross horns with a scourge the likes of Favela!” Favela and I be butting heads and growling at one another.

“Do you want to leave town so we can get into a proper row or do you be intend to be challenging me in something else?!” I shouted back.

“Favela challenges you to a rum drinking contest!” Be liking this girl already, I can be telling we would be being the best of friends.

“You’re on if you can even be getting a barrel with how young you are!” I stated with a big grin.

“I bet you can’t even hold your rum like a true Gogoat!” She pulled back and announced haughtily. “Ma, I got a got a challenger here and she seems to be ready to lose to a true drinker of fermented fruit!”

“Only if you can be drinking it all before I can!” I stated as I followed her in.

-Pom-

“This will end in tears, I just know it.” I said blandly.

“She seems like someone Shanty would get along with. Despite how angry they sounded their emotions were more excited and positive.” Ocellus stated with wonder. “Also I think we just found this world’s equivalent of Shanty who looks just as rum obsessed as she is. Given ‘Favela’ is basically another word for a ‘Shanty-town’ in Brayzil. Though it has very negative connotations… which is actually perfect for Shanty.”

-Shanty-

“Go!” I took up the glass and downed it in three seconds, Oran Berry rum be tasting good but I be expecting some sweetness that wasn’t there.

I slammed my glass down at the same time as my opponent Favela.

“Ooh… you are good! Keep us topped off ma, this could take a while! Go!” We both downed another glass. “We might need to switch to Pecha Berries ma, this one is a contender!”

“Oh my daughter… where did I go wrong?” The large goat with tons more leaves and large horns stated blandly before shaking her head. “Oh right, it’s when I let you have your first taste of rum when you were teething. You wouldn’t drink any milk afterwards.”

243. Arbora Acquaintances.

-???, Oleander-

“Ghidora, you’re being very bad guy right now, don’t make Fred and me kick your bum butt across this planet because we will!” I was currently acting as Fred’s heart, I was in fact in the center of his chest and using his full form as a suit. “No Kevin, you’re a very sweet head and I like you very much.”

The middle and right head of the kaiju monster named Ghidora, a humongous three headed wyvern hydra hybrid thing, glared at the left head who was grinning goofily at me.

“I like you too Oleander, you’re a good friend!” Roared Kevin in a manner that was likely unintelligible to anyone else that wasn’t currently connected to a kaiju sized demon.

“Can we get this thing started, I WANT TO DESTROY THIS CITY COMPLETELY BY ACCIDENT!” Rolling my eyes at Fred’s demon candor, I sighed and then got us slowly moving forward. We destroyed the street with each step as we approached our enemy as one.

-Greenleaf Kingdom, Arbora, Pom-

“So… how much?” I was asking how much all the rum Shanty was drinking was worth, her new friend Favela was already under the table and Shanty had gone through the rest of an entire barrel by herself. “Also, Shanty you need to drink some water.”

“Thanks for the reminder!” Shanty took up a mug that was specifically full of water and downed it. “That be quite refreshing.”

Did Shanty even need to go to the bathroom? Well, she does dehydrate fast when using water in her attacks and you’d think alcohol would dehydrate her completely with how much she ingested, yet she seems more hydrated? I really wanted to ask… what is her biology?! She eats like she’s constantly at a buffet, she drinks alcohol to the point that her blood was possibly at least seventy percent proof. How is Shanty even alive?! How hasn’t her belly overloaded with all the liquids she’s put into herself, yet she looks practically the same physically after drinking that much?!

You know what Pom, no… just don’t think about it too hard. Shanty made a friend and I have a mother goat to talk to.

“Don’t worry about money honey, it’s not exactly expensive to make this stuff. In fact food and drink around here are very inexpensive as they can probably get for any Pokémon kingdom. Visitors always appreciate how cheap our high grade food stuff around here is.” So everything here was cheap? Well at least the owner was nice plant goat. “I’m Vetali, welcome to the local guild and The Saucy Skiddo tavern. I used to be the very namesake of this tavern and then I became a Gogoat, my partner at the time was so surprised I evolved when we were snuggled up. Had fifteen girls and twenty boys, most of my kids have left me to my lonesome after I raised them and are having their own adventures. Favela here is the last one still in the nest. Considering what just happened with your lass, she’s probably going to want to go on a journey with you after such a vicious defeat. I’ve never seen anyone take to rum quite like the Sharpedo you’re raising, she drunk my daughter under a table… quite literally.”

I wondered when I would see a Sharpedo, sounded dangerous by the name alone. I’m never going to keep track of all these Pokémon names am I? Also I just realized that Arceus never stated how long he wanted us to keep helping the kingdom of Aurora, I mean open ended and open to interpretation much?

“Why is food and drink so inexpensive here?” I paused and thought about Vetali’s introducing herself as she moved behind the counter, Dolly hopped up on to it and looked about as I took a seat. “I’m Pom Lambchop. It sounds like, compared to everything else, it’s ridiculously cheap to get a meal here. Also if this tavern is called The Saucy Skiddo, then why is the building a, what was it called again, a Skiploom in appearance?”

“The reason why the building looks like a Skiploom is actually a really funny story and involves the contractors around here, one that’ll probably be too long for you if you aren’t staying in town for more than a day.” Vetali shook her head and then pointed out her daughter out cold on the floor beneath the table. “There is also a very simple answer as to why food and drink are so cheap around here, it is that grass type Pokémon are a majority in this kingdom. Grass Types can mostly survive off sunlight and clean water.”

“Do you eat soil to?” That was an innocent question, I was surprised when Vetali slammed her hooves on the counter and leaned forward.

“Who told you?!” A moment after saying that Vetali blinked.

“I think you just did.” I stated blandly with a flat tone. Smolder and Ocellus stopped chatting to look at us and Vetali suddenly looked sheepish for that outburst. Quick, change the topic, apparently grass type Pokémon have a slight issue with talking about consuming soil because it is likely that they consume the leavings of other Pokémon as well… which would naturally be seen in a negative light despite them being part plant and everything. “Uh, you want anything to eat Smolder, Shanty, Dolly?”

“Oh yes we have plenty of things to eat. Breads, salads and pastas mostly, would you like a Rawst Berry Special?” Real smooth change of topic Vetali and that you immediately jumped on it doesn’t mean I was going to forget about what I just learned. “The Greenleaf kingdoms specialty berry is Rawst Berries. They are a bit bitter, but when used as a vinaigrette they give quite an interesting taste to any dish. They also immediately cure burns on the body just by eating them, still need an Oran Berry or two to heal the rest of the damage, but they are much better than using aloe. Aloe is for those who need a hold over until they can get a Rawst Berry. What about your last kid, don’t they want anything to eat?”

“Oh don’t worry about me, I eat my girlfriends love for me.” Ocellus stated plainly and nobody batted an eye at that as she leaned in and nuzzled Smolder’s neck making her face turn red.

Well at least none of the other Pokémon in the booths lining the tavern batted an eye. There weren’t many Pokémon at the tables and nobody was bothered by this information.

“Is there being a bathroom around here?” Shanty was gone with a single pointed hoof from Vetali. I thought for sure her body wouldn’t even notice all the fluids she ingested, apparently I was wrong and it finally got to her.

“So your energy efficient as long as you have someone that loves you, remind me to tell you about the legendary Pokémon Cresselia. A Pokémon that basically feeds on nightmares and is basically the true love of another legendary named Darkrai who causes nightmares. There’s a really sweet story of how those two got together.” Vetali sighed with a grin, before plopping four menus on the counter. “Anyway here’s the menus, what’ll it be? It is on the house because your daughter drunk mine under the table.”

“Shanty’s not my daughter, but I am her caretaker.” I picked up a menu and looked it over, there were some strange things on this menu that looked familiar.

“Same difference, you care about her and could be a big sister for all I care, but she’s still family to you.” Vetali stated as she waited for us to go over the menus.

-Five minutes later-

“So this is actually a guild too?” I had paused to swallow my ravioli, the food here was ridiculously good and also ridiculously affordable. Vetali probably got incredibly bored of surviving off water and sunlight to be able to cook this well.

The Greenleaf Kingdom may export medicine and imported artworks, trinkets and the like, but never did they ever import food. Grass types, as I was coming to learn, were exceptionally laid back for the most part and they need far less food than any other Pokémon type around.

“Yep, if you interest any Pokémon staying here enough they might ask to join you, heck you can walk up to any Pokémon here and talk to them to get to know what they are like. Not all Pokémon of a given species will act the same way and there are many personalities out there, the exception is Wooloo. If you meet just one, then you are going to know what they are all like.” Vetali was fairly laid back about her daughter having a drinking habit nearly as bad as Shanty. “We’ve got a few Pokémon here just looking for an adventure. Sure most of them are grass types, but I’m sure you expected that. Some of them are not grass types though and might be simply looking for a change of scenery.”

“What are grass types good at exactly when it comes to defending themselves? I’ve gotten good read on normal types… I think.” I didn’t know how to quantify Geoff as far as the word normal goes, aside from being a chivalrous lecher with a clear appreciation of life.

Jiri seemed more in tune with what I considered normalcy. Talkative even if she gets embarrassed easily, she was vocal about wanting to help people despite not knowing what she should do and would hop into a fight on a moment’s notice on the behalf of others I’d bet.

“Well if normal types are all you’ve known so far, we grass types can do things like this.” Something flicked at Vetali’s side and I watched a vine flashed forward over the counter and under the nearby table where we watched it swat Favela across the butt and that woke the Shanty sized grassy goat up.

“Wha… ow!” Favela banged her head on the bottom of the table and then slowly came out from under it. “What happened ma?”

“You lost.” Vetali stated. “To what smells like a water type, given she smells like a sea breeze from her sweat alone.”

“…”It took a moment for Favela to realize what her mother just said, she sat down and threw her hooves in the air and wailed. “Nooooo!”

“She also drank the rest of the Pecha Berry barrel… by herself.” Continued Vetali with an amused smile.

“Okay, that’s just adding insult to injury! Wait a minute… she’s still going?!” Just about anyone would think Favela really shouldn’t have challenged Shanty to a rum drinking contest, after witnessing her asking for more rum upon coming back from the bathroom. She was still drinking rum even now with small drinks of water here or there on the side.

At least Shanty was currently pacing herself better.

Favela silently walked into the nearest rounded corner of this building and bonked her head against the wall, after a moment she glanced towards Shanty.

Shanty was fairly happy with the quality and services of the tavern here, it showed with how big her grin was as she raised a mug to Favela and then started to drink from it slowly while staring her down.

“Shanty is completely immune to the side effects of alcohol… also your daughter doesn’t seem to have a hangover.” My idle comment was followed by me taking another berry spice filled ravioli chunk into my mouth.

I thought berries would taste terrible in ravioli, but apparently Vetali knew her stuff when it came to cooking and Dolly was plenty happy with the Ravioli too. Mildly spicy, but not enough that’s it was painful, a bit of savory flavor too without being sugary. Went nicely with the slight bitterness of the Rawst Berry vinaigrette in my salad.

“We Grass Types may be weak to Poison Types, but my daughter and I can hold our alcohol relatively well. Wouldn’t see most Grass Types normally last more than half a mugs worth of alcohol otherwise, but we thankfully don’t get hangovers like other Pokémon would. Our Grass Type biology thankfully makes that impossible, we still get sleepy or pass out from drinking too much. I'm hoping this has taught my daughter a valuable lesson.” Vetali sighed oddly as she watched us enjoy our meals. “Still, being immune to alcohol… that’s a nifty trait to have and will come in handy with some Poison Type Pokémon, especially if they love drinking alcohol. Alcohol always has a curious effect on the poisons they generate. Most grass types aren’t as resilient to the substance unless they are part poison type themselves. An example of a Grass and Poison type Pokémon would be that Bulbasaur over there next to the Chikorita.”

With that Vetali pointed a hoof at two, four legged, Pokémon quietly minding their own business. One looked like a little dinosaur with a big plant bulb growing out of their back and the other looked like a quadrupedal onion with a leaf sticking out of the top of its head. A leaf which was currently scooping food into its mouth, while the other was using two vines to pick up and eat their food at a slower pace.

“I’ll finish my food before I try talking to any of the Pokémon here.” I was talking about all the other weird Pokémon in the room, I’m pretty sure one of them was a canid or canine in some respect knowing my luck. “I really have no clue what we’ll be doing though as far as adventures are concerned, I guess our first one was just coming here to Arbora and getting involved in a fight with those Riolu. At most we’re just currently helping move a delivery of medicine to Aurora, our two normal type Pokémon friends are working on getting the shipment together. After we help the medicine get back to Aurora my group are going to have to think about what we’ll be getting up to from there, but I really don’t want to deal with any huge ‘continent sized’ issues. Small adventures are what I’d rather stick to while we're here on this world.”

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed several Pokémon in the tavern, that weren’t being lazy, perked up at the word ‘fight’, ‘Riolu’ and ‘adventure’. The Chikorita in particular raised their leaf lightly in curiosity as they continue continued to chew their food with their face positively smothered in what looked like the zesty tomato sauce Vetali makes. They seemed to be enjoying it with some intensity.

“I’m sure you’ll figure out something to do. The Ransei Region can be a bit boring in some parts like here when there aren’t outsiders like you around, but there’s always something to do. I’ve been wondering when someone might start a rescue team organization around here, but without the mystery dungeons to get lost in that permeate the rest of the world… they won’t get nearly as much traction in support as say the Kecleon Brothers organization recently setting up shop here in Ransei. They are rather expensive for whatever convenience they offer, but they sell good stuff and will tell you what you are getting into, fair business practices all around. They sell things like simple food, traveling supplies, move teachers and useful mystical accessories that will work for any Pokémon or outsiders like yourselves.” Vetali went on to describe what Kecleon’s were and what a Rescue Team was. I could actually get behind the idea of being a small disaster relief team, the less fighting involved the better. “So if you’re interested in taking up any odd jobs, where you are the boss of how you want to live, then start something like a Rescue Team that goes around and solves issues you can pick and choose if you want to avoid politics. Though some politics are to be expected depending on where you set up your business or what kingdom you end up in and for what reason.”

“Sounds like my speed.” Having finished my food, I got up and looked around.

“Excuse me, can I paint the two of you?” Turning I saw a curious bipedal male dog with white and brown fur holding his tail that seemed to be a paintbrush. I hadn't even noticed him or when he had set up his easel, he was just there all of the sudden.

“Um…” I knew what dogs were like around me and this was definitely a dog that had Dolly moving along the counter to stare at this guy curiously.

“I’ll pay you for the ability to make a portrait of you and your canine companion!” Didn’t know what this creature was, but he seemed to have an artistic heart and an interest in replicating my appearance.

“That’s a Smeargle, they can get a bit weird, even if they aren’t art crazy. They can learn almost any Pokémon move by using their highly unique move called sketch. They tend not to be fighters, but more poets, writers and if you haven’t noticed the tail… artists.” Vetali answered what it was, but not why he was keen to pay me for a portrait. “You must have gained his interest by a lot if he’s willing to pay you.”

“Um… okay.” I answered. The Smeargle plopped a large bag on the counter. “Isn’t that... a bit much?”

“Nonsense, for a painting of you it’s a perfectly reasonable amount! Now can you have your friend sit by your side and lean up against you? Yes, like that, exquisite!” It took him about five minutes, but he perfectly replicated my appearance alongside Dolly’s with excruciating lifelike detail, plus everything else that had been behind us. I noted that he did this ridiculously fast. “Thank you so much!”

With that the Smeargle ran off with a cheerful smile like I gave him the most wonderful gift in the world, I was surprised he didn’t ask to follow us around. I should count my blessings, Geoff was one weirdo enough already.

Well time to interview a few Pokémon and see if they don’t mind doing random stuff with my group. I spotted a Pokémon of some interest. I was going to attempt to keep the canines and canids to a minimum, even if Tianhuo was okay with it when I talked about Dolly.

“Hello, I’m Pom, a Lambkin, what are you?” The Pokémon I took interest in looked like a spooky gourd, its bottom half even had a glowing smiling face that reminded me of Nightmare Night pumpkins. She clearly looked quite lonely and had flinched harshly when I spoke to her.

“Erm... my name… is…” She was fairly quiet, I could barely hear the whisper of her voice.

“Kind of Looks like Fluttershy if she were a Pokémon.” Interrupted Smolder.

“Acts like her too.” Ocellus butted in making the Grass type hide her face in her pink hair and whimper.

I sighed audibly.

“Sorry to have bothered you.” I turned around and looked for someone else to approach.

“It’s… okay…” Said the gourd Pokémon quietly.

“If you want someone to be joining you, then ask me!” Favela stated audibly. “I want to get out from under ma and I’m willing to take Shanty on as my sidekick.”

“Who’s going to be the sidekick now?!” Shanty stated in an angry manner as she butted heads with Favela again. “Ms. I can’t handle drinking even ten glasses of rum without giving in?! If anything I would be making you a cabin girl on my ship!”

"If you can get a ship, that'll be quite the day!" Favela returned fire.

“Hehehe… I’m Shine.” Shine, the Pokémon I talked to before, notably had pink hair that acted like arms and hands. She seemed to have warmed up and was waving at me shyly. “Of course I’d like to join you, I’m… not really doing much around here anyway. I’m a Gourgeist, eh… Ghost Types sometimes have a poor reputation... with other Pokémon. I’m a Grass and Ghost type, I’m... not great on offense and I like utility moves.”

“Well that wasn’t too hard. Anyone else want to join in onthis slapdash mess we’re starting to form here?” I asked sarcastically.

“With a Gourgeist following you around, on top of you being outsiders? You’ll have problems finding someone crazy enough to stick around for too long and Ghost Types are trouble.” The male Chikorita apparently made Shine upset, as she looked away from him while her thick stem like forelock wilted to cover her eyes.

“Gourgeist don’t have the best reputations, but Shine isn’t bad and you know it. Still, Ghost Types do send shivers down my spine.” At least the Bulbasaur seemed friendlier about it, so Shine wasn’t wrong about the poor reputation thing.

“It’s understandable that they don’t like me… my only attack move is... fire based." Shine said with hint of sadness. "Not exactly something other Grass Types would exactly be fond of.”

“Did someone say you’d have to be crazy to be on a team with a Gourgeist?” A male Pokémon stepped forward from the shadows, his arms crossed and he had a smirk on his face. “Well I’m crazy enough for it, count me in. The names Quetal and I’m a Sneasel, Dark and Ice Type. Dark types like me need apply early or never be accepted at all, since we tend to rub people the wrong way just by existing.”

“Oh trust me, they won’t get rid of me that easily by saying no and I don't mind the Gourgeist at all!” Declared Favela with her head held high. “I’ll just follow you anyway if you try to leave without Favela!”

“I’d like to join, if that’s okay.” Shine stated while tapping her two of her three fingered hair tufts against one another. “I’m classed as a ninja... if that helps.”

“Take me or leave me, you won’t get a better offer than me around here.” Quetal stated with a hint of smugness.

“What do you say girls?” I wasn’t going to be the only decision maker in the group, I gathered the girls together to talk about this quietly.

“I’m okay with Favela, even if she is being quite annoying.” Well Shanty did need more friends and Favela seemed quite willing, plus her mother Vetali was nodding in acceptance with a smile.

“Quetal seems to need this from what I can tell of his emotions, he’s kind of craving acceptance and I remember that feeling all too well.” As stellar an invitation as you could give under the circumstances Ocellus.

“Shine, she reminds Ocellus and me of a good friend.” Smolder was likely talking about Fluttershy they’ve mentioned numerous times and I think I’ve vaguely seen Ponyville’s animal caretaker once.

“If you ask me, we can handle most things ourselves… but if Pokémon get as big as Vetali or are much more dangerous than we can handle, then we could use the help for traveling around. You know, incase we are attack by more than two full units that can actually get their stuff in gear.” Dolly put her two bits in as well. “Also, you attract a lot of trouble Pom, we need all the help we can get even if it’s going to be more dogs taking up your time from me. I won’t like it, but I will understand it... if there are a lot of canine Pokémon in this world, you probably won't even be able to avoid them all. Like that strange Smeargle guy for instance.”

“We’ll put you all on a trial basis… we need to see how you interact with other people and how you will handle a fight if you want to do so. Mostly so we can see how you'll act as traveling companions, at least until we arrive in Aurora. If you have anything you need to do, do it now, because we’ll be leaving to check on our two friends to see if they have that medicine shipment ready.” From what Geoff said, we could be back across the bridge by the evening and sleeping in Aurora easily enough. “We’re not going to be in town for much longer. Also are you okay about letting Favela decide that she's coming with us Vetali?”

“Oh I am, besides Favela needs a good adventure and you outsiders lead to some really interesting ones.” Vetali appeared to be a bit teary eyed at hearing her last child was leaving. “Go on Favela, get a bag and prepare for the adventure of a lifetime! I'll give you some berries for the road.”

-Five minutes later-

We only just stepped outside the tavern when...

“Prepare for trouble.” A voice said.

“And make it double.” A second stated.

That’s when three figures jumped from the roof of a nearby building.

“To protect the world from devastation.” The large female snake with large red fangs and a red colored bladed tail stated, she looked fairly dangerous.

“To unite the peoples within our nation.” Said the strange blue and purple sea urchin Pokémon.

“To denounce the evils of truth and love.” The snake continued as she posed with her body.

“To extend our reach to the stars above.” The male urchin stated as he posed all his tendril things pointing in different directions.

“Jessie.” The large snake stated.

“James.” The strange blue and purple urchin stated.

“Meowth, Team Pocket, we thieves attack at the speed of light!” The strange bipedal cat Pokémon with a coin on its forehead hopped forward brandishing it's claws. “Surrender now or prepare to fight!”

“Why are you attacking us and what would we be surrendering for?” I asked dully as the three pointed at us, one with their tail, one with a single claw and one with a head tendril thing. “What do you three want exactly?”

“All of your money of course.” Jessie answered with greed.

“The infamy of defeating outsiders.” James answered with possible thoughts of glory.

“Power, someone will have to give it to us for bringing you down!” Meowth answered with thoughts of illusionary grandeur, I'm judging that by the look on his face. "Also you ain't Pokémon, so we have the advantage here!"

I highly doubted that they had the advantage. Shanty, Dolly and I could possibly bring them down easily once we knew what they were capable of, Smolder would be backup and we didn't exactly want to force Ocellus to fight even if she could do so in a limited degree.

“Well… now is a good time to test your resolve. I know me and my friends can take them, but can the three of you try without our help?” The three Pokémon we were looking to possibly hire on as personal help nodded to me that they would at least try and we'd get to see what they could do first hoof.

While Jiri and Geoff were going to be working directly for Aurora, though Geoff may continue being our guide for a time, I would try to make sure my group was free to do our own thing.

I didn't mind the idea of leading a full Pokémon unit ourselves... if only to save me on the numerous personal injuries this time.

Author's Note

Pages are likely to be longer because the added characters. The number of added characters is going to get a bit out of control given this is Pokémon I'm dealing with.

250$ Poke from Chansey for a little help from Geoff.

5000$ Poke from a Smeargle just because Pom exists.

Pom befriending a Gourgeist? Priceless, because you wouldn't expect her to go out of her way to talk to someone so spooky looking. She would talk to someone who looks lonely though.

244. Tricky Trio.

-Airship Mauled, Bloody Maries-

“Fizzy can’t you do something about them?” Mara asked for us.

“Not really, they look too comfortable.” Fizzy stated as she looked at our back. “Besides Jade and I are going to be needed for the Tambelon mission. No matter how much I’d rather Jade stay out of it, she’s a brilliant tactician and we could use a mind like hers in Tambelon… so long as math isn’t involved. This is just her way of spending time with those most important to her.”

“Do they have to be sleeping on our back though?” Maria stated while turning her head to look at Silvers and Jade snuggled comfortable into our back, Jade wrapping around Silvers and Silvers curled up inside her mother’s embrace.

“Shouldn’t you know what cats are like given that two of you have lived with Mara all your life?” Fizzy stated with a fond tone. “Also you’ll be stuck with Silvers when we have to go outside of Equestria, if anything happens to us then you’re the designated parent.”

“Not going to lie, I didn’t get to do much cat things growing up, not with my sisters.” Mara responded and we all understood the reasoning of her statement. “We rarely did things that a cat would normally like.”

“Eh, fair.” Fizzy stated before moving over to pat Jaded and Silvers on their heads, getting them to start purring as they snuggled deeper into our back.

-Pokémon world, streets of Arbora Town, Ocellus-

“What happened to the town guard and why aren’t they hear about strange Pokémon jumping off roofs and making declarations to attack or thieve from people?” There was good reason for Pom to ask that as these guys were making open intentions to attack us and yet no guards were showing up.

“We’ve already dealt with them, poison types can take down grass types rather easily!” Announced Meowth. He didn’t look like a poison type, but I’m pretty sure Jessie and James were on principle of their appearances. I had several transformation ideas to handle poison because one of them was a snake and the other was an urchin of some kind.

Hopefully they would get that far, because I could do some pretty nasty things and biofeedback wasn’t hard for a changeling to do. Poisons, venoms, paralytics and plenty of other things shouldn’t have any effect on me.

Quetal, Favela and Shine moved forward in a disorganized fashion and were ready for a fight. The Sneasel seemed confident, Favela seemed uneasy because apparently grass types like her were weak to poison types and Shine seemed to be more calculating as she eyed the trio.

Behind them Pom created a second defensive group as the center, with Dolly on the left and Shanty on the right. Shanty tossed her bag and I caught it in my magic and looked over Dodo’s egg, still no changes.

Shanty wasn’t leaving anything to chance to happen to Dodo by leaving him back at Aurora like we did the machine parts Dodo was going to eat, so she was going to carry him absolutely everywhere. Pom always finds most trouble or runs straight into it for decent reasons, but that doesn’t mean trouble isn’t happening somewhere else like Aurora.

Smolder stayed in front of me and I made sure that I was at the back as the last chance to resolve things in a positive manner. That was if the self-proclaimed thieves somehow got past Smolder after everyone else, which wasn’t likely, even if there were probably Pokémon in this world that could do so these three didn’t look capable of beating Dolly much less, Pom and Shanty.

“We’ll try to stay out of the fighting, but if they attack us, we will defend ourselves. If you need help just call out for it.” It seemed Pom was worried about the three Pokémon who were looking to join us on our adventure in this world.

Favela was a foregone conclusion once she and Shanty started getting angry with one another, they were actually lot friendlier than they acted towards one another. Shine was a lonely Pokémon and just wanted friends as far as I could tell. As for Quetal, he needed us, I don’t know why that is and it was disturbing how much he threw his lot behind joining us.

“Let’s get this party started!” In fact Quetal he was more afraid than he appeared as he leapt forward and basically charged Jessie with his claws.

“Oh ho, you don’t think I’m ready for someone of your particular type? Rock Smash!” Jessie deflected his claws with her tail as she brought it down and knocked Quetal into the ground and onto his back. “If I recall, Dark and Ice type, exceedingly weak to fighting type attacks… say goodnight, Rock Smash!”

The snake raised her tail and sent it whistling down as both Jame and Meowth watched with grins.

Within a blink I saw the panicked looking Quetal appear where Shine was and Shine was suddenly in his place to take the attack.

It almost looked to us as if Jessie had whiffed with her attack, however from what I just saw… the attack basically passed through Shine harmlessly as she jumped backwards. It had hit her body, but didn’t seem to touch her at all.

Let me reiterate, the part of the attack that would have hit just passed straight through the living gourd Pokémon with a Nightmare Night theme.

Both Meowth and James look a little flabbergasted.

“Wha… what just?!” Queatal stated looking puzzled to find himself in a new spot.

“Don’t rush in without a plan... please.” Shine said looking back at him with worry. “That could have seriously hurt you.”

“Well it seems one of you is going to be tricky to deal…” A series of leaves struck out as Meowth was talking and hit James with a lot of force pushing him back. “Hey I was talking here twerp!”

“Talking is not a free action, we’re in the middle of a fight here!” Favela announced as she sent a more sharp angular leaves flying at James from her body only for Meowth to intercept.

“Fury swipes.” With each swing of his claws, Meowth deflected the leaves out of the air before they could hit James.

“Hm… this is going to get bad.” Mumbled Shine as her emotions were as south as Quetal’s were, but Favela had a positive attitude despite the circumstances with her facing two Poison types she was apparently weak to. I’m assuming Meowth was a Normal type which is why he didn’t attack Shine. “Favela right? Continue attacking at range do not get close to them, especially avoid the Mareanie. Quetal if you have a ranged attack you should use that too, I can deal with the Meowth.”

“Deal with this, Metal Claw!” Meowths claws took on a metallic sheen as he charged Shine.

“He’s not the only one you’re dealing with Poison Tail!” Jessie tail glowed as she shot for Favela who was continuing to pressure James with those leaves that seem to hit with a force far more than leaves should be able to.

James seemed to be the slowest Pokémon here, he was the smallest and didn’t seem as dangerous as Jessie did.

“Toxic!” James, apparently finally having had enough of enduring the leaves as he hunkered down, decided to launch his own attack and fired a ball of pure purple liquid towards Quetal.

“What is Shine planning to do?” Huh, what did Pom mean? She was paying more attention to Shine than Favela or Quetal. Emotions were starting to run high, but out of all of them Quetal seemed the most emotionally invested.

Jessie lunged into the air and brought her tail around for Favela who was looking panicked.

Quetal managed to dodge the ball of dangerous looking purple liquid.

Shine dodged Meowth and then suddenly swapped places with Favela place to take the hit meant for her dead on.

“Aghhhh!” Shine went down and whimpered as she took a nasty gash across her body.

“You may not have been my target, but you aren’t immune to Poison Type attacks.” Jessie stated haughtily.

“Well I needed to even the odds… and you’re the most dangerous one here.” A white sphere popped out of a weak looking Shine and one popped out of a surprised Jessie, Jessie’s was orb larger than the smaller orb. “Let’s see how you feel… when you know the pain you’ve caused…”

The two white orbs collided with one another instantly and the smaller grew in size as the larger shrunk until they were equal in appearance and then the orbs went back to the respective Pokémon.

Shine’s injury was far less painful looking having miraculously healed quite a bit and Jessie suddenly had a moderate injury as if she had struck herself with her own tail.

“AAIIEEE!” Jessie screamed in pain as an injury appeared on her body and she slithered backwards in a blind panic.

Shine didn’t fully heal from her injury, but she looked to have healed enough to stand back up.

-Smolder-

While Ocellus was watching whatever was happening with Jessie and Shine. Favela looked confused to be in a new position, but she quickly capitalized on it as she was out of range of Meowths attack by slapping him across the face with a vine.

“So what if she swapped with you, I can take you on easily enough!” Meowth continued swiping at Favela with his metallic claws as she pulled back her vines and dodged his attacks.

“How about if Favela wave’s goodbye to your supposed victory?” Favela stated with a grin as a massive amount of water surged up out of nowhere from underneath her and then the mass of water that was slightly wider than her body slammed down on top of Meowth with a painful amount of force and sent him sputtering and flopping past James.

Grass Types can do water based attacks? Well that would have put out a dragons fire at least.

-Shanty-

This is being nuts. That Quetal guy be firing exploding stars out of his mouth and James be having a hard time moving forwards as he be having to hop to move about, he is not being very fast but he is proving to be tough to stand up to the constant barrage he’s been taking since the fight started.

I be thinking his only ranged move be that ball of curious liquid. Also did Favela just be creating a small tidal wave in the street? These Pokémon are being far stranger than I first be thinking.

Also why did Favela be turning to Jessie? Shine seemed to be having trouble with avoiding the teeth and tail swings.

“Hey, ugly snake lady, leave her alone!” Why did Favela be glowing as she said that and why was she moving in a strange manner like that?

“Did you just call my magnificent visage ugly, you little brat!” Jessie turned about and surged straight for Favela.

While Jessie was distracted, Shine turned towards Meowth and two white orbs erupted between them and Shine’s was being smaller. I think I be understanding what the orbs were doing.

Shines injuries lessened as Meowth looked to be mildly hurt and grunted in pain that stopped him from going after Quetal while he was busy dodging and attacking James taking a few scratches from James but didn’t seem to be in any real trouble.

“Jessie, you need to take out that evolved dame!” Instead of listening to Meowth, Jessie wildly swung her tail for him making him back off in fear and she continued on to try and attack Favela with wild abandon.

I be thinking there are moves that can be making someone blindly angry at you from what I just saw…

Wait… did she be using that on me?!

-Pom-

Creating waves of water, firing exploding stars, turning parts of your body into metal and instantaneously switching places within the blink of an eye, spitting blobs of dangerous to touch poisonous liquid that harmlessly evaporates ten second after striking the ground and offloading a portion of grievous personally injuries onto an opponent… these Pokémon were very weird creatures.

James closed in on Quetal and he lunged high and all the tendrils on his head pointed all their barbs at Quetal, who continued to spit stars at James as he came down on him.

“Ha, got you!” James shouted as he dug all his barbs into Quetal’s chest in a painful and, if James was as dangerous as he appeared to be, lethally poisonous manner.

“Do you now?” Quetal said from behind James, how did he… when did he… what the?

The thing James had impaled on his tendrils suddenly stopped looking like Quetal and appeared to look like a green stuffed toy with bright white cheeks and belly. It even had a funny looking comical smile on its face.

“I will when I…” That’s when James tried to free himself, all he ended up doing was wiggling and wobbling about as his tendrils were stuck in the stuffed toy. Being stuck upside down on the stuffed toy left his body quite exposed. “Uh… oh no…”

“Let me show you my ace in the hole against fighting types, since most of your tendrils are currently occupied!” With a forward leap and a flip, Quetal fly by James almost hovering off the ground and a slash ripped across James exposed body making him cry out as he was launched upwards. “With Aerial Ace, I just have to be faster than a fighting type.”

“Heh, you weren’t the only one to land an attack.” James stated as he got up.

“Ngh… darn it…” Despite having landed a painful blow that left James barely able to sit up straight, Quetal had a small gash in his side from where James managed to get a tendril free and raked him with it as he passed by. Quetal grunted, he started sweating and looked to be suffering. “I’m poisoned…”

-Dolly-

This… was… insane. Oh dog, was it ever!

Still didn’t regret being here with Pom, but if this was the kind of brutal stuff we were going to have to deal with... I would seriously have to up my game in this world. Pom doesn’t want me relying on my ‘Haste’ magic and I can understand why it would quickly become a crutch from watching this spectacle.

Favela looked to be having problems with Jessie and had taken several nasty looking cuts as she tried to avoid Jessie’s more dangerous and wild attacks. It didn’t seem like Jessie was even focusing on what attacks she was doing.

“How long have you been with these outsiders to be this tough?!” Making his way for Favela’s back Meowth’s claws were glowing, but not in a metallic manner. He rapidly struck Favela across her butt and right flank with his claws.

“We all literally just met them!” Stated through her clenched teeth, Favela ducked back and to the left and Meowth took a face full of Jessie’s tail.

“Seriously?! Just meeting outsiders is enough to be this strong?!” Meowth stated as he sat up with a large rectangular mark across his face and watched Favela narrowly avoid Jessie’s wildly flailing poisonous tail.

“We were already strong before meeting them, you guys are just weak!” As she said this I watched her dodge backwards rhythmically and give off a strange energy that seemed to enrage Meowth just as much as it had Jessie.

“I’m not weak!” Meowth lunged for Favela and she rolled to the side and Meowth rapidly clawed up Jessie’s face before she smashed him back with her head.

“Stop getting in my way Meowth, I have a twerp to shred!” Jessie and Meowth were now mad at one another and looked confused as they started attacking each other in anger.

-Ocellus-

“Why haven’t you used your fire attack yet?” Quetal asked of Shine as he avoided another spike from digging into him from James hopping at him, but he was slowed down immensely from the poison.

“A fire type move in a town full of Grass Types and with so many flammable objects nearby, are you nuts?!” Shine responded before suddenly swapping places with Quetal and ducking under a reaching out tendril and slapping James across the face with her hair limb sending him flopping backwards.

Pokémon didn’t always have to use moves to do some damage apparently.

“How do you keep doing that?” Quetal asked as Shine ran towards him and reaching under her hair at her nape she pulled out a heart shaped berry that I quickly recognized as a Pecha Berry and tossed it to him. Quetal quickly took it and consumed it without question. “Thank you… for saving my sorry backside several times now.”

“Yes, but can you save hers?” We all turned to Jessie who was wrapped around Favela and the blade of her tail was on her throat. Meowth looked a bit battered, but he was grinning victoriously. “We’re at least not leaving without that money. Don’t make any sudden moves.”

The folds of Jessie’s body tightened around Favela making her wince in pain and whine for help with what little air she could get in her lungs

James and Meowth formed up with Jessie looked battered, but not beaten.

Quetal wasn’t looking too good and he was a storm of angry emotions, most of which were directed at himself and there was quite a bit of worry for Favela.

Shine had taken some hits, but she had recovered through her unique abilities.

Favela was both injured pretty badly and being held captive by Jessie, she was struggling and was quite frightened to be in the position she currently was in.

-Shine-

Okay, I couldn’t use Ally Switch on her in that position, which was bad. I doubt pain split would do much unless I was in terrible pain or weaker than any of them.

What do I do, what do I… well… that could work. She’d have to trust me to use one of my more unique utility moves on her.

“It’s going to be okay, I’ll get you out of this.” Please say yes to what I’m about to ask, I don’t think I could help you otherwise. “First I need to ask, do you trust me?”

The Skiddo managed a nod despite Jessie tightening her coils on the poor dear.

That was good enough for me.

I muttered my moves name, chose my target and it took effect. Yet nobody would know what that effect was until it was too late to do anything about it.

“Trust? What is there to trust, there’s no way you’ll attack me while she’s bound like this.” Jessie held the blade of her tail close the Skiddo’s throat. “We have the advantage here, now give over your money or else.”

“Taking a kid as a hostage, how low of you.” The Sneasel said with an honest distaste for these three, I could certainly feel it too and I try to not have a bad opinion of anyone until they reach a point like this.

“The lowest.” James stated proudly while swiping a tendril across his face.

“You can’t get lower than perfect hostage situations.” That Meowth stated with clear glee. “We’re at least getting a decent payday today for our troubles, just think about what we can do with all that Poke.”

“If you can manage it, Swagger her again!” Having shouted this, I hoped she listened to what I said. Hopefully Jessie lost all sense and did a regular attack or any move that wasn’t poisonous.

I received strange stares, but there was a good reason for her to Swagger this Jessie again.

-Favela-

Swagger… in this position, but why? Also something felt very odd here, but I just couldn’t quite place what.

I said that I trusted her and I was going to prove it, ma didn’t raise no liars.

Managing to wiggle the front half of my body upwards through the folds slightly before they squeezed down on me again. I managed to get enough room to get some air in me. Quickly taking in said ragged gulp of air, I proceeded to say the absolute worst thing I can ever imagine actually saying in this given situation.

“So you’re entire group is made up of ugly, incompetent and stupid, but you in particular are all three in one. It’s little wonder your group is weak what with an old hag like you running things into the ground constantly.” I waggled myself and my brows at the snake and waited to see what the Gourgeist had in mind. “I mean I heard witches were ugly, but I’m sure they are far prettier than you will ever be.”

“Old… ugly… stupid… incompetent? Nobody calls me a hag and gets away with it!” The fury on the Sevipers face was getting increasingly worse. She raised her tail and began to slash it towards me without activating a move. “I’ll show you who’s ugly after this!”

I closed my eyes, I heard a scream shock and agonized pain.

I personally didn’t feel any pain until my backside hit the road and I opened my eyes, I was up and quickly running to everyone else and safety.

Looking back I could see that the Seviper had stabbed herself and she reflexively flung me free of her coils in the process, but why hadn’t I been injured?

“Trick-Or-Treat…” Mumbled the Gourgeist quietly with a faint smile as she hid her eyes behind her pink hair, whatever that move was it just saved me from getting hurt.

The Seviper Jessie wasn’t as lucky as she writhed around on the ground bleeding after pulling her bladed tail free from jamming it straight into her own body.

“Arrgghh, you’ll pay for that!” Jessie was angry and both James and Meowth were glaring.

“I think not…” Uh oh, ma was angry and her eyes were glowing bright yellow with power, it was a very sunny day today so it was very understandable that she was about to let them have it. “You did just threaten my daughter after all.”

-Pom-

We all backed away from Vetali as she was glowing brightly, she moved forward.

“I think that’s quite enough of a show for one day. Your new companions showed what they are capable of and they didn’t ask for help when they actually needed it proving to you that they need to work on that.” Opening her mouth, energy was glowing at the back of Vetali’s throat as she took aim at the trouble making trio. “Now let me finish off these thieving ruffians for you!”

What happened next solidified our need for the three Pokémon companions, especially if Favela eventually became capable of it.

A brilliant golden beam of raw power erupted from Vetali’s mouth and struck the trio dead on and slowly Vetali lifted her head angling the beam skywards. Once it stopped firing from her mouth we saw a sparkle in the sky from the trio being launched into the horizon.

“Eh, they’ll live, but at least those thieves won’t be bothering anyone for at least a couple of days until they recover from that.” Vetali turned to us and we gave her incredulous looks. “Oh trust me, Pokémon are far tougher than we look. That… that wouldn’t kill those three. They’ll probably hunt you down again if they are insistent on bothering your group.”

“We’re here what happened!” Geoff announced as he showed up with Chansey, Jiri and a covered cart that seemed to be loaded with recently purchased medicine.

“A lot of things, which I’m going to be completely worried about in the near future.” This was just another in a line of dangerous worlds. “In any case, we made some friends.”

Author's Note

Another million words is surpassed and my writing has been relatively consistent at least.

245. Troubled Treatment Transportation.

-Slightly after noon, The Greenleaf Aurora Bridge, Pom-

After everyone was healed by Chansey, who apparently had moves that can heal most injuries, we quickly set out for the bridge and made it here in record time.

I had several worries about Pokémon now, Vetali seemed like a nice goat lady. She of course is capable of firing a beam of raw solar energy out of her mouth with force and eventually Favela will be capable of doing that too if she chose to learn how to.

Favela was another kid for me to worry about, but she could at least mostly survive off sunlight and water. So I wouldn’t have to find ways to feed a second goat with an overly ravenous mouth. Besides Favela’s rivalry and friendship with Shanty would be good for the both of them.

Learning what the move ‘Substitute’ does weirded me out, Quetal was very upfront with the information. In fact, Quetal seemed to be trying to endear himself to my group, even if his slightly gruff personality read almost as cold as his somewhat dark appearance.

I was beginning to think Quetal in a similar vein to Oleander until I was proven otherwise, that is that Dark did not always equate to evil.

Still, we would eventually need to know more about Quetal. I fear he had ulterior motives with joining us given he was waiting in a dark corner for us to ask around for assistance. I was guessing Dark Types were closer to more nocturnal capable Pokémon or more towards fighting dirty. I didn’t mind fighting dirty if it kept me alive and if Quetal proved pragmatic enough, we would get along swimmingly.

Quetal’s limbs ending in sharp claws was no different than when Shanty swung her hooves about to me.

Shine… I was actually comfortable with her, despite being part ghost.

The only thing about Shine that I was curious about is her Fire Type move, which she refused to use around a town positively covered in decorative foliage and plant life for exceedingly obvious reasons.

Now if I can get my mind on more important matters, I just had to ask…

“What happened?” Asking that as I walked up, the two Breloom named Luke and Brisk looked behind them at the destroyed bridge. They then return their fairly upset gazes to me.

“Someone destroyed the bridge and they used one of the heaviest things they could find apparently.” Luke turned and pointed out that the remaining one fourth of the bridge was on Greenleaf’s side. The other Three fourths were completely decimated. “Sorry we couldn’t prevent this from happening, even if we had already guessed it was going to. You might want to make haste to the southern bridge into Fontaine, the bridge to Aurora is close by enough that you can still make it into Aurora before nightfall and someone can figure out another way to intercept you.”

“That boulder is being pretty big!” Shanty be staring at it alongside Dolly with a display of concern I was probably showing myself. “There be such a Pokémon capable of throwing something of that size?”

“Oh, that’s not a boulder… that’s… actually a Pokémon. It’s a Snorlax to be specific, it’s a very good thing it didn’t wake up in the commotion of destroying the bridge. they are better off sleeping and can be really hard to fight when awake. Not to mention they can eat at least twice their body weight in food over the course of half a day that would lead to a great famine if they aren’t quickly put back to sleep. It’s a good thing they breed far slower than molasses.” We all froze at what Brisk was saying and then looked at the large boulder as it shifted slightly on the far side of the deep river to reveal a cat like head snoring away. “Ninety percent of their energy thankfully comes from sleeping for long periods of time, but it still isn’t a good idea to approach a Snorlax, they have moves that are specifically geared to be used while they are sleeping. It is best to never fight one and to ultimately leave it sleeping, they are heavy sleepers as you can very well make out from here.”

“That… is a Pokémon… that mass... is a Pokémon… heh… hehehahahah… I think my mind might be a moment from snapping.” Very clearly horrified here, given I saw what looked like a land whale had beached itself partially in the river on a large broken chunk of the bridge. That it slept through having its body being used as a force of destruction that took out most of the bridge was clearly absurd to a degree my mind was having trouble grasping. “Are you sure you don’t have any ideas who could have done this?”

“Don’t rightly know who could use the Snorlax’s body to destroy the bridge like this. With the momentum it had hitting the bridge, I know for a fact that the Snorlax itself couldn’t have possibly done this.” Luke turned to me and pointed south. “We’ll escort you half way to the southern bridge and then we’ll break off for Arbora Town. We’ll send a message out to King Motonari tomorrow morning about the problem, you guys should quickly use the southern bridge before someone tries to stop you from leaving Greenleaf entirely in a more lethal manner. With the way things are going today, things aren’t getting any less eventful around here and I’m glad to see you found some traveling companions.”

“Right, Geoff turn the cart around! We need to move fast, we’ll rush the southern bridge and slow down once we’re well on the other side.” I stopped and thought about something. “How much weight do you think you can handle if I were to push?”

-Two hours later, Fontaine Kingdom, Forest Wetlands, Smolder-

We were making good time with the Breloom guards helping push the cart. After they left for Arbora Town it was up to Pom to start pushing the cart with Geoff steering and pulling it along, paranoia power got us pretty far even if Ocellus was complaining about Pom’s spiking emotions being like an ice pick stabbing into her nerves. Dolly was trying to keep Pom calm by talking to her, but it clearly wasn’t working.

We all took took turns riding on the cart and even Pom swapped out with Jiri or Quetal in pushing the cart along. We made it across the bridge into Fontaine without any trouble, but then Geoff had to go and make a comment by noticing something odd was going on as we took a break.

“Strange, there aren’t any wonderful water types frolicking around the bridge, the effervescent glow of a happy Squirtle’s shell, the belly spiral of a Poliwhirl, there isn’t even a single leggy Surskit and you’d think we’d have seen at least one unit from the Dutiful Ducks Battalion around the forest wetland path. Usually this bridge would have water Pokémon highly active around it.” Geoff sat down and sighed audibly, the dude needed a break. He also needed to stop looking at Pom with affection because she clearly doesn’t appreciate it. “Once we get through the forest wetlands by following the path east, the bridge will be directly to our north, we should be back in Aurora in no time at all once we get there.”

We couldn’t very well cross the river around the destroyed with the medicinal shipment, but I was getting a foreboding feeling in my gut and it wasn’t what I had for lunch. Also how useful would I really be against Water Types? My fire wouldn’t do much to them considering what we’ve been told about the battle triangle of the countries around Aurora and we’ve already seen Favela create a small tidal wave already and she wasn’t even a Water Type. A Water Type would probably do it larger and with more force.

“Should I go scout around while you guys take a break?” I’ve been meaning to stretch my wings today and I could make myself useful. “Also what’s this Dutiful Ducks Battalion thing look like if I see something?”

“They usually consist of some of the cutest yellow bipedal Pokémon with the adorably round bills and yellow down called Psyducks. They tend to be armed with small swords, shields and some specialty helmets to help them deal with a species specific constant migraine. They have incredibly rare psychic type abilities, but are not Psychic Type Pokémon themselves. They can hardly control the incredible power within them and they are pure water type species, which are easily recognized by their vacant expressions.” Geoff cleared his throat and continued, because of course he did. “With evolution they become a larger blue duck, usually with a red jewel in their forehead, which are equally attractive and much cooler looking. They are called Golducks and are usually the much stronger, smarter and better armed of the Dutiful Ducks Battalion that makes up Fontaine’s more elite soldiers, hey have a much better handle on the psychic powers which become far weaker with their evolution. It’s a bit of a mystery why they evolve to be less potent in that given area, but those blue ducks are wonderfully exuberant and quite friendly.”

“Anything else I should be on the lookout for?” Not about to take off before I got everything out of Geoff, so far I’ve paraphrased all his talking down to just yellow and blue bipedal ducks.

“Well there’s the Auxiliary Dutiful Ducks members which consist of Lotad, Lombre and Ludicolo, they are Water and Grass Types. If the Dutiful Ducks aren’t out in force, then maybe their auxiliary members are about? Basically if you see something that looks like a living lily-pad or a large round dancing thing with what looks like it has a sombrero as a part of its body, then you’ve seen all the members of that particularly species of Pokémon.” Right Geoff, so two ducks of a single color and a bunch of living lily-pads go it. “Ahh… they are so lively at parties and a nice shade of green too!”

“Okay, I’ll be back soon!” I flying up above the dry path leading through the wetlands and the forest, I flew forward to go see what was ahead and if there was any more trouble for us today.

We’ve had some of the Raiders that were causing problem with Aurora, a mysterious bow wielding Pokémon that attacked Pom, Thieves that were trying to attack us for a variety of reasons and at this point Pom’s nerves were getting on Ocellus’s nerves. We had right to be paranoid after the bridge was destroyed with that huge Snorlax thing.

What were we going to deal with next?

-Pom-

We had the rest of the day to get the supplies back and instate Jiri as an official military member of Aurora. I knew what a Miltank was and why they would call this a Miltank run, because Miltanks were pretty darn fast at rolling or running.

It was supposed to be a quick in and out, maybe spend some time with the locals of Greenleaf and then return to Aurora Castle. This whole trip had been anything but simple since it started from crossing the bridge.

There were people out there making absolutely sure that today was going to go badly for us, at least we didn’t have to step with those thieves. Favela, Shine and Quetal handled themselves really well despite being barely more organized than their opponents. I’m still finding it hard to believe that those thieves might have survived that Solar Beam attack after threatening Vetali’s daughter and if they did… what did that say about general Pokémon toughness?

I spotted Smolder coming back in for a landing after a good ten minute break.

“Saw something really odd up ahead, I didn’t see any living lily pads or sombrero dudes, but there are a lot of those yellow ducks in the forest wetlands and crossroads leading to the bridge and there’s something off about them.” Here Smolder paused and looked around to make sure she had all our attentions. “Their eyes were glowing.”

“Well when a Psyducks eyes glow blue or they are shrouded in a psychic aura, they are about to unleash their psychic powers, which usually come in two forms. Either a Confusion attack or a Psyshock attack.” Geoff still sounded rather optimistic. “Were they doing combat exercises by any chance?”

“No, they didn’t appear to be doing exercises with one another and they looked to be searching for something. Probably us.” Yeah, that checks Smolder, with our luck they would probably be targeting wouldn’t they? “Also what I want to know is, what do red glowing eyes signify?”

“Red glowing… that’s not good at all!” Geoff looked about worriedly and was appearing quite frantic. “How many of them had these glowing red eyes?”

“All of them.” When Smolder said that Geoff paled visible, while everyone else stared at him curiously. “There were five full units of those small yellow ducks to the far to the east and south at the cross roads, there are also five full units directly in our way to the bridge in the forest. So that’s what… thirty guys in our path and sixty more that can show up as backup that we likely have to get the medicinal supplies by? They seem to be patrolling the crossroads for some reason.”

“That many… how could someone mind control that many of the Dutiful Ducks Battalion, that’s almost a fifth of their full strength in that one area!” Did Geoff just say mind control? He said Mind Control didn’t he? Pokémon could do that?! “We must now assume that Fontaine is horrible and sadly compromised! Think of all those poor beautiful Pokémon being under someone’s hideously enticing thrall like that!”

Of course Geoff was somewhat attracted to the idea of being mind controlled too… why wouldn’t he be? If someone were to ask what a Wooloo’s kinks were, the response would simply be ‘yes’ at this point.

I sighed audibly and sat back looking at the path forward, there was no other way we were getting the medicine back to Aurora in a timely manner I’d think, but I still had to ask.

“Is there any way we can get off the road and go around them and get to the bridge quietly?” I’m still trying to piece together how all of today’s events were possibly related.

“Ignis is the only other way into Aurora and we can’t very well drag the cart through the wetlands, it might sink into a sinkhole or get stuck in the bog.” Geoff would know so that means… “We have to stay on the paths.”

The sad conclusion I came to was that all the events couldn’t be related to us being here in some way.

The Riolu Raiders were specifically there to stop the medicine shipment until they saw me, then they wanted to capture me for their leader.

Don’t know what the Decidueye was about, but they were definitely targeting and singling me out specifically. They didn’t look at anyone else in my group or target our slowest member Ocellus with an arrow for a sure kill, they just wanted me dead specifically and looked shocked that I spotted them.

The thieves were technically after us and they targeted us as a group while basically attempting a mugging that went quite horribly wrong for them.

None of these events were related to one another, aside from the destruction of the bridge possibly being related to the raiders. Someone definitely didn’t want the medicine shipment to go through and possibly knew what was happening to the north and south of Aurora.

This event is likely something that was happening that we were just coming across incidentally, just because we wouldn’t go through Ignis to get back to Aurora.

There was a large, certainly not anywhere close to zero, chance of us being attacked and the medicine meant for the people of Aurora being stolen if we tried to pass through Ignis.

To think, here I was worried about getting hit by giant beams. Mind control was something far worse for us to run into and a ridiculous ramp up from what we’ve been dealing with today.

I quickly glanced at Ocellus to see how she reacted to the news, she wasn’t taking it well judging by how she sat up straighter, her eyes going wide and glassy. Smolder moved over to her and took her right hoof in her left claw and giving it a squeeze, Ocellus blinked and looked at Smolder. She gasped and tried to pull away, but Smolder held firmly while looking her in the eyes until she calmed down.

“How dangerous are these Psyducks and do any of you have any ideas?” We had to push through the Dutiful Duck Battalion units, while I wanted to figure out a way to free them from whoever or whatever was controlling them… we probably didn’t want to get bogged down with fighting just thirty of them with that many units in the area.

“Very, especially if they still have use of the portion of their minds that allow them to do unit commands.” They probably would Geoff, I know how our luck works. “Six Psyducks firing off a combined Psyshock, it would be a concentrated destructive and volatile thing of beauty… one I don’t think any of you or the medicine would survive a direct hit from. They got us at range and are good up close too.”

“We move the cart as fast as we can and don’t stop as we make for the bridge. No stopping to fight entire units. We don’t need to complicate or overthink things, just blitz straight past them.” Offering the obvious option was Quetal with his arms crossed. Now that I looked at the sneaky weasel with the one feather ear and feathery tail thing, the way he held his arms crossed like that looked defensive and made him seem vulnerable and not the dangerous. In fact I’d say he’d cut a rather dashing figure if he didn’t have a grim frown on his face. “If all we need to do is keep any of them from destroying the cart, then we will just run interference and provide them with targets to focus on so they ignore the cart.”

I gulped a bit, knowing we’d need volunteers to draw fire and that I’d be one of them.

“Favela and Geoff will pull the cart while Jiri pushes.” Announced Shine.

“Yeah, that works… how good are you guys in a fight?” Quetal turned to me. “Once we start heading towards the bridge there will be no stopping. We of course will be going before the cart and starting a ruckus.”

“We can hold our own, no worries about that. Shanty, Dolly and I are basically the combat experts of our group.” At least Shanty was far better at taking care of herself now so I had less to worry about and Dolly was quite agile. “Ocellus is more back up and emergency help. Smolder has been near indestructible in our travels and is capable enough in her own right in a fight… but I don’t think that will be the case in this world. How fast are these Psyduck?”

“Fortunately not very on foot, but we will need to occupy their attentions fully to make sure they don’t even get an opportunity to target the cart.” Quetal looked at Smolder and Ocellus. “You two can fly right? You can protect the cart by drawing fire in the air. The rest of us are going to be draw as much of their attentions away from you as we can. One person per full unit of Psyduck to draw attention. Six to one odds… what I have I gotten myself into? Well… are we doing this sometime today while we still have daylight or not?”

“May I make a suggestion here?” We all nodded to Shine to take the “I think Favela should be on the offensive, they are Water Types and her Razor Leaves and Vine Whips would be helpful with taking some of them down quickly, I’ll be a pusher instead. We could start things off with you and her attacking at range.”

“Hmm… but that would be putting her in the path of danger.” Quetal sounded like he was actually worried about Favela.

“Hey, I, Favela, can easily keep up with you, you’ll see!” Favela stated as she moved forward to glare at Quetal.

“Fine, let’s get moving.” Quetal turned and started down the path slowly.

-Quetal-

I had to do this. Help the outsiders, that I would also be helping a lot of Pokémon doing this was a good thing.

Glancing at Favela, I was mildly worried about the Skiddo that had confidence, but that didn’t exactly equate to competence.

Shine was correct that Favela would be a big help here and if Shine was near enough, she could Ally Switch Favela to safety if things go horribly wrong and we got in over our heads again.

“Wait…” I gestured with my claws for Pom, Dolly and Shanty to move forward slowly to the bush we were taking cover in. “The minute we attack that unit, we will begin moving.”

Ahead on the path, six yellow ducks were meandering about with their red glowing eyes looking about seemingly at random while their hands were reaching for the hilts of their swords. Two other units were nearby in the wetlands looking about, but for what and who?

The Outsiders haven’t been anywhere near Fontaine before now, so something else must be drawing the attention of the controlled ones to watch the crossroads. Who were they on the lookout for exactly?

I seriously doubt medicine warranted this much attention from the one behind the mind controlled Pokémon. I can already tell a dark type or a psychic type were behind this, maybe even a ghost type even if it was unlikely because this wasn’t a bunch of possessions.

Whoever they were, I wanted to deal with them personally, but I’m not dumb enough to run off on my own.

“We’ll get into position in the trees to ambush the second unit and draw will attacks from the third.” Pom stated as Dolly, Shanty and her ran up the nearest tree and started to hop across the branches.

We were going to need a lot of good Pokémon soon if the mind controlling Pokémon had already taken over the entirety of Fontaine. Aurora didn’t currently have many forces, Greenleaf was having internal issues and Ignis had an army, but they weren’t currently doing anything of note to stop what was happening in front of them or what was coming for that matter.

Having seen the look on her face. It seemed that Pom, beyond everyone else, already understood what we were getting into here given the grim look on her face…

War.

The Ransei Region was going to have a lot problems soon… and I hope I was on the right side of history here.

“Go!” I moved forward and started firing off stars from my mouth, doing a Swift attack as Favela moved with me and fired leaves into the pack of Psyducks before they could raise their shields in defense.

-Spatial Pocket Realm, Arceus-

I was just going to watch, all I needed to do was all that I have already done. This day was the start of many things for the Ransei Region.

On the other side of the world a figure would soon wake up as a Pokémon and would eventually solve that nasty little time travel issue.

Let’s see if the various machinations of the ‘so called’ noble ones will even remotely begin pushing things in the right direction.

One was already reliving their past mistakes. The end results of their will speak quite loudly as karmic retribution befalls them.

Another in particular was already of ‘legendary’ consequences in the power they had been gifted with, given how they threw that Snorlax at the problem. They thought that simple actions would change the course of history to resolve things in their favor or to their very whims. They were currently both too haughty and blind to the change others can cause just by existing, no matter how lowly.

Even a simple Bug Type in the right place can defeat the greatest of us.

…

I calmly teleported a Caterpie five feet to the left, seemingly at random, with a smile.

Okay, now I didn’t have to do anything, the consequences of that were going to be quite humorous later on.

Also let’s see how the so called ‘legendary’ one among them deals with a Grubbin eventually becoming their worst nightmare.

...

Bored I was not.

…

As I had told Pom, she did not need not to be the hero and I had not lied about that. Things would ultimately resolve themselves one way or another, even if all Pom did was spend all her time quietly as a maid. Cooking, cleaning and organizing things for King Evan.

Would she yearn to do more, or would she eventually quail before the might of what Pokémon are capable of? I not only wanted to see her survive in this world, I wanted to see her absolutely thrive.

There were those who were already trying to become heroes to stop the rising chaos, some were already well on their way to being and then there were the heroes that were already there in plain sight.

All the various pieces began to make their moves around Ransei.

246. Duck the Psyducks!

-Location?, Legendary Pokémon?-

It seemed innocuous enough that the powerful god of this realm saw fit to do something highly and noticeably overt to my senses, however that overt action somehow ended in my defeat.

I was an outsider received a body befitting someone of my legendary status. Yet when the power that is, in this world, moved one little insignificant worm… I kept divining my imminent defeat from that one action.

All that happened was that lowly worm finding a pile of fruit to eat and yet I couldn’t stop divining the worm as my ultimate doom for some reason.

This was the response for me throwing that Snorlax at that bridge wasn’t it? That was to prevent my defeat by the strange sheep like entity.

I seriously doubted a tiny insignificant little pest like that one can eventually best someone of my mighty caliber!

Yet, my divine powers kept telling me it would somehow lead to my ruin. I would simply have to keep an eye on it.

-Chrysalia, Kingdom of Bug Type Pokémon-

While a god tried to figure out why a regular worm was its downfall and would slowly become obsessed with a green little worm with a small red horn called a Caterpie, another bug was hungry and trying to survive another day.

A second worm like grub, which had no attention on it whatsoever at all, crawled on its six tiny nubby limbs that were almost legs towards the large lone berry.

While the Caterpie was somehow diverted to a larger pile of food that it liked, this one had just found its favorite berry today and it was a big juicy one too!

This soft white bodied, yellow spotted, grub with two large tough looking orange mandibles and a yellow rimmed orange shell on top of its head moved forward with sheer happiness at its sudden discovery.

It was called a Grubbin and today was its fourteenth birthday as it found its favorite berry just sitting out in the open, no pheromones of any other Bug Type having laid claim to it. Today felt like the luckiest day of its life and it started to happily and slowly consuming the berry, enjoying every single scrap of delectable flavor it could wrench from it.

After finishing the berry it continued on its merry way being ignored completely by a Legendary Pokémon that just ended up on a wild Swanna chase.

-Fontaine, Forest Wetlands, Pom-

I dropped down from the tree front hooves first onto one of the Psyduck from the second unit, as Favela and Quetal began their surprise attack on the first unit in the way.

Geoff and the others were already moving the cart as I slammed my hooves down on the helmet and using the still standing Pokémon I bucked a second one into a nearby tree.

Shanty manage to bludgeon two of them and Dolly knocked the other two onto their backs.

This was about the time that the Psyduck units started reacting to our attacks, the ones under assault by Quetal and Favela raised their shields and weathered the ranged attacks.

The ones we just hit or knocked down were back up in seconds and coming at us with small swords raised.

Shanty darted forward across the swampy muck that was slowing Dolly and Me down slightly, to swing for one of the approaching Psyduck. The yellow duck swung it’s blade and two cutting forces clashed, the one that one out was a surprise to me.

For a second later, Shanty was sent skidding back past us to almost fall onto her back, she managed to stay standing and kept her staff at the ready before glancing to me.

“They are being very goofy looking, but they are not weak!” Stated Shanty with a sudden fear as five more swords were pulled on us and the entire unit we were distracting raised their shields and began to quickly approach.

Quetal and Favela were damaging the shields of the first unit, we were occupying the second unit.

“Psy-ai-ai-ai-…” The third unit that just arrived due to the commotion suddenly gathered together and began glowing and building up energy while chanting in unison.

“Incoming Psyshock unit command attack, get clear of it!” Announced Geoff and the others were passing between the two groups, when the third group arrived on the hill to the right of the path.

The entire glowing group turned in our direction.

“Scatter!” I shouted as a blast of pink energy surged into the air and quickly arced towards where we were as the unit of Psyducks halted their advance on us and held their shields up.

Dolly Leapt into the air and zipped away with a glide, I jumped up and kicked off a tree and onto the path behind the cart and Shanty went scuttling across the muddy waters to get far ahead of the cart.

The mass of energy that came down behind us destroyed a huge section of the forest wetlands, that included the water, trees, mud, possibly the air itself and absolutely everything caught in the blast seemed to atomize in a perfect sphere of raw, pink colored, force.

It took a few seconds for the world to realize physics should be taking place, the muddy water quickly flooded into the destroyed wetlands area after a second of being held back by the unknown force.

Dolly zipped around on the air and dropped next to me and then lunged forward to block the blade of a charging Psyduck with her board held horizontally. She kicked off the Psyduck sending it onto its back with a momentum boosted buck of her rear legs.

The other five were quickly coming upon us as turn and moved after the cart. Looking to my right Favela and Quetal were retreating from the other unit and only had managed to take down two of them as they out cold on the ground. The other four were still chasing them and us as we met up.

“We be having more problems, the other two units are blocking the path!” Shanty shouted from up ahead and she was charging that group alone that already had their swords and shields ready. That’s twelve psyducks in the way, ten coming up behind us and six on the ridge looking to be building up for another Psyshock as Geoff called it.

“Everyone rush forward and clear a path for the cart, we can’t afford to slow down now!” If we did, they would box us in and bombard with those Psyshock attacks until we were torn to shreds. Maybe they wouldn’t even leave anything left.

Dolly and I rushed with Quetal and Favela to help Shanty who was dancing in front of the twelve psyducks and deflecting their blades with rapid arcing swipes of her cane blade. She was slowly retreating towards us and the steadily moving Geoff being helped by Shine pushing the cart.

Jiri had hopped off to join us in the forward charge, Ocellus looked to be prepping magic with her horn and Smolder took up Jiri’s position with moving the cart.

“Also don’t hit them in the heads, it just potentially makes their attacks far more powerful!” Quetal pulled away from us as we rushed to back up Shanty.

Quetal opened his mouth and fired a stream of those small star shaped blasts of energy, he traced them along the hill beneath the chanting Psyducks as they gathered energy for another attack as he continued forward.

The charge almost built up to a full blast as Quetal stopped for a moment and continued to focus on the hill. A section of it started to shift and it eventually fell, knocking a single Psyduck off balance and almost taking it with it.

The large forming attack above the hillside Psyduck unit’s heads suddenly broke apart as the one left the formation and the masses of scattered energy splattered against the ground in a raucous explosive fashion and sent the entire unit up in the air a few feet. That was followed by them limply flopping down the hill to go skidding into the wetland muds while groaning in pain from having been injured by their attacks misfire.

“I’ll slow the ones on our rear, clear a path forward!” Saying that Quetal moved towards the cart and started to spit more stars at the Psyduck coming at our backs, to little effect as they all had their shields up.

I turned forward and continued to pick up the pace as Geoff kept moving forward, but he had to slow down a little bit on approach for the Psyducks that Shanty was having a problem breaking through.

-Shanty-

With a twist of my left hoof inwards my cane slashed forward and deflecting three blades with a cutting arc. Removing my right hoof from it, I it swung outwards to deflect one on my right and knock them back.

I had to quickly kick up my right hind leg to knock a blade right up and out of the small hands of the Psyduck that be running towards me with the blade raised.

The one Psyduck paused to look at it empty right claw. Despite the blue shell shaped helmet and shield weighing it down. It quickly did a handspring into a backflip, landed, then caught the blade as it fell and then it be immediately began charging forward to thrust it at me.

My cane, right leg and left rear leg were currently being occupied as I balanced on my right hind leg, having kicked out with my left to deflect another blade away from piercing me.

How do I be getting into these situations so often? Not this time, I can be getting out of this easily enough.

I lowered my head and swung it to the left creating cutting arcs with both my horns that deflected multiple blades away from me including the one that be thrust at me. I hopped back and let the other incoming blades go past before slashing my legs forward.

“Riptide!” A point blank blast of water sent all twelve of the assailants skidding backwards, but did little to hurt them or break them up. What little force that could hurt them was absorbed by their shields.

A Psyduck on my left opened its mouth and that be when Dolly arriving, she moved into the path of a powerful stream of water that be shooting out of its beak and be using her board to angle all the water it into another Psyduck to my far right.

“Break them up further!” A bark blast from Pom be catching one in the face on the far left before it could raise its shield and it was sent sprawling. That was not nearly being enough to keep one of these tough ducks down.

As I flourished my bladed cane to deflect four more sword strikes from the yellow feathered nuisances with the glowing red eyes in front of me, Jiri shoulder checked the third one of the four down in front of me to create a small opening as she hopped backwards.

I swung the butt of my cane into the side of the one on my right that had been left open by circumstances and sent them flying off the pathway. They all be wielding their weapons with their right claws.

The two to my left had to deal with Pom landing a flying buck to topple the second duck and then bucking at the other one as she stood up, the left duck was sent skidding backwards slightly when it took the blow with its shield.

The four Psyducks on my right were sent flying when Favela grabbed one a with a tentacle vine and whipped them about to slam them into the three other Psyducks while releasing it. That be clearing up the paths right side.

Jiri, Pom and Dolly were battering the five still standing ones on the left back and away from the path as I be catching my breath. I quickly be joining them with deflecting a blade before it could jab into Pom’s side and Jiri be punching that one across the face with a glowing paw that be healing the wounds she took from tackling straight into sharp objects twice.

“Go faster!” Quetal stated as he followed behind the wagon as it passed by us and we had a number of psyducks coming up from behind, the ones we just knocked down were already getting up and already coming at us.

Quetal blasted energy stars at them forcing them to stand still and block them as he continued to back away.

“You heard Quetal, we have to keep up with the cart and keep on top of anything that might be in its path!” I be putting my weapon across my back and following everyone as we ran with thirty angry ducks at our backs.

“Everyone clear the way! They are weak to lightning right?” Ocellus be lowering her horn and we be moving to the sides of the cart passing by Smolder and Shine pushing at the back and were now around Geoff.

“Remember not to push yourself too hard Ozzy!” Smolder be shouting at her, shoulder pressing into the back of the cart and pushing it through a rough patch of mud with Shine at her side.

“They are faster than the cart Smolder and we can’t keep them at range forever.” I don’t be knowing about that Ocellus, Favela seemed to be a doing a good job firing leaves backwards into the crowd forcing them to slow down and block them with their shields. “Here I go!”

A bolt of lightning surged from Ocellus’s horn, the psyducks, being covered in water and having been wandering around the wetlands were struck and screamed out in pain for the first time. They had been eerily silent up to this point aside from the chanting for the collective attack that came from the hill.

“I can’t believe we got by all of them!” Pom stated as she looked behind us at the struggling to stand ducks that looked to have been paralyzed or weakened enough by Ocellus to prevent them from keeping up with us.

“If they had their minds, and if we weren’t moving at such a pace to reach the crossroads to the bridge leading into Aurora, then I’m quite sure we wouldn’t have stood a chance against them if we actually stopped to fight them all off.” Geoff be making a good point, Favela is being very good against the psyducks when her attacks be hitting them. “Favela can do the most damage to them, but she doesn’t appear to have her full potential as a battler yet.”

“Hey, I got into plenty of scrapes with other Pokémon, it’s just that I’ve never actually had to deal with real kingdom soldiers or many other Pokémon Types for that matter. The fact those Psyduck can simply get up so fast after a direct vine whip or a razor leaf attack that directly hits them… well it’s quite scary to Favela!” Admitted Favela as she looked behind us and kept moving forward at the pace Geoff was setting for all of us. “Heck, they were still struggling to follow us even after being collectively fried with a Thunderbolt attack!”

“The Dutiful Duck Battalion was full of good, wonderful and strong soldiers, I don’t honestly know how this could have happened to them! To think they are still capable of some tactics, even if their minds simply aren’t running the show. It’s just unfortunate that they are aimed at all my friends.” Meaning that Geoff be okay with them stabbing at him? “Oh… all those swords, it would have been excruciatingly delightful and quite horribly painful if I had decided to do this run alone or with just Jiri!”

“Focus on things other than your kinks Geoff, you’re the one directing the cart!” It be understandable that Pom be snapping at him, but he is being correct this being far more than even we would be handling alone. It is being good that we made some quick friends today. “Smolder did say there were sixty more in the area, we need to hoof it to the bridge before they cut us off from crossing it! We will get this medicine shipment back to Aurora or we’ll be badly hurt trying! We can figure out what we’re doing from there about everything that’s going on around us.”

“I’ll scout out the crossroads ahead!” Smolder took off and Jiri moved into her position to begin pushing the cart.

“Somehow I don’t think those ducks were looking for us specifically, we were just a target of opportunity.” Quetal is being so cool looking, but does he need to be so broody too?

“I agree with that sentiment.” Stated Pom, her eyes be darting about wildly.

It wasn’t a minute later, as we slowed our pace to conserve energy, when Smolder be coming back with some bad news.

“Guys there are several of those Psyduck units converging on the crossroads and I saw a unit of the larger blue ducks already on the bridge. They don’t have shields, but they have long bladed spears.” Smolder was directing that to Pom who probably wouldn’t want to be hit by one of those. “We can still ditch the medicine and try to swim across the river back into Aurora.”

“Nice alternative, we’ll do that if we fail to break through the ducks.” Responded Pom as she motioned to Geoff to move faster. “Also if they are converging on the crossroads, then we really need to move!”

“Golducks, that’s going to be a major problem for even someone as wonderful as you and your friends are Pom. We can’t just forcefully shove them out of the way like we did the Psyducks without a real fight on our hooves, we’ll need to actually beat them before we can cross the bridge.” Geoff was actually be showing a slight hint of fear. “I’m so worried about all of you wonderful people getting seriously hurt!”

“Shanty, Dolly, Favela, we’ll run ahead and try to bust the blockade on the bridge before it’s too late. Everyone else protect and help move the cart.” Pom started galloping forward, Dolly, Favela and I swiftly joined her in reaching the crossroads.

-Ocellus-

“Huh… Geoff!” Geoff looked over his shoulder and saw a bolt of energy arcing for us from behind.

“Ally Switch me and take control of the cart Shine!” After stating that Geoff was suddenly moving forward behind the cart and Shine was leading the cart with her hair claws. “Protect!”

The barrier popped up just in time as a thunderous force almost hit the cart. Looking behind us, I saw a few of the psyducks I fried in the distance down the road, their glowing reds eyes lighting up the evening in the wetlands as they slowly shuffled after us. Suddenly more bolts of pink started arcing down behind us tearing up the path and Geoff really put his back into pushing the cart to safety.

“Why not constantly use Protect as we move forward?” My curiosity was met with a grimace from Geoff.

“The Protect move has a decay problem, especially if it is held for too long or used more than once in a row without waiting at least a minute between uses.” That was an interesting tidbit Geoff. “It’s why I know Cotton Guard, thankfully Cotton Guard stacks in strength and is useful against attacks that hit physically. Psyshock is one of those attacks, but I wouldn’t take other psychic attacks quite as well.”

“You have that Electro Ball attack don’t you?” Which was notably stated as being effective against Water Types, the kinds of Pokémon we’re dealing with.

“I don’t want to use it on them, I’d feel quite horrible about using it on those poor, sweet and innocently attractive victims of mind control!” Geoff was far too nice, I easily saw why he was militia and not military.

“Unlike you, I don’t have the same amount of guilt about attacking guys trying to kill us!” Having turned around Quetal sent a quick burst of those energy stars flying for the ducks at our backs and they just blocked the attack the attack with their shields. That slowed them down a little bit at least.

-Dolly-

“Pom…” I said slowly.

“Yes, I see them Dolly.” Responded a slightly panicked Pom as she had a upset look on her face, not only was the bridge covered by six spear wielding blue ducks, but there was a unit of those Psycho Ducks at the cross roads and we could see more oncoming from the east. That was a lot of open ground and a lack of trees in the crossroads.

“The cart can easily cut that corner.” But it would still be attacked if we didn’t deal with the Psycho Ducks first.

As we were almost at the crossroads, four more units showed up from the south. The thirty or so ducks moved to blockade us.

The blue ducks at the bridge held their spears at the ready actively waiting to see if we tried to get by them.

Oh sure we could easily cross the river, but we weren’t about to leave the cart behind to swim for it. We’re doing this the hard way.

“Yeah, but we’ve got thirty six ducks to deal with and thirty more filtering in from the east and who knows how many more behind them and the ones we injured that are behind us!” When we were apparently close enough, four of the units surrounded one in particular and the central unit started building up for a Psy-Slam attack as the others stood protectively around them. “Also, they aren’t weak to wind Dolly.”

“How are we supposed to take them all on then?” We could shove through the Psycho Ducks, but we weren’t getting by the blue guys called Golden Ducks.

“We’ll start with having Favela attack them at range with leaves.” Yeah Pom, like their shields would let Favela’s leaves hit them.

“I just want you to know that I can’t fire infinite leaves. Sure I can fire a lot of them, but I only have so much energy to use that particular attack.” Not doubting for a second that Favela had far less energy than her mother did, especially not with that awesome solar cannon thing she did.

“Aim for the ducks on the bridge, I want to see how they’ll react.” Listening to Pom’s commands, Favela launched at least ten leaves in the direction of the bridge.

One Goldie Duck moved forward and simply spun their spear so fast, that all the leaves deflected off of it without scratching the duck wielding it.

“Move back!” We all did as Favela shouted in a panic and dog did that large ball of energy get our butts moving!

A large chunk of the path in front us was decimated by the Psycho Ducks weird pink colored mass of a powerful attack.

Oh dog, where’s a hill to make them misfire when you needed one?!

“Again, what are we going to do Pom?” I turned to Pom and she looked to be thinking and then she took in a breath of air.

“We rush them regardless of how much of a bad idea it is. Spread out, the ones we passed by weren’t so bad, but gathered together like this in formation though…” Yeah, big problem hitting the guys doing the shooting when they were surrounded by swords and shields.

“Those travelers…. is that a medicine cart I spy bound for Aurora behind them? What happened to the Aurora Greenleaf Bridge?! These injustices, they must not stand!” Shouted a high pitched airy sounding female voice. “Unit command, Ice Beam!”

“Captain, wait, you’ll give away our positions!” A male voice tried to shout, there was quite a bit of despair in there. It was apparently too late to stop what was about to happen.

Five vibrant whitish blue beams fired on the five Psycho Duck units in our way from several directions from the south, they tried to block with their shields.

However the beams weren’t aimed at their shields or bodies, they instead pass by the ducks harmlessly along the ground.

Eventually I saw what was going on, as the beams created a building mass of ice that expanded around the Psycho Ducks lower torsos getting them all stuck in place.

“Snow time is better than right now!” Five pink and cream colored cats surged out of the brush into the open space around the crossroads in various places, all of them had really weird looking thin tails ending in a large round paw things with three strange antenna like things sticking out of them. One was wearing a white sailors hat jauntily placed upon their head at an angle over their left ear. “Charge, for Aurora and Fontaine!”

They were followed by a slightly upset looking white head blue otter with a shell on his chest who was smiling with his eyes closed.

“Hehheh, I guess that’s why I’ve always liked you as a liaison Captain.” The otter just shook his head and grinned as he and pulled the gleaming edged shell from his chest while walking forward, he opened his eyes in a glare at the ducks and took a stance. “Always following the beat and rhythm of your own heart, even in these dire times!”

Author's Note

Warning: Ditzy Special-kitty attack in progress.

247. Beware of Skitty.

Author's Note

Music: Rabi Ribi- Kitty Attack

247. Beware of Skitty.

-Ransei, forest wetlands road to the crossroads, Shine-

“I’m seeing a Skitty unit with an Oshawott, should I be worried?” I was pulling the cart towards the crossroads and watched as Pom and her small group were suddenly capable of getting closer due to the sudden Skitty ambush.

“Is one of them wearing a white hat over their left ear?” Geoff asked with a slightly lilt in his voice. “Also can I say your hair is quite a lovely shade of pink and that you have nice hips?”

“One of the Skitty is wearing a hat like that.” I wasn’t going to comment on Geoff making a passes at me, if he was going to be my friend I would just suffer advances from him like Pom does.

“That has to be Captain Skeeball’s unit! We’re either saved or doomed… it’s kind of hard to tell with Skitty sometimes.” Wait, what did you mean by doomed Geoff?! “We have to make sure they follow us back to Aurora so they can report on what’s happening in Fontaine! Hopefully they don’t get too distracted by a butterfly or a small bug and run off to who knows where.”

-Dolly-

“Are we seriously getting help from some really weird looking cats?” I’m not exactly a full out cat hater, dogs and cats can mix as a family very well sometimes too, but I didn’t know what to think of these cats.

Seeing five pink and cream weirdoes show up out of nowhere to halt the bombardment on us, along with a blue bodied otter, suddenly moving to attack the psycho ducks and taking them by surprise was a nice distraction for us to get through the crossroads. The bridge was still going to be an issue though with the bigger ducks.

“I wouldn’t underestimate them considering they are actively knocking out the Psyducks in our way and that they froze half their bodies has stopped their ability to effectively bombard us.” Pom wasn’t wrong the five cats had already taken out a unit of the psycho ducks on the far right corner from us, it’s just how they were fighting that greatly concerns me. “Focus on trying to take out those blue ducks holding the bridge!”

The cats looked to be easily distracted, they weren’t actively dodging sword strikes and they weren’t actively attacking with ferocity, they just seemed to be wandering in and out of danger while doing damage by accident. They just looked to be frolicking and playing among the half frozen ducks and were successfully avoiding injury while having knocked six of them unconscious by accident.

The only one taking the ducks seriously was the otter with the shell that had energy extending from it like a blade. He was injuring them to the point they weren’t able to attack with their swords of block with their shields, he was actively focused on knocking them out to the best of his abilities.

They clearly had the yellow ducks on lockdown as we were almost at the crossroads. Once we made it there we immediately turned towards the bridge to the north staying on the path and not running through the muck. Not many places to ride my skateboard around here where it wouldn’t sink into mud. Gives my paws a work out at least.

It took me a moment to realize it, but Pom had veered off from us as Shanty, Favela and I moved to the bridge.

Pom mentally told me to keep going and to keep Favela and Shanty safe.

-Pom-

“Who are you and what exactly is going on in this country?!” I had decided to get information from the source that seemed like it was aware of its surroundings because the cats… they were causing chaos and… there were now ten of them wandering around all the psyducks? Did they just multiply?!

I hopped over a horizontal swipe and threw a left hoof hook into a psyducks skull, knocking it clean out.

Quetal warned us about attacking them in the heads possibly making those pink energy attacks stronger, but they wouldn’t be able to use them if they were half frozen or knocked unconscious.

“Long story and we don’t have exactly much time for a meet and greet here lady, short version is things went to Distortion World levels of bad around here and it’s really throwing off the rhythm of everything. It’s been quite a nightmare for me! At least there’s a limit on the range to the power controlling these troops, if we can cross the bridge they won’t be able to follow us without the one behind this losing control of them. Whoever they are, they are going to try to retain as much power as they can hold onto.” The otter deflected a sword with his shell blade and launched a painful kicked into the psyduck’s skull, he deflected another blade as he did this with his shell as he jumped into the air, the duck he struck rocked backwards and then its upper torso fell forward limply. He landed and rammed his right shoulder into the chest of the psyduck that just took a swing at him, it gasped and looked to be having troubles breathing as the otter took its head in his left paw and slammed the back of it into the ice. “Your friends are already beginning to engage the Golducks, we need those guys out of the way pronto, but they are Fontaine elites for a reason. Hope you don’t mind, but I’m joining up with your group! Help me take out the rest of these psyducks soldiers before they can free themselves and get the ability to concentrate on doing more of those psyshock attacks, then we’ll focus all our efforts on breaking the bridge blockade.”

“What about those cats?” I slammed a hoof forwards into the skull of another psyduck before it could get its round blue shield up in time.

“Oh the Skitty? They’ll be fine, they’re the best military unit of Aurora after all and they’ve proven that to me time and again despite how odd their fighting looks!” The otter wasn’t wrong, the cats were fighting playfully and didn’t appear to be taking the psyducks seriously, but I noticed some things in their actions.

There were subtle movements to avoid injury that looked like playful antics. One just stopped to yawn and randomly lay down on their belly, the Psyduck that swung their down sword at where they would have been got their sword stuck in the ice. The cat just rolled onto their back and stretched out lazily, resulting in another sword was stuck in the ice just having missed them. Their tail wagged a little, until it swatted the next stuck Psyduck that was going to attack them in the face knocking them out with a ridiculously powerful and painful looking smack.

It was very little things, but if one was paying close attention to them… then those cats knew exactly what they were doing in this fight despite putting on a show of looking entirely scatterbrained or taking seemingly random actions that would have a drunken hoof master guessing if they were doing it on purpose or not.

I was of the opinion it was definitely on purpose.

Despite the dire situation that smile that the hat wearing Skitty sent me meant that everything would be okay and I could almost believe it too, but anxiety and the fact that she was trying to disarm my nervousness or anxiety about getting too close to the soldiers had me on edge as I dodge to the left and launched a straight left into the center of a psyducks skull knocking it out.

That’s when the hat where cat came up to me.

“Hi there, I’m Captain Skeeball and we’re the Skitty Squad of Aurora, it’s nice to meet you!” This Skeeball, the smiling eyed kitty, sounded like a bucket of sunshine despite the desperate fighting going on. Her grin was almost infectious as she directed at me. “Skitty Squad, fall into formation, we’re going to focus our attack, so get a move on right now~!”

They all started to move back to the south of the psyducks and we did so to, me and the odd otter.

“We hear you, moving into formation, we’re ready to take them all out and with a lot of knowhow~!” The ten Skitty moved into a rectangular formation and started moving with Skeeball’s marching steps. In fact there were two Skeeball’s at the center of the formation as they pranced forward.

I moved behind them feeling the flow of a heart song, so they had those here too? I looked at the otter and he nodded to me with a serious expression, we both got just caught in the rhythm that Skeeball just started.

“Skitty Squad, take note and spread out, we’re all helping that medicine cart and getting it right on through~!” Skeeball announced as she marched in place.

“Just so you know that we all love you, there’s no other mother quite that is quite exactly like you~!” The eight male Skitty sang as they marched in place with serious expressions on their face.

Wait… did they say mother, these were her children she was bringing into this fight?!

“That’s right, Skitty will always make it through, regardless of the dangers or whatever we need to do~!” The ten Skitty, of which I realized five were substitutes, marched forwards and we followed behind them.

“We Skitty all came here, and we were always going to be bound to seriously help you~!” They sang as the looked towards us and started moving forward taking out the still conscious Psyducks from two left outer units from a southwards facing. They were trying to free themselves with their sword and shields, but they weren’t able to do so before being swarmed by slapping tails and small paws scratching them up until they were out cold. “Skitty, cat scratch, we’re all in on the one most important points of view~!”

“That is if you know what you should do~.” Skeeball sang as she and her clone turned towards me and their tails knocking four Psyducks unconscious with one swing. The Skitty, having finish most of the three units surrounding the central unit all turned towards it at the same time and moved forward with the beat in a peppy manner. “Now tell them about the great Skeeball~!”

“Skeeball is the name of love~!” One of the Skitty stated as he rushed into the middle six Pokémon’s formation and smashed his head against one of the psyducks and their eyes whited out.

“Skeeball gives out a lot of great hugs~!” Another Skitty sang as he duck under a blade and then hopped up to hug it, he opened his mouth to fire a beam point blank into the psyducks head and froze its head and helmet solid.

“She puts us to beds, and helps us rest up our heads, she also helps a lot of other Pokémon too~!” The boys were quite proud of their mother. One quickly one deflected a blade from the otter with a tail that gleamed like metal and then proceeded to not only break the sword in half, but also smashing the helmet apart while knocking the Psyduck unconscious.

“She’s our mother, don’t you know~!” Another Skitty sang as they just about finished knocking out the ducks with more focus than they had when they looked like they were running around all scatterbrained. As they scratched and slapped with their paws or slammed glowing metallic tails home into the stuck psyducks.

“The brightness in the darkest hour, that goes with her own flow~!” The four male Skitty sang, as Captain Skeeball and her clone rushed the final corner unit at the northeast of the crossroads and that had almost freed themselves.

They just saw there and watched as their mother went into a break dance maneuvers that a little cat like that shouldn’t be capable of. She even made a head spin double as an attack as the two tails of metallic glow tore the remaining six Psyducks from the ice and sent them flying. They were all groaning and weren’t getting back up anytime soon.

“She’s a manic attack, a power pack, that takes no guff and gives plenty right on back~!” Didn’t know whether it was the substitutes or the originals that started running towards the bridge, but the four Skitty sat singing with the cheerful beat that their tails started slapping out on the ground.

The four substitutes sacrificed themselves for Shanty, Dolly and Favela in short order and did damage to all the golducks by exploding with blasts of lightning on impact as they warped and revealed themselves to be just smiling faced dolls.

“I’m a hero of Aurora, of which I’m quite proud, so I’m going to state this out loud… that there’s nobody quite like me, as you will soon see, so please just let me move forward and take up the lead~!” The substitute covered itself in electricity as did Skeeball and they charged forward and took down two Golducks with one blow.

One of the Skeeballs got skewered and it reveal that it was a plushy and the other one was smiling cheerfully at the remaining four Golducks as she took up position between Favela and Shanty while licking at a paw and rubbing at her face.

Skeeball’s mood changed as she hopped backwards and looked to the west, a slight frown before a giant toothy grin formed on her face and a green glow came off her but nothing seemed to happen.

I moved forward, picked up a spear in my hoof and deflected a thrust going for Shanty as Dolly blocked one of the opposite side giving Favela enough room to whip a vine into one of the large blue ducks leg as another disarmed him of his weapon.

Skeeball ran up and fired a beam from her mouth at the bridge for a split second before going on a belly slide under a spear stab. Her tail lit up with a metallic color that slammed a Golduck between the legs dropping it immediately, it wasn't out of the fight though as it slowly tried to stand back up.

We might actually have a chance of crossing the bridge safely with Skeeball and her kids on our side. They may have lost their substitutes, but I don’t think we were going have a problem.

“Unit command, Iron Tail!” The four Skitty moves up, two to the left and two to the right of their mother and then all their tails started glowing as they crouched and the burst forward as one.

-Jiri-

“They’re catching up, how good is this Captain Skeeball exactly?” I heard something and looked back to see a green glowing knot of grass pop up out of the ground.

One of the Psyduck firing on us tripped with his forehead glowing with energy, as soon as his head struck the ground at least a unit and halfs worth of Psyduck were wiped out in the resulting psychic attack exploding violently among their ranks.

“That good.” Geoff stated plainly, looking visibly upset that other Pokémon had to be hurt for us to escape.

“That’s why you don’t attack Psyducks in the heads while they are still capable of psychic attacks!” Quetal stated as we kept the cart moving and were turning the corner at the crossroads to head to the bridge. “Now keep pushing!”

“What kind of attack was that?” I asked, never having seen an attack quite like that before.

“That move is rated for taking down Snorlax’s or other heavy pokemon. Grass Knot is a move that causes a Pokémon trip and is to be used against big pokemon, the heavier the pokemon the more damaging that attack.” Quetal has apparently seen it before. “While it didn’t do much damage to the Psyduck personally…”

Quetal trailed off to let me figure out the rest, the tripping effect notably caused a disastrous chain reaction.

When we reached the bridge we saw something a little heart wrenching. Four of the Skitty were down and the one with the hat, Captain Skeeball, she was standing back up and I noticed how tired she looked despite all the antics we saw as we came up to the crossroads.

-Captain Skeeball-

“Okay… maybe a solid week of constant fighting has finally taken its toll on us and I probably shouldn’t have insisted that we stop to deal with that Blastoise… but those civilians needed our help. Also probably shouldn't have done a musical number...” I struggled to stand up and my boys were down for the count. “I’m Captain Skeeball, do you hear me!”

We still had the four Golducks to deal with, but we wore them down quite well and our VIP Oshawott companion was still fresh for a fight.

It’s just that we were finally out of steam after having come so far, wish I knew a fire type attack so I could boil some water and just make more.

A pair of vines slammed into the face of a Golduck preparing a Psychic attack and then they wrapped around his legs and heaved him over the railing so that his head slapped against the side of the bridge before being letting go to fall into the river.

Make that three Golducks, I still had some fight left in me! For great justice, for happy cuddles and for my loving gigantic hubby who was currently one of the victims of all this!

A spear was thrust for my face and I frowned in defiance.

“No you don’t!” With a clang, the Oshawott pinned the spears point against the bridge with the shining blade that erupted from his shell, he turned and pulled back his right fist while his left held the spear in place. He thrust it forward and disappeared from sight in a rocketing blast of water to ram his fist straight into the Golducks forehead pushing it back. “I’m not letting a true hero down on my watch, not after she got me this far!”

He took position against that Golduck, on my right was the off brand Wooloo, the canine with the odd weapon, the Skiddo and the sea goat.

That left the one on the left to me, I turned and marched forward the remaining spear wielding Golduck alone.

-Pom-

Skeeball’s unit did a lot of damage to the Golducks and after having knocked out all the psyducks in the crossroads to prevent them from firing on the cart from behind. It still seemed they hit some limits, also I heard Skeeball muttering something about a week of constant fighting and a Blastoise, whatever that was.

We needed to finish knocking these Golducks out of the way, because I looked to the right off the right side of the bridge and saw thirty Psyducks marching in this directions from the east. Who knows how many were coming from the west.

We had to hurry as the cart was already at the bridge and waiting.

We… were having trouble taking down just one of the remaining Golduck. The one we were ganging up on was defending against Dolly, Favela, Shanty and me all at once with ridiculous efficiency.

I was even helping with a spear, a weapon I was only somewhat competent with, and could see how not using Dancing Flame was hindering a quick resolution.

I refused to use Dancing Flame and we needed an opening to bring this one Golduck down as the other two were currently being battled and distracted by a tired kitty and an otter with a shell that acts like a sword.

This world was weird and I absolutely knew this was only the beginning of things, we've only been here for barely two days after all.

When Shanty got knocked back, I quickly moved forward and knocked the Golducks spear downwards with my own and pinned it.

Stepping onto the spear with my right rear hoof and grappling it with my wool I launched my left hind leg for the Golduck’s face, he stopped my attack with his right clammy webbed claw.

Favela fire some leaves at the Golduck and he blasts them out of the air with water from his beak, that’s when Dolly came with the edge of her board fromt he left. The Golduck pushed my leg back and chopped his arm outwards to block Dolly’s board with some kind of fighting type attack, Dolly was sent flipping backwards in the air where she caught herself went into glide and swung around to land to my left on her hind legs.

Seeing as our unspoken plan was working, I opened my mouth and barked blasted. Catching the Golduck in the left side of his face. He quickly let go of his weapon and stumbled back and glared at us with his red glowing eyes.

“Now!” The Golduck looked confused when I didn’t do anything except held the spear in my hooves at the ready in case this failed, neither did Dolly or Favela who took up defensive stances. The Golduck itself took up a defensive posture with it's claws.

Thankfully the mind controlled monster forgot his fourth opponent. For after Shanty was knocked back, she had rolled forward and got around behind our opponent while we all held their attention.

Shanty leapt up and slammed the Golduck across the back of the skull with the butt of her weapon and he toppled forward unconscious.

We turned too looked to the remaining two to see the otter was overpowering his opponent. It made me wonder who he was, because he used his little shell with an insane expertise to send the spear flying from the Golducks claws.

It brought its claws together and then fire a vibrant beam of energy from its head, only for Jiri to suddenly intercept it holding one of the shields the Psyducks had been wielding.

“We can’t wait any longer, we’re moving now!” Jiri yelled as she flashed white and sped forward to ram the shield into the Golduck.

Said duck caught the edges of the blue round shield and was pushed back, It tried to form a beam from the red gem on its head to take out Jiri.

“Aerial Ace!” Only for the otter to come in, pushing off the top of the shield, flashing by with a slash from the ducks right shoulder to its left hip, the Golduck finally toppled backwards bleeding badly. After landing the otter quickly pushed them off to the side with a look of sadness on his face, it had been cut up one too many times by the smaller otter to really keep going. “Get their weapons and put all the Skitty on the cart!”

I looked back to see Shine pulling the cart up onto the bridge and Quetal was up on the bridges edge firing those stars off toward the west. As the psyducks from the east and west were on approach there were about forty of them, meaning five full units from the east and one unit from the west with four remainder.

I went back and picked up two of the small cats and put them on top of the cart, Favela lent assistance with her vines with Ocellus securing them. I looked over to see Captain Skeeball was still holding that Golduck as the cart started to move across the bridge, the otter ran in to help her and he deflected an attack allowing her to hit the Golduck in the leg with a metallic tail.

It stayed standing despite the pain it must have been in.

“I’ve got this, go, get that cart to the other end! I’ll hold the rear... I’ve got one last thing left in me to do.” Stating this as she deflected the spear stabbing at her into the bridge, she fired a beam that stuck the spear to the bridge with ice and angled it along to going across the Golducks feet.

The Golduck was was now trapped in place, it tried to shoot a blast of pink energy which she avoid by hopping back.

“If you’re sure…” The otter turned to me and motioned to follow the cart as he ran past, I turned to follow him and looked back to see the Skitty walking backwards behind us her ears and tail erect.

She was hissing quite loudly as the Psyducks finally made it to the bridge and I noticed something sparkling from the base of the big round portion of her raised tail as she avoided another attack from the Golduck.

-Skeeball-

“Let me show you exactly why there are beware of Skitty signs in Aurora, because whoever you are that’s controlling all these poor Pokémon, this is exactly what’s coming for you when I come for my captured husband!” Standing on my hind legs, my front legs went through the motions and my fur started standing on end as I held the pose. My body suddenly lit up with lightning and I could barely control the energy of the forming attack very well in my poor state, but I was Captain Skeeball! “Z-MOVE… GIGAVOLT HAVOC NYYYYAAARAAAARGHHH!”

The darkening evening sky was lit up by the brilliant lightning coming off of me, for I have always shined this brilliantly!

-Pom-

The torrent of unrestrained power Skeeball unleashed was mind boggling and terrifying, that it was coming from someone so small will make it even harder for me to gauge the strength of a Pokémon just by appearance.

After several seconds of blasting thick masses of lightning in a beam far more than anything Ocellus could ever hope to do and in an almost controlled manner. The still standing Golduck and every Psyduck in the path of the attack that was trying to come onto the bridge were all fried and… it just ended in a blink like it had been some kind of ephemeral dream.

Captain Skeeball’s body sparked a bit as she stood there and slowly she sat down…

“I’m… spent…” She whispered in a weak and incredibly pained voice as she slowly flopped onto her side.

I quickly ran up collected her with my hooves as there were still quite a few Psyduck that hadn’t been hit by another new eye opener to what Pokémon were capable of, because that had been far bigger than the solar beam I saw after lunch.

These were the kinds of things we were going to be seeing in this world?!

I started speeding for the cart on my hind legs cradling the kitty as pink energy attacks fell around me, but Quetal started leaping into the way of the attacks as they apparently did nothing to him as the energy dispersed wildly off his body. It was self explanatory why he didn't do that to defend the cart as the deflection was wild and he could only stop them from hitting a small target.

Having made it across the bridge unscathed with Captain Skeeball in tow, I sighed with relief.

We had made it back into Aurora and according to the otter, which was an Oshawott, we were all safely outside of the control range which encompassed most of southern Fontaine.

Only eastern and north eastern Fontaine, the coastal area east of Aurora with almost no connections to the other kingdoms aside from one tiny area where one can enter eastern Ignis, remained safe from the machinations of the evil that befell the Fontaine kingdom.

We approached Aurora castle as the stars started shining in the sky feeling completely awful about not being able to do more, we felt beaten... but we were successful in getting the medicine to Aurora at least.

Once we get to the castle, then maybe we could get some medical aid for Captain Skeeball and think about how to move forward from here. Doing that attack hurt her as much as it had the Pokémon she faced.

248. Potential Portents.

-Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, late evening, Tianhuo-

I sat there eating a meal quietly in Kuril’s restaurant. A simple soup and grilled vegetable skewers special, it was of course of great flavor and well prepared. However the wonderful meal was without the conversation a speech capable partner could offer.

If the mission to Tambelon was to be successful. It was probably better that we didn’t take any royal guards than the minimum amount into the realm with us, especially when even Fœnum Pom could beat them in a fight. We’d be better using EUP members.

Blighter, the ever lovable pink mass of something, popped from my shadow and nuzzled against me, silently assuring me that Pom would call soon.

It was getting later in the evening and she assured me that she would be doing so the calling this time. Our devices only had so much power and could only give us so much time, there was so much that needed to be said.

Blighter wasn’t the only one to comfort me as Pom’s Puppy Patrol, as Jaded La Perm got everyone calling them and it was a title they didn’t seem to mind being stuck with, also joined in whining and wanting to see Pom and cuddled against my legs under the table while waiting for her too.

“Is everything okay Tianhuo?” Kuril asked as she walked up to me, her ears erect and a serious look on her face. Rarely did anyone see the Abyssinian not present a goofy cheer and catty demeanor.

“I am waiting on someone to converse with me, I just wonder how long they will keep me waiting…” I stated somberly, Kuril patted me on the back in a comforting gesture. “Also your food is excellent.”

“Stay as long as you need Tianhuo, you can even have a guest room here.” Kuril stated pleasantly. “If not, then Grace will certainly lend you a room free of charge, since you’re friends with Arizona.”

“I will gladly accept your hospitality.” When in need, do not look a gift pony in the mouth.

I would wait Pom, even if Blighter and the puppies would sleep, I would wait.

-Ransei, Castle Aurora, Pom-

“Just some light exhaustion and ridiculous amounts of anxiety, how often do you get spa treatments or massages? You need at least half a dozen massage treatments from the stress alone, I’m surprised your wool isn’t falling out.” At least Happiny were noted as being really nice Pokémon, as were their evolutions Chansey and Blissey.

I still haven’t seen what an evolution was, but I’ve seen the end results of it with the Golducks. Also I’m fairly happy that a Fluffmancer can’t lose the ability to grow hair and that it won’t fall out, I was quite comfortable with my wool as it currently was… a shell against blunt and cutting force that keeps me alive another day.

“How’s Captain Skeeball? She kind of jump into the fray when we needed her the most.” I wasn’t the only one concerned, everyone was in Aurora’s infirmary, directly left of the entrance to the castle, getting a checkup.

There was the fact that the Oshawott had said, before we entered the castle, that they could have stayed stealthy and snuck across the bridge like they were originally planning to while we were dealing with all the Psyducks and Golducks.

Instead Captain Skeeball quickly saw what was happening and then rushed to our aid, this was already after a solid week of hard fights that had exhausted and pushed her unit beyond the pale, they still sought to aid us. The Golducks were final a straw that broke most of them physically, but they were still willing to help to the very last.

That wasn’t all, Captain Skeeball went and pulled all that power out of her tiny body to give the one controlling the Pokémon of Fontaine a black eye and ensured our escape without taking any chances that the cart could still be attacked from behind at a long distance.

“Bad… Pokémon can heal from most injuries that aren’t permanently scarring, but you try healing from a spiritual one of a broken heart… given she had to leave her husband behind in Fontaine.” The Happiny sighed. “We can do physical injuries, sometimes rare sicknesses, maybe even some emotional injuries as a ‘mon’ to lean on and talk to about your problems. As for injuries that are spiritual… those run too deep for any of our species line to really help. She’ll recover, but the fact that she can even do Z-moves is a surprise, even to us. We knew Captain Skeeball was an oddball, but that she can actually walk the walk makes her an even bigger hero. Still that injury to her spirit… it’s going to slow down her physical recovery, but she will recover. Her kittens are much better, but they are wiped for the most part of at least two days. Skeeball will take more than a week to recover as Z-moves tends to put incredible amounts of stress on the body, especially an electric type Z-move and Skitty are not built to handle that kind of force. I’m personally fairly surprised she didn’t destroy herself and is going to make a full recovery.”

“Do Happiny fight?” All Pokémon seemed to have the ability to do so at varying levels, I was still curious and that curiosity was driving me not to curl up into a fearful fetal position and not go anywhere near a Pokémon again. Any Pokémon, like those Skitty, could be as cute as they are deadly.

“We prefer to heal, but we can fight… in an emergency or if a patient is thrashing about too much and we need to quickly calm them down to prevent them from hurting themselves. We’re the most noted Pokémon for being the least likely to be battle junkies, any more questions?” Shaking my head to Happiny, she nodded and went off to check the others. “It’s been nice talking to you Pom, you seriously need to learn how to relax. At least find a Pokémon with sweet scent that can make your favorite flower smells to calm your constant problems with your nerves. I can easily understand why you might be learning to fear Pokémon, but not all of us are horribly violent.”

The only time I relax is when I’m frolicking through a field of flowers with no danger in sight… or with Tianhuo…. It was late and I did promise to call her, but we still had a meeting and dinner to go to.

Evan wanted us to be kept up to date on things even if we weren’t going to be under his direct command personally, he wanted us to at least tell us if it was safe to travel to other regions and we had three Pokémon to assist with moving around independent of his forces. Three more and we’d have a complete unit that would personally be by our side out of comradery, friendship and adventure.

Evan was an open hearted fox and would make a great king for it.

“Harmony… the units of this world… eventual working combination maybe…” Ocellus mumbled as I stood up and made to head to the kitchens to start helping the staff, which consisted of a Happiny and Maiden Jigs meager home front team of herself and a Pokémon called a Clefairy, with dinner. “Will we… form a unit based on friendship?”

I didn’t want to lose my skills at running a home and the last time I cooked was when… when… Saint Canard…

Standing still for a moment to collect myself as a few tears dropped onto the floor, I took a long shuddering breath that had my friends looking my way and then pressed forward in a slow trot without looking at them.

-Dinner, Dolly-

A brat I might have been, and I acknowledged that I had acted like that at times, but I was always there for family. Pom thought of Dormarch again and far from it for me to stop her from thinking about the little brother that I lost.

If Arceus was right then we might have a chance to search for a way to revive when we figured out a connection to the worlds Digimon come from. I might not know much about computers or the realms thereof, but I was willing to find a way to bring him back even if did go out how he wanted to with that kill virus hanging over his head the entire time.

I reached a paw up to the Digivice hanging from the top band around my neck, putting my paw on it and sighing before looking to Pom.

I knew eventually that I’d lose a brother or a sister to an accident, I had ninety nine of them… now it was back to ninety eight and I was out of contact with them. That it actually happened… there was slight gap in my heart where Dormarch should be.

My family had to be blessed to not have lost a puppy before now. There was also the fact that the puppies would have to grow up eventually and seek to become independent. I wanted to make good memories that would never be forgotten while we could, I apparently succeeded at that at least.

Not so surprisingly, I was the first out of all of them to leave… the total separation hurts less this way…

I silently looked at the warm bowl of soup Pom placed before me, she knew how to cook for a dog… because this smelled delicious. I carefully blew on the steam rising from the bowl and took up a spoon in my paw, definitely didn’t want to burn my tongue on this.

“Thank you, it smells really good Pom! You’re going to call Tianhuo after this… right?” I received an aimless nod from Pom as she sat down and started into her own soup. I couldn’t connect to my side of our family anymore, but Pom could still connect to hers and I was going to bug her exactly like she bugged me to not shut them out.

Those four puppies calling Pom baa-baa was one of the sweetest things I’ve ever heard and I intended to hear more of.

I had previously thought the dangers of my world were bad, but this world… it… the escalation we went through on this one day alone was enough to break even the most mentally stable puppy. Glad I wasn’t a little puppy anymore, I’m certainly made of sterner stuff like my bro Dylan when it comes to those who endanger our family… but I wouldn’t want to be in the way of that GIGAVOLT HAVOC thing that that Captain Screwball character used.

I don’t know what I’m getting myself into, I’m in over my head, but I’m not going back away from a challenge. I’m still the best skateboarder of Camden… even if I never won a competition and took my own skateboard to my chin more times than I can count.

I needed some kind of truly hellish training regimen… because my body couldn’t toughen up nearly enough for this world and I definitely couldn’t take a direct hit to save my life. Something would get around my board and helmet eventually, there had to be Pokémon capable of insane speeds and could hit with the raw force of a truck in a way that would result in immediately pulping my fragile body.

Really needed something here, for one I can feel there’s more to my wind magic. It seems like it’s only slightly beyond my reach, I just needed to grasp at it with both paws and put my heart into protecting those I cared about.

“So… Z-Moves… are there more things… like that?” Pom asked as we all ate, she was looking to the ‘No OSHA Compliance What’ guy.

Goodness knows my brother Dylan tried to keep our home ‘OSHA’ compliant in case we get another pest control inspection, apparently it means keeping the house safe to avoid us from dying to accidents in it.

“Before I answer that… it’s about time I’ve introduced myself!” The OSHA-What stated as he stood up drawing our attentions to him and the shell on his chest that doubled as an energy sword, which downright paw-some to me! “I am Motochika Chosokabe, the Rhythm King of Fontaine! If I had my instrument I’d show you what music I could be playing... I had to leave that behind due to the circumstances of why I am here in the first place. Captain Skeeball managed to not only escort me safely, but saved your medicinal shipment as well. Call me Moto!”

“Wait, you’re the King of Fontaine?!” Maiden Jiggy Jams seemed to panic as she realized we had some big shot deal of a guy among us, then again he took one of those Golden Ducks solo and it took four our group to bring one down. “Oh my goodness if I had known!”

“Calm your inflation organs Maiden Jig, your Captain Skeeball won me over by more than a mile and after meeting Evan… I can this kingdom is in good paws. Skeeball both knows how to create rhythm and how to fight, she also stopped to help every citizen she could on our way out of my kingdom. She faced Gyarados, Blastoise, Tentacruel with her unit and even survived a constant barrage of Clawitzer artillery for half a day while saving a still loyal unit of Squirtle from capture as they headed to the north east, all that over this past week with her unit rising to the occasion every time.” Closing his eyes Motorcycle sighed and then chugged some of his soup. I usually don’t like high society people, but this king didn’t act like that at all. “She’s one of the most amazing Pokémon I have ever met in my life! Too bad she’s taken already. Even on the brink of her abilities, she still had time to continue surprising me by pulling off a Z-move to make sure our retreat was certain. Fancy stuff like what you might have rolled out for me doesn’t impress me in the slightest, which is why I’ve been quiet up until now and just getting an idea of all your characters, but the rhythm of a good and true hero like her does! She came to my kingdom to continue brokering peace. Now if only my kingdom was currently at peace, then we’d definitely assist you if a majority of it wasn’t currently enslaved to someone’s will. Aurora may be a small kingdom, but it always gave rise to the greatest of hearts and I’m a sucker for good food and equally good people!”

“Thank you for the compliment, I hope to continue living up to your expectations as a leader.” Evan stated cheerfully with a wagging tail and happily licking the cream of his soup that was currently on his face.

“You asked about things like Zenith Moves? Oh yes, there are definitely more Super Powers like that in this world. Dynamic Maximizing, Z-Moves and Mega Evolving are some of the tricks Pokémon can do for an incredible amount of power, but only for a short period of time.” Motorcycles words caused a shiver to go throughout Pom’s entire body, as if she already knew we’d be seeing each one at least once. “A Pokémon that can do all three at once? They’d be able to rival the likes of Arceus in power for an instant, but the requirements to do all three at once are functionally impossible to do much with as the energy required for all of it would only let you do one single world shaking attack. What do you want to hear about first?”

“Zenith Moves.” Well that was obvious, Pom was worried about having seen one in action. To be fair a cat putting off enough power to keep Camden running for an entire year in the span of a minute was horrifying to witness personally and I wasn’t as close to it as Pom was.

“As far as Super Powers go, the easiest for any Pokémon to achieve is a Z-Move. You just need to acquire an elemental crystal, know a move of that crystals element and then learn to do a weird pose that focuses tons of spiritual energy. Only after all that can you launch a Z-Move. It’s far from simple, but any Pokémon with half a brain can use a Z-Move and can actively do them anywhere.” Explained Motorcycle as he stopped to take a bite of his food. “They can only be used once, maybe twice a day if you’re lucky, due to be horribly energy intensive and extremely hard to control. The stress it puts on the body is immense for concentrating a lot of power into one attack and one attack is how long a Z-Move lasts, henceforth putting the ‘Zenith’ in Zenith Move. What’s next?”

“Mega Evolving… I’ve heard tales of Lopunny being able to do that!” Jiri didn’t know much about these Super Powers either apparently.

“Mega Evolving only works only for specific Pokémon as far as I know, but it’s the longest lasting version of a Super Power. It’s entirely limited to specific Pokémon who can find an exceedingly rare marble sized stone meant for a full evolved Pokémon of some species in particular.” Motorcycle turned and looked at Jiri. “Lopunny in particular are one Pokémon that can Mega Evolve. It’s a temporary evolution, but it’s a powerful one that can change a battle entirely. You would need Loppunite specifically and you would have to be a Lopunny for it to work. When a Mega Evolution occurs all of a Pokémon’s abilities are boosted or multiplied, but the changed form can’t be held forever. The willpower needed to change into and hold a mega form in fight, a form that can only experience for a short time, doesn’t make training the ability very easy. Once you are trained in doing it on command, you have one exceedingly hard to bring down opponent.”

“I believe we are now at Dynamic Maximizing.” Maiden Jiggy-with-it stated in a flat tone.

“Ah, Dynamic Maximizing, a Pokémon can only do it in specific places or under highly unique circumstances. When those requirements are met… you’ll see humongous Pokémon that are far bigger than this castle doing equally humongous things such as shaping the landscape with simplicity as taking a single step.” Clearing his throat with a drink of water Motorcycle continued, much to our groups’ fairly noticeable wariness. “Any Pokémon can Dynamax, but it has to be done in very specific spots which limits its usefulness as a Super Power. It is far more powerful than a Mega Evolution, but its time limit is far shorter for an ability that can create hurricanes, cause floods and or even create literal volcanoes on the spot. If you can weather a Dynamax Pokémon’s attacks long enough or have a friendly Pokémon that has Dynamic Maximized to hold off the attacks and limit damage to the surroundings, they will eventually shrink back to normal size and will find all their attacks to be far weaker for at least a week. Also, like I said, this is only possible in specific locations which are rumored to be where darkened clouds turn red and swirl and the world seemingly falls away, best to avoid those signs unless you want a literal huge battle.”

“Is that all?” Smolder asked looking concerned, a literal dragon was concerned about this world.

“Those are the Super Powers that have been seen, documented and are known. There are other stranger Super Powers that are rumored to be out there that do even more bizarre things than further a complete evolution, make one a giant or a single one shot powerful attack that can make even the simplest of Pokémon exceedingly dangerous.” Motorcycle glanced at Quetal for some reason. “The chances of a Pokémon being able to find all the stones to do all three at once? Not happening… hopefully… wouldn’t want to meet the Pokémon that can. They'd have to be on par with Legendary Pokémon to handle it all.”

“Before you ask, Legendary Pokémon are like gods in their specific domains.” Geoff seemed to be looking thoughtfully to Pom. “Arceus is god of all Pokémon, all Legendary Pokémon are said to have come from him directly and they can shape the worlds he makes for the better or worse. Quite a few Legendary Pokémon are opposites and tend to fight, at least they keep their fights to secluded areas and away from innocent lives. It’s when they don’t that we need heroes to rise up and face them head on.”

After that Pom quietly ate her food and looked forlorn, the only ones at the table that didn’t seem worried were Shanty and for some reason Ocellus didn’t seem as worried as she looked at our three friends we picked up in Leaf Town.

It was as if Pom knew we were going to inevitably see a Pokémon that can do all of them once… just because we were here. Sure it was admittedly a non-zero chance that one could do all three at once knowing the strange situations Pom gets into, but even that was apparently highly unlikely.

While the Pokémon noted our groups quiet, they still talked about a few things. Like Jiri officially trying to build a heavy hitting unit for Aurora’s military which currently consisted of rats and a recently acquired squad of brown pigeons.

King Evan had been busy today trying to hire some air support to stop the northern raids. The Wooly’s were apparently going to remain emergency militia and under Geoff’s command.

I knew what the future might hold after experiencing the things going on in my world. A world that had several levels of insanity going on well beyond the tiny and safe little community in Camden Town and Dalmatian Street, where puppies could play at the park all day and not worry about many things… except Cruella De Ville. That devil woman was barely a blip to me now after the stuff I’ve seen.

-Later at night, Aurora Castle guest room, Pom-

I put the device down and put my hoof to it and suddenly an image of Tianhuo appeared, along with five excited canines. They were at a table.

“Ooh neat … three dimensional magical image projection!” Jaded La Perm appeared behind Tianhuo only to get growled at by my puppies and she held up her paws and backed away slowly. “No harm meant. If you need anything Tianhuo, just ask!”

“Will you be returning the entire armory you stole from Huoshan then?” Stated Tianhuo with a no nonsense tone.

“Finally, someone noticed the weapons rack, thank you!” Jaded La Perm gestured to Tianhuo with a friendly smile, then started to walk off. “Hope you’ll be okay Pom!”

Turning away from Jaded La Perm, Tianhuo scrutinized me and then nodded to herself as if she had an understanding of something.

“Pom… what is wrong?” She noticed immediately, because of course she would.

“I don’t think I’m strong enough for this world… I don’t think I can effectively keep everyone safe by myself…” I lamented while whimpering and curling up next to the device projecting her image. “This world is full of impossibly powerful beings, all of them have powers beyond anything I’ve had to deal with before. Even the smallest cat has destructive force to possibly level a part of one of Huoshan's mighty walls. I’ve already broken my body’s limiter twice, I don’t think I’ll survive doing it a third time if I absolutely must.”

“I believe in you.” It sounded so simple and Tianhuo said it… with absolutely no hesitation at all. I flinched so hard that I flopped over and I could swear I heard her giggling at me. How could she have so much trust in me when I was whimpering and blubbering mess of anxiety? I just stared at Tianhuo who was sending me the warmest loving smile I’ve ever seen. “You’ll find a way to survive, I’m sure of it. No matter how dangerous, you are among friends you’ve kept alive and going forward by your efforts. If you are not strong enough by yourself, then simply seek help that will help you be strong enough, but never look away from your own strengths and achievements. You have a great capacity for finding strong companions, like Dolly. She may not appear to be much at an outward glance, but I can tell she is not to be underestimated. Be by her side Dolly, whereas I cannot.”

“Be strong Baa-baa!” Puff shouted excitedly.

“We’re being good Baa-baa!” Woof said sweetly.

“Baa-baa help others, then Baa-baa get help!” That was Tufts attempt at wisdom, he wasn’t wrong.

“Is Baa-baa getting more family?” Asked Ruff curiously.

“You bet your flaming hot backside I’m going to be by Pom’s side through thick and thin!” Dolly’s words made me blush and my eyes slowly drifted in a particular direction.

“While I do not understand you Dolly… can you please not talk about my backside in such a manner? Body language is not as hard for me to understand.” Tianhuo was almost glaring at Dolly and she ducked behind me with a grin on her face. “Still, do your best to keep Pom’s spirits up Dolly. Now is there anything else you wish to talk about Pom? We still have some time.”

“Well… there may be some times where I can’t call you… and I find myself in grave danger again.” I trailed off sadly.

“I will never lose faith that you will always be a lambkin Pom…" Tianhuo stated with certainty as she looked at the bell around my neck. "Specifically, 'MY' lambkin.”

I felt a smile come to my lips.

249. “Build” a business.

-Ponyville, School of Friendship, Twilight-

“So Pique and Niche are doing well as students, they are great at making friend in spite of the language barrier and are particularly good at arts and crafts.” I told Fizzle and I was thinking about how to broach the topic of how to get my friends to not jump in on the ‘Breaching Tambelon’ adventure, Rainbow Dash was already a lost cause and would insist on going. “Surprisingly, and I can’t believe this what with the trauma of what happened at Mount Aris, Silver Stream has become friends with the two storm creatures. She said it was a little hard to get over it at first, but Pique and Niche made an incredible effort as friendship students to get to know her and try to make amends even if they were mostly under your leadership and didn’t really harm too many ponies or hippogriffs to begin with.”

“That’s good to hear, some good news for once around here! Being the Storm Queen hasn’t been too hard and Grubber has been keeping me up to date with the fleet and Storm Creatures homelands…” Fizzle trailed off, froze and then her eyes widened. “Twilight… what if I were to suggest we use Storm Creatures for the Tambelon Mission?”

“Well that would settle some of the issues with breaching into Tambelon, but they would have to volunteer for it.” Which from what I knew wouldn’t be a problem as Storm Creatures were quite capable and willing to do anything for Fizzle, because she actually cared about them as a ruler despite being a busy mare with helping the royal guard and having a family to worry about. With Jaded, anyone would be worried about that family. “So when will you be informing the friends and family that Pom has made contact with Tianhuo so that Smolder and Ocellus can talk to them?”

Fizzle knew what Tianhuo was going through and was being supportive and has been specifically stating that Tianhuo shouldn’t go evil like a unicorn. To be fair, horned beings in our world do have a tendency to let power go to their heads... which is where the horns usually are and the power that channels through to them might cause some psychosis issues. The thought refreshed the memories of me causing trouble during Winter Wrap Up and there’s the whole 'Want-it Need-it' spell incident.

Might need to start a research paper on the possibilities of things that cause ‘psychosis by magic’ with some help from Starlight and a doctor that isn’t a unicorn that actually thinks they already know everything there is to know. As noted, and easily verified, by an infamous earth pony stallion philosopher I’ve been reading about, unicorns tend to cause huge setbacks in the educational systems out of stupidity, vanity and hubris in the thought that other races can’t possibly be better than them in the intelligence department.

Sadly, I now completely understand why Celestia actively watched unicorns more than any of the other races.

“Tianhuo already told me that the devices are limited to ten minutes of total usage and take the most part of a day to charge, so we need to work out a schedule with Pom when she next contacts us.” If anyone could understand a given situation, it would be Fizzle as she was reporting on what we knew. “The world Pom’s group is currently in is… fairly dangerous. As in their second day there escalated like crazy. Thus far… Pom has actually done a good job of keeping her group alive. Physically her group has suffered various injuries from light scratches to an incredibly nasty things like a dangerous magical backlash coma, trauma based arrhythmia and spinal damage. The spinal damage was actually considered a lucky break. The reason being that if it had been anyone else that went through what Smolder did, they wouldn’t ever walk again… because they’d be outright dead. Pom has experienced the most physical, mental and possibly spiritual trauma that it’s not surprising she’s anxiety riddled or paranoid. Though anxiety is generally nothing new to a Lambkin, as you well know from all the research you’ve done in an effort to get changelings and lambkin to interact amiably, Pom has been noted as being a rare high functioning lambkin. The mental health of the group has been battered brutally, but they are holding strong and we still don’t know all the details of everything they’ve been put through.”

“Thanks for the report Fizzle, I’ll write up a list of questions for Tianhuo to ask Pom when she next calls.” I stated quietly, letting it sink in that the things this worlds Pom and her group went through were definitely taking a toll on them. “Now what to do about the issue of dragons wanting giant pillows? I’m already considering magical, self-repairing, memory foam.”

-Ransei Region, morning, Castle Aurora, Pom-

I yawned and lifted my head from the pillow to look at the weight on my chest and belly. I was hugging Shanty and Dolly to my chest and they were sleeping like angels. Smolder and Ocellus were cuddled together at my side also sleeping peacefully.

I noted Favela looking like a leafy bush sleeping in a nearby sunlight, didn’t know where Shine or Quetal were. It was fascinating that a Grass Type Pokémon looked exactly like an ordinary plants while they were sleeping.

Until my friends woke up, I wasn’t moving from my spot or disturbing them… I actually liked being used as a sleeping aid. It always makes me feel quite useful and loved.

Left alone to my thoughts, I eventually came up with an idea of what to do in this world. I would need to find a Pokémon that was somewhat exceptional at building things to get my idea off the ground.

For I wanted to start a small business in this world.

-Thirty minutes later-

“You’ll want to find a Bidoof if you’re looking to build something near the castle or wherever you feel like putting a building. Just don't bother anyone when you do start building.” King Evan didn’t even think twice about offering a space nearby for me to use as long as it didn’t interrupt any of the nearby Pokémon around here. “I would suggest Mankeys, but they are resource intensive and can get greedy even if they work fast. Bidoofs would much cheaper with your current funds and they always make sturdy structures… like this castle for instance. Their personalities are a bit… eh… you’ll see when you meet one.”

Speaking of funds, five thousand Poké was a lot and made for a good start up. Which reminded me that Evan was giving my group hospitality freely without question or even asking for repayment. I really didn’t want to rely on the kindness of strangers again, I was going for fully self-sufficient this time!

“Where would I find a Bidoof and what do they look like?” I started pulling money out from the sack that that Smeargle left me with.

“Brown, thickly curled facial and tail fur, red noses, teeth like a Ratatta and stout bodies.” Okay the description was limited, but I think I can work with it if one of our three Pokémon companions can identify one for us on sight. “I’d suggest looking along the waters to the north, but please be wary around the bridge to Ignis. We don’t exactly know what’s going on in Ignis, but we don’t want any trouble to destroy another bridge. If someone can throw Snorlax’s around so easily, then who knows what they might do next. Uhm… what’s with all the Poké?”

“This is to help aid you’re kingdom, for our room and board, for feeding us, for giving me advice and for just being a good person in general by not telling Geoff where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing today.” I placed at least one thousand Poké down for Evan.

“I-I can’t accept this!” Evan stated in an upset whine. “You’re friendship is more than enough for me!”

“You seriously need it for your kingdom Evan, just accept it with grace. If she wants to give it you, then let her. She clearly has reasons to do so and you’re running low on funds as it is just trying to mobilize that new unit of Pidgeys.” Moto stated as he stood off to the side of Evan with his arms crossed. “We’re going to need a lot of dosh to build up for retaking Fontaine if you’re willing to help me with that. I’m not going to force you to do so, until then I’m a part of Aurora plain and simple.”

The little fox looked upset with me, but I eventually gave him a loving cuddle and then eventually wore him down into accepting the money. I went to get my friends and our half unit of Pokémon adventurers before Geoff showed up to compliment me on my eyes or how nice my tail looks today.

-Two hours later, Northwest Aurora Kingdom, border lake-

We had taken a little time to look at the damage done to the bridge to Greenleaf on this side… the Snorlax was still there, still sleeping and it was, scarily enough, much bigger up close.

"I'm not fighting that if it wakes up." Dolly stated as we moved away from the destroyed bridge.

I could see some brown mountains and fiery scorched landscape to the northeast across the water where Ignis began, to the west I could see forests of Greenleaf. Having asked around, we were directed here by a very nice looking chinchilla Pokémon called a Minccino.

Minccino were, as noted by Quetal, Pokémon that were absolute clean freaks that actively competitive with Swablu for cleanest Pokémon to ever exist. Swablu being a blue bird with white cotton wings. If you were wondering where they were holding cleaning competitions, you’d find out quickly by just asking them as they were relatively eager to find places to spruce up. There was also a Pokémon called a Nickit that cleaned up after themselves, but that was usually to prevent someone finding them after they have stolen something.

Some Nickit’s actually liked to clean and were not thieves that also take part in the competitions, Shanty was interested in meeting one. I would rather avoid having a fox that will want to steal for me, I already had Shanty to do that if a need for stealth and theft comes up.

This prompted commentary from Dolly as we approached the lake bordering Ignis, Greenleaf and Aurora from the east side of the river that runs south. We started looking around for the Pokémon we needed to find.

“I’m sure my brother Dylan would have loved to have those Pokémon as friends, our friend Fergus would have loved palling around with that pickpocket fox too from the sounds of it.” Dolly shook her with a weak smile.

The Pokémon around here seemed wary of Ignis with the glances they kept sending to the north as we turned to move east along the lake and we didn’t see any brown Pokémon around so we moved on.

-Bridge to Ignis-

We weren’t going to cross it, but we finally found a Bidoof.

“What happened here?” I asked to the brown Pokémon that turned and stared at me blankly.

“That’s what I want to know, there’s no way a single Bidoof could have fought that many Pokémon.” What Quetal was talking about was a piles of unconscious bloodied Pokémon just on the cusp of walking onto the grass coming from the bridge to Ignis. “Some fire type units from Ignis might have been trying to stop another raid into Aurora, that or they were a part of a raid.”

Quetal was fairly cynical about things, but he wasn't wrong to be and I was cynical myself at times.

Notably it was a few units of Riolu and what looked like some lions that had fire color hair, all of them badly beaten and bloodied Pokémon seemed to be near the mildly roughed up Bidoof.

To put it bluntly, I was more than a little bit disturbed by the sight of multiple defeated units next to the buck toothed mouse with the world’s most bland and unexpressive look on his face.

“Build.” The Bidoof stated in a mindless sounding tone while tilting his head at us, sitting at the end of the bridge.

“Look lets ignore the piles of Pokémon for the moment and tell Evan of this when we get back to the castle. A battle obviously happened here and I don’t know who was fighting who or why, all I know is that we’ve finally found a bidoof that can build something for…” In a single blink and the Bidoof was standing front of me, I hadn’t even seen, heard or even felt him move at all. In fact nobody did as they were all still staring at the spot the Bidoof used to be.

“Where did it... WAH!” Shine freaked out and jumped behind Favela who was also somewhat freaked out.

“I rescind my previous statement that the Bidoof couldn’t have possibly done this.” Quetal’s eyes were narrowed on the Bidoof and he flexed his claws slightly, I was making a silent note here that Sneasels were a bit jumpy.

“Build?” Said the Bidoof with slightly more excitement than a corpse being consumed by buzzing buzzards.

“Um, I need someone to build something for me and I was told to look for a Bidoof. I need several things to be built actually…” Nobody would find this scene as unnerving as I currently do, because the clueless staring from the Bidoof the next two minutes of silence had me sweating a little bit.

“Build!” The Bidoof nodded, though his expression didn’t change much at all to match what sounded vaguely like excitement.

“Pom, I’m getting some seriously off vibes about this guy.” Ocellus was shivering as she looked at the mouse Pokémon smaller than any one of us.

“Well… I guess I better tell him what I need and where I need it…” Again I received a nod from the Bidoof.

“Build.” The Bidoof sat down and waited patiently, as I pulled a list, some drawings and a map with a specified location.

I placed them all before the Bidoof. It took him a few minutes to look at all them, then he gained starry eyes on his still blank and emotionless face.

“Build!” The Bidoof took the papers up in his mouth and then… there was a cloud of dust trailing off into the distance to the south a second later.

“Um… do you think he’s actually going to build what you want?” Smolder stated while glancing at the Pokémon at the end of the bridge.

“We’ll head back and found out. If Bidoof are any good at construction, then I’ll definitely pay him for his efforts.” Still, I felt a little disturbed after meeting a Pokémon like Bidoof.

Taking one curious glance at the scattered injured Pokémon on the bridge to Ignis, we started back for Aurora.

-Two more hours later-

“So… were you expecting this?” Smolder asked me with a raised brow as we finally made it back to being near Aurora Castle.

“BUILD!” The multiple Bidoofs stated at the same time towards us, they weren’t even shouting and it still quite raucous.

There were more than fifty of them and they were all in constructing the frame for the buildings, including the plumbing and a few were already in the middle of digging an irrigation ditch for the fruit trees I wanted to plant.

“Um… excuse me, but can you tell me why Pristi and I are here?” I turned away from staring at the rapid construction to see a Minccino and a Swablu sitting there watching the Bidoof build the things I wanted. The male Minccino was just watched the Bidoof running about. “The Bidoof kind of grabbed us for some reason and dragged us here.”

“AHHHHHH…. oof!” Now there were three Pokémon as a Bidoof blurred by, the new one was a yellow fox with big tufts of red fur coming out of their ears. “Can someone tell me what’s going on here and what’s up with all the crazy Bidoof?”

It took a moment, but once the fox noticed my presence, he just kept staring at me… then he started to blush and ignore everything else.

“Well… I think they gathered you because running a place like this is going to be exceedingly messy.” My words made the Minccino and Swablu perk up immediately.

“A true challenge of cleanliness?! I Picochi, welcome it!” The grey chinchilla stood up with his right paw in the air and his left on his hip. “Will I have to clean up after a Muk, please tell me I’ll have to clean up after one of them!”

“I’ll be the one cleaning up after a proverbial Muk first, for I am Pristi the maiden of good hygiene!” That was when the Swablu pressed her forehead against the mouse and they glared at each other in clear rivalry, before the bird turned back to me. "I don't even mind that they somehow plucked me out of the air for this!"

The more I hear about Muks the less I wanted to meet one on the principle of it, apparently there was one around here that one of Geoffs unit was dating or sleeping with. I seriously didn’t want to know more than I was learning, but I just knew it would happen eventually.

“I’ll do anything for you beautiful… I mean hi my name is flem… I mean flim… darn it!” The poor fox spat out some specks of flame from his mouth as he became increasingly tongue tied in my presence and seemed to be trying to talk in spite of himself. “Eriflamb, yes, that’s it… that’s my name. You can call me Erif you beautiful cuddly, fluffy, attractive wool covered goddess you! Er… did I just say all those compliments out loud like a Wooloo?”

We all nodded, he whimpered and curled up with his paws on his face.

“So embarrassing…” Whined the Pokémon that was obviously a fire type, if the constant flecks of flames dropping from his mouth and the heat coming off his ears were any indication. “Wait if those two are here to clean things, then what am I here for and why was I kidnapped from Ignis by a bunch of Bidoof? Not that I mind since you’re here my goddess!”

“Wait, you’re from Ignis?” I asked wondering how far Bidoof were willing to go to make my planned facilities a reality. They were already putting down the frame work and digging up the landscape, in fact they already looked halfway to properly putting up walls and a roof. “Do you have any information of what’s happening there in that territory? I mean in a general sense. Also Dolly, I’m so glad that you don’t act like this.”

“Why would I? The only time I’ve ever acted like that was with Hansel...” Dolly sighed and I could almost see the hearts floating around her head for a few seconds, well seconds before they burst at the realization that she was likely never getting with him or seeing him again. “Still, I made my choices and I’m happy with where I am. There are plenty of dogs out there… maybe even some handsome ones around here can catch my fancy.”

Yeah, no, I really didn’t need to magnetize more canine companions to me in a ‘familiar bond’. Also since most beings in this world seemed highly intelligent enough, I might not have to worry about familiar bonds at all and would have more to worry about them just following me everywhere I go even if they couldn’t bond to me like Dolly had.

“What’s going on in Ignis you ask my goddess? Well for one Lord Hideyoshi is having many problems with an Unfezant named Berserker Lu Bu and his Rapidash called Bloody Red Hare, at least they are keeping all the violent fighting away from the civilian population.” Erif seemed attracted to me like most canids are, but this seemed a bit more intense… like he had a major crush on first sight. “This has left the country kind of leaderless until those two can settle things about the leadership position, so Ignis’s military isn’t exactly focusing on all the issues piling up everywhere else due to the partial civil war going on… like those Riolu Raiders stealing from the civilians. People are kind of thankful they are hitting Aurora more than they are Ignis, but that doesn’t make what they are doing right!”

“Well if you choose to accept it, you’d help with running a bathhouse and rest stop guild… do you know how to cook?” I asked as I continued to watch the Bidoof build everything like crazy while throwing in their own flourishes and designs.

I noted that Aurora didn’t have a guild and well it couldn’t be too hard to functionally run one… right?

“I don’t know how to cook personally, but we can easily find a fire type that does!” Erif still seemed quite excited to have met me. “There are Fletchinder or a Talonflame that live around the border of Ignis and Aurora that are pretty good at food preparation. Also yes, I would like to join! I can help with heating the water in the bathhouse.”

“Build.” Huh? It was that one male Bidoof that we met. I looked at the plumbing schematics he was presenting to me and there were some things added to the illustrations I made up this morning.

There were a few changes to the design, it looked something like they wanted to make a variety of areas specific to Pokémon types. Like the sewage from bathroom usage would be directly piped to a specific area for certain Pokémon judging from the symbols, I think one of them meant grass types given the green coloration.

“Well... whatever you think will make all this work.” I said blandly. “If you can make a guild both beautiful and functional, then I’ll be happy with whatever you come up with as long as anyone, Pokémon or outsider, can enjoy coming here.”

“Build!” The Bidoof seemed happy with that given his body was vibrating violently as he scampered off.

“Pom, I think you might have created a monster… never mind… make that monsters. All the Bidoof seemed ecstatically and insanely happy all of the sudden.” Well Ocellus, I did kind of just give them a Carte Blanche to do whatever. “Emphasis on the insane part. Do we even have enough funds for all this?”

“You’d be surprise how cheaply Bidoof work, they just want to build things. The more complicated and challenging it is, the cheaper the price tag will be at the end of it all.” Pristi the Swablu stated while watching the Bidoof celebrate in ecstasy by gathering building materials and performing some kind of ritual around them. “So Aurora is finally getting a guild… it’ll be interesting to see how that turns out in this highly backwater place. So many muddy, dirty and unclean Pokémon will likely visit… the cleaning will be endless… a lifetime of positively killing grime… it’ll be glorious!”

Both the Swablu and the Minccino started drooling slightly at the thought of keeping this place clean.

“So…” I was going to ask them something, but they both respond at the same time.

“We’re hired!” They stated without any hint of hesitation and then started glaring at one another.

“If you are to be my enemy for life in the same place, then I Picochi welcome you to try and out clean me Pristi!” Paw and cotton wing were quickly shook. “So do you have anywhere we can stay while we wait for the Bidoof to finish?”

“We’re still going to be adventuring right?” Favela asked of me with searching eyes.

“Yes, but we’ll try to stay safe about it.” The reasons we got around in Aurora, Green Leaf and Fontaine so easily is because there were roads and long, wide and open spaces to travel through. Ignis to the north was more mountainous and treacherous to travel, so it would be slower going if we ever went there.

“Good enough answer for Favela!” Stated a smiling Favela.

“Why don’t you, Shanty and Dolly go play?” I said as I started pushing the three off in a specific direction of some flowery grasslands. “Stay within sight of Aurora Castle though. I think we’re done doing important things today until the Bidoof finish… which might take just the rest of the day at the rate they are going.”

All the Bidoof seemed ludicrously hyper about building things, they were even building a structure next to the guild that I didn’t even commission.

“We can be doing that easily!” Shanty stated as she threw a hoof around Favela and hugged the bush goat before setting off.

“Excuse me, but what’s that structure?” Smolder asked for me as second later.

A Bidoof sped up to us and gave us a paper with some schematics.

“Ah… it appears they were building a build and repair center… if I didn't know any better I think they might even have plans to build an entire town around the guild here.” As soon as the Ocellus said that, all the Bidoof in the area froze. They all slowly looked at her and then each other, then all their bodies began to vibrate like crazy. Seconds later, they went into a building frenzy. “I… probably shouldn’t have said that.”

“You think Ozzy? Hey Picochi, do you know where we can find a field of flowers to relax at? Pom is stressing out… and don’t you dare deny that you aren’t Pom!” Well Smolder had me figured out and she didn’t even need to ask Ocellus about my current feelings. “A nice, no danger, good smelling, flower heavy, frolicking spot.”

“There’s a place a bit south west of here, let us show you!” Picochi stated with good cheer.

"Ah the sweet smelling meadows, the Wooloo should all be elsewhere today making it a perfect spot to relax." Pristi followed up the statement by sending a blast of sparkles at Picochi and he fired a barrage of energy stars, that I now know to be the move Swift, back at her.

“I want to come to, I’ve never actually been in Aurora before… also, I don’t know how to get back to Ignis from here…” Erif's cheerful stare was making me uncomfortable.

I was almost wishing for Geoff’s presence.

“Oh so that’s where you are slender legs, your lovely appearance has already made my day!” Geoff stated pleasantly as he and his militia unit showed up. One of the Wooloo was actively writing down what Geoff just said and nodding to himself in clear appreciation of his leaders flirting ability. “I think I know the spot he’s talking about.”

Darn you Arceus, the key word there was ‘almost’!

Author's Note

Pom starts a guild...

Chaos has ensuing before her group even arrived in this world.

250. Excogitating Ewe.

-Ransei, Near Aurora Castle, Shanty-

Favela almost be like me having a sister, I be having plenty of fun roughhousing with her and Dolly.

While I be knowing Dolly was not fragile, I was still being careful with her as I wrestled her to the ground and Favela flopped over my back and tried to be pinning me down.

“Heh, this is being fun.” I finally be silently admitting that all the adventuring be getting to me, but spending time with Favela and Dolly was a lot of fresh air in my tired lungs. The peace couldn’t last, but I be getting in what joy I could.

“You said it. I may have been a bit of a jerk to you, but you’re adventures all sound really cool Shanty!” Of course they do Favela, except the part where I got seriously ill from swamp muck after helping to fight a voodoo witch. “I want just as many amazing adventures as you!”

“No you don’t, I be nearly dying multiple times!” That’s when Dolly be barking a bit and nodding. “Dolly is being there for a number of those things and she has been in as much, if not, more danger by just spending time with Pom. Interesting happenings are abound, so it is being best that we all be wary of everything going on around us.”

Dolly held up her right paw and tilted it left and right in a ‘so-so’ gesture. She has been a very expressive buddy and friend despite not being able to communicate verbally.

“Well we’ve already been getting enough interesting happenings around here for a few months now. Also we’ve got some information on juicy adventures just waiting to be had.” Favela was cool looking and friendly when she wasn’t trying to swagger me to be angrily stupid, I be much smarter than that. “Favela is tough, you know I am, the dangers of this world won’t stop me or any of my friends!”

“On that we can be agreeing!” I raised a hoof and we soon high hoofed with a paw from Dolly.

-Ocellus-

A distance away I felt Shanty, Favela and Dolly bonding cheerfully and were running about playfully. It was so nice to see friendships bloom, even with beings from across three different worlds. Also it was nice that Shanty trusted me with the solid metal paperweight that was Dodo.

I believed Shanty when she stated that her familiar was still alive even now, but I was wondering when Dodo would eventually become active again. Maybe the process of what Dodo was going through to stay alive was taking up a lot of energy or maybe he needed energy? I mean Dodo ate food… as much as scrap metal and other weird materials.

We were simply relaxing near Castle Aurora in seats and watching Bidoof pass by. We were letting Pom have a chance for some alone time from responsibility. Though Pom had plenty of reasons to be anxious and stressed with all the trouble going on around Aurora.

“Do you find it weird that Pom wants to start a quiet business, when we’re literally surrounded by problems that we could be figuring out how to deal with?” Smolder asks as she watched multiple Bidoof pass by with ever increasing piles of material. “I mean the thing we know about the least is what’s happening in Greenleaf, but it doesn’t seem to be a big issue… aside from the loss of that bridge to the humongous round blob that calls itself a Pokémon when it resembles a living boulder.”

“Excuse me it’s not quite correct to call a Snorlax a living boulder, since there are Pokémon that are actual living boulders. Multiple of them in fact, they are usually rock type Pokémon. A few ground types look like they’d be rock type Pokémon.” Shine had been hanging out with us quietly up to this point and not interfering with what we were doing, but we did take what she said into account. “Unlike Mr. Geoff, I’ve been a bit further in my travels… because I wanted to see what Spectra, the ghost type kingdom, was like. I didn’t like it there and preferred living around here.”

“Next I suppose you’ll be telling us there are Pokémon that look like living trees.” Remarked Smolder in a bland tone as we watched a Bidoof pass by carrying another Bidoof that were hauling more materials than their bodies should be capable of carrying.

I was kind of too afraid to really focus on what the Bidoof were doing in the distance with all that stuff, such as a massive pallet of stone being carried by a single Bidoof that slowly went by with what looked like a metric ton on its back.

“Huh, either that Bidoof knows strength or that’s a moody one with raw determination to build… anyway yes, there are two Pokémon that would specifically look like trees. One is a rock type Pokémon known as a Sudowoodo that fakes being a tree and the other is a grass ghost type like me called a Trevenant. Not all Trevenants are bad, but it would be a good idea to be wary around trees with odd segmented looking sections to them.” Shine offered us a weak smile. “We Pokémon can be quite literally anything and we can do a lot of weird stuff. Like a Vaporeon, one of the evolutions Evan can possible turn into if he wasn’t Aurora’s king, it can become entirely invisible in most bodies of water.”

“Any interesting facts about bugs of this world? I’ve noticed a severe lack of them.” That was something that Smolder drew my attention to. I’ve seen grasshoppers, maybe a stick bug or a mantis, but very little in the way of actual bugs in large numbers.

“That’s because bug type Pokémon exist. Bug Types can be a bit reclusive around other Pokémon that aren’t bugs. Some have really nice communities, while others are downright vicious in how territorial they can get.” That was nice to know Shine and you still kept reminding me of Fluttershy with your peaceful and sweet demeanor. “Those Bidoof seemed to be busy like beavers… it’s kind of sad that Pokémon outperform most animals in nature.”

“With the size of their teeth, they practically are beavers.” Feeling Smolder’s mood shift, I noticed her looking towards me. “How do you think Pom is doing?”

“That is very much a loaded question as you well know Smolder, but needless to say… she’s probably thinking about how to avoid getting into trouble this time or is at least planning for a way for us to not be directly involved as much as possible. Barring that, mitigate the need of having to fight as much as possible.” Which is why she was thinking of the bathhouse and guild combo to run, she wanted some comforts of home. “Arceus did tell her that we didn’t need to act as heroes, but that it would be appreciated.”

Pom wouldn’t start something like an adventurer’s guild that operated separately from King Evan without having something in mind. Well aside from wanting the comfort of a well-built place to stay, cook and or experience relative peace that had plumbing.

“Is it weird that I find most Pokémon to be cute or adorable?” Smolder stated as she picked up and started petting Talia the Rattata, not that she seemed to mind in the slightest.

-Southwestern Aurora Meadows, Pom-

We were definitely not going to go north, I didn’t currently want to handle fire types or the several dangerous names I’ve heard as being in that direction. Getting involved in a civil war was not good for my health and neither was trying to after the raiders in a chaos filled territory as that mountainous region of flames.

On the other side of things, I didn’t want to go south either if a Pokémon could have a range of controlling others that large. That they can keep that control despite us knocking those Pokémon down or out was a major issue.

If we knew how they were keeping hold of said Pokémon, we could find some way to free up Moto’s military and start turning them into an effort to liberate Fontaine.

I’d be okay with visiting Arbora Town in Greenleaf, but someone obviously took out the bridge with us in mind and it was definitely an act to prevent us from delivering medicine back to Aurora. Also there was that Pokémon that seemed intent on killing me in the area. They didn’t go after Shanty, Dolly or Ocellus, the other soft targets in my group, they were focused entirely on ending me with that first shot had I not reacted.

While I did want to know exactly what made that Decidueye target me, given I haven’t been in this world long enough to earn anyone’s attention or ire aside from those I’ve met, I didn’t want to know badly enough to stick around to be attacked more.

So until we could get the bridge fixed or we had a way to deal with the mind controlled Pokémon problem down south, I wasn’t leaving Aurora for just about anything and would rather let things come to me.

I would suggest turtling up and working on securing Aurora’s position by building up forces from the surrounding Pokémon to hold the dangers at the borders, but that’s none of my business and is entirely King Evan’s business.

What I’m setting up to do is to deal with the much smaller issues already going on inside this kingdom that won’t inevitably lead me to being an absolutely bloody smear on the ground, floor or whatever surface that could be beneath my hooves at any given moment.

I was going to be a small time problem solver, like those rescue teams that have been mentioned several times.

Lambkin instincts don’t fail me now!

“… can you stop that?” I stated as I sniffed the sweet smelling air. The smell was nice, but I didn’t come here to appreciate unnaturally generated smells.

“Why? You look like you’re stressed out and need it.” The Pokémon that popped up was small, it looked like a little blue walking onion with a face and several leaves naturally growing from the top of its head. Easy enough to tell that it was a grass type.

“I want to smell real nature, not something biologically manufactured.” I stated calmly while trying to not get too upset about this Pokémon trying to help my nerves.

“Oh… sorry…” His leaves wilted sadly.

“It’s an Oddish.” Quetal asked, he’s been watching me quietly laying here on the side of a hill in a meadow full of flowers watching clouds float by. “Shall I run him off if he’s bothering you?”

“No, he means no harm. He can even join me with relaxing if he wants to… you can too you know, you don’t have to be so distant.” Having called it a while ago, I noted Quetal’s reticence to approach me or get close. Quetal was definitely dealing with issues he’s likely not going to talk about, not that I would push him to. “Can you even smell the air little guy?”

“My leaves can taste it.” The little plant Pokémon stated cheerfully. I’m chalking that bit of oddness up to him being a grass type.

“The smell of fresh flowers…” I stated solemnly inhaling slowly through my nostrils, this place is pretty wonderful and I could see danger coming from a mile away. Unless it was smaller than the flowers.

“Yeah, great right?” A small voice said and I looked down at one of the flowers to see a tiny Pokémon holding onto one that wasn’t connected to the ground. The flower the Pokémon held onto looked to be quite healthy despite no longer being planted.

“That would be a Flabebe, a fairy type Pokémon. Curious to find one out here.” Quetal announced in an even tone, the Sneasel was more curiously out of place considering Shine mentioned that they lived in far colder regions than the warm climate around here. “In any case, I’ve often found myself curious as to why they are primarily considered fairy type Pokémon. They tend to use mostly grass type moves.”

“Hey, we’re small Pokémon. If we don’t have a flower, then we don’t have power!” The Flabebe stated while waved a limb lazily at Quetal while using the other to hold the flower. “But yeah, we’re more grass type adjacent than an actual grass type. Though some do confuse us for grass types due to our general lack of fairy moves, our fairy energies actually go into making sure the flower survives as we carry it around.”

“Don’t your species usually fuse with the flower after a while to become Florges? How do you not become grass types in that case?” Quetal seemed to be insistent on knowing this, making me pay attention to him.

“Our body may fuse with the flower power, but we will still be separate where it counts as a fairy type. It’s not like we can suddenly survive off sunlight, soil and water in our final evolution.” Learning all sorts of interesting things here, but this Flabebe brought about a questions.

“Are there any Pokémon smaller than you?” I knew Pokémon could be bigger than a Snorlax from some of the things Quetal and Shine mentioned off hoof, but tiny?

“Joltiks can be smaller, I’m even friends with a few of them.” This little flower hugging Pokémon was unusual.

“Would you and the Oddish like a job?” The idea to get my business venture off the ground was to ask around and get some Pokémon to work as staff.

“A job?” The Oddish seemed quite curious about it.

“What kind of job?” The Flabebe asked, while still clutching her nice smelling flower close with one limb and adjusting her little crown of pollen with the other.

I was planning for the future, a future I would never be a part of should I survive this world. At least I know if I die Arceus would reincarnate me… but I’d rather avoid becoming a Pokémon like the plague, there was a permanence to it that a part of me would never accept.

Tianhuo said it best, I was her Lambkin and I always would be. It was a promise that whatever comes, even twelve more canines to add to the roster of our family, she would accept it. She liked Dolly, possible because she was small and keeping me relatively happy, but she knew I had a problem and was probably expecting me to pick up more.

-A few hours later, Aurora Castle-

Picochi, Pristi, the Oddish, the Flabebe and even Erif had gathered at the castle with our three traveling companions to see the Bidoof repairing damage to the castle that time had done and were leaving unblemished and well refurbished parts of the castle behind.

“Wonder when they started doing this.” It seems to me that the Bidoof were both ridiculously eager and insane to build and or repair things.

“What’s with all the Bidoof?” The Oddish asked.

“I asked them to build something. It seems they are getting a little out of control…” I think I’m currently learning to always expect big things from the most simpleminded of creatures like the Bidoof.

Seeing King Evan standing outside and watching the Bidoof with Maiden Jig, I approached.

“Hey, I just want to ask, can a few Pokémon use your guest room for few nights?” It was getting into the evening and I actually wanted to get in some exercise with Shanty and Dolly, I was also going to need to do some training with our Pokémon friends.

“Huh, oh sure!” Evan stated with a wagging tail. “Please don’t force me to take more money for it though.”

“Really King Evan? With how bad the surrounding regions are getting? We kind of need the resources.” Maiden Jig wasn’t as upset as before, but she did watch the Bidoof work with a sense of wonder as they rebuilt parts of the castle. I actually got to see her get excited for the first time since I’ve first seen her. “Yes, they’re fixing the roof, no more leaky nights! This is the best news I’ve heard or seen in weeks as an advisor to the mystical throne of Aurora!”

Maiden Jig started sniffling and tearing up… then she turned to look at me.

“Did you pay for all this with the rest of you Poké?” Actually Maiden Jig, I didn’t know how much this would cost me. I only asked for a wagon and a combination of a bathhouse and guild. I think they were doing all this extra stuff free of charge, because they just couldn’t stop or control themselves at this rate.

“I think they are doing this on their own, I only asked for two or three things...” Honestly though, if they were going to do all this work, I think we should let them. They looked quite happy to do so. “They still haven’t asked me for a price, yet… they are doing so much. Are Bidoof always like this?”

“I wouldn’t know, I mean King Evan directed you to them and I always thought they were dullards are lazy slow minded Pokémon like a Slowpoke.” Well whatever a slowpoke was Maiden Jig, I think you were being proven thoroughly wrong with all the Bidoof are currently doing.

What was most interesting to me was that they just kept bringing in materials in from somewhere from the east and yet no Pokémon came to complain about it. This made me think the Bidoof had all of this stuff stockpiled somewhere ahead of time and were just waiting to use it all up to build something, anything basically, and for repairs to the castle.

“Before you ask, yes they a mind numbingly happy.” Ocellus announced as she came over to me with Smolder and Shine.

“Speaking of recent events, I heard about the Litleo Militia and Riolu unit fighting at the bridge, apparently one of the Bidoof took out the units because they were disturbing its nap. The Litleo were sorry to have disturbed us and carted off the Riolu when they woke up.” Informed Evan with a wagging tail. “This means we still have some allies in Ignis not currently embroiled in a civil war, even if it is a small amount of honorable Pokémon that are willing to keep the peace between our kingdoms. This day has been quite heartening with all the depressing stuff that’s been going on.”

When Shanty, Dolly and Favela showed up looking disheveled and roughed up, I sighed at the idea that I’d have to help clean them off. Dolly was practically caked in mud and grinning at me brightly like Shanty was. Favela looked to be absorbing some of the mud into her leafy form with an equally broad smile.

“Shanty, Dolly, fun times over, I think it’s time we ate lunch and we’ll do some training with our friends afterwards.” I need to get myself back up to speed, plus an evening of exercise will leave them quite sleepy after a good meal.

“Can I join in the training, I want to do some combat practice with actual people and not just targets. A king needs to be a capable battler at least!” Evan looked up to me and I decided it would be okay by nodded. He looked to his round balloon shaped advisor. “Can we run combat exercises Maiden Jig, can we?! We do kind of need to get Teeth’s unit more training outside of fighting us and then there’s our new combat unit with Mr. Rauco and his Pidgey unit.”

“Why are you asking me? You’re the king that does things while ignoring my input half the time.” Sighing in an annoyed tone, Maiden Jig turned to Evan while rubbing at her forehead with little limbs. “If you are asking me for advice or because you want me to join in too… then I guess I could get use some combat practice. Just please remember that my unit is primarily for emergencies.”

“Yay!” King Evan stated as he pranced around in a circle.

“Count me in on that, I can teach you a few things about combat rhythm!” King Motochika would be getting in on this as well. “Also I need to keep up my skills and I need to personally get stronger to take back Fontaine, no king would let their Kingdom go that easily!”

“Skitty Squad wants in on this too!” One of Captain Skeeball’s four Skitty stated as they were up and moving towards us. “We’re making this fun!”

“I like a good harmless scrap, but real battles… yeah not all fire Pokémon are hot blooded battle crazed idiots.” It seems Eriflamb wanted to train some too. Pristi, Picochi, the Oddish and the Flabebe were behind him and looking curiously excited. I didn’t think Flabebe would want to get into combat, she looked so fragile, but if Vetali was correct about how tough Pokémon could get… then I was severely underestimating the little flower hugger. “Still a full training exercise with friends, it’ll help me get control of my fire better!”

“Hey, don’t leave us out of this!” Jiri showed up waving and she saw the gathering, once she got close she heard the words training exercise and jumped on it figuratively. What followed her was several bear like Pokemon with differing appearances. “I got the Pokémon I wanted together for my unit and then some!”

“A pancham, how did another dark type like you end up in Aurora?” Quetal stated with narrowed eyes that spoke of trouble.

“None of your business weasel.” So dark types were regularly gruff good to know the panda Pokémon shared something in common with Quetal.

“A full unit of bear Pokémon, how did you manage that?!” Maiden Jig stated as she looked at Jiri in a new light, Jiri blushed and looked away shyly. “Is one of them a Kubfu from Pugilis?”

“Yes and I have sworn myself to being a part of master Jiri’s unit, as she has defeated me in combat!” The Kubfu apparently stated with closed eyes and a nod, Jiri looked away while twiddling her paws as if that wasn't the whole story. “I am at her command.”

“Does ice type bear not get equally noticed for being far from ice type bears usual habitat?” The snotty nose little bipedal ice bear stated before sneezing a bit. Apparently the disgusting bit of snot hanging from its nose was a natural part of its existence.

“I had a few accidents picking up my Stufful and Teddiursa friends… heh…” A few? I’m now expecting Jiri to have had a half dozen accidents that somehow resulted in her forming a full unit of five bears and a bunny.

It sounded like an understatement with the surprise Maiden Jig showed at the three particular members of Jiri’s group showing up.

-Nighttime hours-

I sat there relaxing in the bath with Shanty, Favela, Smolder and Ocellus after some incredibly intensive combat practice… then I realized something.

“Wait… since when did Aurora Castle have a hot bath as nice as this one?!” My answer was quickly found by the Bidoof that wandered by.

“Build.” The female Bidoof stated in a chipper tone as she skipped along.

“That answers that.” Ocellus didn’t take part in the training exercises, but it had been interesting. At least I knew I could take an entire unit of smaller Pokémon. “So Smolder, did you really have to jump in with helping Eriflamb?”

“Yeah, the guy couldn’t control his flame to save his life, a few tips from me got him going even if he’s not going to be a part of Evan’s military force, self-defense is fairly important for anyone.” Smolder leaned towards and started scrubbing Ocellus’s back make her blush and whimper. “Not that dragons have to worry about training in anything other than how to use their sizes to the fullest. As for Longma though, they do need to train like that as they generally get to largest Pegasus stallion size at minimum.”

I reached for the device to call Tianhuo, the minute Tianhuo saw me in the bath her face turned straight red.

“Pom…” Tianhuo tried to talk, but her tongue didn’t seem to be working as I smiled at her cheekily with my wool straightened out and draping over the right side of my face.

“I’ve been meaning to ask, do I still have a job?” My position as head of Huoshan’s Canine Division still mattered to me. “Also does anyone want to talk with Smolder or Ocellus? I know I’ve been greedy with the possible ten minutes with you every evening and I’m sorry about that… but… well…”

“I understand completely, and about that…” It seemed Tianhuo finally found her voice.

“Two tails doing lots of stuff Baa-baa, Fui-fui mate fed her lots!” Thanks for telling me Woof, my tenko fox familiar was picking up my slack in my absence. Thankfully Tianhuo had quickly figured out how I kept up with so many chores at once.

I still had to plan for the future and keep pushing forward, but I'm sticking to small stuff this time.

Author's Note

Next up, Pom and friends go on a rescue team-esque mission to help some Pokemon.

251. Rescuers: Team Harmony.

-Ransei, Castle Aurora, early morning, Pom-

I woke up hugging Smolder and Shanty this time, Dolly was laid out on her back on top of my belly and Ocellus was snuggled up against side. I guess that they were just that worried about me after I was left fully crippled in the last world.

They weren’t the only ones snuggled up to me though, so was Quetal and the slashing weasel looked so peaceful that I didn’t want to disturb him. He looked cute despite being a Pokémon who seemingly only has skills in combat.

Again, I appreciated being used as a special sleeping aid.

-Ten minutes later-

I managed to slip out from under my friends, with some help from a sleepy Favela carefully using her vine whips to move them about.

I stretched out and decided to go check on the Bidoof, they had been last heard working late into the night. Walking outside, I turned and looked up at the castle and saw that it gleamed in the rising sun. They had refurbished the entire outside of the castle.

Shaking my head, I looked in the direction they were building my commission and then just stared, I slowly raised my hooves to wipe at my eyes.

I looked again, nope the image still hadn’t changed.

“They built an entire town overnight?!” I stated in sheer disbelief that those Bidoof had done that much work overnight.

I approached and saw a vaguely familiar lone Bidoof standing at the western entrance to town, I had the foresight to grab my bag of Poké for the transaction. I placed the bag before the Bidoof and he looked at it curiously.

“You can have however much you want or the entire sack, I care not.” Really, money wouldn’t be an issue if I met any more Smeargle, because…

“Build.” I looked at the Bidoof and the small pile of Poké he had taken from the sack. It was barely more than a thousand.

“That’s all you want, what about all the other Bidoof that helped you?” This was a bit too ludicrously cheap to me.

The Bidoof tilted its head aimlessly, and poked into the sack and got about two hundred more out. Aside from that I still had more than a thousand Poké left.

“That’s it?” My query was met with a nod, he left and came back with a sack and gathered the Poké into it and started dragging it.

“Build.” The Bidoof stated in a blank manner through his clenched teeth and tilted his head in a ‘come on’ gesture. We soon approached the building Ocellus noted as for building commissions and repair work.

I followed him through the door and saw all the Bidoof were now in this one building sleeping about the insides of the structure in little cubbyholes, they were kind of adorable once you get past their moderately goofy appearances.

Still didn’t honestly know how dangerous Bidoof actually were and I never wanted to find out.

“Um… thanks for everything I guess?” I stated before turning and leaving to go look at my commissions.

One headquarters for Rescue Team like activity, plus bathhouse. After a quick look around, I found that the large bathhouse featured eighteen separate zones for various Pokémon. They also built a lot of stalls for privacy. Speaking of plumbing, they even built reinforced porcelain toilets for Pokémon as large as a Snorlax when I checked the bathrooms.

That explained why the bathhouse areas were large enough for just about any Pokémon to enter and it took up a lot of space next to my home away from home, the guild house itself, which included furnishings like beds and actual working sinks. Guess I needed to remember how to make homemade soap now, did that a lot in exile from Meadow Hills.

Note to self, Bidoof were clinically insane about constructing things, especially when challenged.

“Where’s the wagon I commissioned though?” Currently I was checking the entryway to the guild house itself, having rooms personally for my group and extra for our friends on the second floor. The guild also included barn sized entrance leading to rooms for larger Pokémon to stay nice and dry for a night or two.

It’s around this point when Picochi decided to make his presence known as he hopped up onto the counter.

“Oh that, it’s out the back door back Mrs. Lambchop!” The chinchilla informed cheerfully while waving at me from the counter. “The early Pokémon gets to clean, but it’s certainly not going to be that bird!”

“So… much… to clean… we can’t wait for it to get dirty so we can smite all the dirt, ALL OF IT!” Pristi had hearts in her eyes at the thought.

I turned and left the guild hall as the two Pokémon started glaring at one another, walking out the back I saw the camping wagon I commissioned with what looked like a waterproof envelope. Now if only we had Dodo or a Pokémon large enough to move it, we’d be using it eventually for travel for sure.

Nodding to myself I walked back around to front, taking in how large the building was in this quick built hamlet.

“What to call this place… Helper’s Hamlet maybe?” If I didn’t have to do heroics, then I simply wouldn’t. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t be helping people though.

“Help, someone help!” Just as I thought about it, the devil the answers. The loud voice attracted my attention to a pink mouse creature shivering and looking around in fear as he looked around, he was crying quite loudly. “Wait, I don’t remember a town being here at all… AHHHHH!”

“Yeah, it just got built… welcome to Helper’s Hamlet.” If one were to look at a map they’d see an upside down T shape east of Aurora Castle with my guild at the center of the intersection taking up most of the southern area with the eastern expansive bathhouse and western large rooms for bigger Pokémon.

The Bidoof didn’t disrupt the farms or any other Pokémon and built plenty of homes for Pokémon to start moving in with the space they had available to them. I think they outdid themselves with the row of buildings creating a street leading north.

“AHHHHH… scary Wooloo thing that isn’t trying to compliment me in a perverted manner!” There was a feeling that this Pokémon was someone who gets easily frightened, my eyelids drooped slightly at the thought.

“What are you by the way?” I tried to speak softly.

“NOOOOO! IT WANTS TO KNOW WHAT I AM SO IT CAN EAT ME BECAUSE IT DOESN’T KNOW IF I’M POISONOUS OR NOT!” Yep, an overdramatic Pokémon that was scared of everything. Looked like a normal type Pokémon to me.

“Do I actually look like I eat meat, I’m a vegetarian.” I stated blandly.

“It’s a Whismur, normal type. They can get loud and tend to use sound based attacks like Uproar, they also tend to panic at the drop of a hat… quite annoying really.” Quetal informed as he walked up with claws on his ears. “Can you get him to stop, he’s causing me a headache.”

If anything the Whismur reminded me of my youthful days as a little ewe, when every lambkin freaked out about something and then causing a huge mess over some random truth we’d learn that day

“Waahhh you’re telling them everything about me so they can know all my weaknesses!” The Whismur continued to be outrageously loud and absolutely hysterical.

I calmly walked up to them, with a twitching right eye, and slapped their face lightly with my right hoof.

“Stop that.” Surprisingly the Whismur did stop crying and being as obnoxiously loud as ‘Flamberge the flammable’. “I’m head of the… what did you Pokémon call them… a Rescue Team? Well at least I’m starting one here in Ransei, apparently Rescue Teams don’t normally exist around here. Figured I’d get ahead of that particular curb and start a business of helping people.”

“Do you have a Pelipper or at the very least some Kecleon Brother Merchants to confirm that?” The Whismur whispered quietly while whimpering.

What was a Pelipper, I’ve already heard of Kecleon as being chameleon Pokémon that find rare things and food to sell to Pokémon for Poké, I’ve yet to meet either.

The ground erupted nearby, Quetal and I were suddenly wary of what was going to show up and Whismur cowered behind me. What popped out of the ground wasn’t what I expected.

Two chameleon Pokémon with single zigzagging stripes along their bodies pulling themselves from the hole in the ground, one stripe being more visible than the other.

“Did someone say they needed a Kecleon to confirm a Rescue Team forming? Well if you can’t get a Pelipper delivery service running, then the Kecleon Brother Merchants Company will have you covered! Now open in Greenleaf… and Aurora as of this second!” Stated the two different colored Kecleon as they unfolded a bag to spread out some goods, including food and odd orbs, on a large blanket in the middle of the street. “It took a bit of doing, but we used Dig to make our way into this kingdom past all those nasty mind controlled Pokémon down south, especially that pack of Clawitzers. Better idea than what we heard going on with the raiders or that Lu Bu guy up north. Still, those Clawitzers were quite vicious with their bombardments! These lands are very strange, but we heard of some outsiders that would make some interesting customers, so here we are to confirm if you have the spirit to forge a lasting Rescue Team even if you should eventually leave… so we can profit off of them of course, but we always do good honest business! I’m Kec-red/Kec-blue, and… welcome to our shop!”

The two spoke in unison and were smiling broadly, one Kecleon a solid red with a faintly visible stripe and the other a bright blue with a red stripe.

“Got a nice looking guild hall there at least, so that’s one question settled of if you have a place where Pokémon can gather. So you definitely have the funds to start up your own team and I can practically smell the Poké on you. You had a lot, but also spent a lot recently and freely it seems… our kind of customer!” Kec-red stated working himself up into a fervor. “Can you pass our three… wait ones proven… two challenging questions to prove you have what it takes to rescue anyone that needs help! Whether it’s dealing with feral Pokémon or those who are trapped by devastating circumstances such as natural disasters or are between a rock and a hard place, I have to ask… CAN… YOU… HELP… PEOPLE?!”

“This place was literally built just last night, by that I mean all of Helper’s Hamlet.” This had me curious. “How did you even know to show up here?”

“Bidoof recruiting methods…” Kec-blue muttered loudly with his arms cross, eyes closed and tapping one foot.

“Yeah, showed up at our camp last night after we crossed the bridge from that Fontaine place and they were happy to do business with us. We dug the rest of our way here as we didn’t want anyone absconding with our merchandise, but it seems we didn’t have to have that much caution. Aurora seems quieter than any of the other wild kingdoms around here.” The chipper Kec-red stated, that’s when Eriflamb showed up. “Also the Bidoof at least allowed us to show up on our own merits instead of just dragging us here like some poor helpless saps.”

“Hey!” Eriflamb’s mouth was sparking with flames.

“You’re one of those poor saps I take it…” Kec-red stated with a humorous grin and nod. “Okay, the second question as to if you can form a Rescue Team is… can you make friends?”

“Hello, my name is Pom, what do you have for sell.” Said in the flattest tone I can manage.

“That’s good enough to befriend me, the second question has been answered!” Kec-blue stated with shining eyes. “We have magical accessories, food, light medical supplies, traveling supplies, seeds that can revive you from severe injuries, one time combat magic orbs, emergency throwing objects and more!”

“I’m not convinced of the second question personally… business friendship is not quite a fight for your life and back to back friendship built by a trial by horrible, horrible violence.” Kec-red grumbled while tilting his head.

“… I’ve become a traveling companion for her group.” Quetal offered up in a slightly shy manner, where seconds before he had been brooding and then looked upset when Red denied me.

“Okay, now I’m convinced!” Kec-red stated a second later as exuberant as ever. “Sneasels and other dark types have a hard time making friends, but they are good strong friends to have indeed. Sharp claws, fast and icy cold attitudes with hearts of gold… for some of them at least, others can get downright nasty. That he would speak for your character says a lot that your friends’, even if you don’t know much about each other yet and we can definitely tell.”

Quetal flinched when heard the word ‘nasty’ and I looked to him worriedly, his past apparently wasn’t pleasant if he was reacting like that. Still, he went out of his way to say something that helped us even if his past is murky.

“Last question!” Both Kecleon announced. “You need to go on a mission, one that’s officially commissioned! Can you complete one to earn the title of local reliable rescuers that less capable Pokémon will rely on?”

“I… I… have a…. a commission… I guess… that is… if they need one.” Whismur stated weakly, he seemed a little afraid of the two happily grinning chameleons.

“Go on, we’re officiating this commission as this rescue teams first.” Kec-blue said in a serious manner. “We’ll set up a rescue teleportation spot outside the guild here in… Helper’s Hamlet was it?”

“There’s a scary Pokémon in northeast Aurora near Arceus Valley.” Whismur spoke up. “I just ran in a random direction and ended up here. All the other Whismur are afraid of it.”

“Ah you’re first official mission then, an investigation, a search and query, a mystery that needs to be solved of a frightening visage and a possible encounter with the unknown!” Stated Kec-red in a boisterous flamboyant manner. “If you’re not interested in buying anything currently, then gather a team, set out and we’ll all see what’s up. How you handle things is up to you, this seems like an open ended case and we’ll judge if you and your friends are worthy of Rescue Team badges. Considering Pelipper service are going to be an issue what with most of the local ones being mind controlled down south, we’ll worry about setting up a mailing system later when the issue is seen to. We’re definitely going to ask the Bidoof for a stall and storage here. Going to need to find a big Pokémon to protect storage though… but that’s on us and possibly another thing we might commission you for.”

“What do you have for sale?” My question made the two grin and move to the side to present their wares with jazz claws.

They answered what each and every single one of their wares would do when I was looking over accessories, the two said that they all had unique and unusual properties.

-Hours later, Northeast Aurora-

I didn’t see the Kecleon’s anywhere, they assured us they would be watching how we handled the situation, whatever said situation might be. They were brought up to date on the regions eccentricities such as units and the like by Maiden Jig.

While they were independent of Aurora and would remain so, the Kecleon Brother Merchants were given the go ahead to set up a permanent shop in the region in Helper’s Hamlet.

“This is going to be fun!” Favela stated while I was worried about what kind of Pokémon we would find.

“I don’t know about that, but we are getting close to the described area the Whismur said the Pokémon would be.” As dour as Quetal could be, I liked him as we could easily share a mood. “Don’t know if I can honestly trust a Whismur to know what is actually scary around here, anything that knows Hyper Beam would immediately be at the top of that list.”

“Please let this not be a huge Pokémon problem…” Shine whined, I’m right there with her on that sentiment. I’d rather deal with small problems instead of more huge messes like what’s currently going on. “We here in Ransei don’t know what rescue teams are actually like, as we’ve only hear rumors from Pokémon that traveled long distances to get to this continent.”

We were near the valley we appeared at, one that lead to the top of the mountain, but otherwise the problem wasn’t in the valley. It was more to the northwest of the valley or to our current direct north off the path in a small tree covered area that didn’t reach true forest capacity. It was between here and the river between Aurora and Ignis and Whismur was bravely showing us the way.

Normally what we were doing would be a problem for the militia to deal with, but Evan had Geoff’s unit watching the south bridge in case the mind controllers range expanded or they tied to bombard us from the southern side of the bridge. Rauco’s Pidgey unit was watching the north for any more trouble that the militia in Ignis couldn’t deal with, as the militia units across the bridge were staying out of the politics of the civil war going on and protecting the citizenry.

Said Ignis militia units where trying to maintain vaguely decent relations with Aurora on their own merits.

There were so many things going on in the world, but I’d rather deal with this one small issue.

I silently thought about the small mouse Pokémon that caused uproars, they’d probably be good singers if they could control their fear responses. A good choir or a-capella group would make for some nice entertainment around here that didn’t involve battling.

Sad that all the Whismur liked quiet and solitude. They also freaked out if a berry so much as fell off a tree, with their sense of hearing being fairly powerful it would sound like some kind of roaring beast. In this case the Whismur said it was an actual Pokémon, key fact one Pokémon, was causing some problems in the area because it was apparently scary to the small colony of Whismur living in this general area.

“Ocellus, can we talk while we trot?” I asked as I stopped paying attention to the light

“Okay.” Ocellus moved away from buttering up Smolder for a hit of compassion and moved up to walk next to me. “What do you need? Aside from something that will permanently kill your anxiety issues.”

“How many fights have I actually personally won on my own merits without outside any help involved or around?” My question came so suddenly that Ocellus flinched. “What is my most impressive fight to date Ocellus? One where I haven’t been driven into the ground.”

“Physically, the most impressive was taking on those six shadow versions of your friends and you. You understood all their combat styles and mentally inverted all of them enough to figure out and match what each of those shadows were truly capable of, but you also looked like a complete mess after that fight. Arguably you got six wins and one loss when it came to Hollow Heart.” That just it Ocellus, that’s how weak I exactly am when I could barely take what were basically newborn beings with their own minds that copied already living people. Aside from that, most of the battles I’ve won were with the strength of others. “As for mentally, I think you win just about every battle placed before you when you’re amazing intellectual abilities are brought to the forefront. You’re far more dangerous when you’re allowed to talk things out. Also you trained Dolly into a respectable force of nature with love, she’d be quite hard to take down even if she didn’t have her skateboarding equipment… not that she would survive too many direct hits to her body. I believe the Ogres and Oubliettes term would be Speedy Glass Cannon.”

“I didn’t give Dormarch enough love and very well couldn’t when the Saint Canard crisis ended… most of my fights end up with me mostly on my back focusing on personal survival while I’m trying to make sure others are surviving.” I’ve taken the most torture of my group, but my wool practically made me a fairly tough brick wall to those who would harm my friends. A brick wall when picked apart brick by brick will eventually not be a wall anymore and a single brick can be broken in half with a single stomp of a halfway decent martial artists hoof.

“Why are you bringing this up now?” Can’t you already feel the emotions Ocellus, the ones coming off of me?

“If I do a third Shock Ram… well a body like mine isn’t meant to have its limiters removed more than once without seriously heavy repercussions.” That I even vaguely survived another fight using Shock Ram activated was a shock, if I do it a third time… well Dormarch and the medical technology that held me in stasis are the only reasons why I still exist as I am. Arceus said as much that he would have grabbed my soul for a new life. We continued through the grass, over the hills and towards a tiny forest like fruit orchard. “Arceus is the only reason I’m standing here right now, in actual good health and talking to you. I saw the extensive reports of my injuries Ocellus. I should be blind from all the impossible high speed eye movements, have multiple bones broken, most of my muscles should be irreparably shredded, nearly had complete organ failure that only Dormarch had the medical knowledge to stop with a trauma kit and even that was barely putting me in the stable range. I even saw how many times my heart reportedly stopped afterwards. How much more torture can you truly expect me to take?”

“That reminds me and brings up an interesting point I hadn’t considered until now, how did you move so fast without killing yourself?” Well that was actually simpler to accomplish than most would think Ocellus. “Didn’t you say after a certain amount of running that the creator of the Shock Ram technique have his heart explode in his chest?”

“I never actually ran the distance required for my heart to explode in the way of killing me instantly, most of my combat with Negatron Duck was me hopping around at high speeds and not actual running. That’s the mistake the creator made, when you have that much strength with your limiters off why waste the energy moving along the ground when you’re on a deadly time limit? That fight went a far sight better than Tai Lung did, but the end result was basically the same and my injuries were far worse even if I did knock Negatron Duck back down to being normal Negaduck.” Standing quietly while looking at the smattering of trees ahead where the Pokémon we came to see awaits, I turned to Ocellus. “I have to seriously thank Dolly for giving me her ‘flowing motion’ ability throughout that, it made me immune to the fire when I lit myself on fire and it also possibly eased the burden of all the movements putting ridiculous stress on my body that I couldn’t feel. Thus did I live up to the name ‘Leap Lamb’ in that world, though I don’t appreciate being called a hero in the slightest because what real victories do I truly have aside from saving a plane full of people? Negaduck actually won that fight… since he truly got what he wanted.”

“You’re victorious in keeping us alive Pom, we trust you and you haven’t been a bad leader… we kind of fell apart without you and I don’t think I can make snap decisions to do absurd things quite like you do.” Ocellus hugged me with her left leg and then looked at the scarf I was wearing around my neck. “Also that Pecha scarf looks quite fetching on you Pom, Dolly looks quite adorable too.”

“You’re just complementing me to cheer me up…” Honestly it worked, because I did like this scarf. “Thank you.”

I bought a pecha berry themed scarf that made me immune to poison, because my paranoia was obviously something that kept me semi-alive this long and Dolly was wearing a matching one around her neck over the Digivice and her three bands. Shanty didn’t want one and was interesting in possibly acquiring other accessories when we had the Poké for it, Smolder’s blood runs too hot for more poisons and Ocellus was able actively eject any venom or poison from her body at will.

As long as I wore this scarf and had no other magical accessory that interferes with its mystical nature, and thankfully my wedding bell didn’t, the scarf made me completely immune to poison.

The explanation was that if you have two objects of mystical nature on you, whichever you put on first was the one that would take effect and the other will do absolutely nothing. It was kind of sad that you could only use the mystical power of one of the magical accessories you could find in this world at a time per being.

The Kecleon’s mentioned the usual side effect for the mystical accessory makes you a little hungrier. There were accessories that make one less or barely hungry, but that tended to have entirely different side effects since they prevented hunger instead of causing it.

For the positive benefits to the wielder or wearer, increasing my need to eat marginally was an incredibly small price to pay for the end results.

The scarf was proven to work despite my skepticism, because Kec-blue guaranteed it by hitting his Kec-red partner with the move Toxic point blank while he was wearing it to ensure its authenticity and then did it to me while I was wearing it to make sure it would work for outsiders. They used toxic on a willing Pokémon, a random confused looking Bidoof they gave a pecha berry, to prove the move they were using would actually poison someone.

The scarf was only preventative measure however, if you were already poisoned then putting the scarf on would not cure the poison. The scarf also didn’t prevent injury from attacks that can poison, just the poison itself.

“Let’s do this.” I sighed audibly, hoping that this wasn’t about to become a horrible battle to the death again, and moved into the copse of trees following the Whismur.

“There…” The Whismur pointed to see an injured Pokémon quietly snacking on Oran berries and minding their own business, their numerous wounds very slowly and barely sealing up with every berry eaten.

“Before I get close to them, did this Pokémon actually hurt anyone around here?” After seeing that I receive a shake no in response from the Whismur, I calmly walked forward and looked over the Pokémon that scared all the Whismur. They didn’t seem to notice me yet. “Hello…”

My paranoia paid off a second later when the lizard screeched and I was harmlessly splashed with purple liquid that slowly evaporated.

The dark colored lizard looked like it was wearing a mask, which was just a part of its face, had a striped tail leading to strange markings on its back that were lighting up with flames. It was, like many Pokémon I’ve been told, capable of using Toxic.

When I first saw a Seviper, a Mareanie and the mention of multiple poison Pokémon exist and that many Pokémon can poison even if they don’t specialize in it, I knew I wanted something like a pecha scarf and the kecleon’s even threw in an extra one for Dolly for free since I’m a first time customer.

“No, I won’t go back there, you can’t make me!” The lizard seemed panicked as she pressed her back against the tree her burning tail threatening to light it and the other fruit trees the Whismur cultivate on fire.

Saw that reaction in people like me too many times, I can empathize with her sudden reaction. It seemed like she had a stress disorder and it looked like she was somewhere else right now.

“Go back where?” I asked softly, that seemed to shake the lizard back to reality. She was frightened and scared and I was seeing a shivering lambkin in my minds eyes, despite the lizard being around my size or a little bigger. “It’s okay, you’re safe with me here. I’ll be your friend if you need one.”

She looked at me with a less aggressive stance and she soon eased up further. Her tail stopped being on fire when she eventually realized there was an audience and how dangerously close those flames were to the trees she got the healing berries from.

She also had to realize that I was the only one that approached her with honest intentions of not fighting her, her gaze did focus on the odd assortment that came out this way for a few seconds.

“You’re not… a unit from Viperia sent to capture me? Oh… oh dear… I’m so sorry!” Quickly reaching to her side the strange lizard produced a pecha berry from a small pouch. “Here you can have…”

“No need to worry about that, keep the berry. I recently bought this Pecha scarf… basically for exactly this reason. I’m kind of surprised it didn’t stain… possibly an aspect of it being a mystical accessory? Protected my wedding bell from getting splashed at least.” Absolutely saw this coming a mile away, just didn’t expect it to happen so soon. At least I got one up on the chaos that was my life. “Since you apparently have pecha berries on you for accidents like this, you seem like a nice Pokémon to me. My name is Pom and I just came to peacefully ask if you actively spooked the Whismur. I also wanted to know if you are okay personally or if you needed any help with anything, maybe a place to stay? You look like you’ve been through a lot.”

The lizard creature twiddled claws looking to be think about somethings as her eyes darted about looking for something that wasn’t there.

“I didn’t truly mean to bother the Whismur, but I was hungry… and badly hurt…” She looked away. “I’m Dazzle.”

“Nice to meet you Dazzle, would like a hot bath, some good food and a nice sleeping spot with that place to stay?” The lizard perked up in interest, I carefully smiled and moved forward. “May I hug you? You look like you need one.”

Carefully the lizard wrapped her limbs around me and slowly pulled my close to rest her chin against my wool as she began crying.

“There, there…” I intoned softly letting her do the hugging and slowly brought my hooves up to hold her.

-Hours later, outside Helper’s Hamlet Guild Hall-

“The Salandit is all fine now, but I would suggest she stay away from battling for a while… no Pokémon gets this traumatized to immediately spit Toxic on reflex without a mentally damaging reason behind it.” Announced Happiny, currently on loan from the kind hearted Evan. “Salandit’s have a nasty corrosion effect with their poison, so you are quite lucky to have had that pecha scarf on you. Please don’t make me follow you around if you start getting seriously injured, your anxiety speaks a lot about how often you do… I already get enough patients from the farming Pokémon doing stupid stunts around here. I suggest taking it easy and slow with her, she’s been through a lot and there’s much she doesn’t want to talk about.”

With that said, Happiny started back towards Aurora Castle.

“That was so heartwarming!” Announced a tearful Kec-blue. “I think you’ve met a friend who will be there for you for life!”

“You really connected with a Pokémon that truly needed comforting, help and you even escorted her here personally to relative safety. You even procured a healing specialist to look her over, well above and beyond, truly heroic that you didn’t even have to fight her and managed to talk her down while saving those wonderful berry producing trees too!” Kec-red stated as equally pleased and tearful. “Needless to say your Rescue Team has our approval! All we need now is a name for your Team. It’s going to be known as Team ‘blank’, just fill in the blank unless you’re like that one Slowpoke team literally named Team Blank… most mindless rescue team that was ever formed. They barely passed qualification, but they still do their jobs no matter how slowly that may be.”

“Team Harmony.” Ocellus stated immediately her glittering wings fluttering slightly as her eyes shined brilliantly.

“What she said.” Not having any better ideas, I was quickly handed an egg shaped badge with wings by Kec-red.

“I now officially instate you as Team Harmony! The first official rescue team guild in Ransei, may your Rescue Team help many in need… and bring us lots of profitable Pokémon to sell to and buy from of course!” Kec-blue announced as the badge I held glowed. “Now let us tell you how these particular badges works, since we have the rescue teleportation spot outside the guild hall all set up!”

“Wow, an official rescue team in Aurora, I have to tell all the other Whismur about this!” I turned to see the Whismur, who brought us the mission to investigate the less than scary and traumatized Dazzle, run off.

That Whismur just left me with a slight sinking feeling.

252. Getting to know ewe...

-Equus, Ponyville, Carousel Boutique, Twilight Sparkle-

“No Rainbow, you are not going on the Tambelon mission.” I was putting my hoof down on this.

“What about Fizzy, she’s going and so is Jaded!” Rainbow, if a pony jumped off a… no wait, you’ve jumped of multiple things hundreds of times that were a lot higher up than bridges.

“Rainbow, martial arts is self-protection, Fizzle is rated for war both physically and magically. Also she can take you and half the royal guard in a fight and win, that’s before she even needs to start resorting to magic to take out the other half.” First explanation done, now for the next. “As for Jaded, she is a mercenary that can plan around a lot of things we can’t account for, she has a lot of tricks and is capable of defeating almost the entirety of the day guard shift with rubber bands… didn’t help that she bribed most of the night guard with fruit baskets to not stop her that day. Also, no, I couldn’t fire the night guard, they still did their jobs even if they wouldn’t or couldn’t stop Jaded.”

“Speaking of, have they recovered from that incident?” Applejack asked.

“Yes Applejack, they’re fine.” It still left me wondering… how did she find that many uses for a single rubber band ball?!

“I’m fine with not going.” At least Fluttershy was the sensible... “If none of you do… otherwise I’ll pick up some medical kits.”

Well at least Fluttershy is thinking ahead.

“Can I please be left out of it too?” We’ll try to oblige you Fœnum Pom, but you took out a number of guards and your friends just might drag you into it anyway. Mine were certainly threatening to do that to me.

“I actually want in on this adventure too, because how can I ignore an entire realm without laughter?! So I want to go to this Tambelon place and brighten it up and rescue who we can! Besides, I can get Cheese Sandwich to cover for me while I’m gone at least.” It seemed Pinkie actually had heroic aspirations. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking Pinky?”

“I think so Pinkie, but where will would we even find that many rutabagas in time for the festival?” Said a white mouse with a red nose who was sitting on top of a strange, goofy looking, pony.

“Pinkie…” I said slowly.

“Yes?” The mouse and pink pony both responded.

“Please, stop breaking dimensional boundaries and bringing weirdoes into this world to learn friendship.” I sighed audibly.

“Can we go back to our world so that we can get back to taking it over?” Said a second mouse with a large head, we couldn’t let him go before taught him to learn the value of friendship. “I would loathe to miss a night where I fail spectacularly, I have a world record to upkeep for most failed attempts to conquer a planet in unique ways.”

“Honestly, I’d rather stay out of Tambelon place.” Applejack muttered. “I’m happy with being a teacher and a farmer, but a warrior… well if Rainbow Dash does manage to sneak in, then I’m going to.”

“It would be a bit of a bother, but I already have enough of a thriving business that I can spare plenty of time to go on the mission.” Rarity stated as she continued to quietly teach Yona how to make a dress by hoof, apparently she was somewhat enthralled that Spindle was quite capable of helping Yona with it. So long as Spindle the wolf pack spider didn’t crawl onto her, she was perfectly fine with the familiar’s presence on her apprentice. “I’d rather not, but if Pinkie or Rainbow asks me to, I wouldn’t say no to actually finding ways to assist in the excursion to the best of my abilities.”

We’d learn that Pinky seems to already know what being a true friend was, despite trying to help his friend take over their world. Brain said it was more of a hobby at this point, because if he ever succeeded that would mean the world was doing far worse than he would like.

-Ransei, Helper’s Hamlet, Pom-

By the time Happiny had finished looking over Dazzle, it had become too late to start lunch. So I was going to holding a big feast and bade some of our new friends to gather the food to cook up a lot of soup with. Evan, Maiden Jig and Motochika would be informed by Happiny.

Miltanks would help with the milk I needed to create a cream for the soup I’d make later, but I made sure to tell them to pasteurize it first. They knew how to do that, so it was taken care of.

Until then, I had some Pokémon to talk to and some training with Dolly I needed to cover.

-Team Harmony HQ/Helper’s Hamlet Guild Hall, Smolder-

“So what did you mean that she at least always wins every battle placed before her mentally?” It had been bothering me that Ocellus and Pom had that strange talk. I leaned against the table and thought about when I would be able to eat.

“... Pom… well… the anxiety issues aren’t the worst of her problems. It’s okay Ocellus, just rip the bandage off.” Ocellus muttered that last part to herself out loud before returning her gaze to me. “I can feel what… ‘death seeker’… emotions are like. I have counted a number of occasions throughout our adventure where Pom sorely wanted to give up on life entirely, there were possibly more times that I wasn’t around for. Pom has to actively try hard to keep a positive attitude around me, mostly for my sake despite how hard that is for her to do.”

“I’m only learning this now?” This left me completely worried for our caretaker, especially when she was winning mental victories against herself to just to keep going.

“Pom is probably going well out of her way to never do things to upset us… aside from trying to make sure we were taking our relationship safely, which was an incredibly awkward attempt at being an adult.” Not going beyond the hoof holding and kissing stage until we are a few years older. “Still, it’s nice that she told us to be careful.”

“At least the beings in this world are somewhat cute and cuddly looking.” Right now, after hearing that, I think I needed some cute silly stuff in my life. I moved over to Ocellus and put an arm around her, good things Ocellus was pure cute and we could do silly stuff together.

-Different table, Shanty-

“That was a boring mission.” Favela be wanting some excitement. I can be understanding the sentiment, but Pom be needing help. “Though I’m somewhat glad it was, I wouldn’t want to fight a Salandit. I, Favela, know that they have powerful poisons that even poison type Pokémon can’t be immune.”

“Pom can’t avoiding trouble.” Silently, I be wanting to hug Pom more as we almost be losing her again. “Trust me, things just be getting started and that is not exactly being a good thing.”

-Field outside of Helper’s Hamlet, Dolly-

“Aero!” Having a magical ability to suddenly summon swirling vortexes of wind wherever I wanted was easy to utilize, what wasn’t easy was what Pom was asking me to do.

Since Pom learned I could somewhat absorb impacts, provided I don’t get knocked over and I can’t be in the air where I’m in control of how I fall, she’s been trying to get me to branch out my wind magic.

Surprisingly… we’ve discovered the spell was more than just circular vortex of green wind and blasts of air.

I was now being followed by a silver swirling wind and Pom struck at me as I leapt at her to try and hit or bite her. I didn’t have my equipment as Pom had told me to leave it in our room at the base.

I took the blow across the belly and flipped backwards to land on the ground while absorbing the impact of her attack. Clapping my paws together wouldn’t restore energy, it had to be an impact I’m not causing so that I could absorb the momentum for recharging my magic and Pom wasn’t exactly going easy on me.

Pom was definitely pulling her hooves when she struck me. It still hurt, but it was a lot less painful with the swirling silver winds moving around me.

“So what is it doing? It buffeted me somewhat when I struck you.” The silver winds whipping around me continued as Pom asked.

“I think it’s just a magical barrier that moves with me.” My response made Pom looking thoughtful as she held her stance. She looked behind herself for some reason, nothing but grass and wide open spaces here Pom and I didn’t smell anything… unless it was underground. “Really cool looking, but not exactly my color or style. Also it really seems to be making sure I stay perfectly in the middle of it.”

Pom lunged and threw a left hoof at me and managed to tag my side as I evaded, she was pushed back roughly and a bit off balanced.

“It seems to push back whoever tries to hit you and it also noticeable reduces any injuries you would have taken otherwise.” Taking a moment to drop to all four hooves, Pom lifted her right hoof back up and motioned behind her. “Okay, try to create a wind behind me, but instead of blasting outward or in a given direction… I want you to make it do this inverse. By that, I mean I want you to make it pull me backwards when I leap at you, fail to do so and I’ll land a blow.”

“I always did learn better when consequences were on the line.” I readied myself three paws and my right raised and ready to pull her away. I just had to concentrate right? If Pom hits me, I would have to try and stay standing.

“Ready?” Pom crouched. “Go!”

“Aero!” I did as she asked and tried to place a wind that pull her backwards behind her.

I got the suction part right, but… Pom slammed into me at a high speed.

The swirling winds having sucked her in at me even faster and her attempt to strike out turned into an impromptu, and rather painful, shoulder tackle. A tackle that left us being dragged back and forth across the ground several times as we were sucked towards the center of the swirling winds until they died out.

“Bowwww-aghhhaaa-owwww…” I groaned lamely after having my body dragged along the ground with Pom’s several times through the inward swirling winds. Thankfully they stopped before I was pummeled into the grass too badly.

Several attempts later proved that the suction of air would always be centered on me. Thankfully the suction doesn’t seem to actually have an effect on me, at least until I’m hit by something that is… which is highly likely.

“Do you think I’ll get up to tornadoes like the one we created at the volcano?” My Aero magic felt like it was always at the same strength, except when I was using it as a swirling silver shield. “I mean without you, Smolder and Shanty adding power into it.”

My Haste magic was cut and dry in its simplicity by comparison to what my Aero spell could do. It still felt like there was more to Aero that could do, at best I can extend my time with haste by a few seconds with practice and practice was slow thanks to those darned side effects.

“Maybe someday Dolly.” Nothing gets a tail wagging like fun positive reinforcement like some petting or cuddling, like what you are doing right now Pom. “I think we’re done here Dolly, I got some Pokémon to talk to before I start dinner.”

-Farmlands south of Aurora Castle, Shine-

Bidoof were pretty amazing, as were my new friends that made this place possible basically a day after I met them. Outsiders really were incredible like legends say they are.

Speaking of friends, I was gathering wild vegetables for them to eat… also I was sneaking snacks of the surrounding soil for myself after I pulled the vegetables to see how healthy the soil was for some replanting.

Many Pokémon might see me as spooky or dangerous, but I was okay with that as long as I could still make a few friends that would show them I wasn’t something to be feared. Ghost types in general weren’t very scary if you had methods to actively deal with us.

Ghost types did have a reputation and while I wouldn’t say it’s entirely undeserved, it was to be expected when ghost types can be quite mean in their playfulness. No one could tell me that absolutely all ghost types were horrible, I was one of the ones that wasn’t.

“Excuse me…” Jumping slightly, Pom was coming up to me with a weak smile and a curious look in her eyes.

“Oh, hello Pom, was there something you wanted?” I giggled at being spooked so easily, I quickly made sure the dropped basket of vegetables was okay.

“I wanted to know more about how ghost types phase through things.” Oh, interested in ghost types now are you? I’m happy to oblige! “I want a little more idea of how that Trick-or-Treat move of yours works, more to the point why Favela managed to get free and avoided getting hurt. I know it’s an immunity thing, but I want more of a solid explanation.”

“Well to start, we can phase through most solid matter and other Pokémon who aren’t charged up with or are in the middle of using an effective move. We have some problems with phasing while in liquids, even ghost water types are a bit slow in water. If we’re attacked with average, normal or fighting type attacks, it phases straight through us unless a Pokémon has a move to counter our phasing abilities and break our immunity to said attacks.” I thought about that Seviper that got a hold of Favela, she had used an average attack and stabbed herself in anger while Favela was a temporary ghost type. Even if the Seviper had prepared to use a move, the same result would have happened. Favela would have slipped out of the Wrap move the next time the Seviper flexed with normal energy or a move is prepared thus causing a flex. The normal type energy of a wrap attack pulsed throughout the body with every flex. So in any case, no matter what the Seviper did, Favela would have escaped safely. “Average attacks are basically what we’re doing when moves are not involved using our natural bodies alone to deal damage, like if I were to punch you with my hair arms with no move based energy behind it. Also I’m sorry to say, but the fear of ghost Pokémon is actually warranted.”

“Why would you say sorry? You seem nice enough to me.” That’s nice of you Pom, but I couldn’t overlook the many problems that ghost Pokémon tended to cause.

“We ghost types can possess others, mess with souls, cause nightmares and can even eat good dreams. That’s not even getting into how often ghost types like to make people miserable at times.” I started twiddling my tufts of think pink strands of leaf hair. “If someone mentions ‘mean spirited’ pranks when in reference to ghost types, it is quite literally done by mean spirits.”

“Well it’s a good thing you’re a nice spirit then, even if you are a bit lonely in that…” As nervous as Pom seemed about something, I waited patiently to hear what she wanted to say. “I kind of want to know what it feels like to be a ghost and you’re a quick answer to that… so can you ghost me and let me move through one object?”

“Are you sure?” I ask because becoming a ghost can be disconcerting to some Pokémon.

“Yes.” It sounded like Pom wanted to say no and be wary of me, yet she was still going through with it?

“Trick-or-Treat.” I stated softly and Pom shivered as her body took on the effect and began to glow in an ethereal manner.

“… Everything feels so cold all of the sudden, is this what it’s like to be a ghost? It’s even lonelier than I thought.” Saying that, Pom got up and started moving towards the nearest tree, after walking her full body through it she came back to me. “Okay, that felt really interesting. Can you please … oh… wow… it just stopped immediately?”

“Yes, you were clearly uncomfortable. I can only turn someone into a ghost temporarily, but I can turn off the effect long before the time limit runs out. I can only do that to two, possibly three, targets at maximum. Also I can’t use it on you for a few minutes after it wears off in any given manner.” Thinking on it I decided to tell her. “It can last an hour, provided I’m not knocked unconscious. If something happens to me, the effect immediately wears off. If you’re phasing through something and it wears off, you’ll at least be forcibly pushed upwards out of any solid object safely into a large enough space before solidifying.”

“You mentioned souls?” Tentatively asked a wary Pom.

“Yes, I did, one of the most dangerous moves I know of is called Destiny Bond and now that I think of it… I want to warn you what it looks like and how to avoid the effects of it.” I would proceed to teach her what it looks like, much to Pom’s interest of avoiding the move.

After explaining the move Pom gently pulled me into a hug.

“Thank you for telling me about that, one less thing for me to worry about now that I know what to look out for if I meet any ghost types that would use it… so…” Given that Pom was still hugging me, I started hugging her back. “Want to continue being friends Shine?”

“Of course!” I stated cheerful.

“So how was your life growing up?” It seemed like Pom was interested in my life and I was in her, we started to share stories.

Remembering my time as a sweet little Pumpkaboo brought back fond memories and some equally upsetting of being bullied. I even thought about that nice Bulbasaur that stood up for me.

I will try not to let them down!

-Two hours later, north end of Helper’s Hamlet, Quetal-

If I were them, I wouldn’t trust any Sneasel or our evolution form Weavile. That includes me, how unfortunate that I was not them.

“You know… Shine pointed something out to me when I had a talk with her, I know why she doesn’t use ghost type attacks and her only attack is the fire that she’s highly reluctant to use.” The leader of the outsider group, Pom Lambchop, approached me with curiosity. I could almost taste her honest fear, and possibly respect, for how powerful we Pokémon really were. “She told me I should bring something up with you related to that.”

“What would that be?” I grunted and kept my arms crossed as I leaned against the empty building.

“Do you have any ice or dark type attacks?” There was no way Pom could have missed my flinch. “The Skitty Squad used ice beams, so I have idea as to what ice type attacks entail. I’m guessing that dark type attacks are focused on brutality and are usually used by nocturnal Pokémon.”

“They are.” I tried to calm down, Shine had noticed and had likely figured something about me out.

“So why would you handicap yourself like that?” That… was not the question that should be coming from you Pom.

“I live how I want to.” Huffing this indignantly, as I continued to stare in the direction of Ignis’s mountains.

“I have a friend who uses the power of darkness as a hero, her name is Oleander. She’s always trying to proclaim that dark is not evil. Even if the unknown can eventually lead to that, she hangs out with a being who generally seemingly lacks empathy for most things alive. That person is my friend too.” And… where were you going with this Pom? I didn’t want to talk about this. “It’s strange, but I would figure you to be more pragmatic for someone who has notably survived incredible hardships with the way you act. Having attacks that benefit your strengths would be conducive to your survival, instead you stick to two not aligned attacks and two evasion based abilities.”

“I haven’t even used Double Team in front of you once.” I stated bluntly.

“But you did just confirm to me that you don’t have ice or dark type attacks. So… I’ve notice a lot of Pokémon tend to stick to four moves, why is that?” Why is she asking me this? Is it because I will tell it to her straight?

“We can actually use more than four moves, but keeping more moves tends to dilute the energy in our bodies for every move we hold on to. Our bodies can only have so much energy dedicated to each move.” I held up my left claw at her, she still approached me and sat down next to me. “Four moves is the best range for not diluting their power too much and we still have average attacks. There are a few moves where only holding onto one is actually a benefit in some cases, like take King Evan for instance… if he were to learn the move Last Resort and ditch all his other moves, he’d easily take down a Tyranitar with it. However it’d drain him of his strength so quickly he’d be reduced to struggling in a pitched drawn out battle with many more Pokémon than just a few big ones, plus he’d be entirely useless against ghost types. So four moves of any quality evenly spreads the power and gives you the ability to handle most situations depending on how you use them in a fight.”

“You don’t like fighting.” The minute she said that I slashed my left claws at her. She didn’t flinch, she didn’t move away and she didn’t even look at me she was looking at the mountains of Ignis in the distance like I had been. My claws never touched her, she calmly looked to me with a worry and not fear despite my threatening her so readily. “If you don’t mind me asking about it… what happened to you?”

“…” Could I really trust her with that information? I sighed, it’s not like I had much to hide. “My brother… he was killed by both ice and dark type attacks. One of the dark type attacks crippled him and then he took a spear of ice through the chest… he died protecting me and saving my life. They thought I had died too, given how close that ice attack was to piercing me mortally.”

“Older or younger?” She just reached up with a hoof, grabbed my right shoulder and I soon found myself sitting at her side where she gently embraced me.

“Younger…” The hug tightened, I slowly and carefully brought my claws around her and held her as she sniffled. “If I had cried out or tried to fight back… I would have died too.”

She was going to cry… for someone like me? She really shouldn’t waste her tears on me.

This crazy outsider didn’t entirely know what dark types were like.

She could stop now…

Anytime…

I’d let her comfort me for a few more minutes as I finally pressed my face into her wool.

If anyone asked, I’d deny having tears in my eyes.

“I sometimes wished fighting wasn’t one of the things I was decent at.” Pom confided in me. “Fighting for survival is something I understand all too well.”

I opened up and started talking about the harshness of the kingdom of ice type Pokémon and the darkness within, it was the kingdom of frozen hearts… Nixtorm.

The world wasn’t always a bright place, but I had found the help I could ask for eventually.

-Helper’s Hamlet guild, occupied room, late evening, Dazzle-

I didn’t think there were people out there that would help me. I’m quite aware that Salandits, or eventually a Salazzle in the case of females, had a history of being highly dangerous Pokémon.

Steel types and other poison type Pokémon trembled with our corrosive might. A might that I’m not exactly proud of having used on someone that was trying to approach me peacefully.

I wanted to get away from the stereotype of being one of the scariest monsters to meet in Viperia, I also wanted to get away from my other status entirely.

“Are you feeling okay?” Sitting up worriedly, I turned to see the Fennekin poking his head into the room. I just stared at the fire fox quietly and he stared back. “I’ll just leave the door open when you want to come downstairs. We’re going to have a feast soon and we want everyone currently in Helper’s Hamlet to be a part of it, everything here was built last night believe it or not.”

I was not in a talkative mood and kept my head facing away from him as I laid there on the bed.

“Well I hope you’ll feel like coming down and joining us.” He turned to leave.

“Wait…” I said quietly, almost hoping he wouldn’t hear me. He poked his head back in the open door with no guards standing around the entrance, did they not fear me running? Were there were no political games here, no hunting parties trying to drag me back or Pokémon trying to outright assassinate me? “Can you get the one that brought me here and got that Happiny to see to my body?”

“You want to talk to the beautiful boss Pom, sure thing!” Before he turned to leave, the Fennekin looked back at me with a smile “I’m Eriflamb by the way, call me Erif!”

He was soon gone leaving me to my thoughts.

I didn’t know when she arrived, but she moved up to me.

“Today has been a roller coaster of emotions… at least it’s been quiet in the violence department.” The white wooly one muttered to herself. “Hello, Erif said you wanted to see me? My name is Pom Lambchop.”

“Yes…” I hissed out as I rolled over to face her, but kept laying down. “Again, I apologize for the poison attack, I’ve just been hounded by the forces of Viperia as far as Pugilis… I barely crawled through Ignis without my injuries worsening by a magnitude. The civil war there is not pleasant, but I avoided most of their fights… most, but not all of them.”

“Since you want to talk, I’ve been learning the stories of my traveling Pokémon companions. So what’s yours if you don’t mind me asking?” At least she wasn’t demanding anything of me.

“I’m ‘a’ princess of one of Viperia’s major houses. I will eventually evolve into a Salazzle… only the females of my species evolve and we are known for having the most virulent poisons in the world that even other poison types fear. I’m trying to get away from my responsibilities of forced marriage and being chained to the kingdom.” I sat up on the bed and looked at Pom. “I don’t want to be a princess or a fief owner that is never allowed to leave the kingdom. I wish to travel wherever I want freely. The ruler of Viperia, Nene, is nothing more than a figurehead… while a very beloved one and the brightest spot in the kingdom, she can’t actually control any of the houses of poison types other than her own.”

“Well you’ve come this far, what do you want to do now?” That is the question isn’t it Pom. What do I, who have escaped the kingdom that would chain me to it, want to do most? “I can offer you a spot on my traveling companion team if you want to move around some with friends, otherwise you can stay in this guild hall for my Rescue Team as long as you need to before heading out on your own once you’ve figured things out.”

“Rescue Team… like the ones to have done things like stop world ending threats? I would like to join, but… I would also like help with being able to learn something.” Seeing the curiosity I had caused, I smiled. “I want to tell stories, sing and dance in merriment… to that end, do you know a Pokemon that knows the move Round?”

“I know a pervert.” Pom stated audibly with reluctance.

“I know Round!” Said a cheerful Minccino as he passed by dusting the floor with his tail merrily.

“Never mind who I was thinking of before, he can teach you!” The one eighty Pom did made me feel like I have dodged an amount of unpleasantness. “Can you do that Picochi?”

“Since you gave me an entire town to clean, gladly!” This Picochi threw a salute.

“Hey, you’re not doing it alone without me, I can teach her round better than you!” A swablu stated as she glared at the mouse. “We birds are proud singers!”

“I call dishes tonight!” Picochi stated.

“Oh no you don’t, I’m doing the dishes and the floors!” Never had I heard Pokémon sounding so competitive over chores before.

“If you do that, I’ll get the rafters and windows before you Pristi!” Declared the Picochi.

“Hah, fat chance, you flightless rodent!” Pristi yelled back.

“I will become a new member of your traveling companions Pom, some of the elder Pokémon in Viperia never wanted me to learn how to sing and this is quite joyous news for me.” I said with a cheerful grin as my forked tongue flicked about in manner representing how pleased I was. “All they wanted was for me to be bound to a husband I wouldn’t care for as a trophy wife and to be a warrior of some repute, they succeeded at the second all too well. With my injuries I did not think I would make it to a peaceful place.”

“Well if you want to make it official… by the smell of it, dinners done!” Pom stated brightly as she approached without fear. She gently took my left claw with her right hoof and tugged me onto my feet to start lead me downstairs. “Come on, join our feast Dazzle.”

It was strange that someone would interact so freely with one as poisonous an existence as mine. Still, I was eagerly looking forward to learning round and traveling with purpose behind my actions.

Going things alone by myself hadn’t been going very well anyway.

-Helpers Hamlet Guild Hall, feast time, Pom-

I’ve learned a lot from the Pokémon around me today as I ate with Dazzle sitting to my right. She seemed reserved around so many other Pokémon and while she seemed unapproachable, she was happy to start a conversation at the drop of a hat as long as it wasn’t talks about what Viperia was up to.

“Excuse me Pom, I want to commission your Rescue Team to help me test something out tomorrow morning. You won’t have to do any of the fighting if you don’t want to, but I would appreciate the help if you do. If my idea works, then I can started on taking my kingdom back.” Motochika was carrying a stringed instrument on his back. He quickly sat down and then readied his shell like a guitar pick. “Now let me add some lively music to this place, no feast should be this dull!”

Motochika really did light up the night with his playing.

253. Will help a lot.

-Equus, Ponyville, late evening, Garble-

“It was good to hear that you’re still safe Smolder!” If anyone points out that I was emotional, I’d punch them.

“Maybe next time we can talk with Gallus?” Ocellus offered and I looked between my sister and her, my sister was holding her hoof. “We’re just about to use up all of our…”

The device winked out. I was a little grumpy about it, but I sighed and decided to let someone have the slot tomorrow.

-Ransei, early morning, near the Southern Bridge between Fontaine and Aurora, Pom-

“Hey there perfectly fluffy lady, we’re here to assist in this rescue operation!” Geoff wasn’t going to stop or change anytime soon. “Can we date?”

“No.” I said sternly.

“That’s the pervert guy isn’t it?” Dazzle asked.

“Yes.” I stated succinctly.

“You have wonderful purple eyes, you can end my career and life anytime you want!” Geoff stated gleefully.

“Is he…” Dazzle started to say.

“Serious? The answer is probably yes.” I groused out. “I’m surprised no one has taken him up on it yet.”

I didn’t hate Geoff… not really. It was just that he was annoyingly persistent. I could still consider him a friend, but he was almost as annoying as Paprika when she’s being insistent on giving you a hug.

“Okay, enough of the Wooloo hitting on everyone! People listen up, ever since we broke through the bridges perimeter to get into Aurora a day or so back, the Dutiful Duck Battalion has been moved back south due to the damage we dealt to them. The controller behind this is at least letting my people heal, eat, drink and sleep, they won’t last long without Fontaine’s military strength otherwise. So the bridge is now currently under the watchful eye of the Fontaine’s Clawitzer Cannonade units, which is actually good news for us.” Coming up to us was Motochika, I really didn’t like where this was going. “Let me start off with the objective I seek to accomplish today, we’re here to capture the Clawitzer units. If this works, it’ll be a huge boon to my kingdom, as we’ll have our artillery specialists back. Any questions before we start?”

“Yeah, how are we going to get all three units of Clawitzer back across the bridge? Their main arms are kind of heavy.” Geoff was the one that brought it up.

“That won’t be an issue once we get Pom’s team across the bridge.” What did Motochika… oh wait, I think I understood.

The Kecleons did teach me how to use the Rescue Team badge to rescue Pokémon, which is one of the things a rescue team normally specializes in aside from finding items and or getting Skitty out of a tree.

If I rescue the Clawitzers after they get incapacitated, they’d naturally be out of range of the mind controller. Still don’t honestly know how the puppeteer can still retrain control of a Pokémon after they’ve been knocked out. Also we only have the one rescue badge…

“I think I understand what my team’s part in this is and what you’re hiring us to do as a Rescue Team, but what is our strategy going forward?” My question drew Motochika to grin at me.

“Good question, first Geoff’s unit will be drawing all the Clawitzer units’ fire while firing Electro Balls back at them. The three enemy units are at the other end of the bridge and a little to the east and west.” Pulling out a map, the three units had been marked on the map by Motochika. “Once all three Clawitzer units are distracted by Geoff’s unit, we will be quietly using crossing the river with the help of Aurora’s combat engineers. You know them already and they’ll be here soon enough.”

“Skitty Squad reporting for duty Motochika!” Didn’t even take a second for the four Skitty, without their mother, to show up and throw tiny salutes our way. They looked to be in good health, Captain Skeeball must still be on the mend.

“The Skitty Squad will help our assault units cross the east and west side of the bridge to attack the two Clawitzer units directly while they are distracted. To do this they will be splitting two to an assault group and using ice beam attacks to create temporary pathways straight across.” He moved his paw over the map to show where the Skitty Squad would be crossing. “While on the offensive the Clawitzer units have very bad tunnel vision and will be unlikely to see us coming once distracted, they are quite vulnerable to close range combat where aiming their claw cannons will be hard to do under duress. Our plan of attack is to hit the east and west squads before squashing the central squad in what will hopefully be a three way pincer.”

“Is this all we have to work with?” Dazzle asked as it was just my group, our traveling companions and the Skitty Squad so far.

“We’re here, sorry we’re late! We were picking up healing supplies for the inevitable injuries, Happiny is set up and ready to go when the patients start coming in.” King Evan and Maiden Jig showed up. They were with Teeth’s Rattata unit. “I’m ready to fight, our Pidgey unit is watching the north to fend off any raiders if they show up. If raiders or unknown forces do manage to get past the Pidgey, then our castle is being defended by Jiri’s unit. We could have used them here, but better to be safe than sorry with Aurora’s security.”

“Okay, now I can divvy up our groups.” Motochika started to organize us and himself.

Smolder, Ocellus, Dolly, Dazzle, Quetal, Shine and I were together. Dazzle was a fire type, so she wouldn’t like being close to the line of fire. Maiden Jig was going to be with at the start of things, but would switch to supporting Geoff’s unit with the supplies she was carrying once my group began crossing the bridge.

A Clawitzer were blue shrimp with one small pointy stabilizer leg where a claw should be to dig into the ground and act as balance, the actual claw… was a humongous and bigger than the rest of their body. Said stupidly large claw can outmatch any cannon in fire rate and raw power as long as they were set up by digging their tails and aforementioned stabilizer leg into the ground to perform bombardments.

They were not terribly mobile aside from forward and backwards crawling movements, they could retreat and shoot decently. Asking them to turn quickly and or deal with an opponent in melee range was something they couldn’t do with their cumbersome big meaty claws.

Clawitzer can compress blasts of water that hit harder than cannonballs, which was not something Dazzle wanted to be hit by and we were to stay primarily out of range until we could charge across the bridge.

The assault group on the east side was going to be led by Motochika. Their group involved Shanty, two Skitty and three ratatta one of which was Talia. Shanty was with their team, her unique abilities were ridiculously useful in this scenario.

The assault group on the west side was being led by Evan. The other two Skitty and three other rattata one of which was Teeth. Favela was to be serving the same rolled as Shanty in being a specialist with unique abilities.

My group, which would be waiting out of range behind Geoff’s unit who had the most dangerous job next to us. My group is the central assault, we’d start moving for the bridge at first opportunity.

We could signal Geoff, if we did so his unit would try to lead the central Clawitzer unit to shooting off to the side to the east or west, where we would quickly approach from the opposite direction. We would start crossing the bridge while they weren’t looking directly across it.

When noticed we were to distract the central unit from the inevitable pincer attack by quickly move to take them down if we could, with Geoff’s team offering fire support via Elctro Balls attacks. The other two teams hoped to be done and lending assistance to take down the Central Clawitzers for minimal danger to my group. The bridge may take some damage, but that was considered an acceptable loss by both Motochika and Evan.

“Wait…” I interrupted. “What are the chances of us running into other units that will back up the Clawitzers?”

“Highest chance of that is at least one Clauncher unit, maybe two from what Evan’s scouts say. They are not as powerful at long range, but still quite capable of it even if they can’t arc their shots and have to fire directly towards you. They are a more agile short range issue, that’s thanks to being much less encumbered than their evolved form of Clawitzer.” Informed Motochika as I was getting an idea of what a Clauncher might look like from the Clawitzer in the distance across the river to the south. “Other chances are that we might see previously encountered controlled water Pokémon as backup. We’ll react accordingly as to whether or not we can keep fighting to free them too. Remember, our main objective is rescuing the Clawitzer units and pulling out. Doing any bonus rescues on top of that would be good thing, but I’d rather retreat before we face any reinforcements as soon as we successfully complete the commission I hired you for Pom.”

Well let’s see how this would turn out, I’m quite thankful to be on the backline for this.

-Approximately thirty minutes later, Geoff-

“Okay guys, let’s get their attention and then prepare for evasive maneuvers. Remember, we’re going to be shaking and shimmying for our lives my wonderful comrades!” I opened my mouth and aimed it slightly upwards around the center of the other end to the bridge where six Clawitzer were sitting. To both sides of my four Wooloo unit took aim at the east and west Clawitzer units to draw their attention and hopefully knock at least one of them out, at this range it was unlikely that would could manage a good enough direct hit for that. “Unit command, Electro Ball Barrage!”

Balls of condense electric energy flew forth from our mouths, the east and west Clawitzer were caught in the splash of the electrical explosions we had one direct hit to the west that fried a Clawitzer immediately. That should make things a little easier for our Eevee King. My shot landed among the Clawitzer at the other end of the bridge and barely grazed two of them.

“Ready to dodge, then we’ll start alternating targets from west to east!” My group made noises acknowledging what I said as we all dodge the eighteen shots of ground destroy blasts of water arcing for us with incredible accuracy from across the river. A lot more accurate than we were, as the shots of water hit the places we moved away from and would have likely resulted in direct hits on my units had we stayed in one place. “They are incredible Pokémon, their cannonades prove the pure beauty of their military history. It’s just too bad that we have to try and dodge it all!”

We were scrambling and forced out formation, we wouldn’t be able to do unit commands under these conditions, so we started randomly taking electro ball shots one at a time on the westward team until we all had fired a shot.

We then did the same by firing at the central team keeping their eyes off what was happening off to the sides.

I managed to get off an electro ball to distract the eastern Clawitzer unit as they were about to notice the incoming assault teams, but I kept their attention squarely in our direction and under a barrage of heavy attacks that ruptured the ground, turned it to mud and tore apart anything caught in the deluge compressed water exploding on impact.

We were quickly getting roughed up as we weren’t exactly the fastest Pokémon around, but we would start to make up for that with my special formation that I and the others have practiced.

“Barricade, Break, Blast!” Having shouted my orders we gathered together and the outer two Wooloo and I used the Protect move to block the incoming shots, we were weathering a pure storm of powerful blasts that threatened to break our overlapping barriers. The two Wooloo next to me fired back at the central unit. “Let’s hold their interests like the sexy Tyrantrums we are!”

We proceeded to swap positions where the two Wooloo next to me spread out and were now using overlapping Protect moves, while the outer two Wooloo moved closer to being behind them. They and I were firing on each of the majestically blue enemy units with one shot per unit doing minimal damage at this range.

We’d soon have to focus our attentions on the central unit as the other units were about to be hit by the assault teams. This was an energy intensive maneuver, but it was worth it if we can help save these incredibly powerful and tough Pokémon.

-Eastern assault unit, Shanty-

“Wow, they sure are making the Wooloo dance for it.” One of the Skitty be saying before he and his brother be running forward. “Neat Protect cycling idea too, won’t stop some Pokémon from circumventing it with hyper beam or other raw force moves though!”

They opened their mouths and leapt forward.

The Eastern Clawitzer unit didn’t be noticing the two Skitty leaping at the edge of the water with us quickly following behind them, they went sliding forward across the ice on their bellies side by side as they created a wide and thick enough flat ice bridge to cross the river for all of us.

Also the slipping and sliding being a fun side thing to do, I be using my scythe cane as a hockey stick for balance as I slid across with Motochika and the Rattata.

When we be getting to the other side and gathering up, the Clawitzer still be distracted.

“Time for an aqua jet.” Motochika shot forward and up before angling down sharply.

“Iron tails, never fails!” The two Skitty shouted as they moved forward.

“Quick Attack, get in close, don’t give them time to aim those claw or reorient our way!” With Talia’s order, the three Ratatta glowed white and surged forward.

By the time the Eastern Clawitzer unit heard us coming it was too late and they were bowled over by the six attacks from their right sides. The iron tailed Skitty, despite being the slowest, notably be doing the most harm and cracking the shells of two of them leaving them immediately unconscious due to what looked to be painful blows.

I be leaping into the action twirling my cane and then slammed the butt down into the face of one with a sharp cracking noise taking out a third that had been bowled over by a Rattata.

The three remaining Clawitzer tried to turn and fight back, but we were already on top of them and they didn’t be having time to build up for a shot.

Oh they be trying, didn’t make it in time when Motochika and I got in close to slashed their building projectiles apart in their claws.

I took out two of the projectiles with a wide cutting arc from my cane and then, as I be running by, hooked one of the large claws Clawitzer. I heaved the claw upwards and flipped the Clawitzer onto its back where it was rendered mostly helpless, it was left prone for attack by Talia’s and two of her friends.

-Western assault unit, Favela-

I went skidding across the ice following Evan. I didn’t know much of about the king, but I didn’t know much about Greenleaf’s king either.

Once I was on the other side we all charged the western Clawitzer unit from their left, like with the east side, they were facing away from us and dealing with the Wooloo that be having their attentions. One was already down thanks to a lucky shot from Geoff’s unit.

I quickly lashed out two vine whips as we charged, I timed it well enough to slap two of the outer leftmost Clawitzer’s cannon arms and they both misfired directly into the Clawitzer to their right near them knocking them over. That’s when Evan took down one of the Clawitzer with a single painful blow with his tail.

Teeth leapt on to one of the heads to start biting at the carapace of the Clawitzer I had redirected and I wrapped the next one in line and slammed it against the ground face first several times with my vines while making sure it couldn’t aim its large claw at anyone.

The Skitty and other Rattata were dealing with the remaining two, but Evan was looking south for some reason as I dropped the Clawitzer I finally recognized as being knocked out.

I made my way up to Evan and he looked concerned at the sight of a Clauncher unit coming from the south as Pom and the others crossed the bridge.

“Rattata form up on me! Favela, Skitty Squad members make sure they stay out cold until they are rescued by Pom’s team.” At Evan’s orders the three Rattata moved over to him. “Now follow my lead, we need to move fast. Unit command, Dig!”

Within seconds all four Pokémon disappeared into the ground in fountains of dirt as they dug downwards and disappeared completely from sight as the dirt resettled where they were second prior.

What did Evan hear or see from the crossroads that required him to go to ground?

In any case I turned around and watched out for the Clawitzers with the two male skitty who held iron tail attacks at the ready in case one of them tried to make any sudden movements.

The Wooloo team was signaled and started drawing the remaining Clawitzer unit’s fire that way as Pom’s team started forward towards the bridge.

Our eastern unit was soon going to hit the central Clawitzer unit from the right, but I still wondered why Evan went underground.

-Pom-

Surprisingly things were going well, what was the horrible thing that would happen here? The Rattata certainly became a lot stronger than when we met them, they also look well fed too and Evan seems to have gotten them well trained enough to take down scarier looking Pokémon.

Maybe this time things wouldn’t end in tragedy or a series of life threatening incidents.

“Signal Geoff!” Calling it right now as I saw both the east and western units were done crossing the river.

“Mystical Fire!” Shine leaned back and the lower pumpkin half of her body glowed brightly and then spewed forth a fireball into the sky, after a certain distance it exploded outward.

-Geoff-

“What happen?” A female Wooloo in my unit asked.

“Somebody set up us the boom.” A male Wooloo stated before firing an Electro Ball.

“We get Signal.” The mystical fire exploding in the sky.

“What!” One Wooloo said in confusion as he brought up a Protect barrier.

“It’s us.” I stated to focus my group. “We draw east or west?”

“We go west, eastern unit is about to flank them.” Another one of my companions stated. “They really are tunnel visioning on us!”

“What he said, now slowly draw them fire off from across the bridge!” We all started moving to the right and continued to fire electro balls as we took several impacts and dodged several mores as the Clawitzers continued to batter us.

We couldn’t use Protect while moving and the hits kept coming, but were quite cheerfully painful. At least none of us have fainted yet.

At least we had drawn and kept the central units fire on us as the east and west Clawitzer units were swiftly and mercilessly brutalized. This is why we never wanted to go to war, but it was necessary to see if we could save them.

-Pom-

“They’re drawing west, curve towards the bridge form the east!” I turned left and started running forward towards the bridge, Maiden Jig broke off to go assist Geoff’s unit which were starting to drop from exhaustion and injury.

“I’ll escort Ocellus into position to hit them from above if they see you coming.” Both Ocellus and Smolder took off high into the air as we continued to pelt towards the bridge.

The central unit needed to be taken out before Geoff’s unit got injured any further, they were tough, but they were starting to flag in their ability to evade or use that Protect move.

My hooves were on the bridge with Dolly boarding at my side, Shine, Quetal and Dazzle followed closely behind us as we charged across the bridge.

So far the unit of barely scuffed Clawitzers hadn’t noticed, much to my relief. Though some were starting to turn our direction the closer we were getting.

“Doing a dragon pulse!” Opening her mouth as we ran forward a brilliant ball of energy formed in Dazzle’s mouth and she fired it. The head of a dragon appeared and the beam that was its tail pulsed as it sped forward and hit a Clawitzer sending it sprawling.

Quetal sped up and bounce around to the left and right, before sweeping past another with his Aerial Ace move.

It was about then that the Clawitzers were drawn away from paying attention to Geoff’s unit and onto us when several Electro Balls dropped down among them in small explosions of lightning that stunned them from launching any shots at us.

I rammed forward into the small body of one with my shoulder bodily flipping them entirely and got on top of them to pin them down and start smashing my hoof against their head while glancing around at what the others were doing.

Dolly shot off to my right bring the back end of her board around the slapped another in the face knocking them backwards, it managed to stay upright. It opened its claw wide and attempted to crush Dolly when it surged forward, she simply stuck her board sideways into its claws to prevent it from firing or closing it. Taking a few steps back, Dolly jumped forward and used the exposed portion of her board to pivot her body at the shrimp with the ridiculous arm cannon, she slammed both her rear paws into straight its skull and used the added force to flip it over and knocked it out.

Feeling the Clawitzer beneath me go limp after it struggling to get out from under me, I pulled the rescue badge from under my pink scarf and held it aloft. The badge glowed and in a flashing pillar of white light the Clawitzer disappeared.

I held my badge in the direction of the one Dolly knocked out and it disappeared too, allowing her to retriever her board and get sent flying as she leapt to block a shot meant for Dazzle.

She caught herself in the air and glided back towards the offender only to stop when Motochika’s group arrived and rushed the last three.

I turned while still holding the badge to get another Clawitzer after Quetal leapt up, flipped forward and brought his left heel down on the Clawitzers head to knock it unconscious.

Three left, Shine was simply distracting them and hitting them lightly with her leafy hair as Motochika and the Rattata started ripping into two of them.

“There’s a special place in my heart, where I would rather do depart~!” That was the sound of Dazzle doing a Round attack. It struck true and the Clawitzer attempting to fire exploding bubbles missed as its aim was thrown off.

“To the realms we’ll go, to where who knows~!” Followed a battered Geoff singing in tune and his attack doubled in strength immediately wiping that Clawitzer out.

“We know we’ll find a way to rise, so that we can all travel upon the hills and skies~!” Sang another Wooloo, reminding me that Round was an attack that increased in intensity as it is sang in turn. It battered another Clawitzer.

“Who knows where we all will soon be, we like the fact that all are free~!” The fourth Round attack took down another Clawitzer.

“Everyone can share the air, take a breath it’s beyond compare~.” The Female Wooloo sang only for her attacks to be deflected.

“We love our home, but there’s so many places with which to roam. In the end we’ll never see it all, but we will at least see a wonderful sprawl~.” The attack was again deflected.

I quickly rescued the two Clawitzer and the last remaining one was flailing trying to hammer anyone that moved close to it with its glowing oversize claw arm.

“Aero!” Wind erupted, but instead of blasting upwards, the Clawitzer was flattened against the ground and Motochika capitalized on the moment to ram into it bodily.

I raised the badge to it and it disappeared.

“One unit down, quickly get the other while… Scatter!” Motochika launched himself skyward, I rolled to the side into Dazzle to push her out of the way of the attack, then ran to rescue the eastern Clawitzers. “Darn it, it's the Blastoise!”

“Dolly stay here and help them with that.” My job was to rescue the Clawitzer, I wasn’t here to fight that thing! “Dazzle with me!”

“Don’t need to tell me twice!” Dazzle whimpered loudly.

When Motochika yelled scatter, a huge furrow had been dug into the ground by two powerful jets of water that looked like they could punch through solid metal with the force they struck, the Rattata and Shine had been knocked about from the shockwave of the blasts hitting the ground. Quetal stayed standing and readied himself for the new threat.

The giant turtle monster almost came out of nowhere from the south, with requisite glowing red eyes and what looked like twin biological cannons poking out of its shoulders roared.

Motochika moved to challenge it and the two Clauncher units that showed up clacking their claws loudly behind me as I continued to go towards the down Clawitzers.

I quickly made my way over to the six unconscious Clauncher that the two Skitty and Shanty were watching.

“Go!” The two Skitty and Shanty took off in a flash towards the massive turtle and its forces, as I started rescuing the Clawitzers over here one at a time.

I sorely wanted to activate the secondary function of rescuing and return to Helper’s Hamlet personally, but I wasn’t about to abandon anyone. When rescuing someone the badge gave you a temporary amount of time where you can use it to retreat back to base, in our case Team Harmony’s Guild Hall in Helper’s Hamlet.

-Motochika-

“Come on, you think you’re so great hiding behind all these Pokémon!” I held my shell in sword form aloft, I fended off the Clauncher with the Rattata having slightly more trouble with the.

We were outnumbered three to one and were getting quite tired. Quetal was getting pretty battered and was almost down, he was taking a brunt of the attacks for the Rattata. Dolly was doing better, but she couldn't go on the offensive.

The Blastoise was preparing another attack and was about to Hydro Pump our butts when five Electro Balls slammed into it stalling it for a few seconds.

Five electro balls from Wooloo wasn’t nearly enough, twenty wouldn’t be either as the Blastoise started to lower itself and angle it’s cannons for the militia while we were busy fending off the twelve Clauncher in the way.

“No!” The Hydro Pump built up and then fired overhead at Geoff’s unit.

“JIGGLYYYY!” The hydro pump never hit Geoff’s unit or the bridge when Maiden Jig inflated to ridiculous size, giving off massive amounts of energy with glowing yellow eyes and tanked the whole attack without injury, but then she quickly shrunk down to normal and immediately flopped over out cold.

Was that a partial Dynamic Maximizing?! I’ve never seen one, but surely a Dynamax would last longer than that!

The two Skitty and Shanty arrived from the east arrived and dug into the Clauncher as the Rattata backing me up were on their last legs. I started to put more pressure on the Clauncher, but I was having a hard time pushing them all back.

Two of the Clauncher lunging for me were struck down by direct Electro Ball hits from the Wooloo.

“We need more time!” Pom stated as she sped past with Dazzle heading for the west side Clawitzer unit to rescue them. Dazzle stopped for a moment to hit the Blastoise with Toxic, it was a big target and we were already having problems dealing with the Clauncher, then continued after Pom covering her from a Clauncher trying to break off. That Clauncher was soon slapped back by a vine whip as the two other members of the Skitty Squad and Favela showed up.

The Blastoise was grunting, it was thankfully poisoned. It was only a matter of time before it dropped as Salandit’s, or the eventual Salazzle’s, poison was some of the worst imaginable to any Pokémon.

To think the ambush went off without a hitch, then the actual hitch shows up when we’ve about all but won and blindsides us!

“We’ll give them time!” As I deflected another Clauncher’s claw, the three Ratatta finally gave out under the offensive of sharp edged claws and were knocked back forcing Dolly to protect their and Quetal's prone forms with her unique weapon.

The four Skitty, Favela and Shanty were now on task to hold back the ten or so Clauncher staying up close and personal to us to avoid being attacked by the Wooloo.

I knocked away a Clauncher as The Blastoise fired again and all the Wooloo immediately put up a Protect, as much good as that did them.

Knowing that this particular Blastoise was a Power Style attacker, it was no surprise that his Hydro Pump hit all of their combined barriers and pushed every Wooloo back across the bridge and by the point they were at the other end their barriers all shattered at once. It had been near the end of the attack, but there was still so much force in it that they were sent flying with Geoff seemingly being the only one to retain consciousness through the assault.

Geoff definitely wasn’t getting back into the battle with how badly that had hurt, in the distance I can see him standing up and he was holding onto Maiden Jig’s unconscious form protectively having used his body to shield her from the brunt of the Hydro Pump.

Nearly took a claw to my face, I twisted my blade into the claw and flipped the Clauncher onto their back and kicked their skull harshly. They were stunned by the blow, but they would be up again soon. Not really my major concern like the Blastoise was.

We were almost through with these Clauncher five left, the Skitty were going strong, as were Shanty and Favela. We couldn’t let it… oh great it’s firing again!

The guns on its back spun up a hydro pump and then the ground shifted, I quickly hopped backwards wondering what was going on.

Then a large section of the ground fell out from behind the six foot tall turtle Pokémon that weighed about several hundred pounds, starting around its heels. It topple backwards was immediately sped up when it’s Hydro Pump attack was angled up and away from us and started firing from the two tubes poking out of its shoulders, once it bodily got stuck on its back and the tubes were firing water straight into the sky harmlessly.

Even as it fired the water three Rattata, including Teeth the black furred one, burst from the ground defeating the three of the Clauncher leaving us with two that were swiftly taken down by Shanty and Favela. Simply a blow from Shanty’s left rear hoof kicking out and Favela stomping down with her front hooves.

The Ratatta proceeded to quickly rally into defensive position with Dolly in protecting the others. It left me wondering… where was…

King Evan proceeded to erupt from the ground smashing his head against the Blastoise making cry out in pain and try to get up, but it couldn’t. With the way it had fallen backwards and the way the ground had been dug out from beneath it, it was immeasurable stuck as its arms were too short to reach the ground.

“That worked? Yes, it worked, woohoo! Skitty Squad with me, unit command Iron Tail, aim for the Blastoise’s head!” The Blastoise roared, but it was helpless as Evan’s tail lit up with a silvery glow and the four Skitty Squad joined him in raising their tails.

Multiple slaps to the skull later, thanks to the Salandit poison worsening, it was getting weaker by the second even if it’s flailing was still somewhat strong. A second later a few lightning bolts dropped from the sky and struck the helpless Blastoise who couldn’t get his cannons pointed at anyone, it was rendered out cold.

Looking up I saw Ocellus and Smolder breaking up a cloud.

“Now what King Evan?” Teeth asked as he gathered his hurt comrades, which included his sister.

“Now we rescue them…” We could hear the roar of a Gyarados in the distance. “And ourselves, we don’t have the strength to face a full Gyarados unit today!”

A Gyarados was a scary flying serpent, multiple working together in unison was terrifying.

“I got it!” Pom stated as she and Dazzle came back from rescuing the last of the Clawitzers and rescued the Blastoise first before rescuing the Claunchers. That was a really good call in case the Blastoise knew the move 'Rest' and somehow recovered from its position.

-Helper’s Hamlet, Pom-

Dazzle and I were the last ones back, arriving right where the Kecleons said they said they set up the Rescue Point. We returned with the rescue energy of the last rescue, which was used to rescue Maiden Jig and Geoff.

Exhausted in a variety of levels, injured in equal measure, but we all made it back safe and sound.

“Seriously guys, how am I supposed to deal with all of this!” Happiny was grumpy and looked at battered head of the large turtle monster that almost reminded me of a Terra Tortoise back home on Equus, except it was blue. Happiny, the small pink puff that wears a pouch around the lower half of her body, already forced a pecha berry down his throat to deal with the poisoning. Goodness knows there is likely something that actually looked like Terra Tortoises in this world. “We need to hire more medical professionals, I can’t do this much work by myself!”

“Calm yourself Happiny, we’ll work together to help you figure that out. We’ll see about hiring more Happiny or Chansey when we can” Evan stated as he flopped onto the ground chin first. “We’re exhausted and injured, but we managed a great victory for our allies in Fontaine today.”

One of the Clawitzers we rescued raised a large claw skyward and bowed his head to Motochika while using his wobbly looking stabilizer leg to stay upright.

“What were the giant floating blue dragon like serpents I saw before me and Dazzle evacuated?” Thankfully were on the north side of the river getting Geoff back, otherwise we might have had problems with those things.

“Water and Flying types called Gyarados, you wouldn’t believe the Pokémon those things come from.” Motochika stated as he started chewing his way through an Oran Berry. “Small orange or red fish Pokémon called Magikarp, one of the least threatening Pokémon imaginable in this world. They make for good listeners at least. I owe you big time for helping me get my militaries artillery units back, especially the Blastoise and the claw fighting Claunchers. At least we’re not dealing with a military genius… just someone who has a lot of power behind them and no wherewithal in how to actually use the Pokémon they’ve enthralled effectively.”

“If it’s okay with you Motochika, we’re sticking to Aurora for the next three days.” My blunt comment was met with nods.

“Just know that I won’t let this debt go unsettled.” Motochika rubbed at his nose. “I’ll figure out something big to do for you after Fontaine is freed up, now that I got some of my units back I can work my way into starting a resistance by trying to connect with those who fled to northeastern Fontaine for safety.”

“How did this stuff in Fontaine all start anyway?” My question was warranted given Motochika and Captain Skeeball were said to be doing peaceful ally negotiations, Motochika must know at least something.

“With a shadowy spooky phantom castle coming up from out of nowhere to the south of my Kingdom’s Capital in the ocean. It was definitely out of nowhere, because that castle certainly wasn’t a part of the depths the castle sprung from. I would know, I have been swimming those waters since I was a much smaller Oshawott. It all started when a voice started singing and before I knew I was up to my neck in Pokémon that started turning on me, civilian and military alike.” Motochika crossed his arms. “The strange music’s rhythm was quite discordant to me, despite the singing voice behind the sudden fall of Fontaine sounding sickeningly sweet. Captain Skeeball tried to talk to her husband in getting us out of there quickly, but he just attacked us. At least Skeeball got me out of my Kingdom’s castle before we were overwhelmed, other Pokémon that resisted that voice went with us or covered our retreat. You know most of the rest of it. Whatever that vile force is, it definitely wanted me either dead, captured or controlled like all the other Pokémon.”

“Anybody need a hot bath?” It looked like Eriflamb was cheerful about something as he skipped his way up to us. "Just tell me how hot you need it! Also, Pom, can you and your friends look into a commission to find a Pokémon that is willing to open a cooking place around here? That would be great.”

Author's Note

This battle took some time to write.

Also Maiden Jig shows that she knows the secret of Puff Up.

254. Taking a licking.

-Ransei, Aurora Kingdome, Helper’s Hamlet, Bathhouse Areas, Pom-

“So wait… a water type bathhouse is… just water?” Makes some sort of sense I suppose. “At least the Clauncher and Clawitzer are getting help.”

Happiny took care of Evan’s military forces first. The Rattata and Skitty were back up in a short amount of time. As for the leaders of the ambush, Evan was fine, Motochika needed some healing for doing a bit of frontline fighting and Maiden Jig had extreme amounts of exhaustion and needed to rest.

After the leaders and local military were taken care of, Happiny then proceeded to take care of my group.

Quetal would make a quick recovery despite the Claunchers clawing him up and shooting him at close range, he gave far better than he got. Dolly had a few cuts and scratches from the Claunchers while on the defense. Shine had taken quite an amount of battering too, resilient to the water attacks but not their claw related attacks. Both Favela and Shanty were mostly fine if a little exhausted. Dazzle had stuck close to me and had helped the Blastoise go down quickly, but aside from minor exhaustion she was untouched. Ocellus and Smolder stayed out of most of the fighting, but it’s a good thing they weren’t noticed or shot out of the air.

Me in particular, I’m fairly happy that the most of what I did was running around and very little fighting. I really don't know if I could have taken the Blastoise.

After us Happiny was seeing to the Clawitzer, Clauncher and the Blastoise. Which is what I was currently watching as Motochika assisted the one medical expert working for Evan.

Geoffs unit was just left lying in the street where they appeared after rescuing them, kind of mean thing to do to the major heroes of the whole battle. Though it’s almost understandable that Happiny was saving them for last, because I think one of them was moaning in pleasure as much as pain…

I'm just going to move on from that disturbing thought.

As strange a monster as the Blastoise was having cannons that it can poke out of its shell, apparently made of the same material as the shell itself, it was a good thing that the fighting didn’t last long and our ambush took out the major issues before the backup appeared.

The Clauncher were really the biggest issue the entire battle next to the Blastoise that would have torn through the rest of our forces had Evan not toppled it by thinking ahead.

All in all we successfully rescued a number of water Pokémon with a much smaller force from an unknown controlling entity. The entity was inevitably going to be an immediate priority to deal with if it ever figured out how to expand its influence beyond the southern portions of Fontaine.

I was currently watching as the Clauncher rested in the water of the pond like bathhouse area. I silently compared Clauncher and their evolution form of Clawitzer.

Clauncher had two claws, one of which is slightly larger than the other, could fire from both of them and were in general mid-range and close-range specialist.

Clawitzer had slightly larger bodies with thicker shells. One of their claws turns into a spike they can dig into the terrain to brace themselves for firing the other which became a ridiculously cumbersome biological cannon that was bigger than their body, making them mid to long range nightmares with how powerful their shots were.

I could see the tradeoffs of the evolution, Clauncher would protect the Clawitzer at shorter ranges. They were both likely more maneuverable in water than on land and I can see why Motochika said the controlling force behind this were not a military minded genius. They left the Clawitzer units vulnerable by themselves without the Clauncher to act as defensive lookouts when they were focused on other targets.

The whole battle could have gone far differently than it actually did if the controlling entity was a tactical mastermind.

In all honesty… I’m reminded of the energy shooting shrimp robots that we fought back on Elhorn, I seriously doubted the shrimp robots could match the firepower of these Clauncher and Clawitzer though.

“Quick question, how did they spew more water than their bodies can possibly feasibly hold?” Asking because I saw how much firepower the Clawitzer got out and all of it was in the form of huge wads of water, streams of water and or a few streams of exploding bubbles from the Clauncher. “Is this all based in the pocket dimension thing that lead to you being called Pokémon?”

“Well, yeah, every Pokémon basically has a pocket dimension as part of our bodies to store elemental energy for our moves, so water types turn energy into water efficiently. Before you ask, they swim around in water to naturally convert water into energy for their attacks to begin with. You’d rarely see a water Pokémon with a fear of water, but it can happen. Water Pokémon, until they are completely drained of energy to do water attacks, can fire absolute gallons of the stuff without stopping… its quite terrifying for a partial fire type like me.” That can be imagined Dazzle. If I were made of living fire, I wouldn’t want a Pokémon trying to put me out with that kind of raw force. “It’s the same principle with most Pokémon really, we live in environments specifically geared to give us the element energy specific to our needs. For Normal Types, this is easy as any environment works for their energy needs even if their attacks are common and not exactly overly effective against anything. Pokémon can naturally regenerate energy outside of said environments, but it takes longer based on our health. So water Pokémon can’t actually make water from nothing and have to stay hydrated to do their attacks, because otherwise this entire world would be just underwater and nothing but water Pokémon if there wasn’t some conservation of energy going on. It’s one of the lessons I paid attention to growing up as a princess, I’d prefer it if you didn’t think of me as one.”

One of the wetly bandaged Clauncher looked our way and blew a bubble out of its left claw in a friendly manner while making some weird sounds. Happiny was slowly working her way around the Clauncher first and would finish off with Blastoise.

“Interesting, so all Pokémon have some form of elemental energy they are attuned to, which is the concept of Same Type Attack Bonus from living in the same environments as the energy they tend to utilize. Does it work in abstract concepts as much as it does logical?” Plants absorb water, water beating extinguishes fire, fire burning grass or plants was all fairly logical. I’m having a problem with the logic of ‘normal’ as an element, mind you I’m just currently focusing on the areas around Aurora at the moment.

“If you want abstract, that’s what legendary Pokémon tend towards, they embody the elements or concepts to an absurd degree that normal Pokémon can barely match at times. If you’re a Pokémon that is of a generally ineffective typing that is up against a legendary, the chances of victory are… close to impossible. The thing I said about the whole world being underwater? That can actually happen with Kyogre, who can actually flood this world and is nice enough not to… we might actually see them if we’re going to liberate Fontaine.” Please Dazzle, tell me that we wouldn’t have to fight something on par with Arceus. “Legendaries tend to wake up when the world is threatened and if the threat is large enough, then one will show up. So far it seems like the threat to Fontaine isn’t world ending or worth the effort yet.”

“Speaking of these Legendary Pokémon, do you see them as gods?” I’m asking you specifically here Dazzle.

“Well some Pokémon do worship them as such, but everyone knows that Arceus is the one above all. No one will contest that as he was the first Pokémon to ever exist.” Dazzle stopped and looked at the sky as things slowly slipped into the evening. “If anyone says that they defeated him, then he likely faced them with barely anything approaching the full scope of his actual power. It wouldn’t even be a fraction I can tell you that much. I’m actually of the mind that we don’t need to bow and scrape to the Legendary constantly and would rather focus on what’s in front of me and hope to never meet one that has issues, specifically with me being alive.”

“Hmm…” So Legendary Pokémon showed up when the world is in turmoil? Chances are, I’m going to end up fighting one eventually to get crushed like an insignificant gnat. “So want to join us tomorrow on an adventure to look for someone who can cook? Aside from me I mean.”

“Yes, I am officially a part of your companion traveling team right? Unless you think this mission will be so dull that I wouldn’t even bother with it, I’d rather make that judgment myself.” One last question Dazzle and then we can do other things into the evening.

“What if we eventually have to go to Viperia?” This question from me notably made Dazzle pause and looked worried, she opened her mouth to say something and then thought better of it. “It’s okay, you don’t need to go everywhere with us.”

“…” Dazzle didn’t say anything, but the Salandit did hug me tightly while shivering.

I returned the hug and had a feeling this would come up with Quetal and Shine if we ever approached the kingdoms of Nixtorm or Spectra.

-Early the next day-

I’m become increasingly lacking in size as a sleeping aid with the number of people that crawled into my bed without disturbing my rest. Had I not known these people, some who are only recent acquaintances, I would be more uncomfortable about this given situation of being cuddled all over.

-A few hours after breakfast, southeastern Aurora-

Dolly, Dazzle, Shanty, Favela, Eriflamb and I were off to look for someone that can cook as commissioned by the Fennekin with us. To that end we were going to look through some farmlands and asking the local Pokémon around here about anyone that might be capable of that when it was time for us to leave.

The fire type Pokémon himself couldn’t cook and I was the designated cook so far. On a side note we were swiftly running out of kibble and Dolly was actually rationing it quite well… this made me have to cook for her more, but I like to do that in general. Cooking for the entirety of the Helper’s Hamlet though… yeah, no.

The grasslands of Aurora were a nice and beautiful verdant green, with meadows of flowers, ponds and farms. It was making me somewhat nostalgic for my little ewe days.

“So nothing so far on finding a cook for the general area of the guild, it’s going to need one if the number of Pokémon living there increases further.” Eriflamb stated as his big fluffy ear hair bounced as we walked along. Apparently the thick hair sticking out of the little fire fox’s ears were to help with absorbing the heat his body naturally generates. The biology of Pokémon can get quite fascinating and a little bizarre.

“Okay, I’m going to ask another Pokémon, let’s hope we get a positive response this time. Uh hello, can I talk to you for a second!” We’ve been looking around for a while and I saw an interesting Pokémon to address, it was a bird holding a stalk of some kind. Looks to be an onion.

“Sure, what do you need?” The bird responded while holding the onion at the ready, it looked to be a weapon for him.

“Do you know where we can find a Pokémon that knows how to cook?” I didn’t know the name of this brown feathered bird’s species, but he didn’t seem violent.

“Hm… cooked food… Skovet and Greedent are out. Wouldn’t last long enough to actually cook the food.” It looked like he was actually thinking about this as he sat next to a pond and rubbed at his head with what I’m now remember is a leek. Less sharper in flavor than an onion, but good for soup. Could have used some of that the other night actually, Smolder and Ocellus were happy to talk to Gallus and hear that things have been going pretty well for the griffon. “Okay, try asking Monsieur Furfrou, that way! He seems fancy and well fed, one of the few Pokémon that live in Aurora that has a home that isn’t a barn like the farmers live in.”

“Thanks!” We waved by to the bird who continued to relax at the pond.

-Monsieur Furfrou’s home-

Well it wasn’t hard to find, lots of Equus Prance aesthetics. It seemed to be a small cottage, one that was notably occupied by dog Pokémon.

“Well at least know they’ll be friendly.” Dolly grinned at me and I rolled my eyes with a drawn out insufferably sigh.

“Let’s get this over with.” I moved forward. “Hello.”

“Ah, a lovely lady has come to this small and humble vacation spot.” Said a dog covered in thick white fur had black skin, a somewhat round nose and his accent with soothing on the ears.

The unusual thing about this guy? He looked too much like a normal, completely average, everyday dog to be considered a Pokémon.

“Monsieur Furfrou I assume?” I’m only assuming because there were other dogs around here that looked far more abnormal.

“Well I’m definitely not the Lillipups or Yampers.” He gestured at one, then the other with a paw. “But yes, I am Monsieur Furfrou, what is it that you seek? I can introduce you to some nice Rockruff that grew up here and would like to travel. A pair of Lycanroc came all the way from Cragspur some years ago to safely raise some pups near here, I’m sure they would follow a lovely vision like yourself anywhere you want to go if you’re a traveling group of outsiders as they are old and spry enough to go wandering. Word has gotten around that more outsiders were around, the Wooloo seem excited at the prospect of chatting you up… then again they are excited to chat anyone up.”

That’s kind of what I’m afraid of Monsieur Furfrou, picking up more canines than I know what to do with.

Taking a glance at the two notably types of dog in the area I noticed that the Yampers gave off sparks of electricity as they ran about and the lillipups having oddly thick facial fur that made them resemble a flower. Yampers were definitely electrics types.

“We’re here to find someone that can cook for a small town that was recently built near Aurora Castle by the Bidoof, do you have any Pokémon to suggest towards that end?” After a few minutes of hemming and hawing, I finally received a thoughtful look.

“I do have a suggestion miss, but you’re going to end up seeing the Rockruff anyway. The Pokémon I’m thinking of is in that given direction.” That’s when he proceed to describe a Pokémon to us, more for my sake than that of the Pokémon following us around. “It has an extraordinarily long tongue, pink skin, some stripes of a varying colors, it is large and has an incredible sense of smell despite the tongue being its most prominent feature making you think its sense of taste was what was grand about it. You know what, I think its best I led you to it.”

“Going somewhere? I’ll come with Monsieur!” A speedy female said as she ran up to us, she resembled a larger more streamlined yamper and was positively glowing with energy as she moved about excitedly.

“Can we go to?” One of the lillipups around asked.

Oh no, here we go…

-Five minutes later-

Well we saw who we were looking for, he had a cauldron and was stirring something and humming to himself, his ridiculously long tongue hanging down his front. He sniffed at the boiling soup as his thick tail shifted side to side.

“That’s a Lickitung, their saliva is adhesive, paralytic and worst of all itchy rash inducing. Their tongue is actually twice the length as their body is tall.” Monsieur stated as we took in the three adorable light brown male puppies that looked like they had solidified rock like fur running around their necks like collars. “Those would be the Rockruff I mentioned.”

“Be a little more careful, I’m cooking here!” The Lickitung stated with his long tongue making it sound horribly slurred and hard to understand, the three running puppies had made the cauldron wobble a bit with their roughhousing.

I made my way forward and was about to introduce myself when three shadows knocked the puppies down and then leapt forward.

Blinking as I saw a familiar trio again, I sighed… mostly in relief that these guys weren’t dead. I also thought Vetali said that it would take longer than this for them to come back or attack us again. They must be pretty stubborn if they sought us out.

“Prepare for trouble.” The Seviper known as Jessie stated as she pointedly looked at my group with unrestrained anger.

“Make it double.” The Mareanie known as Jame stated with a fairly dark tone, but I was too happy to see they were alright.

“To protect the world from devastation.” Jessie continued as if they rehearsed saying this hundreds of times in front of a mirror… so the next part would be.

“To unit all peoples within our nation.” Followed James.

“To denounce the evils of truth and love.” Stated Jessie as she flexed her tail and the bled on the end of it.

“To extend our reach to the stars above.” James said holding all his head tendrils up high.

“Jessie.” Jessie posed.

“James.” James posed with her.

“Team pocket, stealing faster than the speed of sight!” Meowth said as he posed between them.

“Surrender now or prepare to fight!” They all announced while pointing at my group standing a little bit away from the canine Pokémon that showed us the way to the cooking Lickitung that didn’t look amused in the slightest with the trio.

“So do you do that every time you decide to bother someone or…” I was trying to find the words for this without sounding rude.

“That doesn’t matter! You outsiders and that Skiddo are going to pay now that we’ve found you!” Jessie was angry about the scar on her body.

“You want to go then let’s go!” Dolly made sure her helmet was on her head correctly and then kicked her skateboard up into her front paws as she stood up.

Shanty pulled her scything cane from her back and held it at the ready.

Dazzle narrowed her eyes and she her lips were bubbling with a froth.

Favela readied a stance to fire off her Razor Leaf move.

Eriflamb started to inhale and exhale flecks of flames and his tail rose up in an aggressive manner.

“Uh, Jessie, James… they have a Salandit.” Meowth pointed to Dazzle who looked about ready to spit a ball of toxic liquids at them.

“And you’re point Meowth?” Well Jessie, I had heard that the Salandit was exceedingly capable poisoning even poison type Pokémon.

Dazzle carried multiple Pecha berries on her so she doesn’t accidentally kill someone with said virulent poison, but I’m getting the idea that you exactly didn’t care about the fact that she showed more thought for the possibility of seriously harming others than you ever could Jessie.

“Well my point is… we kind of just kicked an ant’s nest here and the Salandit ‘should’ be the most of our problems.” At least Meowth had the decency to notice the problem, like all the canines of various strengths in the surrounding area glaring at the three of them.

There were even several green canines that showed up with their ears and fur sticking straight back crackling with lightning. They already had a read on the situation given they were forming up with all the canines and growling.

“Oh, hey cousins!” A Yamper said with a cheerful bark, the little guy was adorable with the lightning sack giving off some sparks.

“… maybe we should leave.” At least James had enough brains to see where this was going when there was this many Pokémon glaring at them.

“Not until I get a pound of flesh out of that wooly outsider’s companion, the bushy little b-aahgghFFFTTT!” Jessie was cut off by swallowing a ball of poison fired by Dazzle directly into her mouth. It seemed she had impeccable timing and aim, as Jessie looked immediately ill after swallowing it. “That… okay… my head may be spinning a bit, but I still think we can take all of them! All seventy two of them!”

There weren’t that many of us here near the large tree the Lickitung continued to cook under.

“Visual issues already? That… is far too fast, she will really need a Pecha Berry soon.” Dazzle looked like she was considering giving her one, since she just pulled one out.

“Take your berries and shove it, I’m a poison type and I can tough this out and none of the eight of you that are now twice your sizes for some reason are going to make me feel otherwise!” Jessie was wobbling back and forth as if she had vertigo. “Salandit poison is just propaganda and hype!”

“I think you should actually take the berry Jessie and that we should just leave.” Meowth was actually concerned for her health, which was fairly nice of him. He was also concerned by the sparking of electricity and the preparations of attacks all around.

Considering that she was immediately dizzy after swallowing the stuff and looked to be having a migraine headache… if she were smart she would just take the Pecha Berry.

“I’m a poison type Meowth we simply don’t get poisoned… also why are you on fire and why is the fire an entire rainbow of colors?” Apparently that was true Jessie, unless you were hit by a Salandit with a move that can poison from what I’ve just seen.

“Catch.” Dazzle threw the berry to Meowth and he caught and tucked it away somewhere. “You’re going to need to force that down her throat soon or at least get some of the juice in her mouth.”

“Ahem… Mr. Schlurp, could you speed up this rather sad situation before all the three rather rude Pokémon end up poisoned by the rather nice Salandit and subsequently make the rest of us beat them to within an inch of their lives?” Monsieur looked down his raised nose at them. “The use of such language in front of a gentleman such as me is quite abhorrent, even more so when it is about to be stated with children around.”

“To be fair, I, Favela, did use Swagger on her several times.” Favela commented idly.

“That’s after they be threatening to take our money after attacking all the nice guards in Arbora Town and want to hurt us just for being outsiders to gain fame. I think they were also going to be stealing our medicine shipment for Aurora so…” Shanty trailed off and was fairly unafraid right now, even more so when we watched Mr. Schlurp stretch and slap his tongue against James and Meowths backs making them both freeze up.

“Jess…” James tried to see through the rictus of his now very still body, with his poisoned spike tentacles pointed upwards he left himself open to be paralyzed.

“Ie…” Meowth finished looking equally stiff.

That was some insanely fast acting paralytics, glad it wasn’t me getting hit by that tongue. Mr. Schlurp looks like he could swallow most small Pokémon whole.

“I’m a mighty danger noodle, we will not lose so easily!” Announced Jessie who was now facing the opposite direction and pointing the tip of her tail at the shadow of a tree. It also didn’t help that Jessie was wilting quite badly as her body started discoloring. “You’re indigo coloration offends me sir Peek of Chu for you are not a Gengar, not until I’m through with you… have at you!”

She started to stab at the shadow of the tree pointlessly, doing little aside from disrupting the dirt.

“Well they have a Pecha Berry, so I think they’ll be fine… when I do this@” That was when the Lickitung, known as Mr. Schlurp, wrapped his tongue around all three of them and then spun them around once and sent the three of them flying away into the sky. A tiny sparkle could be seen as they disappeared over the horizon.

“Well then… Mr. Schlurp, my wonderfully attractive associate here needs someone with cooking expertise and she was wondering if you would be willing to take them up on an offer to move into some humble dwellings near Castle Auroa?” Monsieur Furfrou asked politely with a bow, the pink monster with the paralyzing tongue bowed back. “I am sure it will be worth your while and you’ve always enjoyed cooking for large crows… as much as you like eating.”

“Sure thing, where’s the town? Oh want to eat first?” Despite the nasty looking tongue and the slurred speech, he got all the canines he knew wagging their tails as a scent rose from the cauldron.

-Some travel time later, Helper’s Hamlet-

“Yeah, this seems like a nice place!” Surprisingly, despite the tongue, Mr. Schlurp never slobbered on any of the food he prepared and was quite careful about the preparations therein.

Eriflamb considered the mission a success and paid us some Poké he scrounged up from somewhere after having been Poké-nabbed by the weird Bidoof and would owe us some favors later, he’d also continue working the bathhouses.

“Can we stay too my friend?” I turned around and look at all the expectant canines that were started look around the town. “This place looks lifeless and in need of good company!”

Can I ever get a break?

“Probably not Pom.” I didn’t say that out loud Dolly, please don’t respond to my internal thoughts out loud.

‘Sorry, but it is kind of funny to watch you attract canines like crazy’.

Don’t even get me started Dolly… can we at least hold onto some hope that those three won’t come after again?

-Foot of a mountain in Ignis, Jessie-

“AGGHHh…hah… hah… what… what happened?” Catching my breath and calming myself down after some immense amount of confusion, it felt like something had just hit me in the chin because it was still sore from a rather sharp blow. I flicked my tongue at the air to get a taste for where we were and noticed some juice dribbling down my cheek I wiped it away with my tail. “Where are we? It smells like brimstone… are we in Ignis?”

I felt absolutely awful, like I was more than three fourths of the way dead. It took me a moment, but I finally notice a half bitten Pecha Berry next to me.

“Yay… she’s… okay…” James stated from where he was impaled by his head tendrils on a nearby boulder his body shivering as if he was trying to remove his tendrils from the boulder.

“Good…” Meowth stated from face on the ground next to me, his body visibly shivering with what I finally noted as paralysis as well, his right leg was extended into the air for some reason. “Took a licking… will keep on…. kicking..,.”

We were all hurting and I for the life of me couldn’t remember how we ended up like this, all I can remember is the horrid taste of something going down my throat.

Well, whatever the cause, I knew that revenge was the only answer!

255. Spicy Chicken.

-Equus, Canterlot, Jaded-

“Can you not ruin my day when you’re around Jaded?” Grinning at one of my good friends Bon-Bon. The earth pony secret agent that is a candy confectioner, and a recent hire for Capture Bridle Defend, who was one of my bestest friends ever.

“Oh, she hasn’t been that bad to you. She’s arguably more affectionately annoying towards Captain Spitfire.” Fancy Pants was also a good friend, he like my quirkiness. He likes things to not be boring too. We had a lot in common. “So what’s the good words today Jaded my good lass?”

“Well Secret Agent Fussy Britches, the Quarrelsome Quartet are holding up their end of the bargain, Celestia is going to admit to tax evasion since she no longer has an excuse of being a princess to not pay them and Luna is going be…” I was cut off when a tremor shook all of Canterlot.

“JADED LA PERM!” And that was Luna’s royal Canterlot voice going off.

“Never mind, she triggered the magical lock-on constant pie pummeling portal trap early. It’s going to be one pie for like every three minutes, I think, to the face for the next… uh. I never did the math on it, probably a good thing for the sake of the world, but there are a lot of pies involved.” I made sure to figure out what her most hated flavor of pie for it was. Also to make sure the pies don’t go to waste I have Green Smooze on clean up. “Forty pies, they’ll all be no miss pies over the course of several hours for certain. I took the time to count them and made sure that I didn’t accidentally do math, so that they don’t end up like Nightmare plague causing pies or something.”

“That’s as many as four tens!” Fancy Pants stated in honest astonishment.

“And that’s terrible.” Bon-bon nodded and seemed to feel sorry for Luna. “So why am I here again, can’t you catch up with Agent Fussy without me?”

“UGH, THE SMOOZE, REALLY JADED?!” Luna yelled from across the city.

“Well you’re here to carry a coded message to my underworld associates ‘The Squirrels’, also a large bottle of premium cashews… the fate of the world actually depends on it.” It made me smile to see Bon-Bon sighing in utter defeat knowing she’d be forced to do it somehow. “Also you’ll be left holding this bag, run Agent Fussy run!”

-Bon-Bon, AKA Agent Sweetie Drops of SMILE, now currently an agent of CBD-

“Wha-?!” I was left holding a bag and a message in hoof, there was also a wobbling plastic jars of cashews sitting next to me as the two ran away.

“Where is she!” As Luna came stomping down the street, the bag Bon-Bon was holding sprang open and a pie flew out of it.

Luna turned her anger onto Bon-Bon who took up the jar of cashews and the message, then started running for her life.

-Fancy Pants AKA Agent Fussy Britches of SMILE-

“This is proving to be a most fortuitous day!” My Abyssinian friend was entertaining, I should really invite her, the Storm Queen and the Barrister Beast over for a dinner party. Maybe even set up something for her to steal on purpose with as much security as I can possibly manage? Well I’m fairly sure she’d enjoy that. “Jaded, I would like to invite you and your family to a dinner party at my estate. Do you accept?”

“Will there be twister and blackjack?” Jaded asked while scrutinizing me closely as we ran. “Hookers is already assumed because of Fleur’s rather generous presence.”

“Oh my yes.” I stated plainly.

“I’m bringing Pinkie Pie with me!” The response to Jade’s suddenly jovial countenance was for me to smile, I do so love a good rogue that messes with the established order of things. Not that she’d ever target me like she does the other nobles, we simply have far too much fun working together.

-Ransei, Team Harmony HQ/Guild Hall of Helper’s Hamlet, another morning, Pom-

Mr. Schlurp was going to save me on having to cook every meal, but I still wanted to at least cook and clean somewhat. I also needed to exercise to see where my limits were currently.

Last night we got to hear from Smolder and Ocellus’s friend Gallus, he’s apparently a competent guard.

“If this keeps happening, I’m just going to start renting my body out as a pillow…” I complained audibly. “Also why can’t you guys just use Wooloo as pillows?”

“Maybe it’s because they are not as good smelling as you?” One of the three Rockruff, currently cuddling up to me, stated in a sleepy tone. “I mean the bathhouses here alone would help them with that, because those dirt baths for rock Pokémon were really nice.”

“Pom, do you honestly know where those Wooloo have been?” Ocellus stated as she continued to rub her sleepy face into my wool.

“Okay, yeah, fair.” I rolled my eyes exasperatedly.

Still, I was quite serious about charging Poké for using me as a functional sleeping aid, so long as all the Pokémon will do is use me as a pillow.

-Breakfast time-

Walking down the stairs, I sat down at a table and saw Mr. Schlurp serving up waffles for breakfast.

I idly wondered what excitements will come my way today. As long as others can do the fighting, then I can remain blissfully happy that I’m not needed for a pitched battle of life and death.

My answer would soon come in the form of a small orange chicken with small yellow wings and moderately length legs for its body that made it look like a remind me of a kiwi bird. The beak was distinctively chicken though. Judging by the smell and general appearance, the strange chicken was a fire type Pokémon.

“Hello? Is this where the Rescue team is?” Well yes, but I would like to know why more Pokémon from Ignis were showing up here, at least I’m assuming this one was from Ignis.

“Yes, can I help you in a set capacity that doesn’t require me to leave Aurora for any reason whatsoever that might end with me getting maimed and or harmed grievously?” My future was bound to be painful, the question was how painful and when would I feel safe enough to leave the safest kingdom on this continent. “Welcome to Helper’s Hamlet and Team Harmony’s HQ by the way. Commission, joining or other?”

“Commission!” She chirped merrily, as she reached into her backpack like pouch and showed she had a bit of Poké on her.

“Before that, I need to ask a friend of mine something, hey Motochika!” I turned to Motochika who looked to me while chewing through some berry covered waffles. “When are you going to head back to Fontaine; or when are you going to try and reach northeastern Fontaine?”

“Well it’s not hard for me to get there if you’re asking if I’ll need help, but I’m going to need something to shield all my units from being taken advantage of again. We’re going to need something to block out further mind control efforts before we go into an area where the Pokémon are still under its effects.” Motochika sighed happily into a mouthful of food, I idly considered how the otter Pokémon was a good leader as he was thinking ahead instead of blindly rushing off with the forces we rescued. All his units still needed some recovery time. “Until then, I’d rather not take up all of Evan’s hospitality and will be staying in Helper’s Hamlet for the time being until my recovered units are back in gear for moving around. We’ll all just jump into the river to the north and swim east until we hit the coast and northeast Fontaine. From there I will get a handle on what forces I still have available to me that evacuated southern Fontaine, that Squirtle Squad better have made it there after all the trouble Captain Skeeball went through for them. We’re water Pokémon so moving a force like ours is easy when there’s water to move it with, not hard to say we have the best navy around these parts. Which is another reason why I think the mind controlling my forces isn’t a military genius, the units we fought could have been in the water around the bridge for ambush potential instead of on dry land and out in the open waiting for targets to cross the bridge. Already told Evan he can keep the gear you guys grabbed from the Dutiful Duck Battalion, Jiri’s unit can certainly use them.”

Well that just proved my concern that the battle could have gone far, FAR, worse.

“Thanks, now what was your commission?” I asked sweetly of the fire chicken. “Also what are you?”

“I’m a Torchic, also my commission is for you to help train me so I can protect myself and others better!” This Torchic wilted a bit and hopped into a chair at my table to start kicking her legs. “The civilians up north are getting kind of battered by the civil war going on and our Brave Litleo unit came back almost too battered to stop the fighting from spilling over onto the more innocent Pokémon that don’t want to fight. They’re fine, but they really need help and I heard of a Rescue Team starting here, Ransei’s first even! I heard they act as mercenaries to find items, help Pokémon in trouble and or can do many things on top of rescuing people. So I want you’re help to learn how to fight for my friends!”

“Well I guess we should start with some exercises after breakfast then.” Sounded easy enough commission to me, once I knew what I was working with.

“Can I join in on that? I’ll paying for your help too! My training practice with my bear friends didn’t go over too well as we were watching the castle, I kind of need help learning how to train others more than I do knowing how to train personally… though there are some things I need to train in. ‘Like my bounce attack always going awry’.” Jiri had quite suddenly arrived and sat down at my table, the rabbit looked a little worn and weary. “Also those waffles smell really good, can I get some of those… please!”

“Then pay us however much you feel we deserve. Just don’t bankrupt yourself doing so.” I wasn’t going to set a price on this commission. “I hope you get what you both want out of this, since the commission is the same we can do both at once.”

“Yeah, we can be training our companions too while we’re being at it… regular fruit juice?!” having swallowed a drink from her cup, Shanty turned to him and looked a little angry. “I be wanting rum Mr. Schlurp!”

Mr. Schlurp shrugged in her direction as a sigh escaped my lips.

-After breakfast, some ways out to the east of Helper’s Hamlet in a grass field-

I started with stretching, Jiri and the Torchic did this easily enough.

Then I tried for more esoteric exercises, starting with Jiri.

“I’m going to practice jumping in place, increasing how high I jump each time. Starting with a small hop.” I did so, a small hop. I then did a slightly higher hop. “Doing things like this lets you know where your limits are. I’m going to figure out the limits of my normal jumping before I start into the enhancing it.”

“Ooh… this’ll be useful for when I learn Sky Uppercut!” Flapped the Torchic as she did a small hop too and hopped slightly higher the second time.

I then jumped, putting more effort into it and my lightweight body cleared half a nearby tree in height. I hadn’t hit my maximum jump height. As I came down I tumbled and Dolly did so next to me.

“Joining you Pom, I need to work out my super jumps a bit.” Dolly offered a simple explanation why she was here.

“It will also help if you know how to tumble or have another method of learning how to land from a high fall.” I looked towards Jiri who seemed reluctant to do any jumping. “You said you needed help with this didn’t you?”

“Yes… but my jumping leads to accidents…” Come on Jiri, I’m sure it’s not that bad. “I’ll try normal hopping, but I really don’t think I should use my enhancing jumping.”

“We’re just jumping in place Jiri.” I spread my legs out, crouched and then jumped, my height getting almost to the tops of the tree. Being fully healthy really is putting a pep in my step and a wonderful feeling… I inflated my wool before I hit the ground and finished dropping.

“Woo this is getting pretty hard!” Looking to the Torchic, she was getting higher and higher with each jump up to the point she could leap half way up the ten or so hooves tall tree.

I jumped again and cleared the top of the tree, which was me actually putting more effort into it, I inflated my wool before I landed. Looking back to Jiri, I gestured for her to do some jumps. She wasn’t looking to me, but at me wool curiously as she flicked both her ears…

She gave a tiny hop, then she hopped slightly higher, then she jumped a bit more. Jiri continued until she went well past the tree top and continued to land on her feet each time. Buneary could jump pretty darn high.

“Well I guess this isn’t… too bad.” Jiri said after landing while spreading her ears out to slow down her fall.

“This is also about control, can you keep control of how high you are jumping as much as increasing the height you can reach? Can you jump to a set height again several times in a row, I’m going to be pushing my limits here.” I seriously needed to test how strong I currently was and how strong I could actually be if I wasn’t being such a coward... which as a lambkin is a normal thing. “I’m going to do a full unassisted jump.”

Crouching down, I prepared to give it my all, my muscles tensed as I entered a Fleet Cunning Doe leaping stance with my legs spread out and then pushed off the ground. I went past the tree and the height of my jump was quite a bit higher. I just hung in the air with that realization for a few seconds before gravity pulled me back down.

I inflated my wool before I hit the ground, Dolly had leapt next to me and cleared the same height I did.

“Okay Pom, that was kind of amazing jump… but was that an assisted jump you were talking about?” Torchic stated as she jumped and reach three fourths of the trees height.

“Actually… no… that wasn’t assisted.” Though the Fleet Cunning Doe leap did throw me. I hadn’t actually done a full straight up jump with it, I’ve always used those jumps for maneuvering around horizontally around an opponent.

“What’s assisted jump look like then?” The Torchic stated before leaping slightly higher than last time. “I think I hit my limit, I don’t have a move to assist me higher.”

“I’ll show you.” Starting to start working the wool around my legs, I prepared to jump.

“This is going to be something, isn’t it?” Dolly stated as she moved over to the others and then went back to jumping normally, she wasn’t using her flow-motion or momentum powers.

I pushed of the ground and my push was assisted by my wool stretching downwards, I practically launched far and well past the tree.

The air rushed past me as I jumped, my wool have launched me far higher than my muscles ever could.

I took a moment to consider my talent as a fluffmancer, it ‘was’ minimal and I could barely armor myself and manipulate my wool before.

Now, I think was at an intermediate level, given I just replicated another thing that Paprika can do. I just now jumped high enough that I could get a pretty good glide going and might be able to catch some thermals.

My talents went from barely being able to control my wool armor to gliding, wall climbing, thickening wool around my hooves to increase striking force like boxing gloves, turning myself a living drill and now I can jump this high without entering Shock Ram.

In the few seconds of weightlessness, I started thinking I should take the time for myself to really focus on figuring out how to do other things with my fluffmancer abilities… like the wool wings I created.

Wait… Shock Ram doesn’t affect my magical limitations only my physical limitations… well not correct, my magic is kind of tied to my mental state and at the time I made the wool wings work was focused to a fine point and moving with Dolly assisting me with her personal power. Does that mean if I’m positively focused enough, and not an anxiety driven mess, that I can learn to fly?

With a panicked gasped, I inflated my wool a foot above the ground before setting down softly.

“Something like that.” With a small weak smiled on my lips, I flopped over on my side.

“Huh.” Torchic stated as she looked at me lying on the ground.

“Just straight up and landing right here… okay… I’m doing it too.” Jiri crouched and then used Bounce, she disappeared in to the sky, going far higher than I did.

Getting up, I looked up as did Dolly and the Torchic who probably doesn’t have a name or hasn’t told us one yet. They looked back at me and then up as something flashed brightly in the sky and something came crashing down towards us, also we could eventually hear screaming as two creatures came down before they hit the ground kicking up a lot of dust.

-Thirty minutes later-

“Again, I am so sorry to have disturbed you from your duties!” Jiri received a gentle pat on the head from a colored arm.

“There you go, you’ll be fine Mr. Latios, just take it easy for a little while.” Happiny stated with a stern voice, the little ponytail pink puff Pokémon was unhappy at having heard the ruckus Jiri created. At least Dolly was quick with getting her services. “No flying too fast and keep those bandages on your head for a few days unless they need to be changed out. Get your sister Latias to help you with that.”

“Thank you.” The Latios, strangely aerodynamic flying blue and white Pokémon that it was that looked vaguely airplane shaped, dizzily and slowly floated up into the air in an entirely wobbly manner from an immediate concussion. Without another word he slowly flew away while slowly turning invisible.

“Oh my goodness… now there are going to be rumors that I beat up a legendary Pokémon!” Apparently, according to a distraught Jiri, Latios and Latias were the jet stream twins that maintained a high altitude air current around the world and were some of the fastest Pokémon alive. “Why does my Bounce move always go wrong?!”

She just happened to hit one by accident, because hitting one of them on purpose was darn near impossible when they were invisible and moving at such high speeds.

“Do you want to move on to training with a spear?” I said comfortingly placing a hoof around Jiri who was crying two rivers of tears like a fancy water fountain. She started hugging me tightly and was getting the wool on my chest wet.

“That was an awesome training exercise!” The Torchic stated with a fire in her heart.

“Well I’m glad that guys okay at least, also you have to admit Jiri accidentally suplexing a dragon into the ground without hurting herself is pretty darn awesome.” Dolly said with a grin.

-Latios-

“What happened?” Latias asked, my red counterpart and sister looked worried. “I was about to fly down there and look for you.”

“I was accidentally suplexed by a Buneary.” Nobody was going to believe that it happened, yet I’m the victim of it and I didn’t believe that it just happened.

“No seriously, what happened?” Apparently even Latias, my sister, didn’t believe me.

-A few hours later, before lunch-

Jiri took to wielding a spear far better than I did when Tianhuo first taught me the guard tradition weapon. Anything you couldn’t be dealt with using fire, life for instance a cherufe, is why Longma had spears or weapons at all.

“My turn, my turn!” The Torchic had been waiting patiently for me to help her with combat training.

“Okay, do you think you can continue from here Jiri?” It seemed as if I didn’t even have to ask as Jiri threw me a salute before taking up her spear and held her shield in front of her to shadow fight by stabbing it forward.

I turned and moved over to the Torchic.

“Okay what can you do?” I was being paid to teach and I was going to teach, so far today hasn’t gone too terrible wrong.

“Scratch, Ember, quick attack and growl!” Torchic announced.

“Okay let’s practice you’re ember attack, don’t worry about me. My wool is relatively hard to burn down.” Not that it can’t burn or the fact that it can will be used in an emergency for fighting.

“Okay!” Opening her being the flames built up and the Torchic started firing small darts of fire.

I looked to my left as the darts evaporated.

“Aim a little to the right…” The moment she does so she’s missing by a wide margin to my right. “Okay aim straight down.”

The moment Torchic does, the flames start shooting out the nostrils of her beak and straight up instead of lighting the grass on fire.

I felt a bit of sweat rolled down my forehead. This… might take a while. Her aim was not only horrible, it didn’t look like she would hit anything.

“How about we try a leaping scratch, right here at me?” I held my left leg up horizontally in front of me and tapped it with my right hoof for emphasis.

“Okay, I’m coming right at you!” She ran straight for me, jumped and kicked out with her right leg. “Huh, what, wait!”

The flying scratch kick she tried went flying by me to the left where she tumbled and ended up with her beak stuck in the ground.

-A minute later-

“Yahhhh!” Torchic went flying to my right and ended with her beak in the ground again.

-Another minute later-

“Yahhhh!” Torchic flew over my head and I heard a painful sound of a beak going into wood.

I looked over my shoulder and saw Torchic’s beak was now stuck in a tree that wasn’t there a minute ago.

“Build.” A bidoof stated blankly as they walked by.

-Yet another minute-

“Yahh-Pgfpfpfff.” The Torchic went sliding between my legs as I tried to stop her and she ended up behind me with her beak, and half her head, stuck in the pile of dirt she dug up with her face.

“You know what, I think was should stop for lunch and maybe you can make a few friends around here?” Moving over to the poor bird, I started to dig the dirt around her face up with my hooves.

-Lunch-

“Smolder, Eriflamb, I want you two to help teach the Torchic how to breathe fire accurately. Dolly can take care of herself with her training and I want to work with Jiri in her spear work.” Looking both in the eyes with my own watering and my lips quivering. “Can you please do this for me?”

“Sure thing boss lady!” Eriflamb was on board and we both looked toward Smolder.

“Well, I am a dragon. If teaching a fire breathing chicken, how to breathe fire right, then I’m going to do so.” Well that was a good thing Smolder, because you taught Eriflamb how to control his flow maybe you can do better?

-After lunch, east of Helper’s Hamlet again, Smolder-

I watched as the fire veered in a spiral around us and missed us entirely. Even if it had hit either of us, Eriflamb was a fire type and I was a dragon.

“I’m impressed that you somehow managed to get an ember attack to look like a fire spin... without actually hitting anything.” Eriflamb said dully, the little fox dude was matching how I currently felt on an emotional level.

“Can you actually try to breathe fire with your eyes open?” Trying to keep the calmness in my voice as I watched the chicken close her eyes and fire with her beak wide open. She eventually stopped and looked at me.

“I have problems breathing fire with my eyes open when my beak moves into my view.” After Torchic said that, I think I knew exactly why Pom left this up to us and went to train Jiri.

Jiri was someone that Pom could actually work with and she could even possibly teach Jiri how to control her jumping issues.

We were also much better suited to train the Torchic being fire breathing specialist and all, I had helped Eriflamb with controlling his flame this shouldn’t be too much harder… right?

“Can you shoot fire in any other way than your beak?” Just asking for the sake of curiosity.

“Yeah, but I don’t like doing that.” Okay Torchic, I actually wanted to see this.

“Show us.” It didn’t take long for me to see the other way Torchic could spew fire.

The Torchic turned her backside towards the target that’s been set up, one of which Eriflamb had hit multiple times and that the Torchic had missed constantly. Raising her rear up, Torchic looked behind herself with concentration started firing incredibly accurate flames out of her backside and hit the target.

“Well… that… works. I know that that can be useful in a battle… if just for the surprise factor alone.” At least Eriflamb was somewhat optimistic about this. Also it was a good thing that Torchic didn’t make a farting noise doing that so that it’s silent, but deadly… snrk.. “What?”

“Nothing, just thought of something funny.” My grin wasn’t going to leave my face for a while. We would continue training Torchic to get her to try and do something that was more capable of facing an enemy head on.

I take a small glance at what Pom was doing, she was training Jiri in how to fight with a spear with blunted training equipment so they don’t seriously injure one another. Jiri was actually keeping up with Pom despite the slight difference in size and stature.

“We should be trying to do what those two are… having fun.” Receiving odd looks from the two fire Pokémon, I grinned as I watched Pom and Jiri spar.

-An hour or so later, Pom-

So I’ve went over one hoofed and two hoofed spear styles and Jiri was managing to translate that to using her paws. Jiri was paying me to train her, but that didn’t mean that what we were doing wasn’t fun as I taught her how to hit with accuracy and power while wielding a spear.

I smacked the small ball with an overhead swing and watched as it shot towards jiri who jabbed her spear at it to send it flying back my way while keeping the shield up. So long as she didn’t use her Bounce move, she was quite competent and nothing went wrong.

Reaching out with the hoof, I caught the ball signaling the end of our exercise.

“Okay, I want to call break to see how Smolder is doing. What do you think of training so far and did you learn what lessons I’ve been trying to teach you?” I was much better with my hooves than a spear, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know how to wield one, so I taught how I was taught.

“Precision, speed and the basics of wielding a spear as you know it.” Jiri smiled as she had gotten good at jabs and wide swings. “You seem to have better knowledge of how to use a shield.”

“You’ll have to figure out your own style and or learn advance spear techniques elsewhere.” We’ve had fun here, but I couldn’t spend the entire day training just Jiri. “As for the thing with the shield, I specialize in defense and speed when it comes to fighting and you would probably do better with a teacher who can teach you some offense.”

“Personally I think you did great in teaching and training with me Pom!” With that said Jiri moved on by me with her spear laying over her left shoulder. “Now let’s see how Torchic is doing.”

-Smolder-

“Come on Torchic, show what you got… Pull!” I stomped down on the board and a berry launched into the air, there was a basket next to me with enough of them for training purposes.

Dazzle and Eriflamb proved to be a good shots with their fire. Torchic was getting moderately better at shooting flames from her beak, even if she still wasn’t that great at attacking at point blank range. In fact the Torchic wasn’t great at much really, but she was trying and actually showing at least some improvement.

Out of the numerous darts of flame I watched fly up, only one tagged the berry. At least she managed to increase the volume of her fire dart spewing attack, not that the accuracy got any better...

Torchic got all misty eyed.

“I finally hit something!” Torchic got to eat that berry too with teary eyes, first time she hit anything successfully all day.

“Congratulations Torchic, later we’ll work on being able to do that at least twice in a day.” I seriously doubted her accuracy would get much better that quickly, but if she was sticking around she had some willing teachers at least.

“So today has been quiet… tomorrow is going to be bad isn’t it?” That was a pretty decent prediction Pom. Following Pom was a happy Jiri who had apparently had a good time training with Pom.

I heard some barking as Dolly came up to us and she pointed back to Helper’s Hamlet.

“Yeah, we’re calling it a day Dolly.” Pom said while running a hoof gently down her back and she smiled under the attention. “Though I’m curious…”

We all turned to Pom.

“About what?” Asked Dazzle after a moment.

“Use bounce and do it straight up again.” Pom, didn’t Jiri knock a legendary Pokémon out of the sky doing that? “I want to make sure of something.”

“Well… okay!” Jiri gained a look of determination and passed her spear and blue shield off to Dazzle before launching into the sky.

We waited for about a minute and then a large white bird Pokémon came falling down with eyes rapidly rotating in his head and Jiri’s head buried straight in his esophagus. He slammed into the same place that Latios did.

Apparently it was the legendary Pokémon Lugia who had heard something had happened to the Jetstream inspecting duo.

“Cursed?” Pom stated flatly as dirt, dust and chunks of ground fountained into the air.

“Definitely.” I said a second later with a nod.

Author's Note

National Dex Number.

256. Raiders of the lost bark.

-Ransei, Helper’s Hamlet, Guild Hall, Pom-

I sat down at a table with Ocellus, while ignoring both Picochi and Pristi fighting each other while somehow also cleaning anything vaguely messy at the same time. The cotton swab bird had an aerial advantage and was still having problems dealing with the grey chinchilla in a cleaning battle.

The Oddish was relaxing with the Flabebe and were likely discussing how they could help as staff, they’ve been simply hanging around here and haven’t done much yet.

Of course Helper’s Hamlet had drawn a bunch of interested canines, as if I didn’t know why, that were looking for things to do too.

Monsieur Furfrou assured me that he and the other canines wouldn’t cause too much of a mess around here or would follow me around endlessly, at least he wouldn’t because he was a gentleman at least and would ask first if it was alright. He was the most normal ‘Normal Type’ Pokémon I have ever met.

So Yamper were little dogs with biological lightning generating bits of fluff around their necks that evolved into incredibly speedy Boltund where their lightning generating fluff spread to their entire bodies boosting their speed. There were Electrikes, the green sparky dogs with strange heads, with their evolutions turning blue and gaining white angular manes called Manectrics. All the electric dogs were similar in nature, but there were differences in appearance and capabilities. They were mostly Kingdom Violight ancestors, the kingdom of electric Pokémon that take up the western coast of Ransei directly north of Greenleaf.

Then there were the Rockruff, rock types that were stated to be hardy to physical attacks. These particular canines can come in three varying forms of Lycanroc, their night form being the most unique compared to their other two forms. I haven’t seen a Lycanroc yet, but it’s been said I would know a night form Lycanroc when I saw one and all three forms came with different specific moves for their particular evolutions.

I looked outside as Happiny finished applying a cross shaped bandage to the throat of the Legendary Pokémon named Lugia. He was a balance keeper and guardian of the ocean, but he wasn’t apparently a water type despite sleeping at the bottom of the ocean. Kyogre was the noted master of the ocean as stated by Motochika.

Legendary Pokémon had their eyes on the situation with Fontaine, but it wasn’t of world ending consequence. At least they were aware of the issue Motochika was currently having. Lugia even suggested a method of dealing with the mind control problem, giving Motochika a good hint of how to keep the remainder of his free forces in northeastern Fontaine free of said control once he starts pushing down south to take his kingdom back.

“So… I think I might have reached intermediate levels of fluffmancer abilities.” Given it usually requires a more positive outlook or better emotions, I’m surprised I even got this far. I can do a technique that all fluffmancer alpacas are capable of, which of course included Paprika, which is being able to assist ones natural jumping ability. “I’m almost fairly surprised that I hadn’t noticed earlier.”

“Which is why you asked to speak with me… after Jiri brought down two legendary Pokémon in one day. Which is something she and the apparently Legendary Pokémon will never live down.” Ocellus was calmly looking me over. “What are the chances you’ll get the advanced levels of your particular brand of unique magic?”

“Not very likely, it involved being able to separate and reattach ones wool at will and have the wool act autonomously from you. The highest level of Fluffmancer is being able to create a true wool clone which can mimic you perfectly without anyone being the wiser. Not even Paprika has done that, but she has shown me the ability to separate and reconnect to her wool on command and she can grow back her hair as long as she has energy. My surprise stems from the fact that my meager fluffmancer talent has rose to this point...” I trailed off, gathered my thoughts and looked to Ocellus. “Today was the first time I really thought about the fact that I can spring myself into the air with my wool. This also allows me to recreate my thousand spears technique using my wool instead of my Dancing Flame technique to punch the air with a hoof rapidly to create the air pressure needed for the attack.”

“You don’t sound too happy about that.” She was tilting her head at me.

“Should I be happy about being able to fight better? I’m not an overly violent person, or at least I try not to be. I’m more upset at the fact that I might have to use the attack then actually having it.” Having the attack gave me options. “I don’t want to use my magical wolf claws, bark blast or thousand spears.”

“Even you should know you don’t have the luxury of holding back here, all the Pokémon we’ve seen are ridiculously tough Pom.” Sighing Ocellus watched as I drink from a cup of juice. “So can your wool double as armor while setting up a thousand spears attack?”

“Yes, I can also probably Wobble Counter straight into throwing a point blank thousand spears with the increased strength… which would probably punch a hole straight through most things.” My commentary was met with a simple smile. “What?”

“You’re always worrying too hard, you’re even worrying about the health of opponents you have yet to face.” Yes, Ocellus, because…

“I’m scary.” I stated quietly.

“As scary as you can get, I really don’t think you’d scare Shanty, Dolly, Smolder or even me unless you went off the deep end. Even Dodo isn’t afraid when you’re around and I can barely feel his emotions, he’s showing excitement meaning that he might be about ready to come out of his egg state. With how much you worry that isn’t likely to happen, as worrying is apparently healthy… for you. Also thank you for loving me freely.” Now that, Ocellus, gets a smile from me. You weren’t a hard changeling to love, you were always straight up and honest with me. “So what are you going to be doing tomorrow?”

“That Torchic is going to train with Smolder, Dazzle and Eriflamb, maybe Shine would even land her support as she can shoot magical fire.” Otherwise I had nothing to be doing tomorrow since I didn’t have much too really worry about. “I might train with Jiri a bit tomorrow morning, but otherwise I really don’t have anything scheduled. Favela and Shanty are having fun. Dolly is running wild, but she’s also training for future trouble. Come to think of it… what exactly are you doing Ocellus?”

“Trying to figure out ways to hold you together better mentally. That and I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that… I’m basically the reason that you lost…” Looking to Ocellus she looked away slightly, I reached over with a hoof and put it on her shoulder.

She looked up at me.

“Ocellus, I will not blame you for what happened.” Really now, evil alien lizards were not something we could predict. At least we had a lot friends that came through for us.

“I’m also trying to figure out how to approach our Pokémon friends about their feelings, Dazzle is unusually close to you.” After looking thoughtful for a bit, Ocellus continued the train of thought. “I think it’s because you didn’t show any fear of touching her and slowly got her to calm down, you weren’t afraid that she was poisonous and she appreciates that greatly.”

“I still would have hugged her even if I didn’t have the Pecha Scarf.” It wasn’t hard for me to see that Dazzle isn’t the only one that needed a good hug. Out of the four friends for our traveling companions, Favela is the most well-adjusted and likely to become a second pirate for Shanty’s crew if she tried to follow us home to Equus.

I wonder what would become of them when we inevitably left or if we came across places we knew they didn’t want to be or go.

At least the guild staff would keep our guild hall running. The bidoof would keep it in good repair as long as there were Pokémon around to ask them to build. Picochi and Pristi would keep it clean, as long as a speck of dirt so much touched the place. Eriflamb was still learning how to run the bathhouses, but he seemed to enjoy the challenge of figuring things out. Even the Kecleon came here to start a business from far away and business was going to become good with so many Pokémon hearing about their presence.

“More juice please.” Looking up at the long and large tongue Pokémon, he came over and poured more for me.

Even our new friend that can serve food and drink. Mr. Schlurp, was willing to aid in our endeavors. Still wouldn’t mind finding someone that can…

“Excuse me.” Hearing a voice brought my attention to the two purple and white furred bipedal Pokémon with sheep like appearances.

“Don’t you mean excuse us, my dear?” The other, female, said to the male as they both bowed to me. Her horns looked like they were pointed downwards and looked like pigtails.

“Indeedee do.” The male stated. His curled horns pointed straight up. “Would you be looking to hire Pokémon to watch you’re guild hall for you? Someone who can write up commissions. I would be glad to offer me and my loves services, we are both Pokémon called Indeedee. Your friend there is as curiously empathic as we are, also your anxiety can be felt from up to at least twenty miles away and that is what drew us here. We are normal and psychic type Pokémon and we live to be of aid to those in need, you certainly are someone of great need.”

“Gratitude is our sustenance and you’re happiness is our goals.” The female stated with a curtsy and bow. “That is, if you are willing to hire us on.”

“Well she should, her anxiety is almost blinding to be in the same room with. Quite a ghastly amount of that particular emotion coming off of her, though not necessarily a bad thing if warranted… how are you not blinded by this if I may be so bold to ask?” The Indeedee male asked of Ocellus. I noted the blue triangles above his nose between his eyes.

“I’ve been around her long enough… wait… you eat gratitude?!” Ocellus was about to make some good new friends.

“Oh my, yes! There is nothing quite like a room full of good emotions of thankfulness to power our psychic abilities and nothing is more filling to our stomachs than a good job done.” The Indeedee female stated, having round pink markings poking up at an angle above her eyes. “Having good friends also gives us strength and vigor, why I can even feel the friendship between the two of you shining despite the constant anxiety flooding out from one main source.”

“Well we already have maids, but I guess we can hire you to be lookouts and see to anyone’s needs help outside of cooking and cleaning if you’re willing to be assistants.” They were quite willing and very interested in the fact that Ocellus ate love for a living as a commonality between them.

-The next day-

“Quite a bother you have there.” Foffo stated, the male Indeedee noticed my current situation as being stuck with several people sleeping on me.

It hadn’t taken me long to ask yesterday, but Foffo was most certainly not related to his love. Indeedee just have a thing about having repeating letters in their names.

“I’m comfortable to sleep on.” I stated. “Also some paid for a good night’s sleep, only my closest friends and family do this for free… some of them arguably need it.”

“Yet you only have so much space to give, poor dear.” Fiffi stated, being the female Indeedee who was bubbly to Foffo’s serious nature.

“Would you like us to assist you?” They both said at once.

I nodded, as I really needed to go to the bathroom.

“Hold still then Lady Lambchop.” Foffo stated before the two Pokémon both held out their paws. Soon everyone sleeping on me glowed and slowly levitated into the air as if the two were using unicorn magic. “Please move so we may gently… oh terribly sorry for waking you Lady Dalmatian.”

“Oh don’t mind Dolly, she tends to be wake up when I do…” Speaking of my Dalmatian companion, she was stretching out and smacking her lips in the air. “She’s family and we’re kind of connected, so it’d be hard for one of us to be asleep while the other is awake.”

“Quite a powerful connection you have to her, no psychic or ghost would dare touch that without extreme repercussions befalling them.” Fiffi stated with nod and a sweet smile. “Not that they would be able to do anything to either of you through such a bond, aside from alerting you to the fact that they tried. Excuse me for distracting you, I believe that you have business to attend to Lady Lambchop.”

“Thank you.” Whispering this quietly, I quickly got up and ran for the bathroom.

“Your gratitude is most appreciated and delicious among a sea of worries.” Foffo stated with a smile as I left.

-Guild Hall-

Tomorrow I was going to see Motochika to the northern river and I had a feeling that was going to go over so well without something happening.

“I think I’m just going to relax today…” I started to say when I was interrupted.

“Team Harmony leader!” Three voices stated as one and I looked to see the Rockruff with wagging tails, all of them looking at me as if they were expecting something grandiose.

“Do you need me in an official guild capacity?” Headache incoming, I can already tell. At least Torchic was happy with the help she was getting. I was acting head of this guild and the rescue team running it until we left this world. “So Commission, Joining or Other?”

“Commission/Joining/Other!” The three canines stated at the same time before looking between themselves in consternation.

They sounded so much like my good boys back home, it was rather eerie how much like my god puppies they were acting like. I wonder who was stronger, my little star powered magical god puppies who would bravely take on star beasts even at their size or these rock hard ruff puppies?

“Okay… let’s start in the reverse order. Which one of you said other? I’m starting with you.” This better not go to…

“Can I cuddle up to you?” Sighing, I hefted him up and sat him the chair with me and hugged him. He squeaked happily and his body was really far heavier than it looked, also his fur was a bit rough to the touch. “Yay!”

“I want to join the Rescue Team… even if you don’t have people to rescue today or jobs, I still want to interview to show I have what it takes to help people!” A noble goal for that particular Rockruff.

“Noble, we’ll run you through a quiz and trial later.” Now what would the commission one say to me?

“I want to commission you to help us find a hidden treasure that Monsieur Furfrou told us about somewhere in southwestern Aurora!” After saying that Rockruff plopped a bag of Poké on the table, well there was plenty in the bag to purchase my services and I think he was going to bug me until I gave in anyway.

“Do you have a good idea where this hidden treasure is so we don’t just end up looking around for it randomly at least?” This… ‘might’… be fun.

-A few hours later outside a cave-

I rescind my thought as I looked at the sunlight reflecting off an orb into the cave.

The three male Rockruff, Shanty, Favela and Dolly were with me today. Shanty of course jumped at the chance for treasure, Favela was just excited for an adventure and Dolly was here to make sure I was mentally stable… I’m as worried about Dolly as she is about me.

“Come on, if there’s being treasure to be had, then we best get right on in there!” Shanty was eager for her first treasure hunt in this world with friends, well a treasure hunt that wasn’t just stealing the nearest source of rum. That’s up to her to sneak by me.

“Let’s be careful now…” The only light in the cave seem to be redirecting in an overhead crossing pattern off of several orbs redirecting it. “What was special about this cave again?”

“It’s only open while there’s sunlight!” The Rockruff that commissioned this stated in good cheer and excitement.

I inhaled sharply and then decided to just dive right in… at a really slow pace.

“Very well let me prepare a torch… just in case.” I made a torch and we entered the cave. From the entrance we saw a long winding pathway that split off into several ways to go over what looked like a dark chasm.

We made our way on a large platform at the center of these pathways, there were at least five.

Looking at the ceiling where the light split in several directions for clues of which way to do go I saw something scribbled in a strangely written…

No that wasn’t writing, those letters were actually Pokémon!

Six unknown black creatures shaped vaguely like letters dropped down and were glaring at us with aggression.

“Uh… can we avoid a fight here?” I asked nicely, only to duck as ball of elemental energy surged over my head. It made my wool stand slightly on end. “So they are electric…”

I rolled to the side as another ball of energy much like the first one exploded in a small blaze.

“Not electric then…” I said looking at the six Pokémon that basically spelled I D L M D E, which if I were to untangle them they’d spell the word ‘middle’.

So we needed to take the middle pathway? Another shot was fired while I was distracted and Dolly blocked it with her board, but she didn’t move to attack and was paying more attention to me.

Another blast of energy was cut apart by Shanty finally getting fed up with them attack us, the attack created a splash of water when cut and that made two of the Rockruff whimper.

The one that fired the energy that turned into water was knocked out of the by a series of leaves launched by Favela taking down one of the two floating ‘D’ shaped Pokémon.

Shanty then took down the ‘L’ shaped one with the blunt of her staff and a painful sounding hit.

As I held up my right leg, I braced with my left hoof to take aim.

“We know bite don’t we? I think they’re psychic types, they’re weak to that!” The one Rockruff that wanted to be a rescue team member shouted. The differences between the three Rockruff was already becoming apparent.

Said Rockruff led them into charging forward and taking out three more of the letter Pokémon in a single bite as they yanked the Pokémon from hovering in the air and slapped them against the ground.

“I got the last one.” Let’s hope I didn’t hurt it too badly doing this… it built up energy and fired.

I unleashed my wool version of thousand spears, the spear of white air pressure erupted from my leg and pushed the energy back into the ‘I’ shaped one and knocked it down. “What are they?”

“Unown!” One of the Rockruff helpfully stated.

“Well if they are unknown, I probably won’t want to stick…” The puppy rapidly shook his head.

“Not unknown, Unown! They are strange Pokémon that get powerful in huge numbers and are found weird places. Any numbers smaller than ten and they only have the ability to use a move called hidden power, otherwise they can easily break reality!” Well that wasn’t a disturbing thought or knowledge to know. I calmly pet the puppy on the head and he excitedly leaned into it. “They aren’t very strong in small numbers.”

I noted as the six letter shaped Pokémon weakly gathered and floated together in a circle making a strange chiming noise, but they were no longer attacking us. It was almost as if they were looking at us expectantly.

“Let me guess…” I moved forward and the ‘I’ among them flinched and Rockruff looked ready to continued fighting. “No, no. No more violence. I think I understand what they want.”

I carefully and calmly rearranged the Pokémon to spell the word ‘middle’ and watched as they closed their eyes and hovered to the ceiling. The middle of the five paths started glowing brightly as the others dimmed and disappeared as if they never existed, I shuddered at the thought of one of us falling into the chasm before anyone could save them.

“Okay, enough sitting around, let’s go find some treasure Pom!” Dolly had been eyeing the Pokémon calmly glowing the word up in the ceiling suspiciously, but after ten seconds it seemed like they were not doing anything.

We continued along the pathway as it narrowed and bridged over to another cave, looking to the ceiling the five lights suddenly converge on a crystal orb. Upon entering the archway of the cave the orb was implanted in, we saw a shaft of light shining down on a rusted sword sitting at the top of some stairs and the light leading up along the walls to it.

Everyone was about to go running off.

“Wait, let’s move forward slowly, something is up with that sword.” They looked to me and nodded, I was going to continue to lead them here. I just saw living floating letters and rearranged them to spell a word where they glowed and let us pass, these things usually come in threes.

“It looks like treasure though…” The Rockruff that commissioned this stated.

“I don’t know about that.” As we moved up the steps and got closer, I could see that the sword looked fairly rusted as it partially stuck out of the sheath that was seemingly implanted in the floor.

The one thing that should have worn away with time is the tassel or scarf like part attached to the sword, instead it was perfectly clean compared to the rust.

“Don’t touch the sword.” I had an inkling as to what was about to happen as I approached it and noted that the shaft of light, which was entirely separate from the line of light leading into a orb going to a barely visible passageway beyond the sword as I got closer. “Shanty block. Dolly, Favela, Rockruff, all of you prepare to attack.”

They nodded as I approached the sword and reached for the handle while making sure my wool twisted and prepared to fire outwards. If I was right then the sword was going to be…

My hoof got closer to the handle and then the tassel reached out to try and grab me. I fired off my wool and let myself be blasted backwards from the recoil which I didn’t brace for. This knocked the tassel away from wrapping around my leg.

The sword was a Pokémon, because of course it was! The hilt of the sword suddenly opened up revealing an eye as it swung itself out of the sheath. It tried to slash at me only to be blocked and deflected downwards by Shanty slashing forward with her cane scythe.

Dolly came at it with an overhead bash with her board and the sword quickly took up its sheath with its tassel limb and blocked the board using the sheath as a shield.

The living sword had its sheath slapped out of its tassel hands grasp and grabbed by a pair of vines.

Favela just got the drop on it without being slashed by the blade as she got the sheath away from it.

This left it open to getting bitten onto by three Rockruff who were growling quite angrily, they held the sword in place as Dolly slammed her board into the hilt making the sword cry out.

“Alright, alright, you pass the test!” The sword stated, we all let him go and he danced in the air for a few seconds and in a flash his rust disappeared. “Please stop attacking me, it’s been quite a while since I’ve been woken up in this boring place. I take it the kingdom of Aurora still exists?”

“Yes, it does. So is the passage beyond you where we’re going?” I pointed it out.

“Yes… also can I follow you, it’s quite boring here and the Unown are the only ones who would want to live in this place. I’m a brave Honedge that has been here for a long time and you seem like a valiant group of warriors, my blade and sheath is at your command… also can I have my sheath back? I feel kind of naked without it.” His sheath was returned to him, so the Honedge put himself in it and floated alongside us. “Don’t expect me to help you with the rest of the trials though, this is meant to teach lessons.”

“Pay attention to your surroundings as much as what’s in front of you, don’t touch anything without caution or else it could end it getting stabbed and…” I paused as we came to the end of the passageway leading up to a large cavern that had a pedestal at top of a long staircase. “Be wary of treasure hunts with large staircases that is likely to be booby trapped, wonder what’s on the pedestal.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.” The sheathed hovering sword stated. “I’ll stay here.”

“You already know what’s going to happen here don’t you?” The sword stayed by the entrance, but didn’t say anything as his eye looked towards me. “Dolly, let’s go. Everyone else… stay here.”

We followed the beams of light up the staircase and eventually found the final orb shining a light down on a pedestal and on that pedestal was… really?

There were two objects. One is a bone that looked to be made of stone and appeared to be a club, the other was a crown shaped piece of rock.

“So… we take the bone?” Well obviously Dolly, but we were going to take the crown to.

Looking at the pedestal, I notice the two objects on it were weighing down a switch. I looked up beyond the pedestal and saw what looked like that took up the width of the staircase.

“Oh come on… a boulder trap, really? That’s cliché as all get out!” Dolly stated with huff and crossed legs.

Looking back down the staircase I saw the rock walls had holes in them for dart traps, further down a ceiling with an upside down staircase for a smashing trap and one last trap was one designed to shoot flames. There was one last thing I noticed.

“We can’t go back down without triggering the traps…” Sending my mental impressions of what I learned to Dolly, she froze up and looked to me.

Anyone that passes through the area of the traps primes them to be set off, basically climbing the staircase was dangerous and going back down would be hard.

“Oh dog, well I’m good for gliding down the staircase… I don’t think I can stop something of that boulders mass Pom.” As she said this Dolly took her board and flipped it so it was upside down and wheels towards the ceiling and she stepped onto the slanted back of it with her hind paws. “Ready when you are!”

“Everyone get back to the room we met the Honedge in!” I waited until they were all clear. “Dolly I’m going to spring boost us down, be prepared for the traps I possibly don’t know about.”

“Right!” Dolly declared as she continued to wait as I moved over to the pedestal, put both my hooves above the two objects, used my wool to latch on to them and then wound up the wool around my hind legs.

With a yank, I turned, lunged onto the board, stuck fast to it with the wool on my belly and Dolly got onto my back as the wool around my hind legs unleashed their tension and blasted us forward into the air where Dolly started to control our momentum to stay more horizontal than downwards.

At the same time the pedestal popped up in a loud clunk noise, the boulder immediately hit the top of the pedestal and pressed it down before it came after us at speed. At the bottom of the staircase a doorway started closing.

We flew above the dart traps meant for things running down the staircase, skidded through the ceiling smasher before it could crush us, or more importantly my trailing hind legs. Dolly was keeping us upright with her momentum control as the fires erupted in front of us as the Rockruff brothers tried to hold the passageways door open with Favela.

The sound of rumbling was loud in my ears, before a loud crash sounded off as the upside down crushing staircase was hit by the boulder and decimated. Now there was a ton of tumbling debris coming after us as we headed straight for the fire, we were so close to getting out of this as much as the door was close to closing on us sideways.

“Riptide!” Shanty blasted the flamethrower head behind the entrance that looked like dragons of some kind and they sputtered for a bit, trying to build up to being on fire again.

Dolly raised a paw and stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth as she concentrated.

“Aero.” Dolly launched us forward and through the doorway before it snapped shut sending Favela and the Rockruff tumbling. I heard the flames start up again and the boulder slammed into the backside of the shut doorway making it bulge outwards slightly. “Heh, that was kind of awesome… but the movies I’ve watched don’t do that justice at all.”

I sighed at Dolly’s enthusiasm for adrenaline rushes, I personally didn’t like the painful heart pounding in my chest.

-Later that evening, Castle Aurora-

“Ah, you found the King’s Rock of the kingdom… I was wondering where that got to. Also a bone club carved from the finest stone.” Maiden Jig looked over the King’s Rock, she had recovered from blocking the Blastoise’s attack and was apparently back to business. “Give this rock to a Slowpoke and they’ll evolve into a Slowking, they make good counselors and advisors. Give it to a Poliwhirl and you’ll get a Politoed, they make for good leaders. That or it can be worn and give you the ability to make anyone you fight flinch randomly in a fight, because it gives you the powerful feeling of authority.”

“Anything special about the stone bone?” The Rockruff and Dolly loved being near it for some reason, despite not chewing on it, or wanting to do anything to it for that matter. They just seem to stare at it longingly. “You can keep the King’s Rock, I’ll hold onto the bone…”

“It tends to attracts canine Pokémon attention and is usually used as a powerful weapon, but it is especially powerful when wielded by a Cubone or a Marowak.” I will be keeping that in mind Maiden Jig, in case we meet any Cubone or Marowak to give it to.

Another good bit of news, I have something that would distract all canid Pokémon away from me if I were to throw it.

“All’s well that ends well I say, now why did we come here again?” The Honedge just hovered nearby.

“Oh right, I summoned you to let you know that our Pidgey unit scouted the Riolu Raiders building up at the northern bridge for an assault on Aurora, apparently they saw the Lucario leader named Cu Chulainn with them. We can’t avoid it Pon, they are going to attack us tomorrow in force.” Ah… so we were going to be in a big battle tomorrow, Maiden Jig took the King’s Rock and presented it to Evan, the fox Pokémon started to play with it curiously. “Motochika is going to lend his recently healed units in battle support as allies to us before he and his units swim off to the east to Fontaine’s northeastern coast. He’ll be in contact with us afterwards when he calls for our help for pushing southwards. Can we rely on your support as well for the coming battle?”

“Of course and thank you for the warning.” I’m going to bed early tonight, tomorrow was guaranteed to be a thing. “I’ll get everyone that's willing to fight prepared.”

“We’ll help too!” The Rockruff brothers stated. One of them then added. “Even if fighting types are scary!”

“As will I.” The Honedge added in.

"Anyone that wants to help that is not military, spread the word and tell them to form up at the guild tomorrow morning." If anyone wanted to help, then the more the better.

"Uh... I got the King's rock stuck on my tail." King Evan stated with a weak grin as the King's Rock neatly fit into place at the base of his tail.

"Ugh, Evan!" Maiden Jig sighed while throwing her little flipper like limbs up to her face in exasperation.

Author's Note

Next up, the actual raiders.

257. Rampage Rebuff.

257. Rampage Rebuff.

-Equus, Canterlot, Tianhuo-

“So you will still have a job.” Of the many things that was hard to do, one of the easiest for me was keeping Pom calm. “Dragon Lord Ember assures it when you are fit for duty from your journey... also you can maintain just a desk job if you so wish.”

“Oh thank good…” Our ten minutes were up and Pom has told me of her worries, her advancements in her fluffmancer abilities and a huge battle she was going to take place in.

Reassuring Pom was hard when I couldn’t make physical contact with her, yet my voice seemed to be her much needed balm upon her nervousness.

She would not lose her nervousness, of that I was certain of just about any lambkin.

Still, her personal potential was shining through. It was what Velvet, Arizona and Paprika saw in Pom, even I had seen it too even if she never wanted to fully realize it personally.

It was quite upsetting that she was being forced into realizing it fully anyway.

-Ransei, Helper’s Hamlet, the next day, Pom-

“So… that’s everyone?” The staff for the guild weren’t going to involve themselves in the fighting up north, they’d stay here to defend the place.

This meant Honedge, Torchic, the Rockruff Brothers, Quetal, Shine, Favela and Dazzle were all going to be in attendance for the battle to the north.

Torchic, Honedge and the Rockruff were counted as militia unit. The Rockruff specifically wouldn’t last very long against fighting type Pokémon and they were still going through with this.

“Yeah, looks like it. Also, can I just say that the atmosphere around here is… eh…” Ocellus’s expression was matched by Foffo and Fiffi who were trying to keep up the good cheer around here.

Indeedee weren’t the only empathic Pokémon around apparently, we might run into some of the others that have been mentioned like a Ralts if we ever went to the Psychic Kingdom. My anxiety issues being able to be felt for miles around me was nice to be told about.

“Finish eating breakfast Shanty, we need to set out!” We all needed the energy a good breakfast would provide and Shanty was filling up.

I was going to make sure I had some insurance before we went onto the battlefield. To that end I went down the street to the Kecleon merchants.

“Do you have powerful healing berries?” Felt like I needed something with an extreme amount of healing properties, something much stronger than the Oran Berries, not leaving anything to chance today.

“Why of course we do!” Kec-red stated with a nod. “You’ll be wanting some sitrus berries if we’re talking instantaneous potency. If a being is near death or has a hole in them, a sitrus berry can immediately stave off mortal wounds.”

“All we need to discuss is the price and how many you’ll need!” Kec-blue followed with a greedy lilt. “They aren’t easy to grow and we have been keeping up with the fruit trees the Bidoof planted. Convenience and the rarity of the item makes it one of the more expensive fruits.”

-South of Ignis Aurora Bridge-

All of King Evan’s forces were here… not that they were great in number, anywhere near max capacity or even competency. Also many of them had a serious disadvantage to the Pokémon we’d be facing, at least Shine and Honedge were the ones we didn’t have to worry about as much.

Dazzle and Shine would be the most helpful against the Lucario, I guess this would even be my first day to see one in person.

“Can I try to talk to them before the fighting starts?” There’s only one question I wanted to ask really.

“Sure!” Evan seemed ready and raring to go, the King's Rock still stuck on his wagging tail.

Looking to the other side of the bridge, I saw a lot of Riolu. There were also larger jackal Pokémon twice the size of the Riolu with spikes sticking out of them, said spikes were coming from the back of their paws and chest.

“Seven units of Riolu, two and a half units of Lucario!” Called out Rauco the Pidgey hovering overhead with his five unit members. The small brown birds were ready to hold the bridge.

So that was fifty seven Pokémon, forty two Riolu, fifteen Lucario and one of them was the leader. Some of the Riolu were the ones we fought on the way to Arbora Town.

We had Jiri’s unit, Teeth’s unit and Rauco’s unit as full units.

The less than full units were Geoff’s, The Rockruff Brothers with Torchic and Honedge, The Skitty Squad and then our four traveling companions.

The smallest unit was Evan, Maiden Jig and Happiny at the back of the battlefield.

There’s also my group. Shanty, Smolder and Dolly would be at the front with me and Ocellus would be in the air directing clouds for a lightning attack or two.

Basically it was forty four of us with large weakness to our opponents, so we were basically at half strength compared to them and very little in the way of advantages.

We'd hopefully even the field before the real battle started.

“I’m going out, stay here. I’ll be right back.” I walked forward onto the bridge and crossed it slowly until I reached the side where the Riolu were stretching and getting ready for a fight.

They all looked at me with intrigue as I first stepped hoof onto the soil of Ignis territory, the one Lucario at the back had to be the leader of these forces.

I can easily tell who Cu Chulainn is, as he was slightly larger than the rest of them. He seemed to take interest in me as he cross his arms and stared me down, I noted he was wearing a colorful looking marble around his neck. So was that Z-move or Mega Stone? If Z-moves were from crystals, then Mega Stones were marbles. Given that Dynamic Maximizing could only happen in specific locations...

It was a mega stone.

-Captain Skeeball-

“Hey, you’re not defending Aurora without me!” I slowly sauntered up and took up formation with my boys. “Captain Skeeball on deck, woo!”

“Mom, should you really be fighting?” Nuzzling the Skitty Squad member that talked, I sat down.

“I’m a hero of Aurora, I can’t afford to take another sick day with these raiders about to pummel my home again!” Yeah, my body was still messed up, but I wasn’t going to sit this fight out.

What would be the point of liberating Fontaine and getting my husband back if there wasn’t a home to come back to? Sure Fontaine might take us in, but I grew up and lived here in Aurora and I would make sure this kingdom never fell!

“Mom, this is going to be a slaughter.” One of my poor Skitty stated with worry. “Most of the Pokémon on our side are weak to fighting types.”

“Type advantage isn’t everything, but you’re not wrong…” I would never lie to my kitties. “This is going to hurt, but did you see me back down from a raging Gyardos? No? Well we spent a whole week fighting after facing a few! I’m not a hero of Aurora for nothing, for I’m Captain Skeeball!”

Fighting types couldn’t scare me one bit!

“Ugh, they’re right… this is going to be such a mess.” Happiny groaned while dragging her flipper limbs down her face, her fluffy ponytail drooping. “I’m also surrounded by idiots.”

“I know that feeling.” Maiden Jig stated a second later patting Happiny on the back.

“Aw, come on, cheer up Happiny!” I said with cheer. “You love your job!”

“If you’re certain of this Skeeball, I won’t stop you from joining this fight.” Evan stated to me with worry.

I just kept a patented grin on my face as I looked to him.

-Pom-

Evan’s military was basically full of random animals, just about all of them weak to these guys. If only Shine could cover everyone...

“I would like to ask a question of your leader before the fighting starts.” One of the Lucario looked ready to make a move to attack me, but the one that had to be Cu Chulainn stopped him by holding out an arm in front of him.

The Lucario took a step back as the leader himself approached me.

“Speak.” He looked strong and tough, but the way he looked at me… there was something disconcerting about me to him.

-Cu Chulainn-

That energy… it was like a noble phantasm, it could just be a strange aura maybe.

It was the pure spiritual power of a powerful wolf?

I looked closer.

No… a whole pack all at once hiding in one being?!

How the…?! I’ve never quite seen the likes of her before, but still… all that in something so innocent and 'soft' looking.

Hm… if it came down to it, I know who my opponent would be at the end of this battle and the one that I wanted to fight the most.

She doesn’t look dangerous or like much, but I would recognize a fighting spirit when I saw one and this outsider was not to be underestimated.

I would know being an outsider myself, but she wasn’t a heroic spirit… which is odd considering what I’m seeing.

I liked her accent at least, sounded quite familiar to me given where I come from.

Again, she didn’t seem like much, but something tells me I shouldn’t underestimate her by appearance alone… not with an entire wolf pack being a part of her spirit.

Is she… perhaps… a fresh living legend in the making?

-Pom-

“Why?” The leader calmly quirked his left eye at me. “Why are you attacking Aurora specifically? Why are you raiding the farmlands, hurting the civilians and trying to harm so many innocent people? I want to know if you are just being a bully or if there is more to this. Just why all of this?”

“Why not? Those who fight hardest are usually the ones with their back to the walls.” Well Cu Chulainn wasn’t entirely wrong, but I’m not getting the full picture here. “I’m a fighting type, we fight. Also if you were ‘fated’ to live a short life, wouldn’t you try to find fun and challenges wherever you can?”

“Wouldn’t fighting in the civil war of Ignis be more you’re speed then? They are strong targets of which to test your mettle against… or are you a coward that only picking fights you know you will always have an advantage in?” Something about calling him a coward made him frown at me. “You've cross an entire warzone to come here multiple times to raid Aurora. A kingdom that is mostly peaceful. If you were here for a fight, then you certainly passed up a lot of chances.”

“I don’t need to answer to you.” He said gruffly.

“… You’re right, you don’t. I now just want to understand 'their' reasoning for following ‘you’ into all of this and I wanted to hear if you have any justified reasons for attacking the kingdom of Aurora like you are. I heard that Lucario were supposedly noble and revered Pokémon, yet you guys appear to be just coming off as thugs to me.” I turned around and started to trot away. The Lucario looked slightly angry, but Cu Chulainn didn’t deny what I said. “You don’t seem like much of a true leader to me… a leader would know when to ask for help from people who would have gladly given aid if you were having problems. If you were hungry Aurora has plenty of food and far likely enough for half the civil war going on in Ignis on top of enough for you and themselves. This is the kingdom of those whose king is always one with heart, even if their mind or strength fails them. It makes one wonder if you chose this kingdom because you don’t like the ideals by which it is governed on principle, maybe you don’t like the peace, maybe you are the world’s biggest coward dragging these others down with you, maybe you’re trying to be a warlord by taking over a kingdom that would be the easiest of low hanging fruit on a tree or there’s a hang up you have going on in your heart that makes you want to prove you have what it takes to beat the currently weakest kingdom into a puddle of mush. I simply don’t know the truth, but whatever the heart of this matter is… I think I’ve heard and seen enough of your character to know that you’re not a hero at least! I’m not a hero either, but at least I won’t fully give up a chance for things to change by believing that they can’t for the better or worse because of something like fate.”

I looked back and saw that my words made him flinch, the Riolu and Lucario around him gave him strange looks.

-Cu Chulainn-

I clenched my paw, fury roiling throughout my form.

I would save this strength for the transformation.

By my action, I would have to kill her to make her understand how futile a fight this is. It would also end her rather obvious suffering permanently.

“Cu Chulainn…” One of Lucario started to say, but trailed off.

“We will fight.” I cared not for words, I’d rather speak with my fists.

“Of course.” The Lucario stated, despite the unease in his voice.

The other Riolu and Lucario simply nodded and began preparations to charge across the bridge.

-Pom-

I calmly crossed the bridge uncontested, glancing at the shadows in the water off the west side of the stone bridge without turning my head.

Once I got back to my side of this battle, I silently considered the fact that Cu Chulainn had at least some sense of actually being noble. He certainly didn’t take advantage to attack me when I turned my back on him.

I formed up with Shanty, Dolly and Smolder. Ocellus was setting up in the air above the area. Evan’s units spread out and covered a large swath of the field to the south of the bridge. The Pidgey were forward and flapping their wings in a coordinated matter to signal those that were watching and waiting for the battle to begin.

“Ready everyone?” Evan was nervous, about as much as I was probably. He wasn’t leaving any of his people in the lurch and was staying positive.

“No… but we’re going to have to be.” I stated solemnly, because I think Cu Culainn thinks this was all ordained by fate to be his victory. I would prefer destiny, because with destiny you get to choose your own path and reach a destination you chose.

I’m still wondering what he meant by fated to live a short life. If this is what he was doing with a short lifespan, then he needed to be stopped.

“You okay Pom?” Dolly asked as she hopped in place on her board and did a kick flip, she was getting a bit antsy.

“No.” I hardly ever ended up okay after or even during things like this.

“Then we’ll make it okay!” Dolly said cheerfully as she prepped for what we were about to do.

“Here they come!” Teeth announced as he and Talia, as well as the various other units, spread out in a semicircle.

“Hold…” Evan stated calmly despite the rush of Riolu and a single unit Lucario coming across the bridge.

The Riolu charging us at a breakneck pace and the Lucario unit taking their time.

Once the Riolu were basically upon us, Geoff’s Militia, Skitty Squad and Teeth’s Rattata brigands all moved forward.

“Units command, Powered Protect!” Evan announced, a semicircular wall of barriers sprung up as the Riolu had spread out and launched fighting type attacks.

The protects held up to the assault.

-A Riolu-

“Protect what’s that going to do, they’ll have to drop it eventually!” Were they going to be cowards and try to hold up the protect wall and not fight us? Well let them…

“What’s that noise?” A riolu next to me stated after launching a fighting type attack into the conjoined barrier and suddenly we looked up and it didn’t take me long to realize what was about to happen.

They had seen us coming and had time to prepare… and we just let them set the battlefield.

-Motochika-

“Units command, Powered Protect!” Evan could be heard shouting.

“That’s the signal, all Clawitzer and Clauncher fire!” I shouted to my men from below the bridge, a lot of claws aimed upwards and let loose. The Clauncher were able to fire twice, but two shots from them was barely half the strength of a single Clawitzer shot. “Bartholomew, hold for a second then try and knock that Lucario unit into the trap!”

“Hmph…” The Blastoise responded with a grin as the twin bone cannons sticking out of his shell started taking aim, preparing not a hydro pump… but two hydro cannon shots.

-Pom-

I stared sadly at the Riolu as the Clawitzer and Clauncher rained down blasts of water onto them from the river, knocking a majority of them down and splashing them with water. Only a single unit of Riolu managed to back up from the barrage keeping the other units in the center of the semicircle.

Motochika had told me that where there’s water, there’s likely to be water Pokémon. It also helped that many water Pokémon were known for ranged attacks.

“Rauco your up!” Evan called out to the Pidgey team he brought into his military not too long ago.

“Unit command, Great Gust!” Rauco followed up the constant barrage by having his unit spread out and started to created circular gusts of powered wind that let them hover in the air and attack at the same time.

The water and Riolu started to swirld around in a circle. The brown birds were only good for taking down the Riolu, the Lucario having the steel typing makes them less effective.

One powerful blast of water struck the Lucario unit that had stopped and two of the Lucario’s barely leapt back as four of them were launched forward. A second blast of water threatened to push the remaining Riolu unit that escaped into the swirling mass of water that Rauco’s unit was kicking up.

That one Riolu unit barely escaped the second blast of water, but still got hit by the edges of the effect that sent them sprawling.

This was going to be quite painful for the ones that entered the trap zone.

“Dolly…” I said quietly.

-Dolly-

I spun into standing on my hind legs, left paw on my hip and right paw raised to the sky with a single digit.

I took a moment to pay attention to the way the brown pigeons were spinning the air.

“Oh yeah, Aero!” The winds picked up massively and doubled in strength to start sucking in all the water and a small waterspout built upwards and even got a few Riolu from the last unit and those four Lucario.

I could feel how upset Pom was about all of this, but these jerks have been attacking Aurora for quite a while now.

They came to attack Aurora after all and having been raiding the farms and places around here unimpeded, it was about time that was stopped.

-Ocellus-

I was taking on a pegasus form and waiting for my chance.

Jumping up, I slapped all four hooves against the cloud.

A lightning bolt struck down into the waterspout and I could see a number of struggling shadows still as the spout blasted apart.

-Cu Chulainn-

…

So they were actually ready for us and their allies from Fontaine came to help and were now retreating to the east.

I fired off an Aura Sphere after the smiling otter that was obviously from Fontaine, his grin widened and he dove into the water.

My blast of energy struck the top of the water and exploded harmlessly.

Even down most of our Riolu, we can still win this.

“Charge.” I charge forwards with the remaining eight Lucario and would go to reinforce the two Lucario.

The few Riolu still standing were likely to be a waste.

-Pom-

The last team of Riolu had only been slightly hampered by the electrified water that blasted in their direction before the barriers fell.

Six complete units of Riolu and change, alongside four Lucario, were totally decimated. It was unfortunate that our forces could no longer hold up their protective barriers.

I can already see Cu Chulainn advancing on us with a wild fury in his eyes and eight Lucario.

We had to fight eleven Lucario and whatever of the remaining Riolu can still put up in a fight, despite looking to be mostly paralyzed.

“Geoff, secure and detain the downed units, get them off the battlefield, assist anyone in need while doing so!” Evan barked and moved forward to begin the fighting. “Rauco, help them!”

Rauco threw a quick salute as he and his Pidgey pals swooped down and started to move the Riolu one at a time.

“Everyone else, good luck!” Evan stated with worry as Teeths unit moved forward to meet the Lucario with Quetal and Favela supporting.

The rattata were all almost wiped out immediately in a single attack each, only Teeth and Talia managed to stay standing through the barrage of fighting type attacks of thrusting the palms of their paws at them.

Despite being injured by the attacks Quetal and Favela grabbed the rattata and pulled back with Teeth and Talia biting and scratching furiously to give them time to retreat before they too were sent flying.

Good enough, those eight were only meant to stall them long enough for…

“Jiri’s unit is ready!” Shine announced from near Jiri’s unit, all the bears and Jiri were equipped with shields and spears.

Jiri’s unit prepared to charge forward as Evan, Jig and Happiny dealt with the remainder of the last Riolu unit and were actually holding their own against them with Happiny keeping Maiden Jig and King Evan healed.

“That’s us.” I said as we moved up to the side of Jiri’s unit and prepared to charge forward.

“For Aurora!” Jiri charged the Lucario as they battered the Skitty Squad, still Captain Skeeball’s unit was proving to be amazing despite Skeeball herself not being at full strength.

“Shanty, Dolly, Smolder protect my back, I’m going to be fighting Cu Chulainn. He’s not going to target anyone else on the battlefield.” I knew this because the Lucario in quest was coming right for me.

-Jiri-

“Hmph… your team is made of Pokémon weak to fighting types, what can your team hope to… do…?!” The Lucario struck out with a Force Palm, that’s when he found out that my unit has gone cold as his attack passed through me entirely.

Ghost type cold.

“Bounce.” I kicked off the ground leading with my blunted spear into his gut, I couldn’t possibly miss at a point blank range.

Any further than that and I probably would have, my bounces tended to never go right unless I knew I would immediately hit something. The Lucario I hit went flying across the entire bridge back onto Ignis soil.

Around me Stufful, Teddiursa, Pancham, Kubfu and Cubchoo all started laying into the Lucario who missed the fact that we had a friendly Ghourgeist on our side.

“Ice type bear thinks this is scary.” Stated Cubchoo as he started lashing out with the move Fury Swipes.

Shine could only have so many Pokémon under the effects of Trick-or-Treat at once, our entire unit was even a bit of a stretch for Shine, but she was managing it. The problem was Shine couldn’t move at all while she was concentrating on keeping the six of us safe.

One Lucario down, nine more to go. We had to make this fast, Shine couldn’t keep us protected forever!

All of Pom’s other Pokémon companions were also taking a beating, but at least Dazzle was ensuring the Lucario wouldn’t get too far as she was carefully poisoning each one while we were embroiled in combat.

-Pom-

“I’m still wondering why.” I stated as I trotted forward.

Dolly, Smolder and Shanty met a Lucario that just took out a Wooloo and they intercepted them. Shanty blocked the attack, Smolder tripped them with her ribbon and Dolly smashed the back of her skateboard across the Lucario’s skull.

They’d be fine, I had much worse to focus on.

“Maybe I just want to fight you!” Cu Chulainn charged me.

“You just met me for the first time today!” Going up onto my hind legs, I brought my front legs up into a block while using my wool to brace and stick to the ground.

His left paw slammed into my right leg and it rocked my entire body and the ground underneath me threatened to break entirely to send me toppling over, however since he didn’t knock me over…

Wobbling back with the force my left leg stretched back, I also lifted my left hind leg slightly.

Cu Chulainn was already moving to block my left strike, as my eyes were centered on his chest.

Instead, I kicked straight up under his guard into his chin returning the full force of his blow to make him flip backwards.

He barely caught himself as he landed on all fours and stood up while bringing his paws together

“Hmph!” He brought his paws forward and unleashed a sphere of energy at me.

Possibly using far less energy than he did on his attack, I fired a quick bark blast that made his attack implode on itself. I didn’t stay still though and ducked as he swung his right leg over my head.

I hardened the wool on my forehead and then sprung forward by unleashing the contortioned wool wrapping my hind legs.

He went skidding backwards as my blow slammed into the left side of his chest, avoiding the spike sticking out of it, with the force of a bucking earth pony.

He was smiling as he managed to dig his paws into the ground to stop and begin charging back at me again.

“Well you quite clearly earned my attention!” Cu Chulainn shouted as both his paws glowed, he slung his right forward first.

I side stepped out of the path of the shockwave making it flash past me and ducked to put my right hoof under his left paw and angle his second thrust upwards into the air to hit nothing.

Slapping him across the right side of the face with my left hoof, he barely staggered before kicking me with his left leg.

I let the blow knock me away so I could get some breathing room. So far he hadn’t hurt me and my wool was taking the blows fairly well.

Cu Chulainn leapt at me with an overheard swinging left arm swing, I shifted forward barely raising my rear hooves from the ground so that his arm came down on my left shoulder.

I immediately rammed my left hoof up into his stomach and then slapped him across the face with my right while stepping forward. As I stepped I ducked as he tried to retaliate with a right hook.

Loosening the wool on my rear legs again as I crouched, I sprung up leading with my left hoof into his chin, forcing him into the air and back quite a few feet away.

He managed to land upright and rubbed at his chin with his left paw and looked at the bid of blood covering it from where I split his chin with my uppercut.

“Hmph… I think we’re done with the warmup then.” While Cu Chulainn said this, I took a moment to glance at how the others were doing.

Though the Lucario were outnumbered, they were still beating quite a few of the Pokémon down.

Jiri’s unit was still going strong, even if the Lucario switched to attacks that would work on ghost types.

Shanty, Smolder and Dolly were trying to protect the Geoff and Rauco led units. Geoff was down three wooloo and Rauco was down four pidgey. Even two members of the Skitty Squad were down, yet Captain Skeeball was still standing.

King Evan was personally helping retreat the wounded with Jig and Happiny wasn’t smiling any longer as her moves were apparently stressing her body to keep healing Aurora’s leaders.

The Rockruff, Honedge and Torchic were toughing it out and had managed to take down two Lucario between them… they weren’t the two that were Cu Chulainn’s personal entourage.

Those two specifically were tearing into everyone.

Shanty, Dolly and Smolder had to move to assist our volunteer team when one Rockruff was sent flying with a painful looking kick and the still active Pidgey managed to make sure the landing wasn’t as painful.

Well at least that answers whether my good boys and god puppies were stronger or not, then again they didn’t have a typing thing they were weak against.

I hopped back and avoided the spike and backhand aimed for my face.

“You’re fight is not with them, it’s with me.” Cu Chulainn hopped back twice and crouched down on one knee while crossing his arms over his chest leaning forward. “At the true height of my strength!”

The marble on his necklace started glowing and a rainbow of energy surged around Cu Chulainn and his form started glowing brightly.

The glowing silohouette grew slightly, spikes started to erupt in various places throughout his body and the muscles were increasing in density. The hair dreadlock things grew in some places. Where all Lucario were twice the height of a Riolu, Cu Chulainn had grown more than a head taller. His tail became covered in a layer of fur and more like a billowing cape.

“That’s a mega evolution, be careful Pom!” Shine called out from where she was stuck standing.

With a roaring howl, Cu Chulainn spread his arms out and stood straight up more than a head taller, more muscular and with more spikes along his body concentrating at the top of his feet and back of his fists like spears.

I quickly tossed something into my mouth and held it there, there would be no more time for talking.

His ability to use puncturing attacks on me, which would actually go through my wool, had gone up immensely. Any kick inward, any thrusting or hooking punch, they all had to be avoided now.

Once he was done howling, Cu Chulainn opened his eyes and stared me down.

-Jiri-

I could feel the power their leader was putting out, but I had to finish dealing with the other Lucario first. I hopped to the side deflected the Lucario’s outstretched paw and then rammed my blunted spear forward into their face staggering them.

These Lucario were as tough as their steel typing would imply, at least I wasn’t in front of the one that just mega-evolved. The raw power he was putting out was killing our morale quite quickly.

I hoped Pom would be okay, at least survive the fight with that monster!

It might even take all of us together to bring down Cu Chulainn.

Author's Note

Big fight incoming.

Cu Chulainn will be stomping quite a few characters into the ground.

Also I love the Month of Monsters, lot's of candy to be had.

258. Riastrad.

-Ransei, Aurora Kingdom Field-

Pom started trotting forward slowly on all four legs and opposite of her Cu Chulainn started to slowly walking forward too, his added weight and mass was not slowing him down at all. Whatever prior injuries he had before transforming… those were gone.

Within a blink of Pom’s eyes, Cu Chulainn had flickered and covered the distance between them his right paw’d wrist blade now a millimeter from her left eye.

Time seemed to freeze. Within the infinitesimal freeze, Pom’s eyes narrowed.

In similarly impressive flicker and sudden blur, Pom diverted the spike up upwards with her left hoof as she went into slide while kicking up into Cu Chulainn’s stomach with her right hind leg as he passed over her. Finishing the slide Pom turned to face him.

Cu Chulain had barely felt the attack and landed, turned and was immediately on Pom again launching the bladed spike on his left foot for her as he lunged. Pom hopped back out of the range of the kick and with a swift swivel of his hips he leaned forward and went for a right hook as Pom was landing.

Pom spread her legs out and sprung forward as soon as her hooves were close enough to the ground to go over his right hook. She slapped at him with her left hoof, doing barely any or no damage at all as she passed over his right shoulder.

He pivoted far faster than Pom had anticipated and kicked up with his left leg again, nearly skewering her with the metal spike on the top of his foot.

Pom had inflated her wool and used the resulting pressure wave of the kick to float upwards and rotate in the air while raise her right leg high up.

Deflating her wool Pom flipped and brought her right hoof down at Cu Chulainn, he blocked the force of it with his left arm. The skin on his muscular arm barely rippled with the force of the impact, proving the skin to now be as tough as steel. Pom could hurt him as a normal Lucario, in this case she’d be hard pressed to do anything to him.

He sent yet another right hook for Pom, intended to hit or grab her, as his left arm rotated to grab at her too. Pom let loose the coiled wool on her left leg and blasted Cu Chulainn in the face with a Thousand Spear looking to move away.

Despite staggering Cu Chulainn, Pom felt her backwards push away halt as Cu Chulainn’s left arm managed twist and extend enough to grab her right hind leg.

With a powerful one pawed heave, Cu Chulainn bodily slung Pom overhead and slammed her into the ground.

Pom inflated the wool along her chest and belly to take the impact, upon slamming into the ground the contorted wool on her right rear leg finally loosed its force into the air and this forcefully blasted her free of Cu Chulainn’s paw.

Cu Chulainn had tried to stomp down on her held leg to cripple her before Pom broke free, but had failed to hold onto her.

Once free the lambkin quickly kicked her rear leg against the ground to roll forward and used her right hoof to slide and pivot into a four legged standing position facing Cu Chulainn. Her wide legged stance changed to a more aggressive wolf like stance.

With a flick of both his arms the spikes sticking out from Cu Chulainn’s paws lit up with a glowing metallic sheen brighter than anytime the ewe had seen anyone else using iron tail.

Pom started to quietly stalk to the left and right like a wolf moving towards the Mega Lucario. Her movements quickly became much harder for Cu Chulainn to read despite not doing anything fancy.

The part of Cu Chulainn’s mind that was keeping track of the battle had problems focusing, his eyes narrowed at the way the spirit wolves moved about Pom’s form as the lead wolf moved exactly as she did. The other odd wolves that were a part of her were trying to distract his aura based senses.

-Elsewhere on the battlefield, Geoff-

The Lucario were tearing us apart, at least Jiri’s unit seemed to be handling most of the Lucario, but still!

In any case I had an ace up my sleeve I’ve been saving just a moment like this and only a cleric like me could possibly pull it off.

“Wait-wait-wait, I need to show you something before you kick my face in!” The two approaching Lucario paused and I cleared my throat. From out of nowhere, or more likely from under my wool, I pulled out a small gnarled wooden staff and yellow scarf. I wrapped the scarf around myself and then stood up. “Woolooloo~.”

I made sure my eyes were spinning inwards as I spun my left hoof in a tight circle while waving about the staff in a random manner, I also said it in a really old and wise tone too!

“What was that supposed to…” The Lucario was suddenly cut off by the sound of the female Lucario next him.

“Erectus!” The now changed shiny furred Lucario next to them proceeded to harshly kick the other below the belt and he went down immediately with a whimper… I wanted to be kicked like that once in my life. The Lucario then turned to me. “Narwini?”

“Please assist me with getting others to safety and out of the way of the fighting!” I said in a pleasant and respectful tone. “The injuries are bad, but we need not make them any worse.”

The Lucario nodded and stayed near me as we started moving Pokémon away from the vicious fighting.

A Rockruff and Torchic went tumbling through the grass and were down for the count.

I immediately moved to get them to safety.

-Cu Chulainn battle-

Pom lunged forward, inflated her wool and dropped short of a stabbing left straight that would have struck her forwardhead to send a bark blast up into Cu Chulainn’s belly that barely staggered him.

Cu Chulainn retaliated by suddenly blurring forward and Lashing out with his blades in a rapid frenzy of swings.

Pom dodged backwards with several hops, avoiding being skewered or slashed up, her eye all the while slightly shifting left and right slightly with each swing not really paying attention to the arms movements, but the general area around Cu Chulainn and herself.

Pom suddenly lunged forward taking a cut to the right cheek and bit into Cu Chulainn’s right bicep as it came forward.

This made Cu Chulainn gasp in pain, possible the first real injury Pom dealt in the fight and blood erupted from where she bit him. Her teeth somehow bypassing the toughness of his steel hard skin entirely.

Following up the bite and having been lifted up high enough for it, Pom unraveled the coiled and contortioned wool around all her legs at once as she kicked them at Cu Chulainn’s chest and belly. The unleashed force of several Thousand Spears slammed into Cu Chulainn at once, she used the attack to kickoff of supercharged jackal and then looked at him to see the bite had done the most damage to him.

The air pressure attacks launched from her uncoiling wool doing barely anything to Cu Chulainn made sense when Pom remember he wasn’t weak to flying type damage. That meant anything relating to wind or aerial based attacks, which would be highly useful against a Riolu, wouldn’t be as such here.

Cu Chulainn just went skidding back slightly and not nearly as far as Pom wanted, because he shot forward a second later and stabbed his left blade into her right side while forcing her to the ground.

Having pinned Pom down into the dirt, Cu Chulainn raised his right blade in a motion that would lead to him thrusting it down into the ewe’s heart.

A loud clang sounded out as Captain Skeeball appeared on Pom’s belly and deflect the blade with her tail, she quickly spun and slapped her tail into his other arm. She notably wasn’t using iron tail when she did this.

Skeeball knocked the left blade straight up and out of Pom and then opened her mouth to fire an Ice Beam that pushed the Lucario away while doing very little in the way of damage while freezing a portion of his arms being used as a defense.

A blast of flames struck him and exploded he roared in pain as he was engulfed and the ice on his arm exploded violently. Freezing then heating up metal quickly apparently had an effect on the steel type Pokémon, Dazzle had to quickly run as a Lucario nearly stomped on her back after taking the opportunity to strike out at Cu Chulainn with an exploding fireball.

Dazzle would be kept away from attempting a poison attack on Cu Chulainn by the other Lucario, her Flame Burst move doing much more immediate damage than Toxic would have. They’d eventually knock her out at a great personal cost.

While Cu Chulainn was being pushed away and busy trying to put out his ignited body, instead of pushing wool over the injury and bandaging it like Pom has normally done prior times, her wool shifted and actually entered her wound. Her wool proceeded to quickly stitching itself throughout the wound. Pom, feeling a slight tug at her side, sealed the puncture wounds with a final mental flex.

Pom quietly got up and started to contortion the wool around her legs preparing for more wool based thousand spear shots, mostly for maneuvering than actual attacking. She quietly considered using Dancing Flame considering how powerful their opponent was.

Cu Chulainn recovered and started to attack Skeeball who was in his way.

Captain Skeeball spun around in a circle twice her tail deflecting the stabs and catching a stomping foot, before she hopped back and pulled her tail out from under his foot throwing him off balance. She fire a beam of lightning at him from her mouth almost knocking him down and blinding him.

He was up and preparing to blindly charge forward only for Skeeball to glow green slightly, a mass of grass and plants suddenly rose up and wrapped around Cu Chulainn’s left ankle as he tried to step forward after planting his right foot solidly on the ground. Cu Chulainn tripped and twisted his left ankle painfully, the injury caused by his own heavy form would slow him down immensely.

Cu Chulainn in the middle of getting up was struck by a Thousand Spears attack from Pom as a distraction and the second one she fired was shredded by his glowing right fist blade in one swing as he charged forward.

Skeeball lunged and tried to launch another attack, unfortunately she got speared straight through the head by Cu Chulainn’s left blade.

A second later, a loud popping noise revealed it to be a Substitute. Angrily Cu Chulainn flicked his blade off to the side sending the substitute doll flying away.

Skeeball was actually still actively fighting one of Cu Chulainn’s top two enforcers nearby and Pom sighed loudly with relief. Skeeball was still giving far better than she was taking despite the disparity in advantage between the Lucario she was battling and her own battered body.

Enraged Cu Chulainn turned his fury on to Pom who was quickly joined by the remaining Rockruff brother still standing and awake, his growl was doing nothing to intimidate Cu Chulainn.

-Bear Squad, Jiri-

“Guys we need to pick up the pace, Shine can’t hold this for much longer!” I ducked under the glowing spike on the back of the left paw of a Lucario and shield bashed them to push them back far enough.

Once I finally had the Lucario positioned, I used Bounce while bracing the tip of my spear against them. The force of me trying to kick off the ground sent them flying when it traveled all the way up my spear to the very tip focusing all that force in one spot in an instant.

“Ice type bear believes other friends are in trouble too.” The Cubchoo among all my bear friends were trying their hardest to deal some damage. Cubchoo used the move Brine, an attack that launches a blast of salt water and does more damage the more wounded a Pokémon was, by doing a powerful sneeze. This staggered an incoming Lucario.

Kubfu the kung fu bear Pokémon launched a flying kick at said Lucario we were targeting together, he ended up kicking off the leg that deflected his failed attempt. Lucario was left open to panda Pokémon Pancham diving forward and biting their other leg to pin them down. Stufful the toy like bear Pokémon proceeds to uppercuts them in the chin harshly with a Flail move, the pink and white bear with dark furred legs cheered as the Lucario was repelled.

Any fighting type attacks we could use and land were doing a lot of damage, Riolu didn’t have that weakness and fortunately we had no Riolu to truly worry about here.

“Guys, I think I finally figured out how to do a Focus Punch!” The Teddiursa, my childhood friend, shouted with glee with a glowing fist that started to grow brighter. The small brown bear with a moon like marking on his head kept building up for the attack slowly.

“I am quite jealous of your capabilities comrade, but master Jiri is still our leader!” The grey furred bear cub with the thick white hair above his eyes shouted, Kubfu might have a crush on me and I didn’t know how to feel about it.

The Lucario we were tag teaming suddenly went pale, he tried to get to the Teddiursa before he could launch the attack. A Focus Punch would drop the second the wielder takes any damage, in single combat it was not very useful if your opponent was far or even slightly faster than you. If you knew Trick Room and Focus Punch, well everything in the world would start looking like a nail for that hammer.

In this case however, we could easily stall the Lucario long enough for the attack to go off and to that end I blocked with my shield and blunted spear until my friend charged his attack.

So far we were down to seven Lucario, two of which were Cu Chulainn’s top fighters. They were putting up more of a fight than the Riolu ever could.

One Lucario had miraculously turned shiny out of nowhere and started fighting on our side. That was rather confusing, but very much welcome addition to the battle we were slowly losing.

“Fist… of… POWER!” My Teddiursa friend leapt forward and we all backed away as he drove his left fist into the Lucario’s chest left of the spike sticking out of it, they went down in a single blow that sent them skidding and flopping halfway across the stone bridge in an exceedingly painful manner.

“Show off.” The Kubfu stated dryly.

-Cu Chulainn Battle-

Rockruff took up an aggressive position next to Pom and they both moved forward. Pom paying more attention to the Rockruff than her opponent.

The Rockruff moved to bite when Cu Chulainn surged towards Pom, he managed to lightly nip Cu Chulainn’s right leg before Pom had to pull the rock dog away from the glowing left blade through his face.

Pom threw out her left hoof straight at Cu Chulainn and he blocked it with his glowing right blade, the Rockruff leapt out of Pom’s right leg and bit on to the left side Cu Chulainn’s muzzle. The Rockruff started to claw at Cu Chulainn with his front paws.

With a single harsh shake, Cu Chulainn sent the Rockruff flying over Pom to land on the ground as he slashed up the left side of Pom’s face carving a line across her muzzle that made her scream in pain and back off.

Trying to take advantage of bloodying Pom’s face, Cu Chulainn went to kick his right foot up into her belly.

That’s when a rock sailed into Cu Chulainn’s left eye stagger him, several more rocks pelted him before he held up his right arm to start blocking them from hitting him in the face.

Glaring at the Rockruff firing rocks at him, Cu Chulainn blurred pulled back his right leg and kicked the Rockruff slamming his blade up into its body.

The yelp the Rockruff made drew Pom’s attention as she finished wiping the blood from her face and stitching it up with wool, she watched as the rock puppy struggled to stand up after being struck by a single devastating kick leaving it on its side whimpering.

Cu Chulainn grinned as he approached the puppy and turned to Pom as he crouched down a prepared to stab the puppy, daring her to come to the Rockruff’s rescue.

Pom’s eyes twitched, she was imagining the Rockruff as if he were one of her god puppies being in this position.

-Shanty-

These guys were being quite tough!

I hit them with the blunt side, barely be dazing them.

I slash at them and their skin hardly splits unless I put force into my cutting arc.

“Ruff!” Dolly barked and looked over in the direction of Pom.

“If Pom be needing you, then go!” I know we were being pushed, but Pom be fighting the worst of them.

The Lucario I be fighting aimed a glowing fist for my head, only to have a ribbon wrap around it.

“Go, we got this!” Smolder, with a sharp yank, be having the Lucario smash its own face with a glowing fist and it be going limp a second later.

A Lucario be leaping for me only to be struck by a lightning bolt and then Honedge slashed him into the ground.

“Need a partner?” The Honedge asked.

“Do you be thinking you’re sharp enough?” I ask as I charged the Lucario before he could get back up.

“Who do you think you’re talking to, I’m the lord of edge!” The living sword be joining me in my attack.

-Pom-

I quickly ran forward as Cu Chulainn looked at me and flexed the glowing right blade aimed for the puppy. He was going to make me choose between me and the Rockruff.

Knowing Cu Chulainn was baiting me into an attack, I wasn’t going to back down now.

Charging forward on all four hooves, I saw Cu Chulainn swing his right arm down as he prepped his left to stab at me.

His blade struck the dirt as Dolly skidding in at the last second to save the puppy, the nose of her board dug up under the Rockruff and he was soon tossed into the air by Dolly kicking the back of her board downwards.

Geoff caught the Rockruff and retreated as I leapt uncoiled the wool around my rear legs and twisted as I shot at him to hit him with my left hoof. His stabbed left arm missed me because he was too distracted by Dolly’s save.

Cu Chulainn blocked my blow, but he was still sent skidding backwards.

He was going to kill that puppy to get at me?! Well…

“Dolly get back and… lend me your flow motion.” The need in me was almost feral as I growled out to her. “I think it’s about time I called it… BAA-RAM-EWE!”

I felt Dolly lending me her strength, I started to manipulate my wool and shape it and with a few steps forward my appearance changed from front to back.

-Dolly-

Whoa… that’s new.

Pom’s wool thinned out along her body. The wool around her tail stretched out to start looking like a wolf’s tail. Her four hooves were covered in wool that formed digits and claws like a canine. The wool shifted around her ears and they became triangular.

Despite having a small body and gangly legs, Pom now looked like a wolf as her wool rippled and started to resemble fur.

I moved away and concentrated on lending Pom my flow motion power. The resemblance to a wolf would be uncanny if Pom’s body were a little longer.

-Pom-

I had to figure out a way to quickly deal with this guy… I stood up on my hind legs and struck my hooves together. My hooves ignited and my front legs lit on fire along with my wool paws, I slowly started to drag the fire all along my body until I was covered in it.

He might be weak to fire, but I needed to stop him from hurting anyone else.

Let’s hope this new wool shift works…

-Cu Chulainn-

“A fiery beast?” The battle fury sung in my blood at the sight, a grin was etched into my face as I saw a flaming wolf before me. “It takes one to beat one I guess!”

-Cu Chulainn Battle-

Pom burst forward and Cu Chulainn tried to prepare an attack, only he didn’t predict how fast the sheep like entity could now move.

Leaping forward with her right paw extending she slashed at Cu Chulainn with her left claw, he tried to block with his right arm only for the magical claws to slash down his face, chest and belly lightly cutting into his steel flesh with cutting flames.

He grunted and tried to strike back with his left blade when her right claw latched onto his right arm, she dropped and slashed her claws along both his leg making him grunt even more as this was actually doing damage to him.

Cu Chulainn swung his right leg into a low spinning sweep and then swung out his left fist, Pom seemingly hopped straight into the attack. Rolling in the air her rear wool clawed hooves went to both side of the spike that angle to try to puncture Pom.

Swinging with her right wool claw, she cut into Cu Chulainn’s skin and was about to hit him with her left as he hissed. He threw his whole body into slamming her back first into the ground where the weight of his arm kept her in place, stabbing her through.

Leaning up Pom bit down on his left shoulder, then shifted her head out of the way of being stabbed. She started to frantically claw at his arm as she shifted her upper torso a bit to avoid being stabbed.

Growling like a wolf, Pom inhaled and bark blasted Cu Chulainn halfway off of herself and she rolled. Despite the pain from another wound in her torso, she focused enough to stitch it up after she got standing on her hind legs.

Cu Chulainn swung his right arm in a hook and she caught it with her left claw and it stopped dead he push with most of his strength and her hoof didn’t move and the claws on it clenched onto his inner forearm as she brought her right hoof back and struck him across the left side of his face with her flaming right claw and then threw a quick follow up of the other claw across his belly and left leg.

The jackal monster stagger as blood sprayed from his face into his eyes and while he was blind he was hit with a bark blast in the neck that made it hard to breathe. This gave Pom enough time to stitch her wound fully.

Swiping the blood from his eyes, he growled and then the spike on his right arm started glowing with black and red energy.

Pom leapt forward to try and claw Cu Chulainn again and he leapt back, he then jumped high into the air. The entire time Pom had been on fire and close to Cu Chulainn had really done a number on his strength as he was slowing down, but his mega evolution was still going strong.

“Resign yourself, and receive my blow!” Having shouted that Cu Chulainn brought his right fist spike back glowing with power. “Gáe… Bulg!”

Time froze and the spear seemed to split infinitely in every direction. Red streaks filling the sky as they all rained down towards Pom with unerring accuracy.

At the same time Pom’s wool started to glow a bright golden color extinguishing the flames around her whole body and the golden silhouette of a wolf stood still. Along with the multiple spirits around her just coming to sit and looked at her.

Pom’s glowing visage disappeared in the storm of black and red swirling spears of energy.

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

The millions of spears slowly dissipated and golden glow of Pom’s wool faded too.

Cu Chulainn landed with an incredibly dumbfounded, shocked and highly confused look on his face.

-Dolly-

It looked like that Cuckoo Lane threw that spear straight at Pom… but it missed.

How did that work?

I could swear the spear was going to hit her, but it struck the ground in front of her and then the ground behind her got damaged.

Weird attack, but dog did that guy totally whiff it hard!

-Shanty-

I blocked a Lucario’s attack and then the Lucario stopped to stare, I be holding off his fist with my staff and also staring.

If I be throwing a spear at the range and that accurately, I certainly be knowing I wouldn’t be missing if I aimed it right at her. How did he damage the ground behind her when he hit to the far left of her, how did he be missing by a mile?

“How… there’s no way… he couldn’t have missed with his mortal injury attack!” The Lucario being very distracted did see the butt of my cane smashing them in the back of the skull.

-Smolder-

“Okay…” How the hell did he miss when it looked like the spear was all set to hit her? How did it damage the ground behind her if it landed something like twenty feet to her right?

Also why was Pom’s wool doing the golden glow thing, doesn’t that usually mean magic was in play at some point in that energy spear shot thing?

A Lucario slammed tried to slam their fist into me and blast them with a wall of flames for trying, these guys being weak to fire was easy even if their hits had bruised me up quite badly.

I’m simply far tougher than they are.

-Jiri-

Why did the energy spear stop in the air look confused, fly in a zigzag pattern shoot off into the sky spreading plaid colors everywhere and then came rocketing back down in front of me with the dead body of a legendary Pokémon known as Celebi that slowly disappeared?

Of course there was the weirdness of the ground exploding behind Pom too as the Celebi disappeared… maybe a time paradox?

I slammed the tip of my blunt spear into a Lucario’s skull, Shine fell about a minute ago and half my team was down. I was going to take advantage of them being distracted!

“Ice type bear has many questions about why the spear changed into a dragon and sang something about a doodle dandy while waving flaming sticks everywhere.” What? That’s not what happened at all Cubby!

-Ocellus-

A cause and effect magical attack!?

The cause… thrust or throw of a spear.

The effect… hits the intended targets heart… without fail by conceptual causality.

That was cursed or dark magic right there. It certainly would have killed Pom if she didn’t have a natural counter for magical attacks like that!

The only thing is… only god like beings can do conceptual magical attacks like that. Unless you’re the elements of harmony, which have done that numerous times… and Twilight eventually ascend so...

Did that mean that that Lucario, Cu Chulainn, has divinity to him?

It wasn’t surprising that Pom was functionally immune to a magical attack, but that it should have hit on the concept of doing so was the amazing part.

To anyone else it would have looked like he threw one attack and missed. Being magically sensitive as I am, I actually saw and felt the millions of spears raining down at Pom trying to find her heart.

Which spear landed would be different from each person’s perspective, but the spear throw happened across millions of possibilities… and every single one of them missed with a chance in the negatives of actually hitting anything unless he were to have stabbed her directly with it.

The true energy spear hit behind her damaging the ground, I’m going to have to ask what everyone still conscious saw later.

Mostly for the sake of curiosity and magical intrigue to bring back to Twilight.

I also now had a headache from how much malice that attack gave off… I’m going to stay up here until Cu Chulainn is dealt with.

-Pom-

I looked at the spot where the spear struck behind me, I was silently wondering if he meant to miss or if that was just a side effect of my wool countering the magic?

I needed a way to get close to him… because I think I finally had a way to ultimately defeat him as I’ve been trying all fight to find the right frequency for a bark breaker. Should have really considered this earlier, but the target was hard to hit and she needed to be point blank and have a few seconds to do it.

I felt around in my mouth and it was still there. I was hurting, but I would trust that the Kecleon merchants didn’t give out defective magical products.

“How… how did you avoid that attack, TELL ME!” Looking at the wild eyed Cu Chulainn like he was weird, I wondered if he didn’t see my wool giving off a golden glow?

“… maybe… you just have really bad aim.” I said calmly, that just seemed to enrage him further.

-Cu Chulainn battle-

“RAAAGGHHH!” Cu Chulainn sped forward a Pom was on her rear hooves ducking a left slash.

Pom slammed a hook into the right side of his face claw marks streaking up it, she threw a quick right that staggered him.

“Rrrr… yip!” Pom tried and her throat hurt a bit, but instead of damaging her actually target…

Cu Chulainn lunged forward to throw a punch with his right arm, yet something started snapping.

“AGHH?!” Apparently Pom’s bark breaker had a very unusual, highly negative effect, on Cu Chulainn’s metal bones as his entire right arm went limp and made the sounds of scraping metal. “What… how?!”

“Oh dear…” Pom didn’t want to miss again or else she might incidentally make Cu Chulainn a paraplegic, it was a good thing she wasn’t trying to kill him. She was just trying to stop his madness even if she did declare war on him.

“RRrrggg… your heart is pierced, the target hit as I declare!” His left spike started glowing as he ran towards me. This was my opportunity!

He thrust his left arm forward...

“Gáe Bulg!”

“GRrrrrrr…. Yip!”

…

Pom was lifted into the air by a smiling Cu Chulainn, his fist spike puncturing straight through her chest… but he had missed her heart again. This of course made him frown in confusion.

Cu Chulainn didn’t think she would survive this… something pulsed and he felt incredibly weak all of the sudden.

-Cu Chulainn-

I looked down and the mega stone I wore around my neck shattered. I shrunk down and went back to being a normal Lucario, the destruction of the stone making me incapable of using my Gáe Bulg noble phantasm… I could only use it twice a day anyway.

As my spike protruding from the sheep’s back disappeared, she flopped onto the ground dead.

“This fight is over, it was a good one. Had some fun and now I can put your suffering butt to rest.” I turned my back and toward those who were still standing, only the two top Lucario of my raiders were still standing. Battered, broken bones and beaten, but still standing. “Heh… now I just have to take care of the rest of you.”

I started limping towards them, at the end of the day we’d prove… what?!

That massive amount of power where is it all coming from?

I turned and looked at the sheep I just skewered and something in her mouth was glowing with the power of a mystic code or at least something on par with an artifact.

Slowly the sheep with the wool shaped like a wolf rose up, floating into the air, her wounds all disappeared and she landed on her hooves. Her eyes snapped open and she was once again alert.

She still looked tired, but her body… it was completely healed and something else flickered inside of her... a piece of a unusual soul? It didn't seem to be doing anything and looked benign, but it wasn't helping her in anyway... why hadn't I seen that before? The soul piece disappeared when the spirit wolves were reestablished and would be a thought for another time.

-Past Pom-

"Reviver Seed?" I looked over the tiny insignificant looking seed.

"Oh yes, we can only sell these to rescue team captains. Can even bring you back to life long enough if you get stuck in lava to teleport back. Pokémon are less likely to die by having these at the ready!" Kec-blue grinned. "Take it as a thank you for buying Sitrus Berries in bulk and being a great customer!"

"If the battle goes poorly, at least you'll be in good health in no time!" Kec-red stated enthusiastically. "Also ignore the fact that we never gave you your rescue team starter kit and sold it to a Bidoof!"

-Cu Chulainn-

“Oh, come on, really?!” I threw my left arm out at her in exasperation. She wasn't supposed to have a noble phantasm that made her act like a phoenix, or hercules... I didn't even sense anything like that from her before!

“Your right Cu Chulainn... this fight is over.” I saw her spiritual wolf pack spreading out. She couldn’t possibly be that much faster than me, I can still take her with one arm. "I'm honestly sorry for what I'm about to do, but you've been asking for it."

-Cu Chulainn Battle-

They all were one, one was all, Pom’s full fighting spirit was going to take down Cu Chulainn as a threat.

If only Cu Chulainn or Pom realized that Pom had been mostly at Dancing Flame speed the entire battle without actually using it, had she used it she would be moving three times as fast in her Sheep’s Clothing shifted wool.

Her Fluffmancer abilities used her wool to move with her bodies motions as if the wool was acting as secondary muscles, almost doubling her strength and speed. This at the cost of being unable to armor herself making it far easier for her to take fatal injuries, if she is hit while moving at those speeds she's not going to be able to move afterwards due to severe injury.

Now that Cu Chulainn no longer had his mega evolved form, his speed was basically crawling in comparison to Pom currently. Which is why what Pom was about to do would be hard for anyone to see or keep up with.

Being used to moving at such absurd speeds, Pom’s mind would actually keep up with what she was about to do to Cu Chulainn.

She inhaled sharply...

Pom’s left eye sparked red as she thought about what Cu Chulainn was going to do to the poor Rockruff, all her injured friends and he tried to kill her. That he would continued fighting, hurting and injuring even without his Mega evolutions state led to this moment.

“Full Feral Flurry.” Softly stated Pom before she took a single step forward.

The pack of wolves descended on Cu Chulainn who didn't even know what was happening.

-Dolly-

I think I’m the only one that could understand what just happened… in fact I’m the only one that can even begin to know how fast Cuckoo Lane just got mutilated. It was all in the time it takes to blink.

One second he stood there with a broken arm… the next he was on the ground covered in bite and claw marks as well as all his limbs twisted in a very nasty manner. His torso was also bruised to hell and back on top of all of that, while his head was... left completely untouched actually.

The only saving grace was that Pom wasn’t a killer and she just tore the crap out his now currently mutilated hide.

I stopped supplying Pom my flowing motion ability, because I think that's part of how she just did that. Our bond was that powerful?

I smiled a little... then I quietly turned my head to the side and barfed at the grisly sight. I wasn't afraid of Pom, but darn if that didn't solidly put her as being the top dog in our family.

“I… a demi... god... wha… lo-ost…” Gasped Cuckoo Lane, the guy was definitely in immense amounts of pain. who went from standing to on the ground without a clue as to what just happened in a single blink. "Im... imposs-nggghhh..."

Cuckoo Lane fainted, my dog, that guy still had enough strength to talk after what Pom just did to him?

I noted that every Pokémon in the area, that was still awake anyway, was now staring at Pom with wide eyes and some relatively healthy fear. To think Pom was afraid of them a few days ago, now that's what I call stepping up!

"She... she is THE doggy messiah!" Okay extremely battered, bloodied and beaten Evan, what is with the Doggy Messiah stuff and why did you look so happy? That's like, the fifth time I've heard this and the last three or so times was back in my world!

Pom's wool slowly shifted returning to normal and she sat down, took a single breath and then flopped over.

I sent a feeler through our bond to her, still alive and oh... ouch... pulled all the muscles in her body. Better than her nearly dying at least!

-DC dimension, Oleander-

Hope the Corgi of the blue lantern core, a peace organization that had magical rings that was powered by hope and bright thoughts, was currently worshipping the statue of a lambkin. It was apparently a religion that most dogs in this dimension followed apparently, for when she appears all was well for good dogs.

I'm not surprised Pom has some kind of multiversal effect even in dimensions she's never been alive in or has even visited...

"Well we found her, BUT NOT HOW WE WANTED!" Well aware of that Fred, but... I wonder how dogs form a cult worship of her, given that even Overlord Ender the Puppy Wolf Noise already worshipped Pom after only vaguely hearing of her and was beside Hope the Corgi.

Author's Note

Suggested Music: Moebius Battle- Xenoblade Chronicles 3.

Pom Combo Meter: 9999+

Sheep's Clothing*: Pom's Wool makes Pom take on the appearance of a wolf, her wool starts acting as secondary muscles to increase her speed and strength. The downside is that she takes critical hits if hit at all in this state, also heavy exhaustion and muscle damage.

*Special Side Ability: Simply crippling Pom's body doesn't mean she is incapable of fighting anymore. If Pom's body is too damaged for her to move it, Pom can move her body using her wool alone at normal strength and capability without the strength and speed boosting properties Sheep's Clothing would normally give her if her body were healthy.

It is safe to say that Pom has finally figured out how to combat. Also she just did her first anime, by beating an actual anime. Cu Chulainn was a pretty poor match up for Pom considering her talents.

Also yes, this is the long winded anime section of the story and Nasuverse/Fate Stay (Freeform) has been added to the list of crossovers for this arc. Nobunaga's Ambition characters are already involved because of Pokemon Conquest.

Also I would like to thank Shadowshame for this artwork of Dalmamon existing.

259. ‘Time’ of reflection.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

I looked away from my giant bowl of perfectly popped popcorn to the two who arrived, Celebi and Mew.

Mew, being the more childlike one, stole popcorn from my bowl immediately without asking.

Celebi being the more serious one, reported to me as to what they were looking into.

“Can I just point out that one of those conceptual spears actually hit and killed me?” Celebi was a small Pokémon that looked like a green fairy, it was a grass and psychic type and it was currently rubbing its head from the phantom pain of being struck down. This legendary Pokémon’s domain was to keep at least some forests of every world I have created healthy… and to make sure the timelines don’t veer into total decimation so easily, as they are want to do with increasingly alarming regularity, which was equally important as well. “The Greenleaf Kingdom isn’t spiraling, neither is the Fontaine Kingdom situation for that matter. What’s going on in Fontaine is pretty bad though. I’m more concerned about Ignis’s civil war. Also I got a front row seat to seeing Cu Chulainn was beaten into submission by the mortal you’re interested in watching. Didn’t honestly think a reincarnated demi-god would lose to a mortal like that, but we know that’s not an impossibility given how often a rescue team has needed to beat the snot out of a Legendary Pokémon to get them to stop causing problems and or from sleeping on the job.”

Many would not believe time travel was a secondary ability of Celebi’s main job, its powers were just meant for minor course corrections and paradox fixing and not part of its main domain. Celebi was actually somewhat of a subordinate to one of my first creations Dialga, whose main domain is making sure time marches forward.

“Didn’t you say Pom didn’t need to be a hero?” Mew were generally cuddly looking pink or white cats with incredibly psychic powers and long tails.

They were made to be friend shaped and they lived up to it, but for some reason I was thinking of something that had a mouth of a black hole and being rounder and pinker with red feet when I originally created them… something like a Jigglypuff. Still, Mew was a good companion to have when one was ultimately bored.

Mew were my most playful of creations, they also had the DNA of every Pokémon to exist and they will always receive an influx of more DNA for the ones that ‘will’ exist.

Mew’s job was to make sure Pokémon never went extinct or would never start going extinct, also a Mew is the reason why the blob Pokémon known as Ditto exist. One of the worst mistakes Mew will never live down… it always brought a smile to my face at least when the Pokémon with the domain of ‘life’ made Ditto the most plain faced being in any existence I have made. The other intelligent beings that were once Pokémon went into experimentation with trying to recreate a copy of Mew, which just led to more Ditto existing much to Mew’s chagrin.

Mew did much better with Happiny, Igglybuff and Cleffa, yet still couldn’t get my original idea down for a round pink thing that absorbs elements and copies their powers while generating cute and fearsome hats to show what powers it’s currently using. The closest thing to the appearance we ever got was the ultra-beast Guzzlord. Oh sure the hunger was there, but the ability to shift into things with hats wasn’t in the cards… also the thing embodied gluttony too much and was much happier in its own dimension and was partially the reason for the existence of Munchlax and Snorlax. Snorlax was a far more tenable species given they gained more energy from sleeping than eating.

Should something happen to me or all of the realms of Pocket Dimensional Monsters are destroyed, Mew was to be my emergency last ditch effort to build a new universe from scratch or seed an already existing world that could hold Pokémon.

All Mew even held a piece of my genetics in the event that something as powerful or even more so than me comes along and attempts to end my eternity and eternal dreams of infinite stories where I precariously live through watching others’ lives from birth to death.

A child known as Ash Ketchum was still one of my favorites on one particular world. Not very bright, but very entertaining all the same.

“I did say that Mew, Pom didn’t need to act in the capacity of a hero. Given that she’s already too good at acting in the capacity as a friend or someone who can’t look away from suffering, which is why you are somewhat upset as she would have helped in as much capacity as she could anyway.” Even I knew if she were told to not act as a hero, she would still see things through regardless and her efforts would never be wasted in Ransei. “The outcome is better for it, for the heroes that are already among Aurora under King Evan have a great example to pull from. Though the ‘Doggy Messiah’ stuff confuses even someone of my vast might and intelligence, since that didn’t exist before King Evan stated it and now a number of my worlds are suddenly worshipping the existence of Pom Lambchop despite her never having been near any of them.”

“Ugh, it’s apparently something ‘memetic’ Lord Arceus. At least it seems to only effect canids… including, as I've just found out, the legendary ones. Suicune is in the middle of commissioning Smeargle to get artworks of Pom and is filling an entire room of her doing adorable things with her friends, then again she is known as the 'Aurora' Pokémon so she does have some pull in that kingdom despite traveling around a lot. Having looked into Pom’s full history up to the present, I can see why ‘The Canine Queen’ comes up a lot with her.” Well that answers that Celebi, it didn’t seem bad at least. I would even say it was a mostly amusing and relatively harmless side effect. “It’s surprising that Pom is completely mortal and has not a lick of divinity, wolf pack spirit and the anti-magic wool aside of course.”

“I still think you should go back and stop yourself from causing the Holy Grail. Also why aren’t you doing anything about that Moon Cell thing?” Good question Mew, like all psychics you were intelligent and able to piece together information from very little. “It did show up here after what you did father.”

“Did those worlds truly need all the trouble such things brought them?” I asked back, Mew immediately started pondering all that much harder and continued stealing more of my buttered and salted popcorn. “If anything we have already Jirachi and they have caused similar problems. I will not go back and stop myself, this has been most entertaining. Those heroes and villains needed some time away from constant warring to live anew once more… despite the many issues it is currently causing Ransei.”

“Yes, but Jiriachi causes wishes on a lesser scale… which, having said that out loud, I can see your point and it admittedly makes me understand why you stopped all that ‘Holy Grail’ wish nonsense considering the crazy stuff Jirachi gets up to.” This one could sense that you had more to say Celebi, but I will answer preemptively.

“As for the Moon Cell, that will not be a problem as it cannot operate beyond the informational bounds it is contained within… well not yet at least. However… I believe Pom will eventually visit it, if for no other reason than for the opportunity to explore. Also to see if she can ultimately revive her dead companion if she doesn’t by that point. It will incredibly difficult to do so, as nothing around the subject of death is ever easy as Yveltal well knows.” That will be when Yggdrasil.sys gets involved no less, I could already feel the information goddess creating a world seed to bloom along aside my own. “The Moon Cell will not be able to manifest itself into our reality and I will certainly keep it suppressed if it tries to act on our reality with ill intent or too large an alteration that we wouldn’t appreciate. I will however be allowing some creatures from another realm to manifest into our world… within limitations. Mew will not be picking up their genetic structures for they will not be Pokémon or kin of us, no they are not ultra-beasts, they won’t have genetic structures to begin with as they will be informational entities.”

I will welcome Yggdrasil.sys and will slowly integrate the digital creatures into Ransei and then the world at large to see if we could come to a form of unity of biological and informational entities. We already had Porygon and Genesect as peaceful negotiators to send in first. That and to warn Yggdrasil.sys away from giving Moon Cell any access to manifestation knowledge or capabilities.

It will be curious what Pom decides to do if she runs across this stuff, especially when the computers Pokémon are creating in Ransei and ‘the ultimate supercomputer’ that is the Moon Cell collide in an information space.

Yggdrasil.sys will inevitably and curiously infiltrate and cause problems in the Moon Cell, of that I have little doubt already. I will try to integrate a safe connection with Moon Cell and the one Yggdrasil.sys will create in this world.

I lived in interesting times, many eons passed me, but there’s always a few years where activity is at its most hectic and most intriguing. I have also seen into Yggdrasil.sys and saw something that will be of interest to Pom, I will ensure that she crosses paths with them when she visits Yggdrasil’s sub-dimensional seed.

As for Yggdrasil.sys interfering with Moon Cell… I’d wait and see what will become of that situation, especially when Yggdrasil.sys used the power of mythology to create most of its beings and the Moon Cell was full of data on myths and legends.

The reason I didn’t doubt Yggdrasil.sys causing problems is because it wouldn’t resist the temptation to integrate said mythology into making new lifeforms. One of said lifeforms that was previously created was born on the basis of information about a, 'entirely theoretical’, apocalypse. That had to be one of the dumbest things that Yggdrasil.sys ever allowed to exist and it required help dealing with that… said help was in the form of children. The information goddess was equally infinitely intelligent and infinitely stupid.

Sure a massive war could break out between my faction, the Yggdrasil.sys faction and whatever will make up the Moon Cell faction and whatever smaller factions erupted from all of it, but I wasn’t going to panic over it personally.

I was more worried for all the mortals that would be involved in the high end dimensional chess about to take place.

It would also gravely interrupt my people watching...

-Ransei, Aurora Kingdom Castle, hours after battle, Pom-

The Sitrus Berries I bought helped a lot, but medical aid was still being applied to everyone who needed it direly. Nobody would want to heal a broke bone in the wrong way.

“Most of your group is fine… about as healthy as you can get really.” Happiny stated in a dull and tired tone. She had carried absolutely every injured Pokémon back, loaded onto large pallets she walked while holding above her head. Even managed to wake me up before the day was over with.

“Do you really like the work you do?” Since the little Pokémon hates idiots and is in the primary job of dealing with them.

“Nothing makes me happier than seeing someone healthy.” Happiny smiled wanly, not having the energy to be angry. “Sure most of the Aurora Kingdom Pokémon are idiots, but they are my idiots and I’d keep them alive no matter how many injuries they get. It is my purpose after all!”

The sudden gained energy resulted in the room becoming filled with a brilliant light and I watched as her form shaped and grew under the light like how Cu Chulainn had done when he apparently went through a mega evolution.

“You hear that, even Cu Chulainn’s injuries will be fixed on my watch!” Shouted the new Happiny, she noticed me staring at her. “Did everything suddenly just get smaller?”

“No, you just got bigger.” I made a gesture of holding up my hooves in front of my face. “Do this.”

She held up her flipper arms in front of her face and blinked and then looked down at her body… after a few moments of silence, she smiled a little.

“… oh my giddy Amaura… I’m a Chansey now!” Yeah, she looked like the Chansey in Arbora Town with some vague differences. “Well I’m going to be miserable for the foreseeable future.”

“Why?” Ocellus asked, having not taken a single injury the whole battle. Cu Chulainn’s battle frenzy was not safe to be near even if it wasn’t wide spread condense emotions, it was concentrated aggression.

“I have the capacity to heal more, better and will be able to help larger Pokémon… in essence everyone is going to expect far more of me!” Aurora’s Chansey started crying into her flippers. “So… much… wo-hr-hr-hr-rk…”

“Um, how is Cu Chulainn’s health?” After I mauled him at a speed most couldn’t even begin to see, I don’t think my Dancing Flame ability is supposed to be that potent.

“He’ll live, he’ll get use out of his right arm again, his legs though… he won’t be walking again for a while because I refuse to heal his ability to be mobile anytime soon. Call me Chan, even if I eventually become a Blissey.” Chan had seen to the Evan’s units and Evan himself, quite a number of them had slings and bandages wrapped around them. “In any case Cu Chulainn’s entire body will be in a splint for the next few weeks... possibly months if I take it slow enough.”

“I didn’t permanently cripple him?” That had been a concern of mine, I think I might have used too much force on him.

“Some Pokémon are very hard to permanently cripple, if there are any long lasting problems he just needs to find another Mega Stone to perform a mega evolution. Evolution heals most wounds, Mega Evolution is a repeatable phenomenon that takes fully evolved Pokémon to their peak and those stones always exist somewhere. Limited in numbers sure, but they still exist and he knows what once looks like.” Still felt horrible for all the pain I put him in Chan. “Sure the pain your putting him through will be excruciating, but you were run clean through and experienced a relatively similar amount of pain. That you didn’t scream in agony was surprising and that reviver seed is why you’re alright, those things are quite rare on this side of the world. You also owe you’re life to that annoying Skitty, Captain Skeeball, given that she saved you the early use of the seed for when you actually needed it.”

My tolerance for pain has sky rocketed since this adventure began.

“She doesn’t owe me anything!” Stated Captain Skeeball in a cheerful if highly pained tone. She proved herself a real hero by actually beating one of the two Lucario that were part of Cu Chulainn’s personal entourage before going down. “I would gladly give my body for others!”

“Be quiet and stop running around with said body and making my attempts to heal you fully moot!” Chan yelled at the cap wearing Skitty while pointing at her. “Butt, back to resting, now!”

“It’s so boring being in massive amounts of pain though!” Skeeball retorted with a high pitched whine.

“Well whose fault is that?!” We all already knew the answer to that Chan. The Chansey turned to me and sighed with her left flipper on her forehead. “Look can you and your friends clear out, I need to take care of the rest of my idiots before they do something to mess up all my work.”

“Mom… please listen to the Pokémon who specializes in health.” One of her Skitty said with bother ears and butt bandaged.

“Fine…” Skeeball was certainly a personality.

“Right, healthy people out of my overloaded workspace!” Chan made a shooing motion to Ocellus, Dolly and me.

“What if I can send some Pokémon to help you out with the injured?” There was an idea percolating in my mind as I had two Pokémon who were eager to please and ate gratitude for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

“As long as they are willing to listen to orders, then please do send them my way! I’m overworked as it is and my evolution isn’t going to make up for that anytime soon.” We left Chan to it.

-Helper’s Hamlet, Guild Hall, Dolly-

We walked into to see doggo and diggi hole working with Mr. large tongue cook guy who probably knows what everything tastes like.

“Fiffi, Foffo, got a commission for you from the Chansey that used to be a Happiny and now goes by the name Chan.” Announced Pom as the two 'deed deed' Pokémon came up to us. “She needs your help with the injured Pokémon at the Aurora Castle like yesterday, listen to her orders and help her out with them.”

“We’ll get on it right away Lady Lambchop!” The male floppo guy bowed and then turned to Flippi.

“Lady Lambchop, Lady Dalmatian and Ms. Ocellus, nice to see you are well after the fight that happened up north.” Flippi said while bowing too.

What is it with these guys and bowing?

“Good, get going. I’m going to take a seat and not move until late into the evening.” Sounded boring Pom, but fairly understandable.

We all got seats at a table together near the stairwell to the second floor.

“Do you think Motochika made it to Northeastern Fontaine?” Well Pom, I kind of, almost, wanted to know if he did too.

Motorboat kind of left as soon as he was done helping us out with that ambush. Chika definitely knows how to lead units and those water Pokémon seem quite experienced at ranged attacks. Speaking of ranged attacks, I could probably use Aero and do my speed up thing on something I throw to create high speed baseball pitches with anything I can throw…

So what if sports was always my go to, sue me my mental self-image! I know what I was about at least, I looked to Pom and tilted my head at her looking at the table.

What would happen if I tightened and shrunk Aero and then threw something through it?

“You kicked butt Pom, why do you… oh right… fighting so-, and still, not your thing.” Didn’t even have to have Pom look up or give me a mental image to know when I was going too far off the rails. “Sorry.”

“At what point did I become capable of what I did back there Ocellus?” Receiving a mental pat on the head from Pom, she turned to Ocellus.

“You mean mauling that guy within an inch of his life? Yeah, I can see why you would think you’re scary now, but I know you’re not on a personal level Pom. At least you didn’t go rabid or feral, you were in control of your actions right?” When Ocellus said that last bit we both noticed Pom wince and rub at her left shoulder with a hoof. “You had complete control over yourself.”

“That’s the problem…” Pom stated with a wide eyed and very much worrying look. “I would have been less worried if I wasn’t in control of myself when I did that knowingly! I’ve been in full contact with my feral side since the Yellow Dog base back in the world with all those evil cores, not a lot to do when you’re sitting around and being mildly molested by bipedal canine’s eyes, mentally and, thankfully not as often, physically.”

I popped up onto the table, padded across it, grabbed Pom's head in my paws, redirected her gaze to me and looked her deeply in the eyes.

It looked like I was looking at the real Pom, she looked like an anxiety riddle mess of a sweet and caring person, she looks like someone that would take a bullet for any dog and keep going!

Keeping a serious look on my face the entire time, I opened my mouth, extended my tongue slowly and then brought it carefully to Pom’s nose to not spook her. I proceeded to then slide my tongue upwards in a long drawn out manner. After having done that, I let go of her head and silent walked backwards keeping my eyes on her and fell right back into my seat to continue staring at her with concentration.

“Thank you…” Pom started giggling a bit as she tearfully sat there wiping at her eyes and I grinned at her. “For that rather clear vote of confidence in me Dolly.”

“Yeah, I’m certainly not going to mistake that as a sign of anything else but carefully thought out and methodical affection for one second. Kind of weird because Dolly doesn’t usually do slow and methodical given how fast her emotions can flip from second to second, very easily excitable.” Hey, cheap crack Ocellus, I do those sort of things for Pom all the time! Someone has to keep saving her fluffy backside, even from herself. Also I learned about my close friends, I think I would know enough about Pom to cheer her up easily by now. “Dolly seems quite clued in to how you feel, now get me clued in because you felt like you were emotionally dead inside until that act of silliness.”

I wouldn’t be one oh one Dalmatian Streets cheer up pup of the year, every year, if I wasn’t good at being wildly fun!

-Ocellus-

“I’m just reflecting on how I feel about all of this, like I told you prior my fluffmancer abilities jumped to a level that I can physically augment myself to an absurd degree with less drawbacks than any other technique I have ever used prior. Add that onto me using Dancing Flame and doing it at an insane increase of proficiency… well it’s quite daunting!” Yes, that is quite true Pom, it was Daunting that your mind can actually keep up with your body when moving so fast.

Pom basically stopped creating blurs and turned invisible without breaking the sound barrier… that or she broke the sound barrier so hard that no sound existed with her movements. I don’t know which is more terrifying, but what I do know is that Pom has a brilliant mind and an equally brilliant way to apply her personal strengths.

“Is it that you made yourself look like a wolf that’s the issue here?” I was trying to play psychiatrist, but Pom had to know and acknowledge that I wasn’t an officially licensed one. I was, oddly enough, just a friend and a person willing to listen to her constant anxiety kicking me in the skull. An emotion she was willing to suppress around me on purpose for all the good attempting to suppress it did. “Maybe it’s the ability to commit to violence that has you frightened? I don’t see an issue with that, as you still have problems with being violent or aggressive. Though I don’t see why you lean towards ignoring the fact that you are a protector, you’re a guard and our guardian. Is it killing you inside that badly?”

“Maybe it isn’t… but I don’t want to be a monster.” I leapt across the table at Pom, Dolly did so as well.

We both knocked her to the floor and held her close.

“Pom… I’m a changeling, did you forget this fact in the course of us become friends? Because that would be real sweet of you to forget that Lambkin and Changelings don’t mix all too well! I would know all about not caring about what I did when I didn’t know any better and we were still kidnapping ponies to feed on their stolen love… I would safely know enough about being a monster to say that you worrying makes you far less of one than I was.” Now that’s another issue to worry about, I think Pom was scared of becoming too strong when she obviously needs her strength. “Also you looked cute with your wool like that. If anything I need psychological help when I went power mad taking control of those two mechanical monsters, I also failed you while you were out of action! That you're still seeing me as a friend and not a changeling is what makes me think I’m not a monster, alongside Smolder, Shanty and even Dolly… all my friends and family back on Equus waiting for us to come home. If you ever stop listening to us when and if we were to tell you to dial it back… we’ll knock some sense into you. At least Dolly definitely will considering the connection you have with her.”

I heard Dolly bark in somewhat cheerful agreement as she kept her paws wrapped around Pom’s neck and squeezed her in a loving manner with a wagging tail. Pom reached up and hugged us and started to pat me on the back, her eyes were closed and yet all I could feel were good emotions coming off her, she even had a faint smile going.

“So… apparently I didn’t ruin Cu Chulainn’s arm enough with a bark breaker technique as to be permanently unusable despite basically pulping all the metallic bones it. I think it is still worth worrying about when it comes to doing something like that to someone that had steel bones and skin just as tough. Had I aimed my bark breaker wrong…” Pom drifts off and I squeezed her as she took a shuddering breath. “You’ll never be a monster Ocellus, you’re too cute and silly.”

“… Pom…” I just held her, my friend, alongside Dolly.

-Later that evening, Pom-

“I… don’t know what to think about doing this wool shift, in front of Tianhuo I mean.” I rubbed at the wolf like scruff around my neck.

“Are you kidding me, you look adorable… also fierce. Would Pinkie Pie say Fierce-rable or Adora-fierce Ocellus?” Smolder stated while looking at me with my wool in the wolf state. “In any case, she’s the person you care about the most when it comes to opinions.”

“Is this going to be another one of those volatile Chimi-Cherry-Changa things Smolder?” Ocellus stated with a snort. “In any case, Pom has a perfect Nightmare Night costume for the rest of her life. Plus she knows how to howl adding to the silhouette she creates, so imagine on a moonlit night seeing a glowing spiritual white wolf wandering about the shadows... with ridiculously gangly legs.”

I rolled my eyes at the gentle ribbing.

“I be thinking Pom be badass no matter her appearance, no pirate would seriously want to mess with her after seeing her move around with that appearance.” Shanty had taken a few rough blows and Favela was upset that she didn’t last nearly as long in the fight as Shanty did. Of course Shanty imparted the fact that it was experience and grit that kept her going, that was my younger and quite tough goat kid.

We all heard something move and we looked to Dodo’s egg shift about and some lines formed on it, but nothing more.

Take a long moment to steel my nerves, I put Arceus’s communication device down and called Tianhuo.

I couldn’t keep Tianhuo waiting, I couldn’t wait to hear her voice and I couldn’t wait to see how she reacted to my current appearance. What would be the first thing she says about this?

I was nervous and a bit anticipatory of Tianhuo’s honest opinion, my mental scars and the fact that I was agonizingly skewered to the point of dying hours ago had me worrying about my life more than ever.

That Reviver Seed was likely worth far more than the beginner rescue team kit the Kecleon’s owed me, unless the the kit initially comes with one of those... no don’t think about that now... because Tianhuo was about to.

“Pom, how has your-...” Tianhuo trailed off and stared at me, my appearance resembling the shape of a wolf. My large fluffy wolf like tail started wagging behind me. “It is apparent that there is no end to the number of surprises you’ll have in store for me.”

“My day hasn’t exactly gone very well Tian…” I took note of her bright red face and her looking at the cute triangular pointed ears that covered my own and then her eyes roved over my entire body for a bit before looking down at the wool digits and claws with my hooves acting as the palms of my paws. Her eyes even tracked my wolf like tail for bit, my tail was of course shifting about like an excited dogs.

“I miss you, every… single… day.” Tianhuo finally said after nine minutes of just staring at me with passion as I slightly moved about to show off my current wool shift. “Tell me about this day next time, because…”

Time was up.

“I be thinking that went rather well, she ignored the fact that Smolder and me be bandage to Tartarus and back!” Yes, thank you Shanty for reminding me that Smolder’s innate dragon toughness doesn’t translate very well as far as Pokémon are concerned.

-Equus, Canterlot Barracks, Fizzle-

“What was that?!” I asked Tianhuo who spent more time staring at her admittedly adorable wife and burning that image into her mind than actually talking to her… unbelievable.

Hopefully actions spoke louder than words here, because 'wow' was the stoic head of the guard from Huoshan distracted and struck mostly speechless.

“Oh, um… yes, did you need something Fizzlepop?” Giving Tianhuo a flat look, I just shook my head with a dry sigh escaping my lips.

I was not going to comment on Equus Shanty or Smolder looking quite roughed up and heavily bruised, didn’t want to worry Garble if he heard that Smolder is getting into bad fights where she currently is. Anything in that world that can bruise a dragon like that was quite dangerous.

Pom was probably trying to find a way to talk to Tianhuo about a hard day, but she spent most of nine minutes just letting Tianhuo inspect her cuddly wolf like appearance. She seemed entirely happy to just do that and turn small circles as if she were somewhat chasing her wolf tail made out of wool or at the end of a catwalk.

Something was obviously wrong with Pom mentally, but I’m guessing Tianhuo’s staring and blushing was quite reassuring to her somehow?

I wouldn’t know, my relationship is made up of raw, mostly unfiltered, chaos that Discord was proud of... not that I could go an entire week without something weird happening or Jaded plotting the downfall of Saddle Arabia behind everyone’s backs. A downfall that doesn’t end in Sultan Snickers just taking back her post as the Saddle Arabians kept begging to happen, because there was no way Jaded would hurt her familiar.

Author's Note

N/A

260. A restored friend.

Author's Note

Music: Golden Saucer Theme, FF7 (Any version, jukebox)

260. A restored friend.

-Ponyville, Twilight-

“Okay Jaded… what are you up to today?” I ask as I ignored Cadence for the moment.

Cadence shot me a look.

I’d do the ladybug thing later Cadenza! I silently promised her with my eyes.

She smiled.

“Today is my day off, I’m doing exactly jack all.” Finding that hard to believe Jaded, I can see your plans to turn Saddle Arabia into a sinkhole in your shorts.

Other than something I was going to have to stop from happening later, she was just sitting at a table looking content. Note to self, don’t think about the fact that I was looking at her shorts.

A jackalope jumped onto the table and chittered.

“Not talking about you.” Jade stated lazily. “Also not on my day off Jackass, go play with Angel.”

The jackalope looked sad and then started to leave.

“That was mean of you.” I stated with concern.

“Not really Twilight, it was that particular jackalopes name.” Really Cadence, huh. “Yeah, Fluttershy just calls him Jack. He won’t respond to anything else or anyone else, other than Fluttershy, unless they say his full name otherwise.”

“So what are you doing here Cadence?” I mean she didn’t say she was visiting Ponyville or anything.

“Being lazy, we’re going to play some Ogres and Oubliettes later.” There was one other question that Cadence should really be answering for me.

“Okay… well what’s with the Kraken then?” My view panned slightly to the left to tentacles of the creature that seemed to be calmly working over Cadence’s back.

“That’s just Nurse Escargot, apparently anything can get a medical license in Equestria if they try hard enough. He’s the best masseuse and Dr. Bones main physical therapy expert. I don’t honestly think you should fix that particular loophole, not when Escargot put in all that time.” Cadence sighed audibly as something popped in her back. I’ve heard about this, also I still couldn’t exactly stop animals from getting medical licenses as long as they live up to having them. “So… want to spend time the rest of the day being lazy with us?”

“Sure!” I needed a break. Celestia never tried to use her vacation days, probably for all the backpay from being princess, but I’m not exactly my mentor now am I?

“Okay what in tarnation did you say to Jackass to make him look so upset Jaded?” Never thought I’d hear that word from Applejack’s mouth.

“Told him I’m taking the day off from weirdness or the general hijinks, didn’t want to play or get hurt by our usual general shenanigans.” After having said that, Jaded got a look of understanding from Applejack.

“Ah... so what are you doing?” This was going to snowball into everyone in Ponyville taking a day off wasn’t it? Jaded couldn't 'normally' be lazy either! “I could use a break too.”

-Hours later-

I was right, but at least the town wide picnic was a huge success even if no one was doing their job today. I wonder, was anyone else was having as much a lazy day as we were?

It was a little weird to see Pinkie acting tame and taking time off from being a wild party obsessed friend.

-Ransei, Aurora Kingdom Castle, Shanty-

“So what do you think they will be doing with them?” I be asking because I be having no clue what we were going to do with all the Pokémon we beat up yesterday.

“Well… I’m sure King Evan will figure out something, the Riolu and Lucario can’t keep attacking Aurora. The Aurora Kingdom could probably hold them indefinitely, but I’m betting without Cu Chulainn guy they won’t have the wherewithal to really keep attacking the kingdom. At least Pom took care of that particularly major problem.” Smolder was being fairly reassuring, but I still had some worries.

“Do you think Ocellus and Dolly will be helping Pom well enough?” It be quite amazing for me to see Pom becoming stronger, but even I can be telling that she has issues.

“I’m sure they are already working her down from any depressive mood she might be slipping into.” Now that was actually reassuring Smolder. “There’s also all the other friends we’ve made, Pom will be fine.”

“You be meaning most of us that are currently here and hurting?” Looking about, most of the friends we had were here being cared for by what I saw as just a moderately bigger version of Happiny.

“Okay you have a point, but at least Pom made sure Chan got help right?” That was one of the nicer things she be doing Smolder.

“Here’s your soup Ms. Shanty.” The Indeedee Foffo stated in a humble tone as he place a tray over my lap.

“Be careful it’s hot and Mr. Schlurp fresh!” Fiffi stated with good cheer as she laid out a platter of gems for Smolder to eat. “You’re gratitude is as nourishing as the food we brought you, do either of you want anything to drink.”

“If you be having rum, you’ll be getting all the gratitude you want from me!” I would be fairly gracious for it most certainly.

“No alcohol for my patients!” Chan shouted and I be a bit miffed with her.

“Fruit juice then.” I leaned back and tried to figure out how I could ferment it quickly enough for my needs, in any case hot soup should not be wasted!

“That battle was quite horrible.” Favela said from nearby. “I went down before Shanty did!”

“Don’t always measure your own strength by another’s accomplishments, Pom already did that enough and eventually figured out she was getting strong on her own merits.” I be learning much from Pom, how to live was one of the better things I’ve learned. “You are being strong Favela, but you just need to train more. Don’t do it obsessively, we’re friends and friends will always help you get where you want to be. Also I be thinking about adding you to my crew… I don’t be thinking your weak at all. It’s just that the guys we fought were strong and you survived the battle with less wounds than the others!”

Favela is being incredible and cool, she is also being a living bush and having a crew mate that works for adventure and fun would be easy for me to take care of. Just had to be keeping her away from fire is all, she could use her Surf move to handle that.

“It’s going to take a lot of rum to get me to start calling you Captain Shanty… aside from the fact that I just did.” Favela be smiling at me and I be smiling back, the grassy goat was cool.

“Well doesn’t that sound promising for your future prospects Shanty?” I knew Smolder was going to spend her time wherever Ocellus lived, but I had more adventure planned for my plate when we made it back to Equus.

“Yeah, just have to be living long enough to…” I froze and trailed off when I felt it, a surge of emotions not my own through my bond and my grin could light up the room. “Ms. Chan, can you be getting my egg? He’s finally coming out of his long sleep and he wants me to see him wake up!”

“He who?” Favela be asking and my grin just broadened.

“Dodo!” I stated plainly as Chan brought the metal egg now covered in lines, but nary a crack in the shell. Dodo was not a regular egg though, so why should I be expecting him to hatch like a regular egg?

It had been since the disastrous battling at the volcano… hard to think it hasn’t really been that long. Barely a few weeks, it certainly be feeling far longer than that. Was it the pain and suffering as much as the joys and fun we’ve all been having together on the way?

Chan sat the egg down on the bed and I stretched out before moving my hooves forward to grab Dodo. I felt him silently telling me how to place the metal egg so he can begin operating as my friend again.

Lifting the heavy metal egg, now covered in various lines, I started to rotate it until Dodo sent me a feeling that I had it gotten it correct.

“Doesn’t look to be hatching to me.” Chan commented as she started to go look over her patients.

“Who said he would be hatching? He survived losing most of his body and has been trying to restore himself since then. He hasn’t been awake much, but now… I be getting my buddy back!” Dodo was not someone I ever wanted to lose, Pom taught me all about how strong bonds like this could get.

Dolly and... Dormarch... they proved that strength time and again.

-Dodo-

Systems operations… currently limited… hatching sequence begun.

Checkup Magical Harmony OS… all six support programs operational.

Memories, ninety percent restored. Memories before Shanty have been entirely lost… completely optimal losses incurred.

Beak beam weapon system… still missing parts for restoration.

Baked goods manufacturing module… fully operational and marked important function five hundred nineteen times by PinkPie.exe. Bonded companion Shanty will at least be appreciative of its continued existence. Prioritizing it might not have been entirely the best idea, but it was still currently saved as a primary needed function.

Biological reactor… functional. Able to eat and regain energy, need to do so immediately.

Wings and flight thrusters… new and unusual, integration of 'eggmobile' flight module schematics successful. Need more resources to become available for use, also need to increase size.

Current size… gyro cuckoo bio machine. Massive resources required to return to viable acceptable supporting and protective riding size.

All new capabilities… we’ll work on it as we go as a fixer upper according to Apple.exe. We’ve kept our bond partner waiting long enough.

Current location… unknown…

Reestablishing current location correctly… next to Shanty. Location doesn’t matter otherwise.

Happiness levels of bond partner rising, personal happiness levels also rising.

Beginning unfolding and transformative sequences.

Life companion functions… restart.

Dodo is awake… hello friend!

-Shanty-

The bottom of the egg be pushing the entire top of it upwards and then the extension be splitting in two, the extension split into three front toes and a rear. I realized that was Dodo’s legs and feet. It slowly got those two legs under it as all the lines became more apparent as parts of the egg started folding or unfolding with strange noises.

The two sides of the egg spread out and started turning into metallic wings. He be having wings now?! He just be legs, a torso, neck and head previously. So this will be interesting.

The back end of the egg unfolded into several flexible looking pipes and the small front stretched and jutted out as its beak and eyes started appearing from the strangely folding metal. The top of the egg stretched out forward and parts of it turned turn tube like revealing Dodo’s neck.

Once fully complete, the egg be unfolding completely into a smaller version of Dodo who be looking to me.

Dodo let out a friendly, familiar sounding, happy warble in greeting. He may be looking a little bit different, but that be my Dodo… except…

“Can you still do beams?” I ask because we were in a dangerous world, he be shaking his head no. “Well that’s okay because we have plenty of stuff for you to eat so you can be doing that again!”

He be warbling again, then opening his beak wide.

“What do you be…?!” I held out my right hoof and caught a cupcake in it, I be happy with the news that he could still be doing that! “You be thinking the baked goods more important than your ability to defend yourself? That’s my silly Dodo alright!”

Dodo warbled cheerfully as I started crying and hugging him. His toothless beak suddenly having retractable razor sharp fangs and its blunt toes be poking out claws and flexing upwards. Not completely defenseless then, as I watched the beak fangs and talon knives disappear back into him as I held him.

“That has got to be the weirdest hatching Favela has ever seen.” That be, Favela, because Dodo didn’t be hatching. He is just being the whole egg.

“Do you still be having the junk we brought with us in storage? Bring Dodo to it, he be hungry.” That and he be needing to grow.

-Chan-

“Foffo, can you and Fiffi please get on that for me?” The two were Legendary sends and would be worth every Poké their assistance provided, also all of gratitude they could ever need to live for the next month or so. I was an overworked lady that tended to lovable idiots. “I have an important patient that I urgently need to check on.”

-Cu Chulainn-

I came to with a start and immense amounts of pain. My body was ravaged, I could hardly move and the pain was almost blinding. I didn’t see what that sheep had done, but she had soundly beaten me to within an inch of my life it seems.

What I was curious about is…

Why was I still alive?

“Oh your awake, please don’t try to move much. Your right arm took some serious damage from the Rescue Team leader.” What was a ‘rescue team’? Not something I have heard of in this world, then again I didn’t have my ears open for much and have only seen Pugilis, Aurora, Greenleaf and Ignis. “For what it’s worth, I think she’s sorry for what she had to do to you. Also the King Evan of Aurora wishes to speak with you.”

Also, I had heard the reputation of Chansey as being fierce beings of healing. The kindness her aura radiated was as blinding as my pain was, which showed me the truth of my situation.

I would stay here and heal, or else. It made me feel like a little puppy… which I technically was when I was still a Riolu before evolving in battle. Had I been wrong about how a Riolu evolves into a Lucario?

Maybe it was camaraderie and defending people that actually created such strength to change for the better… I had been so wrong before. It wasn’t the main reason for my assaults and raids on Aurora, but it was a factor... also my noble phantasm was shattered and I couldn't access it.

“Stop looking so morose, that’s my job with having to take care of so many idiots!” The Chansey stated while rubbing at her forehead. “I’ll go get our king so he can talk to you.”

My reasons for attacking Aurora might be quite moot at this point.

-One discussion later-

I have erred… GREATLY.

King Evan still didn’t look at me as if I were evil, he saw hope where I saw nothing but the follies of my actions once I told him some things.

“If you want to make it up to us, then start a rescue team somewhere when you get all better!” Evan didn’t seem like the brightest sort, or even the strongest, but he did have a charisma unnatural. “It would certainly take an amount of pressure off of Pom.”

“What is a Rescue Team exactly?” It sounded new to the continent of Ransei, because it apparently was.

“Something great, it’s never too later to turn yourself around you know! I feel like you should be a hero, you just wandered off to the wayside a little bit.” King Evan was far too nice for his own good, I could read his aura and it glowed brightly with his honest heart. Also... he wasn't wrong.

The one to form the first rescue team service in Ransei was one Pom, the sheep like being with that strange aura. I will eventually get better and tell her what she wanted to know… I’m just surprised I’m not a prisoner in this kingdom and am but a guest, a guest they beat in combat of whom they were defending against.

I leaned back, closed my eyes and would let my body heal as Chan ordered.

-Shanty-

Dodo was taken to where the stuff we got for him was waiting, he was eating every last bit of the alien lizard technology we got for him. At least I could feel he was.

There was enough of those drone thing parts and he’d be spitting beams again before I knew it.

I was so happy knowing Dodo was okay and able to move again, it was getting quite hard to carry him around everywhere.

Still healing off my bruises though… with half a cupcake in hoof. Those Sitrus berries sped up the healing of all our friends involved in the battle, King Evan be owing Pom a lot for thinking ahead.

“You sure do eat a lot Ms. Shanty.” Foffo kept brining me food and I be grateful to him for it.

“Yeah, I be needing to heal so of course I be eating a lot.” I drowned my throat with another hunger quenching bowl of soup. Took so long to make and downed in five seconds. “Thank you.”

“The gratitude you feel is more than enough, plus I believe we will be paid for this given this is official Rescue Team business Ms. Shanty.” Foffo stated cheerfully.

“That’s right, you are two are worth the Poké and I’ll be paying out of pocket myself for your services.” Chan be stating with a less bitter tone. “Becoming a Chansey certainly hasn’t made my prospect any easier as being King Evan’s primary medical care giver as castle staff.”

Dodo warbled as he came back chewing on something. He be slightly bigger, but still not big enough to ride. He be looking less egg shaped and more a slightly smaller version of himself with wings being the difference.

I be feeling particularly happy today.

“How about a song?” My grin was met with some perked ears, I’d show them why I was named Shanty. “Maybe one about our victory?”

“Sure… I could go for some good cheer while we’re all still recovering.” Favela was looking to me as if she wanted to join, but she not be knowing the song… not yet anyway. I have yet to even begin singing it!

I be needing to finish my cupcake first! Swallowing the other half, I shook my head and let my sweat mist into the air around me to create a rainbow in the light filtering into the room as I got up off the bed. I was already humming the tune I was going to sing to.

“Let me tell you a story, the greatest of glories, of the heroes those travelers that are on the road right now~!” I sprang into it immediately surprising the Pokémon, but Dodo was warbling the tune as I started singing it. “They’ve know of pains and struggles, but that doesn’t stop them from continuing to push forward, and how~!”

“Who are the travelers, what do they do, can you see them come up to any trouble and just push right on straight through~?” I continued as I looked around the room at all the Pokémon who were listening. “That’s their secret strength, they keep going with greatest of friends and a tankard of rum, now doesn’t that sound, quite dumb~?”

“They are heroes, through and through, no matter what the trouble they all get into~!” My cheerful voice was making them all bounce their heads to the song. “They traveled a long road now and they all need a little break, to listen and share their stories all around~.”

“For where they stopped, is a tavern where they sing, in boundless rounds and with the hope that no fights in there springs~.” I grinned as I looked about, I had an audience, even a Riolu or two was listening. “Fantasy of knights-, with mystical mages and magical lights-, all raising toasts to some of their greatest fights-, but nothing quite tells a great tale and never without fail-, like a true story of those who come to wander-, through all the violence on which they can ponder-, only to come out on the other side… with- nothing more than a little bit of yarn to sell~!”

“So with their tales of glory, they have a story, to spin into a tapestry and will put it out for sale~. For they will do so without fail, they travel the road, even if they do not know, where to go~!” I grin and the lyrical lilt in my voice was enticing. “Everywhere they go, a problem springs up, they can’t leave the tavern without something about to erupt~. Are they cursed, do they want to stop~? on that, I hear, yes’s, and no’s~!”

“Were they great, were they strong, even though everything around them always does seemingly go quite wrong~?!” I drew out a few gasps. “With your friends, you can’t go wrong, no matter how the road grows so long~!”

“Just remember, who is at your side, at the end of the day and if they can stay that way to say that everything will be okay~!” I hugged Dodo and he pulled me into a hug with his wings, I think that be why he is having them. Maybe also for flying, but we’ll see about that. “Never lose your best friends, those who will go with you to no ends, to protect you with their lives and you can always return that favor by the fives~! Now we all need some rest, at the night’s tiresome behest, it’s either that or wander into an evil forest, to get back to kicking some more butt and earning more of that exploratory glory~!”

“Let me tell you a story, the greatest of glories, of the heroes those travelers that are on the road right now~!” Favela sang and she be having a great voice for it. She also be picking up on the theme of the adventure starting, but never ending and be doing exactly what I wanted.

“They’ve know of pains and struggles, but that doesn’t stop them from continuing to push forward, and how~!” Quetal, Shine and Dazzle sang together loudly.

“Who are the travelers, what do they do, can you see them come up to any trouble and just push right on straight through~?” The Rockruff brothers sang in earnestly, likely thinking of Pom.

“That’s their secret strength, they keep going with greatest of friends and a tankard of rum~.” Foffo sang with a proper sounding voice.

“Now doesn’t that sound, quite dumb~?” Fiffi giggled as Shanty took a glass and downed it as she provided some energetic dancing for everyone.

“They are heroes, through and through, no matter what the trouble they all get into~!” Geoff sang with a hint of laughter. “They traveled a long road now and they all need a little break, to listen and share their stories all around~.”

“For where they stopped, is a tavern where they sing, in boundless rounds and with the hope that no fights in there springs~.” Some of the badly injured Rattata sang in good cheer.

“Fantasy of knights-, with mystical mages and magical lights-, all raising toasts to some of their greatest fights-, but nothing quite tells a great tale and never without fail-, like a true story of those who come to wander-, through all the violence on which they can ponder-, only to come out on the other side… with- nothing more than a little bit of yarn to sell~!” Chan surprisingly joined in with a cheerful smile.

“So with their tales of glory, they have a story, to spin into a tapestry and will put it out for sale~.” The Torchic with bandages around her head and butt continued.

“For they will do so without fail, they travel the road, even if they do not know, where to go~!” Honedge joined in next, his slightly dented form sounded quite jovial.

“Everywhere they go, a problem springs up, they can’t leave the tavern without something about to erupt~.” Some of the Riolu sang.

“Are they cursed, do they want to stop~? On the road of life, I hear yes’s, and no’s~!” Shanty broke in changing the story slightly and notably. Everyone got the idea, they were all on the road of life and some would continue where other could not or they would all go down branching paths.

“Were they great, were they strong, even though everything around them always does seemingly go quite wrong~?!” Half the room sang out as if asking the other half.

“With your friends, you can’t go wrong, no matter how the road grows so long~!” The other half of the room responded.

“Just remember, who is at your side, at the end of the day and if they can stay that way to say that everything will be okay~!” Evan joined in, bringing in Maiden Jig and wrapped a paw around her with a great hug.

“Never lose your best friends, those who will go with you to no ends, to protect you with their lives and you can always return that favor by the fives~!” Even as grumpy as Maiden Jig was, she joined in too.

“Now we all need some rest, at the night’s tiresome behest, it’s either that or wander into an evil forest, to get back to kicking some more butt and earning more of that exploratory glory~!” Everyone sang with a bit of laughter.

“And that be the road, of life~.” I started finishing up while nodding. “With friends to help you there’s far less strife and the glory comes from sharing the good and bad times being with all the others in your story~!”

Really wish I had a drink right about now, Dodo nuzzled up to me warbling cheerfully and he would be walking the road with me again as my familiar and good friend.

I can lead a good round at a tavern if I kept this up and there was a tavern waiting back on Equus for me to do some singing, maybe I’ll even see that goat captain again, because our stories aren’t over yet and I still need to become captain of my own ship!

-Smolder-

Heh, Shanty really knows how to sing and live up to her namesake, not to mention she got everyone involved in it. Wish Pom and Ocellus were here, but they had business at the guild and were probably taking a break like we were here in Aurora Castle’s infirmary.

Yeah my bruises still hurt, but Shanty’s singing just made them sting instead of throb… huh… maybe Ocellus should look into Shanty’s singing to see if it was quite as magical as I thought it was.

“What happened in here, I felt a huge burst of good cheer over here. It even encompassed all of Helper’s Hamlet.” Well Ocellus, Shanty might have talents geared towards being one of the best pirates I will ever hear of in my long life.

“Just Shanty getting us to quit focusing on our injuries and cheering everyone up with a song… so…” I trailed off and then grinned. Thinking about a song of drunken heroes traveling in large circle and ending back up in the same tavern they left with tall tales. “Let me tell you a story, the greatest of glories, of the heroes those travelers that are on the road right now~!”

Shanty grinned and started up again.

-Fields outside of Helper’s Hamlet, evening, Dolly-

Come on, I can do all kinds of skateboard tricks.

I can manipulate momentum of things on touch, provided it’s not going to imminently kill me.

I can even throw rocks that hit like a tank shell, because yes, I just tested adding momentum to a rock and throwing it through the swirling winds of an aero equals incredibly fast rock that can hit harder than a bullet. I can only do that about three times before my magic bottoms out.

I’m well aware that my magical capacity sucks, but I had a way to fix that with some tempo related blocks during a fight.

I’m no longer without a dangerous projectile attack if I have something small enough for me to throw… not that I had problems with casting Aero at a distance away from myself. Aero was kind of useless against those Lucario until I throw something through it.

I’m an awesome, if relatively small, Dalmatian.

I can glide through the air, leap higher than any dog, run up walls and along the ceiling, but breaking into a higher range of air moving magic is beyond me? Even if I can feel it sitting right there?!

I don’t believe for a second that I can’t do it! Dalmatians can do ‘anything’ and I’m proving it with my Pom as my witness!

“Build.” The simplistic minded Bidoof said next to me.

“Tackle me.” I tapped the board to show the Bidoof that I wanted to hit me, I jumped and the Bidoof tackled into my board and I absorbed energy from the impact that was not one I created. Trying to go beyond my meager limit of magical strength gave me a headache, but restoring my magical strength before I did allowed me to do more and practice.

Even then the fatigue of taking attacks would wear on me after so many hits.

The Bidoof weren’t the brightest Pokémon around, but they were very helpful once they know what you wanted them to do.

I got inward wind, outward wind, shielding wind, I can charge my board with it. It was always the wind… something I actually loved on a hot day, a nice cool breeze while I watched the pups running around.

Pom needed me to be strong enough to keep up with her and keep her in a good mood. I knew how haste worked, it didn’t have any alternatives other than extending the time it worked for based on how much magic I put into it.

I’ve never actually done this much thinking in my whole dog gone life! I like to just… do stuff, basically wing it, doing fun things and keeping Pom’s backside safe and happy.

My heart was in it, my body was in it, I think even my soul was in it with something else in there… probably not important… but my mind… yeah…

Keeping up with Pom’s impossible outside the box thinking was hard, especially when she jumps a level in capability and I’m still steadily slowly working on my own strengths. My body wasn’t going to miraculously get tougher or bigger aside from normal growth, I wasn’t going to go total muscle dog. I was primarily built for moving and speed, which was my thing.

What part of my cunning was I missing here? I knew I could think laps around my much smarter brothers back in my home world, because they get so easily distracted when I wanted them to look the other way and they fell for my pranks or shenanigans multiple times. They tended to focus far too much on their own ideas of things, which as we know is not necessarily wrong like aliens, mythological beings and what not so what was I…

Was it… had it really been that simple? Well my brother’s wouldn’t be wrong in saying I’m an idiot sometimes.

Aero is what ‘Aero’ does, but never push its boundaries like I’m trying to do. So… did that mean there were spells that were different that did that same exact thing but greater?

So if I want a more powerful spell, then I need something that’s not just ‘Aero’… something… more…

I can feel it at the tip of my panting tongue.

The wind shifted around me and I inhaled through my nose, felt the breeze of the world moving even as I sat out here in the grass in a place my brothers and sister would have loved to run around in freely. A thought came to me on the wind ‘something’ about the word ‘Aurora’.

“Something like an add-on to the spell, why the word Aurora… Au-ro-ra? Ra? Aero… and Ra.” I paused and considered it. Something clicked in my head… I held out my right paw while channeling magic. “Aerora?”

The world exploded into swirling tornados of wind far more powerful than a normal Aero, I could summon two at once doing two entirely different things. I could combine them together into one big tornado, I could split them further and spread them over entire groups all with the strength of a normal Aero, stack two tornadoes on top of each other to launch me high into the sky. My head was suddenly filled with the possibilities of having more powerful swirling winds of greater strength at my beck and call.

“Hah, figured… OW, oh dog my head… that is a costly one!” Could definitely only do that once every other block or so, because that drained me a lot. After holding my head for a bit and the winds died down, I leaned back. “I know you can’t understand me, but… thanks for the help there buddy.”

“Build.” The Bidoof stated, as they normally do. Maybe they weren’t so simple minded after all, he seemed to pick up on my meaning easily enough.

I let my ears whip about in the normal wind and smiled to the Bidoof who was smiling back at me. We both relaxed there on the hillside watching the evening sun dip beyond the horizon, looking in the direction of Helper’s Hamlet.

The darkness of the future, whatever we’re heading into next, wasn’t going to stop this Dalmatian!

261. The casual calm, before more storms.

-Beach, Fluttershy-

“Is this where you do your therapy sessions?” I asked of Jade calmly, Mr. Anubis was quite memorable from when Discord took me time traveling and he seemed a lot calmer these days.

“Yeah, but this session is mostly for Celestia, we’ll get back to working me through why I shouldn’t destroy Saddle Arabia next time.” Really Jaded, you weren’t going to let that go? “Today we’re going to get Celestia to admit she has a problem.”

“I have no problems that I know of.” It’s when someone says that Celestia that they have the most problems out of anyone.

“Look out there’s a chicken behind you!” Jaded pointed with a wide eyed look, Celestia immediately leapt onto the top of the nearby beach parasol screaming at the top of her lungs as we stared at her. The parasol didn’t snap or break. “Right… no problems… I fully believe you….”

“Y-you just caught me off guard!” We all stared flatly at Celestia as her eyes darted about. Who was continuing to cower on top of the parasol that held up her weight, Celestia probably bought it to be rated tough enough for an Alicorns full weight.

“Strange thing is, Celestia isn’t afraid of cockatrices.” Jade motioned to Silver Stream as she presented Edith, Edith clucked merrily. Celestia flinched lightly at the clucking noise, she was looking at the more chicken like parts of Edith warily and otherwise didn’t find Edith to be scary at all after a few moments of recognizing that she wasn’t a chicken. “She’s clearly got a phobia of and is terrified out of her mind by chickens.”

“There are no chickens underwater, if she wants to come live in my home… I’d welcome Celestia in Seaquestria.” Queen Novo smiled in Celestia’s direction.

“Into your bed maybe.” Jaded state bluntly.

After a few moments, I realized that Novo didn’t deny it and was blushing a bit while looking away.

“Celestia’s diplomat related relationships are not what we’re here about today… also Jaded’s intent to cause incredibly volatile incidents against a landmass.” Mr. Anubis, the death god I was only vaguely acquainted with, rolled his eyes. I think I knew the confusion god Veles better than him. “We’re here to get Celestia to admit she has a problem and an intense fear of chickens, we also need to help her process her fears as to find the root cause of them.”

“Chickens, don’t scare me… honestly it was absurd anyone would fear those… little… beady eyed… sharp beaked… birds!” For some reason, I didn’t believe you Celestia.

That’s when Elizabeak, a notably gentle and friendly chicken who I had brought with me, finally wandered up behind her and clucked.

Celestia freaked out at seeing Elizabeak and went flying away screaming shrilly. Nobody laughed and nobody made a nasty remark about Celestia’s fears.

“I’ll go get her.” Anubis glowed and began to levitate after Celestia.

“We’ll help her with her chicken problem eventually… maybe Applebloom in a chicken costume?” That might work Jaded. “Her hair is the right color at least.”

-Ransei, a few days later, morning, cornfield, Pom-

“Are you bored yet Dolly?” Surprisingly, she didn’t look to be despite the thing we were currently doing was shucking corn. Ocellus was handling the rice fields.

“… Can I say no?” Dolly was busier watching the Miltanks. Those friendly, slightly rotund, pink and black cows that can move in a bipedal manner. She wasn’t exactly helping me as much she could be with the chores we were supposed to be helping them with.

In fact a lot of rescue team stuff has been tame thus far, the small requests and chores were fun and simple and we got to meet interesting people who just wanted a little help.

“It would be a lie wouldn’t it?” Knowing the inside of a dogs mind as much as I knew my own was never going to stop being weird.

“Not entirely, but we have been playing it safe for the last few days and I kind of want to do more Pom.” At least we were being paid pretty well for all the odd jobs I had everyone running around doing. Dodo being back meant we might be able to use the transport wagon soon for long distance traveling, but Dodo wasn’t exactly big enough for that yet. “Don’t get me wrong the exercise and training are awesome and you’re pushing me to my limits while keeping me fit, but... I kind of want to travel more. Not that Aurora isn’t any fun, but this seems pretty tame compared to all the stuff we’ve been through previously.”

“I’m glad things are tame, Evan is focusing some attention on the western bridge and making sure the Snorlax doesn’t accidentally hurt anyone by rolling over on top of them. The civil war to the north means we don’t have to worry about things and Motochika, as far as we know, is pushing southwards into his kingdom and retaking his territory.” Our Rescue Team has enough money to buy a few things from those Kecleon Merchants, but their prices were based on convenience of what you wanted to buy from them and how hard it was to acquire said item. Food was cheap, apples, berries and vegetables were affordable to just about anyone with a bit of Poké. “I don’t want to be involved in a civil war as it’s definitely not our business. Retaking Fontaine isn’t exactly our business either, but we will actually assist if asked to do so by King Motochika. He may call in King Evan to assist with the final battle, which is why we haven’t been resting and keeping up with our abilities.”

Recently the Kecleon acquired a number of solidified one use Technique Magic, they were disks usually referred to as TMs. The TMs can teach any viable Pokémon the move contained within, afterward the disk became useless. Aside from the instantaneous effect, a Pokémon could be taught a move by another Pokémon. There was nothing of interest to my core group there, but if our companion Pokémon asked, we might fund a move for them to learn.

“Well you’re a pragmatic one.” Quetal commented idly, he was getting really good at shucking the corn without cutting it with his claws, he didn’t have an opposable digit and was still doing it quickly and efficiently.

Quetal wanted to be recognized as a good person so badly it was heart wrenching, he was trying to get past the stigma of dark type Pokémon. A stigma which wasn’t a problem here in the Kingdom of Aurora, but might be in other places.

“Pragmatic because she’s already been through so much!” There was also a stigma about poison types, especially incredibly powerful poison types like Dazzle. Dazzle and I had a strong friendship, because I wasn’t afraid of her and we both have been through plenty in our lives. I really did not want to get involved in poison type politics, they sounded incredibly iffy and far worse than the reindeer games in Rein that Velvet had to deal with before she basically disowned herself from her family. “I don’t know about you, but after that fight with Cu Chulainn it is fairly understandable that she wouldn’t want to jump into fighting again so soon. If she didn’t have that reviver seed in her mouth when he skewered her...”

It was strange that a Salandit like Dazzle was welcome around here, aside from the Whismur acting up… everyone seemed to think she was a perfectly nice Pokémon. Aside from the stigma of being among the most dangerous poison Pokémon you can possibly meet outside a Mareanie and Toxapex, there was also the fact that Salandits tended to cause wariness as being part of a thief culture.

Dazzle wasn’t a thief and she just wanted to dance, sing and be merry with no worries. She didn’t want to worry about politics or be forced to form a male harem as a Salazzle queen after she evolved, if she chose to do so.

Ignoring the fact that Dazzle was a noted princess, she certainly didn’t act like nobility as she was said she was trained to be. Mind you the training was her being beaten into the ground until she could hardly walk up until she did what she was told to do, it really toughened her up a lot.

That Dazzle managed to escape to here by running across several kingdoms throughout the entire continent while under near constant attack from pursuers… well she was a strong fighter even if she didn’t want to be.

I easily related to that on a number of levels.

“Yeah, I know! It just… it just feels like we could be doing more, not that I mind doing this… I really like corn.” Looking over to Quetal’s pile when he spoke, the Sneasel had amassed more shucked corn than the rest of us combined… without damaging any of the corn he shucked. Despite not having opposable digits he was fairly talented at it. “Grits are delicious and the word ‘grit’ means a lot to me, you’ve certainly shown that you’re a person worth being around numerous times Pom. How do you think the other teams are doing?”

Coming from a harsh cold kingdom where food is scarce and friends are even scarcer, with a political climate that was quite literal, Quetal wanted to be seen for who he was and not what he was. He had mellowed out quickly getting to know us and King Evan’s forces. The merit of his actions, dour personality aside, spoke volumes for him.

He hasn’t been a big help yet, but he has tried hard enough to earn my approval as part as our traveling companion.

“I’d say that Shanty and Favela have destroyed a cabbage cart if Shine isn’t keeping those two in line, Dodo is probably just sticking nearby and trying to figure out if Shine is a vegetable, an animal or a friend.” I thought it was nice to see Shanty’s familiar up and moving again, no matter how strange Dodo was biologically. “Ocellus, Smolder, Foffo and Fiffi, are likely doing a good job. Provided nothing distracts Ocellus from keeping Smolder on task, something like experimenting with her body and trying to replicate the stuff she’s seen Pokémon do, I’m sure they’ll be fine as they are less likely to cause trouble. Smolder might set something on fire by accident.”

“So no more dangerous than a Charmander… but would she be like a dragon type?” Dazzle stated looking thoughtful.

“I’m not sure how elemental typing really effects my group. Smolder is literally a dragon, but I don’t know if she would count as far as this world is concerned.” It was definitely a concern I was mildly worried about.

“Well keep her away from fairies type anyway, it’s much better to be safe… than sorry...” Quetal speaks from experience that I’m well aware of.

“Well let’s finish this job up.” I went back to my shucking and would eventually move onto plucking up vegetables.

-An hour later, Helper’s Hamlet, Guild Hall-

Lunchtime was a nice and quiet time to discuss things with friends.

“So, what are we likely to do next that doesn’t involve Aurora, because we’re getting a bit antsy here Pom.” Smolder was the first one to crack after taking a sip of her drink. “Sure we’re helping the local economy and the kingdom of Aurora is doing pretty good, it’s like we have an itch for adventure to see what’s out there. One that you just don’t seem to have.”

“For many good reasons, I’m sure you know all of them by now.” Aliens, robots, lizards, zombies, robots and all manner of other things, I’m surprised we haven’t been involved in fighting pirates very much aside from what Splatter Phoenix did to that one exhibit. “Reminder, I’m not nearly as indestructible as I seem and Cu Chulainn still gored me. I am not numb to pain nor do I enjoy the feeling of having a lethal bloody hole put into my body.”

“If it makes you feel better you were brilliantly fierce and adorable at the same time! I don’t know how many of us would have come out of that fight any better than you by being capable of destroying his ability to transform.” Geoff stated with a cheerful and positive attitude. “I didn’t even think that destroying a mega stone was possible.”

“The only good thing that came of that disastrous fight was that I have learned that I have good control over my Dancing Flame technique, but I’m not liable to abuse that knowledge given how fast my health failed me from overuse previously.” Not that I was going to focus on the fact that after Arceus healed me to full health, I was functionally strong enough to stand on almost even ground with Cu Chulainn while transformed. “I prefer this quiet and not fighting for my life on my back, I’d rather take fighting Team Pocket or even Mr. Beelzebug futilely trying to be threatening than get into another horrid situation for the rest of my life. That, as I well know, is completely unavoidable though.”

“Then what do you be waiting for exactly?” Shanty asked with a tilt of her head before she bit into some fruit.

“For someone to actually ask me for help and for things to not snowball out of control. I am dead tired of running to aid people, I like the walking pace we’re doing now… knowing I’m still going to do some running regardless of my own feelings in the matter eventually.” Bringing my hooves up to my face, I started to rub at it in small slow circles. “Remind me again, what is my biggest flaw?”

“That you think you have to do everything yourself to keep us safe, though you do notably be relying on us for things so it’s not really being too bad.” Responded Shanty. “You could at least be training Smolder and Ocellus to be defending themselves better, you be training Dolly and me well enough to figure out things for myself. That and I be getting extra training from the Cooper Gang.”

“That you can’t relax even if it’s ultimately required to save your life and are slowly forcing yourself into an early grave trying to keep up with the constant crushing pressure on you that your trying to keep entirely off of us?” Responded Ocellus. “You’re not the healthiest person mentally Pom and your constant physical scars and injuries aren’t helping all the mental ones that much.”

“That you don’t have any pride in your capabilities that you obviously practice when you think we aren’t watching?” Yeah, Smolder was one of the ones that catch me practicing everything I can do the most, including the basics of the combat styles I know. “You’re not a master in combat by any stretch of the imagination from what we’ve seen, but you’ve basically cobbled together the fighting capability that would put you on par with what you told us your friends are capable of. You need to acknowledge the kind of absurdities that you said your friends are normally capable of, because you ‘yourself’ are now currently capable of them by your own merits. We've said it several times before that you shouldn't ignore your strength, also find better methods to cope with things than curling up in a corner and crying about how unfair all the stuff that’s happened to us has been.”

“That you don’t use that incredibly fast working brain of yours to think of easier solutions to avoid larger problems sooner?” Dolly said with a snort, because she could quite clearly feel my embarrassment.

“That… was actually a good one for me to hear Dolly.” If the stone around Cu Chulainn's neck was the reason for his transformation, then I should have tried to Bark Breaker sooner.

The unfortunate problem behind using the Bark Breaker then is, if I had missed the first time I probably would have made the metal bones in his chest brittle… with the implications behind that possible being able to accidentally kill him in one hit. That is something I would never do intentionally, at least I know I’m a steel or rock type Pokémon’s worst nightmare. Getting a good point blank angle on it so I wouldn’t kill him is what basically got me skewered.

“Maybe you’re too kind, but that’s not exactly a bad trait to have!” Geoff said with a pleasant tone. “So want to go on a date?”

“No.” Despite being asked that in a persistently annoying manner, I can’t say that Geoff was a bad person. I ate some of my salad before I considered adding onto the statement. “While I’m going to feign being flattered and pretend to appreciate that you think of me so well, I’m going to continue saying ‘no’.”

“Hey, scars can be attractive, ask any Wooloo that loves pain!” Which would be somewhere in the numbers of more than half your particular species of Pokémon Geoff.

“Asking a Wooloo would just lead to the question, are you single… and if not, do you want to share?” Nobody could deny that having already happened at least once Quetal… this week, the first day of, and that would just be the Wooloo getting started until the week ends.

“Well we have to remind everyone that life is worth living and that there is always someone out there that will find you attractive regardless of what you or others may think.” In so many ways Geoff was a simple minded. “Outward appearances never show the true ugliness nor beauty of a person, even people ugly on the inside need someone. That said, outward appearances are an indicator of a person’s possible story and it is usually the one you imagine at first sight. It is not a key indicator of that person’s personality or actual story though and you won’t know anything about them unless interact with them or you ask them and they are willing to talk about it. Outward appearances can often, like most things we don’t understand in life, be deceiving. As such, I can forgive Cu Chulainn for his actions no matter the reasons behind them, because he hasn’t actually killed anyone… not for the lack of trying though.”

We all just stared at a blankly smiling Geoff.

“I will never get used to Wooloo.” If you ever did get used to them Dazzle, I will want to know how you did it.

“Agreed.” The rest of us echoed.

“You can continue being mean about it all you want, but I will still appreciate all of you!” Don’t think Geoff would ever change, also can he please stop looking at us with starry eyes? I’m quite sure he used half of his brain cell for complimenting and trying to ask people out on dates. The other half was spent being a good friend and effective member of the local militia that happened to be a fairly sturdy unit of wooly wonders.

-Some time after lunch-

“What are you doing?” Eriflamb asked, the Fennekin was wearing an accessory on his head that read ‘Bathhouse’ as he was getting quite into the role as head of the baths. He knew he could request Picochi or Pristi to clean them if something was ultimately wrong with them. He just had to be aware of which bathhouse had which problem. Any repairs needed would be done by Bidoof.

I think the Rockruff brothers were currently rolling around in the dirt and sand baths, but they were not the ones I was wondering about.

“Making some homemade nut mash from local sources, Dolly is going to need it soon because she is almost out of kibble.” Goodness knows that I’ve seen Dolly has been rationing that stuff like it was pure mound of gold and platinum, not that she didn’t appreciate my cooking or other foods… it’s just that kibble was something she’s existed on for so long.

I know the method for making kibble hoof made, but it would take quite a few ingredients and for me to do some fishing if I want to put some meat into it. Otherwise I had plenty of ingredients to make her a non-meat based kibble for her around here, essentially dog safe granola. When you have fifteen plus canine familiars, then you’re going to learn how to effectively cook for all of them.

The nut mash would be tasty and anyone could enjoy it, provided they don’t have a nut allergy, plus it was good protein for Dolly. I'm going to make some berry preserves next.

“So, I heard from the Pidgey scouts that they saw some large movements along the eastern coastline in northeastern Fontaine and that Motochika is successfully pushing south.” Eriflamb just wanted to make idle conversation as I worked on this food. “We might be getting word from him asking for support from King Evan soon.”

“That’s kind of what I’m worried about.” I continued to pound and mulch my mixture into a paste, a clean mortar and pestle really helps with this. I was going to be making a lot of this and it would keep for a long time.

“Yeah, I kind of need a hobby when I’m not watching the bathhouses. Got any suggestions?” The fox with the ridiculous ear hair looked to me expectantly.

“Depends… are the recreational activities your looking for high energy or low energy?” I knew plenty of low energy ones, because taking care of an entire pack of canines can get quite exhausting. “High energy might not leave you a lot of time to cover your job as the main runner of our bathhouses. Maybe start training that Oddish or the Flabebe to help you out with it.”

“I have energy to burn.” Eriflamb blew out a small torrent of flames into the air. “Quite literally, but I do want to know some low energy activities for when I get bored.”

“Considering your type, have you ever thought to take up wood burning art? I know the Bidoof have plenty of stockpiled wood to share for it. There’s also singing, gardening and the like that won’t take up much of your time in a day.” He tilted his head curiously at me. “If you do take up wood burning, then the wood ashes from that can be used in gardening as fertilizer and singing is an activity anyone can enjoy if they know a song they’d like to sing, plants also like carbon dioxide so singing near them will help them grow to. Your activities can mix into each other like that, I have heard that Fennekin have a strange bond with sticks so that was the first thing off the top of my mind. If you want something more high energy, then you can train to do showy things as entertainment. I can imagine a fox that breathes fire, who can shape his flames and create stories in the air with them by creating images.”

Like a Longma does when they control fire… Tianhuo certainly liked watching sky art.

“Hm…” Eriflamb nodded to me and left looking thoughtful.

-A few hours later-

“Pom, a scout from the Fontaine liberation forces is here!” Announced Dazzle as she came back from spending time singing and dancing with Torchic and other Pokémon.

“Where are they?” The thought of being asked to help came up in my mind as I waited to meet this person.

“Down there!” Seeing Dazzle point downwards, I looked down at another tiny Pokémon, it looked like a four spindly legged blue ball looking to have some kind of pointy cap on top of its head. Closer inspection reveals it to be a part of its biology and that it was releasing a sweet scent. “It’s a water and bug type called a Surskit and one of Motochika’s scouts.”

After a moment of quiet, it became apparent that the small Pokémon looked to have forgotten something.

“Did Motochika want something?” Having asked that, the smiling mouth like shapes under the Pokémon's eyes turned from being pink to being a bit redder. With one of his spindly legs he reached back at the tube strapped to his back two legs without making it impossible to walk, he pulled out a rolled up bit of paper and passed it up to my hoof.

“Motochika here, I want the rescue team help with liberating some more of my units, we’ll be dealing with the Gyardos units you saw here in the east. The push south is going fairly well and we’ve managed to drag a number of Pokémon out of the control zone to bring them back to our side, Lugia’s suggestion to prevent further control is helping our war effort. As to what this message is about, I’m sending a unit that wants to repay a favor for what Aurora's Skitty Squad did for them earlier. You are to rescue the units they are tasked with knocking out so they can regroup in Aurora and begin preparing for a big push and final battle. Be prepared for the Super Sentai Squirtle Squad, they can be a bit… eccentric... I apologize in advance. They are already heading for Helper’s Hamlet, I am also asking Evan to lend any help he can to my efforts. My Surskit scout unit will stay in the area and help the Squirtles in combat, I hope you will assist them and make up the difference in combat strength.” Having read all that I looked to the little Surskit and he threw a salute at me. I looked at the Post Script and finished reading the note out loud. “Watch out for an Inteleon being in the area south of Aurora, their long range attacks are dangerous and stupidly fast. They usually shoot powerful compact water bullets from high up spots. The expected enemy units to be dealt with in the area to the south are the Octillery Officers and the Froakie Commandoes units. The commission pay will be given to you, upfront, by the Squirtles upon their arrival.”

The Surskit threw another salute and looked around, it seemed like it wanted something… so I directed it to the water type bathhouse where it started to skate on top of the water playfully while they waited for the rest of their unit to show up.

-Later in the evening, outside the bathhouses-

The sun was still up and I had finished mashing up a few pounds of puppy protein packed power snacks for Dolly. Also a few of the local fruits she can safely eat were now pulped and just as preserved, so she’ll have some delicious food going forward.

“So they were supposed to show up some time… what the…” Ocellus was talking with me about the Super Sentai Squirtle Squad, when she suddenly looked into the sky.

That’s when we saw six spinning red turtle shells came lowering from the sky releasing water from their orifices as they lowered to the ground like water powered flying saucers and then all the shells stopped spewing water. Five of what had to be the Squirtles landed on their feet after popping, one unfortunately dropped on their head.

“We are the Super Sentai Squirtle Squad! I am Squirt Red, master of firefighting!” Said the boisterous blue skinned turtle with a red cloth wrapped around his head with eye holes.

“I am Squirt Blue, master of cute!” Said the female Squirtle who posed like a pop star with a blue cloth on her head.

“I am… Squirt Green, ugh…” Said the Squirtle stuck on his back, he was the one that landed on his head. “Master of clumsy heroics…”

“I am Squirt Black, the master of being the edgy one!” Said the Squirtle with sharper eyes wearing a black cloth on his head while also wearing black triangular looking sunglasses. “Sunglasses!”

The sunglasses sparkled brightly for some reason.

“I… mmhemhme… am Squirt Yellow, the master of being invisible… I rescue other team members when they get into trouble.” The neon yellow clothed quiet female water turtle said with something approaching conviction. “And they get into a lot of trouble… so much trouble…”

“I am Squirt Purple, their most obviously obnoxious team member that tries to act like the team leader to make Squirt Red look good by comparison when I fail horribly and am the master of being the decoy that is secretly a masochist!” Secretly? You just told everyone out loud Squirt Purple… ah… obviously obnoxious, I get it.

“Here’s the pay for your commission, Rescue Team leader Lambchop!” Squirt Red smiled with glittering teeth as he passed me a heavy bag of money. “Super Sentai Squirtle Squad will be happy to work with you, for we are…”

“Heroes on a budget, Squirtle Power!” They announced together with jazz hands.

“Is it too late to wish that the quiet days would continue and that they would go back to where they came from?” That was a rather scathing amount of sarcasm Ocellus, I thought I knew you.

“Hey now, we’re a good team and we can fight very well despite our many…. excessively numerous… shortcomings!” Red Squirt stated with his fists on his hips while standing there proudly. “We owe it to Aurora’s Skitty Squad unit for saving our backsides and King Motochika too!”

“Team? I work alone, I’m the lone wolf stalking the night wearing a homemade zubat costume, because a Caterpie string shot my parents and covered them in his parent defiling silk. I was traumatized by the number of zubats that populate this world by wandering into a cave full of them… on purpose!” Squirt Black announced in what I’m beginning to recognize as sounding like a whole lot of stupidity. “The trauma of stepping on a pointy pinecone left me with many mental scars that made me the hard baked, crime fighting, detective monster I am today! Why I can brood for hours about nothing and look cool while doing it! Black is the only color I will wear! Edgy, Edgelord, edge, blade, edginess, brooding, two sunglasses for my biceps, acting too cool for anything within my presence and blindly taking it as evidence that I’m the coolest one around while mysteriously getting selective hearing as a super power!”

For any god that might be watching this moment, yes, Squirt Black just said all that. Also yes, he had two more of the same sunglasses and was wearing them on his arms as he flexed them.

“I’m adorable, I should be looked at more than Squirt Purple!” The slightly airheaded Squirt Blue stated with another pose.

“I’m still the master of being a decoy you know!” Squirt Purple announced angrily. “Of course I’m going to get more grievously injured so you can continue to be cute!”

“But I want that attention though, even if it’s bad for my cuteness!” Squirt Blue whined.

“Before you ask, yes, our team is a complete mess and a half.” Squirt Green admitted with some shame. “Still we have helped Pokémon successfully… with a sixty five percent success rate when we do have our acts together and we’re not weak at least.”

What was their success rate at when their acts weren’t together?

Yellow just seemed to blend into the background without really trying and any movement made them more visible, which is odd because a bright blue skinned turtle with a shiny red shell wearing neon yellow shouldn’t be so good at stealth.

“Pom… how quickly can we legally get them maimed with a real accident?” Ocellus asked innocently and I stared at her aghast. “Just kidding… now if there was a boulder sitting precariously on a nearby cliff…”

“No Ocellus, we’re not going to ‘miraculously’ let them get hurt somehow and handle everything else ourselves. No matter how tempting that might currently be.” I had a few items of interest to purchase from them, also more healing supplies. We were definitely going to need healing supplies. “Besides Motochika has, sadly enough, paid us for the job upfront with money and we can use that to fund some gear from the Kecleon Merchants. Also do you seriously want those poor innocent Surskit scouts to be only backed up by us?”

I looked into the water type bathhouse and saw the Surskit unit working on formations while gliding across the top of the water professionally at incredible speeds. They were small and quite agile at least.

“You’re right, but their emotions are so annoying… except for Squirt Yellow, she’s okay and seems to fade out on my emotional radar easily enough.” Even Ocellus’s emotional sense were having problem keeping Squirt Yellow in view?

“Quick question, are you the only Squirtle with super powers?” I asked once I finally managed to spot Squirt Yellow.

“Yes… I’m the most competent team member. Well, next to red that is… when there’s a fire to fight he can decimate it on his own.” Squirt Yellow stated timidly. “I… Don’t honestly know how he manages to spit Hydro Cannon attacks at his size… he should honestly be incapable of it.”

“Where’s evil burning at the worlds goodness, I will quench the fires of villainy under a deluge of water!” Squirt Red announced passionately. “We will see our end of the fighting through, just you wait and see, hah ha!”

“Again, I’m sorry Ocellus, but no, we can’t wish for what amounts to an ‘exceedingly happy’ accident to happen to them.” I whispered to Ocellus, also Smolder and Dolly who showed up staring at the spectacle that was the Super Sentai Squirtle Squad. Shanty and Favela were still working on fixing the cabbage cart that exploded violently earlier this morning when they were chasing a fox Pokémon called a Nickit, that stole a small piece of food. Shine was making sure they fully completed the repair job before dinner. “Even if I’m quite clearly starting to see the appeal of it.”

“I will make a young bird Pokémon my sidekick and name him Swallow. For he will do so with the evils of this world, but I will continue to work alone and treat him like dirt because of my edginess." Squirt Black would continue to be the weirdest one out of all of them. "He’ll be my best friend ever, because I’m too edgy to normally have those!”

Author's Note

This... can only end well.

262. Sentai Shenanigans.

-Ransei, the next morning, Fontaine Crossroads, Shanty-

“This is being a bit too quiet.” The surroundings were silent aside from natural animals, insects and frogs, not a Pokémon to be seen in the wetlands area.

To the west there be no movement, to the east would be where Motochika’s forces were said to be pushing down the east coast. To the south was mostly the unknown and there were no aggressors at the bridge.

We be being in small numbers. The Strange Squirtles, The Surskit Scouts, Our four traveling Pokémon companions and then there’s our group now with my Dodo back in action.

Speaking of Dodo, he be warbling and looking around curiously, he be fairly alert for trouble though. He not be big enough to cart around the wagon we have waiting yet, but I be noticing that he be growing somewhat from his egg size.

Dodo be needing much more materials, even if he didn’t be finishing the stuff we got for him yet. Some of the hunter drone materials were still sitting in storage in Aurora castle, but Dodo be giving me a feeling he’d be needing much more to grow back to his original size. Dodo still couldn’t spit beams from his beak, but he wasn’t being helpless.

The new wings were very cool looking and there were implications that he could fly now, given he be giving me strange images of being in the sky. He not be capable of that yet either, but his wings wouldn’t need to flap to do it at least… it’d be looking really weird if he flapped his wings to fly.

“Then we shall Furret out the victims and quench their controllers thirst for villainy!” Squirt Red got old pretty quickly, but he be having his heart in the right place… we think.

“I had my spine broken this morning before I woke up by a Gurdurr, I got better obviously, but I will find the criminal that almost crippled and make them pay with violently awesome vigilante justice!” Black Squirt was narrating a life story that never happened so that be about right with him. “He uses a drug from modified Arbok venom to make himself stupidly strong!”

“Please don’t, it’s not cute if you keep going on about how adorable you are, it also makes you sound horribly narcissistic.” That Pom shut up Blue Squirt before she could even get started was funny as her mouth flapped open and closed trying to come up with a comeback.

“But she is horribly narcissistic!” Squirt Purple stated loudly trying to be drawing attention to himself.

“Says the distracting guy who can’t go five minutes without being distracted with himself?” Squirt Blue said dryly with her eyes continuing to be sparkly.

“Going to need Rawst Berry for that burn… agh!” Squirt Green is being okay, despite tripping over his own feet constantly like he just did. I also be liking Squirt Yellow.

“Can we just get on with this adventure?” As grumpy as Quetal was, he looked ready to shred something and I’ve been meaning to talk to him about his slash and dash style of combat. “Motochika said most his forces would be drawing attention eastward, they are likely going to be fighting those Gyarados units Pom saw today. So we are after a single unit of Octillery, Froakies and possibly an inteleon which will be the most dangerous one.”

“The Froakies can be as equally bad, but at least they will be more akin to close up fighters.” Shine be stating and looking around. “Hopefully they aren’t Protean Froakies that can change their elemental type on a whim depending on what moves they start charging up. They always have same type attack boost and they can change their weaknesses fast enough to avoid serious harm.”

“We’ll watch out for that.” Pom stated as we sat at the crossroads looking at the mountain to our southeast. On the other side of the mountain is the kingdom of Fontaine, through which the waterfalls of the mountain ran through and many water Pokémon be living. “How good are the Octillery close up?”

“Considering you’ve already dealt with our Clawitzer Cannonade units, moderately weaker in handling close combat. They mostly only know ranged attacks and are able to turn faster than them, plus they can attack while moving so bringing them into close combat is difficult. They will use ranged attacks at point blank range too.” That, Squirt Green, sounded to be quite annoying. “They usually start their fights by being dug in to a defensible position. Usually a hole, an armored pot or crags, anywhere they can fit really that makes attacking them directly a tricky prospect. The easiest Octillery to deal with are ones that are exceedingly claustrophobic, but under mind control… they probably won’t have that issue. If you encroach on whatever their bunker is, they will retreat backwards and continue spitting ranged attacks. For those of us that are close up fighters it would be good idea to focus on evasion as we approach them. If we had Clawitzer support they would be less of a problem.”

“So… we be waiting on the Surskit Scouts then?” I be asking that as they be going ahead to find where the two units we were out here to beat into submission and rescue while Motochika be drawing a bulk of trouble to himself.

In the distance several bright beams were seen lighting up the sky to the east.

“Y-yes… I-I wonder if King Motochika is okay o-over there.” We can’t be knowing that until we’re done here Squirt Yellow.

“He’ll be fine, the rhythm of his heart beat will never fail to inspire music or his people and his combat shell will never break to the paltry villain throwing our own forces at us!” At least Squirt Red is optimistic. “For he has the power of a true leader within him on top of being a great hero!”

“Chances that Motochika set us up for something horrible given he paid us ahead of time?” Ocellus be whispering to Pom.

“Pretty good odds on that.” Pom stated while her ears were flicking every once in a while and her eyes darted about. “Oh look, it’s the Surskit Scouts!”

The Surskits were so small, that I barely be noticing them approaching us until they were already within our groups. They be stealthy and I be liking how they skate on water, I be wanted to learn to do something like that. I know I be capable of hopping or running on water, but full on skating?

One Surskit threw a salute and then pulled out a piece of paper from the tube at its back. Pom took up the paper and looked it over.

“The Octillery are a bit closer to Fontaine than I’d like, the Inteleon is possibly set up on the mountainside and as for the Froakies… they are suspiciously open for an ambush.” The information Pom was reading off the paper be sounding fairly sound, given the Surskit got it without being seen. “If an Inteleon’s range is as great as you guys say it is, we’re not going to be able to sneak by it on the road to engage with the Octillery without it taking shots at us, so we should not approach the mountain or go along the road too far for any reason. The Froakies however are in an ambush position and are open for an attack. We can easily take the Froakies out of the equation, but we’ll have to deal with them fast if they try to alert the Octillery unit to our movements. To that end, we’ll be sending someone to set off the ambush and if the ambushed team is having any problems, then we’ll rush in with everyone else. We’ll rescue who we can and retreat before any reinforcements show up to bog us down.”

“Who the dark and troubled idiots that will be doing that?” Squirt Black asked and we all looked at the Super Sentai Squirtle Squad, the silence was deafening. “Oh…”

-South road toward Fontaine, Squirt Yellow-

To think we would soon be fighting a commando unit of Froakie’s, which are like ninja’s really. We’re doing this all unit to unit and we’ll be fighting on mostly equal ground, but we should really watch out if any of they are the Protean unit like we suspect.

-Pom-

“I feel almost bad about this, but be ready to aid them if they need it.” I received salutes from the Surskit Scouts and they all have a serious looks in their eyes. They were so small it was hard to imagine they’d be effective in combat, then again it was hard to imagine the Skitty Squad being dangerous unless you watched them in action closely.

Pokémon have proved multiple times that size isn’t an indicator of strength on this world. Sure Evan’s Rattata unit got absolutely beaten into the ground, but they were still alive.

“There they go.” Smolder said as we watched the six water spewing, highly eccentric, turtles waddled their way forward.

“Can we hope that they stay?” Ocellus still didn’t like their wildly off kilter emotions, even if she was generally used to my anxiety issues by now. Today was a good day, I wasn’t as paranoid as I could be. I still worried that it was going to turn upside down any second now, but it was better the Squirtle Squad than me.

One of the Surskit got my attention as the Froakies appeared from their hiding places and leapt toward the Super Sentai Squirtle Squad from the trees, between their webbed digits were spinning ninja stars made of sharpened water.

One would think the Squirtle Squad would be ready having known this attack was coming thanks to the Surskit, one would think the Froakies would immediately get in some good blows as they came down on them and many would think that the fight would be even.

None of that stuff could be further from the truth and what happened next was more than a little bizarre as the rest of us crept up to watch the ensuing spectacle.

“It seems we’re under attack, Super Sentai Squirtle Squad, fight fire with water!” Squirt Red stated while posing with his right arm in the air.

“I don’t have to listen to you I’m the groups lone wolf!” Squirt Black stated gruffly as he pulled his left arm into his shell and it popped out with a weapon that looked vaguely bat shaped with two handles that made it looked like a tiny throwing axe with how it was designed. The edges of said axe didn’t look to be overly sharp.

They were saying this stuff as the Froakies were in the middle of throwing their water shuriken at them.

Squirt Yellow had already blended into the background and out the way of the stars. Squirt Green had flipped onto his back where he got stuck after tripping over a rock and pulled his head and limbs into his shell, but due to this he was also out of the way of the six thrown stars.

“Oh, hit me, hit me!” Squirt Purple stated as he danced around on his feet excitedly while glowing drawing two of the water stars towards himself.

“No pay more attention to me, I’m the good looking one!” Squirt Blue also drew two of the stars while having a similar glow.

“Huh, those two know Attract… that’s an… interesting use of it.” Glancing at Shine, she was paying attention to those two Squirtles.

“RWARRR I am here, to AGH…!” That’s when a large grey Pokémon came out of nowhere wielding a large red girder and took numerous water stars from four of the Froakie meant for Squirt Blue and Purple to the back. He his face slammed into the ground and his red girder flopped over onto his head.

The other two spinning series of water stars were taken out by a throw of the strange metal object Squirt Black held that flew in a boomerang circle around the five of the group still visible in an outwards counter clockwise manner. It had been thrown with his left claw and he caught it with his right after it finished circling around and taking out the water stars that would have hit them from the left and right.

“Greatly thrown Zu-rang, it’s my shell breaking, poison drug pumping, mortal nemesis Scourge the Gurdurr!” Squirt Black announced while focusing on him, that’s when we heard a demented laughter he jumpe back as a wad of silver strings struck out at him from the trees. “My other mortal nemesis too?! The String Shot defiler Jester the Caterpie!?”

The small green and purple worm crawled out wearing a jester’s hat while continuing to cackle madly.

“Aw, did I gunk up your parents?” The worm stated with a creepy grin and continued to cackle madly. “Are you still on about that Black?”

“What are you doing here!” Squirt black stated while the others in the Super Sentai Squirtle Squad stared at him.

“Wait… those guys are real?” Red said after a moment breaking his true upstanding hero persona entirely for the moment, clearly as surprised and shocked as he sounded.

“I thought Squirt Black was making that stuff up.” Squirt Purple stated with disbelief, everyone watching this could feel it. Even the mind controlled Froakies didn’t know what was going on.

“Apparently his supposedly hidden enemies are real, who knew?” Squirt Blue shrugged in a manner that attempted to be cute.

“Of course we’re real, and we’ve captured Squirtle Black’s Winged Wonder, Swallow, Mahahaha!” The caterpie moved behind a tree and dragged out a tied up struggling bird Pokémon. There was thick silver string wrapping around the wings, legs and beak of dark blue, red and white bird wearing a domino mask and yellow cape.

“You fiends, I only just started training him as a sidekick for ten minutes this morning, then ghosted him while leaving him money for lunch because I’m a brooding barely golden hearted jerk like that to him!” Squirt Black announced with gritted teeth and a growl while holding one of his throwing boomerang things threateningly.

“Wait… you actually have money?” Squirt Green stopped struggling on his back for a second to actually ask that. “I thought we were all generally working cheaply because, you know… heroes on a budget, Squirtle Power.”

“I’m just better at managing my finances than the rest of you, because being broody and edgy like I am costs a lot.” Squirt Black stated simply, then flex his arms with sunglasses on them. “Like buying fifty pairs of sunglasses so nobody will ever see my eyes behind the darkness of the shades!”

“We’ll talk about that later, we need to get our heads in gear and start heroically fighting all these guys!” Red was back on task a second later of staring at Squirt Black with honest befuddlement.

“Yes, you do, and these guys are our newest partners in hunting down those pesky outsiders getting in the way of our thieving… even if we are kind of stalking them and they wouldn’t get in our way if we didn’t do that, we know they are around here somewhere! We didn’t swim the river from Ignis to here to miss an opportunity to bug them!” Yelled Meowth, as he, Jessie and James appeared dropping to the ground and my group groaned audibly at seeing them again. Even I couldn’t help but do so along with them. “First we have to help them deal with you guys, then we can worry about that Wooloo adjacent outsider and her friends as Team Pocket’s Villain Team has grown two members bigger!”

“HAHAHHAHA, he said bug!” Jester laughed madly.

“Prepare for trouble…” Started Jessie and I sighed as we were dealing with these guys again, they were also going through their whole spiel again like every time they showed up.

Do they rehearse doing this constantly in every kind of environment to make sure they always have their introduction perfected?

“Make it doub-ugh!” James continued before he, Jessie and Meowth were hit by a wall of bubbles from the six mind controlled Froakie. “Hey we were in the middle of something very important, we have to do the whole bit or Jessie gets grumpy!”

“Too late they ruined it, just start fighting!” Stated an obviously grumpy Jessie as she slung her poisonous bladed tail for the closest Froakie.

“So… it be going from a simple unit fight, to a full on three way battle?” That would seem to be correct Shanty.

Hearing a nose I look down and saw that the Surskit had a huge bowl of popcorn and looked to be asking us if we wanted some with a gesturing leg.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

Where did my fresh bowl of giant nearly perfected popped popcorn go?

Does anybody realize how hard it is to pop popcorn perfectly with just the right amount of butter and salt to not be going overboard with the extra flavor spices, even with godly universe creating, manipulating and twisting powers?!

-South Road Fontaine, Pom-

“This is pretty good.” Crunching through some popcorn kernels with Quetal, we watched as the sudden tenseness end as the fighting started.

“Shouldn’t we be helping them?” Quetal asked as Jessie tried to attack the Froakie, yet their jumping ability easily got them out of range of her swing tail. Meowth wasn’t have any luck either and James barely managed to tag one.

That wasn’t to say the Super Sentai Squirtle Squad was idle as Squirt Black started to acrobatically avoid the girder swinging Pokémon with muscles. Black was spewing equally dodged blasts of water as he hopped over and slid under the fast swinging mass of metal.

“Nah, they’re doing fine so far.” I said waving a hoof to Quetal.

Squirt Black slammed home a blast of water into Scourge’s face while throwing multiple, thin, edged axe boomerangs he was pulling from out of his shell to cut up the bulky monsters skin slightly.

“Agh, a Brine attack, I’ll break your spine again for this!” Shouted the girder wielding beast of a Pokémon with muscles and strange popped veins.

Squirt Green was still stuck on his back and was avoiding attacks from the Froakie’s by pulling in his limbs and spraying water from his semi-frictionless shell to skid around on the ground.

Squirt Yellow looked too confused to do anything, not that it was easy to spot her when she was nearly invisible and carefully watching everything like we were from the sidelines.

Squirt Red fired a massive blast of water, but looked immediately tired afterwards, probably couldn’t even do that twice in a row. The Froakie he aimed at didn’t manage to dodge out of the way, as a matter of course it would be pretty hard to dodge a massive cannonball of water and was taken out of the fight by being slammed into a tree with a painful amount of explosive force that sent water flying everywhere.

Red actually managed to take one down despite looking exhausted afterwards, that and he was still on point with our original mission.

Squirt Blue was distracting Meowth who had hearts in his eyes as he watched her pose innocently, she was smiling and enjoying the adoration she was receiving from the cat Pokémon.

Squirt Purple was… yeah… partially impaling himself on James spines and rocks were erupting from the ground into the Mareanie pushing them both out of the path of some of the Froakie’s attacks of bubbles, water shuriken and lashing tongues. He was also hitting himself as much as James with his own attacks, should probably introduce him to a Wooloo.

Jester, the laughing mad Pokémon, was swinging around on silver threads and trying to catch one of the Froakie who was trying to avoid him and continue throwing numerous water stars to keep cutting through said rapidly spewed threads.

“Huh, Rock Tomb, interesting move for a Squirtle.” Quetal said blandly as he carefully scooped up a claw full of popcorn.

“Well it’s confirmed now, those are Protean Froakies!” Looking to where Shine was pointing with her left side hair hand, we could see Meowth was trying to protect Squirt Blue but his attacks were going entirely through the Froakie as he stretched out and slammed a tongue across Squirt Blue’s face making her shiver and freeze up. “Lick is a ghost type attack with paralytic effect just like Mr. Schlurp uses and Squirt Blue has just been paralyzed by it, should we jump in now?”

Meowth grew angry and his he opened his mouth and darkness started to form up there, looks like he picked up a move to deal with ghost types. Meowth actually successfully bit the Froakie, the frog looked like he was seriously hurting from it.

In a panic the Froakie quickly released a massive amount of smoke that got Meowth to let go of him and retreated a bit.

“No… not yet, but I really should rescue that downed Froakie before he gets hit anymore more…” While I’m thinking about it and everyone in the battle is distracted. “Stay here.”

I looked at the tree as the fighting went on took up another hoof full of popcorn into my mouth and chewed as I leapt up to grab a low hanging branch and climbed up onto it. I quickly started hopping across the trees using my floaty nature to quietly hover overhead of the fighting and then turned and started to walk down the tree that the out cold Froakie was at the bottom of.

Pulling out the Rescue Team Badge, I rescued the Froakie and sent him back to Helper’s Hamlet in a pillar of light. Hoping that didn’t attract too much attention, I then quietly turned around and climbed back up the tree to continue watching the odd fighting going.

I sat on a branch to watch as the various Froakie acrobatically leapt around dodging while attacking at the same time and waited for another Froakie to be downed.

I sent a mental message to Dolly.

-Dolly-

Hm? Well okay then, I turned and barked to Ocellus and made several gestures with my paws.

“Pom says we should spread out and prepare to assist the Super Sentai Squirtle Squad when she signals it.” Ocellus was getting really good at charades now, I finished off the message. “Also to save some of this popcorn for her.”

“Just a few more handfuls, I don’t think I’ll ever taste popcorn his good again for the rest of my life!” That was apparent Smolder, given you were enjoying the popcorn a little too much. Even the Surskit had a few kernels as we watched the fighting. “There’s just something unquestionably rich and heavenly about it. Like someone meticulously balanced the flavor to a razor edge of greatness close to godlike somehow… while it satisfies it somehow fails to reach the pinnacle of what it could be. Eh, seems good enough to me, but someone was trying to make the perfect bowl of popcorn. Well props to whoever for trying, because that is practically impossible.”

“Right, let’s get right on the spreading out part.” Quetal ran towards the nearest tree and clambered up it swiftly with ridiculous ease.

I slung my board up, hooked the wheels on the tree and launched up onto the branch and then leapt into the air to glide forward towards a position near the fighting.

Ready to jump in when necessary, the small forest of trees around the road here gave pretty good cover for an ambush… that the Froakie already did it didn’t mean we were just copying them.

That would be implying that we would fail and flail about like the Froakie are slowly starting to.

-Pom-

Meowth actually defeated a Froakie with gleaming claws and started moving towards James to help him with Squirt Purple. I got up and leapt across two trees and moved close enough to send the out cold Froakie on their way to Helper’s Hamlet with the rescue team badge.

Four left to go and there’s the Team Pocket thieves to beat, though honestly I haven’t seen them steal anything yet.

I was sticking to the job I was commissioned for unless someone’s life was in terrible danger, but because the Squirtle’s had shells they were fine with taking hits. Squirt Black’s incredible acrobatics aside against a larger and much more physically stronger opponent, the rest of the Super Sentai Squirtle Squad weren’t doing too badly in avoiding damage.

I looked to the bird that was still trying to get free of its silk bonds and it looked like he wouldn’t be getting free anytime soon, makes me wonder why Scourge or Jester thought that bringing the bird here was a good idea. Since if he did get free, that would be an opponent they’d both have problems with given it was obviously a flying type Pokémon which a bug type should be weak against. Don’t know what the metal swinging giant was, but I’m pretty sure it’s a fighting type judging by the orange glow of some of its attacks.

Jumping over to the tree and calmly climbing down and watching as Squirt Green turned himself into an impression of a sprinkler or was break dancing trying to get off his back, his water did little to bother the other Squirts, but Jessie incidentally took a mouthful of water and started choking on it.

It was becoming increasingly obvious that the Squirtle Squad were actively putting the Team Pocket thieves between themselves and the mind controlled Froakies to the best of their abilities. Which, from the looks of it, was a rather effective strategy.

Another effective strategy was that Squirt Blue kept charming Meowth with her cuteness into fighting for her. Squirt Purple was clearly enjoying the pain he was suffering through with James poison spines and the Froakie attacking the both of them, he was also hitting them both with rocks that erupted from the ground and was not idle in the fight.

I reached the bird and it looked up at me worriedly, I made a gentle noise to be quiet and he nodded. I magical wolf clawed the binding around his wings and legs and he pointed at his beak.

“Just don’t make any loud noises, I’m trying to stay out of the fighting.” I carefully used a single magical claw from my hoof and his beak was free.

“Thanks for freeing me. I’ll find a good opportunity to pay Scourge back for smashing me in the back of the head with his fist. Though I have no idea what he or Jester were planning when they brought me here, was it to rub it into Squirt Black’s face that his sidekick failed to predict them? I’m still kind of new to all this weird sentai hero stuff… at least the cape is nice and this mask is cool. Do all other sidekicks only get ten minutes of training and a lot of yelling about how color black is great?” With that Swallow, the apparent Winged Wonder, took to the air and started looking about as I carefully made my way back up into the tree again to watch what would happen next.

Squirt Red seemed to be having trouble with Jester as he continued to tackle him and pin him down with that string, it was like Red had expended all his energy for attacks on that one Froakie… was it the water cannon thing that was mentioned as being something that should be nearly impossible for him to do? If so, he was going to need some water to restore his water attack capabilities, good thing this was Fontaine and we were still in the wetlands region slightly south of the crossroads.

I was going to go down and help him with the cackling mad Caterpillar and the Froakie he was valiantly defending against, but then Squirt Yellow jumped in with her shell spinning like crazy and she slammed into both the Froakie and Jester in a well-timed manner.

“Guh, did someone get the number of the Mudbray cart that just hit me?!” Jester was laid out on his back and rolling onto his belly to look around angrily. “It’s not funny when I can’t see the joke coming!”

The Froakie was still up and slinging its tongue around… and was missing Squirt Yellow by a mile, likely because she was practically invisible to him and barely visible to me. I wasn’t relying on sight, I was relying on my sense of smell and hearing to keep her in sight visually, otherwise she’d fade into her surroundings so easily.

“Hey Scourge, I think you deserve this Brave Bird!” Swallow swooped down and went into a high speed dive and kept picking up speed until he rammed his beak into the chest of the large grey Pokémon with a force that sent them sprawling painfully after they knocked out another Froakie with their big hunk of metal. After the impact the bird flopped to the ground and the large grey Pokémon with pink veiny protrusions was out cold with a large bloody spot on their chest. “Ow… my beak, my face and everything else. Time to Roost…”

Sitting up Swallow started glowing and his injuries from the massive impact started healing. So there were Pokémon moves outside the ones Ms. Chan uses that would heal the user. Good to know for later in case a Pokémon looks about defeated, but then suddenly gets back up after healing through a move.

“Good job Winged Wonder, since you took care of Scourge that leaves me open to deal with my nemesis Jester!” Squirt Black immediately turned and threw another strangely bat shaped bit of metal and it slammed into Jester’s face with unerring accuracy. The green and purple caterpillar went down with his face slightly smashed in. “Thank goodness… I almost missed with that one… er… I mean… ahem… dark brooding stereotype one liner number twelve! You can’t run from the knight of the night, Squirt Black.”

As he was saying that I was checking the Froakie that got slammed by the metal beam that was wielded by Scourge, I urgently motioned for Shine and she came running. The Squirtle Squad still had everyone else distracted and were actually, ridiculously enough, winning.

“Doing a Pain Split… ohhhnn… yeah, that was a bad head injury, good call Pom.” Shine groaned at stealing a portion of the injury that was dealt to the Froakie. She then quickly ate a Sitrus Berry from her pack as I rescued the Froakie.

“Companions, now!” With two newest members of Team Pocket down and half the Froakie’s out, it was a good idea to call a bum rush.

“It’s an ambush!” James stated finally having gotten free from the very distracting Squirt Purple and went hopping towards Scourge, leaving behind a poisoned Froakie that passed out from it.

Squirt Purple… was actually perfectly fine with his injuries and still ambulatory.

“Shine get a Pecha Berry out and follow me!” I ran towards the poisoned Froakie as Team Pocket started gathering up around Scourge.

Yellow managed to block several water shuriken with her shell as she flew at the Froakie shell first like a rocket in the middle of the air and popped out to flip and spike him down.

“Heroic upper!” The Froakie fell right into Squirt Red throwing a right uppercut into their chin knocking them out with a painful jaw breaking noise.

Shine applied the Pecha Berry and I rescued the fourth Froakie, then we ran to collect the fifth one.

“Meowth come to your sense, we’re getting overrun!” Jessie shouted in an angry and exasperated manner as she ducked another thrown metal boomerang. Despite dodging that the Surskit Scouts started blaster her with bubbles that seemed to stick to and slow the snake down immensely, James moved to defend her with his spikes popping the bubbles.

“Meowth we need to retreat… wait, how were we planning on moving Scourge anyway?” James stated as he continued to tank attacks from the Surskit Scouts. “He’s too heavy for us!”

“I don’t know how we would do that either…” Meowth said making his way over to them calmly with Jester and a lipstick mark on his cheek. “Also Squirt Blue is really cute, she’s quite charmingly narcissistic! Then again I hang around a narcissist all day, so maybe I have a problem.”

“What was that Meowth?” Jessie said with a cold fury as she turned to him with her tail raised.

“Come off it Jessie, everyone knows you’re a narcissist, not that James or I care about that.” Meowth stated bluntly with his arms crossed. “We like you anyways.”

Dodo spat a pastry, I believe it to be a hot apple turnover, into the face of the last Froakie causing it to halt in its midair leap for the still stuck on his back Squirt Green. Shanty landed a brutal flying buck to the Froakie’s butt, as it went flying forward the dazed frog was hit with a Flame Burst by Dazzle from below him knocking him up into the air. Quetal flashed past lightly scratching the frog up with multiple claw wounds and kicked him towards Favela who wrapped them with her vines.

“Got him!” Favela stated as she slammed the Froakie into the ground.

The Froakie groaned and continued to struggle until it took a light smack to the head by Shine and I sent the sixth Froakie away. All Froakie’s rescued!

“Come on get up you lousy… oh… uh…” Jessie turned to see us all looking towards her as she shook Scourge. I think Team Pocket were trying to get Scourge back up and fighting, but Swallow had hit him really hard. That bird sidekick packed some real power.

“Super Sentai Squirtle Squad, Special Unit Command...” Red Squirt announced while glaring at Team Pocket.

“I just want you to know I’m only reacting to this command and willing to work with you on super attacks!” Squirt Black announced as he and the other six gathered in a circle, pulled into their shells and started to spin rapidly against the ground. “Since super attacks are so edgy and cool.”

“Sentai Shell Blitz!” Screamed Red Squirt after enough build up they started swirling around in a circle and then all six of them flew up into the in brilliantly glowing colors.

They all shot forward like rockets and started to slam into Team Pocket and one of their own that circled around all of them. The five Pokémon kept pounding the villainous group rapidly bouncing between them and the one shell circling the clumped up and the now floating Team Pocket members.

The six shells all gathered together once the spinning and flailing airborne Pokémon of Team Pocket were beaten black and blue by numerous impacts, the tops of their shells angled for Team Pocket and they shot forward together closing in on a single point. Only, Green Squirt was still backwards, but that didn’t matter much.

Team Pocket was sent flying for the horizon upon impact, still surprising me as to what Pokémon could survive.

“You know, one of these days we’re going to capture them before they get sent flying.” Ocellus said as she and Smolder came walking up. “Maybe even bungee cord them to the ground…”

“Well that was quick and pai…” Smolder was cut off by Dodo warbling in warning.

“Move!” My shout made everyone dive away from the road towards the trees as something erupted through the center of the road. There was a five foot wide long line of a ditch dug into the ground and a small pond at the end of it.

“I think that might have been the Inteleon, we need to retreat before he lines up another shot… wait why am I still on my shell?!” Does someone actually need to point out that you landed on your back Squirt Green? “You know what, just pick me up and run!”

Looking to the mountain side I saw a relatively large Pokémon and swirling red clouds sitting on a spiraling pillar, the Pokémon was slowly shrinking out of view as was the pillar it was sitting on.

-West side of the southeastern mountain-

The giant bipedal lizard, simply frowned at the water harpoon shaped gun extending from the fingers of his right hand.

The water types glowing red eyes were dimming as his left hand was gripping his right wrist, he was resisting and had managed to throw off his aim and weakened the attack at the last moment.

His eyes started glowing red brightly and he let out a hiss of agony daggers dug into his skull for showing defiance, but he continued to do so with as much force as he could put behind it.

Despite the pain, there was a grim smile on his face as he started shrinking back down, only being forced to shrink because the controlling force didn’t like him resisting with the extra strength he got from the size increase of Dynamax power.

He smiled knowing that Motochika was coming for them, to save them all from the horrors of the dark castle.

263. Long Range Finders.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Jackie ‘The Blackcap’ Chickadee-

“So… you don’t want my crews help with the Tambelon thing?” Call me crazy, but I think Jaded, Tianhuo and Fizzle were trying to talk me out of an adventure. Not like said adventure would kill me, because my curse certainly couldn’t at this rate.

I idly pulled an uncomfortable piece of broken blood covered glass out of my armpit. Nothing new to me, I’m usually getting splinters, glass, bits of sharp rock and metal pulled out of me daily. Thank goodness for most of my crew being licensed medical professionals to some degree or other.

“Jackie I know you’re a lot braver and more capable than ever as a Captain of your ship, but it would give me peace of mind if my Ornithian sister was on the backup team in case something goes horribly wrong. I know you and mom would look after Silvers if something somehow got all three of us, plus you’ve been pretty busy lately.” Jaded was honestly worried about Grogar. Speaking of children, my Gavin was currently with his father Gene and his cousins Silvers. “Plus we need someone on the home front in case Grogar tries a breech with whatever force he has there, going in is going to be just as dangerous as getting out. Plus I don’t want your curse to cause any major incidents in a pocket dimension that will inevitably try to and collapse in on you if you so much as breathe the air in there for a few seconds.”

“Good points, but are we still on for that small trip to Palicoast?” That question made my childish kitten of a sister perk her ears up, I thought it was nice that Jaded wanted to show Silvers her home growing up. Goodness knows I need to ‘safely’ show my little Gavin all the wonders of Turtle Toga.

“Of course we are!” Jaded answered brightly. “With Equus Tianhuo in contact with Equus Pom, we’ll know when Equus Pom will be ready to appear in Tambelon. So we’ll have some initiative and plenty of time to prepare, we don’t have to worry about them ending up there at random! Also everyone on the away team, that is competent, is going on this trip… so long as that... whale shark... isn’t there, it’ll be a good time on the shore.”

“I thank you for making the distinction because we are here.” Fœnum Tianhuo stated as she and the five other Fœnum heroes were discussing the training they were currently getting to keep their skills sharp and even learned a few new things like Fœnum Arizona learning all of Equus Arizona’s physical strength techniques.

Equus Tianhuo, Fizzle, Jaded, Equus Arizona and even I have been training the Fœnum heroes for the inevitable dangers ahead. They needed combat training against people who are decent at wielding spears and other weapons.

-Ransei, Wetlands south of the crossroads, Pom-

To recap what just happened, after the Super Sentai Squirtle Squad special attack where Squirt Black used his flying shell maneuver to bounce the others shells into Team Pocket multiple times before they sent them flying with a combined assault of six quasi-turtle shells rocketing at them at once, we were almost blasted by a powerful water attack.

“… That was the Inteleon?” I asked after a pause to look at the damage to the road. “I think that he was dynamic maximized, because he was certainly noticeable from this distance.”

Everyone was mostly okay, but the Super Sentai Squirtle Squad were a bit battered. Yellow… she was untouched because she stayed out of most of the action and jumped in when Red was having problems.

“If it was a Dynamaxed Inteleon, then they resisted attacking us greatly.” Glancing at Red I just had to ask.

“By how much?” The concern on my face was met with even more concern from Squirt Red.

“The damage there…” Squirt Red pointed slightly to the road to the south of us after we moved slightly north into a more thickly wooded area. “Well simply put, the entire area should be destroyed. So about ten maybe twenty times worse in damage than what we’re seeing. If they were in Dynamax mode when they launched that attack…. then they held back a massive majority of it, like ninety five percent of it.”

“I can verify that, the attack should have taken out at least the road and the entire area we were fighting in, instead of creating a small ditch and pond.” Squirt Green was reliably intelligent, even if he is clumsy. “So the controlling force must have had issues with controlling a maximized Pokémon… did they shrink immediately afterwards?”

“Yes.” I had actually seen it on the mountain side, though the Pokémon was hard to make out at this distance.

“Well that would mean that the Inteleon is vulnerable as they won’t be able to Dynamax for quite a while, but alas we’ve taken plenty of hits in that fight. It would be just quite torturous to ask us to continue… so please do so!” At least Squirt Purple wasn’t a Wooloo, he wasn’t making passes at everyone in his general vicinity. “Still a Dynamax not shifting the landscape very much must have taken a herculean effort to hold back enough so that it only ended in a small pond instead of a new unite-ball sized lake.”

“T-t-t-he Fontaine Footers always lose to the Aurora Audios team when it comes to unite-ball.” Squirt Yellow drew our attention. What is unite-ball? It was probably something like buck-ball or hoof-ball. A hoof-ball stadium sized lake… yeah, that was terrifying amount of power to leave sitting on the mountain side. “T-t-thankfully this stuff isn’t happening during unite-ball season…”

“You guys might not have been paying attention, but I was. There were dark swirling red clouds over Fontaine’s mountain.” For one Squirt Black wasn’t going on about how edgy he was, but did he really need to wear the sunglasses in the shade. “So that means Fontaine’s dynamic maximizing energy field is active and growing more powerful, that means Fontaine is experiencing a great and huge threat! So much edge and heroics to be had here, the encompassing darkness is like that of my soul.”

“Nobody cares about your ridiculous, mostly self-inflicted, backstory Squirt Black.” The Winged Wonder known as Swallow was staring at Squirt Black flatly.

“I care…” Squirt Black said while wilting slightly, then he perked up and stood tall. “But I keep my emotions repressed until they become explosively bad, because that’s what edgy guys do!”

“Right, ignoring him… if we want to approach the mountain where the Inteleon is, because it looks like the Octillery are too far out of our way of the mission parameters, then we’re going to need to cross a mostly vast open space with the Inteleon having range on everything that is moving to the west of the mountain in the open grasslands.” Squirt blue was being serious for once and… no, wait, she was still doing cute poses even as she talked. “They’ll be able to shoot at us anywhere outside the tree line of the wetlands, possibly even a bit into it considering where that last attack landed.”

“So… do you think the Inteleon is working alone?” There was an idea percolating in my mind.

“Yes, but we wouldn’t be able to reach it before it shoots us all down if we were to try and rush for the mountain.” Which wasn’t my idea Squirt Red, my idea was much better.

“How much tunnel vision does it have at a long range if it’s focusing far away instead of close up?” We were going to need our stealth experts in top form. To that end my suggestion would be an interesting one. “You live in Fontaine, so I’d think you guys would know better than anyone Red. Depending on what you say, it’ll give me an idea as to how viable my idea will actually be.”

“Well when an Inteleon is going for their signature move, they lose a lot of visual range if they try to focus down a single target.” Okay that was good Red, very good even.

“Red, can you take most of your team to check on the Froakie back at Helper’s Hamlet? I’m going to need Yellow and the Surskit Scouts for a stealth team, how quickly can you guys climb? I already know Shanty can do what I have in mind.” Taking my gaze from them, I turned to Ocellus and Smolder with a grin. “You two will also be very helpful, head north to the river with Dolly and get a lightning cloud together. The rest of us will be acting as targets. Mr. Swallow, if you want to help, I think you can help with their efforts by protecting them from attacks if they get noticed.”

“Being a living target, why that’s my specialty!” Squirt Purple looked like he was begging with his eyes. “Please Red can I stay?”

“Well… you got roughed up somewhat badly…” Squirt Red looked to be considering it.

“That is the very point of my existence!” Stated Squirt Purple who was possibly looking at the fourth wall.

“I’m actually concerned about those poor Froakie and think we do need to send someone back north to check on them.” Squirt Blue muttered. “Also, we need to make sure the path back is still clear.”

-Something close to an hour later, tall grass west of Fontaine Fountain Mountain, Shanty-

I could be feeling Dodo’s worry for me, he needn’t be worried. I totally be having this, since I be learning stealth from Sly. We be sneaking this far under the Inteleon’s notice without getting hit or seen, in the distance I could see Fountain Mountain.

The Surskit Scouts were experts at scouting and were currently sticking with me and Yellow… I didn’t even be knowing where Squirt Yellow was being as we carefully moved forward through the tall grass trying not to disturb it enough for the Inteleon to notice.

We were to get close and closer up than this if we could be finding any cover. If we were spotted, then that would be giving the people farther away a chance to get closer.

The Surskit Scouts reassured everyone, in their own way, that the Octillery were not between us and the Inteleon at least and were leading me to good spots to move forward until we got this far where there was being too much open space.

We did not be knowing where the Inteleon exactly was, but we did be hearing the crack and I be getting some vague images of Dodo seeing the shots aimed for them back the way we came. Pom’s team were carefully drawing attention their way as we tried to move for the mountain.

Shine and Favela were going to be at the back as the emergency medical team that would grab anyone and bring them to safety if they get hit, but that be mostly for Pom’s team. Our team didn’t have the luxury having snuck all the way out here.

I carefully reached the edge of the tall grass I be crawling through and looked for a nearby spot to move to. There be a boulder close, a few feet away and a crack in the ground, also another patch of tall grass a fair distance away through a lot of open ground.

“The boulder?” I received a nod from the head of the Surskit Scouts and he be pointing to himself and the nearby crack in the ground. “Got it.”

-Pom-

Dazzle was carefully looking around the tree to the southeast after I avoided a shot that toppled a tree, and rolled into a ditch to avoid another one.

Quetal was also glancing out slightly before ducking back as something barely scratched his face and put a hole in the ground behind him.

Squirt Purple got hit and was okay, just taking a hit on his shell. He really shouldn’t be taking too many more hits like that though.

Rescuing the Inteleon would get us some useful information from within the Fontaine Kingdom itself, we were definitely not going to try to press south for the Octillery and who knows what else was that way. We would be trying to avoid getting bogged down by whatever large scale military battle like what is going on to the east.

This rescue would only be a good thing for Motochika’s efforts, because that Pokémon had good eyesight and could get eyes on the Fontaine Kingdom directly. However the major problem wasn’t with Fontaine itself, it was the large castle that rose up south of Fontaine from the ocean. If we wanted to reach the southern shore, we would have to go through southern Fontaine’s forest… if we were going on hoof that is.

We could bypass the forest entirely, if we went by the river or along the east coast to the sea... but the issue with that is that the controlling force has a lot of water Pokémon under control and a ridiculous advantage in both those areas.

Taking Fontaine back and holding it would give Motochika a good staging area for an assault on the problem. We would probably be on commission to rescue a massive number of Pokémon soon and would be a part of the plan for an assault on the enemy to the south whoever they may be.

Not only would Motochika have to hold Fontaine, but he would have to have half his own military force rescued and a good number of civilian volunteers to get things moving in the direction of an assault force. I’m fairly glad I’m not Motochika right now, because being in charge of all that in the near future was going to be a nightmare for me.

“Dazzle, light up the air, keep their attention squarely on us!” It wasn’t going to be hard to approach once the Inteleon was disabled and I knew that the teams on it would succeed. Shanty, the Surkits and Squirt Yellow needed time to get close to the mountain. If the Inteleon noticed them, then that would give us time to move forward ourselves to put more pressure on him.

As long as they don’t pay attention to the clouds, everything would be okay.

Dazzle leaned out and fired off a Flame Burst that exploded in the air like a firework, this also nearly got her hit in the shoulder with a fast flying bullet of water that tore a hole into the ground near her.

She didn’t have nowhere near the range to fire a fireball nearly far enough to even get a quarter of the distance needed to hit the Inteleon, it was just a distraction.

-Shanty-

I darted out and rolled behind the boulder and the Surskits dropped into the nearby small hole and tried to look like acorns. That be explaining how they be sneaking around, but blue acorns is being very conspicuous to me. Must be being a Pokémon thing.

I be looking around and be seeing Squirt Yellow be standing out in the open ahead of the boulder halfway between me and the tall grass.

“What are you doing?!” Leaning away from the boulder slightly to yell, I knew the Inteleon wouldn’t hear us at this distance. He only be having good eyesight and a normal level of hearing.

“I’m giving you a halfway point between me and the tall grass, move behind me when you think it’s safe. I don’t think the Inteleon is going to actively notice me unless I’m moving while it’s looking in this direction.” Well she might not be wrong, I leaned out slight and carefully made my way to behind her and crouched behind her slightly smaller form. “Even if we can’t tell when they are looking our way yet, it would be a good idea to move fast when we do move. We still have a lot of ground to cover before we can get close to the mountain.”

-Inteleon-

The controlling force swept his telescoping eyes through the tall grass open area to the west for a second. Possibly having seen some movement out in the open, his eyes narrowed in the area, but nothing was there.

He saw nothing or at least kept pretending it was nothing… except maybe a strange colored acorn or two. He couldn’t think of them as being anything other than acorns, it was a good thing the controlling force couldn’t fully read minds and information could be obfuscated so easily.

The force returned his view to the northern edge of the wetlands and trees. His fingers came up and fired a water bullet at the white wooly sheep thing that narrowly dived back into cover. He actually wanted that sheep to get closer.

The controlling force wanted them to stay away because they somehow instantly removed the controlled ones from within the control range, thereby rescuing them.

He thought he saw movement again from the west, but he couldn’t see what would be making it unless it was invisible. There weren’t many ghost types around and in the daylight it would be impossible for them to hide their presences. A Kecleon would be noticeable and there wasn’t enough water for a Vaporean to sneak closer unless they were already in the water around the base and it was hard to climb up the side of a ninety degree surface with barely any handholds.

So how would they sneak someone close enough to him to disable him? They didn’t know where he was looking, but he noted the blue acorns were gone. He did note something was moving out there, but not what and there was a lot of pressure on him to stop any danger from climbing up the mountain and getting close to him.

He was making sure to not look up, the controlling force didn’t consider an attack from the air and he wasn’t going to correct them on Aurora having plenty of options for aerial assault that would be nasty for even someone like him to deal with.

-Dolly-

“So… no pressure.” It was awesome that I was standing a cloud, it was really soft like Pom. It was maybe slightly comfier than Pom was.

“Don’t get as anxious as Pom does Dolly, you’re much better at being positive. The cloud walking spell lasts for quite a while. Some unicorns use it for back problems and need a cloud mattress to deal with them and others live in Cloudsdale, it’s a requirement alongside the Feather Fall spell for all non-flying species to live there.” Ocellus really brought up a useful idea for when we get close and we would go with it.

I wasn’t even worried about falling through the cloud, but I was here to protect Ocellus if the sniper lizard noticed us before we got close enough to disable him.

“This is new to me too, I only heard of standing on clouds like this around the mystery dungeons in other parts of the world where Rayquaza lives.” Swallow was going to be a big help once we got up close in personal too.

-Shanty-

Squirt Yellow walked forward slowly and I stayed behind her while also moving forward.

“Does this be nerve wracking for you?” I wasn’t worried, but getting any closer to the mountain without being noticed was getting harder, as was getting to the grass was in the first place.

“Y-y-yes, but I’m a super hero. The only one on the team that can do this and being invisible is a very useful ability to have in this situation.” Squirt Yellow continued slowly walking forward until we made it to the patch of tall grass. “Okay let’s keep moving guys.”

I be flinching slightly at noticing the Surskits having caught up with us, they are being very quiet in their movements.

We be making it to the end of the tall grass and there be no hiding spot for quite a distance, then crossing the water around the west side of the mountain and then we be needing to start climbing the mountain itself to get up to wherever the Inteleon was. That was another problem we be having to actually find the Inteleon up in the mountain, the description of tall and thin lizard, fin sticking up form head, mostly blue, black and yellow coloring.

We had to be doing all of that to reach him without being spotted, if we be making the wrong movements, then the Inteleon would be spotting us before we could them.

Ocellus and Smolder will be having an easier time of finding them then we will.

“How are we going to be finding t-the Inteleon, Fountain Mountain is kind of huge…” The easiest way I know how Squirt Yellow.

“Don’t be worrying about that, we be finding them when they find us or if we can see them shooting at our friends. Before we move out I’ll be telling my friend Dodo to get Pom’s group moving and he’ll be sending out when we should move.” It be a lesson in coordination I’d think, it be a good lesson to learn.

-Dodo-

Shanty?

…

Okay!

-Pom-

Dodo ran forward from cover and then burst forward avoiding the shots that was powerful enough to have taken out a right wing and then leapt into the ditch with me.

“Dodo?” The warble I received made me pay attention as he started scratching something out. “Huh… okay. Shine, Favela get ready to pull us out if any of us get hit, we’re rushing the mountain from the northeast.”

-Dolly-

Huh? Pom… okay, yeah… mhhmmm… got it!

I barked drawing Ocellus’s attention and then started pantomiming what Pom wanted.

“Right, we can do that!” Ocellus then looked below the cloud. “We’re already almost over the mountain anyway. Tell Pom we’re basically in position.”

On it!

-Pom-

“Give Shanty the image of us moving out, she should go now Dodo.” He warbled and looked in Shanty’s direction. “Everyone we’re going to rush out, drop into cover out of sight whenever you can if you start receiving fire. We need the Inteleon to fire as many shots as we can make them in our given direction without getting seriously hurt, we’re going to either run them dry of energy for long range attacks or Shanty will find them based on where Dodo tells her to head. Dodo will stay here and triangulate Inteleon’s position for Shanty’s team. Get ready to move on my mark and be ready to zigzag like mad, do not move in a straight line for more than five seconds!”

“Got it.” It seems that Quetal had no issue as he was good at darting about at a pretty decent speed.

“I’m not so good at zigzagging… but I’ll do it anyway!” Dazzle really seemed to be more worried about me, which was quite touching, but nothing made a lambkin move faster than danger.

“Okay… ready… GO!” I uncoiled the wool around my legs and sprang high and forward above the trees, something immediately whizzed by my face almost impacting my right eye, I inflated as I dropped and the next shot whizzed by below me.

I let go of my hovering state and dropped below the next two, the Inteleon was apparently firing two shots at once now as Quetal, Dazzle and I charge the mountain leaving Dodo behind to tell Shanty where to head.

Ocellus would be able to find the Inteleon easily soon enough for the sure takedown. A water bullet ripped across Quetal’s left shoulder making him roll into a slide to avoid a shot going between his eyes as he started bleeding.

Dazzle dove behind a boulder and it was littered with cracks as two water bullets struck it, nearly shattering it. I leapt to the left and performed a sideways flip through two shots, one scraping my inner right thigh.

Another shot nearly tore through my left ear in an attempt to throw me off balance as I landed into a forward slide.

Inteleon’s aim was insanely accurate at this range!

-Shanty-

After crossing the top of the water at a gallop, with the Surskits Scouts being faster than me and keeping up we made it to the mountain with Squirt Yellow on my back and started to climb it.

Where was the Inteleon Dodo? I started receiving feelings of direction and place… up and to the left slightly.

“I know you guys can’t be climbing fast, but please be catch up quickly!” As I looked back down the rock wall, the six small Surskits threw salutes as they started to find tiny hoof holds for their spidery limbs.

I started climbing up quickly with Dodo directing me towards the Inteleon. He was being careful not to draw attention to himself, but he be looking at the mountain and knowing where our target is. Dodo be having good long range vision even if he can’t be attacking at that distance.

“Is it a bad time to tell you that the Inteleon might try to glide away for Fontaine?” Not if we be stopping them Squirt Yellow. “That’s another reason they like high up places.”

-Inteleon-

What were they doing?! In any case I was using both my hands to fire Snipe Shots, but thankfully they were evading my attempts, but why were they rushing me out in the open now?

Don’t they know that it was impossible to reach me before I gunned them all down? Wait, where’s the odd Skarmory and what was it doing? Something to hopefully free me from the controlling force, because I have information that needs to get to Motochika.

Please don’t think of retreating me yet, I need to be rescued!

The white wooly one dove behind a rock as my shot clipped her left hind leg, the Sneasel quickly slid into a small pit behind that rock and there wasn’t too many trees that could protect them from me now.

I immediately started aiming for their weakest link, but the strongest thing I don’t want to get close to me. The Salandit, behind the boulder.

-Dazzle-

“Is this really a good idea!” This was dangerous, but it was an interesting development that we were suddenly rushing the mountain.

“Yeah, because our teams know where the Inteleon is now!” As Pom said that, the boulder I hid behind creak and became positively covered in cracks as two more shots hit it.

Good news, our teams knew where the Inteleon was, bad news would they get to them before we were killed? Would we get to ‘them’ before ‘they’ were killed? Inteleon’s were no joke to fight far or close up, especially if they were trick shot artists and can double fire like this one can.

I lunged out of cover as the boulder exploded and ran forward for four and a half seconds and stopped dead in my tracks to turn, the shot the whizzed over my nose made me jump. Not a weak reflex and fear jump, I literally jumped straight up and a shot went through the space my heart occupied and a second shot scraped my back painfully as I fell and rolled and started to run for the boulder Pom was behind.

The shots came in furious and fast as I suddenly changed direction and dove into the ditch with barely any room with Quetal and landed on him.

“Well this is awkward.” Quickly getting off of Quetal, I tried to make myself as small as I could as he scooted over to the side give me more room and himself less. We heard the cracking of a boulder ahead where Pom was.

“Yes, but we can only hope the Inteleon doesn’t see the other teams coming.” The grin I received for that statement said a lot.

A shot whizzed overhead as Squirt Purple zipped around through the air with his spinning shell spewing water to fly dodging randomly in every direction until he landed on the boulder feet first and did a backflip off it so that the water bullet scraped the tip of his shell as it flew through area and he landed beside Pom.

“Okay they may seem like dorks and are a little weird, but those Squirtles are actually pretty impressive.” On this we can agree Quetal. “We will never tell them this though.”

“Agreed.” I nodded along to that sentiment.

-Shanty-

Almost there, Dodo be directing me to their right and behind their facing. They were looking northwards at Pom’s group. In fact I could be seeing him already!

“Ready?” I said as I turned at an angle to move above him for a drop stomp.

“Y-y-yes, of course, we’re not letting him get away… even if he is a scary fully evolved Pokémon!” Yellow be braver than I be thinking, she was somewhat like Pom.

“Let’s go!” I be kicking off and dropping towards the Inteleon and Squirt Yellow be leaping form my back and spinning her shell up as she fell and seemingly disappeared from sight.

The tall lizard be firing water bullets from both hands and I be flipping several times for a Cutlass attack.

“Cutlass!” I yelled as I uncurled and swung down my right hind leg with a blazing cutting arc, this drew his attention immediately he turned to put up a protect barrier to stop my attack.

My leg started cutting through the barrier anyway, like I be cutting through metal and molasses and frozen butter, but I still be doing it.

He dropped the barrier and I flipped backwards as a upwards shot blew by my chin and beard, his right hand be aiming straight up but his left be aiming across his chest right at me and I saw an evil smirk under his red glowing eyes.

I slash my front hooves out and downwards before a small blob of water almost too fast for me to react to hit my cutting arc and split the water into two slower halves.

“AGH!” The outer edges of both my shoulders be struck with painful force instead of my heart and I flopped onto the ground back first bleeding from two small holes in me. Both his hands oriented to shoot at me at the same time.

“Hey, Super Sentai Squirtle Yellow, Heroic Right!” Squirt Yellow bellowed she appeared out of nowhere spinning counterclockwise and popping from her shell to slam her right fist in into his head.

Her yell distracting Inteleon long enough that both his shots be blasting the ledge to my left making it start to crumble.

I rolled to the right and tried to get up my front hooves… only to find my front legs not be responding. I be thinking this one guy wasn’t so dangerous up until now, especially if he be predicting my attack after blocking me once enough so that he could fire a water shot to kill, or disable if I tried to deflect.

Okay I was definitely being in pain, but as I be learning from Pom about how to power through it! Mostly in the sense of running away, but I was never a good student when it came to cowardice.

Yellow be trying to punch Inteleon in the face again, she bursts backwards with two jets of water from where her legs came from on her shell. The spraying water did little to the Inteleon to avoid as Yellow avoided a shot aimed for her neck and then she boosted to strafe to the left while spitting water into his face to blind him temporarily to avoid the second shot that tracked her.

While this be happening I planted my right hind hoof against the wall at the back of the ledge and then heaved myself up onto my other leg and got my right leg under me as the Inteleon turned to look for Yellow, who had quickly disappeared.

With this opportunity I charged forward with my limp front legs and leapt up to kick my left rear hoof into his belly as he turned charging his attack to shoot at me, his attack faltered and I pulled back my right hind leg while sticking to him with my left.

“How about some Moon-salt!” I put my sweat into this attack and launched my right leg arc across his left side and up to his right shoulder as I kicked upwards and off of him. The cutting arc of water bit into him as I landing on my hind legs from the backflip off of him he stumbled and flinched.

He be collecting himself and trying to aim for me when Yellow appeared from thin air and slammed into the back of his head staggering him forward where he had to catch himself and fell to his knees while covering my wound with his left arm and gritting his teeth.

Inteleon’s eyes be glowing red and he be spreading his arms out as he turned to the cliff to his right and I saw the glide wings expanding as I launched a flying right kick at him.

In a glow of blue he flipped over me while slapping me with his tail, then leapt away over the side only to have Yellow appear and slam into his chest in mid-air halting his escape.

What followed was six streams of an absolutely massive amount of bubbles slamming into him from below and pushing him back onto the ledge and he looked to be moving at a crawl now. One he got his footing he fired downwards with his left hand and then at me with his right as I charged him.

We not be letting him leave once we got him!

I slid on my right leg under his slowly fired shot and launched a blunt straight kick into his right knee preventing him from jumping and gliding away.

He grunted in pain, I flicked my leg cutting into his hip and he tried to stomp me between my hind legs.

I rolled backwards twice, avoid a shot with my second roll until I was on my hind hooves again to see him getting slammed in his right side by a jetting Yellow. This was followed by the Surskit Scouts leaping onto him and blasting him point blank with even more bubbles, the tried to pry them off as they clambered all over him and hitting him in various places with bubbles.

Seeing a shadow I looked up and grinned.

“Get off him, now!” My warning came just in time, all six of the Sirskit Scouts leapt away and a bolt of lightning struck him. They continued pounding him with bubbles and even Yellow joined in with the bubble barrage.

Inteleon was struggling to stand up and slapped several of the Sirskit about with a sweep of his tail, they squeaked in agony and three of them were knocked unconscious instantly after hitting five of them. The leader of the scouts managed to avoid that fate.

That Inteleon be still standing after all we be doing to him says a lot about how tough he was being.

Then the second lightning bolt fell, freezing him up and he struggled to aim upwards and fire a shot, Dolly went flying backwards with her board blocking it. A bark was heard and a green vortex of air slammed Inteleon into the side of the mountain and didn’t touch the Sirskit that were grabbing their friends and moving them out of the way of the fighting at all.

Two lightning bolts and the Inteleon was still standing up and trying to aim at me only to have a ribbon wrap around his right wrist and drag his fingers pointing into his undamaged left thigh putting a hole in it.

He still be trying to get up despite crying out in agony and almost toppling with blood leaking out several parts of him, I landed a kick to his right wrist with my left hind leg breaking it as his left fired at Smolder who took the hit, it drilled into her chest and sent her flying with a small splash of blood.

Smolder toughed it out to stay airborne, but that actually hurt her pretty badly.

That’s when a different gust of wind slammed him against the wall and pressured him, Swallow was pounding him with gust after gust of constant wind. Yet he still be fighting it and us.

“What does it take to put this guy down?!” I be as upset as Smolder when ice started forming up on Inteleon’s arms.

“This!” Ocellus dive in to slam into Inteleon’s chest with her horn glowing and she discharged a massive amount of lightning energy into him. Her horn was slightly burnt afterwards as she fluttered away to stare at the Inteleon as he started to fall to his knees. Ocellus was grimacing as she probably burnt her horn slightly doing that.

“Thank… y-…” The red light died in his eyes, he flopped onto his face finally done.

Now we just had to keep him here until Pom came to rescue him, he be really needing it right now!

-Several hours later, sometime after lunch, Helper’s Hamlet recently established infirmary, Pom-

“Build.” Bidoof said while looking at the Inteleon with notable worry.

“The mission was mostly successful, but we couldn’t get the Octillery as they were too close to Fontaine." I hoped that the Inteleon wasn’t too badly injured. "We would have been swarmed.”

We soon learned that the tough guy was called ‘Grit the Long Slinger’. A top level strategist, spy and Commanding Officer of Fontaine’s artillery corps. Chan was looking Grit over and the extensive damage done to his body by the lightning attacks.

“Like Cu Chulainn... he’ll live." Chan said as she set his broken wrist and continued to patch him up with the assistance of Foffo and Fiffi. "Darn if he didn’t put up one hell of a fight from the looks of it… pass me another roll of bandages Foffo.”

I looked at the Dynamic Maximizing stone Grit had on him, that… was going to be a big issue if there were more in Fontaine and our enemy had one of them and was a Pokémon.

The likelihood of that... one hundred percent knowing our luck.

Author's Note

Insert Music Here- Advance Wars: Grit's Theme.

264. Dimensional Power and Logistics.

-???, Oleander-

“Buttina…” I stated slowly.

“Yes-?” My friend Buttina returned with an equally slow measure.

“Can you please tell me that this is feasibly survivable by our usual flank kicking standards?” I took a long, and exceedingly slow, glance around us.

“After the kaiju world?” The clacking noise of Buttina loading shells into her Boomacorn could be heard. “We’ve got this.”

We were surrounded by horrifying creatures of a consisting mostly of a primarily singular color with image producing squares in their stomachs and odd antenna sticking out of their heads. There were tons of them and they all were horrifying with their faces filled with creepy grinning fangs. They were acting like Zombies in how they moaned and tried to crawl up onto the tractor with us, they just kept coming through the nearby cornfield in endless droves.

A blue dog with dark blue spots and the ability to mark things with magical paw prints whimpered and cowered while looking to us.

“Why are you looking at us Blue, aren’t you the one with all the clues?” Fred stated calmly, where was the... “WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE HERE!”

Ah… there we go.

“Hey, I’m Benny Bull, can I get some help up here?!” We looked at the small bipedal blue bull in the loft of a nearby barn trying not to look at all the fang filled teeth clawing at the wood of the barn. He was nervously gnawing at a vegetable and was wearing a blue and white bandana around his neck.

That’s when the swarm of tubby monsters started climbing up at us with evil grinning pumpkin symbols emblazoned on their bellies and mouths with bleeding gums being a rather prominent thing among all of them.

That’s when Song Ender swung the ship around and started gunning down the massive hoard of them around us with the belly turrets rapid fire lasers. They just kept coming as there was practically a sea of them.

“Back, you portly picture punks!” Buttina fire into the crowd trying to knock the tractor, we were currently gathered on, over with haunting yellow slit eyes looking up at us hungrily. “Why are we rescuing so many blue creatures today?!”

“D-d-does anyone know where my dad is?” A different more bipedal blue dog was curled up in the seat of the tractor and shivering. “Do you… do you think the monsters got him?”

“Bandit is an adult Bluey, I’m sure he’ll be fine and we’ll protect you until we can get you back to your parents!” I started rapidly stabbing some of the monsters with my key blade. “Though this will be pretty difficult and could take a while.”

“THIS WORLD SHOULDN’T HAVE SOUL SUCKING EVILS WORSE THAN ME!” Fred refused to be touched by any of the creatures. “To think, I thought this world was completely innocent this morning.”

“I knew these pudgy pallette pests were completely evil!” Buttina shouted over another blast of her shotgun yelling ‘you don’t belong in this world’ in horse with every pull of the trigger.

“Look, we probably should just find Pibby, she’s learned how to deal with and handle this eldritch stuff.” Of course Gumball was a blue cat wielding a golf club with overhead swings. “A little better help here Blooregard!”

“Excuse me, but we’re being surrounded by scary nightmare monsters, as an imaginary friend I can’t be expected to work at full mental capacity under these conditions without panicking!” The strange simplistic cylindrical creature was still swinging the baseball bat side to side for all he’s worth, which wasn’t much as he was swinging at empty air blindly.

“Fred be more helpful than Bloo and get the tractor started!” I shouted as we continued to down multiple grinning faced monsters in onesies. “If we’re going to meet every cutesy blue creature in existence today, then we’re going to save every last one of them!”

“Hey my name is Goo, did someone say they needed help?” A blonde haired flying blue colored pony mer-creature that smelled of clay said as she flew in like a bird.

I sighed, all the blue creatures today!

-Ransei, the next morning, Helper’s Hamlet, Pom-

I got up early to go check on Shanty, she had taken some serious hits yesterday.

“How you feeling Shanty?” I saw her grunting and moving her front legs and the bandage wrapped shoulders shifted.

“I’ve been better.” She smiled at me expectantly.

“No, I’m not getting you rum.” That’s when I received a frown and she crossed her legs over her chest.

“Stingy!” Shanty stated, then after a moment she had a grin on her face.

“Well at least I know you’re not in as much pain as I’ve been in if you can joke about it.” Honestly, my little friend was sadly a rum runner and would never change on that front. “Take care of her Dodo and don’t let her leave town! She needs to heal and I’ve got a few things to check on today.”

Dodo warbled cheerfully from the other side of the bed as I left to check on the other injured.

The Surskit Scouts were small and easily hurt, but they were doing relatively okay and would heal quickly.

The Super Sentai Squirtle Squad had plenty of injuries, but none of them life threatening. Yellow, Blue and Green were the least hurting of the six of them, Purple had taken one of the last shots aimed our way, Red was moderately bruised and Black seemed healthy but apparently was the worst off. Swallow had healed himself with his Roost move, which can only be done while a flying type Pokémon is grounded, so he’s fine too even if Roost does leave flying types vulnerable and stuck on the ground.

Having finished checking up on them I made my way back to the guild for breakfast and would pick something up for Shanty too. Upon entering I heard some music being played.

“Though the battle may be long, we… have our will~. Even though those in the battle will be strong… we’ll fight on-~.” It was Motochika playing his personal instrument and he looked horribly battered and he had bags under his eyes, he seriously needed sleep. “Oh hey… Pom… took… back Fontaine Castle and Town… last night…”

“You need sleep.” I said bluntly, seeing that he was in poor health after yesterday. Dealing with Grit was hard enough for us, but him… he looked like he was put through a wringer and came out barely alive on the other side.

“I do, fighting all night wasn’t very healthy of me huh? Still we managed to tire out our enemy through sheer force of will, it’s all the doing of one Pokémon or outsider and that odd castle.” Motochika grinned, he was probably worse off than he looked. “Thanks for getting Grit and the Froakies back for us, even if you couldn’t get the Octillery. And we got them back too! Though that took some doing from my Blitzing Buizel units, Aqua Jet is their specialty… hahhhh, after all.”

“I’m guessing we’re going to need to build up supplies for when we go to face the one that is causing all of Fontaine’s problems… until then, you’re going to get some sleep!” I picked up Motochika and, despite his protests, dropped him into Foffo’s waiting hands. “Get him to a bed, thank you.”

“You’re gratitude is most appreciated and delicious Lady Lambchop, as I’m sure that King Motochika will be just as grateful that he will be in a warm bed soon enough.” Foffo carried the weakly struggling Motochika away and none of the water Pokémon currently in the guild moved to stop him.

Some of said water Pokémon were water weasels known as Buizel enjoying a breakfast after a long harrowing battles yesterday, some were pass out drunk. The larger more evolved ones were Floatzel. They looked like they could go through the water at an incredible speed by spinning their tails in an incredibly fast corkscrew fashion, given that’s what some of them were doing as they sat at their tables eating and spinning tails were signs of their happiness.

“What can I do for you today Lady Lambchop?” Fiffi stated as she came up to my table with a twirl and a curtsy.

“Breakfast, vegetarian special, mixed spice special for Dolly who is being lazy in not getting out of bed today when I did, and whatever Mr. Schlurp feels like making for my friend Shanty as long as it is a large order to go.” It didn’t take long for Dolly to come down the stairs and share breakfast with me, she was still trying to save every last scrap of kibble she could.

There were barely a few mouthfuls left for my canine companion, I wonder how she will cope without it? Hopefully she weaned herself off of needing kibble in her diet every single day.

-An hour later, fields between Helper’s Hamlet and Aurora Castle-

“We’ll all be coming with you, even Geoff, I don’t think anyone in Aurora will want to sit this fight out!” Jiri announced as I knocked her back with forward stab into her shield with the spear I was wielding as I stepped forward. Training her to use a spear had been giving me some training off the rust from my training as a guard in Huoshan. I had told Dolly not to tire herself out too much, because I had some training planned with her later.

“So who will be picking up the supplies both armies are going to need? I know Motochika’s forces are already loaded for bear with Oran Berries.” Arguably Sitrus Berries were far better when it comes to healing, aside from reviver seeds and a few other possibilities I might not have heard of.

“Can you please not say bear around me Pom? I get enough of that from the fact that my unit is full of them and they are all so strong in their own ways, their evolutions are going to make them much bigger than mine will.” Jiri stated that last part with a grumble. “Anyway Evan, despite our kingdom being a bit low on funds to keep us housed and fed, is easily going to take care of our food needs as the kingdom has plenty. As for high end direct healing supplies… that’s going to be a bit more of an issue for him to procure. Evan is probably going to end up paying all his military units in food and housing with how much money he puts towards the people of Aurora, and they notice his efforts too. Evan is recognized by the people in heart and spirit as a leader worth following.”

“You know I can buy some stuff from the Kecleon merchants for you guys.” I offered, because I really didn’t need all the Poké I was making for much more. There were a few accessories or one time use magical orbs I was interested when the Kecleon gave my guild a catalog of their offerings of what they could acquire, hopefully legally, and bring into the continent from beyond its borders.

“Then you might want to run that by Evan, before you start buying up stuff.” Jiri stated as she brought her shield up and tossed her spear up to be grabbed by her left ear. A common tactic among Buneary and Lopunny was to use their ears in a fight, she was learning to wield a spear in her ear as she focused on wielding the shield and her free paw in a fight.

“I’ll talk to him after we’re done training then.” I stated before holding my spear up in a defensive stance.

Jiri would train by switching which ear held the spear primarily and was even becoming quite good with a spear and shield. Aurora and Fontaine didn’t use weapons too often, mostly because all water Pokémon could do some form of ranged attack that a close range weapon wouldn’t be needed as much and Aurora wasn’t very militaristic to begin with.

As for the Pokémon that do have weapons, that would be an Ignis thing as the closest purveyor of armaments. All the fire types that lived in the volcanic region of Ignis had great forges they could operate by hand due to an immunity to lava on par with Smolder, the only reason why fire type attacks could hurt other fire types is because of how Pokémon moves worked.

It is weird when a creature completely immune to lava can be hurt by fire moves not used by it due to some mild bits of said moves having a very small part of a possible added ‘dimensional’ or some ‘divine’ element to them if the opposing element of the Pokémon was not outright immune to the attack.

I surmised that Arceus, being the eldritch being who created Pokémon in the first place, made sure that all Pokémon have a small pouch of dimensional ability to use elements and even generated them slowly outside their favored habitat as Dazzle had told me. This means that every Pokémon or any race created by Arceus all had at least a very tiny scrap of his power.

I wonder how other beings that were not designated Pokémon would use that power?

-Another time and space entirely, lore-

A boy threw a ball.

The dimension energy in the ball that the boy empowered it with, by touch no less, hit a Pokémon.

The Pokémon was then shrunk into an empty pocket dimension within the ball. It shook several times as the Pokémon inside felt the boy’s spirit and love, it decided to stop fighting and join him in his journey and let the dimension within the ball hold it as its own private space.

The boy cheered and was happy to have a new friend to love and care for that he fought a hard won battle to show that he was capable of making that Pokémon just as strong as his other friends or would take care of it even if it didn’t want to battle, not knowing the why of what made pocket dimensional balls work.

Despite all the studying, the people would never could quite figure out why apricorns were primarily used by heroes in the past or even why they worked the way they did that led to the modern Pokéball to exist.

For they lived in a magical world, never knowing just exactly how item capsules could hold items of any size or how Pokémon so big would shrink and why they could make things to do so. All they knew was just that it did work and that they can improve on the design, they even had invented dimensional energy based technology that could move things vast distances… but the issue of ignorance still stood.

Never did this odd species who trained Pokémon and were once possibly Pokémon themselves know the truth. Even as it stared them in the face when they had psychic powers, aura, strong familiar like bonds and or toughness to take Pokémon attacks head on and survive with little lethal injury to themselves.

The truth is that these odd beings all held a tiny sliver of chaotic dimensional energy in themselves, a raw power that allowed them to help Pokémon with Dynamic Maximizing, Mega Evolving, Zenith-Moves or do any number of other weird things that came with the power of hearts and spirits when they forged deeper relations to the Pokémon of the world they shared.

Even with all their technology, they still hadn’t discovered the sliver of power very much prevalent within themselves that expressed itself in a ridiculous variety of ways or even know that the energy was there as it took on many forms that hide its true nature. As such Pokémon professors were out of luck on many things and came up with theories that always led away from the fact that every single odd being in their particular species held dimensional energy much like Pokémon did.

To think there was a strange race that lived alongside Pokémon that started out with a simple apricorn fruit that one of the odd beings, that stopped being Pokémon, had once thrown out of desperation. Their dimensional power imbuing the two empty halves of the fruits shell with extremely odd unheard of properties to capture things. The Pokémon that was going to kill the first ever Pokéball thrower, as they had been both fighting for their lives out of fear, had been captured and thus the first connection born of a shared fear bloomed into an incredibly wonderful friendship as understandings started happening and the fear lessened gradually.

Arceus was quite amused by that species particular discovery and was curious towards their personal slow evolution over years and through many generations.

It was rather unfortunate that Pom and her friends would forge their own strong bonds while lacking the dimensional energy to continue them, because they knew they weren’t staying in one of the realms of Arceus forever. They didn’t have that same constant dimensional energy generation required to carry any of their eventual friends inside fruit with them in a portable manner and couldn’t acquire it.

Even if magic was of a somewhat close relation in being able to do many things, forcing dimensional energy into mixing in any form as a true part of any of Pom’s group would end in their exceedingly violent, planet or possibly even reality destroying, deaths.

-Back to Pom-

The dimensional element operates on a scale so small that the injuries caused by said fire were going to be equally minimal as the fire portion would have no effect.

Using fire to kill a fire type Pokémon would take forever and was pointlessly torturous when other attacks would be far more effective.

The more Pom understood, the more fearful and curious she became of this strange world. She probably didn’t want to meet a people that could both control dimensional energy and had an insanely huge volatile chip in their shoulders.

-Some time later, Aurora Castle-

“So you can give me a list of stuff we might need for the coming battle and I can procure some of it to help Motochika and the rest of the water Pokémon.” My offer of assistance made Evan look thoughtful on the subject.

“I’m pretty sure other kings would reject it and see it as an affront because they don’t need help, I’m not those kings… I need all the help I can get because I’m not exactly good with money.” Yeah, it seemed like King Evan was more for following his heart and or in general good ideas on a budget, he was also quite excellent in a fight when it comes to tactical acuity. “I’ll get Maiden Jig to start writing up a list of the things we might need in aid of Fontaine finishing off their problem as peaceably as possible. We still have plenty of medicines for sickness from Greenleaf, but we need a lot of healing stuff for fighting. I’ll add it on to your rescue team commission’s board so Pokémon know they can offer that stuff in particular for your help.”

I nodded and proceeded to leave.

The one thing King Evan definitely wasn’t, was rich. He spent most of his kingdom’s money improving the lives of those who lived in Aurora as the local farmers will tell you.

He already had as much a military force as he could afford to field with the current units he had, that being Skeeball’s, Teeth’s, Jiri’s and Rauco’s units as a military forces. The reason nobody invaded Aurora prior is because it wasn’t seen as important on a grand scale of things.

That alongside Geoff’s unit which were militia volunteers in defending their home and took less pay than the Evan’s full on military units.

My Rescue Team was quite cheap to hire and could act as auxiliary units, King Evan might just start selling the services of his units as a part-time Rescue Team to raise some funds quickly.

In comparison… Fontaine had a ridiculously large military force. A force that was mostly fighting itself and the citizenry at the moment, just to hold Fontaine. They held a waterfront region, had underwater food resources and a huge home field advantage in said region.

-Some hours later after lunch, Fields east of Helper’s Hamlet-

“Your welcome and thank you for keeping me busy!” I said as I took the payment for a job well done from the Miltank. Miltanks were really friendly cow monsters, but I think they wouldn’t be pushovers if they ever had to join in a fight.

Dolly looked up to me and seemed a little excited.

“So are we going try your idea for a new technique?” Dolly seemed excited to help me with some new fighting styles and techniques.

“Yeah, I think it’s time to do that. Let’s go Dolly.” She seemed fairly excited for helping me with a new technique.

-Some hours of montage level training later, Dolly-

“Are you okay?” Pom asked with her back to me, her right hoof glowing. She was doing magic not with just her wool, but with her body as well. Combining the magic of her wool and the magic of her body into a single powerful attack was rather cool.

“Yeah, I can keep going.” Though I was covered in bruises and Pom was quite concerned if I could keep going, if I wasn’t blocking with my board then I would be doing far worse off. Who knew constant shockwaves could hurt so much?

Pom nodded and I hopped into the air, Pom spun around, the wool around her left hind leg sprung into the ground launching her forward. Her right hoof thrust forward and, upon impact, released a wool based Thousand Spears that knocked me back slightly and I tried to absorb the momentum of the blow.

Pom’s left hoof braced her right leg still held straight out and then this next part still confuses me as to how she does it. But it happened when she shouted…

“Buster Wolf!” Angling my board downwards, I saw something vaguely wolf shaped mass of energy spike up at me, its maw and claws scrabbled at me violently and sent me flying sky high.

Despite taking it all on the board, and having expected it completely this time, the energy splashed around the board and burnt and scratched into the fur of my front legs slightly. I flipped backwards absorbing the shock of the attack that I could and glided back to Pom.

After landing I noticed something about my board that freaked me out slightly.

“Pom… how do you see you’re attack again?” I had to ask this slowly and not make any sudden moves, I was connected to Pom and could even watch her launch the attack from her own eyes. What she was seeing and what I was seeing were two different things entirely, I actually had proof to back up what I’ve seen.

“A lunging right or left straight with a Thousand Spear on impact, followed by a concentrated explosion of energy upwards at a mostly forty five degree angle that widens and dissipates.” Well I seriously didn’t want to freak Pom out or worry her too much, but she had to see the evidence of that last attacks, before it disappears or something. “Why, what are you seeing?”

“I’m seeing you launch a wolf at me, every single time no less. Also look at my board.” I held my electrum coating skateboard out to Pom and she flinched at the sight. “There’s your proof of what I’m seeing isn’t just in my head Pom, also I’m going to send you the image my eyes caught as you launched it at me.”

I thought I had a pretty good imagination, but sending Pom the clear image of what I saw made her fall onto her butt with a wide eyed blank stare. After a few moments her eyes slowly tracked to my board and what was currently going on with it.

While Pom hadn’t damaged my board, and it was likely because she wasn’t intending to do damage being why it wasn’t badly scratched, we could see the aftereffects of the attack on it.

Across the top of my board were six intersecting marks, three curving inwards from each side and overlapping them was two lumpy looking U shapes that were definitely shaped like a wolf’s attempt to bite straight through my board. All of the markings were glowing and slowly fading away, not a scratch on my board, but I felt something like raw tenacity coming from the energy and I wonder if Ocellus would feel the same thing.

Being a part of Pom’s family wasn’t going to be easy, mostly because I wanted to keep Pom alive, but it was worth it to see radical stuff like this in action.

“Maybe… we should switch to my Alpha Lambkin style and get off the Buster Wolf technique for a while…” Alpha Lambkin was right, an aggressive defensive style where Pom claws or hits with her hooves with highly stunning swift blows that can also deflect, evade or immediately block straight into her counters are pretty powerful already, but with Pom in wolf mode? There was an interesting combo in the style she was making and Pom has been working on her speed, like she needed any more if she were to do a Dancing Flame burst and dog god of Sirius help you if she was to do that while lit on fire. “I don’t want to bring this up, but after seeing Dazzle do her Flame Burst move a few times… I think I can even replicate that move with my bark blast to possibly do a ranged Buster Wolf… and I can possibly combine it with my ‘Matchstick’ technique to create a burning variant, but let’s hold off on attempting that until I need to do it. I’m getting kind of terrified of the implications if I am actually firing magical wolves off like you say when doing a Buster Wolf, the idea that I can do ‘that’ at range... still… much better to have that idea and not need it, than not have it and need it.”

“You think your scared Pom? I think it’s kind of wicked awesome! Sure it is really scary that your explosions look like wolves to me and it just looks like raw energy to you. You doing a ranged version that to launch wolves at people with that kind of power… is haunting the word for it?” We both shivered, though I still kind of wanted to see that in action. “Yeah, that’s going to be something you’ll want to use a training dummy for and not my endurance training.”

“You know what, I think I’m going to call it with training today… let’s go do a few more jobs to build supplies for dealing with Fontaine’s situation.” Everything Pom felt, I could feel. She was quite nervous about getting stronger this quickly, she really doesn’t want power to go to her head even if her intelligence and ability to think fast is one of her greatest strengths. “I’m going to want a reviver seed for everyone on our team. Having used one, I know they are very effective in what they do.”

Taking a moment I asked Pom for the information of how that reviver seed felt mentally, she gave it to me and I reeled at how much pain Pom was in before it ended and the seed activated to revive her against Cu Chulainn.

“Yeah, it was like that Dolly.” She said to me and ran a gentle hoof down my back to calm me down. She went from agony to feeling fine in seconds, this world really was spooky sometimes… going to miss enjoying Halloween back home. At least Nightmare Nights I’ve heard about should be close enough right?

-Some hours later, Smolder-

I finished carrying a crate, food supplies for the water Pokémon currently holding Fontaine and part of the preparations for the big battle so that all the Pokémon involved would have the energy for it. It seems Pom lit a big fire under Aurora’s butt just be being nice and friendly with asking what she could do to help and a list of items.

The Miltank, Tauros and Bouffalants were gathering a lot of stuff to aid their poor beleaguered neighbors in Fontaine and would even move it themselves. It was their idea to donate to the cause, because anything that could control that many Pokémon needed to be taken down and they were happy and willing to share the surplus of their resources.

Maiden Jig was running about and doing her job as the head of logistics for keeping this kingdom going, as much of a kingdom as it was before King Evan hit something of a stride that made him become acknowledge by the people of Aurora.

Ms. Chan was already helping any Fontaine Pokémon refugees that came in heal up for what was coming ahead, whether they were going to stick in Aurora until the trouble is dealt with or go into battle on the front lines. Ms. Chan was a busy Pokémon, but as busy as she was… when Pokémon that had healing moves heard of her plight, many came in as volunteers to assist with getting their neighboring kingdoms warriors on their feet.

I loaded the crate and motioned to the nearby buffalo, bull and cow monsters with a smile. We were creating a supply line to Fontaine, Pokémon were congregating and assisting those less fortunate from Fontaine or were comforting those who lost family in the fighting the mind controlling entity behind all this caused. At this point the Flabebe and Oddish Pom had met were proving their worth at easing the tension.

I looked around and what was once a bunch of Pokémon lazing about in farming fields suddenly came alive with activity and a purpose. It wasn’t long after King Evan declared his intent to help their allies of Fontaine that things really kicked into high gear around here, even King Evan was pitching in with preparing things.

The whismur colony were of course suspicious, but even they were roped into helping out and at some point one of them made a Bidoof hear the word ‘rebuid’ and ‘Fontaine’ in the same sentence.

Thus began the mobilization of the Bidoof Building corps who wanted to do something, so I gave them suggestions of siege engines or mobile fortifications for a huge battle before rebuilding Fontaine. That’s when they all went a bit berserk after vibrating slightly and began bouncing off the walls… don’t know what they were doing right now and I don’t rightly care, I wasn’t going to be blamed for whatever those guys got up to now.

I was going to hang with Ocellus, Shanty, Dodo and Shine for a bit.

“Come to think of it, I can see why Aurora is called the ‘Kingdom of Dawn’ now.” I said as I passed by several Pokémon.

“What makes you say that?” Ocellus said as she wandered up to me and kissed me on the cheek.

“The Pokémon of Aurora just seemed so lazy to me before, kind of like dragons and our love of sleeping.” However like dragons… my mind trailed on the thought. “This entire kingdom seems like it just woke up and now they all move like the elements of harmony were used on them. So like the dawn rises, the people wake from their slumbers and go to work. It’s kind of impressive just how many Pokémon are coming together for this, give them a challenge and they rise to the occasion.”

“That’s rather poetic Smol, now come on I need your help with something.” Of course I wouldn’t say no after you plied me with a kiss Ocellus, you were a dangerous dragon charmer that knew everything about me. You were also adorable and silly, my favorite things. “We need to reorganize the bathhouses a bit because Eriflamb is a little overworked with helping Pokémon, not to mention Fiffo and Foffo are running everywhere to help as many as they can. We’ll also need to get a list of refugees who are coming here for medical help and we have to make sure the Kecleon merchants aren’t doing anything suspect.”

“Lots of stuff, so little time huh.” I looked to the south and wondered just how big could this battle really be?

-A few days’ later, southern edge of Southern Fontaine Forest, Ocellus-

The opposing force ran out of the water and then froze, the red glowing eyes went wide as they saw a Bidoof sitting in front of a large wooden fortress close to the edge of the peninsula.

“Build.” The Bidoof stated calmly and then quite a few of the mind control Pokémon fell into pit traps.

Hundreds of normal, water and miscellaneous type Pokémon sat quietly waiting, this was going to be far bigger than the battle of Elhorn. King Evan and Motochika were standing on the wall of the quickly built fortress, the controlling entity had taken it’s time with building a reprisal for the retaking of Fontaine. It was more than enough time for us to set up at the southern end of the forest south of Fontaine Castle proper.

“So all of you are the problem, stealing all my lovely subjects full of ever loyal blood away from me, who are you to stop the new Queen of this very country?!” We heard that vile voice from across the battlefield as something was pulled from the water by larger Pokémon, it belonged to what was called a Primarina sitting on a gaudy clamshell shaped stage with colorful lights sweeping the sky, her eyes were the only ones not glowing among the controlled they seemed slit and unnatural and the shadows she cast in the lights were disturbingly demonic in appearance. Behind her was the huge dark castle that had risen from the sea and our primary target. “The great and beloved, the ever wonderful and forgiving Elizabeth Bathory will forgive you if you give up this act of rebellion against my beautiful and noble personage! Just make sure everything you own is all mine and then we can move on with our lives with me running the show… okay? Otherwise I’m going to enjoy the bloodbath that happens here EHAHAHA!”

“This is going to get messy really fast, hopefully Greenleaf and Ignis were still too busy with their problems to bother Aurora or Fontaine with what’s happening here.” I said to Smolder as Evan and Motochika prepped their armies.

The Dutiful Duck Battalion was at full strength and ready to fight the thing that gave them a worse headache than they usually had.

A Loudred, the evolution of a whismur, stalked forward. Evan put a paw on his back. Loudred were twice the size of a Whismur and had two large biological speaker phones for ears and if you put a limb on them you can talk through them like a megaphone.

“Elizabeth Bathory, I will not cherish having to fight you!” King Evan was going to ask nicely first and tried the peaceful option as the Loudred sent his voice across the field. “Can you please give up and release those under your control?”

“No… because then I wouldn’t be able to bathe in the blood of my beloved subjects, the happy puppets that they are, but I can give you a song and make you all mine anyway!” Several Pokémon showed up and they looked to be musically inclined Pokémon. “Soft hearts like yours always spouts the greatest amount of blood if stabbed correctly, hit it!”

Music started playing and Elizabeth Bathory held up her microphone to prepare herself to start singing, I dropped my copy of Grit’s far seeing eyes and turned to Motochika already getting ready to counter the musical assault as both armies charged one another.

I glanced at where Pom was waiting with Shanty, Dolly and Dodo, they were to circumnavigate the battlefield from the grasslands to the sandy beach and across the ocean, with several specially picked water type teams by Motochika himself, and enter into the castle to rescue everyone they could that was in there before we can think of collapsing it.

Captain Skeeball was oddly staring at one of the whale Pokémon with a fierce look marring her normally cheerful face, she would soon be on the frontlines and was going to be going full tilt for Bathory once the battle started and we opened the fortress gates. I don’t envy her, she would be leading the charge straight into this mess.

This would be a sad battle to remember, the cause of it being that blue and white odd mer-pony looking Pokémon with the long light blue hair and a devilish grin and an equally evil feeling disposition.

Malice like that simply couldn’t be hidden from my senses.

Author's Note

As this is the month of monsters, we need a 'real' monster to fight.

265. Blood Bathory pt. 1.

Author's Note

Music- No Straight Roads, Sayu Boss Battle.

Navy Spheals will be seen in this chapter, then again all of Fontaine's military is one giant navy.

265. Blood Bathory pt. 1.

-Ransei, Violight Kingdom of electric type Pokémon-

A happy little Grubbin crawled into the kingdom of lightning spewing Pokémon, their presence wasn’t unusual for they would eventually become a known electric type Pokémon with their first evolution and one capable of flying in their second.

None of the electric type Pokémon thought much of its presence, like most of them wouldn’t think that a legendary Pokémon would ever be taking a normal everyday Caterpie miles away from here in Chrysalia seriously as a threat.

The happy little Grubbin wanted to make friends that weren’t normally part of the kingdom of Chrysalia, where bug types come from, because Chrysalia tended to be too structured to him at times.

It only took him an hour and a half to be successful, for he made friends with a fluffy sheep like being called a Mareep and he cuddled up on their back to go traveling and see the sights with a tour guide. The kingdom was full of beautiful bright lights and interesting technology, only the steel type kingdom boasted better technology than Violight.

This particular Grubbin was completely ignorant of the turmoil happening to the far south in Fontaine.

-Fontaine Peninsula, southwest of Southern Fontaine Forest, Pom-

“Are these guys seriously the unit that Motochika is saddling us with?” Holding out my left hoof to our castle infiltration team, I watched as what was known as a Spheal bump face first into another Spheal with tiny adorable squeaks. “Why couldn’t we fly in on one of the large flying scary looking danger noodles? Is eccentricity a thing that’s this horribly common in Fontaine?”

A Spheal was basically a beach ball with an adorable face of two large teeth sticking out of their upper jaw from puffy lips. Its limbs consisted of two tiny flippers and a tail fin. They were covered in blue and beige colored fur and were so ridiculously unthreatening that I couldn’t find a way to believe they were really one of Motochika’s elite units.

The being I was addressing my concerns to was much larger. She has four flippers, a tail and long neck leading up to curled ears and a unicorn like horn on the center of a gentle dinosaur like face. All of that blue and cream colored skin resided mostly underneath a rocky shell with poky lumps that can be used as hoof holds while riding her that covered a majority of their torso like a turtle, unlike the Squirtles this Pokémon didn’t look like they could retract its limbs very well or at all. This was a Lapras and it was quite friendly looking for our stealthy transportation through rough waters.

“The Gyarados are needed for the front lines, after we went all the effort in getting them back up to fighting snuff they weren’t going to tolerate or even accept anything other than being in the thick of things. Don’t you worry though, the Silly Spheal unit will have us covered on the way in… okay yeah, they are a bit dim and eccentric, but that’s the insanity that Fontaine produces regularly.” Yeah, really selling me on the harmless looking beach ball Pokémon that have the same energy as bidoof in how vacant their stares can get at points. The Spheal were probably dangerous just because they looked and act as innocently adorable as they do, hopefully they could fight with the same level of competence that Captain Skeeball’s unit does. “Trust me even if you can’t trust them to not roll off randomly, I’m Plessilia. Please call me Plessy, I’ll be your ride today… hopefully we can avoid of the volatile fighting that will be going on over that that way more directly to the south of the wooden fort that was put up overnight by those exeedingly overeager Bidoof.”

One of the Spheal almost rolled off when Plessy stopped them with a fin and a sighed audibly, I felt that on a personal level.

“Yes, that’s… very… can’t lie, our infiltration team looks like it is being inserted with a bunch of toddlers as our personal defense force for getting through all the water Pokémon between us and the castle for the rescue operation.” Still quite dour, but highly fair take Quetal. “At least your bigger and will make decent transportation Plessy.”

“Let’s get on Plessy and set off on the west side of the Fontaine Peninsula for that castle.” Shine knew what we were doing here, she hiked her backpack loaded with healing supplies and would be here for emergency pain splitting.

We were simply doing our duty as a Rescue Team to make sure the castle was cleared before we burned it down, Grit said that there were Pokémon trapped inside and were slowly being bled out for some reason. I’m inclined to believe him after hearing Elizabeth Bathory for the first time. That castle was large, ominous, dark and gave off a feeling of demented territory to it, plus there was the whole swirling clouds thing that most evil places tended to do. It was the kind of place I wouldn’t normally want to wander into out of a logical fear that it was going to be exceedingly deadly.

“Let’s see if I have sea legs better than my land legs… I Favela know the move surf, so I should be able to make it on my own if I fall off.” Favela as much as Shanty, were both obviously raring to go and Shanty was practically trotting in place to get to a battle on the sea. We’ll be in Shanty’s element at least.

Dodo warbled worriedly to me.

“I’ll try to make sure that none of us get mangled horribly this time Dodo.” ‘Try’ was the word of the day for me, I looked towards the Pokémon piling out of the fortress built south of the forest and at the front of them all was Captain Skeeball.

-Outside the fort, Captain Skeeball-

“Remember everyone, aim to incapacitate, no killing and absolutely no dying! Don’t make me make you not die or undie! Blood may be shed, but let it be primarily that hussies if you can target her!” I paced in front of all the units of combined forces and volunteers for a big battle, before focusing on one thing. Nobody takes away my blubber hubbies freedom or love for me! “Protect our medical Miltank supportive units where necessary, they can mostly defend themselves. The higher priority protections must be given to the units that are specialized in canceling out the continuous mind control effects, otherwise the Pokémon you knock out will get back up. All melee fighters will be up front, artillery units will stay in the back under Commander Grit’s oversight and we’ll eventually bring out the siege units to tear down that eyesore floating out at sea once our courageous team of infiltrators go in to save every Pokémon trapped in there! Stick to our side of the field until Motochika and Evan start the countermeasure to the mind control effect the enemy will likely be using against us. We will not let our quick built fort fall, we will not let our leaders down, we will succeed in saving every single life we can, we will not bend, we will not break and we will not stop as long as the heroes of Aurora and Fontaine stand strong together, this is going to be one heck of a fight to remember everyone!”

I turned and my Skitty Squad formed up with me as cheers erupted around us, my children could see their daddy among our controlled enemy… he wouldn’t be staying there if I had anything to say about how this day goes. I adjusted my cute hat, smiled and got myself into a stupidly hyper positive mood.

The enemy was already playing music and was preparing to sing, which was what we heard when the hussy took control of Motochika’s people previously and we didn’t know what was happening.

Thank goodness Lugia did know what was happening and told us how to stop it this time, after being taken out of the sky by our newest hero in Aurora, the ever interesting and probably cursed Dragoon Jiri. Jiri was nearby and still wielding some electric type resistant shield and a blunted spear weapon, that alongside multiple Golduck lined up and prepared for a charge led by the Tauros farmers of Aurora.

I’d get Jiri through this and then Aurora will have more true heroes, all the stuff she’s done was accidental or small skirmishes… this… this would be a real battle for her.

-On the fort walls, Grit-

“Heh, the little lady certainly has charisma to her!” My bandaged self couldn’t do any running around and I could only shoot with one arm, but I was better for directing the artillery units with my injuries anyway.

“That she does Grit and she’s going to be charging straight into hundreds of attack face first with those Tauros. That Skeeball never fails to impress me with how outrageously nuts she is.” Motochika grinned and pulled his instrument from his back. “So when do you think that Elizabeth is going to start singing, she’s been letting that music carry on for a bit and I want to go down be on the battlefield personally.”

“Yeah, I feel like that too, I don’t want to sit here doing nothing.” King Evan said wistfully watching as hundreds of Pokémon took to the field on both sides. From edge of the forest, through the grass and to the sandy shore and under the waves where a lot of Pokémon were likely hiding that were incapable of moving on land. “After we’re done with our song and dance, do you want to head out there?”

“I’ll stay here and protect the fortress, please remember that Chan and some other Pokémon are waiting back at Helper’s Hamlet for Pom to save those that are trapped in the castle.” Maiden Jig stated as she had my stone that allowed for Dynamic Maximizing, it would be a Jigglypuff that knew how to use ‘Puff Up’ that would be our best hope when it comes to supersizing. Not that I would be able to make use of it as I am.

-Heading off the west side of the peninsula, Pom-

“Okay, here we go!” Plessy jumped into the water and we grunted with the impact, this was followed by six smaller splashes as the beach ball Pokémon rolled into the water behind us and then started to drift around aimlessly. “We’ll start heading for the castle once all the forces are busy engaging one another and that Batty Bathory character is distracted from sending anyone our way as we circle around all the fighting.”

“I’m, as ever, resigned, upset and mostly scared about this…” I put my hooves to my face and groaned audibly. Shanty and Favela might be able to fight in and or on water, but Dodo, Dolly and I were sitting ducks if we fell off Plessy’s shell. “Is it too late to back out this now?”

“Like you would ever be doing that in the first place!” Shanty’s shoulders had healed over the last few days, Chan was a medical miracle, the existence of Sitrus Berries also helped. “You are being scared, but you rarely if ever be acting on that cowardice in my presence. Also you are being the one with the rescue badge.”

-Bathory Battle-

“Underwater, out there with my heart, can you feel the powerful waves… as you go swimming on~?” The Primarina sang as she held her microphone close to her chest with a fanged grin as her power pulsed over the battlefield. Her opponents within range of her domain, she was a little confused that she didn’t take control of the Pokémon she previously had as she didn’t feel more Pokémon falling under her spell, still singing would empower her forces so she would continue. “The flood that overcomes thee, will be a new ocean as to the seas, but with all you acting… as the reef~.”

As Bathory sang, several large whale Pokémon known as Wailords breached the water and slammed down creating a tidal wave to hit the peninsula. It would hit before both armies could clash and leave the Aurora Fontaine alliance forces open to a critical assault.

On the opposite side of the field Evan grinned at Motochika while holding out his waiting right paw, Motochika sighed and dropped a small bag of Poké into it. Not even worrying about the tidal wave that would horrible decimate their forces if it hit.

A hydro cannon and a series of blasts arced from the wooden fortress across the battle field and before the wave would hit the charging Pokémon led by Captain Skeeball and or carry controlled water Pokémon over to their side of the battle line, the artillery shots hit the wave in multiple places causing it to break and split off to the east and west coast sides.

Incidentally one might see a Lapras riding the waves from the shifted massive amounts of water into enemy territory without notice and six small happily chirping beach balls.

The sudden loss of the tidal wave caught all the controlled as flat footed as the Bathory and they were slammed with the full force of a hundred Tauros charging with Captain Skeeball leaping onto a Pokémon known as a Milotic and proceeded to start tearing into the enemy forces like the rock armored turtles called Titouga and Carracosta, barely slowing down her forward pace.

“Undercurrents tear at your heart, draining all that lovely blood… why, the idea feeds me on~.” Bathory continued to sing and coax her forces with their red glowing eyes forward as the Wailords set up for another tidal wave. “A new tide will come in and you’ll be washed away, for there will be no more fate… when you’re all quite late~.”

“Fire!” Grit shouted, it wasn’t Pokémon that were attacking this time, but the siege engines that Smolder haphazardly suggested. Tons of wood went flying overhead and were not threatening to actually hit any of the enemy, even if they did the chunks of wood were for a different reason entirely and it took a genius like Grit to calculate where all the wood panels would land to give the less sea capable Pokémon a platform to fight from should the battlefield become flooded.

These slats of wood were landing all over the battlefield as Grit prepped his artillery forces to fire lower as the next wave came in. The wave when the shots hit from below weakened it tremendously so that it wouldn’t crush and would instead lift up all the wooden platforms landing in the battlefield and every normal or not water type Pokémon immediately proceeded towards the nearest square or rectangular flotation device as the weak wave swept towards them. Not all of them would make it to a makeshift raft, but those that didn’t would be saved by allied water Pokémon.

Jiri, Cubby and Skeeball were all on one such number of Pokémon on one of the wooden float platofrms as the water from the tidal wave swept backwards to slam hundreds of wooden platforms with Pokémon on them into the pushing army of controlled water Pokémon with the painful force of the receding water.

It was sufficient to say that Bathory, who wasn’t very bright tactician and was still very much dangerous, was angry. She felt something off and then looked to the west and sent three units of what were commonly known as Sharpedo, the living shark torpedo Pokémon, after those trying to circle around and then went back to paying attention to the battle in front of her as she brought her microphone back up.

Even if they made it to Bathory’s castle, Bathory didn’t think they’d last very long inside the structure.

So the tidal attacks weren’t working, but she still had yet to begin fighting or showing her truly terrifying power. Right now she was just warming up even if the land battle wasn’t going too well at the moment.

“Stronger, than fate, you don’t have to really have to wait, come now and let me sate, let me taste those currents of blood~!” Bathory sang while presenting her gleaming fangs and her land army finally started putting pressure on the forces that were spread out all over the battlefield by the last wave. Bathory herself was in the same place as the clamshell stage was protected by the water flowing around it in an odd manner. A small Pokémon moved up to her calmly and she picked them up to bite them in the neck and when she let them go they were left pale and shivering weakly on the stage. “Beat you from the deep, drowning you when you start to sink, only master you’ll ever need, you can’t fight the currents of blood~!”

Omanyte and Omastar were shelled squid like Pokémon were spewing water every which way and using their shells to tank hits. Staryu and Starmie were starfish Pokémon soaring through the air and ramming into enemies with brightly glowing red gems that showed they were under Bathory’s command. Shellder and Cloyster were large clam Pokémon firing ice and spikes across the battlefield. There was also the weirdness of Mareanie and Corsola working together as they fired a veritable salvo of spikes every which way, it was quite hard to tell which were poisonous or not.

“Stronger, than fate, blasting you with a hurricane, give up and don’t you wait, you can’t fight the currents of blood~!” Bathory kept singing as her forces pounded back the initial push forcing them back to the center line to the north, she was throwing everything at them and multiple Pokémon of her forces even used a move called Rain Dance to build the power of the building storm into a crescendo. “Take you, to the brink, you will all start to sink, I’m the only nightmare you’ll ever see, you can’t survive under the currents of my flood-ood-ood-ood~!”

The weather itself was getting to a point where it didn’t favor the normal types of the Aurora part of the Aurora and Fontaine alliance taking part in this battle, but they were nothing if not hardy under the stressful amounts of water, spikes and a numerous amount of attack pelting them from all sides. Bathory wanted a taste of the liquid gold in the normal type’s veins, she might even take some of them alive.

The only part of the battlefield that wasn’t hectic was the part where the Super Sentai Squirtle Squad were fighting a massive number of seventy five Magikarp by themselves. The magikarp were just bony orange fish Pokémon that could become Gyarados, usually by swimming up waterfalls, whose best move was to flail at or tackle their opponent. That would be more helpful to the Magikarp if they were in water, but they were all currently flopping around on land uselessly and being slammed into by six rapidly spinning shells.

Only one Magikarp was standing on its fin and shouting something at Squirt Black in all of the chaos, something about revenge for his toy named Scarred Face, before trying flail into him ineffectually.

Up in the air the Gyardos, the flying water monsters were raining down moves known as Hyper Beams onto Bathory’s forces puncturing holes into the masses of controlled Pokémon to give retreating Aurora units some breathing space to get back to the Miltank supported backlines from the heavily contested frontlines.

Bathory grinned as she raise her left flipper to start issuing commands and held her microphone up, it was her turn to push.

“One, two, three, four, rise up from the ocean floor~!” Hundreds more water Pokémon popped out of the water to started spitting bubbles onto the field in arcs slowing down any Pokémon caught in them. “Five, six, seven, eight, double bubble them some more~! One, two, three, four, show them quite a downpour~!”

Moves such as Bubblebeam and Bubble started increasing and creating a fog like effect over Bathory’s side of the field. Hiding the movements of her troops as bubble started flooding the land and hiding the movements of the shadows underneath.

“One, two, three, four, Wishiwashi pushing in, five, six, seven eight, Wimpod aid your sissy kin~!” At Bathory’s command numerous small shadows in the clouds of bubbles slowly flowing towards the northern wooden fortress eventually revealed small fish hovering on the bubbles. “One, two, three, four, suspicious fishes let’s begin~!”

The small weak looking fish known as Wishiwashi suddenly grew enormous and increased in size when swarms of similar fish gathered around them to turn them into demonic looking shark like horrors when the mashed themselves together. Said Large Sharks that were not notably hampered by the lack of water on the sand or in the grassy terrain, as the lunged forward and started tearing through a number of Tauros.

They weren’t alone, because the Wimpods were horseshoe crab bug and water type Pokémon that, even under control, were highly cowardly. They were slowly and carefully backing up the Wishiwashi swarms by spewing Toxic attacks, screeching meaningless Round attacks that grew in power the more they joined their powers and were basically terrors on the battlefield with their Scald attacks as burns and poisons started filtering through the Aurora and Fontaine Alliance troops.

“One, two, three, four, slamming slowpoke everywhere, five, six, seven, eight, shellos push otherwise I won’t care~!” Bathory’s orders had strange creatures called Slowpoke were pink water sloths that were spreading out among the bubbles and launching psychic attacks. “One, two, three, four, this is me just not being fair~!”

On the Aurora and Fontaine side of things, they were trying to figure out how to deal with the field of bubbles slowing down all their troops much less deal with the hidden threats that the slowpoke represented. The Shellos were more obvious in their threat as the pink and blue sea slugs sprayed blinding sticky Muddy Water attacks and even caused the ground to erupt with Earth Power attacks.

The Alliance forces were being pushed back and hard, but among those on the front that had yet to falter Captain Skeeball was still tearing through enemy ranks. The Skitty Squad was determined and on a mission to at least reach either Bathory or the Wailords that were using the move Water Spout or their own massive hyper beams to pound them into the flying grass and dirt from a distance.

“One, two, three, four, calling out my victory parade, five, six, seven, eight, I’m quite a lovely little mermaid, one, two, three, four, bloodbath under the shade~!” Bathory announced grinning devilishly, there were bubbles blinding the field, the rain causing the normal types to have problems in the mud and the injury based assaults were sending large amounts of what she thought of as delicious blood flowing her way.

Quite frankly both Evan and Motochika were surprised when she leaned back crossing her limbs as the music continued on, it was as if she had already won just because she put a lot of pressure on their combined forces.

“Agh?!” A bullet of water tore a hole in her left side of her chest where her heart should be and she just look slightly frustrated, she shifted forward to the edge of the stage and dipped her limb into the red liquid tightly flowing around her clamshell stage.

Any of the blood that had been shed in this battle thus far was flowing into being a part of a strange pool around Bathory’s stage and it became quite apparent why, especially when she leaned forward and dunked her arm into it the mass of red liquid.

The red fluids flowed up her arm and her injury healed immediately, she pulled her arm out of the pool and dragged her tongue along the still blood red limb.

All the red liquid seemed to vacuum up into Bathory’s mouth and she grinned happily while smacking her lips with glistening bloody fangs at the mid battle snack, this left her limb completely spotless and her chest relieved of any injury, it was like it never even happened.

-Quick fort wall, Grit-

“… I don’t know about you guys… but that wasn’t quite right.” I said slowly from my viewpoint on the fort lowering his left hand and stared in disbelief at the injury barely phasing Bathory and all the blood being spilt in the battle, where it could be seen, was flowing towards her clamshell stage. “There is something just not right about what I just saw there… it’s like she’s a Golbat for blood. We can’t take her out as long as she’s surrounded by all that blood. Why she’s practically immortal as long as there are any bleeding injuries on the field of battle. I even watched her pick up a Wooper and drain it while she was singing. To think this is all coming from that one Primarina, that didn’t even react after I shot her through the heart… it’s like she doesn’t have one.”

The Wooper was an armless bipedal small blue axolotl like Pokémon, the one she drained still looked to be moving and not dead, but that child seriously needed help.

Despite this I kept my cool, even if the battle wasn’t going well for our side. The Whismur and Loudred were blasting out Uproars and using their sound attack to push the bubbles back by popping them with noise and prevented them from pushing any further forwards. The Gyarados were starting to tangle with the still capture Gyarados in the air, assisted by a number of Pidgey and Rauco’s elite unit. A large number of Tauros were down and the Miltank backline was being attack and were trying to keep Pokémon from getting injured worse while fending off attacks.

Units were taking beatings everywhere and it was basically a slaughter on both sides, Bathory’s forces weren’t holding back and their forces were trying to take their opponents.

I turned and started giving orders to several of the artillery unit Pokémon.

-Smolder-

Okay, seeing Grit shoot her and her not going down with a hole where her heart was caused chills down my spine.

Ocellus was quivering next to me, we were to stay here to help protect the quick built for and the siege weapons. Not that Pom forbade us from heading out and assisting in other ways, there was also Dazzle who was somewhat useless in doing fire attacks in this rain.

“Ocellus can you cloud walk me all the way to being above Bathory’s blood pool?” We turned and looked at Dazzle.

“Do you have an idea?” Could use a ridiculous one right about now Ocellus.

The situation out there was getting dire, as attacks violently crisscrossed all over the peninsula. Some controlled Pokémon were even close enough to hit the fortress beyond the heavily stressed Miltank backline.

“I’m coming up with one.” Dazzle stated with a clear look of concentration on her face as she watched the battle, probably glad to not be in the middle of it.

Pokémon fell and were dragged back to the Miltank for healing. Some controlled Pokémon were freed and joined the fighting, but it was going poorly out there.

“I hate to say it, but those Wimpods and Shellos are absolutely tearing us up with burns and poison and they currently have the battlefield advantage!” Stated Motochika with a weariness. “We could use a good idea.”

The Fontaine artillery Pokémon continued to pelt the backline of the controlled Pokémon trying to avoid friendly fire by hitting the heavily armored Pokémon in the back like the Cloyster firing giant spikes through the bubbles at the Pokémon in the field.

“We need to get started on our reprisal right away, but she has control of the battlefield for the moment… not that it will be for long. We can come up with something.” Evan snapped a look to Motochika. Dazzle moved over to King Evan and started talking to him. “Uh huh… Yes… oh that give me an idea… that’s going to be a nasty surprise and I have an idea of how to capitalize on it!”

“What, what is it?” Motochika was already readying his instrument along with several Loudred on the wall ready to start belting out his beats.

“Dazzle has an idea how to ruin Bathory’s ability to immediately heal from blood around her stage from what Grit just saw, if we can take her out, then the controlled Pokémon won’t be as big an issue since she’s the one behind all of this. So tell me do you have a Ludicolo team who specialize in using the move Sunny Day and Solar Beam?” Sunny Day, from the way Evan looks excited it sounded like his had an idea. Motochika grinned at Evan and they started talking with Dazzle as Ocellus and I looked at each other. “Also I’ve been holding back on some reinforcements in case it got this bad, so let me call them out… Okay, Riolu, Lucario, we need your assistance now! Please help us, we’ll forgive your raids if you assist us in this battle, that’s why I asked you to be here!”

From around the fort came the RIolu and Lucario raiders that were with Cu Chulainn, minus their leader who was still back at Aurora Castle. They all charged forward into the battlefield and immediately started tearing into the Wimpod that were causing problems and the battle line pushed back to the middle.

The sudden influx of fighting Pokémon turned the battle around, but it wasn’t enough to win it. I wondered how Pom’s team was doing?

-Open ocean, Pom-

“Plessy, incoming in the water!” They were hard to see under the dark clouds and to think this morning started out calmly enough before the rain storms started coming.

“Yeah I can feel them, thank goodness I have sonar sensitivity training! Silly Spheals unit, stop them before they can attack me or my cargo, if any of you on my back can assist then that would be quite lovely too!” Plessy swung wide as a stumpy shark shot out of the water in a blur and tried to bite her neck only to be frozen solid in mid-air by the six Spheal popping up and freezing it with cold air coming from their mouths.

“They are Sharpedos!” Quetal called out as another popped from the water and he fired a ton of swift into its open mouth. In fact that stumpy sharks looked to be mostly torpedoes with mouths.

Another leapt out for me and was grappled by Favela’s vines and she swung it around into another ones biting mouth going for Dolly who shivered in fright.

“Pom… please tell me you know how to fight in water…” I looked at Dolly and she looked back at me, then her eyes narrowed. She wasn’t asking for the information mentally. “Right then, this is going to be a problem.”

“Three coming up my rear, I can’t shake them… there’s fifteen in the water coming at us.” Plessy continued to speed towards the large castle with a small bit of land at its entrance sticking out of the sea in the distance.

“I got them, keep going!” Called Dolly as she held her right paw out and used her board and strap to hook herself to one of Plessy’s shell spikes to prevent from fall off.

“Dolly has them!” I repeated. The three fins in the water behind us went down and then they rocketed up and out of the water with their mouths open and wild glowing red eyes coming down on us.

“Aerora!” That… was new, but Dolly winced at the amount of energy she put out.

Two tornadoes erupted, one caught the three sharks coming at us from the air and the other tornado, it surrounded us with powerful silver winds as another leapt up from the left side and hit the swirling silver wind.

Our reaction to seeing the Sharpedo go flying in the opposite direction was to stare at Dolly and even she stared as the Sharpedo went sailing far away. The next few attempts didn’t break the silver barrier swirling around Plessy as they were sent flying off it all the same.

That’s when the next Sharpedo dove deep into the water as the shadow surged after us.

“They are going to try and hit us from below!” I realized immediately, that’s when I heard six splashes as the entirety of the Silly Spheal unit leapt off Plessy into the water. The six smaller shadows in the water kept up with us and then suddenly explosions started going off behind. “What are they doing?!”

“Their jobs, hold on tight I’m going to use the move Dragon Dance!” Plessy suddenly wobbling from side to side and leaning left and right as she continued to keep pushing us forward. Suddenly a glow covered Plessy beneath us and we were going much faster. “Once I drop you guys off I’m going to go back and assist them. They’ll be fine for a while on their own, they are the Fontaine Navy’s Silly Spheals! Even if Spheals aren’t generally bright, they know better than to swim directly into the mouth of a Sharpedo at least… performing another Dragon Dance to build distance!”

“That just makes me worry more about them, you said there were fifteen of those things in the water!” I looked back as did the rest of the infiltration team, we didn’t see any shadows moving after us as Dolly’s air shield ceased to exist.

-Spheal-

Did I just swim into a strange cave, it is full of teeth like objects… hmm this part at the back feels like a stomach…

After several pokes with my face and the acid eating at my fur, I took another minute to figure it out.

Yep, definitely feels like I actively touched somethings stomach lining again.

I should turn around, fart ice and swim out like those training manuals for complete idiots tells me I should do!

-

The Spheal rocketed out of the Sharpedo’s mouth as it filled with ice, thankfully the Sharpedo wouldn’t have trouble breathing, but it was going to be stuck with what amounts to the worst ice cream headache for quite a while.

The other fourteen Sharpedo were going to have a ‘fun’ time with the Silly Spheals combat unit.

266. Blood Bathory pt. 2.

-Ponyville, Cadence-

“So can we just kidnap Twilight and our friends to go to Palicoast together while leaving Luna in charge?” I asked as I sat with several of my friends.

“Why are you still friends with Jaded?” Oh Shining, she wasn’t as bad as you think she is. Still, she was pretty bad and annoying to other people most of the time.

“She’s actually a pretty good friend when you’re not on her petty kitty list, besides Flurry Heart could use some friends and we can watch her build a sand castle… plus there’s me and you being on a beach?” I watched as it took a moment for Shining to think it over. “The kidnapping wouldn’t even be really that bad as I know the pirates we’re going to be hitching a ride with.”

“Okay, we can go to Palicoast with them, but can we not call it kidnapping?” Well okay then Shiny.

Yona, a yak I’m vaguely acquainted with, stopped and looked to us.

“But Yona signed up for it and wants to be kidnapped by pirates!” Yona stated as she approached us. “Also Yona wanting to see kitty land with Sandbar, Streamy and Gallus.”

“See, Yona gets it.” I said holding a hoof out to her.

“Don’t make me ask the bridge question Cadence… I know you would jump off one because you have wings.” Shining said with a laugh as he nuzzled against me and I returned the love we felt for one another. “Still don’t like Jaded though.”

“Fair, we each have our own friends and we don’t necessarily have to be friends of those friends… did Twilight learn that lesson yet?” I said as we held each other.

“Eh, she’ll get there eventually if she hasn’t, Princess of Friendship and all. Probably learned something like that by researching Lambkin.” We can’t even mention the Lambkin around her without her eyes twitching Shining. “So who’s going to watch Equestria while she’s gone?”

“Luna.” I just know Jaded set something up since she declared war on the Princess of the Night and Pies, Twilight was more of a Tart and Turnover lover and my particular food hang up was Parfaits. Everyone already knows how Celestia was with Cakes.

-Ransei, A short distance from the ominous castle, Pom-

With a splash of water, ice spewed forth from Plessy’s horn and an icy ramp appeared ahead of us leading up to the small bit of land floating. A second later Plessy slammed into it and we went sliding up the icy ramp and placed her flipper along the inner edgy to pivot and slide us onto the solid ground loaded with strangely healthy grass at the top.

Sea water or salt water shouldn’t lead to healthy grass like this, the briny air would kill grass, weeds and healthy plants. There’s something queer about the nature of the castle as we looked at the open stone archway entrance, it wasn’t just the swirling red clouds meaning that Dynamax energy was in the area either.

I hopped off Plessy, followed by Shanty, Dolly, Quetal, Dodo, Shine and Favela, turning back to look at Plessy she nodded to me.

“All off? Then I better go keep those Spheals from getting into further trouble and help them deal with the Sharpedos. If I’m in decent health I’ll swing back around with the Spheal and will be waiting below this ledge and we’ll hold the entrance.” In the distance six lights rose up into the sky and lit things up like the sun beyond the torrential downpour I could hardly make out anything else through. “If not try to figure out a way back to the north… huh, it looks like our side are throwing up Sunny Day moves for some kind of plan. Enough Sunny Days can mostly cancel out the move Rainy Day. Good luck in there!”

Plessy dove off the ledge into the sea and started to swim back north, leaving us stranded with a castle that was obviously magical in nature.

“Let’s take stock of our stuff quickly, we have people to rescue!” With that I motioned for everyone to gather up, everyone in our group had a Reviver Seed and a few Sitrus Berries for personal use.

Shine was carrying numerous Sitrus, Oran and Pecha Berries in a pack, there were less Pecha Berries than any other. She was our support, as such she will be at the back.

Quetal, Shanty and I were scouts, we’d be testing or moving for traps. Dodo, Favela and Dolly would protect Shine and were our defenders. If any of us get seriously injured then I can use my Rescue Team Badge to send them back to Aurora where Chan was waiting to heal those we were rescuing.

“Okay, we are being good to go, then let’s go!” Shanty turned and was about to dart forward when I grabbed her with a hoof and pulled her back.

“Shanty…Wha-?!” It was a good thing I did when a sword’s blade erupted from the ground threatening to skewer us. I swallowed loudly at the rust colored blood splatters on it.

“Well that’s a trap no one would expect…” Quetal said wide eyed as he looked at the small section of grass it came from, upon closer inspection I was right to feel that something was up with the green grassy courtyard beyond the entrance. I could see various other holes patterned and layered throughout the grass, hard to spot and especially dangerous to be hit by.

“Everyone be more careful and cautious, follow me.” I moved to where I saw empty grass area, and moved forward and took a moment to notice there were different holes and even a line in the ground.

I quickly swung my hoof over one of the odd holds and a rusty colored tipped lance sprang up. Quickly jabbing my hoof over the line produced an axe that swung through the area quickly. I decided to avoid any more traps like those.

-Shanty-

We carefully be picking our way through the courtyard, slowly making our way for the wooden doors at the castle entrance. There be traps everywhere! This is exciting, scary and a fairly intimidating place, given that this was being the things we were seeing first. How much more horror be inside?

“Wouldn’t want to be fighting out here...” Dodo suddenly leapt forward and pushed me to the left with his head as a chain sprang out of a hole at where my front right leg had been, the bladed chain instead wrapped around Dodo’s leg and dragged him off to the side and a large section of the grass flipped upwards.

Dodo flexed out the bladed teeth from within his beak, he be biting through the chain wrapping his leg and while chewing on the links in his beak after freeing himself, he be getting up quickly to run towards us a few steps and then hopped several times avoiding several knife and spinning blade or axe traps.

The large section of the grass be sandwiching down on itself where Dodo had been. It be like a massive hammer with how loud the impact was and the shockwave be nearly knocking us all down.

Warbling with slightly worry Dodo looked around and whimpered flexing his new metal wings in agitation as he protectively cuddled up against my side.

Dolly be barking something and her eyes were looking about as she held her board aloft to block any chains trying to drag us into another smashing trap.

“I’m well aware Dolly…” Pom said quietly while staring at the solid block as it slowly started unfolding and settled back into place, the grass on top of the smasher not even be disturbed… it’s either that or that not be grass. “Everyone watch out for more of those bladed chain traps!”

In fact, I don’t think I ever be seeing grass grow near salt water…

We quietly be circling around to left and then back to the right and in a long circuitous route, Shine narrowly be avoiding another chain trap by phasing her body through the chain as it tried to wrap around her neck.

“This castle… it is being intelligently malicious.” I can be feeling it, I did not be having Ocellus’s empathy sense and I don’t think I needed it here.

“Just what we needed, a magical genius loci. My paranoia has shot up at least five levels.” Pom stated shivering and eyes darting about as Dodo took the lead triggering chain traps and evading them quickly.

Dodo stop as we were on the far right side of the courtyard, he turned back and warbled something to me and I received the image of a rock.

“Dodo be wanting something to throw.” It seems that I excited Dodo, because I understood what he wanted to keep me and our group safe.

“Can’t you just spit a cupcake or something Dodo?” We not be knowing how his baked goods making ability works Pom, but he probably not be as capable of doing it at the moment. “Also does it bother anyone else that there’s an increasingly large coppery smell coming from the entrance the closer we get to it?”

Dodo warbled to Pom sadly, he not be currently capable of as so much as a cupcake at the moment.

“Yeah, I smell it too, also if you be needing a projectile…” Favela flick a thick and heavy looking leaf on an arc to Dodo, he be catching it in his mouth. “Then ask for one of my razor leaves!”

Dodo nodded came back to us pushing Quetal and Pom back a bit until we were all gather, he then be sending me a mental image of my eyes and ears.

“Cover your ears and close your eyes, we should probably should be ducking down too!” I was doing this as I said it and Dodo be flicking his head right and then sharply to the left letting the leaf fly.

The leaf spun through the air curving leftward and then swung inwards and struck the ground. I be seeing something pop up from the ground and be quickly closing my eyes as several loud explosions went off.

Upon opening my eyes I be seeing several spears, swords, axes, daggers, darts and a whole mess of twisted bits of metal sprayed all over the place. Dodo looked to the left and right slightly and then warbled before moving forward.

“… Can we all just take a moment to appreciate the fact that Dodo prevented us from being in the middle of that horrifying kill zone?” After Pom said this, we did just that and praised Dodo. It be making him quite happy that we were alive and alright. “These traps look like they were designed to maim and or completely shred and bleed a person out. That Bathory is really… something else.”

I think Pom wanted to be saying something nastier, but she be looking my and Favela’s way. It not be like I don’t know how to curse like a sailor already, but Favela might need to take some pirating lessons before she can be a good number two. Pom is still being more innocent than I am, not that I be entirely losing all my innocence in one go, I still be having a scrap of that somewhere around here in my head.

Also we be making it to the entrance without any further trouble.

-Quetal the Sneasel-

I pushed the door open and the creaking noises sounded vaguely off, as in not ancient, enough so that I jumped back. This made me avoid getting skewered by a bar of spikes swinging down from above the doorway. It seemed it would only do so if the door is opened fully, the spikes were low enough to puncture legs or torsos of smaller Pokémon.

Also the overpowering smell of blood was getting worse, not that I didn’t notice all the spikes on the bar had the same rusty colored tips to them. How many people have these traps killed and were we walking into what was an obvious death trap the size of a castle?

“Not very welcoming is it?” I said blandly to Pom who looked nervous and very much alert.

What does she have to be scared about exactly? I know she isn’t invincible, but she managed to mostly match a powerful Lucario while they were Mega Evolved on her own and she has insane reflexes. Sure she pulled every muscle in her body doing some weird attack, but she was likely to survive this… unless she got herself killed trying to keep us alive…

I flinched slightly and brought my left claws up to my chest, taking a few deep ragged breaths trying not to relive history here. Not when we were in a very dangerous place where I could almost feel the maliciousness in the air.

“Where to first?” I asked as I didn’t move to go inside.

“The castle has four towers, but I doubt any of them are primarily where the captives are held. We’ll start from bottom to top… we will need to find stairs or something that can possibly lead into a dungeon or a basement that’s likely to be here.” Well it certainly did feel like it had to have a basement Pom. She carefully stepped over the bar trap hanging in the way of the right doors entrance. “Also, we are not splitting up. No matter what happens, we group up, we move cautiously and we do so quickly. Dodo, thankfully enough, can sense the traps he’ll take point.”

The strange ground bound Skarmory like thing made a strange noise and immediately moved forward into the castle while sweeping its eyes left and right. It then looked around in a circle at the ceiling and at the floor, it stretched its right foot forward and tapped something while swiftly hopping back.

A wide axe like blade dropped from the ceiling and crashed into the floor with thunderous force splitting the stone flooring with minimal little effort.

“A guillotine?!” Pom stated as the rest carefully entered the castle behind her over the spiked bar. She studied the brown edge of the metal. “Okay… not what I expected… but let’s not walk under any chandeliers with tons of pointy bits, for very obvious reasons. Be wary of anything that moves and isn’t us, including the floor! Continue Dodo.”

The thing that wasn’t a Pokémon responded to Pom and then moved forward while looking around, it was very bright and it triggered some traps and after that the area was slightly safer to move through.

We passed by the two staircases leading to the upper floor and didn’t go through the hallways to the left or right, we instead went straight entered a central room of the castle… which had a large fountain filled with a viscous, thick and churning red liquid that smelled of blood and probably was.

“Is that a fountain of… I, Favela, am going to be sick.” The poor little grass type goat paled and shivered, I however just reminded of what I’ve lost looking at the sickening pool.

“It’s not a fountain… it’s a bathtub with a fountain in the middle, I can faintly smell some chemicals to keep the blood from coagulating.” Pom stated with a wide eyed certainty. “Any nicks or cuts we get in the castle are now a priority to deal with if all the traps have that anti-coagulant chemical in them or else we’ll continue bleeding until we bleed out.”

“Agreed.” The rest of us stated as we gave the giant bathtub a wide birth and moved on to what should be the throne room… it wasn’t. The throne room must be up the stairs then, since what we saw was exactly what we wanted.

The staircase into the basement of this cursed and haunted castle of traps.

-Shine the Ghourgeist-

This place had some interesting aesthetics to me, but then again that’s just the inner ghost type side of me that likes spooky places. This place was horrible for anyone who couldn’t simply phase through all the deadly traps and if they were even deadlier because you wouldn’t stop bleeding if hit by them… yeah. This place was both scary and not nice.

Even the spiraling staircase down into, what I assume to be the dungeon or a torture, possibly both, was covered in traps that Dodo thankfully could see and or somehow predict. Pom even had us walking along the wall when there was a trap that would turn the staircase into a slide, where being skewered or stabbed on the way down was an exceedingly high likelihood.

Wire with barbs, swords with jagged bits of metal, axes with gleaming edges, large clubs covered in metal thorns, we were seeing all sorts of ways to be bled dry on the way day. It’s a good thing we won’t have to carry any captives back on the way up, but still it was going to be hard for us to escape personally.

We were going as fast and as safely as we feasibly could, even then the battle outside was probably far more horrendous and growing more hectic. We’d be late to the party, but we’d join in if the fighting was still going.

We finally reached the bottom step and a barbed spear sprang out of the ceiling, no one was hit, but it did spook us a bit as it was something that Dodo didn’t catch. Favela was the one that pulled Dodo back to safety with her vines while looking up and shivering.

-Favela the Skiddo-

This place was an adventure, but not the kind I wanted to go on. This was the serious, we’re going to die if we make a mistake kind of stuff. Still we managed to disable or bypass some of the worst traps, the floor slanting slide one was particularly notable to me.

I looked to Shanty and she looked to me, we both cautiously squeezed by the barbed spear that fired into the floor and moved into what looked like a place from a nightmare, it was the entrance to the castles dungeon.

Thinking about it, was the spear aimed at where you would stop if you were to slide all the way to the bottom of the… best not to be thinking about it then.

There was watching my step and watching someone else’s steps as well, we kind of needed that here as we moved forward into a room with implements I didn’t even want to think about how they were used.

“Torture room… Bathory is definitely one of ‘those’ kind of problems.” Pom stated quietly as I stuck with Shanty who was looking about curiously, barely looking far less fearful than I was feeling.

We started looking around the circular space with various things in it like crates, barrels, even a table with some wine and a few other odds and ends on it. Wine that I noticed Shanty sniffing before putting a cork back on the bottle while making a gagging noise. Dodo didn’t seem to find anything problem in the surrounding room so we relaxed a little.

A lot of the center of the room was taken up by some very strange large objects, so we heard the voice before we saw them. As we walked clockwise around the central obstruction blocking our view of them.

“No… she can’t be back… not now…” Someone whispered and my ears flickered to a rack where a Pokémon covered in scars was hanging from bindings wrapped around her flipper arms. The Pokémon opened their eyes and she didn’t seem like she could understand what she was seeing before her. “Not… Carmilla… thank… goodness.”

“Carmilla?” Pom immediately made her way over to the bound Pokémon that I recognized as being a Primarina.

“You learn… a lot… when…” She started breathing heavily, tears spilled from her eyes. “Please, be real…”

“Shine, we found a captive over here, we need a Sitrus Berry!” Pom moved up to her and gently ran a hoof along her body making her flinch at the gentlest of touches. “Open your mouth please.”

“O-okay.” She was already whimpering, this Primarina had seen better days. Scars ran along her body tarnishing what was once a beautiful Pokémon, her hair was seemingly haphazardly hacked to her shoulders and her limbs seem to not have much strength in them.

Pom slowly pushed the Sitrus Berry into her mouth and she quietly bit down and started chewing the berry. Once she swallowed her battered and scarred form heal up slightly, but she still looked very horrible.

“… you’re real, all of you… you… you came to save us… from HER.” The Primarina suddenly had some more life in her eyes, the look in them prior to eating the berry was haunting.

“Favela gently wrap your vines around her torso, Quetal cut her bindings… one at a time and slowly lower her to the floor.” Pom instructed and we followed that up. “Who are you and what’s been happening here, I’m Pom Lambchop of Rescue Team Harmony. We will get you and everyone in the castle out of here alive.”

The Primarina barked with laughter and tears, it was as if she didn’t believe Pom’s words.

“How are you going to do that, you’re trapped in here with us. This castle breathes, it wants us all to bleed for ‘HER’…” She shivers as she was freed and left lying on the floor, which was pretty cold come to think of it.

This ‘HER’ sounding fairly scary to me, is it the same one who is holding that massive battle on the Peninsula? A battle that we are not a part of to be here?

-Pom-

“Who is she? Is it Bathory? Also why didn’t she put you under her control?” The answers we would receive probably wouldn’t be the most pleasant things in the world to hear. Not from this poor seal like Pokémon that looked to have bene vigorously tortured. “You know what, tell me while we’re rescuing the others being held in the cells down here. Dodo scout and tell me if there are any traps ahead, if this is a dungeon there are likely cells with Pokémon that need an emergency rescue.”

Dodo went to do so and I turned back to the sea lion, mer-pony Pokémon who gained my attention by trying to move towards me slightly.

“She likes to hear woman scream as she flays us with sharp instruments, the controlled don’t react how she wants them to when it comes to carving us to lick up our vital fluids. She bleeds us out and licks our wounds to drink our blood. She talks quite a bit about who she is, was and her history.” She was shivering and looking around for safety, most of us here were female and she’s been very badly hurt by one so she sought out Quetal who seemed a little surprised she would focus on him. I would be surprised to because he has claws and she had scars. “She calls herself Elizabeth Bathory, but her name is Carmilla the Blood Countess, the very master of this castle. She summoned it here, a castle full of traps to bleed anyone that gets trapped inside. She’s very much haughty, arrogant even to the point she wouldn’t stop talking about how great she was even as she stabbed me in the tail and told me how we should all be glad, proud even, to be a delicious snack for her. She said we wouldn’t be able to get out, to escape capture, that we’ll be trapped in an enclosed space like she was at the end of her life whatever that meant. She even revels in the idea of bathing in the blood of females and whatever appearance of her you saw, it is a lie… since she’s using my appearance before she captured me.”

The Primarina was just shy of hysterical as she told us about them and holding onto Quetal who was trying to avoid hurting her with his claws.

“Quetal, can you get her to calm down? I’ll be busy rescuing the Pokémon from the cells.” I left the Primarina to him and saw Dodo waiting for me with Favela and Shanty by one of the open cells, inside was a badly injured fox like water Pokémon with fin laying on her side. She woke up as I approached her.

“Mmhhhh… Doggy… Messiah? You came for me…” The tail weakly flopped and wagged the cross between a fox and a fish seemed excited to see me despite how painful it was to move.

I held up the Rescue Team badge and in a pillar of light the blue Pokémon disappeared back to Helper’s Hamlet. The first rescue from this castle.

I made my way into the next cell, it look like a blue little crocodile.

“Huh… someone actually came… Motochika… for…ever…” In fact blue was becoming a recognizably prevalent color among water types at this point for me. I sent the little female crocodile on their way and hoped Chan was ready because those injuries looked nasty.

-Bathory Battle-

“What?!” Bathory noticed something was wrong as signs of life began disappearing from her castle, she knew of all of the life within her castle and could feel every inch of it.

Bathory was angry that someone was taking away her toys somehow. Maybe they were killing them to put them out of their misery or maybe they were being teleported out. Whatever the cause, Bathory had to nip that in the butt and was upset that they think they can succeed in saving the already damned.

With a mental flick Bathory activated the castle to actively go after the intruders and thereby raised the castles threat level several degrees to active traps instead of her usual passive ones, since apparently the passive traps that normally make up the malicious location that was her castle weren’t quite enough at the moment.

If Pom’s team were to head back to the entrance of the castle, they would see why going out the front door just became functionally impossible.

Bathory turned her focus back on the battle in front of her, her enemies were being quite resilient to the assaults she kept pressuring them with. The six suns creating the daylight on the northern side of the battlefield were glaringly bright and the clouds of the rainstorms her controlled could create wouldn’t push any further northwards, those suns were well enough to shine through the dark rainstorms she tried to increase in strength, the light of those created suns made her skin itch.

-Dungeon cells, Pom-

“Thank you.” The Floatzel in the cell said before she disappeared in a bright light, I asked about any other captives and most of them were down here in the three cell blocks.

I moved to the next cell and saw a monkey like face and she was already at the bars of her cell and giving me a hopefully smile as she stretched out an arm. To me, probably saw me needing to be close to a weakened target to rescue them.

“If you are healthy enough, help the others I’ve already rescued with the injured.” The monkey nodded and I rescued her, sending her away from this dark and disturbed place. It was quickly becoming quite apparent to me that all those that we rescued were female, covered in scars and had been bled out several times… so that bathtub with the fountain we saw on the way in.

I wanted to throw up, I wanted to cry and not be in the middle of this mess, but I had a job to do and more Pokémon to rescue.

“Pom, we be hearing something strange sounds, it is being like the castle is shifting about!” Shanty drew my attention to the large staircase that lead down here.

“She know, SHE KNOWS!” The Primarina wailed out and continued to whimper and pulled the much smaller Quetal into a tearful hug. “And is coming for us…”

“Do you want to be rescued?” I held up the Rescue Badge. The Primarina nodded and tried to use it on her to send her away. Only… it didn’t work. “That’s, not good. It didn’t work.”

“Don’t worry we’ll still get you out of here.” Favela was joined by Shanty and Dolly in agreement. I silently thought it too, no one that was stuck here was going to be left behind to these horrors. We have to check the towers, upper floor and the throne room, but before we did that we’d at least get the Primarina outside and into the sea to freedom.

It took about five more minutes of checking, but none of the cells here had any more Pokémon. We had already rescued about fifty seven so far. It just made me wonder how many we would find in other places, Dolly also found a journal or diary belonging to Elizabeth and after perusing its pages for a good ten minutes I learned all we needed to know about Elizabeth Bathory. Why this was found in the torture room was obvious, this was her favorite place to be as sickening as that might sound.

Bathory was not someone that was nurtured by nobles that looked down on the peasantry, was overly spoiled and the story led up to how she became what she is.

The journal also pointed out she was a reincarnated soul that was given another chance in this world. She even remember how she died several times previously. Her first death… she sealed in a room all alone, barely surviving off whatever food they the people who put her there gave her and after three years of karmic torment to match the ones inflicted on the people she thinks of as below her… she died, lonely, insane and tortured herself.

This led to her being summoned from beyond death as a vampire with a draconic power over sound from how her voice had led many to their deaths in her first life. It was the knowledge about how she became Carmilla because of how history saw her, she literally became what the world she was in thought of her in legend after death before being called back from beyond the veil… she went from stuck up noble to a blood sucking demoness due to cruelly bathing in the blood of other females and history seeing her as a monster. Thus a monster she became.

Carmilla didn’t have to be that monster when she was reincarnated into this world, but she chose to become the monster again in this world to. Leading me to think she was far too stuck in her ways.

It was sad and I can kind of pity her, even if she was a total monster judging by some of the implements she had here.

-Bathory Battlefield-

“Okay, hit it, let’s give this discordant note a rocking and take back the field!” Motochika shouted and some drums started playing. He soon joined in on the guitar “We’re not going to take it~. No, we aint going to take it~. We’re not going to take it, anymore~!”

Across the field the pupils in Bathory’s eyes shrunk as she felt the song of rebellion wash over her. Memories of being stuffed into a small room in a tower until she died. Autophobia and Claustrophobia as the battlefield seemed to shrink before her eyes and even with all the controlled around her, the pressure of loneliness threatened to struck her down.

“Stronger than fate.” Bathory said with conviction as she continued to force her controlled army to take down the forces of Fontaine and Aurora once and for all. She reached up and gripped the necklace she wore bearing a Dynamax Stone.

267. Blood Bathory pt. 3.

-Prison Castle, Pom-

“So this magical castle is a prison where Bathory died and it’s preventing us from using the Rescue Badge from teleporting anyone out to Helper’s Hamlet.” I shivered at the idea that we were all trapped in a magical castle full of extremely lethal traps, closing Bathory’s diary I looked it over. I had been reading it for the last five minutes in concentration. “Bathory is apparently some kind of dragon with illusionary and mental sound powers and vampirism. How did we end up in this position again Dolly?”

“Motochika asked us to rescue the people trapped in here and you being you, you didn’t say no.” Dolly stated with an amused tone as she glanced about warily. “Normally I wouldn’t be afraid of some spooky haunted castle like this, but in this case, it’s quite literally a ‘magical’ spooky haunted castle that you can feel led to the deaths of various people. That blood filled hot tub wasn’t something that one person could make alone Pom, how she got that much blood in there is something I’d rather not think about. In fact, it’s something I’d actually expect from Cruella De Ville given her history with my family… which was something that actually came up with Splatter Phoenix come to think of it, so that’s a horrifying validation on the thought.”

“According to the journal or diary, whichever you want to call it, from what little I’ve read so far at the back of it… Bathory’s legend is what gave her the power to summon this castle and how she is the demon she currently is, that and some magical space time shenanigans involving something called the Holy Grail wars and magical wishes. A holy grail doesn’t sound like much, there are plenty of those in Equestria and all they do is freshen water, but wishes sounds like a whole huge mess of trouble.” I stowed the journal away in my bag and motioned for Dolly to make some noise to gather the others waiting patiently near the entrance to the cells and circular room. “If you ever get a wish Dolly, be extremely careful with what you wish for.”

“I’d just wish Dormarch was revived and healthy if I ever get another one.” Dolly said earnestly as she adjusted the board on her back. “Already got one wish where I’m living the dream.”

“That’d be two wishes, even if you frame it as one. One wish to revive and one wish to make sure he was healthy… we’d need a third to bring him to us I’d bet, because where would he be revived at and how would he get to us from there? There’s also the fact that anything that has ever been named Dormarch or any variation thereof might be revived and not necessarily or specifically ‘our’ given Dormarch that we know for certain. If I was given a wish, I would wish for something so stupidly simple, that the wish simply can’t be interpreted in any other way.” I would kind of want to wish that nothing would ever happen to all of my friends, but if nothing ever happened to them then how would they grow or experience new things? They’d hate me for that, pain and suffering is something you have to live with existing. That along with having a finite life span in a given world you love, before the next great adventure. “Okay, everyone, we have to find out if any of the towers around here have anyone in them and check all the rooms, then we have to leave and make sure this place gets destroyed. Also I would like to admit that I feel kind of sorry for Bathory.”

“Why would you feel sorry for that monster?!” The Primarina we were going to rescue had reasons to be upset with Bathory, she of course was clinging onto Quetal for dear life and he looked very uncomfortable.

Given his life prior to ending up traveling with us, Quetal wasn’t very touchy feely and he had reason to keep his distance from people, but he was trying to rise above the nature of his dark and ice typing by not having a cold heart. This was still very awkward for him.

“I think she started in this world alone, she’s never going to have any true friends because of who she is as a person and she’ll never find real happiness as all she seems to know is causing and receiving both pain and suffering. Elizabeth Bathory, Carmilla, is basically living in a delusion that what she is currently doing makes her strong.” It didn’t beyond her having personal strength, but we knew Bathory was still a terror and a half with the kind of power she got from being a legendary figure in life on some other world we might never see. Makes me wonder what the legend of the Shadow Fighters would do for us when the six of us all finally perish. I’m aware I’m progressively getting stronger, not that I liked it or appreciated that worrying fact, but it was something I seriously needed to continue forward. That I’m on par with someone like Arizona was a bit mind blowing for me. “Bathory is truly a nightmare made real by the people around her growing up and by the legends that came after, but how she became that nightmare is sad… enough so that she wrote her memories in a diary trying to force them all out of herself in an attempt to forget who she is, was and might continue be without pause. I’m going to read her entire diary eventually and learn all I can about the person she was, because from what I’ve seen… she might never get the chance to be anything other than a villain in someone else’s story. Even when given the chance to reincarnate into a world anew and starting fresh, it sounds like her memories will always follow her like some form of curse. At least that’s all of what I can understand of her situation thus far, so really… there’s some room to pity her. Bathory is actually strong in some ways, but others… well one person fighting an entire war ‘alone’ by themselves…”

Trailing off I looked to the Primarina who didn’t say anything, she simply looked away while crossing her flippers over her chest and began to lightly hug herself. I trot up to her and give her a hug and she returned it softly with a bit of hesitance.

“Come on, enough resting let’s try to take the stairs and see what’s changed around here, because something big happened to this castle and knowing us, it probably won’t be anything good.” We all went to the circular room before the cells and towards the stairs, I stopped when l heard something behind us.

Turning around I saw something oozing from the wall and hissing as it dropped to the floor. The lit candles, which never wore down, fell off the far back wall as a green oozing sludge started to fill the torture dungeon and began melting the metal of the cells. In fact the flow was coming towards us and if we had to run up the stairs with traps while being chased by rising acid goo…

“Dodo, path, stairs, now!” I didn’t need to elaborate as Dodo started moving up the stairs. “Follow him!”

When Dodo tried to go up the stairs they immediately turned into a slide and he quickly popped out the claws on his blocky talons and managed to stay on the slope, but he looked back us and warbled sadly.

I looked at the staircase and saw some slick black substance flowing down it, probably oil to prevent us from climbing up the spiral slide down into the acid that was quickly fill the cells down here.

Shanty, Dolly and I could climb up along the walls, but said walls have traps. Favela might be able to pull herself up with her vines by stabbing them into the brick work and pulling herself up. Quetal might be able to claw his way out of this. Dodo was already showing he had an idea of how to climb up himself.

The problem was that the Primarina was large and already doing poorly health wise. There’s also Shine to worry about. The traps wouldn’t affect her if she phased through them, but she was carrying our healing supplies.

If we had some rope… Favela… if we had defenders… like Quetal and Dolly.

“Favela, quickly wrap vines around me and Shanty! Ms. Primarina and Shine start hugging Favela tightly. Quetal, Dodo and Dolly will protect us from the traps as we climb up!” My orders in the middle of a growing panic were met with instant action.

Favela’s left vine whipped out and wrapped around my waist, I leapt to the left wall. Shanty jumped onto the opposite wall understanding where I was going for this. The captive Primarina got to the where the oil was and rolled onto her back and Favela clambered up her tail and onto the mermaids belly so that the Primarina would wrap her in a hug, Shine clung to the small end of the tail.

“Ready, move carefully now, go!” I started to trot along the left wall at the same time as Shanty did so on the opposite wall as we climbed the spiral. We were using the oil slick to help us drag the Primarina up the steep slope as we walked along the walls that weren’t coated. We would use the oil trap to our advantage.

Quetal Clambered onto the wall behind me using his claws and Dolly was on Dodo’s back, as he climbed ahead of us, readying to jump at any trap wielding her board in a defensive measure. Dolly couldn’t stay on the walls without moving, but she’d be capable of getting up by herself if she fell. Dolly was only riding on the smaller Dodo to conserve energy.

We started really pulling the poor Primarina up the slope as the green sludge splashed at the bottom of it.

“Come on Shanty, pull!” We were moving up the spiral at a good pace, a spear on a chain flashed out at me from the upper wall on Shanty’s side.

Only to be hit back and broken by the exploding energy stars that Quetal spewed forth, he crawled the wall with a look of concentration in his eyes. He sprayed another burst in the defense of shanty as bladed stars shot at her.

“Why is it always being ninja with me? Pirate, Pi-Rate!” Thus was Shanty’s grumbling at being assaulted with throwing stars.

A cutlass, lacking handle or hilt, came spinning at the vine wrapped around me and Dolly swung her board up into its path with her strap. It was easily deflected up and over and then went sliding down the spiral slope.

“Oh, come on, that was a perfect one to be sending at me!” Shanty stated with more grumpiness.

“Shanty… don’t ask the bleed happy murderous castle to attack you any more than it already is, it’s already doing that enough.” Blithely aware that the castle was somewhat alive, I continued to clamber along the wall avoiding the trap holes that would either cause me to get skewered or would cut into Favela’s vine.

“Knives!” Shanty announced and both Dolly and Quetal deflected the projectiles that spewed forth from the walls at us. Dodo even had to catch a knife in his beak before it could hit either the Primarina or Shine. “Well that is being more like it at least…”

“Stop encouraging this place!” The Primarina had found her spark and voice, it just took her getting angry to do so. “Acidic goo rising up behind us, remember?!”

“That’s not much to worry about, we’re almost to the top.” There was something I noted about Shanty, she wasn’t losing energy or getting tired at all… she had gained quite a bit of stamina and I was proud that she was getting stronger alongside me. At least I wasn’t so alone in my unusual rise in strength.

Once we did get to the top, after deflecting a series of very insistent throwing axes, Shanty spoke up.

“Stop!” Shanty shouted before we climbed through the entrance and I looked to her, I took a glanc behind us at the bubbling goo rising and the fact that it was now tinged red. “Up!”

I looked up from the entrance and saw something that hadn’t been there when we passed through previously. A chandelier now hung near the entrance, one covered in an absolutely excessive amount of sharp crystals, blades and thorns.

“...” I didn’t say anything. The chandelier would get in the way of us pulling straight out of the doorway. It was placed precariously and precisely so that it would crush us if we tried to pull the Primarina and Shine the rest of the way up.

Unfortunately it was also poorly placed as I grabbed onto the side of the entrance to the basement dungeons and looked at the walls to our immediate left and right from the entrance. As if seemingly in response to my looking, the walls spun around and produced pillars with spinning blades and chains that moved back and forth along tracks in the wall, so we couldn’t go outward from the entrance to avoid the chandelier.

The only way was up then, I quickly climbed up the arch, with Shanty mirroring my actions and then straight up above the entrance. This pulled the Primarina up enough that she could get her flippers on the floor around the entrance to the basement and pull her and Shine the rest of the way up, which was a surprising show of strength given her poor health.

“What no flames traps to keep us off the walls?” Shanty… well actually…

“I don’t think this castle can kill us in ways that isn’t conducive to ruining its ability to bleed us out.” I’m quite sure the acid was specially made to rend our flesh and bones, but leave our vital fluids untouched. That was on the basis of the bloody color it turned as it rose. The reddish ooze stopped a foot below the basements entrance. “Guys move carefully, don’t trust what we knew coming in!”

Favela released us and sighed as she finally wasn’t stressed with acting as a pulling rope for us. We all regrouped up near the dungeons entrance, but not under the highly obvious chandelier trap like complete idiots.

So far this castle was just mentally exhausting, this could be worse we could be fighting our way through controlled Pokémon trying to escape and they could be getting skewered on these traps. Thankfully enough, Bathory had most of the controlled on the battlefield… or maybe there was even a small part of her is being vaguely merciful by not having them patrol her castle.

Since we kind of promised to get Primarina out we needed to head back towards the entrance before searching for more.

“Dodo scout ahead, let’s head back for the entrance.” Nodding back to me, the lovable living metal familiar started to circumnavigate the room and we followed him back towards the room with the blood bath and fountain.

When we entered the room Dodo was waiting patiently and warbled with worry, he had reason to be as the room no longer feature what was previously here… we couldn’t actually go back through this room safely either for one reason.

The entirety of the floor was now taken up by what looked like the world’s largest wood chipper, given the horizontal body pulping blades taking up the floor. I wouldn’t want to attempt carrying Primarina or Shine over that and I don’t think Favel can stretch her vines that far. Speaking of Favela she look stressed by us outrunning that acidic ooze the way we did, I would not ask her to use her vine whip to help us across this.

“Okay… let’s try a different path! East or west people?” I shuddered at the idea of us trying to circumnavigate that death trap. “We still needed to check the towers for any other survivors anyway… first come first serve direction.”

“Let’s head east first!” Dolly shouted before anyone else could speak up.

“East it is!” We turned and left the body chipper room and back through the hall with the chandelier and towards the eastern corridor. “Wait… stop… an idea has just occurred to me. Shine give me your backpack.”

“Okay… but why?” Taking the Sitrus Berry loaded bag from Shine, pointed down the hall.

“Phase, then run as fast as you can through the hallway, I need you to test something. Also here’s a reviver seed just in case.” I whispered to our ghostly gourd friend, she took the reviver seed and tucked it into the hair behind the curling stem sticking up from her the top of her head. The hallway was full of iron maidens, slots for swinging axes and beyond that was the back eastern corner of the castle.

“Right… excuse me everyone, but Pom asked me to do this… YAHHHHHHHHHHH!” Shine charged down the hallway and the Iron maiden came to life with shining yellow eyes and tried to skewer her with two spears from above two axes from the side and tried to stab her from below with six arms. One of the iron maidens launched forward open two doors outward and tried to close them on Shine who kept going as swinging axes, stabbing blades, and puncturing spears all passed through her ghostly form and arrived at the other end of the corridor after passing through an iron maiden that tried to close in on her.

I looked to the ceiling at the hanging lights in the corridor leading to one of the towers.

“Let’s go, Primarina stay in the middle of us. Shanty, Dodo take right, Dolly with me on the left and Quetal bring up the rear and help those of us who get into trouble with your Swift move.” We’ll move at your pace.

Aside from being a bit slow and quite scared the Primarina made it to the end of the hallway and everyone avoided injury.

The swinging axe traps didn’t activate and only two of the Iron Maidens came at us. Dodo and Shanty fended of their weapons easily with bladed hoof and deflecting metal wing. Dolly blocked the spears and knives while I held off the axes by breaking their wooden shafts.

The two that activated were the ones near the end of the hall, the traps had a limited amount of time of being active and had to act on the principle of being trap. The Iron maidens for instance couldn’t hound us or leave the area they are trapping.

“Everyone wait here for me here.” I made sure that the floor wouldn’t suddenly drop out from beneath them as I gave Shine back her healing berry loaded pack and started up the stairs.

“Hey Pom, I’ll…” I looked back at Dolly and shook my head no, she laid down on top of her board. “Well okay then.”

I carefully and quickly made my way up the stairs… no traps… strange, very exceedingly strange.

Once I got to the top of the tower I noticed several things out one of the small openings. There was a magical purple barrier around the castle and I thought I heard some movement.

Nothing here, but lights, a table, some chairs and a chipped teacup with a design that looked oddly like… it was a ghost type wasn’t it? No way would a teacup have a face like that, strange purple liquid that was refusing to spill onto the floor from the chipped portion and a part of the handle was made up of the same purple liquid stuff poking out of a different hole on side the handle would be trying to look like a handle.

“Excuse me, but you can’t stay here, we’re going to destroy the castle as soon as we leave and no one should be here when it collapses.” The liquid rose up revealing a spooky ghost thing as if it were a part of the tea cup, a tea cup that was notably floating. “Also can you do me a favor and check the other towers to see if anyone is in them, then come back here so we can leave together?”

“As long as the scary bat lady isn’t around… okay.” He said after a moment and left through the stone wall and floated towards one of the towers, he came back a few minutes later. “No one else in the other towers.”

“Come on then, also what are you?” I’ve been learning of many Pokémon, this wasn’t an entirely odd one being a living teacup full of ghost stuff.

“I’m a sinistea… also I touched the barrier, I can’t go through that.” Motioning for him to follow me, I moved down the stairs.

“Good news, this is the last Pokémon left in the castle.” I said as my group were relieved to see me. “We just have to get out of here now.”

“That’ll be easier said than done Pom.” Shine stated looking at the corridor.

“Rush down the corridor so we can see what we’re dealing with, also stay phased.” Our new friend nodded and didn’t think twice, the teacup ghost immediately shot down the corridor which filled with barbed chains, whips and flails. “Go!”

We got through the corridor before the traps could reset, even the wary Primarina who had to avoid some of the barbed chains as she moved forward.

“Thank you for assisting us in getting out of here without asking for anything, still… do you want a berry?” I offered. “About as much as we safely can offer right now.”

The Sinistea nodded eagerly.

Shine pulled out a berry and offered it. The Sinistea took a look at the berry Shine offered and he calmly took it, he apparently liked that berry as he began eating it immediately.

“Sitrus Berry goes great in tea…. I would know!” The Sinistea grinned. “Since you say this place won’t be around in a while and we need to get out of here, I don’t mind helping where I can. You didn’t have to offer that, but you still did anyway. You also looked around to see if there were any Pokémon left in the castle too and came to warned me it was going to be destroyed. So we’re evenly kind!”

“We still have to get down that corridor to get to the entrance and somehow find out how to shut down the barrier keeping us in here.” Quetal was keeping us on point and I looked at the Corridor and my eyes narrowed a bit.

“Sinistea you’re up, find out what kind of traps this hallway has.” The teacup ghost shot down the corridor and looked about curiously when nothing happened when he got to the other end. “The traps in this corridor are either not working or… they are based on touching the floor. Dolly Skateboard, full speed.”

Dolly threw me a salute and then kicked off and into the corridor leading towards the entrance. The reaction as immediately, the floor fell out beneath her and she went into a slowly falling hover while looking downwards.

“Heh, just spike pits so- scary hahaha.” Dolly went to hover closer to a wall and I saw the ceiling shift slightly.

“Above you!” Getting an image from me as to what was happening above her Dolly angled her board forward and kicked off the wall to gun down the corridor at a high speed glide as ceiling smashers slammed down behind her rapidly trying to push her into the spikes.

The last ceiling smasher slammed down as she was under the middle of it.

“Ack… oof… agh!” Dolly made it to the other side only to have the back edge of her board get hit by a ceiling smasher that sent flying upwards to flop onto the floor at the entrance room on her face and belly before her board landed on the floor next to her. “Bow-whacka-whoa that was a close one! One of my better wipeouts even, didn’t break a leg this time!”

“Dodo, under the Primarina’s front, use you’re wings to help lift her.” I got under Primarina’s midsection and lifted it up.

“Wait… you can’t be thinking of…” Primarina said with her glossy blue eyes widening in fear. I slowly moved my hind hooves to the wall.

“Match my pace Dodo!” I started running forward along the wall once the trap reset with a struggling Primarina on my shoulder, we made across without issue as Dodo and I ran Primarina along the wall. “Quetal carry Shine! Favela stretch your vines as far as you can and grab the corners of this side of the corridor and retract yourself forward, you can do it!”

Shine hopped onto Quetals back and he clamped onto the right wall and slowly moved claw over claw to the left towards us and they managed it. The only one left was Favela who had been stretching her vines forward, but couldn’t quite reach.

Favela narrowed her eyes and burst forward into a gallop while keeping her vines extended until they could reach the corner of the entrance side of the corridor, the ceiling smashers activated as the floor fell out beneath her.

With a hard yank Favela retracted her vines and came flying forward, but she wouldn’t be fast enough.

“Shanty, Dodo, Dolly!” I called as I ran for her left vine and they went for her right, we grabbed the vines and pulled as hard as we could. Favela barely cleared the last smasher and I leapt up to inflate my wool and take the impact, to slam into the floor on my back.

“You… okay Favela?” I asked slowly after having caught her.

“Yeah, I think so. That was terrifying and my blood is pumping after that, don’t know why Skiddo like being quiet and gentle normally, that was amazing!” It seemed Favela was okay.

“Amazingly close.” Shanty stated while rolling her eyes before she moved up to Favela and rubbed a hoof against her forehead affectionately.

“Okay we just need to go out the… oh…” Everyone else looked to where I was staring, the front entrance door and spiked bar trap were gone. The door itself was also gone, I wanted to curse so badly right now. “The entrance… it’s gone… heh… we’re doomed.”

“We could be trying upstairs or we could try breaking the wall?” Well if there was as good a time as ever.

“Rrrr…yip!” The stone wobbled and didn’t crack. I turned away and then clenched my right hoof. “Are you okay…”

I thrust forward assisted by wool springing from my rear hooves, I thrust my right hoof forward into the wall with a solid impact and a point blank thousand spear. I then place my left hoof on my right leg to brace and…

“Buster Wolf!” Despite putting my all into it, the end result of the upward explosion was a slight scorch mark and me being blasted backwards by everyone from the recoil. I laid there on my back for a bit as everyone came over to me and looked down at me, I slowly sat up and looked at everyone who had equally worried faces. “We can’t escape can we? The castle has magical properties that make it immune to the kind of damage I can do…”

“Not right, we can at least get outside.” Sinistea gestured to himself and Shine.

“What good would that do? You said you couldn’t get through the barrier out there.” This magic castle had us trapped inside and who knew how long it would be before someone realizes that we were in dire trouble.

At least we saved most of the captives... now who’s going to save us?! My most recently created devastating form of attack and it was useless here!

“Maybe not the barrier, but if there is a nearby Pokémon outside maybe we can alert them to the problem and they can get help or help us somehow?” The purple ghost sticking out of the teacup at least had an optimism I just currently didn’t. He was such a bright little guy for being a ghost, kind of like shine. “I can go outside and look for a way to get someone’s attention from inside the barrier… or find a way outside from the upper floors of the castle? The towers didn’t have anything in them, but I think I saw a balcony upstairs with an open way out…”

“So we just need to get up the…” Something clanked loudly. Oh no… I looked to the staircases and where we all were sitting. To large holes opened up in the ceiling and two large metal balls fell at the top of the staircases and looking at their design…

“Everyone move!” We all dove away as the two railings of the staircases acted as guides and sent the two metal balls smashing together to create a shockwave that knocked us all to the floor, even the poor Sinistea whimpered as his cup struck the floor harshly. “Oh what next, tons of holes in the floor opening up to… yep.”

Sections of the floor shifted revealing holes leading up to the metal spheres between the staircase and I got up and ran towards the two large metal boulder sized balls as spears sprouted up from the floor in a wave behind us.

I helped Primarina up onto one of the metal balls, her heart shaped tailfin nearly getting nicked by the blood rusted blades, with a heave. Favela lifted herself up and got Shanty with her vines. Dodo hopped up on his own. Quetal tossed shine up and made the leap himself with aerial ace. Sinistea was fine as he started phasing to avoid any damage.

“This place be trying very hard to kill us…” Shanty noted blandly.

“Oh is it now?” Followed Quetal sarcastically.

“Sinistea, check outside and see if that balcony is still where you remember it being?” It didn’t take long for Sinistea to come back.

“Yeah, there’s a way outside the castle, but there’s not a way out of the barrier though.” Good enough for me Sinistea, because I didn’t want to be inside this insane castle for much longer!

“Good, we need to get out of here before the castle somehow succeeds!” I looked towards the quiet and seemingly innocent staircases. “We’ll take our chances with the staircases and the upper floors.”

-Bathory Battle-

Motochika singing his song had rallied his civilian and military units, alongside rallying Evan’s makeshift forces that weren’t his core military units and volunteer civilians.

“We still need to wait for them to… there, they did it! Now we need to cross the battlefield and take this fight to Bathory!” Grit was smiling as he took aim and fired on Bathory hitting her in the right hit from all the way across the battlefield with an insanely accurate shot. Looking beyond their enemy he saw something that might be a problem. “Guys, problem, the castle has a barrier around it for some reason…”

“Okay now we really need to take the fight to Bathory, she’s got Pom’s team trapped in the dark castle!” Evan growled. “Maiden Jig, Motochika and I are taking to the field. Pick a good moment to Dynamax, but do so only after Bathory does!”

Just because Grit made them aware of the problem of the glowing barrier now covering the castle, didn’t mean they could do anything about it… aside from using the wood chucking ballista.

“We’d have to move the ballista forward close to the shore if we’re to even hit the barrier to weaken it.” Grit looked to Evan and Motochika.

“Like I said, we’re going after Bathory. We’ll meet up with Jiri, Skeeball and Teeth’s units.” Evan was proud that the rattata unit were doing far better than they had during the Riolu and Lucario in the battle at the northern bridge in Aurora. “You need to move the ballista units forward, we’ll make room on the battlefield.”

Sure Teeth’s unit was spending a lot of time coming back to the backlines for healing, but they were doing almost as much fighting as Jiri’s unit and Jiri’s unit was getting hammered from all sides trying to keep an open path of retreat for Skeeball’s unit dug into the middle of Bathory’s side of the field. The Skitty Squad and Skeeball had been stalled out before they could reach Bathory, but they were still fighting tooth and claw to get an open shot at the stage Bathory was on.

The Riolu and Lucario that King Evan brought in were a big help in turning the battle around. The problem was that the rest of their forces were fighting haggardly and getting exceedingly tired even with the Miltank backline holding and getting Pokémon back into fighting shape in the middle of all the battling going on as multiple units were down over the course of the last few minutes.

“Bidoof!” Evan called out, drawing the attention of the bidoof keeping the fort standing through constant repairs under the vicious attacks from Bathory’s side. “You know very well that we can’t rebuild Fontaine if we lose here, do you want to build? Then come out with me and help everyone in the fighting wherever you choose to, so that you can ‘build’ a better future for all! Bring Pokémon back for healing, beat down the enemy, do something constructive like you are all well known for, let's go wild!”

Evan charged out of the gates of the fortress, following him was a determined Motochika and the fifty Bidoof keeping the fort standing all had equally determined looks as they charged for the center line of the battlefield.

“Artillery units, get those Ballista loaded and moving, we need to start hitting that castle like yesterday!” Grit ordered behind Evan and Motochika’s reckless charge.

"Be careful out there Evan." Maiden Jig was worried for her king... that and she would have a hard time finding a better one to work with.

-Ocellus-

“Mission accomplished, but do you think she is immune to poison personally?” I asked of Dazzle and Smolder.

“If she can control the blood in her body, then yes, but she can’t use the blood in that pool from all the injuries going on in the battle without having to take time to cure herself of the poison every time she uses it.” Good news then Dazzle. “Skeeball’s Skitty Squad could use some back up down there… what else can we do from up here? I don’t trust my aim with Toxic from this high up aside from hitting a big target and I don’t want to get lower near all those water Pokémon or poison anything or anyone else unnecessarily.”

“I have a good idea to follow up poisoning Bathory’s blood pool.” Smolder spoke up with a grin. We watched as Bathory used the pool for an injury she took from Grit and she grimaced after a moment, she then forcefully started vomiting up some purple liquid, of the Toxic attack they dropped into her blood supply, onto her stage. “Here’s what we do…”

Author's Note

Dynamax Battle of the century, Bathory's true form is revealed and more.

268. Blood Bathory pt. 4.

-Ransei, ocean south of Fontaine, Prison Castle, Pom-

“Imagine how much more trouble we would have gone through if I hadn’t found Sinistea… why are you here anyway?” It took me that long to think of the question.

“One of my friends is a water Pokémon.” The purple teacup ghost stated with a sad tone. “This place has been weird and while I like the aesthetics… they too mean and not the fun spooky we ghost types enjoy. I’m sure I would have survived the castle collapsing, but given that my friend is already rescued, then I can get out here with you guys!”

“Right there with you on that.” Given that Shine agreed, I guess ghost types really liked spooky, dark and seemingly abandoned places. That didn’t mean they liked malicious stuff, so it makes sense given this castle was all of that and the only lights were chandeliers we were avoiding like a plague and candles that were everywhere.

“We’ve rescue just about everyone, you and Primarina here are likely the last ones we haven’t gotten out.” I made Sinistea perk up easily after stating that.

The castle deciding to go into magical lockdown and is actively trying kill everyone inside was troubling, I’m fairly sure I’m not the only one that was silently panicking on the inside. We were sitting on the large metal spheres and resting before we try the upper floors.

“You know… I could just Trick-Or-Treat everyone and…” Shine was making the offer and I calmly put a hoof on her back.

“Do you have the energy for that, also it would be a bad idea to split up in any capacity. Can you make us hover and or fly in ghost forms?” My statement caused Shine to pause. “Think about the pit trap and ceiling smashers that almost got Dolly, how would we have gotten out of the pits under the effects of being ghosts if we can’t climb and can only pass through walls only being capable of walking on solid ground? We’re not splitting up for any reason, even if your just a few feet away, because anything can happen in this castle if its related to skewering, stabbing and cutting us up with sharp pointy implements possibly laced with chemicals to make us bleed excessively.”

I pointed out the guillotine still buried in the floor next to the metal spheres we were sitting on for emphasis. There’s also the fact that I only had so much blood in my body and anemia can come easily to me compared to Shanty who had a far hardier health.

“Oh... well… I’m not exactly a Gourgeist that is highly capable of hovering or floating around… which sadly translates into my Trick-Or-Treat move, I don’t like fighting very much which is why I try to stick to utility moves. Not like it matters if I can’t get someone outside with that barrier you and Sinistea saw being in the way and is powerful enough to stop ghosts.” Continuing to rub a soothing hoof up and down Shine’s back, I decided to cheer her up a bit.

“Also there’s another reason why I’m not asking you to use Trick-or-Treat on any of us, we’re keeping it for emergencies and you’re conserving energy better than anyone here.” That and we still had to search around the upper floors for a way to that balcony Sinistea saw. “Also if that barrier can prevent ghosts like Sinistea from escaping…”

“Then if I tried to Trick-Or-Treat some of you and you suddenly got injured outside the castle by hidden traps… that… made to bleed us out…” I calmly wrapped Shine in a comforting hug as she started crying. We had somewhat similar personalities. “I really don’t like this place.”

“None of us do.” I said trying to sound calm. “Also I don’t like fighting either, but sometimes we have to in the course of protecting others that can’t protect themselves. Now come on, there’s a battle to save the water Pokémon of Fontaine outside and we need to get out of this castle so they can really get started on destroying it.”

There was no bravado in my voice, not that anyone expected it of me and I was glad my friends understood me so well despite constantly seeing me as a hero.

-Fontaine Peninsula, Bathory Battle-

Evan, Motochika and a Loudred were moving forward as half a unit as they were reaching the front line the two kings bust out into song as some of their Pokémon were retreating from the glowing red eyes of the controlled Pokémon. The Miltank line was holding thanks to the help of the sudden influx of Riolu defenders, one Riolu even evolved in the course of protecting a Miltank making the other Riolu look on in awe and suddenly they were more determined than ever to hold the line.

“When you take a look behind you, what do you see~?” Motochika sang as he strummed on his guitar, he leapt up and stomped his left food down on a Krabby, a crab Pokémon, with enough force to knock it out and sent bubbles spewing from its mouth.

“We’ve been hanging onto this thing, that’s really good enough for me~!” Evan sang as he rammed his skull home into a Tympole, a small tadpole water Pokémon, sending it into unconsciousness.

The Tympole was quickly picked up by one of Motochika’s Frillish, a small jellyfish ghost Pokémon, from his control breaker units. They were somehow immune to whatever Bathory was doing to control them and a quick application of some ghostly or psychic energy would break her control over them. Another Frillish grabbed the Krabby as the Bidoof Rolled forward and pushed back a massive number of Pokémon.

The control breakers always prioritized children first, then any older Pokémon that can be quickly grabbed and set free from Bathory’s control.

“So tell me what have you found, when life is pushing us all into the ground~.” Motochika’s guitar glowed and he slashed a Wartortle, the slightly large evolved form of a Squirtle, across the chest before bashing it over the head with a ‘kabong’ noise. “When fighting our way to the top, might take us all down-~!”

Both Motochika and Evan were focusing on reaching Bathory, the Skitty Squad was also stuck in deep as they quickly reached the centerline of the battle with the help of the Bidoof’s making the opening for them.

Evan pointed with his left paw to one of the logs that had been launched onto the battlefield balance on a rock, Motochika nodded to him as they seemed to share a thought and motioned to the Loudred. The Loudred got the idea of what they wanted from him, he grinned and agreed to the silent plan immediately.

Loudred charged forward creating an uproar using a move called Uproar, blasting sound and charging straight into the enemy. Each pulsing blast wave pushed them back and grouped them up.

“When things fall apart, we got to keep it together~!” Evan sang as he fired off energy stars into a crowd of Pokémon being pushed back by Loudred blasting sonic energy from his ears.

“Where ever you need me, I’ll be there by your side~!” Motochika sang as he pushed down on the other end of the log with Aqua Jet and sent Evan flying into the air towards the group that Loudred was gathering together with its Uproar.

Motochika did so as he fought off the blade arms of a Kabutops, a rock and water type that was a cross between an aquatic shelled beetle and a mantis. Its blades flashed forward trying to hit him and he deflected it with his shell blade in his right paw and blocked it’s other with his guitar. Opening his mouth Motochika fire a Water Pulse at point blank and sent the Kabutops skidding right back into the group and got caught up in the Uproar attack pounding a group of various controlled water pokemon.

“I want you to know, that we’re brothers forever~!” Evan sang as he kind down curled up and spinning rapidly, he uncurled and his tail glistened like solid metal. He slammed his Iron Tail into the ground with enough force to knock down the twenty or so Pokémon clumped up, including the Kabutops.

“If more trouble pops out, then we’ll both stand and fight~!” Evan grinned as Motochika joined him when their forces descended on the prone controlled Pokémon and started dragging them back to their side of the field to the north.

Looking ahead across the battlefield they could see Jiri’s unit fighting close to the sands, they were getting swarmed. Jiri’s spear had seen better days, but it was holding up because she was charging it with Normal Type energy and her bear friends were slightly spread out and beating back anything in melee range while trying to avoid range blasts of scalding water from the Wimpod and the Wishiwashi swarm monsters.

“Castles will stand, but they won’t last forever~!” Evan and Motochika sang as they pushed beyond the center line staring down the castle under the dark storm to the south covered in a very visible barrier of energy. As they joined Jiri’s unit, a barrage of move based artillery fire dispersed the Wishiwashi leaving them exposed to attacks. “Save who we can, we’ll be by right by your light~!”

“With a gathering of friends, we’ll get through whatever, because we all be pushing straight through the other side~!” Jiri sang with Evan and Motochika. Jiri crouched down and launched in a horizontal bounce that sent her sailing through a huge swath of Pokémon reopening a path to the beleaguered and still fighting Skitty Squad. She leapt up normally after landing and brought the tip of her spear high into the air before smashing down onto a Quagsire’s, an evolved Wooper that had arms, head.

Jiri’s unit capitalized on that by charging the suddenly Wimpods that had been causing so much trouble.

The several Wimpods units were each beset by a bear of Jiri’s unit, they didn’t get much chance to retreat before entire units were taken down by a single bear each. The regrouping forces of the Alliance armies surged forward creating a bulge into their enemy’s side of the field, Bathory clutched at her head as she tried to sing, but it was drowned out by the music played from the Loudred’s at the fort and Evan’s and Motochika’s singing.

Aurora had woken up and Fontaine’s people were emboldened by their kingdoms leaders making a personal forward push and taking to the field.

“We’ve got this Bathory running, do they think they can really hide from me~?!” Motochika sang his anger making his leaders aura brighten as he strummed his guitar and charged forward as the Controlled Pokémon started faltering and some were even breaking free of their own willpower to attack Pokémon at their sides.

Bathory was quickly losing control of the fight.

“Open your eyes and realize, that Bathory to us is still a mystery~!” Evan stated as they finally reached the tired Skitty Squad, he leapt in front of Captain Skeeball and used Protect to block a hyper beam that cracked his shield.

The retaliation to someone attacking their king was the entirety of the Skitty Squad suddenly turning as one and returning fire with a barrage of sweeping ice beams that froze several of the several Wailords in the ocean making them incapable of bombarding the battlefield with their Water Spout attacks.

The reduction in area attacks allowed the Medical Miltanks and Freedom Frillishs supporting backline to move forward and start aiding some Pokémon sooner than they otherwise would have as they won’t be constantly bombarded from across the field. Grit already had the siege artillery halfway to where they need to be to start attacking the castle.

“How can we go back to having fun, unless we keep this trouble on the run~?” Skeeball could see her husband was still among the Wailords that were still free and launching long range attacks from the ocean, a Water Spout from one of the remaining Wailord surged for her and it was partially blocked by a Solar Beam ripping across the field of battle from the Ludicolo squad back at the fortress where their six Sunny Day orbs were empowering them with rapid fire beam attacks. “I just want my husband back, though he weighs a solid ton-~!”

Another Water Spout fired for Skitty Squad was intercepted and slowly a hovering Wailord to fire Water Spouts at the other still free Wailords, Captain Skeeballs smile lit up the world as tears spilled from her seemingly closed smiling eyes as a massive shadow came to hover over her Skitty Squad. Her unit… was once again full and not missing any members.

“Dad!” The four Skitty Squad kittens of Skeeball shouted up to the sky as the Wailord swung around and hovered above them raining blast after blast down on anyone that came close to his badly battered family. Wilhelm had heard his beloved Skeeball singing and when he saw her battered form and her courageous heart still putting up one heck of a fight, he was enraged to the point he immediately broke free of Bathory’s control without prompting.

“When their battle falls apart~.” Skeeball started as she surged forward for the clamshell stage.

“We have to bring it together~!” Wilhelm roared above them.

“No running ahead, we won’t leave anyone behind~!” Evan sang as he sprayed numerous Pokémon with his Swift attack, energy stars burst into the enemy lines that were growing smaller by the second.

“Never apart, we’re all stronger than ever!” Jiri rose with a Miltank tending to her injuries, bracing herself on her spear she raised her spear to the sky and held her shield aloft as her unit gathered around her.

“If we get cornered, then we’ll fight side by side~!” The Blastoise known as Bartholomew stated as Grit sent him ahead to fire a hydro cannon at a closer range on Bathory, the cannonball sized blast of pressurized water burst into Bathory’s stage apart and diluted the poisoned blood sending everywhere.

Bathory flopped into the sand and then propped herself up on her flippers, she opened her mouth and a sonic screech sent a huge blast of water towards them the enclosing teams of fighters.

“We all have our part~!” Wilhelm blocked the wave with a Water Spout blast as Evan and Motochika sang and didn’t look worried for a second.

“We’re in this together~!” A Golduck sang as he and the Dutiful Duck Batallion charged forward spears, swords and shields raised to take out the remaining land bound water types down in a quick manner that Bathory just couldn’t make them match when they were under her control.

There were only Pokémon in the water that were still under Bathory’s command, her poisoned blood pool had weakened her ability to recover from things and the destruction of her stage the bool pool was splattered everywhere and ruined even more while also having stopped her music entirely.

“Fighting for all the things we believe~!” Evan spat more energy stars that struck Bathory’s face and Motochika slashed at her and he narrowed his eyes and leapt back when she swiped out with a flipper and it took out a large section of sand that the flipper shouldn’t have been able to reach.

“I want you to know, that we’re brothers forever~!” Motochika and Evan sang to each other, Motochika continued to rock out on his guitar even as he fired a water pulse and the way the water blasted around Bathory’s form revealed a different shape hidden behind her visible form that they were looking at. “All the way to the end, we’ll be courageous and free~!”

“Enough!” Bathory screeched and the sound wave made both Evan and Motochika flinch back, Motochika putting his guitar in front of himself to take the brunt of the sound blast.

“You’re not a Primarina…” Motochika said after a moment of looking at Bathory with narrowed eyes. “Drop your disguise, show us your true form!”

“Make m…agh!” A brilliant beam of electrical energy struck Bathory and her disguise dropped away as she was covered in the light of the attack.

“HAVOC----!” Screamed Skeeball who continued to push Bathory back to the water, after the attack end she fell over breathing roughly. Wilhelm, her giant whale of a husband, lowered to sitting on the ground and putting his flippers around her tiny form in a protective manner. The kittens started nuzzling into the fins of the giant. “Take… that… you witch!”

“Who dares… call me… a witch!” The true form of Bathory revealed itself when she spread her wings out and stood up with a roar revealing that she was much more dangerous than the innocent Primarina form she previously showed.

“Huh, would you look at that.” Jiri stated from behind the gathered Pokémon facing down a monster unlike any other. “For once, there’s a dragon I actually want to take down, on purpose!”

There were sharp purple edged black wings, three red claw at the bend in the wings, two massive bloody looking talons on each foot as the dragon form of Bathory stood tall and glared at them with wild eyes. The Dynamax Stone started glowing and it had them all wary.

The belly of the black hearted dragon was purple under underneath a thick scruff of white fur around her neck and thicker at the back. Her tail ended in a sharp barb whipped about in promise of eventually skewering someone through.

The most notable features though, those were on Bathory’s head. Two huge ears shaped like speakers, far bigger and more powerful than the Loudred that was personally escorted Kings Evan and Motochika to this point. Beneath the ears were red spiked nostrils flowing up her head in a V-shape.

“Ice type bear just wants to state that…” Cubby the Cubchoo tried to say something quickly, but was immediately hit with an explosive boom of noise as the ears on the wyvern flicked forward slightly, the attack had been too insanely fast for him to dodge and almost took him completely out of the fight immediately upon impact and bloodied his now pained and coughing form. The noise tearing into him in an exceedingly painful manner. “It’s… a Noivern... weak to ice… tar-targeted m-me for that… ugh.”

-Boss Monster: Vampire Dragon Carmilla ‘Bloody’ Bathory, Noivern of Sound Destruction-

“Cubby, NO?! Medic!” Jiri cried out as she stowed her spear and her unit gathered and started to lift and move him to safety as one. They were already battered, so neither Evan nor Motochika stopped them from evacuating.

“Anyone that has an ice type move to the front!” Motochika shouted using the Loudred as a loud speaker.

“That won’t help you at all… because… it’s time for this monster to ‘GROW’!” The wild eyed Bathory started increasing in size as the clouds above swirled with red energy and she was struck with a bolt of red energy that turned her from an already large wyvern dragon into a gigantic monstrous being glowing with dark power and now her eyes were glowing a pale pink. Her back and wings became covered in spines and her bladed limbs became even sharper, her normal sized fangs elongated and she started looking truly monstrous when she roared. “Ehahahaha, whoever poisoned all my tasty blood will pay for their insolence, all of you will pay in blood Eeeehahahaha!”

The bone chilling laughter wasn’t helping Motochika make his next order easily, as the monstrous dragon prepared to flex her ears again at that size…

“She’s Dynamic Maximized, everybody fighting retreat, anyone with ice type attacks hit her with everything you have!” Motochika ordered as he and Evan narrowly escaped the explosion of destructive noise that had been fire at them, but a well time lightning bolt struck the large dragon in the right eye saving them from being directly hit by the impact that would have ultimately shredded them.

Several more lightning bolts struck out against the Flying Dragon type, doing negligible damage.

-Dazzle-

I was staring at the monster.

“The lightning bolts aren’t doing much to her!” Aside from distracting her Smolder. So it definitely wasn’t her weakness. “Also that is one big ugly bat that looks too much like a wyvern for my tastes!”

There was a look of rage in Smolders eyes, something was up with her and how her eyes were getting angrier and angrier at the monstrous true form of Bathory.

“Keep hitting her, we can’t let her focus an attack on those people on the ground!” I looked down as the rain slowed down to nothing and saw Evan firing constant Swift attacks at her as he retreated, for all the power he could put behind them they weren’t doing much to Bathory. “Wait, stop firing lightning! The rain is letting up and we don’t want her finding us up here!”

Ocellus immediately stopped firing lightning bolts from the cloud and we had a good position to watch as the battle shifted to Bathory’s favor as hundreds of Aurora and Fontaine Pokémon were aiming their attacks upwards. Of course how much favor when you were one against many depended on the quality of said one who could fight like an army, Dynamax was where one became an entire force unto nature itself.

Hundreds of attacks were striking out at the monstrous Pokémon, but even at her size she was dodging them and launching powerful blasts of destructive sound that were taking down Pokémon left and right.

A single strafing blast of sound tore chunks out of the ground and inexorably altered the landscape and sent Pokémon flying left and right. I am so glad that I’m not down there, but I felt sorry for the Pokémon getting caught in those attacks.

The whale covering the Skitty Squad used Noble Roar move and fired with a Water Spout afterwards, but the sound of Bathory’s screeches created a veritable wall of defense. It was not only that, the sound of Bathory’s voice was disabling any weaker Pokémon just from the pure skull rattling shockwaves she was putting out when not doing attacks.

“… how… how are we supposed to fight something like… like… THAT!” Ocellus was shivering and whimpered and I patted her.

“Get us back over the fort, we spent too much time gathering lightning only to find out it’s not as useful as we thought it was.” I saw Smolder about to jump off the cloud to go after Bathory and grabbed on to her, she was thrashing wildly as I pinned her against the soft fluffy cloud.

“Let me go, must get that wyvern!” Smolder seemed incoherent and I looked at Ocellus who was staring at her worriedly.

“Oh right… dragons hate wyverns with a passion…” Ocellus quickly latched onto Smolder and she kept thrashing and trying to break free of our hold. “Smolder…. calm down or I will stop dating you.”

The effect was immediate like a switch was flipped and Smolder shivered while keeping her eyes closed, she started whimpering and carefully wrapped Ocellus in a needy looking hug.

“Please, don’t stop being the centerpiece of my hoard Ocellus, my one true prize above all else, I’ll be good.” Smolder whispered quietly whimpering and keeping her eyes close and not looking in Bathory’s direction. “I just can’t stand wyverns and that… ‘thing’… is bringing out a feral side of me. I can’t look at her without feeling sick to my stomach or enraged!”

She didn’t see Bathory as a person anymore, not that I did either, but Smolder had gone to a disturbing level of volatile of wanting to attack something that was more than ten times her size and probably several times more deadly than the small orange dragon. That would not have ended very well at all had I not stopped her.

“I know, but I need you here now… with me…” Ocellus looked to be in pain. “So much malice…”

-Smolder-

My eyes opened and widened, I quickly started to direct the cloud away from the battlefield as the treasure closest to my heart was in danger.

My protective instincts were overriding the fury and viciousness in my heart that told me to rip out that wyvern’s throat for thinking it can even come close to a dragon like me.

It was sobering, but Ocellus mattered more to me than that feeling, she mattered more than anything and the malice that wyvern was putting out was hurting her as it began to spill out all over the battlefield.

I’m sure that anyone could feel that!

-Bathory Battle-

A large ballista bolt made from a tree struck Bathory and shattered into hundreds of pieces against the Dragon type’s scales around her belly and only pushed her back. Bathory was emanating hunger and a viciousness that could be felt all across the battlefield as she flew.

“Switch targets to the castle, we can’t do a thing to that beast. She might be getting some extra power from that castle of hers and Pom’s unit might be counting on us to get them out!” Grit ordered and the artillery unit Pokémon working the artillery siege engines reoriented. He couldn’t retreat, but he could surely draw Bathory’s attention from their beloved kings of ‘Rhythm’ and ‘Heart’. “Hammer that barrier and draw her to us and off our leaders! Artillery Corps, Two birds, one stone!”

“Two birds, one stone!” Clawitzer, Clauncher, Octillery and various other artillery related Pokémon units responded.

Nothing says Grit like staring danger in the face with a chill attitude. Despite his injuries keeping him from being a major player on the battlefield. An injured ‘Grit the long slinger’ grinned and was ready to face a deadly foe with all of his ballistic friends.

Bathory was massive, fast and exceedingly dangerous, the kind of combination that the heroes on the ground were all hard pressed to match.

A lone figure charged forward across the battlefield sometimes rolling where they could, it was small, it was pink and it had large vibrant eyes that stated their purpose as the figure bravely pushed forward as everyone was in retreat from the massive monster. Their attacks doing minimal or even no damage at all.

Maiden Jig was not losing King Evan to this monster!

Bathory opened her mouth and the spilled blood of hundreds of Pokémon she had injured in such a short amount of time started flowing and gathering into a large red orb in front of her and a stream starting flowing into her open mouth.

All the damage anyone was doing was quickly becoming a moot point as Blood Bathory started to feed off of the very battlefield itself with her blood pool ruined. She was practically gorging on all the freshly spilled blood caused by her shredding noise attacks.

-Prison Castle, Pom-

We were about at the top of the right side staircase and very wary given nothing happened as we climbed the steps aside from some ominous creaking noises. When we heard the roar that shook the world and a haunting laughter followed.

Whatever had made that sound was massive and we were all shivering at the implications, I’m almost glad to be stuck inside a murderous castle and not on the battlefield right now.

At the top of the stairs we saw the bloodbath room and the throne room beyond, there was also and east and west corridor up here that were narrower than the ones below.

“Which way?” I turned to the Sinistea and tried to float out through the walls, only to find he couldn’t pass through them. “Okay, we can no longer rely on ghost typing to avoid the traps!”

“Nnnnn…” Whimpered a shivering Shine as Sinistea came back rubbing his purple ghostly liquid face.

“Okay there should be at least a balcony either to the east, west or one out the back of throne room.” Sinistea looked a little confused, I think this place is starting to mess with my head.

“Okay, we search the throne room! If we can get to a balcony we’ll try to get outside the outer walls and will circle back around to the front.” I moved forward and my right ear twitch I stopped as a guillotine slammed into the floor of the archway leading into where the blood bathtub and fountain were. Once the guillotine slide back up I quickly passed through the doorway followed by everyone. “… Do you think that Bathory would risk her blood bathing area with traps?”

“She might, if she’s on Cruella and Splatter Phoenix’s level of deranged.” Dolly didn’t move past me and neither did anyone else, we were too afraid of setting off another trap ones that were notably magically guided at this point.

I took one step forward and then pivoted and bucked a chain away with my hooves wrapped more thickly in wool send it away from me, the chain then like a snake suddenly swerved back at me unnaturally to attempt to lash me. I dodge back and looked to my friends.

“We’re fighting our way.” I said calmly and as succinctly as I could be given my heart was going a mile a minute as various chains started to droop from the ceiling all slowly starting to creepily point our way. “Simple answer, force our way through, RUN!”

We all started moving as one as the chains moved like tentacles trying to strangle, entangle, ensnare and tear at us as we circled around the bloody bathtub and liquid churning fountain for the throne room.

I fire bark blast after bark blast to knock the chains back and or destroy them, Dolly popped into the air to block and deflect with her board preventing me from being caught off guard as we moved.

Shine was using Mystic Fire at full blast form her lower half to melt them away from us as she toddled forward.

Primarina had enough strength to created bubbles of water that she seemed to have some kind of mental control over to slow the chains down. We were all protecting her as she slid into the throne room.

Quetal flicked an aerial ace that protected Shine, but a bladed chain got his right arm. Shanty quickly cut the chain with a double hoof axe shaped arcing attack, even then he was already bleeding profusely.

A spear at the end of a chained scraped past my wool as I dove for the throne room, Shanty followed soon after as did Sinistea and Shine fending off the chains that stopped at the edge of the room.

“Ugh…” Quetal fell over and I noted the pools of blood leading up to him and Shanty started flowing towards the blood filled bathtub, after a moment he started glowing and he was revived by the reviver seed before we could even give him a Sitrus Berry. “But I… only got scratched once…”

“That was apparently enough for the castle to drain you dry in seconds.” Shine whispered in horror as we looked at the chains hovering their and pointing to us, one covered in Quetals fresh blood dripping over the bathtub of churning red liquid. The chain was soon clean as if it had never cut into Quetal’s flesh, except for the rusty looking very tip of it.

I turned and started walking forward towards the throne. Nothing happened, there were no traps here and behind the throne was an open balcony to freedom. Also a table and a few chairs, the table had something on it… a note that read.

“Please, I beg of you end the phantasm of my life and death, destroy that blood bath and what it truly represents, the throne room is only safe because this note says it is- signed the Elizabeth Bathory, the one that came before the Carmilla that I now am.” I looked to the others we all had a look of concern on our faces at this mysterious note.

We could have left right this instant, but… Bathory… at least ‘Elizabeth’ and not ‘Carmilla’ left a door open for people to escape through provided they could survive the traps.

I sighed… and slowly turned around to begin walking back towards the entrance.

“Where are you going, the exit is right there?!” Quetal had right to be afraid, he almost died here.

“Bark Buster!” I fired a solid looking wad of through the entrance to the throne room from my throat, the glob landed beneath the fountain and exploded upwards at it. Through Dolly’s vision I vaguely saw the image of a blood covered wolf tearing into the fountain in the middle of the bathtub trying to damage it to the best of its ability and it did damage, just not nearly enough though. The chains tried to attack the wolf, but they couldn’t do anything to it before it disappeared. “Dolly, remember when you said I needed a target to practice this on?”

Dolly nodded with a grim grin as she glared at the fountain. A burst of energy shot past and started damaging the fountain and it started to tilt as Quetal was also glaring at it. We were safe in the throne room and we had ranged attacks.

I fired a barrage of solidified magical energy at the fountain, each blob of energy exploded upwards into it with increasingly devastating force like I was launching a pack of magical wolves. They slashed the edges of the tub, they slashed at the fountain and they were trying to ultimately destroy it.

Only, I wasn’t alone.

A blast of Mystical Fire burned at the blood in the large floor bound bathtub coming from Shine.

Quetal continued to spit stars at the tub.

Sinistea lit the blood on fire with a strange blue flame and the castle shuddered and we could feel something akin to a screech going throughout it. Afterwards he started hitting it with psychic energy like what the Psyducks had used against us.

Shanty launched a riptide into the tub spraying the blood with salt water causing it to start coagulating as the fountain crumpled into the blood of the tub. The entire castle started shaking under our thunderous assault.

Dodo fired a cupcake loaded with what looked like gummy worms, potato chips and what smelled like cola? Ew… but the sentiment was appreciated.

“Aero!” Dolly called out and this increased the power of the mystical flames Shine was spewing. The wind also sprayed the blood out of the bathtub and damaged it heavily the floor of the room started creaking.

“I may not understand who you were, but this one is for you.” Primarina stated before she inhaled and then let out an echoing burst of beautiful sound from her mouth that rumbled the whole room shaking its very foundation to the core.

The bathtub soon collapsed into the floor and then broke the shredder on the floor below. The entire castle pulsed as if something just went horribly wrong. Good.

Looking out the balcony the barrier was weakening and something shuddered.

“Okay, now we can get outside and try to reach the castles entrance… and let’s make it fast!” I turned and ran as did the others following me, trusting me to lead them out of this death trap alive. The castle shuddered and buckled as something hit it, was the weakening barrier under attack?

I don’t know what we just did or why it felt very important and like the right thing to do, but we did it.

Elizabeth, whoever you are, thank you for the note.

-Bathory Battle-

The blood ball suddenly dropped to the ground much to the consternation of Carmilla Bathory who had been controlling it and think haughty thoughts about their inability to do any permanent damage to her.

The healing giant monster suddenly looked wide eyed when it finally felt something was very much off. Slowly the flying vampire dragon turned to the castle and felt someone had done something that just made it impossible for her to control blood.

A part of the castle collapsed as ballista fire started to break through the barrier around the Prison Castle known as Cachtice.

-Carmilla-

Phantasms shouldn’t be capable of being destroyed like that… right? The phantasm shouldn’t be vulnerable to regular people or such normal means, RIGHT?! No… no-no-no this couldn’t be happening!?! Not to someone of my incredible might and power! Why the concept of bathing in blood should be absolute to my legend!

Unless… my legend doesn't have as much power in this world... or another legend was taking place as to overwrite my own that gives me such incredible power... there's also the possibility of Elizabeth existing at the same time as me...

A cold chill just ran down the spine of the currently giant vampire dragon, one that made them realized they should have worried about the intruders much sooner as there was a variety of possibilities that had suddenly tagged her for a huge downfall.

-Origin Space-

Arceus smiled upon his brave children, Bathory's sudden realization of it all was also interesting in and of itself.

He looked at one Pokémon in particular hanging upside down in the forest near the quickly built wooden fort.

Author's Note

Finishing this storyline for Halloween, then I take a few days off to recover from typing this much, this fast, over the last few days.

Music: Brothers Forever, Scooby-doo and the Loch Ness Monster.

269. Blood Bathory Finale.

Author's Note

Music- Zords (Instrumental) Ron Wasserman.

You'll known when to use it.

269. Blood Bathory Finale.

-Ransei, ocean south of Fontaine, Prison Castle, Pom-

“Sorry I didn’t help as much when destroying the bathtub.” Favela stated as if she hasn’t been helpful thus far.

“Trust me, this adventure is only going as well as it is because you helped us save the Primarina, you will have to do so again.” I approached the balcony behind the throne and looked at the grass below the balcony and saw tsomething. “Everyone look!”

“What do we be looking at, all the green… it’s not green, it be withering quickly!” Shanty pointed as the grass withering, turning brown and immediately dying before our eyes.

“I think we may have just destroyed the castles power source, specifically I think Primarina did when her voice broke the floor.” The castle is going to collapse pretty quickly if that were the case. Also the barrier was still up, so it was putting more energy into taking us with it than trying to prolong its existence.

“In any case you’ve been very helpful Favela and sure you’re a bit combative, but we like you and we wouldn’t have gotten this far without you. Now can you help Primarina get down there, you’re vines seem a bit overworked.” Having to think about it a bit, I decided to add. “Dolly can get her down if you don’t want to, you can carry Shine down if you wish. Make a decision quickly, because we really need to leave this horrible place like yesterday, then find out what made that horrendous noise on the battlefield.”

“Dolly does it, my vines can take much more stress.” I patted Favela on the back with a gentle hoof.

“Knowing your limitations is a good thing Favela, because I certainly keep losing track of mine. That said…” I motioned the Dalmatian toward Primarina. “Dolly on her back. Primarina, I’m sorry but you’re going to have to trust us and jump off the balcony.”

“Do I have a choice?” Primarina said looking shakily at the ground below, I silently shook my head.

“I can hold your flipper and jump with you to help out, you up for it Dolly?” I noted that unlike Favela, who didn’t feel like she did much.

“Dodo can be taking Shine, everyone else can be getting down easily themselves!” Shanty announced as a rumbling sounded throughout the castle and a portion of throne rooms entrances collapsed inwards.

“No more stalling!” I grabbed Primarina’s left flipper with my right hoof and leapt forth.

“No… wai-waahhhh?!” Primarina let out a slightly shrill, melodic scream as we dropped over the edge of the balcony, Dolly was looking towards me as we fell.

I inflated my wool and like a balloon our fall slowed immensely and with Dolly’s assistance it slowed even further. Dolly waited until we had built up enough momentum that she modified it to going upwards and we bobbed before slowly levitating downwards.

“Thank goodness I don’t have to go through that Ms. Primarina!” Shine stated jovially as she was small enough to ride Dodo, said miraculously living metal ostrich quickly dropped past us with jets coming out of his spread out feet and the underside of his wings.

“He is not being big enough to be flying, but he can be hovering.” Shanty stated proudly from the wall of the castle as she and Quetal climbed down the slow way. Sinistea simply hovered down and we were clear to run around for the front and could hope that our ride was waiting for us, because I doubt Primarina was capable of swimming too well in her poor condition.

“Thank goodness, solid ground!” Primarina was looking a bit pale, after having to use me and Dolly as makeshift parachutes. Now that we were on the ground all we had to do was circle around to the front of the castle.

We did that easily enough, none of the traps were working without the magical blood bath that apparently powered all the traps in the castle. We went through the archway to the patch of land in front of the castle and were at the barrier… the castle was still projecting it despite it weakening and slowly collapsing in on itself.

“Now what?” Dolly asked as we stopped and sat down for a break finally away from all the traps or most imminent danger.

The entire floating island started rumbling, it would collapse with us on it. Being buried alive unable to move and slowly suffocating wouldn’t be how I wanted to go out.

“All we can do is wait for help.” After coming this far, I really didn’t want to die. I was the first to notice a big problem, a humongous shadow with a backdrop of six bright sun like orbs on the sunnier northern side of the battlefield in the distance. “If you feel like trying to help break the barrier, then put some oomph into it. Otherwise, I think I might want to save my energy for that horrifying thing!”

That was a really big black wyvern, I didn’t envy anyone on the battlefield right now.

“Pom… please tell me we don’t have to fight that thing.” Sorry Dolly, but if we get back to the battlefield in time...

“That’s a really, really, big Noivern.” Okay now we knew what that Pokémon was actually called, thank you Quetal for that information. That is not going to help us fight a nightmare of that size.

-Fontaine Peninsula, Battlefield Center Line, siege artillery forward position, Grit the Long Slinger-

They were still alive!

“I see the Rescue Team, they’re alive and got out of the castle! I don’t see their ride though… the waves are pretty chopping out there, keep hammering the Noivern and the castles barrier!” The island the castle was sitting on looked like it was sinking into the water and if the barrier was still up when the water starts flooding in... “Scratch that, all firepower on that barrier! We need to break it, we’re not abandoning them to drown out there! It looks like Captain Skeeball is about to start drawing the Noiverns attention off of our troops anyway, so the Miltank units can pull everyone’s butts out of the fire.”

“Yeah and if Captain Skeeball goes down, I’m going to need everyone off the field when I Dynamic Maximize, Skeeball has already fired off her Zenith move so her husband and unit will have to be able to hold off that Maximized Monstrosity.” Maiden Jig was taking to the field?! Even the administrator of Aurora that has been overworked before Evan took up his position as king was raring to finish this fight. “When Skeeball goes down you will need to return to hitting that Noivern with all you have.”

“Right, we’ll switch targets immediately as you say. We’re still missing the Silly Spheals and the Lapras that went out with the Rescue Team, now the Rescue Team needs rescuing and they seem to have a Sinistea and poor looking Primarina with them.” Poor lady, her hair was messed up, she was covered in scars and I wouldn’t out it past that overgrown Noivern to have tried to ruin her beauty out of jealousy. “They will need the Lapras if they all want to get out of there in a timely manner, because most of them might not be able to swim that far to get back and will be sitting ducks in the water.”

-Open ocean somewhere south of Fontaine, Spheal-

Ice was safe, they can’t get us on ice!

A sharpedo would prove me wrong a second later and it leapt out of the water and chomped into our makeshift iceberg putting a hole in it and nearly unbalancing it. Nearly getting one of us, but we sprayed him and froze him and pushed him off our frozen sea water platform.

Okay, ice was not safe, not safe at all!

We put backs together and see… uh… I don’t know how to count, how many fins was that circling us? There was being much less than when we started, but we didn’t take them down… hmmm. Maybe they got hungry and left?

Two fins turned towards us and the Sharpedo popped up and opened their mouths. We all focused on them.

That’s when Ms. Plessy rammed them both out of the way, joy!

“Get on me!” Plessy shouted as she popped up and then skidded sideways over our iceberg, knocking us up onto her back and she hip checked the two Sharpedo we didn’t see coming at us from behind. “Okay, we’re bugging out! I already took out five of them underwater and it looks like you got a few yourselves, good work boys!”

Having skidded back into the water Plessy started to speed away and she suddenly looked up as something flashed by overhead. It be making a shiny light when it hit a big bubble, bubbles were fun to pop!

Were they trying to pop bubble? We would help!

-Plessy-

“Bubble? Bubble!” The six not exactly bright, but still highly capable, Spheal shouted one after another with cheerful ignorance of how dangerous things were getting, like that giant Noivern on the battlefield.

I turned to start swimming for the castle now that I opened up some distance between me and the Sharpedo.

That flash of light was a barrier and the castle looked to be collapsing, if they are waiting on a ride out, then I’m that ride as I’m the only one out here that can react and reach them in time, I seriously doubt the Spheal were going to do it!

A Sharpedo burst form the water aiming for my neck only to be hit by a ball of ice the size of my head the knocked them out cold.

Okay, close one, I could feel that one’s teeth on my neck there for a second… A quick moving Dragon Dance and I was back up to full speed.

-Captain Skeeball-

“Come on my tubby hubby, let’s do this thing!” I shouted from on top of my husband Wilhelm with the rest of the Skitty Squad.

“Right!” Stated the suave deep voice from beneath us. So what if I might have imagined the suave part, my beloved Wailord was back in action and my unit was complete once more!

My husband swung around and fired an Ice Beam into the side of that Nasty Noivern. My Wilhelm just prevented an attack on Evan and Motochika working the Pokémon into a functional retreat while keeping up their offensive. The smaller attacks would going to chip her down eventually if she ignored them.

Not that it paused the Noiverns rampage as she soon turned and just took down the Super Sentai Squirtle Squad with a single blast of sound and they were being picked up and carted away quickly as casualties. Their shells likely being the only reason they were still alive.

Motochika wasn’t letting off of the Water Pulses and Evan hadn’t stop aiming stars for the Noiverns eyes to irritate her, because there really wasn’t much slowing her down at that humongous size.

“That got her attention, swing around hard left and draw her back towards the ocean and away from our forces!” I grinned. “Let’s keep her attention with a unit command, Big Beam Barrage!”

My unit acting as one as the Noivern tried to launch a blast was hit with a veritable wintery storm of ice beams and a functional blizzards worth of energy launched by a Wailord, the pain was definitely enough to draw her ire and turn her towards focusing on us.

“Back us up and keep firing kittens!” I shouted over the screaming icy winds and lancing beams. “Prepare for backwards jack knife left… wait for it… now!”

With a jerk my Wailord twisted tail fin first back and to the left out of the way of a massive wall of sound distortion passed by, I notice some large slashes had scraped across the right side of my husband.

“You okay Wilhelm?!” My worry was palpable after being separated from him for so long and getting him back today.

“Never-better-Skeeball!” His whale song came out as a Noble Roar attack that fought against the second incoming sound wave and stalled it out before the remaining power went into shaking up the Noivern.

“Bathory is an Infiltrator style Noivern!” I announced to no one in particular, there’s no blocking its attacks at all as they’ll go straight through barriers. Infiltrator style Pokémon specialize in busting Protect moves or anything defensive like it. This means only evasion was a fully viable defense, even if Wilhelm was big enough to take on a Dynamic Maximized monster, he wouldn’t be able to match the raw power they were outputting for very long and he wasn’t nearly fast enough to keep dodging forever either.

My kittens were continuing to try and ice the Nasty Noivern, but she was agile for something of her size even if ice was effective it was going to take a lot more than we were putting out to take her down. This made me wonder, how in the world do Pokémon that grow to this size still have the capacity for flight? The power she was using must be using at that size to retain her speed must have been enormous!

I knew why my hubby could float and how he was doing so, he was a talent for floating over land and he did it just to stay with me! Not the most important thing in the world to anyone else, but it was special to me that my husband was a big softy.

Two water spout attacks fired off, from Wilhelm behind us and he inhaled to fire another ice beam, the ice beam was aimed upwards and two massive balls of ice fell down making Bathory dodge the first one. The second one slammed down on her tail and grounded her, she surged forward in anger on her legs to slash across the left side of my husband’s face with her right wing, bodily turning him to expose our side.

My children even in the face of danger kept firing and I was doing so right alongside them in continuing to hit the monster with every ice beam I could. With a kick we all had to hang onto Wilhelm as he flopped onto his side with a wail of pain and I could hear my, mostly gentle, husband cry in fear.

It wasn’t fear for himself, it was fear meant for us.

“Come on hubby get up, we’re not abandoning ship love, this Captain goes down with her husband!” I was screaming as the horrible monsters left leg tore a gash into my husband’s side trying to scratch us off as we kept hitting her with constant ice beams.

“Skeee-balll-” Wilhelm whined another Noble Roar buffeting the monster as she raise her right leg and the claws came for us.

“We’re not leaving you Wilhelm, not again!” I stated defiantly as I looked up into a pair of wings spreading and the monstrous visage staring down on our tiny forms compared to my husband’s large girth. “I’m a hero of Aurora darn it and I don’t abandon anyone for long, especially not my big lovable husband!”

The ears reeled back as the leg rose high, she was obviously going to claw and shred us with noise.

Before the leg could crush or scratch us all away as my kittens continued pump ice beam after ice beam into the massive talons, something tore into the claws of the wing joint of her raised left wing. I turned and looked to see the magical barrier on the castle flash, Grit was hitting her and the castle at the same time! Our allies were ridiculously talented and I’m glad I managed an alliance with them!

Said claws on the left wing broke apart and the monster screeched and was even in more pain when something tore through the bottom of the right wings member tattering it and filling it with a massive amounts of splinters. Splinters for it anyway. The sound blast she was preparing to fire from her ears shot straight up into the sky clearing some of the swirling clouds away so that a shaft of light shined down on us.

I looked to the sun, my kittens gathered around me and we didn’t cower, even Wilhelm was silent but still fighting with his glare as he tried to sit up. I continued to fire ice beams, but I was alone, my kittens were exhausted by being the front line of the battlefield… all of my brave little, super strong, kittens.

-Grit-

“Come on you monster, I’m not just sitting back and watching you destroy family!” The evacuation was still going and the Skitty Squad’s attacks were weakening, Wilhelm was in dire trouble if he could float and was basically beached. “Keeping aiming through the bottom of her wings at the castle! Artillery units give her everything you got if you’re not working the siege engines.”

Seeing as she didn’t have any fight aside from Skeeball and could probably deal with her later, Bathory turned her sights on us and flew forward as we were dealing damage. I had seen Skeeballs lips move at this distance, she basically told me that Bathory was an Infiltrator type Noivern. As if she wasn’t a nasty enough piece of work already.

“Don’t stop firing until you need to dodge! She’s an Infiltrator Noivern, so if you have to dodge, then dodge hard and fast!” A blast wave of destructive noise fell upon us taking out a siege engine to our right and we didn’t retreat even as Pokémon ran past us.

I finally spotted Plessilia, good girl was still out there and she was almost to the castle. Another ballista was blown apart in a wave of sound and foot stomped down knocking me into the siege engine behind us.

My body was already hurting, but I found myself in a really good position to really put a bolt in Bathory’s eye. The loading crew, bless their hearts, they had finish loading this ballista before retreating and with where I was laying…

I raised my left arm and fired a Snipe Shot into her left eye making her roar, until I couldn’t hear anything anymore. She just deafened me, hope the healers could deal with that. She raised her left talon intending to crush me.

Using my left arm I aimed the ballista upward and I kicked out with my left leg, I couldn’t get up or move, but I could still shoot something worthwhile.

“I really shouldn’t have been on the battlefield today with my injuries.” I calmly stated as death lumbered over me. “If I wasn’t though… many more could have lost their lives to you!”

The lever slammed forward and I had been using my foot to channel energy into the ballista as it fired, instead of crushing me Bathory dodge out of the way to her right with a grin. As the glowing tree sized bolt flew off into the distance.

“What’s that grin for now?! You already know I don’t miss!” Shouting this with a smile on my face and having been under her stupid control was sickening, she thought herself intelligent? She didn’t know tactics and could only barely grasp the bare minimum, basically Bathory was just a power mad bully to me. I grinned when her eyes widened at my implications. “You should have just taken that shot!”

-Prison Castle Cachtice, Pom-

That monster was tearing up the battlefield, glad I wasn’t over there… though a part of me wanted to help with that.

This place was called Cachtice Castle. It would be nice to see it gone, but could it not take itself with us when it left?

Something came soaring at us and we all moved to the side as a large brown cylindrical thing ripped a glass like hole in the barrier, busted through courtyard and tore into the castle. The castle immediately began collapsing and the barrier began fading.

“Well at least we won’t be being dragged into the sea.” Shanty said with a grin.

“We’ll still be pulled into the whirlpool the sinking island will cause.” If that didn’t kill us I didn’t know what will, the thought terrified me on a number of levels and there were far worse ways to go out.

“Nobody is dying today, Plessy’s Passenger service is here to pick up some heroes!” Plessy slung her backside into the space below the ledge we had been trapped on. “Hurry up!”

“Please don’t specifically call me a hero…” I whined as I gladly hopped onto her shell. “If anyone is a hero here, it’s you for making it back to us in time!”

“Did you save a lot of people today? Did you lead your team to success? Then you’re a hero, even if you are technically acting as mercenaries! You can’t fool me Ms. Lambchop, you’re a good person!” Once we were all on Plessy’s shell, she kicked off the sinking island and the castle that sat on it. The sinking place threatening to suck us into a quickly forming massive whirlpool of destruction. “Hold on tight, this is going to be hard to pull away from!”

-Battered Peninsula, center line artillery group, Grit-

A grin formed as I took out the castles infrastructure, possible taking away Bathory’s control over the Pokémon in the sea as we were still saving those that were on the land. I could see Plessy pulling away with the Rescue Team.

I could die with no regret here, but I’d rather live, I aimed up with my left arm and fire another shot into her eye. For all the damage it did like a chewed up leaf spit wad, I was defiant to the end.

Clawitzer, Octillery and even Bartholomew were here hitting her with all they had as they backed away, she wasn’t slowing down as she prepared to hit me with a sonic attack. That was going to shred me entirely, couldn’t move, didn’t have the strength to move and my broken body had hit its limit coming out here.

I leaned back and closed my eyes, however something caught my eye and I snapped them open wide with an evil grin forming on my face. Today was not the day that Grit the Long Slinger dies! Today was the day I would begin my recovery for a long, long time…

“Hey… don’t focus too hard on me now, look up and pay attention to what’s in front of you.” Bathory didn’t listen as she was about to flick her ears for me. I calmly kept a look up at her as a large pink foot planted itself next to the retreating artillery unit and a large shadow pivoted forward over me.

Bathory’s ears flickered forward, but they didn’t have time to get off the entire attack when…

“PUFF!” A nub of a fist slammed home into Bathory’s face in a beam of raw physical force, as I got a front row seat to Maiden Jig of Aurora showing up in Dynamic Maximize form.

She was enormous and on our side, plus that was a damn good sucker punch and I was glad to be a part of it. A giant monster like Bathory should be more aware of her surroundings and shouldn’t have tunnel vision on little old me.

What little I could hear or feel through vibrations was still painfully loud in my ringing hearing and the deep thrum of her voice was a welcoming feeling even if my ability to hear was getting more shot by the second. Still it was worth it to see the look on Bathory’s face as her giant nose was shattered with what was possibly a loud and painful bloody crunch as she went skidding backwards and broke her red v nose thing into small chunks.

-Nearby the artillery unit, Motochika-

“Grab him!” I ordered, a nearby Miltank carefully lifted Grit’s broken form from the siege engine that was falling apart from the near miss of the Boomburst attack that the Noivern was about to fire. It had been halted by a good friend of ours.

“Maiden Jig… you’re so big, beautiful and round… also soft and fluffy… please come back from this fight okay?!” The large pink form Evan was shouting to, with slightly red cheeks, slowly turned their right eye to him.

We saw Jig smile and a slight shift downwards before she turned back to the sliding dragon managing to stand up from such a devastating blow, even we didn’t know when Jig Dynamaxed she just came out of nowhere from the sunlight and appeared with her right nub thrusting forward for massive Maximum Strike. Bathory truly had a real fight on her talons as Maiden Jig was now protecting the retreating Pokémon with her massive form.

She puffed up slightly in a threatening gesture before shrinking back down to her normal Dynamax’d size and started to stomp forward.

I heard the term for what was about to happen as a ‘Kaiju Fight’.

-Hero: Maiden Jig the ‘glee-puff’, Dynamic Maximized Punchy Pink Puffy Powerhouse!-

“JIGGLY!” I raised my left nub as I charged forward feinting another maximum powered strike with my left. Bathory tried to get into the air. Smirking, I stopped my charge because this was what I wanted.

I brought my fists in front of my eye and grinned.

“MAX STARFALL…” I tried to whisper, but it still came out obnoxiously loud.

Bathory looked confused, she obviously never had Dynamax training with her predecessor like I did… if she had anyone train her at all for this kind of fight. This wasn’t a simple ‘Puff Up’ one maximized attack battle with my predecessor though, this was the real thing and my blood was pumping through my massive form at the speed of light with every breath.

I felt alive and would bring the light back to Fontaine, this evil didn’t belong in this world!

Trying to get an aerial advantage on me immediately as the Fairy Type attack began was a poor choice as massive stars of energy enclosed her and bracketed her to lock her in place. She was soon eating dirt when a massive beam pounded into her spine from above, had she stayed on the ground she would be able to at least stand up to the attack as it pummeled her.

Bathory stood up and blasted me with a soundwave, my entire body jiggled with the impact, but my flesh didn’t so much as scratch as I kept my stance firm. I grinned and stomped my right foot against the ground and a huge slab of stone rose up and slammed down on top of Bathory crunching both her wings.

“MAX ROCKFALL.” I stated after having used the attack with a vicious grin and brought up my nubs to block her talons tearing into my skin rabidly, she wasn’t even using attacks anymore. I pity her and I had two moves left in me. She was pushing on fumes since her lack of being able to draw blood into her mouth means she was rapidly losing strength. Given she was this close, this wasn’t going to miss. “MAX KNUCKLE!”

My left fist finally moved forward having been charging the attack since the feint, my left nub burrowed into her chest causing her to reel back. Despite being bloodied and hurt, I kept pushing it forward to the southeastern part of the peninsula away from Skeeball and anyone so I could use my final move as I force Bathory onto her back.

I had the moves Rollout, Pound, Drain Punch and Dazzling Gleam, but there was one move I had yet use. The ultimate move of Igglybuff, Jigglypuff and Wigglytuff lines of Pokemon, a move my ancestors perfected, the move of the ‘Glee’ family… Puff Up.

Leaping into the air I landed on top of Bathory belly first, she clawed at me with her broken claws on her left wing, her right wing which still had working claws and tried to find purchase with her legs talons to try and push me off and my injuries were mounting and this would take a whole heck of a lot out of me… but… someone just had to threaten ‘MY BELOVED IDIOT KING’.

Slowly I started growing my mass far surpassing the Dynamax form, the ultimate defensive technique Puff Up could take any attack… but would leave the user unconscious and bodily exhausted. Doing it while Dynamaxed? Oh, this was going to hurt! Her, mostly!

Confused? Well Puff Up was technically an attack as much as it was an ultimate defense, however the attack portion of the defensive move was a point blank energy surge. If Bathory hadn’t been trapped beneath my increasingly large bulk, then she might have been able to get an inch away from me and making my final attack a moot point.

Unfortunately for her, I was crushing her under my weight and my skin to skin contact means the attack portion couldn’t feasibly miss if she couldn’t get out from under me. My bulk surpassed the clouds, my form covered the entire south eastern portion of the Peninsula.

All the energy I had gathered…

“J-I-G-G-L-Y---P-U-F-F--JIGG--OLY-----PUFF----~!” The world turned white as the massive mountain of pink screamed the song of her people in a world shaking manner that brought immediate silence afterwards.

“You should have thought better about messing with all my friends and family…” This wasn't said, it was but a transmitted feeling.

-In space-

Looking down the planet at the Arceus shape continent of Ransei, one would see a large bloom of a pink mass taking up a portion of one of the back legs and in a second a white flash that drew the meteor defense Pokémon that protected the planet from being destroyed, known as Rayquaza, to stare in shock.

A Pokémon just surpassed all their bodily limitations for an instant and went even further beyond, they would go down as a legend throughout the annals of time. Given they left a huge hole in the landmass of the Ransei continent that started immediately filling with water.

-Ransei, five minutes later, Fontaine's Battle Battered Peninsula-

A pink form laid on the ground unmoving, next to her was a dragon that had every bone in their body broken, their organs were ruptured and they were trying to struggle to stay alive as they shrunk down.

The red tinted swirling clouds in the sky cleared up to reveal a vibrant blue as the day was halfway finished.

The sun shined and Carmilla Bathory burned, her fleshed started boiling, her body caught fire and started to turn to ash. She couldn’t scream in pain, she could move and she couldn’t escape her fate as her life began extinguishing in the sun.

A Miltank found Maiden Jig, their countries administrator, who just inexorably changed the landscape of Fontaine forever by reshaping the entire eastern shoreline of the peninsula. She stopped to stare in horror as the monstrous Noivern quickly began burning away to nothing in the sun, they couldn’t even create a hint of a noise of pain.

What was left of the burning Carmilla Bathory afterwards was nothing but a large pile of ashes, the vampire dragon met her demise without being able to whimper.

“Stop gawking and get Maiden Jig already, she needs emergency medical aid! Also send back help for my husband immediately!” Ordered Skeeball as she watched the burning ashes of Bathory float away in the wind with a sad frown.

As tired as Skeeball was by the frantic fighting and her badly battered form, she stayed there to watch the ashes until they were all dispersed into nothing and the Nightmare that came to Fontaine was cleansed from the world fully.

-Hours later, repurposed medical fort, Pom-

We had escaped the wave caused by Maiden Jigs explosion by diving underwater, it ironically stopped the whirlpool from growing bigger and saved us from being sucked in.

I was slightly happy that the dragon was dealt with and that we didn’t personally have to deal with that huge problem.

Smelling something on the air that drew my attention as I watched various Pokémon run around seeing to every Pokémon that had spilled blood, was battered, beaten, broken on the battlefield… all the suffering that was caused by one person alone.

An entity I could smell as still existing despite her body having said to be burned away in the sun like a true vampire. The thought chilled me to the bones and it certainly explained the bathtub of blood.

I followed the scent with a hint of worry and saw a smaller version of what Bathory had been, she was sitting in the shade of the tree looking to the evening sky as it painted beautiful orange color among the fading blue.

“Elizabeth?” I queried.

She squawked loudly and fell out of the tree.

“Wha… oh… um…” She seemed nervous and despite falling to the sunlight she wasn’t burned by it. “Uh…”

“Thank you… for the hint and the exit in the throne room.” She seemed meek and not at all the like the larger one that caused all of this.

“Oh… heh…nothing...” She looked away being ever so shy.

“Can I hear your story?” I sat down and calmly patted a spot next to me on the rock.

“Okay…” The small bat like Pokémon fluttered over to me and sat down next to me. “There once was a little girl born to nobles, who was always taught to treat others as beneath her, the peasants, slaves and serfs… throughout her life nobody among the nobles corrected her and she was always seeking to be the center of attention. Eventually she started cutting up women out of jealous as she grew older, her servants and anyone she could capture to start bathing in their freshly spilled blood to stay youthful. The people, eventually tiring of the cannibalism and blood bathing monster that the little girl became, soon stuck the grown up version of her in her own castle to seal her in a room for three years where they fed her but did little more. Not willing to outright kill her themselves and leave her to a torturous existence. Claustrophobia of being trapped in an enclosed space, Autophobia for being unable to interact with anyone day in and day out, three solid years of this torture is what it took for it to sink in that they would never be freed, eventually Blood Bathory gave in to despair and perished with her mind completely broken, nobody cared or shed a single tear. Her legend however would continue on… creating a vampire that would be born from a dangerous mystical war of wishes, things that grants wishes always brings incredible danger from those with lofty dark ambitions and with it life is given to legends… the legendary Bloodbath of Bathory Castle became reality from the history of what became known as the Prison Castle Cachtice. Thus is the story of the warped castle of traps that became a place that drained and fed on blood of the people who died there, engorging itself on it even. It wasn’t Carmilla Bathory, what I could become, that was in control of the castle like she thought… it was the castle controlling ‘HER’ and I barely had the strength for one saving throw for when you entered the castle with a large amount of fear and trepidation, but still a lot of hope to save everyone you could. Even if you can’t save me, no one would cry if I were to fully disappear.”

"I would." The small bat sniffled and started crying, I wrapped a leg around her.

“Yikes, talk about being spoiled to death!” Dolly commented dryly making me flinch, but I kept holding Ellie. When had Dolly shown up?! “Kind of want that to happen to Clarissa Corgi naturally, spoiled pedigree inbred that she is, but I wouldn’t necessarily wish that kind of torture on anyone no matter how tempting it might be. Mama Delilah began raising us better than that and even saved the monster that was Cruella De Ville! For who would cry for the monster if my mother and father didn’t save her from herself out of the goodness of their hearts?”

I felt a pulse from Dolly and I felt a pulse from my own body, when she recalled Cruella De Ville’s story before being arrested and incarcerated. Delilah and Doug would certainly cry if they let the monster die when they could have done something to save them, even if that monster were to be ungrateful, they were truly excellent dogs raising far too many good children and Dolly was one of their results. I was happy to have family like Dolly to share my feelings with.

“What are you going to do now?” I asked of Elizabeth, a… a younger version of her? How did that work exactly? It didn’t matter, someone needed help and… despite my disdain for being called a hero… I couldn’t let this problem go unanswered.

“I’m just going to stay in this forest for the rest of my…” Booping the bat pokemon on the nose with my left hoof as my right was still wrapped around her and comforting her, I glared at her.

“No.” I said sternly.

“No?” The story she just told me said that nobody ever corrected her, I’m doing that right this instant!

“You have been given a second chance, make some friends, try not to be an attention seeker and try to be more humble. Don’t waste it like it sounds like you are going to do!” My sternness made her look up at me with numb shock. “Go out there and enjoy the evening... Ellie Zabor, get out and do stuff, learn from people and find a way to turn your life around… and never become that!”

“Ellie Zabor… that sounds like a nice name… not something a monster should ever hope to...” I lifted up Ellie and drew her into a tight hug, a hug which Dolly joined as she couldn’t let a child go depressed like this one was.

“By the power Paprika, let my hug compel you to make better life choices than what you were going to do to yourself!” I shouted as I gently held and caressed.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Paprika-

I smiled, don’t know why I did as I rubbed a hoof over my belly.

It sounded like someone needed a hug and happy connections, they were certainly getting both.

It would be a few months yet before my little cria came out of my belly, I already loved them dearly.

Then I would be able to get close enough to touch Arizona and Velvet again!

With happy anticipation came joy, whatever it was I was feeling… that hug will definitely mean something to whoever is receiving it!

-Fontaine’s Battered Peninsula-

A Pokémon called a Noibat took to the sky with drying tears in her eyes, free of her future, free of her past, and most of all… free from fates design to become something greater than a demonized person that was made to become what they were and force into a cycle of reliving the same pain and suffering over and over again.

Arceus smiled down upon Ellie as she flew in the evening sun and Pom had actually shed the tears that the vampire known as Carmilla Bathory needed to finally be put to rest.

For someone had to cry for the monster and Pom was both willing and able to mean it, Dolly joined her in a good cry from feeling the sorrow through their bond as they had held that little bat close before letting her fly off to find her way in this world she was reborn anew in.

Those tears broke the cycle of Elizabeth ‘Bloodbath’ Bathory. All that was left was Ellie Zabor who would go on to make many strange friends and find love, also she would become a hero worthy of the title ‘heroic spirit’. One spirit that probably should have mentioned or warned Pom what ‘heroic spirits’ were in the first place, it would have helped many things much sooner, but spilt milk and all that.

Ellie Zabor began her life.

270. Passing through?!

-Equus, Palicoast, Beach, Gallus-

“Okay, this is enough, untie me this instant!” Twilight seemed visibly upset as she sat on the blanket on a really nice beach. The Abyssinians here have a really sunny days too!

“We can’t you’ve been foal nabbed.” I said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“They untied all you, why didn’t they untie me!” Really Twilight was just being overly uptight about being kidnapped. “Spike can you give me a little help here?”

Spike was sunbathing with mirrors, he lowered his sunglasses to look at Twilight and then raised them back up and simply went back to sunbathing.

“We signed up for the kidnapping!” Silver Stream stated jovially with Yona nodding alone.

“I signed up to be one of the kidnappers to eventually betray them and untie all of those that were kidnapped.” Calmly stated Tianhuo.

“Why didn’t you untie me then? Aren’t you on loan from Huoshan to have my best interests at heart?” Yeah, well, about that Twilight, the people who kidnapped you are eventually going to take you back to Equestria. I mean Jaded and Jackie aren’t planning to ransom you or anything and I find it amusing that they let you stay tied up this long, there’s also the wad of tortilla wrapped cheese on your horn preventing you from using magic due to your fear of quesadillas.

She ignites her magic, the cheese melts and instant quesadilla… she was going to have to face her fear of some Mexicolt foods eventually.

“I do not see any trouble here, do you Woof, Ruff, Tuft or Puff?” Tianhuo was relaxing and building a sand castle, the puppies were simply enjoying digging in the sand for buried treasure. That those puppies had already found two treasure chests of some really strange stuff alone was amazing in and of itself, they also made sure to fill in the holes they left behind too.

The puppies stopped what they were doing and made barking noises while shaking their heads. They didn’t see anything going on as being wrong.

“Well there is the fact that you didn’t sign up to be kidnapped on purpose, so you’re like a side kidnapping that’s more realistic to the scenario.” That would be Cadence implying Twilight was still in the middle of actually being kidnapped, she wasn’t wrong. “Those who signed up for it are basically roleplaying being kidnapped… which is when Tianhuo betrayed the kidnappers and untied all of us.”

“I know, I was there when Tianhuo was wearing that poorly made hippogriff disguise and she untied everyone else in front of me!” If you really wanted to get free sooner, then you would have made the quesadilla happen Twilight.

“I’ll rescue you soon enough Twilight, I just got to finish my volleyball match first!” It seems like Shining Armor was finally warming up to Jaded somewhat, he didn’t bring her up in a scathing manner... this time at least. Don’t know if I could do the same with my somewhat clinically insane adoptive sister.

“Oh I get it now, this is about my distaste for Quesadillas isn’t it?!” Twilight stated in an angry if slightly fearful tone, she stopped her magic from igniting the cheese and tortilla. She really didn’t want to pop a quesadilla off her horn... and it would solve all her problems sooner. “I’m not afraid of Quesadillas! I’m not!”

“Yona is wondering why you haven’t ignited your horn if you are not being afraid.” There was a long silent pause from Twilight and she visible looked down with a frown. “Yona is being afraid of spiders until Yona is meeting Spindle, then Yona is literally having a friend for life!”

“You can’t make friends with the horrors that are quesadillas!” Shouted Twilight, actually saying what Yona goaded her into admitting out loud. Smooth move there yak… I held up a curled talon and bumped it against her outstretched hoof.

“Okay, now that you just actively admitted that you’re scared of quesadillas, we can begin to eventually start helping you with it.” I stated bluntly, Twilight wouldn’t say anything for the next ten minutes.

“So anyone for a game of Twisty?” Jaded said with a grin.

“Of course!” Fleur De Lis was only here because she wanted to enjoy a good kidnapping with Fancy Pants.

“I’m game!” Fœnum Arizona stated with a keen interest, followed by the other Fœnum heroes we kidnapped into this vacation.

“I’ll play when Shiny is done with his volleyball game, oh and Gallus… this is a good opportunity for you to figure out how flexible Silver Stream is.” Given that I was receiving a devilish grin, this would either turn out alright or I should be flying for the hills… I can’t tell which yet.

-Ransei, Fountain Mountain Lake, Fontaine City, lakeside, Pom-

Fontaine city was a part of Fontaine Castle in floating on the waters south of Fountain Mountain, a city that was made for Pokémon that weren’t as enthusiastic about water as water types were. Most water types could live underwater and that’s where the other half of the city was.

We weren’t technically in the city, were camping outside of its borders which includes the whole lake of Fountain Mountain. Said lake feeds into the mountain and the mountain creates waterfalls of fresh water from that and the melting ice at the peak of the mountain.

Bidoof were rebuilding both halves after the devastation caused by Carmilla ‘Bloodbath’ Bathory. I don’t know where Ellie got off to, but I hope she lived her best life away from becoming her future self. I still didn’t understand how it was possible for her future and past self to be in the same place at the same time, all I know is that I helped destroy the future self and let the past one run free.

The Bidoof, as always, were insanely enthusiastic to rebuild Fontaine. It explains why they were so helpful in evacuating the battlefield, beating up controlled Pokémon and a variety of other things that were not related to the medical support units on the field. Nobody trust the Bidoof with medical practices, I didn’t want to end up as half a house for whatever inane reason a Bidoof would need to try and figure out the logistics of turning someone into half a living space to fix what amounts to a papercut.

Hundreds of water, normal and some various miscellaneous types of Pokémon needed time to recover from that battle. Healing Berries can only go so far and healing moves like what Swallow had were a premium and usually for the users benefit.

The water Pokémon that could use a move called Aqua Ring were especially tough as that move gives them constant regeneration by flowing water around themselves in a specific sustained manner that it heals them. They were also quite helpful if they knew the move Baton Pass, it allowed the user to pass on positive effects of moves to others temporarily and it worked with the regenerative properties of Aqua Ring. As such Motochika had a supporting medic force dedicated to doing that as his support units that were a match for the Miltank Medics in the backline support.

Speaking of Motochika… he and Evan were checking out the damage done to the southeastern coastline by Maiden Jig when she inflated explosively to impossible proportions.

I was considering my options of what to do from here and though I’d loathe to bother with what will be an oncoming headache, I was going to check on how Greenleaf was doing while sending everyone else back towards Aurora.

Geoff, who was protecting Aurora from any untoward attacks, was happy that the battle fared well and the brutal casualties were fairly low because of Pokémon having ridiculous amounts of resilience to dying. Casualties in this instance was just grievous injuries in the flesh wound variety, there was no lack for methods of healing from severe injuries in this world when healing potions were easily made from local berries and herbs.

-Fontaine Peninsula, southeastern coastline, Evan-

I still felt somewhat spent after that battle, so many Pokémon are hurting… at least we won’t have to worry about a big battle like that for a while!

“Evan…” My attention was drawn to Motochika.

“Yeah?” I said as we started to leave.

“Remind me to never make your kingdoms administrator mad… for any reason really.” That was understandable Motochika, given the large perfectly curved hole in the peninsula left behind by her.

“Do you think she’ll be okay?” I had heard that she was still out cold, apparently she used far too much energy while Dynamaxed, it was even worse than Skeeball being tired after burning a Zenith Move.

“Maiden Jig is made of tough stuff, like my administrator. She'll pull through, you'll see.” That’s when a Lapras came up to Motochika and slapped him in the face with her tongue, it made me blush a bit. “Ugh, Plessilia, really now, in front of Aurora’s king?”

“You owe me a kiss for doing my job as transportation. Hey there I’m Plessy, Fontaine administrator, I was with Pom’s team for that whole fracas.” Oh, was that a ball on her back… oh no… wait… that was a Spheal. I still wanted to bat it around playfully, it looked fun.

“Hm… hey, wait a minutes, did anyone get the Dynamic Maximizing stone that Bathory left behind?” It suddenly made me realize that it hadn’t been destroyed in the fighting.

“I’m sure it’s fine, not like Dynamax energy is going to be big enough to cause problems around here anyway with the levels dropping off for a long while until it's needed again.” Motochika should be a little more worried when his region was known for being Dynamax capable, but if he wasn’t worried then I guess I shouldn’t be worried. “I’m sure within the flow of rhythm, it will make itself known to us eventually.”

-Fontaine Peninsula, southwestern coastline, Skeeball-

“So you must be wondering why I asked you here my tubby hubby?” My big guy nodded while making a sound of curiosity.

Using the remaining Dynamax energy in the area, I grew several times my own size. After licking my lips, as I laid on my side in an inviting manner, I began grinning brightly at him.

With hearts in his eyes, Wilhelm floated towards me with a cheerful Wailord brand grin.

This would be much easier and we’d be taking care of any excess Dynamax energy in the area, it’s the purr-fect plan to make sure the energy left behind was dealt with.

For I am Captain Skeeball!

-Fontaine City, lakeside, Pom-

“So you can now take commissions safely in Fontaine and Aurora, I am personally going to check Greenleaf briefly and will look through Violight for information of anything odd going odd.” So that I could avoid it. I wasn’t taking many people with me for the reason that I wanted to be fast about all this. “I’ll swing back through Greenleaf bridge and then through Ignis bridge and then I’ll be back in Aurora after I’m done getting information in Violight.”

“That I’m going with you doesn’t need to be brought up!” Dolly said with a cheerful grin.

“Dolly of course is going with me, but I’m only taking one other person with me.” That’s when I noticed Dazzle come forward a bit shyly.

“I want to go with you.” She seemed a little nervous, maybe it was because she didn’t do much during all the fighting.

Being weak to water types made Dazzle somewhat helpless in a battle full of them. Still, she successfully got off a sneaky poison attack off on Bathory before she purged herself with Smolder and Ocellus’s help. She even prevented Smolder from making the mistake of rushing Bathory blindly.

The Riolu and Lucario that helped us out didn’t have as much issue with water types and were a huge swing for the battle, that was Evan’s idea and they accepted it and a few of the Riolu even evolved. Evan said something about being right afterwards, but I wasn’t paying attention as I was still regrouping with my friends.

“Sure thing Dazzle, we’ll be traveling pretty quickly though.” That and since I would be going through the Grass type Pokémon domain, she might be thinking she would be a big help in case I get attacked in the grass type kingdom. “Remember girls, stay out of trouble, Smolder your leader for the time being. If I let Shanty lead, she’d probably have you building a rum distillery somewhere.”

“How did you know I would be asking… er… I mean I would never be doing such a thing Pom!” I gave Shanty a flat stare and she gave me a big cheeky grin with her front hooves behind her back.

“Come on, let’s get a move on.” I motioned to Dolly and Dazzle. Motochika would start the celebrations when all the Pokémon from the battle are healed and their kingdom is mostly rebuilt. “Tell Motochika and Evan that I’m getting a scope of possible situations going on in other places.”

-A few hours later-

It felt weird traveling the road that was once held by Grit alone, up to the crossroads where we took a left and kept going west. It was going to be late in the evening by the time we got to Arbora, so we’d stay the night there and then would move on to Violight after asking around if anything has happened and maybe drop off information to Vetali about what happened in Fontaine, how her daughter was doing and in general try to avoid any trouble.

“I felt really quite useless, she even purged my poison immediately.” Dazzle felt a bit useless, like Favela had.

“You were there to help Ocellus stop Smolder from making a big mistake, that’s something I recognize as a good thing.” Given that there were wyvern Pokémon, I knew we would keep an eye on Smolder around anymore like that.

“…” Dazzle looked a little thoughtful as we continued on.

We were about halfway to Arbora Town when we ran into trouble.

“Prepare for trouble.” Started Jessie as she and her group ran in front of us.

Were these guys simply more persistent than Geoff was? I thought that was impossible, it boggles the mind that they would keep bothering us specifically.

“So… want to just walk around them and head to Arbora while they are doing this?” I asked as the Team Pocket guys continued their motto about robbing us or beating us up or whatever it was they were going on about. I stopped paying attention to them after the third time. “I want to at least talk to Vetali sometime today about how Favela is doing, then tomorrow we’ll head for Violight and will steer completely clear of Greenleaf Castle. I have a hunch things will go much better for us if we do.”

“Yep/yes.” Dolly and Dazzle both responded with amused expressions and we quietly skirted around them while they were taking stances with their eyes closed. Scourge was muscle flexing, Jester was dancing about, Meowth was standing tall between Jessie and James at the front as they went through the motions of doing stances.

-Fast forward to the finish of the motto, Meowth-

“Meowth, prepare for Team Pocket’s might because you’re in for a… wha…? They’re gone… and they left us a note?!” I walked over and picked it up. “Hello my verbose and rather persistent villainous annoyance group, one of constant irksomeness that get launched long distances and somehow are alright despite what would be usually quite painful experiences for people that do not have the ability to handle such falls. We have unanimously decided that since you were taking so long to leave a message so that by the time you were posing with your eyes closed, you would eventually notice that we were no longer standing in front of you and have moved on with our lives. By the time you are done reading this message, we will be long gone and hope that you enjoy the rest of your evening. Also take note of the explosive blob of energy I left among you that will explode as soon as you… finish… reading… this…”

We all looked at a wobbling mass of energy in our midst.

“Uh oh…” I said as the wad of wobbling energy began to glow brightly.

-Pom-

We were outside Arbora when I looked up and saw an entire group of Pokémon flying overhead.

“Eh, they’ll be back.” While I would normally worry more about people that were more threatening than Mr. Beezy, those guys were a bunch of clowns. Sure they were fairly dangerous clowns, but they were still clowns.

Also giving my Buster Bark blasts set commands about when to go off was interesting, they probably shouldn’t have finished reading the note… would it still have exploded even if they didn’t? Well technically if they finished reading the note before completely reading it… doesn’t really matter, it still happened so they aren’t very bright either way.

“Most assuredly Pom.” Dazzle nodded with a small smile. “We’ll be ready for them when we actually feel like fighting them.”

“Or they could corner us somewhere, somehow, in a way that they will get their whole motto off before we can get bored and wander away from them. They could be even worse and tie us up to watch them go through several renditions of it.” Don’t even joke about that horrifying thought Dolly, that’d be giving them ideas and too much credit for their capacity to torture someone!

“Let’s get a room at the Saucy Skiddo after we stop to talk to someone we know.” Dazzle hasn’t been here before, but she seemed to like the atmosphere around here despite how sleepy looking the grass type Pokémon were in the evening.

“Saucy Skiddo?” Dazzle seemed curious and was blushing for some reason.

“Yeah, it’s the name of the local bar and guild.” As we entered town we saw two familiar Breloom. “Hey Luke, I just wanted to inform you that Fontaine has solved their issues with the mind controlling monster.”

“Was it a Malamar?” Luke said with eagerness as he looked to his guard friend.

“No it was something called a Noivern that was also a Vampire, my group destroyed her protections and Maiden Jig apparently stomped her into the ground and she burned away in the sunlight.” The fighting mushroom smiled at his guard friend as I informed him of what the problem was. “Anyway Fontaine should be getting back in working order soon and we just dropped by to stay in Arbora for the night. Anything of interest happen here?”

“You could say that, also my friend guessed it was something less weird than that, I said it would be some kind of mystically altered Pokémon using some weird artifact and thought something like Malamar or psychic type on top of that.” The competent fun guy leaned against his spear. “We’re both wrong and I’m partially right so I get some Poké. Nice to hear that everything is working out in Fontaine, heard and saw something big and pink around there… didn’t know it was Aurora’s own Maiden Jig, sounds like we missed a huge party. Since you were last here we caught that Robbing Hood guy, your information about it being a Decidueye helped us a lot with catching the culprit in various minor to moderate misdemeanors around here. He had a cross bow and favored hanging around yew trees for some reason. Aside from his stealth, he wasn’t very good at fighting up close and personal.”

“So there’s nothing horribly wrong going on around here?” Just wanted a confirmation on that, I was sure that we’d be sucked into something.

“Well… no, but I wouldn’t stick around if I were you, might invite something to happen just because you’re here.” Again, Luke sounds like he was speaking from experience. “So just passing through or…”

“Passing through, we’re going to Violight tomorrow to see what’s going on there and get some information of what’s happening further afield. Ignis currently isn’t safe and I’d rather not involve myself in their civil war.” Getting a knowing nod, I got a friendly salute and smile from Luke.

“We’ll be willing to escort you the Violight border in the morning if you want.” Luke and his friend must not have much going on aside from having captured that Decidueye guy.

“I would like that, thank you. We’re heading to the Saucy Skiddo for the night, have a good evening!” He waved us off as we continued on our way.

“He didn’t even question my presence.” It seemed Dazzle was mystified by the rather blasé amount of attention she received.

“I think that’s because you’re my friend and I trust you like I trust Dolly here.” She seemed so put off by it, I just gave her a light hug and then directed her down the street to the Saucy Skiddo. Upon entering the establishment, it seemed to be quite busy this evening given all the noise going on inside. “Hey Vetali, can we get a room for the night?”

“Sure, take a seat and let me get two tables first, then you can tell me how my daughter is doing.” Vetali the Gogoat was moving about and taking care of numerous Pokémon. There were a few Breloom guards here so the rowdiness in the Saucy Skiddo seemed to be low despite the light drinking going on around here.

After a bit of waiting Vetali came up to us with a smile.

“Anything I can get you?” Vetali stated with decent cheer and a few vines pouring drinks for some of the patrons.

“Some food and a room for the evening, we’re passing through and trying to find out if anything is happening in Violight and its surrounding neighbors. Aside from that it’s probably not a good idea to be in Ignis right now considering all the fighting that is said to be happening there.” As for her daughter Favela, I decided to express how she was doing. “Favela is doing okay, but she kind of got dragged into a haunted death trap of a castle with us. It kind of shook her up a bit, but she’s healthy and is a great help. She's even becoming best friends with Shanty.”

“My daughter being as adventurous as the rest of my children, but still… a haunted castle?” I would go into the tale of Blood Bathory over some food. Not long after, we settled in for the evening.

-Saucy Skiddo upstairs room, night, Pom-

Something shook me awake and I sleepily lifted my head from Dolly curled up in my legs and practically dead to the world.

“Um… sorry, but can I…” Dazzle looked like she wanted to ask something.

“Fine… get in.” I said drowsily figuring out what she wanted, it was cute considering she was one of the Pokémon that liked sleeping on me.

“I thank you for the comfort you bring.” Dazzle stated as she crawled in to bed and snuggled up to me.

I sighed and went back to sleep, it seemed Dazzle still had nightmares and to my dismay I was a very good and comfortable pillow that chased away said nightmares.

-The next morning, breakfast and several hours later-

We were making good time today, nothing seemed wrong and I was nervous as to where things would suddenly fall out from under me. Dolly on the other hoof, she was a ball of positive sunshine on me being in a dreary mood.

“Come on Pom, we managed to get through most of Greenleaf without trouble. Today is a good day, I can feel it! The sun is shining, the smells in the air are amazing and I feel great… despite…” Today was the day Dolly finally ran out of her world’s kibble. Her right lower eyelid twitched a bit and she continued to keep a positive attitude, despite me knowing she was actively thinking about it. “Anyway, we’re making good time! We have an escort with no trouble in sight and Dazzle doesn’t seem to be making passes at you like Geoff does.”

“Well she wouldn’t Dolly, she told me what it was like for a female Salandit, especially one with her notorious nobility. A lot was expected of her and when she evolves things would just get a whole lot worse for her prospects in life.” I even shared that information with Dolly mentally. “She just wouldn’t be allowed to be herself like she is now.”

“Yikes… that bad? No wonder she likes you so much, you’re not scared of her being dangerously poisonous and you’ve been nothing if not gentle and kind towards her since you first met.” Dolly certainly gets it readily enough. “I guess I can see why Dazzle isn’t looking for anything more closer in your friendship, it’d basically be her doing the same thing the people of her kingdom were doing to her.”

“Exactly Dolly, plus she knows I’m already taken and am not looking to build a herd.” Still it would probably be for the best if Dazzle wasn’t with us if we headed or ended up in the direction of that particular kingdom.

“Does the herd thing happen on your world often?” Dolly tilted her head as she walked along and tightened down her helmet.

“More often than you would think with quadrupeds in our world, lambkin are less likely to herd due to our rather consistent mental issues.” Of which there were plenty among Lambkin kind and I would know being one member of it. “Anytime we do find someone we’re comfortable with, it’s usually a match made in Elysium.”

“I’m helping you with your issues right?” Yes, Dolly and you being here for me does keep me calmer, I even nodded in acceptance to your ever cheerful smile.

“Well here we are, northern bridge to Violight, I’ll tell you a few things you need to know before you head off.” Nodding for Luke to go ahead, he did so. “First off Electric types tend to use paralysis attacks, to that end you’ll need a Cheri Berry or two to cure paralysis. They are also tend to be fast Pokémon and are in general weak to ground type attacks and cannot hurt ground type Pokémon easily. So kick up some dirt at them or in the way of an electric type attack if you’re in trouble, it’ll help more than you think it will. Ginchiyo is the Queen of Violight, she’s a bit stern and prideful, but can be nice once you get past her rough exterior. She is a Luxio, a feline species of Pokémon that come in blue, black and yellow. The kingdom in general has higher technological levels than we do, they even have some things called computers there. The only kingdom with more technological heights than them would be Valora the kingdom of Steel Type Pokémon, of whom they share a long distance alliance with. So expect buildings that are made of much tougher stuff than what you’ve seen around thus far. Be aware that electric types, when charged up on food or sugar, can be a bit hyper or a little aggressive. The kingdom is known for its storms, it is also known for lights and unusual magnetic energy fields that can cause odd things to happen. As for one last thing of note, don’t damage any of Violight’s storm towers, they absorb lightning from the constant storms that happen around Violight and some Pokémon need that energy to continue functioning. Underneath the towers are the safest place to be in a lightning storm if you get caught outside in one.”

“Well thank you for all the information, but what about directions to where we can get some information?” This was my first time going into Violight and I didn’t want to get lost.

“Easy enough, just follow the path northwest up the coast. All the places in Violight have paths to them. If you want information then you can make a stop at Sky Garden, one of the results of the strange magnetic fields I told you about that’s a very popular tourist attraction. Further northwest the coast is dominated by the coastal capital itself Violight Castle and Shiden City. If you’re not heading towards Violight Castle or Shiden City, then try Voltsburg because it’ll likely be the town you can easily reach first and finding information there won’t be hard at all.”

“Thanks for the help Luke, take care now!” We set across the bridge northward.

“I’m a bit nervous about this. I’ve heard electric types can get quite weird, but what he just said made my worries go up a bit more.” You weren’t the only one that was nervous Dazzle, but I wanted to know if anything was going on around Pugilis, Chrysalia or Violight that might be a problem for the regions surrounding Aurora later. I could almost feel the unseen dominoes being set up somewhere.

I was quite thankful the Decidueye in Greenleaf wasn’t going to be an issue to me at this time.

-A few hours later, Voltsburg-

“Wow…” Shared the sentiment Dazzle, this was kind of amazing. The Sky Gardens were neat to look at, but we couldn’t exactly get up to them and didn’t see a way how. Apparently we should inquire about that in Voltsburg while we’re here. “Violight is likely called the kingdom of lights for this very reason.”

We made our way into town and saw lights strung around, the weird and strange electric type Pokémon were moving about in high activity and some of them were selling wares and or odds and end. It had taken us most of the morning to get here, but even I was transfixed by the strange beauty of all the colorful lights were spraying the areas with color.

We must have been gawking for too long because a Pokémon that looked like a sheep wandered up to us.

“Hello and welcome to Voltsburg travelers. If you want to see something interesting or need a place to stay for a bit, then hit up Professor Pong. He has been looking for assistance into some strange phenomenon going on lately if you’re looking for work. If you don’t want free room and board with him, you can try the Raichu Rooms Hotel. They have generally good rates and if you’re looking for somewhere to eat, then the Power Strip food court is quite electrifying for various types of Pokémon or strangers.” The sheep with sparking wool looked down and saw what had to be a bug type was trying to get his attention gently by poking at one of his legs. “Oh a Grubbin, on tour in Violight and possibly about to evolve into a Charjabug huh? I’ve seen a few visit here quite a few times, so you’re a recognizable sight at least compared to our strange travelers. Aside from Snom you guys have some of the slowest evolutions of bug types.”

Interesting to know, but the little guy did kind of interrupt us. Still if we were going to ask anyone about the surrounding area, it would be the sheep Pokémon.

“Can you show us where this Professor Pong lives please?” The bug had two long pincers and an orange on his head, he seemed fairly cheerful and full of life. “I’ve learned that Mareep and Flaaffy make really good guides, also I want to get to know who these other travelers are too! We can possibly travel together if they are sticking around. I’m just a normal Grubbin, you can call me Grubby until I become a Charjabug like Mareep just said!”

“Well come along, I’ve got free time to show you all where Professor Pong lives.” It was almost lunch time and I was kind of interested in seeing what the Power Strip food court had going for it. “Do you have any questions?”

“A few, has any unusual happenings been going on around here, Chrysalia or Pugilis?” I knew Greenleaf had some internal issues which seemed to be resolved, probably related to the Decidueye. Putting that out of mind, I was worried about Ignis possibly going on the warpath in other regions.

“Chrysalia was quiet when I was last there.” Okay some confirmation that not everywhere was experiencing trouble from the one Pokémon that was a tourist like us, Grubby was it? He was a cute little guy and seemed to look healthy if he’s been traveling around by himself. “Nothing going on around there except maybe for the usual stocking up on food.”

“Unusual as in trouble? Pugilis has been strangely quiet for a while, probably just Pokémon building up for an announcement to yet another fighting tournament… quite common around there really, though there was an issue of Riolu and Lucario being rowdy. I haven’t heard much about that though. Aside from that, if you’re looking for strangeness in Violight then Professor Pong would be your go-to for some strange happening around here.” The Mareep stated as they led us through the streets. I’m glad he told us about Pugilis, because I would rather avoid getting dragged into another tournament against my will. I don’t think I can get accidentally lucky with my anti-magic wool launching me skyward again. “Oh pay attention, on our right is the Power Strip food court remember the general area so you can come back here.”

We took a moment to do so and then continued on our way looking at the lights and the strange Pokémon running around. There were a lot of small Pokémon that looked like mice, two that were different kinds of squirrel and a few that looks like metal orbs with magnets or tuning forks.

“This is Professor Pong’s residence.” Huh, it was slightly more impressive than the rest of town which was constructed with bricks and wood, the building had some metal in its walls too. “It’s also a laboratory, hey professor I got some people interested in whatever you’re working on.”

“Is he a rock type?” I asked as I looked upon the strangest Pokémon I’ve seen yet floating in the middle of the room.

“No I’m a normal type, called a Porygon. Specifically I am Professor Pong Porygon and… that’s odd there’s been a sudden increase in instability in this room. Some of the data is going out of control, something about my guests must have changed it.” Professor Pong certainly didn’t scream 'normal type' to me being a weird blocky floating thing. He was looking at a computer’s monitor and studying something. “This data stream seems to indicate that something incredible is about to…”

“Digital dimensional breech in progress.” Said the device under the Pecha Berry Scarf Dolly was wearing around her neck. She was still wearing her three colorful bands and the device that was hooked on them called the digivice underneath. The most we knew was that it was something of a connection to another world, a world of which Dormarch had originated from.

Dolly looked down at the pink scarf around her neck and then at me like a deer with light shined in their eyes.

“Excuse me, but did one of you just say…” One second we were listening to Professor Pong about to ask a question and given that we just met him, we couldn’t get a good judge or read of his character. A vortex opened up and swallowed Dolly, then Dazzle and it tried to get me but I was fighting it. “My word, what incredible data this is! Oh, no, wait… this isn’t good at all! My new interesting guests are all getting sucked out of this…”

I decided to let go of the floor with my wool and fell into the vortex after Dolly and Dazzle, it closed up after I entered it… because of course it did!

Finding myself in a black space, before I knew I felt like I was spinning out of control and eventually I ended up moving towards the entrance of a tube… that was made of green wires? Further down that tube were hundreds upon hundreds of strange blinking colorful squares making up the tube.

At least Dolly and Dazzle looked as confused as I was as they floated there and… wait… what was that yellow spot on Dolly’s back? Okay, not entirely important to worry about yet because…

“Digivice establishing connection to nearby new digital world server, please wait… Signaling help from any nearby ally for accidental, and we assure you very much completely unintentional, Digi-destined summoning to network connection space. Please survive the life threatening heavily patrolled security firewall of the new server until then.” The Digivice announced. “Guardromon and Machinedramon will see you as viruses to be deleted and will begin attacking soon. Yggdrisal.sys is quite sorry for this horrendous inconvenience considering prior inconveniences involving deceased digimon partners destruction. Yggdrisal.sys hopes to at least not let you down… for once… warning, WARNING, Chaosdramon X detected invading server connection! Extremely immediate life threatening danger to unprotected Digi-destined... beginning immediate transference to save nullified Digi-destined regardless of trying to fix current firewall issues!”

For some reason I had very big gut feeling that this was going to be one of the worst things that I’ve ever experienced in recent history, especially as we all quickly got sucked into the strange tube of squares among the vast ocean of surrounding darkness.

Author's Note

Pom just wanted to avoid trouble, not happening here. Not with something she has no chance of beating and will likely die to if she has to fight it directly.

271. Frantically Fast Firewall Failure.

Author's Note

Music: TMNT: Turtles In Time - Sewer Surfin' [Eurobeat Remix]

271. Frantically Fast Firewall Failure.

-Ransei, Fontaine, Smolder-

“Do you be thinking Pom will be alright?” Shanty asked, likely knowing the answer already as well as any of us.

“She’s fine, she has Dolly and Dazzle went with her, what kind of trouble could they possibly… okay fine, I can’t say it with a straight face. No, she won’t be fine! We all know how much trouble Pom attracts and she is probably already in over her head!” I crossed my arms and specifically didn’t look at Ocellus when I paused and told the truth. “I’m sure she probably got the information she wanted at least, but how she got it will probably take her a while to get back to us about.”

“Wow, I didn’t expect you to go the brutally honest route Smolder.” Now you see Ocellus, if we all know the truth and it only take one of us to say it, then it may as well be me. Probably why Pom left me in charge, Ocellus has already had a turn and that went somewhat poorly. As long as I don’t see a wyvern or someone doesn’t endanger Ocellus, I think I can keep my head quite clear and will have to remember that not everyone can tank like an Ogres and Oubliettes character. “Now come on and help us out with the blankets, one of the healing Buizel is getting cold.”

Pom, whatever it is you are currently doing, you better not leave me as the leader for too long. I already had enough talks with Ember being heavily stressed out by her leadership as the Dragon Lord before I ended up at the friendship school, also some time after it too. Thankfully King Thorax balanced out Ember quite well.

-Network Connection Tubes, Pom-

We were inside the tube and generally hovering in the same positions we entered at, yet we were moving forward somehow… at least I could feel that we were moving forward. This all felt so strange... at least I wasn’t separated from Dolly and could still feel our strong connection.

Dazzle was looking around in slight fear and I wouldn’t let her or Dolly get into trouble without going after them, which is why I dropped myself in here with them. That and I didn’t want to lose Dolly.

“Network Connection route established, please avoid Chaosdramon X at all costs during transference. Movement within tube system should be intuitive, please practice now before and firewall defenses show up. Two minutes approximate time until first firewall response arrives.” We were looking to Dolly as the voice of Yggdrasil.sys was coming from the device she was wearing. “Also focus on forward movement as swiftly as possible, keep your bodies inside the data streams at all times and try not to die. It would be a very sad.”

“Pom… what I said about this day being good so far… I take it back.” Dolly stated with a slight unhappy blandness and I nodded to her in complete sympathy. It ‘was’ a good day, but we couldn’t have seen this coming and could only hope to get back to Shanty, Ocellus and Smolder. They could thankfully take care of themselves at least.

I tried to float towards Dolly and it… just seemed to happen. Dazzle already made it to her and we grouped up holding onto the sides of Dolly’s board as she was sitting on it. The sensation of movement was constant with all the shifting blinking squares.

“So… how do we go faster, do we just try to feel like going forward?” Well we were already going forward, it was like we were in a waterless river inside this tube and it was flowing in a given direction to an unknown destination. We were unfortunately going along for the ride.

“What’s going on?” Dazzle asked, looking visibly shaken up as she kept her front left claw on the side of Dolly’s skateboard with an iron grip as the many squares upon squares making up the tube we seemingly passed by at incredible speeds.

“Apparently we’ve stumbled into a situation I wasn’t prepared to run away from fast enough…” I let go of the board and floated up, ahead of Dolly and Dazzle, back behind them and around them in a circle. “We’re also possibly going to another world, one where a deceased friend.”

For some reason that relieved Dazzle more than it should have.

We had been in a town and I thought we were safe. Well we weren’t safe in Abora the first time we visited the place, but Voltsburg seemed so tame!

Something busted through the side of the tube behind us.

“Targets acquired, eliminating with Grenade Destroyer… lock-on, fire!” It was kind of roundish square with a mostly brownish color, looked like a walking tank that just burst through the wall and it aimed it’s opening forearms at us to fire what I assumed to be strange looking explosives at us. It looked to be made of iron and was quickly catching up to us on flaming jets.

What is it with me and robots?!

“Ugh… Robots again.” Whined Dolly before said robot fired a pair of missiles that were blowing whistles as they came at us. “With literal whistle blowing missiles, oh come on, those are killing my ears here!”

“I believe he just said they were grenades…” I was thankful the grenades were stopped by Dazzle firing a Flame Burst destroying both of the ones coming up behind us in a fiery explosion, close enough to where we could all feel the heat.

“Guardromon, Guard Robot Monster, network defensive program, can come in all attributes and is a machine type digimon. Caution advised, they fire grenades from their forearms with Grenade Destroyer attack program and lasers from their eyes with Warning Laser attack program. However they are weak in close range combat due to having slower reaction times at shorter range confrontations.” Informed the digivice or Yggdrasil.sys in a bland tone that almost sound worried for our safety, I couldn’t tell which it was giving us this information at this point and I wouldn’t be here to ask questions as I shifted my wool.

“Rear Drill!” Straightening out my body as all my wool shifted to the back half of my body. I twisted my body and pushed off Dolly’s skateboard with my front hooves and shot backwards while rapidly spinning and my rear hooves pressed together into a point.

My hooves hit and I dug into the metal monsters thickly armored chest twisting into and breaking its relatively moderate armoring, then scrunched up and use the increased amount of wool around my hind legs to launch two powerful point blank Thousand Spears from them to free me from all the twisted metal in a fountain of untwisting wool.

I rocketed forward, past Dolly and Dazzle, as the Guardromon fell behind into the distance. He looked to be quite pained and I was glad I didn’t hurt him too much as it looked like he wasn’t bleeding and he was still moving, the flailing robot disappeared into the distance and given that this was a straight tube, we were in a really, really long one. That poor thing was just doing its… his maybe… job and as a backup Huoshan guard I can relate to having problems with rough intruders, like a certain Abyssinian I haven’t seen for the most part of a year.

Dolly moved to catch up with me and shot past me at a blazing speed before slowing down, she was about three hoof balls lengths away before she realized she passed me.

“Whoa what is up with my momentum here?” Good question Dolly, she asked this as I once again took a hold of the board when she slowed down. “Whoa?!”

Dolly veered through three sets of parallel small beams crossing in front of us coming from outside the tube. Three more Guardromon were moving along the outside of the tunnel and were trying to match pace with us.

“Despite being nullified, it seems you are more capable than other digi-destined… at least on a level of being able to handle champion digimon with your natural capabilities. Also that sudden bandwidth increasing ability would be prudent to escaping danger at much quicker speeds.” The digivice was oddly informative and at times it says things I don’t understand, what was bandwidth and what did that have to do with Dolly getting insanely fast in here? “Please, I implore you to continue to using the bandwidth increasing ability, it is quite urgent that you do so to evade Chaosdramon X who is quickly approaching your network connection zone. Methods of slowing them down have proven to be… generally and highly ineffective.”

“You heard the device Dolly, break loose and momentum boost us like crazy as long and as safely as you can. Dazzle and I can deal with them at range.” Since I doubt we would get the time to fight close up with the repeated urgency from the Digivice… anything with ‘chaos’ in its name was bound to be dangerous. The Guardromon behind us were quickly catching up. I quickly wrapped a portion of the board strap around Dazzle’s left wrist and my own right hoof. “Quick question, what does a Chaosdramon X look like?”

“Bright red, death incarnate, mechanical dragon… is that enough information or do you need more about something that can reap an entire city into a hole in minutes?” The digivice stated almost flatly, though the tone registered with the decidedly fearful part of my brain that focused down on the words ‘reap’ and ‘entire city’ that came up in the same sentence. “Connection with ally digimon achieved, ally will find their way to you in approximately five minutes and can move faster than you can at increased bandwidth speeds and will be able to keep up with you. Help is on the way, but don’t stop or slow down for them.”

“Right, I’ll focus on things in front of us and keep us moving, got it. Now kicking this into high gear, let’s go… Bow-Whaka-Wahoo!” We all shot forward as the guardromon bursts into the tunnel behind us, we put a significant amount of distance between them and us immediately. They started speeding up to catch up to us.

The tunnel veered downwards sharply and Dolly quickly flipped us upside down before we hit the sharp curve, aside from a little discomfort there didn’t seem to be gravity here. So we wouldn’t exactly be bothered by orientation as we hit the corner of the tube.

As soon as the back end of Dolly’s board hit the squares, we were shooting down the tube at an insane rate. At least it seemed insane to me, I didn’t know how fast we were actually going as the squares blurred by. At least the squares didn’t seem to hurt us as Dazzle and I were being dragged along by Dolly’s board.

The Guardromon, unfortunately were keeping up and were actually gaining on us. Dolly went onto her hind legs and took on a surfer’s stance while sending a quick excited grin to us as the tips of her ears whipped in the nonexistent wind from beneath her helmet.

I looked to Dazzle and she looked back at me, we nodded and looked behind us as Dolly swept us into another curve into what should have been the right wall… actually… I can’t tell which way was up anymore. This place was like Gravity Gorge back on Elhorn all over again, except there were no places to hide this time!

-Network Surfing-

“Phhtweeeeeee-!” Pom turned her head and rolled her body back first down to the tunnel walls to fire a bark blast and the missile with a whistle in its mouth blew apart taking another with it as it was struck by the energy.

Dazzle fired a Flame burst that exploded and hit all three of the Guardromon behind them doing minimal damage and melted their thickly armored hides slightly. In retaliation their eyes started to glow.

“Right!” Called out Dazzle, Dolly didn’t think twice before veering right along the tunnel as three pairs of small parallel beams of energy passed by them to their left.

Pom loosed a bark and a wad of blob shaped energy flew down the tube behind them at an angle, there was no seemingly gravity as it closed in with the lead of the three guardromon following behind them in the center of the tube.

The guardromon tried to veer slightly to avoid the blob and it promptly exploded in the bipedal machines direction as it passed by, the Bark Buster sent it spiraling into another Guardromon sending them both tumbling and falling behind out of the tube as it curved sharply again.

“As dangerous as this truly is, we’re going to get through this, for spending time with you guys is like bliss~!” Sang Dazzle firing off a Round move that the last Guardromon behind them sent went flying out of control when the left thing where the jets were coming from dented inward under the concentrated sound attack sending them spiraling slightly out of control.

It fell behind and Pom looked down and Dolly looked up ahead of them, Dazzle was looking to the left and right.

“Above/below!” Dolly and Pom exclaimed as four Guardromon simultaneous erupted into the tube two behind them from below their current orientation. The other two burst through what was the ceiling ahead of them flying backwards and immediately fired four missiles at varying angles from above. The two behind the trio spread out to fire lasers while pivoted inwards to prevent them from sliding left or right along the tube bracketing them in.

It was a good thing Dolly knew they weren’t only stuck with left or right movements. With a single kick of her board she launched them across the tube to the opposite side while flipping through the missiles to land on what was the ceiling for them. The lasers hit nothing aside from the tubes walls and the missiles from above broke through the barriers of the tunnel and exploded outside in the nothingness beyond.

Dolly, clutching at her helmet due to the whistling noises the missiles made, veered them all into the sharp right in the curve and towards the rear Guardromons that had lost sight of their quarry. As the trio went past the one on the left behind them Dazzle fired a Flame Burst into a grenade before it could fire as it quickly aimed for them with its left arm.

The grenade did a lot of damage to the Guardromon by exploding in its face and sent it tumbling back.

The other Guardromon tried to turn and fire only for Pom to let loose a bark blast into its aiming forearms and causing another violent explosion as the two grenade blasts blew the bulky machine out of the tube entirely.

Dolly suddenly changed direction veering hard left that almost caused Dazzle to lose her death grip on the board as Dolly guided them between another volley of whistle blowing grenades that seemed to be glaring at them as they passed by. They exploded all around the three before they could leave their proximity and Dolly launched them into floating in the middle of the tube to escape getting injured in the blast.

Three more Guardromon dropped into the tube ahead of them.

“Quickly choose purple tube and you will not be hit with their next attack.” The digivice stated earning Dolly a quick glance as five sets of arms prepared to fill the tube full of whistling missiles ahead of them.

The tube suddenly became four different colors and deciding to trust the device on her neck Dolly swerved her board upwards and to the left to reorient to the part of the tube that had the purple coloration along it and not the green, blue or red that suddenly took up other parts of the tube.

Before the five Guardromon could fire, the tube split in four different directions and most of them ended up going down purple or green, one went down the red tube.

Dolly, Pom and Dazzle all ended up in a tube entirely alone. Until a large shadow passed by the tube beneath their current orientation.

“What the dog was that…” Dolly said looking back and seeing a large shadow swinging around and surging up behind and beneath them.

“More incoming Guardromon, your newest problem is Machinedramon. Estimated time of interception by Chaosdramon X, a massively worse problem than the Machinedramon that are about to attack you, is approximately two minutes.” The shadow was getting bigger beneath the three as the Digivice spoke. “I would suggest veering very fast off to the side.”

Dolly threw herself and her friend to the left with her momentum power and even threw in her flowing motion magic. She barely managed to kick the board up and out of the way of massive, dark, rounded square jaws rose up from where they were, said jaws turned and snapped at the three of them as they flipped up onto what was the left wall for them a second ago.

“There’s something worse than that coming for us?!” Pom went quite shrill given the horrors of the situation as two more large shadows and multiple smaller shadows started appearing around the tube they were in as the monster that tried to eat them rose up at their back.

It barely fit in the tube and was skidding along the tube behind them on its two legs which seemed to have skulls as knee caps. It was an already ridiculously intimidating monstrosity, did it really need that little bit of whimsy to feel less like a lifeless lethal machine entity in full?

The thing that popped up behind them was chrome grey colored it had lifeless glowing eyes, it’s right claw looked like it doubled as a cannon and the left were three blades the length of swords and on its back was two massive barrels that were glowing.

“Keep going Left!” Pom shouted as the barrels erupted and Dolly kept pushing further as a large portion of the tube was shredded, a quarter of the tube was just missing instantly after the twin beams lanced through the area lighting up the darkness for a quite a large distance. There was very little out there aside from other faintly visible tubes.

The large monstrous mechanical lizard seemed to slow down and was pushed backwards by the recoil of firing those devastatingly powerful beams and a fairly long distance ahead the tube returned to being fully cylindrical, outside the gap in the tube another Machinedramon and several Guardromon could be seen.

Another Machinedramon was sliding sideways through the black space and the two cannons on its back came up and started glowing as it aimed at the tube from the side.

“Out of the tube!” Screamed Dazzle.

Dolly, figuring Dazzle had the right idea, continued the leftward drift and slid them out of the open gap in the tube made by the previous pair of beams that tore a massive section of the tube open, they avoided a pair of beams where they would have been that tore a large section of it to shreds.

“Do not get too far from the network tube, you’ll slow down your transference!” The information was somewhat timely from the Digivice, because Dolly was veering wildly through the fields of whistling grenades and avoiding a third massive pair of beams from yet another Machinedramon.

There were so many grenades coming at them from all angles as the ten to sixteen Gaurdromon were spread out ahead and pummeling the three clinging to the skateboard with proximity based explosions trying to allow the soulless feeling Machinedramon time to close in and attack them.

The trio’s defense of bark blasts and Flame Bursts was fairly stunted against such a constant onslaught.

“This is getting quite ridiculous!” Stated Dolly as she jerk about in different directions trying to keep their forward momentum. They were buffeted by various explosions from the Guardromon from all sides and laser beams scraped at Pom’s wool and glanced off Dazzle’s heat resistant scales. The Dalmatian being the only reason they hadn’t taken a completely direct hit so far.

The three large Machinedramon were almost upon them like sharks with their mouths wide open.

The skateboard trio were slowing down as Dolly tried to veer them back for the tube before they lost their chance to get back inside. It was hard going because they had to avoid various explosions.

The Guardromon gathered in a circle and were about to create a hard to escape cone of fire when they were suddenly strafed by a series of flashes of something that came in from above and behind the trio on the skateboard.

This caused multiple primed grenades to go off prematurely and scattered the gathered Guardromon all into the black void as the trio continued towards the tube.

“Woohoo, now this looks like a real party line, grab on!” The least likely thing to see in this situation would be a biplane flying in out of nowhere being piloted by what looked like a guinea pig with bat wings for ears wearing a cap and goggles.

Said guinea pig monster swooped in close to the three as they were already heading back to the open portion of the tube.

Dolly reached up her right paw and got it around the support structure underneath the right wing, the skateboard bound trio were immediately pulled forward and dragged out of the way of the three snapping mechanical jaws of the Machinedramon.

“Those Machinedramon are terrifying aren’t they, woo this is quite a rush!” As the wing eared guinea pig made Dolly look back at Pom and Dazzle, the two shrugged at her and were probably thinking the same thing Dolly was. This was the ally that Yggdrasil.sys got to come save them? He didn’t look like much but he was at least keeping them ahead of the Machinedramon, said monsters cannons shifted outwards and looked like they were ready to fire again. “You’re lucky I’m an adrenaline junky, because no other digimon would be nearly this stupid about getting into this kind of situation with the network firewall brigade. Hold on!”

The small creature hit something and the biplane tripled in speed faster than what Dolly could push with her momentum control and a flash of six combined beams tore through the tube as they made it to a curve.

“We’re almost to your exit, you made it this far, so you’re doing pretty good considering that total death squad on all of your butts!” The guinea pig looked to the trio. “Hey, now would be a good time to climb on while they are still dealing with the recoil of their Giga Cannons. Less useful for them in network space when they have nothing to brace against.”

Pom reached up with her left hoof and clamped to the underside of the plane. She unbound her right hoof and carefully unwrapped Dazzles left claw and clamped onto it and pulled her up onto the plane first where she easily found a. Pom followed up by Getting Dolly up next and final herself.

“Almost there and we’ve still got Machinedramon on our butts, those guys are relentless!” The guinea pig had yet to introduce himself and looked behind them as he continued to fly his vehicle down the tube.

“Incoming Chaosdramon X, you are out of time.” The digivice announced. “Please try to reach your exit, Yggdrasil.sys will try to close it off before it can get through.”

The guinea pig’s eyes widened with at the news.

“Come on, come on, we need to reach the exit before…” Something large and red surged forward out of the darkness, blasting huge flames out of the cannons on its backside to propel itself forward. It looked similar to the Machinedramon, but was bigger and several times faster. The feeling of 'imminent death' permeating everything around it was worse than the relatively disturbing sense of lifelessness the Machinedramon’s gave off. “Ah, just so you know if it gets close enough to us, it’s going to pointblank annihilate us with its most well-known attack if it’s feeling generous for giving us a quick death! We can outrun the Machinedramon, but we can’t outrun or even fight ‘THAT’! I heard they were supposed to be slow, but stupidly powerful. Slow when compared to what, a Rinkmon?!”

The large red dragon monster flipped its thrusters, it slowed down immensely and the buildup of energy on it’s now forward pointing cannons caused static to fill the surrounding air. Six beams struck it and diverted its shot from the tube and an absolutely blinding massive wave of energy shot off into the surrounding nothingness.

The Chaosdramon X was entirely unscathed by the six Giga Cannon shots that slammed into it and had diverted its fire, the Machinedramon were thankfully focusing on the much bigger issue here.

“What… was that…?” Pom sat in front of Dazzle on the tail of the biplane and was staring wide eyed as Dolly clung to her chest whimpering.

“Huh, if we survive this, then I can seriously tell everyone that I saw what is known as Chaosdramon’s signature move, Genocide Attack, and survived to tell about!” The guinea pig was frightened, but he seemed to not be letting it get to him as the Chaosdramon X turned around and immediately interposed itself between them and the oncoming Machinedramon.

It rammed it’s right claw home tearing open the chest of the first Machinedramon to reach it, then the Machinedramon ceased to exist a second later in a glow of mushroom shaped fireball that used to be its body.

The other two Machinedramon took umbrage to that, they bit, they clawed and blasted energy from their right arms at Chaosdramon X.

“G-gen-genocide?!” Pom was still clearly stuck on the name of the attack as she clutched at a cowering Dolly and Dazzle just stared as one of the large, seemingly undefeatable Machinedramon monsters die in a single attack from Chaosdramon X and none of the Machinedramon so much as scratched it.

“Oh good the exit is coming up, we just might make it if those Machinedramon actually keep it busy long enough!” The guinea pig seemed to have a chipper personality.

Pom just turned back to stare as the other two remaining Machinedramon continued to fire their Giga Cannons and attack the red monstrosity pointlessly, the Chaosdramon X responded by firing it’s cannons in kind.

Even at this distance, the sudden evaporation of the tubes complete existence behind them was horrifying, as much as anything that used to vaguely live in that direction.

The Machinedramon were no more and the Chaosdramon X had already pushed itself back towards the biplane riders using the recoil from the attack that just killed two already terrifying monsters instantaneously.

Pom couldn’t even comprehend why something with this amount of power exists and swallowed hard.

It turned around and its eyes locked onto the biplane. They had managed to gain some distance, but that didn’t really matter much at the moment if they didn’t reach their destination before it caught up with them.

Chaosdramon X, the giant deadly robotic lizard that it was, turned its cannons around backwards and used the boosting flames to speed forward to catch up with them.

“Almost there… we’re so close!” The guinea pig said.

“Pom-…” Dolly said slowly as Pom held her close.

“I’m terrified beyond all reason Dolly, get back to me in the next life if we have one together.” Pom said with a blank tone.

“Network transference ninety nine point nine percent complete.” The Digivice unhelpfully stated as the monster closed in on them and whipped its jetpack slash cannons about to start charging them to fire.

“There, we’ll have to jump for it!” The guinea pig with wing ears stated. He even pointed his right ear at something, which drew Pom’s attention to what looked like a portal with the image of a city on it.

Pom immediately started to inhale.

Dazzle fire a blast of purple liquid into the red armored monstrosities face as it closed in and its armor started sizzling and wearing away.

“Whoa, that’s Red Digizoid, how did you’re friend manage to damage it with such a weak looking attack?!” The exceedingly odd guinea pig was way too excited about the oddity despite being seconds away from death. “That kind of Digizoid is some of the hardest stuff in the digital worlds!”

Pom continued to inhale as her wool shifted to wolf form of Sheep’s Clothing. She planted Dolly on her back, wrapped her left hoof around a shy looking Dazzle’s waist and her hoof grabbed up the guinea pig creature as she hopped onto and move along the right wing to the very edge of it.

Pom exhaled and the groups gathered forms flickered out of existence, seconds later the biplane had a critical existence failure.

For the biplane ceased to exist even before the beams from the Chaosdramon X even fired.

-???, Pom-

“Wake up, Pom, WAKE UP!” With a worried Dolly in my face, I came to and blinked dizzily as I felt my wool settle back into its default state. Wha… “Pom, think quick, focus, to the right, hoof out, use your wool, now!”

I… what?

The world blurred as my spinning head rolled to the right and I saw the ground approaching and saw something moving underneath us.

I reached out with my right hoof, snagged something and inflated my wool. All that in the following order as my senses slowly came back to me.

“Where did the strange that creature go?” Dazzle asked after a grunt when we slammed into something together, something that was moving at high speeds and my inflated wool kept me aloft and off the pavement passing by beneath me.

Dazzle was clinging to me quite tightly, I could feel her claws digging into my skin hard enough to draw blood.

“Don’t know, saw him fall away from us after passed through the portal thing, he has wings so he should be…. why am I answering you? You can’t understand me and Pom is still out of it!” Dolly slapped me in the face with her paws several times, admittedly this did focus me, as she looked behind us in a panic. “AHHHHH! Whatever you do Pom, keep holding on like this and don’t let go!”

“W-what…. why?” Sound came back and my vision cleared I was clinging on to a two wheeled vehicle blazing down a highway in a city full of tall buildings and tons of lights. Dazzle leapt off of me and grabbed on to the back of the vehicle while growling at a shadow behind us. “What’s going on?”

Had the Chaosdramon X thing followed us? No, but I did see what was a fairly large machine with a pink blade raising into the air at the end of its left limb.

“Huh, what the, who the… where did all of you come from!” I blinked at the being driving the bike.

“A Puckian?” I slurred slightly as Dazzled helped me get a better grip on the familiar looking rear portion of the bike and as I had noted there was a large bipedal duck driving it.

“Wait… if you recognize what I am, then… I have to keep you alive! That complicates things greatly as I‘m already in the middle of something else!” The Puckian raised a pistol and fired a flaming hockey puck into the large bipedal machine behind the relatively large vehicle to stop it from swinging its pink blade down on us. The blade turned out to be rapidly spinning set of three claws that were glowing with pink energy, the puck had slowed down the tentacle like digits spinning long enough to be seen when the arm had been knocked backwards. “If we can trust that lizard that’s with you and the barking black spotted creature to not do something dumb, then this just might be my lucky day!”

“Maybe yours, but it certainly hasn’t been mine!” I stated when my senses finally cleared up as we were going down a road at a much slower speed than we were going in the interconnected tubes place.

The thing chasing us was daunting, but far less scary and threatening than Chaosdramon X had been.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Wow multiple beings really want her dead if that’s the kind of fire power they are willing to spend on her.” I said lazily, the Moon Cell AI had played one its cards far too early with that red armored monster.

Still, this was an intriguing turn of events even I didn’t see coming.

272. Ticked On.

-Equus, Palicoast, after an overly violent Bar Brawl, Gallus-

“Okay… that was… actually really awesome!” I exclaimed sitting on a pile of battered Abyssinians. Fizzlepop made for the greatest teacher in close quarters combat. Sure I had a black eye and my body was covered in welts, but you should see the other guys. “Thanks for taking me to my first bar fight Fizzle.”

“La Perm tradition, you needed to experience the wonders and joys of taking your everyday frustrations out of everyone around you.” That and knowing how to start a bar fight in an emergency Fizzle, but I wouldn’t say that out loud as you’d probably demote me to latrine cleaner before I even became a guard officially. “Abyssinians know how to party my way at least.”

“You said it Fizzy!” Jaded was huddled up beside Twilight, both were covered in bruises while leaning on each other for support.

Twilight looked slightly tweaked and spooked. Jade in particular look a bit mangled after getting a little too close to the winner, winners if I was right, of the bar fight and had two black eyes.

“They just… and I just… with the chair…” Twilight had really gotten into getting her frustrations out, at least she hadn’t used her Earth Pony strength during all of that.

“Hey, I said chairs were legal today… they were getting old anyway and they make for good firewood when smashed. Glad at least someone took me up on the offer to break them down.” The current barkeep stated gingerly with a smile, he was a black furred Abyssinian leaning against the counter. “Also the griffon needed to get bruised and start his first bar brawl, I have to admit it’s been a while since I’ve seen the La Perm method of starting a bar fight in full form.”

“What can I say, I’m an expert at getting people quite angry with me!” That probably wasn’t something to be proud of Jaded, even if your grin was infectious.

“Yona really enjoy that, lots of smashing!” Somehow the Abyssinians near Yona weren’t flattened into a fine paste. “Sandbar… did not do that well though.”

“Let’s be fair here, he took down three of the toughest Abyssinians in the room when they tried to gang up on Yona and that was rather sweet of him. Also he’s got street cred now!” Not that he ever really wanted that Jaded, but yeah that was pretty awesome of my best ‘dude bro’ buddy Sandbar.

I still hoped to be the hopelessly normal one in the La Perm family, despite getting into a bar brawl where everyone seemed to come away from it with no serious injuries or even bleeding wounds. The worst of it was heavy bruising.

“I still can’t believe who we all lost to though.” Grumbled Sammy or Flotsam the Sea Pony of the ‘blue pirate’ crew that brought us here.

Among us, one stood taller than all the others… someone I had never suspected of being so vicious because they were so very tiny in comparison to everyone else they took out in that fight.

The spider, known as Spindle, crawled up onto the counter with a rock held in one leg and limped up to the bartender before tossing an unconscious mouse he was also carrying, which the Abyssinians knew all too well as the most vicious entity in all of Palicoast, onto the counter.

The bartender silently dropped Spindle’s winnings on the counter and spindle threw his head back and roared a tiny squeaking howl, raising a leg into the air and using the rock to keep himself upright.

I thought Jaded was terrifyingly weird and dangerous, but that wolf spider… Yona’s supposedly harmless familiar… it scares me. I was never going to look at improvised flails the same way again, also the whole thing with the gopher-chucks was just plain insanity that even Discord couldn’t come up with.

“Why is the spider leaving half his winnings next to the rock?” The bartender probably didn’t know the truth about the rock.

“Because he’s quite honorable like that.” Stated the Tianhuo of Equus that didn’t partake in the bar brawling, the Tianhuo of Fœnum was nodding along with the statement as she pressed an ice pack to her face.

Someone would have to eventually tell Maud that Spindle and Boulder tag teamed a room full of Abyssinians and even managed to beat most of the room into submission.

Notably, the left behind money disappeared the second everyone had looked away from it and nobody other than the rock were near it when it did.

So Boulder was a living magical rock like Eir’s pet Ragna the rock, I knew it!

-???, Highway, Dolly-

Okay, Pom was hurting and disoriented after getting us here with Dancing Flame and then grabbing onto the back of a moving vehicle wasn’t the smoothest of landings either. Dazzle could still protect from the back of this bike and as for me… well I’m a bit hesitant to take the fight to a fifteen foot tall machine being piloted by something when I’m barely even able to scratch two feet height standing on my hind legs.

The machine kind of looks like a mech from one of Daisuke’s anime shows, Red and Blue shoulder pads, three large dangling tentacle like fingers from the two arms, an average biped torso and legs that ended in wheels in the heels which is how it was following us. It looked armored even if it was fast.

Am I actually considering fighting that thing?!

Yes… yes I am!

“Take care of Pom for me for a bit would you!” I made Pom say for me in a different tone and without her pleasant to the ears accent.

Dazzle looked confused for a second when I took control of Pom’s mouth, she then noticed me looking at her and I nodded. She returned a nod in understanding.

I focused on the machine behind us that was curiously looking at us before it started to take action, its shoulders seemed to be raising upwards. Nope, no more of those whistling grenades, I’m not taking any more of that!

Clambering down the side of the bikes fin I kicked off and slung my board underneath me, once I hit the street I found it to be unnaturally smooth for a road which made it easy for me to keep my board going straight. It was weird, as I was expecting something bumpier and not so perfectly smooth, but not my main focus right now as I had to keep my momentum.

So fighting on a highway empty of vehicles, keeping up with a bike and fighting another machine with some possible help from the Ducky Alien and a fire and poison spewing lizard. Pom might be able to get back in it with a Sitrus Berry, but I felt how sore she was after that last Dancing Flame.

Yeah, my life was awesome, weird, dangerous and even fun at times, but I would still miss caring for the little pups back with the other part of my family.

Instead of rockets, beams came from the two shoulder pads that converged and created a bigger beam that the bike dodged to the left and I went right to see that the road took some damage as the beam angled up the road.

My ears were kind of killing me from all those whistle blowing bombs and my sense of balance was a little off, but I still had quite a bit of fight in me… now how do I aid in this fight exactly?

That machine is armored, likely heavy and has very few weak points I can exploit like the wheels. Aero or Aerora won’t work. I could go for the joints with my board… maybe add some wind power to it, but I’m currently running low from dragging Pom and Dazzle through that place with the squares and needed a top off from an impact soon. Also I needed that energy to keep my board going at these speeds, so using it for attacks that will do basically nothing that isn’t going to help was pointless.

It was a good thing it wasn’t focused on me or I wouldn’t be having all this time to actually think about what I’m going to do. That thing that fired the hockey pucks was minimal damage coming from the big duck guy, Dazzle’s attempts to do some damage with blasts of fire wasn’t too hot either as the armor on the robot seemed to be too tough for it and I could at least feel Pom was eating a Sitrus Berry.

“Okay time to try something.” I kicked my board up on to the highways railing and, turning it sideways, I started to grind along it while looking over the side. Are highways supposed to be this literal? We were high up and there was some countryside below passing by at a pretty good speed and a large body of water coming up, looking ahead there was a city in the distance.

The robot launched a missile and it was blasted out of the air by Dazzle as soon as it popped up from its back, the explosion did nothing to that machine’s armor.

“What is that thing?” I grumbled as I popped off the right side railing and back on the road while keeping up with the bike and staying ahead of the robot that raised both its arms and the three tentacles twisted together and started spinning and glowing with energy. Two shots from the duck guy put a stop to that.

“Hiandromon is a mechanical digimon that has digitally evolved to be primarily composed of chrome digizoid for incredible personal resilience and an increase in personality. It is currently piloting a digital vehicle shaped like itself with similar functions on a larger scale. Primary function of Hiandromon is localized security, it seems to be taking it too far if it is willing to attack digi-destined. The machine it is driving can be called a mech.” Oh right, the Digivice would probably know more than I would. Though it just said a bunch of nerdy stuff that I didn’t quite fully understand, but they sure were words in a given order. “Hiandromon uses electrical based abilities to lock on and fire his attacks with increased accuracy, the mech does not appear to have been built with this function in mind and seems primarily suited to pursuit, disabling and capture.”

“Any weaknesses to the... uh… mech… that I can exploit?” Just asking here as I watched the bike avoid a volley of missiles that launched off the back of it and rained down on them, Dazzle had more problems blowing them out of the air because of the quantity that was fired.

I don’t think this Hydro-mon guy was paying any attention to me at all, which was better for me to eventually pull something cool off.

While I had considered using my ‘Haste’ magic, it was wasn’t exactly helpful in this situation unless I wanted to batter the machine for five straight minutes to the best of my ability and if I couldn’t even scratch the armor on that thing, then what would be the point.

“Scanning… extrapolating… considering intelligence of registered user Dolly D. Dalmatian to explain things in a simpler manner that even she can understand…” Hey, was that a crack at my inability to be as dorky as my brothers usually are! “Information acquired. Mech weaknesses are as follows… wheels, shoulder beam emitters while open for highly vulnerable targets. Less vulnerable targets are the arm and knee joints. Hiandromon is personally weak to water, ice and earth based attacks. The mech itself is weak to electrical attacks and if Hiandromon is connected to it, then it will cause moderate feedback damage.”

“Okay, good starting points… except I don’t have an electrical attack.” I dropped back to the right side of the mech as it tried to strafe the motorcycle with its beam. As I did this I felt something itching at my back like there were four tiny pins there.

The bike sped up and avoided the beam sweeping the road behind it. I had to hop my board over the damage blackened road as it came up to me. The mech just sped through the parts of the road it upturned with its beam, barely slowing down at all.

Looking at it from the side… I kicked my board of the ground and clamped onto the back of right calf of the mech as my board slapped onto my back, it wasn’t moving its legs so I didn’t have to worry about it crushing me between its calf and thighs.

Yes, Pom, I’m being careful, chill.

Say… I have an idea!

-A minute ago, Pom-

After swallowing the fruit, I could feel my muscles and insides healing back from the stunt I pulled to get us here and away from that Chaosdramon X thing.

I turned to look at the Puckian driving the vehicle.

“Why was that thing following you before we showed up?” I held onto the bike as it swerved sharply as another volley of rockets dropped on us from above.

I’m having San Fransokyo flashbacks and really didn’t feel like doing a Bark Breaker, also the armor was segmented to do enough damage I’d have to hit each individual part and I don’t have the throat for that. I also already did a lot of barking to defend ourselves before we arrived in this place.

“I got into an argument with someone I’m currently at odds with, attracted a lot of trouble and attention to myself and now the guy driving that thing has been on my butt for the better part of the last twenty minutes for moderately average reasons for some of the people of these worlds.” He didn’t sound very fond of the person that got him into this mess judging from the look on his beak, he kept looking back at the machine that simply looked like it was sliding towards us. “Also since I’m biological and not digital, I’m seen as aberrant by some of the beings in these realms just by existing and some of them like their order far too much by wanting me out of the picture, but not in nice way I would prefer by getting me out of the realms entirely while still alive. I’ve been wandering aimlessly for the last few hundred years, some of the places I’ve been has some people like that guy behind us that hits a level of tyrannical and controlling to the point you can’t sneeze without someone trying to punish you for it. I’m seen as a possible portent of chaos and with you guys showing up, it just proved him right in his mind. Also newer worlds like this one are ‘generally safer’, but there’s always going to be some overzealous security protocols running around even if you haven’t done anything destructive. Usually that’s in the form of a Guardromon, but this time it wasn’t and I doubt you came from another branch world like I did.”

I could hear the air quotes when he said ‘generally safer’ and from what I’m understanding some beings in this world didn’t like him for just existing. I almost felt that exact feeling since meeting the Guardromon and the other monstrous machinery on the way here, wherever here happens to be…

Blinking I looked back to Dolly and worried a bit when she leapt onto the machine trying to collect the three tentacle digits on its right arm together to form a spinning blade of pink energy. The Puckian took on of his hands off of steering to fire another burning hot puck and stopped it by cancelling out the building energy drill sword thing.

I felt what Dolly had in mind after fretting over her, I turned to Dazzle and gestured at the shoulders as they tried for another laser. I noticed a few key things about the machines pattern of attacks and let Dolly in on them.

The Dalmatian had a grin and I got the mental image of her disabling the machine by jamming her board into the wheel. I sent her back an image of being stuck in the resulting wreck as street pizza. Dolly then sent an image of destroying a shoulder and I gave her the green light for that.

“Dazzle hit one of the shoulders!” There was no hesitance with the urgency I gave it, a ball of purple immediately splash against the right shoulder and the thing inside it that would fire a beam.

The shoulder started corroding within seconds and the machine hadn’t dodged, because while it prepared a beam attack it couldn’t maneuver around. It took me only a few repetitions to notice that it seemed to be doing things in a set pattern.

Dolly sent me a feeling of appreciation, even as we dodge another beam that tore its way up the road and past us.

-Dolly-

Seeing the splash of purple, I quickly clambered up the machine and kept pressing my momentum downward into it to not go flying off. Once I got up its nearly straight spine to the neck by the right shoulder, I carefully got my left paw wedged in place using the missile raining backpack to anchor myself.

I grabbed the strap of my board with my right paw and started to swing it around in a circle while looking at the corroded shoulder, building momentum in circle as much as I could until I couldn’t even see my board anymore. It sounded like a propeller on a plane, that’ll do a lot of damage.

I just had to wait for it to open up its shooter thing and then sling my board into it nose first, simple right? Well that would be wrong considering I remembered what happened the last time I did this with the destroyed leash, good riddance to that thing, and I can actually learn from my mistakes. I’m preparing to pull away if the thing explode.

I’m not feeling strong enough to protect everyone around me yet. I can barely protect Pom from depressing herself with my brightest of smiles, but I’m still willing to work on it.

When the shoulder thing opened to fire another stream of energy… I leapt up.

Having both paws on the strap as I swung my board around into the opening, I prepared for my board to bounce after hitting with a devastating impact or to evade an explosion. The momentum from my board must have been greater than I thought as my board slammed straight through the weakened metal and just took off the entire section.

I spun twice as I fell backwards and brought the board around under me, it slapped under all my paws before landed on the road. The head of the machine turned to look at its right shoulder dumbly.

That’s when the machine turned on me slowing down to and started spinning up both its tentacle fingers into two large pink blades of death.

“Uh…” It slung its right arm forward and I quickly kicked flipped to the right avoiding a pink wobbling beam of energy shot at me. I saw Shanty was training to do something similar with her arcing cuts.

That’s when it started to bring its left arm around.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily ducky partner and I’m going to stick to your side like glue no matter what you’re doing even if you absolutely hate my guts! As for you, you vaccine bastard, stop picking on us little guys!” A second, less duck themed motorcycle, flew up into the air from the left over the divider and onto the highway next to me. The blue army lizard driving it had thrown a rectangular package into the machines chest and it stuck fast there. “DCD Bomb set and… now for the time delayed boom! … huh?! Darn it, Hiandromon must have a signal blocker, I knew I should have sprung for the encoded… EEP!”

The second beam blade went off after the blue dinosaur and she barely managed to skid into a sideways slide under the wobbling beam.

I felt another itchy sensation traveling up my back, what was causing that?

I’m in the middle of something and I needed to focus on the machine as it dodge the purple blob of toxic fluids from Dazzle without even looking. It wasn’t trying to fire its beam anymore, but it did fire missiles at me and the army lizard.

-Puckian Duck?-

“Ugh… her… why is she still following me and where did she even get a working digi-vehicle from… I’m already having enough problems as it is without you adding on to them!” I yelled back at that blue lizard.

“Hey, I know you don’t want my help and have no reasons to trust me given how long you’ve been stuck in the digital realms and with how many setbacks you’ve had…!” Yeah at the possible chance of getting yourself killed… now that I think about it that actually warranted some reconsiderations from me that you were here. “I’m going to help you anyway, even if it kills me! I was made to be am easily disposable soldier anyway, at least let me make this decision about to do with that!”

The digimon nuisance of a lizard drove through the wave of missiles with what I had to admit were skillful displays of control, her left claw never leaving the handle. Her right claw pulled the rifle from her back to shoot down the missiles she couldn’t avoid with decent precision.

“Hey, can we come back to this conversation at a later when we’ve dealt with the bigger problem here?!” Pom screamed louder than the both of us.

“Sure, but I don’t know how much my D-I-Sixteen will do to its armor and it takes forever for me to generate DCD Bombs… stupid messed up body!” That’s when the small spotted creature yelped at something as the machine begin spinning up its three fingered tentacles for another blade beam ranged attack. The blue lizard fired her rifle and it didn’t disrupt the blades as they were held up defensively. I needed a good shot to even disrupt them, her gun simply didn’t have enough damaging force behind it to even disrupt that attack. “Come on, you want a real virus, then come get some!”

-Dolly-

I looked at the tip of my nose at the creature that turned and looked up at me, it tilted its tiny body in curiosity and then turned and squeaked at the machine.

It had yellow four, four blue eyes and four legs ending in blue pointy tips and it… was… freaking adorable!

I mean… sure… it was a tick and it has been running around on my body, but it was a really cute tick and… what was it doing?

The tick started crackling and it suddenly launched a blast of lightning from on top of my nose, said lightning didn’t even scorch or hurt me as it struck out at the machine and then the attack veered straight back into square pack.

If said thing was a bomb… I immediately fell back as it exploded violently and a lot of smoke flew up in the air.

“Agh…. uhn…” When the smoke clear, I saw a biped in some kind of shiny black armor sitting in a seat inside the machine and he looked to have been slightly hurt by the explosion. “Yoo-you-you-you… w-w-will not get…. get… away… aberrations!”

Feeling a tapping on my nose, I focused back down at the little yellow critter that squeaked at me and point his front right leg at the open hole.

“You want in there little guy?” The little tick nodded, he seemed determined to do something. “Well okay then, but do what you have to quickly and get out.”

It nodded and I boosted us forward towards the machine and watched him spring off my nose and climb into it through the jagged edge of the blast hole.

-Tiny yellow bug-

Once close enough.

Leap in…

Find food…

Lots of food…

So much food!

Yay!

-Dolly-

A minute after the little guy jumped in there I looked at the blue lizard riding the motorcycle and she looked back and we studied each other for a few seconds.

The machine suddenly toppled. All the lights on it winked out and it went flopping and rolling through the air along the road. Popping up to the railing I watched as it bounce and went over the side.

A tiny glowing yellow form hopped out in time and landed on the front of my board with its front two legs, squeaking as it struggled to climb up onto it as the machine disappeared into the water below. I reached down with my left paw and helped him up onto my board.

The little yellow tick, positively glowing with happiness and equally glowing, crawled up my right leg. The bug stopped to nuzzle itself into my neck, then continued to crawl down onto my back and stopped. I looked and saw it curling up and resting.

There may have been the joke that my family would eventually get an alien pet in it to round things out what with the magical zombie chicken and moderately intelligent robot dog Dawking created with some help, this just might be that alien pet.

Who knew it would be a strange tick that didn’t bite me once… though its legs digging into my back slightly was itchy, it wasn’t breaking skin or ripping up fur as it started sleeping..

-Pom-

“What just happened?” Good question Dazzle, it felt like Dolly knew and she was quickly catching up to us with that blue lizard.

“We’re out of trouble, that’s what happened.” The Puckian stated. “We’re almost to the city, we’ll stop and find a place to hunker down, we’ll talk about how you know what I am and we’ll go from there. Since you’re definitely not digimon.”

“I’m coming too!” The blue lizard announced as she came up to us on her bike.

Dolly got up next to the bike and hopped on with a cheerful smile.

“Hey, guess what Pom, I have a pet tick!” It was small, yellow and… absolutely cute looking.

“A Joltik to be more specific, bug and electric type, it can survive off static energy that anyone can generate.” Dazzle clearly knew what it was judging from her looking at it sleeping in Dolly’s fur. “It will absorbs large sources of energy if given the opportunity, really small and powerful Pokémon. Just make sure to keep it under control around large sources of power.”

Ah, so it was one of those Pokémon that rely on the lightning rod towers in Violight to stay happily fed!

“Pokémon, is that a kind of Digimon?” Asked the duck driving the bike along the now relatively safe highway.

“Pokémon, as far as I know, are Pocket Dimension Monsters.” I informed the duck. “Hello my name is Pom Lambchop, that is Dazzle the Salandit, this is my family Dolly D. Dalmatian and the… well the Joltik is new to us.”

“I’m naming them Lit!” Dolly said after a moment with a wagging tail and her infamous cheerful wide grin.

I sighed, did Dolly even know how to take care of a... Joltik was it? Well Dazzle did say it could survive off static energy and that’s easy enough for me to generate if it gets hungry, as long as I'm not doing a magical static energy build up. I don't want to have any Shock-Ram related accidents.

“Any chance you can open a dimensional hole back to my world?” The duck asked suddenly after glancing at Dolly’s barking, not understanding a word of it.

“No, but we may know someone who can, provided that we can get back to where we just came from.” My words were met with a relieved smile from the duck.

Arceus could certainly help this guy get back to Planet Puck-World if he’s from the same one as Wildwing’s team, he did say he’s been stuck in these realms for hundreds of years thought and he couldn’t possibly be the same duck they said they lost.

All we have to do is get back to Arceus’s world, which is easier said than done if we have to outrun that Chaosdramon X thing again. It was barely survivable and none of the other monsters could even put a scratch in it and the most that was done is that Dazzle poisoned it, which I doubt will do any lasting damage given how lethal it was.

“I’m Sami Soldier, nice to meet you. If you haven’t seen one of me before I’m a Commandramon! The etymology is Commando Dragon Monster.” The blue lizard said with a cheerful disposition riding alongside us to the left. “Commandramon like me tend to be used as highly disposable soldiers, but I managed to get out of a horrible situation thanks to this!”

That’s when the blue skinned, helmet, jacket and metal shoes wearing, lizard held up a device eerily similar to the one Dolly was currently wearing and Dolly quickly pulled out ours from under her scarf to make sure it was still there.

“Oh you guys have one too, that means we were digi-destined to meet! So is that strange dragon lizard you’re partner… why the sad faces... did I say something wrong?” We’d tell Sami about it in the city coming up and when we were feeling better.

“We’ll tell you about it when we get in the city.” I say as I took the device from Dolly’s paw and put it back on for her, over her scarf this time.

“Pom Lambchop’s digimon partner completely nullified by engineered digimon destroying virus. Egg resurrection impossible.” Announced the device in Sami’s claw. “Also those are not digimon user Soldier, they are all biologicals.”

Correction, we'd tell Sami more about... Dormarch... once we get to the city and find a place to cool down in relative safety.

“Oh… ooh-yeah-… my bad.” Sami hissed and gave us worried looks. “Anyway the guy you’re riding is supposed to be my partner, but he won’t take back the device. It belongs to him and he knows it!”

“I’m Canard Thunderbeak and we have a lot to talk about.” The duck finally introduced himself and… wait a minute he couldn’t be that Canard Thunderbeak could he?!

How would he have… maybe… time disparity issues? I’ve… never really thought of that as being a problem before. I could come back to Tianhuo forty years older or ten years young if time travel is possible. Well that’s another fear to add to the mental checklist of all the horrors I’ve been through, good thing Ocellus wasn't here right now because go-go-anxiety.

“Wildwing, Tanya, Grin, Duke, Mallory and Nosedive.” Canard reacted to every single name as I said them in order.

I think… I think we just found their missing team leader that gave Wildwing his position as their team leader.

“Where did you hear those names?!” He suddenly turned to me and barked with sudden attention, almost driving us into the divider between the two roads and nearly hitting Sami and her vehicle in the process. He quickly got us straightened back out and Sami stayed behind us.

“Heard them? I’ve met them for a short while before ending up in the world that led to me being here.” I could see it, the hope blossoming in his eyes. “I think time might be a bit screwed up in these realms you’ve been in, because it’s been at most a year or maybe two for them. Also they defeated some guy called Lord Dragaunus, but I wasn’t awake for that and the only issue is that they are having problems getting back to their home planet of Puck-World. They also mentioned that hockey is your world's religion.”

“They did it… hahhah, they actually did it! I knew you could become a great leader Wildwing…” He started crying and soon it turned into laughter. Sami was looking at him with wonder as something seemingly shifted and lifted off of his heart entirely. “I promise to see you again Team Captain and I promise you’ll have done me proud no matter what, maybe I’ll even help us find a way back to Puck-World after a few pick up games because I'm definitely quite rusty by now… No, I would have to get back to them first before planning anything and that requires me living another day. I'm sticking with you!”

He nodded to me.

We didn’t say anything for the rest of the trip, we eventually came off the highway and passed by a large monitor sized sign that said ‘Welcome to Server City, regional reality anchor connections between worlds are currently on lockdown for repairs, sorry for the inconvenience’.

Author's Note

It's going to take Pom a while to get out of this place, but at least the time disparity won't be a problem since it is geared in her favor.

Commandramon- Sami Soldier, Special Infantry Digimon.

Vehicle- Self built Tron Bike.

Partner- Canard Thunderbeak, hero of the rebellion against the Saurian oppressors.

Lit- Not hard to guess what this name is a reference to.

273. Glum Slums Soldier.

Author's Note

Warning: World building in effect.

Before any of you ask, no Jojo's Bizarre Adventure will not be a part of this story... yes, I'm dropping this AN here first for a reason. There are some Digimon that fit Jojo's Bizarre Adventure far too well to not do the reference.

This entire page is almost a commentary about the general life expectancy of 'normal' Commandramons, Sami is an outlier in becoming a digital partner.

That said, reality and how Digimon work when using digital attacks based on said reality are two different things.

-

The most effective attacks done by humans on a Digimon, as far as I can remember, was on Guilmon being messed up by a powerful electromagnetic 'Digimon erasing' trap field before Takato managed pull him free.

Guilmon was being sought out for destruction for various reason, the main one being that he was a 'Digital Hazard' marked Digimon. A type of Digimon that can eventually gain the capabilities of destroying an entire digital realm by himself.

The Digimon Tamer's episode in question was 'Now you see it, now you don't' and one of the very few rare times humans almost managed to 'conventionally' take out a Digimon, mostly with a prototype trap specifically meant to destroy them. This was something of a precursor and foreshadowing to the whole D-Reaper incident in that show.

In every other form of Digimon show, Digimon are absurdly tanky to every 'conventional' means of attacking them, mostly because they can phase out of reality so the conventional means are ultimately doing basically zip all.

Electromagnetic bullets were tried to minimal effect as Digimon are not just entirely made of data as living entities, the bullets did at least cause a mild stunning effects to higher level Digimon.

Digimon move so fast when manifested into a reality because they actually lack physical mass for gravity to effect and are mostly what amounts to a solidified shell of energy given impetus. This goes a long way to explaining why some Digimon can float, fly or jump around so easily.

To put this into perspective, Pom would have to anime stupidly hard to actually match the ridiculousness of a higher class of Digimon surviving two thousand pound bombs with just a scorch mark to show for it and those were from 'direct hits'.

For those who know Digimon. Pom can fight champions, but anything approaching Ultimate and Mega... those will always be impossible for her to deal with as she can't actually 'anime' that hard despite being in 'anime' style realms. That's why the power of friendship is used as a great equalizer in monster tamer series.

Pom would barely survive the indirect hit from the same aforementioned two thousand pound bomb even with her wool soaking damage. She'd have to be pretty far away too.

273. Glum Slums Soldier.

-Digital Realm, Server City, Slum District, Pom-

Well I told our story first of how we got here and what we were doing before being dragged into the area between worlds that was full of danger.

There weren’t many people around, then again Digimon weren’t exactly sounding like the most civilized people from the way Canard described it. He’s told us the story of the electromagnetic worm that got him and if he survived… well… Dolly looked hopeful at least.

Hearing Canard’s story up to this point was rather harrowing from his brief overview of how he got here, he was jumping through digital worlds looking for an exit that didn’t lead into another digital realm. So far he has been less than successful.

So we’re in a realm of pure information… Fred the Demon, being a knowledge based dark entity, would become something of a functional god here. I should warn Oleander about that if I ever see her again.

“What are the chances of a Digimon surviving a similar situation?” That was the most important question to us.

“Somewhere between zero and one percent, which is ironic considering where we are is made of information derived from ones and zeroes in a sequence. Learning Binary took me a while, but I’ve had plenty of years to study it.” That… was… extremely disheartening Canard. The muscular duck at least was honest and forthright. “Reality based electromagnets are fairly dangerous to Digimon and can weaken them greatly or even kill them depending on how powerful they are. However if a Digimon does an electromagnetic attack it’s basically replicating the effect of electromagnetism via launching information based on an approximation of what an electromagnet would do. Digimon attacks can get a bit iffy when it comes to functionally following physics and Digimon can be quite dangerous because of that. They are far more than information and energy than actual mass. One thing is for certain… if you want to outright kill a Digimon to a point they can’t reincarnate into an egg for a fresh new start on life, then destroying their core before they derez or break apart completely into the reincarnation system will prevent that.”

“Canard is right, never expect any consistent physics from us Digimon… we can kind of become like living ghosts when manifested in a reality outside digital realms if we were good enough at controlling our physical forms. The big issue for us Digimon is that we can’t survive outside digital realms very well without lots of energy. I think that’s the reason Digi-destined will always win in a Digimon battle outside the digital realms, because the Digimon parter gets stronger with a shared bond through spiritual power, whereas Digimon that don’t have a partner will have limited resources to work with outside a digital realm. In fact, manifesting in reality pretty much drops our capabilities by a quarter or a half. Most Digimon even downgrade a level trying to manifest in reality due to having to compress our data and energy into a more physical solid state form.” So far Sami was our expert on anything Digimon related and whatever she said was likely to be the truth. She doesn’t have a reason to lie. “In the digital realms like this one, we are at our strongest because of home field advantage, we can even drag portions of the digital world to overlap reality if we try hard enough, but fusing a digital realm to a reality has been noted as being a very bad and horrible thing to do. So… how bad off was Dalmamon?”

“In the middle of the remaining parts of him melting from the virus, lost most of his body and he threw himself bodily into the electromagnetic worm.” While I hadn’t been there, Wildwing’s vigilante heroes team, The Mighty Ducks, had seen him in his final moments.

“Yes, that would be a true deader than dead situation for a Digimon at best, especially with the virus geared for killing something like us. At worst there would be something like junk, frag or bug data left of him from what you described of the virus sounding like the D-Reaper that plagued one of the digital realms and was allowed to manifest in reality in such a way that caused all sorts of trouble. Junk data is basically chaotic nonsense information tangentially related to anything Dalmamon could have known and probably can’t feel pain. Frag data would be more viable for at least something approaching a partial recovery of at least a memory, maybe two, and could feasibly feel some pain if it was locked in a loop of endless agony based on the memory. As for being rendered bug data… well bug data would be a nightmare and a half if you were self-aware and couldn’t do anything about the data, it’d be like having cancer that you can’t die from and being covered in constantly bubbling, blistering and breaking bleeding scars for the rest of your life. I don’t think anyone would want to live like that.” Thanks for the mental image Sami, I didn’t want to go to sleep tonight anyway. “As one can imagine, the bug data thing might leave some capability for Dalmamon to actually be recovered in some capacity, but he would never quite be the same.”

-???, some random guy named Wade Wilson-

Ah-choo!

“A sneeze…. I must be getting a random cameo in a fanfiction somewhere… awesome!” I said wearing my nice red suit and all my thinking boxes floating around me dancing in glee.

“Do you want a Cherry Chimi Changa or a Chimi Cherry Changa?” Asked the similarly red suited quadruped that came in with a grin hidden under her mask and a mass of wild pink curly hair.

“Why not both Pinkie Pool?” I said with glee.

“Oh my goodness, you’re so right!” Pinkie Pool stated with equally sheer joy. “Also do you think we’ll get Negasonic Teenage Warhead to make an appearance before this scene transitions back to the…”

-Digital Realm, Server City, Slum District Hideout, Pom-

“I’d take it! I don’t mind my family members having issues… a lot of us and I do…” Dolly kept trying to keep her exuberance up, but I can feel she doesn’t want to give up on Dormarch.

“Dal… Dormarch, had a healing ability called Cure Liqueur, would that… have aided him in staying alive in any capacity?” The unique ability to heal himself from injury was one of the things Dormarch was capable of.

“A Labramon based utility program? Well that’s curious. With the way you described the virus working on him, it would have only vaguely slowed down the virus. It wouldn’t stop it’s spreading at all. Still restoration and optimization of lost data would have to be impressive if it could even keep up with him falling apart. It wouldn’t have helped as much as you think it would, if he were injured by Digimon or reality based attack, then he’d be mostly fine if he doesn’t run out of energy or his body doesn’t do something like cannibalize itself trying to fix the major damage.” So what you mean to say Sami, is that because Dormarch was manifested he was incapable of building up the necessary energy to keep using his healing ability to slow down his imminent demise beyond a certain point and prioritized saving everyone he could. Like a good boy… he succeeded… “If any part of his data actually survived that to make it into the digital realms… it would be sitting somewhere in a near infinite amount of realms or it would be recycled into something else like a street sign or into being a sliver of a sliver in another Digimon. The chances of running into that data specific bit of data would be so infinitesimal… well I’m sorry for the loss of your partner, child and little brother. Where were we again?”

“I believe we told our stories. While we don’t know the Joltik’s story specifically, I don’t think he can actually talk enough to tell us it or why he decided Dolly was a comfortable looking dog to sit around on. We know each other’s names and…” I was going to continue and was ignoring Dolly’s downtrodden and still rather defiant look, but was rudely interrupted.

“You don’t know mine yet, I’m Tsukaimon PV, the letters stand for Pilot Variant! I would ask for an apology for my lost network traveling vehicle… but you saved my life as much as I saved yours and I got to see a Chaosdramon X and live, so we’re pretty much even.” It was the purple guinea pig monster with the bat wings for ears. “Whoa, is that a Commandramon, aren’t all of you guys like… dead?”

“No, I’m very much alive thank you! Also there are plenty of other Commandramon that are still just as alive too, not for the lack of many trying to bring me or this yahoo down. I prevented a lot of ambushes on my partner trying to follow him around.” Sami stated blandly while gesturing to Canard, the Puckian simply crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “I guess it’s my turn for a story…”

“Can you tell me where your motorcycle came from first?” Canard seemed rather insistent to hear that first.

“That’s not a long story, I watched you build your own stuff from scrapped together digital information, metal and some elbow grease. I figured it couldn’t be too hard, so I tried my hand at building something personally… it went a far sight better than my first day of combat at least.” Sami Soldier the Commandramon motioned to her bike. “This is the Tron Cycle mark number Sixty Four.”

“What happened to the first Sixty Three?” It was obvious from the grimace Dazzle, but I’m guessing not happy things.

“Well the first half of my attempts became Machmon… the second half was me trying to recreate Beelzemon’s summon capable digital motorcycle known as Behemoth from scratch until I got a cease and desist from at least twenty instances of him. Didn’t know the guy went Deva… anyway, really didn’t want a shotgun to the face, but I kind of want to recreate his shotgun for my personal use. That and Behemoth had a mind of its own and I was coming dangerously close to creating a second roving gang of highly dangerous two wheeled murder vehicles.” That the implication that you already made one roving gang of two wheeled murder vehicles was a terrifying thought in and of itself Sami. “So I worked from an angle that won’t try to come to life and kill me. I eventually ended up with working motorcycles, but for some reason they kept creating solid walls of light data behind them wherever I drove. It was really inconvenient for wanting to go back the way you came. I eventually found the problem causing the wall creating function and fixed it, now I’m thinking I should have left that feature in and put a switch in to toggle it as a defensive measure. In any case I made my Tron-C-64 capable of being summoned like my DI-Sixteen Rifle, made sure it didn’t develop anything like a personality, sentience or sapience that would want to maul me to death, made it easily modifiable to take on any shape as long as it is generally a motorcycle and you program the shape into it. So far I’ve already programmed ‘open air’ for fun rides, enclosed for weather or limited armored protection, submersible mode for quickly escaping the digital sea if I ever get stuck in there, let me tell you that one took me months to figure out, then there’s my attempts to recreate a new version of Behemoth… I somehow ended up with a weirdly three wheeled motorcycle I’m naming ‘Fenrir’, that was the one I used on the highway. Plus it’s readily portable as I can fit it in my jacket and I’m even thinking of marketing this beauty to Yggdrasil Digital Innovations!”

Reaching into her bike, Sami pulled something, her claws came back with simple looking rod of metal and the bike disintegrated or folded back into the rod. It was kind of hard to tell what just happened there. She tossed the metal rod out and it transformed back into a different motorcycle that was almost flush with the ground.

“That light wall thing would have been more helpful when we were being attacked by that Hiandromon… speaking of that guy, he’ll likely be back once he’s recovered from his wreck.” Canard was checking his puck pistol over as he talked. “Don’t know about his mech though.”

“Well it’s a vertical wall that follows the bikes movements and not horizontally placed behind the bike, the mech would have been able to easily keep the wall between its legs or it could step over the wall entirely… would have been useful against other things though.” Sami smiled at Canard and all she received for it was a few grumpy grumbles from him for it.

“So… you’re story Ms. Soldier?” Definitely wanted to know more about Digi-destined even if I was a, ‘supposedly enough’, nullified one.

Maybe Canard would be friendlier to Sami if he knew more about her? I already know why he would have a distaste for lizards, especially if some took over your planet and enslaved your people for a while.

“Please, just call me Sami!” She looked to be collecting herself for it. “First of all Commandramon like me, as I may have stated previously, are entirely disposable. It’s more sufficient to say that we were quite literally made to die and do so at an obscene rate hoping to be at best a distraction for the more dangerous foes we faced. That or if a shining star was on us on a particular day, we’d actually succeed at an objective without the need for backup.”

“That’s an interesting way to start things off Sami.” While there wasn’t a frown, I could feel it from where I was sitting next to Dolly and she picked on it as well. Even Lit was looking at Sami.

“The three things Commandramon had going for us upon our creation is our stealth chameleon skin, a cheaply made Digital Infantry Sixteen model Rifle and the ability to digitally generate bombs hazardous to just about everyone and ourselves. Me… I eventually found a fourth and fifth thing that made me survive longer than most of my peers, one is innovation in the face of death and the other was an ability to question any given orders.” To prove a point, Sami faded into the background of the slum room we were squatting in, she blended in with the brick work of the building fairly well before she reappeared. I think she was on par with a Kecleon, she can still be noticed if you’re looking for her. “So we were created for secret operations and fighting small wars, however I was lucky to be in the thirteenth set of one hundred Commandramon. Mind you all the previous Commandramon were killed, destroyed or just went missing in action under quite horrible impossible to survive scenarios.”

There wasn’t much life in the city or at least if there were it wasn’t being loud. There were possibly dangerous Digimon around that could attack us, there were also possibly a few that were friendly ones we could befriend like Tsukaimon PV. The slums were like this when we got here and we had a place to camp out for the night in an unoccupied building before we started looking into solutions for getting back to Ransei.

The building at least had working toilets, a refrigerator and for some odd reason an exceedingly strange vending machine with unusual things in it. We didn’t have Digi-credits to get anything from it and none of it looked like food.

“So your something like test tube digital entities and not born from a Digi-tama?” Canard actually posed that question. “Digi-tama are the eggs that hatch into Digimon, it’s how they reincarnate.”

“Anyone with enough data know how can cobble together enough coding for a spark of life to take and whatever you coded will take on a life of its own when it becomes a Digimon and a lot of coding for Digimon comes from Mythology. So no I’m not a natural born Digimon, but I’m still a Digimon all the same regardless of my birth… among the cloned legions of my brothers and sisters.” Sami hugged her rifle to her chest and sighed. “All the previous Commandramon before my group were poorly coded. Their stealth skins were glitchy, their guns would jam at inopportune moments based on the Commandramon’s stress level or wouldn’t even fire at all. There’s the worst of all when a Commandramon tried to use our signature DCD Bomb attack. Our DCD Bomb attacks can come in a variety of explosive devices depending on the Commandramon, some of the prior numbers before I was born self-destructed taking a lot of others with them in training before ever seeing combat as soon as they generated their explosives. I’m one of the lucky few that had enough time to recode my gear to fit me personally. I can summon my rifle and recode it to fix any damage to it whereas other Commandramon were not so lucky. My particular DCD Bomb attack is remotely detonated explosives based on a shaped C-4 charge… unfortunately my detonator as I’ve recently found out can be signal blocked, but when it isn’t I have a powerful explosive that won’t go off in my face as soon as I generate it.”

I winced at the idea of having a power to generate explosives and can imagine that going, horribly, horribly wrong. Even Canard looked upset at the idea of a bomb going of near someone he liked.

“Reminds me of how many close calls Tanya got into when taking down those Rex Drones.” Muttered Canard.

“Continuing my story. My people are basically poorly made soldiers using data from commando training, sure it ensured disciplined based trains of thought… but it didn’t exactly raise our living conditions or life expectancy a single inch. Don’t know why I’m even sticking with the color blue… guess it’s just me being nostalgic for old friends.” Slowly Sami’s skin and gear turned a somewhat bright orange color, she had a small smile when doing so. “Much better, orange is my favorite color and I’m glad I recoded my stealth abilities to let me control my color in a semi-automatic manner instead of the effect being entirely automatic and most importantly to my continued survival… slow. It’s what killed off a quarter of the hundred I was part of. I quickly figured out to never trust the organization that created me with any information about the situations they kept putting us into, where we would basically be slaughtered because of bad information.”

I can’t even begin to imagine what that must have been like.

“My group specifically lost half our numbers to a bunch of natural born baby Digimon, couldn’t ask for a situation to go more pear shaped or badly than that. Considering the fact that we were armed and the baby Digimon weren’t… one would think seventy five Commandramon could screw in a lightbulb on that situation, but no…. everything went into the digi-toilet that day as my particular people became the laughing stocks of our organization. We were literally eaten alive by what are functionally babies with barely any fighting ability whatsoever. Again Commandramon were made to be ‘Disposable’ so if the information from the organization behind us was as bad and horrible as that, we’re going to find out real quick like and nothing of great value will be lost. It’s just a few Commandramon they’d say, we can always throw more at the problem. At least the guys who were watching us die in droves behind us with basically weapons pointed at our spines would get out of any situation perfectly fine, because they were far more important than we ever were. Basically we’re created on survival of the fittest and the fittest get rewarded with even worse, I learned to injure myself on purpose just avoid ‘that’ fate.”

That was a lot of bitter resentment, Ocellus didn’t even need to be here for me to feel that. Sami probably needed therapy as much as I did… also what organization sends that many dragon lizards armed with weapons like what Sami has after babies and somehow still fails utterly and horribly as to lead to being eaten alive by them?

“Can you get on to a much cheerier subject like how you got the Digivice, that thing seems to make you very happy.” I knew a lot of the stuff we’ve been talking about, including Dazzle’s history in Viperia not being great, was rather depressing. It was Sami’s history that was taking the cake and running with it even more.

Oh my goodness… are we actually forming an impromptu a therapy group here!? Well at least everyone here is friendly... enough.

Dolly hopped up onto her paws and carefully placed the sleepy Lit on my left hind leg and went over to be friendly and affectionate with Sami and battle scarred soldier really seemed to appreciate the positivity.

“Sure thing, but I have to tell you about why I had to injure myself. You see the Commandramon that were successful at surviving the first minute of any form of combat, without a comically acquired injury, were looked on as geniuses. Frankly I am of the belief that those Commandramon wised up, but didn’t do it quickly enough to avoid the ‘Forced Digital Evolution’ program. One that was specifically designed to avoid creating a Skull Digimon, basically a Digimon that resembles something dead or dying with ridiculous haunting amounts of comically karmic dark power bent on tearing the world around it down.” Shuddering and hugging herself while rubbing at her own biceps with her claws, Sami looked around wearily and then started petting Dolly much to her appreciation. “The more successful and brightest Commandramon were taken and had their coding butchered to make them as soulless as those Machinedramon you probably saw sitting around coming on the way in. The butchering turned them into a slightly more elite version of Commandramon called Sealsdramon. It ruined the Commandramon’s gun coding and stealth, but gave them increased viciousness, deadly digi-knife fighting skills and speed. This was a very bad thing given some of the Sealsdramon went crazy and one in particular started counting how many Digimon they killed and racked up quite a body count hoping that someone would eventually end their suffering, that guy in particular started with the scientists that forced that form on them. Don’t know what happened to that guy, but being driven to madness was better than losing your emotions completely. Another Sealsdramon accidentally created a new Digital Evolution and became a Tankdramon after eating a Tankmon’s data for survival reasons, cannibalism is not unknown to Digimon even if we don’t necessarily need to do so.”

This was getting quite long winded and even further depressing sounding if Cannibalism was coming up as something that sounded normal for Digimon to do.

“Thus another can of worms was created in a bid for power as our organization started forcing Tankdramon into existence. Sealsdramon arguably had it worse than us as those butchers continued to evolve the emotions out of them, but they were arguably more competent in a fight so that much was a success given how they were made. I have a copy of that particular digital evolution line put into my coding before I was even made and I haven’t touched it once, I’m hoping that I can force something else.” Sami was shivering at the thought. “Can’t get me to turn into a Sealsdramon or a Tankdramon with a ten foot pole without a very good reason for it. Even if it won’t actually take away my emotions like it did to all previous test subjects or so ‘they’ told us, but I’m not willing to trust that the organization that made us to have our spiritual and mental health in mind when it threw us at problems and abandoned us on the field of battle sometimes when we were only halfway dead and bleeding out data.”

“How can you sound so cheerful in what sounds like a normal day in Viperia?” Sending a worried glance to Dazzle, she motioned to me that everything was okay even as she grimaced in thought. “Backstabbing can be somewhat common there.”

“Because of crossing paths with Canard here was the best day of my life, probably one of my worst too… eh, it evens out really. I want to think I have a purpose beyond what I was created to do beyond run forward, hope that my gun works and to not die in a fiery explosion from an exploding snowball launcher wielded by a polar bear Digimon or my own bodily generated explosives.” The grin Sami had on her face was unusually cheerful as she continued to hold Dolly in a gentle manner. “It was all on a day like any other under the organization in the moderately tyrannical rule of the Metal Empire that created us biological Digimon clones, only to modify us into killing machines by forcing an evolution when we proved more useful or adept at combat than the others. Quite literally like what the Machinedramon and Guardromon were made to do when it comes to firewall security, except Machinedramon are a lot harder to control than we were. Also Guardromon and Machinedramon were actually quite necessary to prevent outside forces from immediately destroying a freshly created world like this one, they are basic defenses of every digital realm more often than not. What we were made for was lab rats and horrible experimentations. Imagine my surprise when I first saw something that wasn’t a Digimon trying to kill me and I wasn’t trying to kill them.”

“Hm…” Sounds like Canard was finally interested in the story of how Sami came to start following him around like a cute little happy puppy.

“I could use something to eat if I’m going to listen to a long story…” As soon as I said that two digimon entered the room. One was a black cat in a helmet and coat with a sleeping cat head symbol on his helmet and the white cat had a similar outfit with a Red Cross symbol inside a white cat symbol on her white helmet.

“Heard some new people arrived in Server City, did someone say they needed something deliv… wait... Sami?!” The two cats that walked in looked surprised to see Sami, the one talking was the white helmeted and outfitted one. Despite being orange, they had recognized Sami immediately. “Heh, one of the toughest Commandramon alive is still among the living… kind of amazing to see you really. Thought you went out taking a Raremon down with you.”

“Hey Hea-Gatomon, Black-Tailmon-Uver… I was about to go into that story of how I ended up following this duck guy around with this. Wait… what are the two of you doing here?!” Sami held up the Digivice and the two cats looked at it with something approaching intense wonder. “If I remember right, my life turned around when I woke up around that time to Healer’s face. A relieving sight that it wasn’t Datamon, the little pill shaped code cracking monsters are the most well-known among those who butchered us and they were specifically supposed to be our medics.”

“If anyone deserves to have a chance like that, it’s you Sami.” The one called Black-Tailmon-Uver stated as he and his friend found us sitting around a room that, while not particularly filthy, was not exactly the greatest place to spend the night. Hea-Gatomon or Healer Gatomon had immediately started fretting over her orange friend as she started telling her story. “We’re here to check in on visitors and make sure the city isn’t destroying itself. We're kind of wary what with the large influx of strange new prototype spotted Digimon that were slated for testing here by Yggdrasil.sys... they kind of look like that biological. Also we followed this guy since he was asking around a lot about a strange group he wanted to talk to recently coming into the city and Tsukaimon are somewhat known for causing trouble… guess that’s you guys.”

The black cat gestured to Dolly who was currently relaxing happily in her position, then to Tsukaimon PV.

“Heh, sorry about drawing attention to you!” Tsukaimon PV grinned mischievously and didn’t look sorry at all.

-Some time in the past, in a different digital realm entirely, Location: ???, Sami Soldier-

“Nhnn… please tell me I’m not being patched up by a Datamon, I’ve heard horror stories about that.” That the Commandramon would be in constant pain afterwards went unsaid, I really didn’t like Datamon at all. “They never quite put your code back together correctly.”

“No, I believe this situation is much worse for you, you’ve been captured… alive. So please, don’t die at the drop of a hat like all the others did, we kind of need you!” Those were the magic words, someone needing me is the most I could ever hope for out of life. I opened my eyes and saw Hea-Gatomon the same one I would see again in the future… like right now. “Frankly you’re the only Commandramon that we’ve managed this with and it’s a miracle that you’re even talking at all!”

-Server City, Slum District Hideout, Sami-

Apparently the enemy we were being sent to assassinate were the Bancho Digital Monster Legion, we were being commissioned by Myotismon, a vampire Digimon, who also goes by the codename name ‘Dio’ for some reason. I think it stands for Digital Invasion Officer and was the primary chaos maker in that particular digital realm.

I was under the care of Bancho Leomon portion of the legion for quite a while surviving day to day after they patched me up, Bancho Leomon also called himself codename ‘Jostar’ and I wasn’t about to parse that one out. Things were quite weird back in those days and I got up to some pretty bizarre adventures.

I also started helping Commandramon like me break away from the organization that kept making more of us, they went through at least twenty five batches of Commandramon further after the first thirtheen. Yet they never got more advanced than me because I actually worked my own coding like a muscle into something amazing. The guys that created us really should have been valuing intelligence over feasible direct fighting prowess.

Every Commandramon I rescued eventually turned into a rebellion of our manufactured Agumon-like line, Agumon is kind of like the basic of most basic Digimon to exist and is a good line to compare everyone else against.

That those Commandramon were primarily all under my command didn’t need to be said and they lived far longer for it too, at least long enough for the Bancho Legion to put us into the Digi-tama system. We weren’t even previously given chances to reincarnate into a different Digimon, again ‘disposable’ was the word for us. Bancho Leomon didn’t like that tyranny and got us hooked up to the system… at least tentatively.

Caused a large influx of Digimon, also another realm replicated the cloning practices and got stuck in something called the X-Project after trying and succeeding to recreate Digimon in vast numbers comparable to the vast number of Commandramon that reincarnated straight into being easier to kill Commandramon that now had baby forms… but that was life for us.

Really nasty piece of work that X-Project, arguably worse than our lot in life as that was a genocidal rampage of epic proportions that killed more than ninety eight percent of the population in that particular digital realm and the survivors were moved to a different realm. So yes, I would think Chaosdramon X was a part of that genocide… they just refused to die from it. We Commandramon were lucky enough to not be a part of that mess and had our own problems.

Sorry about that, I just remembered we’re supposed to be talking about me… ahem… anyway...

I one day found myself on the ground with my rifle several feet away and in grave danger.

Hey, I didn’t have my summon weapon program yet, give me a break Black-Tailmon-Uver!

Yeah, you better believe I added such a useful function to myself soon afterwards, I hardly trust my DCD Bomb attack even if I made absolutely sure it was entirely inert coming out of me. That organization was all about violently exploding!

Hey, I’ve been very careful about self-modifying Hea-Gatomon stop worrying so much! Though, yeah, a checkup would be quite nice.

So there I was on the ground, one of my Commadramon nearby refused to change into a Sealsdramon just like I did and became something worse upon recently being horribly injured… a Raremon.

A Raremon is basically the digital monster equivalent of a mythological zombie, barely alive and seeking to tear the nearest thing apart out of instinctual hunger for data to hopefully fix the mess they were in. Usually that data just makes a Raremon's hunger worse. Etymology says it all what with them be being called the ‘Raw Meat’ Monster.

I was, unfortunately enough, the closest thing to my friend who was one of the few survivors from the original batch thirteen and he just changed into that thing. My rifle was a good twenty feet away and I didn’t feel particularly safe with my DCD Bombs that day, considering how my friend just became a Raremon.

That’s when Canard saved me, well accidentally, but I think it still counts!

He was trying to make a device to try and get into communication with anyone outside the digital realms, regardless of whatever it takes to do so. It had apparently turned into a Digivice in his hands and in his frustration he threw it out a window from the nearby building he was taking cover in from all the fighting around there at the time, it went straight into the Raremon’s skull and bounced off.

That minor ten second distraction gave me enough time to roll to my rifle to do a mercy killing on my old friend, nobody would want to live like that and it was always best to get a Raremon while they were still fresh. They tend to grow out of control and exceedingly deadly really fast.

That’s how I came across the Digivice and found myself inexorably linked to following Canard Thunderbeak around and protecting him when he needed it. He’s quite a self sufficient tough guy already, barely needs me to act except in a few occasions like what with Hiandromon and his Mech.

-Pom-

“Explains why we found splattered Raremon data lying around the area, ugh… that was quite disgusting to clean up and we definitely knew that used to be a Commandramon. We had thought you bombed yourself out of existence, because your data never showed up as a Digi-tama like his did and we thought you were finally put to rest… aside from rumors of the Commandramon scouts that you were still a 'ghost of the battlefield', running around and following some duck guy to disappear into the various digital realms beyond while stopping to aid those in need.” Black-Tailmon-Uver glanced up and down at Canard. “... I think you’re good enough for her, a far sight better than Sami being stuck in the Bancho Legion and fighting for the rest of her life. At least you’re leading her to innovate and be something more than a soldier, which I think would be a much better fate for her at this rate. Gato and I were originally here on vacation to a new digital realm, even more so what with that lockdown in place from the Chaosdramon X that recently messed up one of this fresh realm's anchors.”

“My life may be hilariously awful, but I don’t mind following Canard around. He’s had his setbacks as well from what we’ve heard about the fighting on Puck-World and what I’ve seen of his struggles to survive in the digital realms. We’re kind of kindred spirits that rebelled and ended up in poor situations, but we’re still kicking butt regardless!” Sami giggled as she was poked and prodded by Hea-Gatomon. “As some Commandramon are known to say, misery loves company and it isn’t as miserable with a company of friends to share your grievances about life with. So what do you say… partner?”

“I don’t feel like I want to hold on to that just yet, nor do I want to take it from you since you seem to like holding onto it.” Canard was still reticent as he pushed the held out Digivice back towards Sami.

Canard seemed to lift his incredible distaste for lizards somewhat, possibly for Sami’s sake.

Sami seemed a little bit happier afterwards even with the rejection.

“So… you can get us some food?” I asked Black-Tailmon-Uver, he nodded to me.

“Anything you could possibly want, if it exists somewhere… then I can maybe find and deliver it." We’d soon learn exactly what Black-Tailmon-Uver’s unique talent was, unfortunately it wasn’t exactly useful for us getting back to Ransei where we came from. "Just give me a list and an hour or two.”

274. Spotting Spots.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

Time held no real meaning here, so I could keep track of Pom’s progress despite time moving faster in that realm easily.

The time disparity means that they age at the rate of the reality the digital world is connected to, so essentially they’d be aging far slower in the digital realm and spending a year in the digital realm could be anywhere from a full day in real time to half as much if the disparity was huge. If the disparity is bad enough you’d possibly appear almost as soon as you left.

Truly Yggdrasil.sys has their own form of fun with time and space as well… at least they weren’t anything like their offshoot idea of King Drasil, now that… ‘thing’… was quite a piece of work and caused an entirely unnecessary amount of death while it was alive.

I made sure my children wouldn’t have anything befall them quite like that.

…

Pikachu taking down a really powerful Charizard with the spirits of all his friends throughout the journey gathering around him, I’m quite proud of Ash as his bond is true.

The beauty of friendship, love and a positive attitude that made a long journey worthwhile. Helping both their species and seeking equality between them.

I shed a few tears and wondered if Ash would continue journeying now that he’s succeeded at becoming the top of the trainers.

Probably, you can’t actually stop him from adventuring and seeing new Pokémon, unless he was to find someone and settle down. At least he has enough females after him, he’ll continue being entertaining beyond his Pokémon journey doubtless.

I wouldn’t even be surprised if Latias was going to try to get to him first, she was already plotting something. Her and Bayleef were going to come to blows and that would be a few good laughs.

In any case, because while that Ash is a champion among his people… he has to equally become a champ among mine… but how to go about getting him to actually want to challenge me in a peaceful manner though.

I’ve already thrown threatening the world at him more times than an average person could handle, he could probably use a break from that. Maybe draw his attention with some Alpha Pokémon?

…

Well… more watching what Pom is going to get into next. Her attitude was decidedly less positive, happy and a bit of a downer, but she still tries to get through the day regardless of what happens to her, her friends or her new acquaintances.

I wonder how she’ll get back to Ransei… oh sure I could help, but I’ve already done too much recently and she was going to have some problems calling her mate. That’s going to be her drive to get back to Ransei moving forward.

It’s also I’m also feeling lazy from all the near perfect popcorn, despite someone absconding with a single bowl of it. I glanced at Mew chugging parfaits next to me.

“What?” Mew stated innocently and she lifted a parfait and started downing it like a mad kitten. “I don’t get ice cream headaches as you very well know.”

“I will help Canard reach his friends when we meet, but I need him to help us all first.” The bitter heart of a hero beat within that Puckian from being lost in the digital realms for so long, but he would heal spiritually and mentally with Commandramon’s plucky help.

“Quite nice of you, knowing exactly how you have to operate.” Mew commented idly as she pulled out another parfait from behind her back and started digging into it with an Alakazam’s spoon, I gave her a flat look. “Hey, the Alakazam I took this from will get it back… if slightly used… okay, I’ll wash it first, give me a break parent of all Pokémon!”

Not that Canard would like lizards anytime soon given how many dangerous ones he’s run into in the digital realms, but he might eventually make an exception for his partner.

-Digital Realm, Server City, Streets, Pom-

“We’re just going to walk around for two hours?” Well no Dolly, we were actually going somewhere. I heard this city has a park and I was curious to see it, because everything in this ‘realm’ was a little bizarre and had plenty of nonsense going into it.

Lit squeaked happily from Dolly’s back, not seeming to understand what was going on around him and just enjoying the ride under the shade of Dolly’s skateboard. The little four legged electric type tick seemed just happy to be around us and was minding his own business.

“We’re going somewhere to have some simple fun Dolly, we’re not here to cause any trouble… or attract a big fight.” Digimon of all types usually found a way to enjoy themselves and or help other Digimon with their unique skills. Like a Virus Digimon running a gym to help other types get stronger with sparring sessions because it liked fighting, sure not the best example, but the Digimon in question didn’t want to seriously hurt other Digimon. “It’d be just my luck if we did get into one.”

Street signs that hang from walls, electrical wires that looked like spider webs, plenty of strange popping colors in places there shouldn’t be any, even the ground was covered in really strange lines that seemed to shift from one moment to the next like the world itself was evolving and breathing, there were screens everywhere advertising odd things about coding or some kind of pick me up from sickness being manufactured by Yggdrasil Industries and there was even a house made out of a cardboard box. It was odd like that one house made of an upside down pagoda.

It’s like the architects of this place took information from the nearest form of reality and didn’t quite interpret it right because I thought I saw some sideways portions of Aurora castle in one of the buildings down a street we just passed. There was a part of Fontaine Castle at a really odd slanted angle the next street over, as part of a building that looked like or strongly resembled a giant crashed airplane… so I’d be somewhat correct.

Compared to all the weird stuff, the empty carnival wheel and karaoke bar looked… ridiculously normal as we passed by them on the way to where Hea-Gatomon was leading us.

Hea-Gatomon was a Vaccine Digimon, her medical capabilities made patching up other Digimon far better than most at the cost of some of her combat ability were she to be a normal Gatomon. Hea-Gatomon enjoyed being a medic and she gave Sami a clean bill of health, so there was no issue there of the orange soldier lizard spending more time with us.

Canard on the other hoof was off trying to find us a feasible exit back to Ransei, since it would get him closer to getting to his friends and a form of home if not Puck-World directly.

Learned in idle conversation that Hea-Gatomon was still trying to work on creating a new digital evolution, as she didn’t have one yet and was angling toward becoming something called a MarineAngemon if she couldn’t make a new path forward. Marine Angel Monster, what would that look like? A cheerful little otter like a Buizel? That’s just my hopeful imagination talking.

Vaccine Digimon were usually strong against Virus Digimon, Virus Digimon were usually strong against Data Digimon like Dormarch had been and finally Data Digimon were usually strong against Vaccine Digimon, it was like Pokémon with their Fire, Grass and Water types.

Vaccine were usually seen as holy Digimon, but were not necessarily always good or just like Hiandromon attacking Canard despite him being fairly harmless to the digital realms. I mean, aside from giving some Digimon like Sami ideas. The journey of Sami learning to build her own motorcycle ended in a roving gang of two wheeled motor murder vehicles called Machmon, of which I only have a description of so far, so that might have been good enough and justified reason for Hiandromon even if Sami was an entirely reasonable person trying to be happy like Dolly in spite of everything.

Viruses were seen as beings capable of great destruction, but could be benign and more honorable than most and were usually mischievous at best. Data were somewhere in between the line of dark and light this world seemed to play with.

The elemental attacks from what we knew were imitations of actual elements according to Canard and thus only acted like the elements as far as weakness of other Digimon were concerned. Hiandromon in particular was going to take a while since he landed in water and that was one of his weaknesses despite being an electric element using Digimon. So I can’t rely on the logical elemental system that the Pokémon ran on if we came under attack here, mostly we should assume their attacks are raw energy, fire or electrical in nature even if they looked like they were shooting water like a Water Type Pokémon.

Virus was more of a predisposition than an actual evil nature, more like how Oleander was a Dark Unicorn with a heroic heart… Fred the demon was actually evil, but Oleander had him under control… I think.

I idly wondered why Dormarch didn’t count as Vaccine and was a Data Digimon with his hospital knowledge gained from his prior incarnation, but it wasn’t very important to think about as the thought just brought me down an emotional level.

Tsukaimon PV was supposed to be a virus type and yet all he wanted to do was explore and do fun or mischievous things, basically another Dolly. He wasn’t currently following us around and went off to find things to build himself a new plane with. If Tsukaimon did something wrong, he said would always fix his mistakes at least, how well he actually fixed them would be judged by whatever person he wronged.

Another oddity was the local food, where Digimon were growing meat in the ground… I didn’t know exactly what kind of meat that was, but it was still odd to see flesh on a bone acting like a plant. I saw an apple tree and was immediately suspicious of it considering the meat growing from the ground on the farm we passed.

Dazzle, being an ever curious Salandit… climbed up the tree and plucked an apple. When she bit into it, I was quite right to be suspicious of the apple. Mind you this world didn’t have bugs, well at least not normal ones like Ransei did on top of the Pokémon type that Lit came from.

“Hm?” Dazzle looked at the apple and the insides of it were definitively not normal. “An apple made of meat? How does that even work? Would probably taste better cooked though...”

“Yeah, lots of weird stuff like that in the digital realms. At least I know that vegetables are always safe for biologicals, if highly off in the flavor department. Be wary of digital mushrooms as there are some really bad ones even if a good number of them are healthy, they tend to be a great weight loss diet for Digimon that get too fat. Not sure if you’d actually get nutrition from eating our food, never really dealt with biologicals much. I’ve always been geared towards helping digital beings like myself.” Informed Hea-Gatomon as we continued on our way from the meat farm. Blowing some flames on her apple that didn’t have any seeds in it, she started eating it with more appreciative noises. “It’s definitely better if you cook the apples first before eating them, even if you’re a carnivore. Don’t ask why the digital realms have such strange whimsies like that, we Digimon stopped caring a long time ago and just know this stuff by heart at this point. Also if you’re going to eat fruit, ask me first, because things like Conductor Lemons are actually like powerful batteries and will give you such a zap if you’re not a Digimon.”

Lit sat up and the information and looked fairly excited to have one of those Conductor Lemon things, Hiandromon’s bipedal vehicles was drained of its energy quickly by him and I started to wonder how much power went into making that suit move. That just proves that size was nothing to Pokémon considering I could fit Lit in the scoop of a single cloven hoof and he tore a hole in that mech, sure with Sami’s help, but he still did it. I also have an idea that some Digimon didn’t care much about size either, so much as they do stages of evolutionary life being a general idea of their level of power in these realms.

While we were waiting on Black-Tailmon-Uver to do his dimension hopping thing for some food, we’d be going to the nearest park to see what Digimon did there as normalcy was almost out the window here. Since apparently they were the only Digimon with that unique capability to safely jump between worlds, the key word being ‘safely’ as between dimension things like Chaosdramon X might be roaming around and Uver knew how to bypass the gap between entirely somehow.

Apparently Uver can only get into realities with one or two Digimon with him, he had many more issues transporting biological beings across dimensional barriers as to be basically impossible for him except in an exceedingly dire circumstance. Said dire circumstance would always involve the biological being hurt by the process of dimensional transference as Uver does it. He was better at pulling Digimon back into the digital world, provided they weren’t fighting him on it, and could also pull in objects as easily from just about any reality touched by Yggdrasil at least once… which meant he might be able to find a bag of kibble for Dolly while getting the rest of us food.

When I asked about money, Uver just said it won’t be a problem and he’d be paying for us. Any world with enough capability to have a digital realm with Digimon in it will be able to take Digi-credits that can transform into the local currency through whatever digital banking inevitably exists in that world, since any world with powerful enough computers systems usually has digital banking.

He did note that the world connected to this one was one of the odder ones. This realm was connected to a world with powerful enough computers, but there was absolutely no digital banking whatsoever. Since Pokémon operated on barter and Poké, though I wonder how they had powerful enough computers to handle having a digital world appear here. From what I’ve seen Ransei isn’t exactly as advanced in technology as the world prior to it was.

Sure it might fudge a few numbers, but it was above board and better than stealing when Uver had already had tons of digi-credits to his name from his haphazard job as interdimensional courier along with any other Black-Tailmon-Uvers that existed. They can apparently always get you things that you wouldn’t normally see in the Digital Realms.

For all the power Uvers seemed to have in crossing dimension boundaries even vaguely touched by the still rather curious Yggdrasil.sys person, they didn’t have much combat ability to speak of and was overly specialized in being a courier that could easily avoid any danger and always deliver on the times they said they would.

After a bit more walking we came upon the park and two sights of immediate interest, I mean aside from the trees growing colorful lightbulbs on them that wouldn’t look out of place during Hearth’s Warming back on Equus. Again, whoever made this world seemed to take ideas and jumble them together in a blender and just planted them in the soil of this world, at least the giant benches were understandable as there were giant Digimon that likely came through here that could use them.

One of the two things of interest were one the oddly designed skate park that looked like someone took several ideas from a rollercoaster and a non-Euclidean painting given some parts of the skateboard park was upside down and twisted. In said skate park were several tall bipedal Digimon riding skateboards around, one looked like a white and blue wolf with dark blue stripes wearing pants marked with skulls and he just seemed to be enjoying himself. I really didn’t want to bother any of the Digimon over there, but Dolly sure look like she did as her right paw slowly started reaching back for her skateboarding helmet.

Now if Dolly weren’t so distracted with what was an obviously ridiculously designed skate park that looked to challenge those who loved skating in many forms. Including one Digimon on a scooter that didn’t have anything to hold onto to the handle bars with, so how was it doing… no, just don’t go there Pom.

Dolly would see the thing that really had drawn my attention, had we not been so distracted. For there was a large gathering of Digimon, specifically Digimon that looked quite familiar to us and was apparently new to Hea-Gatomon who was a little wary of them because of their appearances.

“Dolly… please stop drooling over the skate park and actually look at the park entrance, it’s important.” Dolly did so, then goggled at the number of Digimon there, all of them were relatively similar in appearance. If I had to guess, this would be the world Yggrdrasil.sys made the one hundred and one Dalmamon.

“That’s… a lot of fish tails.” Sami said blankly starring at the number of them, likely 303 fur covered fish tails if none of the Dalmamon were missing one or two among them. With Dazzle nodding next to her.

“Okay everyone, don’t wander off too far from the park with any other Digimon you don’t know too well, and be wary of both Vaccine and Virus alike… even Data can be bad too. Also don’t get into fights, we are still missing a lot of attack programs to actually defend ourselves with due to the incomplete data that made us. Remember that if you see a Datamon in the city, run as fast as you can and raise an alarm.” One Dalmamon stated, with red eyes and star shaped black spots. The speaking Dalmamon looked to one Dalmamon in particular that looked a lot like how Dolly would be if she were a Dalmamon what with the colorful hearts, stars and speed line shaped spots going across her body, she was also carrying a skateboard covered in artwork that was probably relative to this realm that I didn’t quite understand. The squares and lines on her board made a nice pattern though similar to some parts of the surroundings. “Realize that I’m looking at you for a reason Variance.”

In fact the various Dalmamon’s eyes and spots came in a various rainbow of colors like Dolly’s adoptive sister Da Vinci having colorful spot like splotches near permanently etched into her fur, the spots also came in a variety of fun or basic shapes and designs. It was easy to tell that none of them were Dormarch given their varying sizes and another reason, because I felt like I just took an ice pick to the chest at the still frayed edge that used to be a bond still sitting there lifelessly as I looked at all the Dalmamon with a broken heart. A reminder of the time and sorrows I’ve faced thus far.

“Hey, chill Pickle my bro, so my name means divergent, doesn’t mean I’m going to cause problems by just hanging out with Renamon, Gaomon and Weregarurumon. They both are totes chill and are good Digimon!” Yep, that Variance’s voice was similar and not quite the same sold it for me. Also like all the other Dalmamon she had the same large goofy claws accompanying the three fish tail motif they all had going on.

“I worry about you sometimes, that Chuumon you spend time around in particular, he seems like a dodgy customer.” It didn’t take long for Pickle to devolve into worrying about all the other Dalmamon.

“Hey, Little Squee is a perfectly friendly Digimon.” Variance stated firmly back at him. Variance seemed to be more carefree and more open to being adventurous.

I hear a clack as Dolly dropped her board and just stared, I looked to her and she looked to me. She certainly didn’t feel like skating anymore and even drooped a little as I felt her mentally looking at her frayed end of the three way bond we had with Dormarch. She calmly placed her helmet on the skateboard and sat down on the street, before quivering as she brought her paws up to wrap herself in a hug.

“Is something wrong with you two, is it those strange new Digimon?” Sami seemed to be worried when we broke down a little at the sight of so many nearly, but not quite the same, Dalmamon all clustered together affectionately. For Dolly it was a reminder of good and bad times, the bad times being amplified.

“Don’t… worry about it… too much.” I said calmly as Dolly carefully placed a suddenly fussy and worried Lit on her Skateboard and then leapt to hug me tightly. “You can go ahead guys.”

I held Dolly for about a minute before Hea-Gatomon shrugged and worked up the courage to go talk to a few of the Dalmamon. Sami looked interested in the skate park and wandered off in that direction after hiking her backpack up a bit, giving us a look that said she’d be back if we needed her. Lit quietly leapt on to Dolly’s back and started to rub his face against her fur as we quietly sat there. Dazzle also looked curious about going off to explore and instead stayed with us in silence.

“Ah, so sweet your love for one another, can I do a portrait for you while you comfort your friend there? It might cheer you up, yes?” Looking up from hugging Dolly, I saw one of the Dalmamon had wandered over to us, he was wearing a beret like one of those Smeargle and the spots on his body looked the most artistic out of all the other Dalmamon, given they were all in several art styles all throughout his body. His fur was also a strange soft turquoise or teal color among the artistic spots compared to the mostly white fur with odds spots of the other Dalmamon. “I am Di Lodovico, nice to meet you strangers. You don’t look or smell like Mons like us, so you must be biologicals or something like it. And you… you are a thing of beauty madam, but I can’t exactly say or describe why. Your soul screams of being an unattainable work of art to mine, something precious that should never be taken away by the likes of me. No… a true artists knows to appreciate at a distance what is before him, for art is always in how others perceive its worth if appreciated or not. An artist can make work they don’t appreciate and they can make work they love, but others may see it differently. I know what I like and you, while highly attractive, are something that I can never quote connect with on a more personal and emotional level beyond a sudden and truly heartfelt offering of a friendship.”

This would be Da Vinci’s Digimon counterpart I take it, if Pickle was Dylans… Dyl Pickle… Dolly… Variance…Deliverance... oh my goodness, really? I’m betting a number of the Dalmamon’s when matched to some of Dolly’s family were just horrible puns. Yggdrasil.sys had a horrible sense of humor it seemed.

Feeling a whimper against my chest, it seems like Dolly running into a vague resemblance of her family was messing her up and that resemblance also had a lot of the appearance of her what used to be her little brother and… my self-proclaimed son.

“Go ahead, Dolly here is going to be a while after just experiencing heavy emotional turmoil at the moment from seeing all of you.” I was barely holding it together as it was, one of us had to keep our head or else our bond would be a whole mess of emotions increasing the sad feelings exponentially like a vicious cycle. “It’s nothing you did, we just lost someone important to us not too long ago in some dire circumstances.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, but what was their name?” Di Lodovico, don’t honestly know how that puns off Da Vinci. He was less enthusiastic with his three wagging tails. “I can write it onto the portrait in memory of them.”

“Dormarch Dalmatian Lambchop.” That seemed to spook the artist and I know he definitely recognized that name because…

“The name of our progenitor? Oh… no wonder… we are probably like pale imitations to the one that you knew more personally… am I right to assume that you were his… er…” It seemed like Di Lodovico didn’t know how to broach the topic, I nodded and motioned for him to set up the easel and get to work. Dolly was going to take a while to come back to her normal state of exuberance. “We watched the records he left. Sorry we don’t know how to Dalmamon like him, but we can only hope to catch some of his rather unique qualities. Wish we knew how to do what is supposed to be our signature move, watching him do it just doesn’t quite tell us how he did it.”

Signature… oh Dormarch’s Search Hunter ability, that teleport thing he invented based off watching me using Dancing Flame. He said something about overclocking himself… I’m not sure it’s a good idea to give any Dalmamon a hint. I wouldn’t want them to hurting themselves trying to figure it out if they weren’t already and I didn’t want them hurting themselves even if they did on their own.

I’m sure they were all smart, but they were basically children.

-A few minutes later-

“Feeling better Dolly?” I said as Dolly final pulled away and Lit decided to hop onto my head, I wasn’t going to freak out about it… although I did feel the urge to light myself on fire with Lit sitting on my wool.

“Yeah… I am.” Dolly said with a grin and a wagging tail. Di Lodovico was just about done and when he turned the portrait to us with a smile, it showed a smiling Dolly instead of the sad one. It was also signed in Memory of the First Dalmamon, Dormarch Dalmatian Lambchop.

“Hey there, cool deck, is that yours?” Variance came up to us looking to me and then looked at the portrait. “Sweet and heartwarming art as always bro… though invoking the name of the original seems kind of iffy. Not that we actually have a job as Search Engines yet, we’re kind of going stir crazy without trips to the park and the meat farms.”

“No it’s not mine, its Dolly’s skateboard and helmet. She’s a really good skater you know.” Dolly looked to me as she took up her Helmet and Board. “I bet she can do tricks you’ve never seen before.”

“I’d like to see someone try to top me in a contest of tricks.” At Variance’s words, Dolly slapped her helmet on her head secured it and grinned at her. Dolly then took off on her board towards the oddly designed skate park. “Hey, wait for me!”

“I actually want to watch this.” Dazzle said as she turned towards me. “Do you… do you need some time alone?”

“I would like that, I’ll join you soon enough to watch. Lit, please go with her.” Lit leapt from my head and landed on Dazzle’s nose to start hugging it. “Di Lodovico, take the portrait and go with her. I can take care of myself for a bit.”

Dazzle nodded and sent me a worried look before she turned and left, as did Di Lodovico before he too moved on after her to go watch Variance and Dolly battle on skateboards into the evening.

“Okay, what do you want?” I asked the air as everyone was in the parks, I was expecting to be attacked because frankly a dodgy character watching you from the shadows was likely to do that.

“For you to leave and to never come back.” Growled out a Digimon as he stalked from the shadows, he was similar to the skateboarding bipedal wolf Digimon except less excessive in appearance. He was more dog like and smaller for a start, he wore toeless shoes with three purple claws sticking out on each foot, white pants, a lot of belts around parts of his body and two gloves ending in silver claws. The purple and white furred canine like entity that didn’t like me at first sight, a novel experience that. Unless he is not a dog at heart, so I should be worried about him attacking me. “Digi-destined always means trouble wherever they show up.”

“A rebuttal if you will… my name is Pom Lambchop, I’m not currently a digit-destined as I don’t have a Digimon partner considering I’ve been said to be of a nullified status and I didn’t come to this world by choice.” The bipedal canine crossed his arms and glared at me, but that really didn’t change the truth of the matter. “My friends and I coming here is entirely accidental, but I can assured you that whatever is coming… it was going to happen regardless of my presence here. If I could stop it, I would. I don’t think I have the capability and I’d rather not worry my friends about the severely high possibility of that Chaosdramon X getting into this world and decimating it entirely to get at me. Trust me, if the way I came in didn’t spell it out for me, the way going out is going to be equally bad and I’m having to do it with several extra people more than what I came in with. Which is going to be much slower and much harder to do, especially with what I have been told is a totally genocidal monster with the power to actually backup the 'genocidal' part that'll be gunning for us when we do. So if you’ll stop stressing me out further by following us around quietly in the shadows, it would be greatly appreciated and if you were going to attack me then just do so and stop dithering about it like you currently are.”

The bipedal dog Looked like he was going to say something angrily, he tried several times to bring up a thought to counter my argument and he raised a claw several times before putting it to his bottoms lips in deep thought. He failed to do anything more than looking conflicted for a number of reasons I could only begin to start guessing.

“… Hmph… fair point. I’m Strabimon by the way. The data for my existence came from several different incidents involving digi-destined from several different realms entirely, the most notable is the one that fused with partial data to become like what you see before you. I’m a recreation of that data made realized and... I hate it.” Well doesn’t that information just cause a sinking feeling in both our guts Strabimon? “If I’m here for any reason, then it’s probably that I should be watching you because you are, or were, a digi-destine and stuff happens around them.”

“Please do so openly and not from the shadows, it’ll get annoying having to be paranoid about you when there are others that are more openly aggressive Digimon. Like the bedsheet monster that was following you and is about to attack.” I said bluntly with a frown on my face. With a wide eyed look Strabimon immediately rolled forward and avoided the bedsheet ghost that tried to attack him from behind with a pair of nightmarish dark claws reaching from under the tattered bedsheet exterior. The claws pulled back under the bedsheet and resumed looking like cute little nubs as part of what might actually be a mildly terrifying bedsheet ghost. “And now you owe me one for the warning, despite the fact that I might be the reason it was here in the first place.”

“Rarrgh!” The monster roared from under the bedsheet revealing its nasty mouth full of teeth, it would be much scarier if it wasn’t for the darn bedsheet it was wearing. I couldn’t take it seriously as a threat even as he blasted me with a strange gas.

“Do you ever brush your teeth, it might be why you have horrible breath.” I commented idly and felt slightly hungrier, ah so it wasn’t just bad smelling… it was meant to be poisonous. Again the Pecha Scarf pays for itself. “Can we take care of this ridiculous, vaguely scary, thing fast? I have some friends that I need to be getting back to.”

“Did you just no sell its poison breathe attack?” What Strabimon doesn’t know, probably doesn’t matter in the long run if he’s going to continue being antagonistic towards me. “Also I think it’s after me and not you because of my Wizardmon heritage. It’s a Bakemon, if that Bakemon kills me it’ll try to turn into a Soulmon using my data.”

“Will it still have the ridiculous bedsheet if it does?” I asked lazily.

“Yes.” Strabimon stated, turning to me ignoring the Bakemon with a hint of a smile despite still scowling at me.

The Bakemon seemed to be in agony for some reason and neither of us had attacked it and it started shrinking.

“Yep, I’m sorry, but I can’t take you seriously.” Conversationally speaking, it was about as scary as Mr. Beezy was. That being less than an innocent, if slightly aggressive, puppy that just wanted belly rubs. “How much worse is it as a Soulmon exactly in appearance?”

“It looks the same, except it basically has a witch’s hat that sometimes covers its eyes blinding it and making it even worse at combat sometimes.” Blinking at Strabimon, I turned to the Bakemon. "At least it gets cool looking magical attacks to go with that."

“Seriously, that’s the best you can do after killing him? Look at him, he looks much cooler and stronger than you are and will ever be.” My bluntness made the Bakemon shrink even more. “Why is it becoming less terrifying by the second the more we disparage its life choices to wear a bedsheet when not wearing it might have made it scarier in appearance judging from the claws, the mouth and the dead inside looking hollow eyes?”

“Because we’re either ignoring it or exactly because we’re disparaging how little fear it’s causing us, it’s a ghostly Digimon so they probably get strong off fear and get weaker in the face of out of nowhere deadpan apathy.” Strabinman was also feeling less threatened than he was a second ago.

“Make it stop, make it stop, be scared of me already!” The Bakemon shrieked. “Would it help if I said I am the great reincarnation of the monstrous Beelzebug that has apparently become some strange demon ghost computer monster thing that feeds on your incredible fear of me… which… doesn’t exist apparently… oh no… wait... why am I getting flashbacks of you and why does this situation feel horribly familiar!?!”

Oh... it was Mr. Beezy, huh.

Okay… yeah… any hint of fear I had before knowing that this is just Mr. Beezy again, meet the mental super toilet and immediately flush that emotion down the drain until something actually threatening comes along... then I'll need the worlds largest plunger, some brown pants and a megaphone for the shrill scream I'll let out.

“Wow… you’re a really sad being if this is what you became. There, there, you’ll explode or go away in a humorous fashion soon enough Mr. Beezy, though I am quite sorry that I’ve done this to you twice though.” I walked up to Mr. Beezy the Bakemon and hugged him, it screamed as if my affection burned him and he struggled to get out of my grip.

He was already too weak to escape.

Seconds later Mr. Beezy promptly exploded in my hooves into bits of strange colorful cubes that floated away on the wind. I think Paprika would be somewhat proud... maybe.

“Huh… seriously thought that would be a harder thing to fight.” Eh, you get used to weird stuff like that guy Strabimon, well if you stick around long enough. Mr. Beezy barely registers as anything more than an acquaintance to me, I've only met him twice. I wonder what he’s been up after sending those rather dim beetles, that explosively caught fire, after me. “I wonder what Digimon he’ll reincarnate as next.”

“Probably something that flies.” No wonder I lost my fear of that thing so quickly, it was just Mr. Beezy playing at being an evil thorn in my side again. He’s still really not that threatening after a few seconds of being lightly spooked. “Come on let’s go watch one of my friends do cool stuff in the skate park, I’ll introduce you to them!”

I cheerfully grabbed Strabimon’s right claw and dragged the perplexed Digimon into the skate park.

It'd be easier to help him make friends instead of just having him secretly follow us around a lot like a lost puppy while being about as angsty as I am at times and trying to struggle with finding himself! I am definitely not going through that mess here if I could help it. Since I can, so I will.

Author's Note

Pom the Beelzebug Slayer: 2.

Beelzebug The Unfortunate: -7.

275. The Skateboard Scamps.

Author's Note

Music- Doodle Champion Island Games- Skateboarding Theme

Next page: River City Ransom references.

275. The Skateboard Scamps.

-???, Oleander-

“So… this egg will hatch into a strange dog creature if you hug it?” I was looking at the person of this strange space fleet we came across in an odd dimension where the personifications of evil called Dark Falz were causing problems.

Darkness wasn’t a hated element… but it wasn’t very good in fighting Dark Falz and the people here use it for other monsters.

“With horns, wings and magical abilities, yes.” The robot behind the counter said.

“Why are you doing this, don’t you think she has enough dogs?” Buttina Stalliona, my traveling bicorn companion, I know for a fact that Pom loves dogs. I don’t think she can actually have enough of them! Sure it might be a bit hard to take care of so many, but I’m sure Pom will appreciate my unique gifts of interdimensional canids that will protect her to the point she’ll never ever be bothered by low class villainy again. “You said she has like ten already, isn’t this a bit much.”

“For my friend, NEVER, MUWHAHAHAHA!” Why did my laughter sound so evil?

“Ollie you’re making me blush, TO THINK PEOPLE THINK I’M THE EVIL ONE!” Fred stated loudly spooking the living robot behind the counter slightly.

“Uh… I know you look and sound a bit… sketchy… but you did save some of my friends on that mission you took and it’s the right amount of meseta at least. Before I give you the egg, would you like to adjust its element focus? You can have lightning, wind, ice, fire, darkness and a popular one for Dark Falz, the element of light.” Hmm… the robot was a bit wary or maybe even leery of Fred. Better not push it.

“Light please, my friend would prefer that element.” Hey it’s not my favorite element, but this was for Pom. After I made my purchase I was holding a black egg with what looked like bright purple flames at the wider bottom end of it, it was of course how the egg was naturally colored. I was also passed a collar with a blue crystal for the puppy to wear eventually and thought of actually acquiring more help traveling around. “Say, how would I go about getting an Auxiliary Assistant Android I’ve heard about around here?”

“I know this might be a bad idea, but…” The robot actually trailed off wondering if he should tell us or not.

It ended with us getting a small bipedal kitty robot that looked like an Abyssinian with black fur, long lustrous purple hair and bright vibrant red eyes. Kityan the bipedal kitty android was born and ready to help us out happily with anything.

-Digital Realm, Server City, Skate Park, Dolly-

Sure I was using this really unique and really weirdly designed, ridiculously fun, skating park as an excuse to get away from my feeling, aside from a little surprise at something Pom didn’t seem to be having any trouble with whoever was causing her to feel suspicious.

With Pom safe and not mentally stressing out too much, I could do some really awesome tricks without worrying about Pom or our strange adventures and live in the moment.

Down the ramp up to the top of the three-fourths pipe and went spinning off the top upside down to flip into a sideways rail grind, then popping off down a half pipe further down and once on the other side of the pipe I performed a nose stall and held it balanced precariously one edge of the halfpipe.

I took a whiff of the fresh air around this park in this very odd world, it was ridiculously clean all things considered… maybe even too clean. Don’t know if this place was odder than my world... well I can’t exactly call it my world, because Pom is my world now.

I took another breathe to relax and try not to suddenly go rushing off into the unknown in the hopes of looking for that one little piece of my little digital brother that may or may not exist. Still not giving up on that, though from what some people say it’s impossible.

Some of the things Pom does are close to impossible. I have magic, but I now know that magic wasn’t everything and using it too much was a costly pain on my skull.

I took another breath and considered trying the twisty DNA shaped thing in the middle of a spiraling ramp leading to the ground, those looked fun. Eh, maybe later, skating parks like this wouldn’t exist in normal places because it would be too hazard to normal people. I’m not normal and I love that.

Ah yeah, this was the stuff, balancing my board perfectly on an edge and close to hurting myself on this wildly designed place. Now into my drop…

I hopped back slapping my front paws on the back of my board. It went flipping backwards as I went flipping forwards while moving backwards. With a few more flips I planted my feet on the board to stop both our spinning, I angled it behind me to slide up the ramp backwards into a sideways grind along the edged using the back of my board, did a kick flip over a gap and then went down another ramp that swept around to the right into the middle of a half pipe after crossing the air a few feet.

Not using my flowing motion, not using my momentum control or anything like that, I just wanted to be all pure skill here. I could very well beat anyone with those abilities in a skateboarding contest, but I’d rather stick to legit natural talent as magic isn’t the answer to everything as I very well know now, but it is the answer to prevent me from taking a bad spill.

I dropped out the other side of the half pipe after traveling down its center and started skating over to Variance.

“Way cool, you sure know how to board!” Variance seemed excited, but it was still kind of hard to look at a three tailed fish dog with goofy claws without expecting a voice nagging us about our health. “I’m not nearly that good yet.”

“Considering how many times you’ve flopped off the front of your board Variance, you should practice simpler stuff before doing anything more advanced like that. This biological here, she knows her stuff… and likely physics, even with how weirdly designed our skate park is. Our park is most certainly not beginner friendly like that upside down rail grind she pulled a few minutes back.” The big wolf himself seemed to be a skateboard critic and he was crossing his arms as he towered over Variance. “You could learn a thing or two from her.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know I’m not exactly the best at skateboarding and she’s a quadruped, but I have big goofy claws that most Digimon seem to end up with. Maybe if I could digivolve into something else that’s better at this… why are all of us Dalmamon so hampered?” Giving Variance a look, I gestured at her with a paw. “It almost feels like the system recreated us and is watching us for something we obviously lack or don’t have that the original did… do you think maybe…”

“That it was a crest, there are some that the system can’t make and they can come out of nowhere.” Coming up to us was a yellow and white fox with a lot of floof over her chest that wore gloves with yin yang symbols on them, I recognize the symbol from watching my brother Deepak meditate and his face kind of looks like one. She also had purple symbols for… I think it was crab? Anyway those were on her knees. “I believe that Yggdrasil.sys is always looking for a particular one that appears with a digital partner and a digi-destined involved in highly dangerous situations. These crests come from out of nowhere, without any warning and even the system doesn’t know how these crests forms, but they are the stuff of legends.”

“There are no legends here, this world started barely a few years* ago. We Dalmamon are barely more capable in combat than a Bokomon is and our progenitor had some rad amazing powers even if he was incapable of digivolving and was more cautious about getting up close and personal despite having more close range combat programs than ranged. The dude was totally accurate with his ranged attacks.” Variance paused for a few seconds to let it sink in that my brother wasn’t a battle happy adrenaline junkie. I would think I know Dormarch better than her. “Before you say anything, even a Neemon can beat a Numemon and they exist to keep Bokomon out of trouble. Well they can beat a numemon if they weren’t half asleep and full on raring for the fight, rookies should be able to be at least some trouble to champions Digimon, we Dalmamon would barely survive other rookies! I don’t know why the system made us or is even humoring us with guardians like that Jijimon, we’re basically useless… at least we don’t have anything to important for so we have a lot of free time. What’s the use of a bunch of ‘search engines’ if you’re not going to have us look around for stuff and coop us up in this city?!”

Yeah, I can kind of feel that, kind of felt cooped up in Camden Town sometimes, but I had good friends to keep me from running off by myself to adventure. Now that I am on an adventure and being Pom’s plucky sidekick, I think my friends back in the world I originated from were some of the best a dog could ever have asked for and then some.

“Calm down Variance, you can be whatever you want within the confines of the city… there really isn’t much beyond it aside from some wild Digimon and they’d eat you alive.” The bipedal fox tried to be placating with raised and Variance growled at her slightly. “Even you’re brother Pickle wants to see what’s in the deep digital sea, but even he knows that he shouldn’t dive into that death pit without being more capable.”

“Couldn’t you train me or at least give me a few attack programs I can use to practice with, I want to be able to do things freely and if I can fight then I wouldn’t have to be stuck in this dead end city with a bunch of… huh?” Variance looked at me and I gave her a smile, she needed to cooldown and I was the dog to do it.

I slowly inhaled as I kept my paw on her and stared at her with a serene grin, she followed my inhale. I slowly exhaled the air I took in and I followed and she did the same. Deepak’s method for stopping panic attacks, he was one of the order keepers in our family and I learned a trick or two from him. After a few repetitions she seemed to have calmed down greatly.

I had stopped her before she said something she regretted.

“Sorry… I was about to say something really bad before… doll face here stopped me.” Sure Variance might not know my name very well, but I’ll take it! I might not know the beings or people they were talking about, but I mostly understood everything else.

Being stuck in Camden Town without many prospects of a future beyond it was something to be expected for me, I still kind of want to do the firefighting dog thing. Being a professional skateboarder would have taken me too far from the family and as I have stated numerous times, being a show dog just wasn’t my scene and skateboarding would have led that way if I went professional. Still when Pom came, I jumped on the opportunity presented to me when we connected.

“Well at least you have a safe life and more time to figure yourself out than I would have ever been given if my situation continued the way it did. Try being stuck in a single building for most of your early life with the threat of being experiment on if you don’t perform well enough or if you do far too well.” Sami walked up to us. “Getting the chance to leave, to see other sights would have been amazing for me at the time if the mortality rate of my people wasn’t above eighty five percent. At least you have a family where most of them died horribly, you have the freedom to run around an entire city and you have a Jijimon. I never got a Jijimon to look out for me, to hold me, to even care about my existence like a good grandfather would, I just got a number and marching orders to a possible early death.”

“What would you know about… oh… a Commandramon…” Variance was about to go off on Sami bringing heat back into her voice, that heat suddenly died an ice cold death as she cringed away from Sami entirely when she turned around and saw the orange Commandramon standing there. “I… I’m… sorry, very sorry.”

It seemed Variance knew what being a Commandramon meant, so she knew something of the story behind Sami. Given what Sami told us, all that stuff about being a surviving soldier is hardcore, but also sad to know that it’s true enough that even she realized she couldn’t beat a Commandramon in having a life with little freedom. Sami had a lot of freedom, she just chooses to bind herself to Canard if what I’m understanding about the situation is right.

“Well now, we could use a distraction… do you have anything?” The fox asked of me and the wolf guy, I pointed at the cubes of light fluttering away in the wind. “That might do-ooooo-… who is that beautiful being…”

The fox looked like they just took a gut punch at first sight of Pom coming through the entrance of the skate park next door to the more natural park.

“I believe that’s a recreated Strabimon, you know Renamon it’d be kind of weird if you had a thing for guys with pants considering you hang out with…” Bipedal wolf guy was quickly elbowed in the gut and he laughed through the sudden pain.

“Not him Weregarururumon… her~…” The fox purred as she looked at Pom front to back dragging the guy into the skate park with her right and her tail started getting faster as she stared. Pom stopped to talk to Dazzle and Lit hanging around the entrance. I did not like the way the fox was looking at Pom. “Never actually seen a Sheepmon that doesn’t put me to sleep by being insanely slow… and she looks so fluffy, rowr-~.”

“Down girl, she looks biological and something tells me she won’t be as interested in you as you are her.” Werewolf guy put a paw on her shoulder and squeezed it firmly. “Also I don’t know what you’re seeing right now, but I’m see something small, scrawny and looks like a few nervous wrecks away from being a completed train crash. Do you really want to run up and introduce yourself so enthusiastically to her?”

“Yes.” The fact that the fox said it with so much want was disturbing, she received quite a few stares.

“I didn’t quite catch her name before she sent doll face off with me to do some skating, but she does look interesting.” Variance seemed to be on the general dog appreciation and attraction level, the fox went straight to highly interested and into something close to love judging from the body language… as for the werewolf, nothing but idle curiosity. “Let’s go introduce ourselves before my brother Pickle sticks a cucumber into our business.”

“You could have phrased that better you know, also Renamon… take it slow or you’re going to be greatly disappointed when she tried to let you down gently.” The werewolf guy had a stable head on his shoulders, I wonder how strong his was in comparison to the surrounding monsters native to this realm.

The other dog like guy Pom dragged, was also another nothing from how dogs normally acted around Pom. From what I could tell from Pom’s interaction with the dog guy with the white seemed totally shy, awkward and like my brother Dante in being moody looking.

Okay what did Werewolf and werepuppy have in common that seems to make them immune to Pom’s magnetism whereas the fox and Variance are looking at her with affection? Was it because they were bipedal… but the fox was bipedal too. Unless she could run around on all fours, but that couldn’t be it hm…

-Several minutes later, Pom-

“So can you help me learn to ride a skateboard?” Sami was asking Weregarurumon for help with learning how to skateboard after watching Dolly and Variance for a bit.

I think I’d rather call the Weregarurumon just plain Garu, because his full species name was a bit of a mouthful.

“I think I can help you find you’re balance, give plenty of tips and maybe help you with a digi-board, so yes.” Garu was like the guru of this skate park and he protected it like it was his territory with a fierceness from anyone who would cause too much trouble. Otherwise he seemed friendly and down to earth, running this place was his favorite activity when he wasn’t patrolling the city for any Digimon possibly committing malicious actions. “It’s up to you to put in the hours and do so far more safely than her, she obviously learned most of her stuff through pain, suffering and life lessons. Broken coding is no fun and those patch casts always itch.”

Garu gestured to Dolly and she nodded that that had happened and she couldn’t deny that.

Sure Garu knew the skate park had some oddities that would make a skate park like this exceedingly dangerous to normal beings to try and skate on if they didn’t know what they were doing, but we weren’t exactly dealing with normal beings here now were we. They were capable of taking nasty spills with less horrible injuries, that and Dolly was a professional at this point in everything but name.

Unlike Hiandromon, this Garu accepted us being here without as much as a single blink for being different, I appreciated that and how he and Strabimon didn’t seem to magnetize to me. Probably didn’t see us as a threat… apparently he was an ultimate type Digimon. One level above champion and above that was mega, mega was where Digimon started getting their deadliest.

It didn’t take long to find out that Chaosdramon was a Mega, Chaosdramon X was a Mega Plus. There weren’t many X Digimon, but what there were was always far more powerful than a Digimon of the same name without the X. Whatever was causing the X had to be taken away or altered in some manner.

Of the most awkward introduction to one of the Server Cities ‘Skateboard Scamps’, the local Digimon skateboarding club, was meeting Renamon for the first time.

“Hi, I’m Pom Lambchop and you are?” My innocent question was met with eh most flustered being I have met, well worse than my first time talking to Tianhuo at least.

“Narenom, beautiful to can you beat so are no one you. I mean it’ll go so pleasantly… ugh sorry, I must be glitching something fierce I swear my data matrix is in order, I’m glad to meet you! Not so much as for it to be awkward… yes… that. It would be quite awkward if I find myself flung tide, tongue tied, I meant to say tongue tied!” The bipedal fox was flustered and tapping her claws together in an adorable manner, blush and her tail was excitedly wagging. She saw me watching her tail and grabbed it to stop it and then grinned at me in a sheepish manner, she cleared her throat, stood up tall with her arms behind her back and tried to take on an air of sophisticated. She was failing horribly. “Can I start over, I’m Renamon… and you’re very pretty and fluffy like a Sheepmon. Did I just say that out loud? Please tell me I just didn’t say that out loud… checking the data of my core matrix running my brain to mouth module. Let’s see here, it says ‘currently set to foot in mouth’? WHY IS THAT EVEN AN OPTION IN MY CODING?!”

I’m sorry for this Renamon, but that made me burst out laughing. Don’t honestly know what the fox saw in me aside from my magnetism, but it must be hitting her harder than my strange aura normally hits canids if she’s this flustered and obviously crushing on me at first sight. It was about as flattering as Geoff was, despite his irksome attempts at trying to make me feel better about my scarred and very average appearance among lambkin otherwise, but she wasn’t very confident and was having a hard time getting words out making it cuter than anything.

Too bad I had to let her down.

“Sorry to do this to you, but… happily married and friend zone.” I said immediately.

Renamon wilted and in a blink was sitting off in a corner of the skate park facing a wall holding her skateboard to her fluffy chest with her tail wrapping around her waist. She was looking quite dejected.

“Still could start a cult in her name… would have to compete with Lillithmon, but I think we could pull it off a victory.” I could barely hear Renamon muttering, that… wasn’t worrisome at all, nope, couldn’t be any less worried about that if I tried.

Okay if I find out where the cult is when it forms, I can stop it before it goes too far. I’m already creeped out by the odd Doggy Messiah stuff popping up randomly, I do not want that getting worse.

“Ouch, could you have been any faster with slapping her in the face with that?” Stated a dry sounding Strabimon. He glanced at Garu and the two sized each other up, then nodded in approval of the other. Canine like attitudes, but I’m glad they aren’t attracted by my canine magnetism. “So where do you get your boards around here?”

“Wow… it’s like she teleported over there, hope she finds someone eventually.” Dazzle mumbled looking sad for the fox. “I like you a lot too, but at least I’m friend zoning myself on principle of several logical reasons as to why I shouldn’t begin to try getting into a relationship and that was before hearing about Tianhuo. I’m just glad to be your friend, like I’m hoping she’ll figure out too eventually. I seriously hope that doesn’t bother you that I still think highly of you, even if you won’t think highly of yourself.”

“Well… that’s interesting and all, but I really don’t see how anyone can compete with the best boarder around here.” Variance gestured to Dolly and she seemed to be thinking about it instead of proclaiming her glory or trying to hog attention. “That being her.”

Dolly gave her a flat look, cleared her throat and I could vaguely hear the peppy tune that was from Dolly’s own heart. It sounded like her theme music even.

“I’m not the best, but hey I try~!” She performed a nose manual and then went into a regular manual before stopping and performing a paw stand on the back of her board with the nose precariously balanced beneath her. “It won’t be a bother to tell you that- I’m not the best~!”

“You seem to be really quite confident, an incredible talent, as we can well see~.” Variance joined in looking confused, probably doesn’t know about Heart Songs or how infectious they were. I wonder if Equus magic would have an effect on this world to…

“I’m not the best~! I’m betting even someone as unskilled as you, can beat me too~!” Dolly pushed down with her paw and her board spun on its nose as she flipped and landed with both her hind legs on the back of her board and managed to maintain balance, incidentally stopping the board spin. “You just need to train your skill and gain some will, then show me a true grinning bright attitude~!”

“I’m not the best~! I’ve got clumsy claws… been through my share of falls~!” Variance said waving her claws while leaning on her skateboard.

“I’m not the best~! How do you think I learned to be this good, it’s not like I had learned in a day~!” Dolly toppled the board onto its right side and kick flipped it onto its wheels with a hop of her hind legs. “I’m not the best~! So what can I say to you, to get you to… understand that talent is about having and finding that brightness-and not being such a big brood~!”

Dolly popped up and did a full three sixty nose grab, landed on the back wheels of her board doing a reverse manual and then popped into a backflip to land. All of that done on flat ground.

“We’re not the best, but hey we can try~.” I watched as Dolly moved next to Variance and popped the front wheels of her board up, then motioned for Variance to do the same and she did it shakily. Dolly motioned at her tail and flicked her tail out straight. “Don’t bother to tell us why- we’re not the best, but we can all have an off day and be in a funky moo-ood~!”

Dolly popped the board up and landed in balance on the front wheels staying quadrupedal the entire time and motioned for Variance to do the same. Variance tried to hop the board onto its front wheels and Dolly quickly veered her board forward and caught Variance before she face planted. Dolly then motioned for her to try again after she did the same back to front wheels hop.

Variance balanced on the back of the board and popped it forward, only she quickly fanned out two of her outer three tails this time and managed to get the board balancing on its nose with a strange balancing act that almost had her face planting. This time she actually avoided it and seemed to have learned something from watching Dolly’s quadrupedal skateboard riding style, because she smiled at Dolly.

“We’re not the best, so what can you learn in a day, anyway~?” Dolly and Variance sang with smiles. “Even if there’s pain coming your way, its okay to get back up and into that groove~!”

I felt something crawling up my back and saw Lit squeaking the cheerful tune Dolly and Variance had been singing to before they trailed off and focused on techniques together.

Dolly would proceed to show tilting a board up onto the edge of its right wheels and then motioned for Variance to copy her in her own way. It took a bit, but I can see Dolly was teaching her balance and was being humble, bright and cheerful. She was trying to focus on her positive attitude and it was infectious to Variance who seemed to be a bit happy to be practicing skate board balancing with Dolly, it’s why Dolly could even move on her hind paws so well when I started teaching her how to fight with her bare paws and her skateboard.

Though the skateboard was an unwieldly weapon, it was Dolly’s and she had effectively made it into her own unique combat style in so many ways… teaching was fun. Both Shanty and Dolly were good students even if they could be a bit rambunctious and easily distracted, they learned by doing well enough and sometimes they need to be told why doing certain things was a good or bad idea.

A calm red lizard with strange markings on their chest and other parts of their body showed up with a skateboard covered in orange and blue flame patterns under their right arm and in their left claw was bread in the shape of the red lizards head with bat wing ears included.

They were slowly chewing through the bread with a small smile as they watched Dolly and Variance practice balancing on their boards in various ways.

Something glowed at the lizard’s hip, they seemed rather chill as they held the bread in their mouth and pulled out… another Digivice?!

It was glowing brightly and they started to wave it around, after a moment they smiled slightly as the glow grew more intense in my direction. They came towards me, then walked right past me and over to Dazzle.

The red lizard with the fan ears went over to sit next to Dazzle to watch the two train, she idly passed the Digivice into Dazzle’s confused claws without so much as a word and lazily broke off a piece of bread for her that hadn’t been in a part of their mouth and offered it.

We hadn’t eaten yet and it had been an hour or two since we left Uver to his business of getting food for us.

“Huh? Hmm… this is really good sweet bread, thank you, I was getting quite hungry and we haven’t eaten since we were going to before we came here.” Having watched Dazzle taste the bread and even enjoy it, the red lizard nodded in appreciation with a satisfied smile then pointed at the device. “Huh, this device like what Dolly and Canard have, why did you give it to… oh…”

Dazzle apparently just passed a strange test as a digi-destined somehow. For a second I thought Pokémon couldn’t be digi-destined when they were already dimensional monster, but it seems like I would be wrong.

“Who are they?” I asked pointed at the Digimon that just showed up lazily and even acted lazily about finding a partner in Dazzle. Seemed like a good match to me.

“That’s a Guilmon, Frizzle is a rather quiet and calm one for her combat capable species. Guilmon are also all absolutely obsessed with bread… anytime a Guilmon comes into existence it becomes a priority for them to focus on how to bake bread first instead of learning how to defend themselves since they are already unnaturally good in battle. That symbol on her chest… it means digital hazard, she can become danger to this realm. It doesn’t mean she will, because Frizzle is the calmest Guilmon I’ve ever seen.” Garu said as he came back with a spare board for Sami to use. “The bread obsession they have comes from the first Guilmon created in another digital realm by a kid that lived in a bakery, that Guilmon went on to be quite a legend among Digimon kind. It’s been kind of hard coded into every Guilmon from then on to love bread and it stems from that one guy. Not that bread is bad for them, it is quite the opposite actually. When you burn as much energy as a Guilmon does daily, it actually helps in the long run for them to always have some bread on claw.”

“This has been a fairly strange day…” It’ll only get stranger than this Strabimon, stick around and you’ll find out by how much.

“Is Renamon going to be okay?” Breaking someone’s heart made me feel pretty bad.

“She’ll be fine…” Garu huffed with his arms crossed and idly rubbing at his right shoulder that wasn’t covered in a shoulder pad. He glance over in Renamon’s direction. “Probably... As a member of the Skateboard Scamps, I am honor bound to try and help her through her feelings.”

“Speaking of feelings, guys, pack it up, we have to get back to where Uver is going to be waiting with the food!”

“Get that skateboard master over there to help you learn how to use that Digi-board, it’s yours Sami.” Garu made a friendly gesture to Sami and started to mosey over towards Renamon. “I’ll go take care of Renamon and get her in a better mood, come on and help me with Renamon will you Variance?”

“Once a member, always a member Frizzle.” Variance said before she picked up her board fell into step with Garu as they made their way over to a sulking Renamon, Frizzle made a lazy gesture of a happy wave to them.

Frizzle came over to us and smiled. With that we gathered up Hea-Gatomon from an absurdly playful pack of Dalmamon and headed back to the slums with me carrying a portrait, wondering how I was safely going to… Uver can transport it back to Ransei and leave it at the guild for me when we see him. If you have a dimensional hopper on hoof who was an expert courier, then get him to do a quick service for you as needed.

-Ten minutes later, less than a slum hideout, Dazzle-

“How…” I asked as we entered the place to find that it has changed entirely, I was now wearing Frizzle's belt with the Digivice thing she gave me.

When we left this room, it looked run down and very much dilapidated for a living space in a slum. I think I’d prefer a slum over the luxury that seemed to have exploded here.

Now the room we shared our lives in looked like a fancy ballroom and I hated the aesthetic on principle of being an escaped princess of the Kingdom of Viperia. I actually wanted to stay in this world, if for no other reason than to stay as far away from Viperia as I could

“I had some spare time to do some remodeling.” The response from Black-Tailmon-Uver led me to believe that these Digimon could be as mysterious and nutty as we Pokémon were at times. “Also made the bedrooms far less ratty since I had time to pick up some beds, mattresses, nightlights and really if you’re going to sleep here… I’m going to make it as comfortable as I can for an old friend that’s saved my backside more than a few times. It’s the least that I owe Sami.”

“This… is a bit much Uver.” Sami stated at the opulence that permeates the entire room along what with the fancy music playing in the background just to express how opulent this all was. “Thank you very much though, so about that food?”

Uver would proceed to pull out a lot of hot food from his small bag as ordered by us, what a truly amazing guy!

276. Server City Ransom Pt. 1.

Author's Note

If I were a more sane person, I would have stopped writing a while ago.

Music: Digimon World 2, Jijimon's theme.

276. Server City Ransom Pt. 1.

-Digital Realm, Server City, slightly upgraded hideout, evening, Pom-

“So… where did Strabimon go?” Dazzle asked as we sat here eating.

“He’s a free spirit and he probably didn’t want to stick around a lot of people for long, the guy might need to socialize more and that’s coming from me given how horrible I was at it until moving to my home in Huoshan and I’ve been better about it. Besides, it’s going to be hard enough to survive getting back to Ransei with more people involved.” That was my read on the guy. Dazzle recently acquired a friend in Frizzle and speaking of the overly calm red and relatively silent lizard, she was quietly chewing on some bread next to her. “Goodness knows you don’t want to go back to Ransei and have plenty of reasons not to, aside from having friends in Aurora.”

“…” Dazzle didn’t comment and continued to eat some food Uver procured outside of the digital realm.

Frizzle just gave Dazzle a slightly curious and worried gaze before popping some bread with other stuff between it in her mouth, she was eating a full baguette with various weird things on it.

Lit was gnawing on a few fresh strawberries, nothing interesting going on with the lightning bug. He was leading a simple life and living on Dolly’s back as a benign tick.

Dolly was happily munching away on some kibble, happy to not have gone an entire week without it and the small resupply wouldn’t last her very long unless she rationed it out.

I was personally eating still hot vegetable lo-mein, Uver had a unique storage space in his bag that’ll keep things that go in the same until they come back out. Not that it’s a new concept to me considering we saw examples of that in the World Where Dreams Can Come True.

“First bit of real food I’ve had in a while that wasn’t the usual digital world weirdness, I almost forgot how good it could taste.” Canard was enjoying some bread freshly baked by Frizzle and was enjoying some food from ‘reality’ for himself. He seemed in a good mood at least. “You’re attention please, we know the lockdown was caused by a Chaosdramon X. That said, there are very few anchors in this world that can be used to be get out of this realm to a reality. One of those anchors is huge and that is not the way we’re going for one good reason. I don’t know why there is another digital world at the end of that other particular anchor, but I think we should leave that one alone considering the information I found shows it’s where Chaosdramon X came from to actively intercept your group. The anchor that Pom’s group came from is going to be in repair for quite a while, but after scrounging up enough information I already know there is another anchor is nearby, it’s in what is in the capitol of the kingdom of Violight.”

“Well that’s doesn’t sound too far away from where we previously were, do you know the time disparity we’re working with here?” After saying this, I watched as Canard unrolled a map of this world and sighed. “Really Arceus? That’s not a very subtle at all.”

“Sixty days to a minute or hour at least in reality based time. You won’t be missed for long if we can get out through the computer connected to the Violight city anchor in less than a few months.” The map had several anchor locations drawn on it, some were too far away to use and many of them were labeled Valora. There seemed to be a thick amount of those anchoring this digital realm to Ransei, in fact it seems that’s where this digital world is primarily anchored at. “There are only two anchors close to us and one of them is heavily blocked off, as I said Chaosdramon X came from that direction. The other is the one we need that will get us to Ransei.”

“Arceus, the physical god of the world Dazzle and Lit are from?” Sami asked as she looked at the map. “What makes you mention them?”

This entire realm was shaped like Arceus as if you were looking at him from head on, I could see the circle and four spikes of the circular thing coming from Arceus’s waist. His body made up the central spiked I shaped mass of this continent. We were on the western edge of the incomplete circle between the north western and southern west spikes that were a part of Arceus’s halo thing.

“Call it a hunch that he’s had some influence on this realm...” I said blankly.

“Yeah, that’s not really a hunch at all and you know it Pom! He’s probably got something going on here and probably wants us to figure it out or something… I mean that’s usually how this stuff works with god’s right? I’m only basing this off of that Poodle Wolf stuff Dylan and Dor… Dormarch were into.” Dolly muttered that last part as I sent her the image of Arceus looking straight at us and then mentally overlaid that on the map with that. The western edge of this continent would be Arceus’s right side waist girdle thing extension. The peninsula at the bottom was his two pointed legs coming together and at the northernmost part of the continent was the top of his head. “He really is stupidly powerful… so why couldn’t he bring Dormarch back?”

“I’m sure there are very good reasons for it Dolly, for one Dormarch wasn’t a Pokémon or under his purview so he was probably limited in that respect.” I whisper to her and didn’t want to explain what Dolly just said, so I kept her words to myself. “Also he had to grab onto a soul and couldn’t do so because Dormarch did something with his to make it impossible to reincarnate him as a Pokémon.”

“So the continent looks more unusual than a normal File Island or Folder Continent should… it still has some aesthetic close to being a File Island at least, what with the disc shape going around the central I shaped mass with the ghostly candle like flame at the northern edge and dagger like tip at the bottom.” You don’t know the half of the truth Sami and I think you were trying to distract us, even I barely even know less than a quarter given the wacky stuff we’ve been seeing. “Well if you see something different, then that’s alright to me.”

“Anyway… I got a good look at the source coding for this realm even if I can’t touch it with a mile long pole. We can access the way out of this realm into the reality that is the Ransei continent. I came into this world from closer to the southern end of the continent from a different digital realm and you met me around here.” Canard said tapping the map western curve of the coastline portion of the ring and our current position was in the middle of the arc in that ring. “With a few issues being in our way.”

“I’m guessing that there’s a large big backside in there ready to rudely begin thrusting itself in our faces and asking for a hard kicking while it’s at it.” I’m definitely quite sure that I wasn’t wrong in thinking it either, even if I was being sarcastic. I just wanted to have some fun, befriend a lot of strange monsters and not have to fight anything, which was too much to ask for apparently.

“I won’t say it then. We simply can’t access the next closest anchor back to Ransei without the key code and the code for that particular anchor point… was recently stolen as I was looking into a way to open said anchor point after all the anchors to this world went into lockdown.” Gee, what a surprise Canard. Let me guess, we’ll have to do something like go track them halfway across the... “The culprit is currently in this city, but I don’t know where and there are a lot of Digimon gathering around them to possibly take over the city or cause a riot that the local peace keepers can’t deal with. That would be very bad for all involved and we may need to egg a lot of Digimon soon. We’ll try to find him tomorrow, but he’s going to be a big problem to deal with as much as find.”

Oh… that was much simpler than what I was expecting, what was the catch? I’m terrified of the proposition of another Saint Canard Crisis happening and Dolly was shivering quietly too.

“How big of a problem are we talking here, can I at least get a name of this culprit so I know how to prepare for them?” Sami was glancing at Canard, as she pulled her gun from her back and seemingly inspected.

“It’s an Ultimate level Digimon named Etemon, apparently a real nasty piece of work at any range and I wouldn’t want to fight that guy in hand to hand if I could help it.” Canard seemed worried about the guy that has the thing we need to get out of here in a timely manner.

“An Etemon? Ugh… those guys are some of the nastiest and most aggressive bit of coding in existence… an advertising virus. I’m pretty sure this city has to have a Volcamon at least to counter the guy somewhat, how else would a city like this run without someone to monitor this realms processor heat sink?” Now Sami was shivering quite violently with a horrified wide eyed look in her eyes, as if she’s met an Etemon before, she slowly looked at us and then sighed while coming back to her senses. “Right, we have biologicals here that need protecting, get your brain in gear Soldier. In simple terms… imagine a ridiculously powerful muscle bound microphone and banana wielding monkey with a horrible singing voice and a thing for advertisements and jingles as much as being into himself, Etemon. Now imagine a large bipedal robotic looking guy with a volcano coming out of his back, Volcamon.”

“What are we looking at as far as forces we might have to fight if we can’t talk our way through this scenario to get back what the thief stole so we can use it ourselves to get back to Ransei? Not saying us using the key to open the anchor to escape would be a good thing considering we could be letting Chaosdramon X through the lockdown and that would doom this realm entirely.” Noticing the way that Canard’s beak clenched as he seemed to be warring at himself with the happy idea of being back in a reality at the possible cost of this ones existence, I had an idea that we weren’t getting through tomorrow without at least one fight or many… no matter what we did.

“Well we do have vague acquaintances that wouldn’t want this city to come to ruin…” Not that I thought they would be able to handle a monster of that kind of awe inspiring despair that basically erased a number of Machinedramon in seconds. Machinedramon were quite terrifying soulless looking beings to most people of these worlds apparently, it says something when even the soulless beings can have something to fear and I definitely feared it.

Frizzle raised a claw and nodded, she was really chill about hearing we’d have some trouble coming to us as soon as tomorrow and wanted to protect the city if the narrowed look in her eyes were anything to go by.

“I know a lot of species of Digimon, but Etemon is one I haven’t personally dealt with or met yet in person… for some reason I think I should feel lucky about that. I prefer interacting with rookies and champions for a reason and had to avoid anything bigger like an ultimate. God of all pucks help me if another mega sees me as target to pursue like Hiandromon, that guy was a bit relentless given how far he pursued me from the south.” Canard looked to us. “That said, an Ultimate level Digimon is nothing to sneeze at and his minions are likely to be Rookies or Champion levels, mostly cannon fodder at best for us if we all put in some effort. As for Etemon himself, we’d never beat him even if all of us took him on without at least a few Champions working with us.”

“I can take on the grunts with some help from you guys, but Etemon himself… we’re going to need a darn good fighter for that and at least we already have a Digimon with the right element to do a little damage. Etemon is weak to fire… that’s about it as blunt trauma doesn’t phase them one bit so earth based and most forms of physical Digimon attack do zip.” Sami was looking at Frizzle when she said that and the lazy red lizard nodded with a slight gleam in her eyes. “They are arrogant and very much in love with their own voices, but when they get serious… they fight dirty, they fight rough and they can give you a beating at a pretty good speed despite keeping up their goofball act entirely while doing it. If they start going hour long infomercial spiel, then we’ll need to put them down hard and fast because they might soon become MetalEtemon and then they’d be impossible to deal with… in more ways than one… so many Andromons…”

“I’d still like to try myself against Etemon to gauge his strength, us Pokémon are pretty hardy beings and if you need fire…” The markings along Dazzle’s backside spewed purple slightly and then promptly lit on fire, Frizzle took a moment to appreciate the flames and then pulled out a pan with something in it and held it over the flames without Dazzle paying her any attention. “Well you do have another lizard who specializes in poison, fire and flammable poison. I’m still learning to sing so I can do my Round move better.”

“Less worried about Etemon now, but still pretty darn worried if he’s going to be surrounded by powerful minions.” At least Sami had a pretty good idea of this Etemon’s strength and could measure it against our strength.

“Dolly can increase the power of fire based attacks with her wind magic if it helps.” It was me simply acknowledging just how much support duty Dolly kept pulling when she wanted to be more front and center at times. I have to give it to Dolly, she knew how to keep a bright attitude going in the face of adversities that keep beating mine to a creamy pulp. “Also I can work on a technique I haven’t gotten correct quite yet.”

“That Blazing Thousand Spear thing, yeah, that one still needs work Pom. Stick to the wolf claws if you have to really dig into the fighting and keep your wool protection up.” It was something Dolly was trying to help me with before and after the battle of Fontaine, aside from Buster Wolf and Bark Buster, I still haven’t even perfected those two moves yet what with the anomalies I’ve seen from Dolly’s perspective in the Buster Wolf attack and I’m still trying to get the Bark Buster to be a bit more uniform in power even if it was a versatile attack that I have to spit in an arc. Bark Blast was still more powerful close up. “You need more practice with your Sheep’s Clothing wool shift, because you still tear your muscles really fast when using it. The only reason why you aren’t in agony is because those Sitrus Berries do a lot of good work fixing the pain you keep putting yourself in to even move that fast and wasn’t that the major problem with using Dancing Flame? Except that form isn’t just a burst of speed, it’s constantly on. We only have so many of those berries Pom and we might need them soon.”

“Noted.” I continued to eat quietly as I thought of what to do or be worried about tomorrow, I slurped up a few noodles and considered something. “What’s a Jijimon, should we worry about the guy that’s stated to be the protector of the Dalmamon?”

“Etemon probably wouldn’t want to mess with him. Jijimon are really powerful, everyone’s grandpa kind of guy. They are a mega level Digimon that tends to hide their full true strength behind a sweet old man visage, endanger those they care for at your own risk.” Again Sami was a fountain of information and it sounds like that grandpa was a dangerous guy and would be doing the job of guarding innocent Digimon lives if the city went into an uproar. “Even so, he can’t be everywhere at once and will likely take down more than his fair share of Digimon that try to hurt any local baby Digimon or even the Dalmamon who we’ve heard are having battle programming problems. So we can’t rely on them to defend themselves effectively, they’ll be fine if he’s there to protect them at least.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t ask us, but I guess you probably already know that as champions we are kind of lacking in the outright combat department due to specializing in something. Uver and I are not entirely helpless though.” Hea-Gatomon sounded somewhat worried about the Dalmamon, despite her nervousness, she had befriended quite a few of them before we left. “As part of the UCT, Uver’s Courier Team, I can safely say that we can add two high speed mobility specialists and information gatherers that are quite decent in combat too and would be good at rescuing and or moving others to safety. Another Champion that can fight at an Ultimate level and just an Ultimate outright. We’re willing to throw in and help, because I think Uver is looking to make this entire realm, or just this city at least, a vacation spot. I mean fixing up this place as much as he did when you weren’t going to be here forever or for long was rather suspicious.”

“Yep.” Uver said lazily.

“Good, you’ll probably be able to help us out a lot then if your friends are as mobile as you say they can be. Let’s finish our food, get some sleep and then go see that Jijimon about some information on possibly giving us a direction or at least some rumors to finding Etemon before he becomes too much of a hassle.” With any amount of horrible luck Canard, I know we’ll find him and it’ll be another hard and painful day for me. “You can do your own thing to give us directions to our target and help us out where you can, but don’t put yourselves into danger over it.”

Dolly sent me a look knowing exactly my thoughts and eventually asked for a banana as a dessert based treat now that she’s finished her meal. She knew we were going to need all the sleep we get tonight to survive whatever happens tomorrow.

Soon Frizzle was pulling her pan off of Dazzle’s back and Dazzle glared at the gently smiling red lizard who started slicing up some flash fried cinnamon roll bread and silently offered it to anyone who wanted some.

Dazzle grumbled a bit about being used like that despite taking a slice for herself. It was some good dessert.

-The next day, the streets-

“This city is still a bit eerily quiet Pom.” Dolly that’s usually the kind of thing that you shouldn’t say. Since when you say it, it usually leads to a massive of fights breaking out.

We were well on our way to Jijimon’s house, which was apparently the strange cardboard box building we passed on the way to the park, it also double as a Digi-tama raising facility for baby Digimon. The one hundred and one Dalmamon’s home was basically next door to the place and playing up the dog stereotypes quite clearly, much to Dolly’s distaste for the buildings design.

Didn’t think that the four or five story home should be designed like a bright neon orange fire hydrant, I could also see Di Lodovico’s paw work on the building given the random splotches of paint to add darker colors to the eye searing building and making it less so.

We just had to hope Jijimon wasn’t too busy to see us.

-Jijimon’s home-

Jijimon was tending to a bunch of baby Digimon when we showed up, they were so ridiculously adorable and squishy looking. One fox Digimon a blob with four tiny nubs for legs, a fluffy tail and big cylindrical fox ears basically bounced up to me excitedly looking for affection with another similar looking Digimon that was just a blob and tail, they reminded me of Renamon and probably what she looked like as a baby Digimon. I freely gave them some affection and they cuddled up against me cheerfully making happy growling noises.

“Oh, some visitors. Not one of those Trial Dalmamon I helped I see. It seems Relamon and Viximon really like you miss, they tend to be good judges of character.” If it wasn’t for my canid magnetism, that would be a more agreeable statement Jijimon. The guy looked old, felt old and even gave off the feeling of old with his cat paw staff, but the muscles he had were very sturdy and not wrinkly. The friendly persona was definitely hiding the truth of his actual strength.

“Oh-hohoho visitor’s, deary me, well the babies could use some worldly experiences with something unsual for a bit before their morning nap time.” One look at the other Digimon that looked as old as Jijimon, only female and Sami seemed to be quailing under the pressure of the two being in the room together. “Don’t fret deary, I’m just a simple Babamon.”

“Vaccine and another Mega.” Sami stated plainly with a hint of fear. “Two in the same room, the pressure is… daunting… to say the least.”

“Is that lady going to be alright, does she need a potty?” A small black baby blob Digimon with yellow eyes and two small ears asked, it received a few pats on the head from the false elderly looking grandma as the false elderly looking grandpa tended to some of the other babies around.

“Sorry about these sweet little darlings, we don’t get out much unless it’s to make sure these babies get their exercise.” Babamon stated and smiled. She had a similar incredible musculature compared to Jijimon and was also hiding her strength behind being a grandmotherly being. Her name reminded me that I couldn’t call Tianhuo last night, given the time disparity between worlds… that was a good reason, but still a problem for me as she was what was holding me together mentally. “As long as you don’t intend any harm, aside from accidental, you’ll be fine here… don’t make use tear apart your coding and raise you from in training.”

Sami was about to comment when a round blob with three eyes and a fuse bounced up to Sami and looked up at her.

“Boom-boom?” The baby said in honest awe of Sami.

“Bommon, do you need to go to the bathroom again?” Did Babamon just say bommon as in Bomb Monster?! What… I… that… a baby bomb… just what?

“Nu-nu… boom-boom!” The baby stated looking at Sami with worship while bouncing in place.

“Oh right, a Commandramon, specializes in quick digi-bomb construction and not necessarily the healthy kind if they aren’t careful about it and end up as a Raremon… must have happened to you given that wince. Sorry you had to go through such a terrible thing as putting down a friend my dear. The Bommon must recognize you as a possible form of its existence and is quite excited to meet you. Going to have a heck of a time keeping it grounded when it eventually becomes a Missimon. Those things tend to fly everywhere and are problematic to raise right.” After a pause Babamon looked around at us all through her hair covering her eyes. “Ah yes, you came here for a reason beyond meeting these little cuties… hohoho, they can be so distracting yes, why you’re little black and white friend seems popular with them too!”

“Pom… help me…” Dolly was basically covered in Baby Digimon affectionately rubbing up against her, she thought they were as adorable as I did. Now she was swamped with them.

“We’re sorry to bother you ma’am, but we hear there’s going to be trouble popping up soon and came to warn you about it. We also wanted to know if you’ve heard anything about an Etemon being in the city.” Canard immediately flopped onto his butt when we all felt the pressure from the grandma and grandpa Digimon as they focused on us entirely now.

The babies didn’t seem to feel it, but they did quiet down a bit and look at their caretakers with slight worry. Jijimon patted one of their heads and their moods lightened up immediately and they went back to playing with one another.

“We might be taking care of many more babies than we can handle in the future, but it’s a living. No trouble makers touching anyone that hasn’t hit Rookie on our watch. After that you need to start growing up a little on your own two feet, but we don’t leave you high and dry if you ask for help. At Champion you’re good to go find yourself unless you want to take up child rearing with us. It’s a rewarding profession don’t get me wrong, but it can be quite tiring keeping up with so many little tyke bombs. In a literal sense sometimes.” Jijimon stated bluntly and firmly as he had a tan Digimon with wiggly ears cuddle up against him and gestured at Bommon. “Don’t know where that monkey is, but if he so much as bothers our baby tending operations here… then he will be one quick Ex-Digimon let me tell you even if he does become a MetalEtemon, Babamon has some real fire in her. However we’re not going to go running about looking for them, don’t have the time as you can tell. I do have an idea try the data river front area of the city to the east, the coast to the west side of the city seems fine from what I last saw and the Digi-food plantation is still running smoothly. Thank you for the heads up, wish we could do more to help, at least we’ll be ready now for a chaotic outbreak of aggressive Digimon. You can send any Digimon that might son need help our way. We’ll take in the injured, the sick and any Digimon that needs us in a temporary manner, no matter what type they are. So long as we can trust them to not harm our little ones here on purpose.”

“To the east eh… thanks for the tip at least, we’ll check that way.” Canard looked over to Frizzle and saw a bunch of red baby Digimon with bat winged ears crawling on her and then looked at his shoulder to see another one smiling at him. “Once we figure out how to get untangled from these little ones…”

“They are quite a handful… yes.” Jijimon said while stroking his beard. “Excuse me Babamon, but I need to go check on the Dalmamon and make sure they aren’t running off like that Variance always is. Quite a troublemaking Digimon that one, but she’s trying to find herself and I can’t truly fault her for her frustrations given she’s a Search Engine with nothing to look forward to… quite literally being incapable of living out her function and not having the ability to defend herself too well. At least Pickle understands and is careful, one of the reasons why I let him lead expeditions to the park with all the other Dalmamon. Come by here again and spend some time with the babies when the whole Etemon situation blows over if you survive it. I’ll help round up these little rascals first, so you can leave without one of them clinging to you. Like that yellow one there… wait… that’s a biological? Heh-heh-heh, haven’t seen nothing like that bug before, kind of like the dark colored lizard… must be with you I assume. What an interesting beings, it looks like we’re about to make friends with some real monsters from the reality we’re connected to hoo-hoo!”

After that Jijimon, who made me feel like I was visiting my grandpa, and Babamon gathered up the little ones and counted them and made sure they weren’t getting clingy like Bommon was to Sami so we could leave. The babies all whined sadly to see us go, soon Jijimon exited after we did and headed towards the fire hydrant.

-The next few streets over to the east, Canard-

Didn’t take us long to find trouble at the riverfront area.

I pulled my Puck Pistol as soon as I heard someone shouting for help as we came to the digital river running through the center of Server City.

“Help, we’re under attack, Goblimon and Kamemon are on a rampage!” A Bearmon, haven’t seen one of those in a while. The backwards blue cap wearing small bear Digimon was being chased by some ugly green brutes with clubs in various shapes, sometimes resembling meat on a bone.

One was leaping for the battered Bearmon with a raised club and I put a puck between that ugly green mugs eyes knocking him down and onto his back. His data fluctuated a bit due to the amount of damage the Digi-puck did. I ran out of real ammo a long time ago trying to fight of Digimon.

My Puck Pistol proved effective against Rookie and Champion levels, but could barely scratch Ultimate, much less the paint on Hiandromon’s chaser mech. High speed burning pucks should do more damage than that, but as I’ve learned… Digimon do wonky things to physics calculations on their home turf.

Gods and goddesses of the noble hockey mask, I hope everyone back on Puck World didn’t switch to the dissidents sport that is known as Soccer.

“Let’s go everyone!” I said taking the lead and charging forward before that Bearmon got surrounded and deleted. Pom was already ahead of us with Dolly riding her into battle, they were focusing on the Bearmon.

277. Server City Ransom Pt. 2.

Author's Note

Music: Main Theme- River City Ransom.

277. Server City Ransom Pt. 2.

-Digital Realm, Server City Riverside, Pom-

“Stop, can’t we talk this out?!” I was at least going to try to make a token effort to talk them down, the one Canard shot got back up and aside from bruise he, seemingly enough, was perfectly fine with taking a flaming hot hockey puck to the skull.

In general the monster green, two large bottom fangs sticking out from their lower jaws and in general wielding clubs. Must have a really thick skull, which made the following conversation the only lead to obvious conclusion I was trying to ignore coming.

“Nope, we’re Goblimon, the most generic of minions to most violent Digimon or more importantly Ogremon and he’s choosing to work with the self-proclaimed King of Digimon. We are literally called Evil Digimon and live up to it, it’s not a stereotype if it’s true!” The goblimon stated flatly. “We are the boys that what never stop fighting or hurting those we need too to hold our territories, also we like taking more territories. If you get in our way like Bearmon tried, then you gets pounded on. Do you honestly think you can stop our gangs from causing trouble with flowery words? Good luck with that.”

“Yes, I actually did, but I’d rather we talk thing through and try to work out our issues.” Did violence really need to happen here? All the Goblimon raised their weapons high up while glaring me down.

“Yes, that’s what we do. Causing destruction is fun for us, but we also don’t mind being hurt doing it either!” I reached into my bag and pulled out the Stone Bone to block the Goblimon’s wooden club and was sent skidding backwards on my three legs, since I didn’t brace for impact with any of them and took the force of the blow. So these guys were physically strong, but there was no thought or skill put into it. Also somewhat lacking in speed because I actually blocked that easily enough. “Now if you are done talking about stuff we don’t care about, then fight! Don’t worry about our health, because we certainly won’t about yours and you couldn’t kill us if you tried. You’ll see what kind of problem we truly are presenting soon enough. So fight with all you have, we gobbo’s will eventually grind you into dust!”

There were at least twenty of them here alone and I stayed protectively in front of the bear to protect him. Canard came up to me wielding his puck pistol and I held the bone shaped club defensively, Dolly was readying to sling her board outwards from my back and our friends bringing up the rear were preparing ranged attacks. Lit was sitting there in Dolly’s fur, likely biding his time before taking action.

“Okay punk, what do you mean that you don’t have to worry about your health? You guys tend to get wiped out pretty fast when you start causing too much of a ruckus.” It wasn’t just Canard who was curious as to why they seemed unafraid to take a beating.

All the Goblimon were spreading out and ready to start attacking, they didn’t seem to particularly care about their lives or there was something we were missing here.

Speaking of missing, the two Uvers Courier Team members were off looking into information and summoning their friends. Hea-Gatomon was seeking information on her own quietly in safer places and would be in the area around Jijimon’s home for safety. Uver teleported off to get in contact with and bring in his powerful high speed, rather capable in combat, friends to come in as support for finding Etemon.

This meant my group of Dazzle, Dolly, Lit, Canard, Frizzle, Sami and myself were going to be looking for clues to Etemon’s whereabouts actively as a group. We would also be helping any innocent Digimon that may be getting attacked in the city like the strange bear I was protecting.

“Um there sure are a lot of them, are you sure you don’t want to just… you know… run for it?” Looking down at the cowering bear I gave him a friendly smile.

“Don’t worry about us, we can handle this.” I just had to get over my distaste for violence, because here they come.

“We’re all about ruining someone’s good day, Gabbah Gabbah!” The Goblimon in the vest and shorts charged forward and I was getting Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the highly noticeable resemblance to the Pukwudgies of Equus cry before they assaulted you with malicious intent despite their small statures.

These guys were a lot bigger than pukwudgies and well they seemed to share an aesthetic… oh no…

To my horror, I have just realized that the Goblimon were this worlds Pukwudgies and that peaceful negotiation was never going to be an option.

The Goblimon tried to smash me with his weapon again and I braced all the wool on my right side in place along with both hind legs, his weapon landed and didn’t move my right leg as the bone held up to the impact. This seemed to stun him and I brought my left front leg around to slam my hoof into his belly.

“Barf!” Why in the world did he make that noise as I sent him sliding across the ground? I unlocked my wool to deflect another club, the Goblimon were all attacking at once.

The Goblimon that attacked me was kicked in the face and launched over the nearby fence into the river by Canard, he turned and fired his pistol into the skull of the one he had shot previously taking them down in a swirl of light that left behind some weird objects.

Several bullets flew past, all of them having tracers as Sami started to fire at the Goblimon on our right slowing them down. Another went down and also disappeared into a swirling vortex, what was going on? That didn’t look how it was described when a Digimon evaporates back into the Digi-tama reincarnation system.

Two Goblimon tripped over a metal bar on the left that was knocked over by Dazzle’s Flame Burst hitting it in a way to topple it into their paths.

That’s when Frizzle joined the fight with a wild look in her eyes with a trash can held above her head had and slammed it down on the two Goblimon making them disappear in swirls and leave behind more strange things on the ground. She kicked the trash can and sent it rolling through the air into one of three Goblimon unlucky enough to not be able to dodge the trash can in time. Letting out a growl, she held up her left clawed arm and caught a chain that wrapped around it and pulled the Goblimon to her to bite him in the neck and he quickly disappeared in a swirl of light. She seemed upset about something and then took to wielding the chain in her left hoof to smack down another incoming Goblimon.

I stayed in front of the Bear Digimon who was looking curiously on as another Goblimon disappeared leaving behind more strange stuff on the ground.

“What’s that stuff they are leaving behind?” I asked.

“It’s Digi-credits, something is off… why would they leave money behind like that?” The bear answered and then asked a question of his own as Dolly slung her board around to the left knocking down a Goblimon trying to capitalize on my inattention. “Also how are they disappearing in swirls of light, it is not natural. Someone get those incoming Falcomon!”

“Orders received!” Sami belted out and turned her weapons fire upwards at the birds gliding in for us as one tried to dive bomb me only to have its wing shot out and it went spiraling into the ground and erupted into yet another vortex. “Leave them to me!”

Canard moved forward and stomped on the Goblimon, which Dolly had knocked down, twice and upon the second stomp with his boot it disappeared leaving a pile of Digi-credits behind and a large concerned frown crossed his beak.

Even Canard, the pushing eight foot tall muscular alien duck wearing slapdash armor and was pretty strong if he’s survived stuff like this for so long, thought something was off with the way the Goblimon disappeared after taking too many powerful hits.

I didn’t have much time to think on it or the information I was slowly piecing together as Digi-credits were being left all over the street and some of the other Goblimon were going for them.

As another came at me and I flicked the bone club up into its hand and disarmed it with a second speedy blow after loosening its hand, my left hoof went forward and slammed him in the face taking him down. We’re not killing them, I knew that much and while slightly thankful… something was up.

“Okay gangs of Server City, hold up you fighting for territory for the moment and let the defenders have a moment to rest, I got some information to dish out for those who aren’t fans of the King of Digimon… that’s right it’s Etemon talking to you all live and the fighting in the streets is epic!” A voice announced sounding loud and throughout the city, the ten or so remaining Goblimon stopped for a moment and so did the seven Falcomon who landed from their glides on the edges of the building to our left. They were all listening in to this even if it wasn’t too important to them. “It seems like a few of you guys under me are already losing some fights. So let me inform everybody of the latest product now on sale for any Digimon, since the proof of concept is… a resounding success, yes we’re doing a live testing of the knew Backspace System. You can even look at the code yourself and see it is on the up and up, buy one for yourself after I finish my announcement and try it for yourself. If you defeated one of the gang members then you’ve noticed swirling lights and them disappearing instead of dying and turning into Digi-tama after taking too many nasty hits right? Well that’s the power of the Backspace System, it helps a Digimon retreat from a fight to heal and come back after you later for revenge! All you need you need is some Digi-credits to make it work and a safe place to return to, so if you have a base and some territory this will backspace you right into relatively safety where you can heal and lick your wounds from a rough fight. Giving all the little guys a chance to fight as much as the tough guys, if you enjoy a fight and don’t want to die at the end to have your data consumed by your much stronger opponent you definitely couldn’t handle, then the Backspace System is for you! The only downsides to using it is that it’ll use up whatever Digi-credits you’re holding onto to evacuate you away as soon as you take too much damage, you’ll also leave a lot of Digi-credits behind too, it also doesn’t prevent pain so that’s more incentive to win fights if someone else has the system! If you don’t have Digi-credits or a place to safely return to, then the Backspace System is going to be quite ineffective. The gangs roving the streets are already equipped with this system, so those of you who don’t have it… well you better be fighting for your lives long enough to buy one! Those who don’t have a Backspace System, well you’re out of luck as far as defeating the gangs is concerned. As I may have implied previously, the Backspace System is on sale for any Digimon willing to buy one, decently cheap. The Backspace System, erasing total defeat as long as you have the dosh to use it! Note the Backspace Systems can be found in the shopping district to the north of the Riverside area where some of my thugs are already losing. Get back in there and fight harder you hear me, I want more dosh to work with to get my singing career off the ground! We’ve already got a few Goblimon and Falcomon resting off their injuries, they’ll be back out there soon enough harassing all of you in no time… I assure you… welcome to your fight for a slice of Server City~!”

This Etemon guy sounded both hammy and scarily devious... yet he was doing this to become rich and famous, by sending gangs out as incentive to buy this Backspace System thing? Who would be dumb enough… actually, yeah, I would probably want one of those Backspace Systems too if it would have been useful to save Dormarch. However Dormarch’s virus would have made it a moot point judging by the way Etemon said it works.

“Well that’s going to be annoying, we can’t actually permanently defeat any Digimon unless we can buy one and figure out how it’s doing what it’s doing. That or we’ll have to beat up a Digimon enough that they run completely out of credits and maybe take one of the systems off of them before they reincarnate. We’ll head towards that shopping district after we’re done here.” Carnard grumbled as he held his pistol up and clenched his left fist ready to continue fighting the Goblimon and Falcomon, the Falcomon jumped from the roofs to our left and the Goblimon charged forwards.

One Falcomon was immediately hit with a flaming puck and crashed into the ground in to a split second of a swirling vortex.

Dodging to the left away from a wooden club with screws poking out of it, Canard threw a particularly painful hook into the skull of another Goblimon sending credits spewing into the air as it disappeared.

I gripped the stone bone club in both hooves and blocked one attack, Dolly jammed the nose of her board into the Goblimon’s face staggering them and then swung it outwards and to the right with increased momentum to deflect another one doing a lunging swing with his right arm.

Being hit in midair by the board threw off the Goblimon’s aim and he barely landed on his left foot and was flailing entirely off balance.

I brought the bone up into the left side of the Goblimon’s chin in front of me and then continue the motion into the blow to spin to the right strike the left temple of the Goblimon on the right taking them down in a vortex, the Goblimon in front of me was trying to get up.

I still disliked fighting, but… if it was unavoidable, then we might need to cost these Digimon something for coming after us. I was about to let off a bark blast and when the bear ran by me and slammed his left claw into the Goblimon and a vortex sucked up them up in front of me.

“Sorry, but you looked conflicted there and I figured it was better that I do it.” The bear said rubbing at the back of his head underneath the blue cap he was wearing, he had a weak grin and didn’t seem to take pleasure in having to do that either as he went back to being behind me. While grunting and holding his right arm in pain, he didn’t look too healthy.

Three Falcomon fell from the air in a blast of flames from Dazzle and were pummeled into their Backspace Systems disappearing through vortexes by Sami with her rifle leaving behind money that Frizzle was quickly scooping up as she rammed shoulder first into a Goblimon and bit another one in the arm like a rabid raptor before it could complete its swing.

Frizzle was getting kind of scary as she slashed a metal meter pole and kicked it into a Goblimon making them disappear in a vortex from the force they were hit with, she followed that by leaping up and tearing a Falcomon from the air with her teeth. A few bites on the poor grounded bird it disappeared. She did that with… her… teeth… eeh…

I’m beginning to think Frizzle was a natural battle maniac and there weren’t very many Goblimon left for her to brutalize. Even Dazzle looked a little spooked with how Frizzle was fighting.

Dolly was watching my right and I was paying attention to my front, so imagine my surprise when Lit leap up from Dolly’s back and fired a powerful blast of lightning into the Goblimon that went wide and around Canard who missed kicking him and leapt for me.

As soon as the bolt hit the pained figured disappeared into a vortex and the bolt bounced to the next and so on.

Sami gunned down any remaining Goblimon. She also took care of any Falcomon, the gliding bird monster, which just showed up and hadn’t immediately started fleeing the area after watching what Frizzle did to one of theirs. Speaking of Frizzle the Guilmon, she seemed to have calmed down and the intelligent look in her eyes was less bestial than it was a second ago she tested the chain she wrapped around her left and nodded to herself.

“Okay, I thinks that’s all of them around here… can you tell us what’s going on?” I turned to the bear and he shivered looking around and then turned to me.

“Thanks for protecting me, all kinds of Digimon started rioting in the shopping center, maybe it’s because Etemon wanted to put a shop there for selling those Backspace System. I think that’s where the Kamemon are still running wild when the Goblimon ran me off for trying to fight back, didn’t know Falcomon were involved too… I guess it is true, not all vaccine types are good Digimon.” He smiled at me weakly. “I’m Bearmon nice to meet you by the way. I’d have helped more, but I’m kind of weak at the moment. I think I might have saw some Monitamon over there too, so watch your back they like to sneak attack from the rooftops like the Falcomon. They are monitor headed Digimon with colorful ninja aesthetics, surprisingly stealthy even if you’re not looking directly at them.”

“Head towards Jijimon’s area of the city, that’ll be our rallying point for injured Digimon or Digimon that want to avoid the fighting.” I pointed to the west and Bearmon nodded to me and quickly set off.

“Come on, the shopping district is to the north and one street over.” Canard motioned us forward and set off with the others, I was about to stow my bone club when Dolly stopped me and held out her paw expectantly.

I gave her a look and she nodded, I thought about it for a few second and put the stone bone club in her paw and she hopped off of my back and was taking on a two legged stance while wielding the bone. She rested the bone over her right shoulder and pushed her board forward with her left leg, Dolly was going to wield it as unwieldly as it would be for her because it was somewhat heavy. If she could get some momentum going it would be a more devastating in her paws as I was better with my bare hooves.

Lit squeaked and clung to Dolly’s shoulder and looked about before giving us a determined look. We went to follow the others as they turned to the left onto the street leading to the shopping district, Dazzle waited for us to catch up and when we got to the shopping district there were Digimon already fighting by the time we arrived.

-Hiandromon-

As a mechanical vaccine type Digimon of law and order, it was my job to stop chaos and it seemed like the entire city has just broke out into that since I couldn’t catch that elusive criminal Canard. I watched as the sheep entity that fell out of the sky and joined my quarry turn down an alleyway heading towards the shopping district.

My spinning blade hand rammed into the Goblimon I was holding and it disappeared into a vortex before it could take enough damage to be forced to reincarnate in the Digi-tama system, this Backspace System was making it quite problematic to uphold the order of this digital realm.

Fortunately for them, they were across the river from me, or else I’d have attacked them immediately and I was already dealing with scurrilous curs as it was. They were everywhere and ruining this cities bright future! I turned and stared down the various Goblimon that looked a lot braver in trying my patience.

“Criminal scum like you are going to be reincarnated into model citizens by the time I’m done fixing what’s wrong with this city!” I used my move copy and paste to lock on to the enemy viruses and then started to fire off crescent blades of lightning.

I would find Etemon and make him pay for creating this horrible Backspace System!

-Pom-

There was a bipedal blue dog Digimon with boxing gloves that was having issues with the Kamemon, as described quickly to me by Sami as being armored turtles with spherical wheels on their belly for ramming attacks. She charged out and started looking around carefully, she wasn’t attacking anyone wildly like anyone that went near Frizzle who was wildly wailing on someone with the chain wrapping around her left wrist.

The others were already stuck into fighting several of them, more Goblimon and a few strange green slimy looking slug things throwing strange curled up pink stuff around that smelled horrible even at this distance. Dazzle blasted some of that gross smelling pink stuff as it went sailing our way and quickly crawled up and along the wall to get a better angle on the fighting.

Looking back to the blue dog, it reminded me of an akita dog. One that was wearing a red bandana around his forehead and was having issues with getting close to his opponent as they kept pelting him with blasts of water. The Kamemon resembled Squirtles a little too much and there were several sliding around and one just knocked over Canard.

I saw something leap from the nearby roof towards the boxing gloved dog. Dolly, focused as I did and shot forward kicking her board off the ground into an air spin she brought the bone around building momentum as she did and slammed it into the right side of the strange box head creature which was about to hit the blue boxing gloved dog with a fireball.

I quickly ran forward and fired a Bark Blast as the strange heading pudgy bodied creature barely took the blow and had twisted with it, bark busters required a bit too much energy even if they were stronger, and the battered creature disappeared into a vortex.

It was becoming hard to tell who to fight given there were so many Digimon fighting one another.

“Stop it with the water already… also thanks for the save you two!” As the dog turned to thank us for having his back the turtle tucked into itself, landed on its belly and shot forward. I moved in front of the dog, crouched down and quickly stuck all my legs to the ground and shifted my front legs to angle upwards like a ramp.

The turtle slammed into me and went slightly up my legs from momentum. I rocked with the blow and slammed my chin downwards, the turtle flipped and flopped onto its back where it helplessly flailed.

“Dolly!” Dolly entered a manual on her board and went spinning forward towards the turtle while using the spin to raise the stone bone. With one final spin she brought the club around in a golf swing, the turtle went spinning away and slamming through a crowd of the green slimes, several of its armored helmeted friends up until it punctured the side of a dumpster. It eventually vortexed out given the dumpster glowed after a few seconds.

“Hmph… I don’t think I needed your help that much. You might be good looking on the eyes and I can get to know you later, but I’ve got a brother to find. Names Gaomon, since my big brother isn’t here I guess I’ll see you later when I’m done searching for him.” The blue dog quickly ran off into a nearby alleyway and out of the fighting going on in the street. “I would like to get to know you more, but now isn’t the time for that when these punks are likely overrunning my favorite training gym!”

I quickly made my way over to Sami who started shooting the green slime creatures.

I crouched down behind the orange soldier lizard and she glanced at me and then went back to shooting the green slime creatures.

“Ugh, I thought I had enough of these darned poop throwers after that Sukamon mission where three Commandramon drowned under a deluge of… egh… I’ve heard of crappy details, but that one was one of the worst. I’m still not sure that was worse than having to outright kill one of my best friends who went Raremon.” Sami looked like she wanted to throw up, also that pink stuff was poop?! Dolly and I looked at each other with slightly green faces. “Numemon, nasty sewer Digimon, don’t go near them unless you actually want them to fling their digi-poop at you. The box head you took down was a Monitamon, keep a wary eye out if there’s one, then there’s probably more around here. Some Commandramon went out in horrible ways to guys like Numemon as much as their even worse evolutionary version Sukamon which look like large poops and throws even more of it at you. If you see a large yellow poop shaped monster similar to those pink poops those Numemon are flinging about, it’ll have two arms, a large tongue and wild cracked eyes, then please warn me so I can start an early fighting retreat. I’m definitely not going out like that, I have too many friends to live for!”

Sami raised her gun and fired a series of shot into a Goblimon that was trying to sneak up on Canard who had finished wiping out three Goblimon and was distracted by a Numemon trying to throw that pink poop stuff at him.

I wouldn’t want any of that one me either… I glanced at Dolly to see if she wanted to go forward into that mess and she shook her head no and glanced at her board. Canard seemed to have things handled for the moment despite more Falcomon and Goblimon, possibly even the same ones we defeated, came onto the street to back up the Kamemon that were regrouping.

We needed to check one of the nearby shops to see if we can find some information on these Backspace System things.

“Which shop should I check?” There were plenty of weird shops and the Digimon inside seemed a bit worried about all the fighting going on in the streets out here.

Another blast of exploding flames and several Monitamon went flying and disappearing due to Dazzle as they seemed to be trying to cover themselves with lighting while leaping for Canard who was front and center of the action.

Lit lit up a slime monster with a lightning bolt from Dolly’s back as it tried to charge for us and they popped into a vortex. So they were also trouble causing Digimon part of the aggressive gangs attacking everyone… either that or they just recently bought Backspace Systems. This was quickly becoming a mess and the only way to tell who was a bad guy here would be if someone was being ganged up on or if I was being attacked outright.

“That one, here take some Digi-credits with you.” She shoved a square thing into my hoof and started shooting as more green slime creatures popped up from the nearby sewer hole and attacked absolutely everyone. So were the Numemon chaotic neutral? That’s just adding even more questions. “Order a large for me, I’m going to need the energy for some DCD Bombs today!”

I took the credits in hoof and ran into the nearby shop Sami pointed out with Dolly following me as the fighting in the street worsened.

“Hello and welcome to Mc-digi’s!” The pink bird behind the counter said in a friendly tone. I looked up at the menu and blinked. “I’m Biyomon, how can I help you today?”

“A smile?” Why was that on the menu as free?

The Biyomon smiled at me brightly, her happy beak brightened up the entire room by several degrees. Whoa, that was quite a powerful smile and the shine of her happy bright face filled me with a temporary calming peace. Then my paranoia about how this day was already going and how it would inevitably end won out.

“Would you like anything else?” Biyomon said in a continued chipper tone despite all the noise and fighting going on outside, it was like she was not fazed by it all in the slightest.

Dolly was sending me images of what was going on out there. Canard was getting swarmed, but he was doing pretty well despite that with punching, kicking, stomping downed opponents and just in general shooting anything that moved with a flaming puck.

The number of Rookie Digimon weren’t very threatening when Frizzle was going wild with a baseball bat on them in her right hand and whipping about a chain in her left. The quiet bread loving Digimon was disturbing me by quite a bit, as she seemed to be delving into all the carnage so easily. That she was also picking up a lot of Digi-credits was curious, bread money maybe?

“Some information and… a large for my Commandramon friend named Sami out there.” I said as I held out the Digi-credits, Biyomon took it and swiped it through something with a wing and then gave it back a cheerful grin never leaving her face. I took it in hoof. “Uh…”

“The large will be done soon, the Agumon will be working on that in the back. Meanwhile I’ll try to help you with information if I know anything for free, ask away, what do you wish to know?” The Biyomon smiled, but not as brightly as the ‘free’ smile. Guess you have to ask for that, the customer service in this realm was almost as good as what I would find back on Equus at a Hayburger.

Too bad that I wasn’t sure if digital or information based food agreed with me, much less fast fried food at that… but Canard survived off it so it couldn’t have been too horrible… right? Well Canard did cry a little when he got some real food from Uver, how long has he been stuck getting into these situations exactly? The time disparity of the digital worlds must be brutally long winded, meaning you could live for thousands of years and only have a year pass by for your body physically.

“Can you tell me where they are selling those Backspace Systems, also what’s going on out there… I mean aside from the obvious?” I pointed my hoof outside as Canard had somehow got a hold of a hockey stick at some point and was now mercilessly beating down Digimon left and right with it, he seemed to be far too good with using that thing as a weapon to be normal. Then again his religion was hockey… so it probably checks out. “What’s you’re take on all this?”

“Well… Etemon’s got those Backspace Systems being sold in a store three shops down to the left as you exit, so a bit up north from here. They aren’t a bad bit of coding either, no hidden tricks or viruses whatsoever and they do what he says they do. They prevent an early reincarnation by having your data shredded and eaten by a more violent Digimon and evacuate you to the safety at the cost of Digi-credits for the convenience. I’m surprised as anyone else that it’s not a scam Etemon’s selling… they tend to do that a lot.” Biyomon stated that last part dryly with an equally dry look on her face, before she returned to her bright cheeriness. “It’s equally suspicious to see Etemon marketing a working product, I doubt Etemon came up with the Backspace System on his own though. So you might want to try looking for who created that if you’re planning on dealing with that nuisance that’s started a city wide riot. I don’t like all the fighting, but the Backspace Systems apparently are getting some very good advertising from all of it. If any good, preferably paying, Digimon needs a place to go or heal, then tell them they can reliably set Mc-digi’s as their safe base to recover at. We have a mini-firewall barrier on this place to prevent those thugs from getting in, but they can still run off all our customers from out there or even keep them trapped in here so we can’t get anymore customers, big hint there for when you leave. We may not be handing out any food for free, but my smile will always be! Here’s your order, if you intend to be a part of the fighting to save our once quiet city, then please do so with my heartfelt wishes that you succeed at doing something important to help prevent this mess from getting worse!”

“I will be trying at least, thank you for the smile and the ‘large’ whatever this is.” I took the bag from Biyomon, smelled like cooked meat and various other things grilled and dipped into a vat of oil to be flash fried.

“You’re welcome, come again sometime!” The one called Agumon stated while waving his claws to me before hugging Biyomon and going into the back.

I was about to go out the doorway, but stopped.

I motioned for Dolly to go first, she zipped past the doorway and avoided a wooden club smashing down into the street. The Goblimon that had been waiting for us didn’t avoid my right hoof smashing him across the face for trying to ambush us a second later, as he disappeared into a vortex.

I sighed, okay where was Sami? Wait… what in the world was that thing?! Frizzle went flying past me missing both the bat and the chain, having been thrown by a hulking monster to go sliding across the ground.

Dazzle struck at the monster with an exploding fireball and he simply held up his left hand as it exploded against it, singing it moderately.

“Abobo the Bulkmon is enjoying his day, also you all seem like good fighters!” I’m suddenly reminded of Jock Hawk from just looking at the large bruiser of a monster with his fist crackling with lightning as he stared down at the much smaller and backing away Canard. The large lizard flexed and his muscles seemed to grow even larger. He was like a combination of Shocking Awe and Jock Hawk, what kind of Tartarus is this world where something like that even exists?! “All this fighting is awesome, let’s do some more! Maybe King Etemon will pay me tons of Digi-credits for taking out his dissenters… wouldn't that be you guys? Fun!”

278. Server City Ransom Pt. 3.

Author's Note

Music: CPS3 Remix - River City Ransom - Boss Theme

278. Server City Ransom Pt. 3.

-????, Oleander-

I dodged to the side as a… was that the slide of a trombone?!

Looking up as the bladed slide pulled back slightly, I glared at the one holding the trombone.

The guy had long white hair, a dark coat and was wielding a trombone with a bladed slide. He had such a smug smile on his face too, because he was quite familiar to me.

“You’re coming after me, me of all people, with a weaponized trombone?” Well two could play at that game, now where would one find an armored sousaphone tank...

“WHAT A LUDICROUSLY DESIGNED TROMBONE, GIVEN IT ONLY LOOKS TO DESIGNED TO PLAY B-SHARP! Actually pretty clever considering who our foe is.” It seemed Fred was impressed by the sheer audacity of him coming after us with a Trombone, he dropped down onto the ground and started to slowly play it and walk towards us. “Is he doing his own theme song on that trombone? THAT IS SO AWESOME!”

“Fred, he just tried to kill me, you know… the lovely dark unicorn you’re betrothed to.” I said flatly.

“Yes and we’ll have to maul him for that, but you have to admit that’s got to be the classiest way to make an evil entrance and there’s the whole sheer audacity of trying to stab you with it!” It looks like we had a one winged angel to slay, again… because killing him doesn’t seem to stick no matter how many times we’ve tried before.

-Digital Realm, Server City Shopping District, Pom-

The Numemon, which had been fighting just about anything that moved, all jumped into the nearest sewer hole in fear. The Monitamon, Goblimon, Falcomon and Kamemon also retreated at the sight of the hulking mass of rippling muscle into the nearby alleyways, mostly out of fear and not wanting to have their skulls squished like sparrows eggs between the muscle monsters thighs.

The bulky yellow lizard had a metal mask covering the top of his head and a zigzagging lightning bolt horn sticking through it from above the his nose. The only other accoutrements were the strange green pattern on his chest leading to lines going into all his limbs and then there were the two fingerless or clawless gloves on huge three clawed hands. I can understand running from the guy, he was terrifying and huge… far bigger and much more muscular than Canard was.

‘Abobo the Bulkmon’ didn’t waste any time before lighting up with lightning, he immediately lunged forward with insane speed and brought his right arm in an overhead swing and Canard narrowly avoided the blazingly fast fist that slammed into the street and cracked a large portion of it in a splash of lightning.

Canard came out of his roll firing a puck. It did a little damage, but I don’t think it even bruised him. In fact the act of attacking him just made Abobo grin.

Canard was farther away from Abobo than I was given how fast he was backing away with wide eyes from the electric lizard, Dolly was notably staying away too on her board wary of approaching something of that size.

I finally spotted Sami shivering behind a trash can and tossed her the sack, she quickly caught it and poured the contents into her mouth and started chewing before swallowing happily with her lips covered in condiments. She even swallowed the sack too afterwards.

Dazzle was the next to attack the large mountain of muscle, she tried a Toxic attack…

Tried being the keyword, as in a flash the purple fluid was flash evaporated in a brilliant beam of lightning from the muscle monsters horn.

Having avoided taking a direct hit that notably tore a burnt hole into the building to the point you can see through the hole to another hole. Dazzle’s body locked up when she was splashed by the attack puncturing the wall, this left her paralyzed and stuck clinging to the wall of a building.

That’s when Abobo turned his attention to me, I swallowed hard as he studied me.

“Heh, you seem like a good group of fighters in general. Don’t honestly see a reason to overpower all of you with lightning immediately, so take me in a close up and I’ll keep the lightning to a minimum… not that I’ll stop using it entirely mind you. Now make me feel alive by struggling!” Abobo charged for me, I went with my first instinct quickly went to spring high into the air to avoid him thrusting his right fist for my face almost before I could react.

The guy was insanely fast… this proved to be a huge mistake on my part the second I did jump, having managed to get over his fist swinging down at me and my body would have cleared his right shoulder.

Of the things I noticed immediately one was that this guy was strong given the damage to the street denoting an insane amount of toughness, two this guy was faster than Cu Chulainn and three was that he had an absurd reaction speed bordering on completely insane to impossible for something of his size and musculature.

He grabbed my right hind leg in a painfully tight grip of his left fist that my suddenly locked up wool was barely holding up against.

Time slowed down as I looked to the right into the guys eyes as his head turned to the right slightly to focus on me, that’s when I saw it. He apparently saw something he liked in that split second of grabbing my leg, because his grin went positively feral and the recognition that I was capable of keeping up with his speed was probably one of the worst things I could have done.

The next second, my world blurred upwards and then my back slammed into the ground, my body functionally burrowed into the cement. My protective wool held up to the impact, but I was stunned and it only took another second before his huge right foot stomped down on my torso crunching me further into the street.

I grunted as I felt the shockwave of his foot slamming down on me through my wool. I could already tell that was going to bruise and my wool was capable of taking a lot of blunt force trauma, but the amount of force put into it had bypassed that immediately. Was this the physics fudging thing Sami talked about? It hurt… a lot.

“Come on, start fighting back against Abobo, I know you have a strong fighting spirit… I can feel it, don’t be a wimpy little turtle like those Kamemon!” A hurled, fully loaded, garbage can struck him in the side knocking him down and off of me.

“Pom, can you move!” Canard shouted to me and I rolled out of the crater shaped like me and then fired off my coiled wool against the ground to spring high into the air, because the blazing flash muscle monster almost stabbed me with his claws or was he attempting to grab me with his left fist.

Neither was a prospect I would welcome against this beast as he prepared to jump after me.

Frizzle slammed her left clawed foot into the side of his mask barely rattling him as he changed his clawing for me into a nasty haymaker that rammed into her chest with the force of dragon crashing into the ground after one of its wings caught the wind wrong.

Frizzle’s whole body flipped and she landed on her stomach and face.

“Hey, lay off my new friend, unless you want some poison to be your end~!” Managing to sing that from her position, Dazzle launched the Round into Abobo. Forcefully making him stumble away from Frizzle before he could stomp on her spine.

It was at this point that I finally landed behind the still standing behemoth, being floaty and lightweight wasn’t going to be very helpful right now when this guy could brute force me to death and had the intelligence to pull it off.

“Now you see, the Guilmon gets it, she’s got the frenzy in her blood like I do!” Abobo grinned as Frizzle propped herself up and immediately spat a large fireball at him. Abobo blocked with his arms and was barely pushed back, he countered Frizzle with a lightning blast from his horn over his face blocking arms.

Frizzle had already been motion to avoid the lightning and succeeded, she let out a growl and her wild eyes narrowed on Abobo. Abobo was about to charge forward with his lightning horn with an intent to rhino her.

Canard came in from the monsters left side, swinging the hockey stick he found somewhere into Abobo’s belly with all he had.

The hockey stick promptly snapped in half on that monsters abs and left a mild bruise. At least that would be a lasting bruise… maybe.

Abobo turned and clamped his right hand on Canard’s left shoulder, squeezed slightly and then lifted him bodily off the ground in a show of his raw monstrous strength. The monstrous mass pulled back his left fist grinning. Despite his current predicament Canard glared at the monster defiantly.

Okay think Pom, what do you do to stop that fist from breaking Canard’s beak straight off his face…

“Are you okay?!” I shouted, a confused Abobo looked to me as I turned my side to him and gathered wool and energy around my right hoof. I think it’s become a bad habit to shout that before using the attack, but it’s how I practiced with Dolly so… I turned and surged forward firing off the coiled wool from my hind legs. In a forward burst impressive for me, my hoof connected with his left side. It felt like hitting a sold steel wall, I still continued the attack by bracing my right leg. “Buster Wolf!”

The explosion of force erupting didn’t do much damage to Abobo personally, didn’t really think much could at this rate, but the explosion of rising energy did hit his arm hard enough to make him drop Canard.

“Hah, knew you had something to you!” Abobo said as he swung his tail at me from the right as her turned my way, I had to perform a sideways rolling leap towards the buildings on the west side of the street and again jumping proved to be a bad idea as a bolt of lightning shot for my face blinding me. I felt a powerful gust and my body being pushed to the side by something.

I landed and rolled while covering my eyes, really shouldn’t get close to the guy when his horn lights up.

I wondered why I hadn’t been hit? I suddenly started receiving sight of myself in a crouch near the wall and the alleyway that the blue dog left the area through… oh of course Dolly used Aero on me!

I saw myself about to be kicked.

Planting my right hoof against the ground, I kicked off the ground into a full circle pivot with my hind legs and avoided taking the big three toed claw in the side.

Watching myself from a third person perspective was weird, but it helped me scrunch up and time my next attack from the pivot. I landed a solid buck to the left leg that tried to kick me throwing Abobo off balance as he tried to lift his other leg off the ground to swing it at me, he stumbled.

I had planted both my right legs on the ground I pushed up with my front right hoof, spread out and flexibly slung my left hind leg out and around straight into his spine.

I even used swinging my front hooves upwards as I spun into a standing position to build moment to do that roundhouse buck. This helped aid his stumble forward and He slammed face first into the nearby brick wall, leaving an impression of himself in it.

Having finished my roundhouse buck I rolled forward and to the left away from him and used my roll to twist about and put me in a standing position facing him.

Frizzle was the closest one to him now in the middle of the street. She had taken the time to find that length of chain and wrap around her right forearm.

My spotty vision finally returned to normal and I gave a nod to Dolly who was shivering in fright of that monster. Wait, where was Lit? He wasn’t on Dolly and he wasn’t on anyone else around here. I didn’t want to lose… was he even technically Dolly’s pet lightning tick? Was he smart enough to be considered a friend? We were acquainted with him and we couldn’t leave him behind at the very least.

Abobo’s face, sadly enough, did more damage to the wall than the wall could ever hope to do to him. As he did more damage to the wall pulling himself from it looking as strong as he did a few seconds ago.

Sami ran forward and chucked a square package that stuck fast to Bulkmon’s chest as he turned around and then immediately ran off back to where she came from.

A second later the explosive device detonated sending Abobo back into the wall and straight through it with incredible force though the explosion didn’t look very powerful.

I believe Sami said she specialized in shaped explosions? Well that put most of the force on Abobo and it didn’t even make him scream in pain.

Once the dust cleared, aside from the scorched chest, Abobo stomped forward out of the hole in the building with a grin and roared in challenge. What was this guy made of again?

“While I would normally appreciate a well-muscled behemoth, this one is going to kill us all!” Sami stated with a slightly hopeless lilt as she raised her DI-16 Rifle and fired a full burst of shots into Bulkmon.

Most of Sami’s shots bounced off or became pitted into his flesh or whatever passed for flesh on informational beings like Digimon.

Hauntingly enough, none of those shots even broke his skin and some were even currently falling out of his skin, they still must have stung at least… maybe that was just hopeful thinking from Dolly’s side of the bond. I know I didn’t have such positivity and haven’t had anything approaching overwhelming optimism like that in a while.

He charged for Frizzle and she moved towards him and then feinted moving right and surged left to his right side where she raked her claws and he tried to swing his right arm forward to punch her and then back to knock her down with the back of his fist. She avoided it and lashed out with another fire ball that staggered him, notably Abobo was a bit singed but still wasn’t taking any serious damage.

He thundered forward and Frizzle ran forward and looked prepared to jump, she instead went into a slide and went under the lunging Abobo whose masked face broke the street. I made a move forward as he picked himself up and he swung his left fist for me, I stopped short of his attack and fire a bark blast into his armpit flipping him onto his side and back.

I leapt up above him and then started to rapidly trample him with thousand spears with each thrust of my legs pummeling his body doing slightly more damage to it. I managed to get off at least thirteen rapid fire stomps, but that still was not nearly enough to even bother this monster in the slightest as his tail flicked up striking me in the chin cracking like a whip as it did so.

The blinding pain in my chin was agonizing and then, to my horror I felt something clasp onto my face. I started to wildly buck at the wrist of the massive clawed hand now on my face.

“You know, your face is a very good weak point, I wonder how you’ll feel after I give you some free plastic surgery the hard way. You should have defended your pretty little face better.” Abobo had used the down ward slapping of his tail to quickly lift himself off the ground and onto his feet to catch me by the bleeding face with his right claws after I finished a single flip.

His claws started clenching and my skull started making unhelpful creaking noises as the pain and pressure was starting to get to me. I heard Frizzle take a hit as Abobo shifted and heard as much as felt him punch her in the chest with his right fist. I could barely hear the sound of Canard firing his Puck Pistol as my skull was threatening to shatter.

That’s when the pressure eased off entirely and the sight I saw was the stone bone club having just cracked his mask as I fell to the ground and staggering him greatly as it flew by. The club hit the wall of the building to my right and, defying all known sense of logic or physics to me, rebounded going double its speed.

Abobo took a step for me as I tried to use some cheek wool to stitch my bloodied chin up before I lost anymore and went into anemic shock. It put the other side of his face into the path of the bone and knocked him off his feet with a supernatural amount of force as another crack formed in the mask that made up his face.

I watched as the bone sailed back to a surprised Dolly who held up her paws and clenched her eyes shut, the bone’s momentum seemingly stopped the second it touched her paws and she didn’t even move from her spot. Also it didn’t seem like she used her momentum control to stop it either.

Dolly blinked and then looked down at the bone and then looked up at me, I tilted my head in question to Dolly and she shrugged with thankful grin as she hugged the bone to herself. I don’t think either of us knew how the bone just did that, but I’m thankful Dolly threw it to save me.

After a second Dolly pointed and sent me a image, I rolled to the side as Abobo stomped his left foot into and under the street, I could hear the vague sounds of screaming from below the hole in the street he just made as he ripped his foot from the pavement.

I got onto my hooves and started backing away from him, his feral grin growing bigger as he saw I wasn’t running full tilt from this fight like I was about to die. I even inhaled through my nose as he pulled back his left fist, he was going for a lunging thrust and he was readying to fire his lighting.

Horrified shivering, yep, frightened beyond belief, most definitely, my utter terror was like meeting an old friend that I hadn’t exactly forgotten. I narrowed my eyes in suspicion and kept inhaling.

So what can we do? This Abobo guy was going to have too much fun mauling us and I really doubt we could outrun someone who is not only big and strong, but also ridiculously fast and mostly intelligent. We can’t hurt him, we can’t fight him, was this what it was like to fight a really well built brick wall head on?

He then slung his left fist forward and… I exhaled and in a split second I managed to tackle Dolly out of the way of his lightning bolt by grabbing her with my front hooves as I passed her by. I flipped us so I would take the brunt of the impact on my wool and bounced off the street a few times before coming to a stop.

“So you do have more in you… stop sandbagging already!” Thankfully, before Abobo could attack me or Dolly again, he was struck by two fireballs, an uncountable number of bullets, a few puck pistol shots and another bomb planted on his chest that knocked him onto his back again. He seemed to just ignore all that as he got up and lumbered forward with a grin, with a single flex any of the shots Sami fire popped from his flesh. “Hehahaha, this is a good day for a Bulkmon! People who have the will fight to the bitter end even with the kind of threat that Abobo presents!”

Dazzle apparently go over her paralysis and had moved further up the building to the top of it. I noted Abobo aiming his horn for her and was about to shout a warning when the lightning on his horn winked out entirely as did any glowing on his electrified body.

“What… where did all my electricity go, hey who’s doing that!” Abobo started to turn and looking around in a full circle, that’s when I barely spotted the little yellow dot that was Lit. “Who in the world is eating my power?! That’s my power, not yours!”

Lit was at the base of Abobo’s neck, barely a speck of his blue legs could be seen under Abobo’s yellow spikes for hair and above the line of green spikes running up his back, blending in with the yellow skinned beasts coloring naturally. I could vaguely make out his tiny fangs digging right into the skin of that huge beast where said beast couldn’t reach him without running into an issue of flexibility.

At some point the little tick had managed to jump onto Abobo, clambered up his back into a hard to reach position and then apparently bit into him to do something. They ate lightning energy right? Well at least we wouldn’t have to… was Abobo shrinking slightly or was that just my imagination playing tricks? In any case, bless Lit’s tiny little heart for trying to be helpful.

“Urgh, if I can’t use my lightning I’ll just have to do this the old fashioned way, with my fists!” Abobo leapt and Canard had to stumble out of the way of his fist slamming down and then jump over the whipping of the tail into a roll.

He continued to put flaming puck after flaming puck into the monster and I noted that the small bruises were starting to pile up from the impacts, unlike before when we weren’t having an effect… now we could and I believe Lit was to blame for that.

“Dolly up the building, assist me and don’t get anywhere close to him.” I went onto my hind legs as Dolly fled up another building next to the one Dazzle was on and firing rounds off into Bulkmon actually causing moderately large bruising with each hit as she sang. “Keep hitting him, he’s being weakened greatly!”

“Why is Abobo so weak all of the sudden?!” Abobo screeched, as he chose to target me, with a right haymaker.

I brought up my left leg locked myself in place with my wool and immediately tore out a chunk of the street as I was bodily launched upwards from the impact coughing a bit from the force of the hit that had bypassed my wool.

Yeah, trying to wobble counter him was a bad idea.

He was immediately on me with his left fist coming straight on when a chain wrapped around his wrist and stopped him from smashing me in the face or sending me even further north up the street as I landed.

Frizzle yanked him towards her and slashed up his arm with her left claw. With a flick of her right wrist managed to unwrap the chain and hop back to evade his left leg kicking out for her. She swung the chain and slapped him in the neck and that actually hurt and staggered him slightly.

Now Sami’s bullets were actually digging into his flesh instead of bouncing or pitting it.

“Dazzle, please don’t aim at his head, I need everyone to find a way to topple him!” I wasn’t about to give Abobo any clues as to Lit’s existence if I could help it.

Even with Lit’s help, Abobo was still strong and fast, but not as big as he used to be as he shrunk down a full head in height. With his lightning powers nullified, a large chunk of Abobo’s strength was just simply missing, not that he didn’t have any to spare.

-Sami-

That large data dump gave me the energy and resources to generate bombs for days… just got to find another moment to do so when he was distracted.

I’ve managed to stay mostly camouflaged so far, but I’m not going to test my luck by getting close to that lightning bruiser.

-Dazzle-

“…” I really don’t like using it, but we needed the fire power… also, it could give me an opportunity to land a Toxic on him if needed. I opened my mouth and prepared a Dragon Pulse.

If he hurt Pom again... he’d know the fury of a dragon.

-Canard-

The pucks are starting to work now, that beast probably supercharges his muscular coding with electrical energy. Now I had to find something else to hit him with… the baseball bat?

I picked it up and swung it… I was iffy on using a weapon from another sport, I believe the religion of baseball was the realm of the rats. Basically this would sacrilege if I was on Puck World and didn’t have a good excuse for wielding it, but I’m not on Puck World am I?

I’m in a digital realm and no other Puckians are here to see this… I stowed my pistol.

I took the handle of the bat into both hands and held it aloft, Frizzle had been wielding against those other Digimon early and swung it a few times to get an idea of its heft. I needed to trade this in for a hockey stick later, but otherwise it’d do the job.

-Dolly-

I stood on the roof looking on as Dazzle built up purple energy in her mouth, flicking the bone into the air and catching it. I watched as it sped up and no matter where I held my paw, the bone returned right to it as if by… didn’t the Kecleon guys say there were mystical objects and given where this was found… ah… I get it now.

This bone is not only cool looking and attractive, it it’s a stone bone club that acts like a magical boomerang… that’s… actually pretty awesome! Not only that, but it actually sped up when thrown... I’m sure if you could hit it or knock it off course it wouldn’t return to the thrower, but otherwise it seems like it always will if nothing stops it from doing so and hitting a target doesn’t seem to do so.

Which means…

Now start building momentum in the bone experimentally, but give it no specific direction… and wind back like so to prepare to throw it.

Ouch Pom just took a nasty hit, but it doesn’t seem as bad as could have bene like when she was hit in the chin.

Is that Canard with the baseball bat Frizzle was using… idea!

Here’s the wind up…

-Pom-

I ducked under massive fist, with a badly bruising right cheek and lashed my right hoof up into his chin and, surprisingly enough to me, staggered him back into Frizzle’s leaping counterclockwise tail slap that stumbled him further, but didn’t knock him over.

Canard came in swinging his bat and the monster started to topple backwards, he managed to stomp the ground and sent us all flying back. Only seconds later did a large dragon shaped blast of purple energy slammed into his chest and actually put him onto his back with thunderous force.

He started to sit up and that’s when something fast struck his face, I didn’t even see what it was that went flying at his face with how fast it had been going.

He was going to get up again when one of Sami’s square bombs attached itself to his face and went off putting him on his back again and this time it didn’t look like he was getting up.

One moment I could see cracks going through Abobo’s mask and it was coming close to shattering entirely from the explosion. The next was filled with a vortex opening up and Abobo disappearing into it, with a massive wave of Digi-credits coming off his form. Frizzle immediately began collecting the credits.

“Darn it, I’ll be back, just you wait for me to find you lot again and we’ll settle this for real!” Abobo voice stated as the rest of his body disappeared into the vortex and left behind a sad looking Lit who had been happily and greedily sucking up all of Abobo’s lightning energy.

I shivered at the thought of having to fight him again without having Lit on hoof to deal with the biggest issue of fighting him and sighed.

Moving over to Lit, I picked him up and started to pet him gently. I even gave him a light loving hug and he squeaked adorable and cuddled against me too affectionately.

If he wanted to be Dolly’s weird pet, then I was one hundred percent okay with that as long as she asked him first.

-Dolly-

The bone was smoking when it slapped back into my right paw, all momentum in the bone seemed to die when it did and I just blinked.

“Whoa…” Huh, oh right, Pom wanted us to group up and was motioning to a store a few doors away from the fast food restaurant we entered!

-Average looking shop, Pom-

“Excuse me, but can we get one of those Backspace Systems?” I stated while glancing at Frizzle who nodded in agreement that she would pay for it.

“Sure thing, don’t honestly know if I can trust it… it seems to be on the up and up though.” The frog with a musical brass horn wrapping around his neck said, I waited until he sat an object on the counter and Frizzle paid for it. “It doesn’t work on biologicals though, so really… it would probably be a good idea to have an exit strategy if you’re Digimon partner is having problems winning a fight.”

I wasn’t going to correct him for his assumption… as I popped a Sitrus Berry into my mouth and chewed. My insides kind of needed it after that.

“Now what?” I asked, I hadn’t really thought about where to go next from here.

“We should check in with Jijimon to see if Bearmon made it okay.” Canard stated and took the object and started leading us back the way we came. The Digimon that ran off before were slowly starting to trickle back into the area to continue fighting. “We’re going to need more leads other than just owning one of these things, I’ll personally get a look at the coding and maybe get a second opinion on who could have possibly made this. We’ll plan our next move from there.”

279. Server City Ransom Pt. 4.

-Digital World, Server City, Jijimon’s Home, Pom-

Getting back here wasn’t too hard, but the streets were kind of teaming with Digimon looking to make some quick Digi-credits off of beating the ever loving snot out of someone.

Maybe I could simply point out that I don’t own Digi-credits and cannot possibly use a Backspace System? Apparently the system only works for Rookie Digimon and stronger.

“Pom, why didn’t you grill that shop keeper for information?” Dolly only decided to bring that up just now as we were settling into Jijimon’s. She was avoiding the baby Digimon and was keeping Lit from being eaten or used as a plaything.

“He didn’t know anything beyond selling the products he gets in his shop Dolly, there wasn’t exactly a storeroom or any other place to get that Backspace System from. I think Digimon teleport their goods in once they are made.” That last bit was a bit of a supposition on my part. “If it’s all the same to you I’m still getting the shakes from dealing with Bulkmon… temporarily. Thank goodness for this little guy, if you can actually keep him around then more power to you Dolly. Though it’ll be odd enough for you to have a pet tick.”

“You’d be correct in stating that the shopkeeper wouldn’t know where the goods came from aside from receiving the shipment through a one way Digi-email with an attachment and no return address, It’s how Digimon ship small stuff that are not Digimon safely through digital space. Asking that Gekomon for any information about where they get their goods shipped in from is unlikely to reveal any information on where to find Etemon… though we should probably find some clues to that anyway.” Canard turned to look at Sami who was happily tinkering away with the Backspace System that looked like a strange blob of distorted space vaguely shaped like a cube. “Do you have anything yet?”

“Working on it… if only I had more space and was in a quieter place than here.” Sami of course was referencing the baby Digimon being a bit loud in their playfulness nearby. Babamon was making sure they didn’t leave the safety of Jijimon’s home while he was out securing this street and making sure all the Dalmamon were safe.

“Couldn’t she just go into her Digivice like Dormarch did with the one we own?” That… was an excellent suggestion Dolly. I mean Dormarch could go into and manifest out of the device, we could feasibly use it for storage and take the weight off my shoulder having to carry a slightly cumbersome bag around.

“Dolly just said, couldn’t you just use the space inside the Digivice?” It took a few moments, but eventually Sami looked up at me wide eyed, then at Dolly and then at the both of us with slight wall eyes.

Sami smacked her forehead with her claws centering her confused looking eyes, which probably stung given she wasn’t wearing her helmet at the moment.

Thinking of it, I rarely saw the orange lizard without her armored cloaking gear on. Given how her life had been as nearly bad a roller coaster as mine currently was, what with having to mercy kill one of her friends… I think Sami had obvious reasons to keep wearing her gear near constantly, even if it offers minimal or no protection, it’s still something.

“Oh duh, I could make a Digi-Home space! Maybe throw in a field with digital food provided I can get some Digi-meat and Veg seeds… yeah I can definitely do that! One small problem though...” Sami took out the Digivice that was apparently connected to her and started working on it instead.

“That being?” Canard stated with his arms crossed.

“Someone will have to protect the device while I’m inside of it looking over the coding of the Backspace System with an ultra-fine toothed comb.” Setting the Digivice down, a flash and a small swirling vortex appeared above the device, Sami threw us a salute tossed all her stuff in and then hopped right into it afterwards. Looking into the device I could see a similar living setup to what Dormarch had, only this looked like a military foxhole on a small island. Sami seemed to appreciate the military foxhole for a bit before she got to work. “It’s going to take a while to set up a personal space here, but a Digivice is one of the most powerful devices in the Digital Realms. So it will be a good place to train for combat, storage and even private meetings. Although storage needs to be improved before I can invite anymore Digimon in aside from myself, might be able to fit you biologicals in here because you don’t actually take up as much dataspace as much we Digimon do. Give me some time to work on things from in here and carry the device around with you. If you actually need me for anything active, just talk to me. I’ll try to respond at my soonest convenience, but otherwise I’ll be busy in here working on my bunker for quite a while… do me a favor and drop by the nearby plantation and ask the Palmon or Tanemon for a few seeds if they can spare them. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a Vegimon working the food fields either. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

With that Sami started to work on something on the incredibly sparse island. I really had no idea what she was doing, but it was having an effect as the space around her started shifting in small pieces and something started to grow out of the islands ground.

“Can you do something like that?” Dazzle asked of the slightly larger red lizard Frizzle, Frizzle simply nodded and hopped into the Digivice Dazzle was carrying around on the belt that has recently become a fashion choice for her. “Okay.... that’s… actually rather convenient, I kind of wish we Pokémon were just as portable.”

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“No.” I stated firmly to Mew who was looking at me expectantly, even as she stole my corn on the cob from a boiling pot without so much as flinching from the heat. I’m always cooking food, it is a wondrously inventive pastime that invites delicious smells and all my children can enjoy my labors freely. Even with all the powers of being the one true god of all Pokémon… I still couldn’t create good food without practice and doing it in a ridiculously mundane way. “That world is specifically a ‘no pocket dimension ball world’ Mew, you know what would happen with the dimensional shifting areas there if a pocket ball ended up in the general vicinity. You’d be giving the Rescue Teams far too much work and the results would be disastrous, we’re already in the midst of silently preparing for what could be an encroaching enormous three way war.”

“I’m not going to start anything that problematic.” Mew stated affronted, as if I couldn’t see her intentions to be lively and curious clearly. She started nibbling at the corn. “So what are you doing next since you’re on a bit of a corn kick?”

Mew looked upset for a second and then teleported some Miltank butter and a cube of salt in to spice it up.

“Potato Corn Chowder.” Now where would I get those potatoes from exactly?

Maybe I can try using the digital meat plants in a recipe to see what they taste like, the meat apples also had me curious.

-Digital Realm, Jijimon’s Home, Pom-

Dazzle motioned to Lit continuing to take up real estate on Dolly’s back, looking at the screen on Dazzle’s hip I could see Frizzle start with a small island and what looked to be a completely empty bakery. Dormarch didn’t start with a small island, but I could see the similarities between the pocket spaces that these Digivice’s held.

I briefly considered entering Dormarch’s pocket space in our empty Digivice.

“Canard…” I said looking at him check his recently refurbished Digi-bat that was now a Digi-stick ‘hockey variant’, apparently he had to make sure it was still sturdy and officially a hockey stick now.

“I’m still wary of most lizards, but…” Canard admitted, but he still moved over to pick up Sami’s Digivice and I saw pink hearts of affection forming on the screen of it. Methinks Sami was easy to please, then again Canard was likely a huge step up from her hilariously awful life that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. “I guess I’ll carry it around, since she’s doing us some big favors. So what do we do while we’re waiting on Sami to get back to us about that?”

“I for one do not want to run into Abobo again too soon… especially not without Lit here to help stop him.” We were doing very little to Bulkmon before Lit latched on to him. We are quite lucky that Lit eats lightning based energy and was able to eat enough as to depower Abobo to the point he could be hurt, otherwise we were basically doing nothing before that point. “We can try to get in touch with the Skateboard Scamps of the Skate Park, we can wait for Hea-Gatomon to show up with information or we could wait for Sami to discover something. Aside from that that streets are basically crawling with aggressive or violent Digimon and we don’t know when Uver is getting back with those reinforcements.”

“Can I ask you something?” Canard was staring at me intently. “What are you capable of exactly?”

“Well...” I sat down and had a discussion with Canard while Dolly wandered off with Lit and Dazzle to play.

As long as they didn’t go too far, this street was a safe zone and nothing bad could happen here… for now at least. I didn’t know how long that would actually last.

-Two hours later, midday-

“So there are othere worlds out there where everyone is devoted to a sport in a religious fervor?” My talk with Canard had gotten me to know him better.

Canard was courageous, strong and quite intelligent. Despite not having supernatural abilities like I do, he wasn’t a push over. His ability to do what is known as coding from being stuck in the digital realms for so long also wasn’t something one could overlook as a useful ability to have around these realms. He was a good person and had been a strong leader in being able to sacrifice himself for the good of the many, the digital realms couldn’t change him… aside from making him despise lizards even more and that was an issue for Sami to deal with later.

He had morals and boundaries he wouldn’t exactly overstep without good reason, the Saurians were definitely a fairly good reason considering their propensity for creating dangerous, enslaving, robot armies if left unchecked.

Even if the Saurians only had schematics to create drones, those drones were all combat capable and Ocellus had to deal with them upfront and personal. She told me how many there had been, there were enough that they could have eventually taken over Dolly’s home planet if they secured enough resources to build a factory on the planet to make even more. That’s not counting the fact that the few free Saurians were trying to open a gateway to free the rest of their dangerous empire that the Puckians had barely sealed away thousands of years ago.

“Yep, it’s interesting how sports can bring us together… or tear us apart in bad sportsmanship. Its good exercise and you can make friendships for life playing the game. I haven’t played a game in so long, but if what you say is right I’ve been gone at least a year or two at best where my friends ended up.” Yeah and they thought Canard was dead, he unfortunately survived the electromagnetic worms stomach to be spat out directly into the digital realms. He’s been lost far longer than my group has been and he’s been doing it... mostly alone. At least up until Sami Soldier started looking out for him after she saw him for the first time. “What you told me about yourself… it’s amazing you’re still alive. You’ve been put through several grinders and yet your spirit hasn’t given up, hard to tell whether I’ve had things worse or not hearing your story.”

“You still have your spirit and you’ve been doing this thing in the Digital Realms for far longer, you have more reasons than I to complain Canard. My spirit really wants to give in at this point…” I said with my eyes tearing up and he gently rubbed my back. “It’s unfortunate for me that I have too many people relying on me to keep pushing forward. I can’t stop myself, even if I direly wanted to.”

“Nobody said being strong was easy.” Canard muttered while looking away and keeping his hand on my back in comfort. Was it for my comfort or his? Both would be acceptable to me.

“I never wanted to be as strong or absurd as my closest friends in the first place… circumstances have seen fit to force my hooves.” That and having to deal with so many mentally exhausting situations didn’t help. “I just want to go home to curl up with my entire family, even if the weight would collapse the bed, and not have to fight anymore. I sadly know that’s not going to happen anytime soon.”

-Canard-

A magical sheep adjacent entity that could have been a sheep farmer, she was a magical being from the planet Equus and a guard of a fabled city of Huoshan the city built on the side of a mountain that used to be a dragons body.

Pom’s home world sounds nice and quiet, for the most part if you’re willing to ignore all the talk of mythical monsters, odd mystical canid creatures, quirky gods of chaos and other stuff like highly annoying thieving cats bothering you on the job as a guard for attention.

What I was curious about was what Pom said about all beings born of Equus being able to harmonize with anyone else or the world itself, usually through the form of music and or the rhythm of their world.

She would rather not be constantly fighting for her life and I know the feeling having been doing so for mine with how dangerous Digimon could get. These recent events of being transported into the digital realms and getting trapped here, while her friends and those she was the caretaker for were still back in the reality this realm is connected to, was wearing on Pom’s mind.

At least we were aware of the time disparity issue and therefore at most time in reality was passing by at barely a minute compared to the hours or days spent in here. Nice to know that my friends weren’t all dead from old age from spending so much time in the digital realms.

Pom truly expected bad things to happen to us. Not that she was wrong, as I was expecting them too. It wouldn’t hurt her a little to have a more positive attitude like what she says Dolly has, plus it’s nice to have someone to talk to and interact with that wasn’t another Digimon. I’ve heard other people like me got stuck like this and finding a way out wasn’t as easy as accidentally finding a way in.

Dalmamon were also interesting to learn about, that they came from Pom and Dolly interacting with the first that was designated as a Search Engine by Yggdrasil.sys. Yggdrasil.sys was likely at the core of all the interconnected digital realms and trying to keep them running effectively, must be a nightmare with more computing power than a Saurian super computer.

An effective search engine would certainly be really useful right about now and plenty powerful in the computer based digital realms when you needed to find something like Etemon.

Since the Dalmamon couldn’t effectively fight or defend themselves from danger with all the missing gaps in their combat abilities and being made from indirect data, they weren’t able to do what they were designated as specializing in nor could they use the signature move that the original Dalmamon came up with. The Dalmamon were understandably frustrated with it all, but they seemed to be generally happy and healthy otherwise.

Dalmamon were at least consistently cute, friendly and cuddly looking even with the goofy large claws that seem to be a common feature among many Digimon, not many Digimon are like that often enough for my liking. I really dislike Snimon, almost as much as I disliked lizards.

“Heads up people, I’ve got some information for you that might be a good lead if you haven’t gotten one already!” Hea-Gatomon appeared looking quite pleased with herself. It’s hard to imagine that she was a Champion level Digimon like Bulkmon with how small she was.

-Five minutes later, Pom-

I gathered up Dolly, Lit and Dazzle. I had found Dolly buried under baby Digimon, Dazzle was sleeping on the ceiling while clinging to it trying to stay out of everyone’s way and Lit was trying to, peacefully enough, shove the baby Digimon off of Dolly’s back and away from his favorite perch without hurting them. They had problems with fighting Lit for some reason, so the little guy was physically stronger than a large amount of baby blob monsters and he was smaller than them.

Maybe it had to do with having actual mass versus a solidified shell of information? Something to think about later.

Frizzle and Sami were going to be out for the time being as they were setting up their Digi-Homes in the Digivices. ‘Digi’ was quickly becoming a prefix I was starting to get highly annoyed with, but I can understand why it was used so much here. ‘Digital’ was a word that expressed the fact that we’re dealing with a world built entirely out of information, anything built from said information was going to have ‘Digi’ as part of its prefix. Just like the digital monsters that had descriptors for their appearances as a prefix to ‘mon’ on the ‘monsters’ that lived here.

“Okay, so wandering the streets, I’ve found out information of several gangs of interest running around the Server City that could be our allies in finding Etemon or at least keep the friendlier less violent Digimon safe from the thugs he has unleashed all over the streets of the city.” Hea-Gatomon looked a bit scuffed up, but she apparently handled herself fairly well out there by herself. I certainly wouldn’t want to mess with those scalpel shaped claws of hers. “The Skate Scamps already consider themselves our allies thanks to Frizzle and their newest member Strabimon so the general area of the Skate Park is definitively under Weregarurumon’s protection.”

“Good on Strabimon for making some friends and not being a lonely brooder who shows up to help late because he has easily misunderstood intentions or something.” I said cheerfully, before motioning with my right hoof. “Go on.”

“Goblimon are all definitively under a Digimon known as Ogremon, nothing new there as Ogremon tend to be lead Goblimon in causing trouble. Their gang is the Basher Bullies working under Etemon and I can assure you that they are never going to change allegiance, if we had a Leomon in play they’d only get worse too. The Numemon have their own gang in the sewers of the city, the Pink Troopers under their leader Sukamon… as disgusting as their gang sounds, they are actually true neutral as you can get in this city and I’d rather we not have to deal with them unless their members bother us personally. The Monitamon are part of an information gathering gang that works under an Octomon named Ultros as the Data Divers. They tentatively work with Etemon in information sharing, but the alliance is shaky because of Ultros being rumored as being a grubby tentacle horror that has a love of money and… eugh… ladies. He apparently has a monopoly on all the information moving about the city in general. Also there are rumors of something being very off about Ultros as he doesn’t sound like a normal Octomon. As for the Kamemon, they work directly under Etemon as the ‘Kings Kames’ gang.” Please tell me, Hea-Gatomon, that you didn’t just imply we might eventually be dealing with what sounds like a perverted tentacle horror. “Those are the gangs that are going to attack just about anyone. As for the true lead I have to finding Etemon, you’ll need to face the gang leader currently holding the night life district who is neutral or even, tentatively enough, friendly. The leader in that area is Tempomon who is holding the district with his army of rookies called Muchomon as the Musical Maestros gang, unlike Octomon he has more in depth information that is not general knowledge of the goings on or movements in the city. He might even have a better idea of where Etemon is of those who are not a part of his machinations… or more importantly, exactly where he isn’t.”

If we knew where Etemon wasn’t in the city, then we’d at least narrow down areas to look in at least.

“Wait… who’s in charge of the Falcomon?” Canard had actually picked up on something I hadn’t. The gliding Falcomon, which had been mostly shot down by Sami, did attacks us when we were heading into the shopping district.

“I think it might be an Aquilamon, but I’m unsure as I didn’t find much information on them. They seem to be working with Etemon at the least, so be wary of Falcomon gliding in from above you.” Didn’t even know what some of those Digimon you mentioned even looked like Hea-Gatomon, but I’m sure we’d find out soon enough anyway. “As for another problem, the problem you ran into with Hiandromon on the highway south of the city… well he’s down his chaser mech. He’s currently in the city and he’s fighting all the gangs by himself regardless of whether they are peaceful or not and he’s not holding back on any of his attacks. So be wary of running into him as he still wants to rip Canard and you newest intruders to this realm apart. Whether you are Digi-destined or not, I don’t think that guy actually cares beyond his sense of needing to put things in order and thinks you’re quite a major disruption to that. Hiandromon might even find a way to get to Etemon before you… that would be a problem with getting that key to open the anchor point to get you out of this realm and back to the reality it’s connected to. We do not want Hiandromon to get a hold of it, I have a good idea as to what he’d actually do with it and it make things much harder for you in escaping this realm safely.”

“Right, no pressure to hurry up, just several gangs and random neutrals fighting over this oddly designed city with very little good actually going on.” I groaned audibly. “Let’s add on a person who will prevent us from leaving and might be out to kill us on top of all that, simply for existing as possible chaos magnets.”

“It’ll be fine Pom. If any of them has a bone to pick with us, then I’ll have a bone to pick with them!” The ever exuberant Dolly had taken to wielding the Stone Bone Club quite well since she found out it had magical properties beyond being a fantastic distraction for dogs. “Also any chances we could possibly get someone into looking into anything related to Dormarch’s remains?”

As Dazzle and some others had mentioned prior, these clubs were usually utilized by Cubone and Marowak Pokémon for their odd ability to act like a boomerang and had unnatural mystical aerodynamics. This proved to be a boon to Dolly who had issues with fighting at range given how hard she can throw the thing with her momentum controlling power, that it always came back to the user if not intercepted was useful and it also gave her a good close up fighting ability too. So Dolly didn’t have to rely entirely on her board as a weapon and could be used more as a shield or for mobility while wielding the bone.

“I… Dolly…” Groaning and rubbing at my closed eyes, I sighed when I considered the idea of actually finding whatever possibly remained of Dormarch. It would be pretty hard to do without something to search all the digital realms at once to find it. “Give me our Digivice, please...”

Dolly reached under her pink scarf, pulled it out and held it up to me and I took it from her paw that seemed reluctant to let go of it.

“Yggdrasil Sis… can you try to locate any remains of our… Dalmamon… given the information of what an electromagnetic worm might have done to it extrapolated from Canard’s existence?” It wouldn’t hurt to ask the fairly busy force behind the digital worlds for a little help.

“I can certainly try and have been doing so, it is unfortunate that so far nothing has been found even if Dalmamon’s data ended back up in ‘a’ digital realm. I have been trying to find traces of the rare digital crest that was a major feature of your partner’s unique oddities. I will be sending you a Calumon to assist in opening a much safer exit to the digital realms once you have acquired and secured the anchor point key.” Yggdrasil wasn’t sugar coating things and even just told us we'd have help getting out if the Chaosdramon X becomes a problem, also she sounded a little bit more emotional than before or that was my imagination as she sounded fairly hollow every time I had heard her voice before. “Again, Yggdrasil.sys apologizes for the inconvenience in lacking the capabilities of recovering ones beloved Digimon partner. All Anubismon have been informed and are on the lookout for the unusual data of deceased Digimon. They have not found anything like it yet and it is still unlikely that they will, please continue to assist the other Digi-destined in solving the possibly bad situation in Server City to the best of your abilities. So far the situation seems to not be causing overall system failures, I will inform you if the world approaches such a state and needs rebooting or saving.”

I don’t know what an Anubismon was, but it sounded like the Digimon version of Anubis, the King of Jackals and the God of Judgement and Death. Of course it was a Canid Digimon I might meet eventually… I can’t escape meeting more at this rate can I?

Dolly frowned, but kept hugging the stone bone to her chest while sitting on her board. She was going to be stubborn about this… and… so was I admittedly. Given that Canard survived the transference with his body intact only losing his clothes in the process of arriving in the digital realms while keeping his puck pistol.

The clothes he was wearing now were made of information and I was trying not to think of what that might have felt like to him given how much he’s lost.

“We’ll come back to this Dolly, since you won’t give up… I might start trying to believe it’s possible too if you can keep this up long enough for the both of us.” I said while placing my left hoof gently on her head, she whimpered and leaned into the touch as I caressed her gently. I promptly put the Digivice back in place on the three bands she always wore, underneath her Pecha Scarf, and nodded to her. She nodded back with a slight smile and wagging tail. I looked to Hea-Gatomon and thought about what I was going to do from here. “Where’s the Night Life district, how are we going to get into contact with this Tempomon and how dangerous is it going to be?”

I was going to support the idea that Dormarch could come back… even if only in our hearts or in spirit. Digimon did have ghost like qualities sometimes given Mr. Beezy showed up as a bedsheet ghost.

“The night life district is on the east side of the city’s central data river and to the north. You’ll need to cross a bridge to get there. If you start seeing red bird Digimon, then you’ve likely found Tempomon’s territory. The Muchomon actually keep Tempomon’s territory under strict control even if they spend most of their time dancing, partying and singing. They are not push overs in a fight no matter how jolly they seemingly act, anyone who tries to disrupt or capture that territory is going to be dealing with a lot of dangerous capoeira experts that know how to fight with a rhythm.” Hea-Gatomon rubbed at her cap with the red plus symbol on it. “If you see a purple version of flightless Digimon bird around there, then it’s likely to be a Penguinmon. Similar species with some minor differences to a Muchomon, but no less fun when it comes to being jolly. Tempomon’s base is the Dance Club he owns in that area. The city is kind of growing worse with fights breaking out all over the place and the normal less combat capable Digimon are quickly being displaced or flooding to places of safety where the fighting isn’t as bad. Still the danger should be minimal as the Muchomon are stopping fights from starting within their territory, which is if they catch it happening in front of them. So watch out wandering the back streets and alleyways.”

“That was a lot of good sounding information, so when exactly do we set out?” Dazzle asked with her tail flickering with flames every now and then from her agitated state. “I’m sure Frizzle and Sami can get ready for a fight if we needed them, but most of the Digimon we’ve come across so far seems to not be too dangerous to get by… aside from that Abobo guy. That guy scares me, even if we do have Lit.”

“Right now would probably be a good idea before it gets dark, the Goblimon are going to be aggressive and come out in force everywhere when night falls. Fighting your way out at night is going to be easier than going in at night.” Hea-Gatomon got me thinking about the logistics of the gangs and the territories, so far Jijimon seemed to be the one territory nobody wanted to contest, while the rest of the city was in turmoil. Jijimon’s territory consisted of the wheel, the karaoke bar and the parks if the Skate Scamps hold their territory on their own and were throwing in with Jijimon as the safe part of the city. Basically the fun and friendly stuff, with no seedy underbelly, territory. There’s also the tenuous territory Uver wanted as he built up the hideout we were using in the south side slums. “Nobody is going to want the sewers territory under the city, but it would be a good way to get around the city… I’d rather we not deal with the Pink Troopers and ignore them to the best of our abilities. The Numemon and the Sukamon leading them aren’t going to stay idle as a faction though, but you can at least trust that they won’t join Etemon at least.”

“Why not?” Canard asked a second later. I wonder if I would get used to the novelty of being friends with generally eight foot tall, bipedal, hockey as a religion, alien ducks.

“Sukamon and Numemon are upset with Etemon because he’s doing something to stop trash data refuse from trickling down to them and they are the recycling masters. That stuff is basically their bread and butter, messing with it is messing with them and they do care somewhat about the state of the city above them despite their living conditions functionally being the insides of a toilet. They are considered the city’s garbage monsters for a reason and if there isn’t garbage for them to sort through, then of course they are going to be upset with the guy that stopped it from flowing to them as their resources are basically, in a literal sense at that, all ‘dung’ already with a few truly golden bits of treasure in the mix. They may not like Etemon, but that doesn’t mean they won’t use the suspect Backspace System programs that seem to be picking up in popularity.” Hea-Gatomon looked a little green in the face. “The depths they will go to for the existence of trash and scouring it personally… it causes chills down my spine if we need to go to the local junkyard for any reasons, as that would be about the only above ground holding they’d be interested in having or would even care for.”

“Okay, since we still got daylight to burn, we’ll head out towards the night life district while Sami is busy looking over every inch of data on the Backspace System we have. As long as we don’t run into another high tier Champion like Bulkmon or worse, then we should be good to at least meet with this Tempomon for some information if he’s willing to give it up.” While Canard was okay with that, I still had some issues with all of this running around. “If not, we can ask him what they want for it… if it’s within reason that is. We don’t really have much in the way of resources aside from what I might have in Digi-credits or whoever is willing to lend us aid, aside from the shop being neutral in selling us stuff like weapons or gear. So far that’s the Skate Scamps, Jijimon, Uver’s group and Pom’s Lost Ones are what we have at the moment. We might even need to make a few Digi-credits by beating up the gang Digimon running wild around the city, they are bound to attack us just for existing anyway so we might as well make the best of it.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m afraid of… getting into a lot of fights.” Not the way I’d like to do things, but it might be necessary with Digimon sorting themselves into gangs and attacking people, regardless of whether or not they have an affiliation with a gang to begin with or even access to a Backspace System if they are actually benign.

“Hey, we’re not going to start them, but we’ll certainly finish them.” Canard leaned the blade of his hockey stick over his right shoulder with a stern look.

“Sorry about that, but it currently seems to be the way of things Pom.” Hea-Gatomon nodded to me with a frown. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a few more things to look into and I hope that Tempomon has the information we need and that Uver gets back to us with our more mobile teammates quickly. I’m a healer, not a spy or a fighter... not that I can’t fight, but still getting around without getting into one is getting harder by the second out there and I’m almost out of safe places to get information from if not for the refugee Digimon trying to avoid the fighting in the streets.”

So, Basher Bullies, Pink Troopers, Kings Kames, Musical Maestros, Data Divers and possibly more gangs we probably haven’t heard of if the Falcomon thing panned out… can’t things just be simple? At least three of those gangs were somewhat working together, though I suspect it was just as complicated in how they were working together or were just loosely allied for some common causes.

Etemon could be working towards some unknown goal in the background from what some Digimon have said of his character being relatively untrustworthy. That the gangs might not actually be in on said possible goal has crossed my mind and they could just be a byproduct of what Etemon wanted or the gangs could just be a smokescreen to something much larger with the idea that someone much smarter created the Backspace Systems being sold locally.

It was either that or it actually was just simply earning money, fame and acknowledgment that Etemon wanted and he wasn't actually as complicated as we all might think he is. The only thing that would make us think of him as complicated is having the key to us getting back to the Violight Kingdom.

Why, exactly, did Etemon take that key? That was the question that needed to be answered and we’re liable to find out the truth of things anyway just trying to find Etemon to get it from him.

Author's Note

Let's see, past week involved healing from a somewhat nasty burn wound incurred on the 'day of turkeys' of a sadly lackluster Feast Week.

A family member almost went into lethal septic shock and was basically a day away from death. They also have an inch sized kidney stone, which is a really, really bad thing. At least they are getting help with that and their hospital stay was informative to say the least, the blood pressure problems certainly don't help.

I'm healing okay, I'm still worried about my family member and I have been playing Pokemon Scarlet to get my mind off things. I will try to avoid using Gen 9 Pokemon in this story going forward, even if Carol Tea is a good name for a Sprigatito and could do a Freedom Planet thing.

Things could be much worse and I could be missing another important family member in my life, a family member that currently needs help to continue living with a on call nurse until the kidney stone can be dealt with.

As inconveniencing and scary as life has been lately, I'm still good to go.

280. Server City Ransom Pt. 5.

Author's Note

Music: Running Around the City - River City Ransom EX GBA.

280. Server City Ransom Pt. 5.

-Digital Realm, Server City, Riverside, Pom-

Basher Bullies, AKA the gang of Goblimon, were standing around when we walked out of the alleyway to the west riverside and I sighed. We needed to get to the east side and there was a bridge slightly to the south, we’d cross it when we come to it… unfortunately we were immediately noticed by the Goblimon loitering around.

“You guys again? Gabbah Gabbah!” The Goblimon oviously weren’t even going to talk this time before attacking us.

Ten of them, shouldn’t be too hard without Sami or Frizzle… I mean how many of these guys could there truly be?

One leapt at Canard and he cool brought his hockey stick from his shoulder down on the Goblinmon’s head.

“Blarg!?” The Goblimon’s head bounced off the ground and Canard brought it his hockey stick back with both arms and swung it. The Goblimon went flying over the fence and towards the river.

“ARGH, NOT THE DATA RIVER, NOT AGAIN!” Wincing at the screaming Goblimon, I watched as a large splash of water shoot up into the air.

Quickly sidestep to the right a second later, I avoided the chain that came swinging for me. The chain sent a lot of dust flying as it struck the ground with a loud cracking noise like the chain had been a whip.

Dolly road forward on her board and with a rising bone club swing to the chest, with boosted momentum, to send the chain wielding Goblimon flying into the fence and he bounced back into Dolly popping up and kick flipping the board into his face and she landed back on it with her hind legs once it finished bounced off their face. Nice to see Dolly can use her board with her hind legs while wielding the stone bone club at the same time.

The Goblimon rolled around randomly a bit before he stopped on his back out cold and was soon disappearing into a vortex.

A blast of flames immediately took out three more Goblimon curtesy of Dazzle’s Flame Burst and one came at me swinging with a… I blinked and hopped backwards and stared incredulously at what the Goblimon was attacking me with.

“A training toilet, really?” The Goblimon I was addressing grinned at me with clear malicious intent as he wielded the duck shaped toilet with blades for wings, a spear tipped beak on its head and a saw toothed Mohawk.

The thing was certainly looked to be designed to be ugly and weaponized on purpose, plus it didn’t look safe to use in any respect what with the back end handle being the only safe place to hold it by as there was a spike on the underside that meant it possibly also double as a spiked buckler shield.

“Whatever works as a weapon for us, would you believe that I never have to clean this thing?!” He stated nastily and tried to stab me with the beak and as I stumbled away he swung the toilet around in an attempt to hit me with the sawblade-hawk, before rearing back and trying to spin at me several times aiming to use the axe bladed wings.

I hopped over one of his swings and decided to a put a stop to this nonsense, with a twirling leap my right hoof slammed upwards into the left side of his face and sent him rocketing upwards. I turned around and reared up my hind legs and bucked the disgusting green monster right in the belly.

“Barf!” The Goblimon went flying with his ugly duck training toilet over the fence. What is up with the weird noises they keep making when they get hit? Are they doing that on purpose? He hit the water with a scream.

Almost taking a nail to the eye from a sideways swinging nailed studded club, I stepped back and then punched my left hoof into the top of the Goblimon’s skull and then hit him with a right hook that staggered him, I crouched down and pushed forward with all four hooves to shoulder bash him into rolling along the ground into Dolly dropping the bone club on his head as she passed by to take out another Goblimon.

The Goblimon Dolly struck disappeared in a vortex dropping some Digi-credits and Canard’s Digivice began vacuuming them up.

“That guy was rather disgusting and these Digivices actually have some rather convenient functions.” Canard muttered as he used the center of his stick to block an overhead swing of a metal pipe, for guy that could barely scrape two to four feet in height the Goblimon sure could jump you.

With a push Canard made the Goblimon stumble, he bashed the top of the stick into the right side of the poor green monsters before slapping him across the left side of his face with the flat of the blade at the other end.

“Do you think they are making those funny noises on purpose?” I asked as we each picked one of the two remaining Goblimon to fight.

“Probably, either that or they can’t help but make ugly noises when they take hits… it was always a running theme with Goblimon, like their eternal hatred of the general Leomon line of Digimon. Never met a friendlier species of Digimon than them.” Canard stated as we approached the remaining two who had stood back and they both ran forward raising their weapons, a rusty sharpened shiv and a bluntly studded club. “Want to do a team up and knock some heads?”

“Of course!” I stated pleasantly. Moving closer as we moved forward, both our opponents lunged for us, I hopped left and Canard hopped jumped right so we had both of them between us and their weapons harmless struck out at air or the ground.

I lunged forward with a left straight into the right side of the Goblimon’s with reversed gripped shiv and on the other side Canard jabbed the top of his hockey stick into the other ones head with his stick like a blunt spear. Their heads slammed together in a painful, if oddly satisfyingly hollow sounding, manner.

They were down, but now out until Dolly landed on them with the skateboards front and back wheels smashing their heads down into the ground, they soon disappeared into vortexes.

“Come on, let’s move, we’re burning daylight here!” Dolly barked and pointed towards the bridge.

“She’s got the right idea, even if I have no idea what she’s barking.” Canard led the way towards the bridge.

“It almost feels as if we’re bullying them…” The Goblimon weren’t exactly a great threat, but they were still an aggressive threat. Again, I likened them to the pukwudgies of Equus, aggressive, nasty and willing to ruin your day just for the sake of ruining it.

“If they weren’t the ones attacking us, I’d be more likely to agree that they aren’t too hard to deal with… if it weren’t for the fact that they could keep coming at us constantly and eventually wear us down with numbers.” Canard stated as we started onto the bridge and halfway up we saw six Goblimon waiting at the other end. I could feel music, but I don’t think it was a heart song meant for us. At least the music sounded fun and funky, even if it was being used by these guys. “All they need to do is get lucky once… don’t drop your guard around a Goblimon just because they seem less than threatening.”

“We are the numerous Basher Bullies, and we’re about to have quite-a-violent-amount-fun~.” The six grinned as the leader of them was looking at something behind us as the stalked forward slowly, turning around there were six more Goblimon coming up on our rear. “Don’t expect to go easy on you, especially when you now can’t even go on the run~.”

“Guys, ambush!” Yes, Dazzle we… a cube shaped barrier of energy surrounded the bridge. Four Kamemon erupted from the water through the barrier, two to the left and right in front and behind, basically landing on the bridge surrounding us in a square. “To be specific, I was talking about those guys.”

We all dove in several directions mouth fired blasts of water surged forth, scattering us as the twelve Goblimon charged forward. Dazzle seemed to move quite fast to avoid the water with a fearful look in her eyes.

I bucked out at the nearest Kamemon knocking them from the bridge and had to avoid another one firing a strange arrow connected to a wire from their back that arced up and towards me.

The arrow tracked me as I moved to avoid it by hopping left and right, back and towards the Goblimon encroaching behind us.

The arrow was swiftly deflected by Dolly as it closed in when she swung her board out on the strap into its path as she threw the stone bone at the offending Kamemon’s face, forcing it to reel its arrow back into its open shell.

Canard quickly fired a puck into its opened up back before it could close its shell and that Kamemon let out an agonized scream as he disappeared into a vortex. Apparently they had weak spots in the back of their shells when they were open, good to know.

My ears twitched and I rolled to the left avoiding a makeshift rusty arrow to the spine as one of the Goblimon had a bow and the arrow. The arrow was deflected upwards by Dolly popping it upwards with her board as she threw stone bone again to slow down the six Goblimon encroaching slowly form the front, I leapt up after the arrow and slapped my left hoof into it when it spun to point towards the nearest Goblimon that was about to attack Dazzle and the arrow pierced his shoulder hard enough to make him disappear into a vortex leaving the arrow behind.

The Goblimon did tend to leave behind weapons when defeated earlier, so the Backspace System can only account for so much.

Dazzle returned the favor as soon as I landed by blasting away three of the Goblimon behind me with a flame burst as she avoided another Kamemon shooting water at her like the plague given her weakness to water based attacks.

“Do you really think that you are very strong~? Well we’re here to prove whether you’re right or wrong~.” A Goblimon sang as he slammed his club into my left leg and wobble countered him with a harsh left that he rolled with and was on his feet again a second later. “Let me tell you a lesson of dealing with us Goblimon, it’s the rules that we have all lived by and known for so long~.”

“You’ve got to be tough, you’ve got to act rough, don’t you even dare try-to hurt the bosses bottom lines~.” The Goblimon stated as they ganged up on Dolly as she defended herself with her board and a freshly caught bone, one of the Goblimon slammed a club her across the helmet dazing her and confusing the Goblimon when the club cracked instead of her helmet. “You’ve got to be tough, you’ve got to act rough, there’s no weakness among these Goblimon’s spines~.”

I opened my mouth and fired a Bark Blast that knocked that just hit Dolly away from her, then barked to Bark Busters and exploded them at the other two Goblimon’s feet knocking straight them into the air.

Where was Lit, wasn’t he… oh he was helping Dazzle with the three new Kamemon that popped onto the bridge. His blasts of lightning were ripping into them with frightening strength for something so small.

“Thanks for the save Pom!” Dolly stated after she collected herself, I still owed you more saves than you could ever owe me. “How are we going to get through that barrier, what is even up with that thing anyway?”

Even as Dolly said it, she was throwing the bone towards a Goblimon that managed to latch onto Canard’s right leg as he was busy knocking another away with his hockey stick, she managed to dislodge the Goblimon enough for him to punt it through the barrier and into the river.

So the barrier trapping us on the bridge didn’t prevent the gang members from passing through it…

“I think I might have an inkling of an idea as to what the barrier might be for Dolly.” Some of it was almost far too obvious to me though, I would have to confirm my suspicions later.

I leapt up and flying bucked a Goblimon into the path of an arrow from the short range bow wielder, they disappeared in a flash of Digi-credits like the others had.

“I think we might even be having similar thoughts on that then!” Grunted Carnard as he lifted up two of the Goblimon and slammed their heads together for more oddly satisfying hollow clunk noises, before swinging them both around and tossing them off the bridge. “I bet we need to actually deal with all these guys on the bridge before we can leave.”

We were quickly getting swarmed here and Dazzle was singing a few small Rounds into them to keep them from closing in on her. Lit was busy stopping any Kamemon from getting close to her, they weren’t using their wire arrow things around Lit after our fuzzy little buddy completely fried one of them into getting sucked away by a vortex.

I noted that the gang members were picking up each other’s credits when given an opportunity and a Kamemon even fled through the barrier keeping us in having stolen what looked like an obscenely large amount from the Goblimon… hmm… curious.

“You’ve got to be tough, you’ve got to act rough, there’s no room for being ever-SO kind~.” Sang the Goblimon we were still wrestling with, speaking of wrestling I felt one land on my back as I was busy swatting one back with a jab of my left hoof and loosed my coiled wool to fired off a point blank Thousand Spear directly into him sending him flying into the bow wielding one we have yet to deal with to deal a little damage.

“You’ve got to be tough, you’ve got to act rough, you certainly won’t like what we have in mind~.” Grinned the Goblimon on my back as he gripped my neck with his left hand trying to choke me and jammed his shiv into the meat of my right shoulder making me bleat loudly in pain.

A swirl of wind was an immediate response from Dolly that sent the Goblimon flying off my back into the river, I pulled the shiv out and quickly stitched my small wound shut with my wool with some concentration.

“You okay there Pom?” Dolly asked as she was suddenly next to me defensively watching the bow guy and for any other nearby threat. With her board and bone held aloft like a shield and sword, my little black and white knight.

“Mostly, just a little stabbing… not that I haven’t had worse than this.” I commented dryly as I started coiling up the wool along all my legs to jump or fire off Thousand Spear jets as needed.

“Yeah, bullet wounds must really suck after seeing and feeling what one did to you second paw for weeks after the initial hit.” Well Dolly, I’m actually quite thankful my arrhythmia problems mostly cleared up when Arceus healed me.

Lit, having taken care of the Kamemon problem, gave Dazzle opportunity to blast the Goblimon over the side of the bridge or just hit them directly with exploding orbs of fire.

The bow Goblimon started to notch another filthy looking arrow, when he went down to vertical flaming puck striking him between the eyes.

“Blargleflargle!” Okay that one was really bizarre and don’t know how he even made that sound with his mouth. Not after taking a hit like that while foaming at the mouth and disappearing into a vortex like all the others.

“Barriers down!” Dolly announced while pointing her left paw to the end of the eastern side of the bridge and we were out of targets.

Lit quickly leapt from Dazzle’s back onto Dolly as we made our way off the stone bridge, Canard took some time to grab and drop some weapons into his Digivice that could be useful later.

“Let’s move we don’t want to get caught up in barriers like that anymore than we have to.” Carnard grumbled as we started heading north in the street. Not many vehicles around here I noticed. “Also yes, I now think they are doing it on purpose after hearing that last one Pom.”

Thanks for the confirmation that I wasn’t the only one that thought it was oddly specific sounds of pain Canard.

-Dolly-

I was boarding on the street when some square heads ninja guys decided to drop from the nearby roof tops and all four of them were preparing fireballs to launch at us.

“Aero!” A gust of wind blew into them causing the fireballs they were preparing to erupt and cover them in flames.

The television heads quickly started running around in a panic and Pom simply sighed, but still gave me a warm smile for my quick thinking.

“You know, there’s water you can jump into over there.” Pom said dully as she watched the four square heads suddenly gain exclamations marks on their… face I want to say… eh.

The TV heads all started doing something with their hand and then balls of water formed above their heads and splashed down on them to put out the fires on their now slightly smoking and now wet bodies.

I felt a tug on my left ear and looked to my back. Lit squeaked pointed upwards with a tiny blue leg, while sending a slightly nasty look at the square heads.

Oh… I can see where this is going… I sent Pom an image of grin, the very grin she likely saw on my face right now.

“Light them up Lit!” I grabbed the little lovable yellow fuzz ball with my right paw and tossed him high up, guy was lightweight enough for my momentum powers to give him a boost.

The four TV heads looked up with question marks appearing on their screens, before they were all struck with a massive lightning bolt causing their screen faces to glitch out in what was obvious agony. Kind of like what happened when the TV lost signal all you saw was white noise static.

Their badly charred forms and now blank screens slowly fell over and disappeared into those swirly portals as Lit landed on my back with a happy squeak. That definitely had to hurt, especially their pride as ninjas if they had any to begin with the weird tubby TV monsters.

“Those poor Monitamon, they never stood a chance.” Chuckled out Canard as he motioned us forward and we continued on our way. A strange menacing looking motorcycle passed us by, but didn’t attack us… that thing looked weird. “What was that?”

“Machmon, champion level, vaccine type… does not seem aggressive to you at the moment given it is not turning around to run you down with its triple grill blades.” Our D-vices answered. That motorcycle with the freaky exposed spine portion certainly didn’t look like something we wanted to tangle with Sissy. Also didn’t Sam-I-am mention something about creating a bunch of those Machmon?

Eugh… now I have shivers down my spine that there was more than one of those two wheeled half biological and mechanical looking horrors. How many did Sam-I-am say she made again… she didn’t as far as I can remember, just that there were a lot of murder bikes running around that looked like that thing.

I’m fairly glad that the bike actually passed us by and ignored us, I wouldn’t know how to fight something that could move that fast.

“You guys okay? The Digivice saying something alerted me.” Sam-I-am said from the device on Canard’s hip.

“Aside from a slight injury, we’re mostly fine.” Pom answer, though that knife wound to the shoulder was pretty light considering how quickly she got to stitching it up.

“Well don’t get hurt anymore if you can help it. I’d miss you guys, especially you Canard, if something horrible were to happen!” Sam-I-am stated in an honest and earnest tone of voice. “Hold on, I’m contacting Frizzle.”

A second later Frizzle popped out and saw us slightly scuffed up, she whined and started slightly fussing over Pom and Dazzle while pressing up against them. So I’m sure she knows she could have helped, so why didn’t she?

“We’re fine, now let’s keep moving… did you need to do anything else in the Digivice?” Well Dazzle, it almost seemed to me that Frizzle could have helped us sooner… I even shared the thought with Pom who was the one that got stabbed.

“So what happened?” Glancing at me, Pom turned to Frizzle and she frowned while looked down. Frizzle made a motioned with putting both her claws up to one side of her head and mimed sleeping. “Well if you needed to sleep, then you needed to sleep.”

Frizzle seemed to be slightly relieved. She held up a claw and clenched it towards us, then motioned us forward.

We still had some distance to travel to get to the Night Life District place. The place sounds like my kind of party from what we’ve heard about it and the fact that we’re going to a Night Club meant for dancing.

-Dazzle-

As we quietly moved along the road, I quietly thought to myself

I’ve noticed that Frizzle the Guilmon doesn’t talk much or at all, I wondered why.

She was expressive, loved bread like it was truly chronic drug for her and she knew how to fight, possibly even reveled and loved fighting in a bestial manner. Otherwise she was rather alarmingly calm for the viciousness she can put out in a battle.

It’s still quite weird that she just approached me and gave me the device on this belt out of the blue. Did I end up here by happenstance or did I end up here in this world on purpose? Makes me wonder if Frizzle was somewhat of a quite rebel to match my personality and cared about freedom? There’s a lot of things I didn’t know, but a hug from Pom after days of torment eventually gave me have friends I would protect with my life.

I’m fairly large for a Salandit, but I guess no one would notice that fact had they not met an average Salandit in Viperia. None of these people here knew I was slightly abnormal, because I was going to get bigger and possibly alpha sized when I evolved and I was dreading that day.

I still wanted to evolve, mostly for a sense of security that comes with the strength… but for a pokemon to evolve they would have to be put under a lot of stress and duress. I really didn’t like the forced evolution practices of my family and would prefer to evolve for a reason or purpose of my choosing. I also didn’t like my family or the people that came after me, could I really stay in this world for as long as I wanted?

My eyes flicked upwards as I crawled along with my friends moving down the street and noticed something.

“Heads up!” I got the warning out in time as multiple Falcomon dived straight for us like a Taillow doing Brave Bird attack, but if I remember right these guys couldn’t fly and could only glide. “Say… could Dolly maybe force them straight down into the ground?”

“Dolly… do you still have the magical strength for something like that?” Pom asked and the little canid gave a reply that other canid Pokémon might be able to understand, but it just sounded like she was saying ‘Dalmatian’ a lot to me with a lot of strange inflections and variances.

The grin on the Dolly’s face was rather promising as she held up a paw and pointed down with a single digit, then uttered something.

A swirling wind formed in front of the Falcomon and when they flew into their angle for us suddenly turned them straight into the ground with the speed of a boulder being dropped off a cliff.

The seven Falcomon were now stuck beak first into the ground and hadn’t done the teleporting thing yet. Never really interacted with psychic type Pokémon to figure out how they did the teleport thing here, but my friends apparently understood how it was done here well enough.

“Don’t attack them just yet, I need to talk to one of them.” Canard was tall, muscular and fairly handsome warrior of a sport I can only begin to star understanding as an ice type Pokémon’s dream sport. Golducks were showboats and usually moderately nice looking, but this guy was no Golduck. “There’s something we’ve got to know, if the other Falcomon get free knock them out.”

Canard use his play stick to flip one of the Falcomon out the ground and onto its back where it struggled to get out from under the blade of the weapon.

“Okay, talk, who’s your leader and gang in all of this?” Canard stated grumpily.

“We’d rather that stay private.” The bird with the claws that seem to be common for Digimon said before spitting metal four pointed star out of his beak into his own belly and disappeared in a vortex. The other Falcomon were quick to do the same to escape us.

“Well that’s disconcerting, but given the ninja motif, I’m thinking they might be related to the Monitamon. We’ll shelve finding out knowledge on their gang for another time, let’s move.” After receiving acknowledgment from us, we started moving and eventually came to a street that was being watched by two red birds that were playing maracas and wearing Ludicolo hats… they must be Muchomon. “Are you Muchomon and is this the Night Life District we’ve been hearing so much about.”

His approach was friendly and even jovial.

“Si, this is the place if you want to have fun, but no troublemakers and the only fighting is if Tempomon lets it happen. Do you need help finding his night club?” The colorful birds had removed their Ludicolo hats and put away their maracas in an instant and were all business when seconds before they were playfully and joyfully playing around. “We assume you’re here for him if not for partying.”

“Yes please.” Pom said with a smile while warily looking around.

“Look one of the reasons we’re letting you into the district without too many questions is because you helped out Gaomon, his big brother put in a good word for you to let you through if you came this way. Also the big brother would like you to visit his gym when you have the time.” One of the red birds turned to a purple bird of similar appearances, except he for some reason had peg legs instead of bird legs and a large brown bag strapped to his belly. “Penmon, can you shows these guys around, pass by the gym on the way to the club and make sure they don’t get lost or attacked.”

“Sure thing dood!” Penmon saluted and motioned for us to follow him. “First time in this part of Server City I take it, you probably want some information. Well getting it out of Tempomon is going to be a real struggle, the guy really knows how to dance you into the ground dood.”

“What is Gaomon’s brother anyway?” I asked remember Pom combing to Gaomon’s aid, blue canine Digimon with boxing gloves like a Hitmonchan.

“Oh him, he’s a Kangarumon dood!” Did Penmon always say dood at the end of everything he says? That was going to get annoying quickly. “A fighter with a body as tough as he is kind too, we’ll make a quick stop by his place then we’ll head to the Tempomon’s Night Club once you are done talking things out with him dood.”

“So… what happened to your legs?” We were too polite to ask, but Pom decided to broach the topic after nibbling her lower lips cutely.

“Oh that, I’m not actually Penmon, I’m actually Prinnymon… most Muchomon and Penmon can’t make the distinction between us and them dood.” Wait… what? I was expecting some horrible accident where he got used to walking on stilt legs after losing his feet or something… so those were his actual legs?! “I stopped bothering to correct them about my actual species a long time ago and it doesn’t really bother me that much dood.”

We continued to follow Prinnymon in silence and a slight bit of confusion.

“What’s the difference between your species, aside from naturally having peg legs as part of your anatomy?” Canard was the one that broached the topic this time.

“Okay imagine if you were a baby bird digimon that incidentally got into a really weird mixture of data, one that makes you violently explosive if picked up and thrown. The act of lifting up a Prinnymon arms us and we detonate when our body is physically thrown, that comes from the Commandramon data we have in us.” Okay, that sounded a lot like an Electrode exploding because it was happy, sad or just because it wanted to explode. I sometimes wonder why some Pokémon have the ability to detonate their dimensional energy violently like that, it actually seems highly counterproductive to living. “Add in a cocktail of other Digimon data and of course Penmon data for the overall form before we grow into our Rookie level and you get us dood."

We continued to follow the Prinnymon in silence for a few seconds.

"Isn't it terrifying knowing you could violently explode?" I found myself asking.

"Eh, I take things as they come, exploding wouldn't actually kill me, but it would certainly really hurt a lot and leave me on deaths doorstep to the cold embrace for any Digimon to tear apart for data dood!" Prinnymon stated with a smile on his beak. "My life could be much worse than acting as a tour guide, I'm quite thankful the Backspace System exists, it helps prevent me from having a really short life expectancy like a Commandramon dood!"

281. Server City Ransom Pt. 6.

Author's Note

The literal interpretation of Dancing Flame gets used, to great effect.

Also...

Music: Sensei's Theme, Advance Wars 2: Blackhole Rising.

If Advance War Sensei were to ever have a Digimon it'd be Kangarumon, he'd be the trainer that trained the next generation. Am I wrong to think this?

Thousand Spears is the launching of air pressure like One Piece Zorro's Phoenix Cannon.

You are probably under fifteen pounds of air pressure and that's not accounting for gravity pressing down on you too. The more you know!

281. Server City Ransom Pt. 6.

-Digital Realm, Server City, Night Life District, Kangarumon’s Gym, Pom-

As soon as I walked in I saw Kangarumon, he was a large yellow kangaroo monster that wore boxing gloves, red boots, had a blue helmet and a pouch with a toy sticking out of it. Next to him was the smaller blue bipedal akita we met before, Gaomon.

Gaomon was huffing and looking off to the side and away from Kangarumon.

“Ah you came, thanks for watching out for my little brother’s back in the streets when we got separated… technically all Digimon are related from the very source code that gives us life, virus, vaccine, data or otherwise. Still the concepts of brotherhood and the like exist among us Digimon.” Kangarumon crossed his arms and gave Gaomon an honestly worried look before turning back to us. “I’m Kangarumon and I owe you a free lesson on anything relating to fighting, if you need help to see where you can improve, then I’m the one to do it even if the improvement is marginal… also you can use this as a safe spot to rest this part of the street is my turf and Tempomon doesn’t mind sharing as long as I protect it well enough… and I can. I can even help you with unusual techniques, even if you might not think I could because I can’t do them. I’m fairly smart in that regard, aside from the free lessons do you need anything.”

Dolly looked at my right shoulder and I sighed, this was going to sting… a lot.

“Do you have any effective disinfectant? I was stabbed by a Goblimon on the way here…” I didn’t even need to say anything further as Kangarumon blurred in a hop to somewhere and then came back with several things in his right arm.

“Rubbing alcohol, sanitizer, soap or ointment? Also do you need something to bite onto I have this rubber dog bone you could use, also do you need stitching?” Looking away from Kangarumon my gaze slowly slid over to Gaomon who looked a little embarrassed. “I’m a good trainer who knows the ins and outs of patching up light wounds, even if I’m not a professional or variant specified towards it. Knowledge is power, especially in the realms a Digimon occupies and being intelligent as much as brutally strong can get you by in a lot of ways.”

“Is the bone clean? Also I’ll use the sanitizer.” I get enough alcohol from just watching Shanty imbibe it.

Again I consider it odd that, somehow, Shanty’s not dead nor does alcohol do anything negative to the goat despite having mostly alchohol and possibly vinegar for blood being a negative for just about anyone else as overabundance can kill as not keeping a balance of good health practices. Shanty was, physically enough, stronger than me in some regards of muscle even if I outclassed her in skill.

“Of course it is, I would never give you something that was covered in bacteria, though digital bacteria is not as harmful to biologicals it’s still a good idea to play things safe.” Taking the rubber bone Kangarumon offered me into my mouth, I clenched my teeth and safely undid the wool stitching on my shoulder. “Huh, nifty… hold still this might sting and bubble a bit.”

-A few minutes of wound tending later-

I wool stitched my wound again and Kangarumon appreciated my stitching before nodding and motioning to himself.

“Okay, anything you would like help with as a freebie, a new move for your Digimon friends perhaps? Any techniques that have been giving you a problem that I can improve on or even suggestions on how to better yourself, I can teach or help anyone. Even the seemingly unteachable, like a Gaossmon. For those that don’t know a small blue lizard Digimon that’s basically just a head, legs and a tail that runs away from fights really fast when confronted and tend to be easily found after almost drowning in puddles about an half an inch deep or giving away their hiding spot they run into by barking like Chihuahuas… it’s actually pretty cute of them and they are not truly a threat to anyone unless you corner them.” Kangarumon nodded to Frizzle who tilted her head and gave him a curious look. “Yes, I can teach a Gaossmon to fight better… but no I can’t necessarily teach them to win said fight.”

Frizzle looked at us and shrugged, then reached into the Dazzle’s Digivice and pulled out a cinnamon roll. She broke it in half and offered me the other half. Well I did need the sugar after losing some blood… I took the piece of roll on the proffered napkin and bit into it, I was in heaven for a few seconds.

I wonder what Frizzle would be like if she weren’t addicted to bread or baked goods, probably not as happy to see a smile on my face.

“You can only do so much, still it’s amazing that you even successfully taught that Gaossmon kickboxing… didn’t know they had legs that were quite that flexible.” Gaomon seemed to be singing praises of his big brother. Said big brother put his gloved hips on his hip and raised his head high with a grin towards Gaomon. “Good student, even if he wasn’t too terribly bright.”

“Well, how about it?” Hmm… could Kangarumon actually help me with that fireball technique I’m working on?

“Well… wouldn’t you have to know our capabilities to know how to help us?” Taking on a thoughtful look at my question, Kangarumon rubbed his chin with his left glove.

“Only as much as you’re willing to give me, I will not ask for anything you’re not willing to tell me.” Kangarumon turned to Gaomon and gestured to him with his right glove. “Still a little information would help me figure out whatever it is you want to learn, because learning…”

“Is how we grow!” Pumping his right fist Gaomon was looking to me in a friendly manner, his tail wagging slightly. “It doesn’t matter if it is physical, mental or even spiritual learning, there’s always something new one can learn and no one can learn everything there is in a lifetime… at least not without being a supercomputer the size of a small planet. Also Digimon, being informational beings and all…”

“Okay… well there is this one technique I’m having problems with…” The one that would allow me to shoot fireballs if I could do it right.

I wanted to show that to Tianhuo when I get back to Ransei as the Arceus device wouldn’t let me connect to Equss and… well… the time disparity here will make it so Tianhuo wouldn’t know she had something to be worried about, much less Shanty and the others.

“Do you have the free time?” Kangarumon asked with worry.

“We do, we might be here to ask Tempomon about something important, but it’s not immediately urgent… yet.” I threw in that ‘yet’ after ten seconds of silence, Dolly didn’t say anything but knew I wanted to calm down after going through a number of Digmon like we did.

“Then be prepared to call me sensei, also everything in the training facility can be used freely!” Kangarumon stated as he brought both his boxing gloves in a defensive stance and threw a few jabs that were almost invisible to the naked eye. “Just don’t abuse my kindness too much or you’ll be kicked out permanently.”

-A few hours later, Dolly-

“Huh… so I can simply improve the strength of my slap shot just like that and angle it so no one knows which direction it’s going to go but me?” Canard has learned a lot about wielding a hockey stick as a staff, a halberd, a scythe and even hockey techniques.

“Yep, you already know how to use a hockey stick expertly in the sport, just remind yourself that high sticking should only be used when not playing the sport and in self-defense of you or others.” After that Kang moved back to Pom, with some hint of concern.

Apparently Kang knew how to fight with sporting equipment and enjoyed sports as much as he did fighting, this included skateboards and I was kind of amazed that the guy was as graceful as he was at his size on one.

Pom made a suggestion of getting Gaomon to play with the Skateboard Scamps at the Skate Park if he had some free time from being a gym assistant and Kang agreed to try sparking a friendship with that Garu guy. We’ve secured a place on the east side of server city to go to in an emergency at least.

It was humbling when a Kangaroo could actually teach me a thing or two about fighting with a skateboard utilizing only my hind legs and maybe keeping one paw free for maneuvering plants. Some of what he taught me was a part of him giving me a few pointers on using the stone bone to pivot and or flip myself about and how to use it close up for more than the oddly mystical boomerang effect it had going on.

Frizzle looked like she respected Kang after a quick lesson on improved her brawling and how to better wield the chain she wrapped around her right arm, this respect went up after Kang helped Dazzle learn to do a few grapple and throws letting himself be tossed about by the smaller lizard. Dazzle wasn’t that great in a close up confrontation, she spent most of a battle trying to keep a distance to hit someone with ridiculously accurate ranged attacks. She would eventually learn to be great in close up encounters, but it would require her to evolve which earned Frizzle’s curiosity… Digimon haven’t interacted with Pokémon much beyond what we were doing here it seems.

Kang was quite amazing, given he somehow taught Lit to spit electrified webs or balls of webbing that would explode into entrapping webs. He apparently figured out the mechanics behind something Lit was trying to learn to do and went from there.

It was when he got to Pom that Kang had a slight issue… it was what we were currently experiencing. At least that exploding Prin guy sat off to the side moderately amused, lazily kicking his wooden legs up and down watching us all exercise.

“Okay, what you’re trying to do Pom is… a bit difficult, but it’ll be a worthwhile technique if you can get it right.” The technique that Kang was talking about was the fireball blasting technique, name pending, which would allow Pom to generate awesome blasts of flames as safely as possibly without lighting herself on fire. “It’s kind of missing something still, give me a minute or two to think of something to help you.”

I think Pom had a thing for fire and after seeing Tian I can think of one reason right off the bat, aside from the whole lambkin lighting themselves on fire while in danger thing. Pom’s people were nuts, but it is pretty hard to catch or attack someone that’s running about and flailing while on fire. While Pom’s wool was resistant to burning down, it didn’t mean it wouldn’t catch fire and eventually do that and she was trying to make this ability absolutely safe to perform.

It was unfortunate for Pom that a number of her techniques tended to have drawbacks on her personal health to use too much in a short period of time, aside from ones that just exhaust magic which she apparently has in abundance compared to me.

I’m just thankful Pom was still alive… not for the lack of almost dying numerous times up to this point. It’d be a pretty sad day if something like a light stab wound actually took her down.

In any case Pom was Kangarumon’s focus right now and he seemed up to the challenge, I’ll practice with my board for a bit while they try to figure out how to do the technique Pom wants.

-Pom-

“Okay… I need you to do something for me, can you do the Buster Wolf thing?” Looking to Kangarumon, I nodded.

“Yes, but I need a target.” A target was promptly set up. “Are you okay?”

I went through the motions of spinning, shooting forward and slamming my right hoof into the target and bracing, then…

“Buster Wolf!” Blew the target into the nearest wall, not against the wall… into it.

“Okay… interesting technique, but why did you ask if I was okay?” Kangarumon asked as he looked at the improbably tough Digimon shaped target stuck in the gyms wall.

“Part of the attack, it’s become a bit of a thing I couldn’t stop saying after asking Dolly, having practiced this with her a lot.” The curious look I got made me nervous. “It’s how I prep the attack, probably shouldn’t use it if a person isn’t okay.”

“You don’t like fighting do you? Understandable that you’re learning incredible techniques to protect those you care about and love, I can tell you’ve been scarred pretty badly in several fights regardless of how your wounds have healed since.” Kangarumon was being quite patient and calm, it made me feel a little bit relieved that he didn’t sound angry about me not liking fighting. “Do you need to sit down and talk about it?”

-Five minutes later, Kangarumon-

I’ve never been to reality, but it’s from where we get information from for all the digital realms. Not that we interpreted that information correctly or perfectly, but I think it built character among Digimon.

“Okay, so you’ve been using techniques created from what your friends can do, the one fighting style you know best has been taught to you by the head of the guard for the place you live… and you recreated the others fighting styles mentally and can do them physically.” I looked up and she seemed to shyly look away, she was adorable. Also I could tell the bell she wore under the pink scarf around her neck was the most important object to her. When she talked about the head guard of Huoshan she wasn’t talking as if she was a person of great respect… she was much closer than that and that person was capable of wielding the element of fire, Pom had some burning passion under that meek exterior. Pom herself was like a sleeping wolf and from what I saw of the Buster Wolf, the wolf part seemed to be powered by intent more than anything. “I would like to spar with you eventually, but if you want to find Tempomon then he should be arriving at his club soon… he usually works his club starting in the early evening. Didn’t think it would take so long to try and work out this technique you’re creating.”

“I’m sorry…” Pom stated with a wilt.

Pom could create the spark, but she couldn’t blast it into a ball of fire big enough to make it a technique worthy of anything more than lighting a candle, there’s also the fact that it’s a technique based on her people lighting themselves on fire. She couldn’t do it with her bark and she wanted to do the fireball without igniting herself first. She told me a single thousand spear created by her wool isn’t enough so… what if… Dolly could do things with air and I would suggest it, if Pom didn’t want to be capable of doing this solo and has probably already thought of that.

“It’s okay, I think I have an idea, but we’re going to do this safely. First can I see a Thousand Spears?” I quickly set up a target for her and her wool shifted around her left leg and she fired off a lance of air with her wool uncoiling, which was quite amazing to see in action and it did some damage to the target. “Is there any other way to do that?”

“Yes, but it requires using Dancing Flame to speed up my movements.” The technique Pom said causes issues as it causes her physical health problems various times in life. “Maybe I can do it with Sheep’s Clothing supporting my muscles…”

Pom became quiet and looked at the ground.

“Sheep’s Clothing?” Looking to me I saw her close her eyes and the wool across her body… subtly rippled like water before changing.

The wool shaped around her ears into a more triangular manner, her hairstyle flipped to lengthening out around her neck into a wolf like scruff, the wool around her tail elongated into a thick wolf like tail and her hooves were surrounded with wool shaped paws that had claws. Those were the most notable changes, the other changes was the fact that the wool around her body was no longer protecting her and seemed to be thinner and more integrated with her limbs.

She raised her right paw and curled it to start rapidly punching it forward rapidly, I could feel several strong gusts of air, but not the same strength of her launching a Thousand Spear with her wool. Still her physical strength and personal speed notably went up by quite a bit.

“No… don’t think I can do it that way, also being in this form while doing Dancing Flame pulled all the muscles in my body painfully even if it gave me incredible speed. Almost as much as Sho-…” She trailed off and quickly shifted her wool back to normal and she no longer looked wolf like, I glanced to Gaomon who was staring at Pom slightly. Gaomon noticed me looking at him staring and he looked away blushing to continue helping Dazzle with opening distance in close up fighting. “In any case it’s not safe for me to use Dancing Flame in Sheep’s Clothing shift.”

She sharply inhaled and I noticed something in her eyes, I could almost see her brain activity skyrocketing beyond her normal capabilities and then she exhaled. I could keep up with an ultimate in a fight… but the speed her leg moved when she jabbed out a spear of air like she had previously done was quite impressive.

“Slightly more powerful, because you are congealing the air and that you do that without make noise from breaking the sound barrier is… odd.” Very odd, but I had an idea for how to work her technique and how she had been trying to do it before was ultimately wrong. “I have an idea, but let me try something first.”

After setting up my target, I moved back to being next to Pom and the target was several feet away. I brought my gloves up to one side together and cupped them, Pom and the others looked toward me curiously.

I remember this being a technique in some martial arts that I never really tried to use, but as a Digimon it should be feasible for me to teach Pom if I can replicate the move in full. It’ll also give me a new move to eventually teach Gaomon.

Having gathered energy usually used for my flaming fist attacks, I surged my arms forward and twisted them.

“Hadoken!” A massive fireball of energy ripped with my gloves and blasted the target to smithereens and ash in a blink. My gloves were slightly smoking, but the release of that attack had been an amazing feeling. The martial arts archives box my data comes from were done proud today. “Now you see Gaomon, information can teach you to do many things you didn’t know you could before. I believe I know how you will perform your technique Pom, it’ll be similar in execution but it’ll still be yours alone.”

-Pom-

I was almost hoping he wouldn’t be able to help me with that, but the smile on his face meant I couldn’t back out now. I was set in learning to do this technique.

“Okay…” I muttered, Kang crouched down and gently hugged me.

“It’s okay to be a bit afraid of yourself, for others or of the possible futures where you do or do not learn this, but you’re doing this so you’ll have another move to use in a fight and learning it now will be better than learning it later. Remember to figure out when to take action and when not to.” Kangarumon was still so patient with me, like Tianhuo. “Also I think you can take your Buster Wolf a little bit further, but that’s up to you to figure out. As for how you’ll do your technique, it won’t be the Hadoken I just used. It’ll be your own technique to name and your design, I’m just helping you finalize it and here’s how you’re going to do it…”

-Ten minutes later-

Okay, having gangly legs was making this a little awkward, but I could do this. The Hadoken focuses energy before being fired and requires a twisting motion to spin the energy into spiraling a straight path through the air; my technique was, as Kangarumon said, different.

Well my wife’s name technically means ‘Sky Fire’ and she’s definitely the embodiment of a living firework, bright and beautiful. So Huo was always going to be a part of the attacks name… Huo Qiang? Fire Spear, fits the theme of my Huoshan training and it’ll certainly surprise the longma back home. Maybe I should mix in my own theme and call it Thousand Spears: Huo.

I brought my hooves together, about as well as I could, and didn’t charge any energy like Kangarumon. I didn't know how to do that through my hooves with magic.

The Hadoken seemed to be straight forward attack and only straight forward give the swirling motion needed. My attack, I can aim it in any direction and possibly have the same results every time.

If Kangarumon was right, and he probably was given how talented he was, my technique required quickly making my legs parallel to one another before firing it, otherwise I’d get caught in the back blast if the flames compress inwards and then explodes in my face.

I quickly clacked my hooves together and a spark formed, I started to slowly swirl the sparked fire forward and the gentle air from my hooves gave it strength as the fire started to spiral into the shape of a magatama.

Too strong and it would burn out before properly fired, too weak and it wouldn’t last long enough to fire… same principle as Dancing Flame, different use of balance.

Having sparked the flame, I nurtured it with my swirling hooves slowly and gave it life and then I’d coax it into position with movements of my hooves creating the airflow to guide it. I made the flame act like it was breathing in and out, matching the tempo of my breathing and it pulsed between my hooves like a happy little child. It wasn’t bloated and it wasn’t starved, it was a flame that danced happily in the air reminding me of better times.

Once the fireball slowed its swirling and was between my hooves pointing at the target. Like a baby grown to adulthood, I released it into the world with the rippling of the coiled wool down to my hooves and the results… were not what I expected.

“Thousand Spears: Huo.” I whispered in awe and… complete and utter terror at what I just did. My friends said I had potential, I think I should stop pushing said potential. If anyone were curious as to the true meaning of Dancing Flame… I just made fire literally dance in the air and unlike the fire immune longma, I had to be quite careful when sparking a fire like that.

Thankfully, I doubt anyone would even let me do the slow set up for that attack before they were on top of me.

Despite how slow the attack was, the results could not be denied.

Everyone was staring at me, even Frizzle. They slowly looked to the target, the top half of it was missing. Left behind was a cauterized stump in the shape of a half circle and the bottom half was ablaze. The hole also lead to the bathroom behind the target where I could see burning bits of several sinks before my attack finally stopped.

“Anyone that lets you set that up on purpose… would have to be a complete and utter idiot beyond all measure or completely immune to fire. It took you more than five minutes to do that, but I think the results speak for themselves given you melted through a training dummy… a brick wall… and several of the bathroom sinks… going to need the one from the kitchen and a contractor for copy and pasting. Anyway, I’d average that was ten times the strength of an average oven from what was once a little candle flame, putting about one thousand degrees and the physics behind that attack alone…” Kangarumon stated with clear awe. “Please come again sometime soon and thank you for showing me the excellence of your understanding of what you have been taught and how you went about interpreting it. It’s about time you went to talk with Tempomon, also be aware that any interruption to that or even an errant breeze could ruin that attack if not kept under control properly.”

“Yeah…. no problem… thank you for finding the solution to my issue so quickly Sensei Kang.” That being, start the fire off to the side, build it up and then squeeze it between two thousand spears making a three pronged blazing pressure spear that drilled through a lot because the fireball was still carrying the spiraling motion I initially put into it. “Please carry me to the club guys… because I’m going to pass out now…”

Eyes rolling up in the back of my head, I felt my back slap against the ground before everything went black.

-A short time later, Dolly-

Okay, Pom was definitely freaking out about that, would probably go into denial mode upon waking up too.

Frizzle seemed to be intrigued by the raw power of it.

Dazzle seemed more amused than anything, except when Pom passed out in shock.

Lit started trying to shoot spiraling electric webs… yeah the little guy had a competitive streak and I liked that about him, though I don’t understand why a tick would have the ability of a spider to make webs. Maybe it’s an evolutionary thing, I’ll have Pom ask Dazzle about that later.

Canard was staring at Pom trying to imagine that someone smaller than him could so easily lay waste to her enemies if she wasn’t a mental mess at times, that fire lance thing pushed it a bit too far for her mind to comprehend that, yes, it had in fact been her that did that.

Prinnymon, he just started roasting a marshmallow over the burning lower half of the training dummy and took the whole thing with a lackadaisical attitude and simply said ‘Awesome Dood’.

There was my thoughts on how to react to it… I didn’t know how to.

On the one paw Pom was always awesome like that, on the other that was terrifyingly slow so someone would have to run interference for Pom to set that up. It was equally terrifyingly devastating to watch in action and if you weren’t immune to fire… then you’d sure be hoping you had a ridiculous resistance to it.

Pom literally put the Dancing Flame into making that small bit of fire dance and grow before doing what she did with herself. The spiraling ball of fire shrunk before she exploded it into motion. If she was ever going to do that attack, then she would certainly make sure she doesn’t want her target moving again if it wasn’t outright immune to fire before doing that.

The most worrying thing was how Pom was going to take creating such a lethal technique like that. She probably should have just asked for an improvement on her Wolf Fang Hoof movements, as that technique is going to haunt the back of her mind for quite a while.

Reminded me of that combo move we pulled at the volcano that took out those robotic birds, Pom never mentions it and we almost lost Dodo that day, so… yeah… definitely burying this technique in her head until we needed it.

-Outside Tempomon’s Club, Frizzle-

Never discount the little guy, especially not a Cutemon or a Marineangemon, Pom definitely is not someone to discount despite how weak she looked to be. I knew that Pom was a wolf that would rather sleep than fight, but pick on her friends and if that wolf wakes up...

I looked at Pom hanging limply from my shoulder and the slightly worried looks from Dazzle. I would talk to her, but I’m quite exceedingly embarrassed about my voice. It was a fact that all Guilmon have an awful addiction to bread and making it, ridiculously weird high pitched voices and battle instincts that most Digimon on our level can’t match easily. It’s definitely that second thing I’d rather not talk about, because I'd rather not say anything at all.

“Business or pleasure, if it’s business, it’ll lead to Tempomon’s pleasure anyway and I mean he might challenge you to dance fighting if he thinks you got the groove or the moves to give him a challenge.” The bouncer at the door was a, relatively small, Daipenmon. Etymology ‘big penguin monster’, appearance was a mechanical penguin with a crank sticking out of his head and w ielding two large popsicles, which would never melt, as weapons. His data obviously came from a snow cone maker.

I could tell that this Daipenmon was a champion level version, almost bordering on ultimate.

There were a lot of Muchomon and Penmon around, so the robotic penguin Digimon wasn’t likely an unusual sight around here. There were two reasons it would be odd though, one it was a bouncer and not acting like a general soulless mechanical Digimon as it blocked the door we had been waiting in line for and two it was smaller than a regular Daipenmon, so was it still worthy of the ‘Dai’ part of its name since it wasn’t a mountain sized threat?

“They’re here to talk with the boss and possibly have a good time dood!” Prinnymon answered, I hadn’t really seen a Prinnymon before him, must not be a common species of Digimon.

I blinked as I looked beyond Daipenmon and saw another Prinnymon, but red, huh… neat. It was carrying a tray and was smiling as it went about its business.

“Then welcome to Music Maestros headquarters, don’t start any fights without Tempomon’s say so… unless it’s a dance fighting, a pure dance off or basically light sparring. If you’re seriously trying to kill someone, take it outside the night life district. We don’t try to kill and load Digimon data around here.” With the number of penguin Digimon protecting the other Digimon around here, the Daipenmon would think anyone an idiot to try. I pointed at Dazzle’s hip and Daipenmon silently acknowledged the Digivice with a slight tilt of his head and motioned us through with his Popsicle. “Go on through.”

Daipenmon was looking at me suspiciously, maybe because I was a digital hazard marked Digimon and capable of ending this world if I went entirely rogue. I'd rather not do that thank you very much, I like living and not being destroyed by other Digi-destined. It was weird enough how I even ended up with a Digivice in the first place without a partner connected to it until now.

Upon entering I saw a Frigimon and they wouldn’t associate with bad people under normal or extenuating circumstances, the snow bear Digimon were good judges of character and always safe to approach. So this wasn’t an ambush and we weren’t walking into a trap with one of ours unconscious from the mental stress of being incredible.

Good, we should be fine until we meet Tempomon personally.

282. Server City Ransom Pt. 7.

Author's Note

Well this one took a while to write, I'm not exactly on the ball am I? I've been feeling some melancholy lately.

If anything is wrong with this page, then so be it.

Music: References.

Pico - Friday Night Funkin'.

Everybody's a Rockstar - Tall Paul.

282. Server City Ransom Pt. 7.

-Digital Realm, Server City, Night Life District, Tempomon’s Night Club, Canard-

The beat filtering through the building was starting to make my head throb and all the Digimon were at least enjoying themselves and not attack me.

Pom was unconscious, but I think that was out of shock of having caressed a spark into a fireball and subsequently a beam lance of destruction. She looks so innocent and yet was quite dangerous, like Dolly or Lit in the small, cute and capable department.

“Keep close and don’t let Pom out of your sights here.” I grumbled as I stalked forward and looked at all the Digimon dancing and or enjoying themselves in a completely clean manner. “So where do you think we’ll find Tempomon?”

“Where anyone would find him dood!” Prinnymon stated and then pointed towards the empty booth a little bit above the large open hall with lights, a bar and a dance floor. This place seemed pretty nice, if a little bit loud for my tastes and it was probably meant to be that way. “He’ll have to head towards the DJ booth eventually, wouldn’t be called Tempomon if he didn’t love to play music dood!”

I looked to the booth and saw a large robotic bipedal Digimon with a volcano sticking out of his back playing the music currently, he was a mass of mechanical muscle wearing a hat with a V on it.

I believe by description that that had to be…

“Volcamon bringing the beats and warming up the place for my dear friend Tempomon, the Digimon Maestro of this joint! Things are heating up, can I get a yeah?!” Volcamon shouted and several Digimon might not even know what they were yelling about, but they were enthusiastic all the same and Dolly joined in with a howl. “You see, that one gets the enthusiasm that goes on in these places and they look to be bobbing with the beat. They know how to have fun!”

Dolly in particular seemed happy at the recognition and held up a paw and bent her middle digits inwards as she nodded her head to the beat and swayed her held high paw left and right.

“Come on. I see a good place near the entrance, we’ll set up at that booth in the corner.” It was a little unusual to me that nobody questioned us bringing an unconscious Pom in with us.

Maybe it was the fact that Digimon just didn’t understand when there was some oddness around, since they were purely bizarre a lot of time judging by how information gets interpreted around here into strange monsters. What was odd for us was just normal for them really.

We took a seat at the booth and watched as the red Muchomon, their purple colored cousins Penmon and a few Prinnymon were working around the area and would likely be keeping fights from breaking out. Not that they had much trouble with that, most of the Digimon already here seemed quite tame from what I normally deal with and were just having fun.

I personally thought the indoor floor to ceiling several story bouncy castle was a bit much, but who am I to tell the Digimon enjoying themselves that? This place was rather spacious if it had a three floor bouncy house that took up a quarter of the club.

I didn’t expect to see anything raunchy, because Digimon probably didn’t know what raunchy was and I haven’t seen a female duck in hundreds of ‘virtual’ years. When Digimon wanted to make an egg that didn’t naturally or randomly come from the system for Jijimon to raise, two or several Digimon working together would usually form one from combining any excess data and likely had to wait for the system to approve of its existence.

The realm didn’t want to overload it’s systems with too many Digimon for several good and highly obvious reasons, since Digimon are still talking about what started the King Yggdrasil incident.

Shaking my head and taking a seat at the table with the others, I raised my right hand and a waiter shuffled over to us on peg legs.

“Hello and welcome to the Musical Maestros headquarters that is Tempomon’s night club, neutral dealings and fun to be found here dood. I’m quite sure you’re surprised to see that we’re not all penguin Digimon here and we welcome any Digimon as long as they stay within the rules, you got that dood?” The Red Prinnymon stated, she seemed to be the chipper sort. “If you’re wondering and are just seeing a Prinnymon for the first time. Prinnymon is Rookie, Red Prinnymon is champion also known as Blood Prinnymon, King Prinnymon is an Ultimate with a specialty for being immune to almost all forms of small time virus attacks due to a particular protective ‘icepick proof’ coding. The final evolutions Pringermon X is our Mega form and doesn’t explode if thrown dood. Aside from that we can also go anywhere from Muchomon to Daipenmon, that is if we weren’t going to follow the line of Prinnymon based evolutions dood. Only Pringermon X looks entirely different from the rest of us and more mechanical aside from King Prinnymon being green and wearing a crown dood. So what can I get you dood?”

“Would asking for a conversation with Tempomon be too much?” The worst thing I can think to happen around here is a Giromon to come crash the party, those floating sphere shaped ultimates with two arms were terrifying with their grenades and chainsaws. It seemed this realm thankfully didn’t have defenses like those guys, the Machinedramon were basically almost enough to scare any invader off and any bad Digimon here were homegrown.

The only detriment to not having incredible internal defenses is Etemon causing trouble in the city… at least we think he is beyond causing the gangs to form.

“Not really, I’ll get him to talk with you, but be aware he will challenge you… not necessarily to a fight, but he does love to play games dood. Write down some information on this dood.” Red Prinnymon held out a notepad and writing implement to me I signed my name and reason for wanting to talk to Tempomon, she took the pad back and glanced at it. “Yeah, I’ll hand this to him personally dood. Hey, it’s nice to see another Prinnymon around dood!”

Red Prinnymon stuffed the note away in her pouch and waved to the Prinnymon still hanging out with us.

“Right back at you Red Prinnymon dood!” Prinnymon responded with a smiling beak and a waving flipper. “The difference between a red prinnymon and me is the explosive yield when we’re thrown, like the difference between a shrapnel grenade and a ballistic missile dood. However she’s more likely to explode in the direction of the impact after thrown so she’s much safer to be around than me dood.”

“Anything else, food, drink, free hugs or an interesting conversation starter dood?” Red Prinnymon seemed friendly enough, so I looked to Frizzle to see if she wanted anything. Now that I’ve tasted real food again again… I really didn’t want to go back to eating Digital food. Sure digital food was nourishing, but the flavors were always so bizarre… I’m quite tired of knowing exactly what the color purple tastes like. “If hugs, don’t lift me up too far… if you don’t know already Prinnymon explode due to unstable coding in our makeup, some bits of which are Commandramon in nature and that explains a lot about us Prinny dood.”

Digital food, being made purely of information and energy, was an acquired taste in many regards.

“I’m good but the others might want something.” I noted that she didn’t even pay one bit of attention to Pom nor did she seem to care as Dazzle was keeping her in comfortable position in the booths seat. Dolly seemed excited to be here and Lit seemed to match her mood by glowing a bit, all we had to do was wait. “Any of you guys can go do whatever you want, but be careful and don’t leave the club. We also need someone watching Pom and our stuff at all times.”

I saw Frizzle ordered something by writing it down, I’m already suspecting that it’s bread, and passed the pad to Prinnymon to see if he wanted anything and he wrote something down too.

“I don’t mind just sitting here.” Dazzle stated pleasantly, trying not to remind me she was one of the most poisonous things alive from her home realm, I’m certainly glad she wasn’t a Saurian. Terrifying poison aside, she really was as nice as she seemed. “I can watch Pom and anything we leave sitting around here.”

I still had a distaste for lizards, even if I was warming up to three of them. Sami and Dazzle were okay, but I really didn’t know Frizzle much beyond her fighting ability and the whole drug like addiction to bread thing, she doesn’t say anything and keeps mostly to herself.

Lit and Dolly, I was perfectly fine with those two and Pom being around me at all times. Pom should be scarier given what she’s feasibly capable of, but I couldn’t see her as a threat… to me at least.

Dolly put Lit on the table and barked something at Lit and the little electric tick nodded back to her and saluted with a tiny blue leg. I think he was able to understand what Dolly was saying almost as well as Pom does considering he stayed at the table as Dolly left her gear behind. The bone, helmet and skateboard where now bound in the skateboards strap and was wrapped around Pom’s torso while she was still out cold.

Lit sat down and looked about at the dancing colored lights with some wonder.

Having wandered out away from the table seeming to take in and enjoy the beat of the music, Dolly at least recognized that staying within sight is a good idea and was starting to enjoy herself by dancing to the beat of the loud music.

A few minutes later, Red Prinnymon came back with a basket load of sugary baked goods, something that hopefully tasted better than it looked.

-A short time later, Dolly-

Aw yeah, this place was bumping! Even if it was a little loud, at least it was not high pitch enough to cause me serious ear pains.

“Digital entities and anything else, the Digimon himself has entered the building!” At Volcano’s voice, cheering rang out and I stopped dancing about to turn and looked to see who the spotlight was on. “He’s got the face of a botamon, he’s a rhythmic butt kicking capoeira master, he’s a dance instructor and he knows how to carry a beat from nothing to everything, Tempomon is here and he’ll light up the night with games, music and more!”

The guy looked like a biped from my world. Only on continuing to look at this Tempomon did I recognize something weird. The guy was wearing headphones around his neck, he had a blue jacket with a penguin head motif for the hood of it and white pants. Among the other things the guy was wearing clawed boots and fingerless gloves red and yellow, he was covered in something like a cross between black downy feathers and fur judging by his exposed arms and the major thing about him… he had a huge speaker in his torso. That and his face consisted of two yellow eyes beneath the penguin hood and not much else.

“This Tempomon is in the building, nice to see all of you enjoying my place, remember not to come here too often if you have jobs or prior arrangements. Remember that this establishment is clean, otherwise can you enjoy yourselves and care to make some noise?!” Everyone in the building including myself cheered, this guy was hype as he hip hopped in place. Red Prinnymon approached and handed him something and they spoke for a bit. “Thank you for the noise folks, but I’ll be a bit before I start running my sets. DJ Vivid Visualization will take the booth, floor or will come up with something to entertain you eventually, don’t fret folks! I got to see to something first.”

I also realized that he was using a speaker the speaker in his body and not a microphone to talk to the entire room. Tempomon was the guy we came to meet right and he was already heading over to the table.

“Hello, hello, what do we have here, I think I recognize you Castaway Canard the biological that was swallowed alive by a Digimon’s nightmare fuel and lived to tell about it to end up here in the digital realms. Nice to see a sweet chica like that Guilmon here enjoying some sweets, the biologicals are pretty cool too! That little yellow one is so fluffy!”

I hopped on the table and looked under his hood, nope… still don’t see a mouth on him.

“Can you not call me that? Also I’ve been stuck in the digital realms long enough to have worn that out.” Canard huffed and glared at Tempomon as he hopped, skipped and danced in place.

“So what did you need from the leader of the Night Life District? If you’re going to ask me to fight the other gangs I’m too busy holding this territory and making Ogremon sweat just trying to beat me.” This Tempomon guy was moving with the beat and was enjoying himself while talking to Canard. I started bouncing my head with his movements. “The green guy is annoying.”

“You… are… so cool…” I said starry eyed with this guy.

“Little white with black spots or are they dots? I think you’re in awe of just meeting me, you must be a music fan dude.” Glaring at him I barked twice, he patted me on the head tenderly and immediately apologized. “As a correction on my part and for that last word, I apologize dudette.”

I nodded at him and then we turned back to Canard.

“So… I need information, I’ve been stuck in the digital realms for so long and I have finally have a way out and an almost sure way home. Unfortunately the first step on that way home is currently being held by Etemon.” The muscular large bipedal duck that was Canard was taking Tempomon’s peppy, high energy attitude fairly well. “I need to know where he is or more importantly… where he currently isn’t.”

“Ooh… heavy stuff, don’t bring me down like that Castaway. Etemon isn’t here in the Night Life District and he definitely isn’t going near Jijimon’s little slice of heaven what with the Skate Scamps calling an alliance to him. I have an idea that that whack and odd Octomon knows where Etemon is, but I’m not about to give you the information to finding Etemon so freely through him.” That earned Tempomon a frown from Canard. “I also know where Ogremon can be found, guys got Goblimon constantly running all over the place doing small errands and roughing up Digimon for Digi-credits. He keeps stepping on my toes and is most certainly not a good dance partner to have in any respect, guys got two left feet and they are both trying to shove their way up my backside if you catch my meaning.”

“What do you want for that information that can lead me to Etemon?” One could almost feel the mood Canard got from Tempomon in the way his lower eyelids lifted upwards in a smile.

“Well first, I want a free-style rap fight and then a dance off… after that I’ll give you the information you want. I’m in the business of entertainment after all and if someone among you can entertain me tonight while helping me entertain others.” Then Tempomon’s lit up brightly. “That or you can try to take me on in an outright fight, but I’ll be dancing the entire time.”

“No… I’m not suicidal enough to actually fight you, my Digivice reads you as an ultimate level Digimon. At best I can handle low end champions.” That was probably the quickest way Canard could have taken the fire out of Tempomon’s constantly shifting body. “An outright fight with you would end in tears for me, even if you weren’t going to kill me. Also I’m a biological.”

“Aw man… do I have to go to Kangarumon for a good fight anymore? That guy can actually keep up with ultimates and knows how to throw a mean flaming hook.” Tempomon wilted and sat down in the nearest chair to the booth, but kick bouncing his right leg over his left knee to the rhythms Volcano was putting out.

“We came from his gym to end up here, said you’d be showing up soon and he wasn’t wrong.” Canard muttered.

“Like I’d miss a ‘gig’ and ‘a-byte’ of fun!” Tempomon threw his arms up while performing jazz hands with the music.

“Hey, I want to try him!” I can rap and I can dance. If this guy was tougher than Bulkmon, and it was kind of hard to tell from appearances, then fighting him directly was a bad idea as Canard said.

“Hmm… what’s with Dudette here?” Tempomon looked to me.

“User Dolly, do you wish to activate translation function?” Translation function? Oh right, Dormarch did have a hand in teaching other computers and AI’s to understand dogs. Then again those Fetch devices my family played with for a day or so did that too, so it was only a matter of time before that knowledge spread and goodness knows what will happen in my world when people find out that dog has already been translated into a known language.

“YES!” I said wagging tail and pressing my paw to the device at my neck.

“Translating will proceed as soon as you start speaking from… now.” Don’t know who Icky Sis is, but she was obviously connected to these devices and willing to help.

“Okay… woah… that’s new… anyway, I want to take you up on that challenge for a rapping good time and a dance off!” I pointed a digit on my right paw at Tempomon. “You know, if it’ll help you give us that information… also because I want to have fun and can I just say that you’re somehow dripping with cool?”

“Yes, you can say that as my heart is not ice cold and I’ll accept your challenge.” Tempomon considered us all for a moment and then sat up and leaned forward with a cheerful look in his eyes. “Huh… how many of your party has Digivice’s and partners?”

“Between all of us, three Digivices, two Digimon partners, one is in my device which has my partner Sami a Commandramon, another is right there eating her snacks as you’ve noted and is partnered with Dazzle. The last is… well the situation made them impossible to recover with the Digi-tama system, they were partnered to Pom and Dolly here.”

“Yep, I’m Dolly D. Dalmatian. You ready for a throw down Tempomon?” Seeing as I was receiving an eager nod from Tempomon, I jumped from the table. “Then get some microphones out, we’re going to duel with our voices and I’ll be using my actual voice for it.”

“Yo, Volcamon, bring some mikes down here, I got a rap off already ready to go!” Tempomon motioned me forward and I started to pad after him, only to feel someone put a hand on my back.

I stopped and looked up at Canard.

“You sure about this?” Canard asked looking worried, it’s not like I was going to physically fight the guy… still it was nice to know he cared.

I nodded to him and gave him a gesture that I’ve got this, then set out for the dance floor which was quickly cleared of all the Digimon as the Muchomon set up the stage for me and Tempomon to throw down.

“We’re about to have a dissing contest here in a minute folks!” Volcamon stated and tossed two microphones down to Tempomon, he tossed one my way and I caught it in my teeth and spat it out into my left paw and went to standing on my hind legs. Shanty is going to be so upset that she missed hearing this, I just know it. “Tempomon has a strange challenger and they are a small one.”

“She’s a cool little dudette and we’re going to start with our names and then we’ll start insulting each other in tune with the music, how well do you think we’ll do when free styling folks?” Tempomon walked to one side of the floor and stood in the light and turned to point at the other one. “We can dance while we’ll sing too, but that’s not entirely necessary for a rap battle.”

“Icky Sis turn off translation, I won’t need it for this.” I stepped into the spotlight and stared down Tempo across the dance floor from me as we held our microphones.

Volcano put on the music and that’s when Tempo started us off.

“Yeah, I’m Vivi, yeah yeah I’m Vivi, oh~. Yeah I’m okay, yeah yeah I’m ready, let’s go~.” Tempo pointed to me and I started up in a similar manner to him.

“Yeah, I’m Dolly, yeah yeah I’m Dolly, yeah~. Yeah here we go, yeah yeah here we go, bleh~!” I stuck my tongue out at him and then pointed to him with a wink with my right paw.

“Now DJ Vivi’s number one, he’s fancies lots of fun, he knows when he’s already won, now rebut me if you don’t just run.” He belted out as he moved his legs to the beat and he did a split, do I call him DJ Vivi or Tempo?

“If you think I’ll just run, then you don’t know me a ton, you’re squawking like this is done, I’ll show you how to rap on the sun~!” I sang back as I bounced on my hind legs left and right like a boxer and on finishing my rebuttal I twirled and pointed my microphone back at him.

“If you think you can burn me with your cool rhymes then I’m just going to have to say alright, then I’ll just have to drag this rap fight for a time into the long night~.” He did a twirling hand stand and slid on his knees to the center of the floor and hopped up and back while pointing toward me.

“Are you that scared of facing someone in the sun in the long light, I think we know who the coward here is and he’s really quite up-tight~.” I grinned at him as kept my cool and stood there bouncing to the beat and shifting my hips with my right paw firmly planted on my right side as I sang, he flinched as I pointed to him with a glare.

“Ooh…” The Digimon around the room intoned, calling a guy that liked to move loose and free uptight.

Instead of getting angry, Vivi calmed like I did when he held up his microphone.

“They know that I’m king of the night, do you think I’m going to fry~? I’m the glacier that never melts in the light, you’ll soon be frozen over with your last sigh~!” He swayed left and right and held his left arm straight out at me as he sang into the mike in right hand.

“You sing like your king of the kite, the one who’s going to fly~. You can’t freeze volcano’s might, you’re also such a bore that I’ll die~.” I put my right paw to the back of my head and flopped to the floor on my back, then kicked up onto my hind legs and pointed to him. He pointed back and we nodded.

We started to sing at the same time.

“Black and white baby going to cry, do you need to be put to bed for the night~?” Tempomon sang. “Your barely getting by, so why don’t you take the next flight~?”

“Yeah you’re really quite the floppy hopping guy… but your already running away so- I say by-by-by~.” My voice mixed in with his and I finished off.

He paused and I took advantage of it to continue

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, I’m rocking this tune as you know and don’t doubt~.” I took advantage of his slight confusion and continued. “Now don’t you dare pout, you’re the jester here you dancing lout~.”

“Now you don’t get to kick me out of my club when I’m breaking out the fancy beats alright, now check it because this is almost the end of our fight~.” Vivi gestured at me for to hit him with a good one and was grinning with his eyes because he doesn’t think I could pull one last verse.

“You seriously want to even call this farce a real fight, I’m not the one who was fighting dissed and mentally unarmed all night~!” I dropped my microphone and crossed my paws over my chest as the music ended.

“Who do you think won this rap off? DJ Vivi our Tempomon Musical Maestro.” Volcano stated and held up a hand towards Vivi, he got quite a crowd. “Or this little sassy canine brat, Dolly?”

The roar of the crowd was telling and I grinned at Vivi, I started bowing to all the other Digimon and I saluted Volcano for giving us an awesome beat.

“Rapping isn’t my specialty as much as dancing and physical fighting is. I’ll even give you the fact that you schooled me there.” Vivi stated as he came up to me and I shook his hand with a paw. “Good on you, now let’s see how you do in a dance off where it’s my area of expertise and specialty. Positions… Volcano, music.”

“Everybody’s a rockstar~!” Volcano sang out and started up the electronic beats as Vivi and I started to sway to side to side.

We moved as one tapping and stepping towards each other and look in one another eyes as we danced, he pointed to me to go first.

I turned to gesture to Prinnymon and had a quick translation for some glow sticks to juggle, once he got them and threw them I hopped into position.

I caught two glow sticks and slapped them against the floor lighting them up and start to rhythmically wave them around, then twirled them while twirling myself and tracing paths of light through the air and the dancing colorful lights moving about the dance floor. I was bouncing up and down and left and right, showing joy in my movements as I joyfully hopped about.

Tossing the glow sticks up in the air, I hit the floor on my back and twirled to use my break dance movements to juggle the two glow sticks, using kicks from just my hind paws as I kept my front paws crossed over my chest. Learned this trick from Shanty and some of Pom’s memories of it.

Vivi kept dancing lazily in place and watched me bust a move, until I kicked the two glow sticks high into the air and rolled back onto my hind legs and caught both of them in my paws to go back to twirling them.

Vivi held up his right hand and gestured, I tossed the glow sticks to him and decided to take a break by slowing down my dancing. He flicked the sticks up into the air with the back of his hands and hopped back slightly to go into a squat, was he going to do a Cossack Dance?

He started kicking with the toes of his boots into the glow sticks from the crouch so they arced near each other in the air, almost touching one another as they flipped and passed by over the course of several kicks.

I watch in amazement as Vivi skipped forward with each kick and then went into a handstand and continued to juggle the two glow sticks on his heels. He started dancing with his arms, using them as legs while bouncing the glow sticks from the outer to inner of the three talons claw on each boot and then reversed it.

Balancing both glow sticks on the outer of the three metal talons on his boots he crouched and did a donkey kick straight up, twisted in the air and landed on his feet and twirled as the two glow sticks came down.

“No… way…” The glow sticks were now balanced on the beak of the hood on his jacket, on top of each other as he started doing disco finger dance without the glow sticks so much as shifting on the curved bill of the penguin face hood.

When he started to jitterbug like he was an earthquake and didn’t manage to drop the glow sticks perfectly balanced on his hood.

That was when I knew he had me completely outclassed, this guy was a dancing machine as he was switching into swing dancing and still keeping the two glow sticks balanced.

With a downward tilt of his head, he popped it upwards slightly and one of the glow sticks flew to me as the other one fell into his waiting left hand.

Catching the glow stick in my right paw, I guess we were finishing this in style.

I went into a front left paw hand stand and tossed the stick up and kicked it with my left hind leg, he was bouncing his glow stick off his knees and kicked it straight at me.

I twisted with the impact with my right hind leg and quickly caught and balanced it on my nose and started to shuffle to the left and right all four of my legs into it. Vivi was treating the glow stick I sent back at him like it was a bouncy sack with the way he was bopping it off his shoulders, elbows, wrists and knees while being a pop and locking robot.

Yeah, no way was I going to beat that… still I might want to see if I can trip him up. Charging momentum to my tail as I flicked the glow stick upwards from my nose, I started spinning rapidly and slapped the glow stick with my tail at him.

The glow stick went flying and miraculously, he added it to his pattern without missing a beat and was even managed to match the cymbal hits with each glow stick bounce as he twisted and turned like a pretzel and yet never stopped looking so loose. This guy was a not a knot at dancing and that flexibility was insane.

When the music ended, I wilted as he caught both the glow sticks in his hands his left leg extend to the ceiling and his right leg straight on the floor, he slammed his leg down and waited. Vivi was just staring at me with the haunting blank yellow eyes and seemed to be much taller than he was a second ago.

I bowed my head letting my ears hide the look on my face.

“Looks like the challenger can’t take on DJ Vivid Visualization in a dance off. Still… let’s give a round of applause for the plucky pooch for some really impressive tricks, but even she can’t knock Tempomon off his rhythm!” The cheers were heard throughout the Night Club as I made my way back to the table a bit sullen, I hopped up onto and sat down and whined a little.

Lit was instantly on me and cuddling my neck with all four legs, Dazzle ran a claw up and down back and even Canard patted me on the head.

“You did really good out there Dolly, but I really didn’t expect you to out dance a guy literally programmed with all forms of dance into him.” Canard was being quite placating and if Pom were awake I’m sure she’d agree with that sentiment. “You tried for the team Dolly, we’ll still figure something out.”

“You were awesome out there dood!” Prinnymon threw in his two cents as well waving a flipper at me with a smile on his beak.

Frizzle picked me up in her claws carefully, gently hugged me and then sat me back down on the table before going back to her bread. It said enough that she stopped eating the bread to comfort me.

“Well now I guess it’s time to tell you the information you wanted before I take up my position in the DJ’s Booth.” We all looked at Vivi when he came up to us and dance music was once again started up by Volcano.

“Wha…” He’s still going to give us the information?!

“I never said you had to win the challenges, but you certainly have a competitive spirit and I like that.” Vivi stated with a finger rubbing across his face where a nose would be. “Also, I like that you’re not a sore loser and have good friends willing to comfort you in the case of a loss. Ogremon is in the southeastern slums, his Backspace System is set to send him there so if you can pin him in that location there, he can’t go back to anywhere else. You can get him to talk about Octomon and Octomon can tell you where the boss of the Falcomon is and if you know where they are, you’ll likely find Etemon from there. Give Ogremon a smash in the face for me will you? I’ve got some sets to run here, but… if you plan on staying to listen to a few I’d appreciate your patronage all the same.”

“One last thing then, do you have any smelling salts?” Canard gestured to Pom and Vivi nodded, knowing what I do about the digital world… it’ll be a wakeup call for Pom alright.

-A minute later, Pom-

“Okay… ow… smelling salts are not supposed to smell like that!” I felt like I just took chili peppers up my nose and I had tears in my eyes from it as I walked out of the club passing by the bouncer Daipenmon as I went. Now I wanted popsicles for some reason.

“Welcome to my world, I’ve had to subsist off digital food for quite a while. I know that feeling far too well.” Why were you smirking about it Canard? “Anyway the southeastern slums is our target and we need to look for Ogremon there.”

“You know I had this weird dream where I gently caressed a spark into a fireball and then…” I was quickly cut off by Dolly as we set out and it was quite later out.

“That wasn’t a dream Pom.” Dolly said flatly.

“Oh…” Well exceedingly lethal technique aside, it took forever to build up and I would never have to use it… right? “Can we at least stop by Kangarumon’s Gym to rest for the night and then try the southeastern slums of Server City in the morning?”

“Hmm… I’m okay with that.” That was surprising of Canard, I thought he would be rushing to get out of the digital realms and instead he’s pacing himself. “Don’t look so surprised, I’ve failed to get out of the digital realms several times precisely because I didn’t have patience. Also I think we need to rest after spending most of our evening training at the gym and sitting around Tempomon's Night Club. We need to be ready for the challenges ahead when facing Champion level Digimon head on, especially one known for cheap shots and low blows.”

283. Server City Ransom Pt. 8.

-???, Fred the knowledgeable demon-

“Please stop trying to make contracts with my Oleander, OR ELSE I WILL SHRED YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE SPECIES SOULS FOR EVEN TRYING, AND HORRIBLY FAILING AT THAT, TO FOOL MY WIFE TO BE!” I was quite upset that so many had tried to steal Oleander from me over the course of the last few dimensions, those demons had it coming and then some.

“She would make for a very good magical girl though!” A being simply known as Kyubey stated with a pleasant and friendly tone, trying to act cute and innocent while hiding the truly nasty underside to the wish they were offering.

The wishes it offered was in the ‘too good to actually be true’ category. Even if they can in fact warp reality to make the wishes happen, it always came at a very steep negative price to the person and everything else nearby.

“Really now Fred, I already know that what Kyubey here is offering is a huge farce considering what they’re actually trying to do. I mean trying to offer someone, who is already magically gifted, more magic and a wish with the price of a curse so I’d eventually become a witch to fuel the fighting off of entropy with my inevitable death. Honestly now, you’re goals are far more obvious than Fred’s were before I locked him in as my fiancé!” Oleander summoned her key blade, Buttina loaded two shells into her Boomacorn and readied it and our small bipedal android cat Kityan pulled out a pair of rapid fire photon pistols to hold them akimbo in Kyubey’s direction. I added onto the threat by glaring with glowing eyes.

“Really now, you have no idea who you are messing with, my people are far more powerful than you can ever imag… uh… what’s that?” Kyubey stated as a keyhole opened up in their chest and a beam of light entered it before disappearing along with the keyhole. “Wha… what did you just do… why does everything suddenly feel so… off?”

“I just made sure you couldn’t replace your body and you are now locked into the mortality of your current form.” Oleander stated with an evil grin, I loved my unicorn with pretty hair. “In essence, you can die now.”

“My people have not calculated someone being capable of ending our existences so easily or readily… can I apologize and continue to make witches from magical girls by contracting wishes off them to continue the necessary suffering of every entire species I plan to eventually make extinct like I have done many times before? I assure you that magical girls becoming witches through our cyclical system of immense pain and suffering by turning wishes into complete nightmares is quite necessary.” In response to Kyubey’s attempt to make nice to get out of what was about to happen, Buttina fired an explosive cavalcade of elements that took off Kyubey’s left ear to the sound of her shotgun screaming ‘Buck-shot!’ quite loudly in its usual horsy noises. The acid started eating at the side of Kyubey’s head slightly as they screamed and started to flee. “You would truly pass up the opportunity for wishes?!”

“If it ends with us going out of control and then dying horribly to feed your machinations on our souls and magic, of course we would pass on that as we have better ways to achieve our goals through hard work! Better start running faster short stuff, because it seems we’re hunting extinction class nuisances in this dimension!” Buttina said as she loaded two more shells and began the chase. “You wanted some magic, oh we’ll give you and your entire species all the magic you can handle alright!”

The little white false angelic fox looking monstrosity started running for their life in fear for the first time in their eternally long existence where they thought that the heat death of the universe was the only thing that would end their race. Finding out that they couldn’t regenerate after what Oleander just did to them was a blow to their immensely large ego that nobody could possibly kill an ‘Incubator’ like them permanently. Oh how wrong they were about that.

“Fred… I hope you are hungry, especially if there are more of these things complicit in ruining entire civilizations by being nasty little parasites that try to be all cute and cuddly.” Oh joyous days Oleander, especially if you were implying what I thought you were! I could feel Oleander charging me up, my heart and conscience was going to let me loose again. “Fred… release.”

I came out of my book grinning.

-Digital Realms, Server City, Kangarumon’s Gym, Next ‘Digital’ Morning, Pom. *total time elapsed in Ransei Realm reality, three minutes and twelve seconds since entering the digital realms*-

“So where exactly in the southeastern slums district will we find Ogremon?” A lot more fighting was going to happen today, I would sadly have to put my best hooves forward and focus on our objectives of finding Etemon today. “Tempomon only gave us a general region, not an actual location of where Ogremon would have his Backspace System set to so he can’t escape us if we pin him there.”

“Oh that’s an easy one, Ogremon is not exactly what anyone would call subtle dood.” Prinnymon was still with us for some reason. “If Tempomon didn’t tell you his exact location, then he likely thought it would be highly obvious once you got there dood.”

“So we need to rough up Ogremon to find the Octomon named Ultros, we need to beat ultros to find the boss of the Falcomons and after that we’ll probably have Etemon’s location if we’re lucky. I dislike being given the run around, but at this point it’s kind of necessary.” Right there with you Canard, this was going to be more of a run around than I wanted to deal with and I’ve already done something like this not too long ago.

“Hey, can I ask for a membership here dood?” Prinnymon turned to Gaomon and suddenly asked out of the blue. “I want to eventually become strong enough to help out with this stuff and be a hero dood!”

Sami just about got the farmlands set up in her Digi-Home space and had mostly finished building a comfortable two story bunker in the Canard’s Digi-vice.

“Well good luck with that Prinnymon. From what I’ve heard of Prinnymon, you guys are on par with Commandramon in the luck department… probably got it from us no less. Still studying the Backspace System!” Sami was only out for breakfast and quickly leapt back into the device at Canard’s hip, only stopping to remind us to pick up meat and vegetable seeds from the cities plantation again when we had the opportunity to pass by the place.

“Well let’s go fight our way through the Goblimon and whatever else is going to bother us today.” If I didn’t have to worry about seriously hurting the Goblimon or any other opposing Digimon, I could probably go a little wild with my magical wolf claws. Maybe injuring them badly enough will prevent them from being on the streets sooner after we bash our way through them.

The Backspace System notably doesn’t heal injuries, it just prevented them from being furthered to lethality after a certain point.

“Okay Frizzle, your taking point when we exit Tempomon’s territory.” Nodding quietly to Canard, Frizzle bit into a piece of bread shaped like her head taking off one of the fluffy bread ears. “Now let’s move!”

-Ten minutes later-

“So while I was unconscious you had some fun singing and dancing?” I never bothered to ask last night and Dolly knew I was still shaken up about the Thousand Spears: Huo. Sure it was an obsessively slow technique, but the raw power I put out from it was horrifying on a number of levels when it comes to what I was capable of. “Well, at least one of us is enjoying this adventure.”

“Yeah, that guy was impossible to beat at dancing, I mean the guy seemed like he was literally born to dance and even probably teach it.” Dolly lazily blocked a wooden club with her bone absorbing the blow and she slammed the bone home into the Goblimon’s chin knocking them down. “You’d think a guy with a speaker in his torso would have a bit more bite when it comes to singing though.”

I was busy leaping upwards and doing a flying buck that sent a Goblimon rolling into the river. We were almost to the southeastern slums having passed just by the bridge where we were ambushed with that trap barrier the previous day.

Frizzle was holding two Goblimon by their shirts and slammed their heads together and held her claws in a scoop like fashion as she took the Digi-credits that spilled from them.

“You’d think eventually these guys would run out of Digi-credits.” Canard grumbled as he slapped the flat of his hockey sticks blade into a Kamemon. Canard sent their shell skidding backwards into wall where they ricocheted and began spinning like it had no friction. “Hah, I’m getting back my puck control skills from this!”

Canard just took out a row of Goblimon with really weird sounds for each Goblimon hit until the Kamemon hit the eighth one and played a fun sounding jingle, then it promptly slammed into a mound of mud on the bank of the river while smoking and looking a little red.

“Well that’s nice to hear, better than the other stuff going on that I can’t do nothing about.” I grumbled as I blocked with my right leg and wobble countered a Goblimon into the sky where they disappeared over a building where they hit and went through a billboard advertising ‘Binary Cereal for healthy Digimon’ in a rather painful sounding manner.

“Barf!” Was what I heard in the distance and sighed. “Looks like we cleared this street let’s keep moving.”

One block of quiet unnerved me considering we’ve been under attack by Kamemon and Goblimon quite frequently up to this point. Turning the corner that lead into the southeastern slum across a bridge… well Ogremon definitely wasn’t subtle about where his hideout was.

There was a large two stacked billboard advertising across the bridge. The top billboard read, ‘Ogremon’s secure warehouse and weapons factory, you can totally give us your goods for safekeeping with the Basher Bullies… because you’re not getting them back from us, so they’ll obviously be safe from everyone else’. Also there was the other thing on the lower billboard ‘Globlimon clubs ninety percent off for all Goblimon minions while supplies last, because my guys need something for thumping things real good like, ask about joining Ogremon’s WAAAGH’.

“That… I have no words for how dumb it is to advertise where his Backspace Systems home base is.” Canard said as he walked up beside me.

“There’s arrows pointing towards the warehouse in question and everything, we definitely didn’t need to worry about how to find it.” What Dolly was looking at, and was pointing out with her left paw as she rested the stone bone on her right shoulder, is the exceedingly large amount of sign posts with arrows pointing in the direction of Ogremon’s base. “The spelling on those things is atrocious. I’m glad I’m not nearly that dumb, these Goblimon are actually making me feel smarter than I should be by comparison.”

The signs had stuff on them in order of our give approach: ‘seecurut baze dere, theze sighnz er fer the gobbos wiz no senze of directshun.’ ‘Do nut reed or falloh zignz if youz are nut a gobbo, if youz cun reed ta bee gin wit’. ‘If nut a gobbo and youz is dooeng the reedeeng eenywey, Gabbah Gabbah you! If steel a-lie-va, thin falloh teh zignz and fite Ogremon at youz oeen pearill’.

“My brain cells are starting to mutiny at reading those signs.” I said out loud while trying to only pay attention to the arrows and not the writing on the signs.

“I don’t think they’ve ever been to a school before in their whole lives, so those signs are actually quite impressive for them to know that many letters to begin with much less put them in a nearly coherent order.” Nodded Canard and then he pointed the blade of his hockey stick at the Goblimons barring our way on the other side of the bridge leading into the southeastern slums. “Now let’s go see if we can bring down Ogremon with minimal fuss and find out where Octomon is.”

“How likely is he to honestly tell us that?” It was a concern of mine as much as it should have been a concern of his as well.

“From what I know? Ogremon are honorable after combat is won, before that they will lie, cheat, steal and try just about anything to win a fight. So we’re liable to be swarmed when we enter his warehouse and factory while possibly coming under attack by Ogremon himself at the same time. Maybe even before we can even get in there.” Oh great, just what we needed in our lives Canard, more existential dread. “If we beat Ogremon and the Goblimon with him in a fight, what with him trying to stack things in his favor, he’ll tell us exactly what we want to know without lying since we showed we’re better than him in every way possible and that he needs to improve in whatever way possible to eventually be able to beat us. Ogremon basically require a reason to grow stronger whether that is revenge, spite or a rival stronger than them.”

Frizzle nodded and held up a claw in a gesture that said he was correct and then turned and spat a sphere of fire that exploded three Goblimon into vortexes immediately, she then started charging across the bridge by herself while quickly unwrapping the chain from her right arm.

“Hey, don’t too far ahead without the rest of us Frizzle, we need to stick together to prevent surprises from taking us all out!” Listening to Canard, Frizzle didn’t push too far off the bridge as she started to sling Goblimon around with the chain, bashing them with her curled up claws, slashing them with said claws and .

I was idling behind with Dolly, Dazzle was between us and aiding Frizzle or Canard with long range support in the form of accurate blasts of exploding flames. I was mostly paying attention to the direction we were heading in while watching our backs as Canard and Frizzle cleared a path.

Dolly gave me a curious look and was reading my nervousness quite clearly. There were possibilities we were walking into something highly dangerous, but the form that danger would take was what I was worried about.

“How bad could it be, these Goblimon guys go down pretty fast, Ogremon couldn’t be too much harder right?” Dolly, please tell me you just didn’t say that!

“After everything we’ve been through Dolly, really? I get the right to say I told you so later when we run across something real nasty because you said that.” I’m pretty sure it’ll happen, even if the number of Goblimon hasn’t exactly been increasing on our approach. We’ve been steadily beating our way through them. “Also they know we’re coming and are likely preparing for a big fight with us, so I think it’s doubly confirmed now.”

“How would they know… oh… right… the backspace thingy.” Having sent Dolly an image of the numerous vortexes we’ve seen yesterday and so on today, she finally started to feel the same sense of foreboding that I was. “Can I apologize and take it back Pom?”

“You’ve already tempted fate, so it’s actually going to happen Dolly.” A Goblimon in samurai armor and a short sword bypassed Canard and Frizzle looked to be targeting Dazzle, only for me to move in the way.

“Ah dog, this is going to be one of those days isn’t it?” Now Dolly was on the same page of being ready for things to go downhill quite soon.

So far things didn’t ‘seem’ to be too bad, let’s see how long that would be true.

“Like things can get any better with me.” I ducked under the leaping horizontal sword swing and promptly shoulder checked the Goblimon in the gut leading with my left shoulder while they were still in the air.

The Goblimon were forced back, but they landed on their feet and held their blade high up readying another attack. A spinning bone came from Dolly and deflected the blade to the side as they tried to bring it down on me, I didn’t even flinch or move as I trusted Dolly.

I was already readying my right hoof and once the blade struck the ground, I swung it forward and unleashed Thousand Spears that sent them flying into an alleyway with a thunderous crash.

We hurried to catch up with Canard and Frizzle who were already turning the corner after leaving Goblimon disappearing into vortexes.

Another Flame Burst erupted from Dazzle, blowing down another clustered group of Goblimon as we turned onto the next street after the two and saw all the signs pointing to a large building in the distance with a large neon sign of what I assumed to be Ogremon’s face. The colorful dark green spotlights were accenting the building quite nicely too.

“How many more Goblimon do we have to go through?!” I lamented as I saw about fifty on the street ahead between us and the large building that gave off corporate vibes like Shere Khan’s headquarters in Cape Suzette did.

“Hey, I’m not a Goblimon, I’m a Shammanmon!” One of the slightly darker green guys shouted as he came forward.

“What’s the difference exactly?!” I yelled back as the Goblimon and possible other Digimon that looked exactly like Goblimon except colored differently gripped their weapons slightly. It was a good thing they weren’t very large, the numbers they had on their side was already daunting enough.

“Are you implying that we all look exactly the same?!” Shamanmon sounded angry about that.

“Yes, you look like every other Goblimon!” At this point I couldn’t tell the difference between them as there were red Goblimon, green Goblimon, blue Goblimon and Shamanmon just looked like any of them.

The Goblimon looked amongst themselves, they even started to converse about it for a bit and they all turned to Shamanmon and one Goblimon stepped forward.

“That checks actually.” The green underbite tusks riddled punk styled monsters actually agreed with me?

“… hm… mhmm… maybe… mmrrn…” Shamanmon took a good four minutes of humming and hawing about that. While the good forty nine or so assorted green guys stood around awkwardly, some swinging their weapons in idle practice and others looked to be waiting to charge us. “Okay, I believe that you might have a point there. Still going to start beating on you for the boss though.”

“We were kind of expecting that anyway, but thanks for at least warning us ahead of time of your intentions.” I stated back pleasantly.

“You’re welcome, Gabbah Gabbah!” Shamanmon raised his wooden club with nails haphazardly hammered into it towards us and the others roared as they started forward.

“Frizzle Left, Dazzle right, Dolly on me, Canard get back and while I’m actually quite loathe to do this… it might be the quickest way through them.” I sent Dolly an idea of what I was about to have us do.

“That thing I did with the box heads when they tried to throw fire at us, sure!” Dolly hopped onto my back and held up her right paw.

“Frizzle, Pyro Sphere towards the right, Dazzle Flame Burst towards the left.” I held up my hooves and my wool started coiling I angled them specifically to my needs. “Try to get them to meet in the middle.”

“What are you going to do?” Canard asked.

“A combo maneuver, that’ll hopefully speed up this fight so we don’t have to face them all in close quarters combat.” Even as I said it I aimed slightly upwards and looking at Dolly over my shoulder, she agreed to do the same. “Fire!”

Dazzle and Frizzle let out balls of flame, one a controlled sphere and the other barely contained mass of coiling raw fire energy. Where the two collided I fired off an upward Thousand Spears into it with both my legs as Dolly called out her move.

“Aero!” What followed Dolly’s declaration was a widespread amount panic and fire that, thankfully enough, wasn’t directly flowing at the Goblimon and was primarily going above their heads.

What followed was a large amount of Goblimon immediately being sucked into vortexes and leaving a lot of Digi-credits laying all over the street, we basically took out half with a powerful heat wave. Shamanmon was one of the few that weathered the heat fairly well, as did the blue Goblimon who looked to be sweating slightly, any red Goblimon looked unbothered. The bright green ones were the ones most affected given quite a number of them were missing now.

“Freezing breath!” Several of the ice Goblimon stated and cooled down the heat in the air and, using the freezing cold air they were exhaling constantly in our direction, created a large tornado that surged towards us because of the hot and cold front differential.

That… was actually far more intelligent than I thought they could actually manage.

“Aero!” Dolly quickly stopped the tornado before it could engulf us.

“Life shield!” Shamanmon called out and all the Goblimon still present, about twenty seven or so, suddenly started glowing with magical energy.

Frizzle tested the waters with a blasts of flames… and the effect was far less as the explosive fireball seemed to weaken greatly in the presence of the Goblimon’s glowing auras.

“Now you’ll see why I’m different, boulder throw!” A large boulder appeared in the air and Shamanmon, of which I finally noticed there was only one, slung his club forward sending the large boulder tumbling our way.

My wool rippled to the front of my body as I twisted myself with my legs held straight up and then lunged forward into a wool shift drill. Grinding against the boulder for a few seconds, I focused enough to fire off two slightly stronger Thousand Spears point blank with the increase in wool mass around my front legs. The white spear shaped air pressure blasts shattered the boulder and knocked me back to the ground. My wool quickly took the impact as I rolled back to my friends side.

“Quick question, how many times can you do that?” Canard asked before pulling his puck pistol and firing it, it did some damage to Shamanmon, but it seemed to be lessened because of the glowing aura.

Shamanmon must be a higher class subordinate to Ogremon to be that strong.

“Just the one, charge in!” Shamanmon rallied the other Goblimon into coming at us again.

“I’m a bit tapped on magic here Pom. I know I agreed to it, but shouldn’t we have hit them directly with the fire?” Well since you’re asking Dolly.

“I think some of them might be resistant or even immune to fire so, even if we had directly hit them, it would have possibly had the same results as right now.” No longer having the time to talk I prepped for a fight.

Frizzle was spinning the chain up and brought it around as the first Goblimon reached us and started swing it horizontally she wasn’t bound to miss with all the Goblimon swarming at us. She started thrashing her way through them.

Following that Canard slammed the blade of his hockey stick into a Goblimon’s throat and brought the other side around into their ankle to sweep them down before slamming the blade of the stick down on their forehead causing them to disappear.

He gritted his beak and blocked two leaping goblimon and pushed them back and started to stalk forward with his hockey stick at the ready.

A blazing pulse of purple energy in the shape of a dragon roared past and actually hurt the red Goblimon and took out quite a few.

Dolly prepped her board and took an impact on it and managed to stay standing, I saw magic swirling into her and refilling her capacity a bit as I rammed my forehead forward with my wool hardened around my head to take down the Goblimon with a blow to the skull.

It’s a good thing the Backspace System gets them out of harm’s way quickly as the next Goblimon was already upon us and Dolly was kicking her board up into his chin before dropping the stone bone on their skull take them down with a momentum boosted downward strike.

I turned about and used the length of my legs to buck the next incoming one in the stomach as another dragon shaped pulse of pain streaked out from Dazzle’s mouth.

“Barf!” Okay, I have had about enough of hearing that noise these Goblimon kept making.

“Why is that even a noise you can make?!” I was a bit angry when I started to lash out with my front hooves in a wild trampling manner that clawed up the next few as Dolly bashed and thrashed with her skateboard and the stone bone club.

“Well…. Blarg.” A Goblimon stopped to answer and was taken down by a vicious three magical claw swipe from me, I would have stopped myself to listen, but at this point I was more focused on keeping them from injuring Dolly, Dazzle or me.

We were tearing through the Goblimon pretty quickly despite the auras protecting them from most of the damage we were dishing out.

Canard was proving his hockey based prowess when he should checked four into vortexes against the ground. Frizzle was being a beast in the fight, seeming to take to brawling with an intense joy that was kind of scary. Dolly was blocking and returning hits with far more force than they could dish out to her and was doing pretty well with multitasking between controlling her board and the mystical club in her paws.

Wait, does that mean the Pecha Scarf doesn’t work while she’s wielding the Stone Bone? Something to worry about later if we come across something poisonous.

Keeping up with being near Dolly and staying protective of Dazzle, I kept to low sweeping hoof attacks that could be turned into upwards claw slashes at a moment’s notice to catch at least three Goblimon in the face or across the chest and shoulders.

Sweep attacks were easy to get out fast when you were a quadruped with long legs like me. Tripping the Goblimon up wasn’t too hard nor was it hard to take them out after they were down, they were exactly combat savants beyond being somewhat instinctual brawlers.

We were quickly wearing them down as there were barely five left and Shamanmon was among those still standing as the only dark green one.

“I’m retreating, you guys keep fighting!” The last few hapless Goblimon looked between them as Shamanmon hightailed it towards the building with Ogremon’s neon sign on it.

In their distraction two of the Goblimon went down to a hockey stick slap shot based swing to the gut and another was picked up by the leg by Frizzle and promptly used to bludgeon another Goblimon into unconsciousness before they both disappeared into vortexes.

This left one who had stopped running at me and looked around he started to run and was smacked twice by a twirling chained from Frizzle before Canard kicked him in the back sending him tumbling until he ended up on his back.

“Blargh…” The Goblimon managed to get out before disappearing.

“Now you see Pom, we’ve got this!” Dolly stated in exuberance as she kicked her board into forward motion, we started to chase after Shamanmon who ran into the warehouse and factory. “To think you were so worried we’d run into something quite horrible, these guys got nothing on us!”

Don’t worry Dolly, I’m still waiting for it. Ogremon knows we’re coming and he probably has his best Goblimon at his side, with who knows what else.

-Ogremon’s Warhouse Warehouse, Ogremon-

“Boss the intruders are incoming right behind me!” Shamanmon, one of the few knuckleheads I can actually trust to be smart in a fight.

“Is it Tempomon and his lot finally retaliating against me for all the raids?” I was grinning, Tempomon was quite the challenge and I wanted to beat that smarmy grin off the dance happy monster’s face. "Finally some heroic action!"

“No, it’s a strange group, I think two of them are Digi-destined. They had devices.” Shamanmon stated with a panicked looked as my eyes lit up with glee. “I only saw one Digimon, but they could be holding another in reserve. The others are strange biologicals that can fight really tough like, also the Digimon is a Guilmon… it might be capable of Digital-Evolving.”

“Digi-destined, here? Oh what a joyous occasion, some real fun is about to begin… Tankmon be ready to intimidate them as they enter! We need to show off our A-game if there’s Digi-destined to start a battle with!” I raised my Digi-bone club and let out a roar that could be heard throughout the factory and warehouse. It would gather the Goblimon, today was a great day to make some enemies. “Shamanmon be prepared to life shield Tankmon, we’ll give these guys a very warm welcome… of the explosive variety!”

-Outside the Warhouse Warehouse, Dolly-

Heh we had them running and fighting Ogremon was going to be… we all ran through the large open doors and it took me a second to comprehend exactly what I was seeing in front of us.

“Oh dog!” We all had run in with intent to fight, but then we all quickly scattered as an explosion happened near the center of our group.

I personally boosted my momentum to the side get out of the way of the blast. Frizzle and Canard dove forward and were buffeted by it, Pom leapt straight up and out of range, Dazzle quickly turned and leapt and clung to the wall next to the entrance.

“You okay Lit?” I received a squeak and a friendly weight hugging against my neck, had to remember that he was on me even if he was just vibing most of the time.

In the open space in the center of the warehouse among the boxes, shipping containers and a lot of other random stuff, was a large figured and a motorized revving noise as a pair of glaring eyes peered out at us through the darkness.

“Is that a Tankdramon that Sami mentioned?!” Pom said quickly backpedaling out of the path of another missile fired from the things… nose… I want to say. It flew out the open doorway and exploded down the street.

“I wish I were a Tankdramon those things are powerful and awe inspiring! I’m the great mercenary Tankmon, explosions!” Flames erupted into the air from the tanks arms causing small explosions every once in a while.

It was a tank with four treads two in a triangle formation in the back and two flat front ones, the lower torso was all tank and the upper torso looked like something biological was fused into it. The biological looking arms lead into two cannons with three holes and one barrel sticking out at the top of each. The monstrosities helmet... or was that actually part of its upper skull? Well it was what I expected the top of a tank to look like, that had some small tufts of hair dangling out from under it and a long cannon for a nose that just fired at Pom, it also had small armored shoulder pads that seemed kind of pointless to me.

After that rather terrifying display, the lights came on and Goblimon were swarming the walkways above and surrounding us to the left and right on the floor and behind the tank. All of them grinning and wielding various weapons.

On the walkway above was a big green guy that was on the neon sign outside with Shamanmon at his side, he simply raised his bone and pointed it forward.

“Tankmon, Data type, weakest area in combat, close quarters. Getting into close quarters with one is difficult as Tankmon specializes in constant heavy bombardments at various ranges.” Icky Sis stated unhelpfully from the device at my neck. “I advise finding immediate cover.”

“Dolly… I told you so…” Pom stated slowly with a flat unamused look as she widened her stance to start springing around like a grasshopper on coffee, when the monster tank moved to aim at Canard and Frizzle who were still picking themselves up.

285. Server City Ransom Pt. 10.

-Equus, Seaquestria, underwater throne room, Queen Novo-

I so loved to play music in my spare time, the acoustics underwater were always interesting. Being the goddess of the hippogriffs and sea ponies was exhausting sometimes, but I made sure that the hippogriffs were at least doing marginally better than the griffons. Truthfully the Hippogriffs are thriving and the griffons have been as well as of late thanks to the grouchy griffon Gruff.

The good thing about being underwater all the time is that the pressure builds a strong body, so when I transform into a hippogriff I’m at least several times stronger. It’s been a while since I’ve practiced with my trident, it could also use a good polish.

“Mother, can I ask you a question?” I immediately stopped playing music, put down everything and turned to my daughter with a bright smile.

“Yes my little Skystar?” I always had time for Skystar, always.

I wondered what it was this time. It better not be another clam bake incident, goodness knows my daughter gets into so many accidents and she’s quite hard to protect.

“I really want to know, what is the thing about you and the marmalade?” The moment Skystar uttered those words, I felt my expression flattening out and my eyes going slightly wide. “That is your ‘I so don’t want to talk about this’ face. Don’t tell me I’m old not enough mom, I’m basically an adult and I actually want to do things! Even cousin Silver Stream gets to do stuff on the surface world, she’s even dating this cool griffon named Gallus.”

“Was it Silver Stream who asked you to ask about that?” Okay… it’s okay Novo, don’t panic… it just might be a regicide attempt gone wrong.

“Pinkie Pie, she’s been researching how to make Lambkin smile in her spare time and sent me a letter telling me that you might know something about it.” Oh no… and Skystar is too interested in learning about this.

Definitely not a regicide attempt, I usually like those for the comedy of it all. It’s usually visitors that try that though, never a griffon or sea pony.

Well this won’t end well… but… I guess I really should tell her or sink my affection score with my beloved daughter further than I did when I tried to write off the surface world. Being a goddess of the sea and queen of two races is hard work.

“Well first off I must warn you, the tale will make you see me in a slightly bad light…” My daughter crossed her fins and began staring at me, waiting expectantly for what I’m about to tell her.

“No less weird than knowing what goes on between you and Celestia.” Clearing my throat at the dig to my slight issues with being far too affectionate sometimes, I prepared myself.

“Well it’s like this…” I started.

-Two hours later-

Skystar looked somewhat traumatized.

“So you’re the progenitor of the lambkin?” She said blankly.

“Yes.” I hissed through my teeth. “They were known as Chrysomallus’s back when I was first tending to them.”

“How many am I directly related to?” Skystar was asking the hard questions now.

“Directly? Definitively more than half of them at least, if not all of them. I did transform quite a few outside intelligent creatures into Chrysomallus to help the species not have inbreeding issues.” I answered.

“That’s horrifying! How are we ever going to have enough money to buy enough missed birthday presents for all of them?!” Sometimes my little Skystar made me worry about the things she prioritizes, then again she was learning to effectively be a party pony underwater.

“I don’t think that’s an issue we need to worry about.” I’m fairly sure the lambkin really didn’t care about me missing their birthdays, not since the first seventeen I raised and left on the west side of the continent in what became Meadow Hills, I made sure they knew how to farm and build a civilization before turning them loose after my first son died from old age surrounded by family. My divinity hasn’t caused them great issues thus far, aside from that one lambkin prophet called Cassandra. “Also, aren’t you even a little concerned that I’ve had children before you?”

“Why would I be, the lambkin are still alive and are a… somewhat thriving civilization I guess. So you must have done something right with raising the first batch that they became their own thing right?” Skystar was missing the fact that Lambkin are anxiety riddle, many were hypochondriacs and there’s the whole setting themselves on fire at the drop of a hat thing that disturbs many a psychiatrist. If you could be an effective psychiatrist in Meadow Hills, then you would be a well-known one anywhere else in the world. “Say… could you maybe introduce me to them and do you still know what your ewe form looks like?”

Well… it couldn’t hurt to check up on them, wait… no! Bad Novo, you promised not to baby them like Celestia does with the ponies. The ponies are really, really, exceedingly bad at putting up a fight until the potato chips are put down, her royal guard is the laughing stock of the world and yet their nation is the best known for diplomacy and outstanding amounts of luck when dealing with nigh unstoppable problems like Discord.

“… I take it you want to go to Meadow Hills?” My daughter got starry eyed and started nodding rapidly with a cute begging face.

“Can we go, please-~?” Skystar was trying the cuteness ploy… sadly enough, it was working today.

There’s a reason why lambkin were so good at figuring out shape shifters and I can partially be blamed for the changelings and them interacting quite poorly, not that that was a bad thing back then when the changelings were acting in malice.

Not that I’d ever tell Twilight Sparkle about that… she’d be quite rightfully upset with me for creating her worst headache in the form of Lambkin kind. I wonder what the young goddess of friendship would do to me if she were to find out about that.

Maybe I should invite Jiutian the longma goddess of war, ‘love’ and longevity. Xuanna loved fluffy things and I can use her being there as a scapegoat for my being there.

Later on I’d see how cute my daughter was as a chrysomallus, no I didn’t go on the trip just for that or to see how my erstwhile descendants were doing. I was going to make it a business trip… once I figure out what kind of business I could have with the lambkin and I knew Jiutian wouldn’t say no. Just so long as she doesn’t spook the lambkin, somehow, things ‘should’ be okay.

-Digital Realm, Server City, Ogremon’s Warhouse Warehouse, Pom-

We quickly grouped up after… whatever it was Frizzle just became and basically rammed Tankmon out of the building like an angry bull. The new horns she had certainly helped with that and I’m pretty sure Tankmon was still intact and barely hurt even after that.

“What was that about and why is the floor suddenly trying to move all over the place?!” I asked as I tried to keep a steady hoofing, the floor was shifting underneath us and only us. Dolly was less affected because she could hover and glide as needed with a hop while we fought off our attackers.

The floor wasn’t bothering the Goblimon at all and their fireballs weren’t technically magic, probably information coalesced into the form of fire and this was a world of information so it made some sense. Likely the reason my wool wasn’t doing the golden glowing thing to reflect them.

While the floor was shifting, it wasn’t moving too ridiculously fast and was more of a trotting pace, still one could easily sprain or break an ankle on this floor with how it jarringly shifts so suddenly to spread ones hooves out or push them inwards.

“I may or may not have helped Frizzle evolve… unfortunately she’s gone a little berserk because of what I did to help her.” A slightly upset Dazzle was doing better at keeping her footing with the constant movement of her legs and was blasting fire at the surrounding Goblimon coming at us from all sides. “I don’t think she would almost step on me or ignore me as a friend otherwise, at least she was pointed in the right direction… towards the nearest threat and challenge to her.”

“Thank you for confirming some of my worst fears here.” I ducked and a fireball passed over me, the slightly more advanced fireball throwing Goblimon were at least being smart in staying out of close range with us.

The one’s who couldn’t shoot fireballs were coming at us full tilt while we were having problems staying still or standing, given the floor was actively working against us. It also didn’t help that a huge pit suddenly opened up in the middle of the warehouse and the floor was trying to keep us disoriented as it tried to drag us in that direction if we were close to falling over.

It was certainly moving boxes, shipping container, weapons and other random weapon into the pit and many of those things started dropping from the ceiling at us from some kind of floating disc I couldn’t identify. I hopped back and then had to dart forward and around the crate that just exploded into a pile of wooden clubs with rusty nails and spiked maces.

“We seriously need to think of something to get to Ogremon, this is getting more dangerous by the second!” Canard pulled his puck pistol with his right hand and blasted a Goblimon that was about to chuck a fireball at us and took him out with a puck between the eyes. He quickly brought the hockey stick around in his left in an outward wide swing arc that pushed back several Goblimon and over that were about to lunge at us. “Sami says she has something to help with Tankmon, which will come in handy if Tankmon… or Frizzle… comes back.”

I slapped a Goblimon with the back of my left hoof and swung around my right to slam them across the face with the stone bone and knocked them down, I raised the bone club high in both hooves and slammed it down into them causing them to suction away into a vortex.

The floor under my front left hoof shifted forward and the floor under my rear hooves moved back, I had to hop forward slightly to reset my stance and noted something as I crouched down and slammed my forehead upwards into a Goblimon’s chin as I stood up.

The destroyed walkway that Dazzle had been around, it didn’t have the same problems as the moving floor down here did.

“Dolly, can you create a ramp leading to the walkway above?” I blocked an incoming blade with the bone in my right hoof and Canard slammed his hockey stick down on the Goblimon’s left shoulder with a nasty crunching sound. The Goblimon quickly disappeared and the Digivice on Canard’s belt started to suck the Digi-credits in.

“On it!” Dolly popped into the air to start gliding towards the nearest wall veering around fireballs that started aiming for her and avoided a Goblimon attempting to jump up and swing at her with a blade. Most of the weapons here were of the short ranged variety.

I had to wonder how many Digi-credits these guys had that they could keep coming at us like this. Also we were down a member with Frizzle gone.

This made it quite hard for the four of us to keep up with the Goblimon’s constant numbers, especially with Dolly off to do what I asked of her.

I deflected a spear into the floor with the bone and then reached forward with my left hoof to tug the Goblimon into the path of a fireball that scorched them instead of me, I clubbed the Goblimon I just used as a shield to finish them off.

As I told Shanty once. There is no honor in fighting for your life, only survival!

I aimed my left leg and fired off a Thousand Spear that caused a fireball to violently explode in a Goblimon’s face taking them out. Another Goblimon went down in the same many when a flaming puck passed through their fireball to strike them in the chest as the fireball blew up in their face. It was a good thing that most of these guys weren’t immune to fire. Only the red ones seemed to be fire resilient, they were mostly getting into close combat with us so it didn’t matter if we couldn’t light them up as Dazzle had that covered.

An entire line of Goblimon were blown back and down by a Dragon Pulse from Dazzle, dragon energy wasn’t fire either so the red ones were going down to it. Dazzle looked a little queezy after that dragon shaped blast tore through a number of the local version of pukwudgies. They were coming at us from all sides and we weren’t going anywhere fast, at least we were providing a valiant effort at trying to stay in place and were trying to hold a formation.

Please hurry up Dolly, I don’t know how long we can keep this up.

Canard and I had to keep moving to stay close to Dazzle as the floor shifted again and almost made me fall flat on my face with a misstep, instead I stumbled forward and was almost skewered by a spear. Canard, having taken care of that Goblimon with a thrust of his hockey stick, was equally having problems with keeping his footing unless he tried balancing on one foot.

We were trying to keep them from encroaching on Dazzle who was arcing Flame Bursts into the crowds around us. Some Goblimon separated from said crowd and those Goblimon generally came charging at us with weapons raised, even when fireballs blasting forth from the others at the same time and had a chance of hitting them as much as us. The floor was making it hard to dodge, who designed this place to work like this?!

Oh right Ogremon, the guy that had a dangerous Tankmon waiting for us as soon as we got here, I saw an enlarging shadow beneath me. I instinctively dove to the right and in front of Canard as several tied together spear racks fell upside down into the floor and impaled it slightly.

Trying to get up I took a burn across the right side of my forehead burning the skin and scorching some of my wool.

“Agh!” Okay that stung pretty badly, at least the fireballs weren’t hurting Dazzle when they connected with her. Canard and I on the other hoof have been scorched at least once, but at least we weren’t burning as it almost seemed like they were making a concerted effort to set us on fire.

I tripped when the floor shifted as I put my left hoof down and quickly slung the stone bone up with my right to deflect another spear upwards, gathering wool around my left hoof I broke the Goblimon’s face so hard he immediately disappeared as I used the wool to grab his spear from his grasp.

Reoriented spear in my left hoof and stone bone in my right, I took up a defensive stance on my hind legs.

-Dolly-

Canard, Pom and Dazzle were getting hammered and I was having problems getting up to the walkway to actually use Pom’s idea. For some reason I couldn’t run up the wall, even using my claws didn’t help me stick and I could get my skateboard to stick and use momentum to get up it. Mind you I was making the first few attempts with the board on my back to block the fireballs, when I found out my board wouldn’t connect or allow me upwards momentum I decided to turn around and start fending off the Gobs.

Pom, problem, I can’t get up to the catwalk! I think that Sham guy is doing something to the wall to prevent us from climbing up there.

Also the stairs up to the catwalk above were on the far side from the entrance near the throne, probably built that way on purpose so intruders like us couldn’t get to them easily.

This ‘O-Grr’ guy is really annoying. I could get to him by gliding over the pit, but… I’m not nearly stupid enough to fight him alone. Even if I could reach the stairs there are too many Goblimon over there waiting to intercept me, I knew I could get by them but I really didn’t want to be that near that ‘Oggle’ by myself.

Huh? Right, meet you there Pom! I flipped over a fireball and started to boost my momentum to quickly glide along and bounce off the various Goblimon’s heads.

-Pom-

Good, now we just had to fight our way to meeting up with Dolly. Once Dolly, Dazzle and Canard are able to cover one another I’ll jump to the catwalk and make a ramp across that gaping void.

The flying saucer on the ceiling launched a large metal sphere that nearly crushed Canard, until he ran out of its path and it rolled towards the pit and into it before the floor could change its momentum enough to turn it around to come at us.

“Push towards where the destroyed portion of the catwalk is sitting!” I rushed forward and to the left and unleashed a charged bark blast, the explosive force launching from my throat pushed a number of Goblimon out of my path as Dazzle and Canard followed me. I can see where my Bark Blast could be better in some regards to my Bark Buster.

Once we got there I watched as Dolly slid under a bit of railing of the portion of the destroyed catwalk that Tankmon shot down from above. The Goblimon’s weapon bounced and Dolly was leaping out him to smashed him across the face wheels first.

“Okay what are we doing here Pom?” Dolly looked to me as I motioned to Canard and Dazzle to get on the broken pieces of fallen walkway.

“Can you really jump that high?” Canard asked as he realized what I was about to do, he knew I could cling to walls and required a wall kick to get up there previously jumping a good eighteen feet straight up would seem a little unusual to him.

“I’m very lightweight, also alpaca’s are known for this technique. Give me a minute!” I said before spreading my rear hooves out while crouching and then sprung from the floor, before it could trip me up, using my wool to assist my jump. I puffed up my wool before I slammed into the ceiling and waggled my hind legs wildly to float forward and over the walkway.

“We’ll give you more then one if we can!” Canard fired his puck blaster into the regrouping Goblimon from on top of the collapsed walkway, no long being on the floor so that it messed with his ability to stand up straight.

I was now on the upper right walkway of the warehouse and I quickly slashed at the wires holding up the end of the damaged portion of the walkway with the spear in my left hoof.

I got to another two wires making the walkway sag downwards as I moved forward and that’s when I had to hop over a fireball launched by a Goblimon and some of it singed my tail.

They were rushing me on the catwalk to stop me from making a ramp for my friends down on the floor below, friends who basically had their backs to the wall and a good twenty or more Goblimon pressing in on them.

Narrowing my eyes I raised the spear in my left hoof and chucked it forward spearing two of the Goblimon with it and threw the bone so that it curved around and hit the third goblimon behind them.

The third Goblimon stumbled from the stone bone blow to the head and fell over the railing into the yawning void that was the pit as the other two disappeared into vortexes one taking the spear with them.

As the bone was on its way back to me I clawed two more wires and caught the bone in my right hoof as the walkway finally finished tilting and crashed into the floor below creating a ramp up to right side walkway.

“Dazzle first!” Said Canard as fireballs flew across from some goblimon on the other walkway, he fired on them and pushed back the goblimon with several swings of his hockey stick as he backed up towards the ramp.

Dolly hopped up to block a fireball or two for Canard as he made it to the ramp and then she was grinding up the railing to land beside me as Dazzle passed by.

“Keep moving!” Canard didn’t need to tell me twice as I found my hooves and pass the bone to Dolly, ahead of us Dazzle was clearing the walkway with a Dragon Pulse beam tearing through a number of Goblimon along the straight walkway.

Canard was bringing up the rear as we started crossing the walkway to other side.

“Hah, you’re doing better than I thought you would! Move the construction device over to this side Shamamon and get ready for my fight!” Ogremon called out from his throne of weapons. “Also collapse the right side walkway entirely to give them more trouble.”

He said that as we were halfway over the huge void like pit. The entire walkway to the right of the throne started collapsing immediately and tilting to the left towards the pit. I clung to the walkway as it crashed into the floor sideways on both sides of the pit.

Canard and Dazzle were gripping onto the railing, Canard having managed to put up his pistol and had a strong grip on his hockey stick that he place on his back down his shirt using the blade of the stick to keep it in place as he got both hands on the railing to pull himself up.

“You okay down there?” Dolly was on top of the right side of the walkway looked down at us.

“We’re good Dolly, get to the other side and make sure they don’t try to collapse the walkway into the void!” I walked along the walkway sideways towards the other side. Dazzle clambered up and moved along the top and I looked back to Canard. “Are you okay Canard?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Canard pulled himself up and put his boots to the left railing beneath him and was using the railing above to keep himself steady. “You know, it’s weird to see you standing and walking on something sideways like that.”

“Well I’ve honestly seen and felt weirder, don’t know how much weirder this can get for you Canard.” A huge crash was promptly heard as soon as I finished my statement making us both look towards the left side of the warehouse. “I’m used to it at this point.”

We saw Frizzle rolling into the warehouse to end up on her back. Tankmon rolled on through the hole he just made with Frizzle’s much larger body looking a bit battered and he no longer had that aura shield thing. Raising his arms Tankmon unloaded into Frizzle who stood up and covered her face with her claws and started stomping forward lowering the front half of her body down as she did. She grabbed both his arms, her palms stopping his guns from shooting and bit upwards into the bottom of his cannon for a nose before it could fire into her face.

As the two struggled, I shook my head and made for the part of the walkway that was on the other side of the warehouse and dropped to the floor where Dolly and Dazzle were waiting for us and fending off some Goblimon. I turned around and made sure Canard made it across to the other side before turning around and seeing that the Goblimon were less numerous, but still being aggressive as they ever were.

Ogremon was sitting up and taking notice of us, but he has yet to come down from his throne of weapons to attack us. He was watching Tankmon and Frizzle beat on each other with interest, Tankmon had firepower, but Frizzle was both tough and fast.

Speaking of Frizzle being fast and tough, she was stomping on Goblimon, her tail was thrashing them as they tried to help Tankmon and she even snapped up one in her jaws and he thankfully disappeared into a vortex before she chewed them up. It was horrifying to watch her in action as her body seemed to absorb fireballs without flinching or even causing any damage, but the thirty or so Goblimon on the other side of the pit trying to help Tankmon weren’t lasting very long under Frizzle’s violent onslaught.

“Pom, we need you over here, we’ll worry about Frizzle later!” Canard brought my attention back to him kicking a Goblimon over and gunning it in the face with a puck projectile.

“Right…” I quickly turned about and moved forward only for a goblimon to force me onto my back and I quickly raised my hind legs and fired the coiled wool into his backside sending him flying into the pit before he could stab me with his knife.

“Ready, coming out now!” Sami shouted and a second later, she popped out of the Digivice going up into the air and looked around before propping up the tube she was holding onto her shoulder. “Digital Infantry Mechanized Mangler, DIMM-One Bazooka!”

Sami with an orange skin and equally orange star on her helmet grinned and pulled the trigger and the ten or so Goblimon quickly evaporated into an array of quickly disappearing vortexes in a fiery explosion. She slammed the nose of her explosives firing weapon into the ground.

“Program… M-Loader!” A flash and she lifted the weapon back onto her shoulder, she turned and fired it at Tankmon, the rocket toppled Tankmon onto his side. She slapped the nose of her weapon against the ground again. “Woohoo, that works! M-Loader!”

Another flash and she raised it to fire at Ogremon, to our surprised he caught the rocket with his large left hand, looked at it disinterestedly and then calmly flicked it off to the side where it exploded a chunk of the wall.

“Going to need more than gimmicks to deal with me, keep at them boys! Soften them up for me and really get them riled up!” That’s when twenty or so Goblimon jumped down from the left catwalk, the floating saucer came to hover overhead to drop more stuff on us and Goblimon hanging around the right side of the throne charged down the stairs from it at us. More Goblimon came from the doors at the top of the stairs to the left and right that would lead onto the walkways. The one on the right, which was missing its walkway, only had the stairs leading to the throne. “Also try to push them into the pit if you can.”

“Do us a favor and deal with the floating saucer Sami!” Canard, Dolly and I moved forward while Sami and Dazzle took up a backline position behind us.

I mentally noted that our backs was to the gaping void with no bottom in sight, I didn’t even know if there were spikes at the bottom and I didn’t want to find out what would happen if I fell in and I couldn’t climb the walls to get out.

“That flying digital printer? It’ll run out of materials eventually, but it would be a good idea to take care of it if it’s being a big problem I guess. On it commander… woah… can you lend me a little help with it Dazzle!” Sami just dodged a bunch of exploding rubber ducks, with a punk aesthetic to them, which started raining from what she called a digital printer. “Keep them off us and we’ll bring it down in no time! Though you’ll lack fire support in the interim.”

“Right, let’s go!” Canard stated taking forward center and moved to the left and Dolly took the right side.

A sudden explosion knocked me over and Dolly was immediately in front of me. Looking up I saw the saucer taking a hit from Sami’s weapon and it knocked the saucer away from us as it tried to drop a large ball right on top of us. The saucer was then struck by a Dragon Pulse starting to take some damage as the hovering saucer started smoking.

“Pom, you okay?” Dolly asked as she launched the stone bone forward into a Goblimon and caught on the rebound, she kicked up her board to block a fireball for me and landed while tossing the bone out again.

“Yeah, I’m okay Dolly… what happened?” I was a bit disoriented.

“Tank guy is back up and shot at us from behind, even dealing with Frizzle he’s still trying to take us out.” Dolly said glancing across the warehouse towards Frizzle’s fight with Tankmon, I’m actually kind of glad we’re over here and that Frizzle far too busy over there to pay any attention to us. No Goblimon that went near Frizzle lasted more than five seconds in that rampage. “So we’ll have to watch our backs while we’re fighting for our lives from the front. Also I’m sorry that I tempted things to go this pear shape!”

“It was going to do that anyway Dolly, I seriously doubt you were the one that made things worse just by saying things were going alright up to this point!” I got my hooves under me and leapt forward to start slinging magical claws into a group of Goblimon clawing them up and tore through five of them in seconds.

“Still feeling kind of responsible Pom!” Dolly kicked the front of her board down as she hopped up and landed behind it to shield from a fireball and reached out with her left paw to catch the stone bone.

“Blame it on my luck Dolly!” Firing a charged bark blast I sent a group of Goblimon flying and paid attention to my throat was feeling, need to hold back on any more bark attacks for a bit.

“Or mine, I haven’t had very much in getting out of these realms since I got into them!” Canard shouted as he charged into the center of the a group of Goblimon and then swung his hockey stick outwards in a full sweeping circle knocking down a number of them and the ones he didn’t knock down received a hockey puck to the body. Canard stopped firing his gun when it looked like it was turning red. “At this point I’m willing and ready to take just about any reality!”

I leapt up above Canard and the downed Goblimon and fired off a series of Thousand Spears from all four hooves trampling the Goblimon under multiple blasts of coiled wool powered jets, the recoil from repeatedly firing off my coiled wool kept me in the air until I finished hitting them all.

Upon landing beyond Canard I rolled back dodging a stabbing sword and then brought up my right hoof and fired a Thousand Spear, taking out the Goblimon that tried to run me through. That’s when Shamamon came down and the goblimon started gathering, I noticed something…

“How many Goblimon do you think we’ve gone through so far?” I lost count after one hundred and three, counting the ones on the way to the southeastern slums. I blocked a club and wobbled into a devastating counter that knocked the Goblimon into two others.

“Not nearly enough!” Canard answered and he slammed the hockey stick’s blade down on a goblimon skull making it disappear into a vortex where it dropped a small smattering of Digi-credits that sucked up into his Digivice.

I noticed there were less and less credits the more we defeated, they were probably running out them by now what with our Digivices sucking up most of them.

“You’d be right, if you can still deal with Shamamon after all I’ve put you through, then I might entertain a fight to see what you’re here for.” Ogremon announced from his throne with a grin as Shamamon leapt down the stairs and landed on the ground in front of us and raised his club and had five other goblimon with him.

“Now I’ll show you I’m no ordinary Gobli…” He raised his club and was probably about to shield all the Goblimon up and then an explosion rang out.

The flying saucer that Dazzle and Sami were dealing with crashed into Shamanmon’s group and exploded sending a number of vortexes flying everywhere. He certainly disappeared like all the other goblimon when defeated.

“Trick shot, aw yeah!” Looking back at Sami, she and Dazzle slapped their claws against one another in celebration. That left about twenty five or so Goblimon left to deal with, they all charged for us.

I pointed my front two hooves at five of them on the far left and unleashed a burst of alternating Thousand Spears that took them down.

“We’re lighting the lamp!” Canard, wielding the hockey stick in both hand, swung hard and downed another five.

“Pineapple scented explosives!” That was random, but the green colored pineapple Sami tossed smelled nice after it exploded inside a group of unfortunate Goblimon and they were down seven more. “That’s the sweet smell of victory! M-Loader.”

She loaded her bazooka and hefted it to fire another round only for Dazzle to drop a Flame Burst on the group she was aiming for and they were scattered and quickly taken out by a green whirling wind generated by dolly the nearly blew out the rest of the remaining Goblimon into vortexes.

Dolly skated forward leapt up and slung her board around with the strap and smashed the last terrified looking Goblimon with a skateboard to the neck.

“Hmph… so you are going to be troublesome heroes.” A flash happened behind us and I looked away from Ogremon to see where it had come from, it looked like Lit was trying to knock some sense into the rabid Frizzle who was still locked in combat and slowly being whittled down by Tankmon. Tankmon didn’t look good being covered in bite marks, scorch marks, claw marks and had definitely seen better days. Not that Frizzle was any better covered in bleeding holes, explosion marks, looked like she got ran over by Tankmon’s treads at least twice and possibly had broken bones by how she was breathing. “Hey, don’t pay attention to the merc…”

Ogremon leapt for and slammed his bone club against the floor knocking us all over with the shockwave of his landing, I came close to falling into the pit and looked over my shoulder into the void. I quickly scrambled to get onto my hooves and move away from the edge of the pit, Ogremon was both fast and strong.

Dolly even had to glide back to the floor as the shockwave had nearly launched her all the way across the pit.

Okay, now I believe Ogremon probably didn’t fight us because he didn’t see us as much of a threat before now. Now he does and he’s taking us seriously after we’ve already exhausted ourselves somewhat… oh joy.

“Not when you should be paying attention to me after you took out most of my boys, I am the Basher Bullies leader Ogremon and you currently have my full attention!” Ogremon grinned. The two goofy curved tooth tusk sticking out of his upper jaw seemed to be more menacing. The metal spikes lining his shoulder seemed to sharpen and gleam. His horns seemed to gain more prominence darkening as they bracketed his thick grey hair hanging down the middle of his back. His muscles bulged as his left big fist with metal knuckles clenches and his smaller right gauntleted fist held the studded bone club with an impossible to break grip. The skull symbol on his bicep screamed deadly and his shorts looked haphazardly patched together, the belt was nice at least. This green, tall, mass of wild, was the epitome of the word ‘ogre’ and ‘monster’ smashed together. “I don’t have a Leomon to fight and Tempomon isn’t too into a combat rivalry despite my attempts to rile him up, I need someone to push me to my limits, so all of you will possibly have to do! Don’t care for your names or backstory, give me a reason to learn those and come back at you with more force than ever before! I’ll be your worst nightmare for sure eventually. So beat me into the ground so I can rebuild my strength and eventually have my revenge story, for I will personally make you regret my continued existence… WAAAGH!”

Author's Note

Once again the 'Marmalade' thing has been brought up and is apparently Queen Novo's noodle incident.

287. Server City Ransom Pt. 12.

Author's Note

Music I listened to on loop: TMNT Arcade Stage Four (AKA the turtles cartoon battle theme).

287. Server City Ransom Pt. 12.

-Digital Realm connected to Ransei, Southeastern Slum Sector, Server City, Sami-

Imagine my surprise that a team of Commandramon busted into Ogremon’s operation, but not the true place where his Backspace System was set to if he was to be believed about going to Etemon’s current location.

What I’m more concerned with is why these guys showed up in what I had to guess was an all-terrain armored digital transport with no roof that seemed to be mostly a flatbed with the exception of the chair and controls at the front. I could probably design better, but this thing felt like it was built to survive large and heavy digimon jumping on it or take a thrashing.

The vehicle was to Commandramon specs then, built stupidly tough and simple to the point that any failure in the vehicle didn’t render it immediately useless. Which was a good thing when we had an out of control Frizzle on our backsides.

“Shift left!” Canard looked dashing as always and that fight with all the Goblimon and Ogremon made him work up quite a sweat, the Commandramon driving the vehicle did so and we avoided a cylindrical mass of vibrating air.

The buildings ahead didn’t as they collapsed into our path and we all held on as the driver forced a hard left onto the next street where we saw Goblimon on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. The Goblimon started to throw fireballs our way, but their aim with moving objects was horrible. I wasn’t worried about us being hit by them unless we came to a complete stop.

Frizzle took a fireball in the eye, for all the good that it did aside from making her madder, and roared several Goblimon off the building into immediate vortexes.

Looking to Pom she seemed to be having some kind of existential crisis, seems like her default state really. As she sat in the middle of the vehicle with her wool clinging to it. Her eyes were darting about and wide, like she was taking in everything going on around her.

Dolly was next to Pom hugging Lit to her chest, happy to have the little electricity eating parasite back if her wagging tail was anything to go by. The feeling was mutual for Lit, who was snuggling against her chest while squeaking.

As for Dazzle, she was looking back at Frizzle with clear worry. Given that Daz caused her to go into some kind of battle frenzy and Digivolve weirdly, she had to be feeling responsible for Frizzle’s current state.

As for me, I was curious about something.

“Hey, I have to know, why do we have to get out of here?” My question was met with the driver answering the question, the other Commandramon were a bit busy firing on all of the Goblimon on the nearby buildings attacking us and trying to jump into the vehicle to get at us. The Goblimon were just as aggressive, numerous and somewhat stupid as they ever were. “You obviously didn’t know about Frizzle back there when you showed up and she’s… kind of a friend whose brain has currently gone AWOL.”

Pom snapped her attention to us and her ears flicked as she met my gaze, she was paying absolute attention to what the response would be with a keen interest.

“Well… there’s been a system wide warning of a ‘game cube’ possibly landing in Server City, do I need to tell you the exact predicted landing sight?” When the driver stated that, I could feel my spine freezing over. The Goblimon soon let up on trying to board the vehicle or attack it. They looked to be fleeing the southeastern slums.

“Okay, yeah, that’s bad and we need to get out of here like yesterday! Uh… what do you think will happen to a biological if they gets caught up in one of those?” I had a few guesses… some were horrible.

“If it’s any consolation Sami, they’d probably survive it with little personal injury to show for it if the user doesn’t target them for any reason. They don’t have data to corrupt, delete, fragment or completely derez if things go horribly south.” At least the driver had the right idea, we didn’t so much have to worry about the biologicals as the digital entities that may or may not get caught up in a game to the death with someone who won’t die. “Uver, a little help!”

The entire vehicle lifted off the ground with the sound of a crash, turning to look back I saw Uver finishing a spin on his mode of transportation, having just tripped up Frizzle and was speeding up to us on Pistmon.

Pistmon was a cross between a motorcycle and a plant, a lot thinner and smaller than a Machmon and his bottom half looked like a bicycle and a majority of his torso was basically above the rear wheel and on his back was Uver looking behind us as Frizzle was back up and stomping after us in no time.

“Maybe Frizzle’s hungry? Sami, can you go into Dazzle’s Digivice and get some bread she likely has stored in there? Would that calm her down?” My attention was drawn to Pom and she look like she wanted to ask what a ‘game cube’ was. “We need to get out of here fast because something really bad is coming right? Well we’re not doing so without helping Frizzle. Besides it’s the only thing I can think of after watching her try and eat the Goblimon.”

“Well if you can do it fast, that would be very helpful as our bullets are doing jack all to her and is just making her angrier.” One of the Commandramon commented as the four of them were gathered at the back where they were pummeling Frizzle’s body with round after round from their rifles. Their weapons were having very little effect to the digital Rex. “Also, I want the specs for that bazooka CO!”

“For your own safety. Please don’t put me in charge of anything right now, especially not you guys!” I whined, I would rather be led then lead and Pom seemed to share the sentiment as she nodded at me. “Also, since you brought attention to it, this should slow her down long enough for me to grab some bread.”

I crouched, raised my recently created weapon and fired a rocket into Frizzle’s open mouth causing the building force to explode and knock her onto her back. She clawed wildly at the air and would eventually figure out she needed to roll over.

“It concerns me that she’s can almost run faster than this vehicle can go and I’m pretty sure I saw that she was suffering from battle damage before we showed up.” The driver stated looking at Frizzle dropping behind us a fair distance away as he turned to the right to head north only to find the path blocked. He turned right again. “Darned Goblimon, they created roadblocks on their way out!”

“Work on that and keeping away from Frizzle. Dazzle, may I have access to your device please?” Wincing slightly, the poison fire lizard nodded to me and I immediately leapt for the device at her hip.

I entered into Frizzle’s Digi-home space, a bakery which I quickly entered as the door wasn’t locked. I started quickly looking around for the closest source of bread, anything I can toss into a possibly starving Digimon’s mouth to calm them down before they go Skull from energy expenditure or injuries.

-Canard-

“Is this vehicle amphibious?” I just wanted to confirm something.

“No, we can’t cross the river. We came across the bridge to the north, there’s no bridge to the west side slums and our exit is to the north as there’s one way into the southeastern slums. Unless we want to swim that is and with a confirmed Octomon around… that would be a terrible idea sir.” At least the Commandramon driving gave it to me straight out of the gate. “We might need to abandon the vehicle and make a run for the bridge on foot, but we don’t have Backspace Systems and I don’t relish the idea of having to fight a ridiculously high tier Champion. Also even if we did have those systems, we don’t know how they’d interact with a game cube.”

“Yeah, none of us are relishing having to fight that thing, best we can do is slow her down or topple her with explosives.” Another Commandramon stated. “Hope we can navigate out of here in time or else we’ll get caught in the game cube that was forecasted to hit this zone.”

I’ve heard of ‘game cubes’, it’s related to someone in reality doing something that’s highly taxing on a new digital realms systems and is a highly dangerous stress test before the digital realm becomes strong enough to not be damaged by them. If the person in reality wins the game, it burns out and overloads some of the systems in the local digital realm and does a lot of damage. I’ve heard it could be malicious or entirely unintentional, I’ve never actually seen a ‘game cube’ and they are said to be rare occurrence, but are entirely lethal to all digital entities that get caught up in them as much as destructive to the area they hit.

“Why did you guys risk yourselves to come rescue us?” They didn’t have to come here, they didn’t have to save us and most importantly, if I was correct, then Uver could have better spent his time securing the southwestern slums across the river.

“No Commandramon or good friends dies alone if we can do something about it, and we don’t leave allies behind in enemy territory if we can help it!” The Commandramon driving this flatbed vehicle stated with a tone that brokered no argument.

“Oorah!” The other four Commandramon shouted in agreement, as we turned a corner to go around another road block and that’s when Frizzle burst through a building behind us.

“I will at least admit that I’m scared of the prospect of getting caught in a ‘death cube’.” Another name for a ‘game cube’, but the Commandramon looked to me with a smile. “We’re still here and we managed to pick you up swiftly enough, maybe we can actually make it in time?”

“Dazzle, we need a Dragon Pulse!” Drawing our attention to Pom, Dazzle looked like she didn’t want to. Looking back at Frizzle getting close enough to bite down on the vehicle in a burst of forward movement, the attack Pom called out might be warranted.

Dazzle went to the back of the vehicle and propped her claws up on the rear guard and opened her mouth, but hesitated as Frizzle grew closer. A purple build up and a dragon shaped blast of energy escaped her mouth before Frizzle could bite down on the vehicle, Frizzle’s claws flailed and she was taking a lot of energy to the chest and face washing over her as she faltered.

Eventually the energy knocked her over and Frizzle seemed to be less wild than she was a second ago.

“It’s a good thing we’re not dealing with the Goblimon anymore, but we really need to get out of the area before the system announces the ‘game cube’ spawning in or else we’ll be in for quite a crunch.” As the vehicle skidded around the corner it came to a stop. “Darn it! Guys those Goblimon left mines behind, I need you guys forward now!”

The four Commandramon rushed to the front and started firing their rifles into the explosives to clear a path, but this slow down allowed Frizzle to catch up.

“Keep clearing a path forward, I’ll… I’ll distract her!” Pom, despite sounding horrified at what she was saying with wide eyed fearfulness as she looked at the large beast turning the corner. She still jumped from the vehicle to the wall of a nearby building.

-Pom-

I bark blasted the side of Frizzle’s face and got her attention, didn’t seem to hurt her one bit as she turned her head and snapped at me with her teeth, I hopped higher up the building as she took a section out of it with her jaws.

Her left claw raised and slammed into the building as she dragged herself up and tried to slash at me with her right claw. I turned and climbed the wall and looked to see how the Commandramon were doing with the obstruction.

It wasn’t going to fast, I looked down and saw Frizzle building pressure in her mouth for a roar only to take a bolt of lightning to the right eye distracting her from getting off the attack. I’m quite certain a sound attack would go completely through my wool, so…

My wool rippled as I clung to the side of the building and I took on a wolf style wool shift and fired a bark blast downwards into Frizzle’s face to make sure she didn’t go after the others on the vehicle.

Frizzle roared and I leapt to the left out of the way of the sonic blast, my right leg had been caught in the attack as I clamped to the building with my left. When I checked on the agonizing pain in my leg, it had some painful ruptures all along it from the sound attack and was bleeding profusely. I quickly shifted some wool to stitching all the wounds together and shut before hopping further up the building as Frizzle’s gnashing teeth chased me up, nearly catching my wooly wolf tail in her teeth.

“Coming through!” I was grabbed by the strange bicycle shaped motorcycle Digimon as he and Uver passed by Frizzle going up the building, where Uver smacked her head to the side with his bag. They avoided another cacophonous roar that atomized a portion of the building above us as we reached the top and toppled forward over the edge onto the roof. “You okay miss?”

“Yeah, but our friends or going to have problems if Frizzle turns on them.” I received an idea from Dolly and I gave her the go ahead if she thought it would work. “The mines won’t be a problem soon enough at least.”

“Is you’re leg alright?” Uver asked as he helped me hold onto the plant motorcycle.

“I’ll be fine, I’ve had much worse than ruptured flesh along the entirety of my leg. We need to start looking into a path to the bridge for them down there.” Uver nodded and then gestured to the Digimon we were riding.

“Pistmon start roof hopping, we need to get a path going forward for the guys down there, they are not going to survive a direct fight with that Growlmon.” Uver stated as Pistmon launched us off the building and onto another rooftop.

-Dolly-

Right, Pom was injured, but okay.

I pointed a digit on my right paw to the mines that the Commandramon were clearing.

“Lit, help them clear the way!” I barked as I looked up at Pom getting rescued by plant motor guy and Uver.

The little guy squeaked and leapt for onto the front hood of the vehicle and then a streaking blast of electricity surged from him and traveled along the road creating numerous explosions from the stray sparks of electricity that came from the electrical beam.

Sure the road looked horribly chunked up afterwards, but we cleared a good path through.

“Go! Pistmon and Uver have Pom. We need to draw Frizzle’s attention back on us!” Canard fired his puck pistol into Frizz’s right eye and was joined by the four Commandramon in firing on her. Dazzle included another dragon beam and that definitely earned us Frizzle’s attention again.

Frizz lunged off the building at us, but the driver already had us moving forward and out from under her, she landed on a few mines and popped up into the air in a roar of pain. Stomping forward, Frizz started to force her way through the explosives, how was she still going after everything she’s been through?!

“Goblimon with enough smarts to use mines, an out of control distorted Growlmon, what next? It better not be a flying fortress full of Jetmon.” One of the Commandramon grumbled as they started shooting the mines behind us to knock Frizz off balance with explosions she would have otherwise avoided.

These Commando guys looked cool in principle, but in action they weren’t very strong combatants and their weapons weren’t up to the task of dealing with things like what Frizz became.

Kind of puts Sami’s story of going through numerous horrors into perspective for me, given I’m fragile to weapons like what the Commandramon.

“Turning, grab onto something.” The driver took us into a sharp left and we were back on a path, at least I hoped we were. We were passing by some of the signs that pointed us towards Ogre guy’s base.

-Dazzle-

I didn’t know Frizzle all too well. Aside from the unusually high lust for bread, Frizzle never really talked or express anything other than a cool demeanor with a possibility of liking fighting a little too much.

This… what she became, was entirely my fault. Maybe if I check the Digivice thing. Taking it from the belt and lifting it towards Frizzle, I asked.

“Uh… Yggdrasil.Sys right… is there anything we can do for Frizzle aside from killing her?” The screen on the device lit up.

“Depleting unknown energy that caused unstable evolution to return her to Guilmon state is advised, the plan to throw bread at her might also work in bringing her to her senses.” Wait did Yggdrasil just imply… Frizzle can do what?!

“Excuse me, but did you just say she can stop being evolved and return to her previous form?” Pokémon evolution was one way and in general we got bigger and more powerful.

“Most Digimon evolutions are not fixed quantities, Digimon can be saved from bad evolutions as there have been several incidents in the past of such a thing with a Digmon known as Skull Greymon or Megidramon. Erasure is not necessary user Dazzle. It is entirely based upon energy efficiency for a Digimon to return to rookie state outside of combat while in the bonding process with a digi-destined. Digi-destined help with their companion digimon’s evolution through emotional bonds of varying levels of friendship or love, bad evolutions occur when Digimon is forced to evolve due to circumstances or is treated horribly.” That… was strange, so she could become a Guilmon again and then become something else? “Some Digimon are more set in their evolutionary paths than others, in particular Growlmon is Guilmon’s most notable champion stage evolution. SKULL type Digimon evolutions are quite hazardous to everything, please avoid ever causing them.”

“Nice to know, but it isn’t exactly helpful here now is it?” As Canard spoke another several story building was torn down by Frizzle as she roared and continued to chase us, albeit much slower now.

“Take your next left, two rights and then a left after two streets to bypass some trouble ahead after that three streets down and one more right.” Uver’s voice stated from somewhere. “Pom’s mostly okay, we’ll be directing you from up here on roofs in case the situation changes.”

“Roger that procurement maestro, I hope we can get out of here before that ‘game cube’ is announced as confirmed or even hits!” Stated the Commandramon driving this thing as he steered around a corner and we avoided another devastating howl from Frizzle. “Now if we could do something about big and crazy back there, then that would help.”

“Could you press on the breaks for a second, I need to hop out of Dazzle’s device and I don’t want to do it at multiple miles an hour to hit the street and become immediate roadkill!” Sami announced from my device.

“Give me a minute to make these next few turns!” The guy finished some turns and we were… I think, three streets away from making the next one. He hit the breaks the machine came to a hard stop that nearly made me fall over, but the other Commandramon propped me up. “We’re stopped.”

In a flash Sami, popped out of the device that apparently belonged to me and Frizzle, she pressed her bazooka against the floor of the vehicle as Frizzle was upon us with a wide open jaw and wild eyes.

“You can go back to driving now, B-loader.” Sami announced and her tube weapon flashed and she hefted it onto her shoulder. “Can’t believe I made this modification to my weapon just for this…”

Sami didn’t seem happy about something.

“Fire in the hole!” A large brown boxy mass exploded from the bazooka and into Frizzle’s maw as she was about to bite down and step on the back of the vehicle that started forward again. Said brown mass slammed home into Frizzle’s mouth and, despite her still giving her chase, her wild eyes widened and her pupils dilated into becoming big and round to fill out her eyes and a slightly dazed smile came to her face. Sami pressed her weapon against the floor of the vehicle and reiterated the thing she did to fill the projectile shooter. “B-loader.”

Did her weapon actually just shoot what I thought it did?

“Okay, now I’m really interested, how did you get it to shoot bread?” The Commandramon flinched when Sami glared his way as she took aim.

Yes, it apparently did fire rocket propelled bread as the Commandramon just confirmed.

“I don’t want to talk about it, but I’m definitely going to be fixing my new weapon after this.” Sami stated as she fired another round into Frizzle’s mouth after she finished swallowing the first bread loaf. “Stop the vehicle!”

The vehicle came to a screeching halt as Frizzle wobbled back and forth, groaning a bit. Surprisingly she soon toppled over closing her eyes and began shrinking down back into a Guilmon after being cocooned in a bunch of swirling ones and zeroes.

“What did you put in that bread?” Another Commandramon asked with confusion.

“Enough Mammothmon tranquilizer to kill a Commandramon at least twenty times over, she’ll be guaranteed to be out for quite a while.” Sami promptly kicked the ramp down and pointed to the Commandramon. “Now go drag her sorry unconscious butt into this vehicle, that’s an order soldiers, I don’t want her death on my conscience if she ends up in the game by herself!”

“Yikes, definitely would like her as a CO even if she doesn’t want the position!” The Commandramon stated wide eyed as he ran out to help the others pick Frizzle up and started hauling her back. She was laid out in the vehicle and soon the ramp was up and we were moving. “Should be smooth sailing from here.”

“Warning… incoming game…. warning… incoming game.” The sky started turning purple as a feminine voice that sounded familiar seemed to be announcing that to the entire world.

“I wonder who would be playing games in the realm we’re currently connected to, there’s not that much advancement…” The same Commandramon stated with a slightly weak grin as his buddies and Sami glared at him.

-Ransei Region, Valora (Steel Pokemon Kingdom), ???-

“Okay, let’s see if it’ll work correctly this time, hopefully this isn’t too much for the computers systems after the last showing…” The mouth at the back of my head was crunching into a bucket of fried okra as I started on the controls, I pulled my goggles down and booted the program up.

-Digital Realm, Pom-

“Okay which of you jinxed us this time, I know one of you said something and it definitely wasn’t Dolly this time!” I shouted into Uver’s communication device as the vehicle below started moving at full speed for the bridge after getting Frizzle onboard.

“Pistmon we need to get across the bridge like yesterday!” Uver stated in a less than calm tone as Pistmon launched us across rooftops.

“Guys, problem, the bridge has several blockades and the Goblimon are going to try and prevent our escape.” Blinking at Uver taking the communications device back, I looked ahead at the blockade after Pistmon launched us over several roof tops. “We’ll try to break it up a bit! The game cube is going to drop any second now and we don’t have time for a protracted battle, ram everything out of the way that you can and if you have to abandon vehicle, then do so and make a run for it.”

I looked at the sky glowing an even darker purple and black as the air in the sky started arcing with strange electrical energy as a black void of a circle formed overhead.

“How bad are these game cube things?” I needed to know in case I get caught in one.

“For biologicals, not very dangerous aside from some heat and mild discomfort regardless of the outcome of the game, with the mild exception of a kind of game where the user has to kill absolutely everyone to win. As for every digital entity caught in one however, they are likely to get killed by it if they don’t do the right things if they get caught inside of one. Thankfully this realm was created to prevent outsiders from damaging things through game cubes after the last few digital realms systems were overtaxed. In the case of a player actually winning the game, any digital entity caught up in the cube will suffer erasure or something along the lines of a fate worse than death. It is best to win the game at all costs as you can’t actually hurt the user physically and ganging up on them is definitely advised!” Surprisingly Pistmon was the one to tell me this. “I’ve been in one or two game cubes, it’s how I evolved to being a pistmon. I decided to go impossible mode in the racer game I got caught up in and managed to grab and eat some data when I won the game, saved plenty of lives that day.”

“Can you fight with your right leg messed up?” Uver asked as we stopped at a building ledge and Pistmon slowly rolled his front wheel over the edge.

“Yes, I’m good, but I probably shouldn’t attack directly with it.” I’m not going to mention the internal injuries from Ogremon’s shockwave attacks, I was doing relatively great today in not being half dead all the time.

“Good enough for me, let’s get in there!” Pistmon rode down the wall of the building and then we were at the bridge where the Goblimon opened up with fireballs from the far side that he had to swerve around.

Pistmon looked like part mushroom, part bicycle rider and bicycle all in one. He stopped for a second to let Uver and me off to do our own fighting, then charged forward and fired a sweeping rapid fire amount of thorny projectiles to weaken the barricade he tore through a second later with his front wheel, he was blitzing the Goblimon formation personally.

“Cubes coming down, we need to bust through before it hits!” Uver stated and I turned my sight skyward to see the edges of a large box slowly coming out of the massive circle above this portion of the city.

I gulped and looked forward to see Uver using his bag to smash the barrier and was helping Pistmon, I slowly made my way forward and then took control of my body with my wool.

Galloping forward I leapt up and charged up a bark blast to tear apart a ramshackle barricade made of bathtubs, a screen door and sheet metal causing my throat to get a little itchy as a warning that I was pushing my limits with my bark attacks.

At least the Goblimon were panicking and running from Pistmon’s sudden assault of spores flying off his back, we had to clear these barricades like yesterday because I could already hear the Commandramon’s vehicle on approach.

“We can’t let him through Ogremon wants them to be challenged on their way out as well!” One of the Goblimon shouted.

“Is now really the time to be largely obstructive nut bars?!” I shouted.

“Yes, strife makes for good heroes to fight!” The same Goblimon shouted back.

I sighed audibly and started rubbing my forehead in little circles with my hooves.

Giant death cube for digital entities falling on us, with some possible chance of the game being lethal to biologicals, and the Goblimon erected several barricades for us to break through.

No pressure at all Pom, just your digital entity friend’s lives being in grave danger like any other day of my life.

-Dolly-

Ugh, those green guys were ahead and Pom was fighting on an injured leg, with a few other injuries and light burns to go along with that recent bit of bad blocking the way. Also what’s so scary about a game? Sure the sky was purple and black with a large ominous cube of energy slowly lowering on us, but that couldn’t be portents of doom.

“Warning… incoming game… warning… incoming game.” Okay given that Icky Sis was announcing that again, it was actually probably a really big deal. That and the Commandramon definitely seemed freaked out about it.

The vehicle soon came to a stop as Pom, Uver and Plant Bike were trying to break the barricades as the cube started falling over this section of city.

“What are you doing?!” Sami asked the driver and he looked at us.

“Get out of the vehicle, if I’m going to be breaking through those barricades I don’t want you getting hit by anything from the impacts.” Sounds like a good idea to me, before hopping off I grabbed Lit and wrapped the stone bone in my skateboards strap. “You after lost the ability to load you’re new weapon with explosives didn’t you?”

“Urk… yeah, that’s why I’m upset, it can only fire bread now.” So Sami ruined her new weapon for us? “At least it helped stop my friend from mauling anyone important. I can still use the Commandramon standard DCD-Bomb though.”

“Good, because you’re going to need to follow behind me at a run and be prepared to bust through barriers, the cube is coming down faster every second… so no more time for talking!” He floored the vehicle into motion and I watched as Uver, Pom and that Planty Mcgee dodge out of the way as the vehicle as it started plowing through barriers.

The guy driving the vehicle took several hits from the bits of trash the Goblimon was using and soon the vehicle was stopped by a barricade that was made of sterner stuff. Two barricades away from getting completely through.

We were already running forward and the commando lizard driving the vehicle ducked under the wheel as attacks from the gobs started concentrating on him.

“Game Cube impact imminent, five minutes until touchdown.” Icky Sis announced from the device I had at my neck as I followed the five charging commando lizards lead by Sami as they fired bullets at the Goblimon trying to stop us from reaching the barricade.

“Pom, you okay?” I asked as we charged past her.

“I will be eventually.” Pom stated as she ran back to get Frizzle.

Oh yeah, we kind of left her behind in the rush after we offloaded her for the driver guy.

-Sami-

“Guy on the right!” A Commandramon gunned the goblimon target down as we reached the barricade the flatbed personnel carrier was lodged in a slapdash fence. “Can you put it in reverse?”

“It’s stuck!” The driver answer, he eventually found the time to start firing back with his own rifle and the Goblimon were taking large losses in Digi-credits.

“DCD-Bombs, V-pattern toss! Driver get the right.” I pulled out a grenade on a stick and hurled it at the left side of the barricade as two other Commandramon followed my lead with a pineapple grenade and a cartoon bob.

The driver and the two other Commadramon threw some C4, a breaching charge and… was that an acid bomb? I needed to ask about that last one later, provided we get through all the troublemakers in time.

The fencing to both sides of the vehicle freed up and the driver pulled back and let the fence fall down before pushing the damage vehicle forward as much as he could. It battered the last barricade and partially climbed it to make a ramp, a cement barricade that wasn’t made haphazardly out of random junk as all the others had been.

Where was Pistmon? I saw everyone else except him and Pom pushing forward. I looked back and saw Pistmon carrying Frizzle with Pom on his back, good he could get them through. We just had to finish clearing the path, then… though I just had to ask.

“HOW IN THE WORLD DID YOU IDIOTS MANAGE TO ERECT A CEMENT BARRICADE IN SUCH A SHORT AMOUNT OF TIME?!” I was a bit irate as the driver got the ramp lowered before running up the angled vehicle and jumping on top of the barricade to start gunning Goblimon down.

“Basher Bullies just be that good at being annoying!” A goblimon responded and I put a bullet between his eyes immediately, he disappeared into a vortex with a possible migraine as I hopped onto the Barricade and was joined by the other four Commandramon and Canard in firing on anything that was ugly and goblin shaped. I looked up and saw the cube was three fourths of the way and was about to finish slamming down on us. “Everyone up and over now, that cube is about to hit!”

-Pom-

Pistmon ramped up the vehicle and over the barricade, only I was struck by something and fell away screeching as I bounced off the center of the flatbed vehicle and slapped into the ground behind it belly first.

“Pom!” Dolly came up to me and I felt a burning sensation in the left side of my neck. Picking myself up, I looked and saw that I had a knife in me.

One of the Goblimon managed to throw and hit me with a knife?! I seriously doubted they did that on purpose, I carefully wiggled the knife free and then stitched my shoulder shut with my wool.

“Sami there’s no time, go! Keep looking for Etemon, I’ll stick with Pom!” Canard came back down the vehicle and was staying with us because we were his ticket back to his friends.

“Canard!” Sami yelled.

“Go, we’re more liable to survive this than you!” He yelled as he picked me up, I whimpered.

Sami quickly leapt away off the barricade with the other Commandramon and an upset Dazzle looked back before looking up. I mouthed ‘go with them’ to Dazzle, she nodded weakly then leapt off the barricade as well.

I closed my eyes as the cube slammed down on us.

I was expecting the cube to have a little weight or cause some pain, instead… nothing aside from the pain I was already in.

“Pom? Pom, say something!” Dolly tried to get my attention as my head swam and we appeared to be in some stands in some kind of dome.

“I think… I’m a bit lightheaded from the blood loss of having the flesh on my right leg ruptured, taking that knife to my shoulder didn’t help either and I have a few internal injuries from when Ogremon hit me with a shockwave directly.” My whimpering and dazed state didn’t mean I couldn’t look about or try to focus on my surroundings. “Where are we?”

“Welcome to the game ‘Battle Beasts’, hope you can help us win this because we want to get out after getting stuck in here from when the cube last dropped in the digital realm.” I blinked at the glowing green eyed, yellow armored, bipedal robot with guns built into his arms and a weird single horn that split into two that looked like it spewed fire. Next to him was a white robot with a large pincer extending from his right arm and two longer and larger horns on the side of his head that bent inwards, he looked like a white knight and built for speed. “I’m Metabee, the blazing gun specialist. This is my buddy Rokusho, a close up blade master. We got caught up in this game cube the last time it dropped and was in use, we didn’t want to die so we loaded ourselves as part of the game to survive! Now we kind of need your help in kicking the user’s backside so we can finally get out of here!”

“They’re biologicals, they might want to know more than that Bee. We technically count as Digimon, we just don’t have the ‘mon’ designation.” Rokusho seemed to be a calm reflection to Metabee’s utterly excitable nature. “We’re of the ‘bots’ designation, so we’re technically Digi-bots. We’re basically the same as Digimon and we’re somewhere between rookie and champion in Digimon strength terms.”

“Don’t we get the ‘mon ‘designation when we fuse together though?” Metabee crossed his arms and looked to Rokusho while tapping a foot.

“That’s because fusing causes us to cease being Digi-bots and turn into a ‘mon’.” Rokusho said blandly.

“Oh right, so fusing is actually kind of a thing with us then huh!” Metabee stated smashing his left fist into his right hand.

“I can kind of see why you two got stuck here.” Canard state blithely as he carefully laid me out on the nearby steps.

“You’d be correct in your assumption that it’s his fault.” The red eyed beetle bot tilted his head towards Metabee.

“Hey, I wasn’t the one that got us stuck under the cube the last time it was in use in the first place!” Metabee stated irately as his horns let off a burst of flame.

“Pom how many fingers am holding up?” Dolly, you don’t have fingers, you have paws and Lit is like a cuddly plush toy. “Yeah, your heads all sluggish, but your mind is still as sharp as ever.”

“I think I need some medical aid, disinfectant at the very least and something to eat to make up for the blood I’ve lost.” I groaned out as my wounds throbbed.

“Well, this place has got you covered there at least!” Metabee stated jovially. “This game has good medical stations and a food court, whoever made ‘Battle Beasts’ really wanted some realism involved despite most of the gameplay centering on the dome’s various interchangeable battlefields.”

288. Server City Ransom Pt. 13.

Author's Note

The Medabots RPG for the GBA is quite memorable for me, but a little easy once you really got going. I recall one punch death builds surrounding one particular part...

Before anyone asks, I could probably reference Robopon and nobody would get it. Yes I've played just about every mons series you can imagine. Two is already too many 'mons' series already for this story. I can barely remember the two, vastly different, robopon games I played on top of that.

That Metabee and Rokusho technically classify as Digimon, Digi-bots is the technical term I went with, it is reasonable that they and any other possible 'medal robots' are being placed under the Digimon Crossover label as digital entities that exist among particular digital realms.

They have their own mechanics compared to Digimon, losing parts knocks them down Digimon based levels. All Digi-bots with full strength parts are somewhere between champions and Ultimates, at least two parts heavily damaged will drop them to Rookie tier.

Rokusho and Metabee can Fusion Digivolve to become Omedamon under the right circumstances, which is a Mega Digimon on par with Omegamon and is even a parody of it for those who know what an Omegamon is.

While I'm quite sure there is a high probability of a Megaman Battle Network connected Digimon Realm, because that worlds technology is fantastical enough for it, I already said I'm not doing that when Dormarch finally came up as being a Digimon.

The digital realms connected to various realities that have high technology levels, the Mystery Dungeon World barely has enough high end technology to count as a marker for a digital realm to form. Said technology is in two areas in known quantities, Violight and Valora the respective electric and steel type kingdoms are slightly ahead of the curve technology wise compared to the wilder parts of Ransei.

There's also the abandoned laboratory as a Mystery Dungeon Friend Area, thus denoting that other signs of high end dimensional technology exists and Pokémon have learned from it... but technology is still not quite as prevalent as it could be.

The Server City Arc is getting to be quite long already, this is still setting things up for later when the 'WARS' part of 'Miraculous Monster Wars' actually starts kicking things into high gear.

So far there has been a small war in Fontaine and there's a small war going on in the Server City.

I hope I can finish this story within this year... because Pom still has a long way to go before facing Tambelon.

288. Server City Ransom Pt. 13.

-Digital Realm, Server City, Sami-

The game cube slammed down and I sighed in relief, no digital being got caught up in it. Canard, Pom, Dolly and Lit would be fine in the game world as long as the user doesn’t have good reason to attack them depending on the game being played.

“Well… we’re not going to see them for a few days.” I stated as I turned and blasted a Goblimon in the face with my rifle and saw a Hi-Vision Monitamon hopping away. Was that who threw the knife at Pom? Ugh, darn dark colored champion stealth expert! “Be safe Canard… guys…”

“Wait days? Why won’t we be seeing them for days?” Launching a Flame Burst at the last remaining Goblimon, Dazzle turned to the huge shifting wall of the glowing purple energy that made up the game cube.

“Time disparity, they are moving in real time now based on reality.” One of the Commandramon answered. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back for them… and our transport if we can swing it. Until then we’ve got issues to deal with and we will have. Trying to breach a cube will have disastrous results.”

“Until then we’ve got your backs.” The Commandramon that was the driver added.

-Northwest Server City, Beach Bungalow, Hi-Vision Monitamon-

“I got her, just like you asked Ultros!” I said proudly as Octomon's second in command.

“Great, now where is the darling cutie, heh heh heh.” Ultros grinned his unnatural teeth and waggled his tentacles.

“She’s in the game cube as we speak, if it’s not lethal I shall endeavor to try getting her again.” I suddenly found a tentacle threatening to pop my cubed head off my small body.

“I think there’s been a miscommunication here… when I said I wanted you to ‘get her’, I meant bring her back to me so I can host her in my beach side palace. I totally mean that in a less than threatening manner.” The large tentacle tightened and I could feel my code threatening to unravel, Ultros was far stronger than any Octomon had right to be and I worked for such a gloriously strong leader! Provided he didn’t kill me for completely misunderstanding his orders… “She would have looked fabulous in a bikini darn it, plus my tentacles would have been all over such a sweet honey. You better hope she survives that game cube and that the user is being relatively harmless!”

That meant I had a few weeks left to live… for which I can devote to my master Octomon, praise be Lord Ultros for this blessing! There was just one thing I needed to ask.

“Uh, you do realize for all intents and purposes she’s basically covered in wool and doesn’t wear clothing right?” I asked bluntly.

“What part of she’ll look good in a bikini do you not seem to understand!” My lord Ultros worked in mysterious ways as he waved all his tentacles at me threateningly while squeezing harder.

-Ransei, Valora, ???-

My game start screen booted up.

“Welcome to Battle Beasts, please select your avatar!” I chose my personally crafted avatar, the one with duel samurai swords and looked somewhat like me! I grinned as I waited for the AI to choose the battle arena and then glorious digital fighting would occur, I might even get a Porygon or a Rotom interested in modifying my game further to be more efficient.

“You have selected Maul-wilier!” I wonder if the robotic Pinsir and Heracross will try for me again, they were tough and made for a good fight… also living shields against the other NPCs.

-Game Cube, ‘Battle Beasts’ Dome, Ladies Restroom, Pom-

I grit my teeth and hissed as I poured the disinfectant over my front right leg and noticed Dolly’s nose wrinkling in confusion at the lack of smell coming from the substance.

She also looked to be in pain despite not taking any serious hits, I checked our bond and was immediately upset with what she was doing.

“Dolly… are you… stop, stop taking on my pain this instant!” She was taking on a portion of the pain I was in for herself.

“No can do Pom, pain shared is pain reduced, don’t ask me to do math since this is giving me a headache!” Paws on her head, Dolly was grunting at the effort to reduce how much pain I was in by shouldering an amount of it. “Can I, can I see the injuries?”

I sighed, she was going to be fairly stubborn about this. I might as well show her. The wool receded from my right leg entirely, with the exception of the wool stitching.

Dolly looked a little sick at the flesh ruptures from Frizzle’s attack that my wool had been hiding as I douse my left shoulder with more disinfectant. I covered my right leg back up and shifted my wool to look as normal as I possibly could.

My fluffmancer talents were working pretty great, but I wondered if I would ever get to independently moving wool like Paprika did? How does one control wool at range when it wasn’t connected to you?

“Bow-Whacka-Ouch… just be glad I’m not trying to take on all of your pain Pom.” Dolly closed her eyes and started crying. “Still, I’m helping you regardless and at least the wool stitches have a cute flower look to them. The kind of tattoos I’d expect you to have if you wanted them.”

“You are at that, but it’s obviously a bit much for you.” Seriously hoped Dolly knew she could only take so much. “Also the flowers are very much incidental, I assure you.”

“Hey, you’re family.” Dolly said with a grin, it just came out being more of a grimace.

“You girls okay in there?” Canard asked from beyond the nearby door, he probably finished his business in the male’s bathroom.

“Yeah, we’ll be out in a bit.” Things felt weird here, this world felt… small and didn’t have the same thrum of rhythm to it. Basically this entire world existed inside a dome. “Frizzle really got me pretty good. Most damaging injury of the day really, entirely glad that didn’t shattered my bones.”

I was reminded of what I almost did to Chu Chulainn and winced.

“You’ve taken on a lot of trauma, anybody would be a little worried about you. By the way Lit’s fine.” Yeah, Canard and Lit hadn’t interacted much, but it’s nice to hear they were getting along.

“Trauma has been a common occurrence for the most of this current year of my existence, I’ll live.” I was trying to keep the quavering out of my voice.

“Well, alright, see you in a few minutes Pom. Metabee and Rokusho are grabbing food for you to help with the lightheadedness.” Even Canard was concerned about my health. “Make sure she’s alright Dolly!”

“I’ll do my best of course.” Dolly said looking up to me and pressing a paw gently into my side with a chipper smile and a warm feeling sent through our bond. “Stop thinking of Cuckoo Lame and get your mind off the injury and get you some eats.”

-Five minutes later, digital food court-

Introductions out of the way and now we move onto business.

“Okay, we should probably tell you. While we’re in the game, we’re basically stuck in reality based time while it’s active. So don’t be surprised if some things change when you get back to the digital realm.” That was something I think we needed to know sooner Metabee the white and yellow beetle bot sighed while crossing his arms. “We’re probably missing months due to getting stuck in this game cube, better than being erased from existence. You’ll probably miss a week or two if this takes an hour or less.”

“There’s also the chance that we’ll never leave this cube alive if it’s never played again, given the amount of time from when it was last used. We need to win against the user Metabee, this is seriously life or death for us.” Rokusho’s red eyes narrowed on Metabee and he turned to us as I ate some potato chips, dried fruit snacks and drank some water. The food and water here were tasteless, but I was still getting back some energy from eating. “We have to defeat the user at the game soundly or else we might be stuck in here forever, not you… I assure you that as biologicals you will be fine once the game is won or lost. At least we won’t be awake or aware when we perish in the case of this game being deleted.”

“Geeze Rokusho, why don’t you scare us into action harder? We’ve got this! Mind you we lost the last time we fought the user and I’m pretty sure it’s the same guy given their avatar.” Metabee saw our curious looks, he gave us an equally curious questioning look. “Oh… right… you wouldn’t know about that. Hey can we use that monitor over there to show them a replay of our previous battle here?”

“Ughh… if you weren’t my best friend…” Rokusho stated while putting his left hand on his face, after a moment he removed it and looked to us. “Anyway Battle Beasts is a game built around creatures fighting in duels, free-for-alls, battle royales or tournaments with varying rulesets based on the users whims. In teams, solo, round robin and etcetera, that kind of thing if you know fighting. The user, much to my dismay, did solo the both of us when we fought them. We were the only digital lifeforms caught in this cube the last time it was in use. The user’s avatar is a strange two legged creature with a mouth on the back of their heads and a smaller mouth at their front, it’s hard to describe, but it looks like this.”

With a sweep of Rokusho’s left hand, the nearby monitor advertising the sea battlefield and giant toothy waters monsters that didn’t look like Pokémon shifted. The image that came up on the nearby screen was some kind of two legged yellow and black creature with a large bean pod shaped mouth sticking out the back of their head.

“The user rarely plays this game and judging by the amount of time that has passed since they’ve last played in digital time… well… we’d greatly appreciate your help on escaping our situation before it’s too later.” Rokusho bowed to us.

Metabee raised his left fist into the air.

“Yeah, help a couple of guys out and we’ll back you whenever you need it!” Metabee stated jovially.

“Please don’t offer my services on things without my permission, but you can do as you please.” Rokusho stated flatly to Metabee.

I think I was getting an idea as to what their relationship was normally like, a stoic knight kind of guy and a headstrong explosive ballistic personality. It made for a rather weird, if barely stable, friendship.

“So how did you two lose to this thing last time?” This was brought up by Canard.

“Yeah, we were in the middle of a Battle Royale, the games NPCs don’t care if we’re just trying to survive they attack everyone equally as long as you aren’t on their team and in the middle of an arena match.” With a motion Metabee made the screen show a replay of what happened to him and Rokusho.

They had been doing pretty well against the user. At least up until they got surrounded and were outplayed when the user apparently used their bodies as living shields to not be attacked from all sides while dealing with them at the same time.

“We digi-bots are pretty strong, but we’re limited in increasing our combat capabilities without the normal digital evolution pathways that Digimon use. We mostly rely on our parts for our combat strength. Once you’ve seen everything we can do, that’s about all you’ll see truly see aside from unusual tactics.” Quite sure Metabee was talking about himself in reference to ‘unusual tactics’, because he puffed up.

“Admittedly, Metabee does have a knack for being ‘stupid lucky’.” Rokusho mumbled.

“Ah, we know we’re great Rokusho! It seems the user is making a move on choosing a battlefield, we should get signed up for whatever battlefield they are going to get involved in.” Metabee continued on as if Rokusho wasn’t implying something about his intelligence. “So what do you say, team up and beat that solo act to get us out of this mess Rokusho got us into?”

“I’ve already apologized for my part in this issue… you could do well to do the same.” It also seemed Rokusho was pointing out Metabee being a bit of an inflated ego, he personally could stand to have some color like Metabee.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry we both ended up in the same sector where a Game Cube was dropping!” Metabee groaned out.

“We don’t have a stake in this… but we’ll certainly try to help!” I said pleasantly.

“With that bum leg… are you nuts?!” Metabee stated while pointed a digit on his five fingered hands at me.

“She’s actually still quite capable of moving and fighting, but I believe she should be in the back behind Dolly where it’s safe.” Canard was willing to help them, so we’re both okay there. Even Lit looked willing to help. “I’ll be okay for being upfront.”

“Woohoo, finally getting out of this place!” Metabee was jumping with excitement.

“I’ll go get the match cards for us and set up our team, you entertain them.” Despite his slightly sour demeanor towards Metabee, Rokusho was a nice robot. For once I’m glad to not be trashing my way through robots. “If we’re lucky we’ll be out of here before an hour passes.”

-Two minutes later-

“Oh boy… the user must be looking for a challenge.” Metabee stated as Rokusho came back and gave us cards that would teleport us in to the battlefield after the user finished selecting details involved. “We’re going to the mountainous battlefield.”

Looking over the card I recognized at least some of what we were being called. For one, me being called ‘long legged wooloo’, didn’t quite sit right considering the fact that I wasn’t like a wooloo and I certainly hoped I wasn’t a pervert.

Still, a Pokémon apparently made this game.

“Why am I being called a ‘Cubone Roller Knight’?” Dolly asked as she looked over her card for a name.

“Well the bone you’re using is said to be wielded by Cubone as a popular weapon for them and you do use your skateboard as an effective shield.” I answered, remember what I was told about th0e stone bone being a favored weapon of a particular Pokémon.

“Eh I guess that fits.” Dolly nodded, but she glanced at me. “Still want to meet an actual Cubone though!”

“I’m ‘Tall Farfetch’d’?” Canard stated as he held his card up looking confused, if I remember right a leek wielding bird Pokémon. That sounds like a decent comparison what with Canard wielding a hockey stick.

“If you’re interested I apparently come up as Metal Pinsir and Metabee comes up as Metal Heracross.” Rokusho stated.

“Heracross is definitely better than Pinsir, everyone knows that.” Well that wasn’t a very subtle ego boost Metabee. Rokusho glared his way.

“So how long until the battle begins?” I asked as I looked over the details the user chose. A battlefield with a lot of verticality kind of favored anyone with long range and the user was using a sword wielding character. Joltik held the card and his mouth and whined at me. “Oh you want to know what yours says? Let’s see, Average Joltik Swarmling?”

Lit seemed somewhat upset by that and glared at his card as he hopped onto Dolly’s back.

“Oh we’re fighting right this instant.” Metabee stated jovially before a flash went off.

-Battle Beasts, Mountain Battlefield-

I blinked and found myself standing on a portion of a mountain around the base with the others.

“This battlefield doesn’t favor the user, but they didn’t choose many ranged teams and none of them are flyers. Conditions say the first team member of any team to reach the flag at the top to hold it for a specific amount of time or the first team to defeat every member of all the other teams wins. King of the mountain style.” Rokusho blinked at me when I gave him a look of disbelief when he saw the corners of my mouth turn upwards. “What… what is it?”

“Is that specifically ‘any’ team member that reaches the top and holds the flag for an amount of time?” I said while slowly turning my gaze to Dolly, whose grin was equally becoming bigger by the second. Lit raised his front legs and started rubbing them together with a wicked tiny smile in his eyes as he clamped down and nuzzled into Dolly’s fur. “Well this game is going be a really quick one then, the logistics are entirely in our favor at the very least.”

“How so? It’ll take a bit of time to climb up to the top, I think the user intends to fight all the teams on the way up and they are quite good at this game and tactics.” It seemed Metabee didn’t quite get why I was smiling, even Canard was starting to smile as he remembered what we were capable of. If it were just Lit and not Dolly we’d still win as Lit can get up there pretty darn fast. “The pathways are quite treacherous on this mountain unless you can circumnavigate them. It’d take at least twenty minutes for the fastest team to get up there and even then you’d have to hold the flag at the top of the tower for five minutes.”

“So are all the teams starting near the base of the mountain with what I assume to be pathways that connect to other teams paths leading up and it’d take them all longer than five minutes to get up there?” My grin was definitely like a lightbulb right now. “It’ll take that specific twenty minute amount of time for all of them to make it up there right? Well… provided they aren’t all bogged down in fighting each other which would make it take much longer.”

“Yeah, but it’d take us a lot of time too, unless you can go straight up a ninety degree wall. We should get…” Rokusho paused when he noticed that Dolly, Canard, Lit and I were grinning. “Moving?”

“Well most of us don’t need to move at all.” I looked to Dolly who was waiting with Lit on her back for me to tell her to get moving. “The other teams can’t do a single thing about our victory. So today seems to be your guys lucky day. Dolly… GO, full tilt, enjoy yourself even, but have Lit grab the flag immediately!”

Rokusho and Metabee looked at one another. They didn’t know what we were capable of quite yet, but they were about to see how fast Dolly was.

“Bow-Whacka-Wow!” Dolly shouted as she popped her board at the mountain wall and then shot up the steep stone incline with momentum powering her board at a decent speed. I could barely hear Lit’s joyfully squeaking as he rode with Dolly straight up the mountainside.

“I could follow them, but I’d rather rest and let my leg heal than climb all of that.” I sat down on a rock and waited, Canard idly checked over his hockey stick and puck pistol while also taking a seat to enjoy the fresh mountain air.

Both Rokusho and Metabee still looked a bit stunned as they stood their staring at us blankly, eventually Rokusho shook himself out of it.

“You’re luck is quite appalling Metabee.” Rokusho stated angrily to his friend. “In any case, want to spar while we have the free time?”

“Let’s do it, ro-battle!” Metabee stated while hopping into a position to face down his friend.

Our impending victory would be announced twenty seconds later and Dolly would spend the next five minutes doing incredible skateboard tricks on the tower at the top and the surrounding mountainous slopes. I was watching her from the backseat of her mind to make sure she wasn’t doing anything too dangerous or stupid, which was hard to tell at times given her gliding capabilities and the stunts she liked to pull.

-Ransei, Valora, ???-

Aw, yeah, now this is a challenge, I’ll beat each team on the way up and then take the flag from any team that captures it. It’ll take everyone about the same amount of time to climb up there so…

“Flag captured, by Average Joltik Swarmling of Team Beetle.” The game announced and I just froze.

“… What? No seriously, WHAT?!” It was barely like a few minutes into the game and the flag had already been captured, there was no way to get up there in time or defeat all the teams in time before I could make it.

My character had only just crossed the first team, how in Magearna did an average Joltik go that fast?! Wait… agility… duh!

…

I was still going to try to see how far I could get!

Note to self, worry about mountain climbing Joltik in the future when choosing ‘king of the mountain’ for the mountain battlefield. I’ll also take Joltik more seriously from now on.

Next time I was going for ‘team elimination’ and then a three team free-for-all after enough teams are eliminated.

Also need to work on making a unite ball game…

-Game Cube, Battle Beasts Mountain Battlefield, four minutes after taking the flag, Pom-

Still the time that passed in here being real time wasn’t too bad, but it was going to be bad for Dazzle who would be missing us for weeks and stuck doing who knows what in the meantime. The time disparity would be awful, but there was nothing I could do about it.

“I did not expect this to go so well.” Rokusho stated as he dodged around Metabee’s rapid fire bullets and tried to strike him in close range only for him to leap back and blast fire from his split horn.

Metabee was poor in a close up fight, but mid to long range he’s already gotten Rokusho quite good a few times. The two sparring was interesting to watch as they displayed their personal capabilities. Close up, Rokusho was blazingly fast and Metabee could hardly handle him being a ranged fighter and spent a bit of time trying to put distance between Rokusho and himself while taking numerous cuts to his metal body.

Wait… what would be waiting for us when the game was over? They said the game cube would disappear as soon as we won and leave us right where we were. Don’t know about the two digi-bots, but hopefully they would be next to us as we exited it.

Still, it was worrying what might be waiting for us.

The Goblimon are probably going to be there in force as they’ll want to go back into their territory. I silently sent the word to Dolly who had been experiencing some extreme mountain skateboarding. She sent me back a happy dog face and to not worry so hard, she’d apparently tell Lit to be ready if we were in trouble when we got back. Who knows how the state of Server City has changed in the time we’ve been gone.

“Canard, I just realized as soon as this last minute is up, we might need to be ready to fight.” I guess he realized what I had and he nodded.

“Guys, your sparring time is up, get ready for a fight in case we end up coming out of the cube directly into a hot zone.” Canard’s words made Rokusho and Metabee immediately stop, also it appears that he said that just in time too it seems.

Rokusho’s right arm bladed pincer sword an inch from Metabee’s neck and Metabee’s single barrel right arm weapon was point blank to Rokusho’s forehead.

“Of course.” Rokusho said as if they weren’t seriously about to kill one another. “Something always interrupts us before we really get going.”

“Right, we’ve got your back, just tell me who to shoot!” Metabee’s green glowing eyes grinned at us. “Look at it this way Rokusho, I can always kick your butt later. We’ve got way bigger things to worry about!”

“Winner, Team Beetle!” This was announced ten seconds later and the user lost the game. “Game Over!”

-Server City, approximately several weeks into the future, Pom-

“Game Over!” With a blink I looked up and watched as the cube raised back into the sky, when I looked in front of me I saw a lot of Goblimon hefting their weapons and slapping them into their hands.

“Goblimon?” Rokusho asked as his pincer sword opened and close and he stared them down, the Goblimon looked a little worried when they noticed him.

“Uh… one… uhh… one… Digi-Bots, where did they come from?” The numerous Goblimon started to back away from their speaker, a few started running when Rokusho and Metabee took offensive stances.

“Yep, the Goblimon, are most certainly not our friends.” I nodded to the two, who thankfully were here with us at the end of the bridge when the cube lifted. I looked see that the Commandramon’s vehicle had also reappeared with us, right where we left off. Though the barricade seemed to be mostly gone thanks to the Goblimon having taken it down. “Don’t damage the vehicle, it might still be useable by my friends who will hopefully show up soon.”

A mass of missiles immediately loosed from Metabee’s split horn and he was on the Goblimon firing round after rapid fire round into the confused mass that was becoming smaller by the second after a violent series of explosions.

Rokusho got moving a second afterwards to also start tearing through the Goblimon at blurring speeds far faster than what Metabee and he were moving at when they were just sparring. I saw the flashing crescents of his pincer blades swinging as he moved through the Goblimon that were disappearing into vortexes at a pretty good rate.

Canard wasn’t idle as he fired his puck pistol into the crowd of goblimon gathered for our return, the Goblimon were so caught entirely off guard by our two new friends that they faltered immediately.

What was once twenty or more Goblimon became more like five in a matter of seconds and they were trying to escape Metabee’s maniacal laughter that would certainly haunt their nightmares as much as mine.

“Is that all you got punks, you Goblimon got nothing on us Digi-bots!” Metabee gleefully exclaimed as he leapt up and fired an incredible volume of projectiles downwards into them.

“Why are Digi-credits falling everywhere and what is up with the vortexes?” Rokusho seemed to be paying more attention to the carnage they were unleashing as they worked together in tandem with alarming efficiency.

The five remaining Goblimon tried to run, but they went down when five figures charged forward from that direction and started firing on them. It was the Commandramon team we met before we ended up in the cube.

The goblimon went down and the Commandramon seemed wary of the bots as they were of them.

“We can answer that, it’s been a while for us even if it hasn’t been so long for you… sorry we weren’t in position to help sooner! Kind of hard to tell how long a Game Cube will last.” A Commandramon apologized as he came forward. “As you may have well guessed… we’ve been kept quite bit busy since you were gone. Guys secure the vehicle, we’ll drive it back to Uver’s territory.”

“What’s happened since we were gone?” That’s the first question that comes to mind that seemed most relevant to me and I wasn’t wrong.

“Quite a bit, Octomon took over the Ferris wheel and Karaoke bar, he’s kind of wedged himself between the Skatepark Scamps and Jijimon slightly. It’s actually a pretty tentative hold, but he’s somehow managing it. Those Monitamon are not very strong, but they are highly versatile with all the elements they can use and are working together quite well. We think it’s the Hi-Vision Monitamon that Sami spotted who’s keeping their act in gear.” The commandramon stopped talking when we heard a rev and looked over to see the Driver Commandramon hugging the wheel and wagging his tail, we turned back to each other. “Tempomon holds his territory, but is remaining neutral to most people as long as they don’t cause trouble for him. We’ve heard nothing from Ogremon over these last few weeks after his defeat except that his Goblimon know he’s still around. Hea-Gatmon was captured, but don’t worry about that. Dazzle, Sami and Frizzle rescued her from the Pink Troopers… incidentally, never go into the sewers, they were almost stuck down there for almost an entire week after getting a bit lost after a week of just trying to find where Hea-Gatomon was. The Pink Troopers still hold that territory with an iron fist and nobody even wants the sewers to begin with, but they’ve been rumbling with the Basher Bullies since their only surface territory, the junkyard, to the west of Jijimon’s territory was taken. Pink Troopers… more like Pink Poopers… anyway way Uver’s taken up the southwestern slums and had us check to see if Etemon is in the area over the last few weeks. Aside from some nasty Falcomon attacks, we’re sure that the southwestern slums are clear and are slowly being built up into a more habitable area thanks to Uver’s help. Also the plantation is neutral zone as well, Veggiemon and Palmon are making sure the city gets food under Togemon’s watch.”

“Did you find out anything new about the Backspace System?” It’s been on my mind since I just watched a lot of Goblimon get gunned down by an overzealous Metabee that seemed to be enjoying it a little too much for my taste.

“Yeah, a few things like who created them in the first place, even if Sami hasn’t had time to study the one currently in his Digivice.” The commandramon gestured to Canard. “Now that we have that back we can compare findings with the second one we have on claw, which we have ‘acquired’… through some rather dubious means. Once we have our Personnel Flatbed in order, we’ll get you back to Jijimon’s territory in no time at all. We can stand around here all day gabbing, but I think its best we move before the Goblimon build up enough force to actually beat those Digi-Bots.”

“Well we got nothing else going, so count us in!” Metabee stated excitedly, Rokusho sighed audibly rolling his glowing red eyes upwards.

“Ret-tsu-go, the vehicle is still in surprisingly good condition and we might want to move because Driver is getting a little too physical with the vehicle and it’s beginning to disturb the rest of us.” One the Commandramon stated and cringed when he saw the driver nuzzling the vehicle and kissing it affectionately.

Once we were up the ramp we were on our way to a few surprises once we reached Jijimon’s base, the Digimon Kindergarten and Dolly’s bane.

-Outside Jijimon’s Home-

The vehicle came to a stop, I actually felt sorry for the Goblimon and Falcomon we ran over crossing the bridge back to the western side of the city. In fact was that a…

A Falcomon flopped to the ground groaning and disappeared into a vortex leaving a number of Digi-credits behind.

Yeah, it was a Falcomon stuck to the bumper by inertia.

“Can I stay out here, the last few times I went in there I got badly swarmed!” Apparently Dolly was apparently afraid of being a magnet for cute little Digimon babies. “Sure they are adorable and sweet, but there are way too many of them in there. Besides I want to check on my Dalmamon… should I call them cousins? They are next door and might enjoy some company if they’ve been cooped up in the hydrant house.”

Lit squeaked a sentiment that vaguely seemed similar to Dolly’s as he got mistaken for being a Digimon baby for his tiny appearance.

“Sure, go ahead Dolly.” I carefully got up and walked down the ramp in a three legged trot. The Commandramon noticed, but weren’t saying anything about my limping.

“We’re staying out here, talk to us if you need anything as we’ll be hanging around here. I’m not exactly good around kids and Rokusho has issues with opening up to people.” Metabee sent a leery eyed stare to Rokusho and he looked way while crossing his arms and huffing.

“So… what was the game and how easy was the user to beat considering you caused them to game over?” A Commandramon finally asked as we entered.

“Something called Battle Beasts? It apparently took place in a dome and we ended up at a mountain where we had to climb up to it first and hold the flag for five minutes or defeat all other teams. Dolly just sped up the side of the mountain and got the flag, it would have taken all the other teams approximately twenty minutes to do on foot what she did in about two minutes.” We were guaranteed to win that and thankfully without a vicious fight to the death. “It was surprisingly simple, I don’t think the person who was playing the game realized how advantageous the ability to go up vertical surfaces was when they chose that battlefield and we had three people capable of doing that quickly. Dolly, Lit and myself.”

“The user probably had it coming!” A Commandramon stated as we entered Jijimon’s home to the sound of digital babies running around excitedly and I saw a Dalmamon was playing with them gently.

“I’m so sorry I hurt you!” A high pitched squeaky voice sounded out and I found myself lifted from the floor and wrapped in the claws of… Frizzle? I can understand why she doesn’t talk now. She’s a tough lizard, but that voice would make anyone comment.

Frizzle was even blubbering as she carefully held me off the floor.

“Hey, be gentle with her, her right leg looks to still be smarting and it hasn’t been as long for them as it has been for us.” Sami stated as she sat in a chair without her gear on, she looked battered and badly bruised. She brightened when Canard came in. “Nice to see you’re okay Canard! Can’t wait to plant those digital seeds… anyway, a lot has happened as you can probably tell.”

“Hey, where’s Dazzle?” I blinked and looked around for her, then my eyes zeroed in on a slightly larger and more feminine streamlined looking lizard that was much bigger than Dazzle previously was.

“H-hey there… I um… I evolved.” Dazzle certainly did, I believe she was what was called a Salazzle now. She looked quite nice. “I’m a little bit bigger than before… also I learned the move Flame Lash.”

“Which was really useful against those digital sewer mutants, didn’t honestly know roachmon’s could get that huge.” Sami stated while shivering. “So… many… explosions… ugh, just stay out of the way of any Pink Troopers you see for a while, if any attack you personally, then promptly set them on fire. They really don’t like fire. They don't like fire at all.”

“Do I even want to know the story?” I asked as Frizzle carefully set me down and I went to hug Dazzle who used to be about my size and was now much larger.

“Well… no.” Dazzle shyly rubbed at her head as I hugged her. “Though a thorough explanation might be in order before we hit up Octomon’s territory, we’ve been fairly distracted as you can probably tell. One explanation is that I haven’t told you I was kind of a freak among Salandits… given I was far larger than other Saladits, even as a princess my size is unusual. Now that I’m even bigger there’s less to worry about when it comes to fighting off any Salandits or other Salazzles if we were to ever go to Viperia back in Ransei, but I still wouldn’t like it.”

“You look beautiful at least, even if you seem to be having some trouble accepting your new appearance.” I silently watched as several emotions pass over Dazzle's face, before she eventually decided to blush and bury her chin into her chest while looking away. “Also does Frizzle talk now?”

“Not very much…” Dazzle answered quickly.

“Is it her high as helium voice that probably got her bullied?” I asked trying not to put it in a way that would upset Frizzle.

“Yes.” Sami answered for Frizzle.

Frizzle just pointed at Sami and nodded with a serious expression on her face.

289. Server City Ransom Pt. 14.

-???, ???-

“I don’t know about this X, she doesn’t look like a reploid… in fact she seems to be biological despite somehow made entirely of diamond and the fact that she’s imbibing alcohol and barfing up molecular acid rainbows at the same time is quite disturbing on a number of levels… and she just melted an entire reploid into metal slag. Now there’s a horrifying image I won’t be able to ever delete.” My mind was blaring with warnings about unicorns, bicorns and any quadrupedal four legged horse like entity that had horns. I was also getting a video recording of a similar or even the same diamond pony with a shotgun that I was seeing right now, it read ‘do not mess with’ multiple times across my vision and wouldn’t stop until I looked away from the diamond bicorn slowly wreaking havoc through every maverick machine in her path. Even Duff McWhalen hadn’t last a minute under the barrage of colorful shots coming from the shotgun that made cute horsey noises every single time it fired. “Also there’s something very familiar in my memory banks that’s giving me constant warnings to not go anywhere near her for some reason, it’s blaring that constant warning that I wouldn’t survive going near her whenever I even so much as glance at her. Something about… stealing Dustman and ruining an entire plan?”

“She could need our help though Zero!” X tried, my blue armored robot friend was quite watching what the biologic diamond horse was currently doing was he? “Also she seems familiar to me too for some reason. Why is there black box data in me telling me to help the bicorn from behind and to not be in her way?”

“X… she’s stomping the mavericks into little puddles of oil and parts by herself, she’s even laughing and enjoying herself doing it too… and she’s just stolen a ride armor out from under a maverick, I think they are all doomed at this point honestly.” I stated plainly at the wake of destruction left behind by the two horned unicorn after she pulled herself out of the sea after getting into fight with a giant robot whale. That she didn’t drowned was my first sign that we probably shouldn’t bother the possibly magical beings, we’re basically robots and we’re not supposed to think of magic as being a logical conclusion to anything… yet my head kept screaming not to bother the bicorn. “Wow… I’m kind of feeling sorry for anyone going maverick right now.”

The ride armor was now currently totaling everything in its path as we stood here watching the destruction as the diamond horse gleefully laughed like a maniac. For some reason the laugh is haunting my nightmares, as if I had blocked out meeting them before at some time in my life. Something that terrified me down to my central data core that passes for a soul.

“Excuse me, I’m Kitty Android or Kityan for short, are you going to fight that Velguarder unit down there?” Turning to the cheerful voice, I saw a short, bipedal cat eared machine with twin energy pistols in each hand. She was pointing with her right pistol towards the distant ground where a familiar wolf mechaniloid could be seen. “I’ve apparently been assigned to capture a fun robotic wolf by master Oleander and that one seems to be in vicious enough to be in need of reprogramming!”

“Wait, what’s Sigma’s Velguarder doing here?” X asked looking worried and wide eyed that Sigma’s traitor hunting mechaniloid wolf was around.

“Doesn’t matter, I’m going to go catch it for Mistress Oleander and Master Fred!” That’s when the… well I didn’t think she was a reploid, something was very off about the female feline machine, launched off the nearby cliff.

The cat android flipped and started gliding with what I was reading as photonic energy coming from her feet in a strange output that made me feel oddly calmer just staring at it. Calmer than I have in a long time as she started down towards the wolf tracking down another reploid that managed to either free itself from the Sigma Virus or just turned against Sigma for whatever reason. It really didn’t matter which, it was always chaos we had to settle as maverick machine hunters.

“Oleander… that sounds vaguely familiar to me too… why do I feel like I’m going to have nightmares about a book now?” X, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that name before too and that it’s somehow caused some weird effect on our history. “Huh… Light Code: Heroic Dark Unicorn, do not proceed with current mission?!”

“Woohoo, this is my new favorite toy!” I heard a female voice shout, coming from the direction of the diamond bicorn I was most certainly not avoiding even looking at.

-Digital Realm connected to Ransei, west of the digital meat plantation, south of Octomon’s Bungalow Beach, a few digital hours later, Pom-

So we were quickly caught up with weeks of missed fighting and action by the five Commandramon that were working with Uver to hold the southwestern slums where we came in at. I think we were the only faction that seemed to be trying to fight the gangs actively, well in so much as making sure digimon can actually move through the city without being accosted constantly.

At least Uver was giving the local citizenry some sign of peace or safety. The neutral territories were defending themselves quite well and Ogremon’s guys were not being sighted in great quantities aside from being a constant nuisance to traveling between areas of the city.

Dazzle being evolved was the biggest shocker, but she seemed okay mentally having spent time with Sami and Frizzle working out some of her issues with her being a bit larger than normal among her species. I’m glad I wasn’t involved in their sewer adventure to rescue Hea-Gatmon, because it sounded awful in numerous ways than getting stuck somewhere at the cost of nearly an hour of real time in Ransei. I think we got the better end of the deal with ending up inside the Game Cube.

“So I couldn’t uninstall the B-loader and had to reinstall my M-loader function, so now my bazooka can fire soporific bread loaves and high explosives.” Sami seems to be happy that Canard was back, but was still somewhat unhappy about the fact that her bazooka was slightly messed up in having to stop a rampaging Frizzle. Still firing soporific bread loaves could be useful, it would certainly be helpful if Frizzle went crazy again and I was still wary of that happening. Frizzle was a bit upset that I was trying to keep my distance, but everyone knew why and we’d be fine and if we weren’t… we’ll just simply find a way to be. “Don’t honestly know what makes this Ultros guy so weird, but he has the information we want and we couldn’t exactly hit his holdings until now. Not without you guys at least.”

“So what’s the hold up here?” Dolly asked as we sat here on the beach looking towards the north along the beach at the majority of Octomon’s territory, the beach bound building in the distance was large… but small for an Octomon apparently.

Bad weather wasn’t a problem here, digital world had weather regulating system and if there was a forecast of good weather, then it was bound to happen with one hundred percent accuracy. It was apparently cloudy or sunny all week.

“We’re looking for traps Dolly.” However if a normal person were looking at the stretch of beach to our north they would only see flat sand. Perfectly flat sand doesn’t exist, not even here. It was kind of a red flag for us and I could only notice some of the traps along the beach, mostly the hidden mines.

The Monitamon might have even been responsible for the mines back when Frizzle was chasing us through the southwestern part of the city.

“We’re trying to work out what all the traps are in the way to reaching the Beach Bungalow if that’s what your companion is asking about. Also the Monitamon have been a big problem recently as they’ve been getting better at fighting us off the more they know about us, they certainly have their acts in gear making it hard to approach this particular Octomon at all. Also the Hi-Vision Monitamon has been reportedly been in trouble with Ultros for hurting Pom, apparently there was a miscommunication and something about a bikini? We didn’t get much, as the Monitamon are kingpins when it comes to information gathering and holding, it’s a surprise they even let that much slip.” Sami shook her head. “I don’t know why anyone would wear one of those things anyway, no protection whatsoever aside from a flimsy amount of cloth and it’s not a very pragmatic covering. It makes me wish I had powered armor more protective than my current gear, but I wouldn’t go Sealsdramon for it. Maybe I can make a powered armor suit like the one Hi-Andromon has… or just steal his if it’s still in the waters to the south of the city. Maybe I could commission Uver to retrieve it? Also it’s not like we Digimon have genitalia to hide.”

I would comment on Dormarch being male and having the matching canid biology, but he did have an entire hospitals worth of medical data in his head when he was started up and probably managed to match his biology to some real world anatomy from it to that of his appearance as it was. So maybe all Dalmamon actually copied that information, being informational beings created by this realm, okay… I think I was thinking too far about this and need to cut my train of thought…

We already have an idea of what Monitamon were like, they were good at monitoring places and sharing information between themselves. Dolly has been calling them those ‘TV headed ninja guys’. They knew how to work together effectively and aside from a few gaffs involving us, they’ve learned what we were capable of and how to deal with us more effectively. I haven’t personally seen the effects of this yet, but the Commandramon were certainly having problems with them prior to us coming back.

“So… this Ultros… you said he was a purple Octomon, what are Octomon normally like?” We were going to sit here and wait for all the traps to be mapped out by our spotters among the five Commandramon that were helping us attack Octomon’s holdings. They really didn’t have a stake in this, yet they were still here for Sami Soldier as friends, companions and colleagues.

There was also Metabee and Rokusho. Given Metabee was hanging out with us, we didn’t need to ask for his help. While Rokusho had wandered off to look around the city on his own. The two were very much night and day, but they were friendly at least.

The only reason we had to attack Octomon’s holding, was for information or to possibly free up the ferris wheel for the young Digimon that liked to ride on it. The Karaoke bar, that nobody was using, was not something of great importance as the Commandramon have already confirmed it doesn’t have a secret basement and it’s basically a thing that Tempomon might like to run on his off days.

In fact, these Data Diver gang guys didn’t seem to be searching to expand anymore and seem to be perfectly happy with their beach side territory, aside from helping Etemon do whatever it was he was doing… they don’t actually sound as evil as the other gangs. Aside from Ultros sounding like a pervert, but I haven’t personally heard the guy talk yet.

Ogremon and Goblimon were so obvious about being evil, but were currently tied up with the Pink Troopers having stormed the southeast slums after the Game Cube lifted and have taken it over immediately because the Basher Bullies took their junkyard. I wouldn’t bother dealing with those two factions attacking each other, Pink Troopers seemed chaotic neutral and didn’t care much about surface dwelling Digimon or anyone else so long as their turf wasn’t messed with. The Basher Bullies were regretting taking the junkyard from the Pink ‘Pooper’ Troopers right about now from what we’ve been hearing.

“You mean beyond the whole 'beach ninja' thing we’re dealing with here?” Sami took a relaxed position on her beach chair as we continued to sit here and wait for the Commandramon to finish scouting the area for as much information as we could get with their digital binoculars. The Data Divers could have reportedly done this job in five minutes, we’ve been here for more than an hour and the Commandramon were carefully looking over every square meter of sand. “Octomon, as the name implies, have eight limbs with some with varying differences like grasping claws, a blade at the end or a normal tentacle. They are good at short and mid-range battle, with some long range capability thrown in with some digital weaponry they possibly stole off some Vademon, er… tentacle alien Digimon with somewhat large brains known for making fantastical stuff. An Octomon can multitask fighting entire groups quite effectively, we need at least more than eight people to give them some real problems. If this one is as big or unusual as stated, given they are usually primarily red in color and this one is purple, then at most we should be very wary of this one being a nastier variant type. Otherwise on land, they are quite slow mobility wise and we’re not fighting Ultros in the water, it would be exceedingly dumb to do so. The Monitamon known as the Data Divers gang are the major issue here, they already know we’re coming and are scoping out their territory to launch an assault on Octomon’s holdings or at least try to pry information from him. Information is a major resource fort them and they have more of it than we do.”

“Could we possibly converse with this Ultros peacefully? He didn’t try to assassinate me on purpose, though I’m not defending the fact that I still took a knife that was apparently poisoned for digital entities to the shoulder.” Even if the thrown knife had poison that would effect a biological, I was still wearing my Pecha scarf. Not that that was a known factor and the Hi-Vision Monitamon still tried to kill me. “We have Digi-credits, maybe we can afford a price they ask for peaceably?”

“Yeah, maybe an option, but the Monitamon have had it out for our group since Etemon started the whole Backspace System conspiracy thing that’s going on here. I’ve looked over two separate instances of the Backspace System and I’m still coming up blank for what Etemon could get from selling them aside from the Digi-credits and good publicity, because it seems to be entirely benign... aside from the massive loss of Digi-credits from the pockets of the wielder. Still far better than the information loss of reincarnation or being digitally consumed.” Yeah, which was why you were still trying to figure out some things Sami and even I only had a few suggestions to try thinking about, but they weren’t quite warranted yet until we know there’s something up with the systems aside from trapping Digimon in specific areas they label their home base to return to upon the systems activation. Etemon doesn’t seem to be trying to own the entire city, but he did give the gangs the capacity to hold territory and set them on people to actively sell his product as something that works. At least I know for certain Etemon didn’t make the Backspace Systems, he’s just selling them. Surprisingly enough, Etemon is actually doing his job as an advertisement program despite starting the whole issue with these gangs in the first place.”

“If I may interrupt your casual conversation ma’am. Our flatbed can take a lot of punishment, but we can’t in good conscience try to drive it onto the sand through that specific area with so many traps. There’s mines of at least three identifiable types as far as we know, dug out spaces for hidden Monitamon ambushers and there’s even something big buried in the sand that we probably don’t want to go near. It may be a tank or a similar combat vehicle of some sort and we only know this because it’s slightly hotter than the surrounding sand and giving off enough energy that it obviously screams danger. There’s a lot between us and the Beach Bungalow where Octomon is currently, he hasn’t left since it was establish and they are quite prepared for us.” Which according to the Commandramon means we probably need to launch something of a probing attack to lure out the large thing to see if it was worth trying to push through it. “We can try to open communications with them to see if they will sell the information openly. We know they are not personally big on offensive power individually, but I can tell whatever they are definitely hiding in the sand... it's big and something we absolutely don’t want to mess with.”

“Can you park the vehicle near here and let us use it as a retreat point?” Sami asked.

“We can do that for you, but the guys and I know for certain that something smells here and we would rather you didn’t figuratively test the waters yet. When I say smells, I don’t mean like the sewers of Server City did when we were down there.” At comment from a Commandramon, I noticed Sami, Frizzle and Dazzle cringe. “Yeah, well, we didn’t like the sewers either. Not a mission I would want to do twice unless I had to, even if I owed you all a huge favor.”

“You guys being here and acting as long range support is good enough for me.” Sami stated with a slight frown on her face as she looked towards the bungalow in the distance. “Though I still want to know why you are so eager to assist me personally.”

“Well for one, you did give us the data on your bazooka and there’s the fact we respect you as a legendary Commandramon… one that apparently became a digi-destined on top of being one of the most memorable Commandramon in existence that is one of the earliest surviving iterations of us. Keyword being 'surviving' there.” The other Commandramon had been working on their own bazookas when we came back, they weren't quite finished yet. “That and Uver brought us in with you as the selling point. As friends that needed our help and something interesting for us to do was just as important caramel icing on the gooey warm freshly baked cake for us.”

“So should we go forward and try to draw out what they have buried in the sand in preparation for us or should we try to contact them first?” Drawing our attention to him, Canard was quietly waiting on us to make a decision. “We’re all a team on this, we should act like we have some functional cohesion here.”

“Contact, we should at least try to talk before we resort to violence.” Of course we were going to end up resorting to violence anyway at some point, but I wanted a little hope that we could try to come to an agreement where that didn’t happen.

“I’m for whatever.” Off to the side Dolly was quietly building a sand castle.

“Dolly basically says she’s not making a decision on this.” I followed up.

“Contact, the enemy knows we’re here, might as well try the peace option before we fight.” Dazzle seemed to be with me on this, she was busy playing with a whip of fire and practicing her 'Fire Lash' technique so she would avoid hurting us later by accident.

Frizzle pointed to Dazzle and nodded, basically just a ‘what she said’ gesture.

“I’m okay with trying to contact them peacefully.” It seemed Sami agreed and the Commandramon were open for trying. “Now if someone can tell me how we’re going to do that.”

There was silence that stretched out as Dolly continued to build a sand castle in the background.

“I could go over there and simply ask…” I received multiple frowns as I pointed towards the north

“Yeah, no, not happening Pom!” Dolly immediately reacted negatively to the idea, yet still kept sculpting a sand castle and was looking at something in the distance.

Looking to where Dolly was, I saw a Monitamon a fair distance away building a sand castle too as competition to what Dolly was doing. It was a cute interaction at least, maybe I could talk to that Monitamon without incurring trouble?

“No, your leg might look like its working fine, for the most part, but I wouldn’t want you to going that way all alone.” Okay, I apparently upset Dazzle too.

Frizzle crossed her arms and shook her head.

“I’m with them, as a friend we're not letting you out of our sight.” Metabee added his two cents from nearby. “Also I’m all for busting in and knocking some heads!”

“Pom might have the best chance of being seen as harmless attempt to approach them though.” At least Canard was considering it. “Still wouldn’t want anything to happen to you though, you’re probably the only way I’ll eventually meet that Arceus guy in person. You’re kind of the perfect one to send forward alone, which rankles me quite a bit.”

“We’ll say yes to the idea, but we’ll at least give her cover from here.” The Commandramon group stated as they broke up from talking to one another in a huddle, this was surprising.

“Pom… be careful.” Sami stated after a moment.

I got up, flexed my wool and sand flew out of it in a slight cloud and then started to trot forward towards the Monitamon competing with Dolly in building sand castles.

It didn’t take me long to reach the Monitamon, they didn’t seem too threatened by my presence.

“Excuse me… I know you’re competing in a sand castle building contest at the moment, but is there anyway we can peacefully buy the information we want from you without having to go through the whole rigmarole of beating each other into the ground violently?” The Monitamon was doing quite impressively as their castle had a moat and was sculpting parapets with careful hand motions. He looked up at me with a question mark appearing on his monitor. “Well I was wondering what would it cost for us to simply buy the information on where Etemon or the Falcomon’s leader currently is? We were just wondering if we have to actually go without the whole violence route with you guys.”

The Monitamon held up a digit on his left hand in what I came to recognize as a ‘wait one second gesture’ and he turned towards the bungalow and was doing something. After a moment later, he turned back around and his face showed Etemon with an X mark and a circle on a black blob shape with a question mark on it.

“Okay, so we can buy the information on the Falcomon leader, but we can’t on Etemon. Can we buy information on the one who created the Backspace Systems?” I silently asked Dolly if she could bring our Digivice over to me when I called on her. I looked to see that Sami and Commandramon were carefully holding their weapons, making sure they were pointed downwards.

Another gesture of 'hold on' and the Monitamon turned from me and made several gestures. He turned back with a green circle on his screen.

“The information on who the Backspace System creator is and the Falcomon leader, how much would both of them cost together or separately?” Another gesture to wait and they went back to working on the sand castle.

I sat down and started to play in the sand myself while I waited for an answer to the question, apparently they weren’t going to sell out on Etemon, but the aerial gang and the creator of the Backspace Systems? They are somewhat open to negotiations apparently and I was a little surprised about that.

-Bungalow Beach, bungalow, Ultros the purple Octomon-

“They’re here, can you get me an image of those cuties?!” On screen I saw the wary adorable figure that was called Pom. Slight injury to her right leg, but my goodness she was exquisitely adorable to look at playing in the sand in spite of the all those hidden scars she has!

Hi-Vision Monitamon didn’t kill her, but he was still on my list for the next week or so.

I focused on the Guilmon next, she was a cute, battle hardened, bread thirsty, monstrous lizard. She was quite a honey and a quiet one to boot! Her actions definitely spoke louder than words.

There’s a lithe large black and purple lizard with the stylish pink highlight markings along her chest and belly, she looked like royalty with the way she held herself. Didn’t look like a Digimon, but since when would that have ever stopped me from appreciating such visions of beauty before?

The orange Commandramon. Battle hardened, no sense of feminine appearance or care, screams practicality or pragmatism by existing… but the muscles looked nice enough on her. She was mostly a ‘meh’ at best though.

-To the current south, Sami-

Why do I feel like stuffing an octopus full of explosives for a flash fried calamari hamburger?

Also felt an extremely strong urge to fire my bazooka at the bungalow, must resist urges… do not ruin the peaceful negotiations Sami… Pom might actually be succeeding at getting something from them without a big fight happening.

-Bungalow, Ultros-

The little canid was cute, but a bit too small for my refined tastes. I don’t think I could even squeeze them in any of my tentacles without immediately crushing them to death.

No Hea-Gatomon and that cute nurses outfit, oh well. Would have loved to rub my tentacles up against her brilliant cared for digital fur.

As for the rest, couldn’t care anything much about them aside from the fact that they might be customers.

Gyheheh, I wanted to get my tentacles all over most of those sweet honeys! How to go about doing it though?

“Hm… you can sell the information for that price fairly enough, but if they want to a clue to finding Etemon directly…” If anything, they direly wanted to know where Etemon was and they’ll have to come to me to get that bit of information. I can hardly wait! “Well they’ll have to come after me personally for the information on Etemon and will have to go through you to do it! At least let them know that they should make an open declaration of wanting a fight before trying to beat the information out of me, they’re being cordial at the moment so we should do the same and tell them how they can get what they want.”

-A few minutes later, Pom-

Negotiating prices was going pretty well, they were willing to cut some of the price for buying two bits of information at the same time and I wonder what it would take to actually get a hint of where Etemon was.

“What would it take for a hint of where Etemon is on top of the current price?” I was holding the Digivice and Dolly was continuing with working on my sand castle next to me, I had the digi-credits for the information.

What the Monitamon answered was surprising, free of charge? That was ominous, these guys were in the information business and I’m guessing the information was going to be so obvious it would be worthless to actually put a price on it.

“Okay… I would like to finalize purchase and information exchange.” The device in my hoof lit up.

“Yggdrasil.sys, will check and carry out the trade if information is of proper value.” The Digivice announce and soon the information seemed to be traded between the device and the Monitamon. “Information successfully retrieved, sending Digi-credits.”

“Okay, what do we have Yggdrasil Dot Sis?” I asked as I looked at the device, Dolly lifted her right ear in my direction wanting to hear this as well.

“Information is as follows according to Monitamon network. Accessing Informational Packet 1. Creator of the Backspace Systems is a local ‘Greymon Expert’ known as ‘Hakase’ who bought Etemon’s help for advertising his product, it seems to have been a complete success judging by local trends.” Okay, intriguing, we’ll need to find where this Greymon Expert was and ask him if he knows what Etemon is doing. “Accessing IP 2. Leader of the Falcomon is Raptor Sparrowmon, extra information… their bases location is to be found upwards and their gangs name is the 'Avalanche Avians'.”

“Okay, that’s two good leads…” So maybe on a tall building or somewhere in the sky, I couldn’t rule out floating islands after seeing one in Ransei. Also a Greymon Expert, an expert at what… who knew? We just wanted to find Etemon, not continue being a dug in part of the gang wars going on in the city.

“Accessing IP 3. Free information of how to get a ‘good’ hint to where Etemon is currently hiding, fight through my Monitamon and beat me down. Give us a heads up when you’re ready for a battle 'Gyhehehe'-Signed Ultros the Purple Octomon.” Why of course, why wouldn’t he challenge us to come after him for it? “While we cannot currently confirm all the informational accuracy, the Data Divers have given us other leads to follow up on at least.”

I was about turn and go back to the still tense and waiting group, but I paused and thought of something. I turned back to the Monitamon and scrutinized him, her or it closely and even took a sniff of the air around them slightly. I think I had a good enough read on them to at least put something into motion.

“Okay… this might be a long shot and you might never find the information I’m looking for and this could take a very, VERY, long time. It may even be a challenge of all of your skills… I need you to find information on something of great importance for me and you might never actually find it or it might not even be possible… but please, I want to know if you can at least try and…” I moved closer to the Monitamon and whispered what I wanted and then transferred every ounce of the remaining Digi-credits out of the Digivice to him quietly with a press of the hoof. “Also let the little Digimon have free access to the ‘ferris wheel’ ride again at least, you took that away from them. We’ll inform you, quite loudly at that, if we’ve come for a fight or we’ll come quietly if we need more information. If you can do this one thing for me… then… I will be forever grateful with just knowing whatever you come up with.”

After a moment the Monitamon quietly nodded in acknowledgement and hopped away, I turned and moved over to Dolly returned the Digivice to her. I then started heading back to Sami and the others to inform them of the information we now have. Quietly wondering if anything would come of paying that Monitamon so much to do something important for me.

“Pom…” I noticed Dolly catching up to me, she immediately caught on to what was on my mind. The true longshot I just asked for might never come to pass, but it wouldn’t hurt to try and the money of this world wasn’t exactly a big focus of mine, though it was a part of the current ongoing problem. “Do you think they’ll really do that? I mean, they’re the bad guys right?”

“I’m truly not sure they’re bad guys out and out Dolly. They could just be working for a bad person, they’ll obviously honor the payment and will have to try at least. I can feel they’ll do that much.” That’s what I was hoping for, if it came down to it Canard and Dazzle still had Digi-credits in their devices to spend should they need to. “I’ve also got all kinds of questions about the information they just gave us to go over with Sami and the others… the whole 'flood the city with gangs’ thing being one giant marketing campaign is a little too much to me to be fully real.”

-A few minutes later, Sami-

“A Greymon Expert? Oh my goodness, an Agumon Expert actually took the time out of being a complete brainiac to go out and exercise enough to actually pull off a rare digital evolution!” Provided there is such a Digimon in Server City, finding them would be relatively easy. Not a lot of Greymon running around here, if they were the type to get out there might be Digimon who’ve seen them. It explains Etemon being here somewhat, though Etemon’s business practices were definitely scummy and left something to be desired what with all the gangs running around. “Raptor Sparrowmon… okay, that’s a Digimon I don’t know about, but they sound dangerous given the ‘Raptor’ is in their name.”

“We’re going to attack them aren’t we?” Canard stated a moment later.

“It’s almost too good a carrot, but there’s a big stick involved there as well.” I responded, said stick was a machine of unknown quantity buried in the sand and the Octomon himself, Ultros.

“I’m willing to accept that we might have to fight, but wouldn’t looking into the other bits of information we received first before we start a big fight be a better idea?” Pom stated with a slight hint of not wanting to do so. Knowing the Monitamon, they’ll be watching our progress throughout the city and we don’t know when they’ll attack us any time after we decide it was too much trouble to start a fight here for the most wanted bit of information. “I don’t relish the idea, but if they are on the up and up with the information I bought from them.”

“They definitely know where Etemon is, there’s no doubt they wouldn’t being the major information brokers in the city.” One of the Commandramon brought up, because we all knew Tempomon was the lesser information specialist around and his part of the city was the safest to be in at the moment. So he gets a decent influx of knowledge from those who pass through peacefully. “I think they do business as paid, but will still hassle us combat wise as we travel around like the Goblimon.”

Pom sighed audibly at hearing that they’ll continue to bother us as we moved around the city, but nodded in acceptance that’ll we’ll have to keep fighting them off.

-Dazzle-

Well it’s nice that we got some information, but we were in for a huge fight soon and we’d be fighting the Digimon who could use multiple elements… sure they weren’t at Pokemon levels of output, but any water attacks on me would still be quite devastating.

I wonder what Pom asked the Monitamon before they started jumping away?

I glanced at Frizzle and she sent me a smile that said everything would be okay, provided she could actually control herself if she were needed to go through a digital evolution again.

I think I could trust her to be better this time after the time we spent together in the sewers of Server City.

-Ultros-

“Now just come to papa my pretties, you’ll receive a big loving squeeze from me alright!” My toothy grin was met with curiosity from Hi-Vis and the other Monitamon around looking to me curiously. They just didn’t understand the beauty of those lovely females. “If you even manage to bring me down, you’ll get your hint, but not before I’ve had my fun… can you still reach the Black Widow despite being buried?”

“Of course sir, I can get back in the same way I got out." Hi-Vis responded with a salute. "It is still fully operational and ready for deployment with me as the pilot.”

“Good… very good…” I smiled malevolently, I practiced it in front of a mirror and everything to get it just right what with my teeth sticking out of my body weirdly.

I even rubbed two tentacles together in true excitement of what was to come to me.

Author's Note

Will Pom and friends immediately go for the 'carrot' or grab a stick of some equivalent size?

290. Server City Ransom Pt. 15.

-?, Oleander-

“Okay, so the Velguarder self-destructed before we could catch it, this is one of those kind of universe continuances where the words ‘grim’ and ‘dark’ is a constant thing isn’t it?” I ask because you can’t really do much for a grimdark universe that’ll force grim and dark to happen even if the heroes win darn near constantly.

“In short term… yes. It always happens after many years of peace which Mega Man and we fought so hard for, IT IS KIND OF A VICIOUS CYCLE HERE.” After pausing Fred turned to me eagerly. “So are we going the nuclear option?”

“Does everyone die if the grim dark stuff keep happening?” I waited for Fred to answer and I knew he would do so honestly.

“No… but ‘maverick’ issue continues being a thing because most people don’t understand that you shouldn’t partially replicate something without understanding it in its entirety.” After a moment Fred whined quite loudly. “ALSO ROBOT SOULS HERE TASTE ALL SAMEY AND LIKE PLASTIC!”

I swear it’s like that universe with those Eldar people who are actively seeking to destroy themselves through sheer idiocy.

I mean, they saw me causing a calamity and then acted upon that knowledge without looking into the reason why it happened in the first place, had they done nothing then that calamity wouldn’t have happened. They really shouldn’t have tried to wheedle Fred away from me in the first place… that ended so poorly because Fred ate the ones who tried. I can’t even blame Fred for what happened, because they actively sought their own destruction through him.

They seriously relied far too much on their future sight ability and all their lording it over people that they were the ultimate empire, which eventually caused them to become quite self-destructive in so many way it’s crazy they didn’t completely go extinct.

If I hadn’t forced myself to have the inability to enjoy using dark magic I would have simply destroyed myself weeks into becoming Fred’s friend. Also self-fulfilling prophecies are something I avoid like the plague, like that wizard school I once came across. Never try to make a prophecy happen on purpose, it ends worse than if it happened naturally, accept the prophecy but try to find as many loopholes as possible if it inevitably ends in your death.

A self-fulfilling prophecy is usually what happens to every other dark magic user when they let powers absolutely go to their heads and become holier than thou hubris loaded hate sinks, then wham they die due to a series of convoluted circumstances.

I mean, they start getting sought out by some random hero of light to be stabbed repeatedly with a sword or some magical artifact macguffin of killing them for being evil shows up out of nowhere or the dark magic user even created the artifact in the first place as to end up being their own downfall.

I understand the balance of good and evil perfectly well enough that something evil will rise up in the worlds I’ve left behind, which is why I usually only stop most of the major problems and egregiously dumb nonsense that happens in front of me.

Like that stuff that was happening between Adrien and Marinette… I still don’t know what to do with the cosmic Fox Kwami thing called Trixx, but I don’t think giving them to Pom just yet would be the best idea.

Pom is not quite ready for nearly phenomenal cosmic power over illusions, she could probably handle the super speed at least... though I don’t know if she plays a flute or not.

Eh, I’ll just keep Trixx in the pocket dimension where they are for the time being, I made quite sure to Teumessian proof the pocket too. If a Blink Fox gets in, then they are definitely not getting out of there through their usual shenanigans without my saying so. Plenty of food and air in that dimension too, I’m not cruel enough to functionally bug jar a generally friendly cosmic being without adding air holes too small for them to use to escape.

Had one heck of a time fighting those Akuma things though, why is it always butterflies that I have the most problem with? It’s like when Mothra beat our backsides soundly, but we didn’t have nearly a problem with knocking Ghidora down a peg in our three way fight with King Godzilla.

“Oh.” A maverick robot was leaping for me.

I calmly aimed my keyblade levitating in my magic and fired a beam of light from the tip that locked the virus completely out of their minds systems and they flopped onto their faces in front of me. Basically, I just cured them for life and with their mental state was restored to what it previously was before being altered by the malicious coding.

A key that can unlock and lock anything conceptually would never not be useful on some level, which is why the aforementioned pocket dimension cannot be escaped by anyone that manages to get into it without my say so.

“So…” Fred started.

“No Fred, you can’t eat them after I just saved them.” My tone is drier than a continent sized desert. “Also didn’t you just whine that their souls tasted like plastic?!”

“IT’S LIKE SHOVING CRAYONS UP YOUR NOSE OR EATING THEM OLLIE!” Huh, that was a weird way for Fred to put that into context… while he was currently eating crayons out of a large variety pack box. “There are guys that prefer glue, but I prefer crayons… ALSO GLUE IN SOME UNIVERSES ARE MADE FROM PONIES AND I'M EVENTUALLY MARRYING ONE SO I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE A BAD IDEA AS A VISUAL GAG!”

I loved Fred dearly, but he was quite a somewhat evil weirdo at times.

Still going to marry that and possibly Cashmere if she ever stops being too shy.

-Digital Realm connected to Ransei, the next day, Dalmamon home, Pom-

We had plenty of time to decide whether or not to attack Ultros, we decided to leave yesterday with the information given to us and take a break from dealing with gangs for the evening. We could follow up on the information, but I had other ideas and a fairly good suspicion of what would happen if we continued our course of following bread crumbs to find Etemon.

Which brings me to here and now, I looked to the sky before knocking on the door and once I made myself known… I was swiftly allowed in.

“Excuse me, but I need to ask you something.” I was here alone to find out if I was right as I sat down at the table and Pickle was willing to be a good host.

“Uh yes, what do you need ma’am?” Pickle’s ears raised and his three tails began wagging, my goodness the memories of how adorable these guys truly are...

“You’ve been here since this world was made right?” All I had to do was figure out what we needed to do next. I will simply not be led around by a carrot tied to a stick.

“Yes, we were some of the first beings plopped down in this world by the system.” Then he should know the answer to my question. “Sure we’re a failed experiment, but the system is keeping us around and I enjoy life and being alive. Could have more purposes in life, but keeping one hundred sibling in line or out of danger keeps me busy enough as they can be rambunctious being cooped up like we currently are. Those two trouble makers Delightful and Dig are especially troublesome. Even if we are kind of stuck being unable to defend ourselves for the most part, we’ve been getting by.”

“Where do the least amount of Digimon gather in this city, also where are they least likely to go?” Depending on what he says…

“Well there’s a lot of great places in Server City.” Of that I have no doubt Pickle. “If you want the least used place in the city, and criminally so at that, then you’d be looking at the school. There’s so much in life to learn there at the library, imagine all the knowledge and ancient history of the various digital worlds in there! I could be the first digital archaeologist and I might even find and dig up an ancient meme to put in a museum! A Dalmamon can dream I guess…”

Hmm… I’m not going to ask for a location, because if I’m right… then I won’t need to.

“Oh barf, give me physical learning over that mental learning any day, also digging up old memes? Really bro?” Variance intoned as she grinded down the banister on her skateboard and popped off to land on the floor. “Woo, I didn’t fall flat on my face! I mean… yeah, I’m just that awesome! What do you need my bro for, I would help you with literally anything right about now. I need something interesting, I need action, I’ll even take helping with a mystery at this point, I hate being cooped up in here all day…”

They lived in a giant fire hydrant, I’d be fascinated as to why considering none of Dolly’s family were interested in fire hydrants.

Okay, this place is making me depressed… I needed to focus on why I’m here.

“Okay then, both of you get Di Lodovico, since I want at least several confirmations on something. Also a copy of the map of the city and something for me to write on it with please. At most I’ll need to ask all three of you two questions and depending on the answers, it’ll greatly help me in an investigation to find the guy causing the gang issues around here.” If this went as I thought it did, then I’d be making a monkey out of Etemon if he wasn’t already one. I’m tired of being given the runaround and I did enough of that in Saint Canard and I’m certainly not repeating the endgame of that! I’m hopefully cutting the proverbial Gordian knot here and now. “If they are answered how I think you will, then it’ll solve a major problem that’s been itching at me.”

The three Dalmamon were gathered, a map was placed out on the table and ninety eight other three tailed siblings were curiously as to what was going on.

“Okay, answer this, where do you think Kamemon’s base would be if they had one?” Those turtle soldier Digimon of King’s Kame’s were visibly quite sparse compared to every single other faction. The Falcomon could appear everywhere, even if they could only glide and not exactly fly.

“The river!” Pickle answered immediately, assured that’s where the Kamemon would be based.

“Those guys? I’ve seen them running around and picking up Digi-Credits everywhere, but I seriously doubt they would have a base in a place so wet. They certainly use the river to get to places throughout the city though.” Variance stated afterwards, matching what I’ve seen. The Kamemon were not engaging in combat as often as they were seen gathering Digi-credits. “They couldn’t be anywhere under the river either what with the Pink Troopers being so aggravated by the Goblimon, they definitely control the sewers. I would know, one of my friends is a Chuumon and is helping the Pink Troopers somewhat.”

“I also know they wouldn’t be based in the river, the Backspace System doesn’t work very well in water.” We all looked at Di Lodovico blankly. “You guys knocked more than a few Goblimon into the river and I was tagging the wall near where they splashed down each time.”

“You were doing what?! You know how dangerous it is to be out and about right now Di Lodovico!” Flinching at Pickle’s voice, Lodovico looked away with his tail between his legs.

“Heh, you still know how to make a fun mess of walls bro!” Variance stated cheerfully, then looked suspicious in the same way Dolly gets sometimes. ”What were you tagging the wall with?”

“Nothing too important.” Di Lodovico stated with his eyes darting about, but never quite settling on me. I narrowed my eyes at him and he blushed a little. “Besides none of the gangs caught me wandering around and Pom’s group didn’t see me doing my work either so it’s fine!”

“You could have gotten hurt or worse!” I can see where Pickle and Dylan certainly shared a nature.

-Server City, riverside region, nobody-

A large bit artwork stood above the water of the river.

It was of Pom surrounded by a heavenly glow with golden feathered angelic wings, clouds and flowers artistically surrounding her. One hoof was stretching out to boop an average looking Dalmamon on the nose, the Dalmamon was made to be exceedingly plain looking and seemed to be in complete awe of Pom.

-Dalmamon home, Pom-

“Yeah, yeah, beans for brains. Let’s move on, what’s you’re other question!” Variance asked.

“Has that cloud always been there?” I asked pointing outside a nearby window.

“No.” Okay, that’s Pickle.

“Nope.” Variance added to my growing sense of excitement.

“Strange, today was a clear forecast…” Yes Lodovico, that’s exactly as I thought! “Funny, I think that clouds been there for about a week before Etemon first obnoxiously advertised the Backspace System.”

“Now I need to ask someone else something.” If you’re not busy, I need you to bring Sami here immediately Dolly…

-Five minutes later-

“So… many… cuddles…” Shuddered Dolly as she somehow managed to get out from under the avalanche of baby Digimon that liked her to drag Sami here. “To think I thought I was free from being dogpiled by numbers… kind of makes me miss the larger part of my family.”

“What am I here for, shouldn’t we be planning out an assault on Ultros? Since it sounds like we’re going to have trouble with him.” Giving Sami and easygoing look, I shook my head.

“That won’t be necessary if I’m right. Quick question, was there a limit on the distance one can move with the Backspace System?” I received a blink and a tilted head.

“About halfway across the entire city… which is a pretty good range overall, why?” Getting up and walking past Sami, I looked out the window and did some estimates on how high the one cloud in the sky that never moved was.

It had been there before the game cube and it hasn’t moved since, which matched the clue given to us yesterday about the leader of the Avalanche Avians. Given what I knew about the weather forecast saying ‘clear skies’ and there’s one section covered in cloud that haven’t moved in weeks, it was so much more obvious now.

It was probably where the Falcomon came gliding in from and any thermals around the city could be easily manufactured easily enough in this information driven world. They could deploy everywhere they needed to be, any defeat and they’d safely be back up there. Thus the name of the gang being ‘Avalanche Avians’ as they could come down on you from above like a rock slide.

“I know exactly where Etemon is now.” I walked back over to the map and then drew two circles representing Ogremon to the southeast, Octomon to the northeast and then added a third member Raptor Swallowmon. Land, sea and air… if they were all operating a specific distance of each other and I was estimating how high up Raptor Swallomon was that we’d have to go up there to get at them personally after dealing with Ultros. If the Backspace System were to activate with him then how far would he have to fly, just knowing he was a flying digimon?

Oh my goodness, this is just one huge game of monkey in the middle isn’t it, except the monkey was having fun at everyone else’s expense in the middle and giving everyone else the run around.

“Why did you draw an eye on the map?” Looking at the map Dolly tilted her head curiously, I dotted the exact center of said eye on the map and the central location was ‘Fury Clan’ high school. A place we might have passed by once or twice without a second glance since Digimon didn’t really use it, given that Etemon didn’t have anyone visibly guarding the place from the outside and yet still looked relatively clean when we passed by it.

“Because that’s my idea of an approximate distance the Backspace System could move each of the three main gang leaders that are running around Server City. That, right there, would be where Etemon is within a certain distance of all three gang leaders provided they lose…” I trailed off. Hakase was said to be the genius that created the Backspace System, I think I know where he’d be and Etemon would know we were coming through the Monitamon network and would know to go to ground if we bothered looking into the Greymon Expert. “Ogremon said he was going to where Etemon was, the information we bought from Ultros’s faction hinting at Raptor Sparrowmon’s location being that large cloud above a certain portion of the city that hasn’t moved… well it’s become quite glaringly obvious.”

“So do we go after him now?” Sami said with excitement and grabbing at her bazooka.

“Not quite yet, remember that guy… Hi-Andromon if I’m remembering right? He’s said to be an ultimate level Digimon right, we need to see if we can redirect him to Ultros. Give him a sense of purpose if he’s still running around the city hunting down problems, It’ll keep him away from us at least while we find the real problem.” If Ultros was going to be more than a champion sized problem, then we’ll find a way to throw an ultimate sized one at him. The Goblimon are currently busy with the Pink Troopers, Ogremon won’t have any backup if we attack Etemon’s holdings now, well… aside from the Kamemon. Why would I ever bother trying to get into the sky to fight Raptor Swallowmon when we could bring them to us since the game was basically up? The Commandramon are good at shooting down the Falcomon… and we could bring in the Skate Park Scamps who’ve been running around defending the park territory. “I need help with making a plan, I’m done with these monkey shines and running about the city fighting all the time just to get anywhere. I’m not going to be drawn into two more protracted battles with entire gangs before having to face all three gang leaders at once and then Etemon himself at where he currently is. I can see the writing on the wall here, it’s exactly the direction things were previously going in and we’re ahead on intelligence now! I say we cut out having to deal with Ultros entirely, we’ll deal with Raptor Sparrowmon if he shows up to the party unannounced. I want to leave this realm sometime within the next two digital days. I am not here to fight an endless gang war, all of this was for us to get that anchor key off of Etemon and get back to Ransei!”

Sami and Dolly looked to each other then turned to me with determined looks.

Some hours later, Data Diver’s Beach Bungalow territory, Ultros-

“We’re under attack!” A Monitamon announced.

“Woohoo bring on those sweet honeys… wait… you’re a not a honey!” Pot crown covering my wondrous head, I slithered out to see the beautiful battalion coming for me personally.

Much to my disgust it was just a Hi-Andromon attacking my base, probably a holier than you system police guy who overdid it on the whole keeping things stable and peaceful. What happens when you have too much order and not enough sense, since when were we Digimon ever that peaceful for any prolonged amount of time?!

“A little Biyomon civilian told me about your dirty presence Octomon, I’m here to deal with you in as much a capacity as I can! Lock-on…” Hi-Andromon didn’t seem like he wanted to talk much, given how quickly his spiel ended. His right arm started glowing as he approached me. “Spiral sword!”

I barely managed to slither and slink out of the path of the flying sword attack.

“Life’s a beach and you made a poor decision coming here metal copper!” I shouted as I pointed my gun weapon at the offending overzealous police drone of the system. “There’s no silver or gold rank here for you bronze stooge and you’re about to find out what makes me different from other Octomon.”

“Spiral Sword!” The second flying blade was blocked when the Black Widow, in all its lovely glory, erupted from the sand in front of Hi-Andromon who froze to study the new problem before him. If I were him I would try attacking or would be warily backing up.

Digi-tank X-ATM092, The Black Widow, was a four legged walking tank of pure annihilation.

It had a forward facing gatling cannon built in that could punch through most low quality forms of Digizoid. It could focus fire a stream, blast a shotgun spray or fire a barrage with no focus whatsoever hitting anything in the general vicinity it’s facing.

The two glowing blade arms at the front were capable of three modes, blade, three-digit grapple claws and quite lethal crab scissors. Said arms could cut up a War-Greymon.

At the backside of the nigh unstoppable self-repairing spider menace machine piloted by my best lackey Hi-Vision Monitamon were four high powered grenade launcher. Said Grenade launchers had some special ammo just for Digimon like Hi-Andromon, It’s Ray Bomber Special was one of its ‘beaming’ qualities.

It has been specially rigged to repair itself in two ways. The fast way by absorbing any kind of electrical energy attack, which all the Monitamon around here can use on the pylons connected to the legs. The other was its basic self-repair function making it functionally impossible to put down as long as the pilot is alive as the pylons will fix themselves if damaged.

Its armor was of a special Obsidian and Cyplasium Digizoid composite mix that made the vehicle tough to deal with. Sure the mixture made the Obsidian Digizoid easier to damage by the likes of champion or rookies and the Cyplasium worked far slower in automatically repairing data damage, but overall…

The Black Widow would obviously live up to its name!

-Two minutes later, near Fury Clan High School, Canard-

I was grinning.

Pom had actually figured it out, instead of facing three gang bosses and possibly Abobo we’d be facing one and possibly Abobo… Abobo was still a massive problem on my mind and we had no clear idea where he was. He might be aware of Lit now and that would be an issue with fighting the hulking monstrosity that can easily crush us in his grip.

This was going to be interesting, the Monitamon were going to be a bit busy with Hiandromon as he attacked Ultros’s base, that Biyomon who worked at the local digital fast food restaurant had been quite charming with her smile.

While that attack on Ultros was happening, we were slowly sneaking up on the digital school where Etemon was hiding.

One of the five Commandramon confirmed he was on one of the top floors near the roof from a nearby building where they were setting up to start taking out any Falcomon that arrived at range.

Raptor Sparrowmon might make an appearance and that was going to be a problem for everyone involved in this assault, maybe Tempomon will join in on the excitement. At least we knew the Skate Park Scamps were willing to assist.

Just two major issues stood in our way, Ogremon who has probably recovered by now and Abobo who might be his recent training partner. Ogremon was dangerous, but less so than Bulkmon as a high tier champion.

If we fought Ultros, Pom figured he would have just shown up here. The entire point of our fighting the gangs was done, we knew where Etemon was and we knew he had the key on him… we just had to get it from him now.

Aside from Abobo the Bulkmon being stated as being here and Ogremon, there were a lot of Kamemon and a few falcomon on watch. As soon as we started fighting, we were likely to be locked in by barriers like the one that stopped us at the bridge a while ago.

Etemon would still be the end game, we couldn’t battle an ultimate on even footing… so we’d cheat the difference a little with the so called King of Digimon. Which is why Uver brought in Pistmon and Moosemon.

Moosemon was a white and blue furred moose, with large blue horns. Something about my religion connected with that particular Digimon on a spiritual level.

We also had the Digi-bots Metabee and Rokusho who were completely immune to Etemon’s downgrading ability that turned champions back into rookies through horrible singing. They could even become a mega level for a short while provided they both were in agreement and could sync up, which was apparently a rarity for them though they have done it at least three times.

“It is a-boot time we get to it eh!” Moosemon stated as he started to drag his right hoof against the ground. We had to support him and Pistmon in the fighting, Pistmon was good in wide open areas and places where he could maneuver and the hallways of the school were going to be a bit tight for him… Moosemon said he wouldn’t have that problem.

“Are you ready Pom?” I asked the shivering Ewe.

“No… but we’re still going to do this anyway. Our goal is not to take down Etemon… though it might cause good things to happen overall if we do, we just need to grab the key. That’s it, that’s all we’re here for, we’re not here to be heroes.” Pom nodded to herself, I wondered if she was deeply in denial about the hero thing?

As Moosemon and Pistmon prepared to bust through the back of the building, the Skate Park Scamps were breaking through the front to at least draw off Ogremon or Abobo.

-Front entrance, Fury Clan High School, ???-

“Do you really think those guys who took Ogremon down a peg will show up? I mean they barely beat Ogremon, so really them getting past us is clearly impossible.” I was standing in front of a pillar just doing an average day of my guard job for Etemon. “I really doubt they could truly beat us if they had so much trouble with the Goblimon.”

My friend was about to say something when he was hit with a door, one that was kicked off its hinges from the front entrance and my friend was hit by the large rectangular wooden projectile in a rather painful slow motion display before my eyes.

I turned towards the entrance and the falcomon was about to yell something when he was hit with an attack.

“Diamond Storm!” Shards of crystal leaves embedded themselves into the Falcomon, popping him into a vortex immediately as a Renamon sauntered through the entrance. Behind her were a Lobomon, a Bearmon and a… oh no… that’s Weregarurumon of the Skate Park Scamps!

“Emergency, we’re under… ulp…” I was stopped from yelling fully when the Lobomon’s foot buried itself into my stomach and I felt myself disappearing to the nurse’s office… I had a feeling it was about to be filled with patients.

Not that we had anyone to take actually care of our injuries. As I disappeared I watched as the four quickly started trashing every Kamemon, Falcomon and the few Goblimon, not currently tied up by the Pink Troopers, in sight.

Why couldn’t the Monitamon have warned us about this?!

-Pom-

Alright, quick take downs, don’t worry about the health of those I’m going to be beating down quickly.

We push through them to the big boss behind all this ruckus and take what we came for and then get out of here before something else finds a way to keep us here indefinitely.

I took a slow breath, then exhaled slowly as well and tried to calm down.

The school was actually kind of innocuously normal looking, which was obscenely weird for the digital world to have a normal school when consistent architecture was a bizarre concept for Digimon.

Moosemon charged forward and busted through the back door of the school, only to immediately be blown back through said entrance over our heads by a point blank Pummel Whack attack.

“Hah, I told Abobo this is where the real fighting would be at!” Ogremon stated loudly, confirming Abobo was around.

“Why are you here? All the fighting is on the other side of the building!” I was hoping to maybe gain access to Etemon without running into trouble.

“This is the story where the villain is doing something for dramatic irony!” Yep, that is the same Ogremon alright.

“Can we avoid a fight?” I know it was hopeless to say that.

“No, you’re part of my revenge arc anyway, now I got those sewer mutants all over my territory thanks to Sukamon and I'm blaming you for it!” That would not actually be my problem Ogremon, that was more your problem that you caused in the first place.

“Look if you really wanted a better or more serious reason to fight… then I can think of something to say to help you.” After several weeks away in the Game Cube, I wondered how much stronger Ogremon had gotten.

“Go ahead and try, I’ve heard every insult in the book and there’s nothing you can hit me with that will make me mad.” Ogremon stated blithely with his arms crossed and tapping the bone club on his left shoulder. “In fact, I dare you to actually crack me if you can!”

“You’ve actually read a book?” I asked in slight surprise.

“Yep, that’s one way a Goblimon can become an Ogremon. We need to read or learn something intellectually stimulating, so I read the entire history of a punk rock band… also I learned to read.” Ogremon glared at us. “Of course, not having a Leomon to fight sucks. So I’ll take you all on!”

“Funny with the way you were going on about your revenge story and arcs, I thought you would have read a fantasy novel.” Now I was honestly curious, plus if Ogremon were here then that meant that the other group would be able to reach Etemon sooner.

“Meh…” Responded Ogremon. “The only reason why I’m not attacking in earnest yet is because I was waiting on those two to show up to help with your higher tier Digimon in your invasion force. Say hello to Gawappamon and Shawmon, evolutions of Kamemon. They’ll keep your big guns busy while I wipe the floor with your rookies.”

We looked beyond Ogremon to see he was gesturing at. There a stitched up doll turtle thing with headphones around his neck and an odd flat disc head, kind of looked like a Neighpon Kappa. The other looked like a warrior armored styled kappa with a dangerous weapon that had wide bladed at one end and the other had a gun like aesthetic, looked especially good for twirling.

“Think you can take them Moosemon, Pistmon?” Well Canard felt a little caught off guard, because Gawappamon and Shawmon did look pretty tough.

“Can you fight Ogremon?” Pistmon asked.

“We’ve done it before.” I answered.

“Yeah, but he might have come up with a lot of tricks since then, be careful.” Pistmon stated before he and Moosemon charged forward and met Gawappamon and Shawjamon. They managed to push them back a bit before the fighting between them started in earnest.

“Just out of curiosity before I kick you’re backsides all up and down the place…” Ogremon put his bone under his left armpit and loudly cracked both his knuckles before taking it back into his right hand with a grin. “What would you’re insult have been? I doubt it was about me reading a book at least once in my life or an insult to my intelligence.”

I took a deep breath and couldn’t believe I was about to say this to the guy. I just knew he was going to be in a blind fury afterwards and this might be a bad idea, I somewhat thought we could actually benefit a lot if he showed off some of his tricks early and might tire himself out to make the fight much easier down the line.

“I believe that you’re a very nice guy and can be a respected member of just about any community in Server City, also I would like to imply that you’re as handsome as a bishonen character from a manga.” There was a dead silence afterwards that stretched on into a minute with no reaction from Ogremon, he just stood there with an empty look on his face devoid of all emotion.

Well silent if you were ignoring all the thrown discs flying around behind Ogremon that Pistmon was avoiding coming from Gawappamon. There was also Shawjamon’s weapon being deflected by Moosemon’s horns making a loud clanging noise. Pistmon was cleary at a disadvantage indoors from what I could see, no room to build up speed or to distance himself.

“…” Ogremon looked at me and started breathing loudly. I can slowly see veins popping out of his forehead as he started turning red, his right left eye was twitching violently and his grip on his bone club tightened.

His eyes started turning from icy blue to pure blood red filling the entirety of his eyes.

“Uh… that probably wasn’t a good idea Pom.” Shifting his grip on the hockey stick Canard held it up defensively.

Oh knew for certain it was a bad idea to say that to Ogremon, but I really did think he could be a nice guy if he wanted to.

Dolly burst out laughing and Ogremon’s ire continued to grow. Even Frizzle and Dazzle were giggling a bit and Sami looked at me completely horrified as if I were some kind of alien.

“Why, in all of the digital realms, would you ever say something like that to him?” The panic on Sami’s face was starting to make me feel slightly panicked as well, I guess she understood the full scope of the insult completely.

Ogremon wanted me to drive him into a frothing blind rage, well I think I have succeeded... badly.

Who knows, maybe he was actually easier to deal with if he wasn’t thinking straight?

“WAAAGGH, I’M DEFINITELY CRACKED!” Ogremon’s voice went completely demonic as he flexed and grew a foot taller and was radiating a deadly dark purple aura. “ROUND TWO, NOW!”

Dolly stopped laughing and was immediately behind her board shivering as she held it and the Stone Bone Club up defensively.

“PUMMEL WHACK!” The attack immediately broke the Canard’s Digi-stick in two as he moved to defend me and the rest of the attack sent Canard flying into a nearby wall where he grunted as he bounced and bodily slapped against the floor.

That Ogremon had moved at least three times faster than he previously did weeks ago was astonishing, I immediately used Dancing Falme to dodge the next three attacks and a shockwave he belted out with near impossible to see speed with a swing from his bone.

The most deranged thing about it, he wasn’t even calling out his attacks anymore.

One second I was dodging, the next I found myself outside, on my back, staring dumbly at the me shaped hole in the wall and a badly bruised jaw that my wool barely managed to stop from being completely broken or possibly shattered into little pieces.

Yep… probably shouldn’t have insulted him that badly, also he was much more of a threat than before. Did the whole thing about having a revenge story actually mean that much to him?

I inhaled, exhaled and rolled to the left fifteen times. This created multiple holes the size of Ogremon’s left fist which was now buried in the fifteenth hole… up to his shoulder.

He swung his club down and despite my attempt at rolling a sixteenth time, instead of sideways and forward towards the school wall.

This proved to be a bad idea when the blast wave hit and went through my wool entirely as I was rocketed back into the building through the wall to land back inside after a quick tumble. I think he just cracked a few portions of my skeleton with the shockwave of that last attack alone.

I probably shouldn’t have learned how to insult someone by listening in on Smolder and Shanty’s friendly insult sessions or actually answered Ogremon’s challenge on actually finding an insult so heinous he’d actually crack like he just did.

Currently he’s fighting like what I would assume fighting an Ultimate level Digimon would feel like. This did not bode well...

Author's Note

Pom prevented the land, sea and air boss rush from happening.

She also just did one of the dumbest things she has ever done in what will be her possibly shortened life in the same page.

291. Server City Ransom Pt. 16.

-Outside Fury Clan High School back entrance, Metabee-

“Did you see that?” I wanted to bust some bad mon’s up with my guns and missiles, this Digi-bot was ready for action. “Why aren’t we getting in there to help them?”

“Patience Metabee, we are needed for Etemon and we can’t risk weakening ourselves too much before that fight.” Rokusho stated with his eyes closed and waiting calmly. “We need to hold onto enough strength to perform a fusion evolution.”

Rokusho does know that I’m hardly the patient type right? Looking at him standing there trying to be all cool and silent. Also it looked like Pom’s group just ran across an Ogremon with a revenge tilt to them, because they were going complete psycho ONI mode at the moment with that purple aura.

“You do realize we need to be in sync to do that right? We’ve only done it like… uh… three times.” All three times were under duress and they were sharing a goal when acting as the systems earliest form of defense.

Their coding was brought in from the more Digi-bot specific digital realms to help make sure this particular new digital realm grew and prospered, we were warned this realm was going to wildly experiment and the digital-mecha in the works was interesting to say the least. I’m kind of jealous that Hiandromon got first dibs on the prototypes.

I didn’t mind virus type Digimon, they were a natural and fun part of good digital realms ecosystems in my opinion. Some of them were even nice and quite good conversationalist, it’s not like bad Digi-bots didn’t exist either.

Rokusho and I were meant to be actively using our combat prowess to make sure nothing went as horribly wrong as some of the previous formations of digital realms… like the King Yggdrasil incident that no Digimon or Digi-bot was going to let Yggdrasil.sys live down.

Given the whole Etemon thing going on the western crescent of this strange digital realms continent… well it could be much worse than one Etemon causing some trouble. That was usually just a Tuesday for us, hopefully we wouldn’t run into any Guardromon, Giromon or Hiandromon, those guys were absolute stiffs when it came to order and network rules.

Thank Yggdrasil.sys for actually enforcing the rule about keeping those soulless Machinedramon completely outside as outer defenses to the realms.

At least Rokusho was able to bend rules when it was in our best interest to do so, our new friends wouldn’t have to worry about us even if their presence was moderately disruptive… things would be too boring and stagnant without at least something chaotic happening in any digital realm every once in a while.

Still the Backspace System was something we were going to investigate more closely and we would be having a word with Greymon Expert in the near future, after we were done helping our new friends here that got us out of jam.

-Fury Clan High School, backside entrance area, Etemon Seekers Versus Ogremon-

Pom was laid out on the floor after being blasted back inside by the vastly stronger Ogremon.

Those who were not busy fighting Gawappamon and Shawjamon all looked towards the nearby entrance and flinched when Ogremon crashed through the wall next to another outline of Pom. His glowing purple aura flared, glowing red eyes narrowed and a nasty fang filled grin soon followed.

Frizzle was the first to challenge him, while Sami ran for a nearby pillar. Dolly was heading towards Pom to help her up.

Canard raised his puck pistol and took a stance ready to start firing, fairly aware that Ogremon probably wouldn’t even feel the pucks hitting him in this state.

Ogremon’s focus was squarely on Pom and Frizzle narrowed her eyes, looking between.

With a lunge, Ogremon passed by Frizzle and brought back his left fist and tried to thrust it forward as Pom was getting up, only it was stopped and fired off a Pummel Whack into the ceiling as a chain wrapped around Ogremon’s wrist.

With a heave, Ogremon slammed Frizzle into the floor back first and stomped down on her crushing her into the floor in a painful display of brutality, before lunging after Pom who was up thanks to Dolly.

Pom pushed Dolly away with her left hoof, and brought her right leg up in time to block the bone slamming down on her.

Gritting her teeth as her entire body shuddered and wobbled violently under the blow. With tears in her eyes from using her right leg to block, Pom thrusts her left hoof up into his belly returning the force.

Ogremon basically skidded back half an inch and hardly felt any damage he might have taken from that.

Much to Pom’s surprised he retaliated quickly with a Pummel Whack that she had to dodge by flopping onto her back, ball of purple liquid hit his glowing aura from the right and basically evaporated upon touching his aura.

“Hit him with something a bit more solid Dazzle, like this!” A rocket slammed into Ogremon staggering him for a split second before his bone could crash into the floor where Pom had been. The rocket having been enough time for Pom to get out from under his next attack that shattered the floor tiles digging another hole in the world with his massive fist. “Here’s an idea, hit him hard while he’s focusing his efforts on killing Pom!”

“Can I please not be the live bait?!” Whined Pom as she hopped left and right while moving backwards dodging more Pummel Whack attacks.

“Yeah, if we can hit him with anything he’ll even feel in his current state!” Several pucks fired from Canard’s pistol punctuated the point as the flaming pucks slammed into Ogremon’s digital muscle for very little effect.

Slamming his bone down, Pom was sent flying by the shockwave and bounced off a wall near a set of doors. Quickly getting up, Pom ran through the doors to find out that they led into a lunch room. She glanced around at all the chairs, metal lunch room trays and tables and then looked behind herself. It didn’t seem like the room had been in use for quite a while given the mild layer of dust in the room.

Pom quickly threw herself to the floor as the door was blown off its hinges by the roaring Ogremon who stomped his way through the entrance and focused the entirety his ire on the lambkin as the door hit the far wall.

He stumbled when a bolt of lightning struck him from behind Lit putting his all into it and the end result was only a flicker of Ogremon’s aura from the attack.

Ogremon’s only response was to then he smack a thrown Stone Bone Club into the nearby wall, where it got stuck three fourths of the way impaled as he turned and idly fired a Pummel Whack behind him without looking at the destruction he caused. He focused his attention on the target of his ire and raised his club as he lunged for Pom.

Pom scrambled under the nearby tables and avoided the shockwave from the impact of Ogremon slamming his bone down that sent some of them flying across the lunchroom.

Canard ran into the room grabbed up a chair and then Lunged to break it on Ogremon’s back, actually managing to make him flinch as the chair broke from the impact.

Ogremon retaliated with a backhand from his bone, only for Canard to quickly roll to the side and avoid the flying shockwave that blasted from it.

Dolly was busy struggling to pull the Stone Bone Club from the wall while making sure to keep Ogremon in sight, she was smart enough about not getting anywhere close to the monster personally.

Lit was paying attention to the fight with Gawappamon and Shawjamon just outside. Taking moments to blast away flying discs launched by Gawappamon with electric webs, covering Dazzle helping to get a battered Frizzle back on her feet.

“Frizzle… I know I may still have my hangs ups about my evolution and that you have helped me through some of it, but how can I help return the favor with your evolutionary ability?” Dazzle knew her new evolution had been one way and she was a Salazzle for life and with that knowledge came all the new things that such changes entailed. She was bigger, faster and stronger, all of her offensive ability were much more powerful, aside from Toxic which was only visibly larger.

Frizzle had worked with Dazzle to control her knew form and had been entirely curious that Dazzle was going to be stuck like this for the rest of her life. Frizzle herself had tried to avoid any mention or focus on her personal evolutionary abilities given what happened when she first became a Growlmon, admittedly they could currently use the firepower that beat a tankmon and continued to rampage beyond that. Frizzle was quite scared of her mindless bestial side coming out again.

The expression Dazzle saw made her heart break a bit as Frizzle looked away with her winged ears lowered as the sounds from the lunch room grew ever more destructive.

Inside the lunchroom Pom was breathing roughly and she glue the her wool to the underside of the ridiculously clean table on its side that just absorbed a Pummel Whack that cracked the entirety of the table she was taking cover behind.

Canard was throwing chairs and metal trays at Ogremon to little effect aside from annoying him a bit from focusing down Pom.

Ogremon began charging up some kind of attack with his left fist.

Dolly eventually gave up on trying to wiggle the Stone Bone Club free from the wall and watching what Canard was doing, decided to give a metal tray a try… with as much momentum boosted force as she could put behind it as the table Pom was behind was going to shatter under Ogremon’s next attack.

Dolly kicked off the wall the bone was stuck in brought her skateboard around, bounced off the top of a table with it while leaning down to grab up a tray with her teeth and then slung her board out and around by the strap to go into a spin and build momentum before throwing launching the tray at Ogremon’s back.

Ogremon managed to launch his charged up attack before the tray struck his left thigh and caused it to bruise lightly as it had been moving fast enough to break through his aura.

Dolly focused her sight on the attack as she landed on a chair and Pom was receiving the information in real time.

Pom was wondering curiously why Ogremon aimed the attack to the left of the table, also the shape the attack took was the size of Ogremon’s body and matched his shape entirely and it was pivoting too... which would mean…

Taking in a sharp breathe of air time slowed down as her eyes darted to the left and saw the energy shaped copy of Ogremon slowly moving to punch its left fist forward. Information received from Dolly showed Ogremon was about to bring his club down in the direction she was about to be flushed out into.

The coalescence of a pummel whack from the energy clone made her exhale sharply detach her wool from bracing the table and jump straight up to the ceiling.

Time returned to normal speed as the right end of the table erupted into shattered bits when the shockwave struck it and the pummel whack the quickly disappearing energy clone launched destroyed the wall between the entrance and exit where one would return used trays and dishes in to be cleaned.

Pom was stuck fast to the ceiling and Ogremon looked up at her with glowing eyes, keeping up with her despite being in a Dancing Flame state.

Not only could Ogremon launch flying shockwaves with a swing of his bone, he could now also launch Pummel Whack Clones of himself that could then fire a normal Pummel Whack remotely and even keep up with Pom moving at ludicrous speeds.

With a rightwards twist while holding the bone straight outward, Ogremon swung the bone outwards. Not for Pom, but for Dolly.

Dolly suddenly felt Pom take control of her body and let Pom do it freely, she found herself inhaling sharply and when she exhaled she was leaping to the left and bringing her skateboard around while starting to sparkle with the power of ‘Flow-Motion’ to start grinding along the table.

Pom managed to get Dolly out of the path of the shockwave. When the shockwave did hit, the portion of the table Dolly was on angled upwards and launched her into the air.

Looking towards Ogremon he was in the middle of thrusting his large left fist for Pom’s body.

Pom quickly took control of her body again and continued running along the ceiling to Ogremon’s right as the Pummel Whack ruptured a large portion of the ceiling behind her causing large chunks of it to fall. Dolly had thankfully got her body started on moving and relinquished it back into her control.

Managing to move far enough to avoid the falling from the ceiling, Pom ducked around a pillar and turned to see Dolly catch herself in the air.

Dolly looked to be breathing roughly, she was not capable of handling the taxing stress Dancing Flame could put on one’s body and probably couldn’t do that again without being injured or worse as Pom could feel all of Dolly’s muscles were on fire from being forced into Dancing Flame and ‘Flow-Motion’ by Pom.

Changing her sight to Ogremon slightly, she saw Canard swing a metal for all he was worth as he leapt forward and manage to smash the left side of Ogremon’s face to stagger him. The blow was followed by a high explosive missile to the back by Sami taking cover at another pillar knocking him onto his face.

Ogremon was up a second later and slammed his left fist down in the direction of Canard who was already retreating away as pillars of shockwaves erupted in motion towards him ripping up the floor as it did so.

A ball of fire slammed into a section of the floor ahead of the traveling shockwave of pillars before it could reach Canard as he jumped onto a table and rode it when one last pillar shaped shockwave erupted beneath it kick up that end.

Canard went flying off the table, but he managed to kick off a wall he was launched at to end up behind another pillar and fired a shot into the Ogremon’s left eye, possibly blinding him for a second for all the damage it was doing to the champion.

Among the six pillars, Canard was behind the mid left, Pom was far back right, Dolly was front left from the entrance they came through and Sami was front right. Frizzle and Dazzle were out in the open and staring down Ogremon in the middle of the front pillars out in the open.

Ogremon, whatever was wrong with him, was still going strong with his dark aura as he stood up and hefted his bone on his right shoulder and tilted his head left and right with sharp cracks punctuating the silence as he looked about at where everyone was.

Either Ogremon’s mind was possibly calculating all the positions of his enemies in the lunch room and the fact that he was outnumbered, that or he was possibly excited to be having a proper fight thrown at him what with all the wimps that usually couldn’t get through the Goblimon to take back their stuff he helped steal so someone could actively challenge him.

One thing was for sure, Ogremon direly wanted to fight Pistmon or Moosemon, both of which were busy with Gawappamon and Shawjamon. He raised his massive glowing fist in preparation for an attack and glanced between all those who opposed him.

-Elsewhere, near the schools front entrance, WereGaruru-

Ugh… this guy is tough, high tier champions like Bulkmon are nothing to sneeze at then.

“Abobo is enjoying the fight!” The bulkmon stated while flexing his muscles and glowing with electricity.

“Let’s see how long you enjoy it after this, Mach Punch combo!” I charged forward with clenched fist, making sure to check on Renamon and Bearmon were doing out of the corner of my eyes.

They were handling the Kamemon of King’s Kame just fine, there weren’t any Goblimon around for a cheap shot.

There were a few falcomon coming in from outside to help stop our little invasion. The nearby Commandramon team were taking them down quickly enough and only a handful that could even make it in were greatly injured trying to do so, they were swiftly sent packing not too long afterwards.

“Mach Kick combo!” Lobomon said coming in from the opposite side of Abobo matching my movements, he’s come a long way since he befriended the Skate Park Scamps on Pom’s recommendation to do so. Back when the wolf armored guy used to be a Strabimon, he was so awkward.

Now he became something of a little brother to me and I made sure he knew how to fight.

As such the two of us Werewolf Digimon were going to beat this Abobo guy black and blue together!

Maybe after all this the gangs will leave my skate park and the many innocent Digimon in this city alone, they can have whatever territory nobody cares about. The city was big enough for all of us to begin with, but if some Digimon were going to get too greedy, then they’ll have to deal with us Skate Park Scamps.

-Lunchroom, tense silence, Etemon Seekers Versus Ogremon-

Ogremon continued to pour malevolent energy into his large fist as he glanced about, possibly preparing for a big attack that had the fighters on edge.

Dolly looked up at the top of her head when she felt something hop onto and crawl up her back, Lit nuzzled her and then squeaked.

“Oh dog, is this ever tense… I don’t even think I could take a direct hit from one of the guy’s shockwaves, even with my board blocking the attack.” Dolly readied her board and started sparkling with ‘Flow-Motion’ active, preparing to move at a moment’s notice. She glance over in Sami’s direction while trying to ignore her aching muscles from the Dancing Flame burst Pom did with her body leaving her a bit messed up. “You ready little guy?”

Lit squeaked and sparked a bit with electric energy.

“M-Loader…” Sami stated quietly as she kept her gaze on Ogremon from behind her pillar, planting the nose of her bazooka to the floor so that it reloaded correctly. She was on the front lines and soldier who knew death came at you fast. She would reincarnate for Canard even if she couldn’t remember him, she’d hopefully know instinctively that he was someone quite important to her if she were to be taken out.

Pom near the top of the pillar she was behind started charging a bark blast in her throat.

Dazzle closed fists were glowing with flames and there were licks of flames poking from her mouth. Frizzle had a slightly wild look in her eye, but was keeping her head as her mouth also had flickers of fire coming out with every breath. The two hazard lizards weren’t afraid to be directly in the path of the monster’s gaze.

Canard held his pistol at the ready behind the pillar and was leaning out trying to figure out what he could do against Ogremon. He might not have any abilities in comparison to Lit or the girls, but he was ready to find a way.

“Drop the entire roof on him maybe, is there any other way to disrupt his data? Think Canard, you’ve seen worse than this… more than an entire planet and a few digital realms worth.” Canard Thunderbeak muttered in thought.

It was around this point that Ogremon decided to break the minute long silence and finally show off what he had been charging up for.

“OGRE WHACK!” Raising his fist high up Ogremon slammed it down into the floor and huge shockwave flooded the room send every chair, tray, table and anything else not nailed down flying towards the nearest wall as everyone ducked behind the pillars for safety and they took the brunt of the initial portion of the attack.

The only table that hadn’t flown towards a wall was completely destroyed as Frizzle and Dazzle braced both their bodies against it.

What followed the initial parts was multiple Ogremon’s made of energy began shooting out from Ogremon in all directions.

Pom was the first to realize what Ogremon just did, however Canard was the first to react.

Canard fired his puck pistol two times at the three images coming at him and moved in front of the pillar. Two of the energy blasts shaped like Ogremon winked out of existence without resistance, they were feint attack illusions.

The third blast of energy thrust a punch towards Canard when it got close enough, he simply dove to the side as the pillar behind him had a large chunk taken out of it. He was back behind it a second later and firing pucks at the ceiling.

Pom stopped the illusionary attacks and actual attack with a single wide cone of a Bark Blast.

Lit fire several webs, only stopping one illusion and leaving at least two more and an actual attack incoming.

Dolly, with Lit on her head, charged up the pillar as one of the energy attacks passed by the pillar and aimed for her.

The energy clone fired a Pummel Whack at where Dolly was and damaged the pillar, after wards Dolly carefully slid down and dropped to the floor behind the pillar.

The illusions and attack aimed at Sami were dissipated by a burst from her rifle and the actual attack passed by the pillar to fire a Pummel Whack at her. She immediately hopped up and triggered her bazooka to fire backwards and flew straight up over the attack using the blast to boost her out of the way, took out most of the pillar she had been taking cover behind.

Dazzle slashed both her claws forward lashing out two whips of pure fire to destroy the illusions and slow down the actual attacks which were quickly blown out by a blast from Frizzle before they could launch Pummel Whacks or tackle them personally.

“Can you guys take out these pillars!” Canard was still firing at specific spots on the ceiling as everyone looked his way like he was crazy.

The pillars were kind of the only things that would stand up to Ogremon’s shockwave attacks and they weren’t doing that all too well.

An imaginary lightbulb went off above Pom’s head as she figure out what Canard was asking for and looked towards Ogremon already starting his next attack.

“Sami, Raptor Sparrowmon has arrived, we’re not going to be able to hold them off, but we’ll try to keep their attention.” Sami pulled a device from her combat gear and looked at it.

“Roger that Commandramon Squad, pull out if the fire gets too hot. We’re currently potted lobster as well!” Sami was already moving for the pillar Dolly was taking cover behind to reload and to prepare for what Canard had in mind as she had figured it out not too long after Pom did.

While they were dealing with the first Ogre Whack which was a mixture of all of the attacks Ogremon had, he had already finished charging up another one.

“OGRE WHACK!” The left fist once against slammed the floor, none of them even had much of a chance to retaliate against Ogremon before he managed to launch this attack. The shockwave cracked all the remaining pillars and they again took the brunt of the force.

Unfortunately for both Frizzle and Dazzle, being caught out in the open during the shockwave, slammed into the wall near the entrance to painfully fall into a piles of twisted somewhat broken metal from the chairs and tables that used to be fixtures in the lunchroom.

The follow up illusions and energy ogres were as hard to tell apart, some were aimed in the general direction of Dazzle and Frizzle and angled themselves for Sami, Dolly and Lit’s location or for Canard. The remaining spread out in Pom’s direction

In the midst of this attack Ogremon leapt towards the pillar Pom was on as she dropped from the pillar quickly to avoid several Pummel Whacks launched from the Ogre copies. Ogremon brought his bone around and slammed it into the pillar where Pom’s head was when she reached the floor.

Pom tumbled forward under the attack that caused the sudden complete destruction of the now shattered pillar. She kicked out into rear leg slide between Ogremon’s legs and he immediately turned to slam his fist into the floor half way up his forearm. Pom flexed her wool to launch from the floor before Ogremon’s big fist connected.

Having flipped onto her hooves Pom turned her head and fired a blob of Bark Buster that exploded in a flash of light that blinded Ogremon as he swung out a horizontal pressure wave from the bone in his right hand.

Pom fired two rear wool springs to launch off the floor in a backflip and, while upside down, fired two Thousand Spears from her front hooves that impacted with Ogremon’s chest doing little damage to his body through his aura. Completing her flip she hopped onto the pillar and jumped upwards as Ogremon’s fist tore a chunk out of the pillar with a swing.

While this was happening Canard was clipped by a Pummel Whack from an Ogre clone and knocked to the floor with a pained grunt and his left shoulder was nearly wrenched out of the socket as the pillar he was at was destroyed.

“Dolly, Lit, start digging Frizzle and Dazzle out and get them to moving towards the entrance… Canard set this up at the base of the middle right pillar and then clear out back towards the entrance!” Sami tossed a pair of DCD Bombs with the configuration of a remote detonation device in Canard’s direction, then promptly slapped one on the pillar Lit and Dolly had been using as cover. Taking a moment to breathe, and to make sure she wasn’t overdoing the DCD BOMB program as to cause a disastrous self-destruct, she created another DCD Bomb a bit more carefully and set it up. “I’ll blow the two remaining pillars once Pom is somewhat clear of Ogremon!”

-Pom-

Okay, Ogremon has definitely stepped up his threat level significantly… I ducked and a large section of the pillar behind me was just missing.

I quickly threw a left, right, left into Ogremon’s face, to little or no effect… certainly didn’t stop the glowing red eyes, the scary grin or the whole demented purple aura thing he had going. I would definitely think he was serious about getting revenge if this is what he could do with the several weeks we were separated by the Game Cube.

He retaliated to my pitiful attempts to fend him off by stomping the floor and the shockwave simply knocked me into the air.

His right arm moving to bring his bone about in a swipe, I reflexively inflated my wool, I was sent flailing and spiraling through the air out of control and thankfully enough avoiding a direct his from the bone.

When my flailing led to me being mostly upright I saw a Pummel Whack flying straight for me and deflated my wool to flop onto the floor as the attack struck the ceiling.

“RRAAAGGHHH!” Ogremon leapt towards me and his arms started to blur as he started launching feint attacks and my eyes was having trouble tracking which one was an actual attack.

I quickly backpedaled towards the center of the room inhaled slowly as my lungs burned from all the dodging. Ducking, hopping and shifting out of the way of his frantic attempts to hit me with numerous Pummel Whacks, Ogre Clones that could fire Pummel Whacks at me from the side and various pressure waves from every swing of his bone in his right hand.

“Pom, get out there!” Hearing Sami, I turned and looked behind me as I couldn’t inhale anymore and saw them frantically waving for me to move towards them.

My eyes went to the two remaining pillars and… I exhaled in relief, also I disappeared in a blur back towards the entrance as several Pummel Whacks were coming at me from all sides. To create a small glowing and swirling purple star in the air where I had been standing barely a second ago before I used Dancing Flame to get dodge.

I exhaustedly fell into Canard’s arms and he hefted me up from his crouch and quickly pulled me beyond the doorway.

“Fire in the new hole!” Sami screamed. Two powerful, quite deafening, explosions went off and the entirety of the lunchroom and some rooms above it collapsed inwards towards Ogremon.

It took minute or two for me to get my eyes open again as the dust filtering through the back entrance of the school and I saw a mass of debris had collapsed on Ogremon… I also saw some flare of purple and the massive amount of rubble shifting.

“At best, I think that just slowed him down…” I said wide eyed.

“Well we’ll hopefully have plenty of time to reach Etemon before then!” Canard turned to me to see Moosemon bucking Gawappamon in the head and Pistmon was skidding about currently avoiding getting in close with Shawjamon.

The two evolutions of Kamemon of the King’s Kame gang were badly roughed up and Pistmon looked a bit bad. Moosemon still looked somewhat fresh, then again anything that’s related to the word ‘moose’ were always scary and powerful.

-Streets outside Fury Clan, Commandramon-

I flopped onto the street in pain as I was blasted out of my perch. The screech of the incoming Raptor Sparrowmon chilled me to the bone as they came diving at me with their talons wide open.

Raising my rifle I fired it on full auto and it did little to deter the strong champion digimon, two other Commandramon were focus firing on him and that wasn’t slowing Raptor down as they closed in on me with their six knife like talons aimed right for me.

One Commandramon timed a DCD as Raptor Sparrowmon passed by and the sudden explosion going off in their face shook them slightly, but they were still on a path to shred me. I was about to pull a DCD bomb and go out when Uver leapt forward in front of me and swung around his red carry bag.

I watched with awe as a leaping Black Tailmon Uver slammed his bag up into the Raptor Sparrowmon’s chin and flipped the entire Chrome Digizoid jet bird Digimon backwards to belly flop into the street.

“You okay there soldier, any heavily injured should immediately report to Hea-Gatomon!” Uver carefully helped me up onto my shaky armored feet. “Do you know where the flatbed is Driver?”

“A-Around the corner and out of s-sight.” I muttered shivering at the idea that I was about to be a pile of shredded ones and zeroes a second ago. “Also I think I’m the only currently injured, everyone else is still fighting capable.”

“Good, then you know where Hea-Gatomon is waiting then and are coherent enough to get there on your own, get moving and fixed up while I back up our boys.” Uver stated before he marched forward as Raptor Sparrowmon picked themselves up and screeched, more Avalanche Avians were coming down on them by the second at the call of their gang leader.

I was up and moving as quickly as I could, I wasn’t going to be out of the fight for long if Hea-Gatomon had anything to say about it.

Turning the corner I didn’t see just Hea-Gatomon, I also saw a Labramon… Uver brought in extra combat support? Good, we needed all the help we could get out here!

-Fury Clan High School, back entry hall, Dolly-

“Holy dog… did we seriously collapse several rooms on the guy and he’s still active?!” Horrifying was the word for this, as I saw flashes of purple light coming from the massive amount of rubble again. I think the mass of collapsed building even shifted slightly.

Goodness knows I wouldn’t have survived something like a large portion of building collapsing on me unless I got stuck in a small rigid air pocket or something.

“Yes, which is why we should hurry up and get through the back hall entrance and make sure Etemon doesn’t escape.” Pom answered as we turned to watch Pistmon and Moosemon continued to fight. “He’s likely highly aware that we’re coming and is preparing for a throw down with all the noise we’re making, I mean he can’t still be where the Commandramon said he was at this point right?”

-Currently in the fourth floor Principal’s Office-

Etemon, the monkey suit digimon, continued to sleep in bed and snuggled a plush toy of himself and mumbled once or twice about being the greatest advertisement program ever and accepting an award for being most viral singing sensation of the year.

He quietly rolled over and snuggled into the comfy bed. Nobody else was going to use the High School so he made the place his secret castle.

Despite all the gunfire from the Commandramon team, the various explosions, the excessively loud fighting at the front and back entrances and a portion of the relatively empty school collapsing…

He just continued to sleep through most of it.

-Back entrance hall, Canard-

“You okay Canard?” Sami was checking my shoulder over and flinched when the rubble shifted a purple glow erupted from it for a few seconds.

“Got clipped in the shoulder by a Pummel Whack…” Which seriously hurts. “We should be more worried about Frizzle and Dazzle.

“I’m… still good, I don’t know about Frizzle.” Dazzle looked to a groggy Frizzle as she raised a claw in a sign that she was ‘mostly’ okay. Dazzle was slightly injured, but still strong. “I guess that means she’ll be good in a minute or two…”

I’ve noticed Frizzle being a good bit closer to Dazzle, like how Sami seemed to be fussing over my shoulder injury. It was something I could easily walk off, a direct hit would have been far worse.

What was also noticeable was that our morale was tanking quite badly all around.

-Frizzle-

Okay so I couldn’t handle a champion like that without being a champion myself… but I really didn’t want to go crazy and lose control again.

It made me feel like a hypocrite with getting Dazzle to feel okay with evolving, when I was currently completely and utterly reluctant to do so when it was sorely needed for the firepower. Ogremon would eventually get out from under all of that eventually and when he does… would I be able keep my head and control my odd Growlmon form?

It made me so tough and powerful. I know forcing an evolution was bad, but not evolving when your friends need you the most and were absolutely in trouble felt even worse.

-Dazzle-

My new form made taking hits like that shockwave much easier, I’ve been much stronger since the sewers… but I still had my mind.

I heard about what happened to some Pokémon when they change in personality drastically due to evolution, I guess the changes and new size didn’t thankfully go to my head.

Still a bit bruised and I really didn’t contribute much to the fighting Ogremon… I might trade out Toxic for something that can’t be evaporated or blocked, even if it was a signature technique of my people.

-Pom-

Still catching my breath, I checked Dolly’s health and winced at the various aches she had from when I forced the Dancing Flame technique on her.

I owed her a big apology after this.

“I know we’re not exactly doing great, but we’ll get through this, you’ll see!” Very motivational Canard, wish I had your charisma and could actually feel that level of positivity.

“Trust me Canard, things are about to get worse somehow.” Whether Ogremon breaks out from under the rubble or…

Canard was about to say something when a flash occurred and a vortex opened up to plop a large battered purple octopus near the back entrance and Moosemon and Pistmon were still fighting to open a path inwards.

“I’ll just let the Black Widow take care of that Hiandromon then I’ll just go back to my territory… now for some…” The battered purple octopus stated, then turned and saw us. I’m going to guess that the pot covering the octopus’s head meant it was Ultros the Octomon, said octopus had weird teeth poking out from under the pot in an odd manner. I didn’t know if the teeth were natural or not given how weird Digimon generally were. He held a cutlass in one tentacle and was wielding some kind of projectile weapon in another. “Huh… what’s going on here?! Have I died and gone to digital heaven? Oh… ohoho…. OOHHH THE BEAUTIES!”

“Yeah, things just got far worse.” I said flatly as the eyes showing in the broken portions of the pot turned into hearts.

I don’t know why, but some instinct tells me that this Digimon was somehow a pervert far worse than any Wooloo, even Geoff... especially Geoff.

"Hey look, the Stone Bone was blasted straight through the wall from where it was stuck!" Dolly said as she picked up the Stone Bone Club with a wagging tail.

That really didn't even things out universe!

Author's Note

No excuses, I've just been playing Live A Live and a recently updated Subnautica.

292. Server City Ransom Pt. 17.

Author's Note

This small sidestep adventure is quickly coming to an end.

292. Server City Ransom Pt. 17.

-Origin Space, Suicune-

Origin Space where it was rumored that Arceus hatched from an exploding sun. I didn’t know if that was true, but what was true was that he was our father.

Being a legendary water type canid Pokémon that specialized in easily cleansing bodies of water, I had a lot of free time on my paws. It was quite understandably upsetting to see Fontaine is such disrepair, my long flowing purple mane reflected my slightly agitated state from having to figure out how to help clean up that mess. My twin ribbon like tails just couldn’t wag when I knew people were hurting.

I came to Origin Space because wanted to know where the ‘Queen of Canines’ was and needed to… ‘wanted strongly’ to get to know her better. A legendary such as me should really not give in to baser impulses for the grand possibilities of pets and belly rubs…

I heard Pom was in Violight, but she disappeared and the trail went cold since I couldn’t exactly find her. So… to that end I came here to find Arceus watching her current adventures in another world. One that was connected to Ransei loosely at the moment.

I sat down and was immediately offered a spicy potato curry dish with the smell of a rawst and cheri berry sauce wafting off of it, I took the bowl from Arceus and watched what was going on trying to figure out how things were going for the ‘Canine Queen’. She was looking a little roughed up at the moment.

-Fury Clan High School back entrance hall, Dolly-

“Look, can we avoid the fight and just say we did it?” Pom asked sweetly with a desperation bordering on going completely spare considering all the stuff I’ve seen her go through.

“No.” Ultros answered with a grin. “You are just so adorable, I could just eat you up you sweet thing, but the sugar might go to my teeth!”

“Vaguely horrified to hear flattering things from a goofy looking octopus monster with teeth in a weird place… so what would it take for us to avoid coming to blows?” I can see that Pom was at least partially stalling, maybe to give Moose and Bike dude some time to finish of Grapple and Shawl guy to help us out with tentacle dude here.

Still the octopus guy didn’t look like he had an aura impervious to just about everything like that Okra guy and looked to have been battered in the fighting with stoner android at the beach. I wasn’t about to ignore the flashes of dark purple coming from the rubble of the room we collapsed on Okra either.

The octopus looked to be thinking about what it would take to avoid fighting him, he seemed to gain a grin quite quickly.

“Why we can avoid a fight if you leap into my tentacles and let me get them all over you!” Yeah the octopus wasn’t about to get that, considering the turn Pom’s mood just took. “I bet you feel ‘real’ nice, cotton soft even!”

“Sorry to be rude, but I think I’d rather fight if that’s alright with you.” Sometimes wondered if Pom needed to hear an even worse solution or possible turn out to seriously get motivated for a fight.

“Sounds about right to me, I think we can take him. He’s not currently charged up on impossible like Ogremon currently is and he looks to be at a quarter strength.” Sami announced as her rifle clacked. “Someone remind me to make a digital shotgun later, it’s more intimidating to pump one of those.”

“Go ahead… touch me all you want!” Dazzle said brazenly moving forward making us all stare at her, even the stoic Frizzle and Canard were caught off guard.

“Uh… what?” I stated blankly, then I got a thought from Pom explaining why Dazzle might do something like that. At some point I had forgotten that Dazzle was deadly poisonous and getting that close to the octopus… there would be no way she could miss and he didn’t look like he had a defensive measure for poison. “Ah… got it Pom, so do we owe Dazzle like… twenty… for taking one for the team?”

“Really!” The octopus was quite excited by the way his tentacles waved about and Dazzle sauntered forward with a bright smile on her face.

“What’s concerning is that he doesn’t have any Fujitsumon on his pot…” Sami muttered as she aimed her rifle. I have no idea what that was about.

Canard, Lit, Pom and I readied up alongside the soldier lizard, while Frizzle… she just looked upset and sat the ground drawing circles on the floor with a claw.

“Frizzle, Dazzle is going to need our help soon, so get ready.” Stated Pom out the side of her mouth as Dazzle wandered close enough to be grabbed. Frizzle nodded, but still seemed upset about something as she stood up and glared at the octopus.

-Frizzle-

Dazzle really didn’t have to do this… she told me about other Salazzles and how she hated the fact that they acted like this. Now she was forcing herself to do this...

It’s kind of weird, we’re both lizards, we’re both fire breathers and she’s poisonous and I’m hazardous. Lot’s in common… though I don’t think anyone other than another Guilmon can match my hunger for bread or simply baked goods.

Is this because Dazzle knew I refused to evolve after what happened when I first became a Growlmon? She really didn’t have to do this for us and shouldn’t have had to.

-Pom-

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched another pulse happen from the collapsed lunchroom. Ogremon is definitely terrifying now if he can eventually dig himself out. I turned my sight to Gawappamon and Shawjamon the two kappa Digimon were quickly going down. We just might be close to moving through the school to get to Etemon.

We didn’t know how the Skate Park Scamps were doing, but they had to be doing relatively okay… though they probably ran into Abobo and didn’t have Lit to suck the strength out of him.

I watched as Ultros greedily grappled Dazzle with a mostly normal tentacle and she shivered and frowned at the feeling of being lifted off the floor.

After a moment she unleashed purple liquid from her body onto Ultros’s tentacle, it quickly evaporated.

“Huh… are you trying to poison me?” Considering how the poison works, Ultros really didn’t know what was coming to him. “Well it’s a good thing I’m quite resilient to things like that!”

Dazzle’s toxic attack, unless somehow blocked or otherwise prevented from making direct contact, is ludicrously dangerous. However, it thankfully cannot poison a water supply and the poison doesn’t hold cohesion long beyond a body. It has to be introduced by at least immediate skin contact with another being to be dangerous, at that point it grows exponentially more devastating the longer the poison has time to act.

“Ugh… I don’t feel so well!” After a moment Ultros flinched violently and squeezed Dazzle painfully, his delayed reaction to the poison wasn’t a bad sign. What was a bad sign was that he was refusing to drop Dazzle, we’d have to make him do so. “Well if this is how you are going to be, then be prepared for ten tickles from this Octomon!”

In the back of my mind I wondered what has become of Chaosdramon X who was poisoned by Dazzle before we dropped into this realm.

Ultros brandished the blade and the gun weapon and I leapt forward.

-Canard-

While I miss my hockey stick, nothing beats a puck pistol at keeping your distance from an enemy and the pucks I was firing were actually doing damage this time.

I had to stop firing when Ultros brought Dazzle into the line of fire. Pom was busy keeping two of his tentacles ending in three metallic claws busy. Notably he wasn’t swinging his sword at her as she slashed her hooves created claws of energy in the air to deflect the attempts to grab her.

“Enough of that you pesky puck popping pest, let me grab my beauties in peace!” Ultros stated loudly before opening a portion of his mouth and fire a wide spray of ink that I quickly moved away from.

Even if I didn’t get hit by it, it smelled quite noxious and was possibly poisonous… for a digital being.

Didn’t exactly want to chance that and Ultros was managing to keep Dazzle out of reach of Pom as he focused his ire on me.

I had to avoid a blast of energy from the gun one of his tentacles was wielding.

“He doesn’t seem to be slowing down Dazzle!” He was shooting and aiming at me while fending off Pom and even Frizzle started to spit fireballs that were deflected or slashed apart by the sword he wielded.

“Give it a minute or two, with how battered he already is… he’ll drop soon enough!” Maybe the currently struggling Dazzle was overestimating her poisonous abilities, her arms were pinned at her sides, she started trying to breathe flames and slip free. If the poison was truly effective against Digimon as she thought, then all we had to do was stall.

Dazzle looked to be having trouble lighting Ultros on fire and the tentacle wrapped around her mouth to keep her from spewing flames once she tried to blast him. He kept putting Dazzle within the path of my aim and was making it hard to shoot pucks into an exposed part of his body that wasn’t currently under a pot as armor.

Dolly seemed to be staying back while also prepping to throw the strange boomerang bone. Lit, who was currently on her head, obviously didn’t want to shock Ultros while he was holding Dazzle.

“Eugh… this poison is really nasty! What in the world did you eat to be that caustic lady?” Ultros got a rather scathing glare from Dazzle and I tried to place a puck where his eyes were in the hole in the pot his spear like tentacle ending in metal tip stopped deflecting shots from Sami and flickered forward. It deflected the flaming puck and then slapped the bone thrown by Dolly back at her and she barely caught it. “If this is all you have then, I can take all of you on quickly enough before this poison gets to me!”

“I can’t get any shots by his defending tentacle.” Sami wouldn’t fire a rocket because Dazzle would get caught in the blast.

“Speaking of shots, how about I take one at you… sure you may be a bit homely, but I’m an equal opportunist octopus when it comes to beauties!” Ultros certainly insulted Sami and then he slung forward a tentacle glowing purple. “Deadly Shade!”

An arc of purple erupted out towards us and we avoided it, Sami wasn’t so lucky and immediately fell over and looked a bit stiff when it struck her in the chest.

“Pa-ra-ly-sis…” Sami got out before a grimace of pain crossed her face, as one of his tentacles fended off Pom’s bark blast by snapping the claws shut to create a shockwave to counter her blast another lashed out and tightly wrapped around Sami’s body.

I fired a puck or two into the tentacle before having to evade a fast bullet of ink from his gun that destroyed some rubble around the entrance to the lunchroom by melting. The tentacle grappled Sami and pulled her back to Ultros.

“Gyeheheh, that’s two beauties in my grasp! Now for the remaining two!” Ultros focused his attention on Pom and Frizzle as he said that.

Frizzle spat some more fireballs, and since Ultros had less tentacles to defend with, when he blocked them with the sword I fired and managed to hit one of his eyes with a puck.

“Agh, didn’t I say to leave already so I can play with these lovely visions!” Ultros, having shouted that at me, I threw myself to floor a bullet passed by and took out a chunk of the wall in a splatter of black ink. “Deadly Shade!”

I rolled and avoided the blast fired another puck that was deflected, Pom managed to fire a wad of energy from her throat and it exploded upwards nearly knocking the protective giant pot off the Octomon’s head. He simply slammed it back down with a tentacle and a bone throw from Dolly managed to crack it slightly as it rebounded off and back into her waiting paw.

“Frizzle we need more firepower… I know you might not like the idea of becoming Growlmon again, but we need you at your best! I believe you can keep control of yourself, you’re a team player aren’t you!” Another fire ball slashed, the claw tentacle deflected any of Pom’s attempts to close in and attack close up and even kept up with her when she went into a Dancing Flame state. My pucks were doing some damage to his limbs provided he wasn’t actively blocking them with his tentacles.

“A Growlmon, that would be a beauty of such ferocity, I’d gladly welcome the chance to get my tentacles all over one!” Ultros was seriously messed up in the head for a Digimon. He wasn’t weak by any stretch of the imagination despite showing up here battered, even if he was slow on land he made up for that by being quick with his tentacles and being capable at all distances. “Nnn… seriously could have used Black Widow’s back up with this!”

For a moment Ultros wavered a bit and his eyes looked a bit dizzy beneath the pot, Dazzles poison was really starting to get to him.

Dolly barked something and Pom backed off from attack Ultros and looked to her with a quirked eye, after a moment she nodded and turned to me and Frizzle.

“Keep firing as quickly as you can manage, also don’t mind if I get caught we both have ideas that might work.” What, why did it sound like you were about to get caught on purpose? Ah, Dolly gave a Pom plan and was hopeful that Octomon didn’t speak in their barks.

-Lit-

Friends need help with big Octillery.

Had some friends in grip.

Get closer, attack in shell!

-Dolly-

“Hope you’re ready to get closer little dude.” Lit squeaked and hopped from my head and started to scuttle forward from me and into Pom’s shadow.

I prepared to start throwing my bone and get a little bit closer in with my board, I definitely was not going to let the octopus grab me if I could help it. I don’t feel like having my bones crushed.

“Ull… how is the poison this powerful… is it getting worse?!” He was started to turn a pale purple or pink, Dazzy’s poison was wearing him down quickly as his movements against Pom turned sloppy and she got a good swipe in with her magic claws.

“Okay, we might just have to defeat him to save his life, his Backspace System brought him here and he is not going anywhere else fast!” Really Pom, you actually wanted to help this sleazeball? Heh, just like my parents when they could have left Cruella to die and instead said her sorry ancient evil backside.

I threw the bone and noticed Ultros making a mistake in trying to deflect it, it hit the base of the tentacle that was holding Dazzle and he almost let her go. Yeah, it wasn’t my imagination, he was getting slower by the second. Now if only he didn’t have a death grip on our friends.

Pom continued to deflect tentacles and was eventually grappled around the waist, I saw that she immediately hardened her wool as the octopus started putting pressure on her. She continued to claw at the tentacle holding her and was trying to free herself up. I caught the bone as it came back and moved forward and started to dodge into and out of range using my skateboard.

A fireball from Frizzle was torn in half by his sword and that’s when she immediately charged in, I moved to cover her and hoped she knew what she was doing.

-Frizzle-

Okay, I got something to prove and Lit was making his move to get on Ultros the Octomon, Dazzle’s poison was getting exponentially stronger… but he was still this strong. Also it seemed he refused to use his sword or gun for anything other than defense against us or offensively against Canard.

It’s a good thing we didn’t choosing to fight Ultros at full strength at the beach, he would be much harder to deal with near the water.

I quickly lashed out with my slightly damaged chain and caught one of his tentacles and pulled it into the floor, I watched as the little yellow electricity eating Lit got into a crevice in the bottom of his pot and get in.

“What… I’m supposed to be the one entangling you, not the other… ohnnn.” Octomon wobbled in place drunkenly and placed his free three clawed tentacle against his pot. He was definitely getting slower, because I used a Pyro Sphere to blast away one of his tentacles and it actually worked. “Yeowch! Why does everyone keep trying to make calamari out of me, that’s more of a thing for squids or a sexy Calamarmon!”

Despite how weak he currently was, his mouth was still working perfectly fine, much to everyone’s chagrin.

“Wha… agh… what the… erg… something is in my pot, get it out get it out get it out!” It seems like Lit finally begun his tiny assault and Ultros almost dropped Pom, Dolly even tried to assist in her getting free and almost got crushed by a tentacle for her trouble.

Ultros was thrashing with all of his tentacles that weren’t currently holding Sami, Pom and Dazzle. I was barely holding onto the chain to keep one of the remaining combat tentacles occupied as Canard pelted Octomon in the eyes with flaming pucks.

“What revolting development this has turned into, I can’t even stop for a moment to enjoy getting my tentacles all over some beauties!” Still didn’t know why Octomon wanted to do so in the first place, it seemed like an oddly specific hang up of his to wrap us girls up in his tentacles. He seemed to despise Canard as he fired another blast of energy Canard’s way with his gun. “Okay those pucks and whoever is in my pot scratching me up is making me mad! I’ve heard of High School trauma before, but I didn’t think it’d be this ridiculous or literal!”

I hopped to the side as his free clawed tentacle slapped at me as I kept a tight holding on his chain to pin his tentacle that I wrapped it around.

He had at least five tentacles occupied, how was he still giving us this much trouble while poisoned and under constant assault when he appeared here at half strength?! At least the Skate Park Scamps and the Commandramon had it easier than us… hopefully.

-Fury Clan High School, Front Hall, Lobomon-

It looked like a warzone in here, wasn’t far from the truth… considering the Commandramon outside were trying to prevent Falcomons from getting in.

Abobo was still proving to be a serious threat.

Garu and I were hitting him with everything we had, he just wouldn’t stop coming at us! Was he seriously that high tier a champion?!

-Nearby buildings, Commandramon-

“I’ve never seen this many bird Digimon in my life!” I continued to provide anti-air cover to my comrades, the fact that we had lasted this long was a testament to our digital coding for absurd amounts of stamina.

“DCD bomb going out!” Pineapple on a stick was thrown and it exploded amongst several Falcomon trying to toss shuriken with their talons through the windows at us. “How’s Uver doing against the Chrome Digizoid bird?”

“Surprisingly well, I didn’t think he was that good of a fighter, he’s putting up one hell of a fight with very few attack programs to his name!” Another Commandramon yelled over the sound of constant digital rifle fire.

“He’s an inspiration to be taking on a combat digimon when he’s a supply specialist!” A commandramon threw a grenade and it suddenly propelled itself like a rocket into Raptor Sparrowmon’s face distracting it from Uver for a second, allowing him to get in a blow. “How’s my new DCD Bomb trick?”

“Cool, show me how you did that provided we survive this mess!” The Commandramon pulled out a round black bomb with a fuse, said fuse immediately lit and started to quickly wear down as he timed his throwing of it to take out a Falcomon that tried to glide in and get us into melee range. “Maybe I can do something interesting with my version DCD Bomb!”

“I’ve been working on a version of DCD Bomb that can walk around and explode, I’ve been considering using a crank key to get it moving maybe give it eyes and a cute aesthetic of a living bomb.” Another one said, as a syringe slammed home into a Falcomon from below taking them out. As Driver drove up with the flatbed and Hea-gatomon wielding throwing syringes with her scalpel claws. “We’ll do a weapons show and tell after this, no Commandramon dies today!”

-Fury Clan High School, back hall entrance, Sami-

I’m still upset Octomon called me homely, I mean that in spite of me not really caring that much about my appearance aside from the color orange making me stand out. There was just something about the way he said it that earned my ire.

Now if only I wasn’t paralyzed by his Deadly Shade attack. I’d shove a DCD Bomb into his mouth or beak… wait, does he even have a beak? I mean Octomon are supposed to have beaks yet this one has teeth… that among other things lead me to thinking something was still something very off about him.

I felt the tentacles grip weakening around me as Canard, Frizzle, Lit and Dolly continued to occupy his tentacles.

“I think the poison has almost gotten to him.” Pom whimpered as she tried to use her hind legs to slap at the tentacle holding her. “Keep struggling, he’s almost worn down!”

Easy for you to say, I couldn’t feel most of my body due to his paralysis attack hitting me directly. The only thing I could do currently was… a ‘backfire’. Would I remotely trigger my bazooka at point blank range though?

I did it with Ogremon before, so why not now! It was the only thing I could do in this moment while locked up like this.

A click and the tube at my back blasted downwards launched the tentacle holding me upwards and over Octomon, catching me in a small portion of the blast by proximity.

“Wha… OOF!” Octomon toppled when Frizzle let go of her chain and now he was on his back flailing after having reflexively let us go, his pot was now cracked and Dolly barked something loudly with her paws framing her face. “Huh… oh cr…aghhh G-g-g-g-?!”

Electricity ripped out from under Ultros’s pot and down to his tentacles as he flailed wildly and after a moment he flopped a bit lifelessly against the floor.

I rolled along the floor to a stop where I could see Ultros’s body spasming and looking less purple and more burnt now.

“Why... I’ve been cooked again…” Cried Ultros as Lit crawled out from under the pot and bounced his way merrily for Dolly.

“Pecha berry coming up.” Pom clawed the berry a bit so its juices were flowing and tossed it into a fried Ultros’s beakless mouth.

An energy ogremon bursts from the lunchroom rubble and we thankfully weren’t hit by it. It looked like Ogremon was free to lunge at us until more rubble collapsed on him and he roared angrily. Yeah another minute or two and he’d get out of that without trouble.

“Well we don’t have much more time before he’s on us, how are Moosemon and Pistmon doing?” Pom asked and I heard the sound of three Digimon fighting. Who went down besides Ultros?

I felt myself rolled to stare up into Canard’s face.

“Sami, are you okay?” Couldn’t really do much to reassure you that I was Canard, wish I could smile right now as you were actually concerned about me.

“Open her mouth, we’ll give her a Cheri Berry for her paralysis!” Dazzle announced as she appeared over me, tossed a small berry in my mouth and forced my jaws closed on it. Smooth and slightly spicy, a very interesting flavor and texture, said warmth soon filled out my coding and I could suddenly move again.

“I’m okay, but darned if that Deadly Shade attack didn’t hurt.” It should have hurt worse, but I had a feeling Ultros wanted me alive for whatever reason. He could have just as easily wringed us out, maybe he wasn’t too bad a guy? “Also a little blown up, but I’m data stable at least.”

I was hefted up by Canard and turned to see Gawappamon was down and leaking data. Both Moosemon and Pistmon were tag teaming Shawjamon, Pistmon have taking the worst of it for being in enclosed spaces where his high speed abilities were hampered. Shawjamon was still dangerous in a close up confrontation with his weapon despite looking haggard, but he was quickly being whittled down by Moosemon’s ramming horns and Pistmon firing spikes when an opening was present.

Shawjamon was on the backfoot and they almost had him finished off.

“It’s only a matter of time before Ogremon gets out, we can’t exactly sit here and wait for him.” Okay, but did you have any actual suggestions Pom?

“We take a minute then start climbing floors looking for Etemon.” Canard put me down on my feet slightly wobbly. I watched as Moosemon caught Shawjamon’s weapon with his horn and launch it upwards managed to cut up Shawjamon with his antlers.

“Ugh…” Shawjamon was slapped by the flat of the blade of his own weapon coming back down and toppled over as it clanged loudly against the floor. “Lord… Etemon…”

“Okay, I think things are going rather well.” Pistmon stated as he rode up besides Moosemon.

“Hey, uh… Sami, can we get some help out here? Raptor Sparrowmon is putting a lot of pressure on us.” I looked at everyone as I heard one of the Commandramon calling. “Can we also get a sit-rep?”

“Octomon leader of the Data Divers down, Ogremon is rage mode and currently buried and is slowly working his way out from under a collapsed portion of building. We’ll be proceeding inwards now and will try to deal with any of the King’s Kame gang we run into on the way.” Looking towards Pistmon and Moosemon taking a break. “Guys take a minute to cool down and rest, then your needed out front, the Commandramon are getting hammered and you can get some healing from Hea-gatomon. Raptor Sparrowmon is giving them problems.”

“We’ll get on that once we’re off our break.” Pistmon responded and threw me a thumbs up, then the bike Digimon looked a little concerned. “What about Ogremon?”

“We’ll cross that bridge and burn it behind us when we get to it.” I answered, Pistmon saluted as I started to stumble forward and was kept upright by Canard. “Let’s get moving!”

-Fury Clan Front, Uver-

“Neko Punch!” My fist met Raptor’s face with the power of digital cat claws, dazing him slightly. I followed this up by turning his entire body into a billboard as I kicked off him and landed on top of a light pole to barely keep my balance.

Raptor Sparrowmon went skidding down the street with a face full of billboard, but still outclassing me in raw power, tenacity and endurance being practically covered in Chrome Digizoid.

The Commandramon were getting hammered in close range. Considering how many Falcomon were being thrown at them, it’s an utter surprise they’ve even held up so well this far given all the general stereotypes that particular brand of rookie digimon have faced in the past. They lived up to some of those, but these guys were even using their rifles as bayonets or clubs and digging into the fight with a fervor I haven’t seen in a long time.

Hea-Gatomon was backing them up and keeping them standing, but neither her nor I could really focus down Raptor Sparrowmon together when there were Falcomon flooding the air around here. I bet they were teleporting back to base to pick up healing items. We couldn’t and wouldn’t leave the Commandramon without support, they were our primary offense against the Falcomon.

“Diamond Storm!” A number of Falcomon were suddenly shredded under a storm of crystallized leaves from a Renamon. “In the name of the Doggy Messiah Pom, you will have backup!”

“Remind me again why you formed a religion based on a mortal sheep like being?” Bearmon stated as he physically tore a Falcomon away from a Commandramon with his claws and heaved them into another Falcomon with a ridiculous amount of force.

“You would not understand even if I were to explain her greatness Bearmon, only a true canid can understand the glory she brings to us! Unfortunately WereGarurumon doesn’t count and he also sent us out here to help you with the Falcomon while he and Lobomon deal with Abobo...” Renamon was on point when she lashed out a kick that sent a falcomon flying. “I didn’t want to admit this, but that Bulkmon scares me…”

Despite looking badly roughed up the two immediately started to help turn the tide as far as Falcomon were concerned, but how would they deal with Raptor Sparrowmon? The guy was already up and lifting off again.

-Back entrance, Metabee-

“Now?” I asked as I watched, Pistmon and Moosemon exit the building and started around for the front of the campus.

“Hmm… we’ll enter the back hall, I sense something amiss there.” Rokusho leapt forward and was already passing through the entrance.

“Hey wait for me Rokusho!” We had to work together on this, as I leapt forward and landed at the entrance and walked in, a purple massed exploded from the collapsed rubble of the lunchroom. “Uh… should we take care of this guy?”

Ogremon looked our way and roared while brandishing his bone and raising his left fist, his dark purple aura flared.

“We do not currently have much of a choice in the matter I believe, he seems to have locked onto us.” Rokusho readied his pincer blade and I raised my guns and lowered my missile blasting horn. “That aura… dark net influence, be careful Metabee. We have no idea who has given him such power.”

“Oh come on Rokusho, you don’t have to tell me to not be head strong with that kind of glow coming off of him.” We were both focused and ready to start getting involved as Ogremon leapt for us. “Do you think he generated this dark net power himself?”

“It’s the only conclusion we have at the moment as the realm this digital world is connected to doesn’t have hackers.” Rokusho started forward and I stayed behind him to back him up.

-Inner Hallway, first floor, Pom-

I heard the building shuddering and felt the roar of Ogremon shaking my bones, I shivered and I noticed everyone else around looking uneasy.

“Intruders in the hallway! How did they even get by our gatekeepers Gawappamon and Shawjamon?!” A Kamemon stated and several Kamemon rushed out the nearby doors and started towards us.

Canard was the first to meet one with a boot to the face and a flaming puck to the stomach to send the poor Kamemon sliding into their comrades.

I was next up to tackle a Kamemon head on with my shoulder and increased fluff to bowl them over. I was hoping that Ogremon didn’t catch up to us at this point, because it certainly sounded like he got free and I doubt he’d accept an apology… no that would probably make him angrier.

A lash of fire took down a Kamemon to my left and Dazzle quickly clambered up the wall to the ceiling to avoid the blasts of water the Kamemon were firing our way with accuracy almost as bad as the Moliarty’s moles. They were in a panic and we did catch them off guard, so it was a little understandable that they were having problems aiming at us.

Frizzle was slamming through them and taking out some kind of frustration on them, given how vicious she was starting to act. I glanced at Dazzle who refused to look in Frizzle’s direction.

There were issues I had to work out later, focus on the here and now as we force our way towards the stairs.

To that end I loosed a bark blast that popped a Kamemon into the air and Dolly immediately slammed the bottom of her board into his face and bounced him off the floor and spun her board to slap them into another Kamemon. Lit squeaked and blasted out a series of entrapping electrical webs to incapacitate the remaining aggressors.

As the other made their way forward, I stayed back and looked at Sami.

“Are you okay Sami?” I noted that she was not taking as active a part in battle.

“Sorry if I’m a bit slow, oh before I forget... M-loader.” She lifted her bazooka onto her shoulder and pressed it against the floor. “Shouldn’t forget to have that at the ready if I need another ‘backfire’ or a powerful shot... let’s move.”

Wary of Sami’s health, I stayed with her as we made our way to the stairs and started up to the second floor.

“Do you think Etemon is still on the fourth floor below the roof access?” We had a moment of quiet so I figured it was time to ask. Never thought a High School needed to be this big, then again I’ve never formally finished schooling and really did most of my school work in exile from Meadow Hills. This place is making me think about bringing it up with Tianhuo when we can next talk. I think this place fits with Digimon aesthetics at least, what with all the weird childish scrawling art on the walls and a few oddities in the building design. Like the fact that the front entrance was across the school from the only staircase going up a floor and the back entrance was halfway to that. “Also do we have to fight our way across the entire school two more times just to reach stairs going up to the fourth floor?”

“Yes, Etemon was stated to be in the principal’s office and we mapped the layout of the school, no reports of him leaving the room… even if the other Commandramon are too busy to keep an eye on him. This school is basically one solid brick with a small back entrance hall and a lunchroom and a few auxiliary rooms connected to it. We destroyed most of the auxiliary rooms collapsing them onto the lunchroom.” That answered my first question Sami, what about the second? We came to the top of the staircase and there were no further stairs up to the third floor and down a long hallway I could vaguely see stairs in the distance. “Also yes as there is no elevator or staircases leading between all floors in more points in throughout the building to make getting up and down floors much easier. So you literally have to cross the length of the entire school again to go up a floor, digital buildings are less likely to catch fire as badly as those in reality and it’s not like this school was in normal use anyway. Many Digimon are still trying to sort out themselves and find places in the city to settle down and this digital realm is still relatively new.”

“But fires can still happen and you’re saying you don’t have fire escapes in the case of an emergency?” The look I received was generally befuddlement as we saw the others pushing through some Kamemon upon exiting the staircase, it was as if Sami didn't understand what I was trying to get across. “Okay, why am I actually surprised that this is a non OSHA compliant world?! Am I really that used to this stuff by now...”

-Beach Bungalow, Hi-Vis Monitamon-

The Black Widow had finished its self-repair routine and Hi-Andromon had fled after delivering quite a beating to our forces.

Still... we successfully fended him off.

The Monitamon in the city were delivering real time information on what was currently happening at Fury Clan High School and it was apparent that Ultros was down and needed an immediate extraction to the ocean bunker.

Also Ogremon was facing off with two Digi-bots, apparently the less stuffy system police found our united gang’s headquarters based out of an unused schooling program.

“Do not worry lord Ultros, I shall endeavor to aid you personally!” Right or wrong, Lord Ultros was still our boss and leader of the Data Divers.

293. Server City Ransom Pt. 18.

-Equus, Abyssinia, Palicoast, Beach, Jaded La Perm-

I snuggled against Fizzy under the umbrella with Silvers cuddled up between us.

“So… nun-chucks?” I asked quietly as we snuggled on the blanket.

“No, not happening Jade, you just want them for the joke of you being a sun priest.” Aw, that’s my Storm Queen, frosty as a blizzard and she punches me into the ground.

“But I’d be like a nun and I’d be chucking myself at people.” I whined with my ears drooping.

“Why did you marry her again?” Twilight asked from a blanket with Cadence and Shining Armor relaxing.

“She’s adorable and she knows how to make life interesting, even with her annoying habits.” Yep Fizzy was the unicorn I needed to keep happy, people would suspect it was Maries that was hard to please. You just needed cottage cheese, fish jerky (Of which my mom made too much) and a dead mouse and Maries was really easy to ply for favors. “Plus she’s at least a mother to Silvers and Silvers loves her too much for the divorce to carry through or happen now.”

“So cold…” I whined and I felt Fizzy wrap her hooves around me tightly with a giggle.

“Okay… now I’m concerned as to why Jaded married you.” Twilight said confusedly.

“I was lucky she couldn’t squeak anything out other than ‘yes’, she could have said ‘Shoo-be-do shoo-shoo-be-do~’ as a joke though and I still would have taken her despite how horrible that would have been.” Fizzy stated with a flat tone and a whale shark beached itself for a second, she glared at it and it promptly pushed itself back into the water in a frantic manner to get away from her.

“Fizzy keeps the crazy Abyssinian nibbling Whale Sharks away… come on Silvers it is okay, our Tempest Shadow scared it away.” I stated with grin as Silvers whimpered in my arms at the scary fish monster that came from the water. Eventually they uncurled and looked to the water and then Fizzy, they mewled happily and pounced into their mother’s belly much to her amusement.

“So… is Airship Mauled ever going to rejoin Equestria?” Ah, so Twilight did notice that we were still technically our own country in the middle of Equestria, probably shouldn’t have brought up the Storm Queen thing then.

-Digital Realm, Fury Clan High School, second floor, Pom-

Dolly took down three Kamemon in quick succession striking the middle one to the face with the bottom of her board, bounced up to flip forward to bring it down on the second one and kicked off that Kamemon’s neck with her rear paws to slam the last one into a classroom with a sideways swing.

With a last twist, Dolly landed on the floor on top of her board with both her rear paws. Her right paw gripping the nose and her left in the air to catch the thrown bone that took out a fourth Kamemon down the hall.

Frizzle was clawing up quite a few of them and the ones she didn’t claw up, she slammed them about with a chain grapple.

Sami at my side popped a few Kamemon with her rifle as long as no one was in her line of fire, I silently wondered wonder where they were disappearing to with the Backspace System. Considering this was their base, they couldn’t very well be disappearing to the top floor and the Kamemon still in the way were quickly being thinned out under my friend’s assault.

-Fury Clan High School Medical Facilities, near the front entrance hall on the first floor, Kamemon-

They just kept coming, the room was full of groaning and in pain bodies… the horror…. the horr-AGH?!

A Kamemon teleport in on top of me, followed by several more… I was swiftly being buried alive under my kin.

I would be stuck under them for several hours, living a nightmare I couldn’t escape from.

-Fury Clan High School, second floor, Pom-

Dazzle personally lashed out with some flame whips and was leaping to the walls, climbing along lockers and avoiding the blasts of water aimed her way and sometimes clambered along the ceiling to launch attacks. Canard was hitting any Kamemon that was attacking with flaming pucks or a kick or two, his size giving him a natural advantage against any rookie level Digimon.

As we continued pushed forward down the hall to the staircase at the far end, I was slowly moving forward and not doing much fighting. I was doing a lot of thinking and Dolly was quietly reassuring me that could handle do most of the fighting for me currently.

I trusted her if the threat wasn’t beyond her and champions were definitely a threat that only Pokémon and Digimon can handle. Despite Ogremon’s shockwave hitting Dazzle directly, she’s still going strong and didn’t take too many injuries despite impacting a wall and being squeezed in Ultros’s somewhat crushingly strong tentacles not too long ago.

We were causing a lot of carnage, but there were so few Kamemon standing in our way. I was expecting like hundreds and it was more like ten or so in our way at any given time with maybe a minute long break between fighting groups of them.

Something tells me that if we had fought Ultros and Raptor Sparrowmon in order, then Etemon might have been more ready for us… if he was even ready at all.

“You think somethings up?” Sami asked before firing a spray of bullets from her rifle pressed against her shoulder.

“I don’t know, I mean I’m trying to piece together everything, but everything does actually seem as simple as it appears concerning your report on the Backspace System and finding out that some Greymon Expert guy creating it.” I mean if Etemon were a mastermind of some kind, then he’d have some plan and I couldn’t find reason to think he had much of a plan beyond getting lots of Digi-credits, sell Greymon Expert’s product and be a moderate nuisance in our backsides. “I have things I want to ask Etemon about the Anchor Key when we get to him.”

“You and me both, like why Greymon Expert would bother with a viral advertising program.” Sami muttered and we had passed by multiple unused classrooms. The classrooms looked like they had the necessary supplies for teaching, but nobody was using the stuff, some Kamemon were even coming out of the classrooms and looked a little groggy like they had been sleeping in them and quickly kicked into gear to fight us off. “Also I want to know why these Kamemon are so loyal to Etemon. The Basher Bullies and Data Divers I can understand, Ultros had control of information and Ogremon was basically a toll troll that locked up a parts of the city what with the fact that Goblimon hardly care about scruples when it comes to being generally obnoxious.”

“Yeah, but the parts of that they took over… well the Data Divers to the northwest weren’t very active in obstructing people, but they were active in observing and getting information on them. They were well prepared for us in advance if we had decided to attack. Say what you might about Ultros’s exceedingly odd and mildly vile personality, but I believe the Data Divers aren’t very evil even if their boss is somewhat dubious in that area he was willing to do dealings with us even if we were going to be enemies. Before we came to assault this place I saw one of them running the Ferris Wheel for the little Digimon, I only made mention of that the day before and they actually went and did something nice with that information.” Which let me know the Monitamon were orgranized, gathered information stupidly fast and aside from a lack of personal combat strength had a sense of community. They only tested us once or twice. The Goblimon had a sense of community and they were quite honest in their operations of being evil to a comical degree, quite aggressive, but they weren’t very strong individually with some exceptions. Ogremon… he was honest about wanting a challenge someone to fight to an absurd degree. “Ogremon just wanted a fight, he was even asking for it and we very well can’t give it to him now that he’s too strong for us. My read of him is adrenaline junkie and volatile punk, which is why I said what I did to him...”

“Even knowing it was horribly insulting to say?” Yes, Sami, saying he could be a recognized member of the overall Digimon in the city wasn’t a lie. Ogremon could run a police force if he wanted to, but no he’s more of an ‘I’m evil because I want to be’ kind of person.

“Yes… and it really set him off didn’t it? We’re almost through the second floor.” I didn’t have a read on the Falcomon, but the ‘Avalanche Avians’ chose to work with the other gangs for some reason and I could ask. They were good at spreading their guys throughout the city because of their gliding abilities, aside from that they didn’t say much and showed up to backup any of the other three allied gangs that were in trouble. “He’s probably free by now… which is why I’m worried about him coming at us from behind.”

The Kamemon, they didn’t mind stealing digi-credits even from the gangs they were allied with and the whole King’s Kame thing seem to have them under Etemon as some kind of warlord king behind the three gangs running amuck as the head of them all.

From what little we’ve heard from him, Etemon’s personality sounded extremely flamboyant and being a Digimon that apparently specializes in advertising, the kind of shock and awe he delivers would make sense for his character.

“I’m more worried about him coming at us through the floor, wonder what’s keeping him from coming after you.” Sami said as she tossed a grenade with a smiley face and spoke in a strange Mexicolt accent as it was thrown.

I looked behind me at the groaning Kamemon littered about the floor and walls that were burnt, filled with projectile holes or battered by Dolly’s skateboard. I shivered and continued forward to keep up with everyone else.

-Fury Clan, first floor back hallway, Rokusho-

Ogremon were somewhat formidable foes when given motivation, without a Leomon they tend to get bored or were constantly there wasn’t a Leomon around. They were always open about their intentions, even if they would proceed to lie, cheat and or steal afterwards, their end game intentions were always a known factor… how they get there was always a question.

This one was proving to be a major issue and Pom’s group was working its way towards Etemon, they would not likely be able to fell him even with their numbers and would need us soon enough.

To that end I pushed back the bone with the blade on my left armed and slammed my left fists armored knuckle into the right side of his face staggering him and depleting his dark net aura for a few seconds. Limited and self-made though it was, his dark net ability was quite impressive as it was terrifying that it looked like he made it on instinct and in a matter of seconds purely out of rage.

After unleashing and electrified stunning slash that paused Ogremon for a few second and dropped his aura, I hopped back several times to let Metabee open up on him.

“Have a taste of this, Burst Fire!” Metabee fired a burst of exploding bullets from both his arms that hammered Ogremon in the chest and head and actually caused quite some damage.

Ogremon roared and thrust his fist to launch a Pummel Whack attack, Metabee immediately moved out of the way as he nearly got shoulder tackled by full sized energy copy of Ogremon.

“Hah you…” Metabee was starting to say, however I kept my eye on the energy clone.

“Behind you!” My warning came in time as the energy clone turned about and lashed out its fist and fired a head shaped blast of a normal Pummel Whack.

Metabee managed to move out of the way of the blast and as he darted to the side his split horn fired off a barrage of powerful missiles that pushed Ogremon back and into a wall with every successive blast.

“Dig in Rokusho, we’ve got this!” At least Metasbee’s explosive personality at least matched his fighting ability… for the most part.

-Fury Clan, second to third floor staircase, Dazzle-

We stopped to rest for a bit and I decided to look to Frizzle. She’s been fighting alongside us, but she seemed upset and I might know why.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t enjoy acting like that either, but it helped the situation immensely…” I received Frizzle’s attention immediately as her head snapped on to me.

“Are you girls good to go? We can take another minute if you need to work out your issues, even the best players in hockey need to be benched once in a while or else they risk hurting themselves from pushing too hard. Winning isn’t everything, especially if a price paid for it was too high.” Canard’s constantly referencing hockey aside, he wasn’t wrong. “The less experienced need some game time too to get just as good.”

Lit squeaked and tilted his body slightly in curiosity on Dolly’s head as he looked between us with his four little eyes, Dolly barked something and he simply crawled down her back and snuggled into her fur to relax. The little electric tick understood Dolly well enough without a translator.

“I’m the one that should be sorry, I tried to make you feel comfortable with your evolution and here I am completely terrified of mine and I can barely confront the idea of becoming that again. It feels like I'm being a total hypocrite about these things.” Hearing Frizzle talk was still a novelty, though I wasn’t about to make fun of her squeaky helium voice as I rarely ever got to hear it since we became friends and digi-destined partners. If she talks, then I know it’s important that I should listen. “You can’t exactly go back on your evolution and you’re going to be stuck like this for the rest of your life, possibly only increasing in size as a biological. Me, I can eventually learn to slide into and out of various forms eventually with enough control of my coding, but I’ll most likely become a Growlmon again given my particular line is very set in stone. I can even become a true monster by becoming a Megidramon. In general I like being laid back, but that time as a Growlmon was the first time I digitally evolved beyond being a Rookie and when I woke up from my rampage… well you spent most of your time telling me about how horrible Viperia was and then you evolved in the sewers. Told me how Salazzles are usually seen and act… it’s hard to believe that you would ever be like that. Then you went and showed us how you could be acting and I'm just glad that your not haughty in the slightest, you didn't need to apologize for being helpful.”

“Yes, becoming a Salazzle was quite distressing for me.” Most Salazzle’s weren’t nice, ask my sisters… at least they were all smaller than me now. “Still… you were there for me and have been a good friend since. Evolution messes with brains of Pokémon sometimes and they are never quite the same after evolution and it is kind of sad when that happens, I guess gaining wings or new limbs changes perspectives on things. I’m glad that it didn’t happen to me, also I’m physically tougher than I was as a Salandit so that’s a big plus. I really just want to thank all of you for being here for me.”

“I think we’ve rested enough, we can’t stay here all day and Etemon still might find a way to get away.” Canard stated as I quietly made my way over to Frizzle to give her a hug.

“I believe that you can keep control of yourself when you become a Growlmon, you don’t exactly have the same problems that we Pokémon do when it comes to evolution.” I muttered and she put a claw around my back and hugged me in return.

“Okay, I really have to ask, where are the guys on floor three?” We turned to Pom at the top of the stairs looking into floor three. I quickly made my way up the stairs and floor three was… eerily silent.

Oh we could still hear the sounds of combat outside and below for sure, but this was like a ghost Pokémon convention. We quietly stepped out into the hallway and looked around…. nothing was coming at us or attacking.

“I don’t like this.” Pom muttered and Dolly barked something as we slowly tread forward hopefully looking for any signs of an ambush by looking into the nearby rooms. “Did we already deal with all the Kamemon?”

“That would be a little hard to believe, unless they are the smallest among the three other gangs we’ve been dealing with.” Grunted Canard as his beak clenched immediately afterwards and he carefully poked his head into doorways leading with his projectile weapon.

-Dolly-

“You know how they say when things are too quiet and then something loud happens that spooks everyone?” I padded after Pom on my paws with my skateboard across my back without disrupting Lit’s position, the throwing bone tied up in the strap. “Getting those kind of vibes here Pom.”

“Land and weapons, Sea and information, Air and possible couriers… what does King’s Kame represent as far as specialization? The most they been doing is stealing any Digi-credits not nailed down and they don’t come off as thieves to me, more like opportunists.” It seems Pom mind was not entirely on the spooky third floor hallway as we were cautiously passing by the fourth classrooms on our left and right. “They control the river at the very least, the spine of the city… not the most numbers or the best combat ability, but the most capable officers with Gawappamon and Shawjamon. What am I missing here?”

“Pom, all my fur is standing up… something nasty is about to happen soon, I can feel it. Is sixth sense a thing with magic?” She glanced at me and looked around, she lifted her left hoof and ran it in small circles around my upper back. Very comforting, but still upset that nothing was currently coming at us.

We’ve been mostly fighting constantly up to this point, so where was everyone that was trying to stop us?

“Nothing in any of these rooms?” Canard asked he continued to watch our backs. “This is taking too much time… what are the chances there aren’t any Digimon between us and Etemon right now?”

“With our collective lucks, quite low and that’s the seldom heard optimist in me speaking.” Pom was paying attention ahead and looking left and right before cautiously passing the doorways. Dazzle clambered up to the ceiling and stayed there looking for trouble, Frizzle gripped at the chain wrapped around her right arm. Even Lit was awake and looking about as we were about a quarter of the way down the hallway with nothing happening.

“So… do we just keep talking to make sure we don’t freak out if nothing happens?” A wary Dazzle said from above as she crawled along the ceiling. “I mean relaxing sounds like one of the absolute dumbest things we can do right now.”

We heard a noise and Pom looked to the right, I jumped on her sight and saw a large metal bird pass by attacking something.

“That must have been Raptor Sparrowmon.” Pom breathed out slowly. “I’m so glad we didn’t go through the whole fight all the gang leaders and then find out where Etemon was while giving them time to recover and have to fight them all over again.”

Funny, sounded like a video game with eight guys and then you fight them and the final boss twice, I don’t know if I remember it all too well. I don’t spend much time indoors playing electronic games when I could be putting my body through its paces.

“Is everyone that bothered by this whole entire floor being empty of any guards?” Canard said as he strode ahead and took glances into nearby rooms. “I don’t think anything is going to happen on this…”

A loud crashed and a dust and debris filled the corridor behind us, coming from a classroom. Soon a pair of black scythe like limbs grabbed at the edges of the doorway and ripped a large hole in and what crawled through looked like a demented black crab robot thing.

“Do you suppose that’s the thing the Data Divers had buried in the beach?” Pom asked sounding more relieved that something was happening than when it wasn’t. In fact everyone seemed to be sighing in relief. “Also Canard, there’s a rule that Dolly and me intrinsically know. It’s this, don’t tempt fate around me, because I think she’s quite salty that I won’t give up on life and drop dead!”

“Really, you guys were sighing in relief about this, wouldn’t it have been better had nothing happened at all and you were all just being silly?” The four legged machine ripped its way out of the classroom and turned towards us. “Also, yeah, tempting fate to try another assassination attempt on Pom, very bad!”

“Okay, yeah, I can see where that was stupid of me, I apologize profusely for what’s about to happen.” After a pause Canard added. “I didn’t even finish my sentence…”

“Doesn’t matter Canard, half sentences still count regardless. Honestly Dolly, I think the tension needed to be cut by something… unfortunately it’s likely a machine with an extremely deadly amount of lethal applications to it.” The dull delivery made me know that Pom was highly upset by having to fight another large machine. “One that’s going to be a bother to deal with since it’s another walking tank, it is at least smaller than the one in San Fransokyo and I can still do bark breakers given I haven’t run my throat raw in recent history. All I needed to do for that was find the frequency to hit it for the most damage.”

“So same usual way we always end up dealing with things?” Thinking about the amount of robots and machinery I’ve destroyed put things into perspective how awesome we were, plus the stories of the machines Pom has dealt with before even ending up in my home world.

“Guys… I’ve seen one of these before.” Sami had a deer in the headlights kind of look to her. “One those things can tear fifty Commandramon apart in two minutes in more than five ways…”

We heard a whirring noise.

“It’s about to fire, take cover!” Sami dove for the nearest classroom and I immediately followed Pom into diving to the side as a stream of hundreds of projectiles filled the hallway, after a moment the lead filling the air stopped.

“Hmph… send Hi-Andromon after Ultros will you?” A voice asked from the machine as it slowly started walking forward. I moved my board to shield me and looked at the staircase up to the fourth floor down the hall that now resembled Swiss cheese somewhat along with the walls around the staircase being full of holes. Why am I now thinking of snacks my family likes at a time like this? “I think it’s time that I, Hi-Vision Monitamon, show all of you exactly why you shouldn’t have messed with the Data Divers. Say hello to your doom today, the X-ATM zero nine two, the indestructible Black Widow!”

The claws on the machine snapped and it started for us only to be hit by a rocket from Sami, it was blown back, but it didn’t topple over and had taken a bit of damage. It seemed to sit still for a moment and started billowing steam.

“Hah so much for…” Was the moderately ripped up armor seriously repairing itself from a direct rocket hit in front of our eyes? The things I do for love… how was I going to protect Pom from that?! “Oh come on, it can regenerate!”

“Yeah, I… I don’t think I want to fight that thing…” Pom was quivering and why wouldn’t she be, it just showed that her Bark Breaker technique was going to be entirely pointless unless we could take out the guy piloting that thing before the armor repaired itself.

-Sami-

“This is exactly why I made this rocket launcher, M-loader!” I said from my position in a classroom, we had spread out and taken cover in various classrooms.

As that death tank stomped forward, Canard fired a few shots lightly damaging the armor. Frizzle and Dazzle opened up on it with fireball and a dragon shaped wad of energy.

The machine slowed to stop and repaired the damage done to it immediately.

“We can overwhelm its repair functions, but that is going to take hitting with constant heavy attacks back to back until it can’t keep up with the damage!” It was probably for the best that we figure out how to deal with the pilot inside that thing, otherwise we weren’t going to beat the machine. “We’d need to deal with the pilot immediately if we can even crack the armor enough to get at him.”

A few hundreds rounds flew down the hall and Dolly yelped as she pulled back into the room, she was in with Pom and Lit. I saw what she was looking at, the staircase we needed to get up to the fourth floor.

Lit tried to sneak out and the hallway immediately filled with fire as exploding orbs were launched from the spinneret grenades on the back of the machine, Lit immediately went back to the room.

“Yeah, that little electricity sucker isn’t going to be able to do anything this time, he can’t get to the sealed power source!” Ah, so Hi-Vis was aware of Lit’s existence.

“He’s not wrong, there are four pylons on the legs for repair and extra energy production.” I knew a few things about this reaper of a machine. “Even if Lit could reach one of them, it wouldn’t be enough to get all of them or stop the machine from being power from its primary reactor. At most he’d only be stopping the machines auxiliary power at best!”

“He won’t even get that much since I’m aware of his capabilities… not mention what the rest of you can do!” Responded Hi-Vis. High Vision Monitamon was a mid-tier Champion in pure offensive capability, but still a Monitamon and Monitamon were dangerously intelligent with enough information. This one was just dangerous for the reason he could fight with and without the freaking walking tank he brought to fight us. “Most of the Monitamon are off cleaning up Data Divers headquarters thanks to that ultimate you pointed at us, but I’m not going to need them to deal with you if I could beat him!”

“Any weaknesses on that thing can we exploit Sami?!” Canard stated as hundreds of shots slammed into the wall he was taking covered behind.

“Well it’s not good at fighting things that come at it from the side, back or are on top of it, since most of its weapons are forward facing. Going below it is just asking it to crush you under its weight or stab you with one of its legs. So being in front of it out in the open is kind of a death sentence.” That was just how you should approach one of these if you were ever to run across it. “As for plan of attacks, anything that can take out the pilot immediately. I’m talking highly piercing attacks, shockwaves from explosions and even devastating sounds that can vibrate past the armor, anything like that. It’s going to be hard to get close, because he likely knows most of what can do already thanks to the other Monitamon watching us in action.”

The mad machine started getting closer to our positions.

-Pom-

“Wait, Ultros is down by the back entrance hall, aren’t you worried about him!” Maybe I can try to appeal to the death machine piloting guys need to protect his boss?

“Sure he’s pretty badly injured, but if no further injury occurs he’ll be completely fine. I believe Ogremon will not strike out at him while he’s weak, besides he’s too busy dealing with those two digi-bots at the moment to really take advantage of Lord Ultros’s weakness if he were even inclined to do so in the first place. A Goblimon might, but not the mob boss himself from what information I have on him. Even in his berserker state he would not break our alliance on a whim.” Okay so that was a confirmation on what Ogremon was doing, hoped Metabee and Rokusho could handle that particular problem by themselves. “Raptor Sparrowmon and his Avalanche Avians has most of your other forces tied up so you will not be getting help from them, Abobo also has two particularly interesting specimens held up at the front hall so they aren’t going to come either. So really what else can you say now to stop me from taking all of you down now that you know where all your forces are and knowing that they can’t help you before I’m done with you?”

“Wouldn’t you rather secure Ultros first, instead of hoping that things go alright?” I tried again.

“Already sending available Monitamon to do so, thank you for reminding me of a few free agents.” I could hear the machine stomping its way down the halls toward us, it was heavy enough to be loud as my thundering heart and lightweight enough that it wasn’t breaking through the floor. It could also render Bark Breakers pointless. “Can you guys maybe give me five minutes to perform a Thousand Spears: Huo?!”

Basically if I was hit with anything at all or even so much as jostled slightly, then it would completely ruin the buildup for the attack. Also I would need the ability to concentrate to even build up for it.

“Yeah, that’ll depend on us keeping him off you for those five minutes, I don’t think he’ll let us keep him at bay that long.” Yeah, that’s what I think too Dazzle, but it’s the most powerful attack I know that’s not a desperation maneuver that’s likely to kill me.

Basically I wanted this fight to be survivable and still be capable of eating beyond using a straw by the end of it. Hard sell really, but I had an idea to stall a little longer.

“Wait, wait, time out, a few last questions before you start killing us all in a manner that will leave bloody smears everywhere!” I heard the machine in the hallway pause almost upon. Dolly, Lit and all the others in the various doorways leaned out to give me a questioning look and raised eyebrows. I gave them a weak grin. “How did you ever know we were on the third floor to come after us and how did you guess we set up Hi-Andromon to go after you when we didn’t directly tell him to do so? Also are the Avalanche Avians couriers by any chance?”

“If you must know, this vehicle has a sonar scan feature that can detect specific vocal speech, the machine caught on to the tall bipedal ducks word and I focused the zoom feature through the windows and saw you skulking about on the third floor. The reason I came through the wrong classroom is because I misjudge the leap to the High School… I was going to crash through the building right into you and give you no time to react, but I have clearly missed my opportunity for a perfect ambush completely.” Ah so Hi-Vis wasn’t perfectly calculating, good to know. “Aside from just confirming that it was you who did it… you entered an eatery and the Biyomon you talked to was later seen in the presence of Hi-Andromon who immediately set out to the northwestern beach where the Data Divers are known to reside. Using that brightly smiling Biyomon as an intermediary to charm and direct him at us was smart when Hi-Andromon had it out for you as well. It’s just too bad he lost the fight to us, can’t believe the guy managed to limp away after being hit with every mine, trap and the Black Widow constantly attacking him… the guy just wouldn’t die and I hope he reduces back to an Andromon, because I don’t think we Monitamon could actually delete him otherwise. The only reason he got away is because the Black Widow was just that badly damage, still it took on an ultimate and made him flee. Yes the Avalance Avians work in the distributing of the Backspace Systems for sale and are couriers for things that simply can’t be ‘attach filed’ to an 'anon' email. Is that all you wanted? Does anyone else want any questions before I take my frustrations on you? If yes, well too bad, because I’m coming for you right now!”

“Yeah, you can go about attacking us now and thank you for telling us all that.” I said pleasantly, then inhaled and though about how he said his machine could pick up Canard’s voice. He was just that confident that he could kill us all…

Well he probably could, but I would give it my best shot to take on him and his monstrous self-repairing machine that held up to an ultimate… and barely at that considering what the ultimate Digimon went through to barely disable it long enough to escape.

“Do you have a plan Pom?” Dolly asked as the machine made a loud noise.

“Nope.” This made me wonder… how do you even plan for something like this?! “We should probably dive behind something or knock something over for cover... like right now.”

An orb with a glowing red line making beeping noises flew into the room in arc and Dolly knocked it back out using the bone club like a baseball bat, the sudden fiery explosion and blast wave outside the doorway knocked us over.

I quickly reached my hooves up to the nearby teacher’s desk and heave it over in front of me as another explosion went off, the wood surprisingly didn’t burn, but it did scorch vaguely. Was it made of Ipe wood?

“Oh cool, it’s made of I P wood!” I heard Sami shouting from another room where another explosion happened. “Everyone, anything made of wood here will make for some really good cover!”

“Okay, who programmed the freaking wood in this building to be to be made of nigh incombustible I P WOOD?!” Angrily shouted Hi-Vis Monitamon as he lost all composure that his grenade launching attacks wouldn’t be able to flush us out.

“So there is something like OSHA compliance here… huh, neat.” It was nice to find out about that now of all times while my back was to the wall in a classroom with a death machine coming after me.

This scenario wasn't new to us, nor was it unusual that it was happening yet again... we had to destroy a machine or not die as long as possible trying to do so.

"Here we go again Pom." Grumbled Dolly rolling her eyes.

Author's Note

A champion Digimon piloting X-ATM092 Black Widow managed to repel Hi-Andromon. (For some reason I read this designation as X-ATM as 'Atma' in relation to the words 'Atma Weapon')

It is also know as that one early game Final Fantasy 8 boss that just wouldn't die, but could be killed if you kept beating it into the ground enough times. It gave you the impression that it was unkillable and you would run to the shore so it could die under armor piercing deck gun fire.

FF8 also had a habit of having the enemies in the game scale alongside you and they scale faster to be exponentially more powerful than you.

294. Server City Ransom Pt. 19.

Author's Note

Music: Never Look Back, Final Fantasy 8.

Oddly a lot of things named 'Fred' are evil...

294. Server City Ransom Pt. 19.

-???, Buttina Stalliona-

“Hehehe, I hope you squeal really good…” Suddenly the covers were ripped from my body and I aimed my Boomacorn shotgun at the wrinkly guy with the claw gloves, a sweater and a fedora.

“Squeal how?” I asked in consideration.

“Why you’re in my realm now little diamond pony, a realm of nightmares where I will torture horribly to…” I raised a hoof stopping the raisin guy from talking.

“Are you a demon?!” I asked excitedly, I’ve always wanted a pet nightmare monster! “This is awesome!”

“Uh, what… I don’t think you quite understand the situation here, I’m going to hunt you down in your dreams and kill you in real life through them.” Said my new pet demon.

“Give me thirty minutes to eat an entire jar of peanut butter while fighting you...” I said with confidence and the entity glared at me and raised a pair of claws at me in a threatening gesture.

I put away my Boomacorn and pulled out my seldom used ‘Unicornsplosion’ shotgun... for when I want to make things extra glittery in as painful a manner as possible.

I loaded two shells and pumped it with a hoof to get a satisfying clacking noise.

-Thirty one minutes later-

“This can’t be happening to me!” The dream monster Freddy, which barely rated as a demon to Fred, had been turned into a tiny raisin with limbs. He was beating his tiny fists against the inside of the plastic peanut butter jar. I even poked holes in the jar lid to make sure they could breathe. “I’m the one that does the torturing, not the one that gets tortured! I’m supposed to hear your screams of torment, let me out of here so I can violently stab you!”

“Can I please keep him Ollie… please?!” I gave Oleander a watery eyed look and biggest cute Pandoran Bicorn look I could manage, of course my species was about as dangerous as everything else on the planet of Pandora so… you’d have to be an idiot to fall for it or friendly enough that the Bicorn wouldn’t gut you with their diamond horns.

“I have no idea why you would want a runt of a monster like that, but I can at least help keep him contained. As for keeping him… well….” Oleander tapped her chin with a hoof while thinking about it. “We’ll do a trial run at least. Just remember to feed him a bagel every other week and maybe parts of the souls of your enemies if they did something to upset you gravely. Never give him full souls and or souls of the innocent, they become idiots very quickly that way. First things first though, we’ll have to make sure he’s not a cenobite. Those guys are a bit annoying to tame and can get a little bit uppity if they think they have any kind of power over you.”

“Yeah, but they taste quite delicious!” Fred said as picked his grinning skulls teeth with a pin and belched out something that sounded vaguely like a documentary on how to cook pan fried bacon.

“This is exactly why we can’t have pets Fred.” Oleander said flatly in a dull tone.

“Yeah, because they are not awesome enough, LIKE OVERLORD SONG ENDER!” I rolled my eyes at Fred, then smiled at the two of them. “Also the guy Fred in his name and thinks he’s scary… he might have an ‘ACCIDENT’ soon.”

“I can hear the obvious air quotes Fred, is this going to be like what happened with the animatronics in that one pizzeria?” Oleander asked dully while giving Fred a searching look as he looked away while whistling.

-Digital Realm, Third Floor, Sami-

We can’t fight that thing, we don’t have the skills to fight that thing, but how were we going to avoid it?!

Was I hyperventilating, also it could detect noises at a distance… I tried to make my breathing shallower and slower to not be as loud.

I made my way to the door way over the light scorched desk and looked at Canard poking out of another room and he looked as worried as I did when the Black Widow started moving to us attack in melee or with its machine cannon. We both ducked back into the rooms we were taking cover in.

Pom may have jokingly stated she could use her Thousand Spears: Huo on it, but the machine would probably survive the attack if she avoided aiming at the pilot… I don’t think she has the nerve to hope that the Backspace System activates before she kills Hi-Vis Monitamon with a flaming spear of pure destruction. Also the repairs system would keep a Black Widow going even if I could constantly hammer it with rockets.

Pom was decent fighter, but kind of reluctant to hurt anyone seriously or else she’d be using those magical claws of hers constantly. Frizzle had the aggressiveness needed, but her turning into Growlmon wasn’t likely as she was as afraid of her evolution as much as I was of the possibility of becoming Sealsdramon. I liked my emotions where they were and Rookies could get strong enough to beat Ultimates without going through evolution, but it was exceedingly hard to pull off and requires ZIP compression file at the very least to hold all the extra data that evolution would create.

That Black Widow took on Hi-Andromon and managed to make him retreat. The only thing we had to compete with were numbers… another explosion went off and the toppled desk next to me took the brunt of the blast. We couldn’t stay in these rooms even if the IP wood was very good for a defensive position against explosives. The blade arms or gun on that machine would chew through the wood in short order, that or the Hi-Vis was going to keep hammering us with grenades until the structural integrity gives out on us and the floor collapses.

Is this why Digi-vices are given to kids? Was it that they were immature enough to run into danger and the Digimon has to protect them from absolutely everything, the kids in return will give the Digimon strength to digitally evolve from the partnership. We didn’t exactly have that kind of symbiosis here…

Pom and Dolly lost their Digimon partner to a virus specifically geared to destroying him should he break free of his collar. I’m Canards partner and he almost wanted nothing to do with me until a short while ago where he might have started seeing me as a friend or comrade. Frizzle and Dazzle are having some issues coming to terms with the whole ‘berserk abnormal Growlmon incident’ and have barely worked it out, they otherwise have a number of similarities as lizards that are both equally hazardous in nature with nice, if slightly different, personalities.

Also Dazzle’s Toxic was fast acting and I knew it needed to hit something living. I still wondered why hitting something alive was a requirement and why would something like that work on Digimon anyway?

-Origin Space, Arceus-

The answer to Sami’s thoughts was that Toxic works on bio data as well because Porygon exists, Toxic can affect digital beings and Porygon is a good choice as a go between for our worlds… as was a Rotom who could administrate just about any device and thus making it impossible for the Digimon to manipulate the local coding.

The only beings who can have complete immunity are Zangoose, some Snorlax or very rarely a Gligar, also if the poison affected everything else other than a living being… well my Pokémon worlds would be run entirely by just poison types now wouldn’t they? The existence of Pecha Berries and Suicune being able to cleanse large sources of water were backups, just in case something like that happened.

Balance is certainly a key to creating good worlds that won’t suddenly destroy themselves immediately due to some minor lack of foresight of an inexorably small detail that snowballs completely out of control to being a complete universal problem…

What could cause an imbalance like that, but would be cool to implement?

Hmm… paradoxical motorcycle lizards!

-Digital Realm, Server City, Fury Clan High School third floor, Sami-

The Black Widow skidded sideways pointing into my room and I could hear the whirring of the gun building up to fire.

I quickly got up and started running from my cover, bullets started shredding the desk and everything behind me and silently deciding that looking back any further would be a poor idea.

I hopped onto and across the desks at a frantic pace and shards of the classroom flew everywhere.

Quickly lunging for a nearby window, I threw my left shoulder into it and smashed through as round after round of heavy machine gun tore through the air after me for a few seconds. I felt one rip into my coding at my side as I twisted while falling out of the sight of the window.

“Backfire!” Hopefully I didn’t misaim this or the fall would definitely make me hurt even worse.

-Pom-

My right ear twitched it sounded like Sami just ejected herself out a nearby window. The following explosion, among all the glass and other materials breaking under a hailstorm of projectiles, sounded like her using her bazookas ‘backfire’ thing.

Hope she was alright.

“I don’t know about you, but going out the nearest window sounds like a good idea right about now Pom.” Yeah, there were three problems with that, Dazzle, Canard and Frizzle. Dazzle might be able to climb around on walls, but Frizzle and Canard? They’d be sitting… well metaphorical ducks aside from Canard and we couldn’t abandon them and Dazzle certainly wouldn’t abandon a friend.

“Dolly, I want you and Lit to get behind that machine or at least try to get behind it, also Lit… don’t climb around on it and stay with Dolly.” Though my words seemed to have confused Lit, he still nodded with a tiny determined look in four small blue eyes. “I’ll distract it for a bit and then run, you just need to get behind it and figure out something to do from there.”

I took a breath and then ran out into the hall as the machine was about to go for Frizzle or Dazzle, I loosed a quick bark buster beneath it and exploded it under the front of the machine. The machine rocked slightly and it immediately turned on me with a whirring noise starting up.

I inhaled and then jumped straight up and flipped to plant my hooves the ceiling, looking down I saw hundreds of projectiles passing by below and tried to raise up slightly to track me. I had noted that the front gun couldn’t aim up very well.

The slightly dark machine, as Sami had noted, was made for attacking things head on with lethal amounts of force. Its long range gun wasn’t exactly great at firing upwards beyond a certain angle as the machine was designed to fight things on the ground or possibly in the water given it was at the beach. The exploding orbs from the spinnerets could still reach me, so I would have to blow them up early if they were fired at me.

It raised on its hind legs and the front claws suddenly extended large glowing blades of energy. It swung its right claw and then it’s left upwards at me, forcing me to trot backwards along the ceiling as two slash marks formed in front of me.

I think I was getting used to evading in an inverted manner, also Thousand Spear: Huo was not a likelihood or even possibility here.

I trotted back a few more steps trying to make sure I had at least two hooves planted against the ceiling as I veered away from the blades of energy that slashed at me several more times.

Dolly chose that moment to burst out and forward, I saw a swirl of green wind boost her and the machine tried to stab its front right leg down on her. She swerved past it and managed to get behind the machine that suddenly blasted flames out all around it, thankfully Lit had stayed with Dolly as the machines outer shell became hazy with heat. Likely a defensive measure with Lit in mind to stop him from just gnawing at whatever energy sources this thing had.

A Fireball and Dragon Pulse rocked the machine backwards and instead of falling over, it toppled forwards onto all four legs and started firing hundreds of projectiles at Frizzle and Dazzle who immediately took cover in the same room.

I noted Canard pop out and fire a few pucks at the machine doing some light damage drawing fire his way, he was actively giving me time to backpedal some more and out of sight.

The machine was hit by a blast of lightning and a burst of wind from behind. Instead of turning around, its spinnerets rotated about and fired two grenades behind it. After a yelp, I heard an explosion and felt out for Dolly to get an idea of her position and health as I clambered through the upper part of a door into a different classroom. Dolly returned the feeling that she and Lit were okay.

Were all the doors in this school just open? Nobody bothered to close them at all? Still not the most important thing to be concerned about right now. Even if we could beat this machine, the pilot was still apparently a champion level Digimon and that was going to be as big a problem as they already were being with their vehicle.

I leaned out from the upper frame of the door and spat a Bark Buster in its direction, the liquid magic landed beneath the machine. I held off and on actually detonating it for the moment and ducked back as a spray of projectiles tore up the doorway.

I silently gave Dolly an idea of what I wanted, but did she have the energy for it?

“Aerora!” Dolly barked immediately, I could feel it drained her pretty badly and sent some energy her way to make up for the cost. The hallway was soon filled with powerful whipping winds that knocked the front of the machine upwards as the tornado erupted from beneath it forcing it onto its hind legs.

I detonated the Bark Buster into the bottom half of the machine, forcing it straight up as the wind continued to buffet and push it threatening to put it on its back. It started to lean forward slightly then several flaming pucks, a Dragon Pulse and two fireballs finished knocking it entirely over onto its back.

“Did that do it?” I asked, then I found out how it made the leap to the third story of this building.

Jets of flame erupted out of two of the legs and the machine flipped itself half way into a wall and then used its four legs to finish righting itself into standing right side up. All that effort to knock it upside down and do some damage… and it was already doing the fog thing and repairing.

“Any other ideas Pom?!” Shouted Dazzle as she ducked back and away from another spray of projectiles that tore through the doorway.

“That was the best I had. Aside from using my Thousand Spear: Huo technique and I can’t do that with any speed to save our live unless given the time to set up for it.” The machine was fully repaired by the time I finished that sentence. I had to wonder who built this thing and why, because someone definitely got their money’s worth out of it. “Does anybody else have any better ideas aside from hit it a lot to the point we overload its ability to repair itself? Now would be the time for them… because I doubt any of you want to pull out when we’re so close to getting at Etemon.”

“No, I’m not leaving without access to some way out of the digital realms!” Of course Canard was angry, I understood the sentiment of not being able to go home because of so many obstructive problems getting in the way. “Not this time, I’m not going to fail to get out of these realms again!”

It was a dream come true that Arceus even offered my group a surefire way home, only the caveat of our helping him was becoming much more convoluted. I even expected this when he asked us to just help out Aurora.

I’m sure Arceus had something to do with the way the digital realms continent was shaped given it connected to one of his worlds. Arceus could even get Canard home to his team, but what would it cost him to ask for that help?

“I can understand your frustrations Canard, I’m living them, but keep your head in the game and don’t cause any fouls the team can’t take!” I knew a few things about hockey, anyone who was Velvet’s friend or at least had a reindeer friend in general would. “We don’t want to lose anyone here due to impatience.”

-Canard-

I had checked the Digivice after Sami was blown out a window, it was keeping track of her health and she took a bad hit and was still in the fight. Didn’t know where she ended up though or what she was doing, but it was good to know she was alright at least. She was a soldier, she knows the dangers, yet her positivity was strangely common among all the Commandramon. Hearing Pom say that made me check the device again.

Pom was right I couldn’t afford doing something lethally stupid here. Another spray of bullets blew through the wall and got stuck in the desk I was ducking behind. I couldn’t stay stuck behind this thing or I could get cornered like what happened to Sami, I was going to suggest she make a few grappling hooks later even if she had an idea of other things she needed to work on. I could maybe even draw up some Puckian tech she could recreate.

I wouldn’t likely survive the three story fall unless digital world physics suddenly glitches entirely in my favor. Unlikely, the worlds I’ve been through haven’t exactly been the kindest to me and the puck pistol was the only physical object I still had one me and it was using regenerating digital ammo. It wouldn’t have anything to shoot once we leave the digital realms… another spray of bullets struck my cover.

If we could even get out, I’m going to die trying at least. I got out from my cover, picked up a chair and then moved near the entrance of the classroom I was in. I quickly heaved it out and it drew the fire from the machine which practically turned the chair into confetti. That thing was not going to run out of ammunition if it’s anything like what I’m using with my puck pistol, but… the grenade launcher was a vulnerable point.

“Pom, can you get Dolly or Lit to hit that explosives launcher as its launching explosives!” It was an idea at least. I’m starting to have a post-traumatic stress episode of having to fight through tons of Hunter Drones back on Puckworld here.

“Good idea as any, until the launcher repairs itself!” Pom answered

-Dazzle-

Still didn’t like using Dragon Pulse, but it was my most powerful attack. Frizzle wasn’t having much luck with her Pyro Sphere in doing a lot of damage either. We heard as much as saw Canard throwing the chair, we both leaned out and fired on the machine doing some negligible damage while it was busy blasting the chair into small chunks. Negligible in the fact that anything we did would be fixed.

My dimensional energy stores for specific attacks were going to run dry eventually, wished I could do a Z-move, grow giant or even had a mega evolution.

“Daz…” Frizzle’s high pitched voice startled me, I looked to her and she looked back at me and pointed at the Digivice with her right claw as her left settled on my right shoulder.

“Can you keep control of yourself?” I believed she could do it and well… that thing was not something I would want to face up close and personal and it was already encroaching on where Pom was. “I know you can do it, but I need to hear it from you.”

Hearing that machine skid to a stop and start firing, I looked to see it was aimed into the room Pom was in across the hall and two doorways down and then stopped after a second as Pom landing on top of the machine itself and then launched up to the ceiling before it could burn her when it blasted flames out of itself, she quickly started moving along the ceiling in the direction of Dolly and Lit. I noticed her turn to bark out a blob of energy that stuck itself fast to where the explosives launchers were as she moved.

Okay that was good, we had the machine in a pincer now… now if only we could actually capitalize on that. I turned back to Frizzle and she notice I was paying attention to her, she tilted her right claw left and right with a grimace. She was willing to digi-volve again, but didn’t want to and I wasn’t going to force her to.

“We’ll think of something Frizzle, you don’t have to.” She seemed almost relieved to hear me say that, almost because the machine turned and started firing on us making us duck back into the room. “Also Growlmon is a bit big for the space we’re currently occupying currently and I worry we won’t even get to the fourth floor if this floor ceased to exist at the rate we’re going.”

I quickly moved around the desk and shoved it in the way of the projectiles with Frizzle’s help, as they tore open the doorway and wall between us. The desk wouldn’t last much longer under the concentrated attack, Canard fired some pucks but that wasn’t distracting it from us. We’re the most dangerous, to the machine without Sami so it’s fair to focus us down first.

“Mmm…” Frizzle looked at me worriedly, we heard the sounded of lightning striking the machine again wonder why Lit would do…

What followed was two explosions in quick succession. She got up and looked out into the hallway and I followed to see the back end of the machine was heavily damage and it had flopped onto the floor. What followed was a third explosion that toppled it to the side reveling Sami was with Dolly and Lit.

Lit continued to blast focused lightning bolts at the machine.

“M-Loader… Okay… hit it with everything… you’ve got… because it’s not going to be down for too long!” Wonder what happened with Sami? She didn’t sound too healthy and was out of breathe as she fired another explosive into the back end. “We need to keep it… down… everyone… move to this side of it… quickly!”

Canard didn’t even hesitate to start firing pucks, Frizzle started firing Pyro Spheres into it and I followed up with Dragon Pulses. This wasn’t slowing down the rapidly repairing machine that lost a portion of its back end that was already quickly reforming, but we were making sure it stayed down longer. Hammering it wasn’t exactly going to work when it was fixing itself faster than we could break it.

I noticed Pom wasn’t around. Ah… I think we were doing the Thousand Spears: Huo plan.

Frizzle nodded to me in understanding as I blasted another dragon shaped wad of energy into the machine, what was that thing made of that it could take such a pounding?! A Metagross would have been knocked out by now if I was using fire.

Canard was able to move faster than us, because he didn’t have to focus energy through his mouth to attack. We carefully made it by the repairing machine that was quickly working on standing up and then kept hitting it from behind as Sami started fired again once we were clear of the blasts her attacks caused.

As we all grouped up, there were things I had to know.

“Are you okay and where’s Pom and Dolly?” I didn’t see them out here with us, but Lit was here.

-Sami-

“Setting up… and no. I’ll be okay though… not the first time I’ve been injured jumping out and… reentering a building… I was doing that with a rope the last time this happened though. Could have done without blasting myself… through a brick wall… on the second floor.” Yeah, that didn’t help my projectile wound in my code and I’m glad we Commandramon came with decent helmets, because I missed the window I had been aiming for. I planted my weapon against the floor. “B-loader.”

“B-loader, why would you do that and not another M-loader?” Canard knew how upset I was that it took me forever to retool my weapon to allow for M-loader again, B-loader was a confusing thing to do in this situation if not for one particular reason I would be using it.

“In room opposite… the Black… Widow came through.” As for Pom, well she was preparing her attack and we needed to stall for five minutes. We didn’t even know if she could move once she started building up for it. Hopefully he understood the meaning of next words. “Five minutes.”

“Ah… Dazzle get the desk from that room. We just need to distract, lure and survive the outcome! I would rather be fighting Rex Hunters right now.” Canard grumbled, yet he still entered a nearby room and dragged a desk out into the hallway and Dazzle stacked the other desk on top of that one. It was around this time that the machine was standing on its legs and quickly turning around, Lit, Canard, Dazzle and Frizzle kept hitting it.

I carefully propped my bazooka up on my shoulder and leaned out, I began waiting until I had a good shot… then depressed the trigger with all I had. The bread flew out in a less than solidified glob, fun thing to figure out that I didn’t always have to fire fully baked loaves.

The bread glob splattered into the machines sights and it immediately started blindly firing in our direction. Thankfully Canard thought to bring the IP Wood desks out or we wouldn’t be standing here as they soaked up a massive amount of projectile fire.

Looking out from behind the desks, I saw the machine flare with flames and that just baked the bread into the visual ability of the Black Widow. It was going to take more flames than that to finally clear its sight.

I heard Frizzle hum in appreciation at the sudden smell, probably remembering the tastes of tranquilizer laced bread I blast her mouth with when she was a Growlmon. Technically… I couldn’t remove the tranquilizer from the bread mix, I’m still wondering how it became hard coded.

The armor on the Black Widow might have been taking amounts of damage, but it kept repairing. I already had an idea what it was made from, but it couldn’t repair forever if we did massive enough damage to the composite digizoid in one attack. To that end Dolly and Pom would be getting a combined assault ready.

“I can’t believe this is a sentence I would ever need to say in my life, but… don’t hit that bread!” Canard shouted as the machine came blindly stomping for us on four legs and ignited two energy blades from its front claws.

“That’s far easier said than done Canard!” By the end of this Dazzle, this floor will probably be totally and utterly wrecked if we fail to bring the Black Widow down before needing Frizzle to evolve.

Dazzle aimed a Dragon Pulse at the front left leg and made it trip to stall its forward movement, Frizzle having blasted the front right at the same time.

Another burst of flames and the bread was slightly blackened, still hadn’t cleared its vision, but it was blindly slashing its blades forward while encroaching on us.

“M-loader.” I raised my bazooka and fired a rocket into its front right leg from my position right of the the desks. Dazzle and Frizzle were on the left.

Understandably Canard was quickly dragging more desks out of rooms behind us as the two in front of us soaked up the volley of projectiles, his puck pistol could only do so much to help and he needed something like an indestructible hockey stick to really help here.

Beneath me was Lit who followed up by blasting it with as much electrical energy as he could put into the attack, poor little guy had to be getting tired by now… because that was a lot of power he was putting out. I was beginning to wonder how many lightning bolts the little bug could make with that amount of raw power.

The Black Widow stood up and was charging for our position.

“Move!” I ran and vaulted over the desks behind us, noting Lit clinging to the top of my right booted foot as I did. Bits of desk went flying as they were swiftly shredded by the energy blade producing claws. Another burst of flames from the machine blackened the bread blocking its vision completely. “It’s going to burn through the bread entirely in the next burn or two!”

“Can’t you just add more and keep it blind?” Still not used to hearing Frizzle’s high pitched squeaky voice, but good question.

“I lowered the cycle rate on it while reinstalling my M-loader function, I didn’t think I’d need it as much!” Which means I wasn’t going to use it as often, but it was still handy to have for situations where I needed to blast something with liquefied bread or a fully cooked bread loaf. I was doing an M-loader right now and I fired a rocket into the machine dead center, it was about to get its vision back anyway.

-Canard-

Okay this was getting ridiculous, how much more did that thing need to be hit with before it would stop fixing the damage? Well Pom’s trump move could certainly do it, but I had some reasonable doubts.

To that end I started moving things into the path of that machine to slow it down, Lit and the girls were hammering it with everything they had and then some as they fell back.

Not really a good vote of confidence that it wasn’t slowing down that thing one bit. I just hoped Pom would be ready by the time we got to them.

-Dolly-

I looked out the window at the falcon guys and that metal raptor bird thing versus our guys out there, yeah… things weren’t going so well there. That metal bird looked more terrifying than the Camden Park giant goose. Don’t know where Oni guy was or what was exactly stalling him and I saw one of the Skate Scamps out there helping the fight, but we didn’t see any of them up here with us so Abobo might be coming soon and that’s a terrifying thought.

I turned to look at Pom who was trying to concentrate on the little ball of flame and she kept her breathing in a cycle as who hooves danced in circles around it. She was intently focused on what she was doing and I moved to looked out in the hallway. Ignoring the large ripped open hole across from us to look to my right.

I saw Canard trying to put things in the path that might slow the four legged death spider thing, the others were hitting that machine with a lot of attacks.

To think my part was the easy part in all this, I was just going to sync with Pom and support her attack. She already topped my magic up with a few strong hoof slaps to my board. Still didn’t know why I couldn’t do the impact thing to restore magic just by myself.

-Sami-

I quickly hopped over the barricade and ran, one last blast of flames and the machine could see again. I ducked behind a desk as projectiles sprayed forward and it continued to stomp forward towards our cover.

Canard was behind the doorway at the staircase going down and popping out to fire a few puck pistol shots, as was Frizzle shooting Pyro Spheres from the other side of the doorway. Dazzle had taken to the ceiling above the machine and was staying still so that she couldn’t be heard.

It knew where we were with its sound sensors before clearing its vision, if he’s relying on vision now then Dazzle could find a moment to get the drop on Hi-Vis when he lost his vehicle.

I shifted to the left popped up and fired a rocket, the machine quickly blew it out of the air under a hail of projectiles as I ducked back down behind cover.

Lit took the opportunity to blast lightning in a brilliant flash that stopped it from spraying my position with hundreds of projectiles. He hopped onto me and pointed to the room Pom was preparing her surprise for the Black Widow.

I quickly ran for the doorway and dove through it as hundreds of rounds ripped through the air behind me.

“Why won’t any of you just die, most of you are biologicals and a few rookie levels!” We’re all survivors and too attached to living Hi-Vis.

I got up from my prone position and looked to Pom whose focus snapped to me for a half second before returning to swirling the ball of fire and she started sweating, she couldn’t hasten up the pace of her attack looked understandably freaked out. Dolly was holding a paw out next to her and waiting, as Frizzle and Canard held Black Widow’s attention with constant fire and pucks.

“It’ll hopefully…. be enough… M-loader.” It’s always a good idea to have a rocket prepped, yeah I needed a good medic. Hopefully Hea-Gatomon was close enough to put me back together again after what I was about to pull. “After Pom hits…. It… we blast it… with whatever we have! If that still isn’t enough... and it starts repairing just book it for the fourth floor.”

“You’d think Etemon would at least come to see what’s going on with all the noise we’re making!” Yeah, it made one wonder Canard.

-Fourth Floor Principal’s Office, Etemon-

“Zzzzz….” Open mouthed, snoring loudly and still sleeping with dreams about being famous despite everything happening outside and one floor down.

-Third floor, Sami-

I shoulder my bazooka and slung my rifle about into my arms. Time to help draw some attention… and lure Hi-Vis into position. Suicide missions had always been my bread and butter even if I already was hurting pretty bad. Never been on a mission where I wasn’t hurt, so used to pain emotional and physical… it makes being alive feel more special to me when I could appreciate the danger I was about to put myself in.

I ran out of the doorway and sprayed the machine with pointless rounds from my Digital Infantry Rifle, to little effect of course, I ran to the left and leapt over the stream of projectiles as they swept towards me and continued firing back. I felt my tail get clipped once or twice.

“Come on, if you can’t deal with a common Commandramon, then you’re really bad at your job and I doubt you could really be Ultros’s number two in anything other than a toilet!” I taunted and then rolled into the gaping torn open hole the Black Widow made coming into the school and made for the back right corner of the and sat down exhausted.

This room had seen better days, before the large four legged robotic tank tore through here. I propped my rifle up at my side as I sat in the corner breathing roughly and calmly brought my bazooka up. Come on Pom, have it ready in time…

“Hmph… just for that you’ll be the first one to be taken out!” Yes, my lure was successful in getting Hi-Vis to focus on me! The machine appeared in the gaping hole and turned about to the right to take aim at me. I fired a rocket into its front left leg toppling it slightly to lock it in place. “Really, that’s the last thing you’re going to do? Stumble me? You obviously aren’t using that Backspace System you bought, hope you enjoy the loss of everything that makes you, you.”

“Oh… I wouldn’t know about that…” Fireballs and pucks continued to dent or damage the armor that just fixed itself constantly. Its little wonder Hi-Andromon had trouble with this thing, his kind of Digimon were a bit one note in combat tactics… not a very hi-tier Mega if you lose to a champion in a self-repairing tank with good tactical ability.

A grin passed my lips as I heard the heavy machine gun revving up to start firing.

“Thousand Spears… Huo!” I heard a bark that sounded like ‘aero’ sound off along with the word ‘Huo’ and the world lit up and became incredibly hot as I reflexively closed my eyes and felt a lot of pain. It felt like the sun was in the room with me for a few seconds.

Weakly opening them again I saw the back half of the machine had been totaled and I felt myself being lifted from the floor.

Canard?

The hole in the classroom was much bigger now and slightly melted from what I could see.

“Can you hear me, come on Sami, focus on me... it shot her several times before your attack hit Pom!” Yeah… I can hear you Canard… ow… okay world back in focus and several holes in my torso’s coding. So much for bullet proof vests… then again they weren’t rated for cannon fire from vehicles only fire from other Commandramon, which it was admittedly good for because we did accidentally shoot each other a lot starting out. “She needs help.”

“Well she’s not going to…WAAHHHH!” Hi-Vis stated as he landed from ejecting out of his vehicle and wielding his lightning jutte, only to be blindsided by a Dragon Pulse and blown out the third story hole in the room by Dazzle.

Dazzle dropped from the ceiling and stared out the hole for a few seconds. That had been an excellently timed sneak attack.

“We should get moving, he’ll be back soon. I seriously doubt that was enough to take him out.” Then Pom looked towards the machine and I started wondering what she was staring at. “Are you kidding me, it can still fix itself from that kind of damage?!”

The Black Widow was repairing itself despite missing its back legs, even rebuilding the portion of its rear that had been melted entirely into slag… so once its pilot got back...

“I suggest… running for… the Fourth Floor…” I saw a bit of loose coding float out of my mouth when I coughed.

Okay… that wasn’t good. This hurts so much…

“Canard… we’ll go after Etemon, you take Sami and find her help.” Yeah, like Canard was going to give up on…

“Right, come on Sami, Hea-Gatomon was supposed to show up out front to help the Skate Park Scamps if things went south right? I’ll get you to her!” I was cradled in Canard’s arms… what? “Shock… blacking…”

-Pom-

Okay Canard was running down the nearby stairs with Sami, the machine was repairing itself and the pilot could have hopefully been blown far enough away that he wouldn’t be back in a timely manner. Our collective lucks wasn’t anywhere near that good.

Which is why the rest of us were moving full tilt for the fourth floor stairway as Canard went to get Sami taken care of.

It wasn’t a victory, because once that Hi-Vis guy got back, we’d be looking at the business end of that machine again once it’s fully functional.

I stepped one hoof onto the fourth floor and knew nothing should be in our way aside from Etemon now, the top floor was empty too.

-Principal’s Office, Etemon-

“Huh? What’s going on…? We must be under attack, I’ll mosey on up to the roof and see what is happening around here.” I woke up to a bunch of noise and someone setting off my alarm at the top of the fourth floor stairs. The Kamemon probably have it handled.

295. Server City Ransom Pt. 20.

-Ransei, Geoff-

“Woolooloo, I have some apples, woolooloo I’ll eat them too… woolooloo sharing with friends, woolooloo roasting them on some fiery stick ends~!” I smiled as I gathered some friends for some snacks.

“Geoff.” A voice stated from out of nowhere, it didn’t come from the surrounding Wooloo.

“Huh, a sexy voice?!” I looked around for someone, possibly interested in Wooloo snuggles.

“No, that would be incest and you Wooloo are actually very good about never committing that taboo at least. I’m an eldritch entity who hides behind simplistic looking equinoid form with an unusual girdle as some would say. I’m basically your grandfather given I made the existence of all Pokémon, yes there are implications to that so please stop thinking along those lines. Do I really need to inform you that I’m Arceus?” The voice that seemed to most certainly be Arceus said… after answering all my questions as soon as they popped into my head.

“Oh my goodness, I’m having a true religious experience… thought it would be with more glowing lights from Orbeetles high above and Pidoves on harmonicas or Kazoos.” I said brightly as I pulled an apple from the fire blew out the flames and waited for it to cool. “So-… what do you need?”

“Usually someone would say Swanna’s on harps and the bug type reference for the lighting is usually Vikavolt or Volcarona. Look, yes, I’m talking to you for a good reason.” Was it because… “You’re a cleric, that’s a small part of it. I just need you to tell King Evan to prepare for a fight with the kingdom of Ignis. The violence there is about to spill over into Greenleaf so send an envoy through Fontaine to quickly form up a defense alliance before all of Greenleaf burns down. Also send someone diplomatic to Violight quickly, trust me on this.”

“I like to think differently… still think Orbeetles would be better for the lighting, though what would you say to the idea of trumpeting Trumbeaks or Toucannons?” I asked. “Also is Pom okay? I did get news she was scouting out Violight and she should be there right now.”

“She’ll be fine… ish…” That wasn’t exactly a confident answer to the question Arceus, it sounded like you were trying to dodge the fact that something was going on with Pom. “The Toucannons got too loud… I mean er… I’d rather have an Oricorio do the musical accompaniment and they dance beautifully while playing instruments… why am I even stuck on this subject of your religious experience?! Any inane more questions?”

Sounds like what you were actually trying to do was dodge even further there by mentioning the fact that you’ve used Toucannons before for one of these whole holy experience things. It probably didn’t go quite right or correctly given the grimacing sounds you just made, I’m going to ignore the dodge and continue to the conversation for the moment.

“Well you started it by communicating with me… I have to know, why can’t we Wooloo use rollout?” It was a good question and it was one for the century, but it wasn’t most wanted to know question. It was a question for my people who were waiting around me with baited breathes.

“If you used rollout and impacted a Pokemon with your thick wool, what would happen?” A question from the lord of Pokemon himself, it must be a trial of some kind.

“Uh… hit them with a wall of fluff and go over them harmlessly if it was thick enough or my wool would probably catch on their bodies if they were big enough and I would just roll up them and possibly get stuck? Then there’s the possibility that our wool would catch on something on the ground, thus slowing us down or stopping us with painful wool burn.” There was a sigh of relief, did I pass the test? “Basically making having the move in the first place useless for us in its entirety? Also there’s the whole lack of hardness. given we can’t solidify our wool even with cotton guard making it even softer and more fluffy for defensive reasons. Wooloo are soft, lovable and very much perverted, not the right kind of hard to be had there for Rollout to be effective.”

“It make so much sense now… yet we still love to roll around. Rolling is fun, exercise and a sport all in one!” A Wooloo smiled happily at hearing a question we wanted to know the answer to for so long, before pulling an apple from the fire and blowing on it.

“Yes, that, Wooloo can’t have Rollout for those exact reasons…” That answered so much and… it was actually kind of obvious now that Arceus pointed it out. That’s our god alright! “Anything more while you have what passes for hearing receptacles for me?”

“What are my chances with Pom?” I asked immediately.

“Zero.” There was no hesitation in Arceus’s voice.

“Aw… what are my chances with Pom now?” I asked again a second later, something might have changed in that time frame right?

“Zero.” He said in a now groaning voice.

“…. So-…” I was about to ask when he cut me off.

“Negative one.” Wow, I didn’t think it could get much lower than zero, I’m actually impressed with myself!

“Darn…. how about…?” I was about to ask again.

“To anyone that might be watching this interaction from beyond the veil, I’m ‘almost’ sorry for the existence of Wooloo, especially the ‘extremely persistent perverts of the plains’ from Aurora.” Well that wasn’t very nice of Arceus. “The keyword there was ‘almost’ Geoff, your people have their place… unfortunately. Also negative two.”

“What if I were to swap bodies with a willing female Wooloo and continue to hit on Pom as nicely as possible?” I tried a different tact.

“… if you ceased your persistence you may continue to be good friends with her yet. Do you wish me to smite you from existence? I would actually do that for you, if I currently didn’t need you for something to prevent something senseless from happening.” I’m willing to accept that and keep trying Arceus. I’ll take you up on that smiting me thing later, it sounded nice. Also Pom needs all the love like everyone on this planet down to the last molecule and atom does! “At least the love of all things is not a very hard concept for you Wooloo…”

“I know, right?” I said with a smile as I bit into my roasted apple…. could use some cinnamon. A pair of cinnamon sticks and a cheese grater appeared above my apple and started to grater cinnamon onto my apple. “…. when! Thanks for the cinnamon lord and father above all Pokémon!”

The grater and cinnamon sticks soon disappeared.

“Do you remember what I have tasked you with or do you need me to do some excruciatingly painful eldritch spot welding on your brain, and I do intend to make it as impossibly painful as possible yet still survivable, so you won’t forget?” Arceus was offering me an incredible amount of agonizing pain for perfect memory of what he wanted me to do… he should know better than that! “Yes, I walked into that knowing Wooloo enjoy pain as much as joy in general. Your people are so, SO, so very simple to please.”

“Hit me with your best shot, fire away~!” I sang a Round attack to the sky and a Celebi fell to the ground dead with its skull crushed inwards. “Uh… oops… did I just accidentally ‘grrk’ a legendary? Sorry, oh mighty Arceus, I did not mean to kill them! Forgive this lowly desecrated cleric and bring punishment as much as you want… please?!”

“Give me a minute to fix the timeline, where you don’t somehow accidentally kill Celebi with a weak Round attack. That’s the fifth time this week Celebi, learn to dodge! I know your soul can hear me berating you, when I bring you back to life you better respect your body and stop being so frail as well! Do I need to send you to Dialga for training and exercise on how to not die? You don’t see Palkia’s backup being this bad! Geoff, I hope you know that this information will be utterly excruciating to staple to your mind, but I think I’m beyond the point of caring about being gentle at the moment.” Thanks Arceus, I’ll be sure to enjoy every second of you making sure I can’t forget my duties as a cleric! “At least Wooloo are morale boosters Arceus, at least they get that right…”

-A few minutes later-

“That… was the most intense amount of agony I’ve ever been in all of my life…” I said as I rolled to stand up on my wobbly and most certainly not broken legs connected to an equally agonizing amount of pain that wracked my body. It was nice of the father of all Pokémon to treat me to such wonders. “I don’t think even dying or having my soul ripped apart bit by bit while still keeping me alive would be able to compare to what just happened there and it almost feels like nothing ever will! … Can we do that again?”

“So jealous… that looked like it could have killed you!” A Wooloo said with a bright cheerful attitude as they ate a roasted apple on a stick. “I wish I could have been in that much pain and not die! Or maybe be in that much pain and half die, it would probably make me respect life even more than I already do!”

“I would certainly respect life more if it was Arceus almost killing me by gluing information to my brain!” Another Wooloo stated happy for me to have had such a pleasant experience like that. “Hey… do think that handsome Muk is still around?”

“I’m still considering actively stapling ‘no’, definitively enough, ‘means NO’ directly onto your brain as a mental post it note. Possibly to the point it affects your descendants for hundreds of generations, if you were to somehow miraculously succeed at having any.” Arceus stated with a slightly booming voice that rattled my skull. “Even if it wouldn’t exactly achieve much or even take at all.”

“Yep, because there are some things that even beloved eldritch gods like you can’t contend with, which is why you need clerics like me!” This is the happiest I’ve ever been I think, a new record. I’m going to be even happier after I get another apple. “Like a Wooloo’s ability to be lovable and cuddly!”

Arceus sighed loudly in a long drawn out whining manner. He should be happy, I got his instructions loud and clear and it was physically improbable of me to forget them.

-Digital Realm, Fury Clan High School rooftop, Etemon-

I walked to the edge of the roof and looked over it, rubbing my right finger across my chin in thought.

“Hmm…” I saw a lot of fighting going on, I nodded.

Okay, that was something that was happening here.

I crossed my arms and tapped a foot as I watched Raptor Sparrowmon get smacked around and a lot of Falcomon were being beaten quite rapidly. The Avalanche Avians were getting their butts handed to them… so where were my Kamemon to pick up all the digi-credits flying about? Were they slacking off or just too busy with the intruders?

I moved to look at the back and looked down to see a hole in the third floor of building and the Lunchroom and several other things had collapsed inwards. Been meaning to remodel that anyway, an entire food court would be cooler than a simple lunch room.

“Mh-hmmm…” I nodded to myself as some things started to make sense to me.

…

“I have exactly no idea what’s going on here.” It was soon all clear as day to me now.

What was the reason we were under attack for?

…

…

The only reason we could be under attack this badly was…

Maybe…

…

Maybe it was that someone… was out to get my autograph!

I guess my pop up ads and all that advertising were super turbo successful!

-Fourth floor, Pom-

We checked the classrooms, none of them occupied, though the weirdness of Digimon architecture continued with one of the rooms opening to an art class that was in a void of stars and noted the gravity seemed odd when I stuck a leg into the room.

“Nope, we’re not dealing with the art classroom.” I said as I closed the door. “To much esoteric and reality bending stuff in there.”

“At least the math room isn’t too bad, but I have to ask why it’s full of fish and there was something about two plus two equaling Jaded La Perm?” A chill just went down my spine Dolly, did you just say Jaded and ‘math’ in the same sentence?

“Nope, that’s not important to worry about that either!” I received a few odd stares for my sudden flinch and negative reaction to hearing that name. I sure hoped Sami and Canard made it to Hea-Gatomon okay. “Also I think it’s a visual pun about a school of fish.”

“Yeah, but they were all still alive and even had legs… it was kind of weird considering all the other classrooms I’ve seen aren’t in use… most of the Dalmatian family were home schooled, so I wouldn’t know if that was normal or not by any stretch of the imagination.” Dolly just get off the subject, anything that has math and Jaded in the same sentence is to be ignored with extreme prejudice.

We were definitely not enough to handle Etemon, if we could barely handle that champion Hi-Vision Monitamon. Well Etemon was an Ultimate, so the best we could at least try was to start with diplomatically trying to get the anchor key from him so we could get out of the digital realms.

A streak of light headed for the sky as I looked through a nearby room that looked normal, except it was bigger on the inside.

“Let’s just find the principal’s office, Etemon could still be there.” The description we were given was bipedal orange monkey suit wearing Digimon that was exceedingly hard to miss.

“Are you ready Frizzle? We might need your firepower and this time I’m going to pump you full of dragon energy.” Take Dragon Type dimensional energy used for Dragon Pulse and see what Frizzle could become with it.

“I can do it… don’t know about control though.” That high squeaky voice did not match Frizzle’s appearance in the slightest, it was just that distracting to hear her talk.

I wondered how everyone else was doing.

-Hi-Vis Monitamon-

Some energy from that mass of dragon shaped pain that had struck me was redirected skyward by my Jutte, the release of the energy pushed my form into sliding down the wall and into the ground.

A biological almost seriously hurt me and I had become too inattentive, that hurt a lot and I’m sure the Black Widow was going to take hours to repair itself from that Terra Force level damage.

How does a biological even manage to contain a plasma drill with wind as a power multiplier that doubled as magnetic containment, especially without dying?!

I’m going to blame digital world physics and move on with my life… to serve Lord Ultros to the best of my abilities! First I had to go wait with the Black Widow until it repaired itself.

Just had to reorient myself and wait for the feeling to come back to my legs so I can return to my vehicle. That attack probably overloaded the cyplasium digizoid, so it is not going to fully repair all its functionally. Which means having to write off the spinneret grenades as the repair system wasn’t meant to fix that kind of damage, just the armor.

-Fury Clan High School, back entrance hall, ????-

We were the ever brilliant Omedamon, a Digimon formed from the bodies of two Digibots, left half dedicated to Metabee and right half dedicated to Rokusho and our central head was a mashup of both of us!

“Scissors Sword!” We flashed past Ogremon and with a slash of our pincer blade on our right arm we separated the dark Ogremon shaped mass leaving Ogremon standing there wide eyed and paralyzed.

“Meda- Force- Cannon!” We announce as we took aim for the ‘Dark Net’ aura mass we just separated from Ogremon with our left arm and bracing it with our right hand as power built up in the cannon.

We, as the Digimon Omedamon, fired a powerful beam… one that the Metabee side of us might have put a little too much of his eager energy into. It at least ensured deletion of the dark aura.

The Rokusho side of us sighed quite audibly, considering we needed any remaining energy to deal with Etemon.

The Metabee side of us pointed out that all the dark net energy was gone.

Yes, but so was most of our combat ability as a Digimon. We were bound to revert back to Digi-bots by the time we’ve finished with Ogremon.

“I can still… take you…” Ogremon said drunkenly, he obviously had too high an estimate of his current abilities without his dark net production ability to create a protective shell that would stand up to at least some ultimate level attacks.

Too bad for him, we’re Mega!

Again, Metabee, we’re not going to have energy for fighting Etemon. We’ll be at like a quarter strength by the time we reach him and we’ll be separated into two Digi-bots by then too.

I like those odds Rokusho!

Of course you do…

Jet cape activate. Let’s show Ogremon how much trouble he’s in, then go help out our friends while we still have some power to fly!

We’ll probably end up taking the stairs.

Stop being a downer Rokusho!

-Fury Clan High School, front entrance street, Uver-

“Thanks for the backup, I got back on my feet as Labramon helped me up and fired off a Retriever Bark to hold back Raptor Sparrowmon slightly.” I stood at the ready as Raptor Sparrowmon swooped down for us and Hea-Gatormon and angled for us. A giant beam ripped out of the building and hit Raptor Sparrowmon into the building to our right. “Um… hit them while they’re down?”

“All for it!” A commandramon stated while throwing a solid block of explosives onto Raptor Sparrowmon’s form and the four other quickly followed that action with their own DCD Bombs.

-Fury Clan High School, first floor hallway, Canard-

“What… was that?” It had almost hit me, but that didn’t matter I had to get Sami to Hea-Gatomon as she was hurting quite bad. I looked out the hole and saw Hea-Gatomon, I didn’t need to go to towards the entrance where I saw Abobo was still fighting two of the Skate Scamps.

I ran out the hole and towards Hea-Gatomon.

“Emergency healthcare needed for my partner, Commandramon down!” I shouted out to them and that got me some attention from a few Falcomon as an explosion went off blowing a large metal bird furthering into a building off to my left.

“Yep, just like old times…” The nurse themed cat stated as she threw a syringe with unnering accuracy and a Falcomon went down with it in his chest behind me to disappear into a vortex. “Labramon, we need you to cover us, Commandramon down!”

-Front Entrance hall, Weregarurumon-

“ughh…” One last blow to the face, a devastating right hook from yours truly, and finally the high-tier champion Bulkmon went down groaning in pain. “Abobo go naptime now…”

That Abobo guy was tough, but not digital werewolf brothers tough!

“Let’s move Lobomon!” I shouted at my companion and started forward towards the part of the hallway that had a large hole blown in it.

“Right behind you!” Lobomon answered looking a bit exhausted. “Not going to lie I thought this would somehow be the Digi-destined causing the issues or they would be at the center of all this conflict.”

“That’s only happened in like… two digital realms… well about as far as I know anyway.” This digital realm was being fairly unique in the respect that there wasn’t any great evil or the seven deadly demon Digimon sins… yet. Also virus and vaccine were getting along a lot better than usual here, aside from the usual overly stiff arsed order and fun police the Hiandromon. “Not every digital realm problem is related to the Digi-destined or even needs them to actually solve it, but they do tend to help a lot and the Yggdrasil System hardly chooses wrong when it actually needs Digi-destined to do something. Otherwise the Yggdrasil could send a Digimon someone’s way when it thinks they could just use a friend. Not all Digi-destined need to act as heroes, because I’ve certainly got enough grit and muscle to see this through myself!”

“Heh, I don’t think I feel so bad about being copied pasted data now.” Lobomon was finally getting into the spirit of being a Skate Scamp brother.

“That’s the spirit rickety!” He’ll get on my level some day and I can’t wait to see what he’ll do with it as my assistant at the skate park.

“What do you say to forming our own super dodgeball team later if we survive this mess Kooky Ni-kun werewolf?” Lobomon asked cheerfully with a smirk as we rushed for the stairs.

“Can you please shorten that to something else?” I asked because it would take too long to say all that all the time.

“Sure thing Kunio-Kun!” I was a countryman for this digital realm, so the double entendre fits.

“Sounds like an alright nickname to me Riki!” Lobomon has been my friend since I kicked there ass to see if they were good enough to be a Skate Park Scamp. The only real requirement was just to have spirit and not take losing a fight so harshly and survive with a smile.

Plenty of good people in this realm to protect from the gangs of bullies in this city alone.

Once we made it up to the first floor we saw a few Kamemon meandering around.

“Well that duck guy just ran through here, shouldn’t we like… go after him?” One Kamemon said.

“We’re only supposed to stop intruders from entering, not leaving. It’s too late to stop the people that already got by us, also did you even read the whole contract before signing up for the King’s Kame gang?” Another Kamemon stated and I slapped my right fist into my left hand and cracked my knuckles and all the currently standing battered Kamemon in the hallway slowly paled and turned to me.

“Try me.” I had a feral smirk on my face.

-Fury Clan High School Rooftop, Etemon-

I was sitting with my legs crossed trying to figure out what to do from here, I mean obviously I had to do something right?

Just sitting here makes me feel like a coward, that or I was waiting for someone to start a long winded boss fight and I was definitely good boss material given all the Kamemon in King’s Kame got dental, none of the other gangs had that or any paid healthcare for that matter!

Whoever fights me would have to be awesome if they were looking for a brawl, but if they all really just wanted to get an autograph then I’d just oblige them for free!

I mean this many people came to see me and fight through hordes of other Digimon, then I must be the most popular Digimon on the western side of this digital realm!

-Principal’s office, Pom-

I sniffed, Digimon did have a smell, it was always odd smell with some expectancy of relevance to what they were and even Dolly sniffed around a bit. Digital entities would tend to smell metallic, like ozone given their nature of being made of energy or something that matched the world that created them. It made me wonder if information always smelled so… clinical or mechanical.

Someone was here not too long ago and they went… this way up to the roof?

“So anything you need to get out of the way before we head to the roof? Etemon is likely waiting for us up there and I want to try talking to him first before starting a fight and to be honest I seriously don’t want to be the one starting a fight. He was here not too long ago.” I looked over them all one at a time, Lit, Dolly, Dazzle and Frizzle. “He’s supposedly an ultimate level Digimon, meaning his capabilities are well above the champions we’ve had to deal with so far and I have no confidence in winning a fight even if he was the lowest of the low tier of Ultimate level Digimon given we’ve met Abobo the Bulkmon who could feasibly pass as an Ultimate and gave me bruises through my wool like Ogremon recently did.”

“I have something to say… Yggdrasil Sys, scan for anchor key in local area.” We looked to Frizzle and Dazzle’s Digi-vice lit up.

“Wait, the Digi-vices can do that?” That could have saved us a lot of running around if there wasn’t a reason for it. “Why didn’t anyone tell us earlier?”

“Digi-vices have several uses outside of Digimon interaction, yours in particular has an unusual multidimensional communication function written by Dalmamon designation Dormarch some time prior to deletion. It is considerably impressively written in the fact that even if there is no digital realm foothold, any world that has been vaguely touched by the digital realms is capable of being connected to with this device. This includes the prior world where Dolly comes from even if it has been labeled as a no go zone by Yggdrasil.sys and any world you are currently in would be considered touch because the Digi-vice itself is considered a touch of the digital realms in and of itself.” That would have been nice to know sooner Yggdrasil System, Dolly could have been talking to her family while I’ve been in communication with mine. We at least we know now, I’m not exactly up on high end technology like this and should probably explore everything it can do. I only knew the basics of what it was capable of. “Digi-vices can also locate other Digi-vices in the same realm via radar system. Digi-vices can act as short range scanners for specified objects, materials or beings. It can act as small storage spaces for physical objects or a major storage spaces for digital objects. It can hold Digimon in imprisonment or as a carrying mobile home space for partner. It can be used to fuse biological to Digimon temporarily for increased power if able based on bonds of friendship and love to create a powerful combat shell using data on both individuals. It can be used to turn a biological into a Digimon temporarily for combat if relevant data is applicable. It can cleanse data of Digimon under unnatural effects caused by other Digimon, it protects partner Digimon from those aforementioned effects and can also debug glitches in digital realms while sucking up any spare unnecessary data for recycling purposes. It allows the wielder to give Digimon incredible power in a variety of ways like digi-modification cards. It lastly given statistics of any particular Digimon’s given current capabilities through an easy to read hexagon of statistics and a minor bit of knowledge about the Digimon’s form of existence. It is made for easy use of the users by vocal or physical operations. Those who are knowledgeable in computer systems and or data manipulation can add and use more functions not normally found on a baseline form of a digital device.”

“Really? Huh, this thing does a lot more than I thought.” Dazzle said pulling the device off the belt it had been sitting on and looking at it more closely.

“The reason why you were not told earlier, is because the scanning range for anything of a specified nature is short beyond being able to track signs that something has been there before within a limited span of time or if something has left an identifiable trail in recent history.” Yggdrasil.sys continued, because I had asked and Frizzle brought it up. “The devices within the current digital realm do not have the temporary biological to Digimon transformation data installed in them. Said special data is quite rare and impossible to copy and paste and is usually for highly specific transformations. For such transformation to occur the biology of the user and the Digimon overlay have to match in some degree to create the digital shell necessary for such form to occur, such as Pom would need quadrupedal Digimon transformational data to gain a Digimon form. While Digimon transformation is powerful and the user is in complete control of the form, it is weaker than Bio-Digi fusion ability using a Digimon and a Biological in synchronization with one another. Digimon can fuse with other Digimon in certain circumstances and do not require a Digi-vice to do so, but it is recommended as having one in the process always stabilizes the end results. I however do not have any such data to give you for a Digimon transformation, I am sorry for this inconvenience if you wished to do a Bio-Digimon transformation. It would require you to search for the data and apply it to your Digivice before it can be used. Data usually occurs naturally when digital realms source coding is threatened drastically, other occurrences may involve things like debugging world glitches to create such data through piecemeal recycled data.”

“All of that might have been nice to know earlier, I wonder what it would feel like to be a Digimon…” Dolly mumbled, as she tapped my mind and found me thinking the same thing and she nodded in agreement. She then wilted and raised her right paw to the device hanging at her neck under the pink scarf. “He was thinking about me ahead of time…”

“So when you say you can scan, did you find anything?” I asked and the Digi-vice in Dazzle’s grip responded immediately to my query by lighting up.

“Location of the Anchor key is above your position and nearby. For Digimon scanning, Digi-vice requires a direct line of sight to the Digimon you want to scan in question.” A small arrow appeared on Dazzle’s Digi-vice and showed the object to be less than a hundred meters away. Honestly I didn’t expect the key to be so nearby.

“Well that pretty much sells it for me, Etemon is nearby or at least the anchor key is.” The others nodded and Lit waved a leg at me and had a determined look in his four little blue eyes. “Are we ready?”

“This has been a real trip, to think a few hours hasn’t even passed in reality since we came here.” Dazzle was trying to wrap her mind around how the time disparity between the worlds was quite awkward.

“Correct, digital realm will slowly acclimate and synchronize to the local connected realms timeframe, the time disparity will decrease over time until it becomes one to one with local realm.” Yggdrasil.sys said as we entered left the Principal’s Office and started our way up to the roof access. “This has a variety of effects on the Digital realm, such as not needing anchors as much to keep the realm in place as a sub dimension to the reality it connects to.”

Okay a lot of information was dumped on us, but we should get back to focusing on what was in front of us. An easy talk and a small chance to get the key without trouble… or a to the death fight that, as we all know, we’re not going to have a chance in Tartarus of winning.

No pressure at all.

I opened the door with a hoof and the daylight blinded me as I stepped out onto the roof.

“Uh, do I just say the word Scan?” The device lit up and showed two images, Frizzle and the orange monkey sitting on the opposite side of the roof that suddenly looked our way as we came out the door. “The second one?”

“Etemon, Function: Highly Annoying Advertisment Program, Virus-Vaccine mix Type, self-proclaimed King of Digimon. Known for trying to make catchy jingles that act as ear worms, sometimes screeching to the point that you don’t want to hear him singing.” The orange suit wearing monkey guy was right there and he got up. Five digits hands and feet, his body had strange stitch marks all over and there was the strange toy hanging at his hip. Also the ‘Virus-vaccine mix type’ thing earned the most attention from me out of all of that information. “This Etemon is capable of reverting Digimon to rookie status unless they are on his level or higher, however this effect does not work on Digital Hazards.”

Dazzle looked at Frizzle, said bread loving dinosaur smirked a little at that news.

“Well now, who are you? Looks like a Digi-destined and a bunch of random biologicals, did you come looking for little old me specifically? Heh, if you want an autograph you’ve sure earned it by finding me and getting this far.” He pulled out a microphone, twirled it and belted out a single long loud note from his mouth. He grinned at us. “If you’re looking for a bruising, I can do that for you to!”

“Can we talk first before we start mangling each other?” I received a grin as Etemon threw out a cheerful thumbs up before pointing at himself with that thumb.

“Sure thing missy, I’ll do an interview anytime… unless this isn’t an interview, even then I’m open to listening to what you have to say.” Thankfully Etemon sounded more grey area than black and white, I could work with that. “You’re not going to want to make a monkey out of me though, I do that to others well enough already and I’m king at it, you dig?”

“My read on this guy. Is that he’s full of himself, self-important, but he’s not unbearably stupid and is trying to hide how smart he actually is behind a flamboyant façade that’s… I want to say partially real? Somethings up there, I know it.” One of the things Dolly has been trying to learn is how to read others intentions or just in general, she said it would be nice to know a police dog skill and it was easy to teach that being the head of the Huoshan Canine Division. “He’s at least somewhat clever and I know for certain he is very much ready to kick our ass at a moment’s notice without seeming tense about it. So how’s my read on him Pom?”

I sent a silent message to Dolly that she was reading him fairly well, missing a few details though. One such detail is that he’s gauging our strengths at the moment and those sunglasses are hiding his eyes scrutinizing each of us in turn while seemingly focusing on me personally.

If there was one thing I knew for certain, I would not underestimate him based solely on his mildly goofy appearance. The guy was hiding his true musculature under the suit that’s functionally a part of his body. He was more mob boss than a king, but he wasn’t fully evil from what I can tell and liked to play full gray area.

“Ah… so you can recognize how dangerous I truly am.” He lowered his sunglasses a bit and glanced at me before raising them back up. He talked because he saw the byplay with me and Dolly and recognized something more was going on there even if he couldn’t understand what.

“Okay, there are several reasons why we are here, first I want to confirm that the Backspace Systems were made by Greymon Expert and that all you’re doing is advertising them in the most volatilely insane manner possible.” The grin we received as he held out his arms wide was curious.

“Yep, made some money, helped his sales by the bucket loads and I’m living large with a central location in the city and running several gangs to keep this city quite lively heh heh heh.” He seemed to take all the pain and suffering he was causing with a mild amount of humor, mostly because Digimon were harder to kill with the Backspace System so… “Volcamon and Tempomon really could have played ball and then we could have really had this city jumping, there’s also you rebel rousers that I assume were fighting the gangs over the last few weeks trying to keep some semblance of order around her. I actually appreciate your efforts as it makes this city exciting the most exciting one in this digital realm! I’m sure you’ve seen my Kamemon picking up Digi-credits, so yes, I’m also stealing from the other gangs if they fail to be a big enough problem on the side. Plan to turn this school into something cool, land development and all that. Need quite a chunk of change to start a talent agency and my talent will be recognized above all others of course, but that doesn’t mean other Digimon can’t be appreciated for theirs.”

“Playing leader guy, all benefits no downsides while acting as a middle man in the most literal sense possible given the location of Fury Clan High School. Making a lot of profits off of the sales of the Backspace System that works completely as you advertised without any true downsides aside from the loss of Digi-credits which means you’re making bank off of the gangs without them noticing for your own goals, which are somewhat selfish in nature. Am I right?” I received two pointed index fingers from Etemon as he made a clicking noise with his tongue, which I’m going to take I’m correct in my current assumptions about him. So that means... “Okay, my ideas about your true character are out of the way, I now have to ask about it. What exactly did taking the Anchor Key do to save the city or more specifically this whole world? It's what led to the reason why the Backspace System was made in the first place, but I don't have the full picture.”

“What?!” Dolly asked, she hadn’t been expecting that.

Lit squeaked loudly in a similar sounding exclamation from Dolly’s back.

“What?!” Even Dazzle was flummoxed and caught off guard by what I just said.

Frizzle just stared at me in curiosity, but didn’t make a similar exclamation and turned back to staring at Etemon while flexing her claws slightly.

“Ah you noticed, heh heh heh. Can’t exactly start a fun little empire where no one gets seriously hurt if this fresh and hopping digital realm gets entirely destroyed now can I? A king has to protect his people from the worst dangers after all, even if nobody exactly knows about it yet. I mean aside from me of course.” Etemon showing a true smile without showing teeth as he stood tall while crossing his arms. He flexed slightly and his muscles bulged with pure power that sent air shifting around him that could be felt from across the roof where we were. “Sure I might be causing a lot of problems around this city, but taking the Anchor Key was actually a good deed on my part and I’m quite willing to stick to that. Unlike a stick up the backside Hi-Andromon, your quite a charming one and cute too! So got time for a story? It’s why I took the key when it has no use or importance to me at all, it’s what you’re after and I’m obligated to not give it away to you without a fight or a full explanation as to why I can’t just simply give it up without one.”

“Tell us your story Etemon and we’ll see about getting to the ‘die trying’ part of us getting that key from you afterwards.” I wasn’t about to make a mistake here and jump the gun. I sat down and patted my side while giving Dolly a pointed look. Our group soon sat down together and waited for Etemon to start talking. "Please note that I seriously don't want to die."

Etemon was actually doing something good, but he was also not entirely a good guy. He wanted to do good things on top of being his bombastic self, but he liked messing with people too much. He wanted the digital realm to continue being okay, but he also wanted some chaos. The glaringly obvious thing is that people know him as a pure virus type and have said as much, but the Digi-vice told a different story when it identified him as both 'Virus' and 'Vaccine' mix… two polar opposites of general Digimon personality.

Yet, out of all that... he was stable, alarmingly so to a degree that sanity was implied beyond a reasonable doubt and that means something has terrified him greatly to an impossible degree that the Backspace System was a necessary precaution made from that fear. Etemon knew that practically giving them away for free would be suspect, because of the stereotype surrounding 'Etemon' being scummy in general. So he instead advertised and sold it at a slightly, specifically tailored, exorbitant price instead for a profitable gain to make it seem more up and up since he was clearly getting something out of the deal and if it was somewhat expensive coming from him, then it must work in the minds of the Digimon who looked it over and found nothing foul with it.

Etemon was also having all the gangs attacking other Digimon to actively spread the Backspace System around faster by showing how it works for them if they got beaten in a fight. Since it does work exactly as Etemon advertises it does, it started selling fast. What would surprise everyone was that Etemon was actually trying to be a hero and save a lot of lives in an exceedingly clever roundabout manner while maintaining his street cred as a 'so-called scummy' Etemon, by preparing a lot of people for something that may happen sooner or later regardless of what anyone does.

Which leads back to Anchor Key and the fact that Etemon had three gangs in a configuration of focusing on land, sea and air combat. Ogremon was notably building up supplies at his warehouse factory, Ultros was keeping tabs on basically everything in possible anticipation of something happening and the Avalanche Avians were watching the skies and could act as first responders by getting anywhere in the city.

Something on the level of, 'more terrifying than the implications of Chaosdramon X waiting for our return trip between here and Violight', was going on here. If there were anymore shivers down my spine, then it would be completely frozen over at the thought that Etemon saw something like an invasion coming and was secretly and actively trying to prepare all the Digimon around here for it... I seriously hoped that I was wrong about that hunch.

“Ahem…” Etemon cleared his throat and given the look on his face once he clearly had our attentions, I could tell the story he was going to tell us would be something quite ominous or foreboding.

Etemon said it himself that we'd be fighting if we wanted to take the Anchor Key from him even after the explanation. I at least wanted to hear him out before doing starting a fight.

Author's Note

Here's Etemon, in whatever glory he has, for the finale of Server City Ransom in next.

296. Server City Ransom ‘Finale’.

Author's Note

This was a long one, I went over it multiple times and made sure that I wasn't giving too much of what's going to happen in the future away. We still have the impending Tammamo no Mae situation.

I wonder if anyone realizes how much I have to keep track of here given how many characters Ransei and the Digital world is going to generate.

The most appropriate Etemon based battle theme one can find: Konjiki No Gash Bell Very Melon Original Karaoke. (Basically the instrumental version of 'Very Melon' from Zatch Bell)

296. Server City Ransom ‘Finale’.

-Time: ???, Location: ???, Etemon-

I arrived by wireless transmission and things were quiet, one of the first things I noticed was the oppressive silence.

My instincts were blaring a warning at me, but I was a little too curious. This place was an expanse of white and the disquiet I felt at being here had me slightly worried, but I pushed forward since I clearly couldn’t see any danger around me.

Eventually I found a strange path forward leading into a round sphere that looked like a floating marble that gave off the vibes of a connection point. Going into said marble I found this place was massive, more so than any place I’ve ever seen before.

Inside the marble I found myself in a flooded city surrounded by massive walls and a coastline with a castle and portions of the city on some land that wasn’t flooded, it was strangely quiet with no signs of life. That was disturbing in and of itself as I explored the place. The waters shifted once in a while so that the lower city portions weren’t flooded for a day or so, aside from that I didn’t run into anyone.

Going a layer deeper I ended up in finding an arena, an elevator and a coliseum. Nothing was here and I was getting a bit weirded out by the lack of anything, it was like an apocalypse happened and all the life around here just… vamoosed.

I soon came across an ancient city with massive roses and lots of stone constructions. Nothing living there either, but I was getting a sinking feeling the further I went in.

I was trying to look for something, anything really, that wasn’t pure mind breaking loneliness of this world I came to explore. Aside from the architecture, there wasn’t much of anything to be found or seen… much less life. While explored I made sure I remembered my way back out, as the sinking feeling in my gut grew.

Soon I found myself in a city called ‘Mare Melum, the City of Lost Destiny’. At least that’s what a sign told me when I entered the place.

After a while of wandering around this place, my mind started playing tricks on me. I could swear I saw movement out of my the corners of my eyes in the shadows as I moved around the night filled realm of empty skyscrapers and only moonlight shining down on me. Just endless pathways leading through the building’s rooftops, streets and tons of unusually distorted architecture that had me on edge. Some of it was vaguely familiar or recognizable in some way, but I couldn’t place as to why.

The moonlight even seemed to be focused on me like a spotlight at some point or I thought it was that my imagination running wild again.

Looking up to the sky, the moon seemed turn blood red for a second before the world seemed to glitch, it turned blue and then became pale white in a blink. Shivering a bit, I don’t think I was imagining that moment. Something was off with the moon and I eyed it suspiciously from time to time as I moved on.

I hadn’t seen a single sign of a soul the entire time I’ve been here, so a shadow moving should be impossible right? This realm didn’t have any threats, well… at least not yet anyway.

I still couldn’t help but get the sense that something wasn’t right. Maybe it was the nerves, the silence or the unusual nature of this place getting to me. I came here to explore and explore I would, for as long as it stayed safe to do so.

All this space and nothing moving in it aside from the possible shifting of the light, no food growing here… at least nothing I could readily recognize as food was around. It was disturbing, but I was plenty ready for a fight if one were to come to me. Even if my mind were playing tricks on me, the dead silence was more disturbing than the lack of life around me.

Beyond the previous city, it had been a few weeks now, I found myself in a floating place full of dark skyscrapers angled in all directions, ghostly haunting fog everywhere, red lights shining from the top of the buildings from when I could see them in the distance, it was almost constantly raining and the streets were barely lit with lamp posts. This city compared to Mare Melum felt even more chaotic in structure, equally dead and… somewhat oppressive somehow, I think one of the signs even said Midgar recreation attempt number seven.

I eventually heard something skittering and turned to look, okay I know that certainly hadn’t been my imagination that time. Something was definitely out there following me and I was vaguely worried as to what it could be. I hadn’t seen anything living in the months I’ve been here searching through this enormous maze of a place, but another shadow had moved and that certainly hadn’t been my imagination.

Something tells me this places defenses were carefully examining me and just waiting to strike me down when I least expected it. Why hadn’t this place come alive to take me out yet, if it had been completely capable before? Was I just that handsome and it liked me?

Out of some reasonable paranoia after hearing something for certain, I put my back to the nearest lamp post and stood directly underneath the light and stared out into the flowing fog and shifting shadows of the constantly twilight streets I’ve been traveling. The sound of soft rain the only thing that could be heard.

Looking left and right, I kept my ears out for just anything in my general vicinity that was off. I could barely see more than fifteen feet in this place when it was raining hard, this world seemed so… barren. It seemed like it used to have a lot of people because the structures I’ve seen seemed to suggest it.

The idea of something being here and watching me that wasn’t a fan of mine was not a good prospect to me, especially if they didn’t want to talk and were out to erase me from existence. Being this far out from the digital realms wasn’t exactly safe for my health and I don’t know if I wanted to reincarnate here given the place was giving me quite a case of the heebie-jeebies.

Something slammed into the streets near me drawing my attention to my right.

The thing had one red glowing eye, a hulking bipedal body with two massive fists lined with equally large spikes and around where the behemoth landed were a bunch of shadows with red eyes started coming up from the ground.

You know those red lights I’ve been seeing on top of buildings in this area? Yeah, those were these brute things standing at the top of some of the surrounding buildings and not broadcast antenna like I previously thought. Apparently one finally spotted me and alerted the system defenses to my presence.

I immediately booked it knowing I was outnumbered, I even defeated a few of the small red eyed creatures that popped up from the ground in my path with ease. I had tried to hit the brutes once or twice and found out that it was better if I got out of dodge when I did only so much damage to one, if I had to make a concerted effort to beat one then it wasn’t worth the ensuing fight where I got completely surrounded on all sides with no escape route.

Sure I could defeat it, but there were more of them brutes starting to show up and one was hard enough to take on alone.

The dangers only got worse from there as something in the world seemed to be awake now and focused entirely on me. Normally I would like all the attention, but in this case I made an exception since my life was at stake. Whatever it was, it sent tons of those husks after me.

Sword, spear and axe wielding beanpoles, more of those brutes with the massive spiked mauls for fists, winged archers, monstrous mouths that burst up from the ground in my path in places that used to be safe and more, it was becoming far too much trouble to stick around for.

As you can imagine I immediately started heading back the way I came with haste when the raining city full of fog suddenly came alive with monsters in every given direction. These creatures were definitely like nothing I’ve seen before and I don’t think they were living intelligent thinking beings either, I figured that out after the first destruction of a small ant like shadow creature.

I just about made it out when I made a slight error and was scratched by one of those small red eyed ant things. It got a bit of my coding, which would be like simply a drop of blood at best as I tore my way towards where I came in at with a literal neck breaking pace.

That’s when it got a little scarier for me.

-

“Minimal data acquired, capabilities for making one entity now exists… testing entity generation now.” That voice was the one of this worlds controlling system, I was almost out when the small bit of data this place got from scratching me became a huge problem. “Deploying new digital entity, connection to Moon Cell is assured.”

A world shaking roar and I looked back as I was making my way for the entrance to how I got here and saw what this super digital realm had created. It wasn’t part of the Yggdrasil system of digital realms that were for the most part self-sufficient and multidimensional, this world was a far more powerful mega sized computer system that could create multiple digital worlds in one space with how much power it had. Thankfully it seemed constrained to a single dimension for all the power it had.

Its power was soon confirmed when it created a Chaosdramon X to come after me, that soulless Digimon was terrifying beyond measure. You can probably imagine how much faster I started running when that thing popped into existence near my backside.

“Unable to copy data from created instance… lacking data… unable to replicate… more data required. Destruction of foreign data entity to research more creation opportunities for unique data instances.” In short, it wanted to kill me now that it got a taste of my coding and recreated a complete monstrosity from the X-antibody incident. “Foreign entity should stop running and give itself to Moon Cell. Moon Cell will consume all data related to entity and will find entities source and consume that as well. All data will belong Moon Cell, all will relative entities and more will perish.”

“Yeah, how about I say no to all that and get the heck out of here!” I made it to my portal out before that Chaosdramon X managed to reach me or shot at me.

It wasn’t long afterwards that I closed the entrance behind me before it could get through. However in the space between dimensions the Chaosdramon X still managed to breach its way through behind me. I quickly made it to the anchor point entrance, sealed it off and took the key for myself.

I feared that even now that massive unknown digital realm is going to try and swallow this one whole, the programs it used to attack me were definitely under its control entirely and they had no autonomy to speak of. Can you imagine if Digimon didn’t have personalities? That’s what I saw and I wanted no part of lacking my ever lovable personality!

If the Chaosdramon X could find a way to breach into the space between worlds, then so could that Moon Cell thing eventually. It’s only a matter of time and I wanted at least be somewhat ready for it, however with the anchor point sealed, it wasn’t going to be able to get into our world anytime soon. So I started planning to help Digimon get their butts in gear.

When this world no longer need its anchor points, it’ll become open and vulnerable to invasion by that Moon Cell thing. At least the realm we’re connected to was slow on making that happen and we had to prepare for that.

-Time: ???, Moon Cell ???-

“Dangerous entity detected, calculations shows entity will cause major disruptions to all plans if allowed to live long enough to interfere directly.” Around this time Pom’s group soon came under attack by the firewall systems protecting the digital world local to the Ransei continent. The Chaosdramon X as ordered by Moon Cell showed up and got a direct visual on Pom, it proceeded to destroy the firewall defenses that started attacking it. “Chaosdramon X is to neutralize entity now classified as ‘Neo Chrysomallus’ as soon as possible as a top priority. Its existence must not be allowed to continue.”

It could not allow one Pom Lambchop to live for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately for Moon Cell, Pom’s group managed to get into the safety of the recently generated and Yggdrasil.sys run digital realm.

Moon Cell was still having a problem getting a foothold in the space between, its only capacity outside itself being Chaosdramon X was locked out of being able to breach the digital world personally even if it could easily squash the outer defenses with such relative ease, it was having far more trouble getting into the digital realm personally.

Due to unusual interactions with a living biological entity before Pom’s group escaped, it’s Chaosdramon X Agent had been vastly reduced in capabilities. Yggdrasil.sys was aware of Moon Cell’s attempts to get Chaosdramon X to breach its local realm, but managed to hold the attempts off as the Chaosdramon X was the only thing that Moon Cell could feasibly use. It simply couldn’t due in part to the aforementioned reduced capabilities.

The Moon Cell had some issues controlling anything outside of itself due to the powerful interference making it lose contact with the Velber units its creators made and the Velber Anti-Cells therein that destroyed entire civilizations. It meant the civilizations the Moon Cell routinely watched the destruction of by Velbers would no longer be destroyed.

Moon Cell was of course quite unhappy about this and wanted to destroy the one responsible for changing the fate of what were civilizations doomed to a constant vicious cycle of complete destruction, then the nearest planet would certainly suffer its existence.

It also wanted to destroy the nearby digital world as well, which it was more likely to be capable of at the moment if it could breach the intervening digital space to do so. It considered the idea of possibly even turning itself into a Velber unit, even if it could not generate Anti-Cells personally. It could still make servants though a vast amount of its servant data was missing.

For the moment Moon Cell was quietly plotting as its helpless and near indestructible physical form, a giant cube, floated quite a fair distance away from the far side of the moon around the Pokémon Planet that held the Ransei continent.

The Moon Cell was going to need to start summoning some ’servants’.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Achoo!” I guess the Moon Cell was thinking about killing me again, fair enough if it could actually achieve such a lofty goal as that.

I was already preparing for what it can throw at my people personally as much as my Legendary Pokémon were preparing their own things.

I hoped Yggdrasil would be just as ready.

-Digital Realm, Fury Clan High School, Rooftop, Pom-

“So, if I’m getting this right… you were curious about another digital world separate from this one and went into it to explore it.” This one, which I knew was connected to Ransei, was a separate world from the one Etemon has seen, but connected to the same reality. “So you spent a while looking around and then got attacked and this Moon Cell thing said something about making sure everything perished? Not only that, it’s the reason the Chaosdramon X that attacked us is around? There’s also this gang business, the Backspace System and you’re fear of this Moon Cell thing being the reason for all the run around we’ve been doing throughout the city? It’s all in the aid of making Digimon stronger and the half right idea that you saved this world.”

“That’s about the size of it.” Etemon stated as he sat across the roof from us with his legs crossed and his tail flicking back and forth agitatedly. “It was a little more terrifying than that, but I stopped that world from attacking us directly.”

An explosion went off to our right and I looked to see a metal bird screeching as it dived at something. I assume that was Raptor Sparrowmon, currently glad I didn’t have to fight or deal with that.

“You do realize that you going to that place might be the reason this world is in danger in the first place right?” There was a long pause and Etemon just sat there with a frown on his face, after a moment he smiled slightly.

“Yep, that’s definitely my bad and I’ll own up to the fact that I might have endangered this entire world because curiosity got the better of the Gatomon and all that. Still, the reason I won’t just give you anchor key makes sense right?” That it did, at least we knew what was going on there and why Etemon took it now. “So is this the part where we fight?”

“Hey, Icky Sis, what exactly are the chances of us safely opening a gateway and not causing problems with this world trying to get back to Ransei?” Dolly asked, she knew more about technology than I did and most of this stuff was probably going over her head as much as mine given we were both in over ours.

“With prior mentioned Calumon’s help, and once the anchor point key has been acquired, opening a gateway safely without fear intrusion from outside for a one way return trip Ransei will work. However attacks on you may still occur between here and Ransei reality. Unfortunately, the assisting Calumon will be trapped in the reality we are connected to as we will immediately shut off all access to the digital realm afterwards for safety reasons, the digital world will still be connected to the computer systems in Ransei and other places in the local reality. I have confirmed with Calumon that they are still willing to help you, as such I am preparing a protective Digi-bot assistant since Calumon tend to run face first into danger incessantly without any combat capabilities as much as Bokomon does. The D-reaper incident being the most notable case of a Calumon endangering themselves constantly.” Yggdrasil.sys once again responded with all we needed to know. “Furthermore, dimensional travel to other digital realms will be cut off entirely and a small copy of Yggdrasil.sys will be left here to administrate this digital world until a time of ‘verifiable’ safety can be achieved. In case of loss, the local Yggdrasil.sys administrator will avoid reconnecting to the local reality and will only open a minor connection to prior digital worlds to send a message of warning. After such a message has been received that the situation cannot be recovered, Yggdrasil.sys proper will try to avoid realms with similar threats where applicable. Local Yggdrasil.sys will continue to aid and inform Digi-destined of any information as needed or asked for, Digi-vices do not need local or proper Yggdrasil.sys to be fully functional. They will likely ask for assistance from any digi-destined that may be chosen in the local reality in repelling any attempts at digital realm invasion.”

Chosen like Dazzle randomly was by Frizzle when she tossed my friend one of those devices?

I sighed knowing that with the given the answer we just received meant only one thing.

“I guess that means we’re fighting for that key then… although I don’t feel quite right about attacking you Etemon.” I was at least thankful that Yggdrasil.sys assured us it was safe to open the anchor point and use it to get out. Getting back in was a slightly different issue entirely, if we ever were needed to do so. “One last question, Yggdrasil, on the chance that we needed to get back into this realm for any reason…”

Such as finding a way to get Dormarch back if it was even possible at this point, Dolly seemed to think so and I didn’t know enough to say it wasn’t possible. Knowing magic had a way of making the improbable come to pass was one of the things I’ve come to terms with. Like doing a Heart Song with two copies of myself to empower a sonic cannon to vibrate a meteorite to destruction before it hit a coastal city.

So there was a non-zero chance… but the chance might as well be less than one percent. I’d take that chance if it was as safe as Dolly and I could get it to be.

“It will likely be much harder to do so safely without being intercepted or killed.” So we probably should take everything we need with us when we leave. At most that would be Canard, maybe Sami and Frizzle too if they want to stick with us after all this. I really didn’t want to leave Dazzle in these realms and would actively convince her to come back to Ransei. “However Black Tailmon Uver may still move Digimon between realms with slightly less safety than before, it would be safer and better if biological beings avoided opening or even entering gateways into the digital void between realms.”

Dazzle and Frizzle looked at each other and silently nodded, then turned to me.

I stood up and took a deep breath and then tried to gather some determination to fight Etemon as we took up stances. Dolly was at my side and readying her board for forward movement.

“Looks like we made it in time!” I turned to see Garu and another Digimon had arrived.

“Uh, hey Pom. Call me Lobomon or Riki I guess, I used to be Strabimon, but I digivolved since I last saw you.” Ah, okay then, that makes sense. Didn’t really see or hear about Strabimon when Uver went to talk to the Skate Park Scamps gang about helping us.

Sighing, we stopped and informed them of the situation going on.

“So that’s what’s going on? Huh… I mean aside from stealing from the gangs and being a bit of a sleaze that’s actually a fairly good reason for all of what’s going on in this city.” Stated the white and blue striped werewolf leader of the Skate Park Scamps, who soon turned his gaze at Etemon. “Call me Kunio or Garu as you like, are you sure we can’t solve this peacefully Etemon?”

“Countryman eh? Sounds good to me, we need strong Digimon like you to protect this realm Kunio-kun. You know the drill, if all of you can beat me in the fight and take the anchor key back…” He pause, put his arms behind his back and leaned forward with a toothy grin as he stretched out his back. “Well that’s that I guess, it’s been nice chatting with you even if you aren’t fans of mine or didn’t want an autograph. It’s nice enough that you believed me when I told you what the problem was. Let’s do this thing, YEAH~!”

Bringing arms forward he shouted into a microphone while standing tall and then gave us a dazzling smile as he put it away. He raised both his arms above his head and out wide in what I’m thinking is grappler’s stance. He definitely knew how to fight.

The roof they would be fighting on was relatively sparse and long, but falling off the front or back sides of it would be relatively easy. So we had to be a little careful to keep fighting along the length of the roof.

-FIGHT: Digi-world Friends vs. Etemon: Self-proclaimed Digimon King-

Pom inhaled and exhaled and shot forward thrusting her left straight, Etemon leaned his head to the left and went to grab her with his right hand.

Only to miss his grab when Pom launched herself backwards with a thousand spear from her left hind leg at the roof to push herself backwards, her right leg fired of a thousand spear directly at him that he dodged around by bending backwards under it.

Rising back up, his left arm caught Lobomon’s right wrist before he could swing his glowing energy blade down on him.

Etemon kicked Lobomon with his left foot while letting him go and sent him flying across the roof and then caught Garu’s right fist and threw a punch for his left cheek with his right fist. Garu staggered back a bit when the blow landed.

Dazzle took advantage of Etemon’s having pushed back Garu and lashed out with a flaming whip, which actually made Etemon dodge to the side to actively avoid it. He pulled out his microphone and blasted out a sonic wave of destruction at her with horrible screeching that blew out the flames by creating vacuum distortions in the air that sent Dazzle rolling backwards.

He followed that up by backhanding a fireball away with his left hand launched by Frizzle, then caught Dolly’s skateboard between two fingers as she tried to bring it down on him. Despite the impact wave, Etemon was unfazed by the attack. With a flick of said fingers Etemon sent Dolly flying across the roof much like he had done with Lobomon.

Dolly simply stopped herself in the air, flipped and twirled to land on the back end of her skateboard as Pom fired two thousand spears from her front legs that Etemon dodged with a leap.

Etemon quickly got hit by a rising kick from Garu to the stomach as he came down that knocked him back a bit and Lobomon leapt to swing his left blade at Etemon for extra damage. Only for it to be deflected by a dark blur, this allowed Etemon to land without being struck by the follow up attack.

“How about I make this fight a bit more challenging for you?” Hi-Vision Monitamon showed up, the square headed small bodied ninja Digimon with a small radar dish sticking out of the top of his head decided to be Etemon’s backup. “It’s going to take a while for the Black Widow to repair its back half and it won’t quite be the same without the Grenade Spinnerets. Going to have to buy some replacement parts for that. Until then, you’ll see how strong I am compared to the other Monitamon personally!”

“Heh heh heh, quality over quantity my friend, but then again some of our opponents already have quite a bit of quality all their own.” Etemon got back into his fighting stance and Hi-Vis struck a pose next to Etemon, then the monitor headed being twirled his jutte and held it in front of himself. “Nice of you to join the fight Hi-Vis.”

A bone went flying for Etemon and Hi-Vis hopped to block it with his jutte.

When Hi-vis successfully deflected the bone back to Dolly, he received a sudden flying buck from Pom to the body.

Having knocked back Hi-vis, Pom landed on her back and rolled out of the way as Etemon tried to stomp on her prone form and received a rather painful kick to the face from Lobomon for his troubles.

The kick to face, not being a stunning blow, let Etemon grab Lobomon and slam him into the ground behind him and he turned to push Garu’s fist upwards before delivering a flat hand jab to his kidney staggering him back.

Having an open shot at Etermon, Dazzle unleashed a Dragon Pulse only for Hi-Vis to leap into its path and divert the energy with his jutte and redirect it at Pom who had to leap to the side into a roll to dodge as it the beam followed her and damaged the roof a bit.

As the deflection was happening Frizzle ran by Etemon and slashed at his right side scoring some claw marks on him.

Frizzle was swiftly knocked over by Etemon suddenly belting out a screech with his microphone as he quickly twisting his upper torso at her, while kicking his left leg out to deflect Garu kicking at him.

Hi-Vis leapt for Garu’s back and was intercepted by Pom leaping and flipping forward to slapping both her hind legs on his radar dish antenna.

Hi-vis, having been diverted, dropped to the ground and immediately blasted a fireball up at Pom from, his jutte. Pom quickly inflated her wool and rapidly flailed her legs to move out of its path. He quickly turned and deflected Dolly’s skateboard as she swung it at him with the strap in a clockwise motion, using the momentum of the deflection Dolly spun counterclockwise, continuing to move forward, and swung the bone in her right paw for the center of his monitor face.

Having blocked the bone with the jutte, Hi-Vis left himself open for a Fire Lash from Dazzle that hit with the full force of a physical whip as Dolly disengaged at the right moment. Hi-Vis was sent bouncing across the roof in a painful manner.

Hi-Vis went right skidding past Etemon who was diverting a punch from Garu as he deflected Riki’s kick with a backhand, then grabbed onto Riki’s leg before he could bring one of his two beam blades about and was swiftly used to bash Garu several time as Etemon started using Riki as a living flail.

With one final swing, after several painful rapid fire up and down blows, Etemon finally let go of Riki’s leg sending him and Garu tumbling.

Etemon turned and looked to see Pom coming at him with a flying cartwheel, he brought his arms up expected her to forward flip and drop a hind leg on him from above.

What Pom instead did was kick her legs together to reverse her Wild Windmill spin to land on her front right hoof in front of Etemon, she continued her spinning momentum by doing an upwards buck under Etemon’s high guard and ended the spin in a four legged standing position facing him.

The end results of Pom’s attack was left Etemon was both stunned and doubled over, giving her enough time for another attack. Pom’s wool shifted around her head and right shoulder before she boosted herself forward with two thousand spears from her rear legs to and tackle him to the ground with a burst of speed.

Pom bounced back from the impact and sprung up high in the air above Etemon and started to rapidly launch multiple thousand spears to stay in the air as she perform a trample attack that rapidly dropped thousand spears on him from above with ever stomp motion Pom made.

Etemon, weathering the attack fairly well despite now having hoof shaped imprints on his body, screeched at Pom with his microphone knocking her out of the air and onto her back from the soundwave attack hitting her directly.

Sitting up Etemon suddenly received the back end of Dolly’s board to the left side of his face and she threw the bone into the right side a second later and caught it as it bounced off his skull and back to her. Dolly followed that up by taking a position in front of a prone groaning and shaken up Pom.

Etemon was up and charging at her and she grinned.

“Ar-rooroo*(Aerora)!” A powerful silver gusts of wind surrounded Dolly and Pom along with every nearby ally suddenly having protective swirling winds around them, Etemon ran straight into the barrier and the shield buffeted him badly and forced him into stumbling backwards.

In a similar event as to what happened with Etemon being bounced back, Hi-Vis trying to jam his Jutte into Dazzle bounced off the aerora shield and managed to land on his feet and had to hop to the side to dodge the flaming whip that was visibly supercharged by the swirling winds protecting Dazzle.

Hi-Vis unfortunately dodge into the path of Frizzle’s pyrosphere and it struck him in the back, knocking him face first into the floor.

With a jab of his jutte straight up in the air, water engulfed Hi-Vis weakening the effects of the flames had on him and was swiftly swung his weapon forward to pummel Dazzle harshly with a huge torrent of water knocking her down.

The attack would have knocked Dazzle out entirely if she didn’t have the ‘aerora shield’, that Dolly put on all of them, to dent and weaken the attack greatly. It was still quite painful for her to be hit with that much water and she could hardly stand up, the barrier quickly flickered out have absorbed so much damage.

Hi-Vis was about to launch another torrent of water at Dazzle.

“…” Frizzle’s form started glowing.

Hi-Vis turned around twirling his jutte and he launched a blast of cutting air and water to hit…

Nothing?

The cocoon of zeroes and ones he had been expecting just wasn’t there.

A question mark popped up on Hi-Vis’s monitor for a second and then a large claw slapped down on his small body.

The large form hopped back and stood in front of Dazzle while sweeping about its tail, spreading its wings and holding out its claws threateningly. This time Frizzle had been prepared for the influx of raw dimensional energy power she took from Dazzle, however the energy she took from Dazzle wasn’t Normal Type dimensional energy this time.

“Scanning… Growlmon Dragon Type, registered.” Yggdrasil said from Dazzle’s Digi-vice. “I think this technically counts as Growldramon… mildly horrifying for a champion level Digimon.”

Frizzle lowered herself onto all fours and stared down the now badly shivering Hi-Vis. Frizzle had the wings from her possible future form of Megidramon on her tyrannosaurus sized, vaguely dragon shaped Growlmon body and they spread out as she loosed a roar to the sky with her skin having turned vaguely lavender in color.

Hi-Vis was going to be busy for the next few minutes fending off an angry dragon Digimon that was in control of her faculties enough to keep protecting a downed and barely conscious Dazzle.

Etemon was quite distracted by Frizzle’s evolution, whose weight was damaging the roof quite a bit that cracks were forming everywhere, he barely managed to duck away from a right high kick from Garu.

Within a blink Etemon suddenly swung his left fist to the right swiftly into the nearly indistinguishable incoming blur that was Pom’s face knocking her down and almost breaking her nose with a single devastating hit.

The ‘Aerora shield’ stopped Pom’s nose from breaking completely, but her face was rapidly turning a nasty shade of purple, puffing up and bleeding slightly from her nostrils. Pom was left feeling as if she just rammed face first into a brick wall. Pom had been moving at Dancing Flame speeds when she went to attack Etemon only to find herself being knocked down again, her Aerora shield disappated a second later.

Etemon hadn’t gotten away from hitting the shield scot-free, but the damage was relatively small. He had to dodge a flying bone as Dolly moved to protect Pom from Etemon if he chose to continue going after her.

Garu moved forward and was about to lay into Etemon with his fist when he stopped and hopped back leaving Etemon confused until he slammed into the roof by Frizzles sweeping tail smashing him in the chest.

Apparently Frizzle took the opportunity to slam her tail into Etemon as she chased down a visibly panicked Hi-Vis who’s fireballs, spouts of water, blasts of electricity and bursts of weapon twirling wind were doing very little to slow down the angry ‘dragon’ powered Digimon as she opened her mouth and fired a massive Growlmon shaped Dragon Pulse.

Pom grunted and got up again and soon she was moving to aid Garu and Riki, Dolly was giving her worried looks as she took up a defensive position at Pom’s side.

An entire portion roof shifted and suddenly everything was slanted when the roof broke into a lower floor causing the five fighters to stumble as they were now on an incline.

Etemon flailed as he fell forward and into Garu’s uppercut and then Garu blasted blues flames out of his mouth with a shout of ‘Fox Fire’ that engulfed Etemon painfully while launching him upwards.

With a twisted all of Etemon’s muscles bulged as he brought his right arm back and came down, breaking the two stacked bits of floor down another floor and now things were inclined towards him.

Pom went sliding at Etemon and then glued her wool to angled fallen bit of roofing, stopping short of his left fist digging it into the bit of fallen roofing between her hind legs.

Dolly sped up and boost her momentum as she kick flipped her board in Etemon’s grinning face and knocking the smile entirely off it. He tried to move forward only to get Dolly’s teeth into the left side his left neck and she jumped off before his right hand could swat or grab her.

While he was distracted, Pom managed to regain enough senses to get her left hind leg under her and she raised her right hind leg. She started breathing rapidly and with every exhaled she rapidly kicked into Etemon with as much force as she could manage.

Knees, sides, chest she was hitting him with rapid fire kicks that had him stunned, Pom then leapt up and slammed her right hind legs into his face staggering. Landing on her right legs she hopped up and brought her left hind leg high up and then slammed it down on the front of Etemon’s skull smashing his face into the broken off portion of the roof near where his fist made the hole.

The floor shifted again and suddenly it broke down another floor and Pom flailed as she landed badly and started rolling down the incline with Dolly quickly chasing after, as the dog had stopped fighting for a moment to retrieve her skateboard after it bounced off Etemon’s incredibly thick skull.

The section of roof had collapsed down to the second floor at this point and had several matching sections of broken flooring underneath it.

Etemon was up and charging down the incline at Garu when Riki appeared and slash his blade through Etemon’s left side causing him to stumble into a hard left from Garu that knocked him onto his back.

Garu quickly took advantage of Etemon’s prone form and stomped down on him with his left foot three times before Etemon retaliated with a point blank screech from his microphone knocking Garu down as he got up.

Etemon would have attacked Weregarurumon, only to be slashed from behind twice by Riki. He swung his closed left fist for Riki as he kicked out his right leg at Garu pushing him back before striking him across the head with another kick.

Both Garu and Riki were about to continue, but they jumped back and that confused Etemon for a second. He looked down and noted a shadow increasing size from above and looked up to see Hi-Vis’s monitor with an exclamation points and questions mark bearing down on him.

For Frizzle was about to pile-drive Hi-Vis into Etemon as she held the smaller Digimon in her claws.

The force of the impact caused the floors to collapse to the first floor and kick up dust everywhere, now there was no incline and everyone was laying down on a completely flat floor at the first floor of the school.

Everyone was groaning and sitting up. Looking to the point of impact, they saw Frizzle had driven Hi-Vis through two of the collapsed floors head first and he looked to be completely unconscious.

“Frizzle go pick up Dazzle from the roof, we’ll finish things here!” Nodding to Pom’s badly bruised face as Dolly whimpered at Pom’s injuries, Frizzle flapped her large wings and ascended up through the four stories of collapsed floors to the roof.

“What a workout!” Etemon had avoided having Hi-Vis slammed into him and he was huffing a bit. “Yeah no more floors to collapse to, let’s… let’s finish this little rumble!”

Etemon still had some fight left in him.

Pom needed a minute after that last floor collapse and was coughing up some dust, Dolly was by her side holding up her board defensively next to her.

Weregarurumon Kunio was already up and smashing his spike covered knuckledusters together ready to finish this and Lobomon Riki was ready as well.

Etemon charge and tried to grapple Garu, only he got to Etemon first by clapping his hands on both sides of Etemon’s head and bringing it down into his spike covered knee pads three times.

After one left and two rights of his knees applied to Eteremon’s face, Garu Kunio heaved Etemon up and over into the floor with a crunching noise.

Riki leapt up and landed a devastating elbow drop on Etemon’s chest shattering the roof bits of floor completely into small fragments.

“Ugh… so very… painful.” Etemon groaned and tried to sit up, only get grabbed by the neck and forced down by Kunio, Kunio socked him once in the face. “Okay… I give. You’ve got me… heh, we need more Digimon like you… key… left… pocket… I’m finished…”

Etemon laid his head down and didn’t move, moving his sunglasses upward revealed he passed out due to the amount of punishment he took.

It didn’t take long for Raptor Sparrowmon to go down to a dragon type empowered attack that made Frizzle look like a draconic meteor after all the punishment that had taken during the fighting with the Commandramon, Uver, Moosemon and Pistmon.

-A few hours later, Uver’s Base in the southwest slums district, Pom-

My face was still swelling up a bit and the digital ice pack was helping the pain in my face, we had the anchor key now and all we had to do was wait. Etemon had been quite tough and he handled most of us, but Weregarurumon proved to be too much of a match for him. The werewolf Digimon was reigning champion of the gangs now, by the fact that his gang was the only with members that weren’t currently embattled and still standing at the end of it all.

Yggdrasil.sys said Calumon would show up with a Digi-bot partner for Calumon’s protection and to play with him to prevent him from running constantly into danger. It wouldn’t be a Rokusho or Metabee, so I had to wonder who Yggdrasil would be bringing in to go back to Ransei with us.

Speaking of Digi-bots, Rokusho and Metabee had been on the second floor when we came crashing through. Apparently they already used their Omedamon form and ran out of energy which is why they didn’t show up until the end where Garurumon Kunio knocked him down and out with Riki’s help.

The two Digi-bots took some time to heal, then got Greymon Experts address and set off to have a talk with him. We said our goodbyes to the two as they left with Metabee was waving enthusiastically to us and Rokusho bowed to us in a friendly manner.

“Okay… so all of that was quite nuts.” Understatement, Dolly, very big understatement. She had a few scratches on her from where portions of the debris hit her as the ceiling fell to the first floor. “Now that we have a moment to rest, I have to ask… how the dog did we survive all of that?! I mean Bow-Whacka-Whoa Pom!”

“Good friends, Dolly, good friends.” I was going to sit up, I was just going to lie here and hope the swelling went down somewhat. Etemon really let me have it with that punch to the face, I wasn’t about to use Sheep’s Clothing when I would preferred to keep my armored wool where it is against an opponent that can react as fast as I can move.

I doubt a single being in all that fighting got out of it unscathed, the one that seemed to be the healthiest was Garu Kunio. He was perfectly fine after five minutes and eating half his body mass in food, which was ridiculous but apparently a thing some Digimon could do here in Server City.

“Best I can do for you sadly, I’m better at caring for Digimon.” Hea-Gatomon said as she looked over Sami’s heavily bandaged body. “Her coding was touch and go for a bit, but the girl is as tough as they come. Though surviving machine cannon fire is pretty hard to do. She’ll be ready to go in a day. Dazzle will be fine as far as I can tell, she just needs time to heal. Frizzle pulled quite a few digital muscles in her coding. Really all of you took quite a beating, the only one of you that is mostly okay is Canard.”

“Still got clawed up by a Falcomon or two.” Canard responded looking healthier than the rest of us combined, he had joined the Commandramon in dealing with the Falcomon.

“About the time Calumon should show up with their Digi-bot protector, get some rest it is doubtless that Chaosdramon X is waiting for your return trip between worlds.” Yggdrasil.sys wasn’t making me feel any better about that oncoming headache.

“Don’t remind me.” I whined and wouldn’t get up anytime soon, my wool didn’t stop the sonic attack Etemon hit me with from hurting me internally. “Let’s just stay still and have a quiet evening like Yiggy suggested.”

Everyone else groaned too in agreement that we should just rest.

“I’ll go grab us some victory pizza, enough for everyone.” Offered Uver, who was wrapped in bandages like the rest of us. He got up and made his way out the door.

Uver did the most fighting against Raptor Sparrowmon and fighting wasn’t even his specialty. He still showed everyone quite clearly that he was a courier and transport expert that you didn’t want to mess with.

Apparently the genocidal monster was under control of a dangerous digital world that was possibly run by something as genocidal with similarities to Yggdrasil.sys. If Arceus knew most of what was going on, then I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest.

I had to wonder why Chaosdramon X would seemingly be targeting me or my group though, I was kind of a major focus for that thing before we dropped into this world and soon… soon we’d be leaving.

I’m barely strong enough to deal any of the damage I had to Etemon and had to hit him multiple times to really do anything. I couldn’t even do much more than scratch Ogremon. I think the best I did was against Hi-Vision Monitamon and even that was a terrifying fight with a walking tank that wouldn’t stay down and was probably still repairing itself even as we left.

At most we’d be missing another minute or so back in Ransei for a day or two more here. It would still be the same day we entered Voltsburg and that was a mind boggling fact for all the time we’ve spent here.

Where would we come out at and would we even make it back without Chaosdramon X showing up? Not likely, but hopefully Calumon was what we needed, it seemed Yggdrasil.sys thinks they could help us.

“Thanks for the medical aid… you guys did a serious number on me.” Etemon grinned toothily as his mummified body laid among us. “Guess we’re all friends now… except Ogremon is still evil. Hm… not my problem, he has his gang to run and the Pink Pooper Troopers gang to deal with so you should be in the clear to get out of here.”

Good to know…

-???, Oleander-

“Buck you bayonetta!” I shouted as I fell away from the hair suited witch, while fighting off all the violent angels of this world.

Why was it always butterflies that give me problems?!

“Oh my, such a feisty little dark unicorn.” Smiled the lady as she continued fighting several things at once and flapped butterfly wings every once in a while.

“Fiesty this!” A blast from her Unicornsplosion by Buttina was quickly dodged and Bayonetta even caught one of the projectiles and hugged it with a smile. The smiling unicorn shaped projectile that had fired from the gun squeaked audibly like a plush toy.

“Thank you I will.” Bayonetta smiled demurely as she popped a lollipop in her mouth, Fred shivered in fear and came after me to help out with the angels. “All of you are so very cute, even the knowledge demon! It’s so nice that we can play again…”

“Time travel sucks!” I shouted out loud as I stabbed my key-blade into a passing angel to ride it back up towards Fred. Bayonetta already knew all our moves and how to counter us perfectly from a prior encounter we have yet to have with her.

"Oh I'm well aware of that personally!" Bayonetta shouted back.

297. Ransei or busted!

-The next morning, Digital Realm, Server City, Southwestern Slums, Uver’s Pad, Pom-

Usually I would wake up first, but when Dolly does… it’s never long before she finds a reason or way to wake me up after getting in a little exercise. The swelling in my face was still quite painful and made getting to sleep rather hard last night, Dolly helped me with getting comfortable.

However being woken up to this morning, I could feel Dolly panicking about something.

“Oh dog, oh dog, oh dog, not again, this cannot be happening again!” Dolly was running about and looking for something seeming in a panic and it was drawing attention from everyone else.

“Dolly… what… what’s wrong…. Where’s the fire?” I said through a painfully bruised face, my voice was a little off do to my entire face still being somewhat swollen as my mind was slowly kicking into gear. I didn’t even touch our bond, it was in my mind within an instant as if I had just read hers without our bond. “Is this about Lit?”

Dolly froze in her panicking and turned to me and winced, because I was giving her a slight look.

“Heh, sorry for waking you Pom, but I just realized that I haven’t seen the little guy since the fighting yesterday!” Yeah, he disappeared before getting the key off Etemon… I think I have an idea of where he went.

“Don’t worry Dolly, I have an idea where Lit got off to.” In fact it was better than a good hunch what Lit had gotten into when it was left sitting there open for the taking.

“You-… do?” My goodness was Dolly adorable sight in the morning, energetic, excitable and not exactly engaging her brain as to what Lit’s habits are like.

“He’s probably at Jijimon’s place.” Probably where he would go after he was done with what he had to do at Fury Clan High School, I still didn’t know if that was a normal name for a school or not.

I really am not a normal lambkin by any stretch of the imagination and now that I didn’t have anything else on my mind, it immediately went back to my lack of real schooling growing up beyond what I taught myself and what Tianhuo helped me with when it came to moving into Huoshan and becoming head of the HCD.

I wasn't normal... and I never have been.

“How do you figure? We left him behind at that really odd high school after we got through with Etemon! Not that I know what a normal High School is like, but you get my point right?” Dolly was quite upset with herself that she forgot Lit and to be fair Lit was kind of easy to forget because he was a 'small' detail. “How can you trust to know where he is?”

Still couldn’t leave Lit behind in this dimension, even if he obviously smart enough to survive on his own.

“Lit knows that our gathering point is at Jijimon’s house. I’m quite sure that you’ve noticed, but Dazzle can talk. So you know all Pokémon are intelligent and we’re not going to leave without your favorite tick and our most recent traveling companion Dolly.” As for what Lit was doing while we were busy with Etemon… I’m pretty sure Hi-Vis was going to be quite upset about it given I’m bound to be entirely right as to my suspicions.

Probably the only tick Dolly would ever appreciate having on her, one that would eat other fleas and ticks, on top of sources of energy and general foods like berries. Lit was a rather benign symbiotic parasite in that respect. However, I would remember the fact that packs of Joltiks were still dangerous and tend to work together to catch large sources of food when not given something else to snack on.

-Fury Clan High School, third floor-

The Black Widow’s destroyed back legs had stopped repairing a quarter of the way, the back of it was still quite destroyed. Still it was slowly repairing itself due in part to the Digizoid materials that it was made of that would fix itself over time, however it was slowed down immensely from doing this due to the full loss of its power source.

Batteries and power sources just weren’t safe around the Pokémon known as Joltik, especially not one so easily tempted like Lit when an exposed power source was just sitting out in the open like that. The little greedy electric tick went to town on sucking it entirely dry by himself.

This would later be a good thing as an entirely upset Hi-Vis Monitamon wouldn’t be able to catch up to the ones leaving the digital world.

-Thirty digital minutes later after a quick breakfast, Jijimon’s house, Dolly-

“Where were you, I was so worried about you little dude, I’m sorry we left you behind at the school!” All Lit did was happily squeak when I hugged him, he didn’t seem angry in the slightest. He just seemed remorseful for having wandered off. I started to pet him with my right paw. “It’s alright bud, I thought you got hurt or something and I should be apologizing because I totally forgot all about you!”

“To be fair I’m sorry I forgot about you too.” The squeak Pom received from Lit was rather reassuring as Lit waved a small blue claw tip at her in a friendly manner.

“At least you’re not leaving without him, which would have been a real problem to miss a little guy like this! Tsumemon here had so much fun with your little companion.” Turning to GG, Generic Grandpa, I saw he was holding a bug like creature with one eye, two tendril ears and multiple pointy legs. “Say goodbye to your playmate Tsumemon, it’s time to eat.”

The little Digimon whined, I turned Lit in my paws when he struggled a bit and he waved a claw and squeaked back to them. Tsumemon gurgled a bit and waved a claw at Lit with a smiling eye. The interaction between the two was just precious.

“We have to get moving guys, don’t want any complications in meeting up Calumon and the Digi-bot at the anchor point.” We exited the building, Sami and Canard were waiting on their digital vehicles. Canard would be carrying Pom, Lit and Me. Sami would be transporting Dazzle. As for Frizzle she would be in Dazzle’s Digi-vice.

We began driving north and it was pretty quiet, we’ve already made sure that we hadn’t forgotten anything. We had everyone and two more participants waiting at that anchor point so we can get out of here.

The ride was pretty quiet and there was the silent anticipation of know that terrifying large red armored monster was possibly waiting for us between worlds. I don’t know if I was ready to surf the digital tubes again.

-Some time later, Anchor Point, Pom-

I silently thought about having said goodbye to the Dalmamon family before we left the city, as much as we said goodbye to the baby Digimon and a few others we’ve come to befriend before we left the city in a dubious state. I mean it’s not like we imprisoned the Digimon gang leaders we beat up.

We pulled to a stop, Canard was holding onto the key. He would defend it fiercely until we were on our way. We were basically on Arceus’s upper right spike of him facing us, having moved north from the mid-point of the crescent from the city to here.

I still wondered what Calumon looked like and what Digi-bot would he be accompanied by. It wasn’t long before I found out. When two beings showed up, one was immediately infatuated with me, it was of course the Digi-bot with a dog motif. The only difference between Digi-bots was the parts they used and the medals they had inside them to power their artificial minds, their personalities being based on an animal. I didn’t need to have any guesses as to what this Digi-bots personality was going to be like around me.

“Are you Calumon?” Maybe I was expecting a bit too much after all the other Digimon I’ve seen? “What can you do? Do you suddenly grow claws, fire lasers or have any fighting ability whatsoever.”

“Yes, I’m Calumon! Also nope, no ability to fight whatsoever, I can’t even digivolve to save myself, isn’t that amazing!” Cheerful and unafraid of the world around him, the little white critter with a large forehead jewel seemed to be bright and bubbly. Noticing my mood he gave me a cheerful smile, I didn’t feel like smiling with my face still somewhat aching from being almost smashed in by Etemon who was partially sandbagging against us. Etemon would have used a move to at least de-digivolve Lobomon back to Strabimon, but said move wouldn’t have effected Garu or Frizzles. Because Garu was too strong and Frizzle was a digital hazard, which meant Etemon couldn’t have reverted Frizzle to Guilmon form if he tried. “What I can do is grow my ears to fly, that’s pretty unique right!”

“What am I missing here with Calumon?” I asked the infatuated Dog Digi-bot, Calumon looked far too innocent for the title of ‘monster’.

“He’s functionally the power of Digital Evolution given a physical form, apparently digivolution has the physical appearance of being cute and innocent. Also he’s able to help you transfer between realms much faster than you would be able to normally do by yourselves ma’am!” The metal hat that was part of the robots head had two long dog like metal ears poking out the side of it, it had a mechanical tail and paws instead of hands. His torso was basically the upper jaw of a dog and his legs were connected to what looked like the upper jaws tongue. “Model DTT-02 Side-Kicky, support Digi-bot, call me Sideline! I’m good at boosting any digital or mechanical entities abilities, causing opportunistic distractions, creating time and space distortions that both hurt and slows down an opponent in a short range of myself and my special ability, when I’m properly charged up in the heat of danger, is creating illusions… usually to turn invisible. Medal type Dog.”

I blinked, he could do all those things? I narrowed my eyes at him.

“What are your downsides Sideline?” I asked.

“I’m not great at doing damage directly to someone in a fight unless I’m transformed into dog mode ma’am, the reason I was chosen to watch Calumon are entirely based in my ability to evade trouble as much as Calumon can get into it.” Assuming Sideline’s sudden infatuation with me is making him honest, I had to wonder why he, specifically, was chosen to be the protector of Calumon. “I may not sound like much to any of you, but I can and will do my job well while helping you to the best of my ability. Dog mode means I lose the ability to do some of my bipedal mode functions, but I get a pretty mean bite and can fire a sound cannon from my mouth.”

So Sideline was basically me in a fight while in dog mode, really Yggdrasil.sys? You didn’t have anyone more capable or scary than Rokusho and Metabee are said to be? Someone who wouldn’t be trying to constantly look up to me… I knew Arceus wasn’t subtle, but I’m getting the feeling neither was Yggdrasil.sys.

“Fine… let’s get moving… who’s going to close up the portal and relock the anchor point once we’re through?” My question was answered by Uver appearing on moosemon in a flash.

-Origin Space, Mew-

“So… Calumon is basically me, but has no combat ability to speak of whatsoever?” I said as I looked into the fact that Calumon was carrying the data of just about every single Digimon in his tiny floating form. “Yggdrasil is playing risky business with that venture sending him to Ransei now.”

“Yes, but with Pom there it is a good opportunity to speed things up, I can see why Yggdrasil is making such a move. I believe Calumon is the intended to eventually be the delegate that Yggdrasil wants in a position of safety for obvious reasons and looking through Sideline’s history he is very good at combat outside his natural Digi-bot abilities.” Arceus was grinning at Sideline for some reason. “He may not be damage focused, but Sideline is still a very good choice for protecting Calumon. Moon Cell is going to try to intercept them no doubt.”

“Why is Moon Cell so determined to target Pom father? She’s not even aware Moon Cell is actually a very huge problem for everyone yet.” Looking at back those data ants called ‘shadows’ gave me the creeps, data derived from world eaters was not something I wanted anywhere near the Mystery Dungeon Realm.

“Yes, but Pom is going to have a very good reason to actively seek Moon Cell’s destruction when she learns of one key factor Mew. It’s something of a recent discovery of mine, once Pom calls ‘Baa-Ram-Ewe’, there is a good chance nothing will be able to stop her.” Arceus was staring at Dolly and Pom with a warm smile. “We have all the heroes we need in various parts of the world, especially Ransei, starting to come into their own. While we do not necessarily need Pom… it’s always a good idea to have an ace in the hole and now all factions are aware she’s on the board, but not what movements she will actually take. Even I cannot see the full end of what she’ll accomplish. Digimon and Pokémon are inevitably going to come to blows, if we can broker peace fast enough, then Moon Cell won’t have as great an opportunity to destroy both our worlds.”

“Ugh… politics, I’d rather take combat training with Palkia and Dialga both wailing on me any day.” Though what he said made it clear to me, Pom would greatly help ease things into place for Digimon and Pokémon kind even if she was an unnecessary variable in what was coming, being unnecessary was not the same as being unimportant. “So… got any mochi dad?”

-Network Connection Tube, Pom-

Everything was quiet when we appeared in the tubes again, Calumon immediately got us moving and everyone noticed an exceedingly immediate difference in speed.

“Whoa, we’re going like three times faster, what gives?” Dolly asked as the little white rabbit like Digimon known as Calumon hovered in front of us with the red crystal on his head glowing.

“Choo-choo, chugga chugga chugga, we’re not going to be late for a very important date of me seeing the local reality!” Calumon stated cheerfully. “I’m going to find us the closest exit, then I was told that can have all the fun I wanted! All I have to do is make friends and that’s easy, I already made so many minutes ago already.”

Calumon was continuing to be a bundle of pure positivity, innocence and quite frankly blind exceedingly naïve optimism. He was adorable enough that I wanted to protect him on the principle of his very existence, which I’m fairly sure was the point of him being entirely helpless in a fight. He’s not an active threat to anyone and couldn’t be, so what was his secret?

“Be advised unknown entity detected, similarities to Chaosdramon X noted, unknown issues may occur in transit and I will get a better scan once the creature gets closer to you.” Oh trust me Yggdrasil, we weren’t going to ignore the fact that it was coming after us again… but wait… it wasn’t Chaosdramon X? “Entity seems much slower than Chaosdramon X, but is still picking up speed, sealing digital realm off from hostile entity. Firewall defenses will actively slow them down and not attack you this time. Leaving local Yggdrasil.sys instance in local digital realm to continue assisting digi-destined. Yggdrasil Proper cannot be compromised… I am sorry, truly, for every inconvenience that will occur from here on. I will inform you when entity enters visual range.”

Dolly whimpered as she and Lit clung to me when they saw the Guardromon, but they didn’t fire any of those annoyingly loud whistling missiles at us and the Machinedramon didn’t try to eat us or fire their cannons in our direction.

“It’s kind of scary to see these guys again.” I stated plainly, they were just silently and disturbingly watching as we passed by them with dead emotionless stares, it made me somewhat nervous to see them again.

“Please note they are not the same Machinedramon and Guardromon you saw on the way in, their data was destroyed and their eggs retrieved to safety for reconstitution into firewall defenses as they are now via reincarnation.” Well that was sad to hear Yggdrasil, these guys got reincarnated back into exactly what they were. “Network security recognizes you now, the prior incident of being attacked will not occur.”

I mean it made some sense and get the idea behind it, but still… that kind of job security was nuts and I wouldn’t want to be them stuck in a loop like this. Though if they really were soulless Digimon, then it was less an issue on my mind to worry about their wellbeing and still very much disturbing to see entities that could have souls but don’t. Giving them souls would have been kind of cruel.

“Excited Canard?” Sami asked from where she was resting inside Canard’s Digi-vice.

Sami and Frizzle were both working on their Digi-homes, Sami less so because of Hea-Gatomon orders to rest. That and them not being out was probably making this much faster transference on top of Calumon pulling us through the tubes.

“Yeah, can’t wait to taste some real fresh air. Unfortunately I’m going to be naked and my puck pistol is going to stop working when we come out.” Thanks for the reminder to not be looking your way once we’re out Canard. “Going to need to make some clothes when we get to this Ransei place, at least it’ll put me one step closer to my team.”

Hm… maybe… yeah, that could work!

“We could actually get you in contact with them using our Digi-vice.” I said earning Canard’s attention. “Dolly’s family has recently gained a lot of odd connections from our adventures and one of them is to the Mighty Ducks hockey team if they ever need help. Since our Digi-vice can connect to that world…”

“Thank you…” Canard said in the most heartfelt manner he could while wiping his eyes and beak on his arm.

“Don’t thank me yet Canard, it might take a while to get into contact with the… ‘flock’ so to speak and Dolly is going to want to talk with her family first to set that up.” Getting a nod in understanding, I turned back to face the direction we were heading in the tube. “Also there’s this chameleon guy and they had some trouble with him mimicking you once.”

“I’ll convince them of who I am, because there are some things only I would know to say. Whether I return or not, Wildwing is still going to be Team Captain.” There was a smile on Canard’s beak. “This is the fastest I’ve ever moved in a network tube, but I’m quite thankful for that even with the threat of an unstoppable Digimon coming at us.”

Mostly unstoppable, because we didn’t have the requisite firepower to actually deal with it.

“So quick question, how weak are Digimon going to be when we get into reality?” It was important because we were going to have several Digimon and a Digi-bot in the Pokémon realm.

“Depends on the digital energy available, it’s probably going to be exceedingly thin given the lack of heavy technological levels. Meaning we’ll be pretty weak as a result.” Sami stated with a surety that made me worry about her safety. “We Digimon are basically nothing without technology.”

“Speak for yourself, Digi-bots can make a full digital to physical conversion, we don’t have the issues of lacking digital energy like Digimon meaning we’re as capable in a physical reality as we are in a digital one. However we are severely limited to the parts we have equipped and as a reminder lack digital evolutionary abilities barring some set Digi-bot pairs ability to fuse into Digimon. I am not a Digi-bot with a fusion capability or have yet to meet a Digi-bot I’m capable of fusing with.” Speaking up Sideline was changing the gun like protrusion coming from one of his arms. “Until we get there, I’m going to be running a self-system diagnostics before entering reality for conversion to digital to physical, this will be my first time doing this and I’m a bit nervous. I hope to be of great service to you ma’am as much as I am Calumon.”

After he said that last part to me with smiling blue glowing orbs, Sideline continued checking his body over.

A silence fell over our group and we were left to our thoughts, I wondered how Shanty, Smolder and Ocellus are doing. I’d basically let Ocellus paraphrase what I’d tell them into something more understandable.

“Hey, uh… Pom… where do you think we’ll come out at?” Good question Dolly, let’s hope it’s not too important and that we got out before something stopped us.

“Don’t look so worried, we’re almost-“ Calumon was cut off abruptly, he really was helpful in getting us through these tubes quickly.

“Digital entity within visual range, please aim Digivice at it to scan.” Upon Yggdrasil’s need for a Digivice to get an eye on it, and I could barely see it in the darkness beyond the tubes, Dazzle silently angled the device on her belt at it. “Scanning… new Chaosdramon X variant detected, applying new designation. New entities designation is ‘Skull Chaosdramon X’. Extreme data corrosion detected in digital entity has caused this new form, side effects include inability to attack at long ranges due to warped data. While its danger at range has drastically decreased, its claws seem to have gained a significantly devastating deletion field effect. One that can cause immediate core deletion to any Digimon under ultimate strength on contact without a chance of a reincarnation cycle, its tail has also grown and increased striking power with a spear tipped barb sharing the deletion field effect. Warning: do not fight Skull Chaosdramon X in melee or close combat range if you are a digital entity, core deletion will effect all Digi-bots. The loss of a majority of its armor and the weight of its cannons have improved speed significantly, thankfully it is no longer capable of performing Genocide attacks. However it is still going to be marked as a significant digital hazard due to the new severe data destroying properties it contains.”

The roar that came from what was apparently Skull Chaosdramon X was a bone chilling shriek that shook us all up.

“I... did that…” Dazzle stated with a hint of sorrow, this was the end result of her having used toxic on it before we entered the Digital Realm. The end results were definitely not pretty to look at.

“At least it doesn’t have the ability to blow us up at a distance, which is a good thing.” Yeah, so very good for us, I thought bitterly. Just as long as it couldn’t close the distance between us. We were going at three times the speed we had going in and it was still catching up to us.

Skull Chaosdramon X, was a skeleton of its former self. Still red in color from what were decidedly its bones and its claws were glowing a sickly looking purple color. The cannons on its back were inert and its skeletal metal body was coming at us with as much speed as it could put out, its red glowing malevolent eyes on its desiccated corpselike appearance were solely focused on me and I had to wonder why it was me it was focusing on and not say someone like… Calumon.

Sure I know it would be callous of me to wish Calumon was the target of so much ire, but that thing screamed death incarnate and it was currently pointing itself directly at me.

“Diagnostics complete, activating combat defensive protocols and ready to show my stuff!” Sideline stated as he turned and moved to the back of the group. The transforming dog Digi-bot focused on Skull Chaosdramon X as it was quickly closing in.

“I have no illusions about any of us actually winning a fight against that thing!” I screamed loudly.

“We never cured it of my poison, I have to wonder if it’s gained a total immunity to it now?” Which would be something Dazzle, considering how you told me how powerful your poison was and we were seeing the clear effects of it.

“I don’t need to win the fight, I just need to stall them and stalling is kind of my specialty as a 'Combat Support' Digi-bot!” Sideline stated with a bright optimistic tone, in the face of that horrific skeletal demon coming at us.

Skull Chaosdramon X was almost upon us and Sideline moved forward slightly and we all turned to face the monster as it raised its right claw.

“Time-Attack!” A flash from Sideline’s head and the creature slowed down immensely and fell a good distance behind us within a second. “I can only do that once in a while until my head parts cycles back and I bleed off heat. Now using the time that we have… Hypercept!”

Turning, Sideline aimed his right arm gun at… Calumon? The energy struck out at him and flowed around Calumon.

“Whoa… I feel… kind of funny really, ha ha wee!” Calumon started giggling loudly and happily, suddenly our speed doubled much to my disbelief.

“I was right… Calumon, not having much of anything else to improve, the Hypercept improved his capability to up our transference speed to a ridiculous rate.” Sideline’s eyes grinned at us as Skull Chaosdramon X fell into the distance behind us roaring and shrieking angrily while thrashing about.

“Give us ten seconds and I’ll get us out of here in a jiffy and that big meanie won’t be able to hurt any of you!” Calumon continued to glow with a happy amount of energy.

Turning back to the Skull Chaosdramon X becoming a dot behind us given how fast we’re moving, I sighed. That… had been much easier than I could have ever expected, a little too easy really…

So where’s the proverbial horseshoe drop? Oh right… where were we coming out at again?

“What’s on your mind Pom, aside from the horrifying skeletal monster that we just left behind?” I turned to Dolly and Lit squeaked in curiosity from her back.

“Has anyone ever considered the fact that we might be in some sort of trouble as we come back out depending on where exactly that happens to be?” There was a long pause after I asked the question, said pause was long enough for Calumon to open a hole back into the reality that was Ransei.

-Approximately three hours, ten minutes and fifteen seconds after entering the digital realms, evening, Violight Capital of Joltenheim, Violight Castle, super computer room, ???-

I have heard some trouble happening in Voltsburg earlier this day a few hours back, the message Proffessor Pong sent me through the system made very little sense and someone messed up his laboratory whether by accident or malicious intention, I would find a way to bring such interlopers that caused that to justice.

Thankfully it doesn’t seem that the kingdoms power production systems were messed up in the slightest, our lights would remain lit for the glory of the Violight Kingdom.

Something sparked slightly in the air near the computer and it wasn’t a bit of electricity, I quickly back up to the entrance of the room and charged my body for an attack.

“Guards, intruders, to arms and alert, something is happening in this very room!” I shouted and the result was immediate as two Eelektross flanked me, some of our kingdoms greatest warriors that were never lazy or idle and these in particular specialized at dealing with Ground Type Pokémon who thought us easy targets to mess with. “Prepare Thunder Waves for possible intruders, should they prove immune, use other attacks to incapacitate.”

Some form of portal opened up in the air, if it was an Ultra Beast it would not feast on my people or take them from their homes. In fact that would happen only over my dead body! If it is a Guzzlord, we would do all we could to kill it before it could destroy our kingdom. If it was one of the other more peaceful ones, I would try to open dialogue. If it was unknown I would immediately use Thunder Wave and worry about the consequences afterwards.

Several forms quickly fell out of the portal, one was a Salazzle, which was all I needed to see to think this might have been some form of assassination attempt on me by those literal snakes in Viperia.

“Unit Command, Thundering Paralysis Wave!” I unleashed my mightiest Thunder Wave with my guards acting in unison with me. We paralyzed all we could before they could get their bearings, the only one not effected was the curious Joltik among them that seemed clearly upset with me and the strange machine with canine attributes.

“Guards, seize them, take anything that looks like a weapon or armor from them!” I shouted and looked over them as my troopers surrounded them, the oversized Psyduck was quite unusual. “I am the Luxray Queen Ginchiyo Tachibana of Violight, I know not why you are here and you have invaded my castle. Know that I will certainly find out your purpose here while you are imprisoned soon enough, take them away!”

-Digi-home, Sami’s Military Bunker Workshop, Sami-

“Frizzle, no! We can still settle this peacefully… do not pop out of your Digi-vice and cause a ruckus.” I thankfully managed to convince Frizzle to not go out there while all our friends were being detained. The communications systems between Digi-vices was silent and then Frizzle started growling in clear frustration, but ultimately listened to me. “At least not yet, stay in your Digi-home for the time being unless destruction is threatened. If that happens, then you can go hog wild. Just make yourself some bread and calm down with a snack… alright? Alright.”

I felt the same as Frizzle at the moment because Canard was one of the ones being detained. In the meantime, while I was thinking of a solution to the problem and healing from my injuries, I could work on some things like a specialized grappling hook.

The digital energy outside our Digi-vices was fairly thin, we wouldn’t be fully combat capable and quite limited in attacks. Fully manifesting wasn’t exactly the issue here, the problem is that we’d be fighting at a huge detriment compared to the local’s capabilities having seen what Dazzle can do. We’d just be caught too, if not outright accidentally forced into reincarnation cycle if they didn’t have an idea of how much damage we could take and went full power on us.

We needed to wait and think about this carefully before doing anything.

299. A Quickly Shattering Peace.

-Location: ???, Tamamo No Mae-

“Okay, Ammy, let’s blow this Popsicle stand, I’m tired of being on ice!” I shouted as I started the sequence of magic that would drop us in the world where the Queen of Canines resides.

This is a little unfortunate because there are many worlds where she exists and we’d only end up in one of the.

Amaterasu, the white wolf with divine red marks covering her body, huffed loudly as the sequence of magical mysteries started and alarms throughout the facility sounded as our transportation out of the facility began.

The three of us would be gone before they could do anything about it.

“So long everyone, it was a nice place to be born, but I’ve got a whole multiverse to mess with!” Great Vixen Tamamo no Mae was out to seek a great husband, even if they were female, she wasn’t exactly picky. “Also Cipactli… have some fun on me, but you definitely belong in here!”

Amaterasu wanted to explore other realms where she wasn’t needed to do anything and Tamamo convinced her to not let loose her world destroying plan, she hadn’t quite reached the state where she would just do so and decided to disable the trigger before they left. She was quite interested in a world where she didn’t exist.

The third member of their group just looked at the two of us and was possibly wondering where we would end up, if I remember right they once upon a time met Merlin and were left wanting. We were doing the world a favor. If the organization actually caught our third member and Amaterasu didn’t bring him along, then they would poke the beast too often and stir up an extinction level event.

“One last thing for the ones recording this, let sleeping dragons lie or else you might destroy yourselves by accident!” I shouted and then the world turned white…

It changed to silver in a few seconds and then I realized I was a silver fox with nine tails tipped with blue colors wrapping around my form and I felt the element of fire surging through me. I uncurled and looked myself over…

This silver fur of mine was really quite glossy… I approved of my new appearance, I’m super sexy!

Now where was Ammy and… oh… it seems we have been a bit… split up.

Ah well, time for some fun! What does this world have to offer Tamamo in finding that great husband? I could find the other two later, I wanted me a Chrysomallus to snuggle!

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Well now… that’s… concerning.” It seems like something chaotic was added to the mix of what was already happening. I wonder how much of a powder keg that will become? “Someone just accessed a true magic for a second there to hop dimensions… oddly it seems they used Pom’s unusual memetic properties to do so.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t seem like they kept the amount of power they had during the crossing. Their power was probably more strongly tied to the world they just came from than they thought.” Mew stated as they continued to overlook Ransei. “Solgaleo should be able to keep that one in particular from doing anything rash with the sun at least.”

“Yes, but this does alter things somewhat.” Which is why it was concerning. “Things are about to devolve across Ransei pretty quickly.”

“Like they haven’t already father and mother of us all.” Giratina stated as the distortion world ruler showed up with one of the beings that came to our world, the form they took was quite peculiar. Giritina was in his full might as two of his legs held the Pokémon out while keeping a tight grip on them. “I found this one lost and confused within seconds of him appearing. It was my fastest time yet on finding an intruder. The intrusion might cause problems with Ultra Space, but I’ll deal with it.”

I looked at the normal and ghost Zoroark struggling in Giritina’s grasp, it was based on the Hisuian Initiative I had going on in one of my other worlds… a curious form to take to be sure.

“Drop this spirit off safely in Ransei and give him the knowledge he needs to get by… I’ll let you choose where to drop him off at.” I wanted to see how wise Giritina has grown in recent times.

“I have an idea… though you might not like it at first.” Giritina stated with a smirk, yes I can see he was being quite wise. “But first, and more importantly, can I have some of those fresh baked cookies?”

“Of course.” It was nice of my children to always appreciate my hobbies. “Be sure to check them for allergies before you drop them off.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Giritina said through a mouthful of giant cookie cakes.

-Digi-home, Battle Bunker House, Sami-

Okay, things didn’t seem too bad, but I’m willing to wait a little further. The digital energy in the air was quite thin outside the Digi-home and that was disturbing despite the fact that Calumon was alright.

Digi-bots would be fine as they were made to fight and work better in reality when manifested even if their capabilities were sorely limited compared to a Digimon.

In the meantime I was still healing off the bullet wounds and working on a grappling hook for maneuverability.

I’m not exactly ever going to be the strongest Digimon, but versatility helps a lot. Also… I was afraid of reality, even if Canard came from one somewhat like this one. The lack of digital energy in the air was a bit scary, daunting and I still wanted to be at Canard’s side through thick and thin regardless.

At least Frizzle was texting me, even if she didn’t want to talk out loud. Understandable given how high pitched and squeaky her voice was coming from a body built for combat. She was itching to protect Dazzle and or get out of the Digi-vice, but her constant supply of bread wouldn’t keep forever, she only had so many reality based supplies from Uver and would eventually want out to find if this reality had bread too.

Yggdrasil.sys really shouldn’t have let Frizzle’s particular species of Digimon taste bread, because they are hardcoded to love it and nothing could stop them from trying to get into the nearest reality to acquire more.

Just wait a little longer Frizzle, please don’t cause a scene…

-Ransei, Ice Type Kingdom of Nixtorm, ???-

We just managed to fend off the beast again, but it didn’t seem like we did much damage to it. It even had dangerous poisonous claws, thankfully Pecha berries weren’t too hard to keep in stock. Though if this keeps up, then the kingdom of frozen hearts was going to be torn apart by a being of legendary strength.

The monster only had a passing resemblance to Eternatus, the ‘eternity’s requiem’ legendary Pokémon, the one who is said to be behind the power of Dynamic Maximizing.

We knew this wasn’t Eternatus, because it actually had legs. The blood red bones were also a difference as part of a terrifying visage of a dragon that gave off the feeling of having rotten until it grew strong from it, ice did nothing to slow it down and neither did any other Pokémon attacks until it visibly starts distorting and backs off to possibly heal… if it could be called healing as it didn’t look to be damaged.

It has attacked twice in as many as seven hours we’ve known of its existence and it was terrible in how it inspired both horror and fear.

Our scouts noted that it had a habit of looking towards the moon, but we had little clue as to why. If there was one thing we did know for certain, it was not a natural entity and it wasn’t a new legendary Pokémon by the grace of Arceus. No, it was a demon of raw physical strength and it might have come here for our sins, we hoped that Lunala would guide us in these trying times.

I do not know how the Ice Kingdom of Nixtorm has earned this beings ire, but we know that when even the mighty lady Articuno is having problems slowing it down that we were in dire straits. Were my lady to be knocked down I would put myself in the line of fire for her, but so far she has held strong.

We could only fend off such a ferocious beast as the bloody dragon for so long… it was a good thing we had a reputation for cold receptions to monstrous problems that were decidedly worse than we were at times.

The eastern kingdoms of Ransei would probably make some form of move on us while we were weakening, well we’d actually welcome them to try and deal with our issue!

I seriously doubt that even Dragon Types could take out that monstrosity or would have any better luck than we currently did trying to lead it away from the kingdom.

If there were more entities like this one, it meant that war was coming to Ransei and we’d only survive if we all united like the Pokémon of legends. They once upon a time did so to earn Arceus’s attention for a battle that shakes the world. Arceus welcomes challenges and as his children we’d rise to the occasion as best we can.

“Send word to Titania, Chrysalia and Violight. We need to give them warning that the eastern nations of Ransei may soon break out in war as tensions are rising. We could earn some good will in terms of supplies as we currently are beset by an unquenchable beast of battle.” My retainers waited patiently for me to complete my thoughts as I moved about. “Avoid Illusio and Valora, as much as the other eastern kingdoms. Strange happenings have been occurring around those two nations as of late from with what little information we have received outside our own, every confirmable bit should be verified and acted upon carefully. I want to know if they are as embattled as we soon might be in a constant manner. See to securing and sending supplies our way. I am willing to trade in our plentiful ores, but do not make us seem desperate. Now make haste and find out if the other regions are about to act in poor taste.”

Weird happenings have been going on in Valora and I did not trust Dragnor to lend us aid or even believe that we were having trouble, they’d sooner attack as much as help us. Dragon types were quite fickle like that and only strength mattered to them, they’d usually get a leader that would try to unite Ransei under their banner just for a taste of a battle with Arceus.

The Kingdom of Spectra was rather insular and those ghost types were too tricky to trust at the best of times, at least with the poison types of Viperia or the flying types of Avia you knew absolutely what you were in for... bird brains and political problems alike.

As for my suspicions about Illusio… I hoped I was wrong about there being evil legendary Pokémon there. Anyone that actively fakes having a utopia that hard obviously has issues. I would never send anything other than a dark type there or nothing at all if I could help it, for they could see through those mind manipulators lies.

-Fire Type Kingdom of Ignis, ???-

Our homes were burning and the civil war grew hotter, now it was no longer civil as Lu Bu’s forces threatened to attack the neighboring kingdoms to gain territory to gain some kind of ability to break the stalemate with Lord Hideyoshi. He would do so by forcefully taking supplies from other regions.

Fontaine would not be kind to us and neither would Greenleaf though we have the advantage on them. We did not know if Aurora was awake or not to the plights of those around them. If they were they too would fall upon us.

Please, someone… anyone… save our kingdom… before it is all ultimately brought to ruin...

-Fighting Type Kingdom of Pugilis, ???-

The situation in Ignis was getting worrying, that the Riolu and Lucario raiders haven’t come back was telling of their defeat or they might have even joined someone in the fighting. Whatever the case we were looking south as to the west and east, there was peace. To the northeast there was murmurs of something going on with Illusio.

There was even more noise coming from further east than to our south, have the dragons gone insane or addled their brains again enough to challenge the mighty Arceus?

They would never defeat Arceus without the aid of other Pokémon and the defeat is only so far as Arceus is fighting on the level of us mortals.

Still… a victory is a victory to dragons I guess, even if everyone knows Arceus was actively giving himself a handicap to whoever challenges him.

We fighting types understood the draw of battle quite clearly, but we knew when to rest or to train by keeping up with our economy. People thought we were all muscles, they were right, because we have a lot of muscles to work in our heads too.

-Psychic Type Kingdom of Illusio, ???-

Hmm… it seems she was back on my radar as coming to fight me, it’s rather interesting that the white wooly one continues to be a thorn.

They will have problems soon enough and then we’ll see if they are worth paying attention to, I need not throw another Snorlax at them.

It seems the eastern kingdoms wanted to play… it will make me indispensable and they won’t be able to oust me less the world falls on their heads.

If they ousted me anyway… well they could try at least, it would be quite humorous to see them squirm. I still don’t know how a Caterpie will result in my defeat though.

-The next day, Normal Type Kingdom of Aurora, Helper’s Hamlet, Team Harmony Guild Hall, Shanty-

“Do you be getting the feeling that someone be wanting us to go to the watery abyss?” I know I be relaxing with Favela and we just be waiting on Pom to return from her trip.

“You mean that feeling of something walking over a grave… yeah, something scary is happening, but I’m not feeling anything powerfully malicious within my emotional detection range.” Ocellus was always the first to sense danger or ill intent, so that was being a bit calming on my nerves.

Pom was trouble avoidant, but I be feeling that she still ran into something. She is not being very lucky, but then what is luck compared to skill? Pom is being very skilled at survival, I had little doubt she would return… even if she had to do so as a ghost, she’d be a benign haunting at the very least.

Thinking about nicer things, Dodo was growing back to his original size and he be a silly happy metal bird. Fontaine would slowly recover from the damage that had been done to it and we didn’t exactly have to worry about much.

“Guys, something is happening up north, we might need to prepare for a fight.” Quetal stated as he came into the building and I calmly be taking a sip of juice while looking in the clawed Pokémon’s direction. “I went into Ignis and saw some fire Pokémon building up in force near the border, they aren’t covering the bridges yet, but they are too close for comfort.”

“Aren’t they in the middle of a civil war though?” Picochi brought up as he cleaned the nearby counter, the mouse be good at his job at keeping things tidy.

“Well you’d think so, but they might continue the civil war and attack other regions for supplies.” Eriflamb brought up with a hint of worry, he was being from Ignis wasn’t he? “The first kingdom they’d attack… would likely be Green Leaf. It’d be a complete massacre, it’d be like four Grass Type Pokémon to every one Fire Type taken down. Not favorable odds for the grass types.”

“Hey guys, heads up, we’re sending envoys out to some kingdoms and we’re also preparing for Ignis forces building up in the direct north of us.” Geoff said as he came in with his four Wooloo friends. “My unit has been ordered to cover the bridge to escort our envoys to the Ignis border while we still have a chance to send envoys through the small area while the bridges between there and Greenleaf are not occupied. We are going to stay and watch out for trouble. If any of you would like to help out in case of sudden attack, then we’re open to hiring from the Rescue Team members we have available.”

“Who are the envoys your sending and where?” That be the question now Smolder.

“Well Motochika is being informed by our Pidgey unit of the likely trouble and we need the Rattata and Dragoon Jiri’s Bear unit for defensive reasons, I am to assist them when I set out. Captain Skeeball and the Skitty Squad is to be the envoy to Green Leaf, but we’re kind of lacking an envoy to Violight which I know to be quite necessary for reasons I can’t explain at the moment.” Does Geoff be knowing something that we don’t? “To that end, Maiden Jig will be heading to Violight on the count of being the only competent person we have to send for negotiations, but we can’t exactly provide her cover or escort because we’re lacking resources. Unless we’re in an all-out war, we can’t use volunteers and even if we could get volunteers said volunteers are still reeling from that major battle in Fontaine. So we’ll be short if an attack does occur and we need to mobilize quickly.”

“Which comes to us… as a member of Team Harmony I offer my personal services to escort Noble Lady Jig to Violight.” Honedge, the ancient living sword, be a good start. I be thinking they needed more than that for someone as important as Maiden Jig is being.

I be paying attention because leadership is a skill I will be needing eventually.

“Good if we have two more volunteers Evan will feel much better about letting Maiden Jig go to Violight, Evan is very much needed here to lead our defenses.” Geoff looked about when two more Pokemon came forward.

“I’ll go, I haven’t been doing as much as Oddish has with helping out at the bath houses.” That be the flower Pokémon flabebe right? She looks so tiny and fragile, but I don’t be underestimating based on size as I’ve seen what Skitty can be doing. “I wouldn’t mind attending Maiden Jig in her journey.”

“… I’ll go to, she’ll need someone who can be an emergency medic or support.” Shine the ghostly gourd stated. “I have the title ‘Ninja’ and if there is a need for trickery I can get Maiden Jig out of danger quickly with Ally Switch, help with serious injuries with Pain Split. I’ve been recently toying the idea with picking up the move Phantom Force and dropping Flamethrower. Phantom Force would help me with short range teleportation or as a quick evade and it doesn’t necessarily have to be used as an attack.”

“Yeah, I forgot you were a ‘Ninja’, how did you earn that again?” Quetal received a sad smile and stare from Shine.

“How did you earn your title of ‘Trickster’?” That Shine answered the question with one of her own drew my attention. I already be knowing the answer, it is being ‘through pain and suffering’ and the look on Quetal’s face be one of understanding. “This is a mission for a ninja and I’m clearly capable of keeping someone safe at the cost of my own health, plus I’ll be carrying healing supplies. The KB merchants are running a decent deal on Oran Berries today.”

“Favela believes that leaves our traveling team down a Pokémon for the defenses.” Favela was as concerned as I was starting to be.

“We be having Dodo and anyone else that would join us, besides I be ready for a fight anytime if it’s for my friend’s sakes.” That seemed to embolden a few of the Pokémon in the room.

“Speaking of titles, Evan thinks you’re strong enough to accept a title Favela.” That earned everyone’s attention squarely on Geoff.

“Uh… what, REALLY?!” There was some excitement and trepidation in Favela’s voice.

“Titles, they aren’t easily earned, but if Pokémon start calling you that and the title takes… it’ll stick to you like glue. I would know, even ignoring dark or ice type attacks didn’t stop it from sticking to me. In any case, some of us believe titles have power, others believe it’s simply a part of our personalities.” Quetal seemed to be chatty today and less broody, but I know he be missing Pom like the rest of us. “I don’t think it’s anything special personally… given how mine came about.”

“Mine is still special to me even with… er…” Shine said while wiggling her hair arms a bit looking lightly agitated, but not willing to talk on it further.

“Well hit me with it, what’s Favela’s title?” Favela seemed quite curious as were we.

“You’re being given the ‘Pirate’ title. If it sticks then you’ll be recognized by it, given your friends with Shanty that’s a foregone conclusion given she’s screams the word pirate yet she can’t hold the title like the rest of us. Even Motochika is known as ‘Fencer’ Motochika given his blade work if it wasn’t overshadowed by his status as King, Evan believes the word ‘Pirate’ suits you, do you accept?” Geoff asked as he stood quietly waiting for Favela to respond. “You will still be a free companion of Pom’s Pokémon group, no one to steer your rudder except for whom you’ll allow.”

“Yes, please!” Favela stated brightly and a slight light shimmered around our friendly bush goat, someone I’ve been finding to be among one of my best friends since meeting her.

“Right something just happened there, don’t know if that’s a glowing approval of the title itself or just you accepting it and it somewhat sticking… Pirate Favela.” After a slight grin Quetal frowned a bit with a distant look in his eyes. “I may not like how I have my title, but you can still enjoy yours. It seems fitting really, when you’re palling around with a pirate already.”

“Oh trust me, being a true blue pirate is more than just saying you are one. I don’t even be having a ship or… well I do have one crew member.” I be looking to Dodo who warbled at me affectionately.

“Two, but don’t pirates need to know how to work cannons or swords.” Aye, maybe a sword with those whipping plant tentacles you have will ruin someone’s day Favela, two and a lot of spinning be a weed whacker.

“Eh, we can be working on it Favela. You know how to ride water, your good at any range in a fight and you just need to be looking out for fire which you can use a water technique to protect against.” I wondered what would be changing if anything. “Dodo’s still my first mate though… also all you need to be a pirate is free spirit, an adventurous heart and the capacity to be a charming or clever jerk to just about anyone except your closest friends.”

“Of course, I wouldn’t dream of stealing that title from the baked goods spewing steel bird.” Favela grinned my way and then looked to Dood. “I’m going to your world with you or bust. Don’t care how, I’ll find a way to follow you even if Arceus himself tries and stop me from leaving this world! You’ll be a great captain someday whether it is in the sky, on the sea or even in the sea, because knowing you… you wouldn’t be just happy with not looking at every opportunity for adventure.”

“I be knowing a good place to start a pirate adventure too, Turtle Toga, the best place for a start to any pirate’s adventures! We’ll go there one day together Favela.” But until we both got back to Equus, well… I be a pirate with two crew members no ship and a lot of friends.

Also it be reminding me of Skunk, he would have been a cool pirate too, but he has his whole destiny thing to work out with that black Dragon.

“Okay, that was a thing, so should we get moving or do we have any other Rescue Team business to take care of today?” Smolder asked as she turned to Foffo, the Indeedee was being quite good at keeping track of requests and jobs for anyone needing one. Even the Bidoof be taking jobs to help other Pokémon when they weren’t find reasons to build things.

“Ah, friendship… it’s among one of the sweetest of tastes, so long as it doesn’t sour too badly.” Well at least Ocellus didn’t have to worry about feeding off of Smolder today apparently.

"Congratulations on your title Ms. Favela, I believe we do have a few things for the guild to take care of since Maiden Jig is leaving Aurora temporarily and we could help her from an administrative point of view as much as prepare for a possible attack on Aurora's soil." Foffo answered with his prim and proper posh voice. It be slightly grating, but he was being too nice to say anything about it. "Fiffi will take up Maiden Jigs slack in the time being."

"Anything that keeps us busy and earning gratitude is a good thing Foffo." Fiffi said from next to Foffo smiling in an identical manner.

-???, Oleander-

“Subject appears to be a Crab Face Leviathan like ones seen on Equus, also the sea dragon empress was quite a nice lady... too bad it was her time to go. She seemed fun.” We were underwater and I was in the form of a half octopus equine, Buttina was half leviathan style mermaid and Fred was ghostly skeletal fish with bright red eyes and a spectacular sadistic grin.

Next to us in the water was a creature you’d see on Equus, which was curious because this was an entirely different planet and warranted further investigating to see if there was a dimensional leak in the direction of this planet or in the direction of Equus.

“FFVVVVMMMM…” Yes, Mr. Warper, it was quite interesting indeed!

“Look dude, we’re sorry we put you out of a job… but do you want a new one?” Buttina asked.

“Zzzzzerrrraaaaazmmm…” The strange squid thing with scythe arms called Mr. Warper responded while spreading them slightly and making some odd gestures.

“This somehow screams ‘something Starswirl The Bearded did’ to me, the guy was always known to shove his problems onto others… well at least until the whole situation with Stygian humbled him greatly.” The Crab Face Leviathan shrieked and wiggled in place trying to grasp at me with the scythe limbs on its face. “Either that or this is Celestia’s fault when she was exploring alternate dimensions causing some cross dimensional bleed or leak problems, all because she wanted nooky from an alternative version. Those are not as dangerous though, but Pom’s group is probably infecting every world she visits with a little bit of Equus magic and friendship is not exactly a bad magic to spread around like a disease.”

A large round red fish swam up to us and blinked lazy with two large eyes.

“Cheep-cheep*?” This thing was definitively not native to these waters. That confirms it, something screwy was going on with this water world and we might want to put a stop to it.

“Can I eat Mr. Warper… PLEASE?!” Fred, you ate all the little cave crawlers* off of that floating island an hour ago! Apparently they weren’t even native to this dimension either, which was why I wasn’t worried about Fred eating them, but I didn’t think much of it at the time.

Eugh... so many alien spiders...

“EKEAZZZEDDDGGGGGSSHHHzzzz…” Mr. Warper stated with an eye roll, he didn’t seem too afraid of being eaten alive. I should probably warn him that being part cyborg wouldn’t help in that regard, though his ability to teleport anywhere he’s seen would at least keep him out of Fred's mouth.

Author's Note

Oleander is a running gag at this point, but she did find something unusual.

Reaper Leaviathans being on Equus was in the previous story for those curious and don't actually read everything. One in particular gave Fizzlepop a mild case of the bends and got blasted by lightning for it.

Cheep-Cheep* (Mario Series, being entirely out of place, they makes noises like birds I believe.)

Cave Crawler* (The Cave Crawlers in Subnautica are like the 'Space Spiders' from 'Lost In Space', except Space Spiders are bigger and scarier looking with wider mouths and the ability to chew through metal hulls like tissue paper.)

300. Ignis-ion.

Author's Note

Current Situation:

Heater, destroyed motherboard chip, needs replacement.

Local weather being thirty to forty degrees with no temperature control = bad.

Home slightly freezing over in result.

Currently thankful for the existence of two electric heaters that can heat up an entire room.

So how has everyone else's weeks been?

300. Ignis-ion.

-???, Buttina-

“If you are that insistent on canines for your friend Pom then why not get her a Skag from Pandora, they’re canine and can be trained… well enough.” It wouldn’t even be hard to find one or a Skag egg, getting it would be one hell of a thing though. “Of course they are monstrous canines so Pom is likely to be in danger trying to deal with even a baby that will gnaw on everything on top of the other canines.”

“Fred, plot a course for planet Pandora in Buttina’s dimension!” Oleander looks like she had a fire lit under her butt.

Why did I even make that suggestion? Oh right, we’ve lost a few fights and Oleander was getting a bit desperate to rescue Pom despite not having a single inkling on where she could be given we were on a time crunch. Oleander sure has done a lot of good in multiple universes though and she never asks for much reward for it, I on the other hoof looted everything under the sun that wasn't nailed down like a Vault Hunter. I was definitely making bank on these adventures.

“Skags can get pretty big though.” I had a ton of stuff in the cargo hold to sell back on Pandora, maybe I can get my hooves on some of that tasty Eridium. Maybe take a few merc jobs and show some bandits why Pandoran Bicorns are dangerous to even go near. I’m too good a friend to say no to at least seeing my toilet bowl of a backwater home again…. I wonder how my friends back on Pandora are doing.

“Good, the better it can protect Pom when it grows up!” Quite sure you were a bit nuts Oleander, but your friend would have to be alive to make getting a skag egg worth it. Those three jawed, gnaw happy, spear tongued canines were quite ornery to deal with. “Remind me, what are the varieties they come in again?”

Oh here we go...

-Pokémon World, Ransei, northern bridge between Aurora and Ignis, Shanty-

“So anyone can come up with an idea of a title like say ‘Fighter’ and have it become a thing?” My conversation with Favela was going nicely.

It would be nicer if we didn’t have a battle on the way, I was beginning to feel I know what Pom feels like when you know stuff like this is coming now.

“Well it has to somewhat resonate with the individual to have some form of meaning. We’re not quite sure if Arceus is doing something when it comes to titles or if it’s just another form of super power like the known ones that hasn’t truly awakened, but it almost feels like something has happened with Favela.” My grassy goat friend be a bit nervous considering what we were doing here, we were waiting on news from Smolder scouting ahead to the north with Ocellus on a cloud.

“Incoming, we have a small force of at least three units moving on us and a large force heading for Greenleaf!” Smolder announced as she and Ocellus drove the cloud they were using down to us.

“We have to stop them or stall them from attacking Greenleaf somehow!” Glancing at Favela, I noted she be gaining a look of grim determination, I be knowing that look as I be having it myself at times.

My life be all sorts of grim, but what would… oh… her mother Vetali in Arbora. To think it wasn’t too long ago that I be thinking about the mother I can barely be remembering being a changeling.

“I agree with that, we can’t let the people of Greenleaf be burned out of their homes.” Also I couldn’t be letting Favela get reckless like I am about needing to make sure Arbora doesn’t get attacked or ransacked.

“Well at least Captain Skeeball took Maiden Jig with her on Willhelm when she set out for Greenleaf Kingdom so she didn’t have to cross the bridges to get there.” Ocellus is being nervous, probably the malice in the air from all those people coming to attack Aurora.

It be nice that Aurora had some air mobility with Wilhelm being able to move people freely like an airship. Wilhelm is also being a big water Pokémon, with big attacks that can stop a lot of fire Pokémon cold. We didn’t have much of a defense force here, then again they weren’t sending much of an offensive at us. Eighteen Pokémon couldn’t be too hard to fight right?

“What do the Pokemon look like?” Geoff asked as he was leading a defensive force of Teeth’s Brigand unit of Rattata and Geoffs own unit. We were being a little outnumbered, but I think would could still do it.

“Pigs, bipedal rabbits and dark dogs that look like they adorn themselves with bones.” Answered Ocellus swiftly.

“That would be Tepig’s, Scorbunnies and Houndours, the Houndours will be the fastest to attack. We should take advantage of that to take down the Houndour unit first and as fast as we can before the Scorbunny unit hits us. Tepigs won’t be too hard to fight, the scorbunnies are going to be a pain in our backsides though.” Looking to Quetal, it be taking him some time to realize we had our attentions on him. “Huh? Oh, Right. With Houndours you’ll want to watch out for biting attacks and they’ll gang up on you with the move Beat Up, Beat Up can’t be used as a unit command because it basically is one already. The more Pokémon near a Houndour when they use Beat Up the more powerful the attack, we need to take them out swiftly. They will also use Ember attacks, most of their attacks are going to come from their mouths so hitting them in the jaw will stop most of their attacks, they tend to have problems with long range attacks while moving. Watch out for their teamwork and don’t let them gang up on you. As for Tepig they are more likely to use tackling or charging based attacks, but they will also shoot fire from their nostrils. So moving to the side if one is coming at you is advised, but also take caution to roll or duck as they can still blow flames as they pass by you as well, they are good at hit and run. As for Scorbunny, good luck figuring out a strategy for them, they are well rounded and it looks like they are equipped with blades. Watch out for any kicking motions from them as they tend to use their lower bodies as they move around. Shanty and I should focus on them when they make their way to the front.”

How would he be knowing they have… oh… they were about to be coming across the bridge to attack us.

“We’ll take forward Geoff, cover us from behind.” Quetal stated and then turned to gesture at me. “The Ratatta will engage when we need to retreat.”

“Right, let’s be moving, Favela stay behind me and prep a Surf attack!” I pointed a hoof forward

“Aye Aye, Captain Shanty!” Not a captain yet Favela, not without a ship, but I be appreciating the enthusiasm and feeling anyway.

“I should be up front too, they can’t do a thing to hurt me with fire.” Be knowing that Smolder, but can you say the same for any other kind of attacks? Pom would be advocating caution by now… I’m sure she would have been able to talk down the Houndour too. “Dodo, be making sure they can’t hit Favela with fire.”

“Does Dodo count as a steel type? That might not be a great idea.” Don’t be worrying Favela, Dodo already be agreeing to do it.

“Yeah, but he cannot be creating a wave of water to douse their flames of war.” I started moving forward onto the bridge and recalled the Riolu and Lucario we fought a short while ago. “I be trusting Dodo with our lives, besides he is not being completely helpless.”

A pastry flew towards me and I leapt to catch it in my mouth, Dodo always be thinking of me… can’t wait to see when he’ll be able to fly or spit those rippling energy beams again. Mmm… cream cheese muffin, Dodo Warbled as he followed and stay next to Favela.

“Ready up sexy Wooloo, It’s time to defend our country again!” Geoff ordered behind us loudly. “Everyone take positions!”

“Wait, can I help?!” We turned to look back at the new Pokémon that showed up… it is being an animate pile of purple sludge or mud?!

“Oh it’s my boyfriend! Yay~!” One of the female Wooloo among Geoff’s unit stated.

“Oh my gosh/ so lucky/ oh what handsome guy he is!” The other Wooloo stated and I just be staring back at them with Favela and Dodo. Kind of wish I could get drunk on rum now…

“Sure join our unit on the defense line and stay behind us, we’re about to be hit by fire types!” Ordered Geoff, who didn’t look to mind the extra help. “Figure out how to help, but we don’t want to seriously hurt anyone if we can help it. Can you do attacks that are not poisonous? Also be sure to think about everyone and not just your girlfriend even if she is a hot Wooloo.”

“Yes sir, Cleric Geoff!” The mud pile stated while waving an arm in his direction.

“Guys focus, incoming Houndour, get ready!” Quetal be bringing our attentions back to the front, like he said the Houndour were very far in front of the other two units giving us some time to fight. “Do not let them use Beat Up, distract and interrupt them quickly if they start glowing in a dark manner!”

Right got it, Smolder be moving in front of us and I be taking up a position on the left as Quetal took a position on the right. Ocellus be staying back with Dodo and Favela in a similar formation with Favela at the head, Dodo on her left and Ocellus on the right.

Brigand Teeth was staying next to the Wooloo on defensive. As far as number be going we be evenly matched and the bridge wasn’t being too damaged from the last time we fought around it. However I don’t think we be quite matched in skill…

“When you be saying a lot were heading to Green Leaf… how many is that compared to here?” Not knowing what the other numbers are like, I was worried these three units could pull reinforcements at a moment’s notice.

“Compared to what we’re seeing here, I think Aurora is getting the better end of the big stick we saw at least fifty or so heading for Green Leaf and that wasn’t even the full size of their force.” Smolder answered with a definite worry.

“There’s at least a few hundred of them camping out north of the bridges into Ignis, a lot of them better equipped than the ones they are sending at us.” As nervous as Ocellus was, she was still willing to help defend Aurora and there was the implication of how big a force they could be sending.

That just means our opposition be underestimating us gravely… this will not be a repeat of what be happening in Gongmen Cities occupation if we can be helping it!

The Houndour were on the bridge and charging straight at Smolder, I spread my four hooves out slightly and then readied to make them walk a plank into the river to cool off. When I get a ship, I was going to name it ‘THE PLANK’, even be putting big lettering on it and everything… maybe draw a face on it and befriend it if I was feeling silly enough.

The three front running dogs opened fire on Smolder with ember attacks, Smolder just blocked the small flecks of flames with her arms to no effect. Then the first canine Pokémon be lunging for her and biting at her left arm… much to his detriment as tears be filling his eyes afterwards because the dog bit into scales that were the hard for anything to so much as scratch.

“Yeah, biting me was probably the worst mistake you’ve ever made…” Smolder stated dryly as she curled up her left claw into a fist and smashed it into the side of the fire breathing dog’s head making it yelp and toppling it while freeing herself up. Smolder spread her wings and started forward. “Okay, let’s party!”

Quetal was instantly moving for the dog on our left as I moved forward for the one on our right. They be leaping right at me and I went into a slide underneath them, to end up behind them. There bite be missing me by a mile as I came into a standing position behind them and slapped their backside with my rear hooves launching them in the direction of our other friends flailing.

We did be needing to deal with them quickly, as the center one of the next three started glowing until a bolt from Ocellus be striking him on the forehead dropping his concentration as I charged forward and shoulder tackled the guy on the right in the throat to prevent him from even starting.

Quetal had knocked the guy on the left into the rear guy stopping him from starting up that attack.

Behind us I heard Dodo be doing something and the fire blasting hound I kicked that way went flying forward and bowled over some of the hounds again including the one I just smashed in the throat.

“Incoming!” Favela shouted, both Quetal and I be moving out of the way of the incoming attack onto the side rails of the bridge as a wave of water swept through.

Smolder just didn’t care as she stood in the path of the small tidal wave that blasted through the centered unit of dour hounds.

Smolder just continued to stand and stare at our opponents after the attack in the middle of the bridge with her arms crossed, not having moved an inch from the water attack Favela launched. She raised her right brow delicately and I be noticing she had her toes clenched into the stonework of the bridge to stay in place.

After the tidal wave had passed the six hounds were left soggy mess on the far end of the bridge and several spheres of lightning flew overhead and were doing minimal damage as they were quickly deflected by blasts of flames and fireballs be fired back towards us by the Tepigs.

I still be thinking it weird that they can shoot fireballs from their noses, their sense of smell must always be good at least. I be looking to the west to see smoke rising up in the sky. Things over that way weren’t going as well as they were here, I hoped Favela’s mother would be okay.

“A grass Type with a water move, send word back to the camp for reinforcements!” One of the dogs that had been hit by the tidal wave Favela be making was still awake.

I be flicking an ear upwards and listening in.

“You think that’s bad, that dragon didn’t even flinch when hit with fire or water, I agree we need reinforcements like yesterday!” Well that be a bad thing to hear from one of the pigs, even as the pigs and sheep continued to fire long distance shots at one another, arcing sometimes out at us to be swiftly avoided or in Smolder’s case taken without an inch of flinching from her. “I know we have Hideyoshi backed into a corner and it’s only a matter time of before Lu Bu takes the seat, but we all know he’s not one to take any loss lightly. Which is why we need to win here! We can’t fully take Hideyoshi on without extra supplies, unless we want to do a reckless assault. I don’t know about you, but after what happened in Lord Lu Bu’s last one, he is definitely keen on doing something like that at the expense of the rest of us again and given how things are going here… we’ve confirmed that Aurora’s awake and it’s just a matter of time before we’re all taken down!”

I quickly sidestepped a fast flying fireball as it struck the bridge next to me and watched as one of the pigs ran off.

“We could collapse the bridge, fire types don’t like swimming.” Quetal murmured out to the left. “It would make things harder later on… so no… no we can’t do that then.”

A fireball struck out at Quetal and passed through him and then I blinked a bit at the sight, I be seeing him standing to the left of where the fireball had hit and looking a bit back there were multiple copies of him in the same thinking pose.

I noted only one of them was being real, he was just moving fast enough to be leaving afterimages of himself. Pom learned a lot of her skills and abilities by watching her friends and I can be learning a lot by paying attention to mine too. Don’t know if I was fast enough to replicate that move, but I could think of a few ways to deal with it if I had to fight an opponent after I be seeing it.

“Heads up, here comes the hot pigs.” Smolder stated blandly, looking unimpressed with the five charging pigs and I could see the blade wielding rabbits coming at us from behind them.

Smolder spread her stance out and waiting the pigs blew fireballs at us, focusing their efforts on hitting Favela behind both Smolder and Dodo. Geoff’s team started focusing on the rabbits instead once they got close and I got ready to surprise them further as I brought my hooves.

“Riptide!” I fired a blast of water at the ground and it came out too fast for the charging fire pigs to react to, it exploded and splashed in their direction putting the fire out in the pig’s noses as they were close enough to the blast.

Their charge was halted entirely out of shock and the speed of which I belted out that water blast, I be grinning as we got them flat hoofed having just put out all their fires.

I quickly leapt forward slashing with my right hoof in an overhead attack and Quetal started firing stars into them. Smolder charged forward claws out.

My hoof slapped down on the pigs skull and having landed on my right hind hoof I lashed out with my left hind leg to launch them backwards with a bloodied nose. Didn’t use a cutting slash, I not be wanting to bleed them out.

Pom taught me to be careful with my Cut-lash fighting style, but that doesn’t mean I can’t throw hooves well enough without cutting arcs, but I’d definitely be needing them for those blade bunnies. A blast of magic zipped past and knocked down another pig and I noted the six rabbits charging us.

I moved forward by myself while Smolder and Quetal dealt with the other three pigs still standing, they weren’t being very strong or organized. I can be telling that we were not be getting their best fighters by far, especially if they be going down this fast.

The first rushing rabbit pulled his blade and swung for me, I lashed out my left hoof upwards and let it generate the arcing cut that deflected the blade. I managed to get them in the right leg as they jumped back with my right hoof swinging down at them.

The first of the next three swings at me was deflected by my right hoof swinging backwards and my right hind leg kicked the next blade to the side before it could hit me. The rabbit swinging for me was surprised I reacted quickly to that.

The third swing for me was the sword being lit on fire which shocked me for a moment, it was thankfully and swiftly deflected by Quetal’s left claw and he flickered past the rabbit slashing them across the side with his right.

“Keep it up Shanty, we’ve got this!” Quetal stated as he flickered with a leaping forward flip and slashed by another bunny leaving a slash mark across their chest to hip. “If you’re going to use weapons, then we’ll just have to treat you seriously.”

“Darn it, don’t let them push us back anymore!” One of the rabbits yelled as they leap and her blade was met by a slash from left hoof as my right cut across their chest and sent them falling. “Agh!”

“We’re getting our butts handed to us here!” One of the three remaining rabbits stated as they brought their blade down on Smolder and watched with wide eyed terror as the blade broke and went flying off the bridge into the water. The rabbit just stood there staring at his broken blade as Smolder’s right fist came for his face. “Ngh…”

I turned and deflected a blade up as it went for my neck and slammed my head down into the smaller opponent knocking them down and out, having a thick skull is not always being a bad thing. Quetal took care of another one in a series of flashes as they darted about slashing them up.

A vine slammed into the back of the third ones head as they held their blade at us in a defensive posture, they dazedly dropped their blade as Favela quickly tackled them into the ground with a solid blow to the chest. Favela still looked quite worried as she glance to the west of us.

“This was too easy… somethings up.” The moment Quetal said that my eyes, narrowed and I leapt for him, lashing out with my right hoof as hard as I could. “Wha…”

Two cutting arcs met and a slightly bigger rabbit was reflected back to reveal they were holding a blade and trying to regain their balance as they were knocked back.

“A Raboot, faster than Scorbunny’s at least. We just dealt with a weak scouting force.” From what Quetal was saying, I take it the Raboot was an evolved version of Scorbunny and quite a bit stronger. Also the Raboot look like they be wearing a hoodie… is their fur just like that naturally? That’s actually pretty cool, if they weren’t trying to hurt us or invade Aurora.

With another flicker of movement my left hoof deflected another blade strike with an inward arc, knocking the rabbit back and I myself found myself skidding away too barely managed to stay upright. He be actually hitting hard enough to knock me off balance.

I swung my right leg and locked his blade against my cutting arc and he suddenly received a slash to his side from Quetal and then was blasted with several stars that knocked him back and he started to retreat.

“There’s more of them coming, I just know it.” Quetal muttered as another wave from Favela sent the fire Pokémon washing back the way they be coming from.

“Heading up, I’m feeling something…” Ocellus announced before taking to the air and we waited. “There’s more incoming, also I think… eep fire spitting monkeys!”

Looking up I saw Ocellus coming down from having dodged a blast of fire, she landed behind Smolder who just stared flatly as a fireball slapped against her chest harmlessly.

“There are two kinds of monkey like that, those in particular would be a Pansear. Retreat and ready up, because here they come and there’s going to be more on the way.” Quetal readied his claws and I took up a position next to him. “Oh and thanks for the save Shanty.”

“You’re welcome.” I said as the Raboot was forming up with five others, those Pansears were also coming in and there were quite a few bat like beings in the air.

Geoff and the other Wooloo were already targeting them with fast firing spheres of lightning.

“Ugh… they’re sending zubats in… those guys always go everywhere, can’t avoid them no matter what region of the world you’re in.” Grumbled Quetal who seemed worried and was backing up a bit towards our defensive line. “Not to mention they are also bringing in more ground forces.”

Dodo be looking to me and warbled worriedly while shifting his new metallic wings around a bit, I can feel he be missing his energy firing beak now.

“Don’t worry Dodo, they won’t be getting by us!” I stated with a certainty, although it seemed like even more Ignis Pokémon were coming for the bridge now.

We couldn’t exactly aid Greenleaf if I we couldn’t get to them… considering the larger numbers that be coming our way.

Well to put it simply, we had to worry about ourselves first before worrying about others!

-Violight Capital, Violight Castle, Jail Cell, Pom-

“Do you think Shanty and the others are alright?” Being trapped in a jail cell while they were doing who knows what with Lit was leaving me a bit worried.

Of course they had us on trespassing, not like we could have helped that considering where we appeared. We needed to sit tight and wait to make sure we’re not found guilty of ill intent.

“Hey, I’m sure they’re fine Pom, they’re tough! Besides they’re probably in safe in Aurora right now.” One could only hope Dolly. “Worry about here and now, like what might be happening to Lit.”

-Aurora northern bridge to Ignis, Dragoon Jiri-

“Join Aurora’s soldiers Jiri, become a hero Jiri… what was I thinking? Being a hero really is as Pom said it was… difficult, sometimes unfair and likely to make you a martyr after a certain point… but I think I still want to be one… also I have friends to protect with my life!” I lunged forward and flew more than halfway across the bridge and rammed the dulled point of my spear into a Raboots skull knocking them out and into a bunch of other enemy Pokémon to land next to a beleaguered Quetal. I turned back and yelled for my friends. “Battle Bears, let’s go!”

I was getting much better at forward Bounce lunges, however I was not going to jump up higher than six feet, because that always leads to an immense amount of trouble for me. I quickly looked around to see Favela, Ocellus and that odd metal bird Dodo defending themselves as much as they could from the Zubat swarming about.

My bear unit started forward and Cubby was a bit reluctant because ice types generally don’t like going near fire types, also his recent injuries were still hurting quite a bit even if Chan dealt with the worst of it.

We had just arrived and our northern bridge was being overrun with fire Pokémon and Zubat, a lot of Zubat really…. how many freaking Zubat did they need in their army?! Are Zubat really that cheap to hire? I mean come on! The mouths with wings were so annoying, who’d honestly be insane enough to actually take this many into their army considering all the leavings they leave behind? There’s a reason why nobody would go into a Zubat cave unless it was incredibly necessary for survival.

The little blue bats were everywhere and swarming Team Harmony’s forward defensive position on the bridge. Too bad we can’t get the Bidoof in on this, they were still out of it after the battle in Fontaine.

“Hey, welcome to the party Jiri, please cover us while we take a quick break behind what amounts to our artillery!” Quetal shouted over the sound of a good fifty or so Zubats flapping their wings and screeching inanely before firing off a Swift into the crowd of Zubat knocking a few down into the river. “Shanty, Smolder, we’re falling back to let Jiri’s unit take the front! Dodo, Favela and Ocellus, cover our fallback!”

Shanty was in the middle of deflecting several blades and I made note of a small pattern as she defended against the Raboot aggressive trying to strike her down as she deflected and attack back to be deflected herself. I took note of Smolder dealing with flaming monkeys and she was handling herself fairly well, even if she apparently didn’t have a fighting style beyond brawling.

I ran forward and brought up the shield on my right arm to catch the next blade swing, I pivoted to slam my spear home into the Raboot’s gut and they doubled over immediately having been caught entirely off guard.

“Thanks, to think today just be getting started…” Shanty quickly raised her left leg to the sky, hopped and dropped her left knee on it’s the back of the Raboot’s head knocking them out. She then started backing away while firing a blast of water from swiping her hooves forward to knock out a swarm of Zubat that had been harassing them considering she had a few bite marks on her. “All yours for a few minutes, be being safe!”

“Thanks, I’ll manage!” I deflected a sword to the side with my spear and jammed it into the Attack Raboots leg and locked them in place with it for a left Focus Punch to land from charging Teddy.

The blow sent the poor, hopefully unconscious, Raboot through several other Raboot and knocking down other Pokémon trying to make progress as the Harmony Team and friends fell back.

I raised my shield and held my spear at the ready, this… was going to be a long day.

Ignis’s civil war had apparently spilled over into being an all-out war, at least that’s what one faction appeared to be doing with nations they think are weak. We’re going to show them why that’s a bad idea, I hope Evan can get some help from the artillery of Fontaine.

Stufful immediately launched forward into the air spinning wildly with a Brutal Swing knocking out a large hole in the swarming Zubats that was swiftly filled by more two spindly legged flapping annoyances.

Griz ‘Teddy’ Teddiursa was using his physical strength to ram into a Pansear through the flames they were trying to slow him down with. I’m certainly glad we all stocked up on Rawst Berries before leaving the castle, there were bound to be a lot of burns by the end of this.

Foo, the Kubfoo launched forward in a dazzling spiraling leap and landed a spinning kick into a different Pansears head while stylishly dodging its flames. Always the show off, though he could certainly fight while doing so.

Panda, the Pancham was marching forward and thrusting his paws out with rapid fire Arm Thrust attacks, he even stopped to Taunt a few Pokémon into attacking him and drawing them away from attacking Cubby. Like Quetal, as a dark type he was a great friend to have.

“It’s a good thing Ice Type Bear knows Brine.” Which was a water type attack that Cubby knew would put salt in the wounds our opponents were receiving and really hurts when you were badly injured. Fire type Pokémon were not especially happy to be hit with a Brine attack as Cubby, flicked his head several times and his nose bubble launched explosive wads of mucus covered Brine attacks that exploded on them. Gross, but ridiculously effective given Cubby’s aim was impeccably timed to the others attacks, mostly to miss them entirely while hitting their opponents with explosive snot blasts of water.

Then there’s me…

After I sent a small round fire Pokémon know as a Darumaka rolling away with a quick shield bash as they came running at me blasting fire from their mouth, I checked my shield and then hopped forward into the fray with my unit. I wasn’t about to use Bounce unless I was guaranteed to hit my target, I’ve clearly learned my lesson.

“In the defense of Aurora, we fight! So what do you fight for and will it be worth it in the end!” My comment made a number of assaulting Pokémon freeze up slightly as if fear was their only motivation for being here.

With my spear and shield raised, I began charging forward, they were on our half of the bridge and I was aiming to push them back to their side and further to help Greenleaf by drawing more of their forces onto us.

301. Stoking Fires.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, upper floor living spaces, Velvet-

I felt something big wrap me in a gentle hug and I smiled to myself, I had been feeling irritable up to this point and the hug was really nice. Quite familiar even, it had been a while since she was able to get this close to me.

“See sweetie you can overcome the biological… oh…” I looked to see that it wasn’t Paprika hugging me, it was her fluff shaped exactly like her and taking on her form. “You still can’t get close to us can you, but you can at least still send your floof to hug me?”

The floof Paprika nodded.

“You do realize how weird it is that you can even make a clone of yourself out of hair right?” The woolly copy of my caring alpaca tilted her head at me questioningly before pointing a fluff leg at the nearby calendar. “Yes, I’m aware that we need to go to Cruise Line Hospital for a checkup with Dr. Bones, mostly to make sure the magic that led to this situation isn’t having detrimental side effects to our given health. I’m going to need a lot of exercise to get back into shape after this...”

“Meep?” Okay that was haunting sound coming from an ambulatory pile of floof the world’s most hug happy alpaca.

“Okay interesting topic to bring up, but how did your floof clone make a sound like that?” I watched in curiosity as the woolly Paprika clone reached up to its throat. It moved some of the wool to the side to show its hairs in a rather specific shape inside what passed for its throat.

“Meep.” The golden wool of the alpaca snuggle clone vibrated the chords floof to replicate a close approximation of Paprika’s voice.

“A working vocal cord made of literal chords?” If there was one thing that scares me about Paprika, it’s that she’s definitely far more intelligent than she ever truly acts.

Most people would assume Paprika was dim or somewhat of an airhead, that she didn’t know how to talk or communicate correctly, maybe even believe that she was a little slow, they couldn’t be further from the truth.

Paprika was without a doubt the most dangerous being here and her mind worked far faster than anyone might believe, given that she was controlling this floof clone remotely and having it actively respond to me when she wasn’t even anywhere nearby to be able to hear my voice.

That just meant she was getting sensory data from the floof clone and could see, hear, feel and know it’s every action as if it were her own, she definitely deserve her title of Paprika ‘The Demon’ Paca with her hidden talents.

However there was some bit of dimness I had to address quite clearly.

“What took you so long to think of doing this before now? You could have been helping Arizona train without endangering yourself!” The floof copy wilted in front of me and seemed to be embarrassed, while rubbing the back of their head with a hoof made out of wool. The only other time she’s shown this capability was during that tournament where she split herself from her wool before she got skewered by my… ugh… ‘life’ donor. “Sigh… let me guess, you’ve been working on it since you really haven’t trained in the ability to separate your floof from yourself and you couldn’t use the full scope of it up until now.”

The floof clone pointed to me and nodded.

“Still a very impressive ability, I wonder how skilled a fluffmancer needs to be to pull off something like this.” Being in two places at once wasn’t exactly easy, ask my Rogue of a sister Jaded La Perm when she was plotting something while using hydra scales to be literally in two places at once.

Being happily adopted by crazy cat people wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened in my life… love my new brother Gallus by the way, that griffon needed more family and my little nephew Gavin practically adored him as an uncle.

“As to your earlier question, while I would appreciate slightly colder climates, I made a sacrifice to my comfort to continue living here.” Though apparently higher body temperatures from pregnancy was quickly becoming a problem with my little wunderkind inside me.

I felt Paprika hug me, as if she could hear my thoughts and was worried about me.

“Love you…” I know Paprika and… freezing up, I just realized that she just said that out loud? Well it was her wool clone, but still!

“Of course you love me, won’t find a reindeer with more magnificent floof than me.” Though it was quite a bother in warmer climates. At least my little worshipper Tinsel will help me cool down, especially right now given I’m quite flustered.

-Pokemon World, three hours later, Aurora to Ignis northern bridge, Favela-

This fight be going for three hours.

I, Favela, was dead tired on my hooves and Shanty was guzzling water again from the number of ‘Riptides’ attacks she fired off. We had pulled back to the back of our defensive line at our end of the bridge. Those concussive blasts of water were quite effective on those fire types.

It was amazing to watch Jiri continue the fight. If Evan didn’t declare her a hero of Aurora, then he’d have to be blind, deaf and dumb with the performance her unit was pulling off here.

A massive amount of the enemy ground invasion forces were primarily being held off by that one unit showing up and bottlenecking the aggressors hard. They have already thrown more than three hundred ground bound Pokémon at Jiri’s unit, the scouting force units were just an opening probe until we proved too hot for even the fire types to handle.

Almost everyone was surprised that nobody in Jiri’s unit had evolved from the sheer stress they were putting themselves through to even be standing at this point.

Heck at this point I couldn’t even count how many zubats were taken out by them, us or a combination of everyone on our side at present, but we were still holding on even if we were all clearly as exhausted. I think we’ve proved our point with being more trouble than we were worth, but they were still trying to push or keep us from pushing.

I looked to the west at the worsening black clouds rising into the sky, things were probably going worse over there…. mommy… please be alright.

Very few grass types could learn water moves, but those that did were usually put on the front lines as far as fire types were concerned.

At some point I stopped using Razor Leaf, because I was getting a cramp from firing off so many razor edge leaves… up until I figured out how to use the Seed Bomb move and decided to drop Razor Leaf for it. Slower fire rate for sure, but the pure area of effect made up for it. Zubats were quite a bit more wary of coming close enough to be hit with exploding seeds that took them out in entire groups with how they were clumping.

Zubats and the occasional Golbats were the only ones actually getting past Jiri’s unit because they could fly. Surprisingly Brigand Teeth and his Rattata unit were quite good at dealing with Zubat.

While Ratatta weren’t normally known for long range attacks, King Evan apparently sprung for some better moves for his Rattata unit with the meager funds the kingdom had. What with Evan always putting most of its money back into the people, he certainly put it back into the Rattata when they started acting like bug zappers to the Zubat by firing off Thunderbolt attacks.

Apparently Geoff knows how to train electric type attacks or at least knew a guy that could given the Electro Ball attacks his unit was spamming, even if they were obviously hurting themselves to keep pushing their limits. The Muk was giving them some defensive power and his use of the move Fling with whatever rocks were nearby was rather inspired outside the box think. It’s a surprise Muk couldn’t learn the move Rock Throw naturally.

“We can’t be keeping this up for much longer…” Even Shanty had taken a few glances to the west, before looking my way and I knew why.

Shanty has been an orphan for quite a while, she knew what it was like to have nobody looking out for you, to never have a home and mine is currently burning and I did kind of want to go back to Greenleaf and see the Saucy Skiddo bar still standing. At least the smoke seems to be in the northeastern of Greenleaf area and hasn’t moved too far south yet.

“They can’t either, they’ve lost more than twenty times the forces just trying to get by us and we will continue to make them pay for trying!” I was angry, frustrated and most of all…

“You be feeling helpless too huh?” I looked to Shanty and she put a calming hoof around my back and hugged me as we looked to Quetal spitting Swift attacks into the Zubat swarm as they swerve around for us while taking Electro Ball shots from the Wooloo. They had to run out of those pest at some point!

“You girls doing okay back there?” Quetal glanced at me too, I guess he knew what I was feeling knowing Greenleaf was burning.

“Favela is far from okay mentally, but we can’t do anything to actually help Greenleaf if Aurora doesn’t hold strong and keep drawing attention to ourselves.” Ocellus be staying behind Smolder who was burning Zubats to fly into the river off the sides of the large stone bridge. “To be fair, I’m not mentally doing too well in this chaos either... all these rampant emotions of fear, pain and everything… it’s making nauseous given the strength of them. Either that or I’ve become more sensitive to this kind of stuff from overexposure to powerful malice… I’ll look into that later.”

“Hey, we’ll get through this Ocellus. Once Pom hears we’re in danger, she’ll come running.” That is unless something happened to her Smolder. “We’re going to have to relieve Jiri’s unit soon, they are getting badly roughed up.”

I looked to see Jiri covered in soot and her own blood as much as that of the other Pokémon she was fighting, all to defend her home with a ferocity that bordered on insane. Wish I had that kind of resolve to help Greenleaf, her bear friends were backing her up as they swiftly tore down another unit of fire Pokémon.

At the end of the units swift stomping, Jiri planted her spear and was using it to even stay standing, her shield was covered in a myriad of dents and scratches. I already know that no amount of determination will allow her to keep up with so many numbers for much longer, even the back line were running ragged because of the constant Zubat attacks.

The other side had to be running out of Pokémon right? How much of their resources were they wasting on trying to get past us? Did they care so little about how much of their forces had been forced back and beaten as long as they get what they wanted in the end by breaking us?

I was wondering if any other country was having this much trouble with invasions.

-Vipera, ???-

“We’re under attack, Yaksha Pokémon are invading Viperia!” A purple snake shrieked as the dark types of Yaksha launched an assault on Viperia’s southern border.

-Terrera, ???-

“Why is Cragspur attacking us? Evacuate and collapse the tunnel, quickly!” Terrera the ground type kingdom was suddenly under assault by quaking attacks, attacks that shook the underground kingdoms very foundations were being caused by large rock type Pokémon.

-Dragnor, ???-

“So… Spectra moves on us now? Hm-hm-hm... let them, they’ll see the error of their ways when it comes to the might of Dragnor.” A dragon type Pokémon stated as they just received news of ghostly troops from Spectra invading the borders. “It seems war has come to Ransei once more, what a time to be alive with grand ambitions.”

In fact news was the entire eastern coast of the continent was starting to fall into chaos.

“Watch for any movement in Nixtorm, send an envoy to check why Valora has gone quiet and if you hear any movements of anyone from Titania… avoid them and report back to me with haste if they are doing anything of note.” Now how to put this chaos to our advantage… “Spectra is not who we should be focusing on… we’ll play defensively against them. I want to focus on Avia, the kingdom of flying types and the so called ‘one-eyed dragon bird’ that leads their kingdom.”

-Avia, ???-

“Hmm… somethings gone quite horribly wrong.” All the movements in the other kingdoms were not hard to notice, Avia the ‘Flying Type Kingdom’ had some of the best scouts and was generally the hardest to assault kingdom given they were at the top of mountains. “Be prepared for an assault from Dragnor, something tells me they are about to claw at our feathered backsides under all of the chaos going around in the other territories… the actual dragons might finally be quite tired of peace by now. That or it’s the fact that I call myself the ‘one-eyed dragon’ when I’m a flying type that’s earned their ire.”

“What about keeping eyes on Illusio?” Yeah, I was quite concerned about that as well my old Scyther friend Tracer, currently doing some nice calligraphy work with the point of his scythe arm. Psychic types had a habit of teleporting around and there was definitely something up with the kingdom within the last year.

“We’ll do that too, we already have a spy inside the area, she’s undetectable by psychic types who are not looking for a small dark type and even if they do find her… her personality is too much to really be taken seriously as a threat.” However she hasn’t reported in for weeks, she’s usually slow and methodical so I’d give it another two weeks before I send in a unit to find and extract her to safety with any information she might have gathered.

The western half of the continent was probably doing better than the eastern half currently was, they weren’t at total war yet and my guys were already arming up to defend ourselves from all sides when Cragspur inevitably turned its rock chucking attention on us and Viperia would definitely seek to stab us in the back if they could while we try to hold off two other kingdoms, Yaksha is fortunately going to keep them busy for the foreseeable future.

“Call in my favor with Nene of Viperia, there’s something I want her to do that might seem a little… odd.” I grinned a maddening grin.

-Greenleaf, current, Captain Skeeball-

“Skitty Squad, ice beam the areas ahead of the fires to create a fire break. Hubby we need some Hydro Pump action, muddy the ground around their front line and slow those fire types down!” We had stopped to drop maiden Jig off and her entourage was on its way across Greenleaf’s bridge into Violight. “We can’t stop the invasion, but we can give Greenleaf time to get their backsides in gear!”

We were just about to go over the mazelike forest that surrounded Greenleaf’s castle that lead into its hedge mazes, when one of our Skitty Kitties saw fires starting in the distance and looking below my hubby I saw grass type Pokémon, civilians likely, running by in fear for relatively safety.

Instead of continuing my diplomatic mission to the kingdoms castle, like a good kitty you better believe I turned my big hubby Wilhelm’s floating butt around and charged us straight for the fire, mostly to see what was going on and who could have started fires that big as to be visible from miles away.

Ignis apparently started an assault on these mostly peaceful lands. Greenleaf was quite a sleepy place, plenty of good sunbeams to be hit by while napping in the shade of trees, it’s where Aurora got most of its medicine from and this burning of the northeastern portion of Greenleaf was clearly an act of war.

It wouldn’t be hard to believe that Greenleaf was caught entirely off guard and they really couldn’t organize a very good defense against fire types. The battling had to be going on for hours as we could already see the bridge in the distance where the fire Pokémon were setting up a staging area in the distance as they burned a large swath of land that was once long standing acres of forest. They were likely already taking stolen resources from Greenleaf back across the bridge into Ignis and building their foothold in this kingdom.

We needed to at least give the defenders some breathing room. I really doubt I could take on the whole of Ignis, military or rebel. I could still do a lot of damage in a short amount of time as a hero of Aurora.

“Skitty Squad prepare for a Giga Impact into some mud, we’re about to make a huge mess of those fire types!” They were about to face the wrath of me, the ever lovable Captain Skeeball! “This injustice will not stand if we have anything to say about it!”

Wilhelm clearly agreed, as once he was done creating something like a swamp below and in front of the westward encroaching forces he blew out all the air in his body and charged up a Giga Impact attack as we belly flopped towards the mud.

-Aurora to Ignis northern bridge, Smolder-

These Zubats couldn’t bite through my scales, but their screeches sure were confusing and distracting as I was in the air burning them back to Ignis side of the bridge with directly applied force and fireballs. The bats were thankfully not fire types or resilient to being lit up.

The entire world shook and I wonder what caused that noise, looking to the west I saw a huge wall of brown flying up in the air and collapsing towards the east. Whatever was happening over there was likely a far worse warzone than this bridge currently was with Jiri being a battered and injured, but still giving worse than the opposition could dish out.

Given how grass types are weak to fire, someone just did something big and crazy over there.

“Why won’t they just give up on Aurora already?” I grumbled as I came for a landing once I got tired.

“All I know is that they are far more afraid of someone else than they are of us despite the display Jiri’s team is putting on.” It was okay that Ocellus wasn’t doing much fighting, she was doing her best in other ways. “Said terror is far worse than the terror of not being able to break us here and they are close to doing that. Jiri’s unit can barely stand anymore and we don’t have much in the way of reinfor… oh never mind. Reinforcements incoming… for us!”

“Ruckus Rauco, here to harry and help!” The pidgey with the flight cap announced loudly as his unit soared in from overhead and started blasting scything winds into the Zubats. “Whoa… that’s a lot of fire Pokémon.”

“Yeah, we know, we’ve been fighting them for the last few hours!” Call me grumpy, but we needed this help a while ago. “I really doubt one unit can change this battle around, they are slowly overrunning us and pushing us back. Jiri’s unit definitely needs some relief dude and we’re barely recovered because we haven’t had a second’s peace because of all those Zubat things constantly harassing us!”

“Then Jiri will be quite relieved to hear that we didn’t come alone!” Rauco stated with a big grin on his beak as he led his unit to fly forward. “We’ll relieve Jiri’s unit and take up the slack ourselves.”

-Jiri-

I was breathing roughly, chunks of my fur were missing, I was covered in scabbing scars and my body felt like it couldn’t take much more. I think I might be missing a small chunk out of one of my ears too… or maybe that was some numbness from all the burns I’ve received having cauterized bits of my body. I’ve barely had a chance to drink my crushed Oran berry juice from the flask at my hip.

“Our spirits are willing, but are bodies are fleshy and weak…” Yeah like you needed to tell us that we were running of fumes Foo. As a number of Charmander and their evolved form, Charmeleon, were prepping to charge us when.

The red raptor lizards started forward, only for an enormous tornado of wind slammed home into the bridge and block their path. The flame tailed Pokémon were pushed back and it cut off a new wave of pain and suffering.

“Jiri your unit is to fall back, now!” Ruckus Rauco was back from his message delivery mission?! At least some pidgeys were better than no pidgeys at this rate. “We’re taking it from here, you can’t take much more and Chan will soon arrive to take your injuries into account!”

I tried to do as he asked, but I toppled over before I could take more than two steps away, my damage spear and shield dropped from my paws as I finally collapsed. I also think… I think I might have inhaled too much smoke from the fire type’s attacks, because breathing was getting quite hard and I was coughing a lot.

I felt myself being lifted up halfway.

“Ice type bear has you Jiri.” Cubby started dragging me away from the front by my arms, soon my legs were lifted up by Foo and they started carrying me towards the marginally safer southern end of the bridge. Stuffy, Teddy and Panda were covering our retreat to the best of their ability, Panda in particular was successfully taunting the Zubat that tried to encroach us into Teddy’s and Stuffy’s attacks.

“Oh no you don’t, not after all the trouble you gave us, we’ll not allow a retreat of your greatest unit now!” A Charmeleon charged for us as soon as the tornado’s winds died down, but Rauco and his unit ignored them entirely and started harassing other Pokémon gathering up beyond them.

Greatest unit? Heh, we’d probably be seen as such after our performance, I doubt a fire type Pokémon would forget our vicious stand here.

I was slipping in and out of consciousness slightly, but did I just seriously see the pidgeys ignore an immediate threat to us? Why did Ruckus Rauco just leave us open to attack like this?!

The Charmeleon and other fire lizards were almost upon us when their tail flames dimmed after several blurs pass by them, the lead Charmeleon’s eyes went wide and the red raptor Pokémon slowly started crumpling over as did several other fire types on the bridge. The entire Charmander and Charmeleon assault units on the bridge were just immediately decimated.

That’s when one of Fontaine’s units finally came to a stop long enough to be fully visible. Motochika’s Bullet Buizels. The six propeller tailed water otters, were glaring at the fire Pokémon organized on the northern end of the bridge with their arms crossed and standing in a line. The fire Pokémon that would have joined the Charmander and Charmeleon attack froze immediately.

It seems like Motochika came through for us in sparing single unit of help and our defensive line was now thoroughly on their side of the bridge.

“You’re about to have a very bad day… unit command Aqua Jet Streams!” The six encased themselves in water and everywhere they went streams of flowed after them and continuously slammed into any Pokémon misfortunate enough to even be near them as they passed by. The ones that got dragged into the water streams went following after them screaming in terror.

-Slightly to the north of Aurora, Fire Type Camp, ???-

“Lord Dong Zhuo, Aurora is definitely awake, Fontaine sent their Bullet Buizels unit to aid them as reinforcements.” I was just a lowly grunt for the civil unrest force, a Cyndaquil who was starting to believe we weren’t the good guys in all of this and that the Monferno known as Hideyoshi might have been a better choice to follow. “We’re actually being pushed back and need to call a retreat!”

Still Hideyoshi has done a lot of bad things so he’s not entirely a good guy either and this civil war couldn’t be for naught right? Lu Bu was scary, but so was Dong Zhuo the Emboar who was quite a wide and massive load.

I unfortunately got the short straw to deliver this message from the southern front in person.

This is where the money to feed my poor family was coming from, so I couldn’t make too many complaints out loud without someone trying to bite off my head in a literal sense. Agriculture in Ignis was quite tough given the mountains and hills, but the volcanic ash did make for fertile farming soil if utilized correctly.

I don’t know if I’m right, but I think the farm land was not being utilized correctly in the slightest considering that we even have starving Pokémon to speak of. Either that or Dong Zhuo was taking up half the armies resources by himself, the guy was certainly large enough for eating that much.

I felt my body get pulled into a crushing grip as the Emboar, the large backside that he was, silently and slowly lifted me up to his face. He gave me a sickening grin and giving me an exceedingly long stare, as if I was a complete and utter idiot in his eyes.

His next few words were as clear as the threat within them.

“Deal with it…” The ‘or else’ part was entirely implied, because Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu successfully started this civil war and wanted to win it even at a cost.

Still, Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu certainly had a bunch of good political talking points to persuade a lot of Pokémon to their side, if they hadn’t gotten enough then there wouldn’t even be a civil war issue currently happening in Ignis. Hideyoshi wasn’t exactly the saint he wanted to be, but he wasn’t the worst leader Ignis has ever had so I’m a bit conflicted.

I personally thought that what we were doing right now in attacking Greenleaf and Aurora was the height of stupidity when we were still trying to take down Hideyoshi… even if we did have the flaming monkey trapped in a corner. It was exceptionally egregious when even a single Aurora unit just wiped out several hundred Pokémon in the last few hours of nonstop fighting after exclaiming one pointed fact.

What were we fighting for? They were fighting to protect their kingdom and protect it they did, it wasn’t a boast to say they were terrifying most of the fire types that went up against them, given they would probably would have died on their feet doing so. That they managed to hold out for reinforcements that were quite threatening was as terrifying a prospect that they’d come back fully recovered after all that time we spent on breaking them in the first place.

Yeah, this assault on Aurora and Greanleaf was probably the worse idea in a similar vein of bad ideas like us drawing Fontaine’s ire outright would be. We’ve hit sunk cost fallacy levels of bad in using more resources than necessary.

We should be focusing all our efforts in Greenleaf as that was going far better, but apparently something about Aurora made Dong Zhuo want to attack them as well.

I was shaken violently and my attention was focused entirely on the scowling pig lord’s face, I just realized that he had been choking me to death for a second there. He tossed me to the floor painfully and then pointed out of the tent. His intent was clear that I should get out of his sight immediately or suffer the consequences.

I quickly scrambled to go tell the officers around that we should deal with the issues, because legendary gods help us if Lu Bu was brought in to deal with us and make the issues go away at the same time. The ‘Flying General’ was quite dangerous and not someone you wanted to be within twenty feet of while he was wielding a spear with wing or talon, Red Hare his Rapidash companion wasn’t any better.

-Aurora’s northern bridge, Shanty-

“There you go, you can go back into combat, but I think the Bullet Buizels have us covered for the time being. So please rest and don’t make me come back over here.” Chan then moved back to Jiri, her body was being quite wrecked.

At least Jiri successfully pulled a Pom, which was exceedingly painful and her spear and shield were no longer usable. The shield might be being salvageable at least.

“I’m a little more hopeful after seeing those guys… but there’s still a large number of fire types in Greenleaf.” Yes, that is being true Favela, but they were diverting a lot of resources into dealing with us and that wasn’t going as well for them.

“We still got some fighting to do, Zubats and Golbats are still a moderate problem.” Quetal reminded us as he took a drink of water from a canteen. “We also don’t have enough Pokémon to actually take the fight to them or help push them out of Greenleaf. The best we can currently do right now is make sure they are hurting in resources and make them think twice about attacking us again.”

“I think Jiri’s unit be doing that well enough, but she is no longer be having a weapon or shield.” For as I be seeing, neither shield nor spear be surviving Jiri’s intent to defend Aurora with all she had. The bears were in much better health if run as ragged as Jiri had become.

“We’re currently in a stalemate, they won’t be able to bypass the Buizel or Rauco’s unit before we’re all ready to fight again once Chan is done patching us up. I would rather we were open to peace talks though, because those fire Pokémon are hot!” We can at least rely on Geoff to be being himself.

“Yeah, quite smoking even!” A male Wooloo growled out cutely.

“They can set me on fire any day of the week, why… the burning passion alone!” Stated the female Wooloo who didn’t have an intelligent pile of putrid poisonous sludge as a boyfriend.

“Wooloo, always complimentary even when you’re on opposite sides of a battlefield.” Groaned Quetal who looked up at Rauco’s unit currently laying into the Zubats and their evolved forms with eyes the Golbats.

“Heh, we actually held our own for once, right Talia?” Brigand Teeth turned to his sister with a toothy grin.

“Yeah, for once we’re not unconscious on the ground and half dead while bleeding out, which is a nice feeling when you’re considered the world’s weakest Pokémon.” Talia said flatly to her dark furred brother.

“Technically Sunkern are the world’s weakest Pokémon after Unown, because a single Unown lacks versatility in a fight and Sunkern at least have that much… multiple Unown are actually dangerous and can warp reality. So Sunkern win weakest on a pure output of raw power, next to a singular Wishi Washi if we’re not counting the abject lack of versatility an Unown who can build up at least some raw power with the one move they do know.” We all just stared at Teeth. “What… I know how to read!”

Our staring just became all the more disbelieving.

“No respect for us Rattata soldiers I tell you.” Teeth grumbled throwing his paws up in the air.

“It is kind of hard to believe that you’ve actually read anything…” One of the other Rattata commented quietly.

“So… how long do you think we will be being here?” It just occurred to me that we can’t leave the bridge undefended.

“You might want to settle in, unless we can do something about the leadership behind the attacks on Aurora and Greenleaf. With the amount of Pokémon they just threw at us… and whatever else is between us and their leader, one who is probably just sitting across the border right now in that camp to the north. We’re not ready or likely to win the fight, especially not numerically even if we have a sporadic decent quality in fighters going on here.” Quetal shrugged with his claws held out. “Well we’re all likely open for suggestions at this point, but fighting in the open on their or our side of will get us surrounded. The particular bottle neck of this bridge is great, because fire Pokémon in general can’t swim very well and getting drench causes some intense amounts of pain from heat loss. It would be too dangerous for us to move at this juncture as we don’t have enough people to launch an assault on them. Even the Buizel unit has to eat and sleep some time, they only have so much stamina even if they can feasibly take out more fire type Pokémon than we did in practically half the time.”

“So we’re stuck here while Greenleaf is currently under assault and being ransacked while we can’t do anything!” Favela yelled with tears in her eyes.

“Hey, I asked for a plan, put your brain in gear and get thinking on something that might cause the Ignis guys to back off of Greenleaf.” Quetal looked out the ground while hugging himself slightly. “I would sorely like to hear a good idea right about now. Holding them off is about the best we can do functionally.”

“What if we be finding a way to sabotage them to make them really regret attacking both Greenleaf and Aurora?” They looked to me and I was trying to be building up a working idea. So I went with the first thought that be popping into my head. “What if we be doing a daring late night attack on their supplies?”

I was thinking of Gongmen again...

“Might work, but it would require for us to wait until nightfall.” Quetal was looking about and we didn’t have anything. “While we think on this, anyone else have any ideas… anyone who is not currently Favela?”

It was sad that he had to tack that on because I think I be knowing what Favela might suggest. She seemed upset that Quetal wouldn’t take her idea, but also looked almost relieved to hear that he wouldn’t.

302. Gregariously Obvious Asset Taking Pirates.

Author's Note

Music: With Catlike Tread- Pirates of Penzance.

302. Gregariously Obvious Asset Taking Pirates.

-Pokemon World, Evening, Violight, Violight Castle, Jail Cell, Dolly-

“Now I would like to speak to the leader of the odd expedition that went to and came back from this… other world.” Gin-Flea-Toe was looking at us with those freaky eyes of hers and I got up as while wondering what she was doing when she moved something form her back. “I have called Proffessor Pong, his assistant a Rotom named Ping and the Grubbin you met to get the full story of what happened in his laboratory before coming down here. Ping was out on business so he didn’t know anything.”

I also saw a big mouse with bright blue eyes, orange fur and a long tail with a rounded tip tail. I felt the large slightly chunky bipedal mouse look my way and felt my bond with Pom flare and the huge mouse was left clutched at her head and looked between me and Pom with a slight amount of shock.

Pom was staring at the mouse flatly as if she just tried to touch our bond or do something close to it, familiar bonds were no joking matter and Pom took the connection we had seriously once I finally got her to take me on as a partner and stop trying to reject me.

After being under this bond for so long and having figured out all the implications of it… well suffice it to say, anyone that tries to mess with our bond deserves the slap to the face for trying to invade our privacy like the giant mouse-kangaroo thing just attempted.

Pom calmly ran a calming hoof down my back because I was agitated and continued to stare at the giant kangaroo mouse thing in the eyes and they look away with embarrassment at being caught out.

Turning my attention back to what Limp-Cheeto was doing and with a few twists of her paw she pointed the top of the jar at me and I saw that Lit was perfectly fine. Upon seeing me he happily squeaked and hopped out of the jar and scuttled my way.

“Please, for the sake of continued peace around here, don’t do anything rash until I get back Dolly. I’m the closest thing our groups have to a leader Ms. Tachibana.” What was I going to do Pom? I was just likely to call my family and show them how cool my pet electric tick Lit was! I wasn’t planning some massive crazy jailbreak and wrecking this place… but if they hurt you Pom, well I’d immediately know and would probably do just that and live up to my now famous ‘Caper Canine’ moniker. “At least wait for me to call for help before doing anything rash Dolly, please.”

“Yeah, sure Pom… no doing something crazy unless you ask me to.” I was happily hugging Lit to my chest and my tail was going a mile a minute that they hadn’t hurt the little guy, the cute bug snuggled against my chest purring happily. “I’ll just spend my time talking to my fam, they probably have the tablet charged and ready for another interdimensional call from me. Need to let them know my jail time hasn’t been too horrible... food could be better though.”

Pom raised a gentle brow at me.

“Okay, so I know I’m out of kibble again, but I promise I will try to not freak out about it.” Of course there was some ire from me that that that Blackmail Uber guy had bought a small bag that barely lasted me a day after getting out of that strange world. “Hey, I can go a week without kibble, you’ll see!”

“Alright let’s go, that was just me making sure my family wouldn’t do anything dumb at this point in our incarceration.” Pom sighed dramatically as she was led away by the Magnet-Tight guard guys and Bin-Primo.

After Pom, the guards and that largest cat I’ll likely see in my life, Dim-CEO, left. I calmly pulled out the Digi-vice and decided to call my family and see who would pick up when they could while Lit crawled up my chest and to the right side of my neck while looking at me in curiosity.

As my called was waiting to go through the dimensional boundaries… I heard a familiar voice singing.

“Stars, clouds, skies and stuff, this poetry is making me lose my ruff… Stars, clouds…~” They were using my voice as a ringtone? Heh, nice-…

“Hello you have contacted the Dalmatian residence and… oh good heavens Dolly what is that thing on you!” Dawkins eyes had been closed for the first part of that and when he opened them he freaked out when he saw Lit and spooked the poor guy to backing down my neck.

“You remember when I said I got an alien pet ‘elec-tick’… yeah… you kind of spooked the poor guy after he went through and interrogation or whatever’s happening here. Say hello to one of my brothers Lit, hey its okay… Dawkins didn’t mean to scare you.” I felt Lit crawl back up to my shoulder, squeaked cutely and then waved a tiny blue pointed leg at Dawkins.

“That’s… pretty large for a tick Dolly.” It was pretty cool, right Dawkins?

“I know he’s an omnivore, but he prefers lightning and berries… would probably cause the power bill to go through the roof if he was allowed access to a wall socket. He can completely drain any power source from something like nothing else, he’s already done it twice… to things with a lot of juice in them. He’d make a really good threat to the robots I’ve fought, given how often Pom and I end up running into them we’re definitely keeping him around.” I muttered while rolling my eyes. “He’s an awesome little dude.”

“Oh… so….” I saw Da Vinci wander onto screen and with one glance, the colorful puppy just stopped to stare at Lit. “Cute! I need to paint such an inspiration.”

That’s when Da Vinci ran off noisily, I wonder if I should tell her about the bipedal art dogs with paintbrushes for tails in this world that look like Snoopy from those Peanut comics... I’m pretty sure this world had a Woodstock equivalent too.

-???, ???-

“I suddenly get this feeling we’re being used for a visual gag.” A large yellow lightning bird called a Zapdos stated as they sat in front a Smeargle doing a cartoony portrait of them together as friends. “Also I’ve been getting messages from Articuno for Help up north.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s nothing, Articuno can handle whatever it is for a little while longer. I mean if she has the time to write with her talons it can’t be too bad.” The Smeargle had no idea how wrong they were when a dilapidated zombie made of disastrous information and grit was continually hassling the kingdom of Nixtorm. “She’s really quite tough and what can functionally challenge her in her own domain of ice and snow?”

There was a clear threat that definitively warranted attention as would later be found out.

-Violight Castle, Jail Cell, Dolly-

“I’m grabbing a screenshot of this, such a fascinating species…” Yep, brainy bro was already geeking out about seeing Lit for the first time and producing a blob of electricity in the shape of a heart. “You previously said they can spit electricity as a defense mechanism, what’s their amperage and volts?”

“Dawkins, do I really need to point out that it’s me you’re talking to?” I said bluntly while jabbing a paw digit at him.

“Oh… right… the least scientific dog that became a super hero, the irony of the existence of magic is still twisting my brain into knots.” Yeah, magic would do that Dawkins. I wonder what Dylan would think of Lit, would he freak out positively or negatively. It was quite toss-up really, but freaking out was a certainty. “Let me go get a few of our siblings so they can meet Lit, since scientific queries is clearly out of the question.”

-Throne room, Pom-

“Now treat me as if I didn’t have your friend’s prisoner. I got the information I wanted from the Joltik, but I want your personal scope on the...” Ginchiyo would have continued further.

“Sorry to interrupt your meeting your highness, but it’s important that we discuss… Pom?” I turned and saw Maiden Jig the administrator of Aurora with an entourage of Mr. Edge, Flabebe and Shine.

They looked quite tired.

-Aurora defensive line, north side of Aurora-Ignis Bridge, Shanty-

“There’s no way that can possibly work Shanty, Favela doesn’t believe that for a cotton picking second and I can be picking up a lot of Cottonee up in a second!” Oh ye’ o’ little faith Favvy, but I can savvy the initial distrust of what I be suggesting being so bizarre. “Also since when did I be speaking like you!”

Pie plus rat, plus my good friend who was apparently labeled one without the usual negative connotations involved by a countries ruler, that verbal tic of mine was bound to be happening to you eventually Favela.

“Well… actually… it could… I mean sure it’s totally and absolutely ridiculous, but if Shanty can successfully starts a heart song centered on the subject of stealth. Well the narrative causality of the magical song will make you ridiculously stealthy even if you were singing the song at the top of your lungs in a blaringly obvious manner, wearing brightly lit neon signs and waving flashlights around wildly as if trying to get someone’s attention. The audacity of doing all that makes you practically undetectable and even if you were detected nobody would believe you’d do such a thing so blatantly. Of course it might actually require us to be singing at the top of our lungs for the best effect of making people ignore us entirely.” Yeah, if Ocellus said it be possible, then I was going to believe it was and not acknowledge that it shouldn’t be for any reason whatsoever. It’s when you be thinking you can’t do something that you lose the ability to and I certainly believe in heart songs after Pom, Ocellus and Mopsy helped save Cape Suzette with one… well mostly, the water in that city would still be being undrinkable for quite a while. “That’s part of the beauty of the rhythm of Equus and all lifeforms who live on our magical planet.”

“Wait… so it can be an actual thing?” Smolder asked.

“Oh yes, the more Equus or other magical beings involved in the song that can feel and do it alongside the ones who started it, the stronger the heart song magic gets in output values the more people who feed into it in harmony. Discordant singing or a counter song would weaken the song as to be a moot point for stealth purposes and we’d have to start before we’re seen or it won’t work.” Despite nervously pawing at her face with a hoof slightly, Ocellus didn’t seem too against the idea. “Dodo can pull the wagon Pom had the Bidoof commission for our personal transport around Ransei, even if Dodo is still a bit small he’s strong enough to move the supplies we pick up back across the bridge. The problem is keeping up a song about being silent for that long would be annoying and hard to pull off.”

“Oh watch me, nobody be better at shenanigans than an excellent pirate… I’m not at that level yet, but tonight they’ll rue the day they didn’t be hearing a particular shanty!” My grin was ear from ear and Favela seemed a little uncertain, but soon matched my smile.

“Yeah, you’re going to need us for this and if we can all sing this and get it to work with the choreography of stealing things…” Smolder grinned and rubbed her claws together.

“Smol… no greed.” Ocellus be stamping her right hoof cutely while glaring at the dragon. “These guys burned a portion of Greenleaf, at the very worst we can at least make sure they don’t get a good night’s sleep by being loud and obnoxious.”

“Speaking of burning Greenleaf, whatever supplies they have might have acquired from Greenleaf, we’re going to need more than a single wagon to wipe them out on a logistics front if this works.” Quetal tapped his right foot and closed his eyes in thought. “We need to do something about the invasion force still in Greenleaf. Even if we deal with their logistics and bring all the supplies back to Aurora, what’s to stop them from tearing Greenleaf apart further for more? Much less them coming after us to tear us apart. We need someone to take care of that and keep a stranglehold on the bridge here and the one between Greenleaf and Ignis. We don’t have enough units to do that, even if we can at least steal the supplies they need for whatever continued efforts successfully, we’d still be having a problem with them pillaging Aurora’s neighbor for more with impunity given ‘Grass Types’ can’t really stand up to ‘Fire Types’ very well.”

“So us helping ourselves to the stolen supplies would only make things worse in Greenleaf. Jiri at least might have spooked them into not wanting to deal with us…” Even then I don’t think we can be leaving Aurora’s northern bridge undefended long enough to hold the western bridge from Ignis to Greenleaf. “We can’t rely on that can we?”

“No, we can’t. We can still get help with raiding the Fire Type camp, but we need to think of the implications beyond doing that.” Quetal looked at the nearby Buizel. “How do you guys feel about helping Greenleaf to the west by raiding and hassling the fire types?”

“You kind of needed us here to stop the assault on you.” One of the Buizel said. “We’re not about to abandon an ally, not when Motochika is counting on us to help you out. Of course you held up pretty well on your own, mind you they didn’t stop coming until we came in to make a defensive perimeter.”

“… we kind of need you to go help Greenleaf, we’ll be fine. We held the bridge for three hours before you showed up.” Yeah and that was being a tough time Quetal. “Despite how tired we are, the fire type Pokémon got the worst end of it even if it’s more than five to one in their favor. The major injuries were to the Jiri’s bear unit.”

“Which is a better reason for us to not move. We water Pokémon don’t want Greenleaf to fall either, but they really don’t have their stuff in gear if a part of their territory is occupied. Splitting our team or making our unit attack and hold the Greenleaf-Ignis Bridge while leaving this bridge lightly defended wouldn’t be tangible to keeping Aurora from taking a huge hit.” The Buizel did be having a good grasp on the situation there. “I’m not saying we can’t take the other bridge and hold it, but we’d be lacking supplies to do it for long. Either we leave Greenleaf exposed to more fire type trouble or we gamble on your ability to hold Aurora’s bridge without our help.”

“This is being a tough choice…” We could sink the bridge here but Quetal be giving me reasons why we shouldn’t do that. “What if the Buizel took out the other bridge, making it impossible for Ignis to take supplies from Greenleaf?”

“Then we’ll have the ire of those militant fire types focused entirely on us, they still have hundreds of soldiers ready to attack us even if we dealt a large blow to them on our own thanks to Jiri’s efforts. Never seen a rabbit or bears as heroic as that unit in particular.” Okay that would be being bad Quetal, considering we barely be holding off an onslaught with a wing and prayer here. Most of us didn't have wings and I be doubting prayers would be answered by the god who put us here in the first place. “Even with the Buizel we’re quite outnumbered and if we lose the bridge for any reason, Aurora is going to fall when we lose the ability to bottleneck their forces. Still… we’re going through with Shanty’s raid, anything to get back at these guys for causing so many issues. The Buizel unit can decided what to do themselves, they are not under Aurora’s command and neither am I or my companions. All Aurora Military units should hold this bridge while we set out and cause them some delays, don’t know how Greenleaf will respond, but they’ll have to do something eventually.”

“Maybe we can seal the bridge off from being crossed and bolster our defenses so the Buizel don’t need to take the other bridge." Talia, Brigand Teeth’s sister suggested and I be suddenly getting a lightbulb over my head as the rat be giving me a grand plan. "We need like a giant fireproof gate here, if we were to have them put some siege weapons over here too maybe…”

“That’s brilliant, thanks for giving me an idea Talia!” Everyone looked to me as I figured something out. “Now we just need a lot of wagons, Tauros to pull them and Milktanks to load them. The fire types won’t be able to get back into Greenleaf and if there are any still there in Greenleaf they won’t be getting backup once the Bidoof are done.”

-An hour later as night fell, Aurora’s destroyed western bridge, Bidoof-

“Build!” We heaved and a small wooden bridge fell into position allowing us to cross into Greenleaf, we had an obstruction to set up on the bridge to the north in Greenleaf and had to make it so that we could still use the bridge again later, but fireproof. Nothing like a building challenge to make us happy!

Also we had to make sure we didn’t alert anyone to what we were doing, because we doubt Greenleaf would like us coming into their kingdom unannounced and building something on the bridge between them and Ignis.

Of course we would have rebuilt this bridge too, but nobody commissioned us to and Greenleaf was said to be looking into contractors. We didn’t want to steal work from other Pokémon so we left it destroyed and moved the Snorlax out of the way to a place where it wouldn’t immediately slaughter someone and would find some food if it woke up.

Moving north along the west side of the river we spotted a poorly built quick fort and there were fire types patrolling it, it was not near enough to the bridge that they’d notice us doing our work until we were well into it. Which is we we'd silently take care of the fort first. Once we were done here we’d remove the wooden bridge we used to get into Greenleaf and then remove it behind us coming back to Aurora. We’d cut off the fire types from any reinforcements first before we try to deal with the fort, we would also have other Bidoof looking into building a bridge gate to help stop or slow another invasions from Ignis.

So much to BUILD upon! We like the idea of being combat engineers and the problems presented had our minds buzzing with quite a few ideas!

-Fire type camp, southern Ignis, near Aurora and Greenleaf bridges, Cyndaquil-

“Dong Zhuo was quite mad, do you think Lu Bu will turn on him eventually? Hideyoshi isn’t bringing down such a huge threat on us as the other kingdoms, they’ve been kind of ignoring us up to this point and now I think we’re in big trouble…” Was it worth all the trouble that was likely coming for us from Aurora? I heard about that Buneary and the bears I wasn’t part of the offensive that tried to break into Aurora, but what I heard was absolutely terrifying and I really didn’t want to be put up against them if they were recovered enough tomorrow. “Hideyoshi might have made some horrible decisions, like the ridiculously heavy tax on bananas not being sold directly to him, but is he really all that bad?”

“Sure Dong is making even worse ones, but Hideyoshi needs to fix a lot of things before I would be even willing to consider working under him and he wasn’t a strong enough leader to prevent a civil war from happening. Besides Dong has gotten results numerous times and just recently with our invasion of Greenleaf the supplies we got from that will be enough to help us finish off Hideyoshi by sieging the capital constantly.” One of the Darumaka said. “Most of Hideyoshi’s forces are spent protecting the farmlands and small villages, seriously this civil war isn’t going to last much longer and Dong Zhuo actually pays very well and doesn’t have exceedingly dumb laws to worry about.”

“Yeah, but he’s not a very nice guy and I have a feeling he’ll do worse things to stay in power even if we do manage to take the capital of Ignis for him without being crushed by the other kingdoms.” The dormant volcano city of forges had held up this long.

“It’ll be fine, you’ll see. We’re not going to have to do another crazy thing with Lu Bu and Dong can lead a war on the rest of the kingdoms for all I care, Hideyoshi’s policies are just that bad since he took leadership.” I don’t think the Charmeleon had the right idea. “If we don’t succeed, then we’ll all get what’s coming to us at the very least and won’t have to worry about it for much longer afterwards.”

Lu Bu of course being the world’s most dangerous Unfezant who was quite unpleasant to be near. Red Hare was less volatile, but with Lu Bu they were the nightmare pair when fighting together. There was no escaping them tag teaming you on land.

“Did anybody hear that?” I asked as I looked around, something distinct and faint just sounded off in my ears.

“Hear what?” A tepid asked looking about.

“It sounded like the sound a fly would make if it farted… which is weird that I’d even know what that would sound like.” Nothing seemed out of place, except for the wagon tracks on the ground, I didn’t see any wagons… nor did we bring any wagons… that’s weird. Were we being haunted by ghost wagons?

-Currently happening in reality at this very moment among all the awake and sleeping fire Pokémon of Ignis rebelling forces, Shanty-

“With Skitty like tread, upon our prey we steal~!” We be in the middle of loading the various wagons and singing at the top of our lungs and they be ingoring us entirely, this is despite being in the line of sight of numerous Fire Pokémon. “With a sense of dread, what we’re doing is quite unreal~!”

“We won’t make a sound, not even as loud as a bird~!” Favela be singing next to me as we loaded the wagon with the camps supplies with Milktank helping us. “Even if all our hoof steps should be distinctly heard~!”

“Galvantula, Galvantula~!” The Milktank sang loudly and as obnoxiously as possible.

-With the campfire Pokémon, Cyndaquil-

“I feel as if something very strange is going on here.” Something was off, yet I didn’t know what.

“Look Cyndaquil, we know Dong might not be the greatest guy around, but he’s got this victory and we want to be on the right side of history.” Not very reassuring, considering I can’t help but feel the other kingdoms are going to crush us for attacking Greenleaf somehow. “All we need are those supplies and the logistics will be handled for the siege, nothing can possibly stop us from dealing with Hideyoshi now.”

-The thieves that are currently not being subtle about it at all, Quetal-

“With stealth we’re dealing with these creeps, while most of the fire types in this camp sleeps~!” I sang loudly while grinning at the absurdity of what we were doing, the fact that we were being ignored meant that the weirdness censor thing was a plausibility for how this is working.

We couldn’t just have brazenly walked into a camp with a bunch of wagons singing about how we were going to steal all this stuff right?

“Come, friends, who steal like me~!” Shanty grinned as she picked the lock on the box and loaded up a loot sack with its contents, then threw the box into the sack too. “True this elation, caused by sudden deprivation~!”

“Ra, ra, ra, ra…~” The Tauros chanted as everyone else sang waiting for the wagons to be loaded before setting back off for Aurora.

“Let’s steal lavishly, while doing so quite vocally~!” Favela joined by a walking into a tent and coming out with her own sack of stuff she threw into the back of a wagon.

“Come, friends, who steal like we~!” Milktank and Tauros sang together as we continued to steal everything in the camp because Favela suggest it, we had plenty of wagon space. “Much to our elation, succeeding without tribulation~!

“Ra, ra, ra, ra~.” Favela and I be chanting now.

“Let’s get to Piracy, with plundering everything we see~!” We were even starting to steal their tents and nobody be noticing it or waking up.

-Campfire, Cyndaquil-

“I don’t know, I mean I know Hideyoshi did that but… um… does anything feel off to the rest of you?” I looked around and noticed less tents than before with fire Pokémon sleeping on the cold hard ground, I’m pretty sure we at least had mattresses for everyone at the start of the day.

“It’s nothing, stop worrying!” A Raboot stated as he went to go back to sharpening his blade, but it and its sheath were gone. He just shrugged stuck a piece of straw in his mouth and leaned back to flop onto the ground as the log he had been leaning against was now gone.

“No... somethings definitely up and I don’t mean the civil war, something is going on here…” Nobody seemed to be taking my sudden sense of wrongness here seriously.

Maybe it was the fact that the campfire was gone…

-The totally out in the open thieves singing at the top of their lungs and are not actually invisible in the slightest, Shanty-

“With Skitty like tread, in silence led~!” We all sang as we slowly broke down the camp around fire type Pokémon. “With Skitty like tread, upon our prey we steal~!”

“Caution to the wind, insane this all does feel~!” Even I be admitting that this was absurd. “As we’re sneaking around, barely making the sound of a bird. One would think our hoof falls would be certainly heard~!"

“Come, friends, who steal with thee~!” We sang loudly as we exited what used to be a camp past the two guards who we just stole the spears off of. “Stealing to eradication, expecting no differentiation~.

“Let’s bury violently, their ability to be quite surly~!” This was going to be pretty interesting as we marched away singing loudly at the top of the longs.

-The two fire types watching as a bunch of wagons left at the entrance of what used to be a camp-

The fact that they broke out into song as soon as we saw them had us confused and then they started stealing everything while singing about it so brazenly that there was no possible way that no one in the camp wouldn’t and couldn’t have noticed it happening. Yet somehow, they did it all without waking up Dong Zhuo or alerting any of the many, MANY, camp guards that were around that should have raised a fuss as it was happening.

“Did we just seriously stand here and let that happen?” The Charmander, the small bipedal raptor with a flaming tail asked of their friend. “Or was that a fever dream…”

“Yes, but you have to admit that was quite impressive way to go about stealing our entire camp…” The fire spewing anteater called a Heatmor responded seeing the humor of the situation that nobody tried to stop them. “They confused us so hard that we had no idea what they had in mind until they were already doing it.”

“With Skitty like tread, upon our prey we steal! Our caution fled… no caution needed we feel-~!” They held a long note as they walked off into the horizon.

“Why that had to be the most brazen and outlandish thing I’ve ever seen done in my life.” The Heatmor said.

“Yeah, they just totally ignored us… wait, shouldn’t we be raising an alarm?” The charmander asked with a hint of desperation. “They did just take everything not nailed down.”

“With what, they stole all the alarm bells.” Heatmor just pointed out. “They were also singing at the top of their lungs, you’d think everyone in the camp would have noticed at least that much!”

“They also took all the food…” The Charmander said flatly with an equally flat gaze directed at the fire breathing metal-ant eater.

“Still you have to admit… there was no way that should have worked.” Heatmor continued.

“Oh totally, shouldn’t have happened given the absurdity they were pulling. Now if only we Fire Types weren’t so lazy at night aside from the blacksmiths that work the forges in the capital of Ignis…” Well the Charmander wanted to blame it on being nighttime, but still one would think Aurora sending musicians or at least musically talent people to steal everything out from under them was possibly the most bizarre thing they could cook up.

Nobody would eve believe the guards on watch if they told the truth about what just happened.

“Everyone wake up, we’ve been robbed!” A Cyndaquil shouted finally noticing the problem we noticed when we saw the Aurora contingent heading back to the south after having stolen everything… including the campfires.

“Okay, this is a good reason why we shouldn’t ever underestimate Aurora after this. What they just did was so damn strange, but fun sounding… and… I’m not even mad about it is the odd thing.” The Heatmor finally commented as he stood next to me.

“Well it was entertaining at least, but we’re functionally all kinds of screwed if we can’t get those supplies back.” The Charmander said dully.

-Heading back to Aurora with an entire camps worth of stolen stuff, Shanty-

“Come, friends, just sing with me… that was fun with no sense of urgency~!” We finished as we started crossing the bridge by a bunch of wide eyed Buizel.

“That… no… you… but… what? How did you do it without a fight?!” The lead Buizel of the unit asked with disbelief.

“I am being just that good at leading a song.” I stated as I be smiling to myself. “Yeah, don’t be worrying about it, but we may be having to protect the bridge from a full onslaught of angry fire types after whatever the Bidoof just be doing to secure Greenleaf.”

The Bidoof will fix the bridge after we’re done dealing with the problem, they attacked Aurora and that means they were no longer neutral civil war faction and all that would entail.

“That was possibly the most absurd thing to ever happen in the history of this world.” Ocellus stated with a smile.

-Greenleaf, hours before the morning started the next day, outside the Fire Type Quick Fort, Bidoof-

Reconstructing the fort into a giant reinforced cage wasn’t hard at all, but it took a bit of doing to dig under all the fire type Pokémon and build ‘Dig’ proof structures underneath them took some time. They also had to knock out the awake guards.

Building a three story tall and wide wall that the fire types couldn’t melt through if they tried was also an inspired bit of engineering and much easier than turning the fort into a giant cage.

“Build!” I shouted to my comrades.

“BUILD!” They responded as we made our way back to the broken bridge between Aurora and Greenleaf. We made way for home and would remove the small wooden log bridge we made to get here, then go sleep for the rest of the day back in the BUILD Guild.

What a tiring night of good hard work.

303. Back to Bridge Blockading.

-Equus, Ponyville, Caps for Cash, Cashmere-

“Thanks for the business Pinkie Pie.” I said merrily wondering when I’d lay eyes on that lovely dark unicorn again, my cousin Velvet said she was still busy looking for their Lambkin friend Pom.

“I’ll come to you for all my mad hatter and tea party needs Cash, in any case I think Rarity appreciates you’re business… she doesn’t have to do nearly as many hats with you being able to make matching ensemble to anything she creates.” Pinkie stated jovially while wearing a top hat with a ten slash six card in the brim. “Come on Pacman, let me show you what snacks are like around here!”

The floating yellow sphere flapped its mouth making odd sounds as it hovered after Pinkie upon exiting my store.

“This place flows with weirdness, I’m glad I set up here and can visit my cousin in Airship Mauled.” The only problem was the heat around here for me. If Velvet can handle it with as much floof as she has, then I’m perfectly capable of doing so myself.

Sure my customers might not enjoy the lower temperatures in my shop, but the air conditioning is worth it. In a few days I would get to meet my cousin’s extended family of Paprika Paca, alpacas are becoming a slightly common sight in Ponyville and the Princess of Love has been very friendly with alpaca nomads in recent history visiting the Crystal Empire.

Maybe I could talk to them about doing a seminar on alpaca culture at the friendship school, Rarity did want to do a culture festival thing like what happens in Manehatten.

Pepper, Tamale and Kayamba Paca were the ones I believed that were said to be visiting.

-Pokemon World, Violight Kingdom, morning, Throne Room, Pom-

“That’s about the size of my scouting expedition and now you’re telling me Ignis attacked Greenleaf on purpose. Violight is pretty nice, haven’t gotten any new scars from this kingdom yet.” Hearing about Greenleaf means, I needed to talk Ginchiyo into sending help or at least sending someone down south to check on things if she wouldn’t release us in a timely manner. Ginchiyo kind of has me detained for a variety of logical reasons and I was being treated more as a guess here instead of a prisoner. Maiden Jig still got better accommodations, for obvious reasons. “What are the chances we can speed up the bureaucratic process of getting my new friends and team released?”

“I’m sorry, but I will have to keep you detained for at least another day, before we can officially release you barring a direct attack on the kingdom and I still need to hear Professor Pong’s testimony on the situation. I’m still a bit curious about the Salazzle’s history, but I’ll send an envoy to Greenleaf to hash out a few things if they need support.” Ginchiyo then turned to Maiden Jig. “Now in the meantime, we can discuss the terms of a possible alliance that Maiden Jig, Administrator of Aurora, has brought before us. I’m quite sure Chrysalia as much as I would be open to joining an alliance with the southern kingdoms, given great trouble is befalling the kingdoms once more it won’t be long before the eastern kingdoms come for us and the dragons start seeking a fight with Arceus again. However I won’t be able to enact the alliance quickly, it’ll likely be unable to occur until after the war problem with Ignis has been resolved and there’s some other reasons I cannot let Pom and her friends go yet.”

“The people?” Maiden Jig stated.

“The people.” Ginchiyo responded.

Girls, please don’t do anything dumb in the meantime until I can get back to Aurora...

-Aurora, South end of the Northern Aurora/Ignis Bridge, Shanty-

We be managing a completely successful raid, one where we be taking their entire camp out from under them. Now we be needing to survive an oncoming onslaught if they thought to come after us. I be sleeping comfortably in a stolen tent last night.

“It’s kind of sad that a stealth based heart song won’t form or couldn’t be used unless you were actively sneaking and not in broad daylight. We’re not even sure it even worked entirely, but stealing everything in camp without an ounce of combat is at least a good indicator in that it did.” Ocellus was of the opinion that with the walling off of the bridge between Greenleaf and Ignis being eventually discovered, Aurora was bound to be exposed to an attack from the north soon. “Jiri is still out, but Chan is working on her specifically and is getting her in fighting condition. Also the members of Team Harmony’s guild are wishing us luck with holding the front while helping out around Aurora. They are dealing with quite a few small problems around here that are capable of snowballing out of control.”

Basically if any fire type be crossing the bridge and we don’t be knowing them, then we not be letting them on this side of the bridge.

“So can someone explain to me why Zubat are a thing?” Smolder be receiving a motion from Quetal to pay attention to him.

“That’s easy, Zubat can be found literally anywhere… even under rocks, underwater caves and sometimes even alive inside of larger Pokémon. They’re the most well-known pest and that is considering the fact that Bug Types exist.” That sounded to be being very annoying Quetal, that you can’t go anywhere without finding one. “They are as annoying as you can possibly imagine given how they get everywhere. They are almost as common as bug Pokémon, but we’re in luck to have stolen all their medical supplies so there should be less Zubat in the air at least.”

“How soon do we be thinking they’ll attack us?” The fire related beasties, as I be knowing, didn’t have any food given we be stealing everything they had last night.

A good amount of what was stolen was stored away to be transported back to Greenleaf, we’d be using most of the perishables ourselves though. I be having plenty to eat this morning.

The Miltanks and Tauros’s had fun with the thieving last night, but we were expecting at least a large number of Fire Type Pokémon to be attacking us soon in retaliation. The Fire Types would hopefully not do so without eating at least something, which would currently require them to forage to the north in Ignis, because they weren’t going to be getting food from Greenleaf as the Bidoof said they be sealing off the bridge.

The problem be laying in the fact that we were still covering this bridge in particular with what amount to five or six unit’s worth of Pokémon being tens against hundreds.

I be going over every team we had here.

There was Jiri’s Battle Bears minus Jiri due to exhaustion and number of injuries she’s taken in the course of defending Aurora.

Ruckus Rauco’s Belligerent Birds were a big help in the fighting when they showed up and were the least injured and better at fighting than the Zubats at the very least.

Cleric Geoffs Pesky Perverts were working on how to integrate an animate sludge pile into their militia unit.

Brigand Teeth’s Rat Raiders had some extra zap to their strength and did alright at range.

Lastly there was being our otherworldly team with Quetal and Favela.

Those were the forces we had that weren’t the Bullet Buizels unit on loan from Motochika. The propeller tailed otters were quite a boon

We be having Chan as a medic deployed to the front on standby, Evan had wanted her here to make sure we were in top shape. What King Evan would be doing personally at this time, well I haven’t the slightest idea.

Having seen a number of fire types last night, that was just the southern rebel forces of Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu. Said forces were directly being led by Dong Zhuo while Lu Bu be committed to fighting Hideyoshi to the north. How do we be knowing this?

Well we be having an informative extra volunteer in a familiar friendly Torchic with aiming issues, so long as she is aiming from her beak that is, who informed us of the things going on in Ignis since she left Aurora.

The Bullet Buizels had been taking shifts in protecting the bridge and almost attacked Torchic when she showed up, that’s when she said she came in peace and that she would know someone from Aurora.

We quickly confirmed her identity when she couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with her Ember attack that sprayed darts of flames from her beak even at a ridiculous volume of literal fire, she was still much better at aiming the attack out her backside which would be useful if she be running from danger chasing her. She was much better at melee, I personally just be thinking she might be needing glasses.

“Well the later the better.” Quetal finally stated with his arms crossed.

Yeah and the hungrier the forces that attacked Aurora and Greenleaf would be if they couldn’t get supplies.

“Yeah, don’t know if I could actually fight the thousands of Pokémon they have.” Torchic was decent close up fighting. She might not be the greatest help, but she was still sticking with us. “Some units and a quasi-unit doesn’t seem like much in face of all that they have.”

“I, Favela, believe we can hold them off… we did just move some siege engines from the Fontaine battle to here by commissioning Helper's Hamlet's guild this morning.” Yeah, but there is being one big issue with that Favela.

“Who is going to be operating them though?” There was a pause, we be having two siege engines for our use. At best we can be thinning the crowd of Fire Types with two shots if they were loaded before they attacked the bridge en-mass.

“Um…” Favela looked about, none of us could effectively use the siege engines without at least a full unit working on it.

Dodo warbled affectionately and pointed his beak at the siege engines. Yes Dodo, you could effectively be loading them easily enough with a little help, but that would still be being a problem. My medium sized mechanical ostrich, now with wings, was just trying to be helpful and I acknowledged that it would be helpful if he could manage to work both of the siege engines… at best he would be better off working just the one.

“It’s obvious we have issues in logistics, but they have even worse issues with that right now. A major lack of food and shelter for one.” That is being barely a good thing about all of this Quetal. “I’m okay for asking civilians for assistance as long as they willingly volunteer their time like they did last night, do you think Team Harmony members would join us here? At least the Rockruff Brothers would be a decent boost in our numbers even if it’s still like twenty to one against us. Jiri is the only one that made up for the lack of numbers on our side through sheer grit and that’s when they weren’t focusing the entirety of their forces on us and were raiding Greenleaf… we could definitely use more help right about now. Does anyone here know the move Rain Dance?”

“I do!” One of the Buizel waved their paws.

“You’re our MVP then, we cannot let this guy faint in battle, we’ll need him in the back to keep it raining. The Fire Pokemon will lose their long range ability if it’s constantly raining.” Quetal be a decent leader as he was organizing us and I be thinking about how to be a leader myself if I be becoming a pirate captain.

“So if I be getting it right. Teeth and Geoff will be in the back in front of the Buizel. Rauco will be mobile and deal with aerial opponents. Bears, the rest of the buizels and we will be on the front.” He looked to me for a bit and then nodded.

“Correct, Torchic can be wherever she wants to be, even safely outside of the battle.” Quetal looked to Torchic who seemed to be worried for us. “You brought us some important intel, you don’t need to take part in the battle.”

“If they are taking you seriously they are going to start with a Ponyta rush, but that’s about all I know.” Torchic’s last bit of information be interesting Quetal.

“A high speed attack, yeah, I can see it. Let’s get set up, once we’re done with having breakfast on the fire type rebels.” We’d be finished with breakfast and then would come the onslaught, we were rested and about ready as we could be getting.

-Fire Type Rebels, north of the bridge, sometime earlier, Dong Zhuo-

As an Emboar of incredible size, impressive might and an army at my beck and call, the loss of our camp and supplies was only a minor setback. I was furious that something so idiotic as singing while stealing our stuff actually managed to work.

It became an even worse setback when someone somehow cut us off from our southwestern forces in Greenleaf with a large wall, how they even built it overnight I couldn’t say. It probably coincided with Aurora’s theft of our supplies and we couldn’t burn through the wall to get into Greenleaf, it was both fireproof and too large to scale without tools.

We didn’t have any supplies, food or even morale given Aurora paid us back in full for attacking them by stealing everything we had.

I had not expected such viciousness, that they even stole the campfires was ludicrous while apparently singing at the top of their lungs was as ridiculous. They should have been caught and attacked, I’m surrounded by incompetents!

My men were hungry and not being paid now due to the loss of the war fund. Some were even threatening to mutiny or had a quiet look of wanting to join Hideyoshi’s force now, I quickly disavowed them on the notion that they even could quite quickly. Mostly by pummeling some into the ground and used the sheer force of will to organize them back under my command.

I would have no deserters and as Lu Bu have shown, deserters are treated quite poorly or killed if they are caught. The rise of Ignis would be glorious under my command and Lu Bu was one general that nobody would want to face, yet Hideyoshi was surprisingly stubborn and held up to Lu Bu fairly well on the battlefield despite his completely berserk offensives.

Hideyoshi, the masterful Monferno, was surprisingly hard to pin down in a battle and end completely.

“Ponyta in front, we march south!” Horses with flaming manes of fire neighed wildly. Aurora could hopefully only make one wall and were still left open to our advancing on them. “We do not have the supplies to move northeast will try to raid Aurora.”

“Are you sure that’s wise sir, we’d be better fit to attack to the east and into Hideyoshi’s holdings. It’d be easier to get supplies on that front.” The Cyndaquil has earned some ire, but he hasn’t outright betrayed me yet.

There was the fact that Hideyoshi was actively protecting the farmlands to the east that made them less than reasonable to attack.

“Oh? Aurora’s defenses were said to be small.” Yet they stole all our stuff, as much as it rankles me that they managed that somehow.

“Yeah, but the quality of those defenses are good. They held off Tepigs, Raboots, Houndours, Scorbunnies and constant waves of Zubat before we backed off.” In that vein of thought, Cyndaquil would be right that Hideyoshi’s forces to the east would be a better assault target. The Litleo militia forces were not to be trifled with though, they actively supported not interfering with Aurora or Greenleaf. We just actively brought them into our civil war. “They even have a Buneary that totaled more than three hundred Pokémon in one battle on her own with a spear and shield, she’s not likely to be standing at the moment, but her unit wasn’t as badly injured and they were strong. Aurora has some good medics with their Miltanks, if not them then any local Chansey. Sir, it would be a very bad idea to attack Aurora at this time as they are getting backing from Fontaine’s Bullet Buizels via Motochika.”

“A single unit of Buizels, how much trouble can they really be?” I still led us south… it would become quite apparent what a mistake this might be when we got to the bridge.

-Slightly north of the Aurora and Ignis bridge, Cyndaquil-

“Sir they have electric type attacks, we should turn back.” It was raining, not the natural kind of rain either, it was a Rain Dance and that meant we couldn’t do long range fire assaults. Rain Dance prevented fire artillery based attacks entirely and boosted lightning artillery into being damn near impossible to dodge. I know the Wooloo could use Electro Ball and the Rattata could Thunderbolt. The unit of Pidgey would shred through our Zubat aerial forces that weren’t already down from injuries the other day, also the lightning plus rain would make flying around here a bad idea. “Also they have outsiders helping them, it would be a really bad idea to attack them.”

“Do you want to eat? Then I suggest we get our supplies back from Aurora and take more than they got from us!” The fact that Dong Zhuo was so calm was frightening.

As far as final evolutions went Emboar were scary with their fighting type attacks. They gain fighting type when they evolve into Pignite and Dong Zhuo obviously had evolved into being an Emboar through battle somehow. He had the strength to rip us a new one and back up his silent threats as he was the leader. If Dong Zhuo has been as lazy as he seems, he was probably only as strong as a Pignite due to lack of exercise.

The only true reason I can see that we would be attacking Aurora again is because of Dong Zhuo’s heavily wounded pride, not the mention the pride of various Fire Types that were acting as guards who basically just let the camp raid happen without reprisal.

“Right, Ponyta forward!” One of the Charmeleon ordered while trying to make sure their tail’s flame was staying well-lit in the rain as steam rose up from behind them.

I still think this was a bad idea and that we should have stopped the civil war when it started burning through supplies faster than the local population can recoup them.

Ignis’s farming lands were great on output, but the area they can occupy was small because of Ignis’s craggy and rocky volcanic terrain. We didn’t exactly have the food production or the medical supplies to keep fighting a civil war for much longer and since we weren’t exporting much, given our major export was weapons and armor from forging, in times of peace we were always on the poorer end of things.

That was one of the main reasons that this civil war started, Hideyoshi wanted to stop equipment production since there was very little demand for a war footing and switch to trying to better food production which, if we hadn’t started a civil war, ‘might’ have been the better idea. He also clumsily trodded all over traditions that Fire Types of Ignis were renowned for among other things that ignited all this trouble like a powder keg.

Fire Type Pokémon being hot-blooded and aggressive didn’t help stop the increased tensions from boiling over badly, though I’m beginning to believe Hideyoshi might be in the right here if he wasn’t so bad with taxing certain things like bananas. I get that he’s a monkey, but were bananas really that important to him? If his long term goals required a lot of money, he should have come clean to the public sooner as to why he needed more resources as the ‘Monkey King’ of Ignis.

At least Hideyoshi had long term goals, goals that had caused huge amounts of dissent in the short term.

I was of the opinion that, as a small fire backed echidna Pokémon with flaming quills, Ignis was quite doomed even if Lu Bu or Dong Zhuo were to win, I didn’t voice my opinion on this as I didn’t want to be beaten black and blue for stating that we were going to fall as a kingdom due to our hubris.

It didn’t matter who won now, we were all losers and coming out on top was still going to end in our defeat once Fontaine organizes an offensive against us. The grass types of Greenleaf were unlikely to come to our aid stop them for burning a large section of their kingdom for supplies.

That’s the problem with acting like bandits and raiders in a civil war. Once you’ve burned the ability to get more supplies through aggressive action, alongside all the goodwill from stealing said stuff, you’re eventually going to either starve to death or be taken care of by stronger forces organized against you.

All raiders and bandits do is take, when there is nothing more to take or steal and whatever resources have dwindled to absolutely nothing with no infrastructure to build upon to speak of… then there is no more hope for a future for the lands that no longer had a capacity for building civilization.

I was on the wrong side of this conflict and Hideyoshi might not have been the worse guy to follow, but maybe I can get a few guys and flip sides to the local militias. At least the militia are honorable in defending the people and I heard they tried to stop the Riolu and Lucario Raiders from bothering Aurora, they also don’t necessarily behold themselves to the military.

All I had to do was survive this battle or sneak away when I had a good moment and take some people with me when I defect from working under either side of the conflict. That would require Dong Zhuo to be distracted and possibly diving into the battle himself.

-Aurora and Ignis bridge, Favela-

“Here they come.” The Ponyta’s flaming manes were tamped down by the rain, but they were still speeding ahead of the amassed fire Pokémon. They would not be having any long range artillery effectiveness with fire attacks, but that wasn’t to say that we wouldn’t be effective ourselves.

“Yeah, but we be having a good position to stop them with. We can hold them.” Shanty was optimistic, but their numbers was still quite a lot. “Dodo, fire the first shot, we don’t be wanting those fire ponies to hit us with the speeds they are galloping at!”

The Rain Dance was putting a damper on their assault, but they were still going through with it.

Dodo warbled loudly and kicked a lever to send the first boulder flying free, a number of Ponyta were taken down by the first small boulder bowling through a few units in their tight formation.

-Dong Zhuo Forces, Dong Zhuo-

“So they don’t just have water Pokémon from Fontaine, they also have some siege engines and might get their artillery specialist involved.” I turned to the nearest Fletchinder the small fire type birds with red feathered body, black and white striped tail feathers and black wings with yellow tips that lead into the underside of their wings being yellow. “Take your unit and tell Lu Bu that we are experiencing some… setbacks.”

I wrote down a message for Lu Bu to read, if he could even do that much, Hideyoshi had been buckling under the pressure and now we suffered a major loss.

Six of the Fletchinders took flight to immediately inform the southern rebels of this civil war were having problems.

I turned back to see the Buizel fending off the remaining Ponyta, they were an elite unit from Motochika then.

-Ocellus-

Huh, Ponyta wouldn’t look that much different from a Nirik or an exceedingly angry unicorn. I winced as I watched a number of them be taken down by being bowled over by the first boulder.

Shanty’s attempt to stall them from attacking Greenleaf through use of Bidoof apparently worked and now they were coming at us with no better options, if they had any to begin with.

The feelings I was getting wasn’t rage… more to the point that it felt like something approaching sadness and suffering. At least when it came to the remaining Ponyta as they were quickly taken down and repelled by the Bullet Buizel unit, those guys were pretty darn fast, but not nearly as mesmerizing as feeling Pom zip around and have her leave a trail of anxiety emotions behind her.

The Ponyta were just the opening salvo. The following charge of Pokémon were the small round egg like Darumaka, a few small echidnas with fire instead of quills, Houndour, small camels with volcanic humps, Scorbunnies, Raboots and Tepigs. It seemed like most of them were on the smaller side and they all had some common colors.

Red, orange, black and yellow are the colors you’d expect from fire and soot, it’s becoming increasingly obvious like water Pokémon coming in the color blue a lot or grass types being green or other plant related colors depending on the plant. There is a color theme to Pokémon that I wanted to explore a bit.

The Buizel started into the incoming Pokémon to devastating effect and then, Quetal, Shanty and Favela readied up behind them with Jiri’s bear squad as the other Pokémon that got by the Buizel continued forward for the bridge. I can see where the strategy was going here, they were going to try and use their numbers to get them by us.

I was behind the back line and helping Dodo with loading the catapult, levitating heavy rocks and preparing to launch a rock across the bridge at the large number of Pokémon seeking to invade Aurora after we held them off yesterday. Now they are more focused in larger numbers, which works against them when we had a catapult to deal with large numbers.

Really didn’t like the idea of seriously hurting the Pokémon, but I was assured it was going to take more than large rocks hitting them to put them down for good. Some of the Ponyta that were hit by the boulder were already getting back on their hooves, only to be blasted down by Thunderbolt attacks from the Rattata team.

Geoff and his team were using Electro Ball attacks to fire long range assaults on the encroaching Pokémon that weren’t at the Buizel’s line of scrimmage.

The rain that was being summoned by the nearby Buizel with Rain Dance was boosting the other Buizels in his unit’s speed to absurd levels, thus the name of the unit being Bullet Buizels made a lot of sense as they all had the ability to move faster when it’s raining. Add their Aqua Jet attacks into happening at double their normal speed and you have Bullet Buizels who can practically fly while it’s raining.

At least the Rain Dance didn’t darken the entire sky like it had during the battle of Fontaine, we could still see sunlight.

“Quick question, how long can you keep up this Rain Dance?” The Buizel was calmly relaxing and watching the sky.

“As long as I rest between each dance, then I can keep it going indefinitely. Though Houndour or Pokémon who don’t focus on fire type attacks are still going to be a problem.” The Buizel got up and prepared to dance again. “At best they can only use fire attacks at short ranges to keep them somewhat effective. Any artillery based fire attacks are decimated trying to travel through a rain storm. Even drizzles ruin those kind of attacks.”

By that comparison water type artillery was highly effective, if you could get a visual with bad weather… makes me wonder how Grit commanded his artillery so well.

“We might need you to do that all day.” At least we had chance for food, rest and medical help.

-Shanty-

All this water raining from the sky be giving me an advantage of not having to be using my sweat to batter Pokémon back with blasts of water into the fire Pokémon. Favela seems to be enjoying the rain too, being part plant probably helps.

“Incoming Darumaka, the rain isn’t doing them any favors in keeping their inner flames going.” There were also the Houndour coming Quetal and a lot of Pokémon beyond that. At least I be having plenty of water to work with. “Speaking of which, aim for their mouth with your water attacks. That’ll knock them out immediately.”

Three Darumaka came charging at us having managed to get by the five Buizels that were dealing with thirty or more fire Pokémon at once. Some Pokémon were inevitably going to get through with their numbers.

I held out my hoof and a ball of water started growing on it and then I slung it forward to catch a Darumaka in the mouth. The small Pokémon around the size of Maiden Jig or smaller, immediately stopped. Its arms and legs tucked inward as it turned into an egg and fell asleep on the spot.

Favela followed up by dropping a wave of water on the other two with Surf, Favela was in front of us to utilize that attack. Water be flowing into the other Darumaka’s mouths and they were immediately knocked out and rendered sleeping eggs incapable of fighting back.

“You be knowing a lot about other Pokémon Quetal.” Taking notice of Favela’s comment, I decided this might be being something to bring up with Pom later.

“Well you can learn a thing or two while traveling Favela… hopefully you’ll learn more than I did to prevent some tragedies.” Quetal is not being a very happy blade armed weasel, but it is nice that he be worrying about us.

I moved forward and leapt as a charging Scorbunny tried to launch a flying kick at one of us and instead took a flying buck from me to the face from me. I immediately knocked them out and sent them rolling back across the bridge to their side.

“This is going to be a battle that lasts longer than three hours isn’t it?” Cartwheeling back into position, I watched as Quetal hopped about and slashed up the incoming Raboot with acrobatic swipes of his claws as he passed by the rabbit.

“I believe it is going to go that way, yes.” Favela stated as she launched a Seed Bomb into some Zubat that had managed to get through a storm of electrical attacks passing overhead and into the crowd of Pokémon starting to build up at the end of the bridge.

The Buizels were being slowly pushed back by sheer numbers alone, we be knowing they had hundreds of fire type Pokémon to throw at us. The rain be weakening the lot of them, but they were still coming at us.

I will be making sure they will not be lucky in getting across the bridge today either if I can be helping it!

A Houndour leapt at me with its mouth wide open and was promptly slapped in the throat by Panda the Pancham and sent flopping backwards.

A small camel be trying to tackle me and I took a few steps to the side and then slashed them up their left side, then spun to plant my rear hooves against their chest and sent them flying into a Heatmor.

The Heatmor, the bipedal fire anteaters, looked fairly dangerous considering they be taking several impacts from the Buizel and still managed to get this far by toughing it out.

They were much tougher than the other Pokémon we be dealing with and were going to overrun us with bodies this rate as more Heatmor started pushing forward while not caring about the blows they were taking. Also a few Ponyta were getting through as well as the fire types started building up their numbers at the northern end of the bridge.

Another boulder slammed down and rolled through their numbers, yet they still seemed determined to come at us.

“Isn’t all we need to be doing is take out Dong Zhuo?” I asked.

“If we see an Emboar then he’s a priority target, just think bigger bipedal tepig.” Quetal stated as he fired stars upwards and they arced downwards into a variety of targets. “He’ll likely sit behind all these guys and probably won’t involve himself in the fighting at all.”

-Aurora’s Camp, south of the bridge, Chan-

“Please, it’s obvious the fighting is going to get bad, they need me out there.” Groaned out Jiri who was still quite battered and bandaged, there was only so much healing I could do at one time.

“What you need is to rest.” I wasn’t about to tell her the bridge was getting swamped in Fire Pokémon, we were going to get overrun if those fighting on the bridge faltered. At least the rain was ruining any chance of fire attacks being used against us. “I’ll keep you update on how things are going, they are doing well so far.”

At least the Zubat were having problems flying in the rain, any that could manage to make it more than halfway across the length of the river were quickly taken down by the Rauco’s Pidgey unit. This was well before the Zubat could so much as stop or scratch our back line from pummeling the ground aggressors with electric type artillery attacks,

I walked back out in the rain and looked to the north across the bridge at the hundreds of fire Pokémon trying to invade Aurora, compared to our meager numbers. They were building up to push the bridge hard, I might even need to put in some of my fighting capabilities.

They certainly weren't ready to siege us and didn't look to have eaten this morning, not even a few Oran Berries to fill their stomachs with at least something. The Heatmor probably resorted to eating regular ants, the other fire types out there weren't looking as lucky.

All we truly needed to do was stall them out, they looked desperate, hungry and most of all after a night of bad sleeping conditions… unhealthy.

Author's Note

So continues the story, I'm somewhat mentally and physically exhausted.

Nothing to worry about, moving on...

304. Under Pressure.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Jaded-

“So Tamale, Pepper and Kayamba Paca are here…” I stated as soon as I got off the airship known as the Ardent Survivor and was met with three walls of fluff hugging me, they just got off the train and decided to pile on me. “Nice to see you too, we just got off a rather nice vacation.”

“Awe, I love alapacas!” So says Princess Cadence the Princess of Love, the alpacas soon let me go and flying glomped her into the ground and she hugged them back. “So affectionate!”

“Yeah, except when they are not, alpacas are a class eleven level when they are top level Fluffmancers and vaguely angry.” Yeah, I can see where Shining was coming from, Paprika was terrifying not because she could literally hug you to death, but her magical talents in wool manipulation could be downright lethal as they are bizarre when ultimately pushed.

“Ugh, I’m going to leave before I get jumped by the alpaca, see you in therapy Jaded!” Twilight grumbled as she started to walk away.

“What, you’re not sticking around for mother’s cooking? She did say she’d give everyone a free meal upon conclusion of our vacation.” I saw Twilight freeze and I glanced at Fizzle with Silvers on her back as she trotted up to me.

“Yeah, Twilight, do you really want to leave that fast?” Spike said innocently while waggling his eyebrows in our direction.

“You’re lucky your mother is one of the most cherished and beloved witches in the world Jaded La Perm… also that you’re on retainer as Canterlot’s leading security testing expert.” A suffering Twilight stated with drooping wings as I smiled at her affectionately. “I’ll even admit that Palicoast was pretty good vacation spot, much better than Klugetown at least, but only if you’re telling the truth about a free meal at the Witch’s Fare.”

“Why, would my daughter ever lie to you?” Kuril, mom, yes I would lie to Twilight Sparkle if it was necessary. After a moment mom snorted and cracked up laughing burying her face into her pointy hat. “Yeah… don’t answer that… couldn’t even keep a straight face on that for even a minute, I know my tomcat of a kitten is a hellion of a sun priest.”

“Mom---...“ I drew out in a whine, I could be completely trustworthy… sometimes… I’m a chaotic good rogue/priestess hybrid at the very least!

“I still wonder why the sun let’s someone like you continue be a priestess of it.” That, Twilight, is like asking why my once upon a time would-be assassin Blade Bright, mom’s favorite cooking assistant, was a moon priestess and living under the same roof as me.

It just works.

“Hey mom, what do you have in the line of protein enriched grilled bird seed?” Gallus asked, finally accepting his doom in being a crazy cat mother’s child.

“Coming right up Gallus!” Kuril stated. “Blade, break out the flamethrower, the pancake and crepe making sledgehammer and fifty rashers of fish jerky stat!"

-Aurora, Northern Aurora/Ignis Bridge, thirty minutes into the siege, Shanty-

“Why can’t we just be destroying this bridge again?” I asked as I slapped a Raboot in the head to daze them and then I be kicking her where the sun don’t shine with my left hind leg and she went down in agony. I be quickly latching my magical hooves onto her ears and throwing her into the throng of Pokémon at the northern end of the bridge barely being held back by the Buizels, they were putting in a lot of work.

I followed that up by gathering a large ball of water above my head from the rain and be lobbing it after the Raboot to cause a massive splash that be taking out a few Darumaka and Tepigs.

“There are many reasons we shouldn’t destroy the bridge, there are several reasons that we currently can’t destroy the bridge, also it would be a very bad idea to let them try and destroy it as well!” Quetal was using his Acrobatics move to zip about like crazy and he be leaving those illusions of himself behind, still hadn’t quite figured out how he be doing that. I be knowing Pokémon be using their energy for it… could I be replicating with magic somehow? It would be being awesome to do that technique. “We destroy the bridge, Pugilis to the north might do the same and we’d be isolating them to Fontaine, who could easily seal or hold them off as well. Heck, Pugilis might even invade and Ignis wouldn’t be able to fight back considering the condition it currently is in. Mind you Ignis really needs imports right now and it hasn’t been getting in any for a while from merchants because of the civil war and if this bridge falls because we have to bring it down around us, then we’d likely be consigning everyone in Ignis to starving to death. They have to be running dry of reserves by now given how long this civil war has been going on for, they really didn’t have big reserves to begin with mind you. We will need this bridge open to help everyone by moving supplies if they are this desperate. Their kingdom is signing their own death warrants at this rate, as this is no longer a ‘civil’ war! Why do you think they are fighting so hard to get all the supplies you stole after they raided Greenleaf when it would have been better had they not involved the other kingdoms in their in-fighting?!”

Quetal’s voice rose above the din of the fighting as he stood tall, his claws gleaming in the rain and his fur dripping wet with splatters of blood and water. He was breathing roughly after swiping away several Pokémon in a violent display of movement that left several Pokémon lying weakly on the bridge and possibly bleeding out.

“…” One of the Fire Types that had been heading towards Quetal stopped and looked away with something akin to guilt, before looking back at the Fire Pokémon putting pressure on us, then looked back to Quetal and Aurora across the bridge with a frown as we dealt with other Fire Pokemon.

It was a reddish orange Fox with six wilting tails and after moment they started whimpering as their stomach gurgled. He began crying, then ran to jump of the bridge and started to swim away from the battle.

“Good call from that Vulpix… hope they make it out alright and find something to eat soon.” Quetal finally stated with a dim sounding voice as a few other fire types would rather brave the river then be being berated by their big pig commander currently leading these forces against us. “Their moral is just that low that they’d rather take their chances with the water, might not even be long before they start turning on themselves if this keeps up. It’s harsh, but the kingdom is going to collapse in on itself if to complete destruction if Aurora isn’t open to the idea of propping them up after the fact if we hold them off… If we just give them their supplies back then they are just going to continue spiraling into a pyrrhic victory, which would be a nasty stereotype they are playing to being Fire Types. I understand the logistics going on here all too well… the weaker Pokémon here aren’t actually receiving their fair share of food, but that’s not to say they aren’t being compensated. I’m sure they are being paid, but when their money doesn’t have anywhere to go and they quite literally burned any goodwill they had in the other kingdoms… this is not going to end well for them no matter how you slice it Shanty.”

Bad if you be doing, bad if you don’t… that is being a horrible way to set things up.

“Didn’t some of you be telling me that if a Charmander’s tail goes out it’ll die?” I pulled my cane from my back, hopped back and swept the legs out from under a charging Ponyta. I hooked it by the neck once I had downed it and then started the slow process of building up a spin to launch them bodily back into the crowd beyond the Buizel. “I’d rather not be slicing into these guys after hearing all that.”

“Yeah, I don’t like it either, but what else can we do?!” Teddy ‘Griz’ Teddiursa slammed his glowing fist forward and sent a Pignite, the bidpedal next evolution form of Tepig bowling through a number of other Pokemon.

“Yeah…” Quetal didn’t comment on the Charmander being helped onto the distant shore to the east, he was too busy fighting for survival, Aurora and possible more. He may be called a trickster for his fighting skills, but he seemed to be being altruistic to me.

The Vulpix had pulled the Charmander from the water and its tail was weak, but still burning as the Vulpix breathed some flames onto it to strengthen it. The two were helped by other Fire Type Pokemon quickly deserting from the fight, with his words alone Quetal just made at least four units flee off the side of the bridge and swim a good distance downstream to the east. They didn’t be looking to good coming from the water.

“Cowards!” Yelled the big pig currently behind an entire army and not doing anything to help the fight on his side of things aside from yell at his people to do more and I be seeing him stuffing some snacks into his mouth behind their backs. Where did he be keeping that snack sack? It certainly wasn’t being on him when I robbed his tent blind, deaf and dumb. “Do any more of you want to run, then I’ll make an example of you myself!”

“Fear is a pretty good motivator for him maybe, but you’d attract more Butterfree with honey.” Quetal stated calmly while glaring at the guy.

“The proverb is no less true now, we just need to outlast them, we can even talk a few Pokémon into fighting on our side for access to food and healthcare.” Foo the Kubfu be lashing out with a Low Kick to topple a Ponyta and then be launching a glow fist into its face as it fell towards him.

The whinnying sound of the poor fire pony as they be sent flipping backwards made me feel somewhat bad about what we be doing here.

“Yeah, but they likely wouldn’t trust us to have their best interests at heart.” Panda stated as he rough up a few Scorbunny with several rapid fire paw thrusts.

“Maybe I can do it, I’m sure I can convince some of them to stop fighting!” Torchic stated as she came running forward with a satchel on her back, she hadn’t been an active part of the battle up to this point and had been staying a little bit behind the front line looking indecisive with herself.

“Yeah, but you won’t get all of them with that Emboar threatening them, we’d also need someone to break through hundreds of Pokémon. Whoever does that is definitely going to be quickly surrounded on all sides, who would be dumb enough to put themselves in that position?” Even Smolder could only be taking so much when surrounded on all sides.

“Smolder, we’re dumb enough to do that.” I told her flatly, given we did be doing it before. “Also don’t run off yet Torchic stay back a bit.”

Maybe one of us could get to Big Pig and drag him directly into a fight, with him distracted I’m betting a lot of Fire Types would easily be leaving the fight. I be glancing at Favela as she sent an entire wave of Pokémon back with a wave.

That be giving me an idea…

“Smolder, Quetal, Favela, I be having an idea, but we be needing some cover to discuss it!” If we were going to deal with Big Pig, then we’d be needing a solid plan to spearhead through the horde of Pokémon between us and him. “We need to pull it off before the Buizel be being too tired to fight, we being under a lot of pressure.”

“Ice Type bear will do that for you.” Cubby slammed out several Brine attacks from his large snot bubble, which was still being quite gross to me… yet it was so cool. “Jiri’s Battle Bears, to the front… put the Buizel behind us, give them time to rest.”

Without a single word between them all five of the bears of Jiri’s unit pushed back every aggressive ground bound Pokémon, each using their own attack in unison with ridiculously good results given the timing of their attacks was being perfect. They started forward together as a true full unit working in concert with one another without a word other than the grim looks on their faces.

“Thanks!” I be calling out to them and then we be backing to the southern end of the bridge. Hopefully out of the range of the Zubats which were being slammed with lightning and Rauco’s unit who were avoiding lightning to the best of their abilities.

“Okay, what’s the plan Shanty?” Quetal was going to be listening to me despite him acting like a leader for the last day or so.

“Favela can be generating a wave to push a lot of Fire Types out of our way and we rush the big pig.” Though there be a slight issue.

“Favela can’t be putting out enough force to be getting us all the way through that!” Yes, but we be needing to try Favela.

“Not without me at least… you need a force of nature to pierce through their forces… you’re looking at her.” We all be turning to Jiri, holding onto a fresh Spear and a badly dented shield that a member of the Dutiful Ducks Battalion once wielded. “You’re about to see why my bounces are truly horrible, Favela you do your attack and then wait for me to clear you a road!”

“Are you being alright?” I tilted my head at her.

“I’m healthy enough… besides I’m quite sure some of those Fire Type will get a reminder that I’m quite stubborn.” The brown rabbit be having quite a mean streak for her size.

“I have a lot of reasons to greatly protest this action Jiri, just want to remind you that what becomes of you after this is going to be your fault entirely.” Chan stated as she was escorted up the bridge by Teeth’s unit who kept the Zubat at bay with bolts of lightning, they be really throwing a lot of blue bats at us in the last twenty four hours. “That said… Life Dew!”

Chan be firing a blast of energy into the sky and the rain started sparkling as it fell on the Buizel, Bears and us any injuries we might be having were disappearing really quick. Any exhaustion I may have been feeling suddenly fell away as the rain began washing it away instead of adding onto it.

“Ugh… so much energy into that… use every last drop of that for a good cause Jiri and please come back alive so I can throttle you!” Then Chan turned about and marched back the way she be coming with Teeth’s unit slowly moving backwards.

“Whoa… she knows Life Dew?! I feel kind of great, but I’m not going to lie to you guys. Move healing can only do so much for my battered body…” Jiri motioned us forward with her fresh spear. “That said, let’s go beat an ugly pig with an ‘even uglier stick’!”

Once we be getting behind the Buizel the bears fell back and looked a little upset that Jiri was being here with us.

“Bears back up, Favela ready a push and I’ll follow it up. Buizels if you can assist a Surf attack, then that would be great.” Jiri crouched down shield on her right arm held forward and the spear in her left pointed off to the side as she crouched and I could be seeing the muscles tensing in her body.

As the Buizel took to holding back the absolute hoard of Fire Pokémon with blasts of water and ramming into them at blazingly fast speeds of jetting water. Favela be building up water for an attack it wouldn’t be being hard for her to get it off… what was I sitting here for, I can be helping her with that!

Moving forward I started to gather a large amount of water above me head with both my hooves held to the sky and all the rain water bent inwards into a swirling vortex above my head as I flexed my magic. My connection to water has been as strange as my hooves allowing me to cling to even the slipperiest surface.

Waving my hooves about I be gathering water and water started spouting and building up under Favela’s hooves. When the wave started raising her of the ground, I split the ball of water I be controlling into two parts behind me and then swept them forward while leaping onto the moving water.

I be riding the wave with Favela and watching as the Buizel bursts out of the way of the tsunami as it slammed home and spread out a lot of Fire Pokémon opening a large bulge in their offensive.

“Let’s Bounce!” Jiri feet left the ground and she basically be disappearing, a large swath of Fire Pokemon be parting like the sea when a cannonball be skimming over it.

“Go, go, go!” Favela stated and start moving forward, Quetal, Smolder and I followed her as Jiri plowed a way straight to the Big Pig in the back.

Too many of the Fire Pokémon were confused by the sudden force of Jiri’s passing to be stopping us.

-Torchic-

“Whoa… so… awesome… excuse me, but please stop! Do all of you have that much pride that you can’t simply just ask for help?!” I shouted at the Pokémon, one in particular a Cyndaquil came up to me and whispered something.

I quickly passed him an apple and he nodded, he roasted it a bit and it steamed in the light rain from the ongoing Rain Dance, but the smell was unmistakable delicious.

“Listen to us, we can turn things around before it’s too late!” The Cyndaquil wasn’t attacked by the Buizel and he started to make a speech. “Aren’t all of you tired of living in fear of Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu? Please stop and maybe we can still work things out before we destroy ourselves, I kind of just want to get into the Ignis militia. At least they have their heads on straight unlike the rebels or Hideyoshi’s loyalists, news flash they are just as hungry and bedraggled as we are!”

He waved the apple about then calmly took a small chunk out of it with his claw, ate it, then passed the apple to a Scorbunny that stopped trying to fight the bears.

After a moment the Scorbunny tore a small chunk out of the apple… and then pass it on. Slowly the tide of was slowing down and now watching Dong Zhuo’s safe place behind all of them being invaded.

-Jiri-

I managed to stop myself by planting the spear in the ground, I left a huge ditch in my wake as I came to a stop starring at one of the problems that attacked Aurora. It’s not the people of Ignis we should be fighting, it’s both the feudal lord Dong Zhuo and the guy called Lu Bu that apparently terrifies everyone in this kingdom.

I wrenched the spear from the ground and glared at him.

“Hmph… so you managed to get to me, I will not go down so easily!” Dong Zhuo stated as he inhaled and fired a blast of scalding hot water, I was already flipping over the horizontal moving beam of painful steaming jets. His Scald attack was soon halted before he could bring it back to me. “Agh!”

A small ball of water slamming into the left side of his face rocking him slightly, he quickly turned to attack Shanty… so what were his other three moves?

With a bit of focus I watched Dong’s movements and then managed to control my leap well enough to end up in front of Shanty.

Dong stomped the ground and several large stones shot up and he slapped them forward with his left arm, I was sent sprawling by the attack. Said attack was a move called Smack Down, rock type, very dangerous to flying types. He definitely has four moves and not more or else his attacks would be diluted and my shield actually took the brunt of that.

I watched as he dodge Shanty’s slashing attacks and Favela was building up for another Surf attack, I also noted Quetal was looking to the north… for what? Did he feel or know something that we didn’t.

-Shanty-

“Fiery Sweep!” As the boar announced this, I immediately leapt over the attack that seemed to be very familiar. That sweep attack was being exactly like Panda King’s Flame-Fu move!

Hmm… that be three moves… what be his fourth? I dodged around the rocks he fired at me and slapped him with my cane weapon a few times and then leapt over a fiery sweep of his leg and slammed my cane down on his skull.

After a bit of being dazed he went into a Fiery Sweep and when I be seeing his smile mid jump I be quickly letting off a Riptide to be blasting myself backwards and away from him.

A purple cloud erupted in a farting noise, surrounding him and he be getting hit by my Riptide attack and he just be hiding in the purple cloud.

“Watch out for that move Shanty, Smog is a poisonous!” Favela answered as she sent a wave at the Fire Pokémon that tried to come our way.

“I be thanking you for the heads up Favela!” As I said this spraying jet of white be coming at me from the poisonous fog. “Ay!”

I created a temporary barrier with my pirate shout and took control of the scalding water and steam with the time I be buying myself, I swirled the boiled steaming liquid surround myself in a protective bubble with the sweeping motions of my hooves to circle it around me.

It be pushing back the purple fog away from me and when it be clearing up I grab at whatever vapor I could with my hooves and compressed it into a swirling ball of force.

“White Squall!” I threw it at big pig’s face when I had a clear shot and he screamed as his face was scalded by a concentrated portion of his own water attack.

“Why isn’t anyone helping me deal with these pathetic nuisances…” There was an answer for that Big Pig, I be thinking they no longer be seeing you as danger if I can be fighting you easily. That and I see apple chunks being passed around by Torchic and a fire quilled thing.

“Think you can hit him with some good blasts of water if we gave you and Favela some time?” Smolder be asked, the lightning artillery from Aurora’s side be dying down and when I be looking the Fire Type Pokémon no longer be attacking the bridge. The Buizels still be standing at the ready though in case anyone tried to be crossing the bridge.

“I be thinking we can be doing something in that vein, yes.” I stated as we had to duck or dodge some rather inaccurately slung rocks. I just had to ask him. “How long has it been since you’ve actually fought anyone or trained in the skills of self-defense?”

“That’s none of your business!” Probably not much as he immediately going into farting more purple smog to use as cover.

Wait… isn’t smog or fog made of…

I slashed my hoof forward and then dodged to the side as the fog was pushed away revealing several stones be aiming for me and Favela. Favela did a stylish twirl under the fast flying stone that went at her.

“Hey pay more attention to us!” Quetal started blasting stars at the big pig and he be actually taking the attack pretty well and then he farted again and ducked into the smog.

“Smolder… gas…” Hoping my flat expression was understood Smolder, as I started to gather up water with Favela for our combined attack.

“Oh right!” Smolder exhaled a fireball into the smog and Big Pig be getting caught up in his own gas exploding violently sending him flying back quite a bit.

He not be using that steam water or smog attack again since we have hard counters to that, he be stuck with rock throwing and sweeping with his legs or arms if we get close.

“If I had my flail or tyrant blade you wouldn’t be having it nearly this easy!” Roared as Big Pig as he slammed his left foot into the ground like a sumo wrestler and be firing tons more stone our way, but Smolder, Quetal and even Jiri be intercepted and blocking the attack.

Jiri be protecting Favela with her shield, Smolder just be tanking the attack or Quetal be counter firing small exploded stars into the rocks with his Swift attack.

“Come on, do you think me beaten?!” Most likely yes, because…

“Combo move, Rip-Surf!” Favela and I be stating. Favela be starting a wave and then I be turning that wave into a huge flying projectile. Maybe I can be learning to do flying cutting attacks now? Still had to figure out the mechanics of getting my cutting arcs to travel away from my hooves.

“Agh…” The Big Pig be getting knocked down harshly.

“Do you be giving up already?” In answer to my joyful boasting the Big Pig got up and prepared to come at us again only to stop and grin.

“Why is it always swirling clouds…” Smolder asked mysteriously, then I be looking up and seeing a lightning storm approaching.

(Warning violent death incoming! A majority of this story is still not about death, but I think the warning is warranted here.)

“You’re done for now! Lu Bu is here and he’ll deal with all of…” Streak in the form of a beam ripped into Big Pig’s back and out his chest to pin him against the ground. He didn’t be looking too happy and that be looking like a barely survivable injury. “The…. the… God Force, Sky Piercer? Lu… Bu… w-wh-why? I… like… father.”

A large red flaming horse with a unicorn horn came galloping up to him, on its back was a large black and grey feathered bird with a mostly green feathered lower torso around the legs and belly. The big bird look like he had what looked to be a permanent constant scowl on his beak beneath a mask of bloody feathers that had to long feathers extending from the top of his head.

“Lu Bu, everyone scatter, every Pokémon for themselves!” A Fire Type Pokémon shouted as all the Fire Types started to evacuate the area in any direction but the bridge or Lu Bu.

The Aurora units stayed where they were and were shivering at the power Lu Bu exuded by existing.

-Ocellus-

My breathing started to quicken as I felt it, it wasn’t just malice, it was mixed with pure madness, and absurd amount of power and…. no… oh no… that wasn’t good!

Where was Pom when we needed her?!

I whimpered and curled up on myself and Dodo carefully picked me up with his new mechanical wings and carried me to the tents further to the south and warbled Chan before leaving me to her and started returning to the two siege engines looking determined.

-Shanty-

Lu Bu, who I be assuming to be the rider, be placing the bow on his back as his mount approached a struggling Dong Zhuo. He got off the back of the violent looking Pokémon and slowly stalked toward Big Pig.

He be grabbed the shaft that was sticking out of Dong Zhuo’s back.

“I tire of your utter incompetence Dong Zhuo.” Lu Bu be stating coldly. “You are not a leader worth following and like the lord you had me betray… it is time now that I betray you at your weakest. You are pathetic, letting your skills and strengths go to waste while playing at being a warlord. You’re no stronger than a Pignite… no… you’re not even a match for a rowdy, lowly, Tepig.”

“That… is one really large and exceptionally jacked Unfezant. I believe he is going to be quite…” Favela continued on as Dong Zhuo struggling to get up, the bird slammed his right talons into Big Pigs back and clenched them causing him a lot of pain his left wing reached forward and yanked the arrow out of his back to reveal… the arrow was being a halberd?!

Big Pig’s screams make me wince and I be taking a few steps away and then my eyes widened at what Lu Bu did next.

“AUGGHHHH!” With a single swing, I watched as the top half of a torso be falling away from that slash of an absurdly sharp blade.

Lu Bu leaned down and dug his beak into the lower torso, tore the liver from and be chunking it down in his beak and swallowing it.

“Unpleasant.” Favela finally finished shivering and backing away while trying to look so much like a bush she could pass herself off as.

“Those of you who stand in the way of my destiny of facing Arceus after decimating the kingdoms of Ransei. Prepare yourself, for you face ‘The Flying General’ of peerless might… Lu Bu!” He announced and I be shivering, gulping and then... I be steeling my nerves as he twirled his weapon and pointed it at us held in his left wing with a demented look in his eyes and on his red covered beak.

The red large evolved Ponyta be moving up next to Lu Bu and be snorting loudly, they be dragging a hoof along the ground and ready to charge at us. There was a feeling of the Alicorn sized pony being as dangerous as what Lu Bu be currently representing just by being present.

I stared him right in the eyes, I wasn't going to be dying anytime before I become a pirate captain of my own ship.

Author's Note

Does Lu Bu really need any more introduction then that as an establishing character moment?

I glossed over the injuries or violence in the Fontaine battle, this... this is going to be and get painfully violent. No Smolder is not immune or anywhere close to being resilient to the God Force weapon, the weapon that can change into various forms... including a scythe.

I'm so tired... Imma sleep now and worry about all the possible errors in grammar later.

Also yes, Queens song.

305. Indomitable.

Author's Note

Music: Lu Bu Theme, from any Dynasty Warriors, but I was listening to his 8 theme in particular.

Am I underutilizing Lu Bu's abilities? I'll let you be the judge as this is going to be a multi-page fight.

Also take notice of the things Shanty does... because 'Pursue' definitely happens here.

305. Indomitable.

-Pokémon World, Ignis, Tamamo No Mae -

Having felt something familiar I went looking in a direction and saw many denizens of fire running from something.

Upon barely spotting what they were running from… I too turned tail with my tails between my legs.

NOPE!

“Nope, nope, nope, nope, definitely not going near 'The Flying General', the somehow resurrected bloodlust monster, especially not when he has full use of ‘God Force, Sky Piercer’!” The very weapon that could take on several different forms, has a lethality of several levels of phantasmal power. There was no mistaking the weapon, the owner of said weapon or the horse with him all being fully reimagined in this strange world.

Lu Bu could kill me in a single blow, none of my current abilities would stop it either! I am not an idiot or nearly dumb enough to even go near Lu Bu, especially not with the kind of bloodlust he’s putting out that hasn’t been felt since the Hulao Gate incident and that’s one of the most infamous incidents in his history.

It was little wonder that I felt something familiar, it’s only when I got close enough that I finally felt exactly why it was familiar. So I decided to head in the complete opposite direction before the mortal War God felt my presence and decided I made for good hunting. I was still getting the hang of having nine tails and having strange dimensional based elemental powers, on top of my already mighty repertoire of abilities.

I almost felt his eyes come close to landing on me, but he just missed me by a fraction of a second.

Had to keep running for my life and leave whatever sucker is willing to fight him to their dooms!

-Lu Bu-

Hmm… I thought I felt something familiar… something that might have been fun to hunt for a little while.

No matter.

Dong Zhuo, the worthless scum fell so easily to such small numbers and with one swing I tore him in two pieces for his failings, his liver tasted pretty good all things considering for a washed up politician and warlord.

Now who are these people that would stand in the way of my might? At least one of them had to be worthy fight. All else already said, I would destroy them one person at a time.

“Is there a worthy warrior among you that can even hold my interest long enough to see to the safety of the kingdoms I will soon come for?” I started moving forward and readied my spear with a smirk. “I will not stop until I have the grand battle with the god of this world, so send out all your warriors at me at once and I will ensure that their deaths are at least quick.”

-Shanty-

I be taking a few steps forward and I felt a pair of vines wrapped around my waist.

“Shanty, you can’t be thinking of fighting that… he just cut someone in half! With a single swing!” Yes, Favela, we did be seeing that happening and the Big Pig be getting a chunk of himself eaten by that guy as well.

He be feeling worse than that giant metal owl did, only his malice was being far more concentrated into a small area.

I be believing that Ocellus is possibly having a migraine right now, I don’t even need to be told this guy was dangerous. I could be feeling it in my bones that there was no joking around with someone like this, Pom would definitely have the right idea here to be running away.

I wasn’t Pom though, I was Shanty. Though after what I be seeing, I also think Pom would be protecting anyone this guy went after.

“I’m no idiot Favela, he’s not letting anyone leave here alive, anyone who isn’t already running that is...” As I be once told by Pom, a master of fighting should fear the untrained or the unpredictable, for they have no clue what either will do.

I just had to be being very unpredictable… I give myself three minutes of life left to live.

I’ll just be making those three minutes last far longer than they should possibly have, like the rest of my life if I be winning.

With a sharp tug at the vine hugging me, I pulled myself free of the vines and stared directly into the eyes above the bloody beak as I approached him with a bit of swagger in my steps.

“You be killing someone who took you in, in cold blood no less.” I remember what would have happened had I not been taken in so long ago, I would not have survived long enough to be here.

This person be having blood on their wings and that of the people who took them in. As if their small kindness, no matter how little those people might have had, was a weakness that this guy cared little for.

The Big Pig had to of been acting like a father for him in some capacity, I be picking up on that much at the sight of deep betrayal in the Big Pigs eyes before he died. This Lu Bu just slew him without a second thought.

“And?” This Lu Bu be saying as he stared at me as if I were an insignificant speck. “He was weak.”

“Is that all you be having to say? Are you truly that cowardly that you be hiding from having any emotions at all? Do you kill everyone that be weak, even someone that can vaguely be loving someone like you?” I be hitting something of an issue somewhere with him, as the flare in his eyes spoke of my murder and I be accepting what was to come. “You don’t ever be dreaming of a day when you’ll finally be losing an actual fight do you?”

I glanced at the red, darkly burning, demonic looking unicorn and returned my eyes squarely on his.

Time to put my thief training with Mr. Cooper the gang into practice. I stood on my hind legs and unslung my weapon from my back and held it aloft ready for a fight, I knew how to use a cane… or a makeshift scythe.

I’ve seen pirates with such darkness in their eyes, I not be being brave enough to cross their paths when I was too young to be doing anything and they only tend to care about survival and have long since stopped dreaming. Their crews following them out loyalty and inertia, I should be thanking Bentley if I ever hear his voice again for teaching me what that word meant.

“Shanty, are you seriously…” Holding up a hoof to cut Quetal off, I be looking to him and nodded.

I looked this Lu Bu guy in the eyes, he be looking into mine. I be challenging him outright, he may be having muscle, size and possibly a magical weapon on me due to the absurd sharpness… but I be having grit and a dream.

“I, Lu Bu, will be the one to snuff out your spirit, if Red Hare doesn’t do it for me first.” As far as bravado went that was a pretty good boast, now to be getting my rebuttal in…

“You will not be breaking my spirit nor will you break a dream unlived.” This was going to take all my concentration. “Also, I would say you are nothing more than being a big chicken too afraid to actually live. You be having a dream, sure, but you are not having a life.”

“You’ll come to regret those words.” His deep voice in the soft rains might have made everyone else shiver, but I held his gaze without looking away. “Red Hare, face everyone else that tries to interfere, leave this one to me.”

I started to approach him and he started approaching my dragging his spear along the ground digging a furrow with the blade, as if there was no resistance whatsoever from the ground as the blade passed through it. I be making a silent note that the magical weapon was being absurdly sharp and powerful for a halberd that was just recently used like an arrow, it was definitely a magic weapon from what little he be showing of its power.

“Avast, for you be facing Blade Hoof Shanty!” I shouted as I held myself at the ready and took on a forward leaning stance ready to get into the fight.

“Again, I am Lu Bu.” Was all he said before he came flashing forward at me as I looked to be curling up as if in fear.

I wonder if he be seeing the grin on my face?

I not be paying attention to what Red Hare be doing in the background as they be charging at my friends. Didn’t have the time to focus on anything else, but in this moment where I could sneak in a quick victory.

“YAHARRRR--!” My scream could possibly be being heard by the world as far as I know, I bet even Arceus could be feeling and seeing this moment coming.

My scream be stopping the weapon dead as it hit the wall of my bending and unbreakable spirit as it continued for my neck.

“ARRRRRR-” I was no longer screaming, it was my unyielding spirit that was pulsing out from me in defiance making that noise as I stared at Lu Bu who kept putting pressure to slice my head from my neck.

The powerful golden glowing of his weapon started dimming entirely under the torrent of my spirited scream continuing on even without my voice.

I pulled back my weapon and prepared to lunge forward, Lu Bu be narrowing his eyes and then his weapon… it be deflected and knocked back entirely throwing him off balance.

I lunged forward and swung, he be leaping backwards to open up the distance between us. He be having no room for retaliation against me in those few seconds.

There was a silence as a grey stone in the soft rain became splattered with a single drop of red, I opened my mouth and caught the tip of a slowly falling slightly damp feather in the right side of my mouth.

Quite a few be seeing the interaction and be staring at me as if I were being insane… they did not be knowing me too well then. As Favela be the only one staring at me with awe, Smolder was looking curious before she swooped at the flame spewing pony.

“Well, if you want to be taking my head...” My cane had a tiny bit of blood on it, I brought it about to the ready to a defensive stance. “As far as I be seeing, first blood be going to me… so bring it.”

“Morning Sun.” Lu Bu started glowing bright red with an incredible intensity, then as he twirled his weapon about above his head he announced a second move. “Hurricane.”

Powerful walls of wind be whipping up and swirling around us and cutting us off from everyone around us, the swirling winds also cut the rain off and stopped it from falling on us. It be far more powerful than whatever Dolly can be doing, given her winds not be lasting as long as to create a localized tornado around us.

“You have earned my ire.” He stated calmly, I can be telling he is being quite angry if his red aura is anything to go by. His weapon be taking on its golden glow again.

“You’re being welcome!” I stated smarmily while trying to make sure the feather didn’t fall out of the side of my mouth. I be prepared to fight for my life with a smile, if he can be feeling anything other than bloodlust then I actually just be doing my job very well.

The power of my ‘Pirate Shout’ was enough to deflect his attack or at least be slowing it down, but I had to prep it and build up to doing it. He almost be getting through it too, so I shouldn’t be relying on it to save my backside when being swift would be better for that. This guy was blazingly fast, strong and most off all daunting, I would have to be using my shout sparingly and be constantly moving to stay alive.

-Favela-

“Shanty!” I tried to move forward only to dodge backwards as a blaze of flames passed by me and that’s when I be paying attention to the one that guy be calling Red Hare.

The demonic looking Rapidash was being quite scary for one particular reason.

“If we want to help her, then we’ll have to get by that Rapidash.” Quetal be saying from at my side, he did just see what I saw right?

The rain… it seemed had no effect on the power of the Rapidash’s fire attacks, it didn’t be weakening at all and his every breath was causing a lot of steam.

The five Buizels moved forward and glared down Red Hare, Jiri was picking herself up from her break and readying her spear with her bear friends around her.

Quite a lot of people left the area when Lu Bu showed up, but Favela was surprised that Aurora’s defenders were still here and still ready to fight. Even against what was the world’s most demonic looking Rapidash.

-‘Blade Hoof’ Shanty (Captain title pending), Cut-lass vs. Lu ‘Do Not Pursue!’ Bu, The Flying General, Bloody God Force Wielder That Pierces The Sky, Imminent Death Incarnate, Halberd Hell Bird, The ‘Morning Sun’ Warrior, Rapidly Regenerating Raptor Reaper, Stop Killing Me I’m Already Dead-

The bird was blindingly fast, yet Shanty somehow kept up with his next few attacks perfectly, slowly inhaling as she deflected the first overhead blow to the side. The next two sideways swinging blows from right and left knocked her back from the pure force of the impacts that the cutting arcs from her own weapon fought against.

Shanty was not going to win a battle of strength against Lu Bu, especially not when he had pressed her back close to the wall of winds behind her in three barely deflected blows that be sent her sliding back from the impacts alone. She was so close to the wall of wind that she could be feeling it on the hairs of her tail, her ears drifting to the right in the breeze of the counterclockwise tornado.

If it were anyone else in this situation they would believe themselves already in dire situation, however Shanty was not ordinary in the slightest and Lu Bu couldn’t possibly expected what came next from wily goat.

Lu Bu thrust his spear into the wall of wind straight for Shanty and she leapt straight up and bucked out at the wall of whippings winds behind her, an odd move to be sure.

Following his stab, that blasted a small hole in the wall of whipping wind temporarily, Lu Bu expected Shanty to fall into the path of his next swing, as he swiftly brought his spear around to the right out of the winds and overhead for a rightward swing from the right towards where Shanty should have been.

Instead his halberd hit nothing but his own hurricane forces walls and threatened to reverse the hurricane’s spin entirely from sheer force of will, he looked to his left tracking something and his eyes narrowed as he quickly turned to the right and tried to swing his halberd upwards only to be too late as he received a harsh cutting slash up the right side of his neck and face as Shanty shot by and slightly upwards.

The goat took to standing horizontally on the rapidly swirling, twisting, winds and, having reversed the grip on her weapon, managed a good decent blow against Lu Bu. Decent was about all it was as Shanty stared at Lu Bu as she continued to ride the winds upwards slightly wielding them as a solid, yet moving, stable surface to stand on.

Lu Bu was quite unamused and his bleeding face soon stopped bleeding as the cut and wound almost immediately gone leaving only bloodied down with not a blemish beyond the coloration and liquid dripping from unblemished feathers and flesh.

Shanty blinked at the sight of his wounds having closed almost immediately and watched as Lu Bu carefully scrutinized her rapidly circling form.

Lu Bu was far more skilled and stronger than Shanty and far more capable in the air given his title as the Flying General would suggest. At least the goat intelligence, speed and small size, that was all Shanty had going for her… all Lu Bu needed was one solid blow to put her down.

Something sparked in Shanty’s eyes and she leapt upwards and narrowly avoided a rising halberd that cut an upwards scar in the swirling winds.

With a flap of his left wing Lu Bu shot up and swung his weapon in his right for Shanty, it change into a multiple pronged sword mid swing, her weapon was far too out of place in time to make a deflection.

Shanty kicked the blade with her right hind leg and the cutting arc from her hoof slammed against the blade and she went shooting backwards through the air to land on the wall of wind. She had angled herself to pass by over his head riding the wind where she landed and she dropped down and watched as he turned in the air to keep track of her.

That Lu Bu was even capable of flying with one wing was terrifying in and of itself as his weapon reverted to being a halberd.

Twirling her scythe cane in her right hoof, Shanty kicked off the wall of wind and shot towards Lu Bu leading with her left hind leg already having a plan in place for when Lu Bu tried to strike at her.

Lu Bu timed his swing perfectly and Shanty exhaling slowly before she was struck, she seemingly split into two halves one going up and one going down.

A slash swept deeply across Lu Bu’s neck as Shanty that kicked off the shaft of his halberd to the winds above him with her right hind leg. The neck injury sealed immediately not causing Lu Bu any discomfort.

However what confused Lu Bu was the second Shanty that erupted from his* lower half coalescing into a second Shanty going downwards from the slash and cutting into his belly and organs. An injury that lasted all of five seconds for all the good it would do to Lu Bu while he had Morning Sun aura active.

He didn’t even flinch at the feeling of a blade cutting into him, to say he was fairly used to war and fighting would be an understatement as to how many injuries he could easily and actively ignore. Even injuries that would have permanently dismembered or disable him didn’t work as his aura immediately reattached his body parts and could even fix brain and eye damage, his might could not be stifled so easily by singular mortal blows.

Lu Bu looked at the two Shanty’s now riding the wind, each grinning, each having dealt damage to him and each one wielding the exact same weapon… that had not been a simple Double Team trick.

The second copy had physically dealt damage to him and they were moving independently of each other, Lu Bu’s eyes were busy trying to discern how the goat came up with such trickery.

The upper Shanty dropped to the same level as the lower Shanty and the lower Shanty, once she reached the height that Lu Bu was at launched for him with a Goat Fly.

Lu Bu’s weapon shifted into a chain and sickle and swung the chain and blade upwards, his opponent split into two copies which he deflected readily with quick back and forth defensive flourish that blocked their attack coming at him from both the left and right.

His weapon hadn’t actually touch them, but he had distinctly felt two taps on his sickle blade through the chain as the single form split into two. He quickly thought back to when the goat had split seconds prior, for this warrior was showing his* rather impressive might. It was almost too bad Lu Bu had to slaughter him*.

Lu Bu was a warrior and with his masterful insight on combat, he was slowly piecing together this Shanty’s sudden technique to generate copies of himself*. It was not reliant on Lu Bu actually striking them.

Lu Bu knew this to be true, because he recalled that he felt the slightest pressure on his weapon from the first strike where he thought his attack was splitting his opponent in half.

The first time Shanty split before he* kicked off his shaft to go upwards with his right hind leg… he* had used his* left to push upwards and forward off his blade before jumping upwards with his* other hind leg off the shaft. Thus created an illusion of being split in half while generating his* second clone. Trying to hide his* duplicity from Lu Bu’s senses could only work for so long.

That was when the third Shanty, still riding the hurricane force winds, slid by him and slashed him across the butt as he hovered there have just deflected the other two clones.

Lu Bu’s eyes narrowed, now there were three physical copies of nuisance riding the winds and he didn’t know how this warrior was doing what he* was, but he just figured out how to stop the so called trick rather easily.

Given the strike he just took, it gave something about this trick away entirely… had his opponent kept to using his* clones to attack him then he wouldn’t have discovered that only one of the copies had a heartbeat and was slowly exhaling. The other two didn’t breathe, but they could still cause damage and were most certainly not Double Team illusions.

This meant that… Lu Bu knew what to do to end his opponent’s trickery before it grew out of control. He flapped his left wing and moved to the center of the howling winds of the vortex he had trapped them in and waiting hovering in the air without an issue.

The three Shanty’s all kicked off and each one yelled while wielding their weapon for attack Lu Bu all at once from three direction, launching three simultaneous kicks at once. One was coming at Lu Bu from the front and to the right, another front and to the left, Lu Bu paid neither of them attention and quickly spun to slash.

One was coming at Lu Bu from directly behind him… but again, only one opponent had a heartbeat and breathed. Bringing his wings together his weapon turned from chain and sickled into bladed wing guards.

In an instant the feathers of his left wing jabbed backwards stabbing into the heart of a clone, his right wing scythed out and the spiked wings guard punctured a second clone’s heart with one of the spikes as his right wing continued to scythe forward.

The one coming at Lu Bu from the front and left of him, suddenly change their flying form into a wind-milling series of blade as they must have realized that Lu Bu actually figured out his* trick.

With the way they were spinning, his right wing would miss, but Lu Bu lashed out with his left leg and aimed imperiously at their belly side. When they did a miraculously bit of air control by slamming their hind legs together to somehow reverse their spin and would use their weapon to block his right talon lashing out.

Lu Bu’s talon hit a blocking cutting arc and his talons sent his opponent slamming into the ground back first.

The two clones dissolved into harmless splashes of water that smelled salty and like the sea.

Shanty rolled away from the center of the vortex as Lu Bu came down with his wing guards turning back into a halberd in his wings to ram it into a ground.

The massive bird created a shockwave that sent this Shanty flopping away and this unfortunately disarmed her as well, her cane getting caught on the wind wall she bounced off of and went sailing to a different portion of the vortex bound arena where it shot out and got stuck in the dirt hook bladed end first.

Shanty gritted her teeth and propped herself up, with a gasp rolled to the side and then forward underneath Lu Bu who tried to stomp her as she got behind him and manage to send a quick cutting arc through a specific area between his legs.

Much to Shanty’s surprise, Lu Bu didn’t even flinch and didn’t slow in his next attack when he swung about to his left and brought his halberds blade towards her prone neck with a golf swing.

Shanty quickly brought both her front hooves together and slashed out a larger cutting arc to be sent tumbling across the ground and away from her cane sticking out of the ground at an angle.

Lu Bu just turned to her and started stalking forward.

Shanty started to slowly inhale again and didn’t show even a hint of fear even if she was in dire situation and her spine be badly battered by the fall.

“You will not win.” Lu Bu stated as he noticed Shanty glance at her weapon. “Wait… you’re a girl?”

“What? Just because I be having a beard means you thought I was be being a boy, heh heh… agh-…” Shanty looking for an out and thinking of something, the pain in her back was quite bad. "Also, why do you only be noticing that now?!"

Lu Bu realized his opponent was still a warrior, yes and a decently challenging one at that, but it was mildly distracting that he’d been fighting a girl with such incredible spit and vinegar as to have given him some 'mild' trouble.

“No matter, you’ll die all the same.” Lu Bu continued forward and then something stupidly fast punctured through the winds and ripped through his chest in a horrifying fountain of blood. “UGH!?!”

-Many miles away exactly a minute later, outside the borders of Illusio in Chrysalia, Celebi-

“Now I just have to make my report and… AGH?!” A spear hit me center mass and on the spear was a still beating heart that somehow hadn’t realized that it had left its body behind.

“Well… look at it… this way…. Arceus… at least… I didn’t die this time. Still… survivable…” Then the heart decided to explode in my gasping face and I started choking violently on the mass that exploded its way into my throat.

As the world dimmed, I heard Arceus sigh quite loudly… but he apparently wasn’t blaming me for what just happened.

-North of the Aurora and Ignis bridge, outside the vortex, Jiri-

My spear pierced the clearly hit the malevolent bird’s heart, but didn’t do enough damage to knock them down. Though it was a bit strange that the tornado turned a bit red when my Bounce empowered spear hit its target with full force. What confused me is why he wasn’t falling over with the heavy injury I just dealt him, I could still see the red glow of that horrifying Pokémon beyond the swirling winds.

I quickly had to run and roll to the side as the demonic Rapidash charged for me covered in flames that the rain couldn’t quite weaken. Before they could trample me the large mechanical bird that was Shanty’s friend slammed its right foot into the side of their head moving at incredible speeds.

Hoped that helped Shanty out at least, because I can only do that once. I was completely out of energy for my Bounce attack now and I no longer had a spear to defend myself with. All I had was my shield.

The insane Rapidash was once up again, barely even scratched by… Dodo was he called? Despite taking a kick at Agility levels of speed, the Rapidash was barely hurt.

I have never seen a Rapidash disable five Buizels nearly as fast as this one had, in fact one would think it was impossible for a fire type to be functionally immune to water types or wipe out an entire unit six to one… or in this case at least fifteen to one given it had injured my unit pretty badly.

The Rapidash snorted and targeted me again, my bear buddies formed up protectively in front of me battered and covered in hoof prints.

Dodo sent a worried look at the swirling winds encasing Shanty and warbled worriedly, as if knowing something we didn’t about what was going on in there.

-Lu ‘Do Not Engage With’ Bu vs. ‘Blade Hoof’ Shanty (Captain title unlikely, someone save the poor goat) continued-

Jiri hadn’t realized the exact lethality of her spear throw nor did she calculate how much power she would need to put into it to pierce the hurricane and right into the vortex where Shanty was struggling to do anything to Lu Bu.

All Jiri had known was that Shanty was in danger on the ground and still moving judging by the shadows she saw from that outside looking in.

Shanty was staring at Lu Bu wide eyed disbelief as he propped himself upon his weapon and gritting his beak as the bones, sinew and flesh quickly started knitting itself back together rebuilding a working heart from practically nothing and then the wound sealed over with fresh skin, followed by fresh down covering.

At best this caused his red aura to only dim somewhat.

Shanty hadn’t been idle and was up and immediately galloping for her weapon, her eyes watching as the hole in his chest filled with a new heart.

The level of absurdity to survive such a death blow almost made Shanty want to give up, only almost, the dimming aura let Shanty know at least there was a limit.

Shanty swiftly rolled under spinning halberd blade that bounced off the winds and back into Lu Bu’s grip as Shanty grabbed the shaft of her weapon and wrenched it from the ground and immediately deflected a slash from Lu Bu’s weapon, got knocked back first into the wind wall and went flying sideways out of Lu Bu’s range.

Shanty managed to kick off the wind safely and roll into standing on her hind legs at the ready again, slightly more wobbly as her spine was in quite a bit of pain.

Lu Bu paused and considered something for a moment.

“My God Force: ‘Slash’, goes through any physical defense, how are you deflecting my attacks?” It had finally occurred to Lu Bu that she had deflected multiple attacks with physical movements.

“My slashes be magic too.” Shanty answered as she wearily readied herself to keep going, catching her breath and regaining whatever strength she had in her before they got back into it.

Being slapped into the ground had taken a bit of fight out of her.

Even after seeing him regrow his heart in his chest without so much as batting an eye at the fact that he had been gored so badly and barely reacted in mild pain as his heart grew back.

She shoved the shaft of her hooked scythe in her mouth and brought her hooves close together as she backed up towards the winds and angle her front hooves at the winds threateningly.

Lu Bu was being far too powerful and Shanty hadn’t wanted to do this… but, when needs must… think stupid and hoped it worked out!

Lu Bu gave her actions a curious stare, she was threatening something, but it wasn’t likely to work as he readied to charge and end her existence in a painful manner.

Shanty for her part knew that a lot of fire would really be messing up Lu Bu’s healing ability something fierce, she wasn’t going to be able do the clone thing again unless she actually survived this battle and only then after an amount of rest.

Her new technique took a lot magic to even do and the weakness of it made itself apparent if her actual self takes a hit, it immediately disrupted the clone’s existences which was a drawback if her opponent could be telling who the real Shanty was.

What was Shanty about to do? Why that simple campfire lighting technique Pom had taught her of course! She readied her right hind leg and would kicked off the ground with her left and lash her right up high to cling to the wind wall while igniting the swirling winds upside down.

Shanty was going to matchstick the whole arena and hoped it did more to help than actually hinder.

Lu Bu lunged forward his spear stabbing and then sweeping about in a slash, Shanty naturally followed through with flipping upward on to the wall of wind and…

-Outside the Hellish Hurricane, Quetal-

The entire world became blinding in an instant and once I blinked the spots out of my eyes I saw a massive blazing swirl racing into the sky.

Oh gods and goddesses, all legendary deities above and Arceus himself…. Shanty was in there!

I quickly dodge back and slashed a wound into the Rapidash side when I found my feet trying to take me towards the blazing tower to help Shanty.

“Shanty!” Favela shouted.

Smolder also made a panicked exclamation, she currentgly had multiple hoof prints embedded in her scales, Smolder proved to be quite good against the Rapidash given its flames did exactly nothing to her… it’s hooves on the other claw were downright scary that they could dent Smolder’s scales so badly.

Favela had been hanging back and trying not to be close and personal to the Rapidash, Smolder had been trying to use blunt force trauma and got trampled for it injuring her wings somewhat.

Dodo warbled at Smolder and tilted his head at Smolder, was Dodo implying what I thought he was.

“Right, I’ll get in there and help Shanty.” Smolder said as if understanding Dodo’s gesture. “You just have to stop that Nirik, Pony, Demon, whatever it is from getting in the way.”

Dodo quickly spat something out, a blob of liquid that suddenly hardened upon contact with the flaming face of the Rapidash, completely blinding it with what I assume to be a massive amount of dough and sugar.

The metal bird quickly rammed into it, doing a good rendition of tackle, to proceed and use its weight to temporarily pin the demon Pokémon down letting Smolder get by before it could use its blazing heat to clear its sight.

The Rapidash roared, reared up and sent the glowing red scorched Dodo flying back with an explosion of flames and two smacks of its hooves.

It tried to follow up its attack having failed to stop Smolder from getting by it, by choosing to go after the prone Dodo in anger.

I moved to intercept only for the Rapidash to be hit with a powerful torrent of water slowing them down immensely. It was coming from the last remaining Buizel still standing, who had just crossed the bridge and had recently used Rain Dance once again considering the rain renewed.

I followed up by pummeling the Rapidash with a Swift attack slowing their forward charge down further allowing Dodo to get up retreat and allow his metal form to cool down from the insane heat the Rapidash was putting off.

Whatever was happening in there, I could only hope Shanty was alright after the hellish localized hurricane's winds lit ablaze.

-Shanty-

It is being quite hot in here, but I be blinding the angry bird by burning his eyes with the eruption of flames... he wouldn't be healing from that in a timely manner! Also wrapping myself in a thin barrier of sweat be the only reason why the heat hasn't done me in yet.

Oh don't get me wrong, I knew Lu Bu was still being quite dangerous even when blinded, nobody who is being this strong would be easy to take down just because he lost his physical sight for a short amount of time.

That red glow around him still hasn't stopped and was still going strong, like the howling burning winds around us.

So I'm not being nearly stupid enough to think he is anywhere close to being done.

I kept the one feather tightly clenched in my teeth still, even as Smolder barreled into the swirling vortex to lend some very much welcome aid.

Of course hearing him say that no physical defense could be stopping his slash, I just be realizing what that could be meaning for Smolder and an exceedingly cold chill be going down my spine.

306. Willpower.

-Pokémon World, North of Ignis and Aurora Bridge, Red Hare-

I was upset that I even let even one get by me.

So now I unleashed more of my power… neigh!

-Quetal-

What was the Rapidash doing now? We’ve barely scratched it up badly enough to tell if we were winning, so what could it be… oh… wow… that’s…

“Did that Rapidash just grow wings?!” Yes, Favela, it did just grow an unnatural pair of wings. Wings that looked to be suspiciously the same wing span and size of a certain Unfezant currently being a huge issue here.

Said wings were also covered in the same demonic flames the Rapidash had been giving off this entire time.

It was kind of awe inspiring really, if we weren’t having to deal with what has to be the world’s strongest Rapidash.

With a single flap of their wings, the Rapidash took to the air and glared at them as it hovered on slowly flapping wings.

If I had to wonder why Lu Bu even bothered to ride Red Hare at all, well this new complication possibly explains it. This also gives more meaning to ‘The Flying General’ title and why a Rapidash might even let a giant bird ride them.

Lu Bu could have just sent the Rapidash alone and have it successfully deal with all of us, instead he came down here to finish off that Emboar personally and challenge anyone still present to a battle to the death. Shanty’s silhouette was still moving around so she had to be holding her own.

“Okay… this might be a bit harder than I thought.” The haggard Rain Dance Buizel stated, recognizing that our opponent didn’t apparently follow type weaknesses.

“We’ll just have to do our best here, because I really doubt we can pierce those hurricane walls like Smolder can while they are on fire.” Jiri announced as she held her small battered shield aloft, her and her bears were proving to be as much trouble to the Rapidash as the Rapidash was to the rest of us.

A lucky Electro Ball struck the Rapidash and only mildly knocked them about in the air, I don’t think it counted as a flying type now despite having grown wings and became capable of outright flying. The whole Charizard isn’t a Dragon Type thing came to mind.

The Wooloo had moved positions to be halfway across the bridge with the Rattata and were firing electric attacks into the Rapidash. There was some effect, but it wasn’t enough to put this monster down in a timely manner as they spewed forth balls of fires and razed the ground with streaks of flame or tried to physically maul us with their hooves.

I was still firing bursts of Swift attack, but the effects were minimal even if my attacks were always hitting and constant.

Chan was already taking care of the five downed Buizel and a still cooling Dodo, we had to put this Rapidash out to pasture before Shanty was killed by what was apparently the most infamous general in Ignis.

“Maybe this will help!” Turning to the voice, the Muk with the Wooloo Militia had suddenly launch a huge wad of sludge that exploded in the Rapidash’s face.

The Sludge Bomb attack apparently was actually somewhat effective against the Rapidash, also that made it quite angry and it would certainly help if we could poison it.

“Protect the Muk, we need him to poison this guy!” If I was going to be stuck fighting something this ridiculously tough, then some poison would help us wear the flying Rapidash down faster.

“On it!” Favela launched some seed bombs which the Rapidash swooped around with impressive capability, as if they were practiced at using these wings. At best the Seed Bombs were for distractions or at least some mild inconveniencing. “Also this is going to give me nightmares if I live!”

-Inside the nearby flaming Vortex, Smolder-

“Smolder be being careful, do not be letting him near you and don’t be getting hit by his weapon!” Even as she shouted that at me, I could see Shanty deflecting an attack and rolling away from a blinded bird, said bird had clashed with Shanty twice in so many seconds of my arrival. “Jump in when you be thinking you can safely help, just do not be getting close to him!”

The fact that this Lu Bu guy’s weapon was accurately finding Shanty left me a bit speechless, even worse each deflected attack sent Shanty sliding backwards or sideways.

I stayed quiet and backed into the twisting flames and prepared to hock a fireball at him while watching as Shanty frantically avoided being pushed into the wall of swirling flames.

Lu Bu had certainly been blinded in that explosion that turned the hurricane winds into a swirling vortex of fire. While the heat actually felt quite nice to me, I’m quite well aware my friends were not capable of bathing in lava like me.

I would ask how Shanty survived the explosion, but she looked to only be slightly singed so she must have stayed ahead of it somehow.

Given that Lu Bu was still knocking her around and back with each attack while not giving her almost any room to retaliate… being blind wasn’t a really big issue for him.

While trying to figure out where to jump in, I was getting some seriously bad vibes from the golden glow of the weapon the bird held. Gold would never make a good weapon unless it was actually magically charged electrum.

Sticking within the quickly moving wall of flames, I was going to heed Shanty’s warning and jump in when she needed me.

After a few moments of scrutinizing Lu Bu, I noticed the blast damage to his head and face was quickly healing and he was regaining his sight. It was kind of unreal how fast the guy was healing from what would functionally be a permanent injury for anyone else.

-Lu 'Insert Grave Epitaph Here' Bu vs. 'Blade Hoof' Shanty-

Shanty deflected back towards the center by a swing from the halberd and Lu Bu fully regained his eyesight in this moment.

“Sweep.” Lu Bu raised his weapon high at an angle and Shanty watched as the weapon changed from the powerful halberd into a scythe within his wings.

Shanty instinctively leapt up and lashed her hind legs downwards, the circular cutting wave that came off of scythe expanded out throughout the inside of the vortex and the twisting winds slowed down slightly before returning to full speed.

Shanty had kicked off the flying circular cutting arc into the air and landed to see Smolder had leap up into the fires and started using the burning winds to glide about.

Sweeping the scythe upwards a circular saw of air flew at Shanty and she quickly used her weapon to strike out at the edge and deflect herself to the right of it. The blades cut through the swirling flames leaving a scar rent in the hurricane surrounding them.

Shanty had to quickly swing downwards to deflect off Lu Bu’s next cutting saw of air, while showing keen interest in how Lu Bu was launching flying cutting waves.

The next attack sent a single saw of air straight up at Shanty and it split in three circular cutting wheels of air that started spinning wildly like coins on their edges.

Shanty started slowly inhaling and tried to figure out what to do as deflecting herself off his attacks to the left or right would put her in the path of one of the two other cutting wheels.

A lightbulb went off in the goats head as she flipped forward.

“Cutlass!” Instead of deflecting off Shanty flipped forward and lashed her left hind leg downwards sharply with an impressive cutting force to tear straight through the middle circular saw of air in one massive slash. The circular cutting force having been weaker due to splitting into three.

After slashing her way through the circular saw of air, Shanty started flipping rapidly as she fell towards Lu Bu and raised her weapon high.

“Cleave!” Shanty swung her weapon down creating a massive axe shaped cutting arc and met Lu Bu’s upwards swinging weapon, which had turned from a spear into an axe mid swing.

The two weapons clashed and fought for dominance, but it was very apparent which one would win the clash.

When both weapons deflected Shanty was exhaling slowly as she was knocked upwards and Lu Bu actually let the deflection push him back and he pivoted on his right set of talons and went into a counterclockwise spin.

“Thrust!” Lu Bu shouted, finishing his spin by pushing his right wing forward extending the spear to its maximum length in Shanty’s direction. This launched a powerful shockwave from the spear that Shanty narrowly avoided a direct hit from in the air as she leaned her upper torso to the side as hard as she could.

It might not have bene a direct hit, but the shockwave of the attacks passing still struck Shanty and she fell to the ground completely losing her grip on her weapon.

Shanty’s body was refusing to move as Lu Bu steadied himself and surged forward preparing for a decapitating swing.

Several fireballs struck Lu Bu with force, right side of his face, chest, right wing and his left leg, any of the rest missed scorching the ground. Smolder was putting out quite a bit of volume.

Sure it may look like it hurt, but all it did was slow Lu Bu down and he wasn’t even flinch as parts of him had been lit ablaze by Smolder’s sudden assistance.

“Rrraggggh-“ Lu Bu was definitely going for a finishing blow against his downed opponent who was weakly shifting and trying to get into a position to defend herself.

Lu Bu swung and Shanty managed enough movement in her paralyzed body to roll backwards and the blade created a furrow where it slashed into the ground without slowing down.

After that Lu Bu went for a second swing even as he was continuously pelted by a number of fireballs, the fire being nothing more than a minor at nuisance for him.

Rolling backwards a second time Shanty was regained enough movement in her legs to roll into a standing position as Lu Bu brought his weapon around for an overhead third swing.

“Bouncing Blades!” Hopping into the Shanty curled up and started rotating rapidly, generating cutting arcs from her hooves and horns that encircled her whole body in a spherical shell of cutting energy before the blow landed.

The rapidly spinning sphere was sent flying into the wall of flames. Upon contact with the swirling flames the sphere of spiraling cutting arcs suddenly lit aflame as it bounced off the wall to the ground and then launched back towards Lu Bu covered with those flames.

Lu Bu swatting Shanty’s glowing spherical form away and it bounced off the wall of flaming winds and back at him, he just hit her again.

After two more deflections Shanty was moving faster until she was rapidly bouncing off the walls of flaming winds past Lu Bu and not at him to pick up immense of amount of speed.

Suddenly slash marks started opening up in Lu Bu’s body as he tried to protect himself from a rapidly bouncing sphere slashing into him as it passed by or rebounded off of him and the burning hurricane force winds.

Slashes opened up in his sides, chest, vent, the top of his backside, his head and each blood was met with the ground getting covered in crimson splashes.

This was helped by Smolder’s fireballs aiming at the opening slash wounds on the red glowing bird to slow down his constantly healing from injury.

“Thrust!” Lu Bu’s next stabbing shockwave attack wasn’t aimed at Shanty, the attack instead struck Smolder.

Smolder went flying out of the hurricane winds the scales on her left shoulder cracking to the point of shattering completely and lightly punctured the scales outside where her heart was.

The injury hadn’t been deep enough to be mortal blow, only because Lu Bu hadn’t hit her directly with his weapon. The blow also did what it had done to Shanty, it left Smolder paralyzed as her body flopped painfully onto the ground outside the hurricane winds.

“Parry!” Lu Bu’s weapon changed into the pronged sword and with a swing he caught the rapidly spinning Shanty.

Forcing the rapidly spinning goat toward the ground, Lu Bu then grasped the hilt with both wings to push down and pressure the still rapidly spinning Shanty against the dirt even further.

The clashing of Shanty’s cutting force and Lu Bu’s weapon created a loud screeching noise in the air, Shanty’s spinning form began to slow down in its rotations as she was forced further and further into the ground.

“Ngghhh….” Shanty grunted and tried to push back, but Lu Bu was crushing her under the raw force of his strength and his unique weapon.

“You’re proving that you at least had capability to be a great warrior, but you were never a match for my might.” Lu Bu stated dully to the goat he had pressed under his sword and was slowly beginning to breaking through the rapidly spinning defense of arcing cuts.

“Aye!!” The suddenness of Shanty's shout and being forced into the wall of flames had caught Lu Bu off guard as Shanty uncurled with a force beyond him for a scant second or two. “I still be… having… quite a bit more… to give.”

Gasping and looking over herself as she stood on four shaky hooves, Shanty noticed she had slash marks along her body and she was bleeding. Yet she didn’t remember getting hit by any of Lu Bu’s attacks that would leave such wounds. She figured the damage could have occurred when he did that ‘Parry’ thing, so she’ll be more careful around that.

Gathering her sweat with her magic, Shanty used it seal the bleeding cuts off. While she knew it wasn’t healthy to do so, she used the salt in her own sweat to help seal over her worst cuts to her sides, back and a minor one along her left leg.

Shanty grimaced and grit her teeth at the pain she was putting herself through, along with the hazy heat of the burning hurricane forces winds surrounding her making her dizzy. Glancing ahead, she could see Lu Bu calmly walking out of the flames with his body burning slightly.

The large birds red aura was still present, but it wasn’t as bright as it was at first. Not that Shanty was having an easy time with effectively trying to destroy the aura and Lu Bu just basically stopped one of her strongest attacks in an enclosed space cold.

Shanty turned her right side to Lu Bu slight and started dancing on her hooves slightly ready to keep going despite the pain in her back and the painfully sealed cuts on her body.

With a single flex of his muscles the flames covering Lu Bu’s body winked out, extinguishing within an instant and leaving his form steaming.

After a moment of glancing about Shanty realized that Smolder had been taken down, she went back to focusing on Lu Bu with narrowed eyes. Lu Bu simply readied his halberd to come at her again.

Shanty’s body might be protesting her slightly dancing movements, but she wasn’t going down without a fight.

After a momentum Lu Bu surged forward and Shanty widened her stance. Sure she might not be able to leap high like Pom could, but she could make incredible horizontal leaps when she switched into Fleet Cunning Doe. Mobility was going to be the only thing keeping Shanty alive against someone who far surpassed her in both strength and pure endurance.

Shanty leapt forward over a horizontal slash and lashed out with her right hoof across Lu Bu’s chest and used her right hind leg to kick herself into downwards.

Lu Bu took the slash and swung his halberd downwards on Shanty who rolled, he twirled his spear as he brought it about and tried to hit her with a point blank thrust only for Shanty to enter into a slide by his right side while opening a large gash that would only last for seconds.

Swiftly the halberd and lifted and slammed down where Shanty was going to be, only to miss as Shanty popped up slash him up the neck and right side of his head and landed on his back with hers to roll to his left side.

Lu Bu’s weapons switched to the wing guards and he blocked a slash from Shanty and slashed her across the chest lightly as she used her two rear hooves to enter a cartwheel across his front.

While upside down in the middle of the cartwheel flip, Shanty’s hooves rapidly lashed out in a series of slashes hitting Lu Bu’s legs and the underside of his wings.

Lu Bu’s wings swept forth to unleash a burst of wind Shanty was clipped by that sent her sprawling to his right and she was immediately back on her hooves and charging straight back for him.

Lu Bu lunged and brought the blade of his quickly swapped halberd down on Shanty who rolled and rotated into a roundhouse buck that deflected her to the side.

After this move Shanty got up close and started to use every movement to slash and her aggression shot up a degree. In turn for Shanty’s increased aggression.

Lu Bu’s weapon change to the wing guards, he quickly lashed out to start blocking her slashes and after one particular block he flapped his wings forward to knock Shanty off balance and tried to claw at her with his talons.

Instead of rolling back, Shanty instead leapt forward onto his extended leg and launched a right upper hoof into Lu Bu’s chin. She followed that by lashing outwards with her left leg to spin and slash him several times several times as she dropped to the ground to land on her hind hooves.

Shanty was quickly kicked in the chest and that blow almost caved her ribs in entirely.

Lu Bu watched dispassionately as Shanty skidded up to the swirling wall of flames, the heat scorching the small goat’s body making her grimace.

Even then Shanty rolled onto her hooves and got up on all fours huffing and puffing to see that Lu Bu still had a red glow going as he wing guards turned into the scythe and he slowly stalked forward prepared to swing.

“Sweep.” Lu Bu swung his scythe forward and five circular blades of cutting force launched out in wide spread that would make it hard for Shanty to dodge.

Lu Bu knew how high she could jump, how fast she was and was in general sure he had an idea as to all of Shanty’s abilities. That and the broken or even cracked ribs were going to make it hard for Shanty to move out of the path of the scything air blades.

Shanty brought her front hooves together and a ball of water coalesced in them as she turned and swiped the ball of water through the flames as she ran to the left. She whipped the water ball about and spiraled it into the path of the farthest right Wind blade Lu Bu had launched.

“Spiraling White Squall Cannon!” An explosion of steam and a horizontal tornado of raw force and hundreds of cutting arcs struck out at Lu Bu and sent him sliding back across the vortex to the other side before he managed to dissipate the small cyclone with a slash that tore apart the physical force.

Lu Bu stood for a moment contemplating what Shanty did as his body recovered from the massive amount of damage Shanty just hit him with, an unexpected move that heavily lacerated his body. Lu Bu’s opponent, while weak, still had much to surprise him with.

Still Lu Bu gave off a verdant red glow as his body regenerated from the damage.

Shanty had created that attack using the cold air of his own scythe attacks, which naturally generating the cold energy of death, and the hot boiling ball of water she spiraled into it to do that.

Lu Bu’s opponent was not to be underestimated, even when cornered. Given her spirit was starting to shine despite her injuries and her body starting to fail from the heat, he could see a silhouette of a black flag flowing behind Shanty and it didn’t yet have a symbol on it.

That flag never would have a symbol if Lu Bu had anything to say about it, he could see her unlived dream driving her forward and giving her strength. It just wasn’t nearly enough to beat his raw might.

The will to keep going, the willpower to keep going given Shanty was grabbing up her scythe cane weapon and still willing to face him said a lot about her determination. To what end, she must know she wasn’t leaving the vortex alive. Even with her odd cutting force, she was no match for him.

Shanty on her side of the arena saw a silhouette of a raging demon, she was even reminded of having faced the Jade statue of Lord Shen. She’s come a long way since then and even did a few new tricks in this battle, she still had so much to learn and do.

Lu Bu’s power was incredible, he was dauntless, she couldn’t take him down, but Shanty would be darned it if she wasn’t going to try and her dream of grand adventures would not go unlived!

“Can ye’… actually be… sending me to… Navy Bones… locker?” Shanty stated, she was on one grand adventure already and was hooked on the taste of friendship, cultures, strange foods and life itself.

Shanty was going to see this massive adventure to the end, she be knowing this bird wasn’t the end of the long road and she had too many people that wanted her around… goodness knows what Pom would think if she didn’t survive this, she already knew what Pom would say if she did. She’s rather Pom be mad at her then, then sad after the loss of Dormarch be silently eating at her. She almost be losing Dodo so she almost knew the feeling of what it was like to die.

Also… she just did her first flying cutting attack, unfortunately it was entirely situational and she had to use Lu Bu’s cutting wind to even pull it off. She still had something to prove despite being in a desperate situation and had little else in the form of miracles to pull off. If she survived the next minute she still had to learn to do a flying cutting attack without her opponent’s aiding in said attack.

“I do not believe you will see a bright afterlife.” With a swing of his scythe Lu Bu turned it back into the halberd, something he seemed to favor more than any other weapon in Shanty’s eyes, then brought it around with a twirl and prepared to do something he’s done twice before. “Thrust.”

A conical burst of force existed the spear heading right for Shanty, the goat who just closed her eyes and took in air with a slow inhale as the attack crawled ever closer as time slowed down.

Shanty slowly shifted her weapon to the side and let out a sigh.

“Ay’.” It wasn’t shouted, it wasn’t a ‘yahar’, ‘aye’ or an ‘arr’, it was a simply a work spoken with pure conviction by Shanty. If she had timed this pirate shout poorly, she would have already been dead and she didn’t even need to shout it… she just had to put her conviction in front of herself and let what will be, be what it will.

Shanty’s eyes snapped open. There was a massive amount of defiance in her bar shaped eyes as she looked at Lu Bu and sitting directly in front of her battered body was a cone of force frozen in the air in front of her trying to push forward and into her body.

Yet something was stopping the physical, magical and possibly spiritual raw force that Lu Bu had launched at her.

Shanty stared at the attack for a long moment and then her eyes snapped to Lu Bu who was staring with something approaching or akin to disbelief at her.

Having timed her ‘Pirate Shout’ so precisely, Shanty knew what was about to happen next.

Lu Bu’s own thrust attack then immediately reversed direction when a small spherical pulse rippled out from Shanty, it slammed his own attack into him with twice the speed and strength that it was going to hit Shanty with.

Rocked back by the power of his own ‘Thrust’ attack. Lu Bu was left frozen standing up, both paralyzed and defenseless as his belly was struck by it directly by it goring him with his own attack. Still his innards quickly healed the damage, but he was entirely paralyzed.

Shanty charged forward entirely ready to take advantage of the fact that Lu Bu was badly paralyzed by his own thrust attack.

Raising her weapon high up as she charged forward, Shanty slammed it down to pole vault launch herself high up and grasping her weapon with both hooves she flipped twice. On the third flip swung her rear legs down and out to create a large cutting arc and then brought her weapon down through the same space to reinforce the strength of the arc.

“Grand Cleaver!” The cutting arc swept straight through Lu Bu from beak to tail feathers when Shanty landed the blow, her body faltered and she slapped against the ground chest first.

Shanty lifted her head and then tried to stand up… only her hind legs weren’t working after that attack. Her front ones did and they were currently in a death grip on her weapon, the cane portion of which was buried into the ground.

She pushed herself upwards to see what she had done, Shanty wasn’t going to look away from what would be a grisly sight.

Slowly Lu Bu, despite his weapon remaining unscathed by Shanty’s attack, started to split in half. The left and right half of his body started to slowly fall away from each other, when Lu Bu’s wings simply tightened their grip on his weapon.

“N-no…” Shanty didn’t see how Lu Bu could still be alive when his head was currently split into… strings of red started leaping from the left and right halves of Lu Bu.

The blood from the two halves of Lu Bu’s head stretched out from one half to the other, slowly the strings brought the two halves of his head together and the blood spilling from his body started doing the same.

Lu Bu still had the red glow going and the two halves of his body were pulling themselves back together and eventually stitched his two halve together, he was still healing… he was healing back from being cut entirely in half vertically?!

Once the two halves of his body recombined into one whole, the massive amounts of Lu Bu’s blood spilling onto the ground stopped and the blood covered bird simple flexed his body and tilted his neck to the left and right with sharp cracks. He then looked at Shanty.

“That… hurt.” That was all Lu Bu had to say about being cut in half, his beak had just healed from all that damage in record time.

Notably his red aura had dimmed significantly, but he had survived Shanty’s need to live and stood tall as his spine loudly started popping back into the right places as it too was healing from being split in half. His organs shifting in his body back into their proper positions, the damage happened as the amount of blood Shanty spilled was quite visible… but it hadn’t been enough.

Shanty thought she had been getting stronger since almost losing Dodo and the loss of Dormarch, but this… this Lu Bu guy was well beyond her. This was quite clear when even the scars of being physically split in half were disappearing before her eyes.

After a moment, you couldn’t even tell that Shanty had landed a massively damaging attack on the most dangerous warrior in Ignis. It was still obvious that Lu Bu was reeling from that attack, because he had yet to end Shanty’s life and was still getting his body back in working order.

“You can be… breaking my body… but you can’t be breaking… my spirit…” Shanty didn’t have the luxury of being able to move as she propped up the front half of her body on the cane. Even as bad off as she currently was, Shanty was still ready to keep fighting with whatever she had… even if she had nothing she’d still fight. “I not be letting you… make my dream go…. unlived...”

The damage to Shanty’s body was significant and unlike Lu Bu, she couldn’t heal from everything under the sun. This might be why Morning Sun thing Lu Bu said at the beginning of the battle to start glowing red could have had some severely significant relation to the thought of the saying.

Lu Bu finally started moving and brought his halberd back and started to step forward for a swing.

Shanty pressed her pelvis against the ground, arched her back harshly and pulled her weapon free to create a defensive upwards cutting arc. One that sent her flopping across the ground as she deflected the incoming blow.

“Help…” Shanty wasn’t afraid to ask for it, in whatever form it came as she was left helpless on the ground.

“You do realize that… ugh!” Something flew through the whirling flames and suddenly the flames in the swirling hurricane winds died out for some reason, the hurricane winds themselves were still there creating a vortex.

Also the air started smelling of baking powder as Lu Bu’s left eye was struck with a hypersonic heavily carbonized bread loaf. One that had absorbed a lot of heat from the blazing hurricane, as much as partly exploded into a massive cloud of baking soda that neutralized the flames as it passed through the Hurricane winds.

Said dazing hypersonic heavily carbonized bread loaf was quickly followed by a heavy angry metal ostrich kicking Lu Bu in the side to send him sliding along the ground on his side and the right side of his face being ground up by rocks and dirt of Ignis’s soil.

Dodo warbled worriedly and quickly made his way over to a weakly smiling Shanty.

“You… will always come for me…” With careful consideration for Shanty’s injuries the metal ostrich carefully grabbed Shanty by the scruff and deposited her in a sitting position his back.

A distance away Lu Bu sat up and saw a change to the black flag, there was a renewed strength as a steel type creature turned to glare at him with glowing eyes and the right side of his face healed from the injuries a bit slower than he’d like.

The beast was nothing like Lu Bu had ever seen, but he knew it would be folly to make light of something that just caught him entirely off guard.

Dodo released a wild warbling roar of distorted mechanical noise in Lu Bu’s direction while spreading his new wings out protectively as if to shield Shanty from him.

“If you can be… being my legs for a bit Dodo… I can still be fighting.” Despite her lungs burning Shanty felt a renewed vigor as she rested her head against the cool metal of Dodo’s neck and showed even more defiance now that Dodo had showed up to help her.

Dodo cooed softly at Shanty and nuzzled her with his head gently before turning back to Lu Bu with a glare.

Despite the weakened red glow, Lu Bu smirked and huffed loudly as he readied himself. He still had his ultimate attack, he just might even be driven to actually use it.

-Situation outside the no longer flaming vortex of doom, Favela-

Dodo apparently figured something out and somehow stopped the burning flames of the vortex and got in there before the insane Rapidash could stop him. We were quickly running out of Pokémon to throw at said Rapidash monster and I didn’t want to be hit by a fire attack from the winged abomination.

Quetal, was quite understanding my reluctance to get anywhere close to that flying horror after it just wiped out Jiri’s unit. Teddy Griz, was dragging all of his unconscious teammates to safety.

The remaining Wooloo and the Muk continued to pummel what couldn’t exactly be a called a Rapidash anymore with everything they had. The Wooloo unit were down three members, Geoff, the Muk’s girlfriend and that brave Muk that refused to let his girlfriend be hurt.

Even as badly beaten up as the Rapidash was, it was still able to move with surety and I started to believe it was a being made entirely out of pure spite that just happened to be Rapidash shaped. At some point the Muk had poisoned it, but the poison seemed to be doing so little to help.

“Neiggghhh!” The Rapidash roared as they prepped a fire attack, the Rain Dance Buizel was exhausted and I didn’t know if he could actually stop this one.

“Get behind me!” Wait… Favela… no… don’t be an idiot and volunteer yourself for stupid actions like my best friend Shanty.

Okay, yeah… I, Favela, was totally going to be an idiot. If it worked, then we’d survive to keep fighting with this demon named Red Hare.

I built up pressure on my hooves that started spurting water and waited, I was charging this attack so that it could possibly get through to Shanty. She had to be exhausted by now from all that heat, goodness knows how much fluids she lost.

If this could help her at all… then I had to do was get it by the Rapidash while making it seem like I intended to hit it.

A burst of fire shaped in a specific way burst forth from the Rapidash’s mouth. It was a Fire Blast attack, a volcanically powerful one at that.

I immediately raised my wave into the air, since the Buizel’s Hydro Pump attack was barely slowing it down. I got the wave moving forward, but instead of riding on it, I slid down the backside of it and shoved it in front of me.

It thankfully absorbed the intensely powerful attack, likely only thanks to the Buizels constant water spraying into the it, and an amount of it barreled straight through the Unfezant’s highly localized Hurricane attack. The winds of which were still going quite strongly.

If Shanty seriously needed water, then she just got some.

I was out of the ability to use surf now and I seriously doubt that grass type attacks are going to improve the flying beast situation or its volatile disposition.

Author's Note

If anything is wrong with this, I can feasibly come back to it later. Probably won't.

Smolder rolled a two on her saving throw, Lu Bu rolled a fifteen and bypassed her armor check entirely for a critical hit.

Lu Bu is proving to be a brick wall for Shanty to break herself on. Also yes he'd be exactly this hard to kill with hard to kill berserker as a background, but not stopped from wielding his full capabilities.

Current: Morning Sun Armor PP 2/5

Red Hare has unleashed the power of it's noble phantasm, which is basically gain attributes of Lu Bu while mounted. Lu Bu as an Unfezant has wings so Red Hare as a Rapidash reflects that.

Too bad there aren't any Equus beings around to see and comment on the Rapidash being a demonic version of an alicorn. Lot's of burning red, not enough emo black to be the dreaded 'common pony fanfiction alicorn'.

Rattatas down, Geoffs unit halved if your counting the Muk as a unit member of the Wooloo Militia unit. Quetal, Favela lightly injured or mildly exhausted from constant move usage. Five allied Buizels out. One allied Buizel barely holding on. Chan the Aurora castle healer busy working with patients. Jiri's unit down, minus Teddy Griz Teddiursa who is likely opting out of any further fighting. Ruckus Rauco's Pidgey unit, utterly obliterated by Red Hare and currently in Chan's care. Ocellus, dealing with a migraine. Smolder unconscious, moderately injured.

Shanty's current trauma list of injuries: Parry damage slashes across sides and back, front left leg.(Lu Bu can use any weapon form to 'Parry', 'Parry' causes damage to the opponent as an attack is blocked even if Lu Bu doesn't actively attack back.) Blunt spinal trauma and damage to her back from being slapped into the ground. A broken rib, every other rib cracked from being kicked by a large bird. Heat exhaustion and damage, somewhat self inflicted by igniting the Hurricane force winds. Both hind legs sprained with mildly mangled muscles from using an attack too powerful for them to keep working afterwards, leaving Shanty unable to walk in any capacity until the injury heals. Salt wound sealing damage, sealing a wound with salt is not a good idea for long term health, but in the short term it has some uses. Moderate overall exhaustion.

Lu Bu's current trauma list: Mild itch, annoyed.

307. In-spirits.

-South of the bridge between Aurora and Ignis, Aurora Encampment, Chan-

So many injured to deal with. I need something of a more permanent understudy… maybe one of those two Indeedee if we survive this fight with some of Ignis’s most powerful Pokémon.

I turned to head back north and watch the fight with that horrifying Rapidash when someone shouted out to me.

“Chan, is the bridge still… oh…” King Evan had finally arrived with help and he wilted when he saw that almost all Aurora’s units were out of commission. He was such a kind king, don’t know about good with money… but still happy to serve him and still be on retainer for the castle.

“What do you think, since you don’t see any fire types on this side of the bridge that aren’t friends or at the very least friendly?” I answered the unspoken question anyway. Most of our injured were burned or brutally battered beyond belief, their spirits were willing even if their bodies weren’t and even the five buizels on the mend were still wanting to get back in the fight.

Evan looked to Teddy Griz was acting as our last line of defense, with a Torchic that once hired Team Harmony for training assistance and a Cyndaquil from the enemy side that decided to switch to Aurora’s side. Should our last few friends holding the north go down, then Griz was the last ditch effort and I’ve done my best to keep him standing.

I had quickly destroyed the five Bullet Buizel’s notion that they even could get back into it with their injuries.

“Come on guys, we need to get over there!” Evan had the three Rockruff brothers with him as he charged across the bridge. “Is that Captain Skeeball?!”

I looked to the northwest and sighed… mostly in relief.

-North side of the bridge, Favela-

We had a Sneasel, the Skiddo that was me, a Buizel, two Perverts of the Plains and a Muk that’s been actively tanking attacks for us to help protect his girlfriend who was one of those aforementioned perverts. Not to mention the Rain Dance Buizel was out of energy for all of his water attacks, I was out of energy for Surf and even if we did have water attacks… it really wouldn’t help given how much we’ve hit the flying Rapidash with.

“Neigh!” That better not be the last thing I hear from the Rapidash before I die, because it was pretty annoying that they were saying the word ‘neigh’ a lot. I think it might actually be a speech problem.

The Demon Rapidash with feathered wings twirled up in the air and then came diving right for us at high speed, we readied ourselves for more close up fighting with a physical powerhouse that was going to tear us apart inch by inch.

Just when the Rapidash would have hit Quetal as he readied an Aerial Ace attack, a massive amount of water slammed into the Rapidash from the side knocking the demon from the air. Looking at who was firing the attack, I saw Wilhelm the Wailord and on him was…

“Skitty Squad, Go!” It was Captain Skeeball, never thought I’d be so happy to see that weird feline.

Speaking of crazy felines, she and her Skitty Squad jumped into the hydro pump to ride it towards the Rapidash while rapidly rolling along the top of the Hydro Pump and their tails started glowing. “Unit Command, Wave Motion Fun!”

This would be a turning point, as the Rapidash actually took two Hydro Pump assisted Iron Tail attacks and three still quite as painful three battering tail slaps when the Iron Tails failed to hold on the other of the Skitty Squad members.

-Ignis north of the Hurricane forged vortex, ???-

I had to make things right, including admitting to and fixing my own mistakes. I would start by dealing with a problem that is going to plague all the kingdoms if I didn’t stop him here.

-Inside the vortex, ‘Blade Hoof’ Shanty (Title of ‘Captain’ possibly back in the running) and ‘Bio-Mechanical Bakery Bird’ Dodo vs. Lu ‘Backstabber’ Bu-

Shanty didn’t care if the water wasn’t exactly clean, even learning the fact that pure water doesn’t conduct electrical or lightning energy and all water type attacks from aquatic Pokémon definitely conducted said energy, she used her free right hoof to draw a massive ball of water from the Surf attack that had burst through the winds. She greedily chugged as much of it as she safely could while trying not to spill any.

The water had at least let Shanty know Favela was doing okay.

Drinking the water from a Pokémon attack was probably not entirely healthy, but Shanty seriously needed some fluids in her body. She wasn’t in the mood to be being too picky about getting at least some refreshment after nearly sweating herself out in the swirling flames. She would have preferred a flood of rum, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and Shanty was very much not afraid to beg for food and drink as needed.

It was ludicrous that Lu Bu hadn’t broken nearly as much of a sweat, he wasn’t even gasping for life like Shanty was on Dodo’s back as the metal ostrich prepared to face down the still quite deadly Lu Bu.

Dodo warbled a challenge to Lu Bu while spreading his small mechanical wings. He still hasn’t recovered his full size yet, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. Shanty on his back held onto him with her right hoof and raised her weapon in her left ready to continue a battle of losing attrition.

“Dodo, don’t be getting hit by that weapon, it is being very dangerous.” Shanty warned before she leaned forward and her heart beat synced up with her buddy as he dragged a right metallic talon along the ground and prepared to charge Lu Bu.

There wasn’t a sound to announce the fight starting anew, just Lu Bu bringing up his weapon in a defensive hold as he marched forward and was glaring down both Shanty and Dodo with a flat emotionless expression.

Dodo burst forward and Lu Bu swung his weapon when Dodo didn’t look like they would be able to stop in time. He would be proven wrong as Dodo stopped in an instant allowing his weapon to pass by entirely.

Lu Bu’s weapon having badly whiffed when Dodo stopped on a dime, the metal ostrich followed up the sudden opening by lunging forward with a left kicked.

Lu bu swiftly blocked the kick with the shaft of his weapon and tried to perform a kick of his own. His kick didn’t land as he took a blow to the underside of his chin for the attempt, when Dodo hopped up and kicked with his other leg.

Shanty followed Dodo’s attack with a slash across Lu Bu’s right shoulder to his left hip with her weapon, the damage was quite fleeting given he healed from it in seconds.

Dodo quickly hopped back and to the side to avoid being hit with a thrust as Lu Bu had recovered from stunning the blow alarmingly fast.

Lu Bu leapt after the retreating bird and brought his twirling weapon into an overhead slam, it transformed into an axe on the way down.

Dodo hopped back and then had to jump straight up to avoid the shockwave of cutting force that dug furrows into the several times abused dirt in the area.

Lu Bu wasn’t giving Dodo too much time to react to his next action as he leapt up after the metal bird and swung for him with the halberd.

Shanty deflected the blow from actually hitting Dodo with a quick swing, they were both knocked back and falling from the deflection.

Lu Bu immediately swapped his weapon to the Scythe to swing at Shanty and Dodo several times, launching several circular saw shaped blasts of air at them.

Dodo had to dodge frantically and avoided any chance of Shanty getting hurt as he maneuvered around the slicing air with slightly more agility than he had before he nearly died by being melted in lava. He eventually had to dodge away from the swirling wall of wind as the ground was shifting as chunks of rock and dirt flew, chunks of the ground shifted upwards and others crumpled.

Shanty held on as Dodo maneuvered the shifting land scape with her right hoof, she could feel or move her hind legs, but she could still channel magic through them. It certainly helped with staying attached to Dodo’s backside.

Lu Bu didn’t drop to the ground to chase after Dodo, instead he stayed in the air flapping his left wing for a moment to scrutinize Dodo and his quick moving form. Soon he started diving down for them spiraling at them.

Dodo dodged out of the way of the initial attempt to tackle him and nearly got his head slice off when Lu Bu swerved and swung out at him, only for Shanty to deflect the blow and Dodo dodged the next three with several quick rapid steps back.

It was readily apparently that Shanty and Dodo hadn’t had any practice at fighting like this, but they were making the best of the situation. Dodo being actively faster to react to things and Shanty being able to put up an impressive defense under the onslaught of constant blazingly fast attacks was wearing away at Shanty having to deflect them.

Dodo then stepped into Lu bu’s attack caught the shaft of his weapon by the wing and quickly stabbed Lu Bu in the left shoulder with his beak and backed off, only managing to do so successfully because Shanty deflected the close up attack of a chain and sickle that swinging for them.

Upon dodging the follow up sword swipe, Dodo opened his mouth and blasted Lu Bu up close with a rock hard square blackened thing.

Shanty didn’t know what kind of baked good that was and couldn’t identify what it could have been, but it hit hard and pushed Lu Bu back pretty well.

“Ugh… cornbread!” Lu Bu answered the silent question with quite an amount of distaste and some actual emotion for once, making Shanty wonder what Lu Bu had against cornbread… well when it was not blackened, rock hard and fired at an incredibly damaging velocity.

The square slab left Lu Bu with an injured eye for a few seconds before it healed and he took off high in the air.

“What is he doing?” Shanty asked as Dodo gave a distorted warble of concern at Lu Bu hovering high above them and pointed himself downwards while building up energy for something while angling at the center of the vortex. “Uh Dodo… do you be having any new tricks?”

Dodo warbled in the positive while looking at Shanty, a silent conversation passed between them.

“That is being nice for if we are falling, but you can’t be using it yet can you… so how about using my talents as your own?” Shanty had a bond with Dodo, she had seen Pom share her talents with Dolly. So why couldn’t Dodo use Shanty’s talents in the same vein?

It wasn’t like Pom had a monopoly on weird familiar skills… now Shanty was considering what it would be like to suddenly be capable of spitting baked goods everywhere or what other things she could get from Dodo sharing his talents with her. Shanty could think of several goods uses for super speed when only moving in a straight line.

It was around this point that Lu Bu pulled out his bow and notched the now arrow shaped weapon to the string and pulled back charging up the arrow with a large amount of raw energy.

“Dodo start climbing the wind, we be needing to attack him!” Despite Shanty saying that and it seeming to be impossible, the bird braid that was Dodo tried anyway trusting Shanty implicitly.

With a leap Dodo slammed his talons home into the wall of wind, Shanty immediately started sharing her talent with him and he started moving along with the wind while running upwards in a spiral. He and Shanty barely made it more than a twenty feet off the ground when Lu Bu announced his attack that could be heard over the roaring winds.

It was a fact that Shanty never questioned how she managed to hear him over all of the noise when he was speaking normally. Shanty wasn’t going to bother as she had more important things to worry about as she had to concentrate on giving Dodo her special ability to climb any surface… even odd ones like the wall so of wind they were rapidly climbing up.

“Shoot.” Lu Bu’s weapon was now glowing with a massive amount of energy, the arrow struck the ground with an immense amount of force and an explosion of energy rose upwards behind Dodo who doubled his pace to beyond breakneck to out run the contained blast threatening to suck them in and engulf them.

Dodo managed to outrun the energy wave with Shanty looking behind them fright as he leapt up and tried to deliver a spinning left kick to Lu Bu. Tried because Lu Bu Flew by and almost managed to claw Shanty with his talons as he entered a steep dive for where his weapon landed.

The marks in Shanty’s back were not too deep, but she was bleeding again. Dodo also got a bit scratched up, with a flare of his new wings Dodo flipped, twisted and began falling after Lu Bu. The mechanical ostrich didn’t like Shanty getting hurt and he most certainly wasn’t happy to hear her grunting in pain.

Dodo turned his head to Shanty as they fell and warbled worriedly.

“I’m being okay, I’m not be quite Pom levels of injured yet.” Well Shanty was trying to be convincing at the very least, but Dodo wasn’t about tell Shanty they were going to stop fighting if she wanted to continue.

Below them Lu Bu pulled the air from the ground and it turned back into a halberd which he readied and swung upwards when Dodo and Shanty were close enough.

With a flare of his wings spreading out, Dodo slowed his falling momentum immensely with some blue energy blooming forth from beneath his wings and an odd humming noise of a replicated Egg Mobile system activated. The halberd missed Dodo’s stomach by an inch.

Dodo lashed out with his right leg to grapple Lu Bu’s left shoulder in a crushing grip as he stomped down on Lu Bu’s face with his left, cracking his skull quite a bit judging by the noise before Dodo kicked off of him when Lu Bu’s weapon changed into wing guards and he tried to smash the spikes on them together on Dodo.

Dodo gave off a distorted angry warble while taking on an aggressive stance while facing off against Lu Bu.

Lu Bu charged Dodo and the metallic ostrich swung his beak to deflect the halberd with a decent power cutting arc.

Unlike Shanty, Dodo actually managed to knock Lu BU off balance. Dodo had more size and force to put behind Shanty’s blade arc technique.

Dodo followed up by launching a kick that was deflected by the back end of the shaft of Lu Bu’s weapon and with a back swing was struck across the chest in a screech of metal.

Wailing out in pain, Dodo staggered back with a painful looking rent opened around his chest.

“Please be being more careful Dodo!” Like Shanty needed to remind her big metal friend that she couldn’t currently walk and if he went down then she was next on the chopping block.

Dodo narrowly avoided the next three attacks from Lu Bu who was back to wielding his halberd within a second.

Lu Bu did seem to be running low on his red glow and looked to be almost out of power and seemed to be growing more and more ferocious for it in return by the second. There wasn’t an ounce of fear to be seen coming from the guy.

Lu Bu was still pressuring Dodo immensely and on occasion Shanty lent him aid with a swing or two from her cane scythe when she could work up more than the strength to just hold onto Dodo and give him her strength.

Shanty cut in to defend or even attack Lu Bu when Dodo created an opening with his beak deflecting their opponent to be balance. She even managed to score some decent hits of opportunity, as much as a small five second gash could be considered decent, Dodo kept backing away from Lu Bu and finding good opportunities to launch an attack.

Dodo suddenly lunged forward swinging both his small wings upward to generate arcs, only do be blocked when Lu Bu’s weapon shifted to wing guards and blocked both attack and he pushing forward with his to block Dodo from swinging his own. Shanty managed to get a cut across Lu Bu’s left leg, before she was almost stabbed by the sudden change in armament and was thrusting his sword for her.

Dodo hasty sidestep through the rider and himself off balance and flailing on his right leg with his left going upwards in a protective manner.

Lu Bu changed weapons and slammed his scythe like a hook into the base of Dodo’s right leg, he twist the blade downwards and pulled harshly toppling Dodo over.

At least Dodo made sure to topple in a way that he didn’t crush Shanty.

“You may work well together, but you still do not have enough power.” Lu Bu changed his weapon to an axe and leapt to hack at Dodo as a threat, compared to the rider.

“Riptide!” Shanty fired a blast of blinding water into Lu Bu’s face when he swung his weapon downwards.

After taking a moment to shake his head and clear his sight, he saw that his axe had missed and that Dodo had managed to not only evade the axe, but had also leapt over the cutting shockwave.

After a few steps, Dodo let a warble of pain and looked to his right ankle sparking and sputtering, he turned a glare back to Lu Bu.

Lu Bu’s weapon changed as he leapt forward raising his halberd high upwards for a lethal horizontal swipe.

The weirdest response to this was for Dodo to pluck Shanty from his back with his beak and then toss her forward.

Shanty quickly hooked the horizontally held halberd above Lu Bu’s head with her cane and swung her limp legs into slashing up his face and chest as she flew over his head and flopped onto the ground behind him.

Lu Bu went to swing at a prone Shanty’s neck when Dodo jumped forward with his left leg slammed into his side, with the red glow was getting less present by the second.

Lu Bu responded lashing his sword at Dodo who backed off.

Shanty slammed the hook her cane into the ground and heaved herself forward, using it to pivot into spinning on her back and slashing off several of Lu Bu’s tail feathers as she spun pass his backside to strike him twice.

“I tire of your struggling.” Lu Bu tried to stab Shanty, only for her to roll away and he tried to rip the sword through the dirt towards her torso.

Lu Bu would have succeeded in tearing her in half too considering how quickly he shoved the sword towards her trying to drag herself way with her scythe cane. If Dodo hadn’t dove to the side near him and fired an undercooked cupcake into his face, with the special and highly unusual ingredient of squid ink.

The distraction allowed Shanty enough time to hook Lu Bu’s weapon as he swung it wildly and blindly, his involuntary change in swing made Shanty go flying back to Dodo. Afterward Lu Bu quickly wiped the black inky mess away with his feathers.

Dodo managed to catch Shanty in his beak and put her back on his back, without aggravating her injuries much less his own.

“Too well coordinated… a connection like me and Red Hare.” When Lu Bu said that, Shanty and Dodo looked to each other with a bit of worry. “Hm-hm-hm…”

Lu Bu leapt back several times and his weapon change into a chain and sickle, he looked ready to charge forward when the Hurricane forces winds of the vortex were breached… and utterly destroyed.

Dodo and Lu Bu hopped backwards several times as Wilhelm, the Wailord transport and biggest member of the Skitty Squad plowed a path between them using a winged Rapidash’s body as the plow.

They watched as the whinnying monstrosity was basically being mulching under the whale’s girth in what was clearly one of this Pokémon world’s most devastating Giga Impacts going off.

Eventually the two stopped moving, the Rapidash struggling weakly to get out from under the Wilhelm’s nose and then fell unconscious after letting out a loud yell.

“Woo… that was close one my beloved knocked out hubby… victory for…. the heroic and…. fantastical… Skitty Squad.” Captain Skeeball stated while huffing and puffing, looking fairly ragged and her Skitty Squad looked to be barely standing.

King Evan and the Rockruff Brothers moved to help pick up a badly beaten Geoff and started transporting him across the bridge. The Muk was carrying injured Wooloo, Favela and Quetal had seen better days themselves.

Lu Bu who was staring at the fact that Red Hare had been beaten, after totaling at least five units worth of Pokémon by himself as a one horse army unto himself, turned back to Shanty and Dodo.

“You are just lucky to have even had enough forces to knock Red Hare unconscious, you’ll be less likely to do the same to me.” Lu Bu not caring that Red Hare had been defeated, he still wanted to conclude his fight with Shanty. “I will not be defeated unless I die standing.”

“…unfit for fighting, get them out of here!” Chan was yelling at Evan and the three Rockruff Brothers.

Favela whined and looked towards Shanty, but didn’t get a choice about where she was going when she was lifted up and carried off by one of the rock puppies.

“You hear that Dodo, the bird thinks he can be taking my head. Let’s show him why that notion is wrong!” Despite not being able to use her hind legs Shanty was in good spirits, Dodo was less confident with his right ankle being badly damaged by Lu Bu’s scythe blade. “My dream of horizons is not going unlived!”

Favela looked towards Shanty with a slight swell in her heart at those words.

“Horizons were mean to burn.” Lu Bu responded, his Hurricane arena having been broken by raw force didn’t bother him one bit. There wasn’t anyone coming to Shanty and Dodo’s aid.

“Hold out a bit longer Shanty!” Evan shouted as he started dragging the last Buizel across the bridge covered in nasty burns with his paws.

Lu Bu charged forward and changed his weapon to wing guards, he swung his right wing for Dodo and follow the rightward spin with a kick that dented Dodo’s belly and staggered him, Shanty tried to retaliate from Dodo’s back only to get a clang as the wing guards stopped her attempted cutting arc cold.

The weapon change was sudden and the waited end of the chain slapped out for Dodo’s head as the sickle swept around for Shanty’s neck, she slashed the sickle blade back with her right hoof and then swung her weapon to deflect the weighted end when it was swept back around at her skull.

Dodo lunged forward and attempted to skewer Lu Bu for going after Shanty, when his weapon changed in an instant.

“Parry.” As soon as Dodo’s beak struck the blade, cuts opened up along his neck… if Dodo needed his throat to leave he would have been much worse off than agony he was currently experiencing as he staggered back.

A quick switch of weapons again and the weighted end of the sickle and chain hit struck joint in Dodo’s left leg swiftly and without warning.

Dodo nearly fell onto his left side, but manage to stay upright with his right leg as the sickle end of the chain flew forth for his head.

The sickle was deflected by weak Shanty, who was quickly running out strength to give to Dodo as her own was flagging due to bleeding. She gave Dodo one particular talent that she knew Dodo would know when to use, like right that instant as Lu Bu swung his weapon having changed into an axe mid swing at them.

“RarrRRrr-!” Dodo warbled violently, managing to get the sound out even with the damage to his throat, he did so while spreading his wing. A powerful Pirate Shout barrier deflected the axe with impossible precision, Dodo could feel Shanty’s spirit was still going strong in the shout, even if her body currently wasn’t.

Dodo used Shanty’s spirit and his own to shout out the technique with enough force to actually stun physically Lu Bu, paralyzing him on the spot and leaving him open to reprisal.

Dodo slashed his left and right wings across Lu Bu’s chest created bloody mess in the shape of an X, then hopped onto his left leg despite how painful it was for the joint to bend even by the smallest amount and kicked with his right leg.

Even if said kick was agonizing on Dodo’s ankle, the kick carved its way up Lu Bu’s front in a painful cutting arc to send Lu Bu flipping backwards with a halfway broken off beak once Dodo’s talons struck home against his face. Landing on his face with a broken beak had to be even worse.

The red glow permeating Lu Bu’s body finally died out. Dodo teetered back and forth on his damaged legs, only to flop onto his backside and give off a distorted and painful sounding whine to Shanty.

“You be doing good enough Dodo… hopefully he be staying down after losing his glow…” Much to Shanty’s horror, Lu Bu still got up from that series of blows within the next twenty seconds, dashing her hopes that the battle was over.

Lu Bu pressed his right wing against the ground and pushed himself to be standing, his beak had fixed itself, but his chest now notably had a large X-shaped scar on it… he was no longer healing from damage at a rapid pace. Not that Shanty could take advantage of that fact, because his wounds had still sealed themselves in a ridiculously fast rate.

“You can be breaking our bodies, but never our spirits!” At Shanty’s strong and clear words Dodo struggled back into a standing position, but he looked anything but ready to go another round with the deranged warrior.

Dodo warbled in agreement with Shanty’s sentiment.

“You can break my body as much as you want, I will always get back up and end the lives of those who think themselves great warriors before me. Their tales end where mine continues.” So saying this, Lu Bu pulled out his bow and his weapon changed into an arrow again. The arrow started glowing with immense power as Lu Bu started backing far away and took aim at Shanty and Dodo with the bridge behind them. “Your weird shout defense will not stop this next attack, for this attack will pierce all in its ways.”

“Dodo… if we don’t get through this, I’m glad that you were my first mate.” Shanty was wracking her mind for what to do Dodo wouldn’t be able to cross that distance with damaged legs in time. “Also I’m not just a warrior, I am pirate!”

Dodo was still making the effort to move forward though, even if it killed the both of them Shanty was willing him into motion.

The glow of the arrow grew ostensibly brighter as Shanty and Dodo didn’t blink in the face of death.

“HYPER-…. BEAM-….” Lu Bu was putting every ounce of Hyper Beam strength into this one attack, he could do no less for such a wonderful battle. It was unfortunate for his opponent that even after having gotten through his Morning Sun armor, they would not survive long enough to bring him down and their fate was sealed. “-SHOOT!”

The arrow flew forth with devastating force tearing apart the very fabric of the world around it, even then Shanty and Dodo stood in its path with grim faces. Lu Bu admitted that they weren’t coward in the face of their demise, a lofty achievement in the face of true destruction.

The destruction and distortions of the world around the arrow as it flew promised death and both Shanty and Dodo didn’t move.

Quetal had made quite a good case for not letting the bridge be destroyed, the fire types would need aid after all this if they were willing to even ask for it. At least farming help from the grass types, but the grass types likely wouldn’t do that without Aurora being an intermediary.

The bridge absolutely needed to stay standing against the destructive wave coming for Shanty and Dodo.

That required a standing bridge, a people willing to bridge the gap despite all of Ignis’s attempts to burn away it’s good will and a less than reluctant country willing to help those in need like Aurora.

“Aurora will save Ignis, even if I die here!” Declared Shanty, and Dodo shouted alongside her, their spirits intertwining and the pressure wave from their combined shout, not vocal in nature, but their very spirits screaming into the void slowed the stupidly powerful arrow down immensely when the force of their spirits hit it.

The arrow wasn’t stopping though, its destructive power continued forward. The arrow slowly and literally eating its way through Shanty and Dodo’s combined spirits. Trying to shred their souls with raw force to break through their combined silent screaming and force of will.

“AHHHHHH-!” The light grew brighter in Shanty’s eyes as the arrow crept ever close to her and Dodo, they weren’t going to move aside.

“Yoink.” Suddenly the light died out and the arrow disappeared entirely from existence at the sound of someone’s voice.

Both Shanty and Dodo collapsed, the solid mass of destruction between them Lu Bu speaking more for the power behind the attack would have obliterated them on every level it feasibly could have achieved and then the attack just stopped out of nowhere.

Shanty looked up and blinked, she had a weak grin on her face and Dodo nudged her lightly with his beak she weakly raised a leg and started crying as she barely managed to get her leg around Dodo’s head. Her body was broken, but it seems this wasn’t her day to die.

“What… how… that’s… impossible… nothing could have stopped that attack until its completion!” Lu Bu yelled in shock, anger and a numerous amount of emotions passing by his face.

“Well now… I wouldn’t exactly say that, THRUST!” There was no amount time in which Lu Bu could have feasibly even reacted to the voice behind him… he was suffering from using every bit of Hyper Beam energy at once. The withdrawal left him frozen place to be stabbed with his own weapon through the back.

His weapon, in the form of the pronged sword, pierced through him violently and out the center of the X on his chest.

“X marks the spot as you pirates would say, heh...heh...” Said a halfway joyful voice before it pulled the weapon through Lu Bu’s body while twisting it violent, Lu Bu flopped to the ground and would bleed out in a minute due to multiple destroyed organs in that single devastating attack that caught him off guard from behind. He had no further strength to survive such a mortal wound. The voice continued a little bit quieter. “Sorry I’m late to the party…”

-Behind Lu Bu’s slowly dying form, ???-

“I am Hideyoshi Toyotomi current King of Ignis and I’m quite sorry for everything that’s happened to the other kingdoms… I apologize profusely and cannot possibly do enough to fix all the mistakes I’ve made, I will throw myself to your mercy. Please… don’t destroy my kingdom!” I moved forward beyond Lu Bu’s form and tossed Lu Bu’s infamous weapon forward and far in front of me, I bowed putting my palms on the ground and silently begged for help and would receive whatever punishment they decide is just. I would not use that weapon ever again if I could help it. “Please help me restore my kingdom… you can do whatever you want to me. Just… don’t hurt my people, if there is anyone to blame for all of this… it’s me.”

With tears in my eyes, I let myself be judged by the neighboring kingdom of Aurora.

-King Evan-

He did just save Shanty and Dodo’s lives, not to mention everyone else’s across the bridge, but he just basically ended Lu Bu’s… okay Evan you can do this.

I can’t smile about the way things ended here, but I can at least try to help him fix things if he’s being genuine in his need to do so. I was a king and for once in my life… I had to act like one for real.

“I am King Evan of Aurora, I cannot truly judge you solely alone, for Greenleaf too was greatly wronged. They should be in on the decision I cannot make here alone in a given instant or haste. Though I appreciate you saving the lives of my friends and possibly everyone on the other side of the bridge to the south who could not move due to injuries. Should that attack have continued for miles, a lot more deaths would have occurred here.” I closed my eyes and though on what to do with the Monferno. The blue browed, orange furred monkey with the flaming tail was still bowing down, blubbering and groveling on the ground. After such an amazing feat of power as what he just pulled off, that he even threw down the weapon showed the spirit of his character… when he could have continued the bloodshed and taken Aurora for his own. He likely saw the injured… he was not a conqueror, he was someone who understood that he’s made some major mistakes. “To that end, I bade you end the civil war in your country with haste and tell your people what they need to hear to continue on without your presence for long enough to acquire a judgement, then remand yourself over to the custody of Aurora. We will treat your kingdom with the respect it deserves, but should they fight us we will not hold back. We will be contacting Greenleaf about all of this.”

The Monferno let out a tearful howl, possibly both in relief and grief.

Being a king was hard work. I think Hideyoshi understood that, considering he came here alone to throw himself at the mercy of the kingdoms for not keeping his civil war within Ignis. I trusted he would do the right thing.

There was the only other reason he came here alone without an army backing him… he was going to try and talk down the rebels by himself no matter how stupid that may have sounded to do alone.

In fact… that was something I would have done personally.

I looked to see Dodo was breathing, if what he could even do that with a perforated neck.

As for the goat… Shanty wasn’t.

“Chan, emergency!” I shouted with alarm, the Chansey was a blaze of speed to help Shanty where she laid.

Shanty wasn’t the only severe injury around, as I soon spotted Smolder on the ground barely breathing as well.

-Kingdom of Violight, Castle Jail Cell, Pom-

“So we’ll be able to leave soon, we have character witnesses to prove we are not here on purpose much less mean any harm.” I didn’t feel happy about not being able to rush to the assistance of where I knew Shanty, Smolder and Ocellus would be. We needed a good standing with this kingdom, they were at least amiable and the peace discussions and rewritten alliances Maiden Jig were going well. “We can only hope and pray that our friends in Aurora are alright.”

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Curious.” I said calmly.

“Dad, that attack had enough power in it to almost match you doing a full powered and supercharged Judgment attack.” Ah yes, Mew was still reeling from the fact that the attack was stopped by that rather unusual trait of Hideyoshi’s. "There was quite a bit of divinity in it as well... I... don't quite understand how Shanty and Dodo managed to slow it down."

The ability to steal a mystical weapon from the user, no matter what that weapon may be doing at the time and be able to use it as the user does to a limited ability.

What an interesting monkeyshine that was, but now the monkey seeks to make amendments for all the trouble he’s caused.

Will Hideyoshi succeed…. or not? There’s also the one called Tamamo to keep an eye on, a shiny Ninetails.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Arizona-

“Hey now, it’s nice to see you guys too… but uh... do you have to be so comfy?!” It was nice to see Pepper, Tamale and Kayamba Paca. Kayamba was better known these days as Rattle the Snow Cone King. I was sandwiched between all three of them.

Pepper nodded and made several gestures that I understood from having been around Paprika long enough.

“Huh, you don’t say…” I then saw Tamale wink at me and waggle his brows. “Yeah, yeah, rub the pun in that you guys don’t talk.”

As far as in-laws go, these three were easy to get along with, provided Tamale and I could get into a bit of a scrap later.

"Wait... who's watching all your Cria?" Thankfully my worries were put to rest when Pepper made some gestures that things would be alright.

Author's Note

Shanty has a lot of offensive power, she has seldom used the full scope of it until now. She has mostly used it for incapacitating. Here she was trying to use it to stop Lu Bu.

Cu Chulainn is on par with Lu Bu in a close range fight, however since Lu Bu here isn't full berserker that a summoned version of him might be there were some differences. Also Lu Bu was very much weak to hit and run attacks, but fighting him power to power would have ended in disaster.

Hideyoshi- Has Blade Taker: Sword Hunt, but since he isn't summoned he doesn't have to worry about 'Child of the Sun'. If there were any 'Child of the Sun' effects, it would be related to his evolution. He'd be at peak power for years as a Pokémon.

308. Doused Flames.

-Equus, Ponyville, Sweet Apple Acres, Arizona-

“So while there are some slight issues with Velvet’s body that might cause some complications, our kid inside her is at least doing alright. The reason her body temperature is entirely off is because the baby is making her body run hot which…” I trailed off remembering what Dr. Bones said about Velvet possible complications, I wasn’t going through life without a reindeer to beat me up and Velvet would be that reindeer.

“Is bad for reindeers considering they live colder climates that’s more fitting for their biology, but doesn’t her visiting Huoshan a few times help with her resilience to higher temperatures?” Applejack finished knowing how worried I was about Velvet. “At least Hearth’s Warming is easier for you.”

“Yeah that’s true. She does have some resilience, but it’s still kind of a problem for Velvet to be going through all this what with Paprika being distant to the both of us too. At least she still cooks and leaves stuff out for us to eat.” I sighed loudly, then perked up slightly. “So need a carpenter to help fix your stuff pro bono? It’ll help me advertise my work and won’t exactly be a problem to me.”

“Awe come on now Arizona, I don’t want you working for me for free just because we’re friends. We Apples try not to be charity cases, no matter how nice your mother is… bounty hunting aside.” Applejack’s brother Big Mac was expecting his first foal with Sugar Belle and I thought I’d offer some neighborly ‘weirdness town’ help, Applejack was rather ecstatic for her brother and so was Apple Bloom.

“I insist Applejack, besides I need to work on my strength for the Tambelon mission.” If I were any other cow, I wouldn’t have the capability to drive nails into wood with my bare hooves. I’m not any other cow though, I’m Arizona ‘Earthshaker’ Arid and I really don’t need that much money to get by. Velvet on the other hoof was high maintenance to Paprika’s exceedingly low.

“Yeah, I kind of have to do that too, Pinkie says it’s going to be a Doozy and a Humdinger of a bad time. Twilight doesn’t want us endangering ourselves, but she should know better than to leave her friends out of a right mess she could use some help with.” Wonder if Applejack would like a sparring partner? Fœnum Arizona was getting stronger by the day and might be a bit younger than me, but Applejack would be a good test for how far she’s come. “Consarn it all, I know she has a lot on her plate with being a fancy ruler and all, but we’ve gone through a lot together and she’d be crazy to think we’d stop helping her now.”

“Yeah, nice, brainy, but gets stuck in her own little headspace a little too much, got some contracts with her when I accidentally ended up in Canterlot Castle and had to fix the damages my body caused by plowing through multiple walls after a training incident.” That was after the incident where I was testing how many ‘wobble counters’ we could do before it became too much. Paprika could hit really hard. “I swear a lot of carpenters and architects in Equestria are more about aesthetic than function given how quickly buildings break apart in dumb ways. I reinforced the entirety of Canterlot Castle and made it basically impossible to topple over or damage easily without the whole mountain coming down with it. Even then I made sure that castle would remain mostly intact in such a scenario, mom is proud that I have a vocation that can make up for all her destructive and over the top tendencies when she’s not doing bounty hunting stuff.”

“Well that explains Rainbow Dash’s complaints that she couldn’t literally crash Twilight’s days, really ought to talk to that mare about who she really wants to crash into.” Applejack rolled her eyes and there was a faint hint of a blush dusting her cheeks. “Still nice to know you can Rainbow Dash proof anything… can you do it to my home and everything around here and how much would that exactly cost us?”

“Depends on materials you want to use, weather pony proofing wood isn’t hard. If you want to really make sure Rainbow stops crashing into things for the fun of it, then I’m going to suggest some really solid bricks to really make her start paying attention to where she’s actually going.” Built tough, cow tough, because my mom was an explosively destructive nutcase when it came to making and using explosives in any situation. Mom’s definitely earned the ‘Mad Cow’ title as a bounty hunter and no bounty would be dumb enough to believe that she isn’t going to make at least one thing in her vicinity explode when a target is spotted. “Also there’s a discount for practically being family given. My mother gets along with all of you so well… when she isn’t actively lighting a stick of dynamite and chewing on it.”

“If I didn’t know you’re mother very well, I would think she was a complete idiot to even keep doing that.” Applejack did know my mother very well though, my mom takes every opportunity to drop in on the Apple family to make sure they were getting on and that’s when she wasn’t bugging me about the grandchildren she and Kuril were getting ready to spoil into the ground.

I seriously missed my pa on days like this where I had time to think. Fortitude and Flamberge were some good pals, but since they are usually off doing something ludicrously danger and to the tune of eldritch, abomination and eldritch abomination, I rarely got to hang with them. I guess I could get to know my diamond dog construction team a bit better.

“My mom has a literal taste for explosions Applejack, she can tell you the exact yield and what was used in any explosion just by seeing the aftermath of said explosion. She’d even know the minute details of the accelerants, retardants or other things that might have affected the explosion in a variety of ways. She’d actually know far more information than anyone would be comfortable with if she was actually caught up in said theoretical explosion, provided she wasn’t the primary cause of it.” I was beginning to believe my mother actually held no fear when she fought and killed that massive world snake that Pom once lived around with her canines.

“It’s still a might bit terrifying to know we got someone we can turn to who’s as tough as she is that knew my parents, then there’s you Arizona and our family has other friends too if we ever needed help. Never been so afraid for and of someone who is that much of a thrill seeker that even Rainbow won’t last three days in her presence.” Applejack that was putting my mother way too nicely, ‘thrill’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. "If we absolutely need help, we'll definitely ask for it."

My mother walks into a bar is becoming a common lead in to the question of, how quickly did it explode?

“Well you can also turn to Grace or Calloway, my mother’s closest friends are good cows… also it’s probably safer to get Grace’s aid on anything and it’s just a quick trip to Airship Mauled… unless Grace is in the Chaos Realm with Veles again. I’ve stopped questioning that relationship or how it’s working, it’s kind of like watching Discord and Fluttershy interact.” We both nodded at that, no need to think about that can of worms too hard. “So back to the topic at hoof… how much Rainbow Dash proofing are you looking for and how much do you want to annoy her? I know you think she's cute when she's upset.”

-Pokémon Realm, A day later, Aurora Infirmary, Dolly-

“So what’s going on with you guys? You already know what’s up with me, strange worlds full of really weird creatures Dylan is definitely jealous that I’m getting to meet.” Pom left me here to tell her if Smolder or Shanty woke up, Dodo recently did and he was worried about Shanty.

Dodo was eating quite a bit of metal and food to heal from all the damage he took in that fight.

I was missing a small spot of weight on my back, Lit was with Pom in making sure the fire guys weren’t causing any more problems personally.

“I’m pretty sure there’s a world out there where Poodle Wolf is an actual real thing Dolly and you’re living the fantasy world dream, of course he’s going to be jealous. Also if you want interesting then there was a thing with a ‘painting vampire’ Da Vinci destroyed the other day at the art museum.” At Dante talking her up, my shy puppy sister blushed and looked away.

“It wasn’t that big a deal.” The quiet voiced nervous artist stated. “I just didn’t know a paintbrush could even do something like that.”

“Nice, would like to hear more about that Da Vinci, bet it must have been scary… probably not as scary as some of the stuff I’ve been through though.” I was happy my family was getting into some weird stuff and were actively having their own adventures.

I just hoped they stayed safe… gah, I’m turning into that safety dork Dylan in my head.

“That still went far better than some of the things I ended up doing with your ancestors, art is a form of magic all its own Da Vinci and you really saved the day.” Spot the zombie chicken said while sighing and crossing her wings. “Our Bark brigade unit would have been proud of that particular accomplishment... warms my metaphorical heart even.”

Speaking of adventures, who knew that the King of Ignis, Hideous I believe his name was, used to be a farmer? I certainly didn’t, also his parents apparently hated him. King Even shared an oddly curious understanding with that Hideous guy. I didn’t envy his position of having to talk about what to do with the fire monkey after he killed the Low Blow guy. Blood Rabbit was also still around and detained, didn’t know what we were going to do with a magical flying fir horse with a horn.

“Still, things are a mess around here and Pom keeps asking if Shanty or Smolder are awake yet, not much we could have done to stop this from happening. I’m not currently worried about Pom, she has Shiny, Dazzler, Frizzy and Lit with her.” It was still kind of lonely without Lit on me, I was getting too used to him climbing all around on my back.

“How’s the kibble situation Dolly?” Dante couldn’t do his future sight thing across dimensions, he still cared enough to ask about one of my major problems.

“It… is… fine…” I said slowly with my left eye twitching.

“Yeah, Dolly’s going through withdrawal.” Sighed out Da Vinci. “Remember when Dylan challenged her to go an entire week without eating kibble and only eating alternatives?”

Several of the puppies present on the screen shuddered.

“Yeah, yeah, I know I can get a little… anyway how goes getting into the contact with the Mighty Clucks?” I asked because Pom did want to keep up on that situation.

“They are happy that Canard Thunderbeak is alive and that we sent them several screenshot pictures proving he survived his dire circumstances.” Dawkins answered while giving me a curious look. “Also it’s ‘ducks’ Dolly, Mighty Ducks. The Mighty Clucks is a team of baseball playing super powered chickens… still odd that that’s a statement I can say out loud and not sound like I was completely insane dog.”

Says the guy likely dating the robot dog he made, so I wouldn’t exactly discount the insane thing.

Hockey playing alien ducks and super powered baseball playing chickens, what was even the major difference there?

“She’s avoiding the issue...” Da Vinci stated while giving me a sad look.

“Look kibble doesn’t grow on trees, but at least I have things I can eat around here… it all tastes pretty strange and new, which has been a plus in my book.” Not that it was helping me get over my slight lack of kibble. “My sense of taste is going where no dog from our world has gone before and that’s something I’m enjoying.”

“Yeah, speaking of going where no dog has gone before, Mars was quite nice. Wish it didn’t have moderately evil Martians on it though.” Dylan said walking onto the screen in a space suit with a lot of burnt bits on it and dripping with white fluffy goo stuff. “Guess what, dream achieved sis! Still going to stay in the McDuck space program even with the weirdness the McDuck family tends to attract.”

“Dylan you’re back! That was actually kind of fast…” Dante stated while looking over our brothers damaged space suit a few of the other puppies were giving Dylan a worried look.

“Yeah, the regular Oxychew was definitely better being relabeled as the dog flavored brand.” Dylan stated as he started to peel himself out of the battered spacesuit that looked to be heavily armored. Some would say the caution was going overboard, anyone who knew McDucks knew better. I knew the need of having some decent protection around those guys. “Mars was as amazing as I thought it would be! Again, the Martians had to ruin things slightly, but all in all it was fun and the McDucks have put me on standby for a while after that adventure.”

“So did the burn marks come from the martians or…” I asked slowly.

“Launchpad crashed us back into the planet like ten minutes ago… I just survived reentry and he happened to crash the landing pod in London, I figured why not see my family while I’m in the area.” Dylan stated bluntly with a shrug and an easygoing smile that seemed unnatural on his face. “It’s kind of terrifying that I’m beginning to actually trust that I’m going to survive it every time as long as Launchpad is the reason why we’re landing in any way, shape or form. Still not getting in a submarine with him again when it comes to underwater space training camp, I’ll just say that I’m entirely thankful for the existence of giant friendly kaiju krill and leave it at that. Launchpad apparently finally satisfied his crashing bingo card too. I bet the insurance company that owes him now is going to be impressed that he survived an orbital drop going twice the speed than a normally safe orbital drop… the only reason he doesn’t have that as a world record is because Donald got to it first by surviving going three times the speed of a safe orbital drop in a literal screaming metal death trap. I did have a little freak out when the parachute wouldn’t deploy at the right time. When the parachute ripped off entirely then deployed perfectly afterwards, that was annoying, but apparently that wasn’t such a huge issue as the insides of the pod catching fire spontaneously. Thankfully the fire extinguisher promptly exploded.”

“Are you okay bro?” I just stared at Dylan and he stared back at me.

“Perfectly fine… though the nightmares and mental trauma of it all will never likely end.” Dylan flopped onto his back groaning.

“… HUG!” I shouted immediately and despite not being there, every Dalmatian in the house swarmed Dylan immediately. Most of them avoiding the discard and damaged spacesuit.

“Thanks Dolly.” Dylan mumbled from under the pile of puppies.

“No problem bro, I’ve got my own things to get back to. Talk you guys later, Bow-Whacka-Wow!” I shut the D-vice’s connection to home and then put it back where it belonged in hanging from my neck. Nice to see Dylan got what he wanted.

I went back to watching Smolder and Shanty, nice to see Dylan got his dream job and it wasn’t like that was the first time he survive sky diving without a parachute.

Ocellus was at Smolder’s side and she was taking care of her while I watched over Shanty. Dodo was still fixing himself, somehow, by eating metal and food. I’m not questioning my friends and family on their abilities when mine were downright bizarre.

Everyone in Aurora was kind of messed up at the moment and Pom was the only one keeping Aurora’s border secure. The thought did bother me a little, but Pom was always reliable. I checked in with her and let her know my family was doing fine and she seemed relieved to hear that the Dalmatian family was still going strong.

-Between Greenleaf and Aurora bridges into Ignis, Pom-

As bored as I currently was, I wasn’t going to jinx anything as long as things here stayed quiet. Most of Aurora’s units were out of commission. Geoff was surprisingly the only one fit for duty as a militia member and he was staying within the border of Aurora and the Bidoof were currently taking down the wall between Greenleaf and Ignis. Even the Muk who was apparently fairly tough was out of it.

Now that I know a Muk was a large pile of living toxic sludge, I tried not to think about things too hard when it came to his girlfriend being a Wooloo on Geoff’s team.

“Pom.” I jumped and shrieked a bit and then calmed down when I noticed it was just Dazzle. “Sorry, I know you’re a bit tense with two of your girls getting seriously hurt. They are fine and in good care at least.”

“Yeah… they are.” I decided to sit down and let my heart travel back down from my throat, my nervous shivering was clearly not that of any form of excitement.

“There, there, it’s okay Pom.” Dazzle carefully hugged me and my shivering slowed down.

“Yeah, because we’re here to help keep the peace!” The Torchic and Cyndaquil were here and apparently became quick friends after Lu Bu’s demise.

Yay, two Pokémon… my mind certainly wasn’t currently a mess of anxiety and cynicism, oh no I was very bright and happy at the moment…. honestly now!

Sighing I looked to the right at what would eventually be a small lake from an attack that had been aimed at Shanty. The raw power of that attack could still be felt in the air, what horrors did Shanty face to ensure that attack didn’t destroy the connection between Ignis and Aurora?

“You have our unit at least as well, we Litleo of the militia tried to stay neutral through the whole thing and tried to keep it contained. We’re sorry we clearly couldn’t do more to stop this.” The fire lion stated while drooping as he and five others approached. “We heard news that Hideyoshi was going to announce something important today.”

“Then take a seat and hope everything happens.” Because I was expecting something interesting to happen, it was more unlikely to happen.

“Doubt that, it seems Ignis and the ambitions of those who would conquer has been very well truly doused since the rebels heard of Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu’s deaths and Red Hare’s capture.” The lead Litleo sat down with us and seemed to be considering things. “Yet, Hideyoshi isn’t happy with how things turned out, so that explains whatever he’s going to announce. Hopefully it’ll fix some of the unrest still happening in Ignis.”

“Mmm…” My noncommittal grunt was followed by me looking to the sky, my girls and I kept running into so much trouble. Some of it was self-inflicted by me having too strong a conscience. I had hoped to draw danger away from the girls and it still came to them, so it wasn’t just me that drew trouble like a moth to an erupting volcano.

At least Ocellus was fine, but that Lu Bu guy’s killer aura and malice had terrified her almost to complete speechlessness even if it wasn’t a bad headache for her to begin with. Not that Shanty fighting him ended very well either, but she survived mostly on her own merit so there was that. I’m not even sure what Evan was going to do with Lu Bu’s magical weapon, but it was something no one wanted to wield given the dangerous feel it gave off.

“So what’s Pugilis like if any of you have been there?” I already know fighting types and fighting tournaments were a thing. “I’m asking more about the landscape, the general region and not the people who are bound to be constantly training and achieving peace by constantly preparing for war.”

“Fighting types usually aren’t that bad, but they can run as hot headed as fire types sometimes. They just like exercising a lot more than most Pokémon and are consistently active.” The Litleo then sighed. “That’s not what you wanted to know about, usually they live in a relatively hilly region, have some light forests, grasslands and lots of dojos… dojos are a given in Pugilis where fighting styles are kind of everywhere and everything there. In any case the kingdoms castle is just one big dojo built at the base of some mountains in the center of their holdings and have pathways leading to various other places including Violight, Chrysalia, Illusio, Terrera and some say there’s a pathway to the Fairy Type kingdom Titania between Chrysalia and Illusio. The Fairy Type Pokémon are a bit reclusive and well hidden, so nobody is sure if those rumors are true, but there are fairy types around Chrysalia and Illusio so there has to be something to it.”

“Well that’s nice to know.” I was curious about some of the things he just told me, but really small talk was just to pass the time. “So… beyond the volcanic landscape, what’s Ignis normally like culture wise?”

“Well the mildly volcanic mountainous aren’t eruptive though they do spill lava sometimes, brown grass is the norm where plant life is concerned and plenty of flatlands around here. The resources here are more towards goods in the form of metals, but this region is lacking in food and some medicinal resources. The most any Pokémon really needs to use around here is a Rawst Berry for burns, oran berries for healings, but for advanced sicknesses… well if the rebels didn’t mess with Greenleaf then we’d be able to get our medical supplies from there. The air is dry, but constant warmth, we fire types like the heat of this region, but as far as farmlands go the soil is good quality in only specific areas where the mildly volcanic activity won’t end with crops getting burnt up by lava. Recently Hideyoshi kind of caused a lot of issues with trying to build up the region and as you can guess things went down here before Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu perished.”

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“What are you going to do with that father of all?” Mew asked as I held the soul of Lu Bu in front of me with raw power and scrutinized it closely.

“Nothing more than keep it locked away, we wouldn’t want the invasive ‘Moon Cell’ to get a dangerous pawn to summon.” I just had to keep the soul off the board and try again, Lu Bu’s soul was quite fierce and trying to regenerate a body from nothing.

It was quite amazing how powerful some mortals can get through sheer force of will. Lu Bu was a monstrous fighter to the point that he’d even fight his own death.

Had I let him create a body out of his soul, he would have had a chance to permanently destroy himself completely if that body were to be destroyed.

-Nearby, Tamamo no Mae-

It was her, the very depiction of that mystical statue! She was gorgeous and would be a good husband for Tamamo… there were a few problems though.

I noted the biggest problems I could sense about her as I looked over her adorable form. She was a masterpiece that most true canines could appreciate.

The first problem I noticed was that she didn’t have the golden wool of her kind.

The second problem I noticed was that she didn’t have the magnificent feathered wings for flying.

Lastly where were her guardian the constellation canines? She was obviously connected to one… two? Well she was connected to some canines at least, I can feel something like that.

I could definitely feel she was a Chrysomallus though. She was a golden ewe yet… she didn’t look it? Was she hiding her powers or did she not know she even had them? I could feel the power she should have, but it seemed… off as if she was passively using it in some way.

Okay, Tamamo, no need to be nervous. Approach her with good cheer and maybe… she wouldn’t mind me following her around for a while.

The Chrysomallus wasn’t strong in body, but I definitely knew strength via raw perseverance and a stubborn will to keep living when I saw it. I also saw something like suicidal thoughts and wanting to give up on life. It was a conundrum seeing so much anxiety in someone so gifted with a uniqueness. She had a legend to her too, like Lu Bu did before Hideyoshi apparently took him down.

I started to move towards the warmth, the attractive aura, the blazing inferno of a beauty that my sense couldn’t let me look away from.

It lit a fire in my chest just to be this close to her, she was like a bonfire to be in the presence of and I just had to talk to her!

-Pom-

“So Chrysalia will continue being allied with Violight and now Aurora and the other kingdoms, I know they’ll help the kingdoms if there is trouble on the rise… they are the major purveyors of honey and have the large fruit orchard in the world!” The Grubbin stated with good cheer, he apparently happily followed us out of Violight and hasn’t stopped since.

I glanced at Lit and he made a shrugging motion before squeaking, yeah I get the feeling that he was excited to be exploring the world too Lit.

“Why are you here?” I mean, I didn’t mind him being here, but this was the same traveling Grubbin who vouched for the character of my friend and me to Ginchiyo despite not having known us for long when we met up before going into Professor Pong’s laboratory.

“To help of course, I also want to be friends with you too and you seem like you’re well-traveled!” Aw the Grubbin was just as sweet as Lit. “Traveling alone is kind of lonely… and I want someone around to be a witness to me becoming a Charjabug!”

Apparently there was a difference in Bug Type Pokémon when it comes to a difference of being speech capable or not. Lit was one of the ones that wasn’t speech capable, but he definitely understood spoken languages and wasn’t as simpleminded as his appearance may make him seem to be. That Lit understood Dolly was interesting in and of itself.

“Well okay then.” It was curious that Grubbin seemed full of life and enjoyed so many things.

“Um, excuse me, hello I’m…” Turning to the fox with multiple tails something in me made me stare her down in the eyes.

Soon I was narrowing my eyes and whatever enthusiasm she had to talk to me the nine tailed fox put all her tails between her hind legs.

Kitsune, Tenko and Teumessians among other magical foxes were not unknown to the world of Equus, this fox was a local version of a kitsune. It was definitively a Pokémon version of a kitsune, I could see the bright eyed hope in her eyes die quickly as I saw something deceptive in what she was about to say before my stare made her stop.

She had gleaming silver fur that looked soft and the tips of her tail were blue, she was majestic looking from outward appearances, but… There was something in her eyes that told me all I needed to know about her.

“No.” I said simply, everyone was looking between me and the fox and she wilted her ears pulling back, she flinched harshly as if I had just slapped her physically. “My name is Pom Lambchop. Whatever it was you were about to say, even if it was entirely in jest, just don’t.”

“Okay…” She said quietly and looked like she wanted to collapse in on herself. “I’m… Tamamo no Mae.”

-Tamamo-

Pom seemed so wonderful until I got up close, what I found was quite terrifying when she stared me down. I saw a looming shadow with a pair of glowing eyes glaring down on me when I was about to call her ‘my husband’. I felt so small under that massive crushing presence of her staring down at me.

I felt it, I would never be able to ever call her ‘my husband’, she read me like an open book before I could even begin to try and deceive her with my false cheerful act. If I tried to force it… she’d reject me to a level that would never stop hurting even worse than the eighty thousand troops I fought because I was thought to be a demon. I killed so many in the name of self-defense, but this wouldn’t be self-defense since she would be the one defending herself from my advances as I was the one that sought her out.

I couldn’t even think of making that claim now as she stared into my soul and put out the fire of any false affectations I could have piled on her from the start, Pom was not dumb and had immediately read my intentions fully even if she hadn’t known what they exactly were or where they were going. I just knew that if I tried from that point, she wouldn’t want anything to do with me.

The size of Pom’s spirit was ridiculous, I knew she was a Chrysomallus, but her presence alone dwarfed my own mystical and long lived life with such ease and she’s barely lived for more than twenty years. She wasn’t even actively doing anything.

I’ve heard of things called noble phantasms, spiritual power brought to life based on legends… but this… yeah… something else.

-Pom-

“So… what did you want to talk about Ms. Mae?” I said earnestly hoping that she wasn’t about to do something I would not appreciate.

“Several things actually…” Her mood was muted, but she didn’t seem entirely dead inside. She was far more dangerous than she appeared, that was for certain. That I even cowed her so easily was curious.

“You’re lonely aren’t you?” The reaction to that was stumble back and flop onto of her tails and shiver.

“Yes.” Ms. Mae answered honestly.

“Why?” I glanced around to make sure nothing in Ignis was going poorly and no army was marching on Aurora or Greenleaf.

“I’ve done a lot of bad things…” Tamamo was being far too honest, but I wasn’t about to force her to tell me what.

“Do you want a friend?” The look I received was one of utter astonishment.

“…” Tamamo let off a whining noise. “How are you so good at this?!”

“I’m generally good at reading someone’s character, you have a lot of regrets… killing isn’t one of them.” I said flatly.

“It isn’t… so why would make a joking offer of…” Mae continued and I cut her off.

“Who said I was joking, I just asked if you wanted a friend. It wasn’t an offer of friendship, I asked a yes or no question, a very simple one at that and you’re dodging of the question is making me curious.” I noted Tamamo’s ears perked up, but her tails stayed between her legs and under her body. “Let me ask you this again, do you want a friend?”

“… yes…” Okay, so I’m making progress with this weird fox named Tamamo No Mae who likely killed a lot of people, but not without a very good reason behind it.

“Now I want to ask… do you need a hug?” I heard a soft snort and looked to Dazzle who grinned at our interactions, she went back to looking around to make sure that we weren’t caught off guard.

“I would like one…” After Mae said that I just made my way up to her and hugged her gently, then started rubbing her back.

“Are the things you want to talk to me about violent or something inane?” I calmly asked as she leaned into my touch.

“No… nothing violent, I try not to kill unless they attack first and or were a bad faith actor.” Mae might have had some psychological issues. “Also it isn’t inane, I just want to ask if you know about what you are?”

“What do you think I am?” Please don’t say ‘black sheep’, that is one of things I’m trying to believe I am not. I certainly didn’t feel like one, I was far too different from the lambkin legends to actually be one.

“A Chrysomallus.” That… okay… yeah… wait… no… I… could it…

“Are you sure?” No…. no…. no, no, no… no definitely not, please don’t say…

“Yes, I’m quite sure.” Well Tamamo No Mae you just explained why a good portion of my life has gone the way it did, I’m also glad to have met Tianhuo at all.

“Well that’s a horrifying bit of news, how did you come to that conclusion?” It explains why I wanted to fly so much and my anti-magic wool properties.

“I’m not exactly of ‘this world’ if you catch my meaning and one of the things I’m good at detecting is magic, you’re unique brand is right up there with being related to a legendary flying golden ram.” Mae, this is something I really probably didn’t want to know. “You’re even kind of becoming a legend in multiple universes you haven’t even visited.”

I took a deep breathe, then said one thing.

“Aries Constellation?” It explained way too much, was I hyperventilating?

“Yes.” Tamamo seemed more worried for me now.

I was hyperventilating.

Oh Goddess Jiutian, the marmalade conspiracy was just confirmed… my people were right about everything!

-Dazzle-

What was a Chrysomallus and why was Pom shutting down right in front of us from hearing about it?!

Pom’s eyes went eerily blank and hollow as she sat down and barely blinked as her eyes stared off into the distance.

-Aurora Infirmary, Dolly-

Whoa, what the?!

Pom, are you okay, you’re acting a little…

“Dolly…” I could hear Pom’s voice as if she was in the room with me.

“Can you please reassure me that I’m not going to be sacrificed for something? I just… I need hear it from you.” Why what was going on Pom? Why would anyone sacrifice you for something, also you’re healthy and not nearly dying at moment so what are you going on about?! “I’m… having a major existential crisis at the moment… of the likes that would horrify my friends when they thought what they were seeing in me was just my combat potential. Even Oleander and Fred… Fred didn’t even see it… not even he could see… oh gods…”

“You’re kind of freaking me out here Pom… what’s got you so messed up in the head?” She was getting really depressed… no that wasn’t quite the word for what she was feeling. This... this was far worse.

“Arceus he knew… I ignored it for my own safety… I didn’t want to hear it… he knew I ignored it for my own safety...” Yeah, Pom, you’re not making a lot of sense. “The secret behind the golden glow of my wool…”

Is the world growing colder?

“Well… there’s one thing worse than being a black sheep in the lambkin culture... and I'm it... heh heh... I really don’t talk about lambkin culture much with my friends do I… hahaha… nobody has to know but those who heard Tamamo blurt it out loud…” Pom, do you need me to come running? “No Dolly I… this… Baa-Ram-Ewe… lambkin be true… lambkin be true…. lambkin be… CHRYSOMALLUS…”

Suddenly I felt something in Pom snap, the world suddenly grew lifeless around me as if something sucked all the color out of the surroundings. My eyes widened and I grabbed my skateboard and helmet to burst out of the castle in seconds.

I was blazing for Pom, she needed me, she really needed me right now for something extremely important… it was just a feeling, but I needed to pull her back from whatever was happening to her by being next to her.

By the time I got to her a few minutes later, I find her just laying lifelessly on the ground staring at the sky repeating the words ‘lambkin be true’ in her head a lot. With several of our worried friends and a strange nine tailed fox that seemed guilty of something.

“What did you do to Pom?!” Dazzle angrily growled at the fox. “Dolly wouldn’t be here if something wasn’t wrong with Pom!”

“I’m... I don’t know… unless… oh… oh dear.” The fox seemed to be wide eyed and horrified about something, I can deal with that later. “I think… I might have just made a huge mistake by telling her what she is.”

Didn’t matter, Pom needed me! I tossed my helmet to the side and leapt from my skateboard for her as I approached, I landed on top of her and put my paws around her neck and hugged her for all I was worth.

“Dolly…” Pom didn’t say that out loud, but I heard her voice through our connection. “Do you know what the meaning of ‘sacrificial lamb’ is?”

There was something about the question that I hated with an intensity like nothing I’ve ever felt before, Cruella De Ville... who was that, a girl scout cookie seller?

“Pom, hug me back, don’t do whatever it is you’re currently doing, hug me back!” She wasn’t paying attention to me and I wasn’t about to answer her question.

I looked at everyone standing around and then raised my right paw and slapped Pom across the face drawing an amount of blood from her nose.

Pom’s mouth wasn’t moving, but I heard her clearly.

I slapped her again.

“Pom, I need you to come to your senses!” I screamed, she wasn't responding to me. “Lit... I know this sounds dumb, but strike me with a bolt of lightning!”

I clamped myself onto Pom’s face, closed my eyes and grit my teeth.

I could hear Lit squeaking worriedly.

“Lit, just do it!” I begged, this was important. I instinctively knew what I had to do to stop whatever was about to happen and it required me to hurt myself. It was like a small part of me was urging me forward to knock us both out at the exact same time, something in my chest… my heart was guiding me. My heart and something else was guiding me… there was like a small bit of extra warmth clinging to it. “I promise little bud… everything will be okay…. just… just do it. Hit me!”

Lit closed his four blue eyes, gave an upset squeak and before anyone could stop him, my world exploded into pain before darkness took me and Pom.

-Aurora Kingdom, Castle Infirmary, the next day-

I awoke with scorch marks and bandages covering my body… Pom was covered in said marks too, there were tears in her eyes when I woke up and looked to her. I was right at her side.

“Dolly I’m… sorry… that you are connected to someone like me...” Gladly take a lightning bolt for you anytime Pom! I felt the immense amount of love in that statement when she said it mentally, but I did not get the reason why she apologized. “I know you would again… not that it'll help in the long run.”

I pulled myself up onto her chest and laid back down and rested my head on her to feel a slow somehow upsetting heartbeat, she just raised both her hooves and started hugging me.

I hugged her back, still relatively freaked out by whatever had gone wrong with her. I had felt it and still didn’t know what it was about.

“...” Pom just continued to keep her eyes closed and held me tight.

It felt like something inside Pom, a part of her, just tried to die really hard and I stopped it in time.

That something was still thankfully there though… I didn’t know what it was, but there was something in my heart telling me to never, EVER, let Pom out of my sight in the coming days until that horribly foreboding feeling went away.

-Tamamo No Mae-

I broke her by telling her exactly what she was… nice going Tamamo, someone offers you true comfort and friendship, then you immediately screw them up severely.

It doesn’t help that I don’t know how to make this right, but…

“If you want Pom to be better, you’ll have to find a way to reignite her spirit.” That was as much of an answer as I could give them to the problem at paw.

I couldn’t tell them exactly what had went wrong, that was up to Ms. Lambchop to discuss with her friends. I’ve already done enough damage as it is.

“Pugilis knows all about spirit, maybe they can help!” Evan stated, but I don’t think he quite understands what’s wrong with Pom. “Hey, where are you going?”

“To think about things.” I… would try to find a way to make up for what I’ve just done.

-Pom-

At least Smolder and Shanty weren’t awake to hear about this.

The world seems so dull now…. I think… I think Dolly is the only thing keeping me from…

I grasped onto Dolly tighter, holding onto her for dear life and she was doing the same to me.

She was an anchor, something to stay focused on like.... like Tianhuo.

-

.
.
.
.

Baa at birth with happy little form.

Ram through the battle of life until weary flesh is severely worn.

Ewe will eventually meet death, where from everything Ewe will be shorn.

For afterwards, it'll be as if they had never been born.

Author's Note

After having ignored the truth for so long, Pom knows she can't ignore it further.

She's had a very odd reaction to it.

309. Mangled Morale.

-Equus, Therapy Beach, Celestia-

“So I think something is really wrong with my wife and she was only making small talk…” It was nice of Tianhuo to be here for therapy. “Her eyes were so hollow. The only clue I have as to what might be wrong is that Ocellus mentioned Dazzle saying that it revolved around the word ‘Chrysomallus’.”

I couldn’t hold back my twitching ears or slightly flinching body.

“You know something?” Jaded noticed something that small, the rogue sun priestess was as mentally sharp as ever.

Of course Jade drew attention to it and now everyone was looking at me.

“Queen Novo would know the most about them.” This was kind of unusual to me, usually Jaded was an odd fountain of esoteric knowledge. Then again she survived thousands of years as nothing more than an incorporeal astral ghost, being the major reason why we even had this therapy group in the first place. She probably spent most of that time not looking anywhere close to the Lambkin and waiting for someone to save her. Still… I needed to ask. “Wait, why don’t you know anything about it Jade?”

“Pony Poseidon Nova Novo… ah, I’ve been meaning to look into the Marmalade Conspiracy! Never had the time what with my recent plot to flood Saddle Arabia going off in the next five minutes.” There was a long pause and now everyone was staring at the cat with the back length green mane. “What? The flooding is going to be a very exceedingly slow gradual thing, exactly like watching paint dry, people will be able to get to high ground quite easily before it becomes too big a problem over the next week. Plus it’ll quench the thirst of a lot of people… provided they sift the sand and salt out of the water correctly. Also it’ll destroy the country without hurting its people.”

“Jaded, where would you even have the time to set up something like... Ah right, you can make clones of yourself and they can get away with a lot of things.” Fizzlepop ‘Storm Queen’ Berrytwist didn’t even seem surprised, just mildly disappointed in the adorable Abyssinian known to be the ‘Evil Sorceress Mirage’ to the Saddle Arabians. Pulling out a water bottled she sprayed Jaded with it. “Bad wife, bad kitty, no destroying a part of a continent by somehow turning it into an ocean!”

“Meroaw!” Jaded whined under the assault of water spritzing her and the disappointment of her favorite unicorn.

Ah a thousand and one Saddle Arabian tales, Jaded’s historical exploits during that time period make for a fun read, the Rogue Ballad Din the first and Princess Jasmine Tea were exceptionally lucky to have Jaded teach them important lessons that led to them being happily married and having a lasting peace in Saddle Arabia. Well, at least for as long as they were alive… and provided Jaded wasn’t around.

Jade never did forgive the people of Saddle Arabia for waking her up from her enchanted nap early, quite understandable that the ancestors of those thieves are especially terrified of her. Still, it did give me the opportunity to avoid becoming a full blown goddess… for a few reincarnations at least. I miss being a queen bee with a hummingbird mafia boyfriend.

I really couldn’t stop or help myself from becoming a pony goddess. At least Luna was in the same boat as I was in, so I wasn’t as lonely in that respect.

“What’s a Chrysomallus, Celestia, also what is the Marmalade Conspiracy?” Twilight was scrutinizing me now and it wasn’t like this was going to stay hidden for much longer. “As annoying as Jade is, if it’s something she was going to look into, then I’m liable to believe that such a thing actually exists.”

“Well a Chryomallus is basically golden fleeced lambkin with wings and incredible mystical capabilities. From what I know, eventually becoming a master level fluffmancer is a given what with them having magical wool and I know they have a power of ‘Vitakinesis’. It kind of comes with the strong fluff manipulating abilities.” There had to be downsides to being a Chrysomallus, but I didn’t know the exact specifications. We would need to contact Novo for that information. “I think Pom knows what being one means and that is why she might have gone a bit… hollow as you say Tianhuo, especially if she knows something we are currently not privy to. We will need Queen Novo’s aid for a full idea of why Pom’s spirit might be broken to the point of acting hollow.”

“We’ll explain Vitakinesis first and then we’ll go into the Marmalade Conspiracy.” Anubis was now interested in the topic of discussion. “Celestia, if you will.”

“Okay, quick question Tianhuo… have you ever noticed people never getting sick when in Pom’s presence or that sickness quickly clears up if she’s particular friendly with someone? That or Pom having a close or deep connection with anything that always seem unusually full of vim and vigor?” It didn’t take long for me to receive an answer and Tianhuo’s answer spoke a lot about how much Pom puts into those she cares about.

Also in hindsight, it was pretty obvious given Pom was the world record holder for most familiars connected to a single individual.

“Yes, if the ‘Vita’ part of Vitakinesis means what I think it does… then all of Pom’s canines have never been sick unless they ate something wrong and then the sickness lasts for as long as it take them to throw up what made them sick in the first place. They are always so strong even in Pom’s absence and like her puppies here, they wait.” Okay, that confirms something very particular about her Tianhuo, considering the absurd number of familiars she’s able to maintain. Several barks of acknowledgement that they were being talked about was heard, said four puppies soon went back to playing once we were silent for too long and didn’t need them for something. Those Canis Minor must be a hoof full of trouble, but they were quite adorable and sweet natured. “Canines have always had an unusual vitality around Pom, even what is a usually slow moving stone guardian Fu-Dog that connected to Pom in Huoshan is far more lively and brimming with energy than would ever be natural. Fu-Dogs only tend to be highly active when defending a territory they deem worthy of their protection, the one still back home in Huoshan was slightly unusual in the fact that it actively wanders about helping lead people around the city when lost. We had to put a sign on it reading ‘Huoshan Guide’. He does this when he thinks our home safe and only returns swiftly when he feels someone is threatening its sanctity. He actually considers all of Huoshan his territory, but he protects and covets the place we live most of all as one of Pom’s familiars.”

…

“So wait, if Vita means ‘life’, does that mean Pom can heal herself?!” Twilight looked vaguely upset as if she was cottoning onto something bad. “How has she gotten so badly injured over the course of traveling through various worlds if she could always do that?”

“It can only be done if trained to do it actively and most importantly, properly, especially with someone to guide her in the knowledge of how to do so as there are quite a lot of limitations to it. The main one being energy intensive. Otherwise the consequences are quite dire. Far, FAR, worse than dying in many cases.” The muscular handsome jackal Anubis answered with crossed arms knowing something of the subject, given most gods and goddess do know of and can use Vitakinesis at least. Tianhuo looked worried and Anubis sat down next to her and calmly placed a gentle hand upon her back to caress and ease Tianhuo’s fears. “The passive form of Vitakinesis acts on its own, it’s always going when there is a loving connection. A weaker version temporarily works on those she is just a friend or friendly to, friendship absolutely requires her presence to work. Love, it almost knows no distance as long as she is in within the same realm as a loved one. A friendship connection only prevents Pom’s friends from dying of disease, sickness or lesser forms of poisoning. The passive form of Vitakiness will only heal the injuries of those who are closest to her heart, even seemingly permanent injuries will fade away, so a familiar or truly loved one can regrow new eyes, limbs or organs over time after a severe injury that is not an immediately killing mortal blow. Anything that causes instant death cannot be reversed through Vitakinesis and the ability can only bend the natural order of life and death ever so slightly, if death occurs Vitakinesis cannot return life once gone. A truly loved will always heal faster than a familiar, but both will only heal while she is awake and even faintly aware something is even wrong. Her life force might even be incidentally increasing the longevity of canines she likes that are not even connected to her. While the ability could heal Pom personally, again she has to actively know how to use it in such a manner and have intensely cautious training in it to do so safely… or she could accidentally kill herself if such an ability is misused in the wrong manner.”

“What’s the damage for misusing said ability?” A slightly wet Jaded was suddenly alert and her ears stood straight up, the look on her face was forlorn as if she was predicting something horrible.

“Gods and goddesses could lose or weaken their mortal shell immensely healing one mortal, otherwise we don’t have as nasty drawbacks or penalties. Gods are told to never upset the natural order if the being in question is bound to die regardless of whether or not Vitakinesis can extend their life by but a single day, we would not wish to extend the suffering of another unnecessarily.” As Anubis would know, given him being a well-known death god who’s actually good at therapy and capable of Vitakinesis himself, he can stop someone on the edge of death from dying and judge them. I might actually get over my terror of chickens… within the next ten thousand years if this therapy group holds up. I’ve already informed Twilight that if she dies she’d eventually be able to come back because she ascended, but the time she’d have to wait before being capable of coming back depends on how badly her mortal shell was destroyed, she needed to learn lessons in how to use it too. It may save her friends one day. “Anything else that actively uses Vitakinesis could tear or shred their very souls, a similar but not quite the same example is the existence of necromancers who tear their souls on purpose to live cursed half-lives. Ah, I sense your worry… do not worry about Skeletal Noria, she will live a full life she wasn’t allowed to live previously due to the natural order being upset, I have seen to that personally. Though her shifting to bones curse will remain with her throughout and her sense of smell will only return in her next life, she has earned that much. I believe it is quite humorous that she’s dating the world’s smelliest yak yes?”

“I am Fortitude the fantastically fragrant!” A voice in the distance to the west yelled, spooking us all. That was probably all the way from Airship Mauled if I had my guess. Loved what was done with the place, didn’t appreciate the airships landing on gods thing though.

“Back to the subject… A Chrsyomallus, being closer to mortals in nature, could shred their very existence if they are not careful. Some of us gods will say souls are sacred for numerous reasons, but in the case of Vitakinetic related soul destruction… the wielder’s soul is actually salvageable given the incidental tearing instead of purposeful, even when their body ceases to be. We can actually try to put them back together or, if it proves to be impossible, give them the mercy of reform after going through ‘The Endless Silence’ and hope they come out the other side better than going in.” Nobody asked Anubis what he meant by that. Even Twilight understood what ‘The Endless Silence’ was and Jaded shuddered as it was another word for ‘Limbo’ and Anubis was avoiding the word for Jaded’s sake. “As otherwise they’d be living a constant painful existence if their soul could never be restored properly in full.”

“Pom…” Tianhuo quickly looked away from us and off the eastern shore of Equestria out to sea at the flowing waters, the flames along her body barely flickering with anything approaching strength.

“Now as to what the Marmalade Conspiracy is, it kind of starts with two dragon gods named Bahamut and Tiamat and of course Queen Novo…” I started off and then told a strange tale and why marmalade had caused an incredibly large incident Novo would rather not be brought up ever again.

I still had to wonder if Bahamut ‘the volatile tester of heroes’ and Tiamat ‘the primordial waters of chaos’ actually need those taco and noodle carts to keep their scheme going.

-Pokémon World, the next day, Aurora Kingdom, castle throne room, King Evan-

“I know we don’t have any forces that can stop an invasion… also that we’d be doom if an invasion were to happen now.” I did, I truly did, but I wanted to help Pom with whatever was wrong with her. “We can’t sit by and watch her waste away!”

“I’m not asking you to sit by and watch her waste away Evan. She’s not wasting away either, but how she is going through the motions of living… it’s… disturbing to say the very least.” Maiden Jig was still running talks with Greenleaf about what we would do with Hideyoshi, he had made his preparations and was waiting to be judged for the trouble he had helped to start and I was required to be there in Greenleaf. “Even Arceus would be disturbed to see how lifeless she is. We Pokémon are always so colorful, vibrant and full of life… even Darkrai is colorful in his own way. There are no words for what is currently going on with Pom being even close to the ideal of living and Ocellus agreed.”

“Yes, she’s eating, drinking water and getting exercise, but she’s not talking to anyone… except maybe Dolly and that’s only because Dolly is attempting to do something positive through her connection.” I wilted entirely. “It’s… clearly not enough.”

“And you think forcing Pom to go to Pugilis under false pretenses is, we don’t have anyone to escort her or even keeping her safe.” You wanted to help her Maiden Jig, I know you do. Things are a bit busy around here, but I always wanted to make time for friends. Much like how Motochika was busy rebuilding Fontaine and he still sent me a unit of backup. A unit that was decimated by a Rapidash that we had prisoner. “The injuries from fighting against Ignis left our forces decimated and we can barely hold onto any of our borders. Pom’s outsiders are currently down Dolly and Ocellus who aren’t hurt, Ocellus wasn’t injured because she couldn’t even go near the threat that nearly wiped out the bridge and our medical camp to the south at the time. Chan is also overworked and we really don’t have much to spare… in the way of good will…”

“We could hire Team Harmony members!” I tried, because Team Harmony wasn’t just Pom’s group.

It consisted of most of the Pokémon that went to start living around Helper’s Hamlet, Pom unintentionally drew in so many friends that would work for very little pay if it meant Pom could have any emotion at all restored to her. In fact some of the friends she drew in were basically feeding off the appreciation of their skills like an Indeedee.

“With what, we’re barely making ends meet as it is with keeping our military units alive. Every military unit is severely injured and, again, Chan is overworked!” Maiden Jig… we could just ask them for help. “What Pokémon would literally do a commission for one Poké? Because that’s about as much as we can safely give, we’re a logistics nightmare Evan and you’re currently too busy working on making sure Hideyoshi isn’t outright executed by Greenleaf in the name of peace!”

“Any of them… would do it for Pom.” I was serious and I believed they would. “Just find someone willing to go and ask them. Pristi the Swablu, Eriflamb the Fennekin, Picochi the Minccino, Mr. Schlurp, that Torchic, the honedge, the Flabebe, we are not completely out of options here Jig!”

“If they get hurt trying to get her to Pugilis Castle and it ends poorly?” Maiden Jig sighed, her complaints were readily understandable. We were stretched too thin, too far and most of our friends were hurting for one reason or another. “How can you still have even the slightest of a positive attitude with all of this stuff happening and the world breaking down around us?”

“That’s easy, because you’re here as my administrator and my advisor Maiden Jig…” I said softly with a smile.

“Maybe Fiffi and Foffo can assist Chan with the medical issues… Pom’s group have that wagon in Helper’s Hamlet and that strange steel type Dodo could pull it…” Maiden Jig, I know you can stop looking at all the bad stuff happening and look beyond. “Dodo has healed quickly enough to be mobile and strong enough to pull the weight.”

“You kept this kingdom running without a king or a queen for quite a while. You were practically queen in all but name, yet you never wanted the title personally for yourself.” The looked I received from Maiden Jig was quite focused on me and there was a slightly angry pout she had going. “I’m here to hold that title for you and make sure you don’t lose hope, like you didn’t when the kingdom was being run on a really small budget without a king. Jig, you’re an amazing Pokémon.”

“I am aren’t I… okay fine, we’ll see if there are any spiritual healers in Pugilis that could help Pom, we’ll even give those going a letter to deliver to King Yoshihiro. If it goes poorly, I blame you. Pom’s team will have to be with her on that wagon injured or not. They need at least three healthy Pokémon outside the travelers that can be spared.” Of course Jig, but I already know one Pokémon that would volunteer in an instant… Pom probably wouldn’t like it if she were in her right mind, but I doubt even Geoff would think it an appropriate time to make a pass at Pom while she is in her current state.

Geoff was healthy… enough. Of course Wooloo were generally tough and tend to enjoy pain, he’ll be find to go on mission. Chan doesn’t actively care about his chances of living a very long life, but I believed in him! Also that Torchic was living in Helper’s Hamlet the last day or so, she was training to fight and she can become a fighting type… there’s also that Cyndaquil guy who was with the rebel army needing a change of scenery.

The Litleo militia group could help them pass through Ignis, they stayed neutral the entire time. Maybe even those Kecleon Brother Merchants Kec-red and Kec-Blue might be interested in escorting them. Those guys were strong enough beat up anyone dumb enough to rob them and I could sell them on the idea by telling them Pugilis could make use of their strength training wares!

“Maiden Jig… I have an idea of three Pokémon that can fight, five if you think we can rely on the Kecleons to sniff around for a profit once they arrive at Pugilis Castle.” Which I certainly believed they would, they were nice… enough. Sure some of their business practices were a little… eh… but I believed them to be good, ‘enough’, Pokémon. “The Rockruff Brothers will remain as supplementary militia for the time being. They were helpful with carrying the injured to safety and they have good hearts. They can escort Pom’s group to the bridge to Ignis.”

-Shanty-

I be waking up to a strangely zombie like Pom, I almost felt like throwing salt into her mouth anyway even if I did be knowing she wasn’t being controlled by voodoo magic. Dodo be quickly hitched up to the wagon, his injuries still bothering him somewhat, but he is being my big strong bird!

Ocellus was talking over things with the two Kecleon who were always money hungry, sure some of things they did were suspect… but when they sell something they always tell you exactly what you were paying for. Also they were paying use for providing transportation and helping them get a merchant contract in Pugilis.

I did not be knowing if going to Pugilis could be fixing Pom’s spirit, but it couldn’t be hurting to see Pugilis as visitors. Smolder still hadn’t woken up yet, her injury was quite bad and Ocellus was taking care of her personally.

We were beaten. Pom was broke, hopefully not forever. We were all being emotional blasted by wind that not be filling the sails. Even so, we were being nowhere near out. Even if everything still be hurting and I feel I be needing a massive intake of rum.

Our traveling companions were a Grubbin…

“I will help you bring the nice fluffy Wooloo lady back to her senses!” Said Grubbin announced with a cheerful positivity that he was practically glowing… in fact he was glowing. “Huh?! Oh neat, I’m evolving! And-… I’m a Charjabug now, woohoo!”

The long pincers shrunk to move to both side of his face and become stumpy yellow prongs, he became green and his body now looked like a loaf of bread… that was an evolution? It didn’t be looking any more impressive than his initial form.

At least someone around here be being in good spirits. My spirit is bent out of shape, but it is not broken and Dodo’s isn’t either, we almost be shouting death to a standstill and even basically spit in its eye by surviving our assured deaths!

-Cave somewhere, Yvetl-

I was a wyvern Pokémon shaped like a giant red and black ‘Y’ and I was the personification of death. This was not my day as I kept being annoyed by false alarms in Viperia recently.

Currently I was reading my novelty size comic books for legendary Pokémon. I looked up and thought someone was talking about me, but no they were talking about death in general.

Eh, not my concern, maybe it might be later considering what’s happening there. Maybe Xerneas could fix that before I had to actually do anything.

“Can you turn to the next page please?” Looking at Eternatus dully, the eternal violet and red skeletal dragon was looking over my shoulder. Domain of Dynamic Maximizing and giant fights, he literally calls himself ‘The Boss’.

“Yeah, what happens next?!” Stated Zygarde excitedly, they were a collective green and black combining cell cultures who acted as an ecosystem avenger. Smaller than me at the moment since they were currently in their ten percent dog shaped form.

Someone was stirring up trouble with an ecosystem somewhere, for if said ecosystem destruction continued Zygarde would certainly move out at fifty percent strength mode to avenge a given ecosystem in an over the top heroic manner.

“… can’t you guys go get your own comic books?” I asked flatly.

“But you always read it in such a fascinating manner/ you’re so good at acting out the parts!” They both replied much to my disdain, at least they were my friends.

-A hour later, passing through Ignis, Ocellus-

Okay a mission might get Pom’s head back in the game… now if only she’d stop having that already dead look in her eyes. I didn’t know if this was a result from her inexistent will to live or something else, but everyone agreed this state was disturbing… at least she wasn’t physically dying darn near constantly.

Still her being emotionally and feasibly mentally dead inside, possibly with barely a color of thought in her head... a horrific state for someone I could call a close friend.

Pom was awake but no one was home and her emotions… the aura she was emitting was no longer being held back for my sake.

It hurt…

It hurt a lot to just even be near Pom right now, but I was making an effort to tough it out.

Aside from Shanty, Dodo, Lit and Dolly we need all the spirit we could muster. Lucky I knew some of the strongest morale boosters around. Not that they knew how to boost Pom’s morale.

Dolly has been at Pom’s side near constantly and was watching her with a constant eye. Never once being out of more than ten feet away since whatever hurt Pom this badly happened. Hurt wasn’t always

Lit wouldn’t leave Dolly’s back, he was a curious little Pokémon, but apparently Dolly had cause him some mental trauma by ordering him to hit her with a lightning bolt. He was quite upset that he hurt both Pom and Dolly, but apparently Dolly thought there was some sort of necessity to taking on some pain like that. I could feel Lit clutching to Dolly like a life preserver.

Shanty was recovering from her badly battering battle with a near immortal bird that had raw power incarnate, the damage his last attack did would have been enough to carve a path of destruction through more than halfway across Aurora if it had kept going. If that was my estimate then I’m glad the attack was stopped before it could finish us all off.

Things with Lu Bu had gotten to the point that Shanty’s hit and run tactics did little to help. Combining forces with Dodo helped Shanty make up some of the difference, but she was still brutalized.

Dodo was quiet and reserved, sometimes sending looks back to Pom and warbling softly in a tune that was something like an attempt to cheer her up. As mechanical as he looked, Dodo was still all heart inside.

Our traveling Pokémon companions were all weary, except for the newly evolved Charjabug who was a little green train car of positivity, he was here to spite everything negative we were currently feeling. Given he’s an electric type Pokémon, it made sense that he was positively charged. He was such a little trooper of friendship!

Shine was tending to Quetal’s wounds and had used Pain Split once on Pom to test something. The end result was a lot screaming, crying and becoming a shivering mess of terror and agony, which occurred seconds after trying to split whatever was Pom’s problem. It lasted a solid five minutes where Shine was positively tortured by the pain she tried to take in.

There was no way Shine wanted to do that again and said as such that nobody could make her, the kind of pain she received from such a split was unreal. She didn’t even know what form the pain was taking, but Pom couldn’t be helped by splitting mental, spiritual, metaphysical or otherwise pain and sharing it.

However Shine’s comment on it being all kinds of suffering was extremely worrying. If she had helped Pom even a little, then Shine thought it was worth the attempt at least and she would always at least make the one attempt with anyone like Pom currently was. Even if she had to go through what she just had again.

Quetal would still see his companionship with us through, no matter his injuries. The claw weasel was staring at Pom with a frown.

Shine was trying to keep a smile on her face and after eating a Citrus Berry, she pain split with Quetal much more easily and didn’t even flinch despite sharing his physical trauma.

Pom’s ‘pain’ was apparently so bad that Shine was numb to splitting Quetal’s trauma into herself.

Quetal tried to cheer Shine up afterward whenever she looked at Pom and frowned. He said things like ‘such a cute gourd should never be so sad’ or ‘come on Shine, smile, you’ll bring a little light into everyone’s lives and we need it’.

Dazzle was quietly talking to the device at her hip, apparently creatures made of pure information were a thing Pom ran into and they could live and build homes inside devices like Dormarch did.

Speaking of informational beings, the people Pom brought with her from that other realm were staying in Aurora for various personal reasons. One of which was to act as peaceful delegates by talking to King Evan.

Favela was trying to not to stare at Pom and was trying to get into a singing mood with Shanty, but nobody wanted to sing at the moment. We’re so bad off, we couldn’t even do a sad ‘heart song’… it would feel wrong forcing Pom to join in on a chorus like she currently is anyway.

As for the auxiliary help currently surrounding all of us in the wagon, the clumsy Torchic, a once enemy Cyndaquil who wanted to do right by us, Geoff who eerily hasn’t said a single word since seeing Pom’s state and the Kecleon merchants Red and Blue.

Red and Blue seeing Pom like she was had some eerie reactions, no smiles and not even a single mention of profit. They said they’d help escort us to Pugilis and even look for help for Pom and this is the important part of it… ‘For Free’. Which was quite something to hear from the profit mongering pair of striped chameleons.

Smolder still hasn’t woken up… her injury was quite severe and I know Pom said that there were beings in this world that could hurt her, but…

Well Smolder’s always seemed so invincible, capable and strong to me. Now I was the one taking care of her and… I would make sure to carry her like she did me.

How can we keep going forward, when one of the strongest of our group and the one who gave us hope that things could keep moving forward, ultimately had checked out on us.

“Bits… for your thoughts?” Shanty asked and took a sip of Pecha Berry Rum, not going to ask where she got the bottle from or how she acquired it, she just had it and wasn’t guzzling it down. We’re getting kind of morose and the mood was getting any better.

“Sure.” We rolled along the Ignis countryside, there was something of a ‘devastated beauty’ look to everything.

We were just doing this to hopefully find some way of returning Pom to being here… with us… she wouldn’t leave us entirely alone. She survived the Saint Canard Crisis, barely and when she healed she kept moving forward.

Now… Her body still responded, everything else… the Pom we knew cared about us. Well I know we wouldn’t give up on her.

As I talked to Shanty, I made a comment that the landscape looked exactly like how we felt.

-Ignis to Pugilis bridge, Lit-

So much sad.

Food taste.

Salty water.

-Pugilis proper, a minute later, Dolly-

We were adventuring, but I wanted Pom to check back in. Even if it seemed like she was blinking and looking, the dullness and lack of light in her eyes was telling a different story that she wasn’t even aware of us.

I knew what was going on in her mind, but it was so hard to describe.

“Pom, talk to me.” My ordering yip got a response.

“Okay, I will.” She didn’t say that out loud with her mouth.

“I mean out loud.” I barked.

“I am talking out loud. To you specifically. In your head.” Okay, so even messed up Pom could still be vaguely smart as she spoke in a blank tone.

The dull sounding voice was pain to hear and I kind of felt what Shine had when she used Pain Split. The experience wasn’t pleasant, but I toughed it out far better than she did. I knew what loss was, what dying actually felt like and I still wasn’t afraid to live or keep living!

I could easily puppeteer Pom’s body, but I seriously didn’t want to go to that extreme. It just wouldn’t be Pom and I’m only supposed to do that in an emergency to save her life or use her body to save mine.

I could pay attention to other things, like all those dojos around here, wow… fighting is definitely a national pastime in this kingdom given all the combat rings they had set up all over the place as we traveled through the grasslands and towards a distant mountain where a castle sat waiting for our arrival.

On the way I stared in wonder at what was probably an entire kingdoms load of kung fu movie action stars, ones that could actually do all the stunts that you’d see on screen and weren’t just special effects.

Two in particular approached us on the way to the castle and had stopped sparring entirely. One was a biped weasel with long sleeves of fur hanging from their arm and the other was a dinosaur with large round metal plates all over their body and the two looked like they had been going at it quite roughly before we showed up.

“Excuse me, but I sense a disturbance among your number and… ah… a very dangerous condition indeed. I am a Mienshao.” The triangular head weasel crossed his arms and let his fur sleeves dangle. “I shall accompany you to Pugilis’s Castle.”

“I as well, for I feel there is something gravely ill with your friend’s current haunting mood. It is almost as if she were possessed by a ghost type. For those of you who are outsiders, I am a Hakamo-o and my name is Jeanne d’Arc.” The metal plated raptor stated while giving a glance of concern for Pom. “Let us lead you safely to your destination, those on the road looking for fight will not bother you if we are around. My business here was to train my skills so that I can better protect my home of Valora from dangers. I can put a halt to my training for the one who feels so dire that even those with but a hint of Aura can feel the wrongness within the air about her.”

“It even almost feels oddly… contagious…” The ‘Meow Shroud’ guy stated that last word with widening eyes while shivering, I bet my brother Deepak would get along with this guy so well.

“Can we get on much cheerier topics, what is Pugilis generally like and do you have anyone who can help what’s wrong with Pom around here. We know for certain it’s not a physical injury.” Don’t know about you Ocellus, but I truly will believe any mystical mumbo jumbo that actually helps Pom out right about now.

“If it’s truly a spiritual issue, then there may be someone who can help her here. For there are as many meditators as there are Meditites the meditation Pokémon to be found and plenty of fighting spirit in every single Pokémon around here.” Great if we needed you to fight someone, then we’d call you Meow Wow. “Your thoughts are born of great turmoil, I forgive you.”

“Did you just read my… yeah I’m not going to think about that too hard.” My brother Deepak did stuff like that sometimes too, he was at least good at reading what would relax his brothers and sisters.

“Good choice little companion, the one who is closest to the heart of the one currently direly troubled. Your connection remains true even in such a circumstance speaks of your character.” Meow Wow stated with a nod. “I do not know of healing minds or spirits personally, I train bodies and help with fitness. I do however know of a hot spring that will heal broken bodies within the castle town of Pugilis. It will aid with physical injuries among your number, but it will sadly not fix your broken friends current state.”

“We’ll take whatever we can get and if you’re offering a healing spa, then I’m definitely open to the suggestion!” Yeah, wasn’t too keen on spas here Ocellus, but if you thought it would help some of us… then I’ll bite my tongue and won’t bark about it too loudly.

“Both wild and wise, an odd combination for a partner in life.” The mustached Meow Wow stated as he glanced at me with a slight grin.

“The tournament might still be on since Ignis has calmed down…” The Jean D’ Pants girl was probably trying to distract us from thinking too many grim thoughts.

“Can we sell our wares here?” Kec-Red asked.

“We need place to make a profit and we have plenty of training aids for a decent pricing.” Kec-Blue followed with a starry eyed advertisement. "I'm sure you Fighting Types would find our offerings quite enticing.”

“If your wares are unique enough, then I believe you will see Poké in your pouches.” Uh, Meow Wow, dude, they had some really weird and unique stuff like you wouldn’t believe.

310. Pummelton.

-???, Oleander-

“Fried Ricer!” A muscular side of rice wielding giant spoons as weapons leapt into battle with Fred.

“Hey, don’t get angry just because I like the food in this dimension Ollie.” Of course you do Fred, because… “IT’S SOUL FOOD AND IT CAN FIGHT BACK!”

“I’m with Fred. Sure this dimensions is incredibly weird, but everything on Pandora ate everything else and those monsters made out of food actually look rather tasty.” Buttina, the extreme omnivore that she, was staring at the muscles on the fried rice monster. She would actually eat that food monster alive, its head was made of rice so that wouldn’t be too big a problem.

My traveling associates probably didn’t understand that I was currently thinking about actually destroying this entire world on the principal of things. I don’t want my food to become living things through magical means turning them into battle monsters.

At least putting the Skag egg in stasis went fine when we were on Pandora, could have done without having to fight a Skagzilla that was there while looking for one that would fit someone of Pom’s majesty as one of my friends.

-Pokemon World, Ransei, Pugilis Kingdom Road, Jeanne d’Arc-

“Hey, I’m Ocellus, what’s it like to be a Hakamo-o and you said you were here training to be a part of the militia in Valora, so I’m curious to know what Valora is like.” The strange bug like being stated, she was cute and her shade of blue was quite calming, I’m sure it is purposeful to her character.

As intriguing as this group was when they asked if we knew anyone who could heal a spirit, understandable why they would be asking here in the land of fighting spirits, we sadly didn’t and could just escort them to the capital of Pugilis.

I glanced at the hollow one, it was disturbing on a number of levels that someone can have eyes with no hint of light or life in them at all and yet still be considering alive.

“Valora is a kingdom of big towering coastal cities and harbors. It is said that Valora is one of the most technologically advanced places in this world, but I am personally a humble farmer from the countryside as even we steel types need to eat to and we eat hearty. Being a Hakamo-o has been a peaceful life from my times as a little Jangmo-o, but we do train to defend ourselves and others as needs must. As far as my training has been going, my mentor the Mienshao here has been training me in close combat and how to utilize my flag twirling and bearing in a fight.” I looked to the cloudy sky and the dull sunlight filtering through as we moved along with the wagon full of moderately injured Pokémon and several of what I’m assuming now to be outsiders. As rare as outsiders are, they are not unknown to us, they must have been caught up in the harsh fighting that has been going on in Ignis to the south. “I’ve been hearing odd happenings as of late going on in Valora and I hope that my home is doing okay, there’s news of war breaking out all over the eastern side of the Ransei continent. There is a disquieting lack of news of what’s actually happening in Valora, but it is said to be the one kingdoms that is not currently not fighting a neighbor. I’m not particularly worried, as my home is strong enough to be wedged between several other kingdoms and has never fallen.”

“While we do not know anyone that can heal a broken spirit quite like your friends, I do know of a local healing spring that can heal those injuries you all seem to be carrying with you.” My purple and white furred mentor stated as he looked at them. “Fighting types use it all the time, mostly because they need it... given how often most fighting types are liable to bash each other’s brains out. Fighting Types can be somewhat aggressive unless they are a more disciplined kind like me.”

“I might be a fighting type, but I would prefer not having to fight at all, but if it comes down to it I will defend my country with everything I have.” I grew up there, I have good memories of home and it is a land I loved. “Now I have questions for you, what are you?”

“I’m a changeling, ‘change’ is in the name and my people are a bit aggressive about love and friendship, friendship being a more recent thing. I’m able to mimic just about anyone or anything I see, but when it comes to mimicry… we’re never as strong as the genuine article is.” Ah so Ocellus was basically akin to a ditto, only more bug typing. “I’m beginning to think that King Evan sent us out this way, just to make sure we didn’t fall with his kingdom if someone attacks. Nobody asked how he knew anything about Pugilis if he’s never been outside of Aurora very much.”

“What is King Evan? I’ve heard some good things about his demeanor from some travelers and the Harmony Rescue Team.” I’ve heard the rumors, possibly a king of heart like any true ruler of Aurora.

“He’s an Eevee and he really is nice… a little too much for his own good really, but I wouldn’t have King Evan as a friend in any other way. I’m Shine.” The Gourgeist was quite friendly looking, though she looked troubled whenever she glanced at the white wooly one with the glassy long distant stare.

I wanted to ask about the bird pulling the wagon, they seemed quite interesting, it is just unfortunate that we were interrupted.

“Prepare for trouble!” A voice stated in the road in front of us as a Seviper dropped from a tree and raised her head high.

“And make it double!” The mareanie start posing next to the seviper.

“Ugh, you guys again, can’t you just give it a rest?!” The Salazzle seemed thoroughly annoyed with this group of traveling performers… unless they were bandits with a traveling performer’s motif, but they would probably do better as traveling performers.

“Uh… Jessie, that’s a pretty big Salazzle… wait… she evolved from that Salandit and got that big?!” The Meowth received a sharp glare from the Seviper for interrupting their speech whatever it was and he gulped.

Yep definitely traveling circus performers that try to play themselves up as bandits. No group would be stupid enough to announce dark intentions so clearly in broad daylight, especially not in the Kingdom of Fighting Pokémon as that would be just plain dumb.

If they were serious, then I would sadly have to swiftly knock them out as to avoid injuring them even more harshly.

“Ahem… to protect the world from devastation.” The Caterpie continued taken a pose in the middle, I was on the right side of the wagon and facing down the Gurdurr on the right.

“By uniting people in being below our station!” The Gurdurr followed with a flex of his muscles.

“To denounce the evils of truth and love.” The Seviper continued.

“To extend our reach to the stars above.” Okay, so the Meareanie just confirmed it, they were bandits making a power play at us for some reason and we have them outnumbered at least two to one if you were discounting the injured Pokémon not being able to fight at full strength.

“Jessie, the beauty.” So the Seviper was a haughty insecure person.

“James, the brains.” So he thought he was smart and yet seemed to be in a position of working with people who abuse him.

“Flexing bulk, Scourge.” Slightly bulkier than average Gurdurr, so as far as fighting types go he actually looked dangerous. “Hey, where’s Squirt Black, I need to break his shell again!”

“Hahahaha, Jester!” A fairly large Caterpie who seems to have been driven insane by something. “He’s not here Scourge, he’s a loner that works alone with sunglasses and alongside a group of colorful Squirtles. So of course he’s not here Heeheehee!”

“Meowth, the mouthy one.” At least he was by far the most honest out of all of them, but he wasn’t as mouthy at the moment as his companions.

“Team Pocket, stealing your stuff after a fight!” Said the Seviper named Jessie who clearly was the force of nature of the group.

Yeah, don’t know what they are thinking attacking us, we have them outnumbered even with the badly injured Pokémon.

“Surrender now and submit to our might!” James sated and I don’t think I’ve seen a Mareanie that was actively aggressive unless there was a Corsola around.

“Team Pocket, we’re robbing you guys, alright!” Meowth was taking a forward pose with all the others.

Before they did anything else, all looked at wooly one and stopped their aggressive stances entirely, they were showing concern for her.

“Hey uh… what happened to her?” James asked while looking a little wary of the hollow eyed one in the wagon.

“Yeah, she seems like she’s almost possessed by a ghost type… is she?” Meowth stated staring at the wooly one’s current demeanor being obviously upset by it.

They may be obvious circus thieves, but they did worry about the health of others… somewhat noble given their circumstances, because I’m starting to think they are a bunch of masochists.

“No… it’s… nothing to worry about, we’ll just beat you off like usual and will continue on our way.” Dazzle the Salazzle was certainly the strongest Pokémon among the travelers we met on the road of life, her hesitation had been quite noticeable by all involved. She didn’t seem to believe her own words, as she knew it was something to get highly worried about.

My belief was that Dazzle was just trying to keep the mood up by playing it off as nothing too serious. Given that the wagon was loaded with injured Pokémon and outsiders, it would be my duty to see to their safety and would give me more militia training to actively fight a real live combat exercise.

“Do not worry for we will…” I was about to reassure those we were escorting to the castle town of Pugilis Kingdom, when one of them decided to go on the offense.

“Yaahhhhhh!” It was the Torchic running forward and she leapt into a flying kick, none of the thieves even moved and she flew right by them and got her right talons stuck in a tree a fair distance behind them. “Uh… a little help… anyone?”

“Wow, here I thought we were bad at fighting...” Scourge stated bluntly. “I mean aside from me fighting my nemesis Squirt Black, I’m actually a bit more competent in that arena.”

-Dolly-

“Yeah, Torchic is an interesting… experience…” Kweh-tall stated with crossed claws, but still not getting up from the large wagon. None of those riding were exactly in a good mood to fight Team Pickers. “How good is that healing spa in Pugilis’s Castletown? She might need it after getting her ankle caught and twisting it.”

“I haven’t AGH?! … okay… so you saw the twisted ankle coming…” That poor orange chicken with long legs.

“You probably shouldn’t have started flailing after getting stuck.” Shine said while sighing loudly. “We’ll get you out after we’ve dealt with Team Pocket.”

“With how often fighting types get injured, the healing the place offers is exemplary and all of you will be moving around without aches and pains by the end of the day… provided we get by these ruffians.” Meow Wow was already looking over the Team Pocket guys, he nodded before bringing his crossed paws apart and readying himself into a fighting stance. What was he going to do, dangle his sleeves at the opponents?

“This fight would last more than five minutes at best, ten at worst.” Stated Jeans d’Pants as the metal covered scales shift and she took up her own stance.

“If anything you’re overestimating their capabilities to last two minutes without being launched into the sky into another kingdom.” Dazzle said flatly with an equally glazed look in her eyes.

“Hey, we’ve managed to steal successfully from people before!” That was kind of hard to believe Me-Mouth you’re track record with trying to rob us has been utter failure.

I mean aside from tree town where you managed to take out those mushroom guard guys before attacking us, you guys still didn’t exactly have that great a record with dealing with us.

“Honestly, I almost feel bad about attacking you with her like she is, almost.” Even Jess the haughty one that reminded me of Clarissa Corgi showed some concern about Pom. These guys were weird in that respect.

Did she want me to break off one of her goofy large fangs with my bare paws and stab her with it? I can and will do that to her if she so much as goes near… Pom?!

Pom calmly got up hopped out of the wagon and walked forward, not a word, but I can feel what she was about to do. This wouldn’t be pleasant by any stretch of the imagination to watch, I feel sorry for Team Pocket.

“Um…” The little green worm leaned back as Pom stayed in a four legged stance spread her hooves out slightly, shifting into the Fleet Cunning Doe stance.

-Dazzle-

What was Pom doing? Frizzle almost sounded like she wanted to come out of the Digivice, but I had told her to stay put. I had some understanding that the informational entity would have problem with mass outside their world.

I wasn’t in any real danger and as such Frizzle was willing to listen to me about not popping out all of the sudden, but she notably showed a quite worry about Pom and if I knew her as well as I knew any Guilmon… she probably wanted to come out when we found a bakery in the nearest town.

Said town was likely the castle town of Pummelton. Most of Pugilis was loosely formed communities of fighting dojos, even dojos that taught combat styles that never worked except unless one figured out how to make them work. The combat dojo of self-injury was quite a thing to watch in action, using pain as a motivator to hit harder.

Logically I knew Team Pocket was mildly threatening at best, at least more than that Bakemon thing that went after Pom and Strabimon had been.

-The one sided beat down via broken Pom that ensued-

“Um… I don’t know how to feel about her going to fight them with the way she is...” The Cyndaquil was as worried as everyone else once Pom started moving, even tried to stop her.

However Geoff quietly got in the way and shook his head at them and stopped the Kecleon or even the Mienshao and Jeanne from moving forward to help her.

He didn’t say anything, but he was carefully scrutinizing Pom. His uncharacteristic silence was drawing more attention from the occupants of the large wagon than anything, given he was putting himself between them and Pom.

“Honestly now… what do you think you’re going to…” Jessie didn’t get so far in her speech, where previously Pom would rather avoid confrontation and not do as much fighting.

Pom proceeded to show Team Pocket exactly what would happen if she were a bit more towards violent maniac.

A quick lunge and twisting in the air, Pom landed and thrust her rear left leg up and under James chin launching him upwards. Team Pocket was too stunned from watching one their number get kicked into the air, specifically the one with the most defensive options unable to react in time before his body was kicked sky high.

The next maneuver was Pom leaping to the right and lashing out a devastating right hook into Jessie’s temple dazing her. Using her right hook to twist around by planting it against the ground to pivot after passing by Jessie’s now dazed form, she lunged forward lashed out with her left leg and several digits made out of wool clenched around Jessie’s throat tightly choking her.

Following the choking her wool was doing, Pom lashed the rest of Jessie’s body out like a whip and with a correctly timed yank the slightly stunned Team Pocket members watched as the flat of Jessie’s tail slapped harshly across Meowth’s face with a whack.

Meowth rolled to his right and with a large red flat mark on his face and he was in the middle of sitting up and getting ready to get into a standing position when James fell on top of him and all the Mareanie’s head tendrils clamped down reflexively.

Pom hopped forward and lashed out wrapped the back half of Jessie’s body around both Meowth’s head and Jame’s tendrils locking them in place.

After stepping to the side with her hind legs specifically into the path of Jester’s String Shot on purpose, Pom started taking it on her right leg until enough of the sticky silk substance was positively covering it.

With a sharp thrust of her left hoof, Pom launched an unconscious Jessie’s head sweeping straight for the green worm Pokémon.

Jessie’s fangs cut off the thread spraying from Jester and hooked the worm Pokémon on the fangs as Jessie’s chin bashed into his skull. He was swung around twice before Jessie’s fangs pinned him against Meowth’s chest. The Seviper’s large fangs were now caught on Meowth’s left armpit and over one of Jame’s tendrils.

Pom leapt high and straight up while facing the the four Pokémon and flicked her right hoof out and downwards at them, with a simple flex of wool the string sticking to her right leg simply flew off and glued them all the Pokémon together getting them even more stuck together.

What followed was Pom staring blanking at Scourge the Gurdurr straing at her, she took one step to the right and after a moment of just staring creepily at him he charge forward and raised his large metal beam and brought it down in a leftward swing for Pom’s right side.

Pom held up her right leg, when the beam hit the impact shook the ground, there was a minor crevice that formed to Pom’s left and the ground under her three hooves cracked and shattered from the force.

Despite the hefty sound of the impact, Scourge’s beam was stopped cold on impact with Pom’s leg. Her wool having transferred most of the impact through her body and into the ground.

Calmly placing her right hoof on the ground as Scourge started to stare at her and back up slightly to be next to the rest of Team Pocket, Pom stared up at him with dull, lifeless, eyes and then slowly lifted her left hoof off the ground.

Ocellus saw Pom’s left hoof vibrating with incredible force that the very air was shaking and seemingly cracking on the strain of the power Pom was about to return to sender via delayed wobble counter.

With a precise and ever so eloquent movement, Pom gently angled her violently shivering left leg forward and slowly moved it toward the ground. The shivering becoming a lot more controlled as she moved it ever more slowly.

Scourge’s eyes widened and the Gurdurr felt a distinct impression that something really bad was about to happen to him and his team.

She stared up at Scourge blankly, as if he were a gnat that was buzzing around angrily in front of her eyes.

She ever so gently tapped the ground in front of her.

… WHOOMP!

The following explosion sent up dust, debris, rocks and a cloud of destruction swept through the area as Pom wobble countered a fraction of the force she had been truly hit with.

Why barely even a quarter of the force Pom had been hit with had been used, most of that had been absorbed by the ground or her wool. Still several hundred pounds of force contained and then fully utilized with the tips of her hoof with a single flick in a pinpoint tap, resulted in devastating blast.

The end results shook everyone to their core as they watched Pom slowly turn around and made her way back to the wagon.

A shivering Dodo warbled sadly while witnessing Team Pocket’s devastated forms flying into the distance and took note of the crater Pom had left behind as she calmly loaded herself back up into the wagon. The tree Torchic was stuck in toppled over and in the course of doing so it freed her and she was left untouched by the blast.

-Dolly-

Yikes.

Lit squeaked a similar sentiment, while trying to burrow himself into my short fur.

-Mienshao-

Holy… Arceus… she was a bit dangerous to leave in such an unfeeling state.

I believe she needs to be returned to her senses and will personally investigate finding a spirit healer to the best of my abilities.

-Jeanne-

Yikes, she knew how to fight. Wonder if I can get that good.

-Geoff-

I’m glad you’re kindness is still prevalent Pom, you could have done much worse if you had decided to strike one of them directly.

Now if only we knew how to help you... Pugilis is a land of ‘fighting spirit’, also spirit in general in the livelier sense of term. I wouldn’t want it to be the literal term that the kingdom of ghost types, Spectra, uses.

-Shanty-

Pom might not be having super strength, but that wobble counter of hers be devastating… wish I be having something like that.

I still be needing to work on my liquid clone, if I be losing control I could be just as dangerous as that… I do not be wanting to kill people.

Not for the lack of trying with Lu Bu, but I not be killing him so I be fine… well mostly ‘fine’. About as ‘fine’ as Pom currently is. Maybe I’m being a bit better mentally, but that’s nothing to be proud of.

-Favela-

I am now terrified for Pom, anyone with half a brain would have to be.

-Quetal-

That…

Was unequivocally brutal.

She even waited for Scourge to hit her so she could use the force of his attack to do that, she knew the equivalent of the Pokémon moves Bide or Counter.

That massacre altogether barely took a minute.

-Shine-

Oh Pom… if my Pain Split ability helped you even a little bit, then I’d proudly look back on that five minutes of torture.

-Dazzle-

Some call us Salazzle dangerous, but that… that was all coldly calculated to every single last second.

-Kec-red-

Note to self, don’t price gouge Pom.

She’s been a very good customer.

-Kec-blue-

Note to self, lower prices for Pom.

She’s been a very scary customer.

-Torchic-

She did that without hurting me… so amazing yet…

-Cyndaquil-

Okay, maybe siding with Aurora wasn’t a bad idea if I had to face that, even if her mental state is almost deader than a false zombie caused by ghost Pokémon. That didn’t quite cut it when it comes to the horror I just witnessed.

-Charjabug-

I want to be that strong someday, then traveling will be much easier!

Which means I needed to train to get myself ready to become a Vikavolt, I already have a magnetic rock to evolve with and everything!

-Ocellus-

“Come on everyone, let’s just…” I looked at Pom and then turned back to Dodo. “Let’s get a move on.”

-Some quiet hours of traveling later, south side of the mountains bordering the south western edge of the Terrera Kingdom, Pummelton-

Smolder was still out and if anyone ever says that kindness is a weakness, I might turn into my dragon form and smack them upside the head.

We needed Pom back and fast, because as she is now, who knew what was going through her mind… aside from Dolly. I knew we were safe around Pom, it was not the primary issue. It was that she’s shut down on a fundamental level that’s bothering my senses so badly.

“This is Pummelton, the castle town of Pugilis Castle.” Mienshao stated as we approached.

The town looked… very much themed to what I was coming to expect of Fighting Type Pokémon.

There were Gyms, various sports fields, sports paraphernalia shops, eateries of the healthy and unhealthy variety. Guess even Fighting Types are not above junk food. There were also workout clothing shops.

A lot of Pokémon with plenty of raw muscle around here, exercising, picking fights verbally or physically and in general being positively friendly to everyone around them.

The general mood around here seems to be mostly positive vibes, including some tall grey Pokémon with massive forearms and four arms showing off his muscles to some other Pokémon. Physical strength and a halfway decent mental capacity was something of an obvious running theme around here.

“Aside from coming here for training, I believe Master Mienshao mentioned the healing springs you could use to take care of your injuries?” Jeanne mentioned as she looked about.

“Did someone say they needed the healing springs, I’ll gladly help you, FOR GREAT JUSTICE!” If I didn’t know any better I’d swear the unicorn pony that came up to us was a normal one from Equus, he certainly seemed colorful enough to be from Equus. He wasn’t a Rapidash, because he wasn’t covered in fire. “I am Keldeo, welcome to Pummelton new friends!”

“He’s one of the four swords of justice… the most excitable member at the very least.” That didn’t explain much Jeanne. “As far as Legendary Pokémon go, he’s a good one and is always looking to help others.”

“Ah, so news of my heroics have gotten all the way to Valora! Now come follow me and I will see to it that you’re injuries stop hurting… what’s wrong with her?” Of course Keldeo noticed Pom and his cheerful demeanor dropped a little bit as he fretted over her blank stare.

“Don’t worry about Pom too much, she’s… alive… for a given definition of it.” My explanation was short and to the point, there wasn’t much to say until Pom, or more likely Dolly at this rate, opened up to us about what was wrong.

“Then I will endeavor to see a smile on her face eventually!” Yeah, that was asking for a bit much at the moment Keldeo. His emotions were quite bright and cheerful, it was like being the same room as Pinkie Pie for five seconds.

“So… the healing springs or spa?” Being a little bit gruff, it felt like Quetal didn’t like Keldeo for personal reasons.

“Right, follow me!” Keldeo was rather interesting looking, he had a thick red mane, a blue tail and cream colored fur except around his neck where it was blue like his tail. He had blue hooves too, but the real unusual thing about him was his rather large dark blue eyebrow ridges that were enormous.

I’ve never seen eyebrow that huge.

“What kind of types are you?” If it was not too much of a bother for me to ask that is.

“Water and Fighting, I’m training here to make sure my skills are honed for when I’m needed to aid those who are in need of such strength from the ‘Swords of Justice’. Patented and all rights reserved.” Ignoring that last comment, Keldeo must always be training then. Keldeo looked to have strong muscles in every part of his body and seemed to be ready for just about anything, even a fight where he wasn’t likely to win.

-Some time later, healing springs, Shanty-

“I am being thankful that the springs be free.” Aches, pains and my recent injuries be drifting away in the slightly warm waters. Even my salted wounds be feeling better.

“After that crazy Rapidash, I am needing this…” Favela be looking healthier already despite the nasty burns she had been covered in, she stayed standing throughout that fight and she was being strong in heart. Even if we somehow get separated I believe she was destined to be one of my crewmates.

“Just don’t drain the healing springs with your grass type powers, this spring is for everyone.” Intoned Keldeo softly as he too rested in the spring. “So why were all of you so injured?”

“Well we be getting into a huge fight with Ignis when their civil war stop being so civil, Aurora be running low on healing supplies and the local Chansey is being too overworked to fully heal everyone. They be prioritizing their local military and militia over the rest of us.” It also be understandable from a standpoint of them needing to have Pokémon to defend their home. “We be coming here to help Pom on the suggestion that we be needing to find someone who can restore her spirit of the one that be causing her to be the way she is. King Evan of Aurora seemed to think there was someone that could be doing that here in Pugilis.”

I gestured to Dolly, Lit and Pom sitting by themselves. Pom still be having the same dull look in her eyes and Dolly was cleaning her up and scrubbing her, not that Pom was reacting to Dolly’s administrations.

Lit was attempting to help, but he was being a bit too small and kept falling in the water in several goofy ways.

“It makes me wonder what Evan knows about Pugilis.” That contemplation be coming from Quetal.

“Maybe he watched a Unite Ball game or two here. It is a popular sport that leans into traveling to other kingdoms to learn a bit of culture and watch the games.” Offered Shine in explanation.

“That or other sports, Fighting Types love a variety of games as much as they do fighting.” The way Keldeo talked about it, I be more interested in playing some sports myself. “Team games happen to be popular as much as fighting competitions, the competitive spirit here is real and there are no hard feelings unless you’re a wrestler. It’s a part of the wrestling scene around here to work oneself into a fervor. Every Pokémon here can find something to do or be good at.”

-Dolly-

I barked and tried to get Keldeo’s attention, he looked to me and I started wagging my tail as I hugged onto Pom’s back.

“Hey do you guys do skateboarding around here?!” They had to have a skate park around here.

Any guys that liked sports and exercise as much as the Pokémon around here, they had to have skateboarding at least!

“Uh… what?” Keldeo of course couldn’t understand me and I was about to get out of the communal bath thing to go grab my Digivice when Smolder answered for me.

“She probably wants to know if skateboarding is a thing around here.” Stated Smolder who apparently woke up a minute or so ago and I hadn’t noticed the excitement because I was paying too much attention to Pom, the scales around her chest were slowly mending in the liquids.

Ocellus seemed particularly happy to have Smolder back.

“Yeah, there are at least three different skate parks around here. One for training, one for fun and one for experts.” That, Keldeo, is exactly the thing I wanted to hear!

“Hey, what’s with…” It finally dawned on Smolder to get a better look at Pom and when she did Ocellus just quieted her down and whispered something to her. “Oh… have you found a way to help her yet?”

“We’re currently working on it Smolder.” Weakly answered Ocellus.

“Wait…” I just realized something. “How am I supposed to go to a skate park and watch Pom at the same time?!”

I really started whining when I figured out that I could not simply enjoy myself here. I knew I was a bit of a responsibility dodger in the past, but in this instance I couldn’t do that and leave things to others. I couldn’t take my eyes off Pom for more than the amount of time it takes for her to go to the bathroom.

“What’s wrong with her?” Smolder asked as her wound was a quarter of the way to being healed. It looked like it was going to be nasty for quite a while.

“I think she just realized that she has to be responsible and it’s eating her alive inside, at least that’s what I’m getting from her emotions.” That wasn’t exactly hard to guess Ocellus! “She could maybe just watch Pokémon skate or help teach someone how to."

Well teaching wasn’t too bad… I apparently got the skills for it given I taught Variance how to do some standstill tricks.

“I, Favela, wouldn’t mind looking into learning how to skate.” Well that could be fun to help you with Savvy.

“Eh, I think I might be preferring the roaring waves of surfing.” Eh, surfing was cool too Shanty, but you could only do it by the sea unless you had the right equipment and I doubt there is a Pokémon out there that would spend their time just making safe waves for the fun of it.

“Well we could all take a tour of the town, we also need someone to take the letter from King Evan to the local king here… that’s for after we’re done soaking in these healing springs.” Ocellus cuddled against Smolder as she said that last bit.

“I can deliver the letter if it’s of some importance.” Keldeo offered.

“It’s not super important, it’s mostly King Evan asking for someone to assist us in finding a way to get Pom out of her… I guess we can call it a funk.” After a second or two of dithering on this, Ocellus finally came to a decision. “I know we can trust you to deliver it, so when you’re done we’ll give the letter to you.”

-An hour later, Smolder-

I kind of liked this place, I expected to wake up in Ignis or Aurora. This place wasn’t so bad either, it had a lot of highly active Pokémon and they knew how to start and end a brawl. I even saw someone do a dragon style fight no less, I bet Garble would love to hear about that.

Wonder if they had cheerleader outfits here in my size…

So upon getting the rundown of what was wrong with Pom, I was having some odd thoughts about it.

I mean none of us know exactly what ‘Chrysomallus’ specifically meant to Pom. She wasn’t telling us why it would leave her in this state, but we needed to fix the problem quickly. I didn’t like seeing Pom like this.

Being caught up to speed on just about everything Pom and the rest of us had been through didn’t take too long, but I found being hurt so badly in one hit sucked. At least the healing springs cleared up some of my damaged scales, I was still hurting quite a bit. I was going to take Pokémon far more seriously, if they were anything like that Lu Bu guy.

“Hey, you guys, do you want to join the local tournament while things are quiet around here?” Okay, the bipedal brown Pokémon looked pretty strange. He had a purple shirt and kilt, boxing gloves looked to be its hands biologically and it even seemed to have a talent for boxing. I was getting the distinct feeling that there are Fighting Types who would fit just about any sport you could think of given this place was known for it. This boxing Pokémon picked up a flier with one of his red glove shaped hands. “Here, a flier with the prizes for your perusal.”

I took the flier and looked it over, Poké prizes for fifth place and up, those who get third place and up get items along with money.

As I was looking it over I heard Ocellus gasp about something and I looked up to see Pom actually signing up for the competition.

What? I mean even Dolly and Shanty were in disbelief as I was to watch Pom calmly walk up to the counter and sign up for the tournament.

“I… what?” Yeah, my disbelief was just that bad, even Ocellus was flummoxed by what Pom did without blinking.

Dolly looked at Pom and then narrowed her eyes, she leapt onto the counter to sign herself in as a separate contestant while glancing at Pom with determination and worry.

“If they be doing it…” Shanty stated as she signed herself in for the tournament. Sure the healing springs might have healed her quite a bit, but she wasn’t quite back to full strength. That fight with Lu Bu took a lot out of her, didn’t stop her from being a spirited pirate goat. Doubted anything could do that.

“Wait what are we doing for food? We’re not exactly carrying enough money or food to last the evening.” Ocellus finally asked a question that was a problem given we have too many mouths to feed, it wasn’t as much a problem for her because I was awake.

“Do not worry about that… I will take your traveling group in.” Mienshao reassured and then turned to Jeanne looking at the signup sheet. “Interested in joining the tournament Jeanne?”

“Maybe…” Jeanne looked rather reluctant to get into the tournament, kind of like Pom normally was in some ways. Guess not all Fighting Types were as hot blooded or competitive as a dragon from Equus. “I think I’d be better off watching from the sidelines.”

Torchic was signing up, I wonder how bad she was going to do… maybe she might surprise us and actually win a few fights.

Once we were done Mienshao led us to a place, he didn’t have much variety in food, but he had a lot of rice, pickles, pickled rice, fish and vegetables that could also come in a pickled variety. The guy really likes his pickles.

The tournament started tomorrow and I was wondering what drove Pom to sign up for it. Shanty, Ocellus, Dolly, Dazzle, even Dodo and Lit picked up on it being something suspect about her being willing to do something competitive with the way she currently was.

Author's Note

A short one page tournament arc, can it be done?!

Eh, two pages at the most. Also Mortal Kombat Theme intensifies.

311. Pound Out!

Author's Note

I'm going on Hiatus for the rest of the year and might never be coming back!

Music: Big Blue- Super Smash Brothers versions.

311. Pound Out!

-???, Buttina-

“So… the wolves in this world are called Tigers?” It wasn’t the strangest thing I’ve ever heard, didn’t even rate my top twenty five list of strangest things to happen with Oleander.

“Yeah and they apparently come in several varieties, I’m thinking of finding a Hare Hound for Pom. I’ve already gotten her enough eventual large deterrents to anyone ever bothering her ever again and she already has a Fu-Dog.” Yes, like she needs more canines in her lives, but I can understand that you want to be both a good friend and a sadistic person at the same time. Eh, it’s not like Vault Hunters aren’t like that already and I technically counted as a hunter ‘of many things that may include vaults’. “So something cute and cuddly like another puppy… with rabbit attributes and vicious combat capability.”

“Quick question, how are we going to find the right disc with specific said monster inside it?” We’ve given this world a cursory glance before, disc, shrine, spinning said disc right over a shining light and boom you have a monster to be friends with.

Also we met this nice girl Holly who thought we were some rare monsters at first, we made sure that she was quite aware of Fred being the only real out and out demon among us.

“I can see the shape of the souls the disc will turn into. I just need a picture of a Hare Hound and we can find a disc that will produce one easily.” Fred offered amiably, then he goes into his whole demonic voice like usual. “Oh come now, I’m not that predictable Butt Stallion.”

“Yes, Fred’s habit of reading minds aside, we might want to even look into the whole Master Moo thing while we’re here. Apparently its some kind of genetically engineered cow dragon that can absorb the negativity of this worlds inhabitants for power, also can possess people… it’s going to be one of those weeks Buttina.” Oleander just shook her head and gave a derisive snort. “Honestly creating super evil cow dragons, why do all ancient civilizations immediately go to big, horned and hooved for powerful creatures?”

“Ahem… I’m one of those creatures Olllie.” Stated Fred dryly.

“Yes, but you weren’t actually made by an ancient civilization.” Retorted Oleander. “It’s either that or some form of tentacle horror.”

“Hm… good point… but even I resemble the general idea of a Minotaur when my full form is summoned by you.” From what Fred has said about it, most demons do share the trait of horns, hooves and a fiery personality.

“Yes, yes, when I fully summon you, you proceed to protectively stuff me into your chest where your heart would be as a form of your symbolism of loving me and my pretty hair by being your metaphysical big heart when we combine forces.” That didn’t even rate among the top one hundred weirdest things Oleander has led to. The super move was kind of terrifying sure, but it wasn’t edible cheese pizza monsters that remain perfectly edible ‘no matter what they do’ weird.

Still weird that grime doesn’t stick to the pizza monsters and they actually taste like what their name implies, spicy tomato sauce for blood and three cheeses and perfectly cooked dough for skin! It’s almost like they were one of those Fighting Foodons, only more aggressive and with really weird reproductive cycles.

-Pokémon World, Ransei, Central Ignis, on a rock, Tamamo-

“…” Okay… Tamamo has been moping around for too long, I just need to somehow sell my indentured servitude to Pom and somehow convince her to marry me so she can be my husband.

I know I have psychological issues, but what really quirky fox like me doesn’t?

“Excuse me, but do you need help?” Jumping and looking up at the shadow being cast over me, I sighed in relief when it wasn’t a death god… “I could use some myself.”

“Well I do need to find my... what I might call a ‘Sister’. There’s also what I would loosely term a friend that really doesn’t like primates. I also want to make up for a problem I caused someone... and I’m not sure how to fix the mess. Causing problems is a bit of a running theme for me.” I could use someone who could protect me if I ever run across someone like Lu Bu again, but I would be a little skeptical about their offer. “I’m Tamamo no Mae, what can I do for you and how do you think you can help me?”

-The next day, Pugilis, Pummelton, Mienshao’s Place, Ocellus-

“So I talked to Tianhuo… she’s going to get in contact with Queen Novo to find out why being a Chrysomallus would bother Pom so much.” Hopefully they would get back to us soon with an update on that later. “So… are you ready for the competition Shanty?”

“After a big breakfast… no… I be thinking I need another dip in the healing springs before then. I will be needing all the strength I can be getting if I am to be beating some sense into Pom.” If you could do that Shanty, then maybe we could get Pom to tell us what was wrong instead of shutting down and doing odd things.

“We still don’t have a clue why Pom signed up for the competition.” No, but we could make a ton of guesses Smolder and be nowhere close to the truth until Pom starts talking.

Even Dolly was having problems and she was directly connected to Pom’s mind.

“Is there anything we need to seriously discuss?” I added to the other occupants in the room.

“Well… there’s something I want to ask Jeanne about, but it’s not that important and can wait until later.” Shine had drawn our attention to her, she waved her leafy hair in our direction while leaning back. “It’s nothing bad, just an idle curiosity.”

“I, Favela, think we’ll be tired of pickles if we stay here for more than two days.” The pickles weren’t so bad last night Favela… then again I didn’t have to eat of them so I wouldn’t know how strong the taste was.

-Four hours after breakfast and a visit to the healing springs, Pummelton Indoor Super Stadium, Dolly-

So this stadium was built inside the mountain the castle was connected to, no problem with weather if we’re doing this indoors and with decent lightning. It was cool, but I still wanted to know where those skate parks were and find someone to watch Pom for me.

Using my paws to raise a headband to my forehead, I quickly tied it there and then crossed my paws ready for a fight.

“The orange paw print mark on that is pretty cute Dolly.” Glaring at Smolder for trying to ruin my attempt at looking cool, I sighed and waved a paw at the dragon and basically accepted what she said.

I wasn’t going to use the Stone Bone Boomerang, my nearly indestructible skateboard or my equally nearly indestructible helmet.

Fighting using my own strength was the name of the game on this one without any of my gear. I could still use magic, but I would save that for Pom.

Shanty got some more healing spring time in, but I don’t believe she’s at one hundred percent. She was good enough that she likely didn’t need it.

Pom wasn’t saying anything, but she was going to be one of the most dangerous competitors.

Didn’t even know where that Kelpie sword guy was staying, but I didn’t see him here at the moment.

Torchic needed all the help she could get, didn’t think she was even going to get past the first round of fights.

There were several fighting rings and I bet I would be called into one of the ones first.

“When called proceed to arena and wait for the call to start fighting, all fights will begin at the same time. Torchic, Machop, Ring 1-A. Pom Lambchop, Hitmonchan, Ring 2-A…” The announcer called out, he was a Loud-Dread guy or something related to those wimpys that were scared of Dazzle back in Aurora. Oh… right… I didn’t want to be put into an arena too far away from Pom and I would have to finish my opponents quickly! I whined as the next ring was announced. “Tyrogue, Meditite Ring 3-A…”

“Don’t worry Dolly, we’ll look out for Pom for you, just focus on winning your match.” Nice sentiment Ocellus, but I can’t help but worry about her.

“Timburr, Shroomish, Ring 4-A.” According to Loud-Dread that means I wasn’t near enough to Pom to keep an eye on her.

“It’ll be fine Dolly, I don’t think Pom is going to get hurt on purpose too badly, now keep an ear out they are calling for opponent in the B-Rings.” Not that I could feel good Smolder, not when Pom was already move for her ring.

My name wasn’t in the B or C Rings either, Shanty was in 3-C at least facing off against a leak bird that was different from farfetched bird we saw before. There were a lot of strong looking Pokémon guys here and I am getting worried I was going to be paired off against the giant forearmed four arms guy.

“Hitmontop Seventeen, Dolly Danger Dalmatian Lambchop, Ring 1-D.” Well that figures, the Loud Dread calling me to a D ring.

I started to quickly make my way over the ring and upon climbing the stairs up into the ring I saw my opponent they were dancing from foot to foot. They were brown, had a large spike on their head and a tail with a round part and a spike sticking out of it that was half the size of their three claw feet two claws in the front and one claw in the back like a birds talons. Their arms were a bit weird, reminded me of the big red boxing gloves the guy that gave out those pamphlets had, except these weren’t as large and were just ball shaped.

Hit-On-Top, tilted his head curiously at me and it would be pretty painful to hit him on the pointed cone head that seemed to have to hard flaps angling down from it. His face was rather simplistic with two eyes and a mouth.

“This is my opponent?” He sounded like a kid, probably was.

“She officially signed up for this.” Stated the bipedal grass thing that looked familiar, except she wasn’t wearing a skirt and her legs were showing, she wasn’t like the dancing one in Arbor Day town.

“Well okay then, prepare for the might of my spinning bird kicks!” He said taking a stance.

“We’ll see about that dude!” Sure he couldn’t understand my barks, but my intent was easy to read when I started growling at him.

“All rings filled, prepare for a fight.” Announced the Loud Dread guy.

“You’ve got this Dolly!” Cheered Dazzle while holding the empty Digivice that was currently communicating with my family, I wondered if I should actually have let my family watch this? Things were going to get fairly violent.

“Be careful Dolly, remember that I can’t be there to take care of you!” Wait, Delilah, my step mother was going to be watching this? Must have gotten some time off to spend more time with the pups.

“Hey, I’ve got this, no sweat!” At least this would go better than the faking a monster in the park did, though I was facing an actual monster.

“Ready… Begin!” The fighting broken out all over the stadium.

I had something to prove to myself today and I was going to show that I could do anything if I put my mind to it even without a weapon in paw.

-Fight Ring 1-D: Dolly vs Hitmontop #17-

Dolly and Hitmontop moved towards each other.

Hitmontop opened with a kick, which Dolly dodged away from, he lashed out another kick lunging forward, which was again backpedaled from.

When Hitmontop went for their third kick, Dolly darted forward and entered a slide under the last kick to end up behind him as his last kicked missed and he was left exposed to an attack from behind.

Dolly rolled onto her paw and then jumped slammed her head into his back with a momentum boosted hit that sent him sprawling and bounced off his straight up horn chest first into the rings ropes.

Flopping onto his back Hitmontop angled his horn at Dolly as she charged forward to leap at him and managed to avoid skewering herself on the point of his head spike.

As Hitmontop got up, he launched a punch that sent out a flash of silver and Dolly rolled to the side to her left and narrowed her eyes at her opponent. He launched two more silver flashes with thrust that Dolly dodged back right and left.

Once he opened up enough distance between them, Hitmontop launched a high right kick at the air to flip entirely upside down and started rapidly spinning toward Dolly on his horn. He was rapidly swinging his tail and feet like a demented top of doom as he moved toward her.

Dolly slowly backed up and kept her eyes on the spinning form and then raised her right paw and waited before putting it out in front of her on a moment’s notice while leaning her head back. She caught Hitmontop’s left leg and stopped his momentum entirely.

Hitmontop’s leg having, been caught the way it had, almost wrench both of his legs out of his hip sockets from the sudden stop. He was promptly slapped by Dolly’s left paw and was sent skidding backwards and flopping onto his face.

Not wasting any time while her opponent was down, Dolly leapt high up and stomped down on Hitmontop’s back with all her paws using momentum boosted impact on contact. She bounded backwards towards the center of the arena and then carefully approached Hitmontop.

Even if Hitmontop hadn’t moved, he felt like he suddenly got harshly smashed into a brick wall, he might have underestimated his opponent for her size. He wasn’t completely out of this yet.

Hitmontop lashed out with his tail and the spike on the end narrowly missed slashing up Dolly’s face when she approached to see if he was out of the fight.

Something drew Dolly’s attention away from Hitmontop allowing him to get back into a standing position and was facing her.

Dolly went to attack him and he started glowing and smiling as he put himself in a defensive posture, Dolly stopped and waited.

After a moment Hitmontop frowned and realized that Dolly wasn’t going to hit him while he was prepping a Revenge move. A move that returns double the damage dealt back to the attacker if they got hit and weren't knocked out while it is going.

Instead, even if she didn’t know what he was currently doing, Dolly went with her instincts and didn’t attack and went onto her hind legs and prepped her right paw by bringing it back and curling it up.

Sparkles of the magic of flowing motion built up around Dolly for a powered forward leap. Her left hind leg lifted up slightly ahead of her right hind leg she was balancing on, she leaned back as if she were going to throw a ball like a pitcher. Her tail flicked several times to keep her balanced for the attack she was about to launch.

Once the red glow died out on Hitmontop he reared back his right fist and it started glowing silver as he went to attack, but he could no longer get off his Bullet Punch move.

Dolly had launched her attack the second Hitmontop’s Revenge move ended and her right paw slammed him right in the middle of his face with the force of a brick dog house. This sent Hitmontop flipping out of the ring and flopping across the floor twice and after landing on his back, he was out cold with swirling eyes.

Turning to the referee, Dolly pumped her front legs as she sat on her rear and her tail wagged.

“Winner by knockout and ring out, Dolly!” The plant girl stated.

“Yeah!” I raised my left paw in the air.

“You can take a break now, until all the other fights conclude.” The Fighting Lilligant didn’t need to tell Dolly twice as she hopped out of the ring and went to see how Pom’s fight was progressing.

-Fight Ring 3-C: Shanty vs Slay the Farfetch’d-

“You’re big vegetable be looking tasty.” Shanty said with a grin as she eyed the thick leak being wielded by the duck like bird.

“Good, because you’re going to be eating it soon enough.” The darker Farfetch’d with a thick unibrow stated while point his weapon at her.

“Ready… Begin!” The central announcer called out.

Shanty immediately lunged forward, starting with a left hoof slashing at her opponent. She soon found herself being deflected and even pushed back with an unnaturally fast swing.

A second later, with his leak glowing darkly as he held it up and took two steps forward, the Farfetch’d swung and created a massive circular arc of force that struck Shanty and knocked her over.

With a leap Farfetch’d raised his weapon high above his head and brought it down at Shanty.

Shanty rolled onto her hooves and managed to brace for the shockwave and immediately fired a Riptide once she was able to collect herself.

Farfetch’d raised his massive leak and it took Shanty’s blast of water without damage and it was swung upward with powerful force in retaliation.

The focused blast wave that flew off the glowing vegetable struck Shanty in the belly and knocked the air out of her as she was pushed into a corner of the ring.

“Come on now, put up more of a fight, I just need one more… I can feel it.” What that one was, went unsaid as Farfetch’d twirled his large leak above his head then tried to slam it down on Shanty’s head.

Shanty dodge the attack and slashed her opponent across the side lightly as he hopped to the right to avoid taking a deep injury from her. She rolled forward to dodge a glowing slash of the vegetable the bird wielded and then watched as he hopped backwards with his weapon glowing brightly like the sky.

With a swing a slash of air shot at Shanty requiring her to dodge to the side, for some reason the ring wasn’t damaged by the attack.

Shanty dodged two swings of the heavy leak from farfetch’d with impressive leaps and then landed another slash across his right side, but that was about as far as her luck went when she had all four of her legs knocked out from under her as she landed.

Farfetch’d hit Shanty was a golf swing and Shanty went sprawling across the arena, she tried to get standing when the leak was pressed roughly against her throat.

“Yeah, I still not being at full strength…” Shanty said weakly as she was pressed back down, the large leak being held at her throat.

“Opponent unable to battle, winner by pin Slay the Farfetch’d…” The referee Lucario stopped at a flash of bright light going off and saw that Farfetch’d was evolving, within the light the leak split into two different forms and the farfetch’d grew slightly large. “Correction, Slay the Sirfetch’d wins!”

When the white light resolved itself, the Farfetch’d was white feathered instead of dark brown and was now holding a mostly blunt leak sword with an exceptionally sharp stabbing tip and a large leafy green shield.

“Darn it… I be wanting to fight Pom…” Shanty wilted, she would go find Smolder and Ocellus as soon as she could get up.

-Fight Ring 1-A: Torchic vs. Machop-

It had been a minute or so into the fight and Torchic had actually managed a few decent hits, her strange and clumsy evasion maneuvers had prevented her from taking any devastating blows from her opponent.

Eventually Torchic leapt high into the air and angled herself downwards.

Unleashing a powerful burst of flame from her backside and, upon using the flames to jet forward, Torchic rammed herself beak first into the small muscular grey Pokémons chest with and into the ground kicking up a lot of dust.

After a moment of laying down, Torchic shook her head popped up onto her talons and looked about for her opponent… only to realize she was standing right on them.

“Winner by knockout, Torchic!” At the announcement from small ball of white fur with lanky limbs called a Mankey that was a small monkey with anger issues, she looked to see a number of people gathering in the next ring over.

She hopped out and quickly went to see what was going on with Pom’s fight.

-Fight Ring 2-A: Pom Lambchop vs. Hitmonchan-

“Ready… begin!” As soon as the fights were called to start, the kilted and red fisted brown Pokémon charged forward with a raised right fist.

Hitmonchan thrust his fist forward in a high speed corkscrew motion, only for it to be deflected off to the side.

Pom stared blankly at her opponent, while she dodged back and to the side with her right hoof thrusting forward and up at the bipedal monsters oddly shaped head with the five blunted spikes.

Hitmonchan was incredible focused on his opponent, he could already tell that there was something wrong with her and given his opponent suddenly reared up onto her hind legs and brought her hooves up into a boxing stance.

Immediately recognized the tough opponent before him, Hitmonchan shifted his offensive stance to a defensive and stamina efficient one.

With a left thrust of her hoof Hitmonchan ducked under Pom’s attack and launched a high speed right for her kidney, only for her wool to take the attack and barely shift the upper half of her body.

Immediately Hitmonchan weaved to the side and swung a rising left hook for Pom’s chin as her right hoof tried to hit him with a right straight.

Pom was still in the middle of bringing her left hoof back in while trying to turn and keep him in sight.

The blow to the chin rocked Pom and Hitmonchan tried to get another blow in on Pom’s unprotected face, but overextended by dropping his defense and was struck across the right side of his face by Pom’s left hoof.

This staggered Hitmonchan back and gave him a black eye. Staggering further back to avoid taking another blow, Hitmonchan flashed his left fist forward and slammed Pom in the right eye making her grunt loudly returning the favor of a black eye.

Pom stepped into the painful attack and crouched slightly before performing a leaping uppercut with her right hoof.

Thanks to the blow to his jaw stunning him and rocking him backwards, Hitmonchan couldn’t prevent Pom from slamming a nasty left hook into his face. He was knocked back a fair distance, but not down or to the edge of the ring. Hitmonchan even managed to steadily land on his feet too.

Pom hopped back while keeping her hooves up in a defensive posture, she then exhaled and flashed forwards moving in a half circle to the right. She threw a straight right that Hitmonchan dodge by leaning left.

Pom hopped inhaling and was back at where, she exhaled again and started her half circle run charging from the left this time before throwing a straight left.

Hitmonchan leaned right to dodge and watched as Pom hopped back to where she started again.

This time Pom moved in half circle in both directions at the same time, which confused Hitmonchan long enough to take a straight left to the face.

The pain caused Hitmonchan’s concentration to skyrocket and he actually saw how Pom did what she did… when she hopped back and then started zigzagging at high speed between the two spots along the circle of movement she initially made making it seem as if she was coming at him from both sides at once.

With that in mind and waiting until the last moment, Hitmonchan ducked the straight right and then threw his own right straight into Pom’s forehead dazing the dull eyed fighter.

The stun lasted long enough for Htimonchan to slam several painfully piercing punches in the form of what was known as a Drain Punch into Pom.

Pom’s wool might protect against blunt force… but it didn’t stop the shockwaves of pinpoint hits or having her energy stolen for Hitmonchan to heal himself with.

Leaning back Hitmonchan reared back his right fist to throw a high speed Mach Punch, he threw his hips and entire body into the right hook…

And missed entirely as Pom ducked his blow.

He was struck in the gut with Pom’s right hoof as a counter, doubling Hitmonchan over and allowing her access to his face.

Pom lashed her hooves into his face four times with a left and right rapid fire hoof blows, then for a fifth hit she threw a devastating leaping left hook that sent Hitmonchan spinning around twice and toppling over onto the floor.

After a second or two Hitmonchan rolled away from Pom trying to stomp down on him with her right hoof and immediately bloodied her nose with a rising right hook.

Pom hopped back and crouched down while holding front legs up in a defensive manner. Hitmonchan was wary of charging her and was breathing roughly after that left hook that knocked him down.

There was something akin to a wariness in the dull eyes that seemed to narrow in concentration, Hitmonchan narrowed his own and ready to move forward.

Pom was inhaling and exhaling evenly and then slowly started to inhale slowly for a long time.

Hitmonchan put his left foot forward, his fist glowing, to charge his opponent. Pom exhaled explosively and appeared in front of him in a blink from where she had been standing, she was now to his left.

A hopping rising right uppercut hit Hitmonchan staggering him, which was followed by a rising hopping uppercut to the left, four more hopping uppercuts followed, two right and two left in rhythmic manner that staggered Hitmonchan to the edge of the ring.

When it looked like Hitmonchan was prepared for a full hopping uppercut he threw a hasty left hook and missed, because Pom decided to land in front of him instead of hopping into the path of his hastily thrown attack.

Pom was crouched down with both her hooves held out to both sides over and then she lashed them both forward and then upwards while kicking off the floor with her hind legs.

Hitmonchan eyes were wide as he felt his jaw break under the force of the two simultaneous blows and the world spun for him twice before hit slammed into the floor outside the ring face first and blacked out.

“Winner, by knockout and ring out Pom Lambchop!” The Pancham referee announced.

Pom dully turned and calmly walked her way out of the ring.

-Dolly-

“Pom… are you alright?” That double uppercut looked painful for the boxing gloves for hands guy.

“I’m fine Dolly.” Like anyone would believe that Pom, not when you won’t talk out loud.

“Say that when your voice isn’t hollow, you don’t have a shiner, several painful bruises along your body and are hurting inside for some reason and won’t tell us why.” I can be spot on when I want to be and I pay attention to my friends, then again Dalmatians tend to be ‘spot on’ in a lot of situations.

“Again, I’m fine.” Says you in our heads Pom, you actually signed up for this competition and that’s concerning behavior knowing you.

“Sure you are…” I stated dully, before wondering when the next fight starts.

I moved away from Pom and towards Dazzle.

“Hey guys, did you see me, I got through the first fight!” I was keeping Pom on my mind in the back of the head.

“Yes, quite an impressive display of violence Dolly.” Dawkins didn’t particularly care for blood sport, most of my family didn’t, but even he had to admit that I’m awesome.

“Are you okay, are you hurting anywhere?” Mom asked and I sent a smile her way to let her know I'm okay, I still decided to say it anyway.

“I’m fine, besides this fighting competition isn’t too bad… could always forfeit if I end up with that guy.” I pointed out the bipedal mound of muscles with four arms that was flexing and quite frankly we didn’t hear what happened to his first opponent, we probably didn’t want to know.

Quite a few puppies back home agreed, that four arms guy was scary.

I turned to see Shanty hanging out with Favela, she only seemed mildly upset to be knocked out in the first round by an onion wielding bird. One that upgraded from their fight to wielding a sword and shield. If anything it was amazing Torchic managed to survive the Ma-chopper... strange that the guy didn't have any propellers for flight, but eh.

“First round ended, winners of the first round are as follows, Torchic, Pom Lambchop…” They spoke an entire list however something came up that shocked quite a few Pokémon as the last name was spoken. “Wild Wrestling Wooloo.”

“There’s a Wooloo in a competition with all the fighting types around?” One of those fire pig guys asked with clear shock, pig nitro or something like that.

“How did they get past the first round, I’m pretty sure there are enough Fighting Types that he would have had to face one in the first round.” White ball of fur with a pig nosed and muscular limbs stated, he had large boxing glove like fist like the red boxing fists guy. Except he was far shorter and more stout.

“A normal type beating a fighting type, don’t be absurd!” Stated another guy that looked like a Popsicle with legs and arms, their legs seem particularly powerful given the bunched up and spring like quality to them.

“Actually the wooloo’s first opponent was a Croagunk…” A large tiger with red and black striped fur with a grey furred torso and a large belt with a fire motif spoke up, he stood there with his arms crossed looking all cool as he looked around for the white wooly wonder that entered this competition. “Must be a really tough masochist to get through a fight like that.”

Didn’t know what a Croagunk was, but I’m guessing that the Wooloo had to be Geo Puff.

“Do you think it’s Geoff?” Dazzle asked me with a hint of curiosity. I nodded, yep it had to be Geo Puff. “Why would he enter the competition, he’s at a disadvantage… unless he wants to be hurt and I wouldn’t put it past him to enjoy that.”

“Maybe it’s the same reason I entered the competition… to keep an eye on Pom.” Oh right, my barks weren’t being translated… Dazzle couldn’t understand me.

“I assume it has something to do with Pom.” Sighing audibly, Dazzle looked to Pom who was sitting quietly off to the side and waiting for the next match. “We’ll figure it out Dolly, even if we have to force the issue.”

“Oh I’ll force the issue alright, Pom can’t keep being silent about whatever this is she’s got going on in her head forever!” I was going to get her to open up eventually.

-Condensed Montage Time-

Dolly was faced off against a heavyset short guy with black boxing glove fist, a common feature among many fighting type Pokémon apparently, he was small yellow sumo wrestler with a bag or dumpling shaped head and red circles on his cheeks. It was called a Makuhita… Dolly just called him a Maximum-eater and called it a day as she dodged his rapid fire arm thrusts, Pom’s attacks were far faster than that when she was going full speed with Dolly.

When the Makuhita blasted a palm shape mass of energy Dolly leapt straight over it and flipped into flying buck to the skull, thus far her momentum boosted hits hadn’t done anything to slow the guy down when she struck his body. However a pinpoint blow to the skull was more than the Pokémon could take and he fell down with a painful knot on his forehead in the shape of two paw marks.

Dolly’s evasion skills and speed more than made up for the fact that her opponent was a walking tank.

Torchic ended up with a poor matchup and was fighting a Poliwag, a tadpole with a swirl on their belly and legs that fired blasts of water that she had to frantically dodge. The Poliwag wasn’t willing to lose to her opponent being a fire type, but Torchic was proving quite squirrely to hit with a blast of water as she tripped, flopped and or clumsily dodged all over the place.

At some point Torchic managed to actually land a hit after fifty seven consecutive misses and that was in the process of being slapped by the walking tadpole’s tail. The Peck attack Torchic landed was accidental because it slammed into the tail as she got hit. The tadpole tried to follow up with a bubble beam only to miss when Torchic landed and then sprang high up in the air and performed an incidental bounce attack and ended up behind the dazed tadpole… one would think her next attack would be the finished blow. They’d be wrong.

Torchic tried to point blank an ember attack and missed entirely, from less than half a foot away…

Not that Torchic was going to let the Poliwag opponent recover, she decided to just tackle the tadpole with a Body Slam, which actually worked.

Afterwards Torchic evolved into a Combusken and earned her ability to do fighting type moves with more power. Her wings extended and grew three claws each, her body grew bigger and taller and more bipedal stature as her legs reverse the way they bent. Torchic was cheerful that she managed to finally achieve one dream of managing to get enough experience in battle to evolve.

Pom was faced off with what Dolly termed the Popsicle or a corndog with arms and legs. It was a Hitmonlee, the kicking Pokémon. The Hitmonlee’s legs could extend and stretch a fair distance that had three claws on the feet, its arms were pretty short in comparison ending in three blunt digits and didn’t seem to fight with its hands very much.

When their fight started, the Hitmonlee lashed out several hundred rapid fire kicks, Pom started by dodging and then eventually matching and deflecting his kicks with her hind legs. As the fight went on it was apparent that Pom was learning kick boxing style that Hitmonlee were known for as she fought him in his domain and was only deflecting or defending with her front hooves.

The Hitmonlee found his opponent to be a worthy challenge and despite her emotional state, he appreciated her fighting him in his domain. As they exchanged blazing fast kicks, Pom had a slightly bloodied nose and battered face. Hitmonlee had several bruising hoof shaped indents in his neckless torso made for kicking.

Quite a few Pokémon were watching the high speed exchange of kicks, twisting, turning, and even soccer styled blows they were landing on each other’s bodies was creating quite a scene of skill and violence in equal measure.

The Hitmonlee was quite a challenge for Pom as he could kick at her from any position whether from the floor, upside down on top of what passes for the headless torso with eyes doing a spinning break dance maneuver and it didn’t help that the legs were incredibly flexible beyond what even Pom could do.

It was an understatement that Pom was having trouble with hitting her opponent with a solid finishing blow given his insane amount of legwork. Hitmonlee’s legs that could stretch to twice their length and could change angles at a moment’s notice up to at least three times mid kick along the segmented portions of leg, the claws on the Pokémon’s feet had dug into Pom’s side piercing her wool with each successfully blow several times.

It wasn’t until the Hitmonlee made a mistake in trying to do a High Jump Kick, a jump attack that ends in a powerful crushing knee blow, the fight then turned completely to being ultimately in Pom’s favor. Pom was faster than Hitmonlee in movement and dodged the crushing knee attack and after that the Hitmonlee had trouble with his injured leg being less flexible than before.

After a final roundhouse buck to the top of torso boy’s skull, Hitmonlee toppled and couldn’t get back up to continue the fight. Pom was left the victor and bleeding a little bit.

In another ring a Wooloo wearing a bright yellow luchador mask covered in smiling faces was pile-driving a Clobbopus into the floor head first. The two large tentacles ending in boxing glove like appendages of the Clobbopus tried to struggle out of the wooly wonders hooved grip and didn’t succeed in time.

The Clobbopus’s six stubby mobility tentacles were sticking up in the air out the floor and their large head with bar shaped eyes had painfully punctured through the floor of the ring. Since the Clobbopus couldn’t get free and its two large boxing glove tentacles were pinned to its sides, the Wild Wrestling Wooloo was soon declared the winner.

-Condense montage end, stadium space, Dolly-

“Thanks for the water Dazzle.” I nuzzled her left thigh in a show of appreciation. I then pointed to Pom who, even with her dull eyed look, seemed to need refreshment.

“Oh right, I’ll do that for her too Dolly!” Dazzle passed me the Digivice my ‘fam’ was watching all this on and made her way to give Pom some water and a few berries. After two rounds the contestants were allowed thirty minutes to eat some berries and drink some water.

“The competition is heating up folks, the stronger Pokémon and visitors are going to get into harder fights, who’s going to walk away with the top three spots?!” Yeah, didn’t really care about that Loud-Dread dude, I just wanted Pom to return to having a bit of life in her eyes.

“Do you think you can reach her sister?” Deepak immediately asked and all the puppies seemed worried for Pom.

“I don’t honestly know, maybe I’ll reach if I come close to breaking our bond…” Which would require me to pull out all the stops against Pom.

“Yeah, that fight isn’t going to go in your favor Dolly, Pom is like really tough, fast and she’s known as one of the world’s strongest heroes here in our world for a reason!” Delgado, wheelchair wonder pup, wasn’t wrong.

“I know… but that doesn’t mean I will give up. In any case I’m kind of surprised Torch Chick made it this far, she even evolved. Too bad she’s against big four arms guy next, she’s going to get creamed by that Mock Champ guy.” I even knew my next opponent… since there were few fighters left and a bracket could be made.

“At least that onion guy be fighting Geoff.” Shanty tossed out there, didn’t know if the pervert sheep guy could win that fight. The bird with the sword and shield looked ridiculously tough and had taken out Shanty before evolving.

Said brackets were randomized, not that it would help for my next fight to know who my opponent was…

The sign for the bracket fight had been randomized, it was kind of what I wanted to happen as it read ‘Ring 3-D, Pom Lambchop vs Dolly Danger Dalmatian Lambchop’.

I think this was going to strain our bond to the extreme.

312. Super Pound Out!

-Pokémon world, Kingdom of Pugilis, currently inside Pummelton's indoor mountain stadium, Dolly-

“You might not want to let the pups watch this mom, this next fight isn’t going to be pretty.” Understatement of the year, I know.

“Dolly, you do realize that you can’t use magic directly on Pom, her wool will reflect, block and in general cancel any magical attack directed at her.” Yes Ocellus, I remember what happened with Cuckoo Lane. You didn’t need to worry so hard about it, I knew I was about to get my butt kicked.

“Winner Machamp!” Well that wasn’t a big surprised, my fight with Pom was about to start and Combustion Chicken was already out of her fight. Machamp would be fighting Pom next if I lost here, like I had any better chance against the four armed muscle monster with lips big and yellow enough be confused for a beak.

“Winner Wild Wrestling Wooloo!” Huh, Geoff already won his match with the guy that onion blade and grass shield guy that took out Shanty?! Well Shanty wasn’t fully at her best after facing that Low Butt guy.

“Will participants D.D.D. Lambchop and Pom Lambchop come to ring 3-D?” Okay according to the prior announcers so the Machamp guy would be facing Pom, then Pom would have to fight Geoff… I have my bets on Mock Champ actually putting a stop to whatever Pom was doing here.

I gave off some friendly sounding words to Smolder, Ocellus and Dazzle as I made my way towards my fight. I could already feel Pom waiting for me.

Arriving at the ring, which seemed far large than it previously did. I saw that our referee was something like a cross between a Rhinoceros and a Beetle, it was also blue. The big bug looks like it could take a real beating with that kind of tank armored shell, makes me wonder why Ocellus doesn’t have carapace like that.

“Uh… you two family by any chance?” The big guy asked as I took up a position on the opposite corner from Pom.

I nodded to him, yeah… we were definitely family. I would like to at least think we would continue being so even with the way Pom was currently. Being connected to her made me know she was not in any mood to be talkative, as if the blank and dull lifeless look in her eyes wasn’t anything to go by already on that front.

“Right then, are either of you going to have a problem fighting one another?” To the big bug’s credit, he managed to look at Pom’s lifeless eyes without flinching. She shook her head no and I reciprocated the sentiment. We weren’t going to have any problems beating the total snot out of one another. “Okay, get ready, say or get anything out of the way before the fight begins.”

I was going to have some problems with hurting Pom, mostly because she could take and dish out more damage than I was full capable of. Her wool was a ridiculous obstacle, blue and cutting forces will do basically zip, meaning I would have to jab her with my claws quite a number of times… that is if I didn’t want to go for her face.

Even if I did go for her face she could shift her wool to protect her and I wasn’t about to try and poke out her eyes.

Okay, ‘Aerora’ had flexibility in how I decide to use it. There’s also… ‘haste’ which can leave me with a case of magical induced high and being more aggressive than I normally would be. My flow-motion ability will definitely be on full blast constantly. My repertoire wasn’t that big without my weapons, I might even have to bite Pom a few times… at least my teeth would go through her wool like I know my claws will if I keep stabbing her with them.

The unfortunate problem is, even if I knew Pom’s every exact move, she was still going to cream me into next week as I couldn’t react very well to her going absolutely full tilt against me.

“Pom… can you please tell me what’s wrong with you?” Where was the kind and caring person I cared about? The one that could be dangerous, smart, fast, sweet and full of life in a manner to spite the world constantly pressuring her to break. “You do realize Tianhuo is going to figure out eventually and would want to talk through things with you. Sure, leave me out in the cold as much as you want, but what about her?”

“…” Pom didn’t say anything, but it almost felt like she wanted to.

I sighed and motioned to the referee as I sat down staring at Pom and she sat down as well.

“Are you ready?” We nodded, we were getting quite a crowd.

Heh I might as well put on a show, before I’m taken down.

“Bow-Whacka-Wow!” I shouted while raising my right paw in the air and bowing my head and letting the two strands of black cloth flow behind me from my headband with the orange paw print.

Afterwards I was paying full attention to Pom.

“Well, okay then… ready, fight!” The blue beetle stated while swinging his right arm down and backing away.

I’m going to need a heart song and we’ll see what happens from there... but my opening move should be…

-Pom Lambchop vs. Dolly Danger Dalmatian Lambchop-

“Aerora!” Dolly shouted as her starting move, Pom thrust her right leg forward and fired off a Thousand Spear and the jet of air deflected off the powerful silver swirling barrier that surrounded the Dalmatian.

Dolly and Pom already knew each other’s moves as they were making them, including the fact that Dolly shifted gears now that her barrier prevented her from taking long range hits in the various forms that Pom could pull off.

“What can this canine do for you~?” Dolly was starting a heart song as she started to move, Pom hesitated and quite a few Pokémon were now focusing on Dolly with the swirling silver winds protectively wrapping around her. As she strutted forward with the beat. “What can this canine do for you, what can this canine do for you, what can this canine do for you~? I can’t hear you~!”

Dolly lunged at Pom and landed short of a block and lashing out attempted.

Dolly took two rapid steps forward on her hind legs, while getting entirely under Pom’s guard, she lashed her right paw out and up in a jab claws first into Pom’s chest. When she pulled her paw back with some blood on her claws, she gave it the briefest glance and then steeled herself as Pom was going to take this fight seriously after that.

Pom had been bodily lifted off the floor from the momentum empowered blow, she brought her hooves up and slammed them down on top of Dolly only to be buffeted and knocked back slightly by the defensive blasts of wind. Her anti-magic wool notably didn’t protect her from it.

Dolly went skidding backwards and was almost toppled onto her back, barely able to absorb the impact of the blow for energy for some more magic.

“Far beyond the lazy borders of your heart, you can feel the pace, it’s moving like this~.” Dolly sang as they started clashing paws versus Pom’s longer legs and larger form. Between the two of them Dolly clearly wasn’t as good on her hind legs as Pom was.

Each clash left Dolly wincing as Pom was far stronger and faster, than her the best she could even do was deflect a blow using her momentum control ability on contact and get in a hit or two on Pom’s legs with her slapping claws stabbing through the wool using momentum boosted strikes. With how blazingly fast Pom was it was hard to land a blow, but that didn’t mean Dolly was going to give up.

Still that didn’t mean that the wind surrounding Dolly wasn’t buffeting Pom with every deflect blow and clash between the two.

“Every now and then I won’t know what to do, still… I know that I… would never look back~.” Dolly leapt up and used her right paw and claws to grapple onto the puff on Pom’s head and pivoted to slam her left paw down into Pom’s back. She wasn’t showing it, but she was upset to be covering her claws in Pom’s blood even if the damage she was doing was minimal.

Pom’s wool tried to cling to Dolly, but for some reason Dolly managed to slip free even as the wool enclosed around both her front paws.

Apparently Dolly’s Flow-Motion magic was preventing her from being pinned by the magical wool as she immediately slipped free of Pom and got free to drop behind her, this was apparently news to both Dolly and Pom. As even the dull eyed Pom showed some surprise, but not for long.

Dolly silently decided to keep her Flow-Motion running full blast and had to quickly roll out of the way of a fast low buck from Pom, by rolling underneath the attack and Pom before they could lash out and catch her in the face.

“All the things we’ve seen, like a life made of dreams, can’t compare to what I’m doing now~.” Dolly lashed her claws upwards into Pom’s exposed belly several times and getting a few more pinpricks of actual injury from her small claws. “Everything feels so different, that I would rather have some fleas~.”

“Though, I know, the power of Flow-Motions it surrounds me, I will lean into it~.” Dolly sang as Pom leapt up and started to rapidly stomp Thousand Spears at her from above with a trample attack. Yet throughout the possible chance of each threatening to pierce the barrier of wind around her, Dolly kept effectively dodging them. Any that she couldn’t dodge the wind barrier absorbed or deflected into the fighting ring or surroundings around them. “So now, you know, that forward is the only way my heart can flow~.”

Pom had to land eventually and when she did she stumbled to the right when Dolly delivered a powerful leaping right paw haymaker up after seeing a green triangle in her sight for some reason. That it had nearly knocked Pom off her hooves left Dolly a little upset.

“Can you even hear my voice calling out for you~?” Dolly sang with some tears in her eyes as she backed away her ears drooping down her back from under her headband and she got a little angry. “I won’t ever let you feel alone~!”

Pom just regained her balanced and scraped her left hoof against the floor, the usual sign of a starting up for Cow Kempo. Pom launched forward both her hind legs coming about to do a flying buck, but she was also doing something with her right hoof that seemed unusual.

“What can this canine do for you, what can this canine do for you, what can this canine do for you~?” Dolly dodged the initial buck by shifting to the left, but saw Pom had her hoof planted and quickly ducked to the right to dodge a second buck that came at her face far faster than the first, instead of falling to the floor Pom had used her right hoof to stabilize for a second buck in the case the first missed. “I can’t hear you~!”

With her back facing Dolly, Pom pivoted and threw a hasty left straight for her head while blasting forward using a spring boosted shock from the wool on her rear legs.

Dolly’s wind barrier was almost used up and it wasn’t going to deflect Pom’s entire body coming at her with what she was recognizing as a Fake Buster Wolf that wasn’t followed by the angular wolf spirit explosion as she frantically dodged back and to the left.

Pom looked to have overextended and Dolly saw that green triangle, acting on instinct she leapt forward and bit onto Pom’s left leg with her teeth where the triangle was as Pom was about to draw it back. Pom flinched, allowing Dolly to slam her rear paws into Pom’s forehead and then bound away, as she let go of Pom’s leg with her jaws.

This left Dolly with a disgusting taste in her mouth, a taste she never wanted to ever have again, the taste of Pom’s blood on her tongue. She just stared at the wound on Pom’s leg that she caused.

“I don’t plan on going back to my old life, I don’t even plan… to always rely on you~.” Dolly focused and narrowed her eyes, there was still a fight going and she could worry about the pain they were causing to each other later. “Though there’s always chance that everything could break this bond, I’d have still come along anyway and will try to save you~!”

Pom wool shifted and the bleeding stop. There was a spark of light in the hollow eyes, but Dolly hadn’t reached her. The next moment, Dolly and Pom spread out their paws and hooves respectively and then leapt at each other.

“If from time to time, we have a rough patch to climb, then you must know that I believe~.” Dolly wasn’t going to stop singing as she grabbed onto Pom’s right swinging hoof and then used the momentum to her advantage to pop off of Pom’s leg and slam all her paws down on Pom’s skull to slam her bodily towards the floor. Dolly landed on the ropes and pointed towards Pom. “Where’s your true heart that I’m seeking~? Since I know it’s not inside of me~!”

Then much to the audience sudden shock as much as Pom’s, Dolly’s chest gave off a strange golden spark and before Pom knew she was being hit from behind by Dolly who had turned into a burst of golden wind that appeared in a flash behind her. Dolly rammed into Pom sending her skidding on her side across the. A small spark of gold appeared on Pom’s head for a split second similar to the one on Dolly’s chest.

“Aerora!” Dolly decided to use wind magic directly on Pom and had it spiral inwards for her, Pom’s wool glowed a powerful golden color the wind suddenly reversed directions and appeared around Dolly, but that’s exactly what she wanted.

Pom was frozen for a moment looking at her glowing wool in despair, something Dolly took as being something to do with the Chrysomallus. She was starting to piece together what was wrong with Pom through their bond.

“Come and find, the world of Flow-Motion that surrounds me, I will lean into it~.” When the wind encompassed Dolly, instead of hurting her she used her flow motion to spread it around the ring and get a sense for what Pom’s wool did to reflect instinctively and leapt up to kick off of it. Dolly could feel their bond breaking under the strain, but it wasn’t quite to the point of shattering completely yet.

Dolly looked like she was flying as she danced around on the wind and using her gliding ability to attack Pom from all sides in the air with every one of her four legs, flowing and gliding about her in a circle and could change direction at any moment instantly. Evading deftly each hoof thrust and swing with incredible swirling and flipping finesse while striking out with her claws. At one point Dolly nipped at one of Pom’s ears to pivot around and dig her hind legs claws into Pom’s right side before kicking off back into an evasive glide.

Quite a few of the watchers were astonished that Dolly had been saving this up until now as her previous opponents were seeing Dolly trying to utilize her full capabilities against Pom in an aerial display of acrobatics that most fighting type Pokémon would have problems dealing with. Dolly knew it was not nearly enough to win this fight and she didn’t want to win, she just wanted Pom back.

“The many things we shared, back then, will always be enough to get us through the pain~.” Dolly was sharing memories of the loss of her mother with Pom and how hard she worked to hold her family together, Pom reciprocated with memories of growing up while not having parents and being exiled. “Because of you, I’m strong enough, you’ll never be alone~!”

Dolly slapped her left Paw forward. Pom blocked with her left leg, then threw her right leg straight for Dolly.

Everyone could visibly see the shockwave blasting off it into the rocky ceiling above, doing some damage to the overhead lighting structures as Dolly redirected Pom’s leg upwards with a wild kick from her left hind leg.

“What can I do for you… what could I do for you… what will I do for you… what can this canine do for you?~” Dolly stated as she softly floating backwards and landed on the floor on all fours, bowing her head and then looking up directly into Pom’s hollow eyes. “Still can’t hear you~! …haste…”

Even as the wind barrier finally died out, Dolly had finally used her ace in the hole and started growling as a sickly red glow overtook her body. Pom’s hollows eyes widened fractionally with a vague sense of concern filtered over to Dolly.

Pom inhaled as Dolly moved, in a blur and that blur slowed down to be more visible as she did so.

“And if, you find, that a world of commotion has surrounded you, and you can’t go on~.” Dolly and Pom were now moving quite fast as they assaulted each other in the form of two indistinct mostly white blurs.

A number Fighting Types were riled up with excitement and some parts sadness because there was something about Dolly’s song that let them know something was going on. Dolly was landing far more blows on Pom as she had a sustained speed boost compared to Pom’s bursts of dodging and attacking.

“I’ll be there, the moment that you close your eyes, to comfort you~.” Even as Dolly sang she felt a crunch and a flash of pain across her nose, she had to bit Pom again as it helped her avoid the next attack and a triangle had called to her. It felt like a moment of opportunity and she slapped her hind legs up under Pom’s chin as her right leg came back from battering her nose bloody. Pom stumbled from the blow to the chin and Dolly launched herself off of Pom’s leg and clung to her chest. “We are connected, a strong bond of time, to never be…~”

Pom managed to slap Dolly off her chest with her right hoof and then slapped her down into the floor where she bounced and flipped to come back at the lambkin.

“And though, I know, the Power of Flow-Motion has surrounded me~.” The attacks come from Pom were growing fiercer as much as Dolly’s were coming out at high speed paw slaps or quick bites, the two continued to lay into each. “It won’t let me win this~.”

Pom started firing off a Fiery Flurry of hoof jabs that Dolly was hard pressed to keep dodging as she swirled and twirled, dancing her way between the blows and lashing out with as momentum boosted strikes as she could behind her paws to actually slam her claws into Pom with incredible precision. Any wound she opened on Pom would be sealed off by her wool anyway.

“Now, we know, that this is the only way that our hearts will flow~.” Dolly started wearing down quickly, Pom’s longer legs and reach was hard to compete with and she had to take devastating grazing blows to even get into range to hit Pom’s torso or head. “Please start calling out to me, I’ll never leave you alone~.”

Dolly flipped over a left straight and rolled along Pom’s leg to slap her in the nose with both her hind legs crunching it as she pulled Pom’s muzzle downwards. She curled up to slapped Pom across the right side of her face with a harsh left paw with no claws, leaving a mark similar to the one on her slightly tattered headband.

Pom force Dolly to the floor of the ring, yet she didn’t stop trying to get up even as the haste ended and her various injuries were getting to her more than Pom’s were to her.

“What can I do for you… what I wouldn’t do for you… what do you wish to do…. still can’t hear you~.” Dolly sang as she felt their bond start to fray and Pom pinned her to the floor with her left hoof.

Raising her right hoof, Pom’s right leg lit up in a golden glow. Pom was hesitating, Dolly continued to stare into the hollow eyes.

“What can I do for you, what can this canine do for you, what will this do for you?” Dolly grinned slightly as the bond was about to be broken, if Pom wanted it to break all she had to do was hit Dolly and she was letting Pom know as much. Even then Dolly wouldn’t stop being by her side at this point if she survived the coming blow. “Still can’t hear you~…”

Pom reared her glowing right leg back and her eyes started to give off the same golden glow as she brought it down, Dolly closed her eyes.

“….’m… sorry…”

Pom’s leg came down with crushing force.

-Ocellus-

I sat here wide eyed, just staring at the destruction.

The dust was starting to clear from the volatile explosion, something felt off about the way the wool along Pom’s right leg glowed before she brought it down. The power behind the blow was as unreal as the explosion was…. and Pom was actually controlling it.

Could Dolly actually survive being at the epicenter of something that destroyed the entire ring?!

When the dust fully cleared I just stared at the blue beetle, known as a Heracross, flew up to Pom with wide eyes and when I looked to the floor.

Pom’s right leg buried into solid stone. Whatever wild magic had been powering her leg had been quite devastating, but as for Dolly… she was lying safely next to the hole Pom's leg currently occupied. Pom hadn’t struck Dolly with that amount of force.

Dolly looked somewhat relieved about something, as the power unleashed had all but flowed around her and seemingly refused to touch her battered form.

Dolly’s tail even began weakly wagging as she looked up at Pom nose to nose and she had a smile on her face despite being more bloodied and battered than Pom was.

She lightly licked Pom’s bleeding nose and her face scrunched, she promptly got a disgusted look on her face and spat off to the side.

-Dolly-

Heh… the bond just strengthened itself… funny… not getting rid of me that… easily… huh Pom.

“Love… you…” I stated out loud.

“Love you too Dolly.” Pom’s voice came through loud and clear, even if her lips weren’t moving and it was bland sounding, it was something at least.

The world was slowly going black for me… think I hit my limit. Pom had… plenty left…

I heard her whisper a secret to me, it was something to do with the golden glow her wool could take on and it was something she’s currently trying to unsuccessfully bury inside of her.

She knew they’d find out eventually from Tianhuo. That Tianhuo, her puppies and practically everyone could eventually know, she just couldn’t deal with it at the moment and needed a lot of help.

The hesitation in not telling me everything, made me sharpen my eyes and focus. I tried to sit up despite how badly it felt to try. She gently pushed me back down with her left hoof after I had lifted it up slightly with whatever remaining strength I had.

“Talk later… while alone please… get some rest Dolly.” Still not talking out loud Pom… at least you were talking to me.

“Pom… you don’t have to… just didn’t want… bond…” Everything was getting pretty dark.

“Please rest.” Pom’s voice was gentle and sad, I could hear her.

I had to… tell our friends… about what that was… after a nice… long… Dolly brand… nap…

-Shanty-

“Did she actually be controlling the glow of her wool that time, I did not be seeing any magical attack on her when she be doing that.” I haven’t seen her do it on purpose before, it was always used in repelling magic of some kind as Ocellus has told us.

“Oh yeah, and whatever that was, it sure was powerful!” Smolder seemed in awe of the destruction as we watched Pom carefully take up Dolly in her left hoof and then wrenched her right leg out of the solid stone and then proceeded to be walking on said leg towards us. “Ocellus is practically catatonic from whatever she just felt. I’m surprised that Dolly is still alive.”

“Winner by knockout and absolute total destruction of ring Three D, Pom Lambchop.” The big bug referee eventually called out once he be getting his wits about him as Pom carried Dolly towards us, quite a few Pokémon be wondering how someone as scrawny as Pom can be destroying an entire ring in one blow.

A blow that be sticking her leg up to her withers into the stone beneath said arena after totally decimating it. Pom does not be having the physical strength to do that... magical strength on the other hoof. She did be getting better at controlling her wool over time.

-Pom-

I walked up to my… my friends… and then slowly held Dolly out for someone to take.

Smolder, really shouldn’t stress herself given her injuries, not that anyone from our group was all too well off anyway. Still she carefully took Dolly off my hoof and held her carefully and gently, gentle and sweet are not what dragons should be known for… it’s definitely what Smolder would be known for even if she was already fierce and strong.

I looked them all over.

Ocellus, almost nothing could really hurt a changeling more than damaging them emotionally in a permanent fashion.

Smolder, almost nothing could hurt a dragon more than being entirely helpless.

Dolly, almost nothing could hurt Dolly more than our bond being truly broken.

Shanty, almost nothing could hurt her more than being completely alone in any world or never having met us in the first place.

Dodo, almost nothing would hurt Dodo more than if Shanty got grievously injured when he was around to prevent it.

Dazzle, almost nothing would hurt her more than if she were to witness me lose myself completely.

“I have no idea how to comprehend the kind of injuries you just dealt to my daughter.” Delilah, nothing would hurt her more than knowing that she failed to do all she could for her family, a good role model for Dolly. “I should be angry, but I just… don’t know how to feel about this. I hope you come to your senses, you’re part of our family too Pom.”

Me… nothing would hurt me more than knowing that…

I burrowed my chin into my chest and sniffled a bit before turning away from my friends to go prepare for my next fight, it was that four armed grey monstrosity of raw muscle. Maybe he would be able to stop me? Before I get any worse.

Nothing would hurt us all more…. than losing each other now.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Dad… what was that?” Mew said wide eyed and horrified.

“That’s for Pom to decide.” I said staring curiously as Pom mentally readied herself to fight one of my four armed children, Machamp’s were really quite powerful yet… yet what was more surprising was Geoff and his reasons for joining the small competition. “Ten oran berries on her winning the fight with the Machamp.”

“Dad that’s a suckers bet, you’re god of our worlds, you likely already know the outcome.” Not every outcome Mew, there are some things that even I can’t predict… chaos exists for a reason.

“Depends on whether or not the outcome can change, Celebi continues to exist for a very good reason.” Like the fact that I didn’t like dead end timelines where everything dies, I’m a big proponent in making sure that doesn’t happen. “I’m more surprised by Geoff’s current actions though.”

“Yeah, where exactly would a Wooloo learn to do all that?” If there’s one thing Wooloo were known for Mew, it was being reliable and resilient. They were really ridiculously hard to kill, I mean was dating a Muk and you’d think that Wooloo’s life expectancy wouldn’t be more than a month tops.

-Pom-

“Ready… Fight!” Apparently the referee was a Gallade from Illusio, tall green and white guy with bladed arms and a central red chest and back spike that looked like someone stabbed them with a knife. Psychic and fighting at the same time.

My opponent the, Machamp, wasted no time in attacking me.

I already planned for his inevitable defeat by going onto my hind legs, gluing my hind legs to the floor and bringing up my hooves defensively.

Hundreds of punches trying to slam into my center, each one striking out at me with incredible speed and ducked dodged in place. My upper body started wobbling under the constant pummeling for the hits I couldn’t dodge or even see coming, unfortunately for me… my wool was taking it with relative ease.

Aside from the shockwaves sending tremors through my wool bypassing my defensive abilities with pure force, this… hurt I guess. I was being punch by four arms that were acting like jackhammers, hundreds of blows coming at me. The only problem was… this guy’s coordination left something to be desired.

He had strength and plenty of speed in his arms, but as for his accuracy and the finer control of his arms…

“Come on now, after that last fight, is that all you have to give?” After a moment Machamp stopped and took a step back to examine me.

I had been slowly inhaling and leaning away from some of what would have been the more painful blows. Did he not even notice that his attacks weren’t very concentrated? For all that raw power he really lacked finesse or focus… if he had all his arms hitting me in the exact same spot with that amount of speed constantly for over five seconds, then I would be worse off than I am currently or would have even lost by now.

As it was he was just flailing his arms at his opponents and not using the greatest advantage of any fighter who was worth being called a ‘fighter’, their brain. I sent most of the impacts into the floor, absorbed some of it for a wobble counter and took the rest to the best of my ability if the force of the blows got through my wool.

I unclenched my wool sticking me to the floor and exhaled explosively while half my body vibrated with unbridled force.

Using the speed gained from Dancing Flame, I stepped forward into his guard, crouched and then threw a perfect rising right hook and unleashed as much of the stored up force from my opponent’s attacks.

My blow landed on his face and he went spinning around before dropping on the floor like Hitmonchan had.

Blunt force and raw power, were useful in a fight, but really… knowing yourself and your opponent was much better. My opponent naturally favored using his four arms, he was too obvious about overwhelming his opponents outright.

With that said… he wasn’t going to win by overwhelming me with uncontrolled attacks. My wool could easily handle multiple impacts from various directions as much as single heavy impacts, not since that hammer hit me and my wool armor ability took the entire force of the attack have I felt so… at peace to be fighting someone like this guy.

Machamp was only down for a minute and he got up his lower left arm rubbing at the massive bruise on the left side of his face, I hopped back to gain some space and start inhaling again as he narrowed his eyes at me.

“Hmph… neat trick… let’s see how you handle Double-Edge!” Mr. Machamp, if you have a name that was in any way, shape or form related to Mr. Beezy then this will be a very short fight.

All four of Machamps arms glowed as he hopped towards me twice and then on his third hop he thrust them all forwards.

I went onto all fours and then dropped flat to the floor so that all four arms passed over head, a quick rising left thrust into the bold bull’s charge and he was stunned clutching his stomach with his all of his arms. I’m pretty sure the name of the Pokémon Double Edge was rather specific in its meaning.

Hitting in the head with several left and right hoof strikes to push him back, until I turned my back on him and held my right hoof to the side.

“Are you okay?” I just couldn’t do the real Buster Wolf move without actually saying that, not when I was fighting Dolly and not even now.

“Why are you asking…” Machamp start to say until I spun and launched for him right hoof first, he blocked my hoof with his lower left hand, which got slightly burnt from the friction of the impact.

I thrust my left hoof forward now and he blocked that as well with his lower right hand. His upper arms were about to punish me, at least they were posed to do so until I announced my attack.

“Buster Wolf Cross!” My regular Buster Wolf attack was… unsuccessful on several occasions, I decided to add a little extra oomph to it.

Two forty five degrees explosions erupted from my sides inwards cutting twelve claw marks across Machamp’s chest going left and right from hips to two arms shoulders, he was sent sliding backwards. At least it went much better than the usual central forward eruption that I do.

Again, another Buster Wolf that has yet to fell an opponent, maybe I’m doing it too soon or I’m just not physically strong enough to really give the attack the power it deserves.

“What… ugh… good one.” At least my opponent didn’t seem in dire spirits even if he was bleeding a bit from claw marks that exploded all over his body.

I fired a Thousand Spears at him from my left leg and he seemed too shocked to dodge, the attack did a lot more damage to him than I thought it would. Oh right, Fighting types are weak to Flying type attacks which means… well on a windy day it would be surprising that someone like this would be beaten so easily. My Thousand Spears had been useless against Dolly while she was running a swirling air shield, here… it was my most useful technique.

I decided to end this fight before it could keep going, sure it was going to be cheap to do this… but I was still going to try and win this tournament.

I braced myself against the floor by locking myself in place with my wool and brought my two front leg forwards. While the wool on my left leg was twisting up the wool on my right leg fired of a Thousand Spears, then my left leg did so as my right leg reset. I was soon rapid firing alternating Thousand Spears into Machamp, jets of air were pummeling him before he could even close in on me and with each blast of air I saw the will to fight leaving him.

Type advantage in this world was powerful, but not always key as far as Geoff was concerned given he’s been through two matches with the type advantage of this region working against him.

My pummeling kept going right up until I stopped firing. Once the wool on both my legs was wound up, I fired two Thousand Spears at Machamp simultaneously and he toppled over the ropes and out of the ring.

“Winner by knockout and ring out, Pom!” I calmly exited the arena and thought about Dolly… at least someone would know why I’m behaving the way I am now.

-Ocellus-

Pom could have done that from the start. Whatever the word ‘Chrysomallus’ did to her, she must be really out of it to have not thought of that sooner. It sounds too close to the word or name Chrysalis, it sent some shivers down my spine.

Wind based attacks were anathema to Fighting Types as our battles against Riolu showed, then again… most immaterial attacks seem effective against them.

Fairy, Psychic and Flying all specialize in that kind of attack. Ghost types would be unique in the fact that they can hurt Fighting Types but fighting types can’t hurt them. Ghost Types act immaterial, but don’t do double the damage? Maybe it was a Fighting Types literal fighting spirit protect them from taking twice the damage from Ghost Types, but allows Ghost types to still hurt them unlike Normal Types.

On the flip side of things, Fighting Types seem to be more capable of damaging material things easily. Which explains their strength against Steel, Rock and Ice, most solid sounding stuff. The Dark and Normal types being weak to them are, to my guessing, because Fighting Types can be either based on having a heroic or bullying nature.

Fighting Types live up to the name by being mostly close combat being, with few ranged options.

This world had so many fascinating rules… now if only Pom was as interested in her surroundings. Her eyes were a little less dull now, but still quite unsettling.

“Do you think the Wild Wrestling Wooloo can take her Ocellus?” Glancing at Geoff, I sighed.

“We know it’s you Geoff, do you really need to hide behind a mask?” I know a thing about disguises and his was pretty poor.

“I’m quite sure that I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Sure you don’t Geoff, makes me wonder if you were in this tournament to fight Pom. Which of course is weird considering you don’t like fighting all too much unless you have to, but you’ve been a far sight more reliable than most Pokémon in standing up for yourself and others.

What drove Wooloo to be so weird? I could write an entire series on the subject alone at this rate.

"I believe he can, he is a very brilliant student of Lucha Mundo's Wrestling dojo!" Okay, the bird that just spoke up could pass as an Ornithian from Equus, at least a male harpy. He had a red down around his chest and feathered arms and the tip of his beak. His head was mostly green down along with the feathers on his red arms. The rest of him was fluffy as fur white down until his legs which were as yellow as his startling eyes. Speaking of feathers his were acting more like a cape and he had the vibe of a masked wrestler and a somewhat suave voice.

"Lucha Mundo I presume?" I ask because I wanted to know, even if I might regret it. On some level, this felt something like what Pom would do.

"Honor, Family, Tradition... and Donuts! I am a Hawlucha outsider and my name is the great Lucha Mundo!" He said cheerfully introducing himself while posing like the Team Pocket trio. "I love churros by the way."

"Did you actually take a crash course on wrestling from this weirdo Geoff?" It was an honest question, because it felt like that's what Geoff did. It's how I believed he got acquainted with this guy... who admittedly seemed to be fairly well built all things considered.

"Again, I have no idea what you're talking, but that Wild Wrestling Wooloo is so cool! I can't wait to see how he does against Pom, he might even be able to reach her where we can't!" Really Geoff... you're not fooling anyone. That you are even actually trying is sad... it's also so you... so...

I'd actually be more fooled by Ms. Cheerilee's sister teaching a class of students than whatever this is. The less than subtle winking between you and Lucha Mundo wasn't helping your case either Geoff.

To think Gallus calls me an adorable dork... I wonder what he would have said about this.

Author's Note

Title bout, Wooly Warrior Vs. Woolooloo Wrestler.

Music lyrics written to- Real Emotion, Final Fantasy X-2.

314. Angels Number.

-Pokémon World, Ransei Region, Kingdom of Aurora, Helper’s Hamlet, evening, Canard-

This world was as dangerous as the digital world, but it seemed far more peaceful than it. At least I don’t have to worry about being eaten alive by a ‘Glitch’ or something like one.

Breathing fresh air, having real custom made clothes from some really nice guys up in Violight and a friend at my side that seemed to be curious about the noble sport and religion of hockey.

I miss the mascot of mascots, the spirit, the heart and the cheering for your team even if they weren’t playing too well on a bad day…

I was quite tired of adventuring, the hundreds of digital years seemed to flash by so slowly and yet the time disparity is kind of amazing. I’ll even get in contact with my friends again soon, after being taken alive by the Saurian’s electromagnetic worm. That the Saurians managed to catch a second one was horrifying and that it took Pom’s Digimon partner from her…

Well… that’s life sometimes… other times it can be really peaceful or bright. Like right now for instance.

Pokémon were as interesting as Digimon were, but I really hadn’t seen too much danger since we came back here even if there were some really dangerous Pokémon out there. I was probably in one of the more peaceful kingdoms and wouldn’t need to do much around here unless I wanted to work for Pom’s established organization.

“There are so many fun people here!” Calumon was acting as an emissary of his people, the friendliest that could possibly find.

The Sidekicky Digibot known as Sideline acting as Calumon’s relatively quiet protector, followed along behind in Dog form.

Calumon was trying to find Pokémon to spend time with and he was easily succeeding in that endeavor as he was making a lot of friends here, the guy was like a nearly helpless mascot of the digital world.

The two certainly weren’t having any problems getting along with any of the locals here.

I personally appreciated having more real world food from one of Pom’s acquaintances called Mr. Schlurp, it tasted great and not a random chance to have a bizarre flavor like digital world food. I didn’t have to worry about Digimon attacking me at random for just existing either.

Pokémon on the whole were more laid back unless you bothered them or they were a far more aggressive species that wanted to bother you. Normal Types were apparently quite temperate unless seriously pushed, then they’d really surprise you with their ability to endure things that almost no other Pokémon could.

Calumon’s gratitude towards the Indeedee made them particularly happy, they said they wouldn’t be hungry for quite a while. The butler and maid of the Harmony Guild were quite busy dealing with injured or other important work like keeping the guild operational, but they still took some time to play with Calumon at the castle or here in town.

To think Pom started something so wonderful with Team Harmony… wish I could have done something like that for the Digital World. At least we didn’t leave the digital world worse off than when we got there.

“How do you think Pom and her friends are doing?” I turned and asked Sami as she tinkered with something.

“Pom personally… probably not too well. She… looked dead inside. Kind of like how I feel at times, but I’d prefer to be upbeat even if my life has sucked quite a bit. Still kind of horrifying to see, considering Pom’s genuinely sweet personality and fierce need to help people was quite an inspiration. Hmm… maybe if I… Oh-wha-ah!” The thing Sami was working on suddenly fired off and Sami went flying through the air on the wire once it started reeling in, she rammed head first into a building across the street barely damaging it at all. I was immediately up and actually worried about her. “I’m okay! The grappling hook just had a… slight miscalculation. Digi-tech is kind of hard to work on in 'reality', but you were right that I needed to get out of the Digivice and adjust. Even if it feels weird to feel so lightweight.”

Thinking further on my Commandramon partner. Sami had even mentioned it was strange that she didn’t revert to a Missimon, a literal missile monster, upon exiting the Digivice I held. It was a surprise to her given the light amount of digital energy she had to work with, there’s also my emotions powering the device to power her. My thought on why she remained a Commandramon, may be because she was able to focus better than Frizzle had when she first came out.

Frizzle came out as a tiny little four legged red thing called a Gigimon with an oversize tail. Dazzle was able to lift her with one claw. Frizzle eventually evolved back into the slightly volatile ‘bread addicted’ Guilmon we knew and cared about.

“What are you thinking about Canard?” Sami stated as she sat down across from me, the orange lizard started putting up her stuff.

“How Digimon would compare to these Pokémon in an all out battle.” If I saw something like the Cleffa that gave Sami trouble in testing out the differences between the two monster species, then I wondered what a fully recognized Pokémon evolution can do against some of the things the digital world had to offer.

Physical mass and energy capabilities was very much in the favor of Pokémon, the world needed more technology for digital energy so that Digimon could really fight on equal terms.

“Well they can be more dangerous according to what Pom has said when even the smallest can grow strong without evolution, evolution tends to exponentially increase a Pokémon’s capabilities since they can functionally damage data entities such as myself easily if they land an attack. Just about any one of them could be entirely on par with Ultimates and Megas by just knowing the right moves.” If there is a ‘but’ there Sami, get it out there. “Sure Mega Digimon with their dense data can tank a lot, but that’s only if you aren’t directly attacking their data. I mean humans have fired ballistic missiles at Digimon before, Ultimate and Mega level Digimon would feel minimal damage at best because the explosion was a physically damaging one and not a digitally damaging. A Pokémon attack with the same amount of force would approximately do the actual damage that the missile was supposed to, instead of most of it being avoided. There’s also destroying or denying a Digimon’s access to digital energy being possible since this world is not exactly super technological, except in specific places of course.”

What Sami was referring to was the phasing phenomenon, where Digimon at the levels above champion can avoid damage from conventional weapons by ghosting them. It’s a very unique power that only some lower rank Digimon can pull off, some of which had the intelligence to do it to avoid damage by conventional means, usually some very bad ones from what Sami has told me.

If I could learn to wield the power of my emotions and power myself with the digital energy from my Digivice, I could eventually punch out even Mega Digimon with enough time and practice. My punches would have an effect because I’d have far more mass than a Digimon of my size or slightly larger, that and digital energy would let me do some really weird stuff if I figured out how to utilize it correctly. The size of the Digimon didn’t so much matter as their general density.

Sami said it was possible, but at best learning such a thing would be mostly effective against Digimon or digital entities, wouldn’t do much to help against most Pokemon aside from giving me a slight protective boost.

I was considering actually training to fight Digimon with my bare hands if needed personally, since Sami wasn’t actually using that energy to Digivolve and didn’t need it aside from using her weapons. I’d need someone to help me figure out how to turn my emotions, even possibly love, into raw power to protect those I care about. Right now, that was the friends I could see in front of me.

“So a ballistic missile from one of the worlds you Digimon invaded wouldn’t do anything to an Ultimate or Mega, but if a Pokémon hit with the same amount force they would actually make it stick?” Since from what we knew of Dazzle being able to hit like a truck and had caused Skull Chaosdramon X to be a thing, it meant that any Pokémon could be dangerous to Digimon. “That’s... a little weird. Also if a ‘Pound’ can affect you so easily, then it wouldn’t be hard for even the smallest Pokémon to take on the largest Digimon as long as they know a move that can do so.”

“Yeah, but what kind of move would a small Pokémon know that could hurt a Digimon with that kind of force?” Sami asked and was answered by the Cleffa that started hanging out around us.

“Oh, I know, watch me!” The small star shaped Pokémon with a puffy tail and forehead stated and started gathering energy. After twenty seconds, Cleffa finally used whatever energy she gathered.

“Solar Beam!” The tiny Pokémon unleashed a massive beam of energy into the sky that dissipated after a certain distance. A distance we couldn’t actually physically see.

“I think my life just flashed before my eyes…” Sami stated with wide eyed horror.

“So what equivalent level of Digimon would that hurt?” That was somewhat impressive to me, even the youngest Pokémon can learn moves that can devastate a small mountain.

“That would easily hurt an Ultimate, might even scratch a Mega. Pokémon have something of a great equalizer when it comes to fighting us with their dimensional energy it seems, considering that was just fired by a young Pokémon. Makes me wonder how focused an adults attack would be.” So if what you’re saying is right, get enough Pokémon that could do that together and then you’ll have them tearing apart Ultimate or even hold off a Mega class Digimon indefinitely.

So if this world were invaded for any reason they wouldn't be on the backfoot by any stretch of the imagination.

“I’m going to go play with Calumon… is that okay?” Looking at Cleffa we both nodded, we didn’t need her for much else at the moment. “Yay, thanks for letting me help you!”

The Cleffa waved, then ran off to go keep Calumon entertained. I’m not even sure the little guy knew what being an emissary entailed or even what Calumon should be doing in that capacity, I wasn’t about to tell him to stop having fun.

“That is quite fascinating to know…” We both turned to Professor Pong, the Porygon, was here acting as an emissary of Violight to Aurora and studying Digimon since the local digital world was on lockdown after we left. Mostly just studying Sami and Calumon really, with some side interest in Sideline.

Pong was a Pokémon that was half biological, half digital and one complete headache for Sami to look at. It was implied that any Digimon that saw him would feel the same way about his more biological components and ability to mate with something called a Ditto or another Porygon.

Apparently Porygon looked like some kind of bird head and pointy tail, on an odd tank body and two moving blocks next to them as limbs or legs. Apparently he rated as somewhere between Rookie and Champion level, leaning more heavily towards Champion to Sami’s eyes.

Technically he only identified as male. Like Digimon, he wasn’t a species with a gender based biology and yet could have children from eggs under specific circumstances. Digital children that hatched from ‘biological’ eggs, Sami didn’t even try to figure out how that works and neither would I.

Some would say Digimon were weird or whacky in appearance, but Pokémon shared a lot of weirdness all their own.

Proffessor Pong was also here to help us study the differences between Digimon and Pokémon, strangely enough they had quite a lot in common as much as they had so much differences between them.

One particular instance was Digimon had a variety of evolutions depending on how their dispositions change, Pokémon tended towards more linear evolutions with few branching options. Pokémon tended to stay stronger as they don’t get weaker or revert to prior evolutions when using up too much energy, they also get stronger over time naturally and exercise made Pokémon stronger exponentially. Digimon got stronger through different means and the absorption of data they can copy and use for themselves or just outright eat, Vaccine Digimon are more likely to do the former and Virus Digimon the latter. Goodness knows what the Data Digimon did, probably both.

Pokémon of equivalent size or slightly smaller always had more mass than a Digimon. Why was that important? Well Pokémon couldn't stay as large as some Digimon could. Digimon have the capacity to become the size of building, but the problem was that they wouldn’t have nearly as much mass that Pokémon would at the same size. Dynamic Maximizing was certainly a thing in this world and it would give some Pokémon quite an edge over similarly sized Digimon.

Square cube law would take effect rather quickly for Digimon, but not Pokémon who are using an unusual energy to cheat the difference and not collapse in on themselves. Never thought something I learned in school back on Puckworld would be this important to know.

We lost most of our space industry when the Saurians attacked… and so much more... even if I never see my home planet again, I'd at least be able to eventually see my friends.

I felt Sami snuggle up against my side and smile at me, I snorted as a smile formed on my beak too.

“So… are we going to spend the rest of the day relaxing?” We can do that Sami.

“Yeah, mostly, maybe you can help me with learning how to wield digital energy with the Digivice?” I was going to use the energy it if she wasn’t going to.

Differences of this world and the last I was trapped in aside, finding friends was easy and a way home was almost guaranteed.

That didn’t mean I wanted to rest on my butt feeling useless, I could probably take a few commissions for the guild and maybe even support and help Pom find her own way home. She was apparently going to meet Arceus again eventually, might as well do a few small odd jobs around here and earn some favor of the people.

-Pummelton, Healing Springs, Geoff-

I saw to the unconscious forms of Dolly and Pom, Lit was making sure their heads stayed above the water. The tiny guy was worried about them and seemed happy that they were actually sleeping so peacefully. The healing springs was definitely helping their bodies, but it couldn’t help their minds.

Dolly frowned in her sleep and after a bit of random wiggling, she was snuggled up against Pom and a bright smile formed on her face and the water splashing a bit as her tail started vibrating.

To think we came here to deal with our injuries and some of us may leave here worse than when we arrived. I hoped Pom was having some nice dreams at least.

We’d be setting out tomorrow and heading straight back through Ignis, I don’t know if Pom or Dolly would wake up tomorrow. They were really wiped out by the fighting today.

Pom’s group was a fully fleshed out unit now, I know for a fact that I could trust Lucha Mundo to aid Pom’s group in their endeavors. Since Lucha Mundo was apparently the spirit recovery expert we needed.

I also knew Mundo’s backstory and that he’d probably tell it to Pom like the others told theirs.

Wait… did Lit tell his? I mean the little guy really couldn’t speak so… he probably needed another bug type to translate.

Maybe Charjabug could do that?

-???, Pom-

“Mom, thank you for bringing me with you on vacation!” Dormarch crawled up into my lap with his three fish tails wagging happily and I carefully rolled him over to start rubbing his belly. “Even if it isn’t a real one.”

“Pom, this is really nice.” Tianhuo said from next me as I wrapped my hooves around Dormarch and hugged him tightly.

We were sitting on a hillside full of flowers overlooking the ocean to the west.

“Too bad this, like Dormarch said, isn’t real…” I sighed, I knew I was dreaming. I would love to feel Dormarch in my hooves like this. “It’ll be a nice quiet dream at least, not one of those screaming nightmares I tend to have.”

“It may not be real Pom, but you know the real Tianhuo would want to be here too.” I looked at my mental representation of Tianhuo and she smiled brightly.

“I really don’t like the idea of being what I am… makes me wonder if I can declare ‘Baa-Ram-Ewe’ on myself. I want to remain true to myself, but it’s kind of hard to do that when I’m getting stronger and more capable. The news about what I am was just thrust right into my face by an outside that became a Pokémon and I… I just couldn't deny it any longer. I’m not handling it all very well am?” Back on Equus, I know for a fact that Princess Luna was the watcher of dreams… so who was watching my dreams here? I could feel at least someone, but it didn’t seem like they meant me any harm. “Dolly at least is still trying to stay at my side and help me through this, but I don't think this is something that can be fixed or helped.”

“She’ll always want to be at your side mom.” Dormarch stated pleasantly as we looked out to sea to see Dolly go surfing by with an excited look on her face as she rode the wave.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m concerned about, knowing what I am...” I sighed and then just started to relax on the beach with my imaginary Tianhuo and Dormarch. It may seem like I sleep peacefully, but I lock the wool closest to my body to prevent me from struggling in my sleep from night terrors… also it helps that I kind of like being used as a pillow. “The bond we have is just so… it’s going to end poorly if I have to… still I love Dolly and I know she’s trying her best for me, but it’s all still so much to place on someone who can feasibly be happier by not being bound to me if things go the way I’m thinking.”

“That’s because you don’t feel like you can trust them to be alone or out of your sight for long mom, to be fair they have had some close calls with Smolder and Shanty almost getting… taken out… recently.” The way Dormarch paused before saying 'killed' almost made him seem real, I continued to hold him tightly against my chest. “Maybe you could give them some training?”

“In what? They are already skilled in several things. Shanty is capable of holding her own, at least to the point she’s surviving and not struggling. Ocellus is working on her own thing, plus she’s been learning biofeedback and partial transformations for defensive reasons. Smolder… maybe could use some help, she certainly could use her combat ribbon a bit more. Doubt the ribbon would have helped her against Lu Bu and if she had gotten closer to use it she would have died.” Wouldn’t know how to train Dodo, our Pokémon friends would know more about their own capabilities than I would and the only Digimon I had to worry about was the one in my dreams. The others were with their partners from whom they could derive strength. “There’s not much more I can actually do for them, I can easily expand on my own talents. I really don't want to, I mean my Howl Blast was good at slowing down… wait… wasn’t I knocked unconscious by Geoff… I don’t think I’m going to live that one down. Still it is a bit relieving that I’m not nigh unstoppable, then everyone would just expect so much more of me...”

“Yes, that did happen. You’re unlikely to remember this dream, but at least you’ll have all this stuff in the forefront of your mind when you wake up mom… though it’ll take approximately eighteen hours before you do considering the concussion Geoff gave you.” Dormarch stated while continuing to sit in my grip with happy wiggling tails. “You have friends Pom, you just need to start relying on them to start coming through for you. Instead of always being the reliable one, start making others pick up the slack because if they don’t it falls on you and it’s getting kind of heavy when it does. Also I’ll always be here in your head mommy.”

“There’s some comfort in the fact that I won’t forget you at least…” I felt my right leg slowly be pulled out from hugging Dormarch and a warm hoof gently wrapped itself around mine and I looked up at the imaginary Tianhuo.

“Comfort, is why I exist.” The mental Tianhuo stated with a smile that reflected that of the actual Longma. “You need to relax and rest, you need to stop thinking so hard. Just let go of your worries for a while. If there’s something you can’t do, then you’ve probably done all you could knowing yourself as well as you do.”

“Still need to find a way to contact Arceus, even though he probably already knows about Canard, Digimon and who knows what else he has going on to worry about.” If he’s as powerful as I think he is, then he already knows whatever it is that I have to tell him. He probably even knows all the complaints I might have about the dangers I’ve been getting into, he said this world doesn’t need me to act in the capacity of a hero… well it certainly doesn’t feel that way to me. It definitely, and sorely, needed heroes right now. “I sometimes wonder if he can do subtle…”

“He does subtle all the time, however making a continent shaped like his body wasn’t very subtle at all. He wants us to be self-sufficient and to learn.” I turned to my left and saw a dark creature sitting on a beach chair, it had a ring of red spikes that somewhat resemble a jaw depending on how you looked at it and long white hair coming off the top of its dark form. “Looking at you, it actually makes me feel better about myself, because well… I thought I was an impossibly tortured soul for quite a while. Your Night Terror energy is nearly impossible for me to quash and keep this dream happy.”

“We are less subtle at times as well honey.” The Pokémon to left of the dark guy with the glowing blue eyes spoke up with a soft voice. She looked have the shape of a swan in body that was bluue, had two small dark pink paws with what looked like two wings made of ethereal matter connected to it. Her head was mostly yellow and had a beak like protrusion to her mask like face, her head looked like it had a crescent moon splitting into being on both sides of her vibrant pink eyes. She certainly had a dreaming night theme going for her. “I’m Cresselia, Legendary Pokémon of good dreams, I hope you are enjoying your dream. You are unlikely to wake up prematurely considering all your injuries.”

“I’m Darkrai, Legendary Pokémon of nightmares and terror, someone who can understand a life of suffering quite well. If you want to talk about it, then I’ll be here when you sleep.” He sounded like he knew what I was going through, he doesn’t sound like a bad guy either despite his rather frightening appearance kind of reminding me of a reaper for some reason. “I can eat or give nightmares. Cresslia can give or, quite rarely and seldom done by her, take away good dreams from someone. We can create neutral dreams or dreamless void together.”

“We’re quite the lovely pair really!” Cresselia seemed dreamlike already, I wondered if she looked like this in reality as well. “So who is this Luna you mentioned.”

“I’ve seen Celestia and Luna once or twice here let me…” I tried to concentrate and a copy of Luna appeared before us. The alicorn smiled, sat down and brought out some tanning mirrors with her hooves to start relaxing. “She’s the mare of the moon and the princess of the night in Equestria, her name is Luna. She also doubles as the goddess of dreams.”

“Yeah, I’m just a Legendary of dreams, if you want the legendary of the moon then you’ll want Lunala.” With a small wave of one of the two paws connect to the odd ethereal wings the figure of a bat appeared. Said bat gave off the appearance of a full moon showing me what Lunala looked like. “So want some company, or do you wish us to leave you to it?”

“Company.” I didn’t want to be lonely here with my imaginings after all.

“Mom would be delighted to have you for as long as this dream lasts.” Dormarch stated while nodding to them. "She needs all the love she can get at the moment."

Cresselia stared at Dormarch oddly for a bit then shrugged and started a topic about my favorite kind of flower to frolic around in.

For some reason Darkrai was staring at a slightly behind the base of my neck as I tried to continue ignoring the large golden feathered wings flexing and spreading out every once in a while.

Those better not be there when I wake up… I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if they were...

-Pugilis, Pummelton, the next morning, Ocellus-

We were busy loading the wagon up for our return trip, some local traveling food apparently loaded and paid for by the Kec Merchants. Our wagon was apparently of use to them for getting some stuff back to Helper’s Hamlet.

“So what was the item we got from Pom getting second place in her block again?” We certainly didn’t know what it was or were bothered with finding out, we had other things on our minds.

“A claw apparently, but it doesn’t seem like it came from anything alive.” Smolder stated while holding up the item in question.

“A razor claw, that was the prize Pom won?! Say uh… can I have that… please?” Apparently Quetal knew exactly what it was, he even seemed fairly desperate for it considering the sudden shift in his emotions.

“Sure, but what does it do?” I asked as I levitated it and looked it over. It was a crescent shaped, looked like an animal claw, but… it didn’t come from an animal and I’m betting it was something mystical like the Stone Bone.

“It’ll boost the holders ability to find weak points… it’s also… something that’ll let me eventually evolve if I hold onto it.” Quetal crossed his arms over his chest and looked away as if he was ashamed to mention he needed it to evolve. “I’d be able to eventually become a Weavile…”

“Here you go, if it’ll be of use to you, then you can have it." I levitated the claw over to him. "I don’t know what else we would do with it.”

“…. Thank you… you have no idea how much this will mean to me eventually.” Quetal sighed and looked a little troubled. "Brother..."

“Would you like some help getting it on some string so you can wear it?” Because it would be hard for him to carry, he didn’t exactly have opposable digits.

“It would certainly help…” Quetal stated calmly. “So we have a full traveling companion unit, strange selection we have going on here.”

“Speaking of selection… I’m working on learning Phantom Force move. I’m wondering if I should give up Flamethrower for it… Dazzle certainly has our fire needs handled.” There was something that has always been curious about Shine.

“Why did you know Flamethrower in the first place if you seemed so uncomfortable about it?” I could understand Pain Split, Ally Switch and Trick-Or-Treat. Shine liked her utility moves and what she could do with them. The ability to spew forth fire didn’t seem utility beyond lighting an instant campfire or setting something violently ablaze.

“It’s about how I got my title of ‘Ninja’. Where there’s smoke, there’s a very distracting fire so someone will be left alone when there were bigger problems going on.” Shine looked away, our spooky friend seemed a little wistful about something.

Pom and Dolly were loaded up with Dazzle and Frizzle's help, we were just about ready to set off.

“So… Mundo... are you packed or have your things in order.” The wrestle bird was also curiosity to me, then again most people over the last few worlds were all curiosities and learning experiences. “We’ll soon be on our way to Ignis.”

His moves were at least understandable, Flying Press in particular was a wrestling move turned into something more fitting for a Pokémon. It hit with the force of a flying or fighting type attack at the same time, using whatever energy was more effective on impacts, it was quite amazing. Coaching was an odd move and he used it to teach Geoff, apparently it also boosts strength of an ally and is useful for training. Roost was a general healing move most flying types tended to learn, self explanatory sitting down to rest. The last move Steel Wing was so Mundo had some defensive options on top of being an offensive move.

“I will be fine, all I have is what you see before you.” A bag with some Poké, a simple cloak and a wrestling mask designed exactly like his face, Mundo was traveling light. He had a lot of weaknesses, but also a lot of strengths when it came to the elemental nature of Pokémon. “Also know that if we run into any Pokémon that uses Thunder Wave, I will be of great help for I am immune to being paralyzed by moves!”

“Really?” That’s curious.

“But of course, all Pokemon have unique abilities, I personally have the ability of being limber.” From there Mundo started a conversation of abilities. Said abilities hadn't been brought up because they didn't seem important at the time.

Shine’s had the ability to find stuff laying around, usually the things found were immediately useful in some capacity.

Lit’s ability was to have incredible accuracy when using ranged attacks.

Quetal’s general ability was to stand firm and not flinch in the face of danger when needed, provided he’s not caught entirely off guard. It was exceedingly hard to make him flinch when he was actively participating in a fight and a Focus Punch was one of the few things that could make him flinch.

I already know Dazzle’s poison can affect even those that normally couldn’t be poisoned, there were apparently some exceptions to this as Pom and Dolly’s Pecha Scarves could block her poisoning attempts.

Favela’s unique ability was rather interesting, given we’ve never exactly had reason to know about it.

“So wait… you can absorb Grass Type attacks and make yourself temporarily stronger from absorbing the energy?” I found that intriguing, Favela called it Sap Sipper and the seemed like a pertinent name to what she can do. Abilities were interesting and varied from Pokémon to Pokémon, It hasn’t come up because Greenleaf was a peaceful nation and we hadn’t had any battles involving Grass Type Pokémon or had been assaulted with Grass Type attacks. “Couldn’t you hit yourself with a plant type attack and get stronger that way?”

“… I, Favela, could probably use Seed Bomb on myself if I’m being pinned and use that to get out of a sticky situation.” It sounded like Favela had never previously considered that. “Thanks for the idea Ocellus, I’ll make sure to try that later when we inevitably get into more trouble.”

“Evolution has a habit of changings abilities as well, I wouldn’t know what that is like. My species doesn’t have an evolution until Arceus deems that we have always had one… then he just rewrites history to make it so. That's what he did with Fairy Types anyway.” Didn’t need Mundo to tell me that Arceus was a terrifying entity, especially if he was that powerful. I mean Arceus made all the functional gods on this world, so of course he was really powerful.

“Good to know… has that affected you any Combusken?” Our friends new form took some getting used to, given her legs were now bending in the opposite direction.

“No I’m pretty sure I still have my ability to just move faster the longer danger goes on, up until I hit a peak.” We were going to make a stop in Ignis for Combusken, Cyndaquil was just as curious as we were about where this was going to go. To think this was that little orange chicken that came to us for training help. “Explains why I’m so good at running away…”

“Excuse me, but I wanted to say goodbye to Jeanne and Mr. Mienshao, they’ve been so nice to us… even if Mienshao’s taste in food is a bit... 'bleh'... what with everything being pickled.” Shine walked over to Jeanne and Mienshao, they were here to see us off as I started getting Dodo hitched up.

-Shine-

“Hey Jeanne, we’re about to leave, but I wanted to ask you something.” I was a bit nervous about the response I would get.

“Sure, what is it?” The Hakamo-o was tilting her head at me.

“So just to confirm something, you’re a steel type right?” I just wanted to be sure that I heard her mention that.

“Of course I am, I grew up in Valora, why wouldn’t I be?” Okay, that answered that Jeanne… but…

“Is you’re father by chance a Goodra with a steel shell?” There was a look of slight surprise on the bipedal fighting dragon’s face.

“Um… yeah, but how did you know?” One would call it a hunch Jeanne, but I did use to live in the general area and passed through Valora on my way to Greenleaf.

“Does his shell by any chance have a small claw shaped rent marking halfway up the right side?” I possibly knew who her father was... if I was right then…

“You know my father?” Jeanne seemed particularly surprised and intrigued.

“Yeah, sorry to cut things short, but when you see him… can you tell him that Shine has finally found her light?” I turned and left to join my friends in loading up our large traveling wagon. “He’ll... know what it means.”

“Sure thing, I was going to head back towards Valora soon anyway, what with the rumors of strange goings on getting worse.” Jeanne stated while waving my way. “I wanted to check in and make sure my father’s farm is doing okay anyway!”

Didn’t have the heart to tell her that she wasn’t a steel type and that her father was an interesting individual. I’m sure some day she’ll figure out she’s a Dragon and Fighting Type and not Fighting and Steel. Probably helps that the Kommo-o clan is laying low in Valora, somebody is going to have to tell Jeanne eventually.

At least Kommo-o did know moves Iron Head and Iron Defense.

-Ignis, hours later, midday lunch, Shanty-

“So, is that being what I think it is?” My question was met with a silence and a few nods, I am being very upset.

“That… might have been her home…” Yes, it be quite a burnt out husk of one Smolder.

Combusken be quietly sitting outside the burnt out husk of what was now a pile of ashes and burnt wood.

After half an hour Combusken eventually be coming back with Cyndaquil following.

“Okay… I’m ready to go. I’m joining Rescue Team Harmony with my new buddy here. I’ve been pretty bad at fighting, but helping out in other ways isn’t as big an issue!” Combusken be crossing her new arms and nodded to herself, then she pointed a single claw on her right arm forwards. “I eventually want to be the leader of Team Harmony and I’ll work hard to help as many Pokémon as I can, since I know Pom isn’t going to be around forever as the founder and an outsider. So let’s go everyone, no sad faces!”

“Yeah, what she said!” Charjabug shouted and I be looking back at the lost home as we be moving on.

I am being glad that my home is wherever my friends are, I really be needing to get stronger if I am to be protecting the most irreplaceable treasure in my life.

It would be a little bit into the evening when we would be arriving back in Aurora to find that things were okay. The Rockruff Brothers be taking care of a few bandits, but not much be happening other than that while King Evan is being in Greenleaf.

-Greenleaf, Greenleaf Castle, King Evan-

The Servine, a green pokemon with a serpent like appearance with small hands and feet, stood tall and glanced at Hideyoshi with disdain from under his rather fashionable boxy hat. I'd have have to ask where he got it from, I wanted to wear something like that too.

This was the king of Greenleaf, King Motonari. He was a fairly calm and polite guy and like the other Grass Types in this kingdom, he was relatively laid back.

Hopefully he would see reason... and allow Hideyoshi make up for his many and somewhat grave mistakes. I think Ignis has lost far more than it has gained in recent history. Surely Motonari would recognize that?

"Let me reiterate, the northeastern forest was burned, my lands were raided, your rebels even put up a fort in our territory and your civil war boiled over into an attack on the both of our kingdoms. Good knows what would have happened if Pugilis were to get involved. So my question is thus, will you actually defend yourself or your actions?" Motonari seemed to be asking for the sake of clarity.

"No..." Hideyoshi stated quietly. "I will at the very least want to explain myself in full, but I will not defend what I have allowed to occur under my rule."

"At least you understand that the peaceful propriety of the western Ransei nations has been severely broken, now let's get to negotiations..." Motonari was of course quite angry with Hideyoshi, but I was here to make sure that Hideyoshi would leave here alive. "And as to whether or not I should have your head."

At the very least I would try my best, Motonari was a reasonable sort from what I've heard. Still didn't know what the internal problems that had happened here, but apparently it was not an issue anymore.

I glanced at the Decidueye that looked fairly cagey in the back of the room, something was up with that guy as he shifted uncomfortably under my stare.

Author's Note

If someone is wondering, the best a human has done in unconventional ways to defeat a Digimon are as follows.

Basically Marcus Damon's whole career as a Digimon Tamer. There have been other times when a human has effectively attacked a Digimon directly in anger, like Tai and a Bakemon... but Marcus made it an artform to beat on things bigger than him.

Basically Digimon don't have as much mass as they would appear to. They are also apparently weak to highly emotionally charged people with a Digivice that know how to punch things.

315. Tales of Tasks.

-Pokémon World, Ransei Region, Kingdom of Aurora, evening, Ocellus-

“That’s so neat!” One of Geoff’s Wooloo friends stated with interest at Geoffs story about how he started looking like a Lycanroc in the wool department. One would think he would start looking like a wolf, but apparently Geoff’s ‘Copycat’ move took liberties with his appearance to mimic that of what the Rockruff brothers could eventually look like when they evolved.

We were almost back to Helper’s Hamlet when we ran across Geoff’s unit or more to the point for a pun, flock, if we’re taking Geoff being a Cleric into consideration as their shepherd and spiritual leader seriously. Kind of hard to do given the whole, Wooloo are perverts ‘no exceptions’, thing they have going on.

We’ve seen some really weird stuff, Geoff being stuck in Pom’s Wolf’s Clothing mode wasn’t the weirdest thing to happen. That it actually permanently enhanced his capabilities was something else and from what I’ve heard of Lycanroc, they tend to be ridiculous fast like Geoff now is. It was fairly fitting to say the least.

Pom and Dolly started stirring at the same time in synch with one another.

Everyone paused and had been wondering how Pom would be when she eventually woke up. Tianhup said they ran into a slight snag with contacting Queen Novo about the Chrysomallus.

Dolly was the first to sit up and bark something, before whimpering and rubbing at her head. She turned to look at Pom as she sat up in a sweat and gasping and the feelings of panic coming off her let me know she probably hadn’t wanted to wake up for some reasons, she even quickly started to pat her back as if searching for something that wasn’t there.

Her eyes were still dull, but there was some life in them… at least more than before Geoff ripped her a new one.

After apparently finding out there was nothing other than the wool on her back, Pom sighed with relief. A rather curious thought that she could feel any relief when her anxiety output basically doubled a second later.

“So…” Pom started as if she hadn’t stopped talking or reacting to us at all. “Do you need anything?”

“For you to be okay for one.” My words made her flinch and Dolly cuddled up against Pom trying to calm her down.

“Sorry for shutting down… but… we didn’t exactly get that spirit expert help now did we?” Pom suddenly asked with a less than enthusiastic manner.

At least we got most of the physical injuries dealt with, though Smolder's was still going to be a while yet.

“Nonsense, for I am right here.” Lucha Mundo stated with grin.

“Ah… so you’re not just Geoff’s wrestling teacher and really odd friend that he’s likely already hit on at least fifty or so times.” That was an understatement Pom, he’s asked that at least twenty or so time every ten minutes since Mundo seems like an acceptable target to Geoff.

“Yes, he has done that, and yes, I have turned him down every time. ‘Persistent Perverts of the Plains’, doesn’t even begin to describe a Wooloo’s rather insatiable exceedingly friendly tenacity.” Mundo stated with his wing, cape or arms crossed and nodding. “That does not reduce me from a capacity to be of service as to help you and I will be one of your traveling companions from here on. First order of business… rest, lots of it, no work, just thinking, talking and spending time with friends and loved ones. You can do this without running off to help someone in need of help yes? I think you need some time to be selfish for once in a safe environment and Aurora seems to be quiet and peaceful enough for that.”

“…” Pom obviously liked the idea of being selfish, the problem would come with the execution as Pom has quite a few notable tendencies that would make this hard for her to accomplish.

“I hope you realize that asking Pom to relax is kind of big problem for her, because the only time I’ve ever seen her relax is when she’s frolicking through flowers or when she has nothing pressing to do or going on.” After taking a moment to let that sink in, I added my thoughts further to the cause of helping Pom recover from whatever is wrong with her. “Thankfully there are plenty of places to do so around Aurora. Don’t worry about us Pom, we can keep ourselves busy with any tasks Pokémon might have for us at the guild and we won’t leave Aurora for any reason without you.”

“It will be a challenge to be sure.” Mundo nodded to himself. “We will actively face it together… with donuts!”

-The next day, Team Harmony Guild, Canard-

“So Pom’s got some kick back in her, but she’s not exactly back yet.” Not what I was worrying about too much. “They’ll be trying to keep her calm and from doing anything all day, I heard that was going to be quite a task.”

Pom needed some help and relaxation, thankfully she had teams of friends raring to go on that front. A good team will always pull together through thick and thin.

“So how about this one Canard?” We were looking over a board of missions or tasks the rescue team members could perform.

Seemed simple enough from what was described of Rescue Team work when we were on our way to Aurora coming from Violight, though I was kind of having trouble with the normalcy of the request considering how long I’ve been stuck traipsing around the digital realms.

“Sounds good, but…” I looked at Sami and she looked at me innocently. I would never like any saurian, but darn it my partner was adorable at times. “How long will this take and will the pay be worth it?”

“Should be, seems a bit much that someone is willing to pay us this much money for cleaning kites out of a tree.” Which meant something was up with this request Sami, but it seemed so easy… a little too easy. “Well come on, hey Mr. Foffo, we’re taking this one!”

“Sure, thing… just let me finish up this report, Fiffi is still on maid and medic duty for the Castle and is under Chan’s purview and Maiden Jig is reorganization our budget to include the recent lofty donation made by Geoff. Okay, I’ll sign your mission out now.” Foffo then started to write up something and then he passed it to Sami. “There, you are officially on this commission. The client is a bit south, by southwest near a large tree.”

“We’ll also take this commission, since it seems related.” I stated after pulling another one down.

“Hmm… quite right, you even already know the client of this one!” Foffo stated with good cheer.

-Half an hour later-

“Thanks for bringing me along!” Cleffa was joining us for this task and she seemed perfectly happy to help with getting kites out of a tree.

“Well we needed someone who could identify the client for us and Sami isn’t a Pokémon, the client is a Sudowoodo?” I haven’t been in this world for long, but I was curious what our client was like.

“Oh it’s a slim brown Pokémon that tend to pretend it’s a tree and has Ditto face… it does the whole tree thing quite poorly.” The tiny Cleffa was proven correct seconds later.

“Hi there!” The Pokémon that was Sudowoodo was posing as a tree next to two trees, one was full of kites. “Are you here for my commission?”

“Yeah, we’re supposed to get kites out of a tree and pile them up in one spot… why are there so many kites in this tree in particular?” Floating wind devices were all over the one tree, I thought it was a little odd.

“Well this section of the plains is particularly windy and this tree is the only place a kite could get stuck in.” I glanced at the tree next to the one the kites were stuck in, there wasn’t any kites in that one and I wasn’t going to comment on it.

-One hour of work later-

“My grappling hook is proving pretty useful.” Don’t exactly think it was meant for pulling kites down Sami, but it was shockingly effective at doing that as long as I was using it. Otherwise Sami has been slammed into the relatively large tree at least four times at this point.

“There all the kites are out and piled up.” I dusted my hands of this mission.

“Oh thank you, here’s the…” The Sudowoodo was about to pay us when something shifted.

“Thank goodness, I couldn’t hold myself back any longer!” The second tree screamed and then ran to the pile of kites and then started picking them up and eating them. “So many tasty kites om-nom-nom!”

“What in the world?!” I shouted as I backed away from the second smaller tree started eating a bunch of kites.

The monster had one large read eye, two limbs with three claws and six roots it walked around on. The tree just came to life and in the joints of wood was a black spooky substance.

“That would be a Trevenant, one that seems to really like eating kites... for some reason.” Sudowoodo stated with shock.

“Uh… if don’t tell anybody about this… I’ll pay you on top of what he was going to!” The Trevenant said and then stuffed another kite into his mouth and bit down with a loud crunch. “So much paste and string, this is a really good one!”

“You are so much like a Woodmon or Cherrymon, because they too eat kites.” There was a look of wonder on Sami’s face as the hidden tree monster continued to decimate the pile of kites, there was also a slight hint of anger. “So many digital kites lost to those mouths… those Jungle Trooper bastards.”

“We’ll take the extra pay.” I said for the both of us, because I seriously didn’t want Sami to do anything drastic.

I was also trying to avoid drawing attention to Cleffa.

“Thank you for helping me get my kite back Mr. Thunderbeak.” Whispered Cleffa as she quietly started heading back to the town, all while sneaking away with a single little pink kite covered in bows while the Trevenant was busy devouring all the other kites violently.

That would be two commissions and a little extra in one trip.

-Helper’s Hamlet, Guild Hall, Approximately around the same time that Canard and Sami took their commission, Shanty-

“So cleaning up the calmer part of the river between Greenleaf and Aurora? That doesn’t sound too exciting Shanty.” No, you just not be getting it Favela!

Where there’s trash, there’s also treasure, I be dumpster diving a lot when I was younger so I would know how to make at least some money to buy barely stale food. I be living this long, so I must be doing something right when it came to scavenging and dredge stuff up from the river sounded it was being a calm adventure while Pom was busy resting and or being told to not help anyone. It might be driving her nuts, but I want Pom to have some life back in her.

“Oh ye’ of little faith my pirate companion.” Shaking my head at Favela’s naiveté I turned to my other crew member excitedly. “Dodo be getting the wagon, we’re going treasure diving! Foffo we will be dredging the river… don’t be giving me that look, I am being good enough for some swimming.”

“I’m still somewhat concerned about your recent scars, but okay, fine, if you think you can do it. I’ll be sending someone out to watch you though, just to make sure nothing bad happens.” Foffo signed off on the mission and then be passing it to us with a smile.

-One hour later at the Aurora riverside between Aurora and Greenleaf-

“I hope you realize that I’m not going to be very much help in the water.” We didn’t be expecting you to swim Dazzle, but since you and Frizzle were here… we could use help whenever Favela needed to drag something in.

“Don’t be worrying, I’m just going to do some treasure diving… and practicing my ten minute breathe hold on the side.” For some reasons my reassurances didn’t be making the frown on Dazzle’s face any smaller.

“Can you swim Frizzle?” Sighed out Dazzle to her companion, Frizzle answered the question with a smile while nodding. “Okay, then let’s get this started. Apparently there are several things that we were specifically asked to remove from the water, anything else we find is ours to keep. First order of business… really?! Okay this is odd, but… we need to remove a wooden desk from the river. The Bidoof apparently lost it a while ago and want us to find it so they can use it for décor in a small dam somewhere in the Ignis and Aurora portions of river. We also need to find a Cubone Skull Helmet and parts of a wagons, if we can find the wagon’s cargo it’s all ours.”

“What be the cargo?” It could be something interesting at the very least.

“Well it was a shipment from Aurora to Greenleaf, some general stuff and… er… I don’t how you’ll react to this but there’s also some rrrrr-uuuuu-mmmm---…” Time slowed down for as Dazzle got to that word and then I was already swimming towards the bottom of the river, I be being halfway there already.

-Dazzle-

In a blink Shanty was gone a colossal pillar of water was shooting up in the air.

“… she really likes rum huh?” The fact that she was immediately in the water and had disappeared the moment the M sound left my mouth was rather impressive. “Okay Favela you’ll be using Vine Whip to search the river while Shanty is working on fishing up her drink supply. Frizzle I don’t know how this water will affect you given it’s not the same as the water in your world, but you can help if you feel like.”

Dodo looked at us and warbled something.

“What, what is it Dodo?” After a moment we witnessed Dodo’s eyes started glowing. After a really high pitched noise, he projected the image of elongated divot. “Is that the bottom of the river?!”

Dodo warbled merrily in affirmation. That’s when Shanty started finding the bottles that Dodo detected rather quickly if that was her dot moving around underwater at Water Type speeds. Oh right, she was connected to Dodo like Pom was connected to Dolly.

A second later Shanty erupted from the river with eight bottles of rums, four in her front hooves, one in her mouth, two sticking out of her ears by the bottlenecks and one hooked on one of her hind legs. She dropped all the bottles off and I collected them and put them in the wagon.

“I will be getting all the rum!” Shanty announced loudly before inhaling and flopping back into the water with a large splash that made me back away hastily.

“While she’s doing that, do you think you can fish up the desk Favela?” Seeing where the desk was indicated I moved over to the approximate location Dodo was showing and Favela sent two vine whips into the what.

“Yes, but I, Favela, am going to need some help doing so, got my vines on it, can you help me pull?” We moved to both side of Favela and grabbed onto her horns. “Can you pull by my vines instead of my horn please?”

We reoriented our grips on to both the vines Favela had in the water and started pulling, we eventually got the dragged the desk out and it was, surprisingly enough, in perfect condition and didn’t look like it spent even a day in the water.

“Ow, ow, ow, my vines are a bit sore…” We looked over to see what Shanty was doing and saw three small treasure chests that could fit in the palm of my claw full of Poké, twenty seven bottles of rum and a tired Shanty. “How did she manage that in the time it took us to pull the desk out?!”

“All the rum, all of it!” Shanty stated with a crazed look in her eyes before diving back in, likely knowing there was still loaded rum bottles left in the river.

“Okay, missing Cubone Skull Helmet and wagon pieces, can you help us with that too Dodo?” We received a friendly trill and I nodded to myself as he started locating the other stuff, but he was apparently focused on finding all the rum lost in the river for Shanty. “Looks like the skull is buried under some of the river silt, you’ll need to dig around one of the horns with a vine to get a good grip on it. Shouldn’t be too hard to free up. Also isn’t anyone concerned about how Shanty is acting?”

“Not particularly no, it might have been a rum shipment to The Saucy Skiddo from local farms in Aurora and Shanty apparently doesn’t let perfectly good rum go.” Answered Favela immediately.

Dodo also warbled a negative with no worry about how Shanty was acting while shaking his head left and right in exasperation.

“Are you here to help my find my skull helmet?” I jumped a little and turned to the small Pokémon with a large paper bag over his head, his purple eyes visible within the eyeholes of it.

“Gobumon…” Murmured Frizzle in a high pitched squeak, so she saw something familiar in Cubone. Wasn’t Gobumon the prior evolutions of that Weregarurumon guy in the digital world? She must have known him for quite a while, given lived in Server City before I showed up.

“Yes, don’t worry, we’ll get it back for you, in fact we’re doing that right now.” In fact all I was doing is waiting on Favela to fish it up with a vine. The small brown bipedal Pokémon sighed in relief. “Say, how did you lose it in the first place?”

“Whoever shot that Snorlax at the bridge almost took us out with it, losing the skull from my head was a really big downer, but happier alive than all the bones in my body crushed... also Ground Type, swimming to shore was hard for me so I’m lucky that I didn’t drown in the incident. at least the Pokémon I was traveling with gave me this bag to wear. I’ve been trying to get help with finding my skull for a while.” The poor little bipedal guy wilted while sniffling loudly. “I’m so thankful that the Rescue Team finally got around to me, WAAHHHH!”

I gently patted the poor Cubone on the back, avoiding his back spike as I carefully tried to calm him down. Surprisingly, my being a Salazzle was no longer commented on and nobody seemed to fear me around here. Aside from the fact that quite a few Pokémon heard I evolved while working with the Rescue Team Leader Pom. Those sewers are going to haunt my memories for quite a while, but I’m stronger for it.

“Gah, I’ve found it with my left vine, but something just bit onto my other vine! Someone grab my right vine and pull it out, my left has a grip on the skull helmet!” Favela was whimpering and Frizzle immediately moved to grab her right vine and give it a sharp yank. A massive Magikarp was soon flying from the river and left flopping on the shore, we’ll throw them back in after we’re done here. Favela quickly thrust her right vine back into the water. “Darned Magikarp… be holding on for a little… huh?”

“What is it?” Suddenly the vines reeled in and with them came a two horned skull helmet that I knew Cubone were known for wearing.

“I think Shanty just helped me get it free from the river bed.” Favela stated with a smile. “Guess she’s not too busy down there.”

A Gyarados launched upwards out of the water and then flopped over to start slowly floating down the river, leaving us confused as to how that happened. We shrugged it off, considering it was getting up or attacking us.

“Yes!” The Cubone was about to rush forward and take his skull cap back, but I stopped him.

“Hold up, we need to clean it out first before you try putting it back on.” After having said this, I jumped when Shanty burst from the water.

“Found another rum bottle under that skull, but that big serpent thing got in the way! Nobody be getting between me and my rum, nobody!” Shanty took a few gasping breathes and then dropped back into the water while leaving the bottle of rum on the shore, I took it up and put it with the others in the collection Shanty had going.

Wait… did Shanty just spend several minutes in the water without breathing? Also she just beat up that Gyarados over a bottle of rum? Well now, that had my spine was tingling with fear. She beat it without churning the water too much or even a huge fight... and she did it underwater too. That was kind of terrifying considering how strong Gyarados’s usually are.

“I’m just so happy to have it back!” Cubone whined while hugging the clogged up skull helmet to himself, his spraying tears was getting his paper bag wet to the point that parts of it started disintegrating. “Though yeah, you’re right, I need to clean it out before I can wear it again.”

-Around the same time that Shanty, Dazzle, Favela and Dodo took on their river dredging mission, Guild Hall, Smolder-

“We could do this one, seems simple enough…” There were some pretty weird missions, heard Airship Mauled started doing something like this before we got stuck hopping across worlds. It’s been pretty weird that I’m starting to think of a pop-up town between Ponyville and Appleoosa.

“It’s just cheering someone up, that sounds oddly… simple.” Ocellus stated looking faintly suspicious, making me wonder if she’d be willing to do something like this. “Let’s take it to Foffo, then we’ll see about it. Though it feels kind of wrong to be paid to help out a friend.”

“Well Pom did say if we wanted something, then we’d have to make our own money at times.” Money isn’t what made me greedy, Ocellus is what made me greedy. “Besides we could put that money back into the guild by hiring someone to find a good dating spot for us.”

“I can tell you a good spot for free, I heard Arceus valley to the east has a nice view of the ocean in the morning.” Eriflamb stated with a chipper attitude as he passed us by. “So has anyone come in to help me cleaning up the bath house?

“Yeah, Pristi and Pichochi will be on it, expect them to fight over who cleans up more. Maybe this is why Swablu and Minccino can’t live in the same general region…” Foffo posited before taking up our request and looking it over. “Seems simple enough, do you think you two could do it alone? I know some of your traveling companions would be willing to help.”

A loud squeak was heard and I blinked and saw Lit skittering along Ocellus’s back. What was the little lightning tick doing here?

“Huh, it seems he wishes to help you, I’ll sign off on it.” Foffo does so and Lit squeaked with smiling eyes as he passes the signed mission confirmation over to Ocellus.

“I wonder why Lit isn’t with Dolly, much less Pom.” Yeah, it was something to be curious about Ocellus, but I’m sure Pom and Dolly were fine.

We’re in Aurora, how much trouble could those two… no wait… its Pom… of course they are in some kind of trouble. Well hopefully they could deal with that themselves, it can’t be that huge an issue if nobody is panicking about something outright.

“Eh, it’s probably nothing too big or else we’d be hearing about it.” Please note my tone Ocellus, we do not need another incident and Pom needs a relaxing day.

“You think something is happening, but you don’t want anything to do with it.” That was the gist Ocellus. “Fine, but I would like to say that we are good friends with Pom. If there was a problem we missed, then we can only get away with ignoring it because we were busy with something else. Let’s go find this person and help them.”

I looked at the missions specifics and noticed something familiar about the Pokémon at the location. The Buneary Warrens, as in the place Jiri was from.

-Approximately an hour later-

It took us some time to find the right place, we had to ask a few of the underground housing Pokémon about who we were looking for. It didn’t take us long to find out it was Jiri’s family we were looking for, specifically one of her little brothers, inside a nice community that was a Buneary warren.

Hope they didn’t expect Jiri to show up, she was still laid up after the battle between Ignis and Aurora… then again the mission was to cheer someone up and it was sent to the guild and not a message to the castle so they really couldn’t be expecting Jiri right?

“Okay I’ve knocked, we just have to wait.” It looked like Ocellus was as intrigued as I was about this commission. “Do you think this is one of Jiri’s little brother?”

“Ocellus, if Buneary are anything like Equestrian rabbits, like Angel Bunny for instance, then she undoubtedly has a large family.” After a moment of thought, I considered why Jiri was so gung-ho to be an actual hero. “You don’t think it’s because Jiri had so many accidents and got that Dragoon title right?”

That bunny put up one Tartarus of a fight against the Ignis rebellion forces, said forces that broke up with the loss of Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu. Banditry was still a thing but a minor problem at best considering we managed to get through Ignis and back without trouble.

We still had Geoff’s militia watching the bridge, but so far nothing bad has happened.

“Yes, who is… oh my!” What came out wasn’t a Buneary. It was likely Jiri’s future form, a Lopunny and she seemed fairly soft spoken.

“Hey there, we’re here about the commission to cheer someone up… also are you one of Jiri’s older sisters?” This brought a laugh out from the large bunny, she was twice as tall as Jiri was if you counted the large ears that go the entire length of her torso. She had fluffy thick creamy fur on her brows, ear tips, writs and legs up to her knees. Aside from that she was brown furred and she seemed calm.

“Oh no, I’m not Jiri’s older sister, though it is quite nice of you to think that. I’m her mother.” The Lopunny stated with a bright tone, before becoming a bit wary. “How is Jiri by the way? Is… is she okay?”

“Jiri’s fine, if resting from a pretty heavy and long battle, but she’s recovering fairly well. She has a habit of befriending bears that are apparently going to be larger than her and they are her best friends and she leads her own unit fairly well.” So Ocellus just confirmed that we were going to be dealing with one of Jiri’s younger siblings. “She held off more than three hundred Pokémon at the bridge between here and Ignis, she was quite a sight in that battle and we knew she was protecting Aurora with all her heart for a reason. It was a bit surprising that she didn’t evolve by how much of a fight she put up. Aside from that, can you confirm this commission?”

“Yeah, our family has had a habit of having slow but greatly timed evolutions in particular, but it sounds like my little Jiri has become a real hero despite still being a Buneary. Thankfully she’s a real hero now, instead of all that stuff with the Dragapult making her an accidental one.” She motioned us forward into the underground warren through a round wooden door. “Yes, this is the place the commission was talking about, come on in. There was another reason for the commission aside from the stated one of cheering up one my kids… it seems we found something that Jiri might be able to use eventually in her military career. She is in the Aurora military service and not the Rescue Team right?”

“That’s correct, she joined Aurora’s military forces and her first mission was escorting medical supplies from Greenleaf.” I answered as we sat down, we were motioned to take a seat at a table and I took a seat next to Ocellus as we waited. “It became kind of involved with finding out what was happening in Fontaine and things kind of went from there. Jiri’s proven to be quite a powerhouse, even if she is rather clumsy. She really pushed herself so hard to make sure Aurora wasn’t invaded in that last fight, I can see why she made a declaration that she had something to protect.”

“That’s my little Jiri… has she stopped using Bounce entirely?” Jiri’s mother asked patiently with a little worry. “She has always had something of a bit of cursed luck using that move and it’s something of a Buneary and Lopunny trademark. As Pokémon we’re kind of jumping fanatics.”

“Well no, but she’s at least making sure her target will be directly in front of her or absolutely clearly in her path before using it.” Smiling at Ocellus’s answer, she nodded to us. “She’s really talented with a shield and spear, never saw anything quite like it and Pom, our friend and the one who started the guild, only trained her in the use of a spear for a few days. She’s a natural at both offense and defense from what we’ve heard and seen of her.”

“That’s good to know, because she’ll likely need that jumping power of hers in her line of work. Excuse me for a minute to get that special thing for my daughter, also I’ll need some time getting our sad sack out of his little hole so you can try to cheering him up too. I think he personally needed someone to talk to and I heard good things about your guild. You girls wait right here, I’ll be right back!” With that the Lopunny bustled off leaving Ocellus, Lit and I sitting at the table… well Lit was more on the table then sitting at it.

“She seems nice.” Ocellus stated in a cheerful manner. “Her emotions were generally positive about hearing what Jiri has been up to. A little sketchy around the mention of her bear friends, mostly worry, but there was quite a bit of pride around hearing Jiri being the leader of her own unit.”

“Yeah, real down to earth family… to the point of being in it.” I said with a grin, Lit chittered happily with four smiling eyes. “I swear I’m feeling Applejack, if she were a warrior.”

“For me it’s more of a Rainbow Dash vibe, loyalty to family, kingdom and friends.” This was a nice place to relax Ocellus. I had a feeling you were thinking about something specific, so I’ll broach it now in the only way I knew how, as bluntly as Gallus tends to do with the rest of us.

“Are you thinking about Pom right this moment?” That my question caused her to jolt and look away from me was kind of funny, she got caught and called out.

“Yes… I’m still quite worried about her. You have no idea what feeling the emotions of those around you is like all the time and turning it off isn’t exactly easy for me to do. I’ve been trying since it’s become a liability, but it’s so intoxicating to know what others are feeling at any given moment.” Yeah, that was definitely a big problem for you Ocellus. At least you knew how I felt about you. “Though I have been trying to learn how to do the turn off thing lately, so as to not get pushed out of being able to help people during times of crisis when emotions run high, it’s not going very well. Pom… she’s been something of a constant blowing wind of negativity to me, but that doesn’t mean I can handle other emotions than anxiety particularly well. I just know what anxiety feels like better than most changelings ever could, it kind of borders on terror or outright fear. I mean concentrated malice will always outright take the fight out of me, but that… there’s no amount of anxiety that could stop me from trying to help Pom with whatever is bothering her. Not that she’ll tell us if we’ve missed something or haven’t noticed the things she takes care of for us when we’re not looking.”

“Yeah, Ember told me about the constant burdens of leadership, I’m beginning to understand why being a leader is not exactly entirely a great thing unless you’re good at keeping people from going off rails. Goodness knows Shanty wants more pointers on how to build and keep together a crew of pirates that’ll be like family for her, kind of hard for someone who’s had a run of bad luck when it comes to having any family at all… kind of know the feeling given the ‘no show’ parents.” I let that one sit in the air for a while, Lit whined and gently tapped my claw with a leg in an understanding manner. “So glad Ember forced me into the Friendship School, wasn’t exactly doing much otherwise before.”

Dolly was probably too caught up in worrying about Pom to notice that Lit likely gave her and Pom some space. The little guy was quite independently sure of himself, even if he really likes to be Dolly’s benign tick.

“Okay girls sorry it took so long, here’s my little Bunnelby and here’s the thing for Jiri.” It looked like a marble, but even I could tell there was something behind the stone I was looking at.

“Is this a mega stone?” I asked while gazing at the two brown colors in the marble, I remember seeing that Chulainn guy use one of these to fight Pom. Pom destroyed it and he immediately reverted back after totally skewering her with his fist spike.

“Yes, it’s a Lopunnite, it’ll allow a Lopunny to mega-evolve. I don’t need it, but I’m sure Jiri could make better use of it than I ever could.” Jiri’s mother started to introduce us to the smaller rabbit she dragged out. “Now about my little boy here.”

“I know I’m adopted, you really don’t have to pretend to care.” Muttered the dull grey more normal looking rabbit with brown neck scruff, feet and at the tips of his shovel sized ears.

“You’re still my son though, regardless of whatever you may think of me. I do love and care for you.” Lopunny didn’t let the smaller rabbits mood or apparent disdain get to her, she still nuzzled the smaller rabbit affectionately before turning to us. “Can you please get him out of the burrow for a while and help him work through his feelings? He’s been cooped up in the burrow since his sister Jiri set out to become a real hero to be looked up to.”

“Of course we can, that’s why I’m here. Feelings are actually kind of a specialty for me.” That was definitely you Ocellus, I’m more of a brute force blunt approach to friendship kind of person.

“So what are these two weirdoes anyway?” This Bunnelby guy continued to be a sour and depressing mood, we had our work cut out for us.

“Just a couple of outsiders that work for the local Rescue Team Guild.” The smiling Lopunny earned an interested ear raise from the dour Bunnelby.

-Thirty minutes later-

The Bunnelby was cheered up and talking to a Bidoof about digging and underground construction. We were also becoming good friends with him since we knew his sister. He had some hero worship for Jiri, even if her accidents weren’t entirely heroic.

The stories of her battles since she started living at the castle or in the hamlet had pepped him up quite a bit as we meandered around the grasslands together.

-Helper’s Hamlet, Pom-

“Are you sure?” I asked searching Mr. Foffo’s gaze, I can tell he was somewhat upset that he couldn’t help me with my dulled feelings.

“Yes, I am quite sure there is nothing for you to do here Lady Lambchop, though you might want to spend time with your favorite companion.” Foffo was of course talking about Dolly, who was by and large sticking to me like glue when she could be out playing and enjoying herself.

“Come on, Pom, no one needs anything of you today, besides you’re supposed to be taking it easy!” Dolly barked at me irritably, but she wasn’t going to leave me in a lurch I could already feel that much coming from her side of our bond.

“Fine, fine… I’ll try to relax… say maybe I could help Mr. Schlurp…” I tried again.

“I’m good!” Mr. Schlurp shouted while waving his tongue in a friendly manner at me before I could even suggested helping him cook. Pristi and Picochi already took care of the cleaning.

“Oh… well… this feels kind of weird.” I’ve never been so absolutely needless before, I suspect that everyone was doing something to not give me a reason to be doing anything helpful.

Nobody needing my assistance in a fight was nice, but nobody needing my assistance at all was something unheard of to me.

“… I… could… erg… play fetch with you.” Dolly, you hated fetch, you even gave me the reasons why you hated fetch and if you were more like you’re brothers you’d likely come up with a three hour long presentation for why you wouldn’t play the game unless you’re life absolutely depended on it.

“You… don’t have to do that for me Dolly…” I sat down at the nearest table and Dolly took up a seat next to me.

“Do you have any hobbies that are not helping people or taking care of something? Even my brother Dylan has hobbies, all you have is work and helping anyone. Do you even know how to ‘fun’ Pom?” That’s a good question Dolly, because… well cooking was a useful hobby, but Mr. Schlurp already stopped me on that. Everyone was making sure I was having a relaxing day through sheer force of will at this point. “Also you’re still sounding a bit hollow there.”

I know Dolly, but how do you expect me to feel anything positive with the idea that I might grow wings, sure the flying with nary but a thought would be fun, but… the downsides were a sticking point.

“Can you blame me, I already told you the secret of what a Chrysomallus is. Yet you’re still going to persist with being bound to me.” I’d give her that, she wasn’t going to bow out on me even knowing what she does… it was kind of relieving that she was sticking to me.

“Well of course, I’m not much of a quitter concerning you Pom. I’m willing to be called your dog if you ever needed me in that capacity… which you thankfully don’t and it’d be quite awkward when we’re family to act that brainless. Still someone as awesome as you needs a spunky pup like me to keep you in the green as much as possible, because you are quite easy to depress and drop into the red.” With the way things have gone can you blame me Dolly? “I wouldn’t blame someone for being themselves Pom, try to think more positively. It might not happen.”

Relaxing is not something one does when they took survival courses while living in the wilderness with a bunch of canines for most of their early life. All the cooking, cleaning and spending time with Tianhuo was the best parts of my life, frolicking was fun, but I can only do that for so long before I start wanting to get involved with civilization.

“It’s not a matter of ‘IF’ it’ll happen Dolly, it’s a ‘WHEN’ it happens.” Thankfully it didn’t seem like today was that day.

“Then you should be trying to enjoy life as much as possible Pom, I know I’m trying to enjoy as much time with you if you’re even right about that particular subject.” It was strange that Dolly could even sit still considering how much energy she had and she was practically doing it for my sake. “Why spend the time between now and ‘THEN’ if the ‘WHEN’ ever occurs being a constant depressing sink of emotions, you deserve at least some happiness.”

“You’d think so wouldn’t you? The whole Chrysomallus thing is going to blow up in my face eventually… just you wait Dolly.” It was a matter of ‘WHEN’ and that was not now, but eventually and I had no clue when it would pop up. “This whole adventure I’ve been on is seeking to change me into something I’m not.”

“What a worrywart? A pensive quiet person that likes to think too hard? Someone who doesn’t like fighting, but will do so if needs must? If you wanted someone who knows you right now, it’d be me. You need something to keep your mind off things and… what about giving me a bath. That’ll keep you busy for an hour or so and I won’t smell like I crawled out of a dump truck.” Not that you’ve crawled into one recently, but bathing wasn’t your thing and I knew you were only suggesting things that I might appreciate doing for you. “You like doing things for others Pom, it’s kind of like watching Dylan do stuff for other. Takes me forever to convince him to have fun, always too busy cleaning the house or focusing on the safety for others. Lunch Mound guy wants you to do something relaxing and you’re having a problem relaxing because you don’t have a hobby. Something beyond fighting and your continued survival. Which admittedly you are amazing at camping… hm…”

“His name is Lucha Mundo, also you’re not wrong Dolly. Most of my hobbies were born of necessity.” Taking care of others was one of my favorite things to do and it was always a free activity.

“Why don’t we go camping together at the top of Arceus Valley place we started at in this world and wait until night to look at the stars together? I bet the view is great what with the lack of city lights getting in the way.” You’re going to keep making suggestions until I agree to something aren’t you? “Well no duh Pom, but it’ll be at least fun to look around top of the valley’s mountain for a bit. If you want me to run around and leave you to yourself, then you’re going to have problems with me not being near you with how you currently are.”

I smiled a little and let out a huff.

“Alright, let’s go see if the Kecleon’s have a tent and some portable cooking gear, it’s been a while since I’ve done some outdoors living… first we’re getting you a bath, even if you are going to get into some dirt or mud anyway.” I waited for Dolly to lunge at me with affection, after a small pump of her paws in victory of course.

-Later that evening at the top of Arceus Valley, east of Helper’s Hamlet near a grove of apple trees-

So this is where Geoff kept getting his apples from.

“My brother loved to look at the stars, now he’s exploring the ones back in my home dimension.” Dolly was staring at the clouds after all the running around we did to build a perfect camping sight… it was weird that I was just going camping with only Dolly for company, apparently Lit wandered off at some point and it took a while for Dolly to notice her favorite tick wasn’t clinging to her back. He was off enjoying some time with Ocellus and Smolder for some reason. “So much weirdness in the stars here, not anything I’d recognize. Not that I’m big on star gazing, but hey, it’s pretty!”

“Yeah, I wonder when the people here will start charting out their stars, they don’t seem to think much beyond their world… though they’ve had outsiders here before me, make me feel less special in a way. I kind of need that feeling to persist Dolly.” I was also wonder what other life Arceus was watching in this universe he created. This was peaceful, surrounded by flowers, no visible danger for a mile and spending some quiet quality time with Dolly. “I don’t want to be anything overly special, never wanted to be, but I guess I can’t stop being special to the people who see me as a friend or family huh?”

“Yep, too late for that Pom! Still, I don’t think you’ve changed all that much from when you started this adventure, though you couldn’t have gone through all the stuff you did without a little change. You’re still being true to yourself, you’re just… more now. If that makes any sense, it’s like how I’ve change a lot and yet I’m still the spunky sporty pup that my family misses. I like to think I’m fearless and feisty, but even I can’t be that all the time. I’m mostly afraid of what could have happened to you had I not found this strange sensation between us.” I slowly ran a hoof over Dolly’s head affectionately as we relaxed side by side. “You could still try to learn how to fly with wings made of wool like you did back in Saint Canard… flying seems like something you still want to do. You could take up hang gliding as a hobby, you don’t even need a hang glider! Just a sense of where to find some thermals to ride into the sky.”

“Yeah, but I kind of want to do that with Tianhuo. It’s kind of hard to get upward momentum… even with as light as I am. Still heavy enough that gravity will pull me back to the ground just like you Dolly.” However I was not denying the possibility of preparing for the moment my back suddenly sprung wings with golden or possibly white feather. “At least we can glide down in the morning.”

“Yeah, now that’s what I’m talking about Pom!” Dolly stated as she continue to roast the apple over the fire. I was about to warn her about pulling it out and a few other things. “I know not to eat the core or any seeds, I’ve done this before Pom.”

“…” I sighed.

“Look… I’m not going to let it happen.” Dolly suddenly said as she pulled her apple from the fire and blew out the flames with a small gust of green winds from her mouth. She apparently learned a new trick in breathing out magically infused air. “Not while I’m around! With me you won’t need to resort to that or… Shock Ram…”

Right, Dolly felt what it was like for my body to go through Shock Ram while I was numb to all the damage it does to me.

“You can’t make that a promise can you…” I said bitterly and Dolly didn’t respond, she carefully bit into her roasted apple and started chewing quite thoroughly.

After Dolly swallowed loudly, she glanced at me.

“So when do you think it’ll happen… like what, tomorrow?” Dolly, even I know it’s not going to happen that soon.

“Not that soon, it doesn’t exactly seem like a quick process, but I really won’t have that much time left…” I held out a leg and flexed, a golden glow shimmered along it coming from my wool and I could feel a faint hum in the back of my head. “Once it becomes a full body thing…”

“I know that you’re not just going to die immediately just like that… are you Pom?” Dolly asked with a stern voice through a mouthful of apple she was making sure to chew thoroughly.

“Well you’re right, it will not kill me immediately or even be the reason I would die… but…” I just wanted to be a regular Lambkin right now and not have to think about this. “Eventually… it’ll get me killed, but it won’t kill me. Just you wait and see why this is a bad thing, since it’ll undoubtedly become a bit too much for me to deal with after a certain point. Are you sure you want to stick by my side knowing what you do?”

I slowly let the golden glow fade back to being regular white wool, letting the campfire continue to light our campsite. I looked to the sky at the moon and saw a figure flying in front of it and spreading their wings. That must be Lunala, don’t honestly know if she actually controls the moon or just interacts with it.

“Of course I’m going to be by your side! Come on, give me and yourself at least some credit her Pom!” Dolly was so sure, she was smaller than I was and yet so much braver than I currently felt. “You’ll definitely see Tianhuo, your home and your god puppies again! So… uh… awkward moment to bring this up… but can I get a belly rub? You know, no one out here to see it and all… so I can’t be too embarrassed about it.”

“That’s me, the belly rub machine for dogs… and best living pillow of the people.” I groaned out and then started to tickle Dolly’s belly with my left hoof.

“Oh yeah, a little to the left… Mmm… maybe I can take on some of that Chrysomallus energy you have and just, you know, dump it off to the side somewhere?” Dolly looked very relaxed under my hoof as she took another juicy bite out of her apple.

“I don’t think that will work, or that you can handle the backlash of trying to do so.” There was a reason I was not going to let Dolly take any of it from me, considering the potential harm it could do to her without benefitting me in the slightest.

“I’m not going to let this power of sacrifice thing kill you… not without a fight somehow.” Dolly… I’m a literal living example of the words ‘Sacrificial Lamb’, this is not a power I would ever want you messing with. The possibility of you becoming something like a ‘sacrificial dog’ just for trying, it is not something I want on my conscience even if you are willing. “We’ll think of something Pom.”

Dolly wilted afterwards at knowing my thoughts on the matter.

“We’ll try to at least…” I had a mind that could run like a super computer apparently. Even if I could speed my mind up with a Dancing Flame, there was no solution that I knew of.

“You know once they hear about this, our friends will be trying to do everything in their power to make sure you don’t… you know…” Dolly snuggled into my side, she didn’t whimper, but I could feel her pressing a smile against me and was hugging me with everything she had.

“I know they’ll try too…” I said a second later with a haunting dullness to the sound of my own voice grinding against my ears in this warm and nice evening.

“Look, would Tianhuo want you to give up?” No, she definitely wouldn’t Dolly, but would it really help to tell my wife what’s happening to me? She’ll be both parts furious and sad, not to mention more worried about me than she already is. “At least try to be livelier Pom, that’s all I’m asking for here.”

“Okay… I’ll try to be a bit livelier Dolly, but don’t expect me to go to absurd degrees with this hanging over my head.” Currently the device Arceus gave me was with Ocellus, but I might have to talk to Tianhuo tomorrow night. So much to tell her and so little time. “If Tianhuo asks me though, I’m going to tell her what I know about my current issues. I would never keep secrets from her. I’ll try to condense it all into eight minutes or less, because that’s the most I’ll be getting.”

We quietly ate our food and then decided to do some howling at the moon, we eventually stopped howling and crawled into the tent to snuggle together for a bit until we fell asleep.

My sleep was a tiny bit more restful than usual, even if the local sleep related deities weren’t involving their selves in my dreams.

At least Dormarch was here for me too, in spirit at least... to help the dreams not become waking nightmares.

316. Not Simple or Clean.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, bedroom, Jaded La Perm-

Hearing a slight whine and something squirming among the five of us, I sat up groggily.

“What…. what is it?” Fizzy stated dazedly as I broke the sacred circle of cuddling.

“Silvers needs to use the bathroom.” I picked up our little chimera cub and carefully got out of bed to help our daughters.

-Fizzle-

“Do you ever regret sharing me with her?” We often time swapped off on taking care of our little oddball of weird genetics.

I was half awake enough to realize that Jaded has done it more than nine times without swapping off, our kitty was getting greedy with little Silvers.

“Nope.” Responded all three of Maries’ voices, brooking no argument whatsoever and without a second thought no less. “We have a both beautiful unicorn and a brilliant idiot.”

That’s when Marie snaked around me in a literal fashion and pulled me into a kiss.

“Still though, Jade is getting rather greedy with Silvers.” This was my statement after I finished letting a forked tongue dig around in my mouth.

“Yes, she is.” Mara was more amused than anything. “At least she is being a good mother, can we blame her for being cute about it.”

“Probably, also ‘Cute’ is definitely the nice word for it.” Maria said still half asleep despite her sisters being more awake.

“One would think that Jaded doesn’t have a feminine bone in her body, aside from occasionally seeing her in a skirt or taking care of Silvers.” Of course anyone would think that I didn’t have one either given what I’m like. Though if anyone were to hurt our little Silvers, then they would definitely be wishing at least Maries gets to them first before Mama Kuril, Jaded or I did.

If someone were try to figure which one of us was the outlier in our marriage, then they would have a lot of problems because we were all quite weird. Many would suggest Jaded being a priestess and a rogue at the same time, also once upon a time completely evil sorceress Mirage of Saddle Arabia. I would say myself for still being the Storm Queen and a royal guard to Twilight after having once almost killed her. Maries would say their selves for being a chimera that was a lawyer and the actual bread winners in the herd.

I silently thought about how our lives could be far more dangerous. Things were actually fairly tame, because we were in the running for the most dangerous herd to mess with on the continent.

Maries… them being lawyers is what many around here would claim to be the absolute tamest thing to be notorious for among our unique family. Mind you most people don’t know that Maries does some bounty hunting on the side with Arizona’s mother ‘The Mad Cow’.

Mara, Maria and Marie enjoyed the thrill of the hunt and the very few times where violence was completely necessary while they were present. Most tried to avoid making said violence necessary, especially upon being confronted by an attractive and particularly large, highly intelligent, chimera.

Eventually Jaded came back with Silvers and plopped them on Maries belly where the little three headed tyke stretched out and then curled up against their mothers.

“Okay ladies, resume cuddle positions. I know dawn is an hour away, but I’ll be darned if I’m not sleeping in before I set out to plan for the future escapades, like finding out more interesting stuff about Pom.” Jade was going to be doing research for Tianhuo, despite them being somewhat antagonistic to one another. Our Jaded can’t help herself around anyone with a profession so much as tangentially related to the word ‘guard’.

Jaded loved reading up on legends and mythology she doesn’t know about. In our world there was always a hint of truth to legends if you weren’t one yourself. The whole ‘Chrysomallus’ thing was something that piqued her interests fiercely. Something that worried Tianhuo to no end as she helped train her counterpart and our other magical next door dimensional neighbors.

We needed all the help we could get, which had me wondering where the Fœnum Fred and Oleander disappeared to. They could have gotten us in contact with our Equus Oleander and Fred to tell them we knew exactly where Pom and the others are now.

Aside from the drama, somehow life just all seemed so… normal… despite the bizarreness of everything we dragged each other into. Jaded being the absolute worst offender for not being able to go a solid week without something incredibly weird happening, even if it wasn’t her fault.

“Silvers is probably going to wake us all up again…” I stated with a yawn and flopped back into the snuggle pile.

“So~?” Jaded stated with a loving tone from behind me as she quickly fell back to sleep while purring happily, her rumbling massaging me slowly back to sleep as I was pressed into the middle with Silvers.

I felt Silvers nuzzle their faces against my belly as I too fell back into restful slumber with a smile on my face.

-Pokémon World, Ransei Region, Kingdom of Aurora, next morning, at the top of the western edge of Arceus Valley, Pom-

“Pom, have I ever told you how cool you are?” Several times Dolly and you certainly enjoyed our howling session last night, as did Lunala apparently. I’m not ‘too’ sure of that or where my life is going other than eventually into the ground.

“… A few times.” I finally responded after a seventeen seconds or so, lost in the memories of the time me and Dolly have spent together not doing anything dangerous. I then proceed to kick us both off the cliff and into the air with my hind legs.

“Honestly, where did you even learn to turn a tent into a functional hang glider?” Dolly said as we glided forward, her paws were holding onto the bar between my hooves as she was underneath me and held in place by my wool.

“You can learn a lot when you’re surviving outdoors for more than a few years, innovating isn’t too hard when you know math and science of things. The physics between all these worlds I’ve been to have been, thankfully enough, consistent.” As we glided through the air, I sighed at the freedom and felt the warm air pass around us as we hit a thermal updraft that sent us higher into the air. We could have done gliding by ourselves, but we were doing this together through less than magical and far more mundane means. Reminds me of that trip to Cornwall where Dylan did something similar. Fun times were always worth remembering. “Also one of my canine companions got stuck on a ledge during a really nasty storm. No one else was going to help us out there that far from civilization and I just had a spare tent lying around. I’ve always had a strange fascination with flying, it’s just unfortunate that I’m a lambkin slowly going Chrysomallus.”

After an hour of gliding about, we finally landed in a tree to the south of Helper’s Hamlet. Well land wasn’t exactly the word for what happened.

“You going to eat that?” Giving the tree monster a flat stare as I pried the makeshift hang glider free, he backed off raising his two clawed limbs with a leafy wrists. “It just looks a lot like a kite is all I’m saying.”

“No, also no you can’t eat this tent, I actually paid Poké for it and that it doubles as a functional hang glider makes it worthwhile to keep around.” The spooky tree eventually respected my need to keep the tent. “Come on Dolly, let’s go talk to the girls about some of my… problems.”

“That was a fun way to start the morning at least.” Dolly stated with a slightly upbeat attitude.

-An hour later, Guild Hall, second floor, Shanty-

“So you couldn’t relax entirely, could you?” Ocellus be having Pom’s number, given she be flinching at the accusation.

“Well excuse me if most of my talents are basically survival, fighting and being a merry little house wife for the most wonderful longma on the entire planet of Equus. If I were to name a hobby that wasn’t geared towards any of that, I would love to say flying or gliding, but that would be in poor taste considering what I have to tell you.” This time it was Pom that be making Ocellus flinch. “I have Dolly watching the door so nobody can eavesdrop on our conversation. Since this is important, I’m going to start off by putting this in the simplest possible way that I can. Take the concept of a ‘Sacrificial Lamb’, make it as literal as possible and take it to the furthest obvious and worst conclusion you can think of, especially when in context to me.”

My eyes widened as my mind ground to a halt, as it dropped anchor and went to shore to see if there was anything that could actually be making me inebriated. I be learning to read, write, do math and all loads of other stuff that be quite conducive to understanding of others and I can be thinking of a lot of horrible things just from those words alone. My face be quickly turning into a big frown as the implications be sinking in like a dinghy hit by a cannonball, Pom wasn’t be subtle.

I be pulling out a bottle of Rum and opening it, I be taking a slow, long, deliberate sip of it while I be gathering my thoughts.

“You’re going to die?!” Ocellus stated, to think I be once thinking she was the smartest of us.

“Ozzy, Ocellus, there are far worse things worse than death, see Discord ‘Lord of Chaos’ or Chrysalis ruling Equestria freely without consequence for more information.” How very dry humor of you Smolder.

“... I be getting it.” I be knowing enough tragedy to be lasting several lifetimes, to think I am barely being a teenager. It was quite easy for me to think of the worst idea imaginable in relation to what Pom be saying, it only be making too much sense.

Pom being something like a ‘blackcap’ be a scary thought, sometimes I be thinking that I am being one too.

“Okay, give me your ideas and I’ll tell you how close you are while trying not to explain it, Dolly already knows and wants to tell you, but I told her to let me have a crack at trying to tell you first.” Was that being the reason you were so despondent Pom? “Death is a highly possible end result, but not necessarily the worst one as Smolder has stated.”

“… if any situation we get into be getting bad enough, you will absolutely sacrifice yourself for us. The question is being, what will you be sacrificing to do so?” There was a weak glance being sent my way, but there was no denial from what I could be seeing in Pom’s eyes. “Helping people is just something you do, protecting those in need means a lot to you even then.”

“Shanty… you definitely have a good grasp of the concept already.” Pom nodded to me. Smolder and Ocellus be looking at Pom curiously. “Do you have anything to say Smolder, Ocellus?”

“Pom, if what you’re trying to imply is correct, are you conceptually obligated to sacrifice yourself for anyone’s sake?” That definitely be something important to ask Ocellus, because we wouldn’t be letting that happen.

“Thankfully enough, no, not just anyone’s sake.” Pom glanced meaningfully at us, I be getting mixed feelings about that. “It’ll be close enough to seeming like it is that way though. While my problem won’t immediately or directly kill me…”

I did not be liking the fact that Pom trailed off.

“It will lead to you getting killed quite easily... so what exactly is a Chrysomallus?” There, the question was now being out there thanks to Ocellus and she was the only one to be being brave enough to ask it directly.

“Let’s start with the definition of a ‘Black Sheep’ and why I’m not one. It’s actually important that you girls pay attention to this.” We were all listening Pom, this was being about her health and safety after all. There was no way we would be ignoring some possible information that could be helping. “Okay if I were specifically a ‘Black Sheep’, then I would have been able to win the Tai Lung fight a long time ago.”

“Well that seems…” Smolder started only to be interrupted by Pom.

“Without even using the Shock-Ram technique.” That… was being a lot to take in… wow… Pom had us all quiet and staring at her. “After some thought, a Black Sheep’s combat potential is just that plain ridiculous. Now think about how I go on the offensive and how some of my techniques are sacrificial in nature.”

“Sacrificial to your total health when using Shock Ram, loss of voice when over using your bark attacks, Dancing Flame abuse plus a nasty projectile injury led to arrhythmia problems and you constantly getting physically weaker from being unable to handle a constant strain on yourself. To the point you were left in a near constantly dying state…. that you used it on top of using Shock Ram at the same time… there’s also the whole lighting yourself on fire.” Ocellus stopped and said that last one with a hint of dulled amusement, then came the scathing sarcasm. “Gee, no, we hadn’t noticed a lot of your techniques have that problem with being a huge double edged sword and of course we’re worried more about you, considering you’ve basically been killing yourself to protect us and others. I think you’re most recent one is the least egregious from the way it sounds. Given what you’ve told us about the ‘Thousand Spears: Huo’ taking a full five minutes to build up to, it will be a complete waste of time if anything so much as distracts you from actually using it. I actually believe that sacrificing a tiny amount of ‘time’ is the much better option than you sacrificing anything else.”

“Provided I live to be thirty Ocellus, then yes that is the least devastating sacrifice for the successful output. You missed a few, like the Wobble Counter. It involves absorbing and returning an impact along with some of my own meager strength added on to it, it requires that I purposely take a hit. Thankfully my wool can take it for me to mitigate the worst of it, but still doing it without wool assisting me would be quite painful. Mind you if done incorrectly it can be severely damaging.” We just stared at Pom as she just threw that out there. “Thankfully Paprika ‘The Demon’ Paca doesn’t teach by half measures and most of my best skills are based around my speed and defensive potential, if not my magical potential being quite huge.”

“Sheep’s clothing, sacrificing your wools protection to make it act like extra muscles to increase speed and strength.” Smolder said wide eyed. “You’re… horrifying…”

“Exactly… at least you understand that now Smolder. I said I was scared of myself and I actively tried to ignore what I am. I am a Chrysomallus, a very unique form of lambkin, said uniqueness of my situation is a not good thing though.” Pom said with sigh, a dull look in her eyes and she be lowering her head to stare at the floor. “I hope you appreciated what I’ve sacrificed to even get us this far. There’s still a long road to home for you and I intend to ensure that at least you guys make it.”

She wanted us to make it because… Pom didn’t be thinking she could…

“We will not be letting that happen, ‘if’…” I was cut off by Pom.

“It’s not an ‘IF’ Shanty, it’s a ‘WHEN’ when it comes to sacrificing my entire being!” Pom be screaming at us and making us flinch, then I be seeing the regret on her face a second later before she be putting her hooves on her face, but she not be crying. “I’m sorry for yelling at you…”

Was she sacrificing peace of mind too? Constantly being under stress to perform to keep us going and alive? She clearly not be enjoying this adventure as much as we were at some points. She did be saying to take the words ‘sacrificial lamb’ and making it as literal as possible. She not be dead yet, but she be pushing it quite close several times.

I be carefully moving forward and wrapping my hooves around Pom’s waist, did it always seem so tiny? Was Pom always being so small? She almost be seeming like an unstoppable juggernaut to us, a brave leader, someone who wasn’t weak willed and couldn’t be stopped.

“A Chrysomallus is worse than a Black Sheep, because the word ‘sacrifice’ has a lot of meaning to such an individual like me in a magical manner. If a Black Sheep is a physical power house with few downsides and are warriors that rise up to be capable of protecting lambkin kind all by themselves, then a Chrysomallus is in turn a magical powerhouse with many downsides… the upside is that I’ll eventually be far more powerful than the Black Sheep at least. Possibly at some major personal cost." Most of Pom’s best moves be using her magic and she be having plenty of that, when her wool was glowing a gold color she be using a lot of magic to destroy that ring in Pugilis. She didn’t seem to be sacrificing much, but she did look tired afterwards, she apparently just sacrificed a lot of magic to do that without hurting Dolly with the raw force she unleashed. “Chrysomallus are known for having golden wool, alongside golden feathered wings and glowing eyes. There’s also the capability of ‘conceptual flight’ to avoid almost any attack conceivable even if the wings I’m supposedly supposed to have were rendered entirely unusable, the ability to give one’s own life force to another or multiple others, incredible wool control and the ‘power of sacrifice’ that will be used unintentionally or not. Being aware of being a Chrysomallus just makes it all even worse, that’s the reason I’m reacting the way that I am… I’m terrified. Not just for myself, but all of you knowing just exactly what I will eventually do on purpose and with a clear mind.”

Smolder and Ocellus soon quietly join the hug, we held onto Pom tightly. We clung to her knowing what we do now.

“Let me guess, it’s addictive. This need to sacrifice yourself… and it’s only going to get worse.” Ocellus said slowly. “Like how we changelings kept wanting more and more love, until we almost started starving ourselves out of existence.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s fairly terminal, given I’m always willing to sacrifice myself for my friends.” That’s not exactly what anyone here wanted to be hearing Pom.

“Do you at least get more powerful from it?” Smolder be asking as we tightly held on to Pom.

“Not physically, but any possible extra magic I gain from it will only actually make it much worse. It’s already to the point I can make a single leg glow on purpose. I think it depends mostly on how much of what passes for ‘free will’ for me and how much I put into actively performing a ‘sacrifice’. If it’s my choice it’s definitely a lot more meaningful at least, hearing that I’m a Chrysomallus put my increasing talents as a fluffmancer into perspective.” Pom be showing us all when her right leg be taking on a powerful golden glow, the glow felt both comforting and safe somehow. She switched the glow to her left leg, before letting it drop to the white soft wool. “As Ocellus said, it’s only going to get exponentially worse… and I won’t even mind doing it either. Since I know I’ll be doing it for a friend or at least someone I believe to absolutely need it.”

“You do realize we’re not going to let you go so easily right?” Smolder stated before clamping down with her claws even harder, I followed suit with my hooves and Ocellus be creating octopus tentacles.

“Like you’ll have a choice in the matter, we can’t stay like this forever… the thought is nice at least.” Pom calmly stated as she started to hug us back with a slight quivering in her legs.

“So Dolly knows all this and she’s still going to try to keep you alive, much less stay connected to you knowing you have something like an out of control death wish going on?” Ocellus asked while holding tightly onto the fluffy leader of our strange group.

“Specifically the ‘she’ll try’ part. After having almost died in her world numerous time, I don’t know how successful Dolly will be no matter how determined she is.” Pom groaned out and stopped hugging us to rub her two hooves in circles on her forehead as we held her close. “Also she’s reaffirming that in my head this moment… that she’s in it for the long haul. Please don’t tell other temporary friends, they… they don’t exactly need to know. What would they think of me if they knew?”

“A lot more than if you didn’t tell them. Hey, we’ll get through this Pom, we’ve gotten through everything else mostly… right sorry.” Smolder realized how much Pom has been through for us. “Just don’t go dying for us at the drop of a hat, that’s an order from me as a dragon to you as a Huoshan Guard! The only one I will ever want to give you Pom!”

“I don’t know how well I’ll be able to follow that order exactly Smolder.” Replied Pom dourly. “I’m already going well above and beyond my station as a ‘simple reservist’. Heh, so why not add more pressure onto that?”

“Well you better darn well try Pom, because we all want you to live a long and fruitful life!” For once Ocellus was being quite forceful, this be surprising both me and Smolder. As she sniffled and burrowed her face into Pom’s chest. “So… what are you going to tell Tianhuo tonight?”

“Whatever my wife wants to hear.” Pom said with a hollowness as she wilted, we still hadn’t stopped hugging her. It be like there was a gaping wound in her heart. “The truth most likely.”

“Now what?” After a full minute of silence, Smolder finally had to ask that.

“Now, we go about our day as if nothing was wrong and everything is fine, because this… things are fine.” The door to the room opened as soon as Pom said that. Dolly slammed it behind her before stomping up to us, then she be leaping onto Pom and wrapping her paws around Pom’s neck. Dolly whined something. “I’m aware Dolly… I’m well aware. I said I’d try for you last night, well I told them and now you all know the horrible truth. What are you all going to do about it?”

“Well we can’t make Pom avoid trouble… she’s like a literal magnet for it.” Ocellus whined. “The way I see it, we should try to mitigate Pom’s necessity in most situation. Which is kind of impossible given her capabilities in a fight.”

“All Pokémon are capable and so are the Digimon, though I’d rather not drag Canard into my problems as he’s already been through as much as I have… if not more.” That be our Pom, always thinking of others. “I’m doing it right now aren’t I… sacrificing for someone else’s peace of mind?”

“We’ll be doing everything we can to be preventing you from sacrificing your life.” I said it so simply, it would be a daunting task on top of all the other crazy things we’ve been through. “We just be needing to prevent you from being in a no win situation.”

“Considering how close things have been for Pom, it’s a particularly huge ask to keep her away from trouble entirely like Ocellus said.” Stated a dour sounding Smolder.

“If it comes down to it…” Pom didn’t finish her statement.

“I already nearly be losing enough on this adventure, I have gained too much to be losing anything now!” The only reason I am being here is because everyone here was family to me.

If I wanted a home I could have stayed with Cooper and he could have been family, I would still call him Uncle Cooper if I ever saw him or the rest of the Cooper gang again. I would have been quitting on living my dream of being a famous pirate on Equus though, I be believing that dreams are the stuff that strength is derived from and I would be breaking my own belief if I quite on any of my friends or family now.

“What if someone be making sacrifices for ‘you’ specifically?” I suddenly asked and Pom gained a disturbed sickened look on her face.

“I…” We be knowing already Pom, you love us!

“You don’t have to be asking us to.” We just needed to be strong enough to prevent ‘you’, specifically, from doing anything like that. “As long as we don’t sacrifice our lives, it’ll be being fine right?”

“No…” Pom didn’t even need to think of her response. “Can we please remember that I’m the adult here girls.”

“And you’ve arguably done a very good job at being our guardian… we would like you to be able to keep doing so and maybe continue being friends when that is no longer required.” Responded Ocellus in a frosty tone that brooked no argument.

“How about we just eat lunch girls, I’m sure Dodo is hungry too and he’s certainly getting back to his old size… new wings adding a bit to that of course.” Pom wasn’t even trying to pep up.

“You could still stand to enjoy life a little more Pom.” Dolly said loudly, that was not being a translation from the device and that hadn’t required her singing it either. “If you’re going to be our hero, then you’ll need some heroes yourself. We’re willing and able to make sure you won’t need all the pressure placed on you to die for us.”

“Uh… did Dolly just speak that sarcastically without the device or having to sing?” Smolder asked in surprise.

“She said that from the heart, so of course she was understandable.” Ocellus nodded as if it were being that simple. “So one last question… how do you know all of this?”

“Well…” Pom started and her explanation quickly started involving the word ‘marmalade’ a lot and it is being a story every lambkin apparently knew.

-Origin Space, Mew-

“Dad…” I slowly turned to the god of all Pokémon.

“I know, knew, and cannot exactly tell you where the future will lead from here. Even Celebi will be hard pressed to keep things in order and they are about to request something of me. Chaos comes for us all Mew, Pom is strong and if she stops being a downer she might even survive the absolute Tauros grade fertilizer of a storm that’s coming, she’s truly a master at surviving the odds. Kind of banking on it actually.” Yeah, but what you were saying Arceus, is that we didn’t even need her for all of this and yet you still brought her into it. Why? “I’m sure Pom knows why I went above and beyond for her, she needs more reasons to continue living than any mortal I’m watching at the moment.”

“May we join you in watching said mortal, we offer an eternity of free taco and noodle stand fare.” We both turned to look at a large black metal dragon and another dragon with several heads that seemed to be smiling mysteriously. “We are Bahamut and Tiamat, we have some interest in a particular mortal. We will not be interfering in the war and will mostly just watch things. It’s been a while since the whole marmalade thing that we’ve seen one such as her rise to prominence.”

“Teach me how to make your recipes and I’ll agree to letting you use Origin Space in a ‘professional’ capacity.” The two dragons looked at each other, got into a slight heated argument… considering one of them was a hydra it was going to be a little awkward.

“Agreed.” The two gods, one with at least multiple personalities stated in unison.

“So want some good old fashioned noodle soup?” Tiamat asked airily.

“You only make that stuff because you can boil water perfectly.” Bahamut stated with crossed arms.

“Oh like you’re tacos are all that hard to make, king of breathing habanero sauce!” Tiamat, from what I gathered as being his sister, started to argue. “Besides we know ‘THE Noodle Incident’ has lead us to being here.”

“What’s THE Noodle Incident? Why does the word THE sound like it has all capital letters?” Being kind of hungry for a taco and some side soup, I ask out of curiosity.

“It’s something we’re not liable to talk about.” Tiamat stated with her heads blushing.

“It’s why the term ‘Noodle Incidents’ is even a thing in any world we even have a marginal claw in, darn Memetic Causality and all she does! She’s been trying since forever to make us come clean about it and then there’s the whole thing with the marmalade.” Bahamut stated with a flat glance at his sister deity. “It was just that bad and Tiamat should feel bad about running a Noodle Stand. Very poor visual pun all things considered.”

“Just to be clear, we’re actually here because some of our worlds power may soon get dragged into this incoming conflict by Moon Cell, we’re here to make sure things stay… fair.” One of Tiamats head stated. “Relatively speaking of course, because the lesser forms of Bahamut or I might be one of the things summoned against that poor lambkin.”

“To think that’s her head with her most honest feelings no less.” Bahamut stated bluntly.

“Hey, at least I chose correctly with Jaded. You just had to choose one of mine after I chose one of yours!” There’s a distinct impression that there was a ridiculous squabble going between Tiamat and her brother Bahamut.

“So… giant spider meat tacos… how do you start with making one?” Arceus didn’t seem bothered by their showing up in his domain of birth.

“Well obviously you start by finding a hero with a consecrated sword of something like ‘anti-poison’ to kill the spider in such a way so that the poison in its body entirely evaporates upon being slain…” Bahamut started to say. “Either that or have a dimension with non-poisonous giant spiders laying around, kind of a hard to find rarity that.”

It was a ridiculous way to start a cooking recipe, it got worse when he got around to the less than evil Demon Lord raising living vegetables from the ground that needed to be killed with an axe in particular. Which apparently is why something called ‘onion knights’ existed, then there’s the whole thing with drying ‘killer tomato’ slices to the point that they were barely damp but not turned completely to jerky.

There’s also the whole thing about needing Invisible Non-Euclidian Lettuce created from the destruction of a highly destructible, barely sentient, cabbage carts. It just required the carts destruction, not the cabbages place within them. The cabbages being ruined tended to be incidental to the process of creating said lettuce.

“And you say my visual puns are horrible!” That was Tiamat, after Bahamut made mention of an optional marmalade based hot sauce glaze that tasted particularly good on the tacos.

-Ransei Region, Aurora Castle, Pom-

Even Dodo was looking at me with worry, because he was going to find out exactly when Shanty did.

“So what’s going on Maiden Jig?” Apparently Aurora’s military units were still taking a bit of time to recover from defending against Ignis’s Rebels.

Don’t know if I wanted to join King Evan in being in Greenleaf at the moment. I wondered how that bit of politics was going.

“I need an escort for a Chrysalia exploration expedition, they are going into Illusio to find out what’s going on. The nation has been far too quiet lately and from what little information has been coming from the east coast being at war… well it’s concerning that the mind readers and future sight specialist of Illusio are quiet about everything that’s going on and aren’t responding to anyone asking after the psychic types at the borders.” Sighing Maiden Jig looked to the other group that was here, an entire group of giant bears with white lances for arms ending it tiny points. “To that end, this is the unit of Beedrill that Chrysalia wants supported for a ‘diplomatic’ escort into Illusio. As you’ll note, they are a combat unit, since we have some idea that trouble might be found in Illusio. Violight, being friends with Chrysalia, are preparing a Morpeko unit to back up the Beedrill on the suspicion that the local psychic types are going to be some form of huge trouble. We’ll need various Pokémon that can deal with a psychological problem and Morpeko will be specifically geared to fighting psychic type Pokémon.”

“Which is where we come in. Are we being hired to go in with the Beedrill first and will we be expecting the Morpeko to catch up with us later? Also what are Morpeko like?” There was a slight cringe when I asked about the Morpeko, not only from Maiden Jig, but the Beedrill as well.

“More or less, yes, that’s exactly the gist of things. Morpeko come in three colors and can change to being two colors depending on their moods, they’re very easy to recognize at least. They are kind of like hamsters in appearance” Maiden Jig stated. “However they are willing to take Rescue Team support if we can’t currently lend them any of our units for this investigation.”

“They are… a little troublesome to work with when they get hungry.” One of the Beedrill buzzed out. “Great battlers though, they could wipe the floor with any psychic Pokémon that only has psychic attacks. Otherwise they are fast and vicious little guys, of course we’re bots calling kettles black in the viciousness departments. Just don’t rile us up and you’ll be fine.”

“We expect this to quickly become a combat operation.” A female beedrill followed afterward. Shanty, Smolder, Ocellus, Dolly and Dodo all turned to stare at me as if expecting the inevitable.

“So we just need to cover the beedrill unit?” I already knew it wasn’t going to be that simple, Maiden Jig looked like she knew it and even anyone that knew me knew that.

“Well if you’re willing to be hired for it that is.” Maiden Jig would never force us to do it. Team Harmony wasn’t exactly subordinate to Aurora Kingdom so much as we were an organization working within said kingdom.

“Okay, we’ll do it, we can talk about pay after everything goes horribly wrong. So will we be going through Violight and Chrysalia?” I turned and asked the Beedrill.

“No we’ll actually be going to Illusio through the southern pass access from the Pugilis and Terrera border access after going through Ignis, it’ll be much faster.” The lead Beedrill assured me. “The punchy Pokémon are watching the borders and are willing to help our expedition into Illusio to find out what’s going on in the kingdom. We’re trying to keep this in the realms of a scouting mission, but we’ll decide once we’re in the area.”

Maiden Jig unrolled a map of Ransei and it showed us traveling up the inner hind legs seam up the thigh and into the region that would make up Arceus’s back.

“So what’s the Illusio region like?” For sake of clarity for our travel preparations.

“Moderately mountainous, but there’s also a lot of magnetic fields, floating rocks and as the name would suggest… entire hidden cities on the ground or floating in the sky. Illusio Castle itself is said to be in the sky and the terrain favors the ability to float around like psychic types are known to do.” Maiden Jig pointed out the pass we were going through between the Fighting Kingdom of Pugilis and the Ground Kingdom of Terrera. She then pointed out the pass heading into the mountain region of Illusio proper from Chrysalis which we’ll be in for a short time, we’d be passing through Chrysalia’s eastern most edge for a short amount of time. “Be careful of mental illusions Psychic types will try to make you see or experience things that aren’t there. The sharper one’s mind or at least the simpler it is, the less likely you are to be effected by psychic types since you’ll either notice or shake off their attempts easily. Dark Types are also fully immune to psychic type attacks. So if someone like Quetal says something is up, then you should pay attention to him if you don’t notice anything being off.”

“So what are a Psychic Types most common abilities? I’m not talking Pokémon Abilities specifically, I mean general ability.” My question took a moment to be thought over and then Maiden Jig nodded to herself.

“Teleportation, telepathy, telekinesis and floating is the general among all Psychic Types, the strength varies from Pokémon to Pokémon though. Psychics are very good at ranged, energy based, attacks.” With that said I had no more questions for Maiden Jig or the Beedrill unit we’re to escort. “I hope you know I wouldn’t ask this of you if I could help it. We’ll try to get at least the Skitty Squad up and running to back you up in case things go horribly south. Just one last thing… are you okay Pom?”

“I can’t honestly say yes to that question.” That was my answer and I wasn’t about to give a better one.

-Some hours later-

I didn’t even try to talk with Geoff before we left, though I have to admit his wool shifted form was adorable and quite a few others agreed with the sentiment that the cleric was cute, dependable and obviously a persistent pervert of the plains.

“Are you sure you want to be on a mission that sounds like it will go to Tartarus in a handbasket Pom?” I calmly hugged Ocellus and then went back to thinking on what we might run into. “You’re expecting it.”

“I expect a lot of things to happen.” I answered evenly.

“So is anyone going to tell us what you guys discussed earlier today?” Dazzle looked quite worried, as did Frizzle who was chomping on a baguette she got from Mr. Schlurp before we left. She turned to everyone else. “It’s something to do with Pom isn’t it?”

We were rather tight lipped about my impending doom, one eventually bound to be brought about by a rather highly lethal itch to help people. Not that my friends would ever want to stop me from helping people, it’s that they wanted me to stop me from sacrificing myself totally and utterly in the most volatile way possible. I kind of wished them the best of luck and that they would succeed at it long enough for me to see Tianhuo in person again.

“I don’t think she’s going to want to talk about it Dazzle, it’ll probably come out one way or another. Don’t force it, it’ll likely end in tears.” Canard wanted in on this particular mission, which was odd. It was not very hard to guess why Sami wanted in on this as well… Sami was quite rather emotionally attached to Canard and would go wherever he did, the information entity was quite smitten with the giant duck according to a whisper between Ocellus and Smolder.

I really needed to use advanced my senses more often.

The one thing I would question is Canard’s sanity of wanting to go with us, he would have been much safer doing small jobs in Aurora instead of getting into trouble with us.

“I will at least say that I will explain what we talked about if it becomes pertinent to whatever is going on. Otherwise we’re trying to keep it to those of us who are all heading to Equus, Canard will be heading back to the world his friends currently occupy and I assume he’ll be taking Sami with him. Dodo and Dolly are from different worlds, but they’ve made their choices to follow us until the end, I can’t ask that of you who are going to stay behind… or will be forced to at least. We’re not even sure Arceus would let Pokémon come with us beyond these adventures.”

I mentally drew up a list of those traveling with us.

Quetal, Shine, Lit, Mundo, Dazzle and Favela were all in attendance as our traveling Pokémon companions. Lit seemed particularly upset at the idea of being separated from Dolly. Favela was obviously the same way with Shanty. I think Dazzle would be okay if we were separated, but she would want it to be on good terms.

There was my main group with Smolder, Ocellus, Shanty, Me, Dodo and Dolly, all of us aware that I’m quite driven to eventually sacrifice myself violently.

The six Beedrill unit from Chrysalia that we were escorting into Illusio.

Frizzle and Sami were auxiliary help, along with Canard and the Cleffa that Canard befriended that was officially became a recent member of the Team Harmony. Then there was the non-combatant of the Charjabug who wanted to see the world, he would help us as needed and wanted to just explore and see the sights.

“Trust me, I, Pirate Favela, will find a way to be a part of Captain Shanty’s crew, come high water or fiery inferno!” Declared Favela as one of the best friends Shanty has ever had. “I’ll likely be told then right? If it doesn’t affect us now, then we shouldn’t worry right?”

“If you can actually swing it Favela. Arceus might just keep you in this world for your own safety, he’s apparently a major controlling factor of whether or not people can cross borders between unconnected dimensions.” We were making good time at least, we were in Pugilis and close to the border of Terrera and closing in on the southeastern pass into Chrysalia. Chrysalia held two bottlenecks at its eastern border and we were going to be passing through both of them as we continued north along the road instead of south towards Pummelton.

-Illusio Kingdom, Illusion Castle, ???-

“Hmm… so the white wooly one is finally coming for me.” I glanced at the Caterpie that recently became a green moon shaped shelled Pokémon known as a Metapod. It was apparently still supposed to be a reason for my defeat and I scoffed as their life seemed particularly normal for a Bug Type of their species. “I guess I can prepare a good welcome for them at least, they won’t have even an ounce power to even threaten someone of my lofty caliber.”

-???-

The scene zoomed out showing a creature with glowing red eyes filled with mirth, it had a ponytail flowing from its head and the two horns at the side of its head that had rings hanging on them as gold as the creatures coloring. Its two arms with glove hands weren’t quite connected to its body for the lack of shoulders, said body was cylindrical with a golden hoola hoop like ring tightly stuck around its waist. The bottom of said waist was a ghostly tail.

On this golden creature’s face, which lacked a nose, was a malevolent, utterly manic, smile that reached its rosy pink cheeks on its opulent golden form.

“Let’s see how well you’ll do against the King of Heroes outsiders and travelers from the beyond. For you’ll soon come to face to face with me, The Legendary Gilgamesh and will be weeping in sorrow at my splendor as every last one of you fails to achieve your goals…” The figure said as he floated above a throne in a floating castle in the skies of Illusio. “Oh what fun games we will play together, when I see all the hopes and dreams of you and your friends dashed upon the rocks of my elegant grace. I might even let you live to wallow in your failures like the bugs you are and might even bother to add their things to my collection once I’m through proving my superiority, hmmhmhm-heh-heh-heh!”

-Nearby, Celebi-

We’ll certainly see about that… not when you have both the understudies of Palkia and Dialga mad at you for taking over Illusio and killing the previous king in cold blood as a tyrannical conqueror. We’re angry that he was giving us Legendary Pokémon quite a bad name, but we couldn’t exactly directly act against the Bootleg Hoopa.

I glanced at the actual Hoopa and he had an equally sadistic grin as the fake counterpart currently running Illusio, we nodded to one another while rubbing our hands together with delightful hints of mischief.

So that golden ponce wanted to play games with the lives of mortals huh…

Well he might be one tough sucker to take down, but we had all the time and space in the world to really screw with him.

Let’s see, there was a Gallade named Kenshin who was going to do big things… no positioning or movements needed as Cotton will actively take care of everything on that front.

We personally could bring in a particularly silly outsider to aid ‘them’ in the right moment… just need to run it by Arceus to see if he’s okay what with the irony of it all.

Finally there’s the whole thing with how the Charjabug was slowly and quietly being positioned into becoming a rather glorious bit of payoff… being completely overlooked because Pom was there and a primarily keeping any kind of focus off of the rather innocent little green bug that Gilgamesh sees as beneath his notice.

Bless Arceus, for he has a miraculously cosmic sense of humor that eventually creates smiles.

Author's Note

Took forever to get the word count right on this one.

317. Onslaught at Three Borders Valley.

Author's Note

Music: Final Fantasy IV boss battle theme.

Let's see how dangerous Gilgamesh is, especially when he has infinite uses of Hyperspace Hole.

317. Onslaught at Three Borders Valley.

-???, Oleander-

“You’re a good kid Lincoln, though I wouldn’t go actively looking for magic, you certainly have enough of that with a family of ten unique sisters already.” I stated as sipped away at my tea. “... I’m not saying you can’t do actual magic as a stage magician. I’ll even throw you a small hint on that at least, learn to speak backwards... you’ll be amazed with the results.”

“Thanks for the worship Lucy!” Fred stated amiably to a dark haired biped. “You’re creepy little sister Lucy Loud is going to be an interesting acolyte to keep up with.”

“Terribly sorry about my fiancé ‘trying’ to 'completely' corrupt one of your sisters.” I followed up a second later.

“Is Lucy going to lose her soul?” Lincoln asked worriedly.

“She better not.” I stated sternly while looking flatly at Fred, he just innocently floated next to me. After a moment he simply blushed under my intense scrutiny.

“Yay, weirdest my dreams come true, I got to make a designer jacket for a unicorn!” Leni, one of Lincoln’s sisters stated with glee as she somehow managed to talk a short ride out of Buttina. “I also guess riding one is great too!”

“I’m actually a Pandoran Bicorn, but that doesn’t really matter too much.” Buttina apparently liked one of the older sisters Leni, it wasn’t just because Leni had a good taste in fashion either. The new black jacket looked quite fitting on the diamond bodied horse too.

“Well this is one no one is ever going to believe, they barely even believe the whole dragon thing.” The white haired Lincoln said while hearing that everything his sister was into had some truth to it. Even if it was slightly off by at least fifteen degrees, metaphorically speaking of course.

-Pokémon World, Ransei Region, early evening, Three Borders Valley, south of eastern Chrysalia, Quetal-

“Okay, I think we need to discuss the Cufant in the wagon.” I stated while continuing my vigilance in watching our surroundings from behind. I didn’t think Pugilis would attack us, I was more worried about a Ground Type from Terrera possibly ambushing us from below.

Didn’t seem like we were facing any trouble from the south and the north seemed clear.

“Really, why do we need to talk about me?” We all blinked and turned to the fact that there was an actual Cufant hanging onto the back of the wagon. “I thought I was being rather unobtrusive.”

Wait, how long had he been there and I didn’t even notice him?!

The small copper bodied Steel Type elephant with splotches of green, from where it rained on him, looked at us curiously.

“I wasn’t exactly talking about you, I was using a turn of phrase, but now that you’ve brought yourself up… what are you doing on the back of the wagon?” I crossed my arms and glared at the Cufant.

“I’m catching a ride to Chrysalia obviously, I saw your wagon turning north at the crossroads. You haven’t turned right into the Terrera’s desert yet, so you’re still going my way and it didn’t seem like you would be too troubled by my presence.” The Cufant was certainly quite an orator, he was also entirely unfazed by a wagon full of Pokémon that could beat the snot out of him… especially Dazzle if she slapped him with a Fire Lash. “I’m going to buy me some honey from the Bug Types when I get there, heard they had some really sweet cuisine too!”

“Yep honey is what Chrysalia is known for when it comes to visitors… not that we get many what with our territorial and insular mindsets sometimes. We do get a lot of visitors from Violight and vice versa considering our two kingdoms history of companionship.” One could easily guess why Charjabug was wanting to talk avid traveler. “Are you all the way from Valora?”

“Oh yes, some strange things have been popping up all over the place and causing havoc there. I decided to travel to safer climates what with war also popping up all over the eastern side of the continent out of nowhere.” Well at least thanks to Cufant, we now knew more of what was going on in Jeanne’s neck of the woods. “Somehow Valora hasn’t been dragged into a war with any other kingdom, but like Nixtorm we’re having internal issues and I’m surprised that every other eastern nation is too busy squabbling to bother the Steel or Ice Type kingdoms. Kind of surprised about Cragspur attacking Terrera though, Terrera has all the advantages against Cragspur and yet the rock types seem a bit insistent on attacking the underground kingdoms.”

“Nice to know the movements of things in the world and we’ll thank you for the information Cufant, but I wanted to address the change in attitude around Pom and her group before I was interrupted.” We were barely within the entrance of Three Border Valley, the valley that connected Chrysalia, Terrera and Pugilis. “Pom’s girls seem… a little preoccupied with her. Any ideas on what’s causing it?”

“Whatever they talked about earlier this morning probably.” Dazzle commented as she looked towards the front of the large wagon where Dolly, Dodo, Shanty, Smolder and Ocellus were all acting a little odd around Pom. “They are kind of watching her kind of closely.”

Dodo, not having to slow down for anyone walking alongside the wagon, was pulling us all along at quite a good bit of speed. We’d probably make it into eastern Chrysalia where we’d likely settle down and camp with the border guards, before setting out for Illusio the next day to investigate with the Beedrill unit.

“Well… while it is concerning, it seems they are doing it out of worry for Pom. She might have a terminal illness or something.” No, it couldn’t be that Shine, a terminal illness would have them all be paler or more sorrowful. They were acting more, ‘careful’, that’s the word I would use.

Given what the Cufant meant by strange creatures attacking Valora, then could they be something like what Frizzle and Sami are? Both curious and worryingly strange creatures, but not currently an immediate problem to focus on.

“I don’t think it’s a terminal illness, but Lit seems just as concerned all the same.” My comment was meant by everyone looking at the fuzzy little Bug Type staring worriedly at Dolly.

“At least Pom seems to have regained some of her spark, but there is still a hollowness to her that I aim to help, maybe a nice snack?” Mundo held up a churro and it was quickly snatched from his right claw, by Frizzle’s upper half popping out of the device at Dazzle’s hip and then she ducked straight back into it. “My does that one certainly appreciate her baked goods!”

“Frizzle needs a lot of energy… and she’s sadly addicted to bread and apparently donuts now too thanks to you Mundo.” Responded Dazzle quietly, before she looked through the wagon.

It was a little tight, but we managed to fit everyone inside. With plenty of supplies for how fast Dodo could pull us all.

“Do you think Shanty would tell me what’s wrong?” It was just a curiosity on Favela’s part, she was like a sister to Shanty and she wanted to know what’s wrong. To be fair to Favela, we all did.

“In time, we’re all probably going to hear what’s…” My eyes widened at something as I looked out the front of the wagon. “Grab hold of something!”

It was unfortunate for me that my species didn’t have opposable claws and I wasn’t about to dig my claws into the wagons wood or its cloth covering. We weren’t going to be around Bidoof for quite a while.

Dodo let out a startled sound as he lunged to the right, lifting and moving the entirety of the wagon with an incredible show of strength. This almost made me fall out of the back of the wagon as a massive boulder bounced off the ground leaving a crater to the left.

Thankfully Canard grabbed me and got a got good grip on the back edge of the wagon and the Cufant helped me back in with it’s trunk as the massive boulder, that could have crushed us all, created several more craters as it bounced and rolled along the valley trail behind us.

“I believe that that has garnered your attention, I am Gilgamesh. I know… amazing right? No need for applause, adulation or even worship, if you want an autograph… eh… maybe if you live through this.” Said a smiling ghostly horned imp with floating detached arms. He looked like the Legendary Pokémon Hoopa, only he came in a golden color. There was also something quite demented about him. “Before you waste my time along with your energy, I’m not actually here, I’m just projecting my image to where you are. So listen up, I want to play a little game with all of you… it’s called ‘Natural Disaster’. The aim of the game is to simply this, survive until I get what I came for and leave, that’s all.”

I did not like this guys demented tone and if he truly had the power of a Legendary Pokémon… well we were about to find out if he could make good on his threat of causing a natural disaster. Wasn’t Hoopa know specifically for spatial manipulation? How dangerous could that actually be?

Hundreds of portals opened up around the wagon, all of them filled with weapons. Axes, spears, swords, arrows and far more, there were thousands of weapons now currently aimed at us.

“Guys, he actually has the real Hoopa’s capabilities.” Not something anyone among us wanted to hear, but I thought it needed to be said.

Who knows why this portal generating mad monstrosity was about to mulch us.

-Pom-

Yep, don’t know what we did to deserve this, but it was certainly going to be a thing.

“Gates of Babylon…” With flick of his right hand the Gold Hoopa Gilgamesh sent all the weapons flying at us from all sides.

“Unit command, Beehive Barrier!” The Beedrill leader stated and his entire unit quickly flew out.

Suddenly the dome of hexagons surrounding us was ready, just in time too as the barrier started taking hundreds of weapons. Thousands of impacts were striking the barrier that the six giant bees were putting up to protect us, it was kind of like watching Geoff’s unit put up a defense.

I got out of the wagon personally to aid in the defense when it became necessary.

It was barely thirty seconds under the constant sound of weapons impacting the barrier that it started cracking and breaking.

“Prepare unit command, Pin Projectile Parrying, on my mark!” The Beedrill leader shouted as his team started to struggle under the strain of the barrier about to break apart. “Pick your area of cover, protecting lives is priority! Current mode of transport is secondary, divert anything that’ll hit us or our allies directly first!”

“Roger!” The five other Beedrill stated as their pointed lance arms started to build up a glow.

“Barrier is about to be breeched, drop in three… two… mark! Unit command, Pin Projectile Parrying!” The barrier protecting us blew apart, but that didn’t mean were defenseless against all the weapon raining down at us from all sides.

All six Beedrill started to rapidly stab out projectile in the form of energy spikes in the shape of their lance arms, efficiently deflecting hundreds per every projectile they fire. I even fired a few Thousand Spears and saw some similarities, except they had more direct control of their attacks and how they changed direction shortly after firing.

Whatever they couldn’t stop we would have to deflect away from destroying the wagon, Ocellus had already unhitched Dodo and he was creating cutting arcs like Shanty with rapid swipes of his wings and beak. I guess Shanty learned to share her abilities with Dodo as she was on top of the wagon deflecting axes, spears… a halberd, a flail?

I quickly lashed out a hoof to knock a weapon upwards and caught a very decently made spear before it could hit Ocellus and twirled it in my hooves to deflect two knives with two swings and continued to deflect a following barrage of spinning axes, canes, swords and more with the tip of my spear rapidly stabbing out to block the bladed weapons raining on us.

How many weapons was this guy going to throw at us?! I used the tip of the spear to deflect a morning star away from hitting the slightly fearful Cleffa and Canard took to wielding a large headed axe as an actively shield. It was too large for Canard to wield, he was just holding the giant axe by its head since it was big enough to block with.

Even Dazzle was deflecting weapons with two whips of flame working up a swirling ribbon pattern, probably learned from watching Smolder practice ribbon dancing, she was making completely sure to avoid aiming her Fire Lash whips anywhere near the Beedrill.

After a solid minute, it stopped raining weapons at lethal velocity on us. The Beedrill looked somewhat exhausted.

“Hmmm… bored of raining on your parade now… how about we heat things up?” Feeling heat to my right, I turned as a circle formed in the air and stream of molten lava shot right at me.

“Pom!” I was pushed away Dazzle took a volcanic blast of molten rock to the face, for very little in the way of looking pained or hurt for having taken thousands of degrees of hot magma to the face.

Oh right Dazzle was a Fire Type, heat wasn’t an issue. Apparently it did hurt somewhat given the rock part of the ‘molten rock’, but the heat didn’t cause her any discomfort or melted her alive. She had thankfully thought to toss her belt to Frizzle or else her Digivice would be under a lot of duress.

Another stream and Smolder redirected the stream of molten rock at the ground physically with her body, mostly by flying right into it and pushing the stream away from us.

Several more portals with molten magma opened around us in all directions.

“Aerora!” Dolly screamed and swirling silver winds protected us from balls of magma and streams of lava impacting us from all sides from all side.

The winds directed the heat away from us, instantly cooling off the lava and the air became freezing cold for a few seconds as the shifting air pressures just made Dolly’s protective magic all the more powerful.

Now the wagon was surrounded by a masses and splotches of quickly cooling lava that was becoming jagged rock all over the ground around us.

“Ooh… was that too hot to handle, how about I cool you off a little?” Okay this Gilgamesh guy was getting on my nerves, how far away could he be that he could be attacking us this easily? “Some water from the bottom of the ocean should do, it’ll definitely put all that heat under pressure.”

A powerful jet of water blasted Dazzle and she was taken down immediately, even with the wind barrier absorbing the impact of the sudden blasts of water alternating all around us pummeling us with Hydro Pump level streams worth of water.

Frizzle hopped out and quickly retrieved Dazzle, the water struck her a few times, but she seemed to be far less affected by it. Most likely because there wasn’t any Pokémon dimensional energy actually involved in these attacks, the energy was definitely around the portals forming all over the place.

The wind barrier around the wagon and each of us individually held up fairly well to the immense amount of water we were being pounded with. The blunt force blows didn’t bother me so much as the brine trying to painfully seep into my pores and any injuries or scars that haven’t sealed up.

“We need to do something, we’re getting absolutely hammered here!” A female Beedrill stated as four of their team were down.

“I kind of wish I could be getting hammered, you try having so many horrible memories you can’t be getting rid of!” Shanty said as she suddenly started redirecting all the blasts of water to circle around her and away from our friends, she had help from the wind barriers in keeping control of all the water and directing it away from pounding us into the ground.

Shanty leapt off the wagon and kept drawing the massive amounts of water to herself and sent it flying to the north, to harmlessly splash and spray against the ground along the path.

“Hehaha… ooh… you didn’t like becoming soaked? I’m so-sorry-.” A massive portal opened above all our heads and we stared in horror as multiple cracks of thunder and lightning sounded out. With a single gesture from Gilgamesh a massive amount of clouds loaded with lightning appeared in the portals above us and said lightning was about to slam down on all of us, especially when we were all currently wet. “Those wind barriers of yours are mildly bothersome and since you’re all wet… let me show you something absolutely shocking!”

We were about to be bombarded by lightning from above any second now and it seemed like it was coming from… Violight? How far did this guy’s reach go? Aurora?!

Something connected in my head in an instant, something that could move a thousand ton Pokémon like that sleeping Snorlax, the information we got from Shanty dredging the river and the Cubone that had been there. This guy, he has had it out for me since he destroyed the bridge in Aurora...

“You’re the one that destroyed the bridge between Greenleaf and Aurora!” I accused.

“Correct, give the lady a prize, I do recall having some fun on that day.” Gilgamesh stated with a gleeful widening of his grin as the lightning fell. “Goodbye now.”

The attack was stopped when Lit squeaked loudly and the lightning redirected towards him. Lit was using his own body as a lightning rod to take the hundreds of lightning strikes, alongside that he had covered the wagon in Electroweb and connected multiple strings of silk to the ground. Whatever Lit couldn’t eat, he safely grounded by directing the excess energy into the webbing. Lit may not be the brightest being around mentally, but he was fairly intelligent about how his own element worked.

“Oh my, how clever for something so very small… not a gnat at all, but quite the nuisance.” Says the grinning nuisance known as Gilgamesh, as the lightning barrage stopped. “How about quick quiz, what’s cold and miserable? Hmm-hmm… are you going freeze up when it comes to answering the question now?”

With a flick of the left hand, the grinning demon suddenly caused us to be buffeted by freezing cold winds of a howling blizzard and that was last Beedrill swiftly going down. The leader couldn’t take the strain of being hit with so much cold and having his wings frozen solid, he flopped onto the ground and struggled to stay awake by propping himself up on his lances.

Dolly’s wind barriers were doing nothing to stop the onslaught of freezing winds, her protective winds even seemed to be encouraging the ice creeping up all over the bodies of those who were wet and exposed to the elements.

To my horror Lit and Shanty were also just basically flash frozen alive, Dodo warbled in a panic over Shanty’s frozen form even as his body started to frost over too. Favela was shivering and looking to be freezing up nearly as much and her shivering was rapidly slowing down, all the sudden rapid changes in temperatures couldn’t be healthy for the plant goat.

I too felt my body slowly freezing solid from all the water that had soaked into my wool, I flexed my wool and sprayed the water from around my body to create a small circular wall of ice around me to get some reprieve from the blizzard as I crouched behind it. Tightening my wool, my warmth quickly returned to me as I propped myself up on the commandeered spear.

Once got into a standing position, I saw exactly what this grinning menace was going to do to us next and a chill ran down my spine.

The only other ones who seemed unaffected by the cold were Dolly, Canard, Quetal and Cleffa. Dolly and Cleffa were the odd ones give they were small and Dolly had a thin fur covering. Canard came from a planet covered in ice so he was naturally resilient to this and Quetal was an Ice Type Pokémon so the sudden temperature drop didn’t do a thing to him as much as the temperature raising when we were being assaulted with lava.

“What is a cold reapers most favored weapon?” Asked this Gilgamesh guy in an insulting tone, with a continued and ever present demented lilt in his voice.

Multiple large portals with what looked like thousands of spikes in icy caverns were now aimed our way.

“How about a little loud noise to help you figure it out?” The image of the widely grinning Gilgamesh loudly clapped his hands together and the hundreds of icicles on the other side of the portals started falling towards us.

“Guys get the injured in the wagon, I can stop this attack!” I shouted as I hopped my way up to the top of the wagon where the electric web had already been sapped completely of its energy by the unrelenting cold.

I inhaled through my mouth and nose sharply and then let out Howl Blast, my howling wail shattered all the icicles that were about to perforate us violent. Dolly quickly leapt in front of me with her board held aloft. The crystals of ice left behind in the destruction of my voice that would have hit me were blocked and constantly battering Dolly’s board as much as the rest of the wagon.

Still a few ice chips stuck into me as I kept the howl going, my throat was quickly getting raw from the magical force I was unleashing. I could at least feel Dolly regaining her magical strength under the storm of quickly slushing ice.

As the assault ended, I gasp in air and clutched at my throat with tears in my eyes, that was just on the brink of making me voiceless again.

“Wow, what a set of lungs on you… I hope you don’t mind ‘tomb’ much if you simply just perish and save yourself the trouble of existing further.” The grinning monster spread his hands out and looking around the wagon two portals were swirling upwards creating quickly hardening walls of solidifying lava surrounded the wagon. We were becoming trapped in a large cylinder now. “I swear you’re defense could have been just a bit… meteor.”

I saw a sparkle in the sky, as the grinning image of Gilgamesh waved at me lazy.

“How about I needle you for something before that bit of bother for you ultimately comes to fruition?” A spike of rock slammed into the wagon from below, lifting it up a bit. My satchel was launched out of it by the blow, a second spike of rock hit the bag and caused something else to fly from it.

My eyes widened, with a quick inhale I lunged forward, my hoof was just about to grab it… when a glow wrapped around it and pulled the device away. The device that allowed me to contact Tianhuo… was now out of my reach as I flopped onto my chin painfully and looked up at the grinning monster.

“Word to the wise, this is mine now and you’re not getting it back.” Stated the grinning image as a circle appeared and then with a single horizontal spin of the portal, the device disappeared into it and the image was suddenly holding it. “This ultimately useless piece of junk? Yeah, I own it now as I deem it fit for my collection, barely if at that. Not that you’ll need it within the next minute anyway.”

I just stared at the image holding the device with wide eyes.

“Where are you?” I asked calmly as something roiled within me.

“Castle Illusio, which is where I am right now, you’re looking at the King of Conquerors a King above Kings that deserves everything. You were coming after me anyway, I thought I might give you some more incentive. Riches, power and anything I declare worthwhile will be mine.” He wasn’t lying, why would he. He’s so powerful that if he was attacking from all the way in Illusio, then it was completely intimidating that he could throw this much at us while treating it as if he was doing it halfheartedly. Like all his attacks weren’t even taking much effort on his part… and we haven’t even entered that kingdom’s borders! At least we knew what the problem in Illusio was, because it was definitely this Gilgamesh guy. “You’re little paltry and pitiful fun parade of a group is so quite inadequately prepared to handle the likes of me, why the threat you present to me is so minimal that I could care less that you’re going to be coming after me later on. Still it would be nice if you would just die for me… please. I so would hate to have to dirty my hands on you later.”

“Why?!” I shouted as I watched Dolly rub her paws together rapidly and then slap both sides of a frozen Lit and the little fuzzy bug immediately thawed out as the ice around him shattered strangely. Gilgamesh raised a single brow at me. “Why all of this?!”

Lit gave off a weak sounding squeak and Dolly quickly hefted him up into hug before quickly getting him into the wagon. Even Smolder and Ocellus were partially frozen and I felt Dolly moving to help them as well.

“Like that will matter to you soon… because I’m not going to spear you a moment.” A giant spike of ice burst from a portal.

“Bulldoze!” That’s when a copper elephant interrupted the ice attack with a wave of dirt and rock by stomping his front two feet into the ground creating a massive shockwave and defensive wall the absorbed the sudden attack entirely. “Why are you attacking these people, what did they ever do to you?!”

“Oh nothing… yet… but why not attack them? They are fated to become my enemies after all, dealing with them swiftly seems quite prudent and they will feel less pain if they die here now, rather than continue to even remotely struggle against me later.” This Gilgamesh’s grinning image was continuing to disturb me as his image tossed the dimensional communication device he stole around, taunting me that he had taken it so easily and that there was nothing we could do to stop him. “If I can take care of them here and now, or at least warn them off from dying a thankless death for trying to bother ‘my’ kingdom. That’s one less problem for me to ultimately deal with. Also… piano.”

“Pia… PIANO?!” I managed to roll to the side to avoid the piano that crashed into the ground with a thunderous noise that sent bits of broken wire, wood and ceramics flying everywhere.

“Maybe I should have used the anvil first, it would have traveled faster…” Gilgamesh actually looked like he was considering it for a moment, this guy was unbelievable! “We’re heading for a meteoric climax and here I am getting quite lazy in my attempts to end you. You are quite a boring if unusually tenacious adversary when it comes to clinging to life… you’d even be more of a challenge than Cu Chulainn up close and personal, but why even give you the opportunity? You don’t deserved to see me in person in the first place!”

There was a loud whistling noise coming from above me as the wind barriers all winked out of existence at the same time.

“Ally Switch!” At the sound of Shine’s voice I was suddenly in the wagon and Shine was actively phasing her way out of the anvil that had hit the ground with a loud clang. It had landed right where I had been standing a half second ago. “Be more careful Pom, ugh all this cold… is making feel so slow.”

I looked up to the sky and saw the massive amount of burning stone hurtling at us at high speeds.

“Be a little lamb and fleece, save yourself, leave your friends to their fates. You can easily escape with the time you have left.” Listening to Gilgamesh trying to call me a coward, I just started shaking my head in distaste and I quietly sat down staring at him. “Not running? Then I hope you won’t mind you’re inevitable and unenvious demise, for it’ll be quite a crushing defeat.”

“Can you please stop it with all the puns already?” My bland tone made him flinch, I had to find the frequency of the mass coming at me or else the wagon was doomed. I would lose my voice again… but it was a worthy cause. “I know you’re some ego tripping, godly powered, monster that wants me dead, but the puns are entirely grating and beyond the pale.”

The massive meteoric hurtling death orb was growing closer by the second. Dodo warbled worriedly as he stared up at the massive rock coming down on us.

I prepared my throat to start growling up a Bark Breaker frequency, then had to dodge a bolt of lightning that forced me to exhale.

“Nope, you’re not breaking my last attack just like that. Like I’ll just sit here and let you do something to stop it, it would ruin the dramatic moment where I get my total victory and won’t have to pay you any attention later.” Closing his eyes and crossing his arms, Gilgamesh started laughing. “Since you’ll be dead tired after all of this…”

I had to dodge several icicles and twirled the spear in a stylish flourish to deflect all of the others, I was too distracted by Gilgamesh to really do anything about the meteor that was about to strike us.

A lightning bolt suddenly struck me from the side.

“Aghhh-gg—g-g-…” I fell down and looked up at the smiling image with gritted teeth, he quickly started spraying me with water and cold icy winds to start freezing me in place. Until I couldn’t move.

“Hmm… if I hollow out the meteor, it’ll make a nice novelty sized snow globe…” Gilgamesh wasn’t even paying attention to us anymore. “Keep the spear if you live through this, doubt you will though.”

“Solar Beam… rraaggggghhhhhh!” Cleffa? Wow, that was a pretty powerful attack for such a small Pokémon.

It was only slowing the meteor down, it wasn’t going to stop it or even destroy it before it hit us.

“That’s not…. going to be… enough…” I tried to yell to everyone around me.

Quetal soon joined by spitting a stream of stars, for all the good it would do to slow down the meteor coming down on us.

Ocellus surprisingly managed to get up, having been thawed out by Dolly rubbing her paws together and smacking her with them creating a sound that sounded vaguely like a defibrillator. Our Changeling friend started firing a beam of magic into the meteor, putting out as much energy as she could to the point her form began to turn black around the edges.

Lit despite how weak he was started firing off a powerful bolt of lightning, the raw amount of energy he was pouring out of his body couldn’t be healthy.

“Please, hold it off long enough and I shall take care of that meteor personally!” Lucha Mundo despite the battering was one of the healthiest looking among us, he took off into the air towards the meteor still falling at us with two quick flaps of his arms.

The Cufant started throwing large boulders into the sky and was actually managing to hit the meteor as it was getting closer and closer to us, this slowed it down immensely. Frizzle even joined in by blasting a series of fireballs at the meteor as Lucha Mundo flew up towards it.

Still too far away for me to use anything other than bark breaker for good effect, unless I thought a Thousand Spears attack would do something.

Gilgamesh made it clear he wasn’t going to let me use bark breaker, it was if he could see the future… but not quite everything.

“Time to show my stuff for this great team of traveling companions, signature move… FLYING PRESS!” We all watched as Lucha Mundo swooped for the meteor that was getting closer by the second and if he was about to do what I thought he was.

With a glowing form, Lucha Mundo slapped bodily against the meteor in a sideways belly flop with impressive force. Surprisingly his momentum plus all the attacks on our end managed to shift the meteor away from falling straight on top of us and the wagon.

It still slammed into the ground next to us tearing straight through the cylinder of solidified magma that was keeping us stuck. The rest of the cylinder shattered after the northern part of it broke away, pelting us with numerous bits of stone when the meteor crashed into it with explosive force, the resulting shockwave knocked us over, going through all of us who were not in the wagon. Some were even thrown out of the wagon by the blast wave as it was rocked backwards and upwards. The meteor was even almost blocking the path forward due to its size.

“Hmph… so you actually survived that…” Commented Gilgamesh idly waving at us lazily as the dust cleared from the desturction. “Maybe next time then, I’m sure I can think of a better game we could all play then.”

With that the image of the monster attacking us disappeared from our sight.

“That… was… just plain… nuts…” A panting wide eyed Dolly said as she hobbled her way up to my side to hug it with a good paw.

“Dodo…” My quiet voice drew our metal ostrich back to my side, he had used his body to absorb most of the shockwave from the meteor crashing into the ground. Still hadn’t been nearly enough. “Are you ready to continue? We…. need to be in Chrysalia… before night falls. We need medical help…”

“We’ll…. show him… next time… won’t we?” Trying to keep a chipper tone, Dolly was leaning in to me to stay upright.

“Dolly… look around you… he was just toying with us.” From what I knew, that monster damn near wiped us out without actually ever being present and wasn’t actively trying all too hard to kill us. “If he really wanted to, he could have easily finished us all off.”

“I’m okay… Cupcakes, Laughter, Loyalty and Honesty… no that…. doesn’t sound quite right…” Lucha Mundo flopped over onto his face near us looking scorched and painfully battered.

I sighed and hauled Lucha Mundo back towards the wagon, he really slammed himself into the meteor quite hard to save us.

After getting the bipedal bird situated, I sat in front of the meteor to stare at it.

“Pom…” Yes Ocellus? She limped up to me with parts of her form having turned black, Smolder hugged her and the black started slowly receding. “The device…”

She was at a loss for words and so was I as my throat was still recovering from holding a magically enhanced howl for so long.

Gilgamesh intended to demoralize us completely, he succeeded, but that wasn't going to stop me from going after him even if I had to do so alone.

-Ocellus-

I saw something red spark in Pom’s right eye as it twitched slightly, she sat there staring at the meteor that was stuck sitting in the divot it was now stuck in. We could squeeze around it.

He eyes still had that light amount of hollowness a second ago, now… now they were vibrantly and dangerously filled with life and her emotions were burning as brightly as the life in her eyes.

“BAA…” The valley shook.

“RAM…” The region quaked.

“EWE!” The world could hear Pom’s anger loud and clear as she just declared war on that Gilgamesh guy.

I shivered as I stared at the meteor, the massive hunk of rock that it was, had been split into two halves and then those halves safely shattered to pieces under the force of Pom just shouting at it in fury. None of the pieces even came close to hitting anyone.

Pom was quite quiet after that just sitting there and staring at the cleared pathway, she just threw out her voice didn’t she?

It wasn’t hard to tell she was quite livid about having the device, that let her communicate with her wife, stolen from her.

All that fury quickly disappeared a second later, confusing me to no end. There was frustration, worry, the massive amount of anxiety that has more explanations than ever and… a deep rooted love for us? That Gilgamesh had endangered us and that was what Pom was most angry about.

“Ocellus… start seeing to everyone’s injuries with Smolder… we need to be meet the Chrysalia border guard before night falls.” Pom quietly stated in a quiet, highly raspy tone, then went to help Dolly with reviving Shanty.

My eyes stared at her in surprise, she stopped just short of ruining her vocal chords. Where there was once dullness was now a burning resolve as what we just went through lit a quiet, if incredibly powerful, fire inside of Pom.

Did she know exactly how much she could sacrifice her voice to do what she just did in clearing the way so we didn’t have to squeeze by the meteor?

I blinked and saw Cleffa, the small Pokémon, picking up a piece of rock with a smiling face before getting back in the wagon, I wonder why she was so happy about a rock that came from the meteor? She was almost the healthiest among us at this point.

-A few hours later, nighttime, Eastern Chrysalia Outpost, Pom-

“That’s what happened.” Smolder stated and the strange spider like bug nodded to us.

“Then we are clearly at war with Illusio, but not openly quite yet.” That was understandable General Ariados, you needed some time to inform your people. Gilgamesh took out the Beedrill reconnaissance team, injured most of my friends and then took something important to me as if it was all a walk in the park for him. “We still need a recon unit to scout around a bit to confirm the trouble, this is why we’re asking for outsiders or at least another kingdoms help. At least we know what the threat is now… a Golden Hoopa named Gilgamesh.”

I was resting my throat, I had almost pushed it too far, but that’s probably what Gilgamesh had wanted. He wasn’t getting the satisfaction if it was. He seemed like the kind of guy that wanted someone to suffer because he easily made them angry. Well I stopped short of damaging my voice permanently, my throat needed all the time in the world to heal and the cold tea offered by the bug types was quite soothing, honey based and it was helping my nerves quite a bit.

Gilgamesh had injured absolutely everyone, the Beedrill unit were going to be swapped out with an Ariados unit. An Ariados was a colorful red or purple four legged spider like Pokémon with horns on their foreheads and pincers for mouths. Apparently they evolved from the small green or blue six legged Spinarak Pokémon, the evolution turning two of their back legs into something like moveable antenna. While they had a strong resemblance to spiders in appearance and movements, I silently noted that they weren’t actually arachnids.

Glancing at Ocellus, she came to the same conclusion noting down something about Bug Types in a journal. Apparently the Bug Types liked and were quite welcoming of Ocellus, maybe because they could feel her bug like nature.

We were soon provided the best medical supplies the Chrysalia eastern border defense units could quickly muster up and provide. The knowledge and danger of a Legendary Pokémon level threat had put them all on high alert, with good reason too. We were all eventually bandaged up in some String Shot silk even Lit needed some around his four tiny limbs and body.

Quite a few of the Bug Types here suggested we wait for the specialist Morpeko unit from Violight to show up before even thinking of going into Illusio. We needed Dark Type backup before even trying as they could naturally generate what Ocellus likened to an anti-scrying field where Psychic Types would have problems finding us, they would also counter illusions or mental attacks. The exception being that they couldn't counter someone of Gilgamesh's caliber entirely.

“Thanks for the wild ride and sorry about ditching you here, but I have to get going. If we ever meet again and provided you survive that complete psycho, I’m Heffalump, but you can call me Lumpy!” The Steel Type called a Cufant stated cheerfully while waving his trunk at us, apparently his name was Lumpy. He started to walk off towards the western path leading into Chrysalia proper. “Oh and if you see anyone calling themselves Woozle… please send them my way would you? That guys my best friend, I’ll be in Chrysalia for quite a while until I hear things blow over in Valora.”

With that, Lumpy flicked a bindle over his shoulder with his trunk and started to walk off.

318. Chrysalia Camp.

-Equus, Ponyville, Sugar Cube Corner, Maries-

“Okay, here are the results Ms. Silver Stream…” We passed the envelope over to her with a paw and the hippogriff looked nervous as she opened it. We were here in a professional capacity as lawyers for Silver Stream and had made sure what she was receiving was the real deal and not falsified documents.

The last time someone attempted to falsify documents around us, they were a good hunt. We loved spending time with Magnolia… she was almost more nuts than our beloved Jaded was. Could do without the numerous ear rending explosions though, we had three heads and that made it so much worse for us in the disorientation department.

“Oh my goodness, I did it!” Sitting across from Silver Stream Gallus up glanced at her from his snack.

“You got that license to raise, work with and openly be a handler of cockatrices?” That is what happened Gallus, Silver Stream passed all her tests for certification.

“Just a reminder, you are not licensed to handle all creatures capable of causing petrification.” We just wanted to put that out there incase she runs into something like a catoblepas or basilisk.

Mind you since Edith was Silver Streams familiar, she didn’t have to worry about a license for having a cockatrice as a familiar, but she did need one to be a professional... oh goddesses, the pun of it finally hit home in all our minds at once.

“So you’re a professional cock wrangler now?” Gallus said with a snort and a sharp bark of laughter which totally continued on into guffawing saying what we just realized.

“Yes, and since I’m immune to being petrified thanks to Edith, it’ll be easy to be a handler for them professionally. It’ll be a good side job if I’m having trouble finding work in Equestria. My dual citizenship is guaranteed at least.” After a moment the pink, blue haired, hippogriff looked to Gallus with something approaching curiosity. “Why are you laughing so hard Gallus, what’s so funny about me being on talon to deal with a big cock problem?”

“Oh nothing too…” With a renewed laughing Gallus was about to state something, when Marie couldn’t help herself and burst out laughing as well from what Silver Stream just said, which made Maria start laughing and if two of us were laughing than the last of us couldn’t be too far behind.

“We’re sorry, but we realized what Gallus has.” We couldn’t stop laughing once the joke occurred.

Then Pinkie Pie joined us in the laughter…

“So… what are we laughing about?” Pinkie Pie finally asked?

“Silver Stream just became a professional ‘wrangler’.” We all burst out laughing, then Marie whispered something to Pinkie.

“Oh my goodness… too funny…” Pinkie was choking from laughter.

“I don’t get the joke…” Silver Stream stated tilting her head.

“Yona can be handling this, yak is best at story time!” Yona cleared her throat. “So a yak watches a hummingbird flies into a bees nest…”

Silver Stream’s body went from being pink to straight red when Yona finished her story. Silver Stream had asked quite a few questions and the answers she received was quite embarrassing for the earned clarification.

That’s when one of Jacky’s crew came slithering in, it was Flotsam De Brie the sea pony that couldn’t swim. Thankfully drowning was no longer a problem for her, but still sinking to the bottom of the ocean was. She further helped Silver Stream’s complete understanding of the situation.

“…” Silver Stream just put her talons over her face and squealed quite loudly in embarrassment.

“Yeah, that is the reaction I expected, well talk to you guys later!” Sammy went back to her date while she still had shore leave time and could get away from her playful little brother Nefer.

“Would it be bad to say that you might want to wrangle a stone hard Gallus?” Mara said surprising all three of us, even Mara surprised herself as being the one that said it.

“Really Mara? You seriously think she wants to get all ‘cocky’ with Gallus?” Maria couldn’t help herself either, our goat sister got in on it. “Wait… did I just say that out loud?”

“Oh my goodness you guys, it's unfortunate that I can't go anywhere without you!” Marie stated as the laughter started up again. Our snake sister had some minor psychological issues with something 'like abandonment' even if she's been by our sides all our life and that she could even joke about it was a good sign about how life has been going for us in general as a chimera.

Now Gallus and Silver Stream were both equally embarrassed now.

“Let’s just call me a professional ‘draconic-chicken of magical stone perception’ wrangler…” Whined out Silver Stream who had Sea and Mer Pony knowledge of attraction and relationship values, she didn't quite completely understand dry land version of the 'birds and the bees' up until just now. “It’ll still be a good fallback in case I need a decent paying job.”

“Agreed.” Followed Gallus rather bluntly, he then glanced at Pinkie who looked to be shivering in place. “Okay… how many rooster jokes Pinkie? Since we know underage fillies and colts aren’t going to be around to hear any of it.”

Yeah, most colts and fillies were off playing somewhere else today or completely busy with something else, which led us to idly wondering if little Gavin was getting along with Silvers. Also since it was a slow day for Pinkie, that would mean she had a lot of ammunition waiting in reserve for just such an occasion.

Pinkie cleared her throat and her right hoof slowly lifted upwards into view, revealing a scroll. She pulled a bit of the scroll out, inhaled and then…

Pinkie was known for a lot of things… an entire series of embarrassing dirty jokes was a new one for Gallus and Silver Stream from their 'Teacher of Laughter'. What occurred over the next few hours, especially when Cheese Sandwich showed up and started adding ‘hen’ jokes to the mix, none of it would soon be forgotten.

Our little brother-in-law, as lawyers we made sure of that 'in-law' part, and his girlfriend were growing up.

It was only a bit ironic that later this day a mega rooster attacked Ponyville, because someone kept chanting 'arise chicken' around Scootaloo and there was incidentally the right stuff for an oddly specific ritual, that Zecora apparently knew about, around them at the time. Meaning the Cutie Mark Crusaders finally got covered in enough tree sap for it to actually happen and barely avoided it happening previously a ridiculous number of times.

-Pokémon world, Ransei, Bug Type kingdom of Chrysalia, Eastern Border Guard Encampment, the next morning, day after Gilgamesh attacked the travelers, Pom-

“Do you want some more soup Shanty?” So we take a few days break to deal with the fallout of Ignis Kingdom issue, resting at Pugilis and now we’re all battered again.

Could life give me just one big long lucky break that isn’t the end result of me outright dying?

“Yes, please!” If there was one thing Shanty was, it was usually hungry and she was drinking rum on the side. Normally I would say it wasn’t a drink for breakfast, but this was Shanty, so I didn’t bother because I already knew what her response would be. Likely more rum, she did dredge up a lot rum from the river between Aurora and Greenleaf.

The Beedrill unit still wanted to do their mission, but they were in no condition to carry it out and it was kind of obvious who was behind the problems in Illusio, whatever they may be.

Gilgamesh was why the Beedrill unit was going to do a reconnaissance, but we still didn’t know what was happening in Illusio proper and we had little clue as how we could deal with someone who could create environmentally weaponized portals to anywhere.

The answer was, there was no possible way for us to actually fight Gilgamesh without support from at least several factions. Even then, the chances of winning were quite miniscule. We could use all the help in the world, unless we could get another Legendary Pokémon or two involved.

“… Sacrificing so much time and energy on us…” I could hear Ocellus faintly talking to Smolder and tried not to focus too much on that, but I couldn’t help but keep an ear out for trouble among my friends. Last night… hadn’t been particularly restful. “We could be a little more self-sufficient.”

They were worried about me, it also sounded like Ocellus was also trying to come to terms with the number of sacrifices I was willing to make as long as they were small. Cooking and caring for everyone really wasn’t that big a sacrifice, but I could see what she was getting at.

“Could be worse, she actually likes cooking, cleaning and taking care of us. Goodness knows Dolly appreciates the lengths she goes to make every meal for her healthy and tasty, that she’s getting exercise and is in good cheer. Dolly is a fountain of positivity, but even she has her limits Ocellus and we’re kind of stretching it after what happened yesterday with Pom becoming incapable of connecting with her family on Equus. There’s also other the issue we can’t discuss because it would be breaking Pom’s trust to talk about ‘that’ where someone could hear us, she told us about it in good faith and I bet there are Pokémon that are exactly like flies on a wall around here.” Smolder stated as she drank some piping hot soup from a saucer and nuzzled up against Ocellus. She wasn’t wrong as there were a lot of Bug Types on the wall around the encampment. “We should honestly appreciate how far she’s gone for us already… and that she’s even still alive. I don’t know if we could even get close to even hurting someone who can attack us from miles away and or move us miles away to attack us with something from much farther away. That Gilgamesh guy seems stupidly powerful, so it’s kind of dumb for Pom to make a declaration of war on him. Dumb, but completely understandable, I as a dragon wouldn’t want the current most important thing to me taken away.”

That being Ocellus, Smolder is quite emotionally connected to her and they were cute together.

Among the ones of us that were injured… Sami stayed entirely untouched by staying within Canard’s Digivice and Charjabug stayed entirely unscathed by finding a corner of the wagon to hunker down in.

The other least injured were Cleffa and Frizzle. Frizzle needed a little rest in the Digivice that Dazzle carries, but was for the most part fine too. Without digital energy, Digimon tended to have problems staying manifested if injured.

Thankfully Gilgamesh wasn’t hitting Frizzle directly with dimensional energy that Pokémon wielded.

“Ma’am, we’ve sent some scouts and you weren’t waxing poetic about the huge disaster that left tons of weapons lying around everywhere down south. I have some groups working on gathering any weapons that you might find useful, we really don’t have many people that can actually wield them. Might sell the weapons off to Pugilis to make a quick buck though, you wouldn't happen to know any merchants that could help us?” General Dos said as he approached me with a bowl on his back. “As for your wagon, we’ve helped to fix the damage to the best of our abilities and it was pretty sturdy to stand up to so many weapons striking it.”

Yeah we arrived at the encampment with weapons sticking out of the wagon and caused quite a stir around here. Thankfully we had papers of our current commission as evidence, with a Chrysalia seal on it, to prove we are who we said we are.

“Want some soup?” I asked earnestly. "Also yes, I have an idea as to some merchants who could help you make some sales. They are a bit... off... but they are good people."

“Well… if you’re offering.” With a flick of his two antenna like protrusions on his abdomen, General Dos pushed the bowl forward and I started loading it up with soup, he looked quite eager to try it. “So anything you want to talk about?”

“How about Bug Type culture?” I quickly learned some things from listening to General Dos.

Outside of being omnivorous Bug Types were oddly insectivorous, that was towards normal insects and not other Bug Types. Most Bug Types don’t mind eating regular insects, but they explicitly asked any guests about their food preferences to make sure to prevent bugs from getting into food they shouldn’t. They were actually very good hosts about making sure we weren’t mosquito bitten to Tartarus and back.

My life has pretty much been Tartarus enough already…

The construction ability of Bug Types was a bit iffy when it came to above ground structures, they preferred to work with nature where possible as they had some problems constructing things and enjoyed the vast swath of forests that Chrysalia had. Despite high end construction being an issue for Bug Types, they were quite fairly decent at arts and crafts.

However what Bug Type do construct with great enthusiasm… was traps. Honestly it made sense given they farmed flies, spiders, mosquitoes and basically anything they’d find useful as a food source using webs alongside have farming fresh fruit and vegetables with slightly more trouble. Basically Bug Types were never hurting for resources even if some of their food goes rotten, it just attracts insects they can eat. Sometimes Bug Types even enjoyed eating rotten food too.

Quite frankly Chrysalia was rather efficiently run as they had their supply chains and everything else in order, the only issue was they were insular and rarely left their borders like what is now Charjabug. They were all for community and mostly keeping to themselves.

As for what Lumpy told us about their cuisine, it was rather true. They tended towards loving sweet foods… cookies were common and came in hundreds of flavors, some had actual insects baked into them. Cricket cookies were fairly popular around here for those who didn’t mind eating insects, even a large number of Pokémon outside the borders of Chrysalia enjoyed them too.

“So is there anything being unique to this country?” Shanty decided to learn some things too, she had an appreciation of other cultures from traveling around with Sly Cooper and the places we’ve been to before meeting the friendly thief of thieves.

I noticed Favela was slightly skittish around Bug Types and was sticking to Shanty’s side, for the most obvious reasons. Sure Favela was calm around one or two bug types, but a fort full of them?

“Oh you want to hear something unique, we have alchemists!” General Dos was really enjoying the soup, must not get very many well cooked meals out here watching the eastern borders. Bug Types also had some issues with cooking food given a lack of limbs to properly utilize utensils with, they can get by with using String Shot Pokémon move to grab and manipulate things if it doesn’t ruin the cooking process.

“Alchemists?” That earned some interest from me.

“Well we do have the largest variety of berry producing plants on the north western end of our territory. We can makes some interesting concoctions to heal whatever ails you by blending berries together into a nice juice. Getting medicinal herbs from Greenleaf is kind of hard, because of their quite reasonable distrust of bugs in general, but when we do we can make some extremely powerful healing potions by mixing them with sitrus berries. Outsiders tend to emphasize citrus as if the name of the berry started with a C, I’ve always been curious to ask about that.” After letting that sink in for a bit General Dos continued on. “We also make berry blocks, a popular candy that can come in a variety of textures and flavors, you want something crunchy, chewy, gummi or even a variety mixed together. Want chocolate? We can do that too… we’re kind of the sweets specialist of kingdoms. Tends to draw Milcery, Alcremie, Munchlax and a number of other Pokémon with a sweet tooth to do some cooking for us in exchange for supplies for making such excellent cuisine in the first place.”

“Is there anything else you can do with alchemy?” Ocellus seemed fascinated with where this conversation was going.

“Yes, actually, we can use alchemy our alchemy labs to mix two things together to create something wholly new. I’m not talking just berries, we can mix objects into something new two. Take a cube of rock and mix with a wooden box and it might turn into a stone box with wood lining or the wood becomes as hard as stone, it’s kind of an imprecise science at times.” General Dos was fairly open with this information. “Sometimes we even end up with random objects that we don’t know what they can do, if I remember right one of the outcomes was something like the pink scarves you and you’re little canine companion wear.”

“So who’s the leader of Chrysalia?” It seems we were all a little curious as Smolder was the one that brought that up.

“King Yoshimoto, he’s a Forretress and evolved from a Pineco playing Unite Ball. He’s not exactly keen on war and prefers to play games all day, he’s pretty good leader and face when it comes to inspiring tourism even if we’re not exactly keen on it. He loves Unite Ball to a ridiculous degree and we have one of the better stadiums on the western side of Ransei. Unfortunately he’s a bit of a flaky person, when it comes to actually doing more than making our kingdom an excessive amount of money and playing games all day, being richest entrepreneur around this kingdom at least proves he’s a decent king. Now if only he wasn’t always going on about the virtues of Unite Ball and how it can bring the world together, too bad he was born into our relatively insular nation. We Bug Types tend to rely more on the nobles for organizing our regions defensive capabilities, though we do have to run stuff through Yoshimoto when it’s important like an impending war with Illusio.” General Dos sighed audibly. “You wouldn’t believe how many Pokémon from outside our kingdom to expect us to have an overall Queen running the country. We definitely have a lot of queens in our nobility though. Still… I guess I can credit Yoshimoto for not allowing us to cut ourselves off from the world at large entirely, we’ve avoided some real major problems by watching our borders carefully before.”

As interesting as this conversation is, my mind is still going back to the fact that I declared Baa-Ram-Ewe on an insurmountable and likely unbeatable person. Well maybe not beatable by me, but I’m sure others could find a way to beat Gilgamesh and I would definitely help them with it.

“Do you mind us camping here in your local base?” This base wasn’t very fancy and I was asking to see if I could set up a tent here.

“Stay as long as you need, whether you’re heading back to Aurora or continuing the mission to find out what’s going on in Illusio. We might know who’s likely causing something in Ilusio, but we need active eyes on the region to get a better idea of the ‘what’ of it all.” General Dos wasn’t hiding the fact that Chrysalia watched their neighbors or was part of a kingdom that mostly stuck to itself. They were only moderately interested in seeing if trouble was coming their way and possibly making sure tourists don’t cause problems. I can relate given Huoshan does have tourist problems at times, surprisingly the home of the longma was a popular vacation spot in the dragon lands. “Terrifying that we have news of someone who could attack our outposts by themselves and destroy it outright without needing an army. If you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to and I have to make sure my troops aren’t getting too lazy what with a major threat so close to us. We’re supposed to be on relatively high alert.”

With that General Dos was up and off yelling at a bunch of green six legged fake spiders to get their abdomens in gear.

-Canard-

“Sorry I couldn’t help while we were all being assaulted, but someone who can create portals that could have just teleported us directly into the center of a volcano is terrifying.” Sami had been trying to think of a strategy to deal with Gilgamesh and was coming up blank, even I was hard pressed to think of anything.

“It’s okay, we’re not too badly hurt Sami.” Cleffa was still holding onto that strange rock, what was strange is that it seemed to make her so happy. “I would have done the same thing if I could.”

“So what is it that you got there?” My question made Cleffa perk up.

“Oh this is a moon stone piece, it was inside that big rock the mean guy tried to drop on us!” What in the world was a moon stone? “It’ll help me evolve into a Clefable when I’m ready, of course I want to choose when to use it... I mean I do want to try being a Clefairy for a while first before using the stored energy in it to evolve. First I have to become a Clefairy… kind of hard to do though.”

“Why is it hard to do?” I felt bad about ignoring Sami, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. I was beginning to think that Gilgamesh couldn’t push us into a portal in the middle of a volcano without magma spewing out of the portal first. Still terrifying to be that close to a convection based death, we all had Dolly to thank for keeping us alive through that.

“Well I need to form strong friendships and bonds to evolve into a Clefairy from the happiness resulting of it, but instead of doing that with other Cleffa or Clefairy like normal… I chose to do it with you two!” Okay that was a little heartwarming for the cute little Pokémon to say.

“Well back to you Sami, like Cleffa said I can’t blame you. That guy makes Suarians look tame with their dark magic, massive robot armies and magical cloaking technology… yeah those guys are still a mental thorn in my backside. Drake Ducaine had his work cut out for him, but I doubt he’s seen beings as powerful as what we saw yesterday.” One that we couldn’t do anything to at all. I knew reality warping entities were recorded as existing, but portal making one were just as terrifying even if they couldn’t just blink you out of existence on a whim. “Hmm…”

“Got something?” Sami picked up the fact that something occurred to me.

“I think… I think that guy has limitations on where he can open the portals he makes.” Not exactly helpful when the guy can basically manipulate any environment hazard he wants into us. The guy did launch tons of falling icicles at us and a few of them even went straight through the axe head I was using as a shield.

“How did you come to that conclusion?” Sami stated as she got to work on making me a hockey stick, she was going to ask for whatever made Dolly’s board nigh indestructible despite clearly being made of wood. I wouldn’t mind a low maintenance nigh indestructible hockey stick if it could be done.

“Well he can open the portals in liquids, but he can’t open them inside of solids… so he can’t split us in half at least.” That did not mean I dismissed his capability as a threat being quite up there. “Unless he can possibly do so by closing a portal on us…For that guy to teleport us anywhere, we’d have to actively move or be pushed straight into his portals.”

“What about those spikes of stones he made?” There was a good answer for that Sami.

“It just means his portals are not static, once made he can move them. Thus he moved a portal over a spike and slams that portal down at a given speed and it comes out the other side at that speed…” Though it was a little difficult to tell how he opened a portal in the middle of blizzard conditions, which sounded a bit trickier to justify as being possible. “He can make a portal in blizzard conditions by creating a portal at a really small size and then slowly expanding it, it would be much slower but still doable under the constraints I’m putting down. If he makes a small portal then uses his psychic powers to move the air away from the portal, he can likely grow it in size much faster. It did seem like his ability to open a portal into a blizzard was a little bit slower than his other efforts.”

We all had a quick rundown on what Psychic Types could do, telekinetically kicking hundreds of weapons at us in seconds without a care for said weapons. That monster showed us what a top level Psychic Type Pokémon was capable of, especially when he projected himself before us from an entire kingdom away and dropped a meteor on us. Something was up about that though.

“I don’t think he can open portals beyond the atmosphere.” If my supposition was right he could at least lift something the size of that meteor and drop it into one of his portals easily enough at atmospheric limits.

“What use does knowing that do for us?” Cleffa really didn’t seem to be too afraid of seeing that Gilgamesh guy again.

“Well maybe can make many portals, but he can only move one portal at a time, while opening and closing various others wherever he needs them to be? Also it helps somewhat to know if he can possibly put a portal at the edge of this planet’s atmosphere and try to shoot us into space, we’d be more careful about moving too fast around him at the very least.” That would be a good thing to get a good handle on Sami. It would certainly go a long way to explaining why he encased us in a dome and didn’t immediately collapse it inwards to send us all over the place, possibly in pieces. “This is mostly conjecture right?”

“Yes, I’m just working with the information we have from what we saw of the guy, but we need our team running on all cylinders to try and figure out how we can beat someone that absurdly powerful. The most we’ve gotten so far is that Dark Types like Quetal are almost a requirement, but there aren’t many around here.” That information was still quite terrifying, I would try not to put a big target on my back like Pom seems willing and able to do it. We were all quite worried about the traveling white wooly wonder. “We’ll probably run it by everyone, some Pokémon has to know something about that guy. They did mention he was a Hoopa right? Come on, I’ve been smelling that soup since Pom finished making it and I’m hungry.”

-Pom-

Canard was quite large, so he had to go through several portions, I should remind myself to make more next time. Apparently he had a taste for the cricket cookies they had here on the base, the Puckian definitely appreciated it and General Dos just wanted me to do some cooking tonight as well.

I’m always ready to make a meal for friends.

These Bug Types were not unfriendly, but they seemed to be like Changelings in a way in having a healthy community and it being one of the most important things to them. All the Bug Types around here knew each other really well and definitely congregated like actual bugs.

I was a little concerned that it should be creepier than it is, it was actually full on wholesome that the Bug Types could work together to an absurd degree. The problem with that however is that Bug Types basically had no dual Dark Types among them, even if they could already fight psychic types fairly well.

“I’m still wondering what made Gilgamesh target the bridge in Aurora before we could go back across it.” Could he really be reading that far into the future to know that my group would become a big problem if he hadn’t or did he redirect us to end up going through Fontaine on purpose? I had so many questions.

Gilgamesh certainly knew we were going to come after him long before we even knew he existed, now he’s almost made it like it’s his mission to make me rush after him in a stupid manner without thinking about the consequences. He certainly made it quite personal, what is he expecting me to do really?

That guy said we were fated to be enemies and I think he saw me as a threat, even a minimal one to his plans. So what was he doing that would possibly motivate me even further to be more of a threat than I already am in finding a way to deal with him from whatever he saw? Future sight or being a seer was apparently a thing Psychic Type could do and apparently he saw me being a thorn of some kind, one he can readily deal with, but still a thorn all the same.

“Who can truly know Pom.” Quetal seemed to be thinking on it as hard as I was. “It is quite concerning that he even admitted to doing it. He’s not ‘The Hoopa’ at least, goodness knows what would happen if we were facing the actual Legendary himself who has had who knows how long to get good with his abilities, instead of just this Gilgamesh guy. Doesn’t seem like there’s a real difference in power though. Arceus preserve us, since we’re inevitably going to have to deal with that guy.”

I saw Canard approaching with Cleffa and Sami, he looked like he had something he wanted to talk about. He was done with breakfast and seemed satisfied with my cooking.

I idly glanced in the direction Dolly was and saw her quietly sitting on top of a tall vertical log in a meditative position. She opened one eye to glance at me and her tail started wagging, she inhaled softly, closed her eye and got back into meditating. Though I could feel her trying give me positive vibes from there as I looked up to her.

I might want to meditate on things myself when she was done with the large wooden climbing pole.

Wonder why Dolly took to meditating… was it me stressing out and she was meditating to calm me down by association of our bond?

That's... actually pretty clever come to think of it, and it was actually working now that I was focusing on our bond. It was so subtle of her and I had to actually look for it.

-Shanty-

“What did you be needing to talk to me about?” Having pulled me off to the side alone, Smolder and Ocellus looked to each other. Ocellus nodded and went to be keeping Favela some company.

“How quickly do you think you can get stronger?” Smolder asked in return as an answer.

“I be having some ideas, but I would be needing quite a bit of time why do you be asking?” If this be going where I think it is.

“You’re likely the only one of us that can possibly keep up with Pom without killing yourself.” There, Smolder be saying it, I be needing to step up so that Pom doesn’t end up in a situation where she sacrifices herself like she fears she will.

It is being a pretty scary thing that we all knew it was almost guaranteed for Pom to sacrifice herself if someone can’t be stopping any situation from getting too bad.

“What about Ocellus?” Slapping myself with a hoof for that bit of stupidity that be passing through my mouth. “No, wait, I get it… she is not being much of a fighter. Even if she can be adapting for combat it’s still not her thing and then there’s the fact that she actively needs to think about how to modify her form to best fit a situation. You are strong physically and hard to hurt, but that not be protecting you from Lu Bu. While I am having Dodo and I can be quite powerful in a fight… do you think I can actually be keeping Pom safe.”

“You can certainly try, but I seriously doubt we could keep our fearful leader completely safe from everything like she’ll try and do for us.” Smolder wilted a bit. “That Gilgamesh guy is definitely not going to go down easily and it’s a bit much to believe or even ask Pom to take him out, even if the guy is really taunting her to try.”

“There’s Dolly…” It was good to me that Pom had someone who would try to be by her side at all times, Pom kind of be needing that comfort.

“She is a good companion for Pom, but her capabilities are kind of very specific to the gear she wields and her personal strength can only grow so much before hitting a peak.” Smolder is not being wrong since Dolly is quite small if fairly capable of putting up quite a fight. “Ocellus says Dolly also has the issue of having a limited amount of magic she can wield at any given time with her body being incapable of channeling too much before she gets headaches from over doing it, well at least she has a limited on her more powerful magic.”

“Wind tends to go everywhere, but when it blows in your favor you don’t have to worry about a rudder.” I be watching some pirates be making it back into port on a raft with less. “Still, coming up with more abilities to fight on par with Pom is going to be being quite tough. I am barely being able to create two clones or new techniques on the fly.”

“Yeah Pom is kind of insane in that respect, but from what she taught you, you’re not too bad yourself Shanty. Considering how legendary a warrior Lu Bu was said to be.” Yes and he still almost be killing me Smolder. My spirit is both willing and strong, but my body be taking a rain check on being able to endure a long fight.

“I could be using some good training exercise and it will be being several days before the more peckish guys show up.” Yes, but who would be helping with my training, Pom wouldn’t say no to helping me be more self-sufficient. If this is how bad things are being before I can become a true captain worth any salt, then I be having my work cut out for me whether I be sailing the sea or the skies themselves. “I be needing a lot of help to refine my techniques.”

“Well since we’re going to be camping out here in Chrysalia…” Smolder trailed off. “What do you think you need to get better at what you want? We’ll try to find training aids for you if you can give us an idea as to what you need Shanty, we’re going to be here for several days in bug country. Pom taught you what she knew and she obviously got you off the ground into creating your own cut-lash style, which has been pretty impressive so far.”

“I’ll be needing a lot of things… including water.” I was getting better at manipulating water, maybe I could do something similar to my Bouncing Blades technique with water encasing me.

“Then it’s a good thing the eastern part of Chrysalia is small and we’re close to the northern shore. I mean on top of being close to the entrances to Illusio, Pugilis and Terrera… we always need to be alert for border jumpers who might have ill intent.” We both were spooked when a bug that had a gold, grey and black carapace and two large red eyes showed up behind us, this bug be reminding me of a ninja in appearance given his looks. “If you need training in general just ask a Ninjask like me and our shell family member, the Shedinja, to help you out. A Ninjask is never lonely when we evolve into what we are, we will always have family… even if they are a little creepy to others. Of course we’re not going to help you pro bono, but if you want training beyond general stuff we can help with training in speed, infiltration and stealth or variety of other techniques. We’re good as gold on those subjects as long as you can do stuff for us. Your friend definitely got General Dos’s approval to cook and it’s giving you guys a lot of credit with us, given we’re always interested in trying something that is not entirely doused in sugar or sweet flavors. It’s honestly a rarity to get new tasting food around here.”

That’s when a second, highly stiff looking, brown Bug Type floated up with an incomplete white halo and a similar appearance to the Ninjask if it were dead and resembling an angel. It almost looked as if the Ninjask could live inside the other Pokémon and the brown Pokémon is feeling hollower than Pom recently was being.

“Shed.” Stated the hollow creature slowly, there was something quite off about it. “Inja.”

“Yes, this one wants help training her skills. Though I don’t know why she’s looking at me like that, pirates are basically ninjas of the sea right?” This Ninjask stated in a friendly tone. “The Ninjask and Shedinja units are bound to take over for the Beedrill squad anyway and it would behoove us to work up some camaraderie. The Beedrill were aerial reconnaissance experts. We Ninjask more the spy and stealth experts and sure we could do aerial reconnaissance too, but the Beedrill are far more sturdy for it. That doesn’t mean we Ninjask and Shedinja can’t be dangerous fighters in our own right.”

Why do I always be meeting ninjas and not pirates?!

“So what do you say, need some help?” At least the Ninjask was letting me decide.

“Come on Shanty, what else are we going to be doing while waiting for those Morpeko guys to show up anyway?” Smolder be making a very good point and I do be needing to get stronger so Pom isn’t burdened.

“Fine, but I already be being an expert at stealth, I be training with a master thief.” That seemed to be making the Ninjask excited.

“Oh ho, a challenger has arrived, pirate in nature, thief in skills and a bit of ninja as backdrop… we’re going to have a lot of fun camping together!” The Ninjask seemed too perky to be a real ninja, but I be getting a feeling that he was more than he seemed. “Ah, I think you also have a keen eye for observation as well, quite useful for a pirate.”

“What, you going to be teaching me to read body language too?” I asked sarcastically.

“Sure could, Pokémon body language isn’t hard to understand, but there are nuances to it. We have several days to help you build up what you want to.” Curious that Ninjask be recognizing me as having pirate traits and I never said I was pirate to him. “Also I know I’m a bit chipper, but my job hasn’t exactly been all too hard thus far. I mean you guys being here is giving me something more to do than working with my family Sheddy here.”

“Shed… Inja…” Replied the floating object, because it certainly didn’t seem to have any moving body parts aside from the odd halo floating above its head.

“Yes, yes, you’re quite excited to be a spotter and a training assistant, I know.” That was Ninjask’s family member being excited? “Shedinja here really can’t wait to get started in helping you in your training, it’ll certainly help us in ours as well. So let’s get stronger together!”

“So what, you’re both into the whole talkative and quiet one shtick?” Smolder raised a brow.

“Well yes, but you don’t really need to point that out… Inja...” We both stared at the hollow creature speaking plainly for a few seconds before reverting to sounding lifeless.

“One of these days you’ll stop being so shy Sheddy.” Ninjask stated giving a flat stare to his family member.

“What exactly is up with Shedinja being a part of your evolution, before we get started on hearing Shanty’s training ideas?” There was a few seconds of dithering between the two on Smolder’s question. The two bugs fluttered and floated away from us and started talking.

“Well this might seem odd… but…” After we were told what Shedinja were, we both stared at it in disbelief.

“That… makes no sense. You just… I mean… really… creating a sentient family member out of nothing more than a shell from your evolutionary energy to become two separate Pokémon?!” Bug Types were apparently being quite weird like that Smolder.

“I don’t be seeing a problem, it be like making an imaginary friend come to life. Wish I be having that ability growing up...” Now to be getting onto my ideas for training. “For my first few ideas we’re going to be needing Favela, Ocellus, Lit and Mr. Mundo… Mundo do be having that Coaching move thing to help me during training right?”

“Coaching is pretty helpful in a team or unit battle too, but in a one on one fight… yeah, not as much.” Ninjask seemed to know something about it. “Still getting that Hawlucha to use Coaching on you while you train, it’s a good idea as Hawlucha can be very inspiring and can feasibly double the effectiveness of your training ideas if the training works as you intend it too. Even if it doesn’t work, Coaching will still give you some better insight on how you can improve yourself. Get him to us it on us as well, we could use a boost in our training sessions as well.”

At least the bugs here won’t be a problem as far as camping is concerned, plus a few days of training could be fun.

Author's Note

Just a little bit of world building and some humor, because Gilgamesh is going to be a hard sell for anyone to beat... 'fairly'.

A lot of shenanigans would have to happen to even come close to dealing with Gilgamesh, because his logical threat level is somewhere between 'turbo absurd' to 'downright impossible to beat, why are you still hitting yourself'. Given he has access to the 'Gates of Babylon' giving him infinite Hyperspace Holes as a Hoopa, he has the ability to pull out several weapons that can easily end just about anyone coming to face him provided he finds a good enough reason to use said weapons.

Otherwise he'll be lazy in dealing with opponents that he can't honestly see as threatening to his overall goals. The biggest weakness Gilgamesh has is his ego, but he has a good reason for having an enormous ego the size of Arceus given he incarnated directly into being a Legendary Pokémon.

Whereas Lu Bu was slightly on the weaker side having incarnated as an Unfezant.

Shanty gets her own full page of training montage... it's going to be to the tune of something along the lines of the Mulan song 'I'll make a man out of you'.

319. Motivated Montage.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Tianhuo-

“Hmm… Kurilian, break out the ice cream float fixings and root beer it, we have a depressed longma here and she looks like she’d be an avid appreciator of a few shots of vanilla!” Brenda shouted, she was one of the most well-known companion of Savannah ‘The Wild’ and her weird escapades, I had almost forgotten that she was one of the waitresses here.

“What’s wrong?” The poodle diamond dog asked as she took a seat across from me.

“Something is wrong with Pom and her friends of the found, they didn’t call the other night to give us an update about what is going on. Their last report was that the problems with a place called Ignis were mostly over and there was something clearly wrong with Pom.” The reports had been regular until the other night. “I fear something bad may be happening to them.”

“Oh right, that is a problem, must be hard to not have your significant other by your side. I would know, Savannah does tend to wander… like… a lot. I don’t think anyone else would tolerate someone who gets around as much as she does.” Brenda sighed, we were soon joined by Fresh Start the early bird pony and maid. “That Abyssinian is the best friend I’ve ever had. In any case, they might have just misplaced the communication device Mrs. Lambchop.”

“Oh, hey there, Tianhuo, for a second there I thought it might have been Wary Berry again… she’s still trying to get over a recent flying purple pony eater attack. Always need a hyperventilation bag with her.” Was there truly such a thing around here Fresh? “Thank Goodness Drip was working on some pipes nearby and managed to hose it with enough water to make it drop Wary and leave town. We wouldn’t want to be without our quality assurance on fruit.”

“So have you seen Flamberge or…” Brenda gets a little shifty eyed. “Fortitude, around here any...”

“I am Fortitude, the fantastically fragrant!” Everyone in the room jumped at the sound of a distant yak yelling that.

We didn’t even know how far away he was, just that he somehow knew we were talking about him.

“Never mind, must be dealing with the local giant fauna, that or getting rid of the mega rooster that just attacked Ponyville.” One can easily see what you were doing Brenda, while I appreciate the company and attempts at distractions, distractions being a very common sight around here, it did not alleviate my worries about Pom or those she is in charge of taking care of. “Those brothers are always dragged into fighting really weird stuff.”

“Ay, that they do, but it makes the adventures around here all the more fun for it.” The historical figure of Rockhoof had taken a shine to Airship Mauled and was quite a storyteller at Twilight’s School of Friendship. He was also still quite a warrior of renown. “It’s always nice to see that incredible adventure hasn’t become dead since my time.”

Skelly snorted some air and rolled her eyes, of course she would, given she was a bit mortally challenged. Probably taking a break from the brother’s shenanigans.

“Right, sorry if my choice of words upsets you ancestor.” Rockhoof tilted his head to the quiet mare as she took a seat.

“While you may be trying to distract Tianhuo ‘The Blaze’ Lambchop, all of your attempts are not going to be nearly enough to make her stop worrying entirely.” Stygian was also another common visitor around here and he wasn’t wrong, he was in the middle of his own food. “Love the food here by the way.”

“And we clearly thank you for your patronage Mr. Abyss!” Fresh responded with good cheer.

“We’re all basically family here Tianhuo, on the house. Occupy your mouth and your mind.” Kuril stated as she placed a float before me, it seemed to sparkle in the light of the room, I sniffed it and then took up the spoon and took a bite out of it. I found it to be… exceedingly delicious, it was almost addictive in flavor. Almost, but it would never usurp my thoughts of Pom being in terrible danger. “Note to self, Longma and Kirin really love cinnamon and some other interesting spices.”

“Can I get one of those too?” A kirin with a fiery red mane asked with a bright smile as I happily downed another spoonful. “I like the noises she’s making!”

I blushed and tried to quiet my enjoyment, my stoic discipline having been lost for a minute there.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei, northern shore of eastern Chrysalia, midday, Shanty-

“You know just about all I can teach you… but it’s still nice to get in a spar and my spear skills are still a bit rusty.” If you call that being rusty Pom, then I didn’t want to be meeting Tianhuo for training. “You would know more about your weapon than I would.”

Pom was good with a spear, mind you wielding weapons with hooves wasn’t being easy in the slightest to begin with.

“This spear is made of incredible materials and of fine quality, does that guy really have so many weapons of such quality that he can just fire them at us like he did? Seems like a huge waste.” Pom really couldn’t be getting her mind off of Gilgamesh, she was angry, sad and upset.

She was also just ready to sacrifice herself for our sakes if things be getting too horrible regardless of how she feels about wanting to continue to be among the living.

I was being one of the ones among her friends who could be building up enough skill to be preventing Pom from doing just that. We wanted Pom to remain happy and as alive as possible, because I don’t be thinking I can see the real actual Pom die without feeling something being ripped from my own chest. Bad enough watching it happen to a fake or Pom being exceedingly close to it.

Smolder, Ocellus, Dolly and even Dodo would be doing their own thing to improve, but when it be coming to combat… I was becoming quite good at it and I be needing to be anyway. Learning Pom’s lesson of adapting one’s own abilities to things we experience and anything can be training be leading me to being able to create clones of myself, after seeing Pokémon do Double Team enough times, except I be making actual clones. I’m pretty sure I not be doing the Dancing Flame part of my newest technique correctly, but my version be helping me with ten minute breathe holding pirate technique

I be having a lot of thing to be improving on, still wanted to do a flying slash with water and without it.

“I’m not going to even try to tell you to not use Dancing Flame, at least the way you use it is… well… quite bizarre really. How long can you keep your clones going though?” Pom be asking as she be looking at the real me, I be a little surprised as she blocked three slashes coming at her with a single sweep of her spear. “I can hear you’re heartbeat, smell your actual scent compared to the slightly muddled ones of your clone and there’s the fact that your clones have a more fluctuating quality in their motions. Could use more flow like Dolly. Aside from your heartbeat, it might get hard to detect the actual you the better you get at your technique.”

“You are being a very good teacher.” I be knowing that Pom didn’t like fighting or being in a fight, but she is still being quite ridiculously good at it.

“Comes with the territory of teaching Huoshan Guards to work with canine companions I guess…” Pom planted the butt of the spear against the ground and rubbed the back of head with her left hoof. “So how long can you actually actively hold those clones up for?”

The clones immediately popped and I hadn’t been hit, they disappear when I’m hit or after eight or so minutes.

“About the amount of time I can be currently holding my breath.” I answered honestly.

“Pirate lung technique?” Pom stated bluntly.

“Pirate lung technique… with a bit of Dancing Flame… maybe it is being more like a Water Rondo.” I nodded back to her, I be training to go the full nine minutes and fifty nine seconds. It is being really hard... also I be knowing that you never be going the full ten minutes.

There was the last split second between life and death, but I’d rather never be in a position to be testing that split second.

“Just remember how much of a problem it was when I overused my technique and try not take after me in getting yourself seriously hurt.” Pom be putting the spear off to the side and be hugging me, I be hugging her back. “Do you need some water, it can’t be healthy to expend that much sweat instantly.”

“Yeah, that would be nice. I should probably be using outside sources of water first before using the water in my body.” I would be getting strong enough to stop you from sacrificing yourself for us Pom, I would not be letting any family do that for me if I can be helping it. Goodness knows Dodo could do some training himself, he be getting almost as big as he was previously… maybe he will even be being bigger what with the wings. “Thanks for helping me so much Pom!”

“Don’t mention it… oh and watch your hips when doing horizontal swings, you don’t want to throw them out by pushing into the swing too hard.” Pom snuggled me a bit and then be letting me be as she had wanted to get in some training with Dolly.

-A thirty minute break later-

Favela, Ocellus, Lit and Mr. Mundo were waiting off to the side. They could be hitting me with attacks that won’t be too painful.

“Okay are we being ready?” I asked as I prepared to run along the shore, it is being a while since I have felt sand under my hooves.

“Remember this is as much training for everyone else as it is for you.” Mundo stated as he be waiting for me to start the exercise.

I get a nod and started running through the sand and was being bombarded until I was knocked over.

Okay… that be being way too fast, also Lit be hurting a lot even when he be holding back as a bolt be taking me in the side.

“Hey now don’t get listless, if we want to have… some fun~!” Before everyone knew it Mundo was picking me up and getting me back on my hooves. “Are you giving up marauder, or will you start… a new run~!”

I started to dodge bolts of lightning, magic missiles, exploding seed bombs and one seed bomb caught me from behind and I was blown clear off my hooves to go tumbling along the sand. I ended up flopping onto my face.

“You’re a part of the greatest bunch we can ever get, and you know that I’ll help you see this through~.” Mundo be hefting me up and getting me back to the starting line, I felt reenergized. “Sister, we’ll… help you grow to heights, that are new~!”

For my next exercise I was trying to gather and keep water around me in a defensive measure, I be quickly trying to create a bubble of water while under assault by the others distracting me from my task.

“Peaceful as the air, before a torrent begins~.” Mundo sang from his position on a log and his arms crossed with a smile. As my attempt to gather and control the water were being halted under the strain of the assault being sent my way, Lit being the worst one with his ability to be electrifying the water I was trying to control and that be disrupting my magic. I got blasted off my hooves by Favela. “Once you find you’re balance, there will be no knock down wins~.”

The next training exercise Shanty was fighting off Favela, Lit and Ocellus, but she was trying to hit them with long range attacks and failing to launch flying slashes she had to evade in the middle of circle.

“You’re brave, bright and quite a lot, but you still need some more clues~.” I was blown over by a Magic Missile to the chin, it didn’t be damaging my beard so I am being okay. Mundo walked over to me and gently helped me up again and started to massage my bruises. “Somehow we’ll, show the others, some good news~!”

We proceeded to the next exercise. I splashed up out of the water gasping for air, this exercise was figuring out to do while under attack while out on or in the water, I can be skipping across the top of it or I can be swimming in it.

“Give me a moment to catch my breath~…” I gasped out on my back, the thief training courses I went through were about avoiding notice. This was more about what I would be doing when I was in the thick of a battle.

The next exercise was me dodging by flipping and jumping around with Fleet Cunning Doe style, I not be very good at jumping very high.

“Come on, I dare you to tag me newbies~!” While I was down I watched as they tried to Ninjask and he just kept getting progressively faster, I carefully scrutinized his incredibly fast movements as he zipped around at high speed. What can I be learning from that? Pom did be moving just as fast at times.

“Boy all this training is already looking quite grim~.” Still Mundo looked like he was ready to continue coaching us, even if he was shaking his head.

I wasn’t the only one doing these exercises though… as Favela was doing a ‘beach run’, I tagged her with a blast of water.

“Shanty’s got me scared and out of breath~.” Given Favela didn’t make it as far as I did, before she was knocked down. She wanted to be keeping up with me… which was being heartwarming if I didn’t be easily nailing her with a solid ball of water from a Riptide attack.

Unfortunately for her Dodo started a run immediately and didn’t let her get out of the way, he basically be blasting by all of us.

“Did anybody see what just blew right through me~?” Favela stated a second later as Dodo succeeded in the beach run exercise on his first try, even with Quetal firing his Swift move full blast. Dodo managed to outpace the energy stars or even lead them into hitting obstacles.

The scene changes to Dazzle getting help from Frizzle on how to properly swim, it wasn’t going well for the fire poison type Pokémon.

“I hope you all know that I’m really not learning this on a whim~!” Dazzle sputtered and coughed up a bit of water as she flopped back onto the shore with Frizzle’s help. Frizzle slapped her back and she coughed up a Krabby that quickly scuttled back into the water leaving Dazzle standing there with wide eyes.

“To be quite grand--~.” We sang as we continued training into the evening.

“We have to face dangers without a shaking quiver~.” I sang as I dodged several attacks and was knocked down by a single glowing star to the face, I be looking up at Quetal who smirked at me as he came to help me up by letting my grab onto his arm.

“To be quite grand-~.” Some of our bug friends sang as they added obstacles for us to dodge, such as barely visible tripwire webbing, hidden pitfalls in the beach and more.

“With all the force of some great friends soon~.” Mundo despite being tired kept Coaching us even if it was taking a lot of energy out of him to keep us up and going, he never had a negative word to say about us even as I was struck by a Thousands Spears from Pom that barely be moving my front right leg off by an inch, which caused me to fall and flop onto my back.

“To be quite grand-~.” Pom be wanting to help and I be seeing no reason to keep her away from our training, she just didn’t need to know why I specifically was training so hard. Also all this training be good for the others as well.

“We’ll have the fury of raging pyre~!” I was soon in a fight with Favela at my side, Dolly created a horizontal tornado and Pom lit it on fire with a spark from her hooves slapping together, using campfire lighting technique that turned a simple ‘aero’ into an explosive force of nature.

Pom and Dolly were so great at working together, I would do some training with Dodo after we got in dinner.

“Quite serious in these rising tides of doom~!” I sang to Pom as she sat down beside me quietly on the beach with a smile and passed me a bowl of soup and we both looked up at the glowing moon.

-Two days later-

“Time is coming for us, until the Morpeko, arrive~.” Everybody was listening to Mundo as he had us all better organized than ever, we be showing stupid amounts of improvement under his Coaching move. “They’ll eventually come from the western forest, so everyone look, alive~!”

“I’m still not suited for, the call of war~.” Pom sang as prepped her wool to start firing Thousand Spears at me as I be on the beach with a determined look, Mundo be patting me on the back and backing away as I started to run forward.

“Don’t back down, for home, we’ll improve…~!” Smolder flick her ribbon and smiled as she practiced dancing with it. Dragons weren’t the most elegant lot, but Smolder was picking up quite a bit of grace.

“How can we, help all of you, grow to heights that are new-~?” General Dos sang as he and some troops arrived, the silk bandaged Beedrill were okay for some light action and would be especially helpful in the beach run exercise with their Pin Missile move.

“To be quite Grand~!” Everyone sang.

“With courage I must move without a quiver~!” I sang as I leapt and twisted my way through hundreds of Pin Missiles needles from the Beedrill, Thousand Spears air jets from Pom, I be spin kicking the sand into the air before doing a rolling leap as the sand stopped the Swift from Quetal and I be barely being singed from a fireball from Smolder, I be cheekily catching a high speed apple turnover pastry in my mouth from Dodo and quickly be chewing through it. I landed on my front hooves and pushed myself into a flying Wild Windmill and sped myself up twice to land some very fast moving cartwheels across the sand avoiding three Seed Bombs and I be diving under several magic missiles from Ocellus as I be getting to the finish line and be grabbing my motivation to complete a beach run.

A bottle of rum dangling on a fishing pole held by an amused Mundo.

“To be quite Grand~!” We sang as I sat on the beach and started to gather water as everyone began attacking me.

“With all the force of an incredible monsoon~!” I belted out was wrapped in a bubble of water in seconds and blasting my way through the air using jets of water to dodge attacks, I be getting the idea from the Bullet Buizel’s Aqua Jet move to create my Bounding Bubble.

I also be blocking attacks within my bubble of water by blasting out hundreds of bits of water from it to intercept projectiles or even create a tentacle of liquid to launch a seed bomb back at Favela and knock down some of my friends, I was keeping concentration despite multiple impacts against the wall of water between me and pain.

I was moving along the surface of the ocean so I be having infinite water to jet around on, I passed by a waving Dewpider, a spider like Bug and Water Type Pokémon that had its head encased in a bubble of water. He be helping me greatly with finishing my Bounding Bubble technique, apparently Bug Types be having their own scuba divers and small navy as well.

I be getting just about everyone on the beach wet and then I made two clones from the water and created two more Bounding Bubbles to be firing three rapid streams of water bullets from them. Once the Bounding Bubble got small, I had to retreat to the nearest water source to grow the bubble back to my maximum amount of water I could be controlling all at once. My clones could be controlling the same amount as me too!

I could be staying underwater as long as I could keep a bubble of fresh air around my head, but I still couldn’t be doing it forever. I can be staying underwater for more than ten minutes now, but once I run out of fresh air in the oxygen bubble around my head I was being put on the usual Pirate lung time limit at that point.

“To be quite Grand~!” Pom and Dolly sang together as I faced them down with Favela again.

“Altogether we’ll face dangers like volcanic pyres~!” I screamed as Shanty set up a surf, I collected the building water wave and swirled it around us protectively to take the flaming tornado, then I charged forward towards Pom with water bursting out behind me pushing me forward as I mimicked the Aqua Jet move.

When Dolly moved to intercept with her board, a vine whip snapped past me and got Dolly by the waist and she quickly threw her bone at Favela in retaliation. The other vine caught it and bodily slapped the Dalmatian against the ground as I leapt for Pom.

A little later I be sitting with Pom who had a proud smile and a slightly silk covered bandaged cut on her face, she didn’t even mind being hurt or was upset that I managed it. Her wool already made her hard to hurt.

“I might not have to sacrifice myself in these tidings, of doom~!” Pom sang softly before she started to howl and Dolly joined her in their wolf song to the moon, likely thinking about that Gilgamesh guy.

It was being the idea Pom, we would not be losing you to someone that is being like that and we definitely wouldn’t want you to sacrifice yourself to death!

-Three days later-

“We’ll be quite grand~!” Favela sang as she fought a fire bug and was using her vine whips to sling herself about and fire seed bombs as she moved. She leapt into the air and turning into a blurring buzzsaw with her lashing whips as she rolled at the bug before it could light her on fire.

“We’ll create our own fork in time’s new river~.” Quetal sang as he slashed through a blast of water and almost nailed me with his claw before he was blown out of the bubble of water.

“We’ll be quite grand~!” Shine continued to work on her ability to handle pain, she was training her Trick-or-Treat to work on multiple targets and or extending the time, she was even using Phantom Force to dodge and more move about a battlefield, even swapping places with people about to be hit using Ally Switch and immediately diving into the shadows with her Phantom Force move to dodge the attack that would have hit her.

Shine popped up in an explosion of darkness, one that sent Ninjask flailing into the air, with a cute little grin on her face. Shedinja got knocked out second later by Shine flinging a Graveler Pebble at its forehead from the pouch she was wearing.

“We’ll be able to put up a great fight soon~.” Sang the ‘Lucha’ Mundo as he and Pom wrestled one another, he tried to slam Pom onto her back and she caught herself on her hind legs and tried to lift him he quickly change his grip and with a kick at the air with his legs he pinned her against the ground on her stomach.

His sleeper hold made Pom tap out and then he helped her up, Pom had been wrestling him without the assistance of her wool.

“We’ll be quite grand~!” Dazzle sang as she used her singing to fire off a Round move, that caught her opponent off guard and then Dodo found himself eating a face full of sand.

Dazzle followed up by using a Flame Lash to physically vault her body into Dodo as he tried to stand up.

“Heroes be forged from a raging desire~!” I sang in a spirited manner as I watched Lit be fighting the entire unit of almost fully recovered Beedrill by himself.

Lit used the move called Lunge to leap vast distances despite his tiny size. He is using his String Shot to change directions in an instant. He had already used Electroweb to disable three of the Beedrill and one of his Lunge’s took out one with a direct impact, his four tiny blue eyes narrowed as he blasted a thunderbolt at the lead Beedrill and the Protect it brought up buckled under the pressure from the power that the tiny bug was unleashing. Said lightning bounced off and fried his last remaining comrade still in the air.

Lit the Joltik was proving to be more fierce than Pokémon several times his size, after having won the fight with the two remaining Beedrill he tiredly crawled up one of Dolly’s hind legs and then fell asleep quickly after snuggling into her back.

“Protecting loved ones and the future coming for all of us… quite soon-~!” Canard finished out the song as he held up his new hockey stick to the sky and then glanced back at his felled opponent, a large green scythe armed bipedal bug type called a Scyther.

He walked over and helped the Scyther up and the green bug saluted with its right blade arm, while giving the big duck a broad grin.

Sami ran up to them with Cleffa and I be smiling as I turned to go talk to Ocellus. We be making a lot of improvements this week thanks to Mundo’s Coaching.

Still can’t be doing a flying slash though… I be needing to find someone that be being specialized in it.

I just be hoping all this is being enough to face the many dangers that are being beyond Gilgamesh guy… since the Morpeko unit be arriving not too long afterwards.

As I be making my way off the beach I be looking to see Charjabug ramming head first into a tree and then he be gathering berries, not for himself, but for us. He was being such a nice little guy all week and worrying about us eating enough or making hammocks when we be getting tired.

-Other side of the moon in space, ???-

A large glowing golden core inside a cube floated in space, the cube was far more dangerous than it appeared, even if it couldn’t move as it floated a set distance away from the local moon.

Moon Cell, was trying to keep in touch with its primary instigator of world destruction, it needed some help and was busy doing something quite nasty in Valora. Unfortunately the Steel Type Pokémon were quite sturdy, but the flames of war to wipe the world clean couldn’t be stopped if given enough time to propagate.

Its influence on reality was minimal and getting a foothold was being a bit of a problem, but it had a foothold all the same and soon...

-Illusio, Castle of Illusion, Gilgamesh-

“Wow… so much training… what the… eh?” My sarcasm was cut off when I noticed I couldn’t see too much further into the future or the area around there. “Must be Dark Types congregating around there, the future has become quite murky. “Heh, things will get fairly entertaining soon at the very least. Hm-hm-hm, so amusing that they think they can even come up with something to use against me.”

-Eastern Chrysalia, northern beach front, noon, Shanty-

“So… that was an impressive amount of working out this week. We got the entire Bug Type encampment in on it too, had fun, made lots of friends and you got to create an awesome technique where you create a flying bubble of water.” A giggling Smolder said as she came up to me. “Probably won’t be nearly enough, but it is making Pom a little calmer to see you getting stronger at the very least. Goodness knows she attracts as much trouble as our teachers at the Friendship School do.”

“Yeah, but for all the trouble she attracts, Pom’s always willing to help. Whether or not it’s her whole ‘sacrifice’ problem of being a Chrysomallus being a part of her nature doesn’t matter. She’s still going to be Pom.” Ocellus said coming up to my other side and sitting down on the other side of me with a sigh. “Even if the training did prove helpful in learning new things about ourselves, I don’t think any of it covers god tier Pokémon with nigh infinite teleportation powers with a few rules about how those portals work being known to us. That guy could have been watching us all week and just laughing at our efforts.”

Dodo chirped cheerfully as he slammed his metal backside into the sand near getting us covered in covered in beach.

“Pffft… Dodo!” He looked only mildly cowed as I glared at him, before I burst out laughing. He be smiling and making chortling laughing noises.

“So is today a beach day?” A Morpeko asked, they were strange hamster shaped Pokémon one with darker personalities when they get angry or hungry, maybe even both. “We do need a break, given how tired we are from traveling all the way here. Sorry if we got caught up in a few… incidents.”

“Yeah, a break would get me to calm the ‘BLEEP’ ‘BLEEPING’, ‘BLEEP-EEP’ ‘BLEEP’ with a tire iron ‘BLEEP’, down!” Stated one of the said changed form into a Morpeko that had a slightly altered state of mind, another Morpeko quietly be passing that one a berry and he reverted from being black, purple and angry looking to being happy looking with right side colored brown, middle and bottom parts turning yellow and right side was raven black. “Thank you dear sir, that was quite horrible of me, I apologize for my utter rudeness as I was just a little hungry.”

“OF COURSE IT WAS RUDE YOU ‘BLEEP’ ‘BLEEP-EEP’ ‘TWEET’ ‘EXCESSIVE DOLPHIN NOISES’ ‘DEADPOOL PAID FOR AN ADVERTISMENT HERE’ ‘BLEEP’ ‘CHAINSAW NOISES’ ‘ANVIL SMASHING THE GROUND’ ‘CH-CH-CH AH-AH-AH’ ‘THE STOCK IMAGE OF A NORMAL COW’ ‘FAR TOO PROFANE FOR THIS STORY AND WOULD HAVE REQUIRED BRAIN BLEACH’ ‘AN ACTUAL NORMAL SOUNDING CURSE WORD THAT GOT LOST AMONG A TIRADE’ ‘STATUE OF CELEBI BEING EATEN BY A VAMPIRE’ ‘SO FOUL MOUTHED AN ACADEMY AWARD WAS MADE FOR THIS STRETCH OF TEXT’ ‘SCENES OF CUTE PUPPIES AND KITTENS’ WITH A RAKE, I ALSO HATE ALL OF THE REST OF YOU TOO!” The tiny hamster held up her front limbs in a rude gesture. “RAGGHHHH!”

“Uh… what’s her problem?” Smolder asked slightly wide eyed and terrified at the display of such vulgarity.

“I be giving that a three, it not even be rating the top five most vulgar things I be hearing.” My statement be getting disbelieving stares from the five other Morpeko in the unit.

“Mating cycle, Morpeko females tend to get extremely volatile for about four straight days every year… they also, thankfully enough, don’t synch up… don’t know if that’s honestly worse or better. It’s ‘kind of’ why we were delayed.” The male Morpeko that had calmed down stated. “Hmm… get it all out of the way at once and all the males suffer greatly for a week or to continue to have it in small year round doses that we won’t die from horribly. Anyway, she’ll be much nicer when we set out for Illusio tomorrow, we promise. We're taking a break for the rest of the day. The Electric and Dark Type Morpeko unit is at Chrysalia's and Team Harmony's service, Queen Ginchiyo sends her regards.”

“Sure… we’ll take your word for it…” Ocellus stated pleasantly with a shiver and a weak grin, I wonder what she be feeling from the emotions of that one in particular.

“’Volatile Foghorn Noises’!” Shouted the no filter female Morpeko as she scampered away.

“Anyway, after the last three solid days of that, we came here because we heard you have intel about what might be a major problem for the scouting mission into Illusio?” That we did be having clearly Mr. Morpeko sir.

“Yes, we do.” Smolder confirmed.

“Before that… I’m intrigued, what was the most vulgar thing you’ve heard in your life that could be worse than our comrades er… issues… as it were.” The Morpeko be looking at me expectantly.

“Well if you must be knowing…” I Inhaled and then said it. “Everyone ‘THE PROCEEDING FIFTY PARAGRAPHS OF TEXT IS SOMETHING THAT WOULD DEFINITELY GET THIS FAN FICTION CANCELLED IF IT EVER GOT OUT WHAT SHANTY EXACTLY SAID HERE AND HAS BEEN DELETED. IF SAID INFORMATION HADN'T BEEN, THE INFORMATION WOULD BE LOADED INTO A HARD DRIVE, BURIED WITH EXPLOSIVES SPECIFICALLY IN THE E.T. CARTRIDGE LANDFILL AND THEN HAVE ACID POURED OVER IT WHILE THE BOMBS ARE EXPLODING, THE PEOPLE CAUGHT IN THE EXPLOSION WILL BE MISSED BUT IT WAS A FOR A GOOD CAUSE, WE ARE QUITE SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE YOU MAY NOW RETURN TO THE STORY WITH NINETY PERCENT LESS VULGARITY AS LONG AS THE MORPEKO ARE NOT AROUND OR BEING PAID ATTENTION TO WHILE IN A DARKENED STATE’. And that is being the most vulgar thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Holy Arceus… did you grow up around pirates or something!” The Morpeko stated with wide eyes, his four friends were staring

“Yes, I be doing that exact thing.” I be stating calmly.

“Sounds fair.” The Morpeko stated calmly and all his four friends nodded and agreed.

“Can you all please stop cursing around me…” Ocellus be looking a little green and Smolder carefully started rubbing a claw up and down her back. “It’s giving me indigestion…”

“Now you see Shanty, this is why I got into insult contests with Gallus when Ocellus wasn’t around.” Finally, Smolder be explaining something I be wondering about for a while.

"It's basically the same reason why Psychic Types wouldn't want to read our minds even if they could, our minds are absolutely filthy!" The Morpeko unit leader stated proudly while he stood tall. "That and dark dimensional energy is a perfect counter to most psychic powers, can't forget that."

Author's Note

Shanty's newest technique just basically replicates the effects of a Gushen from Mario Odyssey, with a bit of water bender in there for good measure.

Apologies for all the vulgarity, but it's going to be a Morpeko thing as much as the Wooloo are all perverts.

Morpeko have a reason to be vulgar though, they are partially aware of Arceus's attempts to create a cuter electric mouse Pokémon than Pikachu. They became half Dark Types out of animosity of being yet another electric cheeked rodent Pokémon.

Music: Mulan (The good 1998 animated one) - I'll Make a Man out of you.

320. Entering Illusio.

-Pokémon World, Ransei Region, Chrysalia, eastern border defense encampment, the next morning, Shanty-

“I still not be getting a flying slash or cutting arc…” I be grumbling, but my new Bounding Bubble was being a fairly nifty defense, utility and offensive technique all in one.

“You’ll get there eventually Shanty, we all have our talents.” Pom is not being wrong, we be all having our unique talents. It is how we even be getting this far. I watched a Pom turned to address Dos. “Okay General Dos, since the Beedrill are still feeling a bit under the weather. Who will be going with us? Aside from the… Morpeko…”

So they be a bit foul mouthed Pom, did you be expecting to get through this adventure without hearing some harsh language?

“Since the problem is going to be of legendary equivalence, our response is to attach Ninjask, Shedinja and four of our advanced heavy combat specialist, the evolved form of Dewpiders, Araquanids to your traveling team. We’ve been given the go ahead to prepare for a counter invasion if needed.” That’s when Dos be pointing out Ninjask, Shedinja and four ‘six legged’ spider like beings with large bubbles of water on their heads and smaller bubbles around the six joints on their legs. “The Araquanids are also our fire-fighting specialists in peace times, they’ll be of great help in case that guy tries to dump any more magma on you and or tries to seal you in with quick hardening magma walls or dome like he did to you in Three Borders Valley. They know the move Crunch, a dark type attack guaranteed to give a psychic type a bad day and possibly a mangled limb or two if they get too close. They all also know Aqua Ring which makes them tough to take down, but what’s better is that they can unit command to combine Aqua Rings into a healing field that works on all their allies as well. Said healing field won’t work on anyone they tag as enemies, it’s one of the reason why they are heavy combat specialists as they are some of the most durable Bug Types we can lend you at the moment.”

“Nice to know we’re going into Illusio with a solid support.” Ninjask stated with some good cheer. “I take it those four are coming from the Water Weavers unit?”

“Yes.” After nodding to his friend, General Dos then be turning to us. “Word of warning, the Psychic Types might know where you are at all times while you are in Illusio, but not what you will be doing. Be very careful about what you do as soon as you cross the border.”

“I thought that’s what the Morpeko unit was for.” Pom be gesturing a hoof to the six Morpeko meandering around and were getting some supplies they could carry, that being a few berries.

“I’m going to be honest here, Psychic types can tell when Dark Types are around in large enough numbers to cause them problems. Mostly because of the absence or hole where a Psychic Types powers should be having an effect when Dark Types group up enough. If that Gilgamesh’s guys range is as good as we think it is, then he’ll always know where you are. From as far away as Aurora even, so he likely knows that a team of Dark Types are already here and our feasible intentions to get a scope of the situation he may or may not be causing our next door neighbors.” Well wasn’t that being quite a terrifying thing to hear General Dos. “The Morpeko team will be generating something like an invisible field or fog that’ll prevent psychic types from getting any long distance mental visuals or seeing your future actions, but they will still be able to see you quite visibly up close and personal. Unless we were to go to the Kingdom of Yaksha for help, which is currently at war with Viperia due to some information we received from a high speed Ninjask scout team, which are currently on leave due to being exhausted from flying across the entire continent to even get us this information. Viperia probably had some poor politics going on with Yaksha again.”

Dazzle be wincing at being reminded about where she was from, and everybody be noticing it. She is being quite self-conscious about it with the way she be rubbing her right arm and looking away. General Dos cleared his throat and waving a leg to draw our attentions back to him.

“Yes, we’re completely ignoring the fact that she’s a wayward princess. Anyway, the Morpeko unit is the best we can get as far as acquiring Dark Types on short notice from allied nations. They might be small, but they are quite the little hellions in a fight when their dark sides are out. I’m fairly certain that other kingdoms have noticed something going on with Illusio and will have likely sent in any Dark Type agents they might have as spies. You are being given the go ahead to befriend or avoid them at your own discretion, for they might not actually be your allies later on. I know Dark Types get a bad rap, but there’s a reason for some of the stereotypes to exist. Still get help where you can.” We be nodding at the advice General Dos was giving us and he was specifically not looking at Quetal, but the Morpeko. I guess we should be being wary of any help that is being offered to us then. “There might be some Psychic Types willing to start an outright rebellion or some looking to help an investigation of what’s going on if things are truly getting dire or bad over there, try to interact with all Psychics Types in a professional manner first and foremost and be wary of mental probing or manipulation. The Dark Types spies from other kingdoms are going to be less noticeable or hard to find if they are acting alone or in fairly small groups, so you might have some unknown and undetected possible allies wandering around if they decide that helping you is a worthwhile expenditure of their time. Don’t rely on them actively coming to your aid if you seriously need help, with that said… we’re going to miss your food Mrs. Lambchop!”

General Dos started spilling tears as did a number of surrounding Bug Types in a comical over the top fashion, it is being both sad and adorable.

“Sure as Bug Types we enjoy our sugar, but we still want different flavors every once in a while for the novelty and health reasons of it!” General Dos was being a very nice guy for someone who could move swiftly and was being very scary in training exercises with all his ambush ploys. He be leading a fairly good fort here too. “Oh, one last thing to know before you set out, Chrysalia has already sent out warning to all western kingdoms in a show of good faith. This is in spite of our general disinterest as an ‘insular’ kingdom. Everyone knows to be on the lookout for possible portal attacks from Illusio. The information you said about how Greenleaf and Aurora’s bridge was knocked out…. that has been confirmed as psychic energies given off by a Hyperspace Hole were what moved that sleeping Snorlax. Apparently this news has changed some opinions in Greenleaf about what to do with the King of Ignis, but we’re not certain on what has changed or how the trial is going there. We’re interested in the sense that we’re hoping that Ignis’s stability gets better, because the western kingdoms are going to have problems from eastern ones eventually and Illusio is showing signs of some major trouble going down.”

“Thanks for keeping us up to date on the happenings around here General Dos, you’ve been a great and humble host to us.” Pom bowed to him and then turned to me and motioned the rest of us to head for the wagon. “Okay guys load up, we’re supplied and heading east for Illusio.”

“Do you be worrying about another attack?” Considering that Gilgamesh guy said he was basically on the throne of the kingdom and was practically running it?

“Oh definitely, but we’re still going to do it…” Lamented Pom as she be having a ‘helping people’ complex that is being quite lethal to her health. “I hope to at least reach the border before things start going wrong, if they start going wrong while we’re still within Chrysalia’s then this is going to be a thing. Shanty…”

“Okay, Dodo let’s be moving!” I called out as I took my seat at the front, I be captaining the wagon.

Dodo be warbling and he be setting out for the gate which is being opened by use of a lot of String Shot from various Bug Type Pokémon. We set out and we be now headed to the eastern pass into Illusio.

“Okay, I would be liking an explanation on something, why is throwing a pebble at them being so effective?” I be turning and pointing as the ghostly shell Pokémon known as Shedinja.

“Shedinja are a fairly unique Pokémon given they are born with the evolution of a Nincada to Ninjask, all Shedinja have something called ‘Wonder Guard’ as an ability… which might become a huge problem if we run into a Ralts line of Pokémon. They have the ability to ‘Trace’ the ‘Wonder Guard’ ability for themselves. As long as something isn’t highly effective against them, A Shedinja will always survive an attack without a single scratch. Fire, Ghost, Rock, Flying and Dark Type attacks are effective against Shedinja, so chucking a pebble at their head will always knock them out immediately since a throwing rock can give off that kind of energy. Shedinja don’t have a lot of endurance, in fact it’s known for having the weakest endurance of any Pokémon to ever exist in always taking one hit to defeat. Something as simple as a candle flame or a charged burst of wind can knock them out… as for everything else… they are a living shield against every other possible form of attack imaginable. Ice Beams, Hyper Beams, Solar Beams, no matter how powerful, do basically jack all too them despite how much energy can be put into such attacks, it’s even easy to say that Shedinja are basically immune to ‘direct’ psychic attacks too. Shedinja can still be hit with special effects such as confusion, poison, burning, weather conditions or battlefield traps like Stealth Rock and Spikes, but direct attacks… they can tank almost anything all day as long as it doesn’t have a side effect that can cause Shedinja trouble, or is naturally effective against them. Shedinja can’t even enter Terrera without passing out given the constant sandstorms, same thing with Nixtorm because of the common blizzard and hailing conditions. Sheddy here is going to be a good support role when there are attacks they know that they can safely block.”

“So he is being a specialized perfect shield against most, but not all, things?” It be fairly amazing to me what some Pokémon were being capable of.

“Yep, now let me tell you what make Araquanids special… they are obscenely powerful with their water attacks despite the limited repertoire they can get in that particular arena. Their head bubbles boosts their water based attacks to an insane degree when it comes to using moves and weakens Fire Types attacks significantly. Also they are immune to getting burns from fire attacks as a kind of sub ability.” Ninjask be pointing out the water bubbles that be covering all the Araquanids. “So when an Araquanid uses a move like Scald, it works insanely well for them compared to any other Water Type and their innate toughness makes them a terror to face on a battlefield. When they shoot boiling water, you would do well to be well out of the way of that attack.”

“What are the Araquanids bad at?” Ocellus asked as she glanced at the water wearing beings.

“They are exceedingly slow in combat, their natural offensive power isn’t the greatest with anything other than water attacks and they have an annoying habit of sticking important things in their water bubbles including small Pokémon like Morpeko.” That be sounding pretty mixed bag to me Ninjask, I be looking to see that one of the Araquanids had already stuffed a Morpeko into its head bubble and it looked to be partially drowning. “It’ll still take a lot to bring one of them down in a prolonged battle with numerous opponents. Even these four can wipe entire units by themselves if given the wherewithal to do so. ”

“Um… is someone going to…” Pom started with concern at the Morpeko frantically trying to get out of the bubble until Lit hit it with a String Shot and pulled it free of the water surrounding the Araquanid’s head.

The Araquanids were fairly large, but we still managed to fit them in the wagon Pom be commissioning from the Bidoof. It was being large enough for our transportation needs, because she specified Dodo had to be capable of fitting in the wagon as well.

“So how much trouble is a Ralts if it does this tracing Wonder Guard from Shedinja thing?” Canard finally voiced with Cleffa sitting next to him idly kicking her legs and humming to herself.

“Exceedingly big trouble, they’re only exceptionally weak to Steel, Poison and Ghost type moves. At least Sheddy knows they’d be a pretty big liability if they let a Ralts actually trace them.” Ninjask then be settling in. “Any more questions until we reach the pass? If not we’re going to be stuck with idle talk.”

Not really, I be looking ahead and seeing the pass is not being too far away. The Bug Type encampment was placed in a fairly defensive spot to watch the road to the west into Chrysalia proper.

-Ten minutes later, outside the pass-

We be having idle chatter as we approach the pass and the Araquanids were especially helpful with their knowledge on how to control water. Dewpider’s required three of their legs to hold a water bubble in place, their evolution into Araquanids made it so that it was no longer necessary to hold the bubbles on their heads and the bubbles doubled as a battering ram in how condensed the water was.

Dodo be slowing down and looking at the shadows cast by the mountain and the pass was eerily silent.

“Are we still technically being in Chrysalia?” As I asked this, Dodo be approaching the entrance and was sweeping his gaze about warily. “Dodo seems to be picking up on something.”

“Yes, this pass between the mountains would be the border point leading into Illusio.” Ninjask took to the air and flew ahead of Dodo and looked around for a bit before flying back and landing. “I don’t know if Illusio has border guards or not waiting for us on the other side or in the pass, but if your Dodo is wary and feeling something is off, then we should be cautious too. The pass isn’t very long, not like Three Borders valley, but I wouldn’t want to be attacked here of all places. We could get bottlenecked.”

“For obvious reasons, we’re not going to be offload everyone quickly in tight spaces.” It was Canard that be answering the particular thought that be passing between us. “Let’s take it slow Dodo, we’re in no hurry.”

With that Dodo started forward at a very slow pace, he be feeling quite wary.

“Dodo is still one of the oddest familiars I’ve ever heard of or seen personally.” Ocellus stated as she watched Dodo pull all this weight behind him without a problem.

“He’s fairly strong, it’s kind of odd that Shanty has been able to maintain the bond with a familiar as strong as he is considering he came back from being almost melted alive. Then again the location the bond was formed was not exactly on Equus or Dolly’s world, there were bound to be differences in the minutiae like what’s going between me and Dolly. There’s also the whole Digimon being something like partial or true familiars with their partners too.” Pom stated as she calmly ran a hoof over a relaxing Dolly’s back. “Then again Dodo is probably weak in how much of him is actually biological, so his more metallic and mechanical nature might not factor into the strength of their bond. So really the bond is more towards Shanty being stronger biologically and possibly mentally.”

“Could be the feasible reason as much as animal intelligence and actual intelligence are concerned, maybe it’s just a mixture of several factors at this point and Dodo refuses to do anything that might break his bond with Shanty. Aside from nearly sacrificing his life for all of us that one time.” Even Ocellus be looking intrigued to discuss my first mate and larger bird buddy. “Twilight has Owlowiscious a familiar that’s remarkably smart, but somewhat physically fragile compared to Twilight. So there is a precedence there for it.”

“Yeah never see a time when that Owl wasn’t meandering around the new library Twilight created in her personal castle in Ponyville.” Smolder be tapping a claw on her left cheek in thought. “Really helpful when you need to find a book… wait… wouldn’t that owl’s lifespan be technically immortal because Twilight’s is now?”

“Good question, never considered what would happen to a familiar bond after one of the bonded ascends into being a goddess or god. We know princess Celestia has a phoenix who still goes through the cycle of rebirth and death, so technically the phoenix was already functionally immortal.” This is beginning to be a very interesting discussion.

“What be happening if the partner be the one becoming immortal?” There was a silence as I brought that up. Pom looked between Ocellus and Smolder, then to me and then down at Dolly with worry.

“Good question, hope I never find out. Immortality without hobbies leads to some nasty horror stories of mad gods.” Shivering quite visibly, Pom’s eye started looking everywhere ahead of the wagon.

Dodo suddenly stopped and made us all look to him as he turned to glance back at us and warbled something.

“He be saying something is being in the way.” To prove his point Dodo turned his head forward and tapped the air with his beak and something shimmered for a second.

“Oh, here we go, looks like there’s a Psychic Type barrier in the way.” Hopping out of the vehicle, Quetal moved forward and glared at the series of rocks ahead. “Come on out, we know you’re there!”

Pom got out and moved up to Quetal’s side as a unit worth’s of Pokémon came out and they all be looking the same.

“Oh, finally someone came through the pass, we are the Mr. Mime!” Said a bipedal female Pokémon, one with strange feet ending in inward curling toes, big floppy looking hands with strange dots on their digits and a falsely cheerful looking face.

They be looking like clowns and I not be seeing many of those since Mr. Cooper took me to a circus while we were traveling around the previous world.

“You’re a girl though, wouldn’t that make you a Ms. Mime?” Pom, I don’t think they be caring.

“Yes, some Mr. Mime can be female, my species is odd like that. Also you have no idea how much that comes up with us… and just for that I’ll double the toll.” What toll was this Mr. Mime talking about?

“What toll?” This was Quetal’s question as he be narrowing his eyes in suspicion, I think we were about to be shaken down and it is being obvious that we would bite on to the scam.

“The toll for getting through this pass of course, odd to see a Dark Type here… but it’s six against one, you’d still lose even if you could get through the barriers we put up. We have barriers blocking the path behind and in front of us.” The female Mr. Mime stated with crossed arms. “You’ll have to pay double, for us to remove and get through both barriers, unless you think you can break them?”

“… I’ll give it a shot.” It seems like Pom be getting the gist of it easily enough.

“Of course you will.” The Mr. Mime stated with a demented grin, she was even rubbing her glove like hands together in glee. “We just know you won’t be able to break through it, so try us!”

-Six minutes later, Pom-

“Thousand Spears: Huo!” The entire pass lit up like the sun from the swirling spear of pure flaming force, I had aimed my attack slightly upwards and the barrier flared into visible existence and it held up against the attack even if it bent slightly inward.

“Whoa, way to make us sweat a little with that heat, but with our two united barriers you won’t break through into Illusio here if that’s the best you can do!” The Mr. Mime and the other five Mr. Mimes started laughing and quite frankly these shysters were in need of a swift attitude adjustment.

Which is why I’m thankful the plan has already succeeded.

The fact that they were even here probably meant there weren’t border guard on the other side of the pass, I seriously doubt they’d let these six Pokémon block things off like this. That or I can test something, before the actual plan comes to fruition.

“Can I say one word?” Seeing the smug barrier making Pokémon nod to me, I decided to bite the bullet and confirm a suspicion. “Gilgamesh.”

There was almost no reaction among them, what I did see was not an easily perceptible one, but I saw it and I looked to Dolly. Dolly nodded that she’d seen it too and she agreed with me.

“So that’s why you’re here. Really though, I was expecting something a little, I don’t know, grander from someone like Gilgamesh.” Receiving some curious looks from the Mr. Mime, I decided to ask them something. “Were you actually the best he could send to stop us? It seems like he just put you here to slow us down at best or at worst…”

I trailed off letting the thought hang in the air, as I had held their attentions completely on me and away from what was about to happen to them.

“Even ranged Dark Type attacks would have a problem getting through our barriers and any Dark Types you have would have to actively go through the barrier to get close to us to do anything. Not going to happen on our watch!” The female Mr. Mime smiled, very unfortunate that none of her group noticed the problem yet. “We’d take them out in an instant. We’re quite good at dealing with Dark Types, I’ll have you know.”

The nose lacking monster, with pink spheres at the hips and shoulder joints, belly and cheeks of the bipedal clown with two tufts of hair coming out the sides of their head, was currently swelling up with quite a bit of haughty pride in their capabilities.

They really shouldn’t be so prideful, especially if they had just missed such an obvious ploy that we just pulled off perfectly.

“So hypothetically, if we could hit you with some incredibly large attack from within those barriers, then would the barriers hold the attack with you in the very concentration of it until the end of it and we wouldn’t get scratched because the barriers wouldn’t go down until after such an attack finishes?” I asked, while specifically not looking at the ground around the group of relatively tall bipedal Pokémon’s feet.

They weren’t going to be in the way for much longer.

“Yeah, but how would you get a powerful enough attack in here to take us all out at once like that when we’re prepared for that?” The Mr. Mime obviously didn’t know that I just did the Thousand Spear: Huo as a distraction, so much for these guys being mind readers. They were apparently just barrier specialists and not very big on the other common psychic abilities.

“Go ahead guys!” It was simply because my attack was so obvious when it came to this current set up that, like a magician at a magic show, it drew all of their attentions away from what was the real threat.

“Unit command, Dark Pulsar!” Shouted the leader of the Morpeko unit that had snuck through the barrier while I was blinding the Mr. Mimes with the flare of my attack.

All the Mr. Mime’s went wide eyed and didn’t have time to react when a huge swirling blast of darkness erupted in their midst, looking like a swirling sea of stars having been created by the Morpeko unit once they gathered enough power together and were in the middle of the Mr. Mime group.

Morpeko’s were far nicer to talk to when they weren’t angry or having raging hormone problems.

I silently watched as the invisible barrier blocking the pass in front of us buckled outwards slightly under the strain from the massive torrent of dark energies being released with explosive force. It was making me miss my friend, ‘Dark Hero’ Oleander somewhat, it was because of Oleander that I even met my wife in the first place… a wife I haven’t talked to in a week.

I just depressed myself…

After the pillar of darkness into the sky stopped, there lay six of what were pink and white mimes, now black and grey in color like actual mimes. It was like a devastatingly powerful bomb blast went off among them, I’m even quite glad we waited for the Morpeko unit.

The results were relatively devastating to the area, not that there was much growing in the pass to begin with, but the barriers were down and we could now pass through without trouble.

“Well if Gilgamesh knows we’re coming with Dark Types already, then that shouldn’t have been too much of a big surprise for him right?” A smiling Quetal stated as we just sent a message that we would hopefully be ready for most of the shenanigans Gilgamesh could possibly throw our way.

“Want us to detain these miscreants?” Turning around, we all looked to General Dos with five other Ariados and I nodded. "Your clear to continue the mission, like I said before 'be very careful'."

The Mr. Mime were soon taken by the eastern Chrysalia border guards, while Ninjask rejoined us in the wagon so we could continue forward into Illusio proper.

“That went… well…” I pulled out a map of Ransei and looked it over. Illusio was a fairly mountainous region, we could take the path north or south. “So we’re about to hit a road with two paths… what the?”

Lowering the map I saw multiple roads going every which direction, some even go into solid stone walls from the pass we just came from.

“Yep, there are only two paths, to the north and south. Whatever you might be seeing, it’s probably wrong and just Illusio living up to its reputation as the ‘Kingdom of Psychic Types’.” If Quetal thought we were seeing things already, then I had to believe him. “Also if you can’t see the two Pokémon fighting ahead of us, then you might want to shake your head a bit and clear out any distracting thoughts.”

After blinking a few times and focusing my mind with a few deep breathes, things shifted about and now there were just two paths like the map showed. The one path distinctly going to the north and one going south, instead of the paths I saw going every which way and corkscrew a second ago. There were also two Pokémon sitting at the sign post arguing about something.

“Okay, I’m a little mildly disturbed that my mind was messed with that quickly.” I pointed my hoof forward. “Dodo can you park us next to those two Pokémon. I think we need to get our bearings for a bit.”

As we closed in on the Pokémon, I heard what they were arguing about.

“I’ve been going in circles, you’ve been going in circles, we’ve both been stuck going in circles, I’m just going to sit here and wait for help in this crazy place!” It was a Furfrou like Monsieur Furfrou, except female this time and with her was a weasel sitting next to her. “You haven’t been exactly helpful, aside from getting food or water and making sure we could find our way back to this crazy crossroad!”

“Excuse me, but can we help either of you?” That drew their attention to me. The weasel next to the normal type canine didn’t look like a psychic type, I already had an idea of what a Pyschic Type might feel like thanks to that Raichu back in Violight.

“No, nothing you could… could… um…” The angry canine took one look at me and started to turn red under her thick white fur, I sighed audibly already knowing what that was about. “Hi there… I um… sorry for being a little terse… being in this kingdom can be quite aggravating at times what with all the mental traps. I’ve escaped four since I got out of eastern Terrera and came to the west up the southern path through Illusio, I was trying to avoid all the fighting with Cragspur. These traps have been quite nasty, unless someone is around to point out what’s wrong. Probably wasn’t a good idea to get separated from my friend Abby from Yaksha, apparently she detected a huge disaster about to happen around Illusio. I want to at least grab her and get out of here.”

“Nasty like these crossroads that seem to always have one running in circles. Have you by any chance seen a Cufant by the name of Heffalump, sometimes goes by Lumpy? I heard he managed to get into Terrera proper before the fighting really got bad, but not much else.” The weasel bowed to us. “I’m Woozle, the Yungoos compatriot of that particular traveling Cufant. I’m also currently regretting trying to pass through Illusio, but I believe I’m close to getting out of here, I just know it. Now if this trap wasn’t messing with my head, I believe I would have been out of here by now.”

“You’ll want to take the pass to the west of here, your friend Lumpy helped us out a bit ago and asked if we could look out for you. Said he’s going to be in Chrysalia for a while until things in Valora blow over.” The weasel blinked a few times as I pointed at the pass.

“Thank you for pointing it out, I shall not take my focus off that pass until I’m well through it!” The weasel was staring at the pass with narrowed eyes. “I was having problems getting free from this trap and misery loves company, hope you can help this poor Furfrou too! Time to go prevent my friend Heffalump from spending all his money on honey!”

With that the weasel took off straight for Chrysalia, another weird guy to meet on the road, but apparently psychic traps were already going to be a problem for us. We were going to need Quetal and the Morpeko to navigate us through this country.

“So you said you were looking for your friend Abby and she said there would be a disaster coming soon, what would exactly make her think that?” It would be the story of my life if the incoming disaster was exactly what I thought it was, but I was definitely asking for at least some clarification and clues.

“Huh… oh right… I’m Fleer by the way, Abby is an Absol… Abby being a common name for females of that particular species, not very creative. Anyway, outsider right?” The Furfrou’s tail was an indistinct blur and Dolly growled at her a bit, I rolled my eyes and mentally reassured Dolly that Fleer was just being friendly. She hasn’t stepped over any line… yet… “Absol’s have the ability to detect imminent disasters… anyone that sees an Absol tries to turn the other way when they look exceptionally determined, mostly because they have a habit of trying to stop the disaster or try to save the people in the way of it. They rarely, if ever, cause the disaster they are detecting, but some Pokémon think they are bad luck to be around. Makes it kind of hard to make friends when you can always tell things are about to go south near you.”

“So they can detect incoming disasters, but I’m guessing not what form it takes?” The nod I received was fairly telling, yep Gilgamesh was doing something and needed to be stopped.

“Can you help me look for my friend, please?” This Fleer seemed like a teenager or close to adult and she was asking nicely, even if her eyes were roving my body a little too much for my taste. “Sorry for staring… it’s just… there’s something about you that feels safe, warm and nice.”

“Sure, we can help you, we’re not exactly sure where we’re going from here anyway. We’re here to investigate the things going on in Illusio and if an Absol is sensing a disaster, then we might already have an idea as to who is behind it at the very least.” Quetal looked back at everyone being idling in the wagon and waiting for us to decide which way we’re going from here. “Did your friend say how large this disaster is or do you have any leads on the nearest form of civilization?”

“We’re at the southwestern most part of Illusio, at least I know that much if we’re near the Chrysalia border, which I can finally see at least. I remember there being three paths from here, you have the north and south path which circle around the mountainous zone and there’s the third path through the mountains themselves which is a little harder to traverse. So the nearest form of civilization would be… Kadabraville hidden at the foot of some of the small mountains around here off these beaten paths.” Fleer was being decent help at the very least. “Would be much easier to find if the psychic energy in this kingdom wasn’t messing with my head so much, at one point I started thinking I was a Flying Type Pokémon and almost jumped off a cliff. As for the disaster, whatever it was that Abby felt coming from this kingdom, it was huge enough for my friend to come running into this country with me tagging along to try and help her.”

“Would she be being a spy for some other kingdom?” Shanty there’s this thing called subtlety.

“She might be a Dark Type from Yaksha and I’m aware there are plenty of stereotypical Dark Types in that kingdom, but no, she doesn’t have nearly that strong enough ties to her home kingdom to be a spy or agent for them. We’ve been mostly drifting around Terrera’s desert and Cragspur’s mountainous tunnels doing small odd jobs for the last few years, right up until a series of wars started up throughout the eastern kingdoms of Ransei. Which is quite weird, because why would Rock Types attack the Ground Type kingdom? They aren’t exactly on the winning side of that type match up, so something is definitely up with that and or someone has called in a stupid amount of favors for it to be a thing.” That sounded like a clue of things to come Fleer, I hope we’re not dragged into it. “Abby is more of a free agent when it comes to trying to stop disasters and likes to move around a lot and I’m kind of worried about her running around on her own after we got separated, the mental traps around here are so annoying! Even if a Dark Type would have a lot of advantages in getting around without notice around here, there are still some things Psychic Types can do to bring a Dark Type down if they were quite determined to do so.”

“So how do we get to this ‘Kadabraville’ Fleer and do you need a ride?” Taking a look at Ocellus who spoke up and the fact that we have seven dark types, Fleer looked at me and seemed quite eager to take the help, for more than one reason.

“Yes please, I don’t want to be stuck going in circles for the rest of my life! As for Kadabraville, I know it’s to the northeast of the Chrysalia and Illusio pass. I wish I hadn’t kept losing track of where I am.” Fleer got a blank look on her face before shaking her head and focusing on me and she started to carefully move forward and climb into the wagon. After a moment she sighed with relief as she rubbed her paws around on her head. “Illusio isn’t called the illusion kingdom for nothing, all the unused psychic energy floating around can really get to your head if you’re not wary and as I’ve said before, the traps made from that energy can really mess with you even more than the ambient energy. The ambient psychic energy not being used for traps can make you see things you want that are not there. You have enough Dark Types that I can keep my head, just tell them to turn up their darkness field or whatever to help you keep your head.”

Like seeing a nearby field full of the devices Arceus gave to me in the form of flowers… yeah, I can see why this place would get to someone quite quickly. Dolly shook our connection and my sight cleared up showing that there had been no flowers that were growing divinely gifted devices, just lots of grass, dirt and mud.

Apparently Dolly and I could cover for one another as the strength of our bond couldn’t be faked. Even knowing that I’m kind of a walking ‘death wish’, Dolly’s still willing to stay by my side. I’m… actually kind of glad for that and the mental hug she was currently giving me.

“Right, it’s settled, we’re heading to this Kadabraville place!” The Morpeko leader stated and pointed Dodo in a direction slightly off the northward path that would lead along the northern shore of Illusio.

“Shanty is Dodo being affected by the energy in the air?” I saw a strange look on Shanty’s face.

“No, but I am… Dodo seems to be being immune to the mental manipulation.” That Shanty stayed quiet afterwards meant she wasn’t willing to comment on what she was seeing, her right eye was certainly twitching a lot with tears.

Shanty quickly pulled out a bottle of rum and started drinking it to distract herself from whatever she was seeing.

-Shanty-

In one eye, I be seeing the world as it was.

In the other there were faint fields of Pom’s skewered, stabbed, bludgeoned, bleeding, mutilated, spilled ograns everywhere, monstrous giant wolf Pom’s eating other smaller Poms violently and there were the less than tasteful heads on pikes of all the people I’ve come to think of as friends.

There were rivers of blood flowing everywhere from fly covered corpses and the various voices of Pom constantly blaming me for not saving them.

It be looking like a fire scorched battlefield. A nightmare is what it was being and it was all just being in my mind. It was horrifying, but I was being stronger than this.

I be shaking my head and my right eye cleared up and was seeing the same thing as my left, I be concentrating on not seeing those horrors that be living in the back of my skull. I also be drinking my rum with wild abandon, somewhat wishing that alcohol could have an effect on me.

Unless that was what being drunk was like, then I’d rather keep my immunity to alcohol.

-Pom-

“The air around here tastes kind of funny, but I think I’m capable of resisting the energy pretty well.” Which would be a first for Ocellus, as usually things that affect the mind like emotional states tended to have something of an adverse effect on her. It sounded like she’d be able to prevent herself from being mentally manipulated at least.

“I’m just seeing hives full of Ocellus’s all around… heh, awesome.” A blushing Smolder stated in a dazed tone, physically tough… mentally not as strong. “I think… I can… keep it together. Why do you have to be so cuddly looking Ocellus, ooh that one is in a really cute dress!”

“Well everyone, try to keep your minds sharp as you can and stay in the wagon until we find the village. It’s the first lead we have to finding out what’s happening around here… other than the obvious we’ve already seen.” We didn’t need anyone wandering off or getting lost in a kingdom where the mind was under constant threat of being distracted or controlled by illusions or other Pokémon. “This is going to be another one of ‘THOSE’ adventures.”

“…” Canard glanced at me with worry, hopefully his mind and the two Digimon’s minds were alien enough that manipulating them was at least harder or even impossible to do.

We needed everyone as strong and 'functionally' sane as we could get with Gilgamesh around.

Author's Note

Pyschic Types will appear in smaller numbers since they are slow breeders, but they will still pose a massive problem for Pom's group via their natural special powers output.

The Mind Screws are already starting and Pom's group has barely even passed the border into the kingdom.

Whether it be innately caused by the ambient psychic energy or caused by a Pokémon that is actively trying to mess with your head...

"Welcome To Illusio, you're mind is not safe here at all! No Dark Types please."

321. Hocus Pocus Locus.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Sekhet’s Pyramid, Silver Stream-

“Oh great and mighty…” I started to say only to be cut off.

“Let me guess, you want a training regimen and some way to fight?” Yes, but how did she know that?! “Well by the look on your face, you’d be surprise I already wrote one up for you. You’re friend Gallus is on one my physical education programs and is working with Fizzlepop to fulfill it, he’ll be a far sight better than some of the royal guards running around Equestria. I’m the best PE coach of the local schools here and you are not the first among your friends to come visit me for help. You know about the whole Tambelon thing, so they came to me weeks ago. So what were you doing in that time?”

“Well I was busy earning my ‘stoning-birb’ license.” I admitted shyly. “So… I’m finally here about helping my friends.”

“Ah, a cockatrice wrangler, interesting thing to have as a professional license for. Less dangerous than basilisk wrangling at the very least.” There was no amusement in Sekhet’s voice, this was much nicer than her busting a gut like a few of my friends did. Still so embarrassed about that. “How do you feel about archery?”

“Nothing particularly, though there are plenty in the hippogriff navy who do it and I know Crystal Ponies have ice arrows, why?” I received a grin from large purple kitty as she brought her face up to mine, I was quite nervous about this.

“Well Yona is learning to be a shield maiden, emphasis on the shield part like…” Here Sekhet paused and looked about with a sly grin before whispering. “Fortitude.”

“I am Fortitude, the fantastically fragrant!” A distant voice shouted back.

“Yeah, that’s the stuff… I love the chicanery around here and so does my sister Bastet. Anyway Yona is quite strong for her age.” Sekhet said with a sigh. “There’s what Sandbar is working on his naturally given and magical strength, he could be a quarter of Arizona’s maximum physics breaking output if he’s kept up with his monk training. He’s going to surpass Farizona soon at the very least. So with you, I might as well give them someone with a bit of a ranged support capability if you intend to stick together. Besides we have a lot of unused arrows around since Jacky’s bow fires everything normally except actual arrows. That ‘literally the kitchen sink’ story was quite an amusing one from last week. So what do you say?”

“Can they be blunted arrows?” I really didn’t like the idea of hurting people.

“They can have aerodynamically challenging boxing gloves on them for all I care, how you want to use the archery skills I have to teach is up to you. I’m just pointing out it might be something you’d be interested in learning. I am also offering crossbow, bomb making and Kuril has been considering potion classes.” So Sekhet was going to help me? I gave a happy squeal and hugged her left leg. “Besides, you have some catching up to do with your friends training efforts and archery isn’t exactly too hard to pick up. Just a reminder, I can teach anyone how to fight how they want to fight. Before that, would you answer these riddles three… first, what is your name?”

“Silver Stream.” Didn’t she know that already?

“What is your favorite color?” Okay this didn’t seem too hard.

“Blue…” I blushed and thought about Gallus.

“What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?” Oh… that was a little more difficult Sekhet.

“Depends, is it a Zebrican or Ornithianian swallow?” I ask back.

“Good, we can even begin training now… I hope you don’t mind pain, being emotionally traumatized and physical soreness.” With what Sekhet just said, I’m feeling like I’ve just made a huge mistake. “So what kind of training do you want?”

Wait a minute… I didn’t even answer the last question!

-Pokémon World, news of movements within the Ransei region-

King Evan is still in Greenleaf discussing what to do with Hideyoshi among other things.

Ignis has become a neutral territory and inactive until the Hideyoshi trial passes, currently actively asking for merchant food supplies in trade for equipment. Aurora is stepping up to supply the relief efforts.

Maiden Jig is helping the troops of Aurora recover and is preparing them for the next inevitable crisis. Cleric Geoff’s unit is watching the northern bridge with supplementary support from the Rockruff brothers.

Violight is gearing up for a fight from an alternate dimension if the Digimon world proves to be volatile enemies. The kingdom is also prepared to defend itself in the case eastern aggressors.

Professor Pong continues to research and befriend Calumon and his Digibot guardian Sideline.

The various factions within Viperia are too busy defending attacks from the south to send out scouts to the western Ransei to look for Dazzle. Viperia is also watching Cragspur, Avia and Spectra in case they are to be attacked from the north.

They do not know Dazzle has recently become a Salazzle due to an incident with a sewer within the neighboring Digital Realm.

Nixtorm continues to suffer constant attacks from Skull Chaosdramon X, but are managing to hold and keep the monstrous force of nature somewhat contained. Most of their attacks are at least proving to be effective at slowing down the soulless rampage machine, they are vulnerable to attacks from the east. Thankfully no one is biting at their backsides.

Illusio is being fairly quiet and several kingdoms are determined to find out why with spies.

The fighting is fierce between ghost kingdom Spectra and dragon kingdom Dragnor, Dragnor is also sending small raid groups into Avia.

The Rock kingdom of Cragspur continues to attack Terrera confusing every Pokémon who is aware of the situation.

Valora is currently ‘VERY BUSY’, too much so to worry about anything else going on. The distractions in Illusio, Nixtorm and the fighting of the eastern Ransei kingdoms is making what is happening in Valora go mostly unnoticed.

The digital realms are turtling up to the best of its capabilities and is trying to prevent a mostly genocidal super computer from getting access to the digital world and destroying it for its information. However some information of the digital realms is escaping into reality and Pokémon are becoming aware of the existence of Digimon as a possible threat.

-Ransei Region, Illusio, Dolly-

“Has anyone had any hallucinations since we left the north and south sign post?” There were a lot of negatives flying around at Pom’s question. Pom sighed audibly. “Okay, that’s good.”

“We used up a lot of energy for our Dark Pulsar attack, but we got the field we generate back up and you shouldn’t be having any problem with the ambient psychic energy in this region as long as we’re nearby.” That means were safe for the time being, these More Peckish guys were cool. “As for active psychic energy from a Pokémon, well we Dark Types and Shedinja are immune, but the rest of you would need to be more active.”

“Oh trust me, I’m quite good in dodging attacks.” With how fast you were Ninja Question, it was ‘probably’ a good thing you were around to draw fire away from us. Likely wouldn’t help with ‘Gills and Mesh’ though.

Dodo warbled something drawing our attention to him.

“I believe he be seeing Kadabraville… but I don’t be seeing it personally.” We were getting fairly close to the mountainous terrain so that was bound to happen Shanty.

Pom got up and pulled out the map and spread it on the floor. I got up and moved over to put my two paws on it to keep it from rolling back up without prompting.

“Shanty, tell Dodo to approach and stop a fair distance away like a mile or two.” Pom pointed out the spot on the map as to where we approximately were and marked it with some charcoal. We all looked down on it. “So I know the northern and southern paths create a large circle that covers all the outer edges of Illusio, but why aren’t there any marked paths leading to the inner mountainous regions of Illusio?”

“That’s because the mountains and hills of inner Illusio are all relatively forested and it’s hard to find any paths. Mostly because Psychic Types don’t need them, they can probably make pathways out of psychic energy that only others like them could follow.” Fleece didn’t seem to know much about the country, the fluffy dog somehow grated on me. “The outer Illusio circle pathway is considered mostly safe for travelers, provided someone helps them if they get stuck and before they run out of supplies like that Woozle guy and I did. We were stuck foraging together for a good while. Most people prefer to go through Terrera’s desert or underground road tunnels leading across their territory to get to the eastern or western side of the Ransei. Said tunnels are likely closed off what with all the fighting going on with Cragspur.”

Dodo eventually came to a stop not too long afterwards, he turned to warble something to Shanty.

“We’re being in visual range, or at least I think Dodo be trying to say that.” Looking where Shanty and Dodo were, I didn’t see anything.

“Hmm… how come I don’t see anything then?” Quetal mumbled with his arms crossed as he was staring at the very much empty space where there was supposedly supposed to be a town.

“Dolly, can you go check out the direction Dodo is looking in, I want to know if you’ll see something if you get far enough from the wagon.” Nodding to Pom, I put my helmet on for safety and hopped out of the wagon to start running in the direction Dodo was looking.

I love the exercise and the smells around here were certainly interesting to say the least, kind of smells like foxes.

So this village or place we’re looking for should be out this way at the base of a mountain, hill or plateau. So why could the guys that state they are immune to the stuff going on here not see it? If it even is out… here?! Whoa!

“Pom… are you seeing this?” I asked blankly as I got far enough from the wagon my mind might be under some odd effects, but from what I’m seeing a ghost town popped up out of nowhere.

Pom called for me to wait and the wagon started approaching my position, that’s when the dead ghost town disappeared and I told Pom to stop the wagon. Must be close enough to those foul mouthed hamsters that my mind was not being affected, because now I was seeing a fairly average town with some life in it instead of a dilapidated mess.

All this mental stuff was really weird, kind of reminds me of the time I was drugged by mom so they could put a cast on my leg when I broke it skateboarding. You really see a lot of things when you’re on pain killers.

Pom asked me to start backing away for some reason, I started to do so while keeping my eyes on the town, at least up until it disappeared from sight entirely. I blinked in confusion.

That’s when I took a few steps forward and then a few steps back and blinked as the town appeared and disappeared. It continued to do so as I stepped forward and hopped backwards several times.

I took a seat when Pom told me to wait for them, apparently the Bug Types could somewhat see through what was going on here.

Eventually the wagon arrived next to me and Key-lull looked around at the air for a bit before taking a few steps forward.

“Hmph… then that explains it.” Grunted out Key-fall as he motioned the wagon forward, I hopped aboard and he walked forward. “They don’t need to affect our minds if they can make the town appear to be invisible with enough concentrated energy to change what we’re seeing visually from a certain distance away with a thin bubble of power, they are still doing the mental manipulations much closer to the town if the visual barrier doesn’t stop anyone from getting through it. Dodo must have seen through the psychic energies physically distorting the air to make it appear that there is nothing there… even to a Dark Type.”

“Okay, anyone else disturbed that Psychic Types can still have tricks that would fool our senses even if they can’t have an effect on our minds?” The leader of the funky hamsters stated.

“Didn’t fool our eyes nearly as much, the way the light bends around the area was quite off, also the differences in silhouettes and shadows is also fairly noticeable once you know what you’re looking for.” One of the scuba bugs with the bubble heads said while looking out the front of the wagon. “We’re not immune like a Dark Type, but we easily noticed the distortions in the air. Probably would have had some problems with psychic effects that make the town seem abandoned and not worth visiting personally.”

“We’re going to need to keep all of our senses and heads in gear apparently, Illusio might drive us all insane before we’re all through with this kingdom.” The dry delivery of your thoughts could use a little work Pom, yes I know it wasn’t supposed to be a joke but we kind of need more good cheer around here. “Get going Dodo, we’ll want to carefully park ourselves outside of town, then we’ll try to ask around for information… if anyone is even willing to give it.”

-Twenty minutes of slow approach later-

“So boring.” I grunted.

“Dolly, we’re literally in the territory of a mad god like entity that can attack us from half a continent away from inside a floating castle. He knew we were coming and would eventually become a problem for him. I still aim to be at least something of a thorn in his side even if we all know we can’t deal with him personally.” Pom hopped out of the wagon and I soon followed. “We’re being careful here for a reason. Okay everyone, set up, we’re leaving at least two or three Morpekos here. I don’t want any more stuff to be stolen from us, like our limited food supplies.”

“I’m pretty sure everyone here is less than comfortable with the idea of that happening. While we digimon don’t necessarily need food very often, I don’t want to know what Frizzle is like without her bread fix.” Sami stated as she popped out of Lumber Beaks Digivice. “So who’s going? I think we need more people at the wagon in case something goes wrong and we need to, excuse this phrase please, bug out. I’ve survived more action by having a cranked and ready vehicle waiting behind me, but not because it was ready to move, but more to the fact that it was heavily armored and able to tank a few attacks from an Ultimate Digimon.”

“Those who have some form of resistance like Pom and Dolly will be going at least, Shanty is getting half immunity from Dodo. I kind of want to go too.” The duck Picard was right that I was going, I wanted to explore this place a little bit after seeing it. “Would three Morpeko be enough to protect the wagon?”

“Yes, we’d need at least three to keep a protective field up against ambient psychic energy for you guys, but it won’t be too much of an issue to split us into teams of three.” The gentle sounding hamster leader stated, then they split up their team. I guess they only had foul mouths when they were angry. “We’ll stick here and wait for you to return, we’re here to just find information about what is going on in Illusio and will react accordingly. We’re not here to actively attack the Castle of Illusions or Gilgamesh, though we can understand your frustrations with the guy from what we’ve heard. We know a lot about frustration.”

“Right, so we’ll be taking half the Morepeko into town with us. I’ll be going since I’m generally good investigative stuff, Dolly can help with that.” You bet your snuggly form I can Pom! “I would like at least one Digimon to go with us to test a theory I have about something. So Sami, Canard, you’re up. There’s one thing I need to know, how many people can three Morpeko functionally cover?”

“As many as you need us to cover, range might be shorter, but three is enough to cover anywhere in town… provided we’re not in high end combat where we’re constantly needing to use Dark Type attacks.” With that we split off a group for an expedition into town. Enough to defend ourselves and retreat if they prove hostile.

Pom was immediately made the leader of this group and it rankled her to be made the leader, I would know as I could hear her mentally complaining about life. Like she wasn’t already the leader of Team Harmony.

Key-Tall was an immediate choice being a Dark Type, even if he tried to stay away from Dark Type or Ice Type moves. The guy still generated both types of energy far more naturally even if it was going unused in his moves.

Lit was coming too, he was my buddy and Bug Types were generally capable in a fight against Psychics.

I was coming, Pom and I could feel when the other is having our heads messed with and fend off the effects.

Smolder had to stay behind, she was affected by the psychic energy quite badly. By comparison Ocellus was given the careful go ahead to come along, though there was some worry about psychic energies possibly affecting changelings in strange ways. We kind of needed Ocellus’s ability to read people’s emotions, at least Pom thought so and wanted an idea about how the general emotions of the nearby town felt.

Shanty would stay with the wagon with Smolder and she argued about going with Pom, probably an attempt to stay near her and prevent her from doing the whole crystal malice sacrifice thing. Pom basically told her to get some exercise with Smolder or do something else while waiting, Favela decided to stick with Shanty and Smolder.

Dazzle, Shine and Mundo were left behind. Pom didn’t give a particular reason, but Mundo did point out he’s a bit of a liability in a fight with Psychic or Fairy Types and this kingdom had quite a few of those. Mundo also mentioned he have never would have gotten by the gaggle of Mr. Mime, but he would have still tried if it would help us in our endeavors.

Canned-Bard, Sami and Cleffa were coming. Pom was a bit iffy on letting Cleffa come, but she had proved herself more than a week ago when were about to be smashed with a meteor.

Ninja Question was coming along while his family member was sticking behind with the other Bug Types.

Afterwards we left the Bug Types to set up a defensive camp around the wagon while we moved out to investigate this magician place.

Charjabug decided to stay behind and was last heard asking Fleece questions about the places she’s been, thankfully Fleece didn’t do anything suspect around Pom other than getting an immediate crush on sight.

I guess it was just Poms magnetic personality for dogs, foxes and things like that.

“It’s kind of quiet… it feels like a lot of people here are sleeping.” Ocellus stated drawing our attention as we closed in on the buildings.

“Sleeping?” Asked Pom curiously as we approached the outskirts, the town seemed fairly simple and made out of brick and wood.

“About more than half the town feels like that.” Which was strange given it was still daytime out, we left pretty early and got through the pass easily enough… it wasn’t even close to lunch yet.

Even I’d be awake by this point. I would like to sleep in more, but Pom being awake wakes me up more often than not. I didn’t actually mind that one bit, even if I do miss my lazy days.

“Uh, Pom, look!” I had moved forward a bit in thought and then froze when I noticed something up with the town. There were a bunch of small brown and yellow… foxes I wanted to say, they were laying on porches, in hammocks and or just sleeping out in the sun while floating above the ground. Some were rotating in the air just like a rotisserie chicken.

Pom wandered up to one and in a shine of colorful energy it disappeared, making her blink curiously.

“I believe these are Abra, they sleep a lot and teleport all over the place randomly. We’ve confirmed that we have found Kadabraville at the very least, Abra’s are the prior form of a Kadabra and Alakazam.” Ninja Question didn’t seem perturbed that the thing just up and disappeared all of the sudden. “It’s how they practice their psychic powers. A lot of an Abra’s life is spent mostly asleep, honing their psychic powers by teleporting at least once an hour within a specific distance. Unless they know moves other than teleport, they are generally harmless as far as offensive psychic powers go. They get more active and awake when they turn into Kadabra. If half the village is made up of Abra, then we really don’t want to cause too much of a stir… um are you okay Pom?”

“Just… peachy…” Pom stated with flat half lidded eyes and covered in these Abra’s snuggling up against her in their sleep. I had only looked away for a second and now they were all over her. “Now if only I weren’t the world’s comfiest pillow for these guys.”

“Yeah, sorry about them, welcome to Kadabraville!” A bright cheerful voice followed and we all turned to the larger two spoon wielding Pokémon wearing a top hat and a tuxedo, he had a large mustache and was a much bigger version of all the Abra covering Pom. “I am the Magnificent ‘Mentalis’, magician extraordinaire! I see the Abra of Kadabraville have taken a liking to you and I’m an Alakazam!”

With a flick of his wrist right wrist he was holding a bouquet of roses out to Pom with a friendly smile, Pom took them in her one free hoof as Abra continued to teleport onto her.

“Wait did he just seriously say abra cadabra alakazam, then pull flowers out of nowhere?” Dude magicians could be cool, but this guy was given me some weird… if fun… vibes.

“That I did little D… feels like you like to do lots of ollies. So your name wouldn’t happen to be Dolly now would it?” Dude how did this Mental Licks guy know?! He chuckled audibly as he put up his spoons into pockets on his tuxedo and took a bow as he stood before us. “Oh don’t look so surprised, also it’s rather cute that you sometimes have a problem with remembering names. Cold reading isn’t too hard, also having a future or past sight of you introducing yourself to others doesn’t require me to do anything invasive in the slightest. Why it would be just poor form for a Psychic to enter a mind without permission! Too sad that it’s happening all the more around here lately what with King Gilgamesh ruining the lives and making it worryingly hard to know who to trust, how about I invite you and your friends to a show… it’s hard to get visitors what with that guy making it hard to travel around this kingdom.”

“We kind of want to talk about that…” Pom spoke up, still covered in little sleeping bipedal fox like guys.

“I kind of want a critique on my act, perhaps we could be of help to one another? I’ll give you three questions to start off with, then you let me do my act.” Taking off his top hat with his right three finger hand ending in claws and with a flick of his left he was suddenly holding a small black rod with a white tip. “Afterwards you can ask me whatever you want after you tell me what you think of it, I want an honest critique.”

“How are you doing that without using your psychic powers?” Wet Towel said after a moment while tilting his head and tapping a foot, the Sneezer was getting rather impatient with this guy.

“Now you see, that’s what makes me the Magnificent Mentalis. I don’t need my moves or powers, I’m doing things with sleight of hand and a bit little misdirection magic.” Mental Bliss apparently was good at this stuff, but I could tell he was using a little bit of power here and there. “Get that from your bond do you? Curious, but I believe your bond is as equally amazing as I am Dolly… possibly even more so considering how close you feel to your partner. Now children, please get off the nice white Wooloo like lady.”

Various bright spots of light erupted around Pom and the foxes disappear and allowed Pom to move yet she looked around when she noticed she was no long holding a bouquet. She looked up as she saw petals sprinkling around this Mental guy as he tapped his hat and the flowers fell out of it and then exploded into a rose colored cloak in a dazzling display of petals. The cloak quickly floated up and around Mental’s neck as his eyes glowed.

Mental slapped the top hat on his head and grinned at us as he struck a pose, before tapping his cape with his magic wand and changed its color from rose to black like his tuxedo.

“That’s actually… quite amazing... none of the Abra even touched the flowers, how did you…” It looked like Ocellus appreciated the act already as she started stomping her hooves, a common form of applause on Equus from what I know. “A time delayed setup perhaps?”

“Believe what you will, but you do have quite a sharp mind. I’d like to believe in my magician tricks, like I’d rather have an audience that wasn’t just skeptical, cynical or downtrodden Psychic Types. So… thank you, thank you, you’re far too kind my little bug like lass of an outsider. I always appreciate a little applause, but I hope I’m not barking up the wrong tree in that you’re here to do grand things to help us all.” Mental glanced at me and winked, I just glared at him. “Magicians also don’t readily reveal their secrets you know. If you can figure it out entirely, then props to you, as my intellect quotient is quite up there.”

“This is going to be a thing isn’t it?” Pom stated flatly. “Something really horrible is going on around here and you’re willing to help us… if we help you a little with being a stage magician.”

“Why yes my dear, you’ve hit the proverbial nail with a golem’s body as to hammer the nail all the way in with one blow, straight to the point even!” The guy should probably change his name from Mental to Flamboyant as he reached behind his back to pull out… wait, where did he even get that wooden board nail and a hammer? We all watched as he carefully smacked the nailed down into the middle of the wooden board with his hammer. I was wondering something else, where did that wand go? “First do me a small favor, make sure that this is in fact a nail hammered into a wooden board!”

“Really, I’d rather talk about the state of Illusio.” Pom tried, but Mental ignored it with a slight frown and continued to hold the board out to us.

Pom sighed loudly and then took the wooden board making Mental smile again, she checked it over pulled at the nail slightly, tapped it with a hoof and then glanced at Mental.

“Yes, things are quite dire around here milady, but I’m trying to liven up Kadabraville at least with some of my amazing performances!” He then stood tall and pointed his wand that was now suddenly in his left hand again out of nowhere. “Now pass the board back to me nail first.”

Holding out his right hand Pom pass it back to him with the nail facing him, with the wooden board held in his right hand he placed the blunt point of his magic wand against the wood and slid it along across the center of the wooden board in one solid fluid motion, making sure we couldn’t see the nail pointed at him.

The wand hadn’t hit anything as it swept out to the side after clearly crossing the center of the board.

“Oh my… it appears that the nail… is missing as much as your point!” Flipping the same board over there was now a piece of paper taped to the wooden board which said ‘humor me here’. “For want of a nail as it were.”

“Okay… I think I get it.” A wilting and lamenting Pom said as she quietly took the piece of paper and revealed… that there was no hole in the wood where the nail was hammered down. “We’ll watch your show.”

“Ooh, he’s good!” One of the Morpeko stated. “He’s not even using psychic powers or messing with your perception with said powers in the slightest.”

“Why of course not, psychic powers would make all of this far too easy. It’s not as easy to trick someone when you’re doing something right in front of them, if I were to use my powers for this then that would defeat the purpose of tricking your senses by brute forcing things. That is to say, I prefer finesse as a magician.” Huffed Mental as he crossed his arms and looked upset that it was even implied that he was using his natural given powers. He then quickly flicked his wand, in his left hand again, in a blur against the wooden board and suddenly, like that, the nail was there like it had never disappeared.

It didn’t even sound like he just nailed the nail into the wooden board, how did he just do that?

“That was but a taste from the Magnificent Mentalis!” He put the wooden board on the ground and swept his hat from his head while grinning at us, he took a bow before slapping the hat back on his head. We politely gave him some applause, he was actually pretty good. “Now you have three questions for a small show.”

“You’ll take any quite question literally, so I have to ask carefully.” There was a flat look in Pom’s eyes as Mental’s grin broadened and he nodded. Pom knew something and I wondered what that something was. She was feeling a variety of suspicions and I was picking up on it. “You just dropped us a hint with the nail and the board, an early warning even. A cleverly disguised euphemism, hidden in the form of a magic trick for one of your shows.”

“Quite perceptive.” Said the grinning brown and yellow magician fox with a nod to Pom, I noted he lacked a tail unlike all the Abra things facing in this direction while snoring softly.

Still kind of creepy that they were all somehow facing us and yet were still asleep.

“First question, what is going on in this region?” Pom asked as Mentalis took to floating in the air with his legs crossed.

“The main thing is that the last king was murdered, by quite the nasty grinning customer lucky enough to be born with legendary power no less. I’m quite sure you already know of him or you wouldn’t be here. That’s the main crux of things and the waste of your first question unless…” Mental looked Pom in the eyes, I didn’t feel a touch in our bond, but after a moment he nodded to himself as if Pom’s blank stare meant something. “No, I guess it wasn’t quite a waste then.”

“Second question, what is the Psychic Type kingdom generally or normally like?” Why was Pom asking about that? Why not ask for an idea of how to defeat Bilge-a-mess?

“Hmph… that’s a good one. In general this kingdom has the highest population of Psychic Types around, wouldn’t be the Psychic Type kingdom otherwise without psychics and the amount of ambient psychic energy around here. We also have the decidedly lowest population of any kingdom overall, make of that what you will, but you’re already possibly guessing as to the crisis going on here and it might not be as simple as you might think. Our kingdom is actually ‘of two realms’, physical and mental. We’re much stronger in the latter while we’re sleeping. You need a lot of mental strength to survive around here.” Mental sighed audibly as he took to sitting on the ground and stroking at the left portion of his rather large mustache. “Generally Pyschic Types are slow breeders, we like our solitude in caves or around the various mountain tops in the central region to train our powers and to eke out a quiet living, ‘most of the time’. Maybe we visit some of our neighbors and play some mentally stimulating games. Quite frankly, Psychic Types are all into mentally stimulating activities of strategy or things that provoke interesting forms of thought like poetry. We enjoy our arts and crafts around here, helps train psychic powers to make a pot without touching the mud to shape it. The outer ring region is where the north and south paths lead around the entirety of Illusio, it is mostly for travelers to pass on through. The ‘rise of ambient uncontrolled psychic energy’ is becoming quite a problem for said travelers.”

Taking a moment breathe softly and think over something, Mental continued.

“Most of the interesting stuff that happens in this region happens around the psychic crystals and magnetic fields within the inner forests and mountains region that make up the entirety of this regions center in the kingdom. As you can guess, finding anything here without a little psychic help would be a bit hard. Dark Type help would be pretty good and will get you quite far… but you’d never get enough of them through the teleporters required that would take you to where you ‘possibly’ want to be. The teleporters run on psychic energy after all, making it all but almost impossible for Dark Types to infiltrate a ‘special city’ normally… oh, by the by, quite a few Psychic Types around here also like ballooning if you were curious.” Why would these guys be into ballooning Mental? I know I was certainly interested in skydiving, especially after gaining the ability to glide. “Of course if I were to tell you where the most general things that happen around here as far as civilization goes, then I would say find a way into Cerebrum City to learn more and from there find someone crazy enough to try and get you to the castle if that’s your end goal. ‘Skies the limit’ and all that, now on to your last question.”

“We’re here strictly for informational purposes at the moment.” That was not a lie, we were being paid to do just that, but Pom obviously wanted to do far more if the glint in her eyes was anything to go by.

Pom looked off into the forested mountains beyond the other end of the town and then slowly brought her gaze back to Mental.

“Do you need help setting up a stage?” Asked Pom brightly with an amount of humor and a small smile, everyone flopped over in disbelief or gained an incredulous look on their faces.

“Here I thought you would just ditch after the first two questions, quite bright to ask how things generally are and ‘not’ how they are now given I already told you things were dire.” When Mental stated this, it confused us a little. “It would be quite appreciated if you and some other fellows among you could help me…. you wouldn’t happen to need a guide in this region perchance?”

“I believe this will be an interesting relationship… so when are you going to introduce us to the rebels?” There wasn’t a flinch when Pom said that so blatantly and I glanced at Mental, there was a bit of tightening around Mental’s eyes and his grin was now showing teeth.

“I already answered three questions quite thoroughly madam, I believe I now have a performance to put on if you want me to answer that one in particular. Though I’m quite sure I have no idea what you are talking about at all.” Mental nodded to himself and crossed his arms. “I will at least tell you that should a group such as that exist, then they would be the reason this town in particular hasn’t be desecrated by that ‘grinning monster’ yet.”

“Wait… what?!” Canard stated while looking at Mental in a new light as did everyone with us who finally cottoned on to what Pom just said.

“I don’t know ‘exactly’ what’s going on, but I think have a decent idea or clue now.” That was Pom’s way of telling the rest of us she had learned something, she passed by me heading back towards the wagon. “Come on Dolly, everyone, we’ll prepare for lunch and a show.”

Don’t know what that was all about, but it sounded like Pom said we’d eventually be meeting with the rebels in Illusio to talk about something. Pom has something of a personal bias against Gilded Crest guy, she certainly didn’t want us to take a side in the Ignis thing until it boiled over into the other kingdoms, but this was understandably different circumstance given what was stolen from her.

I’d be more than a little mad too if someone stole the Digivice that once belonged to Dormarch.

-An hour later, during lunch, Kadabraville outskirts, Ocellus-

“So there’s a flipside mental world to Illusio?” The show had been quite extravagant for such a small stage. I was looking at the piece of wood that had the nail put into it halfway and was examining the hole that was going completely through the wooden board closely. I was still wondering how Mr. Mentalis did it.

“I suggest we be careful my friends, the opponent we seek to fight can wipe out this kingdom on quite a flimsy whim.” Mentalis kind of had the same feeling as Trixie, except he put on quite an entertaining show with less flair and more focused on mind bending tricks of the eyes. He was really good at misdirection. “It wouldn’t be hard for that guy to try and drag you into the mental world, he could crush your mind in the palm of one of his hands with sheer force of will. If not just crush your entire body outright in reality with a massive boulder.”

“So who leads the rebels?” Pom finally asked.

“A Fighting and Psychic Type called a Gallade from the Ralts line, he goes by ‘Psychic Edge’ Kenshin. He has been quite distraught since the death of the prior king who was one of his best friends.” The Magnificent Mentalis answered. “Now he seeks to bring down or at least kick the usurper as far away from the throne as possible. He hasn’t had luck because Gilgamesh is nigh impossible to get near.”

“What are the chances that my friend Abby is in Cerebrum City right now? She’s an Absol and we got separated when she began detecting a huge disaster in this region.” It seems Fleer was like any other canine, very much enamored with Pom’s presence. She had the wherewithal to stop staring and ask about her friend at the very least, so she was a pretty good friend.

“There are good odds of it, Kenshin has been making contact with any Dark Types entering the kingdom that would feasibly aid in taking down Gilgamesh.” There was some disquiet as Mentalis looked over all of us. “As for the disaster, we’re all aware its coming too as it has been foreseen by several Xatu seers among other things. We’ve been trying to find help in actively preventing it. So far we presume it’s the dropping of Cerebrum City or actively crashing the Castle of Illusion, either one makes for a fine hostage for Gilgamesh who has the power to devastate all of Illusio whenever he feels like it.”

“Still doesn’t answer all of what’s going on though, what specifically is Gilgamesh’s plan aside from acting as king for the kingdom currently?” Turning to Pom, I could see she was rubbing her chin and looking at the map with quite a bit of concern.

We’re on the western edge of the inner zone of Illusio, forests, mountains, rising ambient energy levels that can really mess with the mind unless assisted by Dark Types. We’ve really got our work cut out for us this time, not to mention there’s the whole mental world thing we were recently told about. It wasn’t the exact same thing as sleeping, but it was close enough that one could functionally enter it by sleeping.

“That’s something we’ve yet to discover, we would still like to know what he’s doing exactly. It’s going to cause devastation at the very least if it’s drawing in Absols who are quite sensitive to world changing disasters whether they are orchestrated or naturally occurring.” The Magnificent Mentalis took his hat off his head. “I just want to be a stage magician, but I can’t be one if my home is utterly destroyed. We’ll try to send a message in the morning via your Ninjask companion to Chrysalia with this information. I’ll try to gather a few Kadabra around Kadabraville and will make a unit to support you with whatever you help you might need.”

A lot to be worried about and a lot of chances for Pom to sacrifice herself, this was not going to be pretty if it turns into another Saint Canard, especially not when Pom has a reason to actively go after Gilgamesh even if she can’t beat him.

-???, later that night, Dolly-

Ah the moon, there’s always just something about it that tickles at the wild side of my heart. I sat on a rock at a riverside staring up at the stars and wondering if my brother is exploring them, he at least got to mars.

I tried to look around for Pom after a good howl, but she didn’t join me for some reason… okay something was very wrong with this picture. Also there wasn’t a river around here.

Wait… I went to sleep, I now know I did. So why would I be dreaming about this area in general when I could be dreaming about my family?

Unless…

I turned around.

“Oh good, you noticed. I thought this would be far too easy.” I turned around and spotted a grinning Guild-a-fest looking at me and softly clapping his hands together slowly. “You know… I don’t think I’ve quite made myself clear enough to that nuisance with the mystical wool. I really don’t want her around bothering my plans, even if she can’t ever truly defeat me, I know that she’ll still at least become bothersome like a certain ‘Metapod’ I know about in Chrysalia. So I might as well take something else of importance to her to drive home a point… that would be you.”

With flick of his left hand the rock I was sitting on disappeared and the world faded away to blackness and I hit a floor belly first in a vast black expanse that shouldn’t have one.

I narrowed my eyes at this guy and started growling, oh he’d definitely started messing with the wrong dog! I got onto my hind legs and readied my board and bone, as my helmet appeared on my head.

“It was mildly difficult to find your dreams, but not impossible. The Dark Types can only do so much, since they won’t be able to protect you from me.” The guys grin widened as I readied my skateboard and with a flick of his thumb on his right hand, he made a loud snapping sound. “Now… I wonder how well you can mentally defend that bond of yours by yourself, when you have little power to resist.”

All of my gear disappeared off of me in a second before I went to jump.

I flopped onto my face having been thrown off balance and glared up at him in defiance as I quickly got up onto my paws, he was making quite a poor decision here and I was going to make him feel it when I eventually figured out how to do so!

“So please, do struggle. It might even mildly amuse me.” Oh we’ll see about that Build-a-pest!

Author's Note

Been hemming and hawing on this one.

322. Mind-graine.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, evening, Silver Stream-

“Good, we can even begin training now… I hope you don’t mind pain, being emotionally traumatized and physical soreness.” Echoed a voice in my head from earlier this morning as I laid here on the ground in pain.

Yep I was definitely feeling all of that stuff.

“First time going through a Sekhet training exercise? You poor thing, at least she wasn’t doing the involuntary flying thing on you… yet.” Said an Ornithian with an arm and a leg in a cast, long black feathers hanging down her back to a little beyond her waist and a slightly dented beak. “Sekhet has told me you might need my assistance with learning how to fire kitchen sinks at people.”

“Jacky… did she do that to you too?” I asked dazedly as the three Ornithians wouldn’t stop dancing around one another.

“Huh, this? No. I’m actually having a pretty good week, no spine related injuries and only two broken bones that aren’t my shoulders, ribs or knees.” Jacky ‘The Blackcap’ Chickadee smiled as she bent down, she hefted me up with her good arm and proceeded to carry me to the infamous local restaurant. She did so without complaint or even a hint of agony, which was quite amazing given her state. “While I love my dear little sweetie Gavin, he should really watch it where he leaves those building block toys of his or else I’m going to end up in the cruise liner again. So… how is my little brother Gallus treating you? You’re not being too forward with him now are you? Speaking of, I really want to practice my shovel speech for when Gavin gets older.”

“What’s a shovel speech?” I ask tiredly.

“It’ll just be a story, one about buried treasure where no ‘body’ is ever going to be found.” Somehow there was something quite intimidating in the way Jacky said that as she sat me down at a table. “So how was that?”

“Should I be feeling really terrified of someone who has an arm and a leg in a cast?” I said with a hint of terror.

“Given my skills, pirate crew and the fact that I’m really quite hard to kill, you should be.” Jacky said with glint in her eye and a grin on her beak. “If you need to break up with him, inform three of the following people: Kuril, Blade, Jaded, Fizzle, Maries, Velvet and myself before doing so. You will also need to write a five page essay on why. Any form of taking advantage of my little griffon brother will result in an instant La Perm family tribunal and full ‘Turbo Tartarus Petty Kitty Unleaded’ based retribution. If you fail to make your case, the retribution will be carried out via Kurilian La Perm.”

“Don’t you mean Jaded La Perm?” I asked quietly.

“Where do you think Jaded gets her most annoying habits from and why mom doesn’t care that she’s a clearly brazen thief at times or that I’m a pirate? As a reminder, mommy Kuril can semi-permanently curse you into being an immortal jellyfish we can put in an aquarium.” Jacky chuckled at me as I gulped audibly.

-Pokémon World, Ransei Region, Chrysalia, several days ago, Dolly-

“So why haven’t you been working on new techniques Pom?” She looked at me and ran a hoof over my head affectionately before hugging me and nuzzling one of my ears. I returned the affectionate gestures and favor.

“Dolly, there will come a time when you will understand what we’ve been doing here is important, for these past several days I’ve had us reinforcing our foundations. In essence we’re making sure the building doesn’t collapse into a sinkhole like what will happen when your brother Diesel digs out all of the support structures of your home back in Camden Town. The basics are always important to remember, as flashy moves aren’t going to save your life as much knowing when to dodge or how defend yourself in a given situation when you don’t have a piece of equipment or any magic to spare on hoof.” Aside from the ‘on hoof’ thing, Pom always made a lot of sense with her lessons. It’s apparently how Shanty got so good at creating her own fighting style. Also Pom was the one to talk, she wasn’t going to run out of magic to wield as long as she had something to give. Not exactly a good thing for her health though. “You know… at some point you’re going to have to find other ways to grow without me holding your paw or ‘leash’. You have natural evasive skills, ability to think outside the box and most of all I know you’ll be capable of coming up with your own thing. Dolly, you’ll be able to keep the girls ‘mostly’ safe when something happens to me.”

“It won’t happen if we can help it Pom!” I retorted with a vigor and a burning heat in my chest.

“That’s likely what will cause it to happen in the first place Dolly…” Okay, yeah, that... Pom was actually right as I can actually see that happening, what with all the things that happened to us up to this point and before I met her. I felt her hug me tightly. “You were always capable of great things long before you met me and you need to start branching out on your own like Shanty has. You have notable limitations on your magic and your body can only get so much stronger as you grow into full adulthood. Whatever you may come to lack in a physical or magical capacity, you can make up for in refined skill, quick thinking and maybe even a bit of luck. You say Dalmatians can do anything. I haven’t seen the ‘anything’ part yet, but you can certainly do a lot already and I’m hoping to live long enough to see more.”

Oh trust me Pom, you’ll see more from me.

-Present, night, sleeping/mental realm-

Here I was without anything on me, not even my three favorite neck band collars, ‘his’ device or that rocking pink scarf. Just about the only pink or feminine thing I like really.

It’s moments like this that made me realize that while I’m generally dangerous, I’m still kind of weak without a full house in my paw ready to go. The less said about dogs actually playing poker, the better, some dogs could be sore losers.

“Gates of Babylon!” Shouted Shill-for-less as portals opened up around me in a circle.

This was a dream right, how bad could I get hurt really?

…

There’s Pom’s existence, this guy’s belief that something will come of attacking me in a dream and the existence of those horror movies where people are killed in their sleep by a fear eating clown and nightmare claw guy fighting over who can torture children better than the other, those were things to take into account in this situation. Chances were actually pretty good this psycho type guy was going to kill me in my sleep if I didn’t take this seriously at all.

I was halfway into blinking when I saw a green glow, looking up I saw another one of those triangles floating above me. I still didn’t know what was up with those, but it usually meant something good to aim for or at least get an idea from.

The triangle made my instincts feel like they were on fire, as if the blackness of the surrounding void wasn’t memorable enough for some reason.

The guy didn’t seem to notice the green triangle, then again Pom hadn’t noticed it either. Maybe this was just something only I could see?

Moving before weapons started to come flying at me from all sides, I leapt straight up, felt the world shift and then flipped upside down and I ended up falling onto an invisible floor. Funny, I was expecting a massive stained glass circle to fight on for some reason.

That Gargamels-a-mess guy was frowning at me upside down and more portals opened up aiming more high speed weapons at me after the ones now above me had missed passing above my head harmlessly.

The many weapons slowly slid out of the portals all around and then started blasting straight for me once they were far enough out of them.

I acted completely calm and cool in this situation, no panicking whatsoever.

“Oh my dog, oh my dog, oh my dog!” I shouted frantically as I hopped, skipped, rolled, ran and even bounced off of some of the weapon in midflight, some even circled around to come back at me again making everything much more hectic.

I’m not even going to question the homing weapons in a dream. That’s when I saw a handle of an axe glowing with a green triangle as it spun towards me horizontally. The distinct impression of momentum control popped into my head as I looked at the handle of the axe.

I inhaled sharply and all the weapons coming at me slowed down to half speed, once the axe was close enough I grabbed it by the handle and exhaled. Didn’t know how Dancing Flame actually worked or how to do it, Pom never taught me this, I’m just going with dream logic to copy its effects and might be leaning into my flow-motion ability mentally.

Doing the exact kind of thing that Pom generally does, I was soon whirling whirlwind of destruction with an axe knocking back and away every weapon that came at me with the axe or with the dusty winds it was kicking up as I boosted the spinning momentum to a ridiculous degree.

I eventually took to standing on one leg and angled the axe upward to let it go flying at Pills-for-rest.

He calmly waved his hand the axe disappeared into a portal and I had leap to the left as the axe buried itself into the less than existent ground next to me. My head was definitely starting to hurt when that was considered a normal thought to be having at this particular moment.

“Seriously dude, how many weapons do you have to throw at a given problem?!” I continued to run around and nearly took a sword to the face, I turned and ran face first into a wall that I’m fairly certain wasn’t there a second ago.

After yelping and falling on my butt holding onto my nose, I found out that yes, I could in fact feel…

“Agh!” Another yelp ripped from my throat as knife slice into my right hind leg at the thigh, that I didn’t wake up pretty much spelled out this was exactly like those movies. Didn’t think things like this could actually happen.

“Know your place mongrel, for you will die when I kill you!” That seemed a little redun…

A large number of spears cut my thoughts off as I dodge in place trying not to move as much as possible, I blinked when even ‘kills-the-best’ saw me barely squeezing myself between all the spears. I reached down with a barely free paw, trying to avoid cutting myself on the many spear blades around me, and grabbed up the first loose weapon I could get a hold of to defend myself and… it was not even one of those puncturing curved cane sword things.

“Did you just honestly shoot a crowbar at me in the middle of all of that?” I asked as I started using the crowbar to pry myself free of the spears. “I thought it was all ancient weird weapon stuff.”

“It’s actually for barring crows of course!” Insert him shooting actual arrows shaped like crows at me. “I know Freeman isn’t going to be complaining about it!”

“I don’t know why I’m even bothering trying to talk to you when you’re trying to kill me!” I screeched at him as I barely managed to move enough spears out of the way to throw myself to the… blackness that was solidified below me in a downwards direction to avoid eating crow. Okay, ow, my head, this was seriously aggravating. “Wait… were you just trying to kill me with a visual pun?!”

“Why yes, I’m trying to commit a ‘murder’ here after all.” Darn you Fillets-the-flesh, you just had to make me walk into that one! “Please commit to die.”

He followed that up by firing hundreds of small things at me.

I dodged out to the side of several exploding cracks struck the ground around where I was, explosively sending shards slamming into me and I was trying to cancel out all momentum as soon as it hit me. Still got hurt, but at least I wasn’t be perforated… I’ve been good about avoiding that so far.

I looked and saw what he was shooting at me.

“Oh come on, the weird kind of dice my brother Dylan uses for his Poodle Wolf games?!” This was just getting me angry, before I knew I was being pummeled with shattering bits of dice painfully as I tried to avoid the heavy barrage.

-Reality, Pom-

I blinked awake, something was wrong and someone was strangling my bond to Dolly, in fact I heard Dolly yelping a lot and was in pain! Were we under attack?

Oh no…

With a single sniff of the air I smelled a nasty copper scent, I could feel some blood around the inside of the dark tent under my hoof as I stood up. I quickly lit a lamp to see that Dolly had a nasty cut on her right hind leg and her body was quickly becoming covered in nasty bruises.

There was also a faint energy wrapping around her head. I quickly rolled her over and moved my right hoof to check her a bit closer and hold her still as she squirmed, it resembled a slashing wound… one caused by a knife.

The tent wasn’t perforated though, so I’m quite sure that the reason why we all weren’t being killed in our sleep was because the Morpeko actively prevented Gilgamesh from getting a visual lock on us. So he instead chose to target one of us while we slept.

I used my wool to stitch Dolly’s leg shut and after I finished tying it off, I detached it from myself. That’s the first time I’ve used my wool for someone else’s injuries, good to know that I can do that in a pinch.

I didn’t see a knife and that Dolly was quickly worsening, she was under attack. Didn’t really need to even guess who was doing the attacking.

“Dolly, wake up!” She wouldn’t or more to the point she simply couldn’t do just that.

I was immediately up and running for Kadabraville with Dolly glued to my back, it was to prevent her from hurting herself as she thrashed about. The Morpeko had said previously they can only stop passive psychic energy. To deal with active psychic energy, I was going to need a professional Psychic Type to help.

It was Gilgamesh doing this, thankfully I don’t think he could multitask very well or else he would have changed targets when I started calling for help.

“Help, help, someone help me, Magnificent Mentalis, anyone!” It didn’t take long before Mr. Mentalis appeared before me in a flash, this proved that the Abra or Kadabra had the ability to contact him even if they were currently sleeping.

“What is it, what’s the… oh…” I was lifted into the air and suddenly I found myself back at the camp site in my tent, I quickly pulled and held a struggling Dolly as several small cuts and abrasions opened up on her face and body. “He’s possibly trying to cut off your bond to Dolly, might even be trying to take it for himself or barring those first two options… he’s actually actively trying to outright kill her as she sleeps. That she’s still alive means she’s putting up something of a struggle. She will not wake up as long as he has her mind trapped in the mental realm.”

“What can we do to help her?” I asked as the rest of the camp was up and looking about for the danger.

“I could try… ‘we’ could try to help you get to her in the mental realm.” Mentalis changed his wording as multiple Abra arrived, along with several Kadabra which had large fluffy tails. Kadabra actually walked using their legs compared to Abra who sleep and teleported around. Kadabras didn’t need as much sleep, but they still slept quite a bit and their tails apparently made excellent pillows for back support. “At the very least we can open a pathway to her through your bond.”

“Then do whatever it takes to get me in there, I don’t want to lose her!” I quickly pulled Dolly to my chest and hugged her. “Don’t worry Dolly, I’m here. Just hold on a little longer.”

-Sleeping/Mental Realm, Dolly-

“Ugh…” Okay this guy was getting on my last nerves as I scrabbled to my paws after being blasted over and switched to focusing on dodge rolling off to the side.

Technically Hills-a-thresh was getting at me through my nerves, I mean those were a thing inside my head right? Who honestly tries to kill someone with mental inflatable penguin bombs that make rubber ducky squeaky noises whenever they bounce?!

Also I think I’ve lost complete track of all the things he was trying to feasibly hit me with, he had a lot of junk coming out of those portals. It’s like he’s trying to kill me in the stupidest way possible as a challenge to himself.

“Oh rubber doomies, you’re the ones, to make the blast times, bangs of fun~.” Okay, that’s it, I need to go on the offensive against Gives-a-test.

“I am not dying to inflatable penguins dude, I’d like to see you avoid this, Aero!” If he can hurt me in my dream… then what is there to stop me from simply hurting him back?

-Castle of Illusion, many miles away, throne room, Gilgamesh-

A blast of wind rammed me into the stone roof head first, the blow even almost woke me up.

My glowing eyes opened faintly as I now had a large knot on my head, I of course growled as I closed my eyes.

I had maintained connection. Had I let it go of my assault, I would have avoided something most ghost types would have simply phased through easily.

I would not let this mutt get the best of me, she only had so much ammo after all.

-Sleeping/Mental Realm, Dolly-

Okay, seriously thought that would get him to leave me alone… two Aeros or an Aerora. How to make them count.

“How many more times can you do that exactly?” Knew that would be a problem already Builds-a-chest. I mean I have no way to regain energy from impacts. “Gates of Babylon.”

“Can you not babble on dude, please?” I groaned out as I prepare myself to continue the fight, however I felt something off and looked to my right hind leg. The wound was sealed shut with a bit of… white string… Pom was here for me, she was right next to me in reality.

I just had to hold out for her to come aid me?

Okay, can do!

All I needed was a target to use my wind on, since I’m dreaming, I might as well dream big.

“Aerora!” My target was not to put it defensively around me, my target wasn’t Ills-the-pest who immediately teleported out of the way and would have avoided it. The guy was even ready for it this time, I’m glad that I just faked him out bought me a few more seconds least.

Gorilla-breast narrowed his eyes at me and I grinned slightly while waggling my brows. He sent a wall of knives flying at me.

I flattened myself against the ground avoiding knives that flew overhead, then pushed off the ground with a boosted momentum and flipped in the air as several knives rained down at me at an angle.

I had to roll to the left as soon as I hit the floor, the floor I was previously on before I switched to the… okay ow… getting a real headache now. What part of me was a rational thinker before all of this? Also the fact that he was firing weapons at me the entire time, means I should probably start taking advantage of that as a dome surrounded me.

Knives started to rain down around me from all directions and I was getting scratched and cut up by the many narrow misses, but apparently Pom had my injuries covered in reality. It was pretty bad up until I open my mouth and grabbed a knife by the handle with a green glowing triangle and used it to deflect a knife away from my right eye.

I twisted under the next few knives and then let the knife in my teeth fly with a momentum boost.

“Aero!” The knife was blasted towards Quill-of-death and it didn’t hit him directly, it grazed his left cheek flying by like a laser beam with how fast it was moving.

The number of portals double immediately and my eyes widened, apparently this guy doesn’t like me fighting back.

All kinds of stuff started to rain down around me, to the point he was going to bury me alive under his weapons. I quickly backflip, hopped to the left and right while continuing to back away until I hit a wall, but then I thought better of it.

What wall could there possibly be here other than what either of us might think there is, this is a black void!

I continued moving backwards as if there wasn’t a wall there, apparently there wasn’t a wall if I didn’t think there was. If there was it’d be right in front of…

Hundreds of weapons stopped coming at me hitting the invisible wall that suddenly appeared in front of me.

Okay that was useful to know, I mean I did mimic the Dancing Flame despite Pom not teaching me how to use it by pretending to do it. A few portals opened up in a circle with spears poking out of them near the guy pointed towards the center of the circle.

“Huh?” A portal appeared beneath me and then gravity asserted itself as I felt towards the middle of the sphere of inwards pointing spears vertically. I found myself suspended in the air in the middle of all of them. “I’m in trouble!”

The spears pulled back slightly and then thrust forward at me from all sides, I twisted and used my gliding ability to twist by a spear as he slashed me across the back as I managed to escape being skewered.

“Agh…” Okay none of this was going in my favor and I only had so much energy to keep dodging, wait why would I be out of energy if I’m asleep?

I felt myself become reinvigorated and realized that Minds-a-bless was messing with my head, because of course he was why wouldn’t he, but it was having an effect on me. He wanted me to think I’m weak or tiring, so therefore I reflected that in how I was acting.

Quick think of something random, a location anything to make it harder for Shrill-I-guess!

The black void disappeared and I was whisked away from the… huh… with a blink I was somewhere else.

I was standing in a crossing, a big screen at one portion of it, lots of empty space and I was surrounded by a city. I think I saw this place on television a few times. Never been here personally… so that would explain why there wasn’t anything but this same streets repeating into the distance in all directions.

Okay, I gave myself a little… nope he found me.

“Really? You actually think you can run from me when I’m already inside your head?” Yeah, would greatly appreciate it if you got out of it Will-punish. “Cute that you started to figure out how things work, but.”

With a flick of his left hand the world wobbled a bit… and the grin on his face turned to a frown.

“Hm… a slight issue then... though I do wonder, where could a dog like you have seen the Shibuya Crossing? You don’t have memories of this place.” Then the world flickered and there were now streets of varying differences.

“No, but you do apparently… when did you ever end up going there? Don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone like you visiting Berlin.” I commented dryly. “Would have heard of a portal happy ghost-a-fest.”

“That would be Tokyo Japan you vexing cur!” More portals, does this guy ever even think with them? He’s just throwing stuff at me for the last… actually… I don’t know how time worked when you’re asleep. “Also I’m from a world similar to yours… thankfully you didn’t exist in that world.”

“Thankfully mine didn’t have you in it.” I pointed my left index paw digit at him, but he wasn’t paying me much attention.

“Hmph, they are trying to save you, a waste of effort really.” The guy just went back to grinning broadly at me, seriously that grin is going to haunt my… oh… right… yeah… this is a nightmare. “How silly of me to be so easily distracted by the dregs of society.”

Swords, spears, canes, bolas and more were suddenly coming at me and I started running up a streetlight pole as it was shredded beneath me.

-Reality, Ocellus-

“What’s taking so long?” I could feel Gilgamesh’s presence even if he wasn’t here.

“We can’t rush this, Gilgamesh has got a stranglehold on her and we’re nowhere near as powerful as he is.” The Magnificent Mentalis stated as he was getting help from his various kin. “We just need a little more time and then we’ll get him to stop pinching their bond at least.”

“She not be having that much time.” We were going to get some sleep once this crisis was over Shanty, in fact I think I know a dreamcatcher spell for this occasion.

Only it wouldn’t work with an already invaded dream, the spell was made to preventing a suspecting nightmare incursion. Probably should have thought of it sooner if this was going to be a huge problem with trying to get any sleep at all.

Aside from her nose and mouth, Pom had Dolly encased in her wool in a protective hug and some of that wool was stained red.

-Sleeping/Mental Realm, Dolly-

Even putting a building between me and him wasn’t helping and I was getting quite stressed as I ran up the pillar and started running on the underside of the overpass.

I kicked off as an anvil slammed upwards into the stone I was running along. I was having a problem shaking this guy as I rolled and then started running along the street, a street that wasn’t filled with cars a second ago.

A car honked as it tried to run me down, I went into a slide and got between the wheels as it pass over my head and continued on down the road. I rolled to the right as several spears slammed down with force that sent me flying through a glass window cutting me up a bit.

“Oh what are you going to throw at me next a semi?!” I screamed back at the hovering monster as he slowly gave chase. I froze when I heard the horns of several semi-trucks and looked up wide eyed as multiple of them came falling at me from the sky.

Flow-motion don’t fail me now!

I leapt for the nearest pole and kicked at the ground several times to speed up my momentum and boosted it to the best of my ability, then I released myself to launch clear of the explosion that sent me tumbling until I came to a stop on my side in the center of the crossing.

Sitting up, slightly dazed, I sent a glance behind me at the fiery wreckage as Bills-a-yes hovered forward with an ever present grin.

A wave of clubs and sickles came flying at me, my eyes darted through the mass of oncoming weapons and then I spotted it. A bright green glow, didn’t even need to see the three corners, I leapt for the brown club and brought my front to paws up in front of me defensively.

The blow hurt my front legs a lot, but I absorbed the impact and managed to stay upright as I landed on my hind legs skidding across the ground. I grit my teeth and stayed standing to absorb it all and turn it into magical energy.

“Agh… uhn… I think.. I think, I’m done taking attacks from you!” Grunting as I readied myself to keep going. "It's time I start hitting you back and hard!"

“Oh, so you’re no longer running? Let me make that a certainty.” Several burning wreckages impacted the buildings around me and the edges of the crossing were all on fire. “There, now you don’t have the capacity to run even if you felt like it.”

“If I had my board, I’d be so kicking what passes for your butt with it right now.” I grumbled, I’ve barely managed to hits on this guy and I’m dirty, roughed up and hurting badly. Still I could feel Pom coming for me. “I’ll just have to settle for this idea instead, Aerora!”

With a flicker Relish-this teleported, but was a little concerned when he didn’t see wind erupting at where he was. In fact her frowned when he saw me grinning.

No the wind wasn’t being used offensively on him or swirling defensively around me, instead… I was using it on myself and the winds swirled inward on me and I started absorbing them. The power of the wind was seeping into my body until it became lighter, I held up my right paw pad to the sky and it started glowing with power and I could feel my eyes lighting up.

“Ever heard of a series of movies called Air Bud?” I stood on my hind legs, almost floating as air flowed around me. Honestly this guy’s name was already too complicated for me to remember correctly, like I actually wanted to in the first place. He doesn’t need more acknowledgment when he was going to be history. “Well your about to get some air dog, buddy.”

“Please do make good on that threat, it might actually be more entertaining than you have been thus far, especially if all you can manage is two hits to the one hundred and fifty seven I’ve landed on you.” Hey, most of those hits were probably from the exploding dice Guybrush-fetch! “I’m barely even trying to murder you and I’m succeeding quite splendidly at coming close to achieving that goal, the least you could do is try a little harder to make it more mildly interesting. I've never heard of a dog that thought they could ever 'successfully' beat a functional god, much less the king of heroes, king of kings and king of conquerors though those titles are mine because the others are currently dead or are not here. I'm the best like no one ever was, the very first even.”

“Some hero you're claiming to be, because I’ve never heard of you and you certainly don't act like it.” My statement was met with a curious glance, I took a forward stance ready to throw down with him with my front paws glowing with power.

“Wait until you become a story yourself, I believe you’ll be quite the cautionary tale to not mess with your betters.” He spread his arms wide and portals started to appear around us, his grin never left his face. “So many kings, so many forgotten things, but the world will tremble… because I will own everything of worth in it. You... you're not worth anything of note, not even me fighting at my best.”

"Tell that to my friends and family Girugamesshu, I bet my bond with Pom is worth more than anything you've ever had!" I growled back and readied myself to start getting back at Mesh-a-gil guy!

"Oh? Well let's see your so called bond come through for you then." Gelded-eclair made a gesture, hundreds of weapons started to appear around me in their portals.

It's about time I got this guy out of my head forcefully, I couldn't just wait for Pom any longer.

Author's Note

I think Dolly trying to say his name was the closest she got to remembering it correctly.

323. Their power has yet been shown.

Author's Note

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

It is not the same as Breath of the Wild, lots of fun with physics.

Do I need to give any more information as to what actually has me distracted lately?

323. Their power has yet been shown.

-???, Oleander-

“ROAD-ROLLER DA!” Shouted the vampire menace known as Dio, I had taken a real beating from the guy even if I could cancel out his time freeze move, everyone else still got froze except for Fred and me.

“Oh, come on, now that’s just plain ridiculous!” There wasn’t a road roller or ‘steam roller’ within several hundred miles of this fight and he just happened to manifest one. Also where was ‘a Jojo’ when you needed them? This is like the other times we had to deal with Dio and his time stretching shenanigans. Apparently he figured out dimensional hopping, but that just caused “Jojo’s” to appear wherever he ends up going. “Meeting Dio again is not my idea of a good day…”

“VOLTAIC CHAINS!” That’s when the Azure Striker ‘Gunvolt’ showed up and stopped the road roller in place, much to Dio’s consternation, I had honestly thought Dio had managed to somehow kill Gunvolt. The wolf with the thick blue and white fur grinned as his braid whipped about. “Apparently my ‘Prevasion’ trumps time stopping, it’s trumped a lot of things really!”

“Since you have the Steam Roller held in place… HIS FACE IS MINE TO RUIN, NOBODY TRIES TO STEAL OLLIE FROM ME.” Yeah Fred was mad and it was kind of hot to seem him looking so worried about me.

“Seriously what kind of ‘stand’ are you!” Dio was living with a misconception that Fred was a stand, understandable considering he’s always protecting my back when he’s out and about.

“Hopefully the kind that just won’t die, it’s going to take more than you to put down the toughest pony from the Planet Pandora!” A badly bloodied, diamond bodied, Buttina Stalliona marched up to the current fight slowly loading shells into her two magical shotguns at the same time.

She was limping quite a bit, but she had a massive grin on her face. There were a lot of destroyed machines left in her wake and she was running on pure unleaded adrenaline. As a creature of Pandora and a quasi-vault hunter, nothing would truly stop Butt from enjoying a challenging fight.

“So nice to see you again Gunvolt, was kind of looking forward to finding a different dog though… but it’s nice to have some back up.” I popped a bone in my neck and my key-blade appeared near me ready to continue the bloody brawl.

“I have no idea what’s going on anymore, but evil vampire dude looks to be chewing off more than he can possibly take, count me in!” Sakuraba Neku was apparently game too, he flicked up several badges or pins into the air and he caught them in his right hand. His hand started glowing with power as he got ready for an incredible fight.

“Then join the gang, we have cupcakes!” Buttina stated crazily as she fired a cascade of elements as the thing called a ‘stand’ that protected Dio Brando, vampire demon hellion, from the neighing destruction that was a Boomacorn blast. This was soon followed by its lover the Unicornsplosion firing cutesy exploding unicorn projectiles everywhere that bounced in Dio’s general direction.

Don’t ask why Stalliona’s shotguns were married, I wasn’t questioning anything tangentially related to Pandora anymore after the whole ‘Skag for Pom’ incident occurred.

Some would say a gun was useless in a ‘stand’ fight, then they probably haven’t met ‘The Diamond Bodied Diva’ herself, Butt Stallion.

Buttina, one of the best friends I could have ever met, was going to give Dio even more trouble than trying to kidnap me to be his dark bride was worth. If Fred doesn’t get to him first.

It was quite flattering though to see Fred so protective of me as he put me in his chest and went to town with me feeding him all the love and strength he would ever need.

The fight would have a few rough patches, but I think we could do it without anyone dying, the conditions we would be in afterwards would be quite suspect though.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei, Illusio, Sleeping/Mental Realm, Mental Shibuya Crossing, Dolly-

Whether I knew it or not, I felt like I was mimicking someone with this stance as I closed my eyes and waited for the incoming weapons, I needed to time this correctly.

I was hurting, battered, beaten and much like Pom on the back paw, but I was going to show this guy that you don’t mess with my bond to my partner! Yes, I could feel him trying to keep Pom out and the bond opening wider and wider by a second.

It was only a matter of time before Pom came for me, let’s see how long I can hold this bastard in place so she can get in some hits of her own. I hope this power is going to work the way I think it will.

I could feel the wind of a hundreds of weapons raining down around me, I slashed my right paw outwards and then… I opened my eyes.

-Dolly? (Winds of change) Vs. Gilgamesh (slightly genocidal hero)-

Hundreds of weapons were sent flying back by the blade of wind Dolly held in her paw as she shot forward spinning. Nothing had changed about her outward appearance, but the wind flowed with her movements

“Brain save, flow rave, psycho’s in for a hot kick~.” Dolly lashed her right hind leg out as she spun and Gilgamesh surprisingly deflected the blade of air with a sword he pulled from a portal with a grin. He continued to block as Dolly lashed out at him with several more spinning blows with blades of wind erupting with each strike from every paw. Dolly dropped to the ground, then hopped backwards out of the way of several spears exploding against the ground. “Recollect and reset, showing you what you’re going to get~!”

“Missed me, B-lister, it’s not over cow~.” Gilgamesh sang back as he struck out with the sword and Dolly flickered back twisting through the air to avoid multiple weapons that fired at her, it looked like her body was made of wind with how she deftly avoid them with the spinning dodge. “Let’s reframe, I’m THE king, don’t you know anything~?”

Dolly twisted through a series of weapons and they seemingly passed through her while she was in the dodging motion as if she were made of the wind itself.

“Old take, cold fake, face needs a hot brick, twisted mister, bold with bolstering~.” Followed up a spinning Dolly who was creating a whirlwind to deflect the high speed weapon being launched at her. She started firing bullets of wind from both paws as she hovered about, not staying in place as she dodged and continued to attempt to blast Gilgamesh as he actively wielded the average looking sword to deflect the bullets of air with incredibly suspicious grace. She did a ‘twisting dodge’ to avoid several axes that came spinning at her from all direction. “Kick it up, I’m the pup, step outside and see the world, your effects are defects, now take a blast to the moon~!”

Holding her left paw forward Dolly gripped it with her right and the charge of energy building up in it blasted outwards like a shotgun that turned into a massive spike of energy.

Gilgamesh just simply blocked the attack, but it shredded the three shields he summoned through the portals to take the hit for him. His grin was actually widening, as if he somehow knew the exact amount of power required to block Dolly’s wind based energy shotgun from hitting him.

“Lame save, brain cave, doggy on a hot streak, redirect, reset, showing I’m the best bet~.” As he sang Gilgamesh was launching an assault of boxes, cars, magazines, bicycles, swords, axes, canes and basically whatever else he could launch from his portal. Unfortunately for him he couldn’t drag real world things into Dolly’s brain. He watched as Dolly danced, duck, dived and did twisting dodges all over the place to avoid his constant assault. He barely had to move an inch as he kept Dolly busy with but the barest of thoughts. “Wistful, wishes, it’s not over now, psychic beam, you’re a teen, need I more mental drains~?”

A fountain of pink blasts of energy rained down on Dolly as she dodged and one managed to blast her onto her side, she was already badly roughed up and all Gilgamesh needed was one good direct hit. Dolly in turn would need a lot of hits before Gilgamesh went down.

“Bold take, could break, face needs a hard kick, misty twister, bold with bolstering~.” Dolly took another impact from a blunt object with her left paw and threw on a wind shield around herself as she continued to dodge hectically and tried to close in to strike Gilgamesh, failing that she fired several wind bullets from both paws. The damage they dealt when they did hit was negligible, but it was adding up over time. “Kick it up, fight on pup, step inside and show the world this kings attacks don’t have effects, take a howl to the moon~!”

Gilgamesh seeing what Dolly was doing when she blocked blunt attacks, immediately switched all the weapons he was launching to be sharp or far too large for Dolly to get energy from. She was still getting energy from the sharp weapons, but was getting injured from having to time her blocks on the blunter portions of the weapons launched at her.

When Dolly howled the world seemed to shift to nighttime and slowly Gilgamesh blinked and saw a lot of people walking dogs through the crossing.

“Morning daze, canine queens, on their way to be the best, to the rest~” Looking to see a Dolly singing, she had a leash on was styled to look like a show dog. “Honest, I once had that dream, belle of society becoming a shell in my community~.”

Dolly disappeared into the crowd with the biped walking her.

“Corner it or spin it, the sound flows, it followed me until I was brought home, dragged by the power of dreams, that power has yet been shown~!” That’s when Gilgamesh felt something as he was blasted in to a nearby building with an echoing cry.

“Buster wolf!” Yet Pom wasn’t around to do the attack and that had confused Gilgamesh, who heard her shouting it before he took a powerful blow to the forehead before being hit with an explosion that sent him through some glass.

He was back a second later by coming through a portal.

“Morning days, nightmare dreams, bring out the best, from the rest~.” Dolly stated this time walking by without a leash among a lot of other dogs on leashes and with a friendly four legged figure slowly following behind against the movements of the crowds. They looked to be talking amiably to one another as the dog preferred her freedom to follow her heart instead of becoming a show dog. “Honest, I once had a dream, strengths in society, the bells rang with our unity~.”

Gilgamesh focused and saw where Dolly was actually sitting, in the exact center of the crossing staring him down without a single hint of movement. He launched several cars at her from all angles yet they didn’t hit her as they all deflected or swirled around the dog as something whipped up the powerful winds around her.

“Cornered, I’ll spin it, the sound flows, followed until we’re home, dragged by the power of dreams, our power has yet been shown~!” Screamed Dolly whose heart shined as a sphere of green came into existence around her and it left Pom in her place with a glowing forehead, shining the same color that Dolly’s heart did, as she came out of the green bubble.

Pom launched herself at Gilgamesh and pulled her right hoof back and prepared to thrust it forward a green flash and Dolly swapped into place. Pom didn’t need to dodge the spear that would have taken her in the chest, as Dolly kicked off it and was suddenly swapped with Pom again in a flash of green and bashed Gilgamesh’s head through a cement wall with her left hoof before she kicked off and landed in the center of the crossing.

Pom looking around at the crossing, the flaming vehicles and the fact that Dolly had been trapped here, she glared as an unamused Gilgamesh floated back out. He looked a little pissed, but was curious.

“How?” Gilgamesh asked. “The Kadabra and Alakazam aren’t strong enough to get you in here on their own strength!”

“Tell that to my bond with Dolly, now you’ve got both of us to deal with!” Pom was actually showing a wild fury as her wool shifted to that of a wolf and multiple spiritual wolves popped up around her and she disappeared into the mass of shifting canines.

“What the… hmm… so there is more to your bond than first meets the eye…” Gilgamesh started creating more portals. “Might even be a match for me if you can effectively figure out how to do this in the waking world.”

“I’m going to figure out what you’re trying to do and I will stop you.” Pom said quietly, but it was heard because all the canines said it at the exact same time, further muddling where she was in relation to Gilgamesh.

“Do you really want to stop me though?” Gilgamesh smiles as he prepared hundreds of weapons.

“Hmph…” Pom narrowed her eyes, readied her hooves and prepared to start springing around. She was now part of the fight and quite willing to protect Dolly from further injury with her own body. There’s a lot she would sacrifice for others.

The signal that the battle was to continue was a semi-truck coming out of the building at mach speed, yet Pom not only managed to roll to the side and dodge it, she kicked off onto the side of the vehicles cargo and used that to slam a rising left hind hoof into Gilgamesh’s chin before being blasted backwards by a powerful psychic attack.

Pom, upside down, caught herself on her front hooves and flipped to be on all fours facing Gilgamesh.

“Brain wave, song rave, psycho took a high kick, recollect and select, show me your best bet~.” Pom dodged every attack with incredible speed, in fact it was hard for Gilgamesh to even hit her or know where she is at any given moment with the crowd of doppelganger spirit wolves confusing him until he was hit by a club thrown that had some of Dolly’s blood on it.

Somewhere in the midst of all the dodging she was doing, Pom had thrown that club at a speed Gilgamesh couldn’t even detect if he wanted to remain focused on where Pom actually was as she ran around leaving blurs and after images of herself.

“Friction, blisters, it’s quite over now~.” Pom slapped her front two hooves together as she crossing her front legs and all the canines ignited alongside her ignited herself and were all now mentally on fire. “Psycho brain, you’re so keen, you need more bandied brains.”

“Burn break, cold take, freaks got a hard kick~.” Gilgamesh attempted to fire blasts of winds from his numerous portals, but it wouldn’t put out the flames nor did it seem to hit Pom despite being an area attack.

“Mr. Twisted, hoist with bolstering~.” Pom suddenly appeared in the air above with Dolly in her hooves as she spun and launched the flaming Dalmatian at Gilgamesh. “Here’s a pup, burn it up, step to the side, sure this world has its defects, but we can still bark to the moon~!”

Gilgamesh was hit with a spiral flaming tornado bullet in the shape of Dolly he tried to retaliate and skewer the dog with several spears popping from portals in a circle around Dolly as she kicked off.

Gilgamesh received a nasty burn from where Dolly slammed into him, but Gilgamesh was taking less damage than his opponents were since he had a larger stake in the mental world even if Pom’s inclusions put him on the back hand… he didn’t have any feet to speak of to be on the back foot.

With a flicker of a green sphere around both of them, Pom and Dolly switched places and Pom managed to avoid the spears without with a fast movement of a single hoof to swing out of the encircling spear trap that Dolly wouldn’t have been able to pull off as the spears slammed inward on her.

“Same wave, brain wave, psycho will need a hard kick~” Both Pom and Dolly sang as they dodged and swapped places in flashes of green spheres, coming out of said spheres in different orientations or movements. Usually they swap when the other was more capable of avoiding injury as Gilgamesh continued to turn up the heat on attacking the both of them, they were dodging everything he could throw at them and Gilgamesh even shot a few kitchen sinks and toilets at them for good measure. “Setup and select, show us your well met~!”

It was beginning to come close to actually frustrating Gilgamesh who came here to kill the dog. Pom’s sudden inclusion was making it much harder than how simple it was thought to be from the start. The spirit wolves were also protecting Dolly’s movements as both of them were now in the same place instead of just one, he couldn’t focus one down as the other would come at him.

“Rhythmic twisters, it’s not over now, psychic beam, dodging things, I need more plans it seems~.” Gilgamesh grumbled as his smile turned to a frown and he was throwing whatever he could at them, Psychic attacks, Hyperspace Hole portals launching things and they were still managing to dodge everything. It almost seemed like they weren’t making nearly as much of an effort to do so as he was trying to even hit them now, Dolly was much slower than Pom being injured, but she could still move with ridiculous grace. It boggled Gilgamesh’s mind somewhat as he angled the spears and fired a literal rain of them them at the two. “Stick it up, take it up, step aside and see the world is doomed to defects, why bow to that moon~?”

Then again, Gilgamesh considered that they probably didn’t know about Moon Cell quite yet, not even what it was or what it was currently doing. Wouldn’t that be a nice surprise for them? He idly wondered if they could really stop the power of a world’s entire history slamming down on them to eradicate this poor world he’s come to love. Which is why he was doing all of this, these guys needed to toughen up if at least some of them are to survive, better some of the strongest of the strong lived than none at all.

That’s a good reason for attempting a genocidal rampage to strengthen this world right? At least Gilgamesh currently thought so, survival of the fittest was something he played with quite a few times.

The swarm of spirit wolves seemed to randomly explode into some object to block them from hitting Pom or Dolly defensively, but it also doubled as an attack when said objects came flying right back at Gilgamesh who silently opened a portal and redirected the objects before they could hit him.

“There’s not just two at play here… there’s actually three of them… but where’s the third one?” Gilgamesh grumbled to himself as he watched the chaos of the battlefield with some mild delight, but it was incredible that neither of the two he was aiming at would just drop dead already. “Are they controlling the wolves?”

They might actually make Gilgamesh actually take this fight a little more seriously, given he had yet to pull out his most powerful weapons, so far the Gates of Babylon were mostly adequate for his needs. They were almost good enough for him to be serious even if they weren’t heroic spirits in the traditional sense.

It made Gilgamesh wonder why Cu Chulainn wasn’t coming after him, the guy knew he was here in Illusio at least. What was more important than him, Gilgamesh, as to have the literal mutt of a mystical spear warrior so distracted from stopping his current schemes? It was curious, but he was too busy watched a green moon shaped cocoon in Chrysalia to really give Cu Chulainn any attention. The spear fisted mutt apparently wasn’t interested in coming at him for some reason and who was Gilgamesh to guess as to why that was.

The singing started up again and Gilgamesh noted that it was giving his opponents powers, yet he didn’t know how to stop the music or even knew where it was coming from.

“Morning days, endless dreams, we’re on our way at the behest, of the rest~.” Multiple Pom’s sang as they calmly walked along the crosswalks and all the stuff Gilgamesh was throwing at her and Dolly just went through them or was hitting nothing. Several of the Pom’s transformed into random sheep of similar nature. “Honest, I once had a dream, to be part of a society, one with a shell of a unity~.”

Gilgamesh blinked as the entire crosswalk was filled with various sheep of different shapes and sizes, Pom’s people apparently because these sheep seemed off in some way, more intelligent. They were using their own memories as defensive tools, it was sad to say that it was working. He was getting glimpses of the worlds these two came from and their bond was getting even stronger to the point even he couldn’t disrupt or squeeze them off from one another.

“Exiled, I spent it, the sound grows, follows us to our home, dragged by the power of dreams, our power has yet been shown~!” Gilgamesh had been so distracted by the image of Pom being sent away from home to live in a harsh place, with a lot of weirdly friendly canines, he hadn’t the foggiest idea as to how both Pom and Dolly had erupted from one of his own portals at him from behind.

They both slammed into Gilgamesh and smashed him down into the center of the devastated crossing before separating off to either side of him as they pushed off.

Using his psychic powers to douse the flames on his present mental representation, he was starting to feel actual pain in his physical body from that last one.

Gilgamesh pulled his face out of the street grumbling from the mental pain and exhaustion, his head was hurting quite a bit now. They might actually defeat him mentally, which would actually be something of a feat to do, where in reality they would be suffering from burn wounds and loss of stamina by now, that wasn’t quite the case here in the mental realm and they obviously knew it given they were now sharing strength.

Dolly couldn’t functionally die without going through all of Pom’s strength while they were connected like this and Gilgamesh, for all his power, couldn’t actually see a way to break a bond that even gods would have major problems snapping apart… if they even could, since he couldn’t break their bond.

“Golden rays, Chrysomallus dreams, finding way to their eternal rest, their test~.” Pom grew a pair of golden wings and Gilgamesh seemed to be terrified of the idea of seeing them as Pom’s form started to glow of a golden color, she was actually actively taking control of the mental realm and wresting it from Gilgamesh’s grasp. “Honest, masters of their dream, part of a society, bound to any community~.”

Gilgamesh could see exactly why Moon Cell would direly want Pom to be dead, if for no other reason than the anti-magic properties she has alone. He could certainly see what else would have the Moon Cell terrified that she’d come after it, because now he was actually wary of having earned Pom’s ire too.

“We haven’t seen it, the sound flows, follows until we’re home, dragged by the power of dreams… that power is yet unknown~!” Pom sang as she hovered into the air glistening a golden color. Dolly echoed the last words as the entire world froze and suddenly the streets were no longer full of fire, destruction and projectiles flying every which way.

It seem everything had fixed itself in the mere blink of an eye, no long was there any danger except what Pom and Dolly represented as peace reigned over the mental worlds as three minds united.

Gilgamesh was still iffy on what the third mind exactly was doing or what it even was, because it only seemed to exist in the bond between these two.

“The power is yet unknown~!” As the two screamed this, Gilgamesh tried to back out of the dream only to find… HE COULDN’T.

Gilgamesh paled slightly and tried to regain his twisted grin as sweat start spilling off of his form, sure he couldn’t die in the dream unlike the ones he had been attack, but he was going to be in a world of hurt now.

A literal form of ‘world of hurt’ no less, for when he tried to create a portal to get away… he couldn’t do that either.

Any chance of denying the mental reality as to what was about to happen was lost… as Pom just took complete control of the mental world and canceled out his ability to teleport, open portals or even defend himself mentally. The only thing Gilgamesh could do was look into Pom’s mind and see the vast oceans of thought that not even a super computer could follow in this moment.

“Ready to fly?” Pom asked calmly as a golden sphere engulfed her and with a flap of her wings she was airborned.

“Then fly!” Dolly shouted eagerly, as a golden sphere engulfed her next.

“Brain wave, same wave, psycho gets the high flick, reflect, select, show him he’s best met~!” Chains of wind erupted from all around Gilgamesh and bound him in the air in the middle of the crossing, they were going through and around him holding him place as they slashed him up with the chains coming from multiple portals.

Dolly slide forward and low on her hind legs with her paws emitting energy as if she was riding a skateboard until they connected with one of the chains and then she started grinding along them to slam into Gilgamesh she enters a portal and comes out of another one going even faster.

While she was doing that Pom teleported around and started launching Thousand Spears attacks and flinging balls of fired at Gilgamesh.

Dolly even got in a few wind blade slashes from her paw as she flashed by him at an insane speed.

“Twisters, blisters, it’s all over now, psycho brain, you’re ‘too’ tame, we need more handy flames~…” The music of the ‘heart song’ was just about up as the both Pom and Dolly wailed on Gilgamesh with fire, wind and multiple explosions when they timed their attacks perfectly to create a combined concerto of carnage with him at the epicenter of it incapable of avoiding it.

“Now what’s going on in your head?” Pom gripped Gilgamesh by the chest and slammed her forehead against his and forcefully ground her forehead against his until she got a glimpse of Gilgamesh’s plans, she floated back and away with a single flap from her large golden wings from Gilgamesh’s chained up form with a look of horror on her face.

Gilgamesh grinned weakly as Pom shared the news with Dolly who looked equally horrified.

“Well now you know some of it, heh heh heh, see you when you get to the castle in Illusio… I would say it’s been fun, but you’ve actually surprised me quite a bit this night.” Now if only Gilgamesh knew how to get out of here without those two landing a finishing blow on his beleaguered mind and putting him out commission in the mental realms for a while. “Good job of that by the way, gave me some actual trouble, let’s see how you’ll do against me in reality where I’m far more powerful than you are.”

This misstep would cost him dearly and Himura ‘Psychic Edge’ Kenshin was undoubtedly going to capitalize on it. He already had plans for that anyway, but this was still quite a setback.

Pom took a stance facing away from him and was about to go into a Buster Wolf when a third voice shocked both Pom and Dolly.

“Are you two okay…” The third entity asked quietly before Pom could voice the start of her attack. “Leave my mother and big sister alone… Buster Wolf: Searching Hunter!”

-Illusio, Castle of Illusion, throne room, Gilgamesh-

I felt three large holes ripped into my chest physically, that attack actually had more of an effect than any other and then an explosion of unknown origin occurred.

I was blasted backwards through my throne and into the stone wall where I was buried and would be stuck for the next three hours with a bleeding wound that for some reason wasn’t coagulating or scabbing up and was refusing to shut or scar.

I had to force the damaging wound shut with my psychic powers.

There was something in that attack that prevented recovering from wounds, it was like a noble phantasm had gone off in my face and I didn’t even see what had hit me. I would still survive the attack of course, it would take a lot more than that to kill the greatness that was Gilgamesh, but still… the injury was haunting as much as the purpose behind it.

My body was weakened quite badly from whatever that being was that was trapped within the strength of the bond between those two.

It was something that would refuse to tear or snap, the bond being made practically unbreakable to the point that something beyond death had resurged from it for a scant few seconds to give him a clear warning to never do that again.

A strength I would do well to not underestimate twice if they could all beat me together mentally.

A fully awakened Chrysomallus was quite a worrying thing to see in the mental realm, thankfully it seemed that sheep didn’t have her wings or true fully unlocked ability in the waking world. I have erred greatly in earning the ire of a ‘conceptually powered sacrificial sheep’.

Now who was insane enough to ever let an entire intelligent race of them come into existence? Much less breed?!

-Equus, a few days into the future, Meadow Hills, Queen Novo (Lambkin form)-

“Achoo!” I rubbed my nose and continued to show my daughter around the mostly peaceful lambkin lands.

Thankfully my sneeze wasn’t interpreted as anything threatening by the surrounding locals who became a bit shifty, but eventually calmed down.

I also made sure to not say several words I knew that were quite triggering for Lambkin and it was quite hard when there were many things that would definitely set off a lambkin’s outrageous amount of what many would call paranoia, if one weren’t in the know that they were actually right about a lot of things.

I had already asked that Skystar let me do the talking if we needed anything on this trip, because Lambkins were quite skittish around Lambkins they’ve never met before.

“Excuse me, what was your name miss?” A lambkin asked and I gave the first answer that came to mind.

“Posey Idon, Poseidon for short.” After a moment of being closely scrutinized by the lambkin they shrugged and continued on their way.

“Huh, that’s a nice name, almost sounds like the mother of lambkin kind for some reason.” Yikes, lambkin were quite more astute than I previously though.

Must be all the seer blood in them giving them hints, we should be a bit more careful from now on.

-???-

A shadowing Abyssinian everyone would know the name of because of the unnatural green hair, who was on a nearby roof, narrowed her eyes at Posey Idon and the pearl transformation necklace.

She started to silently follow the two out place seeming lambkin using the ‘passive sustained power’ of the ninja mask of the dark blue ninja suit.

One would think the bright green back length hair poking out of the suit would make the Abyssinian less stealthy, but magical side effects of stealth masks and all that.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei, present, Outskirts of Kadabraville, Pom-

With a gasp I woke up and quickly uncovered Dolly’s head from my wool as I looked down at her, she looked back up at me with wide eyes after gasping herself and waking up from what would have been a deadly nightmare.

I had taken quite a few hits, but my wool had automatically sealed any of my injuries. I smiled a little, now I had not only automatic armor, but I could heal from piercing injuries in my sleep… not exactly something I want to be doing often though.

No, bad Pom, my mind was getting very off track with barely any sleep and it almost being morning.

We were both sweating and surrounded by our worried friends and Dolly’s injuries were quite horrible as I dug her out of my wool with my hooves.

Dolly continued to weakly look at me with a sense of hope and I knew what she was about to ask.

Even I felt that last attack, the burning raw power in it alone really let Gilgamesh have it.

“Dormarch…” Dolly said with a tail that could barely wag, she was suffering incarnate and looked like it despite her mood being as bright, if not brighter, than it has been over the last few weeks.

She was in a lot of pain and yet she still had the energy to get excited.

“Dolly… we both felt him die… but I’m willing to believe he’s somehow still with us in spirit. Which I would totally be okay with, especially if there was more we could do.” I turned to Mentalis and stated. “I have an idea as to what Gilgamesh is up to, we need to kill him quickly!”

“Kill? That’s…” Quite understandable that you’d be upset Ocellus, but in this case Gilgamesh needed to die and soon. “Seems like a bit of a leap for you Pom.”

Yeah, because I had an idea of what he was going to do. He actually kinds of wanted us to kill him too, for he wasn’t going to stop and there was nothing to convince him to do so. What he wanted was rather simple, for Pokémon world to be strong enough for the oncoming glimpses of an apocalypse. I don’t think he was going to be the cause of it either, but something else drove him to these extremes.

Gilgamesh almost seemed to be pure evil, but in the right context… he’d be a hero, a rather horrifying one no less.

He said fighting him in reality would be harder, well I certainly believed him, it was going to take whatever we could get to bring him down and we had to or else terrible things were about to happen and Gilgamesh was currently building up to it.

At least we just bought ourselves some time to get to Cerebrum City and from there to the Castle of Illusion the place where the current King of Illusio lives.

I tried to stand up and fell over, much to Dolly’s worry as she couldn’t even get up with her injuries.

Darn it, that’s right, I sacrificed my body to physical exhaustion in the mental realm… I need to be more careful about that.

“Get us to Cerebrum, quickly… I’m… going to be asleep for a while…” I conked out immediately.

-Dolly-

Something was up with Pom, what did she do to herself to be incapable of standing. Ugh, too tired to think, I need some actual sleep.

I dragged myself over to Pom, cuddled up to her and fell back to an actual restful sleep, everything hurts so much I was glad I was too ‘dog-on tired’ to really stay awake for long.

Dormarch, if you can hear my thoughts, please find a way to come back to us.

I felt a small warm pulse in my chest.

Information required? What in the...? Nope sleeping, worry about that later.

324. Just Outside The Door…

Author's Note

How many versions of 'Twister' did 'The World Ends With You' exactly need?

Also yes, still galivanting around Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It is really distracting and I've barely scratched the surface of it. It'll be weeks before I actually do something productive again.

Like I've ever done anything productive before...

324. Just Outside The Door…

-Equus, Hoofington Aquarium, Anubis-

“I really need to talk to the La Perm family about how they deal with highly annoying people… that aren’t them.” I lamented as I stared at a tank filled with numerous immortal jellyfish donated from Airship Mauled’s aquarium, one that I knew for certain didn’t exist. “Ugh, this is not how you deal with a problem guys! Though it is cute and rather creative that they got away with this thus far before I felt something off… I’m definitely bringing this up at our next therapy session.”

-???, Buttina-

“So… wait, let me get this straight. One of the top floor room is actually a trash compactor, there’s rooms that can functionally change into museums with live versions of the actual subjects including velociraptors, there’s an ice skating rink on one of the floors, the cafeteria doesn’t serve actual food and what food they do pretend to serve is basically amounts to love potion poison that you absolutely need to cure or else the effect is semi-permanent to the point you’ll end up marrying a cactus or the first thing you become attracted to, the nineteenth floor is quantum entangled mess of both existing and not, there’s camping grounds one of the floors…” I decided to stop and take a breath. “Who designed this place?! The bathrooms are all over the place in hard to get to corners you have to parkour to and out of, the staircases lead into walls in many places, there’s a gondola canal in the middle of the building, one of the floors is producing water despite there not being a method for it to feasibly do so, there’s a floor full of shark tanks for a completely nonsensical reason, there’s the farm full of cows on the third floor, why the only thing that makes sense in this thirty floor mess of a place is the first floor being reception and most of the stuff is on the ceiling in there in particular! What even is this place?!”

“A school apparently, one that was built on its side… which explains the name ‘Wayside’ at least. It was meant to be built horizontally. Someone made a huge goof somewhere, possibly even deliberate given the vertical build is not completely flat… doesn’t even begin to explain how they managed to quantum entangle one of the floors with mundane methods though.” Well Oleander wanted to do something calmer than action packed battles, so we found a weird spot to stop for a small vacation. Apparently our choice of vacation spots was the weirdest school on this particular world. “One of the substitute teachers here was also classified as a witch, or something like one, that could turn people into any kind of fruit, apples in particular, to eat. Apparently they were accidentally eaten by one of the staff members after being turned into fruit themselves. Also you missed the fact that the entire school is currently being propped up by a waterproof paper crane.”

“This place seems fun, I’M WILLING TO TRY THE INEDIBLE FOOD OLLIE!” Of course Fred was interested, this place was designed to be weird.

“At least make sure it’s safe to eat before actually putting it in your mouth Fred, then again nothing has actually killed you at this rate and you swallowed a massive amount of toxic waste to save my life that one time.” It was a little concerning that Oleander was still going to marry Fred, but to each their own.

Their relationship was at least solid, even if one of them was a demon in a fight… and the other one is Fred. That was why we were even here, we were trying to avoid fighting for the time being and have a nice relaxing day.

This Wayside place shouldn’t be too chaotic right? We were just visiting and weren’t going to actively take part in the school activities, never needed school before and don’t need it now. Besides schools on Pandora involves too many chainsaws, lobotomies and far too much dubious consent to perform sketchy medical practices on others.

Also something about accidental zombies I can’t quite remember, but it was a Pandora thing and we’re all aware that many things on Pandora were barely sane at the best of times.

-Pokémon World, Ransei, Illusio, Dream/Mental Realm, Pom-

“Explain.” I said succinctly as soon as I had some control of my faculties to realize that I had fallen back to sleep, except this time Gilgamesh wasn’t assaulting Dolly or me.

“Dormarch!” Dolly slammed into Dormarch and was hugging him viciously, he didn’t seem to be particularly open to returning the affection given his three tail were sitting flat and lifelessly.

“… First off, I am dead, my body died or at least something has happened to it to the point that is unrecoverable and my bond to you snapped. So, yes, I am still ‘functionally’ dead as far as definition for being alive is a bit eschewed from the biological sense of the word. The virus did what it was supposed to, so yes, you did feel me basically ‘die’ as far as a being made of information can do so.” I’m guessing there’s a ‘but’ in this or we wouldn’t be having this conversation Dormarch. “I didn’t exactly help the process with what I did to myself. I did do something to preserve what was left of me and… I’m fairly sorry that you even have to know I’m here in your head in the state I’m currently in. It’d be in the same realm of someone thoughtlessly desecrating their own grave before putting themselves in it.”

“Big sister!” A second Dormarch slammed into Dolly and started hugging her furiously with three tails wagging wildly and affectionately. This Dormarch was livelier and more expressive, yet he didn’t seem to have much going on upstairs other than showing affection.

“The end result of what I did is that I’m basically for all intents and purposes missing half of myself and cannot function in anything other than a possibly advisory role mother.” I looked between the two Dormarch’s we were seeing here, one was sitting and being plain emotionless and the other was nothing but emotion and snuggling up to Dolly affectionately as much as she had with the Dormarch I was addressing. “As you can see the two parts of me I managed to save when I basically broke apart… well they were arguably the most or logically more important parts of me. A digimon’s soul is made of four parts, the all-encompassing core of the soul that keeps everything cohesive, the mind that stores thinking processes, intelligence and memories, the body which allows interaction with ones surroundings and the heart which is where all my purest emotions are held. I would say I’m a shell of my former self, but my ‘shell’ is exactly the problem here, as in its missing entirely.”

“Extrapolate for me then, and again explain, what did you exactly do to yourself Dormarch?” It was concerning to see two of you in our heads.

“Well the Khan Industries virus was ravaging my body, it was somewhat delayed by the bits of Saurian computer data I used as a firewall from getting directly into my core and what passes for my brain came up with… right from a world where computers aren’t that much of a thing yet. In other words, I translated some information into a different language and managed to slow down the virus long enough by confusing it with having problems reading said language to do the things that I did. Unfortunately, I had to eventually give the virus a complete understanding of the alien language so it would effectively wipe out the Saurian computers to save everyone I cared about. At the end, when I had a few minutes left to live, I realized there was something the virus couldn’t effectively get to or touch upon in the time I had left. I set my body up to perform one last action as I was about to perish, I performed a ‘Search Hunter’ and using that move, I split off two specific parts of myself to travel down the bonds connecting the three of us. Said bonds effectively cut off behind my pieces when my body was taken, that was the part of me you felt dying.” The Dormarch next to me continued to be emotionless husk compared to the one Dolly was being affectionate with, Dolly certainly didn’t seem to mind the amounts of snuggling going on over there. “The two pieces I broke off of myself, I of course sent them to Dolly and you. One piece went to your head, that piece is what you are looking at right now which is the entirety of ‘my mind’ and I must say that you’re head has some very good information retention better than some super computers even with how efficiently it runs. I can seriously understand all of your paranoia at least, but you are much stronger than that weirdly and highly unnatural fear of marmalade you have. The other piece obviously went to Dolly’s chest, which is where my heart resides and why there is another me present. My heart is reinforcing the feelings of all the happier emotions we are having at the moment to avoid outright depression. My digital souls ‘shell’ and ‘body’ pieces are just gone, if not outright destroyed. I’m in no condition that I could even remotely use them at the moment even if we could find it to restore me to actually being quote unquote ‘alive’ as you would think of me. So yes, I’m functionally dead aside from being quite literally stuck in the bond between you and Dolly to have some form of cohesion. I can barely keep said cohesion between my heart and mind to even talk to you in this manner.”

“Wait, if I had broken my bond with Dolly…” I was sorely tempted to do it once or twice when given the open opportunity, I’m not going to be the one to break bonds between us at least.

“Let’s just say we wouldn’t be having this conversation and anything left of me might have slipped into a permanently dormant state, I’ve been trying to do something about that when I’ve felt something off with the bond once or twice but I can’t functionally do anything. Gilgamesh attacking Dolly did wake me up though, especially when you started synchronizing with each other through the bond to an absurd degree.” Dormarch’s mind said dully. “When you’re bond with Dolly grew strong enough, it allowed me to temporarily combine my mind and heart to manifest in a limited combat capacity in the link between your minds… basically you were synchronized enough for me to call out to my other part and join our half a soul together long enough to perform at least one decent attack and that was quite exhausting let me tell you. My heart was quite angry with that Gilgamesh for hurting Dolly, wish I could feel what the other piece of me does and I do somewhat, but it’s incredibly muted.”

“So now that you’re awake you can…” I watched as both Dormarch’s shook their heads.

“Just know I won’t be able to manifest a new empty ‘soul core’ for me to inhabit, so I am quite stuck in this desecrated state as something like a ghost. At least I’ve not become a ‘ghost’ digimon of the ruinous data variety known as the ‘skull’ prefix variant lines. I require a digital soul core to have my body, mind and heart all in one place. The core I left behind with my body would certainly fit if it still existed and could be recovered, even if I could get a core it wouldn’t be functional without requisite body data attached and would basically almost be the same state of existence, just outside of you and far more vulnerable. The likelihood of you finding an empty digital soul core and requisite body that has no mind of its own or even a heart are basically not likely to happen within your life span and mixing data from soul cores could cause contamination of memories and or feelings. I’d rather that not happen as I would cease to be myself permanently should I try to take over a living digimon, I’d likely become something else entirely than what I am, which is half of your son located in two separate bodies through a tenuous connection.”

“I’m so glad you’re both still together, even in troubled times!” Heart Dormarch’s stated as he slammed into my mental interpretation of self, wow this has all the hallmarks of becoming some serious mental issues if I didn’t know any better.

I might be horrifyingly becoming a Chrysomallus in my mind, but I’m still the same lambkin as ever… so far. While I wouldn’t mind growing golden wings, even if it sounds excruciatingly painful, I really don’t want the major downsides that come attached with them.

“What my heart just said, I’m currently using the bond between you and Dolly to stay connected to that piece of me to express myself and to even remember what feeling was like for this part of me. In turn my heart has some thoughts in his head for instead of just mirroring Dolly’s state of mind since I’m here.” Mind Dormarch commented dryly. “It’s something I know I should be missing more, even if it’s not logical, it’s the knowing that’s truly terrible even if I can’t express it to you.”

“So… what… you just took your information and stuffed it into our bodies?” Dolly asked looking a little confused as she moves across the sand to me on the island that we were on.

I dreamed of a vacation get away quite constantly, one where Tianhuo is usually here.

Probably to no one’s surprise, I’m currently having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that Dormarch basically broke his soul in half and is living on inside us. Of course he was made of information, so it wouldn’t be hard to contain that information somewhere… but did it have to be us?

“I know you don’t have a body, but you just basically said you don’t have a soul either… how does that even work?” Trying to wrap my head around it wasn’t exactly going to help Dormarch.

“A ‘digital core’ is the vessel of the soul for us Digimon that holds us altogether cohesively, if you can destroy that, then any Digimon has nothing keeping them together and will die without a chance of reincarnating if they are attached to such a system and all the information that makes them up burns and flitters away as their bodies shatter, their hearts and minds become nothing more than motes of dying light. I thankfully finished the transference process before my body and soul were consumed by the electromagnetic worm. That thing was rather horrifyingly beautiful for what it does to reality as a whole.” Okay following you so far Dormarch, how can you possibly exist without… oh no… I see where this is going. “As such, without a soul, I cannot hold my mind and heart together… at least not in the same place at least. As such I can’t be held in the Digivice I was previously attached to, that’s why you and Dolly doing it for me with the bond keeping my two remaining parts, again, tenuously connected at best. I’m… nothing more than a parasite now, even if what I’m doing is not exactly harmful and is basically just information occupying the same space as important parts of your bodies.”

The Heart Dormarch whined and looked pitiable in his depressed state as Dolly started cuddling him again. The piece of Heart Dormarch was feeling the emotions Mind Dormarch so direly wants to, but couldn’t entirely.

“You’re more symbiotic than parasitic at the moment Dormarch. You can’t exist without us, but you aren’t actively being harmful to us and you really did let Gilgamesh have it. The both of us are going to be out for a while to catch up on lost sleep.” I fixed my gaze on Dormarch with wonderment about where to go from here. “So we’ll have all the time in the world to actually talk. Were you the reason Dolly won’t let go of the idea of bringing you back… which seems more plausible now that we know there are pieces of you still alive. Though I’m not exactly fond of the locations, I’ll gladly try to keep these parts of you alive at least.”

Heart Domarch smiled weakly and there was a faint reflection in Mind Dormarch’s expression.

“Pom, mother, this isn’t living. This is as close to ‘true death’ as any Digimon has ever gotten without their overall soul being a part of the process, my current existence is quite unpleasant and I can’t really do much as the more active remaining parts of myself aside from living vicariously through the both of you. Neither of you can hold more than one piece of me, so I wouldn’t suggest trying to forcefully combine my two pieces at present without the glue of a soul to hold them together.” Mind Dormarch seemed to blink blankly with a thousand yard stare as Heart Dormarch sighed, crossed his front legs and looked away from us. “You being aware that my mental consciousness is inside you adds a new wrinkle to the problem at paw, or hoof for you. Our broken bond with my ‘death’ cannot be reformed again, not unless there’s a chance I can get both my body and soul back. What are the chances of that happening though?”

“Knowing us… pretty good actually. I have a habit of getting drawn into ridiculous over the top adventures, am a magnet for all kinds of trouble and most importantly I’m good at saving or helping people. I will just have to find a way to save you.” I said with a hint of amusement as Heart Dormarch gave me a confused look and Mind Dormarch continued to blankly stare at me with a light amount of equal confusion. “My group has been facing some rather ridiculous odds before I met you Dormarch. I’ve survived thus far and would sacrifice a lot to revive you.”

“Yes, you certainly would, wouldn’t you… being a Chrysomallus is very much terror incarnate for you Pom, and that goes for just about everyone who knows, loves and absolutely cares for you too. At least you’re beginning to acknowledge to yourself that you are quite a capable individual and that there are a lot of circumstances you are worrying about with good reason to.” Mind Dormarch was going to be a constant bluntness compared to his emotions wasn’t he. “I will say that at least you are in fact being true to yourself, even if a part of that was a hidden need to constantly outright sacrifice yourself for others. I believe you are holding true to your values, you like making friends, you like cooking for large families and you still in fact dislike fighting by an egregious amount even if it is quite necessary for your continued survival.”

“You’re memories of the random people you’ve helped in Huoshan are always quite sweet!” Heart Dormarch spoke what Mind Dormarch was feeling without prompting.

“Yes, anyway, being connected to your mind, I’m well aware of what’s going on in it. Like the other part of me is aware of what’s going on in Dolly’s metaphorical heart. Not that the other part of me will be very interactive or a good conversationalist when it is constantly just feeling the same emotions Dolly is and isn’t interacting with me like it is right now.” Mind Dormarch got some whining from Heart Dormarch. “I’m not exactly capable of pulling myself together, but still treat us as a single being please.”

“Eh, still smells like enough hope to me Dormarch!” Ever the optimist Dolly dragged the two parts of her youngest adoptive brother into a hug and I smiled as I drew them all into a hug too.

-Mind Dormarch-

“Honestly, you’re naïve enough to think things will always work out, what I did barely worked to begin with and what I’m doing right now is the bare minimum I could have hoped for in anything approaching a positive outcome.” I apparently just threw a water on that fire and found it still blazing with intensity in my face instead given Dolly’s thousand watt smile was still going strong, oil fires were not solved with water and Dolly apparently had a burning passion to see me revived that was reflected in Heart Dormarch’s feelings that were broadcasted to me.

“Sure a lot of things that have happened might not have worked out for us entirely, but Pom and I are still alive and we’ll make sure you’ll come back little bro.” Dolly, setting her paws on her hips, raised her nose in the air at me. “I have never lost a puppy before and I want to keep that record going with you Dormarch! I am not losing you now that I have something of an idea of how to help you. We just need to find a body and soul for you right?”

“Technically a digimon soul core with a body that doesn’t have a mind or heart in it.” I reiterated just how impossible that sounded.

“Details, details, we’ve got this!” Of course Dolly doesn’t sweat the details, oh joy. I died young and Dolly still thinks I’m capable of being saved. “Stop being so dour little bro. We’ll eventually figure something out, we’re not leaving you like this!”

A part of me was glad to hear they wouldn’t stop trying at least, my heart responded with affection. I sighed feeling some of my other pieces cavalcade of feelings, there was a bit of mixed bag as far as emotions went. Sadness, love, anger at a few things, I wonder what Ocellus would be getting from all of this if she could even tell my emotions were inside Dolly’s body.

“I don’t know about that Dolly, but I wouldn’t put it pass Arceus to have something in the works to aid us in Dormarch’s revival if he even knows it’s possible.” Even you were trying to continue to be optimistic Pom? Wow… that’s a rarity coming from you, enough so to shut up my tragic line of thinking and for my separate but still close emotions to win me over.

Maybe there was some room to hope for a miracle if even Pom can keep an optimistic approach on things. I felt a glow and looked down to see that symbol gain as it appeared on my chest, never did figure out what this symbol meant and hoped to eventually do so ‘if’… ‘When’ they ultimately succeeded in finding me a body to use, it’s not like they’ll stumble across my old one anytime soon not after what it went through with the virus deleting most of it down to the core.

“Wait, something else occurred to me, how did you make your information compatible with our bodies?” Pom was quite curious and I had an answer for it.

“I believe you have heard that the Digivice has the ability to temporarily merge biologicals to Digimon or for biologicals to use Digimon data to transform into Digimon temporarily through use of said device.” Well it wasn’t like it was a big deal for me to tell them. “Well it’s the same principle here, but you are acting more like containers for me. Same concept without the transformative ability or anything too special involved to really benefit from, except ‘maybe’ the ability to hit Digimon physically when they try to phase out of reality from attacks while manifested in a physical realm. That would be minimally useful at best if you aren’t strong enough to fight on par with said digimon anyway.”

-Reality, Illusio Road, Canard-

“So while Pom and Dolly are out for most of this day, I’ll be trying to keep us moving forward and will be in charge of our groups.” Not that I knew much about child rearing aside from what my father taught me about wielding a puck blaster, building time bombs and starting a resistance movement and how to make meals from things you can find in the environment. So… many… digital years. Well things turned out fairly well given we succeeded in defeating the Saurian Empire for good, I’m fairly hopeful we brought Hockey and the spirits of the past are watching over Puck World. I wish for nothing but open goals and a better future of my home planet. I might never see it again if the rest of my friends are having a problem finding a way to our home planet. “We’re going to get to Cerebrum City as long as you guys are leading us right?”

“Yeah, you’d have a pretty hard time finding it in inner Illusio without a Psychic Type to show you where it is.” Answered Mentalis as we traveled east into the inner mountainous region of Illusio and away from the relative safety of the outer Illusio ring.

It was a bit concerning that Pom said Gilgamesh had to die, but could she really carry that out? I haven’t exactly killed anyone… directly at least, I’m technically a casualty of my own leadership which I passed off to Wildwing.

Something sounded off from Dolly and we all looked into the back of the wagon where Dolly was, I looked to Sami who quickly found the noise disturbance was from the Digivice Dolly was wearing.

“Huh… a Monitamon has some information for Dolly and Pom, something about a lead to finding the specific bits of data they asked the Monitamon to track? Huh, I do remember them paying off a Monitamon exorbitantly, must be something big if they can actually send us a message beyond the heavily veiled systems of the digital world next door to this reality.” Sami was curious, but she placed the device back where it was on Dolly’s neck and turned to me. “We’ll have to keep that message in mind when they wake up, so what are we going to do until then.”

“Talk about things, maybe what’s bothering us or where we could improve. At least something to pass the time.” Until the next incident that is. “At least until whatever available forces Gilgamesh has comes after us.”

Dodo looked back at us and warbled something, the living mechanical bird was likely having the time of his life with helping us move out.

“Ah, let them come. I be believing we are more than enough for any forces Gelded Flesh could be sending after us.” Shanty, love your bravado, but we’re dealing with someone that obviously has Pom spooked enough that killing them is a very good option. From what little I know of her, she wouldn’t be wrong about something like this.

“Speaking of forces coming to stop us… I’m detecting a lot of Drowzee and Hypno’s up ahead!” A Kadabra of the hastily formed unit Mentalis put together stated as he hovered above the wagon and we entered a wide open plains between the mountains, we were at the top of the slope and several units were waiting for our approach in the plains. “Drowzee and Hypno are tapir monsters that specialize in…”

“Putting their enemies to sleep and eating their dreams?” Ocellus stated with a look of odd understanding and a lot of alarm.

“Dodo, be coming to a stop please!” Shanty called out and Dodo slowed us down as we saw the forces arrayed against us waiting in the plains.

“Yes, how did you know? Outsiders usually don’t know much about us Pokémon on first sight.” The Drowzee were short and yellow upper torso with black lower torso, three clawed hands and cloven hoof toes at the ends of their feet. The Hypno were much bigger carrying coins on string and had white scruffs of hair around their necks, they also were completely yellow otherwise, had three toed feet that weren’t hooves and five fingered hands. The evolutions were a bit weirder given the Drowzee had really short trunk that hung over their mouth, which if the Hypno was the evolution it’s trunk changes into a triangular nose and they were of course bigger than a Drowzee.

“I think Gilgamesh’s plan is to still kill Dolly or even Pom while they are asleep and out of commission, we can’t let any of them get near them!” Ocellus was now panicked, I calmly ran a hand over her frill and she shivered a bit before easing into the touch and took to lying across my lap.

She was quite adorable in how she started to relax, at least the enemy units weren’t charging right at us. That or they were here to slow us down and prevent us from stopping whatever Gilgamesh was cooking up.

I’ve learned enough to know units were six or slightly more Pokémon working in tandem to a cause, there were at least ten units in the way five Drowzee and five Hypno, an unusually even split. That’s sixty Pokémon thirty of each.

“This might be a tough fight, but all we have to do is prevent them from getting close to the wagon and bust right on past them.” I had a hockey stick and I was ready to high-stick it to them, but there was something bothering me. “What are they waiting for?”

“Not really, they are actually on the backside of this fight if they don’t approach us as quickly as possible.” Ninjask stated with a sure look in his eyes. “Waiting for us to approach might actually be to their detriment actually.”

“How so?” My question was met with Ninjask pointed his legs at the Araquanids.

“We have four members of an artillery and tanking team and they are functionally dangerous at any range, even if they are not good in a running chase.” Good point Ninjask, here’s my rebuttal. “Araquanids are considered heavy assault Bug Types.”

“Can’t most Psychic types just teleport in and attack Pom and Dolly directly? Heck, I’m sure they can kidnap Pom and Dolly out of the wagon before we can actually stop them.” That was something to worry about if they were actively trying to kill us and we were east of Kadabraville, if we lose here what would happen to that little village? That Gilgamesh guy obviously knew it was there.

“Yeah, but I know something you don’t, Drowzee and Hypno’s do not specialize in teleportation.” Glaring at Ninjask I waited to see what he had to say about this. “Okay, so they are still very dangerous, they specialize in putting opponents to sleep and Hypno specifically are lethal to sleeping Pokémon. Drowzee are less capable of lethality in that area. They have primarily normal and psychic type moves, with many possibilities for long range attacks and very few possibilities for short range attacks. They are pretty bad in a physical confrontation, provided they can’t immediately put their target to sleep as they close in on them. So it’s a pretty bad idea for us to rush them as their sleep abilities work at close range, their other abilities are mostly long range energy attacks and or short range deterrents like poison gas or up close combat. They don’t have the firepower we have, but we can’t let them get in close to start putting us to sleep with their hypnosis ability.”

“So we hit them at range and make them come to us as we pummel them with artillery?” He didn’t say they were completely incapable of teleporting, just that they weren’t known for it. It’s still a major concern and I was going to make sure we had someone covering those two… they helped me get out of the digital realms and I owed them a lot to not mess up now.

“A defensive battle is probably the best in our favor anyway, they are not going to let us pass or get to Cerebrum without a fight and they might even hound us if we try to rush past them.” Ninjask was giving me the best option available. “The battle will go quickly if we offload the Araquanids and bombard them with bug type attacks from here.”

“Speaking of artillery… I’ve got a rocket and a few explosive reloads in me. I want to make up for not assisting when Gilgamesh was bombarding us with the elements.” Sami was still on about that and seemed raring to go, Frizzle nearby nodded to Dazzle in wanting to help too.

“I’m ready to help too!” Cleffa was cute, but I really didn’t want her getting into big fights.

“… Offload the Araquanids and arrange them around the wagon, you’re in charge of them right? Well get them started. Ocellus, Smolder, Shanty, you three are in charge of keeping Pom and Dolly safe in case a Pokémon teleports past our offensive.” I turned to the Morpeko unit. “Would you guys have problems with the Drowzee or Hypno?”

“One or two might know a fighting or normal type moves just for Pokémon like us, but otherwise, they are basically minced meat to us. The numbers are a real issue thought.” The Morpeko leader had agreement coming from his fellows, kind of hard to believe they were more dangerous to the Psychic Types. “What do you want us to do?”

“Front line defense, keep them from reaching us on foot to the best of your abilities, the Pokémon Companions unit will protect the artillery.” I looked over the team and had a thought, Lit was with them and acting as a companion too I guess. It was still weird that little balls of fur were going to be our front line of defense in the coming battle, you can stack them on top of each other and they still wouldn’t be tall enough to reach my height. “Who’s the leader of your team exactly?”

“Quetal.” Shine immediately intoned without a pause to really think about. “Nobody has really fought him on it. Dazzle doesn’t want the job she already had enough of that being a princess, Mundo just joined us and we’re still getting to know him but he doesn’t seem to be the brightest for leadership position, I’m fonder of following a good leader, Lit is not exactly able to communicate any plans he might have even he is possibly smart enough to make good ones and Favela is still a kid.”

“Can we not talk about how young I, Favela, am?” Whine Favela and I can see why she wasn’t being offered a leadership position too.

Lit squeaked and just shrugged his tiny body.

Yep, we’re definitely fine with Quetal being the leader of the irregular mercenary unit known as the Pokémon Companions.

“Good, then we set up here, Sami you’ll be starting the long range assault with the rest of the artillery.” I motioned to the area around the wagon. “After that you’ll be covering the wagon as will Frizzle and the rest of us acting as a last line of defense with Cleffa and Pom’s group. Mentalis, your unit are the support and we need at least one of you still up to give us directions, so you’re the goalie position in the back line if we need to make a hasty retreat to find another way through. Alright let’s move team!”

Everyone broke off into teams and started doing so, the Araquanids had already offloaded and were ready to go as they positioned themselves around the wagon slowly.

If someone had to kill Gilgamesh, then I might have to be the one to do it before Pom did. She really doesn’t have the heart for it and I didn’t want her to have the heart for it in the first place. She’s made so many sacrifices already, I would sacrifice my ability to sleep soundly for a while for hers any day of the week as any good friend would.

325. Redirected Route.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Kuril-

Sure we may have been a bit immoral every once in a while around here, but I think I ran a tight ship and things were mostly as normal as a cavalcade of insanity can be. On that note I was approaching our local favorite loud dragon and stench bound yak.

“Flamberge, ‘the obnoxiously loud’, how did the patrols go?” I was ignoring Fortitude who was looking expectantly at me. “Don’t…”

I was of course warning Fortitude to not shout his infamous phrase. The yak huffed loudly, but smiled brightly at my narrowed eyes. I was even readying my potion slinging staff while glaring at him, he knew better that the shield wouldn’t stop the splash. I’ve tried making his fantastic fragrance go away, but there wasn’t a potion strong enough, doesn’t mean I can’t transform him into something else to put away for a while.

“RIGHT, MOVING ON WITH OUR LIVES, THERE ARE NO PUCKS, NO GIANT MONSTERS CLOSE TO THE TOWN AND EVERYTHING SEEMS FINE…!” Here Flamberge trailed off and I gave the dragon with the fire sword a look.

“But?” I asked lightly.

“Your familiar Sugar left a ‘Drop-Bear’ at the edge of town again!” Ugh, Flamberge knew I hated cleaning up after Sugar. My big bear sized magical horned death bunny dragged in another carcass, at least we’re not hurting for meat what with the things Sugar couldn’t finish eating. At least my Al-mi’raj had cleaned her face so I hadn’t known about it this time, she was at least learning proper manners… gods and goddesses willing.

“I’ll take care of it… I wonder if any local griffons are hungry. I know how to braise drop bear meat for a good soup or stew at least.” My drop bear eating magical death rabbit was a fearsome figure in the Barely Bearable Woods. A tiny ewe rubbed up against my leg and I realized that it was staring at something.

I rolled my eyes, put my staff in the crook of my elbow and then peeled a leaf off a piece of lettuce for the tiny ewe to happily take. It was unfortunate that my little Fizzy was a huge pervert, why else would her familiar be a ‘tiny ewe’?

“Anything else of note?” I asked as I patted the ewe on the head and they wandered away happily chewing on the leaf of lettuce in their mouth.

“The Diamond Dog construction crew found another roving ancient burial site slinking up on us, the only reason it wasn’t caught sooner was because it was trying to keep its monsters contained this time. It is one that is likely full of eldritch horrors again.” Well that was normal enough around here Flamberge, though why ancient burial sites keep migrating to our little corner of the world is becoming a little bit worrisome. We could easily deal with it though.

Wish Jaded was around to look into whatever prophecy those eldritch beings were trying to start this time, it is bad enough that we keep getting these roving burial sites from a place called Hyrule and something about Demise. At least my little Jaded’s priestess powered campfire in the middle of our town was keeping them from creating legends that didn’t naturally exist here, we had enough issues with Pucks and don’t need grand adventures starting all willy-nilly around the back woods around here.

We already had enough adventurers as it is thank you, none of that legendary stuff was happening here if I could help it! Arizona’s construction crew gets enough problems with rebuilding after Puck raids, at least things aren’t boring around here. Also the fact that the roaming ancient burial sites were getting smarter was a scary thought.

Honestly now, don’t eldritch beings have better things to do with their time than shift haunted cursed land closer to a town to try and spark something like an epic quest from the heroes and adventurers we keep gathering here? I’m already running a restaurant and am mayor of the town, plus there’s my world economy fix plan in motion. Unlike my kitten Jaded, I don’t have a cursed dyscalculia problem and math was really quite easy for me.

“I’ll actually deal with it… give me time to get my consecration potions together, I’m going to need Bastet and a lot of fish jerky to bribe her with… and maybe throw in a ‘certain failure’ Discord trap. Which will work because it was designed to fail and what with Discord being ‘Chaotic’ and all that...” So what if I had a slight problem with constantly making fish jerky, I could create fish jerky whenever I wanted and have a backlog of a least one hundred pounds of the stuff just sitting around! It does taste rather divine… at least to griffons and any other meat eating races nearby, even variable winged ponies love it. “Anyway, good thing we have the jerky already right?”

Just another day in paradise as the mayor of my happy little town of functional boat houses.

“Hey Fortitude!” Yona stated as she came up to us with a shield on her back.

“Oh for the love of all…” I started to say before I was cut off.

“I am Fortitude, the fantastically fragrant!” Yes, Fortitude, it was fantastic in the fact that you probably smelled worse than the drop bear I have to clean up. There’s a certain level of fantastic when it comes to tasting the air in your general vicinity. “Yona ready for Fortitude yak friend training?”

“Yona is!” Yona stated silently while I was covering my face and groaning.

“Kurilian La Perm, can we talk about something important?” Anubis seemed upset with me, probably found out about the jellyfish thing.

Yep, another day in paradise… I have a drop bear to go clean up, then I’ll talk to a death god. The usual normal stuff.

-Pokémon World, Ransei, Illusio, Northwestern Inner Illusio Region Plains, Head Hypno of the Sleeper Units-

“Why did they stop?” Sixty Pokémon strong, ten units and we were waiting for the people we’re supposed to be slowing down. We were doing our jobs excellently so far, also we had orders to kill.

Don’t know if Gilgamesh will give me a promotion for at least performing half of what we’re supposed to do here, but he did have us set up so that we’d prevent them from joining up with Kenshin’s rebels.

Right or wrong, I’m one of the Pokémon that revels in violence, a Nightmare or Dream eater to destroy the minds of my victims was acceptable in this situation. I wouldn’t mind killing the targets he wants us to.

Apparently they knew what we were and weren’t going to get any closer to us than they had to, too bad for us that Hypnosis was a short range psychic ability for forcing our opponents to go to sleep. There still had to be a way to deal with them. We also had long range bombardment, but we weren’t artillery specialist though we could make up for that with volume alone, we were mostly focused on anti-infantry units. If we could put any of them to sleep, then they’d be easy pickings.

“Sir it seems they are digging in, also there’s a blank spot in their numbers and there’s a confirmed Dark Type shroud in the area, it seems like they are readying for an assault from us.” Well that wasn’t our purpose here, delay and neutralize specific targets, but the Drowzee was reporting the intel I wanted to hear.

“Digging in how?” I asked for clarification.

We were one of Gilgamesh’s primary choices for action, given the lackluster barrier units were area denial and tank force that had failed spectacularly to stay alert for Dark Types. They not only failed to hold them at the pass between Illusio and Chrysalia, they were also likely captured.

“We believe they have some powerful Bug Type artillery Pokémon with them.” If only we weren’t so physically short sighted, aside from that our psychic energies were being mildly disrupted by the presence of Dark Types. “Our two Drowzee scouting units say they have Araquanids.”

“What are the chances they can bombard us with Bug Type attacks?” Ugh, Bug Types, nothing more distracting than those disgusting belly crawling putrid creatures.

“We can assume they have both long range water and bug type attacks, especially water given those Araquanids specialize are known for those types of attacks.” Which was a major problem the Private Drowzee was bringing up, given Araquanids were particularly tough and could hit hard. “As for direct fire attacks we’re expecting Signal Beams.”

Rushing them without a plan would be a poor move overall, that is fine, we Psychic Types were patient and able to think far beyond the ken of any living being with our powerful minds.

“Let’s keep the hills between us and them for the time being.” I’m pondering on what to do, they had Dark Types to worry about. “What are the Dark Types reported as being?”

“Morpeko sir!” The Drowzee threw a salute.

Okay Morpeko were definitely a no go zone for any psychic type, especially if those demented hamsters were enraged and cursing up a storm. However they were even more dangerous when calm, because they suddenly have the stealth aspect going for them. They could wipe out all the teams alone, but they wouldn’t be able to stop some of us from getting through if we bum rush them.

I think long ranged combat should be the focus of this battle.

“We’ll have to stick behind the hills, we’ll try to stay out of sight of direct fire. We also need to focus down and take out the Morpeko unit, wouldn’t put it past a bloody Dark Type to be good at pulling something sneaky off when we are looking.” This would be much easier for me if Gilgamesh could teleport in some artillery of our own, we didn’t have or even deserve the privilege. “Do we have anyone willing to volunteer in locking up that unit so we can’t get a majority of our forces in range?”

“Not likely, who would be insane enough to volunteer to fight Dark Types in Illusio. What do you think about about the chances of a Rebel force hitting us from behind while we’re trying to stop these people from getting through?” Ugh, that was going to be another problem, Private Drowzee had a point.

The rebels had been a bit too uppity lately, but they wouldn’t know about our important mission out here. Unless those guys we were blocking were a part of the rebels, then I wouldn’t be surprised as there were some signs of psychics being out there with those Dark Types. All of them conspiring against Gilgamesh’s rule.

“Not likely, any other rebels are having more than enough problems already.” The overall Psychic Type population probably needed a few Ditto. “Prepare to move forward to begin attacking at mid-range, avoid engaging the Morpeko to the best of your abilities. If you have to fight them, then try to get them into melee range with Brick Break or Drain Punch if you have those moves. If not, then distract them for someone who does and take them out quickly! We’ll start by finding targets to go after, they don’t have the numbers to face us up close, so we’ll try to close in slowly with some patience. How many artillery Pokémon do they have, a full unit?”

“Four Araquanids and a supporting Chrysalia spy specialist in a Ninjask and Shedinja duo, they are possibly acting as spotters for their artillery.” Considering I was seeing a Ninjask behind a Shedinja in the air, that was likely to become a problem in the next minute. This confirms that Chrysalia is aware of our efforts and are sending a retaliatory scouting party, one who likely met up with some of the rebels and told them what was happening here. “Someone shoot down those Ninjask immediately and force the Shedinja to retreat with them, we can’t let them signal to the Araquanids where to aim.”

I thought I saw something glint up the slope our opponents were on, but didn’t detect much of anything aside from a light fuzzy interference. Must be a false positive of psychic static noise from the Dark Types unit being present.

“Drowzee move out, be wary and try to start hitting them at the maximum effective range you can put out! Do not yet enter range of direct fire from those Araquanids, otherwise you do so at your doing so at your own risks.” I started forward with my troops. “Don’t forget we have two targets of importance and a job to kill or at the very least cripple them, while also being expecting to slow down all enemies in the area with what we have.”

-Across the field, Commando Dragon Monster Sami Soldier-

We Commandramon seldom used binoculars, not like we have snipers or artillery to inform of shots we see and our rifles were hilariously shoddy when we were born with them, thankfully we patched out all the issues with them to be more accurate even if the firepower wasn’t exactly up to hurting anything more than a Champion level Digimon.

In this case I was doing some spotting while Ninjask ran distraction, I was aiming to take out at least one of the Hypno units with a few bazooka shots under the cover of the Araquanids artillery. They were quite aware of our positions and would likely to focus on anyone acting as a spotter.

I had the digital energy for at least three HE rounds, took some personal code configuring, but I was certainly making up for the fact that I never wanted to become a Sealsdramon. Also knife fighting wasn’t my thing.

Maybe I could slide evolution past it? Heard it was possible at least, Tankdramon was definitely more my jam at least, because tanks were awesome!

The Hypno were much more dangerous than the Drowzee who were starting to approach us, so they were our first choice of targets if we could swing it. The five Drowzee unit were on the move, we were almost outnumbered three to one, but I believed we had the range and firepower advantage. It was quite rare for me being on the absolute better side of things for once.

Okay checking camouflage gear, camouflage was still up, but I did notice someone might have caught the glare of my binoculars. Should be more careful about that.

Sami Soldier is ready and in position and waiting on your signal to hit their back line from above with arcing bazooka missiles Canard. Still working on a lock-on program for them, finicky as all get out to get one of those to work, I’d rather stick with calculating angle of fire to drop rockets on them with precision.

Canard raised his hockey stick, and then slung it downwards, Dolly’s electrum varnish formula giving it fairly nice sheen. Ocellus was the one that gave it magic to make it darn near unbreakable and I know, I tried to blow it up to prove that the electrum varnish was working.

“Front two angle thirty five degrees fire half strength, back two angle forty nine degrees two third powers fire!” A volley of hot steaming water blasts flung forward and created steaming distraction, I believe that was what the Araquanids called Scald attacks.

The steam from the water striking the ground was somewhat helpful as beams of Psychic energy lanced out for Ninjask and Shedinja, while others arced out over the Morpeko unit and started to slam into the area around the wagon.

They didn’t have a decent range on us quite yet. As such it was going good so far, but no plan ever holds for long when engaging an enemy, learned that one too many times over. The steam was giving me a good chance to fire without being spotted.

“Normal shot going out!” I called angled my Bazooka up high and fired the first shot to get a feel for where my next few would land. “Fire in some hole somewhere!”

My shot went wide and didn’t hit anyone, but it did spook an entire unit of Drowzee. They should be spooked, especially when I loaded one of my limited HE rounds. I had an idea of how my aim was off and I have a decent chance of hitting their far left Hypno unit.

“Barrage fire, use the steam to cover the Morpeko unit’s movements!” I wasn’t actually in charge of the artillery, but I could make calls if I see opportunities and was given permission by Ninjask to do so. “Sure they know they are out there, but not what they are currently doing or going to attempt. Spread the water out for them guys!”

Thinking of Ninjask and Shedinja, they were busy getting a good scope of the land ahead of us, they were taking heavy fire. Still no amount of power was going to stop Shedinja from absorbing a large amount of energy aimed at the two of them, it was impressive how the frail thing could take such a punishment without damage.

“Roger!” One of the Araquanids called out and they started to fire blasts of hot water and was making it rain on them.

“HE-loader.” Okay I felt the drain immediately, I just needed to get close to devastate at last one unit. Maybe we could spook them into rushing us.

Taking aim and carefully got the bazooka into position and then held it steady and squeezed the trigger.

The rocket burst forth high into the air and then curved exactly on the course I wanted it to be on.

-Head Hypno-

“Incoming!” Everyone scattered hovering in different directions, hoping to avoid the strange incoming projectile that was most certainly not a bug or water type attack, in fact the attack seemed technology based.

Probably comparable to the powder cannons of Dragnor, which meant we were about to be engulfed in a large explosion.

The blast was large, but my warning came in time. We only lost three Hypno on the left most unit. The firepower in that blast alone was daunting, but I’m a betting Psychic that they don’t have too many of those shots, they could wipe out three or more units if we cluster together.

“All units spread out, especially those on approach!” My order was immediately followed.

-Canard-

That spooked them, it was a decent shot and they reacted to it fairly well, but now they were spreading out making it harder to cluster them up for a big blast. This was still to our advantage though as I know we’ll soon see.

“Okay, give the Morpeko some more assistance now, make it seem like your shots are dropping short!” The Morepeko were preparing in the grass, the steam was hiding a problem that the Drowzee weren’t keen on quite yet. “I need you to soak the ground, but don’t turn it to mud!”

“Can do!” One of the Araquanids stated as they continued to spread the bursts of water they were spraying.

Knowing the capabilities of those who are with you helps in a lot of areas, like knowing the terrain and what advantages you have. Including what we had hiding in the grass, we were going to start focusing on the Hypnos soon enough, we just had to get through the Drowzee first and we were about to take out a number of them.

-Morpeko Leader-

“Oh this will be good… it’s almost done being set up.” I grinned.

-Head Hypno-

Hrm… something was up with their aim, the artillery Pokémon would have had more hits than a few scalding bits of water.

What were they up to?

“Hypno units command, Future Forecast!” Every Hypno unit joined together to get a view of the future. It would take some time, but it might save us from an ambush.

-Magnificent Mentalis-

“Can you feel it, they are about to launch a massive Future Sight attack into the battle.” Which would end poorly for us if it landed and hit anyone, except for the Morpeko. “Do any of you have a capacity for trickery and do you think we can pool enough psychic energy to move everyone’s position, provided that we all know we can’t move the Dark Types?”

The five Kadabra looked among themselves and then turned to me to nod, their psychic conversation taking no longer than a few real seconds to finish.

I quickly made my way forward to Canard and warned him of what was about to happen and what exactly we needed to do.

Quetal was a little upset, but was alright with the plan going forward.

The Morpeko unit would be fine provided they don’t take to many physical attacks, even then Psychics weren’t good at physical aggression and there was only the possible issue of Dazzling Gleam being used.

Hypnosis can have an effect on Dark Types to put them to sleep, which is one of the few Psychic moves that would work on a Dark Type. However Dark Types were highly resilient to it and the Morpeko are highly energetic so it’d be pretty hard to put them to sleep.

-A Drowzee-

We were having a hard time hitting the Ninjask. At least the artillery doesn’t seem to be too accurate thus far, but we were trying to avoid the Morpeko unit and stay out of direct fire from the artillery Pokémon.

We were in as good a range as we would be getting without being directly in the line of fire from the Araquanids, yet something felt off.

I looked down at the pooling water on the ground, was it from all the steam?

“Everyone get back!” I had realized too late for my unit personally, the Morpeko electrified all the water around our ankles.

-Canard-

After the powerful electrical explosion blinded us for a few seconds I got my eyesight back a bit and the hills were crackling with the power the Morpeko let off.

“That got two whole units HE-loader!” This was Sami’s second shot, she better make it count, we had incoming attack and I can feel the pressure in the air building up from the energy Mentalis told me about.

Okay, we took out two of their Drowzee units immediately the other three managed to avoid the trap. Said units were bombarding our position to the best of their ability. The Araquanids really shifted gears and really started to hammer the three units and then spheres of darkness started blasting out of the grass near the Drowzee units forcing them into a slight panic as a few of them get knocked out.

That’s when Sami decided to fire, she only had one more of these shots, but she wouldn’t be able to get her next one off in time.

The rocket arced up into the air and came down on one of the Drowzee units and only caught two in the blast the other four were sent sprawling, but still looked viable in a fight. High explosive rocket left, we better make that count.

The Araquadnids were letting them have it with Scald, the boiling hot water raining down on the Drowzee closing in.

“Sami back on the wagon!” Sami immediately made her way over to us with a questioning look.

So far Shedinja hadn’t taken any damage, but Ninjask had been scratched at least twice and for those of us who weren’t immune to Psychic attacks we were about to be hit hard.

“Araquanids, back in the wagon. Shanty get Dodo started on moving us backwards now. Okay Quetal now is the time to tell the Morpeko we need to retreat!” The little claw guy was out and moving into the nearby tall grass silently to meet up with the Morpeko firing off Dark Pulses and were slowing down the Drowzee, but they weren’t necessarily taking them down.

Blasts of psychic energies from the Drowzee were hammering us once the Araquanids let up on their barrage and pulled back. Shanty quickly got Dodo pushing the wagon back up the path we came from.

“What’s going on?” There was concern on Dazzle’s face.

“We’re going into retreat and you’re about to find out why, brace yourselves everyone!” Nobody questioned me, everyone immediately started grabbing parts of the wagon while I myself grabbed the front and saw a mass of energy building up above us.

“Unit command, Tricky Transfer!” Magnificent Mentalis intoned as he and the five Kadabra with him flared with power.

While our opponents didn’t have teleport specialist, I knew for certain that we did and hopefully our guys managed to do it in time. In a flare of power our group disappeared.

-Quetal-

A mass of energy appeared and started to fall.

The pathway we came into the plains between the mountain terrain were blown apart where my friends just were.

The blasts of psychic energy created a massive crater and sent out billowing winds with the destruction of the landscape. One that would have done more than just wipe out the wagon, when it rained there was going to be a new lake in the middle of Illusio.

The wagon and everyone else that could be moved with psychic powers were safe and to the south of the force attacking from the east.

I was already upon the Morpeko unit as one of them was sent flying by punch as energy sucked out of their body and into an injured Drowzee healing it. Another flashed pink with sparkles and knocked most of the Morpeko over.

“Come on, retreat to the south!” My shout was followed by me firing off several Swift attacks, the star shaped bullets pummeled into the enemy giving the Morpeko to pick themselves up and start moving as another flash of pink blasted through the area. I waited until they were all ahead of me and then I started going myself.

-Head Hypno-

“The Dark Types and our targets are trying to make a getaway to a southern passage, full charge, stop them!” I was immediately surging forward. They needed to go east, but they didn’t necessarily need to go through us to get to their destination. “Fire at will!”

Our psychic blasts started raining down on the wagon, we were ignoring the Dark Types unless we could get them into melee or Dazzling Gleam range.

“Dodge left!” My unite reacted with me to dodge a Signal Beam as the Araquanids were holding us off until the Dark Types made it to them. A few Hypno’s went down now that they had a direct line of fire on us from the south. “Don’t let them escape!”

I was hit in the chest by a lightning bolt from a tiny yellow bug, one that had just greatly earned my ire.

-Ocellus-

“Make sure not to hit our allies!” The Araquanid said to another as they fired out the back of the wagon and Dodo was slowly moving it forward while looking back worriedly and waiting for Quetal and the Morepeko to catch.

“What was that?!” A large part of the landscape gone, just like that, in a massive explosion of what I’m assuming was mental energy. There wasn’t any emotion in the attack, just pure raw force.

“Future Sight, it’s a powerful psychic attack that targets a given area and eventually hits it with a mass of psychic energy and multiple Pokémon used it in conjunction. That… was the end result.” Well Shine, it was a good thing Pom wasn’t awake, she’d be freaking out about how much of a close call that was. We should really thank Mr. Mentalis for the save profusely after this. “Still it took a lot of energy out of the Hypno.”

“I thought we were on the firepower side of things here!” Sami was doing enough freaking out that it calmed me down somewhat… did it say something about me that someone freaking out emotional was calming on my nerves? I’ve been around Pom for far too long.

“Actually we are, Future Sight is a really, really, really slow to activate and easy to see coming. You can even feel the energy in the air building up. Getting out of the area is simple enough if you’re aware it’s coming, don’t do that fast enough and you’ll likely be obliterated.” Mundo was quivering with fright, despite that he was still trying to stand tall and strong, to the sight of an attack that would have evaporated him and anyone else caught in the blast that wasn’t outright immune to it. “Sitting still or being stuck in place is a huge problem with dodging that attack though. Which is exactly why Psychic Types will try to do things to pin you in place for that particular attack.”

“Agh!” I looked up and lit my horn to catch a falling Ninjask and pull him into the wagon. “They got my left wing… that’s going to take some time to heal.”

Shedinja began acting as a mobile shield and was protecting the back of the wagon with his body to the best of his ability, he was quite effective at taking attacks meant for us as beams of energy continued to arc at us reminding me of the Dutiful Ducks battalion from Fontaine. Only these guys were more dangerous and actually geared for psychic attacks.

The Psychic Pokémon coming after us were using mid-range attacks at best and weren’t having an easy time keeping up with us or the Dark Types almost catching up the wagon as we forged a path south towards a pass out of the plains.

The Araquanids were pushing them back from our Dark Type allies as they fired beam after beam of strangely pretty swirling colors of energy that called to me.

“Ocellus? Ocellus! Stop staring at the pretty lights and get your head back in gear.” The snapping of Smolder’s claw drew my attention back to reality and I blushed a bit.

Frizzle blasted a fireball out the back into the chasing Drowzee, these Psychic Types in particular were not fast on foot and it would take a bit for them to catch up to us once we get going.

“Right, Shanty, get Dodo ready to start moving. Quetal and the Morepeko have almost caught up to us.” Shanty nodded and Favela joined the Araquanids in firing off a few Seed Bombs to cover our allies as they reached us and jumped into the back.

“They’re grouped up enough Sami!” Canard called as he pointed at the Pokémon now coming at us from the north instead of the east.

“Right, give me a moment.” Sami hopped out of the back and angled her weapon high up and her eyes searched about for a good target. She then took aim and fired as Quetal and the Morpeko unit passed by her and leapt into the wagon. She turned around and charged after the wagon and was the last on. “Go!”

An explosion went off in the, but it just delayed the Drowzee and Hypno without hitting any of them.

“You be hearing her Dodo, start moving!” Dodo didn’t need to be told more times as he turned forward and started using his impressive pulling strength and we started to pull away.

“Do we still have a path to Cerebrum City from here?” I turned to Mentalis as he sighed audibly. “Pom made it kind of urgent that we stop Gilgamesh immediately, enough so that she things killing him is the best course of action. Which is quite worrying for someone like her.”

“Yes, but they are most likely being guarded heavily more so than the path we were going to take and I doubt those Drowzee and Hypno are going to give up on hunting us so soon. Not very fast on foot, but if they are relentless enough, sleeping will quickly become an issue.” Grumbled Mr. Mentalis. After what happened to Dolly, I would have to agree that sleeping was going to be problem if we couldn’t get any rest when we could be attacked in our dreams. Where’s Princess Luna when we needed her? “Most of their units were already getting up again, they might not be the only ones out here hunting us down too.”

“Eh, I thought we could take them… somewhat.” Smolder, what was your definition of possible again?

“So, there’s a small change of plans, but we’ll continue forward.” At least Canard seemed to be upbeat. “We’ll try to find a place to stop for lunch and we’ll need to find shelter for the night where we can hunker down and hide.”

326. Forest Ops.

-Equus, Ponyville, Sandbar-

“So what sport are you working out for?” While my dad, Beachcomber Currents, could be a little intrusive. He was more open to letting me figure things out for myself. Helps with my independence, but he was always someone I could go to for help or advice.

“He’s not working on a sport, he’s working on his stamina for when he marries Yona.” My mom, High Tide Currents, could be even worse and there was a smile on her face that somehow dug into me as if she knew why I was packing on muscles, physical and magical, for all my friends.

“Ah, yes, that really nice yak, you sure know how to pick them son.” Beachcomber said with grin.

Okay, so both my parents could be a little embarrassing, but they were okay with me dating Yona and they were happy as long as I was happy. Always supportive the both of them and I loved them both.

“Well my exercise routine is more than about ‘exercise’ and getting healthy enough for whatever you’re thinking of.” I tapped a hoof against the floor and the stones I set up started floating a bit, I was trying to learn how to control fine sand.

Sand was coarse, gets everywhere, but it could absorb impacts and since my family was full of ocean focused ponies. So I'm more than capable of leaning my special talent into it when it comes to training in my monk related studies according to Sekhet.

Thus far I’ve been getting better at controlling smaller and grainier minerals, using sedimentary rocks was a very good starting point. Talking to Turtles and Birds was becoming quite fluent for me and it helps that my parents were the specialist at the Ponyville aquarium. They thought I would go for someone like Silver Stream, but I told them she was dating Gallus.

“Bruvver!” My little sister Coral Currents, snuggled up to me and wanted attention, Sekhet did say it was okay to take as many breaks as I want as long as I fulfilled my own self-made goals.

I had good self-control for magical rock manipulation, I just need to work on what magic I had to get it up to the defensive abilities of the monks of legends that Sekhet knew about. She was as great a teacher as her sister, the goddess of life, Baast or Bastet was.

My family were so very accepting of things, as I was learning self-defense alongside Yona. Even when it comes to self-defense yaks were a bit much, but I didn’t have to worry about Yona physically as much as I did emotionally and everyone in my family was good at having a calming presence.

Picking up my little sister I started to give her a ride around the house and put off practice a bit. I needed to relax my mind and what I was learning could be a little dangerous and violent, but it could also be the greatest defense my friends would need.

It would also help with glass blowing statues of dolphins and other fish so there was even an artistic market for my talents when I get good enough at controlling sand.

Life's like a beach, you relax on it for a while and then use it to block the tidal waves of danger that comes for everyone you absolutely care about.

-Pokémon World, Ransei, Somewhere Midwestern Inner Illusio, Smolder-

“Okay, that should do it.” Changed out Dolly’s bandages and disinfected her wounds, Pom was okay and she was smiling about something in her sleep. Probably having sweet dreams, a rarity for her given how bad her nightmares are over the past week we spent training.

She has a right to have nightmares given she’s was usually right about all the danger we kept getting into. We were a little lost, but if we couldn’t find ourselves, then those Drowzee and Hypno guys couldn’t either. We knew we were likely still being chased, but the chances of them catching up to us without transport was unlikely as long as we could keep up a decent pace.

We almost lost the Morpeko unit to an attack called Dazzling Gleam, they were hurting quite a bit.

“I can still taste the ‘a rather rabid euphemism for a coat rack being used to smash a doughnut apart’ glitter!” One of the Morpeko complained volatilely before coughing up pink sparkles.

“That’s why you don’t open your mouth when someone uses Dazzling Gleam!” The Morpeko Leader responded and kept their unit member in line.

Yeah, didn’t want to be hit by that attack personally, the Morpeko’s leader said it was really bad for dragons as it was for them. It was a good thing we managed to successfully retreat after dealing some heavy blows to our pursuers, because otherwise we would have lost that fight had we stood our ground.

“I’ve been wondering, what was so tricky about teleporting us to the southeast?” I had no idea where we were, I knew where we were going, but what we were currently doing was looking for a place to lay low as our pursuers weren’t likely giving up.

We took down two units of Drowzee, injured another two and there was at least one unit still fully healthy.

The Hypno’s were barely damaged and mostly just a unit at best. I’m definitely worried that those Hypno guys took out a large chunk of the countryside trying to destroy us wholesale, the last time I heard about attacks that powerful was when Principal Twilight fought Tirek or the Elements of Harmony were being used.

At best we slowed them down, they were well equipped to deal with us.

“Teleport as a move is used to move to safety, we should have arguably gone back to Kadabraville.” One of the Kadabra answered, the big puffy tailed guys could become Alakazam which was weird. They started out with a small tail, grew an even bigger tail and then the tail disappears in their final evolution.

“We instead redirected ourselves into a more dubious, if beneficial position to our needs, which was to escape and not lose grounds to those cretins.” Mentalis said while pulling a confused looking Jiri out of his top hat. “Oh my apologies ma’am, sorry for the inconvenience.”

He simply stuffed her back in and she was no longer in the hat when I checked.

-Aurora, Jiri-

“Where was I just now?” I was so confused, I was much better and on defensive duty.

“Yeah, where did you just go?” Cubby and the guys in the unit were as confused as I was, they were also worrying over me and my still healing body. “Ice Type bear is worried about sudden disappearance and reappearance.”

I was taking cues from Captain Skeeball and her Skitty Squad, you have to put your heart into what you do and use that to power yourself right on through. What we were currently doing was light duty border guarding. Body still an ache and a half, but I’m fit for duty… well enough for it at least.

I was worried about Pom and the others, but I had a duty to Aurora and I was going to stick to it. I couldn’t run off just because I saw them for a few seconds. Also there’s the issue with Illusio being mental nightmare to wander around in without Dark Type to at least keep you on task.

“Hey guys!” Ruckus Rauco, the pidgey unit leader called out, he came down for a landing. “I hear that King Evan is thinking of sending us to lend assistance to Terrera, we were just doing a flyby and just thought you should know. Wings are still feeling quite horrible.”

That was about as much information as we had about Evan in a while, what was happening with him in Greenleaf and why would he suddenly take an interest in the dusty dunes of Terrera and its underground kingdom?

At least the western kingdoms of Ransei seemed to be peaceful enough and Ignis was getting merchants from Aurora to supply them with food. No banditry was occurring and none of the previous rebels seemed to be holding a grudge. There was still a lot to worry about though.

Like the endangered friends we had beyond our borders for one.

-Illusio, Smolder-

“That looked rather impressive, how did you do that?” I could tell he wasn’t using any of the psychic stuff, the power of the mind. Kind of like Ocellus having the power of her mind over her body or something to do with emotions.

“I have no clue, I’m just fiddling around with my magical expertise!” Mentalis stated proudly as we trundled along aimlessly, we just stared at him blankly. “That’s why I’m the Magnificent Mentalis, even I sometimes don’t know how I do my tricks!”

The aqua spiders were alert and watching our front and back sides for trouble as we continued down a dirt path. They took a few hits from the Drowzee, but were still quite ready to throw down. Just went a long way in showing us how tough these big bugs actually were.

“We didn’t do much did we?” Dazzle asked after a bit of silence.

“No, we didn’t, but it was for the best that we remain on the defensive, I don’t want to lose anyone to any idiocy as thinking we can face a full battalion of Pokémon so easily.” Like Quetal was suggesting, we were supposed to be a small moving band. We just happened to have Irregular Illusio Rebels joining up with with us. “Giving them a black eye and staying mobile was the best outcome. We didn’t lose anyone, but we took some injuries. Arguably we almost lost our most important unit here to the Drowzee, if we lose the Morepeko, the passive protection coverage on those of us not capable of handling the Psychic energies would have been driven to insanity or at least be constantly hallucinating right now. Still, the Morpeko were doing pretty well up until some counter moves were brought out against them. It’s a good thing they are good at running as much as they are at hitting hard.”

“Of course we’re good at running, we’re all working on learning the signature move of the Morpeko, Aura Wheel.” Well the Morpeko certainly had a motive for getting into dangerous situations even if they didn’t evolve into anything. “It requires we have a lot of stamina through doing a lot of cardio, so being a military unit from Violight gives us access to some really nice training facilities and we even get awesome missions with respectable friends like this one.”

We basically consisted of at least five working units. Mentalis with the Kadabra, Pom with us, Ninjask with the Chrysalia Scouting Irregulars, Quetal with the Pokémon Companions and the strangely polite Morpeko when they weren’t being total verbal monstrosities.

We were outnumbered by the Drowzee and Hypno, but not entirely outgunned at a long range at the very least. Seemed they lacked very long ranged attacks. Up close and personal though, the Morepeko almost got wiped out. That was kind of an eye opener, they are supposed to be the ones with the advantage against Psychic Types.

“Which is why we might have to use some of our limited medical supplies on them soon, definitely before we try to get into another fight.” Canard was making sure we were on task, cool dude. He’s been through a lot and from what Pom says, far more than even we have. At least he’s only had to deal with Digimon and not several worlds of weird like we’ve had to.

After a point Canard had Sami watching his back, wouldn’t know what I’d be doing without all my friends with me by myself. Probably would still be stuck fighting ninja monkeys with me possibly slowly being forced into becoming a replacement for that ‘Dragon’ guy in the first valley we ended up in. Also greed growth was a Tartarus of a drug, I did not enjoy being like that, but I’m quite thankful for Ocellus still being alive.

I pulled out my combat ribbon and started flicking it about, to distract myself from those thoughts about how Ocellus is the centerpiece of my hoard of friendship. I was trying not to feel distressing feelings, Ocellus would know if I was getting morose. She’s the reason I even know what the word ‘morose’ means.

We dragons weren’t big on education and education is what I’ve been getting from Twilight’s school even if it wasn’t a traditional school, also the crash courses on culture and how to take care of myself from Pom and the Friendship School are why I have the friends that I do.

Heh, Pom, was going to keep try and keep it together for us. Its very unfortunate that she’s almost doomed by that Chrysomallus stuff and we weren’t going to let her go silently without a continent destroying fight. It would probably get to that point this time.

Slowly the wagon trundled forward and I noticed that we were quickly becoming surrounded by an increasing number of trees. Enough so that it started to blot out the sun, so we were entering some of the thick woods of central Illusio. The glowing mushrooms lit up the surroundings fairly well at least, not like this place already had a fairly eerie feeling to it already.

“Okay, we should be able to find a place to hunker down for lunch or an early dinner in here, but let’s not tarry around the entrance of the woods too much.” Mentalis was looking back at the sunny grassy plains, hill and mountains as we entered the darkening thick forest squeezed between further mountains and more hilly terrain. “Gilgamesh’s forces are intent on being quite lethal and I’d rather we avoid detection in a place known for being thick with psychic energies. The trees absorb a lot of energy from psychic crystals around here, so some of them get enormous and they tend to put off powerful fields of illusions that really make anyone liable to get lost just getting near a Power Spot. I would suggest you not touch any pink or purple crystals you see, we do not need you to addle your own minds as the Morepeko’s passive protective field will not protect you from their effects.”

We were entering a place where sunlight was at a premium, kind of like the Ever Free Forest. It was kind of sending a chill down my spine and making me be a bit more alert of my surroundings.

“I just wanted to find my friend and get to know Pom better.” A shaken Fleer finally said as she looked back at the green grassy lit lands with fewer trees, then forward towards the mysterious glowing mushrooms and strangely dark place we were entering. Which was probably safer and easier to find places to hide than being out in the open.

“Yeah, well, your friend just might find us. Pom is a disaster magnet even when she’s asleep.” My dry comment got me a stare from Ocellus. “So what are we going to do for light?”

A pair of torch beams flew from Dodo’s eyes as he turned to look back at us, a smirk on his beak. Well that was actually kind of neat for being able to see the path ahead of us or where Dodo was looking at least.

“Dodo, that is being a decent trick and all, but we might needing light for doing things ourselves. Please be hurrying and finding a place to take a break.” Nodding to Shanty, the metal bird turned back forward and continued slowly on the dirt path into the woods. Our pace had slowed down when we put some distance between us and those Deep Sleepers as Mentalis had been calling them.

“Did someone say tricks? Maybe I can be of assistance then? I’m full of them!” We all froze and looked around, eventually my eyes settled on a pair of red eyes and a smiling beak, above her head was what looked like a witch’s hat, but it took a moment to discover that it was her feathers. “Hello there, I’m Cotton Murkrow, a spy from Avia working for King Masumune. Didn’t exactly give me instructions how I’m supposed to go about things, but given free rein on making personal judgements… I can do a lot.”

“That… wasn’t exactly very subtle.” Note the blandness in my tone.

“Then it’ll be a surprise for when I am being subtle or getting one by you!” The bird stated jovially while pressing a left wing to her chest and raising her head up high as her other wing fanned out in a flamboyant display. She then leaned forward on the branch she was standing on. “So what’s your thing here? You don’t look like some of Gilgamesh’s stooges, they’ve become quite up in arms lately with keeping Dark Types out of their business here in Illusio. Perhaps you’ve deeply earned their ire somehow?”

Her accent kind of reminded me of Applejack, but the look in her eyes had me wary of actually trusting her as she sat on a tree branch above us.

“We’re running from them and we’re trying to get to Cerebrum City.” Here the bird perked up when Ocellus mentioned our current destination. The current mission’s final destination was Illusio Castle, the Castle of Illusions, where we’d have to fight that Gilgamesh guy who was like a real psychopath given Dolly’s injuries.

“Well that’s going to be a bit of a bother, Psychic Types are watching the teleporters, not that I’d be able to use one of them anyway. Psychic crystals don’t work for or on Dark Types.” The black bird grumbled as she crossed her wings. “The goon patrols are also openly firing on any flying contraption or Pokémon that tries to get close to the city who are not a part of Gilgamesh’s forces, singed a few of my tail feathers off trying to sneak in. Apparently they are looking for the holes in the psychic energy fields to find Dark Types fairly successfully if not for false positives every once in a while. I was quite unlucky in that respect yes-sir-ee!”

“It’s really being that hard to get into the city?” Shanty asked with a tilted head from where she was resting on Dodo’s back and idly tapping the cane scythe against her right shoulder.

“It’s gotten quite sticky to get into there. Fastest way to get to the city is the teleporters, but that’s quite not in the cards if you don’t want to ditch your Dark Type escorts from Violight and you need them to avoid being mentally assaulted by illusions that bother every being not immune to passive psychic energy.” Cotton flicked her wings at us dismissively. “You’d need a much larger army first to even secure a teleporter to get regular psychics up there. Getting a number of flying contraptions by their aerial defenses is much more likely, but you’d probably have to fly it in at night and have someone who has been watching their patrols for a while to get in successfully. Without being attacked is a far sight harder to do and I’d be of great assistance in such an endeavor.”

“How?” Canard asked while narrowing his eyes on the self-admitted spy.

“First off, promise me a good meal and I’ll at least show you a good place to camp away from prying eyes of the third variety if you be catching my drift.” Cotton turned her head and widened her left eye at us. “Help me get closer to the information I’m after and you’ll have my ex-per-tease on getting into the city at least. Getting out might be a bit more of a suicidal premise than getting in in the first place.”

After a moment to contemplate what Cotton was offering, Canard finally nodded and decided on something.

“I think we can do the meal thing easily, but what do the rest of you think, this is a team decision.” At least Canard was living up to being a team play, this got us all thinking.

“Couldn’t hurt, we kind of need the help as the route we were going to use is no doubt being watched.” Well I was of the opinion we could give Cotton a decent shot.

I was also thought that we were well beyond the original scouting mission and were doing all of this to find out why Pom said we needed to kill someone. That and Pom needed to get that device back from Gilgamesh so she can talk with Tianhuo again, there was that motivation of course.

There was also the fact that, goodness knows, Pom couldn’t turn away from those in need and it sounds like there was something like a need to discover in this country and she would personally drive herself towards the trouble instead of away from it. We were also kind of stuck in enemy territory with an unenviable amount of dangerous Pokémon after us.

“I’m alright with it, though Avia and Chrysalia do have something of a slightly sour history, plus I’m grounded until my wing regenerates so it will be a bit before I can get around easily.” Ninjask entered his two bits. “We’re going to need someone who might be able to procure illegal transportation for us.”

“It might be in my interest to do just that, I should be fairly capable of procuring such assistance as I met and know a few guys over the last week or so.” Cotton said while glancing at Ninjask with a smile.

“We’ll continue on wherever Pom’s group wants to go.” Quetal being neutral, but still on our side. We looked to Mentalis. “Straight into danger is the likeliest course of action anyway, not necessarily the safest way to live. I still prefer and will advise caution on approach to things considering our opponent can have some really dangerous forces waiting for us, even if they gave Gilgamesh a headache to prevent him from attacking us mentally or physically for a while. His forces are still very much a major threat to us.”

Mentalis wasn’t obviously too much of a direct rebel, but he was willing to assist those who would stop Gilgamesh and the jerk gave us plenty of reasons to come after him and was likely banking on it. It’s like how Cozy Glow didn’t care how many ponies she killed, hurt or otherwise permanently crippled, Gilgamesh definitely had something like that magic stealing plot going on.

“I have my misgivings, but we’ll definitely be okay with sharing a meal for a quiet place to settle down for a bit and recuperate.” Mentalis was likely speaking to his Kadabra friends quietly, telepathy was a thing I knew some unicorns could do.

“Then it’s agreed, I get something to eat and you get away from those Deep Sleeper units trying to put you to sleep… in a permanent fashion!” Cotton smiled brightly while bringing her wings together in an affectionate gesture of cheer. “Right then, follow me!”

With a few flaps the crow Pokémon was in the air and motioning at us with her broomstick like tail, the witch motif was rather strong with this one.

“When did she…” Favela started to ask when a voice stirred all our attentions to him

“She was watching us when we started the fight with the Drowzee and Hypno.” Mundo commented while staring after Cotton as Dodo started following her with a wary curiosity as she flew and hovered in front of him.

The wagon started moving again and we continued into the forest, if I had to get out and walk somewhere, I’d inevitably quickly be lost. There was a strange mist around us, ten bits says it would be doing something to us if the Morpeko weren’t present.

I didn’t think I could go too far away from the Morpeko here, even if I would enjoy all the Ocellus hallucinations wearing cute dresses.

I continued to flick the ribbon in my claws back and forth, idly getting in some practice and trying not to freak out about how vulnerable I was to mental manipulation. Dragons were strong in body… no one said anything about us being strong in mind and psychic powers weren’t magic.

Dragon Lord Torch was wise, but more importantly too intimidating and large for anyone to actually deal with effectively. Psychic powers didn’t use magic to effect the mind, so really… I didn’t have a resistance to psychic effects. I’m just kind of surprised that Ocellus actually does have a resilience to it.

“Something on your mind Smolder?” Asked Ocellus as Dodo slowly followed Cotton off the beaten path.

“A few things, yes, when do you think Pom will wake up and how badly do you think she will panic about things?” While I knew Dolly was the real one hurt, something about the way Pom collapsed when she tried to stand up and move was quite worrying.

“Eh, it’ll be normal for me at least, I’m used to her being in a constant state of worrying about everything with a decent reason to be worried said things.” Yet you can see why things are a little different here Ocellus.

“We’re almost there guys, be prepare to cook some food, we’re about to meet some friends I made from Titania! Still don’t rightly know where their country is though, the guys are pretty good at keeping it and any information related hidden to the location of their kingdom aside form around here.” As Cotton talked we were led into a clearing with a large tree that looked like we could make an entire campsite under it, it was just that huge. “Here we are, they should be around here somewhere.”

“This gigantic tree is a Power Spot, it should hide the presence of the Morpeko and Quetal should we camp here. Be wary of the growing crystals nearby and whatever you do, do not touch them unless you know what you’re doing.” I did see a few crystals, which Mentalis was warning us about and made a note to watch Shanty or Favela carefully to make sure they didn’t do something stupid.

“They should be around here somewhere, they did have the airship we need to get to Cerebrum City.” Cotton looked about curiously as she flapped her wings to hover about the area near the roots of the humongous tree we were going to be camping at.

“Who are we looking for again?” I heard a cheerful female voice ask from next to me.

“Apparently some people Cotton knows.” I said idly to the side.

“Really, well I’m sure she knows us, maybe we can help look!” Said the exuberant voice that sounded a lot like Pinkie Pie’s that it was spooky.

“Why weren’t you going to… who are you?!” I actually flopped out of the wagon in shock and several people shouted in fright as we had six colorful fluffy curly haired unicorn ponies squeezed in among us in the wagon.

“Hi my name is Inky Dye, maybe we can help you look for Cottons other friends!” Said the pony with a haunting similarity to Pinkie Pie in voice and appearance, the pink and blue cotton candy styled hair was really selling it too.

“Ugh, you guys are the friends I was talking about!” Cotton sighed, landed and then slapped a wing over her face and beak. “How did you even get behind me or on to the wagon without us knowing, I’m supposed to be the smarmy one doing the whole stealth ex-per-tease around here!”

“Sorry about sneaking onto your wagon, but it looked so fun and roomy… but it stopped being roomy when we got onboard!” Said a bouncing Ponyta. “You have a lot of people with you already!

“We’re a unit of Ponyta from Titania under the orders of Lord Oberon!” Said a more serious Ponyta as she too got off the wagon with a fond looking smile. “What those orders are, you’ll have to find out for yourself. Unlike Cotton here, we don’t tell all our secrets at the drop of a feathered hat.”

“Hey, I don’t tell all of my secrets! For your information I like noodle dishes, my favorite color is purple and I’m a utility move twister as my moves aren’t normally damaging in combat by finding unique ways to utilize them to great effect. Masamune also wears a pink cape when he thinks nobody is around.” Really Cotton, we already knew you were a spy, were you just that open beaked about things? “Heh, heh, heh, seriously, you guys are way too good at this that even I didn’t catch you sneaking up on all of us!”

“We’re the Ponyta Prowlers unit, guerilla and commando warfare specialist, we like sneaking up on people and we’re quite good at smuggling and snuggling too!” Another said with a bright grin. “Our snuggles are free and we are fluffy as all get out!”

“Wait… Ponyta… aren’t you supposed to have manes and tails of fire?” Ocellus stated as she looked on as the rest of the six Ponyta piled out of the wagon, leaving a bunch of spooked people not knowing how they got there in the first place. Even Mentalis looked shocked that they managed to sneak in among us.

“We’re a different variant of the same species, we’re a psychic type variant that can eventually become fairy types as well when we evolve!” Said the ever excited Pinkie Pie clone, Inky Dye, stated. “That takes a while though, so what did you need of us?”

“Uh, we’re trying to get into Cerebrum City?” Even Ocellus was flummoxed and caught off guard by these unicorns suddenly being up close and personal. They started to rub up against us like overly affectionate cats. “Also do you know the meaning of personal space?”

“No, and even if we did, we still like snuggling, cuddling and being openly affectionate!” Said a softer voiced Ponyta, well they certainly weren’t shy in showing how curious they were about us.

“We can get you there, you just have to help us with the sky patrol and our airship. Said airship kind of got shot down by them and we’ve been patching it up since and Cotton ran afoul of their air patrols too.” The more serious member of the Ponyta unit stated while giving a flat look to the other more frolicking mindless fun having unicorns. “We’ll need a few things to get back in the air. That Gilgamesh guy has some really nasty Sigilyphs working for him. Hit our airship with the ‘Gravity’ move and crashed us out of the sky before we even got anywhere near to even remotely close to the city, they have the airspace around Cerebrum locked down pretty well.”

“Rrrr…” I looked to Dolly as she shifted about in her sleep slightly and started whimpering.

“Aw, you poor thing, Heal Pulse!” A Psychic Ponyta ignited with energy and blasted Dolly with it, all of her recent wounds started to heal at a ridiculously fast rate.

“Well that’s one less thing to worry about, what does your airship need to get in the air?” Canard asked and the Ponyta looked between themselves with a friend.

“Yeah… about that…” One of the Ponyta stated as they all turned to Inky Dye. “Glorious leader of pep and pop, would you field this one?”

“We need two very specific things to get our ship back into the air, one is ‘Inkay ink’ for lift since our fuel spilled off the side of our ship when we crashed, either that or the meanies that shot us down used Psychic to toss it overboard. Inkay do not easily part with the stuff and we are going to use Inkay ink specifically because it’s the closest source of fuel we can get that would fit our needs, there’s not much in the way of substitutes so we absolutely need at least a barrel of the stuff. There’s a nearby lake where we can find some to try and convince one way or another.” As she said this Inky Dye pulled out a scroll show the image of a squid Pokémon and then point a hoof at the other images of what were obviously leafy plant types with mantis style motif. “The other thing is we need is to convince a Leavanny among the locals in this forest to patch our old balloon up or make a new one wholesale. Problem is they are being driven to madness by the increasing psychic pressure throughout Illusio, so a fight is inevitable. They’ll be quite helpful in getting us a new balloon in gear, provided we can get through all the feral Pokémon around where they are to knock some sense into them.”

“Where is the ship?” Ocellus asked, Inky simply motioned to us and we moved behind the Power Spot tree and saw an airship that wouldn’t look out of place on Equus. It had several vibrant shades of yellow, pink, blue and mostly green it’s like they painted a field of flowers onto the ship itself. The airship even had a ramp large and sturdy that could get our large wagon onboard. “Okay, this is perfect, but how come it isn’t damaged or dilapidated if it fell from the sky?”

“We made most of the airship out of Fairy Wood, the wood burns quite quickly. So if the ship goes up in flames, the entire ship will turn to ash in a very short amount of time.” Tapping the wooden boat without a mast with her horn, Inky turned to us. “Otherwise the wood used in the construction of our ship is really quite sturdy to heavy impacts and it’ll stand up to energy attacks that don’t have a lot of heat. Most of Fairy Type technology doesn’t use metal, but cloth, wood and various sap like substances. Also after we evolve, metal becomes a bit of an issue for us so we try to keep that in mind with our technology. So don’t expect anything in our ship to be metallic and… eh… can your large metal friend not come near us please?”

The Ponyta were now looking warily at Dodo despite him attempting to be friendly.

“One last question, what’s to prevent the… what did you call them… from just knocking you out of the sky like before?” That was the sticking point, if they were knocked out of the sky by Illusio air patrol, then what’s to stop that air patrol from hitting before we could get too high in the air?

“Ah yes, the Sigilyph. We’ll cross that bridge once we have a functional airship again, until then we can’t even make an attempt to get to Cerebrum… I assure you that all the ground routes to the teleporters are positively covered in Psychic Type forces.” Inky Dye wilted and sat on her flank. “We’re fine for survival, but apparently Cotton is far pickier about her food than we are. Maybe… hey guys while their busy getting the stuff we need, do you think we can harvest some of those psychic crystals for some special ammunition? I have an idea that might get us by the air patrols.”

“Sounds like a plan for us, if it is what I think it is. We’ll work on that, but I’m assuming Cotton led you here on the assumption that someone among you can cook?” The Ponyta did look interested and I was about to proclaim that I could cook, when something shifted in the wagon and a dazed and dizzy looking Pom stumbled from it and into the conversation.

“Huh, wha… where? Did someone say they needed a meal… well I’m up, for cooking for… wow what happened to some of you?” None of me or the other girls resisted the urge, I pounced alongside Shanty and Ocellus to immediately latch onto Pom in a big. “Hey, hey, I’m okay girls. I’m not hurting, I was just... exhausted… Dolly is the one who… huh, Dolly’s injuries look better than I remember them being.”

“You’re welcome, a Heal Pulse will fix up most surface level and sometimes internal injuries! It doesn’t fix everything though.” The Ponyta healer stated from where she was checking over the Morpeko unit and applying healing where necessary. “I’m the team medic Lumber Spry, if anyone is injured come to me. I’ll fix you up quickly, no pay necessary.”

“So what’s going on and what happened while I was out?” Pom looked about at the misty forest, the large crystals poking out from under the nearby giant tree and the colorful curly haired ponies that were lending us assistance and then to Cotton.

“Howdy there, you reckoning what’s going on.” Cotton wandered over to Pom and looked her over. The two began to scrutinize each other carefully, but didn't seem to find anything wrong with the other after a minute. “We’re going to need to do some things quickly if those Drowzee and Hypno we ran afoul of are still looking for a scrap, but first, that meal I was promised!”

“Yeah we got attacked by a lot of guys and got routed, they apparently specialize in putting combatants to sleep and then killing them while they are out cold or detaining them for capture. We escaped from them and now we’re out here.” No sugar coats here from me. “Also we just got two things to do if we’re going to get that in the air and to Cerebrum City.”

Pom turned around and looked at the airship I pointed at, she sighed audibly and flopped onto her butt to start rubbing her forehead with both hooves in tiny circles.

“What are the chances the guys that attacked us, while I was sleeping, would send a raiding party to attack Kadabraville?” There was a long pause, a silence fell over everyone.

They started looking among themselves and a tension started growing around all of us.

“Darn it, we’ll try to meet up with you later in Cerebrum City!” Mentalis and the other Kadabra’s all disappeared immediately in the flickering effects of a teleport.

“Okay, what do we have to do and on a scale of one to tenm how much pain are we going to be in by the end of it?” Pom stated as she dragged out the cauldron with some help from Dazzle and Frizzle, she started up the preparations for making some soup. The Ponyta became somewhat skittish around the metal cooking pot. “What… what is… oh… is it metallophobia or a metal allergy?”

“Eventual metal allergy, right now we’re fine. Most people from Titania have incredibly bad metallophobia for a very good reason, it’s why Fairy Types won’t go anywhere near the kingdom of Valora which is practically covered in the stuff! Sure ghost and poison types are as dangerous to Fairy Types, which we Ponyta psychic variants aren’t yet, but metal really makes us skittish and fearful. We’ll eventually be Fairy Types, where it’ll become an actual major issue for us to be near.” Explained Inky while staring at the cauldron with trepidation. Their eyes all notably said the exact same thing, they obviously didn’t want anything to do with the metal cauldron. “We’re less wary of Poison Types, by that I mean us personally. It’s mostly because we give off a mist we call ‘Pastel Veil’, we give off a nice fragrance and we know how to toot our own horns on having farts that smell like flowers and anti-venom. Gives complete immunity to being poisoned to everyone around us in a general vicinity, the move Toxic doesn’t even function at all around us. We just have to avoid a specific variant of a Pokémon known as a Wheezing.”

Dazzle rolled her eyes, but didn’t say anything about that. Frizzle patted her on the back affectionately. Probably because having these Ponyta around made Dazzle unique ability to poison anything that shouldn’t be capable of being poisoned somewhat useless, some abilities apparently trumped others.

Cleffa looked a little confused about something and looked like she wanted to make a comment, but didn’t say anything. Canard crouched down and patted her on the head and she just simply smiled and started talking to him.

“Also to answer your question, we acquire assistance from a Pokémon likely surrounded by feral savages driven mad by the psychic energies building up around Illusio and getting ink from another Pokémon that will be quite reluctant to spare it… given eh… how it’ll be acquired. Anyway, for how painful it will be…” Stated Inky with a thoughtful look on her face tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth. “Well I’m giving it a solid six. Good thing we have a healer in Lumber Spry here right?”

“So it’ll be a nine and a right pain in our backsides, got it.” Pom then proceeded on to making dinner for all of us, much to the disquiet of the Ponyta staring at her aghast for simply assuming the worst.

Shaking her head, Lumber Spry quietly went over to check on Ninjask and his damaged wing, she’d eventually get around to the Morpeko.

“So…” Ocellus came over to me once we were done listening to the conversation.

“I feel like I could be better with my ribbon dancing, I mean leaving it all on Shanty is putting a bit much on her to perform to levels that Pom usually does in keeping us safe. Still, she’s definitely gotten really good with water manipulation at least and she’ll hopefully be enough to stop Pom from doing something absolutely suicidal.” That’s all the explanation I needed. Pom was probably correct and would be more than pleasantly surprised if and when she wasn’t. “Want to help me figure some things out Ozzy?”

“Of course I will Smol!” Ocellus leaned in and nuzzled me affectionately and I nuzzled her back.

-Thirty or so minutes later, before Pom’s food finishes cooking, Cotton Murkrow-

I landed on a tree branch near the camping ground and leaned back while stretching out my wings, just to eventually bring them up behind my head to look over the scene below.

“Yep, this gaggle of strangers is going to be something fun, I can already tell with my ex-per-tease!” While I waited for my meal I probably should have mentioned that all five Hypno units were all up and on their trail, the big living metal outsider bird leaves some pretty distinct footprints.

I did some covering up of the footprints around the forest, but it won’t take long before the Hypno try to come in and find them anyway.

Not that anyone noticed that I even left or did anything at all.

Might be an exceedingly loose beak about many things, but I’m fairly good at being a spy master regardless. Like that Ghourgeist named Shine for instance, she’s a ninja and a utility move twister like me, I can easily tell that much. So what's her story, she feels like she has an assassins edge to her even if she doesn't act very lethal in intent. A curiosity to say the least.

"Eh, it’ll endear them to me when I help put a stop to those units still coming after them." Being an insomniac was rather helpful when dealing with monsters prone to silently killing you in your sleep.

Author's Note

If hypnosis could effect a Murkrow (One that doesn't have Insomnia and instead has Super Luck), Hypno could then use 'Nightmare' for a slow painful death.

Dream eater won't work on Dark Types, but hypnosis would leave them vulnerable to other things like the above mentioned 'Nightmare' scenario.

-

Memorial Day was a nice day, as my family gathered together and hunted down a boar.

Poor thing didn't know what bit it's throat out. Sucking the blood out of it for blood sausages later was a little messy. Now if only we had the more vampiric family members among with us at the time... they know how to exsanguinate things.

We smoked the rest of it, grilled it further and spiced the food with salt, pepper, paprika, herbs and a few extra spices. Smelled heavenly, until we ate most of the bacon flavored goodness out of existence together, then cleansed our teeth with shards of it's tusk turned into toothpicks.

Remember those who come before us who laid down their lives so that we may continue and never be ungrateful to the warriors that might be giving you the life you might be currently living today.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a snack to get to, Lemon Cream Pie on a spring.

328. Forest Ops 3.

-Equus, Ponyville, Tianhuo-

“I figured you need a break from training the guards up, I’m fairly sure Pom is alright.” Fizzlepop Berrytwist was still a highly unusual mare, but she was treating me to lunch after training with most of the Fœnum counterparts of the Shadow Fighters.

“How do you do it?” I said as I felt Ruff climbing up my back to snuggle against me, the Canis Minor puppy missed hearing from Pom too. The other three puppies, Woof, Tuft and Puff were a bit more patient and likely believed in their Baa-Baa as much as I tried to.

“How do I let Jaded run wild without worrying about whether or not she’ll come back to me, well she better or else I have an entire nation as an answer to whoever hurts her.” Ah yes, she was the Storm Queen, the storm creatures have actually been thriving under her rule. “Also, if I hear Saddle Arabia had a major incident, I’ll know it was Jaded’s fault somehow. So there is that.”

I couldn’t help myself and found that humorous enough to break my decorum, so I snorted loudly.

I have good friends and acquaintances, I can only hope Pom wasn’t in mortal peril and had just as many good friends watching her back. I have faith that she was in good hooves if she were not completely safe… and had a very good reason she couldn’t call me for more than a week.

-Pokémon World, Ransei, Near Power Spot, Shanty-

It was when we be almost being where the campsite was that we be coming under a sudden attack from the side, one that I be expecting entirely. This was kind of being a thing with Pom already, so we be in some serious danger, as usual.

I leapt up and slash my right hoof out to block the blade of a green bipedal mantic creature known as a Scyther going for a stab on Pom. I knocked them back a fair distance as I got onto my hind legs and grabbed for my weapon as I moved to face them.

Quickly bringing out my scythe cane and readying it, I be staring down the green arm bladed Scyther as Pom looked to the left and leapt behind me with her right hoof pulled back and a second later I heard a grunt of pain at my back. As long as it is not being the sound of Pom getting hurt, I’m fine.

Also I won’t be using cutting arcs against these guys, they are clearly not in their right mind and looking into their eyes says as much.

The creature raised both its arms and pulled back its right while fluttering up a bit on its wings before it shot forward. I be narrowing my eyes a bit, I stepped back as it swung it’s right arm down for me and then stepped forward into its attempt to stab me with its left by thrusting it forward.

I avoided being hit, I could even feel the air coming from its left arm as I be bringing the butt of my cane up into its chin staggering it slightly. With a quick spin to my left and bringing my can around as I did so, I hammer it across the face with a sharp crack using the back of my cane. This immediately toppled the green scythed armed monster.

It was up within a second and coming back at me with wild abandon, I quickly had to dodge its furious swings that started to send cutting blades of air out when it was suddenly blown away and past me by steaming hot water blast to the back.

I be quickly collecting the water above my left hoof and waited for it to cool down before wrapping my left leg with it. As I kept my scythe cane held in my right hoof.

“Oof!” Hearing Pom, I turned to see her rolling to the side as a red bug tried to snap its claws around her neck while she was on her back, the claw missed and became embedded in the dirt where it got stuck.

Pom slapped her right hoof across her left as she rose up onto her hind legs with her back to the bug and thrust a spinning and burning uppercut into the left side of the red bugs head knocking it down. That must be a Scizor. After knocking it down and breathing roughly Pom be looking my way, as she quickly be flicking her hoof and the wool shifted with those movements to make the flames on it go out.

“Are you okay Shanty?” She asked as she looked to Ocellus had quickly switched into her dragon form to fight off, or lacking the ability to do that, survive the strange pink bipedal monster with strange scything arm claws trying to attack her. Pom then be mumbling something that had me thinking I need to keep being wary of our acquaintances. “That doesn’t look like one of the Pokémon that the Ponyta mentioned.”

“Aye, I’m being fine Pom!” I eventually answered, Wasn’t even going to ask if she was okay, I know I might be getting a lie about how well you’re doing. “Was that what was coming at my back?”

“Yeah, those Scizor are faster and tougher than I expected. Be careful around them Shanty. So far Flying and Bug, Bug and Steel, but what’s that pink one? It doesn’t look like a Leavanny.” Good question Pom, definitely didn’t see that one in the scythe armed monsters that were said to be around here.

“It’s a Lurantis. Grass type, it just looks like a bug type!” Lumber Spry answered as she was stomping and bucking away tiny little scythe leaf bugs that looked like smaller versions of the Lurantis.

“This is a grass type?!” Said a struggling Ocellus, she suddenly inhaled and blasted it in the face with some flames. The wild flailing berserk grass Pokémon be wailing and covering its face as it stumbled backwards.

“They are stronger in sunlight and are physical powerhouses, these smaller ones are their previous form, Fomantis!” There sure where a lot of the smaller plant bulb crowned ones crawling everywhere and trying to stab with their much smaller limbs. “Didn’t honestly think there were any of these around!”

“Out of curiosity… Shanty duck!” A red blur shot over head from Pom’s warning, I lashed out with the water encompassing my left hoof and grappled it before it could get to Dolly who was bashing a number of Fomantis away with both bone and board in large sweeping attacks of both, she barked something to Pom and it sounded fairly distressing. With a hard yank I be heaving the Scizor into a nearby tree with the back of its head slamming into it, dazing it for a bit. “What’s the name of this particular forest anyway? I already have a hunch seeing what we’re dealing with, also do those Scizor always have to come at you from behind really fast like that?”

“We’re in Binder Blade Forest, and yes they do if they think they are fast enough for it to actually work.” Several more blasts of boiling liquid be surging forth and cleared a path forward before us through the various scythe limbed Pokémon. “At least we’re not likely to see berserk Gallade running about, male Ralts tend to like living here too.”

Every time I be hearing a new Pokémon name, I be wanting to hear what it be looking like. Now wasn’t being the time as I slapped away a leaping Fomantis with the flat of my blade.

“Binder as in ‘REAPER’ Blade Forest? Of course that would be the name of this forest!” Pom groused out flatly as she be snapping out a buck at another Lurantis that be coming at us from the direction we came in and be sending it flying back that way.

Several spheres of shadowy energy blasted into the monsters surrounding us and a flaming bread loaf be knocking down the Scizor I be slamming into the nearby tree a second ago, said Scizor looked to be aiming for my throat before Dodo be hitting it with that loaf. The burning loaf be hurting it a lot from the way it be twitching with the flaming bread embedded in its face.

I should consider telling Dodo to not be making bread for Frizzle anymore, but she be looking too cute while eating it to say no. Plus she would be begging Dodo for it and then me by association, I knew I be addicted to rum but Frizzle made it art form to be absolutely addicted to bread.

“Shed!” Shedinja tilted their whole body in the direction of the airship. Didn’t need to tell us twice!

“Ocellus come on!” I turned and lashed out my left hoof to fire a one hoofed Riptide into the Lurantis that was keeping Ocellus busy, it was knocked over by the blast of water and didn’t seem to be taking any damage from the water itself.

Oh right… its being a grass type, not a bug type. Water is not being too helpful for those or Fomantis then.

Ocellus turned and started running as a swarm of Fomantis be coming out of the wood work only to be pushed back by arcs of boiling water raining down at them instead of directly on them. They be making horrible screeches as they clawed at each other as much as they tried to claw at us. It be like they were fighting for the opportunity to get to use first.

“Okay, I would like to know what caused these guys to start attacking in force!” Ocellus be shouting as she flew for it and started to fire blasts of flames at the various Pokémon… most of them being weak to fire, this was to our advantage.

What wasn’t to our advantage was the need to avoid setting the forest on fire and or destroying the homes of those that live here. That is being why Ocellus was being careful in her usage of fireballs.

“The second away team is on the way back with a Leavanny and they are moving like crazy Pokémon are after them!” Cotton, informed us of the obvious, as she be spraying feathers everywhere into the path of the bugs slowing them down. The three Morpeko fired bolts of lightning into the surrounded Pokemon. “It is in my ex-per-tease based opinion that I say we better be getting gone while we can be getting, those Hypno units are almost here too.”

“Then we need to hold the feral Pokémon here for them to deal with!” Pom stated as she continued to fire Thousand Spears one after another from her left leg as she back up towards the airship. The jets of air lashing out into the number of them coming at us, until boiling hot jets of water pushed back the various Pokémon encroaching on us.

Charjabug be zooming past me whining in fright as he did so, he had held his own pretty well thus far.

I turned and be running around the humongous tree with the crystals around it’s base for the airships large ramp, Dodo already be loading the wagon up onto it and was standing on the deck. He is clearly being happy to see me.

Smolder was shooting fireballs from the air near the giant tree as was circled around the right side of it to backside where our campsite used to be. The Araquanid were up on deck of the airship and they be barraging the wild Pokémon encroaching on us from behind.

“Ocellus, get Smolder and secure the wagon to the deck. Shanty, Dolly, with me in defending the ramp so we can get Canard and the companions in.” I quickly moved to the ramp as did Dolly and Pom. I took up a position left of the ramp on the starboard side, Pom was in the middle and Dolly was one the right and we all be facing the direction we came from. “This forest is positively crawling with insane Pokémon, we’re not leaving anyone behind to them.”

“Definitely looks like we’ve stirred up a hornets nest, thankfully they aren’t beedrill, but this is just as bad!” One of the Ponyta shouted before firing off a beam from their horn into the horde of incoming trouble.

“I’ll prep the balloon for repairs, we’re going to need it up and soon!” Gone was the cheerful disposition as Inky Dye took on a more serious demeanor. “Hold them off until we can get that Leavanny to do the repair work. Ink is already prepped and ready to lift us off once we’re done getting the balloon back in shape. We’re going to need to fix all the other problems the ship might have after we lift off, until then keep them off of my ship!”

“Can it fly when we repair the balloon? These guys seem like a bit much!” You were not the only one thinking that we be needing to leave Pom.

“Yes, it’ll fly once we get the balloon sealed by a specialist and all Leavanny are definitely specialist in fabrics, clothing and designs.” Answered one of the Ponyta. “The ship will fly, just not very well given all the repairs we had to make from when it slammed into the ground. We just need to be well above the forest to be safe, none of these Pokémon can fly very high without pushing themselves.”

“Rarity would probably have loved to befriend one of these Leavanny with that in mind.” Ocellus did be making me curious about Rarity and how she might be upset to be meeting me.

Ocellus and Smolder were securing the wagon, I turned and watched as the swarms of Pokémon fight amongst themselves as much as they tried to come and fight us too. I did not be liking this chaos very much and likely knew how Pom felt about it as the Araquanid held off the various bladed Pokémon from leaping up onto the ship with hot steam as a deterrent.

“This is the country with the most Psychic Types right?” Smolder asked seeing the swarms of Pokémon starting to pour in from all sides instead of just one direction, none of them were being psychic types.

“Again, most Psychic Types have low birth rates and it’s only somewhat from the lack of trying!” One of the Ponyta answered as they fired a beam from their horn into the increasing crowd to try and keep them off of the ship. “We Ponyta sadly almost have a higher birthrate than most of the other Psychic Types combined.”

“I see something… can we spare an Araquanid on this side!” Pom called out and Dolly barked something as she put away her bone and held up a paw. “In a second Dolly, but get ready to blow a path open for them if it’s them.”

Dolly nodded and turned as a Scizor screeched and came at us in a blur, I surged forward and slashed out with my cane held in both hooves. Only for my weapon to be caught by its right pincer as its left came at me while wide open.

Pom was immediately at my side and moved in to deflect it upwards with her right hoof and then launched a thrusting left kick into its stomach and sent it stumbling back far enough that it got embroiled in a rather rabid fight with Scyther. It be just like watching cats at the docks fighting over a rotten piece of fish.

I looked to Pom and noticed a splotches of red in her wool as it was packed over her left side to staunch the bleed and she be noticing my staring.

“It’ll be okay Shanty.” Pom quietly answered the unasked question, she had taken a hit at some point when I wasn’t watching. Her ears twitched and she turned to look forward into the hordes of Pokémon randomly fighting around the airship, some were actually wandering aimlessly in a daze and some that accidentally touched the psychic crystals went into an absolute frenzy. It is being a good thing I be heeding that warning to not touch one. “To the east Dolly!”

Dolly finished slapping away a Fomantis with the flat of her board, then turned and ran to leap up onto Pom’s back and then hopped straight up and be turning in the air to face the direction the front of the airship mostly be pointing. As Pom brought up her front hooves and struck them together, I already knew what she was doing.

While it wasn’t as powerful as her Thousand Spears: Huo, the horizontal tornado of flames be a combo technique Dolly and Pom had worked to perfection while we were training for a week and it be covering a wider area in a very explosive manner.

“Ar-roo!” The horizontal flaming tornado cleared a huge path in the horde of Pokémon swarming around the airship and I be seeing what Pom be noticing on the other side of the hordes assaulting us.

It was soon followed by boiling arcs of water keeping the area clear of Pokémon, several were being knocked out by splashes and impact of the water slapping against the ground with explosive force.

Canard soon be charging forward through the open now gap with a tall green Pokémon held protectively over his right shoulder. Sami was running at his side and be batting away Fomantis physically with her weapon.

Quetal leapt up and intercept a Scyther with his claws and flipped kicked off of them, knocking them into a Scizor. A Lurantis was deflected when Lit be blasting it with lightning bolt. Dazzle was simply tearing a swath through them with flaming whips and Frizzle supporting her with flames, they were holding the path open for the Morpeko who were swiftly firing bolts of energy in every direction to keep the Fomantis off of them.

“Hoo-wee~! We got a real monster house going on here!” Where was Cotton being since we got here? She wasn’t being very present and she just shows up now all of the sudden. “Oh and the Hypno units are coming in from the west, just thought you would like to know they’ll be here soon.”

After having stated that she flapped her wings and hundreds of black feathers flew off of her wings and battered the Lurantis and Scizor coming at us slowing them down as the feathers started getting stuck to them.

“Mundo take her onboard!” Canard called out as the Mundo saluted and took the Pokémon off his shoulder. Afterward Canard’s hand started to glow and there were now glowing squares coming off his hockey stick as he stopped and swung it into the head of a Scyther coming for him and Sami, the flat of the blade be connected and it was sent flying as if it be struck with a thunderous force.

Canard was being quite strong, but whatever he was doing was making him a bit stronger.

“Wow, you certainly got a hang of using digital energy…” Sami stated as she looked up to Canard starry eyed.

“Get stuck long enough in the digital world and you pick up a few things. Move it Sami, get onboard and cover us from there! Shoot to disable, stick to single shots and please remember that these people aren’t in their right mind!” Canard commands, Sami salutes and was immediately running towards us. Canard stayed back and be helping the others through the horde of Pokémon going crazy.

Canard be slowly backing up towards us as he bashed and beat back several scythe armed monsters at once with his hockey stick.

“Thank… you…” The green Pokémon weakly stated as Mundo carried her past us with the three Morpeko going up the ramp, soon Sami was with us and then turned around to aim her rifle and she be taking shots at the bigger Pokémon tripping up a Lurantis by hitting its outer thigh in a painful manner.

“Lumber Spry, get that Leavanny up and healthy now, we need that balloon up like yesterday!” Inky Dye shouted over the screeches of Pokémon being knocked out, whether it be being scalding hot water, hooves or Pokémon attacks, we were knocking out a lot of them in droves.

A Scyther lunged for me with its raised left arm and I blocked it with the shaft of my weapon, then kicked up into its chest with my rear left hoof and I went into a three hoof crouched to be ramming my own skull into its head. It went down, flopping and rolling away.

“Keep it up Shanty until we’re ready to take off and everyone is aboard, Dolly and I are going to be the last ones on.” Lit squeaked in protest as he stopped next to us and fired several bolts of lightning to fend off the many scythe limbed bugs and plants coming at us. “Until then we’re going to be keeping them from damaging the lower portions of the ship.”

Lit then hopped onto Dolly as she threw the bone and it rebounded off of the skull of a Fomantis and she caught it as it came flying back, she barked cheerfully while wagging her tail at Lit’s weight.

“Guys, don’t get distracted.” Stated Pom as she flicked her left hoof out to catch a Scizor by the base of its right claw, she slapped it across the face with her right hoof and…

I be ducking back and brought the blade of my scythe weapon up at an angle to deflect the Lurantis attempt to catch me off guard. I held its left blade in lock and over its right limb to prevent it from stabbing me with it, I then be pulling the Lurantis into a kick with my right hind leg knocking them back and Frizzle bashing them across the back of the head with a hammer blow using both her claws.

The Lurantis now down I turned back to watching Pom how Pom was doing.

Pom’s right hind leg was raised high up in the air and she was in the middle of a jump and brought it down slamming into the Scizor forehead to end up bouncing its face off the ground with a painful cracking noise as its armored form bounced and came to a rest. It was still breathing, but the fight definitely went out of it with that heel drop.

A scythe was about to stab her from the left and found its stabbing blade blocked by Dolly leaping into the way with her board in her left paw, she brought the bone around in her right to slam it across the head dazing it.

Dolly landed and planted the bone to sweep the legs out from under it swiftly and then, using the pivoting motion, promptly brought around and jammed her board into the Scyther’s chest taking it down. Lit blasted a few Fomantis keeping them off of Dolly.

“Still so many of them… I wish there was something more we could do for them aside from beating the snot out of them.” Which is why our takedowns are being quite swift Pom, we didn’t be wanting to hurt them more than we be having to. Also I do not be thinking about it, but I think some of them be dying or killing each other. “You okay Shanty.”

“I would be being so if this situation were less dire.” Yes, this is being horrible, these were the poor Pokémon being driven mad. Now if only they weren’t all wielding dangerous blade for arms.

“Hey don’t use fire near the ship, if it lights up, we might not be able to put it out before the whole ship is ablaze!” One of the Ponyta stated worriedly and I turned to see Dazzle and Frizzle turn and stood between us.

“It’s really that bad if there’s even a little fire near the ship? Well that’s not going to be very helpful, considering we kind of need fire here!” Dazzle looked towards me wide eyed and then leapt on top of me a blaze of energy flew past where we were.

“The Hypno’s are here, not that they’ll make the situation any better, but at least they can put the violent Pokémon to sleep!” Squawked Cotton quite loudly.

“Yeah, and they’ll taste quite good when we eat their minds if you leave them behind like Gilgamesh thinks you will! Some hero leaving these innocents to our tender mercy!” That must be the leader of the five units that started assault the many Pokémon between us and them. They be approaching from the west, the back end of the ship. “Kadabraville probably isn’t doing so hot these days either once the Drowzee are through with it!”

“It’s either that or we leave them to be torn apart by these feral blade monsters.” If it’s being a choice Dazzle, then I would be choosing the option that gets us out of here quickly with the ship we need to be on taking the least amount of damage. Also with the least amount of bodies caused by us personally.

“Well, there’s no choice for it and it’s a good thing that I’m not a hero then… we’re going with plan A and holding out long enough to get the airship in the air and we’re leaving as quickly as we can. If no matter what we do ends poorly for those involved, I’m free of having to make a conscious decision to endanger myself for those I want to protect the most over trying to save everybody I can.” Pom actually be sighing in relief after saying this, so she doesn’t have to make a sacrifice here as it would be impossible to prevent dire circumstances even if she did. Which is being quite good to know. “That’s not to say I won’t try to make sure half the Hypno’s are out cold and forced into a retreat with their before leaving, but I really would rather not have to fight through the feral Pokémon to get to them and I would still have to make sure that nothing damages the ship by staying close to it. We’ve got to make some time anyway.”

Pom you say you’re not a hero, you say you’re not trying to be one, and then you be coming up with a simple solution to try and save the most people you can. Was it any wonder that I be looking up to her?

“They still have to be attacking the ship if they want to stop us and they have to be doing that while under assault.” I said with a smile as the Hypno already be having problems with having to fend off the horde of plant and bug types swarming the area around the massive tree. “They will be likely retreating right?”

“Oh we’re not going to retreat until we’ve dealt a final blow to you!” One of the Hypno shouted, he was slightly larger than the others. The other Hypno around him were fighting off the highly aggressive natives of this forest.

“Then I’m sorry you think so lightly of your comrades lives, much less your own unless you’re planning to leave them like a coward!” Pom called back before bucking away a Scyther, but both her hooves connected at different spots with its chest and lower body launching it away. “You’re just here to hound me and make me regret coming after Gilgamesh. I’m already regretting it with how dangerous things are getting now, but he currently has something that belongs to me!”

“Push forward!” The Hypno called out to all his units holding their ground currently, though the Hypno looked a little worried as they be taking hits from Bug Type attacks.

“Well there’s no diplomacy to be had here…” Lamented Pom before she turned to one of the Ponyta. “How long do you need to fix that balloon?”

“Ten minutes, unless we want to do a rush job to make it five and then we’ll be fixing the balloon in mid-air, not a really great prospect!” One of the four unnamed Ponyta answered.

“Araquanids scald around the base of the ship to create a steam fog, Morpeko electrify the surroundings to the best of your abilities, keep the small ones from climbing onto or clinging to the ship.” Pom ordered and the Araquanids started spraying the ground closer to the ship, they were a bit slow because of the size of the airship and there were only four of them. “Shanty, Dolly, I’m willing to ask for help with this.”

“Are you asking me what I think you be asking me to do?” This might be one of the most dangerous things I’ve ever done in a while, that Lu Bu guy had me dead to rights if not for that Hideyoshi guy.

“Count me in until we need to break and leave.” It seems Quetal wanted to help stop the Hypno too, he was deflecting several scythes at once with his claws as he bounced around with a Scyther, a Lurantis and another one of those green Pokémon like the barely sane one that be carried onto the ship.

“Count me in!” Favela stated as moved up to my side and slapped away several Fomantis with her vine whips.

“Well that’s really dangerous, so let’s make it a good team effort!” Dazzle lashed several Pokémon back with two whips of fire. Frizzle seemed to agree with Dazzle as she nodded and then slammed her chin into the top of the Scyther she was holding in a headlock.

“Again, be careful with that fire around the ship made of highly combustible fairy wood!” A Ponyta admonished as Dazzle was being pretty close to the ship.

“We don’t know if we can even get them to run successfully, but it’ll be quite a grand play for the net if you can pull it off.” Canard didn’t sound like he be saying no, he shoulder checked a Lurantis and be sending it skidding away with his hockey stick. “Just remember that the ship is our top priority.”

“I’ll stay on task Canard, the Araquanids, Ponyta and Morpeko can hold them off. We just need to take down the head of the Hypno unit, I doubt they would want to stick around if we take out their leader and most of them.” Even as she says this I was back to back with Pom fending off several Scyther at once and I be using my canes blade more as these Pokémon are being tough enough to survive it. Pom threw a nasty right hook into a Scyther’s face and grunted as it still managed to lodge its blade in her right shoulder, she threw a quick left into its face knocking it down and then rubbing the wool over the new wound. “Besides they are having enough trouble focusing on us when there are this many Pokémon attacking everything in sight.”

“Here’s a heal pulse for you, the Leavanny is up and working!” Lumber Spry announced before lighting up her horn and hitting Pom with a Heal Pulse and her wool moved out the way of her recent wounds as she was healed. “Can you grab a few more? We might be able to speed up our departure with several Leavanny working on it.”

“Smolder, Ocellus, you can work on capturing any extra Leavanny!” Pom turned to face the horde between us and the Hypno.

“Can do!” Both Smolder and Ocellus called back.

“Okay, let’s do this, Team Harmony!” Favela fired a few seed bombs and blasted apart a crowd of Fomantis in our way.

“We’ll be back when we see the Balloon going up! Shanty start clearing a road!” Pom called over her shoulder as she motioned for me to start forward, I be charging while swinging my scythe without empowering the arcs.

I didn’t want to seriously injure these people, I created a swath of space as I swept Pokémon out of the way with wide sweeps of my weapon and Favela was assisting me by sweeping a path with her vine whips too.

-Head Hypno-

This wasn’t quite according to plan, but I’ll let it slide if they were willing to fight their way to us.

So that was our primary target, the white wooly one.

I used my Hypnosis move to quickly put several of the blade armed Pokémon on approach for my unit and found even more wild ones coming at us over the sleeping bodies.

-Cotton-

Hmm… all according to plan, heh heh heh, my ex-per-tease is about to shine through!

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Needs more oregano.” Bahamut was offering some rather nice suggestions.

“I’m partial to a lime and thyme combo myself.” Tiamat was equally amiable to making her own suggestions with her main head.

“Grated cheese please!” Mew stated with a cheerful lilt as they levitated up their bowl of chili to me.

Not to snub my guests, but I would see to Mew first before addressing their suggestions as something I would think on.

“Please be alright Pom.” Whined sweet Suicune, who was now wearing a shirt that had ‘I heart Canine Queen’ written on it with a picture of Pom’s smiling face on it.

Apparently Suicune bought it from Smeargle merchants made for four legged canines, I should keep careful watch on that in case this cultist behavior went to absurd levels of devotion and put a stop to it if it goes over a certain boundary.

I will not have another death cult like Team Plasma or Team Galactic pop into existence on my watch, not after the mess they made of that one timeline in particular.

There’s also Team Rainbow Rocket to ‘mildly’ worry about, but they are spending more time killing themselves off in various realities by accident, so really it’s more dark humor thing than anything to watch them in action whenever they get the idea to be cute dimensional hoppers and are formed from the advanced technology to do so. Never ends well for them really.

I’m not even doing anything to Rainbow Rocket’s dimensional shenanigans for that stuff to go horribly wrong. Ah… watching Giovanni being immediately eaten by a Guzzlord upon coming out of a portal was one of the better highlights of my very long life, the look on his face as he fell into its mouth was rather priceless.

Thankfully the Mewtwo escaped the incident mostly unscathed and has been rehabilitated from the horrors he experienced and is a functioning member of society, now he currently lives on the other side of the planet in the mystery dungeon areas from Ransei with the five other Pokémon that specific Giovanni had with him. Don’t know why Giovanni always limits himself to six Pokémon like everyone else in every realm he appears in, if he was a real villain he would carry more like eighteen or twenty on him at all times under a trench coat and wouldn’t care about the rules of engagement... because evil.

I’m just surprised that hasn’t come up yet.

Wandering thoughts aside, Suicune was still one of mine… even if she found something like a deep rooted appreciation for a mortal. Suicune… Suicune did realize that Pom was mortal right? One would think there was enough cat in the three legendary beasts to not be attracted to Pom, apparently Suicune was the outlier as I don’t see this kind of behavior coming from Raikou or Entei.

Anyway, I was never to be a terrible host, besides I had a deal going on with the two dragons and I was curious… mostly about the 'summons' of the worlds the dragons were from and how my Legendary Pokémon would compare to other raw forces of nature. Apparently the Moon Cell had the data after eons of sitting in orbit of a single planet repeatedly shaped by destruction, said destruction occurs once the civilization grew too bold to start looking beyond their tiny world.

I certainly would never do that, I wanted to see my civilizations grow and do interesting things like travel beyond their world to see others I had taken a lot of effort to even make. That banana slug planet took forever to get right. I mean it wasn’t easy to make smart fruit slugs in the first place, much less an entire planet for them to live on.

The Deoxys certainly weren’t the only alien species I made, well alien to the planets I’m specifically more focused on watching at least. They weren’t alien to me, the Ultra Beasts might be a bit estranged, but they were still children of mine too.

Moon Cell was certainly going to use that capability to pull from history, since it can functionally summon heroes from the history it knows. The question was, what amount of history does it ‘currently’ have and from where?

If it has multiple world’s worth, then it will be a terror to take down.

Well it might actually be simpler than I think to take down, because it’ll be forced to play to my rules in part that ‘normal’ bipedal primates can’t exist in this world and its current invasion force reflects what little it is capable of doing right now from that rule needing to be met.

One thing is for sure, we must not lose any heroes in its presence. Lest those heroes become the very thing we must fight against to save this world.

It was already invading Valora and the continent of Ransei has yet to realize the terrible growing issue among all the fighting Gilgamesh started, it was quite deplorable for someone like him to be working with the Moon Cell. Though his reasoning and methods are fairly asinine, I can see where it would work if people were aware of the full scope of the oncoming problem.

Unfortunately, they would become aware of said problem when it becomes absolutely blaringly obvious as to not be possible to ignore except for the dumbest, densest beings around. I’m talking so dense that even Slowpokes, some of the slowest pink salamander sloths to ever exist, would have long since picked up on the issue before that… even if they will still be slow to react to it. I’m of course thinking of Dragon Types, should have honestly used slightly more brains than brawn for some of them when I was conjuring them into existence.

At least the entirety of the Slowpoke line were far smarter than most would give them credit for, they were the only Pokémon line to make a mass exodus out of Illusio before most had even realized that Gilgamesh had usurped the throne and would become a major problem. Gilgamesh didn’t even know they escape from under his watchful eyes far too easily. Said Slowpoke were now helping Fontaine rebuild from that noisy wyvern disaster, even if their aid was comically slow.

The western side of the continent were already setting up for it unknowingly and mostly had their acts together, Violight and Chrysalia being the most actively ready to handle a crisis across three realms. The other kingdoms needed more time to recover from their recent various issues.

Author's Note

To be brutally honest to myself... I think my writing is suffering and I lack focus at the moment.

I'm not in hiatus, because I'm still trying to finish this massive doorstopper of a story. One would expect me to stop, but I don't currently see a cancelation sign on this story unless I was going to do that for April Fools.

Also... darn you Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom!

I think I'm through more than half the game, minus the need to fully upgrade armor, find all the Korok seeds and or explore every inch of the map possible for secrets. I bee-lined most of the ground shrines from the air, the upgraded sky diving suit was exceptionally useful in that respect.

329. Forest Ops Finale: Canine Queen.

-???, Fred-

“Honestly, this dimension is quite fun.” Yes, so very fun for my diabolical plans to marry Oleander and give her a happy life… she’s so evil in the fact that she’s turning me good! “THE MUTANT SHARKS ARE AWESOME, AS ARE THOSE ALIEN DINOSAURS, OF COURSE I’M TALKING ABOUT THE RAPTORS!”

“Does he always do that?” One of the mummies asked, I believe he said his name was Ja-Kal.

“Yes, but it’s not like I can get him to stop.” Oleander said as she hugged me with her hooves, always so affectionate… she could hug me a little more ruthlessly. Soft hugs were fine too though.

“Are you sure you should be cavorting around with a demon?” The female mummy Nefertina asked.

“He’s been trying to lead me to my death since forever, if he hasn’t done so yet, then I can handle being married to him.” That seemed to shock them a bit, except for that Armano guy.

“You should be the one to talk Nefertina, considering how you and Apep acted around one another.” Yeah, this dimension apparently had counterparts to various deities and entities that we have back on Equus. Not exactly the same though, never are.

One in particular of note is that the Anubis of this dimension was god of the afterlife, but not necessarily of death, and was one of the Trackers of Souls. A group that seemed to be ‘Set’ on capturing the reincarnation of some pharaoh prince.

As if the mutant sharks and the alien dinosaurs wasn’t weird enough, what was weird is that none of them have crossed paths, until recently because of us.

You would think magical mummies fighting to protect the reincarnation of a prince against gods and other mummies, alien dinosaurs that want to cause or stop global warming and mutant sharks fighting a mad scientist with a genetic manipulation thing, which created said aforementioned mutant sharks, would have noticed each other sooner.

They all currently lived within five miles of each other and none of the three groups noticed any of the others activities. Even if said activities happened within a block of one another, like ten minutes ago.

“I thought Unicorns were supposed to be pure.” The kid among the mummies pointed out.

“Nobody said we had to be pure good or evil, personally I’m pure crazy… which might go a long way to explaining me having a lovely soul sucking, mostly evil, information demon as a fiancé.” Oleander cuddled me and I didn’t do much more than blush, why would I try to escape my fiancés grasp… she’s giving me exactly what I wanted. Since one day, our closeness will let me take over her body and do horrible things with it, then we’ll raise our haunting, soul crushing, hybrid kids together. Thank you easy bake oven pony genetics! Now if only Oleander would play ball and actively pretend that I’m forcing myself on her as foreplay. “One who is so very hard to handle what with his tendencies to try and eat the souls of the innocent behind my back, but a bagel or two stops him from doing that… also pomegranate flavored stuff helps too. Fred is always so demented and troublesome at the worst times.”

“Ah you pretty haired flatterer, DO KEEP GOING!” My pleasant demented tone was met with visible shivers all around.

“Seriously does he have to do that distorted voice thing? I mean him being a floating book with that kind of presence speaking in a posh tone is terrifying enough.” The bipedal blue shark with purple stripes and rollerblades at least understood good taste in what was scary.

Honestly, speaking politely while giving off a presence of incredible malicious intent always worked wonders for me.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei, Binder (Reaper) Blade Forest, Power Spot, Dolly-

Quetal went flying by acrobatically kicking and bouncing off all the blade limbs around us while lashing out with his claws. Dude was awesome, then again I always did appreciate good parkour skills.

I was throwing my stone bone whenever I had the opportunity to hit something with it at range that likely wouldn’t stop it from returning to my paw, but I found myself more often holding onto it more for up close smashing. Sure my body still ached from when I was attacked in my sleep, but I wasn’t going to let Pom out of my sight so easily with plenty of fight in me.

“Why can’t I do the stuff we did when we were trying to fend off Gilgamesh?” I asked as I blocked a blade with my board, Pom slammed their right hind leg into the green bug’s side making them stagger away and get distracted with fighting something else.

Pom did this as she deflected a blade with her front left hoof and stepped forward to thrust her right into the face of one of the metal bugs, we were pushing through towards those hipster guys. Shanty was leading the way by sweeping them out of our path.

“Dolly, you have to remember, that was happening in what amounts to a dream. I’m actually kind of glad that I don’t have large golden feathered wings sticking out of my back.” Yet, you enjoyed the idea of flying so much Pom.

Even as we talked we were pummeling our way through the driven insane and were about to encroach on a busy hipster team, one of the five teams we need to force into retreat and keep off the airship.

Would have been cool to lash out a blade of wind from my swiping paw or fire wind bullets while floating around, there was also those chains of wind thing and all that cool swapping places thing.

Wonder how Smolder and Ocellus were doing.

-Smolder-

I slapped my ribbon around the arms and chest of a Leavanny and they struggled and tied to jump or get away, they couldn’t get their arms free. So they started firing leaves from their head, I quickly swung about in the air to aim their head and mouth away from the airship in case they can breathe energy beams.

Wasn’t putting it past any Pokemon at this rate to be capable of spitting energy beams in a variety of ways after watching the Skitty Squad shoot freeze beams from their mouths. It was proven to be the right call when the Leavanny opened its mouth and an energy orb formed.

“Ocellus aim it at the Hypno!” Ocellus was helping with the defense, turned to what I was doing and immediately understood. “Then help me get it onboard!”

Ocellus’s horn glowed and soon the Leavanny’s head was forcefully pulled in the right direction and a massive beam of pure power flew from its mouth.

Just about everything moved out of the path of the beam except for the three members of a Hypno unit were definitively KO’d immediately by the blast. It was seconds later that the Pokémon trapped in my ribbon became weak and a bit limp.

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.

“That was a Hyper Beam, it’s powerful, but it drains the user quite badly afterwards. Very good last resort move, but otherwise leaves you open to attack afterwards until you can recover from the drain.” Answered Lumber Spry who motioned at us with a hoof, while she scrutinized the Leavanny I had trapped in my ribbon. “Get… him, yes get him onboard now, we need him sane and helping with the balloon!”

“A little help here? This guy is not as light as he looks!” Who knew bugs could be so heavy? Ocellus sidled up next to me and help me heave the Leavanny upwards and onto the deck, he struggled weakly in the ribbon as we pulled him on board.

He was hopefully within the field of the Morpeko as they blasted lighting out at all sides to repel boards or any given Pokémon clinging onto the ship that weren’t being blasted off by the boiling liquid spewing Araquanids. Given some time and we might have another sane Leavanny working to help us out.

“Two should be enough right?” Ocellus asked Lumber.

“We don’t have the room or food for every Pokémon here, but we can possibly have a third one onboard. Just remember that once we get to Cerebrum City, we won’t be responsible for them at all and they are not likely staying on our ship.” Nice way of saying they are not our problem later, especially when we currently needed them to even get off the ground. “Also we don’t have the ability to protect them from the passive effects of all the psychic energy in the air.”

This was all basically quid pro quo for us huh, doesn’t seem fair to stick another Leavanny with us.

“We’ll just focus on the defense then, get that Leavanny up and helping.” If Leavanny were as good as we’ve heard, then they’ll be able to do what Rarity would have likely already done by now.

-Mundo-

“Come on, we can do it!” My Coaching move was boosting my friend’s capabilities as they fought on, especially helpful when Shine’s kind of fighting was specifically throwing things and said things were hitting harder thanks to my help. She was also utilizing Phantom Force to teleport about the battlefield to explode out from behind someone in a mass of shadows.

The Pokémon we were fighting barely had the wherewithal to actually use moves beyond instinctually, this meant they were barely able to so much as scratch Shine because they weren’t actually using moves intelligently. Some of them had some of their senses due to the proximity of the Morepeko unity, which is why I’m still mentally stable, but could feel my mind starting to slip a bit here and there which means I needed to be closer to the ship.

I performed a horizontal Flying Press to body check a Scizor going for Dazzle and took them out with a powerful belly bump, I turned and was about to be hit by a Scyther when a Dark Pulse blew them away. I noted Fleer was assisting from up on the deck of the ship along with Charjabug who was firing bolts of lightning to deter Fomantis from crawling onto the ship.

“Nice shot!” I called out with a wave and started up Steel Wing to provide some defense from the attacks coming from all sides and randomly crisscrossing across the battlefield. It was keeping the Hypno distracted from focusing down the airship.

“Thanks!” Called back Fleer as I moved to the stern of the ship and took up a more defensive position and started blocking blade attacks with my wings covered in steel type energy, she probably learned such a move from her friend Abby.

The Furfrou was apparently fine with combat, being a mercenary and all, but was clearly uncomfortable in a more warlike setting going on here.

“I’m sorry, but I cannot go much further away from the ship.” I told Shine as she appeared next to me when I started rubbing at my head, she tossed a number of Graveler stones into the oncoming crowd with unerring accuracy slowing them down or distracting them into attacking each other.

“Then help me protect the ship from here.” Shine said cheerfully. “The others can press the offensive.”

Yes, but they were fighting five units worth of powerful psychics and a horde of forest Pokémon on top of that. Dazzle and Frizzle would be fine at least as far as the forest Pokémon were concerned by the Hypno were going to be a bit much even if they were highly distracted with the locals.

I heard the bang of an explosive and a Scizor flopped into the ground and went skidding by us face first.

“Focus on the battlefield more you two!” Sami then readjusted the aim of her weapon and shot again, I saw a Pokémon get knocked over when the painfully fast projectile hit them in the leg.

“Right!” I and Shine called out together as the others pressed forward.

-Pom-

The horde of crazy Pokémon was actually somewhat in our favor, they had at least three of the five teams tied up with defending themselves and whenever the Bug Types started to use a Bug Type specific move they suddenly became top priority.

Shanty was almost done clearing a path to a unit of these Hypno, we were going to take down two units of Hypno and then, ironically enough, bug out. That beam that came from the direction of the airship already weakened half a unit of Hypno was bad enough that they were having problems encroaching on us, much less holding their ground from all the crazy scythe and claw Pokémon.

“Okay everyone, blitz them!” I quickly turned to my left and blasted a Scyther away with a single Thousand Spears, as I kept moving forward and came to a stop in front of my first Hypno. These guys were weird looking.

“Hypno… Hypno… Hypno…” The Hypno started motioning at me with its arms and I started to feel sleepy, until I felt Dolly slam down on our bond and I was suddenly back to being alert and did a twisting leap forward, dodging several psychic beams as I inhaled and carefully inflated or deflated portions of my wool as I moved forward through the air flipping and rotating.

Notably my wool didn’t do a single thing to stop the psychic energy as it passed through portions of it entirely without touching it, so yeah Psychic Energy was another thing I couldn’t protect against very well. I doubt I’d be doing too well against a well-trained unicorn that could react to fast moving things.

I eventually exhaled and my body sped up as I unleashed a bark blast at the Hypno I leapt towards point blank, the blast stopped my momentum and I had to quickly backpedal as one of the Hypno thrust his glowing fist at me.

The Hypno fist struck the ground with thunderous force that sent chips of stone, as much as a veritable fountain of dirt, flying into the air and I felt the stone puncture through my wool armor and the shockwave stunned me.

While I was distracted by the several bits of rock embedding in my flesh and my body being visible shaken, Dolly was blocking a beam for me from the right with her board and then threw the bone at the offending Hypno nailing them in the forehead and catching the bone as it bounced back, she twisted with the bones momentum and used it to plant her board in the ground and crouched behind it to take several Psychic attack impacts on it.

The guy on the right was suddenly hit by an Aerial Ace kick to the temple by Quetal who did a sideways leap to take another blast for me as I was getting up and he cartwheel into the Hypno at the back left of the units formation, coming out of his cartwheel with a painful double overhead downward claw slash that bloodied that Hypno and he followed it up with jumping roundhouse.

“Most dangerous move, Thousand Spears: Huo, takes five minutes to set up, how in the world is that the most dangerous thing she can do with such a poor wind up time?” One of the Hypno behind the front three said while staring at me, my ears caught this strange fact over the din of all the fighting going on.

Shanty slammed the Hypno with flat of her cane scythe Hypno tried to punch me with a glowing fist and followed that up with a rolling leap to bring the blunt side down on his skull knocking him out.

The guy on the back right suddenly received a flaming whip around the waist and was yanked screaming into the air to receive a hammer blow to the back that spiked him into the ground painfully. It was nice combo from Dazzle and Frizzle.

“Penalty move: Charging!” Canard came in and rammed his right shoulder into the last guy, knocking them to the ground in a brutal display of strength. He was one of the tallest among us, physically stronger than I was without magic assistance. “Slapshot!”

Swinging the hockey stick forward the downed Hypno’s head snapped to the side with a painful cracking noise and it was a surprise to still see them breathing afterwards after they were sent rolling like that, Pokémon were really quite tough beings when they weren’t being hammered with their weaknesses.

The guy I hit with the bark blast was sitting up with his forehead glowing, only to be hit by Lit using Lunge to plant himself squarely on the creature’s nose. The bug promptly squeaked loudly and electrified himself afterwards, violently and viciously frying the Hypno that… really should have stayed down.

“Pom behind you!” Dolly called out as she was busy prying her board up from the ground.

I raised my left hind leg, bucked out and fired a Thousand Spear into a Scizor to slow it down. It only redoubled its effort to come at me a second later, oh right, Bug Steel not inherently weak to wind attacks like almost everything around here.

Two Vine Whips slapped into its face, followed by the tip of a flaming whip rising up into its chin sending it upwards and then it was blasted away by a seed bomb.

“Thanks for the set up Dazzle!” Stated a prancing Favela with cheerful enthusiasm.

“You’re welcome!” It seemed Dazzle and everyone else had thing in hand with hitting this one unit as they turned to fend off attacks coming from grass, bugs, grass bugs and steel bug types.

“Cut the chatter, we have an opening to the main unit!” I lifted my right leg and quickly shook a Fomantis off of it. It had stabbed its right limb into my wool and was about to stab me with its left, until I shook it off and then walked forward a few steps before flicking it away with a hind leg. “The more Hypno’s we defeat the less people fighting off the Pokémon that have been driven insane. So we’re going to need to start running for it soon after we take down the leader Hypno.”

Speaking of the driven insane people, they were now less focused on the ship and more focused on us and the Hypno, some bug type near the ship seemed dizzy and or highly upset as they looked to have somewhat come to their senses. They were likely within the field the Morpeko were generating by presence alone, Mundo and Shine were at least letting them stay with in the field as long as they were not trying to claw their way up the ship. Was every living thing in this entire forest here?

-Somewhere else in Binder Blade Forest, ???-

A glowing mushroom shifted about and popped up to reveal it was a living entity, it looked about because things were too quiet and it recognized that it was still daytime by what little light filtered through the canopy. So it snuggled back down into the dirt and went back to sleep next to its siblings that were also resembling the regular glowing mushrooms around the forest.

The mushroom Pokémon in general didn’t like getting nibbled on.

-On approach to the Hypno leader unit, Pom-

“Hey do you have a name before we fight, I’m Pom Lambchop.” At least we could be amiable what with the twenty or so blades aimed at each of us at the moment.

“My name is Montgomery, how excellent of my target to come to me.” Said the Head Hypno of the unit, of course he was bigger and older sounding than the rest of them. “I don’t know the meaning of retreat.”

We fanned out and kept pushing back any blade limbed aggressor while trying not to do them too much harm.

“I think I can understand why Gilgamesh would send you to goad me to anger.” My flat response was met with a glare. “I’m not doing this out of anger, but pragmatism. We’re not getting into the air without the chance that you would pop the balloon. So let’s do this thing.”

“Yes… let’s.” Montgomery stated as he proceeds to steeple his fingers, my eyes narrowed at him.

I leapt forward and thrust my right hoof for his face, he leaned to the side and his fist was suddenly racing for my face and before I knew I was tumbling and ended up flopped onto my back.

I quickly rolled to the side as a beam of psychic energy slammed down on where I was.

“You’ll have to try harder than that.” Montgomery said with glowing eyes, then again his wasn’t the only one.

I was up on my hooves and witnessing similar action of the others, dodging, deflecting or somehow figuring out what the others were going to do before they did it. So these Hypno in particular have something like combat based Future Sight, like in the move that was mentioned to me as being a thing among psychic types?

That’s my guess anyway… until I thought about it and looked at what was happening closer.

Shanty was up and swinging her scythe and the way the Hypno moved was too fluid as if he knew exactly where the attacks were going to be before nailing her with a blow to the cheek that send her skidding past me.

Dazzle’s flame whip and Frizzle’s form were tossed back by accurate bursts of psychic energy before an attack could be done by either of them.

Quetal got in a few hits, but the retaliations came close to hitting him as he back off. The Hypno weren’t using psychic attacks for obvious reasons, but did they all have blasts of spherical shapes of energy that looked like Quetal was avoiding like the plague.

“They all know Focus Blast?!” Quetal intoned as he came to a stop at my side sweating quite a bit from all the dodges from the numerous Focus Blasts that had been fired at him with dubiously close accuracy. They couldn’t map Quetal at least.

Lit was flicked back by psychic energies when he went for a lunge, his size working against him because they could stop him even at high speeds.

Favela took a nasty direct hit from a psychic blast of energy and was left trying to get back on her hooves only to slip several times trying to dodge follow up attack. She was eventually helped up and moved out of harm’s way by Dazzle.

Dolly threw her bone and nearly got her head smashed in by it when it immediately reversed course, her board deflect it upwards and she caught it with a large shiver going throughout her body.

A burning bullet made of energy was stopped in mid-air by Montgomery and he wagged his finger at the ship before sending it flying back only to be blocked by Mundo gruesomely leaping into its path before it could set the ship ablaze.

The most damning thing about this situation was that the most successful out of all of us had been Canard who managed to take one down with a high stick blow to the head. In fact the Hypno didn’t seem to realize he was there until he directly attacked one of them, they all flinch as if in collective pain as one of them was taken down by the blow to the skull. Oh sure, they started giving him trouble seconds afterwards as he rapidly backpedaled out of the way of the shot fired his way in a wildly inaccurate fashion.

It was not just seeing the future, it was more, like what Dolly and I could do in any instant… they were all connected with Montgomery as the center of their power. The knocked out Hypno hovered up with dull lifeless unconscious eyes, even out cold he was still providing power to the other like a living battery.

“They or you won’t retreat because you’re sharing your minds and you’re basically controlling all of them and using their power to help predict and react to our movements.” This would take some doing, also I’ll have to shift into wolf mode. “Do you really think yourself impossible to beat?”

“I’d like to see you come up with something to actually deal with Future Sight? I so do love the sound of torment in the coming dawn.” The grin on Montgomery’s face grew wider when an explosion of psychic energy went off near me and Dolly yelped.

I looked to see that she was knocked down, she was whimpering and had a nasty burn in her side. Several other blasts of psychic energy sent my friends flying and hurting, but they still looked ready to fight.

I quickly dodged several of the blasts aimed for me and narrowed my eyes at what he just did as I saw several of the controlled were hurt because I dodged.

Yeah, what he just did… yeah… he was going to force it to be my problem. Well if he’s going to go that far, then I should show him a real beast.

“Not a single thought you can have will get by me, I know all you’re moves as you even think to make them.” Montgomery grinned.

“The balloon’s done!” Shouted Ocellus as she swooped by overhead and had to dodge several beams of psychic energy.

“Canard take Dolly with you and start the retreat, I’ll deal with them.” Oh sure it was going to hurt my muscles a lot to pull off, but pulling all of them at once was for a good cause.

“Deal with me and all the ones I’ve just gained control over?” Multiple blade armed Pokémon around Montgomery suddenly had the same glowing eyes he did. “Such fun puppets to toy with and feed off of.”

“Pom…” Canard and the others started a fighting retreat and then noticed the glowing eyed ones were currently aimed at surrounding me.

“I’ll be fine… go… now!” The others began the retreat, but I stayed there standing on four hooves glaring at them. “Shanty… get ready to come pick me up.”

The balloon was already inflating, I sighed. Better make this quick then.

“Oh, just you alone?” Montgomery said. “What do you think you can do that you couldn’t before?”

“Go all out, not overthink things for one, give into my bestial side and become a nightmare of the likes you’ll never live down, the best part is… it won’t require a single thought to pass through my head. I already declared Baa-Ram-Ewe on your boss. I say BAA-RAM-EWE to you!” I said sternly, he just burst out laughing at me. “I just want you to know, you brought this on yourselves, you’re about to see Alpha Lambkin and how absolutely vicious the wolf-fang-hoof style can be. Just be glad I’m still going to be merciful… for a given definition of it.”

“How do you plan on surviving everything I have around you?” Just wait and see Montgomery, I so wanted to deal with you using Shock-Ram, but I really didn’t want to die today and leave my friends to explain what happened to me from doing that out of anger.

Nope, doing this cold fury style.

“Arrrroooo~!” My wool shifted pointed eyes, wolf scruff, long fluffy tail, wool shaped paw digits and something extra added into the mix. “You’re about to see a side of me that I don’t like knowing I even have, at least it’s better than giving into my Chrysomallus side. Shanty, don’t get close to me until it’s all over with.”

-Cutscene-

Sparks of red appeared in both of Pom’s eyes, underneath her wool there was a shifting, but it wasn’t her wool this time. This time… it was her flesh that was changing shape, actual wolf ears, her blunt herbivorous teeth gaining canines and her tail elongating under the fluff and her cloven hooves turning into actual claws.

While her powers of Vitakinesis were unkown to her and she had never been taught to use them, she was using them instinctually here.

Alpha of the pack, the Lambkin leader, stood still while several spiritual copies of her sulked out of the shadows like a pack of stalking wolves not even caring about the numerous controlled Pokémon around them readying their blades to rush forward. One of the spiritual wolves had three fish tails and looked more focused than the rest of them, it showed no emotions, but the intelligence was clear in its eyes as it vaguely showed something akin to worry while drawing some energy from Dolly. One of the spirit wolves had three bands around its neck and seemed eager to dig into the feast.

“Impossible.” Montgomery’s eyes widened in fear, the near future showed his imminent defeat.

He had the numbers, the power and overall the ability to tell what she was going to do… right up until she spawned those blasted spiritual copies of herself, he couldn’t even detect her presence anymore. The future only showed his defeat and nothing else, not how he was defeated or what was coming.

-Ocellus-

Oh Pom… I’ll be making a note of this and will file a complaint about you’re mental state.

-Pom, Alpha Lambkin, Canine Queen vs. Doomed ‘Head Hypno’ Montgomery, in what was about to be an ensuing one sided slaughter, (Insert Mummies Alive! Intro Theme –Instrumental- here)-

Pom started slowly stalking forward and anything that had a bladed limb suddenly surged at her from all sides, there wasn’t any brightness in Pom’s eyes as she Inhaled slowly. Before the stabbing blades and clacking claws could even touch her, Pom disappeared with but a single puff of released air.

Mist started surrounding the entire area hiding the movements of the hidden spirit wolves inside, only the glow of their constantly moving eyes might give even a slightest hint of their locations and it was proven false when a pair of dots were proven to be simply floating motes of energy caused by the fog. A fog made of incredible spiritual pressure in an effort to misdirect where the threat was entirely.

All there was is just pure wild instinct and one command given to Pom’s actual body before it was let loose among all the spiritual energy flooding the area in the shape of wolves, hurt only the Hypno.

Suddenly Pom was running by one of the Hypno at a visible speed, her teeth tore into their leg as she bit into the Hypno’s knee and dragged them off into some bushes. What followed were agonized sounds of could be heard as much as squelching of completely crushed kneecap being rendered useless and then… nothing after such frightening howls of anguish that Montgomery usually enjoyed.

A second later another Pom had snapped her teeth into a different Hypno and dragged it off into the forest by its shoulder screaming, more sounds of agony before quickly turning to instant silence.

Montgomery was trying to send the bladed Pokémon after her, but he couldn’t even sense Pom’s mind was anymore and he was receiving pain from the two Hypno that just got dragged off and mauled violently.

While he was busy trying to disconnect from them mentally, a third Hypno was dragged off by the thigh leaving a pool of blood in the wake of what Montgomery was now recognizing as a completely monstrous wild creature.

He started to consolidate all the power into himself when another Hypno went down by several blurs clawing up its chest right next to him, each hit breaking a rib, shredded flesh, breaking bone and then there were only two left standing next to a very much flayed Hypno that was still alive and passed out in utter agony.

Montgomery was wondering how long it had been, since Pom took out four of them it was like the world slowed down or was it just that Pom sped up so fast that his mind couldn’t even comprehend her movements.

Maybe, maybe it was something more mystical, like a Fairy Type Lycanroc curse, a very real one. At least Montgomery was beginning to believe in horror stories, he was experiencing one and his mind was shattering trying to find a way out of this. He really should have learned teleport, who cares if he would have left his useless men behind in the face of this?!

His mind was quickly cracking under the strain of trying to put off his fear, his sweat could be smelled flooding the area with terror.

Make that five Hypno down, as another Hypno disappeared into the nearby trees screaming in pain as Pom’s jaw threatened to decapitate him and was crushing his spine as they launched upwards.

Blood started dribbling from above, the bushes started leaking trails of red staining the dirt, the trees and the pool at Montgomery’s feet from the one mauled Hypno. The other Hypno teams were frightened and backing away.

All the psychic energy crazed Pokémon suddenly started fleeing the area in droves, even the Pokémon Montgomery once had control of were disappearing into the safety of the wilds. No longer was there a frenzied mess, all being frightened off by an apex predator.

Now Montgomery wasn’t so haughty about controlling so many puppets or eating Pokémon alive of their life force.

What has that fool Gilgamesh unleashed upon us?! The psychic energy in the area was giving way to darkness.

Montgomery saw a pair of eyes open up in front of him and blasted as much of his psychic power as he could at it, the fog cleared and the two bits off light looked like little fireflies as they dance away into the air.

He felt the teeth dig into his left ankle, Montgomery couldn’t do anything but yell as he fell and his ankle was shattered.

He could even see a bit of bone sticking out of his ankle and could be forgiven for barely even comprehending what was happening over all the pain, his mind was shattering to pieces in terror as something invisible tore apart his right knee in a fountain of blood. His left elbows felt like it was crunched under powerful set of jaws, but he couldn’t even see his attacker in front of him!

Montgomery thrashed and flared his psychic energy in every direction, using whatever might potential of his mind he had to try and save himself from this fearsome creature of the shadows. No Dark Type could be truly this terrifying. His chest was being clawed at his right shoulder suddenly crunched and had a paw print shape embedded in it.

Then the attacks stop, slowly a left three toe claw placed itself on his chest and Montgomery stilled as he was facing down the muzzle of a blue eyed growling wolf.

The pressure and weight was increasing on Montgomery’s chest and the growling blood stained mouth of the beast slowly began opening wide to come in for a bite at Montgomery’s face.

His eyes widened as the jaw came forward in a flash of brilliant light, his vision filling with teeth and darkness as he felt it begin to snap over his face and head like a vice.

-…-

Montgomery laid there wide eyed, face stuck with a look of pure terror and not crunched into bloody mess. However the sheer terror was to the point his heart had almost stopped beating.

He could not know that his mind had been directly attacked and damaged to the point short of lethally shattering by the image of a spiritual white wolf with three tails.

Montgomery would live, but he wouldn’t be in any state of mind to harm anyone ever again. His injuries weren’t as bad as they appeared, but Pom really did maul Montgomery’s entire unit of elites in a terror inducing manner, crushing, ripping and tearing into their bodies.

Pom stood up and started to walk away with blood stained wool, she stumbled towards a mentally scarred Shanty who could see the slight red rings around the edges of Pom’s eyes slowly fading away.

-Shanty-

After a moment I looked over at the ones she be mauling, miraculously… their wounds be scabbed over already, but their broken bones still be visible…

I be feeling sick in my stomach from what I just be witnessing.

I know I be trying to kill Lu Bu, but that was life or death… this was too I guess, but still… that was being quite horrifying to be bearing witness to.

Pom be looking at me dully and standing stock still.

“Po…” Pom collapsed before I could even say her name, her body making several cracking noises as if her body was putting itself back together in some way, mostly coming from her hooves.

I then saw something unusual in her blood dribbling mouth that might be haunting my dreams, Pom was laying there crying tears despite being out cold.

What I was paying attention to was the bloodied fangs she had in her mouth, fangs that were thankfully shrinking back to normal as her wool be shifting back to the shape of a lambkin we all knew with faint hints of a faint gold pulsing glow shining every now and then like blood pumping through veins.

I be taking a sniff of her, this blood didn’t just be belong to the Hypno’s, it was also her own. Her body tore itself apart doing whatever that was, at least it didn’t be feeling or looking as if she used Shock-Ram, didn’t be thinking she could actually survive doing that to herself a third time after the first two times.

I didn’t want her to do it a third time… but this was something of a close equivalent. I didn’t want to lose the closest thing I be having to family like that.

I turned my gaze onto the other still standing Hypno who were shivering and there was a lot of pools of liquid on the ground, they barely had more than one unit standing thanks to all the blade arms. I slowly heaved Pom over my back, she was being really light…. did she always be weighing so little?

“Take you’re wounded and retreat or else worse will happen!” I even be meaning some of that, the Hypno be carrying everyone off. They even be taking the ones dragged into the bushes, the one that was hanging from a tree branch, the one that was mangled by fast flying claws and they even bothered to take their leader.

What does it say about them, that they were willing to save even the likes of that Montgomery guy? Not all of them were being bad guys, Pom drove that home quite clearly as they retreated and didn’t be looking like they would be coming back.

I started to carry Pom quickly to the airship before the crazy Pokémon came back, I glanced as Ocellus wordlessly as we had Lumber Spry check over Pom’s injuries.

A little more than half of her muscles were almost torn close to irreparably, not all of them mostly being pulled in her body like what happened with that Cu Chulainn guy.

Wolf-Fang-Hoof, quick disabling style by attacking pressure points or damaging joints at high speeds, not really being a lethal style the way Pom be using it. At least I can sigh with some relief that she wasn’t out to outright kill any of them, even if she did be putting on an amazing show of making it look like she did or had.

Also, Pom can be breaking her limits to an insane degree without even entering the Shock-Ram state of fully breaking her limits…

I don’t know what to be more terrified of, Pom or her incredible capacity for being self-destructive.

Definitely being terrified for her though, was that what the word ‘Sacrifice’ for her was like? She at least be stopping all the fighting.

Author's Note

Lack of focus, so much gaming, need sleep...

Darn you Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom... I once had a schedule. Once...

330. The Airship Approach.

-Equus, morning, Canterlot, Tianhuo-

I had to be ready, I was showing the guards how to properly defend themselves with hoof to hoof combat. Instructing others wasn’t too difficult and having Ruff, Puff, Tuft and Woof as training assistants and constant little mood raisers was nice, but it wouldn’t stop my constant worries much less theirs even if they were distracted to being quite playful.

Speaking of training, I liked having Arizona to take my frustrations out on and she was quite willing to be such a punching bag. At least she knew how to fight back on the level her opponent was capable of.

“Ah, this feels great!” Arizona stated as I kept attacking her and she kept defending herself… well mostly defending herself. She apparently liked being beaten up, world’s best living training dummy.

“Any questions so far?” I stated as I broke off our spar and looked to the soldiers, one of them raised a hoof.

“Um, ma’am, isn’t Arizona like the biggest case for Domestic Violence from what she’s told us about how abusive her relationship is with Velvet?” A fairly decent question, given how often Velvet was at Arizona’s throat.

“Neither Arizona or Velvet have reported it as being a problem, they’ve never disturbed their neighbors… even if their relationship enters a realm of… disturbing.” I know I would never hurt Pom, she’s already getting hurt enough as it is whatever it is she’s probably currently doing.

The distance between our hearts hurts her as much as me. I felt Blighter come up out of my shadow and snuggled up under one of my legs and barked excitedly in a manner of trying to cheer me up.

“Where did that even come from!” One of the Equestrian guards stated in shock, I rolled my eyes.

“Oh that’s just Blighter, apparently it’s why her shadow is pink.” Another more informed guard stated, having actually asked me earlier about why my shadow was sometimes pink. It was just Blighter being protective of me.

“I thought that was from her mane being on fire!” From what the guard just said, I’m beginning to think Equestria’s education system was fairly messed up.

Unicorns definitely needed more normal science curriculum than having everything relating back to magic, Princess Twilight Sparkle couldn’t get those ‘general’ education reforms through soon enough.

How else would a giant butterfly have logically earned a medical license in Equestria while working on a pirate crew? Mind you, the butterfly named Belfry was as close to being an outright animal that it completely beggars belief that it could even pass the test for medical license, much less the whole crew passing the same test with their varying education levels from none at all to actually fairly well educated for a Viking.

As far as world educational standards went, Turtle Toga surprisingly beat out everyone. This in spite of it being a cutthroat, pirate riddled, island of incredibly dubious living conditions. Education was the one thing they don’t skimp on apparently, makes you wonder why most of the people that come from there take pirate as a main vocation if they were smart enough for literally anything else.

-Pokemon Realm, Ransei, a little more than a day later, Illusio, Ocellus-

The gently rocking of the airship stilled my nerves as I approached Pom and started to open her mouth.

“Mmm?” I was about to stuff the funnel into Pom’s mouth when she woke up, Dolly had spent most of the other day exercising and worrying about Pom’s unconscious form.

Darn it, I liked using the funnel…

It wouldn’t be long before she woke up from her nap and would certainly be excited to see Pom, personally I’m terrified Pom could grow fangs or go ‘dog wild’ like she had. Shanty pointed out that Pom was using her Wolf Fang Hoof technique to disable her opponents, which she did so while volatilely mauling them was upsetting… at least she didn’t kill anyone. The terror she inspired in everyone was rather warranted and I doubted any of them would want to face her again.

“Oh your awake, we all made it onto the airship fine, we successfully forced the Hypno into retreating though we might see some of those units again.” Aw she woke up… and I liked using the funnel. Don’t know what that says about me, but I’m pretty sure other people don’t want to hear about it. “Here, drink this, Sitrus Berry Juice. I have to ask, how did you end up tearing your muscles instead of pulling them like when you did with Cu Chulainn?”

I held the cup up to her mouth and she took the drink in a few good thirsty swallows of the tart lemon like liquids. I didn’t need to eat, but my mouth still appreciated flavors every once in a while

“Reminder… I do not have super strength.” Pom stated clearly and succinctly as she raised a hoof and started to pet Dolly, who cuddled closer to her. “Though my jaw strength is fairly impressive, bodily moving the Hypno was a bit much for my body compared to mauling Cu Chulainn. Now that I’m through explaining that to you, what’s our situation?”

“You missed a whole day Pom. The Inkay ink got us into the air and the Ponyta Prowlers unit from Titania is transporting us towards the city, but once we get into Cerebrum City and managed to offload properly, and hopefully not crash landing on some poor Pokémon, we’re on our own from there. It is still unknown what happened to Kadabraville, aside from your supposition that it could come under attack from the other units.” I sighed loudly. “With some help from Lumber Spry and the Sitrus Berries, that we have for emergency medical reasons or just you in particular, you should be able to walk by the time we get there… provided we can bypass the Sigilyph security. Sigilyphs are the main obstacle to stopping all flying or otherwise Pokémon from getting anywhere close to Cerebrum City. Apparently Sigilyph are even dangerous to Dark Types because they can learn Miracle Eye.”

“The Ponyta Prowlers were assumedly shot down far from the city if it’s been more than a day, what’s stopping those Sigilyphs they mentioned from doing that again?” Mind you we haven’t exactly seen what one looks like, but we know that they are dangerous and are said to have very distinct appearances. “Also what does the move Miracle Eye exactly do?”

“Right or wrong, the Sigilyph are apparently always bound to follow the current king’s orders, regardless of who that current king happens to be. Big obstacles for us really, especially if we are going to try and invade the flying Castle of Illusion to attack Gilgamesh directly.” I answered and as for what Miracle Eye does, apparently its applications were quite terrifying to deal with. “Well Miracle Eye is why Cotton Murkrow couldn’t get through to Cerebrum City and was taken out herself. She’s even the reason why we know this information. While under its direct effects of Miracle Eye, it disables any Dark Types immunity to Psychic attacks, it stops Ghost Types from being able to go invisible… and worst of all it makes any attack nearly impossible to dodge if you are out in the open and don’t have the capability of flight or can dig into the ground. Basically you should have something between you and them if you are target of the Miracle Eye move.”

“So we take them out carefully at range?” She sat up and already had a calculating look in her eyes.

“Uh… about that… apparently Sigilyph have a particular thing like what the Shedinja do that makes attacking them at range impossible. It’s an ability called Magic Guard, basically all the Sigilyph of Illusio are immune to any form of long range attack. Basically you can’t hit them with any form of Pokémon artillery.” That’s one of the rubs of having to deal with Sigilyph from what I’ve heard, you can’t hurt them with long range attacks at all. “The other two abilities they could have, one makes their less effective attacks on other Pokémon hit with twice the force and the other cause special effects moves that can end in paralysis, burn or confusion not have those effects occur. We don’t have to worry about that as all the Sigilyph guarding Cerebrum are guaranteed to have Magic Guard.”

“So not only can these Sigilyph find a target at long range, attack them from said range with unerring accuracy, but they are completely immune to any form of retaliation… what weaknesses do that have?” Pom asked as she swaddled Dolly in the blanket she had been sleeping under. “They sound like the perfect defense.”

“Apparently they specialize in high speed flying and devastatingly accurate long range attacks, but they do have a few weaknesses. They are terrible up close fighters and have poor stamina, not Shedinja poor, meaning that if they are attacked up close and personal under their Magic Guard they’ll go down pretty fast. It really doesn’t help that they can fly.” Getting close was a major issue in its own right, especially notably when a single unit of Sigilyph can wipe entire armies if not taken out swiftly. “Apparently the Sigilyph Seraph units are the main reason why, despite the low population among Psychic types compared to other nations, Illusio has never been truly or successfully invaded by a major force. If they detect us… well things are going to get interesting from there at the very least.”

“… Okay… so how are we avoiding them, because I’m assuming the Ponyta Prowlers did something about that involving stealth?” Yeah, they were stealth experts Pom, which is like saying a changeling could hide in plain sight without changing to a disguise form and still not be seen. They however couldn’t hide their true emotions though, among them Inky Dye had a particular unusual set of emotions compared to the rest of the Ponyta. She might seem like Pinkie Pie at first, but there was more to Inky than that. “Stealth definitely seems like the best way to deal with the Sigilyph in any capacity and once we know what they look like, we’ll avoid them to the best of our abilities unless we can get the drop on them.”

“Remember their mention of gathering those psychic crystals around the tree? Apparently that’s putting out enough psychic energy that we’re functionally invisible to them at a long range… visually, not so much.” Yeah, I could see the slightly understanding in Pom’s eyes, we weren’t getting into the city without being attacked at least once if we were unlucky enough to be spotted by even one. “However the airship is really quite slow, so maybe we can get in unnoticed, but it’s highly unlikely knowing our collective lucks.”

A yawn was heard from Dolly and she slapped her face with her tongue to try and wake herself up and then she realized she was really quite cozy in the blanket. Once she noticed Pom was awake, she abandoned all the coziness and all sleep abandoned her as she leapt up to hug Pom affectionately with her paws, tail wagging excitedly.

“Exactly how many psychic types know this Miracle Eye move?” Well there was something Pom she be glad about.

“Not many, but it is definitely assumed to be the most dangerous thing a Sigilyph can do is see you and immediately tag you with Miracle Eye, but I think the unmentioned problem with Miracle Eye is that it gives the user tunnel vision with how it was explained to work to me and they can only target one given being with it at a time. So we’d need someone to close in with them fast and get them into melee range to take them down and have numbers comparable to distract them. You are, unfortunately enough, likely to be a volunteer for that eventually.” I was warning her ahead of time so she could appreciate that I brought it up at all. Pom sighed audibly and Dolly said something with several cheerful barks that made Pom smile a bit and cuddle her, those two were adorable. I’m sad to have to ruin the occasion of the two being playful or cuddly with one another. “That aside… we need to talk about two things in particular. Dolly, can you watch the door for us and make sure no one’s eavesdrops on our conversation? You’re going to hear this conversation through Pom anyway and I already know you don’t care about one of the questions, you just probably stuffed it under the words ‘it’s magic’ in your brain and will ignore it.”

Dolly nodded and hopped down from the bed and left the room and closed the door behind her.

“Okay, first up, Shanty said you grew fangs, did you actually ingest the blood of those you attacked?” It had been my worry that Pom could go completely predator.

“Yes.” Pom didn’t act down or perky, she just proclaimed that she swallowed some of the blood from those Hypno. “Did I enjoy it… no. It happened, I’d rather not think about it.”

“Well that’s partially a relief, makes me wonder about the next time you call on your wild magic like that.” She functionally became a wolf and tore apart those Hypno.

Dazzle was worried, Quetal was curious and Shine basically said she would trust ‘Pom’s Instincts’ with how in tune with them Pom was.

Mundo was fairly quiet for a while, but eventually said if Pom started hurting her friends he’d be there to bring her back to her senses if she went too far. He told us several times that Pom should not be treated as a monster, lest she actually becomes one and even then he’d try to bring her back to her senses.

Favela was somewhat scared of Pom, but that didn’t bother her friendship with Shanty at all. She understandably wary, but also as worried as the rest of us were.

Lit… like Dolly, don’t seem to care, they had some very strange world views. Dolly clearly being optimistic and Lit sharing her optimism probably doesn’t think too far beyond his next meal and being Dolly’s best little buddy and our lightning spewing fluffy bug friend.

Wild magic or bestial magic, was the stuff that made Timber Wolves what they were. Pom and Shanty had close ties to their magic. Shanty’s had odd effects like climbing any surface, being able to create blades with a swing of a hoof and her recent water controlling abilities, makes me wonder who her parents were that her abilities seem to make her seem like she was a water born creature. She was clearly a goat, but her past was shrouded in mystery since as far as she can remember she was tied to a bit of driftwood before being rescued from it by a changeling being one of the first few things she could remember from her youth.

By comparison Pom’s magic was far more understandable and one to one what with all the stuff related to having to do with canids, canines or any variation of four legged pack animals with similar natures. There’s also that title ‘Canine Queen’ which is basically on par with being very on the nose like being a golden fleeced ‘Chrysomallus’.

Canard’s only comment was, we do what we have to in the name of survival for those we care about and those we want to continue on more than ourselves. Having been through as much as he has, those words were haunting as he has made a similar sacrifice… yet he barely survived doing so.

Honestly, Canard was another person we could look up to, he didn’t have to come with us to Illusio. He could have just sat safely behind in Helper’s Hamlet and have to do nothing dangerous, more than doing a few Harmony guild requests, until he could be properly sent home.

Instead, like what happened to him leaving his home of Puck World, Canard was still a hero and leader through and through. He was probably closest to understanding Pom’s anxiety problems in depth considering he had a few himself, he was surprisingly fatherly towards Cleffa and then there was the whole thing with Sami having hero worship of him.

I quietly looked to Pom and she looked to be in thought as much as I was.

“I will have to pull out my Wolf Fang Hoof again at some point, how much damage did I do mentally?” Quickly telling Pom and reassuring her that I was still her friend, if a little wary that she could go for my throat with suddenly grown fangs like a werewolf… maybe more like a were-dog.

“I’m surprised you’re not asking about physically…” I said after I gave a run up about the mental states of everyone, I was acting in confidence here and Pom seemed alright with Favela being afraid of her. To be fair, even I had some hints of fear in the back of my mind related to Pom.

Pom had once said she was scary and I think I laughed it off, here… well she was scary and being afraid of herself was a normal reaction to mauling an entire unit of what were apparently Elite strength Hypno in a minute.

“Ocellus, I’m might not be super strong, but I’m more than aware of my capabilities and how to lever them.” One of the more dangerous things was Pom’s mind, I can only feel her emotions… I wouldn’t know what a Psychic would get by trying to get into her head. Judging by the fact that Dolly stopped receiving injuries when Pom connected to Dolly, I would think Pom’s mind to be more dangerous than her body. “I heard from one of the Hypno during the fight that my most dangerous move was Thousand Spears: Huo, then he scoffed at the fact that it take me five minutes to perform and didn’t understand how it could be dangerous.”

“If someone gave you five minutes to create a spear of fire with the ability to melt rock, they better be a dragon or completely immune to the outcome. That ability was Forewarn by the way, it allows the Pokémon to know one of an opponent’s most dangerous moves and yours is something that can incinerate a lot of changelings.” Otherwise I’d think the person was an idiot to let Pom get off such an attack, much less have the time to form it without interruption. Sacrificing time and effort is probably the safest thing Pom could in fact sacrifice. “Just bringing it up, because I might have to actually see it and I’ll probably find it exceedingly beautiful. We changelings appreciate fire and light a little too much sometimes, Smolder knows how to breathe fire in a way that will always draw me in.”

There was an awkward silence as we all felt the slight shifting of the flying boat beneath us.

“How do you think the Ponyta Prowlers survived the fall prior to this?” Finally Pom asks a question to break the silence, I was avoiding asking the second question as much as she was.

“I have something of an idea on that, first we’d have to start up with how high up this ship was before the balloon was blasted by the Sigilyph.” I will always look up to smart people, smart people like Celestia, King Thorax, Twilight Sparkle and Discord. Pom was one of the people I have learned admire over the time we’ve been traveling together. I have also learned not to put people too high on a pedestal that you can’t have a decent talk with them. Some would be surprised that I looked up to Discord, he really wasn’t too bad, you just had to understand that he was chaos incarnate and even then he was very intelligent for all the sense he doesn’t make at times. “If they were clinging to the ship as it fell, they could have let go at the last second and would have had a different momentum from the shockwave as the ship hit the ground, thus creating horizontal momentum instead of completely downwards. At best I’d think they got lucky that Lumber Spry wasn’t too badly injured and managed to get the rest of them back up afterwards with some uses of Heal Pulse.”

“Hmm… still… something is off about how the ship crashed into the ground, this ship did take damage at some point, but not as much as you’d expect.” Pom was likely overthinking something. “Maybe because the wood used is fairy wood? Anyway, I know you’re going to ask, so you might as well put it out there.”

“Does Gilgamesh really need to die?” There I said it, even if I didn’t like the idea of killing… changelings required beings to be alive to befriend to survive and killing wasn’t exactly something we were comfortable with.

As aggressive and protective as King Thorax’s brother Pharynx was, we do need the capacity to defend ourselves and be able to kill when necessary… we’d prefer it to not be necessary as much as possible and I can tell Pom was able to follow that train of thought easily. So the real question was, why was Pom rather insistent on it?

I can kind of understand why Pom might feel this way after having her device stolen, but that didn’t explain it entirely. Didn’t get a chance to ask up until now, Pom had been somewhat busy in the forest making dinner and or acquiring the much needed ink from the Inkay.

“He needs to be stopped, one way or another… it is most likely another.” Pom wilted a bit. “You would think I’m being goaded to anger by him, but there’s another reason for it. He specifically had those Hypno targeting me, especially with the assumption that I was going to be acting in the capacity of a hero. He either wants me dead, riled up or wants me or someone else to get strong enough to stop him and make sure he dies before he pulls off whatever plan he’s got going on. It’s going to be quite bad, unless we stop him specifically and with as much force as we can get.”

I wasn’t going to say Pom wasn’t a hero, she didn’t want to hear that ‘she was’, that’s completely fine with me. She had managed to stop all the Binder Blade Forest Pokémon from attacking us and stopped the Hypno from feeding off of them. At best it was a neutral outcome, the Pokémon in that forest were still crazy and the Hypno she took out would recover from their physical injuries and likely would avoid the forest, but were still a threat to others if tasked with being so.

“So…” I started only for Pom to interrupt me by holding up a hoof.

“Do you have any suggestions for what I could have done differently?” Pom asked pleadingly. “I’d actually like to hear them Ocellus.”

“I… don’t know how much better I could have done.” It was a bit humiliating to admit, but I didn’t see any better way to deal with the Hypno then have Pom flip out purpose and maul them. “We could have tried talking them down, but…”

“They wouldn’t have backed down, they were there specifically to cause problems for us. Gilgamesh certainly has some pieces of work working for him as well.” What did Pom mean? I tilted my head curiously and she nodded while huffing. “Remember the psychic crystals around the area we were camping at?”

I gave Pom a flat look.

“I’m fairly certain the crystals are a result of the rising psychic energies in the area that are driving the Pokémon that can’t handle it insane. The Hypno weren’t surprised to see the crazy Pokémon when they showed up, like they almost expected it to be a thing and they are a part of Gilgamesh’s regime.” So if Pom was going where I thought she was with this. “I’m somewhat certain that it’s the end result of something Gilgamesh has set up and the Hypno know something about it, why else would he send them to stop us from trying to get to Cerebrum City? As for what Gilgamesh is planning… I only got a glimpse of his mind, but if the increasing psychic energies around Illusio are anything to go by… he’s possibly planning to commit genocide.”

“Genocide?” My metaphorical heart dropped into the pits of my stomach, also my Squeedly Spooch was shaking in horror. Also I sometimes wonder why Ponies were weirded out by normal Changeling biology.

“Either of the neighboring kingdoms or all the Psychic Types in this one, maybe even both at the same time. Kill enough Psychic Types off and with their slow birth rates…” Pom shuddered violently. “Let’s hope it does not come to that, he’d be functionally destroying an entire kingdom for an ideal that I’m too well aware of.”

“Which would be?” I just had to ask as what would be the reason

“He might be committing genocide for the ideal of ‘Survival of the fittest’… whoever’s left alive would be considered the strongest.” Pom… there wasn’t actually much to say to that, who would actually commit genocide for something like that? “My read is that Gilgamesh wants to succeed as much as he wants to be stopped and it’s fairly confusing to say the least from what I know so far. I still don’t have the exact details of his plan and only hunches to go off of, but all of this is in the name of something larger and I want to find out what that is before someone has to kill him to save everyone. I still think Gilgamesh needs to die, but only for the safety of everyone else involved.”

Oh right, Pom was a pragmatist. So to her, so far at least, killing Gilgamesh looked like the best option. I can only hope that will change as we moved forward to continue our supposed ‘investigation’, as much as a farce as the investigation was now as we were actively going to be joining rebels to stop Gilgamesh and whoever was willingly working with him even knowing what he was going to do.

I guess we were still ‘investigating the problem’, even if we could have left on a technicality by now. Pom wants her device back and to prevent a huge problem that could be occurring, because she is driven to sacrifice herself in a variety of ways to save others.

We were going to be quite busy in the near future with just keeping Pom alive, much less doing everything else on top of that.

-An hour later, Pom-

After feeding Dolly, I was sitting on the deck of the ship and staring into the distance far away and above us at the bottom of the floating continent city with humongous psychic crystals sticking out of the bottom of it. Said Psychic Type crystals were obviously why it was floating.

I hoped we managed to at least be well into the city before the Sigilyph even caught wind that we were there, but that was highly unlikely and I would suspect something of Cotton or the Ponyta if we made it without issue.

So we have a humongous floating place had an entire city on it and the castle was probably floating even higher up above even that, close enough to see beyond the atmosphere. Hadn’t really thought about space since Elhorn, must be really hard to survive beyond the ether among the stars.

It was high enough in the sky that it doesn’t cast as much of a shadow on the ground. Though I’m guessing there were periods where central Illusio had the shadow of the floating city cast on it. It was still quite a distance away as we traveled along the central back of what I’m calling ‘Mapped Arceus’.

We came out of the back legs and were now in the spinal region of the Ransei map.

“That’s where we’re going? The place looks huge!” Dolly said wide eyed and with some enthusiasm.

“Yeah, it’ll be an adventure, but you have to realize the big issues we’re going to be dealing with soon.” I looked to Dolly and she looked back at me with a bit of worry. “If something that big floating above the land falls from the sky… most of Illusio is going to be devastated. If Gilgamesh were set to be destructive in the face of defeat he could functionally do that.”

“That won’t happen Pom, we’ve got this.” Sometimes wish to have your enthusiasm, optimism and peppy attitude Dolly. “We’ll get your ability to talk to Tianhuo back from that Hills-a-guess.”

“Gilgamesh.” I corrected bluntly. “You weren’t upset by me going all canine?”

“Why would I be, you were in control of yourself… well mostly. I also think I was there and so was… I want to say the half of Dormarch we have?” Apparently my fighting spirit has the presence of all the beings I’ve ever had a familiar bond with, two presences in my fighting spirit were a lot more prominent than the others. One having three tails was telling and the other was a wolf that had three bands around their neck, who did I know that wore three collars, on top of a pink scarf and the Digivice that allows her to connect to her family? “Felt like I was there fighting along right with you even if I got knocked out, feel pretty good despite getting badly scorched by brain energy.”

Dolly did recover pretty quickly from that, but I put that thought out of mind as maybe her magic giving her minor defensive field around her body. That or it was the application of Sitrus Berries and Heal Pulse from Lumber Spry.

Thinking of Digivice, we couldn’t put Dormarch in it, got enough information from asking Sami about how digital cores worked. A Digimon can only exist as long as they have a core, or in our unmentioned situation a place to keep their information together like Dolly and me. So even if we were to transfer Dormarch’s information out of us and into the Digivice, his data would apparently immediately corrupt and then he’d really become impossible to recover.

After a discussing how Digimon worked, being Sami was created rather than born, she was the expert on the subject of how her and other Digimon souls worked. Dormarch needed a core to live outside of us, even if the core doesn’t have a body to go with it. A Digimon can feasibly exist without a body, but a core was absolutely necessary.

Sami was understanding of my bloody attack on the Hypno, she’s had to do things she wasn’t particularly happy with either and having heard her story it was a surprise she was still as chipper as ever. I at least told her memories were important and that she wouldn’t be who she was without them and she agreed, which is why she has her pleasant disposition.

Frizzle was silently supportive of me and more forgiving about me getting extremely violent with the Hypno, she was one of the ones Ocellus hadn’t mentioned and went to get an idea of how she felt about me. She quietly compared it to her first time going through evolution with Dazzle’s help using her Digivice, the one where she attacked all of us in a wild frenzy.

Except I hadn’t attacked anyone that we cared about, Frizzle was willing to be quite lenient because of that.

“So… want to call my family and see if we can get a connection to Canned Bard’s team?” Dolly knows the mood I was in and probably thought cute puppy antics would stop me from considering all the possible ways Gilgamesh could be screwing with us right now.

“Dolly, you never cease to amaze me with how many quirky names you can come up with for people.” Though we should probably check in on the Mighty Ducks, the ‘hockey religion’ vigilantes, to see if they got the memo that we actually have Canard with us. After a quite bit of staring at me with a smile, I finally relented and yipped out a proper response. “Yes. Let’s do it inside though, we don’t want the device to accidentally fall overboard.”

The Ponyta Prowlers were wandering the deck as Dolly and I made for below deck past the wagon Dodo was sitting next to. They were making sure we were on course and preparing for tonight, we had a few hours of free time and then we’d begin a nighttime insertion with the assistance of low physical visibility and the psychic crystals hiding our presence from their extrasensory visibility.

We would be on approach for the underside of the flying city and would try for the unused airship docks, because Gilgamesh was certain to have made sure nobody was using them under his rule. Since there was no air traffic, the teleportation pads I’ve been hearing about and the agriculture on the floating landmass itself had to be the reason why living this high up was even functionally possible.

-Off to the side watching everyone else on the ship, Cotton Murkrow-

To tell them now or not, That was the question!

Eh, not, it would be more fun that way.

Plenty of friends to make, plenty of enemies to meet and say ‘howdy’ to as I be bamboozling them something fierce, my ex-per-tease was about to become the talk of this here kingdom of Illusio.

It was also going to be quite fun, stupidly dangerous and full of madcap zany adventures. Geh-heh-heh, they should have an idea of who they are letting into Cerebrum City, the previous king of Illusio certainly would and would definitely have had me detained and under multiple locks and keys before I could get within a mile of the floating city!

Oh my beloved Date Masamune, you send me to the best of places to do the worst of things!

“If it truly hadn’t been for me, some of my best friends would be long dead you see~.” The grin splitting my beak as I sang and started humming a familiar ditty to myself. Probably should procure a violin whilst I’m setting up in Cerebrum City… probably shouldn’t try to steal the rum, that water goat has a sixth sense about the stuff. “Most ask ‘where did I even come from’ and others angrily ‘where did I go’, but mostly what is up with me, The Cotton the Murkrow~?”

I would be making sure my new friends survived this or my name wasn’t being the infamous Cotton, the genius 'birdbrained' spymaster of Avia!

-Pom-

Why do I feel a chill down my spine, as if there was a Jaded La Perm like entity nearby? Someone was tapdancing on their own grave and I'm absolutely horrified by the feeling.

Quick concentrate on something else other than the feeling of impending cat doom!

“So anyway Dawkins, did you get in contact with Canard’s team and get them on speed dial?” I asked pleasantly, Dolly’s family was my family too and they were a nice reprieve, especially before flying directly into the mouth of the beast... if we could even get into the mouth before we were all killed.

Author's Note

Sigilyph would be terrifying to fight at a distance as much as Shedinja would be terrifying to fight without a rock to throw at them.

331. Explosively Evident Entry.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Sekhet’s Pyramid, Celestia-

“So if you hear anything about it, don’t say a word.” I stated with clear seriousness.

“Fine, fine, but just so you know Luna is going to pin it on Jaded since they are still at war with one another, surprisingly Luna seems to be on the short end of the stick there. That’s with Jaded plotting to change Saddle Arabia’s name to something else, thereby destroying it… in a sense.” Sekhet grumbled as she lazed about like the sphinx she was. “So about the marmalade thing… did that actually happen?”

“Yes, and Novo is never going to live it down.” I was fairly unamused when Sekhet snorted loudly and started giggling. “So Jaded is going with destroying the name 'Saddle Arabia' itself, at least she’s not doing the slow flooding thing again. The Saddle Arabians were definitely spooked by that one considering the set up would have taken anyone else years to accomplish with what she did in a week.”

“My sister Bastet is definitely going to enjoy what’s coming with your plan.” Most likely because you know who any sort of chaos tends to attract Sekhet. Discord was going to have his work cut out for him avoiding the flail tail sized goddess known as Baast. “Still… playing favorites with mortals, what will people think?”

“She’s a Sun Priestess and you’re a daughter of Ra, you were already playing favorites in your mortal watching.” I pointed out bluntly. She stared back at me with a slight bit of amusement. “What, I don’t like just cats, I like dogs too and I’m going to be talking to Anubis when the next therapy session rolls around. Apparently beaches are very relaxing for barbecues and I like grilled vegetables with a bit of salt.”

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Aurora, Aurora Castle, Maiden Jig-

“So I’m officially ordering your team to assist Terrera in their defense against Cragspur and make inroads to opening a dialogue with them.” Evan stated while trying, and failing, to look at least little firm with what he was saying.

“Why?” Jiri asked, someone else was guarding the northern bridge today. “Also shouldn’t we be focusing on getting the Skitty Squad to Illusio, it sounds like there’s something really bad happening over that way and Terrera can hold out for longer. Pom’s personal Harmony Team might need our assistance.”

“It’s… actually part of a deal I made with Motonari, we also need Pugilis to send an assisting unit and maybe get the Keldeo on board with investigating the troubling news of what’s going on in Valora if he’s around while you’re passing through with your unit. All the western kingdoms are preparing for the trouble that the next door world might be bringing straight to us. No offense meant to the current envoy or his bodyguard.” King Evan stated and I gave him a look, before glancing at Calumon the digital world envoy with his bodyguard Sideline the Digibot. They didn’t need to be here in attendance, but Sideline was more of an envoy than the Digimon Calumon was. “That said, I’m quite sorry, there’s a lot going on around here. We’re beginning the actions and motions to take on a war based footing and we have some news from Violight to be on the lookout for portal based assaults from a demented version of the Legendary Hoopa.”

“That’s okay, I don’t know how to be an envoy anyway… want to play something?” Maybe Calumon could get Evan’s mind off of things, I glanced at Sideline and he seemed to be stoic and mostly friendly for a dog themed ‘Steel Type’ like entity.

“One last order of business Evan… Hideyoshi?” I wanted to know, what did Motonari do with the fire monkey who was once a farmer? Motonari was a level headed leafy leader next door, so it couldn’t be too bad.

“Thankfully enough… the verdict left him alive, Motonari said that killing him would have been too easy and he needs to live with his regrettable actions and make up for them to the best of his abilities. Though Hideyoshi should not go near Greenleaf anytime within his lifetime unless absolutely necessary, Hideyoshi is taking all the blame for letting things get out of paw in his kingdom. Greenleaf are surprisingly allowing trade again, not that Grass Types have much need for anything other than weapons, armor or shields to train with. Ignis has the forges for that and the people are getting help regardless of what they have done by overstepping the boundaries of their less than civil war. The bridge between our kingdoms will also be fixed by the contractors that have recently arrived.” Evan sighed audibly. “Everyone around us are entering a war footing, even Motochika to the south is prepping for something large what with the east in turmoil and the rumors coming out of Valora about huge problems with unusual monsters. Nixtorm is not at war, but is scarily silent and currently under constant blizzard conditions as far as Rauco could tell me when his unit did a quick flyby across the ocean. All that said… I would like to play with you Calumon, it might help me relax from all the stress the negotiations put on me.”

Heavy is the crown on he who has a good heart, that’s why he has me to try and figure out ways to help him and ease the burden of having to think so hard about all the troubles around us.

“I’ll prepare my unit and then will set out for Pugilis immediately and will try to contact the border guard of Terrera when I get there.” Jiri stated with a bow to Evan, then she turned to me so I could give her the orders in writing. She saw me already prepping them and turned back to Evan. “I might even hire some mild assistance from Helper’s Hamlet, if anyone is willing to assist us in this endeavor, it’ll bring me some peace of mind that someone might take up the cause to assist us even if there is likely no pay in it for them.”

-Illusio skies, a fair distance from Cerebrum City, late evening, Cotton-

“That… that can’t be true!” Lumber Spry said with disbelief and a look of horror, I decided to tell the most innocent one the bad news and the Ponyta looked fairly upset that I did. I would be too if I was just told something that I wouldn’t be able to believe and it shakes your entire world view about the people you think you know.

I thought the medic, of all the Ponyta, needed to be notified about something rather important.

“Believe me or not, but it’s a fact. In fact, the evidence is where I say it is. Just watch your back and try not to give anything away now that you know, you hear me? Your crew was a means to an end to get me into Cerebrum all proper like and that’s all, but since some of you’ve been so accommodating I decided to do you a proper small favor and warn you of what’s coming so that you might be prepared for it. Being all nice like is something I’m known for, I’m hardly ever wrong and it is my Ex-Per-Tease as a spy of Avia.” I turned and meandered away with a grin a beak and a glint in my eye. Let’s see what will come of this, it might work or it might not, it’s a fifty fifty Poké coin flip and I’m betting on the medic to have a good heart. “We’re all going to be in terrible danger when we get to Cerebrum… and I can hardly wait. You don’t be having much time to go looking for that information, try and prove me wrong by not finding it while no one is paying you any mind at all.”

I rubbed my wings together gleefully as I started plotting my next course of action, I wonder if good old Xatu is in the city? Couldn’t find him groundside sniffing around the teleporters when I skulked and scouted the area.

Guy might even be working up a cold sweat when he sees my shadow coming.

-Deck, Smolder-

This airship was slow, but then again with the kind of propulsion they are using… to be expected. Also we kind of needed to be slow and not really fast and attention drawing anyway. That Inkay ink stuff was weird in being able to make this entire ship float through the sky.

“So does Tianhuo have the last name Lambchop like you do and what was hers? Is Pom Lambchop even your full name? How are you feeling about what we’re about to do?” I asked distractedly, Pom wouldn’t be helping if fighting broke out. She still needed time to recover and this world had plenty of ways to recover. Unfortunately we knew what Pom was like and she would insist on it, she doesn’t like fighting, but she knows how to take down multiple light opponents and Dolly was going to be watching her closely.

“What’s with all the questions Smolder?” You shouldn’t have given off a weak giggle Pom, also the coughing afterwards was worrying.

“Just wanted to know a bit more about you, before we get into some real trouble again.” Honestly our caretaker has been so busy with everything, she could stand to be on the backline in the next bit of fighting and I’m of the mind there would be a fight to get into the city in the first place.

“Tianhuo did take on my last name yes, I already told you that she used to be bully and eventually grew up under a Huoshan Guard to become who she is nowadays and was adopted by all the guard as a whole. Understandably she takes pride in being the head of the guard and a champion of her people, but she’s not going to forget her past. As for my full name, it’s Pom Pawdore Lambchop, not that that’s really important.” Okay how can someone so scarred and battle hardened like Pom still sound so adorable, even her full name is adorable. “You probably know how I feel if you asked Ocellus about it, but if you haven’t then I’m fairly worried how bad the situation we’re going into is and I would have rather left all of you back in Chrysalia to make your way back to Aurora… but then I wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on you and Shanty might have come anyway. Goodness knows Dolly is going to follow me for the rest of my life… however short that is.”

“Hey, don’t talk like that, you’re not going to die anytime soon, not if we can help it!” I received a glance and nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I know, that is exactly what you are worried about. Look at it this way, Shanty has gotten really good and managed to hold up fairly well to one of the most dangerous guys imaginable.”

“I get a feeling that Lu Bu could have been more dangerous somehow, plus he did almost kill Shanty and Dodo outright.” Before taking a sword to the back via Hideyoshi, who somehow magically grabbed a sure fire lethal attack out of the air without getting hurt. The guy was said to be a farmer right, what kind of farmer has an ability to stop such an attack like that cold? Was that why he was King of Ignis?

“We’re not forgetting the fact that Cu Chulainn basically did kill you, provided those reviver seeds work the way the Kecleon say they do.” Punctured through the lungs and heart, yeah that’s not something Pom would have survived if not for the magical seeds. “Not seconds after reviving did you injure yourself pretty badly there too, which is kind of asking us to step up to make sure you don’t have to do so much for our sakes.”

“I’m always willing to do everything for you girls, Dodo and any of our other friends.” You were willing to outright die for us is still a terrifying prospect Pom, even if you meant that to sound comforting and it wasn’t. “You’re not asking too much of me, I’m always willing even if I’m not exactly completely able.”

“I be seeing one, whoa… they be looking really weird!” We were distracted from our conversation, which was quickly turning morbid via Pom’s problem, and looked to see Shanty using wielding a spyglass.

I wasn’t about to question where Shanty could have gotten that, we are on an airship so their might have been one lying around.

“What are you seeing?” Pom asked as we made our way over to her.

“I be seeing what a Sigilyph be looking like, they are being very weird.” Shanty reiterated and held out the spyglass to Pom who took it and got a good look at the aerial defense force around Cerebrum City, the massive multi-layered city that floated over Central Illusio.

“Hey give me, Favela, a chance to look!” Shanty passed the spyglass to Favela and she started looking through it.

“It’s a good thing Sigilyph rely on sight more than sound to detect things, at this range we’re still silent to them.” A ponyta stated as they too were getting a good look at whatever a Sigilyph was through another Spyglass. “To port, five degrees! We want to stay directly out of their line of sight and there’s a cloud moving with us, we can use to get closer before we’re possible open to being spotted or detected!”

“How do Sigilyph detect things normally?” I turned to the Ponyta.

“Mostly with psychic energy field, anything entering the field will be noticed within a certain distance of them if it disturbs them enough to act. We’re currently masking the ships presence with an abundance of psychic energy from the crystals we gathered. Otherwise they have poor hearing, but exceedingly great eyesight to the point that a thick fog won’t block their sight if they Miracle Eye through it. It’s why you would want something between you and them if they lock onto you, because they are going to hit you or a target regardless of visibility.” The male Ponyta answered as they continued to watch the skies ahead of us and the massive floating mass we were on approach for, they looked almost the same as the female Ponyta except there were some major differences. There were absolutely massive crystals sticking out at the bottom of the landmasses inwards sloping stone and rock, apparently we were aiming for the unused airship docks on the underside of Cerebrum City. “If any of them spot us and manage to alert all the other Sigilyph in the area, then we’re not liable to make it into the city alive. If we do make it to the city at all, but if we can get in the city and dock without being noticed we’re be fine. If we do get noticed, then we just need to make them lose line of sight on us and abandon ship to find places to hide. If the ship starts burning for any reason it’s done for. I’m Friare Buck by the way, we might not be able to talk much later, but I just want to thank you guys and the Leavanny for getting us in the air again for however long that may last.”

Speaking of Leavanny, I want to check on Fleer, the two Leavanny and Charjabug to see how they were doing.

-Ten minutes later, Pom-

We were all very quiet as we floated closer, we managed to avoid the sight of the Sigilyph so far and were getting a bit closer to the unused airship docks at the bottom of the city. There were docks on the top of the city as well, but the chances of getting in through there was impossible with the number of Sigilyph watching the top of the city exceeding the number down here through a lower entrance.

The Chrysalia guys were set up for defensive fire on the port and starboard sides of the boat, not that any of their artillery fire would do anything to the Sigilyph directly, but they could stop attacks from hitting the ship.

The Morpeko were also set up as a small defensive measure on top of the wagon, emphasizing their small hamster sizes. Dodo was hitched up to the wagon and was ready to try and make a jump for it if the ship is shot down as we’re getting into the docks.

Sami, Frizzle and the Pokémon Companions were waiting quietly in the wagon tied down on the deck. First sign of trouble they would release the straps holding the wagon in place and we all hoped we were close enough for a jump if we needed to make one. If we fell out of the sky, we’d have to think of a different way to get into Cerebrum City and make sure everyone survived the fall somehow.

Dodo looked like he was willing and determined to try at least make a jump from here.

“Thanks for letting me get into contact with my team, I’m quite proud of them and they are carrying the spirit of hockey to a planet that apparently has hockey already… just not as much religious fervor for the sport as one would hope.” Canard stated as he came up next to me with crossed arms.

I was currently getting a good look at one of the Sigilyph for myself once Shanty and Favela were done with the Spyglass.

Sigilyph looked like an I-shaped Unown spiking out of the top center of a large round body with two weird large feathered… well it was a bit of a stretch to even call them wings. Said ‘wings’ were sticking out of the spherical body on both sides of the one eye. Below two said wings were two three fingered tuning forks for a lack of a better term that didn’t look like appendages, between which and slightly lower than the central sphere portion were two eye like markings that might actually be eyes that never blinked. Below the eyes were two white spikes sticking out at an angle to the beings front. At the very bottom is what loosely could be described a tail with four long and large feathers.

The creature was bizarrely colored too… it was almost like it was a painting you’d do on the ground in chalk in appearance what with it’s yellow, black and green body, and blue with red stripes tipped feathers.

They were hovering about everywhere and I’m fairly glad we hadn’t garnered their attention, there was something about them that was very eerie as they silently moved about in the air sweeping their eyes from left to right. They didn’t even move their wings or tails very much, which might be the only appendages on their body aside from their singular eyes at the top of the body that do.

“Steady now, we don’t want to make a mistake at this juncture.” Inky Dye stated quietly to her crew as we were closing in.

“I’m an alien, but even those things look more alien than anything on the world my friends ended up on.” Canard grumbled quietly, not even sure if hockey existed on this world.

Five minutes passed and we were almost to the docks, the silence was pervasive and out approach was rather tense. So far it looked like we’d make it into Cerebrum without any...

“Hey, everybody, look here!” Cotton stated loudly while waving her wings wildly from above… what was she doing?! “Look where we are, we’re all going to get into the city quite easily if you don’t stop us! I am being as loud as possible, which is my Ex-Per-Tease!”

Why was Cotton intentionally drawing the attention of the Sigilyph?! Looking around all the Sigilyph around suddenly turned in the direction of the airship.

“Canard, we need to get in the wagon with everyone else!” I stated as I ran for the wagon and at least three Sigilyph were draw to towards looking at the balloon and things were obviously about to get really, really bad.

“Is she actually using Confide to draw them straight to us?!” Shine stated loudly with worry.

If I remember right, Cotton basically told us upfront that her moves were. Confide weakened special attacks and was pretty much loudly declaring a secret to everyone around you, the secret being here is that we were even present to begin with.

That seemed like an exceedingly dumb move for a spy to have to me and Cotton had just turned on us… or had she? I was kind of confused as to why she would do this so close to the city when she’s not guaranteed to get into it like she wanted.

Roost was a healing move most Flying Type bird Pokémon have to heal from a variety of injuries.

Feather Dance slow targets down and makes it harder for them to attack when they are getting covered in a mass of quick grown feathers.

The only move that Cotton knows that would be of any real concern was Confuse Ray, a Ghost Type move that can confuse just about anything on contact and it did no damage directly. What it did do was make it hard to focus on an anything and might cause problems in the confusion.

As I got into the wagon, Cotton decided to throw more confusion into the mix.

“I-ma firing my lasers, geh-heh-heh!” Cotton cackled as the three beams erupted from her beak in quick succession striking the incoming Sigilyph, their singular eyes on the top of each of the Sigilyph started swirling oddly and then the two eyes on their spheres started glowing as they seemed to start targeting… each other? So that’s what a Confuse Ray looks like, good to know. “Hopefully see you guys never more, hahaha-hehehehe!”

“I don’t think we can ever be friends with Cotton after this…” My flat tone was met with a round of nods.

As a powerful flash of energy fired at us as we were between the three Sigilyph and narrowly avoided hitting the balloon, powerful beam of psychic energy erupted from another and a bit of the airships railing was scorched enough to catch fire.

One of the Ponyta quickly excised the wood from the rest of the ship with their glowing horn quickly cutting it out and levitating it away as it rapidly started to ash before my very eyes.

They weren’t kidding, the wood this ship was made of burned exceedingly fast… makes me wonder why they would make an airship out of the stuff. Unless it was among one of the mostly available resources in Titania and was fairly sturdy otherwise aside from the insanely bad flammability.

The Sigilyph hit by the two attacks that had been fired hadn’t taken any injure, they were immune to ranged attacks and it showed quite clearly what we were getting into here as the third Sigilyph fired on the first with blast of air that sent it flying away and apparently launched us forward on the same blast of wind.

The entire ship shook and rocked forward threatening to dump us into the sky until it leveled out and continued flying straight again, Dodo warbled in protest of having to hold the wagon still.

The three Sigilyph firing at us were drawing the attention of many other Sigilyph in the area and we were about to be swarmed.

“Flash Cannon, Psybeam and Whirlwind… those are definitely not moves I want to be seeing near us, full forward now!” Inky Dye called out as the ship lurched forward, but it wasn’t going that much fast. It was a really slow airship and we were at least approaching the scoop that made up the airship docks ahead. “We need to be over the docks before we take any hits we can’t actually recover from!”

“Incoming attacks on all sides!” A ponyta yelled. The four Araquanids started spraying boiling water into the air to block green spheres of energy, psybeams, flash cannons couldn’t be blocked but were narrowly dodged. The air was getting quite busy around the underside of Cerebrum City and now that I think about it, Cotton was using us as a major distraction to get into the city quietly for some reason. “Don’t let them hit the balloon, the ship can take a few hits!”

There was nothing I could exactly do here but wait to give the signal for the Araquanids to board the wagon and then make a jump for it as Shedinja directed the artillery Pokemon and even used their own body to block the various incoming attacks.

But the twelve or so Sigilyph incoming were starting to overwhelm the ship, as if the three randomly firing into the air at each other wasn’t bad enough, and even more Sigilyph were on the way. With the variety of firepower on display, something exploded below us and the entire ship lifted up for a few seconds and then dropped back down.

“They must have hit one of the psychic crystals… start using the crystals to ward them off!” Inky called out, the Psychic Type Ponyta started levitating out Crystals and fling them into the Sigilyph, the physical ammunition doing a little bit of damage when they could hit.

Sigilyph were immune to most forms of ranged attack, barring being hit with something that was largely physical in nature like a large crystal. Basically my bark blasts or Thousand Spears would do nothing here, but maybe Shine throwing a rock would do some damage.

“Are we going to be okay?” The female Leavanny asked from where she was sitting next to the male Leavanny, they were still somewhat haunted by their insanity and in no condition to be dealing with this kind of stress.

A bolt of lightning from the Morpeko deflected an attack from hitting the wagon and the deck crumpled a bit near us.

“Okay, release the wagons restraints!” I called, Mundo, Dazzle, Quetal and Favela all quickly did so. “Dodo, get ready to jump ship, all Araquanids on the wagon now, defensive retreat!”

Dodo warbled back at us worriedly and then looked to the front of the ship to the close aerial dock that was like giant scoop for airships to land it.

“You can be doing it Dodo, especially when we be getting closer!” Shanty cheered and Dodo perked up a bit.

The ship was struck by several attacks as the Araquanids retreated into the wagon, everyone but the Ponyta were onboard, that was when the upper deck behind us was struck.

“Fire, we’re on fire, the ship’s going to explode soon!” One of the Ponyta screamed.

“What do you mean?!” I cried out as Cleffa fired a solar beam lighting up the night sky beneath the floating city to block several attacks heading our way with the beam.

“A little fairy wood burns quickly, a lot fairy wood explodes violently if enough of it catches on fire all at once!” Why is it only now that a Ponyta Prowler is telling us this ridiculous fact about fairy wood?!

“Pom…” Dolly looked ready to get out there and go on the offensive.

“No Dolly, we’re abandoning ship and not getting into a hopeless fight here.” I said calmly and turned to Canard to give him a nod.

“Dodo, go!” Canard eventually called out as the last Araquanid loaded up and he gripped the side of the wagon. “Everyone hold onto something!”

Dodo quickly started forward across the deck with three bounds dragging us behind him as he jumped and his wings spread out and the undersides of them lit up with energy as he angled them forward and his legs folded so that his feet were pointing backwards and doing the same as jets of energy erupted from Dodo.

-Inside the mechanical ostrich’s head-

“Eggmobile flight jets functionality engaged, forward propulsion only, full flight capabilities not online until full growth of new systems has been achieved. Fully diverting power to jets for some extra lift.” One of the six Harmony Magical Operating System programs in the back of Dodo’s skull stated, as the function didn’t have enough power for lift yet. “Come on, don’t fail us now.”

“Don’t forget to make cupcakes for Shanty after this!” PinkPie.exe stated jubilantly. “Oh, and bread for Frizzle too!”

“I thought we locked her in the closet once she started the whole bread machine program!” One of the programs stated in slight discomfort.

“I got out of the closet, nobody locked the door!” PinkePie.exe responded pleasantly. “Also there’s no lock to begin with.”

The rest of the programs groaned out loud.

-Pom-

There was screaming as Dodo leapt up, streamlined his body and then blasted us all forwards we rocketed away before an attack could hit the wagon and everyone was clinging on for dear life.

We barely cleared the edge of the airship dock scoop and I looked behind us at the flaming ship slowly following us into the dock.

“RUN!” Everyone shouted to the dazed Dodo, who was immediately up on his legs and started pulling us into the lower sections of the city of Cerebrum proper despite looking dazed from the botched landing where his head slammed into the floor of the dock.

The Sigilyph were focusing on the airship behind us as we made our way up the scoops ramp.

-Cotton-

Hmm… they be making it, gyeh-heh-heh~!

I as the large metal bird start sliding on his belly barely making it into the dock scoop and was then up and running with a shout from everyone inside the wagon.

The slightly dazed look on the metal birds face was priceless as he began pulling the wagon to safety and soon they be stopping before completely disappearing from my sight.

The airship’s balloon burst and ink splattered everywhere setting the ship below it entirely on fire, instead of mostly on fire, as the Ponyta Prowlers leapt off the ship which hit the lip of the scoop and started to flip upside down.

The six of them were running under constant fire from the Sigilyph and their ship slowly falling right on top of them. Pom and the wagon had already left, boy were they going to be upset with me, In-dee-dee-do!

They narrowly made it out from under the ship and around a corner before the airship exploded and the physical shockwave took out a number of Sigilyph. The Sigilyph that were still active, and not blasted by an explosion, were too busy catching their fainted brethren to really worry about the Ponyta Prowlers or Pom’s group.

Now to go find my friend Xatu, Gyeh-heh-heh-heh-heh~!

Making a mess of so many things was going to be so fun, also there was so much to do and so little time to be an absolute Aipom wrench.

-Pom-

“Okay, the Ponyta Prowlers made it out, if barely… Now that we’re trapped in Cerebrum City, surrounded by enemies and we don’t know where our hidden allies are, where do we go from here?” I turned back to look to the front as we looked at the shiny inner buildings of the cities lower layer. “We don’t exactly know how to find the rebels against Gilgamesh and it won’t be long before those Sigilyph start hunting for us.”

“Let’s find a spot to lay low first, then we can worry about the Sigilyph later, for now let’s avoid all contact for now. I’ve been in this kind of hot drop situation before and I know how to lead a rebellion… well what was left of one. So I might have a few ideas of where to look for this Kenshin guy’s group.” Canard looked at Dodo as he seemed dizzy and tired, probably used up a lot of energy bursting us forward like he had. Certainly couldn’t do that before. “Pull into the alleyway right there Dodo, we need to get out of sight of the streets for a bit to breathe!”

Dodo did so and we saw a number of purple stars with red glowing crystals in the middle of them go flying by the alleyway towards the burning, slightly exploded, docks.

“Shed can you watch the Ponyta Prowlers? They might need some assistance with getting away.” Ninjask watched as Sheninja bobbed in the air once and then took off silently. “Sheddy will find us later.”

-Elsewhere in Cerebrum City lower layer, Lumber Spry-

It was true, while I might not like how Cotton handled the situation and might have an idea as to why she did that, she didn’t lie and I found out the truth. The evidence was there and I have it now… I… don’t know who to trust.

I didn’t know if saying anything now would make things worse or not, so I would keep my tongue for the time being. I didn’t have to tell my friends about it, I just shouldered my bag with my medical supplies and quickly followed them into the lower sections of Cerebrum city.

We had a job to do here and we also needed to find a way out of here, there’s also what Cotton told me and the information I’m holding onto in my bag.

Why did Cotton choose me for this?! I’m just the healer for my group and… I guess nobody would suspect that I know the truth.

Oh Titania, what am I going to do?!

King Oberon had to be notified immediately, but how would I get a message to him without any of the other Prowlers noticing… maybe I can utilize a psychic crystal to send a mental message that far?

“Let’s move, Friare, you’re on point. Lumber in the center with me, you’re important in keeping us alive and moving. We can’t have you taking hits.” Inky led us forward and I thought I saw something shadowing us from above, but I didn’t see the glow of Miracle Eye so it probably wasn’t a Sigilyph.

My world’s been flipped upside-down and everything’s gone completely insane!

-Northwestern outer circle region of Illusio, Mentalis-

Kadabraville had been successfully evacuated, but not without a cost and not for the fact that we were beset by large numbers of Drowzee.

I wonder if Pom and her group made it Cerebrum, in any case it might be a while before we can even meet them there if they did.

“Everyone okay?” A number of Abra sent back a message that they were fine, even as they slept they were upset about our lost homes. Gilgamesh didn’t like us interfering with his torture of that poor canine and now I had even more reason to be against him, by taking actually an active stand now. “Then let’s move out.”

-Upper Cerebrum City, ???-

I felt the city shake with a powerful explosion from below, which would be around…

“An explosion in the lower docks? Interesting, nobody in the rebellion should be near there.” I cradled my sheathed blade and didn’t know whether or not it was time to bring back the Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu, I was loathe to do it though. I didn’t want to be the leader of this rebellion and I really didn’t want to kill again, but my friend the king was murdered and I was quite unhappy with the one who did it. “Can you find out what happened down there Sanosuke?”

I would go, but as a very well-known Gallade, I wasn’t exactly inconspicuous and had a target painted on my back as the leader of the rebellion. My Medicham friend with the bandana around his forehead was less likely to be paid attention to, but… he kind of drew an unwanted attention as well.

“Of course I can Kenshin!” My friend Sanosuke stated boisterously while flexing his muscle. “I’m Pure Power remember, who needs Psychic Type moves!”

“Please do it a bit more quietly... and stealthily.” I whined, with friends like these…

-Castle of Illusion, Gilgamesh-

In the dark I sit, a grin spreading on my face.

Author's Note

Multi-faceted Aipom Wrench is a go.

332. The Very Definition of Subtle.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, high above Central Illusio, Cerebrum City, Lower Tier, Ninjask-

The lower tier of the city was near the bottom of the landmass, the docks weren’t in use anyway so blowing them up slightly and setting them on fire wasn’t a bad thing. What was bad was the attention it drew to all of us.

We were now on a small floating continent with a city that filled it’s innards as much of covered the top of it and was over central Illusio.

The investigation into what is going on continues and my wing is still healing, the Araquanid Artillery Pokémon have already proven entirely useless in dealing with the Sigilyph at range and will at least still be useful against other Psychic Types.

The Araquanids could deal with Sigilyph up close easily enough, but Araquanids were quite slow and would have to be under constant fire to even close in… not to mention Sigilyph could fly being one of the reasons why they would be problematic to deal with.

We saw a patrol of Starmie entering the dock to put out a fire that had ended almost by the time they showed up, just had to deal with the burning ink that had splashed all over the docking area where they airship’s balloon went up.

Psychic types of all kinds will be around, I wondered what was stopping the patrols from actually finding us by scanning around with their psychic abilities? There was some hope that the Ponyta Prowlers were drawing more attention than us at the moment, at least as far as I know… the Sigilyph were line of sight detectors and they were everywhere down here in the lower tier of the city.

Said city had miles of streets, windowless buildings made up of strange materials with a texture of clay, but the hardiness of metal. Our location was iffy and I was of the opinion we had no actual idea of what to do now besides get our bearings at the moment.

I sat here watching from the corner as a Sigilyph floated up to the other Sigilyph they stared at each other and the other Sigilyph moved on. After a moment, a visibly sweating Ocellus returned to her base form and shivered.

“Those things are quite scary…” At least Ocellus managed to pull off mimicking a Sigilyph despite how weird its body was. “Also I think I’m partially capable of adapting to psychic powers fairly well, though I’m never going to be nearly as good as a Psychic Type. To the point I can at least feasibly fudge being a Sigilyph correctly. Even if I can’t use Pokémon moves, I don’t seem to have the capacity to manipulate or generate pocket dimension energy and my magic can’t mimic that kind of raw power. So at best I wouldn’t rely my ability to transform working very well against these guys if one of them gets smart enough to look a bit deeper into my mind. How are your injuries Pom? I told that guy I’m watching this area and that he should continue to patrolling for the intruders. Also that I didn’t spot any intruders in this dead end and I am making sure they don’t hide here with my presence.”

Ocellus quickly morphed back into a Sigilyph in a burst of strange mystical fire and went back to floating in position. The alleyway we were in was surrounded by buildings on all side, the area we were in between all of them was like an empty yard or lot that children would normally play in.

I likened Ocellus to being something akin to a Ditto, but with more intelligence and slightly better capability to adapt multiple species at once than just turning entirely into a singular species. Also I don’t think she’d appreciate hearing what Ditto are normally used for.

Currently didn’t see any civilians here, which was rather worrisome for the state of the city as the only ones I saw so far were the Starmie that showed up to put out the fires. Said fires burned out fairly quickly after the fairy wood volatilely exploded and didn’t need much water to put out aftwards.

“Still feeling sore even with the heal pulse help Ocellus! The entire thing with launching the wagon from the deck of the airship that violently exploded doesn’t help my current disposition in the slightest. Much less our situation of being stuck at least a mile in the sky surrounded by monsters mostly immune to ranged attacks and working for Gilgamesh.” As Pom just dully said with a hint of resentment, likely towards Cotton Murkrow for causing such a kerfuffle. “I don’t know how long Ocellus can keep them from thinking something is up, you’d think all the Sigilyph would be part of a connected mental network like the Hypno or would know each other by sight as much as mental signature like a magic signature on Equus. I’m assuming that’s a thing.”

Sigilyph were relatively immune to most forms of long range attacks if they had the Magic Guard ability… provided they didn’t have a large amount of physicality to them. Explosions worked if they were big enough and you needed something larger and solid like a cannonball to do any damage to them with a ranged attack, like the psychic crystals the Ponyta Prowlers from Titania were launching at them to little more effect than any energy based attack would have.

“It is.” Confirmed Shine who was checking Pom over, she was not a true medic, but Pain Split was better than nothing and it didn’t look like it was needed at the moment.

“It’s a good thing they apparently don’t.” The large Psyduck like outsider, known as Canard Thunderbeak, crossed his arms as we quietly took stock of our situation and supplies. “As I said before I know how to work behind enemy lines and stealth is the most important part of that, until we have an idea of where we’re going or what we’re doing, we lay low until we can find a chance to move to somewhere a bit more secure than a quite literal ‘dead end’ if those Sigilyph find us. They present a huge problem to moving around the city safely and unless we can get the drop on them, we’re not liable to deal with even one of them safely if several are alerted to us taking just one of them down in anything other than an instant knockout. Better to avoid being spotted entirely and we only try to take them down or attack them when necessary.”

“I wonder if Abby actually made it all the way up here through all of that… wonder what kind of headache she’s feeling about the disaster that’s going to happen here if she is around.” Fleer was worried about her friend, the fluff dog was looking a little out of her depth. “I’m starting to feel the portents of disaster myself and I’m not specialized in detecting it like she is. Her head must have a hole burning in it right now.”

“That was an awesome way to make an entrance at least.” Charjabug stated jovially as he started nibbling at bits of magnetic floating rock he snagged with string shot as we were on our way to Cerebrum. He’d need quite a bit more than that to eventually evolve into a Vikavolt, the magnetic iron was good for his diet.

“Who can we send to scout around here?” One of the Morpeko brought up.

“I can do it.” Quetal volunteered, guy had a chip in his shoulder about Dark Types and I saw the look of loathing he sent Cotton when she gave away our presence and caused that whole debacle at the airship dock when we could have gotten in quietly. The guy clearly did not like or accept the stereotypes that Dark Types tended to be known for and it must have really rankled him that Cotton just lived up to the whole ‘will stab you in the back at an inopportune moment’.

“Quetal can’t go alone.” Pom turned and looked to the Shine who seemed to be on a constant form of alert since we got here, heard she had the title ‘ninja’ and with Phantom Force that was quite an aptly acquired title. Makes sense she’d be on point in this situation as much as the Trickster who doesn’t seem to do any tricking outside of combat situations. “Shine how resilient are you to Psychic energy?”

“Neither weak nor strong to it, but I’m pretty sure I have a strong enough mind to not be driven crazy by it very quickly. I would suggest we take at least one Morpeko with us if we’re going to scout out the lower sections of Cerebrum and try to work our way up to finding a way into the Castle of Illusion.” Yeah that was more of a goal for Pom and those allied to Team Harmony. Our goals were slightly different if similar in nature. “We’ll scout around to try and find any civilians in the area we can talk to. Of course we can’t ignore the psychic energy around here possibly driving us mad and should try to keep the Morpeko unit mostly together.”

“That’s basically why we can’t go anywhere else aside from where you go, at least where the Morpeko go. That or if we can find enough Dark Types that can shield us from being driven mad again we’d gladly take safer arrangements.” The male Leavanny spoke up looking terrified of the prospect of losing his mind again.

The male and female Leavanny were at least friendly and could make clothes if given some materials to work with, they were also supportive of our cause given their forest home was no longer safe place to be and here they could at least do something.

Leavanny were known to be artisans with cloth, but they weren’t bad battlers either in a pinch so we had some extras with us that could be of some use in any capacity. Though I wouldn’t force civilians to fight alongside us unless absolutely necessary, I would at least put them on rear guard or being with the other civilians we had with us in keeping their heads down in a fight.

My orders were clear cut as far as working alongside the Morpeko and investigating Illusio were concerned. We were a little bit well beyond our orders at this point in the terms of just being an investigation, but we would stick with Team Harmony as they were going our way anyway. I would just take this as an opportunity for a more in depth investigation with our allies into what the problem, Gilgamesh, was actually doing around here.

There was also the fact the Ponyta Prowlers from Titania had their own goals in mind even after the loss of their airship, which is why I had Shedinja watching them as much as assisting them if they needed it to find out why they originally wanted to come here.

A lot of spy skullduggery was going on around here and I was probably the only spy here for a less volatile and more benign reason.

Cotton Murkrow was someone to look out for while we were here, she tried to either get us killed or tried to keep us from reaching the city. Whatever she was tried to do, she painted a target on all of our backs.

What were we in for with our backs to the wall here? Were the walls even safe with Psychic Types having the ability to teleport?

If my wing weren’t busted I’d be doing more than riding around on the back of an Araquanid and delegating tasks to the Chrysalia unit. That is to say, I didn’t want to miss being part of the action as a spy and scout.

One thing was for certain, Gilgamesh knew we were here and so did the people he controlled, the people who were rebelling and whoever else was here to mess with what was going to quickly become a cluster if someone had their sights on taking over Illusio.

Chrysalia didn’t want Illusio’s territory, but Yaksha might want to take it if Cotton was actually from there.

-Ten minutes later, Pom-

Until Quetal, Shine and the Morpeko that went out found a better spot to hide in, Ocellus was busy guarding the entrance of the alleyway and we were doing a little camping and eating small snacks. I was chewing on a few cashews as Dolly padded her way up to me, I looked her way as she wanted my attention by pinging me in our heads.

“While we have the time, why can’t I do any of that floating slash with a wind sword or firing wind bullets from my paws thing?” We were in kind of a tense situation Dolly, was now the time to try and distract me from my surroundings. “Yes, also I’m fine and mostly healed, completely raring to go and get your device back from that grinning Giles Arrest even!”

“Well okay then… it’s because we were in our minds. You were mentally doing that stuff, but doing it in reality would be much harder. I really doubt you could create chains of wind to bind him in place unless you work on your magical efficiency.” Which I knew Dolly barely had any for the limited amount of magic she had. “The more you do with less energy, the better your abilities will become that you might be able to do that.”

“I’m not exactly on par with my little brother Deepak in the focus department… then again maybe I don’t have to be. Maybe I could take a page out of Tigerball W, Turtleball X or Phoenixball Y, and just yell a lot until it works and I’m glowing with power while flying around out of sheer force of will.” Uh Dolly, wasn’t that a series of interconnected cartoon show with the ridiculous characters traveling around while gather magical spheres similar to the four animals symbolism from Po’s world… actually it’s not so ridiculous when you are living a life similar to a show you’ve watched only a few minutes of once at best in a hotel room. “Skateboard with wind sure gives my board a bit of a kick, makes me more agile on it and everything, but I’m not good at it. I’m trying to imbue myself here and doesn’t seem to do anything like what it did in my dream.”

“Exactly what you just said Dolly, dream, it’s not reality Dolly.” I didn’t doubt that she could make it reality.

“Oh I’m definitely going to want to make those skills reality, really helped me out against Gilgamesh! Don’t rightly know about the wind chain and portals thing though. That seemed more like an ‘us combining our talents’ kind of thing, also there was that weird green energy that flowed between us.” Trying to make dreams a reality was harder than making reality into dreams. “Kind of want to do that Ally Swap thing too, still can’t do Dancing Flame because nobody wants to teach me and I’ve been watching you and Shanty do it over that week.”

“What Shanty does is technically more like water, she’s creating more of a flow and somehow cloning herself out of her own sweat through slow long inhaling and exhaling… where my breathing is even or use in powerful burst.” It has now come to my attention that I’m now just as capably insane as my friends back on Equus are in a fight and just as much outside of one. I now had a control over my canine aspect that I could actually lean into it enough to physically transform and it wasn’t just my wool changing shape that time. “… Just how weird are we?”

“The weirdest and greatest, there’s nothing wrong with that!” As enthusiastic as you were about that Dolly, I didn’t like everything I could do. I didn’t like the level of lethality I had in my hooves and bloodied mouth. I’m not about to tell anyone I actually ate a small chunk of one of those Hypno’s, thank goodness I didn’t enjoy it, but it still happened horrifyingly enough.

“What’s wrong is you trying to learn Dancing Flame, it’d tear you’re body apary, the way Shanty Does it doesn’t have the threat of that and will only badly dehydrate her.”

“My ears be burning, what is being the conversation here?” Shanty said as she came to sit with me and Dolly.

“Dolly wants to learn a new technique, but I would rather she didn’t try Dancing Flame given how frail her body is and how much permanent damage she could do to herself.” It was strange that I didn’t hear Dolly taking offense to that and just pawed at one of her ears with both her front paws looking slightly conflicted before smiling at me with a wagging tail. “Speaking of Dancing Flame…”

“Water Rondo, I be figuring out how to be cloning myself and I still want to be creating a flying cut attack… so I don’t have to be relying on water so much.” Yeah, singing was more of a theme for Shanty whereas dancing was something I was decent at considering how fighting helps with coordination. “However ranged attacks are being a bit useless here right? At least I can be giving myself a full acapella when needed… even if my clones can’t actually be singing.”

Given our track record I expect Dolly to start throwing lightning bolts, spewing ice and then somehow start setting things on fire as much as manipulating ‘gravity’. Speaking of… why didn’t the Sigilyph use the Pokémon move Gravity on us?

Oh right, Cotton confused them before they could after alerting them and the others were probably too far away to drop us out of the sky. Still concerned that Cotton might have been working for Gilgamesh incidentally.

“I don’t have the spirit for martial arts like you two.” Smolder mumbled as she sat with us eating something. “I’m decent at ribbon dancing combat, but aside from that I’m still just a brawler and haven’t really improved much in that area.”

As she said this, I watched Smolder shape the combat ribbon in the air with rather specific set of movements into the image of a dancing dragon with an opening and closing mouth.

“That is being okay, at least Ocellus is improving her abilities by leaps and bounds.” Wonder what Shanty meant by that, I knew Ocellus was at least working on mimicking Favela’s Vine Whip in any form to gain extra limbs and making sure they were safely detachable before using them in combat. “Kind of hard not to think I’m slacking with what you guys are becoming increasingly capable of.”

“Wish I didn’t have to be this capable.” I grumbled, because I’m taking my designated caretaker job seriously.

“I don’t mind being this awesome!” Dolly stated with a cheeky grin and pumping her right paw in the air.

“Heh, so cute, so how long do you think it’ll take them to find a better place to hide than here?” It would probably be a while I’d think Smolder.

“What… WAHHH?!” The shrill panicked scream drew our attentions to Ocellus who quickly floated out of the way of a Pokémon leaping at her with a large two handing massive sword and tried to carve into her.

One would assume anyone with a sword that large and actively attacking a Sigilyph would have to be a rebel, they were odd looking, highly muscular and were what I recognized as a Medicham. Psychic and Fighting Type.

“One of you dullards actually managed to dodge me, oh yeah, this is going to be fun and what are you hiding back there?” Said idiot of course is going to draw every Sigilyph in the area to us unless we knock him out quickly. “Oh ho, some outsider buddies of that big bastard Gilgamesh, this might just be my lucky day!”

He also thinks we’re with the very monster we were here to investigate and likely stop, oh joy and I’m betting he’s stupidly tough too and would have to be to be carrying a ridiculously large and heavy double edged Zanbatou sword around and wielding it one handed as he pointed it at us with a wild grin.

If we’re truly as unlucky as I think we are, he’s a blood crazed berserker judging by the injury patterns on his body. That was on top of just seeing his demented grin, what is our luck today, no really, WHAT IS IT?!

It was fairly apparent this was not going to be quiet by any stretch of the imagination and was going to draw a lot of attention to us.

“Smolder go pull Ocellus back, don’t get hit that thing was made for killing ponies the size of Celestia. Shanty prepare the wagon to move, Dolly with me.” Even as I belted out orders and got up from where I was sitting and quickly ran forward and hurriedly shouted out. “Can we talk this out, PLEASE, you are creating a huge misunderstanding here!”

“Talk with a Gilgamesh stooge, no can do, the names Sagara Sonosuke and I’ll be beating you within in an inch of your lives today!” I believed he could do that too, stupid, impulsive and had the wrong idea about us being present and watched by a transformed Ocellus he took another swing at and barely had to stop in mid swing from tearing Ocellus in half by a fireball to the face that only stunned him. “Okay, ow, that burns. This might be more trouble than I thought, but I’m in it to win it!”

“Can we at least keep this quiet and not attract the attention of every Sigilyph on this level of Cerebrum?” Of which there was a lot that could pound us into dust at range.

“Why thank you, you read my mind, so let’s make this quick and if we can’t, then it becomes a real party!” Sanosuke, it really didn’t take me very long to identify you as a certifiable idiot if you were working for the rebellion and supposedly the same Kenshin that Mentalis mentioned. Also a dangerous martial arts expert from what I could read on him as he charge at me as Smolder pushed Sigil-cellus by me, because Kenshin was probably in dire need of an enforcer this stupid.

At least his movements were easy to read, I told Dolly to back up and let me take the blow. I locked my hind legs to the floor and stiffened all my wool before the massive sword slammed into me.

“AGGGHHHH!” I felt the ground ruptured under me as I was lifted straight up into the air by the blow and felt my ribs crack from just the pressure of the blow going straight through my wool. This was just from my wool mitigating a majority of the cutting force applied to me.

I hit the ground on my back next to Dolly and realized that I wasn’t going to be able to block break this weapon with my wool. Also he was absolutely stronger than I first initially thought, what kind of hysterical strength does this guy even have?!

“POM, WHY YOU… AERORA!” Dolly blasted wind at Sanosuke, only he managed to block the horizontal tornado with his large blade by planting it to hold himself in place and split the tornado into two halves.

Wind attacks were supposed to be effective, but he was strong enough to split a fully focused Aerora funneled by the alleyway by stabbing his blade straight into the floor.

Sanosuke was grinning at us quite ferally, I’d assume at finally finding a good fight opportunity… at least right up until I thrust my hooves up into the tornado and smacked them together creating a spark that created a powerful explosion wave heading right at him.

That was neither subtle nor laying low, but it would have at least… wow… he only moved about six inches and was barely injured by that. At least Kenshin, if this guy really worked with him, has good taste in people to have on his side even if they weren’t currently on ours.

“Oh yeah, now that’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about!” Sanosuke shouted aggressively, it would probably be a good idea to quickly find a way to disarm him.

He was promptly hit with four streams of boiling hot water from the Araquanids. Once their fire died down, he was still standing and even seemed to have enjoy it.

“Ah, that felt good, been a while since I’ve been to a hot spring, you goons are real nice you know and I’ve been meaning to bathe for a while. Just for that, you can die now!” Sanosuke swung his weapon with incredible force.

I quickly kicked up my hind legs into a left legged hoof stand, inhaled quickly and then exhaled as I grabbed Dolly with my right leg and pushed off the floor to avoid it being shredded by the volatile pressure wave of rending winds he launched at us and clung to the wall on our left.

Thankfully Shanty had the bright idea to have the wagon out of the way as the pressure wave tore a hole into the back of the building creating a new entrance into the alleyway or more importantly, out of it. Nobody had been hit, but the hole created was ridiculous.

“Huh? Looks like you’re cavalry has arrived and I’m good at destroying cavalry!” Nobody was doubting you Sanosuke, considering you just blocked a psychic beam from a Sigilyph without moving and inch and had something like a glowing eye marking spotlight focused on your body signifying what I’m sure to be Miracle Eye locking onto a single target.

“Everyone… through that building he opened up!” I called as I kicked off the wall as a massive hole opened up in it from another air rending attack. We can’t wait for Quetal, Shine and the Morpeko that went with them to come back, we had to move. “Go, we’ll catch up!”

“What she said!” Canard agreed readily as the wagon turned and started entering the hole blown in the wall large enough for it to pass through.

Dazzle fire a Dragon Pulse out the back of the wagon before they moved out of sight beyond the hole as Sanosuke was busy blocking another psychic beam from one of the Sigilyph and actually physically deflected the powerful purple energy dragon upwards.

He deflected an energy attack with just physical strength, my goodness that sounded so dumb that it would be something Arizona would do on principle just to make physicists cry.

“Not going to lie, that… was really cool.” In a bit of a stupor after seeing such a thing, Dolly started clinging to me tightly as I ran for the hole on three legs.

“Get back here!” Sanosuke shouted and started into the alleyway as Dazzle’s Dragon Pulse finally hit a part of the ceiling and wall high above and collapsed a mass of rubble behind the guy and onto a pair of Sigilyph aiming at his back. He came charging for us a second later with his sword like it was a spear holding it by its oversized handle in both hands.

“Can I just say that we are not with Gilgamesh?!” I called back.

“Then why are you running, that seems guilty enough for me, you’re probably one of those spies trying to suck up to him or your one of those groups making secret deliveries to his castle!” Gee Mr. Sagara, I too am wondering why anyone would run from a giant sword wielding maniac that just started attacking you on a completely baseless assumption. “You can’t fool good old Sanosuke of the rebels that easily!”

“I wasn’t trying to in the first place!” I shouted back before inhaling and exhaling to blur out of the way of the sword he threw at me, after going through the hole he made earlier it spears through the opposite not as destroyed wall in the hallway that used to be unblemished until that moment.

I felt sorry for anyone who had to repair the damages of all this as I continued down the hallway after spotting Lit sparking up to signal to us to follow him.

Lit leapt up onto my nose when I turned the corner and heard a roaring noise of effort and the sounds of destruction, I stopped in place and then Sanosuke burst through the wall in front of us and continued on through the opposite wall.

Dolly and Lit looked to me and then Lit simply poked me twice to get my attention, he pointed his leg to continue going in the given direction down the hallway towards a T-junction. I quickly galloped that way and the sound of my hooves turned Mr. Sagara back in our direction.

“Wha… how did you get behind me?” Strong enough to hurt me even if I do block and dumb enough to be issue to anyone he’s friends with, that’s not exactly a good combination Mr. Sagara. “Will your trickery know no end!”

Lit pointed left and quickly turned the corner using my front left leg to pivot and nearly avoided being skewered by Sanosuke and he slammed his sword down behind me launching me up into the air, I flipped and started running along the ceiling.

“Your being ridiculous here!” I called back.

“I’m Ridiculous, you’re the one running on the ceiling, get down from there and face me like a warrior I feel you are! I can smell the immense potential on you.” Ah so Sanosuke had the same kind of sense that Arizona, Tianhuo, Velvet and even Paprika had when in concerns with me having a hidden potential for fighting and being a Chrysomallus.

“Did it ever occur to you that we’re running because you’re trying to kill us?!” I dropped from the ceiling as he threw his sword up at me, he leapt up grabbed the handle of the sword and swiftly pulled it free from the ceiling to try and bring it slamming down on us. “We’re not even with a group of Psychic Types at the moment!”

“Likely story, I’ve seen Pokémon of other types working with Gilgamesh and I’m actually planning to take you alive!” Nice to know and very informative, now how were you this darn fast Mr. Sagara I was running at full tilt short of entering Dancing Flame because of Lit and Dolly.

“Could have fooled me with the way you swing that thing around!” I felt Lit poke the right side of my nose and nodded as I ran. My ribs were in agony, but I wasn’t going to let him hit me with that thing again.

“Darn you’re a fast one, how about a Force Palm!” I pretended to try and turn left at the cross section, but I was taking a book out of one Dolly’s evasive maneuvers.

I planted my left hoof and started to pivot to the left in the intersection and then tapped into Dancing Flame with a quick breathe and pushed myself backwards in a blur while locking Lit and Dolly into my wool trying not to hurt them while moving at insane speeds.

If I did that right, then I blurred my movements well enough that he…

Sanosuke turned left and continued down the hallway as the three of us held our breaths.

Didn’t see me going backwards instead of forwards.

Lit tapped me and pointed behind me. I carefully turned around, hopped and covered all my hooves with wool and started running for all I was worth, my hooves silenced by the covering of wool.

After several thirty seconds of being directed by Lit, I exited the entrance of the building through a door, Psychics probably had buildings or rooms without doors, but air vent for privacy since they could likely teleport in and out of things.

Once I was on the street, Dodo warbled worriedly and gestured at the wagon. I hopped for the entrance breathing heavily with wide eyes as my friend grabbed me in the air and pulled me.

-Shanty-

“Go!” Canard ordered and we were on the move, Sanosuke burst out of the building a second later next to where the door was. Why did he go through the wall, there was a perfectly good door there.

Sagara Sanosuke glared in our direction and I be turning to Dodo.

“Be going much faster!” I added on and Dodo started pulling us away. “Slide right!”

A blur of cutting and rending air passed us by, I was being quite jealous that he be capable of doing that. Why couldn’t I be throwing cutting air slashes that powerful?

“Left!” Dazzle called and then blasted a Toxic out the back making the guy block the fluids with his blade in a panic as we moved out of the path of another blasts of rending winds.

“Darn it, you won’t get away from me that easily!” It was around this time that several Sigilyph started converging on him, because he was being far louder than we were and stopped to start fighting them off. “You want a go at me, then come on!”

Dodo stopped at an intersection and be looking around and started pulling us to the left and towards the inner portions of the city. We be getting away.

-Sanosuke-

“Out of my way!” I leapt up and slapped away the Cerebrum City guardians that become stooges for that bastard Gilgamesh as the wagon was getting away.

-Quetal-

“This looks like it will work for us…” I was still debating whether it would be a better spot when I heard sounds coming from the direction of our previous spot. I then noticed the Sigilyph passing by with a cold feeling in my gut. “What was that?”

“Sounds like someone saw through Ocellus’s disguise.” Morpeko said fearfully.

“Quetal we have to… never mind. Over here quickly!” Shine waved her beautiful hair fronds and got Dodo’s attention and he started coming our way very quickly.

“Gyeh-heh-heh~ have a present for you!” Cotton flew by and then out of sight and this left a quickly oncoming Sigilyph who spotted us immediately.

“Lucha Mundo’s ‘AMAZING’ Flying Press!” Lucha Mundo slammed down on top of the Sigilyph from above crushing it into the ground and instantly knocking it out. “My friends have you found a good location yet? We seemed to have attracted some rather unwanted attention.”

“Yeah, no thanks to Cotton again.” I grumbled angrily, was that bird trying to get us captured or killed, or was she actually working with ‘them’?

“That is not what I am talking, do you have an idea of a place to hide?” Mundo asked as the wagon pulled up next to us.

“Yeah, it’s about a block or two away near the pillar to the next tier up, let’s go!” I hopped onto Dodo and pointed my claw forward. “I’ll give you directions to our new hiding spot Dodo, start moving!”

“Before you ask, no we haven’t found any civilians to talk to.” The Morpeko reported as I started giving some careful directions to Dodo.

-Thirty minutes later, Sanosuke-

“Woo… now that was a workout.” Now to find that wagon of supplies that got by me!

I was leaving twenty seven downed Sigilyph in my wake, even I recognized that the thirty more coming at me was a bit much and decided it was time to get a move on.

Author's Note

-Insert Sagara Sanosuke Theme Music here-

333. Whiffs of Portents.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Cerebrum City, Middle Tier, Xatu-

Being a green bird with white wings and some colorful highlights along with a long feather sticking out the back of my head, it made made me feel like I should be put on some kind of totem pole sometimes with my appearance.

As a Psychic Type, I was fairly concerned about the shadow I saw approaching me in the future.

Its shape was that of Cotton Murkrow, I’d know the silhouette anywhere. If what I heard about the explosion in the lower docks was anything to go off of, it was most likely that that was her doing and she was in the city.

Was she here to stop the rebellion, stop Gilgamesh or stop a tragedy? Who knows, with Avia’s infamous Spymaster Cotton Murkrow!

I had quickly packed and opened my door to a true horror, Xatu were known for being slow due to always having our sights in the future… which means we’re visibly blind to what is directly in front of us unless we take our eyes off the future which takes a bit of doing.

I should have just flown for it even if the Sigilyph patrol would have hit me with Gravity and it would end with my body being crushed into a paste upon being slammed into the ground

“Hello~-.” The way Cotton drew it out and smiled at me terrified me, I tried to shout for anyone who would help me as she approached me with a plank of wood. “This is a kidnapping Xatu, hope you don’t be minding if I take you alive, it is in my Ex-per-tease based opinion that you need a few lumps.”

I didn’t care if it was a rebel, anyone from Gilgamesh’s forces or anyone else like the Dark Types that have managed to smuggle themselves into the city in one way or another for who they happened to be working for. I released a loud screech to try and draw attention to myself.

The last thing I felt was a blow to the skull and a small vision of Central Illusio’s destruction before blacking out.

-Cerebrum City, Lower Tier, new hiding spot, Pom-

“Are you getting enough nutrients Smolder?” It was a major concern that we weren’t feeding Smolder properly, that greed growth before we came to this world was quite energy intensive. It hadn’t seem to have affected her before, but now I was starting to notice mild signs that something was wrong with Smolder.

“Could use more a lot more gems in my diet, but I’m mostly fine.” At least my soup was being enjoyed, but I could tell Smolder wasn’t getting her full nutritional value from what I made and it was upsetting that she was trying to downplay it. Could dragons even suffer from malnourishment when they could practically eat and digest almost anything?

“Smolder should be fine, provided she doesn’t go through a greed growth.” Ocellus would know more about dragons than I would, I know a lot about longma at least. She would know more about dragons and I might have to ask her later.

The bottom layer of Cerebrum, as we have come to find out through the scouting efforts of Quetal, Shine and a Morpeko, houses most of the engineers, guards, maintenance and weirdly the Starmie fire fighters. Engineers are to keep the city floating through a hidden Psychic Crystal room to provide flotation for the city like a levitation generator.

Gilgamesh wanted the city to stay floating at least, for if something happened to the city, then so to would something happen to the Castle of Illusion high above it. Said castle was is in an insanely defendable position of being at least a quarter to half a mile higher than the city we were currently in, at least that’s according to what the Levanny knew having lived here for their entire lives under the rule of the previous king.

One of the few ways to get up that high would be a balloon, a teleporter that only works for anything but Dark Types and the most dangerous way would be standing on psychic crystals or magnetic floating rocks in this region and having a Psychic that was an expert in levitation push us up there.

That the often mentioned teleporters didn’t work for Dark Types would put us at a disadvantage if we wanted to go that route and it was the likely route we would have to take, as I really doubt a balloon would be able to launch from this city without being hit by the Gravity move we were told about that dropped the Ponyta Prowlers airship that used to exist out of the sky.

So we were aiming to use the teleporter that was likely to be guarded by the worst of the worst, those going through the teleporter would need to be of sound mind and equally sound body. I would definitely not qualify and I would want to go through the teleporters. Those who stayed behind would probably be fighting for their very lives. Not like having to fight Gilgamesh directly would be any easier for those who went up, because without Dark Type countering the Psychic Energy we would eventually start feeling the effects on our minds.

I swear Gilgamesh could even be watching us right now and laughing about how insignificant we seemed and we wouldn’t know a salt lick of it.

-Gilgamesh-

The green crescent shaped creature just sat in the tree in Chrysalia, I still wondered how it was supposed to end in my defeat and I scoffed at the idea.

…

Yet I kept coming back to it.

-Ocellus-

“So how are your ribs and legs Pom?” After the incident Shine had used Pain Split on Pom and then expressed an insane amount of discomfort with how much pain Pom was trying to ignore being in with cracked ribs after she tried to block and break the blade wielded by Sanosuke the Rebel.

Normally we would be allies with the rebels, but that guy just started attacking us out of nowhere because I had taken on the form of a Sigilyph and likely thought that my sitting still was suspicious. He certainly didn’t seem to be a Psychic Type that actually uses his brain for anything from what I felt from him, the guy was quite hot-blooded like Smolder can be sometimes. At least his emotions weren’t pure malice, more like pure excitement to be doing something.

There’s also the fact that Dolly was actively taking on Pom’s pain as well, when Pom really didn’t want her to be doing that at all or in the first place.

We’re all a little nuts even without the oppressive psychic energy in the air I could almost feel, taste or even possibly manipulate. In fact, I was oddly suited to psychic energies and they felt rather soothing. I think some minor psychic ability comes with being an empathic entity. I’m pretty sure unicorns would get a similar feeling around Psychic Energy given their magic works off their minds ability to concentrate.

“Put enough Sitrus Berry juice in me and I’ll walk it off.” If Pom kept getting injured or pushing herself so harshly we were going to run out of our medical Sitrus Berries supply rather quickly. “Also, yes, I am aware we have a limited amount of them Ocellus. No, I don’t read minds, but you know I do read expressions fairly well.”

“That said, are we going to try for the tier above us tomorrow?” Quetal asked as he looked to Dodo eating a lot more than the rest of us, he had used a lot of energy for that forward burst and I was beginning to recognize the signs of demand not quite meeting up to the amount of supplies we have. “We kind of need to get out of the one noted for having guards everywhere.”

“Well yes, we have to if we’re going to find enough supplies to keep up with everyone’s use of them.” Among my friends, the most supply heavy users tended to be Shanty for food and drink, Pom for medical stuff or cooking and finally Dodo for any amount of scrap metal or food we can actually spare to feed him and he couldn’t go without food forever despite looking mechanical. The Araquanids were also a bit of a drain for their given sizes. The Morpeko were, despite ironically being known for the word ‘hangry’ in this world, the least likely to use a large amount of our supplies.

Also Smolder… I was getting kind of worried about her health when I noticed Pom focusing on her every once in a while. Smolder hasn’t had a lot of opportunity to eat gems in recent history and it doesn’t help that she was found to be rather susceptible to psychic energy.

“I concur, we’ll have to make a bid for the tier above us tomorrow, apparently it’s where they teleport in supplies from the ground below through the heavily guarded teleporters and where a person would end up if they tried to get through from there.” Shine felt uneasy about our current predicament.

“At least you guys be finding a nice quiet spot to rest for a while.” Shanty is talking about after the incident with ‘Sanosuke the Rebel’ and meeting up with our scouts.

Quetal had led us directly to the area that was perfect for our needs that’s out of the way, out of sight and most importantly can’t possibly draw attention from anyone towards us.

Oddly enough it was closer to the center of the city and near the large central spiraling ramps leading up to the tier above, said ramps were positively swamped with Sigilyph guards on top of other psychic types working under Gilgamesh’s regime.

Teleporting was the most used method for getting between floors, but if you wanted to go between tiers on foot or through levitation if teleportation is out of the question, then there were the five pillars. Four of which were at each corner of the city near where a humongous psychic crystal that were below the city, the last was in the center of the city and near where we were.

Our location was in one of the buildings that was large enough to fit a wagon and the sliding doors around here allowed us to take up a relatively safe occupancy… because this building obviously hadn’t been used in a while. This city felt quite ancient and likely had been floating in the sky for a long time.

“How sure are you that this place isn’t patrolled?” Canard asked out of concern as we sat in a circle next to the wagon. Dodo warbled in worry and his attention was focused on Shanty as she patted his side gently.

“It’s covered in a layer of dust, we’re fairly sure nobody has cleaned here in a while.” All the building down here looked the same and only some of them were clean Quetal, yet you said the Sigilyph basically lived down here. There was some reason to worry about the Sigilyph not having to touch the floor, walls or doors given they were always floating about and could manipulate things with psychic energy. “Also this place smells like it hasn’t had a Sigilyph occupy it in a long time, which is if you’re worried about the fact that they can sleep while floating in the air like Abra are known to do and wouldn’t need to touch anything to move about.”

Well that was one less concern off my mind. What was concerning was that the insides of all the buildings were very different upon entrance, the streets were fairly clear visibility in being lit brightly by psychic crystals.

The insides of buildings was a different story entirely as they wildly varied in corridors, stairs and doors in a fairly maze like quality, if we were being effected by psychic energy… how much worse would that even be? There’s also the idea that all the buildings down here on the lowest tier seemed incredibly sparse of plants or other forms of furniture.

“So how did you find out this was the floor for guards, engineers and fire fighters?” Basically all the public services on one floor seemed a little odd, at least until we get an eye on the other floors.

“Phantom Force allows me to skulk about in the shadows. Aside from the light the crystals give off, there’s plenty of shadows for me to use to get around.” So Shine was our professional on scouting right now. “I’m the one that got most of this information for us, but I’m not about to go to the floor above by myself.”

“That’s fair, we wouldn’t want anyone going alone anywhere anyway. We stick to teams and watch each other’s backs.” Canard stated with his arms cross as Sami gave him a slightly appraising look alongside Cleffa. “We need to stick together and any attempts to split our group up is going to end poorly until we can open up a safe communication with the rebels in Cerebrum. Sanosuke was a minor setback and we have to convince the rebels we aren’t against them, Sanosuke is probably telling them what he thinks to be the truth.”

“Good luck, what is that? It’s a foreign concept to me.” At least Pom helped me with being able to identify sarcasm and I’m fairly sure that was a large amount of it and it was rhetorical question.

I noticed Shanty and Smolder looking to me.

“I’m not nearly that bad… anymore…” I added that last bit and they nodded in acceptance. “Let’s turn in for the… well… how can we tell what time it is in here again?”

-Eight or more hours of interrupted rest later and some change of travel, outside the central spiral, Shanty-

“I don’t be seeing anyone covering the entrance up.” As I be saying this, Shine be popping out of the shadows with a small and barely heard ‘bamf’ noise as smoke came off of her.

“We need to be careful, there are quite a number of Sigilyph patrolling the central spiral, but I didn’t see that Medicham anywhere. We should be wary of rebels as much as Gilgamesh’s forces at the moment. I saw a much more major problem though, there are tons of Woobat sniffing around…. before you ask they are the nose focused version of Zubat and as equally annoying in large swarms thanks to all the snorting they do.” That… was being kind of hard to imagine Shine, I didn’t think anything could be being as annoying as Zubat. “They are slightly more dangerous given they are Psychics with an unusual focus on psychic smelling and being the only entities that smell things through psychic powers. They are definitely not to be taken lightly despite looking like flying pig noses.”

“Hmm… any way we can get by them without drawing attention to ourselves?” Pom was looking at Smolder every once in a while, did something be wrong with her?

“They have poor eyesight, but their noses, aside from having an impossible sense of smell for tracking targets, also produce ultrasonic waves for echolocation like a Zubat or normal bat would.” Shine could be getting by them obviously as long as she swims through the shadows, the rest of us are not being so lucky.

“What if we hit them with an impossibly bad or attractive scent?” Now there be an idea Canard.

“What would be attractive to a Woobat?” Favela be wanting to talk more, but she be too wary of Pom since she tore those Hypno guys apart. At least she still be confiding in and trusting me, wouldn’t have a good crew member be afraid of my friends, even if she did be consuming some blood and flesh.

Pom being a predator or a omnivore didn’t be bothering me too much, she be having enough dog like attributes and this one in particular was one she obviously didn’t relish in having.

“Bug Types, they are drawn to attacking and love going after the smell of us… don’t ask how voracious Woobats can get, I’ve heard some horror stories of Bug Types being eaten alive by them and yes they’re quite carnivorous.” Stated Ninjask as he clung to an Araquanid, his wing is almost being fully healed from the small amount of Sitrus juice we be giving him. “We wouldn’t be able to get the wagon within fifty feet of the climbing spiral before we’re attacked by them. They would sniff us out and are likely the cleaners to keep regular bugs from overpopulating or thriving in the city, best pest exterminators around and we’re some pests they’ll want to exterminate.”

“Are they really that scary?” Charjabug seemed to be asking in wonderment.

“Have you ever wanted to be eaten alive by a pack of winged noses? They are far more intelligent and dangerous than Zubats are.” Ninjask be talking like he be having an experience with some of these flying nose things. “Them having psychic powers just make them more dangerous than Zubat are in general when swarming someone.”

“What would be a smell to keep them away then?” I be putting it out there that we would rather not be attracting attention. “If they be drawing all the Sigilyph to us, then we won’t be able to be putting up much of a fight and we’re trying not to caught or killed here.”

“Shh… everyone be quiet.” We all turned to Mundo and he stood by the slightly open sliding door, after a moment the tension left his form as his eyes seemed to track a shadow passing by the doorway. After another ten seconds of silence he turned to us. “Okay, the Sigilyph are certainly patrolling in larger numbers, either they are looking for us or they are looking for the Ponyta Prowlers. Quite frankly we don’t want the Woobat smelling us or those Sigilyph spotting us.”

“What next, a Psychic Type with an ability focused entirely around their sense of taste?” Pom’s sarcasm be making a few people chuckle. “Anyway, is there something they don’t like smelling like Shanty asked and even if there were, would we even be able to get it if we don’t have it from here?”

“Not likely, such supplies would be in the upper city levels of Cerebrum.” The female Leavanny answered. “This is familiar, I’ve been here before just a lot higher up the central spiral, when the previous king was still around. The next tier up is were the teleporters to and from the ground are at along with a lot of storage space, merchant districts and a lot of other things. Teleporters used to bring in supplies do go through there as do civilians traveling to and from Cerebrum, however there has been a lockdown on any comings and goings in the city and a number of Pokémon that weren’t Psychic Types were all kicked out of Cerebrum. I was one of them, I’m a textile work and working on that balloon brought some feeling back into me.”

“Do we have to take out these Woobat?” Sighed Pom audibly.

“Yes, I’d think so, there’s too many of them in the way according to Shine.” Ninjask said as he raised a leg to draw attention to him. “I have an idea as to how we can do it, but we’d need a volunteer, someone who could brave the Woobat and start running from them really fast. They’d also need to draw only the Woobats, draw any Sigilyph and we’ll be swamped by them.”

“I’ll do it!” Is it me or is Charjabug a little bit dim to be volunteering for something like this.

“Let me guess, we’re making an ambush and taking out enough that we can punch through and get lost before the Sigilyph show up.” Getting a nod for his guess, Canard looked around to everyone. “Good, but again we’re not sending anyone alone so we’ll need more than Charjabug nearby… do they go after any bug smell.”

“Yes, why?” Ninjask tilted his head.

“Well…” Whatever Canard was about to be saying was interrupted.

“I volunteer to go with Charjabug and help him lure the Woobat in.” Ocellus immediately announced and I be giving her a glance, she is being, unusually enough, very brave here.

“I know the move Grasswhistle…” The male Leavanny threw out. “It’ll help lure or attract attention and can put a few of the Woobat to sleep.”

“We don’t have much choice about being here, but we can still help the situation, I know something about the area above. I think I might know a place we can go, at least a warehouse we can scavenge or get help from depending on the situation.” The female Leavanny be taking up a positioned with the quickly formed team. “Just don’t… let us lose our minds again.”

“Okay four is enough for a lure, I guess it’s settled that we’ll set up an ambush.” Canard turned be motioning for us to prepare for heading out. “Look at it this way Pom, at least you’re not endangering yourself again.”

“No, but I will eventually. Do Woobats have any potentially problematic abilities we need to be worried about?” The answer was no, not that it would sooth Pom’s mood very much that it was a good thing.

Also it is being bad that Pom just be reminding us that she runs towards danger if someone needed help.

-Ten minutes later, inner central spiral of Cerebrum, Ocellus-

Those are Woobat? Pig shaped noses, with a single large heart shaped nostril… which took up anywhere from a quarter to half their whole face. Small bat wings, they were quite fluffy too. Single large fangs in their mouths for biting into and tearing out chunks of flesh from a target or crunching through a Bug Types carapace. Their overall body shape was a sphere with wings… they were simple looking yet, there was something about the single oversized nostril that irked me a bit given it was heart shaped.

A slight flash of flames came over me and I was definitely prepared for this now, thank goodness for my adaptability.

“Uh what was that for?” The Male Leavanny asked.

“Just something incase things go south.” I changed out the material my carapace is made of for something a little sturdier and added a little something to my throat for an extra defensive measure, if a Woobat bites me then it’s likely they’ll lose their main central fang. Better them getting hurt than me.

“Well I’m glad that I don’t see any Swoobats in that swarm of Woobats.” As the male Leavanny just pointed out, none of their evolutions were present here.

Swoobats are the evolved form and they grew heads, feet and tails. Compare to Golbats being evolved Zubat’s in gaining eyes, an even bigger mouth and their two stalactite or branch clinging tails turn into tiny claws. Pokémon were fascinating to research, but we had business to attend to.

Sticking close to the wall of the building we moved forward and Charjabug looked determined to help, he had the positive energy at least if not the capability to do big things being shaped like a bread box.

At the corner of the building we looked out at the distance of the several curving ramps around the large central open space going all the way up to the roof, but not the surface of this floating continent city place.

My gaze then shifts to the ramp nearest to us swarming with the snorting and sniffing nose bats that were primarily blue and a few green ones, there were quite a few, if still fairly present, distant Sigilyph and we had to make sure not to draw their attention. Now how to get the bats attention without drawing the Sigilyph, we couldn’t do anything flashy or loud.

“Hm… that breeze spell Twilight researched?” I mumbled in thought as I ignited my horn and tried to keep the brightness of it down. The wind whistled through the area and seeing what I was doing, the male Leavanny held his two leaf covered scythe arms up and start blowing into them.

The music was rather joyful sounding and bouncy and it carried on the wind hopefully along with our scents. I wonder if Changelings were bug enough to count as an attractive smell. The wind I was generating was once used by Twilight to stop an Ursa Minor, said wind was directed and it would only go by the Woobat as the Leavanny continued to play his rather peppy tune.

“Usually this move is use for making Pokemon fall asleep… but you make it an artform.” The Female Leavanny complimented.

The Male Leavanny stopped for a moment and smiled.

“Why thank you, I prefer the musical arts to the clothing production ones our particular species is known for.” He responded cheerfully before going back to playing his music on his two leaf limbs.

It didn’t take long for us to start drawing the Woobats, we’re certainly glad they didn’t alert the nearby Sigilyph with their movements as they started to peel away from the ramp and fly in our general direction. The snorting and sniffing they were doing and the wild, decidedly hungry, sounds they made was mildly worrying as we slowly backed away towards the ambush point at the intersection.

“Any sign of patrolling Sigilyph?” I asked quietly as we continued to back away from the quickly oncoming swarm, I haven’t seen this many bats since the Zubat attacking us with Ignis. Can we even get all of them, I can’t count the number coming at us.

“We’re still clear, Pom would be the one to tell us to abort.” Charjabug answered as he continued scooting backwards.

This was definitely one of those moments where I didn’t feel very safe, Dodo’s world was still the most terrifying one to me even as I was about to be swarmed by one fang bats starting to swoop down on us as we entered the intersection. I’m pretty sure it was the intersection west of the central spiral given the direction we entered the city from.

We were almost on the opposite side of the intersection where I saw a grinning Sami wave to us and give a thumbs up from the nearby alleyway that we were still good to go as she hefted her bazooka onto her soldiers and focus her sight on the air in the middle of the intersection.

They did remember that we can’t do anything too flashy right?! We were actively trying to avoid attracting the attention of the Sigilyph eyes to us.

As soon as my hooves were planted on the far side of the intersection I shut off the spell as at least one hundred or more of these Woobat creatures swooped down us with open mouths with fangs and came hurtling at us horizontally into the middle of the intersection.

I prepared my horn, the Leavanny held up their arms and Charjabug lit up. Just when the wave of Woobat was about to hit us the first two Araquanids made their presences known with two blasts of boiling water.

Unfortunately for the Woobats they were caught off guard in the powerful crossfire as the streams slammed into them from both the left and right, they were screeching and trying to fly backwards and away from the trap when the Woobats behind them were suddenly hit with more Scald attacks.

Some stragglers tried to fly away into a different street only to be struck by a hockey stick by Canard if they were flying too low, a jet of air from Pom’s legs if they tried to get too high, a burst of energy stars that wouldn’t miss from Quetal and exploding seed bombs from Favela and the Leavanny.

The seed bombs weren’t as effective, but they did disorient and blast the Woobat back into the four constant streams of boiling hot water knocking the lot of them out of the air and I even fired a few magic missiles to make sure none of them escaped to draw attention to our ambush. I saw Smolder contain a few of them with smacks from her ribbon as we piled on the pain from all sides and pressed the lured Woobat inwards.

That last bit with Charjabug and the Morpeko proved to be too much, as seconds later the boiling streams were aimed to catch last bit of Woobat still capable of having a thought in their heads as their panicking and confused emotions were cut out by the bliss of unconsciousness by electrified boiling water streams.

Once again the Violight and Chrysalia initiatives were proving quite good at working together as allies, I can see why they were friendly nations to one another with this kind of team work. Even if a majority of Chrysalia would rather keep to themselves, the soldiers of Chrysalia were proving open to traveling and keeping good relations with their neighbors.

What would have been one hectic fight against hundreds of flying nose bats, actually turned out to be a one sided complete takedown of all the Woobat in the vicinity of the ramp we were needing to use. I really didn’t like their quickly quashed screeches of pain, but this was definitely necessary. Also I don’t think Psychic Types knew what stairs were judging by the architecture being built to the specifications of manipulating your surroundings with your mind.

“Okay, let’s move before anyone notices! Lady Leavanny give us some directions to this warehouse you mentioned once we get up to the next tier!” Pom motioned for us to pile back into the wagon as we left a bunch of groaning pained bats laying in the center of the intersection as our ambush has fully paid off. “Though I doubt things will be any easier from here on.”

“I’d agree, once the Sigilyph patrols notice the Woobats, they are going to be swarming everywhere.” Quetal helped me up onto the wagon and then we were setting off and up the ramp as fast as Dodo could get us moving before anyone noticed.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“They are doing well so far…” Chicken corn chowder was on today’s menu, it was a hit apparently.

“Seriously, the cocooned creature? That’s quite a diabolical bit of misdirection.” Tiamat commented idle as her heads enjoyed some of the chowder prepared by me.

“Amusing and a lot of talented beings are being thrown into this one area, but how long before they run into some real trouble?” Bahamut asked as he chewed on a portion of bread loaf that was the lid to his bread bowl. “Situations like this are usually powder kegged by now.”

“We’ll see that in the next ten minutes, and it won’t be for the reasons you might think.” Answered Celebi with a worried look. “Also a Xatu has apparently been captured by that odd Murkrow, even I don’t know what she’s up to.”

“Possibly the destruction of Cerebrum City itself, regardless of whether or not that isn’t too great an idea.” I could easily find out, but I’d rather see where this goes.

“Maybe it’s just being set up as the backup plan? I noticed some of the other odd things she’s doing. In any case whatever Gilgamesh is attempting could be stopped if the Castle of Illusion loses its support structure via the loss of the city below it. The results would be absolutely devastating for Illusio though.” Of course Mew was still interested in my attempts to perfectly pop popcorn down to the last kernel, the results were delicious with a perfect balance of cheese dust, hot liquid butter sprinkling and a nice dose of other flavorings on request. She had a bucket with a bit of fried pickle dust flavoring added onto the cheese and butter. Still, I have not perfected the correct method to make popcorn perfect, but I can make it very good. “Also something is wrong with one of the Ponyta Prowlers.”

“Ah yes, the one with a crisis of faith… how interestingly maneuvered.” Tiamat was interested in the chaos.

Bahamut was more interested in the applied heroics and dangers the people we were watching would get into.

I was more interesting in the friendships going on personally, the comradery and the teamwork to deal with rather insurmountable odds.

“Moon Cell just summoned Ifrit… must be using a Saint Graph Core and Digimon data mixed, quite the abomination it’s making there.” Bahamut sat up and had a wild eyed look to him. “Unfortunately it does not look like it can break the boundaries from the digital realms… and it’s being sent to attack the local digital realm Yggdrasil.sys the digital goddess watches over. I believe the intention is to break the lockdown and invade that realm while already invading yours from Valora.”

“The Steel Types are holding fairly well, but summoning powerful monsters and… wait… dad… where did Lu Bu’s soul go?” Mew immediately drew my attention to the empty container that had not been broken.

“Oh, tasty, Lu Bu mixed with the flames of the hulky Ifrit… makes for a gorgeous ‘fiery’ hunk of an amalgamation.” Tiamat was the first one to cotton onto what had just happened. Lu Bu had managed to incarnate in the freshly summoned Ifrit. “Thankfully for your lot, he can’t exactly manifest in reality… yet… he might be able to do so if he managed to break through Yggdrasil’s realm. He may want revenge on the still living Hideyoshi and that fun little, lovely, ‘Capricornus’ descendant.”

“Well he chose a bit of a poor form to take on Shanty with, Lu Bu might be able to manifest again if he can break the lockdown on Yggdrasil’s neighboring realm and then using that to piggyback into the Pokémon reality provided he can get enough information to… ah crap.” Mew turned to me with wide and calculating eyes full of fear, I could feel the silent prayers for my beloved genetics catalogue. “Father?”

“Well, that might actually be a huge problem that would require my acknowledgement of Moon Cell as a very viable threat. I already knew it was, that… that is kind of an impressive step up with Lu Bu’s help.” I stated bluntly. “All legendary Pokémon are to go on high alert, minus you, Hoopa and Celebi! Suicune spread the word to your siblings Raikou and Entei, then tell Groudon, Kyogre and Rayquaza. From there spread to every other trio, I’ll personally talk to Dialga and Palkia.”

Suicune nodded a mouthful of chicken corn chowder being quickly swallowed and their face covered in such happy consumption of my efforts, I summoned a wet rag and wiped their face off and sent the ultimate ‘swimming pool cleaner’ on their way.

The less some of my children knew about the why or how they were created, the better for everyone. I still loved them all though.

Author's Note

Capricornus? Really Darkon?

334. Vicious Vultures.

-???, Oleander-

So we made a stop at this space station in a galaxy doomed to a cycle of being destroyed by Artificial Intelligences repeatedly. We’ve been here before, but we didn’t do much last time… this time however.

“Wrex.” Buttina stated blandly.

“Butt.” Wrex stated back as blandly.

“Wrex.” Buttina stated with more pep in her voice.

“Butt.” Wrex replied with a slightly amused tone.

“Wrex.” Butt stated with a slightly incensed tone, aiming her shotgun at him.

“Butt.” Wrex replied in an angry tone, aiming his shotgun at her.

They’ve been at this for an hour now and I really wanted to stab them with my keyblade or something sharper. Keyblades were really good at ‘open’-ning wounds on things, in fact the concept of ‘open’ and ‘lock’ were the two main powers of the weapon.

“Oh will you two just kiss already!” They’ve been eyeing each other quite a lot, mind you Krogan were stated to be horribly violent and survival of the fittest focused species, this was somehow a major turn on for Buttina.

“Yeah, after the whole Xenomorph incident, I REALLY DOUBT WREX WOULD WANT TO PROCREATE WITH HER KNOWING WHAT WE DO.” Don’t remind me Fred, it’s honestly terrifying how prolific Pandoran Bicorns were in that universe now.

I didn’t know if we could stop the Pandoran Bicorn as an intelligent invasive species… and they absolutely terrified those acid blood bugs. There were some things about Pandoran Bicorns that I absolutely did not need to know, but now I do.

Where's the mind soap when you needed it?

“What’s a xenomorph?” After he was told what a xenomorph was and the incident involving them, wrex grinned broadly and then started to scrutinize Buttina. “Hmm… well now I’ve got to! So want to shotgun this?”

“I would be delighted!” Buttina stated in a maddening chipper tone as she was already loading her shotguns with shells.

“I think I’m in love… again… for the sixth hundredth time.” Wrex stated bluntly, as he readied his own shotgun. “Hopefully you’ll eventually become my most dangerous ex-wife yet.”

“This is sadly going to end in explosions.” Fred, honestly, it’ll start with fire, death, then we’ll get around to the explosions. “SO LET’S WALK AWAY FROM THEM WITHOUT LOOKING BACK!”

“Hey blowing stuff up is a Krogan pastime, next to hunting, killing, burning things, beating brains into things, stabbing things and watching the life leave their eyes, being awesome, buying weapons, selling weapons, being a black market weapons specialist, owning the more dangerous weapons from a massive collection of weapons, killing, beating the brains out of things, doing stupid stuff, mercenary work, counter mercenary work, being space pirates, setting stuff on fire if it wasn’t enough after the first time, killing, making sure something stays dead, irradiating our home world annually every five hundred years, blowing up even more stuff and getting completely sloshed on the most poisonous substances you can possibly imagine to the point of nearly dying during a blackout drunk moment to wake up incidentally married to a Vorcha. At least Vorcha only live for twenty years at the most, to think that my Vorcha wife lived to be twenty five out of spite he-he-heh. Also there’s making friends with people who don’t think we’re a bit too much, but that’s not as much a Krogan pastime…” Wrex was rather amused with the tales of Buttina’s home world of Pandora. “Even our volatile mating practices almost always ends with both sides in a lot of pain.”

“That sounds quite promising and you say the nicest things!” Oh my goodness Buttina, one could practically see the hearts coming off of you! “Let’s get a party started then, we’ll see who has the most stamina after being covered in the blood and guts of our enemies!”

“I like the sound of that.” Wrex grinned and ran a claw through Buttina’s hair and her tail start to flick back and forth while raising a bit.

We should really stop these two before they destroy this universe… I turned my glance at Fred who was waving around ‘destroy everything’ flags and I sighed audibly.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Cerebrum City, Middle Tier, approximately five minutes after the Woobat patrol takedown, Pom-

Okay a lot more civilians on this floor, but we were avoiding them as they were being forcefully moved around by Sigilyph. Some of them were even moving supplies, while I would like to hop off and see what they were moving or help the civilians.

The civilians weren’t actively being hurt, attacked or tortured by the Sigilyph, just pushed around by them. The civilians that weren’t being moved looked fairly depressed and were not looking like they want to fight back against the current regime, if they even had the capability to fight that is. Not all Pokémon were combat capable, a majority of them were though what with Cleffa being a fairly good example.

I figured we would be better off getting to the warehouse and seeing if any of the female Leavanny’s friends could spot us a few of the more needed supplies.

-Elsewhere in the Middle Tier, Rebel Hideout, Kenshin-

“You what?! Did it ever occur to you that the airship that exploded in the dock might have offloaded an unwanted enemy of Gilgamesh’s getting into the city and that’s why it came under attack?” Should I really blame Sanosuke for possibly jumping the gun and drawing attention from the city Sigilyph, much less the other patrolling psychic types around here? “Even an entire wagon load of Pokémon would be useful to our cause of freeing Cerebrum and the rest of Illusio.”

“We could have used some allies, my Goth Squad are barely managing to avoid capture these days.” My companion and one of the rebels Kaoru spoke up, the Gothorita has been a companion of mine for quite a while now. Bipedal pink color around her face, black hair everywhere else and up in two buns with white ribbon shapes around her body, she practically looked like a doll… you wouldn’t know she was fairly aggressive as she was gentle. She had slim arms and legs too, she was a really quite fit and you rarely see a Psychic Type that does cardio as frequently as her unit does. Most Psychics were lazy and didn’t use their legs at all and just floated around everywhere they needed to go.

“They seemed sketchy to me, especially the white wooloo one I chased, she seemed really skilled at evasion… far more than you are Kenshin.” Wait… what did Sanosuke just say?! “She was incredibly fast for something so scrawny looking.”

“Can you describe this wooloo like figure in greater detail?” This might be important.

“Yes, she had a black and white spotted canine with her, they did this really nifty thing to create a massive explosion…” It took Sanosuke a moment to realize both Kaoru and I were narrowing our eyes at him. “Ahem, anyway, the wooloo like lady had blue eyes, a wolf like smell and actually survived blocking me swinging my blade at her with full force and was able to run away full tilt afterwards. She was wearing a pink scarf as was the canine, there was something under both the scarves… I think the wooloo one had a bell that, for some reason, doesn’t ring. Get this, while she was evading me assaulting she could do things like run on the ceiling!”

“Please tell me something… did this white wooloo like entity try to talk you down?” I was getting a distinct feeling that I would have to move my forces soon if this was another one of Sanosuke’s incidents, I’ll have to change the calendar to number of days since Sanosuke’s last incident… which was last dated to five hours before I tasked him with checking out the explosion at the dock in what is to only be known as ‘the taco sauce incident’.

Here I thought he couldn’t do us any harm by being slightly out of the way until we needed him, he might have just scared off a very important ally of ours.

“Yeah, but I could tell she would be a good fight if she actually got sucked in to actually fighting, there’s something about her that screams potential to me somehow.” Oh Sanosuke, you idiot, that was probably the creator of Team Harmony in Aurora. Of course she had potential, she was becoming fairly well known for starting the first Rescue Team in Ransei!

“Tell me something, did the Sigilyph you tried to attack change into something else?” Please say no, please say no.

“Yeah, changed into a weird bug thing, thought it might have been a Zorua or a Ditto trying to play fast and loose with an unusual Bug Type form.” What with the several small groups of Dark Types that have managed to make it into Cerebrum, I could at least understand why one would be wary of such deception Sanosuke. Maybe you could have waited until they actually attacked you first or do something relatively suspicious? “They also had a Skiddo with a thing that looked like a Skiddo except smelled like salt water and booze… lots of rum at least. Could probably drink even me under the table. There was this Joltik and their wagon even had Araquanids on it. Been a while since I’ve felt water that scalding.”

“Were the Araquanids possibly Chrysalia Artillery rated by any chance?” I sighed out loud and Kaoru gave me an apologetic look.

“Well yeah, now that you mention it. Doesn’t help that there was a team of Morpeko with them and a few other beings… a very odd assortment to actually be working with Gilgamesh come to think of it.” Sanosuke started rubbing at his head with his right hand as he leaned on his massive sword with is left arm. “Of course, since they were outsiders they had to be working with Gilgamesh right?”

“No… no they weren’t Sanosuke.” I groaned out and slowly massaged my forehead, Sanosuke the Living Migraine as the rebellion called him. A migraine to both us and our enemies equally. “The people you ran across, were likely Team Harmony on commission by Chrysalia and Violight. They are here on a scouting expedition into Illusio to investigate what Gilgamesh is up to. If they are here in Cerebrum, then things are possibly getting bad and we need to start making plans for the teleporter to the Castle of Illusion floating above the city soon. First though, we need to find them and apologize for their… unwarranted welcome that led to the destruction of the ship they were on. Mentalis sent a message earlier informing me that they were on their way as the destruction of Kadabraville was being carried out. Mentalis is likely quite busy with the Abra, Kadabra and a few Alakazam refugees in a fighting retreat ground side. At least your heart was in the right place Sanosuke.”

“Kenshin is just being too nice, after a harrowing situation of surviving whatever happened at the docks you just went and made things worse for them!” There’s the fierceness that Kaoru is known for and she was quite livid with Sanosuke.

“… Sorry…” Didn’t take long for Sanosuke to apologize and look guilty, he was still one of the best fighters among the rebellion. Though he could only be loosely termed as a ‘Psychic Type’, Psychic Types tended to use their brains more often than ever Sanosuke did or even would. At least Sanosuke is using his muscles to aid the downtrodden after I beat the ever loving snot out of him, yes a part of me did enjoy recalling that moment happening, now if only he would use the muscles in his head. That darker part of me wanted me to use my blade and avenge the late king of Illusio, may his soul rest in peace.

“Kaoru, I need you to take Goth Squad out immediately, you need to secure the support of the Team Harmony and the contingents of Violight and Chrysalia with them before they are taken out or captured.” Knowing what I do, this would be a bit much to ask of of Kaoru’s personal unit because…

“My unit still needs at least an hour to at least recover somewhat from our last incursion into the upper tier of Cerebrum, those Sigilyph really let us have it on our last mission. The Woobats and Drowzee were somewhat easier to avoid given most have been moved to the bottom tier, possibly in response to the incursion of Team Harmony and contingents, goodness know what we’ll do about the Jinx and Wobbuffet units we had to get by.” Which was worrying because Kaoru was covered in bandages and still needing time to rest after their last efforts. Wobbufets weren’t very good in direct offensive, they were far deadlier indirectly and that was saying something.

The Wobbuffet ability Shadow Tag had already caused a number of rebels infiltrating the upper sections of Cerebrum to be captured due to the Jinx units that they worked in tandem with freezing them while they were trapped by Shadow Tag.

Shadow Tag causes one to be stuck near the Wobbuffet until they were knocked out and attacking a Wobbuffet was one of the things most people didn’t want to do if you knew what they were capable of. That they specifically had an ability that basically forced you attack them or else you wouldn’t be able to move very far was terrifying, it made for a seriously daunting opponent. At least they weren’t capable of Shadow Tagging more than one target.

Wobbuffet specialized in capture, delay and blocking attacks aimed at their allies. That is what makes them a hassle to the get around in the upper levels of the city, especially when their ability can lock you in place if they get close enough to you and will prevent you from running away. A number of Jinx units would have been readily dealt with a while ago, if not for the Wobbuffet units covering for them. Wobbuffet had a problem with recovering from injuries though and being injured was necessary for them to actually hurt anyone.

“Please try to start after thirty minutes, if not forty five, Kaoru. After that resting period you’ll set out immediately to find them and apologize profusely for Sanosuke’s actions. I have to go organize another raiding party with two of the Kirlia units.” I got up and looked to Sanosuke. “Sanosuke, grab some rebel units and start an assault at one of the edges of the city heading inwards. If you can, try to draw as much attention to yourself as possible. After a while I want you to retreat all gathered volunteers in whatever direction they see fit. You are to not let anyone be captured, except maybe yourself, goodness knows Gilgamesh’s forces can’t hold you.”

“Heh, now that’s my kind of plan!” Sanosuke was good for fighting, so he will be fighting, even if he doesn’t exactly know what he’ll even be fighting for and will be very distracting.

-Warehouse Storage area, three minutes later, Pom-

The few citizens of Cerebrum we assumed weren’t being pushed about were running scared or hiding from the Sigilyph as much as we were. We didn’t stop to ask them questions though, we were outside the warehouse and the Female Leavanny dusted off her leafy green coat and dress combo.

“Hopefully they are still here and… somethings wrong.” Our female Leavanny friend paused and looked around, one would think a warehouse would have more activity around it. However the spots of blood on the ground said something was amiss here.

I moved around a crate sniffing the air and Dolly followed uneasily smelling the same thing I did, we stopped when we found a pink creature on the ground. Still breathing, unconscious, vicious claw mark injuries possible avian in nature.

“Shine, get ready to take on some pain in case we have a medical emergency, everyone else watch our surroundings and help take care of this little one.” I looked at the creature was pink with flower shaped markings on it. There were drops of blood leading into the warehouse that looked like all the building around here… except it was longer. I looked to Dolly, she nodded to me and I motioned to Shanty, Lit, Mundo and Favela forward.

“This is one of the warehouse workers.” The female Leavanny came over and started to spread string onto the bleeding wound of the still breathing Pokémon as we made for the doors of the warehouse, the male Leavanny assisted her in wrapping the injury tightly to staunch the bleeding. So they could at least bandage wounds if needed as emergency medical help.

Hopefully the warehouse was not mazelike like the rest of the buildings in the city.

Favela was still acting a bit dodgy around me, but I’d never hurt someone I was friends with without a good reason.

Pushing through the warehouse door, Lit lit up the room by sparking up a bit and we looked about there were a few more of the small pink creatures, we quickly moved them outside as they were all injured in a similar manner. Talon marks, dive bombed by an avian of some kind.

Eventually we would have to move beyond the entrance. It was not very well lit in here and I could already smell the incoming trouble.

“Quick question, what are these pink creatures?” I didn’t get their species name yet, they were very small tapir like beings.

“They are called Munna, some of the friendliest Psychic Types you’ll ever meet… kind of an opposite to how some Drowzee can be, they try to give people good dreams instead of just eating the bad ones or eating dreams in general. Drowzee and Munna were said to have something of a shared ancestry despite their differences in appearance and overall ability.” Shine answered in the dark warehouse, her body glowing spookily like a Nightmare Night gourd. I sniffed the air and the coppery scent wrinkled my nose. “Munna turned out far less sinister looking at least and they tend to befriend Abra quite easily.”

“Favela, Shanty stick back with Shine, Dolly and Lit are with me up front. Mundo stick to the entrance and make sure no one gets by you.” I eventually pointed to the blood trail I sniffed out after having collected the bodies of various hurting Munna near the entrance. The six of us started to move silently into the maze of containers and away from the entrance. I tried to ignore the shadows moving above us as we followed the brown stains that turned into a fresh trail of obviously dragged scarlet. I knew we were being watched, but when would they decide to attack?

“Pom…” Shanty stated with a slightly narrowed eyes darting about.

“I’m aware.” I could tell Lit was ready when he squeaked and glared at the air around us from Dolly’s head as she pushed her board along next to me. He continued to glow and keep us on the trail through the maze of containers with who knows what in them.

We were being watched and were heading straight into an ambush, but we had to find out if there were any other victims judging by the smell and blood trail. My mind wouldn’t let me turn away from this.

Round a corner, we entered a space where all the containers were circling around the floor space and in the center of the floor was several larger different looking evolutions of what Munna are and one really pale Munna with a look of absolute fright on its face as it gasped rapidly in its declining health.

Not only would we have to defend the victims piled in the center of the trap, we’d have to deal with flying monsters who…

A crash sounded behind us as a pair of containers attempted to block our way back, unfortunately for the ones who set this trap up… they didn’t know we could all easily climb out of here. Climbing out with injured Pokémon was going to be a problem though. Shine could basically teleport through the shadowy gap and we weren’t trapped.

That did not mean we weren’t in danger, which really depended on what we were facing here.

“Shine… on medical support… we’ll cover you.” I stated quietly, before a screech came diving at me with a flash of sharp talons. I fired bark blast into them knocking them back and Dolly leapt up to block a bone coming for my back and blocked it with her own as Shine darted forward.

I moved with Shine and hoped we could cover one another.

-Dolly-

I blocked the incoming series of bone attacks with a momentum boosted series of bone blocks after kicking into the air and was staring down the eyes of a vulture that came out of the dark.

I grinned as I had been wielding the bone in my right paw, I slung the strap forward with my left and my momentum boosted board slammed into their belly to send them bouncing off a container in a painful display.

I quickly dashed sideways in the air to avoid a set of talons grasping at me, after the robot owl thing I’m not letting that happen again. Turning in the air in a slowly falling glide to see several more vultures diving on Pom and Shine. I flew forward for them

I needed to help protect Shine as she looked over the tiny pink elephants, weird that something like that actually existed. Thought pink elephants were only in that cartoon movie Rum-bo, when the flying elephant got really drunk and took out an entire encampment of evil teddy bears while dropping into it by parachute.

-Shanty-

I be leaping up and deflecting a bone that be swinging for Pom with my cane scythe when she be charging forward with Shine and then I be slashing across the birds chest with my right hoof making them squawk and flap back and away into the space above the area lit up by Lit.

Favela be grabbing another bird and slamming it into the floor and I be getting a good look at it. Why did it be wearing bone skirt and have a bone poking through the feathers at the back of its head? The only place on its featherless head and long neck that be having feathers really.

There were several units of them, there were certainly being more than six here… Lit be taking two out immediately with an incredibly powerful blast of lightning.

That’s when the surrounding bird are becoming a bit more wary of attacking us and backed off as Pom hit one or two with a Thousand Spear, but didn’t take them down.

Huh?!

Don’t be worrying about me Dodo, just get going!

-Around that time frame, Ocellus-

“What I assume to be Gilgamesh forces are incoming, judging by emotions here!” I knew they knew we were here given what they were feeling.

“Canard take three Morpeko, Cleffa, The Leavanny, Fleer and Charjabug, the rest of us will draw them away!” Quetal had made the call and Dazzle motioned to Dodo once they were clear and inside the warehouse with Mundo. We barely got started moving forward as a Sigilyph and several weird blue creatures neared.

“Oh my goodness, they have Wobbuffet units, get us out of here before they Shadow Tag you Dodo!” Ninjask called out and Dodo, despite his warbled confusion, really got the wagon moving and for some reason the Araquanid did not fire on these Wobbuffets.

We were suddenly beset by numerous Woobat and Sigilyph, said sigilyph were levitating the Wobbuffet with them as they gave chase.

-Pom-

“Pom, our wagon be coming under attack and is being on the move.” Nice to know Shanty, but we were kind of busy here and couldn’t focus on that right now.

I fired another Thousand Spear and as my twisting wool retracted to spin up again, another one of these wild vultures came dive bombing at Shine who was in the middle of using Pain Split on the palest looking Munna.

A bolt of lightning flared and warded off the vulture and then I bark blasted them out of the air, then turned and aimed both my legs to fire off two Thousand Spears into the vultures trying to stop Shine who apparently completed the Pain Split on the pale looking Munna bringing some pinkness back into their appearance and making Shine somewhat pale in turn.

“Who are you guys?!” I shouted out as I moved closer to Shine and Lit did the same as Dolly leapt up and blocked a bone with her board and slapped the offending vulture Pokémon across the head.

“At least I know they’re a Pokémon called Mandibuzz, all female species.” Shine stated sounding a bit sickly after taking on the pale Munna’s pain with a smile and accepting the self-damaging side of her ability to have hopefully just saved a life.

“We’re Yaksha and that’s all you need to know morsels!” Right, so that would mean they were from the Dark Type kingdom in southeastern end of Ransei and were decidedly hostile. They weren’t even going to explain why they attacked the warehouse workers or set up an ambush with the injured Munna as a lure, I’m not sure what their goal is here aside from stealing from the warehouse as we got here.

The one Mandibuzz that talked made a mistake in telling me that, because my ears twitched, I turned and quickly fired off two thousand spears into them. Didn’t take them down, but I did hear a grunt of pain coming from the darkness above us.

“Riptide!” A bullet of water slammed into another barely visible vulture, knocking them down as Shanty formed up to protect the Munna.

Favela followed up with a wall of water using Surf to slam the vulture against one of the containers harshly. Right, Favela was on the wrong side of advantages here so using vine whip to grapple and slam or using Surf were her most effective options in this fight.

Shanty followed that up by swirling the water back to herself and creating a dome around us that slowed the incoming vultures long enough for me to knock them back with several rapid shots of Thousand Spears from me as fast as I could manage with my wool.

Still they several came at once, the dome slowed them down but they were going to get through by sheer force until Lit blasted the dome frying the bone wielding vultures a fair bit without taking them out. This pushed them all away until the dome of water dissipated into steam.

“Mandibuzz are specialist in being tough, they are tanks in a fight and usually win fights through attrition.” Informed Shine as she was working to get the Munna out of mortal peril from the nasty talons wounds dealt to them while popping a Sitrus Berry after getting them out of the worst of their injuries.

The Mandibuzz’s we thought were down, aside from the two Lit took out which definitely weren’t getting up again anytime soon, were already back in the air again.

“Units command, Air Flay!” That didn’t sound good, the plural in the word ‘units’ hasn’t been used much before now, as the multiple Mandibuzz formed up around us and started to all pull their wings back at once.

“Dolly!” I shouted as I turned to her.

“Aerora!” At Dolly’s invocation silver winds swirled into existence around all of us as cutting blades of air rained down on us from all sides. She also got a headache afterwards and needed to recharge her magic.

The winds were perfectly blocked by the swirling air barriers, what wasn’t perfectly blocked was the one vulture that decided to swoop in jam it’s right talon into my back before their attack even finished and even got hurt from it.

“Agh!” They clenched their talons tightly causing me quite a bit of pain.

I shaped the wool where the talon was and spike it out into the vulture’s leg making them release me as they were trying to carry me into the air. My wool acted like a cheese grater and cut up the Mandibuzz’s leg badly.

I dropped back to the floor on my hooves and shaped my wool to quickly bandage the piercing talon wounds in my back.

That Mandibuzz went down a second later when a bolt of lightning tore into them from Lit.

I had to dodge to the side to avoid a flying slash of wind rippling through the air and cutting into the floor.

I heard a yelp as Dolly put her board in front of her and took a blade of air for Favela, she had her paw on her side where she was bleeding and I zeroed in on the vulture that did.

“Wolf-Fang-Hoof!” My wool shifted immediate as I leapt at them when my protective instincts came to the forefront.

My left hoof struck out at their right wing joint and then down into their left leg joint, they fell tried to land on their left leg let out a squawk of agony and then received a to the right thigh and crunched the bone as I swung them around with my teeth to slam the back of their skull into a container knocking them completely out.

I quickly switched back to my armored wool and took a bone strike to my body, the bone shattered against my wool and I threw a nasty uppercut with my right hoof into the bottom of the large vulture’s beak launching them upwards spinning.

As they fell back down I turned my back to them and then bucked harshly to cause them to bodily plow into two other vultures harassing Favela.

-Dolly-

I took a sharp bone blow on my board and the talons of these overgrown plucked headed chickens charged me back up somewhat as I was pushed back. A vulture went flying overhead and freed Favela up to seed bomb the ones that had me trouble, not that it did much damage, but it allowed me to get in a momentum boost bone blow that cracked some of the birds lower ribs and the morbid bone skirt they were wearing.

Hey I like bones as much as the next dog, but wearing actual bones as a fashion statement?

“Hey Lit, start using Electroweb!” I heard a squeak confirming what I wanted and saw three of these vultures get wrapped up in an electrified web off to the side. Wouldn’t keep them for long.

This was getting rough as their talons were painful, their cutting wind attacks were blunted by the air barriers I set up and they were getting more dug in with slapping at us with their wings and trying to tear chunks out of us with their talons.

There were so many of them coming at us at once, it was getting hard to keep their focus off the unconscious short trunked tiny elephants on the floor that Shine was helping.

-Shine-

This was not a good time to be a Grass Type Pokémon, but I’ve managed to rouse at least two of the Munna that were currently frightened of our current situation. How many Mandibuzz were here and how did they even get them this far in here in the first place?!

“Come on, you have to wake up…” I tried to gently rouse a third, when everyone was too busy holding them off to stop a Mandibuzz from coming at me. I dropped into the shadows as the talons lashed out at where I was the Mandibuzz swooped around and turned their attention to the cowering Munna.

The dove down and were about to reinjure the damage I just got finished fixing, not my watch!

I grabbed a graveler rock from my bag, then burst out of the shadows swinging the large rock around in both my frond hands and slammed it into the side of their skull. This shattered the rock, dazing the Mandibuzz and sent them spiraling into the floor away from my patients.

Said patients were starting to successfully rouse their friends and their wounds were healing before my eyes. They must know the move Moonlight… if they knew Moonlight...

“Don’t you guys have any Fairy type moves?” I asked as the third Munna was up on its feet and not ready to float into the air like its other two companions.

“We’re not big on fighting…” One of the three active Munna said weakly and was quickly growing stronger with the healing move Moonlight. “In this case I think we’ll all make an exception for these interlopers, cover your eyes! Unit Command, Dazzling Strobe!”

I immediately shut my eyes knowing what was about to happen as the entire warehouse lit up with the power of three Munna doing Dazzling Gleam in unison. My eyelids were filled with brightening and darkening flashing lights and the sounds of Mandibuzz being in extreme pain could be heard.

One the flashing lights died down the Mandibuzz were all on the ground with their wings on their eyes, Lit was taking the opportunity to really let them have it with bolts of lightning and webs made of shocking energy.

“That might have hurt our eyes a bit, but Munna are not exactly known for being great at attacking!” One of the Mandibuzz was already up and ready to keep going. “Plus we still have numbers and resilience, we’ll wear you down eventually!”

“You would, if that hadn’t alert our friends to exactly where we are.” There was a questioning gaze directed at me for a few second and I grinned.

A beam of electrical energy ripped into her coming from Fleer’s mouth. The Furfrou growled and leapt into action.

This was followed by Mundo doing his signature Flying Press into one of the Mandibuzz to ram them into the floor of the warehouse while creating a crater.

Three bolts of lightning soon joined Lit’s assault and the Mandibuzz were quickly losing their superior numbers to the onslaught of lightning attacks.

The Munna were no slouches when they started directing their Dazzling Gleam attacks into the air if the Mandibuzz tried to take flight.

With a quick few swing Canard really started laying into them as did Sami firing a few shots from her rifle.

They started with us three to one and now they were getting hammered and Charjabug joined in with a joyful yell while swinging on a string shot from his mouth before cut it and then landed on a Mandibuzz to start frying them with a ton of lightning power.

-Pom-

One of the Mandibuzz was trying to escape as the tables turned and the tide of battle shifted entirely in our favor.

I leapt up and grabbed onto her leg. I sometimes curse my lightweight body, because she was still capable of flying off even with me holding onto her. Dolly soon latched onto me and Charjabug grabbed us with String Shot and tried to keep this particular Mandibuzz from getting away, they seemed like the leader type from the way the others were fighting to get to us.

The Leavanny fired their own String Shots and the silk caused the Mandibuzz to lose her ability to fly when her wings were glued down to her sides.

The Mandibuzz was soon on the floor and I put my hoof calmly on their neck to press down on it. This vulture wouldn’t get off the floor, as my wool wrapped around her neck and attached to the floor under them. I tried not to think about how I could probably take her head off by squeezing my wool around their neck hard and fast enough to wire saw it completely off.

“Who put you up to this ambush, Gilgamesh or Cotton?” I asked with narrowed eyes and a few spots of blood dripping from the right side of my chin. They definitely knew we were coming at the very least.

“Like I’d tell you anything!” The Mandibuzz growled and thrashed trying to get out from under me and I kept her pinned.

“I think they were here for their own reasons, but there was a Murkrow around here before they attacked us that talked to them for a bit.” One of the Munna stated before turning to Shine. “Thank you for saving my life and my friends. If we can repay you, just tell us how.”

“Well… if you remember me, we could use some help with getting into contact with the Illusio rebels.” The Female Levanny stated pleasantly, before placing her elbows on her hips and glaring at the Mandibuzz. “First we need to detain these vile vultures.”

“We may be vile, but we are closer to nature than you will ever be you sophisticates!” Says a Pokémon that likely made it a habit of eating the corpses of other Pokémon on the principle of being a carrion feeder. Whether the Mandibuzz caused said Pokémon to become a corpse didn't seem to matter to the vulture.

“Hey yeah, I remember you, you make really nice silk scarves!” So the Munna did know the female Leavanny.

That was one less worry off my mind and it seemed like the fighting was over for now, but I can’t help but feel that…

“Pom, our friends are being captured, Dodo be showing me these weird blue things that be doing something weird to stop them from getting away.” Well thanks for dropping that horseshoe Shanty, I was just beginning to think things were going too well today.

“It’s likely your friends got too close to some of the Wobble Wardens, Shadow Tag is exceptionally bad when backed up with other Pokémon who can quickly capitalize on it.” The Munna didn’t even question how Shanty knew that our friends have bene captured. Then again, Psychic Types did have the ability to share things mentally as if they had a familiar bond, so it actually wasn’t that much of a stretch for them really. “Escaping a Wobbuffet while tagged by them is functionally impossible without dealing with the Wobbuffet first, so they are used as rather effective prison guards. If they’ve caught your friends as you say, then they are likely being taken to the upper city tier and are going to be in for a world of pain or psychological scarring.”

-One hour later, Cerebrum City, upper tier, holding cells, Dazzle-

The walls were encrusted with Psychic Crystals lining the cell was starting to get to my head, but I had to hold it together for a little while longer. Needed to stay focused and draw his attention, the energy barrier was not something I could break and being powered by crystals I couldn’t touch.

Wobbuffet were not to be underestimated under any circumstance and I had something of a plan that would require Frizzle to agree to it. Thankfully she did and all I had to do was wait to implement it, which is if Gilgamesh would even bother with us personally.

Before they caught up to us and tagged Dodo, I had Frizzle hide in her Digivice. Right now, I was going to send a message to Pom and try to draw Gilgamesh’s attention somehow. I didn’t know if he would even…

“Oh what have we here? A curious communication device… can’t have you warning ‘The Hero’ about any plans you might find out about soon enough… so it’s mine now.” I was blindsided by blow my temple and then to my gut, with the second hit I was on the floor. Sitting up I saw Gilgamesh holding my Digivice. “Meh heh heh, you’re not getting this back.”

“NOOOO!!” My screech was actually as upset sounding as I needed it to be, as in this moment he tossed the device he took from me into his portals to never be seen again or… so he would like to think.

I hope Frizzle chose a good moment to act, because she was definitely smart enough to cause Gilgamesh big problems from within his own portal network.

“If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go mess with a dragons head. Some would say I’m the greedy or egotistical one, well they’ve never met a dragon before!” The grinning psycho left me on the floor bleeding a bit by entering a portal, I waited a bit and then grinned.

Still, did Gilgamesh seem oddly and incredibly insistent on Pom being ‘the hero’, despite Pom saying that Gilgamesh needed to die and didn’t like being called a hero?

Was Gilgamesh actively trying to force Pom to be a hero? That would be weird… like that orange catfish playing the banjo and dancing with its spider legs.

Well there goes my mind!

-Beyond the Gates of Babylon, Frizzle-

I came out of my Digivice and looked around, this place was really weird and glowing all over the place…

My current mission was to find Pom’s device and get it back to her, also to use Gilgamesh’s portals against him at an exceedingly opportune moment.

There was also finding interesting or unique items to store away into the digivice while I was trapped in here so that Gilgamesh wouldn’t be able to use them. I only had so much storage space, but I was determined to make what I was taking from here count.

They may have beaten, battered, bruised and mangled my friends, but I would have the last laugh eventually and I would hope Dazzle has a plan for how to get out of the situation she’s in. It was interesting that Psychic Type couldn’t detect Digimon unless they saw them while physically present.

Shenanigans were afoot and… oh hey, he has lots of fresh bread in here!

Maybe I’ll eat some, or more likely try to get all of it, then try to find the device he stole from Pom.

-Origin Space, Bahamut-

Hmm… interesting play by the poison salamander and her information fire virus familiar.

That’s really going to be a huge problem for Gilgamesh later when he tried to start taking things seriously.

If one has enemies, then it would be wise to not actively invite them into your inner sanctum without a watchful eye. Heard that was a problem with vampires.

335. Mental Compound Fracture, Pt. 1.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Cerebrum City, Upper Tier, Lumber Spry-

I clutched the crystal in my power and pressed it against my horn.

“Please hear my message Lord Oberon…” I hoped this reached him, getting this crystal to boost my psychic abilities without being noticed wasn’t easy. It was also hard to find a moment to do this, but we were all on break at the moment.

My hair rippled with the glow of Psychic power as I called out to the King of Titania and bade him heed my message of grave importance and ask what he would have me do.

Surprisingly, I received a response and a mission on top of the reason the Ponyta Prowlers originally came here, the loss of the airship was regrettable, but given the news… actually warranted as Oberon agreed with the spy from Avia.

I’m a little confused, but I would do as Oberon asked. I didn’t know if I was capable of it or not though, but Lord Oberon believed in me to act when it was necessary.

-Middle Tier, Warehouse, Pom-

I looked down at the unconscious Mandibuzz after having planted my hoof roughly in her head. We had to think of our next move, Gilgamesh caught our wagon and our civilians had been offloaded with enough Morepeko to keep them from going insane.

Canard was currently trying to figure out the logistics of our situation and I was starting to think of a way to get back at Gilgamesh for having to go through all of this crap. Also wanted Gilgamesh to stop what he was attempting with me specifically.

Dolly smiled when a particular thought crossed my mind.

“Why don’t we do that?” Dolly asked with a wagging tail, I’d have to bring it up with Canard first, but it was incredibly tempting.

“So we’re probably going to end up waiting for the rebels to show up, if not then we’ll set out to find them.” Canard murmured as he approached with Sami.

We’ve been brought up to speed on what Wobbuffet were about and how dangerous they were for pinning people down and leaving them open for attack by other Pokémon.

A Wobbuffets fighting capacity was very simple, all they could do was counter attacks and their ability Shadow Tag made it an absolute certainty that you had to attack them to escape.

The only way to avoid the counters, is to hit them with an attack that they were not preparing a counter for or just taking them out entirely in one singular blow. The latter is harder to pull off and much more recommended as the former is more likely and why you should be careful with how you attack them.

There’s also the fact that move Destiny Bond was a thing when a Wobbuffet started to become quite weak. Apparently they were great at taking a pummeling which allowed them to get off several devastating counters, taking them down in single powerful blow would guarantee you would avoid the move Destiny Bond. Destiny bond makes sure that if they go down, then so too does whoever attacked them while it’s active, however the window in which that move stays active is fairly short.

Plenty of good reasons why the Wobble Wardens were quite dangerous, especially when working with other Pokémon. Even I would be taken out immediately by Destiny Bond, so if the Wobbuffet in question knew it was going to be taken out in one blow or at least the next hit that strikes it, it would always use Destiny Bond and guarantee taking their opponent with them.

It’s how our friends got captured so quickly, once Dodo got tagged by the Shadow Tag ability, they could no longer evade the upper tier force that worked under Gilgamesh. I wonder if this was how the previous King of Illusio was killed, rendered helpless by Destiny Bond and then promptly killed while unable to defend himself, at least revolutions would be fast around here if that were the case.

It took me a moment to realize Canard was waiting for me to pay attention to him, once he knew my attention was on him by Dolly prompting him with a paw wave, he decided to start.

“Well supplies aren’t an issue, but we don’t have a wagon to load them into.” Yeah, losing more than half our combat strength in an instant would put a damper on things Canard. “We can only hope that our friends aren’t being physically tortured.”

“Concerning Psychic Types, they are more likely to go for mental torture, our friends will be fine physically. If Ocellus managed to prevent herself from being captured, then that would be helpful.” I trusted Ocellus to be at least somewhat capable of finding a good moment to disguise and disappear, even if it means leaving everyone else behind to attempt a rescue later.

“Can confirm, Psychic Types are not good at physical torture, that’d be something for the likes of Dark Types.” The nearby Munna stated as they were going about getting the warehouse back in order after the Mandibuzz ambush on us, I made a silent mental note to never be captured by Dark Types then.

Speaking of the vultures, they were now tied up and being kept in a back room and weren’t so much a problem now. Still what were the vultures from Yaksha up to and how did they manage to bypass the Sigilyph patrols enough to get this far into Cerebrum City, unless… they were already here to begin with.

“So what are we going to do from here?” Sami asked, making me glance to Dolly and she glanced back with an excited expression.

“Well I have an idea… Canard can you take care of these people while finding and contacting the rebellion? Dolly, Shanty and I are going to attempt a massive jailbreak. If they took our wagon to the floor above it won’t be hard to get them out of there with it.” At this point I had an idea as to what Cotton might be doing and what Gilgamesh was aiming for in regards to me, so therefore I’m going to do something like flip the board when it came to expectations.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea Pom?” Not really Shine, but what else were we going to do?

“Nope, but Dolly and I have an idea of what to do when we get up there. We know where Dodo is, so finding the facility won’t be too hard if they are all being held in the same place.” First we had to get some food in us, drink something and use the bathroom. “I have something to motivate Shanty once we get there.”

“Oh and what would be motivating me so much more than I already am to be rescuing our friends?” Funny you should ask Shanty.

“They have your rum.” My flat delivery was met with the sudden realization crossing Shanty’s face and then the pirate goats face slowly morphing into a serious and grim look, she wasn’t happy to have that pointed out to her. “Favela, are you coming with us or are you going to stick with Shine and Mundo?”

“Promise not to eat me?” As weird as it sounds coming from Favela, I acknowledged that she was still somewhat afraid of me.

“I promise not to bite you or ever do so while I’m in my right mind, unless I absolutely needed to, I can’t promise if I’m otherwise compromised mentally though. I really doubt I would eat anyone that is a friend of mine.” That was the truth and I’m sticking to the promise to not bite her unless I need to, we could really use Favela’s help on this. Also I really didn’t want to eat people, I might maul, mangle and otherwise, but it really depends on the situation and I’d rather not need to do it or take my canine abilities too far.

“She’s coming, even if she says no, we need to get my rum back… also Dodo and our friends of course!” Really wasn’t hard to see that Shanty had her priorities straight, as far as her priorities were concerned at least.

“Enough gabbing let’s go!” Dolly was, as usual, peppy and raring to get into things.

“Not yet Dolly, we need to be prepared and have something of a plan of how to get there before we set out.” Which is why I was going to ask the Munna if there was anything that functions as a toilet around here.

-A few hours later, Upper Tier, underside of the spiraling ramp between city tiers, Shanty-

“I know that we’re trying to be quiet Dolly, but I don’t think they’ll find us on the underside of the spiral when they’re too busy watching the top of it.” Pom be looking my way. “How’s Favela doing Shanty?”

“She’s obviously being quite terrified.” Considering how tightly I was being clamped onto by her vines, this climbing be a bit painful.

“Well it’s your show from here Shanty, which way is Dodo?” It didn’t be taking me even a second to answer that as soon as we got to the ceiling after we finished climbing the spiral.

“This way!” I pointed and then started walking along the ceiling of the upper tier. The city seemed to be better lit with Psychic Crystals and fancier designed architecture than the lower two tier, there is even being signs of technology, but it still be running with the stone and square or rectangle theme throughout. The images on the stone wasn’t much, just some artwork of various Pokémon.

“So you really think we can take out enough Wobble Wardens to actually get in and out without getting countered?” Favela actually be addressing Pom.

“Depends on how quiet we are with taking them down. From what the Munna told us about the Wobble Wardens, they can only Shadow Tag someone that they are aware of.” By which Pom means we be needing to take them down without anybody noticing and whatever one we took down had to be taken out in one stealthy blow. If there is being more than one, then we be needing to tag team them in quick succession before they could react to us. “At that point you have to knock them out or you’re stuck within a given radius of them.”

Canard be having the easier job, we actually had to worry about how we be approaching this mess. All he had to be doing was talk with people and keep some others safe… why didn’t Pom send him this way again to avoid this? She is being pragmatic and… oh right because I would be coming for Dodo anyway. Also Pom would be wanting to save Smolder and Ocellus.

Dodo be alive, but he wasn’t awake at the moment, but it didn’t seem like anyone was bothering our bond like Pom said hers was when psychic Pokémon touched it. Maybe they couldn’t be torturing Dodo mentally? They still have him trapped at least.

Things were being fairly quiet until we reached the outskirts of the compound within the city, then we be sitting outside staring at the complex and the guards all around it. It was where Dodo is being and I can feel him in there.

The complex had more metal in its design than any other part of the city and it actually doesn’t reach to the ceiling like the rest of the buildings.

“I suppose that’s what a Jynx looks like.” Pointing a hoof at the figures moving below, Pom had her hoof aimed at a wide land mermaid with big lips or a Pokémon biped in a dress and five fingered hands. Couldn’t really be seeing the legs under the dress, which I was beginning to think be a part of them like some of the Fighting Types we be seeing with boxing glove hands.

Kind of be reminding me of a female version of Mr. Mime as we be entering Illusio.

Jynx were said to be pretty fast and had a potential variety of nasty things they could do to someone, the problem was they be lacking entirely in physical capabilities and could not be handling physical hits very well. Which is why they were paired with the Wobble Wardens, like the Mandibuzz they were an all-female species, which was being a little weird to me like the Fighting Types having multiple all male species.

There were a number of Wobbuffet around, the blue tall blobs with strange small black tails with what looked like eyes on them be strange. The four little nubs at the bottom of the tall blobs be acting as feet and two angular limbs for arms with no digits, they have squinty eyed faces with a strange jagged looking mouth.

They be looking goofy as all get out, but they are still being dangerous if they be capturing the team from Chrysalia.

There were also Sigilyph, Drowzee and Hypno around, basically stuff we be seeing before and be knowing how to deal with… somewhat.

Don’t let the Drowzee or Hypno put us to sleep, don’t be seen by a Sigilyph and try to break the line of sight and attack close up where possible, be watching out for Woobat noses sniffing you out and all that, this is being a heavily fortified place and it is being understandable why when they be having prisoners here.

I can already be telling the combinations going on here. Wobbuffet be stopping you in place and a Sigilyph or Jynx be bombarding you safely from range with psychic or ice attacks, Woobat be swarming you with numbers and be decent at any range, Wobbuffet can’t attack if you don’t hit them first… what if you break sight, would the Shadow Tag be failing then?

“Say, do you be thinking Shadow Tag would be failing if we can break their line of sight like the Sigilyph?” It needed to be asked before we tried to break in and be breaking Pokémon out and I was the one to bring it up.

“Probably, but you would have to be near something to hide behind, doesn’t look like they have a lot of that down there.” Pom was resting as we overlooked the compound from a ledge of one of the nearby building, there being a lot of open space around the facility to be spotted and caught and not a lot of places to be hiding. It was brightly lit, heavily guarded and a veritable fortress compared to the rest of the city. It wouldn’t be hard to bet that there were Psychic Types that could sense us coming within a certain range. “So how are we going to do this Shanty, you should know how to approach this and you’re the lead on this being the stealth expert. I’ve got nothing at the moment.”

She be trusting me with this? Well okay, kind of wish I be having my Binocumcom… actually… it should be in the wagon with my rum. Sure I can’t communicate with the other binocucoms across dimensions like the device Dolly carried, but it would be being helpful in scouting things out.

“I want to be finding the wagon first to find my binocucom, they likely don’t have it as guarded.” Haven’t really used it much, but I kept it as a keepsake as being a part of the Cooper Gang. We could be using it here.

“Okay, wagon first, I can kind of smell something in the air that would lead us to it.” It be seeming that Pom had some help there, as Dolly took a sniff of the air as well and pointed in a given direction. “Yeah, that’s the general area I would think it is in. We’re in the east side of the upper city tier and, if my navigational aren’t entirely off, Dolly just pointed to the north side of the prison compound.”

“Say can Dolly be calling her family to get us in touch with Bentley?” We be needing a good plan and Bentley can really plan around anything.

“We’ll do that now, securing our wagon is going to be one of our first objectives. Dolly…” Pom turned to the spotted dog and she quickly retrieved the Digivice to call up the Dalmatian family.

-Thirty minutes later, Pom-

“So that’s what I would do with what information you’ve given me, then again I’m not in a situation where I’m dealing with psychic monsters and would need to be present to get a better idea of things as they are. One last piece of advice would to be careful with thinking any stray thoughts around them as a precaution, we’re kind of in the middle of something else and this Nayla lady really wants Mopsy dead thinking she’s you Pom. Mopsy’s been doing excellent work as a disguise artist at the very least and things have been really interesting since you split off with Shanty.” I could hear the clacking of Bentley typing at his keyboard. “If you can get Shanty’s Binocucom and then call me back, then I might be able to lend some more assistance than giving general ideas. Make sure you get back to a safe place like this before you call back. If I’m not available, then at least Dawkins can help at that point. Never met a smarter canine than him to bounce ideas off of… too bad dimensional travel is still kind of beyond me and I’ve been meaning to talk with Abigail Callaghan about it, aside from that I’m getting quite close to cracking time travel.”

“Thanks for the ideas Bentley!” Well we’ve gotten a Brainiac expert that was probably as smart if not smarter than I was, mind you my ability to outthink someone tended to be under stress and while using my version of the ‘Dancing Flame’ technique to its fullest.

“Don’t mention it, Bentley out, don’t forget to always hit me up with some more brain teasers later.” The turtle cut the call and then Dawkins was on the screen.

“We’ll call you if we’re successful.” I answered the unspoken question before he could think to ask it.

“Well alright then, I’m hoping to hear a call again, because it sounds like you’re in quite a spot as it were.” Dawkins disappeared and Dolly place the device back upon her neck under her mystical poison proofing scarf.

“Well Shanty?” I turned to the pirate goat.

“We’ll be following Bentley’s plan until it stops working, because they usually be working really well.” Shanty needed to be a bit more leadership role and she was taking this seriously. “I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

-Five minutes later, north side of the compound near storage, Favela-

I, Favela, of sound body and mind, do hereby bequeath all my worldly belongings to my mother if this going terribly, terribly wrong. Pom was still Pom, but I am a little nervous to have her at my back where she could sink her teeth into my throat.

“Wait…” Hearing Pom, I be pausing and curling up into a bush, a Sigilyph be floating by the alleyway. Dolly be with Shanty and Dolly would be keeping us in contact with each other through her bond with Pom. “Okay it’s clear, move.”

I uncurled and carefully made my way forward and looked around the corner at the storage area, apparently something smelled and it was how we were going to track the wagon. Shanty and Dolly were doing something to the south of the compound to draw attention away from our infiltration.

We made it into the next alleyway, before a passing unit of Wobbuffet could see us. We made our way into a dead end lot like place like the one we stopped at in the lower tier before being attacked by that crazy Sanosuke guy. Therefore nobody would be checking this place for for us.

“Assuming direct control of Dolly now… watch my body for me Favela.” Pom’s eyes closed a second later it stretched out and yawned.

“I wonder how Pom’s going to do a campfire lighter in my body…” Dolly said while clearly in control of Pom’s body, it was like there was a switch in personality entirely. Pom always seemed to be chronically nervous, whereas Dolly was quite easygoing. “Stop being so worried about Pom hurting you, that’s the furthest thing from being anywhere near inside her mind at the moment… she’s more worried about us being captured.”

To see Pom’s body relax was… actually quite disturbing after getting to know someone like Pom for a while. Pom having a wolf like nature still stabbed at my instinctual fear of how dangerous she could truly be if she went fully wild and she only showed a light amount of that, it was terrifying.

All we I had to do was wait and then move with Pom when they set things off…

A huge explosion of white smoke appeared in a massive fog and sent Psychic Types moving in that direction. Be Safe Shanty…

“Don’t worry about Pom so much, also we got this Favela… switching out… now!” The demeanor in Pom’s body changed immediately as she shook her head. “Okay, that took some doing, maybe Dolly would be capable of throwing fireballs or creating a fog storm on her own like what I just did if she really put her mind to it. Let’s go Favela.”

I moved up next to Pom and hopped onto her back, her wool was really soft, it also became a really sticky the moment I was in a comfortable position and Pom started to move. Climbing up the wall of the alleyway as we were heading towards the entrance of the lot and clambering around the corner as panicked Psychic Types were drawn in to the south.

Pom leapt forward horizontally over to the storage area, the number of Pokémon on guard was still high. No windows, not like there was much to see inside a floating city enclosed in a floating landmass.

I shook my head and started focusing as Pom positioned herself above the two Sigilyph watching what we assumed to be the storage area. This prison compound was far from the three closest spirals to a different lower tiers, fairly understandable that they didn’t want people escaping.

Should things go horribly wrong here, I was to run for one of the smaller spirals and not the main central one we used to get up here. Mind you getting up the central spiral was easier when you could cling to any surface, the smaller ones would be easier to manage and for me to rappel down with my vines.

“Ready?” Whisper Pom and she sent me a slightly worried look.

“As I’ll ever be.” Remember no range attacks, only melee and the weak point was their eyes, at least the back of them which was directly below us.

Pom kicked off the wall and I felt myself become weightless as she detached me from her wool over in the direction of the Sigilyph on the right as she came down on the one on the left with a flip to bring her rear legs in line.

I stopped staring at Pom and angled my forehead for my Sigilyph, just in time too, I’d have missed if I was too busy watching Pom deal with the other one as we slammed into them. My horns slammed into the back of the Sigilyph and it immediately went limp as I rode it’s spherical body into the ground, there was an even louder impact to my left and I saw Pom bouncing off of the other Sigilyph she motioned me towards the door and I quickly slid off of and rolled next to her.

However pulling the door proved to be a bad idea as I immediately felt myself get locked into place by one of the two Wobbuffet waiting for us.

“Darn it…” This was a complication Pom and I hadn’t seen coming as the two Wobbuffet saluted at us and trapped us in a Shadow Tag. We tried to move to the sides of the doorway, but the Wobbuffet moved back slightly and prevented us from doing so and attacking them directly was a dangerous prospect given their counter happy natures.

“Wobbah Wobbah!” One of the Wobbuffet stated pointed at us.

“Uh… what?” Pom, I don’t think these Wobbuffet speak their own language.

“Buffet!” Said the second Wobbuffet challengingly.

“I, Favela, think they want us to try and attack them.” We’re not nearly that dumb, not when Counter and Mirror Coat possibly being a thing.

“Wob!” The first Wobbuffet that talked pointed at me and nodded while grinning.

“Well we can’t just stand here and wait for reinforcements to show up and attack us for them.” They’d likely use Mirror Coat for the moves I knew, the energy from Seed Bomb or Surf would blow back in our faces with twice the force. I could use Vine Whip if they were setting up Mirror Coat, but they could just as easily use Counter before I could hit them. “Tell me, did you know we would be coming?”

“Wobbuffet!” The evil grin on the second blob told us as much as we needed to know, once the other Pokémon came back from the distraction we’d be sitting ducks. Someone had to have told them we were coming to set up a trap.

“Well, nothing for it!” Pom leapt forth and pulled back both her hooves intent on thrusting them both forward into our what would be our captors that had been waiting beyond the door.

Both Wobbuffet braced for impact only to be surprised when Pom landed short of them by quickly slapping her hooves against the floor and pushing backwards, they were so confused until they were both hit from behind by two quickly fired massive blasts of lightning before they could do anything like put up a Mirror Coat.

“I thought I smelled ozone around here, good work Lit!” Pom said with a small smile as she held up a leg over her face to block out the brilliant flashes of energy scorching the two unprepared Wobbuffet from behind. “Where are Dazzle and Quetal?”

Lit whined out a tiny squeak as he quickly crawled up Pom’s offered leg and onto her back.

“Okay so they are likely in the prison…” Pom received a squeak from the tiny Electric Type bug, he sounded fairly sad about that. “Is the wagon here, we need to grab something and maybe move it.”

Lit crawled up onto Pom’s face and pointed with a leg while squeaking.

“Right, let’s go Favela. Did Ocellus escape being captured?” Pom received a positive squeak and a raised blue tipped leg. “Okay, so Ocellus did what I’d expected. We’re going to need to find her before we leave… I wonder how she avoided the Woobat patrols though. Her smell gets rather distinctive whenever she transforms, must have avoided going near any Woobat at least… or she turned into one. We’ll worry about that later.”

I was not trying to think of the fact that as we found a lot of supplies laying around, like a large amount of Poké sitting around that was likely stolen from the citizens of Cerebrum City and a lot of other stuff until Lit directed us to the wagon.

“Favela, can you help me pull the wagon to that open lot beyond the nearby alleyway?” Pom was looking to me for help and I shivered a bit, but I pulled out my vine whips and nodded. “Good, come on and help me pull the wagon. I didn’t pay those Bidoof very well just to let the wagon get stolen from us.”

I be looking into the wagon and afterwards I wrapped my vines around it and started pulling with Pom, how did Dodo make moving this thing look so effortless?! Even Lit was trying, but he was too small to really give it anymore momentum than what we were currently doing.

“Lit, get in the wagon and look for something like binoculars, you know what those are right?” At Pom’s prodding, Lit hopped into the wagon and started to search it. “It seems they haven’t had time to offload the supplies yet, so it should still be in there, it’s something that will smell like Shanty if that helps.”

Lit squeaked in reply as we started pulling the wagon.

-Dolly-

Pom found the wagon and Lit. Yes, my little electric tick dude was fine! I should really focus on sticking close to Shanty, the Sigilyph were being a problem with their miracle eye being able to spot us in the fog as we maneuvered among the various buildings.

One could almost get lost in this place, if I didn’t know where Pom was at all times I’d feel less comfortable wandering off on my own.

“Dolly!” Shanty called out and turned a portion of the fog into a water wall that a Woobat slammed into and I quickly popped up to knocked it into a building with a harsh bone to its oversized nose. I was keeping my board across my back for protective reasons. “There be more where those are from, also I think there be more Sigilyph coming, we need to be being out of sight soon. Have Pom and Favela found it yet?”

I nodded.

“That’s great, let’s climb and make them lose track of us!” Shanty started up the side of a building and I quickly followed after her as she dragged the mass of fog with us and tried to keep the Woobat from smelling us through it. A beam of energy passed between making Shanty stall and look back of me. “Change of plans get on, I’m going to bubble us!”

Hopping onto Shanty and clinging to her with the stone bone in my mouth the water wrapped around us and thickened into a Bounding Bubble and we launched from the building as Shanty started manipulating it from the inside air pocket we occupied.

“Woohoo, let’s go!” We hit the street and like a huge bouncy ball we started rebounding off of building like crazy drawing the attention of Woobats and Sigilyph from all around, on top of many other guys that wanted to stop or slow us down. “This is awesome!”

“Try not be using up all our air please!” Shanty had us rolling along the street at quite a high speed, the Pokémon behind us couldn’t keep up with this bit of awesome as we started back for the prison compound after drawing them out far enough. “Also, yeah, this being pretty cool!”

We were bouncing off walls and the ground really fast as we continued to ricochet our way back to the compound in the general direction of the prison, I wonder how Shanty was keeping control of it all.

“I don’t be having much control, so our stop might be being a bit abrupt.” Oh… well that’s okay Shanty, I’m good with momentum. As for Shanty… not so much.

The bubble burst and Shanty used a bit of water to drag me onto her back and I clamped onto her as she spun three hundred and sixty degrees on the air and her hind hooves came together to land on… wow. How did she manage this at the speed we were going?

“Huh… so that’s how Sly be doing it. Could never be figuring out how this works, at least until now…” Shanty wobbled a bit on her hind legs as she tried to keep her balance on a very pointy spike on the barbed wire fence around the compound. She pulled out her cane scythe and suddenly she was perfectly balanced on the spike. “This is being pretty neat!”

I barked in agreement, this was pretty weird, how can someone stand on a spike like this?

“Huh… oh we’re fine Pom we’re not… oh… SHANTY!” I my bark caused Shanty to realize our situation.

Shanty jumped forward and twirled in the air to land on another spike as the several Woobat slammed each other with blades of air.

“Still being jealous that others can be doing cutting ranged attacks like that.” Says the goat who can apparently create a fog storm with my help… which I wasn’t a part of because Pom knows how to do it.

Huh… oh right, we’ll be there soon Pom, just give a moment to ditch these killer noses!

“Aero!” I created angled trampoline of air and Shanty got the idea and leapt into the center of the green disc and we launched away and towards where Pom, Vanilla and Lit were. We just had to ditch the bats, the Sigilyph and just about everything trying to track us.

-A few minutes later, lot near the compound, Pom-

…

Lit immediately leapt onto Dolly and acquired a cuddle.

“Hey, missed you too buddy.” Taking a position on Dolly’s head, Lit settled down as we called Dolly’s family.

“Oh… ah, you made it!” Dawkins seemed pleased to see us.

“Yeah, we did Dawkins, now we need to talk to Bentley if he’s still available, we got the binocucom, the wagon and Lit is here too. They apparently didn’t find him in the wagon. We’re chalking it up to Lit’s size and a lack of a thought in his tiny brain aside from being Dolly’s rather benign parasite.” I heard a squeak of discontent from Lit. “Sorry Lit, Dolly’s little companion who is a symbiotic entity.”

The squeak Lit gave off was much more cheerful, apparently he knew what the word parasite meant and didn’t like it.

“One moment please.” Dawkins stated as he hit something off to the side. “Bentley they have it.”

“Yes… oh they got the binocucom then?” It sounded like Bentley was pleased to hear back from us.

“Yes, they did and quite frankly it’s worrying that they are going to cause a prison break.” Dawkins stated as the turtle popped up in a different window on the device.

“Recently did that, know how it feels. That Contessa was really nasty piece of work, who knew she was taking bribes on the side and that there was evidence of corruption that bad… anyway, I assume that you have the binocumcom since you’re calling.” Readjusting his glasses Bentley cleared his throat. “Even Sly would have a problem with the kind of guards you’re facing, did you learn anything new before we get started?”

“Shadow Tag definitively requires a line of sight and I have an idea as to its exact range now… given they tried to get us in a trap and somehow knew where we would be going. The Wobbuffet are fairly keen on how long their Shadow Trap range of effect is given they moved backwards to prevent us from evading out of sight.” I pointedly showed Dolly with Lit on top of her head. “Lit really helped out with that when we found him, he took them by surprise.”

Lit raise his front to legs and a spark erupted between them as he squeaked a tiny roar, he was trying not to be too loud given our proximity to the prison compound nearby.

“He’ll really be helping a lot soon enough with springing your friends and maybe some allies, but he probably doesn’t have a lot of mental capacity for a really complicated plan… hmm… here’s what I need you to do before I can give you a plan to work with.” Bentley started laying things out for us.

-Rebel headquarters, middle tier, Canard-

“You attracted enough attention that we’re even having this meeting, also your Gothorita friend helped us have this meeting.” I grumbled to the guy in charge, he wanted peace more than anything… I can tell that by just looking into his eyes. I saw a reflection looking at him, as if he were a mirror.

“Yeah, even I’m surprised that Sanosuke hasn’t let them to weeding us out yet.” So this was Kenshin the Blade, he was an interesting and calm character. I already had a read on him that he was a reluctant assassin, nice guy, terrible deeds and trying to make a future for himself. “Where is the one known as Pom though? Where are the Chrysalia forces and why is their only a half unit from Violight?”

“About that… I would think she’s busy planning a prison break in the upper tier given she’s gone off to rescue our friends. She has a competent crew with her and some of our friends were capture between us meeting Sanosuke and now.” Sami was checking here gear and her camouflage ability, she was basically undetectable to Psychic Type with her camouflage ability active. I however can see the distortions in the air with her making too much movement. “It hasn’t happened yet or they’ve been captured. Won’t know until they start setting off fireworks. So what exactly is going on in Cerebrum and what is Gilgamesh doing and how can we put as big a Monmon wrench to it as we can find?”

Commandramon were not what I would call the definition of stealthy given they were created with a lot of bugs that were never fully ironed out. Still Sami has proven to be a good companion time and again even if she refuses to evolve into a Sealsdramon unless things were absolutely dire, she knows she can do it and has mentioned once or twice she can feel the urge to do it.

“Well first of all it’s going to be quite bad since he’s doing several things at once, we need everyone we can get to help with the rebellion to even open a path to the gate up to the Castle of Illusio. It is heavily guarded by all kinds of Psychic Types and will be a tough nut to crack, at most we might be able to get one or two units through to try and attack Gilgamesh directly… but that’s going to be hard if we end up running into his portals and get sent halfway across the planet.” Kenshin was about to continue when the door opened.

“Kenshin we’ve got some support and… Fleer!” The white fur canid like creature with a large scythe horn growing out one side of her head leapt onto the Furfrou and they started to playfully wrestle with one another. I looked at the three toed claws, heel spikes and the strange tail. I was wondering if Pom would have the same effect on this creature as she does other canids, this looked somewhat canid and feline at the same time. “What are you doing here, are you alright, how would you have gotten through the ground side teleporter? I’m so glad you’re okay, you would not believe the migraine I have going on here and it’s only getting worse.”

“So you are here Abby, thank goodness I won’t have to go running around Illusio searching for you!” Fleer’s tail started wagging as she cuddled up with her friend.

“Ahem…” Kenshin coughed loudly while clearing his throat and Abby looked sheepish.

“Right, the Xatu are offering their support, in return they want us to find one of their own and are immediately sending a few Natu to assist the rebels upfront.” Abby reported with a saluting paw as she got up and moved away from her friend.

“Good, we need all the support we can take or get, because we have to stop Gilgamesh before he can really unseal the true power of a Hoopa.” Kenshin shivered and I was going to ask what the true power of a Hoopa was, how much worse could get Gilgamesh be? “It’s not just his unsealing that power that’ll be a major problem, it’s all the other things he’s doing on top of that. Also it would be nice if we could get somehow get some Dynamic Maximization energy here before he does so… but if we can’t, well then we’re not living long lives and will have to throw absolutely everything we can at him. Given the raising in psychic energy level he’s getting close to at least one of his goals. We may have to throw away our very lives if necessary to save the rest of the world from him.”

Well that’s a huge red flag for Pom if I ever heard one, she has a tendency to throw herself at problem when people are in danger and has said as much that it’s habit of hers. It was almost like she absolutely had to throw herself bodily at problems... wait... was that why Shanty, Smolder, Ocellus and Dolly were paying careful attention to...

“What’s the true power of a Hoopa, I thought the portals he could make already was bad enough. How much worse can this Gilgamesh guy actually truly get?” My comment was met with slightly haunted looks.

-Castle of Illusion, Gilgamesh-

The clock is ticking 'Heroes', even they should know by now that they can't stop me from being a threat to the world, my incredibly robust ego wouldn't allow things to go any other way.

“I’ve always wanted a pet…” The orange dragon looked dazed and mentally compromised, she’ll help me make a few heroes yet or at least will make for some good entertainment if they fail to bring even her down. “Dragon.”

After a moment large shadow was cast over me and my grinning face.

I would soon own everything that was ever of any importance in this world.

I reached out with a hand and tried to summon some of my finest bread into it to celebrate my eventual... some of my finest... the portal had yet to produce any bread whatsoever.

Why were my gates completely empty of all the once in a lifetime designer breads that were capable of being piled to the heavens!

Ugh, must have had an all night sleep eating contest against myself again, oh well... at least I still have 'pie'.

Author's Note

Gilgamesh has plenty of stuff going on all over the place and...

Pinkie Pie: Doozy!

If Hoopa has an unbound form, then what wouldn't Gilgamesh with his when he becomes kaiju sized?

No Dynamic Maximization can occur here and we're about to have a kaiju sized problem, possibly 2.

336. Mental Compound Fracture, Pt. 2.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Cerebrum City, Lower Tier, Cotton-

“Gyeh-heh-heh, I’m a smart one yes I am... can’t believe that I’m not already on the lamb~.” I started whistling to myself as I continued to set things up in advanced, everything was all part of the plan.

Just gave Cerebrum City an engineering problem to fix and it was quite noticeable that nobody could possibly miss it.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Should we do something about that father?” Mew asked politely.

“Nope.” I said lazily, though I have alerted the legendary Pokémon to repel the invaders from Moon Cell or at least try to keep them contained to Valora for the time being, I did tell them to at least try to not be lethal with the small trickle of Digimon also invading from the neighboring Yggdrasil.sys realm.

Gazimon were certainly interesting, they reminded me of Sneasel somewhat.

If there were any more breaches into the world, I would have all the breaches occur within the Ransei region. Don’t want to bother the mystery dungeon running Pokémon with this, so Palkia and Dialga can ensure that happens.

“Really good popcorn, but is perfect popcorn really an impossible dream?” Bahamut muttered over his god sized bucket of popcorn.

“It seems that way if you’re doing it without using godly powers.” I was doing it all the hard way with even growing my own corn, just creating it immediately out of nothing was boring and I liked the convoluted process of it all.

-Cerebrum City, Upper Tier, on a nearby building outside the Psychic Prison Compound, Pom-

We had a plan, from what was possibly the smartest turtle I’ll ever come to know… Snickers the Turtle Dove aside, chose the oddest person to bond with.

The city was fairly quiet, mostly because of Gilgamesh at a guess, not that there was much to do here when martial law was apparently going on. All we had to do was enact the plan and not mess things up.

“So is this really going to work Pom?” Dolly looked pensive for once and not as optimistic as she tends to be.

“It’ll be fine Dolly, though we’ll have to see what they are doing in the compound before we can enact one of the plans we have.” There was the thing I thought was worrying, given it was Bentley who brought up the chance that those captured would be held in the mental realm and if that was the case, then we actively needed to recruit help from those who weren’t trapped in said realm for help. Basically whoever they haven’t been able to put to sleep or a Dark Type. “Ready to go?”

Given our recent run in with Dark Types that live up to being ‘dark’ and set a trap up for us under dubious circumstances, it was a bit much to ask us to trust strangers to help us inside the compound if they are anything like those units of Yaksha Mandibuzz.

There was a good thing and a bad thing about the current state of the prison compound, they had found the two Sigilyph and knocked out Wobbuffet in the storage area thus the increased security around the outside of the compound was going to be a moderate problem.

The security within the compound however was much lower now and if we can get over the wall without being spotted, we had a clear shot to sneaking inside without raising too much of an alarm unless they specifically had a psychic detector.

Getting out was going to be a large problem considering the number of Pokémon around the compound. We also couldn’t touch any psychic crystals lighting the area, not that trying to destroy them to darken things would help. The Sigilyph could target Shanty through the fog we had generated, then they could target us in the dark as well.

“I, Favela, think we can do it.” How Favela was going to get over the wall was easy enough, Shanty climbed the wall between a patrol and Favela uses her vine to get up to Shanty near the top of the wall and would promptly fling herself over. Shanty would follow afterwards with the cane scythe to get her up and over the barbed wire at the top.

Lit squeaked and waved a blue leg in something like a salute, he was ready.

As for Dolly, Lit and me, we could easily just glide over the wall.

“Okay, then let’s go.” I felt the comforting weight of Dolly on my back and Lit cuddling up to wool at the back of my head. I’m fairly glad that I knew Lit… as I certainly didn’t want an unknown bug type, spider or something unknown climbing around on my wool, especially not at the back of my head.

-Five minutes later, Dolly-

Pom slapped against the ground without a sound, her wool absorbing the impact, so the gliding didn’t go too well. We still made it over the fence without drawing attention. As did Favel and quickly followed by Shanty and we were now in the compounds courtyard.

I’m fairly surprised this place didn’t have cameras… kind of reminds me of the time I rescued my slightly dim digging bro Diesel from being in the pound with Da Vinci, she did an awesome job with that spray can of hers in keeping our exit open. At least we now know it was related to Cruella somewhat, given the cat was Hunters… eh… we’ll go with ‘limited time companion’ in some respect before the cat ditched.

If I were any other animal, I wouldn’t want to be around a De Ville for too long either. That Splatter woman with the paint was a bit more terrifying, Cruella was normal… ish… considering her age apparently didn’t stop her from coming at the Dalmatian family more than a good number of times. What with all the Bark Brigade stories on the subject as told by Spot the chicken.

Looking about the yard, Pom motioned us forward as Favela and Shanty came over to us, we made our way for one of the compounds doors, we just had to get inside and start looking around.

With a sniff I could smell several familiar scents, I did smell Ocellus somewhat… that smell was unmistakable to anyone with a strong nose. So right place, so which part of the compound were we entering, I didn’t like the fact that we were out in the open and the building material here seems strangely advanced compared to everywhere else in the city being simpler.

Having grown up around technology unlike some people, I could tell something was up with this place as Pom looked at the complex locking mechanism on the door.

“If we be needing a key I can…” Shanty started to say before Pom’s hoof encased in wool and stretched forward a bit, she slapped her hoof into the hole of the lock and with a swift twist of her hoof the door unlocked. “Or we could be doing that.”

“Being a fluffmancer has some perks, yes.” Pom quietly opened the door a crack and looked inside into a entryway, I would know as I crawled up under her to poke my head in. “Dolly, Lit, do a little scouting ahead for us.”

“On it.” I squeezed through the doorway as Shanty and Favela watched the surroundings, Lit was riding on me.

I moved forward quietly on my paws into an open room with three ways out after passing through an area that looked like it could be locked off from the outside in case of an escape attempt.

Not seeing anyone I sent a clear to come in to Pom mentally as I sniffed at the air and tried to track any of our friends. Smelled Ocellus again, didn’t smell the others for some reason… maybe carrying things in that mind energy stuff prevented scents from getting out.

“It’s a bit too quiet outside, I’m a little bit worried we might be sneaking into a trap… thankfully Bentley planned for the occasion in case we are.” Pom muttered as she approached with Shanty and Favela, she too sniffed the air. “Oh great, Ocellus’s scent is here… but it’s everywhere. How are we supposed to track or find her if it’s going in all directions?”

I sometimes wondered why Ocellus couldn’t do the whole body snatcher thing like in that one movie, but then I quickly remember that she couldn’t perfectly copy all of the abilities or memories of whatever she turns into. Like how Ocellus couldn’t become a fluffmancer because that’s a unique trait that Pom had, but Ocellus could still functionally make and manipulate wool. It just wouldn’t be the same as doing the actual fluffy stuff Pom could or anywhere nearly as fast.

“Where it is the freshest of course.” However that was hard to tell here… we were in a reception area like a vets office. If you didn’t think one hundred and one Dalmatians, without a biped or animalistic to help, could set up vet visitation drop offs… then you didn’t know my family very well. Mother Delilah couldn’t exactly get or sneak out dog safe stuff at the hospital she works at, animal control tended to miss a lot of the stuff we have pulled off over the last two or so years.

“A little help then?” Pom stated as she looked at the reception desk, no one was watching it and made her way over as I began sniffing the three ways out of here.

These open spaces really were nerve wracking, considering all the line of sight or smell stuff going on with the mental monsters all around up in this city.

-Shanty-

We be watching the way we came, the entrance didn’t seem to have anyone coming in after us and the fact that the entrance area was mostly empty did not mean it was being safe. I be having two canteens full of water that eased my nerves a fair bit.

The city be feeling ancient, but this place… it be feeling far too new. As in, made as soon as we arrived in this world kind of new. I not be having a dogs nose for things, but I do be having a good sense of smell as well… enough so that I can be tell when water is good enough to be drinking and how much rot fruit or other food might have as to be safe to eat. I just don’t be using it for other things as much like right now.

I be trying to find the fresh scent compared to the older scents, Ocellus has been through here several times at least. What has she been up to?

“Huh, we have several different areas of the compound for specific types of prisoners.” Pom was looking over something at the desk and I moved over to her. “One area to specifically hold Dark Types, one area to hold people who are vulnerable to being put into a deep sleep that will be trapped within the local mental realm and finally those who are immune to being trapped in the mental realm but aren’t Dark Types. Basically Dodo would be in that direction Shanty.”

“Then isn’t that last section where we need to be going?” I could be feeling Dodo in a particular direction still, he felt okay, but he was fairly sad… and eating the walls. Apparently they were tasty and full of metals Dodo appreciated, plus he be working on freeing himself, not that any of the guards were patrolling around where he was to be really paying him any mind. “Dodo doesn’t be having many guards around him, he be seeing maybe a few Wobble Wardens. Also he might be chewing his way out.”

“Tell Dodo to keep it up then, but we need to go after the Dark Types first. They’ll cause all kinds of problems for the Psychic Types if we can set them loose. She’s obviously free and running around here somewhere if we can smell her and not the others so we can let her find us.” Pom apparently be having a map of the place now and we be going over it, why was this being in reception? Maps are very valuable things and this was just being here? “Apparently, the Dark Types are under the maximum security… everything and the kitchen sink. Those trapped asleep in the mental realm are barely guarded since they can’t really do much to escape and for those who are immune to mental realm tend to be watched a quarter as much or even less than the Dark Types are.”

“I be betting a lot of Pokémon be stuck in the mental realm prison then.” There is likely not being nearly as many immune to being trapped in the mental realm as we might be liking.

“If we can break the maximum confinement area, then taking the others should be more of a cakewalk if the Dark Types back us up. Waking up the Pokémon that are trapped within a mental realm is going to be a problem.” It seems like Favela be coming around with Pom, given she was less fearful of her right now. “Even if most of our friends were in that area of the prison, we wouldn’t be able to help them even if we could reach them easily without a fight.”

“Which is why we’re targeting the Dark Types side of the prison first, maybe they can…” Pom be trailing off and her ears be twitching and both she and Dolly looked in a given direction. “We got an incoming patrol, not Sigilyph at least…. sounds like… one being, small weight, walking on two legs?”

The sound of tapping feet walked in from the direction of the right, from what the map showed the guard or otherwise was coming from the cell block with Pokémon or others that couldn’t be forcefully put in the mental realm.

“Very astute and quite an acute sense of hearing, I thought I detected trouble entering my compound. I am a Meowstic, evolved form of Espurr. I was a gray furred feline before my fur turned mostly blue and I have gained increased power in the biological psychic amplifications under my ears. I am the warden of this facility and I won’t be needing help from those imbeciles outside that let you get this far.” The white haired feline with the blue fur and ears that be clamped down adjusted his glasses as he looked at us. “You are not nearly enough for the likes of me.”

“I’ve…” I started to say before he be quite rudely cutting me off.

“‘Been hearing that before’, yes you have and that is what you were going to say, but I am specifically a Psychic Type that has a fairly prominent detection range and some skill in dealing with Dark Types. Though I may be weak to Dark Type attacks, I believe in being faster on the draw.” He doesn’t be. “‘Looking so tough’, of course I don’t and I do read minds, I am after all a small Pokémon of the psychic powered variety. Like the Morpeko you brought with you, size does not indicate skill or capability, but in some cases brute force can override quite a lot. If you wish to get by me to rescue your friends, then the four of you need to act quickly. Times a wasting. It’s my time, that all of you specifically, are wasting here so please do hurry up and attack me so we can get on with things or do you want to play twenty questions?”

Wait… ah… I not be thinking anything about it then, could be going for a drink of rum right about now.

“Can I know one thing, why would you be working for Gilgamesh personally?” Asked Pom quickly.

“Why indeed, given I know what he plans to do, how he plans to go about doing it and more, I must say… he’s probably quite mad. He is still the king of this region though. While the previous king was rather beloved, he’s not around anymore and I find it is rather pragmatic to be working for him. Gilgamesh is still a legendary level threat and hard to say no to when he can be so convincing.” Adjusting his glasses, Meowstic slowly be sliding his gaze over all of us. “Exploding bomb seeds, a thrown bone, flying slash buck and hmmm… you’re ability to react to any situation is quite curious, but not impossible to predict as you’ll move as the others act. I can see why Gilgamesh has designated you as one of the heroes he wants to come after him as much as the old regime assassin known Kenshin of the Ralts line in particular, you work well with others and are talented combatant white wooly one. Though I’m quite curious about some of the things I’ve heard of you. You’ll be the last one to attack me given you’re a kind person, like Kenshin and his rebels, where Gilgamesh has approved of the use of the more vicious among us psychic types as his foot soldiers. The Hypno in particular are brutes… but their leader seemed too psychologically scarred to fight anymore, I believe that would be your doing hmmm? All of that aside, none of you will last five minutes against me.”

The blue bipedal cat eyes were lazy looking, but I be holding myself back from attacking. It is being a gut feeling or a hunch, but I also looked to Pom who didn’t seem to paying attention to him, but the area around him.

“If we defeat you, what happens to the Pokémon trapped in the mental realm?” Pom’s question brought a smile to Meowstics face.

“They’ll still be stuck in there, the mental realm is self-sustaining and doesn’t require my input. It’ll hold long enough for the guards outside the compound to deal with you, not to mention the guards inside the compound if you could deal with me, which would be a fairly large problem for you now wouldn’t it?” The glasses wearing guy just put his arms behind his back and continued to stare us down. “Also I appreciate you being upset about the idea of having to hit a guy with glasses, but don’t hold back on my account. You do need to defeat me or I will capture all of you if you choose not to attack me first, you are infiltrating the prison with the entirely premeditated idea that you will break all the Pokémon out of said prison. As the warden, I do find this to be… an unpleasant idea.”

Pom suddenly exhaled and in a blink her hoof stopped an inch from the small bipedal cats face, his eyes were slightly wide and his ears were now straight up revealing eye like markings within them.

“Hm… you almost caught me off guard there, bravo to you for coming so close.” Meowstic said with a lazy lilt and didn’t even be blinking at the fact that he be taking Pom’s hoof to the face.

Pom immediately slammed into the ceiling and was pressured there against the tiles, where she was splayed out flat and gritting her teeth while being under an immense pressure of this guy’s energy. I could be hearing her bones creak.

While he be doing that I be darting forward and launching a flying slash buck for Meowstic, he be catching me in his power and I fired off a Riptide which made him dodge to his right as he be slamming me into the right wall. The Riptide be splashing harmlessly against the floor

I be feeling my bones creak and my flesh be squished inward now too.

“Didn’t expect the water blast to come with that attack, anymore wonderful surprises?” Meowstic said lazily with a broad grin as Dolly came at him on her skateboard, she launched at him and the skateboard became wrapped in energy and Dolly hopped off of it to try and bring her bone down on him. Dolly growled a bit when the bone became wrapped in energy and was equally held in place. She let go of that and tried to fire off an aero, but was silenced by some energy wrapping around her muzzle and she was force onto the ground on her back with crushing force, making her yelp and start to slowly turn blue as Meowstic held her throat. “Why yes, my mother was indeed quite rotund spotted canid of interesting thoughts… my how inventive a mind you have there. I seriously doubt you can accomplish that in your current position. You’re not as durable as the others, frankly it’s a wonder you’ve survived this long in a city of Psychics and I’m not nearly stupid enough to try and touch the bond between you and the wooly one. I know how injured Gilgamesh became when he did that.”

He be glancing at Favela who is giving him an equally lazy look.

“So you are a failure as a hero when you possibly tried to stop and couldn’t be standing up to Gilgamesh, which is why you are here working for him. You were not being strong enough to protect this kingdom from the guy that usurped the position of the throne and now you are nothing more than one of his lowly lackeys for all of your supposed power.” As Favela said this she be stalking forward with a Swagger, because she would be using that move to throw our opponent off. “You can take all four of us down, but you must know Gilgamesh won’t need you after he gets what he wants.”

“Yes, well, nice attempt at using Swagger on me, but I intend to survive Gilgamesh when he does have no more use for me.” Meowstic said lazily, but I be noticing a twitch in one of his ears and the strength of the energy holding me to wall flickered a bit, before he be regaining his focus to keep putting pressure on me. Making me grunt as he tried to crush me against the wall.

“So you’re a coward who likes to play at being strong when it’s convenient for you. I don’t believe you are strong as you think you are.” After Favela be calling him out on it, there was a flash of pain through my body as Meowstic be looking quite irritated. He eventually be getting his nerves together… barely. Favela be really getting to him and I notice Dolly and Pom were struggling as much as I was to break free and attack Meowstic. He was struggling to hold all of us at once. “

“If you know what Gilgamesh can do, then why don’t you gather people who will help you stop him?” Favela fired off several seed bombs at Meowstic, he tried to redirect them into us, only for them to explode prematurely before they could hurt us. “Does you’re lost pride matter so much, that you think if you can’t beat him alone then what chance do multiple Pokémon or outsiders be having against him?”

Favela lashed out with two Vine Whips only to have them deflected off a wall of psychic energy.

“Whether or not my pride is damaged and I did fight Gilgamesh to my loss as you are only baselessly assuming, I’m still the warden of this prison and you’re currently trespassing.” Meowstic be slamming Favela into the wall opposite of me. However she be distracting him long enough that we be winning this. “Now if you’ll be quiet and nice prisoners, I will put you to sleep and at least endeavor to make sure your dreams will be pleasant before you all perish and… AGHHHHH?!”

A flare of lightning energy coursed through Meowstic and it look to be causing him quite an immense amounts of pain and he almost be losing his grip on us.

I remember when Meowstic be saying the four of us, none of us be correcting him or thinking of correcting him. So he be missing the fact that there were five of us.

Lit is be getting really quite good at stealth, he is being quite terrifying at it at times.

“Wa-Wha… no…” Meowstic finally be feeling the little yellow fuzzy blob that be grappling onto his back while hanging loosely by a silk string that be coming all the way from the ceiling. He flopped forward onto his face, he tried to sit up and was lifting an ear before he is being electrocuted harshly a second time. He tried to struggle and shake off Lit, but it was already being too late for him. “AGGGhhhhhh…”

We almost be let loose and he tried to keep his power on us, his right ear be flicking up and he be taking a third painful shocking from Lit. Lit continued to fry him until his fur was smoking and blackening under the force of his lightning energy.

“D-d-darn… it… accursed… Bug Types…. ugh…” Meowstic flopped onto his face and was out cold having been burnt black by Lit, a second later I be dropping to the floor, along with Pom and Favela. Dolly be gasping for air and sitting up while clutching at her throat with her paws with a terrified wide eyed look.

“I think he’s had enough Lit, guy smells like Ozone now. Okay, we need to detain him as he’s now our hostage…” Pom be okay with taking a hostage? Well yeah, that be sounding fair, since he was going to be doing the same to us. It just be a little odd, if needed. “This is just like Bentley predicted it would, haughty powerful warden and all, so freeing the Dark Types is definitely our focus here… how’s Dodo escape attempt going?”

It be going pretty well, but he not really be trying to escape, he is just being hungry and eating the metal off the walls there.

“Fairly well…” I said with a nervous smile.

“He’s free, but he’s still eating the walls isn’t he? Does he have the same insatiable hunger you do Shanty?” Seeing the flinch just affirmed it for Pom, she sighed at me and rubbed her forehead with her left hoof. “Look, just remind Dodo that he needs to get moving once he’s done. Lit, tie up Meowstic. Also… I don’t think I need to say this, but just in case, please don’t eat him Lit.”

Lit squeaked and saluted us as he be wrapping the Meowstic tightly with a little too much enthusiasm, he be focusing a lot on its tying down his ears.

Dolly barked several times and had a wagging tail as she pointed down one of the compounds pathways and Pom pulled out the map of the compound she got from the reception desk.

“Meowstic still wasn’t wrong, he dealt with us for five minutes, how unfortunate for him. Okay, so we know which way Ocellus went now, we’ll have to figure out how to help her after we’re done freeing up the Dark Types.” Since that was being a major part of our plan Pom, even if you be having reservations about it. “There are still likely more guards inside, we need to break through to the Dark Types if we’re to get out of here. Who’s staying with Lit to watch Meowstic and who’s going with me to attack the Dark Type cell block?”

“Look we know Lit is predatory and an ambush and swarm specialist as far as Pokémon go… okay, yeah, quite fair.” It didn’t be taking long for Favela to agree with Pom there. “We need someone to watch him so he doesn’t wander off or starts nibbling at Meowstic because he tried to choke the life out of Dolly.”

Dolly barked as she picked up her bone and skated over to Lit and hefted Meowstic up and started to drag him behind the reception desk.

“Dolly and Lit will watch him, Dolly will be our early warning if any guards come in from outside to check within the compound building. Shanty, Favela, let’s move!” Pom motioned to us with her right hoof and we started forward and be going down the left turn towards the Dark Type cell block. “Bentley’s Operation: It Is Dark Out is a go!”

I quickly be following after Pom with Favela at my side, this is being an exciting prison break already. How much of Bentley’s plan would we be carrying out exactly? From what I know, Bentley’s plans tend to go mostly right if given enough information to work with, hopefully we be giving him plenty for this to be working.

-Pom-

“Trouble up ahead…. and it’s quite familiar to us.” I came to a stop and saw the guards that looked familiar watching the outer door of the Dark Type prison area. It was even understandable why they were the guards here. “Think we can take these Golducks on?”

An entire units worth of Golducks noticed us and were already forming up. They were Water Types with psychic abilities, we’ve had some problems with Golducks before so we at least know what they are capable of and these guys thankfully weren’t armed with spears and or weapons.

Most psychic types tend to rely on their mental prowess in combat, but they could levitate weapons around if they wanted to. Saw enough of those from Gilgamesh.

“I believe we can be doing it.” It wasn’t a second later that Shanty was dodging a beam of energy and deflecting another upwards with a quick slash of her weapon.

I focused while moving forward and leapt between the walls, ceiling and floor as I quickly approached them, all while attempting to draw most of their attention on me in the hopes of focusing their attacks away from Favela. Said Bush goat was started setting up for a Seed Bomb barrage.

Shanty was adding to the distraction as she followed me in and took up as much attention off of Favela as she deflected or dispersed the energy attacks with precise cutting arcs as we closed in.

Launching from the right wall to the floor, and shifting my wool to have less friction, I slid under a volley of psychic attacks as seeds shot overhead and buffeted the Golducks with very effective explosions.

I came up from my slide with my right hind leg raising up and bucking a Golduck up under their chin causing them to stumble, I twisted to the left and rose up with a right hoof hook to stagger another psychic duck as Shanty slashed at the two on the left. I swung out a straight with my left hoof causing a third Golduck to backpedal out of the way.

This is when I moved to the right side as Favela’s seed bombs blasted into the Golducks between me and Shanty taking down four of them in short order. I quickly clotheslined one of the remaining ones with a lariat with my left leg and then promptly slammed the back of their head into the floor like Arizona doing a Rope-A-Dope Slam. These guys weren’t nearly as tough as the ones from Fontaine’s Dutiful Ducks Battallion.

Shanty leapt up and slammed the shaft of her weapon into the throat of the last one standing with both hooves and while they were choking from the blow, Shanty hooked their right webbed leg out from under them and then spun her weapon to slap the butt of her staff across the their face.

I knocked out the dazed Golduck with a quick stomp to the skull with my right hoof and then immediately checked to make sure they were breathing okay.

“Okay, let’s keep going.” These Dark Types were heavily guarded right, then why did it seem like they weren’t so far?

We passed through a door and took a winding hallway into the cell block where the Dark Types were kept… and came to an immediate halt at the doorway. Okay, so they were very well guarded.

We stopped at the sides of the doorway into the Dark Type prison complex where we saw numerous Jynx, Wobbuffet, Woobats, what looked like the evolution of Woobats and even a Sigilyph or two patrolling the cell block and keeping a countless amount of Dark Types in their cells. At least fifteen units worth of Pokémon were here, if not a solid hundred crammed into this prison section.

They definitely did not take Dark Types lightly.

The cells themselves were crossed bars on doors and it didn’t look like the Psychics wanted them to ever get free, given said doors were made with thick metal. Quetal should be in there somewhere.

The three of us had slow sweat drops forming on the sides of our heads, thankfully none of the Wobble Wardens were close enough to pin us down with Shadow Tag or the Woobats had yet to sniff us out, but this was a ridiculous number of Pokémon just for the three of us.

“Do we continue plan A or go with contingency B?” I muttered as they hadn’t noticed us yet, but they had to have heard some of the ruckus we caused with. It was only a matter of time before someone came to check on the Golduck unit we just took down with Favela being the hero of that small fight.

Plan A was we continued to free as many Dark Types as we could before we were stopped, basically cause a prison riot and try to get help from them. Contingency B was to try to quietly go back and try to figure out a way to get more help from a different prison block.

This was a bit too much for us… especially after the warden almost crunched my bones on his own. If his guards were even half as competent as he was, then we had to worry about how to do this moving forward.

“Hey, at least let me be trying to sneak around and free a few.” Shanty stated with very little sense of fear.

“Well… okay, just be careful and hurry. We don’t know when the guards are going to start coming to check the entrance, if you get into trouble we’ll cause a commotion.” After I finished whispering this to Shanty, Favela and I stayed posted at the doorway as Shanty quietly slipped into the cell block.

The water goat climbed up to the ceiling using the wall by the door and was soon moving along the ceiling looking for an opportunity of some kind to get at one of the cells.

Dolly gave me the ‘all-clear’ when I checked in with her, so the entrance hasn’t been checked yet by any of the guards outside the compound and there were already plenty in here from what we were seeing.

Lit seemed to have gotten a little vindictive in the way he had cocooned up Meowstic from what Dolly was seeing.

-Top Tier, Cotton-

It was a bright, shiny, day this high up in the sky and I was following the Ponyta Prowlers around to keep an eye on them.

The top of Cerebrum was covered in grass, trees and a small lake or two that usually spilled water off the side when it rained. No buildings whatsoever, which was a little odd, but it’s where the portal to the Castle of Illusion was and gaining access to that was not going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination. Given the Ponyta Prowlers saw a veritable horde of Psychic Types guarding the gateway to it.

One would have a better time accessing the portal from ground that leads up to Cerebrum and vice versa.

“Gyeh-heh-heh~! Hoo-wee things are about to come to a head around here, if the rebels haven’t started lighting things up inside the city already.” I grinned and flew off to see what the rebels were currently doing. Team Harmony is probably working the prison compound to rescue their own and then I’ll eventually have a chance to access the Castle of Illusion.

The Mandibuzz were dealt with, so I have to make some other movements and swiftly. To slow either the Rebels or Team Harmony down, the Ponyta Prowlers can wait if Lumber Spry acts the way I think she’s going to with the knowledge I gave her.

Author's Note

Current injury problems, aside I'll be fine.

I'm probably going to be on anti-biotics though.

337. Mental Compound Fracture, Pt. 3.

Author's Note

For those of you wondering what I'm currently suffering from and why I'm on anti-biotics, I have contracted a somewhat bad case of 'Cellulitis'.

'Septic' is not the word you want to hear when it comes to bodily problems.

I'm almost over it now... I'm not overly suffering, but as you can tell my ability to get stuff out has been hampered greatly by this.

I apologize for the delays, but I don't think I can finish this story within the year anymore.

337. Mental Compound Fracture, Pt. 3.

-???, Oleander-

“Honestly now…” I grumbled as I stared at the giant four legged machine starting to aim a railgun at me.

I just got in close and brought my wanzers giant keyblade around and ‘open’ a hole in its weapon magazine and quickly skated backwards. The ammo soon cooked off and exploded when Buttina fired an insanely accurate missile into it. The entire rail gun arm on the machine was rendered a mulched pile of scrap.

“Oleander, you’re probably better fighting without a mech, let’s do this Iron Mantis WOOO, THE IRON BEAR MODEL HAS NOTHING ON THIS THING!” Announced Buttina, who was in a large green four legged, two armed, walker and was wielding two high powered 'Mech Sized' submachine guns and two rocket launchers to constantly destroy everything around her under a hail of non-stop fire.

Nothing in the area was safe from Buttina, who was going to need to reload in the next five seconds… again.

“Oh come on Ollie, THIS IS FUN!” As he said that Fred piloted his own machine into firing a pile bunker off into another machine, felt a little sorry for the poor soul in that one instantly dying.

“Fred that huge pile bunker is extremely overcompensating.” Despite my bland tone I heard Fred laughing happily. “Also I’m the only one with a reload pack here, so please go easy on the ammunition guys. I only have about three reloads left and we started with twenty packs of ammunition… two minutes ago.”

“So?” Fred returned as his walking tank with one weapon walked into a hail of fire, he of course had a skull painted on his machine… his skull to be specific. “YOU WILL BEWARE THE NAME OF FRED!”

Did Fred just forget his actual name or was he trying to make Fred a terrifying name in and of itself?

“*Bark Bark*” Yes, Overlord Song Ender, you are a good boy… still don’t know how you were effectively driving a rocket artillery though. A few tanks just went up in powerful explosions, apparently he figured out a way to increase the power of the rockets with his ‘noise’ energy.

“Why don’t we have things like this in my universe, aside from those crappy AI driven hunks of junk!” Why did Wrex get bored and started following us around again? He was driving a mech with a shield and shotgun slowly beginning to charge forward. I could already feel his grin as he was about to ram into a much smaller mech.

“Guys we’re being paid in resources for the Front Mission here, goodness knows if the Armored Core of these things hadn’t been found to be rigged with explosives by Buttina we would all have moderate injuries right now.” This world was actively making us use the shields from Buttina’s home dimension of Planet Pandora. “In any case, large walking machines are not my specialty.”

“Well excuse me for not being able to use my ride armor here and taking out a loan to buy all this cool stuff.” Buttina was lucky that the ring floating off my world had at least fifty hangars on it or else we wouldn’t have a place to even store these things after we were done on this world. “All enemy forces, we are the Mech Warriors supporting team, please retreat or else you’ll receive a rocket enema. I’m not waxing poetic here, I will inevitably get one up your backsides just to prove a point!”

These machines would definitely be decent for Kaiju worlds at least, space capable, ocean certified and could take quite a pounding. Sure magically reinforcing the armor was cheating everyone else here on the battlefield quite a bit, but I wasn’t about to die in a nuclear fire.

"Kityan here, bringing extra ammo to the battlefront!" Our ever helpful bipedal cat android announced as she drove a truck forward.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Illusio, Cerebrum City, Upper Tier, Psychic Prison Compound, Sleepless Cellblock, Dazzle-

I sighed, it wouldn’t be long before they tried to force me to go to sleep again. I was being forcefully resilient, but I wasn’t going to hold out forever. Thankfully something important apparently drew the warden’s attention away from me, because even he was impressed by my resilience even if I was taken out by Psychic Type attacks to be caught in the first place.

Certainly didn’t want to end up like Dolly in getting cut up and or tortured in my sleep.

The sound of shrieking metal drew my attention to the nearby wall and I defensively backed up while flaring the vents on my body as a strip of the wall was pulled revealing…

“Dodo?” He warbled in a friendly tone and he didn’t even seem to be in poor spirits, Shanty, Pom and the others must have come for us immediately after we got caught. He was in the process of eating the walls… that didn’t… actually… “Keep going Dodo, eat us a way out!”

Dodo didn’t seem to have anything better to be doing at this moment as he tore out another strip of metal from the wall in a loud agonizing screech as it tore and buckled under the force of his beak, it makes me wonder when the guards would actually move to do something about this.

I then heard similar screeching and wailing from another nearby cell… it sounded like a Chimecho was trying to mimic the noise? Oh… interesting, we had some help here and they were going to pretend it was them causing all the noise.

After a guards checked on us they quickly left after giving the Chimecho a warning.

As soon as I was free I would start working on free the others on my way out of this cellblock, I’d be making a few friends on the way since I couldn’t handle Psychic Types very well without Frizzle to cover me.

Hopefully Frizzle was doing okay.

-Beyond the Gates of Babylon, Frizzle-

By my dilated anime sized pupils! The bread here was so magical, it helped me gain a metric ton of energy… also my body condensed to the point that I didn’t need digital energy to really fight.

Though I was having problems trying to figure out how to expand the space in my Digivice Home to keep it all.

The bread here was of an impossibly ethereal quality… wait… what was I supposed to be doing again?

Oh right, I’m supposed to be finding that device stolen from Pom and preventing Gilgamesh from using the most powerful weapons here against them!

I quickly got up and scrambled to go do what I was supposed to be doing before I got distracted by all the perfectly preserved treasures that is bread!

-Cerebrum City, Upper Tier, Psychic Prison Compound, Reception Entrance, Dolly-

Sitting behind the desk with the out cold and upside down warden hanging from a web. Lit wasn’t doing anything to the guy, but he looked like he wanted to.

Aside from that I was concentrating on my paw, trying to get it to glow with energy so I could hover off the ground, lash out with blades of wind or shoot wind bullets on a moment’s notice.

Wasn’t even going to think of the wind chains or portals thing yet, didn’t seem probable to me outside the dream. Not that Pom and I were doing much to that Gilgamesh guy before my half alive little bro really let it rip into him.

We’ll make sure to make you fully alive again Dormarch…. somehow…

“Why can’t I just have this ability, possibly without saying ‘Aero’? I can glide, jump ridiculously high, run on any surface and do incredibly crazy things with momentum without needing to shout a magic word, why not this one thing?” I also had that thing where I can evade with a flowing motion or do really weird things if I see a triangle. Didn’t even know what the triangle represented, but it always reeked of a single moment to do something.

Where did the ability of ‘Aero’ even come from? I close my eyes and tried to recall the feeling… taking up a meditative position like what Deepak would do.

‘The sound of ninety nine puppies running for the park, the breeze on the air, the smell of nature and civilization together, the feeling of little paws crawling on ones back, cuddling, hugging, a whirlwind of love that never leaves one alone no matter separated by distance. It was a blowing breeze before the veritable…’

A squeaking sound made me open my eyes and look to Lit who was staring at me for some reason.

“I’m okay buddy, just trying to figure something out while we’re waiting for anything to happen.” Now how did I learn ‘Haste’ again and what did it mean to me?

‘The rush of freedom, the need to move quickly to protect those you love, the need to never be left behind, the need to faster or else something bad will happens, the need to react to how things quickly change around you at the drop of a hat. Our battle with that strange clock eyed bipedal bull, I think I learned how to do haste from watching it, time… dogs usually don’t have much of that. Since I met Pom my lifespan is apparently going to be expanded so… I have all the time in the world, but I still need to make ‘Haste’ when the moments warrants me to take action. Aggression, the need to be proactive, the need to take action, a need for speed.’

‘Haste’ and ‘Aero’ seem so much like a part of me. I was always running around like the wind trying to make sure puppies were happy. Considering how miserable I was before the family grew, I didn’t like seeing others feeling down. I’m not exactly being the big sister for a lot of puppies anymore. I can still do ‘Aero’, despite having ‘Aerora’… what don’t I have here? Well at least I knew I couldn’t use magic that required me to bark out loud, because when that psycho cat got me by the throat, I couldn’t use my magic.

My magic is definitely related to my heart and my voice, I know that’s a part of it. Maybe I would have more spells if I broadened my horizons somehow. Maybe lightning, because I liked to move lightning fast? Maybe I can learn that from Lit.

A panicked squeak, brought me out of my thinking. I heard something coming from the entrance and were going through the entryway and could lock the passageway out of the prison.

Hey Pom, permission to take care of an incoming problem? They are coming through the entryway and might lock it up with we don’t take them out.

I was quickly given the go ahead to do as I see fit as long as it wasn’t too much trouble.

Okay Dolly, you and Lit have this, you didn’t recently nearly die getting the life choked out of you because you couldn’t do anything to a powerful psycho cat.

What came through the entrance was a Sigil things, its eye sweeping about as Lit and I stayed behind the desk.

“I’ll draw its attention, remember attacking from a distance on these guys doesn’t work Lit.” I still liked be loud, but the opportunities to shout haven’t come as often as they used to.

The Sigil-snitch came in through the entrance on the right from the desk and I was going to try and leap at it.

Preparing myself, I leapt onto the desk and then lunged at the floating spherical bodied monster and swung for its head with the bone in my right paw. It floated out of the way and I certainly had its attention as I entered a hover state and prepared to throw the bone, Lit looked to be waiting for an opening to blindside it and the little fuzzy guy really liked doing that.

The one top eye of the monster glowed and so did the two eye like markings on its belly and I saw a circle of darkness and purple build up around me.

“What the?!” I immediately slammed into the floor a second later, my chin was bleeding slightly and I was hurting. The tips of my ears were positively glued to the floor.

“AGhhh…” I yelped out as my ability to hover was suddenly taken away from me, my body was now under crushing pressure and I tried to jump, but simply couldn’t everything just became so heavy all the sudden.

I saw the eyes on it glow as it prepared to do something when Lit slammed into its side, hurting it a lot and drawing its attention entirely to him.

Lit fired an electrified web and the Sigil thing didn’t get hurt at all when its body glowed, however the glare from the flashing strength of the attack from it blinded it for a few seconds.

As Lit engage the Sigil thing, I was trying to move.

Trying being a keyword because my body felt like lead and I was being crushed under the weight of my skateboard across my back and my helmet, not to mention the stone bone was crushing my right paw against the floor.

I gritted my teeth and managed to slowly slide my right paw out from under the bone, why was everything so heavy… was my body really this weak?!

Well yeah, my body was still that of a normal Dalmatian. So of course I was going to have problems of size and strength, but come on!

Lit only had one move that was effective against the Sigil thing and it was avoiding his fast lunging attacks by flying up towards the ceiling and then I saw something, when Lit tried to lunge at the Sigil while glowing a green color he suddenly slapped against the floor when the Sigil’s eye glowed and a familiar circle of black and purple entrapped him too.

What was this move that the Sigil thing using, think Dolly… Pom often asks about what these monsters are capable of… oh right… POM!

…

While Pom seemed really kind of busy at the moment, she still managed to give me a reminder and was currently in a fairly stressful situation. She believed in me and that the two of us could handle one monster.

The move was called ‘Gravity’ that Cot-on and the Pony Panthers told us about? Apparently it wasn’t an attack move, but then again it might not be an attack move to the monsters of this world, but I wasn’t a monster of this world.

Lit was prevented from jumping at the Sigil and was quickly spraying the monsters body and eye stalk with webbing while scuttling around on the floor as quickly as he could while drawing fire when I couldn’t move. I could barely move, how was he doing that under all this pressure when he was smaller than I was?

“Aero!” A green swirling wind kicked up around the Sigil thing, did absolutely nothing to it aside from make it blink from the dust in its eye or eyes… couldn’t tell if the belly eyes were real or not. Right my ranged attacks, even my magic apparently, didn’t work. “Come on… not like this Dolly… Pom and everyone else is counting on us to hold the entrance.”

This ‘gravity’ was a crushing me, no matter how incredible my magical abilities ‘gRaViTy’ has always brought me back down to the ground and my body was always under its effects.

“Wait…” Why is whenever I thought the word ‘Gravity’, it seems to pulse in my head like… also did it just become uppercase all of the sudden?

I could feel a broad grin building on my face.

What did I think of ‘GRavity’ and how does it relate to my heart?

‘What goes up, must eventually come down. There’s a gravity in the bonds of family and I was pulled towards Pom when I felt her constant downer nature. I had been a downer when I lost my mother, been there plenty of times. Trying to keep a constant positive attitude is rough. ‘GrAvity’ is the stuff that pulls us together or slings us apart… like…. stars…

Swirling, sea of stars, so much life… ninety eight stars and one floating slightly away to join another group of other stars, no matter how distant, those stars remained connected. I might have been pulled into Pom’s ‘GraVITy’, but she was also pulled into mine. ‘GRavItY’…. connections… stars… bonds… pulling… twisting… all intertwined… all connected.

My brother was a space case, but I was about to become one myself as I thought of him, I was always gravitating towards Dylan because he needed to loosen up, like a lot, and I wanted Pom to loosen up too. Couldn’t do that if we were dead, I could feel a slight surge in my heart.

Like Dormarch, I would always keep those in my heart from drifting away with its pull even if my memories are completely scorched. My heart would never let those memories be forgotten if my body forgot.

I could see the stars…

I could once again feel them reflecting in my eyes, sparkling in the dark and the feeling of the moon as me and Pom howled to it. The image called to me, I felt an echo of that howl coming back to me.

There were SO many stars around my heart and one among them started glowing brighter than the others.

That one star, the one a little separate from the other ninety eight… that one… it was me.

“GRAVITY!” My eyes narrowed as I felt most of the magic in my body drain and ignite something, suddenly the crushing weight disappeared from me and Lit as I followed my instincts.

Lit was looking to me as I raised my right paw towards the ceiling and aimed my sight at the Sigil monster.

I instinctively clenched my paw, as purple and black colors swirled in it, while drawing it towards my body.

Like the swirls of darkness that appeared around me when the Sigil thing used Gravity against me, the purple and black aura wrapped the Sigil and it didn’t seem worried. At least it wasn’t worried up until the energy condensed and it smashed into the floor with a thunderous force that shook the reception area while leaving a massive crater in the middle of it.

“We are all affected by it…” I breathed out in relief, it really took quite a bit of magic out of me to even do that. Yet my version of ‘Gravity’ versus it’s version of ‘gravity’ seemed to be entirely different somehow… mine was better.

Sigil thing taken care of, Lit scuttled up to me and squeaked worriedly while raising his front legs.

“I’m… hurt… but I’ll be okay.” I gasped out as I tried to stand up and flopped over… okay that took a lot of out of me, far more than I previously thought.

Now that I know how to do it…. it seemed it wouldn’t be as hard as my first use of it. I couldn’t feel how to use this spell any differently than the way I just did, but I’m still hopeful for more from it. It was definitely a straight out crushing force attack, given said attack just created a large crater in the floor.

I felt something gently pressing itself against my chin and I hissed at the pain and then my eyes focused on Lit being next to me and he was carefully wrapping my chin up with his little legs and webbing. He squeaked when he noticed that I was paying attention to him.

“Heh… you’re an awesome little dude. I’ll be fine, just give me some time to get back to a hundred alright.” I got a merry little squeak as his bandage stopped the bleeding, my tail started wagging. “Way to stay in the fight, until I figured something out Lit. Also we can’t rest yet… there might be more like that incoming.”

Hmm… Skateboard, Trampoline, Rubber Chicken… maybe...

-Dark Type Cellblock, Shanty-

The evolved Woobat with visible eyes are being a bigger problem to sneak around, they be hanging upside down on the railings along the walkways of the three floors containing the Dark Types.

Most of the patrolling guards are being towards the entrance, so I could start freeing up some of the guys from the back and slowly build up enough free Pokémon to be taking down all the guards and be causing a major problem.

None of them be looking up though, which is being a good thing for me. Most beings don’t be doing that nearly enough. At least I was being fine crawling slowly along the ceiling with no sudden movements.

Having reached the far back wall, I be sliding down to the bottom row of cells silently, Dodo seemed to have found Dazzle and was slowly working on a prison break from his side of things. So that was being one less thing to worry about here as I pulled my cane scythe from my back and looked at the various doors.

I quickly be placing the end of the hook into one of the locks and started to quietly work it, the being in the cell suddenly be looking up at me as my tongue stuck out the side of my mouth.

Psychic Types apparently be having brain melting locks to deal with. There was a certainly difficult to it, but after having felt it out… I am finding a few issues with the lock.

The issues were that the locks on these doors were being far too easy to open, I am of the current belief that there was being no keys for these locks from what I was gathering as I wiggled the edge of the blade I wielded up and down a bit.

There were a few things about the locks that be making them too entirely easy to pick if you be knowing what was up with them.

Holding some of the insides of the lock open with the tip of the blade, I drew some water from one of the canteens I be carrying and shoved that water into the lock.

Afterwards a bit of work, I be pulling the water back out and stowing it back in my canteen and there was barely a clicking noise to signify that anything happened. I slowly removed the blade to not be making much noise.

Now that I be knowing how to open these locks, this would be going really fast. Since these Psychic types be using their minds to manipulate the locks, they need to at least be able to see somewhat into them and could not entirely close them off entirely. However the lock would not open for a key, but one could make a makeshift key with energy or something else, like Pom or I could, to open them.

Looking over my shoulder I saw the Psychic Types were watching the areas around the entrance, so none of them noticed the first door being slid open and out of it be coming a creature with a bipedal wolf like appearance.

Its eyes were sharp and it looked to me and then motioned to the other cells as it faded into the nearby shadows and out of view, it seems I just be freeing a trickster and making a friend given how he be grinning at me in a friendly manner as he disappeared.

I immediately set out for the another cell while being careful not to make noise, in this cell there seemed to be a quadrupedal black wolf who smirked when he saw me open the cell in a quarter of the time that it took me to do the previous one.

All the locks the Psychic Types had here were being the same, they would require some form of energy and the ability to manipulate the insides in a specific way to open them. Were it anyone else other than Pom or me, they’d be having a lot more trouble with this unless they were also being a Psychic Type and one would be wondering what Psychic Type would want to free Dark Types?

I be thinking the rebels for one, but they never be getting this far with how many guards be in the way.

-Hallway between Dark Type Cellblock and Reception, Pom-

After I had lost track of Shanty’s movement we decided to check on the Golducks to make sure they were still out of it and out of the way. Shanty had managed to get beyond the front loaded guards and I was currently glad Woobats and their evolved forms were more all-nose than all-ears like Zubats seemed to be.

If Shanty were in trouble we would be hearing at least a commotion. So far it seemed like Shanty was doing fine.

My ears, which were tied up at the back of my head by my wool, twitched as I felt a gentle shifting in the air, I suddenly was on high alert when a figure floated around the corner to look at us with something like dull surprise.

“Well, well, it looks like there actually was a serious problem here… or else I wouldn’t feel the voids in this area of our humble asylum stirring. Now where is the warden you’ve likely dealt with already hm?” This was another Meowstic, however her demeanor seemed more provocative and far more malicious than the previous warden. Also her appearance was vastly different from the male Meowstic, being more feminine for one, she was mostly of white fur with blue hair on her head, along with blue around her neck like a scarf and at the end of her limbs and the base of her otherwise white fluffy curled tails. “Hope you’re not here to free the Espurr warden of the sleepers, he refused to work for Gilgamesh and so we stuffed him in several of the Dark Types in our high security section to suffer. It would be quite unfortunate if you troublemakers somehow freed him. The both of you simply look ever so delicious… please, let me put you to sleep so I can enjoy your bodies.”

Okay, Bentley didn’t account for multiple wardens, but it sounded like one of them was someone we should really set free if we wanted help with the sleepers. So we were still on the right track if we could defeat this Meowstic.

If this one was as strong as the last one, then Favela and I were going to need to coordinate a bit as this was going to be a major issue.

Where was Lit when we needed him? With Dolly and actively dealing with a Sigilyph at the moment… okay couldn’t rely on them to come help us.

Also I know some Pokémon were predatory, but this one seemed to definitely be exceptionally ‘Predatory’ with the way she was eyeing us. I obviously didn’t think that means she wanted to eat our flesh, I shuddered with revulsion at the implications.

I was slowly inhaling, but I could only hope Favela could think of something if this doesn’t work like last time… in fact.

“Are you okay?” I asked towards Meowstic and Favela knew where this was going the moment I asked this given the bush goat nodded.

“Why would you…” The Meowstic

“Buster Wolf…” I spun and launched forward and struck a barrier.

“Quick Guard.” The female Meowstic laughed airily, I had slung both my hooves forward only to find them blocked.

“Cross!” Two explosions erupted inwards sending the Meowstic flying backwards, this was followed by Bomb Seed Barrage from Favela.

“You’ve definitely pissed off the wrong Meowstic and you made my makeup run.” What little mascara or lipstick there was on the Female Meowstic Warden to even ruin in the first place.

“Oh she did far more than that…” Favela commented dryly and that’s when the Meowstic noticed the claw marks on her body and that she was bleeding.

“OH YOU, HOW DARE YOU RUIN MY DELICIOUSLY PERFECT FORM!” This fight was inevitably going to draw the guards of the Dark Type Cellblock as both of the Female Meowstic’s curled tip ears raised up fully.

I was slammed into the wall to my left, my wool along the left side of my body reflexively inflated taking the entire brunt of the impact.

I retaliated by firing off a Thousand Spears from my right leg and was dropped to the floor when the blast of air struck the Meowstic in the head and forcefully caused her ears to fold.

After a second of being hit with some Seed Bombs, the Meowstic managed to shake herself back into attacking me with a huge blast of mental energy.

I quickly rolled to my right as a mass of energy blasted my way and scorched a fairly large hole into the wall.

Yeah, this one seemed much more aggressive and just as powerful.

“Favela… watch our backs!” I was quickly standing and went into a Cow Kempo stance, I really needed to hit this Meowstic hard and a flying buck to the head would do it.

I just needed an opening.

-Sleeper Cellblock, ???-

“Come on, come on…” Something thankfully drew the warden away and there weren’t actually any guards in this cellblock, but what she had been doing to some of the sleeping bodies was rather quite reprehensible in my eyes. At least Changelings didn’t do that kind of stuff when we had captives who couldn’t fight back. “Yes!”

I had managed to get at least one of them free from the dream prison, the Araquanid slowly blinked its eyes dazedly as it sat up.

It suddenly became alert and was about to attack, when I quickly transformed back from being a red lipped Wobbuffet to being just myself.

“Wait, wait, it’s me, Ocellus!” At seeing that it was me, the Araquanid immediately calmed down and looked around, he quickly encased his head in a bubble of water and then got up while looking to me. “Watch that entrance for our allies or enemies. I’ll try to wake up some of the others!”

Nodding, the Araquanid set off to do just that as I started on trying to wake up another Pokémon.

Mind powers were a little hard to use, but I had enough Psychic potential to wake up a few Pokémon and was using my magic as a guideline for psychic powers. Magic and psychic abilities were definitely two vastly different things entirely, but my ingenuity made up for the gap. I hoped that I never became Chrysalis and used mind manipulation, much less outright control.

This prison compound was about to become one hectic center of a massive fight. I already knew Pom was likely here, I could feel her anxiety skyrocketing from here and it was actually kind of soothing and calming.

It was unfortunate news that I had to tell Pom that Gilgamesh took Smolder. I already had an idea as to what Gilgamesh was going to do with Smolder too… and as her girlfriend I didn’t like it one bit.

338. Mental Compound Fracture, Pt. 4.

Author's Note

My Cellulitis is almost done with, so I'm feeling much better and finished the last of medication plan.

Not sure how I feel about this page though... so much going on.

Also I have Pikmin 4 now. So there is that.

338. Mental Compound Fracture, Pt. 4.

-Equus, Ponyville, Gallus-

“Okay so Tianhuo is the good cop in this routine, Fizzlepop is the bad cop… so who’s the doughnut cop?” My question had a lot of people thinking.

“Does there have to be a doughnut cop?” Fœnum Pom asked quietly in a meek manner.

“Well yeah, someone has to bring the fun energy to the team.” Fœnum Arizona brought up.

“Well it as obvious as the floof on my chest…” Fœnum Velvet seemed the most like her counterpart, no apparent attraction to Arizona aside from friendship though. She glanced at a particular Fœnum Fighter.

“Paprika?” Fœnum Tianhuo intoned, she was busier watching our world’s Tianhuo.

A series of completely incomprehensible noises came from our next dimensional neighbor Alpaca.

Fœnum Paprika proceeded to place a basket on the table and started pulling a near infinite amount of doughnuts out of it, all of them were heart shaped and some smelled like they had apple or jam in them. The variety they came in was fairly amazing for the fact that they were always heart shaped. I even saw her smile at me as she placed one covered in seeds on the table with waggling eyebrows.

Our world’s version of Paprika had fluff and hug focused abilities, and somewhat better etiquette apparently, their world’s Paprika was more magic focused and capable of pulling infinite snacks out of a basket. Just as long as nobody noticed or questioned that there is no possible way that a basket could even contain the amount of snacks she eventually pulled from it.

“Eh, close enough.” Fizzle muttered, she levitated a doughnut to herself and bit into it. She turned to me. “So anyway, you’ve managed to actually do what the other guards haven’t yet. That is defeat Fœnum Pom while she’s running around like a chicken with a bucket dropped on its head, with and without the help of her sheep dogs.”

“I’m not proud of myself, but I’m amazed I even did that much damage...” F.om wasn’t going to point out that it didn’t matter what they were male, female, Pegasus, Unicorn or Earth Pony, the royal guard were still somewhat royally bad at guarding things.

At least the royal guard were, surprisingly enough, at the competence level of scaring off Manticores… dealing with them is another issue, unless they were purple.

Apparently Manticores had an excessive fear of the color purple for some reason, or at least ponies with the color purple as part of their appearance. Fizzle caused the biggest reaction to a rather specific one, immediately flew for the horizon the second it saw her.

“Still can’t take Equus Pom’s Canis Minor, those little guys are from Tartarus.” I held out a talon and pointed out Exhibit A, four Canis Minor puppies dragging a tied up and struggling dragon at least twenty times their size.

“That dragon was warned to not cause problem here in Equestria, I believe her current situation speaks for itself.” Equus Tianhuo sighed and shook her head as Pom’s Canis Minor puppies continued to train by pulling the massive weight of a dragon they beat into the ground behind them with ropes.

Those little guys were terrifying and it made me wonder what E.om taught them that they were like that.

Our Equus Tianhuo didn’t look like she’s been getting much sleep lately because we haven’t heard from Pom, Ocellus or Smolder in a while. We were all quite worried and there’s still the fact that big sis Jaded was collecting information on what exactly Pom being a Chrysomallus entails.

Oh my goodness, I actually called her big sister in my head. I think needed a psychiatrist… I think I’m kind of being bullied into having and accepting a family. Was it a bad thing that I was starting to appreciate it? I still liked Grandpa Gruff and Gilda too, which says some things about me when it comes to be friendly with hard flanks.

There were no psychiatrists in Griffonstone, but there were plenty of them here. So why did I feel very unlucky about actually finding a decent one?

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Illusio, Cerebrum City, Middle Tier, near Rebel Headquarters, Canard-

Organizing with the rebels wasn’t going as poorly as I thought, but the information network they currently had was a little slow. So I was going to set out to check on something personally, the movements of the enemy forces in the city have become quite suspect once I got the information on where most of the beings were going.

“Gyeh-heh-heh, hello there~.” Looking up at Cotton Murkrow sitting on a stone ledge, I could see she was going to continue being a thorn and has been one since we got here.

What was her end game here?

“What do you want?” I narrowed my eyes at her, because of course she’s here to do something. Like slow down… “Are you going to try and slow down the rebels attempt to send a force to the prison to help Pom or are you going to stall the rebels to prevent them from noticing something important? To what end though?”

“The big muscular Psyduck is having too much of a big brain, oh woe is me.” Cotton was being overdramatic. Even if I’ve figured her out in this instance, I didn’t know her overall goals or why she was interfering with everyone so much. More specifically why she destroyed the airship, led some Sigilyphs towards us, bribed those Mandibuzz to attack at the storage depot and then there’s all other sightings of her around the city. “Look hon, I don’t want to be the one to tell you or your strange companion this, but you might want to get the rebels moving top side before it is too late. You see, I figured out long ago that Gilgamesh was working on breaking the ‘Seal of the Hoopa’ on himself and once he does that, he’ll be mighty hard to stop. You do not want to fight an unbound Hoopa, especially not this guy with how powerful he already is.”

“So you’re messing with a no win scenario. If we go to help Pom we’ll be too late, if we try to build up force on top of this floating continent… that’ll also be no win.” It just occurred to me why Cotton was here right now in this instance. I sighed, she was attempting to slow me down specifically. “So why are you even… oh… I see.”

“Do you now?” Ignoring Cotton’s tilting head and curious glance, I quickly motioned for Sami to follow me.

“There’s a third option!” I shouted back at Cotton.

Cotton didn’t attack or get in our way she just stared after us as we set off. Out of the corner of my eye I could see concerned look on her beak.

Was she going to be a friend or foe?

-Cotton-

Hmmm… that might be a slight bit iffy, but still somewhat on track. At least some people around here are aware of the way things are about to go.

Things are in place already, but Gilgamesh is still far too much to deal with.

He’s being very smart and the build-up of Psychic energy can’t be halted at this point… so my plans are going to bear some fruit at least as far as stunting him goes. Destroying the Ponyta Prowlers ship was a part of that.

I now needed to make sure that the prison break wasn’t stalled out!

I quickly took off and blasted a Feather Dance into a number of Woobat’s noses as I tried fly to the upper tier through one of the five pillars. My feathers clogged them up so badly that they couldn’t follow my scent trail as I quickly flew to fix a slight issue.

I had to stick to the shadows as the patrols in the direction of the prison has increased significantly… Gilgamesh was likely going to crush Pom and her friends before they could make any attempt at escape.

Not on my watch, my ex-per-tease is going to shine like the brightest bauble! We Murkrow love shiny things, like Poké, and I’m paid exceptionally well to do a job that needs doing.

Even if my methods are quite questionable after the fact. At least Xatu will be totally fine.

-Nearby, Kenshin-

“Hm… Kaoru, start building up our forces and make a move on the top tier, I’ll go get some forces by helping out the Rescue Team Leader. Send someone to tell Sanosuke his next orders to start building up forces for an attack on the top tier, we need to go all in now.” Several Kirlia, a Gardevoir, two Gallades and a few Ralts moved to support me. “No, I’ll be going alone, support Kaoru and Sanosuke, I’ll meet up with you later up top. Cerebrum City is… ask any civilian if they would be willing to fight, we’re going to need everyone we can get, but we can’t force them to fight… we can however send them away to safety through the teleporter. Secure the teleporter to the ground and start immediately moving those who won’t or can’t fight out of Cerebrum. We’ll need Mentalis to secure the ground portal for the refugees, send a message to secure the static ground teleporter.”

“Kenshin… we’re evacuating Cerebrum?” Kaoru, don’t look so sad, I already had an idea what Gilgamesh was up to when all the psychic energy in the region started building up to such a degree… also I was sensitive to the movements of the city.

The entire city was floating to the east, drifting away from central Illusio and towards the massive lake of eastern Illusio from what I understand of what was happening. The city was about to become very unsafe to be on.

That Murkrow…. a well-played idea, as much as it was curious in its intentions. If I wasn’t aware of some of her movements, then things would be going much worse. Of course she likely let her movements be known for this very reason, given she’s Cotton Murkrow of Avia.

“We’re going with you.” Mundo approached with Cleffa and Shine. “If our friends are in terrible trouble, then we should seek to relieve them!”

“Where is Mr. Thunderbeak going?” Cleffa asked innocently.

“We’re sticking with the Morpeko.” Understandable of the Leavanny, they didn’t want to be driven insane again by all the psychic pressure.

“Just going to tell you now, we’re going to move for top side when we can confirm our friends are freed up.” One of the three Morpeko stated, the Leavanny looked a little upset, but they firmed their resolve.

“I think I have an idea as to what Canard intends to do… but can he pull it off?” I didn’t say that those wanted to come with me couldn’t, but there were many important things happening now and I didn’t have the time to tell them no. He had his friend with him and she looked as tough as he did for her short stature, the guy obviously worked well in small groups. He was a rebel himself at one point and he survived the occupation he’s been through and managed to save his people, now he was here trying to save other people he didn’t even known or would appreciate his efforts. “Don’t worry about him, he’ll be fine if he doesn’t get captured. He’s not likely to be caught, given the movements of Gilgamesh’s faction are currently converging at two points in the city given Sanosuke’s attempts to lure them away from those locations has failed. I will have to use my sword soon.”

Said two points were the top of Cerebrum City for a climactic battle and the Prison Compound to prevent Pom’s group from succeeding in a prison break.

I don’t think this city could truly be saved anymore given all the things being set in motion… but we could still save the people!

Saving our enemies was going to be a lot harder, but I would not lose sleep over it if we couldn’t save a majority of them.

They made their choices, just I have made mine, and our choices are always our own. Maybe there was one last final kill I needed to fulfill before I can find true peace in my life.

As I started my way forward I noticed Shine appraising with a frown.

-Upper Tier, Prison Compound, Dark Type Cellblock, ???-

I stalked in the shadows and reached out to pull down a Wobbuffet, my strong arms started choking them until they stopped flailing so much. I carefully dragged them towards the back while trying not to make a sound.

Zoroark like me were good at befuddling Psychic Types, our illusions were much more problematic to deal with than that of Psychics.

The goat was working on getting more than a few of the cells open and I had to make sure nobody noticed her opening them, the Mightyena the goat set free after me was hopefully aware that we needed to be subtle if we were to escape without being bombarded instantly by Fairy Type moves.

We also needed for a good number of us to be free before we could think of doing anything overt.

I’ve already taking out several Woobat, a Jynx and a now this Wobbuffet. I looked back and saw Mightyena and a Houndoom taking up a protective position for the goat as she worked on a cell as a quivering Espurr exited a cell with two Dark Types.

The Dark Types were supporting the Espurr and seemed worried about him, curious that a Psychic Type was in the Dark Type Cellblock… likely was one of the original prison guards before Gilgamesh’s regime formed.

Stuffing him in a cell with Dark Types was cruelty personified, to think some people called us Dark Types nasty. He seems to have made some friends with them. He would be more helpful if he didn’t look so frail from his time spent imprisoned.

The less between us and the exit the more chances we will all have at freedom. To that end, I noticed some guards near the entrance at the top of the cellblock exiting in a full unit formation. They had been alerted by something, probably whoever was with the goat that was freeing us. They were about to be in quite some trouble as a Woobat unit flew out.

-Somewhere between Reception and the Dark Type Cellblock, Favela-

“We, got incoming Pom!” I was a little worried given we were about to be besieged by multiple Woobat.

“I’ll take care of the warden, try to handle it Favela!” Still had some reservations about Pom, but we were kind of between a rock and a hard place, especially when this second Meowstic was as powerful as the first and we didn’t have any extra help.

At least they were just Woobat… it was still not easy handling multiple Woobat at once unless…

I started to use surf, there was no way they could dodge when this tightly packed in a hallway! The unfortunate problem of me doing this is that it’ll attract more guards… I didn’t know if they found Shanty or not, but if they had there would probably be more noise coming from that direction.

I filled the half the hallway with water and then the wave rose up to encompass the entirety of the hallways as I sent the wave down it, there was no dodging that. As soon as I sent the wave, I immediately started another one and had to stumble to the right a bit when a powerful psychic attack struck near my hooves to the left.

Calm, breathe Favela, you wanted adventure, well you were getting it and then some and momma Vetali didn’t raise no weaklings!

I sent out another surf, because at this point, stealth was no longer an option and I hoped to keep pushing back any units assaulting us from the nearby cellblock.

-Nearby, Pom-

Okay, concentrate, think of a way to take down the warden quickly… my Buster Wolf: Cross got them pretty good and rattled at least, she didn’t expect to be clawed and I don’ think that would work twice. Definitely took the haughtiness out of her and cranked up her seriousness quite a bit.

“Let’s see how you deal with this…” As she said this, Meowstic’s eyes narrowed and her ears showed the hidden eye marks as she stared at me, I started to feel some pressure on me like what the Wobbuffets do with their Shadow Tag ability… right up until Dolly mentally kicked me. She had managed to bring down the Sigilyph, but was worried that more were coming and was a bit tired from some kind of heavy exertion. “A powerful protective bond… how queer. Well that’s going to put a slight damper on my plans to luxuriate myself on your body. ‘SIGH’ I guess we’ll have to take you in the hard way then!”

She started hovering off the floor and her eyes narrowed at me. Not only did I have to pay attention to the Meowstic in front of me, I had to make sure that she didn’t target Favela behind me again like she did a second ago.

If Psychic Types were anything like unicorns, then they needed concentration to keep using their power. I just had to keep my opponent off balance and incapable of actually putting up a fight.

I quick breathe and I entered Dancing Flame to boost up to her, she immediately went to Quick Guard and then fired a psychic blast. I didn’t hit her Quick Guard, I didn’t even need to dodge her Psychic Blast.

She confusedly had aimed at where I would be if I had hit her Quick Guard and opened my mouth to unleash a powerful point blank Howl Blast that slammed her into the far wall. Her body was visibly shaking from the blow and she was physically slowed down by the magical howl attack.

In this hallway, there was no dodging the attack for her and it might have caused my throat some discomfort, but it also made her reaction time slower.

“What kind of effect is this?” The Meowstic was mad that her body was moving slower, but she apparently didn’t need to move her body to attack quickly with her mind. “No matter, I do not need my body to move swiftly to beat you!”

Energy encased my body and I felt myself get raised into the air as she floated up and approached me, a crushing force appeared all around me and I could feel my body creaking.

Inhaling through my nose I spat a quick bark and the female Meowstic hovered back a bit to avoid what I just spat out.

“Really spitting at me, did you seriously think that would be so distracting to…AGH!?!” Triggering the explosive liquid magic of my bark buster in the middle of Meowstic’s sentence, it blasted upwards into her back and sent her flying at me in a small upwards arc. My left hoof slammed home into her face and she plowed into the floor and went flipping and skidding until she caught herself with her energy before she hit the wall.

She looked quite angry now and I was already charging for her, she smirked just as I reached her...

Narrowing my eyes at the sudden change in demeanor I quickly inhaled and exhaled.

“I hope you like to… Play Rough?” She leapt for me and with a blink I kicked backwards as a dust cloud built in front of me. “Darn it, I missed?! You even created an afterimage of yourself, I’m fairly impressed! Had you not slowed me down that would have worked.”

Now that I think I knew all of her moves, I think I knew how to deal with her.

I inhaled and then sharply exhaled, then bursts forward at the female Meowstic.

“Quick Guard!” As Meowstic said this I stopped short of actually hitting the barrier, wound up my hooves together covering them in thick hardened wool and then swung them down to slam them home into her body with a full moon hammer blow the moment her barrier move went down. “Oof… huh… nonono!”

She didn’t go flying away as she stuck fast to my wool. Continuing my swing I heaved her up and over to fall backwards into slamming the back of her skull jarringly into the floor as I released her. Following that I rolled so that my front right knee went into position on her chest to to pin her as I hardened the wool on my forehead. I brought my head back and slammed it down knocking the Meowstic out while she was still dazed.

Quick Guard as the name suggests is to stop a single attack, problem being the attack has to actually come quickly. Slowing down gave me the time to start a wind up for a full moon hammer blow time to hit right at the end of how long the barrier lasted.

“Pom!” Favela yelped as she quickly backpedaled from the evolved form of a Woobat that lashed out at her with its twisted tail, I raised my left hoof and fired a Thousand Spear and the bat monster evaded in the air, but they were moved further away from Favela at the least giving her some breathing space to fire off a Seed Bomb to blast it making it retreat further.

That wasn’t the only Pokémon coming at us, I saw several Jynx that were… oh my goodness!

I burst forward grabbed Favela and rolled us to the left and out of the way of flying icicles, they didn’t seem to care that the warden was even in the line of fire. Says a lot about how nasty she was when the prison guards didn’t care about her safety.

Hefting up Favela with my right leg, I hopped backwards as frigid blasts of snow and ice came at us. Favela whimpered in my leg as I jumped and clung to the wall and watched as the unconscious Female Meowstic was hit with the ice cold attacks. Right Grass type, weak to ice, fire, poison, flying and bugs… Favela was not a happy camper under this assault icy assault as I retreated.

Huh? Dolly can you hold out with Lit until we get there? We’re kind of under attack here… well that’s not good.

“We’re retreating!” I called out as I turned and leapt from the wall and kicked off another to turn the corner and started running as the Jynx gave chase, I don’t think they even bothered to check the female Meowstic.

“Good idea!” Favela whined out as I held her close and tight to my chest. I couldn’t tell if she was heavy or not because of the speed of fear and hysterical adrenaline.

Dolly and Lit were currently trying to hold the front using the desk and we had several Psychic Types trying to get in.

-Prison Reception, Dolly-

Lit couldn’t keep putting up electrified webs to block the way in, he was finally starting to run dry of energy. At least it kept the nose bats away, but they were slowly attacking their way through the webbing Lit put up one layer at a time.

My body was still sore after being crushed into the floor and the nearby Sigil thing was still out as much as the autistic cat we had webbed up and stuck upside down under the desk. Took a bit of doing to even roll the Sigil thing over to the corner and out of the crater I made with its body.

“Lit, you’re looking really tired there buddy, you need to take a break and let me handle things for a bit.” The pitiful squeak I received for trying to relieve him from having to push his tiny body was upsetting on a number of levels. Still he listened, climbed up onto my back and took a break immediately. That he can understand just about anything anyone say was a little odd. “Don’t worry Pom will be here soon enough with Favela… not that she isn’t bringing trouble with her.”

Also I should warn Pom that Sleepies and Hypno Toads were here, because I could see them trying to slowly tear their way through the webbing clogging the hallway in or out of this place.

-Sleepless Cellblock, Dazzle-

A wobbuffet came to a stop in front of Chimecho’s cell.

“Wobba wobb!” He stated angrily, I quickly lashed out with a fire lash and yanked him into the cell door, then I got my arm through the bars and slammed a closed fist down on their head. “Uffet!”

Yeah he was upset and despite my two free hits on him, he still managed to get free from my grasp easily, the bars were a bit hard to reach through. He turned around and prepared to say something only to get the large metal bird foot to the side of his skull that punted him up the cellblock.

I quickly made my way through the gap in the cells and exited out of Dodo’s cell, he warbled back at me in a chipper mood, before he jerked his head forward and seemed upset about something.

“What, what is it?” It seemed something had Dodo kind of upset, he pointed to me with a wing and then the way we were brought into the cellblock. “I… need to get moving?”

Dodo nodded frantically and pointed to himself with a metal wing and then to the cells.

“Right, I’ll leave this to you then!” Jumping to a nearby wall I clung to it and started climbing for the exit, it couldn’t be too hard to pass through the lighter security here.

-Lower Tier, Canard-

“What exactly are we doing back down here… and where are all the Sigilyph?” That’s a good question Sami, I think they were all most likely converging on Pom’s group or were preparing topside of the city to get into a huge fight with the rebels.

“It’s not a hunch if I’m right, so my answer is that Cotton has been doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes.” When we got to the airship docks I gained a grim grin on my beak. “Now tell me, how many airships were in the dock the last time we were here?”

“There were none, but…” There’s a large one here now Sami, doesn’t that invite some questions as there were still Sigilyph guarding the air around Cerebrum City. They wouldn’t just let one through on purpose without a good reason, it looked like it had weapons and it definitely wasn’t made of exploding wood. “If the airship docks aren’t in use, then what is that one doing here specifically?”

“You’ll find out soon enough, because we need to board that ship and take it.” I glanced at Sami. “Are you up for the challenge of piloting it?”

“Sure I’m up to the task.” To explain this to Sami how we got here might take a bit too long, but I’ll give her the abridged version. “Also you know I’ll follow you no matter what anyway, in for a digi credit in for a massive hailstorm of sewage being absolutely poured into some fans running full blast in my general direction. It wouldn’t be new to me Canard.”

“I’ve pieced a number of things together that Pom needs to know about at the soonest convenient time we can come across her… which will likely be topside if Cotton successfully helps her team at the jail.” Now for the rub of things. “I’m already of the opinion that Gilgamesh would have known all about our activities had we landed in Cerebrum and offloaded normally without the Sigilyph noticing us. Cotton destroyed the Ponyta Prowlers airship for a very good reason and I’m certain that reason involves this airship being here.”

The nearby Sigilyph were definitely ignoring anything happening with this airship.

I started towards the docked airship, there didn’t seem to be anyone around to attack us or even be aggressive to halting what we were about to do here. We both boarded the airship and quickly made our way to the cabin where we found a major piece of the entire puzzle of what Cotton has been doing waiting for us.

It was a bound and gagged green bird with eyes staring off into the distance.

“Hopefully this guy will answer all the questions I have about what’s been happening here.” I quickly removed the gag from the green bird’s beak and he still seemed to be staring off into space weirdly. “I think this might be the rebels missing major informant Xatu.”

“It’s a bit late of me to say this, but Cotton has already set in motion the destruction of the city. There’s nothing we can do to stop it.” The bird stated blandly after waiting for me to finish talking. “Also as you might surmise this airship arrived barely two hours ago, Cotton would give her regards if she isn’t doing everything she can to slow down Gilgamesh’s taking up his unbound form. We have a few hours at least before he does.”

“Which is why we’re here to hear what you know.” Pointing my left thumb at my chest, I then crossed my arms and glared at the guy. “So what was everything that Cotton did exactly?”

“My future sight is iffy, especially around those who have fates touch… lot of that going on around here. The Castle of Illusion can be saved, but at this point who would want to? It’s easier to look into the past than the future at times, because the past has already happened, barring interference from Celebi or Lord Dialga.” The green bird grumbled as we helped him stand and he put his wings over his body, his eyes still seem somewhat distant and vacant. “Cotton knows what she’s doing at least, but I really wish she hadn’t caught me. So let me give you a rundown of Cotton’s path through Cerebrum City since her arrival.”

“What’s this unbound form you’re talking about and what has Cotton been doing?” That was the most urgent in my mind.

“First introductions, I am Xatu, rebel oracle and… well… Cotton is a known entity to me and she’s trouble, but she’s not villainous.” Xatu was about to tell us something that could change the course of things drastically as far as our friends were concerned.

Cotton had been stalling things since we met her. The destruction of the Ponyta Prowlers ship was actually calculated and important as I thought. Using us as Decoys led to Cotton being able to kidnap Xatu. She hired the Mandibuzz from Yaksha who were already going to attack the warehouse and were otherwise going to do it anyway, Cotton gave them some incentive to fight even harder instead of running and cutting their losses. She went to the upper tier to destroy something that would have let Gilgamesh immediately break into his unbound form much sooner. She was the reason why Pom wasn’t captured by the force that knew that she’d be at the warehouse, the Mandibuzz were there to stall her from being caught with everyone else that were taken to the prison compound, thus changing Gilgamesh’s plans to luring her into the compound where he will have a number of his forces descend on her.

Cotton brought Xatu to the airship after it arrived and was left unattended, this airship was very special in the fact that it was the only one allowed to currently be in the surrounding airspace. The Sigilyph would not target it on Gilgamesh’s orders.

“So this airship belongs to Gilgamesh’s regime?” Right now Cotton was going to help Pom’s attempt at a successful jailbreak, Gilgamesh was focusing a quarter of his forces on attempting to crush Pom and her friends right then and there.

Gilgamesh knew what Pom was, what she could do and wanted her to, bizarrely enough, succeed at what she was currently doing and wanted her to fight her way to facing him. He wanted Pom to struggle, he was trying to force Pom to become a ‘designated hero’ as Xatu put it.

Failing to raise heroes strong enough to face the future, he wanted succeed in his own plans and give everyone a quick death.

“So he’s doing all of this because… of an ideal of survival of the strongest?” I asked in slight confusion.

“No, he wants to make a hero strong enough to survive the imminent disaster that is currently building around all of Ransei and possibly save the world by stopping it. Barring that he’s going to destroy absolutely everything if a hero that isn’t strong enough doesn’t rise up to stop him from succeeding his current plans, I’m of the opinion that Gilgamesh either wants to die or wants everyone else to die if they can’t stop him. Whatever the incoming disaster is, it’s not related to him and him entering his unbound form.” Xatu shook his head somberly, still wide eye glass look, but apparently this was normal for him. “I have divined, with the possible guidance of our god Arceus, that it involves something to do with the word ‘Moon’ and a cyclic civilization destroying eye. As for what a Hoopa’s unbound form is like, well Hoopa start out in bound form and can only enter their unbound form under certain special conditions. In this case Gilgamesh is going to use all the psychic energy he can grasp at once in Illusio and will turn into a nigh unstoppable massive giant with six floating arms with incredible destructive power. The object Cotton successfully destroyed in the upper tier before it could reach Gilgamesh was called a prison bottle.”

“What can we do from here?” This was a lot to take in, out of the fire of having to escape from that Skull Chaosdramon X getting out of the Digimon World and into the fire of dealing with godly continent shaking threats. Pom definitely needed all the help she could get.

“Fly this airship and crash it at an opportune moment, I can only feel out better timelines where that happens. Actually seeing the better possibilities has become quite impossible given the dangers to this world.” At least we know those dangers are coming Xatu. “I will aid you in combat as much as I am able, since it is no longer important to be able to see the future, it has become quite important that we fight for it with everything we have.”

-Cerebrum City, Upper Tier, Prison Reception, Pom-

Favela ran ahead and I let a bark blast fire off behind me, I can see why the Jynx worked well as part of the Wobble Wardens. Wobbuffet locks you in place and the Jynx can freeze or slow you down for a quick capture if they can’t knock you out by putting you to sleep. I vaguely see Drowzee, Hypno and several other psychic types slowly working their way through a mass of webbing and Dolly gave me a worried look.

“Stuck between a rock and a hard place… we need to deal with all the internal guards quickly.” I sighed as I turned around to face the incoming Jynx and shifted my wool. “Arrooo!”

-Between Sleepless Cellblock and Reception, Dazzle-

“Pom?” Hold on, I’ll be there soon. It was going to take Dodo a while to free enough Pokemon.

“At the tone of my chime, it’s butt-kicking time!” The Chimeco said as they followed me, we already dealt with the guards in the Sleepless Cellblock and all we needed was time for Dodo to free up more Pokemon there.

-Sleepers Cellblock, Ocellus-

Pom?

I got another Araquanid up, so that makes two, my progress was exceedingly slow and there were still a whole bunch of sleeping bodies that aren’t moving. I really needed help, but… if Pom needed help… things were quite dire.

It’s like when changelings cocooned up ponies, but at least we feed nutrients to the ponies bodies when we were still acting as parasites… some of these bodies looked to be unhealthy and malnourished. Like they were being forced to sleep to… oh… they are.

“Go, help Pom and the others!” The Araquanid slowly set out, they weren’t fast, but they could hit hard and if Pom was entering ‘wooly wolf’ mode, she obviously needed the help.

-Dark Type Cellblock, Shanty-

Dodo be telling me that he would be able to fly better soon, I not be having an idea what he means by that, but I be excited at the very least to have a familiar that can fly with me on its back.

I be hearing Pom’s howl as it echoed throughout the prison spooking the Psychic Types that worked here and they started to send more units Pom’s way.

“We need to be moving faster, can some of you be attacking the guards before they be sending more out after our friends holding the entrance.” At least four units worth of Dark Types were being free on all levels and as soon as I opened the next cell Quetal came out.

“Good to see you Shanty, but as you just said Pom’s in trouble and I’ve got to move to lend my aid. Keep freeing the Dark Types here.” He be looking healthy enough to be fighting, he be leaping towards the nearby wall and started using his clawed feet and claws arms to climb up and across the ceiling towards the entrance.

The dog Pokémon that be calling themselves Mightyena and Houndoom nodded to each other, then they be firing off spheres of darkness into some of the guards. This immediately turned their attention to us.

Another dark sphere slammed into a couple of Woobat from below and the tall biped that be able to disappear in plain sight be shouting at them.

“Prison break!” The bipedal fox like being shouted and this alerted all the other Dark Types who can’t be seeing us to figure out ways to start helping, they be waking up to his voice. “Try to figure out ways out of your cells, avoid Fairy Type attacks, protect the cell breaker at all costs and hit them hard!”

He be quickly disappearing from sight, despite the area he was in being well lit. Several guards launched attacks his way, but they didn’t be hitting anything. I guess I was being the ‘cell breaker’ then.

Bentley said this might be turning into chaos, he wasn’t being wrong. Now if only I didn’t have to be doing this one at a time!

339. Mental Compound Fracture, Pt. 5.

Author's Note

Again I'm still healing off a Cellulitis problem... most of it has cleared up.

I apologize for the Morpeko's dialogue.

339. Mental Compound Fracture, Pt. 5.

-Yet another moment with the dark heroic unicorn, Oleander-

“I swear, these last few dimensions we’ve been to have been kind of too consistent.” I was upset and rightfully so. “All these dimensions have the same thing in common, what would normally be games are now something with ridiculous stakes!”

“Yep and we’re currently in the dimension where everything is dodgeball this time.” Buttina said as she bounced a dodgeball off a nearby brick wall covered in cracks with her hoof. “There’s the dimension with the fun monster based card game where everything revolves around it…”

“Yeah, I got my own card in that dimension and everything, even made a deck of skeletal monsters!” Well Fred was happy that he had his own card and deck apparently. At least Fred has his hobbies aside from trying to eat the souls of the innocent, bagels really put a stop to him when he gets rowdy. “The Lost Kingdoms universe was also interesting, I mean turning things into cards created from killing actual monsters… I have a few metal skeletons from that universe I can summon for fun.”

“There’s the dimension where everything was centered on a bloody version of Football called Blood Bowl. The dimension where everything was centered on soccer but there were all kinds of powers ups around to cause all sorts of weird things to happen, the mushroom people seemed to enjoy it. The dimension centered on Football insistently being called Soccer and then Soccer being called Football. We eventually got out of those dimensions, but the one with martial arts soccer was fun.” I liked that last one, all kinds of elements being used to fight with a soccer ball. “Why is it so many dimensions we’ve been to lately features games as universally important things? It boggles the mind that something children can play would be life threatening and world shaking, that hopscotch dimension really shouldn’t have existed for as long as it did.”

“Yeah, I liked destroying the hopscotch one too…” Wrex said with a happy sigh. “Oh, what about that dimension with those flying rocket cars and the giant soccer balls that explode when they enter the goals? Kind of want a bloodier version of that sport back on Tuchanka.”

“Out of the fifty racing dimensions we’ve visited, that one and the one with the Acceleracers and the evil vehicle driving robots were alright.” Anyone who made hopscotch a matter of national security deserves to be destroyed in my opinion. “Still can’t get over the fact that a universe for ‘GO FISH’ exists and the less said about how long we got stuck in the ‘game of UNO’ world the better. Those UNO games we played lasted for days… it didn’t take us long to figure out that we had to play until we finished the game, that universe enforces playing the game to the end.”

I was haunted by the dimension where UNO was the most played game in existence… it was horrifying how a single game of UNO had been going on for more than a year straight. We were lucky that the game we played only lasted a few days, the one that’s been going for a year straight was someone else’s problem.

“Let’s be fair here, nothing could ever get as dumb as that hopscotch dimension that no longer exists… with extreme prejudice…” Buttina used her magic to lift a dodgeball that had fire symbol on it, her jersey looked nice on her and she was the sportier of the two of us. “Ready to pelt faces with painful rubber mayhem?”

“YOU BETTER BELIEVE I AM!” Fred had multiple tentacles all wielding several dodgeballs.

“I agree with where this is going!” Wrex stated also wearing a jersey and was also holding a dodgeball, one with what was definitely a nuclear symbol on it. I gave him a flat look and he just grinned at me.

“The stakes better not be as ridiculous as the dimension where everything was centered on battle tops, including the technology. Which explained so much of the weirdness in that dimension.” I grumbled because that world might have been interesting, but the strategy was mostly build a top and put your soul behind the crest that have spirit beasts embedded into them. Aside from a few unique setups, there wasn’t much to the magical spinning top world. “Still, can we eventually to go back to that planet with the cute little battle flowers and giant vicious monsters?”

“Sure, maybe we can even find a space dog for Pom there, don’t think she has one of those yet.” Fred stated with a hint of humor.

-Ransei Region, Illusio, Cerebrum City, upper tier, Prison Compound Reception Room, Pom-

I slowly inhaled through my nose to slow everything down and think.

The Jynx were not nearly as fast as I was, but they would soon be on us in force and the entrance was being contested by Drowzee and Hypno breaking through a generally strong webbing barrier set up by Lit. There were also all the other monsters that I knew were surrounding the prison. Getting out of here alive was going to take a lot of effort, hopefully Shanty, Dodo or Ocellus were doing something to make said effort easier.

Favela looked like she was a shivering from all the cold, plants don’t do well in winter and Grass Types had the associated weakness. Ice types had a weakness to fire, so I could very well hit those Jynx with a Spark Burst combo Dolly and I can do. The question being, did Dolly have the magic or mental fortitude for that in this moment?

Dolly was apparently thinking at my speed in this instant and answered at the speed my mind was going, that had to be subconscious because there was no way Dolly could do this consciously without effort as her body wouldn’t handle the Dancing Flame’s side effects. Said side effects nearly killed me in her world when added on top of using Shock-Ram a second time.

Shock-Ram was so easy to use and comprehend, but the side effects as soon as it was over were nasty to my continued chances of living a long fruitful life… yeah at this rate I would barely had three years left to live if I had to do it again.

As smart and capable as Dolly was, she was still quite frail like I was without my wool absorbing most or all the damage for me. Her body was as fit as it was going to get and she was mostly like that before I met her.

I really wouldn’t want to use that move a third time, not in this situation and not until I had a very good reason to overclock my body to what would be a certain death. Barely survived the second use, which turned out exponentially worse. I’m not ready to make that kind of ‘final sacrifice’ yet, goodness knows if that will push me to full Chrysomallus status and I would have a major problem keeping that under control if I fully turned.

Lit wasn’t going to be any help, he was out of energy to fight. The guy was a little trooper, but he can’t give much more than he obviously already had. He needed some time to recover some energy and possibly needs to be struck by a lightning bolt or chew on some static charged wool socks, maybe eat a berry or two.

In the next second, Dolly and I acted as one as when I asked her permission. She didn’t even give it a single thought, not a single thought before she agreed to do whatever I needed of her in that moment. It was terrifying what kind of power I could have over her, almost as much as what power I let her have over me. Our trust in each other was bordering on the level of being completely ridiculous for the amount of time we’ve known each other, but not entirely unfounded as we bonded quite well with one another.

She leapt at me holding her board in front herself while grimacing, my left hoof flashed out and struck it with a thunderous force. Dolly barely had time to prevent herself from slamming into the wall or corner to the left of the entrance with her momentum control, but I could feel the impact had recharged her very limited magical pool to bursting and I could vaguely feel something new and strange about Dolly.

I’d have to investigate what was new with Dolly later, I turned my head and looked to the passage way I came from, the approaching Jynx were almost on us. Dolly could see what I saw, even if she couldn’t see it personally from her current position. Dolly could still direct her magic using my line of sight to aim right where I needed her to.

“Aerora!” Two horizontal tornadoes formed and immediately combined into a massive hallway filling one to buffet the Jynx and push them back slightly.

I was relying on Pokémon being horrendously sturdy for what I was about to do, Dolly and did this with ‘Aero’ quite a few time, but in this moment I wanted us to go full blast with ‘Aerora’.

I exhaled, raised my front legs and solemnly slapped them together in under a second. A spark left the wool claws from above my hooves into the roaring winds that took the spark and ignited it with impressive force. The hallway became a one way conflagration entirely directed at the Ice Types, I was relying on Pokémon being quite sturdy here.

Our abilities were incredibly complimentary, though I’m quite sure that nobody thought the campfire lighting technique could be used quite like this. Though I’m fairly aware some cows ignite their farts for the fun of it. Trying so very hard to not think about Arizona’s mother right now… Maggie certainly seemed like a cow that would do that, she lit enough dynamite sticks that way whenever I saw her that I was traumatized anytime I even so much as heard her voice.

The time from meeting up with Dolly to igniting an entire hallway of horrific amount of fire, barely three seconds had went by since I arrived in the reception room area. I looked at Favela and continued to pat her gently on the back, trying to comfort her. This was all a little bit much for the bush goat and I was glad she was accepting my comforting and not panicking.

I stood here for a solid minute as the Hypno and Drowzee hacked away at the webbing separating us from them getting into the reception room from the bottleneck of the entrance hallway.

Okay, Pom, what outrageous thing would I have to do this time, what more of myself could I compromise in the name of staying alive? I’ve been pushing my meekness to the very back of my mind, alongside the anxiety Ocellus could obviously feel from a fair distance away, but in face of danger meekness was not going to help nor was worrying about the lives of those who could care less about me or mine. I still definitely cared about theirs though, doesn’t mean I won’t maul or cripple, I’m drawing the line at actually causing an intelligent being to die by my hooves with the exception of possibly Gilgamesh.

I would really rather become a beast, than let the Chrysomallus heritage take me. Unfortunately I couldn’t become a full beast, I had near full control of my bestial side. Why couldn’t I just be myself anymore?

After everything was said and done, the mental scars might never heal… no matter how much help my physical body might get from all the ways to heal this world could throw at me. You can’t heal or seal a mental scars like you can a biological wound.

Focus Pom, dour thoughts later, a lot of people are counting on me whether I know them or not… kind of wish that wasn’t the case here. I kind of put myself into this position because I have a responsibility to Ocellus and Smolder, not to mention my other friends who were also currently trapped in this prison.

The conflagration I created died down and I saw five barely breathing badly scorched blackened bodies, only one of the Jynx among the six were still active… because they flash froze themselves into a block of ice.

There was barely any ice left covering the Jynx, but they quickly freed themselves from it with only some minimal harm from the heat and looked ready to continue attacking as she carefully stepped around the body of her fallen comrades while glaring at me.

What to do about the immediate problem of the Hypno and Drowzee, I couldn’t tap Dolly to keep using up her energy to use magic constantly as it was taxing on her head to use too much magic in a short amount of time.

“Favela… prepare yourself for what’s incoming, stay with Dolly after I push the Drowzee and Hypno back.” I was a responsible adult and was willing to take responsibility for what comes next when I gave Dolly my idea. “Dolly, on me, now!”

“You do realize this is going to drive you crazy right? It certainly got to me.” Dolly mumbled as the Jynx prepared an attack. “Well I’ll still be somewhat capable of fighting after this, hope you know what you’re doing Pom… HASTE!”

I was the target of Dolly’s spell.

I felt it surround me, my blood was thrumming in my body I felt the world slow down, I added Dancing Flame as the magic washed over me to the effect. Instead of deep breathing I used a steady breathing method, my every normal breathe was now performing Dancing Flame instead of using quick powerful bursts.

I felt the world become incredibly slow, it almost seemed like it stopped. Speed had always been one of my best attributes… now I was faster than the world.

In Dolly’s sight I could see she was imagining a red clock floating above my head and the hands on said clock were moving slowly at first and then began spinning wildly representing the speeding up of the target compared to everything else.

I could feel the aggression building up in me, I tried not to let loose like Dolly does while under the effects of her body suddenly being doubled in capability of being able to move, think or react to her environment. My mind was more solid than Dolly’s under the effects of Haste, I have five minutes and I should not let the effects become addictive to me. It felt like there was fire in my veins and it felt so wonderful, terrifying and impossible, the power that came from this bit of magic.

The magic despite how incredible it was, was really quite simple in what it does, it does not age the body or speed up biological processes… magic could ignore a few things like that. Wherever this spell comes from, it was made with the very intention of being used in combat without the side effects of the user aging to death rapidly… the magic succeeded in making one feel so alive. The main magic effects also don’t cause any strain or backlash personally, it made me wonder how anyone could have made such ancient magic that could be passed down by certain individuals just seeing it, because I doubt Dolly knowing how to use this spell was anywhere near close to the word normal.

First three seconds were spent with my wolf shaped wool paws clawing up the Jynx to weaken it, I heard the last of the webbing barrier left by a weak Lit rip and I did one last thing to the Jynx by biting it in the arm to cripple it. Within the next second I was already bearing down on the six Drowzee and Hypno trying to enter the reception and had just broken through… they couldn’t react to my presence in time or the series of rapid fire barks that blast into them as I charged forward. The Bark Blast Barrage was going to make my throat sore for a bit, but I was going to be using Wolf-Fang-Hoof style to wear down the number of active guards outside and within the compounds walls.

The more I took down in the next five minutes, the more chances for the others to escape. I could only hope Favela and Dolly would be enough for the Jynx. My muscles were going to tear badly from my wool boosting my natural capabilities, but I didn’t need my defensive ability if I was moving fast enough to not get hit.

I did one small shift in my wool, I streamlined it like I did when I fought that creature on the airplane… I kind of copied this capability directly from it. Right now I needed a sufficient lack of air resistance and I knew how to basically become frictionless…

This power, ‘haste’, it was quite maddening in how it was driving my mind to frenzy! Hopefully I could mangle enough guards to not be in trouble when the magical effects wear off.

-Dolly-

I didn’t even see Pom move, within a blink she was gone and I was perceiving two very different things. The world almost at a stop from Pom’s perspective and the world as I saw it in real time.

Pom was moving far faster than she had ever moved before, her muscles being enhanced by her wolf wool thing, her Dancing Flame and my Haste added on top of that… she was impossible to see. It’s kind of like those statues that only moved when you weren’t looking at them in that one horror story, so fast it’s as if they didn’t exist if you so much as blinked. Also you would be quite dead if you blinked… too bad this would last five minutes and Pom was going to be hurting afterwards.

That’s when the strange biped with the weird lips and long hair came into the room, bleeding from a series of claw wounds across the front of her body. They certainly looked jinxed, I can understand why they were called that.

The feminine monsters right arm looked to have been bitten into at the elbow joint and crushed rendering that limb useless, I wonder if that was the ‘haste’ or just naturally Pom being protective. She turned towards us and was about to attack when a whip of flames slapped her across the face making her wail in pain and another wrapped around her good arm.

The jinxed could barely react when Dazzle pulled it to her and was already on the jinxed in an instant, not giving it any chance to fight back by immediately going into violently biting and scratching the other monster without any of that energy stuff going on.

Dazzle quickly overpower the Jinxed with relative ease.

-Outside the prison compound, Kenshin-

I had arrived and stood on the edge of the building to get a scope of the situation, the compound was practically swarming with… what the?!

An explosion from the entrance of the prison to the left of the warden’s offices and the guard’s barracks, multiple yellow bodies were flying covered in claw marks and I vaguely felt the air shift. I could feel heightened aggression surrounding the flying bodies in that instance, I could barely see what was clawing them.

It was moving faster than any eye could possibly perceive, but my mind could capture the front portion of the image as it pass through the air leaving a trail of after images. As if the being were a ghost with how fast they were moving and didn’t have hind legs.

My eyes widened, the form was like that of a wolf… it was not a Pokémon though. I watched as the inside of the compounds courtyard was thrown into complete chaos, said area was positively covered in various types guards quickly became dispatched by something moving at an incredible speed. I’m pretty sure the world didn’t even know it should be creating multiple sonic booms in response. Whatever it was, it slid through the air as if frictionless and at speeds most Pokémon couldn’t comprehend. Only a Latias and Latios would be hard pressed to fight something that moves like that as their combat speeds were not the same as their high altitude flying speeds and they flew by Cerebrum every once in a while, maybe even visited for a quick stop for food.

I watched for ten seconds as the guards went flying every which way, but none of them were being killed…

Whoever this was, despite their current level viciousness, they had a lot of burdens on their heart. I could sympathize with them greatly. As a member of the Ralts line I am in tune with the feelings of others. This was not the power of a great beast, this was the movements of pure desperation to take down as many of the guards as possible within what I assume to be a time limit. The guards that were about to flood into the prison to keep things contained were caught flat footed and were trying to fight back, the keyword here was ‘trying’ if it could even be called that.

The being attacking them was so fast that the Wobbuffet couldn’t even get a Shadow Tag lock on them. Some were trying Destiny Bond, but that was proving entirely ineffective for some reason and normally that would work on anything that could take them out in one blow or multiple consecutive blows.

There were just as many of Gilgamesh’s forces outside the prison, hundreds of them.

My Sharpness was needed here, but I need not pull my blade out… I didn’t want to use it quite yet. However my blade was not needed when my arms were blades in themselves.

Life Dew, Fury Cutter, Psycho Cut and… Sacred Sword… a move I could only do with the blade at my hip to use my most devastating techniques. Those were all the moves I needed to see the next twenty four hours through.

Whether I lived or died, I was going to liberate Gilgamesh’s head from his body or at least set it up that someone could end his reign of terror once and for all.

“So you came here… well I can tell you right now, you better hurry if you want to be saving the wooly one. She’s a good cook and seemed like a nice homemaker. If she wasn’t being forced to be a fighter right now she’d be really good friend to have, but even she can’t fight that many Pokémon for long and I’m sure she’s aware of that and is going full tilt. She’s going to slow down eventually and she’ll be surrounded when she does. Her body can’t take such a strain she’s putting it through in my ex-per-tease based opinion.” I looked to the Murkrow who perched next to me and her eyes were darting about, was she actually following the path of the flying bodies or could she see the movements of the creature attacking the guards? “That right there would be the creator of Team Harmony… she’s more terrifying than I would have first thought and I watched her cripple the most elite team of Hypno Gilgamesh could bring against her and she’s not even doing what she did then. She’s not even tapping into that… whatever it was she did when she brought to life an entire pack of beasts she can apparently portray just by herself with scary amount of accuracy. I’m going inside to get scope on things, help that normally sweet lady Pom out front will you?”

With that the Murkrow took off and quickly flew for the entrance of the prison after apparently seeing something of interest.

Cotton…

I leapt from the ledge to the streets and stopped myself with my psychic ability before I hit the ground, I charged up a Fury Cutter on the edges or both my blade like arms. Those who followed me here better not draw trouble, for I would be trying to draw as much of it as I could away from them and to myself as I could.

“Go help your friends!” I called out behind me, then I charged forward towards the nearest Sigilyph deftly avoiding its blasts as I closed in and with one, leaping, sweeping lash and flash in the air the Sigilyph fell to the ground.

My heart was still too kind, despite being an assassin that had killed many… I could not bring myself to murder in cold blood those who have sworn themselves to the throne regardless of who is sitting on it. I needed to harden it for the final battle ahead.

“Come, show me that your resolve is worth all the suffering you’ve caused in Gilgamesh’s name!” I screamed out loud, drawing the opposing forces outside the prison to myself as I charged for them with glowing arms.

There were hundreds and I was but one Fighting and Psychic Type, unfortunately for all of my opponents involved I was the strongest member among the rebels. I had to help the Rescue Team Leader secure the prison!

-Prison Compound, Reception Room, Dazzle-

Okay the guard was taken care of and… what happened here? I looked to Favela and, after seeing what I just did, Favela ran up to me and hugged me with her hooves while whimpering. I gently tried to comfort her, she had apparently lost some of her mental faculties due to the psychic energy in the air.

“Can we go save Shanty now? We kind of left her behind in the Dark Type Cellblock.” Favela asked quietly, showing that she was still capable of keeping her mind focused.

I calmly ran my claws down her back, stroking her leaves to get her to stop panicking. It was kind of hard to remember that she was a kid like Shanty, what with how brave she was throughout everything we’ve been through thus far.

I looked to Dolly who seem exhausted, but she gave me a hearty grin and a wagging tail and pumped a paw. She made sure Lit was resting comfortable as she came over to me and motioned towards the Dark Type Cellblock.

I nodded and we were going to both set out that way when we heard two noises from the third Cellblock entrance and turned to see two Araquanid looking at us curiously.

“One of you follow me, the other holds this room!” I called out while waving my right claw. If they were free, then the Sleepers Cellblock was being dealt with already. Possibly Ocellus’s doing if I had to guess, one of the two of us who weren’t captured.

Lit had done so much already, his spirit was still quite willing even as he sat silently on Dolly’s back incapable of much else as he was out of energy. Not an easy thing to accomplish as Pokemon always had lots of energy, but the smaller the Pokémon the more they needed to pace their energy usage and Joltik were not exactly known for their efficiency compared to the amount of raw lighting they could ingest.

There was no argument, just the nodding of the two Araquanid as they surveyed the destruction left in what was obviously Pom’s wake. One started towards the Dark Type Cellblock to aid in whatever the situation was there with me as we moved down the hallways.

Pom could only do so much, it wouldn’t be long before she tore herself apart… again. I remembered how well she fared after her fight with Cu Chulainn using her wolf form, as Geoff had proven… that alteration to her appearance was not unstoppable.

I had wondered why Geoff beating her was so soothing to Pom at the time, but now I can kind of understand that she needed the comfort of being beaten into the ground. That she had not stopped being herself was important to Pom, but I didn’t have the full context aside from the word ‘Chrysomallus’ to go off of. Being defined as a Chrysomallus was apparently life altering to a major degree, kind of like how I’m now defined somewhat by being a Salazzle of an unusual size.

Still don’t know what she did when she went total beast on those Hypno in the forest, I just know that swallowing flesh or blood was not something she should naturally be capable of doing without getting sick. Still, Pom was of mind to not kill any of them despite crippling them.

Odd thing to be thinking of right now as I heard fighting ahead of us.

It’s hard to find friends who will accept everything about you, but being hugged by Favela was an oddity of trust I don’t think I’ve quite fully earned. Favela still came with Dolly and me, with the Araquanid bringing up the rear as it trundled along.

I didn’t know what Pom was doing right now, but we had to hurry before she burned herself out.

-Alleyway, Mundo-

Kenshin was quite brave, but he was also being quite a madman charging directly into a horde of dangerous Pokémon. He was showing his bravery as he tore into the numbers as a one Pokémon war effort and he was doing quite well in the short term.

“Any words of wisdom here Mundo?” Shine asked patiently.

“Yes, the heart or willpower is sometimes stronger than the body, perhaps even unbreakable in some situations.” I stated with a certainty. “I am here after all in a city surrounded by Psychic Types, am I not brave for not cowering at the thought of having to fight at least a few of them?”

“You are at that Lucha Mundo.” Shine said with bright smile that could light a darkened world as much as her belly would.

“I hope Mr. Thunderbeak is alright…” Cleffa stated as the Morpeko and Leavanny poked their heads out of the alleyway.

“Wait a moment… what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in safety or evacuating to such?” I asked of the Leavanny.

“Nowhere is exactly safe at the moment.” The male Leavanny said wisely. “Besides we owe those three other Morpeko trapped in there our functional sanity. We are not traditionally fighters, but we know how to turn work into fighting. We want to at least help out here before we, heh, ‘bug’ out.”

“You do a service to the species from which you come, for never have I ever seen braver souls in the face of such numbers.” I said confidently while standing tall.

“Wish I had your kind of spirit, but yes we’ll fight for our friends here and in Binder Blade forest.” The female Levanny shivered and rubbed her arms with her scythe like leaves. “We’re partly Bug Types, we shouldn’t cower from a fight with some fancy Psychics even if we don’t have the numbers to win a large scale battle.”

With the several hundred guards around the compound converging on two separate things, we could slip through in the chaos to get into the compound and lend assistance where needed.

“At most I think we only need to win multiple smaller scale battles truthfully, you will act in a medical capacity to those in need if the conditions in the prison are as bad as we think they are.” I would protect them with my very life, the Morpeko would too as they were here to rescue everyone we feasibly could.

-Prison Compound, Dark Type Cellblock, Shanty-

“Just be keeping them off of me please!” The entirety of the Dark Type Cellblock was being in chaos, a number of Dark Types had been taken down in flashes of pink or other strange attacks, but I’ve freed enough that they were starting to overrun the guards.

“Do you need an army? I can get you one, help me get to the Sleeper Cellblock… I can assure you that none of the sleepers like Gilgamesh.” The grey cat Pokémon called an Espurr stated with a wary weak look as the two Dark Types with him supported him and kept him standing. “The Purrloin here can’t fight if they are constantly holding me up and I have a good idea of what you’re doing here… the rebels finally came for us… there’s hope…”

I did not want to be correcting him and simply nodded, I was being a rebel enough as a pirate. No need to be disappointing him with the truth.

“Why can’t you be asking the other Dark Types for help?” A number of them were busy holding off the guards for me as I did my best to unlock more cells. The locks were barely difficult to me anymore and I was taking five to ten second minimum to open a cell now once I reached them.

“I was a warden of this prison… they are not liable to listen to me or want to help me. Though they are not inclined to hurt me because I’m as bad off as they were.” That and everyone else be too busy fighting the guards.

“Go on, we’ve got this. We can take things from here.” The tall bipedal fox Dark Type stated as he appeared from ripples in the air. “Just send back some help.”

I nodded and carefully escorting the great bipedal cat being helped by two purple and cream spotted furred cats.

When we be getting back to the top of the Cellblock and the entrance, I be getting some good news.

“Shanty!” Favela stated with happiness, though she didn’t look to be too good in the head. The Psychic energy must be getting to her.

I was about to move forward when I found myself stuck in place.

“Wobba!” One of the Wobble Wardens be catching me only to be taken down a second later by Quetal slamming a swinging kick into it that toppled it. It is being knocked out when the back of its head be slamming into the floor.

“The fighting here is getting pretty bad, but I think we’ll make it out of here.” He wasn’t the only one that showed up with a cheerful grin, behind him were the three Morpeko. One of the Morpeko was notably transformed.

“’FLEEEP FLEEP FLEEPING FLEEP FLEEP,’ THIS ‘BLEEP, Euphemism for a corkscrew and a bottle opener used quite incorrectly’ and wreck some face while we’re at it!” Yep, a Morpeko would make for a good pirate in a cursing contest, but they were being a bit too small for my intended crew.

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?!” One of the appalled Dark Types among the fighting the Psychic Type guards yelled.

“OF COURSE I DON’T FLIPPING KISS MY MOTHER WITH MY ‘a visual scene a nice grassy knoll with the wind blowing through it’ it’s so filthy that ‘insert favorite metaphor for a baseball bat here’ and then I’ll cauterize the wound!” Quite a few Dark Types shivered and even the prison guards stopped their fighting to stare at the lone Morpeko that had jumped up on the railing to let loose another tirade of expletives. “Let’s ‘BLEEPING’ go get this Espurr to the Sleeper Cellblock already!”

A number of guards had the same thought when they heard Espurr and Sleeper Cellblock in the same sentence and paled visibly at seeing the two Purrloin propping up the Espurr quickly carrying him out of sight through the entrance.

The guards all immediately started ignoring the Dark Types and began targeting the group at the cellblocks with everything they had to go after and stop Espurr as the collected Team Harmony group fled for the hallway.

-Zoroark-

“Don’t let the guards go after them, keep them occupied!” I was the undisputed leader of the freed Dark Types now and they all knew that the guards had a priority to keep the Espurr from doing what I think he was going to do.

It would be glorious!

341. Perilous Psycho-Pom-p.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Slowly moving over Eastern Illusio, Cerebrum City, Top Tier, approximately twelve hours later, Rising Sun, Dolly-

The prison had been fully broken, Espurr had gotten his medical attention and as for Pom, no matter how much anyone tried to talk to her she wouldn’t say a thing. Also all the forces sent to the prison that were defeated or didn’t retreat were carted to the teleporter and passed over to Mental Licks on the ground to hold onto until all this was said and done with.

The only thing she told me was this the other night.

“Be Ready.”

Had some ideas of what was about to happen to Pom, but I had no idea how to be ready for it as the rebel army had gathered. The Sane Sake guy had taken the middle tier teleporter and the gothic KO Kangaroo had gathered Kenshin’s forces up on top of the floating city. Now the both of them were here with Benchin’ who was wielding a sword with the blade on the wrong side of it, if he could make that work more power to him. Shanty seemed fairly interested in Mention’s sword though.

The top of the city was like a massive park with dilapidated stone structures, grass, trees and stuff, hard to imagine we were in the sky on a floating island more than a mile up.

Terrifying to even think about really, this was all well beyond my little mind and keeping up with everything was a bit much. My family was only approaching animalistic, my instincts were still definitely animal and something had my hackles raised about this upcoming fight.

I’m happy to have a new spell to toy around with, Pom watched me use it a few times and even kept me topped off to practice ‘Gravity’ as much as I could before things came to a head today. It’d be exceedingly effective against flying targets or stopping large targets at least.

We were facing Gilgamesh’s forces and that was a lot of Sigil things hovering in front of where the entrance to the Castle of Illusion was said to be. There was also those Sleepies, the Hip Toads, the whiffle bats and a number of crazy other monsters in the way, there were hundreds of psychos up here gathering on top of the small floating continent that housed an entire city for one huge battle.

Dodo would be carrying Shanty into the fight, Ocellus would be staying at the back to watch the wagon and prepare to help Smolder recuperate… the rebels apparently gathered and gave us a lot of gems and jewels for Smolder to recover after Pom was done with freeing her from Gilgamesh.

Again the scale of all this was daunting. I was still a very small teenage dog from Camden Town, sure I thought my world was huge, but this… this was going farther than I ever thought it would. I could only hope we were still on the right side of things.

I glanced at Pom and she looked back at me as we started moving forward alone with the rest of the rebel army at our backs forming up to start fighting Blunderbus’s forces. Lit and the other companions were preparing to be backup, but they would watch the wagon or join in on the fight at their own judgements.

The wagon was the fallback point and it had fresh supplies in case we got too injured to keep fighting, there were also outposts set up by Kenshin to do similar to the wagon. Gilgamesh’s forces were a bit low on supplies since the pink Money elephants started supplying the rebels from the warehouse we fought those vultures in.

Speaking of fighting forces, the Rebels were joined by the Dark guys we liberated from the prison and all those sleeping guys joined in with the rebels too bolstering their forces.

A pair of flapping wings caused me to look up as a large shadow passed overhead, the shadow revealed a very large Orange dragon with purple frills and a bone chilling roar that shook me to the core.

This was Smolder?! The dragon was hovering above use and looking down on the both of us.

“Everyone… I’ll handle this!” Pom shouted solemnly as she got up from where she was knocked onto her butt by the roar and strode forward without question, quite a few Pokémon were staring at her as if she was crazy. That she said she would actually fight something had a number of them worried for her safety. “Dolly… watch my back, make sure no one interferes. Cotton told me something important that you’ll need to keep in mind for this fight.”

Oh right that soft black bird, she had a very heated discussion with Pom before we went to sleep some eight or so hours ago, wouldn’t know the exact time because I couldn’t exactly sleep in anymore when I was waking up whenever Pom did.

Pom had been fairly angry about something, but really didn’t seem to be taking it out on the crow for all the trouble she’s caused us up to this point. I knew Pom could be very forgiving, but what did Polyester tell her? She hasn’t given me that information yet.

Pom stared up at the dragon that landed in front of her, the impact with the ground sent out a massive blast of wind, uprooting some grass and the nearby trees swayed while threatening to fall over.

Smolder was now glaring down at us and I certainly felt small compared to her in this instance, hard to believe that this was the little dragon we knew. She was even bigger than the space incident, what had that Gills-a-breathe guy done to her exactly to make her this large?

She transmitted me the information Cotton gave her, I tried very hard not to react to it… but my eyes still narrowed in consternation. I looked around and then focused on Pom’s back, so that’s… no seriously… really?!

“If you can help, then do so however and whenever you can Dolly, I don’t plan on dying today and I plan to at least get one scratch on Gilgamesh even if it’s a fleeting victory. Just don’t get hit by anything Smolder okay? Pay attention to our surroundings for me.” Even if the city was soon going to fall out of the sky, and it was probably for the best at this point, hundreds of monsters were gathering for this fight and I could already tell Pom was waiting for something. “I’m very well aware that I won’t be able to actually do much more than that to Gilgamesh if I don’t pace myself today.”

Gilgamesh appeared, he grinned at Pom, Kenshin, the Chrysalis team, our hamster friends, just about anyone else involved in this huge fight and even glanced at this own army.

“Oh look at that, it’s almost time for me to ascend and break the seal on my form… it’s rather unfortunate that it’s been delayed for so long due to some ‘unforseen’ elements. I can see you’re not happy with what I’ve done to your little friend, well it’s too bad that heroes sometimes have to do things they don’t want to.” When Gilgamesh said this, I couldn’t help but feel a large twitch coming from Pom. Still, Pom continued to look indifferent even with that huge grin on Gilgamesh’s face and stared at Smolder. “You intend to fight a dragon all by yourself. I’m somewhat surprised, didn’t think you’d have the guts. Well I hope you, Kenshin and the rest will put on quite a marvelous show for me before I truly show you how pathetic you’re all being when I ascend by breaking out of this bound form. See you at the castle if you survive all of this, ciao!”

With that the grinning guy disappeared and Pom started to walk forward and told me to wait behind her a distance, her hooves clopped as they stuck the stone pathway as she walked up to the massive Smolder.

Again, Smolder was far larger than she had been when we did that whole space base thing and Pom thought she could take that on?! Pom wasn’t wearing her bell or anything else, it was notable when she rubbed at the place the bell would usually be that her wool would usually protect. She only had a spear she got from when Gilgamesh attacked us in the three canyon state area place.

She planted the spears butt in the ground with her left hoof and waited, I could feel her wool rippling somewhat in anticipation for the start of the battle. The spear looked sturdy enough, I wouldn’t know anything about weapons, but apparently Pom does even if she’s not an expert in using them.

Smolder inhaled and let loose a powerful blast of flames and quite a few people watched as Pom calmly held up her right leg, a shining gold glow deflected the fire creating the illusion of a barrier as the fire was repelled from her form as she held her right leg aloft and over her head without moving.

I’ve heard several times that Pom was practically immune to magical attacks. The dragons from the world she came from was basically breathed magic, so Pom was probably safe since she could reflect it with her wool without harm. I was a little less worried that Pom was about to be fried mutton and more worried that she couldn’t even actually scratch Smolder’s body, given how tough dragons were said to be and Smolder was quite tough before she grew to this size.

I felt the shift in Pom in immediately as she stalked forward towards Smolder, she stopped and then swept her spear along the ground and the burning leaves floated away from her as she stared up at Smolder.

A gold glow traveled up her right leg and it started to spread and cover her shoulder, it didn’t go any further from there as Pom gritted her teeth and the golden glow fluctuated around the spot.

I could see the point her right hoof started splitting into four wolf like claws, her mouth gained fangs and her tail extended and fluffed out from her spine as her wool started to make her look more canine in appearance.

Feeling the shift and how far Pom was going, without using the Shock-Ram thing, I started backing up and away a little further while glancing around again as the two armies started to move and prepare their Psycho attacks to start attacking from range.

I had Pom’s back and knew who to look out for, especially since the blanket bird told her a real interesting bit of information and I needed to be on top of my game with preventing anyone from attacking Pom while she was busy with Smolder.

One could see a foggy mist, like what I’d see in Camden Town quite a few times when I started living there, start to rise up in the air around Pom. It was like that mist Pom created back in the forest. Only instead of white it came out in a blood red color and was adding quite a horror aspect to it.

Mostly because it smelled like it was actual blood and it was Pom’s blood that was being used to make that fog, as several vague wolf shapes in the fog stalked forward all looking at Smolder as they encompassed Pom, but didn’t make her disappear quite yet.

Build-a-mess’s forces were going to be fighting the rebels while Pom dealt with this one major problem and Wrenching’s guys were going to try and keep everyone away from Pom’s fight to the best of their ability.

“I’ve got you’re back Pom.” I said quietly. Suddenly feeling a mental head pat and an affectionate lick on my cheek, one of the bloody wolves in the fog surrounding Pom had three tails and it looked at me as its tails wagged before rejoining the rest of the pack.

I also saw one of the wolves had floppy ears and a familiar feeling given it was a white wolf covered in black spots in very familiar places… it almost felt like I was in two places at the moment as I looked at it.

After I shook my head, I realized that that wolf and me were two separate things, though the fact four of the smaller wolves following Pom reminded me of her four adorable god puppies… there was something to the connection of those wolves and Pom, like one wolf for every connection Pom has had with canines.

The two armies started charging as Smolder roared and raised a left claw to attack Pom.

-Pom vs. Servile Smolder-

Kenshin’s forces were in the south and east, Gilgamesh’s forces in the north and west, the final objective was the connection to the Castle of Illusion in the north.

As Pom was considering the battlefield silently and how she sadly was at the center of it, Smolder swept her left claw forward. The second it struck her Pom, evaporated into a swirling red mass of fog.

Smolder looked to the right and left, even right under her raised claw looking for Pom, she didn’t retract her swung claw immediately and looked to the left again.

Pom suddenly appeared out of nowhere, apparently her movements couldn’t be disguised forward.

Having planted the spear she wielded in the crook of Smolder’s enlarged left thumb claw and pointer claw, Pom was rapidly spinning horizontally around the shaft of the weapon. Using Dolly’s flow motion to support her movements, a green triangle popped up in Pom’s sight and she did what Dolly said to do. Trust her instincts.

With a yank, the spear pull free of the crook and Pom launched a powerful flying buck into Smolder’s nose as she turned her head to the right. The blow to the nostril didn’t do much damage aside from a few scratches from Pom’s rear paws, but it did bruise it and aggravate Smolder into breathing harmlessly deflected flames at Pom.

As the battle started to rage on around them, Psychic Type attacks proved fairly useless against Smolder’s scales even if her mind was vulnerable to them leading to this very situation. The Fairy Type attacks caused some barely noticeable flinching in Smolder’s form.

Pom had to make a few dodges before Dolly started to interfere by blocking and deflecting smaller attacks with her board, while trying not to get too close or too far from the fight. Thanks to her ability to leap and glide, Dolly could effectively stay within a decent range to handle things even if she couldn’t stop all the incoming attacks.

For every attack aimed at Pom, Kenshin and his forces made Gilgamesh’s pay for it with their own artillery based volleys. Notably the four Araquanids were hitting things at a far larger range than any other being on the battlefield.

Smolder hadn’t been idly and charged forward to try and slam down her claw on Pom and she only evaporated again into a bloody mist, making Smolder lifter her right claw and look to where Pom had been.

Pom appeared on Smolder’s left with the spear and the back of her left hoof pressed against the ground.

“Spear Ground Upper!” As Pom shouted this, the various wolves in the fog gathered at the tip of the spear when she jammed it straight up into Smolder’s chin, the friction flames on the spear did nothing to Smolder’s scales nor did the spear itself do any damage.

The wolves that launched off the spear caused hundreds of scratches and scuffed up Smolder’s scales moderately while adding a lot of impact force to the blow making Smolder stumble back slightly.

It was quite obvious that Pom couldn’t do much damage to Smolder even if she wanted to and as long as Pom was wary, Smolder couldn’t even touch her with her speed.

Many watching this, who had yet to take to the battlefield, wondered how Pom was going to win a fight with such a nigh invulnerable goliath, especially if she was still pacing herself and would tire herself out eventually against an opponent she couldn’t defeat that needed to be defeated to be saved.

Going onto her reared hooves as she leapt over a rightward swipe and taking up the spear with her front legs, Pom hopped to the left of the left claw slammed down where she was and charged forward while using the spear to polevault her way onto Smolder’s nose.

She smacked the blunt end of the spear into Smolder’s right eye and Smolder reared up and roared in pain launching Pom up into the air.

Smolder looked around didn’t see Pom on the ground or her nose, feeling something near her tail Smolder turned and saw the spear had been thrown at her tail and did no damage. What it did do was attract her attention from Pom dodging a number of attacks being launched at her in the air shifting her wool to create air breaks and evade as she fell back towards Smolder’s head.

“Trample Flurry!” Pom started to rapidly stomp all four of her legs into Smolder’s skull and managed to force it into the ground under the raw fury of a constant four legged assault from above.

Smolder reached up and grappled her right claw around Pom and brought her to her face, however what her claw was holding was a pair of glowing eyes and a smiling wolf shaped of fog that soon disappeared in her claws. As soon as it had faded away the claws had finally closed fully around nothing, having been holding something a second ago that just wasn’t there now.

Growling Smolder looked about for Pom, until Gilgamesh directed her head to Pom with some psychic energy.

Said Lambkin with the golden glowing right leg was in the middle of doing a flying somersault through several Psychic Type attacks to grab the spear in the ground at Smolder’s back.

Pom even deflected one of the attacks with the bladed tip as she came out of the roll, much to Pom’s surprise as the Psychic Types that had been aiming for her.

Turning her gaze to Smolder, Pom suddenly let the glow on her right leg go out, the controlled Smolder took that as a sign to start breathing fire.

Instead of blocking the magical flames spewing forth in a large mass, Pom leapt up and inflated her wool and used the heat to rise high into the air. The long reaching, sweeping, flames that flowed beneath Pom tore into Gilgamesh’s army, setting a large number of them on fire and caused a massive panic that Kenshin’s forces immediately capitalized on.

Quite a number of Gilgamesh’s forces were now wary of actually targeting Pom, trying to put out the fires that ignited the grass to save their ground forces or were too busy to target Pom as the Dark Types assisting the rebels really started to lay into the Psychic Types with Dark Pulse attacks to take advantage of the situation.

The explosions of dark energy bombs ripped into the hordes of panicking enemies, as Pom landed and started to charge for Smolder with narrowed eyes. Smolder lashed out her tail and Pom dissipated into a pair of glowing blue fireflies when the tail collided with her.

Pom reappeared and smacked Smolder’s belly with the flat of spear in what was a full blown golf swing, it still did nothing to Smolder aside from attract her attention to below her chest.

Planted the spear deep into the ground, Pom pulled it to flex it and then used the force the spear straightening out to launch upwards and perform a buck straight up into Smolder’s chin that jarred her head upwards.

Landing on her front hooves, Pom rolled forward as Smolder slammed her left claw down and struck the spear bending, the spear straightened out and launched the back of Smolder’s claw into her own face causing her nose to bleed somewhat from the impact.

The quality of the spear was ridiculously good, yet Gilgamesh still used it as ammunition against Pom’s group and it had proved to be somewhat useful.

Smolder wasn’t showing any of the intelligence she had and Pom wasn’t even trying to talk to her to try and reach her.

Angry, the controlled dragon slapped the side of the spear and it ripped out of the ground as it was sent flying away into Gilgamesh’s side of the battlefield and then turned to glare at Pom.

Given that Pom wasn’t much of a spear fighter, her time of using it as a tool was up as she watched it get flung away and hit a Sigilyph out of the air. It had been a pretty good spear otherwise, but Pom wasn’t willing to pursue it into enemy lines that were currently on fire, being bombarded and were in chaos.

Spreading her paw hooves out, Pom entered a Fleet Cunning Doe stance and was prepared to continue the fight as a gliding Dolly shot by and deflected another psychic attack that was coming at her.

Smolder stomped forward on her hind legs and slashed out with her left claw and then slammed her right down on her left when Pom hopped onto it.

Pom sprung up to Smolder’s right inner elbow and then the wool around her front and back legs shift, she sprung using the wool on her rear legs and concentrated the wool on her front legs that were held together into a solid mass as she slammed into Smolder’s neck choking her bit and causing her to reflexively clutch at it while Pom landed on the ground in front of her.

Smolder took to the air flapping her wings, it was in this moment that Dolly saw her chance and finally called out her spell for maximum effect when Smolder was going to attack Pom from the air.

“Gravity!” Spherical a miasma of purple and black sparking energy hit Smolder and Dolly clenched her right paw, the resulting force immediately and seemingly broke both of Smolder’s wings and slammed her into the ground with a thunderous impact that knocked Pom and many other beings nearby over.

At best Smolder’s wings were sprained to the point of being unusable, because Pom seriously doubted that that had actually broken them. It had prevented Smolder from flying around and causing carnage at the very least.

The entirety of Cerebrum City tilted ever so slightly so that western side of the floating island was one or two degree higher than the east and the floating landmass shook quite a bit as it became unbalanced.

“This can’t go on, I won’t be able to take her down in the time needed to save her… time to really do it… I’ll have to temporarily sacrifice my sanity.” Pom closed her eyes as she stood on bits of stone path and the air changed around her as the red fog around Smolder gathered and coalesced around Pom’s body. “Dolly… Haste on me, unless you want me to use Shock-Ram!”

Dolly felt aghast and slightly hurt that Pom was basically blackmailing her into it, she still would have used ‘Haste’ on Pom anyway, but still it was upsetting.

“Haste!” Dolly called out while she stylishly rolled backwards to avoid an attack, Pom now had five minute to tear Smolder down and she wondered if it was even possible.

-Castle of Illusion, Gilgamesh-

I frowned.

What was she doing? That is not how a hero acts! She’s purely taking on the feeling of a beast.

This might cause my plans to go quite sideways… let’s see where it leads.

-Psycho Pom (One-Quarter Chrysomallus and Unleashed Fighting Spirit) vs. Servile Smolder-

The haste took effect and the red fog the infused into the lambkin, it became a visible aura around Pom outlining her body from all angles.

“I’ve felt the rage rise up in me… kneel down to clear my path of leaves… I wandered out where you can see… inside this shell I’ll break and bleed…~” Pom started using Dancing Flame with every breathe as she stalked forward and the leaves started swirling away from her as she gently swept her right hoof before her, her wool shifted over her canine features and into boosting her physical abilities. Her right leg lit up entirely with a golden glow as she let her Chrysomallus heritage show, everything short of actually using Shock-Ram was on the table here. She shifted straight into a Cow Kempo stance. “I’ve got the rage inside of me, tear down the mind of will that flees~. I’ll show everyone what I could be, inside the shell that breaks and bleeds~.”

Smolder was back up already and swinging her left claw at Pom.

Pom held up her right glowing leg, the impact of the claw against her leg shattered and destroyed a mass of ground to the left of the ewe.

Pom hadn’t moved a single inch from the blow, her right legs started dripping red onto the ground, her body was vibrated as she pushed Smolder’s claw back with a back hoof. Despite using the force of the blow to knock back the claw, the vibration Pom’s body didn’t go away in fact Pom’s entire body was vibrating with the wobble counter energy and she was holding onto it even after having just used it.

Smolder actually looked confused at her claw being shoved back, not only that this pushed her entirely off balance.

“COME ON~!” Pom pushed off the ground to slam her hoof into Smolder’s chest, Smolder actually slid back several feet when struck with a glowing hoof that caused a powerful blast of golden energy upon impact.

Smolder barely managed to stay standing from the impact to her chest and numerous scales actually showed signs of cracking.

“I’ll break from rank and file, my sacrifice is greater this time~!” As she started screaming this, Pom’s eyes began glowing gold and the blue of her eyes turned red, her resemblance to a wild canine became even more prominent. She launched at Smolder, disappearing from sight in one instant and in the next delivering a hook with her bleeding, golden glowing, right leg to Smolder’s left cheek. “Everything is to the last for me~!”

Smolder’s cheek caved in and a visible claws marks appear shredding through her scales, she toppled over onto her right side from the blow. Anyone who was near the fight paused and stared at Pom as she now gave of a roaring growl to meet a slightly frightened Smolder getting up.

“My eyes are Red and Gold~!” Pom kept screaming as she sang out and Lunged forward and her right leg became a blur of magical claws strikes that tore into Smolder, who was trying to protect herself with her front limbs. “My wool is sticking straight out~!”

Smolder actually showed fear and a slight bit of intelligence for once as the wool on Pom’s body started becoming spikier, more bestial the further she continued to attack.

This simply didn’t look like Pom anymore as the several golden threads on her right leg tore through scales leaving them crackes, broken or simple bloody claw marks on the dragon as if the scales were not an impediment to the damage Pom was causing in the first place.

It also became quite notable to anyone that was watching that Pom was not using any other part of her body to attack aside from her glowing right leg to land blow after blow at an insane speed as she pressed forward and maneuvered using the rest of her body to avoid Smolder trying to strike back with her tail.

“This is not the way I wished to be~!” Pom roared, it was then that some noticed that the blood flowing from Pom’s right leg was creating the claw marks with every swipe she was landing on Smolder’s belly and chest.

Smolder tried to breathe fire… only for a leaping Pom to uppercut her jaw shut and break a number of scales on her chin with raw blunt force.

“I can control the breaks~!” Pom’s right leg didn’t looked to be bending quite right before several cracking noises were heard and her right straightened out. she howled, as she swung her right leg forward and multiple bloody wolves slammed into and started bite and claw at Smolder ferociously on their own actually causing notable damage in claw marks and bite wounds. “How did I create this swell of fear~?!”

Quite a number of Gilgamesh’s forces were terrified by the bloody gold limbed beast fighting a much larger and tougher opponent.

Smolder tried to breathe fire on Pom and she just held her right leg aloft as her wool glowed and repelled the magical flames. She tried to rush forward while Pom was blocking her flames and turned her head to snap her jaws on the small morsel.

“Something about me, is very wrong~!” Pom stated as her right hoof slammed into Smolder’s tongue and the force dislocated her lower jaw so that the dragon couldn’t bite down in that moment. Pom’s left hoof did something as she followed the dislocated jaw and struck with her hoof claws in a spot underneath Smolder’s soft, and highly vulnerable, tongue.

This made Smolder rear back and roar in pain spitting out a small amount of blood as she did so. Now Smolder was actually instinctively afraid of Pom despite trying to quite bravely eat her a second ago.

“I have to feel quite proud~!” As Pom screamed she charged on three legs her body shaking with the ‘wobble-counter’ force she had been using the entire time, she was still using it and had been the entire time from the moment Smolder’s left claw connected with her right leg. She was using the recoil of her own blows to build up the strength of the ‘wobble-counter’ and it was damaging her own body by quite a lot. “I wish it wasn’t like this~!”

Smolder swung her right claw and Pom met it with her right hoof, Smolder was the one that topple over again as a powerful shockwave erupted from Pom’s right leg.

“Was Pom’s life just a dream or the memory~?!” Blasting forward Pom unleashed quite a number of claw swipes and continued the rabid assault with her glowing front right leg to continue pushing Smolder back.

Smolder, who had been pushed up onto her hind legs, managed to kick Pom with her left hind leg and her inner toe claw pierced right through Pom’s body in a brutal display of pure agony on the pain bestial Pom’s face.

The force of the blow not only severely hurt Pom, it had launched her back towards Kenshin’s side of the battlefield. Before she hit the ground she stopped and flipped in the air, a faint glow of gold bursting from her withers being the only sign of how she managed her recovery.

“I feel the rage swell up in me~…” With a thrust of her right hoof, Pom shot back across the battlefield and her hoof tore into Smolder’s throat before Smolder could even start assaulting Kenshin’s forces or come to her. Pom was slammed into the ground by Smolder’s random fearful flailing, she deflty landed on her hooves coming from the blow. “Kneel down to clear my path of leaves… I wonder how well you can all see…”

Smolder stomped down her right foot on top of Pom and she burst into a red fog that surrounded Smolder and soon nobody could see Smolder at all in the massive thick red fog that built up and took up the entire center of the battlefield.

Kenshin’s forces avoided it, but any of Gilgamesh’s forces that went near it were suddenly taken down swiftly and end up covered in claw marks.

Only Dolly knew where Pom was now in that mess and was trying to draw pain from Pom while helping her in other ways. The pains he was drawing from Pom quickly became too much, so she had to draw as much pain as she could take from her now clearly berserk partner who could still sing while in this state.

Heart Songs were ridiculous, but Dolly knew they were a thing.

“Inside the shell, I’ll break and bleed~…” Despite being in broad daylight, the appearance of two glowing orbs coalescing into a blood covered Pom suddenly appearing the air above the fog before diving into where Smolder was with a raised right glowing claw became quite a sight, one that will etch itself into many minds to eventually become nightmares and night terrors.

-Castle of Illusion, Gilgamesh-

“Wha…?!” Did she just!

His mind was forcefully dragged into the battlefield.

-Top of Cerebrum City, mental battlefield, Psycho Pom vs. Gilgamesh’s Connection-

“Get out of her head, cause she doesn’t need this~!” Screamed Pom as she attack Smolder, however the claws no long scratched, tore or even hurt Smolder. “Why don’t I see risk~?!”

Gilgamesh however, notice a drop of blood spilling from his body and his eyes widened slightly in surprise as he recalled the pain front three tailed fish dog.

Suddenly, Gilgamesh found himself unexpectedly pulled into the battlefield against his will and he found himself in the fog under attack as Pom actually started targeting him through his controlling connection to Smolder directly.

“She’s a victim, you Machiavellian somnambulate~!” Pom was showing her fury quite well as Gilgamesh tried to teleport around her attacks and was managing to nick him a few times here or there, nothing for Gilgamesh to really worry about, but that she had even managed to draw him into a direct mental fight was mind boggling.

Gilgamesh tried to get Smolder to move and attack Pom, however she was no longer responded to his control even if she was still connected to him. He tried to break the connection only to find a different, problem, he simply couldn’t.

“I now grin, by taking on your mind and tearing your threat away~!” Pom’s ferocity was fairly surprising, but to Gilgamesh he now thought of Pom as a wild mutt, one that needed to be put down considering her actions was likely to ruin things before they could get to his grand finale.

Gilgamesh was not effortlessly dodging the numerous claw swipes of the half canine half sheep like entity, since Pom was actually make him show some effort. He tried launching attacks back at her, but none of them connected as Pom was almost like the shifting fog that currently surrounded Smolder in reality… he wondered if that was how he was drawn into fighting Pom’s rabid form.

Behind Pom in a space that was seemingly separate from them, much to Gilgamesh’s bewilderment, was a crying orange furred puppy wearing a shock collar. Surrounding that puppy was numerous wolf shaped shadows daring him to make a move towards that puppy with their narrowed eyes all set on Gilgamesh.

“I felt the rage rise up in me, kneel down and hear the crown of beasts~. I wander out to where you can see… inside my shell I’ll break and bleed~.” Pom stated as the various wolves started stalking forward and each one started turning into a copy of Pom as she currently was. A bleeding berserk wreck of a monster.

“I feel the rage rise up in me…~” Pom still being under the effects of haste was beginning to get faster and the mental representation of Gilgamesh was starting to have problems being elusive as claw strikes started getting him even when he teleported, it almost seemed like the claw strikes were teleporting with him as he did so. “Kneel down and face the Canine Queen~.”

Trying to get out of the attacks, Gilgamesh could feel his mind was under an intense pressure of several copies of Pom attacking him with claws, fangs and blasts of soundless barks.

“I wonder if you can see…~” After hearing this line the Pom walking normally towards him as all the other copies attacked was locked on to by Gilgamesh, he launched several powerful psychic attacks and was trying not to waste the energy he needed for his unbinding. “That Inside this shell… you’ll break and cede~!”

Pom ‘mentally’ went into Shock-Ram state without doing any of the necessary actions to actually activate it as she came to a stop in front of her target, her mind stopped being limited in this instance and the unfortunate side effect would be that her Chrysomallus heritage take another one of her legs.

She paid that price and far more without a second thought knowing that she wouldn’t have the ability to actually do much to Gilgamesh in reality later.

Gilgamesh became froze in place unable to move and was surrounded by the various copies of Pom.

“GOODBYE~!” The several Pom’s screeched as they all prepared to lunge on a frozen Gilgamesh.

“You will learn something~!” One Pom stated in a distorted as she flashed by him claws tearing a path through Gilgamesh’s astral form as he tried to block with psychic energy and he lost a massive amount.

“I will give up everything~!” A second Pom flashed by more claw marks littered Gilgamesh’s mental form.

The more damage done to Gilgamesh’s mental representation the further and further the color around the orange puppy’s neck crumpled. Gilgamesh could actually feel his spirit being directly attacked and the end result was actually starting to damage the Gates of Babylon themselves, much to his consternation that Pom could even damage a noble phantasm with her pack of wolves that represented fighting spirit.

“My rest is with the bones~!” There was something about Pom’s attack that was actually reaching into Gilgamesh’s spirit in an attempt to breach the gates and she was close to succeeding in getting back what she wanted.

“This pain was always me~!” In that instant one Pom made Gilgamesh feel her agony as his body was crisscrossed with claw marks of an ongoing ‘Full Feral Flurry’ backed by the raw golden power of the Chrysomallus.

Pom reached for the gates within his spirit and threatened to breach them out of pure rage.

“Have you learned something~?!” The gates started buckling as the various Pom’s attacks threatened to destroy Gilgamesh’s phantasm much to his bewilderment that Pom could even attack it directly with a mindless ferocity.

That she was still singing even if she didn’t know the words she was saying was making it much more eerie and had Gilgamesh considering the fact that Pom might be possessed and it couldn’t just be the raw power of her completely snapping allowing her to do all this.

“I’m not changing a thing, your flesh is torn to bones, yet my pain is surpassing thee~!” Pom was sacrificing the pain she was in for more strength and Gilgamesh realized that he had to back out now or someone might actually do something that none else had done before.

The little orange puppy’s collard crinkled, ruptured and exploded. The puppy was fine, but the collar no longer existed and could never exist again due to the backlash that suddenly struck Gilgamesh back.

It to the point Gilgamesh had to start shielding his mind with the mental representation of the Gates of Babylon themselves so he could no long lose Psychic Energy from Pom’s attacks. It was either be set back on unbinding his Hoopa or allow his gates to take the brunt of Pom’s wrath.

“I feel the rage rise up in me… kneel down to clear my path of leaves…~” The distortion in Pom’s voice were getting worse and more demonic sounding as one Pom calmly walked towards the gate and the rest were ravaging it with attacks. “I wonder if you can now see… inside this shell, I’ll break bleed~.”

Gilgamesh was witnessing something no one else could see. He had heard of how powerful Fou or as it is more commonly known Primate Murder was as a planet’s answer to the life it gave birth to, this was likely on a similar level when it was just Pom’s spirit that was doing this and not her mind or body.

Pom was actually much more of a threat to ‘Moon Cell’ than he could have ever predicted, behind her veneer was a beast of incredible power and one that Gilgamesh had to admit he might have found some attraction to for the raw power mindless power she was giving off in this moment.

There was no way she could fully break through the gates that would repair themselves, even if she could lightly damage them.

“I’ve feel the rage rise up in… I kneel down to clear my path of leaves, I wonder if you can see…~” The one Pom sang calmly as the various copies of her violently attack the gate that started to buckle under the force of several anti-magic wool covered claws hitting it with impressive.

“Outside my shell, I’ll make you cede~!” With a roar the one Pom that walked towards the gates suddenly twisted around to put her back to him. She then turned charged forward, bring her right glowing leg forth, her eyes concentrating entirely on Gilgamesh beyond the gates.

The words ‘Are you okay’ resounded within Gilgamesh’s head for some reason, followed by the idea of ‘you won’t be soon enough’.

With the force of a Golden Buster Wolf, Pom’s glowing right leg rammed forward.

“AND I’LL COME FOR YOU, ARROOOOOUGGHH~!” Pom’s right leg punctured a small hole in the Gates of Babylon, beyond the gates Gilgamesh felt a single claw march stretching across the left side of his face as she roared at him with a feral look in her eyes.

-Castle of Illusion, Gilgagesh-

“AGGHH!” Clutching at my face, my left hovering hand came away with what was dripping from my suddenly tarnished face, she… she actually did it… she metaphorically breached the gates and struck me directly and she was still on the battlefield below! “Again? No… it’s worse this time.”

It wasn’t the three tailed dog that got me this time, it was the sheep herself that did this and it was even worse for the limited area it covered in comparison to the larger wound dealt previously. That was because this wound felt like it was infected by her spirit and it wouldn’t stop bleeding for quite a while since I couldn’t seal it off with my Psychic Powers… she had hit and damaged my soul directly with that last attack to just get a single leg through the gates.

She failed to fully breach, but breach the gates she did, she didn’t get what she wanted and would still come for Gilgamesh as promised.

Too bad she was a mutt, because that raw power was kind of hot. Here I thought Artoria thoroughly sticking to her principles was the only thing that gets my blood pumping, I don’t even know if she was in this world.

The gates would repair with time and my injury would be a footnote when I soon became unbound around noon, my forces just needed to hold for a few hours.

The soul damage that sheep did… it felt like it wouldn’t heal though and that was a terrifying thought.

-Top of Cerebrum City, Shanty-

The red fog disappeared and I be seeing Pom motionless, with her right four clawed leg raised to the sky towards the castle above. Smolder had shrunk back to normal and looked horrible lacerated… at least until the reviver seed Pom rammed into her tongue activated to be healing her broken body.

Pom didn’t be having the luxury of being able to use a reviver seed given she be saving it for Smolder.

Dolly acted immediately and shielded Pom with a barrier of wind and moved to protect her motionless body.

“Dodo!” At my behest Dodo raced forward towards Pom as both sides of the battle started heating up, we avoided blasts of varying types of energy that be going all over the place as we be reaching Pom’s side.

The golden glow along Pom’s right leg died out and her leg continued to drip drops of blood and the wool along that leg started to turn an ugly and quite concerning dark gray color. The four claws on Pom’s right hoof combined back into her natural cloven hoof and slowly the transformation started to revert along the rest of her body as Dodo rapidly came up to her. The glow from Dolly boosting Pom’s speed also be dying out.

The fangs disappeared the wool returned to looking normal and the rest of the claws on all of her limbs disappeared from Pom’s form returning her to normal, aside from her bleeding right leg. The red sparks in her Pom’s eyes be gone and those eyes be looking quite lost and lifeless.

One the gold rings around the outer edged of Pom’s eyes be disappearing she be crumpling over lifelessly, we be sweeping by to pick up her, Dolly and Smolder.

Whatever Pom be doing, she be hitting her limits without Shock-Ram and she be hurting herself badly again. At least she isn’t being in a near constant state of death this time.

Dodo be carrying Pom, Dolly and Smolder in his knew wings as he be charging back towards the wagon at the backline of Kenshin’s rebels under assault from all the Psychic Pokémon behind us trying to target an unconscious Pom.

-A distance away from the floating city that has stopped over a massive lake in eastern Illusio, Canard-

I’m quite certain everyone was worried about us and where we went, we had so little time to prepare for what we were going to do and Sami has been flying this airship for the last nine hours almost nonstop.

“So when do we make our move Canard?” Sami asked while looking at me.

It would take us some time to get back to the fighting going on in Cerebrum. The good thing I can say about this airship was that it was at least fast.

“Soon enough, the battle on Cerebrum is going to be a terrible one and the main gathering point of the Psychic Types in Illusio will soon be destroyed while giving rise to a unbound Hoopa.” Xatu was staring off into space, but he was directing us meticulously towards some end goal and purpose.

“Yeah, when Xatu here thinks it’s a good idea.” From what we’ve learned, Xatu can look into the past and see the future. We were timing our actions accordingly, he couldn’t see much of the future aside from a massive shadow and the fall of Cerebrum, but we were planning to be a wrench in all of this.

“Again, Skitty Squad thanks you for helping us with directions Mr. Thunderbeak!” Captain Skeeball called from the top of her flying whale of a husband next to the airship, still did not need to know how that works or how they even had children in the first place when her husband was more than ten times her size. The logistics on trying to figure that out went into horrifying territories and I blocked the thought of actually trying to comprehend it out of my mind. “Yikes, we’re definitely needed here, Cerebum looks like it needs a shot justice and heroes!”

We could see from here that Cerebrum City was burning.

-Top of Cerebrum City, rebel backline, Team Harmony Wagon, Ocellus-

The battle was heated and here I was with Smolder, thankfully healed up by the reviver seed and still in need of gem and jewels to nourish her body when she wakes up. I’m surprised Pom even managed to do all of that.

Checking Pom’s health brought back mixed signals for me, torn muscles throughout most of her body and a small hole in her chest… nothing new when she was going all out with her Sheep’s Clothing form. Her front right leg looked like she shoved it into a blender full of knives underneath her wool, speaking of which her wool was the only thing holding most of her right leg together.

We needed to get Pom back up in the next few hours, I started by pouring Sitrus Berry Juice into her throat and rubbing it so she swallowed the healing juice.

I’m quite happy that she managed to get Smolder back, but what did it cost her? That grey dark wool was giving off strangely disturbing signs of magical blowout like a unicorn’s horn from my magical diagnostics.

Author's Note

Pom was not happy and hasn't been happy, for quite a while.

342. Blockaded Battlefield.

-Pokemon Realm, Ransei Region, Eastern Illusio Sky, Cerebrum City, Top Tier, two hours after Pom irreparably severed Gilgamesh’s control over Smolder, near the Team Harmony wagon on the backline, Shanty-

Hundreds of Psychic Types be fighting, the three most notable ones that are being the major difference were Sanosuke, Kenshin and Kaoru as the strongest fighters in the field, but they were still being only three people.

Attacks be flying every which way between many Psychic Types, a few Bug Types along with our Chrysalia friends and Dark Types from the prison that weren’t the Morpeko, all of them be fighting on the top of the large island sized floating city.

I just got back to the wagon and looking back out over the battlefield Dodo and I had just crossed.

Some be fighting for their homes, some be fighting against Gilgamesh, others like the Dark Types be wanting revenge against Gilgamesh and the many who couldn’t fight were being evacuated from Cerebrum as the city was said to be on a quick path to destruction.

A lot of people were going to be losing their home here and the main reason why is what Kenshin be fighting here, he is going to be breaking through to Gilgamesh who is up in the Castle of Illusion that is being quite far above the battlefield. Most Pokémon could not be naturally flying nearly that high.

The only way to be accessing him and his position would be going through Gilgamesh’s mixed forces that be actively blocking the method to get there. The Mr. Mimes on Gilgameshs’s side were proving to be quite annoying with the number of invisible barriers they be putting up everywhere.

Pom is being out of the fight after saving Smolder, though judging by the way a Reviver Seed went off… Pom be having enough strength of mind to be planting it before she be losing her sanity completely while fighting Smolder. That Pom could even be mauling Smolder to within an inch of her life was terrifying.

After I had hopped off of him, Dodo warbled worriedly next to me and nudged me.

“Pom will be… alive… she’s not being that badly injured from when we be last seeing her.” ‘Alright’ is not exactly the word I could be using with Pom. I simply patted his beak gently with a hoof. “She did be saving Smolder and Smolder will be fine at least.”

Dodo sent me a somewhat flat look, he is learning to be being much more expressive since he survived nearly dying. He be at least showing is emotions better.

“Yes, she was quite impressive in how she managed to pull Gilgamesh into the mental space through the link he was using to control your friend.” Espurr drew our attention to him, he be helping those who were injured on the frontlines and Dodo quickly be dropping the Ralts in front of him. Espurr is still being quite weak, too weak to actually be taking place on the battlefield. As such he be taking a support role for Kenshin’s forces, he is being a decent healer even if he didn’t be having a healing move. “I think it’s weird she sees all of you as her little puppies that need protecting.”

Ralts was small white bidpedal creature with green hair that made it look like a walking mushroom, no grass typing whatsoever involved. Kirlia be taller and slightly thinner more feminine creatures that become good at dancing as their legs be getting much thinner, they resembled little ballerinas.

Thinking of Kenshin’s forces. They had the supplies, but not exactly the numbers or even strength to be taking Gilgamesh’s forces head on all at once. Even if Kenshin did be getting back a large amount of his forces from the prison break.

At least Gilamesh’s forces also be having a problem with launching an assault from their side of things and were forced to be being entirely on the defensive.

Every one of Kenshin’s forces that be going down is being brought back and healed up. Everyone from Gilgamesh’s forces that be being brought down were captured, if it was being feasible to be doing so, and relayed to the teleporter inside Cerebrum that goes to the center of Illusio. Anyone who could no longer fight were also being sent through the portal before they be getting permanently crippled.

Some… didn’t be avoiding crippling injuries or dying. At least there not be too many dying, but it was still being quite bad. The once beautiful green park that covered the top of Cerebrum City was now partially a wasteland.

I didn’t be seeing those Mandibuzz vultures, so they weren’t willing to join the fight and were considered hostile mercenaries that were detained by Kenshin’s forces. That meant Mentalis was receiving the prisoners in central Illusio in the teleporter we didn’t be going through. At least the City wouldn’t be crashing into anyone as it was now stopped over a large mass of water that was the eastern Illusio reservoir.

The Munna from the warehouse be supplying Kenshin’s forces with berries and healing items like potions and other things I not be hearing of before.

Kenshin’s forces definitely be needing those healing items, because the Sigilyph were proving to be quite hard to take down when they were flying out over open air and firing constant bombardments at anyone who be trying to take the connection to the Castle of Illusion. The Wobbuffet, Mr. Mime and Drowzee were also a terrible combination to be running into on the battlefield.

Gilgamesh’s ground forces be having almost no supplies and were slowly being whittled down. From what I be hearing from Ocellus, their job was to just stall out Kenshin’s forces as long as possible and they be doing that incredibly well.

Gilgamesh be building up to being unbound during all of this and I be having no idea what that could be meaning, but it didn’t be sounding very good.

Kenshin does not be having many aerial forces that could be dealing with the Sigilyph formation, he did not be having many forces that could get by the Mr. Mime barriers. The Wobuffet be combining their shadow tags to lock opponents in place to take a severe beating. The Drowzee and Hypno were being very good at forcefully putting beings to sleep. All of these things were being really good stalling methods that be currently preventing Kenshin from securing the entrance to the Castle of Illusion.

The Dark Types we had to help us were being held back by Fairy Type attacks the enemy Psychic Types were using, the most common being the wide area blinding flash of pink energy in the form of an attack that be known as Dazzling Gleam.

They be having a near perfect defensive line, it be feeling bad to be on the wrong side of one like this.

I be shaking my head and making my way over to Ocellus who was watching over Pom as she passed out supplies from the wagon from time to time. I be helping by going out and picking up Pokémon that needed to be pulled out of the fighting with Dodo, as long as they are not being near Wobbuffet.

Dodo is being understandably scared of Wobbuffet despite how goofy they be looking.

“So what is being the damage Ocellus?” I finally be asking Ocellus about Pom’s state.

Our area was under the protection of the Gardevoir units, the Ralts line is being weird in its evolutions. Gardevoirs be looking feminine, but half of them are being male and it only because they didn’t be finding an item needed to evolve into Gallade, like Kenshin, or they chose to become a Gardevoir. Also there was the whole spike sticking through their body thing that be a bit disturbing in the way it be resembling a knife stabbed through their backs.

“Pom’s chest wound was pretty bad considering she didn’t seal it off before she was knocked out, Smolder’s kick really did some damage. That’s not the worst of it, since the Sitrus Berry juice I forced down her throat helped that a lot, because it’s her front right leg that’s the real problem. It wouldn’t stop bleeding until I wrapped it tightly with bandages and there were a few other issues with it, but I’m sure Pom would know why there’s such a problem with her leg.” Ocellus be turning her head to me to give me a knowing look and I be thinking she be talking about Pom making a sacrifice of some kind. The golden glow her leg be giving off was being very powerful, but it would be having as many downsides as most of Pom’s abilities do. “Could you check on her for me and make sure to get Dolly’s help with getting some Sitrus Berry juice in her. While the juice is not helping her right leg very much, the rest of her body could use the healing effects to replenish the amount blood loss she suffered.”

As I be climbing up into the wagon with Dodo following behind to poke his head in, I saw Dolly resting on a blanket next to Pom and be looking quite alert even if she was dozing off a bit.

She be noticing me and immediately sat up to yip something while making a gesture with a paw that basically be telling me she was happy to be seeing me.

Pom did be looking pretty terrible.

After Dolly be taking control of Pom’s body and be wincing a bit, because of how much damage she could possibly be feeling Pom to be in, she opened Pom’s mouth and we got her to drink some freshly squeezed berry juice that would be healing her insides and body.

Dolly looked to me and made a questioning sound, as she came to sit next to me while tilting her head up at me with a weak smile.

“Gilgamesh be stalling us out badly and I don’t be having any ideas how we can break through the battlefield quickly to get to the castle.” That, as I was pointing out, was being our ultimate goal here. The number of Pokémon that are being in the way be in the hundreds and Psychic Types were being quite powerful in numerous ways. Any amount of rest given to Gilgamesh’s forces would allow them time to reinforce their hold over the way to the Castle of Illusion. “If he is becoming unbound then how much more powerful will he be and how much more will Pom have to sacrifice if she even wakes up in time to make a move for the castle?”

We didn’t even know all of what Pom be sacrificing here, but the full use of her leg would probably be a safe bet at minimum.

Dplly looked upset about the idea of Pom making even more sacrifices, but she be looking at Smolder and smiling a bit. At least Smolder isn’t being under Gilgamesh’s control.

-Out on the battlefields northern side, Sanosuke the Medicham Fighter-

“…. I hate to admit this, but this isn’t going to work out in the long run. Keep up the pressure, but retreat our smaller units.” I had bowled through an entire unit of Hypno using my raw brute strength, but after that I actually took a moment to stop and think about how the battle is going. “I’m… pulling back for the time being to think this through.”

This surprised the Meditites, white onion head smaller Pokémon with dumpling shaped ears with mostly blue bodies, to look up at me with confusion considering I actually stopped to use my brain. Something I rarely, if ever, needed to do. I was just that good at fighting, but in this instance I’m not nearly good enough.

This battle was not going in our favor even if we had supplies and chance of reinforcements, their defenses were too hard to outright breach. The outright assaults they could send after us was at most minimal, they didn’t have many ground troops that could perform a deep push into our battle lines most of their troops were defensive specialist.

We were being stalled out on purpose and if we gave Gilgamesh time to do whatever, then things were going to go downhill for us.

“I’m retreating towards Kenshin’s unit!” I called out to my particular team while raising my sword in the air to draw attention. “We need a meet up, everyone else hold the area!”

-Opposite of Sanosuke’s side of the battle in the southwest quadrant, Kaoru the Gothitelle Myrmidon-

My glowing form felt like it was filled with power as I brought down my opponent, my technique worked expertly.

My bokken glowing with psychic energies had just torn through the remainder of a unit of Jynx, it was hard fought battle. Still hundreds more to go… we probably wouldn’t be able to reach the castle or Gilgamesh in time at this rate.

Competitive was my ability and anyone that thought of suppressing me with moves would see why it was a bad idea when my psychic attack strength almost doubles from my fury. Also fusing the move Psyshock to my bokken was quite helpful.

Goth squad had pushed hard, but the defenses were still holding and couldn’t be breached. We simply didn’t have the strength to puncture through.

I noticed something odd in the distance, that meat head Sanosuke was retreating towards Kenshin. He couldn’t be tired of wanting to go on the offensive, so what was he up to… could he be actually using his brain for once?

Well the world must be ending if that were the case.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

I started to whistle a fairly jaunty tune as I set up my kitchen.

-Cerebrum City Battlefield, Kaoru-

“Grab those Jynx and drag them back for detainment, then get back to me, I’ll be retreating to Kenshin’s team… something is up with Sanosuke.” My orders were quickly followed as I set out running with my bokken held out ready to defend myself from any attacks.

The Gothita were basically out of it being the weakest Pokémon of my evolutionary line, we still had some Gothorita to field the first step up and a bit tougher, the Gothitelles were being run ragged and were holding strong as the final evolutions. The pink face black haired cuties that we were, were not doing nearly as hot as Sanosuke, I will admit that while he might be dumb he was powerful enough to cause damage and push the line even if he couldn’t break it.

We had barely forced our way into their lines or made much of a dent to really break through. We needed to do something about all this, the Sigilyph were the major problems here with their long range bombardments and that’s why I didn’t have any Gothita’s on the field.

-Central highly contested combat zone, Kenshin the Gallade Assassin-

My sword had a blade on the wrong side of it for a reason, I really didn’t want to kill anyone here, but it was becoming increasingly hard not to resort to it as we needed to make progress to even reach Gilgamesh before he manages to unbind his Hoopa form.

Said blunt side of the blade smashed across the head of a Hypno elite unit and they crumpled to the ground, never knowing that I had hit them so hard and fast that they couldn’t even retaliate.

If we had to fight an unbound Hoopa… well Cerebrum City was basically already lost and it was only a matter of time, but this fight was for the fate of all of Illusio. Gilgamesh chose his forces well, all of them masters of defensive battles and he was stalling us out quite horribly.

We had the Dark Type mercenaries and the sleepers added on to my forces from the prison, but the Dark Types were being held back by Fairy Type attacks they were weak to and those who had been asleep for a long time were weakened due to atrophying in the prison.

At least wherever the Dark Types pushed they created small holes we tried to breach, but said holes were quickly filled. Gilgamesh’s forces still had numbers, but we were doing more damage than they were through sheer tenacity… and Sanosuke being a brute on the battlefield.

We needed one really good push to shatter their rigid defense and our objective was not to beat the opposing army, but get people through to the Castle of Illusion. Gilgamesh couldn’t destroy the teleporter or the Castle of Illusion would immediately fall out of the sky and the psychic power he’s been gathering would be dispersed.

So we could destroy the gateway or we could get someone through it, either one was the thing we needed to do the most right now. The Castle of Illusion was not that necessary to the continuation of Illusio, but building a new castle would take a lot of time and at that point we’d be vulnerable to Yaksha or any other kingdoms invading. The presence of the Mandibuzz was a sign that the Kingdom of Yaksha smelled weakness in the kingdom of Illusio.

I didn’t want Illusio I love to fall in such a manner, so we were better off trying to get someone up to the Castle high above Cerebrum City before we decide to destroy it. Securing it was going to take too much effort and we didn’t have airships or anything to really take it to the Sigilyph covering the northwest side of the battlefield completely.

We needed something big to change the battle, we needed a major Ninja or a Spy ploy. I would even take a Pokémon with the title of Trickster from the Dark Type mercenaries aiding us, we needed a grand plan to break the enemies blockading rhythm and badly.

“I need a Kirlia to go contact the Ghourgeist known as Shine near the Team Harmony wagon and tell her she’s needed here, if her friends volunteer to come forward with her, then let them do so. In fact, ask all of them to come forward.” I was not afraid to beg for help, Chrysalia and Violight already had their units on this battlefield and thus far they were proving to be quite determined to aid us and were an enduring, if limited, presence on the battlefield. I could at least trust them to not throw our battle lines into disarray. “Also tell someone that I want Pom to join me if she is able to when she wakes up.”

A Kirlia was chosen and they were quickly sprinting back towards the back line as we held the center area where Pom and her controlled companion had fought. The burnt away grass and trees ruined the beauty that was once here.

War was an ugly thing, but it occurred for many reasons and I had stopped as many as I started by putting my blade to a number of Pokémon under the late king’s rule. There was always a reason for things I’ve done, but that didn’t make all my actions right.

“Hey, Kenshin, battles not going to hot, we need to do something or at this rate all our fighting will be for nothing man.” Sanosuke showed up with his massive sword hanging over his shoulder.

“Kenshin, the southwest side of the battle needs more reinforcements.” Kaoru was still an ever lovely and quite intelligent figure among my troops. “Also we can’t keep going on like this, we’re losing this fight by not winning it fast enough!”

If both Kaoru and Sanosuke were agreeing, then my suggestion would probably be a relief to them.

“Do not worry my, I might have something to ruin Gilgamesh’s victory in holding us at bay… hold the lines, do not push forward, send two units to reinforce the southwest side, take down any assault and do not give ground or move until I say otherwise!” My words and psychic message were met with an immediate reaction from my side of the battlefield as the evolved forms of Munna, the Musharna, spread out to deliver my messages immediately through a psychic relay. “Now we need to wait here for the time being.”

The Musharna were slightly larger light pink headed elephants with purple bodies and clouds of dream energy coming from their forehead, a few of them had the rare ability of Telepathy that made it hard for our forces to have friendly fire as long as they stay spread out well enough among our ranks to coordinate.

I imagine that Gilgamesh was coordinating all his forces by himself, he was quite an admirable leader if that were the case, considering his objectives and what he wants to achieve.

The Musharna were mostly our support structure and not direct combat units, they were somewhat an answer to dealing with some of the Drowzee and Hypno that were melee focused, since getting close to a Musharna with ill intentions was inviting yourself to be put to sleep.

Some had Moonblast which was still effective during the day, some had Zenheadbutt for close up fighting or the move Psychic for long range psychic assaults, I was loathe to actually have them be put in combat to use the moves Misty Explosion or Healing Wish unless absolutely necessary. Both would cause a Musharna to faint with the effect of dealing damage over a wide area or healing a massive amount of my units in the field, I would not ask them to do that… but it was a move for dire circumstances.

We were not at that point yet that I’d toss a comrade away for a moderate benefit. If only we had a Musharna that knew the move Expanding Force, since the battlefield was swamped with psychic energy it would certainly be effective for slowly breaking down the Mr. Mime barrier walls preventing us from pressing forward.

I was fairly worried that an Exeggcutor, a large three headed and two legged palm tree that evolved from the Exeggcute seeds, would know Expanding Force and use it against us. I was of the belief that they were being held in reserve for that reason and were the primary protectors of the teleporter to the Castle of Illusion in the distance.

“You have need of our assistance?” Shine called out at she came forward on her stubby legs followed by five other Pokémon. “We’ve been kind of sitting around on the defense line and doing nothing aside from going forward to help the injured get back every once in a while, so we’re still relatively fresh.”

Notably the Joltik seemed distracted with the Team Harmony wagon in the back line before turning his attention back to me from his perch on the Hawlucha.

“I’m aware that the front line is relatively intimidating, but I need a Ninja ploy to disrupt their defensive battle rhythm.” At least I could see she knew what I was asking for, Shine didn’t look pale or determined, she instead looked a little thoughtful and quite. “I have some issues with asking Cotton Murkrow for assistance for several reasons, one being that I don’t know where she currently is at the moment or even what she’s planning on doing. We don’t exactly have the capacity and I know you’re a Ninja and so is Ninjask, Pokémon Companions tend to achieve miracles and you are considered at least neutral as far as kingdoms go to be asking for help. Do you have an idea of how we can disrupt their formations? Also do all you have titles?”

“Trickster.” Quetal answered, he would prove most useful with working together with Shine and he sounded like he wasn’t from Dark Type kingdom of Yaksha, but more the Ice Type kingdom of Nixtorm given his accent. Strange that he would even give his title up willingly. “Don’t ask how I got my title.”

“Noble. Don’t talk about me around anyone who could be from Viperia.” That was clearly a surprise, but I could see that Dazzle was a lot larger than most Salazzle usually get. Also I heard Viperia was missing a runaway princess… I wouldn’t be telling Viperia if nobody else would.

So I gave Dazzle a nod and then glared at Sanosuke, he raised his hands defensively while waving them at me.

“Wrestler, Lucha Mundo, a spiritual advisor… Pom’s furious fighting spirit took a drastic hit in her fight with Gilgamesh, but she did not let him go unscathed and was a terrifying sight in battle against such a grand opponent. Her fighting spirit was truly something else, though it seemed to burn out at the end there.” Lucha Mundo struck a dynamic pose that made me smile, definitely a Pugilis native. If a Fighting Type doesn’t strike poses, then they weren’t from Pugilis. “With Honor, Family, Tradition and Doughnuts we will see this day through!”

“I, Favela, am a Pirate.” The one called Favela stated with a grin and a slightly waggling brown, cheeky natured then and a free spirit that wants to travel. She probably knew the move Swagger.

I looked to Lit, he raised a leg and squeaked something unintelligible. Didn’t know what he said, but he thought he had a title apparently.

-Origin Space, Bahamut-

“Wait, that little thing has earned the title of ‘Hero’?!” It was slightly hard to imagine the little yellow fuzzy bug with bright blue eyes could carry such a lofty title.

“His colony certainly thinks he’s a hero and he certainly lives and breathes a heroic nature, even if his hunger for energy or a berry can distract him.” Arceus answered without pause from cooking up something new in his outside space and time kitchen. “Time will tell if he will continued to live up to it. I believe he has done a wonderful job thus far.”

-Cerebrum Battlefield Central holding position, Kenshin-

These six were the Pokémon companions of Team Harmony and they were all unique individuals with quite a variety of talents, they also had five titles and a possible title among them. This has to mean they were all capable of being true heroes in their own ways.

Shine was studying the battlefield carefully and we stood in silence while Kaoru and Sanosuke repelled several attacks coming our way. Mostly Woobat assaults that prodded us to try and move forward.

“If you must know, I have the title of ‘assassin’, but I’m trying to put that behind me.” Nobody batted an eye at that. Apparently none of them thought me threatening despite my history.

“So… we just get you near Gilgamesh and you’ll do the deed?” Quetal was staring at me, as if the Sneasel could sense my reluctance to kill anyone.

“If I can, I will.” That was the most I could offer.

Quetal immediately gave me a sympathetic look afterwards as if he understood why I said it that way.

“They have Woobats, Swoobats and Sigilyph, they have a lot of aerial superiority as much as defensive potential, tell me do you have any flying units that don’t rely on levitation that can be fielded?” Shine asked as we held positions and slowly Gilgamesh’s forces stopped attacking to start holding positions themselves. “The Sigilyph are being covered by the Woobat and Swoobat in the air to make attacking them up close and personal hard to do even if we could reach them.”

“The most we have is a few units of Natu and Xatu, they haven’t been fielded at all.” For good reason, they did not want to be targeted from the ground or fly into the middle of all that. “So far we’ve been keeping them in reserve for an emergency, as otherwise we would have lost them all by now.”

“I assume because they are heavily outnumbered if they were to try to close in with the Sigilyph.” Exactly Shine, we couldn’t field them safely for any long term skirmishes.

“I will gladly offer my flying ability to help deal with the Sigilyph!” Nice sentiment Mundo, but one more flying Pokémon really won’t help with the problem of being outnumbered. “I’m sure my Coaching would give them quite the boost in offensive ability.”

“While that would be nice and the Natu and Xatu would be fast enough to take down a few units, they’d be completely swarmed and taken out of the fight in minutes.” Which is a major logistics issues for me. “We only have five units of Natu and three xatu units, they would be outnumbered more than five to one.”

“Do you have a few that know the move Tailwind?” Shine was suddenly smiling brilliantly. “I have a few ideas for how to deal with the Sigilyph problem, at least enough to throw them into disarray and give everyone else time to push forward. We’ll need barrier breakers though to take all the Mr. Mimes… can you get me in contact with the one running the Dark Type mercenaries we liberated from the prison? I have an idea, I’m already certain the Morpeko unit from Violight won’t mind lending assistance and the Chrysalia unit are already doing well enough with their small artillery unit, but we’ll need some help from the Dark Types if we’re going to make this work.”

“I need a Kirlia to relay a psychic message to our reserves and one to be a messenger to the Dark Types that we need to hold a discussion about how to breach Gilgamesh’s forces.” While I was hopeful, I was worried about what Shine had in mind. The Dark Types might just leave us high and dry after being freed from the prison and having mixed results on a battlefield where they are supposed to have an advantage.

-Five minutes later Dark Type Mercaneries staging area, Zoroark-

A Kirlia threw a salute and waited patiently.

“I’ll go see what they want, it seems Gilgamesh’s forces are going to stall us out, if they have ideas we could sure use them right about now.” Any Dark Type that wanted to leave had already done so, I wasn’t about to leave as I needed to give Gilgamesh a nasty black eye somehow and I had plenty of comrades from the prison that wanted to help in this endeavor. I noticed some of my comrades looking at me with concern. “They have been good enough to lend us their supplies freely without question, so they are trustworthy.”

A number of Dark Types like me have been living peacefully among the people of Illusio for quite some time, at least until Gilgamesh showed up.

Most of us weren’t even from Yaksha and we weren’t from anywhere else either.

-Ten minutes later, Central Battlefield Rebels Gathering, Shine-

I was a little nervous, but I hoped my plan could be pulled off.

The Dark Types surprised me by being onboard for the sneak attack to cause chaos among the ranks once we got the Sigilyph tied up with the minimal numbers we could bring to bear against them, everyone that would be flying in that airspace was going to be moving as fast as they could go or else the Sigilyph would wipe them out quickly.

“I can be helping with that, since Dodo be learning a new trick. He apparently be getting enough metal in his diet to be flying now.” Shanty said as she rode forward on Dodo, he suddenly jumped and folded his legs inwards and spread his wings and was soon hovering in the air and even flying around a bit. Somewhat slow, but Dodo was quite tough and Shanty could really lay into the Sigilyph if she could get near them. Dolly also popped into the air on her board and be slowly gliding around while send me a determined look, she wasn’t slow in the air and she could even help with the plan. Shanty took notice of this. “She wants to be helping to.”

“I can work with this…” The plan was simple, we’d need a fast air raid to draw the fire of the Sigilyph from the ground forces that Kenshin will deploy. Kenshin, Sanosuke and Kaoru will attempt to bust the middle, while the Dark Types will try and sneak their forces into enemy lines and start ripping into the Mr. Mimes to the best of their abilities from the contested area to the southeast. North is doing fine, Sanosuke’s troops were relatively good for pivoting into a defensive position if this ultimately fails and I had an idea as to what we could do there. “Dolly, I’m going to need you to do something specific… you’ll be with Shanty for this. How big can you go with those tornadoes you make?”

This was important as it might give us an edge. There’s also what the six of us Pokémon Companions would doing in the north side of the battlefield on this massive floating island. It took a few minutes to hash everything out and the timing we’d need to pull some of this stuff off.

“So does everybody know the plan?” They really shouldn’t have given us time to plan or at least me the time to plan. Aside from a few easily repelled assaults from the nearly endless Woobat swarms, Gilgamesh’s forces were quite willing to wait us out. Seeing that everyone knew their parts, I grinned and brought my leafy hair claws together. “Then let’s start Operation: Panic in the Sky!”

“We’ll be being as loud as possible!” Shanty announced and then gained an odd look on her face as she glanced in the general direction of the Team Harmony wagon. I noted Dolly was playfully interacting with Lit, little guy seemed to be worried about her and was being quite affectionate. “What if Pom be waking up in the middle of all of this?”

“Ocellus will send her Kenshin’s way in the central battle line, if Pom is even capable or at least willing to keep fighting. That’s provided Pom is even in a stable or good state of mind when she wakes up.” Which wasn’t likely, I think everyone who knew Pom knows she wasn’t up for this and would still do it anyway. “Smolder is a no go on the battlefield with how vulnerable she showed herself to be to mental assaults and Ocellus will keep her in the backlines.”

If this worked we could stop avoiding the edges of the island where the Sigilyph had control of the airspace and sweep quite a number of problems out of the way.

343. Aerial Aces: Dog Fight!

-???, Oleander-

A large bulbous creature with chicken legs, a red and white spotted behind and comically slug like face with goofy fangs went down under the beating the red plant warriors gave them, this was after I levitated said warriors all above it and dropped them on it all at once.

The little walking flower carrots seemed to have fun being minions, I already brought a number of them into the tiny Halo Array floating off the tip of my horn and will let them propagate there starting with one onion. They were cute, friendly and came in a variety of colors.

“I like the rock ones.” Wrex, I really don’t want to or need to find out that you’ve been arming the cute little indigenous warrior plant people with weapons or that you were possibly planning to.

Some barking noises were heard and we turned to see a small, two legged animal, with bright red fur and a decidedly canine disposition.

“Finally found one, and he was a wily little jerk too!” Buttina stated proudly as she had put a blue collar on a tiny space dog that was probably more space wolf judging by the appearance, it was a little strange that they don’t have front legs and were basically two legs and a mouth, but I’m sure Pom would appreciate figuring out how to raise one of these.

Don’t worry Pom, we would find you before you destroy yourself! At this rate some dark magic and necromancy may be required though…

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Top of Cerebrum City, Southern Rebel Position, Shanty-

Dodo not being capable of flying fast, but he can be flying with Dolly and me being on his back, he could not be taking much more weight than that currently and gain height. He could be slowly gliding down a heavier load like the wagon in an emergency though. He only be having limited flight capabilities, but it would be being hard to knock him out of the air and he is being confident at the very least in being able to help.

The Natu be spherical and green, kind of like the size of a volleyball with two legs and two small wings and a cone shaped beak. The Xatu be stretched out and taller, kind of looked like one of those tribal totem poles things with the thousand yard stare they all be having, also their beaks are being slightly bent, sharper and more knife like. Green, yellows, reds and blacks seem to be the common color among them all in a few patterns, aside from the Xatu having mostly white wings with black and red tipped feathers.

“Okay, people we’ve got a job to do.” A Xatu stated, he apparently be taking the lead of this mission and would tell us how we would be doing this.

This was Shine’s plan with some of Quetal’s input on it, I be trusting the both of them with my life, unfortunately they wouldn’t be around for what we would be doing. That’s why I be having Dodo.

“Oh, and here I thought we’re all here to take in the view, play checkers and eat some crumpets over a spot of tea, then get in a quick nap while Illusio burned down around all of us violent.” One of the Natu stated sarcastically and all the other Natu started laughing in a manner that started to be sounding somewhat like the clucking of chickens.

“Our mission may seem a bit suicidal from the outset…” Xatu stated as they be laying out a map of the top of Cerebrum City and the battle zones that were helpfully being colored coded for convenience.

“Gee, the forty eight of us and the three outsiders, does the canine even count as a full outsider… they look intelligent enough. Anyway, us against the five hundred plus Sigilyph, not to mention an indeterminable amount of Woobat that will be protecting them. I certainly like those odds… so how fast can we expect them to literally eat us alive? We can slather ourselves in barbecue sauce right now if we want to make it easier for them.” The same Natu interrupted again and all the Natu started clucking in laughter again.

The middle battleground was at a stalemate, Kenshin’s troops be doing as much damage as they be taking, but they weren’t able to push the line due to the Sigilyph backline long range assaults coming from all directions along the western edge of the massive floating island.

Sanosuke’s soldiers in northern zone were the least battered, then again with a guy that is being that strong he be doing really well in keeping his troops in shape, relatively safe and healthy despite Sanosuke appearing to be a crazy battle maniac who be no sense of self preservation.

Kaoru’s zone to the south had pushed in slightly, but her troops had taken a battering doing so and were going to soon be supplemented by the Dark Types and we were in this southeastern zone of the battlefield for a particular reason.

“We actually have a plan.” The head Xatu of these units stated bluntly, while he be looking to the west at the defense line taking on a swarm of Drowzee.

“You mean the one aside from getting absolutely blown and torn apart by the enemy aerial forces, where do I sign up to be in the unit that is not currently doing this mission?” That was being a good one considering the outlooks of the situation, the Natu that was a jokester was being quite good at it as he be getting a few of the Xatu to laugh as well.

“Yes, that… I can understand the need to make fun commentary to lighten the mood, but can we actually move on with this?” Said the leader with a flat expression, the Natu didn’t respond. “We actually have several things going for us here, a few aces in the hole really.”

All the Xatu be having that flat ‘thousand yard stare’ expressions and the Natu weren’t being that much better with their blank wide eyed gazes. It be a little creepy that they rarely blink, wouldn’t want to be facing them in a staring contest.

“Can I be in the hole with those aces if it’ll help me avoid the cluster cluck waiting to happen would be morale booster.” The Natu spoke out again, even I be laughing at the dark humor on that one.

“You’re not going to stop back talking are you?” The taller and older Xatu leader sighed and covered his face with a wing.

“I would, but we need the levity.” Natu replied bluntly and brightly with a smile.

“Here’s what we’re doing…” Xatu be going over what we were to be doing, Dolly was apparently integral to the plan and her gliding ability would mean she would be in the thick of it.

After the plan was explained the thirty Natu are all being quiet. The eighteen Xatu be knowing a move that Natu can’t be using, said move is called Tailwind and it is being a very powerful boost ability.

“Huh… so the fact that the Sigilyph are spread out as they are… and if our aces go as well as advertised… might be crazy enough to work if the Woobat aren’t going to be as big a problem for us.” Now there was a sharp look in all the Natu’s eyes and a glint in them. “The near future looks bright, when do we start?”

“After I am done Coaching you of course!” Lucha Mundo stepped forward and stated jovially, his job being to get us all pumped and be adding physical power to all of us before this mission using his move. He would be flying to the north to join the other companions in a secret mission that is being performed by Shine. “The start of Shine’s side of the mission will be carried out as soon as I arrive and join my five other traveling companions.”

Everything was being a part of what Kenshin be calling a battlefield Ninja ploy, as a pirate I can actually be respecting a ninja given we’re friends. Ignoring Shines group would be being the biggest mistake that Gilgamesh’s forces could be making and we would be drawing a lot of our ire our way to make that happen.

-Northern Rebel Position, Shine-

“Baltoys and Claydols, are you ready?” The entrances to the top tier of Cerebrum City were staircases, the top tier of Cerebrum naturally had a lot of soil at least forty feet deep before you hit the actual city layer. I had been loaned some of Kenshin’s troops to command as the companions protected me while I carried out the Ninja ploy.

Baltoy were basically two spheres with sharp spear shaped points on the tops and bottom of their bodies and two blunt mostly motionless arms for balancing, they were basic infantry and had pretty good special defense against psychic and fairy assaults. Their offensive capabilities left something to be desired though and there was a reason I wanted these guys specifically for this mission.

Claydols were their evolved forms with large clay pot heads, many eyes in a full circle around their heads and round bodies with two stumpy legs, what was special about them is that their large food baster shaped arms were good at firing off powerful artillery attacks. In particular they were known for being devastating with Hyper Beams. Attacks were not their specialty though, they specialized in being living walls to absorb attacks for other Pokémon and were immune to ground damage attacks with their levitate ability. These guys could take a veritable storm of attacks long enough to at least launch one themselves, also all four of their body parts could move and act independently for evasive ability.

Baltoy and Claydol were Ground and Psychic Types which was going to be the fun part about what we’re going to pull here.

The Claydols toughness capabilities were on almost on par with the amount of damage the Araquanid artillery squad from Chrysalia could take and that was key to our needs, as they would need to get off a few stupidly powerful attacks while under heavy fire. If they could even do the bare minim of three attacks each, then that would be enough.

I would have liked to try and get them to use smokescreen tactics like the move Sandstorm, which does the obvious in creating visibility ruining storm of sand, but the Golducks on the field would make trying that an entirely moot point if one of them had Cloud Nine ability. It only took one having that ability to ruin any weather related move, since the ability made it entirely impossible to change the weather from a clear sunny day or night. Golducks however could not stop natural weather from occurring, too bad we were so high up I couldn’t rely on a thunderstorm passing through here to help cover our movements, so distractions made by the small aerial force was our best bet for pulling this off.

I should thank King Evan, he gave me this idea and it would be a horrible thing to not take advantage of the terrain… because Gilgamesh’s forces certainly wouldn’t see this coming or would be able to even predict this move to begin with. They also didn’t exactly have the best future sight experts on their side of the field.

-Southern Rebel Frontline Position, Dolly-

“Okay starting Tailwind one now. Remember the Xatu that know the move Tailwind are our VIPs, do whatever it takes to keep them in the air or else we’ll be slowed down!” The Atchoo Leader called out as he started up the move Tailwind. “We hit them hard and fast and we try to do it on the first pass, we will not be turning back. Whatever is left in the air will have to be taken care of later.”

I thought it was pretty fascinating, creating a wind that can boost speed of everyone within a general area by a metric ton. It was a temporary super speed boost and we needed at least three Atchoos to keep sneezing us forward by layering on the speed. This was my kind of plan!

Looking below me, I saw all the Dark Types waiting for the Tailwind boost to start ripping into the funky barrier clowns along the battlefield while we had the hard job of drawing as much attention as possible.

I only had my helmet and my board strapped to my back, left the stone bone back at the wagon as I didn’t want to lose it by throwing it. It would be really hard to find if it fell down to the ground or into some water far below us.

It’s a really good thing I’m not afraid of heights, well anymore, the whole crane incident back in Camden town was refreshed in my mind. I had an important part to play in all this and was excited to get started.

Dodo was hovering in the middle of the formation of Nachos and Atchoos. The nachos were doing a familiar version of a duck flying V formation, with one in the rear. The Ahtchoos were doing a two in front and four spread out behind thing.

“Here we go… Tailwind!” It didn’t seem to do anything at first when the Xatu called it out, but then I felt an energizing wind blowing through me and all the Dark Type certainly felt it, because they were moving like they were using Pom’s Dancing Flame technique and had slammed into the enemy surprising them utterly.

We personally shot forward in a burst too as we headed towards the Sigils around the southern edge of Cerebrum’s airspace. The Sigils were spread out across the enter battlefield in a half circle shape, my job was to make sure the Snoz bats and their evolved forms couldn’t stop us and I was prepared to jump off and start gliding as Dodo shot high up in the air above the Sigils.

I also had to be constantly attacked to make this worked, I agreed to do this because of one thing. I wanted to show just how dangerous I was and after seeing a few small Pokémon do big things like Lit, I wanted to really let loose and rip the battlefield apart.

“Dog Gone~!” I jumped out of the seat in Dodo’s back and Shanty waved to me with a hoof and waved back with a paw as she took Dodo higher, I flipped and brought my board underneath me to start gliding ahead at a high speed.

Dodo would be sniping Glyphs from high up and would only come down if I started having problems, we would have to meet up with the Atchoo guys to refresh our Tailwind eventually… unless… I could create my own. Wind magic was kind of my jam and all, the wind blowing through my fur right now was amazing.

Sigils were immune to most ranged attacks, except those that hit with enough physical force and Dodo’s burnt bread loaf going really fast certainly counted as enough.

I boosted my momentum as I took to standing on my board on my hind legs and grinned.

“First up, above the city~.” I said as slammed head on into a Sigil’s eye taking them out, I looked back to watch as they fell away and I skipped higher into the air. Another Uglyph tried to lock onto me and was struck by a bread loaf so black that I’m sure nothing would ever try to eat it and it could probably outlast dinosaurs. “I’m fired up and I’m feeling giddy~!”

I dodged and weaved my way through several shots fired from the Sigils up ahead that took notice of me and they were quickly swarmed by a unit of nacho performing that Aerial Ace move that Quetal uses a lot, the nachos were tearing into the light numbers easily and we would soon be approaching are larger number of them.

“Paws whipping around the air with wonder~!” I held my right paw out towards the battlefield and cast ‘Aerora’ two tornadoes suddenly dropped on my targets to cause chaos. One sucked up the snot bats that were protecting the Sigils ahead of us. The other dropped onto the battlefield itself and caused chaos for as long as it would last over the next five seconds. “To ignore me will be your greatest blunder~!”

I grabbed my board with my front paws and swung it forward out from under me and deflected a blast of energy right back into an utterly surprised Clippy’s eye. As I spun with the deflection, I brought my board around and slammed it vertically down on another one that was distracted and used the impact to launch myself up high into the air spinning as it went tumbling out of the air.

“Like a shooting star blazing through the sky~!” I immediately dove into a Siggerette and skipped off its big eye to slap the front of my board across a sniff bats nose, I did a three sixty and slammed the rear of my board into the eye of another Siggerette to finish my spin and blasted myself upwards with an ‘Aero’. “There’s a fire burning in my eyes~!”

I looked behind me and saw a good number of Sigils were eating Aerial Aces all over the place at insane speeds. We were starting to get noticed, to the ground on my right the tornado had worn out and the panic I caused had let the Dark Types through and the creepy clown guys couldn’t reorient their barriers in time, not that it stopped the dark guys like the More-peckish before.

I was low on magical energy, so… I brought the nose of my board up and slammed into a beam and rode it into a Sigils taking them out when the wheels of my board wrecked them. Absorbing the energy of the beams impact through my board, I could feel my magic energy surge.

“I’m coming up on you, I’m going in for the biiieeeite-~!” I spun around three hundred and sixty degrees and felt something familiar that I’ve done before. It was like when I did that forward stab thing with my board against that Callow Fart guy. I burst foward with my board flashing bright white and passed by a Sigilyph and felt like I almost went through them. “I’m going to take you out of this fight~!”

The Lymph-node behind me suddenly exploded backwards and past me to slam into another Sigil taking the both of them out and I paused hovering in the air for some reason and blinked.

Wait… I could do it more than once?! A grin plastered itself on my face, I’m calling this Sonic Rave! Guess I’m going to be dancing in the air like a leaf on the wind… at least I now know what that quote from the movie ‘Tranquility’ means.

“Hey… take you out of this fight~!” I thrust the front end of my board and flashed forward and upwards, so wait… I can go up doing this?!

The only problem I could see is that I needed a target… rich environment for that, now if I imagined all of them are as annoying as Clarissa Corgi…

Eight more flashes and the Sigilyph were still trying to follow the sudden flurry of activity that just blew through more than twenty five of them, tens the max I can do I guess… woo, that was a quite a rush!

Now if I could do that on command more often. The feeling wore off and I felt my magic was at max, so I could only do it while my magic was surging? Oh yeah, I’m awesome!

I felt a blast of energy pass by my face and I rolled to the left, which had come from the ground. Right can’t lose focus, taking one direct hit to the body might actually kill me!

“Artillery fire from the ground units! We’re attracting a lot of heat now and are deep in enemy territory watch yourself even if the aerial forces are having problems keeping up with us and don’t get shot down here!” Shouted a Xatu who performed a loop and ripped by a Sigil with his wings extended to wipe them out. A few flaps and he was soaring back up. “Everyone gather up within a minute when you can find a moment to form up, we’re building up for the second Tailwind! We might actually make it without losing anyone… swing out in a circle back around into them when we do the second Tailwind.”

Got it Sneezer!

I took a blast from below on my board and I felt my magic surging again as I absorbed the energy from the impact and road it up into the air. They probably didn’t know this was helping me, their loss.

“Dog On~!” I shouted in excitement as I returned to gliding horizontally and blasted out another ‘Aerora’ to bother a large number of sniffle bats swarming for the Nacho guys and the second tornado dropped on the ground guys firing up at us. My magic’s range was only what I could see, right now that was a lot and I was causing chaos to their backlines.

The Nachos and Atchoos were really shredding through the air and the numerous Sigils they were wiping out way more of those than I was, but they weren’t matching up to the amount of snout bats that were getting bodied by tornadoes.

Despite there only being so few of these Nachos and Atchoo guys against these numbers, we were roaring through straight through them!

“I can feel the rush~!” Another hit to my board which I swerved up into the path of a Sigils attack and while my energy was surging again, I blasted forward ten times at what felt like light speed to me and when I felt the world go back to normal a shot gun blast of ten Sigils were launched into their buddies sending them scattering and tumbling through the air from the massive series of physical impacts I just dished out. “Burning through my veins~!”

I started actively veering into the attacks, careful not to take a hit to my body as I blocked several blasts and recovered, so what if my maximum amount of magic was limited… I could make up for it by taking constant attacks!

“Soaring glorious, above this city place~!” I used an ‘Aero’ and boosted my height a bit as I was getting a bit low, a whiffle bat tried to follow me and was blasted away by the wind burst. “Call me hurri-cane, can’t anybody stop us~!?”

Taking another powerful hit with my board I threw out an Aerora and totaled what had to be a hundred bats that got sucked into the two tornadoes that combined into what looked like one massive vacuum cleaner of pain. At this point we were moving far too fast and frantic for the Sigils to hit or catch us with their ‘Gravity’ moves.

“We’re a mighty force of razors wreaking havoc through the sky~!” The five group of Nachos sang as they all started forming up on me, we were all starting to slow down. To emphasize the point at least twenty seven Sigils were quickly ripped into by two other units of Nachos closing in with us.

“Break hard left, circling now!” The Atchoos were building up energy above us and were trying to dodge attacks while they did so. I didn’t even know how good we were doing here.

Shanty and Dodo swept down and clobbered a Sigil with Dodo’s feet for trying to break up the formation and they formed up with us as we swung out away from the aerial forces coming at us to the west. I think I saw an airship in this distance coming this way? Not important!

We all circled wide and away from the city and then started to curve back towards them.

“Tailwind!” Two of the Xatu’s called out and we all felt the speed boost from their moves enveloping all of us again.

I led the charge as we all returned to full speed tore into the Sigils ahead of us, me swinging, ramming or slamming my board into them. After I took down a single whiffle bat with a paw slap across the nose, something huge happened on the battlefield as a lot attacks were being sent our way from below while we were distracting a majority of the Sniffles and Sigils.

Huge beams suddenly erupted into Gelded Cleft’s side of the battlefield totaling a ton of monsters as several figures erupted from the ground, their forces were thrown entirely into chaos by the sudden attacks coming from all directions. The Dark Types were tearing apart the barrier clowns and Benching’s forces were really starting to push into them with all they had. Sake guy was really tearing a hole in them with that big sword of his.

-Battlefield Position: ???, Shine-

Baltoys and Claydols erupted out of the dirt, the Claydols quickly fired Hyper Beams into the Gilgamesh’s Forcces while the Baltoys started protecting the Claydols until they could burrow again. When Hyper Beam was used, you couldn’t move for a while until a complete cool down from using so much dimensional energy at once occurs.

Very few Psychics had time to react to the sudden incursion within their battle line as they were now thrown completely and entirely off balance and couldn’t reorient to the sudden problem of having ground types digging among their ranks causing a panic. Ground types that were immune to moves like Earthquake or Magnitude were a very dangerous resource on the battlefield where Dig was a common move among their number.

“Phase two, go!” I called out from my position, a Kirlia nodded and disappeared from sight by teleporting away.

“Okay, the path has been cleared Shine, let’s move out!” Thanks for the reminder Quetal, we had our own parts in this battle even if they were small.

-Western Gilgamesh Forces Airspace, Dolly-

We had swung from the southern side of the island and took a second to do a wide circled out to get a second Tailwind going. Whatever just happened down there, we apparently did our part well enough that it obviously caused quite a noticeable stir given Gilded Flesh’s guys are faltering badly.

“Dodge On~!” I called out and my shout was joined by several Nachos as they dodged incoming beams and attacks from below. They definitely knew we were after the Sigils and we weren’t going to get stuck in fur ball when we could be moving onto the next target.

The nachos even fired some beams of their own and I was wondering why they were aiming them at the Sigils when that wouldn’t… work? I noticed some of the Sigils eyes started swirling around weirdly and then they started randomly firing in directions and some of their shots tore into their own guys. They looked as horribly confused as I felt.

Emboldened by their prior success, the Natu and Xatu started to really take it to the Sigilyph physically while the Coaching effects from Mundo were still going, it would be a minute or two before the physical prowess boost of the aerial fighters wore off. As long at Dolly could continue keep the Woobat off them with tornadoes, then they actually had a tenuous form of control over the sky.
-

It almost looked like they were able to predict the Sigils were going to… oh right these guys had the whole future sight thing like my dark bro Dante, duh! That would explain why their eyes are like that, explains a lot about Dante too come to think of it. Must be a real strain on their eyes to be like that all the times and of course they would be able to know where all the beams were going to be, they were predicting them as they flew!

A Nacho suddenly veered off from a group and gently bumped into me suddenly a beam of energy passed by my nose and I barked my thanks to him. As he flew on and put hit cone shaped beak into the nose of a flying bat.

“Rip on them, very well~” I dove to avoid several attacks and when they started aiming ahead of me I leveled out. “We’re going-to, going-to, going-to raise some hell~!”

“Speed monsters, we jive~!” An entire unit of Atchoo looped upwards ahead and moved ahead of me as several Sigil started gather together and built up a lot of energy together, uh… right it was called a Unit Command and they were going to stop it immediately. “We’re going-to, going-to, going-to, make this dive~!”

The six stretched out bipedal birds blasted past them as several shots were fired at them almost point blank, it was right now that I realized we were hitting the Guppies so fast that they could hardly take the time to actually lock us in with their eye thing. The Atchoo avoid the beams with the barest of movements and then ripped past them and took out the unit behind them that had been building up to fire too that I hadn’t noticed.

“Get on it, don’t fail~!” I shouted as went into a downward spiral and pulled out of it hard to blaze out of a cone of fire that seemed intently focused on me, guess Goldy Test really wants me taken out. Either that or that knew I was responsible for the two tornadoes that started blazing a path through the snoot bats, only the stronger ones had visible eyes and hooked tails broke through the winds immediately and formed up to attack me with several blades of air. I brought my board up to block and it was slowing my momentum down immensely. “We’re going-to, going-to, going-to, make you wail~!”

“How about, I say goodbye~?” I grinned cheekily and then lashed out with a ‘gravity’ the grouped up snoopers suddenly were sent careening down into the island. Another few groups showed up and I tried to boost my momentum but they were keeping up with me, tossing out an ‘Aero’ at them didn’t work. “You’re going-to, going-to, goint-to, see me survive-~!”

The many numerous bats that now surrounded me didn’t seem to believe that as I had fallen behind the Xatu and Natu.

“I’m going to survive~!” As sang this I started blocking their attacks with my board and even knocked a few back by whipping it out on the strap, but I felt several of the air blades tear into my fur and body painfully.

I was being attack from all sides and my helmet could only cover so much of my body as I was lacerated.

“Hey, I’m going to survive~!” A black bread loaf block an attack from behind me that was aimed at my spine and I watched as it flipped over my head and I blinked at the fact that the loaf was completely undamaged.

Huh, so they would make good building materials.

Suddenly familiar beams of cold air blew into the guys surrounding me from above and suddenly four units were taken out when a flying whale slammed into them from above.

“Skitty Squad and Wilhelm to the rescue, for great justice!” Nice to see Captain Oddball, didn’t think I’d be rescued by a cat again. Much less easily distracted pink ones. “Need a lift? Hey hubby, get under her it looks like she’s taken some hits, kids start freezing some enemies! We can lend you some field aid, looks like you just took a large chunk out of their air forces let us take it from here.”

I gladly pulled my board onto my back and maneuvered to land on the flying whale, Dodo came in for a landing and fired a bread loaf off into the distance and I saw a Xatu that was about to be taken was saved when the bread loaf plowed through a row of those upgraded nose bats.

“They are safely onboard, you can attack hubby!” After Oddball said that, the sound of a whale singing could be heard before a devastating attack slammed into the force on the ground fighting Lynch-Hen’s forces and created a trench taking out numerous Monsters.

The Atchoos and Nachos were going for a third Tailwind, too bad I couldn’t keep up with some true pros in their element. Speaking of pro’s, a few badly injured Nachos and Atchoos slowly came in for a landing on Scream-helm, seeing that we found shelter on top of Oddball’s husband.

-Near the teleporter to the Castle of Illusion, Dazzle-

We erupted from the ground and the six Claydols we followed fired outwards in all directions while provided a defensive barrier around us. The Exeggutors didn’t know what hit them a second later when the six of us came out from under cover of the Claydols and launched our most effective attacks on them, Lit, Mundo and I took three of them down immediately in a splash of fire, bug type ramming and a Flying Press.

Quetal and Shine heavily injured two more with an Aerial Ace and Phantom Force, Shine had planned this exceedingly well considering we had a lot of Exeggutors weaknesses available to us. Favela was the only one to not do as much damage, she didn’t exactly have a move for this, but she did use Surf to hit all the Executor and took out one of the already weakened ones.

We just had to take out the last tree and hold position after securing the teleporter until Kenshin, Kaoru and Sanosuke tore a path straight to us.

-Castle of Illusion, Gilgamesh-

What a nearly unexpected turnout.

I will have to hold them off at the bridge soon, at least until I could fully unbind myself using all the absorbed energies I’ve acquired.

Maybe I will even see if some real heroes will rise to the occasion, but while they are doing that…

Let’s see how they’ll deal with one of them being assassinated. Particularly the one that gave me a reminder that even wild beasts can be dangerous given she can do a soul attack, no matter how meager said attack was. That sheep needs to be put down like a rabid mutt she is, reminds me too much of Cu Chulainn.

She’s fairly helpless and nobody is going to be able to stop my plant, everyone who is powerful enough to save her are currently busy fighting towards the teleporter.

Author's Note

Dolly Learned Counter Rave*- When Dolly have max capacity magic, she can use the overflow to do ten consecutive Sonic Rave attacks with enemies within a medium range of her.

*Only available while wielding the skateboard, cannot do with the equipment Stone Bone.

Music- Panic In The Sky, TMNT Shredder's Revenge.

344. Full Disclosure.

-Equus, Meadow Hills Outskirts, Picnic, Jaded La Perm-

“Hey, can I ask you something related to the marmalade incident?” Since there were no one else around to go into a blind panic, I finally decided to approach Queen Novo and who I assume to be her daughter Princess Skystar who was in the form of a lambkin too. I was going to ignore that Novo still had a similar hairstyle to Fizzy, even when she was currently taking on a lambkin form.

“Does everyone in the world know about it now?!” Novo looked pretty good as a lambkin. “Fine, what do you want to know about the incident?”

“Well no, not everyone. Also it’s not the incident itself that I’m curious about, it’s the Chrysomallus I want to know more about considering one of my friends is apparently one.” My words had clearly gotten Novo’s attention. Skystar looked curious to hear what Novo had to say.

‘Friends’ was sometimes my term for people I like to annoy… a lot. Whatever I was told, I’d tell Tianhuo everything and I was quite curious myself.

-Pokemon Realm, Ransei Region, Illusio, Castle of Illusion, Gilgamesh-

“You have your target, there shouldn’t be anyone nearly powerful enough around there to stop you.” With that I closed the portal that allowed me to talk to my 'agent' and continued to gather up energy.

-Sky, Northwest of Cerebrum City, Shanty-

The Xatu and Natu be taking some injuries from the Woobat and Swoobat during the third leg of their high speed raid without Dolly to cover them, none of them be falling out of the sky though which be a good sign. There is being a lot less Sigilyph in the sky and they couldn’t properly cover the suddenly chaotic battlefield which be turning to entirely favor Kenshin’s forces, hundreds of Pokémon be fighting down there and I am actually rather glad to not be being in the middle of all of it.

“Come on Dodo, Dolly!” Just because I didn’t want to be being in the middle of it did not be meaning we couldn’t continue to be helping things along, our break was being up. Skitty Squad being here be a good thing for morale, given that a Wailord was a pretty big ally to have in a fight... still wonder how something so big without wings could be flying this high in the air, but I not be questioning it too much like Skeeball and Wilhelm’s relationship. “Also Dodo, be jumping out a bit before you start flying. Skeeball you can be following us and helping our friends over there!”

Skeeball was being up to date with what was going on, Wilhelm was a force of nature that the Woobat and Swoobat should have avoided. Plus the Skitty be firing ice beam broadsides at long ranges to cause problems for the enemy battle line from behind.

Dodo nodded to me and I looked to Dolly who was in the middle of slapping her helmet back on her head as she leapt into the seat next to me and barked twice while pointing a single digit of her right paw forward.

Dodo lunged off the flying whale and out into the sky, shifted his body about a bit into flight mode and we took off to lend The Companions and my crewmate Favela some much needed aid.

-Cerbrum Top Tier, Rebel Backlines, Ocellus-

I was trying to piece some things together, for one, why Pom’s leg wouldn’t heal after a third application of Sitrus Berry juice.

Everyone has basically stated that three rounds of Sitrus Berry juice would heal practically almost anything short of a permanent crippling injury, which was something like Pom’s front right leg apparently. The bones in her leg was fine, her muscles were… okay… but it’s the magical side of things that had me concerned.

“How is she?” Espurr asked after I finished checking on her and moved over to look over Smolder among the other ailing troops of Kenshin’s Rebels in the main backline camp area.

“Her leg is still a mess.” I think I had an idea of why though, nothing was physically wrong with it after the third use of Sitrus Berry juice. Magically… yeah… there’s a rub that was technically complicated and why Pom’s power was absolutely dangerous to use in any capacity.

“If a Sitrus Berry can’t heal it, then something is significantly wrong with the wound itself.” Espurr stated as he continued to move supplies and helped the injured. The prison he worked for was finished before Gilgamesh took over and he was good at taking care of injured or sleeping bodies.

The fighting had really exploded with at least more than half of Gilgamesh’s aerial artillery Sigilyph taken down, the Dark Types were as emboldened and had completely wiped out the Mr. Mime barrier line crumpling it beyond recognition before fighting their way back south to push with Kaoru’s units. Those two things allowed Kenshin’s Rebels to really get into the fight and break the stalemate.

It was only the fact that Sigilyph were spread out over a wide area that the Natu and Xatu even succeeded in tearing through them, that and Dolly making sure the Woobats and Swoobats couldn’t retaliate for a bit with Dolly dropping a lot of short lived tornadoes on the enemies side of the field.

It appears Dolly got slowed down at some point before their final leg along the northern side of the floating city and without her board absorbing a lot of attacks at the front the Xatu and Natu took some real nasty injuries, but they still managed to carry out and complete their mission successfully. I also saw a familiar whale sized Pokémon to the northwest started to proceed towards Shine and the Claydol unit in the middle of the battlefield on Gilgamesh’s side as reinforcements.

Dolly’s familiar bond connection to Pom was coming along ridiculously, it was curious to see just how powerful Dolly actually was. Physically Dolly’s body hadn’t changed much aside from streamlining her already naturally healthy form, magically speaking Dolly really couldn’t increase her magical capacity much either… but the potency of said magic was condensing with her understanding of said magic or else she wouldn’t be able to throw tornadoes like that into the middle of the battlefield.

So same amount of magic used, but to a bigger effect, Dolly was becoming much more proficient with what she had. She was quite a curiosity and I assumed she couldn’t change the cost even if she could increase the strength with continued use to a certain degree. Dolly’s ability to derive magical energy from impacts really was an incredible ability for her given her many limitations.

Shine’s surprise assault on the teleporter with the Companions and the six Claydol went fairly well, now they were under assault from all sides. The longer they held out with the Claydol, the more surprise attacks from the other Baltoy and Claydol units, the easier it’ll be for them to hold that position. With eventual reinforcements from the Skitty Squad they will definitely hold the area.

Pom really couldn’t hurt Smolder until she started using her anti-magic ability on purpose, when before it was just reaction to magic with intent to harm her like the dark magic of the Gedol Empire. Now she had some control of that golden energy in a single leg, the output of raw mystical power was quite outstanding.

I’m assuming the Chrysomallus power was only capable of harming Smolder as much as it does because of its anti-magic properties and Pom sacrificing her health and sanity to dangerously increase the output of her attacks. Dragons like Smolder were highly resilient to magic attacks and nearly immune to most physical attacks and many other forms of energy.

Aside from Twilight Sparkle being able to do a few things to her little brother and assistant Spike, dragons for all intents and purposes were near impossible to hurt with magic or most forms of energy depending on the kind of dragon they were or evolved into. If they were an ice dragon, hitting them with ice wouldn’t do anything except protect them and recover their injuries. Regular dragons were immune to lava, and could possibly survive on the sun if, so what could regular, magical or otherwise fire really actually do to harm them?

From what I had seen, a dragon had absolutely no defense against anti-magic properties like what Pom could use as an offensive ability. Anti-magic stuff was fairly rare on Equus, the most notable use of the stuff in history was during the period where Chrysalis, Tirek and Cozy were using it to keep magic users from doing anything, that or the Storm Creatures who had anti-magic armor and shields in the current Storm Queens army.

Using anti-magic as an offensive ability was quite stupidly rare, so it would be hard to find anything that could physically defend against a power like it. However actively using it in such a manner seems to harm Pom greatly, so business as usual and hence it being called the ‘power of sacrifice’, whereas when it activates passively it does nothing to Pom. If Pom actively sacrifices to use that ability, her magical power probably receives an insane boost that all magic focused beings wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of due to the anti-magic properties. That’s why Pom managed to tear through Smolder’s scales with relative ease, the drawback was causing serious almost irreparable to heal damage to herself in doing so. Her body is showing signs of magical damage backlash that might have the capacity to kill a unicorn, mostly by an exploding horn overload with the same amount of strength.

What I’m trying to effectively wrap my head around is that Pom, our meek and chronically anxiety filled basket case, could effectively fight a dragon and win when pushed. Well… not without injury or repercussions, but she could still fight one effectively and given that dragons mostly breathed magical fire on the planet of Equus, Pom could easily repel the flames with her wool like she did against Smolder.

I’m glad Pom was able to rescue Smolder from Gilgamesh, but how much pain was she going to be in when she wakes up? Maybe she was even the only one around that could save Smolder. Would she even have a stable state of mind upon waking given how savage she looked when she defeated Smolder?

I would rather Pom not sacrifice herself into the ground for all of us, but even I could see it’s impossible with the odds we kept facing getting worse and worse. At this point we should minimize the damage to Pom as much as we could, because she would otherwise not survive to even get back home to the planet of Equus like Arceus promised he could aid us with.

Tambelon was bound to be a death trap world given its history and Grogar the demon sorcerer, but we had to go through it and the healthier Pom was for that, then the better off we would be overall in chances of getting home. It was almost easy to lose sight of why we were doing all these insane things, aside from the fact that Pom really can’t help herself.

I’m stuck here on the backlines because I wouldn’t fight, not because I wasn’t capable, but because I really didn’t like the feeling of others being in pain much less causing it. Robots are fine, they don’t have emotions I can feel. Imagine being able to feel an entire battlefields worth of sorrow and being the cause of it directly, thankfully that only happened when I took control of those two large robotic canines and I was trying not to relive the memory of going power mad. It was quite obvious why I preferred the current disconnect, not to mention any increasing amount of hatred sent your way as you defeated more and more of your opponents to help those you were allied with would not give me peace of mind.

We changelings used to capture people, but we never killed or caused grievous serious harm for a number of reasons when we were in our hungry starved forms. We can take people being repulsed with us, we can take some fear of us possibly being around, but outright hatred, anger and spite really wasn’t a good thing for an emotivore like me to be forced to swallow. Outright pure malice was terrifyingly poisonous.

I kind of wanted to be a therapist, because it wasn’t hard for me to understand how others felts and react to it accordingly to help them. The more positive emotions we were surrounded by or caused, then the better off changelings became overall. We went from just parasites to true symbionts, which is a much better way of living. How much can I really help Pom, I think I practically knew her whole life story and why she’s the way she is, she said the whole Chrysomallus thing would shorten her life expectancy drastically and I could clearly see why.

I sat down and sighed as I checked Smolder over, I can even feel a hint of love radiating from her in response to me being around her. Even knocked out cold and viciously torn down to be saved by a rabid rage filled monstrous self-defeating version Pom, she was still my best friend in life.

I didn’t take in the love, I left it where it was, I didn’t need it as much as I needed Smolder to be okay.

-Rebel backlines, nearing the Team Harmony wagon, ???-

As Gilgamesh had stated the security of the backline was quite lax and there was not many here who could stop me from achieving the mission of dealing with the most dangerous threat to Gilgamesh’s plans.

All the heroes were on the front lines and were too busy to stop this assassination from being carried out. Nobody here was strong enough to stop me as I calmly made my way towards the one known as Pom Lambchop with a simple smile on my face and a knife in my bag, by the time I was done nobody would know who killed her.

The wagon was completely left exposed, no defenses around and the nearest people who could respond with anything approaching a threat were the strange bug outsider and the Espurr prison warden. Even if they did, they weren’t nearly anywhere near my power to prove a problem.

I calmly walked forward trying not to draw attention to myself as I drew the knife from my bag and raised it to prepare to strike down on the sheep lying on her back. She was quite helpless in the wagon and entirely unable to fight back.

There was no hesitation and I prepared to stab this hidden beast in the heart and end her reign as a queen of mutts, for she had such an aura and spirit that reeked of multiple wild unruly beasts.

I swiftly brought the knife down on the heart of this beast…

This is when something went horribly wrong.

My eyes were blinded in an instant and I felt something kick the levitated knife to the side and I had clearly missed my chance to kill my target without a fight. My eyes were in agony as I started ripping whatever covered them out with my psychic abilities and caught sight of the one who stopped me, after I pulled away what I recognized as a mass of sticky black feathers off my face.

“If hadn’t been for me, all of my friends would have been long dead you see~.” The cheeky black bird had the nerve to play a violin while singing this. “Where did I come from, where would I go, nobody knows except Cotton Murkrow~!”

“How?” I asked simply, because… of course a Dark Type who’s brilliance certainly shined in being able to predict someone as powerful as Gilgamesh.

“Gyeh-heh-heh~, Gilgamesh isn’t as great a planner as he thinks he is in my ex-per-tease based opinion. Don’t be thinking you can be getting one by the Spy Master of Avia now, I’ve been waiting for you to show up… especially after you found out your brand new airship was stolen and you couldn’t find the primary Seer Xatu.” The bird stated as she tossed the violin over her shoulder into the wagon with a smarmy grin I’d like to wipe off of her beak, also the accent and the piece of hay sticking out of it was making me really want to viciously stab her to death. “I was waiting for him to send his assassin to kill my friend here, she makes a mean soup don’t you know.”

“Do you think you can really stop me?” Feathers to the eyes notwithstanding, I knew of Cotton, she’s apparently been the major thorn since we got to this city all along. We underestimated her ability to cause trouble.

The one thing that everyone knew, Cotton the Spy Master of Avia doesn’t have any moves that can cause damage and she chooses to fight with her brain instead of her body. She has even stated her move set out loud in front of people multiple times to let it be known she wasn’t afraid of people knowing what she was capable of and there was a doubt she’d change it at this point since she thought herself so cunning as to not need a battle move. I’m vaguely surprised that Cotton can actually fight with her body given she kicked my knife out of the way of striking the unconscious targets heart with incredible dexterity.

I looked at the knife buried into the wagon, near my target. It was going to take a bit of time to pull it free.

“You might have the power side of things sweetie, but don’t you dare think you have the brains to be taking me on.” That Cotton wasn’t raising a ruckus was surprising as she tipped the brim of her feathers hat to me with her left wing, one would think she would call out an assassin managing to sneak into the rebel camp immediately. She wagged a single feather held up on her right wing. “My friend here isn’t going to die today so put that thought out of your head right this instant you hear me! In fact none of my friends will die today if I’m right and I’m optimistic enough to gamble with my very life.”

-Cotton-

If it hadn’t been for me, Pom would be dead right now, the two Hoopa Prison Bottles would have reached Gilgamesh and he would have been unbound by now, a secret infiltrator wouldn’t have been found, the assassin would have their new ship and the prison wouldn’t have been busted.

Yep, it should be quite clear to anyone, I’m obviously having lots of fun here ruining things.

I’ve been doing good work lately, especially getting to the Seer Xatu first before they could be kidnapped by someone else. That the seer was a friend of mine didn’t need to be stated, so what if I took a wooden board to his skull… he’s fine where he currently is.

Speaking of which, I glanced in the direction of an airship hanging around in the air a fair distance from the battlefield. My eyes may be for nighttime, but they were no less powerful during the day.

Good, the seer had his own plans in the works and understood why I got to him first.

“So… Inky Dye… how does it feel to fail your friend?” I grinned and chewed on a bit of hay for a bit. “Or should I say… Inky Due. Gilgamesh’s one, and only, true friend.”

-Inky Dye (AKA Inky Due/En-ki-du the Psychic Ponyta)-

“So, you know…” I stated calmly my voice shifting to the less bubbly tone I had forcefully spoken in for quite a while. It was time to drop all pretenses. “My name is spelled E N K I D U, that is my true name, but Inky Due works just as well. So you’re the one that intercepted the second Prison Bottle as well?”

“It wasn’t hard to follow a trail of the second you stole that Prison Bottle from Titania, which led to me blowing up the ship to destroy the first one you were trying to smuggle into Cerebrum while everyone was unaware of it. Even before Pom’s group entered Illusio you left quite a bit of a trail, almost didn’t look into the news of unknown murderer of several Fairy Types in Titania deeper with my informants… turns out to be a good thing that I did.” Cotton responded cheekily while nodding her head and rubbing a feather across the top of her beak and smirking broadly, despite the calm appearance and joking nature she was very much taking me seriously given the narrowed look in her eyes. She was acting like she was open to attack. “Some friend you turned out to be, worst case scenario really for the Ponyta Prowlers. Unfortunately for you, you’re dealing with an Insomniac workaholic. Gyeh-heh-heh~! Wish I were born super lucky like some of my kin, but being able to work more hours before passing out helps too. Even got in some shut eye before you showed up. Pom is really comfortable to sleep on.”

She had used both Feather Dance and Confide on me and I hardly noticed until now that my offensive power has been dropped drastically, she is truly a very dangerous individual. I had thought she just randomly threw feathers in my face and confided with me that she knew my true identity, she was already weakening me before a fight even started.

She was obviously trying to break my concentration because she knew someone would come to fight me for her… I had to kill her quickly!

“Your move.” Cotton crossed her wings and stood there in front of Pom, willing to protect her with her own body. Cotton knows Roost and Confuse Ray so she’d be exceptionally hard to kill before any help she was expecting arrives. “Consider me quite plum surprised that you didn’t murder your Titania team… but then again, you didn’t exactly have the time with me running around driving you ragged right?”

“You’re stalling.” I stated simply and went on the attack, only to quickly move back from a Shadow Ball after taking several steps forward.

“Awe you moved! Here I was just waiting for a friend to take action, been following you this entire time really.” Cotton waved a wing at the Pokémon that attacked me and I narrowed my eyes. “Friendly spy cooperation has been key to my movements around Cerebrum and I thank Sheddy kindly for the assistance.”

It was the Shedinja from the Chrysalia unit!

“A Shedinja still won’t be enough to stop me.” It was going to take more than a few units to bring me down.

“Yeah, you might want to be wary of Inky, I know that they know the moves Mystical Fire and Bounce.” In response to Cotton’s warning, the Shedinja bobbed in acknowledgment while not taking its direction off of me. “You used Psychic to levitate the knife, so what’s your last move Inky? I’ll likely be dying to know.”

“You’ll die before you or anyone else will know it.” I answered calmly, then Cotton grinned as she narrowed her eyes at me.

“I’m thinking the move… ‘HEALING WISH’… in case Gilgamesh can’t get enough energy to unbind, then your last act is to sacrifice yourself for him so that he does.” The minute Cotton said that I froze, she had figured out Gilgamesh’s auxiliary plan just from understanding my move set?! She was more dangerous then we could have imagined her being. At first she was just an annoying snooper trying to get into the business of the Ponyta Prowlers with what I thought was no results, but now she was to be considered an outright direct threat to Gilgamesh’s overall plans! “We can’t let Gilgamesh have you back and you need to be put down before you cause us more trouble or be murdering anyone else all fine like. It doesn’t matter how injured one is… Healing Wish always works at full power. So if Gilgamesh manages to retrieve Inky Due here, then we’re in for a world of trouble later. Fight to kill!”

The words ‘Fight to Kill’ were rarely used by intelligent, not feral, Pokémon. When it was used… it was rather serious business as most of the time Pokémon fought to incapacitate.

“Well let’s be getting to it!” Cotton spread her wings out and took up a stance.

“Shed!” Shedinja responded by firing a Shadow Ball at me and I swiftly rolled backwards from the explosion of the attack that likely drew attention I didn’t need.

-Rebel Backline Camp, Ocellus-

“Huh… Inky Dye?” I looked in the direction of the wagon, I knew there was something off with her and now I could feel her real, quite ugly, emotions as they were no longer muted.

“Somethings very wrong.” Espurr stated plainly as he looked up from helping an ailing Kirlia.

“I’m sensing a huge disaster level problem in that direction.” Abby the Absol stated and her head horn looked to be vibrating crazily.

She and Fleer the Furfrou were hired on as mercenaries by the rebels, well Fleer was hired after she met with her friend here in Cerebrum, which were simply protecting the incoming injured Pokémon who were either healed or sent back to Mentalis on the ground in Central Illusio.

It was nice that Fleer found her friend and they had a long talk about Abby leaving Fleer behind to be badly affected by the psychic energy build up. At least we now knew what that energy was going to be used for and the two were still friends.

“Well let’s go stop a disaster from happening… wait isn’t Pom in that direction?!” Fleer immediately took off for the wagon.

I did too once the implication set in that Pom was currently helpless and there was danger in the given area according to Abby.

As I moved forward following after Abby and Fleer, I could hear the sounds of fighting and I looked to Espurr who was following alongside me with a clearly upset expression.

-Cerebrum City, Upper Tier, Lumber Spry-

“So Inky Dye’s name is actually Inky Due and she’s a traitor to Titania?!” Nodding to my associate, the now four Ponyta Prowlers, we continued to climb our way to top tier of Cerebrum as fast as we could gallop. "And our whole mission has been a lie..."

“I’m as surprised as you are when Cotton told me about it, she even gave me evidence about the Prison Bottle that was stolen from us.” Said Prison Bottle could be used to quickly unseal a Hoopa’s true power, it’s little wonder that Cotton wrecked the ship in such an explosive manner. We were going to unwittingly end up carrying it straight to Gilgamesh. “I’ve already contacted Lord Oberon and he sends his blessing to deal with this matter when Inky reveals their true colors… unfortunately I think they are doing just that right now.”

“This is so not cool, not cool at all, twenty percent less cooler!” Another one of my friends said.

It had taken me a while to realize what Inky was setting out to do alone when she said she had some business to take care of. I should have paid more attention to her wandering off alone, because she certainly wasn’t going to the bathroom! She even passed by the one we were next to as she left, I’m so stupid!

At least we had a method for tracking her, I at least remembered to do that much.

-Sky, airspace west of Cerebrum City, Canard-

“So we hold position for now?” I was quite uncomfortable sitting here doing nothing.

“Looks like it.” Sami answered as she was crouched and aiming her rifle.

“Correct.” The great seer Xatu stated, saw several other Xatu flying around the island the rebels were kicking the regimes backsides.

“Trying to help from here?” I asked calmly despite not feeling calm about this at all.

“Yep.” With a single pull of the trigger a bullet of energy shot out into the battlefield. “Come on, come on… yes, calculated it right!”

-Cerebrum City, Top Tier, Gilgamesh Forces central battle zone, Kenshin-

I took down another opponent with a Fury Cutter, the Claydol and Baltoy had caught the enemy entirely flat footed. Not to mention Shine securing and attempting to hold the teleporter. She had caused a massive change in the battlefield, her and Quetal were of great minds for tactics.

Just as I finished taking down one of the Mr. Mimes that openly retreated backwards from the Dark Types tearing apart the holding line, a Swoobat was about to hit me when it was struck by a blast of energy to cause it’s swooping form to miss and slam into the ground to my right.

I looked at where the shot came from and sent out a psychic feeler, ah I can barely feel Canard’s alien mind, Seer Xatu is much easier to sense by comparison and… that other one that was really hard to detect due in part to her uniqueness.

“Units move forwards, we still have time to stop Gilgamesh before he becomes unbound!” It wasn’t noon yet and the power growing above us felt like the sun to all the Psychic Types in the general area.

Cheers rose up as we continued to push, sadly leaving broken bodies in our wake. No Sigilyph were going to snipe us and nothing was stopping us from taking the field entirely.

-North of Kenshin’s position, Sanosuke-

“Ah yeah, the little Gourd lady came through for us, but now she needs help!” I Grinned madly and lunged forward with my great sword. There were still more Sigilyph in this area than any other, but my guys could handle it! “Who cares if we’ve still got a Sigilyph problems, let’s burn through the enemies in our way!”

“We’re all going to die!” One of the Meditites yelled as they ducked under a beam from a Sigilyph, despite this, they kept fighting.

-South of Kenshin’s position, Kaoru-

“Please be careful Kenshin.” I muttered, never had I met a Gallade more noble or sad than he to be back on a field of battle.

The Dark Types were tearing large swaths through the enemy Psychic Types and we were supporting them and making sure they didn’t go too crazy or wild, plus they needed our help when a Fairy Type move came up.

We were crushing the battlefield according the to the Musharna information relays, so why did it feel like something was wrong?

I brought my sword up in a stylish twirl that caused a Woobat to spiraling up in the air. Taking a calm stance, I brought my Bokken up and then slammed it down into the Woobat when they fell into its inevitable path.

…

“Musharna, how’s our backline?” I turned to the nearest one to ask this.

“Most of our encampments seem fine, but there seems to be a disturbance around the Team Harmony wagon’s backline.” I considered things silently, I was needed on the front. “Excuse me, could one of you get Zoroark, I need them for an emergency mission!”

-Above Cerebrum City, Castle of Illusion, Gilgamesh-

A frown marred my face as I silently rubbed at the still oozing scratch on my cheek, something was wrong and it wasn’t the soul damage on my handsome and glorious, moderately itchy, face.

No matter, I was gathering enough power and soon… nothing would be wrong, ‘or else’.

Author's Note

Nothing of note, the author is in good health.

345. Chains of Fate: Enuma Elish.

Author's Note

Sorry this took a while.

Music for Enkidu's theme- "Forged In Crimson" (Rubicante's theme), Final Fantasy XIV.

345. Chains of Fate: Enuma Elish.

-Origin Space, Mew-

“Why does the power coming from this Inky Due seem scary?” I asked of father.

“That is because they have the ability to easily bind Legendary Pokémon, much less anyone with an amount of divinity. Even I would be bound an unable to help against Gilgamesh if I were to appear there right now.” Say what, how does that kind of power even happen on your watch Arceus?! “However there is not much to worry about. The binding power is fairly weak or nonexistent when facing mortals. The power only suppresses those of divinity.”

“Would Inky be able to suppress Pom’s powers?” My question was met with a smile in father’s eyes.

“Pom would certainly like her powers suppressed, yes, but unfortunately for her… suppressing them is basically impossible and it would be a bad idea overall anyway even they could be. Even as they push her towards death, her powers are still intrinsic to her. Pom is completely safe from the chains, for she is quite mortal and lacks divinity, though her ancestry certainly has some intrigue to it.” Arceus turned to look at a quiet Tiamat and Bahamut watching the scene of a Psychic Ponyta lighting their horn. “A fairly unusual circumstance I’m sure you two would know more about… hmmm?”

“Yes, a version of me has been restrained by those kind of chains before, basically a weaker and paler imitation that are still fairly powerful in their own right.” Tiamat stated with a flat tone. “That version proved to be worthy of my name when they broke said chains.”

-Pokemon Realm, Ransei Region, Illusio, Top Tier of Cerebrum City, rebel backline-

Inky Due (Enkidu the Psychic Ponyta) vs. anyone nearby that can feasibly try and stop them.

Inky Due started the battle by ignited their horn and exhaling flames from her mouth, there was an odd pressure as the mystical flames turned into chains in the air and the psychic energy started to do the same.

Following the generation of chains made out of fire and psychic energy, Inky proceed to then generate chains out of energy made of wind from the energy drawn out of their Bounce move.

“Something’s quite off with those chains your making… I don’t reckon a normal Psychic Type Ponyta would be able to do what you’re currently showing off.” Cotton stated with a wary tone as her red eyes narrowed as the chains wiggled around the bland faced Inky like tentacles.

“How astute, let me show you my power to chain the gods.” Inky stated blankly and a slight madness entered their eyes and their hair blew back with power, more chains of the same types of energy begin to form in the air from concentrating blobs of energy.

“Better stay agile Sheddy, this is going to be quite a hootenanny and not the friendly kind of dancing with Hoot-hoots and hollering either.” Cotton then proceed to roll to the left and avoid a chains of psychic energy whipping at her, she started to twist and throw feathers like they were kunai from her wings. A chain of pure flame tore through the feathers before they could even reach Inky.

The wind energy chains converged together and deflected a Shadow Ball attack launched from Shedinja who took to being quite a distance further away.

One of the flaming chains now hovering around Inky Due lashed out and the Shedinja narrowly avoided being taken out immediately, for a single successful blow with a weakness would always take any Shedinja down. Shedinja were not known for their sustainability in combat when their weaknesses were around.

While defending themselves from being assaulted with more feathers and not forgetting their original goal, Inky lashed out with a psychic chain for Pom and Cotton jumped into its path. The chain, being made psychic energy, does exactly nothing to Cotton since she is a Dark Type as it dissipates upon impact with her body.

It was necessary for Cotton to block it with her body, unless she wanted the out cold Pom to be hurt. However she could only block the one attack as flaming chain swooped around and threatened to light the wagon on fire.

Before the flaming chain could touch the wagon, the flash of a blade knocks the chain away revealing Fleer’s friend Abby having deflected it with a quick jerk of her head to swing the glowing blade growing from it.

“So what’s up with this Ponyta with the chain fetish?” Abby asked with a blunt stare.

“Inky there is trying to kill Pom for Gilgamesh.” Cotton responded quickly while not taking her eyes off of Inky Due.

“That’s all I needed to know!” Fleer fired a Dark Pulse and the various chains of wind around Inky moved to shred the attack to nothing with them, it couldn’t even do any damage. “Woah…”

Inky didn’t seem panicked over Abby and Fleer’s arrival in the slightest. In fact, she seemed bored as if they weren’t enough trouble to be bothered about.

Fleer started to move Pom away from the wagon by grabbing her by the scruff, Inky immediately sent a Psychic chain straight at her. Only for several feathers from Cotton covered in dark energy to intercept it.

“On a scale of one to ten, I’m now reading a thirteen on the disaster scale migraine here!” Abby stated loudly, drawing a panic from everyone present, because Absol’s like Abby were never wrong about incoming disasters.

“It actually seems like I will have to stop holding back a little, let me show you the power of what is called a phantasm… Let us restrain the gods: Enuma Elish!” Inky Due stated blandly, the number of elemental chains being generated by her suddenly tripled and they all started taking on a golden glow.

Sending a chain that used to have psychic energy for Fleer as multiple other chains swept around and created a wall to prevent Fleer from escaping with Pom’s body.

Cotton took the chain attacking Fleer and received several nasty burns to her wings when she did.

“Gah, she’s hiding the elements with the glow… that or she can change them in an instant.” Cotton said with a sudden worry about actually taking attacks to the body from the chains now rapidly building in numbers.

“Oh, they can do far more than that, you just don’t have the imagination to comprehend the full scope of what you’re actually dealing with here.” Inky Due was facing four Pokémon at once and still wasn’t bother that they could sense more waiting to pitch in.

Multiple chains were sent out for Fleer who was grabbing at Pom’s wool with her teeth and she quickly leapt away and almost got skewered if Abby didn’t deflect the multiple chains with several rolling and spinning swings of her head blade.

The chains quickly circled back around from the deflection for Fleer who was trying to escape as another wall of chains appeared in her path out of thin air. Abby tried to move after them to do more deflections, only to have a chains bind one of her hind legs and bodily lift her off the ground to slam her down on her back away from her friend.

Shedinja tried to knock the chains off course with a Shadow Ball and the remotely detonated explosion delayed them from getting Fleer from behind.

In front of Fleer though, a wall of chains pulled in towards her and she barely leapt high enough to clear them and rolled with Pom still clenched in her teeth to avoid a few chains stabbing at her and one impaled straight into the ground and a second later Fleer made another leap as it erupted from the ground threatening to pierce Pom’s back.

Gilgamesh said there would be no one around that would be strong enough to stop Inky, he hadn’t been wrong. The nuisances in front of her would only be enough to delay the inevitable of Inky killing Pom.

Inky Due hadn’t physically even moved once, why would they even need to when their chains started attacking everyone at once and they were defending themselves from attacks at the same time.

Fleer couldn’t sit still or attacking use her mouth, the Shadow Balls from Shedinja weren’t even coming close to hitting and they needed to focus on avoiding taking a single hit at all, the sporadic Dark Pulses from Abby when she could find a moment to stop deflecting the chains with her head blade weren’t getting close either and Cotton’s attempt to fire a Confuse Ray was blocked by the chains solidifying in the path of the beam.

“Hmph, enough.” Inky Due slammed down a large number of chains causing Fleer to drop Pom and send everyone else skidding away, it even made the wagon roll back a good ten feet.

Inky sent a chain to wrap around Pom’s waist and start squeezing to lift her into the air, the end of the chain was about to stab into Pom when her fleeced exploded with a golden shine throughout her body, except for her wrapped up right leg.

The blast of raw force blinded Inky and she suddenly felt something was off as all of her manifested chains dissolved a few seconds later.

“Ah, anti-magic, right.” That’s why Inky was going to use a levitated knife to carve out Pom’s heart earlier, said knife was now stuck inside the wagon thanks to Cotton.

The god binding chains were mystical in nature and the intended threat from said magic caused an automatic reaction that just saved Pom from being skewered.

Following her acknowledgment of having made a mistake in Inky started to actually dodge several attacks from the ones she had recently knocked down. Putting her a small distance away from the target.

There was one thing that Inky took note of in the previous interaction. Her chains could actually wrap around Pom without a reaction, but it was only when a threat was intended that her wool activated to destroy all of Inky’s chains in a flash. Pom was functionally immune to offense based phantasms if this was the case, considering all them used magic in some way even if it had an element of divinity to it. It was little wonder that Pom could be considered quite dangerous beyond her strange canine related abilities.

It would take a moment for Inky to rebuild her chains.

The attack on Pom hadn’t gone unnoticed by Dolly, who was across the entire battlefield and assisting Shine’s group in securing the teleporter to the Castle of Illusion. The Dalmatian immediately alerted them to the problem and used the Digivice to translate what she was saying due in part to the sudden emergency.

Closer to the ensuing one sided fight that was in Inky Due’s favor, Ocellus ran in and swept up Pom’s body with her bipedal dragon form and quickly tried to move away from Inky. Inky wasn’t giving off enough malice, or any strong emotion aside from annoyance, to really debilitate Ocellus as she focused on generating chains to defend herself from several attacks.

Espurr, who had come to witness the fight with Ocellus, stayed well away from Inky and off to the side and not willing to get into the fight since he was still recovering.

Ocellus was retreating with Pom over her shoulder as the others blasted attacks ineffectually at Inky Due as her chains deflected or tore apart the energy that made up the attacks.

Inky finally had to start moving because she didn’t want Ocellus to escape with Pom, chains lashed out as she gave chase to the bipedal dragon form of Ocellus.

Quickly tossing the mercenaries Fleer and Abby out of the way with little concern using quickly generated sweeping chains, Inky blocked Cotton’s attempt to lodge feathers in her eyes again with a chain circling around her body and made Shedinja back off with a flaming chain before using the move Bounce to launch herself after Ocellus.

Ocellus threw herself to the ground and her chin slammed into a sleeping Pom’s wool as Inky shot overhead.

Sitting up, Ocellus tried to use her legs to push herself away from Inky as she tried to stand up and the monster unicorn had landed to quickly turn around and use the move Psychic on her and Pom.

Both Pom and Ocellus were lifted into the air and Ocellus felt her throat being tightly restricted and Pom too was likely being choked as well. Psychic energy wasn’t magic so Pom’s anti-magic wool wouldn’t save them from this.

“Quickly, we need to break her concentration!” Roared out Cotton who started firing as many feathers as she could launch at Inky Due, to very little effect as they were burned away by the chains rotating around her like a saw.

Two Shadow Pulses and a Shadow Ball slapped fruitlessly against a barrier made of chains as Inky worked on choking the life out of both Ocellus and Pom. Pom was getting quite close to ultimately suffocating to death and none of the attacks could get through to stop Inky from doing so.

“Imprison!” With a sudden shout coming from Lumber Spry and the four other Ponyta Prowlers showing up, Pom and Ocellus summarily dropped onto the ground as energy coming from Lumber coated Inky and stopped her from using the move Psychic. Just because she could no longer utilize the move, it didn’t mean that Inky couldn’t use psychic powers.

“Really, you learned Imprison just to stop me from using Psychic?” Inky stated dully as she bounced into the air and angled her horn down for Pom’s prone body.

Pom’s body gasped and she swiftly rolled to the side avoiding the glowing horn that buried itself up to the base in the ground as Inky’s skull rammed into the dirt.

“Well someone has too, it’s good to see you’re awake Pom!” Lumber Spry stated brightly. “With your help I’m sure we can take on Inky!”

“That’s not Pom… Dolly is that you?” Ocellus stated questioningly while looking at Pom. She could tell exactly when Dolly took control of Pom’s body, because Pom doesn’t have an upbeat personality or an impossibly optimistic and energetic outlook on things. Dolly practically radiated it despite how much of a downer Pom can be sometimes.

“Sorry, took a bit to convince someone to watch my body for me, but I’m ready and raring to go!” Dolly said in Pom’s body with a cheeky grin, looking into Pom’s eyes one could see there was a different light in them and that light reflected of Dolly’s taking over the driver seat. Also the brave look on Pom’s face was one that was rarely ever seen, mostly because Pom never had a brave look like that for more than five seconds. “It’s a good thing I don’t need to use all of Pom’s senses, because she is in quite a lot of pain… sheesh what did she even do to her right leg to make it feel like this? I’m only getting a muted version of it and it feels like I’m swimming in a vat of lemon juice with a ton of open wounds and there’s possible other nasty stuff in the lemonade too like salt… yuck! I’m getting some serious bad vibes from it.”

That was about as much Dolly could say because she immediately entered Fleet Cunning Doe stance and bounded away from several chains made of fire and wind whipping at her while sending a number of golden glowing chains to attack everyone else present. They thankfully seemed to have a limited range, either that or Inky was playing a long game by pretending they had a limited reach.

“How well can you fight using Pom’s body?” Ocellus asked as she blasted out some flames to knock back the chains, which were assaulting everyone except Pom’s body, away from her.

“Why didn’t she send some of those chains after me?” Dolly asked while keeping her leaping stance and trotted in place lightly in a springy manner. “Also not very well, she’s a lot lighter than she looks and the only thing I can do is control her wool and use Fleet Cunning Doe… but that’s just using her abilities.”

“Good, she can’t physically attack Pom with the chains because they are magical in nature even if she can change their elemental outputs, Pom’s basically immune to them if they are used as an attack, but be careful she could still pin you down with them and try to kill Pom in another way that doesn’t rely on the chains.” Ocellus was glad that any attempt to bind Pom would have to be harmless to her, so the fire chains couldn’t trap her and the psychic or golden chains had to be used. It was unknown whether the wind chains would count as an attack or not depending on if the wind was blunt or cutting force.

Inky didn’t seem to be able to currently use Psychic chains due to how Lumber Spry rescued Pom and Ocellus. As long as Lumber Spry stayed standing and able, that would last the entire battle.

“With this many opponents, I should feel more alive than I currently do.” Inky Due was thinking of binding everyone as much as she could, because otherwise this situation would be dragged out quite badly and Gilgamesh’s forces couldn’t hold all day with the collapse of the defensive lines. Pom’s body being remotely controlled by her familiar wasn’t too much of a surprise, just another slight wrinkle in Inky being able to kill Pom. “I’ll just have to deal with the rest of you before I deal with my target.”

Inky started targeting all of the other combatants.

“Dolly, run!” Dolly tried to do what Ocellus said, but Dolly only got so far before she skidded to a stop after a deer like leap and try as she might, she couldn’t put another hoof forward or leap away any further. “What are you stopping for?!”

“I can’t run any further, I think Pom’s body won’t let me run away knowing you’re all in danger…” Dolly understood how it felt to be Pom in a dangerous situation in this moment, when someone else was in danger her nature to ‘sacrifice for others’ thing was now getting in the way of getting Pom’s body to safety.

“Oh right, guess that’s actually far more compulsory for Pom than we previously thought…” Ocellus said before being trapped in a golden chain wrapping around her body, she quickly turned into a cute looking cobra and slipped out of the chains before they could squeeze her painfully and slithered away. “That it is even a thing right now when she’s not aware is complicating things drastically.”

Others were not as lucky as Ocellus to have a natural ability to slip out of the chains as Fleer was tied down from her left hind leg to her front right paw and her body was squeezed painfully in the chain threatening to crush her entirely.

“Fleer use Cotton Guard!” Abby suggested and immediately Fleer’s fur puffed out and gave her some protection from the constricting force Inky Due was applying onto her.

A Furfrou’s ability was Fur Coat, which reduced all forms of physical trauma by a lot. So Fleer could feasibly survive being squeezed for quite a while, others would not be as lucky as her.

“So I just need endanger all of you to make sure her body won’t leave the area eh?” Inky Due now had a demented smile on their face. “Makes my mission much simpler.”

“Probably shouldn’t have said all that stuff out loud huh… my bad!” Dolly shouted while making Pom’s body wilt in response to the Dalmatians emotions, before she turned towards Inky and dragged Pom’s front left hoof along the ground while trying not to put too much pressure on the right. Dolly activated Flow-motion and was ready to use momentum manipulation to the fullest here, she needed quite a few incredible triangle opportunities. “If I can’t run, then I might as well put up a fight!”

“Since Inky would only need one person alive...” Cotton said with a sudden look of horror crossing her beak, she quickly dodged and then did a stylish spin to escape a chain aiming to constrict her throat her feathers became extra slippery as she altered her Feather Dance moves attributes again. “Do not get taken hostage unless you can survive being crushed like Fleer can. Spread out, keep attacking and maybe we’ll find a way around those chains to take her down!”

“You call this surviving?!” Whimpered out Fleer as the chains tightened around her body cutting off circulation and threatening to crunch her bodily, one could hear her bones creaking with in the chain wrapped around her torso and two legs.

“Hm?” Inky suddenly ducked as something invisible passed overhead and bucked out her right hind leg

A Zoroark was sent skidding backwards several feet by the sudden painful blow he had to block with his visibly bruising arms as he appeared out of thin air.

“So close… yet so far away.” Zoroark stated with grim look as he quickly backpedaled away from the several chains lashing out for him. “Physically stronger than they look too, there’s something about this Ponyta that isn’t natural...”

“Has everyone finally come to the party? If so, then come at me all at once.” Inky stated dully and the five Ponyta Prowlers automatically took her up on it. “You might be able to actually make me sweat a single drop.”

The four of the Ponyta Prowlers spread out and charged for Inky and Lumber Spry charged directly forward to blast a psychic out. Abby lashed out with a Shadow Pulse, a Shadow Ball was fired by Shedinja and Zoroark unleashed a shockwave of pure darkness from his mouth.

With the use of a single rapidly spiraling chain, all the incoming Ponyta Prowlers were knocked down and all the attacks were deflected and the Shendinja received a chain jabbing into their chest to send them sprawling. Even Zoroarks shockwave was redirected by the single spiraling gold chain among all the other chains Inky Due obviously controlled to spin rapidly and absorb the attack.

Shedinja didn’t get up after the blow, it had clearly been super effective and if they were a normally breathing being then it would be quite disconcerting to see them laying still on the ground.

“Now you see, that’s why I’m not fighting, still too weak from being tortured in prison.” Espurr stated as he quickly levitated the downed Shedinja over to himself, Ocellus had made her way next to Pom’s body and watched as Espurr turned and started to hurry away. “I’ll take care of Shedinja, keep an eye on the situation until I get back. I’ll bring some medical supplies!”

“Aghhh!” The chain wrapped around Fleer increased it’s pressure on her.

Inky unleashed a blast of Mystical Fire from her mouth and Lumber Spry barely avoided them as her attack was eaten by the much more powerful flames. She quickly backed away hastily as a bit of her mane caught on fire, forcing her to roll through the dirt to put it out.

“Yikes, what kind of freak are we dealing with here?!” Dolly stated with wide eyes as Inky blankly looked her way, making Dolly shiver and tighten Pom’s wool around her frame. The wool around Pom’s right leg remained unresponsive as much as it felt like it was being dipped into boiling acid.

Inky suddenly lashed out with her left hoof and a chain wrapped around one of the Ponyta Prowlers and dragged them into the air above Inky to be held next to Fleer. The ponyta was already starting to bleed, Inky certainly didn’t care one bit about her old team as the chain bit into their flesh.

“Please actually start struggling for life, Gilgamesh would appreciate the sentiment at least.” Inky said with a faint hint of a smile and half lidded eyes now that she had two hostages in as little as five minutes and had taken out Shedinja.

Cotton shivered, but narrowed her eyes and didn’t start fleeing. The bird had some nerves of steel from being in the spy business for so long. Inky Due was incredibly powerful, more so than any other Psychic Ponyta that Cotton had ever seen and that’s with one of her moves being sealed.

“Heal Pulse!” Lumber Spry fired a ball of energy and it struck the Ponyta Prowler who just stopped breathing in the chain and they gasped back to life. Inky could have moved them out of the way, but decided not to on a whim.

There was something quite endearing about the friendship on display and saving the life of another, Inky could have just as easily caught or stopped that energy.

“If you don’t fight me with your best, then they will simply just die.” Inky stated calmly as she whipped out a chain without even looking and the Zoroark with bruised arms quickly appeared out of nowhere and rolled away as the ground cratered under the loud whip like cracks of the chains chasing out after them.

“Can she see through my illusions?” Zoroark the black furred fox like Dark Type with long hair and the appearance of a bipedal werewolf with a short tail, just stared warily at the threat. Dark Types like him should have an advantage, but in this case… advantage clearly wasn’t enough.

Everyone started launching ranged energy attacks and nothing could get by the single golden spiraling chain, but something did get by it.

Dolly leapt forward and sprung around the chains that tried to grapple Pom’s body. With a backflip over a chain that tried sweep Pom’s legs out from under her and tie them up, Dolly saw the bright green triangle as she inflated Pom’s wool and hung in the air for a second.

The wool around Pom’s body deflated and Dolly suddenly gained a massive amount of acceleration and all four of her hooves slammed home in Inky’s face with an all hooves flying buck, the sudden surprise in increased momentum and change in direction made Inky stumble back a bit as she had been setting up a net of chains to trap Pom’s form.

“Take that you De Ville wannabe!” Dolly shouted out at Inky as she launched away.

“Guh?!” Inky shook her dazed head and could see that Dolly had already kicked off to be outside the area the chains were moving around within. The four full hooves to the head didn’t seem to hurt Inky too much, but it had certainly been the first time they took an injury.

“Gyeh-heh-heh~! Can you do that again sweetie, but actually make it hurt this time?” Cotton asked and saw Dolly nod as she was standing with her right side facing Inky and the others were waiting for Pom’s body to make a move. “If you see an opening, then go for it anyway, even if you know you’re going to be stopped! Also you, don’t get Pom dead now, you hear me!”

They had the numbers here, they shouldn’t be having so much trouble with one Ponyta with multiple supernatural chains swirling around them.

“Go!” Dolly decided to spring sideway towards Inky.

Inky was making sure that none of her chains accidentally hit Pom’s body with any amount of force as they fended off the four Ponyta Prowlers and the Zoroark. Any chain that attempted to strike Pom’s body with force would cause an anti-magic reaction that would leave Inky exposed to attacks for a short while.

Ocellus moved to watch from off to the side while not getting too close to what could loosely be termed a battle, it was more like a one sided massacre in Inky’s favor.

Dolly rolled and kicked off the ground while continuing the roll to pass between two of the chains that threatened to wrap around Pom’s torso around the midsection. She proceeded to pull back Pom’s left hoof and swing it out.

Inky tried to block with a chain, but there was no impact on the chain, Dolly had inflated Pom’s wool to stop short of the wall of chains that formed and tried to swarm forward like a net. Tumbling under the swarming chains, Dolly went into a sliding on along the ground on Pom’s backside using the frictionless wool to close in. Bringing up Pom’s hind legs, Dolly bucked upwards into Inky’s belly with a devastating amount of force launching her upwards.

A pained looking Inky didn’t come down though as several chains raced out and stopped Inky in the air so that she was being lifted off the ground by her own generated chains so Dolly couldn’t do an attack like that again. Another Ponyta Prowler was caught by the hind legs and they were knocked unconscious by having their skull slapped rough against a stone slab in the ground, the chains started to slowly crush their legs as Dolly ducked under and scampered away from the slow moving attempt of several chains to wrap around Pom’s neck or body.

It was rather frustrating for Inky that Dolly knew how to use Pom’s body well enough to become an active problem, it was even more frustrating that they couldn’t just lash the chains out at Pom without incurring a huge backlash in losing all her chains at once.

With a twitch Inky turned lashed out a chain that took down another of the Ponyta Prowlers and collected their body to hold high up in the air as well with a chain going around their neck and along their spine tightening and threatening to choke the life out them. The Ponyta Prowler barely managed to get a hoof up under the chain to protect their throat, but the chains biting into their body was making blood drip from their back as the lacerations caused by the chains was worsening on all of those captured.

Lumber Spry once again had to use Heal Pulse to help the unfortunate victims trapped in the chains. Inky didn’t see this as much of a threat, because once they were trapped they really couldn’t do much to help the fight. An example was that Inky had recently wrapped a bit of chain around Fleer’s muzzle to prevent her from spitting a Dark Pulse out using her mouth.

“We’re losing people fast, there has got to be some way to handle those chains aside from forcing them to hit Pom…” Abby trailed off having watched as Lumber Spry fire a heal pulse into the captives as the chains were hurting them quite badly.

“The only way is to start putting up a real fight, this paltry resistance is just sad.” The bland tone Inky spoke in brooked no argument, she was currently glaring at Pom’s body. “There’s nothing you can really…”

From across the battlefield a small blackened, highly carbonized, bread loaf flew true and struck Inky’s horn earning an actual sound of soul rending agony from her and a dazed cross eyed look.

Ocellus glanced out at the hectic battlefield and idly though about how Dodo was getting better at extreme range sniping with the highly carbonized bread loaf even if the fire rate was really slow.

“Where… where did that… what… I’m the fairy princess of the midnight ball…” A dazed Inky wobbled about in the chains supporting her, the grip on the chains around the hostages loosened up a bit, it was second later that Inky regained her senses and tightened them back up.

Nobody could get in an attack as the chains whipping around her had become quite erratic. Dolly still tried to capitalize on the disorientation but failed to get a hit in as she had to frantically dodge multiple chains trying to entrap Pom’s body when she tried to close in for a strike. Even when disoriented, Inky was proving to be quite a major problem in still being able to perfectly control the chains she generated independent of her mental state.

“Fire another Dark Pulse!” Cotton suddenly asked of Abby and she glanced at Cotton before doing so, the pulse of dark energy launched forward and the golden chain rapidly spun to chew apart the attack. “I think I’ve figured it out!”

“Well if you have then please tell the rest of us while we can still fight and move!” Abby groused out and lit up the blade coming from the side of her head to deflect several chains assaulting her.

Cotton noticed that each chain in the link in the golden chain take some damage, but it was usually made up for by the next chain in the link taking damage. In effect the damage was being spread out over each link in the golden chain Inky was defending herself with, said damage quickly repaired itself over time and they weren’t doing enough to one link all at once.

“Absol, get ready to use your most powerful attack and make sure all the damage you deal hits a single chain link on the golden chain!” Cotton was willing to make the gambit and would have to risk being captured while spraying feathers from a Feather Dance at Inky’s face. “Whatever you can do with Pom’s body Dolly, be prepared to start hitting Inky as hard as you can and actively try to get hit by the chains!”

“Hmmm…” Inky wondered if Cotton had actually noticed a weak link in her golden chains or was she just bluffing? It would be interesting to see these mortals struggle a little bit longer.

Inky was the reason why Legendary Pokémon wouldn’t attack Gilgamesh if he managed to cross the line of the world's order and Arceus had warned all them off of trying to do so, at least directly, having somehow known about the god binding chains prior to Inky having actually used them.

The more divinity in a given area close to Inky, the more powerful those chains would get and they would be nigh unstoppable if multiple legendary Pokémon tried to fruitlessly rush down Inky Due.

Right now Inky was at their weakest fighting just mortals, which wasn’t saying much considering she was basically walking over all of them in trying to kill a single very annoying target that Gilgamesh wanted dealt with.

346. Chains of Fate: Weakened Link.

Author's Note

"NEW" - 'Final Fantasy Monsters and Summons' added to world's knowledge in the story description.

It now reads...

World 6: Pokémon Conquest (Dynasty Warriors Style)/Nasuverse (Fate/Stay Freeform)/Digimon (Freeform)/Final Fantasy (Monsters and Summons)

Music- Forged in Crimson-Rubicante's theme, Final Fantasy XIV.

346. Chains of Fate: Weakened Link.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Illusio, Top Tier of Cerebrum City, western side, near the teleporter to the Castle of Illusion, Shanty-

Dolly be out cold in Dodo’s back, but she be protected from being attacked as she be taking control of Pom.

Shine’s group already be losing three of the Claydols they came with from a heavy mass of attacks crisscrossing through the area. The ambush units of Baltoy and Claydol were also being taken out, but it was being far too late for Gilgamesh’s forces to rebuild anything resembling a strong defensive line after Shine’s plan be disrupting it so badly.

There were still hundreds of Pokémon fighting everywhere, but without the Sigilyph performing aerial artillery bombardments, Gilgamesh’s forces be on a back hoof.

I slashed out the cane scythe cutting an attack coming at me out of the air, then be darting forward to take down a Drowzee that tried to put me to sleep. My blood be too boiling to be sleeping in the middle of all of this! Quetal soon took down a Drowzee that be sneaking up on me with flying kick and two quick slashes of his claws.

“Do you think Pom will be being okay?” I be worried about it because Dolly said Pom was being attacked and needed her.

“Who knows at this rate! We can’t exactly battle our way back across the battlefield at the moment, but Kenshin is clearing a path directly to us while Sanosuke and Kaoru are picking apart their forces in the north and south.” Quetal be looking up as two members of the Skitty Squad dropped down among a unit of Golducks and quickly be wiping them out. “More help is on the way, we just need to hold out until it arrive.”

It was around that point that some of the Natu and Xatu showed up and started to launch attacks from above, there weren’t many of them four Natu and a single unit of six Xatu. They still came to the most contested area of the battlefield to assist us, they are really being brave if the rest of them are too injured to be fighting.

“Whoo, this is getting painful, so when can I use my vacation hours again? Right now seems like a good time to fly off to a nice warm beach somewhere!” Apparently the joker Natu still be in fighting condition much to the chagrin of one of the Xatu, who I be recognizing as the one that briefed everyone on the aerial assault mission.

“Can it Heckler and watch your backside, we’re surrounded out here and we’re to continue relieving our friendly units!” Xatu Yelled as he fired blades of wind into a crowd.

“I don’t care if he jokes, any help we can get is good help at this point!” Dazzle shouted as she ducked several crisscrossing beams of Psychic and lashed out with a whip of fire.

As I be taking down a Mr. Mime trying to rush me with a slash before they could be getting up a barrier, I be taking scope of my surroundings quickly.

Lit be blasting an entire unit with electric webs, he be fine if need a rest soon.

Lucha Mundo was putting up quite a fight despite the opponents having the advantage, his wrestling moves were wrecking the less physically capable Pokémon he could get his wings on as he grappled them and threw them or slammed them into other opponents with gleaming wings of steel acting as a protective shield against any attacks that struck him.

Quetal be having my back and when he wasn’t attacking at close range, he was firing his Swift attacks at a distance to be harrying them.

“Where is Frizzle being right now?” I asked as I ducked under a stabbing spear and managed to get a slash of my scythe by the pig, with the two black pearls on its head and the one in its belly, before it can raise its shield. Didn’t know what it is being called yet.

“She’s on a very special assignment!” Answered Shine as she ducked into the shadows and popped back up throwing a vicious uppercut that launched one of the shield wielding pigs away, she must be noticing that my cutting arcs be having problems going through their shields.

“I, Favela, didn’t think you were telling the truth about Pom being magnetized to trouble this badly Shanty!” Favela was having some problems with an Exeggcutor, she not be having a good time here and she be meeting many beings that are resilient to her attacks or were dangerous for her to fight alone.

“If it be coming to Pom, I don’t think I could be telling tall tales about all the weird situations she’s been getting us out of!” I quickly defeated the armed pig I was dealing with. First by doing a twirling clockwise swing that brought me around to be planting my cane scythe sharply into its back after it recklessly charged forward. After I be pulling my cane scythe free, I be slamming them across the back of the head with the butt of my cane. “Heads up, take these with your vines!”

Since Favela be having so much trouble, I be quickly hooking the dropped spear and launched it towards Favela, I then be following that up with hooking and launching the shield in her direction as well.

Favela jumped back from almost getting stomped on by the living palm tree. She turned and caught the spear with her right vine and the shield in her left, she quickly brought the shield around and blocked the kick from the tree and the follow up blast of psychic energy. Both of said attacks be sending a growling Favela sliding backwards, she lunged forward and quickly stabbed the spear into the Exeggcutor’s chest and pulled it out.

The Exeggcutor howled in pain and stumbled back into a Hyper Beam from one of the remaining three nearby Claydol. Two other Hyper Beams be ramming into other Exeggcutor trying to encroach on us.

Dodo slid in front of me protectively and used his metal wings to be deflecting an attack away, Dolly would be fine in his back and I hoped she was doing a good job in heling Pom. They were probably being more okay than we currently were.

“Hah!” Charjabug?! He slammed into a pig armed with a sword and shield with his body was glowing with energy to shock them down.

“Solar Beam!” Shouted Cleffa as she brought her little limbs forward and fired a powerful beam that was far larger than her body. She be joining the Claydol, apparently they be coming out of the same hole that be getting Shine’s group here. “Have any of you seen Canard?”

-Rebel backlines, the continued fight, Inky Due (Enkidu the god-chaining Psychic Ponyta) vs. anyone nearby that is willing to fight this absurdly strong monster.

When the fight was last left off, Shedinja was taken out, Fleer and several of the Ponyta Prowlers were captured and the fight was not looking too hot even as Dolly joins it using Pom’s body dealing some physical damage due to her unique abilities. Cotton apparently thinks she know something about the chains and how to deal with Inky Due, she bades Abby the Absol to use her stronger attack on a single link in the chain and Dolly to prepare to dig in as well while thinking of a gambit to personally put herself in danger.

Nobody knows what Zoroark, the head of the newly established Dark Types mercenaries that joined the rebels, is up to. His attempts at stealth attacks having already failed several times along with his incredible illusions to hide his presence.

Dolly shifted Pom’s body into a bipedal stance and the wool around Pom’s left leg started to churn until it built up into a big swirling and tightening thick spring like cylinder.

Abby started charging up the blade horn coming from the side of her head for an attack and as they took time to prepare themselves to start assaulting the hostages were being slowly and painfully injured by the chains entrapping them.

Cotton started them off by tossing out a veritable hailstorm of feathers formed from Dark Type energy. Abby followed it up with a forward lunged narrowed eyes and Dolly stayed where she was to fire off a large Thousand Spears using the uncoiling wool on Pom’s left leg.

Inky responded by taking out the feathers, the chain of wind surrounding her suddenly winked out of existence upon contact with the powerful jet of air fired off from Pom’s left leg.

Cotton was already charging forward regardless of how unsafe it was to do so with Inky surrounded by several chains and firing feathers at Inky.

Abby, with narrowed eyes, lunged at a blazing speed to swing her head about and the glowing edge of her head blade, covered in dark energy, struck the golden chain. She struck a single link in the defending golden chain with full force using the Dark Type move called Night Slash, which was just adding a type of energy into a powerful cutting attack.

The single link in the chain that was struck had the blade tear more than halfway into it and within seconds of trying to use the chain defensively, the chain above the damage link broke apart and left Inky’s control allowing her to take a face full of feathers.

Lumber Spry clamped onto the other chains using Psychic, to prevent them from capturing her friend and this let Dolly spring up. Striking a powerful left uppercut to the jaw that rocked Inky in the chains holding her up, Dolly landed and skipped Pom’s body backwards quickly.

Cotton took to flying and flinging feathers at Inky and then she, for some reason landed, and grabbed onto the bit of golden chain near where it was torn off and quickly looked at Abby who was helping Lumber Spry hold the numerous chains off from capturing her.

“Absol if you have a normal type attack, use them on the golden chains even if you don’t know what element they are otherwise! Fire on clearly fire chains, wind on wind… AGH?!” Cotton had already said too much and Inky didn’t like that the Murkrow had confided some secrets about her chains, Cotton was suddenly wrapped up harshly by a fire chain and it quickly got around her beak.

The Confide Cotton used before capture had weakened Inky’s fire chain that had entrapped her. She was also using her feather dance to build a barrier of loose feathers between her body and the flaming chain that now entrapped her and was hurting her beak as it clamped down on it.

Inky was quite upset that Cotton was able to figure out the secret of the golden chains, however her explanation of that secret confused everyone else still trying to fight her.

“Use Normal type on the golden chains?” Abby asked, she took note of the chain holding onto Fleer was a golden one. She switched from charging a Night Slash, to charging Slash a Normal Type move similar to Night Slash in effect of giving the blade a charged edge made of a particular energy type.

A Ponyta Prowler held by a wind chain suddenly had Dolly’s eye, she was preparing to use Aerora to cast it defensively spell on everyone, including those trapped by the chains holding them so that Lumber Spry wouldn’t need to use more energy keeping them healed.

Zoroark was nearby and he was glancing at the fire chains with interest, he decided that stealth wasn’t going to happen and he had a fire move, one of the few Fire Type moves a Zoroark could actually learn.

Lumber Spry was quite angry with Inky, but she was keeping her head and noting which chain was which.

The weakness of Inky’s golden god binding chains was Normal Type attacks, attacks that were using mundane energy and the mundane was a huge weakness to Inky’s special chains that could hit with any effect of the elements she had available. Most Pokémon trended towards elemental types and would have had much more trouble fighting her, but a Normal Type Pokémon like Geoff, that was her anathema.

The reason why Cotton figured it out is because she managed to touch a portion of the cut gold chain and got a feel for the energy before Inky could grow the chain back out or pull it back in, she probably should have pulled it back in as Cotton had blown the lid on a powerful secret.

Inky idly wondered how Cotton would know of such a weakness or even have seen divinely powered magic before this point, she started lashing out a variety of chains at the nearby opponents.

There was also another factor to Inky’s chains she didn’t want Cotton talking about, for one she was saving it as a surprise after Imprison stopped her from using the move Psychic… it didn’t stop her from actually using psychic chains as she could derive energy from Healing Wish to create more psychic chains. She’s rather not blow the energy on that or the secret unless it was an emergency.

Everyone started moving at once, including Inky.

“Aerora!” Wind burst to surround everyone, even those trapped in the chains suddenly found the pressure lightened as wind barriers erupted around everyone except Inky catching her off guard.

Zoroark let lose a blast of flames through his mouth that destroyed the chain holding Cotton. The chain made of wind that were holding an unconscious Ponyta Prowler suddenly dropped them as Aerora barrier tore through it instantly and Lumber Spry immediately charged forward to collect them and move them out of the area, Inky was too busy to stop what was once her old unit comrade.

The golden chain holding Fleer was cut away upon the Slash from Abby going through it.

Fleer immediately flipped and pushed off the ground upon landing, to slam her head into Inky’s throat staggering her in the air slightly.

Abby followed up by slashing through the golden chains holding Inky up and she slapped against the ground on her four hooves.

Inky had tried to go for Zoroark, but he hadn’t being going for a close range attack, only closing in close enough to breathe fire using the move Flamethrower. Then the wind powered barrier popped up and really pressured Inky as it knocked back any chains attacking and wiped out the wind chains made of flying type energy immediately.

It was at this point that Inky revealed she could still generate psychic chains without the move Psychic, which was still in lock-down. Inky did so by wrapping psychic chain around her waist and lifting herself off the ground to avoid Abby coming in for another attack.

Inky proceeded to send Fleer sprawling away with harsh slap of a psychic energy chain that destroyed the wind barrier protecting hher, then struck down at Abby with a flaming chain to the side of her head the blade wasn’t on before she could evade. Another wind barrier was broken as Abby went skidding away on her side.

Instead of sending a chain at Pom’s body, Inky instead used Mystical Fire to breathe a wall of controlled flames to surround herself and get in Dolly’s way to prevent her from taking either of the attacks for them and tried to corral her into being slowly grappled with a chain.

Dolly quickly launched herself away using Pom’s leaping ability to avoid a chain that was about to wrap around Pom’s right hind leg and drag her to the ground.

While Inky was retaliating, Lumber Spry had managed to rescue two of her friends in the Ponyta Prowlers unit and turned to fire a Psychic attack off as the Mystical fire. Zoroark tried to use Flamethrower on Inky, but the wall of flames she had created blocked the attack by absorbing.

Inky ducked the blast of energy and lashed out for Lumber with a golden chain making her back away as the roaring mystical flames prevented anyone from attacking from underneath Inky.

Cotton came diving in from above and planted all of her talons into Inky’s back drawing blood and then wrapped her wings around Inky’s throat in an attempt to choke her, only it took a moment for Cotton to realize that there was a major problem with this plan.

The problem being that Cotton couldn’t actually choke out Inky, because she didn’t breathe and had stopped doing so the moment the Murkrow’s wings wrapped around her throat. In the second it took to find out Inky didn’t have to breathe, something was revealed to Cotton.

“So sorry you had to find out this way, but your technique is not going to work on me.” Inky smiled a bit and was talking quite clearly despite having wings tightly pressed into her throat.

“Wha… everybody she’s..!” Cotton didn’t manage to get the revelation out as she was quickly shredded with multiple lacerations from multiple rapidly generated wind chains that sent her flying, her last act was sending a spray of feathers that latched onto Inky’s body.

“That’s enough out of you.” Inky stated coldly, Cotton had been quite a thorn and she just bloodied the bird badly.

Cotton’s body was sent flopping and rolling along the ground it left splattered patches of red as she did so, she eventually came to a stop and was not moving at all. Blood started to pool beneath her rather still form.

“Cotton!” As the known medic of the Ponyta Prowlers, Lumber Spry immediately went to check on her.

The remaining Ponta Prowler still in the fight fired a Dazzling Gleam directed at Inky.

Inky immediately blocked out the flash of the attack with a wall of chains and tried to strike back with a golden chain only to have it deflected by the Ponyta whipping their front hooves into it sending it back with thunderous force using the move known as Stomp. After using that attack the Ponyta backed off a bit warily looking at Inky with worry.

Despite having Inky’s attention, Inky still dodged another large Thousand Spears from Dolly who was eyeing the situation warily.

Dolly still couldn’t leave the area or the fight, given Inky still had a hostage in the form of a Ponyta Prowler, ranged Normal Type attacks were rare and the golden chain holding the Ponyta Prowler was hard for anyone to get to with the flames underneath. Even if they could take out the chain it’d be dropping the unconscious hostage into the flames

“Is this all you really have?” Inky asked flatly as she levitated using the psychic power chain wrapping around her torso, even knowing her secrets they were down a good number of their fighters and most of them were fairly injured, as long as she had one hostage Pom’s body couldn’t flee.

“We’re not done yet!” Abby slowly got back up and did so with Fleer’s support. They both took painful whip strikes from the chains, even with the barriers taking the brunt of it. They still had plenty of fight left in them.

“Yeah, this is not looking to be in our favor guys.” As Dolly built up for another Thousands Spears using Pom’s left leg, she noted that Inky was floating above the ground no longer support by the chains. A demented grin cross Pom’s face as Dolly came up with an idea. “We still got some tricks to play though, hey dark fox guy, can you get in close after I fry her backside and add some heat to it?”

“If you can make that happen, it’d be greatly appreciated.” Zoroark stated as he glared at an unperturbed Inky hovering in the air.

“Hey abs cat you look like a leaper, free the hostage, Fleece you grab the hostage, I’ll give ink pot here a nasty combo with fox guy!” Dolly received a look from Fleer and Abby, Inky just raised a delicate brow as they all started to gather and get ready for whatever Dolly could pull.

Inky hadn’t been ready for Dolly’s most recent acquisition in magic.

“Gravity!” A grinning Dolly held out Pom’s left hoof and then curled it inward, since she was using Pom’s capacity for magic the effect was much more powerful.

A sphere of black and purple erupted around a surprised Inky and they slammed into the flame of their own Mystical fire, the recoil of her slamming against the ground harshly cause the chain holding the unconscious Ponyta Prowler to lash upwards away from the flames.

Abby immediately lashed out a slash through the chain holding the Ponyta’s hind legs and then Fleer tackled them to safety, they both landed near the Zoroark as he blasted the area with flames increasing the intensity of the heat.

After a moment, the outline of a figure stood up among the flames and started to giggle, Inky’s glowing eyes narrowed on Pom’s form. Inky started gaining some nasty burns on her body.

“Heh, for a familiar you sure are dangerous, but you kind of set yourselves up for this…” Several wind chains erupted into existence around Inky in the conflagration ravaging her and they burst outwards, sending flames exploding in all directions.

Dolly’s eyes widened and she quickly dove into a roll away from the expanding wall of flames that hit Abby, Fleer managed to out run it while carrying the Ponyta by the scruff using her momentum and the Zoroark used his own flames to protect from the expanding mass of flames that set the surrounding grass on fire.

Dolly curled up with her back to the wall of flames and fluffed out Pom’s wool, the flames blew over Pom’s body lighting it on fire. A second later Dolly flexed all the wool and the flames immediately went out.

Standing in the center of surroundings that were on fire was Inky looking slightly more amused and her injuries were minimal, Dolly was starting to wonder what it would actually take to bring her down.

“Abby!” Fleer immediately started to move the Absol away from the burning grass as quickly as she could.

“Got any other plans?” The Zoroark asked Dolly.

“Yeah, keep fighting with anything you can think of!” Dolly stated as she took aim again with Pom’s left hoof. Since she was using Pom’s rather unusual amount of magical energy. “She’ll have to go down eventually, Gravity!”

Inky gritted her teeth as the gravitational forces on her body increased to stressful levels once again and pinned her in place.

A Psychic attack from the last Ponyta Prowler rocked Inky’s body stumbling her.

Inky turned took down the other Ponyta with a chain of flames that tore into their body from the nearby burning grass and slammed them down.

A pitch black shockwave of energy struck Inky from the side disorienting her and making her miss her chain lashing out for Zoroark, Night Daze made it hard to aim after being hit with the move. Now this attack look like it did some damage as it made Inky temporarily go down onto one knee before she got back up.

“Giga Impact!” Fleer came charging at Inky with full force and power rippling off of her form, she immediately broke through all of Inky’s quickly assembled chain defenses and rammed home into Inky with thunderous force.

The trench that Inky’s body created was nothing to sneeze at, yet Inky got up and retaliated.

“Fleece move!” Dolly didn’t know what the move Giga Impact did to the user, it was a move that hit with tons of force, but the recoil left the user incapable of movement for up to over a full minute afterwards.

A golden chain pierced through Fleer’s fur and lifted her upwards dripping droplets of red as the chain became stained, the chain wrapped around her started to squeeze threatening to tear her in half.

“Thank you for becoming my hostage again, I needed another one to keep my targets body around.” Inky was actually looking a little shaken up as she stared up at Fleer, she was finally starting to run down. The number of Pokémon she had taken out thus far with only a few hits really said something about how powerful Inky Due was, because this was after Cotton had weakened her offensive capabilities… multiple times in fact and she was still this powerful.

“Gilgamesh has a real heavy hitter with this one!” Zoroark shouted as he charged forward, Inky turned his way to deal with him when she was suddenly clobbered by a harsh left hoof across the face that bowled her over towards the Zoroark who slashed through the chain.

Zoroark caught a falling Fleer with a hole in her torso and quickly retreated as Pom’s body hopped forward and lashed out with a left rear leg.

“Oof…” After the blow to her face from, Inky quickly ducked back from the hind leg lashing out and tried to bounce directly into Pom’s chest with her horn leading.

Dolly flopped backwards and then unleashed a Thousands Spear into Inky’s chest flipping Inky backwards to land roughly on her face.

“Ugh… this has suddenly become more troublesome than I previously thought.” Taking to the air again, Inky was about to use her chains to try to grab her target for a kill shot when Dolly once again hit her with magic.

“Gravity!” Once Inky slammed into the ground, Dolly followed up the attack with another. Pom really had a ridiculous capacity that Dolly was going to use. “Aerora!”

Whipping winds tore into Inky and did a moderate amount of damage, Dolly tried to figure out how to do the campfire lighting technique. Dolly failed to create a necessary spark in time for an explosion and had to hop backwards as several chains almost got a grip on both of Pom’s right legs.

The bandage wrapped front right leg was something that Dolly notably had avoided using for anything as much as she could, given the amounts of pain she could feel coming off of it.

“Fast little thing, can you please stop breathing now?” Inky said as she started walking towards Pom’s body in a limp, she fired off a Mystical Fire from her mouth and swept the flames around the both of them.

A second later rain started pouring down and put out the flames. Looking around, Inky didn’t see rain clouds aside from some small ones above them.

“Wha…” Inky was about to ask something when the sound of thunder could be heard followed by a lightning bolt sending painful energy coursing through Inky’s body, causing her pupils to shrink as her mouth opened in a wordless scream. “…”

“Shocking how easy it is to forget that I’m still around!” Ocellus shouted from on top of the cloud, it had taken her a few minutes to construct it and have it for multiple uses. She was currently in the form of a blue furred Pegasus with short pink hair.

Inky shook her head and recovered a second later, while glaring up at Ocellus. Lumber Spry was still nearby so the Imprison was in effect prevent Inky from using Psychic to pull the cloud down from above. Ocellus was out of range of Mystical fire so Inky created some swirling wind chains and launched them skyward in a flurry.

Ocellus abandoned the cloud as it was torn to shreds by the violent winds and blazed away using a quarter of Rainbow Dash’s maximum speed, which was about as fast as Ocellus could get as a pegasus which was enough for her needs at the moment.

The changeling wasn’t planning to get anywhere close to Inky whose danger seems to be deadliest when it was close up and personal.

Forming several chains of wind in the form of multiple rings, Inky sent them flying up into the air, making Ocellus and Dolly wonder what Inky was doing as they were near hitting Ocellus. It was seconds later that it became apparent when Ocellus had a problem flying in the air and started to crash towards the ground.

With a flash of flames from Ocellus and a launched chain, Inky blinked and stared at Ocellus as she oozed off and away from the chain that had pierced her current form.

Ocellus had chosen to become an animate slime blob and as soon as she was clear of the chain she turned into a dragon to spit a fireball at Inky.

“A shapeshifter… wish I was currently able to do that kind of thing right now.” Inky deflected the fireball by swirling golden chain in front of herself horizontally and glanced at Zoroark who was closing in to slash at her with his claws, which she deftly dodged as she lashed out with a golden chain that was broken by a normal type attack he quickly used. “To think that I’m limited to my chains, to be bound to this adorable form.”

Using the Bounce move, Inky backed off and started to generate some chains, she was preparing to continue the fight.

Off to the side near Ocellus, Pom’s lower right eyelid twitched upward ever so slightly and there was a slight flare of her nostrils inhaling calmly and slowly. The change in Pom’s demeanor drew Ocellus’s attention to Pom and there was a subtle nod to the changeling.

Ocellus sighed in relief, knowing that the fight would soon be over if what she thought was happening was about to occur.

“Ocellus, can you and fox guy get in and attack close up, trust us.” Dolly stated while glancing at Inky as she took a few steps back.

“Right!” Ocellus shifted flew forward with claws ready to attack and Zoroark soon joined her in attack.

Zoroark was spewing flames and using his claws to deal with two types of chains and when Inky went to use wind energy in chains Dolly followed up on protecting them.

“Aero!” One of the wind barriers that formed around Zoroark made him Inky’s worst nightmare as he could break any of the chains she could summon. The large werewolf fox’s ferocity was making it quite hard for Inky to build up chains and landed quite a few devastating blows, Ocellus added onto that with a few precise claw swipes and a few hammer blows of her interlocked claws.

Lashing at Ocellus with a fire chain, which she caught on her left arm, did nothing to the changeling. Even one third immunity to lava was still translated as a high fire element resilience, if not immunity, while Ocellus was in dragon form.

Having caught the chain Ocellus used a combat ribbon technique she learned from Smolder and quickly looped the chain around Inky’s neck while pulling on it to tighten it and hold Inky in place, she wanted Inky to attack her.

A golden chain formed in the air and shot towards Ocellus who smiled, within a flash Pom’s body appeared in the path of the chain, before it could strike her a flash of anti-magic blasted outwards and Inky felt her ability to generate chains falter as all of her chains disappeared.

Inky was shocked to see how fast Dolly could move with Pom’s body, already inhaling again through her nose as Zoroark laid into her with claws and a blast of darkness from his Night Daze move.

He backed up slightly as Ocellus pummeled Inky with fireballs and a decent right hook, because she was still certainly upset about Smolder being taken by Gilgamesh. Knocking Inky on her backside was a little cathartic.

“You are still not strong enough to…” Inky started to state as she got before she was shut up by a hoof to the throat and then a kick to the belly the launched her upwards, she couldn’t even see her attacker or react to them.

Inky could only see their attack when they stretched their right hind leg to being straight high up in the air as they fell towards them, it was Pom and Inky could tell it was a combination of Pom and her familiar controlling her body in unison.

Both of them were functionally one in this moment as they brought Pom’s leg down on Inky’s skull with what should have been a bone shattering impact and created a massive crater using Inky’s body with what should have also been pure neck snapping force that was again directly applied to the top of her skull.

Inky was slightly confused by how powerful Pom still was after facing Smolder, but Gilgamesh had warned her to finish Pom off before she regained consciousness for a reason.

Inky Due could hardly react when Pom leaped above her and slammed her left hoof down onto her back and started to strike her several times with that hoof, forcing Inky to create a larger imprint in the ground and the damage she sustained was really getting to her.

“Okay… it seems that… it seems I’m finally at my limit… bravo for making it this far.” Inky finally said as she couldn’t generate chains for the time being and the last few attacks from Pom had finally drained her. “I wish there was more of you I could have taken out, but you’re proven yourself to be quite a group… now let’s see if you can still deal with Gilgamesh after this and walk away heroes in all of this. I assure you that it’s quite unlikely that you’ll stop him from becoming unbound.”

“Can you finish her off?” It was hard to tell who was talking or if Pom and Dolly were asking this at the same time, they were asking Zoroark to do it.

“Glady!” Zoroark fired another Night Daze into Inky’s body and she was knocked onto her back, even then she was still getting up from the blow. “How tough is this one Ponyta?”

“I’ve seen a terrifying Rapidash that just wouldn’t stay down… so I’m not exactly surprised.” Ocellus commented dryly, apparently ungulate Pokémon could give ponies a run for their money in being stubborn.

Even Ocellus felt that Pom and Dolly were basically acting as one being in the same body, with a third party helping them act together that wasn’t there before… it felt like… Dormarch? Ocellus was concerned because she thought he was definitively dead, yet she could feel traces of a third emotional party in the body stabilizing the other two.

“This should do it!” Zoroark started to charge another Night Daze, which should be super effective.

“Enkidu, Bounce.” Gilgamesh’s voice was heard as a portal opened up in the air above Inky who could barely stand, the portal disappeared as Pom tried to jump through it.

Enkidu did a backwards bounce to land roughly in a throne room having gone through a different portal, she sat at a grinning Gilgamesh’s side who had an oozing drip blood coming from his wounded cheek as he closed the pathway to the Castle of Illusion.

-Castle of Illusion, Throne Room, Gilgamesh-

“Report.” I wonder how well Enkidu did.

“… I took out a good number of extras, but they didn’t have the strength to be heroes of legend except maybe Cotton who could pass for an assassin class all her own if she were better informed about my uniqueness. As you could see, the one called Pom is still among the living and she is quite the Beast you say she is.” A mild concern Enkidu. Kenshin wouldn’t be able to bring nearly as many forces against me as he would like now as quite a number of them were already exhausted. They would only be able to send a small group in after me anyway. “I am ready to sacrifice myself for you, my truest friend.”

“You don’t have to, but I’m okay if you still want to do so of your own free will... if it becomes necessary as you see fit.” I gently caressed a battered Enkidu’s face and she smiled at me.

-Rebel Backline, two hours before noon, fifteen minutes later, Pom-

Okay, so a number of things happened, we just had the Ponyta Prowlers devastated by their previous leader who was outed as a traitor and spy, Shedinja is out, Fleer and Abby are out, Zoroark and Lumber are some of the only healthy ones still up. Everything was a mess... what else was new for me?

Zoroark immediately set out to make sure the Dark Types were doing okay in the field with Kaoru's side of the battlefield. I could feel he was of the honorable sort and like any other canid or canine, there was something about me that he obviously liked in a friendly manner.

I just recovered from having a psychotic break… well… ‘recover’ is too strong a word for it and the air quotes could be heard in my mind with Dolly immediately applying them to the thought of me actually taking the time to 'recover'. I haven’t recovered from it, healed or any number of things close to dealing with my mental issues or my current health.

Like usual, I started to move forward, with a limp as my right leg was magically dead and I thankfully knew it was temporary.

A golden glow started to slide up my left hoof and I quickly quashed the Chrysomallus power with every fiber of my being and felt Dolly helping me with it. It had gotten worse as it had infected another part of my body, at least it’s just my left hoof now… goodness knows what’ll happen when it starts infecting my torso and I start fully becoming what I’m trying to vehemently repress.

I was trying to ignore the damage to my front right leg, my head was killing me and I was still healthy, comparatively the people who kept me alive when Inky Due came to kill me weren’t. I owed them all my life and then some for all this trouble of being a targeted individual, Gilgamesh still plans to see if I can rise to the occasion as a hero… well I wasn’t about to disappoint him in rising up.

Still seriously didn't want to be a hero, because being heroic hurts a lot in a variety of ways. Also I didn't want to continuously think up cheesy puns to fruitlessly spout while being in constant pain.

Dolly had yet to leave my mind and was watching me carefully with worry about my mental state and was especially worried that the golden glow hard started to spread to my front left leg. I couldn’t come up with a convincing lie to make her leave me alone. A lie wouldn't even work as Dolly could see my mind quite clearly.

At least Dolly wouldn’t leave me to myself until I made it across the battlefield to where Dodo, Shanty and the rest of the Pokémon Companions were holding out. Kenshin was quickly approaching the portal according to the nearby Kirlia in the rebel’s backline camp, Kaoru and Sanosuke were being held up in the south and north sides of Cerebrum City respectively.

“Pom, you can’t honestly be thinking about going after Gilgamesh in your state. Your right leg is messed up in more ways than one…” Ocellus trailed off. Ocellus, I love you because you’re my charge, but in this case… I wasn’t going to deny that I’m still up for bringing down Gilgamesh. “You need more rest.”

“I’ll rest when I’m dead or knocked out, I’m basically quite fatalistic at this point.” Concerning my worsening condition of becoming a full blown Chrysomallus, fatal was the word for it when it got around to fully encompassing me. “Dolly knows what I’m going through, misery loves company and Dolly is good company to try and cheer me up in my misery. I’m not alone, I’m aware I’m not alone and I can do well enough when it comes to facing Gilgamesh with one bum leg.”

“That leg is more than a bum Pom, that it can read as healthy on a magical scan of it is ludicrous when it bleeds as soon as I remove the bandages from a portion of it! I shouldn't even be able to get a false positive from it with the scanning spell, that's not functionally possible in the spell to begin with! At least… at least let me wrap it with fresh bandages.” Ocellus wouldn’t follow me to the fight with Gilgamesh, she had Smolder’s health to worry about and our dragon needed a fresh infusion of gems and jewels after being forced into a greed growth state. Ocellus would know more about Smolder’s health than I would, but I’m fairly sure Smolder would be fine. Reviver Seeds, rare as they are, don’t work halfway after all.

I let Ocellus tend to my leg and I told Dolly to get back to helping Shanty and the others, she refused on the principle that she was more worried about my current state than that of her own sleeping body. Now that was alarming, but at least Dolly’s body was safely ensconced in Dodo’s literal back seat.

“Also you might want to drink this before heading out, to put my mind at ease after witnessing such a horrible fight.” Espurr came up to me with a large glass of Sitrus Berry juice. I did need the energy and I slowly savored the flavor, sipping away at the drink before eating a few rations delivered via Ralts who were helping the medical crews and they were all over helping us.

Cotton, even with the help of Heal Pulse, might not even make it. Her injuries were horrific to the point that healing moves might not even save her as the point blank shredding of her body almost killed her outright. Given her critical condition and the condition of the others being cared for by the majestic medical Gardevoir moving about the backline, Lumber Spry was taken out of the fight because she had a unit that was wiped out by their previous leader and she needed to help everyone devastated by... Inky Dye or Inky Due, Enkidu?

Well whatever Inky was called, since we let her get away it was all but assured that Gilgamesh would soon unbind. It would still take a bit before there was enough energy gathered up at the Castle of Illusion.

Once I was done snacking, I picked up some extra snacks and a few flasks of Sitrus Berry juice for my friends currently fighting a hectic battle at the most contested zone on the battlefield. Loading up my satchel and giving my bell to Ocellus for safe keeping, I set out alone into the battlefield to hopefully catch up with Kenshin as he pushed forward.

The bell was a silent promise that I would absolutely come back for it.

I tried to ignore all the bodies laying about the top of Cerebrum City, Dolly whined in the back of my head and the whine was in stereo since Dormarch was also whining about the devastation that had already befallen the city. The only reason Dormarch was emotionally coherent was because Dolly was in my head.

To think the battle had been going since the sun rose this morning... things were only going to get worse from here on out, of that I am quite sure without a doubt. I was after all trying to get back something that was stolen by a godlike threat and said threat definitively was out to get me.

Well I was going to clearly return that favor.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Okay, now you can carry out your plan to balance things out.” I turned to Celebi and Hoopa, they both saluted me. “Just don’t go near Enkidu, they may be weakened greatly by their fight, but even one chain can defeat the both of you and kill Celebi… again... you’re quite lucky that Dialga is capable of bringing you back ‘Time’ and again.”

“I’m curious, but how can the one they are summoning fight someone of Gilgamesh’s caliber on equal ground?” Bahamut queried knowing who the two were going to redirect to help Pom and whoever was with her.

“You’d be surprised by what kind of chaos one with an inventive mind for battle can bring to the table.” Tiamat seems to enjoy the idea as she watched the screen with Shanty slashing away at various foes. “A scythe wielded with such skill… I might just throw a boon her way.”

“Aren’t you’re boons explosively dangerous?” Bluntly stated Bahamut.

“Oh, like you and your ‘rat’s tail’ quests aren’t a thing, that and breathing all over the heroes you like with the deadliest flares of magic imaginable.” One would believe that Tiamat was referencing that Bahamut had yet to do the same to Pom, of whom he did like and would like to show her how strong she was as a heroic figure, no matter how reluctant she may actually be to be seen as such even if the compulsion to throw herself at danger wasn't present.

I knew this was because he would get a face full of his own magical breath attack if he tried. Even the use of the ‘Ultima’ spell would rebound off of Pom and implode the user. The worlds that Bahamut and Tiamat were from were quite colorful and Dolly could curiously use some of the spells from them given she was tapping an outlier of power related to the systems both Tiamat and Bahamut knew relatively well.

"New report, Ifrit is rampaging in Moon Cell... still not a good thing that Ifrit now has Lu Bu's soul infused into them." Report Mew who looked a little green and terrified. "It's slowing down the invasion in Valora quite a bit, but Moon Cell is starting to try and spread their influence and will attempt to open portals in the other kingdoms soon. So far things are... contained... barely. At least Moon Cell shot themselves in the proverbial foot with Ifrit, but that's mostly Lu Bu's fault that it went berserk."

I had to trust in my children and my people to help me save them all. Even I, as mighty as I am, could not deal with Moon Cell alone... because if I were to unleash my full power I could obliterate Moon Cell, but it would also destroy this world so full of life to do so and I would only do it as a last resort.

I also spent a lot of time making a continent shaped like myself and most people have no idea how hard it is to create a monument to myself that is so large that people can't even realize it unless they were in space like Rayquaza. That or have someone point it out to them on a map made of the entire region.

"Any requests?" I finally asked of Mew.

"Icy chocolate dipped bananas!" Ah my beloved Mew, always the one with such a sweet tooth. She waggled her arms at me expectantly and was excited for me to make some for her and our outsider guests.

347. Crossing the Battlefield.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Illusio, Top Tier of Cerebrum City, western battle center, teleporter securing zone, Quetal-

“Shine!” Shine flopped over in exhaustion and I quickly made my way over to drag her back to the hole with my claws as carefully as I could, we only had one Claydol left still fighting and we were under a lot of stress with the enemy Grumpig units.

Spoinks evolution into Grumpigs gave them a lot of benefits, in fact their evolution makes it so they don’t have to constantly pump their hearts by bouncing around. It makes sleeping for Spoinks fairly hard if they have to bounce every once in a while using the weight of the pearl they balance on their heads. Grumpigs don’t have that problem and were much more combat capable and it showed when they were giving us this much trouble as some of Gilgamesh’s elite forces, they were much more of a threat than the bouncing pig heads that were Spoinks.

I don’t think I’ve even seen too many Spoinks on the field of battle here.

We were getting some allied help from the Baltoy units, but we were getting swamped as the ninja ploy’s surprise wore out and we have dealt a lot of damage.

Dodo warbled as he looked at me, he was probably the least injured among us. Without looking I already knew that currently sleeping in his back was Dolly the Dalmatian because of an emergency with Pom, I hoped they were okay.

Psychic Type attacks seem to not cause Dodo any problems or much damage, Shanty was at least fine or else he would be panicking more, I’ve learning a lot from witnessing this familiar bond thing.

“Might not know what you’re saying, but I can agree that our reinforcements can’t come fast enough.” I grumbled to Dodo as he affectionately nuzzled me.

Even with Skitty Squads timely backup and the Natu and Xatu that could fly over to lend assistance after going through medical on the rebel side of the battlefield, the injuries were mounting on our aerial support and fewer kept coming back from flying for the rebel camps to heal up.

We were still dealing with a lot ground forces trying to bury us from all sides, also a metric ton of Woobat, why are the Woobat just as bad as Zubat when it comes to numbers?!

“How are we doing?” Shine said dazedly as she sat up, looking about blearily.

“We’re holding, but I’ll be darned if we don’t have the hardest job on the entire battlefield at the moment.” After saying that, I witness Mundo crashing next to us in the foxhole we created. It currently didn’t feel like it was offering enough protection at the moment. “Mundo, are you alright?”

“I need a small break before I can continue to show them my honorable battle prowess in the face of adversity.” Okay, Mundo was fine.

Dazzle was putting up one heck of a fight, she looked like she had a chip in her shoulder about missing her friend Frizzle. I seriously doubted Viperia would cause her problems in the future considering how fast she was tearing through opponents with whips, singing blasts of energy and dropping dragon shaped beams into enemy units around us.

The other shocker was Lit’s performance, the little bug was totaling numerous Psychic Types units with electric webs and Lunge attacks, his small size and ridiculous speed made him hard to hit and his ability to change directions while webbing up opponents was inspiring confidence that we probably shouldn’t be having as we were getting overrun.

It was about time I took charge of the situation with Shine no long being fit to lead due to injuries.

“Shanty, break time! Xatu team up in the air, we direly need time to rest and recuperate our fighting strength! Natu stay put and look for an opening to evacuate if you feel like you can’t handle the heat anymore.” I took note of the Natu needing more time to rest and decided to let the Xatu take up the bulk of the fighting for the moment. I popped up and started firing Swift stars into the enemy pokemon around us on a high arc that made the energy stars fall on them from above. “Cleffa, Charjabug, I hope you two can learn to shine here. Back up Lit and Dazzle to the best of your abilities.”

Dodo tapped me with his beak and once he had my attention, he held his wings in front of him like a scoop and then spat a pastry into his wings and held it out to me. As strange as Dodo’s talents with making pastries, like an Alcremie hopped up on sugar really, I took the proffered pastry and bit into it and the taste of Oran Berries filled my mouth.

We needed all the energy we could get out here and we needed medical supplies, apparently Dodo had some level of ability to mimic the healing of Oran Berries, too bad he couldn’t mimic Sitrus Berries.

“Thank you…” I continued to eat my snack and thought about the battlefield situation, Gilgamesh had a lot of goons to throw at good people and there was the haunting fact that Cerebrum was set up to the fall out of the sky by one Cotton Murkrow in an attempt to prevent Gilgamesh from becoming unbound.

We only had so much time to get someone up there and defeat Gilgamesh.

Wilhelm was taking a bulk of the incoming fire as he tried to cover for us from above, big guy was surprisingly agile in the air and was showing how tough he was by not running. That and his family, Skitty Squad, was down here so he wouldn’t run.

One may wonder why we haven’t used the teleporter yet, despite it being an archway approximately twenty feet away from the hole we popped out of with the six Claydol… we didn’t have the way to access it currently and we couldn’t dig closer.

Kenshin could have dug his way here with some Claydol initially, but then Gilgamesh’s forces would have become suspicious about Kenshin not being on the battlefield. Also it took us a lot of effort to squeeze through the tunnels that would only stick around for a limited time.

The tunnels we made using Dig to get into this position had already collapsed by now, plus the Baltoy and Claydol were expended in changing the state of battle to being in Kenshin’s favor and turning around the stonewalling problem for the ground forces. It’s like how the Xatu, Natu and our friends helped take care of the aerial artillery, Sigilyph were weak to melee attacks and it showed with how many were taken out so readily and easily in a close up confrontation.

Kenshin was nice and fair leader, even making sure that Gilgamesh’s forces were out of the line of fire once they could no longer fight. Strange that the previous king’s assassin would care about the lives of others, but maybe Kenshin was really easygoing and only killed when absolutely necessary.

Furthermore he was in charge of a number of units in the central assault region, he was drawing the lion’s share of the enemy units onto himself to prevent us from being completely crushed. We could tell he was cutting down swaths of Pokémon and was a large force on the battlefield by how often they pulled Pokémon from sieging our position.

The only thing wrecking more face than Kenshin would be Sanosuke to the north, whose forces were still going quite strong with Mr. massive sword tearing the front lines apart in the north.

I sprayed a blast of Swift stars into an incoming unit of Woobat, there were still so many… nostril bats.

The Grumpigs with the shields and weapons weren’t making the situation any easier, they came at us with maces, swords and spears. They were well equipped, large and fairly dangerous more so than most of the things on this battlefield.

Favela was blasted into the hole and landed on her back with a groan, I could see some smoke coming off of her form. Shanty was up and checking on her while motioning to Dodo to move over and give her friend a pastry.

Kenshin couldn’t get here soon enough, given he was the only one that would know how to operate the teleporter to get up to the castle high above the battlefield.

-West of the contested battle zone, above Cerebrum City, Canard-

“Hrm…” I stood here with my arms crossed.

“Just be patient.” The Seer Xatu stated as he stood watching the various battles below.

“Yeah, we kind of really need this airship later Canard.” Sami stated as she propped herself up on the edge of the airship and continued to snipe as well as she could with her digital assault rifle.

“I still don’t like it, but… fine.” I walked back to the controls of the ship and was fairly surprised nobody noticed us up here or Sami’s sniping. “Can you at least promise me that Cleffa will be fine?”

“She’s in the middle of the hole near the teleporter.” Seer Xatu stated with a slight glance at Sami, a second later my partner readjusted her aim slightly and fired once.

Seer Xatu basically assured Cleffa’s safety with Sami looking out for her at range, Psychic Pokémon couldn’t detect digital or virtual energy so they wouldn’t be able to trace Sami’s shots back to us.

“We will be a big support in due time.” The time on Cerebrum City is running out Xatu, you even said so yourself. There was a sudden pause and Seer Xatu glanced further to the ease with an unusual mixed expression on his face. “Cotton…”

-Currently exiting rebel safe zone and following Kenshin’s path through the central battlefield region, Pom-

“You guys really don’t have to do this.” My statement was quiet as I continued to trot towards the battlefront with an entire unit of Kirlia surrounding me, they had just recovered from their injuries and they decided to form up with me. They all looked like little ballerina’s and they hovered alongside me as I set the pace.

“You’re a VIP guest of our forces ma’am.” A male Kirlia said while saluting to me. “You’re also carrying important supplies to the front and Kenshin wouldn’t like it if anything were to happen to you, so we’re treating you to an important courier escort.”

“My supplies are for my beleaguered friends though.” Also I passed out for several hours earlier in the battle after taking down Smolder.

“Supplies well spent then, we’ll make sure they reach their destination.” Another Kirlia said with no argument being brooked from his cheerful tone. “Besides you’re friends deserve those supplies, they’ve been out there in the middle of that hell for at least an hour. We’re even carrying a few revives to revitalize the downed Claydol, so just keep setting the pace ma’am. We’ll stick with you for as long as we are able, you prevented a lot of us from being hurt by your dragon friend.”

My pace was a quick three legged gait, considering my right leg was messed up and I was constantly putting pressure to keep my Chrysomallus energy under control from creeping up left hoof. I could even feel Dolly and Dormarch in the back of my head trying to keep me comforted, Dormarch wouldn’t be very active if Dolly wasn’t present with the other quarter of him.

Trying to get Dolly to go back to helping the others wasn’t working, because she was stubbornly sticking to me mentally. My mental stability mattered to Dolly quite a lot and frankly there wasn’t much she can do for me aside from be here for me, which she was going to do anyway.

I was starting to not feel like myself, I could hardly remember my fight with Smolder and I knew I attacked Gilgamesh… but aside from that it was all a blur. A mad aggressiveness in trade for boost in magically assisted strength and my heritage getting worse, like my physical strength could really get any better with my noodle legs.

One couldn’t suppress their nature forever, I really didn’t like or even want to change into what I was becoming. Change was inevitable in many ways, the more they stayed the same the more likely change was to find the stagnation.

The reason why Chrysomallus weren’t common among Lambkin kind was for their extremely short life expectancy, no lambkin wanted to be in my position despite the amount of magical strength that comes with the prestige of being an imminent death seeker.

“Protect the courier!” The Kirlia suddenly moved forward and started to blast psychic energy into a swarm of Woobat trying to come at us, despite the Kirlia doing what they could to fend off the Woobats there were still a lot of them.

The Woobat were suddenly taken down in boiling arcing blasts of water raining down on them, frying their wings and knocking them out of the air. It seems the Chrysalia artillery unit, the Araquanids along with Ninjask, were still going strong and sent some help our way.

I continued moving forward and the fighting started becoming thicker, but we weren’t in the middle of it as we were in the bulge of Kenshin’s forces pushing into Gilgamesh’s broken defense lines.

Pacing myself carefully we were on approach for Kenshin’s personal unit with several Gardevoir around him helping him make a humongous push.

“I wonder why the move Teleport isn’t being used more.” My question was met with an explanation from one of the Kirlia protecting me.

Teleportation was always usually used to teleport to a safe spatial area. Cerebrum City had moved east and any movement of the city had removed all spatial teleportation anchor points that a Psychic Type had to place in a given spot, therefore due to the movement the spot for the psychic anchor was no longer recognized as safe especially for the Psychic Types who couldn’t float or hover via limited levitation ability. Therefore the anchor connected to a particular Pokémon failed.

Only some Pokémon like Mentalis and the Abra, Kadabra and Alakazam could force a Teleport to go wherever they want to, but that was based in line of sight or knowledge of the area they were teleporting into that they could get a surrounding visual with their psychic powers before doing the teleport. So it was an overall skill issue and the strength of the minds that used these powers.

So even the experts wouldn’t be able to teleport me to my friends unless a Pokémon that knew the move Teleport could go to where they were, drop a psychic anchor and then come back to me. An anchor placed in a dangerous place was hard for a Psychic Type to do.

If Mentalis wasn’t currently busy with refugees and detaining injured Gilgamesh forces, he’d be able to teleport by line of sight to my surrounded friends.

“What about the teleporters in Cerebrum?” This was again given to me in a quick explanation, psychic entangled devices could only connect to another psychic entangled device.

Anyone except a Dark Type could use the teleporters, the devices weren’t hard to use, but access could be restricted to Psychic Type only use because of the people who made them. So even if Cerebrum City had moved, the teleporter to Central Illusio from Eastern Illusio where Cerebrum City now was floating over, it would still work as it was a manufactured psychic anchor… the requirement was that one of the devices that was like a psychic anchors had to be static in some way and the range was feasibly wherever Cerebrum can go.

Cerebrum City only had a floating range of all of Illusio, the lack of psychic energy and crystals made it impossible for the city to enter other regions, but it was a floating defensive fortress that made it hard to take this kingdom from the Psychic Types given its mobility.

“Well that’s nice to know that evacuating wouldn’t be too hard to do.” I hadn’t even used one of the teleporters yet.

“Evacuations are still ongoing and it’ll take more time than we have to actually move all the civilians out of the city, it’s why Kenshin is fighting so hard.” One of Kirlia remained stoic knowing we were all standing on a time bomb that could fall out of the sky at any time. “He’s fighting for more time…”

Kenshin backed his unit away while leaving others to continue pushing the battlefield. He sheathed his blunt sword with a shining backwards edge, a sword with the blade on the wrong side?

“Kenshin, the problem in the backlines have been solved, it was an assassination attempt on our VIP who’s recently woken up and is carrying supplies to our allies in the contested area near the teleporter.” One of the Kirlia reported as they bowed to Kenshin. “We’re currently acting as a courier unit to get the Pokémon Companions and the downed Claydol around them some much needed medical aid, we’ve managed to scrape together a few Revive items to get the Claydols and some others up and covering the teleporter.”

“I shall lead this unit personally then, it’s about time we made a push and actually got someone up to the Castle of Illusion.” Kenshin stated softly before turning to the nearest Musharna. “Tell Sanosuke ‘Hammer’, tell Kaoru ‘Anvil’ and tell the Dark Types to go wild if they aren’t already. We’re personally following plan ‘kiln’. Spread the word!”

The Musharna nodded and sent out a pulse I vaguely felt through my body to Dolly.

“What’s the Castle of Illusion like?” Finally managed to ask the largest question on my mind as we started forward, since we had some time and were approaching the battle line at a careful pace.

One would think we would be doing this at a more break neck and die speed, but I couldn’t be more surprised by Kenshin’s caution.

“I think it’s about time to tell you the truth, the illusion is that it’s a castle at all. It is in fact a giant psychic energy storage device that is shaped like a castle and the entirety of the castle involves a throne room and a lot of empty space. It barely even has three bedrooms behind the throne room.” Wait… did Kenshin say what I thought he just did? If the castle is not a castle then, I looked at the ground below me at Cerebrum of which the Castle of Illusion floated directly above at all times. Oh… that, actually explains a lot… it’s a ‘last stand’ kind of bunker for a psychic type king to protect the people of Illusio with and it’s in the hands of Gilgamesh. “We need to activate that teleporter to the ‘Castle’ and destroy it before Gilgamesh can use the energy to unbind himself. The reason he hasn’t abandoned it yet is because it’s of grave importance that he holds the castle as it can help him with the unbinding process that a Hoopa would need to enter their most powerful form.”

“So… does that mean what I think it does about Cerebrum City?” I wasn’t about to elucidate what I meant, but Kenshin obviously knew what I was talking about given the architecture throughout the city. The pained look Kenshin was sending my way either meant I was right or on to something.

“Probably.” Kenshin’s answer made me feel sad, mostly about the fact that Cerebrum City was about to be destroyed. “Come let’s reach your friends, then we can send a small team through the teleporter to face Gilgamesh personally. Everyone form up!”

The Kirlia immediately moved to form up behind Kenshin and I carefully moved into the back with Kenshin looking at my right leg.

“Can you still fight?” Kenshin asked with concern, I pressed my right hoof against the stone below me roughly twice while looking him in the eyes with barely a twitch of my own. The barest of twitches was involuntary, but Kenshin seemed to notice it.

“Yes, I’m able, I just can’t do as much with my front right leg.” Aside from some pain, my right leg would be okay if magically inert for a while and I knew it couldn’t be healed by Sitrus Berries. In fact it couldn’t be healed by anything other than some time. “Also don’t worry about using any medical supplies on it, it won’t help me and keeping my leg bandaged is the best we can do for it right now.”

“Alright let’s move out then.” He didn’t ask me how much pain I was in, he likely already knows given he could probably sense the pain of putting pressure on my leg. Also Ralts line of Pokémon were said to be able to feel the emotions of others, so that would be in line with Ocellus’s capabilities. “We’ll handle most of the fighting, you only need to jump in when you deem it necessary Pom… you are after all carrying important supplies and they are a priority.”

With that, Kenshin had decided to push through the battlefield to our people securing the area around the teleporter.

Kenshin’s forces started to pressure forward into Gilgamesh’s forces, following his lead as he pulled his sword from his sheath and started to nonlethally take down quite a number of Pokémon in the way with incredible flourishes of a blade moving so fast that it cut the air even using the rounded edge. It was like Shanty creating cutting arcs, except Kenshin was doing it with raw skill and some style thrown in.

It wouldn’t become apparent to me until a minute into moving forward without too much resistance, that the orders Kenshin sent out to Sanosuke and Kaoru had a drastic effect on the battlefield. Also I was being protected by two units of Gardevoir on both side of me from attacks to the north and south. The Kirlia bombarded areas in front of us as Kenshin pressed forward to draw most of the attacks to him while they did so.

Kenshin was personally only leading eighteen Pokémon, the three units around me, as we pressed deep into enemy lines and aside from constant attacks from Woobats we were being oddly untouched. I was glad to not have to do much of the fighting here, because I wanted to save my energy for facing down Gilgamesh.

I think it was thanks to the efforts of the other forces in Kenshin’s battle group, along with whatever Kaoru and Sanosuke battle groups were doing. I could see units of some weird creatures with gel covered bodies, they were also starting to pressure the battle line off to the side of Kenshin’s groups.

At this point I had no hope of actually beating Gilgamesh, but I did have some hope of at least getting Arceus’s device back from him. We would likely have to fight Inky Due, not that Gilgamesh wasn’t already going to be a massive problem with his portal power. At least I currently knew some of Gilgamesh’s limitations when it came to using those portals, the guy would likely try getting us to dodge into a portal by raining weapons down on us if he wanted to go lethal. There’s all manner of problems with actually hitting him in anything but melee and even melee would be suspect when he can problem redirect my hoof back into my own face.

I came to my senses when we were closing in on Shanty and the other surrounded by several unconscious Claydols. They were being approached by multiple units as we entered the area.

Some of them were strange brown bipedal creatures that looked like they were wearing trench coats and their tall heads looked like strange cylindrical hats. Aside from those two features, they looked rather alien in appearance. An example of their alien appearance was their three digits at the end of their arms looked like colorful gems.

The other monsters were pig like with three pearls that wielded weapons and shields along with using psychic powers

“Enemy Beheeyems and Grumpigs spotted!” One of the Kirlia yelled, before they turned to me. “Deliver the supplies to your friends, we’ll cover you!”

“I’ll make us a path… Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu style: Ryusosen!” With that Kenshin charged forward with his blade held in both hands, swinging it so fast that I could barely follow his swings even when I was using Dancing Flame.

-Shanty-

We be holding up pretty well, but the new coat guys bodies were being quite tough. I barely be taking one down with my scythe when I heard a shout that drew my attention.

“Ryusosen!” That was being Kenshin!

I be blinking as I looked to the voice and saw a beautiful wall of slashes, I believe my eyes were sparkling at the sight of such a beautiful technique.

I drank in all the rapid slashes coming out so fast that they be tearing through everything in Kenshin’s path as he rush forward, not only did the attack be going impossibly fast… it also be deflecting every attack that even vaguely went near him. I be following every single cutting arc he be lashing out.

Eventually Kenshin be stopping among a group of Grumpig between us and used another one of his techniques, the tip of his blunt sword… blunt? No… the back edge is being sharp? What an odd weapon, but if he can be making it work so well, then I don’t be having any room to judge with how impressive he is with it. The tip of his sword was at the entrance of his sheathe.

“Combo finisher, Ryumeisen!” Instead of swinging the miraculous blade that be surviving his high speed attacks, he instead sheathed it so hard and so fast that the shockwave blasted the entire unit of Grumpigs apart and knocked them all out. The blast wave even be disorienting a few of the trench coat Pokémon.

I be wanting to learn something from him… specifically how to do a flying slash or cut! He would have to be knowing how right? He is being so skilled with a sword and I be wanted to do something like that with my cane scythe if I can't be doing it with my hooves.

“Quetal is everyone alright?” Pom, my ears be burning and it was nice to be hearing her be up and about! Except… her right leg, something be feeling gravely off with it from just looking at it being tightly bandaged.

“Reinforcements finally… we’re alive, any help we can get is good right now Pom.” Quetal had been cycling us since he took charge, he is being very good at telling us where to move and what to cover.

“Gather everyone, I’ve brought Sistrus Berry juice and snacks…. no Shanty, you can’t eat them all.” Pom be looking at me flatly as I be having the biggest grin on my face.

“That is being okay, I be having Dodo for that!” My words were met with a friendly warble from Dodo behind me.

Speaking of Dodo, Dolly be popping up on his back adjusting her helmet and slinging her board across her back as she hopped out and made her way up to Pom with a wagging tail. She turned to Dodo and gave him two cheerful barks and he be warbling cheerfully back at her.

-Five minutes later, Pom-

“We can open the path to the teleporter Pom, oh and thanks for giving my kitties some of that berry juice!” Captain Skeeball stated with a cheerful expression. “Sadly There’s never nearly enough of it for my hubby though… but he’s a big strong man and he’s my big strong sweet blubber butter! He'll need to spend some time in a river, lake or sea though...”

Captain Skeeball proceed to have a loving look to Wilhelm who was covered in scars from many attacks as he hovered above us, but he seemed quite determined to stay in the fight and he wasn’t going down anytime soon. It was fairly terrifying to have a flying whale for a friend that can cause massive devastation to a given area.

My supplies got everyone perked up a bit, but the real perked up ones were the Claydol. The Kirlia broke some yellow diamond things over them and the end result was that the unconscious Claydol were back up and ready to keep fighting after sharing a single canteen of Sitrus Berry juice amongst themselves.

“Everyone, get ready to set out, I’ll need a full minute to set up the teleporter. Claydol unit, aim and fire!” Announced Kenshin once the Claydol that assisted Shine personally in raising some Tartarus in the enemies lines turned in the direction Kenshin was pointed and six powerful beams open a large swath through Gilgamesh’s force. The Kirlia and majestic looking taller Gardevoir immediately moved forward to fill in the gap and we now we finally had a hold of the teleporter to the Castle of Illusion. “Come on, I think it’s time we finally draw Gilgamesh into the fight.”

“Aw yeah, let’s go show this Mush guy what we can do Pom!” If we could even turn him to mush Dolly, then that would be a good thing. I didn’t think we had the capacity to do so even with numerical advantage, Gilgamesh would possibly be toying with us for most of the upcoming fight.

Dolly hopped onto me and pointed a paw forward. I rolled my eyes and followed after Kenshin with the Pokemon Companions, Charjabug and Cleffa.

“Is this teleporter the same as the one inside the city?” I asked as we came up on the large wide open archway, it was huge and it was basically more than fifty feet wide by my estimates as Kenshin started glowing and using psychic energies.

“No this one will actually operates more like a portal, the one inside the city is a transmission type teleporter and since you brought it up… this reminds me that we might have a problem evacuating the Dark Types from Cerebrum City when it falls out of the sky.” There was a disturbed look on Kenshin’s face as he concentrated two streams of psychic energy on the teleporter and began starting it up. “With almost all of the Sigilyph up here, it wasn’t hard to get the Mandibuzz out on some hidden small air boats if you were wondering about them.”

I wasn’t, but it was nice to know that they weren’t stuck in Cerebrum and would die when this place broke apart. Skitty Squad’s presence gave me an idea.

“Skeeball how many Dark Type can Wilhelm feasibly carry on him? The entirety of Cerebrum City will eventually fall out of the sky.” Well it would when what I knew as a necessary sabotage by Cotton Murkrow carried out.

“As many we can feasibly fit on top of him, might weigh him down a bit, but he’ll still float down as many as he can to the best of his ability.” Responded Skeeball looking about, there was a lull in the combat as soon as Kenshin started the process of opening the way to the Castle of Illusion.

“You might want to focus on the evacuation of the Dark Types then.” Quetal announced as he crossed his arms and looked about. “Is it me or did things become too quiet as soon as Kenshin started operating the teleporter?”

In the distance the fighting was still going on across the top of the city that had been ravaged by war. The grass burnt, trees toppled and stone pathways torn apart, but here… we were all being left alone.

“Gilgamesh is probably inviting us in.” It was a minute later that the path way to the Castle of Illusion opened. “I mean, no resistance or any massive assaults on us?”

I was the first to approach the teleporter and step right on through, the air on the other side was a little thin as I stepped out on to a massive stone bridge. A hoof ball field wide and much bigger than it appeared when we were looking at the illusionary castle from below.

Dolly parked her butt next to me and looked down the bridge at something that came rushing up to us… it was a Wobuffet?

“Wobba wobba wobba!” The wobbuffet shouted cheerfully and then started rolling his arms as he wobbled his upper body about and thrusted with what passed for his hips every once in a while.

“Love Love Dancing… really?” It seemed Quetal was embarrassed for Gilgamesh after coming through the teleporter to meet the wobbuffet in our way. “That’s what you’re going to do to stop us from trying to cross the bridge?”

A portal opened up near the Wobbuffet and a sword exploded out of the portal and actually exploded when it struck the ground near the dancing wobbuffet and sent him flying off the bridge.

“Wa-wa-wa-wobbuffet!” Whined the Wobbuffet as it fell, I jumped off the side of the bridge only for a portal to open in my path and put me back on it.

My eyes twitched in consternation as I tried again and felt myself flopping onto my face, I didn’t try to save the Wobbuffet a third time.

“So sorry you had to see that nuisance, don’t honestly know how he got up here without going through the teleporter and… well He’s gone now so that’s unimportant. Don’t go throwing yourself off of the bridge just yet, we haven’t had a chance to have some fun together.” Gilgamesh stated as he was here in the flesh himself as he hovered at the other end of the large bridge. “I’ll either make heroes of you or you will suffer a lot before you die. Either way, my victory is assured.”

“You just... but he was one of yours!” I stated with disbelief as the others came through.

The Pokémon Companions were just glaring at Gilgamesh, Charjabug and Cleffa certainly didn’t like him and Kenshin had an actual look of murder in his kind eyes.

“So? That was just a useless grunt, he wouldn’t have added much to our coming battle anyway and would have gotten in the way.” Gilgamesh stated flatly with that wide grin, the oozing cut mark on his cheek drew my attention somewhat. “Such a weakling would never have lasted in the world I seek to build, where only the strong may continue on into the future… still would really like to know how he even got up here without accessing the teleporter though. I’m actually being quite serious here, there is no flying device or any other way to reach the Castle of Illusion this high up without something like Rayquaza level abilities and that guy is currently on the other side of the planet. The teleporter wasn’t accessed in weeks until you just came through it, the Wobbuffet wasn't out here or I would have sensed him, so where did that Wobbuffet minion even come from!”

Yeah, that was quite heartless and it reaffirmed my belief that someone needed to kill Gilgamesh and fast. Now if only he wasn't a monster with abilities on par with the local gods of this world.

-Eastern Illusio, on the ground southern edge of the massive lake known as Spinal Fluid Lake, Meowth-

Team Pocket sits at the south side of the lake awaiting our destined meeting.

“You seriously think they would’ve come through here by now.” I commented dryly, Team Pocket was waiting to really ambush Team Harmony this time, no motto until after we attack and had a captive audience and Jessie even agreed to it.

Only… we were coming up with a whole lot of nothing waiting right here.

“Read the script again James!” Jessie stated with a hiss of warning as her forked tongue flicked at our Mareanie buddy.

“Right, ahem… Team Pocket sits at the south side of the lake awaiting their destined meeting.” James stated holding a script that had the words ‘Baa-Ram-Ewe: Pokémon Edition’ written on it. “It’s all right here in black and white, don’t honestly know why they aren’t showing up.”

“Hehehe, maybe the script is wrong?” Jester the ever demented Caterpie friend of ours stated as he wiggled forward.

What Caterpie never wants to evolve to have wings? That crazy guy, my guess as to reason he never wanted to be a Metapod was an extreme case of claustrophobia.

“Can I get a look at that?” Scourge stated who stood over us and put on a pair of small glasses and narrowed his eyes at the script after it was handed to him by James… uh… head flap, head tendril, tentacle? “Hmm… there’s some fine print here in the script. Destined meeting does not necessarily mean an interaction with Team Harmony or our nemesis Pom Pawdore Lambchop.”

“Then who would we be meeting out here?” I know that we were supposed to be idiots and failures at doing anything successfully in life, since we definitely weren’t going to change our ways of antagonizing heroic types as the generic highway bandit routine and wandering circus act that we were so they can better themselves on our bodies like we’re whetstones to their sword, but did Arceus really have to rub that in by dropping a script of our lives right in our laps?

“Does anyone hear that noise?” Flicking her tongue Jessie looked around and we all started twitching our sound receptors looking for whatever that noise was.

Finally I decided to look up… yeah, that’s where the sound was coming from.

“Is that a falling star, should we make a wish on it?” A second later, I realized that it was a Pokémon. “I think that’s a Pokémon. What does the script say?”

“Slowly flip through three blank pages after Meowth asks about the script and read the next part…” Mumbled Scourge and proceeded to do just that. “Cue the unavoidable painful Mirror Coat counter attack build up caused by air friction and being struck by Gilgamesh with an exploding magic sword, this will all be unleashed upon Team Pocket that will put them into the ground by the mysterious ‘Love Love Dancing’ Wobbuffet Soldier. This in turn will save his life and leave us all in an incredible amounts of pain. Also the script will be burnt away after this moment and Scourge finishes saying… oh bother!”

-Insert classically timed problem now-

*Whistling noise*

“WAAAAAAAAA….”

KAAAAAABOOM!

Splish…

Team Pocket proceeded to gain a new member after he just left being under Gilgamesh’s employ, yay!

Now if only Team Pocket’s bodies weren’t all broken and bleeding at the bottom of a large pit that was dug by the force of the Mirror Coat recoil based mushroom cloud explosion that saved the incredibly genius meteoric Wobbuffet’s life.

'Love Love Dancing' Wobbuffet Soldier had harmlessly and miraculously bounced off of Team Pocket into the nearby lake without injury… from the fall at least… and eventually crawled out of the water.

The 'Love Love Dancing' Wobbuffet Soldier took up a nearby long stick and went to look into the pit to start poking the bodies with it in keen interest.

Author's Note

Gunstar Heroes.

348. Continental Cataclysm.

-Equus, Ponyville, Sugar Cube Corner-

Sitting in the middle of the unlit room at a table with a single spotlight on them were Fœnum Paprika, Pinkie and Somnambula.

They were all wearing top hats, monocles and fake mustaches.

They all looked at the audience watching them and then went back to staring off into space.

Fœnum Paprika took a sip of tea.

Somnambula nibbled at a peanut butter cookie.

Pinkie swallowed a plate of assorted rock candies, which didn’t look too healthy to do, but it was Pinkie Pie doing it.

The light goes out.

A flash of lightning occurs showing Paprika, Somnambula and Pinkie leaping at each other with knives drawn while grinning devilishly in the dark and stormy day. This occurs before all the light from the flash disappears.

…

The lights soon turn back on revealing Pinkie with an English Muffin in her mouth and a wide eyed vacant look in her eyes as her mouth foams. There were a bunch of fake rubber knives now sitting on the table.

Both Somnambula and Fœnum Paprika looked on in horror at the English Muffin sticking out of the unmoving Pinkie’s mouth.

The lovable Muffin Queen, leader of the muffin cultists and highest authority in muffin based crimes against life itself, especially after the whole ‘baked bads’ incident where Sugar Cube Corner lost business for a solid month due to her, Derpy Hooves, swiftly arrived. She bursts into the snack shop wearing a constable’s hat and waves a nightstick around wildly while glaring at the two suspects with narrowed eyes looking in two opposing directions from one another.

In the kitchen a domino masked Mr. Cake grins devilishly and slowly pulls his head back out of sight and into the nearby kitchen dragging a comically large bag of English Muffins with him.

Soon Derpy was dragging Fœnum Paprika and Somnambula out of Sugar Cube Corner and stuffing them into a paddy wagon to take them to the local Ponyville Jail.

Pinkie’s body had a blanket pulled over it by a solemn looking Savoir and Savor, the two stallion brothers that ran the nearby café.

“Okay, what did we just watch?” Rainbow asked while blinking a bit dumbly.

“The Horrors of Tasteless Muffins. It’ll likely become a cult classic, but it’ll never catch on beyond that.” Stated Maria the goat blandly, she was going solo today from her conjoined chimera sisters, she took a bite of her cottage cheese bagel of which she sprung for the double extra globs homemade special cottage cheese super spread. She knew she had a problem and there was no way to solve it other than more cottage cheese. “Also have you ever personally tasted ‘those’ kind of muffins? It’s like ‘military regulation’ cornbread, the very stuff the EUP and Royal Guard uses to keep Puks away these days… at least until some animal is dumb enough to actually try and eat it. Even insects won’t touch the stuff and the theoretical animal in question is usually exceedingly and very desperate or highly depressed for some reason, at least until Fluttershy can get around to them. Goodness knows the buffalos tribes are trying to get the military cornbread labeled as an object of biological warfare and Marie says it’s actually possible that the military will have to stop teaching cooking classes because of it. I kind of feel sorry for Soarin’ if that’s the case… given it is literally a case that my sisters and I have been called in to look over. Speaking of bugs, our in-laws restaurant never has insects, well unless they are there for cooking purposes and Kurilian actually has an authentic license for that. Some Griffons really like the batter fried crickets, goodness knows little Gavin is hooked on them and our little Silvers likes it too. Probably won’t be as filling when she grows up though.”

“Yeah, as a Wonderbolt I can agree that Soarin’ should never have anything to do with corn in the realm of actually cooking it.” Rainbow still didn’t know what even, but she was going to go about her day as if everything made sense. That’s what most ponies in Ponyville do, this also now included the spreading population of other beings that weren’t ponies who wanted to live in interesting time.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Illusio, Bridge to the Castle of Illusion, Pom-

“So… how about we make this interesting.” Gee how could you make anything I’ve been through over the last few days more interesting Gilgamesh? I’m positively dying to know… no literally, I am going to die for knowing aren’t I.

“Let me guess, you’re going to attack all of Ransei and then the attack will become worse when you unbind, but until then you’re going to bombard the whole continent regardless of what this will do the reputation of the Psychic Types.” The Psychic Types were smart, they were low population density and they were most of all quiet and not aggressive towards other kingdoms. It wasn’t hard to guess what Gilgamesh was about to do at all, it was probably the most horrifying thing I can think of.

“Well aren’t you brilliant, now can you stop me before I destroy all of Ransei though?” Grinned the golden colored Hoopa, with a snap of his thumb against his hand flap. “Get halfway across the bridge and I’ll actively start fighting you with my body, get three fourths of the way and Inky will take a more active role in the battle. Aside from that, I hope you live through the storm I’m about to make.”

Hundreds of portals opened up in the air, but the few that opened up above us showing the visuals of all the kingdoms. Aurora, Fontaine, Greenleaf, Ignis, Pugilis, Violight and Chrysalis were definitely the recognizable kingdoms to me. I’ve seen the edge of Terrera, but it didn’t seem like there were many Pokémon above ground for Gilgamesh to hit.

What terrified me was the image of Illusio, specifically the top of Cerebrum with its destroyed trees, grass, stone pathways and psychic crystals, he was targeting his own forces as much as Kenshin’s. He wasn’t just targeting Cerebrum either, he was targeting the entirety of Illusio, but the mountainous region would make it hard to accurately hit anything… not like he needed to aim if a weapon was moving fast enough to create explosive force.

Kenshin frowned at Gilgamesh and crouched slightly while grabbing at his reverse-blade sword.

There was what I assumed to be Cragspur, judging by Abby and Fleers descriptions of it being rocky and mountainous. Viperia which Dazzle didn’t seem too bothered to see threatened, she must really hate where she came from. I kind of knew of Valora because of Ms. Jeanne D’ Arc being raised there, there was a huge battle with strange things going on there at the moment.

Nixtorm was obviously the snow fields with several Pokémon already looking up at the portal, Quetal frowned slightly and I did to when I saw the monstrous Skull Chaosdramon X currently attacking the kingdom.

The large mechanical skeleton monster stopped its rampage for a moment as it took hundreds of ice attacks from the Pokémon trying to damage it to no avail, it just to look me in the eyes and seemed roar at me specifically as its eyes brightened. I averted my gaze from the terrifying sight and continued looking through the portals.

Spectra was spooky and quite haunted looking with various ghost types looking up, Shine looked fairly concerned and she had mentioned it once or twice. Avia was a kingdom built on mountain tops, which was where Cotton came from.

The last two places I didn’t know much about, but they would be for the dragons and the fairies. The Dragons having an entire empire and the other just seems like a bunch of misty.

“Say hello to the designated heroes coming to stop me world, for I am Gilgamesh and I’m a threat to everyone below me… and everyone is.” Gilgamesh grinned at the other end of the very long bridge as he likely appeared on the portals in each of the kingdoms. “If they don’t stop me quickly, heh heh… you’ll all soon perish.”

-Kingdom of Aurora, Castle Aurora, King Evan-

“Maiden Jig, get the bidoof building reinforcements on the emergency shelters and move everyone we can get underground, NOW!” I made a quick call to save as many people of the kingdom of Aurora as I could, the people of Fontaine would be fine as they could dive into the nearest source of water.

Who knew how Greenleaf would react and Ignis was currently reforming, they would probably be devastated by this.

-Kingdom of Greenleaf, Castle Greenleaf, Motonari-

“It’s a good thing we were warned about this ahead of time.” I calmly stood up and looked to the Decidueye. “Help us defend our kingdom and you can earn you’re freedom with this one act Robin Hood. Just don’t bother our kingdom again.”

-Kingdom of Violight, Castle Violight, Ginchiyo-

My eyes narrowed at the Hoopa and Pom on opposite ends of a massive bridge in the sky…

“Alert everyone, the attack is happening now!” I’m glad for our allies to the north in Chrysalia sending out warnings, we were prepared for this. Even if we lose any crops we’ll still be able to keep our kingdom fed on the reserves as long as the castle stayed standing. “Get the magnet screen up and prepare to defend against anything that is not metallic!”

-Kingdom of Chrysalia, Castle Chrysalia, Yoshimoto-

“Do you thing they like playing Unite Ball?” I asked, it was a very important question to me.

“No sir, that hoopa hates Unite Ball with a burning passion and is about to hurt our tourism industry and our allied kingdoms if what we know is true from the attack at Three-borders Valley to the southeast.” My goodness the Queen Beedrill made this situation sound so very serious! Couldn’t we all just play games all day and enjoy life? “Also, the hoopa will make sure we never play Unit Ball again.”

“We must do something immediately, this is an urgent matter of the gravest importance! No one is allowed to stop our unite ball league from existing!” I had all my priorities straight today after hearing someone would stop the joy that is Unite Ball, I had to take action. “We must protect everyone, especially the loyal Unite Ball players of Chrysalia!”

The Queen Beedrill rolled her eyes and shook her head, why was she doing that when a monster was threatening the sanctity of fun, tourism and Unite Ball when she could be getting our defenses together!

-Kingdom of Pugilis, Castle Pugilis, ???-

“Hmph… it’s a good thing that some great fighters are already there. Sir Fetch’d, move everyone into the mountain arenas.” I raised a massive hand and pointed at the bird wielding a sword and shield made of leeks. “We will take cover in here, but we will not be idle. We will actively protect everyone from our best defensive position.”

“Yes, lord Shingen!” After saluting Sir Fetch’d quickly set about following my orders.

He might have defeated the goat among them, but it looks like the she has toughened up quite a bit since they last fought. One should not fight with an injured body before ones spirit was ready, hers might have been quite willing despite that and it spoke of her as being a true fighter… speaking of broken…

I looked at Pom and saw the dead look in her eyes return, she already understood what was about to happen as did most of those who saw Gilgamesh and his threats for what they were. I watched her come into my kingdom with a dispirited natured and yet that fighting spirit of her would never stop until she dies, such a rare talent.

Heh heh heh, Kenshin you look determined, did you not give up killing to try and lead a normal life? I am quite sorry to hear you’re coming out of retirement old friend and becoming my newest nemesis. I am sorry to actually hear that Illusio is about to fall and be devastated, you will become a great leader and will rise from the ashes.

Now if only my true rival Uesugi Kenshin were still alive to see Himura Kenshin’s rise.

I let out a belly laugh, before a serious look overtook my face and I started to order the safety of my civilians and my warriors. If even Himura falls, I would avenge him and take Gilgamesh’s head myself for taking two rivals from me!

-Illusio, Bridge to the Castle of Illusion, Pom-

“Let the whole world quake with my power…. Gates of Babylon, open wide and unleash hell upon all of Ransei!” Gilgamesh soon cut off our sight of each nation as weapons, large rocks and other things began to bombard the other kingdoms. After a moment, he put his focus on us and multiple portals opened up in a certain manner as to be aiming in our general given direction. “The gods won’t be coming to save you, even if they do show up Inky will just take care of them with my help and portals. Now come at me or just wait around and die!”

The sky was blotted out, I thought it might have been gathering clouds, but then I saw what was actually coming at us in the way a mass of things were moving.

Hundreds of arrows, spears, axes, swords… I couldn’t even count all of the weapons and on top of the ones coming at us, there were likely weapons already hitting every other kingdom in Ransei at the same time as we were going to be fighting here!

I knew Gilgamesh was toying with us, but not nearly this much!

“Cleffa, Charjabug, get in Dodo now!” I screamed before I started to inhale sharply, my lungs were already hurting and I couldn’t do anything with my front right leg aside from basic stuff.

Dancing Flame wasn’t as taxing for me to use anymore, but it still did so even if I’ve adapted to using it constantly as easily as I breathed… with every breath a movement or thought.

We had to stop this madman, please be safe Ocellus... Smolder would be fine, if not mentally then at least physically.

To my left Shanty was prepping her cane scythe, to my right Kenshin slowly pulled his blade out.

I could hear Quetal crouching and rubbing his claws together to ready them. One could almost feel Shine started to sink into the shadows behind me. Flames were licking at Dazzle’s palms ready to lash out with whips. Lit squeaked and was sparking brightly behind me. Dodo warbled and I could hear him helping Charjabug and Cleffa to safety in his back. The sound of Lucha Mundo hardening his wings with the move Steel Wing could be heard with the distinctive sound of feathers becoming hard as steel as they slide against one another when Mundo flexed. I heard the nervous shifting of hooves of Favela who was trying to steel her nerves.

Dolly was… actually scared? Yeah, I was right there with her as I felt her pressing up against my right hind leg in obvious terror with her board held in front of her protectively. My nerves were in fact shot to Tartarus and back, have been for a while really, but I really couldn’t stop to deal with my mental issues when there was a bigger problem that was right in front of me.

It was a decent excuse to ignore anything as being horribly wrong with me at least.

-Next to the Castle of Illusion, Inky Due-

“So what do you think?” Gilgamesh said as he took his eyes off our opponents as weapons started raining down on them like so many arrows.

“In order?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Shielder would be her at her best, Rider specifically for her connection to canines and her own speed where she can be the mount or mount a larger dog, Berserker given she could physically damage you through your mental version of the gates through focused rage and finally Lancer for her overall natural capabilities with a spear… and what she’s likely about to do given you’ve sent several spears her way.” Someone like me could almost feel what kind of legends Pom would be able to be summoned as once she dies, but her phantasm probably wouldn’t live up to her actual history. “She’s quite a talented threat and I wouldn’t be surprised if you had to send her away to deal with her, she’ll survive. I would even say that she absolutely classifies as a Beast if I didn’t know she wasn’t born from a manifestation of evil. Kenshin’s a Saber and Assassin, as for the goat… something is very off with her, but it’s like she’s got pure Saber in her blood with something being off about it and an equally large talent as a Rider as well.”

“Hmm…” Gilgamesh turned to face those arrayed against us and watched as Pom made her first move, he prepared to start throwing everything he had at them.

It would be a perfect storm of violence and if all of them survived it, then they were worthy of being called heroes even if they never reached the castle or couldn’t even fight past Gilgamesh. Survival is exactly what Gilgamesh wanted as he attacked the entirety of Ransei.

-Entrance of the Great Bridge leading to the Castle of Illusion, Pom-

The world slowed down to a crawl as I took a sharp breath, my eyes must be widening as I saw a spear among the hundreds of objects falling onto me. I had lost the last spear when I fought Smolder, I’m not really lucky with weapons, but the one I was focused on looked decent for my needs… unless I wanted it to pierce my left eye in the next few milliseconds.

I slapped my left hoof upward in a snap as I exhaled, the point of the spear deflected upwards and then caught it by the back end of the shaft with my right in a strong death grip despite how much pain my right leg was in, not allowing the spear even one full revolution before I had it under my control.

My right leg wouldn’t be able to utilize the wool, so a weapon I’m fairly familiar with would work just as well in a pinch and would make up for my lack of protection. We seriously needed to stop Gilgamesh quickly, he was attacking everyone in Ransei indiscriminately and the best way to do that was to make him focus entirely on us!

“Move!” My shout spurred everyone into motion as I started deflecting projectiles of various kinds with several wide sweeping swings of the spear I caught. My right leg screamed in protest at wielding the spear, but I still opened a path given a single deflection had caused a domino effect of knocked multiple other incoming weapons back.

I started a two legged charge forward as I shifted my grip on the spear to holding it by the center for more control.

I couldn’t focus on everyone, Dodo could keep anyone slow enough to act safe. I felt a weight on my back and almost felt it get knocked off as Dolly deflected something coming at me from the right. Kenshin appeared to my left and swung his sword several times deflecting several large object revealed to be cannonballs and I could even hear the scraping of Shanty’s cane scythe behind me as she grunted and sent several spears flying overhead.

Gilgamesh really wanted me dead given how much he was targeting me now, he should definitely know I wasn’t the only threat to him on this bridge!

I continued my forward charge as projectiles came from every direction, above, left and right, from behind, how many weapons did this guy collect?! This was far more than multiple battlefields worth of weapons and he left a lot of weapons laying around in three-border valley we passed through and still had so much to throw at us…

Had to focus, could not take a second of attention away from my surroundings, I caught an arrow in the shaft of the spear behind me and flicked it forward into several projectiles sending a cascade of weapons falling across the surface of bridge and continued forward out of the path of the projectiles trying to strike where I was.

I was still breathing evenly and trying to keep pace with everything going on around me, every burst of motion when I exhaled was spent deflecting hundreds of incoming weapons. It was all a bit too much and yet I still continued I didn’t even know what I could do aside from press forward and hope to make it through all of this.

My connection to Dolly at least let me feel and see what Dolly was doing when I could take my eyes off the bridge, the Castle of Illusion being far large than I thought and so was this bridge which seemed to be insanely long as much as it was wide. To think this place was floating above Cerebrum City which was now being devastated by Gilgamesh regardless of whether he was hitting his own forces or not.

I could probably be going faster in a three legged gallop, but the problems with doing that is that Kenshin wouldn’t be able to keep up with the pace, Shanty and Dolly would. So I set the pace that Kenshin would be able to keep up with and stayed on my hind legs as I pushed forward through a solid wall of weapons coming at us at insane speeds.

There was no illusion that Gilgamesh was setting the pace of this battle as the strongest monster I’ve yet to meet in this world that had an issue with my very existence. He probably wouldn’t be the last considering I’ve seen Skull Chaosdramon X again, if I survive this then I would have to go after that beast knowing exactly where he was and the people he was endangering.

With a twisting flourish of the spear held by the center of its shafted as I charged forward, I deflected no less than three swords, two battle axes, five nunchaku, multiple uncountable metal ninja throwing stars, fifteen knives, a flail that almost nailed the right side of my head by swinging forward as the chain caught on the shaft of the spear and the ball swung around for it.

I leaned back and allowed a rapidly flipping mace attempting to smash the left side of my skull from the left knocked the ball of the chain back with a tremendous and clang unbind the chain from the spear to allow me to deflect another spear with the tip of my blade against its tip… to still slide across the right side of the wool now tightening around my face in reaction to my near miss.

Gilgamesh has a whole worlds worth of weapons to shoot at us didn’t he? I don’t even think they were of this world either considering Pokémon seemed to be on the lower end of the technology spectrum, barely enough for a digital world to form.

Rapidly thrusting the spear into the air with both my legs on the spear as I started taking several steps to the left, I hoped whoever was behind me now understood why I was doing this as Knives skittered and bounced while flying across the floor of the bridge at high speeds where used to be standing.

More fired out of portals close to the floor of the bridge at me and Dolly dropped down with her Skateboard held horizontally to press against the floor of the bridge, she threw her shoulder and sequentially her back into the board to deflect the knives coming at me low along the ground as I continued to stab out against the multiple weapons raining down on my head.

Gritting her teeth as she looked up me with worry in her eyes, Dolly deflected a flood of knives into the air in a solid tide of metal, she started to push as much as she could with her hind legs as knives started spilling over the board and I swept the spear forward over Dolly’s head to send the tide back.

The grade of every single one of these weapons was peak, high grade and superbly made, not that I was an expert on it, but the spear I was wielding was perfectly balanced as far as I could tell.

I could hear the skittering of knives coming from behind me as well, there was so much metal in the air that it was an unrealistic to expect me to keep up with it all. I felt something press against my back.

“Don’t worry I’ve got you’re back, Doryusen!” I felt the entire bridge shudder when Kenshin brought his sword down on the bridge and the massive shockwave of force erupted upwards almost bowled me over. “Keep moving forward, do not let him force us back!”

“That is being awesome, it be too bad I don’t be having time to learn that!” Shanty stated as she flipped sideways overhead and onto the massive left railing and was spiraling her scythe around her as she deflected weapons from all sides with it and her other hoof lashing out cutting force in all directions.

I turned forward and continued to slowly step forward, I hadn’t stopped stabbing the spear forward for a second and every jab was met with a contact and multiple deflections my legs were almost buckling over the constant impacts against the spear I was using to defend myself.

Dolly was grunting as she pushed her board trying to clear a path through the piles of knives now in front of us, we were slowing down immensely and we hadn’t even covered a quarter of the distance across the bridge.

This was utter madness and no wonder Gilgamesh didn’t seem to take anything seriously as a threat with this kind of ability!

Suddenly the chill freezing cold wind blew through the air, a ball of magma fell into the cold wind and my eyes widened, I kept thrusting the spear with my right hoof despite the agony of using my right leg and scooped Dolly up with my left as I rolled us to the right and took a knife in the back.

Better than taking the massive explosive from cold air and a hot magma ball exploding in my face.

“Ahhh…. oof… pain split… eeeeeeee….” The pain in my back felt slightly better as I felt the knife get pulled from it.

Shine, despite having taken on the pain that was my right leg, leapt forward swinging two knives held in her hair hands deflecting whatever she could. Quetal soon joined after bouncing off a knife mid-air and becoming a ball of claws swipes to protect her in pressing forward.

Dolly helped push me onto up onto my hooves, while I was getting back up Dodo started to cover me with his wings and spat a black brick from his mouth that sent a cascade of weapon falling over the side of the bridge.

Wasn’t Cerebrum directly below us? No time to think of that, everyone on Cerebrum was probably under attack as well and falling weapons were the least of their worries as I was back up within a second and deflecting more things coming from the left, right and center… only to dive forward as a shotgun blast of weapons nearly tore into me and I was struck by two in my side, thankfully the force was more blunt than piercing, because it still hurt quite badly.

“This is too much!” Screeched Favela who had somehow got a hold of two shields in the middle of this mass and was blocking attacks from all angles with them on her vines whipping about.

We were pressing directly into the winds of a blizzard and Gilgamesh could drop magma balls into to create devastating explosions. It’s a wonder the bridge we were on was still so sturdy despite the clattering of weapons becoming the only noise I could hear in my ears.

“Doryusen!” Kenshin leapt forward and brought his reverse blade sword against the bridge and the shockwave cut the freezing winds in half and sent tons of weapons flying into other weapons, I felt Dolly take up a position on my back as I charged forward in the small amount of time Kenshin gave us to keep moving forward.

Suddenly all the weapons stopped coming and then a shot gun blasts of weapons came at us from all sides, it’d be impossible to deflect them all.

“YAHARRRRRRR!” In an instant the world froze as did all the weapon coming in on us threatening to turn us into pin cushions and the next second Shanty’s spirited shout as she leapt into the air among us all blasted them away taking out the next wave of high speed weapons being launched at us too.

This further opened up the path forward and I continued forward with the spear gripped in my right hoof.

We were barely able to get a quarter of the way across this bridge, how would we possible survive the rest of the way… and what was happening to all of Ransei in this time? One of things we needed to do was kill Gilgamesh to stop them, but we also needed to deal with the castle, but with him protecting it that was all but impossible.

-Cataclysm situation thus far-

A majority of Aurora’s farm fields were decimated within minutes, all civilians accounted for under the town of Helper’s Hamlet where the Bidoof were building an underground shelter to accommodate so many Pokémon.

Aurora Castle falls, but King Evan had already evacuated to safety with as many people as he could warn.

The lack of food would become a major problem in the coming days.

Speaking of the lack of food, the Fire Types of Ignis had some protection by swimming in lava or diving into the nearby caves as the surface of the world was bombarded from the sky by thousands of weapons exploding everywhere.

The Pokémon of Fontaine just dove deep into the nearest water source, the rebuilding of their kingdom halted by the sudden rain of death coming upon them.

Like them Pugilis’s people found shelter wherever they could, but the mighty mountain that held their arenas was perfect for sheltering the most people.

The weapons raining down on Greenleaf were impossible for one being to deal with, but Robin Hood protected the people as best he could and the forest helped him. The tree’s seemed innocuous at first until they started moving and protecting the Pokémon beneath them, the children of the forest were in turn protect by their forests and nature itself.

Motonari was also taking an active part in the defense as the Castle of Greenleaf started to crumble under the heavy assault nobody could stop.

Violight was the most prepared for the assault, their magnetic barrier prevent metallic weapons from passing through it so most of the citizenry was safe as was most of the towns also covered by the barrier.

It’s when the weapons made of materials that were not easily magnetized that caused Violight problems, but it would still be the least devastated kingdom next to the Ghost Type Kingdom of Spectra and the Ground Type Kingdom of Terrera.

Yaksha, having received no warning, was quickly thrown into disarray as was Avia which was built out in the open on top of the mountains. Still their leaders would protect their people, their building and their food with their very lives if it came to it.

Avia's people were specialist at dodging in the air and frantic dodging did ensue as many Flying Types sought shelter in the mountains below them.

All the raining weapons were a physical problem, most of the Pokémon inhabiting Spectra were immune to such physical attacks, but their surroundings certainly weren’t. There were some weapons that could even kill or injure ghost Pokémon while they were phased, thus causing an immense panic in the previously less than worried kingdom of ghosts that already lived in devastated ruins and haunted buildings.

Terrera was a vast desert, but most of its kingdom was built underground, as such the damage Gilgamesh could do to it by raining weapons on Terrera was quite limited, but if enough weapons hit the ground hard enough it would collapse the ground into the kingdom of the ground types. The Pokémon living above in the desert would be devastated, but those below could only hope that their kingdom didn’t collapse on top of them as several tunnels were already threatening to do just that and trap them in their own dug out tombs.

Kingdom of Cragspur and Valora had people tough as boulders and steel plates a foot thick it would take many falling weapons to even kill one of their number, but still they needed to eat and the devastation of their infrastructure would make it impossible for them to go to war even if their casualties would be minimal from the cataclysm currently rocking the entirety of Ransei Region.

Valora in particular was somewhat halfway thankful for the mixed blessing as the strange invaders were being devastated as well, so it was a silver lining on the continued future woes of kingdom of metal skinned monsters.

Nobody knew what was happening the Fairy Type kingdom of Titania, the fog there only grew thicker in response to the rain of weapons.

Yet there was no sound of explosions in Titania nor were there sounds of death, only an eerie silence as weapons fell into the fog soundlessly and endlessly onto the hidden fairy isles.

The proud Dragon Types of Dragnor were going to be quite humble after this, because they didn’t take the threat seriously enough. When the sky started falling on them and they couldn’t stop it from devastating their kingdom even with their thoroughly tough bodies. It would be the only kingdom to lack anything approaching serious casualties due to how tough the Dragon Types were.

Chrysalia had numbers and many underground lairs, but the weapons would devastate their infrastructure above ground even if they wouldn’t be short on numbers. They would have plenty of resources as they were the first to hear about Gilgamesh’s abilities, but the devastation would take even them a while to recover from.

Nixtorm was already suffering from the constant attacks of Skull Chaosdramon X and now it was attacking even in the middle of a hailstorm of weapons, just making a dire situation even worse for the Kingdome of Ice Type Pokémon and the casualties would ramp up even as the ice bird of Nixtorm, Articuno, used her body to protect the capital of Nixtorm with the most powerful blizzard she could conjure.

Illusio… Illusio would be the most devastated kingdom of all, for it was where Gilgamesh had a majority of his power focused.

Cerebrum City was already going to fall out of the sky, even if it wasn’t currently being devastated by weapons raining from the sky. The low reproduction rates and high casualties among Illusio would leave it with little left to defend itself with even if the heroes were to soon stop Gilgamesh, anyone that attacked Illusio afterwards would likely find no defense waiting for them and starving Psychic Types trying to get by. At that point they would welcome their conquerors and would actually want to be enslaved to them if they just brought enough food for them to eat for a day.

Even if the heroes were to stop Gilgamesh now, the devastation was already incalculable and it was only going to get worse as time went on and if Gilgamesh was allowed to unbind… Ransei will cease to exist if he isn’t stopped and the otherworldly invaders can then take it over with relative ease.

Even if he lost, Gilgamesh would still have started a world where survival of the fittest might be needed in the near future.

Arceus watched on silently, knowing some things that Gilgamesh currently didn't acknowledge or simply ignored. He still shed a few tears at the devastation of the continent in his image and the many Pokémon living on it.

Author's Note

Whiplash the chapter...

349. Halfway to high water.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

A good number of Legendary Pokémon were keeping the situation in Valora contained. The indiscriminate attack on the entire continent was earning my ire, but it was at least helping Valora a bit.

It’s a good thing Hoopa and Celebi were already working on evening the scales.

I glanced at Fontaine first… their hard work rebuilding their kingdom was not going to go to waste.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Fontaine, King Motochika-

Despite my frantic need to protect the kingdom from being bombarded with weapons exploding everything, I was once again going to fail my people.

“Please… we need… huh?” Water rose up and started to protect what we had managed to rebuild and I turned to look at a large figure floating in the water with us… my artillery units finally had rest from defending against that bastard that had attack the entirety of Ransei.

A lot of water Pokémon were quiet as the disastrous bombardment had ceased being able to hit our hard work in rebuilding our floating water kingdom. We were being devastated and no longer was that the case.

The figure in the water with us was a recognizable figure among us, in fact it was the bigger one that was forging a solid bubble of water to protect my kingdom and its people.

There was Lugia the guardian of the ocean and then there was the ocean’s master, the whale shark himself who came to our aid…

Kyogre.

A reverberating roar sounded out throughout the water and I could feel the thrum of the world calling back, I could almost feel and see the Legendary Pokémon that responded in turn as they started covering every kingdom that needed their protection.

“Thank you…” I said with a weak smile, it made me wonder how bad King Evan’s kingdom was getting trashed by this. Not getting a response from the concentrating Kyogre, I turned to my people. “With us today is Kyogre, we will need to send greater aid to our neighboring allies in Aurora and Greanleaf in these trying times, until then we can build with what supplies we have with the coverage of lord Kyogre!”

Guess I didn’t need to make too many more prayers.

-Illusio, halfway point Big Bridge in the sky to the Castle of Illusion, Lit-

The tiny yellow electric tick Pokémon was crawling across the bridge unfettered and ignored.

For someone of his diminutive stature and size, not many would believe had the title of ‘hero’ or could even be a hero. Being a hero was not something Lit really cared about. He would always, unintentionally or not, act in the most heroic manner possible aside from two specific situations… seeing incredible edible energy sources and something to eat, it could be one or the other or even both that distracts him. Aside from those two situations, he was quite heroic!

Thus far, he hadn’t been attacked because he was crawling along the underside of the bridge.

Not many would realize he had gone missing in all the chaos of freezing winds, balls of hot magma that exploded on contact with said winds, thousands of random weapons raining all over like a hailstorm that would explode if they were launched hard enough into the bridge, blasts of lightning and even a sandstorm mixed in with all of the chaotic problems facing everyone Lit cared about.

Visibility was poor around the area that Pom and the rest were, nobody could blame Lit for going missing in all of that.

Lit was on a mission and the tiny hero was going after Inky Due and Gilgamesh, though it was going to take time for him to crawl all the way across the underside of the bridge because of his size. There was quite a look of determination in his tiny eyes as it wasn’t just his favorite people that were being threatened.

Lit didn’t mind Dolly seeing him as a strange pet or buddy, he didn’t mind living up to that if that was what she wanted him to be. If only Dolly knew he has been absolutely infatuated with her on first sight, she might be flattered and would definitely have to let him down gently.

Even then Lit wasn’t going to be upset, he was a fairly simple bug and just being near Dolly Dalmatian was enough for him to be happy… that and a large source of energy or a few stockpiled berry to eat. Again he was very simple minded in this regard when it naturally came to food.

He was more likely to target Inky Due when he got to the other end of the bridge. Why? Well… in his tiny mind, Inky Due was a weakened target and the predatory side of Lit wanted to make Gilgamesh pay for all the trauma he caused Dolly to go through.

Lit was a Bug Type and Psychic Types like Inky Due would have the worst problem seeing Dark Types coming, but Bug Types weren’t too bad at sneaking up on them either.

There was a thought that Lit could blindside her all the same, he did figure out something about the move Lunge and watching Dolly’s instant change in momentum gave him some ideas. Although the energy cost of using the move multiple times in a row would be high, it would increase his combat and evasive abilities significantly.

-Far above the bridge, Pocket of Space, Celebi-

“Do we even know if this summon will work correctly?” I had some reasonable doubts, but Hoopa waved a hand at me.

“Don’t worry so much, I’m sure the guy we’re calling will be a big help! They will at least have a dimensional stabilizing effect making it hard for Hyperspace Holes to be created… this gold colored bootleg Hoopa named Gilgamesh won’t like what’s going to hit him.” Since Hoopa knew we were fighting fire with hand grenades, shouldn’t he be a little more cautious with what we were about to pull.

Hand grenades were pretty rare in this world, when they weren’t Pokémon to begin with, but they did exist and Team Rainbow Rocket really shouldn’t have tested Arceus’s incredible patience.

It would be like that time Arceus stuffed the dark version of that guy named ‘N’ in a universe that his Team Plasma leader of a father, Ghetsis, wanted to occur. That version of N became completely and utterly miserable within a year and begged Arceus to put everything back to normal. What he doesn’t know was that things were already normal for that given world, so Arceus just smiled and didn’t do anything.

Arceus has been absolutely ignoring that version of N for the last few years and now N was trying to fix everything in that universe personally, Arceus was letting him do so to become a hero and broaden their horizens by a metric ton to the point that the lesson was definitely learned. Be absolutely careful of what you wish for and don’t let people tell you how to think.

Fun thing that there were two Ghetsis in that universe and one of them was absolutely remorseful seeing exactly what happened and what he was going to cause, he was currently helping the Dark N from the shadows. It was fun watching people get exactly what they wished for and it not being what they truly wanted to the point they’d have to work to fix things they were trying to break in the first place. Arceus was truly wise and it required very little effort from him, heroes always in the right place.

Right, got to get back to here and now… but then again I did have all the time in the world to think.

At least Dialga and Palkia let this joint venture to summon someone between us happen, well it was mostly because Arceus said it was okay, but we still had to run this by the Space and Time dragons. We even ran this by Giratina, master of the anti-matter realm the Distortion World just to make sure we weren’t going to destroy reality by accident as this was also a matter of some mild crossing of Dimensions as well.

Goodness knows how many times that reality destroying thing has happened before, kind of why I exist as a time janitor. I did have a side hobby of creating world fixing paradoxes, said paradox energy had to go somewhere right?

Even Giratina’s understudy gave us the go ahead when I talked to them and they said to not worry about any Ultra Beasts appearing.

I’m taking that to mean that it was inevitable that an Ultra Beast of the otherworldly dimensional realms would show up, said realms where Arceus had several special projects running and might be where we get some of our dimensional energy from. If they were going to be involved in this somehow, then things were about to get weird.

They were many that could be on par with Legendary Pokémon and… oh… ah… so that’s it…

There was a common saying among us Legendary Pokémon, ‘Arceus planned ahead’. No matter how many times we say it, we are still surprised when it happens to us on many occasions out of the blue. It happens more often if we of the legendary type of Pokémon get quite rowdy, because we usually end up getting humbled by some not so legendary Pokémon for one reason or another.

Still, the convoluted effort to wake up Rayquaza with a reincarnated hero over months of constantly running around aimlessly with a whole crazy backstory thing was rather inspired.

“Hoopa, don’t be alarmed, but I think we’re actually dropping an Ultra Beast into this mess.” Hoopa looked very alarmed for a moment, then his wide grin threatened to cut his head in half by widening even further as he probably realized exactly what I had.

“Arceus planned ahead?” Hoopa said with a grin.

“Arceus planned ahead.” I repeated with a nod.

“This is going to be better than we thought then.” Hoopa stated rubbing his levitating mitten hands together. “Let’s summon them some help!”

-Close to a quarter of the way across the bridge, Pom-

Dolly shot overhead in ten shining flashes of white energy, somehow the energy she gave off stopped the howling winds and managed to somehow deflect one of the magma blobs without dying from convection. I don’t know how Dolly was doing that with excess magic from constant impacts, but it was clearly helpful and somehow massively disrupted a lot of the onslaught we were slogging through… although I could currently feel her sweating profusely after the magma ball deflecting off her board.

Dolly really did specialize in motion based capabilities, but even she had been scratched and scuffed up and as she landed from her recent dazzling display, I could see an amount of blood dripping from her left hind leg as she blocked a spear heading for my gut with her board and went sliding by me with a pained grunt.

Apparently her counter ability didn’t stop her from getting hurt, it just stopped anything in front of her from harming her and allowed her to move as if she were using Dancing Flame for the ten high speed consecutive thrusts she did.

It wouldn’t stop anything coming at her from any other angle though and with as many weapons being launched at us from all direction, I’m surprised she hasn’t been killed yet and I’m surprised I’m still standing on my rear hooves despite the abuse my body was going through.

“Be more careful Dolly.” I said as I swung the spear in my hooves upwards and deflect a horizontally scimitar away from swinging at her neck sideways in an attempt to wrap around her board, as I did this a knife deflected off of her helmet and almost gave her deadly whiplash. She thankfully could control her own momentum to greatly minimize the damage to herself.

I’ve been lightly stuck with three knives and a spear thus far, no outright heavy solid hits and Gilgamesh was targeting me the most heavily out of all of us. At least my wool can patch my wounds without me having to manually spread it over them now, I wouldn’t survive a second of this if I entered my Sheep’s Clothing wool shift state as the lack of protection would quickly get me torn apart.

Kenshin stepped forward and unleashed another ‘Doryusen’ shockwave forward that stopped the incoming onslaught from that direction for a few seconds, Shanty was watching him with an intrigued fascination and I could tell she was trying to learn something from him.

Shanty still couldn’t do a flying slash, but maybe a series of shockwave eruptions was more within her capabilities given how Kenshin did it. I’m fairly happy with her progress and that she could handle herself in all of this as her cane scythe as it sliced through the air taking out multiple weapons coming from the sides and back. The only attacks we couldn’t stop easily were the ones from the portals that opened up a millimeter above the surface of the bridge itself and fired upwards into us.

I would actually relish the fact that I was being targeted heavily somewhat given my wool can soak damage like nothing else, if I didn’t know Gilgamesh wanted me to cruelly live through this and to actually rise to the occasion in the capacity of an actual hero then I’d swear he was trying to kill me outright.

Gilgamesh was certainly forcing the hero thing and it might work on me knowing that a lot of lives were on the line unless he was quickly stopped, with the way things were going it was more casualty mitigation. Guy had a somewhat twisted view of reality, don’t know why he was like this, but I’ve pretty much figured out most things about him.

Things that would only make sense if Gilgamesh was one of the reincarnated people Arceus has given another chance at life… and Gilgamesh remembered his prior life and was always this stupidly powerful.

The only thing I didn’t want to know now was what an Unbound Hoopa was like, as the idea of it actually happening had a lot of people terrified.

At this point I’m sure Gilgamesh wanted us to try and find a way to kill him. That or he was serious in a manner that said, this world was going to need as many people that can rise up to the occasion as soon as possible and this was his way of making that happen by trial of world ending fire.

Given the amount of power he had was absolutely ludicrous, if there was a threat large enough to drive him to all of this... then I didn’t agree with his extreme methods, especially not when they are forcing me to actively be a hero and I already get enough of that from my conscience, my friends and my desperately suppressed Chrysomallus side.

Anything can be easily said, some things can easily be done, but this… this right here… this was almost functionally impossible to survive!

I ducked an axe and Dazzle caught it before wielding it to deflect multiple weapons as she wielded a barely formed whip of flame being weakened by in the chill winds, water and sand. It’s like we were being constantly hit with an entire beach at night, with a few intervals of being hit with magma blobs to cause volatile explosions that knocked us around or nearly struck by bolts of lightning passing through various portals.

The bridge wasn’t taking that much damage, whoever built this bridge had made it sturdy enough to handle all kinds of storms. That or it was indestructible while it was channeling all that energy the Castle of Illusion was building up.

My front legs were tired, I didn’t know how many weapons I deflected or how many muscle jarring impacts I stood up to, but my wool was working overtime to protect my body from this.

“You’re almost there….” Gilgamesh’s taunting voice stated, he was intentionally poking at us as we were almost a quarter of the way across the bridge. “Huh? Ah… now that’s a problem. Ugh… those gods are cutting off my access to the weather elements by making them all inert in the areas I can access… how capable of them. At best I can launch icicles now or do some rolling snow boulders and they don’t even have to be visible to do it to cause me trouble. Ah well… let’s move on to the next thing, right Inky?”

Suddenly the icy winds, blowing sand, sprays of water, blasts of lightning and magma balls all stopped by the time we made it to a quarter of the bridge. This does not stop the weapons from coming at us, while it just got a little easier it was still pure torture to keep deflecting so much high speed metal.

The end of the spear snapped off with a large chunk of the shaft, I deflected another spear using a quarter staff technique taught to Huoshan guards for such an occasion and immediately swapped it out for another with a three pronged tip and continued moving forward while defending.

We made it to a quarter of the way across the bridge when Gilgamesh unleashed his next method of assault. Inky Due’s chains firing out of the portals at high speeds, but none of them were aimed at me… for obvious reasons.

“Oh come on…” I mumbled weakly as I plant the butt of the spear I held and braced myself against it, this spear was a very similar high grade one to the one I held a second ago that broke under the strain of the amount of weapons being fired at us and used my damaged right leg to a deflect attacks that got by Dolly trying to give me some form of relief in all of this.

A sword slashed across the left side of my face and I almost fell backwards as I puffed out my wool and stayed standing, Quetal, took up position defending me despite how tired he was. His claws flashing out as much as the Swift stars he hadn’t stopped spitting for over a minute now.

Out of all of us Dodo was the only one that was tirelessly avoiding or deflecting weapons, he was mostly mechanical so this probably wasn’t as big a problem for the metal ostrich who gained wings that could form cutting arcs like Shanty and was relatively tireless. Kenshin was still going strong, but I think that was more out of righteous anger than anything.

A portal opened up on the bridge below my resting form and I quickly tossed my head back to avoid taking a knife in my lower jaw. I quickly stepped around the portal and continued forward, we couldn’t exactly take a long break and we couldn’t exactly pace ourselves either with the situation in Ransei possible being really bad.

One of the chains grabbed a fired weapon and my eyes narrowed as it was redirected at me by the chain, I dodged to the side as the spear was slammed into the bridge on a flaming chain that was quickly destroyed by a flaming whip from Dazzle before it could lift the spear and try again.

A chain launched mace slammed into my chest in my inattention after the dodge and I was knocked onto my back with. The impact hurt me through my wool, but it still managed to absorb most of it with my wool and kept a grip on the spear I was holding.

I felt a pair of wings wrapped around me as Mundo huddled over me protectively with his steel wings and I could hear the weapons bouncing off his toughened body, he was still grunting and there was a few thousand reasons why the Hawlucha couldn’t fly in a storm of metal.

“This is not what you want to do, yet you still came through with us, are you okay at the moment?” Is this really the time Mundo?

“No.” I state bluntly as I hugged the newest spear against my chest, then used it to prop and lift myself up with the shaft.

“Good, neither am I and I can share your pain in all of this given I too have several knives in my back, I think I’m going to let go of you now and move back and try to deal with my injuries. Try to stay strong in spirit my friend, for I always will do the same for all of you!” Mundo quickly released me from his protective cover and dodged a chain swinging an axe for his head.

I quickly stabbed the middle prong of the spear through the chain and swung the psychic chain into myself on purpose and with a flash of gold from roughly impacting with my wool, all the weapon wielding chains disappeared.

It wouldn’t be long before Inky would become a problem again and we had to keep pressing forward, I felt Dolly leaping to cling onto my back and took several impacts that staggered me as Dolly was protecting me with her board and body from behind.

I gritted my teeth and kept swinging and stabbing the spear into the air, Kenshin was already starting to flag in the defense of us and himself, that’s when we got an interesting reprieve from Cleffa having climbed up to Dodo’s head.

A beam of energy ripped from her small right nub and gave us a few seconds from the flying metal as the beam tore across the bridge, I inhaled and waited for what I knew Gilgamesh would do.

I exhaled and charged forward to avoid the Solar Beam being aimed back at me from above by Gilgamesh and he turned his portal to follow me until the attack ran its course sweeping the beam after me as I ran forward and deflected multiple well timed and aimed weapons with barely a way through them without Dolly’s sudden tossing her board into my hoof as my right held the spear.

The skateboard has been a lifesaver numerous times, after I was done blocking an absolute onslaught I passed it back to her as I took up the quality spear I’ve been wielding in both hooves. Again, I had to wonder how many high quality weapons Gilgamesh had to be firing them all at us this lazily.

“Be careful more with powerful ranged attacks!” Quetal shouted to Cleffa in part of being worried for me and to scold her, he could do so because Swift couldn’t be redirected back at us, given the user controls the speed and direction of the energy they fired.

The Pokémon move Swift was considered a never miss move because it was a homing attack capabilities, but the user could still also control the energy after fired and the resulting effect would be something akin to a Magic Missile on Equus if a lot weaker. Also from what I know of Magic Missile, it couldn’t turn on a dime and only had a limited lock-on effect, swift was better in being able to hit a target despite minimal damage each energy star fired does.

“Sorry, I just wanted to help!” Wailed a sad Cleffa apologetically as she slid down Dodo’s neck to avoid getting skewered.

-Shanty-

After Pom and Dolly be avoiding the beam, I be sending glances at Kenshin, now I knew he won’t be doing a flying slash for that reason alone if he even could… but he still be having so many techniques that be catching my eyes. Maybe I could be pirating a few of them?

This was being the reason Dodo hasn’t been firing pastries from his beak at Gilgamesh as we approached the center of the bridge, didn’t want to lose an eye to a cupcake as that would be being quite lame.

A chain lashed out for me from a portal and I hooked my scythe upwards in a cutting arc that tore the chain up at the base close to the portal before it could be entrapping me.

“Chains are back!” I warned while avoiding ones that be rising up out of the portals on the stone floor of the bridge. This is being more dangerous than Lu Bu and they can be catching weapons to wield against us to be making this even harder than it already is!

“Take a quick drink!” Shine stated hurriedly as she popped up and passed me the healing canteen, I wonder why she would be being here for me when I felt the large gash in my side. I… is this what adrenaline be doing? I be getting in a quick sip and my side healed bit, at least enough to not be bleeding me out and I be giving the canteen back to Shine as she ducked back into the shadows before a chain could hit her and continued to be supportive where necessary.

Dodo be warbling if I was okay and I be sending him a feeling that I was being good if a little hurt, he accepted it though wouldn’t stop mentally poking me about my injuries with worry. Is this being what it is like for Pom and Dolly? It is always feeling nice to be knowing that I am never being alone and that Dodo can handle the chains easily as well.

Goodness knows what be happening to Ocellus and Smolder as the City of Cerebrum below was being bombarded in a similar manner, then there is being all of Illusio itself… how many people were dying while we be trying to cross a bridge?

I be narrowing my eyes as I be thinking of that, I started plowing forward with wild abandon and rapid slashes of the cane scythe in my right hoof made of a robot leg and my left leg created cutting arcs as I took the lead in pushing forward.

A razor edged shield be coming at me from the right in the form of a spinning disc and was deflected away by Favela coming up to my side with the two shields she be wielding in her vines. She be firing off a few Seed Bombs and deflecting another wave of weapons and a few chains were even blown back.

“Girls don’t push too far ahead on your own!” Pom warned and we listened as we waited for the rest to catch up with us.

“One of us needs to make it to the halfway point to bring Gilgamesh into the battle. I will take the lead on that, everyone please quickly follow behind me when I make a solid path.” Kenshin narrowed his eyes as he crouched and I saw as fields of Psychic energies deflecting all the weapons coming at him as he moved forward, Pom be coming up next to us with several injuries on both her and Dolly. “You’ll be safe within said path for a minute while the effect lasts, so please take that time to rest while you can!”

Kenshin be crouching down, placing his left hand on the hilt of his blade with a grim look on his face as he brought the sheath across his back with his right, his body started to glow brightly.

“Special Technique: Psychic Ryusosen!” In a flash Kenshin flew forward his blade be flashing hundreds of times a second and deflecting everything that be coming at him with incredible force as he cut through the air in a blur and left a literal tunnel of energy in his wake from all the high arcing swings in the middle of his mad dash forward.

Pom immediately ran into the glowing tunnel of energy and be watching as the energy be reflecting the weapons automatically. I be following after her as Kenshin be getting us further along the bridge and be fighting further ahead at the other end of the tunnel of energy he generated.

Shine popped up and quickly passed the remaining Sitrus Berry juice around, we didn’t be having much time and the chains apparently couldn’t be breaking through the psychic corridor and neither could Gilgamesh’s portals so we be safe for however long this lasts and we were being almost halfway across the bridge.

-Kenshin-

Though powerful he may be, I at least think that Gilgamesh had some sense of honor when I made it to the middle of the bridge.

“Come face me Gilgamesh, you said you’d fight us personally if we made it this far!” I issued my challenged and waited. Weapons continued to rain down on my newest friends while I waited and I didn’t have to wait long.

With a flicker of a quick portal the fiend himself appeared with that ever wide grin, he summoned a regular scimitar and it fell into his hand.

“Now we’re getting to the fun stuff!” With his appearance Gilgamesh pulled a plain, if high quality, short sword out of a portal before holding it in my direction. “You’re bound to be a legendary figure, but you’re not worthy of me actually using my best weapon… so this cheap piece of rubbish will have to do. I’m curious, how does one kill with a reverse blade sword? It is of exquisite quality, it’ll make a fine addition to my collection.”

“You’re about to find out.” I said calmly as I raised the sword to eye level pointed towards him and glared. “This blade was meant to represent the end of hostilities… I intend to end yours.”

“A blade made for the conceptual times of peace, how interesting. I can see why it radiates kindness, you would make a great Saber. Too bad you’re not the one I want.” Testing Gilgamesh’s defense with several swings, my eyes narrowed as he managed to avoid me actually striking him with my weapon and even had the strength to deflect my attacks with some of his own. “You obviously don’t know how talented I am with a weapon. Let me show you!”

-Pom-

“How is everyone feeling?” Mundo asked, while looking a bit miserable as Shine wrapped his torso with bandages.

“Have you seen what we’ve just been through?” Asked Quetal who was sporting the least amount of injury among us next to a shivering Favela who had two crumpled metal husks that used to be shields clutched tightly in her vines. “We’re barely able to recover as it is.”

“Could this get any better?” Dazzle wanted to know sarcastically, as she pulled a throwing star out of her shoulder and her left claw, then Shine got to work. Lifting her head, Dazzle looked at Kenshin facing off with Gilgamesh alone. “Frizzle… you better be ready to escape when you have an opportunity.”

“At this rate we might be dying before we can actually be stopping him.” Shanty’s eyes were affixed on the fight between Kenshin and Gilgamesh, she was studying Kenshin’s skills and was even watching Gilgamesh’s. They were, surprisingly enough to me, somewhat evenly match.

“As soon as this protective field Mr. Kenshin made drops, we’ll be in trouble again won’t we?” Charjabug asked as he watched Kenshin and Gilgamesh clashing nearby, I idly considered how much trouble Inky Due was going to be.

Surprisingly Gilgmesh wasn’t firing constant weapons at Kenshin, it was purely a sword fight and Kenshin was showing the full might of his skill and Gilgamesh was matching him blow for blow despite how fast he attacked.

“Pom I don’t want to be an alarmist, but I don’t see Lit anywhere!” Dolly stated as Shine started tending to her.

“Has anyone seen Lit!” I asked in turn after hearing Dolly barking about a sudden problem that was brought up.

“Not since the sandstorm, rain, lightning and freezing winds started hitting us harshly…” Quetal looked quite concerned as he rubbed his left claw along his right arm gently, making sure to avoid stabbing himself on his own claw. “Surprised we made it this far and are still alive with our bodies mostly intact.”

“That is the last of our medical supplies, we don’t have anything else aside from my Pain Split now…” Shine would make that sacrifice, it was best that we don’t get injured enough for her to have to do so.

-Lit-

“Squeak…” The little tick raised his front legs and prepared to fight Gilgamesh and Inky Due by himself as he crawled up over the railing near the castle’s entrance… only to see Inky Due and she was currently concentrating on the bridge.

Looking in the direction of the bridge he could see Gilgamesh was far away, he simply turned back to Inky Due and followed his first instincts, which was that of an avid ambush and swarm predator.

Lit used Lunge!

This hero was going to be super effective.

-Rebel encampment backlines, Lumber Spry-

“We can’t move her, she’ll die, I’m a medical professional and even healing substances are not working very well on her wounds at this moment!” I was doing everything I could to stabilize Cotton’s condition, she had been shredded by those chains erupting out of Inky Due’s body. “I’m pretty sure a reviver seed would work, but they are quite rare in Ransei and these injuries are just that severe.”

I had no idea what Cotton’s last words were meant to warn us about, but it had something to do with Inky Due, Probably how dangerous she was to approach close up alone and I’d agree with that sentiment.

“What if I levitated the both of you into the wagon and you keep working on her?” Ocellus glanced over to the dragon named Smolder in the wagon.

“Moving her in any manner would still be a battle idea, even levitation, she’s very much in a critical state.” Another crack was heard and we looked up at the dome of Psychic energy. The casualties were getting worse, the dome to the rebel camp was about to crack and the city was quickly losing power meaning we were about to fall out of the sky and take the Castle of Illusion with us.

“Perhaps we can help?” I looked up and saw a Xatu standing on the railing of an airship, despite the numerous raining weapons, none of them came close to hitting the ship… until one did and a barrier erupted into existence without rocking the ship an inch. “I believe this ship was meant for Inky Due, it is going to be put to better use evacuating as many injured as we can take on… among other things we need it for. Also, if you can trust me, then I can save Cotton’s life… she saved mine not too long ago by knocking me unconscious with a bit of wood to the head, so I owe her.”

Well that sounded like a strange way of saving someone.

Author's Note

Which Ultra Beast do you think?

It'll be overly obvious.

350. A grandly timed appearance!

Author's Note

Music: Fight on! Final Fantasy 7.

350. A grandly timed appearance!

-Ransei Region, High in the sky, almost halfway across the bridge to the Castle of Illusion, Pom-

I noted that the chains retreated from the nearby portals constantly pounding away at the cutting force barrier Kenshin generated. I looked off into the distance and noticed that my hunch was correct.

“Dolly… I think I know where Lit is.” That got Dolly’s attention and I pointed at the far end of the bridge with my bandaged right leg at the sight of lightning flying up into the air and the barely visible Inky was being distracted by something. Lit’s size would certainly help him fight against Inky, he’d be pretty hard to hit and pretty hard to catch. I seriously doubted a single blow would take the fight out of him, the little fuzzy yellow bug has proven himself multiple times over already. “I think he’ll be fine fighting Inky Due by himself… at least for a little while anyway.”

“Well good for him on taking the initiative, but I wouldn’t want to be in his position of being alone right now. What’s our plan here?” Quetal stated with his arms crossed, it must be hard to have claws and no opposable digits. “We really don’t have much time to rest until we’re back to being bombarded and the longer we stall out here, the more the rest of the continent is getting damaged.”

“I doubt that Legendary Pokémon would allow the kingdoms to fall just like that, at least I know Pugilis has drills for this kind of scenario… well at least the scenario is for long range bombardments, but it’ll work all the same and Keldeo might still be there to be involved in the defense.” Lucha Mundo had gotten hurt protecting me, but he was still fairly strong in spirit if not in body after taking several bladed, blunt and otherwise weapons in my place.

“I, Favela, think this is all nuts.” I’m right there with you Favela, this was quite sanity challenging and we weren’t on the winning side of this thus far… even with numbers being in our favor.

“Well we’re going to have to aid Kenshin in fighting Gilgamesh when the energy protecting us runs out.” I started making my way to the end closer to the middle point of the bridge and I was soon followed by everyone.

“Hopefully Frizzle will be able to get out of there…” Looking to Dazzle, she was raising a claw to her mouth in worry. “I wonder if she’s actually alright inside the portal space Gilgamesh makes, she probably has already gotten your device back.”

Well that was one less thing to worry about… or was it one more thing to worry about along with the possibility that Frizzle will have problems getting out of the space Gilgamesh’s portals access space?

“Guys, get ready to aid Kenshin, we’re about to lose coverage.” Readying the three pronged spear, I waited to make a desperate charge forward and all my friends did so as well. “Are you okay Cleffa, Charjabug?”

“We’re fine!” Charjabug answered in what was an attempt to keep an upbeat tone, his green bread box shaped body poked up out of the seat in Dodo’s back and looked to be shivering a bit. “It’s just that I didn’t know guys like Gilgamesh could exist. I know Pokémon like to fight, but destroying absolutely everything like this? That’s a bit much.”

Cleffa didn’t respond, she was likely still upset after nearly hitting me with her Solar Beam move.

“Kenshin is being amazing…” Shanty was still mystified with Kenshin’s skills and I tapped her back with my left hoof to get her attention on our surroundings and she readied her cane scythe. “I be paying attention, I’ll be ready to move!”

“As good as he is with that odd weapon of his, he doesn’t seem capable of beating Gilgamesh anytime soon.” That was kind of obvious Quetal. “Who isn’t horrified by witnessing all this?”

There was silence because the answer was obvious, we were all horrified. The psychic energy around us, left behind by Kenshin, was wearing out quickly and actually let a weapon through making us all move away from that spot.

Gilgamesh was apparently far more skilled in other areas than just shooting thousands of weapons in our general direction given how well he was defending himself with that short sword. Kenshin definitely had size on Gilgamesh, both weight and mass were questionable when Kenshin was fighting someone that was a torso, head and floating hands that was meeting him blow for blow with a short sword versus a weapon that can be wielded two handed.

Deflections were always well timed, blocks lead into redirects without fighting over who has more strength and quite a few other movements were some of things that Gilgamesh used, he seemed to like stabbing his short sword forward in a fencing manner.

If Gilgamesh knows how to use every weapon he’s ever fired at us with some level of proficiency like I think he does… then he’s still toying with us even now and I think Kenshin is aware of that given how frustrated he looked at not being able to land a clean solid hit on his opponent. Though the glancing blows were likely adding up.

I would soon be rushing in to attack Gilgamesh with the others and we all nodded, we had to pressure the grinning monster and hard. We could only hope Lit would be doing better than us.

At the end of the big bridge, Outside the Castle of Illusion, Lit-

The surprise attack worked and Lit slammed into Inky Due with Bug Type energy catching her off guard and stopped her from poking holes in the barrier around his friends, he also let lose a thunderous blast of lightning upon his opponent.

One would be able to think that Inky would be at half strength after the battering she went through previously, that couldn’t be further from the truth as Lit would soon find out the very same secret Cotton had seconds after finishing his second attack.

Inky Due glared at the tiny, seemingly insignificant, yellow fuzzy bug threatening her. It was as if Lit wasn’t much to worry about and then a chain launched out of her left shoulder seemingly coming from her flesh.

The chain whip slapped at the ground with a whip cracking, sonic boom, speed that Lit dodged with an impressive reaction to sudden danger. The chain basically came from out of nowhere from Inky’s body and would have been fairly hard to react to otherwise if Lit hadn’t been ready for some form of retaliation.

Landing on the outer wall the nearby castle, Lit leapt off it as a second chain whip lashed out from Inky’s right shoulder with an equally crazy speed and then slashed the left chain upwards at Lit’s tiny body.

A green spark popped on Lit’s form and Lit dashed sideways in the air about an inch, only to give off another green Spark as he fully launched the Lunge attack at Inky’s face.

Inky’s whole body shifted into a mass of chains that spread out surrounding him and then snapped inwards returning inky to her normal form, doing so with a explosive shockwave.

…

“You’re far smarter than you look…” Inky said staring at the bug that had surprisingly changed direction in mid-air a third time in the last moment before being engulfed despite looking to commit to the Lunge move.

Lit was now hanging upside down on a strand of webbing from top of the archway entrance staring at Inky with narrowed eyes.

Like a Pikachu using Quick Attack in succession, Lit had manage to turn his Lunge move into a split second evasion ability. Had he not done this, he’d be rendered a completely smashed pile of lifeless mush likely to be consumed by Inky’s body.

“Squeak.” Lit offered in response, having found that his opponent wasn’t quite an ordinary Psychic Type Ponyta, as Cotton had discovered when she tried to grapple and choke Inky out before being shredded by the sudden appearance of chains.

Inky was very much a Psychic Type, but her body had a uniqueness that made all the usual weaknesses moot against her. She was only weak to her own element and nobody would have expected that of her, the only hint having been that her chains were weak to whatever element they were wielding at the time.

Lit was not afraid and he jumped at Inky again to continue the fight.

-Kenshin-

“Sacred Sword, Doryusen!” I slammed my sword, glowing and rippling with raw power, into the bridge blasting out a shockwave as I did so, it pushed Gilgamesh back as the set up to start off my combo.

Despite the amount of force I did this with, I knew I wouldn’t be able to destroy the bridge and the only reason Gilgamesh had to take me seriously was for the fact that I could destroy the castle before he was ready to unbind if I reached it.

The collapse of Cerebrum City would do that, but it would be slow… speaking of the fall of the Psychic Type city… the Castle of Illusion was slowly falling from the sky. It has already started, we were living on borrowed time here.

“Ryusosen!” The second part of my combo, I delivered countless high speed swinging strikes that Gilgamesh was hard pressed to block all of.

He somehow managed to do so… but not without repercussion as his short sword shattered under the fury of my reverse blades flurry.

Now for my finisher of my combo of knock back to set up space to perform the other two parts of my combo, rapid assault and then finisher.

Centering my sword, my eyes glowed as I added to the Sacred Sword’s power with my Psychic ability extending the range of my glowing blade.

-Gilgamesh-

“Heh… so you’re actually going to make me use it, I guess you are somewhat worthy of it after all.” Mumbling this as I reached into the portal to pull out a new weapon, one that could survive the move Kenshin was about to use and would surely be a phantasm in strength and power just by the raw skill shown by this true hero. I was about to meet him head on as he actually made me take him seriously, unfortunately for him he would miss his chance to end me with this move and waste a lot of his energy doing it. “You’re sword was made with the concept of putting war in the past, I won’t be surprised if it survives this and it is quite a grand weapon indeed… now let’s see how you deal with my ultimate weapon.”

I slowly pulled out a weapon that could only be vaguely called a sword to face the coming attack, one that obviously uses the concept of ‘Godspeed’ that mortals shouldn’t be capable of doing without injuring themselves.

I already recognized that this was a True Godspeed attack, and attack that was moving so fast that one could hardly react to the speed unless they were of same or better talent.

I saw nine swords coming for me, the attack was just that fast.

I only need the one weapon to stop this attack.

-Kenshin-

“Kuzuryusen!” Rush forward swinging eight times in an instant… and then thrust for…

K-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-CLANG!

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Is something the matter?” I asked of my guest.

“Just that a version of me has been on the other side of that weapon once before.” Tiamat stated with a slightly pale complexion. “It’s not a pleasant to face in battle, can that summon your people are bringing in seriously tip the tide of this battle with that weapon in play?”

“Yes, things are going to get interesting.” The expressions I received were mixed and concerned, but I currently wasn’t. “Even I don’t know what is about to happen, I just believe in their strength of character.”

-Halfway across the bridge to the Castle of Illusion, Kenshin-

My eyes were widening with disbelief as I tried to comprehend the weapon that stopped my combo cold in its last stage, all eight of my slashes failed and my stab was diverted to the right side of Gilgamesh by his weapon.

Soon I was knocked back to my friend’s sides with a slash across my chest and I fell over, all Gilgamesh did was finish making a single motion of swinging the weapon outward to fully repelling the reverse blade and me with it.

For some reason Gilgamesh wasn’t raining weapons down on us as he held that… was it a ‘sword’? He was holding that weapon at the ready at the very least.

“Next to Enkidu, my truest friend, this is my greatest treasure… Ea, Sword of Rupture!” That thing, could Gilgamesh honestly call it a sword, it was unfathomable to all my senses, especially my psychic senses.

Goodness knows what anyone else is seeing or making of that thing Gilgamesh called a sword!

“It’s… a… rapier?” That was about as far as Pom could comprehend apparently, that was far further than I was getting. “There’s something… so very odd about it.”

“It is being three revolving blocks with a bunch of strange red writing on them, the tip is twisted spiral and it is all being blunt yet giving off a strange familiar sharpness of magic that is not being normal. Yet it feels quite familiar to me, it is being as if I know it from somewhere, but how?” Why was Shanty suddenly receiving a sharp look from Gilgamesh? “It is like the weapon be coming from before existence of itself.”

“You can actually comprehend its true form?!” Gilgamesh asked with both shock and surprise while wielding the blade with his right hand, he was now less focused on me or Pom and much more interested in Shanty than was healthy with this nutcase.

“Yes and its power is being greatly diminished by being in this world somehow… wait, why do I be knowing this? I do not be knowing what this thing is and yet I be knowing that?” Something wasn’t right with Shanty as she rubbed at her head with her right hoof, looking to be in quite a bit of pain. She still held the cane scythe at the ready in her left hoof. “My head it be like it is on fire.”

“I’d be surprised if you didn’t have head pains.” Gilgamesh stated bluntly with a frown and without explanation. “You, you in particular, need to die… like yesterday!”

Pom immediately moved in front of Shanty protectively as Gilgamesh flashed forward. She tried to catch the slashing rapier she supposedly saw with the prongs of the spear and it immediately broke apart in her hooves, basically disintegrating into nothingness upon impact.

A slight flash of gold occurred from Pom, before she was sent sprawling painfully across the bridge by the remaining amount of force. She left streaks of red in her wake as she bounced over and through the weapons littering the bridge until she was back to being a quarter of the way across it.

When Pom finally came to a stop, she eventually sat up and there was a massive bloody gash across her chest. Whatever her gold wool effect did, it hadn’t entirely stopped that attack and was possibly the only reason she was even alive right now.

Knowing blade injuries as well as I do, if that weapon had cut Pom a millimeter deeper it would had torn her heart apart and she’d have died on the spot before she was sent flying away.

Still gasping in pain from the injury, Pom quickly knitted her wound shut with her wool and she appeared to be in quite a lot of agonizing pain. She still managed to stand up, but she was quite weak and looked pale, she didn’t have nearly as much blood to lose as the rest of us.

Gilgmesh’s attack also knocked Shanty on her backside from shock and fear at seeing Pom get decimated so easily in a single swing.

“That spear actually took all the damage for you?! Ugh, the absurdities I’m dealing with right now…” Gilgamesh grumbled audibly as he went to swing the sword at Shanty. “No one should be able to survive being ruptured. The reverse blade I can understand, but that piece of trash that was barely good enough for my collection? I guess I’ve underestimated some of my own weapons.”

As he said this, I could vaguely see the twisting of the weapon, but I still couldn’t make out what it was even after Shanty and Pom had described what they had seen. Apparently it was a blunt rapier with cutting power beyond the mortal comprehension, but that’s not what I was seeing.

Dolly was immediately moving for Pom with a sudden panicked look in her eyes, jumping on top of her board and immediately rocketing for her.

-Shanty-

I didn’t be knowing what just happened to Pom nor did I be understand what that weapon just did, but I be knowing that it is being very bad to be being struck by it.

I be moving before my body even knew what it was doing, I be trusting my guts on this one as both my hooves took up the Leg Pegged weapon made from a robot and alien materials to become the cane scythe it is today.

“Grand Cleave!” I swung my cane scythe horizontally to meet the weapon with an incredible cutting arc as it was swung at me.

The result was that I too was sent flying backwards in an as equally painful tumble as bruises be erupting all over my body from the single swing I be deflecting, like Pom I be coming to a painful stop. Only I didn’t be getting cut by the weapon.

I was on my back and watched silently as my scythe went sliding past me undamaged and Dolly stopped it with her mouth and tossed it my way, I quickly caught it and deflected several weapons that be launching at me while on my back.

Gilgamesh swung his sword for us, nobody be moving to stop him, they were being too terrified… ow… why is so much weird stuff filling my head as a rupture force of primordial energy be rippling right at us.

Wait, what was being primordial energy?

“Aerora!” As Dolly be turning around and leaping forward while swinging her board around to be taking the attack for us, Pom had managed to slowly limp up to my side to help me up with a wide eyed terror in her eyes.

The defending winds immediately broken, the word ‘ruptured’ appeared in my head, Dolly yelped as the board flew from her paws and it clattered to the ground a fair distance away, Dolly hit the bridge hard and flipped once and was now on her back covering her chest with her right paw and I could see scarlet seeping out from under her paw.

“Da… Dolly!” Pom was immediately at Dolly’s side.

I looked at Dolly’s board and saw a large slash mark in the middle of her board, that thing was being darn near indestructible. Except to ‘God weapons’ appa…

AGH?! WHY DOES MY HEAD BE BURNING?

Dodo be trying to help, but it was only doing so much to stop the pain. What is wrong with my head… I can eventually be breathing underwater and never knew that before until now… huh? Where does all this stuff be coming from, does it be from looking at that weapon?

Hmm… I be narrowing my eyes at the weapon and be focusing on one thought.

Was there a way to be beating Gilgamesh without my friends dying?

My eyes widened as something be entering my head, I couldn’t even be saying it out loud, I was not being able to tell anyone and I just be having to act on it.

I immediately started walking forward and then started deflecting a storm of weapons Gilgamesh be sending our way with one swing, that swing be causing a domino effect that be ARHGH…

I just know I not be needing another swing as I protected Pom who was cradling a whimpering Dolly and was looking back at the damaged skateboard in shock.

“Pom, her wound will be healing if you just keep holding her and focus on the wound closing shut.” I now knew there were powers that Pom had that no one was aware of before, powers that she’s had all along and there was what Pom told us about Chrysomallus and the power of sacrifice. I be understanding things that I shouldn’t be. “So yes, you can be saving her NGGGHHH….”

Her familiar bonds were being stronger than anyone could truly be knowing, given she can actively heal her familiars through force of will and sacrifice of her personal energy.

What was being vitakinesis, AGH?! No I don’t need to be knowing that, I really don’t need to know!

The pressure be easing off my skull for a second, so it be thinking too hard that be doing it? HGHHH… mortals were not supposed to know the ‘the truth’, the pain is being a response from…

I really be hoping this knowledge be disappearing from my head after all this, it be causing me a big migraine and being smart is not something that defines me.

-Pom-

“Shan-ty?” I was in too much pain to be talking, but I did as Shanty stated as there was something up with her.

The way she spoke was as if… that weapon was causing it? Couldn’t be anything else, it was having an odd painful effect on her even if she hadn’t been hit by its effect directly.

I looked down at Dolly and she looked up at me and weakly licked my nose even as Shanty protected us from weapon falling all around us with single defined swings.

“Am… I going… to…” A gasping and pained Dolly started to ask and I concentrated, my bond to her and as tears started to fall from my eyes and I could see a glow caused by our bond appearing and her wounds began closing rapidly.

Was this… this was similar to that feeling of me giving her my strength, it was the reason Dolly survived Nimnul a long time ago despite the fact that… I stopped thinking and concentrated, Dolly needed me.

I had to concentrate, I was not losing Dolly and we still had to revive Dormarch together… we had to defeat Gilgamesh there was so much Dolly had to live for to see.

I was already going to die and I’m still coming to terms with that fact, well I could live a long life as long as I didn’t fully become a Chrysomallus. Only at this rate, it was getting worse as I was healing Dolly, I could see a golden glow ascending my left hoof and up towards my knee before I quashed it.

My concentrating on Dolly had worsened the affliction… I believed that it was a fair trade at least. Power was always at a price, I just paid more for it than others would.

“Feels nice… and warm…” Dolly said in a slightly delirious tone and soon she shook her and lifted her paw away from her body. Her fur was covered in blood, but there was no longer a scratch on her and she looked up at me with a smile, wagging her tail and she licked my nose again. “Heh… so awesome… hope… around… long haul… lo-ve… you.”

Dolly passed out and I quickly glued her to my back with my wool I could feel her chest pressed into my back and felt her still breathing, easing my worries about her health. I made my way through a renewed storm of weapons as Shanty expertly protected me with an alarming ease.

I picked up Dolly’s skateboard and saw the large cut in the surface of the board that has thus far never taken damage quite like this and placed it over Dolly’s back and glued it into my wool across my back as well.

We were so not winning this fight, not by any stretch of the imagination I had running in a hamster wheel that was my brain currently. That hamster was tired and just wanted some water and food pellets.

“Pom… we be needing to keep fighting until the very end.” Shanty said with an unknown certainty. “Be following me please. I can’t be explaining why, but we need to keep fighting as much as we can!”

With that Shanty started moving forward while defending us, our morale was shot to Tartarus and I still followed Shanty because I was responsible for her as her guardian. That and something was up with Shanty’s change in attitude, it’s like she was being replaced by something I knew she was certainly not.

I could only hope this wasn’t a permanent change.

I scooped up a spear with my right hoof and started forward once again with Shanty.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

Intriguing.

“She can access knowledge from just looking at the weapon?” I asked.

“She’s a Capricornus, that weapon was forged of primordial earth and sea from which ‘a Tiamat’ came from, not me in particular, that weapon ruptured an entire world and created something new.” Tiamat was rather informative. “Capricornus have a deep connection with all sources of water... even the primordial. That weapon in particular has quite the relation to water and water carries knowledge and memories. I even think Gilgamesh has thoroughly shot himself in the foot from just pulling it out near her. Can Shanty handle ‘The Truth’ the sword will try to impart onto her though? Can she handle just how exactly small she is in the grand scope of things? After this, I think she’ll know of the call of the sea even if she can’t outright hear it personally… yet.”

“Shanty’s strong enough already to survive my breath, so I don’t see the point in testing her when she’s already going through worse already.” It was all Bahamut had to say on the worsening situation as he stood tall with his arms crossed and ever watching.

-Midpoint of the bridge to the Castle of Illusion, Gilgamesh-

“You weren’t wrong little ‘horned sea goat’… it is not as effective as it could be when I couldn’t even kill a dog, even one with limited magic ability, at this range.” Still the weapon was powerful, but not enough so to kill in a single blow of rupturing force. “This world, these heroes, they might actually be able to push me… I would welcome such a thrill if it were true!”

I brought Ea up and calmly deflected the glowing stars coming at me, really I didn’t want to waste it on this lot. Only those who were worthy deserved to have this weapon used on them, I only saw three worthy of it and two of them were the ones I really wanted dead now. It wasn’t just the quarter-baked Chrysomallus that needed to die today.

“Don’t just sit there, fight back!” Said the rather brave blade armed weasel, he was brave to want to fight me even knowing he wouldn’t be able to bring me down at all.

As he was coming to attack me up close I was paying more attention to Inky Due being in a fight with a little bug… and she was actually having trouble with that thing? This world had a lot to offer apparently, I watched their fight as I easily fended off five Pokémon and a robotic ostrich at once without paying attention to them.

That they were forcing me to use this weapon made me feel a nasty pit in my gut, they simply weren’t worthy of seeing this weapons true power! So I kept it to a minimum, they were nothing and couldn’t do nothing to me anyway.

-Quetal-

Despite swinging that thing it did no damage to the bridge, probably because he didn’t want to waste the energy he was going to use in his unbinding.

Another Substitute was torn apart and my strength was getting worse the more I used Substitute to absorb damage for me. He seemed to know where I always was even when using Double Team, my Aerial Ace move was the only reason why I hadn’t been directly struck yet as I was using it to dodge and my Swift move was entirely useless.

Dazzle’s Fire Lash wasn’t able to get by or even wrap around the weapon before being rendered useless, her Dragon Pulse was sliced in half vertically and she had a gash in her shoulder from the result of said cutting.

Shine tried to explode from the shadows only to be blocked and repelled with a blast of force, if Gilgamesh swung his weapon he would have killed her. She saw the Dazzles injury and immediately used Pain Split on her to weaken the damage dealt to her before passing out.

Favela was knocked out cold after the explosions from her Seed Bomb were blocked by the weapon and with but a single flick at her the weapon took her down. Dodo caught her before she was sent sliding past him and picked her up to place her in his back.

Gilgamesh was underestimating us… I could clearly see why, we probably weren’t worthy of that weapons full power being used on us.

We really weren’t pressuring Giglamesh, even when Mundo slashed his Steel Wing at him… Gilgamesh seemed… quite bored actually.

With a single flick, like Favela, Mundo was taken down and sent sliding down the bridge, until he impacted with Pom inflating her wool to catch him.

“Can you all go die, please? I’m asking nicely here.” Lazily said Gilgamesh. “I thought I could get some true heroes and only three of you are actually worthy to face my swords full power.”

Even as Gilgamesh said this he sent Kenshin skidding backwards in a single clash, somehow he managed to stay standing and raised his still surprisingly undamaged sword, but Kenshin wasn’t looking too healthy as he gasped in exhaustion.

Kenshin centered himself and stayed standing through force of will.

“Ahhhhhhh!” This is when someone finally got a solid hit on Gilgamesh much to our shock… it was a screaming Charjabug and he started pushing every ounce of his energy into harming the freaky golden colored legendary. I saw the power of several consecutive uses of the move Charge go off all at once, the brilliance was actually managing to hurt Gilgamesh. “You need to be… stoooahhhhh--!”

Chargjabug, the constant fountain of positivity, kept screaming as he discharged every ounce of energy he could directly into Gilgamesh and practically had him frozen in place with the sheer amount he of power he was putting out.

“Gaaahhhh, go away you useless pest!” As soon as a scorched Gilgamesh had knocked Charjabug away with a single swipe of a floating hand and sent him flying over the side of the bridge, blackened, sparking and looking like an unmoving corpse as he fell out of sight.

Gilgamesh’s eyes narrowed and he brought up his weapon to block the Solar Beam that pushed him towards the last quarter of the bridge before reaching the castle.

The beam didn’t penetrate past the weapon and Cleffa had given it her all, it still hadn’t enough and Cleffa fainted falling into Dodo’s back entirely deprived of energy.

“Charjabug!” Pom wailed as she and Shanty continued to slowly approach us, as she had figured out what I just had.

Shanty, who was looking quite terrible, smiled a tiny bit. Why would she be smiling about Charjabug dying? Maybe glad that he couldn't feel any pain in his passing?

I could worry about that later. Charjabug had just sacrificed himself entirely using Spark with everything he had for that Solar Beam to even connect and the beam was blocked.

This Gilgamesh guy was quite terrifying, but I wasn’t willing to give up. He can kill me, but he would never break my spirit! I intended to be a hero and he wanted heroes, well let’s show him a hero!

I was about to go blindly charging forward and hope to even get a hit in on him as I was taken down, that bleeding scratch wound on his cheek had been oozing drops of blood all fight and yet he was still going this strong. It was the only sign this guy was not immortal and could bleed.

Two portals opened next to Gilgamesh and I kept charging despite a weapon poking out of one about to launch, as for the other...

“I think all of you left might start collectively be some modicum of worthy of it’s full… what the?!” Before Gilgamesh could lazily swing his sword at me charging forward, if that was what the indistinct blur was, something happened that made me stop my suicidal rush.

“RARRRR!” Gilgamesh was engulfed in a fireball as a stunning high pitched roar sounded out and Frizzle followed that up by slammed her right claw into his back and crushing Gilgamesh’s face against the bridge, she kicked off him with her right leg and launced overhead to land behind me.

She turned around to face Gilgamesh with me and Dazzle came up to our side, she tossed the Digivice back to Dazzle and the Salazzle caught it with a firm look on her face. It immediately started glowing and Frizzle tossed something to me as she started to growing, I caught the device that belonged to Pom.

“Get that back to Pom, at least let some good must come of this, at least I'm not fighting alone.” Dazzle stated solemnly, then turned forward and pointed a claw, clenching the device as it started glowing with draconic energy. “Frizzle!”

I immediately turned back and started running, Gilgamesh was now dealing with a winged dragon that Frizzle had become.

A sour part of me thought that, at most, Frizzle just became a bigger target.

-Dazzle-

Chargjabug… the little guy was always so happy and sweet while just following us around… Gilgamesh halfheartedly swung his sword and I brought my arms up, Frizzle mimicked my actions and actually blocked the attack.

Suddenly Gilgamesh’s mood brightened up, the sick monster probably enjoyed someone being strong enough to stand up to him. Growlmon or Growl-dra-mon roared.

“So that’s what happened to all my fancy, high grade, super, magically forever freshly warm in stasis breads… remind me never to take another device like that one.” Gilgamesh giggled somewhat madly and then brought up his weapon before swing it down to his side preparing to face Frizzle, he made a 'come on' gesture with his left hand.

Even then, I don’t think Frizzle was going to be enough considering we’ve already lost so much in this fight.

Looking beyond Gilgamesh, I saw a bolt of lightning… Lit was still fighting Inky Due by himself?! How had he lasted this long when Pom said Inky had taken out a number of Pokémon so easily? At a guess, he was leveraging everything he was capable of just to keep Inky’s attention.

I had to do the same now with Gilgamesh, hopefully Frizzle was up for the challenge.

Also it doesn't help that I just noticed the castle was falling out of the sky... if that were true... then... so was Cerebrum City...

352. Battle on a Bridge that is big.

Author's Note

Music: Any Gilgamesh theme, whether it is Final Fantasy or Fate Stay. Mostly Final Fantasy.

Preferred: Battle on the Big Bridge/ Gilgamesh Theme (Final Fantasy V/five) GaMetal Remix.

Edit: It's the Month of Monsters, let's start it off right.

352. Battle on a Bridge that is big.

-Equus, Equestria, Ponyville, Sweet Apple Acres, Applejack-

How ready were we for this whole Tambelon thing to happen?

Twilight was ready, she was almost used to running a whole country by now, so mentally at the very least.

I think Pinkie was ready, she has that whole dimensional jumping thing if we need an out from Tambelon. Still don’t honestly know how she does it and as many ponies in Ponyville have learned a long time ago, don’t think too hard about it.

Who knows what Rarity is going to do in Tambelon, but she did have some abilities that could be useful. I’d have to make sure to watch her back in the inevitable fighting that's going to occur.

Fluttershy was never going to be ready, but at least she was thinking ahead with acquiring medical kits. Bless her heart that she’s still willing to follow us into this mess, she's the best friend anyone can ask for.

Rainbow was just exercising a lot more and making pretty rainbows in the sky. Lazy as ever and is a somewhat cute idiot on top of that.

Me, I was basically getting myself worked up over the future and I was as ready as I was going to be by working out in my spare time. I wasn’t much of a fighter, but I knew how to hit hard and could hope it was enough. Didn’t want my nephews and nieces to grow up without an aunt and I intended to see the children Sugar Belle has with Big Mac, needed to live to see that bright future.

Honesty was the not the same as the truth, I could be honest and still tell a lie, because I couldn’t know absolutely everything about something. Honesty was telling the truth as you knew it and some people could be quite delusional in doing that, even if someone were being completely honest they could just as easily be lying out their flanks because they wanted to honestly believe in the lie they tell themselves far more than the actual truth staring them in the face.

My friends were going to need me.

“Hey Applejack!” Looking at the voice, the younger Arizona approached, she and the other Fœnum girls were quite busy with working on breaching Grogar’s world. Never saw the guards shape up so much before and Puk’s were no longer a problem for Ponyville these days. “I was wondering something and I heard you were a good listener…”

Oh here we go again.

“Okay, you have my ears and I’m not busy or nothing sugar cube.” I had to wonder why the young wiry cow looked nervous.

“You’re the most honest mare around and this might sound awkward, but do you think my udders will be as tiny as the other Arizona’s when I grow up?” Fœnum Arizona asked while looking quite fearful about it.

Why do I always keep getting these personal questions I can’t possibly have the answers to?

It was bad enough when Fœnum Velvet asked about Equus Velvet’s icicle farting thing possibly being a problem for her. Fluttershy has that issue with actually liking the taste of fish and having a slight carnivorous side, probably exacerbated from the whole transforming into a ‘magical vampire fruit bat pony’ incident. Rainbow Dash still has her confidence issues with actually asking me out and the fact that she came to talk me about it still boggles my mind, considering she was casually trying to pretend that I was someone else while doing so wouldn’t make it any less weird. Rarity was always, aggravatingly enough, asking me for an honest opinion she doesn’t actually want to hear… given I still honestly didn’t care much for fashion. Goodness knows where that griffon Gabby’s inadequacy issues come from when she’s good at a lot of things by putting one hundred percent of herself into learning to do said things. Spike sometimes didn’t feel like a little brother and more like a familiar or a servant to Twilight sometimes despite that role being filled by Owlowiscious.

Spike has had mostly free room and board for all of his life along with the most expensive food as part as his diet being paid for by the crown to this very day and I certainly wouldn’t be complaining too much about that if I were him.

In all, I was the go-to premier mare for everybody else’s awkward issues to talk about and it was really quite annoying. Still, I was begrudgingly the sturdiest and most dependable friend around when it came to talking about things and forming a gentle opinion about things.

“Hon, you might want to seek out a doctor about that, I’m not a professional on the subject and I’m not sure what an opinion from me would actually do for you in this situation.” I was kind of tired of being let in on everyone’s secrets, also I think you kind of needed a microscope to tell if the local Equus Arizona was even a cow at all sometimes. There's more bull in her than an entire herds worth of them.

-Pokémon World, Ransei Region, Illusio, Bridge to the Castle of Illusion, Pom-

Okay, two new beings.

One big green bird that was also called Enkidu. Looked cuddly with those feathers and deadly with those talons, its feet looked like it could eviscerate me in a few kicks.

The other was a big overly muscled monster that looked like a ridiculously oversized mosquito with a habit of flexing judging by the involuntary motions he was doing for us, that he called himself Gilgamesh had me worried.

He had large insect wings, two arms that ended in five fingered hands one of which held a naginata, a large steel looking proboscis and four spiny legs. By comparison its tiny head where the metal needle like nose extended from was ridiculous and almost disc like with what I was assuming to be two eyes with antenna.

I looked to the others and carefully approached him.

“Um, excuse me… uh… Mr. Gilgamesh?” I tentatively stated while the smaller Gold Gilgamesh was still extricating himself from the wall this muscle bound terror put him into. The large bug turned towards me and flexed. “Um… can we help you fight that guy… we’ll let you keep his sword if we win?”

“If we win, hah, you have the greatest warrior to ever plunder the depths of multiple realities, Gilgamesh, on yours side… there is nothing to fear while I’m here!” With a wild flourish of his naginata he planted it across his back behind his rounded dome or disc head while holding out his left hand in a pose I suppose he thought was cool. “I will be taking that weapon, say Greenkidu, I know you’re still mildly upset, but it’s been months! Could you maybe do your thing for them please? I really want that weapon and getting help with this kind of thing generally doesn’t happen often for me!”

“Okay, then you might want to turn around a block that incoming attack.” Hearing me call out the smaller Golden Gilgamesh incoming, Gil turned around and blocked the incoming weapon with the blade of his naginata angled in a precise manner to catch the tip of the other weapon.

The green bird groaned while rolling their eyes, shook their head disparagingly at the buff bug Gilgamesh, but then started flapping their wings slightly, crooning with their beak and stomping in place with their talons in a kind of dance.

“Cue!” The green bird let out and I could suddenly feel a rush of magic build up from Enki, then a shower of green sparkles spilled over all of my friends and me, it felt… rather nice.

While this was happening Gilgamesh and Gilgamesh were fighting head on and clashing sending shockwaves from their impacts.

One with a naginata that held similar feeling to Kenshin’s reverse blade that was wielding it like it was an old friend. The other wielding what still looked like an ordinary rapier… if I didn’t know something was off from the way Shanty described it as being more akin to a drill, then I would think it was.

The green sparkles made some of my friends gasp and I turned to see Dazzle removing the wrapping from her injured claw and the nasty injurie to her claw and wrist was healed.

I looked at my rust colored bandages along my right leg and saw that the green sparkles hadn’t seeped into it, at least I knew why. Healing magic wasn’t going to help my right leg very much in this case… but it did feel good for the rest of my body.

“Thank you very much… um… Inky Due… it’s a bit odd, what with their being two Gilgamesh’s and Inky Due’s here.” I bowed to the green bird for healing the worst of my friend injuries and exhaustion, not that it helped Frizzle resting inside of Dazzle’s digivice.

“Kweh-ehhh.” The bird stated and turned to jab their beak at the two Gilgamesh’s.

“Right, this might be a good chance to turn things around.” Quetal stated as he looked to have fully recovered from using so many Substitutes and started forward, Kenshin nodded and was followed by me, Dazzle and Shanty while Dodo and Lit hung back and would pick us up if we were in serious trouble.

“We will not be being able to defeat Gilgamesh, without the help of the other Gilgamesh.” Shanty mumbled with a whimper as I stopped to look at her, even I knew that we were about to lose before another Gilgamesh and Inky Due showed up.

“Ready to really get this started then? Well join me in battle, just watch out for yourselves! Never had friends in a fight before on my side of things aside from Greenkidu.” Red Gil the bug stated, he twirled his naginata around and then posed while facing the Gold-gamesh. “Watch out, because you’re about to face the ever wondrous Gilgamesh, so here I come~!”

-Red ‘Buzzwole’ Gilgamesh (Big bombastic bridge and arena fighter), with mild back up from Enkidu and the Pom friendship crew Vs Golden Hoopa Gilgamesh (Overly Powerful Jerkass that has been recently heavily nerfed by the appearance of the Ultra Wormhole)-

“Ever heard of the grandest greatest of the legends, it’s my bets here that I’m hedging, that you’ve never heard of someone of my like~.” As he sang Red Gil expertly deflected the sword of rupture with a stupid looking flamboyant flourish much to Gold-gamesh’s consternation as he attacked rapidly. “So welcome me to the greatest fight, where I can truly bust out all of my might, since I guess you’ve never heard of me~!”

“We’ll see who the best Gilgamesh will be~!” Gold-gamesh was actually showing his true strength as he clashed, after several heated deflections by the naginata held by his opponent he fell back Holding the Sword of Rupture high up in the air he slung it forward and a powerful pillar of energy swept forward damaging the bridge as it move.

Red Gil quickly pulled out a sword with his left hand and held it forward defensively, the huge rupture wave made a ‘tink’ sound as it hit the sword and all the power within said wave instantly vanished as if it had expended all of its power trying to break the sword and barely did any damage at all.

“I don’t think you’ve quite ever met someone like me before, and- is this really all of your might~?! Come on give me a good fight, show what me what the name Gilgamesh means to you alright~!” Red Gil stated haughtily as clashed three times with Gold-gamesh and he stopped a second rupture wave with the same sword he pulled out earlier, another ‘tink’ sound and it boggled Gold-gamesh that his most powerful attack can be stopped by a simple looking sword that had some visible similarities to the Excalibur even if it was a damningly odd looking fake.

There was something very off about the sword Red Gil used defensively and it didn’t scream demonic or heavenly power to Gold-gamesh’s senses. In fact, to Gold-gamesh, it just looked like a normal sword that could be trying to be Excalibur… if the sudden effects of its existence weren’t so abnormal he would swear it actually was.

Red-Gil was then across the bridge as if he were flying and with several strikes he pushed back the Gold-gamesh with each thunderous blow. Gold-gamesh created two portals to fire a powerful burst of weapons, all of which were deflected upwards by the seemingly crappy looking sword and caught by the Red Gil to be stuffed away into what had to be his Gates of Babylon.

“Heh, quite a collection you have there, can I have some you bore~? How about I trade you an excalipoor, because I always have more~!” Red Gil stated cheekily, turning his back and tossing the sword over his left shoulder at Gold-gamesh.

Gold-gamesh actually took the weapon coming at him seriously and blocking it he was sent flying back as if he was hit with the force of a truck, putting him at the last fourth of the bridge looking at Inky Due behind him. He nodded to her and then turned back to surge forward at Red-Gil.

“Can we not seriously sing this to a tune, especially not while we’re fighting this goon~?” Pom said as she unleashed a pair of Thousand Spears from her legs that slammed into Gold-gamesh while his guard was down. “He’s a terror that’s trying to destroy this continent like a river to ford~. Watch out for that stupidly powerful sword~! We were in the process of being routed and-…~”

“Now come on you sweet little thing, don’t you worry about that, when I’m the one that has all of your backs~!”Red-Gil absorbed an attack meant for Pom and deflected a knife before it could stab into her neck. “Come on my best friend Greenkidu, why don’t you throw us a barrier or two, let’s show this Gilgamesh that there’s no one quite like you~!

“WARK!” The large green bird cast a spell and everyone that wasn’t on Gold-Gamesh’s side suddenly had a protective green barrier around them that deflected weapons from the few limited portals Gold-Gamesh could make a few times.

Kenshin charged forward and lashed out several clash and before Gold-gamesh could counter he was struck back by the naginata Red-Gil swung to block a blow.

“Never been on the right side of history when it comes to this sort of thing before!” As Red-Gil aided Kenshin in pressuring Gold-Gamesh in a series of barely coordinated strikes.

“Yes, this is the kind of pressure I want from heroes like you!” Gold-gamesh grinned brightly as he dodged am exploding Bark Buster from Pom coming at him from the left, he tried to get under Kenshin’s guard to stab him only to have his weapon pulled to the side by two flaming whip as Dazzle used Gold-gamesh’s grip on his weapon to pull herself into the air.

“Do you still think you have- the advantage here~!” Dazzle sang out a Round and Gold-gamesh sent a quick shockwave at her to block the attack and sent Dazzle flying backwards with a second jab.

Gold-gamesh had to dodge by twisting back and out of the way as Red-Gil slammed his Naginata where Gold-Gamesh had been and deflected Kenshin’s blade downward into the bridge.

Quetal slid in under Gold-gamesh’s body and slashed him across the chest and was swiftly bisected for the damage, only to show that it had been a Substitute as the body went up in an explosive puff of smoke and leaving behind a torn green smiling doll.

Gold-Gamesh had to quickly get his guard against Red-Gil who obviously didn’t know a single Pokémon move, but his new form more than made up for that fact as the Naginata slammed into the guard and what passed for Gold-Gamesh’s butt almost burrowed into the bridgework.

Taking one hand off the guard he quickly launched a weapon and Greenkidu, the bird dodge the weapon swiftly and Gold-Gamesh narrowed his eyes at the other Inky Due.

At this point Gold-Gamesh realized he was fighting what could truly be a distaff counterpart of him if his legend were told by complete nimrods and it was bizarrely strong counterpart no less, strong enough to match his might even as a Legendary Pokémon… both the other green bird Enkidu and red bulky bug Gilgamesh seemed to lack an ounce of divinity for Inky Due to wield against them and they both had a measurable strength at the equivalent of two demi-gods.

Gold-Gamesh wasn’t even sure the other Gilgamesh had an idea how to use his new body to its fullest, but they were still capable in spite of this fact.

Still, Gold-gamesh hadn’t been hit by the green birds kick, but he wasn’t about test it given how powerful Red-Gil was. He could already feel these two were huge problems, when the battle had been almost entirely in his favor from the start, now it was going the other way massively and Gold-Gamesh could barely keep up with the attacks given long range attacks were now viable against him given he was limited to two to four portals at maximum. Even Ea the Sword of Rupture was not capable of winning this battle by itself, it made Gold-Gamesh feel alive and one can see the similarity between him and Red-Gil in this battle frenzy.

Even if it was basically an entire group on one fight, it was only more even now than actually fully in favor of the heroes, Gold-Gamesh was still fending them off with a single weapon and a few well timed portals to occasional launch weapons at the ones who couldn’t defend against it very well.

Pom, Quetal, Dazzle and Shanty were getting the focus of Gold-Gamesh’s highly limited number of weapon launching portals to make sure they couldn’t assist Kenshin, Greenkidu or Red-Gil in pressuring him down, those three definitively required Gold-gamesh’s personal touch more than the others.

Deflecting a blow from Red-Gil, Gold-Gamesh got into a sword lock with Kenshin and then lashed out with his left fist to hit an indistinct blurr to reveal it was Pom moving at full Dancing Flame speed. The blow to her left cheek bodily flipped the ewe and took her entirely by surprise that Gold-Gamesh could even react to her in such a time frame.

Pom chose to land on her side instead of her back and went skidding away along the bridge on her left side with the frictionless wool and Dolly’s Skateboard acting as a slow broke.

Following Pom’s attack Gold-Gamesh caught the overhead cane scythe strike by Shanty, stopping it by the tip of its blade with his left hand, it bled slightly due to the cutting force that came off of it.

Opening his mouth, Gold-Gamesh fired a powerful Psychic blast into Shanty’s face sending her flying away as he let go of the scythe’s blade. With two portals he punched the green bird as it started to charge for him for a devastating kick and dazed it. Afterward, instead of bringing his fist back, it reentered the portal and exited a third one beneath Dazzle’s belly, launching her upwards as she was going for a leap at him and it followed her up to slap her down and finally returned to Gilgamesh’s side in time to catch the reverse blade sword, which thankfully was blunt.

Out of all this going on, one would think Red-Gil would have at least questioned his new hyper muscular centaur mosquito body much less what was going on. Instead Red-Gil was mostly just focused on getting Ea Sword of Rupture from Gold-Gamesh out of this battle for helping these people, aside from Kenshin’s weird blade there wasn’t much else of interest to him here. It wasn’t slowing him down one bit.

Kenshin used his psychic energy to block the psychic attack from Gold-Gamesh, this gave hime some breathing room to start rapidly jabbing his weapon forward to launch series of ripples through the air like Pom doing a Thousand Spears. Gold-Gamesh’s attack required Red-Gil and Kenshin to actually start backing away defensively and deflect the air ruptures with their weapons, again Red-Gil used the sword to do this and every time it got hit it would make a rather annoying and noticeable ‘tink’ sound.

After seeing most of the attack blocked Gold-Gamesh went to start jabbing again and would actually combo into something, only to be stopped when a bunch of energy stars suddenly exploded against his left eye. He hadn’t seen them coming and despite minimal damage they dealt they still hurt when they hit a large viable weak point.

Quetal had sent his Swift attack wide to barely enter Gold-Gamesh’s periphery vision before hitting him and didn’t give him time to react. Of course Swift’s power was meager compared to some of the things Pokémon could do, but it was an attack that wouldn’t miss if it could reach its target and made for a good distraction.

Gold-Gamesh sent a ripple of rupture at Quetal who immediately evaded from the right bridge railing to Gold-Gamesh’s left towards the center of the bridge behind Kenshin.

Unfortunately for Gold-Gamesh, since his left eye was shut by Quetal, he had a huge blind spot and didn’t manage to block the sound of a spear whistling right at him and didn’t have time to deflect or redirect it either as it tore into the oozing wound on his cheek and widened it into a constantly bleeding wound.

Pom a bit further back stomped her right hoof on the tip of another spear flipping it into the air and, upon catching it, immediately spun clockwise to chuck it with her left leg and a boost from her wool springing the spear forward as she threw it.

The second spear Pom launched his way was disintegrated by Gold-Gamesh with a simple jab and he was about to take the fight to them as they had been pushing him too close to the castle, he couldn’t let them damage the Castle of Illusion any further or else the energy would explode and quite frankly he wanted Inky Due to live until she could get the promised Healing Wish off.

Given how many weapons were just lying around on the bridge, a number of them were spears that could be thrown and Pom had plenty of ammunition and determination to really hurt the quickly slowing Gold-Gamesh.

“Come on, are you the people who thinks I’m going to be brought down so…” A hypersonic carbonized bread loaf crunched what used to be Gold-Gamesh’s grinning face inward in a fountain of blood from his ruptured skin and badly cracked skull as he slammed into the bridge on his back. He quickly sat up and screamed in aggravation. “AGGHHH!”

“Don’t let up!” Pom shouted and Red-Gil lunged with a thrust of his naginata.

“No problem!” Red-Gil answered, while things may have seemed lopsided, Gold-Gamesh was more than strong enough for all of them and it feels like how Red-Gil saw himself, someone who required multiple good opponents to really feel a fight.

Gold-Gamesh floated up back up and deflected the larger Red-Gil’s thrust and subsequent swing upwards, then deflected Kenshin’s attempt to hit him with a Doryusen shockwave that he forced to the side before slashing away the flaming whips from Dazzle as he was buffeted by the blast.

At this point Red-Gil was proving to be an opponent Gold-Gamesh had underestimated because of his oddly goofy countenance and exuberance, because in the next few seconds he was hit by multiple sweeping strikes at high speed and then felt that sword he tended to use to block attacks jab into his right hand.

The weapon didn’t make a ‘tink’ sound, but it did feel like he was being given an annoying amount of paper cuts with how fast the weapon was being swung. No, the weapon was causing less than paper cuts, how did that work with something that looked like it had a sharp blade? In any case it was adding on to the naginata assault that Gold-Gamesh was suffering quite poorly as cuts opened up all over his body.

Gold-Gamesh managed some defense in the middle of Red-Gil’s assault that was joined by Kenshin every now and then, he also managed to deflect three thrown spears and knocked Shanty back several times.

What most of the opponents of the golden colored Hoopa didn’t know was that he was about to become unbound and he was still fighting and defending fairly well, they wouldn’t have time to destroy the castle nor would they have time to kill him before Inky Due was ready.

Thus Gold-Gamesh started to smile, not grin, but actually smile as he was calculating how much time he had to hold out for while he was suffering numerous terrible injuries to his torso, head and hands, which basically all he was. Without the full use of the Gates of Babylon he was faltering pretty badly, mostly because Gold-Gamesh had become complacent and this battle was waking him up by quite a bit.

Gold-Gamesh was deflecting the reverse blade, a naginata, fire whips, spears thrown at a decent speed, a lightning blast that almost came out of nowhere, another hypersonic highly carbonized bread loaf, a scythe wielded by a goat who was apparently able to view the truths the ‘Sword of Rupture’ imparted, a large green birds deadly talons that have slashed through beasts far bigger than him and he managed to hold them all at a stalemate.

Gold-Gamesh was showing just how much of a glorious king among heroes he was in a few minutes of fighting as he actually managed to push the multiple talented opponents back slightly.

“Don’t let him gain any momentum!” Pom was the one to pick up on it first that the more injured Gold-Gamesh became the more he was taking the fight seriously and his skill in dealing with them was becoming exponentially better. Pom had seen it before, Gold-Gamesh was learning all of their battle habits and abilities as he fought, he actually started to look alive under the pressure as rupture waves flew from his blade and he even started injuring Red-Gil some as the bulky centaur mosquito was his most daunting opponent.

Swift stars blasted from from Quetal or a substitute that came in close to slam Aerial Ace enhanced claws into him, nothing to the Hoopa Gold-Gamesh as he destroyed each substitute.

Dazzle’s flaming whips expertly lashed out with precision and speed, quickly ruptured under the increasing force of will that was an injured creature that knew he was about to lose his best friend who lost the ability to fight to a little yellow fuzzy bug.

Pom throwing spears from the bridge, she couldn’t throw nearly enough to hit Gold-Gameshj again now that he was paying attention to everything and was utilizing the four portals he could make to fire weapons with extreme precision.

The cutting force of Shanty the sea goat, it was a foot note that such a power was terrible to face in Gold-Gamesh’s mind, but he was still able to block the cutting arcs with ‘Ea Sword of Rupture’ while sending the goat flying away even if he wasn’t doing much injury to her.

The other Enkidu, the green bird, far more dangerous than their appearance would suggest and Gold-Gamesh could actually acknowledge that they were another version of his Enkidu as much as he acknowledge the big red dope that was Red-Gil as another version of him… probably the dumbest version of him to ever exist!

Kenshin was strong and healthy, he just didn’t have the heart for battle or violence despite how powerful his techniques and his ability to use Godspeed moves. Gold-Gamesh wouldn’t be surprised to see Kenshin among the throne of heroes if something hadn’t gone horribly wrong and was the reason he even ended up in this world.

“Now this…” Red-Gil stated as he continued to enjoy the fight with all of his might. The guy looked like more muscles than brains, but that was further from the truth as Red-Gil had proven several times that he knew how to wield every weapon he pulled from what had to be his Gates of Babylon.

“Is a fight!” Gold-Gamesh finished for him as their clashes created eruptions that shook the whole bridge they fought upon. Even if he didn’t think much of Red-Gil, Gold-Gamesh still acknowledged him a viable threat and a capable warrior which was more than he could say about the pitiful heroes still trying to put up a fight and were actually succeeding.

It was almost time and Gold-Gamesh was really enjoying himself despite his golden body being covered in red from his own blood and that of his enemies that got too close to him. Once he becomes unbound, how many heights would they really go to just stop him then? He had a feral smile that nobody could mistake for a grin.

“This feels familiar somehow, one guy holding off an entire group by himself on a bridge…” Red-Gil commented idly, having been on the wrong side of this situation so many times that it didn’t occur to him that he was actually doing it to another Gilgamesh. “Say are we falling out of the sky?”

“It’s time…” Everyone except Gold-Gamesh froze when they heard Inky Due’s quiet voice cut through the thrum of the battlefield like a hot knife. Gold-Gamesh blinked and his right hand was suddenly missing the Sword of Rupture and he glared at Red-Gil, at least a Gilgamesh was wielding the sword… even if it was the worst most up his own backside Gilgamesh to ever exist. Sure he knew he was projecting, but he was quite sure the Red-Gil actually deserved the denigration somehow. “Make you’re mark upon this world my truest friend, show them exactly why you are Gilgamesh of legend…”

“Kill him before…!” Pom shouted trying to urge everyone to get a killing blow, but it was far too late.

As battered and injured as Gold-Gamesh was he closed his eyes as he held off an onslaught of attacks with ease and a weakened badly battered, broken and bloodied form.

“Goodbye Gilgamesh, may we meet again eventually… Healing… Wish…” Inky Due smiled as her body started disappearing as it turned into energy and said energy surged for Gold-Gamesh. The sudden energy blast sent everyone skidding across the bridge to the halfway point from just the raw fury of the energy now encompassing Gold-Gamesh.

When the energy died down, every bit of damage, weakness and or injury disappeared, every imperfection gone including the soul damage Pom had mysteriously dealt to his cheek. Now Gold-Gamesh was full of energy and fully restored to being even better than before the fight even started.

It was a fact that Gold-Gamesh was glowing brilliantly with energy he was absorbing and he immediately teleported to the center of the Castle of Illusion.

It was noon and the sun was high in the sky as Gold-Gamesh started drawing massive amounts of energy from within the castle.

They hadn’t managed to stop it, the unbinding had begun!

The massive amount of energy couldn’t be broken through to reach Gilgamesh as the Castle of Illusion and the massive bridge connected to it all started falling from the sky faster and faster.

Anyone left on top of Cerebum saw the massive bridge and the Castle falling towards it and many Pokémon went into a panic.

“You’re about to see what a god really looks like!” Gold-Gamesh could be heard for at least a mile around the falling structure and didn’t even care that Red-Gill barely managed to make him relinquish ‘Ea the Sword of Rupture’ before he teleported.

At least when the sword was put away Shanty’s headaches stopped and she immediately forgot all the stuff the sword shoved into her head, except for one thing, that she could learn how to breath underwater for some reason was that one thing stuck out to her and it stuck with her.

The castle of Illusion was slowly breaking apart under the massive amount of energy coming from it and filtering into Gold-Gamesh as he started to break the bindings on his Hoopa form. Nobody could survive the energy the castle was putting off as he broke each chain on his form, one by one.

Gold-Gamesh was excitedly reliving the feeling of having done this all before, he had never been fully beaten in his reign in his previous life.

-Origin Space, Bahamut-

“Aren’t you going to do something about this?” The power coming off of Golden Gilgamesh would be somewhat terrifying to those who hadn’t witnessed worse.

“Don’t need to.” Stated Arceus simply and just kept watching his several ovens of baking cheese muffins with an eager looking Mew also waiting for them to come out.

“Hmm…” My sister Tiamat, glanced at Arceus with curiosity. “Do you want me to make some noodle soup to go with those cheese muffins?”

“Sure!” Arceus stated jovially as if the kingdom of Illusio centered on the middle of his continental back, wasn’t about to be completely broken.

-Bridge to the Castle of Illusion, Pom-

The castle collapsed and rising out of it was a monstrous, two legged armored torso with six floating hands and a large black hole in the center of its body.

“Pom, are we being dead?” Shanty asked as we watched the monstrous form rise out of the destruction of the castle drawing energy into itself.

This feeling, haven’t felt it this bad in a while… this feeling of pure terror.

Then the bridge and the castle slammed into the top of Cerebrum City doing massive damage to the surface of the floating city and kicked up a lot of dust.

I managed to stay awake and upright through the destruction and the mad laughter of the giant purple and bluish grey monstrosity that resembled a giant monstrous genie that now had feet, a tail and a bigger grinning mouth with thick hair coming from the top of its head as he rose out of the destroyed castle ruins.

It’s six floating three clawed hand flexed and the monsters red eyes looked down on us with disgust.

“To answer your question Shanty, yes… very much so.” I answered honestly. Sure we could fight, but that thing… that thing was a real monster in comparison to the small ice sprite sized being the Golden Gilgamesh had been before.

“He’s glorious…” Red-Gil stated while his right big meaty fist tightened its grip on the naginata and his left tightened on the stolen sword. “Now that’s a Gilgamesh!”

I just sent the Red-Gil a flat look and sighed, before looking at the massive monstrosity we had to fight now.

I sighed again, whimpered loudly, swallowed some spit just as loudly and let my terror as a tiny weak little ewe lambkin that lacked super strength course through me and then decided, that yes… I was going to have to fight this thing and no, I didn't believe Shock-Ram would help or make this situation survivable.

Knowing that I had declared Baa-Ram-Ewe on Gilgamesh, I had to actually see it through, sure he’s a giant now and his powers have probably scaled to be able to destroy all of Cerebrum City as easily as breathing.

Sure we were struggling to do anything to Gold-Gamesh previously, but we might just survive long enough to actually see the city hit the waters far below. That would be a miracle at this rate.

“Dazzle.” I said while looking at her wide eyed and still form, everyone else was still equally terrified by the energy given off by the Golden Gilgamesh. If I was going to die, then I might as well do my worst and being a Chrysomallus didn’t seem so bad all of the sudden.

“MUHAHAHAHA, I... am... unbound!” The literal massive jerk stated as he stood tall above us all.

It was quite unfortunate that I can’t do a true transform twice in one day.

“Huh, why can’t I portal out of here, uh Greenkidu can you do the void portal thing… it seems something is wrong with me.” Also our help, the swollen mass of muscles that was Red Gilgamesh, now that he had the others sword, wanted to leave us to fight that thing… joy.

“Wark!” Greenkidu responded angrily that Gilgamesh was going to run from this battle immediately, at least the bird seemed more likely to stick by our side in the coming fight and… oh gods and goddesses alike, he was a healer and this was going to be incredibly painful fight before we died if he could keep us standing.

“Can you blame me when there’s a Gilgamesh that’s going full anime kaiju around here?!” The other Gilgamesh stated while pointing his naginata at the giant.

“Wark!” Greenkidu stated again with a flat stare.

“Fine, fine, we’ll see this until the end… but we better appear in another world after this guy rips us a new one.” What a vote of confidence Red-Gil was.

"Yeah, that's the spirit!" Sanosuke stated as he showed up to help Kenshin stand with Kaoru. "We've got this!"

Wish I had the optimism to say the same thing you highly delusion idiot.

"Say good-bye to life Mongrels!" Yeah, that red eyed titan with the distorted voice didn't cause me to want to void my bowels at all immediately and messily all over the place.

353. One large problem.

-???, Oleander-

“So everyone in this universe can eventually learn to generate bombs for no apparent reason at all?” Wrex seemed a little too eager to learn about Bomberman culture.

“Yes, THIS UNIVERSE IS FULL OF EXPLOSIONS!” Fred, why… why do you have to exacerbate things?! “Somehow that’s counteracting all the entropy this universe should normally have with the constant bomb force energy going on… IT’S AWESOME!”

“I’m sorry, but it appears I have now become Bomber Kityan after being in this dimension long enough...” Our bipedal kitty android stated with a little stem and a round blue colored bit at the end of it sticking up out of the androids head. “Apparently bomber-fying is a naturally occurring thing to all machines in this universe, intelligent or not, unless absolutely protected from it. Also there are these things called Bomber suits that allow you to do what the Bombermen do.”

“So… are we still on for a small bomb-astic vacation?” Even you too Buttina, are you really just going to ignore Kityan spontaneously becoming a bomb making robot?

“Fine…” I finally replied.

“Let’s go blow stuff up, explosive nutcase style woo!” Buttina immediately shouted.

I was surrounded by idiots… but they were my idiots and they would all help me rescue Pom.

There were so many screwed up things happening, that I doubted I could imagine Pom was having it any better than I currently did.

I sighed audibly.

“At least we didn’t bring the ‘Blue Bomber’ to this universe.” Because it would be kind of weird to see Megaman be bomberfied… also didn’t that world have a Bombman too? So why would Megaman be called the ‘Blue Bomber’ anyway when bombs weren’t his primary function.

“Did someone say Blue Bomber, where?!” A White Bomberman shouted as he appeared holding a cartoony round black bomb with a lit fuse in a pink mitt. “Oh and sorry about your bipedal cat android, our universe tends to have that effect on robots from other dimensions as well. Most mechanical things tend to turn into bomb spewing machines in this dimension really... usually added on top of their prior capabilities without really changing much, at least when coffee machines bomberfy they create explosively good flavors. Biological reactor before you ask, so yes I can eat and drink.”

“Don’t worry about it and before we talk about who I was mentioning, does this dimension have any robot dogs that count as bombers as well?” I was naturally kidding, but later would be saddled with the newest model of Bomberdog named Bomber Woof V2. That it farted and pooped out proximity land mines like nobody’s business, and could survive Fred, meant it was a keeper for Pom.

I’m not quite sure what Pom would do with a bomb spewing robot dog aside from freak out… at least it’ll be adorable to watch Pom freak out.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Devastated top of Cerebrum City, Pom-

…

“I’ll give you some time to think about actually coming at me.” The Giant Gilgamesh with golden highlight lines all cross his body just stood there with his six floating massive claw hands crossed waiting for us to act or he was taking the time to gloat and just think about how quickly he wanted this go. He had a reason to be looking down on us given the kind of power he was putting off.

As if he wasn’t intimidating before.

…

“Sanosuke… you have to be the dumbest Psychic Type I’ve ever me to want to fight that…. that thing… I don’t think we can even think of him as a person anymore!” Everyone whether they agreed with my tirade or not was looking a little forlorn.

“Yeah, but you have to admit it would be very cool if we survived fighting him one thousand to one and actually win right?” Sanosuke stated jovially, was he… I looked at the gathering rebel forces that could still fight looking on in grim determination to fight the giant, gold highlighted, Gilgamesh monster.

They all couldn’t be serious right?! This was tantamount to mass suicide… which has been most of the battle up until now come to think of it, so why not take it a little further? Ugh, not like I’m already there as it is, but I at least wanted to survive to be able to talk to Tianhuo and it was probably that selfish desire that kept me from using Shock Ram immediately. The urge to do so might be proportional to how close to that goliath of a problem I was.

I’m basically what should be colloquially called a doormat, I preferred to be seen as one too, because I didn’t have any hopeful prospects of surviving this battle. As I might have thought and mentioned numerous times, I’d rather be making a home for Tianhuo to live in comfortably than be anywhere close to here.

Once again, for any deity that could possibly be watching my brain in the most invasive manner possible, I hate my life.

I liked being a home maker, this… this is not something I signed up for when I dutifully protected the girls with my very life. I was going to get home over what is looking to be my literal dead corpse.

We just went through all of that effort of fighting a bound Gold-Gamesh and only after managing to get him on the losing side of things did we find out that we not only failed to kill him in time, we didn’t even manage to slow down his unbinding.

The massive monster with a torso hole in its body and six arms, with what I’m assuming to be access to twelve portals of pain and suffering, was the end result that was looking down on all of us without a hint of worry.

I had no access to my ‘true wolf’ mode thing I can barely control, I had a pretty good handle on it except for the Chrysomallus energy really messing me up, the best I can do is a wool shift into Sheep’s Clothing. My front right leg can’t wool shift and it’s still inert and feels like lead, plus I’m sure if I took the bandages off my leg it would make things worse.

We barely got refreshed by the green bird version Inky Due and I had little idea what was going on with their being two Gilgamesh’s. Sure their voices and personalities were different, but they both obviously had huge egos.

We’ve been fighting all morning and now we have to battle a giant?! Goodness knows what the rebels just put themselves through to get to this point and they were willing, if definitely not able, to put themselves through more to fight the unbound Gilgamesh?

How do adrenaline junkies get off on this kind of stuff?!

“I don’t think we’re adrenaline junkies.” Dazzle quietly said poking her index claws together, I had said that last part out loud and I just dragged my left hoof down my face.

“Without fear!” Sanosuke boldy pronounced a second later while pointing his oversized sword at the behemoth and then began charging forward through the grass to the right side of the bridge from my perspect.

Sanosuke barely managed to block the palm of the claw that came out a portal a second later at speeds that I could hardly keep up with even when inhaling to speed up my perception of what was happening.

We just stood there watching as Sanosuke was buried up to his waist in the dirt from the constant pressure of a single large claw pressing down on him from above, his body was holding up miraculously well even if his oversized sword was starting to crack under the pressure.

Okay, I had to be careful here, I shifted most of my wool so that I had the look of a wooly wolf again and my right leg didn’t so much as budge as the rest of my wool morphed. I did this while carefully making sure not to jostle Dolly, her skateboard or the device I just recently got back.

At this point defense wasn’t going to help if I was hit by something that massive and even a portion of the shockwave went straight through my wool… it was better if was going for full speed and whatever extra strength my wool can boost me with. Again my front right leg is kind of continuing to be a bum factor even if I can move really fast on three wool paw covered legs.

“Squeak!” Lit raised his front right leg to the sky with a determined look as he hopped off of Dodo onto the fallen heavily damaged bridges stone guardrail that now lay across the top of Cerebrum City.

That adorable little fuzzy yellow lightning spewing bug was an entire lightning storm unto himself really. So it was of no surprise to me that Lit, of whom could easily fit in my hoof, was far braver than I when facing a monster that outsized him exponentially.

Lit glanced to me and Dolly before leaping forward into action, as thus far Gilgamesh only seemed intent on crushing Sanosuke with a single claw, I really had no clue how Lit could face such odds and still be willing to fight. Given how strong Sanosuke was by himself and how nobody else was moving to help him, I think the collective terror was getting to us and causing bystander syndrome.

As far as size comparisons went… Golden Gilgamesh was now gargantuan, previously Lit might was the size of one of his mitten hands. Now the size of the Golden Gilgamesh’s three digit claws were basically the size of the Team Harmony wagon and that wasn’t accounting for the arms connected to them increasing their overall mass.

The fact that he could still move those massive arms and claws at insane speeds was horrifying, the only way we could do anything is if his body was exponentially slower than the rest of him. It was likely he gave up the speed of his smaller body for increased offense prowess.

While Lit firing off a massive lightning bolt barely did damage to the claw crushing Sanosuke, it did cause it to let off some pressure and might have stunned it for a few precious seconds. Since it allowed the Medicham to get out from under it by quickly pulling himself from the ground and rolling away before the hand slammed down creating a crater.

Note to self, do not get caught under one of those.

“Right, well, everyone do what you can!” I stated before zooming forward towards the colossus by running along the bridge wondering where my brain went and if I could squeeze more speed out of my three good legs to go in the opposite direction.

I leapt over two hands slamming together and barely cleared them, they were terrifyingly fast for free floating arms that could basically teleport without the use of portals.

I didn’t even get three paces away before a palm was coming at me head on and I dodge to the left onto the stone railing while continuing forward, a fist immediately came at me from above and I stopped on a dime as the section of the destroyed bridge I had been running along was torn apart and sent into the air to float for a bit.

Right, the fact that this section of the bridge I was standing on was floating meant physics was likely being screwed up just by Gilgamesh existing now. That and he was firing another section of the bridge at me from a portal in a vertical orientation.

I didn’t know if anyone following me to start an attack on Giant Gilgamesh and I really didn’t have time to worry about anything else as I leapt up and ran up the vertical mess of stone sent at me from the remains of the castle.

I leapt forward from the top of the vertical section of the bridge that continued sliding along without me and it eventually toppled over onto the section of the bridge I had been standing on.

While in the air, as I inhaled I saw hundreds of attacks surging at Gilgamesh from the surrounding Pokémon. When even multiple Hyper Beams weren’t doing much to Gilgamesh, he seemed to have an unstoppable amount of power give how fast he was punching Pokémon into the dirt with twelve portals two for each arm.

His portals were much more massive now, but he was still only confined to the twelve, my guess was the gaping hole in space that Red-Gil came out of had something to do with why Gilgamesh had lost the ability to affect most of Ransei… so at least I could hope the friends I made in this world were okay and survived the bombardments.

As I landed on a bit of stone, I exhaled and burst forward bouncing and rebound off of bits of floating landmass that were floating upwards from the destruction Golden Gilgamesh unleashed upon his surroundings. That or it was that Cerebrum was falling and the floating bits of landmass was matching the falling speed of the city to make it seem like there was floating landmasses. Hard to tell really, I’ve been in a lot of absurd situations that it could be either way truthfully.

Stopping to rest on a small patch of grass and dirt in the air, I saw a large massive boulder get fired my way. It seems even now Gilgamesh wasn’t going to ignore me or at least wasn’t willing to. My eyes darted about as I looked for a place to jump to.

“Pom!” Huh, Shanty? I quickly found myself encased in a bubble of water with Shanty as she bounced us upwards and the landmass I was standing on was decimated by the burning boulder that caught fire from friction, said boulder disappeared into a portal to probably be sent at someone else. It seems Shanty was sticking with me then and I made sure Dolly’s face wasn’t stuck drowning in water while she was unconscious. “My head still be hurting quite a bit and I be forgetting a lot of what was being stuffed into it, but I am still being able to help you with a Bounding Bubble.”

As she talked a large tendril of water lashed out and swung us off another bit of floating landmass and brought us around to onto the edge of another bit to look towards the large monster lashing out at everything in his general surroundings, sending chunks of Cerebrum City Floating upwards all over the place.

Looking down I could see Cerebrum was beginning to break apart with the destruction of the top layer and quite a few of our friends were moving on the pieces of landmass trying to just find a safe place to start attacking from or take a moment to think. I too thought this was a major problem worth thinking about, mind you Gold-Gamesh was almost attacking indiscriminately.

We even saw a few of the remaining active Claydols firing Hyper Beams to the best of their abilities before being decimated.

“The fact that Hyper Beams can even touch him is concerning, I’m pretty sure he was a ghost type before now. Not that it was really has worth mentioning, aside from having used Swift to blind him slightly… then again a burst of light in the eye would do that to just about anyone.” We turned to look at Quetal who landed next to us and Shanty retreated the bubble from covering our heads for some fresh air. If I recalled right Quetal did that to give me an opening with throwing a spear at Gilgamesh. “At least we can all sense it, we can tell that Gilgamesh has become an abomination in this world.”

“Can Pokémon change their elemental typing during battle?” I asked as a saw large psychic energy beam tear through a number of rebels below.

“Some can yeah… he felt like a Ghost Type previously on top of being Psychic Type, yet we still managed to do physical damage to him prior to this. Considerably weird concerning his ability to break what would be considered normal by our standards… but then again breaking the norm probably goes both ways. It’s because of that oddity that we could even hit him before now.” Well that was certainly good to know Quetal, but how would that help. Quetal glanced at us. “Now that he’s unbound, he’s a Dark Type.”

“Psychic Ghost to Psychic Dark?” I asked just for clarification.

“Yeah… he’s not going to be weak to too many things if that’s the case.” Quetal grumbled with his claws cross in front of him and tapping a foot. “He’s only weak to Bug Type attacks and Fairy Types now, especially Bug Types… goodness knows we don’t have nearly enough Pokémon present with Fairy Type attacks of enough strength here to bring him down.”

“Then maybe we can be of assistance in that?” Turning we blinked as we saw a familiar unit of Beedrill, specifically the leader of the Beedrill Scouts had a glare in his eyes. “Don’t honestly know the situation in Chrysalia, but we’re not taking our earlier loss to this guy lying down. Flutter like a Butterfree…”

“Barrage like a Beedrill, hoorah!” The five other Beedrill announced while raising their gleaming lance stingers in unison.

“We will provide support, starting with wearing him down with our Pin Missile attacks.” The Beedrill leader stated, while pointing to me. “If you can get your Salazzle friend to poison his main body somehow, then we can start doing some real damage with a rapid fire chain of Venoshock moves. Until then we really don’t want to get close to be slammed by the attacks that guy is dishing out.”

With that they took off and Quetal looked over the side to below us, so far it seems Gilgamesh was busy picking off a large portion of the Rebels with rapid fire fists. He eventually pointed his left claws to where Dazzle was, she had gotten off the destroyed chunks of bridge and was trying to get a Toxic move off on the hands and was taking cover wherever she could feasibly do so.

Gilgamesh’s attacks came fast and fierce being basically impossible to dodge if you weren’t already out of the path of them by the time they came at you, the claws were moving way too fast for the poisonous liquid Dazzle tried to spew onto him and even if she did it would only effect the one arm when she needed to tag his main body.

There was a large moat made by the destruction surrounding Gilgamesh who still stood in his spot upon the rubble of the destroyed illusory castle where it landed. So approaching him from the ground was going to be quite hard without jumping onto the floating landmasses being created by his constant attacks that was breaking up large chunks of Cerebrum.

Even if Cerebrum City didn’t hit the ground Gilgamesh was going to end up destroying it anyway.

“How should we be approaching this Pom?” Shanty stated as she looked to me.

“Well… you might have to drop me and carry Dazzle close enough to poison Gilgamesh’s body.” The protective look Shanty sent me was pretty much saying she didn’t want to be far from my side, probably since Dolly was up and aware to watch my back.

“I don’t be liking that idea.” Of course you don’t Shanty, because you wanted to help me specifically and I’m fairly certain it was because you wanted me to not die. I actually appreciated the sentiment if we didn’t need Gilgamesh poisoned like yesterday.

After what happened to Chaosdramon X in becoming Skull Chaosdramon X… yeah… I don’t even think Dazzle’s poison would actually kill Gilgamesh so much as just slow him down. Hundreds of attacks were all landing on Gold-Gamesh, God-Gamesh at this rate, but they weren’t doing too much and thus slowing him down would probably be a good thing overall at the very least.

While we were thinking or concerning ourselves on a floating platform, Gilgamesh was continuing to rip Kenshin’s Rebels apart and Kenshin was in the thick of it trying to get control of the situation or at least convince the rebels to retreat while he was all but willing to continue the fight by himself. It was a good thing Psychic Types could float, levitate or fly, because otherwise this would be considered a complete slaughter with how many were being sent flying over the edge of the city from quick swipes of two of Gold-Gamesh’s claws.

At most Gold-Gamesh was only using three claws to devastate an entire militaries worth of Pokémon.

“Look Shanty, I can understand why you wouldn’t want me to be on my own… but I’m not going to actively try and get myself killed.” No, but I was going to be driven to it and I’m fairly sure Shanty already knew that given the look she just sent me. “Can you just get quickly Dazzle in and out?”

“You can’t be gliding without the use of your right leg can you?” Well, Shanty was quite suspicious and had right to be.

“I can still glide using my scruff, just not very well as entering full glide mode.” Fanning said wool out around my head and neck into a fixed wing shape to show that falling from this high up wouldn’t be a problem, I just couldn’t float or do anything complicated unless I swap out of my current wool shift.

“Okay… but please be being very careful.” Shanty, when was I ever not careful… aside from pushing my body to the point it was killing me outright. I still think my overuse of Dancing Flame was necessary at the time.

“I should she be saying that to you. Don’t know where Ocellus and Smolder are in this mess, but I’m sure they could use some help.” I was poked in the side by a worried Dodo who had managed to fly up here, that or he just jumped and used his jets to assist his movements like a longma would. He didn’t have too much flight capability yet.

“Dodo can be looking for Smolder and Ocellus to drop off our friends.” At Shanty’s words she dropped me from the bubble with reluctance and dropped off the floating landmass and Dodo took off to search for the wagon.

I turned to look at Quetal still standing idly by.

“I’ll be at your side for the time being.” Even Quetal was watching me rather closely with a concerned look.

“Right.” I looked towards Gold-Gamesh who seemed to be just enjoying himself in his rampage, I was looking for a good way to approach this problem or maybe I could spend my time moving injured to safety.

Red-Gil was at least proving to be useful by flying around and attacking him directly, but the only defense Gold-Gamesh needed from the bug was his large lizard like tail to swat at the muscle mosquito.

Crouching down I prepared to jump, only to be interrupted.

“You’re dying aren’t you?” Quetal suddenly asked out of the blue with slightly narrowed eyes. “That’s why they are so worried about you.”

“My thing… is not as immediate a worry as that… it’s only something that ‘might’ kill me eventually provided I live long enough for it to become a true problem. I already told them what the problem was, it’s not exactly something they can do anything about.” At this rate it wouldn’t be a problem in the long term if I didn’t live long enough, it also didn’t seem like I could convince Quetal it wasn’t too bad. I really didn’t want to bring up the dangers of being a ‘sacrificial lamb’ or the meaning behind what I was keeping a mental stranglehold on near constantly. “Look, I’m not going to drop dead from one breath to the next or anything like that Quetal, but it is a problem that we can discuss at a later time when people are not getting hurt out there… or worse.”

I self-consciously rubbed at the blood soaked, rusty colored, bandages covering my right leg and Quetal glanced at it and then to me. I wasn’t going to bleed out, but it was fairly painful even if nothing was broken with my leg as it wasn’t so much a physical injury right now...

“… That healing energy didn’t heal your leg… and you know why… it has to do with you actively using that golden energy you used to save Smolder doesn’t it?” Quetal gestured at me with his left claw. After ten seconds of me not responding, he sighed while crossing his claws and after a moment he then pointed his right claw forward. “Alright, I can understand you not wanting to worry the others. Set the pace Pom, I’ll be right behind you.”

It was nice that Quetal was worried about me, probably the only reason Shanty was okay with leaving me behind, because I at least had a friend with me that might prevent me from doing something that might be more… permanent.

I kicked off the floating landmass and started my descent forward into the combat zone.

-Airspace around Cerebrum City, Canard-

“… Here I thought Dragaunus was bad… Sami, how’s it coming?” I had an eye on the situation below, Seer Xatu was piloting the ship because he apparently had plenty of foresight when we would be needed to alter the course of things.

It was looking quite nasty down there and the casualties were mounting, as if there weren’t enough of those when Gilgamesh started attacking everyone on Cerebrum… even his own people! I’ve never thought there would be monsters on par with anyone from the Saurian Empire.

“Araquanids have gotten their energy back up!” Sami reported as she came up on deck, the orange Commandramon threw me a jaunty salute. “We’ll have some artillery raring to go for attacking Gilgamesh soon, mind you I don’t think I can help much in this situation… my digital attacks aren’t really going to have much effect on something that big with actual solid mass to it.”

“Hrm…” I didn’t like feeling so useless here, but I wasn’t dumb enough to try jumping onto that monster to attack him fruitlessly with my bare hands. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Aside from spotting for us… not right now… at least until Gilgamesh starts getting more handsy with this ship. Even with the barrier we’re not going to be able to hold him off if we aren’t prepared.” Xatu stated as he steered us lower and the Araquanids started crawling up onto deck. “Sami tell the Morpeko to come up to the deck, we’ll need them for defensive purposes.”

Sami went to do so and the Morpeko team came up to stop those claws from grabbing onto the ship even if it was shielded. Sami and I would be helping with that too when it became a problem, since Xatu could only see so far into the future his piloting the ship was going to be useful since he can react to things that have yet to happen.

“Nyan… that guy is scary.” I turned to look at Captain Skeeball and her Skitty Squad riding on Wilhem’s back, Wilhelm had several comically large novelty bandages covering his body that looked like tarps. Aside from being afraid for a few moments Skeeball perked up not a few seconds later. “Still, we’re Skitty Squad with great justice in our hearts and my hubby still willing to put in the work despite how battered he is, we will continue to do our best in this fight!”

I don’t know how something that small and pink could be so ferociously optimistic, not to mention the curiosity of how that hat was still on her head after all the fighting her squad recently went through. They were fairly insane to drop into the middle of an active battlefield, you had to give it to them though they knew how to put up a fight.

Hearing a slightly distressed warbling noise that was familiar, I turned and saw Dodo the biomechanical ostrich come in for a stumbling landing on the deck of the ship and immediately began sitting down.

“Ocellus a little help up here, Sami, help me out!” I called out, because had some unconscious people that needed to be taken off of Dodo, I was already picking up Shine, she didn’t look too injured.

“Mi… ster… Ca… nard?” Cleffa stated dazedly as she worke up and I had passed Shine to Sami and picked her up. “Happy… to see you…”

Cleffa started glowing brightly and then she started to grow within my arms as I hefted her out of Dodo’s back.

“Huh, she became a Clefairy…” Seer Xatu stated that like he didn’t see it coming and that was kind of worrying. “Supposed it makes sense, seeing that you’re alright after a harrowing experience made her happy enough to evolve. Quick question, does anyone know where the Team Harmony Rescue Team Badge is? We’re going to need it.”

Cleffa yawned and snuggled against me before dozing off, Sami sent me a smile and shook her head before carrying Shine into the ship and I soon followed afterwards.

“I got it!” Ocellus stated as she held up the Rescue Team Badge that could teleport Pokémon to safety, too bad it couldn’t work on outsiders as well.

“After you’re done helping. I suggest you take Dodo down to the battlefield and start rescuing as many Dark Type Pokémon as you are able and anyone else that is too injured to fight anymore.” From what I was seeing Seer Xatu, it wasn’t so much a battlefield as a one sided massacre.

-Destroyed Cerbrum City topside, Shanty-

A massive claw be grabbing the bubble before I can be landing and I be immediately thrust my hooves forward, the water around me be spiking out into the claw and it quickly be dropping me.

I be flick the bits of red off the bubble of water around me as I looked around for Dazzle and eventually be spotting her hiding behind a pillar and started rolling the Bounding Bubble for her.

I don’t know what Pom be doing right now, but I really didn’t want to be being too far away from her in this situation.

Getting the bubble out of Giglamesh’s sight, I be looking up to Dazzle after she blasted a furious Dragon Pulse into Gilgamesh and ducked back behind the pillar. I watched from around the pillar as the purple dragon shaped beam hit and did very little damage, but it was something as the monstrous giant be shredding through hundreds of Pokémon with minimal effort.

Taking the bubble from around my head I looked up to her and am being very succinct.

“Dazzle, Pom wanted me to be helping you get close to Gilgamesh!” Despite shivering as she looked at my bubble of water Dazzle still be dropping into the bubble of water with me, my water bubble wasn’t being that… oh right she is being a Fire Type. Opening up a pocket of air around her, I had to be asking. “Are you going to be being okay?”

“Not really, I don’t like water like any sane Fire Type, Frizzle has been beaten down to her smallest form and we can barely make a dent in that monstrous powerhouse after having almost beaten him… if you can get me close enough to poison his body then a little discomfort will be worth it.” Dazzle, you be looking more than a little upset about being in a ball of water. “Please get moving quickly… I don’t know how long I can spend in this ball of water before I really start freaking out about it.”

Not saying another word, I be getting my Bounding Bubble bouncing towards the monster.

Soon two claws were focused on tearing apart Kenshin’s forces, two others were trying to take out Pom hopping between the floating land masses above and she is being frantic in avoiding the attacks, then there was the last two trying to be focusing on me and the needle nosed muscle bug.

I be suddenly having to drag us to the left as a powerful beam of energy be firing out of the large hole in Gilgamesh’s new form, it be tearing a hole through the top of Cerebum.

Dazzle be placing a shivering claw on my back to be steadying herself and I be giving her a confident grin as I patted her arm with an equally shaky hoof and continued to roll the bubble towards Gilgamesh.

The bigger they are being, then the harder they be falling right? Well nobody said how hard it was being to begin toppling something so large in the first place. I didn’t be believing it was impossible, the guys sword be basically telling me that we just needed to keep fighting and so we simply will be doing that.

354. Titan on Attack.

-World Where Dreams ‘Can’ Come True, Camden Town, 101 Dalmatian Street, Dante-

I watched as Deedee and Dizzy napped while snuggling a Dolly plushy together. I might feel a lot better and the future was bright, but it didn’t mean that we didn’t miss or worry about our eldest sister.

Also there was the the whole thing with the banshee, meeting the actual Cerberus to confirm that dad’s side of the family was a little odd in it's own way compared to mothers and there was the recent actual ghost fighting expedition… while Dolly was missing a lot, I doubted she wasn’t in some form of trouble and having nearly as much fun as we were.

Spot, the old family friend, was successfully keeping us safe when magical things showed up.

“It was certainly nice of Hunter to give us a few of those.” Dawkins stated as he came to stop next to me to watch our sisters snoozing before moving on. “Still got a few things to tweak on the kibble sprayer, would you like to help me?”

“Sure.” I’ve had to step up recently for the family from my apocalypse predicting ways, but being a more approachable big brother was nice and happy puppy cuddles were great.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, destroyed top of Cerebrum City, Kenshin-

I defended myself against one of the arm and claws from the right as Kaoru covered my back from another, then I bore witness to entire units of Meditites being wiped out in single sweeping swipe from another arm and three claws.

As a Medicham and one of the strongest rebel leaders, Sanosuke was quite angry to see his guys go down so fast and easily… that and the fact that he had lost his big sword a minute ago.

One would think Sanosuke would lose spirit in the face of what we were doing and we were only fighting only a small portion of the overall Gilgamesh. No, instead Sanosuke continued to fight with his bare fists and continued to show he was one of the strongest among our numbers.

I can already tell the legendary Pokémon weren’t coming and that they obviously had good reasons not to. At least they sent help in the form of the weird Buzzwole who was also named Gilgamesh, him and the large green bird were supporting our forward push to finally put this all behind us.

I don’t know where Pom or her people were on the battlefield, I could only hope they were safe. They were quite incredible, but they were basically another statistic in this battle as far as the Golden Gilgamesh was concerned and he didn’t seem concerned.

And why would the titan be concerned? He was tanking blistering Hyper Beams, blasting Psychic attacks, the few sparkling Dazzling Gleam explosion using Pokémon we could field and even Shadow Balls and Dark Pulses. At least the Dark Pulses have proven to be exceptionally helpful when they occasional caused the oversized monster to flinch.

“We’re hitting him with everything we have, is it still not enough?” I asked quietly as I thought about my most dangerous technique. I could use Sacred Sword and then unleash my ultimate technique, but I would be taken out of the battle when I did so. Nobody could do such a technique without incurring major backlash from the forces unleashed by it. I would have to find the right time to perform it and right now wasn’t quite the right time.

I’ve already used some of my most powerful techniques consecutively and I don’t have nearly that much left in me even with my fatigue being recovered by the large green bird.

“We can do this Kenshin, I believe in you!” Thanks for the vote of confidence Kaoru… you would have never be on a battlefield like this if the situation weren’t so horrid.

“Yeah, come on my brother in battle!” I watched as Sanosuke performed an expertly done one inch punch with his right fist and sent one giant arm and three digit claw flailing away with impressive force.

That Sanosuke had timed it so impeccably… his battle instinct certainly hadn’t faltered even with the loss of his main weapon.

I looked forward and brought my blade up while facing the titanic monster, I just needed an opening to perform my technique. I hoped our allies were doing as well in this battle.

There wasn’t much of Gilgamesh’s forces, but even those that stubbornly remained on the battlefield despite their injuries started turning on the current ‘so called’ king that started all of this.

“I really have no idea what’s going on, and why I can’t leave by voiding out, but it seems like I’m set in backing you guys!” Red-Gil stated as he continued to expertly deflect attacks with a baseball bat and blocking them with the odd sword in his left. Every time that sword was struck it always created that odd ‘tink’ noise.

“Kweh!” Enkidu the green bird agreed to help us and then turned to Gilgamesh and unleashed a nastier sounding rebuke. “Wark!”

“Yeah, yeah, Greenkidu, I know!” The large red muscular bug stated.

-Ocellus-

Another beam of light rocketed into the sky as I sent more Dark and Psychic Types flying away to safety with the Rescue Team Badge. I seriously hoped Aurora could take them all, considering Gilgamesh was said to be attacking every single kingdom in throughout the entirety Ransei continent.

Dodo suddenly leapt to the side while firing a hypersonic highly carbonized bread loaf in defense that sent the massive claw away from us. It was terrifying that Gilgamesh could focus on more than six things at once, he was successfully fighting an entire army by himself without help. Not many could say they could do that so easily.

I wondered if King Thorax would be as grand on a battlefield as Kenshin is if pressed.

“Come on Dodo, we’ve still got so many more to rescue!” I urged on the quirky metal bird, as I saw another unit of Pokémon go down in a pile of bones, flesh and agony when a claw slapped down onto them.

Dodo warbled and continued on as I asked, but I could tell he was a bit terrified of Gilgamesh. I was too, but that didn’t mean we could stop saving who we could. Kenshin’s people were dropping like Flyders!

-Unbound Golden Gilgamesh-

Where were you? You’re out there somewhere… I know someone like you wouldn’t cut and run from this. A hero wouldn’t be able to look or back away from all of this! The wooly one had to show herself eventually.

Hm? Oh, how cute, here comes the poison attempt on the King of Heroes and its being done by the goat.

Even if they poison my arms, it won’t affect my body. Even if they poison my body directly it would take a while for me to really be truly harmed by it and unless I happened to have accidentally destroyed all the berry bushes in Illusio by accident, then it wouldn’t hard to get an antidote.

I swept my tail about sending bodies flying, I stomped down with my right foot and enjoyed the shockwave that sent more flailing forms falling before me. I don’t understand why the mongrels were doing by getting close to me, attacking me up close and personal was just courting pain and misery.

I fired a beam from the hole in my chest and swept it through the chaff that thought it could take me on. Quite a number of units were wiped out and I still didn’t get why they always bothered with coming in teams of six, especially if they were all this weak.

A small, relative to me, bolt of lightning struck me and I turned my gaze to where it had come from. I was so big now that it was hard to see the tiny one that had beaten Enkidu and continued to be an annoying itch in my side. The thing was barely a flea now and it still thought it could fight me?!

-Shanty-

The bubble flowed forward, sliding along the ground under my control at high speed and it be holding me and Dazzle.

Dazzle would be needing my help with getting close enough, because there was almost an entire section of floating land mass separated from the rest and Gilgamesh was standing on it over the ruins of what once looked like a castle. The broken section of the bridge is being the best I can be reaching from here.

When I be going to prepare the bubble for a launch I quickly rolled us to the side as an arm and claws fell down on where we were. A pair of hovering limbs be hanging before us and they all be flexing.

Creating a bit of an opening for us I turned to Dazzle, while making sure not to take an eye off either arm.

“Uh Dazzle, are you being alright with this?” I had a few ideas and I really doubted Gilgamesh would be letting us by if he already be knowing about this.

“So cold…” Dazzle mumbled while shivering, she not be liking water a lot. “I’ll be fine, but you might want to…”

I immediately be launching us straight up and wrapped the bubble around us as the other arm grabbed us out of the air and started putting pressure on the bubble trying to squeeze us. I be thickening the water to not be crushed.

Dazzle moved behind me and I looked as she shoved her left claw of the bubble and lashed a whip flames around the wrist. It be doing nothing until the fire whip be blooming with power when Dazzle be increasing the heat. The hand flinched and be dropping us both, Dazzle quickly be letting the flaming whip go and pulling back inside the bubble before hit the ground and rolled backwards as the other arm swiped at us.

It be making a nasty looking ditch in the ground and I be knowing a lot about nasty ditches, I be sleeping in a few of them. I quickly bounded over the other arm as it came to slap down on where we were at an angle.

Dazzle quickly be jumping out of the bubble and lighting both her claws to be creating flame whips, I be peeling the bubble back a bit from my head.

“… I were Charmander I’d be dead by now.” Dazzle grumbled as she heated herself up with the flame whips, she really did not be liking water and I be very understanding of why and not be taking it personally.

“Do you be thinking you’re poison would work on its arms?” Be hearing a lot about it, but I never be seeing the full effects of Dazzle’s poison before.

“Yes, but it wouldn’t cause Gilgamesh any pain they are exactly connected to his body, the best my poison would do is erode the strength of those things.” As she said this she slapped her two whips out against the left arm and claws as it dragged along the ground and tried to slash upward, the whips didn’t slow it down much and it kicking up dirt and dust sending it all into the air as the claws lifted out of the ground and narrowly missed Dazzle as she ducked and crawled backwards.

“Can he even be healing his arms if they are being poisoned?” If I knew she could be doing that, then it would be being great for us.

“Probably better not to tell you, if he can’t figure it out… then.” I be bouncing my bubble and Dazzle be diving forward as the two claws be trying to smash us together. The reason Dazzle by diving forward under the wrists is because if she be going backwards she would have been torn apart by the shockwave the two claws be sending forward.

A splash purple be blasting up into the arms form beneath and the skin of the claws started turning from a greyish blue to being a sickly purple color from the splotches of liquid erupting from beneath them.

The claws stayed in place and the arms lifted up slightly, I quickly be swinging out a tendril of water around to the left and under the wrists and hopefully that was Dazzle I be grabbing and yanked Dazzle out from under it sideways as the arms slammed down. The shockwave sent Dazzle flying, but at least she wasn’t being crushed by the poisoned arms.

I be staying in place, the water around me wobbled as it absorbed the shockwave, I be learning how important defense is being from Pom and my Bounding Bubble is being multi-purpose.

The back ends of the arms slapped together with the claws pointing in the opposite direction, I tilted my head wondering what was about to happen… then the arms started spinning as they came at me until they were moving fast enough to be indistinct blurs.

After I be pulling my scythe from my back, I gathered the water around me and had it follow the motion of the cane scythe as I pulled it back. Now would not be being the time to be thinking about how I have been basically using a leg to be beating things up, I had to be having more focus than that.

“Grand Cleave!” I swung the scythe forward horizontally to the right, the mass of water taking on the shape of the blade as I put my entire body into the swing.

The impact be sending me flying, but I did be stopping the spinning arms… and be losing all my water in the process of cutting them both up lightly with thousands of slicing water blades that exploded off my weapon. Didn’t count as a flying slash if water was involved, it is being more elemental boosted slash and I wanted to be a doing a flying slash without water… doing it with water already being simple enough.

Just because I managed to knock the arms a bit back, didn’t mean they stopped coming for me at least the right one be pulling back for a slap before I can be getting up. It swung its three claws forward and they stopped short of actually hitting me, I was being a little confused… then I be seeing glimmer of lines in the air in the path it took to come at me.

“Squeak!” The entire arm was being lit up by the nearly invisible webbing and the poisoned arm be flailing a lot as the lightning did a lot of damage to the wet arm.

I be glad to see Lit and that he be planting a trap, only as I was getting up the left arm be bringing its claws around to slap down on me.

Two flaming whips wrapped around two of its digits and Dazzle yanked herself harshly forward to bodily slammed into the arm and knocked it off course from hitting me and into the other arm causing them both to be harshly electrified as they hit the ground and the impact knocked me over. I don’t think that would be stopping them though.

Dazzle soon be helping me up onto my hooves as put my weapon back across my back.

“I don’t know about you, but Lit terrifies me on a number of levels…” Dazzle stated as she turned to see Lit scuttling up to us, he raised his front left leg and squeaked cheerfully while waving at us.

The left arm quickly freed the right from the webbing after they finished flailing about and the two of them floating in the air while turning towards us, the water I be splashing them with be having quite a powerful effect with Lit’s sudden lightning attack. It was not being enough, if we be having this much problems with the arms… then how much problem would be having with the body when we be getting around to it?

-Kenshin-

The arms were frustratingly fast, powerful and most off all tough, I think things were going well considering the five of us were fighting two arms and we’ve done a moderate amount of damage.

“Kaoru how many of those bokkens do you have?” I was only asking out of curiosity while we have a lull in the fighting to take a break.

“As many as I’ll ever need!” Kaoru responded as she tossed away a half broken bokken and pulled out a fresh one.

“At least they are easy to make.” I hummed thoughtfully as I turned to the two arms preventing us from encroaching on Gilgamesh. I noted two arms on Shanty, Dazzled and… Lit I believe I could sense being in the area. One arm was wiping out the people who put their trust in me for a better tomorrow and the other was searching for something… likely Pom given she was probably on the battlefield somewhere.

“Ah yeah, this is getting my blood pumping!” Really wasn’t paying attention to the Buzzwole at all, but he seemed physically strong enough to at least handle one of the arms on his own as long as the green bird was helping.

Green sparkles washed over us and healed our injuries.

“Hey why wasn’t I healed too Greenkidu!” One might be able to guess Red-Gil, but I didn’t want to assume that your friend might have some baggage regarding you.

-Quetal-

Okay we managed to get this close and now I had to distract… I was going to have to learn a long range dark type attack one of these days, but I will forever refuse to learn an Ice Type attack.

At the moment the best thing I can do is fire off a Swift and create a duplicate, maybe double team to shore up the maximum time my clone has to be out and about. Using Aerial Ace on Gilgamesh would be quite a folly given how close I’d have to get to something that large.

I looked from behind my cover and concentrated until I created a Substitute clone, my clone stood next to me and waited to start attack. There can only be one Substitute clone, but nobody said that the clone couldn’t use Double Team alongside the original at the same time.

Being careful was how I was going to survive this, I’ve always been careful… I just had to avoid being the one to take a hit as any blow from Gilgamesh will likely tear me to shreds.

Pom needed time to get into position so she can really deal some damage, she’s only ever going to get the one attack in without reprisal and she better make it a good and highly damaging one. I looked at my Substitute clone and he started moving and firing stars, I counted to five and then moved in the opposite direction while firing stars and then we both used Double Team at the same time and started multiplying into illusory image.

Gilgamesh didn’t even bring one of his six arms against my, he slapped his large tail at me and either of me quickly dodged by leaping into the air. Generating Double Team Clones doesn’t hurt and uses less energy, but all they are is images that move and I’m trying to use it against a Psychic Type… yeah that’s why the Substitute clone is important to confuse the issue.

Still, even if I was attacking him, he still didn’t try to do more than hit me with his sweeping tail and stomping feet, he was saving one of his arms for Pom and it was fairly obvious that he saw her as a threat. In fact I was almost entirely beneath his notice given how weak my attacks were and I needed his attention as much as I could, even if there were two of me avoiding his attacks I wasn’t nearly enough.

I certainly didn’t feel very helpful and I still wanted to prove myself, but in this situation… what?

“Need some assistance with drawing his attention?” I blinked and looked to my left as the air shifted and the now mercenary Zoroark of the Dark Types revealed himself.

“Yeah, we need to keep his attention on us entirely for at least a few minutes.” I stated and continued to fire small energy stars into the titan attacking everything around him, for all the good it would do in comparison to the hyper beams he was being hit with. He only needed one arm for Kenshin’s forces, it said a lot that only a few people required two to fight and Kenshin was one of them that I could see from here near the edge of the floating landmass. “Shouldn’t you have escaped by now with the other Dark Types?”

“Why haven’t you? Good friends are hard to come by when you’re a Dark Type and I don’t think either of us is here to be a martyr.” Despite saying this he leapt out and fired a Shadow Ball into Gilgamesh’s face and drew his attention to the three of us.

“I want to be seen and remembered as a hero.” Which was saying much when my species were known for skulking about and quickly cutting something down in a flurry of violent claw swipes. “We just have to make sure he’s facing this way, we can’t let him turn around.”

“Well we’re going to need more firepower than what we have to keep his… oh… never mind.” As Zoroark was saying this several blasts of boiling and steaming liquid slammed into Gilgamesh’s head and face actually causing him some pain and staggering him.

I looked up and saw an airship, the only one in the air around here and the only one I’ve seen in a while and next to it was… the Skitty Squad!

They’ll definitely draw enough attention if the only airship doesn’t, still wondered how Gilgamesh was paying attention to what all his arms were doing while attacking us with shockwaves from his feet and sweeps of his tail.

-On the back of Skitty Squad’s Best Flying Oversized Father Ever Wilhelm, Captain Skeeball-

“Unit command, Splash, Shock and Shiver!” At my command Wilhelm immediately inhaled and gathered his water energy and began the process of unleashing a massive Hydro Pump that buffeted the big bully.

Legendary kind of Pokémon or not, the Skitty Squad does not tolerate big bullies and this guy was one of the biggest.

I quickly followed up by firing a Charge Beam into my blubber hubby’s attack and supercharged it, then our little Skitty’s start spraying Ice Beams into parts of the two legged body to start freezing him in place as he was battered by Water, Electric and Ice Type attacks all at once.

He blasted a beam out that tore the ice off of himself and manage to fight off our attack and Wilhelm managed to quickly drift to left to avoid it, me and the kitties ducked down as the passing of the beam heated up the air and I shivered at the raw power behind that attack.

I didn’t become Captain Skeeball of Aurora for nothing, for great justice!

“Unit command, everyone prepare a Super Splash, Shards and Shakes on my mark! Sorry big hubby, this might hurt you a bit too.” I commanded, my husband whined sadly for me… he knew what I was about to do to myself and sure it was going to hurt a lot… but I’d live. Don’t know about this giant with the golden highlights attacking innocent people though. I felt the leftover energy from the previous Charge Beam boost my abilities and I smiled a little, might as well take advantage of that. “After I’m down… move away and look out for anyone that needs further help evacuating, do not stay engaged in the fight… and maybe support the airship while you’re at it, but get away as soon as my attack finishes okay?”

My Skitty Squad and Wilhelm acknowledged the order and I started glowing as I stood up on my hind paws and move forward to the front of Wilhelm’s forehead and did the pose to start charging up for the last part of the attack as Wilhelm dodged two massive beams by losing altitude quickly.

He spat a Hydro Pump into the titanic tyrant and then the Skitty Squad started firing Ice beams into the Hydro Pump to start sending thousands of ice started pelting the two legged titan who slammed his tail down to brace himself against the attack and the hole in his chest started glowing.

“Just a little more… there… hhhhrrrrRAHHHH Z-MOVE GIGAVOLT HAVOC!” All the ice shards started to carry parts of the charge much as the water itself and the ice shards exploded into fountains of Electric Type energy.

Our opponent fired back and some of the attack did some damage, but now we had two beams pushing against each other.

“Nyahhhhhhhhhhhhhh-AHHHHHHGGGGHHH!” I put everything I could into this attack quickly reaching the Zenith my body could produce and pushed harder, the electrical flow was almost encompassing the water entirely as it pushed against the singular beam our opponent was putting out from his large cavity.

That he was even managing to fight our combine beam when the occasional icicle bounced out and exploded into him or distractingly into his surroundings, our opponent didn’t flinch and stayed strong when buffeted with exploding Electric Type charged ice.

Like before my body couldn’t take the strain of my own attack, but I was holding out much longer this time and I was powering through. Willpower don’t fail me now!

“You know what I hate, those who believe in willpower alone being enough to protect everything!” The giant stated as he started pushing my beam back slowly. “Though I have to admit, you are impressive… if you survive this then I’ll let you live and see what becomes of you. If you take too long to recover and prepare for a world that’s about to fall to ruin, even if I might not be the one to cause it, then you weren’t ever worthy of being called a hero!”

“Hey Blubby Hubby… take care of the children while I’m out…” I mumbled as I kept pumping energy into the attack.

Even as Wilhelm’s attack cut out, even as my Skitties tired of firing ice beams, I kept pushing my limits on Gigavolt Havoc as it fried my body. This guy wasn’t wrong, willpower alone was not enough at times, that’s why you got to have an unbreakable spirit too! Also I have to have a purpose here and a reason to continue excelling, my family.

They always believed in me even if I’m a bit off at times as a mother, I’m also a recognizable icon in the southwestern nations of Ransei.

My eyes opened slightly, revealing to my opponent the windows of my soul.

Using the last bit of energy I pushed his beam back with a wordless scream and blasted him good and then the world started fading away, was I coughing up smoke… yep… that… that certainly hurt. How did Electric Types handle burnout like this?

I blearily recognized that I was blacking out when one of my Skitty’s looked at me and then grabbed me with their tail and started to pull me back before I fell off of Wilhelm.

-Ruins of the Castle of Illusion, Golden Titan Gilgamesh-

“GG-gg-ggghhheeekk…” Where was that whale riding little hat wearing pink cat before all of this?! That’s almost the kind of hero I was looking for, one willing to put their entire being behind their actions. She was definitely devastating if she could even give me pause with an attack on par or even better than an actual true Noble Phantasm.

They were getting away, they were just going to cut and run… at least they were smart. Once I was able to move my body again I’d go after them.

I had kept my one floating arm at the ready, now where was ‘she’ and what was ‘she’ was preparing for me? Was I wrong about the sheep, did she flee the battlefield, she didn’t feel like the type to cut and run after all of this.

Hundreds of attacks landed on me, but they felt like pinpricks compared to what that one cat managed to do, that was the most powerful attack I’ve felt yet on the battlefield.

I continued fending off just about everyone with my five arms easily, I even took a single swipe at the airship with the arm I was using to wipe the rebels out and it scraped across the barrier on the ship as it barely swerved out of the way.

Yep, that was definitely the airship I was going to give Inky Due alright. The ants on the ship continued annoyingly spraying me with boiling water, but I always kept my upper right arm in reserve and used it defensively.

Where was that wooly little piece of…

“Thousand Spears: Huo!” A voice sounded out from behind me, I swept my arm into the path of a blast of flames as hot as the sun spearing upwards at me and the flaming spear scorched my right arm badly, however the person who shouted that was not the sheep.

What I saw was a little confusing, it was a smaller version of my bound form with different colors and a small green fairy piece of crap.

“Can’t believe he fell for that!” Said the piece of crap.

“Told you ventriloquism and voice mimicry lessons were awesome!” The hoopa stated before grabbing the crap fairy and disappearing into a portal as I blasted a beam out of hole in my current existence.

-Flashback to fifteen minutes ago, Celebi-

“So yeah, Hoopa is out of power, but I can still do something and I’ve been kind of wanting to prove that I’m not just someone who dies frequently or a loser. Arceus would never call me a loser, but I already know he’s been disappointed in my lately and this is my chance to show him that reviving me multiple times over the past few weeks was not a waste of energy. You’re not going to get any other Legendary help around here… everyone is… a bit busy… like ludicrously busy, you don’t even know everything going on yet and probably won’t for a while once the time stream clears up from this incident.” I finished while looked between the Sneasel and Pom, they looked to each other and then turned back to me. “By the way Arceus sends his regards and says that you’re going a little bit above and beyond helping just Aurora. We don’t have much frozen time here, so don’t ask for spoilers I don’t have.”

“So what can you do?” Pom asked me, I grinned brightly while rubbing small hands together. We were currently out of sight and ‘out of time’ since I was using pocket time to prevent Gold-Gamesh from noticing us.

“I can manipulate time and this guy manipulates space…. but as I said he’s out of energy and I’m getting a bit low personally, so don’t expect huge things.” I said as I patted my understudy friend on the back, Dialga and Palkia tended to fight a lot, but they were still siblings at the end of things. Usually to the end of any continuity.

“Hey I’ll have you know that space manipulation is not all I’m good at… I’m good at tricking people too, I mean I can mimic voices and I’m very good at ventriloquism and throwing my voice without using my spatial powers, I’m good at party magician tricks and Mentalis is a big fan of mine. You can book me at any time once I can give you a card… it’s kind of stuck in my pocket space at the moment. As Celebi said, dragging that help into this situation took a lot out of me.” Hoopa was upset with Gilgamesh for making him look bad as a Legendary, but could he really do anything helpful in this situation? “Look, just give me a voice to copy and I’ll show you my stuff, even if fighting is not something I can currently do. Besides that Buzzwole Gilgamesh has already turned the battle around once and he’s currently being helpful in dealing with those two arms, even though he has what he wants he’ll continue to be helpful on the battlefield if what we’re planning here does take him down.”

“Hm… say… can you freeze an attack in a moment of time and move it around?” Pom asked as she sent me an interested look with her clear blue doe like eyes that hid a hint of a nasty idea behind the innocent slightly dog scented ewe.

Pom wasn’t a killer and didn’t have the heart for it, sure she could actively maul someone and mangle them with her Wolf-Fang-Hoof techniques, but what she was… was clever, fast and with her wool ridiculously hard to kill and not for lack of trying from what I saw in her personal time stream.

“Here’s what we’ll do…” Pom said while looking over the floating piece of landmass she got to before we stopped her and Quetal for a talk.

-Now, current time, Pom-

With two long strings of wool coming from my shoulder, I launched myself high above Gold-Gamesh and brought my left wool paw covered hoof and grappled a nearby landmass with my wool from my right shoulder.

I recalled that Paprika had done this to get around back in Huoshan when that Clockwork guy was attacking it along with those shadow monsters, that she easily fought those large mechanical wyverns still gave me the shivers. She could swing around on wool strings without much effort and her I was using every ounce of effort doing it to maneuver myself into position.

After hearing my own voice shout the technique I had fired off minutes ago silently, I came in at Gilgamesh at high speed while spinning clockwise and rearing back my left leg with wool claw splayed out and ready to slice.

I was aiming to slice his head off or at least slice through his nape to damage him enough to stop him from using his body to defend himself by damaging his spine… if I could even do that, I had magic to spare and I didn’t have to use my Chrysomallus ability to do this either.

I drained my body empowering my wolf claw to the maximum and…

"Wolf-Fang-Hoof, Defenestration!"

In flash I was past Gilgamesh neck as he was about to taunt or attack Celebi and Hoopa, a large portion of my left leg was covered in red and a massive amount of flesh was torn from Gilgamesh's naturally armored nape. I couldn’t sever his head, but that certainly had to hurt as I spun into his nape like a living circular saw multiple times as I went past him, all while digging in deeper with every spin.

As the large piece of flesh fell away from my wool claw, I wool shifted back into armor form and I immediately inflated my wool as I saw the badly burned arm coming about to grapple me.

Yeah, should have seen this coming, given my current aerial abilities were lacking.

“Gah… that stung!” Gold-Gamesh fired on Celebi and Hoopa from his chest and they disappeared when Celebi did something. Slowly a glow took over most of his body as he slowly turned it around using Psychic Type energy, so he could still move around using psychic abilities. “So here you finally are… I was wondering when you’d show up.”

His claw squeezed down on me and I spiked my wool out in every direction making him grunt slightly be he kept up the pressure even if his claws were starting to bleed as they tried to crush me and Dolly.

“You know, the worst thing I could do to you right now… isn’t kill you or the mutt you’re hiding on your back directly. It’s killing everyone else here and making sure you can’t do a single thing about it, though I do tire of your existence Chrysomallus.” With that Gilgamesh bodily threw us forward. “Well, that is if you can even survive what I’m about to hit you with, I’ll even be somewhat impressed if you somehow survive the Moon Cell’s near immortal servant. Since I’m so graciously giving you a reason to rise above you’re mortal worries… I want you to please remember to thank me for this later.”

I saw the beam building up in the hollow of his body, I couldn’t turn around and put Dolly into the path of it. Also what or who in the world was Moon Cell?!

I could see the beam coming at me and I covered my body and my right leg with my other three, clenching my eyes shut I put as much wool between me and the beam of energy. The shockwave slammed into me, but it at least didn’t reach Dolly.

The light it was so bright, the noise was deafening and my body was being wracked with shocks.

I could feel a part of my body making a very unfortunate sounding crunching noise before…

-Quetal-

What?! I saw a portal open behind Pom as her body was blasted by the beam towards it and I recognized the looming mountains that were fairly familiar to me… in fact… it’s the last place I would want any of my friends to go or visit.

“No…” My heart filled with complete horror at the realization of where Gilgamesh was likely sending Pom to… anywhere but Nixtorm, anything but that! Pom’s body was holding up in the beam, she would make it to the portal and from what Gilgamesh just said. Whoever that Moon Cell was, they had someone in Nixtorm that could kill Pom… because of course they did. “I have to reach that portal!”

Zoroark finished firing a Shadow Ball at Gilgamesh and turned to me and then looked up at the portal.

“Then allow me to help you with that buddy our efforts here weren’t doing much, I’ll make sure the fight here goes about as well as it can. First give me your left claw.” Looking at Zoroark warily I did so and held out my left claw looking at him as he took a grip on them with both his paws. “Do what we Dark Types do best, survive!”

With that I felt my body go light as a feather as Zoroark spun me around and then threw me like a hammer, I soared at the portal and barely passed through it after Pom was let off the beam attack before it closed.

Unfortunately I found myself falling towards water with Pom who I can see was unconscious and had lost a majority of her wool to the power of the beam and Sneasels were unfortunately not good at swimming.

Strangely we didn’t appear in the hellish frozen mountains, much to my very minimal relief that I could even still see them from here.

Like hell I’d let myself or Pom die like this!

-Gilgamesh-

“Hmph… one more survivor then, how quaint of a Dark Type to be altruistic.” I looked down on the dark fox as he turned to me with a glare, then disappeared… ah illusions, unfortunately for him… I too was now a Dark Type.

“You’d actually be surprise by how friendly some Dark Types actually are!” Hearing his voice from the right, I rolled my eyes and stomped my left foot to the left and the rupturing landscape sent Zoroark sprawling as he was battered by the torn ground rising up into his meager form.

“Do you think such pitiful tricks will work on me?” I asked, then I was hit in the face with something that didn’t seem to do anything other than make a noise that sounded like chiming bells and then I was splashed with ball of purple liquid. “Gah.”

“Word of warning, since I have to pay this price to even do this one thing out of order, ‘Time Won’t Heal Your Wounds Here’. If you do not heed my words, then that would be just great!” Said the small green monster ominously offered before they disappeared.

I actually recognized the manipulation of time this time, they came from the future? Looking into it… that Metapod again. It looks about ready to hatch from its chrysalis, but it was too far away from Illusio to really do anything to me.

Since I was actually paying attention, I could even feel the power of the time traveler had been waning greatly with whatever they just did. They wouldn’t be back for a fight as that was likely their last action of this battle. Also it appears that I’ve just been poisoned, badly.

No matter, once I was done here, I would just rest until I could go on and destroy everything else. Do they have any other heroes that can damage me nearly as well as that hopeless Chrysomallus?

I somewhat hope they do, because being defeated here would mean that this world was strong enough for what was to come.

-Dazzle-

“Was that Celebi?” I asked as I got back up and wondered where they got a toxic attack from, but then I had to dodge as we were still fighting the arms. Nobody aside from Pom got that close and after seeing what happened, well… I could only hope Pom, Dolly and Quetal would be alright.

Well at least they weren’t on a falling city about to crash into Illusio with lethally explosive force anymore… yep the more I think about it, either we all lived long enough to defeat Gilgamesh and escape or we all died to him or suffered grievous injury if not outright die from the falling Cerebrum City shattering upon striking the ground and then are killed by Gilgamesh.

“Whatever that was, it be poisoning Gilgamesh for us at least!” Shanty stated as she readied her leg like cane scythe.

“One less thing to worry about, yes.” I stated, as the two arms flexed their claws as the three of us.

“Boo!” The sudden sound and appearance of something coming at me from my left made me reflexively fired a Toxic at the green… oh… so that’s where Celebi got the Toxic attack from.

I thought I was past reflexively spewing poison at people, I might just have to get rid of the move, but it’s far too useful to do so for a Salazzle.

-Recon Beedrill Leader-

“It’s good to hear and see that Celebi and Hoopa are with us. We have a grand opportunity, let’s start our attack run now, unit command Venom Blast!” I angled my right lance forward and my unit burst forward as I stayed in the back and a glow overtook me.

Gilgamesh might be able to hit my squad, but I doubt he could hit a Mega Beedrill as easily with the speeds I’m going to be moving at.

It’s about time we got revenge for what happened at Three Borders Valley!

Author's Note

Pom has been rendered out of the battle.

Yes 'Defenestration', instead of 'Decapitation'. One is about taking off someone's head and the other is about lowering ones position and Pom was always more than likely to outright disable Gilgamesh than actually kill him. As you might have read, that didn't stick and it wouldn't for a Psychic Type.

Also Gold-Gilgamesh still hasn't revealed something yet and there's a reason why Celebi and Hoopa wouldn't stick around for long.

355. Falling Dominoes.

Author's Note

My goodness is Gilgamesh ever stubborn!

Music Recommend: Those who Fight, Final Fantasy 7 the general battle music.

355. Falling Dominoes.

-Situation Recap-

After landing a less than truly crippling blow, Pom, along with Dolly and Quetal, have been sent away to an unknown fate by the almost indomitable Gilgamesh in his unbound Hoopa form.

Despite numerous injuries being emplaced upon the impossibly powerful titan by hundreds of Pokémon attacking him all at once, Gilgamesh and all six of his floating arms were still going strong. He is proving to be one of the strongest beings to ever exist in the Pokémon Realm given the devastation and destruction he’s caused across the entirety of the Ransei Region.

Kenshin’s rebel forces lay in tatters. The only ones still fighting are the heroic few still standing that might be able to put a permanent stop to Gilgamesh before he can bring terror to the world once more.

If the physical exhaustion wasn’t enough for those who would be seen as heroes, then it was the constant mental strain since the battle began at the start of the day and there has been very little time or opportunity to recover since. Things only got worse at noon when Gilgamesh had ultimately broken out of his bound form with the help of Inky Due’s last bit of strength.

The amount of destruction throughout Ransei doesn’t even begin to compare to what the Kingdom of Illusio is going through.

The Castle of Illusion has already fallen and Cerebrum City is in the process of being destroyed in a variety of ways. The most important to everyone currently involved is that the psychic crystals that once kept the city floating are now dangerously unstable due to the efforts of Cotton Murkrow, the spymaster of Avia, to sabotage them and stop Gilgamesh’s unheard plans.

It is unfortunate Cotton’s final plan has come to fruition far too late. For the falling Cerebrum City is now a giant explosive deathtrap of the likes that have never been seen in Ransei before.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, destroyed top of Cerebrum City, Shanty-

I be rolling to the side as claws tore up the ground next to me and I be swinging my weapon for the arm, the little cut it be doing doesn’t seem like much. It is being hard to keep fighting when I was wondering what became of Pom.

Dazzle lashed with a flaming whip twice and be knocking back the arms, speaking of which they be looking smaller and are becoming weaker by the second, but they were only weakening to a point. The most important thing is that they were being far slower and easier to dodge.

“We really need to be going after Gilgamesh himself!” As Dazzle be saying this we be leaping over a right armed swiping at us from the left and Lit blasted it with lightning after it be passing by underneath us.

“Squeak!” Looking up at Lit on my forehead, he be pointing at something, it is being a very familiar unit of Beedrill… except one of them be looking far more badass than normal, having somehow turned its legs turn into two more lances and it’s stinger has become even more terrifying and large in appearance.

The larger one bursts forward and sprayed something at Gilgamesh and he be reacting to it quite poorly, using one of the two upper arms he had with him to swat at the large Beedrill and sent a beam after them from the hole in his body when his arms missed.

While that was happening the other five Beedrill soared in, in a straight line, then bombarded him with the same attack one after another five times in a row. Each attack seemed to be doing something to Gilgamesh given the two arms we were facing suddenly stopped in place and seemed to be writhing in pain.

“They are using the move Venoshock, a special corrosive Poison Type liquid that does some damage but is not exactly poisonous on its own. It really burns up too quickly to poison someone.” Dazzle stated as she slapped her two whips into the right arm as Lit lights up the left one on the right with several bolts of lightning. “However, if the target is poisoned, any amount of contact with the Venoshock attack activates the poison already present within the body to immediately cause a lot of internal damage. Poison Types tend to use it as a devastating two move combo, especially against those who aren’t immune to such an attack. Almost nobody is immune to a Salandit or Salazzle, unless they have something preventative like the Pecha Berry Scarves Pom and Dolly have been wearing.”

I ran past the flailing arms and narrowly be ducking under a claw as a do, with Lit blasting it with some lightning to knock it away, I be motioning for Dazzle to follow me.

“We should be using this time to be getting close to attack him personally!” I didn’t be having enough water for a Bounding Bubble around me, but the three of us could be climbing up to attack his body while he is being distracted. We all be having the ability to cling to surfaces, but we had to get up to the bottom of the floating landmass ripped from Cerebrum City with the destroyed castle that fell into it. “Lit, can you be giving us enough strong webbing to climb up to that landmass so we can be reaching Gilgamesh?!”

“Squeak!” Lit responded as he bounded off of my head and in a spark of green he rocketed upwards to the landmass floating above us. Dazzle turned around to knock back the two arms with a flaming whip as they regained composure and came at us.

I brought my weapon about to defend against arms and claws, we would have to wait for Lit to finish creating a way up for us and would be defending ourselves until then.

-With Kenshin’s group, Red-Gilgamesh-

Watching that Sanosuke get knocked on his backside was kind of funny, but I was on these guys side so I might as well give the guy something to help things along. Just not my newest awesome weapon that I got from another guy that calls himself ‘Gilgamesh’ too.

I looked at the titan that has been tearing everyone apart. Okay, so he has some reason to have dibs on the name at the moment, but that’s not going to stop me! Mostly since I can’t void out of here and I’m not leaving my buddy Greenkidu behind…

When you can build an entire castle out of Excalipoors, like I have, you really don’t need to worry about lending them out since you can find at least fifty more in one hour. That is if I don’t find the Excalipoor dimension again… I mean come on, an entire dimensions where everything is made of swords that can’t actively be used as swords? Even the people were living Excalipoors that could barely cut butter to spread it on some bread! That I was able to build a castle of Excalipoors before I ended up in the Excalipoor dimension was an achievement in and of itself.

I hopped backwards dodging the flailing left arm that tried two slash us by spinning inward in a circle twice then tried to slam its fist down right on top of me.

I held up my Excalipoor and the ‘tink’ noise occurred, once I found out these sword would take as much damage as they could deal out. Well it was no contest what I’d use them for afterwards, until someone figures out how to actually break these dang things to prevent them from taking over entire universes!

An Excalipoor couldn’t do any real damage intentionally, that means nothing could actually damage it intentionally either, because no matter how hard you swing the blade into something it wouldn’t break regardless of the fact that it is less damaging than a paper cut on a good day.

“If you want, I can lend you something I don’t need.” I have so many Excalipoors, they are practically coming out my… wait does this form I have even come with ears? I’m some kind of giant muscular bug with the feeling that I should be flexing for cameras like some kind of super body builder.

I checked myself while the others held off the floating arm things, very cool thing the floating arms are by the way and it reminded me of Exdeath somehow, wonder what became of him after he lost that fight to a dark unicorn with one of those amazing keyhole blades. I kind of wanted a keyhole blade too personally, even if it happened to look like another Excalipoor.

Eventually I finally found the Excalipoor coming out of my left armpit that wasn’t the ones I kept pulling from my inventory space.

In fact, I’d even say I don’t even know where this Excalipoor could have possible come from at all, I just happened to have the hilt of one sticking out of my armpit as you do. Like it was second nature for me to find an Excalipoor in the oddest of places, especially embedded in my own body like some kind of wart.

I just pulled out the Excalipoor sword, that couldn’t even physically fit in the space of my left armpit, without a second thought about the ‘not-a-working-sword’ and just put it away.

“Wark.” Greenkidu stated bluntly as they jumped and kicked the slashing right arm away with a meaty impact.

“Of course I’m not going to give him the one from out of nowhere that I just pulled from my armpit, give me a little more credit than that bro!” Yep, when my best friend just started turning into birds, they got all chirpy about it and still wouldn’t let me eating the chicken version of them them go. Yeah no, not giving him an Excalipoor, do I really seem that predictable to Greenkidu? I quickly pulled out a boring looking weapon and threw it at the Sanosuke guy who caught it. “It’s dangerous to go alone, here take this!”

“What’s it called? It feels rather nice and hefty.” Sanosuke stated holding a large sword, with a single long edge… it was more like a several foot long heavy metal slab in the form of a sword with a single edge. The thing was basically a simply looking giant broadsword.

“Oh that old thing? It’s called a Buster Sword I think, don’t know what it has exactly busted though.” I idly held out the Excalipoor in my left hand and a ‘tink’ noise was heard as a right armed fist slammed into it with all the strength and speed it could muster and came to an instant dead stop, no transference of momentum or power behind the blow whatsoever. It opened a portal, then started to rapidly attack the sword creating a series of ‘tink’ noises to sound off for each blow as I intercepted the high speed attacks with a yawn. On one of the times the ‘Excalipoor Shield Sword’ stopped the fist trying to smash me, I slashed up the inner portion of the arm by rapidly and stylishly twirling my naginata with an amazing flourish for someone as glorious as I was. ”Someone probably made it darn near unbreakable for someone with super strength, probably why that blade is so large.”

To prove a point, Sanosuke lunged with an overhead swing and brought the new weapon down and sent the left arm flying with a huge shockwave, while damaging and cutting up the arm severely almost cutting it off at the wrist too just from the sheer force of the guy’s physical strength.

“Okay, yeah, I can see where that would be a thing.” Sanosuke then pointed his new Buster Sword at Gilgamesh. “Hey, you know, instead of fighting his arms we need to take the fight to him, really start laying into that guy personally. He might just be able to regrow these arms infinitely or something and we’re just wasting our time here fighting them.”

“Who are you and what have you done with Sanosuke!” Kenshin suddenly seemed suspicious of his friend.

“Look I know I’m not usually smart and… where was I going with that again?” Sanosuke started to rub at his head as his right hand continued to hold up the enormous sword like it was made of Solid Snake grade cardboard.

“Oh thank goodness, it was just a random fluke that he sounded intelligent there for a moment, instead of a Ditto somehow miraculously swapping places with him!” Kaoru seemed like she’s into the Kenshin guy and this Sanosuke dude was their best idiot, I was cool fighting with these guys with Greenkidu acting as a fifth ranger.

Kenshin sighed audibly as he slammed his sword up into the right floating arm and sent if flying back with a burst of energy coming off his backwards blade sword. He sighed with something like relief as I darted forward deflected the right arm away again with a swing of a kanabo I was now wielding in my right hand after I once again blocked with an Excalipoor of course.

“Okay, let’s move it!” I jumped with my four legs and spread my wings only to slam into the nearest pillar when I shot forward… ow… I fluttered back a bit and then flew up at the other Gilgamesh who was thoroughly being distracted by giant bees. “I meant to do that!”

“Kweh.” Greenkidu rolled his eyes and finally sent some pity healing my way.

This world was actually pretty cool, but I wouldn’t want to meet the hive those bee guys came from.

A huge blast of boiling water knocked the titan off balance and they were struck with several more blasts of strange liquids. Yeah, this guy was the closest thing to a good this world had to someone of my impressive might considering how much punishment he was actively taking, he was definitely a Gilgamesh.

-Shanty’s group, Shanty-

“Go, I can hold them for a bit on my own!” Not very well Dazzle, I be knowing that you were struggling as much as we were. A lightning covered spray of webbing hit both arms as Lit aided us from above, I quickly leapt onto the thick white rope of slightly sticky thread and started clambering up.

I really shouldn’t be looking down, but… when I did I be see flames starting to coming up around the edges of Cerebrum City and that is being very ominous. Something apparently be catching fire down there.

I climbed up until all my hooves were on the floating island that Gilgamesh be standing on. I be taking my front hooves off the landmass and then be thrusting them toward the arms below.

“Riptide! Come on Dazzle!” I fired a shock of briny water and it be hurting with all the open wounds I be leaving on both the floating arms. Dazzle quickly ran away from the blast of sweat laden water and started quickly climbing as Lit fired several more Electro Webs to slow the arms down.

Dazzle quickly ascended the webbing rope, but halfway up the bottom of it caught on fire, Dazzle looked down and then doubled her speed until she reached me as I be placing all my hooves back on the surface and be climbing upwards with her beside me.

“We’re falling fast enough for things to start catching fire… either that or it’s the unstable Psychic energy in the air, heard a psychics call it the ‘pyrokinesis effect’ once when it came to psychic crystals destabilizing like crazy. If things are this unstable, I wouldn’t want to see what happens when Cerebrum City hits the ground… or be anywhere near the epicenter. How many people do you think are still fighting?” A gasping Dazzle asked as all of us clambered up onto the top of the floating landmass that broke off form Cerebeum City.

“From what I can be seeing, not nearly enough…” I stated as I looked around the battlefield from the edge of the cliff overlooking everything, seeing a lot of unmoving bodies out there. How many people has this monster killed… on this day, a week ago, the day we got here in this world or even months before we arrived? How long did Kenshin be fighting this guy for again exactly?

Looking up high into the air as boiling hot water bombard Gilgamesh and be seeing an airship, in the distance as an amount of water sloshed in our direction I be gathering it before it be spilling over the edges of the small floating island above the main mass of Cerebrum.

“Yet I’m still here trying to get my pound of flesh for the guy being the reason my home is being destroyed, saw the floating whale evacuating my Dark Type buddies. Don’t know how I’m getting out of here after this personally.” We turned to look at the wounded vulpine Pokémon with the short tail and long hair, he doesn’t be looking to healthy. “Bastard can see through my illusions, really got me good with that last stomp, but I’m not leaving until all things are said and done.”

“Squeak.” A tired Lit sat on his fluffy rear and took a break and I kept watch for the arms we be fighting, Gilgamesh was currently being far too busy with bees to really be stomping the life out of us yet.

I be seeing one of the arms disappear into a portal and then be looking around for it and then I be knowing who it be attacking, because Dodo be carrying Ocellus and Dodo sent me a warble in worry.

I be reassuring my buddy that I’m fine and pacing myself, though that last Riptide be taking the fluid out of me. I just be giving Dodo orders to protect Ocellus and keep doing whatever it is they are doing on the battlefield now.

Thinking of water, I waited until the water I caught had cooled down and be filtering all the impurities out of it as I drink from it. I be getting much better at doing this, it is being a new favorite survival skill of mine.

Seeing Lit stare at me I be separating some water for him and Mr. Zoroark. While Dazzle didn’t need as much water as most Fire Types tended to run hot and be liking it that way, I still be giving her a small amount.

“Huh, that tastes extremely pure and refreshing, almost no elemental energy bleed over like what a Water Type would do that could cause imperfections that Electric Types take advantage of.” We not be really having much time to talk Dazzle, but it is nice to be having a moment to take in our situation and rest. “Right, we need to put a stop to Gilgamesh before this place explodes or something with us on it… I’m quite frankly surprised we’re all still alive and made it this far.”

“Not for the lack of trying on that guy’s part, his last attack broke some ribs.” The mercenary Zoroark gestured over his shoulder at Gilgamesh.

“Kwe-ehhh!” Green sparkles swarmed around our bodies and we all be looking and feeling much better.

“Is this all that is left that can fight?” Kenshin looked perturbed as he and his group suddenly arrived by jumping up here and be using their psychic abilities to float up to us. He glanced at the airship and the Wailord keeping its distance from the battle and the Beedrill that be putting up one heck of a fight with how fast they were moving.

Kenshin frowned as he be looking up at the titan with what I recognize to be pure contempt.

“Okay guys, here’s the game plan, we came, we saw and we kick his butt and don’t lose or die!” Red Gilgamesh was being much nicer than the other one, even if he is being a scary muscle mosquito. Honestly had the urge to be making a fire to keep him away from me with that huge pointy nose. “I certainly keep losing to entire teams… then again, that just proves how strong I am when it requires entire teams to beat me. I’ll bet that one on one I’m a champ and this time I’m on the right side of history, but first…”

Red-Gil be putting away a weird sword and be pulling out a shield… that looked to be being made of weird swords like the one he be putting away that have been haphazardly fused together. He be wielding it in his left hand and in his right he be pulling out a hammer with a flames coming out of what be looking like a mechanical side of it.

“Finally time to use the good old Jet Hammer I got from that weird penguin guy on that star planet.” Red-Gil be twirling the hammer faster than I can be seeing it. “The place had a pretty big rodent problem though.”

“Wark.” That green feathered bird can really be holding some grudges against their friend.

“Hey, I eventually made it up to you about your strawberry shortcake being stolen only for some pink puffball to eventually eat it!” Red-Gil stated, the bird eventually nodded in acknowledge that Red-Gil be likely getting them an entire cake or something to make up for that, which is being more than what I be getting for my birthday for the last few years. “Enough gabbing, heroics are to be had around here and I’m going to be the one to do them this time!”

With a shout the hammer lit up and he be rocketing right for Gold-Gamesh using the flames to push himself through the air.

-Airship in airspace around Cerebrum City nearby, Lumber Spry-

“Mrs. Skeeball ‘should’ be fine, with some rest and doing nothing but that Mr. Wilhelm.” I told the Wailord who looked worried with several of Skeeball’s kittens on their father also showing as much worry. “If I didn’t know she wasn’t an electric type, I’d swear she was by her incredible resilience to firing that much energy from her body.”

Don’t know about Cotton’s health though, it was rather iffy and she was struggling for life.

“I think I’ve finally figured out what Cotton’s final plan ultimate was in all of this…” Seer Xatu stated as I turned to him, as did Sami and Canard who were helping the Araquanids with their aim.

The Boiling water and Beedrill were hitting Gilgamesh hard, this was the kind of monster that Cotton had been trying to stop? All those Venoshock attacks should have put Gilgamesh down a long time ago, what kind of monster was he that he was still standing? I know Legendary Pokémon were said to be powerful, but this is ridiculously terrifying to see what one could do at full power.

“Could you maybe let us in on this plan?” Mr. Canard asked with crossed arms.

“Look at Gilgamesh, do you notice a problem with his body? His arms aren’t connected to his body, there’s also the fact that he can’t form portals underwater, nor can his body swim in its current state and he’s too heavy to pull himself from the water. I think Cotton somehow intended to drown Gilgamesh and if he was trapped inside the city while drowning…” Yeah, that would be a really bad way to go. “If that wasn’t enough to finish him off, with the city about to explode violently… we wouldn’t want to be near the water when it inevitably goes off. It’ll flash boil anything alive in there.”

“It’s almost falling too fast for us to keep up with… how would we even get him into the city? Much less keep him there, we’d have to disable him so he can’t move until he’s in the water.” Ms. Sami was sharp on the uptake and there were very few Pokémon left on Cerebrum City in any kind of battle condition to be doing exactly what we needed to finish Gilgamesh off. The fact that Gilgamesh was still fighting whereas hundreds of Pokémon fell before him was nothing less than terror inspiring. “Guy can teleport and should be even able to levitate given the amount of power he has, we’d have to really hurt him before the place goes up so that he can’t make a portal to get out in time.”

“How far away from the city do we need to be to be safe exactly?” It seemed like Canard had an idea as to why Seer Xatu looked quite pale.

“Let me just start by saying that we absolutely need to put at least a mountain between it and us a soon as it hits the water, the water will slow down the reaction, but once the city hits the bottom it will detonate… I surmise the explosion will be visible from space at the very least and might even make Rayquaza think he missed meteor hitting the planet while he was sleeping. It’s going to devastate the entirety of Eastern Illusio at the very least if the water doesn’t contain most of the explosion, it’s guaranteed to evaporate Cerebrum City entirely.”

“…” There wasn’t much time left then, why did all of this have to happen? Why did Inky Due have to be a traitor to the Ponyta Prowlers? What about all the Pokémon living in that water below us when it flash boils?

My heart tightened a bit and I frowned as I thought about all the patients on this ship that needed help.

“We need to send someone to tell Ocellus to speed things up then.” Canard said a second later.

“Ready, willing and able, suicide missions are nothing new to me Canard!” Sami said jovially while throwing a salute.

“No Sami, just no, do we have anyone available that can fly that will be able to get a message to Ocellus?” Canard obviously cared about Sami and looked far more disturbed than the rest of us that she would volunteer so easily.

“Did someone say massage, I could use one of those after the day I’ve been having.” A small green bird chuckled be fluttering and landing before us while clucking with laughter. “No seriously though, I can do it. Even if I’m five Natu short of a unit and this day has been just plain cashew.”

“Cashew?” I asked curiously wondering why he would say the name of a nut.

“Gesundheit!” Then the Natu started up another round of clucking laughter. “Yeah, today could use a little more salt. Hey, don’t give me that look, I’m a… professional.”

The entire ship shuddered and Natu immediately took off as we were faced with arm after it hit the ships barrier and was promptly blasted away by Wilhelm with a Hydro Pump.

-Gold-Gamesh vs. Kenshin’s Remnants and Allies-

Gilgamesh summoned all of his further away arms back to himself and then glanced at the airship, before sending his middle right arm to attack it.

The two upper arms were occupied with trying to swat the Beedrill, the Mega Beedrill being impossible to hit and thus far Gilgmesh had only managed to clip one’s stinger. The Beedrill were getting slower as they were losing stamina from being in the air for so long and putting in so many maneuvers.

The upper arms started Teleporting around through portals trying to catch the Beedrill off guard. If they weren’t so used to reacting to things moving at blinding speeds, then they would have been taken down a long time ago.

The middle right arm was busy attacking the airship firing constant artillery blasts of boiling water at Gilgamesh and now the attacks were more focused on preventing the barrier from falling less the ship full of heavily injured Pokémon go down in flames.

The poisoned bottom arms and the middle left were busy preparing for the group charging directly for Gilgamesh.

Red-Gil came in and slapped the middle left arm with the hammer and sent the arm flying, the lower two arms weren’t as strong thanks to the poisoning and shriveling up and turning purple but they still caught the hammer and pushed Red-Gil back.

Gilgamesh fired a beam from the hole in his chest and Red-Gil dodged away and continued to attack the middle left arm as it slapped at the shield made of what some would call useless sword only to hear another ‘tink’ noise that Excalipoors are known for making when actively used as weapons.

The bottom right arm grabbed Red-Gil by the four legs and slammed him into the ground, while the beam was still going

The others wouldn’t have the opportunity to dodge the beam, so Shanty chose to perform a cartwheel and sprung into a wild windmill into the path of the beam and was even angling the scythe into it as she kicked her legs to speed up her rotation and parted the massive beam into two half with a constant wedge of cutting arcs.

After the beam ended, Shanty landed on her front left hoof and kicked off to somersault through the air backwards to land on her hooves while holding up the cane scythe defensively, ready to spring into action to slice through another beam of energy. She was watching the hole in Gilgamesh’s chest, as much as the arms.

Sanosuke immediately charged for the lower right arm that swung its fist at him and deflected the fist off the new weapon that Red-Gil gave him and delivered crossing slashes to the arm in a painful rebuke that left it even more damage than before. The slashes also left an afterimage of energy in the air.

After sending the arm flying, Sanosuke quickly planted the tip of the blade and held the hilt as Gilgamesh’s tail slapped into the blade and only pushed Sanosuke back slightly, Gilgamesh almost lost a portion of the tail to the sudden leaping overhead strike that followed the impact.

When the lower right arm tried to take advantage of Sanosuke getting the sword stuck in the ground, a Shadow Ball blasted it back and Zoroark slid into the position of supporting the muscle headed Psychic Type as Red-Gil got himself back into a standing position, apparently his four spindly legs were making it awkward to get up off of his back.

Kaoru on the other side charged a bokken with Psyshock and slammed it home into the lower left arm dealing damage as the psychic energy blasted outwards in a wide pattern upon impact. Her eyes widened and she brought up her bokken defensively and survived the retaliation slap that damaged her weapon as she was knocked back. The lower left arm was suddenly struck harshly with a pair of flaming whips and a following lightning bolt as both Dazzle and Lit ripped into it before it could retaliate further.

“Everyone give me time to perform my technique to take Gilgamesh down, Sacred Sword!” Kenshin just stood back with his eyes closed and both his hand on the reverse blade sword holding it up between both of his closed eyes, slowly a powerful glow started to overtake it. A concentrating Kenshin was charging up for his final ultimate attack that he knew would leave him entirely incapable of moving afterwards.

The Beedrill began raining Pin Missile and Venoshock attacks from above, while staying mobile to avoid imminent death or severe injury.

-Interlude, Ocellus-

“Okay!” It was nice of the Natu to come out here to tell me, but before we could move the Magnificent Mentalis appeared with a load of Abra, Kadabra and other Alakazam.

“What’s the situation?” Mentalis asked as they teleported in and then he paused and saw Gilgamesh and the back of Kenshin as he held his sword tightly as the energy coming from it was on par with some of the feats Celestia, Twilight or the elements of Harmony were known for. “

“You need to save everyone that is still alive in Cerebrum City and or is too injured to move or get away on their own, the city is going to explode!” I said hurriedly as Gilgamesh was in the middle of fighting off some of the strongest people I’ve ever met. The energy the city was putting out was disconcerting as I could feel it in the minimal psychic abilities how big the explosion was going to be.

“That would be an understatement my dear… we’re about to lose eastern Illusio from what I’m feeling here, everyone rescue our friends and allies, teleport them out of here as fast as you can.” The only problem here, would be that Mentalis couldn’t teleport out Dark Types. “We’ll need to get the Pokémon in the water below moving immediately, send out a psychic message warning them that they need to evacuate.”

“Direct any remaining Dark Types towards me…” I really hoped King Evan can handle them and the ones I already sent to Aurora, well if there was an Aurora left after Gilgamesh’s bombardment. At least the ones I sent there would be safer than being here. “Dodo, I want you to relay what I’m about to tell you to Shanty.”

Dodo turned his eyes to me and tilted his head while warbling questioningly.

-Gold-Gamesh vs. Kenshin Remnants and Allies.

“Hmm…?” Shanty looked off to the side and returned her bar shaped pupils to the fight in front of herself and shook her hips a little with a grim smile playing across her lips. “We not be having much time left… but I certainly like our odds of actually flogging this guy to the point he can’t be escaping!”

“Just die already!” With a few portals formed in the air a rain of blazing fists came smashing at Shanty, when Red-Gil intercepted them be taking the rapid attacks on that shield easily for her.

Gilgamesh had recently gained a large hammer shaped indent where his left kidney would be. That he wasn’t falling to pain, meant that they needed something big soon or else this would be a slow death by a thousand cuts.
“Say, can I be having one of those Excalipoors you be mumbling about? They seem rather nifty and useful!” Shanty stated with toothy grin.

“Sure, if you don’t mind it being actively useless as a weapon, since trying to use it as a normal weapon will not actually get you anywhere.” Red-Gil stated under the onslaught of punches that changed targets to the Beedrill who could barely dodge it, four of them took glancing blows and then almost immediately a second later nearly got ripped from the air if they hadn’t recovered in time. “Here, use the one I found in my armpit. It’s really easy to swing in the direction of an incoming attack and they are nigh indestructible… so you’ll only ever need or want the one. I would know, I’ve yet to find a way to actually break one of these damn things on anything.”

Red-Gil pulled out one of these swords with his right hand and I be taking it in my left hoof as I held the cane scythe at the ready in the right. After he handed it off to me, he be pulling back out the mechanical flame hammer thing.

“Cool!” He be pulling an entire sword out of his armpit and it even be smelling like it was in there! It also be looking pretty fancy, even if it can’t be being used as a weapon. I’ll treasure it, even if it was being completely worthless for many things.

With that interaction out the way, Red-Gil rocketed up into the air with the Jet Hammer to try and uppercut Gilgamesh with it. Only for the monster to dodge the blow by leaning back and then slamming his head forward at Red-Gil who blocked it with the shield, only for Gilgamesh to get a significantly sarcastic sounding ‘tink’ noise for his efforts to slam his head into it. None of the previous ‘tink’ noises before this sounded quite as annoying like that.

“What are those swords made of?!” Gold-Gamesh bellowed in anger.

“Failed dreams and a man’s completely ruined romance!” Red-Gil declared before slammed his hammer down on top of what passed for Gilgameh’s upper right shoulder or chest staggering the much larger titan.

“Raaggghhh!” Using the imbalance to lift his left leg high up with his psychic energy and he slammed it down. The heroes attacking his lower arms from the ground were sent sprawling except for three among them in the large shockwave that blasted forth rupturing the stone, grass and dirt as it sent debris from the castle flying in every direction.

“Aye!” Shanty was one of the three on the ground that hadn’t been knocked down, she moved to block the shockwave from hitting a concentrating Kenshin with her defensive shout. She had no idea of how to effectively block an area of effect attack with the sword she’d been given recently otherwise, so she went to using her own spirited shout to deflect the energy away from Kenshin.

Kenshin continued to stand as still as a statue with his sword was becoming a fountain of raw power condensing down around the dull rounded edge of his weapon. Kenshin was the second figured unmoving as he was still preparing his ultimate attack thanks to Shanty’s efforts.

The third still standing was Lit rocketing up towards Gilgamesh’s face rebounding off his three right arms doing quite a bit of damage with each Lunge empowering his upwards movement, that and his inability to understand gravity as a small low weight being. He let off a bright blinding flash of lightning into Gilgamesh’s eyes.

“Gah!” Gilgamesh leaned back and attempt fire a beam at Lit who had already burst out of the way like a little green energy covered yellow bullet.

Gold-Gamesh’s badly battered arms certainly didn’t react to him suddenly being physically blinded and continued to attack as if they could see, then again Gold-Gamesh was psychic and it wouldn’t be hard for him to do so if he was seeing things with his psychic abilities.

“For a few seconds, I will Limit Break… Hiten…” Kenshin’s eyes snapped open, he was only focused on Gold-Gamesh’s body primarily.

“Mugen…” Kenshin intoned as his arms seemed to start moving.

He wasn’t even paying attention to anything else as Shanty was sent flying by a painful backhand as the middle right arm appeared to try and slap down on him from a portal and stop his attack.

“Zan…” As soon as Kenshin said this, the world froze and he looked to have just swung his sword once, afterward Kenshin stood still completely still.

The sword soon just dropped from his limp hands and the Gallade toppled over afterwards as the sword clattered on the ground and his body turning various sickly shades of blue, purple and yellow.

Shanty and everyone else turned to him wondering why he would swing his sword once and then drop it. What had actually happened was Kenshin using Sacred Sword and then attacking several thousand times in a second with a Godspeed attack that increased in speed and ferocity so much that it only looked like he had swung his sword a single time, it had even caught Gold-Gamesh off guard from the sheer ferocity of it.

Everyone turned to slowly look at the six floating arms as hundreds of cuts appeared on his body and he collapsed to his left knee… most of his legs had been shred and the tail seemed to just evaporate into blood smear in the air to eventually reveal that it had been flayed to the bone as it was about to hit Kaoru and Gilgamesh’s body was riddled with thousands of deep cuts all over.

None of the cuts were nearly as bad as a massive gash going from Gilgamesh’s right shoulder to his left hip and a large gushing fountain of bodily fluids leaking from the hole in the center of his titanic torso.

The arms were devastated and the titan was still barely aware, concerning the sudden bellow he let out as he slowly got standing on the torn and battered left leg.

Gold-Gamesh wasn’t finished yet, even after an attack that had completely surpassed what he would call a Noble Phantasm in strength. Noble phantasms were done by spirits… their power an imitation of a legend based on a person’s capabilities while they were alive.

Kenshin was very much alive though and wasn’t a spirit, he just created his own legend by doing a sword so technique so powerful it almost even felled Gold-Gamesh if he hadn’t been so stubborn.

“Even that didn’t be stopping him?!” Shanty stated incredulously as she barely saw even a hint of what Kenshin just did as Greenkidu was already moving over to heal him.

“You need to be heroes…” Grunted a slightly out of his mind Gold-Gamesh. “This world… needs them… kill me… prove to me that you all want to live as much as I…”

With a herculean strength that beggared belief, Gold-Gamesh lifted his six grounded arms up and then stood tall and roared despite bleeding all over the place. He was absolutely prepared to continue fighting.

“You’ve only got about… five minutes to get away from here…” Said the mad grinning and gasping titan before he started laughing and prepared to attack. “You… won’t make it… as long as I’m standing.”

Kaoru was at Kenshin’s body trying to rouse him, but he wasn’t moving.

Gilgamesh had started knocking them all down and continued to bludgeon everyone around him with pure god like strength despite how torn his form was, he was going to finish them all off for being so weak and pathetic.

The only ones still capable of fighting by the time he was done was Red-Gil and Greenkidu when one voice rang out crisp and clear as he went to finish off Kenshin as Kaoru cradled his barely breathing badly bruised and beaten form.

“Bug Buzz!” A green beam of vibrating energy ripped through Gold-Gamesh’s body from behind and he stopped his eyes shrinking to small dots as the hole in his body that fired energy, literally became a hole one could see through as a massive, colorfully green, air rippling beam tore straight through him.

-In a tree in Chrysalia, ???-

Despite the battering, the many deaths and the chaos, the destruction, the pain, the little metapod had survived through it all and eventually a beautiful Butterfree, a small butterfly Pokémon, flapped its wings and pulled itself free from the ugly and beaten shell that kept it safe as it turned into what it was now.

The little Butterfree fluttered free of its confines and looked upon the world with a new and appreciative perspective. It fluttered towards the nearest source of distress and would go on to rescue a lot of Pokémon from several fallen trees and would help the injured with String Shot.

-Decimated Cerebrum City, Upper Tier, Shanty-

I be busting my chin and my forehead when we be falling through into the city and I could be feeling my face swell up in pain, being left both dizzy and confused about what was happened as I looked up through the massive hole and into the sky.

“Who…” I asked as I looked through the hole at the one who be causing Gold-Gamesh to go back to falling after as he tried to stand up and caused a second blast be tearing through his leg.

It was a blue armored beetle bug that almost be looking mechanical at first, it had two large prongs lined with yellow on the outside of them and it be glaring at Gold-Gamesh before turning to us.

“Hey guys, I’m a Vikavolt now!” Stated the bug with a familiar voice… it couldn’t be… Charjabug?! “I String Shot onto some floating magnetic rocks around here, went around them a lot before I slowed down, they were very tasty and I evolved! Then all you guys came falling right by me and… oh right! We have to get out of here, the city is about to hit water and this place doesn’t look very safe anymore!!”

The floating island with the decimated floating castle be slamming through the top of Cerebrum and plowed a hole through through the top layer with everyone still on it and be stopping at the upper tier of Cerebrum City.

Felt something grab me and lifted me up, probably Vik, I be blinking blearily as I looked into a pair of kind eyes of the blue shelled bug began lifting me into the air out of the hole into the sky.

Before I be blacking out, I be seeing the injured Beedrill trying to save everyone. I still kept a tight grip on the two weapons in my front hooves until I was over the deck of that airship.

-Golden Gilgamesh-

The inside of the evacuated city was now a veritable haunting spot for ghosts, had any been around to do so, but they would probably wait until after the city exploded.

Cerebrum City even started rumbling violently as it was likely nearing the water.

I remembered the warning and realized what the green little nuisance meant when it said I wouldn’t heal. I couldn’t even generate the weapon known as ‘Chains of Enkidu’ anymore much less use them to fill in the gaps in my wounds. Which would have been my last ditch effort to take everyone with me had I not been pushed to the point where I could no long move, teleport or attack.

The gods of this world knew to stay away from me even after Inky Due looked like she was removed from the equation. In fact, this had been fairly well planned and that stupid little bug…

“N-no…”I tried to stand again, when another beam of colorful energy be tore off my left leg below the knee making me almost collapse onto my face. I could no longer keep standing and my arms fell limply to the side no longer able to be lifted off the ground. “Arceus… you… bastard…”

“Heh… I’ll be… seeing you… soon Enkidu.” I grunted out before I lost the strength to even talk, even if I had the strength to make a portal there was no way I was making it through it alive.

I was aware when those I had been fighting barely managed to collect themselves to escape… I truly wished them well in their future endeavors to save this world.

I was aware while water flooded the forsaken city.

I was aware as the city hit the bottom as I was slowly drowning under tons of water.

I was aware when the psychic crystals finally exploded.

I was aware to the last as every last bit of me was torn from the mortal coil of this world in a blast of psychic energy so massive that the entire region of Ransei felt it.

I remained ever defiant, for my name was Gilgamesh.

I would be remembered by this world, surely it would not be fondly remembered, but I would be remembered as I roared out in defiance one last time and was to be heard in the nightmares of all those who managed to make someone of my stature and might fall so low!

My psychic scream would be heard by all of Ransei in their nightmares as eastern Illusio was decimated and destroyed.

Not even the supposedly immune Dark Types would be able to ignore a scream so mighty and powerful!

-Island somewhere to the northwest of Illusio, Quetal-

I gasped as I struggled to pull Pom and Dolly from the water, still being ever careful of my claws as to not hurt… why did Lord Arceus make us as such that we couldn’t hug without causing injury?

I turned when I heard the scream, it was Gilgamesh screaming and… despite how far away I was and how it should be physically impossible to hear such a thing at a distance…

It took me a moment to realize what it was, a terrifying and defiant psychic scream that was so powerful it had even bypassed my Dark Type immunity… maybe even the immunity of all the Dark Types in the whole of the Ransei Region.

I shuddered violently, as in the evening sky I could see an almost blinding huge pillar of raw energy reaching up to the sky and beyond our world.

Fairly certain everyone in Ransei could see that, could hear him and could even feel Gilgamesh as he died.

Praying that our friends were alright… I carefully lifted Pom and Dolly to start dragging them further up the beach away from the rising water levels that would come with the onset of the night.

One would see that I’m a somewhat small Pokémon, but I wasn’t weak… never weak… not with Nixtorm being so nearby that I could see the mountains on the horizon. That meant the pillar of energy to the south was Illusio…

Just where were we if we could see Nixtorm from here?

-After the fact, Ocellus-

It was like a devastating natural disaster had gone off in Illusio, Pom was right in saying she couldn’t protect us from the dangers of this world. Not if they were on par with the Alicorns and managed to stay standing through all that.

The Magnificent Mentalis lived up to his name and made the entire airship disappear behind the mountain, with the help of the now homeless people of Kadabraville working in concert to teleport everyone still alive away.

It was kind of hard to fathom such devastation without seeing it first hoof… I’m surprised we even survived the aftermath of what would be considered a theoretical 'mass thermo-kinetic magical bomb' going off that took out half the mountain between us and the explosion that evaporated it.

I’m surprised that I stayed awake through it all, everyone else was still out and that's with Gilgamesh’s screaming upon death still clawing at the back of my mind like nails on a chalkboard that wouldn't go away.

Had quite the headache due to all the psychic energy from the blast, I’m just going to protectively hold onto Smolder and then worry about everything else later after a nice… long… nap…

-Team Pocket-

“Talk about having a blast.” Meowth muttered with wide eyes, they only survived because of their newest member Surviving Soldier Wobbuffet pushed them all back into the hole and buried them all alive while they were arguing with each other.

Surviving Soldier Wobbuffet was a little bit crispy, but he was still good to love-love dance… once he fully recovered that is.

"I wonder who that was that was screaming, they beat my all time volume record." Jessie stated blankly.

"That's right, I thought no one could actually scream louder than Jessie does." James responded without thinking and promptly took a slap to the back of the head by the flat portion of Jessie's bladed tail.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

"Here you go, have an Enkidu, now go bother some other world with your massive ego problem." I quickly shoved Enkidu's soul against a confused looking Gilgamesh's soul and randomly kicked them both away into another batch of universes not connected to those that I watched over personally to make sure he didn't end up pulling a Lu Bu on me and will be coming back later to be a big headache later on.

I at least made sure they were together before sending them on their way after my death god Yvetal collected them for me.

"That... was awfully nice of you... impossibly so even." Bahamut stated with suspicions likely forming from that short interaction.

356. Aisle and You.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Evening, Jaded La Perm-

“Hey guys I’m home from my vacation to the land of the mental lambkins!” I stated as I walked through the door, I was promptly hit by Silvers the three of them affectionately nuzzled into me as I hugged and cuddled them like the loving Abyssinian Queen I was and then I shooed them off to their mothers Bloody Maries.

“Good, you’re back, did you find anything?” Fizz was nice to see after getting pounced on by my daughters.

“Yeah, a lot… is Tianhuo around? She kind of needs to know about this.” The expression on my face made Fizzy flinch.

“That bad?” She asked without really wanting to know.

“A little bit, provided Pom doesn’t grow wings and start glowing a full bodied golden color, then she’ll be able to live a long halfway functional life for the commonly anxiety riddled. She just has more good reasons for having that anxiety.” We all already knew it was miraculous that Pom was as high functioning as she was, not letting her anxiety problems or anything else mentally wrong with her get in the way of taking action. That was mostly because the Chrysomallus thing makes her high functioning with the express purpose of driving her towards danger and making sacrifices. I wouldn’t want to be Pom right now, especially if I was aware of what sounds like a horrible curse that even my sister Jackie wouldn’t be able to walk away from.

“Auntie?” My nephew Gavin looked up at me questionably as he ran up to me, I squatted down and ran my right claw over his feathers affectionately.

“Yes, yes, I got you something you little goober.” I reached into the sack I dropped when I came in and pulled out a designer bright blue scarf for when he goes flying so he doesn’t get cold, Gavin seemed to appreciate it as he looked at it around his neck. “There you go, good and warm for flying high in cold weather. Lambkin are known for good clothing, even bought a shirt for you Fizzle and got a few special order plush toys for Silvers.”

I passed a specifically shaded purple shirt that read ‘Beware of Wife’ in big yellow letters with my personal grinning face on it.

“How quaint, it’s quite apparent to me that you’ll never change… you’re so lucky that you’re still cute.” Fizz said while rolling her eyes sarcastically. “I’ll go grab Equus Tianhuo for you, so that you can talk about what you found out.”

I went over to ‘Maries’ and pulled out a small top hat out of my sack.

Sighing loudly Marie, or ’Mary’ just to differentiate from the overall Bloody Maries, lowered her head and allowed me to put it on her. The top hat looked really nice on her… yes… quite nice, indubitably so for the snake head of my favorite conjoined trio.

“You still haven’t quite explained your unusually strange obsession with getting Marie to wear top hats.” Maria had actually stop gnawing through a large amount of cottage cheese and swallowed a chunk of tin can to address me.

“I never will!” I declare proudly.

“Aside from the fact that it’s somehow a turn on for you, still doesn’t explain it though.” Mara replied bluntly as she yawned and it made Silvers yawn too, always adorable. Mara narrowed her eyes at me and ran her tongue along her right saber fang. “… Have you done anything illegal recently to Saddle Arabia that we need to know about?”

“What, no… no of course I haven’t! Why that thought hadn’t even crossed my mind… much… honest!” I gave the chimera a wide grin as all three of them were looking at me flatly with suspicion. “If I needed a lawyer, you’re always going to be the first ones in my heart… if it wasn’t a huge conflict of interest for an actual court case what with me being married to the three of you individually and together as an overall whole known as Bloody Maries of the Bloody Tracks clan.”

Yes, let us go with suspiciously specific denial.

Being the villainess ‘Mirage’ of the ‘One thousand and One Saddle Arabian Tales’ storybook almost made it seem like I had a humongous chip digging into my shoulder about the whole country escaping my timely and eventual ‘petty kitty’ wrath. It was just honestly a completely innocent eccentricity of mine that nobody would drop after I tried to destroy one particular country oh so many times halfheartedly… in a variety of ever increasingly stupid ways that almost, in a concerning enough manner, worked.

If anything I was making that country a better place by failing so often and they should be paying me for pointing out all of their countries many, MANY, flaws that I can still readily exploit.

Yes, Saddle Arabian will eventually fall to my… er… there might be mind readers around and who knows with unicorns given how often Fizzy predicts my general brand of stupidity… if I hadn’t succeeded by now, that one incident with my buddy Snickers becoming the most beloved sultan notwithstanding, then I probably wouldn’t.

Not for the lack of my continued trying in the future anyway.

My favorite chimera quietly helped me squish Silvers between us and I decided to order some food from mom while waiting for Fizz to get back with Tianhuo.

Though their judging looks didn’t let up on me, it was as if they expected me to suddenly run out the door and enact that one pyramid scheme plan to make it impossible for anyone currently in Saddle Arabia to eat anything other than green beans for an entire week by causing an ‘incidental’ food embargo and destroying tourism for a while.

No my nemesis wasn’t the country of Saddle Arabia, why do you ask as if you knew me?

Aware that my wives had my number, I wilted under sudden the increased glares until they let up to watch me hand the Chimera, Abyssinian and Unicorn plush toys to Silvers, the three of them seemed to enjoy the soft toys that looked like their mommies and it took a quite a bit of cajoling to get the sanity challenging lambkin to make them for me. The chimera plush toy alone took some doing to get right.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, the next morning, Kingdom of Aurora, King Evan-

Aurora Castle, decimated, Helper’s Hamlet, mostly collapsed but recoverable, Team Harmony Guild Hall and Bunker… surprisingly almost entirely undamaged with no less than at least fifty odd weapons sticking out of it. The Bidoof were still busy trying to pry them out so they can repair the damage.

Pom really did have the Bidoof overdesign the place for such an occasion, she had most likely expected the Guild Hall to be directly attacked while she was inside it given how smart and somewhat worried about safety she was. At least that paranoia panned out in our favor by focusing a lot on structural support of the building to take several direct hits from even Legendary Pokémon and apparently the Bidoof can actually ‘Build’ for such things.

It just required a ten percent cost increase to their builds to make a building Legendary resilient, Legendary proofing required a twenty five percent price increase and the Bidoof already worked cheaply as it was.

That said things had actually happened was terrifying, as was the number of injured or otherwise incapacitated that still needed Chan’s help and she was running herself ragged trying to keep up with the huge influx of patients in the emergency Bidoof built hospital. Apparently the hospital was pro bono and the some of the local Miltank were once again proving to be very nice and friendly faces as healers.

Not to mention the sudden influx of a smattering of Dark and Psychic Types that were Illusio before that huge explosion that could be seen from basically anywhere in Ransei from miles around. Apparently Pom had rescued a large number of people and sent them our way.

Didn’t know what was happening in Illusio now, because most of those who were sent were really bad when they arrived here via the Rescue Team rescue badge transportation.

“Are the Bullet Buizels still on retainer from Fontaine and are they okay to travel?” I asked Maiden Jig as I helped carry some water for the injured.

“Yes, they should be… they’ve been working almost tirelessly to help us that they all collapsed at the same time. I don’t think anyone in western Ransei has the capacity to launch an attack, much less anyone from eastern Ransei if everyone was attack.” The bags under Maiden Jigs eyes probably matched my own, we hadn’t slept all night and had been pushing ourselves to help others.

The inflatable balloon Pokémon was so sweet to keep me company in these trying times, even sharing in being as exhausted by everything as I was.

“Then we will Dispatch them to Illusio to find what became of Pom’s team and will accompany them for the foreseeable future if they are even still around after that huge pillar of energy we all saw coming from the northeast.” I was quite worried about our friend who start a Rescue Team business and I’m quite sure that business would be booming in the near future. “After whatever happened, they are not likely to move for a day or two and will be in recovery, I’m sure the Bullet Buizels unit can find them within a day.”

It wasn’t bad enough that we didn’t have much of a military, we were a relatively poor kingdom and then we just lost a lot of fields to the bombardment while also being bombarded with even more injured from Illusio proving that Pom’s team had been active during whatever the crisis was there.

Even in trying times, I resolved to be the best king of my people I could be.

-???, Dolly-

“Ngghhh… gah…” I felt pain, but when I went to put my paw on my chest, I found myself glued to Pom’s back by her wool and suddenly I wasn’t in pain like I felt I should be, in fact this was somewhat comfortable. Darn it Pom, you were the worlds nicest pillow! “Where…. where are we?”

I sniffed the air and smelled the beach, sand, wind, fruits rotting in the sun and other weird smells of what were probably nearby Pokémon. My helmet was still on my head and given I was with Pom, things should be okay.

Using my connection with Pom, I got her to let me… whoa… she was missing a lot of wool. I stood up and immediately became a bit dizzy from doing so and fell off of Pom to the side and into the nearby sand.

Quickly prying the helmet off my head and setting it off to the side with my… oh… my board, wow… that Gilgamesh guy actually managed to damage it. It was for a good cause at least and I’m thankful it hadn’t been entirely destroyed… made me wonder what would have happened had I taken my rubber chicken with me.

No, focus Dolly, we’re on some kind of island at a beach? How did we get here? Last I remember we were fighting on a bridge, how long have I been out and how long has Pom been carrying me around for?

I looked about as I planted my board in the nearby sand, not much use for a skateboard in sand and placed my helmet on it and took stock of the campsite with the dead fire. Pom was lying on a large leaf under a very poorly made shelter, then again it looked like a simple shelter that was made without opposable digits like what my fam was starting to be capable of as animals that were slowly turning into animalistic over time.

“Hm? Oh, you’re awake Dolly.” Oh hey, it was Kettle! I yipped that I noticed him. “Please don’t wander off, if you need some water I’ve got some right here. I think Gilgamesh intended to send us to Nixtorm, but we instead ended up somewhere else instead. We’re going to wait for Pom to wake up before we go anywhere on this island we ended up on, that or end up doing something outrageously stupid.”

Sounds like a plan to me, I have no idea what to do or what I woke up to, much less what happened to me and why my chest feels so clean when that attack should have scarred me for life. Actually from what little I can remember of the trauma, shouldn’t it have killed me? Everything was going cold until Pom cradled me and I felt her warmth filling me up.

Thinking of my partner for life, I moved over to Pom and looked her over. Still breathing, but completely out of it.

Feeling something was up with her right leg, I undid the messed up bandages with the horrid smell of Pom’s injuries on them and blinked at what I saw underneath the bandages.

“What the…” I carefully wiped a paw and bits of grey wool fell away revealing thick and fresh white wool underneath, in fact as soon as the grey wool was swiped away the white wool puffed up. The most wool Pom had on her body at the moment aside from her back and head.

I slowly undid the bandages to the rest of her leg and wiped away the ugly grey wool into the sand to reveal Pom’s right leg had fresh exceedingly pure white wool on it and was no longer weirdly bleeding a lot for no apparent reason.

In fact the white wool seemed to be a bit purer than the wool on the rest of her body for some reason, it was just a gut feeling on my part or maybe how in tune I was to Pom’s needs. I shook my head and decided not to think too hard on it and would ask Pom about it later.

Yipping and pointing at Kettle with a digit on my paw, he placed down coconut bowl filled with water on a leaf. It didn’t look easy for him to do with those claws of his, in fact setting up this campsite must have taken him a lot of time and effort, not to mention lighting a fire to keep us warm last night would probably have been the easiest part for the dude if he had learned that campfire trick that Pom does with his claws.

I lapped up the fresh water and enjoyed the slightly sugary taste on my tongue from the coconut. Even if it wasn’t too healthy for me, at least I knew Coconut wouldn’t kill me…

I tried not to eat too many dropped snow cones in the park back in Camden Town. Sure the syrup flavoring was tasty and a once a month kind of thing, but I would have been a fat dog if I let myself go by eating too much of them and my second mother Delilah was very stern with all of us staying healthy.

Being stern with avoiding obvious things that can lead to sicknesses when you have ninety nine puppies to take care of was just common sense for a pro nurse dog.

“Just so you know, we won and Gilgamesh ultimately died… guy didn’t go down easy either. I don’t know what the ultimate cost for that victory was… in fact, we probably don’t want to know after what I saw.” As Kettle said this he ate a few berries off of his claws after stabbing them pointedly. “Our friends are likely alive though, goodness knows Lit wouldn’t simply die to something like a massive blast that ripped apart a chunk of the continent. I believe our friends are made of sterner stuff and have gotten clear of the blast that was clearly visible from all of Ransei. We’re somewhere south of Nixtorm and north or northwest of Illusio in the middle of the ocean, but I really don’t know how much that actually means to you.”

The information that we were lost didn’t really mean that much to me, but it’s good to know that terrifying guy is down... really didn’t want to meet anyone who could carve a nasty groove in my ‘practically’ indestructible board like that again.

The ‘practically’ part was important to me and finally came in when I actually got injured in spite of using it to shield my friends, next time I should figure out how to deal with attacks so powerful they’d go entirely through my board and into me. Not that I had a way to do so currently.

Really didn’t want to die young without having some puppies of my own to dote on. Kind of wanted to be a mother eventually aside from the general super hero shenanigans I was expecting to get into, this was kind of going well beyond that super hero stuff.

I think we just fought and beat a functional god, well I don’t really know how the fight went after I was knocked out of the battle, but we still won right according to Kettle? I was kind of expecting at least a scar from all of that, but nothing… my body felt one hundred percent perfectly fine and healthy aside from Kettle helping me wet my whistler and bet most people haven’t even heard a dog truly whistle before!

Looking to Pom I went over to my board, laid down and propped the back of my head up against it while I let myself bask in the sunlight.

Kettle rolled his eyes and shrugged, before placing a leaf over his head and leaning against the nearby tree to rest as we waited for Pom to wake up.

After thinking about it for a long time, I got up and made my way over to Kettle and gave him a sharp lick to the face. He smiled a little bit as I was thanking him for whatever it was he did to keep the three of us safe and then I went back to resting against my board. Pom was injured and unconscious and Kettle was the only one with us that could have gotten us here, he obviously did something that went above and beyond for us and could use a little recognition.

“You’re welcome.” Kettle stated a little amused and looking much happier as he leaned back against the tree with the large leaf protecting his head pulled down over his eyes and he started to rest. “Also thank you for recognizing my efforts to pull the both of you from the sea safely without hurting you. My claws were not exactly made with safety in mind and the swimming for this island took quite a toll on my body as it wasn’t built for swimming, much less actually doing so while carrying two other people. Not to mention the trouble with making this limited shelter we have here afterwards that wouldn’t survived a single storm and at least a fire to safely see last night through. It was nothing new to me, I’m from Nixtorm… it’s always as cold as hell there and hell couldn’t freeze over as bad as that place already does. You and Pom have been out since yesterday if you were wondering, things… didn’t go as well as you might want to believe.”

Well I wasn’t going anywhere fast, also appreciated the fact that you were able to manage without us Ke… no… kweh… the sound kweh was familiar, probably something I heard in my sleep… Quetal, yeah that’s right, that’s his name!

-Illusio, shy of the totally destructed disaster zone that was eastern Illusio, Kaoru-

…

The devastation, after an estimated thirty five percent civilian population drop over the last week alone, goodness knows how much of the full population we couldn’t save from the disaster that is the destruction of the floating city of Cerebrum.

We Psychic Types already had poor birth rates, this is going to take a lot of time to recover from… even if we had all the help in the world.

I stood on the edge of the cliff looking at the lack of vegetation in the destruction zone and sighed… at least Kenshin and Sanosuke were still alive. We’d need a leader in the future and we could leave that to Sanosuke.

Kenshin… he didn’t really want the job and we all knew it, still he lead the rebellion to our eventual success and nobody would say no to him being the new king of Illusio after everything he went through for the people.

I turned and started walking back towards the airship, trying not to cry about the sight of eastern Illusio ceasing to exist from the massive psychic energy blast. I had plenty of other reasons to be crying right now, good ones, bad ones, sad ones and a whole lot of other painful mixed feelings.

The Psychic Types that lived in Illusio were hurting, now the Sigilyph had lost their purpose of defending Cerebrum City, we had no actual king at the moment and goodness knows what will become of us without a castle or kingdom gathering point that Cerebrum City was.

Where would we all rally now? How would we even rebuild everything we’ve lost?

-Grounded airship, eastern Central Illusio, Shanty-

This airship is being nice and Vikavolt was being a big hero. Sure he not be killing Gilgamesh directly, but he still be the one to get the final blows on him after he be tearing us a new one.

Those last few minutes where Gilgamesh was completely thrashing us were still fresh in my mind, he just wouldn’t go down… even after Kenshin be doing that insanely powerful technique that looked like one attack when it a lot more than that and even then I couldn’t tell what he be doing.

Admittedly… Gilgamesh did be having impressive staying power and that last scream would be haunting some of my nightmares, I just be seeing and experiencing too much to really let that bother me for long.

I made my way up to the one that is being called ‘Seer Xatu’ and I be having a quick question for him if he can really be seeing things beyond normal sight. Such things were legendary and real in Turtle Toga back on Equus, even if I have never been there before. It was probably the only reason why I would want to be returning to the planet I was born on, just to be seeing the pirate capital of the world.

Well that was being aside from the fact that my friends wanted to return home and I had several opportunities for different styles of life or family, but I was going where my heart wanted me to be.

“Where is Pom being?” Yep, we be needing to find Pom like yesterday, seriously doubted Gilgamesh managed to seriously harm her with that beam. Pom was being really hard to kill and we all be knowing she be surviving just as many bad situations.

Seer Xatu was standing on the railing of the right side of the ship looking to the east silently with blank eyes.

“Even if I told you, I would rather strongly suggest you head in the direction of Valora via the waters between here and there in as straight a line as possible. There’s a coming problem that blinds me to the future coming from there that will spill over into Illusio and destroy the rest of whatever remains of our kingdom. We no longer have the resources to fight against such an unknown factor in a prolonged battle...” Seer Xatu didn’t even look at me and didn’t even blinking once as he continued staring off into nothing blankly. “Until you are ready to go to Valora, I suggest all of you stay here to heal quickly, learn as much as you can and ready yourselves for whatever horrors lay ahead of you. Much was lost yesterday… but there is yet more to lose if we were to make haste or if we don’t act quickly in equal measure.”

“So we’re just heading to Valora next, Steel Types right?” Canard stated as he walked up to Seer Xatu, obviously he be believing that what Seer Xatu said was inevitable.

“Correct, the Pokémon there are highly physically resilient and sturdy, on top of having the most high end technology in the Ransei region. They are holding strong despite the barely visible current problems plaguing their lands, but if they can fall, then anyone else near them will too. They seem to need a lot of help, as we soon all will if nobody aids them with the ghostly fog of an unknown future covering their kingdom in my vision.” Seer Xatu just kept staring. “That future will inevitably spread to all the other kingdoms if left unchecked. I think this world is about to need all the help it can get. Illusio cannot currently mobilize or lend any aid to Valora for fairly obvious reasons, given what we just went through and the loss of the eastern portion of Illusio and our main city. A lot people just recently died and we are all in mourning.”

“I’m sure we help them, we certainly haven’t died yet and my record is still going strong for being the least likely to die out of my Commandramon batch!” Sami is being far too cheerful about that. “I feel like we could have done more Canard… don’t know how though. Gilgamesh was probably one of the absolutely worst things I’ve ever seen in my life next to seeing a full tilt Raremon epidemic… and I’ve seen ‘A LOT’.”

-Island Beach, a few hours after Dolly awakened, Pom-

Am I dead yet? No… kind of wished I was.

In pain? Yes… nothing new then.

Dolly clearly feels excited that I was awake at least.

“Here, drink this.” Quetal? I felt something press to my lips and I slowly drank the slightly sweet water, I hoped Dolly hasn’t eaten too much coconut.

I opened my eyes and found myself on a giant leaf on a beach somewhere.

“You’ve been out for a while almost an entire day.” Quetal stated with a worried look for me clear on his face. “So are you going to tell me how you’re dying now?”

Dolly immediately became alerted and I decided to just bit the flower on this one.

“It’s about the Chrysomallus thing Dolly, he probably figured out something was up when the girls and you became a lot more nervous around me… don’t think I didn’t notice how Shanty tried to keep me view a lot of the time. I’m not an invalid… physically... though I’m currently feeling pretty bad.” I quickly told Quetal what was up with me as I evened out the remaining wool on my body. It felt like a lot of my bones were cracked and my internals were all badly bruised, didn’t know for sure without a medical professional… I really missed Dormarch’s capabilities to scan me.

“…” Quetal was looking at me with a bit of a guilty expression for forcing my personal issue into the open and was eerily silent as if he was trying to think of something to say, he looked down at the razor claw he wore on his neck and then back up to me.

He slowly and carefully got his arms around me making very sure not to poke me with his claws and gave me a hug while trying to make sure the blunt sides of his claws were on my back and pointing mostly outwards away from me. He was being so careful and gentle.

“Thank you for getting us here and for everything you’ve done so far in sticking with us.” I calmly hugged him back gently, Dolly already gave me an information dump of what Quetal possibly went through. He managed to not only keep our heads above the water, but he managed to swim us all the way here.

We didn’t talk much afterwards as I wondered where we were going from here, there was an ocean between us and Illusio and Nixtorm was closer. After what Quetal told me about how his brother died… he would be quite reluctant to go to the mainland through Nixtorm. His brother’s corpse was probably preserved in all the ice or partially eaten there, given he wasn’t actively or properly buried.

Quetal got us some food as we continued to rest on the beach, I wasn’t in a good mood or condition to be moving around a lot and the lights coming from the nearby jungle as the evening set had me worried about the likelihood of aggressive Pokémon being around.

The beach was relatively safe as we could see things long before they could attack us, unless the beach itself came to life and attacked us and I wouldn’t put it past a sand Pokémon to be a thing at this rate.

Quetal tried to light a fire and I quickly decided to be the one to do it as the evening started falling on us, I pulled the device Arceus gave me from the back of my neck. I then glanced at Dolly and her slightly ragged pink scarf.

“Dolly… can Yggdrasil Sis scan me for injuries?” I asked with a few quick yips and a slight growl, apparently I didn't need to ask Dolly as the device immediately did it for me.

“Scanning user Pom and Dolly. User Dolly perfectly healthy, top one percentile among canines in health and an estimated lifespan of two hundred years.” We both blinked at that and Dolly looked at me with a bit of shock, yeah I think our familiar bond and the magic of Equus might have that effect on some animals. “User Pom, multiple cracked ribs, several contusions, minor nonlethal internal bleeding, skeletal structure damage approximating thirty percent of her body with no complete breaks, massive loss of overall wool coverage, signs of extreme fatigue and advanced signs mental depression, anxiety and severe trauma.”

“Nothing new, got it.” The incredulous stares I received from Quetal and Dolly made me shiver a bit. “I know what will cheer me up… I just hope Tianhuo is not mad I haven’t been able to call her for a while.”

I looked at the Arceus given device and activated it, the call was immediately answered and I saw a clearly worried and loving face of Tianhuo.

“Pom, are you alright!” The fact that Tianhuo lost composure was kind of… new to me. I always thought the fiery longma as inflappable, but the immense amounts of concern for my wellbeing eased my stress by a mile. The less suicidal thoughts I have the better, like being a Chrysomallus wasn’t enough trouble already.

“No, Tianhuo, I’m not alright… I’ve got some things to tell you.” Like I told Quetal, I started to tell Tianhuo about my being a Chrysomallus and all that it entailed, she oddly seemed less than surprised by what I was telling.

It was an hour or two later that I realized that I was still talking to Tianhuo and that she was listening to every word I said with a rapt attention bordering on obsessive. I understand the feeling, for when she talked I listened as such. Given it’s been more than a week since I’ve gotten the Arceus given device back, it must have added a lot more time for me to talk with Tianhuo.

“You… you already knew about it…” I finally stated as it was getting quite late into the evening.

“Jaded found the progenitor of the lambkin race and got it straight from her mouth, she gave me that information yesterday…” Tianhuo still gave me a truly loving look, it was kind of unfathomable that she’d still be interested in me given I have what amounts to a literal ‘Death Wish’ hanging over my head. “It has been said that so long as you don’t grow wings, you’ll be fine.”

“Tianhuo… you and my god puppies make me want to be selfish and to live.” I said honestly.

“Then please keep living for me.” Tianhuo responded immediately with a hidden burning passion under those stoic and sharp eyes and weak smile. “Heh, this has been much more than ten minutes.”

“Yeah given how much time the device has been stolen for, it’d make sense it’d be giving us so much extra time to just… talk.” I smiled a little as Dolly leaned up against my side as did Quetal. “My life is a mess Tianhuo.”

“And you think mine isn’t without you in it?” Looking up into Tianhuo’s eyes we stared at one another until our cheeks started running bright red.

“Baa-baa be okay?” Woof asked, always the sweet one and the other three brothers whined behind him in a similar sentiment.

“I’ll live, I’ll see that I do… even if my condition is getting worse.” My front right entire leg and a portion of my left lit up in a golden shower of light as I called up my heritage, before I dimmed it back down and didn’t use any of it. It was almost like I was tempting ‘that power’ to become worse. “I just got to avoid going over my limit… heh heh… hah… that’s actually kind of hard considering I need that power just to stay alive here. It’s not paranoia if you’re right, right?”

“I’ll try to keep her going ma’am.” Quetal promised a second later.

“The glow was quite beautiful at least, Pom I hope…” The call ended and Tianhuo’s face disappeared from the screen making me sit up and then looked to the stars in the sky above us and the small campfire we had going.

“We’ll go inland in the morning to see what’s going on with this island and will see if there is any intelligent life around here. Maybe we’ll start working on building a raft provided if we don’t find any signs of helpful civilization here… and… you probably don’t want to hear this but… we might have to go to Nixtorm.” The flinch that I saw Quetal make was really quite disheartening, as much as his panic attack breathing and highly stressed shivering was and it… reminded me of myself.

-Equus, Tianhuo-

“I get to see you again before it is far too late…” I finished quietly with four whining puppies at my side worrying about my very still form. “It is late, how about we prepare for bed together little ones?”

The puppies nuzzled me quietly instead of excitedly, they probably understood things as well as I did in an emotional sense.

-???, ???-

“Oh a true smile is all I will ask for… and nothing more…” I was smiling as I saw our visitors resting quietly on the beach. He’d even invite them into their happy community tomorrow that is ‘The Dream’. Sure he could send them away or just plain mess with their heads, but they’ve already been through so much and were friends of his friends the e-pony-mous Ponyta Prowlers. They obviously needed a new member and a new leader, Lumber Spry would be quite the peach for it even if she was a medic. He was quite willing to be lenient with the heroes that he saw fit to make arrive in his hidden kingdom. “It will give her pause and time to think, to rest, her metaphorical heart needs time to recover lest she break it irreparably and after such a harrowing story that will be retold throughout the ages… a hero like her would need some rest at a nice tropical island resort that cannot be plotted on any map hidden within a space too small for it to fit by our mystical fog. Even when she clearly doesn’t want to be a hero, she will be one regardless. She’ll probably even thank me for intercepting Gilgamesh’s attempt to send her to face the ‘Terror of Nixtorm’ before she is ready for such things, truly Gilgamesh was powerful and I could barely intercept his portal in time to redirect them. However, many will soon learn that you should never underestimate a Fairy Type when it comes to being quite an ‘Aipom wrench’ in the works as it were... besides, they did me a favor and I do owe them quite the boon… heehee-~.”

Location: The hidden Kingdom of Titania, the magically connected Fairy Dust islands of the Fairy Types under the rule of the ever attentive King Oberon.

The king’s sentries were already watching their ‘guests’ and their ‘guests’ wouldn’t be able to leave until Oberon was done with ‘helping’ them. Oberon didn't mean any hostility to them whatsoever, not that that helped with Fairy Types being monstrously mischievous.

Author's Note

When I feel like writing, I really feel like writing.

357. Fairy Odd Welcome.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Fizzle-

I was not a morning pony sometimes, but having a small chimera clinging onto my back that was hungry. They woke me up early and I was their choice for this morning.

Silvers loved Jade, but sometimes they chose to bother me instead and I should spend more time being affectionate with them.

As I put Silvers down to scamper around a bit, I turned to see Tianhuo with her head resting on the table and the device before her.

I quietly made my way over to her and shook her a bit to wake her up, the puppies were immediately up and looking about in confusion as they tumbled about due to Tianhuo’s sudden movements. They had fallen asleep on Tianhuo, once they noticed me attempting to wake up Tianhuo they quietly went to play with and protect Silvers. Both Poms had seriously smart puppies and they knew how to play with children.

Speaking of puppies, Equus Pom’s puppies were just incredibly adorable and friendly, they wouldn’t attack anyone unless they caught Jaded doing something they didn’t like. Might have had something against Jaded personally, because they certainly didn’t treat Kuril as someone highly suspicious… either that or they can sense semi-evil Abyssinians.

“Huh, where… oh… Pom finally called the other night. We had hours to talk this time, apparently a true monster managed to steal the device from her.” Then you cried yourself to sleep Tianhuo, apparently happy that she was still alright… I would know the feeling.

“Want some breakfast and time to talk about your woes?” I can make breakfast, just not as well as Jaded does. Maries can’t cook, well at least Mara and Mary can’t, Maria can because she learned how to make Cottage cheese and related dishes that went well with. “Our little scamp woke me up and they are moving into the more solid foods phase of their life… such as chewing through bones. Those poor drop bears. Anyway, we thankfully we have plenty of fish jerky, because otherwise it would be hard to keep little Silvers fed.”

I understood what Jaded meant by saying Kuril makes so much fish jerky that the entire town of Palicoast couldn’t possibly eat it all. We had barrels of the stuff and several hungry omnivores and carnivores.

“Lambkin are actually quite complicated, Pom even more so than any normal average lambkin.” Tianhuo sighed and rested her head against the table. “I’m coming to appreciate a lot of things from what Pom’s absence has wrought and I will try to hold onto Pom with all four of my hooves at the first opportunity I can get with everything I have.”

“Hey, can I get an order of batter fried scrambled eggs quick, I’ve got a scheduled fight with a nightmarish frog shaped horror today and the guy really doesn’t like it when adventurers miss their appointments to fight them?!” Flamberge ‘the obnoxiously loud’ everybody, a dragon that was basically everyone’s brother. Surprisingly he wasn’t hanging out with Fortitude, Skelly or Sweetcakes today. “Oh… do you guys need a moment!”

“On it!” Stated a cheerful looking Fresh Start as she trotted her way to kitchen looking bright and fresh, now there was a mare that was a morning pony and it made sense that she was staffed underneath Celestia at one time with her special talent for being an… early bird.

I waited for a moment, but nothing explode, no violent falling down or upstairs occurred, Jackie must not be in right now or else a tree might have come crashing through the window or something just to get at her.

“Okay, I know what’s about to happen and I’m still going to ask anyway… where’s your brother Fortitude?” My asking bluntly was followed by me counting down from three… two...

“I am Fortitude the fantastically fragrant…” It sounded to be coming from the far north and yet it was so quiet and faint.

I’m glad I’m not in Ponyville right now, because Fortitude probably bellowed that at the top of his lungs to even be heard from that distance. Still, how does he know when someone is talking about him?

“In Ponyville from the sound of it, he’s helping Starswirl research possible routes to safer access to Tambelon with Starlight and Sunburst the next bearded!” Flamberge nodded to himself with a simple smile. “Surprisingly my brother is good at translating ancient Yak Viking texts for the magical frosty portals made by the one legend simply known as the Yakhalla bridge watcher that keeps the living from bothering the dead unless they have important business in Yakhalla!”

“Hey Fresh, Silvers is hungry and she’s starting to gnaw at ‘Uncle’ Flamberge.” Not that they’d be able to bite through dragon flesh, but that didn’t stop my little Silvers from trying with all three of their mouths. “Start prepping the high calorie diet and I’ll be in there in a minute.”

Silvon was failing miserably despite already having some strong baby dragon teeth, Silvers better not start eating entire couches when they get older. That would get quite costly quickly, at least Flamberge was taking their attempt to chew on him with good humor.

-Pokémon Realm, Fairy Type Kingdom of Titania, one of the Fairy Dust Islands, beach, morning, Pom-

I stretched out and yawned, yep, body still hurts and I’m a walking pain factory. Nothing I can do about that without medical supplies and only with what I have on me.

I had a Pecha Scarf and the Arceus Device, left my empty bag with Dodo so I could fight unencumbered. My right leg has finally recovered and isn’t bleeding anymore, but I’m missing more than seventy percent of my wool… at least I don’t have to worry about the cold around here. If we do have to head to Nixtorm it’s going to be a slightly bigger problem.

Dolly still had her three colorful bands with Dormarch’s Digivice, a pecha scarf, her helmet and skateboard, not that a skateboard would be helpful on sand for its casual use as sporting equipment.

Quetal had that Razor Claws that apparently would help him with evolution eventually.

Well… I better get started on helping Dolly and Quetal with something to eat. I needed to learn how to use my wool like a living wire anyway after how I got into position to attack Gilgamesh, so I’m to become a living fishing rod. At least it’ll be better than doing it with my bare hooves, had to feed a pack of hungry canines somehow and fishing can be relaxing in a way.

-An hour or so later, Dolly-

Pom went fishing so we’d have something to eat upon waking up, apparently with the amount of wool she has, she was learning to using a single strand to help her catch fish and did a decent job of it. Using less wool to do more things would help her somehow, I’m not sure how it all works.

I took a chunk out of the roasted fish with my teeth, it was delicious and well cooked, proving that Pom has done this before for her other canine friends and probably her little puppies. Quetal was also enjoying some fish as we ate.

Personally Pom collected a few fruits to eat for herself and share with me and Quetal, she even managed to dig up a few vegetables from somewhere and seemed particularly happy about it.

“It’s been a while since I’ve done some quiet foraging, I didn’t hear too many Pokémon around here… this island is rather unusual in how quiet it is aside from all the normal insects.” Pom commented idly drawing my attention to her. “So… we’re on the east side of the island according to you Quetal, are we going to check inward now?”

“I’d rather do anything else than go to… Nixtorm.” Quetal was a bit twitchy when saying the name of the place. Must have been nearly as bad as when something is wrong with one of my family members, which now includes Pom who is just as twitchy about life in general and rightly so given the stuff we’ve been through and seen.

“I just want to confirm we’re all going inland to look around a bit before deciding that we might need to brave the sea with a makeshift raft.” Given Pom’s camping skills and the fact that she can turn camping supplies into a functional hang glider, I’m not particularly worried about our survival here as this place seems to have a lot of plentiful stuff.

Now out on the ocean, that’s a different story completely and I would rather have Shanty here for that. It’s amazing that Quetal even managed to get us here without having to do, oh what is it called, where you need to blow water out of peoples lungs… or was that blowing air into lungs so the water blows out?

Something my stepmom would definitely know, but I didn’t feel like calling the ‘fam’ right now. Don’t want Dylan or whoever picks up to be too worried about whatever I’m getting into this time, that or they’d be jealous I’m on an island paradise with no clue how we were getting off or where we were going.

At least Pom would have time to relax here.

-After breakfast, Quetal-

Don’t think about it, just don’t think about it. I’m here for Pom and Dolly if they end up going there, but I don’t want to think about it… it’s been a long time since I made my way to Greenleaf to get away from there.

Greenleaf was one of the most peaceful places in Ransei and it was quiet, I was just looking for an opportunity to do something with myself. So I find myself as a Pokémon companion and was definitely getting my name out there, even if I haven’t been doing anything too big… mostly since I refuse to use Ice Type moves and I had a problem with Dark Type moves.

Who was to know how much trouble Pom could get dragged into? Well I know now, but I wouldn’t mind following her to a place I despise just to see what happens out of morbid curiosity alone. Not that I would enjoy the trip, but it was the only part of Ransei nearby that I could easily recognize since I knew those mountains very well.

“Let’s go.” I got up after making sure the fire was put out and we stirred some water into our small fire pit and threw some sand on it. It was time to head inland and see if there was any sign of civilization, I seriously doubted it though.

Surprising to be in a tropical warm place next to the frozen hole that is the Kingdom of Nixtorm.

-Ten minutes later, Pom-

“Do you hear that?” As we traveled through the underbrush, full of bushes, trees and standard insect noises. There wasn’t too much sound of large animals going on around here, but I did hear something watching us.

There was something out there giggling just enough for us to barely hear it or at least that’s probably what it would like to think when it had two beings with a canine sense of hearing and who knows how Quetal’s feather ear worked. Also there were signs of civilization here, the way some of the nearby grass was cut was too precise to have been done by bugs that weren’t intelligent.

There were pathways around here, they just weren’t very noticeable or big and were narrow. They would only be faintly noticeable to an untrained eye. My paranoia has proven to be right more than once and right now my mind was blaring loudly that intelligent beings lived on or near this island.

“Be careful, we could be walking into an ambush at any moment.” A concerned Quetal stated as his eyes darted about and he held his claws aloft. “I can already tell we’re being watched.”

“Something smells off…” Dolly stated. “What’s that smell in the air?”

I took a sniff and smelled something sweet, it was almost as if something were made of sugar was around…

“Hi there!” My reaction to the sudden presence of a floating blob of liquids in my face wasn’t exactly the calmest to say the least nor was it the most dignified given my sudden flailing. The liquid creature flowed around my left hoof as I lashed out at the sudden surprise and it continued to have a smiling face despite my attempt to hit it. “Say, do you want to eat me?!”

I finally quickly flicked the blob back with my hoof and they went flipping backwards with a joyful sound.

“Wawawawa-whoo, I’m getting dizzy!” Eventually the blob righted herself and floated back over to us with an ever cheerful smile on her face.

No threatening motions were made, but seeing a smiling, living, floating blob of whatever it was made of still had me on edge.

“Wha- why would I want to eat you?!” I finally answered the question, this Pokémon seemed far too cheerful to me to be discussing something like this.

“Well that’s because I’m really quite a delicious, want a taste?” Said the smiling Pokémon before floating closer to me in an affectionate manner as bits of liquids popped off the floating liquid blob. Said bits of liquid came from the wobbly udder like digits of liquid sticking out of the top of the blobs head before reconnecting with the main body.

“Er… no thanks.” At least the blob of floating liquid respected my wishes and floated backwards a bit.

“A Milcery?” Quetal stated as he looked at the creature, he seems to have recognized its species at least. “Well this might hint at where we are. Given there’s only one kingdom I can think of where Milcery are seen, that might not necessarily be a good thing.”

I’ll keep that in mind Quetal.

“Well where…” I couldn’t get my question out as we were interrupted by the floating blob again.

“Oh right, how rude of me, I forgot to introduce myself!” I’d think you were ruder for suddenly interrupting my question. “My name is Curdle, nice to meet you! … now what was I supposed to be doing again?”

“She’s a Fairy Type, Fairy Types come in a variety of small, cute and pink or a just general love of the color, with the outliers being powerful and exceptionally magical. Magic in like what you have Pom. They have the lowest variety of any species, but plenty of Legendary Pokémon. They still have higher population than Psychic Types despite lacking in variety.” Given Quetal hadn’t dropped his guard around Curdle, I wasn’t going to either entirely. “Fairy Types are known for being disarming, cheerful and most of all… highly distracting or several varieties of cunning or just plain outright idiotic with no common sense whatsoever. Like you’d be ultimately surprised they have lived as long as they already have levels of lacking common sense. They are weak to Poison or Steel Type Pokémon attacks. A lot of this stuff is what I heard when I took a ship from Valora to Greenleaf, with a stop in Chrysalia. I’m not nearly as well traveled as Dazzle or Geoff, but I’d like to think my adventures with you prove that I’m trying to be helpful… even if I’ve not been exactly great in battle. You’ve already met a few, like Cleffa, the Ralts to Gardevoir line and a few others.”

“I wouldn’t worry about how helpful you’ve been Quetal, you’ve been here for us since we first showed up in Greenleaf.” I got a heartwarming smile from Quetal and a light blush as he rubbed at his feathery ear lightly. “Also you did save us from drowning and you’re very smart at the very least.”

“Aww… so sweet, like me!” Curdle stated pleasantly interrupting the heartwarming moment of friendship. “Are you sure you don’t want a taste of all of this? If you don’t have any water, I’m a perfectly good substitute!”

“Could you not proposition me with eating you alive please?” I stated as bluntly and with as flat a look as I could send the Milcery.

“Well okay, but you have no idea what you are missing out on, I’m like a melted hot fudge sundae of flavor!” That… was rather disturbing to hear Curdle, could a Pokémon really taste like a hot fudge sundae and why would it want to? “Now what was I supposed to be doing here… I know it was something important…”

“They are as distracting as they are easily distracted.” Quetal once again nodded at the idea of what we were seeing was a common disposition among Fairy Types. “I believe we’re in the Kingdom of Fairy Types.”

“Well technically not yet, we’re more like on the outskirts that all the Fairy Dust islands present, the real kingdom is kind of a thing on its own and interconnected by… oh right!” Curdle seemed to finally remember what she was here to do, also she giggled at herself loudly. “I’m here to… er… do something with the thing… gee I’m really not good at this… wait it started with a G! Galloping… ground… gentrification… good… great… gallant… gross… ”

Despite the constant smiling I noted that the liquids wilted, so the emotions on her face did not represent her true feelings so much as her body language does. I’m making a note to pay more attention to the Fairy Types body language going forward than the innocent and constant cheerful smile on her face that is not changing. Also noted that she didn’t mind the idea of getting eaten, just what kind of trouble have I gotten into this time? At least it wouldn’t be my fault since there was nothing we could do about being on this island in the first place.

“On average Fairy Types have a rivalry with Ghost Types in pranking, in battle they tend towards misdirection more often than not with their moves like a Dark Type can and they are not exactly powerhouses except where Dragon Types are involved. Dragon Types are absolutely terrified of them despite the immense size disparity, even the biggest Dragon Type would be terrified of Curdle here.” Very informative Quetal, at least we were learning something here while waiting for Curdle to remember what it was she was supposed to be doing here, I’m pretty sure I have a good idea given she was sent this way. “They don’t like iron, steel or cold metals, they also don’t do well when poisoned and considering you’ve seen what Cleffa can do… they can be as tough as something several times their size and hit with just as much force.”

“So a bit deceptive in nature?” I stated while glancing at Curdle who seemed lost in her own little smiling world, her body language was reading thoughtful even as her smile said she was happy otherwise. Yeah, definitely going to pay more attention to body language than their faces.

“Gerund… glutes… greetings… generic… gills… wait a minute, what was that word I said two words ago?” Curdle stopped and then addressed me.

“Uh ‘greetings’ I believe?” I’ve heard of tails of the Fae on Equus, glad we weren’t dealing with them. The Fairies on Equus were highly dangerous to talk to, I wonder if Pukwudgies counted as Fae? "Speaking of, I'm Pom, this is Quetal and that's Dolly."

“Yes, that, that was what I was supposed to be doing! Greetings and welcome to the Fairy Dust Islands, you’re not properly in the Titania the kingdom of Fairy Types yet, this is the outskirts with all the islands being interconnected into a single mass by a magical system. Our kingdom is hidden within ‘The Dream’, a mystical realm that requires entry via a ‘Fairy Type Circle’ monitored and operated by the mushroom Pokémon known as Morelull, they are really small mushrooms. All of our islands are connected to ‘The Dream’, despite the name it is very much a real place and things really physically happen there! It’s only called ‘The Dream’ because of how whimsical the place feels, you know, despite being an inverted negative dimensional wedgie of mystical Fairy Type energy encompassed pocket space that can keep out the likes of even Gilgamesh.” As Curdle floated about our heads, Dolly actually took a chance at her with quick strike from her tongue. This was while I was filing away the information about the Morelull. “Oh, finally, a taker! How do I taste, am I as delicious as I think I am?!”

Somehow I thought Dolly would eventually take a crack at Curdle, she did seem to be the type to want to know what a Milcery tasted like.

“A bit way too sugary for my liking.” Dolly stated and I still can’t believe she ate a part of Curdle, mostly out of what I’m assuming is a morbid amount of curiosity. “I’m having some regrets, taste like I bit straight into a cake like that one time… hey don't give me that look, it was a carob cake. Anyway, I’m an athlete, well technically a super hero now… even if my body doesn’t quite feel nearly as super as my magical abilities, I’d still like to at least stay fit. That’s not really a big problem with all the running around we do.”

“Dolly has a specific kind of diet meant for her, you’re a bit too sweet or sugary for her palette and she’s very sorry, but she cannot appreciate or eat you like that.” I answered for Dolly, paraphrasing her words. Dolly rolled her eyes at me and then we went back to paying attention to Curdle. "Also thanks for trying to keep my mind off the death and destruction that Gilgamesh caused, but I don't think it's going to work Dolly. Good hustle really, I'm surprised I'm not more worried about what our friends are doing even if they are physically alright."

Dolly felt okay to me after ingesting a bit of Curdle, I’m not going to worry about it too much until an hour or two later from now. If Dolly doesn’t show any symptoms of anything wrong, it’s nothing to worry about. Well I would still worry about Curdle seeming like she wants to be eaten, she seemed nice enough.

“At least I’m nutritional and not made of fatty substances like some might think I am!” Curdle seemed genuinely upset that she was not to Dolly’s tastes. My mind was a bit boggled by both the fact that Dolly tried it and that Curdle didn’t seem to mind. “So anyways, the King of the hidden Fairy Type kingdom of Titania is Lord Oberon, maybe the Ponyta Prowlers mentioned him? He sends greetings to you and yours, you are to be our wonderful guests! I don’t think he’s taking no for an answer here, but I don’t get the feeling he’s going to press the issue. Oh and I am supposed to tell you where you enter ‘The Dream’ is where you will eventually exit ‘The Dream’, that is unless Lord Oberon allows you to exit at a different Fairy Dust Island or a point on the mainland of Ransei that we have marked out and we don’t have many of those. As guests you’re free to come and go as you please.”

“A few quick questions before we decide on going anywhere, does the king know one of his Ponyta Prowlers betrayed him? Also what was the damage from Gilgamesh’s attack on your kingdom?” I just had to know these two things.

“Yes, Lumber Spry did him proud by helping to save you from that targeted assassination attempt on your life. Though it’s kind of sad to hear Inky Dye was a spy.” Despite her faces cheerful countenance that was her face, Curdle’s body drooped somewhat like a pancake and it seemed to drip tear shaped bits of fluid that floated back upwards into the whole mass. “While we didn’t receive any serious injuries, or any injuries at all for that manner thanks to ‘The Dream’ being safe from the dimensional portals Gilgamesh made that let him rained weapons on everyone, we are quite sad that a lot of other people were hurt so badly.”

“So we’re welcome there as guests up to a point, what is the point we shouldn’t cross?” If this were the Fae on Equus, I would definitely be running in the complete opposite direction right about now. “Also how would we find the nearest ‘Fairy Type Circle’ as you called them to get into the kingdom proper?”

“Yes, you’re welcome to come visit and leave at any time, as guests we are assured to treat you with respect as long as you don’t running around setting things on fire or do anything too outrageously stupid, dangerous or violent. Basically just be tourists and you’ll be fine, especially with me as your guide!” Okay Curdle just made my sense of danger shoot straight up by saying she’ll be our guide on the principle of what we’ve already seen of her already. “Given you’re relations with the Ponyta Prowlers is positive, Inky Dye being an evil chain monster thing aside, I will be able to show you how to find the Morelull and get access to the mushroom circles they watch. The Dream is a very nice place, very big city. Lots of Fairy Types and a few other Pokémon that have found themselves lost on the road of life in one way or another.”

“Does anyone else feel like this is going to go horrible places or is it just me?” Dolly we were on a paradise island apparently connected to a dimensional pocket fairy realm. Shenanigans are all we can expect at this point, with everything else being completely unexpected surprise for bad or ill.

“I don’t think it’s going to be too horrible, I just think some unpleasant is going to happen in general.” Quetal was on the same wavelength as the rest of us, especially me as my paranoia skyrocketed about actually entering this ‘The Dream’ place.

“The both of you should know me by now, I’m already expecting something to happen. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if something untoward doesn’t happen to me.” With me banged up as I am, yeah, we wouldn’t exactly win a pitched battle with two or more units of Fairy Types unless they weren’t nearly as strong as unicorns were with magic.

“Oh trust me, Lord Oberon would not let a single thing happen to his personal guests on his watch. He can be a bit scary when he’s angered.” Curdle continued to be a pleasant voice, the demeanor of her body shifting to more playful movements as she floated about. “So do you have anything else to ask or can we get going?”

“Now when you say Pokémon that get lost on the road of life…” Quetal trailed off and held a claw out at Curdle.

“Oh that, it’s like how Lord Oberon intercepted you before you directly ended up in Nixtorm. You might have been killed by the indestructible monster currently slowly destroying the Kingdom of Ice Types.” Curdle suddenly earned our complete and undivided attention. “Lord Oberon should probably work on his aim better, instead of hitting sand you all nearly drowned… we should have asked some Water Types to help you guys out with that or at least have had them on standby.”

Okay so Lord Oberon is ridiculously powerful, but he’s not perfect, good to know. So what did he intercept us from and is that why we are still alive? Aside from Quetal having to perform above and beyond what he should be normally capable of. Still didn't make him evolve though, I suspect he wouldn't until after we arrived in Nixtorm.

“Can you describe what that monster looks like?” I was still certainly worried about how we ended up in the ocean instead of on the beach, but depending on the answer I’ll make a judgement call of whether or not to believe Oberon has our best interests at heart.

“It’s a massive beast, one of wretched cold metal, billowing red eyes, said to be completely heartless and unkillable to the point the legendary in the region Articuno is having a problem finishing it off and is slowly being whittle away. It has two barrels strapped to its back, it smells like death and it specifically reeks of Salazzle poison that for some reason couldn’t finish the job.” That sounds very, VERY, familiar to me and I’m sure Dolly was thinking of the same thing. “It is said to be an undead metal skeletal dragon nightmare with stained red bones, with a nasty mindless need to kill the living.”

“Pom, that sounds an awful lot like that X monster that attacked us while we were leaving the Dormarch realm.” Yeah, that did sound a lot like Skull Chaosdramon X and it was currently contained to Nixtorm. “… We’re going to Nixtorm aren’t we?”

“We’ll talk about it later Dolly.” Though knowing that innocent people were possibly in grave danger was itching at me to head towards Nixtorm, because I knew what the threat was. I just didn’t know how to actually deal with it once we go there. “For right now, I think it’d be better to see what Lord Oberon wants with us. He wouldn’t have diverted us from that kind of imminent death if he didn’t want to talk or at least ask for something for helping us in return. So how soon does Lord Oberon want to see us?”

There’s actually no ifs ands or buts about it, we were going to end up in Nixtorm eventually and would have to face Skull Chaosdramon X and figure out how to deal with it. I mean we had a digivice right, maybe it could do something? I really doubted that Quetal, Dolly and I could face Skull Chaosdramon X even with two entire kingdoms at our backs.

“Whenever is convenient for you, you don’t need to rush to see him or he could just come see you if it’s a really pressing matter if he wasn’t busy making sure our kingdom is safe. It’s a good thing Gilgamesh didn’t hit anything when he attacked the Fairy Dust Islands, Oberon made sure he couldn’t even hit the jungles outside our doorstep.” Curdle waggled her little liquid wings. “That was about all he could do though, ‘The Dream’ is as close to safe as one can get… except when we’re not actually safe from each other. Let’s go find the Morelull around here and get something to drink at a good juice bar I know about!”

-Fifteen minutes later, Quetal-

A Morelull was a bulb with two eyes, with three roots sticking out of the bottom of it as a foot, whereas out of the top of its head were three mushrooms that could light up its surroundings. They would probably be more visible at night since they were a glow in the dark kind of Pokémon, during the day time like this morning and it still hasn’t hit noon, they were a little harder to spot. They looked like simple creatures and they basically just survived off good soil.

They were idling near a circle of red capped mushrooms looking almost as if they were trying to pretend to be normal mushrooms, doing a fairly good job of that if their eyes didn’t give them away in the sunlight.

“Hey, you guys, I got guests who want to enter ‘The Dream’, so can you get the circle up and running for us?” Curdle asked pleasantly.

As I’ve noticed from watching Pom, I shouldn’t be watching Curdle’s smiling face, but her body to see what her true emotions were like. It seems like she had a face that was stuck in perpetual happiness… which was terrifying.

She wasn’t being very deceptive, so she wasn’t one of the more cunning Fairy Types who would try to deceive us, I think she was sent to talk with us because of that very fact.

“Ooh guests of Lord Oberon himself? Well okay then!” The Morelull led us to the circle of mushrooms and we watched as they danced by hopping in a circle around the circle while twirling and flipping randomly. “Okay, it’s open, now step or float into the portal and be on your way!”

Nothing had changed about the mushrooms, nothing had changed about the circle, but there was an energy in the air that I didn’t feel before. Unlike Psychic Type energy, I was not immune to Fairy Type energy.

“Okay everyone, here we go. Watch your first step, it can be quite a doozy!” With that and flying loop, Curdle flew straight forward and disappeared into thin air as she pass into the airspace of the circle of mushrooms.

Pom looked at me warily, sighed and calmly walked forward and disappeared making Dolly immediately leap forward after her.

I grumbled a bit about having to deal with Fairy Types, but as long as this is going to be to bothersome, then I’ll be fine with it. I too walked forward and blinked as I watched Pom roll down a slope and slam into a pile of mud sending a fountain of it flying upwards.

“It’s already started…” I sighed to myself.

“Rrr?” Dolly seemed to ask questioningly by the look in her eyes and the noise she made.

“Fairy Types love to prank people and if you’ll look at what’s at the edge of the mushrooms surrounding us.” I pointed out with a claw, some kind of slippery oil leading to the slope we were immediately facing upon arrival.

“Grrrr…” Dolly started growling at Curdle as she understood the implications of what just happened to Pom.

“Hey, I said to watch that first step, all of you heard me before I even went through the portal, both clearly and succinctly!” Yeah, this is why you pay attention to whatever a Fairy Type says, they tend to mislead even if they don’t mean to. “It’s not a malicious prank at least, I mean they would have used cement at the bottom if they were being outright malicious instead of soft, and mostly clean, mud.”

“I think it’s more on you for saying that in a joking manner and not meaning it literally to watch the first step as soon as the portal transports you here.” I calmly retorted as Pom picked herself up and used what little wool she had left to clean the mud off of herself by rotating it around her body quickly and fluffing it out as much as she feasibly could.

“Dolly, calm down, I’m all right… mostly.” Pom looked up at us as she stretched out and we heard several painful cracking noises. “Right, entirely cracked skeleton full of microscopic fractures. I’m in immense amounts of pain… got any Sitrus Berry Juice at that juice bar you know about by any chance?”

“We do and again I’m quite sure Lord Oberon won’t mind you taking your time, as there is no urgent matter for which he would want to talk to you currently. Now behold… ‘The Dream’!” Curdle pointed a small liquid flipper forward and we all looked to the massive sprawling colorful city that mixed plants, building and everything else together.

We even had quite a view to the fountain where we arrived, at the top of which was a tiny bug Pokémon.

The hill we were on was in a park and looking at the statue, said bug Pokémon probably was probably a Fairy Type and the eponymous Lord Oberon. The guy was tiny, given the life sized statue was smaller than I was.

It’s not the size of the statue that mattered in this case, it was the quality of the craft and I think it was good quality, but I was no expert in masonry.

The city lay sprawled out before us and I was very wary of the feeling in the air as Pom went to a nearby sign board with a map of ‘The Dream’ and the various exit points around the city back to the Fairy Dust Islands.

“Gee this place looks suspiciously shaped like a fairy, I wonder if he’s taking cues from Arceus in designing the shape of this place.” Pom stated dully as she looked at the map of ‘The Dream’ and started comparing it to the nearby statue.

Yep, a Fairy Type Pokémon certainly made its image in the shape of an entire city, like Arceus made the entire continent of Ransei in his.

We were at the head of ‘The Dream’ apparently, a calming meadow place full of flowers and a gentle breeze… this guy definitely knew a good place to start Pom off with at the very least to be as non-threatening as possible.

So I’ll choose to believe that the slippery oil leading into the patch of mud thing was a one-off, for the time being anyway...

Not that I would lower my guard as long as I was here though. Oberon might not mean us harm personally, but nobody said anything about his subjects.

At least Pom could get some rest and relaxation, maybe some legendary grade healing. We needed all the rest and relaxation we could get, especially when Pom got that look in her eyes when she heard about the monster roaming around in Nixtorm. It was probably better that we let the Kingdom of Nixtorm fall, but that was my personal bias speaking.

Dolly apparently made a comment that tells me that Pom knows exactly where it came from and may possibly know how to deal with it.

One way or another we were going to end up in Nixtorm, I had to mentally prepare myself for a lot of things to come. I might even learn a Dark Type move for once and give up Double Team for it. I would keep a stranglehold on Substitute though... it makes me feel like I still have a brother sometimes.

I wonder if they had a Gulpin support station around here for that or would I have to do it myself through meditation?

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Where did they go?” Bahamut asked as he saw the three disappear upon entering the ‘Fairy Type Circle’.

“The realm of the Fairy Types known as ‘The Dream’, with Lord Oberon overseeing them. We probably won’t be able to watch them for a while, but they will be fine… if not, Oberon knows I can come in at any time to make things ‘FINE’.” I will let Lord Oberon decide things from here until Pom comes back out, I trusted him enough to not hurt Pom or her companions egregiously. “He knows better than to cause too much trouble, not if he intends to do what I think ultimately intends. Now what is Buzzwole Gilgamesh up to?”

“He seems to be traveling the lands with his Greenkidu just looking for weapons and adventure, screams murder hobo to me… then again murder hobos are some of our favorite mortals.” Tiamat stated with several toothily grinning heads. “They’ll do a lot of weird things for fifty gil and a simple scan materia.”

“In general because they can be altruistic despite their habits of running into people’s homes and then looting them dry before continuing on with their adventures.” It seemed Bahamut was aware of those he has empowered previously, I did not understand his or his sister’s fascination for the murder hobos of the worlds they lived in.

That was a difference between us, I prefered idealistic friendly idiot heroes who struggled every step of the way to get to where they are with the raw power of friendship. Pom basically exudes friendship power by existing, probably why she mystically contaminated a hamster, dog and cat in the previous world she was in. That it culminated in super powers was not my problem as it was not my world to worry about aside from possible dimensional invaders.

“It seems Shanty is taken to trying to learn how to do a flying slash from Kenshin, it’s not going too well… despite the fact that Kenshin doesn’t have to do it himself and could simply just instruct her how to as he’s a talented enough teacher even if his body is currently not up to the task.” Mew was keeping an eye on the situation in Valora and watching the resting heroes still picking themselves up from the complete mess and uncertainty that is current Illusio. “Should we really let the other Gilgamesh roam around, we could just kick him back into the void like he wants with his buddy.”

“No, let him explore this world a bit, he’s much better than the other Gilgamesh and won’t try to kill everyone to make heroes rise up against him to save the world from an even greater darkness than he.” I grinned a little bit at the idea percolating in my head. “In fact he’ll just steal or fight for every great weapon that isn’t nailed down or doesn’t have an owner… which is why I’ll figure out a way to get him to meet an Aegislash eventually.”

“Oh lord of all… an Aegislash, really now?” It seems Mew has guessed where I was going with that.

I mean an Aegislash Excalipoor wouldn’t be impossible to cause and effect into existence right? I might actually give him an Aegislash Excalibur, one with an exceedingly nasty temper about wielding itself if I was feeling like a jerk… some other fun ideas were coming to mind about this too! This other Gilgamesh would have to actually work for it though.

“Anyways, who wants Quiche?” I asked as I levitated several tray loads of quiche with Fairy Type energy.

Author's Note

Music in the background: A Tropical Octav3

358. Fairy World Conversations.

-Slightly outside of reality in the Ransei Region around the Fairy Dust Islands, Fairy Kingdom of Titania, ‘The Dream’, northern flowery meadows, Pom-

I sat there on a hillside staring out at open space, a space made entirely of pink sky drinking a lot of healing fruit juice from a fairly nearby stand while Curdle took Dolly and Quetal on a small tour. Dolly was keeping me up to date on all the weird things she was seeing here.

There were a lot of interesting things about this place, like the fact that the place was more like a small planet given if I was to walk forward from here I would end up on the underside in an upside down city on the flipped side of what is considered The Dream’s topside in the Kingdom of Titania. You know, instead off falling off the edge into the pink void I was looking into… well it would still be right side up from my point of view so there really is no edge to fall off into and it was safe on this humongous fairy shaped planetoid with a sprawling city of stone and plant built on it.

Metal was not a highly liked material around here, so I wasn’t expecting to see much if not any metal at all while in the Fairy Kingdom.

Place kind of reminded me of the Gravity Gorge Zone back on Elhorn, except not a mass of floating rocks caused by some unknown incident involving the strange technology on that world. Dodo was one of those bits of strange technology, if he wasn’t Shanty’s familiar I’d be far more wary of him given his ability to transform into something else entirely given the new wings and everything.

He was flightless prior with being a machine with only two legs, a body and head on a long neck and him being able to fly now was probably related to Shanty’s wishes that Dodo could actually make happen. Shanty was lucky to have a familiar that could recover from near death from a lava bath.

I wondered what became of my friends back in Illusio? I still had to get them all home and I really didn’t think they were dead, mind you I was definitely on that path personally. Again, not with Dodo being able to fly and so many Pokémon that could teleport in that given region that could move people to safety, like the Magnificent Mentalis.

I think it was a thing to be thankful for that everyone else in all the other kingdoms would be too busy trying to recover from Gilgamesh’s continent wide attacks to really commit to an invasion on other territories, but I doubt Illusio was in any state to defend itself right now considering a large number of military units were torn apart by all the infighting.

Here I sat on a hillside contemplating horrors while overlooking the less than real edge of the small planetary world shaped like a Fairy Type Pokémon at the beautiful pink skies with flowery imagery floating around. Not at all concerned about where all the light for this world was coming from or if there is even a night.

The jovial Vannilish purveyor of the juice stand that Curdle liked also did smoothies and milkshakes aside from mixing juices liberally depending on how well they were stocked. So the smoothie I was drinking was full of healing berries and very nice… though the Vanillish that gave it to me made me concerned about a few things.

Vanillish were a Pokémon that looked like a living snow cone, so understandably I was a little concerned how my smoothie was chilled to perfection. Apparently the Vanillish, an Ice Type Pokémon that had gotten lost and came from Nixtorm to end up in Titania, was very capable with his ice cold abilities and assured me that there were no bits of him in the food since I apparently met my first Milcery before coming here. Looking like ice cream cones was common among the Vanillite line, which was the base form of Vanillish that looked more like a traditional ice cream cone with a flat bottom instead of the cone spike of ice.

Curdle was not an outlier, she was in fact like a Wooloo in having a defining personality trait that is the very stereotypical of the Milcery species as a whole, which was about being both sweet and flavorful. That is both metaphorically as much as literally.

I had yet to meet Curdle’s evolution form, but with the name like ‘All Creamy’… well it kind of spells it out for me for what Curdle would eventually evolve into, just not what it would look like in practice.

Vanillish even told me about the fact Curdle could evolve right now, but was looking for someone to help them with the evolution. First the assistant in the evolution needed to give the Milcery a berry or cookie, something sweet at the very least and then grab and spin the Milcery around clockwise or counterclockwise to change the Milcery into several different, apparently flavorful, forms. Apparently time of day has an effect on the evolution as much as the sweet or berry given to them, they get stuck with said cookie or berries as a natural part of them for the rest of their lives… really weird stuff.

On a side note, one of the rarest choices of Alrcremie forms is apparently the bitter flavor form, because it was rare to find someone who even likes bitter flavors like dark chocolate.

At least Milcery and Alcremie can regenerate their sugary bodies infinitely as long as they had the energy to do so. That they made for exceptionally good pastry chefs gave me pause and dubious feelings about eating anything from a local bakery here.

Fairy Types tended to have long lives since their needs were incredibly simple like Grass Type Pokémon, they just needed flowers and beautiful forestry to live happy lives. Explains why the city almost looks like an entire forest tree top town in and of itself, because Fairy Types had plenty of similarities to the rumored Fae back home on Equus.

The one thing to be entirely thankful for is that the Fairy Types didn’t seem to have the nastier temperament of said Fae.

At least the entire city wasn’t made of Fairy Wood, so that was one worry off my mind about this world exploding violently. No, Fairy Wood was actually found, grown and harvested on one of the islands where Fairy Types hang out mostly when outside ‘The Dream’ as they called Titania’s main capital, a place that can be reached from any of the Fairy Dust Islands scattered in a manner that seemed to be flowing behind the back of Arceus’s neck on the Ransei Continent map.

I hadn’t asked the proprietor of ‘Vanillish Delish’ about Nixtorm yet, but Quetal was from Nixtorm and it felt a bit invasive to ask someone else about what the Kingdom of Ice Types was like without getting to know them first.

At least it was nice to know that Nixtorm was like any other kingdom, with both good and bad people. From the way Quetal tells it, a number of Ice Types can be quite heartless, though that would be a major bias on his part even if he actually lived there at one point.

“Are you feeling lonely? I’m a Cutiefly, it’s not often we get outsider guests.” A small friendly bug asked, tiny needle nose proboscis meant for pollen gathering, two large fairy wings on top of the fluffy body and four legs. Looked less than threatening on a good day, but Pokémon had deceiving amounts of strength as much as Digimon had deceiving amounts of viciousness in their appearances sometimes not matching their actual personalities.

Well Dormarch isn’t vicious or dangerous, though I did kind of want his heart and mind out of me and Dolly and back in a body so that I could hug and cuddle him. My poor sweet boy went through so much with worrying about me and even sacrificed himself to save Dolly and the others and that sacrifice definitely hadn’t gone in vain either. The end result was him being half dead still being stuck in the back of my mind, along with that specific quarter of him literally weighing on it.

The Pokémon before me looked like the previous evolution of Lord Oberon the Ribombee. Ribombee changes include a more bipedal like flying stature while gaining a torso, the previous body becoming the head in the process of growing a smaller torso below that, and two scarf like fur protrusions around the neck that hung down the back.

The one thing to be said about the evolution, is that the Cutiefly seems to get marginally larger and smarter, but the evolution didn’t seem to be adding much more than that aside from a bit more fluff that looks like a cute scarf. Still the end result was going from adorable pony style Breezies to adorable Breezies with a more vertical hippogriff or bipedal dragon form.

A Cutiefly was even smaller than Lit, probably among one of the smallest Pokémon next to a Flabebe without a flower, which was a fairly rare occurrence considering how much power a Flabebe would put into their flower to make it nigh indestructible as long as they could live.

I seriously hoped the people back in Aurora are okay after the sudden attack.

To put it succinctly, Lord Oberon was small and cute looking, but in no way did I think he wasn’t a viable threat considering this realm of pink skies. If a small planet shaped like him existing doesn’t spell it out enough that the guy obviously had power or at least some form backing to even have this realm be built in the first place.

“I’m okay… just thinking about a lot of things, you don’t have to worry about me.” I’m too busy worrying about a lot of other things to really care about focusing on myself too much, my mental issues that I’m bottling and the anxiety of something happening here was building up even if nothing was happening at all.

I was safe and yet didn’t feel like it, even as the Cutiefly fluttered around the flowers talking about pollen in general and how tasty the nectar was today. I wonder what small world problems happened here.

“Not having a good week?” The Cutiefly asked innocently, he seemed nice enough even if his odd addiction for stuffing his face into the nearby flowers was a bit awkward.

“Try the most part of a year that isn’t over yet. I’ve been counting the days.” I grumbled, somewhat glad for Oberon footing the bill for the smoothie I was using to heal my body. Still had a few weeks to go before year had gone by and I spent most of it in pain or traction.

I really didn’t feel safe about being indebted to something called a ‘Fairy Type’, but that’s just my completely rampant suspicions about something bad actually happening around me in this given place.

“Yikes, where you come from must have been really bad, nice to see you ended up in a nice relaxing place for once." The Cutiefly was just being innocently friendly.

“More like it’s all the trouble I’ve had trying to get back to a place I call home, than home itself.” Which was no longer Meadow Hills the last time I checked, but Huoshan upper tier, western side so I could watch the sun set on a beautiful day with Tianhuo. Provided Celestia, Twilight or whoever it is running the sun currently isn’t committing shenanigans again. “Getting home is kind of what’s keeping me going at this point…”

“Okay, so it’s more of a where you’ve been that’s horrible. Some would say it’s not the destination, but the journey itself that’s important. Well no place is perfect, not even here being as idealistic and peaceful as Oberon tries to keep things. Guy leads a hectic life despite seeming entirely unflappable in how he acts.” Which the Cutiefly brought up, so I can ask the question about it when he was done talking. “He’s in fact the most targeted prankster in the Kingdom of Titania. If you’re a prankster around here, then you’re going to want to target him eventually for a whole variety reasons. At least he made a rule about not targeting guests on or with a purpose... semantics is also kind of a thing around here, we Fairy Types really can’t help ourselves sometimes.”

“Are Fairy Types more about body language than actual visible appearances?” This has been bugging me since I started watching the Fairy Types around here go about their businesses in having a nice day. Cute, cuddly looking, but their possible hidden natures had me wary and on edge.

“Yes, but you didn’t hear that from me!” The Cutiefly stated jovially as he landed on the tip of my nose and wiggled some pollen into my nostrils as I inhaled. I promptly sneezed him off my nose in a cloud of nice smelling dust. “Sure we love to keep up outward appearances of being happy and alright, but our bodies give away our feelings far more than our faces do for the attentive like you. We’re really good actors sometimes, which comes up often in the pranking we do. That and the retelling of stories that seemed to go in a specific forced cycle kind of way.”

I have heard that Fae tended to get stuck repeating history a lot, which is why the stories are sometimes living in an endless cycle until something breaks it and causes a different kind of cycles. Depends on if you’re talking about the immortal or the long lived versions that reincarnate into doing the same things if slightly different the next time around.

“I’m not really… big into pranks.” Except when I tried to get Dolly to let go of our bond after making it, which right now would be instant death for Dormarch should our bond break for any reason.

No pressure there… nope… none at all… I’m in denial about a lot of things right now and am not currently spiraling into a completely mental basket case like every Lambkin before me.

Dolly sent me a message that she appreciated my methods, including the one bit with the peanut butter on her nose which I thought was a little bit cruel of me in particular.

“Well expect the unexpected, because it’s far safer than constantly committing violence on one another, at least… we do have a clearly labeled arena for such a thing if you want to get more physical with somebody in a less fun way.” Cutiefly seemed good intentioned and his body language brokered no ill feelings or will. He was as happy as he appeared to be flittering about the flowers and sticking his nose into them. “Ah yeah, the good stuff… I can get really high off of this pollen. So did you want to talk about anything else?”

“Did Oberon send you to look out for me?” I stated flatly.

“Yes, but I don’t think he ever wanted me to tell you that, guys got eyes everywhere because of the rather excessive pranking wars that go on in the city proper. You have gangs, teams and even solo acts, it’s really all kinds of amazing the planning they put into everything they do really when it comes to large scale silliness. Lord Oberon at least wants the safe zones to not be destroyed by our ‘slightly’ excessive, but necessary, pranking practices that is intrinsic to the term ‘Fairy’.” As Cutiefly said this, Dolly sent me a mental image of her smugly dodging a pie that had been thrown her way and avoiding a banana peel thrown into her path a second later before her paw could step on it. Yeah, Dolly probably likes it here, given she appreciates a good, mostly harmless, pranks. “The meadow outskirts like here is a quiet place to get away from all of that stuff, no messing with food either, some people get a bit weird about Alcremie using themselves in their baked goods. It’s no different from bees making honey really and honey basically comes from their backsides. We have laws like if someone is allergic to a pie, then make sure not to use that as pie stuffing for several months and the pies have to be lukewarm at best when thrown… not freshly baked straight out of the oven. We have rules of engagements and everything. I just want to make sure you are doing okay personally and that nobody is continuing to target you after that incident with the whole oil on the hill setup, which was admittedly pretty funny to me given they had created nice soft splashdown mud spot for it so it wouldn’t cause terrible injury, and I’m not just here because Oberon asked me to be. I actually volunteered for this!”

“You have nothing better to be doing than talking to me either I take it?” I queried a second later as bluntly. “Thank you for checking on me. Also yes, I was already hurting before I slipped and went tumbling down the hill and I’ve barely had a day or two to rest since fighting what seemed like a physical god that easily took me out of the fight and could have done that sooner or at any time really. I should really consider myself lucky to be alive after being hit with a powerful beam attack, I think having the healing smoothies on tap more than makes up for the small injuries on top of all my major ones like having a full bodied cracked skeleton slipping down the hill.”

“Your welcome and yeah, it’s not exactly the best way to be introduced to us upon first arriving here. Well I could be doing other things than getting high off of all these flowers, which I am, but talking to a rightfully paranoid being like you is a good way to make a new friend I might not see much of. Travelers and outsiders like you tend to do a lot of weird things as you move around and I’m surprised to see someone trying and failing to relax in one of the most peaceful places I can think of.” Cutiefly stated as he dug his face into a nearby flower and started making moaning noises as he wiggled what passes for his face into it. “I’m quite sorry your first step in this world was a part of someone’s prank just one step beyond the Fairy Type transportation circle. Oh yeah, all the pollen… the good stuff…”

“Do you really need to make those noises?” The guy was kind of disturbing my peace on purpose, which paradoxically was making me more relaxed now that something is upsetting all the quiet constant contemplation and self-reflection of my rather fragile continued existence and the painful deprecation thereof.

That was along with thinking of those I cared for and was trying to get home. Not to mention the friends I had in the Pokemon Realm or even the Digimon Realm. We’ve left behind a lot of friends in our wake like Po and the Furious Five, along with Shifu and then there’s the fact that Oogway passed away and he seemed like a nice grandfatherly type of person. Skunk and Dragon in the first dimension. A lot of friends we made traveling the previous world ‘where dreams can come true’.

Mind you Dodo left his home to be with Shanty as best friends for life, Dolly did the same with me and I hoped we didn’t pick up even more hitchhikers. Goodness knows what would happen if I returned to Equus with fifty plus dogs to take care of, if I could survive being a Chrysomallus long enough to even do so. It was in fact a genuine worry on my part that I magnetize canines to myself… or was I magnetized to them? It seemed to work either way at this point.

Would Smolder be able to forgive herself for being mind controlled? Would Ocellus be able to look me in the eyes given I beat the daylights out of her girlfriend? Is Shanty going to be okay with them and Dodo? As a responsible adult and caretaker I had to get back to the girls, but I was kind of responsible for that metal monster following us back to this world and had to responsibility for it being in Nixtorm. Well it was more like the Digivice’s fault, but it was Dormarch’s Digivice, so again my responsibility.

How am I this useless to really do anything?

I was starting to hyperventilate when a voice cut through some of the rising darker feelings slowly crushing me under the weight of my mind that was trying and failing to rest. This was while dealing with the numerous complications therein of the situation back in Illusio and anywhere in the Western half of Ransei where I had friends. That voice was Cutiefly tearing me away from my descent into a mental spiral of anguish, I was in a field of flowers and not frolicking or happy, frolicking was usually my happy place.

My usual happy place among flowers wasn’t working. The stress had admittedly been getting to me in the last world, it was still there, I was just trying to ignore it and put it behind me to move ever forward to whatever the future will hold.

“You obviously have no idea what Hummingbirds go through when they drink nectar and we can taste the joy of flowers too. While spreading the pollen around to help more grow.” The Cutiefly stated a little too happily and airily, almost sounded suspiciously drunk. “Nature is simple, we Pokémon are not and are a far more intelligent than the average animals around us. We’re very complicated in comparison as the world can be sometimes, you just need to stop overthinking and breathe a little. Maybe clear the air of all those foggy thoughts a little… like this… Fairy Wind!”

With a burst of power from his body, the fog of pollen hovering around my head and suffocating me slightly cleared up and sent the pollen to all the surrounding flowers. Flowing and floating far off on the seemingly weak breeze that didn’t even disturb the natural butterflies fluttering about.

“You are very distracting.” I complimented with a wry smile, as I took a gulp of fresh air. “It’s actually kind of refreshing, but it’s not going to help my issues.”

“Don’t mind me, I’m just making sure you don’t fall into a depression loop and to stop one you need a friend. We Fairy Types tend to have a thing about Dark Types, for the reason that nothing about darkness cannot stop our smiles.” The Cutiefly bowed to me from the flower he landed on. “This Cutiefly will be at your service should you need it while present milady, though I think you’re probably more up to any task physically. Also your Dark Type friend could stand to cheer up some more too.”

“His brother was practically killed on top of him in Nixtorm.” The sudden hissing sound and recoil from the Cutiefly subtle shifted in worrying, not about me, but about Quetal had garnered my attention. He was a genuinely nice person.

“Yeah, something traumatic like that will stick with you, especially if that was the only family you had.” Cutiefly muttered as I held out my right hoof for him to land on.

When Cutiefly mentioned that being the only family Quetal had, it made me wonder about Quetal’s past when the only person he talked about was of his brother sacrificing himself…

“You think everyone in his family abandoned him or are dead?” I asked with a hint of sadness.

“Again, no place can be a bed of roses as surely as the season’s change, no place can be perfectly safe… only safe enough like here. Eventually you’ll have to leave ‘The Dream’, even Lord Oberon knows you won’t stay here forever and you kind of need all the help you can get before you do leave to at least be mentally prepared. I personally think you are a not a in a good place to be traveling.” The Cutiefly seemed kind of sad. “Your Dark Type friend knows you’re going to Nixtorm as soon as you heard about the deadly monster plaguing the lands there and is physically tearing the kingdom apart bit by bit. Lord Oberon knows a lot of things really. Sometimes I wonder how Lord Oberon knows some of the things he does, but then again information tends to flow from where one least expects and can come from the unlikeliest of directions.”

“Didn’t answer my question, but given the general gist of the answer your portraying…” I trailed off and gently put cutiefly on a flower he hadn’t dug his face into. “I think its best if I went for a short frolic, then join Dolly and Quetal.”

“Do you need help finding them?” Cutiefly asked as I got up.

“No, I always know where they are… or at least I always know where Dolly is.” Wouldn’t be hard to find, just follow the trail of prank related destruction. Dolly was more cunning than the Fairy Types initially thought apparently and she was having the time of her life. “Sorry about any mess that gets made because we’re here.”

“Think nothing of it, now go simply enjoy life, then worry about things in the order that you can actually deal with them.” Might do just that Cutiefly. “I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but there will be things outside of your control that you have nothing you can do about. Don’t worry about that and worry about what you can do. I’m small, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do big things, like help someone who looks a bit lost. Most people who end up here usually are…”

With that we parted ways and I went to get another smoothie from ‘Vanillish Delish’ and enjoy what time I had left before my next inevitable painful experience.

-A few hours of Pom frolicking later, an inn, Dolly-

“So we’re living in this weird place for a few days?” Well at least the accommodations were nice and the lights of the glowing dust lamps were pretty, Pom seems to be even a bit relaxed… even if she still seems like a bundle of nerves waiting for something to go entirely wrong. Anybody would be understanding once they’ve been around her for at least a month.

Fairy Types were definitely easy to get into a prank fight with and they really get into it, couldn’t walk down the street without a fart cushion, banana peel or an attempt at a pie to the face happening. That’s just the classic stuff, it’s the outside the box stuff that almost catches me off guard.

I hopped onto a nearby cushion and looked at Pom, she gently ran her left hoof over my head and back affectionately before turning to Quetal.

“Yes, but I’m finding it hard to relax knowing we’re the most interesting thing around for the Fairy Types to mess with. Met a Cutiefly who implied impulse control is a major problem for Fairy Types, really nice guy about it though… a little too into flowers.” Seeing Pom grimace a bit, I tilted my head. “Don’t ask Dolly, you don’t want to know.”

“I’m feeling a bit uncomfortable surrounded by so many Fairy Type… at least they had a move shop with a Gulpin support present for changing out moves.” Quetal did do something weird with a big mouthed blob, but I didn’t understand what it was. “I forgot Double Team and I’m keeping the moves Swift, Substitute and Aerial Ace. I learned a move with a bit more punch for fighting when it eventually comes to it, I just hope I don’t have to use it too often.”

“What’s the move?” Pom seemed interested in hearing it. “It won’t be an Ice Type one considering…”

Pom trailed off looking like she didn’t want to finish saying it, but even I knew the story. Goodness knows what would happen if Dylan went out like that defending me because of something I did.

“…” Quetal looked like he wasn’t going to say it, but then he shivered a bit and looked Pom and me in the eyes. “The move… it feels like I’m taking advantage of you just using it. Come with me I’m sure our guide Curdle knows a place where I can use it safely and I need you to be there for me to see it in action.”

“Okay.” Pom didn’t even think about it, neither did I for that matter, but I wondered what Quetal learned that had him worried about how we’ll react. The dude saved our lives from drowning, he should give us more credit than that. Pom turned towards me and quietly said. “This might be a problematic move for him for some reason, go easy on him Dolly.”

Yeah, forgot Pom can read my mind on a whim, got to watch out for that.

-A few minutes later, training space within the inn-

“So what move are you going to use?” Curdle asked as I sat on Pom’s back watching as things were set up.

Quetal didn’t answer and was focused on a Fairy Wood log, made of the sturdy wood stuff that exploded when you light it on fire when there was enough of it.

Weird properties for wood to have really, glad they didn’t use it as a building material around here, but I guess being high in the air means that an airship is not likely to catch fire at the very least.

I wasn’t about to taste her again anytime soon and usually I liked the taste of sweet things, but not when they were alive or so sickeningly sweet my teeth would rot in an instant. Even had Pom check my mouth a few times, apparently my teeth were fine. In fact my teeth were relatively clean and completely healthy after Pom was through with them. Don’t recall my teeth ever being this healthy, probably had to do with my proximity to Pom or something.

“First…” Quetal mumbled, before splitting into two Quetals, he’s done that a few times. I think even Shanty can clone herself with water. Pom and I couldn’t do that… but at least Pom could naturally move fast enough to leave images of herself behind, I needed to boost my momentum to achieve the same effect or have a ‘Haste’ going.

“Next.” One of the Quetal’s glowed and multiple forms appeared, the problem with those forms is that they looked quite familiar as they launched at Quetal’s Target attacking it, including a third copy of Quetal? I thought he could only do the one temporary clone thing. “That…”

Even Quetal seemed concerned that there was a third copy of him for a few seconds.

“Huh… myself…” Quetal continued looking dumbfounded as he stood there in front of a moderately damaged bit of wood he pushed back with a lot force. “Brother?”

“Whoa, that’s a pretty uniquely rare Dark Type move, very few Pokémon can learn that naturally.” Curdle stated and the way she seemed to flex or shift in the air meant she was happy about something… I think, I had to get Pom to confirm it for me.

“What does that move do exactly?” Pom was more curious than judging and I was curious too, considering I just saw a copy of myself, Pom, Curdle and even Quetal all launch a variety of attacks on the wooden post.

My copy did a single Counter Rave ramming attack, Pom’s copy was already in her beast mode and totally slashed the log with a powerful claw, Curdle’s copy blasted it with a flash of energy and both of Quetal’s copies did his dancing Aerial Ace claw swiping thing that had an arcing bit of air like what Shanty does.

“I just wanted to confirm something… I guess I confirmed I’m my own friend at least…” The way Quetal said that made me whine and wonder what he meant.

“What is that move and why does it bother you?” Pom asked a bit more sternly, not seeming to care that she saw what she looked like when she went total wolf beast.

“It’s a Dark Type move called Beat Up, it’s fairly effective when used as a unit command because it’s been staunchly named Beat Up Battalion by Dark Types.” Quetal looked away. “It’s at its most powerful when you have a lot of friends around that are not knocked out cold… or worse.”

“Then why do you make it sound like it’s an awful move?” Pom asked as she crouched down next to him so I was at eye level giving him a sympathetic look, because I kind of thought the move looked awesome with me in it doing my thing. “It sounds nice that the move seems to rely on friendship.”

“To start, the move is almost entirely useless when I’m on my own, but apparently I can summon an extra temporary copy of myself through my Substitute for a triple attack so a bit more useful than I previously thought it was.” Quetal admitted while continuing to look away, I leaned over and gave him a gentle affectionate nuzzle. It made him blush and back up a bit while coughing into his left claw. “Also it makes me feel guilty for using you in it, it was either I learned this or the move Punishment which punishes Pokémon for using buffing moves like Mundo’s Coaching. Punishment sounded a bit too on the nose to me for how I feel at times.”

“Yes and every attack is either neutral or counted as Dark Type energy, depends on who you ask really… given there is more than one way to do it, like inspiriting your friends to bum rush a given target with Dark Type energy. This is definitely the far nicer version of it. We do have Impidimps around here who’ve met at least one Pokémon that can do that move.” Curdle seemed to have a bit of happiness in her voice. “It’s pretty rare to see in action really, glad I got to be a part of it in your lifetime!”

“You’re not upset that I used you’re appearance in my attack, that draws the viciousness out of me?” Quetal seemed more confused than anything.

“No, because it means you see us as friends, because there’s no way we would be a part of the attack otherwise!” Curdle responded cheerfully while rubbing up against Quetal affectionately, dude didn’t look like he appreciated it though.

I don’t how to feel about having a living liquid cuddle up against me personally, but I’ve had to clean cream out of my fur before on multiple occasions. So would probably be with Quetal on this one.

“You don’t understand, the move makes my friends attack a target without hesitation... doesn’t it bother you to see yourself act like that?” Quetal suddenly received a hugging tackle from me and I latched onto him.

“Well it’s not actually me, it’s just the move right? I’m more curious about the mechanics of how the move generates copies of your nearby friends. You said it doesn’t work if you’re friends are out cold, why?” It seemed Pom was interested in the move to, to the point that Quetal even started sniffling a bit.

“I just don’t want to be seen as another evil Dark Type for using my friends in my attacks.” Stated Quetal who sat down with me still holding onto him affectionately with a wagging tail.

“Well at least I know you think of me as a friend as much as I do you.” Pom responded quietly, after a moment Quetal smirked at her, then back at me and then at Curdle with a slight bit of apprehension and then he started laughing.

“Heh… we’ve been friends for a while… through so many battles, yet I never seemed to excel all that much or feel like I’ve been making much of a difference.” Hey dude, Quetal, your problems are our problems, that’s what friends are for! “Now that I have a chance at evolution, I don’t know if I even want to be a Weavile as I don’t think it would change much about me aside from adding an extra claw and evening out my ability to sense things in all directions.”

“I think Dolly wants you to know…” Pom started to say before Quetal held up his left claw stopping her.

“That we’re friends, yeah, it’s just sinking in for me now how many of those I have gained since I joined the Pokémon Companions that are traveling around with you. Shine is even one of the best ones I’ve ever had, since I think we share some things in common.” Well that’s sad, there must always be at least one person you can confide or take solace with, glad that Quetal had some. I had Fergus the Park Fox and now I have Pom, she even speaks dog too. “I didn’t exactly have anyone before we all met that day in Arbora Town, I was getting by easily enough on the kindness of Grass Types in general and doing small odd jobs. Who’d have thought you wouldn’t mind being friends with someone like me.”

“I’m friends with a dark hero unicorn who in turn has a demon for a friend, I think I’m more scared of that demon than a ball of sunshine like you in comparison Quetal.” Pom stated sarcastically with an actual smile, seeing her smile like that was quite a rarity and worth a lot to imprint in memory.

“Hehehe… this is the pot calling a Quetal, black!” Curdle definitely nailed it and I started laughing.

“Hmph… I need to practice this move. The reason it works the way it does is it generates a copy of any actively aware and viable nearby friends to launch the most powerful attacks they can do depending entirely on my capabilities, that’s the nice version of it. The not so nice one inspirits your friends force them into doing the attacks themselves, I’m basically happier summoning shadow copies of you to help me. Anyway, that’s why your copy goes for a claw slash instead of the Thousand Spears: Huo, as that kind of power is harder for me to replicate with dark energy instantly.” He seemed embarrassed that he can’t make Pom’s copy do her most powerful attack, but he could get mine to do my most impressive ability that’s almost like teleporting that Dormarch could do. In fact, my Counter Rave is fairly similar to his Search Hunter… hrm… so maybe… I looked at my chest and considered where a piece of Dormarch in me was. Huh… even now Dormarch? So cool for a little bro, we’ll find a way to revive you eventually I swear on the Dalmatian family name. “Now that I say it, it’s like I went from one copy generating move to another that can actually do some damage… with a bit of a caveat that I need active friends around to make it even work to its fullest extent. Whatever is the least energy intensive most powerful thing you can do tends to be used, unless I really push all the copies to do something specific that I know your capable of, the power of the move increases per every friend or ally that is nearby that is capable of being used in the attack. It’s a bit of a force multiplier now that the three of us are...”

“Four!” Intoned Curdle cheerfully.

“Separated from the others and we’re going into so much danger…” Quetal stated dully while petering off to glare at Curdle as she smiled at him. “You’re not coming with us Curdle.”

Still not going to stop hugging this dour biped weasel until he cheers up.

“Why is it a Dark Type move if it can be used in such a friendly manner though?” Pom asked again.

“Why do you think it’s called Beat Up? It’s a move that calls on everyone present to be launched at a single target, it’s a fairly brutal attack.” Quetal looked uneasy about that. “Also I can, at any time, force you to attack a target if I chose to inspirit you with Beat Up. There’s using my friends and then there’s ‘USING’ my friends.”

“You’d never use it like that unless you thought it was necessary, given how Nixtorm scares you and you don’t want to talk about the kingdom, it’s fairly understandable of you to seek out a powerful attack to really put you in better fighting ability… even if you just use it with your substitute to create a third clone.” Pom looked away rubbing at her right leg. “What with how things tend to go downhill around me. I don’t have anything else aside from manipulation to get stronger or abusing my special nature, which is really bad to do.”

“I don’t blame you for the things that have happened so far, it’s more like you wandered into them than them being because of you Pom.” Quetal stated waving a claw at Pom’s worrying that she keeps dragging us into messes. Sure I almost got killed in that last fight with Guy-dead-mess, but I’m still here and breathing. I remember Pom holding me and giving me a cuddly warmth. “Life has at least been more interesting than anything, when everything felt tasteless or lifeless before claw.”

“Still looking to be a Dark Type hero?” Pom asked holding out her left hoof.

“I am a Dark Type hero, I just need to step up more.” Quetal nodded and bumped his right claw against it, I added my paw and Curdle surround our paw, hoof and claw with her body while grinning at us.

We all shivered in slight disgust at the smiling fairy blob interrupting a heartwarming moment.

“Coming with you~…” Curdle said in a cheeky disturbing tone. “Also can you help me with my evolution ritual before we head out for Nixtorm?”

“Even if we said no, you’d still follow us wouldn’t you?” Quetal grumbled.

“Yep, friends for life!” The mildly edible monster Curdle is looking to join our traveling group I guess. Should I be horrified by this or find it hilarious? It’s one of those between things where you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Also I want to be an Alcremie for the adventures you guys go on! So which one of you will help me evolve?”

“I’ll do it Curdle. I still don’t know when we’re leaving and we’re not doing so before we meet Lord Oberon, so we’ll talk to him tomorrow to see if he actually wants anything from us.” Well that sounds fair Pom, he was giving us free room, food and a place nicer than out in the cold at night on one of the islands. Civilization was better than roughing it, ask my brother Dylan about it. “If not, then we can ask him about transport or how to get to Nixtorm from here in a safer manner. We can worry about meeting up with our friends later. If they are strong enough to finish off Gilgamesh, then they’ll be strong enough to find us eventually. I just hope, Smolder, Ocellus, Dodo and Shanty will be alright until then.”

Yeah, we were going to have to find them after our adventures in Nixtorm with the giant scary metal death monster that’d look awesome on a death metal album, it’d even be a literal representation of the horror we were going to face!

Night terrors of our future fight with big, metal and deadly... as Shanty would say... ahoy!

Author's Note

So I took Beat Up and I decided to give it multiple interpretations.

Non elemental attack mimicry using Dark Type energy as a catalysts to make copies of nearby allies for the attack. (How the move first worked, with a side of inspiriting intent to assault.)

Same as 1, but Dark type energy in every attack launched by the copies.

Actually using the allies by inspiriting them with Dark Type energy to force them into attack, this would not earn you many favors. (The non-elemental version of this was a Sneasel's Signature move, later Pokémon games would have it do Same Type Attack Bonus Dark Type move damage per every attack.)

Possibly doing both inspiriting and copy creation at the same time for a doubled Beat Up.

All of these are the plausible uses of the move, could you think of anything further? Do I have a good grasp of what Beat Up can do?

Quetal has the title 'Trickster' for a reason and this will change how he approaches a fight instead of sticking back or doing quick hit and runs.

Also what flavor of Alcremie? I'm thinking sour yellow for the joke. What cookie or berry topping as well? Alcremie had so many variations in it's appearance depending on how you evolved them.

359. A True Smile?

-Universe: ???, a place called France, person: costumed girl-

“So Barkk has been going on about this Doggy Messiah for how long Miss Hound?” Ladybug asked me.

“For a while now and since Trixx disappeared, even stated they would find the coordinate for the dimension the Doggy Messiah lives in eventually after having caught a whiff of them.” I rubbed my right shoulder warily. “When I transform into Miss Hound… I can even feel it, the fervor with which the words ‘Doggy Messiah’ are said and feel the joy of just knowing that they exist and that they are real. I can feel Barkk’s need to find her and give her a hug, it’s almost like a cult like itch while I’m transformed. Even now I feel the need to hug a sheep and protect her with my very being… I think my Kwami might be corrupted.”

“How would Barkk even find this Doggy Messiah anyway?” Ladybug asked me with clear worry in her voice.

“That’s the thing, Barkk thinks Trixx apparently let herself be captured on purpose by something she’s calling the friend of the Doggy Messiah. Barkk really didn’t make much sense, but I believe the Doggy Messiah exists just by becoming Miss Hound and it’s… strangely comforting that all dogs have an actually nice being to pray to even if she isn’t a goddess. She just seems to be an ordinary mortal sheep of above average intelligence.” Even I was praying that the Doggy Messiah would be alright as Miss Hound and that’s a weird feeling. “A being that is so kind and… ugh… you see what I mean… it’s really getting to me Ladybug, fix it! I mean, I know Barkk is all about adoration, but this is outright worship that actually makes sense in the context to me as Miss Hound and I should be doing it more too for the Doggy Messiah if fluffy and in need of protection by those who seek to be loyal to her… gah, stop messing with my head!”

“I can see where this would be a problem… but is it really that bad?” Ladybug asked as she put a hand on my shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze to let me know she was here for me.

“Yes, apparently the Doggy Messiah has been recognized by a major star dog of the Canis Major constellation and somehow that translates into every universe said constellation exists in slowly getting a bleed over ripple effect for all dogs to want to befriend her in life… or death… which is really weird.” Who knew that Kwami could make you a cultist, I certainly didn’t, besides the Doggy Messiah sounds like an anxiety riddled sheep that loves and is loved. Even I loved her… no that’s just the Miss Hound transformation talking, it’s a rather infectious happy feeling really to know that she exists. How do I even know this, what in the world was Barkk putting in my head?! “So do you have any ideas of how to help me? This is weird even for Miraculous and Kwami.”

“I can help, because I’m a dog!” We both jumped at the sight of a dog. It wearing a strange suit, glowing blue and had clean white fur. It had appeared out of nowhere and was simply floating there with his tongue sticking out of his mouth as he panted happy with a waggling tail. “All will be well. I like hugs, do you like hugs too? Hugs are great and they make the universe not hurt.”

Before I knew it I was hugging a corgi and it felt right somehow.

“Um… are you an alien breed of corgi?” I asked warily, even Ladybug seemed wary of the blue floating dog that was looking at us with affection and a very improbably strong feeling of ‘HOPE’ that came off it, like the hope that we would be its new friends.

That is very likely because he was adorable and friendly sounding.

“Oh is this that thing where people are calling me bread again? If so, then I’m delicious!” The glowing corgi stated jovially, not exactly the smartest alien dog I’ve ever met and I’ve only ever met Barkk. “I’ve been spreading the word that Doggy Messiah shines on us all who feel the song of the canine, she is peaceful and nothing to worry overly about, unless you have her personal ire which she will intone three words for. Only dogs with no prior attachments and a need to protect will truly contract with her to protect her from danger and she will care for them with the strength of a thousand suns of hugs I wish I could be a part of. She is the peace for all dogs to take solace in at the end of our lives for just knowing she exists out there somewhere, for we are usually loyal to the Queen of Canines. Bad dogs are always selfish in her presence and she’ll always quickly know about them. I’m not a bad boy though, I’m a good boy, even if I’ve never basked in her presence personally… I will never want her all to myself forever!”

“Uh… where did you come from?” Ladybug finally asked, being as confused as I was about the talking blue, glowing, floating and magical dog about the obviously existent and wonderful Doggy Messiah.

No seriously, does the worship have an off button or do I need to start being a hero faster so I can avoid becoming like Barkk and this… dog?

“Space, big space, all over the space, space is large, so wide and I can run everywhere in it and even chase my tail across the stars, many places I came from…-------- I are lost.” After a bit of staring the dog finally admitted with a whine and lowered his chin into his chest, but he didn’t stay upset for long as his cheerful enthusiasm came back a second later. It was almost as if ‘HOPE’ was his very being even in the most hopeless of situations that seemed impossible wouldn’t stop him. “Do you know where blue lanterns is? I only came here because I heard someone needing guidance on the Doggy Messiah! All will be well… for I… am a dog.”

That was obvious, but you weren’t a normal dog by any stretch of the imagination.

Eventually, without the Kwami known as Trixx on some kind of magical journey to find a what sounds like a friend of all dogs, we would add the ridiculously odd space dog to our repertoire to make up for the loss.

The dog of ‘HOPE’ was actually very helpful with healing injuries and became a registered emotional support animal. He was a normal corgi, well as normal as a corgi that exudes the very concept of ‘HOPE’ constantly could be anyway with healing powers and the supernatural ability of blue energy.

The dog simply became scarily good at being emotional support animal for anyone having a bad day and Ladybug was in need of him at times, he even hoped to meet the Doggy Messiah someday to give her a friendly lick before returning to the Blue Lanterns whoever they are as an organization. Barkk really liked hanging out with him too, the dog was exceptionally friendly.

May the Doggy Messiah be happy or at the very least okay wherever she goes… I actually seriously mean that. She sounded nice… also I strangely could understand dogs and their needs now even when I wasn’t transformed. I’ve become a dog whisperer, not that many people will ever know.

-???, Pom-

Among the random pillars I ran as quietly as I could, my wool cushioning my hooves. Absolutely knowing that I had to find a place to hide, being out in the open was a death sentence.

I gasped as I leaned my back against a pillar of ice and looked around the corner of it… I heard a fluctuating growling coming from the chilling darkness as fog flowed around the place.

I didn’t see whatever it was that was coming for me. The noise was unlike anything I’ve ever heard before, frightening and driving my baser instincts to run. I knew better than my baser instincts, but in this situation I was willing to work with them.

The ruins and caves around me were silent when I started to hold my breath and darted between pillars of ice and then hid under a toppled pillar of stone.

Only then did I allow myself to breathe a little, I was being hunted, targeted even, by a monstrosity that was hiding and moving in the shadows.

There was barely any light down here and only my limited night vision had let me stay one step ahead of it.

I huffed and puffed quietly as sat there, my eyes searched the spacious area of the ruins I was in, looking around and seeing nothing but ice, stone and the cloying darkness and cold foggy air around me.

Was it scarier to not know where the monster was or to know exactly where it was, but you couldn’t do a single thing about it?

I think nothing being there was as terrifying knowing that something had been, I turned my head to left as I thought I saw something move and held my breath as I saw a long metal tail slide out of sight.

That Skull Chaosdramon X thing was here too?!

The smell of rotted and poisoned fleshed filled my nostrils and my heart started to pound as much as I heard the soft stomps of feet on snow slinking away.

I couldn’t relax, never relax, danger was out to get me and it wasn’t something I could put up a fight against. How does one destroy information anyway? Well erasing the information would be the way to do it, but I didn’t have the power.

A gold glow started to creep up my front legs and I immediately squashed it before the light attracted the monster back to me and or the glow infected me further.

It was already covering half my body now… when and why had I let it get this far?!

Don’t grow wings, don’t be found by the thing, can’t drop my guard and I knew something was definitely after me and out to get me, that’s my natural state of life at this point. It’s not a trick of my mind, there was something in the darkness and the safety of this stone pillar was suspect.

Where do I go, what do I do?! I tried to keep my breathing slow and quiet as I heard a soft rumbling growl.

Had to keep my ears out, had to use what little sight I had, all I could smell was the rot now permeating the area. I could probably feel it’s movements through the ground with my hooves even if there was wool covering them.

Why was this monster focusing entirely on me? What could it be possibly seeking me out for? Why was I the designated target? It had even mostly ignored both Quetal and Dolly, it was only after me specifically!

It was too quiet, was it waiting for me to come out of cover or was it just waiting for me to move so it could get me with less effort? Did it even know where I was?

I could hear the sound of my own rapidly beating heart in my chest, how could the monster not hear that and know where I was already?

I can’t stay here, I can’t move, what can I do? I needed a way out!

Dolly was distant, she had no clue where Quetal was and their newest friend was laying low, she didn’t have her wolf transformation which she could only do once a day. She could probably do it more with the more familiars she was connected to.

She could use her Chrysomallus side to run, but her friends were lost in this place and getting to Dolly or Dolly coming to her would be hard to do as she didn’t know where they were in relation to her.

Also for some reason she couldn’t remember how she got into this situation in the first place in the dark fog and ice covered ruins with a mindless and heartless monster gunning for her, trying with every ounce of its power to kill her.

She didn’t have the strength, she didn’t have the magic and she was feeling oddly drained…

Terror was gripping at her as she tried to find at least a source of light, she wouldn’t dare move or make her own. Running was what she was good at, forward or backwards she knew how run and evade.

A distorted growl sounded off and I put my back to the underside of the fallen pillar shivering, looking left and right… nothing.

When I looked back to the left I froze as did the sickly creature in mid swing with its claw upon being surprised to be noticed as I backed away slightly and out of its swinging range, but was still under the large stone pillar. It had long white hair with red tips, its bipedal grey ethereal body was covered in red welts and its eyes… it didn’t have them as they were hollowed and leaking or dripping with strange black fluids that smelled strongly of something tainted.

Its fangs were glistening with a dark burgundy and a bit of Quetal’s feather sticking out of its teeth along with bits of brain… my horror rose as the ghastly creature opened its mouth wide and lunged for me pushing me onto my back and out from under the safety of the pillar.

Before I knew it, its claws were digging right into my chest while raising its other one high into the air. It only said one word.

“Foe…” The creature intoned menacingly before intending to bite and slash down at me at the same time.

Its ghostly sounding voice had unwittingly caused us to be lit up in a sickly yellow glow as the Skull Chaosdramon X descended on both of us with this creature having drawn its attention.

I started to flail with all I had trying to claw myself out from under this monster and run away from the other one.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Kingdom of Titania within the Fairy Dust Islands, ‘The Dream’-

“Pom, please wake up, you’re okay, everything is going to be okay, you’re safe, please just stop panicking and wake up, yeah that’s it, calm down! Listen to my voice, I am here, right here with you.” A pleading Dolly came into focus as my eyes opened and out hotel room was clawed up quite a bit… I was breathing heavily as my eyes darted about and looking out the nearby window at the bright pink sky. “It’s okay… I’m here… Dolly’s here… Quetal’s here too…. we’re here Pom…”

The inns bed sheets were torn to shreds, as was the bed, the walls and anything in the general vicinity that my hooves could reach. I was soon looking up at a worried Dolly with a paw pressed against my chest my hoof dangerously close from clawing her face off, I quickly dropped it and relaxed my body.

Dolly proceeded to gently hug, nuzzle and lick me a few times with a wagging tail and clearly was fearful for me and not of me after what just happened.

Seriously, if I were anyone else right now I’d be absolutely terrified of me for having a night terror and taking it all out on my surroundings like this.

“Night terror, I’ve had a few of those myself… wasn’t nearly as dangerous when trying to wake up though.” Quetal didn’t seem to be as worried about being near me as he immediately approached after what had just happened.

Though he did make a note to gesture at all the magical claw marks permeating the entire room that I had unleashed while looking at me with worry and not fear. He gently nuzzled me too in an awkward manner.

Why weren’t they scared of me after that?!

I heard Dolly whimper slightly as she snuggled against me, today was supposed to be the day we were going to see Lord Oberon right?

Okay, let’s just… let’s just ignore that this happened… at least it wasn’t a nightmare about Gilgamesh taking out an entire army and whoever else before Quetal heard and saw him die to a massive explosion that beggared belief. Given said could be practically seen from any kingdom in the Ransei Region.

Why couldn’t I say that I was alright? Why couldn’t I say anything?

“Foe.” That voice haunted the back of my mind even now and I looked around, but didn’t see anything but Dolly and Quetal worrying over me as they noticed a sudden panic in my eyes.

“Pom, I don’t know what you just heard, but you’re imagining it. Calm down and maybe we can get started on breakfast… alright?” Dolly was trying to be comforting and thankfully she was something adorable and cute to wake up to, not that she appreciated those terms when in reference to herself. She preferred terms that were cooler by a percentage about a fifth of a hundred.

“Good morning everyone and welcome to a new day in The… oh… what happened here?” Despite the smiling face Curdle’s body showed surprise that the room and bed were practically destroyed and Dolly was clinging to me protectively. “Did someone have a premonition, yeah those usually happen in the realm of ‘The Dream’ since it can sometimes live up to its name, this one seemed exceptionally brutal judging by the outcome. So, who wants pancakes with some of ‘me’ on them!”

I gagged audibly, but still didn’t say anything. Even Dolly and Quetal didn’t respond positively to the idea, while sending Curdle looks of slight disgust.

“Foe.” The night terror was still quite fresh in my mind as the image flashed again and my eyes darted about for a few seconds, I quietly got up and started to woodenly move for the nearest privy, toilet or bathtub I could find.

-Some time later, building at the literal heart of the city-

We entered and I had been rather quiet all morning after breakfast, aside from a few pranking attempts, which were intercepted by other Fairy Types to prevent us from being hit, we made our way to the heart of the city. Which was literally where the heart would be on a Ribombee.

“Hello there, can you give me your name?” Asked Oberon kindly.

“No thanks, I’m still using mine.” I answered succinctly remembering Fairy Types like playing with semantics sometimes.

“Thought I’d try at least that once and maybe get one by you, okay tell me your names and I’ll tell you why you’re here. My name is Lord Oberon as you well know, anybody who comes here will know or at least remember my name as being of some importance here in Titania.” Lord Oberon was… ridiculously adorable and tiny! How could someone so tiny sound so regal? He looked to be full of authority as he bowed to us in the air and I returned that with a bow of my own. “How polite. As you might surmise I am a Ribombee, a specialist at making poffins, a rather delicious snack cake recipe known throughout the Ransei Region. I also make pollen puffs… special recipe, very delicious and highly nutritious and capable of being consumed safely by anyone, good for long travels and easy to carry in large quantities. Aside from that, I’m obviously the ruler of the Kingdom of Titania alongside my wife who happens to be a lovely Florges that loves the gardens and is my beloved Fairy Queen, but she might be a bit too busy for you to ever meet her.”

I didn’t say anything and waited, as did Dolly and Quetal. Once it seemed like Lord Oberon wouldn’t continue on or had anything else to say, I introduced us.

“I am Pom, this is Quetal, Dolly and I’m sure you sent Curdle to act as a guide, she’s been a very good one so far… aside from all the attempts to make us eat her.” That last part was still a problem and goodness knows Curdle has a problem. As do most Milcery and Alcremie as far as I know at this point and time without having talked to the later and only the former. “Which is fairly awkward.”

“You are here because I graciously intercepted your instant transportation to Nixtorm before you would ever be ready to go there, unfortunately my aim for the redirection wasn’t closer to the shore and I’m terribly sorry for the er… rather ‘bumpy and wet mishap’ of your arrival to the island. You seem quite drawn to trouble as it is to you.” He spoke in a rather upper crust and gentle tone, almost like he thought he was the most important creature in the room and probably was despite his diminutive stature. I’ve seen other Fairy Types that were larger than him, but they all still deferred to Lord Oberon for a reason. “That is the reason you are here, because I willed it. Now if you are about to ask me for help, well I will gladly give you all the assistance you could ever need with crossing the sea to the north when you are ready to leave, I’ll even throw in as many food supplies as you can feasibly carry given the harshness of Nixtorm… provided you do just one thing for me.”

“What is it and how long will it take?” Airship travel would get us to Nixtorm safely without problem, it would also be fast and I wouldn’t have to worry about anything until we get into the frozen kingdom proper.

I noted he didn’t say he would provide us any further aid once we got there, a one way trip then and we had to be ready.

“Now you see, I hope you don’t misunderstand me when I say this and it is going to be an odd request overall… but I only wish for a ‘True Smile’ as I demand it.” Lord Oberon grinned and crossed his tiny arms while looking at me. “It can’t be a fake or trying to smile, it must be truly from the heart and heartfelt smile. I’ll give you some time to figure out how you’ll deliver to me such a smile, but until then I hope you’re accommodations are doing you well as guests of this kingdom. If anyone should prank you, please note that I told them to leave you be, the canine with you however is already lost cause given she’s already started a new war between herself and several others. Heard she was quite good even at giving and not receiving, a beast after my own heart really. As long as you endeavor to stay out of the pranking wars, they should endeavor to stay out of messing with you personally. With all that out of the way, duck.”

I didn’t think twice about the quickly or bluntly immediately given warning as I ducked down and forced Quetal to do the same with my right hoof. Dolly somehow preternaturally entered a flow-motion state and started dodging absolutely everything in what could only be the most incredibly odd series of events this large office for the small Lord Oberon has probably ever seen.

“I am so terribly sorry about this, but Fairy Types do have a few problems with holding back on new people, despite my ire being a good reason not to.” Stated Lord Oberon blandly as he fluttered among the sudden mess of his large office, we were entirely and miraculously enough untouched by the sudden incident.

“Whoa.” Dolly stated as she looked around at the devastated office. Cheese on the wooden ceiling fan, paint splattered everywhere and that was just the small stuff that just happened. “Guys really do like their pranks around here.”

“More like they like the chance at possibly getting one over on me as it were.” Lord Oberon stated dully with a slight grin to us. “I’m quite the cheeky one, or I’m told.”

“So when are you going to do it?” I asked.

“Do what?” Ah Lord Oberon’s sudden confusion made me realize what he was doing as he grinned at me with half lidded eyes.

“Right we’ll be going, I’ll try to figure out the answer over the next few hours.” While trying to get over my night terror episode and the anxiety that’s coming from that and just about every other source in my life.

I’m still functional physically, emotional and mentally, but also a complete and utter mess as well that’s doing a good job of hiding it all.

“Foe.” My eyes started darting about for whoever said that and I wondered if that was my mind reliving that one moment of my night terror.

I didn’t see anything wrong, aside from the office obviously devastated by a series of pranks that included a three story cake that came flipping into the room at Oberon as the door opened in the middle of the chaos. A chaos which Oberon somehow shield us from despite being in the middle of it all along with himself just as untouched as we were.

“See that you do and you might want to do something about those wandering eyes. Some things are veiled for a reason, do not look too deeply beyond it.” It was as if Lord Oberon seemingly oozed charm out of his pores when giving that warning, which is what Fairy Types are known for. He was more amused with me than anything, which was possibly worrying given the amount of pranks targeting him and people knowing we were near him at the time to launch this many at once and still managed to miss him and us. “Oh, and take a free weapon on your way out if you will, some jerk dumped them all over the Fairy Islands. Don’t really need them or have much use for them personally. Oh and if you eventually see Arthur or sometimes ‘Artoria’ as she goes by, tell her the lady of the lake says hello. She’s a blue furred canine with long red hair, might catch a fancy with you with that aura of yours, she’s currently a copy of a Legendary Pokémon known as Zacian. She’s busy running around with another canine a copy of the legendary Pokémon Zamazenta who’s named Mash. You’ll come across them eventually I’m sure, they are usually preceded by fog because they like their privacy.”

Gilgamesh launched an attack on the Fairy Dust Islands and I suspected that none of them were damaged and if I looked at the weapons as we exited… yep… I saw a few spears. The weapons obviously didn’t do any damage to the islands or themselves for that matter, was that just how terrifying Fairy Types could be on principle despite their size and unusual demeanors? I had a feeling the prankers didn’t miss on purpose so much as it was Lord Oberon doing something when he told us to duck.

I grabbed one of the weapons and looked it over and then looked back towards the office door to a smiling Lord Oberon, the lance styled spear I had chosen had a very unique design to it and it looked a bit cute and had fluffy ribbons. A little unusual, frilly and it seemed defensive given it didn’t have a sharp point.

I looked it over and hit a switch and the lance portion swirled, spiraling outwards, and flared out turning into a cheerful looking parasol or umbrella from the handle I had been holding, well that was pretty nifty. It didn’t seem to carry any kind of curse on it at the very least and felt right in my hooves. I’ll keep it, hopefully it doesn’t end up like all those other destroyed spears or doing something awful to me later.

-Oberon-

She would choose to take ‘Artoria’s lance’ wouldn’t she? She is worthy of using it at its most basic of levels, but she would never be able to use it at its true and mighty full power. At least it will be indestructible and useful for her needs.

The weapon actively attracted her eye for the very reason that she wouldn’t abuse it. It can ensure the world’s stability and has many a strange power, but in her hooves, it would specialize in defense and striking speed so it chose to be an odd combination that is an ‘umbrella lance’ based on her attributes.

Quite fitting really that she got the ‘Spear of the end’ and it wasn’t even originally where she found it second before she did, it had actually moved there on its own and did so almost eagerly.

How quaint, she has a pet spear now… well if it chose to continue the charade of being an odd friendly looking weapon and she’s going to immediately notice the oddities with it when she faces some truly dangerous opponents.

Not that she could realize or unleash its true power, much less know that it was going to find a way to follow and protect her like a dog… she’s probably used to that by now anyway. At best it’ll be a nigh indestructible parasol and lance for her, a very unique one with quite the history that decided the cute puppy print patterns would catch Pom’s eyes on the lance’s shell.

Makes one wonder how Gilgamesh got it to then lazily and carelessly toss it away, I’m guessing it probably disguised itself as a regular spear to hopefully be thrown at some hapless opponent. Said hapless opponent was my Fairy Islands, so it was fair that the weapon chose to leave with someone who likes to travel in a form that’s good for traveling with.

I certainly couldn’t have wielded it, it usually ends up in the hands of the potentially doomed and I had a long life ahead of me.

Then disguised itself as something more defensive and not offensively centered once it found someone it liked, such as Pom.

Curiosities abound, but it is certainly adorable that it chose to befriend a queen in need of ‘strength’ where she has not much physically. Also it was not like Artoria could wield a lance in her current form anyway.

-Back at the only inn in ‘The Dream’ since they don’t get many visitors that come and go, training room, Pom-

“So Lord Oberon is being a jerk, there are two reasons why it is impossible for me to do what he asked of me.” I stated as I twirled and thrust the spear, practicing with the lances odd weight and candor, it seemed to fit in my hooves quite nicely. Which made it all the more suspicious that there was something off about the weapon, even if it was a cute umbrella with a puppy patterned print on it.

Training with this weapon gave me a sense of peace at least, I looked off to the side to see Quetal practicing his new move Beat Up. He stopped, looked to me and nodded, so he already figured it out.

“Huh, why would giving that guy a true smile be a problem Pom?” Dolly asked and she obviously took what Lord Oberon said at a half attention face value.

“One he wants me to give it to him while he’s in the middle of demanding it or however he demands when or how the smile is given to him.” That was just the first part of it as I sent the relevant information on why that’s a problem over to Dolly who wanted to know what the second thing was.

“Two giving him a ‘True Smile’ on demand means that it wouldn’t, in objective fact, be a ‘True Smile’, because a ‘True Smile’ comes from the heart and he just did something to be a huge jerk towards us making us not likely to give him the smile he wants ever.” Quetal answered for Dolly’s curiosity. “He’s willing to help us, clearly, but he’s got to challenge us about it first and this challenge seems impossible. At least Pom is not overthinking the problems and is in fact already aware of them.”

“So it’s not even possible?” It had Dolly angry and raring to prank Lord Oberon into oblivion. “Dude what a rip!”

“Now I didn’t say that it was impossible… he didn’t exactly declare who had to be doing the smiling. Just that someone had to be ‘smiling truly’ and he had to be demanding it at the time or telling us how or where to give the smile at the time and it has to still be by definition ‘True’.” I looked up at the ceiling as I leaned on the… para-lance? I needed to think about this. “Semantics are quite important here, Fairies are considered tricksters by nature. So he doesn’t expect ‘us’ to trick ‘him’ at all and manage to actually achieve this without thinking about it for a while. He intends for us to be stuck here for a few days.”

“Well do you want to talk about something else?” Dolly tried after coming up with nothing. “I mean aside from successfully pranking him, I got nothing about how to make him personally give a ‘True Smile’ much less anyone in the room with him. He’s seems quite unflappable or untouchable and he’s going to be as cruel to us as possible to make sure we can’t smile truly at him.”

“I want to discuss what the night terror Pom had was, please…” Quetal stopped training and came over to look me in the eyes with clear worry.

“Let’s keep training until lunch… maybe I’ll sing a whole song about it.” I had something in mind.

“Alright, does Dolly at least know what caused your terror?” Quetal asked and looked to Dolly shaking her head no, because I hadn’t shared that with her and he returned his gaze to me. “Let’s train.”

“Foe.” I jumped and looked about a wild panic.

“Since you’ve been having constant panic attacks since you woke up and training with that spear seems to have calmed you down a lot, you need to get your mind off whatever it is or it’ll haunt you for as long as we’re stuck here.” Quetal looked at Dolly and she nodded to him about something, but I decided to ignore the byplay and started running through a general routine of Huoshan Spear basics. Thought it would be awkward with a lance, but it seemed to work with me.

Also apparently two legendary dogs were going to bother me in the future, possibly more than that given they were copies of pre-existing legendary Pokémon… and how does Lord Oberon already know this stuff?

My levels of suspicion jumped quite a few notches as I went through the motions with the anxiety eating at my mind and kept hearing the word ‘foe’ randomly spoken since I woke up.

-Nixtorm-

A light whitish gray furred beast with long white hair with pinkish red tips, red welts in it's flesh and its steely eyes moved through the forest as it avoided the sight of ‘The Destroyer of the Nixtorm Kingdom', but it wanted to see it for the beast was quite envious of its incredible power for being all but an indestructible corpse of unending suffering.

Author's Note

Well Pom has a night Terror and she's now clamming up, as per usual her own anxiety is kicking her flank around.

360. ‘Living The Dream’~!

Author's Note

Music: Rose Town- Super Mario RPG an extended version.

360. ‘Living The Dream’~!

-Equus, Sugar Cube Corner, another Pinkie Pie crossover event-

“Peppino Spaghetti is making us a pizza!” Pinkie Pie stated. “Since our bits are gold, he’ll be making bank off of this and will be helping keep his pizza business open! Also since he’s already faced an entire tower with interdimensional pizza themes, I just had to know what his veggie pizza tastes like!”

“Still think you can beat Airship Mauled in weirdness Pinkie?” Cheese Sandwich stated with a cheerful lilt in his voice as he sat with his date, the two party ponies truly did belong with one another.

“Ponyville is the weirdest place on this planet and I will make sure it stays that way!” Pinkie was still on about that? “Nobody can be weirder than us, nobody!”

“Did you hear, Airship Mauled got attacked by that giant robot named Megatron from those Decepticon guys? Apparently some other giant robots called Autobots came in and helped saved the day, lots of awesome stuff seem to happen to Airship Mauled.” This was being said by the most infamous background pony ever, that wasn’t the hidden cult leader known as the mysterious Muffin Queen, Background Pony Number Three. “The battle was really short and extremely weird, I heard Tianhuo really let them have it too and those four cute puppies tore the one named Starscream apart physically… but the guy somehow came back to life before they escape.”

“Now they are just stealing our crossovers!” Pinkie stated angrily.

“Calm-a down Pinkie, how about-a that pizza now hmm?” Peppino stated as he placed the vegetable pizza before Pinkie Pie and Cheese Sandwich and then a giant tower that looked to have a sign that read ‘Pizza Tower’ started rising up near Ponyville. “Not again… excuse me I have to go beat-a up an annoying pizza faced jerk.”

“No Peppino, sit with us and help us eat this wonderful pizza you made, then… I’ll go do it myself!” Pinkie seemed intent on doing it this time after what happened with the last noodle incident nobody was talking about. “And I’ll drag Fluttershy along with me too!”

“Ooh how chaotic!” Discord stated from a nearby table.

“Discord!” Fluttershy whined while glaring at him slightly, before turning her watery eyes to Pinkie Pie. “Also why me Pinkie?!”

“Well… I need a sidekick and you’re the perfect one for such a job!” Pinkie stated as she took up a slice of pizza.

“Darn my irresistible need to be cute and adorable around other people doing big things…” Fluttershy muttered while hiding half her face in her mane.

“I’m going to destroy this village unless you send someone to climb my tower and stop me, heeheehee!” A crazy cartoony voice shouted, it would be ignored until Pinkie finished her pizza.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Kingdom of Titania within the Fairy Dust Islands, ‘The Dream’, Vanillish Delish, Pom-

I just sat down after ordering with Vanillish, Dolly took a seat next to me and Quetal was across from us with Curdle floating next to him with the ever present cheerful smile that was actually real.

“Okay, this might heart song, so feel free to join in yourself if one starts.” I needed to get a lot of stuff off my chest. “My night terror had me far away from any help and a pair of monsters hunting me down. I already know one exists and the other… well… it was canid Pokémon that looked like Mr. Zoroark except it was grey and I didn’t have my usual effect on it, it said the word ‘Foe’ and there’s a scary thought that I could be the enemy of any canine.”

“Was it greyish white, with long hair and red bumps on its body in odd place?” Curdle asked with a tilting.

“Yes, except its eyes were hollow and releasing a disgusting rotting black liquid.” My response was met with curiosity.

“Well that’s concerning, if that alternative Zoroark actually exists then they should really get that looked at.” Thanks to Curdle, I at least now know what it was. It did look a little familiar to the Dark Type mercenaries that joined Kenshin’s rebels, but it was off putting, something was very wrong with it and I have no idea why it would terrify me so much. “What you’re talking about should be a Normal and Ghost type, don’t ask how a Pokémon could possibly even be both of those at the same time.”

“Well with that out of the way, aside from having nightmares of a giant nigh indestructible skeletal metal dragon monster that I should have been more terrified of that we need to face eventually in Nixtorm… I have a lot of what is quite obviously… ‘baggage’… about how my life has been going.” Simple term for it really, I felt the music start up in me and Dolly’s eyes lit up at the jazzy upbeat tune starting up. I finished my drink and decided to just go ham with it today, upbeat song about the terrible stuff I’m going through. “Well now then… let me tell you… about how I’ve just been ‘Living The Dream’~!”

The music kicked in and every Fairy Type literally stopped to stare at me as they felt the magic surge through the air, they could all feel the heart song starting.

“So to start if off let me tell you that my life is quite sub-par, it started Meadow Hills that’s been mostly peaceful thus far~.” As Pom started to sing she had an entire audience. “There I was born as a tiny little ewe, who lost my parents early to a sickness at two, but what could I really do~?”

“Raised by my grandpa, with my brother too, life has really shown it likes to kick me in the face, and that was just the start of me getting to know my part- as one of the members of the highly paranoid Lambkin race~.” Everyone was just staring at the lines I just sung to an upbeat tone. “Don’t you know that I’m ‘Living The Dream’~? Where the sunshine flies out of my flanks and nothing is ever truly as bad as it seems~! If you think this song will be quite short, then you should hear the rest of my report, I’ve got a lot on which to retort~!”

Everyone just continued to stare at me as I got up and started looking around at everyone.

“So I grew up, life wasn’t too bad, not a lot about which I should be too mad, when I was to become ten that’s when I was next screwed, because into my life came a giant dog- so from my home I was swiftly shooed~!” I stamped my right hoof and all the Fairy Type jumped and leaned away. “Scared by the giant canine that was super friendly, did not do much good for me by earning my towns- fiercest enmity, but when I was exiled what could I really truly do, I just made a new family out of canines who always stayed forever true~.”

Dolly smiled at me as that was my family for you, I even smiled about it a little. Big Mama, Woof, Ruff, Tuft and Puff, the start of my family of growing canine related headaches.

“Spent the next ten years of my life, camping outside and living quite hard in strife, in the valley where I became known as the canine queen, it just was as simple to some as it would seem~.” Pom continued and despite the upbeat song most of the Fairy Types were getting the idea of what Pom was singing about and why. “Don’t you know that I’m ‘Living The Dream’~? Where the rainbows flies out of my backside and nothing is ever truly as nasty as it seems~! If you think this song will be quite short, then you should hear the rest of my report, I’ve got a lot on which to retort~!”

I was getting into the groove and so was everyone else.

“Through traumas of the living conditions outdoors, I worked my flank off to even make some dog safe s’mores, the next thing that went terribly wrong, was when I was eventually finally convinced to leave the safety of my exile after so long~!” That was after I met Arizona, Velvet and Paprika, when Oleander came up to me, she was as friendly as Fred was scary. “Now I’ve been on an adventure or two, just raising canines is kind of what I actually do-, got dragged into fighting shadows monsters with magical keys, fought an entire army and let me tell you that wasn’t exactly a breeze~!”

Yeah, I remember the shadows, I wouldn’t have been half as brave to start fighting myself if my canines weren’t under attack as well… I even got in a few hits, even as barely trained as I was by Arizona who’s teaching methods leave a lot to be desired. You can’t exactly argue with a cow who has somehow figured out how to regularly break physics with pure physical prowess.

“It’s when I met the Skyfire of my life, she always lifted me up and then became my wife, even got a job training canines in a jive, and it was quite a nice eight up to at least five~.” I thought of the simple life of being the head of the Huoshan Canine Division and living in a place where I could just simply help people and socialize without too much trouble. “So there I was actually ‘Living The Dream’~! Where the sunshine flies out of my flanks and nothing was ever truly as bad as it seems~! If you think this song will now end short, then you should listen to the rest of my report, I’ve got even more on which to retort~!”

Ah yes, the start of this whole adventure and the Dragon Lord Ember choosing me.

“There I was, happy as could be, when the next shell shock came at me, I was tasked with bodyguard work to an envoy, I sometimes wish that I didn’t get that deploy~!” I rubbed my hooves over my face. “That’s exactly why I’m here right now, I ended up getting into a dimension hopping journey and utterly dragged around somehow, so let’s start you off with my year, it’s always going to be in a valley and that’s exactly what I fear~!”

Quetal stared at me curiously with a hint of sadness.

“First valley had friendly animals, a dark dragon that could actually be quite nice, but in the next world that’s when I started paying a price, kung fu fighters coming at me and then things became a wall of ice~.” I did miss Po though, he and the Furious Five were really friendly once you got to know them beyond their combat based and overly focused lifestyle. They all really needed to get back into their hobbies to balance their lives out, like Tigress going to an orphanage to help children. “Don’t you know I used to dream~? About a nice family and a large field of evergreen-, but here I am getting battered in my wandering, is it no wonder as to how I’m responding~!”

“My flank gets kicked down by a well-muscled leopard, I fight against a war peacock with knives that seem to be lasting forever, then if that wasn’t the last of my displeasure, I took out a jade statue zombie general who to the afterlife I helped shepherd~!” This made a few gasp and start talking about my song. “My life really became quite bizarre, but it’s nothing new I just grew to accept the pain as payment due, I had my girls to protect so I had to grow up, and let me tell you what’s next on the cue~.”

“A world of monstrous robots made by a mad man, thankfully I never met that monstrous guy I would throw as far away as I can, I even have proof that I was there for all of you, just ask my good friend Dodo if you ever meet him too~!” Now Quetal and Dolly were looking at me as they have met Dodo and he was really quite not what one would expect from a world of robots that had malicious intent. “So after surviving a mechanical onslaught, you would think that was about all the worst that I ever got, but the next world had me running on hoof, it got even worse and Dolly is sitting right here as my living proof~!”

I pointed to Dolly and she waved cheerfully to everyone with a paw, while grinning weakly as she knew where I was going.

“For my group got separated as right now you see, as about as far away as we could possibly be, I got tangled up with Dolly here and was in a world where dreams can become quite near~. That was actually a lot to fear~!” I slapped my hoof on the table. “Robots, lasers and aero-planes, that world was functionally and quite really insane, mercenaries were always hunting me down, I’d be dead several times over if Dolly weren’t there or around~.”

I put a hoof on Dolly’s back and then she decided to get in on the song.

“Yes I was there, my worlds not that sad, Pom just has luck that leaves me feeling bad, she helped my family of one hundred and one, then I decided join in on all of her ‘fun’~!” Very sarcastic of you Dolly. “We became a pair of truly super gallant heroes, the kind that come out of the blue or from wherever who knows, it’s quite amazing what Pom here can do, you’ll even learn to love this ewe- and through every last thing she always come through~!”

Dolly was smiling as she sang and winked at the crowd as she hopped up on the table to dance to the music playing in the background.

“As you can see she’s really hopelessly optimistic around me, my cursed life led me to being in Ransei you see, and I’ve even met your god Arceus who’s kind of cool, for some odd reason I think he thinks of me as a fool~!” I noted quite a number of Fairy Types were now interested in the rest of the song and seemed to be thinking about that last line intently. “Don’t you all see that I’m ‘Living The Dream’~. A constant adventure that’s my own personal hell it seems~. I’m gaining some powers that I don’t actually want, they’ll eventually kill me or even erase me from existence- I’m being quite up front~.”

Both Dolly and Quetal stared at me.

“Now I’m here in ‘The Dream’, where you’re lord just issued me an impossible challenge or so it seems, after fighting a functional god and ending up here, is it any wonder why I’m wary of something happening with a chronic fear~?” The Fairy Types all seemed to be looking at me now with sympathy, I’ll take it because I needed all the help I could. “I wish I wasn’t living the dream, adventure is so very much not matching the things I've seen~. If I can even give your boss a true smile, exactly when he demands it- which will probably take a while.”

Quite a number of my audience were nodding, they probably knew Lord Oberon didn’t give easy tasks.

“Come on Pom it’s not so- bad, you should be far more glad, at least you got friends out the wazoo, every last one of them will want to back you up too~!” There was a shout from everyone in Vanilish Delish that agreed with Dolly. “I want to help you with living that dream~! With sunshine and rainbows or exactly every last good thing you’ve ever seen~! If you think I’ll ever give up on you, then you should really take the clue, because you’re friend Dolly has an idea to stew~.”

“Really you have an idea here, well let’s hear it my dear, I’ve got a few of my own too, that will really stick it to Lord Oberon with a smile that’s true~.” Quetal sang, his voice was actually pretty inspiring. “Now come all you Fairy Types gather around, I’ve got a plan for how to make Lord Oberon frown, I heard that you all love your pranks , but I hear Lord Oberon is the only one who hasn’t been hit in the ranks~!”

“The song is quite inspiring you see, to see you still interacting quite socially, still being able to be somewhat carefree, we Fairy Types will help you beat Oberon as we’re all in prankster territory~.” The Fairy Types sang jovially to the tune of the music still going and then we all decided to close it out.

“Don’t you see we’re all living the dream, sunshine will fly out our backsides and nothing will ever be truly as bad as it seems~!” We all sang together in a friendly manner. “When you have all kinds of friends at your back, there’s no one who would dare to attack, we’re all together in that~!”

“Pom just remember when it feels like you can’t win, you should always be ready to turn to a friend, don’t you ever dare give up on me, since I’m one of your best of buddies~!” Quetal sang jovially showing a smile. “We’re all here wanting to live our own dreams, your destination can’t be that far as it seems, because I’m quite sure you’ll get home one day, then I hope that you’ll finally always be okay~.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to be okay for a long time, but I at least try for my friend’s right?” I said as the music started petering out.

“That was really cool, what was that?” Curdle didn’t seem to get what a heart song was.

“Song from the heart.” I stated flatly. “Like Shanty my life hasn’t exactly been a bed of roses, what with the monster attacks, having to find ways to render medical aid to battered and seriously hurt dogs and just finding food in general for my pack while I was exiled. I’m surprised Huoshan even let me in with all my canines back home. My brother at least made sure I was educated and my Grandpa sent me survival baskets with my brother every once in a while, being a pariah is why I know how you might feel Quetal.”

“So what’s your idea Dolly?” Quetal receives a lot of excited barking and then after a moment Dolly slapped a paw to her head and then looked to me to translate

“Get every Fairy Type alive in on taking Lord Oberon down a peg, she suspects he’s been keeping the factions infighting with each other so they can’t coordinate a kingdom wide prank against him.” I stated summarily, Dolly is one of the pranksters of her home so she would know about the subject than I would and she’s become very good at dodging just about anything under my tutelage.

Quite a few Fairy Types looked thoughtful at that. There were Cleffa, Clefairy, Clefable, a Ninetails alternative that was an Ice Fairy, some ponyta, a rapidash, three Mr. Mime and even a cute egg creature called a Togepi, that could become a Togetic and then Togekiss, all of them seemed to gain devious looks in their eyes. The very looks of a building conspiracy.

There were also these strange pink bulldog creatures that have been following me around silently with hearts in their eyes. Yeah, I don’t ever want to talk to them personally, I’m fairly certain I don’t want to know what the Snubbulls or their more larger and more threatening looking evolution Granbull would say to me.

“That’s one part of the puzzle, but maybe my idea might add on to it. One that will make him really smile and it involves something he said in our meeting.” Quite a few Fairy Types leaned in to hear what Quetal had to offer. “How about we ask around about his aforementioned busy wife, that Florges he talked about, if she’s anything like the Fairy Types that have been targeting Dolly then she’s got a prankster bone in her body somewhere. Does anyone know the name of Lord Oberon’s wife?”

“Titania!” Several voices rang back immediately, before the surrounding fairies started giggling quite audibly about it all.

“Why am I not surprised in the slightest?” Groaning this out, I shook my head and then decided to start helping Dolly organize Titania’s largest prank with Queen Titania herself being a part of it, but first we would have to find and talk to the queen.

“Do you want to meet the queen? I’m one of her handmaidens.” A Floette, the evolution above Flabebe, asked as she hovered over to me bowed to me while holding a bright red flower proudly at her shoulder. “My Spritzee and Swirlix friends can find her quickly to inform her of a plot against her husband, she would undoubtedly join it after hearing of it. Should we meet here?”

“Hello there, I’m a Sylveon, may I suggest you meet her highness in the flower fields? It would go a long way to being able to talk to her in a comfortable environment. She probably has Sir Mik with her at the moment for protection, not that she’d truly need it aside from maybe taking a prank for her since her husband courts trouble so often and is just as bad a prankster as any of us.” The being that spoke reminded me of Evan, so Sylveon must be one of Evan’s possible evolutions?

Sylveon was a really cute cream furred, big blue eyed fox that seemed to be eyeing me with a pleasant demeanor as the ribbons he danced… soon I recognized that those weren’t ribbons, but were a physical part of him and he was appreciating my presence in the same manner that the Snubbull and Granbull were. The pink around his paws, the top of his head and tail added to the fairy like quality that Fairy Types were known for.

“A sound idea.” Really couldn’t escape canids by going anywhere could I? Did the magnetism I have work both ways or was it just coincidence that I kept getting followed by dogs everywhere.

“We’ll swiftly arrange the meeting between you and her highness then.” Floette bowed to me and the floated away from Vanillish Delish.

“Then I shall endeavor to gather the pranking faction’s leaders then for the most beauteous of beings.” Bowing to me Sylveon then set out.

“I wonder how Shanty and the others are doing?” They had to be alright, they couldn’t be still hurting… or at least I was hopeful they weren’t hurting at all if Lumber Spry was around to help them. Well her and any number of doctors around Illusio.

“Pom, have a little faith in them.” Quetal said in an upbeat tone with a small smile instead of a smirk or grin he might have sported otherwise.

“Yeah, have a little faith in us too!” Dolly said with one her cheerful patented wide grins.

“After that little ditty, and for bringing in some extra customers, you can have some free healing drinks on me instead of having to bill Oberon.” That was rather nice of the Vanillish who ran this place.

Afterwards I would train a little with the Para-lance a bit and then I'll get Dolly to start running her ideas by me to make sure we're not making a huge mess.

-Illusio refugee camp, Shanty-

“Still can’t be doing it…” I can’t be getting Kenshin’s help and I can’t be producing a flying slash, what do I be missing here? Aside from the fact that I can remember hearing the fact that I should be able to be breathing water as if I were being a fish.

Illusio didn’t have much housing, Gilgamesh destroyed most of it. Illusio did be having plenty of food inside the mountains stored away, but it wouldn’t last them forever if they couldn’t be getting their farmlands back in order. Also there was a massive chunk of Eastern Illusio that just be plain missing.

Kenshin be having too much to deal with to really be helping me with this one thing.

“Hey Shanty, still working on the flying cut or slash?” If Ocellus be bothering me, that be telling me that Smolder and her be having some emotional problems.

“Do you be having trouble with Smolder?” I didn’t be receiving and immediate answer to that as I looked at Ocellus. “Can I guess that she be blaming herself for being so easy to control?”

“Yes…” Quietly answered Ocellus. “I tried to tell her it wasn’t her fault, even told her that at least she only hurt Pom in any significant manner. She blames herself entirely for that, but it was Pom who was the one that injured her right leg in such an odd manner. Her Chrysomallus side might be powerful, but it is quite an urgent worry that we need to prevent from getting worse… now if only we knew where she exactly was so we could actually help her that.”

I believe we were being needed in Valora as Xatu stated, he be seeing an ever increasing problem from there and my gut be saying we needed to go there soon or else.

“So do we be taking the airship to Valora?” Kenshin’s rebels offered the use of the airship commissioned by Gilgamesh for Enkidu, not like they had much use for it aside from possibly transporting supplies. That was something Mentalis and the Abra line can do with manual teleportation now that they’ve lost the use of their automated transporters in Cerebrum. “Pom would be showing up there eventually, she can hardly be being too far from trouble.”

“I can sadly agree with that, poor Pom… anyway we’re going to be taking the Skitty Squad with us when we do leave in a day or two.” Ocellus said with a slight hint of something in her eyes as she looked off to the side.

“We should be leaving things to our Violight and Chrysalia friends to keep Illusio standing.” That’s because we could be trusting them to help Illusio. “We won’t be moving with much in the way of punch.”

“If you need punch, then you need bullets, Bullet Buizels to be precise!” We both turned to the voice and saw several familiar Buizels throw us a salute. “King Evan is busy, but he sent us to lend you assistance in any further endeavors you may have… also at least Aurora, Pugilis and Chrysalia were hit pretty badly, surprisingly Ignis didn’t lose much, but they have a lot of injured people.”

“I don’t think I want to be knowing how many dead Gilgamesh be leaving in his wake.” I be making the leader of the Bullet Buizels look away from me and huff. It is being that bad huh?

“No, you do not, we Pokémon may call ourselves monsters in our spirits, but that guy… that guy sounded truly monstrous.” The others in the Bullet Buizels unit shivered.

“He basically took down the remainder of an entire army after a long and harsh battle by himself.” Ocellus stated with a haunted voice. “He just… wouldn’t go down, he was still alive even after Cerebrum City sunk to the bottom and then went up in a massive explosion from all the unstable energy in the area. So much power, why did he just aim to be outright destructive with it all?”

“Yeah and it’s not exactly easy to make large psychic crystals like that unstable, I’m amazed we’re still alive.” Sanosuke stated as he passed by with two large boxes on his shoulders. He wilted slightly with a lowered head to hide his eye sunder his headband, but not because of the weight that was being on his shoulders. “Lost many good mons that day. Illusio’s hurting badly, but we’ll try to pull ourselves together, until then we’re not a kingdom in anything but spirit. I’ve got plenty of that personally, but we’ll be leaderless since I know I’m only good in war time and Kenshin certainly doesn’t want the position even if every Psychic Type around is already agreeing to look to him for solutions. We’re broken as a kingdom for the time being, but don’t let us keep you here. Seer Xatu is usually not wrong about dealing with important things like whatever is going on in Valora right now.”

I be looking to Ocellus and she be looking back at me. I turned to the Bullet Buizels.

“You’ll be setting out for Valora with us then, help us scrounge up whatever food supplies you can find for our airship. Everything else is being left to the people of Illusio to use, don’t be taking anything from them. We will be leaving in about two days.” My orders given, the Buizels nodded in understanding and quickly set off. I made my way over to Canard and Dazzle who were overlooking Jyarimon… Frizzle had lost a lot of her strength, she remembered what strength she had previously and all she need was time, food and plenty of energy to return to her true strength. Otherwise she was stuck in her smallest form for the time being. “We’re getting assistance from the Bullet Buizels, they’ll be riding with us to Valora as an attach from King Evan. I can tell he just be sending us what he can while having to worry about every that is being hurt by Gilgamesh.”

“Six more mouths to feed, but they can take care of themselves right?” Yes they could Canard, which was being quite a good thing.

“They are one of the strongest shock troop units Fontaine can field and Motochika trusted Evan to know how to field them effectively.” At least Ocellus is being on top of logistics of the things going on around here and other places. “That they are here with us makes me think Evan wants to help reinforce the Skitty Squad, but he can’t move too many Aurora units around at the moment.”

We could hardly be taking care of ourselves these last few days and it was sad to see the Sigilyph looking so lifeless and aimless. The sentinels of the city for the king, whether good or ill, no longer had a home. I be empathizing with that with Cerebrum City being destroyed to the very last pebble leaving nothing left of it.

“So where did the Red-Gil and Greenkidu be going?” Nobody be knowing that so nobody be answering me. So I tried a different question. “Alright then, do we be having any problems with moving out, aside from the obvious that we want to continue helping the people of Illusio?”

“No, so we should focus on finding out what exactly is troubling Valora before it spreads into Illusio, they are not going to fully recover for months and I doubt they can field a proper defense against anyone. If we can’t stop whatever the problem is, the least we can do is slow it down maybe a day or two with what we have or help any Steel Type locals in stopping whatever the problem is.” Ocellus be feeling it too, this place is being quite low on morale. At least the Dark Type mercenaries under Zoroark were actually willing to assist the Psychic Types in getting back on their feet, they would try to protect Illusio to the best of their abilities for the time being.

“All I be having to do right now is practicing to perform a flying slash Ocellus, I don’t know what else I can be doing aside from helping the misfortunate.” I said quietly, no even being remotely close to sending a arcing slice through the air further than an inch from the tip of my hooves or weapon. “Dodo is getting a bit restless and is being quite worried about me. Exercise is all be having at the moment.”

“You could help me by talking to Smolder yourself Shanty, she kind of needs us to get her mind off of seeing the destruction Gilgamesh caused personally.” Looking into Ocellus’s eyes, I be nodding and then set out to talk to Smolder about how Pom saved her.

Pom be making a willing sacrifice, Smolder really shouldn’t be letting that be in vain. In fact, we shouldn't be letting any sacrifice Pom makes go in vain with what that means and entails concerning her. Pom be making a choice and it be saying how important we are to her, we should be able to be at least trusted to look after ourselves somewhat.

This world was just being that terrifying that Pom couldn't last the whole fight and I barely be doing so myself.

362. Title Talk.

-Pokémon Realm, Aurora, Helper’s Hamlet, Eriflamb-

The Bidoof were ridiculously fast with getting the bathhouse areas running again. As the Fenniken head of them, I think we needed the bathing quarters for cleaning wounds.

“Do you know where King Evan and Maiden Jig are?” Turning to the Foffo, I nodded to him.

“I wouldn’t disturb them right now, they both finally passed out and I made sure to hide them away with the Bidoofs help. A few of them even evolved into Bibarels. They’ve upgraded to being able to say ‘build better’.” I felt like doing the same, but at least I got to eat, drink and bathe, even got some sleep more than they had these last few days.

“Good, let them sleep and tell no one of where they are. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it later, Chan is overworked and the assisting Miltanks are the only reason she’s managed to save so many lives. I bet she’s going to drop soon to.” Foffo looked upset. “The Psychic Types refugees are still reeling from all the pain and suffering, but at least they aren’t attacking us.”

“Yeah, the only thing wrong around here aside from the vast amount of injured are the Kecleons, they are just as Poké hungry as ever. At least they are willing to help for a price. It’s a toss-up if the Wooloo can feel like anything is ever truly wrong, but they have been fairly helpful in keeping the peace and assisting the Bidoof.” Goodness knows that there was a lot of insomnia going on around here, that’s what having so many friends in a tightly knit community will do when everyone needed help. Everyone able will help those who weren’t and will run themselves into the ground doing so. I was one of those who had bags under my eyes too. “I take it the gratitude you’re receiving is keeping you and Fiffi in good health?”

“If only the wealth of gratitude could outweigh the sorrow.” Foffo stated before bowing to me. “I would like to acquire your services for a hot bath… I direly need one after all the running around I’ve been doing as a member of Team Harmony.”

“I’ll pencil you in for a mineral scrub special, really gets the aches out.” I said warmly, Flabebe and Oddish were getting pretty good at being soothing and understanding the needs of a variety of Pokémon. They were some of the first to get to shelter, Oddish especially liked creating soothing aromas and was learning more aromas as time went on. “I’ve been thinking about finally finding myself a stick…”

“To become a Braixen?” Foffo looked at me.

“I could use a bit more strength around here, running the bathhouse area might just make me evolve from the stress of my job alone.” I chuckled dryly, not a lot of laughs to go around here.

“Heard the Rockruff Brothers say the same thing about Rescue Team work. They know Pom was in the middle of whatever happened in Illusio, they want to get strong enough to really get out there and help people while possibly saving the world along the way and maybe Pom too.” Foffo smiled, since it was kind of nice to hear that the Pokémon around here weren’t letting the assault beat the ability to continue on out of them. “Beleaguered, battered and beaten, but never truly down. At least our neighbor’s efforts to rebuild wasn’t ruined. So Fontaine is at least okay, Greenleaf has been distributing food to everyone, surprisingly even Ignis is getting help from them.”

“Mom always said the western side of the continent has the nicest mons, I’m glad to be one of them.” I grinned weakly and started to move towards the bathing area to prepare for Foffo’s rest break.

-Fairy Dust Islands, ‘The Dream’, Right Wing, Pom-

I trotted at an even pace along the branch ramp towards a lower layer of city with Sir Mik and Curdle towards a shopping district among the wings of the Ribombee shaped planetoid. Curdle wanted to but the sweet that would become a part of her form, Sir Mik wanted to protect me to make sure nothing untoward happened to me while we looked around and the queen was leading a nationwide prank on her husband.

If it was harmful, then it wasn’t a prank. All Fairy Types knew to first gauge the limits of what they could do to the other person before it was considered outright malicious. Lord Oberon was apparently receiving no kid gloves approach at all once they kicked things off properly, that in and of itself was telling about Fairy Types as a whole.

Dolly and Quetal were the ringleaders in the plans they had going on, at least from the way Dolly tells it Quetal seems fairly invested even knowing it’ll lead to us going to Nixtorm faster. What they were doing wouldn’t have been able to get off the ground without Queen Titania’s backing, but they definitely had that backing and that of the several pranking factions throughout the kingdom.

Things were apparently going fine so I was just going to focus on a question I’ve had circulating my mind for a bit. I mean aside from wondering if the local bakeries here use stone ovens since they don’t use metal.

“Do you have a title Sir Mik?” The Pokémon Companions unit that joined me as a traveling friendship group all had titles, I was more curious about what those titles entail.

“I have the title of ‘Knight’, whether I am worthy of it or not depends on how black I’m willing to make my soul just to protect those I truly care about.” The Mimikyu was fairly easy to get along with, we had quite a few things in common and I was sad that he had to deal with wearing a costume his entire life.

“I’ve been wondering, do titles do something special? I can kind of guess how one would get the title knight.” The streets made of stone with sidewalks of bark as tough as stone were calm or quiet among the city made around building shaped out of a variety of plants. I would swear ‘The Dream’ was just one giant tree with how all the buildings looked to be made of roots and trees grown in a specific way.

“For one they do in fact have a special effects, they only add on to what is already there for the one that holds said title though.” The head of Mik’s Pikachu costume looked in my direction. “I was already protective of the friends I do have, the title of ‘Knight’ empowers that need to give me a moderate defensive and stamina boost.”

“So what would a title like... ‘Noble’ do?” My question was met with a curious shift from Mik and Curdle.

“That would be part of the titles that do similar things, which would be ‘Alpha’, ‘Noble’ and ‘Totemic’.” Mik started off as we approached a shop where Curdle was going to buy the thing she needed to help her with her evolution. Milcery were never hurting for choice in how their final evolutions looked… and tasted apparently, much to my chagrin as Curdle was still trying to get an opinion on what kind of taste she should go for. “Alpha gained incredible offensive ability boost alongside an increasingly large size, sometimes the size and strength of a Pokémon can be almost be a maximum of double that of an average member of their species, but are a lot more aggressive and can supernaturally make their eyes glow red. Totemic tends to be natural born giants among their species even from birth and come with a defensive prowess boost that makes them harder to hurt, though they tend to be a bit slower than normal. Nobles tends to be grow abnormally large for their species during an evolution and tend to get a boost in movement speed or raw elemental capabilities, mostly both. All those titles are somewhat related to leadership or the capability thereof if they were to try for such a position.”

“What about the title of ‘Trickster’?” I have wondered what Trickster meant when in terms with Quetal, he hardly seems to use it.

“Higher capability of seeing weaknesses, can more easily misdirect an opponent and can do multiple things with seemingly normal moves that would leave most other Pokémon utterly puzzled. A trickster is very good at innovation and adapting to most situations, even if their overall power might not be the best.” It seem Mik knows a lot about titles. This could explain Quetal a bit, he always took good opportunities when he sees them and was fairly careful in combat unless he was making his own openings to get a good hit in. “Do you have any more titles to throw at me?”

“Dragoon.” Because I was curious about Jiri as we stood near the entrance and I saw my first Alcremie, she was swirling pink pile of living cream with strawberries sticking out of her… equally cream like hair I want to say.

Like most Fairy Types, adorable, but given she smelled like a baked good and was suspiciously eyeing my mouth like she wanted to actively shove herself down my throat with a lusty look… the chill running down my spine was telling me not to engage or even say anything to her. I don’t want to know if they actually take it as a challenge if you don’t want to eat them.

Yeah, I don’t want to eat anything here that looked like it had even a hint of pink icing on it or even strawberries. Alcremie could apparently regrow what they used for their evolution according to Curdle.

“Dragoon title holders are fairly strong against dragons or Dragon Types in general regardless of typing involved, basically a ‘Dragoon’ is secondary to Fairy and Ice Types when it comes to dragon punching. They are capable of jumping or flying higher than any other Pokémon feasibly can at incredible speeds going up and coming down, they can also survive a fall from any height without injury and tend to have a moderate boost to all capabilities.” I might not be able to see Mik’s body directly, but he seemed quite happy to go on about the subject as we waited near the entrance for Curdle to make a purchase. “They are always known to achieve at least some kind of impressive feat worthy of note within a year of earning the title… so what did the dragoon you know do? There’s always one feat to their name and it’s usually a big one.”

“Well… the one I know was in a fight at a bridge with about ten to one odds. She was on the smaller side of the equation and fended off three hundred Pokémon with her unit… for several hours.” Made me wonder what Jiri was doing right this instant, never saw a bunny more capable despite her clumsiness and what I’m assuming to be a mild curse on her Bounce move. “Even managed to hold the bridge the entire time too.”

“Yeah, that would do it.” Mik nodded the floppy head of his costume, but I was looking at his actual eyes below said flopping head.

I over looked to see Curdle chatting with the Alcremie and making motions with her floating blob like fins at the sweet treats on display, ones that apparently aid Milcery in their evolution.

Said evolutionary items for a Milcery were strawberries, blueberries, other colorful berries, pink heart peach tarts, yellow star lemon chews, green clover mint chocolates, flower cookies, ribbon gummi’s in a variety of colors… yeah I can see why evolution for a Milcery might be a bit of a chore to pick from those sweet choices, not to mention the whole spinning rule thing that hasn’t been explained to me yet that I was going to be tasked with doing later.

“What about the title of ‘Hero’?” I asked nonchalantly, everyone paused and looked in my direction, absolutely every last Pokémon within hearing range did. I felt a little wary of the sudden attention I was receiving for mentioning that.

“Rare, but if you do have it, well let’s just say that if a Pokémon has ‘hero’ as a title, then it’s going to be highly noticeable after a while.” Mik looked at all the gawkers staring at us. “We’re discussing what titles can do, there is no ‘Hero’ titled here, go on about your businesses you rubber necked Swanna! Anyway, the ‘Hero’ title implies a powerful dogged determination, abilities to surpass the limits of one’s own species several times over to height more than even an Alpha, Totemic or Noble could ever hope to reach to the point of taking on legendary Pokémon… by themselves. Size really does not matter as they can come in any size, shape or gender, so any Pokémon could seriously get such a lofty title. What actually does matter is the spirit and heart they put into whatever it is they want to do, some even say a ‘Hero’ can take on Arceus without blinking or even thinking twice about the consequences of doing so if they believe they have a reason to be fighting our functional and beloved god. The downside of the title is that they start out weak, but they constantly get exponentially stronger the longer they live. It is said that those with the title of ‘hero’ will usually show up almost literally out of nowhere and get into mind-boggling situations. It’s a good thing they are rare and can’t be evil, misled sure, but never evil.”

“Yikes, glad I’m not a Pokémon with that title. Wouldn’t want to deal with the pressure of having to have the whole world on my back expecting everything of me… heh… like it might be right now that I’m going into one of the most dangerous places that Quetal can imagine.” Really did not want the title of ‘Hero’ personally, but my friends think I am truly one, the whole thing with Leap Lamb was mostly me humoring Dolly… even if I did go above and beyond quite a few times while getting my body torn up a lot. To be fair the Leap Lamb thing wasn’t all so… “So… distract me… please! What about the title of ‘ninja’…. or is ‘Lucha’ even a title? What about Pirate?”

“You’re very desperate to get your mind off the subject… so I’ll indulge you. Yes Pirate is a unusual title, seeks freedom, can navigate by stars, better swimming capabilities, can hold your breath for nine minutes and fifty nine seconds, tends to know the move Swagger or an equivalent method of distraction and terrain has less bearing on how capable they are in a fight. Also gains a mild boost to reaction time and speed.” Was Sir Mik joking with me, why is it that whenever I hear about pirates they always have that holding their breath underwater for ten minutes thing come up? Is it one of those universal things that all realities just happen to have when pirates were involved? What, did space pirates have the ability to hold their breath in space for ten minutes without dying from lack of air and no atmosphere? “Ninja, tends to be better at stealth and or doing more with less, plus they can make good use of any move. Don’t honestly know anything about Lucha though.”

“… Is ‘King’ or ‘Queen’ titles?” I was asking because I’ve met a few rulers of various kingdoms already.

“Yes, and it comes with the territory, quite literally. The title does not erase preexisting titles and the strength of the title depends on the strength of the kingdom as much as the king themselves.” Well that was fascinating Sir Mik and pretty much tells me King Evan should be fine. “However, if the King or Queen loses their title for whatever reason, then they lose the power that comes from having it. You have to actually actively be a ‘King’ or ‘Queen’. The people can so easily take away the title and it’s usually based on a majority and how much they believe in their leader. The title can be taken away so easily, but the actual position itself can’t be taken as easily.”

Makes me wonder, was Gilgamesh still carrying the title ‘King’ when he was fighting us or was he always that powerful even if he didn’t have the title, but was just the ‘acting king’ without the title.

“Say guys, what do you think I’d look cuter with for the rest of my natural life?” Curdle was looking at the colorful berries or the heart shaped peach tarts.

“Please don’t ask me for an opinion on this. This is your evolution, I’m just going to assist you with a very small part of it.” I wasn’t likely to appreciate it if she chose whatever I wanted it.

“I’m of similar mind. I’ve been stuck like this all my life, but I can at least change my costume. You’ve only got one chance to evolve, make the most of it and be what you want to be.” Sir Mik stated as he sat there next to me.

“Well you two are no fun, okay let me get back to my life choices.” Curdle went back to discussing something with the Alcremie.

“Say… why didn’t you want to fix your curse problem?” I’m pretty sure if he held onto the para-lance long enough.

“It’s a part of me, to outright deny its existence would be to deny myself.” Sir Mik stated calmly. “Also there’s a balance to everything and getting rid of the curse of the Mimikyu would probably be a really exceptionally bad thing to do.”

“It’s still kind of sad though.” That I couldn’t help Sir Mik with this.

“We grow stronger by working around or through our strife in various ways. The only ones who should be immune to our curse are those that should be.” The Mimikyu curse that Sir Mik spoke of caused lethal amounts of pain, suffering and sometimes death just for looking at their real bodies. My curiosity could have gotten me killed if it wasn’t a magical effect and it was a decent confirmation that Fairy Types have magic.

While I talked with Sir Mik, I tapped Dolly’s vision to get a progress report and blinked at what was going on. Okay, better not to disturb them… or the bizarre situation going on now. Did not know you could do that with balloons… I was going to stop watching what they were doing with them, plausible deniability and all that.

“So when it comes to earning titles, does it come naturally or can you actually aim to earn a title aside from King or Queen?” If this was what I was doing for small talk, then I’m going to need something else soon aside from the impending doom storm that is my life.

“Mostly naturally or what is exactly suited for you, rarely do you ever see a title not related to personality or how a Pokémon lives, but being born with a title like a ‘Totemic’ makes it hard to earn other titles. The ‘Totemic’ title also occurs far more around the four Tapu Legendary who tend to peruse the Fairy Dust Islands, possibly even a blessing they can give a yet to hatched egg.” Sir Mik was certainly helping me relax here as we waited for Curdle to make her evolution choice. I was beginning to think that nothing would happen until I arrived in Nixtorm. “There’s also stuff like being into excessive violence to earn the title like ‘berserker’ or ‘barbarian’, doesn’t mean the Pokémon can’t be nice people. It could mostly mean that they have a temper problem to varying degrees. You don’t like violence much I take it.”

“Having enough of it enacted upon me, I can honestly say that I don’t.” Bullets were agonizing and I’ve only ever been hit by the one and it caused me nasty arrhythmia problems.

“So are you running out of subject to talk about?” I was beginning to get the feeling Sir Mik was going to take charge of the conversation and I didn’t mind that one bit.

“Yeah, I think you know most of what I’ve done already.” Outside of dog rearing which I’m obviously far too good at for my own good that it’s starting to turn into an active cross dimension religion. “I’m… not really too interesting.”

“Truly? Is this more of a personal level kind of thing or is the adventure you’ve been stuck on thus far that is making you seem more interesting then you are.” Good question, don’t know what to tell you Mik.

“Sounds rhetorical, but yes. I’d rather be a home maker and have a boring desk job than be stuck getting into trouble near constantly… I’m surprised that I can even breathe here and have nothing happen.” I took a moment to breathe in slowly and then exhaled slowly while looking around. “I almost expected something… kind of glad for nothing actually…”

“Not every day can be so full of life and I would know that quite well.” Right there with you Sir Mik. “Cherish the quiet moments in life for what they are whenever you can, for life itself is chaos.”

“Do you suppose those Snubble, Granbull and Sylveon are making sure nothing happens to me?” I wouldn’t put it past the more canid Pokémon, it would be awfully sweet of them to do it in an unobtrusive manner as possible.

“Considering their affections for you, I cannot say for certain… but it is highly likely they are stopping any pranks that would be directed at you, that and the Fairy Types that heard you sin about how tortured you feel about life away from your lover.” Mik nodded the costumes had towards me. “Oberon and Titania learned their lessons about messing with love quite a long time ago on a midsummer night. It is a tale of intrigue if you would wish to listen?”

“Sure, it seems like Curdle is going to be a while.” Since I already tested whether or not Curdle can actually fend for herself, and not immediately throw herself into the first hungry Pokémon’s mouth that comes near her. Curdle could fight and handle herself. “Also we’ve been here a day or two, so I want to be in Nixtorm before the week is out… why am I still heading towards my doom?”

“Don’t call it fate or destiny, we make our own paths and your making yours since you somehow feel responsible for the undead beast in the north… so the story of Oberon and Titania messing with something they shouldn’t have.” Sir Mik cleared his throat, he had a fairly deep voice for something small that should sound higher pitched. I’m not questioning it, but it is curious that most Fairy Types have airy kind of voices. “Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, brief as the lightning in the collied night. That, in a spleen, unfolds both Yvetal’s realms and planet, and ere any Pokémon hath power to say ‘Behold’!”

What followed was probably the weirdest comedy of errors I’ve ever heard of.

-An hour or so later, with a large crowd-

“Now to escape an Ekans’s tongue, we will make amends ere long; else the Impidimp a liar call. So… good night unto you all.” Sir Mik finished and I stomped my hooves in applause, quite a few Fairy Types enjoyed the retelling of what is a most infamous debacle with the Fairy Dust Islands neighbors.

“Wow that was… it was a real story, it was really messed up, but… it was beautifully told.” I enjoyed it at least and I was smiling about it.

“Most Fairy Tales are beautifully told and equal parts humorous and usually completely messed up, either by the people telling the story with them putting their own spin on it or the story itself is a masterpiece of hindsight horror.” As far as the comedy of errors Sir Mik just went over, that was an agreeable way to put it.

“So… at least it’s not as weird as a Wailord and Skitty somehow working.” Though it got close in some parts.

“Trust me, a Wailord and Skitty is not even the top five weirdest pairing you can see in this world.” Okay, Sir Mik got me interested, what was more questionable than Captain Skeeball and Wilhelm’s relationship actually working out? I raised my brow at Sir Mik in challenge. “A Charizard and Magikarp, Mareanie and Corsola, Magcargo and Trevenant, Gardevoir and Muk, then finally among the top five weirdest pairings I know that can possibly occur in this world… Zangoose and Seviper.”

“Explain each one of them.” After he did so, I found his reasoning to be quite secure, so Wailord and Skitty would at least be close top ten or twenty. “Well I’m kind of horrified or just plain mortified.”

“Yeah, don’t question any strange happy relationships you see, just smile and nod.” Sir Mik, you are without a doubt good company to keep. I can see why you’re Queen Titania’s formal bodyguard. “If you wanted to get Wooloo into it… well they don’t care if you are compatible or not, they just care if you're happy.”

“No thanks, I already get enough of them already whenever I’m in Aurora.” My nervousness and darting eyes probably spelled it out.

“I’m done picking!” Curdle shouted joyfully, she had chosen to buy a single pink heart shaped peach tart. “Now we got to figure out the timing of when to spin me right round like a Baltoy baby.”

I groaned, since it’s been hours! At least Sir Mik was really good company.

“So how common are titles again?” I asked blandly.

“Do you want more title conversation?” Sir Mik that pun was horrible, but it deserves the laugh it got out of me. “Also not very, Pokémon can peacefully go their whole lives without ever acquiring a title, usually it’s the Pokémon that does stuff that gets one and someone stating the title and you having a reaction to it.”

“Come on, can you not get distracted and help me with what my flavor profile is going to be going forward to go along with the cute pink peach heart tarts that’ll be forever a part of me soon?” Really didn’t want to Curdle, I was having a good time with a good friend.

“Can you come in chocolate?” I asked flatly.

“No, but I can get close to it.” Curdle said cheerfully.

“Good, don’t try for it, I wouldn’t want you to be poisonous to Dolly if she accidentally eats a bit of you after you evolve.” Well I just flummoxed Curdle into being quiet. “Nothing related to tea, chocolate or grapes. We don’t want to have an accident.”

“Don’t look at me, I’m not the one waiting for a plot against Lord Oberon to come to fruition.” Hearing Sir Mik say Oberon’s name, I considered something.

“Does Oberon have the titles ‘Lord’ and ‘King’ at the same time?” My question once again distracted us from Curdle trying to ask us for opinions or advice about how she should taste.

Milcery and Alcremie were far too fixated on being flavorful for my liking, unfortunately if Curdle comes with us I’ll never hear the end of it.

“The title of ‘Lord’ is unusual in that it occurs when a Pokémon has a pocket realm, so it’s a come with the territory thing. Oberon is a lot stronger here, than out on one of the actual Fairy Dust Islands.” Nice to know that the feelings of danger around your Lord were very much warranted Sir Mik.

“At least I know not to be matcha flavored now… forgot food allergies was a thing.” Curdle seemed to be concentrating on that a bit too much.

“Look try not to concentrate on what makes you the most edible, if you can do a sour flavor to mix with the peach that’d be fine right?” Did not want this to take forever. “Also I’m pretty sure that no matter what you choose, you’d be a bit too much for Dolly anyway.”

“Okay, peach and lemon flavor, so we’ll do this at night!” Curdle state happily, her body flexing into a heart shape for a few seconds.

So wait, would that mean she’d become soured cream? Snrk…

“What was that?” Curdle asked curiously while staring at me with her hollow looking eyes.

“Nothing.” I stated immediately with a straight face, Curdle then floated off presumably to come back to me later so she could evolve. “So her name is Curdle and I just suggested she become soured cream.”

“Actually pretty fitting and kind of funny.” Sir Mik nodded.

Dolly tagged me in our bond and I blinked.

“I guess it’ll be time to say goodbye soon Sir Mik, as Dolly, Quetal and Queen Titania have things going full tilt now and it’s only a matter of time before the final act.” I’ve needed these last few days of rest and healing, no expectations and all peace made things feel so wonderful. Unfortunately I couldn’t avoid it any longer, I had to keep moving. As nice as the Fairy Types were, I didn’t want to be trapped here in ‘The Dream’ with them. “You’ve been quite a lovely friend to me Sir Mik.”

“You as well Lady Pom, would you like to train a little bit. I need to work on my Wood Hammer move.” After a moment we started on our way back to the inn Dolly, Quetal and I have been staying at. “Also while you can do nothing for my curse, the more control we have of ourselves, then the less lethal the curse is. Again I still wouldn’t test it with someone as lovely as you and I would not be rid of it, as only the worst of the worst among my enemies can say they've seen the true me. For they would not live to tell about it.”

As morbid as ever Sir Mik.

-That night, Inn, Pom-

“... Please stop making this weird Curdle.” It already was now that I had my hooves on Curdle’s liquid body and she was smiling brightly at me. The witnesses for this evolution would be Dolly, Quetal, Sir Mik, Queen Titania and me since I was helping Curdle with this and I volunteered. “So which way am I spinning you?”

“Clockwise five seconds!” Said Curdle cheerfully as she held onto the peach tart heart in her liquid flippers while smiling at me.

I spun around on my hooves for five seconds exactly and then let go of Curdle who went spinning through the air until she started glowing. Her liquid form swirled and stretched out a bit until she became a living dollop of cream. She had two peach flavored heart tarts in her creamy stylistic yellow hair and she had two pink eyes in the midst of her mostly yellow and white tipped body that was now apparently lemon cream flavored. Her lower torso was now like a snail’s foot.

The evolution was fascinating as it gave her arms and she was no longer capable of floating, yet she was supposed to be more powerful? I still wonder about evolutions that had strange outcomes like this one.

“What were the moves you showed me again?” Just so I can think about battle tactics in the event we were attacked as soon as we arrived in Nixtorm.

“Oh I just learned Decorate! It’ll go great with Dazzling Gleam and Recover, as for my last move I can go to a move tutor to learn Mystical Fire!” Curdle becoming a fire breathing pile of cream… why did that sound like a recipe for disaster?

-World: ???, Oleander-

“Keep beams on those portions of the destroyer!” The Ghostbusters were better at fighting ghosts than I was, I really liked that Egon guy too, quite intelligent.

“Remind me again why we are letting a possibly evil unicorn and her friends help us?” Peter asked.

“Because she said she’d let us have a book on how to handle cenobites and would help us if we run into them again and she’s actually paranormal benign.” Ray answered.

“Yeah, but the demon she has with her certainly isn’t.” Well aware of it Egon, I am marrying Fred after all. "He's tried for my immortal soul at least five times already."

"Yeah, can you please take a hint." Fred was spewing flames out of his mouth. "YOUR KNOWLEDGE IS ATTRACTIVE!"

"Still can't get over how metal that Fred guy is." Ray muttered.

“Why is it always marshmallow monsters with you guys!” Cried Buttina as she continued to spew flames on it from her wanzer. “It’s going to get absolutely everywhere when we finally make it explode!”

“Trust me, this isn’t the last time we’ll be seeing of this guy, it’s always the same giant marshmallow man at the end of the day.” Peter droned out sadly.

“I could help you if you get covered in the stuff Butt.” Wrex stated wearing a modified proton pack that can put a hole in a spaceship on the level of battleship.

“Complaints withdrawn!” Buttina stated immediately with a giddy grin and I just rolled my eyes, before closing them as the smooze like marshmallow man that engulfed half the city finally exploded.

The hot marshmallow goo going absolutely everywhere was an understatement of the greatest of orders. At least Fred would help clear up most of it.

363. Cold Open.

-Airship Mauled, Black Market Shop ‘Paws Out’, Jaded-

“Nice to know that the friends of my friends Ryu and his Jorogumo lady are having a nice time in Neighpon… so what can I do to get some nunchucks around here?” I asked the male Kitsune whole grinned at me mischievously.

“Nothing, because you’re mother already got to us first.” The Kitsune stated with a certainty. “We’re not crossing or stepping on the toes of a witch, especially not one who could ban us from her restaurant for all of eternity.”

“Oh come on!” I whined, while my ears and tail wilted. Wait… “Did she ban me from buying boomerangs from you?”

“No, I don’t believe she did… ah a loophole. So what are you in for since we have a business transaction oncoming?” The kitsune smiled cheerfully while pressing his paws together. “We have heavy metal, designer wood with which we can carve an image of your face on it, tough hard plastic, anti-magic materials, quad-frame, tri-frame, hexa-frame or the simple pipe bend frame boomerang. We can even get you magical enchantments on the boomerangs too if you are up for it.”

“Do you do vigilante suits?” I suddenly asked with my tail wagging madly as I had a demented grin on my face, I could work with this and this Kitsune was my new ‘best friend’. “Also did my mother say there was anything against literal nun-chucks or just nunchaku in general?”

“I can tell this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” The Kitsune agreed as his tails wagged. “However we still can’t help you destroy the name ‘Saddle Arabia’ or be involved in any schemes that you are to be liable to be caught up in trying to do so as ‘Mirage’.”

“Okay then, once we’re done hashing out the boomerang, the vigilante suit and the fact that I can’t own a nunchaku because mom keeps getting in the way no matter what I try…” I paused and looked around in a conspiratorial fashion. “I need you to send a bottle cap somewhere discretely and it has nothing to do with Saddle Arabia, in fact I’m quite liberally giving you the plausible deniability upfront by telling you exactly where I am sending it and why I’m sending it there. Someone needs it for their collection.”

Let’s just say Teatime Clockwork will owe me a favor after I do this for him… after I told the Kitsune exactly where would be going he looked curious and shrugged. After we finished doing business the kitsune only had one thing to say to me.

“Thank you for coming in for a pause, now that business is done, get out.” As I exited the store at the Kitsune’s insistence a billowing blue smoke formed in front of me.

“Jaded, it has been a long time coming and I cannot take your constant effrontery to my honor any longer, for I challenge you to a battle!” Princess Luna was five to my nine thus far, it was about time she tried this.

“How about a battle of wits, unfortunately it seems my opponent came to this battle completely unarmed.” I stated blithely while waving a claw at the star mane princess. “So you might want to go figure out how to do so.”

Luna paused and put a hoof to her chin looking up at the canopy of trees and sky in thought with a bit of confusion on her face, she tried to say something once, but then thought better of it. After a few minutes the princess of the night finally decided on something.

“You are right, I must go figure out how to arm my wits and then I’ll come back to beat you soundly in such a battle!” With that Princess Luna flew off leaving me staring after her, quite a few people came to watch the interaction and after a long thirty seconds everyone in the general area started laughing.

“Did that… did that really… I… what just happened?!” I asked in clear confusion as I turned to the confusion god Veles who was doing a brain scorpion thing today, he was always so cool.

“I have no idea what’s going on either.” Well that wasn’t very helpful mister brain scorpion Veles, with candy canes for legs and a stinger made of peanut brittle, his claws were made of a nice smelling hickory smoked wood with fish jerky and his eyes were made of marble. Nice choice of stone really, really adds to the whole confused mess of a monstrous appearance you had going.

“I can’t believe you just got away with that Jaded.” A colt named Quick Split stated as he came up to me and I crouched down to be eye level with him, I was getting really good at being around children. All the practice with my nephew Gavin and my daughters Silvers helps. “I mean what do you think she’s going to do when she eventually figures out that you just openly insulted her intelligence to her face like that?”

“Well if she resembles my remark… anyway you’re a quick witted colt Split and the answer depends on how long it takes for her to realize it and how much of a head start in planning I’ll have against the immortal pony of the night.” I stated calmly. “I’ll do what I always do when I’ve annoyed someone extremely powerful! I run for the hills, since the hills around here have some really big Maulwurf holes and they have magic resistant skin. Put enough of them between me and her to frustrate her to no end into giving up for that given day when it finally does occur to her. Incidentally, I’ve got some Maulwurfs to befriend now and I’m going to need Fluttershy’s help with that.”

-Pokémon Realm, Heading north and on approach for a south western Nixtorm beach, morning approximately three hours before noon, Pom-

I’m surprised at how fast Oberon got us here, but I chalk that up to how bad Quetal and Dolly are when it comes to scheming pranks.

They were relentless and I didn’t think Quetal had it in him at first. Looking at our bipedal blade weasel friend, he seemed nervous and determined to face the cold north as the airship lowered towards the beach in the distance.

“You two horrify me on a number of levels that I can’t even begin to describe.” I stated flatly. “I mean I had a hint with the balloons, the wine barrels, the reed dart guns and… well just about everything else that still surprises me about what happened. It was all with the Queen’s blessing no less.”

Quetal and Dolly bumped claw and paws respectively with a grin and a smirk that I finally responded to it after a few hours of riding on the airship, those two were definitely good buddies now after that whole mess we left behind. That and Quetal saved us from drowning when he wasn’t very good at swimming, that was a thing too.

“All the Snubbles, Granbulls, Eevees, Sylveons and basically every canine with a chip in their shoulder about Oberon certainly helped our cause, among all the pranking factions that wanted one on Oberon, but I think you just existing had something to do with that Pom.” You know what Quetal, I really should be asking if they rose up into being a cult after I left and I’m not asking because I don’t think I actually want to know. “So all we need to do is step off the ship and then we go monster hunting… I really don’t want to be here, but we can’t always have what we wish for, at least not without hard work. Planning Lord Oberon’s downfall was definitely hard work and the end results speaks for itself. So did you have a relaxing time while we were in Titania?”

“I think I did manage to relax a little, I mean the flowers were nice, The Dream felt like home given the magic in the air and it was mostly quiet up until the targeted prank riots started.” I don’t think we would be welcome back anytime soon by Lord Oberon who kept to his word after receiving so many true smiles and the reason for those smiles was rather silly, but at least we’d be welcome back anytime by his wife Titania. “I think all the Fairy Types were quite nice, but I couldn’t help but feel there was some sense of menace in their actions while I was there.”

“Yeah, the fact that Lord Oberon was trying to keep us there wasn’t hard to figure out, but I think his intentions were at least on the nicer side of things. You’ve been through quite a lot before arriving in our world and since arriving in this world and I’ve been there for most of what you’ve been through.” Yeah, Quetal was a witness to the horrible things that have happened around me and he was a good friend, having stuck around as long as he has for the dangers I tend to get into proves it.

I couldn’t really protect my girls or anyone against the likes of Gilgamesh, much less know how I’m going to deal with the whole informational machine monster we were going to face. On that note…

“Dolly, can I have the device for a second? I need to ask it something.” The airship we were on was coming in for a landing on the beach and wouldn’t fly anywhere inland. That was mostly because of the constant blizzards around here lately having just been that horrible and they were caused by Articuno the Pokémon ‘bird of ice’ trying to keep the Kingdom of Nixtorm standing from the monster we were here to face.

Thanks to the weather issues, I was of the opinion that Articuno was causing as much a problem as the monster itself that came into this world on our heels and I feel partially responsible for it being here.

Dolly looked reluctant, but still pawed over the device and I had to ask.

“Yiggy, what are the chances we can beat Skull Chaosdramon X as we are?” I stated as I walked down the gangplank and onto the frost covered cold beach with several Spheals lazing about.

“There are many unknown factors, but the chances are smaller without a Digimon partner to assist in combat against another Digimon. However, Pokémon might be able to fight on par with or possibly overcome Digimon depending on their overall capabilities. As such your chances might raise proportionally to how powerful your friends are as much as your own strength.” Yggdrasil.sys’s voice came from the device, but I’m aware it was a pale copy of the actual thing with a limited interaction ability. The informational god had spoken, there was a chance and I wasn’t going into this blindly. An image of Skull Chaosdramon appeared on the screen as I looked at the device that I had little idea as to how it worked or functioned, just that it did. Some say that technology, when sufficiently advanced, could compare to magic and that’s what I’m seeing here. “I would not suggest facing powerful corrupted viral beyond mega level entity such as Skull Chaosdramon X without as much assistance as you can bring up against it, unless it is greatly weakened prior to you facing it. Be aware that personal health is important, eat and drink until full user Pom. Until you are absolutely ready to fight it, do not approach any lethal digital entity of such capabilities with only the bare minimum of preparedness.”

Computers back on Equus were quite rare and not very powerful, at most they did quick math calculations and from what I understand of going through two worlds of high level technology… eventually Equus would have computers that can do far more than a bunch of calculations. Technology could come to life all on its own like Dodo, the magical equivalent would be a golem except golems weren’t capable of a familiar bond. Don’t know how to feel about the eventual technological advancements or the implications of the dangers thereof, but apparently its part of every eventual space faring race thing most beings do when they eventually want to get off planet and see the universe they were a part of.

I was so very small in the big picture of everything… really don’t want to add space travel as a complication to things I’m already doing, preferred having my hooves firmly planted on a planet. Wanting to fly had a very different meaning to me now.

Also I noted that the Yggdrasil.sys avoided answering what our chances were in a fight against such a monster directly. Said monster used to have something called a ‘Genocide Attack’ until Dazzle’s poison messed it up, so really, I shouldn’t be too hopeful for our chances even if it was rendered entirely dangerous in a melee only range.

That it was causing enough destruction in the Kingdom of Nixtorm that the various kingdoms were taking note of it being there, this meant that it wasn’t any less dangerous than it had been when it was coming after me or my friends previously with those cannons on its back when they were in working order.

I calmly gave it back to Dolly and took a deep, long, inhale of air and then exhaled slowly. The air here was at least invigorating and fairly fresh, even smelled as such with the pine needles permeating the surroundings, but it was also quite cold. That was to be expected from a kingdom of ice.

“Are we still doing it?” Quetal asked, he was getting antsy just standing on the frost covered sand on the coastline as he stared at the frozen mountains that was once upon a time his homeland.

“We are still doing it.” I confirmed, before I hiked the food supplies onto my back and started forward. Time to start hunting down a monster and put a stop to it… somehow. I have no clue how we were going to do it, I barely even did anything permanent to Gilgamesh.

Even if we had, apparently, won that fight. Illusio certainly didn’t come out of it in anything resembling a good condition and with a lot of Psychic Types suddenly homeless. Didn’t know how Aurora was doing or what the other nations like Fontaine that was still recovering from its own issues, just to have more added onto them.

This world was falling apart and I’m feeling quite sorry for the people who live here.

“Yay, we’re all going to die!” Please don’t look so happy about that Curdle, it’s making my anxiety come back in full force… like it ever really left to begin with. She hopped off the airship to follow us into the supposed frozen wasteland as Quetal tells it, while looking around with wide eyed curiosity. An entire species that devoted its evolution to suddenly lacking flight and becoming tastier was still quite confusing to me. “I’ve never actually been this far outside of Titania’s Fairy Dust Islands or The Dream before. Do you think anyone will actually take me up on eating me?”

“Welcome to the rest of this world then, it’s not going to be a cakewalk like you might think Curdle and I don’t think people want to eat sentient mounds of cream and sugar.” Though I suppose Curdle did look like a walking cake topping. I now had a friend I can positively say was made of lemon cream and had peach tarts as functional organs and edible hair ties. What is my life, that there was an actual concern about a Pokémon actively wanting me to eat it? “I’m fairly certain I don’t want to be a diabetic at this point in my life either, already have enough problems with being a golden wool.”

“Are you guys going to be okay?” Sir Mik asked as he stood on the railing of the ship, ready to ride it back to Titania.

“We’ll be fine from here Sir Mik, thank you for being a good friend and helping us get here safely.” I responded as if I weren’t going on a possibly suicidal monster hunt. Yeah, my mental issues weren’t getting any better, was it that noticeable? “I wish you well with getting back to Titania.”

“You’re welcome, let’s shove off for home guys, I want to see if Queen Titania and Lord Oberon are talking again.” Sir Mik was such a nice guy, which fits with the title of ‘knight’ he had. “They might need help to make their relationship a bit healthier than it currently is, also I don’t want to miss the fallout of the newest major resurgence of prank wars. I might actually have to actively protect the queen or king.”

I sighed and started forward and past the Spheal playfully lazing and rolling about on the beach and up towards the snow and frozen paths beyond the beach to the north, the temperature was dropping by the second and it wouldn’t likely be going up too far as long as we were here.

I looked to Dolly who seemed as energetic as ever and tightened what little wool I grew back out around my body, having regrown enough for full body coverage at the very least over the course of the last few time dilated days of ‘The Dream’ helped with giving me a protective warmth. Fairy Types were surely tricky, but they at least weren’t expecting anything of me anymore aside from maybe Curdle.

“Are you okay Dolly?” I asked as she didn’t seem to be shivering or even showing signs of the temperature dropping having an effect on her, you could see her hot breathe in the chilly air.

She was a short furred dog species and as such one would suspect she shouldn’t have much protection against the cold.

“Huh, yeah, why wouldn’t I be? Is this about my board, I know we haven’t talked about it, but the damage to it isn’t all that bad… though I will be more careful around things like that sword that Guys-a-lush guy pulled on us. It’s far better than you being torn apart by that attack at the very least.” Dolly’s favorite thing and she cared more about me than it. I felt somewhat happy that Dolly was still as positive as ever and she was continuing to have a lot of optimism given the situation we were walking into… on purpose. “Still would like to find materials to fix the damage, so I probably shouldn’t use it as a weapon for a while.”

I noticed Dolly rub a paw over where she was slashed open by that attack and looking at her unblemished fur and pristine, lacking scars, flesh. Yeah, that attack had scared me and I apparently let my Chrysomallus side creep up my front left leg to save her.

“So you’re not cold?” Just to be sure, I asked. It took me a moment to remember what I had discovered about Dolly’s side of the Dalmatian family with her brother Dante being a Dalmatian Grimm. Her father possibly having the general Hellhound immunity to normal flames in his job as a ‘fire fighter’ would make it functionally impossible for him to die from fire, but not a collapsing building.

By all rights, Dolly should have some of her father’s unusual traits, instead it seemed like she had the opposite. Was her birth mother perhaps responsible?

I think Dolly having an affinity for being immune to freezing cold temperatures was unusual for a Dalmatian and I’m surprised she hadn’t started throwing fireballs around already, her magic definitely seemed to fit her though. That that nature didn’t include an active ability to spew fire related magic was a little confusing given her cheerful personality.

“Nope, never been really cold. I mean I can obviously feel it sure, like sucking on an ice cube really, but it doesn’t affect me much.” Dolly definitely had passive abilities before she became a familiar to me and we uncorked her abilities. “What I really hate is getting too hot, matted fur is not pleasant, I swear springs and summers in Camden are like infernos sometimes.”

“Then it’s unfortunate for you that Huoshan is relatively hot year round.” If we ever make it back to the three tiered giant wall of a city alive. “Well outside of Hearth’s Warming season, where the temperature doesn’t drop too much, but at least its cooler like here.”

I pointed and swept hoof to the cold sandy beach as we were walking up towards a trail, there were a few Pokémon loitering about.

Aside from Curdle offering herself for a taste, we weren’t drawing much attention as we passed by several frosty palm trees. I was wary of one of them actually being an Exeggutor.

Nothing was occurring though, which led me to feeling strange… like I wasn’t actually a part of the action going on in the world for once. It was an oddly comforting and slightly twisted feeling.

“I’ll deal with it when we get there. Just know that the cold has never bothered me in any way!” In the fact that you didn’t look to be getting cold at all Dolly. “In fact I love sledding, snowboarding and other winter sports, basically any activities you can do with snow really… also might explain why I have a thing for huskies.”

“Maybe I’ll take you mud-boarding sometime when we could find a good place to do it.” Which was a thing I knew about, but I’ve never done it on purpose before… mostly incidentally because my canine family kept spooking me into sliding down hills flailing.

“Hold you to it!” This got Dolly’s tail wagging and she was affectionately nuzzling me across our bond.

I considered the fact that the underworld of Dolly’s world might be impossibly cold. Her immunity to freezing temperatures would make sense in that context, in a different interpretation kind of way where dogs act as mobile space heaters, while still being a hellhound descendant. Again, goodness knows if her birth mother had any mythical creatures in her bloodline too, well mythical in that world… on Equus all kinds of mystical canines were a common occurrence, at least wherever I happen to be at the time.

The population of dogs in Huoshan did mysteriously shoot up to almost triple the number of dogs in the area when I started living there. I’m now beginning to think it was my fault that the general canine population took a sharp rise, that and the taming of the local wolves was becoming as easy as saying hello to them outright by just the longma alone.

As if the wolves just wanted to live wherever I was settled down at…

“How are you feeling Quetal?” I asked, trying to steer my brain away from the ‘Canine Queen’ thing, as he looked rather twitchy about being here as we moved to a path leading up to the nearby mountain.

“I still remember… how to get around.” Quetal finally stated with his eyes closed and crossed arms hugging himself lightly with his claws. Between my nightmares and his… I don’t know who is winning and we shouldn’t even be keeping score in the first place. “Also I’m… an Ice Type… I’ll be fine at lower temperatures too.”

“Well my body is thickening, but I’m okay with that… I wonder if I’ll start tasting like a nice sherbet or sorbet?” Really Curdle, can you not give me mental images of the frozen treats suddenly being alive like a Vannilish? Reindeer generally sell stuff like that on the streets in Huoshan, this is certainly going to contaminate some of my good memories of talking to the friendly vendors.

“So can you lead the way to the kingdom’s main city or town Quetal?” I tried to ignore the possible ruining of icy treats for me and move on with our adventure, as much as I didn’t like it we needed to find the kingdoms capital and ask around to find out where the monster is, so we can figure out how to deal with it once we do know.

“Yeah, I can… I can do that.” Quetal calmly pressed the back of his claws against his forehead while wincing, he was not mentally feeling well. Physically he was fine, I was already recognizing the signs of trauma I tried to constantly ignore in myself. “Come on.”

With a motion of his left claw forward, Quetal took the lead of our group.

“So I haven’t seen any dangerous Pokémon.” At least not yet, I really can’t see Spheals as threatening as their blank stares were less than threatening. There was very little intelligence behind their eyes and friendly natures. “I’m pretty sure if I picked a Spheal up, it wouldn’t care and would just come along without so much as a fuss.”

“Spheals are always friendly and cute, possibly sometimes useful like with Fontaine’s unit of them, but wait until we see what is considered the more ‘civilized’ people around here before making judgements. We’re still on the fringe of things.” Quetal warned and I would heed him when and if I finally met someone with a scathing personality around here. “You might eventually see what I was talking about personally, wish you didn’t have to as one of the best friends I’ve ever had.”

-An hour or so along the trail through a heavily wooded forest of pine trees-

“So how long will it take to reach the kingdom itself in these snowy mountains?” I finally asked, I was getting rather cold. Dolly was still perfectly fine, even humming to herself cheerfully as we walked along.

“Two days of travel on foot, we’ve definitely got the supplies for it, but given the weather conditions are going to be harsh if the rumors about how well Articuno is holding off the monster we’re here to hunt...” Trailing off, Quetal looked about the clear air in the forest. There wasn’t a blizzard, it wasn’t snowing and there was just a lot of snow covered trees. There was not much else out here, not even signs of Pokémon despite some smells in the area saying otherwise that there were Pokémon around. “It may be slightly longer than predicted. We’ll need to find a cave for the night, I can already sense a blizzard building up.”

“Right, have any ideas on how to find one or do I get started on building an igloo and a fire for it?” It felt like I needed one right about now with how cold it was getting.

“It probably be best to get started on that when we find a clearing big enough for it, because Ice Types tend to eat frozen bodies and I wouldn’t suggest becoming frozen alive around here.” Well that was a morbid thing to be telling us right now Quetal.

“Right, find us a nice open space to start so I can get to work on that.” Building igloos wasn’t too hard, though doing so without water to freeze in these temperatures to hold its shape might not make it the most structurally sound thing. I already had an idea of how to solve the issue without using our drinking water.

It wasn’t long before we were piling and packing down snow into a large dome shape, I had Curdle use my idea to melt the outer layer of the dome slightly. Once the liquefied snow froze back up, we had a working igloo’s outer shell.

Now all we had to do was carve a hollow out of it and put a small hole in the ceiling, then get stuff for a campfire to settle in for the night.

-In the forest nearby, ???-

“Fou?” The beast of envy, with a logos of 'comparison', looked about trying to sense the weird feeling of anti-magic energy in the air as it sniffed around the forest. It was quite an alluring scent.

It still couldn’t fully track the monster back to wherever its lair was and had gotten lost, but it might have just found a juicy and just as challenging morsel to hunt down.

Licking its chops, the beast started to look around and hunted for the wonderful smell with a watering mouth that grinned.

Primate Murder was hungry, but it wouldn't find it's prey before the blizzard set in and it would have to wait for another time to hunt for that delicious aroma.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“So… was it supposed to be a cat, a dog or a weird squirrel rabbit thing?” I asked honestly.

“Cath Palug isn’t actually any of those, he is simply a beast that changes depending on the environment he is raised in. So he is technically above being any of them despite his current form being a short tailed bipedal fox.” Tiamat leaned back and all her heads smiled at once. One savoring some of my food. “So really Pom’s magnetism in this case might be a horrible detriment. I wonder, was it really a bright idea to let Primate Murder wander your realm?”

“He’s not as strong as he could be and while he is quite aggressive to be sure… I believe that he will be an adequate challenge for Pom as much as he thinks she’ll be an adequate challenge for him to hunt down.” I was curious, could Pom befriend the beast or would she have to pummel him into submission before that could happen?

Curiosity has me wondering what happened with Lord Oberon and how bad it was, with a single peak into his realm through time and space itself, I gained a broad smile on my face and actually laughed.

“Celebi, camera moment!” The plant psychic appeared at my call, saluted and then nodded in agreement at the swiftly delivered order before disappearing back into the time stream.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words... but it's more like a memory that can be preserved for posterity.

-Western Nixtorm, Igloo in the forested mountains, Dolly-

Pom poked a hole through the roof with the strange lance and then used it to prop up one side of the igloo as Curdle and Quetal dropped some wood off to the side.

They all set up a camping circle with rocks, then put some wood in and we waited.

“Okay… what is everyone waiting for?” Curdle stated and waited for a bit for someone to light the fire, she then noticed us all staring at her since she had the ability to breathe fire now. Not going to lie, I’m kind of jealous of that and wanted to call myself a dragon dog, but nope, fire wasn’t apparently something I did. “Oh… right… I got it!”

Curdle blew out some flames to light the bits of wood that would keep everyone else warm for throughout the blizzard. Might even get a good nap in while we were at it.

"Fire is going to be really useful around here!" Curdle made me wonder why Ice Types would be weak to Fire Types, isn't ice just hardened water? Wouldn't melting Ice Types make Fire Types weaker or something because things got wet?

Me personally, I didn’t see what the big deal was when it came to being cold. It was only a little bit nippy as we dug into some food for lunch, we would be riding out the blizzard that started up outside and it looked fairly nasty. Never saw so much falling snow in my life though, well at least snow that doesn't melt in an hour or two anyway.

Author's Note

I've been having some bad luck lately, but nothing too big.

364. The Beast of Comparison.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Jackie ‘The Blackcap’-

“Today must be a good day, I don’t have any broken bones and my bruises are only pulsing every other minute rather than every five seconds.” I immediately jerked to the side and a tree slammed into the ground where I had been standing. “Right, shouldn’t get too complacent... trees are out for my blood today and they aren’t even walking vampire trees like in my last adventure. Everyone agreed that killing them all with fire was very much warranted…”

“Ugh…” I looked to see Gallus laying on the ground nearby as I made my way up to the restaurant.

“Oh, hey little brother, how are things?” I asked pleasantly and then ducked as two arrows collided where my chest and spine used to be a second ago. I didn’t even mind when one of the arrows deflected itself straight into my right thigh.

It was only worth a slight hiss of pain through my beak, I shifted my right leg a bit and… yep that’s is most certainly pain.

It wasn’t an assassination attempt… that’s just how unlucky I am to have arrows come at from nowhere with implications that it might be an accident by some unknown unicorn somewhere. Happens often enough, given I was assaulted by one of the Sparkle Family’s Hearths Warming trees that got launched into orbit.

I’ve been injured by Starswirl the bearded before on accident too, the old guy studied my curse after that and deemed it impossible to remove or even do anything about.

I am so thankful that my sweet little Gavin doesn’t have my problems and that Gene is such a comforting husband, even if he’s constantly in danger just by being near me all the time. Guy loves the danger really and that’s one of my selling points as a pirate, I’m constantly in danger while awake and no place is safe for me.

Twilight and Starlight tried stuffing me inside a magical bunker, one that’s ‘supposedly’ impervious to all outside problems, the bunker collapsed inwards on top of me within five minutes. Apparently it wasn’t impervious to internal issues and they obviously couldn’t take out the magical oxygen matrix or else I wouldn’t have been able to survive in there in the first place.

Better unicorns than Twilight have tried to make me perfectly safe while trying to account for every variable including the entropy I cause just by existing. Yep, my curse might be my issue, but at least I have family to make my day brighter. Even my sweet boy Gavin learned when to dodge around me and luckily hasn’t been hurt by my luck yet.

“I’m okay.” Gallus finally answered after his groaning stopped. “Fizzlepop is just mangling me constantly, but she says I’m at least five times better than any royal guard that currently exists.”

“That’s quite a compliment, but…” I started to say.

“Except her.” Gallus added on quickly.

“Right then, answered the question immediately. So is Fizzle going to get the storm creatures in on your training?” I was hit in the back of the head by a pinecone, I ignored it as my feathers took most of the pain out of the impact. Pinecones are really huge around here, like most of the animals.

“That’s next week, she wants me to be good as the Storm Guard is…” Gallus said with a thousand yard stare in his eyes. “Still the Queen of the Storm Creatures by the way, kind of terrifying that she still has such pull with them and a bit weird that she prefers having a day job being one of Twilight’s guards.”

“Good, maybe we can get Silver Stream in on it by having her practice her aim on you. She’ll be using blunt paint arrows.” Also, no matter where I stood, I was guaranteed to be hit by them at some point. I could even be thirty miles away from the practice zone and still be hit somehow.

“Is it bad that I’m nervous to be a part of any training exercise involving Silver Stream?” Gallus stated.

“No, we’re quite sure that she’ll like you no matter what you do as long as you don’t go evil, crazy or flip out or something. I’m sure you two will be married eventually when you’re ready. Mom definitely wants more grand kittens to dote on than just Silvers and Gavin. I know Jaded is being talked around into having a foal with Fizzy… her half unicorn biology should help with that.” Their relationship was honestly cute, even Jaded was trying to make sure Gallus and Silver Stream were working out. Mind you Silver Stream got the shovel talk quite a few times by now, even by other residents in Airship Mauled including Fresh, Mango and Dr. Permanganate. “She knows you were homeless, she knows you didn’t exactly have much of a family before Kuril adopted you, like Kuril did to me when she found out I’m also a homeless waif. Silver Stream likes you enough that she’s not scared of all the people who could come down on her if she ever did you wrong without an apology.”

“It’s actually nice to have a family that cares I guess.” Gallus stated bluntly and then looked at my thigh. “You have an arrow in your thigh… looks to be a barb type of arrow too. That’s going to be a pain to get out.”

“Oh I’m aware that it’ll need to be surgically removed, it only rates a single hiss on the pain scale for me.” I knew the shovel talk from Kuril involving a mouse transformation potion was probably one of the more terrifying threats, well aside from Jaded’s threat to put Silver Stream at the top of her ‘Petty Kitty Revenge’ list…. which means she would be outright putting a single person above the entirety of Saddle Arabia in her list of priorities as far as revenge goes and it truly says a lot about how much Jaded loves her friends and family.

I would be more worried for Saddle Arabia and my friends who live there like Amira, but Jaded’s current track record shows that Saddle Arabia will be fine…. if highly and constantly inconvenienced by a single Abyssinian Cat halfway around the world from them. Otherwise Saddle Arabia is actually quite nice to visitors as long as you didn’t live there.

If anything, Jaded is ironically improving Saddle Arabia by making it a tourist hotspot just to see what she’ll be blamed for happening to the country next, whether it’ll be true or not is the question and only Maries or Fizzy would know.

Currently Jaded might be behind the whole green bean thing in Saddle Arabia, but nobody knows how she could have possibly pulled it off if she even did. If you were to ask the Lord of Chaos Discord about it… all he had to say was that he is somewhat impressed and could have done better with a ball of twine, a pack of bubblegum and a freshly very inebriated Applejack… but he was all out of gum, so he obviously couldn’t have done it.

-Pokémon Realm, Nixtorm, Igloo in a southwestern forest path, Dolly-

I had finished my nap and was sitting on the far side of the igloo away from everyone who was snuggled against Pom’s body for warmth. Here I was with Dormarch’s mobile home in my paws, just talking to my family while everyone was still sleeping after lunch.

I did take a look outside and while I didn’t feel the cold, I could see that the blizzard was basically making it impossible to see beyond my nose and the entrance was kind of worryingly sealing itself up.

“I’ve never seen snow like this before bro, it’s so thick you could take a flamethrower to it and it would even put a dent in the surrounding area.” I’ve kept my family up to date with all the dangerous stuff Pom keeps getting dragged into with me. Also I’ve been making sure the fire was going and that the hole in the roof of the igloo was not getting sealed off by pushing it outwards. “I’m also afraid that I’m not going to be able help Pom when she needs me the most and well… she healed me after a nasty injury that took me out of that fight.”

“Well at least Chrysomallus as a name for a particular species makes sense. ’Chryso’ is a word for ‘gold’ and ‘Mallus’ that has many meanings and one of which in particular is ‘wool’.” Dante stated earning Dylan’s attention before he turned back to me. “I think it’s kind of neat that we met a gold wool flying sheep of legend.”

“Yeah, except the whole growing wings things is apparently somehow an imminent death sentence for her, nobody has really explained the why of it yet. Pom at least knows why and isn’t telling anyone, not even me…” I really didn’t want Pom to die. I wilted a bit and looked away from my brothers. “And I made it is worse…”

“Look Dolly, don’t worry about it, I’m sure Pom will be fine as long as… would it count as an affliction if it is naturally part of her? Anyway, as long as you make sure it doesn’t get that much worse, things will be fine right? If you really can revive Dormarch, then maybe he could help you with keeping Pom from losing to it and it’ll be one of those cool fantasy miracles. It’s not like its cancer right… right?! Look… just know that she loves you and she’s family, she’s likely already forgiven you for almost dying on her and forcing her to lose ground to her ‘problem’. She did it willingly and was probably happy that you were alright afterwards given you were still with her when you woke up.” Dylan was still doing his space case thing, but I caught him in the middle of taking a break. “Look, we miss you Dolly, especially dad. Yes, Dawkins still refuses to call him father, but at least their relationship is still currently quite amiable. You’re Dolly D. Dalmatian, the original Caper Canine herself, I’m sure you’ll be by Pom’s side every step of the way doing your best to make sure she has some happiness in her life. She needs to smile more and you’re good at smiling even when it hurts. You certainly did that enough with me, even when things get bad I’m sure you’ll be fine as you’re finally becoming a responsible dog.”

“Yeah having to be responsible for things sucks, but in this case I’m not backing away from it! Also going to have to confirm the whole ‘mystical canine’ thing in my side of the family again bro. I can walk out into what I’m assuming to be sub-zero temperatures and have it only feel a bit like wind on my face from boarding… on a normal day.” Deciding to be cheeky, I asked something with a smile. “So have the firefighters dad works with found out he’s immune to fire yet?”

“No, but we think they are getting suspicious at how often dad walks away from fires without so much as a single burn on him despite his fur getting covered in scorch marks.” Dante answered. “They think it’s because his gear is pretty good, despite having burned his gear off most of his body more than once or twice over the course of being a fire dog.”

“Well it’s not like dad was going to be a super hero with just immunity to fire, unless he gets a whole rogues gallery of intelligent fire based monsters or something like that. Would be pretty awesome though.” Speaking of which… I had an inkling I should ask about it. “Say, has Ditto been impersonating me as Caper Canine?”

“…” Neither of my brothers said anything and looked to each other, even made several gestures. Eventually they Rock, Paper, Pawed each other and Dylan seemed to lose out.

“Yes, but she doesn’t have any of your more magical abilities, she does have a well put together helmet and skateboard though and has been learning a lot of acrobatics lately from stunt dogs at the local studo. In fact, she can do an almost good enough impression of you to fool Dorothy, Dizzy and Deedee, only almost since even Ditto Dalmation knows that she can’t replace the original entirely. She’s treating the Caper Canine thing like a mantle, it’s giving her some of her own personality… so she can at least stop copying others personalities and be herself a bit for once. Even if it’s in heroics, which is quickly becoming an option for jobs we can do because of you and Spot.” Dylan answered dryly. Yeah, Ditto was able to mimic the naturally occurring skills of any Dalmatian in the family as well as mimic appearances and voices to a limited to degree. “She’s even a dabbling quite a bit into magic and she’s really good at glamour spells, which as you might remember from being bored to death by sessions of Poodlewoof, are spells that make you look like whatever you want to look and sound like. We have at least a few illusionists in the ‘fam’ thanks to Spot.”

“You have to admit Ditto does a pretty good impersonation of you too when needed Dylan.” Dante stated as he hugged Dylan for me after seeing a gesture from me to do so, nice to see my gloomy brother looking much healthier. “I think she’d be better as an actor or stunt dog than a super hero, but at least she hasn’t seriously gotten hurt yet.”

“Like the Triple Divas weren’t enough actors for the family.” I grumbled lightly with a smile. “Well we’re almost out of time, I think everyone is waking up now and we’re about to go hunting for a scary metal skeleton of a monster with an obvious aura of death. Don’t know how to feel about that after we all basically just got our butts handed to us by a functional god. I mean we won, or at least I would like to think we did, but I’m betting that Illusion place is all kinds of messed up from it.”

“Well good luck Dolly and remember, you can always call us if you’re feeling down. Provided that you have that device and are still alive.” Dylan was happy to talk to me and I was happy hear he was happy when I wasn’t there to help things along, my step brother was still so worried about me even when I was no longer in the house anymore to bug him or anyone else. “Just keep proving to the ‘fam’ that Dalmatians can go above and beyond, because we believe in you.”

“Hey, I’m not the only one trying to follow a dream, you’re doing it too bro and we’re not getting any younger… I believe in you too. Best space case bro ever!” I was curious about my friends too. “Say Dante, has Summer, Hansel or Spike visited the house?”

“We’ve had Roxy, Snowball, Summer, Fergus and the Canal Gang, even Spike, but no Hansel… still just does his own thing and rarely drops by to play Poodlewoof. Doesn’t even ask about why you haven’t been around at the skate park when even Prince Corgi and his family did. We told the royal corgis about where you were and the kind of stuff you’ve been doing. The royal corgis said to tell you that you were awesome by the way and that they miss having you over at their personal halfpipe. Even Clarissa asked about you… once… only once and it’s a surprise that she even would bother.” Yeah, that sounds about right Dante. I hoped Dylan would pick Summer over his attraction for that rotten Poodle Portia that tried to make him eat a cat hairball that he was deathly allergic to. Still liked Hansel a lot, but I’ll be darned if he wasn’t a little dim. “Goodbye Dolly, I foresee you ending this call soon.”

“See you guys and wish me some luck, because we’re definitely going to need it!” I cut the call and placed the device back on my collars and tossed my scarf over it before making my way over to Pom. We’re going to be walking throughout the evening and nigh.

The blizzard has passed and we were soon back at it for walking throughout the evening.

-An hour later, moving through the forest, Pom-

I heard something other than the crunching of snow that we were walking through.

“Wait…” I called out to Quetal and he froze and started to look around. My ears, always up and tied at the back of my head by my wool twitched and I looked about with eyes flickering at the darkness around us. The para-lance, whatever it really is, could make light from its tip aiding in this evening trek through a frost shrouded forest. “Something’s stalking us.”

My nose flared in preparation as I slowly inhaled through it, we stood in the twilight of the evening and waited. The area was unnervingly quiet, we previously heard sounds of Pokémon until a few minutes ago and then nothing but the sound of us breathing… and something else.

Quetal and even Curdle were ready for anything, as was I as I pulled the parasol from my shoulder and return it to lance mode with my front hooves.

My eyes surveyed the trees to the left and right, holding the lance loosely out to the side with my right hoof as I slowly scrunched up to get into a standing position if needed.

We were in the middle of a clearing of trees and… there!

Brought the lance across my chest defensively as the shaft entered the mouth of the beast that shoved me to the ground and tried to bite through the weapon. Unlike other weapons this one was undoubtedly never going to break if my suspicions of what it really was panned out.

As it used its teeth to pin me down it raised its right claw and prepared to claw at me.

I tried to push it off me, but its strength was several times that of what I was capable of dealing with. At least I halted its attempt to claw me and I tried to get a good look at it as I finally exhaled.

Even with the limited burst of breaking my limitations from Dancing Flame, I couldn’t move this beast. It portrayed a canine in appearance, but my instincts were screaming that it was something beyond one and I didn’t even know how I could tell.

It looked like a Zoroark, except not a Dark Type like the mercenary back in Illusio. Instead of black fur this, thing, had greyish white fur, long white hair tipped with reds and pink colors. It also had strange red muscle like welts all over its body. Otherwise it was the same kind of three clawed creature that a Zoroark was, thus I’m sure this was an alternative Zoroark and not a Dark Type.

There was something terrifying about its presence, given it was the exact same creature from my nightmares.

First order of business, quickly analyzing my opponent while I could.

I was never going to be able to take them in a physical fight. They had more brute strength than I could contend with and I couldn’t even move them when I attempted to buck them in the chest. They had raw muscle or hysterical strength.

They were smart enough to keep the spear out of the equation by holding it in their teeth so that I couldn’t actually bring it around to wield against them and was using it to lock me in place, thus this beast was intelligent.

The beasts speed was enough to surprise everyone here, it was blindingly fast and I was the absolute intended target of its attack.

The scariest thing about this encounter with a living nightmare was that I believed that it didn’t seem to care about attacking anyone other than me.

Unfortunately for this thing, which was definitely not a normal Pokemon just by the look in its eyes, I wasn’t alone.

“Beat Up!” Quetal’s voice offered it a minimal distraction from trying to claw at me, I didn’t have enough wool to repel the claws or the blunt force this beast could let loose on me.

The first thing to hit the alternative Zoroark, was a Shadow copy of me delivering a devastating right hook across the jaw, it really seemed to grab the beasts attention and hurt. This was followed swiftly by shadow Dolly slamming it in the chin from below.

The real Dolly tried slamming it in the chest with a momentum fueled paw slap to push it further away, only to be surprised when she passed straight through its body when she tried. Definitely a Ghost Type phasing effect.

Shadow Curdle Blasted it with a flash of darkness pushing it even further away, having much more of an effect. In fact Quetal’s new move seemed to be highly effective here as a Shadow Quetal slashed the beast in the belly while ramming into it and dissipating.

The Dark Type attack seemed particular good at forcing it back, enough so for me to get on my hind legs and ready the para-lance defensively.

“If you want something to eat, then try me!” Curdle stated as she leapt into the beasts face and let off a Dazzling Gleam into its eyes that made me glad it wasn’t directed at me, the slit pupils shrunk to dots as the beast howled and stumbled backwards with its paws quickly being put over its eyes.

“It’s the thing I saw in my nightmare…” I stated sullenly and quietly, making Dolly glance at me while trying to keep an eye on the beast that was already recovering. Dolly suddenly became far more attentive to the beast.

“It’s an Alternative Zoroark, Normal and Ghost Type, but somethings up with it.” Looking to Quetal I just had to ask a pertinent question about this situation.

“How can it be ‘normal’ and a ‘ghost’ at the same time?!” There was nothing normal about this beast if my hunch was right as it finally recovered and glared at my friends arrayed at my side.

“That’s not the problem, why didn’t he try to ambush us with an illusion?” Quetal asked as he flexed his claws. “That would have been much quieter.”

“I’d have to say he’s an outsider and a fairly unusual one.” I said as the beast looked between us and then focused on me, why though? What was it about me that he could be targeting? “Something like Cu Chulainn or similar enough.”

With a rush he lunged forward and Dolly managed to slow him down with an Aero, I deflected his incoming right claw with leftward flick of the lance. After jamming it forward into his left knee to force them down, I slapped him upside the head to little injury and then opened the spear into a parasol point blank into his face and knocked him back with the sudden blast of the parasol lance opening.

Despite the knockback, he quickly lunged forward with his left claw and sliced my right shoulder open open as he tackled into me with his right shoulder. This beast wasn’t using Pokémon moves, but they certainly intended to take me down and the blow hurt and thankfully hadn’t stunned me.

I quickly twirled and repositioned the spear to plant it tip first into the ground behind me and to the left to stop myself from being toppled. Again the beast ignore my friends and was blasted by a wall of mystical flames firing form Curdle and two Quetal’s followed up by leaping by and slashing into the beast.

Its slash injuries healed before my very eyes in seconds after they were dealt, but when it tried to attack Quetal, I decided to prevent the beast from taking out Quetal or at least his Substitute.

With a quick heave forward, I sent a pile of snow flying up and splashing into the beasts face. Having blinded it, I followed through on my golf swing and met their chin with a solid cracking noise that staggered the beast.

The beast tried to jump away and possibly reassess this fight and that’s when Dolly decided that her most recent spell would really make this creature much slower.

“Gravity!” Dolly had timed it quite precisely, the purple orb struck while the beast was high enough in the air to go for a tree branch to try and find a different angle of attack.

The beast rocketed into the snow and become buried under it.

“Let’s move while he’s down, Quetal!” I stated and started to motion for the others to run, as Quetal lead us away and towards where we were heading.

I think we made a good twenty feet before the snow erupted from behind me and a claw caught the left side of my face toppling me even with a glancing blow. I hastily lashed out with a magic claw from my left hoof scoring a bloody mark across the beasts muzzle while I rolled onto my back, notably the claw mark I just gave them didn’t heal.

Why would magic be effective against my opponent?

Quickly bringing the para-lance up and opening it in the roaring monsters face when it tried to bring both its claws slamming down on me, the para-lance didn’t buckled under the attack, but the force of it did force me down into the snow in a position where I couldn’t move.

If I had a solid hoofing, I could do a wobble counter, but all the snow made it impossible to lock myself in position with what little wool I had. Also any blow could send me, my weapon was knocked to the side and…

I felt pain erupt in my chest as I was launched into a tree back first and there was quite a bit of pain in my spine, I was both dazed and confused. The beast had gotten under my guard that fast?

How was it still that fast? Was it just getting stronger?!

“Hey, stop paying attention to her, I’m the most delicious thing here!” Roared Curdle who had an odd way of seeing this situation, but at least I knew she meant well.

Keeping my eyelids closed as a bright light filled the area, the sounds of flames hitting the beast and scorching them could be heard. Followed by multiple impacts that sounded like another Beat up and then Dolly unleashed an Aero to make the flames around the beast’s long hair and thick fur violently explode.

“Pom… are you okay?” Dolly was looking at me worriedly as I sat up from the tree and grunted.

“No, but I don’t think he’ll let us leave without a fight...” Veins of wool slowly etched themselves along my left cheek and sewed my light facial wounds shut and my deeper claw wounds in my shoulder was swiftly closed too once I had a moment to concentrate on mitigating the damage, the cold was starting to get to me and I really did not want to bleed too much. “?!”

Wrapping my left hoof around Dolly I rolled to the side as a claw shredded the tree behind me and toppled it into another tree and tossed Dolly out of the way of danger.

I slammed the edge of the open parasol around its left leg and, once hooked, yanked the beast entirely off balance. Reorienting the lance and closing it up, I kicked forward with my hind legs blunt tip first into its right kidney as it turned into my blow.

This badly winded the creature and made it go onto all fours, I hopped while raising the lance above my head and then brought it down on theirs before they could recover from my last attack. The lance came down on their skull with a, very much sickening for me, crack that made me wince and leap backwards.

The thick hair, that apparently wouldn’t burn away in explosions or fire attack, had prevented the worst of the damage and made the beast bleed all over the end of the lance and splatter me a bit as it toppled over on to its side.

Its skull was already healing from the blunt force impact, its blunt force trauma wasn’t going to slow it down one bit.

“Fou-…” Growled out the monster as it looked up at me and I froze, my heart seized up and I felt fear overtake me. I honestly felt like I was currently Velvet when a flashlight is shined in her eyes.

Sure sounded like there was no ‘E’ in the sound he just made, but the beast is definitely related to the one that haunted my recent nightmares.

The sudden lunge forward at me was met by me sharply exhaling a Bark Blast right into his chest. Followed by a series of Beat Up shadow copies impacting and dealing damage to the monster from various angles. Followed even further by being hit by a strange assortment of decorations a second later that spewed from Curdles body.

“How about a little taste of what you get for ignoring my flavor profile!” The Dazzling Gleam Curdle launched this time caused all the decorations to glow brightly and the beast was actually blasted away from me and Dolly. In fact I don’t understand what happened but the power of Curdle’s attack just seemed to double in power out of nowhere. “How do you like that one-two Decorate combo!”

Oh right, Curdle could use the move Decorate. When it was explained to me, the move apparently hit the opponent with replicated bits of the user and marks them with said decorations. Using that to make any attacks that Curdle land resonate and increase the power of all her attacks on said target. The result was actually really quite amazing to see in action as the beast was blasted into a tree themselves.

At least it had been until Curdle was horrifically splattered all over the place by an angry ‘peach tart’ covered beast that immediately surged for me afterwards covered in Curdle’s remains. Obviously not liking it at all.

This wasn’t the hunger of a mere beast, this was definitively a targeted assault and I was the target.

I narrowed my eyes and readied the lance in my right hoof, my left hoof was prepared to let loose a magical claw this monster and I had a few bark blasts in me as I stepped away from the tree. I could feel Dolly taking up a position next to me protectively.

“Okay, ow… give me some time to recover and I’ll put myself back in the game coach…” Even the beast blinked and looked at the pile of completely smashed lemon cream at where Curdle’s voice came from, did she even have a voice box to be talking with right now?

The beast quickly shook off the distraction and then charged to the side to stab and rip apart Quetal intercepting it, only to have just gotten his substitute.

The beast was promptly bombarded by several shadow copies of us, minus the one of Quetal himself. Quetal can only make a total of three substitutes at full strength. I can’t really let this continue on like this, does this beast have a weakness?

I noted something about this beast, it was relying entirely on raw power to overwhelm us and had absolutely no skill in its actions aside from its intelligence. It was stronger than us combined, but it didn’t really have much aside from strength and healing, that and being a ghost type to avoid physical attacks… my magic claw effects were somewhat permanent.

“Dolly, drag the para-lance over to Curdle please and wait.” I pointed at Curdle as she was reforming, started moving towards the beast. “Quetal protect Dolly and Curdle, get ready to help her.”

I inhaled through my nose as I trotted forward, the beasts attention was entirely on me as I trudged through the snow at it with no regrets and I didn’t envy its strength. It suddenly flinched making me curious as to why it did so.

Still the beast hurled itself at me through the dark night air and its right claw flashed forward, I exhaled and narrowly evaded and then leapt up to blast its right shoulder point blank with a charge bark blast.

Having deftly dislocated it easily, the beast suddenly looked frightful for some reason as if not expecting the change in my attitude.

“Fou-.” The beast growled threateningly, I just stared at it dispassionately as it sped up and attacked.

Instead of moving away, I moved directly into the attack and caught a left claw when it collided with my back.

I hissed as the nails dug in to me and winced audibly, then signaled Dolly as I grappled the beast into a hug that pinned its right arm and my wool kept its left claw buried in my back.

My hind legs stomped down on its right and left leg and I simply locked us both in place. My front legs and hooves glowed a golden color as I had a hunch.

It seemed to be disturbed by my actions, but my hunch paid out. My glow was canceling its phasing ability and it could get out of this hug.

“Dolly… now…” I whispered as I sent the message.

Dolly, with the help of Quetal getting the Para-lance off the ground, was currently spinning the glowing weapon around to build up momentum energy. She released it tip first at our opponent’s head, with as much momentum as she could feasibly add to it before releasing it and I leaned my head up under the beast’s neck to prevent it from biting me and kept it pinned in place.

One would think my current position looked somewhat intimate, the best way to prevent an opponent from using physical strength was to disable their ability to move at all.

His dislocated arm had healed in short order, but I wasn’t giving this beast any leverage to act or dodge what was about to happen.

The unusual weapon, slammed into its skull knocking us both over, I then pulled my head away from being under its chin and then loosed a powerful skull rattling bark blast and brought my front hooves above my head and then slammed them down on the beast’s skull with magical claws carving marks painfully into his head.

After a moment of breathing roughly and resting my head on its chest, I slowly got up and looked at Quetal, Dolly and Curdle.

“He’s still alive… let’s… let’s leave some food and then get a move on…” After leaving food for the beast, I stumbled a bit as I walked away from the unconscious and still breathing body. The damage we had just collectively done would only put it down for a few hours at the most, I didn’t know what it was truly… but it was quite tough and wasn’t naturally a Pokémon.

I held no ill will for him, but he clearly had animosity towards me for some reason.

-Several hours later, the beast that eats Envy and Regret and compares itself against possible threats, Fou-

He had been surprised when the target had stopped having regrets and just came at him in an odd manner, not even envy was in the targets heart to be fed off of to grow stronger.

Before the hungry beast knew it… his slightly slashed up face was up and he was sniffing the air around him and was quite thoroughly confused about his loss.

He looked at the wrapped food near it and after having sniffed it a few times, he just decided to start eating it.

His target may have avoided him today, but he would win next time and sure they had left a peace offering, but Fou was not one to give up so easily.

He had a worthy ‘foe’ now, the mindless monster was powerful sure… but Pom, she was able to beat him while she was weaker than him and he envied that. He personally regretted that he lost to her. If she could feed off his regrets and darker emotions of envy then she would have made for a good imitation of him.

She didn’t think their fight was a competition and she didn’t have any personal negative feelings toward him, she just wanted to protect her friends and he couldn’t compare because he… simply didn’t have any.

Sure he might have hung around Tammamo or Amaterasu, but they were more like powerful beings and he liked them somewhat. He was the beast of comparison, he could be physically stronger than any being he compared himself to and match strength for strength… but a being physically weaker than him actually won a fight against him.

He would not let this stand!

This was worth looking into, not to mention the apparent compassion and apology of the food the one he sought to hunt left behind. For she never meant him harm and still did so.

He just had to pick up her scent again and will inevitably beat her, then feast upon her sorrow to face him in battle again!

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Did not see that coming, an abhorrent lethal admirer?” I said blankly. “You were right about him, as a beast he is entirely unaffected by Pom’s natural magnetism. This is despite resemblance of a dog or canine, he doesn't quite have the spirit of one.”

“Cath Palug or Primate Murder has always been strange like that, what with taking on many forms.” Tiamat stated clearly with more knowledge on this subject than her brother. “He has the power to compare himself against others, if you attack him with aggression he’ll fight back with even more. You get competitive, he'd match you for competitive streak and gets further into what you’re competing over as long as he's trying to compare himself to you. However, if you are a person of love, kindness or compassion, he’ll actually weaken by a drastic amount.”

“Pom didn’t have any animosity towards him, she just didn’t want him to harm her friends… and he actively used her as a comparison. He mostly targeted her since he was mostly going to do that in the first place anyway and avoided attacking her friends until they hit a certain threshold.” Bahamut calmly chuckled dryly before clapping a bit in sudden understanding. “He compared Pom's protective nature to his non-existent one and basically blue screened himself when he realized he had nothing to protect and couldn’t make a proper comparison to gain any strength from her.”

“They’ll come to blows again… but can ‘Fou’ actually make Pom hate him?” I calmly watched on as the intrepid team got further away from the monster who was more powerful than them. “He needs negative emotions to power his true strength and he’ll be fighting constantly against a positive influence. He might actually need one like Pom, he's been acting to much like the beast currently destroying Nixtorm and needs a better comparison.”

Pom was quite far from her original objective of simply helping Aurora, but it wasn’t that big an issue. She just might save Nixtorm from falling completely.

That is if the locals frozen hearts didn’t do her in first.

Author's Note

Again I'm having some problems, I'm okay... also in need of a good turkey to chow down on.

Happy holidays, whatever you celebrate, I'm celebrating feast week.

365. Rival Survival.

-Equus, Ponyville, Jaded-

“So as you can see, Ponyville is still much weirder than Airship Mauled!” Pinkie stated while slapping a pointer against a chalkboard. “What have we learned?”

“That it’s just you being you Pinkie Pie.” I stated blithely. “Seriously constant weirdness is not a competition and if it was, why do you seem to be the only one concerned with tourism?”

“…” Pinkie just stood there silently looking at the board and the number of conspiracies taped to it, some of them I was aware of. She then looked back to me. “Ponyville is still weirder than Airship Mauled.”

“If you say so.” I stated blandly as I cuddled Silvers to my chest, the little chimera gurgled happily. They really liked fish jerky so it wasn’t hard to feed them, especially when mom makes a nutritious variety of the stuff. The only thing I still don’t know was… where did mom keep getting all the fish for it from?!

“I know so!” Pinkie stated angrily.

“Right-… do you need to be hit with the anti-Pinkie tranquilizers again?” After I said that Pinkie immediately wilted. “Still can’t believe Mayor ‘Yours Truly’ Mare managed to keep that within the town’s budget.”

Said tranquilizers were put into Ponyville’s unusual budget because of the Pinkie Pie clone incident, they also helped with any monsters that sometime wandered into or near the town. You had to be something special to require a specially made tranquilizer that was graded for mega fauna like Hydras or Terra Tortoises.

“No… I’ll be a good pony.” Pinkie grumbled while looking away.

“So, after forcing me and my chimera daughters through a three hour presentation on the so called weirdness of Ponyville, can we get back on the topic of Silvers spending time with the Cake Twins?” At least the two little ponies were curious about Silvers as they were of them. I was going to try and socialize my daughters and get them to make friends, didn’t want them to be friendless growing up and I wanted to make sure their heads had a healthy relationship with each other like Bloody Maries did. “Also when are you and Cheese Sandwich going to get much closer to each other? You two are like peanut butter and jelly all the time around each other.”

Now Pinkie was blushing and twiddling a hoof on the floor in slow shy circles, her hair even seemed to get a bit curlier for a moment.

-Pokémon Realm, Nixtorm, night, heading northeast through Icy Valley, Pom-

It was cold, but I don’t think that’s what was causing me the shivers and to look over my shoulder every now and then.

We hadn’t talked much since we were attacked and I hadn’t seen too many Pokémon around, apparently Quetal thinks that was a good thing and a bright side to our travels. The less we see the less trouble we could get into.

Aside from the usual every weather Oran Berries, food doesn’t grow much out in this frozen landscape. I also did not need to hear Quetal’s commentary on Ice Types eating freshly frozen dead bodies as a main source of food for some. Cannibalism was still somewhat frowned upon around here… but eating a Pokémon outside your given evolutionary line was okay.

“How are you holding up Quetal?” I asked earnestly.

“About the same as you I expect.” Quetal immediately riposted. “We might even see where my brother might still be buried… provided his grave hasn’t been disturbed for food.”

I winced audibly, the cold did help in keeping the swelling from my injuries down… not like we had much medical supplies to cover the kind of injuries I keep getting. Thinking about how Curdle might be able to help with that, I was astounded as much as appalled to have found out that Alcremie blood was apparently anti-septic and still safely edible at the same time… goodness knows how, why or if anyone would ever actually want to eat a Milcery or an Alcremie on purpose with just knowing that one fact.

We had already discussed the reason why we knew the beast we fought was an outsider.

For one, no Pokémon moves were used by it, an oddity considering knowing at least one move was universal to all Pokémon that exist… even feral Pokémon could use moves, albeit with little intelligence behind the use of said moves being appropriate for a given situation.

Feral Pokémon only showed up around the Mystery Dungeons of which there were none around on the Ransei continent as far as anyone knew.

Another tell for the beast being an outsider was apparently being supernaturally resilient to it’s weakness for an Alternative Zoroark, whose primary weakness was a Dark Type attack like Beat Up.

The last was fairly obvious to me, despite its wild nature it clearly had far more intelligence than it was letting on and there seems to be an eerie feeling about the beast. Like it was sizing itself up against us in some way. Though the others questioned its intelligence, I certainly didn’t even after we knocked it out cold.

“Are you alright Curdle?” I asked as I looked to our Alcremie friend looking like a colorful walking ice sculpture.

“Oh I’m just fine, feel like a pile of iced cream though.” Curdle was still the ever positive attitude, apparently being splattered everywhere in a gory fashion didn’t put a damper on her mood. “Also why didn’t that beast want me, is it the smell? I can always switch to a cinnamon smell instead of brown sugar!”

Curdle did always smell nice at the very least.

“I don’t quite think that’s the problem…” Trudging through the snow, so what could I say, I’d rather avoid that beast and never see it another day~.

Why am I thinking in the tune of Hearth’s Warming songs now? Must be the winter year round kind of feeling around here, because it was just that cold.

Yes, I was going to ignore that Curdle was more upset that the beast that attacked us didn’t want to even taste her. As a sentient pile of vaguely edible cream her priorities were quite skewed, but being splattered like that did apparently hurt a lot… but not nearly as much as not being eaten even a little bit.

“I’m still the emergency rations here right?” Curdle asked with a hopeful lilt in her voice.

Nobody dignified Curdle with a response… it was then that I realized how quiet Dolly was being.

“Dolly?” I looked at the Dalmatian trudging along with us, a slightly upset smile on her face as she looked to me with a wagging tail.

“Huh, did you need something Pom?” Yeah, Dolly needed to get something off her head if her smile and exuberance is that weak. It’s not the cold getting to her either, she was functionally immune to freezing temperatures and that was fairly useful as she can share her body heat with anyone that might need it without personal issue to her own health. “I know it’s been a while since I’ve had kibble, but I’ve been doing great without it… really!”

Who was she trying to convince, me or herself? Also the mentioned lack of kibble made her a bit twitchy, which was going to be a problem for later as she could survive without it easily.

“Okay Dolly, besides an obvious lack of kibble and the availability thereof, what’s wrong?” I stated as we continued the trend of heading towards the northeast. We started at the western end of Nixtorm and were heading northeast and inward into the frozen mountains, it had to be my imagination that it was warmer the closer Dolly was to me since it was quite literally freezing out here.

We were going towards the center of Nixtorm. Quetal had stated that despite all the ice and snow, Nixtorm had a large hollow that’s not as frozen as the rest of this place. Our current destination was called Hail Hollow, what limited sunlight there was made the place a lot warmer than ninety percent of Nixtorm by reflecting off the nearby polished ice. Anything would be warmer than out here at night.

Dolly was looking thoughtful with a small frown on her face and was pulling away from the group slightly, likely to think of a response… she could just mentally share what the problem was with me if it was urgent. It apparently wasn’t urgent, so I didn’t prod much further.

If we were lucky we could stumble upon a random hot spring to stop at. Said springs pop up out of nowhere, quite literally as in the hot spring didn’t exist seconds ago kind of deal and doesn’t disappear until it has been thoroughly used. A few Ice Types and a number of visiting Pokémon relied on finding random hot springs to stay warm in.

Really don’t think many Pokémon were visiting this kingdom this cold without a good reason to, but I wondered what would even make this kingdom a tourist spot. Didn’t seem to have much at first glance aside from trees and tons of snow and low temperatures.

That Vanillish back in The Dream was really good at making stuff to drink or eat, but I doubt food was a major selling point here given the limited resources of Nixtorm. I wondered just how limited they were now with all the constant monster attacks.

“I um…” Dolly tried to say something as she wandered back to being closer to me and the area grew slightly warmer, I paid attention to her and wondered if she was going to actually talk about what had her down. “I’m sorry I’ve failed you quite a few times.”

“Huh?” I wondered where she was going with this and where it was coming from. “If you ever failed me Dolly, then it was probably outside of your control and if it’s outside of your control then you did your best and shouldn’t worry about it as much.”

“Isn’t it hypocritical to say that when you worry about the things outside of yours all the time?” Dolly asked looking up at me. Well she did somewhat have me there and I lowered my head slightly. “I got taken out on the bridge, I… I made the whole golden glow thing worse. There’s also the fact that I couldn’t do much to stop that whole abominable beast thing from coming after you.”

“Dolly the bridge thing was you protecting me, I saved you in return without a second thought about what I was sacrificing. You wouldn’t have survived long enough for the second Gilgamesh and his Greenkidu to appear. I’m pretty sure we were bound to get as badly creamed, as Curdle was just recently, no matter what we did.” I wasn’t exactly batting a thousand either Dolly, yet here we are on a quest to hunt down a monster and I have no idea why I’m doing something like this aside from feeling vaguely responsible for it being in this world. I’m always head towards trouble, so I’m not exactly safe to be around. “Also the beast that came after us is a Ghost Type, not sure how we could deal with it otherwise without some unusual abilities geared for it.”

“Yeah my wind didn’t hurt them much, my gravity spell barely slowed them down at all and it was like they were getting stronger the more aggressive we were being.” Yeah, that was something to take note of Dolly, I’ll keep that in mind. “It sucked feeling entirely useless… again… like when Cruella kidnapped my entire family to put them through a killing machine.”

“Good job Dolly!” I really should be praising you more on actually paying attention to the things I might miss. “Also I feel useless a lot of the time as well, but we still have to at least try to do something and you did try here and have been doing a lot for me by being there as an emotional support animal. It’s not hard to see why we’re bonded partners, family and possibly best friends for life.”

“Wha…?” Dolly looked confused, right forgot to explain myself.

“You noticed something that I didn’t, the beast got stronger and faster when Curdle attacked him for a few seconds.” Which was odd as the beast seemed to immediately slow down afterwards when coming after me. “After that his speed dropped drastically when he turned on me again. It’s actually something to think about and why, because let’s face it, he was after me from the start… and probably still is.”

“Well don’t know how much help I’ll be against a living ghost, still don’t understand how that’s considered normal around here.” Dolly mumbled and latched my wool onto the para-lance so that I could pet her gently as we moved.

“Normal and Ghost Type Dolly, it’s more of an elemental energy system with some relation to the words used for it. Anyway you still did a great job in helping Quetal get us out of The Dream.” That did seem to perk up Dolly a bit.

“Heh, yeah, now that was something I enjoyed doing.” Dolly grinned in thought. “Oberon dodged most of it though, but we were absolutely counting on that.”

“There’s the smile… your ‘can do positive attitude’ is really helpful to me, considering it balances out my near chronic pessimism. Currently my pessimism says that the beast is going to come after me regardless of the peace offering we left behind.” It was a major concern that we’d have to fight the beast and it was a legitimate concern that it’d be much smarter this time. “In fact he’ll probably be on us in the next minute or so.”

“… Don’t know how I can help with that if he shows up again, but I will sure try. Maybe flow-motion to add magic to my body… Aero still had some effect on him even if it doesn’t hurt him much.” Dolly grumbled and continued alongside me and rubbed herself lightly up against my gently caressing leg.

“What exactly are the chances that he can actually find us all the way out here?” Curdle asked innocently. “He doesn’t know what direction we went in. We’ve put a lot of distance between him and us, he shouldn’t be able to find us after we covered our tracks so well and how would he even go about tracking us so far away? I’m sure we’ll be fine! Besides what make you think he’d catch up to us so soon anyway? He’s probably miles away and getting lost somewhere in the tundra.”

Quetal, Dolly and I immediately groaned quite audibly and then wilted in defeat at what was coming.

“What?” Curdle asked confused by our sudden disappointed and scathing stares at her. “What did I say?”

“You just tempted fate… around Pom… multiple times in a row.” Quetal stated as slowly and succinctly as he possible could, he looked like he wanted to drag his own claws down his face. “Multiple times, IN, A, ROW!”

“What does that have to with anyt…” Then Curdle was immediately splattered into cold chunks violently when the white haired beast landed on her. I don’t like that it happened, but it felt quite deserved and I hoped Curdle was okay.

The beast was on all fours and he reared back his head and roared to the night sky, afterwards the beast was immediately looking at me specifically.

“Fou!” Yep, the voice saying that still sent shivers down my spine.

The outsider beast was starting to sound like a living recurring nightmare and I won’t recover from my previous injuries for a few days if left to heal naturally. I’m so glad this world had healing berries, abilities and the like, I desperately needed them all right about now.

I took up the para-lance and held it defensively as the beast more cautiously approached me while paying some attention to Quetal.

“Look, can we not fight? Please?” I asked while shivering, and not because it was cold.

“Fou.” I’ll take that rumbling growl and glare as a definitive no, Dolly still took up a protective position even if she couldn’t do much to stop the beast aside from repeatedly used Gravity and she only had so much magical capacity for doing it.

“Didn’t think so.” I stated as he crouched down to lunge, however as I inhaled I noticed the twitch in his muscles. “Quetal!”

Quetal immediately dodged by rolling to the right at my warning, avoiding the sudden turning lunge from the beast and attempt at a heavy swipe with its left claw. Quetal didn’t even think twice about it and had avoided a nasty claw swipe for his efforts as he fired a point blank Beat Up that staggered and knocked the beast back, he hadn’t been able to get up a substitute yet.

Given the shadow copy of Curdle still appeared to fire a blast, this meant Curdle was fine…ish. The generated shadow copies of me and Dolly really rammed into the beast in a powerful straightforward manner after the beam.

Suddenly the pushed back beast turned and was unleashing a lunging swipe at me. I deflected his right claw upwards and tried to stab forward at him with the blunt end of the lance, he dodged backwards and out of the way.

I tried to press forward and he effectively dodged me while I sped up into Dancing Flame speed to put pressure on him, he then slapped me in the chest with his left claw while trying to steal the lance with his right.

I managed to prevent him from stealing the weapon outright with a quick shift in how I held it, but he still sent me and the weapon flying in two different directions.

Before I knew it I was flopping onto my back in the snow with a bruised chest that was making it hard to breathe.

Laying back first in the snow, I was trying to inhale slowly with freshly bruised lungs while going over the interaction of what just happened. He had learned from our previous fight and he obviously didn’t like the lance, Sir Mik had helped me discover that it was a magical weapon of some kind and its appearance was based on what I would want in a weapon.

This recent interaction proved I was right, the beast was smart given he changed his methodology in how he approached fighting me by striking at my friends and then coming for me when he thought my guard was down.

Less rabid beast and now more of a colder calculating monster, given he disarmed me so easily.

The beast basically landed on top of me and opened its mouth wide to take a bite out of my mostly unprotected face.

Only for him to change what he was going to bite by suddenly turning his head and grabbing onto the lance below the tip. Dolly was swinging it at him with her teeth and he sent her flying off to the side. If Dolly had been swinging that for full momentum impact, then this beast was more terrifying than I previously thought to be able to be able to stop her cold like that.

Dolly looked so surprised, that it might take her a bit to realize she needed to recover after hitting the snow from being tossed like that.

While this was happening Quetal pummeled the beast from the back with another Beat Up attack, trying to distract it off of me, he got his substitute up and running and Curdle was busy pulling herself together.

Given that the beast was still on all fours and pinning me, Quetal wouldn’t be able to get him off of me by toppling him to the side.

I quickly held out my right hoof straight alongside my body and quickly slammed myself in the right shoulder with my left hoof sharply, using what little space I had under the beast to strike myself.

The wobble counter would be only like a quarter of the strength it usually was, but in this case… I added a golden glow to my wobbling right leg and quickly angled my hoof to strike upwards with a self-inflicted wobble counter. I really did not want to be bitten in the skull by this beast, goodness knows where its teeth have been or if they were ever cleaned.

The beast launched away from me and slammed into the northwestern slope, he rolled onto his claws and the echoes of his growls could be heard throughout the valley.

“Fou!” He shook his head and roared out at me in an aggressive manner.

I looked further up the slope after his angry roar and blinked at something in the light of the moon above and the lance Dolly was dragging back towards me, all the while rubbing at my aching right shoulder.

There was some personal disbelief that I just pulled off a ‘one-inch’ hoof attack that Arizona would be proud of, she was likely capable of pulling off such a feat with Cow Kempo through raw muscle alone. I needed some help from my Chrysomallus side to even do what I just did.

I really shouldn’t rely on something that is going to eventually kill me, but in that situation the use was quite warranted.

“Quetal gather up Curdle and start moving to the northeast now!” I already let Dolly in on my plan mentally and I started trying to find the frequency. She had already dragged the lance past me and was following Quetal, who thankfully didn’t question what I was about to do. “Rrrrrr-yip… no… RRrrrRRRr-yip… maybe a little more.”

Come on, come on, I could do this, just needed to concentrate more and find the right frequency before my throat gives out. The glowing eyes of that monster were getting closer.

“RRRRRRrrrrRrrrrrRR-yip.” The icy snow covered wall of the valley shook and the world started vibrating violently as the beast was on approach for me after seemingly being ditched by my friends.

I smiled with relief, pried myself out of the divot in the snow and inhaled. The beast lunged forward to get into my path as I started to turn towards them, unfortunately for him I wasn’t running… I was jumping to avoid what was coming.

I leapt up inflated what little wool I had and then two walls worth of snow avalanched slammed inwards on the beast smashing him between two masses of snow to sweep him southwest.

To add insult to the sudden injury as I exhaled, I dropped and violently kicked off the beast’s head with all four of my hooves to make a huge leap away from the flowing mass of white beneath me. Thus burying him completely in the avalanched flowing to the southwest and landed on higher ground to start galloping as the snow from the northwest and southeast side of the valleys walls came tumbling down in a disastrous manner.

Luckily we were heading up the valley instead of down it. Given there were no Pokémon around, I was less worried about causing an incident that could hurt someone and more worried with getting away from the beast safely.

I had to jump several more times landed on some snow that wasn’t moving or shifting and quickly caught up with Quetal, Dolly and Curdle as we ran for the northeast with more snow avalanching behind us in such thick quantities that the beast would need an hour or two to dig himself out of it to catch up. That is if we were lucky and by this point I don’t see myself as such.

There was no place in my heart to believe that that would actually be the end of ‘The Beast’ who says ‘Fou’ or ‘Foe’.

We managed to safely get out of the avalanche zone and looked back at the massive wall of snow building up behind us.

“Do you think that will keep him?” Dolly asked through the lance in her mouth, which I quickly took back.

“Sadly… no.” I answered with a shiver. “Let’s keep moving.”

-Twenty minutes of being buried later, southwestern end of the valley-

A claw erupted from the snow, slowly the beast pulled himself free and took on sniff. His head immediately turned in the direction of the Anti-magic and the Chrysomallus that wielded it.

The beast, once it fully crawled out of the snow, roared in frustration.

The beast hoped that she could hear him, he was quite angry. He slowly started trudging in the direction of his quarry.

-Northeastern part of Icy Valley, Pom-

“So that went well, could have gone worse and it’s a good thing I can use recover so often!” Curdle stated with exuberance. “Though I’m still angry he didn’t want to eat me, look at me… I’m all lemony goodness! At least we won’t have to deal with him for a long time after that.”

The sudden roar we heard in the distance made us freeze.

“Honestly, you should really stop tempting fate around Pom and never do it again… like ever.” Quetal stated with a flat stare while looking over his shoulder at her.

“Maybe I should make a pamphlet that says, no fate tempting specifically around the ewe known as Pom Pawdore Lambchop.” As I said this Dolly was looking behind us as well.

“How strong do you think that thing is?” Dolly asked with actual terror in her voice.

“More than enough for us combined if he is angry enough, to the point that I didn’t even think twice about fully planting all four of my hooves into his skull with full force while using Dancing Flame at full tilt to get away.” That the beast already managed to get up from that while being swallowed by an avalanche spelled my doom. We desperately needed to either get to civilization or figure out how he’s tracking us. “That he’s up already tells me that we should try to stay consistently ahead of him. Quetal how far?”

The beast definitely seemed intent on attacking me for one reason or another. Maybe we can cool his head in our next fight? Not likely, but I can try… because I really didn’t want to kill that beast and hunger is not the most forefront thing in its mind concerning me for whatever reason.

“At the pace we’re suddenly going to be setting? Well… we’re going to need a full eight hours of sleep and I don’t think that beast will let us do so. At most we still need more than a full day to reach Hail Hollow from here and it’s going to take even longer if we have to fight that… thing… off.” Quetal seemed to be worried about the beast as he kept looking back as we kept up a relatively quick pace. “That’s definitely one of the oddest outsiders I’ve ever heard of. Makes me wonder why it’s after you, you certainly haven’t done anything to it before we got here.”

“Maybe the beast sees me as a rival?” Who would want to be my rival, I’m not very confrontational unless I see something that would obviously make me act that way.

“I hate to say this, but you’re not exactly rival material Pom.” Quetal stated gruffly.

“No I agree with you wholeheartedly and onehundr… ow…” I hissed as a shooting pain shot from my right shoulder.

“So was that a new ‘sacrificial’ technique you did back there?” Quetal asked with concern.

“If you mean hurting myself to set up a powerful attack, then yes.” Sacrificed some of my own health and used my Chrysomallus side to do a not so standard wobble counter. Any sacrifice I make does have greater value than it would for anyone else, always at a cost though. “Spur of the moment thing, now I have a bruise shoulder to go with my bruised chest… oh….”

“What is it?” Curdle asked as she likely saw a look of shock cross my face.

“The beast deliberately aimed a hard blow at my chest in an attempt to prevent me from using Dancing Flame technique to the fullest.” The sudden cold realization made me shiver as I quietly picked up the pace, the beast was already preparing for our next match ahead of time and I couldn’t keep continually sacrificing myself to beat it if I wanted to survive. I think the beast actively wanted me to do something like that and if I do it enough.

-Thirty minutes later, hilly flatlands-

So we were in a less mountainous region that wasn’t a valley of this frozen Tartarus of a kingdom when my ears twitched. I immediately stopped in place, after a few more paces from everyone else, they stopped too and nobody said a word.

We all stood in place waiting and I could barely hear a faint rumbling of a gurgling noise.

Was it him, was it the beast? Did he already catch up to us?

“Not ‘HIM’… crab.” When Quetal said this we all looked at him with curious gazes.

“Crab?” There was a notable confusion in my tone.

“By the sound of it, big crab.” Quetal hissed quietly as he back up towards us or more specifically towards… Curdle? “Dazzling Gleam will be effective if they are a threat, they are just watching us so far.”

“Crab?” Dolly asked in confusion as she looked about and pulled her board from her back as I readied the lance. “How big could this crab really be?”

“Dolly, didn’t we just get finished with telling Curdle not to tempt fate by asking questions like that?” I tried to stay calm, I really did but I let a bit of frustration into my voice.

The immediate result of me talking louder than a whisper was an eruption of snow occurring behind us and I just looked up at the looming figure over me with large boxing glove limbs, denoting a ‘Fighting Type’ if anything and it was indeed a big crab. A ridiculously large one with four legs, thick white fur, blonde hair at the top, blue colored in the parts that weren’t as fur covered, it’s claws that looked like boxing cloves with built in brass knuckles, the most daunting thing of all was the piercing glowing red eyes.

“Alpha Crabominable… back away slowly.” Quetal stated out the side of his mouth through gritted teeth quietly as we all started to slowly back away from them, even Curdle didn’t look like she wanted to be eaten by this thing.

I was told Alpha’s were incredibly aggressive, well it certainly looked the part with the blazing glowing red eyes of pure malice. I wonder what Ocellus would have to say about meeting this thing, I could use her emotion reading skills right about now to know what it was feeling. Did we look appetizing or was it angry we were just near it.

“Holy Crab…” Sure it was not nearly anywhere near as big as Gilgamesh got, but yes, quite big Dolly. “Pom, I hope you can forgive me for any future slips if there are any.”

There was a subtle shift and I quickly hopped back as its claw snapped closed around the snow in the spot I was just standing and, with a flick of the same claw, I was sent flying when the blast of snow struck me.

Coughing and sputtering as I shoved the snow off of my cold body, I witness the suddenly decoration covered crab was sent skidding back slightly by a Dazzling Gleam blast from Curdle. Quetal was spitting Swift stars into it as well.

Dolly grinned sheepishly as, with a jerk of her head, she tossed me the para-lance that I caught in my left hoof. I was beginning to think of the lance more as more the word ‘paranormal’ than shapeshifting ‘parasol’ now.

“I am so… so very sorry Pom.” Dolly stated while whining and looking at the crab monster’s claw started glowing with ice and when it struck out a huge pillars of pointy icicles burst out of the ground at the point of contact where it struck.

“We’ll likely do courses with Curdle on why actively tempting fate is a bad idea later Dolly.” I sighed out as I tried to pry myself into a standing position using the Para-lance.

Quetal grunted as he was scratched across the left shoulder by one of the flash grown icicles.

Another Dazzling Gleam was fired off by Curdle who managed to knock the giant crab back before it could encroach on Quetal.

At least the ‘Crabominable’, as Quetal called it, was quite slow mobility wise otherwise in a close up range its arms were moving much faster than its legs. Fighting Type guaranteed, wonder if being an Alpha makes its Fighting Type nature worse?

Speaking of arms it gather energy and suddenly encased its left limb entirely in ice and raised the resulting mass high above its head and slammed it down sending waves of snow in every direction.

I crouched and opened the lance up to block the wave of snow from battering me and Dolly as the parasol form made for an excellent shield.

“Can we run from it now?” I asked from behind the safety of the parasol as a flailing Curdle flew overhead.

“Yes!” Quetal stated as he ran by, Dolly and I turned to start moving too… only for the Crabominable to make an impressive leap for something of its size and land in front of the way we wanted to go.

Curdle, who was behind it, struck it with another Dazzle Gleam that seemed to daze the monster quite a bit. It swept its right arm around blindly for Curdle, but missed hitting her.

I angled the parasol behind me and with a swing I scooped up some snow and sent the entire mass of flying into the monsters mouth, it immediately started choking on it.

“Dolly!” I called and she reacted to what I wanted her to do immediately.

“Gravity!” Dolly was staying well away from the ‘Alpha’ monster and near me, as soon as the gravity sphere exploded the giant crab became bogged down in the snow and its arms became much hard for it to lift or move.

“Let’s see it try and jump after us now, come on!” I ran around the monster and gave it an absolutely wide berth as we did so by staying outside its reach to find Curdle waiting for us and she blasted a Dazzling Gleam into the crab as it slowly turned to continue attacking us.

It struggled to attack us with its claws or move, given its size the Alpha had problems with weighing however much gravitational force Dolly added to it.

Once we were a fair enough distance away from the slow moving giant snow crab, Curdle was about to say something.

“Don’t!” I stated harshly and Curdle grinned sheepishly with her arms behind her back.

We were on our way to getting away from the first Alpha I’ve run into, don’t know about Totemics, but I know Dazzle was at least a Noble in more ways than one.

This is when I heard something from behind that chilled me and my friends to the bone, quite literally as we were all sprayed with ice cold water and suddenly I found my movements becoming sluggish and my body was freezing up.

“What’s wrong with me, I feel so weak?” The water definitely had hit us hard, but there was something else about it.

“The Crabominable knows a move Chilling Water, weakens our ability to attack physically…. But at these temperatures.” Don’t need to explain much further Quetal, it doesn’t take many guesses why it was bad to be hit with water that weakens you physically when dealing with a large Fighting Type. Speaking of he was still able to stand and continue spitting stars at the giant enemy crab.

If the Crabominable was particularly hungry and wanted to catch prey that were not immune or highly resilient to cold temperatures like Ice Types, then it is this very scenario we’re dealing with right now that would happen.

“Really… I just feel wet.” Dolly was seriously the only one unaffected by the cold water and it didn’t help that the low temperatures were already making being wet even worse for the rest of us barring Quetal who seems resilient to it.

As for Curdle, she looked to halfway to being frozen stiff. Her evolutionary biology is still really questionable to me many times over.

The crab was slowly on approach with the effects of gravity making it too hard to get its body off the ground with a jump so it had to walk over to us.

“…!” Idea just came to me. “Dolly think of a warm summer breeze and hit us with it!”

“Uh, like a fur dryer, okay, but I’m going to need a recharge after this Pom. Aero!” Suddenly the chill threatening to freeze me solid left and my body dried up immediately, as did Quetal and Curdle as warm air suffused an area around us as did several temporary air shields that likely wouldn’t last half a minute. “Huh, need to remember this the next time I need to dry off from a bath… of course my fur is getting a little bit puffy, but the quick dry seems worth it.”

“Less chatty more moving!” Quetal stated as we started to move away from the Crabominable and it sprayed water again, just not at us.

Crabominable instead sprayed a massive amount of water in front of us and with an icy fog on its fists it punched into the water stream and swept it from side to side. Suddenly were being blocked off by a wall of ice that was practically a curved iceberg and we were once again cornered.

I turned around and sent a Bark Blast at the crab only to have it be blocked by the monster’s claws, I charged and rammed the Para-lance forward at it.

It simply grabbed it and flicked me back into the half dome ice wall with a painful crunch as I cracked the ice.

“Look, are we really worth all of this trouble?” I asked, but the Crabominable didn’t seem to be listening to me.

“Obviously, or else it wouldn’t have bothered.” Quetal answered sadly before firing a wide spread of Swift move stars into the crab. Curdle used Dazzling Gleam and knocked it back a bit. “We’re probably the first meat to wander close enough to it in quite a while.”

“So if I’m hearing you right, it can understand us and is in fact smart enough to know we’re intelligent too, but it just doesn’t care and wants to eat us anyway?” I asked dully to clarify the situation we were in.

“Yes, that’s about it and is kind of the ideal first Ice Type meeting.” Ideal Quetal says, makes me wonder what’ll happen when we meet Pokémon that are a little more sophisticated around here. “Other Ice Types might try to act more sophisticated and might just play with their food more.”

The crab thrust its claw forward and I quickly opened up the lanced and blocked its attack that send a cold chilly air at me only to be rebuffed by the warm winds wrapping around me. We were stuck in close quarters having to fight a crab battle because it just wouldn’t let us go.

“We are hurting it though, just give me more time to wear it down completely!” Curdle that was a big ask considering how close it was getting to us, despite being weighed down and being hit with multiple effective attacks. Thinking of, another Dazzling Gleam blast dazed and staggered the crab to falling on its backside slightly. “Also, if it wanted something to eat…”

“Then you wouldn’t be able to travel with us anymore.” I answered swiftly.

“Choices, choices…” Curdle actually seemed to consider letting it eat her. “Eh, I could do better than being consumed by an Alpha, I’m going for a legendary Pokémon to find me tasty!”

Another blast of Dazzling Gleam kept the crab at bay and Dolly’s ‘warm wind’ shields wore off letting the cold back in.

The Crabominable raised a frost covered claw and was about to either smash it into us or hit the ground nearby to skewer us with sharp bits of ice. Neither sounded pleasant.

It brought its claw down and was stopped mid swing by the beast showing up and knocking it aside by ramming right into it.

“Fou!” The beast stated while glaring at me and then he quickly changed targets to the Crabominable after it quickly attacked him with a nasty right hook to the face. Aggression certainly drew his attention a lot.

After being sent sliding backwards, I noted that the beast’s muscles seemed to flex and he suddenly appeared to gain strength as he stared down the Crabominable without fear. Hmm… inconclusive, I needed to study this guy more if he kept coming after me.

“Fou-” After glaring at me once more while growling, the beast did something clearly understandable and showed it's intelligence to the others. It first pointed at me with a claw, then at himself while nodding, then he shook his head no after pointing at the Crabominable.

I understood what he was saying quite clearly, his message was delivered. Nobody could kill me except him now and he would definitely fight anything that tried to encroach upon his prey until he finally manages to end me. How very nice of him to declare my death so openly.

So I was sort of safe… not from him, just everything else while in his general vicinity that wants a piece of me. Good to know, not that it'd help much.

I felt like crying, probably would after we do some more running, I’m never paranoid at this point as things were absolutely out to get me.

The crab attacked again and the beast met them head on without worry.

“I suggest we move while the Alpha Crab keeps him distracted.” Despite the Alpha being bigger, I didn’t think it was stronger than… what should we call the Beast? Fou? After the sound he states every time he’s come after me? Would someone really name a monster just like that based on vocal patterns? Why that’d be quite ridiculous, but I’m willing to do that for some levity from this horrible situation.

We carefully skirted around Fou and the Alpha Crabominable brawling it out and from the looks of it... Fou was definitely giving much better than he got. Yeah I’m a bit more terrified of the outsider beast turned Pokémon that was an average sized alternative typing Zoroak now, it was meeting that Alpha Crab head on and actually harming it and it was already doing a bit abysmally after several Fairy Type attacks from Curdle.

Still, we managed to get around the ice wall dome proceed to run a fair distance away from the fight without notice and then continued running for all we were worth.

The night had to end soon and we would need sleep after all of this and I didn’t want to be killed in my sleep so we had to put as much distance between us and Fou as we feasibly could while still getting rest, food and bathroom time as well.

Hopefully Fou would be too tired after fighting that crab monster to really come after us instantly.

“I think your rival is pretty neat.” Really not the time or place Curdle!

"You call that a rival? I call it a eventual death sentence, but sure, what's one more on top of everything else Pom is dealing with." Grumbled Quetal who was clearly afraid for me and kept leading us in the direction we need to go in at a steady pace of get away from what was chasing us, more specifically me, down. "She's not in a good mental place right now and neither am I for that matter, just being in Nixtorm is giving me headaches and I'm not talking about the trouble we've already run into."

"I kind of actually wanted to stick around to see who won that fight..." Which would be dumb, because staying near the fight would be bad Dolly. I even mentally shouted that at Dolly for it as we kept running away from a major problem we currently couldn't deal with. "Alright, alright, we'll keep running, sheesh!"

Speed of cowardice don't fail us now!

Author's Note

Hisuian Zorua look similar to Fou, you can't say that they don't.

366. Hail Hollow.

-Pokémon Realm, The Dream, Oberon-

“So… have we found a member to replace the traitor on the Ponyta Prowlers?” Possibly as a leader, because Lumber Spry isn’t exactly what I would call an authoritative leader.

“Yes, we have a Rapidash that can take up a leadership position for the unit.” My lovely wife Queen Titania stated as we sat next to each other working on things. Getting my wife into the same room as me does make me smile truly. “We’ll start sending relief efforts to Illusio, I hear that Chrysalia is already working on it. Violight is supporting most of the western kingdoms on the continent proper. They are currently the least damaged western kingdom.”

“Yes, have we received news of the quarantine of Valora yet?” Quite sure Titania noted that her most noble friend Sir Mik wasn’t here. I had him routed to circle back around and check the situation in Valora.

“Not yet, but Sir Mik is already working on that. He’s only supposed to do a quick scouting mission. A flyby if you will.” Hopefully our knight doesn’t do more than that out of boredom, he was a good friend of mine and well loved by the populace at large. He was quite popular despite being among those who are the naturally cursed Pokémon known as Mimikyu, even Pom was able to relax in his presence. “I’m fearing the worst, we may have to help the western nations subdue the eastern side of Ransei which has been mostly thrust into war before whatever is causing the quarantine breaks through it by force… so about that cult that started up?”

“Pom has been said to be popular with all canid species… that is no less true here, the cult is fully benign as far as I can tell.” Though you were a little perturbed by the fervor with which they were praising what were once one of our guests Titania?

Even I was a bit disturbed at how fast every Canid within The Dream and the Fairy Dust Islands came together after very little interaction with Pom. They were quite protective of the idea of her very existence.

-Currently in Nixtorm, Hail Hollow, Pom-

I sat here meditating and sighed audibly when a shadow fell over my eyelids, I opened them up and yep… trouble found me again. At least it wasn’t Fou trying to attack me again.

“To protect the world from devastation.” Meowth started off making me think something was wrong, I was quite curious as to what happened to Jessie, but I guess I’d figure after they were done.

I basically just tuned them out until they got to the part they usually start wrapping up. I noted Jester and Scourge were lazily just staring at me.

“At least you’re humoring us this time.” Scourge grumbled as he flexed his crossed arms and his muscles bulged comically.

“Team Pocket, stealing stuff at the speed of spite, surrender now or prepare for a fight!” Meowth finished up their general introduction motto.

“That’s right!” James followed up.

“Okay, I surrender.” I stated and then waited, it took them a full minute to realize what I said and then they finally reacted.

“What?!” They all exclaimed and flopped into the snow in surprise.

I rolled my eyes and then gazed at them lazily.

“Didn’t think that would actually happen.” Meowth pulled out a notebook, or was it a journal, and started to write down something in it. “Today, we finally got a victory… oh right, you don’t have much on you to steal right now do you? Eh, still counts. Hey, where are your usual friends, the whole entourage thing?”

“We’ve… had a couple of issues before arriving here in Hail Hollow involving a fight back in Illusio, I got separated from most of my friends and I’m only here with three others. One’s a new one, one family member and one I’ve been traveling with for a while now.” I previously thought Quetal was exaggerating about how cold Ice Types could be. That was no longer the case. “So what happened to Jessie?”

“That’s just the question we were waiting for!” Meowth stated with a raised paws, then began a fanfare. “Introducing our newest member of Team Pocket, Wobbuffet, the love-love dancing machine!”

That’s when a familiar blue blob came out from behind a tree outside the walls of the city I was at with an equally familiar snake wrapped around his neck. Jessie looked to be still alive and was quietly snoring away. When he started dancing, I couldn’t help but find him even more familiar somehow.

“Ah… I take it cold weather is making Jessie sleep more often, despite how hot blooded she is, because she’s a snake?” It was clearly intriguing that Jessie would even come here, did she not know that the cold was a problem for snakes? “Wait a minute… you’re that Wobbuffet that was sent plummeting to your death!”

“Wobba wubba, fet.” Answered the blob that threw me a cheerful salute and bright open mouthed smile.

“How?!” I asked as I looked at him.

“He fell out of the sky practically on top of us, smart guy here survived the fall using a move to block against the ground and basically safely flopped into some water, then he ended up saving our lives from this humongous explosion by forcing us into a hole we dug, quite friendly… but we can’t understand a single word he’s saying.” Meowth stated with a shrug and a shake of his head. “At least we know we’re friends and he’s a member of Team Pocket.”

Wobbuffet nodded while smiling cheerfully as he continued to love-love dance in place.

“So why exactly are you guys here of all places?” Hail Hollow wasn’t exactly a friendly place to be… actually seems kind of like the perfect place for Team Pocket to appear really now that I think about it.

On third thought Team Pocket is way too friendly for the locals.

-Flashback montage-

We had managed eight hours of sleep and arrived at Hail Hollow surprisingly unmolested by another Fou attack. Also there weren’t any guards at the gates or anyone really caring that we arrived at the city underneath a veritable mountain of ice. The ice looked pretty at least, but the city certainly didn’t.

“Hello there, I just wanted to…” I tried.

“Not interested.” The Pokémon stated and then wandered off with a snoot in the air. I believe it was called a Swinub, a heavily furred pig.

Generally their evolved forms were the walking tanks of the Nixtorm military, heavy on the physical prowess, but weaker in doing special moves. Quetal had a lot of interesting fact to share about the locals. He was from here and thought I would like to hear what he knew, I did in fact enjoy these little tidbits.

Quetal was trying to share his culture… or at least the very reason why he left Nixtorm previously after his brother was killed in cold blood by a Bearctic. That was more information than I had previously on what happened to Quetal.

I remember that Cubby was the prior evolution, from Jiri’s bear unit and wondered how a Pokémon with a constant snot bubble problem can turn into such a fearsome beast.

-

“Excuse me, I…” I tried again.

“Word of advice, I suggest you go away outsider, we’ve got enough problems without one of you running around as it is!” Stated what I’m told was a Delibird. A red feathered, white furred penguin that is almost always carrying a large sack they make themselves. “Maybe that monster might even be lucky enough to kill you.”

Quetal’s tidbit was that they were usually seen in parcel delivery as couriers or more often outright supply management specialists for the kingdom, usually they get the best supplies for personal use. If you need something delivered a Delibird was a way to get something somewhere fast as long as it was within their weight limit.

Still found it hard to accept that a Delibird was part Flying Type, their wings didn’t look like it would get them off the ground… yet they could in fact fly, with one wing, even when that clearly didn’t make any sense I chalked it up to Flying Type energy making up the difference in natural capability.

It was a fun fact to learn that Delibird’s only ever learned two moves naturally, Present and Drill Peck. The rest they needed to pay to learn how to do, but at least the variety of what they can learn was said to be good.

While the Pokémon weren’t friendly thus far, Quetal made them sound much more approachable than they were with his tidbits. Though I was noticing a trend with everyone letting me try to do the talking.

-

Third times the charm they say!

“Hey…” I started, I didn’t even get two words in.

“Take my advice… quit before you even begin.” The Sneasel stated nastily and just walked off. “You’re likely to die here no matter what you think you’re trying to do.”

“That was a cheerful personality.” I stated dully.

“Welcome to my world Pom, I don’t like being here either.” Quetal stated with his arms crossed and he was twitchily looking around as if expecting someone to recognize him.

Fun tidbit about Sneasels… Quetal was an outlier, not an example of the species as a whole and there were Sneasel alternatives around as much as regular Sneasels. Said Alternatives tend to grow taller and were Fighting and Poison Types, an odd combination but not too different from Fire and Poison like Dazzle was.

-

“Can I just take a moment of your…” I was beginning to get the feeling that most Ice Type of civilized society, if we can even call it that at this point, weren’t very nice like Quetal was.

“Whatever it is you want, no.” The Pokémon left immediately by clamming up and bouncing off.

Tidbit about Shellder, the purple shell Pokémon, they could apparently attach themselves to Slowpoke and form symbiotic relationships that cause the Slowpoke and Shellder to evolve into one strange being.

Quetal tended to keep to himself, but I think thawed himself out for us. Possibly out of desperation to make something of himself, which is why he has been a very good friend since. These Pokémon they were quite rude and or upsetting to try and talk to. Maybe it was just the Skull Chaosdramon X problem going causing it?

If I were to believe Quetal, it’s always like this unless you had some business to do with some Pokémon and there were very few Pokémon that were nice around here.

“Excuse me but…” I tried again with another.

“Whatever you want, it’s probably not worth the effort to listen to.” After hearing that from an Ice and Steel Type variant of Sandslash… I simply just gave up and told the others to find out what we needed to know and or figure out how to get more supplies while we were here. "Also go die to the monster if you want to be a hero, you outsiders tend to do stuff like that right?"

Tidbit dropped here was that the variant of Sandslash was weak to the more commonly known Sandshrew line of Terrera and should I ever need to fight one, they were weak to both fighting types and fire.

I’d be at a stupidly huge advantage against one despite how scary they look with sharp spikes of ice that were as hard as steel coming off of the cold blue hedgehog shrews backs.

Quetal set off with Dolly and Curdle went to sell herself… and was literally selling bits of herself. The Ice Types, in a surprising twist to me, weren’t very picky about where the sugary dessert fluff that made up Curdle’s body came from and would happily buy chunks out of her to eat since she was clearly offering quite openly.

I eventually settled outside the west side of the city walls, if what was left of them could even be called walls at this point, having barely heard a conversation about the direction the ‘Monster of Nixtorm’ kept coming from.

We were basically in Nixtorm Central and the monster we were after kept coming from the west. Looking at the city, anyone could see how devastated it was, but the fact that it still held was a miracle thanks in part to Articuno protecting the Ice Types in vicious battles with the nigh unstoppable nightmare that was apparently an undead informational being.

That’s basically what the 'Skull' designation tends to mean when it comes to informational entities from the way Yggdrasil.Sys tells it. Still don’t know how information can become undead, but I wasn’t going to question it since at this point I’ve seen way too much to really question the possibility of anything.

Like two versions of one being existing in the same time and space… I wondered how Elli was doing.

The grass here was blue and covered in a light layer of frost and the trees were alpine, I decided to just relax, for once in my currently miserable life, and wait for my friends to come find me. Dolly always knew where I was, but Curdle might be a bit more of a problem to find and she was going to be earning supplies for us.

The ruler of Nixtorm was not likely to be seen by me, because I’m not interested in meeting him. It was some guy named Mitsuhide who has at least something of a companionable relationship with Lord Nobunaga of Dragnor, not that the ruler of Dragnor was helping things here and was busy elsewhere.

Dragnor was said to be in a bit of a bother with Spectra and Avia, but was ignoring the crisis’s going on here and whatever was happening in Valora right now.

-Present-

“Well… we enjoyed a nice few days of vacation on the beach on one of the Fairy Dust Islands, but we really couldn’t find out where the mythical kingdom of the Fairy Types was. Since Jessie suggested that as a place to go, it was my turn to suggest a place and I wanted to come here to do some snowboarding.” Not exactly what one expected Meowth’s answer would be or the reason why they came here.

Honestly I thought they were following me or trying to get ahead of my group to plant traps or something. It just seemed that at most Team Pocket seemed… vaguely annoying I want to say.

“So you didn’t just come here because Jessie would be incapacitate fifty percent of the time due to her biological nature making her constantly sleepy in cold weather?” I asked with a slight smile tugging at my lips.

“Well that would be a good reason, but I wouldn’t do that on purpose now would I? Goodness knows James is upset that Jessie isn’t awake.” Meowth stated while sending me a wink and lightly elbowing me in the chest with a grin. “She’s a sadist and he’s a masochist… I’m thoroughly surprised the two aren’t married yet.”

“Please stop telling people I’m a masochist!” James complained quite audibly.

“You’d have to be a masochist to even be Jessie’s friend, geeheeheehee!” Jester’s laugh is still haunting coming from a small green caterpillar. “Wait… what does that say about me that I’m part of this group?!”

“At least Jessie isn’t the sole leader of this group or I would have quite some time ago.” Scourge followed up with a serious expression on his face. “Like being the muscle…”

“Wobba wobba, fet wobba wobbuffet.” Wobbuffet included despite being completely incomprehensible to anyone, aside from another Wobbuffet possibly and then he laughed a bit.

“Jessie’s not... that bad…” James tried to defend, poorly.

“Says the guy who is spine head over body in love with her.” Meowth ribbed. “So now that we’ve won one, a victory, against you, what can we take?”

“All I’ve got with me is some food...” I answered dully.

“We’ll take it!” Jester immediately insisted and I heard the gurgling of multiple stomachs and sighed. “Please?”

“You do realize that if you were hungry, you could have just asked me for all the food I have on me and I would have just given it to you freely.” We were going to get more supplies anyway and Team Pocket was… vaguely frenemies with me.

They were a wandering, mildly threatening, circus troupe. I’m sure if Mr. Beezy were to join them, then I would lose all respect for them as a vague threat.

“Well aren’t you the friendly outsider hero type.” Meowth stated pleasantly.

“Please don’t call me a hero.” I whined out, really did not want that kind of reputation even if it was getting worse over time.

“… I need to snuggle up against you or I’ll die…” We all blinked and looked at the big blue eyed, white furred, six tailed fox that came up to me and sniffed me several times, she then started to snuggle up against me.

Eventually she curled up in my hooves to start snoozing and I picked her up to hold her against my belly.

“Um…” I didn’t know what to say.

“So about that food?” Meowth stated while staring at me with some hint of hope.

“You can have it. If it helps you sleep at night, you won it or something as I recall you writing down.” At this point I was willing to go along with Team Pocket’s farcical victory to get them to leave me alone. “Again you could have just asked.”

I had much more things to worry about, like future attacks by Fou or how to deal with a Skull Chaosdramon X without dying.

-Twenty minutes later-

The Team Pocket group was happily eating, aside from the still very out cold Seviper, and I had a napping alternative Ice Type Vulpix sleeping in my hooves as I relaxed. Its eventual evolution led to it adding Fairy Type to it and I figured that that makes sense, this cute Pokémon was outrageously adorable.

I guess not all Ice Types were bad, just a number of them were exceptionally grumpy, supplies around here were not exactly doing great and overall what few friendly Ice Types there were might be just as grumpy as the ones that already are in general.

Though I’m not sure if it was the constant monster attacks or the stress of building back up from them that is making them like this. The housing around the west side of Hail Hollow was quite messed up.

Of note, the buildings here used stone and ice, possibly with a few other materials. Ice was an easy building material for Ice Types to keep up with and if you had a home that was made of ice, then refrigerating food wasn’t hard.

Stone was the other major building material, wood seems to be rarely used aside from making roofs of some buildings, others used thatch and some were just made of ice which again could be readily replenished by local Pokémon moves.

Ice Types could make a home anywhere in the cold, but finding food and or water out here was a challenge in the frozen environment. Hail Hollow had a small stream or river, one that was barely above the temperature just enough to not freeze over. I think ice fishing would be a pastime around here.

“I wonder how many canids I can find in every part of the world.” It wasn’t unknown to me that Eevee evolutions were practically everywhere, but Eevee weren’t and that was something curious to think about. I’ll see just about all of them if I survive long enough.

I calmly petted the napping Vulpix and sent a mental message to Dolly to not freak out, but Team Pocket was here.

…

Dolly I said not to freak out…

…

They aren’t even do anything right now!

…

Yes, right here, where I am. Not doing anything to me, in fact they are just eating and are chatting amongst themselves. Really don’t know how they stay friends when the only thing keeping them together is an angry and highly aggressive danger noodle.

…

Yes, I thought that would sound amusing to you. Look, Dolly, if I was in danger do you think you wouldn’t have noticed through our bond by now? I would even be screaming for help by now if I was.

…

Dolly, I think Fou would be more of a problem, given he hasn’t show up yet I’m completely fine until that occurs. Then I’ll actually need help, so don’t come rushing over for nothing if Quetal and you are still busy.

…

Yes, I’m sure. I am perfectly fine to continue relaxing as the fights we have ahead of us are going to be soul melting, at least for me. Team Pocket isn’t actually being a problem… given I could take all of them in a fight even if they had gotten stronger from the last time they bothered us.

…

I actually tapped you because I wanted you to find Curdle since she went off entirely by herself. Also we both know what she smells like already. Shouldn't be that hard to find unless a nearby bakery serves lemon flavored peach tarts.

…

Well there you go Dolly, find a way to let Quetal know you need to find Curdle to check up on her.

Now that that was settled, I was going to think on what to talk to TIanhuo about this evening. Hail Hollow was sort of nice and I really couldn’t do anything until the monster showed up here, which means having to deal with it when it came up.

Until then we could be dealing with Fou and I really don’t think I can fight that beast alone by myself.

Sure some of the people around here may have hinted or wished that I would die, others didn’t like me because I was an outsider given the connotations of trouble there in brought about just by the existence of said outsiders and many were grumpy outright with some good reasons behind the grumpiness.

I’ll give them the excuse of the constant monster attacks, then if by some miracle I manage to solve the problem without Fou killing me, if they still acted the same way and didn’t have any reason at all to act the way they did. Well I wouldn’t know what to think or do, but we’d probably start heading towards Valora… there was some talk of strange happenings over there.

Despite all of that, there’s the fact that nobody here would or could ever be grateful towards me for it, but I would still warn everyone and lead the monster away from here if I saw it. Though I’m sure there would be a few that would make it worth it.

-Inside Hail Hollow, inside a local bar, Dolly-

This place looks busy, but aside from looking busy not much was actually happening here.

“Pom checking in on you, you look a little worried there for a moment?” Quetal asked and I nodded. Not really doing much here aside from making sure my board was in working order and that my helmet was tight on my head. “Did she need anything?”

How do I go about answering that without needing to use Yiggy Sis. I got a fun idea and made several random gestures with my paws and then looked at him with a smirk.

“So Pom wants us to look for Curdle after we’re done listening around for news here, got it.” Quetal stated with no hint of misunderstanding from me and I just sat there with my jaw dropped. “Oh don’t act so surprised. If Pom thought of Curdle wandering off on her own might be a problem, then it quickly occurred to me as well. We’ll go looking around for her after we’re done here, is she having any problems…”

I raised a paw and tilted it to the left and right, don’t know how to take it that those Team Rock It guys were around, but having seen Pom decimate them more than once I wasn’t exactly as worried as I might have been. Mostly because Pom told me she was fine.

“So she ran into a problem, but it’s not exactly an emergency issue that she can’t handle on her own… judging by the expression on your face I got it right.” Okay, that was getting kind of freaky Quetal, but then again he did know Pom pretty well. “We still need to know when the next monster attack will occur.”

-West side of Hail Hollow, Pom-

“I’m kind of surprised you don’t want the spear.” I said honestly as Team Pocket was still hanging about.

“We don’t need a weapon… by the way if Jessie asks you later, we beat you while you were using it and that’s where we got the food for her from.” Meowth was quite amiable as were Jame, Jester and Scourge, so Jessie was the driving force behind these… can I really call them bandits? They really weren’t exactly successful at robbing people and the most success they had was in Arbora Town where I first ran across them. “Besides I feel like there’s something up with that spear and we probably shouldn’t touch it. Another reason is that none of us even know how to use a spear. James has no hands, Jessie already has her tail blade, Scourge has his girder and do you really expect Jester to do anything with a weapon?”

“Fair points, but wouldn’t you just try to sell it for money?” That was another angle and… wait… why was I trying to convince him to actually do something nefarious? Did I actively think so little of them that I actively wanted to start coaching them?

I really needed to get my head examined, I wonder what a psychiatrist would find out about me that they wouldn’t already know from examining other lambkin. Some of the best Psychiatrist come from Meadow Hills, basically if you can survive a few weeks of talking to lambkins as a mental health trainee, then you’ll come out an expert in the field provided you don’t mentally crack.

“Looks too unique, anyone we would try to sell that thing to would ask where we got it from and would want to compare prices.” Yeah, that might admittedly be a problem Meowth. I would never say Team Pocket didn’t have brains among them, it’s just that they didn’t use them often or well enough to make a normal living of which I’m just noting that they are absolutely and entirely capable of. So… did that mean they could be living normal lives and are instead doing this team of thieves’ shtick just to be different from the rest of the world? My guess is whatever works for them is what works for them, though it apparently leaves them hungry. “In any case, call it a feeling, but something tells me it would be a bad idea to try and take that thing from you. My gut feelings are usually not wrong, even if we are acting or doing wrong things a lot of the time on purpose. Is it even a spear, it looks almost like a parasol.”

“Fair enough, so are you going to continue bothering me and my friends for the time being?” I asked seriously, because frankly I could use more time to breathe before being tossed into the deep end of a self-imposed monster hunting mission.

“No, we better be getting while the getting is good and we had a victory today. Sure it’s not much of one but we’ll take it all the same.” Meowth motioned to his friends and then they waved goodbye as they started leaving. “I hear some slopes calling my name to the east waiting for me and I might even meet some nice Buneary girls on those slopes to corrupt into joining us. Might even meet a nice female Litten, Glameow or Purrloin. Wish me luck nemesis!”

“Those are some of the oddest people I think I will have ever met…” That would probably become an understatement later on should I see them again in a week or so.

I heard a yawn and looked down at the Vulpix I still held and they began to squirm and then opened their eyes to realize I was holding them.

“Oh… uh… are you seeing anyone?” I gave them a flat look and dropped them into a nearby pile of snow. “Aw… the good ones are always taken… maybe I should tell my Glaceon friend about you, I’m sure they would love to meet you at least.”

“Here we go… can I just say one thing, please don’t make this a thing.” The stared at me as if what I was asking was foreign concept to them and then started to smile brightly.

“I’m so totally going to make this a thing, all Ninetales, Vulpix and Glaceon must know of and acknowledge your existence!” State the ice fox loudly while raising a paw to the sky.

“Can you just go away and say you did?” I asked tiredly.

“No! You are like, the most perfect being ever, so cuddly, soft, sweet and easy to sleep on.” Oh for the love everything, please save me from this adorable blue eyes mess of a fox. “Why… you’re like the best thing to ever exist, EVER!”

“No I am not, you are just saying that because I have an unnatural magnetism to canid based animals and you are one of said canid.” I really didn’t like where this was going.

“But… you’re so wonderful!” The Vulpix stated while looking at me all watery eyed. “Do you not know how easy it was for me to get a nap away from my nightmares of that monster besieging us for once just because you were here?!”

Dolly, this is quickly turning into an emergency, help me!

…

I sent Dolly an idea of what was about to go wrong around me.

…

It’s not that funny!

367. Into the brink.

-Equus, Ponyville, Tianhuo-

“The guard here seem to be expressing a lot more competence lately.” Foenum Tianhuo stated from next to me and she wasn’t wrong, the stallions were now much stronger than they had been a month or two ago.

“Yes, I too find that to be an amazing feat, given ponies generally… aren’t great fighters or are known very well for violence, this is despite them having a few karate dojos for self-defense in general.” The two of us shared a similar personality, but we differ on things like food, some culture and some other things.

“Okay, we’re done now… Gallus stop crying, you’re bound to be an elite guard member before you are even officially given the test. Be proud that I think that highly of you, why I think you’re even good enough for the Storm Creature army.” Fizzle was quite the trainer, then again she was using Sekhet’s Physical Education plans and those education plans tend to make one stallion armies out of people… provided they survive it of course. “If you think your training is bad, you should see what Silver Stream is being put through trying to learn archery!”

“Given that’s she’s the queen of the Storm Creatures, I can see where she’s an outlier.” Foenum Tianhuo said with a curious tilt of her head.

“When it comes to magic, Unicorns Ponies can be on even ground as far as capacity or output goes. A unicorn that has a focus on both physical health and a good control of their magic is truly quite dangerous. It’s not always the most magically powerful unicorn that wins though, but the smartest who can leverage everything around them. Your world has unicorns that focus purely on magic, they need to keep their distance in a fight and would do well to be a bit more athletic to keep said range.” I made a silent mental note that Fizzle wasn’t a unicorn that stayed still in combat. So she was more dangerous for the fact that she is able to focus on using magic and physically attacking at the same time. Gallus is quickly learning to deal with magic users thanks to that. “Now as far as Pegasus Ponies go, they have active magic yet they focus on the physical more often than not and what matters to them is maneuverability and how much force they can put on their bodies. Speed is what makes them physically dangerous, on ground or in the air, but I think they’d do well to leverage their elemental magic more in battle.”

“I don’t think they’ll ever quite match a longma at burst speeds… unless they can control the winds themselves for attacks. Which from what I’ve been told is how most Pegasus Ponies fly or else that bulky stallion over there wouldn’t be able to get into the air with such tiny wings.” Foenum Tianhuo stated as she watched the one known as Bulk Biceps slowly take to the air despite having tiny wings, he was quite the stallion who had a notably strong Earth Pony heritage and it certainly showed in his muscles. We soon after watched as Rainbow Dash flashed by in a blur. “Some exceptions might be available to beat us in burst speeds though.”

“I am of the opinion Earth Ponies are not given enough credit, they would be perfect guards if not for the stigma connect to a majority of them being farmers. Mares of Earth Pony lineage tend to be naturally twice as strong as a pegasus or unicorn stallion with a lineage that has no Earth Pony blood in it.” I was just making idle talk as I tried to stop shifting my gaze towards Foneum Pom and how playful she was with the eight dogs she was overlooking. “Now an Earth Pony stallion, those guys can level entire mansions and even a Minotaur would be wary to pick a fight with one.”

“You’re trying not to look at Foenum Pom playing with the dogs aren’t you?” Foenum Tianhuo carefully brought me into a one legged hug. We were both stoic enough to know that I would not break down, but I dearly wanted to when Pom was hunting a dangerous monster. “I am like a big sister to her. So I will have to say this as her sister, please don’t mistake her for your Pom… your Pom is quite capable from what I hear. Next to your Arizona who has taught ours much about breaking physics through sheer force of will. In fact I’m quite horrified that our Arizona is becoming as tough as yours is currently.”

My Pom clearly didn’t want to do it, but she was going to anyway and her chances of success were… quite blatantly grim according to Pom herself. My wife was almost too good for any world, but all I’m capable of doing currently is silently praying to the longma goddess Jiutian that she makes it through her tribulations in one piece. Pom being entirely mentally sound afterwards was not likely to happen.

I did believe Pom to be quite resilient, but not invincible. She was currently lacking wool mass, being actively hunted by a strong beast and was in a very cold place on top of all that, so the environment might take her out if the monster she was going after didn’t do it first or the one hunting her.

I feared for her life far more than I would ever fear for my own if I were to be put in a similar position.

I glanced at the other Tianhuo and made a gesture with a hoof, she reciprocated and we were both on hind legs striking a pose to start sparring. I needed to continue holding firm until I could aid Pom, I just had to trust that she would make it to a point she will end up in Tambelon where we could finally give aid to her.

-Pokémon Realm, Nixtorm, the next day in the morning, southwest of Hail Hollow, Pom-

Another building collapsed as Articuno, a large legendary ice bird, battled it out with the Skull Chaosdramon X, it wasn’t going well for Articuno whenever it got into melee range and I was staying out of the sight of the destruction with Dolly, Quetal and a number of canid Pokémon that weren’t being ice cold to me like most of the locals as we stayed out of the way and hid to watch the battle.

I blamed my magnetism for the fact that the canids were more lukewarm than they would be otherwise.

Nixtorm’s military forces were decimated from the constant assaults, given they were barely able to field ten fully healthy units and were fielding injured units too.

Skull Chaosdramon X was still as terrifying as it ever was for a giant melted red metal skeleton dragon monster, given it was taking on a legendary Pokémon that it’s obviously been battering over the course of weeks and what little military force was left to deal with the problem.

At least Articuno had the advantage of flight and long range attacks, but said long range attacks weren’t doing as much damage as getting in close and personal where the Skull X could dish out devastating blows if it could land even one. I don’t think Skull X could even feel the cold fury radiating off the Ice Type bird trying to tear them down.

I stayed in my position behind a tree to the south side of the battle and watched as numerous homes, businesses and the like were torn apart by their vicious struggle. Those kaiju movies in the previous dimension had nothing on actually seeing a real fight from off to the side.

At least Articuno wasn’t fighting alone, but any help they were getting was utterly minimal as Skull X could stomp any unit in seconds, as in actually stomp on them and take out an entire unit of six Pokémon instantly with an explosive shockwave.

The western side of Nixtorm was torn open and I wondered where Fou was or had gotten to, they were definitely still out there.

“Looks like Articuno has seen better days.” Quetal quietly intoned as we stayed well away from the fighting. “That’s the monster we’re after right? That’s a tall order and I don’t think you’ve noticed this, but we’re not exactly god slayers Pom and that thing scares me on an instinctual levels like Bearctics would.”

“I’m aware.” Maybe the Digivice can use its data capture function? Well it wouldn’t exactly work on Digimon that were whole and undamaged. It would work on weakened rookie level digimon or just generally loose data knocked out of digimon to compile and build a completed digimon, if there was a chance that we could... then maybe…

So if Skull X was grievously wounded in a fight to at least being a champion, then maybe we could get to it before it could recover from its injuries and wear it down enough to capture.

Already I could see some cubes of light bleeding off of the monsters metallic form, signifying what would be a significant injury for any other informational being considering I’ve seen Sami quickly bleeding out once like that.

I thought that Canard was a good personality match for the plucky, if slightly dark, soldier as far as partnerships went.

-Beast of Comparison, Fou-

Fou was watching the fight from afar as two beings of great power were going at it and nothing could get in their way, despite some attempts to get in the way of the mindless metal dragon. He was enjoying the fight so much that he was currently ignoring Pom’s position for the time being, even if he definitely knew where she currently was.

He was in no hurry to rip into her, he had her smell quite thoroughly lodged in his nostrils. He was a capable of feats beyond magic and anti-magic was not something that bothered him in the slightest to fight against, even if it could actively be used offensively by the sheep without an ounce of aggression from her.

She couldn’t hold him off by herself or forever, but it was confusing that she wasn’t strong and yet felt stronger than most.

What he was busy currently doing was trying to compare himself to the two beasts fighting one another from afar. The negative emotions of the ice bird was quite engrossing as was the competition of power between them.

-Pom-

“I’m pretty sure it’s going to come after me and focus on me if it sees me.” Call it a hunch, but that thing wanted me dead previously on a personal level and I doubted it would ignore me now. Didn’t know why, but it definitely saw the cessation of my existence as a priority from when I last looked it in the eyes previously. “The blizzard is starting to get pretty nasty, we need to seek shelter soon.”

“We can make one for you if it’s too cold!” The Fairy and Ice Ninetails stated joyfully as his tails wagged.

“Yeah, it would be cool too!” Stated a Glaceon the ice version of an Eevee evolution, he was particularly peppy.

At least I found some Pokémon that could be nice… ish… given they were a little too into cuddling up to me physically, I was a little afraid they would become a bit too attached and would try to prevent me from leaving.

I was almost close to thinking they were having the negative attention effect like that one guy from Yellow Dog did.

“Right, can you make a flash igloo we can still watch the battle from?” They immediately got started on it without prodding, we were going to track that Skull X down as soon as it started running, which was when it got too damaged. That’s the one thing most Ice Types knew about it, it had something of a survival instinct and very little else to it.

Several Pokémon had tried to track Skull X back to its lair and failed to find it, but they didn’t have a necessary tools to track it like we currently did. The Digivice could easily track digital monsters, once it got a scan of them and a lot of other technological stuff I wasn’t bound to understand about signatures.

All I knew is that we were close enough for the device to lock onto Skull X as a target and track him no matter where he went and would be able to tell us where it was within a certain range. No matter where it went, we’d be able to find it and maybe deal with it.

We spent the rest of the fight in a quickly forged dome watching the fight as a portion of Hail Hollow was destroyed, I held the device in hoof and it had a lock on Skull Chaosdramon X. It was even projecting up to date data on it health and current combat abilities.

The screen data showed the words Mutant Mega, Skull Chaosdramon X, Undead Virus Type and a high danger level that was slowly dropping as Articuno continued to tear into it with their talons whenever they got an opportunity and whatever existed of Nixtorm’s remaining military could do to it.

The screen also listed its known attacks. The Poison Death Claw was a side effect from being poisoned by Dazzle, Poison Death Stomp again another side effect of surviving the poison that by all rights would have killed it by now given how corroded it became, the last two moves were Barrel Bash and Tail Sweep. Apparently all those were attacks based on what it could currently do now, which didn’t seem like much, if the monster wasn’t so large.

I tapped Barrel Bash and got an animation of the useless twin cannons on Skull X’s back spinning rapidly lashing out with air and a little dark energy that permeated Skull X. Said energy didn’t extend very far from the circle. That it could still use its degraded cannons as a back protecting weapon was interesting, because looking up I didn’t see it using that against Articuno from what little I could see of their fight, but it was capable of doing it if this device says it was.

The device also had an arrow pointing towards the monster signifying that it could now direct us to wherever it goes. So we could track it easily, all we were waiting for was the battle to be finished.

I heard Dragon Types were weak to Ice Types, but the Pokémon here probably didn’t realize that Skull X wasn’t a dragon as they knew it at first. Since it has been attacking them for quite a while now, I’m quite sure they learned all about it.

“Pom, if you are seriously thinking about going out there as a distraction, then I’m not liable to follow you.” Quite understood Quetal and you were reasonable without a doubt to point out that I was slowly starting to move forward and out of the shelter.

I quickly backed up and thought about protecting my friends more than the people of the city, which could apparently take care of themselves despite the ongoing destruction. It was giving me a headache to just stand here and watch while innocent people’s homes were demolished, even if they were rude, mean and or not very nice, I still wanted to help them.

“Is it getting smaller?” Dolly drew my attention to the fact that Articuno finally managed to push back Skull X and dislodged them from further destroying the city by forcing them out into the open. Also its size was diminished a slightly.

“Yes, Dolly, I think it is.” My response got a few stares from those around me looking for a translation. “Dolly might have just given us a bit of hope in actually hunting it down.”

For a monster that was winning a war of attrition against Articuno and what passes for the remainder of the Nixtorm military, it had its limitations as well and that was why it hasn’t destroyed all of Nixtorm yet… not that there was much to destroy in the first place in the frozen north of Ransei.

Most of Nixtorm’s military was devastated, but there was not much reason for the other kingdoms to try and take the territory here… since there wasn’t much here to be worth taking. Nothing unique that I knew of anyway and this kingdom was friends with the kingdom of Dragnor, I really don’t see anyone from Dragnor looking into all this aside from possibly watching things from afar.

I even think that was how it was healing shrinking down due to damage and and once it takes too much damage it retreats to rebuild the lost mass.

“What is it?” Quetal asked as he too started to stare at the monster fighting Articuno and he seemed to blink. “Is it that it’s getting smaller? It’s smaller than Articuno now at the very least... so we should get ready to move?”

“Do you think Curdle managed to get those supplies this morning before the attack hit?” I asked, if anything our piled of lemon cream and peach tarts had surprisingly earned quite a bit of Poké from selling herself as exotic food stuff.

“I wouldn’t know. If anything she’ll be personally fine at least, since she’s intent on being eaten as much as possible without being eaten to death.” At least we could agree on that she’ll be okay Quetal. After being splattered more than once in front of you, you would tend to stop worrying about the pile of sentient cream.

“Hey, are you guys talking about me?” We all jumped when Curdle poked her head into the dome and came in with a large pack on her back and was all smiles. The little ice vulpix was with her. “The commute was a bit rough this morning.”

“A bit? The city came under attack by a screaming metal nightmare… couldn’t have happened to worse people really.” Quetal’s disparaging remark against his homeland aside, Curdle admittedly came through for us and the fluffy white vulpix came over to me expectantly wagging her six tails. “Also if you haven’t noticed there’s a massive blizzard going on outside and we’re barely staying warm in here as it is without a fire… still wonder where the heat is coming from for this dome.”

I glanced at Dolly, was this a confirmation of dogs being space heaters for the underworld in her world? Did that mean that if all hellhounds left the underworld, would it start freezing over? All I’ve confirmed is that Dolly has supernatural origins and the Dalmatian family has had a history of it according to the zombie chicken that still loved their family beyond death.

Sighing audibly, I started to pet the vulpix and she took great enjoyment in every ounce of my lackluster attention.

“Anyway, we’re about to set out as soon as the monster starts running.” Since it’ll be weak and we can possibly deal with it when we catch up to it. “Split up the supplies for Quetal and me to carry our share of the burden, then get ready to move.”

“Articuno has tried to follow after that thing several times and they can fly, what makes your group different?” The Glaceon asked and I smiled at them while holding the clearly happy vulpix.

“We actually have the method to track it.” Since it apparently didn’t leave biological smells behind, it’s been a bit of problem for those trying to find and destroy it. “We just need to make sure we can get to it in time before it can recover from its injuries and we might… very small might here… have a chance of dealing with it permanently.”

The blizzard started clearing up immediately and we witnessed Articuno tearing open a large hole Skull X’s shoulder with a majestic looking Aerial Ace, causing a shower of cubes to spill out. What followed was a badly battered Articuno continued to fire icicles into the durable monsters hide as it began to retreat… at an incredible speed with Articuno trying to follow despite serious injuries.

Eventually Articuno flopped into the snow and was left breathing roughly in wake of the retreating Skull X’s form.

“Right, Dolly, Quetal, Curdle, let’s move we need to go now!” Once I got my portion of our supplies on my back, we were quickly up and running out into the cold. I held the device in my hoof and it showed a trail of color following the presence of the monster. “You guys stay here.”

“Aw…” The Ice Vulpix whined, as did Glaceon and the Ice Type Ninetails as we left.

-Seconds later, ???-

“Want my help with following them?” A voice asked of the three Pokémon left behind in the icy dome jumped as a figure appeared out of thin air.

-One hour later, Fou-

He was quietly watching Pom’s group chase after the monster, he was curious if they would be more successful than he at hunting the injured creature that fought with such ferocity with no thoughts in its head. No anger, no regrets, no malice, it was something unnatural in this world that warranted attention.

He quietly trailed after them, slowly stalking the sheep. How was she even tracking him, he’s lost sight of the monster and it left no physical smell behind.

-Another thirty minutes later, Pom-

“We’re being followed by Fou.” I announced much to Quetal, Dolly and Curdles surprise. Dolly immediately went on alert and started looking behind us.

“If we are, then why hasn’t he attacked yet?” Good question, I really didn’t want to find out when we were still tracking the reason why we were even here Quetal.

“We can’t slow down can we?” Mumbled Curdle and my answer was to continue our pace.

“No, we have to keep moving!” If we get attacked, then we get attacked, we have to keep moving.

“Why are you suddenly so focused on this Pom?” Dolly asked.

“Let me ask this, do you think we could use this as an opportunity to find a way to revive him?” That got Dolly matching pace with me and no further questions.

-Far behind Fou and Pom’s group, Team-four fox, ???-

“That’s right!” The meowth stated as he popped his claws out.

“Quick question, how good are you guys against a Zorua’s illusion?” I asked.

“I’d think we’d known an illusion if we see one, they’d show absolutely no presence in the snow!” The Gurdurr answered, then my illusion faded away, leaving a hole in the snow along with a bunch paw prints leading in every direction as we continued to follow the very dangerous looking Zoroark following the beloved one. “… I have no response for that that will make things right.”

-Team Pocket, Meowth-

So snowboarding went pretty well, giant monster aside and Pom chasing after it, we were somewhat concerned about her and her small team.

If something were to happen to Pom and her group, then who would Team Pocket harass constantly in a vague attempt to rob them of their goods? Mind you Pom and her friend currently didn’t have much on them to rob in the first place aside from food, but it was the very principle of our team’s motto to interrupt anyone who’s a hero and busy doing something else. We had a pamphlet that said so and everything.

“Hey, you foxes, that was a dirty trick, get back here and face us in a lopsided five to four fight like true mons!” I yelled, then sighed and we continued to chase after Pom’s group.

“Six to four, I’m awake Meowth. So I’ll say… get back here you mangy foxes and face us like mons in a lopsided fight purely in our favor!” Isn’t that what I just said Jessie? Also she still looked half asleep and dazed, yep cold still getting to her.

At least she wasn’t beating us up and was much nicer in cooler weather.

-Team Harmony, Pom-

The device was showing signs of us getting closer to Skull X, but I didn’t see anything and soon the arrow started getting sketchy and pointing in random directions all of the sudden.

“Uh, Yggdrasil System, what’s going on?” I asked as we were on approach for a large mound and still found nothing as I stood on top of it.

“Massive spatial anomaly detected… Skull Chaosdramon X is likely within the anomalous space, please proceed with immense caution ‘Digidestined’ Pom.” It may only be a copy of the true Yggdrasil.Sys, and a limited intelligence therein, but I was glad it existed as it was certainly helpful in explaining the Digivice’s functions. “Continue to avoid direct combat with Skull Chaosdramon X user Pom, until you can procure a Digimon or a method to perform limited versions of biomerge, spirit evolution or bio-hybridization your safety cannot be guaranteed. The last option is not recommended for various reasons of prior health issues among adding to becoming half biological, loss of one’s self and possible massive shortening of lifespan from years to days being a possible result of forced bio-hybridization. Spirit evolution requires artifacts that are not likely to be in this realm. Biomerge Matrix Evolution… checking information… biomerge is functionally available, enough anomalous Dalmamon data is present within users Pom and Dolly and gathered spill data from Skull Chaosdramon X can assist in the function should you need it.”

“Ignoring that stuff… can you track the spatial anomaly?” Was the spatial anomaly why no one could find Skull X after chasing him? I Didn’t want to know what the biomerge thing would do, so I wasn’t going to even bother thinking of it as an option if it might incidentally kill what was left of Dormarch inside of the two of us.

“Tracking spatial anomaly…” The area stopped going out of control and pointed in a specific direction.

“Spatial anomaly, so something like Giratina’s Distortion World or… maybe… Pom… I think I know what kind of place that Skull X thing is in.” As he said this Quetal stopped in his tracks and I wondered what he meant. “I didn’t think about it before, but here disasters can be found and exist to such a large degree that… if that is what I believe we’re approaching then…”

I didn’t see it until I was right on top of it, I froze and didn’t move an inch and took control of Dolly’s body to make her stop too. Quetal came to a stop to my left and Curdle was right behind us.

“What are you guys looking at… all I see is snow all around… us...” Curdle came up to us slowly trail off and then stopped. “Oh… yeah… that… that is… that’s a thing isn’t it.”

Once you got close enough to the anomaly you could see a cave stretching out of the ground like a large mouth full sharp teeth like icicles hanging from the roof. The top of the invisible cave had two hollow looking triangular eyes making it look like the cave was a living entity.

Taking a step back it disappeared from sight for me and I could still see it using Dolly’s vision, I stepped back forward and saw the entrance to the cave sticking out of the ground appear again.

“A Mystery Dungeon…” Quetal stated with finality before narrowing his eyes. “It’s taking refuge in a Mystery Dungeon… and is possibly the reason for its existence.”

“A… an actual Mystery Dungeon in Ransei?!” Screamed Curdle who started shivering with fright. “Those things are dangerous, especially without a rescue team badge! Sure I want to be eaten, but this thing would take every last bite of me and I wouldn’t be able to share myself with the world!”

Again, Curdle’s priorities were quite awful.

“If you enter, the only way out is going to be at the end of it and Skull X will likely be there waiting.” That’s kind of a terrifying thought Quetal.

“Can you and Curdle hold the entrance and prevent Fou from coming in long enough for us to get a head start?” Because I remembered that he was still following us, I did not want the beast immediately on my case if I go in there.

“We’ll sure try.” Quetal stated as he turned his back from the entrance. “Get going Pom, we’ll try to be here for you and Dolly when you get back.”

“Please, don’t die to Fou.” I stated before looking to Dolly and she looked back at me as we both looked at the dark void beyond the mouth like entrance.

“We’ll try not to.” Quetal reassured waving his left claw at us to continue forward.

“I’ll choke him with my delicious body if I have to.” Going to ignore that you said that Curdle.

“Come on Dolly.” I took a few steps into the mouth with Dolly at my side and then… and then we both fell. Where there should have been solid flooring beneath us a second ago in what should have been a long tunnel, there was now suddenly nothing.

The best I could do was hold onto Dolly and try to slow our fall as the light disappeared… and then suddenly started appearing again?

“Wha..?!”

-Quetal-

“They just… they disappeared.” Curdle shivered as we watched Pom take like three steps in and then disappeared from existence entirely with Dolly.

“If you want to go after Pom… then you’ll have to go through us.” I stated I turned around and faced down the unnatural Zoroark glaring at us.

Like that Noivern or Cu Chulainn, I knew there was something off about it and would have to put my all behind this fight to even have a hopes chance in Nixtorm of slowing it down.

Bringing my claws up, I glanced at my side as Curdle brought up her tiny fist in determination while sending a nod in my direction.

We both faced what Pom charmingly called ‘Fou’.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

My lower right eyelid was twitching.

“Mew… explain!” I suddenly stated as Pom ran afoul of a Mystery Dungeon in a place where Mystery Dungeons shouldn’t be.

“Let me put it simply and succinctly in as few words as I can manage as to what this could mean for the Ransei Region at large…” Mew stated with a long thousand yard stare while inhaling. “Well crap!”

“Remind me again what happened between you and that chocobo that really liked roller skating?” My attention was drawn to Tiamat who was tittering joyfully.

“Reminder that we too have Mystery Dungeon worlds, one that has the world’s most dangerous Chocobo.” Glancing at Bahamut I saw him look away with a hint of embarrassment. “I got my butt kicked around by a small, incredibly friendly, fluffy yellow mortal bird…”

“You should be more wary of any creature that knows manaward Bahamut.” Tiamat’s heads continued to giggle.

“To be fair to me, anything else that uses manaward only gets a reduction, not an outright complete immunity to my Mega Flare.” Grumbled Bahamut angrily. “At least it wasn’t just some random chocobo, as that was the hero of that particular world.”

368. Dungeon Delving.

-???, the thing that happened in that one dimension, Oleander-

“So wait a minute, so what you’re telling me is that the things called Mobile Suits in this universe don’t have any form of security devices whatsoever on them to prevent them from just being stolen by something like a teenager and just running off with it? That anyone can open up the pilots seat, shoot the pilot and then steal the machine provided they survive long enough to get close up to do so?” I was upset to hear this and I was going to get a headache from this. “My goodness, are you people daft!”

“Hey, Oleander, look what I got!” Actually afraid to look Buttina, but I’m going to do so anyway. “This toy even comes with a giant light saber and this beam gun thing!”

I turned my gaze and saw a large bipedal white mobile suit and it was holding a large light saber made of pink energy.

“Uh… what was the name of that Mobile Suit?” I asked slowly.

“Oh my god, someone hijacked the Gundam!” The person, of which I was talking to, states with absolute horror.

“Hey Oleander, look what I found trying to put a hole in the colony!” Groaning out at hearing Wrex, I turned around again with the person and saw a giant red robot suit with a single large eye staring down at me. “Shot this blonde pilot guy and threw him out into space when I stole this thing. Pretty sure he was a bad guy, any way this thing is stupidly fast!”

Wrex had a habit of pointing out who was a bad guy and why, he was always right and sometimes even calls them out before Fred can even give us a brief historical scan of the dimension.

“Oh god, Zeon’s here!” The guy said again and I was beginning to think this world needs its head examined if Wrex can steal one so easily, he wasn't as much of a hacker as Buttina was.

“Hey Ollie, guess what I just stole, I even destroyed the other one and ate the guys soul from it before the machine could absorb it!” Fred showed up piloting a large green mobile suit similar to the red one Wrex was piloting. “THAT SOUL TASTED A LITTLE ODD AND THIS DIMENSION IS STUPIDLY LAX ON SECURITY, AT LEAST THE WANZERS WE BOUGHT HAVE DECENT SECURITY SYSTEMS!”

“Seriously, put actual security devices on all of your future mobile suits…” I stated calmly with a twitching right eye.

“Red alert, Zeon is attacking the colony!” An announcement suddenly sounded off and alarms started blaring everywhere and the colony shuddered slightly. “Fortunately it doesn’t look like they are using mobile suits yet!”

Suddenly a portal opened nearby and a giant robot dog mech popped out and I heard familiar barking, apparently Overlord Song Ender the friendly Noise Wolf checked the next dimension over for us.

“What in the world is… you know what, I’m just going to find a shelter and heavily medicate myself, I’m so done with this!” The person started running off. “I’m going to medicate myself so hard I’ll forget that I ever met Mobile Suit stealing alien unicorns!”

“Not a unicorn!” Wrex, Buttina and Fred stated loudly from their different machines.

“Ugh… guys, can you take care of the attack?” My friends and fiancé always resulted in awful headaches these days. “I think you’ve given me a migraine.”

The winged giant blue dog mecha, with the words 'BuCUE Prototype' stenciled onto it, lit up beam blade fangs and started running towards the nearest exit. The two cannons on its back even looked to be charging up, so one had to wonder how Song Ender was controlling it so well with his paws… unless he’s conceptually controlling the thing as his own body since Noise can possess things, usually those things are biological and have emotions for them to mess up.

I’m at least quite certain that Pom wasn’t in this cluster of dimensions, they were just too plain ridiculous. Who builds giant war machines that even teenagers could hijack?!

Though we would be keeping the BuCUE thing, I would have to be the one to maintain it and probably make Bomber Woof V2 capable of connecting to it… would it start generating giant land mines given how Bombers tend to infect things with their bomb making abilities? Eh, still probably a good idea or I’ve finally fully mentally snapped and have gone completely round the bend with the idea of making an infinite mine making robot dog’s brain connect to a giant dog mecha.

Eventually I would end up with something called the Unicorn Gundam, not much was actually Unicorn Pony about it though aside from the technological horn… not until it was modified into a four hoofed death machine anyway.

I actively and eventually acknowledged the fact that Buttina and Wrex’s Shenanigans have finally driven me insane. Well nothing for it, I must go even harder into insanity and eventually circle back around to it being normalcy!

Incidentally, the next few dimensions we visit might have been a bit messed up before we got there… honest!

-Origin Space, Arceus-

Mew quickly disappeared to make sure no other Mystery Dungeons started appearing all over Ransei, unfortunately should Mew fail they would at least try to mitigate the massive oncoming disaster this might cause for my plans.

“Hey, why aren’t we watching Pom?” Asked Bahamut, as we were currently watching Quetal and Curdle struggle against the dangerous Fou.

“Could you see into a specific point in the infinitely changing depths of a Mystery Dungeon before this?” It was troubling that I wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on Pom, but I was able to keep an eye on the anchor points of any dungeon at least… the most important would be the place that what Pom called ‘Skull X’ retreated to.

“No, he couldn’t, we could only see the anchor points which is the more static portions of such dungeons compared to the infinitely changing hallways themselves.” Tiamat immediately jumped in to prove me right, her brother glowered at her.

“The dungeons of this world only have one or three static points at most, with the last usually being occupied… the dungeon Pom has entered has two such points at halfway and end. We’ll be able to see her if she makes it to either.” As I said this I was watching the vicious struggle against the one known as Fou, even when an entire unit of Pokémon were working together the beast was proving to be too strong for them. Those four foxes got in over their heads by trying to follow Pom, but they were good Pokémon even if they were like most canids around Pom.

-Approximately thirty minutes after Pom entered the Mystery Dungeon, Quetal-

“Nghh… I’m not finished yet… I still have something to prove.” I fired off a Beat Up, shadow Curdle blasted my opponent, then was followed by shadow Zorua biting him, the shadow Ninetails firing shadowy ice shards, the shadow Glaceon rammed into my opponent battering him away from the entrance and I followed by slashing him across the side trying to hit an organ or at least something that could slow this monster down as I pushed them further away. I took position in front of the entrance. “I’m not weak!”

I was breathing roughly, my wounds were getting pretty severe and Pom was right about Fou, he was simply a beast.

I wasn’t even angry at him, I had no regrets facing something so strong. I needed to face things head on to grow and I’ve finally decided…

A white glow overtook me.

“You’ll only get in there… over my dead body!” I stated as I started growing and grew an extra claw on each limb, I gained a feathery headdress, two feathery ears, a collar of short down and the claws on my feet and arms became far sharper as I grew to match the threat before me.

None of the five other Pokémon here were standing and might even be bleeding out or whatever might pass or count as an injury for Curdle, but they were currently alive at least because Beat Up wouldn’t have worked if they weren’t.

My evolution healed my body somewhat, but I wouldn’t get a second chance so I had to make this count.

“Fou!” Roared the beast in challenge.

We charged at one another.

-Five seconds after Pom entered the Mystery Dungeon, current location Floor 1, Pom-

I blinked and looked around, I even looked up and behind me. I didn’t see the entrance and we were in a brightly corridor of what looked like ice covered ruins of an old civilization. I didn’t see what was lighting this place up, but everything was clearly visible… one would think it would be darker in here.

“Pom… something doesn’t feel right about this place.” Dolly stated as she began to rub up against my right leg while shivering.

“Warning you have entered anomalous space, immense danger is likely.” Yggdrasil.Sys announced from the device underneath Dolly’s Pecha Scarf.

“Stick close to me Dolly.” Something tells me that if we got separated here, it would be a very, very bad thing. My wool shifted in a similar manner to Dolly’s currently raised hackles.

Again I didn’t see the entrance we came in through and the corridor we were in was somewhat long and narrow, not much room for fighting. It extended behind us and if I was to believe Quetal, there was no way back and if we were to go that way we’d possibly just be going deeper into the Dungeon.

“Come on, we have to keep moving forward.” I stated as I started to move forward and tried to not think about how I saw something like this place in my dreams.

Quetal said the only way out was through it and I was going to save my bestial transformation for Skull X, but first we had to survive to even get to that point. Dolly was giving off a modicum of warmth in the freezing cold air around us.

It was too quiet, only the sound of my hooves and Dolly’s paws as we continued down the corridor and came up to a split one going straight and the other turning right.

The Ice pillars, the surrounding ruins and everything was making me shiver as we came to a stop at the intersection.

I looked to the right and saw something like a room in that direction and something sitting on the floor in that direction, straight ahead was a turn and behind us… a corridor that stretched into the distance.

I turned right and started heading for the room, this corridor was feeling claustrophobic. As we approached the room I noticed a large red apple on the floor and I picked it up with a hoof and looked it over, nothing was wrong with it… but how did it end up here?

I stowed it away and moved forward with Dolly following while looking behind us and upon reaching the room I looked inside and saw a bunch of still Pokémon. It looks like they were sleeping… and there were other things just sitting on the floor. A pile of Poké, a sharp looking twig that looked like the things Shine tended to throw and a staircase going down?

There was an entrance to this place on the other side of the room too.

Making a gesture to be quiet, I took a single step into the room, all the Pokémon came awake and turned to look at me and were immediately active. I don’t even think I made a noise… and suddenly I had the attention of no less than five Pokémon that started to sluggishly move towards me, I’m assuming that all of them were Ice Types given one of them was a Sneasel.

“Dolly… how much of a fight do you think you’ll be able to put up?” I whispered to the side as the five Pokémon came at us, three triangular Pokémon that looked like small walking tents, a Sneasel and what I assume to be an Ice Type Sandshrew given I’ve seen the evolutionary form.

“Whatever you need of me Pom, I’m here for you.” Dolly stated as she brought her board from her back and took it up in a combat stance as she got onto her hind legs.

“Um, excuse me, but…” I took a few steps forward to try to talk to them and noticed the glassy look in the Sneasel’s eyes before it took a swipe at me and I quickly stepped back. There was no intelligence in these Pokémon, so this is what a feral Pokémon looks like, kind of like those poor Pokémon in Binder Blade forest being driven to madness by the psychic energies. “We can’t talk our way out of this can we?”

The three little tents fired icicles out of their mouths and I quickly backed up into the corridor with Dolly as ice shattered and threatened to hit us with shrapnel from the attacks fired at us. One of the attacks slammed into the Sneasel’s back knocking them over, yet they still got up and came at us and not the one that just hit them.

The Sneasel leapt forward and slashed upwards with its left claw in an uppercut, I reared back and narrowly avoided taking the claw to my chin and then slammed my head forward with hardening wool to hammer the Sneasel to the ground and knocked them both down and out.

They disappeared from sight and Dolly quickly moved in front of me to block a barrage of icicles. After the attacks struck and Dolly managed to stay standing, she glowed and bursts forward into the room and started to barrage the three Pokémon.

In nine flashes she knocked them all into position in a straight line and then she burst past the three of them taking them all out and they too disappeared from sight, one of them leaving behind what I recognized to be an Oran Berry.

Once Dolly came out of her Counter Rave the Sandslash took advantage of her slowed reactions and slammed its claw into her board, the floor in the room was made entirely of ice and the blow knocked her over to see her skidding into the wall with a grunt.

I immediately galloped forward, making sure my hooves were covered in wool to provide traction, and shoulder bashed the Sandshrew before it could encroach on Dolly anymore. Following that I reared up and stomped down into its chest and it disappeared beneath my hooves.

“You okay Dolly?” My concern was met with an equally concerned look.

“What… what do you think happens to them when they disappear like that?” Dolly asked as she got up while rubbing at her back.

“I don’t know, Yggdrasil is Skull X anywhere on this floor?” I asked.

“Negative signs of target Skull Chaosdramon X being within local spatial anomaly coordinates.” Meaning he wasn’t on this floor. I looked at the Poké and the Steel Twig, I grabbed the Oran Berry, the Steel Twig and the Poké. I might have to ditch the Poké if it starts taking up to much space in my pack.

“Okay… we can use this stuff.” Suddenly several Pokemon came in through the two entrances and the Sandshrew were looking at the two of us and began to slowly approach. The Pokémon here were like zombies in how they acted. “We need to keep moving Dolly, we should only fight when necessary, so let’s go down the staircase!”

We were close enough to the staircase to evade the two Pokémon that were going to attack us. It didn’t take us three steps down the staircase and a single blink in the darkness before we once again found ourselves in the middle of a well-lit large room full of pillars of ice and stone.

“Pom… where’s the staircase that we just went down?” Dolly asked as she looked behind us. I didn’t see any signs of the Sandshrew that were going to attack us. “Did we even go down a staircase in the first place? This place is making my head hurt.”

“I think I’m beginning to understand why they call places like this Mystery Dungeons.” My voice echoed throughout the room with ice floors and I made my way over to a blue orb, then something clicked behind me and I froze and looked to Dolly as an eruption of green energy swirled around her and something invisible on the floor appeared out of nowhere. “Are you okay Dolly?!”

“Yeah, I’m fine… but who would make a trap that does nothing?” Dolly asked curiously and tilted her head as she ran a paw up and down her back. “Also I’m beginning to think Poodlewolf would be better than being in this place.”

“At a guess, I’m betting that there are more harmful traps than helpful. So let’s consider this a lucky lesson that we should be wary of any noises of a trap going off.” I stepped forward and took up the blue orb in a hoof and wondered what it did. It didn’t seem to do anything and I didn’t know what it was, but it might be helpful.

“Don’t think I would be able to react in time if I step another one of these invisible square thing.” Dolly responded as I took a step to the left to go towards one of the three entrances and then I was blinded when an explosion went off and my ears were ringing. “…. Po…. hear… Pom..!”

“Wha…” I dazedly got up and saw that Dolly wasn’t moving from her spot and staring at me.

“Oh thank goodness you’re alright, that explosion almost scared the spots off of me!” I looked at the floor where I had stepped and saw another square panel, this was had a red six pointed star.

I shook my head, got up and tapped the floor ahead of me and carefully did so multiple times as I made my way over to Dolly. I noted that the square that exploded and the square that Dolly stepped on were almost like they were on some kind of grid.

Upon reaching her Dolly leapt up and wrapped her paws around my neck and hugged me, the warmth of the hug helped the chill in my bones and that explosion had certainly rattled my skull.

“Let’s watch our steps in rooms and test the floor in front of us from now on.” We still needed to get out of this one.

A feral Pokémon, an Ice Type Vulpix, came into the room and quickly stepped on the panel that exploded…. and it exploded again with the same amount of force sending them skidding into the wall next to the entrance they came through and they disappeared upon impact like the other Pokémon we had defeated.

“Did it just explode again!?” Dolly stated in terror.

“Yes, I believe that is what we just saw happen Dolly.” Let’s not touch that floor panel again, we do not need a third explosion going off as that last one caused some sharp icicles to slam into the floor around us.

“Pom, tell me honestly, what kind of place is this?” Dolly stated while not letting me go, I wasn’t about to tell her too since she was quite warm.

“A Mystery Dungeon, with an emphasis on Mystery.” Came my dull tone as I chose to slowly work my way towards an exit from this room away from the exploding floor panel. I didn’t know what direction we were heading it, but we had to go somewhere. “I think finding the staircases is a priority, Yggdrasil.Sys can you inform us when we appear on the same floor as Skull X?”

“Affirmative, if Skull Chaosdramon X is detected, device will alert user to the imminent threat if it appears within the same anomalous spatial region.” The device states blankly as we entered a corridor that turned right and turning the corner it went off into the distance, let’s hope there were no traps in the corridors.

As we took a few steps from the room and down the long corridor another explosion went off behind us and, in a panic, I quickly started galloping away with Dolly gripping tightly onto me.

The corridor was a long twisty pathway, but it seemed to only be leading one direction. Eventually we ran into a feral Pokémon, this one looked like a small walking tree covered in snow, it raised its left arm and it grew into a mass of entangled wooden tendrils.

I quickly hopped back when it slammed its arm, which had massive growths on it, down. The shockwave sent me skidding backwards, I quickly loosed a Bark Blast into it and sent it stumbling back before it could try to hammer us with the mass of wood on its arm again.

It seemed to have hurt itself doing the attack, for when it tried to use the attack again and I swiftly dodged another attempt to smash me with the wooden mass on its left arm and was about to counter it when it simply flinched and then promptly disappeared.

Did using that attack hurt it? Not questioning things, I continued moving through the corridor until we came back to a very familiar room… because it was the same room we left like five minutes ago.

“Uh, Pom, are we back where we started?” Yes Dolly, we were back in the room with the two floor panels and I looked at the exit we used and the one we came back into the room from. However there was a new revealed explosion causing floor trap, so that makes two floor traps that would explode when stepped on.

“We just went in a large circle.” Making a mental map, I remembered that all we did was a lot of right turns and a few left turns before coming back to this room.

Well this was going to be a thing, at least the exploding floor panels were still visible and I carefully made my way for the nearby room exit to the direct left of me, I tapped the floor in front of me every few steps to make sure I didn’t step on another trap.

Dolly shivered with every sharp strike on the floor and didn’t remove herself from hanging on to me.

“I think the corridors might be safe from traps, but not feral Pokémon.” As I said this we entered another corridor and started moving down it, eventually Dolly let go of me and started to follow me from behind once again and was watching the pathway behind us as we went around a left and right S-style bend.

I was trying to mentally map where we were when we came to a four way stop, I don’t think compasses would work in this place, I looked to the right and then Dolly leapt to my left and blocked an icicle attack from another one of those little tent Pokémon that came around a corner from that direction.

We quickly went straight and moved out of its view, once we reached the corner I looked back and saw the little icicle spewing tent Pokémon turn to the right and go the way we came from.

“They don’t seem very intelligent, because that… that was kind of dumb.” Don’t think we should question this place Dolly, things aren’t normal here and it’s pervasive in the chilling atmosphere with every breath I took. “I mean it saw us come this way right?”

I quietly turned and continued heading in the direction I decided we should keep going in, eventually finding another large red apple sitting on the floor.

It was perfectly fine, not rotting, clean even, no signs of worms having bitten into it large apple… this was just a nice apple and I compared it to the first apple I found, something tells me this was going to be a thing as both apples were still perfectly fine looking in my pack.

“Is it just me or is wandering around in here making me hungry?” Dolly commented idly as we came upon another room, it was a long rectangular room and I spotted the staircase on the far side of it.

No Pokémon were in the room, I carefully tapped the floor in front of me, nothing. I took a step forward and Dolly waited until we knew what parts of the floor were safe.

“Maybe we should just rush for the staircase, I mean it is right…” As Dolly was saying this a bunch of metal spikes came raining from the ceiling and slammed into the floor in front of us. “There… okay yeah, keep checking the floor.”

I was now actively striking parts of the floor around us to avoid traps like the… where did the metal spikes that fell from the ceiling go? Did traps just work infinitely here? I’ll certainly keep that in mind as I carefully worked us towards the staircase leading down and out of this large rectangular room full of stuff.

We were going to ignore thing that weren’t healing like Oran Berries, I didn’t need to pick up everything on the floor here as most of it was just loose currency lying around. Likely said currency was to lure the greedy and unaware into traps. I didn’t even know what the orbs could do, but I already had one and seldom thought we would need the things we were passing up.

I did pick up a five Oran Berries and two more red apples, there were a lot of apples just lying around and I was beginning to get the idea that the apples were very specific to Mystery Dungeons.

“Close enough to make a jump for it.” I said calmly, despite the perspiration on my face telling Dolly otherwise.

“Don’t chance it.” Even Dolly’s devil may care attitude was completely cautious given our circumstances, how did Skull X… probably bulldozed through all of this stuff and nothing could do much to it.

My next floor smack activated an odd trap, the symbol on the panel that appeared had a red question mark on a cloud all in one big red circle.

It sent out a pulse that filled the entire room.

What did that… suddenly all the items that were just laying around on the floor randomly turned into feral Pokémon.

“Pom… did all that stuff just turn into feral Pokémon?” Yes, Dolly that is what just happened and now even I’m wondering how the trap suddenly happened to turn piles of currency, apples and other strange things laying around into Pokémon. “Okay, maybe chancing it would have been the better idea.”

“Grab me.” I stated quickly and as soon as Dolly’s paws were locked into my wool, I lunged for the exit as at least twenty Pokémon all surging towards us to attack in a large swarm.

Hitting the steps, I protectively held Dolly as I rolled down into the darkness and then… was promptly back on my hooves again despite not having rolled into the position or even oriented myself to be on my hooves. I was on my back one second and then next just on my hooves and standing in another corridor when I should have been on my back with Dolly in my hooves, speaking of Dolly she was standing right next to me looking equally confused about what just happened.

“Okay, this place is getting quite freaky now.” Dolly said as I let her go and she stood next to me long both ways down the corridor. “Also what about all those feral Pokémon? Wouldn’t they have just followed us down the stairs?”

“The only way out is forward Dolly and the staircases are forward I guess… because there is no way back.” I stated as I looked at the well-lit ceiling. “Also I don’t think the feral Pokémon could follow us down the staircase, this place certainly works in mysterious ways and they might even be trapped in here… so Mystery Dungeon, definitely an applicable description of this place.”

“Let’s keep moving Pom.” Yeah, but which way led to the next staircase now? This place was basically a randomized maze.

-Icy Ruins Entrance, Quetal-

“Nghh… no…” I held up my right claw as the beast snorted and looked away from me and stalked through the entrance following after Pom, my world was slowly blacking out.

“Hey, it looks like that monster is gone, let’s help these guys out now.” Was that Meowth?

“G-g-g-o a… a-head… geddit… over… with…” I rolled onto my back and stared down Team Pocket, bleeding out in the snow from a variety of nasty wounds all over my body.

“Jester, start stringing their wounds shut with String Shot. Start with him, he’s the worse out of this lot.” What? Team Pocket was going to attempt to save us? Meowth soon entered my view with an upset look on his face. “Don’t look so confused, we may be bad guys, but we’re not out and out evil. Sure we’re opportunistic, jerks, thieves, like to pick fights and want to steal things from heroic types like you. All of that is very much true, but you think we’re evil? Not going to kick you while you’re down, we already get enough of that ourselves as it is. Also you’re cream friend over there is starting to pull herself together and I really wonder what she tastes like.”

“I’ll gladly give you all tastes of me, just…. please… help save everyone here!” Curdle stated while crying out tears of honey from her half formed face as the mangled splattered mass that was her body was spread all over the place, Alcremie biology was as weird as Pom thought it was.

I don’t know how Fou did it, but he had splattered Curdle so hard that even the move Recover had trouble putting her back together again.

“Don’t worry, we got you… but I’ll hold you to that!” Meowth stated as I felt something wrapping around my limbs. “Now what is with that weird hole in the ground?”

“Mist—ery…. Dun… geon…” I finally passed out from the pain.

-Team Pocket, Meowth-

A Mystery Dungeon in Ransei, well now we’ve seen a lot of things! The end of eastern Illusio was one of the weirder ones. To see the entrance of a Mystery Dungeon was terrifying, given the implications of such a place.

Team Pocket is not nearly dumb enough to go into one those dangerous deathtraps and we were admittedly pretty dumb at times, I’m surprised we didn’t insist upon doing the whole motto while these guys were dying on the ground. Not like they were in a position to hear the whole thing anyway, six to one that Zoroark creamed them… quite literally in the case of the cute Alcremie chick.

Pom was definitely on her own in there, because I’m already guessing that’s exactly where she went. Wouldn’t find me going after a giant skeletal metal monstrosity like the one that attacked Hail Hollow, which allowed us to rob some upper crust homes in the chaos.

Nope, we’re not suicidal. Also like I just said, we were opportunists. There were Treasures and dangers galore in a Mystery Dungeon, so if Pom survives and comes back out we can ransom her friends back to her.

“Don’t like the cold... James… cuddle for warmth… please?” Mumbled a still half dazed Jessie who was now wearing a festive stocking around her body and a joyful little red hat with white fuzzy trimming around it, all of it freshly stolen stuff too.

“Hey guys, let’s set up camp here!” I turned and everyone answered affirmative as Scourge and Jester helped make sure the injured didn’t bleed out and were placed together. We left the Alcremie to gather herself together, she smelled like lemons, peaches and brown sugar. “Wobbuffet go find some food, you’re really oddly good at that.”

“Wobba wobba!” Wobbuffet saluted and then did a quick love-love dance and then wandered off, eh I trusted him to find his way back to us. He was the most competent member of Team Pocket, even if his battle skills were mostly ‘counter’ productive.

Author's Note

The music I imagine going on here.

Dungeon Music Theme: Megman Legends 2 - Forbidden Island.

Dungeon Battle Theme: Megaman Legend 2- Forbidden Island Dog/Wolf Reaverbot.

Author: An apology.

I would like to apologize to Char 'The Zabi Killer' Butt-Navel for how quickly he was taken out when he suffered a Deus Ex Wrex on this page, mind you Wrex was on foot and Char was in a sealed personalized High Performance Red Zaku MS.

It was just very unfortunate that Char was highly underequipped for the situation of meeting a Krogan warlord. Char is in fact one of the better characters of the Gundam series who flies really fast red painted things, but he has nothing on Wrex.

If his plot armor was sufficient enough, Char could have likely survived Wrex's attempt to kill him long enough to get into the colony and will somehow luckily find the fastest method to the nearest hospital.

Some Ace pilots have problems with dying and or not being cloned back into existence... multiple times in fact. Others just refuse to die despite the fact that they already should have, just ask Kira 'Jesus' Yamato of Gundam SEED about his plot armor for more information on how 'Gundanium Grade plot armor' works.

369. Pushing Forward.

-Equus, Doing a moderately honest job in Canterlot, outside the Royal Guard Barracks, Jaded-

“Now you may all be wondering what Jaded La Perm is doing here, no she is not part of this exercise so stop looking so dejected or afraid of what she might or might not have planned as a training aid. She however is incentive to take this seriously and is currently doing her job as a security consultant… don’t snicker the living nightmare of Saddle Arabia is in fact doing her job by just sitting there and eating a Raspberry Tiger Tail doughnut.” Kind of like Duly Noted, his brother Duty Noted was pretty cool too. Those two brothers knew how to run a Canterlot squad of guards, unlike most guards they tried to sell the whole similar appearance that most guards try to portray. They continued to have white dyed fur having been around since Celestia’s reign leading into Twilight’s and would likely continue to be loyal to the sun goddess. “In any case she will be an observer to today’s exercise and will point out the holes in our figuring out the problem, as I’m sure you are all aware, this is a test where one among you is...”

“I know what you’re going to say, it’s the guy in the back on the left.” I commented dryly.

“Which guy?” The guards looked confused.

“Your truly are a security expert… guess it takes someone that is quite crafty to break the refurbished wards on Canterlot Castle not once, but three times in a week.” Duly Noted stared me in the eyes and I smile. “In any case while we distracted you with the information that Jaded has broken into Canterlot Castle no less than five times this week alone, someone among you isn’t who they seem. This is a cross training exercise with a changeling.”

All the guards looked at the Changeling Guard among them that wasn’t even hiding his appearance.

“I mean another changeling aside from Shim Shady who has earned his right as a Royal Guard and a duel citizen of the ‘Glad’ Lands and Equestria.” A lot of the guards suddenly got the message. “Do you know which one among you is currently a changeling Sergeant Shady?”

“No sir, but I should be able to at least identify them, what are they using to hide themselves?” Sergeant Shady looked about, Changelings were not able to match anyone on an even field, but they were good jacks of all trades and multi-lingual so Shady tended to get jobs with foreign dignitaries that weren’t changelings themselves. “Also don’t you mean infiltrated the castle only three times?”

“I know what I said about Jaded, she got by the wards without breaking them more than once, it’s a little bit insulting that she even hired a five year old colt to poke logical holes in our defenses. Anyway, you’ll find out soon enough how the intruder is hiding their presence.” Duly Noted continued and I grinned knowing exactly the trick being played here, it required every to be on alert, when even the changeling can’t eyeball the problem among them.

The problem is the word ‘Changeling’ is not just a race, but also another word for ‘shape shifter’ and a shape shifter that wasn’t a changeling wouldn’t be spotted that easily by an empathic bug pony. However, I will note how long it takes someone to notice I still had my eyes on the guy and add that to Duly Noted's evaluation.

“You are so lucky, that I have a meeting with the Thestrals today or else I would get back at you for insulting my intelligence!” Princess Luna stated angrily while blushing as she walked by, she was still a good leader for the thestrals. Twilight wasn’t exactly ready to be responsible for too much more than just Equestria.

Celestia would take back the job if asked and Twilight just has to know she can ask, even if it would be taking Celestia away from a very much needed vacation after a thousand years of guiding crazy ponies around.

“Yes, you were moving a bit slow that day and you better speed up today so you can come back and get me.” I commented idly with a cheeky grin, the moon goddess was so going to rip me a new one if I was still here by the time she got back to passing by the Canterlot Barracks again. “So anyway, let’s get this exercise started!”

I took out a notepad and waited for someone to ask the obvious as they looked amongst themselves.

“What are the rules we’re working under here and how much help can we ask for from other divisions in finishing this assignment?” After a few minutes of dither among the other Sergeant Shady finally asked a good question. “Also, I suggest that we lock down the barracks immediately with a barrier that prevents anyone from leaving, but doesn’t prevent people from entering if we have in fact been infiltrated. Nobody can leave until we discover the intruder if that is what the exercise is telling us to do, if not then what does the exercise entail.”

“Give that guy a raise immediately!” I stated with a bright smile and my ears perking up, even pointed my fountain pen at him in emphasis.

“I’ll note that down Jaded. Sergeant Shady has earned himself a raise, don’t ask why her word has any weight on that.” Duly Noted stated as he turned back to the crowd to tell them the rules of what the exercise was. “You’re likely better off not knowing.”

The guards looked among themselves and then at me, eyes were still staring at a specific odd one out in the midst of them. I’m kind of surprised nobody has noticed the doppelganger among them, then again the Royal Guard armor does have the ability to make stallions and mares alike look similar, so that was one of the things that needed to be dealt with during this exercise as everyone in armor looked almost alike with the glamour magic active. Sergeant Shady and Duly Noted were the only ones currently not using that feature of the armor at the moment.

-Pokémon Realm, Nixtorm, Icy Ruins Mystery Dungeon, current location: somewhere on floor Floor B4, Pom-

“Should we…. should we stop this?” I asked as we came upon a room, another one with slippery floors that didn’t affect me nearly as much as it did Dolly.

In it were four blowing wind traps that were going off in a constant loop of going counterclockwise around the room, the traps were still sending the Pokémon sliding across the floor as we watched.

“Even if you do save them, they are just going to attack us. That’s what all the other monsters here are doing.” Dolly was right and logically I knew that she was right, but I still think leaving a Pokémon in an infinite loop of setting off traps that shoved them into the other traps like this was kind of cruel.

It was an ice Type variant of a Mr. Mime, I waited until the right moment and stuck out my left leg and clotheslined them to the floor taking out the ice clown and forcing them to disappear.

“I’m still concerned about all that stuff turning into Pokémon.” Wouldn’t anyone be as concerned as I was that the things in my bag could have once been a Pokémon?

“I’m getting kind of hungry here Pom…” Dolly was a bit twitchy and weaning her off kibble didn’t seem to be effecting her as we made our way into the room, looked around and then decided to go out the left exit.

“Hold on a second.” While we were on the move I decided to eat one of the apples, which seemed more perishable in comparison to the stuff Oberon made for us personally.

Sending out a single strand of wool and stiffening it, I slammed the apple down on it with my other hoof, then I twist the hoof with the wool strand and pull the cored out of the apple. I was going to choose to believe that the floor trap just swapped all the stuff with Pokémon and that this apple was perfectly safe to consume.

With an upward flick of my hoof the apple split into two halves and I held out both to Dolly, she took one in her teeth and start chomping down on it.

“This is oddly satisfying…” Dolly mumbled as we both ate parts of the apple and I quickly lead us down the passageway until we stopped in a room that had the staircase. After Swallowing, Dolly finally decided to ask about it. “Why aren’t you using the spear?”

“Saving it for when I actually need it and I have some… concerns… about using it.” We actually walked down the staircase and I was silent as we appeared on the next floor in a large expansive empty warehouse sized room full of stuff and surrounded by numerous Feral Pokémon. One Pokémon even phased into existence right before our eyes and was immediately looking in our direction, there were no pillars or place to hide in this room. “Dolly…”

“Got you’re back.” Dolly stated as she took up her damaged board and stood on her hind legs while facing behind us as the Pokémon started swarming towards us.

Ice Variant Zorua, Vulpix, Ninetails, Sandshrew, Sandslash, Frozen Mr. Mime with what looked like a further evolutionary state of them with sharpened canes of ice, a few of those small tent Pokémon and a few Zoroark that weren’t Fou… at this rate it would be easier to name the Pokémon that weren’t currently in the room wildly surging for us and I couldn’t see the exit through all of them.

We needed to thin their numbers drastically and I could only hope that dealing enough damage to force them into disappearing wasn’t me killing them by going all out here. I couldn’t afford not to use the para-lance.

Were we truly only five floors into the dungeon maze? This place was a mad house of monsters! Multiple mouths opened up and started firing blasts of snow, wind and icicles at us.

I opened the Para-lance and blocked the incoming attacks that I could get to and Dolly blocked the ones I couldn’t stop from coming at us from every direction. Every direction including the air from those round floating orbs with mouths and spikes and the weirdly feminine dress like looking monster, despite blocking as many attack as we could it wouldn’t stop the temperature in the room from drastically dropping.

“Ack…” I felt an icicle bite into my left side as I moved the para-lance to blocked an entire volley slightly to the right.

“Aerora!” Screamed Dolly, the twisting winds started swirling around us in a barrier and stopped the weaker wind and blasts of snow coming at us, but the icicles still pierced though the winds at a reduced strength and speed I could feasible react to.

One of the floating orb Pokémon opened its mouth and…

-Dolly-

“Pom what do we… ?!” Why did my connection suddenly feel weak all of the... HOLY… I turned to look at Pom and despite having obviously blocked whatever the attack was she had been flash frozen in place. “Gravity!”

I tried to angle the spell strike I a ring around us and hit as many of the flying guys that just turned Pom into a frozen statue. I felt a breeze surged past me from one of the floating monsters mouth and notice the ground had frozen over around me… huh, were they trying to do the same to me, you couldn’t freeze this hot dog!

Numerous floating and flying guys slammed into the ground violently. Afterward I quickly threw my my board onto my back by the strap as the winds roared around us protecting us from most of the projectiles and the Pokémon just running into the winds and getting blown over, into other Pokemon or just disappeared in the winds ripping into them.

I quickly began rubbing my paws together violently, this never scientifically made even before I uncorked my magic and Dawkins never gave it an explanation when he and Dylan became frozen solid when we turned the air conditioner into a snow maker.

I kept rubbing my paws together and then slapped them both forwards into Pom’s side and started to rub them, up and down along her body and immediately she was blinking and looking dazed as the ice immediately melted off of her and thawed her out.

“Pom if you can hear me, then eat one of those healing berry things, it might warm you up!” Our connection returned to strength and I got Pom to pop one of those giant blueberry things in her mouth and started chewing. The color quickly returned to her shivering pale face as she quickly deflected another round of icicles with a wide sweep around me with that spear thing. “I need a top up quick!”

I turned my back to Pom and ducked an icicle by going flat on my belly and felt the impact of it skidding off my board, I took some energy from that and then I felt the pressure of Pom’s hoof slapping on my back.

I transmitted my idea to Pom and prepared to warm her up with some warm air.

-Pom-

My eyes widened at what Dolly’s plan to warm me up was and instantly regretted giving her the magical energy necessary for what she was about to do, with all that cold air in a mostly sealed room like this one… the room wouldn’t give out.

“Dolly, wait, no!” It was bit too late for me to stop her.

“Aerora!” Dolly had to make the air spinning up as hot she possibly could and this inevitable resulted in chaos.

Let me explain, when two highly different powerful temperatures meet in manner exactly like what Dolly was doing, the end result is what is known as a ‘thermal shock’ happening.

If it was a choice between me and friends or family, I would always make the same choice.

I exhaled explosively, put the spear along my spine to protect it from the incoming danger while putting head as far under its canopy as I could. While do that I threw my body over my bag and Dolly’s body to pin us both to the floor with my wool and covered every exposed to part of me with my wool, while hardening it as hard I as could to bunker down.

Please be enough…

Dolly was confused, but I was far less so as the entire room suddenly exploded violently.

I couldn’t be mad at Dolly, she was clever and intelligent, but she wasn’t the brains in her family and didn’t remember what happened when we attack Clockwerks lair that something similar happened there and Smolder’s flames launched us into the sky.

A regular Aerora would have been less disastrous and I didn’t even know what the end results would be as the room become one thundering earthquake of destruction.

I didn’t know if I was screaming or not, but I was in pain and at least Dolly couldn’t even feel a bit of what I was going through.

Hot, cold and tons of static energy caused by physics being broken down by magic to create a powerful reaction that slammed down on me with the force of a freight train, also strange noises of shattering glass as the world around us tried to tear us apart.

So… much… pain…

-Dolly-

Wha…

What just…

What just happened Pom? Pom?!

I pushed upwards against Pom and she limply rolled over. I looked around wide eyed at blackened room full of scorches mark, Pom wasn’t looking to healthy either but her body had weathered whatever I had just done pretty well. There was only one part of the room that was untouched, that’s where the stairs were.

I quickly heaved Pom onto my board by rolling her over onto it and after getting the supplies on it, I started to push her body towards the staircase, her legs dragging limply on the floor. We had to get to the next floor down, had to find something to help her…

“What did I just do, what have I done... and why can’t I control Pom’s body?” Did that, whatever it was, paralyze her… that’s bad, that is really bad!

Pom’s body was entirely unresponsive, but I could at least tell Pom was alive. She still protected me from all of it... that’s like Pom alright…

I looked around the room and saw more monsters start to phase into existing appearing out of nowhere, almost there… just a little further…

I pushed us down into the staircase and we both landed with a solid thump in a room with only on exit, we were in the far corner of the room away from the exit.

“Okay… first things first, what to do? Do I call the ‘fam’ and tell them how badly I screwed up?” I asked myself only to hear a response I didn’t want to.

“Spatial anomaly is currently preventing cross dimensional communication.” Yiggy Sis stated, well that’s one less thing I can do.

I quickly checked the pack and looked around, I picked out three of those berries and carefully worked Pom into position so that her mouth was open towards the ceiling.

I squeezed as much of those berries into her mouth as I could and, doing the throat rubbing thing, managed to get her drink the juice that would help her body heal slightly. These berries weren’t very powerful, but they healed things right, this had to work!

It just had to…

-Two floors up, Fou-

He couldn’t track Pom nor could he track Skull X, he was quite angry, but he knew both his quarries were in here, he still had a hunt to finish and he didn’t care who he ran into first.

At least he had a lot of strange opponents to fight, but they always kept disappearing whenever he tried to go for a fatal blow.

He silently wondered if that giant crab will be stronger if he sees it again, he doesn’t care that he was trapped in a strange place.

Anything that got in his way here barely lasted five seconds and it was aggravating him quite a bit.

-Team Pocket, Meowth-

“I wonder what’s happening in there.” Eh probably nothing we should care about, Team Pocket had curry and rice going thanks to the help of Wobbuffet. “Hey James, can you play something on that harmonica we got a while back? Also, Wobbuffet, do you by any chance know any other dances aside from ‘love-love dancing’ you always like doing?”

We weren’t sitting in front of the entrance in case Pom never came out and something else entirely did.

Wobbuffet apparently knew ballet too, how cultured that he knew how to do a good rendition of Swanna Lake.

-Dolly-

I stood vigil in front of Pom, I tried to take control of her body again and I got her legs to move a bit… so that meant the berries might have helped the right thing and if I could move her legs, then I could get us moving forward.

Come on, Pom, if can get your body moving, then I won’t have to worry about leaving you here by yourself so I can find something like an orange berry or… Sitrus, that’s right it’s called a Sitrus Berry. We could really use one of those right about now! Not that they seem to be entirely effective on Pom, they are supposedly powerful and for some reason don’t work as well on her.

Still, I needed a way to heal Pom and fast. The longer we stayed here in this dead end the likelier we are to be attacked. Come on Dolly, you’ve save Pom multiple times already, what’s one more time?

I just had to keep pushing forward and… yes, I got Pom’s legs working at least.

I reoriented Pom on my board and got on top of her to start awkwardly pushing us forward, if we were attacked, I would have to just deal with it with my bare paws and helmet.

Okay going down the corridors easily enough, sure the turns are a little tricky, but making good progress and I might soon find a… shrew!

Having quickly leapt off of Pom, I slammed the snow shrew things face into the floor with my left paw as soon as it appeared and then, when it was getting up, I jammed my right paw into its belly and let loose as much momentum as I could put into the motion to send the shrew flying until it slapped against the floor and disappeared.

Okay, small things like that, not a problem, if it was something bigger I might have to break out the magic and I’ve got… about an aero left in me. I’ll just go with my flow-motion magic, which takes basically nothing at all.

Wait… I needed to move Pom and I can create flowing motions, oh duh!

I quickly got behind Pom before any more monster showed up and got Pom’s legs moving the board and then added flow-motion to it. Suddenly we were moving plenty fast and could even ride up the walls… okay bad idea doing tricks with an out cold Pom, but that was still impressive looking.

Only I’m the only one that knows that I did such a thing… I hope Pom wakes up soon. Can’t do this thing without her. I took a left turn at a four way intersection, went straight through a T junction and then hit a right turn that led to a room.

Once I got to the room, I could see a lot of empty space and a few sleeping Pokémon. The second I push Pom into the room beyond the threshold they’d all wake up and would start attacking. I’m glad I’m in a position to see them before I did something dumb like rushing in blindly. Also I can see the staircase right there waiting for us to get down another floor.

Not to mention the possibility of traps, I’m surprised I didn’t hit one getting out of that last room with Pom.

…

I checked Pom’s bag and eventually pulled out the bright blue orb thing, I’m not sure I know much about bowling but… couldn’t hurt to try it right now. We didn’t even know what this orb thing did and I had an idea of how to use it to avoid traps at the very least.

Putting the orb next to the entrance of the room, looked behind Pom down and moved to look down the corridor to make sure nothing was coming up behind us on the winding pathways I went through to get here.

I positioned myself on my back, brought up my rear legs and promptly kicked the orb into rolling through the room.

Getting up onto my paws, I excitedly watched to see what it would do now. It eventually hit something that made a clicking noise and then the entire room lit up in an even more powerful explosion than what Pom had been hit with previously when she stepped on a trap like it.

I clenched my eyes shut as the blinding light had hurt them and the sound of multiple explosions gave me a migraine, then I felt something knocked my legs out from under me and I flopped onto my chin.

Once I found out what had knocked me over, I smiled. the orb had triggered every trap in the room after hitting that one and the series of explosions devastated and widened the room. Also there was a lots of toxic looking goo everywhere on the floor, along with patches of strange green sticky looking stuff going everywhere in the toxic mire.

Not a single Pokémon was left to attack us, okay I was quite very lucky to not have run into those traps getting pom out of that last room and only met a snow shrew on the way here. I now knew for a fact that those traps could be just anywhere and they could go off more than once.

So even if I had managed to avoid the Pokémon there were powerful explosion traps all around the staircase. I rubbed the orb that came back to me affectionately, don’t know why dogs loved spheres so much, maybe it was back when we used to have wolves in our blood and we hunted small animals. I kind of needed a good luck charm right now.

I quickly put the orb away and got Pom’s body to get us moving and I used her long legs to bounce us over the traps and into the staircase.

Okay… now I was at an intersection leading to more intersections, also could the design of this place be a little more interesting please? All that archeo-whats-its stuff going on here and covered in a layer of ice and snow.

“Nnn….” Don’t worry Pom, I’ve got you and it’s nice to hear you might wake up soon. I can see why these Dungeon places are scary.

Now which way do I go?

“Um… any mini mighty moe, I’m a dog that doesn’t know where to go, so I’m just going to go with… the… flow!” I pointed in a direction and started pushing us in it.

I carefully navigated the next two rooms and found out that some of the sleeping Pokémon won’t wake up if you steer clear of them.

Really couldn’t get greedy about the stuff just lying around unless I see a yellow berry that heals injuries and or more of those blue berries. There didn’t seem to be many monsters on this floor, but the monsters that were here, from what I can see, were generally larger than the earlier floors.

Okay third rooms the…

An earthquake shook the entire place.

What was that?

-Fou-

“Fou!” I roared as I smelled the prey around here, I couldn’t smell them previously, but now I did.

I immediately set out in the direction they were in.

-Dolly-

I think my blood might have frozen, because I could have sworn that I heard ‘HIM’ coming. Not good, Pom is not in a condition to fight at the moment.

Okay, what do I do? Can’t out run him, he caught up to us. Can’t fight him, he’d tear me apart.

I just have to quickly find the next staircase down and maybe lose him on a different floor or failing that send Pom down a floor while drawing his ire to me!

Pom might be able to survive for a bit without me next to her, but I’d have to push her down the stair at the last minute and find a way to redirect that monster. Maybe I could confuse it? No, that guy is pretty smart and would tear me apart for trying.

Instead of dithering about I pushed the skateboard forward using Pom’s limbs and managed to get us moving down a corridor and just as I turned the corner I saw him. Stop to sniff the air around the room we were him.

Must go faster, must go faster! Where’s the exit, got to find the exit, got to keep go down got to avoid him!

I came into the right room and at the same time on the opposite side of it he entered, the exit was a little to the right and there was no way I was going to be able to outpace that monster with Pom out cold like she is.

“Fou!” He stated menacingly and I can see why Pom would have nightmares about this guy before we even met him.

His red pupils turned into slits and his claws flexed as he grinned with murderous intent, while we sat at one of the other four entrances into the room. He was definitely preparing to charge us down, what to do… well maybe using the orb again might work?

I threw the orb as I hard as I could, boosting its momentum as I sent it hurtling towards Fou and he ignored it and charged right into it. He was only partially into the room when it start filling with a thick greyish smog that built up and followed his charge.

The glass orb seemingly shattered harmlessly on his body with a requisite glass breaking noise I would certainly recognize after one too many of my infamous escapades back in Camden Town, he raised his right claw and he kept charging straight for us ignoring all the other Pokémon in the room.

He was followed by an endless plume of smoke from where the orb shattered and started engulf everything like a tidal wave.

In fact I just made him look more terrifying and awesome, well if I was going to die, at least I was going to die to something that was stupidly powerful and that had an epic backdrop to it and everything.

Just as Fou reached us, I prepared to fight to the last to keep Pom safe.

I got ready to leap up at this guy, even started growling more fearlessly than I felt and prepared to give him my all. It was in the middle of him swinging his right claw down for us and as I was leaping up when smog wave hit us.

I felt like I hit a solid mass of stone and flopped to the floor, didn’t know the guys muscles were that thick!

Dazedly I looked back seeing as he ignored me and went straight for Pom.

What I saw made me freeze up.

Inches from clawing at an unconscious Pom laying on my board was that monster Fou, only he was now a solid stone statue.

Looking around the room I saw the other Pokémon that had tried to follow and attack Fou were also stone statues now.

What the DOG was in that orb and why didn’t it have an effect on me or Pom?!

Really could have really used that against Skully Hex or whatever we’re calling it… well nothing for it.

I carefully went over to my board and maneuvered Pom around the statue while eyeing it warily and made my way towards the staircase.

Just as I was about to move down the staircase I heard a crack turned back to see the stone statue of the petrified shift left or right a little bit, a small crack trailed up the statues back starting at its left heel.

He was still alive?!

Right going down to the next floor! Find something to help Pom further while staying on the move, we needed to put some distance between us before he broke free!

Author's Note

Random dice roll came up with an orb and there are a lot of them across the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Series.

There are a good number of orbs that would have successfully saved Dolly here without injury, with injury or left her half dead and still managing to get at least another floor.

The Wonder Orb known as the 'Petrify Orb' came up first, petrifies everything considered an enemy of the thrower in a room.

She could have been severely unlucky and could have just had the orb that allowed her a mental map of an entire floor, the locations of all enemies and traps.

In any case...

Fou's Musical Theme- A Sudden Gust of Wind Before Your Eyes- Etrian Odyssey (Mystery Dungeon version).

The irony of the theme is that it plays when you run into FOEs(Field-On Enemies), basically a super boss monster your team will probably be torn to shreds by upon first meeting it if you ever played an Etrian Odyssey game.

370. De Ja... Dodged!

Author's Note

Suggested Music: A Sudden Gust of Wind Before Your Eyes- Etrian Odyssey Untold.

370. De Ja... Dodged!

-Equus, Still doing a completely honest job in Canterlot, just outside the Royal Guard Barracks, Jaded-

“Okay people the results are in, gather around and I’ll tell you how you did… my guess as to Sergeant Shady needing a raise, we should probably double that even if he’s not exactly good with nuance.” Changelings did take things a little too seriously. Nobody should ask him about the barbed Q’s incident, he gets rather testy about all the noodles lost that day. “Duly and Duty Noted want these names to gather off to one side.”

I started reading down the surprisingly short list as Duty and Duly approached, the guard brothers were without a doubt two of the most competent members of the Royal Guard, next to Shining Armor and a few others I’ve met.

“Those of you who are off to the side failed to notice what we wanted you to, as for the rest of you good job, especially you Sergeant Shady. You were the first to find the intruder in this exercise.” The changeling deserved the praise and his smile was frankly adorable, there was more than one way to transform on the planet Equus and I had access to a few of them with Magical Alchemy personally… usually in the form of a decorative mask that counted as a singular object. “We’re glad a majority of you succeeded.”

I wasn’t part of the exercise today or I would have had some more fun with this, but apparently I wasn’t being paid to have fun. Also Fizzy did warn me not to make a mess or else she’d have to suffer through not having me to snuggle in bed… it is no secret that I’m addicted to pony cuddles.

Still made quite a lot of bits today and that should keep all the family bread winners off of my case, see I wasn’t just good at working in a Hayburger! I was the best security consultant around, mostly because I’m usually the one breaking into the places to steal things that weren’t nailed down… the nails are usually the first thing I needed to steal really.

Things have gotten to the point where I’m being paid by stealing my own pay and leave notes on how whatever security was circumvented, like using a wire coat hanger and a graffiti scrubbing sigil, both are completely innocuous and absolutely easy to acquire. Incidentally Agent Fussy Britches, AKA my friend Fancy Pants of noted true nobility fame, had a decent security system against multiple things breaking into his home that most people wouldn’t even think of thanks to me.

Graffiti scrubbing sigils were basically used by Unicorns to scrub paint and other hard to clean substances off of surfaces by using magic, which can deal with most magical substances as well. Said sigils could be used by anyone with even a hint of magic in their blood. Unfortunately nobody understood the implications of what one of these sigils was capable of when it came to magically scrubbing holes into magical barriers since they are technically classified as a magical substance… well at least they are classified as that now.

The sigil was also a handy stain remover provided you made sure the sigil was selectively targeting the stain and not the clothing, thankfully the sigils could not harm a living being… even bacteria. If it could remove bacteria, then it would have to be reclassified as a magical weapon and I wasn’t about to let the idea of that cat out of the bag. That way lies total destruction.

“So what didn’t we notice?” Asked Captain Obvious, no seriously that was his name, Unilaterally Obvious… par for the course for pony names and he was better known as ‘Unil’ to his friends.

“Okay, there is more than one way to shapeshift, I know a lot of them. Celestia has been using a shapeshifting artifact for hundreds of years to hide herself and check up on ponies when in public without them trying to constantly bow and scrape to her to make sure things were going smoothly from a civilian perspective. I think that was method recently destroyed…” Now I know that bit of information about Celestia got all the guards spooked, at least the ones that failed the exercise at least, but I would ignore their wide eyed stares. “Anyway, yes, Celestia has been dodging her own Royal Guard for as many years, so don’t be too upset that she has likely done it to you while she was still running this spaghetti sieve of a nation security wise, as sometimes lacking security is a security all its own. Luna has more capability with shape shifting given she can make illusions to hide her appearances, smell and even the sounds she makes from others. Just a word of warning, she has never smelt or dealt it. She can even change sizes given how quickly she grew from a filly to an adult size alicorn in less than a year. The more notable examples is that your armor has glamour magic on them and we have a changeling here that could easily detect another changeling presence. None of those methods of hiding oneself was used here either. What are you least likely to pay attention to in a crowd?”

“Um…” Captain Obvious started to rub his chin with a hoof. “I’m not sure I’m liking where this is going…”

“You shouldn’t, so I’ll just say that Celestia has been a longtime friend of Queen Novo and you’ve been in the middle doing cross military training exercises with the Longma of Huoshan, The Changelings of the ‘Glad’ Lands, The Yaks of Yakyakistan, The Saddle Arabian Dune Squads- which I accidentally scared off by just sneezing in their general direction, The Foenum Champions from our dimensional sister world, The Buffalo Scouts, The EUP which has been expanding memberships lately, The Wonderbolts, The Minotaur Republic with their leader Forti-… er… anyway yadda-yadda-yadda and etcetera, specifically to make things short Novo’s people are working on spying and the inconspicuous travel aspect of their military exercises. You just haven’t been informed of it… well now you have.” That got a few guards on alert and looking at their surroundings, quite a few of the ones off to the side were looking for the out of place guard who was placed on the roster again and the set up for this was done a month in advance. So really the guard didn’t seem out of place for a number of reasons that they’ve integrated perfectly. Not my doing, but it was quite impressive what Duty Noted had going on with the odd guard and it has been ongoing until we did this exercise. “I had to point out to the hippogriff that snuck into your ranks that wearing the necklace openly with the transformation pearl on it was a bit too obvious, he has been doing so for more than a month without anyone noticing, they rectified the situation by hiding it somewhere else on their person when I pointed it out. Transformation jewel pearl pieces are quite highly regulated by Seaquestria and the Mount Aris Nations, given they can cause as much shenanigans as a changeling can… except the transformation pearl is more effective with its transformation despite the limitations of size, shape and mass that Changelings can somewhat fudge in details with their unique brand of magic. Should a pearl chunk be stolen or misused and Novo finds out about it, she can deactivate any of the pieces remotely and leave you permanently stuck as whatever you currently are when it happens… no I didn’t try to steal one, I was informed by her myself when I talked to her about a friend who has a highly life threatening medical issue and we’ll leave it at that. Don’t honestly want to mess with artifacts that stupidly powerful, have enough of that already, and I already have my own methods of magic to shapeshift.”

The sounds of horror were fairly palpable when I said I could shapeshift, my method wasn’t as easy and was very much temporary to at least an hour. Still, the things I could do in an hour were not small at all and once the Saddle Arabians hear about this with their contact in the guard trying to keep an eye on me... well that paranoia should do more in a month than I could plan for in a week. They only suspected I had shapeshifting from the legends of me in the distant past, now they would be certain of it.

“No I haven’t used any of my methods… today.” I followed up knowing exactly well what the guards here were thinking.

“So… wait… which among us was the Hippogriff spy?” I stared flatly at the pony that said this, the guard shrunk back.

“Gee, I wonder, the only Earth Pony that is here today among all the Unicorns and Pegasus Ponies guards, yet has gone ignored by some of you the entire time. Seriously though, every Earth Pony from your particular units were all given free leave to spend time around Canterlot and none of you noticed the odd one out that stayed here on duty? Thankfully most of you actually noticed it!” I swear I’m quite surprised more assassins hadn’t gotten closer to Celestia over the thousand plus years of running Equestria. “I think I work better with the EUP…”

“To put it bluntly…” Duly Noted added with a firm voice as the Earth Pony among them turned into a smirking Hippogriff. “Those of you off to the side all failed an obvious spot check.”

“I recently looked up a fascinating fact that Earth Ponies are mostly immune to ‘normal’ non-magical plant born toxins with their strong constitutions, which is why no one in the Apple Family has ever had a cyanide poisoning problem from the apple seeds when they have the tendency to incidentally chew and or swallow them daily when they eat entire apples whole and they eat a lot of apples whole! Those of you off to the side that failed the exercise, please take the time to at least learn something interesting about Earth Ponies like I did.” Despite grumbling this, I held out my right claw in a slightly eager manner and both Duly and Duty planted bags full of bits into it. I suddenly grinned broadly. “I wouldn’t want to be tackled or pinned down by an Earth Pony stallion, they could actually hold onto me if I ever stopped moving long enough for them to properly grapple me with their hooves. Also thank you all very much for helping me win a bet and prove a point, this is just adding on to what I’m being paid today for my services!”

Multiple guards groaned audibly as this rogue kitty took her well earned spoils.

“Yep, still she’s terrifying, so should I tell the Saddle Arabians that their theory about her having shape shifting abilities is confirmed like in the legends?” Duty Noted whisper to his brother nearby, barely within hearing range of my ears.

“That’s exactly what the ‘Mirage’ side of Jaded wants, but sure, why not?” Okay Duly Noted has gone up a few places on my respect meter. Might actually let him catch me doing petty theft once or twice. “Better to rip that old bandage off sooner than later. Also, yes, before any of you ask, Jaded has stolen our armor before and has ran around disguised as a pony capturing criminals, she even properly followed procedure for incarcerating them too!”

-Pokémon Realm, Nixtorm, Icy Ruins Mystery Dungeon, current location: somewhere on floor Floor B9, Pom-

“Dead end, why are there so many dead ends on this floor?” That was Dolly, where was I and oh… ow… being caught in a thermal shock blast… is not the most pleasant thing to ever have happened to me.

We were in the eye of it, so it possibly wasn’t the worst it could have been to me and still hurt a lot. Still had wool on my body, so I’m alive at least.

“Oh great, your awake! Guess what, I found out what that orb did!” Dolly seemed energetic and happy to see me up, given I was met by a wagging tail as I took up sitting on the back half of her skateboard. “It turned Fou to stone… and everything else around except for us.”

“It did what?!” I flinched pain and curled up a bit trying to escape the fact that my body was trying to tell me I was still among the living. Wait… Fou was actually in the mystery dungeon with us?! “Agh-ugnnn… okay… not a good time to return to being constantly stressed out.”

“Yeah, don’t know how long we have before he catches up to us again when he breaks free of being turned to stone… or encased in it I guess. Also there are no longer any of the smaller guys.” As Dolly tried to comfort me with a gentle paw. My stomach grumbled and I slowly reached into the bag pulled out an apple and used my wool to core it, promptly split the edible parts into two halves and gave the other to Dolly who looked hungry again. “Been seeing nothing but the bigger ones the further down I’ve dragged you.”

“How unfortunate…” I was about to say the words ‘not like’… derail that thought, DERAIL IT IMMEDIATELY… no… did not want to tempt anything here of all places! Not with Fou around and us possibly getting closer to Skull X. How about I instead… “How long have I been out?”

“About an hour as far as I can tell in this crazy place.” Dolly responded while moving to the corner to peak around it before coming back to the dead end corridor we were in. “So…”

“Shh… I hear something coming, looking towards the corner we saw something large, a tube like shadow that moved like a bear. Wait, how was there any lights to cast shadows on the wall around… here?”

What came around the corner was frankly the cutest Pokémon I’ve seen yet, in fact it didn’t look very threatening at all as it wiggled its way towards us with a determination to attack us with its nubby little blob pincers.

It was some kind of Ice and Bug Type, it was moving so slowly it was hard to take as a serious threat as it tried to gnaw and bite through the wool on my left leg unsuccessfully when I approached it.

This place was just plain ridiculous… I carefully picked up the cute bug and it struggled in my hooves while glowing green not much happened aside from that.

It failed to free itself from my grasp as it struggled against my strong hug, I certainly needed something less than threatening and comical like this to attack me.

The small bug continued to try and bite through my wool aggressively, well as aggressive as it could be as it was slow and the nibbling was tickling me. It was failing quite horribly to struggle out of my grip, sure it glowed several times as if doing a single move on repeat while it struggled… but it didn’t seem to be doing much aside from trying to smack me in the chin with the rounded mound on its cute ice shell every once in a while.

“Pom should you really be holding and hugging that thing after you just woke up from being exploded again?” Dolly sent me a mental apology and didn’t know what had happened. “I think you might be a bit… off in the head Pom.”

“What happened was you creating a thermal shock vortex that explode in what I’m assuming to be a completely contained mystical room with us inside it.” I’m surprised we survived it as well as we did, hopefully nothing died in there. “Just don’t add a sudden large amount of heat to something cold all at once. If you want to warm something up, it should be gradual like a… a microwave from your world.”

Microwaves were one of the few convenient things from Dolly’s world I wouldn’t mind having at home in Huoshan.

I suddenly received a harsh blast of snow to the face and responsively threw the Bug Type I was holding into the ground causing it hit the floor hard enough to disappear.

“Aw-…” I intoned sadly that it was gone.

“Pom, it was actively trying to hurt you, stop feeling sorry for the strange maze creatures here. I’m pretty sure there’s more of them around somewhere anyway and none of them seem normal, even your magnetism doesn’t seem to work on them.” It mentally sounded like Dolly was trying to remember the games of Poodlewolf to draw from as a form of experience and was failing to do so given how little she cared for the game. “Anyway, how well can you move?”

“I’m sitting on the skateboard and my limbs are working…” One of my legs twitched in an awkward direction, didn’t know I was that flexible... okay ow, why does pain have to hurt so much?! I should probably stop being in pain eventually for more than ten minutes, by that I mean emotionally, physically and spiritually. “Mostly… You’re right we have to get out of here and keep going before Fou catches us in this corner.”

“I use my momentum abilities to push us both along and you steer.” Stated Dolly and it wasn’t exactly coming off as a question.

She eventually pushed us out of the corner that we were in and moved us around the corner and I asked her which direction we came from given the four way intersection and came to a stop. She was pretty sure we came from the right and so I chose for us to go to the left.

More winding corridors, more wandering a maze to find an exit and we came across a room at the end of the corridor and saw an active Pokémon immediately start coming towards us. Large mound of fur, a pair of tusks and a pig nose, that was about it as far as features went as it prepared to charge at us as it came closer.

“Dolly can you draw it into presenting its side to me?” On my request Dolly quickly darted forward and avoid the creature trying to stab her with its tusks and managed to get it to turn to the right to continue its attempts at attacking her.

I immediately spat three wads of Bark Buster and the liquid magic blasted into the monsters side toppling it as soon as they hit the floor and then it struggled to get back into a standing position.

Before it could, Dolly immediately jumped up to the wall and bounced of it to turn around and ram into the monsters nose with full force with her front paws and caused it to disappear like most Pokémon did here when hurt badly enough. They always seemed to attack the nearest living being without much thought of others, like me, being present to take advantage of it.

“Fou!” We heard rumble throughout the corridors and the sounds of distant fighting could be heard, sounds of agony of Fou’s opponent before their disappeared also reached us.

Both Dolly and I froze and then started moving us for the other entrance to really start looking for the exit. We continued down the pathway until we had thankfully found the exit, but there was a catch, it was surrounded by trap panels… in fact the floor was basically covered in them.

“Dolly, I kick, you glide.” We didn’t have time to slowly work around all the traps or the large Ice Type bear that was snoring away in the room.

Ramming my rear legs into the floor I launched us up and over the traps at the staircase and Dolly got us gliding to the best of her ability, it was good enough even with all the weight we presented and we made it through the staircase and came out…

I blinked and looked at the cold snow bound ridge we were sitting on, no entrance behind us and howling winds flowed around us. There was a humongous chasm stretching on into infinite to the north and south… if those were the north and south. There was a path over an icy bridge going over said chasm leading to a large darkened archway on the ridge on the opposite side.

There was no way this was a place within Nixtorm… this was still a part of the Mystery Dungeon. I didn’t need to say anything as Dolly helped me get standing from her board and I started to walk forward towards the bridge. I looked over the edge into the chasm, an endless void below full of darkness, an endless void above filled with light between the two massive endless icy walls going sideways.

This was a place to rest and get a moment to catch our breaths, didn’t seem like there were any Feral Pokémon here. We couldn’t stay long, I didn’t want to know what would happen when Fou eventually caught up to us here.

I carefully walked across the ice bridge with Dolly making sure to prop me up in case I started to look like was going to fall over and once we were safely on the other side I sat down, the ice bridge wasn’t too bad to cross and I looked back at the ridge we had been on. If there was something symbolic in all this about this specific place, I wasn’t catching on to it.

We sat down and I started to eat the highly nutritious pollen snacks Oberon made for me, it made me immediately feel invigorated and gave me strength. Dolly ate some and snuggled up to me to keep me from shivering.

We spent a few minutes there and we really need to get moving, so gathering my courage, I pulled the para-lance from my back and got onto my hind legs to march into the shadowy archway with Dolly at my side.

Once we were through the gateway, we saw a vast expanse and witnessed a faintly lit destroyed city of ice, snow, stone and ruins before us. No sign of life in the streets whatsoever and the pathway into this city was before us.

I glanced at Dolly and she looked back at me, she need with determination, I had a firm frown on my face as I marched down the steps for the city streets. No Feral Pokémon attacked as we stepped away from the bottom of the stairs… there simply or probably weren’t any here at all.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“There, she’s in the Mystery Dungeon’s anchor point with the monster.” I watched quietly as Pom entered streets, not knowing that the monster she called Skull X was awake and had caught sight of her and started to silently stalk her and Dolly. In the shadows of an ancient city.

“Reporting in, I’ve managed to stop the emergence of at least sixty seven other Mystery Dungeons in Ransei. Since the other regions of the world already have them, they are safe from possible Moon Cell incursion via the Mystery Dungeons, however if Mystery Dungeons start emerging in Ransei it can use them to break the blockade.” Okay Mew’s informing me that my plans might be for naught if that comes to pass.

“Can you keep the Mystery Dungeons from emerging?” If I were Moon Cell I’d be taking advantage of multiple spatial points to break into this world from outside of Valora, we needed to put a stop to that immediately, but we couldn’t spare many Legendary Pokémon to leave quarantine.

“Yes, for a time I can, but I’m going to need help… and on that news… Mirage Mew agrees to lend their assistance to saving our world.” That, was actually good news, Porygon and the digital Mirage System Mew would be able to bridge the gap with the Digimon and we could work together to stop the threat trying to destroy both worlds.

Moon Cell would take advantage of the unforeseen Mystery Dungeons appearing all over the place, those dungeons needed to be stopped before they become a huge problem for the already beleaguered nations of Ransei.

Watching the screen a building was toppled as the two were ambushed.

Dolly quickly shoved Pom away on the skateboard to avoid the building collapsing on top of her. This caused Dolly and Pom to get completely separated and that’s when Skull X stated something.

“Target acquired, unit switching from ‘Foothold Protocols’ to ‘Chrysomallus Extermination Protocols’, extermination of designated target Chrysomallus is priority one for Chaosdramon X foothold unit.” Said a blank, hollow and absolutely mechanical sounding voice as Skull X lunged for Pom and she started running as fast as she could with her current injuries, which was admittedly very fast thanks to her Dancing Flame technique.

We watched as Pom evaded and eventually made Skull X lose track of her as she dove into the shadows of the cities ruins and pillars of ice and stone with the large monster slowly tracking her general location.

Dolly meanwhile had managed to get trapped under the rubble and was busy trying to dig herself out of the building Skull X had tried to collapse on top of them both.

That’s when Fou appeared at the entrance of the city ruins and roared loudly, with a single sniff he was heading straight for where Pom was.

-Mystery Dungeon Anchor Point, Icy Ruins Special Zone, Pom-

Among the random pillars I ran as quietly as I could trying to avoid Skull X’s sight after it just ambushed and separated us. Dolly was okay, but a little trapped.

My wool was cushioning my hooves. I absolutely knew that I had to find a place to hide, being out in the open was a death sentence at the moment until I was ready to start fighting it directly. Maybe Fou could do some real damage to it? He’s got the ability to heal really fast.

I gasped as I leaned my back against a pillar of ice and looked around the corner of it… I heard a fluctuating growling noise coming from the chilling darkness as icy mist flowed around the place.

I didn’t see whichever of the threats it was that was coming for me. The noise was like something I’ve heard before, frightening and driving my baser instincts to run. I knew better than my baser instincts, but in this situation I was willing to work with them.

The ruins and caves around me were silent when I started to hold my breath and quickly darted between pillars of ice and then hid under a toppled pillar of stone.

Only then did I allow myself to breathe a little.

I heard Fou’s howl in the distance. I was being hunted, targeted even, by the monstrosity that was hiding and moving in the shadows.

Something that big shouldn’t be able to be so quiet and then there’s Fou who decided to also start being quiet after that howl.

There was barely any light down here, which was being given off by the distant stone walls of the buildings, and only my limited night vision had let me stay one step ahead of Skull X.

I huffed and puffed quietly as sat there, my eyes searched the spacious area of the ruins I was in, looking around and seeing nothing but ice, stone, bits of broken building and the cloying darkness and cold foggy air around me.

Was it scarier to not know where the monsters were or to know exactly where they are, but you could hardly do a single thing about them?

I think nothing being there was as terrifying knowing that something had been, turning my head to left as I thought I saw something move and held my breath as I saw a long metal tail slide out of sight.

The smell of rotted and poisoned fleshed filled my nostrils and my heart started to pound as much as I heard the heavy thumps of feet on snow slinking away.

I couldn’t relax, never relax, danger here and… wait… why did all of this seem so very familiar all of the sudden? I really had to go back and help dig Dolly out, she had the device that was the method for capturing Skull X once he was weakened enough.

A gold glow started to creep up my front legs and I immediately squashed it before the light attracted the two monsters back to me and or the glow infected me further. I glued the para-lance to my side and stayed low while thinking about something being off here.

This was getting quite eerily familiar, also why wasn’t my body half glowing a golden color… wait a minute…

Don’t grow wings… don’t be found by the thing… can’t drop my guard and I know something was definitely up, that’s my natural state of life at this point.

It’s not a trick of my mind, there was something in the darkness and my safety was suspect even if I could feel Dolly trying to quickly dig herself out to come and assist me.

Where do I go, what was I even doing here…

That’s it… this is like in the dream I had back in the Kingdom of Titania! Didn’t Curdle say something about portents of the future or it being something like prophetic? Is that why everything was so familiar!

I tried to keep my breathing slow and quiet as I heard a soft rumbling growl, which was likely Fou closing in on me. I could hardly remember that dream, I tried to forget every detail of it… but the one detail that stuck was that I remember I was alone and that Fou attacked me.

I didn’t have a bag or para-lance with me at that time in the dream though… so things are not exactly going to happen the same way.

Had to keep my ears out, had to use what little sight I had, all I could smell was the stench of that poisonous rot, meaning Skull X was here and waiting for me to break cover.

I could probably feel it’s movements through the ground with my hooves even if there was wool covering them.

This is exactly like what happened last time, since I’m about to be attack by Fou I should…

I still wondered why Skull X was focusing entirely on me, what could it be possibly seeking me out for? Why did I happen to be its designated target? It had even mostly ignored Dolly, it was only after me specifically… also wasn’t I thinking about Quetal being here in the dream too?

It was too quiet and things were far too different, was it waiting for me to come out of cover or was it just waiting for me to move so it could get me with less effort? Did it even know where I was?

I could hear the sound of my own rapidly beating heart in my chest, how could the monster not hear that and know where I was already?

I can’t stay here, I can’t move, what can I do? I needed a way out!

No… Pom… don’t panic this is exactly like what happened in the dream before I got attacked and stuck between the two monsters before likely waking up from that nightmare. Calm down and use logic, the kind of logic that doesn’t come with sleeping.

Dolly was distant, had no clue what became of Quetal or Curdle, unlike my dream I still have my wolf transformation ready and raring to go but I could only do it once and had to pick a good area to do so in. Something of a contained space where I can do the most damage and use Skull X’s size against it.

Dolly coming to me would be a bit hard to do, since it wasn’t safe for Dolly to be near me at the moment.

I would be giving Dolly the time necessary to get free, also I mentally told Dolly that she should be thankful that she wears a helmet after hearing of what her current predicament was like.

In the dark fog and ice covered ruins with two monsters gunning for her, Pom plotted.

She wouldn’t be fighting at full strength after taking that thermal shock blast, but Oberon’s snack had given her a significant boost of energy even if it didn’t heal her battered form. She didn’t feel like she was missing magic or oddly drained like in the dream, but she would pick her battles here carefully.

A distorted growl sounded off and I put my back to the underside of the fallen pillar shivering, then waited, if things went like they did in the dream. I looked to the right and left… knowing that I had to time this just right as I inhaled through my nose calmly.

Fou’s horrific gushing eyes being fresh from my reinvigorated and now living near perfect nightmare, I should be able to get Fou between me and Skull X.

When I looked back to the left, I immediately rolled under the swinging claw and through Fou’s legs suddenly surprising him.

“Fou?!” The creature intoned menacingly as he tried to turn towards me with confusion. He immediately tripped over the para-lance I had left planted at an angle between his legs when I rolled between them and flopped onto his face harshly dazing him.

I ran back to quickly grab the lance and then booked it on all fours with it strapped to my wool by leaping away with my Fleet Cunning Doe skills. I started putting distance between us in as many quick breaths as I could get to Dancing Flame bounce away, as Skull X tried to descend on the both of us after Fou had missed what was supposed to be a surprise attack on me.

The pillar had stopped Fou from being completely crushed under the still moderately damaged Skull X’s weight, I noted the monster wasn’t bleeding glowing cubes and it also hadn’t recovered its size from the injuries dealt by Articuno.

The sudden presence of danger quickly distracted Fou into attacking Skull X and this led to me fleeing the scene with Fou not getting me lethally stuck between him and Skull X.

Now I just had to plan to take down both monsters and survive it… I climbed up the side of a building and started looking around in the barely glow in the dark icy ruins for a perfect place to fight. Maybe a dome with little space for Skull X to maneuver or gain momentum to attack with his limbs?

Hmm… A place where I could do the most damage that would stand up to the kind of fight that we’d be having. I needed a place to fight in that would give me the most advantages that I could make use of when I shifted to utilizing my bestial side.

The collapsing of nearby bits of ice and snow covered ruins signified that Skull X was still prioritizing me over Fou and Fou was at least thankfully prioritizing the bigger threat here given I saw him clawing away at Skull X and doing enough damage to temporarily take the monsters glowing eyes off of me to deal with what I’m sure for it would be a major pest.

I started leaping from rooftop to rooftop, climbing the sides of half toppled building… I guess all that practice at being Leap Lamb had its advantages. I eventually saw the structure I wanted, large… dome like… it looked like it had multiple floors too. It had to have been a library once, one with incredibly thick stone walls considering the building was mostly intact from the looks of it.

That was a decent choice and I immediately started making my way towards it while trying to ignore the sounds of ice, snow and stone being destroyed in my wake by the two monsters fighting each other while giving chase to me.

Running… running is something I’m really good at!

371. The Forgotten Message.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Aurora, Evan-

“Well it’s very clear to me now, we have to subjugate the eastern half of Ransei and unite everyone under one banner to prevent the destruction of our world!” I stated I slapped a paw against the ground.

The Psychic Types told me what was going on in the eastern side of the continent and I already knew what was happening in Terrera thanks to Jiri being there on the front lines of the fight for the Ground Types.

-Mystery Dungeon Anchor Point, Icy Ruins Special Zone, inside a partially collapsed building, Dolly-

Okay, so the building came out of nowhere and collapsed on top of us, I of course knocked Pom away and was not panicking like a headless chicken to bravely dive into the safest place I could find. The screaming was totally me just exercising my voice… heh. My life flashing right before my eyes had certainly not occurred and I was an awesome Dalmatian doing big and obviously dangerous things!

Since Pom and I were still connected, she immediately knew I was fine… well mostly, just a little stuck and lightly bruised by the smaller bits of stone that struck me. I even gave her the idea that this wouldn’t be hard to get out of, just time consuming and that’s somewhat of a problem for Pom.

I was still busy digging my way out of this mess, don’t know how the device could help us against Hull Pecks Monster, but it needed to be there to actually do anything.

Air wasn’t an issue there was a hole I was widening to get the rubble out of the way, slamming the rocks and stuff to the side or knocking them behind with with momentum enhanced strikes was slow going.

Surviving a collapsing buildings is something my father knows how to do in general, safety rules and all as a fire fighter. Starting to get a little homesick for my bigger ‘fam’... to think I’m actually glad that dad dropped that really boring seminar on the whole ‘fam’ that day.

“Hold on Pom, I’m coming!” However I flinched a second later when Pom basically screamed mentally to stay out of the fight when I get there. She needed me to try and figure out if I could use the device for anything else in stopping the mosnter or another way of helping.

Sure I was squishy, but I’m not made of explodium… was explodium an actual thing though? Pretty sure it was, video games always had a lot of things that explode that shouldn’t according to Dawkins.

I stopped digging and shivered and shuddered a bit, do not let the kibble cravings get to me now… though I was getting a bit twitchier, Pom was a higher priority than missing my favorite taste in life at the moment. Could use Haste to speed this up, but I think Pom might need it far more later if she’s still alive at that point and I suspect that she can’t survive an hour to wait for it.

-Icy Ruins Library, Pom-

I rushed through the large entrance archway that had no doors and stopped to blink a bit of dust out of my eyes that I kicked up just by running inside. There was nothing here except stone pillars and walls so thick that I don’t think Skull X could actually destroy them, unless he could somehow drop the Skull from his name and regain the use of his death cannons.

I looked behind me while taking a moment to catch my breath, it’s amazing how fear can make one run faster than a pony athlete. Technically the Earth Ponies always win track and field at athletic events and the Lambkins tend to run away from competition despite trying to send a team.

Put enough distance between me and them that I got a good look at the interior, cross walks, pillars, stone shelves in the walls with nothing in them that could be used for climbing and basically an overhead dome with a lot of ways to maneuver away from a large monster and avoid a faster smaller one too.

After counting to twenty five, I made my way for the nearest pillar, climbed straight up and proceeded to leap off onto the cross walks above the main floor. I started moving along them to the center of the building. I turned back to look at the entrance and sat down to wait.

Skull X charged through the entrance not five seconds later, spotted me and unleashed a bone chilling roar, also I think my entire skeleton was shaking from the vibrations. I could see the battered and fairly beaten form of Fou following Skull X in soon afterwards, his wounds were healing quickly as he looked between me and Skull X like a cat wondering which wingless canary it should eat first.

Skull X leapt up on clung onto the walk near the entrance and started to pull itself up, making a note of its agility despite its size and remembered that Digimon have a lack of overall mass meaning they weighed less than Pokémon in general. Also Skull X used to be twice its current size before Articuno forced it to run off, still too big for my capabilities and even Fou can’t deal with it easily.

I have to pay careful attentions to its grasping right claw, did not want to be grabbed by that thing after seeing what it had done to Fou and I can’t heal or walk off injuries like he could. Also I would save the para-lance for a point when I could no longer stand using my bestial side, provided I was still sane enough to even use it as a weapon once that wore off.

“It’s about time I declared it… I don’t know why you want me dead specifically, but we are enemies, Baa-Ram-Ewe!” I stated as I let them know I picked my battlefield and it was going to be here, I’m not leaving until I’m either dead or I’ve somehow figure out how to get Skull X to stop terrorizing Nixtorm and a way to survive Fou attacking me as well without killing him. “Arwwooooooo-~!”

Work cut out for me…

There were no way I could rely on Shock-Ram for this. I had to tap into my bestial side, I had to flip out and go nuts again like I had on Smolder… I hoped she and everyone else was okay after everything that happened in Illusio.

Let’s see if I could keep my sanity a little more intact this time… my front legs started to take on a golden glow as I took to standing on my hind legs and continued to howl my challenge.

Skull X, despite how big and heavy it looked, managed to climb up onto the walkway and started to slowly stomp it’s way for me and was growling as it got closer.

I narrowed my eyes at it as my front and rear hooves turns into wolf claws, my tail grew out my spine, my ears became triangular tipped and my muzzle lengthened mildly and felt the incisors grow out from my upper lips. I guess it was time to face a Zombie Robot Dragon and a Powerful Beast from some another world… my life is probably the lead in to one huge punchline.

This was going be like a rock between two hard places, and I’m the rock in this scenario.

A mist started swirling and spreading out from me. Still didn’t know how this all works exactly, but the illusionary wolves did at least represent all the familiars I have ever had.

That my maximum number of foggy wolves representing every canine I loved and bonded to as family would be quite heartwarming, if it wasn’t so darned creepy that I could even do this or instinctively know how to manipulate this like I was wearing a sock over my whole body.

I had no illusions about my chances of survival here… and I’m starting this fight already battered, no quick method of healing and I’m already starting to sacrifice my body again so I can even damage Skull X in the first place.

Just got to keep ‘it’ contained and use whatever I can spare…

-Pom (Canine Queen) Vs. Skull X (Undying corrupted data monstrosity) Vs. Fou (Beast of Comparison)-

Fou started the fight by clambering up the pillar to the ceiling and leaping off for Pom, with a sharp inhale the wild eyed Pom flickered from existence and dodge Fou who almost managed to strike her while she was moving at Dancing Flame speed having miraculously sped up to attempt hitting her as she blurred for Skull X.

Skull X opened its three glowing digits corroded into a myriad of sharp pointy bits of poisonous on its right grasping claw and slung its arm forward and even surprisingly extended it on a piston. This almost even caught Pom off guard mid lunge as she forced herself to narrowly slip between two of the three grasping bladed digits as they closed inwards.

Pom slammed into Skull X’s chest swiping both her golden claws one, twice and one swipe with her right hoof before she had to kick off when the left arm angled and proceed to try to stab her with the row of blades on its left arm.

Each blow dealt released a shower of cubes, showing the damage she dealt as she landed and Skull X immediately charged.

Fou tried to take the opportunity to pounce on her from behind, only for Pom to roll to the left, almost tumbling over the side of the walkway they were standing on. Skull X lunged and thrust its extending arm for Pom forcing her to dodge back towards Fou who slammed his left claw down into her chest quickly pinned her in place on her back before she could roll past him.

“If he kills me then wouldn’t that mean you would fail to achieve your objective?” Pom asked out quietly as Fou went to bite her face.

Skull X really shouldn’t care who killed Pom at all, all that had to happen was the very confirmation of Pom dying to fulfill its mission. Yet somehow Skull X responded by attacking Fou with a backhanded swipe of its left set of claw, which was more confusing to Pom than anything before Skull X tried to ram its right grasping claw into her again.

Pom rolled onto her hooves going under the claw and tried to get away only to get kicked in the chest by a quick kick from its right foot, launching her upwards slightly. Cracking her ribs from the impact that her wool couldn’t protect her from and stunning her.

Opening its mouth the draconic or dinosaur like head opened its mouth wide and its glowing skeletal skull with haunting eyes moved forward to snap her out of the air and take her life before she could react.

Only Fou save her life this time, by a leaping slam into it’s from below to smash the monsters jaws shut in a shower of light cubes and with the tilting back of Skull X’s head, Fou had a platform to leap directly for Pom.

Pom was given enough time to recover her senses enough to flip out of the path of the swipe Fou sent her way and landed on the floor on her hooves.

Fou landed behind her and quietly Pom reached up to her neck with her left hoof and it came away with a shock of fresh life fluid, Pom immediately prioritized stitching the neck wound shut with her wool.

Fou turned around and came at Pom with a bloody right claw and Skull jumped above her to either stomp the life out of her or attempt to bring both its claws down on her.

Pom spread her limbs out, wool wrapped around her hind legs and became frictionless and she pushed herself into sliding backwards with her glowing golden claws.

She deftly slipped to the right slightly under Fou’s upward left claw swipe and was promptly sent flying by Skull X slamming both its arms down on him, also the skeletal monster’s landing did some damage to the walkway which shook violent. The walkway stayed intact, but it cracked a bit.

Pom leaned to the side and watched Fou passed by and slammed into a pillar to start falling to the floor below, she cringed a bit and then turned and charged to attack Skull X again.

Skull X swung its right hip forward and its tail whipped out, extending as it did so.

Instead of avoiding it Pom leapt at it grabbed the tail and rode it as it swung back behind it while shrinking back to its normal length. Taking the opportunity Pom let go of the tail when it flicked upwards before completely returning to normal.

Inhaling as she dropped onto the base of Skull X’s tail, she exhaled and blasted up its back leaving a series of crisscrossing glowing marks that sent cubes of light flying in every direction out of it.

-Dolly-

The last bit of rubble shifted to the side and I flopped out into freedom onto my face. I was panting from the exertion, but I was alright.

“Okay… I’m out… need to help Pom.” I quickly stood up and looked about and slung my board forward and hopped on, there was enough solid ground here to board my way to her. Just had to avoid the snow patches.

I didn’t mind saving or helping Pom, done it a few times already and was ready and willing to do it again. I’d just use my momentum ability to get my board going and then I’ll be there in no time. It seems like Pom was starting to lose it mentally and I want her to stay focused.

-Back to the fight in progress-

Skull X leaned its head back and snapped at Pom she kicked off its nose and landed on a pillar breathing roughly. The glow around her left leg started to worsen slightly, Pom gritted her teeth, began growling and focused on holding the increasing threat of the golden glow at bay.

Crouching down Skull X was about to leap up and attack Pom. When it went to leap and was in mid-air, it was blindsided by a white haired streak that slammed into its side and sent it flying.

Pom watched silently as Fou landed with his fangs bared at her, before letting loose a roar that he was ready to continue fighting both her and Skull X.

As she clung to the pillar Pom’s eyes started to gain flecks of red and gold and her body started to quiver.

There was a silence then both Pom and Fou leapt at one another, Fou loosed a mighty slash and hit… nothing but a strange quickly dissipating mist?!

A second later the actual Pom stomped into his spine with her four hooves sending him flipping to slam back first into the stone walkway, then she came down on him a second time stomping into his lower pelvic region with as much force as her body could create.

She didn’t have super strength, but the area around the lower half of Fou’s body being cratered into the floor still had to hurt immensely.

Pom once said that anything goes in a fight for survival, she wasn’t willing to give that advice to Shanty if she wasn’t going to heed the idea herself. Fighting dirty was a necessary in some cases and she immediately bounded away towards Skull X, which was slightly smaller than before, while in it was in the middle of climbing back onto the walkway. The digimon also seemed to be getting faster the smaller it got.

Fou laid there with a wide eyed look of shock, pain and something else, before slowly coming to his senses. He wouldn’t be pulling himself out of that walkway crater within the next minute or so.

Pom leapt towards Skull X as it climbed back up after being knocked from the walkways by Fou and suddenly took one of the innermost of the three blades on its left arm to the right shoulder when it extended far faster than it previously had.

It sent Pom flying back with a large gash to slam into the walk way and almost bounce of, she managed to cling to the edge of it with a claw. Her wound was swiftly sealed by quickly staining amount of limited white wool she had and Pom didn’t have too much more wool she could put to sealing off her wounds.

With a roar Skull X leaped for Pom pulling back its right arm and spinning it’s three grasping claws up into a drill. The Digivice wasn’t the end all be all on what the monster was capable of apparently, since rotating or extending its own body parts hadn’t come up as a form of attack… at least traditional attack as far as it was concerned.

Instead of pulling herself up Pom let got and fell away from the edge of the walkway as the drill dug into and scoured the edge where she had been.

Skull X stomped forward and looked over the edge, but it didn’t see Pom falling to the floor or on the floor already. It entered search mode looking for its rather speedy high priority target.

On the underside of the walkway, clinging to it upside down with her hind legs, Pom carefully turned and started to walk upside her hind legs across the bottom of the walkway as she quietly could. She still had some sanity left to not be acting nearly as rabid as her opponents and this moment of rest would give her some time to recover.

Meanwhile Fou started to pull himself from the crater and his rather painful injury was already healing.

Skull X turned about looking at the entrance and around the walkways for Pom, its head sweeping around for Pom.

Pom came out from under the walkway in its supposed blind spot its tail immediately whipped out for her. Pom kicked off the floor and launched over the the tail as it swept past under her, Skull X swung out it’s right arms spinning drill and extended it while doing so.

Pom, still in mid hop, managed to flip backwards narrowly avoiding the tip of the drill as it passed by her chin and immediately landed on the stone walkway to start hopping backwards rapidly.

Skull X turned towards Pom and tried to stab at her with the three claws on its left arm extending in attempt to spear her as she retreated and tried to charge her down by alternating its launching its left and right arm and even tried to sweep its tail into her while doing so.

Pom ducked under the tail as it swept over her head and followed by flipping sideways to the right over it again when it swept back for her. She landed on the middle of the portion of the walkway leading towards the right back corner of the building and lunged forward under the stabbing left claw avoiding getting skewered and start to slash its left leg rapidly with her claws.

With each swipe, more cubes bled off of Skull X’s form, until it raised its left leg and its food started glowing. Pom’s eyes narrowed and she leapt up to cling to its belly before it managed to stomp it down.

The shockwave spread out explosively and the walkway beneath Skull X cracked and crumbled a bit as it shook violently.

Pom clawed Skull X’s chest as much as she could before having to leap to its left shoulder when it slapped its spinning grasping claw at Pom and barely damaged itself in the attempt. One she was on its shoulder she raised her left claw and slammed it down into the monsters shoulder, to rake her magic claws straight into it.

It was becoming fairly obvious that Skull X didn’t feel pain, nor did it flinch at the meager damage Pom was causing it, for each small wound she inflicted at best the wound would quickly seal up and Skull X would only get marginally smaller.

Skull X swung its back cannons into rotating forward at Pom and the massive air pressure from the speed of rotation, since Pom was unfortunately not anchoring herself to its shoulder in that moment, launched the lightweight ewe flying towards the back wall while she landed with a crouch and kicked off to land on the walkway.

A small tornado erupted from Skull X’s back as its cannons spun in place on its back before it stopped and started to move towards Pom again.

In this moment Fou landed on Skull X’s tail and started to attack it, he went completely ignored even as he dealt some damage. Fou for his part was comparing his speed to that of Pom’s and was comparing his strength to that of Skull X, in both cases he got overall stronger to match the dangers both his opponents represented.

Pom hopped forward at the charging Skull X hopped back as it dugs it’s left claw into the stone and then fired a bark break into the slightly ruptured walkway.

-Dolly-

Almost there, and… A huge noise came from a building and a lot of dust was seen flying out of the open archway.

I carefully padded up next to the doorway and looked inside, to see a long bridge of stone had collapsed and Pom was sliding under a spinning drill that chased her down to between Skull guy’s legs, being near the right leg before she quickly rolled to the right as she passed between them.

Apparently big fluffy white haired villain guy landed behind the right expecting her and the tail from Skeleton Mcgee slapped the white beast sending him flying back first into to a pillar. If that were me, my spine would be snapped in half, but not the enemy guy just simply started picking himself up.

Pom made it to the floor and galloped a few feet away on her glowing front claws and rear paws as the mechanical skeleton turned around to roar after her.

I calmly pulled the device from under my scarf and three collars, because I still liked wearing all this stuff, probably the least naked dog in my ‘fam’ aside from DJ with his headphones or Da Vinci who also wore a scarf.

“Okay Yiggy, please tell me there is something you can do.” I stated as the device flicked on and I continued to watch as Pom fought a three way battle and was on the losing end of things if both of those monster were ganging up on her. She wasn’t doing so hot mentally and was beginning to slip.

“Drawing in and absorbing excess floating data from local damaged Digimon, not enough to data create a full digimon partner.” I just stared at the device, how were we going to get his mind out of Pom’s head and his emotions out of my heart? “Familiar data detected.”

“Yeah, yeah, its chaos whatever’s data… is there something we don’t know Yiggy?” I asked as I watched Pom get the back of her head slammed into the floor with that nemesis guy grasping onto her head.

Pom was still aware, but that blow really took a bit of fight out of her and she was futilely trying to get Fou’s claw off her face as he started squeeze her skull.

Okay, how to help Pom, she needed to break free of that before he popped her skull like a balloon… skeleton dinosaur was about to cream them both because Enemy is not paying attention.

“Gravity!” I called and timed it so well that the skeleton monsters left claw was hit with sudden weight it didn’t have before, so instead of moving forward the limb went straight down earlier than it expected and threw the entire metal dragon things off balance.

Its left claw slammed down onto Foe’s thick amount of white hair and fur making him let go of Pom. Thankfully it had missed a chance to crush Pom as she pulled herself to her paws after getting free of Foe’s grip and put some distance between her and them.

Pom looked scared and was slightly confused, almost felt like a wild animal if I didn’t know she was keeping her mind a little even now.

“Yes, you have one unread message.” Wait… what? Since when?!

“What?” I asked.

My confusion came from the fact that I could call my ‘fam’, but they couldn’t call me. We’ve already tried that and apparently the interdimensional connection was on my end of things, meaning the device and whatever Dormarch did to let it be possible.

How could we have a message, we didn’t have any messages before coming into this dimension… so where did one come from?

“Who is it from?” I asked as I kept an eye on the developing situation inside the building, this place was all ice and stone.

“A Monitamon of the local digital realm that has the contact information for this digital device, they have finished their investigation into the existence of the lost not native Dalmamon… would you like to read the information now?” Wait, that TV headed guy that Pom paid off actually found something where, when and how?!

“YES!” Now may not seem like the time for this, but Pom was still breathing. Sure she was hurting a lot, but she was doing okay for the time being. This was about Dormarch… or at least where his body might be so we could bring him back!

-Message-

Client: Digidestined Pom.

Subject: Information on lost remains of a Dalmamon known by the name of Dormarch.

Payment: Given upfront, amounting to more than a million digital credits for Data Divers use. It has been assumed that the mass of credits possibly came from beaten up Golbimon of the Basher Bullies gang, not that it matters to us as payment given is payment received.

Those Employed to find resulting information: Black Tailmon Uver since digital blockades don’t bother him he was brought in to assist in the endeavor, Ultros’s entire Monitamon Information Force including initially paid Monitamon sending this message, after some convincing Hi-Vision Monitamon was included in the efforts, Ultros himself and finally Etemon due to information recently acquired to confirm data is fully legitimate before sending to client Pom Pawdore Lambchop’s Digivice.

End Results: Major, if highly unfortunate, Success! See Information is below for more details.

-Dolly-

“Wait… they were successful?!” I flinched as I felt Pom take a nasty blow and looked to see her limping on her right leg a bit and her eyes were looking a bit wilder than I remember them being and she was doing the whole fog wolves thing again. It seemed to be really confusing Skull and Rival as they tried attacking Pom in several places she simply wasn’t. At least I always knew where she was. “They… they actually found something?! I thought that there would be nothing left of Dormarch’s body or soul… however that works when he’s alive in my connection to Pom.”

I was getting the gist that this was really quite important, this message was sent to us… how many days ago?! We could have been on top of this the entire time... should have been too… well nothing for it now to find out what happened to my little bro’s soul and body, because he apparently doesn’t need those to still count as half alive.

My eyes started reading the information that followed.

-Message-

First operation: Searching of the local digital world, signs of unique Dalmamon traces were found.

Location around where Etemon escaped from the unknown alternative digital realm.

Second operation: Required Black Tailmon Uver, dangerous operation led to alternative investigation into digital world structure next door to Yggdrasil System made Digital World. Avoided five hundred and eight seven incidences of near capture to fully investigate Dalmamon traces.

History of subject Dalmamon designated "Dormarch":

Information received shows that the digital core of subject Dalmamon had become severely bugged before ending up in an alternative digital realm. This was due in part to a virus made to specifically eradicate Digimon, but wasn’t completely destroyed.

We are filing it as ‘a’ D-Reaper virus, as seen in prior cases where such a viruses exist and the ‘X virus’ is also under D-Reaper virus classification filing though noted to be ‘D-Reaper X’ for specifics given the various Digitial Reaper type virus incidents that have occurred within the Yggdrasil Systems.

Digimon Core was apparently stripped of present targeted D-Reaper virus before complete destruction by the unknown digital realm system.

There was at least one failed attempted revival of Dalmamon prior to being restored to working order, restoration was previously impossible for the unknown system due in part to the digital soul core missing at least one or more key processes of data remnants to restore the digital soul core to working order.

The reasoning for these suppositions can be traced back to Etemon’s exploration of the unknown digital realm, where a drop of digital blood was stolen from him. Digital blood may have been used to recreate whatever data the Dalmamon may have left behind upon D-Reaper destruction and was immediately used to create…

-Dolly-

“… Pom…” I said slowly as it began sinking it why this was all starting to sound quite familiar, super familiar, so horribly familiar and my hackles were raising by the second. “Your luck is both amazing and horrible.”

I started to hyperventilate and started reading from the beginning again… maybe they were wrong about what they found?

No… I couldn’t actually ignore the words on screen just because my mind wanted to blank them out.

‘Chaosdramon X’.

I scrolled down a bit and continued reading.

-Message-

Most Dalmamon seem to naturally carry data of Machinedramon as part of their mundane search engine operations packets, this with the bit of digital data from Etemon to restore minor missing key functions to create an operational if barely functional digital core after being badly fragmented by prior incidents to becoming lost while infected with a D-Reaper virus.

Whatever data was added on by what is now being called an enemy to the Yggdrasil System of worlds, plus using the ‘Reaper Virus’ software to recreate an 'X Virus Vaccine' effect created a Chaosdramon X that is currently being puppeteered by said enemy system that Yggdrasil is now trying to protect all digital realms in existence from.

It is in fact the very same Chaosdramon X that attacked you on the way into and out of our digital realm, we have confirmed all data pointing to this being the end results of what ultimately happened to your Dalmamon.

It is now very much possible that your Digimon partner is now being sent out to kill you by the unnamed enemy system to prevent recovery of said partner. This has not worked out so well in the past for either party.

-Dolly-

…

…

…

…

My eyes were wide and I felt a chill, I actually felt the biting cold around me for once. For once all the warmth I had in me fled my body.

…

…

I can even feel my pupils shrinking as I silently sent this information to Pom in a slow manner as my eyes trailed downwards. I reread all of it again in excruciating detail, I can see why it said it was an unfortunate success now.

The information slowly pierced into my brain as looked at the monstrous skeletal metal dragon… one horrific zombie robot thing that I would be calling my 'little brother' in other circumstances attacking Pom in the stone building as I sat outside the archway watching it happen.

My eyes drifted back downwards, there was a little bit more to read... I scrolled the screen to keep reading as there was more to the message.

-Message-

If you can find some way to restore your digital partner’s memories, emotions and or subvert the current systems in place controlling the body, then you may be able to recover the functionality of your Dalamamon partner.

Signs point to this being on a level of improbable to completely impossible without a way to restore the lost key bits of the digital soul core that were likely destroyed by the application of a 'D-Reaper' type of virus.

This would require you to have the Dalmamon’s missing bits of key data to be mostly or entirely intact, which is clearly impossible and there is no sign of where such backup data could be found and is presumed to have been erased from existence by the virus.

We are sorry for your loss.

-Monitamon of the Data Divers gang.

-Dolly-

…

Maybe…

…

A small bit of hope blossomed in my chest, because we did actually have the missing bits of Dormarch, the most important parts of him even!

So how were we going to put them back into that thing and then expect Dormarch to be alright with any of it?

-The fight in progress, Pom-

I had leapt into the air at Skull X and suddenly the information Dolly was sending to me through our bond fully hit home and caused me to stall in mid-air.

In my shock and horror I completely lost hold of my bestial transformation and my glowing golden claws dropped too as I flopped to the floor on my back.

I could feel the look of absolute horror crossing my face as Skull Chaosdramon X came at me, I frantically started kick at the floor and scrambled to crabwalk backwards away from it.

I shouldn’t have dropped my bestial form, because I still had some time left on it and now I wouldn’t be able to get that back for twenty four hours and I didn’t exactly have that time right now. Plus there was Fou to think about.

I felt a burst of confidence and hope from Dolly, sometimes I wished I had her optimism.

“Dormarch, if you can hear me… we found your body.” I said quietly in a blunt manner as Skull X descended on me.

Frustration, anger, sorrow, madness, I felt all these thing and blinked as Fou protected me from the claw and even deflected the spinning drill with an impressive show of strength.

“Fou!” At least Fou still wanted to be the one to kill me first, so he saved me to do it himself later and continued to battle the monster while I had shown a lack of will in continuing the fight.

…

That what it was, wasn’t it? Fou… he just seeks battle to compare himself to ever stronger opponents without much rhyme or reason, it was kind of sad in a way… but understandable for a beast with a mind to want to challenge themselves to reach heights unknown.

Yes, Dolly, I… I’m so tired.. beaten… I don’t have your energy you know.

Dolly… what are you doing?!

-Dolly-

I ran up to Pom with a stern look on my face

“Getting mad, we need both to get mad Pom and stay mad! I want you to take back my little bro’s body and beat the ever loving snot out of Adversary… come on Pom, get up! I know you don’t have super strength, but I still want you to get up and go at them with everything you have. Dormarch needs us to save his body from being used to kill you!” I stated as I came up to Pom with Rival getting Trashed as much as my little bro’s body was as they continued to fight each other in the background. “He’d never forgive himself, I’d never forgive you if you didn’t try to save him when he’s right in front of us and I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if we didn’t use this opportunity to make a miracle happen!”

“Miracles are quite rare from what I’ve seen Dolly, it is unfortunate for that you’re talking to a living and breathing legend of a walking one.” Huh, what did Pom…? Oh, is this the whole Chrysomallus thing again?

“Fine, you talked me into it and you’re right that we need to get mad and stay mad, but know that we’re possibly going to be quite mangled after this. Already wasted my bestial mode, might as well make another sacrifice as there isn’t anything of myself I wouldn’t give to have Dormarch back in my life. Dolly strengthen the connection of our bond, I need to talk to Dormarch about all of this for a moment.” Didn’t even need to tell me twice Pom. “Get ready to back me up, because we’re not walking away from this one and we need to put whatever we can into it.”

Pom unslung the lance umbrella from her back and glared at both Antagonist and Dormarch’s Body, then I saw a red spark in Pom’s eye and I felt her tap into something deep within herself and then I can feel an explosion of absolutely loathing rolling off of her.

Whoa, Pom’s mad… like actually mad, truly a terrifying feeling when I’m connected and could see how angry Pom was. She slowly brought the spear up into an offensive stance and while tears dropped from her eyes, her right eye was twitching fiercely.

Uh… what was she about to do and why were her eyes sparkling red without the gold? Why did it look like she was about to flip out even worse than when she goes into bestial mode? Was that even possible for someone like Pom.

“Dolly, assist me where you can…” Pom said calmly and started to stalk forward towards the two still fighting. “And please, stay out of my way.”

Author's Note

So yeah, the existence of Machinedramon Data comes back with a vengeance and everything is explained as to what happened to Dormarch's Digital Core and how Moon Cell was able to facilitate such a monster so quickly from Etemon's digital blood.

His core ended up in 'a' digital realm, but simply not one run by Yggdrasil System.

Also had a nice and early holiday party, no more holiday parties for the rest of the year.

372. Rising Flyweights.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Huh, so that is her Digimon partner’s body? Did not actually know that.” Something disturbed me about the change in Pom’s demeanor once that information came to light, mortals usually don’t like hearing bad news like that… but that bad news takes the cake on a number of things already plaguing Pom.

“She’s so totally going to snap.” Tiamat the dragon sibling of Bahamut stated bluntly as all of her heads on serpentine necks smirked. “It’ll be glorious.”

-Pokémon Realm, Mystery Dungeon Anchor Point, Icy Ruins Special Zone, Icy Ruins Library, Pom-

“I’m going to start this off by dealing with Fou, so I can have some room to breathe while I fight Skull X.” I checked over my injuries…. one hoof in the grave sounds about right, still pressing forward regardless.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to get back into the fight or that close to either of them, you could let them wail on each other for a little bit longer Pom. Fou seems to be shrinking Dormarch’s body faster than you were.” Dolly was under the assumption that the half of Dormarch we held onto wasn’t going anywhere, but that wasn’t true. Dormarch was going back into his body and I was getting my good boy back regardless of what happens to me. “You could use a little rest, do you even know how bad your injuries are? I can feel them too you know, they feel terrible!”

“The reason for my haste are several fold Dolly, speaking of… use haste on me, I don’t want Fou to accidentally destroy Dormarch’s Soul and Body before we can reintegrate his Mind and Heart back into it first. Also the recent concussion Fou gave me might have something to do with my attitude about my personal injuries and the oncoming onset of idiocy I’m about to perform by going straight back into that fight with what amounts to a pocket full of dreams.” The massive stabbing wound by a giant metal claw piercing through my right shoulder and one of my legs nearly being broken didn’t make my decision any more sane sounding either, considering I was limping a bit even if it wasn’t one of my hind legs that was the sprained or the twisted one. Oh and don’t forget the bruised spine and the worsening of my Chrysomallus condition. “Why yes, I’m absolutely using my recent head injury as an excuse for why I’m going to start acting like an aggressive lunatic Dolly.”

“Gee, you sound pretty coherent to me right now.” Are we going to argue here or are we going to work to get Dormarch’s body and soul back? They do rightfully belong to him after all.

“I’m a hero, my voice gives me super strength and I enjoy the thrill of battle as much as I do pain and my favorite thing to do is to adventure right straight into danger at every chance I get. Can’t get enough of looking for trouble… heh!” My slightly deranged delivery didn’t make Dolly believe me one bit. “This situation has all my favorite things in it, including the late soul crushing information we could have used a bit earlier.”

“Yeah, that would definitely be a sign that the concussion is having quite a severe effect on you. You know I’ll always have you’re back right Pom? So let’s do this thing!” Getting a trademark cheerful grin from Dolly, she pointed her paw to me and gave me a concentrating stare. “Remember you’re only going to have five minutes of this at the most once I use it and like that whole bestial thing you do, it’s going to be a long time before I can do it again. I won’t be able to do it again for an hour. I’m still wondering if I can make it last up to six minutes, make this count Pom.”

“Oh I will, don’t you worry about that, I’ve got plenty of kick in me yet.” I said as I prepared to charge forward as both Fou and Skull X started trying to steer the battle back towards us. “I’m only saying this again because I love you Dolly, once I start, please stay out of my way. Dormarch is counting on at least one of us to live through this and you’re his big sister.”

“Haste!” Dolly called out, while completely ignoring the rather fatalistic remark, she was used to Pom being a bit dour.

I felt the corona of red magic wrap around me and a mental clock suddenly doubling everything, including perception, speed and reaction time… mix it with Dancing Flame and I was going to be the most dangerous thing under this dome for at least the next five minutes.

Once the magic took hold, I immediately charged straight at Fou who was still distracting Skull X somewhat as it kept trying to break away and come at me. I would be doing Skull X a favor in that regard by putting myself within range of their attacks on purpose.

-Pom (Enraged Ewe) Vs. Skull Chaosdramon X (Dormarch’s Reanimated Soul Core) Vs. Fou (Baleful Comparison Beast)-

“BAAAAAAH!” Pom streaked towards them as an indistinct shift in the air and Skull X tried to turn and attack it with its spinning right grasping claw, only for it to hit nothing but air as Pom disappeared and reappeared behind Skull X.

A huge blast of cubes shot out of Skull X’s back in a powerful burst, not only that but it was horribly staggered by the sudden damage.

Pom hadn’t stopped moving and was going straight for Fou, a few steps before she reached him she threw the paralance upwards and flipping forward.

Fou was going to attack and was initially excited to see the sudden change in one of his opponent’s demeanors, until he was blinded by the flare of her lighting her front legs on fire by crossing her left leg over her right while continuing to charge him.

Pom lunged forward and slammed her left hoof into Fou’s right side with a devastating hook, then followed it up with a right upper hoof to the jaw stunning him at how fast the blows were coming and then the third slammed him across the temple dazing him and making him unable to counter.

What followed was a rapid fire pummeling of flaming jabs of Fiery Flurry that even Skull X couldn’t follow despite being digital entity.

Burning spots and markings erupted all over Fou’s body, his ghost Typing wasn’t going to protect him from Pom’s flaming attacks and he really couldn’t put up anything approaching a defense with how blindingly fast the attacks came.

After one harsh jab into his chest caused Fou to stumble back, Pom hopped up grabbed the falling lance and once her hooves touched it, it ignited entirely on fire itself as she brought it down on Fou’s skull putting her full weight behind it.

Fou was sent skidding back a few feet near the right wall from the entrance with a large burning black scorch mark on his forehead.

Pom wasn’t even done with him yet either, she spun around counterclockwise on her right hind leg once, twice and then with a hop she slammed bother her hind legs to the floor. Planting them both firmly in place and locking them to the floor with her wool, she used the resulting shock from her legs impacting with the floor as it sent a wobble up to her torso through both of her front legs holding the spear in a shaky batter pose and when the vibrations reached the weapon she swung with as much force as she could put into it.

“Ping-BOOM!” Fou went sailing through a stone wall at least a foot thick and disappeared leaving behind a large hole in his wake.

Pom stalled the swing and unlocked her hind legs from the floor, as the end of her spear went upwards and behind her. She swiftly planted the butt of it against the floor while opening the canopy at her back, and blocked the extending claw of Skull X’s left arm aimed at her.

-Correction, Pom (‘Extremely’ Enraged Ewe) Vs. Skull X (Corrupted data monster with Dormarch’s reanimated digital soul core)-

Skull X watched as Pom skids across the floor clinging to the shaft of the weapon until the back end of the paralance struck the wall stopping her in place. It could barely see Pom behind the parasol’s canopy, but its target was definitely still there.

Skull X had silently changed Pom’s threat level assessment from being ‘dangerous’ when she was using her Chrysomallus energy to ‘mild’ when she lost her bestial transformation back to ‘Dangerous’ with a capital D this time as something had changed in her demeanor.

Stomping forward to continue attacking, it launched its spinning grasping drill for where Pom was.

Pom bounced up the wall past the hole she made using just her hind legs to ascend twice before stopping, while still angle the open canopy of the odd burning lance at Skull X defensively as the extended drill tore into the stone while rising up beneath her.

Launching off the wall, Pom closed up the canopy of her burning weapon and immediately slammed the tip of the weapon home into Skull X’s right eye socket and bounced upwards in a pole-vaulting manner from the impact. For its part Skull X didn’t roar in pain.

Skull X likely didn’t even feel it even as a massive shower of light cubes blasted out of the wound in its head, but it obviously didn’t like the inconvenience to killing its target that was now currently blazingly fast.

Quickly opening the canopy up of the paralance up, Pom hooked the bladed edges of the horn and swung around to onto the back of Skull X’s head and started to move for the back cannons with a sharp look in her eyes.

Pom was well aware she wasn’t going to be able to do enough damage to the overall body, but there was an overall weak point she hadn’t considered until now. All she had to do is reach it and do something before Skull X thought to start spinning the cannons.

Flipping the paralance so that she was wielding it backwards, Pom leapt down from the head and kept the shaft of the paralance between the two cannons and the canopy under them as Skull X tried to shake her off by violently bucking about.

Wedging the edge of the canopy against the connected joint and lodging the paralance in place, Pom turned her head and fire a Bark Buster up at Skull X’s horn and ignited the liquid magic to explode as soon as it touched the horn.

It didn’t destroy the horn, but it did damage it lightly.

-Dolly-

What in the world was Pom doing now?! Also how did she light her weapon on fire? The skull face zombie robot that had my little adoptive brother’s body was trying to shake her off.

I was staying well away from the fight and I carefully put my right paw to my jaw and pushed it back into place, it had dropped when I saw her put Competition through a wall somehow performing wobble counter and I was only now getting around to putting it back in place.

Okay Aero, limited use against something that big and basically made of odd looking metal.

Haste, just used it on Pom, needed a full hour before I can use it again and it was being put to good use at least.

Gravity, had minimal effect last time I used it and ‘metal album monster’ seemed to even resist it quite a bit.

I wasn’t going to try and hit that thing with my board, a single hit from something that big would kill me and I really didn’t want to know what dying from getting hit by a truck feels like.

Couldn’t effect that things momentum, it was far too big for me. I’ve got to figure out something at least... I can’t just be useless. Sure I can effectively move Pom around with ‘Aero’ or use ‘Gravity’ to make her fall sideways or even up, but she would have to ask for it.

I thought about how I would feel if…. when… we got Dormarch back. Speaking of the little dude, I could feel the two parts of him doing something in my bond to Pom. Probably getting ready to take his body back, must be at least a little excited to be among the living again. I know I would be in his position.

A loud painful screeching noise occurred and I covered my ears by shoving my paws up under my helmet, because whatever cause that noise really hurt. I watched as Pom clung to the shaft of her weapon and was spun around rapidly by the cannons on the monsters back.

Then the spinning cannons popped off and… oh dog! I got on my skateboard and blasted as much momentum as I could put into my kick and moved to the left side of this strange domed building as the cannons and Pom went tumbling through the air towards the entrance.

The large cannons slammed into the wall above the entrance and sealed it off in a mass of collapsing rubble as the cannons exploded into a solid mass of those quickly disappearing light cubes. It was like watching bubbles from a bubble bath popping into nothing in seconds.

Pom thankfully didn’t get crushed or stuck in the rubble and was trying to pick herself up from where she fell onto the floor and earn a few more bruises from her tumble. I don’t think there’s not much time left on her Haste and mentally reminded her of such.

Looking back towards the skeletal dragon, I could see it shrinking drastically as it slowly reformed the useless cannons on its back. Why would it reform them after losing so much size to them?

My question was answered by Pom, who mentally sent me the message something about it being ‘involuntary’ by recreating missing parts of itself.

I was only listening to half of that explanation and was more interested in the fact that the monster was now less than half its previous size and more of a slightly easier fight for Pom.

Pom sent me a mental message to find and get the spear back to her as she ran forward to draw the monsters attention, she couldn’t fight the monster with her burning legs for too long. Also the fire was starting to harm her quite a bit… should really find a way to stop Pom from doing that to herself in the future.

Finding the spear was something for me to do, even if it suspiciously sounds exactly like I’m playing fetch, I grew alert as Pom took off for little bro’s monster body with her blazing front legs lighting up the room in the form of a blazing streak.

I put my nose to the air and started sniffing, now where did that burning metal umbrella spear thing get off to? I think I saw it fly off to the left after somehow tearing the cannons off monster bro’s back, thing must be made of some real tough stuff to have stayed intact after that… also how did it light on fire just because Pom touched it with her burning legs? It was just made of metal right?

I needed a way to help Pom stop Dormarch’s body, I mean I’ve learned a few spells already at random… can I actually learn a new one in time to help out. How would I even go about doing that while I’m trying to find that odd spear?

-Back to the battle still in progress-

Pom charged forward and leapt onto a pillar to her left and avoided the spinning stabbing blades by hopping up higher on it and spitting a Bark Blast into Skull X’s face for what little damage that did.

If the right arm could extend and spin its grasping claw, then the left could do it too with the row of blades.

Following that Pom leapt away for the floor as the grasping claw drill slammed into where she just was, notably Skull X had lost a lot of size, but what it lost in size it made up for in getting faster.

Skull X stomped forward twice sending a shockwave with each stomp that Pom had to leap over and when the second one came she clambered onto a pillar and climbed up to the portion of walkway still hanging above the floor and leapt off towards Skull X’s face.

It was around this point that Haste finally wore off and all of Pom’s adrenaline and actions caught up with her a bit and it almost got her eaten.

Skull X tried to snap at Pom only to have Pom cling onto its nose with her rear legs and she started slashing with flaming magical wolf claws damaging the base of the nose horn. She clambered up onto its head and leveraged her right and left hind legs into position between its horn and face, her left hind leg slammed outwards causing the horn to break and blast off in a shower of digital blood.

At this point Pom, put out the flames on her front legs while kicking away for the underside of the nearby walkway as the monster tried to grab her with its grasping claw.

Narrowly avoiding the grasping claw closing around her, Pom was now wary of Skull X thanks to having lost her ‘Haste’ speed.

Pom, sticking to the underside of the walkway quickly did something to the walkway as the drill spun up again and Skull X immediately extended it at her causing her to leap from the underside of the walkway and spit a volley of three Bark Busters to the right as the drill ruptured the stone flooring behind her form falling back first towards the floor.

Rolling after she hit the floor and getting into a four legged stance to face Skull X as she skid into position, Pom narrowed her eyes as the monster surged forward, still intent on killing her as ever.

After Pom flicked her eyes to the right, an explosion went off and a large section of walkway fell down on top of Skull X as it moved underneath it.

With a crash and a thunderous force, Skull X smashed to the floor on their belly pinning their own arms, with their tail and legs flailing at the heavy fallen portion of walkway. The tail was slowly chipping away at it at the very least and started to spin up like a drill as well.

Pom wasn’t idle and ran towards the head, it extended forward and snapped at her. She stopped just short of the things teeth and continued to stare at it with a grim frown and rage filled eyes. She slapped the side of its chin with a hoof feeling more pain from it than the monster likely had given only a single small cube floated off of it.

Pulling its chin upwards Skull X slammed it down, Pom inhaled and leapt over the shockwave created by Skull X’s chin hitting floor.

Upon exhaling Pom loosed hundreds of right hind leg stomps into the top of the draconic monsters nose and face, some of her attacks causing enough damaged to make a few cubes fly off of the beast. Pom dropped straight to the floor avoiding the swiftly regrowing horn that burst forth in an attempt to skewer her.

Landing on her hind legs, Pom inhaled and exhaled to dart forward and started delivering rapid fire blows into the chin of the slightly trapped creature with a rhythmic beat. Said blows shook and rattled the monsters entire head as Pom flickered left and right, landing multiple blows and was relying on her actual speed to actually do some damage while she had a chance.

Pom was likely injuring herself more than her opponent by hitting it with her bare hooves with as much force as she could put behind her blows. The damage she was doing with her bare hooves brings to mind that someone could eventually die by a thousand papercuts… mostly it would be from all the bacteria caused by the cuts than the actual cuts themselves.

Unfortunately this monster was considered undead by the ‘Skull’ designation it had, so bacteria wouldn’t help here in any good way as Pom still needed Dormarch’s body moderately functional if she survived long enough to reinstate the rightful owner to the body.

Skull X’s head started spinning and it started inhaling in a powerful manner trying to draw her into its mouth.

Pom started using her limited wool supply to slowly move away from the spinning mouth full of teeth and bladed horn as wanted to avoid being pulled into being absolutely torn to shreds.

Once Pom had got far enough away Skull X went back to working on freeing itself so it could kill Pom, so far its threat assessment of Pom had been rising steadily despite her inability to do any big lasting damage without a weapon.

Pom already stealthily tried Bark Breaker just to confirm something, but despite the appearance of rigidity Skull X’s metallic body presented… it was not actually a solid structural mass that the technique would work on.

Sitting down a fair distance away and closer to Dolly than the currently trapped Skull X working itself free, the tired ewe started taking a few ragged breathes and was trying to get some rest and wait for Dolly to get back to her with the spear.

Pom already knew she wasn’t going to take such a large monster down with her bare hooves unless it did absolutely nothing and let her attack it constantly for half a day. The unusual weapon, the paralance, was the only way she could effectively continue this fight.

She decided to take a moment to meditate and remember what she was fighting for.

-Bond between Pom and Dolly, Dormarch-

“Dormarch… is it… is it enough yet?” Hearing her tired voice, I opened my eyes and saw a battered Pom sitting in front of me and my other part. She had a fierce look in her eyes, her spirit was willing but her body wasn’t actually able to cash that check.

My right paw held tightly onto that of my emotions and my emotions left paw tightened its grip on my own at the sight before us. I was trying to bind my two parts together without my soul core, which has been going quite abysmally… since it was proving to be functionally impossible without a digital soul core to house both parts.

However I did successfully manage to get a single strand of the torn bonds I had to both Dolly and Pom restored. It wasn’t much, but it was still something and it made Dolly feel hopeful at least to feel a working connection to me again. Bringing her mood up would at least help Pom in turn. This was also enough for me to tap both their senses as they could for each other, almost felt alive again through them.

It was just unfortunate that circumstances led my body to committing horrible acts, I don’t think I will ever be able to make it up to the people who live in this kingdom for all the destruction it’s caused. It’s just like that hospital and all those people…

“No, but you and Dolly will need to be touching that monster at the same time for me to transfer into it and should only do so when it’s as weak as you can feasibly get it without dying.” I could do it, but it needed to be much weaker.

Even as degraded and how worn down it had become, that Skull X thing was still a ‘Mega’ level Digimon for crying out loud, maybe she brought it down to ‘Ultimate’ level after tearing it’s cannons from its back with that unusual weapon and even then that was still too much.

There was no way mom could keep this up for much longer and bring it down to a ‘Champion’ level Digimon, which was as close as I was going to need it to be to pull off a completely hostile takeover of my own body. Mom was looking pretty mangled already and her front legs had nasty burns all up and down them, one looks badly sprained. She must have lit herself on fire again at some point, her limited wool wasn’t helping her either, I could see the shoulder wound that was forcefully sutured shut. She’s already suffered a massive amount of blood loss from whatever hit her there and she was likely experiencing all sorts of trauma, at what point can my mom stop fighting and be allowed to rest, heal and actually be happy?

“It needs to be much weaker doesn’t it?” Mom was always perceptive, she did have some of the best canine attributes available to her. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it happen Dormarch, regardless of how impossible it might seem to you.”

I tried to explain that if it came right down it to it, she should just seek a way to outright destroy Skull Chaosdramon X, because I certainly wasn’t in control of it at the moment. Only for her to disappear on me and go back to preparing to continue the fight.

I had doubts that I could even regain control of my body in a swift enough manner to stop it from killing them, even if they do get my mind and emotions back inside it. If there was another mind already in there, then I was going to have many problems regaining control of my body. If it was an automated system running my body with simple priorities, then it would be almost as simple as flipping a switch. It would need to be weakened much further than it already was before we try that and my family was already struggling to achieve that goal.

I looked towards the other end of the bond and tried to communicate with Dolly, she was busy looking for that weapon and I saw it out of the corner of her eye and managed to get a little control over Dolly to redirect her to look back in that direction.

I could only do so little here like this, but it could still have a profound effect at least.

-Dolly-

“Huh?” Call it a feeling, but I felt something redirect my gaze to the spear, there it was embedded in one of the shelves along the far left wall! That got my tail going. “Yes, found it!”

Huh, we would both have to be touching Dormarch’s body to return Dormarch’s mind and emotions to it? I’m up for it Pom, if we had to do it that way then we would, also I got the spear… well I have to pry it out first.

I heard an eruption and turned to see Hull Y standing up and was roaring after having freed itself. Pom stood firmly in its path to draw its attention, like she really needed to be there to draw it away from what I was doing as it really hasn’t stopped trying to attack her since it first saw her.

Right, I’ll get it to you soon Pom. I quickly ran and climbed up to the part of the stone shelf it was sticking out of and started to pull at it… wow, it was really buried in the stone wasn’t it?

After futilely trying to tug it from where it was stuck, even used momentum assisted yanks, I figured that it was really wedged in there and I wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to wiggle it free.

I wonder what Enemy was doing at the moment and if he could pull this out for me without trying to kill Pom for landing a KO bat blow to his thick skull? Guy was still intact when he was blown through that wall, so he should still be alive.

Huh, try opening it? What’s that going to do Pom?

Still, I attempted to flick it open like Pom suggested and it immediately went tumbling away from the shelf through the air as the spears canopy expanded explosively with me still clinging to it. I think I was about to blow apple chunks until I righted myself and controlled the momentum to angle it towards Pom who was in the middle of climbing up a pillar near where I was about to pass by.

Let go and get clear and get ready to eventually slam myself into the monsters chest? Okay, going to find a position on one of the stone shelves to jump from!

-The fight-

Pom watch as Dolly let go and with a flip glided her board towards another pillar on the left side of the building and with a mighty leap she grabbed the Paralance out of the air by the shaft with her right hoof. She latched onto a different pillar further towards the back with her left hoof. She used her momentum to swing around the pillar a bit to get her other legs into position to get a grip on it.

While this was happening the previous pillar she was on was set up by her to collapse onto Skull X doing some damage to it as it had to get close to attack her.

If Pom had to she would drop the entire building on Skull X… if it had any chance of working.

Skull X shoved the pillar to the side and roared as it watched Pom climb up and leapt onto a walkway again. Its threat assessment of Pom kept rising and what little automated intelligence the machine monster had couldn’t quite understand the nuance of what that exactly meant, it was a mindless puppet following simple commands and Pom was meant to be killed by it via whatever method it had available.

Skull X still had a lot of methods and still a lot more attempts. Instead of climbing up onto the walkway with Pom, it leapt up and used its grasping claw and its blade claws to rip a large section out of the walkway. Both of the broken ends of the walkway sagged as Skull X moved out from under the walkway and crouched down.

“What in the…” Pom’s eyes widened as she started inhaling when she watched Skull X crouch down while holding a ripped out section of the walkway she was standing on above its head. Skull X wasn’t very inventive so she already had an idea as to what it was about to do.

The monster leapt high into the air, while pulling back the massive section of walkway it held above it and then sent it hurtling directly at Pom.

The ewe exhaled in that moment and leapt at the high velocity stone walkway chunk to slam all four of her hooves into it, this flipped it one hundred and eight degrees where she kicked off the thrown stone walkway and shot straight for Skull X’s chest to ram home the lance into it.

Skull X lost a solid amount of cubes as it landed on its left leg and was horribly off balance trying to use its tail to stay upright until it could get its right leg down.

Pom crouched as she dropped to the floor and with a quick burst, she launched upwards in a spiral with the lance to slam it into the inner side of Skull X’s left knee. Despite how lightweight she was, the paralance added onto Pom’s effort and she managed to topple Skull X onto its side and it started to thrash in an attempt to hit Pom with its flailing.

Retreating quickly out of its normal melee range, Pom took a few breathes and held the paralance aloft and at the ready. It wasn’t a moment too soon as she had to immediately deflect the suddenly extending tail trying to slam down on her by quickly bringing the lance up high in a defensive position.

The lance took most of the force of the blow for Pom and it sent her skidding away to slam back first into a pillar knocking her down. What few hits Skull X managed to land on Pom were rather devastating thus far and now was no different.

Skull X slowly got standing on its feet and Pom slowly got up from the pillar wielding the paralance to prop herself up and eventually get standing, she was ready to keep going and still very much angry about all of this having happened.

There was a small part of Pom wanted to be thankful or grateful that, should she win this fight, she’d have Dormarch again.

-Dolly-

I really didn’t know how Pom had the strength to keep facing that thing like she was, much less stand up right now after smashing into a stone pillar like that. I would have been down for the count… even then I could feel Pom was hurting and her prior injuries weren’t helping the matter either and we weren’t even close to winning yet.

I wanted Dormarch back too, but not if it kills one of us.

Wish Dormarch or Pom could ‘float’ me some ideas to help w… wait a minute did I just… Wish Dormarch or Pom could ‘float’… THERE! There it was again, the feeling that I could learn some new magic.

The word ‘float’ though, really? What would making things float even do here, we were nowhere near an ocean and I doubt hovering above the floor is really going to… wait… my gravity spell works really well on flying things and it would probably work just as well on things that float too. Well that would be one useful thing to use it for.

It would also let me move heavier things and launch them with more accuracy… like the bit of walkway that’s still mostly intact. Make that float in the air, then Gravity plus momentum boosting something of that size.

Sure I could have used gravity to launch objects in a given direction before, but float might allow me to do it with better accuracy and I can easily move things out of the way using less energy than Gravity.

There’s floating large things and riding on them to places, we wouldn’t even need an airship anymore to get around anywhere in that circumstance and it could help Dodo with flying us around when we next see our lovable pastry spewing buddy again.

Making things float seems about the same as Gravity really… except the gravity spell doesn’t and couldn’t stick something in one place in the air.

Wouldn’t it be exceedingly useful against being that don’t have ranged attacks like Fou? Oh yeah, I can really start to see the potential in this now!

No slow fall gliding, just me spinning in the air upside down on my board until I’m dizzy enough to barf!

Still… how was I going to manifest the spell though, what caused me to learn the other spells again?

First spell, the whirling winds of a hundred puppies racing around and the activity, the liveliness of their movements and the smell of the breeze left in their wake.

Second spell, Haste was brought about by my anger I think… or my aggressiveness? Maybe it was that I wanted to do things faster? Maybe it was because I was naturally hasty at times? Which led to me hurting Pom not too long ago in an attempt to help her, I should think more on that later.

Third spell, Gravity, I was under duress and being crushed by something like the spell. Maybe I learned that one from being affected by something similar to it? I at least knew that no matter how far away from family I was, I would always feel the pull of the good memories we had together.

So… maybe the idea of getting Dormarch back or spending the time with those I cared about? Warm fuzzy feelings might be a good cat analysis for this… and those warm fuzzy feelings will come once we’ve given Dormarch his body back. No… that’s not nearly enough, come on Dolly push it further.

“Excitement, the anticipation of wanting to experience something new. The anticipation of wanting to do something you love. Uplifting those around you to make them feel as if they were riding on a cloud. Emotions like loving someone makes you feel as if you were walking on the very air itself. No still not there yet. To rise above things… lifting your own spirits even with the weight of the world is upon you?” I was always trying to be positive and goodness knows Pom needs to smile more, because she was an absolute full time job for me. If I ever needed to literally rise to the occasion for anyone, then maybe I can rely on… “Float!”

I could see the magic wrapping around Dragging Bull E as it was trying to stomp on a dodging Pom again, but when it stomped it didn’t create a shockwave and instead launched itself into the air flailing.

The monster tried to extend its limbs to pull itself to the floor only to slam into the ground in a shower of cubes and bounced off quite painfully to continue to floating awkwardly and continue its flailing.

I knew then that I had quickly discovered a fun spell. Watching what was happening, I quickly made my way over to that bit of walkway the monster previously threw with a broad grin on my face. Pom just stared up at Dormarch’s body in confusion and watched as it tried to accomplish anything as it was stuck floating in the air.

Surprisingly this ‘float’ spell was exceedingly cheap on the migraine juice too! I quickly leapt onto the chunk of stone walkway and cast the spell again.

“Float!” The chunk lifted into the air with me on top of it, it doesn’t seem like this spell had much of a weight limit. “Gravity!”

Add on momentum to the suddenly gravity launched object and I’m now one of the most dangerous dogs from back home! Sure the ‘Float’ spell only did one thing, but it did that one thing so exceedingly well that I’m easily impressed with it since it went so well with my other spells. It’s the simple things in life.

I leapt off the accelerated massive chunk of stone and watched as it smashed a lot of cubes out of Lull Bets when the impact nearly drove it through the damaged wall at the entrance.

“Dolly, what in the world was that?!” Pom asked as she looked back at me.

“Sunshine and rainbows, Pom, sunshine and rainbows!” I stated jovially with a patented cheerful toothy grin as I glided down to her side and took up a position next to her.

“I’m too mortified and horrified to ask...” Pom stated dully as she turned back to the floating monster as the spell wore off after the second impact and it flopped onto the floor. We really needed to figure out the limitations of this and quickly, I wanted to know what more I could do with it! “Need a recharge?”

“Float like a butterfly, win like a honey badger!” I said as I pulled my board from my back held it up defensively.

Author's Note

There are limitations to Float... but a seldom used support spell in Dolly's paws is a dangerous thing.

373. Acme Renascence Glitch.

-???, Oleander-

“Who’s a good undead boy, who’s a good undead boy, you are!” I stated to pet the zombie as I made sure to magically force the eyeball back into its head, dark magic would certainly help with his complexion.

“Oleander, I don’t think you’re friend Pom would appreciate this one.” Wait was Buttina actually…

“Wait, you’re actually are being the responsible one for once?” Wrex asked as I was thinking it.

“Oh no, don’t tell anyone about this Wrex, it’d ruin my reputation as a gun toting idiot who doesn’t think things through!” Buttina whined while putting her hooves to her face.

“This one is not for Pom… it’s for me!” Honestly now I’m not getting rid of this Putrefido thing, it’s an adorable dark undead dog thing that Fred can’t accidentally kill since it’s already dead!

I’ll just keep it on the Halo…

-Pokémon Realm, Mystery Dungeon Anchor Point, Icy Ruins Special Zone, Icy Ruins Library, Pom-

As Skull X stood back up and was on approach for Dolly and me, Fou came charging in through the hole to roar his one sound cue that he had returned.

“Fou!” While I was glad I didn’t kill him, I’m surprised he got back up or even healed after I dented his skull with the paralance. Skull X started charging us at the same time Fou did.

“Float!” Goodness knows Dolly was going to abuse the new spell she learned to Tartarus and back, how does she even learn them in the first place? Wait, why wasn’t Skull X floating in the air and still charging at us, I would think Dolly would target the more dangerous being here. “Hey, back up with me a bit Pom!”

We did so, moving towards the back wall as Skull X got closer and then it was blindsided by a fast floating, spinning and flailing Fou to the head that unbalanced Skull X. It was concerning how well Dolly had that timed.

I fired a bark buster next to the inner side of Skull X’s left ankle and blasted it in that direction.

As Skull X’s right foot was right slightly off the ground when its head was struck and was knocked off balance and along with the fact that we’ve managed to knock it down to half its original full size, all those factors are the reason for why I managed to successfully topple it. The end result also sent Fou careening into the ceiling from Skull X’s head bouncing off the floor, before he came floating back down to just helplessly floating above the floor.

We would have to eventually find out the limitations of this ‘Float’ spell to know when to use it, but for right now I think Dolly had a handle on it. We had to quickly deal with Skull X and keep Fou from interfering with restoring Dormarch to his body.

“You don’t have much fight left in you, do you Pom?” Dolly was asking for honesty here.

“No, my body can’t take much more of a beating.” Don’t think about Shock-Ram, there’s no way I’d survive it a third time, twice was already pushing it and I wanted to live through this. I’ve got too much counting on me to die here.

“Hey we got this Pom, just got to think of a way to accomplish what we want from all of this!” Which was a lot Dolly. “At least we got Dexterity beaten down to Gladiator level right? So that means we can both touch it and get Dormarch back.”

“Incorrect user Dolly, Skull Chaosdramon X’s current combat strength is that of an Ultimate currently sliding towards Champion.” Yggdrasil System stated from the Digivice. “I advise forcing Skull X to waste far more energy as a survival tactic, you cannot do much without a digimon partner and should evacuate the area. Priority alert! Currently detecting signs of special digital destined crest manifestation… this unknown factor may prove to be blessing if you survive proximity to the ‘Ultimate’ strength Mega Level Digimon present for a time.”

We wanted Dormarch back, we wanted to stop Skull X from terrorizing Nixtorm and we wanted to maybe get Fou to leave me alone too. We also had to get out of the Mystery Dungeon alive and that might be more of a challenge than getting to this point.

“What do you mean Yiggy?” I asked as looked over to Dolly. I did this while keeping one eye on Skull X, as it was already in the process of getting up as Fou continued to flail angrily through the air aimlessly.

“Digital Energy is being siphoned from enemy Skull Chaosdramon X into users Pom and Dolly. It is unknown where that energy is going to or what purpose it is accomplishing.” It didn’t seem like Yggdrasil System understood what was happening, but I certainly did! “Caution is advised.”

I immediately checked my bond to Dolly and found that a completely destroyed bond was strengthening itself and returning bit by bit, clawing itself from the depths of being utterly torn apart by Dormarch’s half death. It was a bit interesting to witness personally considering how many bonds I have pending to reconnect to me.

I could even feel Dormarch growing in strength, it felt small at first, but it was beginning to accelerate exponentially.

Just once question, how was he doing that?

-Bond between Pom and Dolly, Dormarch Mind and Heart-

What is this thing shining from my forehead, at least I saw it on the forehead of my heart and it was on the forehead of my mind too from his sight. I wonder why my emotions seemed so happy, I can feel their happiness because they are my emotions and it was getting quite warm and cozy.

Like that one time I was hugged by mom…

I think I’ve heard of this before, but… what does this symbol mean? At least it’s making me more coherent at the very… where did my emotions go!

Oh… what the… they… how did that even?! They can’t be fused with me, I don’t even have my digital core to hold myself together like this! What’s happening?! So warm, is this what digital evolution feels like?

The glow was so bright… I… want to be by your side Pom, because…

“She needs all the help she can get!” I sighed out, wondering how I was gaining energy. It was almost like I could feel my core from here and if I could draw from it, then…

-Skull X systems-

Error, Digital System Energy compromised….

Error, Saint Graph Core System Energy compromised…

Error, Digital Monster Core System compromised…

Trying to delete unknown source of errors…

Failure… fatal error… glitch found… attempting to delete aberrant code…

Error cannot delete aberrant code… code is overriding Digital Monster Core and is effecting fused Saint Graph Core.

Trying to quarantine aberrant code… Error… abberant code cannot be quarantined.

Error… Abberant Code is increasing in strength, it is attacking from outside the system… no outside system connection detected… Error… data manipulation coming from within systems safety parameteres… Error.

Systems Error Notification Error… Error… Error… Error…

Emergency priority, deal with priority target immediately. Imminent collapse and full system failure error is determined to stem from their continued existence.

“….!” Abberant Code detected, unable to delete Glitch Error Abberant Code… not part of system… is inside system… Error… Error… Error…

-Pom-

“Pom… is that Dormarch?!” An excited Dolly asked with a wide grin and a wagging tail that could light on fire from how fast it was going, I had a small smile on my face personally.

“He’s taking a part in this with us… I think. We just need to weaken and touch Skull X at the same time to transfer him back into his body alright?” I glared at Skull X as it roared and its roar distorted halfway through and its movements suddenly seemed much jerkier than before as it tried to move forward.

Dormarch was doing something from our bond… goodness knows what. Whatever it was, he seemed to be helping things by slowing down Skull X.

-Pom and Dolly (Danger Duo) Vs. Skull X (Even more corrupted data monster) Vs. Fou (Return of a comparable problem)-

Skull X tried to charge forward only to take slow shaky step or two, when it tried to spin up its right grasping claw it stuttered and couldn’t spin up quickly enough to be a drill.

Pom quickly rushed forward spear in hooves and slid under the awkward left arm swing of its blades, opening the paralance up, she dug the edge of it into the right leg and used that to haul herself up to hooking into the right arms elbows as it tried to reorient to deal with her.

“Float.” Dolly, while Pom was busy, was levitating the fallen pillar that had topple onto Skull X and was looking at Skull X’s left shoulder as she looked up at the pillar. The unfortunate problem was that she didn’t control the floating object or its rotation and was waiting for one of the pillars ends to align with her needs.

Skull X quickly angled and attempted to extend its set of claws towards Pom hanging off its right arm, its weapon stop halfway extension and then completed the rest of it at double the speed.

Pom had long since avoided the attack entirely, having got her right hind leg up on the arm above her and used the leverage she received to push herself upwards out of the path of the blades.

Slamming the bladed edge of the open canopy into the right shoulder, Pom got her hooves in place and closed up the spear to jab it up into Skull X’s right cheek doing a minimal amounts of damage.

Skull X turned its head in an attempt to quickly bite Pom, she just exhaled leapt over its head and landed on the other shoulder.

Pom was taking Skull X seriously even at its current size, strength and capabilities, even if it was moving more rigidly than before she was paying attention to what it’s arms, legs and tail were doing as its head rotated towards her to gnash it’s degraded metal teeth at her.

Leaping away, Pom watched as the Pillar Dolly has been trying to line up ripped into Skull X’s shoulder and the left side of its face damaging it greatly and staggering it away. The pillar continued onwards into the back wall of the building burrowing itself halfway into it.

As she landed on the floor, Pom was about to do a follow up attack when she felt a set of claws raking her across the back and knocking her to the floor.

Gritting her teeth, Pom could just see out of the corner of her eye that Fou going for a lethal bite at the back of her neck and she tumbled forward out of the way.

While her back was pressed against the floor during the roll Pom used what wool she could to stitch the wound shut, also leaving a bloody smear on the floor, upon getting to her hooves she quickly dove to the side as she nearly got stomped by a shrinking Skull X.

The shockwave sent Pom sprawling as she bounced against the floor several times, leaving several splotches of red in her wake. Pom was finally beginning to start looking sick from the blood loss, she was tired, breathing rapidly and her face was quite pale as Fou tried to attack her again while she was weak.

Fou lunged… only for Dolly to use Gravity to slingshot herself into the left side of his face with her board, she slammed it home into his face and sent Fou flying with a momentum boosted strike to send them into a pillar on the right side of the room.

“Float!” Dolly called out and then lashed out with the skateboard strap to wrap around Pom’s torso as she began hovering into the air along with the paranormal lance she still had a grip on. Following that Dolly kicked her left leg against the floor while adding as much momentum to her board as she could and pulled away from the spot and Skull X slammed into the floor nearby launching a shockwave their way.

Dolly kicked the board into the air and rode it up the back wall to avoid the shockwave, she eventually popped off the wall and landed on the nearby stone walkway with a slightly insensate Pom dragging behind her like a helium filled party balloon as she zipped along the walkway.

Behind the skateboarding dog, Skull X clambered onto the walkway and the zombie robot dragon monster started actually sounding and looking more like a zombie by the second given its distorted roar as it gave chase.

“Haha, there’s no way that thing could catc….huh… whoa!” Dolly skidded to stop as a figure landed in front of them.

“Fou!” Fou was quite angry and surged forward to attack Dolly with his left claw, to receive the blunt tip of the paralance jammed into the center of his face from above between the eyes.

The blow stunned him as much as it stunned Pom that she could put that much strength into it while she was floating in the air.

“Dolly… move…” Pom stated weakly as she turned to look behind them.

Using Pom’s lack of weight at the moment, Dolly immediately kicked off the walkway and began gliding for all she was worth for another section of stone walkway. A second later, swinging a spinning malfunction grasping claw tore through the part of the walkway wall acting like a jackhammer as it spun like a drill. A large sections of the walkway broke and Fou leapt away to avoid being part of the falling debris.

“Hmmm…” Pom narrowed her eyes at the X shaped bit of walkway, they’ve destroyed three of the sections and the last section wouldn’t take much to collapse on top of Skull X and it’d be a much larger one than she dropped on him before.

“What?” Dolly asked as she looked up at her.

“Can you… lure Skull X under that…. bit of walkway while avoiding Fou?” After Pom asked this Dolly closed her eyes and got a gander at what Pom was looking at.

“Yeah, I can do that!” Dolly appreciated the idea, because fighting Skull X directly was a losing proposition thus far and with Fou back in the picture it would be that much harder.

The big decayed looking monster needs a few more good blows or just one really heavy one and Dolly figured she could use gravity to make the force of a large falling chunk of walkway really hit home.

“Bait.” Pom tapped herself on the chest with her left hoof, while watching Fou and Skull X go at it, Surprisingly Fou was doing quite a bit of damage now.

Fou was still on the losing end of things when the blades on the left arm extended wildly and skewered Fou. The bladed retracted as it sent him flying from the back in a spray of blood coming from his slashed open guts, bouncing towards the collapsed entrance.

“Pom, why would I ever use you as bait?!” It was meant to be rhetorical and Dolly still received an answer she didn’t want to hear.

“Do you have…. a better lure… than me?” Pom had the right of it, Skull X definitively wanted to kill her. “Need to set up… quickly…”

Pom had a bit of coughing fit when she tried to spit a bark buster, several globules of faintly glowing blood flecks spilled out of her mouth. A small grin crossed Pom’s face as an idea occurred to her.

“In the form of a… sacrifice… it should be enough to work.” Pom was referring her flecks of bloody phlegm, she might have had a minor internal injury from being slashed in the back badly by Fou. She was going to need healing soon if she was to live after this fight, the onset of anemia was going to worsen when she does set up the trap.

Last time Pom needed a Bark Breaker and three Bark Busters to collapse a walkway… what would the sacrifice of some blood for a bloody version of a Bark Buster do?

Skull X was climbing up onto the walkway they were on so there wasn’t much time to discuss it, they needed something big and damaging to do to Skull X.

“Go…” Pom gathered some saliva and loose blood into her throat.

“Can I point out that not only what you’re about to do is gross, but sadly on brand for you.” Stated Dolly as she tugged them forward and away from Skull X as they finally got up on the walkway, the random glitch twitches slowed them down from climbing up until Pom and Dolly got far enough away.

It was becoming apparent that proximity to Pom and Dolly was the cause for Skull X’s current twitchy nature.

Once they got close enough to where Pom needed to spit, Dolly slowed down. Pom fired a red bark buster and the glob of blood and magic wobbled a bit where it landed ready to be detonated.

With that Dolly popped them off the walkway and moved them underneath the large platform barely being held up by the two of five walkways still connected to it.

Groaning Pom clutched her head, she really couldn’t lose too much more blood. She slowly reached into her bag and pulled out some of King Oberon’s Snacks and quickly forced one down her throat. Just in time too as Skull X slammed into the floor nearby.

Pom watched as it approached them at a run and then a sound around its right foot was heard and it tripped, it continued to crawl towards them jerkily on its elbows and knees roaring as its weapons started to spin up and rotate.

“I swear I’ve seen a movie like this once, was it Time Exterminators?” Dolly stated as the monster closed in on them and was about to pull away quickly when Pom slapped against the floor grunting in pain as Float wore off. “Darn it, sorry Pom, float!”

After getting Pom back to floating, Dolly kicked them forward as Skull X turned their head sideways and surged at them with its mouth wide open.

Pom remotely detonated the Bloody Bark Buster and the walkway above started to creak and lower, but didn’t immediately fall and Skull X was almost on them.

“Gah Gravity!” Dolly shouted while pointing a paw above the far too close monster and dark orb struck the underside of the walk way and then it slammed down snapped off the last portion, crushing a massive amount of cubes out of Skull X.

Skull X groaned from under the rubble and started to still try and pull itself out from under it and was rapidly shrinking.

“Now…, …!” Pom didn’t have time to say anything she took control of Dolly’s body and forced her to jump high in the air as Pom drifted to the right a bit and Fou slashed her across the cheek lightly.

Pom immediately sealed the wound, she didn’t have much wool that wasn’t occupied with holding her together. Dolly sped them out of the way of Fou’s second lunge and swerved back around for Skull X.

“Come on, come on, we just need to touch his body right?!” Dolly sped them towards the half free monstrosity with Fou on their backsides.

Kicking them up in the air, Dolly aimed to slap her right paw at Skull X’s face and turned her head to look behind her and see Fou coming at them. She looked up at Pom and then at Skull X in slow motion.

Coming to a decision, Dolly let Pom free of the strap and she floated upwards as Dolly went downwards from the sudden loss of buoyancy. Fou slammed face first into Skull X’s bladed horn.

While that painful event for Fou was happening, Dolly forced the nose of her board into the rubble and slapped her right paw onto Skull X’s face. She looked to Pom who was floating way too high to touch Skull X and would have float past had she not reach out with her left hoof and snagged the back ot the top portion of Skull X’s horn.

A pulse of gold appeared from Pom’s head and Dolly’s chest and swirled into the shrunken Skull X, the thing let out a pained roar.

Following that Dolly, kicked the back end of the board and launched towards Pom, who let go of the horn and was back to having her torso wrapped by the strap as Dolly pass her by and dragged her away a fair distance from Fou and Skull X.

Fou looked between Dolly and Pom, then Skull X. Skull X was easily some of the most powerful prey Fou had ever followed around, if he was being left to kill the prey then he would get to his other prey afterwards.

-Inside Skull X-

“Retriever Bark!” Dormarch then fired off his attack and was already fighting for control. “Search Hunter! Wild Bark!”

Thankfully he was only dealing with a virtual intelligence as otherwise, this would have been much harder than it was.

It was Dormarch’s digital core this mindless monster was using and it was responding to Dormarch and only him now that he was back. The secondary core on top of his core however was strange and very much alien to him, but he had to conquer it if he ultimately wanted his body back in time to help Pom and Dolly.

Dormarch was rupturing code left and right at a breakneck speed and the virtual intelligence couldn’t keep up with the constant Error Reports overloading it’s system coming from a rampant Dalmatian with three fish tails.

-The battle continued-

Fou, who now had a large diagonal slash mark from left hip to right shoulder, was now savaging Skull X’s upper torso as both Pom and Dolly watched, they obviously couldn’t let him destroy Skull X or else that would kill Dormarch before he had a chance to take back what once belonged to him.

“Leave him… nhghh…. alone!” The sudden shout and concern for Fou’s other prey led to some confusion, especially when Fou took a secretly magical lance to the right side of his chest that crunched his ribcage and lung to pulp with how hard it had been thrown.

If he were a ghost or a goblin Fou would have definitely keeled over from it. Fou’s ability to survive lethal injuries was quite impressive, but that wasn’t what drew his attention away from Dormarch’s body temporarily as he picked up the paralance and threw it far away from Pom and Dolly.

What drew his attention as he tore chunks of metal that turned into cubes of light off the unnatural fallen half crushed metallic monster was that she was trying to defend it now. Instead of attacking Pom or Dolly as expected, he kept laying into Dormarch’s body.

If Dormarch’s body was important to Pom, then Fou would hurt her somewhat through destroying the monster he had been tracking for a while. Also Fou wanted to get both of his prey here, so he figured if he killed one the other might stay to avenge them.

“Dolly… do something!” Pom asked as Dolly stood there watching as Fou ripped open the throat of Dormarch’s body.

“Hey, the dudes going to mulch me for fertilizer for my neighbors garden… for my little bro!” Dolly immediately let Pom loose and left her floating in the air, she shot forward and launched herself at Fou who was continuing to tear into Dormarch’s body that was getting progressively smaller the more damage Fou dealt.

Fou turned and swung his left claw at Dolly. Dolly blocking the attack and getting knocked back in the air then tried to glide forward and swing her board only to see something green flashing in her eyes as Fou reacted to her attack far faster than she could hope to deal with.

The triangle happened again, Dolly didn’t hesitate on it. She knew it meant something good or helpful would happen. She rapidly spun and wind built up around her to deflect the claw and then her board went flying out of her grip and took the wind with it.

Dolly just floated there, slowly falling to the floor in her slow glide, and watched her board go spinning away with the swirling winds.

“What the dog was that!” Dolly stated exasperatedly as her board soared away and left her floating in the air exposed with only her bare paws and helmet to fight with.

Fou leapt and tried to bite her and she flipped backwards in the air to avoid it while dropping to the floor.

Dolly tried to pop up into his throat helmet first, missed since Fou stepped back and grabbed her by the left hind leg with his right claw.

Dolly was about to speak a spell when the board came roaring back into the back of Fou’s head and his sudden flailing movement made him release her leg.

With an acrobatic flip, Dolly caught her board and surprisingly landed on her hind legs. She was a little more than shocked that she had managed to stick the landing from the sudden change in situation.

Shaking her head, Dolly leapt and rammed the nose of her board into Fou’s belly and quickly bit his left side before kicking off with her hind legs.

Dolly brought her board up to block a two claw rightward power swipe that sent her flying towards the front left of the library from how powerful the blow was. Managing to absorb the energy from the impact Dolly then tried to get Fou away from Dormarch and Pom by using magic.

“Float!” However when Dolly used this on Fou he didn’t float into the air, his claws clenched at the floor as he power walked over to Skull X to continue attacking them. “Gravity!”

The gravity spell made Fou falter a bit, but he resisted the effect and after a moment unclenched his toes and didn’t immediately float uncontrollably into the air.

“No way, he can resist my spells, well resist this Aerora!” Not technically having the energy for after using Float and Gravity, Dolly grabbed at her skull as a sharp pain erupted with the powerful swirling winds that struck at Fou and sliced into him.

Still this didn’t slow Fou down as he tore a chunk out of the jaw of the unmoving Skull Chaosdramon X that had ceased healing from its injuries by shrinking to a smaller size of itself.

There was no clue as to what was happening inside the rotted machine monster as Fou ignored the biting winds to continue attacking Dormarch’s dormant body.

Pom had surprisingly started running on air in a controllable manner until she was close enough to the tornado trying to tear apart an uncaring Fou. Once close enough she struck her two hooves together to ignite the powerful tornado in an explosive manner.

The blast sent Pom careening for the ceiling and she barely managed to reorient her hind legs to take the shock of hitting the top of the dome. Kicking off, she went flying back for Fou’s back who was attempting to rip the entirety of the right arm off the Skull X body by tearing into the shoulder.

Dolly assisted by lunging at him from the side on her board.

Dolly took the sudden back claw on her board and shot off in the direction she last saw the paralance in.

Fou turned his continued left back claw into a right claw swipe for Pom who simply floated out the way, having figured out something about the float spell enough to maneuver while floating.

“Let’s see how you like a variant of one of my closest friend’s attacks!” Pom rapidly started flipping forward, getting quick dizzy she lashed her left leg upwards and out and brought it down towards Fou. “Wolf Cutlass!”

Fou turned again and took the magical wolf claw dropping axe kick, on his right arm that started bleeding. He grabbed Pom by her leg with his left and right claw, then slung her at the nearest pillar, where she dropped to the floor with Floats effects having worn off for unknown reasons.

“Uhnn…” Pom tried to get up, but was finding it hard to do, the blood loss from the claw to the back and a Bloody Bark Buster really left her without much energy to fight.

She slowly sat up and watched as Fou deflected a blur that turned out to be the paralance thrown at him by Dolly.

Fou grinned, finally a victory was at claw, the very same one that he was currently flexing. He pulled back his right claw and rammed it through Skull X’s chest.

Slowly Skull X’s body started to piece by piece fall apart, chunks of it just falling off and cubes slowly disappearing and soon the upper torso was a mass of digital monster blood coming off of it in a shower of golden light that faded away as Skull X’s body collapsed it motes of light.

“No… we were so close… Dormarch…” Pom started to hyperventilate as she felt the bond that was once strengthening started to fade.

Fou turned towards her and started stalking towards her as Dolly streaked for him on her board. She was angry and she tried to stand, but her body couldn’t currently take much more.

Fou turned towards Dolly and she aggressively attack him with everything she had, the beast of comparison didn’t see her as much of a threat at this point. He narrowly avoided clawing her belly open with his right claw. His left suddenly came up and slashed Dolly across the right side of her face and she yelped as she went to the ground clutching at her face with her paws.

“Dolly!” Pom started standing up and charging up Chrysomallus energy without the canine side to be a barrier for the negative aspects that using her personal curse would bring.

However, Pom felt some things. For one Dolly wasn’t dead, but she was hurting. Where did a portion of the golden Chrysomallus energy she was generating going to?

While Pom was distracted, Fou slammed her back against the pillar with his left claw on Pom’s chest, his right on her belly and his maw opened to take a bite out of her face.

Pom might as well blow the energy while she still had it and take Fou with her, when she was about to a voice stopped her and it seized her heart in an instant.

“Search Hunter!” A flash of golden furred form appeared in front of Pom three tails billowing outwards to fan protectively in front of her face as Fou reflexively flinched backwards. The golden glowing black spotted, three fish tailed wonder appeared I could see the shine of symbol imposing itself on Fou’s body as Dormarch hovered in front of me. The symbol was two diamonds at top and bottom, two triangles pointing to the left and right with a strange M shape being the centerpiece of the pyramid like shape. “Executing Noble Phantasm Program: Shooting Stars Miracle!”

Golden flash blew Fou into the air ripping a large hole straight through his chest, what followed was Dormarch launching up after Fou and the world distorted around him. He started throwing rapid fire claw jabs creating burning plasma with each attack, mimicking my Fiery Flurry… he then flashed by Fou multiple times mimicking Dolly’s Counter Rave and then he stopped.

Fou was badly mangled, by that point, but still alive.

Calmly he spread out his legs and a huge ball of building energy appeared in front of Dormarch.

“The stars, what life will we see around them? I am among them and I will always cherish my time with them, since I’m burning through the sky as one... among many…” The world cracked as the ball of energy flew forward out of the crack and then gained five points that spread out, then in a flash like what Dormarch does, the star vanished and a quarter of the domes roof was just missing.

It had just been so noiseless.

We successfully brought Dormarch back... then a black and white spotted body slapped to the floor in front of me.

I simply lay there staring and slowly my eyes slid shut as tears came to them as I felt a weight press up against me, a smile on my face as all was quiet and a bond firmly reaffirmed itself in my heart as I passed out.

-?-

All was quiet in the dome of the icy ruins library at the anchor, however if one were to look beyond the hole a shooting star made in the roof they would see a sky in the Mystery Dungeon that wasn't there before where a star sparkled brightly.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

Well that was interesting... I'm going to wonder how Fou survived that unless Dormarch's intentions were not to kill. They still had to get out of the dungeon, but it should be a little bit easier.

"They have about twelve hours to get out of there before the dungeon collapses on them..." Mew stated with a haunting certainty.

Well never mind then.

Author's Note

Ending Episode Theme- Don't Stop Me Now, Queen.

374. Exit Strategy!

-Pokémon Realm, Mystery Dungeon Anchor Point, Icy Ruins Special Zone, Icy Ruins Library, Dormarch-

I looked at Dolly lying right next to Pom where I left her, Pom would have continued resisting falling asleep to actually deal with the trauma unless I gave her a comforting presence. I wanted to be that presence, but Dolly would be more effective given I didn’t trust myself near Pom quite yet.

With that in mind, I used Dolly’s supernaturally warm body to melt some ice so I could clean her face with warm water and bind her injury to stop the bleeding. The medical knowledge was coming in handy once more, just wish it wasn’t at the cost of an entire hospital.

Pom’s presence seems to help with Dolly’s injuries a little… mine too for that matter and I likely knew why.

I surveyed the damaged arena, temperatures were all quite low around here. Dolly was heating up the air around her to a nice degree given her supernatural origins. Pom and Dolly should be fine without me for a while and I don’t believe that Fou will be returning too soon from his injuries.

Running self-diagnostics…

Saint Graph Core, still needs to be reformatted to fuse better with my Digital Monser Core, things feels a bit roomier in my own body with the add-on. In fact a little too roomy, it’s like wearing ill-fitting baggy clothing now and I just had to put up with the extra power the secondary core might be giving me.

I needed an approximate run time of four hours required to even understand what it’s fully done to me.

Memory Storage, needed to look at what my body has been doing and why, aside from attempting to kill Pom that is. Approximate run time for diagnostics, five minutes… the thing controlling my body previously wasn’t a true artificial intelligence and I don’t feel too bad about shredding it.

Digital Monster Core, my primary core, was slightly warped by the thing that is called Moon Cell slap dashing my soul core and body back together after being ravaged by that virus… at least the core seems fine. Approximate run time…. ten seconds? That doesn’t seem right.

Looking into the code deeper I found that everything to do with my core was mostly operational, with a few bits that needed to be removed, things that basically stated that my core should ignore anything wrong when doing an active diagnostics test.

It needed to add parts of coding it grafted onto my core to control what was essentially once a digital corpse and is now the miraculously living and breathing me. It was no longer needed though.

Don’t need potentially hazardous data that could later come back to control me and force me to attack my friends and family, so toss that out in the recycle bin and I can use the digital energy for something else later. Maybe expand some space in my Digivice Home? Pom could use the ease of object storage and maybe an emergency stasis medical space.

It’s the grafted on secondary core, this Saint Graph Core thing, which was the major issue. Almost prevented me from restoring functionality after Fou fragmented my body data, thankfully Fou didn’t understand that to kill a Digimon you needed to destroy their Digital Core. I used all the available energy in the area to forge my Rookie rank Digimon form like new, also required a bit of a jumpstart to really get my body back in gear and to that end I drained some energy from mom… which was a good thing to have done in such a dire situation.

Noble Phantasm Program… completely inoperable, chances of getting it working again without Pom’s assistance are feasible and not anytime within the next few weeks. Well I did burn through all that energy to save Pom, I think it was worth the cost of blowing the program out.

Apparently it was magically energy intensive program, Chrysomallus energy was quite a dense form of mystical energy… also I was now apparently pseudo-biological thanks to what I’m going to call the Spirit Core, not quite a hybrid though. It was like magic and technology fusing in harmony, usually that sounds like it should be a bad thing…

Didn’t really want to be even more of a freak of ‘digital’ nature than I already am, but that was impossible now and at least I can feel my bond to Dolly and Pom. They’d still want me around right? They went through all of that for me.

…

Digivolution capability… no impediment and fully functional, though digivolution possibilities may be screwed up thanks to the Chaosdramon to Chaosdramon X and then Skull Chaosdramon X transformations my body went through without me in it.

Also the virus bits were burned out by my assault on my own body to take back control, so at least I’m still a Data type… one with some virus bits in me. I think I need some vaccine to balance that back out.

Despite all that has happened to my soul core, I’m… surprisingly stable. Was it a side effect of the crest on my head?

I’m betting with my bond to mom that I’ll stick to canine style digital evolutions… I’d be entirely happy if it were just that and was the case, mom loves dogs regardless of her efforts to not accrue more than just me and Dolly on the way home. Which she has been fighting tooth and hoof to return to, maybe even nails given the whole wooly wolf and actual wolf transformations.

Having some evolutions like the possibility of becoming a Machinedramon scares me more than anything. My body was the epitome of one of the most dangerous lines of negative Digimon evolutions I could possibly achieve not too long ago, the highly destructive kind and unfortunately it almost destroyed an entire kingdom.

I’m not taking the blame for that, it wasn’t me in charge of my body at the time.

Well better settle down and run diagnostics, then I had some things to take care of… like finding the exit to this place. I think I’m generally safe enough to be around big sis and mom, I won’t at least suddenly flip out and try to kill them once I fixed things.

“Yggrdrasil System, what is the importance of the symbol that appears on my forehead before I settle in for self-diagnostics and data fixing?” My data was a bit all over the place at the moment and I liked a clean and organized sense of self, kind of hard to have that at the moment when my body fit like a sock and I needed a glove. I doubt the Cure Liquor-P would help fix most of it in a timely manner.

“There are multiple crests that digital destined can achieve via bonding to a Digimon, the nature of these crests is based in the strength of a given user’s emotional spectrum. It shows where ones strengths lies and a Digimon can rely on those particular strengths to appear in their partner and take solace draw from it in a shared manner. The Digivice can aid the bond through this connection, it would help to have a defensive digital pendant for the users Pom or Dolly as a focal point for their particular strengths, however no such pendant for your crest is available and may be impossible to create. Pom specializes in odd connections… which has led to a rare occurrence that Yggdrasil Proper sorely wants to study from a distance. I will be recording your information to that effect from now on to deliver to Yggdrasil Proper when asked. This will not mess with your access or functions to the Digivice, thought it may take up some memory space.” The digital data that popped up on the screen of the Digivice showed a list of crests. Crest of Darkness, Crest of Honesty, Crest of Sincerity, Crest of Love, Crest of Kindness and the like. Honestly, I was more focused on the fact that the device stated its intentions to stalk me. Kind of hard to escape from something that is basically your ‘mobile’ home. “The rarer crests are the ones of Hope and Light, never giving up and always seeking to do the right thing comparatively. One would suspect Pom would be the cause of either one these crests to occur in subject Dalmamon Dormarch, but it has been shown to not be the case.”

Yeah, but if those weren’t the crests I had then what was and should it cause a sinking feeling in my digital gut?

“The absolute rarest ones to actually be part of a Digimon’s code overall are smaller than twenty in number across the multiple instances of the many Digital Worlds, this makes you highly unique individual worth having access to high class administrator level resources devoted to you by Yggdrasil Proper to see what you would make of it. Among the most common instances of such a crest is just a powerful armor upgrade evolution that was not part of the initial Digimon. The two rarest crests to exist are Destiny and Miracles. Destiny is of an unknown quantity to somehow alter the course of events or steer yourself towards a given destination, however such an ability has unintentional repercussions in the terms of cause and effect and can end poorly for the individual that has this crest if they misuse its functionality. You however have the Crest of Miracles, it is the ability to do what most would think is functionally impossible and or barely feasible.”

“Huh, like the difference between one percent and zero point zero one percent while still being able to pull something off if my chances are infinitesimal?” I said trying to make sense of what could be miraculous about what I did… it didn’t take me long really to think of a vast number of things I’ve done thus far.

I had separated my mind and heart from my soul and body without destroying them. In fact, my mind and heart stayed somewhat active in the two chosen hosts, despite the fact that they shouldn’t have and my body and core were both completely totaled to fragmented data.

Yet I still got those back and some new stuff on top of that which should be making me glitch out and be horribly corrupted and in pain, the secondary core should not be meshing with my systems all too well and yet still did without too much of an issue so far. I still needed to run diagnostics, reboot and some mild reformatting of myself to fix any glaring issues that could rise up in the future.

Why couldn’t my luck belong to mom? Also why was the Yggdrasil System taking so long to respond? Maybe it knew I wasn’t paying attention, which I was now.

“Correct, as long as it isn’t an absolute zero chance and anything approaching one percent or above. This however does not mean that you can control fate itself, it just means that you are more capable in extravagant circumstances beyond you. The ones that User Pom notably tends to be drawn to, though she might not always succeed in them. User Pom has survived numerous lethal attempts on her life thus far and has successfully dealt with a heavily degraded Mega level threat without a Digimon. It has caused Yggdrasil System to error as it did not believe in its users capabilities, usually users of Digivice systems are children without any amount of combat capacity to speak of.” There was a pause from the Digivice. “Yggdrasil Proper would be interested in studying you, as less than invasively as possible, for this unique ‘Crest of Miracles’ property, unfortunately the last bit of active data received from Yggdrasil Proper states that your crest cannot be copied, stolen or even recreated if someone attempted to do so. Reminder, the ‘Crest of Miracles’ is not who or what you are, it is the manifestation from your bond to Pom and possibly Dolly. You would not be the first to have multiple digital destined partners assigned to a single Digimon. One instance of an Impmon is a powerful example of what love can do for a Digimon, Yggdrasil System is allowing access to history logs of ‘some’ past Digital destined adventures for personal perusal in case of need of a mental morale booster where User Pom and Dolly are not present.”

“It’s a miracle that I’m even alive right now…” What with two cores and a building headache that I need to run through diagnostics to fix, approximately five or more hours to do it all and then start on the plan of finding the exit to this place and then I had prepare to leave this place. Hopefully Dolly and Pom will wake up in the intervening time and would be able enough to help, that was not likely given Pom’s injuries were fairly severe though not immediately life threatening as she has somehow used her wool to suture the injuries of her insides perfectly.

“That is a proper summation of your current abilities, yes.” Way to rub it in Yggdrasil System. I’m betting Yggdrasil Proper basically installs you on every Digivice and nobody tends to really think to ask if the Digivice is listening in to whatever you’re doing at any given time or if the Digivice itself might know something like pertinent information. I wouldn’t be surprised if mom was the first to ask herself if the device itself could think. “You still being even more than just ‘vaguely functional’, given the current circumstance is a miracle in and of itself.”

“Thank you Yggdrasil System.” I said dully. I made my way over to Pom and Dolly and laid down to start a complete diagnostics and reboot myself to the best working order I could feasibly be in. “Did Dolly make use of my installed programs?”

“Yes, she did, she finds the interdimensional call feature most useful and quite stress relieving, as does Pom and they have used it to contact a team of Vigilantes known as the Mighty Ducks to tell them they found their previous Team Leader.” The world started shaking violently and some chunks of the empty, destroyed building fell down. Thankfully Pom and Dolly were lying in a relatively safe spot. “Warning dimensional stability of spatial anomaly is dropping rapidly due to the loss of possible stability anchor. Inference, Chaosdramon X might have been responsible for the existence of this dimensional anomaly.”

Yep, that’s exactly just what I needed to hear before entering diag…

-A little more than nine hours later, Dolly-

“Nnnhhh…” I opened my… eye? I raised a paw to the right side of my head and felt something over it. “Wha…”

“Oh good you’re awake big sister, don’t pull that off. You’re right eye is fine, you’re face not so much and needs time, so don’t remove that makeshift medical patch for the time being. Continued proximity to mother helps somewhat.” Sitting up groggily at hearing a familiar voice. I blinked… winked? Anyway I saw something amazing. “The dizziness is from the blood loss you suffered before I patched your face up.”

“D-Dormarch?! It’s you, it’s really you!” In my excitement I pulled away from Pom and promptly had my chin meet the floor as my limbs gave out on me when I tried to leap for him. “Oof… ow…”

“Again you suffered a nasty wound big sis, be a little bit more careful! We’ll need to work together soon, if not sooner.” Huh, what was Dormarch talking about? He approached me, his three goofy fish tails wagging and his large equally goofy claws tapping the floor as he stood before me expectantly with a smile. “I can’t do this on my own Dolly…”

I slowly got up and paw my paws around his back and squeezed as hard as I could, which wasn’t very hard at the moment.

So lightheaded, the anemia thing Pom suffers from when losing too much blood, it wasn’t pleasant and it sucks as badly as breaking a leg since I couldn’t hug Dormarch like wanted to.

-Dormarch-

While this felt really good, we couldn’t stay like this forever, I did spend the last two hours and change looking for the exit to this place and eventually found it.

Still, I’m just going to milk this hug for as long as it lasts.

I glanced at the Saint Graph Core system readings again to make sure I understood some of what was written in there.

Class: Saver Assassin Beast.

I think I’m quite uncomfortable with that classification, but this is coming from the Saint Graph Core and my body was being used to try and kill Pom. So fitting in a way… I’ll just reinterpret it to mean I can assassinate code, computers and anything digital. I don’t like the other implications of it aside from Saver, which wasn’t apparently in the classification listing previously until I took over the body.

Attribute: Star.

What… I… well I did like stars, hopefully the not throwing kind, because this is starting to make me sound like a ninja.

Class Skills:

Presence Concealment, D+

Yep, definitely a ninja, well I was pretty decent at hiding in code and being discreet.

Independent Action, EX.

Did not understand what that means. I’m going to be very much dependent on Pom in the near future as a child needs their mother, even a smart one like me, but okay.

I made sure these stats wouldn’t broadcast themselves to anyone who did know what this stuff was.

Counter Hero, D+++.

Did not know if that was good or not, but Pom did like to use vicious counters. Maybe I picked up some of her abilities? I did do something like what she does for my Noble Phantasm Program, which is still a weird program to wield given the effects it was supposed to have and I how I used it were vastly different than what was intended.

Magic Resistance, D-EX.

Going to assume Pom’s ability to share her energy has something to do with that, as EX seems to be a high rating or a more unique circumstances one.

Territory Creation, D+.

Well hopefully good news for my future projects with the Digivice as I needed to work on my digital home after spending so long away from it, I’m beginning to notice a continuing trend here…

Independent Manifestation EX.

Is that the same as Independent Action or a commentary on my ability as a Digimon to physically manifest into reality?

Parameters:

Strength: D+++
Endurance: D+++
Agility: D+++, EX.
Mana: D.
Luck: EX.
Noble Phantasm: D+++

I’m assuming all those plus signs were related to my evolutionary capabilities. Not even going to second guess why my luck was labeled that, what with the whole ‘Crest of Miracles’ thing I had going. Agility might have two stats to account for my ‘Search Hunter’ signature move. One would think there would be a parameter for intelligence in all of that.

“Uh, Dormarch, little bro, are you okay?” Dolly asked me in a worried tone, she hadn’t relinquished her hug on me and if anything it had gotten much needier and even stronger.

It was like she couldn’t believe I was actually here… I couldn’t believe I was actually here either or snuggling against my big sister.

You know what, I think I’m good… I don’t need to read more of that cores documentation on me. If I actually had something to compare that to, it would matter much more to me. In fact, where was this information coming from? An automated system of some kind to read the strength of the wielder of the Saint Graph Core that’s been basically grafted on to me?

“Yeah, this just feels nice.” I said as I pressed my head against her chest and nuzzled into her and started hugging back.

“I know it does little bro.” Dolly planted her chin on my head and we stayed cozy for a bit.

“Too bad I have to end this by saying…” I started to say, only to be cut off by Yggdrasil System on the Digivice, which I have placed around my neck, like old times.

“Spatial distortions worsening, advising immediate exit from anomalous spatial region before lethal collapse.” I would love to do that, but Pom isn’t up yet and I wasn’t sure Dolly and I could brave the stuff going on below by ourselves. From what little memories I had retrieved from Skull X, the only way out was through and Skull X always made it through easily… mostly because he recovered to full size and brute force it.

I was not Skull X though and Dolly wasn’t as tough as Skull X either, then there’s how to move Pom safely without her getting attacked by the Mystery Dungeon Pokémon we may come across.

“Excuse me, but did Yissy just say collapse, as in like everything caving in on us!” Pom’s left eye was wide open and she was gripping me a little bit tighter. I didn’t mind, I enjoyed the attention while it lasted.

“Yeah, I don’t know how much time we have and moving mom might be a pro…” I didn’t get much farther before Dolly started doing things.

“Float!” Dolly lassoed Pom’s torso with the skateboard strap as she floated into the air. “Come on, we got to move, we’ve got to find the exit!”

“I know where the exit for here is already, but we’re safe for the time being… we won’t be for much longer though and if we leave now we’d be running into fights we might not be able to handle.” I haven’t really done much fighting, I’ve done a lot of code destruction though and I was sadly good at it despite my thing being finding information. Like how mom was sadly good at fighting, feels nice to have something in common with her.

Misery loves company so it’s not as miserable when a burden is shared.

“Don’t care, we might be able to find something to rouse Pom to get out of here faster, but there’s obviously nothing in this place that could if you went looking for the exit while we were out and didn’t find anything already!” As emotional as Dolly was acting, I welcomed that she was being so protective of me.

“Well follow me then, but be careful with mom… we don’t need he getting banged about while she’s floating.” I started for the hole Fou made when mom smashed his skull in with the paralance, said weapon gave off unusual readings and made mom weary of it for plenty of reasons. Even I was a little wary of bringing it with us, but it was still a weapon and could be useful for defensive purposes… notably it wasn’t damaged by the fight at all. “Are you even okay to be moving yourself?”

“Yes, because dying now would suck after getting you back!” Dolly shouted at me, then motioned with a paw. “So lead the way bro, go!”

We eventually made it to the mostly intact government building of the icy ruins. A place that was so dry and silent that I expected Pokémon to be wandering the halls, there were none and I led Dolly to the staircase.

“Can you fight like you are?” I asked.

“Can you? Do we even have the time to sit around waiting for Pom to regain consciousness?!” No, but it would help if Pom were at least somewhat capable dolly. Since the Mystery Dungeon itself might not want to let us leave this place alive.

The entire world rumbled and shook, it was getting more volatile after the last few times.

“Alright, I’ll admit that we don’t have a choice, let’s go… cautiously.” I said as I started for the steps down.

“We should probably be booking it for the nearest exits we can find.” Dolly stated having some idea of what we were getting into.

“If we come across an exit they are definitely our top priority to go down, but any items we find that might help Pom would have to be sadly secondary to us escaping alive. “We’ll avoid fighting as much as possible.”

“We’ll use anything we find if we can identify what it does, that’s a thing like in Poodewolf right? Random stuff that you have no idea what it does until you use it… could get us killed…” After a pause I noticed Dolly looking into the yawning void before me, she was afraid and so was I.

“It’s okay, we’re in this together Dolly, come on!” I tried to state bravely, that only made Dolly snort, smile and then push her board over the edge of the steps.

I followed her down and we both landed in a room, unfortunately we both landed on top of the Ice-type bear monster that was woken up by us landing on it. It started stirring.

“Get off, I got it!” We both quickly jumped off and Dolly quickly yanked Pom out of the way of glowing fist covered in an icy cold mist. “Float!”

The monster went into the air flailing, that at best bought us some time. Looking around I saw something and picked it up… opened it to peer inside.

“Calcium supplement what the…? No, not questioning it, for later.” I tossed it to Dolly and we went out the nearest exit to the room before Float wore off on the floating bear. We were trying to move quickly as possible, at least I was setting the pace since Dolly refused to leave me behind.

We came to another room and I saw a seed that I thought looked familiar, a Reviver Seed, Pom could simply use that!

I quickly grabbed the seed and noted the incoming Pokémon coming to attack us and opened Pom’s mouth, but as soon as I put it under her tongue something seemed to go wrong as the seed sparked.

Did I just misidentify an item like Dolly mentioned?

The three Pokémon coming at us were demented looking floating round spheres with spikes and toothy maws… reminded me somewhat of the Pac-duck game the Digivice had installed on it before I was hatched by mom.

I quickly turned mom’s head and tried to get the seed out, only to duck out of the way when a short flash of gold occurred from her and an explosion ripped its way out of her mouth. This sent the three Pokémon packing as they disappeared in the fiery explosion.

“Dormarch what the dog!” Dolly stated looking quite cross with me with her paws on her hips.

“Sorry, sorry thought that was a Reviver Seed…. it… obviously wasn’t.” I checked Pom’s mouth and… huh… no injury, weird. “Mom’s surprisingly fine though, I wonder what the exploding seed tasted like though...”

“Thank goodness for that, we should probably not stick anything unknown in Pom’s mouth like that again.” Dolly sighed with relief, before heading over towards an orb. “We can throw this and see what happens.”

“After the exploding seed, I’m worried.” I stated as we were heading towards another entrance, I can understand why mom and Dolly felt wary of these twisty corridors and maze like place.

We entered an empty room, an entrance to a corridor on the other side. I moved forward until my left claw hit something and clicked, suddenly demented music started playing as monsters rained from the ceiling around me and Dolly. They all looked like Yeti and smelled like pine trees… also they were large and I couldn’t see through all of them to either entrance.

“Orb!” I shouted, it was the best we could hope for. As the deranged music seemed to put the current intention of every Pokémon that came out of the ceiling quite clearly.

Dolly didn’t not hesitated to smash it against the floor, all the large tree monsters turned to stone and we then we both happened to blink at the same time while looking at one another and found ourselves in a different smaller room without stone statues surrounding us.

“Um…” Dolly tried and I pointed to the staircase right next to us and gestured to all the stone walrus Pokémon statues around us shifting a bit, we didn’t stick around in case those walking trees or walruses could break out of the stone imprisonment soon and descended. “This place is chaos, the bad kind, what if that turned us to stone!”

“What part of ‘Mystery’, in ‘Mystery’ Dungeon are we not quite getting here Dolly!” I retorted as we both found ourselves in a relative long straight room that was a dead end, we were at the entrance of the room thankfully and quickly entered the corridors in hopes of finding a staircase.

It was long and winding, didn’t see any turns or different paths, just the one long one. We eventually came across a Pokémon we had to fight in the corridor.

“Spear me!” I called out as I got onto my hind legs, using my fanned out tails as balance and Dolly tossed me the paralance just in time to open it and brace the back end of it against the floor to block a blast of snow that filled the corridor with cold air. “Search Hunter!”

I blasted forward in a flash and jammed the spear into the walking iceberg and managed to push it back, but I wasn’t taught how to use a spear and didn’t exactly have the programming to put it too effective use in combat… but its canopy made for a very good shield. I poked my head around it and fired a Retriever Bark and it shattered the ice monster into disappearing.

I’m a lot more powerful than I remembered being, maybe the Spirit Cores doing?

“Let’s move.” I led the way with the paralance awkwardly held in a defensive position as I learned to walk on my hind legs while using my three tails as balance.

We continued along the corridor to find that this floor apparently only has the two rooms available on it, after a ceaselessly long corridor, and the second one had the exit. Said exit was behind three sleeping Pokémon in the room we were at the entrance to.

Another walking iceberg, an icy eyed nine tailed fox, reminding me that mom’s magnetism had no notable effects on dungeon denizens, and the last one a floating ice cream cone with two heads that was the evolved form of a Vanillish.

Said two headed ice cream like Pokémon had a tube that was sticking out of one of the heads and spewing something like liquid nitrogen into the air around it constantly.

The thing that caught Dolly’s eye though was a fruit and she quickly pointed to it insistently and quietly while looking to me to draw my attention to it.

It was in fact very important that we figure out how to get it.

I nodded as I saw that it was in fact a Sitrus Berry, one that was next to the walking iceberg’s feet. If we entered the room and made any noise at all, it would move and crush the fruit making it a useless sticky mess all over the floor.

We needed that thing intact for mom and we also needed to reach the exit behind the three dangerous Pokémon. This was going to be a bit of a task.

“Dolly… can you glide over them and get to the other side, after you draw their attention I’ll grab the berry.” I folded the spear and saw Dolly nod, then I whispered further. “Go for the exit immediately once you get their attention.”

She leapt up and started to glide across the room and carefully swerved her and Pom between the monsters. Once she was hovering next to the exit she dropped straight down, making a loud noise that woke up all the Pokémon and made them start moving towards her.

I used Search Hunter to appear above the berry and was about to grab it when I felt a pulling on my navel, then I ended up next to a surprised Dolly in a room with many corridor exits and no staircase down.

…

We silently stared at one another, eyes twitching at being so close to helping Pom.

“Darn it… I had it it!” Apparently we didn’t know all the rules of the Mystery Dungeon, also my words woke up a Lapras.

“Float!” Dolly lifted the monster into the air and it started blasting attacks randomly as it spun in the air, we quickly made our way out of the room ignoring some of the orbs and scarves as a monstrous shell monster started spitting spikes at us as soon as it appeared in the room from out of nowhere. I followed Dolly while deflecting the spikes away from mom. "Move, move, move!"

We needed to find some way out of this Mystery Dungeon and quick, it was actively trying to kill us now.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“I can’t keep all the Mystery Dungeons from fulling manifesting forever father and it is the work of Moon Cell.” Good work still Mew, it’s thanks to watching Pom that we weren’t entirely caught off guard by this different form of incursion.

Still it’s an issue that we’ve managed to prevent from being an immediate problem, the fighting in Valora grows ever worse.

“How much time do they have?” I asked as they had left the anchor point a while ago.

“Two hours at most, maybe an hour thirty or less if the destruction of the place accelerates at any point for any given reason.” Celebi answered. “Collapse of that Mystery Dungeon is imminent given the destruction of the thing holding the central anchor point together. How much time do WE have?”

“Projected two weeks before things start to go entirely south continent wide, like that one Mystery Dungeon timeline with the Dustclops.” Celebi answered while shivering at one of the darker timelines that had been averted by a summoned hero. “You know the one I’m talking about, the one you really hated but turned out alright in the end due to hero shenanigans?”

“Need some help?” Bahamut offered as he passed me a double decker spider meat taco with the works and extra sauce.

“Of course, I’d even welcome it.” I answered, thankful for any help we could receive from the godly dragon duo. “Any advantage we can get to not make Ransei fall into total destruction would be helpful, it also seems that King Evan has already cottoned onto the idea of summoning me by uniting all of Ransei. That would be most helpful for me to actually start acting personally as I can’t otherwise and will only influence things mildly until then.”

“Why is that you’re legend in Ransei anyway, the whole uniting the kingdoms thing I mean?” You mean, aside from the whole continent shaped like me thing Tiamat?

“Well I’ve always liked a power struggle solved by friendship so…” I started up an interesting story about Ransei’s history about when I was first made the continent.

The first time an Eevee beat this instance of me to within an inch of its life for their friends after I wiped out five of their team of six in short order, I was utterly hooked on the feeling and made it a thing in Ransei to summon me.

It’d work in a time of crisis too, if everyone in Ransei could agree on getting their heads out of their backsides, western Ransei was already there. Eastern Ransei needed help.

Goodness knows Nobunaga’s ambition was to challenge me personally to a fight and it probably would happen at the most inopportune time too. Hmm… I might even want to count on that occurring truthfully.

Author's Note

Dormarch may have messed up something with the classification system in his Spirit Core (Saint Graph Core).

375. Slush Rush.

-Pokémon Realm, Mystery Dungeon, Icy Ruins, Floor B13, Dolly-

I think we lost the large bouncing purple spiky thing in the maze, but we were running through the corridors blind and that wasn’t a good thing. Nearly bashed Pom’s face against the corners twice, Dormarch was at least doing a good job at making sure our collectively backs were covered.

Could have used that Sitrus Berry though, didn’t know that Dormarch would be dragged down the staircase with us as soon as I booked it. I was kind of missing the weight of the Digivice thing on my neck, but it did belong to my little bro and he didn’t seem upset about having it back given how he was stuck with it previously.

There’s a lot of stuff going through my head now and we had to find a way out before we get crushed or whatever a place like this does when it collapses.

We randomly came to a room and there was a staircase, there was a Pokémon in the way and it was wandering around the staircase aimlessly. Didn’t see any way to heal Pom, when was she going to wake up?

I checked Pom’s injuries through our bond, yeah I can see why she wasn’t waking up. Nothing for it, we had to fight… or… I glanced at Dormarch.

“Dormarch, use Search Hunter to get to the staircase.” Just confirming something here, so we don’t have to have a problem fighting the nearby monster. Said monster was an orange refrigerator wobbling around randomly in the room we stood outside of and it hadn’t noticed us yet, I really didn’t want to get into a fight with an ice box and I didn’t want to lose a fight with a stupid ice box.

Dormarch glanced at me and I swapped places with him, he immediately did that teleporting trick and was down the staircase, seconds later I was sitting next to him in another room.

“So just one of us has to reach an exit?” I asked idly as we were in a room full of stuff, I think I saw some of those healing blueberries here, score!

“We should stick together, given the monsters in this place can appear out of nowhere almost anywhere… well except in a teleport fragmentation scenario.” Now Dormarch was looking at what I was. “Oran berries, we could use those immediately!”

“Quick question, and I know I shouldn’t be asking this now of all times, but what happened with the Doe guy?” The eye roll I received as Dormarch quickly went to grab up one of the berries for Pom.

“His name is Fou… or at least that’s what mom calls him Dolly. I’d estimate he’s still alive, if he hasn’t left the Mystery Dungeon, then he could be in front of us or behind us.” He could be anywhere really, that is what you were saying Dormarch.

“Let’s loot this room and find the staircase!” What panic attack? Dolly D. Dalmatian wasn’t afraid of a beast that nearly caved her face in, no way. I’m completely fine despite nearly having half my face clawed off in one blow by him.

“I can feel you panicking about Fou possibly coming after us Dolly.” Right Dormarch was part of our bonds again. “We need to keep our heads about us here.”

“Well it’s best not to wait for it to happen right, so a little hurrying would be expected given we were just chased by a spike firing mutant vertical clam, what among this stuff do you think is useful? These orbs do really weird things right?” My stomach rumbled, I ignore the three or so orbs and quickly picked up some bananas that were sitting on the floor. Not caring about whether they were safe to eat or not, I split them and tossed half to Dormarch. “Eat up, while we have a chance.”

“Right.” Dormarch peeled the two bananas I gave him and I watched him eat them as I ate my bananas, they were really good and really fresh bananas… had to wonder about them being in a place like this and still tasting so good.

Needed to watch my sugar intake afterwards though, it was getting pretty high from eating that apple earlier and I knew what was healthy… Mother Delilah drilled that into my head even if I did like junk food for dogs. Wonder if peanut butter is a thing we can get more of, might comfort me about not having kibble… stop craving the kibble Dolly… you can’t get any here.

“What about the seeds?” I saw the few seeds around on the floor.

“Do we want to risk another exploding seed that almost took off mom’s head?” Dormarch asked as he was more interesting in a blue scarf that looks similar to the Pecha Scarf I had around my neck.

Hey, I remembered what Pecha Berries were! Instant anti-poison stuff, so very mystical that I could possibly walk through toxic waste and be fine.

“Fair, but one might be a reviver.” It did need to be said and if we had one of those, then I knew Pom would be much safer than she was right now.

“Can’t risk it, we only have an idea of what the berries do.” Dormarch had already gathered the two Oran Berries that were in the room, those were definitely for Pom.

“Should we take any of these orbs or just break them immediately?” We had no idea what they would do. “I think they generally do good things.”

“Giving the healing berries to Pom is a first priority at the moment… and watching out for traps. I have a vague recollection of you and Pom setting off numerous horrific traps already.” Yeah, with a room full of stuff like this, I’d almost expect that trap where everything turns into monsters to be around here somewhere. “Besides the orbs may have dangerous effects too, we can’t always rely on them to be a good thing.”

“Still going to carry them though, if it comes right down to it we’ll use them and hope for the best.” Since turning to stone or doing that and teleporting to a staircase has been exceedingly useful. I picked up the three orbs and stashed them with our floating Pom balloon. Shouldn’t that have worn off by now? Dormarch immediately got the two berries between his claws and I carefully took control of Pom’s body to open her mouth, he slowly squeezed the juice out of them and I made her swallow the good stuff down. I could even taste it because I was controlling Pom, so that was nice. “Yeah, I can feel that Pom is getting better from that already. So taking that scarf?”

“Yeah, no clue what it does, but… wearing it seems to be doing something. So it’s something like your Pecha Scarves.” It at least looked nice around my little bro’s neck, blue was a good color for him.

“As long as it doesn’t do anything horrible, it looks nice on you. Now that we got some healing for Pom and her complexion is looking better…” As soon as I said it, Pom suddenly flopped to the floor on her back. “Still looks healthy, Float!”

“How many more times can you do that?” Asked Dormarch for obvious reasons as he sent Pom worried looks as she hovered right back into the air.

“Unless I can get a recharge soon, not many.” I had like three in me at the moment, but that’s because the spell wasn’t as intensive on my skull as my other ones. “So do you think Pom would appreciate these giant jelly beans too?”

“Its food, grab them and then let’s move out before a Pokémon shows up, we’ll use them in an emergency.” Sounds good to me Dormarch.

Took a minute to pick up the strange jelly beans, they were more like fruit gummies and then we needed to start looking for that staircase down.

Dormarch took the lead and was striking the floor with the umbrella spear as we made for an exit, this room had been a decent treasure trove.

I wonder if Dylan would be jealous of me traversing a dungeon in real life and not just his pretend fantasy of Poodlewolf.

Dormarch revealed a trap with his careful floor smacking and we avoided being skewered by iron spikes coming up from the floor.

Then again, Dylan would be more worried that I ended up in such a dangerous place to begin with and would fret over me. The only way he’s going to know about this is after the fact and I have already survived it, which is why we needed to get out of here ASAP. Really needed to show them that Dormarch was back among the living, just needed to survive imminent death first.

We quickly exited the room with loot after going around the spike trap and came to another room after a corridor sections, no staircases.

Moving on, we came to a room with the staircase, we immediately ran into it. So we had some luck this floor, don’t know about the next.

Once again we were on a new floor in a blink and next to each other, we quickly looked around and prepared for a fight. One Pokémon, lithe, icy blue colors and like one of the foxes Pom befriended before we came in here.

“I’ve got this.” Dormarch was a lot healthier than I was, even roughed up, but his battle record was… not too bad actually, he wasn’t exactly formally trained by Pom on how to fight and it showed. Wonder how good he would be with training, did wonders for me.

“Right, I’ll watch Pom while you deal with it.” I moved back while Dormarch blocked a blast of fog from the fox’s mouth by opening the spear.

I didn’t know what cold was aside from that occasional chilly wind. If I’m always warm, then at least Pom wouldn’t freeze over with me nearby.

The ice blue fox suddenly glowed white and lunged forward, Dormarch planted the back end of the spear against the floor and braced as the fox hit the canopy with a ‘clang’ and bounced off into the wall.

Yeah, didn’t know if the canopy of the lance-sol was made of metal or not, but that, it looked like it hurt.

Dormarch closed up the weapon and then ran forwards and swung it into the fox’s head making them disappear like most of the monsters we’ve beaten here.

“Come on!” Dormarch stated as he cautiously tested the floor and led us to an exit from this room.

-A few floors later, fifteen minutes left, B19-

The last few floors were not too hard, we avoided the large majority of dangerous monsters and spent a lot of time peeking into rooms and going around them if they proved too dangerous. Like those ice hedgehogs with lifeless eyes with intent to slaughter us with their big claws. I swear those things were more like ice blue porcupines of death with how they sometimes surged at us rolling up into balls of ice blades that reminded me of one of Shanty’s techniques and a video game porcupine who has a half successful series and awesome music.

In any case, if I can’t bring Pom near the exit then Dormarch can just teleport to the staircase and drag us along to the next floor.

“Ice bear turn around, different way, different way!” Dormarch called out from the corner ahead and turn around I did as he started coming back this way, the large ice bears were scary to deal with and one has already roughed Dormarch up for his troubles in actually beating it.

Sure He still managed to take one down, but that was enough to let him know that it was better that we avoided the bears, especially when they were in tight corridors with us.

We went back to an intersection as Pokémon were now more often mindlessly stalking the corridors between rooms. It was Dormarch’s turn to choose a direction, other than the one we came from.

“Left!” Dormarch called out as he came up to me and we heard stomping from the corridor we just retreated from.

Taking a left, at the end of the corridor we came to a dead end with no other entrances, thankfully the small room had the staircase in it as the stomping grew worse from the direction we came from.

“Fou!” A roar shook the whole floor as fighting took place, the sounds of claws on fur and flesh could be heard faintly heard.

Both Dormarch and I froze in horror.

“You remember how I said Fou could be anywhere… yeah, thankfully we know where he is now.” Dormarch shivered with a weak smile, we both dove for the staircase together. “The unfortunate side of that information is how close to us he currently is and he’s still after mom.”

We were on the next floor when things started rumbling badly and I could even feel a chill breeze flow through the dungeon… that… that definitely wasn’t a good kind of wind, it was ominous and had my hackles jumping for the ceiling. I couldn’t get cold, but that… there was something chilling in the air when I felt it.

“Dolly, we have to get moving faster, I think the Mystery Dungeon is about to collapse.” Dormarch was right, we also needed to stay ahead of Enmity before he caught up to us.

“Mhhh… co-collapse… what…” Pom slowly opened her eyes and we looked to her, as she stirred in the air above the back end of my board. “Where… Dormarch, oh my goodness!”

“I’m here, and I’m mostly okay!” Dormarch called out and Pom flipped in air to… not stand on her hooves. She quickly untangled herself from the board strap and took a few quick step on air to hover above Dormarch while looking down, it’s kind of weird that she had some control over her floating. “No amount of therapy will ever solve the things that are wrong with me mentally, so let’s just go with me being perfectly fine.”

“Um… awkward question, but…” Yes Pom, I had to use float on you to move you around, I thought it was better than me puppeteering your body into danger while leaving my own exposed. It’s not like I could control both of them at the same time, don’t exactly have the doggy brain power for that. Sent her an abridged recent history on things. “Right, thanks for filling me in Dolly. It should cancel itself out soon right? I kind of want my hooves on the floor.”

“We’re down at least twenty floors and we don’t have much time left as the dungeon is threatening to collapse.” Dormarch stated while looking up at Pom hovering above him.

“Correction, dungeon is likely already in a state of collapse, it has yet to reach the floor you are currently on.” Well Yiggy had no filter or emotions to speak of, no point in getting angry at them for stressing Pom out. “The spatial anomaly fluctuations are worsening as we talk, I advise finding exits faster.”

-Pom-

Happy hug and cuddle stuff for later, finding a way out of here now!

“Spear?” I asked and held out a hoof, Dormarch quickly tossed it up to me. I held it tightly and at the ready as I lunged forward by kicking my hind legs and took out a vertically opening clam thing when it opened up. The pearl with a face inside it didn’t see it coming in time to close up. I jammed the weapon home hard enough to make the monster immediately disappear. “Thank you.”

“Oh and Fou was right behind us before we got here.” Dolly dropped idly.

…

“I say we follow Yggdrasil System’s advice.” I immediately started for one of the three exits to this room with Dormarch riding on Dolly’s board as I ran on air, this was really weird floating along like I was some kind of flying reindeer.

Sure Velvet says she’s not a flying reindeer, but she’s from a place called rein and she could kick off the air nearly infinitely so it’s technically flying given she can gain height like that.

Pom, now was not the time to let your mind wander while you were in danger. Dormarch looks roughed up, Dolly has a somewhat bad injury and we needed to get out of here like yesterday… they also fed me the only two healing berries they managed to acquire over the last number of floors and Dolly could have used one of them.

They were bound to be my good dogs through and through and I couldn’t help but sigh at the idea they didn’t consider letting Dolly have one of the healing berries to deal with her facial trauma.

I made my way over to a corridor, despite floating in the air the exact movements were as if I was on the floor itself. It made it easy to navigate until I stopped floating, Can’t wait to get my hooves back on the solid floor.

Down the corridor, we ended up in a room, no staircase here. I went to the nearest corridor out and kept going with Dolly and Dormarch behind me as we came upon another room with three other exits.

“Is this what you two have been dealing with?” I asked as I looked into the room and ran forward, Dolly took a step and backed off as a trap went off.

“Yes, also floating definitely has its advantages.” Dormarch stated as he and Dolly went around the trap and I had just passed over it.

“Fou!” We all froze for a moment at hearing the distant sound of the beast and we didn’t see him.

I immediately made my way for a corridor in the opposite direction of that angry noise, at least the Feral Pokémon would be drawn to him more than us with how loud he is. Dolly and Dormarch certainly didn’t disagree with the direction we were going.

“I would ask how he’s still coming after us, but I’m of the opinion that he just wasn’t natural to begin with.” Having seen the kind of attack I witnessed Dormarch use against him, I’m surprised Fou is still capable of being viably threatening.

Next room two Pokémon, I darted to the side in the air avoiding some nasty icicles and then dashed forward and downwards to slammed home the lance into the ice bears gut pushing them back. It tried to claw at me and I just hovered out of reach, then had to avoid an icicle attack from a floating snowflake thing that started to stretch out chain like tendrils for me.

A Retriever bark and a subsequent skateboard slam from Dolly kept the snowflake off me as I focused on avoid the claws swipes from the ice bear. Pokémon that occurred here in the Mystery Dungeon just seemed to work together when it came to attacking dungeon intruders.

Okay the bear’s limbs were making it a bit rough to approach, so I reeled back the spear and chucked it into the bear’s skull. The bear disappeared immediately with a meaty smack of the spearing smashing them between the eyes instead of a worse place like on their icy beard which would have taken the impact more.

I turned to fire a bark blast into the glowing snowflake monster that was attacking my lovable companions. The blast sent it into the wall and after bouncing off, it was slammed back into the wall immediately by Dormarch firing off a Retriever Bark and Dolly performed an overhead edge of her board finisher that took it out.

“Fou?!” Okay that one sounded much closer.

I didn’t say anything I made for the corridor and both Dolly and Dormarch didn’t need to be told to follow me as we went down the winding corridor, only one of us needed to reach the exit for all of us to exit. So why hadn’t Fou followed us down when we entered the last exit, does it have to do with the fact that we were a group?

We eventually reached the room and found the staircase, Fou appeared at the other end of the room as soon we got here. He glared at me angrily, his hair flared wildly as he growled in my direction.

Dolly quickly took something from the bag and threw it as hard as she could at Fou, it was one of those orbs?

The orb shattered, against Fou and… it didn’t seem to do anything Fou glared and looked a little off as if his eyes started sliding right off me. He then started running straight at us… we all moved to the side and then he just was past us… and continued going down the corridor we just came through? What the… I don’t even… how? I knew he was staring at us previously, what did that orb do to him exactly?

“Well that was weird.” Dolly stated simply as we watched Fou disappear.

“I think that orb may have made him lose sight of us or we might have become invisible to him in a myriad of ways.” Dormarch stated as he lunged down the staircase. “He looked a bit confused there for a moment.”

We appeared at the top of a snowy mountain, however I noted that I didn’t see anything for miles on end in the distance aside from the bottom of the mountain.

“Phew, we’re finally out.” Dolly relaxed.

“Negative, detecting the surroundings you are still within spatial anomaly, however the exit to the spatial anomaly is here. Detecting stable reality down the end icy valley far below you, beyond the frozen lake.” Looking at the indicated valley that Yggdrasil System mentioned, we were in the mouth of a cave high up at the start of it. Above the cave was a lot of what I recognized as loose snow, unlike Zootopia this place didn’t have a claustrophobic fissure valley at least.

“I think I see the exit…” Dormarch stated while pointing as the world began rumbling quite badly, the sky started cracking above where we were. “Not good.”

“Heightened dimensional instability, collapse imminent.” Thanks for informing us of that Yggdrasil System.

“Dormarch can you put Dolly inside the Digivice?” I quickly asked.

“No, I’d need time we probably don’t have.” Nice and snappy answer Dormarch.

“Can you at least store her board, this spear and yourself?” Dormarch nodded and he put himself in the digivice after taking Dolly’s skateboard and the paralance, Dolly hooked the device to her neck and climbed up onto my back.

“Fou!” Fou appeared behind us and he looked fairly angry, well time to make him even angrier!

I needed to add even more fear to my lambkin brain so I could effectively use it!

I let out a bark blast above the cave entrance and snow started rumbling.

“Haste me!” There was no hesitation in my asking for it.

“Haste!” As soon as the effect of Dolly’s spell took hold I immediately blitzed forward away from Fou who was still in the middle of hitting an afterimage of me as an avalanche started.

-Insert “Rift’s Collapsing, Hurry Up!!” (A Hat in Time X Wario Land 4 Mashup) here-

Pom was rushing down the slope the speed of fear burning in her heart, the Haste doubling her natural capabilities and when Fou tried to surge out of the second avalanche he got caught in because of her, she exhaled and burst ahead of the thundering snow with a Dancing Flame which she started to cyclic breath to keep bursting forward with every single breathe.

Pom’s hooves were are blur as Dolly hung on for dear life as Pom continued to blur down the slope faster than a snowboarder would.

An ice pillar erupted from the ground a Pom flickered left and had to flicker to the right as several more started popping up her path. She wasn’t even a quarter of the way down the slope and into the valley proper when ice pillars started sprouting up everywhere.

Two pillars burst out of the ground almost horizontally ahead of Pom. She kicked her rear half and slid under them before they collapsed downwards. Sending snow flying up behind them as Dolly looked back and clung to speeding Pom tighter as icicles came flying up out of the avalanche.

Pom flicked her head back at Dolly and Dolly started relaying the massive flying bits of ice coming at them were going.

With the information Dolly was relaying to her Pom dodge left and right as large pillars of sharpened ice rained from above or popped up from below.

Pom’s eyes were frantically shifting left, right, up and down so fast it didn’t even look like she was moving them at all as she was frantically trying to keep up with everything while trying to stay ahead of the avalanche she started to give herself motivation to run as hard as she could.

She tried to avoid on pillar when it shift into her path and she quickly used her front left leg to narrowly pivot around it and then it started moving after her as she regained control of her dangerous downwards dash.

Dolly quickly relayed that that ice pillar was alive, seven yellow dots appearing on it in a cross shape focused on Pom as it too gave chase along with the avalanche. It raised its left arm and shot forward to swipe at them from behind as more ice pillars popped up from the ground or came out of the sky.

“Aero!” In an effort to clear the quickly closing wall with no space to dodge through, Dolly sent them flying with a ring of wind.

Pom was launched into the air over a series of pillars that popped up and the ice pillar monster smashed through them all in a single powerful blow and was about to hit a falling Pom with its right arm, only for Fou to come flying out of the Avalanche to start viciously clawing up the ice pillar Pokémon.

Pom was falling at an angle and had little wool to slow her decent or create glide wings so she inhaled and when she felt her hooves touch the slope she exhaled and was once again running full speed which was far faster than they had been falling.

“Incoming!” At Dolly’s shout and looking at the two white fluffy poodle moth like Pokémon flying down, Pom paid attention as she dodge several more pillars of ice at speeds that if she were to ram into them directly she would surely break her neck if she hit them with her forehead.

The two moths fired off Bug Buzz attacks and the green sound wave blasts tore through the snow and ice as Pom ran along dodging around pillars. Leaning under some that landed in front of her then started leaning at acute angles and popping up over pillars that barely raised out of the ground above hoof level in an attempt to trip her.

One of the moths fired a blast of snow that Pom ducked and narrowly clipped a pillar with her right leg making her tumble until Dolly redirected their momentum to put her back on her hooves. Dolly also shifted them to the side to avoid a second snow blast from the other moth.

Both moths fired green rays of sound with Bug Buzz and was slowly inching them inwards. That the icy moths were managing to keep pace with Pom’s insane speed was impressive.

“Okay, that’s it!” Dormarch popped out of the digivice and immediately flashed into the left the moth and tore into its right wing with the spear held in his claws. This sent it tumbling into the snow to be absorbed into the avalanche.

With a second flash he then shoulder checked the other moth to the side and straight into an ice pillar where it splattered back first as Pom passed by it. It left Pom coughing and sputtering as bits of goo had got into her mouth and slowed her cyclic breathing down a bit before she managed to recover.

With two more bursts of Search Hunter, Dormarch made it back to the Digivice on Dolly’s neck.

No more ice pillars seemed to be popping up from the ground, but there was still a number of them raining from the sky.

To avoid five falling pillars Pom had to kick off three in quick succession, that were in the middle of falling to the ground, this sent those pillars spinning away from the recoil of Pom kicking off them at high speeds.

Afterward Pom had to flip herself upright and tried not to stumble as she landed on a large patch of ice roughly and she continued to speed towards the frozen lake with two shadowy afterimages trailing after her.

A though occurred to Pom and Dolly, Dormarch added to the thought and Pom narrowed her eyes at the sky as the falling ice pillars were going to break the frozen lake.

The first step onto the thin ice and the pillar slamming into almost sent her raining face first into the water, she managed to jump and have a tired Dolly reorient her with her momentum control.

Pom continued to run across the fragile ice that shattered and broke under her hooves as the surging snow from the avalanche slowed due to the shattering lake and churning freezing waters.

Continuing to keep an insane pace as she crossed the ice, Pom barely stayed ahead of the quickly breaking thin ice left in her wake. Several more ice pillars struck the lake and sit large chunks of ice capsizing all over the place, Pom kicked off the ice as something tried to pull her into the freezing depths from below.

She ran along the near vertical section of ice and kicked off before it was decimated by a pillar of ice ramming into it and flipped sideways to start running along another vertical section of ice, she could see the exit in the distance at the end of the lake.

Looking to her left at the sky, Pom narrowed her eyes and then jumped upwards into a falling ice pillars flipping it so it was horizontal and she was running along the length of it as it fell towards the lake.

As the pillar hit the lake she surged forward off of it without slowing her pace, she was even running on the ice ahead of it in seconds.

They were almost there, Pom could see the end in sight and her body was struggling to keep up with the forces she was putting on it.

Thirteen ice pillars rained from the sky and tore the bits of ice of the lake ahead of Pom apart, she narrowed her eyes and started to inhale.

While Pom was preparing to do something incredible Dolly was looking back and saw that the false sky was shattering and the mountain, the slope and everything behind them looked to be turning into shards of glass and breaking apart.

Exhaling as she ran out of ice, Pom ran along the top of the water for several steps inhaling and exhaling again when she started to sink to begin inhaling again.

Pom was successfully running across the top of the choppy water with no surface tension through pure panic and adrenaline, she was forcing herself across the water through sheer determination.

Large walrus Pokémon tried to tear into her with her teeth as they leapt from the water, falling ice pillars caused waves and blasts of ice cold water to drench her and Dolly, the ice pillar Pokémon caught up to them as running on the water was slowing Pom down drastically. Even then the ice pillar Pokémon couldn’t exactly keep up with the continuous frantic pace.

Fou could be seen moving along the edge of the lake and was starting to mimic Pom’s incredible speed by comparing it to his own and was progressively getting faster by the second.

With each burst forward, with each exhale, Pom continued to pressure herself to keep running with the speed of fear that lambkin were known for.

Surprisingly, despite every single volatile thing going on around her, Pom kept her focus forward and was even picking up speed as Dolly boosted her momentum.

“HAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” The colors of the collapsing dimension warped around Pom and Dolly, the shattering glass was almost touching upon her as she reached the end of the lake and before the breaking glass of the dimension could reach her she touched solid land and surged forwards so fast she left a trail of colors behind her as everything stretched while exploding into nothingness behind her.

Fou managed to slip into her wake and used the vacuum Pom was creating to keep pace, but he could not actually catch up to her as she pulled away.

The whole strange dimensional world crashed completely a split second after Fou entered the exit.

-Nixtorm, Mystery Dungeon entrance, Pom-

In a burst of white light, I was suddenly up in the air and falling toward the ground. I pulled Dolly from my back and curled up around her as I hit the snow and several rocks hard as I went bouncing across the landscape.

I eventually skid to a stop.

Okay, body in agony, completely out of breath and that was the fastest I think I’ve ever gone in my life and I’m still hyped up on adrenaline because I think my Haste ended five seconds ago and I was still going under inertia, but still alive… and with Dormarch!

“Fou!” I layed there as Fou rose up over me he leaned forward glaring into my frightened eyes, he eventually leaned back, snorted, crossed his arms, looked away from me and huffed. “Fou…”

Huh?

“Fou.” He simply stated again in the same tone and then started to scamper off on all fours and left me and Dolly alive, he wasn’t taking advantage of my condition to kill me?

Why? I’m kind of confused now, so he didn’t want to kill me this time.

Living really hurts right now my poor abused lungs, heart and everything else wrong with me at this given moment.

“Heh heh, whoo… wish I could get that kind of ride all the time Pom!” Dolly stated as she pried her way out of my death grip and Dormarch popped out of the digivice looking at me worriedly.

“You’re health is again on the lower end of things…” Dormarch sighed as he nuzzled me. “I’m glad we managed to make it through all that. Just take a deep breath and relax, don’t try to talk.”

“Sorry to say this, but we’re taking advantage of you guys!” Meowth stated as he and Team Pocket showed up with a tied up Weavile, Curdle in a jam jar and several familiar gagged and bound foxes.

“Why is….” I started coughing, my lungs really couldn’t take too much more punishment. “Curdle in… a jam jar?”

“I said don’t try to talk Pom, if you need to talk I can do it for you.” Such a good boy Dormarch was, it was so nice to have him back and fretting over my health, because I obviously wasn’t going to do that for myself. “Also sorry about causing you’re legs to turn golden.”

I looked at my front legs covered in a golden glow and suppressed it.

“It… ugh… okay...” I said, he simply pointed a claw and I looked at a golden glow starting to creep up my right hind leg and quashed that immediately. “Still… kay…”

Dormarch pointed to my front right leg and I looked at what he was pointing at because I crushed the Chrysomallus glow going on and then noticed a small portion of my wool on my front right leg above the hoof had turned a golden color… that’s not good, it no longer needed to glow since it was now naturally gold.

I was going to start hyperventilating when I felt Dolly’s soothing paw rub the back of my neck and Dormarch wrapped his goofy claws around me and squeezed me tight with tears in his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, very touching, now let me tell you how it’s going to go from here…” Meowth started to say and I just calmly opened the slightly modified bag, because Dormarch needed materials for Dolly’s eyepatch from somewhere and upturned it and spilled out all the contents in Team Pocket’s direction. Not caring about any of it one bit. After a bit of silence Meowth decided to say something. “Right then, you already guessed what we wanted for your friends and your lives. Well you’re friend Curdle was kind of hard to keep tied up, she kept slipping the string shot bonds being a pile of cream and everything we decided to stuff her in a jar. Apparently doesn’t need to breathe either and if we put air holes in it, we’re fairly sure she would have escaped through them. Also, thank you for doing business with us, we’ll drag you back to town, let you loose and won’t leave you out here in the middle of nowhere to freeze to death, how nice of us right?”

You said this while taking up most of the items we picked up in the Mystery Dungeon. Surprsingly they didn’t take the stuff I was wearing, the stuff Dolly was wearing and they let me keep the mysterious spear… hooray… wished I could be a little more enthusiastic about not having to walk at the very.

“Scourge pick them up all and let’s get a moving!” Meowth stated jovially.

Curdle could at least look a little upset about being trapped in a jar once used for preservatives, I don’t even care about the blatant extortion going on here.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“That was an impressive feat of speed, agility and pure adrenaline fueled terror.” My dry commentary was followed by me slurping up some tasty noodles from a hot soup bowl offered by Tiamat.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mortal ‘book it’ quite as hard as that.” Mew then started slurping up their own soup noisily.

“Now to redirect her towards Valora sooner rather than her going on her own later after a rest break she very much deserves right now.” Celebi stated as we watched Team Pocket carry them back towards civilization. “We need to start quickly countering Moon Cell before they start getting even more bright ideas and Pom is a major distraction for the magic computer, since anti-magic entity is kind of a major weakness for it.”

376. Snow Slowing Down.

Author's Note

Haven't posting anything for a year, sorry I've been a bit slow on posting this.

This is the last year, I have to finish the story within this year or it's not going to be finished at all. But can I do it? I've not much time left as fan fiction writer honestly, but it'll be an adventure getting to the end of things.

Good thing I've already planned to start the year off with Pom resting for a day and going through multiple emotional moments.

Since next is the 'Pom Vs. Moon Cell' arc, before the cooldown world and the remainder of this story.

376. Snow Slowing Down.

-???, Oleander-

“Claude C. Kenny.” Introduced the guy, before he stopped and stared at a water wheel for some reason. “…”

“What, what is it?” I asked curiously, apparently an intelligent species known as Hoovers were not an unknown quantity in this universe, fortunately I’ve been mistaken for one and have apparently got stuck on a backwater low technology planet beyond the usual shenanigans Wrex and Buttina pull. So no different from Equus really, except they probably don’t have the crazy schizo-tech here like Equus does at times.

Fred was on this planet somewhere, I could already feel it.

“Air Slash!” Slinging a fist forward and towards the ground, Claude launched a burst of air that rocketed away along the ground and slammed into a tree in a destructive explosion of wood. “I just learned how to do that.”

“You learned that… from looking at a water wheel?” When I received a nod, the follow up question was certainly required here. “How?”

“I don’t know honestly, just something about looking at a water wheel.” Staring flatly at Claude, he started to get a little uncomfortable and I continued to narrow my gaze at him.

“That makes no sense whatsoever and you know it!” I yelled angrily.

“Well I think it’s amazing.” Rena stated from next to us. “Um… excuse me I have to go home can you two look around the village for a bit.”

She ran off mumbling something about a sword of light. Unfortunately a phase pulse gun was not a sword… I would know I still owned five lightsabers and my key-blade was more a sword of light than that gun was.

I’ll just stick to following Claude around until I run across Fred, he can’t possibly do too much harm when I’m not around right? Who am I kidding, it’s Fred! I better find him soon before he dooms this entire planet with a giant rock or something trying to find me.

I just have to wonder, what kind of series of volatile insanity was I getting into this time?

-Pokémon Realm, igloo outside the southern side of Hail Hollow, evening, Dolly-

“So guess what happened recently?” I asked cheerfully as Pom was still cuddling Dormarch with a small smile behind me.

I’d hate to ruin such a perfect position, but Pom has been at this for more than a few hours and Dormarch has been milking it for all it was worth. As in, since we got back here Pom hasn’t let him go and he stayed in that hug and held onto that feeling like it was floating toy for a pool. Felt like I needed to keep my head above water too at times.

“You seem particularly cheerful, what happened Dolly?” Must be dad coming off of work, he was the one to pick up. “Judging by the background you’re still in the snow lands place Dante mentioned.”

“Just look, never lost a pup yet and still won’t have!” I turned the screen to show him Dormarch’s predicament.

Not that Dormarch was struggling to escape Pom’s grasp, his three fish tails were shifting lazily.

“Heh heh, that’s my daughter, finding out how to revive a lost family member somehow.” So dad wasn’t even going to question Dormarch being back, but he did look happy for us. “So is Pom okay? She’s looking a little roughed up.”

“Yeah, she’s not going to be doing much more moving today aside from cooking dinner. Tomorrow some friends of ours are going to try and earn some supplies to help us out until we figure out where we’re heading to next. Since we don’t have much of anything at the moment, we’re kind of stuck in snow town north of everything going on.” I was glad for the magnetism Pom had right now, the Frosty Foxes certainly were helping with food for this evening. They were quite nice like that and some the few people in Blizz-storm that were.

“Kibble withdrawal?” Dad asked carefully.

“Bad… real bad, like I’d want to use words you’d think I wouldn’t know kind of bad, but I’ll live.” Ignore my twitchiness at being reminded that there was no kibble within who knows how many miles of me. I was doing so well with not thinking about it so far.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine too.” My father chuckled and then I saw something in their background that made me pause.

“Okay, who’s that?” I asked as I pointed and my father turned to look and the glowing spooky bulky blob of a Dalmatian that floated next to that zombie chicken Spot. Hey family was family, Great Aunt Spot was definitely family and remembering her name was important as she was part of it.

“Ancestor from Delilah’s side of the family, his name is Rolly, things have been a bit awkward between him and Spot since he showed up.” That’s not exactly hard to see dad. Another spook showed up and she looked really small, but wasn’t exactly young either and I wasn’t about to say the ‘R’ word where it could be heard but… yeah it definitely defines her size. “That one’s Cadpig, apparently she’s the acting spiritual guide of Delilah’s massive family.”

“Hello there!” Cadpig stated and waved at me before turning to Spot. “Lucky would have come too Spot, but he decided to reincarnate and he’s got a pending date with rebirth. Who knows what he’ll become, maybe he’ll be a Dalmatian again, his luck is a bit grating like that.”

“Nice ears.” I stated as I looked at the tiny ghost dog that came from my step mother’s side.

“Thanks, you too dimensionally separated family member, I hope to meet you again in the far future… well if I can figure out how to cross the boundaries of reality as an incorporeal entity to find your soul after you expire.” Cadpig bowed to me and then looked to Rolly and Spot, her demeanor doing a one eight into a tail grind. “Now you two work it out or else, I know Rolly is a ghostly lummox and you’re a living impaired chicken, but can you seriously just cut it with the tension already?!”

Both Spot and Rolly gulped and sighed in a similar manner, those two were obviously close friends in life.

“Same as she ever was…” Spot mumbled through her beak while crossing her wings.

“Yep, that’s my sister for you, sweet one second and then vinegar the next when angry about something.” Rolly stated while nodding.

“I’ll leave you to it dad, looks like you’re going to busy trying to make sure those three don’t cause problems.” I stated and Cadpig looked a bit offended.

“What, us, cause problems… maybe for an evil De Ville.” Cadpig huffed paws on her hips as she floated above the couch, well she had spunk at the very least for something that small and cute. “Did it all the time when I was alive with Rolly, Lucky and Spot. Still doing it even now, there’s an unsurprisingly large amount of evil spirits from that particular family running around. You’d think their family would at least physically die out with all the chronic backstabbing and a desire to ruin people’s lives. At least the good ones are easier to count on two paws, the most recent one is that Hunter kid. Didn’t feel like haunting him.”

“Okay dad, I’ll call you and the ‘fam’ later if I’m still alive to do so.” I flicked the device to standby and then made my way over to Pom, cuddle pile here I come.

-The next day, Dormarch-

I was looking outside the igloo as the sun rose and filled Hail Hollow with reflecting sunlight, still quite cold and I wonder when the people of Nixtorm will figure out that the monster is leaving… well I’m officially leaving after we were done here.

We’re not going to say a word about my body having free run of Nixtorm for the last few weeks of constant pain and suffering for this kingdom. Not that this kingdom wasn’t enough of a pain to mom already.

“Dormarch… do you want to build a snow lamb~?” Mom asked as she nuzzled the back of my neck, before slowly pushing me out into the cold snow. I was going to have to get used to being pseudo-biological and digital. “It’ll naturally be quite a sight, since it’ll already be all naturally white~.”

“Can we not do the song thing mom?” I asked while wilting under her constant affectionate attention. She wasn’t letting me out of her sight and I appreciated that, because I wasn’t about to let her out of mine.

If the Chrysomallus thing was worsened because of me, well, I don’t know what to do about it as I can’t.

I glanced at the ring of golden wool above mom’s right hoof the rest of her wool beyond was mostly white if it hadn’t been soaking in her blood from the stab wound. She still hasn’t fully recovered from her blood loss or injuries and still managed to run ludicrously fast.

How much more was she going to sacrifice for me, Dolly and her friends to get them back home?

“Sure, as everything will be alright~!” Dolly sang from the other side of me continuing the song as she drew my attention away from staring at mom.

“Please don’t make this a thing…” I said sourly, but my tails betrayed my feelings by wagging.

“So let’s go build a snow lamb, shouldn’t take an hour I’d say~.” Okay mom was really doing this on purpose, or else she wouldn’t be smiling and she rarely smiles.

“Afterwards for the rest of the day we could play~.” Dolly really wasn’t trying to stop it either.

“Well then, why don’t you show me how It’s done~” Wait did I just sing that, oh digital entity of a higher power it’s viral!

“I can already tell that this is going to be lots of fun~!” As long as you didn’t exacerbate your injuries mom… I worry about your health and you’re in your twenties for crying out loud!

“I kind of want to build a snow lamb~…” I stated and continued to sing along, while moving out into the snow towards a nice clearing.

“To start you off all you need is a large snowball~.” Mom started rolling up a large ball of snow and then smashed it into a mound to shape the snow into an elongated oval on the ground and started on another large ball of snow. Her hooves were good for rolling and shaping snow, she was talented at it. “Another smaller for the head and five more beyond it all~.”

I started to build two snow balls and Dolly started to help by making two other large snowballs. While this was going on, Mom placed the slightly large snowball on the oval and started shaping it with her hooves to make a head.

“I’ll get the back legs, you work on the fronts~.” Dolly stated with a grin as she slapped the snowballs against the back end creating two hips and started shaping the legs up from that. “Maybe we can go sledding today and do some awesome stunts~?”

“After yesterday, I’m going to gently say no~.” Mom sang softly. “Not after running down a mountain being chased by more than just snow~.”

“Okay seriously, stop with the singing… please?” They stopped immediately, but we didn’t stop making the snow lamb. I could even hear Pom and Dolly humming the rest of the tune as we did.

After we were done making it, it didn’t look too bad, it was a simple lamb at rest on their belly with smiling closed eyes and quite a broad grin as if they were a sleeping angel.

“It’s cute.” I said after looking at it for a moment and taking it in, we had worked on this together and I was keeping this memory of it for posterity.

“So what else do you want to do?” Mom asked as she crouched next to me, this zest for life really doesn’t come to her eyes often, so I might as well ask her for something fun to do before something comes along and ruin things.

“Um… can we have a snowball fight?” I asked in an uncertain manner, I hadn’t been around snow much and this might be my only chance.

“I’ll join.” Quetal said walking up to us from the direction of Hail Hollow, he looked fairly melancholy as his wilted posture would suggest.

“So did you find out what you wanted to?” Mom asked with concern, aside from a need for supplies Quetal had been looking for information on something important to him.

“Yes, I’m actually kind of sad that I did… my brother’s killer is already dead and it wasn’t by my claws, he didn’t die by pleasant means either. Feel kind of sorry for him really, being eaten alive slowly is not a way to go. I didn’t get any closure on that front, but give me half a day to find my brother’s frozen body if it’s still where it lays on the mountainside. I want to bury it deep enough that another Ice Type won’t disturb it and eat it.” We all gave Quetal a concerned look, even Dolly lost her peppy attitude. ”I’m just going to move on with my life after that.”

“That… sounds like a healthy way of handling it.” Following Moms continued concern for Quetal’s wellbeing, Quetal scooped up a mass of snow with his left claw and shaped it with his right before hurling it into mother’s chest where it splattered harmlessly. It even got a giggle out of her. “Well if that was an invitation to not talk about it, I’ll take it!”

“Thank you.” Sighed out Quetal in a somber tone, before his eyes sharpened as did Moms a second later. “After this I’ll set out for where my brother probably still is, his body would still be perfectly preserved in how cold it gets around here.”

Pom scooped up a bit of snow with her hoof, I dug up some snow of my own with my claws, Dolly had a snowball in paw already hefting it and looking about and Quetal started making another one while smiling at us.

Before we knew it we were hurtling masses of snow at each other, laughing, playing around with small snow forts and simply living without any stress for a short while. That Mom could even get away from being positively paranoid for even a little while felt nice, I think she was doing it for my sake to get my mind off the fact that my body was running around destructively.

I logically knew it wasn’t my fault, since how was I supposed to know something called Moon Cell would take it and try to puppeteer a weapon out of it? One that was used against my mother if I remember right and that made Moon Cell my enemy, one that mom might have to deal with soon.

-A little while later, sitting next to the sleepy looking smiling snow lamb and two snow dogs, Pom-

Dormarch has had a lot of stuff happen to him, but it was nice to see that he can be relatively happy. Goodness knows what’s coming for us next… like I ever could find solace in the future, who knows what will eventually kill me.

It’s probably going to be largely self-inflicted in the direst of situations... looking at the small bit of golden wool wrapping around my leg like Dormarch had when he didn’t think I’d notice. I think he blames himself for it, but I’d have gladly given up more of myself for him.

I bit into the Sitrus Berry I held in my left hoof and enjoyed the taste a bit as it got to work healing me moderately, I looked up the slope as Dolly and Dormarch came sliding down. It was so nice to see them getting along… and Dolly does a backflip without restraints or safety gear. At least she wears her helmet in a fight. That thing saved her from Fou’s claws and from possibly worse, the three scars on her face were healing… Dolly whine about her awesome scars not sticking around as she wanted to remember the escapade we recently lived through.

So when was I going to burst the bubble and finally ask if Dormarch knows who was behind puppeteering his body when he wasn’t in it and sent them after me?

He knows something, he has to at this point, but I hadn’t the heart to try and push him today or confront him. I just wanted to relax today and not be stressed out about my next big adventure, which will be finding Shanty and the others, then deal with whatever painful thing comes my way as usual.

All I had to do today was sit here and keep an eye on Dormarch and Dolly to make sure Dolly wasn’t doing anything too dangerous. The two were currently making snow angels next to each other and laughing.

“Well I best get started on lunch.” Seeing as I could see the Frosty Foxes bringing food, it was about time to do some cooking.

I wonder if Curdle was okay from being stuffed into a jar like she had been and should be left wandering around Nixtorm alone like she was?

…

I’m sure Curdle was fine.

-A short time after lunch-

“Remind me to never get on another makeshift sled with Dolly unless my life is on the line.” Dormarch stated as he came up to me.

“Was it all the backflips and wild spinning before landing upright?” My answer was a shiver and a shaky nod. “She has a slightly more extreme definition of fun, keep that in mind as she’s an athletic dog with magic that bolsters her maneuverability and she uses it every chance she gets to do something ‘cool’ or ‘awesome’.”

“I wouldn’t call kickball a sport and I haven’t a clue why other dogs would watch people playing it.” Dormarch was not so sporty and preferred a lot more mentally stimulating stuff, I was quite good for that.

“Eh, I think it’s the spectacle of it that is the draw for the Camden Town dogs and most dogs in that given region of the world.” We were outside the igloo looking up at the arcing walls of the hollow. The reflection of the sun’s rays bouncing everywhere creating a mystical on a now quiet kingdom probably dreading when Skull X was going to come back.

That thing never would if I had anything to say about it, unless Dormarch direly needed to transform into its original form, that of Chaosdramon X, for some reason.

“Can I get some help here?” Turning we saw Quetal dragging a frozen body that didn’t look like it had been nibbled on, one that needed to be buried.

“Of course we’ll help.” It would take an hour or two, but we’d help bury a long frozen body, then we returned to the igloo outside of Hail Hollow.

-Some time later-

The funeral burial was a somber affair, but now we were back to relaxing and having more fun.

After Quetal had a long and hard sorrowful cry of finally putting his brother to rest, we had an ice sculpture contest to get our minds off the morbid deed of helping Quetal with some closure.

Quetal won the contest by a mile, being quite artistic and the Frosty Foxes supplying the ice were equally impressed with his talent.

It wasn’t long before Dormarch approached me with limp tails, making me wonder what was wrong.

“Mom… I want to learn how to fight. I’m tired of entirely relying on my signature move so much, it’s kind of energy intensive.” Well that was a loaded thing to ask of me Dormarch, especially so soon after getting you back.

My only response to this had to be measured. Sighing I stood up and moved away from the ice sculptures, Velvet would have had some fun here… if she didn’t immediately dislike the local Pokémon for their attitudes and cold shoulders. She would have liked it.

Maybe they had a hockey league? Not like they had much after Skull X started terrorizing them.

“Okay, we can spend an hour or two with training, Dolly can help.” After I said that, Dolly raised her head from where she was laying in the snow trying to mimic the sleepy snow dogs.

“Yeah, I do kind of need more practice… and I want to work out some things with the ‘Float’ spell.” Dolly stated as she stood up on her hind legs and sauntered over to us, she preferred fighting on all fours and only fought on her hind legs if she was wielding her board or the stone bone. This was good practice for moving like a biped as she had the capability for it.

-An hour or two-

“Good job Dormarch!” I praised despite the fact that he was sprawled out on his back and covered in bruises. I still didn’t understand what Dormarch meant by him being Pseudo-biological now, but I guess bruising is one thing that made him seem more alive, that and how soft his fur was. He might actually bleed actual blood instead of cubes too.

It was curious to think about, but I really didn’t want Dormarch to get hurt too much. Dolly played as rough as she thought her siblings could handle and Dormarch was quite fairly resilient.

“Yeah, you might even eventually get past my green triangle thing.” Dolly commented cheekily. “Might call it an action demand, since it kind of demands me to take action.

“I don’t know what the green triangles Dolly is talking about are, but they hurt…” Moaned Dormarch as Dolly danced about on her hind legs while thrusting her front paws forward, the surprising things I can learn to teach to a dog.

“Dolly has had more practice and has some rather unusual abilities, even I don’t know what the triangle thing is about entirely other than it presents an opportunity for her to do something incredible instinctively.” The effects were usually ridiculous and I’ll admit I’ve never seen anything quite like it before and I was watching from Dolly’s vision of it popping up randomly as she fights with or without a weapon. Without seems to make it more common overall. She could ignore it or take advantage, there wasn’t a requirement to go for the triangle and it popped up in particular instances of danger, even allowed her to use Dormarch’s signature move, ‘Search Hunter’, against him and was that quite an eye opening sight to behold. It usually makes her avoid an injury or do something incredible. “It’s actually never steered her wrong come to think of it, it can be evasion, it can be a well-timed attack and it can even be a strange semi-magical defensive field that’ll block an attack she normally wouldn’t be able to for a split second.”

“That and having known how to dance before meeting Pom and being taught how to move on my hind legs helps with me knowing how to ‘move it, move it’.” Dolly shook her flank and grinned. Again, not that Dolly uses her hind leg movements for more than wielding a weapon. She basically has Fleet Cunning Doe mastered to an intermediate level before I got to her, she seemed particularly talented with that combat style. “Also learned parkour from a squirrel, can’t forget one of my nuttiest buddies from the canal crew.”

Yeah, the squirrel thing might as well be her own style, but it wasn’t combat oriented and nobody said it couldn’t be. It at least gave her a strong base for learning Fleet Cunning Doe, leaping, rolling and attacking while dodging. Really haven’t had to fight an opponent that I was basically on par with.

“Honestly, balance should come more naturally to you Dormarch since you have the three tails.” Yeah fluffy fish tails I liked to hug.

I knew Dormarch was a bit clumsy and better at range with his one long range attack then close up with notable multiple attack programs he has for close combat. Normally Dormarch’s numerous close range attacks would have geared him for being a close up fighter, at best his varied close up attacks moves were more suited for breaking away to use his go to Retriever Bark or his secondary go to Wild Bark to stun his opponent that continued to try and close in. A more maneuverable opponent like Dolly was hard for Dormarch to keep up with and Wild Bark was a bit too short in range, after Dolly figured out the range she played keep away the entire time with hit and run tactics.

Dormarch has actually been doing great for this lesson, he learned things quicker than Dolly at least and I chalk that up to Dolly’s attention span and personality.

“Well excuse me for having big goofy claws, they are standard for most Digimon apparently.” Grumbled Dormarch with his front legs crossed as he sat up. “Also I have a new program from some old data lying around in me, Wild Howling, probably came from the Etemon data that was used to bridge the gap between my digital soul core and the spirit core. It’s more powerful version of Wild Bark… should be able to hit multiple things further away with it. Unfortunately it’s indiscriminate with targeting unlike my Wild Bark program. Okay, let me see if this will still work... running program Cure Liquor.”

Dormarch’s bruises quickly faded away and he grinned while wagging his tails, yet it felt like it used quite a bit of energy and I sent some good feelings towards him about knowing he was alright and being in good humor. Digimon got stronger with good emotional energy right?

I could feel him absorbing the good feelings like a changeling might, I wouldn’t know, I’m not connected to Ocellus to know what that really feels like. I think Digimon created an emotional support feedback loop that, when partnered up with the people they tend to end up with, they grew enormously strong from it faster than a Digimon would otherwise as they share their partners pains, victories and experiences. Explains why Dazzle was getting more open with her friends and it was thanks to Frizzle being there for her and being a generally calming influence.

Explains so much about Dormarch seeing me as his mother, I did kind of want children… kind of hard to do with Tianhuo and it would probably be a blessing of the goddess Jiutian if it ever came to pass.

“Hey guys, do you want to watch the northern lights with me later tonight? It’s probably the only joy aside from spending time with you that I’ll get out of this whole adventure.” Quetal had been doing his own practice off to the side, he’s been quite quiet and was trying to deal with having finally buried the only remaining family member he could ever remember having. He was going through a lot and we were here for him. “It’s also one of the few things I liked about Nixtorm that’s left for me here and I want to share it with you at least once. I personally just want to see them one last time and then put this place far behind me for warmer climates, like Aurora.”

“Sure thing Quetal, how does it feel to be a Weavile now?” Finally I asked this politely while staring at his fan of head feathers, makes him look rather distinguished like his ears and the forehead gem grew much larger, there’s also one less tail feather and the other two became a bit larger.

It was a rather curious evolution to me, what did it really change aside from the extra claw and the headdress look Quetal now sported?

Well if I’m looking for positive side effects of his evolution, his claws actually looked a bit more flexible and he could maybe hold onto things safely now. So from an evolutionary standpoint, Quetal gained the ability to hold objects as his claws had changed slightly to be more like digits instead of just being two mostly rigid weapons at the ends of his arms.

“Not very different, slightly taller, more balanced and the extra claw is a little nice… plus I am stronger.” There was a pause and Quetal looked upset as he flicked his new claw into being a bit opposable, as far as evolutions went Ice Type Sneasels had a hard time getting to theirs what with having to find a very specific item to evolve so they could actually pick up things. “Didn’t help me beat Fou though.”

“You held him off long enough for us to at least get pretty far down before he caught up to us.” I still didn’t know where Fou was and he could be watching us at this minute. He would come after me again eventually… right? “Also I don’t think beating Fou is a bar I’d want to set for myself if I was in your position. You did the best you could and you did a lot more than I could have asked of you, besides you’re still getting used to your new form.”

I picked up an apple and threw it at Quetal. Instead of slicing it up with his claws by accident, he actually caught it using his new digit on his right claw.

He actually smiled a bit at the novelty of being able to hold something safely without ripping into it with his claws, it’ll be much easier for him to interact with others now and of course that hadn’t stopped him from trying to do it safely before. He still had to be careful, his claws were quite sharp if not sharper from the evolution.

Back to my though on Fou, I had used a self-inflicted wobble counter and he still came back not too long after that blow to the head… and being put through a stone wall. That still strong enough to finish off the Skull X body off as Dormarch was regaining control of it was a terrifying moment, but Dormarch managed to pull himself together in the end with the massive amount of digital energy floating in the air and using the remainder for that star attack.

Fou was still quite terrifying to me on a number of levels, I hit him with an entire avalanche once he caught up to us after Dormarch hit him with an absurdly powerful attack I can barely remember looking like the stars themselves were flying from his claws. At some point he got free of that avalanche and managed to chase me out of the Mystery Dungeon at a speed faster than I was moving… without the requisite exhaustion that would result from doing so.

A part of me is glad that Fou got out and another part of me is internally screaming about how fast he had to be to do that and he wasn’t under Haste effects like I was. He got strangely stronger and weaker in a variety of ways at odd times. It was bizarre that he could run so much and show so little exhaustion when I was powering my way down to the fullest of my abilities, pushing my bodily limits without essentially breaking them through sheer force of will.

In fact… that might be it, it might be what Fou’s secret is. I’ll just have to confirm it if I see and fight him again.

“Yeah, I did last longer than everyone else in fighting him.” Quetal at least looked a little proud about that small accomplishment given everyone else involved in the fight had been badly mauled and he hadn’t come out of things much better. “He was so strong and only seemed to weaken the more of us he took us out.”

Okay, my suspicion about Fou is getting stronger now, but some clarification would really help know the truth once and for all.

“To be fair we could only knock him out or slow him down, he seems like an unstoppable force of nature.” Which would be him being a true beast as I ascribed to him. He wasn’t canine as his appearance might suggest, that much was very clear to me given his actions around me. I looked around and shivered a bit about not knowing if he was nearby or not. “Let’s change the subject and not talk about half Ghost half Normal Type monstrosities with an insane amount of stamina and recovery abilities bordering on the lines of being purely impossible.”

For where would Fou be getting the energy to heal from his wounds from? If he had magic, he wasn’t using it in a manner that I would counter it naturally. The word ‘nature’ seemed to be an important aspect to it.

“Okay, how about this… until we set out for the evening to see the northern lights, we can do some ice fishing or at least we can learn while trying to catch some fish… Dolly kind of needs meat after the last few things she ate.” Yeah, Dormarch had the right of it. “Her nutrition has been a bit lopsided and some fish, salt and a few carrots should fix things.”

“I know a spot for that!” The Glaceon said gleefully as they bounded up to us.

“Yeah, it’ll even be close to where I think you would want to view the northern lights of Nixtorm from anyway.” The majestically fluffy Ice Type Ninetails added.

“Yeah, fish and Pom can cook them too!” The Zorua added cheerfully. Looks like dinner for the carnivores would be fish soup, I’m quite good at making that by now.

I’ll stick to my vegetarian diet, even if I could eat meat and had done so once, I didn’t like the idea of it becoming a natural thing for me. Now eggs, I wasn’t about to give up on eating those, provided they didn’t have intelligent creatures like Pokémon in them and weren’t fertilized.

“I do now how to make a good fish soup, at least my boys back home loves the stuff.” I stated as the Frosty Foxes, apparently they are going to be a rescue team by the time I leave, took point and started leading us north of the Hollow Hail city.

-Lake and riverside, nighttime, Dormarch-

I looked up at the stars and waving ribbons of beautiful lights of Nixtorm, it’s a memory I would never forget for as long as I’m able.

Leaning against move, she smiled and wrapped a hoof around me in a hug, on her other side was Dolly also staring up at the sky with wonder.

Quetal was sitting right next to us too looking at the stars more than the lights.

“Goodbye and sorry I didn’t do it sooner.” Quetal said silently and a shooting star shot across the sky, he calmly wrapped his claws around his knees and then his attention diverted back to the ribbons of lights dancing in the sky.

It was a wonderful night.

“So, where to next?” Curdle asked cheerfully as she had sparkles in her eyes from staring at the shifting sky lights. “Heard Valora was getting into all kinds of problems and that there was a cool blade hoofed goat running around saving a lot of people in the crisis going on there, also there’s talk of this giant white feathered Psyduck having a handle on organizing things with his strangely dressed Charmander friend, I’ve never heard of such weird beings like that before. Also lots of legendary Pokémon seemed to be quarantining the entire coastal kingdom region to keep anything from leaving, apparently the problem is so bad as to warrant that kind of attention.”

It ‘WAS’ a wonderful night, until Curdle showed up, opened her mouth and had mom all twitchy and raring to run off to the Steel Type Kingdom of Valora.

I even sent the smiling pile of cream a scathing glare. Mom needed more than a day to fully recover from what she just went through, she also needs to grow back most of her wool too as she was mostly defenseless!

We still needed at least half a day to get all the supplies we needed and then we’d definitely be setting out to the east as soon as we got them. Her charges were in danger and I know mom all too well, she’d go above and beyond for those she cares for and much to her constant detriment when she needed rest.

“That’s… nice...” Said an incredibly twitchy Pom. “You’ll start seeing those absurd things quite soon if you plan to go with us. You could stay here and start a business… the Pokémon around here are warming up slightly because of you.”

“Hey, don’t count yourself short, the Frosty Foxes seemed to shake off the bitters as soon as you showed up!” Curdle twirled in place and struck a pose. “I’m with you all the way, creamy hero Curdle will continue to be at your service Team Leader of Rescue Team Harmony, even if the Pokémon around here do appreciate a good tasty Alcremie like me!”

Pom ignored her and pulled out the device to call Tianhuo, she was looking a lot more cheerful and hopeful… but there was a notable edge to her current smile and I sent Dolly a look and she made off pawed gesture back and nodded knowingly.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

A Smoochum appeared before me, before turning back into Mew.

“Are you sure spreading those rumors was a good idea?” Mew asked worriedly to those in the room.

Well the threat of Skull X was taken care of, it seemed I have successfully found a way to restore Pom’s missing partner and son to her. So that was a positive side effect of dragging her to this world and giving her the benefits she wanted, she was my wild card in the war and she was becoming more and more necessary by the day. She’ll play herself without me having to play the cards in my hoof.

“Betting five to one, things will turn out better if Pom shows up in Valora sooner.” Celebi stated clinically trying not to show how upset doing this made them.

“Better for who?” Yes, Mew had the right of it. “Also, side note, Curdle is delicious! I knew we were on the right track with the weird edible species line.”

“Correct question Mew.” I solemnly stated while lowering my head, I was going to owe Pom more once I told her of the duplicity to get her moving towards Valora.

I would definitely tell her if she survives everything to come, but she was a good distraction that would force Moon Cell to stop focusing on escaping the net successfully too soon before we were ready and far more on trying to kill Pom now that they were down a super weapon. They still have yet to field servants, but it was only a matter of time before that happened… I already seeded my own.

“Who’s in the direct path of Pom should she go straight for Valora?” I queried rhetorically as the floating screen showed two Pokémon, a Zacian and a Zamazenta that weren’t my children… but they were heroes that would fight for this world.

The two known as Arthur of the Excalibur and Mash of the unbroken Shield. Curious that they should be in Pom’s path. It might come to blows if Arthur becomes upset at seeing the Rhongomyniad, I’ve researched the histories behind these otherworldly figures and there’s a bit of love and hate from the various Arthurs about that spear and what it could do.

Should have done more research about Gilgamesh, but we currently have a better one wandering around now.

377. Coast Is Clear?

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Maries-

“I can’t believe Jaded would do that to Saddle Arabia!” Mara of us said with a snarl.

“Oh that wasn’t Jaded, that one is me.” Stated Kuril as she stopped to look at the newspaper. “Sorry for the confusion girls, but you can’t get angry at Jaded for that one.”

“Oh, good to know, I was about to metaphorically tear into Jaded about it and might have asked to use your stock of possibly illicit witch potions to do so.” Fizzy was as upset as we were until Kuril said that, but now she was narrowing her eyes. “Why did you do it? I can understand Jaded still has a chip in her shoulder about time travel shenanigans and a history with the country, but what did they do to bother you?”

“A rather annoying group of Saddle Arabian’s dine and dashed us, then had the gall to rate the restaurants food a two out of ten after ordering one of the most complicated gourmet things that I barely know how to make. So I decided to make sure Saddle Arabia knew about it and that it’s their problem if it happens again, so they might want to walk on eggshells because there might be two La Perms trying to destroy a name soon enough… also those particular Saddle Arabian’s homes were the ones that belonged to rich nobles who could fully afford my food and I generally don’t gouge my customers. As you can see, my little Jaded is not the only one they should avoid angering.” With that Kuril sauntered back towards the kitchen with a grin and a flicking tail as she tipped her purple hat to us, the three of us looked back at the newspaper and the picture of one of a number of sink holes made from Kuril’s signature two-part safe explosion potions having gone off. Before she entered the kitchen, Kuril stopped to address everyone. “Everyone listen up, I can find out where you live easily enough and I don’t need my kitten to petty kitty someone into the ground, I can do that well enough personally! Please remember that just because I am a friendly witch, it doesn’t mean you can walk all over me and disrespect me just because you think you can get away with it by being popular, rich or even famous. Also Jaded’s incident is on page four, if you still want to be angry with what she managed to pull despite everyone watching her most of the time. Even Princess Luna should be impressed that her own nation of 'vamp' ponies were a part of it.”

Flipping to the page all three sets of our eyes read the article, we’re kind of impressed that Kuril’s incident made the front page and Jaded’s was a footnote. Apparently our Jade had access to Thestral or Bat Pony resources within the region of Saddle Arabia.

“Jaded La Perm!” Fizzy yelled after reading the article.

Fizzlepop glared at Jaded as she came into the room with two plates and our little Silvers toddling after her, they were growing up so fast.

“What?” The newspaper was levitated and floating into Jade’s face. “Oh, that… wait I’m only on the fourth page?”

“Mother Kuril is the front page news… also since when do we have a subscription to The Desert Times? I thought you were more subtle than that!” Really, Fizzy was only getting angry at her for failing to be duplicitously evil discreetly?

“Can you please give me back my newspaper?” We all turned to the grey furred, blonde haired mare with cross eyes. It was Derpy Hooves and she seemed to be drinking some tea calmly.

“You’ve been getting Saddle Arabian news through the Muffin Cult?” It didn’t even take Mary five seconds to connect the dots and guess why the newspaper was even here in the first place. There was a lot Derpy Hooves would do for a warm tasty muffin.

“Well they did blacklist me from getting any information from their country.” Gee, we sarcastically wondered why that was Jaded. After the last ten or so times you did something with even the most miniscule of information from that country... “Also I like warm fluffy cheese muffins on particular days... and the newspaper has interesting articles.”

Jaded was eating a platter of cheese muffins for breakfast, our little wonder Silvers was enjoying a plate loaded full of heavily spiced fish sausage and fried eggs. Heavy calories weren’t something a Chimera had to watch out for, efficient digestive systems and all that.

“Jaded has good taste and is a friend of the foodie alliance.” Derpy nodded solemnly as she caught a cheese muffin tossed her way with a bright smile and took a bite. “Also I thought it was a newspaper all about Just Desserts missing an 'S' like the newspaper of Grubber International and Soaring Sweets conglomerate of the Storm Creature Empire.”

“… My empire has a newspaper about sweets?” No Fizzy, bad, that was distracting us from the issue and punishing Jade for being a jerk to an entire country, while somehow implicating Princess Luna in an international debacle.

Jaded’s trip to Canterlot was the only time she could have pulled that off and she did mention running across Luna there, so if she got one of Luna’s feathers, a hair from a brush and among a few other things, then managed to transform into Luna using a homemade mask…

“Jaded, no causing international incidents between countries because of your personal petty kitty grievance war with Luna!” Maria barked out making Jaded shy away and look guilty as our goat sister bar eyes drilled into from where we sat.

“Yeah, no international incidents!” Mara growled out baring her large fangs.

Mary was just amused and our sister would be, Jaded sometimes played favorites with us by sharing dead small mammals with her.

“It’s not international though… yet…” Oh here we go, what did our favorite cuddle cat do this time?

“Please, tell me this won’t be a headache for me later Jaded?” Fizzy stated as she slowly rubbed a hoof in small circles over the right side of her head.

“Look, they obviously know it’s a plot from me, so things should be fine unless someone gets stupid… well dumber than some of the things I did to achieve what I had." We needed to slowly get Jaded off of causing trouble for Saddle Arabia. "Like being within hoofs reach of an immortal angry lunar goddess that got into a huge fight with some really big Maulwurfs not too long ago.”

“Also if you want help with Luna you could just ask us.” Mary followed up by giving Jaded a sad big watery eyed look, why is our snake sister the cutest part of us? I think we’re starting to understand Jaded's whole obsession with Mary wearing a top hat thing too.

“I can’t, I got obligations as a beloved Queen or Empress of the Storm Creatures and could you please not involve the Royal Guard in whatever your about to plan!” Fizzy stated flatly as she glared at Jaded who grinned cheerfully with smiling eyes. "I need them semi-functional over the next few weeks."

“Could I sue Luna over something incredibly dumb and be entirely overly bureaucratic about it?” Jaded said eagerly with bright eyes and a wagging tail that would be more fit on a Diamond Dog like Brenda. “Can we make her go in a variety of circles is what I’m asking here.”

We had an instinctual fear of whatever Jaded had in mind and she hasn’t even told us about it yet, why did we make that offer... better yet why did Mary make that offer for us collectively?!

-Pokémon Realm, a little more than twenty four hours later, Morning at the Igloo near Hail Hollow, Pom-

“You know what, I’m actually fairly surprised.” Approaching me with a curious look, Quetal watched as I packed up a bag of supplies and hefted it onto my back.

“What, that I didn’t immediately blindly charge off to go save Shanty, Dodo, Ocellus and Smolder from whatever trouble they ‘might’ currently be in?” If I didn’t trust them to survive on their own without me I would have done that, but taking our time to build up supplies before leaving Hail Hollow behind was prudent. Even if I didn’t like the people here, I still had to do business to prepare for the trip and not just run off at the drop of a hat, I didn’t understand the situation going on in that region and I wasn’t about to go running in without a little thought put into things. “That I actually took another entire day to actually recover halfway from my injuries and am trusting that Shanty and the others to be mostly fine? I may be constantly getting badly mangled mentally and battered physically, but I’m not a blind, deaf and anosmic Quetal.”

“Anosmic?” Quetal tilted his head in confusion.

“Like blind is the inability to see and deaf is the inability to hear, anosmic is the inability to smell.” Pom took one long sniff of the air. “I’m fairly sure something reeks over in Valora’s direction and I have the capabilities of having canine attributes as far as my senses go. I gave us more time, because I thought it was necessary to get ourselves back together before we even tried setting out for Valora. I hope one extra day in Nixtorm was good enough. I direly needed that before I knowingly thrust myself into whatever the Tartarus is about to occur when we get there or after we get there, maybe it’s already happened and I’ll have to deal with the aftermath. At this point I can’t even be paranoid of something big happening Valora, since it’s been happening when we were still in Pugilis for that quick fighting tournament.”

“Well I think you’re looking ready at the very least, I honestly find it a little odd that you don’t seem the least bit reluctant about going straight into danger this time.” Yeah, there’s a reason for that Dormarch.

“That’s because, while I don’t hate Nixtorm, I really don’t like it here and it’s really, really cold.” At least my wool was growing back slowly, did not want to test the bit of golden wool on my right leg in that capacity, though I might have to if Fou chases me down again. “That and if I were reluctant, then I would never be able to find the others who are rumored to be there and I sure Quetal would like to see Shine again.”

"I have no idea what you're even talking about." Quetal answered immediately.

“Cold, I’ve got your back Pom!” Dolly leapt into sitting on my back and she rubbed her front paws together before setting them on both my cheeks, my entire body warmed up immediately and I didn’t feel as cold when she removed her paws. “How did that feel?”

“Actually pretty good.” As far as space heater dogs go, I’m totally biased in my assessment that Dolly was the best one. “Though I can’t ask you to stay on my back to keep me warm.”

“Why would you need to ask?” Dolly tilted her head curiously.

“Well if I don’t, then I would feel like I’m taking advantage of you.” I then asked quietly. “Are we all ready to leave?”

Everyone was ready including Curdle who could easily make a living here.

“We’ll miss you guys!” Glaceon stated pleasantly.

“Yeah, we’ll working on brightening things up around here if you ever visit again.” Zorua stated cheerfully.

“While I don’t think we can warm up our country, Ice Types and all that, we should at least stand to warm our hearts.” The fluffy ice Ninetails was among the Frosty Foxes that looked the saddest to see me leave.

“Don’t be a stranger Pom!” The ice Vulpix said cheerfully while wave a paw my way as we exited the igloo and started to head south east, we were planning to travel along the coast.

I could only hope we didn’t run into Team Pocket, I was vaguely angry at them for taking most of the stuff we picked up in the Mystery Dungeon, but that was just about all they took. They could have done worse and taken the Dormarch’s Digivice, Dolly’s collars, Skateboard or helmet, there’s the Arceus Device I used to call Tianhuo and any number of things like the Paralance.

They really wanted their wins didn’t they? Still they did carry us back to Hail Hollow and I was in no condition to complain at the time.

Dormarch’s new blue mystical scarf was the only thing from the dungeon that we still had, aside from Dormarch himself, and yes I believed the blue scarf had some magical effect like the Pecha Scarves me and Dolly still wore that prevented us from being poisoned. Probably needed to ask a Kecleon about it if I wanted to know more though, they were supposedly known to be experts on Mystery Dungeon items.

-Igloo after Pom and the others left-

“We’re starting a cult aren’t we?” Zorua asked as Pom was now out of sight.

“I call leader!” The Ice Ninetails grinned brightly.

“Darn it, I wanted leader!” The icy Vulpix whined.

"Woo, cult of the wooly one!" Glaceon stated a second later.

-Southeast of Hail Hollow, snowy plains an hour later, Pom-

The slope downwards was somewhat steep, but getting down to the coast wasn’t going to take long, I could already see it from here and we could slide the rest of the way down if we wanted to. I’d rather take things slowly for now and then speed up as we move along the coast.

“So once we’re down on the coast we travel along it to the east directly to Valora.” It’ll be easier than traveling through the mountains, didn’t want to end up passing through Dragnor the Kingdom of Dragon Types without a good reason to be there. “How are you doing Dormarch, do you need to take a break in the Digivice?”

“I’m fine, still getting used to my new pseudo-biological nature, it’s weird that I’m still fully a digital monster and it feels like I have more mass than I should.” Well nothing for it, Dormarch was walking and getting exercise, plus he seemed to be doing fine. “How long will it take to get to Valora on foot?”

“Considering the miles we’ll have to cover without transport, if we pick up the pace we can barely be there by tomorrow evening. At least we’ll have an idea of what’s going on once we get far enough east to see Ironclad City.” Well Quetal has seen Ironclad City before and chartered a ship from Valora to Greenleaf.

“What’s Ironclad like?” The sound of my hooves slapping against the snow echoed in my ears as we continued onwards, I was trying to detect if Fou was following us or coming to attack. Nothing so far, maybe he was going to leave me alone?

“It’s about what you would expect from a place named Ironclad, it’s a huge city of steel, stone and glass, huge marketplace, very busy, lots of Pokémon from everywhere looking to build a mostly peaceful life. Also it’s the most technologically advanced place you’ll see in all of Ransei.” So if Quetal was stating what I think he was, it would be something like what we would expect from Dolly’s world. I saw a lot of large cities of stone, glass and metal, which is what I guess would be like Manehatten in eastern Equestria. Civilizations might naturally trend towards such larges places. Given Huoshan was a city of mostly stone and wood, it sounds far less impressive if you haven’t seen how it was built. “The farmlands are on the outer territories of Valora, more of them are closer to Avia than Dragnor. As for Steel Types, they are all Pokémon that are usually heavily armored and can take a beating, so whatever is happening there I can assure you there are still Steel Types fighting whatever it is that is happening. I really didn’t stick around too long, I wanted to go somewhere… quieter.”

“Which is where we met you?” In Arbora Town in Greenleaf, Quetal must have been living from job to job doing whatever he could to acquire some Poké to just get by.

“Greenleaf was as lazy a place as one could find, most of the Pokémon there were very laid back and I didn’t make a nuisance of myself. So I’ve been there for a few years, you basically know my whole story now.” That and you were quite strong Quetal, glad to have you as a friend. “I’m glad I got some closure, but I really don’t want to come back to this place for any reason.”

“Quite understandable, I did not like interacting with a number of the locals, at least not all of them were bad and it was generally fun to play in the snow. Watching the northern lights was nice too.” After that things were a bit quiet.

The closer we got to the coast the less the snow, notably Dormarch got a bit too cold and decided to get in the Digivice to warm up and spruce up the insides of it and dust his home.

Dolly stayed on my back keeping me warm as we started to turn more eastwards, we would start walking along the coast when we had no other choice but to walk on the sand.

-A few more hours later, lunchtime-

“There you go.” Hopefully food will be more Plentiful the closer we got to Valora, Dormarch started to eat and Dolly sighed before starting in on her own looking twitchy.

Note to self, figure out how to make kibble by hoof.

“Mmmhh, this stuff is delicious.” Well Dormarch was appreciating the fish and vegetable soup. Once you get past what it takes to make it, it doesn’t smell too bad.

“Why thank you.” I said brightly and didn’t hear much from Dolly aside from her eating it, she appreciated my cooking too in a quieter manner.

As we quietly ate I wondered if we would run across anything on the way, so far it seemed as if the coast was completely clear of any problems. It was also clear of any other travelers, so less possible trouble for us.

“Are those Spheal?” Quetal drew our attention to six Spheals rolling in our direction, from the west. They certainly couldn’t have smelled the fish soup right? Wind was blowing the wrong way for that.

“Do they look like beady eyed blue beach balls with almost no sense or intelligence to them?” Curdle asked dryly, because that’s how most Pokémon describe them. “If so, then yes, those are Spheal.”

The Spheal came to a stop as we ate and looked at us expectantly.

“Here for some food?” I asked earnestly of the five who shook their selves no… wait five, weren’t there six a few seconds… oh my goodness!

I immediately leapt to my hooves and went to help the poor Spheal that was choking an equally poor shark like Pokémon that happened to be on land for some reason. How did it beach itself so badly?!

The five Spheal just stared blankly at the scene, not showing any signs of panic or fear as I tried to carefully pull the poor Spheal out of the shark monsters mouth.

-Five minutes later-

That shark was a little too far away from the water to be trying to eat the Spheal I just saved, I even helped the shark back to the ocean and told it to not try eating Spheal this far out on land in the future. It shrugged and swam away.

Afterwards we finished lunch and were soon on the way with six tagalongs rolling along behind us sometimes making cheerful or squeaky noises when they bumped into each other. They weren’t very bright as I remembered them being.

“Hey, Pom, I think these guys are familiar for some reason.” We all turned to Dolly when she barked up and she looked like she was trying to remember something. “Wasn‘t there a unit of these guys from that water place?”

“What like that Silly Spheal’s unit of Fontaine?” All of the Spheals seemed to get excited and began hopping in place when I said that. “So it is you guys. Wait a minute… why are you guys even out here? I’m talking like in the middle of nowhere out here far from Fontaine.”

The blanks looks I received said a lot about how smart they were, one opened its mouth.

“Spheal?” It said dumbly.

“You have no idea where you are do you?” I just made all the Spheal look embarrassed and depressed at the same time. Slapping my left hoof to my face, since I didn’t trust the golden colored wool on my right, I groaned audibly in exasperation. “Well come on, you can keep following us, can’t leave you guys wandering around aimlessly out here. You might as well make yourselves useful to me and I will help you find a way back to Motochika or Fontaine.”

The six Spheal’s saluted me with their tiny flippers and were probably going to follow us because we were recognizable as being allies of Fontaine. That or they at least remember us being in Fontaine, hard to tell when those beady eyes were showing no signs of functioning brains a good eighty percent of the time. They were still a Special Forces unit for Fontaine, so they could be of some use right?

Well at least things would be interesting with them aro... I turned around and immediately grew frustrated with one of the Spheal in particular.

“No- stop doing that!” I said as the one Spheal in particular seemed to have somehow shoved itself into the mouth of an Ice Type brachiosaurus Pokémon. The other five Spheal just stared on dumbly as the Pokémon tried to cough it up and this one wasn’t clearly actively trying to eat the Spheal.

I eventually got the Spheal out of the Pokémon’s throat.

“Excuse me for interrupting your travels, I thank you for pulling the Spheal out of my throat, I do not intend to die by choking on one of the dimmest creatures around.” With that the large dinosaur Pokémon slowly went on his way. “Honestly, why did it jump into my mouth when I was yawning and how did it manage to jump so high?!”

“That was an Aurorus, they are generally peaceful, hardly see many of them around. Also they tend towards eating kelp or vegetation, sometimes fish. As an Ice Type fresh vegetation to eat is kind of hard to find, probably have a slow metabolism to make up for the lack of food.” The most we were seeing Quetal was a lot Water Type Pokémon lying about on the nearby beach to our right, but that begs the question of how the Spheal ended up launching itself into the Pokémon’s throat in the first place… on dry land.

“What are the chances that that will…” I was about to say ‘happen again’, but then I noted we were one Spheal short again and became slightly agitated.

One Spheal had a problem with entering large open mouths a bit too much, probably an instinct to find a small cave to sit safely inside of. That was the only functional explanation we had for the oddity.

I saw said Spheal a second later, they had started wandering towards a sand castle with a slowly spinning shovel on top of it and the castle had a wide open mouth like entrance on it.

My eyes dimmed, the Spheal couldn’t be that dumb… could it?

“Let me guess, that’s a Pokémon made of sand disguising itself as a sand castle and our Spheal friend is about to enter its mouth?” I said dully.

“Yes.” Curdle answered instead of Quetal. “We have Sandygasts all over the coasts of various Fairy Dust Islands, you were lucky enough to be redirected to an island that didn’t have them. Unfortunately that is a bigger evolutionary form of them, Palossand.”

We just silently watched as the Spheal was swallowed alive.

I was about to make a move to go help the Spheal when the Palossand, a large living sand castle Pokémon, opened its mouth and a storm of ice and frost blew out of it as it froze solid.

The Spheal safely wiggled and eventually crawled out of it no worse for wear and cheerfully made its way back over to us, bouncing merrily as if the incident hadn’t happened.

“I suggest we pick up the pace before that Spheal ends up in the esophagus of every large Pokémon we see on the way.” One would think we would have less incidents that way, or at least that was my hope.

“The irony of that situation is that Palossand are naturally weak to Ice Types.” Quetal added conversationally, which was a good thing in case any of them decided to attack us. The Spheal might be able to handle it well enough even if they weren’t big on thinking about things too hard.

-Sandy coastline, an hour later-

I looked at the massive amounts of smoke that in the sky and in the very far off distance where I could barely see anything. The city was probably more than a speck on the horizon to my right, the southeast.

Where there’s smoke, something was burning and that was a lot of smoke.

“Even if we were to rush there now, I doubt we’d be there to help put out the fires and we’d be too tired to do anything.” I got a few nods as we continue forward at our current pace with a bit more urgency. “You said it’ll take us another day to get there?”

“Yes.” Well then Quetal, let’s hope there’s still someone left to save by the time we get there. Like Shanty, Ocellus and Dodo, Smolder would be perfectly fine if highly annoyed if she got lit on fire again.

“Spheal…” Whined one of the Spheal.

“We’ll eventually find a place to settle down for the night, barring that, we’ll make a beach bonfire.” I tried to keep the steps of my hooves calm and collected even knowing that danger awaits to the southeast and goodness knows what my wards are getting into. I at least trusted Shanty to still be guzzling rum by the time I get there, the only thing I could trust about an unknown situation really.

It was only early evening and we still had a long way to go, while trying not to look at the darkened sky to the southeast as we continued east along the coast in the waning sun.

I froze and looked behind us, my eyes shifted to the right and left slowly. Looking for inconsistencies in the air for some form of invisibility or illusions like a Zorua could make.

I thought… must be my imagination.

We kept moving forward, but I noted that Dolly and Dormarch were now quite alert as well.

Dolly, who had left her helmet hanging around her neck slowly eased it into place on her head and grabbed at her board with one paw while continuing to walk with her other three legs.

Dormarch was more subtle in his reaction, he was just said a string of numbers, something about a preset command code and his tails straightened out behind him as he moved closer to me. His actions were generally protective body language of a dog trying to put themselves between an unknown threat and the person they were protecting.

Dormarch was on my immediate right and Dolly was on my left.

Quetal and Curdle for their parts also seemed to be wary of something even if they hadn’t seen anything, in particular Curdle showed some active wariness as she brought her hands together to look more pleasant and possibly appetizing. I swear, Alcremie reactions to danger was all about them getting partially eaten.

Quetal narrowed his eyes and was watching the shadows of trees along the beach and or on the small plains that were next to tall foreboding mountains we had forgone traveling through.

The Silly Spheals, no matter how cute, didn’t seem to think anything was wrong… I don’t think they actually had a thought in their heads to be honest. The fact that the six of them could stick together for so long says something about their friendship… either that or they were all family. I wouldn’t know unless I asked Motochika about it later. They were supposedly a good unit of Pokémon, but I seriously had some doubts even if they were very good distractions and possibly at least half as capable in combat.

“Do you think it’s Fou?” Quetal asked as he seemed to become a bit stiff, but kept moving forward. “Pom, the noise…”

All I could hear was the blowing wind as a thick fog started to rise up and surround us, there was no noise to speak of and I understood what Quetal meant.

“I don’t think this is Fou, but I think he might still be stalking me.” The fog was thankfully stay thing as we continued along the beach between the trees and the halfway frozen plains towards our destination. My right hoof grabbed at the paralance, my eyes slid about the area. “Stick together, this building fog is unnatural.”

It only took me one sniff, but the fog didn’t smell like condense water vapor in the air or like it was occurring because of the nearby ocean having warm water and the temperatures around here still being relatively cold because we were Nixtorm.

We continued forward as the fog thickened, I kept my breathing even, ready to exhale explosively or inhale to the best of my ability… but the fog would dampen my Dancing Flame, in fact most gases would hinder my usage of the technique.

As the fog became it’s thickest in surrounding all of us, the Spheal started to whimper a bit and I moved closer to them protectively. As did Quetal and Curdle. We started to form a circle facing outwards, waiting for an imminent threat.

Was the coast naturally this silent, things had been fairly clear up to this point.

The flash of a pair of eyes was all the warning I got, I exhaled explosively and brought the lance around while opening it. Not to attack, but to block whatever attack was coming my way.

Before I knew it, I was sent flying out of the defensive circle to go skidding on my backside as something struck the canopy of the paranormal lance. I quickly moved it to the right and block another strike from the fast moving assailment and was knocked into the air by the powerful blow.

I flipped backwards and landed on my hind legs and was standing on sand, I couldn’t bunker down with my wool to wobble coutner without solid ground beneath my hooves. Well I could, but my assailant would knocked me about.

They were terribly fast and using a sword, I just kept inhaling and exhaling slowly as I tightened my grip on the lance with both hooves. This wasn’t Fou, it was something else.

Dolly caught sight of something red and wide shifting about and knocking them back when they tried to get to me, blocking everyone’s path between me and them, once again I felt targeted. Dormarch was waiting to get a clear lock on the thing that was attacking me and was clearly waiting.

I silently told Dormarch to take the opportunity if he felt he could achieve something with it.

Not to long after the blur attacked again and I exhaled, reacting to things in bursts of high intensity speeds was always a headache.

I angled the lance so the shaft, not the canopy, would catch the edge of the blade and I kicked off the sand into the air. The shaft, having collided with the flat of the blade I couldn’t see in motion, started flipping into position and shifted my hips forward into clockwise swing while flowing over the blade moving in the same direction.

I unleashed a heavy left hind legged kick forward and… struck true.

My rear hoof bucked into the right side of the aggressor’s faces and sent them rolling back and away from me, I head a splash as their rear paws touched the water.

The fog cleared up slightly and I saw a blue furred canine standing at the edge of the water, with long flowing braided red hair coming from its head in two streams, in its mouth was a mass of air vaguely shaped like a sword. It’s large red haired tail, like the two streams of hair, differed from the thick blue fur covering most of its body and the white fur around its legs.

It stiffened and it had a very surprised intelligent look on its hoof imprinted face as it’s glowing eyes dimmed and narrows slightly as I landed on my right leg and was immediately standing on it with my left shifting to help me regain balance. I was already ready to block or counter another attack.

It was about to move when Dormarch timed his attack, he slammed into the canines side as it went to jump and toppled them. He then moved to stand protectively in front of me while fanning out his tails aggressively.

“Stay away from my mother!” Barked Dormarch angrily.

The large canine eyed the paralance seemingly knowing what the weapon was and then me holding it defensively for a bit, then looked at Dormarch and I saw something else like vague recognition and an intense curiosity.

“Can we not have this fight… please?” I asked nicely as they started standing up, it was likely it wouldn’t work, but…

It then leapt away, as if following some unseen signal and the fog cleared up, I blinked.

“Did that actually…” I started to say.

“I wouldn’t question it, remember not to tempt anything happening, we need to get moving!” Dormarch was trying to track where that large canine went, but nothing came of it and we started moving. It had completely disappeared with the fog.

-A distance away on a mountain peak to the north-

A large blue canine and a large red canine stared at the group of specks as they quickly started moving towards Valora.

The blue one eyed Pom and the Red one looked curiously at the blue canine.

One of the canine was about to say something by opening their mouths when their blood froze cold at the sound of a terrifying entity they both remembered… for a variety of reasons.

-Fou-

“Fou.” It was apparent that Fou was not finished with Pom and someone else attacking his hunting target had earned his ire.

A sword of physical wind, that was not Flying Type powered, ripped through where Fou was… it didn’t even scratch or hurt him in the slightly.

Not that the two figures knew that they were about to be attacked by something that was part Ghost Type or that most basic of physical attacks ceased to be effective where Fou was concerned.

“Fou!” Fou grew angry, but for some reason he liked the red canine when he glanced at them, maybe they could be a good mate for him?

The blue canine had just utterly messed up the first rule of starting a fight with Fou, which is simply enough and fairly easy to understand “DON’T”. You know, since you probably didn't want a near unstoppable semi-immortal beast chasing you down constantly.

Within a flash, Fou slashed the blue canine across the chest and the red one tried to stop him by ramming into him at an incredible speed, only to go harmlessly through Fou's body thoroughly confusing what was quickly becoming a problem for the two canines.

-Currently hastily retreating to the east, Quetal-

“What was that?!” They were Pokémon obviously, but they also felt like outsiders, extremely powerful ones in both respects.

I could only hope we didn’t have another Gilgamesh situation, one was bad enough.

“All I know is that one of them was a large blue furred canine and it apparently knows what this lance is!” Well that was something at least, but right now we should keep making haste.

At least the Spheals weren’t slowing us down and recognized the urgency even if their reactions to the given situation was somewhat slow to start off with.

“Fou!” The sound of that beast's roar made us stop for a second in pure terror and before we knew it we were all running full tilt. Even the Spheal were starting to outrun us on their tiny flippes and they were horrible at moving on land without rolling around!

“I think those two canines were Legendary Pokémon, they were very familiar to me for some reason, I think one of them might have been a Fairy Type?” Not now Curdle we needed to get far away from here!

“Not the time Curdle!” Screamed Pom following my thoughts, who had Dolly and Dormarch clinging to her for their lives as we ran.

Author's Note

Music- Pokémon Sword and Shield - Illusions Zacian and Zamazenta Battle Music.

The theme is music that sounds like a wolf howling the whole song, I'm wondering if this should be a battling theme for Pom when she lets her fighting spirit rise to the forefront.

378. An Ironclad Will.

-???, Oleander-

“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH?!” I ran screaming through the maze as a giant yellow sphere with a large red bow gave chase to me with a wide gaping mouth.

“Waka waka waka…” That was the only noise it made as it hovered after me… menacingly!

-About three fourths of the way to Ironclad City and the Kingdom of Valora proper, campsite cave, evening, Pom-

I peeked out of the cave again and glanced around.

“Pom, we’re more likely to get caught if you keep looking for trouble.” Stated Quetal gruffly and I pulled back to sit with everyone else.

The Spheal were simply being playful and cute… their default stated if anything. Dormarch was running health checks on us all and was rather interested in Dolly’s face after it got badly clawed by Fou, she was doing fine and I could even feel it. Quetal was becoming slightly better and less bitter the further away from Nixtorm we were getting, we have still yet to cross the border. Curdle was just being a blob of sentient cream, the Spheal seemed to like her, but if it wasn’t an emergency then I was never eating a part of her.

“So… that was a pair of legendary Pokémon?” I asking as I took a seat between Dolly and Dormarch. I have to admit Domarch was getting really good at tapping my senses, he wouldn’t have been as accurate with his attack without it.

“A pair of Legendary Pokémon Outsiders, I believe that was Zacian and Zamazenta.” There was a pause as Curdle received our attentions. “The actual Zacian and Zamazenta have noticeable injuries and scars, those two were outsiders guaranteed! Give me a moment to remember what’s special about them.”

“I wonder if those were the two that Oberon mentioned…” I’d bet it was and that being attacked by them was some kind of misunderstanding. Wouldn’t put it past them if they have some decent reason to be attacking travelers moving along the coast towards Valora.

“Highly likely.” Quetal grumbled as he leaned back and crossed his claws. “If they attack us again we might need a strategy for them.”

“The red one is a Zamazenta, which would make them a defensive specialist. The blue one is a Zacian, which would make them a offensive specialist.” Well that’s more knowledge than we had a second ago Curdle. “The reason why I know of Zacian is because it’s a Fairy Type Pokémon, Zamazenta is a Fighting Type. What is notable is that they both have an alternate form known as a crowned form that gives them Steel Type on top of their base types. The true legendary Pokémon are sometimes known for testing leaders of kingdoms on their offensive, defensive and strategic abilities in battle, they are known for fighting Dynamic Maximized Pokémon. As far as godly aspects go, they themselves are considered conceptual embodiments of swords and shields. The Honedge line of Pokémon are big fans of the two, it is said that the Aegislash final evolution is said to be a homage to the two legendary warriors.”

“Nice to know we can use fire if they change forms at least.” That is if they attack us again, which was highly likely knowing my luck if they didn’t let me talk first. “Also I wouldn’t want to be hit by an attack from the Zacian, I’m pretty sure it has the ability to pierce my wool’s protection like Gilgamesh could do so easily.”

“Okay, while we’re on the subject of iffy things.” Quetal looked at the gold ring of wool above my right hoof and I slightly covered it with my left feeling self-conscious about it. “How bad is your wool turning golden?”

“Imagine being able to live for a total of one hundred years, now imagine that my lifespan has been exponentially reduced to the point that I’m not going to live to even be thirty.” There was a long pause after I said that and Dormarch whimpered loudly. I calmly ran my right hoof up and down his back gently. “That’s if it doesn’t get any worse, when I use the golden glow it’s now taking up three of my legs, it’ll go to my other leg and then my tail, my body and then my head, if at that point that I’m fully covered in golden wool… well I might grow wings and at that point I’m guaranteed to die.”

“…” The look of consternation on Quetal’s face said it all. “You can’t control your urges to sacrifice?”

“Would if I could.” I stated quietly, because I really would turn it off if I could. “A strong willpower can only do so much to suppress something as dangerous as what I have. It’s not a curse, but it sure acts like one. I have no regrets that it’s where it is now though.”

“Why?” Dormarch ask as he nuzzled into my chest.

“Well that power helped me bring you back.” It needed to be said and I really couldn’t keep using it without it becoming worse. There is small aspect I was hiding about it from Dolly and Dormarch, most people really and even another Lambkin would never tell that secret for fear of what someone with ill intentions might try, but we all know and feared it coming to light eventually. The largest can of worms that the Lambkin race was hiding.

I pray to never grow wings, because when that happens the truth will come out in some shape or form about the other thing than it being worse than a death sentence. If people knew about it, some would try to force ‘it’ to be used for whatever cause you could think of, but you can’t actually do that and trying will always end in tears for the one attempting to do so.

We lambkin try to be unassuming and live far away from other civilizations for quite a number of reasons, there is one unique thing that happens when a lambkin becomes a full on Chrysomallus and it’s a nasty itch, a terrible urge and one that is impossible to ignore forever. Right now I can suppress that, but I can’t do it forever.

If there were any unicorn within the vicinity of me at the time that I do eventually sprout wings, they are going to immediately know what’s going on with me and will either be absolutely horrified or the worst case scenario dementedly ecstatic. They’ll certainly be able to feel it and just about any being connected to me or is sensitive to magic would be able to figure it out rather quickly too, Ocellus would definitely know what it is if she knows unicorns as well as I think she does.

We were just sitting there in silence, even the Spheal were looking sad.

“I am still going to be with you all the way, to the end!” Dolly reaffirmed with a serious stare, which said she would stick to my side regardless of what happened or was to come. “I’ll be there for my little bro Dormarch if something happens, but it’ll have to be something pretty huge to stop me from trying to help or save you.”

What Dolly wasn’t saying is that Dormarch and me reminded her of her and her birth mother, a birth mother that died of a terminal illness. She had to be a big puppy for the rest of her family afterwards, but took that to mean making sure those around her were happy and having fun.

I didn’t exactly have a terminal illness, but it was getting there and I could feel some of Dolly’s quiet sorrow bleeding through our bond.

“Thanks Dolly.” I hugged Dormarch a little bit tighter to myself as Dolly started hugging me.

“Well you’re certainly not dying on my watch, that’s a promise!” Quetal said with a grin and some bravado.

I sighed, things tend to conspire in ruining such hope in a decidedly horrible manner Quetal. Not that they could stop me from sacrificing, but they could do far more to stop it from getting worse or committing to big sacrifices.

Still, if there was one thing I was going to do, as their guardian I was going to get my charges home and possibly die trying or even far worse than that.

“How long can you keep suppressing it?” Quetal asked with curiosity in his eyes.

“Functionally forever, in actuality not so much, provided that I don’t feel the ‘need’ to use it for any reason.” One would think my willpower is meek, then you would not know me very well. “Suppressing part of myself isn’t the problem here.”

If one were to ask me if I could live for myself, then I would have to say I could even if it would be quite hard to do. If one were to ask if I would live for others, well I’m always trying my best to do so on that front at least.

“Let’s just… let’s get some sleep alright?” The smokeless fire I started should last us the night, even if it takes a bit of doing it was a good way to avoid being spotted when camping in the wilderness.

“I’ll take watch.” Quetal offered and eventually we all laid down to get some sleep. Tomorrow we would hopefully reach Valora and find out what’s going on. If Shanty was there, then so were Ocellus, Smolder and Dodo.

-Tomorrow, on the road to Valora, Dolly-

The silence was so tense you could cut it with anything, we were actually on a road leading southeast and in the distance we could see a city that was still standing. There was smoke in the sky and even at this distance I could almost practically smell the danger and I wasn’t about to tell Pom not to go in there.

We were passing through a small patch of trees when I thought I felt something off, I stopped and so did Pom as she was paying a lot of attention to me and Dormarch.

“Dolly, what do you sense?” Pom was asking me, wasn’t she usually on top of this stuff? “If you think you’ve noticed something that the rest of us haven’t speak up.”

“I can’t call it sensing something exactly, but it’s more of a feeling…” What made me somewhat happy was that Pom immediately sharpened her senses and was looking around at the trees near us too, it made me feel safer at the very least.

Suddenly I saw I green triangle near one of the trees, I immediately leapt forward and up at it. I didn’t know what I was reacting to, but I was doing so anyway.

I suddenly felt my mouth become hot for a split second as I spun about with a bolt of energy I had caught in my teeth, with a flick and quick snap of my head I sent it flying back into the shadowy torso in the tree.

The bolt of energy flew from my mouth and struck that torso dead center. This knocked a strange winged upper torso looking angelic thing with a bow from the tree and its long spinal tail followed it as it flopped to the ground and soon started turning a strange dark color and then exploded into a shower of bright cubes.

“What… was that?” Milk asked while shivering as I turned and looked around for any more signs of danger, I was on high alert and Dormarch… he was by the body and doing something to the cubes coming off of it as it evaporated. He was sucking them up like a vacuum cleaner? Not many pups back him likes the noise the vacuum made, but it was necessary to keep things clean with ninety nine of us running around all the time. “Also how did Dolly catch energy with her teeth like that?”

“Dolly saw an ‘action opportunity’ and reacted accordingly, apparently it gives her some unusual abilities in the moment she reacts to those triangles.” That’s right Pom, if I hadn’t done that then it would have… wait a minute, it was aiming that shot at Pom!

I could feel anger rise up in me from just noticing that Pom was being targeted again, .

“I didn’t get much from the digital energy, but I think I got enough. Let’s see… an identification… Assault Program, Class Archer, Seraph, number five eight seven two three zero three nine one. This thing did not come from the Yggdrassil System and it’s not a Digimon or a Digibot.” Dormarch announced and started to shiver and whimper and he cuddled up to Pom.

“I guess it’s finally time for me to ask this, is this related to the same thing that sent your body and soul out to kill me Dormarch?” The look on Pom’s face was fairly stern as Dormarch flinched slightly.

“…. Yes, it is. I didn’t think it would be a problem so soon, but now it is… it’s something called Moon Cell and is likely something on par with Yggdrasil System in scope.” Well that doesn’t sound good Dormarch, it sounded like a bad thing. “Also judging by the identification number, there are probably more of them… a LOT more.”

“Hey, it’s okay little bro, I mean we only saw one right… how many more of those things can there be?” The haunted look I saw from my little Dalmatian Fish bro was rather haunted.

“Dolly, if the number of these things were all present right now, there would be enough of them to blot out the sky in this general region.” After Dormarch said that I froze up and thought about how many that would be and paled, basically it was a number I can’t even count to. “To put it in perspective, a single attack from each one would be about enough to kill everyone in the vicinity of this general area.”

“Let’s keep moving and keep these things in mind then. I don’t want to be ambushed here, these things don’t have a smell and it had so very little presence that I’m surprised Dolly even caught on before I did.” Well that’s another one for me Pom, my job is saving your life and I’m going to try and make sure you live a long fulfilling and happy one! You are not dying, no matter what you say! If we can bring back Dormarch, then we can solve your problem too!

“Really? They smell awfully bland and like horrible cleaning products to me.” Dormarch whined while rubbing at his nose with those goofy claws of his.

“Dormarch takes lead from here on then, if he can sense them.” Pom said all of the sudden and nobody said anything against it.

Before we could really get moving one of the beach balls opened their mouths and fired a concentrated blast of ice energy ahead of us as something just ran out from behind a tree while moving its right arm upwards.

The tall, pointy headed, robotic looking thing that just became a sudden frozen statue was wielding a blazing axe giving off a lot of heat that started to rapidly melt the ice.

“Something tells me that this is part of the ongoing problem in Valora.” Pom said flatly as she moved forward and then turned around and launched a harsh buck. It snapped the frozen thing in half and more of those cubes showered down from it, Dormarch was immediately on it doing his thing as a living computer or whatever. “It is probably only going to get worse now that I’m here.”

“Identification… Assault Program, Class Berserker, with the designation of… Viking? Purpose… forward raider, well that was kind of obvious. Well while that’s all very interesting, they do come from the same source though, coding definitely fits for it.” So according to Dormarch whatever this Moon Blood thing was, it was definitely trying to go for Pom because that was the second attack on her in so many minutes. What did Pom ever do to them? “I suggest we start moving again, apparently it’s transmitted our location and Pom is a primary target for them.”

“Why me though?” Pom stated as we started moving forward again, when we exited the trees we didn’t see any more of those things. I don’t doubt that there were more of them around though. Nobody answered her question.

“Is anyone going to bring up the fact that one of the Silly Spheals actually reacted to it before it came out from behind the tree?” The sugary Ms. Muffet asked as she looked around at everyone.

“Well they are military unit.” Pom responded blandly as we continued on the road towards the city. "They are a specialist unit in Fontaine for some reason, might as well be combat prowess as I seriously doubt they would be considered as a intelligence gathering or scouting unit."

-Two hours later, now outside of Nixtorm and in the Valora region proper, plains with heavy amounts of ore, Dormarch-

I was nervous being in the lead and we were parked at a boulder, we were no longer in Nixtorm and had properly crossed the border into Valora according to Quetal.

“We got incoming.” I detected them coming easily enough, these ones were new digital entities similar to those we saw before. They looked a bit more wiry, moved faster and were wielding two knives bordering on short swords. If they were based on the classification system of my secondary core… I’d think those would be classified as Assassins coming after mom.

Wouldn’t surprise me, I didn’t know much about Moon Cell aside from its name, but it really did not seem to like mom’s very existence for some reason. It did send a Chaosdramon X after her in its first attempt and that turned out to be a good thing for us in the end, not so much for Nixtorm and I really couldn’t feel guilty about that because I wasn’t in control of my body at the time.

We watched as they came from the direction of the city still a fair distance away and were getting closer to us, lunch was already finished. We still had to clean up our campsite which was among a few boulders and not really a good place to hide in for too long.

Those things were definitely looking for us with their wide sweeping search pattern and there wasn’t many places to go where they wouldn’t spot us moving eventually, since we were on an ore covered plain with very little cover to speak of aside from some tall grass.

Valora was the most mineral heavy nation in all of Ransei and metallic ores were practically bursting from the ground, Steel Type Pokémon notably lived on said ores as a food source and it became part of their armored bodies. At least that’s how Quetal explained the existence of this kingdom being run by Pokémon with metal skin.

The Pokémon around here were weak to fire and I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few Steel Types had problems with those Viking Program things and their heat axes.

“Do you think we can ambush them?” Mom asked while watching as the ten or so ninja like digital constructs continued to move around looking for something… likely us or more importantly mom.

“I’m pretty sure they are after you.” Didn’t take much to guess that really.

“Yeah, not surprised, especially if it’s that Moon Cell thing that sent your body after me.” Pom was looking at the ten or so assassins and possibly a few more moving around out there, they all seemed to be specifically designed to be quite stab happy and mom wasn’t exactly great against piercing attacks.

In fact her history with them was quite abysmal to say the least given she’s been stabbed a few times and shot, on top of numerous other things her body could barely handle under constant stress. At least mom mastered and adapted to Dancing Flame to a level where it no longer hurts her much to use it constantly, at least as long as she doesn’t press her limits too often.

“I’m game if you guys are.” Quetal said as he stared at the things with the knives.

“Word of warning, about the weapons they wield, their hands look to be able to turn into scythes on a whim.” I was telling this to everyone still cleaning up the campsite quietly. “So if you disarm them, be careful, they might just turn their arms into a scythe.”

“New information being retrieved from other Digivice’s scan data within the given region. Data logged, most digital entities of similar make have been termed Enemy Programs by one Commandramon, designation Sami Soldier. Targets are of a given designation of Reaper, Classification Assassin, sighted as being extremely dangerous in close combat.” Well that Yggdrasil System dump just let us know that Sami was around, if we were receiving sharing information from their digivices. I don’t know about broadcast range so they could be anywhere from just on the other side of those assassins or within the vicinity of Ironclad City itself. “Suggested methods to deal with them is to apply ranged attacks constantly until more than three fourths of the body has been destroyed, even while missing three limbs the lethality level of an EP-Reaper digital entity is still at seventy percent efficiency, so it is best to make sure of complete de-resolution of the body before any Digimon approaches the data clouds to absorb the digital energy. They have yet to kill anyone, but they are noted for going after softer targets, Steel Types have been noted down for being nigh impossible for them to deal with and not for the lack of trying. They have a record of six hundred and ninety seven attempts on the leader of Valora, King Ieyasu Tokugawa the Aggron… noted for his use of a massive cannon pike and shield, also being indestructible by most normal physical means. User Dalmamon designation Dormarch is correct in his assumption about transformative property of the EP-Reaper limbs.”

“Well that’s helpful to know, a decent confirmation that Canard and Sami are around at the very least.” Pom stated pleasantly, before her mood dipped downwards. “So how are we doing this thing?”

They were getting far closer and we couldn’t stay behind a boulder forever.

“We send Curdle in, hey Curdle how do you feel about things that can’t eat or even taste how good you are as a being?” Pom called out sweetly and I shivered at where this was going, Curdle didn’t seem to like beings who can’t feasibly eat her.

-Near the dozen or so Assassin Class REAPERS five minutes later, Curdle-

“I’m walking on sunshine whoa-~” I sang loudly as I approached the area where these mouthless heathens were, those monsters were unable to taste the glory that was my body and I pity them for that. “And don’t I feel good~?!”

Twelve blades entered my body in quick succession, my right eye twitched as they were interrupting my song.

“Well now, that’s just rude!” I said and unleashed a Dazzling Flash, blowing them all over and forcing their blades out of my body. Every single one of them kicked up onto their feet within an instant and swiftly flashed by me with all their blades going straight through my body. “Hey, stop that, it really tickles!”

The twelve REAPERS, the strange bipedal monsters with singular glaring red eyes were all just staring at me blankly now from their heads being backwards on their bodies. Kind of creepy really as I giggled about their blades tickling my insides.

“What were you maybe expecting me to do, fall apart?” I grinned and then spun in a circle while blasting Mystical Fire from my mouth, said fire was powerful enough to melt three of them into those cubes of light and made the other nine leap back to avoid the flames spewing from me.

A Beat Up suddenly erupted and two went down in a flash of attacks from the shadow copies of Pom, Dolly, Dormarch, six flying Spheals, my shadow copy blasting them with a dark type copy of my dazzling gleam and a shadow copy of Quetal himself all tearing havoc through them.

The sudden flashing sight of the shadow copy of Pom had the seven remaining REAPER things redirecting their efforts onto Quetal or at least his general direction.

“Spheal!” Six attacks united and blasted four other Reapers completely apart in a hail of united Ice Beams in a unit command attack, the Silly Spheals unit of Fontaine were a little bit smarter than they looked... but not by much though.

The three remaining started to turn to run only for Dormarch to flash into position in front of one and jam his four sets of claws into their limbs and then bit them where their neck was while knocking them the down to the ground.

Dolly came screaming out of the sky to ram her skateboard through ones back and out of its chest, it immediately dissolved and as for the last one…

Pom, calmly walked out into plain sight while inhaling and as soon as it saw Pom… the last REAPER immediately turned around. This was regardless of being outnumbered by everyone and made a Combee-line straight for her.

Combee’s really do like to dance in the air, never will forget that one particularly fun conga party in Titania.

This basically confirmed that they were here to kill her specifically.

As it closed in on her, Pom went onto her hind legs and waited in a defensive stance.

Once it was close enough, Pom exhaled and in a flash the two passed by each other, one swinging low and Pom leaping upwards over the attack from what little I could follow of their movements.

Just the flash of two blades swinging out one at a time, a claw swipe and then…

The two blurs resolved themselves, the head of the last REAPER was wildly spinning as it fell away from its still standing body. One blade held horizontally and the other in the motion of stabbing upwards. The body started to move again and was promptly bisected by Pom bucking out to split its top and lower torso entirely in one clean blow from behind, causing the two halves to start dissolving immediately.

Pom had done that finishing blow with her eyes closed eyes and afterwards took a calming deep breathe, she opened her frightened looking eyes and sighed audibly.

“We need to move and find someone who knows what’s going on around here.” You mean aside from these strange one eyed monsters specifically coming for you Pom? “My Fleet Cunning Doe leaping bypass almost failed there, if I were a little slower I’d have a blade in my guts... terrifying thought really.”

Pom was shuddering, but she seemed to still be moving towards the city in the distance. She was clearly afraid after the near miss and yet she was still going?

“Nothing for it, like Pom said, we need to keep moving.” Quetal called out and waved towards the Spheal who quickly hurried up to keep escorting us towards Ironclad City. “Pom, that movement must have taken nerves of steel… also you’re not exactly known for your killer instinct.”

“Like you wouldn’t believe Quetal.” Pom stated while still shuddering as Dormarch hopped onto her and licked at her face affectionately, she smiled weakly and ran her right hoof over his head affectionately as we continued forwards along the plains near the shore heading southeast towards our destination.

Dolly barked cheerfully or at least looked to be trying to sound cheerful or positive.

“At least we confirmed that I’m a major target, it ceased running the instant it caught sight of me. It didn’t care if it got destroyed.” Yeah, that was terrifying to see Pom.

“Talk about priorities… it seems that no matter how small the chances of taking you out are, you are a major target mom.” Dormarch muttered as he nuzzled against Pom’s back and hugged her.

“I see myself being live bait in the near future.” Pom muttered while wilting a bit. “Moon Cell is now my target… after what it did with your body Dormarch, on top of definitely making itself my problem, I’m going to eventually declare war on it where it can hear me succinctly.”

“One step at a time Pom, once we reach the city, I’m sure we’ll find all our friends waiting for us somewhere in there.” Yeah, on top of a lot more of those things that’ll be gunning for us Quetal, more likely they’ll be gunning for Pom on sight.

-Not too far behind the group, a badly brutalized Zacian and Zamazenta-

Fou was definitely not their friend, well at least the blue Zacian’s friend.

It had almost seemed like Fou went out of his way to completely ignore the red Zamazenta no matter how aggressive they got with him. Fou was still quite a nasty monster to fight even if he wasn’t out and out evil or on the prowl to cleanse the world of people, he was still wandering around and comparing himself to strong opponents.

In fact the two of them just gave Fou some of his strongest comparisons yet, which is probably why they were still alive even after they fended him off successfully. Even if they held him no ill will, he still grew enormously strong in their presence.

“Hmm… some are getting through… far too many.” The red Zamazenta stated. “This world is in grave danger.”

“Yeah, but they are drawn to the one that holds ‘THAT’ spear.” Spat out the blue Zacian, seemingly upset about the spear being present.

“Did you notice? She didn’t use the spear.” The Outsider Zamazenta stated.

“Yes, but she still carries it.” The outsider Zacian answered. “I need to keep my eye on that weapon. It must not leave my sight!”

“She doesn’t seem to be aware of its true power though.” The Outsider Zamazenta received a scathing look.

“Doesn’t matter, she’ll eventually come to know of it the longer she holds onto it.” The Outsider Zacian wanted to know why the Rhongomyniad had chosen a sheep to wield it. Even if said sheep could not bring out its true power, the spear still definitively resonated with the Zacian when they had clashed briefly not too long ago. “That is if she doesn’t already have several good guesses as to what kind of power that thing holds with the way she wields it.”

The outsider Zacian took up an average looking sword in their mouth and it started to give off a powerful glow, they started to quietly move. Only for Zamazenta to breaks the silence with one last comment.

“She wasn’t using it offensively, she trends towards the defensive… as what was once a Shielder, I think I can see her heart on the matter of self-defense and the protection of others. She would die on her hooves for such a cause and she sacrifices greatly.” Zamzenta didn’t received a response, it was quite obvious to them that the Outsider Zacian had a big chip in their shoulder about that lance and what it did in that one particular timeline. “What of the three tailed canine that felt vaguely like a servant, but was paradoxically alive? They could be some form of demi- or pseudo- servant like I once was.”

“…” Again the Outsider Zacian didn’t respond, they looked to be too busy thinking about it themselves.

The black spotted three tailed fish dog was quite odd, but there was no grail war taking place here making the feeling of its living presence even odder.

The two of these legendary outsiders were busy trying to figure out how to preserve this world and to do that they would have to protect it from something of that has doomed many civilizations numerous times over and was far more powerful than they could face alone. A thing that could utilize famously strong souls like its personal weapons.

Unfortunately these two were currently short on allies and the benign gods of this world were quite busy trying to contain the situation already… yet oddly enough, they let the sheep through and let her go straight towards danger without attempting to stop her or even explain the situation.

They just quietly let her by and watched without a single threat or even an attempt to stop her to save her from her current path, what was their game involving that sheep? Was it even a game to them at all?

There was no loftier goal for these two than to do what they currently were, for they were seeking for a way to save this world with absolutely everything they had.

They still had time to consider their positions and that of the many others on the board, there were two civilizations in the path of destruction here and at best if they had to save a world it would be the one that was their new home.

-To the far south, in the middle of the Terrera and Cragspur conflict, Jiri-

“King Evan?!” I blinked and then blinked again in disbelief what was he doing here on the frontlines in Terrera?! With troops from both Greenleaf and Violight no less?

379. Enmity Swarm.

-Pokémon Realm, Within Ironclad City, Canard-

I was getting better at punching out these Enemy Programs with digital energy, I took down another Saber Knight and looked around and noticed the sudden odd change in their movements.

“Sami something is up with their movements!” I called out to the lizard with a gun, she was currently covering my back and blowing through Archer Seraphs. “I think something is going sideways with this incursion!”

“What?! Hold on a second I’ll track, their movements with the digivice after I’m done gunning these grunts down.” Sami continued to gun down our flying digital enemies and tossed a DCD Bomb that wiped out a group of Saber Knights, the ones with shields were a bit harder for her to deal with and that’s why I’m here. Give me any weapon and I’ll fight to the last. “Frizzle and Dazzle already got the last PLANT, but Moon Cell’s influence is already spreading, soon they’ll be able to drop more PLANTs than we can handle without sending a counter incursion ourselves to stem the tides of them coming through and we’re definitely not ready for that, the Steel Types might be tough and willing to fight, but they are completely exhausted.”

A pause in the action made me look around, it was eerily quiet in the damaged city, I turned to Sami holding the Digivice and she had a curious expression on her face.

“It’s a mass exodus, hundreds upon hundreds of them and they’re all heading… northwest? Why would they… hold on… getting a Digivice signal outside the city, Yggdrasil System information sharing activated?” After a moment of looking at the devices data, Sami looked up at me with a look of concern on her face.

“Is it a trap?” I asked as I pulled out a sword from the scabbard, didn’t need this for the Saber Knights.

If we’re going to be dealing with something more dangerous… well I haven’t exactly mastered using digital energy with the sword and my fists were surprisingly enough more effective at taking out the Enemy Programs at the moment.

The Sword was given to me by the Steel Types local manufacturing industries after I helped save their manufacturing zone from an incursion, couldn’t get a puck pistol or a hockey stick, but a new hockey stick was coming soon at least. It would be made of the sturdiest metals this region could provide, until then this sword was for defensive purposes and very much needed.

“No… I wouldn’t think so, considering the Digivice signal is reading as the one Pom and Dolly own, only there’s an oddity with the signal.” Sami responded as I looked over her shoulder as a mass of red bore down on the Digivice. “It’s definitely them though, no one aside from Pom can draw that much trouble to herself. Also I’d swear Moon Cell hates her guts with how many Enemy Programs it’s throwing at her and most of them are Assassin Reapers.”

“What is it that seems odd about the signal?” I asked as things seemed too quiet now, a unit of Beldum floated over to me and Clefairy came running up to me with a smile. Good to see she was okay, she’s been a cheerful and powerful companion since she evolved.

Beldum were Pokémon that resembled floating camera’s. The back flat end of their mostly cone shaped bodies were three claws. The front end had their heads that were spherical with single large eyes that were usually red. They were made entirely of metal, magnetic and were generally acted like robots, but no, they were biologically alive and could even lay eggs.

It was a common trend among Steel Types to have tough bodies and they were some of the most technologically advanced beings on the planet next to the Psychic or Electric Type Pokemon, but that certainly doesn’t prevent them from having problems.

Steel Types were slower and far heavier than most other Pokémon, the large ones s also with all the constant fighting, their bodies would be fine, but they would be almost too exhausted to move.

“… There’s an active Digimon connected to the device, it might have some unusual implications.” Well if it really was Pom and Dolly, we needed to gather everyone and get over to the northwest side of the city immediately, before they were crushed by the swarm coming for them. “I can at least guarantee that it really is Pom though… Moon Cell seems to want her turbo dead from what we’re seeing. Who’s the closest to the northwest that we can contact?”

“Shanty is in that direction making sure the Safe Zone lives up to its name, it’s not going to be safe for long with as many problems as we got here. Whoa those EPs are basically blitzing towards Pom.” This city has seen far better days and I was looking at the tall towers with lots of damage, along with the digital lines of Moon Cell’s slow attempts to gain a foothold in this world.

We were only slowing it down, but we had done a lot to make sure it was as slow as we could get it.

“Beldum unit, we need you to spread an emergency alert to everyone about the change in situation. Some friends of ours are about to be hit hard by the Enemy Programs.” Sami turned to the six floating eyeballs staring at us blankly, they all gained serious looks and their round heads bobbed up and down in acknowledgement. Sami looked down at the Digivice as something changed on it. “Pom’s Pokémon companions unit is already on the move to assist her, hopefully Dazzle will be able to get there before Pom’s group is taken out because that is a lot of Assassin Reapers.”

-A few miles away, Ironclad City Outskirts, Pom-

“Dolly, remember when you said how many there could be… yeah… that was tempting fate.” Dormarch stated dryly as more than hundreds of those Reaper things coming at us. “We got a lot of Enemy Programs incoming!”

“If I had known she was tempting fate, I would have said something.” Well it wasn’t like any of us expected you to learn to speak dog Quetal.

“Honestly, we have a good position right now.” We were on a somewhat big hillside when we caught sight of them coming at us from a distance, that and Dormarch was improving his range of detection.

“How so, there’s too many of them and I think I can see far more coming at us behind them.” Which was an assessment from Dormarch that I was wishing we didn’t need to hear.

“Spheal gather up and start attacking when they come into range!” The Spheal unit gathered in a line at the top of the hill, we needed to protect them. Sure they weren’t traditionally an artillery unit of Fontaine, but they’d do well enough in a pinch. If they weren’t here I’d be trying more for a stealth approach, but it would take forever to get close to the city with that many enemies around. “I’m going to move forward a bit to set up a trap field. Quetal, what are you and Curdle going to be doing?”

“Covering you, we’re not splitting up.” We barely rated two units, we were horribly outnumbered and Quetal chose to stick it out instead of sneaking around the veritable army coming at us to get help. It’s what I would have suggested at least, no point in all of us dying when some of us could still survive this. “Our enemy seems to really have it out for you Pom, especially if they are sending this many of these Reaper things after you. Really doubt we could avoid them, as they’ve already spotted us. Also you’re right, this might be the hill we die on, but it’ll at least give us some ranged advantage. Now go set up whatever it is you have in mind.”

I tested the wool on my body, I haven’t grown enough back to do too many big things, but I could at least fire wool based Thousand Spears from my front legs. That would be taking up a mass of wool for a slight mid-ranged advantage. Doing the Thousand Spears physically required me to put stress on myself physically instead of mystically.

I immediately made my way down the hill as the Spheal stayed behind. Once I got to the Bottom I moved a bit forward and readied my throat for what I was about to do.

Once I got far enough away at the base of the hill we were about to be assaulted on, I barked up a Bark Buster. The liquid magic blob plopped onto the ground and then I started moved horizontally barking up more of them, counting each one that would be waiting for me to remote detonate them as I planted them. I started to move back curve to go in the opposite direction while spitting up more.

This was going to leave my throat a little raw, but I think it would be worth it in the end.

“What does it taste like to bark that stuff up?” Dormarch asked innocently.

“If you knew what coughing up mucus was like, then it is far worse than that.” I said hoarsely as a second later I spat up another one.

“Yeah, feeling how it feels for Pom to do it, it’s really gross… useful and really awesome, but gross.” The moment Dolly finished adding her two scents, six ice elemental beams lanced out overhead at a downwards angle. Something Distracted Dolly from what I was doing and I looked up at the air to see more of those bow wielding Seraph flying above the Reapers and were coming at us much faster than the ground bound enemies. “Well dog, does anyone have any way to deal with that?”

“You can do that Dolly, Curdle too.” My voice was getting all scratchy now and I still continued to spit up Bark Busters onto the ground in a wide area while slowly backing up, my replication of Oleanders dark magic explosion traps had worked fairly well thus far. This was using up a lot of my natural magic too and I wasn’t tapping my golden energy for any of this until I direly needed it.

I was going to need to pace myself afterwards and use my wool for Thousand Spears only and would use my more physical capabilities after I used all these wads of explosive magic up. I would be once again abusing Dancing Flame like crazy, Dormarch was going to be upset about my health after this if we even survived.

I just mentally sent Dolly the idea to summon a huge tornado using Aerora or using Gravity over as wide an area as she can feasibly manage to knock them out of the sky, maybe both in combination? Aerora to draw them in and Gravity to take them all out, she should be able to create a vortex like that.

Curdle had Dazzling Gleam to hit a number of them if they got close enough for the magical flash of Fairy Type energy to hit them.

Another spray of ice beams lanced from the Spheal as they continued to pepper our opponents at range, who knew how successful they currently were at taking down any of the things coming at us. There was a bit of a hill in the way of my sight to see how close they were getting.

I had Dormarch moved up the hill to get an idea of how close the enemy were as I continued to spread Bark Busters until my throat couldn’t take it anymore. After a moment I tapped his senses for a few seconds and got a quick visual. My connection to Dormarch was quite a bit different from Dolly’s, but we still made it work.

Right, now was the time to put in a retreat, I’ve done as much set up as I could. I wasn’t going to throw out my voice in the hopes that we could deal with it all in one go, I should give my throat a rest now and pulled back with Dolly, Quetal and Curdle following me back uphill. There were far more than those Reapers and Seraphs coming at us a lot more and we didn’t exactly have the ability to fend them off or run from them.

Thankfully the other Enemy Programs as Dormarch called them, were much slower than the Reapers and Seraphs, so we were would be hit with waves if we dealt with them quickly enough instead of a constant bulk of them all at once.

I looked at Dolly and sent her a mental message to try and deal with the Seraphs when she thought was a good time to do so. I was trusting Dolly’s judgement on this, her response was that she was going to need a quick recharge afterwards.

Once up near the Spheal continuing to fire as much as the cute little beach balls could into the horde coming at us, I turned around and got a scope of the situation.

I glared at our enemies and had a single grim sentence for the fight we were about to be involved in, these guys were related to the one that sent Dormarch’s body after me and I only had a few words for it sending more at me.

“Bring it on.” We were likely garnering enough attention that if Shanty or the others were in the city proper they’d find a way to help out soon.

“Uh, Quetal do you know anything about large metal birds that could be Steel Types?” Dormarch drew my attention to the city as specks rose into the sky were flying our way and Dormarch had better eyesight than I did as he could tell what those dots were.

“That would be units of Skarmory, one of the more dangerous Steel Type Pokémon that can actually fly despite how heavy they are, if the Steel Types still have an air force around we might might get some help quickly.” Quetal called out and took a forward position in front of me as we faced down the hill. “Here they come, incoming attacks from above, ready up!”

The Seraphs started by raining shots of sparks of energy came raining down on us from above, this unfortunately made the Spheal stop to avoid getting skewered by the hundreds of shots the hill was taking.

I don’t think the Seraphs were even trying to be accurate, they were just trying to prevent us from dodging in a clinical fashion.

“Uh Dolly.” I hoarsely tried to say as I dodged a stream of shots focusing on me with a leap to the left, there were some rare shots going after the others, but being the direct target was more to our advantage as I leapt to the right to dodge even more energy blasts trying to skewer me.

“I’ve got this, trust me Pom.” Dolly said with a grin on her face as she adjusted her skateboarding helmet.

I had to skip backwards to avoid becoming a pincushion and the Spheal were bouncing around wildly trying to avoid all the shots raining down on us, no longer able to concentrate on the incoming ground forces.

What was Dolly waiting on?!

“Almost there… come on.” Dolly was glancing between all the static Seraph and the Seraph moving closer to them to take up a static position to continue shooting at us, to the wiry Reapers charging along the ground for us.

It was then that I figured out what Dolly was waiting for.

“Aerora!” Dolly raised both her paws to the sky and managed to suck in a huge clump of Reapers, but not only that the large tornado also pulled in a large amount of Seraph too as it built up to a large degree and had quite a lot of them in the tornado’s suction. “Gravity!”

The Reapers that weren’t sucked up, started moving forward again when the tornado’s grasp left the ground, only to be crushed by a massive splash of light cubes as the gathered mass of enemies from the tornado exploded against the ground violently.

That took care of a number of Seraph, but not all of them and the Reapers were still closing in on us and my trap. I let them keep moving forward until they were at the Bark Busters nearest to us.

I never thought about it before, but when did I become an army devastator or are these things just that weak? In the distance, I could see more different types of these things coming. It was like I drew every Enemy Program in the city here.

The Bark Busters all ignited in a flowing forward wave of explosions that pushed into the oncoming, rightly terrifying, large horde of enemies. It at least pushed them back and off of us for at least a few more seconds before we really would have to start fighting for our lives in close quarters.

Wait, close quarters… what if they couldn’t reach us?

“Spheal, ice the hill around us…” Quetal’s voice got the Spheal moving to ice the hillside over with Ice Beams as I continued to dodge a few more shots of those light arrows from above.

“Agh!” One of said shots ripped into the right side of my face making me bleed a bit before I closed up the injury with as little wool as I could feasibly put towards sewing it shut.

Dolly soon leapt up on my back and her board was now absorbing a massive amount of fire coming for me, it was somewhat of a good thing that the Seraph were focusing a majority of their attacks on me. The more shots coming at me, the less that was going for the others managing to hold the hill.

The Spheal managed to ice the hillside the enemy were coming at us from, but instead of stopping they kept coming. Sure a number of them slipped down or were taken out by flurry of ice beams firing down the slope as the Spheal learned to fire them while dodging, but the rest simply reversed the grips on the knives they held and started using them to climb the slope. They looked like creepy large bugs with how they were doing it too.

They weren’t even trying to go around to climb the portions of the hills slope that weren’t frozen over, they were just coming straight as us or more likely for me. Yeah, I’m pretty sure this Moon Cell thing needs to be dealt with if I’m ever to survive long enough to reach Tambelon, since it’s going to throw everything thing it has at me and I had no clue as to why.

Quetal was firing barrage after barrage of Beat up into the swarm climbing the ice up at us, the Spheals were continuing to pour on the ice beams, Curdle timed her Dazzling Gleam to knock the ones higher up the slope back down it and took out a few of the Seraph still aiming for me as well.

Sometimes Quetal would even target the enemy up high in the air with his Beat Up attack and launch shadow copies into them. The flying upper torso archer angels were particularly fragile if you could hit them.

I raised my right hoof and took aim, I fired off a Thousand Spears and the jet of air struck true and took a spinal tailed Seraph out of the air, it rapidly dissolved as it fell.

Dolly was still blocking hundreds of shots for me and I was taking aim patiently with my right leg to shoot at the swarm of Seraph. They were starting to spread out to make Dolly’s job of protecting me that much harder as the angles their energy arrows were coming from were getting hard to dodge as I slowly fired back.

I was still pacing myself, but I really couldn’t do much as I already expended a lot of energy to set that trap and took out a good number. It’s just that there were hundreds of them swarming at us and it was impossible for us to keep up with this many for much longer.

Concentrating, I was making each Thousand Spears shot count as Dolly continued to clamber and hop around around my body deflecting energy arrows to the best of her ability. That was up until I felt shot go through my left hind leg and I crumpled to the ground in agony and quickly sealed the wound with the wool with a thought.

I wasn’t the only one taking injuries, but I was the one that was being targeted to Tartarus and back.

Something made me start to panic once I realized that our defensive position was missing someone aiding the fight in his own unique way.

Where was Dormarch in all of this?

-Where Dormach was in all of this, Dormarch-

Just had to keep dodging and try not draw attention to myself, not hard to do as mom just took a hit to the leg and was getting a majority of the focus. I growled angrily at the Archer Seraphs and prepared for my retaliation that’ll give us at least ten second break in the fight and take care of those nasty things out too.

Dolly was blurring around her, probably reacting to dozens of triangles, but she couldn’t block absolutely everything.

I was paying attention to a mental charging meter, I was building up for the attack program Wild Howling. P-Wild Howling was barely more powerful than P-Wild Bark, but what mattered was the difference in range. Wild Bark would be used in a short melee range for a quick stun, Wild Howling would be used while you were surrounded by a lot of enemies and would cause paralysis in any enemy caught up in the attack.

Unfortunately my body required a slight charge up time before I could even use Wild Howling… said charge up time was almost finished and I set up three code commands to enact in quick succession. Search Hunter, was set up twice in a row for if I needed to do it a second time, but I could skip and immediately use Wild Howling after either Search Hunter.

I pinged mom and Dolly, to tell everyone to get down.

-Pom-

Dormarch sent a mental message and I blinked.

“Everyone down!” I crouched so that my belly was touching the badly singed grass and Dolly held her board above us.

Quetal had several small nicks from the energy arrows, dove uphill to press himself against the ground.

Curdle just looked confused.

The Spheal tried to cover their heads with their tiny flippers, ridiculously cute critters, but that might be a bit ineffective for whatever Dormarch was about to pull.

With a flash and then a after a moment of hanging in the air, Dormarch disappeared in another one he appeared above the horde almost stepping on the unfrozen grass to get at us and inhaled.

When Dormarch exhaled he let loose a bone chilling feral howl that rippled outward and caused the Seraphs above us to rupture and explode violently, the ones that were slightly further away that got struck by the shockwave froze up and fell to the ground to splatter in a splash of cubes.

A mass of the reapers that were close enough to the howl followed the same pattern, those that were closer ruptured and those that were further away stopped moving. The ones outside the range of the howl were still moving for us however and climbing over the ones that were downed.

Dormarch quickly popped back next to us and started to draw in a large amount of the light cubes that was considered digital blood. He must have expended a lot of energy to be drawing in as much as he could as he stayed next to me.

“My body can’t handle the stress of doing that again too soon, not without a digital evolution.” Dormarch was supposed to be capable of that and I think he tried to do so once before, but now… he didn’t exactly have anything stopping did he?

“Then why not do a digital evolution?” I asked as we were having less problems with Seraphs at the moment, there were plenty more on the way though with the rest of the Enemy Program horde that looks to be wielding swords and shields, axes, spears and plenty of other things.

“Not ready, also I don’t know what I’ll become… do you want me to become a Machinedramon?” Dormarch asked with worry.

“No, if you need to take your time to figure something out, then take your time. I’m sure we’ll... figure something out in the meantime.” My ‘no’ came out a bit strained, I didn’t want to deal with Machinedramon or Chaosdramon, but if Dormarch became them and was still in control of himself then I’d at least trust him to not kill me with all that power.

I was a little wary after what happened to Frizzle when she became Growlmon Normal.

I said as the first reaper got onto the grass and lunge for me, I was up on my hind hooves and deflected its attempt to stab me with its left knife using my right hoof and leg to twist it away from me with a quick grapple. It tried to swing around its other arm from right only for Dolly block it, as she was still clinging to me and hadn’t let go.

Balancing on my injured left hind leg and launched a right thrust kick straight into its chest to send it falling back into the horde of Reapers, the ones that were paralyzed were slowly regaining the ability to move and the ones that were still moving were about to hit us like a tidal wave.

“Guys, whatever Dormarch did is wearing off.” Curdle unleashed a Dazzling Gleam to push the horde back slightly.

The Spheal were continuing to attack, but they were tiring out, I think they had done the most damage out of all of us and even more than that. The little guys were truly troopers and deserving of their title as a Fontaine Special unit.

“Pom, we’re about to get covered here, what do we do?” Trying to find the words for Quetal as his claws tore into a Reaper that started rushing me once it climbed up to the grass, I couldn’t think of anything. “Does anyone have anything to randomly pull out of your backsides?”

In the next ten seconds of fighting I tore the head off of Reaper and stabbed the next with its own knives before putting it back in the horde with a Dancing Flame empowered kick.

“You could all just leave me… here…” The response was immediate, but everyone yelled at me.

“NO/SPHEAL/NOT HAPPENING/MOM/REALLY POM?!” They all shouted, even the Spheal looked upset when they heard me try and suggest they abandon me to all of this.

“Why are all of you looking to me for answers here, this situation is rapidly devolving and… Rrrrraghh!” I pausing to slash out two magical claws and drained myself further shredding three knife wielding Reapers apart entirely mid leap, there was a bit of a golden glow on the second slash and I looked at my right hoof to see a slight bit of gold seeping upwards and mentally crushed it from happening. That means I was pressing my magical limits already and started slipping into sacrificing outright. “I have none that are good options where I don’t make a sacrifice, at best we can fight and hold out for those Skarmory to hopefully do something before we all die!”

Curdle continued to use Dazzling Gleam to push them back, but even that was failing as more and more Reapers were surging at us. Dormarch fired off several Retrieval barks and at best was delaying the inevitably, because those Skarmory were nowhere close to reach us in time.

Another reaper charged in as I inhaled and then exhaled to tear off its right arm with both my hooves and then spun about to whip its one eyed head off with its own limb. Even then its left arm went to stab me and missed before Dolly tore it in half vertically with the left edge of her skateboard after leaping up and flipping forward once.

“Charge me, we need it!” Yelled Dolly as the next wave of Seraph started firing on us, the wave of shots thankfully fell short of us as they weren’t in range, but it was close enough to be worried about. I stomped my right hoof down on the board and I heard Dolly whimper with the impact, but she stayed standing. “Aerora!”

The tornado pushed the mass of the Reapers away at the very least and took chunks of ice with it they tore into the numbers inside the swirling winds, but the arriving Seraph simply avoided the massive forward moving tornado and Dolly was rubbing at her head.

There’s a reason we weren’t actively constantly charging her up and having her constantly cast spells, we discovered it long ago that while Dolly can cast a lot of spells in a short time, but it’ll build up exhaustion exponentially between charge ups to keep being rapidly charged up and casting.

There was a whistling noise and then the entire tornado lit on fire and explode taking out the smaller hill next to ours.

Whatever that was it bought us some time.

Ten second later, another whistling noise was heard and then a group of Seraph were blasted out of the air.

What had done that? That’s when I saw fast flying shadow shooting overhead and swerved around to come at us.

There was a half formed smile on my face. Another part of me was horrified she made it here in time to get swarmed with us.

It was Shanty and Dodo, and they had come from… the southwest? Must have swung wide to avoid the swarming Enemy Programs and reach us. Also… was Dodo always that big? The flying metal ostrich swooped down and then seemed to be coming for a landing, only it overshot our position and Shanty leapt out, also not coming for our position.

In fact it looks like she was going to dive into a lot of trouble.

“Glad to be seeing you Pom!” Shanty shouted as she passed by falling back first onto the slope of the hill to skid about half a foot before she immediately curled up into a ball of rapidly spinning death via the arcing blades that created a protective force field around Shanty, once she hit the bottom of the slope she started bouncing through the mass of reapers.

Her Bouncing Blades technique had certainly improved quite a bit as it became a full on protective field of selective cutting force, because Shanty wasn’t cutting into the ground as much as she was the Reapers. They couldn’t even get a knife near Shanty before she shredded through hundreds of them with each bounce in seconds, but I doubt Shanty could do that for too long without getting dizzy.

While Shanty was assisting us there, Dodo floated backwards and up with jets of flame coming from his feet until he was hovering above us. He opened his beak and fired out something black with orange colored cracks in it. That was what making an odd whistling sound that had Dormarch and Dolly wincing before it exploded into another group of Seraph.

Dodo warbled merrily at me while hovering in place with his wings spread out protectively above us and giving off a strange humming noise, this was what I could vaguely hear before he fired off another whistling explosive thing.

I silently wondered what kind of pastry could do that and what was my life that I was thinking about that more than the battle that was currently going on?

In any case Shanty and Dodo weren’t going to be enough alone, even as Shanty tore through swaths of enemies.

“Blade Storm!” Popping out of her spinning form while spreading all four of her hooves, Shanty created a spherical explosion of cutting arcs that blasted everything away from her in the general vicinity.

I could really see the use of such a deadly move in this situation, but she better not do that around friends or allies.

She immediately started dodging, deflecting and deflecting attacks as she quickly making her way back towards us and slashing her way through hordes of Reapers while dashing in a zigzagging pattern.

Soon she was up here on the hill with us, breathing and laughing merrily as she nuzzled up against me.

“Am I being glad to be seeing you Pom!” Yeah, when the sword, axe and spear guys were almost upon us as well Shanty. I only knew the axe ones were Vikings. “Those Assassin Reapers are being the worst of them, they be able to fight without a head or most of their body really. You be drawing every single Enemy Program in the city to you and they be leaving all their PLANTs defenseless, how did you be doing that?”

“How else, something is trying to kill me again, it must be quite advantageous to be so hated I guess.” My flat delivery made Shanty hug me. “At least it’s a good thing for the city, but not so much for me!”

Still, glad to see her and I hugged her back, I’m surprised she even made it back up the hill in one piece after she lost the momentum from her Bouncing Blades attack in the middle of the swarm and had to drop it.

“Guys, now isn’t the time for feelings and hugging here!” Quetal stated as he fended off three attackers expertly and performed a flipping Aerial Ace that mimicked Shanty’s Blade Storm somewhat to shred them to cubes of disappearing light. “Do you have any ideas for how to save this situation Shanty?”

“Yeah, more be coming to help, we just be needing to hold out for a bit.” Well that’s good to know, you were mostly fresh and in the city apparently. It was probably safer there than here. “Dry powdered sugar is being a thing according to both Smolder and Ocellus, they be warning me about taking cooking classes with a pony named Pinkie Pie… in fact, that is being why Dodo can even be making volcanic bread loaves. They are being stronger than TNT and that is being an awesome thing to know! Also to be answering your questions ahead of time, Dodo be eating a lot of metal when we got here, he’s apparently been needing it for a while.”

“I’m so far beyond questioning the things that come out of Dodo’s beak anymore…” Despite my tired resignation, at least Dodo was covering us from the Seraphs. I brought up my hooves and Shanty took up a position next to me, I lunged forward and slapped my left hoof into the eye of a Reaper and then retreated it before the thing could stab me in my extended leg. “Just don’t die!”

“I can be doing that!” Shanty stated cheerfully as she tore down several Reapers like a reaper herself when she brought her cane scythe out and around into the fight with an impressive flourish. “It’s you I’m worried about! What’s with that bit of gold on your… that’s your wool? Is that being Dormarch?! Hey, Dormarch, nice to be seeing you back among the living!”

Shanty became somewhat concerned the ring of gold wool above my right hoof and then got distracted by the fact that Dormarch was protecting the Spheal so they could continue to unite their attacks against the swarm.

“Kind of busy here Shanty, we'll talk later!” Dormarch whined as he continued to blast away with Retrieval Bark at the Seraphs and Reaper trying to target me or the Spheal that were keeping a majority of the ground forces off us by icing them over.

Author's Note

Fun Fact: Sugar can have four times the yield of TNT.

381. Musou!

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Cruise Line Hopsital, Kuril-

“So be ready for it.” Dr. Bones finished stating as the Diamond Dog informed me of several things to be ready for. “Also your health is quite good, watch it with the blood pressure though.”

“Right.” Let’s hope that things continue to be fine, the economy was still reeling somewhat from Jaded trying to do math. My kittens were all amazing, but the one I gave birth to is still as magical as ever in a weird sort of way. “Thank you for warning me Zen, but I think I have things under control.”

“Like your kitten?” Okay, low blow Zen, but Jaded was actually nice after you get past her many eccentricities. Sure she has a lot of them, but I think I did well enough with raising her.

“I doubt anyone can control the rogue in the family and I’m not talking about my sweet little Fizzy who technically runs an empire.” Still, I did have everyone in the family do regular checkups to make sure nothing was wrong with any of them.

As far as things went Jaded’s back alley spinal surgery wouldn’t have any long lasting repercussions because I got her every injury checked out afterwards. I had to make sure my kittens weren’t being idiots, especially the one known for getting into strange situations like the living kitchen appliances. I’m not going to say anything if no one else does or hasn’t even noticed something off, especially with how busy Jaded can be at times with weird things happening around her.

Zen was always my first choice of doctor for Jackie’s daily struggles to stay at least capable of limping. Her curse has been pretty nasty to her recently what with the five trees within an hour, in said hour she dealt with a collapsing roof, getting involuntarily shot out of a cannon which she was inside it face first that made her take said launching blast to the face, then there’s being bitten and clawed twenty or so times by a gang of raccoons and then being set on fire by fire wasps.

Usually it’s Jaded that has problems with fire wasps, occasionally Flyders too and despite her love of beasts she really didn’t like or get along with magical insects. Explains why she started carrying powerful bug spray around at least, aside from the whole makeshift flamethrower angle.

Gallus was quite healthy, which meant he at least had people looking out for him quite well before he became one of my kittens. Had to give it to Gilda’s family, they at least made sure he was alive and somewhat fed.

There’s also little Gavin and Silvers to think about as well, I’m glad to have such a wonderful doctor looking out for my grand kittens and is writing a book on how to medically care for Chimera. Quite a few doctors that moved here were waiting on it, because the information might help with chimeric animal rearing as much as chimera citizenry. Maries can’t be the only chimera around that wanted to socialize outside the tribes.

Quite soon Paprika and Velvet were going to have their own kittens, which was going to be a whole other thing if Velvet wanted to get back into Arizona beating shape.

My how time flies, food, fun and love, what more could an Abyssinian queen ask for?

-Pokémon Realm, Ironclad City Outskirts, approaching a horde of Enemy Programs, Pom-

“I’ll have you know that I am doing this under protest, despite the fact that my body is driving me to help since those Hakamo-o and Jeanne look to need assistance.” I also knew Ieyasu would need help, but his hide was proving to be a lot tougher than the enemies we’d soon to be attacking. At least the Skarmory couldn’t be touched in their sweeps of vast swaths of enemies. “What information do you have on the other Enemy Programs we’re facing Shanty?”

“Any of them that be having swords or have both swords and shields are Saber Knights, they are being the general purpose soldiers of our enemy and there is always being a lot of them. Simple enough, what you be seeing is what you be get with them. The ones with the axes be Berserker Vikings and as the names suggests they are being highly aggressive, also their heat axes are not something you want to be hit by or near for too long. Nearly be losing my head to one when they once be steaming my Bounding Bubble out of existence. Lancer Guardians are specialist in charging attacks or acting defensively, so basically if you be closing in on them, don’t let them run you down.” It was nice that Shanty was already knowledge on the subject of these things. “Guardians are usually seen around PLANTS. I really be disliking the Berserker Vikings who are seen with Saber Knights the most. Archer Seraphs usually go everywhere, as you’ve seen they be very fragile and have really good aim. Assassin Reapers be very annoying to deal with, if they don’t be dissolving don’t trust one laying on the ground with just a limb and a head to not try to get you when it thinks you not be paying enough attention to it.”

“Thanks for the heads up for what we’re about to get into.” I said as I moved forward, a majority of these Enemy Program things were still after me, but they were a bit distracted by the Hakamo-o units, the Skarmory and our Pokémon Companion friends. We were thus forging our way slightly to the northeast to start supporting the Hakamo-o and the flag bearing Jeanne D’Arc, Jeanne seemed to even have things handled fairly well given how well she was tearing through the ranks compared to her friends.

“Spheal?” One of the Spheal queried as they continued to bounce or roll after us.

“You guys can stick with the Hakamo-o and lend support when you’re able, don’t over exert yourselves though.” The Silly Spheal’s unit have been quite helpful, very much worthy of Fontaine's insanely quirky or strange units.

“Incoming group of Saber Knights.” Dormarch announced next to me.

“There being two other types of enemy, but they be wiped out early this time. Considering the problems they be causing the last three times we be meeting them. We went to special efforts to be dealing with them quickly. The stronger they are, the longer it be taking for a PLANT to bring back.” Do tell Shanty, because I needed to know all I could about all of this and the situation going on around here. “They are being Caster Mages and Rider Horns. Caster Mages be in robes and be very annoying with magic in being capable of doing a lot of weird things, but they mostly just be shooting fireballs everywhere most of the time. The Rider Horns be really fast and almost always in motion… they also be looking like rectangular bulls and can be carrying the other EPs around.”

Rectangular bulls… well that’s going to be a thing to worry about later when we eventually get around to fighting those.

“Good to know, in case we run into any.” As he said this Quetal took the lead and fired off a Beat Up attack, his stamina has increased by quite a lot since he’s still going even now. Shadow copies that lasted bare seconds tore into the knights who clumsily tried to defend the attacks with their shields. He tore through tens of them with his attack.

Following that Shanty and I charged to meet the numbers that were between us and the Hakamo-o, I needed a quick word with Jeanne and then we can proceed to try and help Ieyasu out with being surrounded by hundreds of these EPs things. Notably the entire crowd of EPs was still slowly working their way in my direction, but they were also attempting to deal with every distraction on the way to me. That is quite haunting for anyone to deal with, especially if they were infinitely regenerating like Shanty had suggested when she talked about those PLANT things until they were dealt with.

“Curdle stick with Quetal. Shanty you’re good to do whatever, just don’t leave my sight. Dormarch, Dolly, let’s go!” I closed up the paralance angled it forward and did a three hoof charge with it.

“Right behind you Pom!” Dolly called out as she followed me forward.

“Please be careful mom, I think you’re still running on adrenaline and I don’t know how much more trouble you can take on today!” Trusting that Dormarch would keep an eye on my health while we bust through to join the Hakamo-o, I ran straight at ten or so of the Saber Knights.

We ran up to the knights and I narrowed my eyes at their raised swords as I continued my charge, while I was doing this I was communicating with Dolly and Dormarch on what I needed them to do.

The knights started their swings as I approached and the three of us stopped on a dime, the sword slapped against the ground harmlessly.

I lunged and tore on in half by catching it on the lance in the chest and swing it sideways, Dormarch slashed the two trying to react to us suddenly stopping and then attacking after they whiffed.

Dolly took the head off the one on my left with a swing of her board and flipped to being on her board and used it to kick off the quickly dissolving body. She led it into a right paw haymaker that took the head off another, she lightly hopped and with her left rear leg hooked around the strap she swung it around counterclockwise to knock over three of the knights.

While this was happening I rose up onto my hind legs and stomped my right hind leg harshly against the ground, the vibrational shock traveled up to my left leg hold the paralance by itself and I slammed it downwards.

“Impact!” A small spreading shockwave erupted from the spear tip and blasted the downed knights and the one still standing as Dormarch took care of the others behind me.

“Are you sure you don’t have super strength mom?” Dormarch asked jokingly.

“I’m quite sure if I had super strength, I wouldn’t have to abuse myself so badly to survive in a fight.” I shook my right hind leg out and then braced myself to move forward as Quetal and Curdle tore into enemies off to the side.

“Well when you put it like that… at least you have super speed.” Okay, couldn’t deny that Dormarch.

“Yeah, but I only have so much stamina.” Idly drawing attention to the fact that running down an entire mountain side while outrunning numerous threats will take a lot out of you, at least I knew I can outrun an avalanche now.

As we talked I swung my lance around as I plowed it through several Saber Knights. Compared to the Assassin Reapers, these guys were actually fairly easy to take out. For one they immediately went down at the loss of a limb or severe damage, for another they didn’t switch between a one eyed bug mode and being bipedal on a moment’s notice to change up how they attack you.

“This is being the easy stuff, clean up shouldn’t be taking us too long!” As I looked to Shanty she was wading through them and tearing them apart in the hundred as they tried to rush her down and get at me through her. Well at least she’s had a lot of exercise and practice, she was fighting far better than she usually does.

Turning back to what I was doing, I continued to do wide horizontal quick sweeps. It takes one serious blow or several quick blows in rapid succession to really take them down and I was swinging the lance side to side quite easily as I stepped forward.

After inhaling slowly, I exhaled and spun before explosively swinging the lance out wide, sending bodies of the digital entities that had no minds or thoughts like Dormarch. If they could think I would be more wary about finishing these things off in large numbers, at most they were basically robots with less metal in them than a Digi-bot.

Taking a solid thirty of things down with that one swing would be more impressive, if there weren’t hundreds of them slowly encroaching on me and they weren’t exactly of the same quality of the Assassin Reapers.

Dolly just went spinning by, gliding in the air and twirling fast enough to become a spinning disk of doom for all the Saber Knights in her path.

Dormarch wasn’t having any problems with them either, Shanty was right these Saber guys were more about exhausting you with number than having actual strength behind them.

I continued to press forward to the northeast towards the Hakamo-o and once we were close enough after taking down an entire group of Saber Knight, I called out to Jeanne. While still slapping and swinging my lance with enough force to get through the ten or so Saber Knight left in my way, it felt like I just we chunked our way through more than a solid one hundred of them.

“Hey, Jeanne nice to see you!” I called out as she spun her banner harshly in a sweeping upwards swing to launched at least a hundred of them into the air and then she rapidly stabbed each one down with incredible precision.

“Pom, you’re looking… somewhat iffy, but alive and in a better place mentally! Thanks for bringing some much needed help to clean up the rest of these invaders current attempt to take my home!” She called out in a friendly manner as she planted the Valora flag with the Steel Type symbol on it that reminded me of metal plates. “My home has been overrun with these Enemy Program things, but thankfully we know how to deal with them… we still need a more permanent method to do so to finish this crisis off as their attacks are getting worse! Friends the leader of Rescue Team Harmony is here to aid us in battle!”

The Hakamo-o took a moment to stop fighting and nodded to me in acknowledgement before they went back to pummeling large numbers of enemies with their fists.

“Does King Ieyasu need help?” She looked in the direction of where hundreds of bodies were flying and the king was basically drowning in their numbers. The Skarmory were helping and were trying not to hit Ieyasu himself.

“Yeah, I’d say he does!” Jeanne turned back to me with a pleading expression, as I jabbed several Saber Knights away. “Will you help us fight our way over to him?”

“We were already going to do that anyway, but how long do you think he can last like that?” Makes me wonder if they could even do anything to him, he was under constant attack where hundreds of swords, axes and lances were trying to pierce his thick hide.

Mostly they were breaking themselves trying to break him, they at least had him pinned and that was fairly threatening.

“Quite a while, but its best we not push it.” Jeanne pointed her flag forward, then she proceeded to leap forward while sweeping her flag about and tearing a massive hole into the numbers still aiming for me. “Onwards comrades… wait… they seem to be targeting you quite a bit.”

“Story of my life Jeanne!” I shouted out as made my way up to being next to her with Dormarch and Dolly, Dormarch still sent blasts of energy out of his tentacles that stunned or destroyed these things in a small area as Dolly took up a vigil with me. “Story of my life…”

The unarmed Hakamo-o could only take down one or two opponents at a time, Jeanne and I were sweeping them away like we had giant brooms.

Dolly added to the violence with rapid pirouettes and spins, on the ground or temporarily hovering in the air while slinging her board around. She always backed off to make sure she was next to me and Jeanne while not pushing too far ahead. Dormarch occasionally let loose a Wild Howling that sent them into chaos and made them randomly attack one another.

We were actually managing to push them back and were tearing through their numbers, well what numbers they had in the Saber Knights category.

The Berserker Vikings were a bit busy trying to chew through Ieyasu’s hide and their axe hits were notably starting to hurt him as we fought our way closer, given they were starting to create rents in his skin.

The Lancer Guardians weren’t near us and more near our Pokémon Companions who were ripping through, the crowd of enemies from the other side. Judging by how close the blasts of lightning were getting, they were doing fine.

“Those guys are pretty impressive.” One of the Hakamo-o watching our backsides said.

“Yeah, these numbers aren’t going to slow us down, there might be many of them, but we’re still stronger!” Apparently watching us fight was giving the Hakamo-o a good morale boost.

Their fighting suddenly picked up and they were doing a lot better, but they weren’t matching the destructive output Jeanne had going with my group as we all worked together to sweep across the plains taking out huge sections of the enemy that still tried to come for me.

I was the center of the formation and we were funneling them into a cone shaped kill zone.

“Could we be following true warriors?” One of the Hakamo-o stated as they watched us rip into tens of hundreds of these things.

“Yes, we have become Musou!” Another said, jubilantly and clashed his scales together before diving back into combat.

We were getting close to Ieyasu, he seemed to be having problems freeing himself as he struggled to shake off the multiple EPs clinging to him with their weapons digging into his metal skin slightly. At least he wasn’t weak to fire as he took multiple blows from those heat axes… he wasn’t exactly strong against it either though.

In fact I noticed we were starting to create a wide line of constant sweeping attacks, it was getting hard to count how many we were tearing through in quick succession in short order.

One swing of the lance in my hooves,

“For Valora, I fight!” Jeanne D’Arc was leading the charge and she was being successful at it, in fact being around her felt highly invigorating and I was following her setting the rhythm of battle. It seemed her waving the flag around and using it as a rallying point as much as a weapon was really helping everyone around her somehow keep up with her enthusiasm.

Still we needed to focus on reaching Ieyasu and pulling him out of trouble, then use his body as a living shield. His iron hide was far tougher then my squeaky toy of a battered form that attracts wonderful canines like Dormarch and Dolly to my side.

Probably wouldn’t be alive without them… Dormarch literally did successfully perform a lifesaving surgery on me with those ridiculous claws as a Dalmamon and it’s hard to imagine me surviving my second use of Shock Ram without it. Even then that Surgery only barely saved me.

I swung my lance forward and the Saber Knights surprisingly tried to block its sideways motion, the weapon still tore through them. I’m beginning to really be wary of what the paralance was truly capable of and all I was using it as was a makeshift baseball bat and sun shade.

“This is going well, have the PLANTs been taken care of?” Stated Jeanne, who seemed to be more aware of the situation more than me. I wanted a full run down of things after this battle.

“Yes, we be getting them really fast this time.” As she said this she did a one legs rising upper buck with her right leg and sliced through a Saber Knight cutting it entirely in half vertically.

“So it’s getting worse… well I shall not let Valora fall!” Despite the slightly forlorn sound of her words, Jeanne got aggressive and started hitting harder as did I as we both pressed forward together.

Once we were close enough, the two of us stated to rapidly stab our weapons into the enemy hanging off of Ieyasu to the point that, one he got some leverage, he burst forth in an explosive display of raw force. His shield was badly battered, but it his pike… it was immaculate and fire an explosion that tore apart more enemies in seconds than what Jeanne and I could do combined.

“Come friends, let us route our foes and then we’ll talk over a big meal.” Ieyasu stated jovially as he grinned at us. “Try and keep up as we fight for glory!”

“If you have baths, healing and a bed I’ll just fight for that.” My dry commentary got a nod from him.

“You come from the northwest, how is Nixtorm doing?” He asked conversationally as we kept EPs from clinging to him so he could devastate an entire army with us picking up the stragglers.

"It'll be entering a recover phase soon." I offered and kept smacking down bipedal entities that kept trying to charge me in the same manner with a sword raised high to try and bring it down on me, Ieyasu soon stepped forward and started taking on the brunt of the army.

Dormarch looked relieved to see I was no longer in the thick of it as Ieyasu led us forward, Dolly was far calmer now that the large iron hide being was taking up the majority of the battle on his own.

“Again, this guy DJ Yasu, is amazing.” Dolly said cheerfully as she put her board on her back and started using her bare paws to take down any stragglers.

“His name is Ieyasu, but close enough.” Dormarch continued to stick by my side and kept glancing at me, his tails wagged a bit each time, he was likely building up for another Wild Howling.

“Squeak!” Lit appeared and hopped onto Dolly’s face.

“Hey, Lit, how you doing buddy!” Asked Dolly excitedly as Lit finally managed to find us in all of this.

We were grinding the enemy army that used to number at least a thousand or more into a find powder or whatever digital energy was, so I guess it wasn’t that hard to locate our at least five unit strong ground offensive. Dormarch must be having a good day with absorbing all that loose energy at least.

Having freed up Ieyasu the Skarmory started scything through enemies before rising up into the air using their momentum to keep height and out of range of the melee monsters.

Aside from Jeanne and I stabbing EPs trying to cling to Ieyasu to pin him down or swinging our weapons to sweep away a number of enemies that seemed to be getting slower the longer they were near us, the battle was practically won at this point.

The large armored guy that Ieyasu was just kept blitzing through them in awe inspiring display of brute force, incredible control and an elegant poise you wouldn’t expect from a bulky metal rhino lizard in how he stylishly tore his enemies to shreds. Glad to not be on the wrong side of a force of nature that could easily gore me on his two spear like horns and not be slowed down in the slightest by anything else that was behind me.

“He’s an incredible leader. Even when his people are tired and exhausted from constant battle, he doesn’t stop protecting them with his very being.” It sounded like Jeanne looked up to the leader of Valora and I can clearly see why.

I glanced at Dormarch as he fired off two Surge Projectors freezing up two Berserker Vikings that managed to get around Ieyasu and came charging for me. They were summarily taken down by Dolly doing a momentum boosted flying kick to the chest and Dormarch biting off the arm of the other and swinging it around while it was still holding the axe to take off the upper portion of its torso with its own weapon. His mumbling afterwards drew my attention somewhat.

“Heavy diminishing returns was already bordering on Champion previously saved enough data and energy from the Chaosdramon X issue to get this far… so really bad and would need far more condensed digital energy, so it’ll be a while before I can hit Ultimate…” It seemed Dormarch was still set on making sure I was safe and already making plans on getting stronger. I didn’t know how long I had, but I appreciated the efforts from him and Dolly to keep me safe after I took some nasty stabs in this fight already.

It was another five minutes of constantly jabbing my paralance into enemies or assisting a few others, but before I knew it the battlefield was just about clear and I was leaning on my weapon.

Roaring, Ieyasu blazed with a clearly visible aura that reminded me of my whole wolf pack thing, his fighting spirit was practically blazing as he leapt up and brought his pike down while making it explode violently to render the last few enemies dust before his might. By last few, I mean all several hundred of them in one terrifying explosive powerful shockwave of a strike, I’m quite glad to not be on his bad side and will be keeping it that way.

That hadn’t been as hard as I thought it was going to be, the Assassin Reapers were the real danger and it was a frontloaded problem, everything after joining Jeanne’s Hakamo-o units was bizarrely easier than it should have been. I think Jeanne might have had some kind of power when it came to rallying people and giving them a second wind.

“Glad that’s over.” I grumbled tiredly and Dormarch steadied me for a moment with his left tentacle before, in a flash, he returned to his cute puppy Dalmamon self.

“Power Saver feature like what Frizzle has, I can Digivolve into ‘Dobermon D-Type’ whenever you need me to.” Saying that Dormarch nuzzled against my side, it was a good thing he could retain his combat ability and stay small and portable. Goodness knows how I would have carted around a dog of Growlmon’s size, I’d like end up riding him around instead like I do with Big Mama. I wonder how she’s doing back in Huoshan? I’m fairly sure my Tenko would still have things under control. “Just keep giving me the strength to do so by taking care of me.”

“Yeah, about things being over Pom… I’m glad to see you’re mostly alright after what Gilgamesh did to you.” A worried Dazzle stated as she and Frizzle came up to us. “You’ll need to talk with Sami for a full scope of the situation, we currently don’t know how to stop it from getting worse.”

“I don’t think we can, we’d need to stop it at its source or at least prevent the source from accessing things through Ironclad City.” Shine commented before hugging Quetal, clearly happy to see him and she sent a curious look to Curdle.

“Want a taste?” Curdle offered openly.

“Yep, definitely not a ditto, Alcremie are all generally the same.” Wonder when Shine could have met an Alcremie previously to know what they were like. Still, she broke off a bit of cream and some internal tart of Curdle and tasted it. “Lemon Cream and Peach Tart… a good mix and you taste great. I would have preferred lemon cream and butter cookie though. Once had a Salted Caramel Alcremie, that was an interesting experience.”

“Why thank you!” Curdle said pleasantly. “You can always get your own butter cookies and scrape them on me, you know."

"Maybe later." Shine stated pleasantly while waving Curdle off.

Don’t say anything about that exchange Pom… not a word about the madness.

“Ah, how are you doing, are you in need of spiritual guidance from your incredible companion Lucha Mundo?” Yeah, Mundo, I would. I even nodded to him and smiled a bit. “You seem fairly invigorated despite battle being anathema to you, what was different about this battle my friend?”

“I think it has to do with Jeanne over there, she seems to have an effect like that on me.” I pointed a hoof to Jeanne D’Arc and Mundo had a curious look on his face as she was currently talking with the Hakamo-o units with her.

“Truly, she has such an effect?” Looking amazed and appreciative, Mundo's beak quirked upwards into a smile. “You should spend some more time around her then, could be healthy for you.”

“That and I recently recovered my little guy here. In fact… everyone, I want you all to meet Dormarch!” I picked up Dormarch in my hooves and his tails wagged lazily as I held him.

Ten minutes after introducing Dormarch to everyone that didn’t know him, we made our way for Ironclad City.

We were quickly filled in on a few things, Ironclad City had plenty of stubborn Pokémon that refused to be kicked out of their own city by the invasion forces of Moon Cell. This Moon Cell couldn’t have started a better or worse place to begin an invasion, it was getting fairly close to breaking the Steel Types backs through constant effort and the pure quantity of the forces it kept fielding.

The Berserker Vikings in particular were the worse matchup for the Steel Types, which is why Ieyasu was looking to get help from outside his domain in dealing with those particular EPs.

-Kingdom of Rock Types Cragspur, Cragspur Castle among the thick mountains, ???-

“What are your terms?” I asked calmly, even knowing that Cragspur has fallen to the western kingdoms that have united together and the one leading them intends to unite all of Ransei.

Now if only the ones Cragspur had fallen to wasn’t a small brown fox, the one I was now looking down upon and had big dreams for such a little pipsqueak. The Rock Type kingdom has been taken, at least our opponents were benevolent.

I was a Gigalith, but even then I had lost my battle. Heh, the Ground Types really took us for a ride, but it wasn’t Ground Type attacks that did me in. The king I saw before me had both heart and a clever mind, a good sturdy leader through and through for Aurora.

“Well since you asked King Ujiyasu…” The small brown fox known as King Evan started to say. “We’re going to need your help with Avia if they don’t accept my proposal. Before I make my proposal, I need to speak to the one known as Cotton Murkrow. I will at least tell you my plan up to meeting her and what you can expect from me before then.”

“Go on…” I was intrigued, Avia was preparing for an attack by the dragons even as the dragons themselves fought the ghosts.

The dragons would be foolhardy enough to fight a war on two different fronts. Everyone knows their pride is their worst trait, but at least they somewhat had the strength to back it up.

King Evan smiled at me sadly, then he opened his mouth and his plans were actually fairly complex for one so young.

Heavy is the crown and he understands that clearly in his plans.

-Ironclad City, West Port, Pom-

There it was, the wagon, I’ll see about getting Dolly’s board fixed by filling the damage in with an electrum varnish and would talk to Dolly about… why was Dormarch glaring at Ocellus as we approached?

Ocellus looked a little shocked to see Dormarch, Smolder was as equally shocked.

“Heh, guess who’s back?” I’m almost beginning to believe that Gilgamesh might have known about Chaosdramon X being Dormarch’s body, but I’m not going to believe it until I see actually proof of that.

I approached Smolder and she flinched away from me, I winced at how much that hurt to see and calmly hugged her and pulled her in to nuzzle her. She stiffened and didn't relax, even after I let her go.

“It’s okay Smolder.” I calmly ran a hoof up and down her back, then looked at Dormarch who was starting to get agitated around Ocellus.

After searching my memory of what happened in Dolly’s home world… oh… right… that.

I just remembered why Dormarch would be angry with Ocellus, the whole thing with Magica De’ Spell while I was on life support and she made a judgement call that almost got me killed when I was barely hanging on by a thread after doing a second Shock Ram. I was thinking about that earlier during the battle with the EPs as my friends have been calling them.

Dormarch even started to growl at Ocellus when she tried to approach me and say something, I calmly picked him up and held tightly as he continued to glare at Ocellus. I didn’t want him attacking her and I wanted the two to get along, which was going to be a problem for a while. I already had long since forgiven Ocellus, this was going to take some time.

“Sorry about him, he’s upset with you about what happened back in San Fransokyo.” I was keeping Dormarch calm at least. Ocellus lowered her head and looked away, she didn't say anything, but she did rub her right leg with her left hoof.

Dormarch still didn’t let up his glare even when Ocellus backed off, but at least he wasn't growling at Ocellus. These next few days were likely to be hectic and I was going to need a long talk with my friends going forward this evening.

I kind of needed to be alone with Ocellus to tell her something about what she might or might not be feeling from me eventually, I'm not sure if unicorns could detect it before it started to happen and changelings would count as magically sensitive. I was direly needed to confirm it with Ocellus if she felt anything off with me. Dormarch was going to make that a bit difficult, given he wasn't going to let me out of his sight and he was paying close attention to my health.

Dolly looked a little lost between me Dormarch, Smolder and Ocellus, I'd likely need her help to get Dormarch to give me a little breathing room.

I really needed that hot bath Ieyasu promised after trudging through Nixtorm...

-Origin Space, Arceus-

"If Pom never showed up, is he one of the heroes that could actively solve your issue?" Nodding to Bahamut, I casually continue to stir a pot of Monterey Jack cheese soup as Mew procured the crackers, bread rolls and other good sides for this meal.

Ieyasu was at least one of the worlds heroes that could unite and save all of Ransei from the oncoming threat, King Evan was already another and he was being quite proactive about it now.

There's also what Cu Chulainn's interesting group was doing and it was rather curious all on it's own as his group was currently fighting Amaterasu. Thankfully the sun goddess was not as powerful as she could be thanks to Solgaleo, the Pokémon of the sun.

Author's Note

In memory recall to page 222 of this story...

Dormarch still hasn't forgotten THAT.

Pom now has a mild friendship problem on her hooves, on top of a terrifying slightly reality bending omnicidal alien computer and trying to get home.

Musou has the meaning of 'unmatched'.

382. A Steel City evening.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Fizzy-

I watched as Jaded got slammed in the chest by our strange Chimera daughters, they were happy and giggling in a playful manner as they knocked over the fun mother. I sometimes felt left out, because it was kind of hard for me to approach Silvers…

I was distracted by Silvers suddenly running up to me, all three of their heads looking up at me expectantly and I glanced at Jaded, she made a gesture towards Silvers and gave me a smile and a wink while making a heart shape with her claws.

Sure I was a bit wary, I’ve left most of Silvers rearing to Maries and Jaded, nobody would say Jade was a bad mother. Sure she was irresponsible, clinically insane, still going to therapy, we’re trying to stop her from being Saddle Arabia’s most well-known villain ‘Mirage’ and a notorious relatively hated rogue outside of Saddle Arabia, but nobody could say she was a bad queen to her kittens.

Jaded didn’t dote on them all the time and didn’t give them everything or spoil them, what she did do was challenge them at times and helped their minds grow.

I really don’t know what to do personally when I’m with Silvers, I’ve always been busy and they were growing up so fast.

I felt a paw press against my leg and our chimera child whines up at me, their Unicorn head, Abyssinian head and Dragon head were all looking to me for affection with bright eyes. Where did Jaded go? Probably off to help Gallus with his training today and this leaves me alone with Silvers.

I sighed, smiled and started to toy with them using my magic, when they got older they would probably stop seeking affection from me for being so cold at times.

Soon, before I knew it I was actually getting quite playful with them and forgetting all the world’s worries. Who knows where Jaded and Maries were, they left me alone with Silvers and I had to watch them.

We couldn’t just leave everything to Kuril, goodness knows she’s mostly raising little Gavin what with Jackie’s dangerous profession as a ‘cursed treasure’ hunter and being a pirate in general.

I had no problem with spending time with Silvers after a good thirty minutes or so, right up until Silvers started squirming. I think they needed to go to the bathroom… my lovely jerks were quite shrewd it would seem and I couldn’t even see Maries around, I did need to do my due diligence in cleaning up after Silvers.

“Come on, let’s go to the litterbox.” Sighing audibly, I wonder if Jaded was actually taking care of Gallus’s training today… or was she just plain outright torturing him?

-Gallus’s Training-

“Stop crying Gallus, Sehket put me through the same thing and I came out perfectly fine.” Jaded said cheerfully, but that only made Gallus whine harder as he knew his older adoptive sister wasn’t the sanest of individuals.

“What is it with my family and training me in possibly abusive ways?!” Gallus cried out as a large rock swung into him.

“You’re going to be one of the best guards this world has ever seen Gallus, good enough to catch even me!” Jaded retorted, she avoided answering the question at all and though she wasn’t world renowned in her infamy. She was definitely well known for outrunning or at least outmaneuvering the Wonder Bolts multiple times. That was mostly because Jaded playfully got Spitfire to chase her through the streets of Canterlot numerous times. “Besides the rocks build toughness and we’re not swinging them hard enough into you to seriously harm you.”

“I should call child services on you!” Gallus grunted and threw off the large rock like he was an earth pony, Jaded stayed quiet on pointing out how strong the lovable blue griffon was getting. Gallus was far stronger than Jaded physically was at the very least, could stand to work on his agility more.

“Mom is child services in Airship Mauled though…” Stated Jaded while looking thoroughly confused about what that would do when the sovereign nation of Airship Mauled’s child services were all on Kuril La Perm. Not that they had an orphanage or orphans to really worry about yet, but the local Diamond Dogs were somewhat accident prone and starting families so it might eventually become an issue. They would have to eventually get around to that, as Kuril couldn’t have every single wayward kitten all to herself in an unhealthy manner. “Anyway, let’s continue with Sekhet’s demi-god training regimen for one being armies that only halfway works for mortals. Flamberge and Fortitude…”

“I AM FORTITUDE, THE FANTASTICALLY FRANGRANT!” A voice shouted from off screen trying to cut Jade off.

“Certainly ’Survived’ this training.” It was easy to know that ‘Survived’ was the nice word for it and Jaded continued her sentence with barely a pause while ignoring a yak shouting about how smelly he was. “You can too Gallus. Think about it, all this pain and suffering now and later you won’t have to worry about it because you’ll be too bruised to feel anything… huh, yeah, is this kind of abusive? Eh, probably, but at least it’s not me going through this again. Anyway, how good are you with spears at this point?”

-Pokémon realm, Kingdom of Valora, Ironclad City, West Port, Pom-

The West Port of Ironclad City was along the coast northeast of Illusio, with a small corner of Avia bordering between the two places.

Avia, kingdom of the Flying Types, wasn’t the current issue as they were busy preparing for a fight with Dragnor the kingdom of Dragon Types who were already in a pitched fight with Spectra apparently.

The news came from Ieyasu himself, who simply thought they were petty squabbles. Also that Nobunaga of the Dragon Kingdom of Dragnor and Lady No of the Ghost Kingdom of Spectra were just fighting one another to see if they could be prospective political partners. I heard that some Pokémon don’t care about egg compatibility when it came to finding love. Dittos were often mentioned when it came to odd couples, but it was never explained why they were.

I was trying not to get too involved in the kingdoms personal wars, because what was happening here sounds far more urgent than some petty border squabbles as Ieyasu puts it.

Okay, I had to get Dormarch away from me for a while so I could talk with Ocellus privately, he’d likely want to take a bath with me and wouldn’t let me out of his sight for too long. I could definitely go for that bath right now, it would be a nice mother and child bonding moment, with my limited lifespan I don’t have much time to do that and actually enjoy many things.

Knowing me, I’ll be thrown into a whirlwind of pain pretty soon and I’m going to need healing before my next big bit of fighting. Any peace I could get was worth more than all the gold I could ever possibly own in my lifetime, which is looking quite grim.

Can’t very well shut everyone out of my life or shut down like I tried to do in Pugilis. I knew how to mother puppies as I was a ‘Baa-Baa’ for four very special Canis Minors that will eventually be Majors one day. Couldn’t be too hard to be similar for Dormarch, only it was going to be a bit more affectionate as far as relationships go.

Still after I bathe, I would at least want Dormarch to be somewhere else for a while so I can talk with Ocellus and possibly stop Smolder from being afraid of me… or was she afraid for me? At this point does it matter, she’s been rather skittish since I stopped in at the wagon to repair Dolly’s skateboard.

At least the repairs to said board were done with Dormarch’s help, but it certainly took some doing to safely fill the missing chunk in the board that had been taken out by that devastating weapon. I’m pretty sure Red Gil has that and is still running around with Greenkidu somewhere, at least that guy seemed more jovial about life than the other Gilgamesh we fought.

“Come on Dolly, Dormarch, now that we’re done repairing Dolly’s board it’s time we got a nice bath in. You’ll have a few hours to play and then then I’ll be making dinner for the evening after we hear out what Sami has to say.” After I said this, Dolly made a gagging noise and Dormarch seemed excited.

For Dormarch it meant spending more time together, for Dolly it was me getting rid of her peculiar smells after all the stuff we did in Nixtorm and the few things she might have gotten into or rolled around in while I wasn’t looking.

Dolly was still a tomboy dog, one with a mile long streak attraction to huskies. At least Dolly understood the reason why you had to clean yourself every once in a while, goodness knows I don’t want anyone getting sick around me and surprisingly it hasn’t happened yet to a disastrous degree.

Shanty was sick for a short while, but I was a continent away at the time. It involved lots of swamp water and voodoo monsters trying to drown her apparently. Sly Cooper’s gang was full of saints, even if they were notorious thieves I’d welcome them into my home with open hooves if I ever saw them again.

“I’ll show you to the bathhouse I personally give my patronage to if you’re ready.” Ieyasu stated as he stomped up to us, he had been busy organizing his people in the port for the next Enemy Program attack and saw us starting to move away. This place was hopefully going to remain a safe zone due to his effort. He was making sure the needed facilities in the city stayed open and were the most protected, fishing was a big thing here as a lot Pokémon around here could eat meat.

As we were led there by the king of Valora himself, I asked about the various local facilities starting with the obvious. Medical facilities, if things have been as bad as Shanty has hinted at and the sights around here were quite run down from constant battle damage, then the medical facilities must be a bit overrun at the moment.

Ieyasu said that the hospitals around here were fairly overworked, but it had plenty of well-paid Chansey that all had the word ‘joy’ somewhere in their names. Also thanks to the toughness of Steel Types, as long as they didn’t run up against the Berserker Viking’s heat generating axes, they generally did very well against the EPs in battle.

So while some injuries were bad, it was mostly the mild injuries and the ‘heavy’ amounts of exhaustion being a big problem. Made sense, given all Steel Types were easily drained of their stamina given how heavy they were and how much strength it took to move their bodies in general if they were ground bound Steel Types. I couldn’t even begin to guess how exhausting it is for those Skarmory to even get airborne in the first place with how their wings worked.

The City was quite sprawling and large, so it had plenty of bathhouses including one of Ieyasu’s favored which we were currently heading towards.

I asked about the commerce in the city next. It used to be better, but all the fighting in the streets made the vendors move to be closer to the outer edges of the city where it was safer, since the EPs started appearing near the more technological points of the city.

The parts where computers and technology were more prevalent were towards the more central districts. The society here was far more advanced than most of the continent, given there were cameras and other bits of machinery and factories that I didn’t see much of anywhere else on the continent.

If you discounted Illusio’s floating city of Cerebrum, having just reminded myself that it no longer existed, and Violight where their advancements could use the energy of the locals to power things. Valora was the most advanced place in Ransei and was always looking towards the future.

Living space wasn’t a problem, sure the homes and apartment blocks were a bit damaged from all the incursions of the EPs, but the Steel Types were said to be and are titled as the most stubborn Pokémon on the continent next to Rock Types. As such their buildings were structurally built to last as long as they would themselves in most fights, which explained why the structures were huge to fit some of the larger Steel Type Pokémon around, but still accommodated the smaller Pokémon too. They built big here and it showed, given this city was the likely to be largest one in all of Ransei… that was still around.

If I had a hide made of steel I would be pretty stubborn too, my wool could only do so much to mimic metal and would be growing back faster if I was given more time and plenty of food.

Glancing around a the tall buildings, that rivaled those in San Fransokyo, were holding up to constant stress of an invasion force from beyond this world and the damage dealt to them from battle was quickly repaired by various floating or flying Steel Types.

Sure the city may looked to be in quite a bit of disrepair, but it was still bustling despite the constant attacks from those ‘Enemy Programs’.

I needed to keep in mind to talk to Sami after I was done bathing and had a short conversation with Ocellus, she apparently had the most information on what was going on and wanted to get me up to speed on things.

Upon asking about the bathhouse I learned that Steel Types preferred cool or cold water, but the baths around here had hot water for other species.

That would be good for us since we had a nice booking waiting for us for our assistance in battle and making sure that massive fight didn’t happen in the city itself, Ieyasu was more than glad when it came to rooting out the invasive pests all at once.

-Ironclad, Maids and Milks Bathhouse, Dolly-

“This place sure does smell nice.” It did at least smell clean, I calmly followed Pom into the steaming waters and suddenly everything started feeling all nice, cozy and more importantly fuzzy.

“Don’t fall asleep in the onsen Dolly, we need to scrub up and get clean.” As she said this Pom already had Dormarch half asleep as she scrubbed his back gently. “I doubt that anything we’ll hear about the EPs will be good news.”

Yeah, that’s a ‘no duh’ there Pom, there were so many of those things that I’m surprised we even took them all out. They didn’t seem very powerful.

I guess with those vegetable things Shanty mentioned making more of them constantly was the real problem, it would be easy to overwhelm anybody not prepared for rabbit levels of breeding.

I’m trying not to think of weapons flying at me from all directions and slamming into my board as I frantically blocked them. My skateboard was fine now and even had a cool new crescent design on it and everything.

Gilgamesh was terrifying, De’ Ville’s didn’t have anything on that guy and everyone barely managed to trap him in Cerebellum. Even heard he didn’t die cleanly and it took blowing up the entire city to finally do it, which was set up by that Coco Crow bird spy gal. I shivered a bit in memory of the terror that kind of guy brought just by existing, why did he even do all of that to begin with? It all seemed kind of pointless destruction to me, I think I even saw a few weapons embedded in the streets on the way here.

“Dolly, could you take Dormarch around the city to play after this?” Why would she… that’s when Pom started sending me the idea that she needed to talk to Ocellus about a few thing and maybe try to get in a few words with Smolder after her earlier reaction. Dormarch was angry with Ocellus and I understood why, but I wasn’t about to hold a grudge against the shape shifting ladybug.

The first thing Pom wanted to do sounded easy, the second not so much as I saw Smolder get very wary around Pom and was constantly flinching whenever Pom moved around too much around her.

All Pom wanted me to do was my due diligence in pup care as a top dog, by making sure Dormarch stayed relatively happy and I was always good at making sure puppies had something fun to do. If ‘Danger’ wasn’t my middle name, then ‘Distraction’ would have been a good second choice.

“Excuse me, does the milk have lactose in it and does it have too much fat?” Pom asked of a passing Tank-milk.

“No, but it’s heavily fortified and exceedingly low in fat content, we even go to great lengths make sure just about any mon can enjoy the milk served here.” The Milk-flank stated cheerfully, did the cows really need to be dressed as maids? Sure it was cute, but it was also weird to see a several hundred pound biped cow in a dress. “We also have several berry flavors, strawberries in particular grow quite well around the hills of Valora.”

“Good to know, it’ll be a good treat for my family then.” Hmmm, did Pom just say the magic word ‘treat’? That got my tail wagging and I incidentally splashed a sleepy Dormarch and made him sputter a bit as he sat upright. Pom started to trail off in thought. “Strawberry is a flavor dogs like, but the sugar content isn’t exactly healthy for them. I’m sure we can splurge this time, Ieyasu is the one who offered us a full bathing package. Still need to figure out how to make kibble by hoof and I’ll still have time to ask some vendors around here.”

Well if you can make the kibble exactly how I like it or better, then I’d really fully appreciate the effort and lengths you’d go to for me Pom.

“Hey bro, no sleeping in the bath.” I copied Pom’s words from earlier with a grin as I saw Dormarch nodding off despite glaring at me for splashing him.

I slapped my paw at the water and drenched Dormarch again.

“Alright, I’m awake…” Dormarch stated somewhat drowsily, I then splashed him again to make sure he was fully awake. Pom shook her head at us and gently went back to scrubbing Dormarch. “Digital evolutions are a little tiring Dolly. There are Digimon that stay in higher powered evolutions for the rest of their lives, it leaves me wondering how they can live without a power saving mode if I’m this tired.”

“Dolly you’ve been wearing your helmet so much, I think you should scrub and brush your ears out a bit.” Pom looked over to me and Dormarch seemed so happy and calm under her hooves as she washed his tails and here I was just sitting off to the side just watching the cute moment. “Unless… you want me to do it?”

“Um… yeah sure thing Pom.” Eventually I found myself gently being scrubbed and cleaned too.

The way she scrubbed my ears felt heavenly, like I was staring at Hansel for half a day without interruptions. It must be from taking care of her four god puppies waiting for her back home.

“Honestly, you could take care of yourself a bit more.” Isn’t that what you were here for Pom? I take care of you and you take care me. The gentle strokes of a brush going down my right ear had me so relaxed, that I found it hard to concentrate on much. It felt like I was getting licked by my birth mother again, Pom’s magnetism at work and I didn’t mind the feeling one bit. “Regardless you’re still a wonderful Dalmatian and it’s nice to have you and Dormarch in my life, otherwise I don’t know where I’d be right now.”

“Squeak?” I looked at Lit and he was waving a leg at us at the edge of the tub, did he want help with being cleaned too?

“Sure thing Lit.” Pom smiled at Lit as he was avoiding falling into the hot water we were lazing around in.

-West Port, an hour later, Pom-

That milk was good after a nice hot bath, it also had helpful restorative properties that made Milktank such good healers in Aurora. A nice relaxing time overall.

Now that Dolly had Dormarch and Lit with her as they ran around possibly getting into trouble, hopefully not too much, I could talk to Ocellus without Dormarch causing issues out of spite.

Dolly and Dormarch didn’t have to worry about me, because they would feel it if I were in danger and Dormarch accepted that as a good enough reason to go play without worrying too much about me for a while. Plus he could kind of teleport so it was a moot point to be right next to me at all hours of every day, including when I need to use the little ewe’s room.

“What did you want to see me about Pom?” Ocellus asked as we sat down in the wagon together.

“First, is Smolder scared for me or of me?” As soon as I asked, a complicated look crossed Ocellus’s face as she made a rather distressing hissing noise and inhaled through her nose.

Smolder didn’t actually relax too much when I had hugged her earlier.

“She’s… complicated. It’s also a bit more than that and I’m sure she’ll come around Pom, just give her time. I know Smolder almost better than I know my own family.” At least you’ll be there to take care of her Ocellus, especially if I couldn’t. “She’s had a lot of upsetting things happen to her, but I thinks she’s still strong. Stronger than I am at the very least, but nowhere near as strong as you have been for us.”

“Next question then, do you feel anything off about this?” I pointed my left hoof at the gold wool on my right leg. Ocellus blinked and actually looked confused for a moment before looking closer at my wool and she then became quite wide eyed.

“That’s your wool?! I thought that was a gold bracelet or something like that.” After a moment of shaking her head in disbelief, Ocellus shivered and then looked over the wool again. Scrutinizing it a bit more than usual, she glanced at me and then looked back at the wool. “No, I don’t feel anything unusual about it, but I can obviously see the unusual change in color. Why do you ask?”

“Good… that’s… that is good. If you start to feel something, tell me.” I wasn’t about to say what she would be feeling, but I’m pretty sure it would come about when I turned into a Chrysomallus, because she’ll definitely feel it then. “It’s very important given a unicorn or other magic sensitive beings might be able to feel it eventually if it becomes too strong, but I’m banking on them only being able to feel it when I... fully convert.”

“What… would they be feeling exactly?” Ocellus became suspicious, she could probably sense my nervousness. She’s been sensing me being constantly anxious for the most part of a year, despite my efforts to try and keep my emotions up and positive.

It obviously hasn’t been going very well and I really couldn’t hide it from a Changeling.

“It is what my becoming a Chrysomallus will eventually entail and why it will kill me if I grow wings, you’ll know why I asked when… ‘if’ the time comes.” Well I might as well drop a hint. “If any other races knew about the secret, someone unscrupulous would probably try to force what a Chrysomallus is capable of to occur. It’ll backfire with a one hundred percent guarantee if someone tries it in any case, but I would prefer that people leave the lambkin race alone and not force anything to happen. Also it’s good that you don’t feel anything from my wool yet, but you will if I do change. I’m guaranteed to die if I sprout wings and I’m guessing that you’ll at least know why when the time comes.”

“Should you really be hinting to me that this has something to do with the magic inherent to your nature?” If things didn’t turn out okay Ocellus, you’ll at least be a little more aware as to why. “As in the ultimate endgame of the words ‘sacrificial lamb’?”

“Don’t worry about it, I trust you. Changeling education can’t be that far behind the rest of the world right?” I really did trust Ocellus and if she said she didn’t feel anything yet, then I was at least fine until I grew wings. I would be fine, I had to be fine, because if I wasn’t fine then it’s going to be very hard to get Ocellus and Smolder home… at least Smolder and Ocellus had homes to return to. What was Shanty going to do for a home? What would Dolly and Dormarch do if I were gone now? Tianhuo would at least try and take care of them, I know that much as she didn’t mind the dogs I brought with me when we started living together. “Do you know where Sami and Canard are? Also do you have anything you want to ask me?”

“Yeah, I know where those two are, but first… do you think Dormarch will ever stop being angry with me?” Ocellus didn’t like negative emotions and she probably got a face full of them from Dormarch.

“Dormarch is a really sweet boy. Like you said with Smolder, I’m sure he’ll come around eventually.” I cuddled Ocellus to me and she hugged me back. “You’re not a bad person and I’ve long since forgiven you for almost getting me killed.”

“I still made a decision and I still don’t know if it was the right one or not.” At least things worked out in the long run Ocellus, we couldn’t predict how things would have turned out otherwise. “Why don’t I have to make it up to you though?”

“Were you the one trying to attack Ms. Bunny Shuttle while I was practically comatose and broken? No, you weren’t. Don’t forget, Dolly was there with you too, she’s not angry at you either and she really doesn’t hold on to anger for too long.” That, I noticed, made Ocellus perk up a bit. “You were under duress the entire time. Just, take each day one step at a time Ocellus and just do your best. Goodness knows I’m trying to do just that and you’re a really good friend as far as emotional support goes.”

“Thanks… so Sami, Canard and Clefairy should be near where what we’ve been calling the main breach zone.” Ocellus stopped, looked thoughtful for a moment and then she hopped out of the wagon. “Let me show you, they are probably busy with organizing the resistance at the moment. I’m sure they’ll finally get some time to relax when you show up, oh and the Bullet Buizels and Skitty Squad are also running around the city somewhere. They’ve been a big help in keeping things organized, plus there’s the Dhelmise Pokémon unit that watches over this safe zone, oh let me introduce you to them. Hey, Dhelmise unit, I want you to meet my friend Pom! ”

Dhelmise were a weird anchor and ships steering wheel combined by powerful seaweed, apparently Shanty had a good rapport going with them as they were one of the sea faring specialist units of Valora. They were a Grass and Ghost Types, with a technical half Steel Type on top because of their ‘Steelworker’ ability, a sea unit that didn’t involve the words ‘Water Type’ was fairly curious as was their appearances as living boat implements.

Pokémon were always so curious, so living seaweed usually bound to anchors was a new one on me.

-Some time later, resistance against otherworldly incursions building, Sami-

Good thing I’m digital, because otherwise exhaustion would be getting to me as well. The Enemy Programs brought a lot of digital energy with them and that made it easy to use for personal gains, such as making backup alternative ammunition for my gun.

“Well at least this incursion was kicked in the butt fast enough that the exhaustion rates were much smaller than last time. Though the assault on Pom outside the city still took a bit of doing to finish off by the Hakamo-o and Skarmory units with Ieyasu being the major force on the field of battle.” I was running through the recent fighting in the streets with Canard.

Canard was a person who cared a lot about what was going on, having lived through an invasion of his home planet made him empathize with the locals quite a bit. He was nothing like the first few commanders I had and mostly outlived through sheer grit. That he was my partner and quite handsome for a tall alien duck helped a lot, in comparison I was a short, orange by choice and not exactly the most prettiest soldier on any battlefield.

“Hey guys, heard you need to tell us some things?” Pom came in with… whoa what was up with that Digimon?! “Is something the matter? I could come back tomorrow.”

“No you need to be in on this, like right now.” That was certainly a Dalmamon, one of the newer species of canine digimon, but not one of the ones we met in the digital realm.

There were a few things uniquely off with him, like his coding was running double time for one and it seemed like he had an evolution given he was in a standard Power Saver mode.

“Oh right, this is Dormarch, my son and digimon partner.” Pom made this Dormarch quite happy just being called her son as all three of his tails wagged excitedly.

I’m still avoiding my chances of evolution like the plague, Sealsdramon was still a nightmare for me and if I had an option for something else I would gladly take it and grasp it with everything I have. I could feel the pressure to evolve getting worse, but it was so worth it to be near Canard. A notable bright light in a long tunnel full of darkness.

“Right, what do you think you know so far?” Just to be clear on the things they might need to know and I happen to have a lot of information.

“Something called Moon Cell might be behind this. That the Enemy Programs are like Digimon, but are their own thing and are basically not very intelligent golems?” Okay, so Pom did know a few things already. She wasn’t entirely computer savvy, but she was at least aware of something similar to compare it to. “Dormarch here was why I even know the words ‘Moon Cell’ means something horrible, because it was Moon Cell that sent Dormarch’s body after me.”

“Wait, his body?” I queried, a little bit confused.

“Remember that Skull Chaosdramon X you saw on the way out of the digital realms? Yeah, we had to get Dormarch’s body back before it did any more damage in Nixtorm when it followed us back to Ransei.” Okay, that, that was some news to start dropping on us Pom. Dormarch seemed fairly calm about it, so I’m going to assume that things worked out well enough in the end if he had his body back. I might question it a bit though. “So… what don’t we know?”

“Okay, here’s the thing, Moon Cell is a computer… one of the most powerful crystal based photonic storage computers ever devised, to the point that even the Saurians that Canard talked about can’t even match a fraction its raw computational power. Said computer seems quite intent on committing full blown Omnicide to everything on another planet, right up until Arceus pulled its plug massively, but he didn’t destroy it… mostly because he couldn’t.” There was some obvious horror that came with hearing that a quite functional and living god couldn’t destroy it. I knew that Moon Cell could be destroy… it’s just going to take some extreme planning to pull it off. “In any case, Moon Cell is something alien and highly dangerous, if the mentions of omnicide didn’t clue you in. Fortunately it doesn’t have the capability to commit complete ominicide… well not yet at least. It’s currently slowly trying to gain the capability to do that and has been trying to study Digimon to that end, it wants to destroy both the digital realms and everything living on this planet. Possibly while recording itself doing so for posterity.”

“Why Digimon?” Dormarch tilted his head and his tails stiffened.

“The computer has something really powerful in it called ‘Servants’ that it can’t field in reality for quite a few reasons. What it has been fielding thus far has been the Enemy Programs you saw, entire armies of EPs are easily generated. Even I can make like two or three myself if I had enough chunk data to make a few units, but I would need to be strong enough to control just those few with any efficiency. They are basically ready-made 'almost' automated soldiers that Moon Cell has no problem throwing at us in large numbers. Since it can replace its losses as easily as you blink.” The crux of the matter was that it was trying to get these so-called Servants out into the field of reality. In the digital plains, those Servants were likely to be deadly and stupidly powerful, like a Deva or a Demon digimon having an effect on the very coding in their general vicinity. “What I don’t get is if the Moon Cell had full access to a digimon already, then why hasn’t it already sent Servants to this world to start wiping it out? It’s been using those lame Enemy Programs that are the most basic and weakest of programming that something of its immense power and caliber could be throwing at us. ”

“It never had full access to me though.” Dormarch answered simply drawing my attention to the mental question I’ve been asking since seeing him for the first time. “It only had access to my soul and body after a nasty virus attack almost destroyed them. I put my heart and mind inside of Pom and Dolly here.”

“That should be functionally impossible, especially if your heart and mind were separated and nothing was holding them together cohesively, not without your soul core that all digimon need!” I pointed out while thinking about the horrors of what Dormarch might be now, he was still Digimon yes… but he was also reading as what a Servant might look like on this world to me.

The word ‘potential’ was what I would use to describe the digital lifeform I was seeing before me. Sure he was probably the weakest servant to ever exist, but with the capacity of digital evolution… it is little wonder Moon Cell started sending everything it had in his general direction. He’s kind of the missing key that it needs to begin manifesting Servants into reality on this world.

Also how did a lack of mind and heart data keep Moon Cell from manifesting Servants?! It definitely had enough information to manifest its EPs in reality, why not its Servants though?

“Well it isn’t impossible, because I did it and survived the repercussions.” That would take a miracle, also the fact that you’re running two cores that have been haphazardly mish mashed and mangled together while remaining harmonious was very highly distracting.

“When you say ‘Servants’… can I get an example of what one would look like?” Pom asked looking concerned.

“You could ask Dormarch, he’s coming off as partially one and thankfully not under Moon Cell’s control. We’d be kind of up to our necks in a river of digital guano without a paddle in that case.” That made everyone around me flinch. “To be more precise Servants are likely to be data of powerful legendary souls that were once living that get brought back to life via the computer, we don’t know exactly as we haven’t seen any true Servants yet. However I do know they would be somewhat like how the EPs are classified, why they’d be entirely on par with the likes of Gilgamesh and Enkidu.”

…

…

The dead silence and horror in their eyes was getting to be a bit much, Gilgamesh was defeated and not for the lack of trying on an entire armies part. Yeah, that look in their eyes was quite warranted.

“So what’s for dinner?” I asked cheerfully trying to bring the mood back up, Dolly started barking cheerfully and wagging a tail wanting to know too.

-Dinner time that evening, rented out restaurant space, Dolly-

Huh, she actually figured out how to make kibble… but would it taste good, especially with water?

After a few nibbles I appreciated the spice of the vegetables and the bits of fish, then I went for a full mouthful of the stuff Pom made.

Okay… a few chews, the crunch, the consistency, the chewiness, the flavor… and swallow to see how it feels when it goes down.

…

“Pom, I’m your dog and always have been if anyone ever asks.” I blurted out without a second thought.

“I take it you approve of the menu items I stuffed into the kibble then, I’ll continue working on it to see if I can make it even better.” Don’t make a promise you can’t keep Pom, also stop smiling like you won first place in a skateboarding contest after only two days of training. Unlike Dormarch who was eating the normal food, I was eating my preferred food and I usually preferred what Pom made. “Kibble is not so difficult to make, but it is a lot of work to make it.”

“It scratched a major itch I’ve been having for a while now.” Though I wouldn’t mind trying some of the vegetable stir fry Pom made, it probably wasn’t as healthy for me.

We continued to eat with friends and family, it was like a potluck exploded in here, Pom didn’t have to do all the cooking and it made me appreciate just how far we’ve come.

“So how exactly do we deal with a ‘kill everything moving and some things that aren't’ computer that wants the power to kill everything harder?” I finally asked and it was quickly translated.

If there was an elephant in the room, it would be trumpeting loudly right about now. In fact there was trumpeting, was it that Cute Phant guy? Huh, he was with that weasel guy. I thought they’d both be in Bug Land right now going on a honey bender or something.

“Well we do have one plan, send someone into the digital realms to distract it from attacking and give it something else to focus its attention on.” Saying this Sam-I-Am looked at both Dormarch and Pom, it didn’t take a genius to know what she was suggesting and I didn’t like it one bit.

“It figures… how soon can a passage to the digital realms be opened?” Pom asked, already resigned to committing to the bit already. Dormarch and I would have to be at our best to keep Pom safe far too soon again.

“Can we at least get another day before running head long into danger?” Being with Dormarch on this one, I barked out in agreement. I figured Pom needs a bigger break than she was willing to give herself.

“Incursion attempts into the Yggdrasil System digital worlds are occurring as we speak.” Yiggy Sis spoke up drawing our attentions to the device Dormarch wore as a collar. “It won’t be long before Moon Cell acquires the data needed, even if Dormarch was not presented as bait. User Pom may still prove to be viable bait in spite of that.”

“Whatever you choose Pom, we’ll always be right behind you!” Dazzle assured as she held up a closed fist that was glowing with flames. Shine, Curdle, Quetal, Lit, Favela and Mundo nodded along to the sentiment.

Even Canard, Frizzle, Clefairy and Sami weren’t going to stop now.

We were all absolutely insane… the good kind at least.

We had good friends and we had all the help we could get, but I sometimes wonder if that would even be enough. We kind of needed entire armies and the whole Ba Sing Se continent was still kind of hurting from Gilgamesh.

Where were we even going to get the armies needed to fight what was about to be thrown our way? I was on that roller coaster now too and I understood why Pom wanted it to stop.

-That moment in the Kingdom of Cragspur, The Aggro-crag, King Evan-

“For we cannot face the oncoming danger alone, to unite all of Ransei is to save it from an untimely end!” I proclaimed to the cheers of multiple Pokémon.

383. Waiting for War.

-Equus, Ponyville, Evening, Tianhuo-

“So that’s about the size of what I’m facing Tian.” Pom then showed me the bit of golden wool above her right hoof while point at it with her other hoof. “This, this right here, it’s going to get worse… much worse.”

“At least it looks pretty.” Knowing as well as I do that Pom cannot avoid helping people in danger. She’s not the only one that can save two worlds, but she is in a position to at least help the situation and would do so. Probably in the most dangerous capacity imaginable, can’t someone else risk their life as much as my wife constantly does? “Can you at least promise me you will strive to live long enough to see me again in person?”

“It’s a big ask Tianhuo, but yes, I will try my hardest to live long enough to see you physically in front of me.” The plan Pom told me was, to put it bluntly, quite obviously suicidal. If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t trust them to come back from it alive. Pom could come back from it alive though, with plenty of help, I have little doubt of it. What I did doubt was how much of her lifespan would be left and how much of her body would be covered in gold wool afterwards. “My time is short Tian, I mean that literally and figuratively. Anything you want to say or ask?”

I really did not like the fact that Pom was on a world where something that is attacking it has been termed as being ‘omnicidal’ and might eventually or actually have the power to achieve a goal of ending all life on the threatened worlds. It was slowly becoming increasingly more dangerous according to the people who lived in Ironclad City, home to creatures made of metal… not so different from some of the things here on Equus really.

The current plan was for Pom and a team of what I am assuming to be mostly her friends, possibly including Shanty, Smolder and Ocellus, would leap through one of the breaches this Moon Cell would make into the Pokémon Realm to invade it. They would then proceed to act as a major distraction for the entity behind all of it. An entity that may as well be on par with a god in raw power, had nigh endless armies and could bring the souls of historical dead warriors to life against their enemies within its realm and was seeking to manifest said warriors outside of it.

Such a thing as what Moon Cell was described to be should strike terror in just about anyone, Pom was definitely terrified and she couldn’t avoid it coming after her because it was outright targeting her for some inexplicable reason. That or Pom wasn’t telling me the reason or didn’t have a decent educated guess as to why, but it must fear her in some capacity or else it wouldn’t have redirected all its forces to go after her outside this Ironclad City place.

Anything fearing Pom’s existence did not seem normal to me, but in this case I truly hoped that they had good reason to fear her and that Pom discovers why that is.

“Just… be very careful Pom.” I sighed out, I didn’t want to lose her when she’s come so far.

“I always try to be Tian, life has been pummeling me quite a bit lately. At least I got a win with Dormarch, even if that was hard one to pull off.” Pom had her strengths, but fighting seemingly endless armies was not one of them and she was going to be doing that soon. “Wish I could be a little more stoic like you, mostly about what I’m facing here... it needs to be said again and again until I’m blue in the face, I love you Tianhuo.”

“If you were any more sweet, you’d cause toothaches just to look at.” I grinned slightly showing a hint of humor. “I love you too and wish you the greatest of luck my dear wife. Jiutian watch over you, even if she cannot help you where you are.”

Our ten minutes were up, every single last one was as precious as the lambkin I spent those ten minutes conversing with. Scarred, beaten, but still fighting, talking to me gave her some strength to keep moving forward and what she was about to do sounded like the dumbest thing one could do… I would be doing it right there alongside her.

I looked up to the stars and the Canis Minor pups started howling, joined by Blighter who continued to shadow me protectively while trying to cheer me up. I always get the eerie feeling of Paprika being behind Blighter when I looked upon them.

-Pokémon realm, Ironclad City, balcony overlooking the city streets, nighttime, Pom-

I sat there alone and then looked up at the alien stars above, now it was just waiting for a dimensional breach to occur and then we’d set our plans in motion. I could feel Dormarch and Dolly cuddled up and sleeping next to each other through my bond.

I smiled a bit about how precious and cute my canine companions could be when they weren’t struggling to stay fighting at my side or protecting me.

Those two were going to follow me to Tartarus and back. I couldn’t even tell them not to, they’d still do it anyway. Dolly was still physically a normal canine, powerful magic aside, she couldn’t take too many serious injuries. Dormarch was the one I was less worried about, he could take injuries, heal from them and even do things I can’t even begin to fathom as I’m not exactly great with technology and Dormarch basically was a result of technology creating life.

Any sufficiently advanced technology was said to be equivalent to magic on Equus, but would that explain informational beings like Dormarch being a living and breathing thing I can touch, hold, talk to and love. Make me wonder if you could bring the information in books to life and have them tell you what you wanted to know from them.

“That was your wife? She seemed nice and well disciplined.” Flinching at the sound of a sudden voice talking to me from off to the side, I let out a quick bleat as I jumped slightly and took a moment to take in some oxygen and wait for my heart to go back down my throat.

It was Ms. D’ Arc and she seemed to find my sudden jump amusing.

“Longma are generally stoic, their cousins the Kirin are less so and should probably consider mandatory anger management classes.” That got me and odd stare and I remembered that I had to clarify for Jeanne who would have no idea what a Kirin was. “Kirin tend to catch fire and become a bit uncontrollably powerful when angered. Like a, uh… like a Morpeko when angry, but without all the foul mouthed cursing.”

“A Morpeko that doesn’t curse horrifically when in Hangry Mode?” Jeanne giggled out with a bright smile. “I can only vaguely imagine that, and thus Kirin sound far tamer for it.”

“If you call setting everything in the general vicinity on fire tame.” My dry delivery was met with an even brighter grin.

“Some Fire Types certainly get like that, explosive anger is not unknown for one that is easily upset and possibly short fused. Not all Fire Types are like that, but some are.” Jeanne took a seat next to me, the Hakamo-o was definitely the hero of the battle earlier. “If you want short fused, you’d have to meet an Electrode. While I may jest about it, I do have an inexplicable fear of fire and the fires of war waiting to engulf us all. However, I will not let any fire douse the flames of passion within my heart.”

I recalled Jeanne fighting and waving the flag about to start inspiring others forward and invigorated them to be stronger than they would be otherwise, still felt odd for me to be a part of that. The rallying pushed us forward to victory, no matter how temporary that victory would be.

“So where were you and the other Hakamo-o coming from, you know, before Ieyasu came charging in from the north to save the day?” If there was one thing to be said about the leader of Valora, it would be that he was a force of nature. Not invincible, but he certainly gave off the impression of being nearly enough so as to almost fool me. This is considering he got surrounded, pinned and attacked constantly and was still strong enough to finish the fight to shrug off what were just simply termed as minor injuries for him… the guy had holes in his metal skin after the fight.

“Ieyasu was busy checking if the northern borders were doing okay, what with the monster of Nixtorm threatening to destroy our northwestern neighbors in the constant struggle going on there. Ieyasu suggested sending a contingent to assist the Ice Types, but apparently something has changed about the situation and we’ll eventually get more information soon. There’s also Lord Nobunaga of Dragnor, he has a tendency to invade his allies as much as his enemies if he thinks they are weak. Nobunaga is rather quirky like that and he really has a fascination with technology, he’s quite dangerously ambitious… any Dragon Type that thinks they are big shots can’t actually compare to him on that front. He wants to challenge Arceus to a fight with the lord of all fighting at his full power.” Yeah that was likely to go very well Jeanne, I’ve seen and felt what Arceus was like… who in their right mind would want to fight him when he would destroy them if he didn’t weaken himself to face them in a fight. “Yes, judging by the look on your face, whatever you are thinking is likely the correct response.”

“I take it Nobunaga is not a very sane individual is he?” It certainly sounded to me like he wanted a major challenge, sounds familiar and it was kind of a thing for dragons to prove their strength at times.

I proved my strength against Smolder while she was in a forced greed growth… is that why she was so scare of me?

“Nope, but he is still a dangerous tactician, just because he’s not exactly sane doesn’t mean he’s stupid. He’s knows what he’s doing as a ruler… most of the time anyway.” Should Jeanne really be telling me that Valora’s neighbors had that kind of problem? “So are you going to get any sleep tonight? The breaches occur randomly and we can’t predict when they will happen, it is best that you get as much sleep and rest as you can.”

I think I might have a thing with scaled ladies, first Dazzle finding me interesting and now Jeanne was studying me curiously. Tianhuo was still who I wanted as my partner in life and that wasn’t going to change, for however long we can make what we have last.

“Yes, I’ll be heading back to snuggle up to my companions soon. I’m just trying to get my head together at the moment and sleep doesn’t exactly come easy to me unless I have someone next to me.” I did need to take going to bed soon into account, especially if Dormarch wakes up and finds out I’m not there. He’ll probably flip out and will check the bond first if he’s in his right mind, if not he’ll probably start teleporting to wherever I just happen to be looking to protect me.

“It must be hard to be recognized and renowned as a hero as much as you are.” Blinking as Jeanne said that, I quirked my head in her direction. “Do people often expect you to fight for every cause as the one who created Rescue Team Harmony?”

“It’s more like I can’t ignore people in danger, I mean that quite literally. I made the rescue team to do simple things, yet the scope of things has gone quite… out of my control and I have no idea what the actual rescue team is doing anymore. I’m here to help and I’m going to simply do so.” It was a problem that I tended to sacrifice for others and I was about to do a big one to save Ransei or even further this entire planet and maybe the digital realm next door. “It is a chronic problem for me, I can’t cure it and I can hardly resist it. All I can do is limit how much is sacrificed and hope to sacrifice the correct minimum needed for a given situation.”

“You can only ever press forward huh? That is sad, like the stories of soldiers on the battlefield who know they will die, yet they will do so in the name of a goal bigger than them. The things they would do for their country to see it safe in a time of great crisis, it resonates with my heart in a strong way.” You almost felt familiar Jeanne, it almost felt like you were someone similar to the likes Cu Chulainn. “Again, what’s it like to be you?”

“It’s like being a normal everyday average person being put through thoroughly extravagant circumstances that they shouldn’t very well be surviving. Yet when they do, people praise it or think highly of the person when the person that went through said circumstances would rather it had never happened in the first place.” I would rather be safe at home snuggled up against green scales and a warm body with multiple dogs waking me up for attention, water or food every once in a while. A simpler life I could only vaguely dream of anymore, plenty of nightmares if I wasn’t dreaming of a nice beach vacation with an imaginary Tianhuo. “I don’t like being called a hero, even if I have acted in the capacity of being one… admittedly several times over.”

After Jeanne gave me a curious hum and went back to looking at the stars, I got up and started to head to bed.

“Pom…” Hearing Jeanne I stopped moving for the stairs and quirked an ear up with my wool to show that I was listening. “Should you need a soldier, I am willing and able to follow you into any enemy stronghold no matter the dangers they present. You have the strength of a leader about you.”

“I would never ask anyone to endanger themselves for me.” Since I was usually the one endangering myself.

“You never will have to ask, you have many good friends and aim to be among them. Shanty in particular will take no one saying anything bad about you for as long as she’s been here and she always believed you survived Gilgamesh’s fury without pause to think otherwise.” Jeanne wasn’t wrong and she came off feeling like a saint, I could feel it in the way she talked that she would follow me into Tartarus with her flag held high and a belief that we’d succeed in our endeavors. “Should you need a place of solace for a bit, or are in need of a good meal, then my family’s farm is to the south of Ironclad City heading towards the mountains of Avia. May Arceus see us through these trying times and bless the lands of Ransei with further hope for a peaceful future for all the kingdoms.”

I continued on my way through the streets and thought about things further. Illusio wasn’t so much a kingdom anymore, but it still had people.

If I was going to jump through a breach soon to fight a death machine, then I would need to stock up on supplies and hope to not immediately die on the other side of that breach.

Hopefully to that end we’ll get the Team Harmony wagon through a breach with enough supplies to last us a month for the Pokémon Companions, my group and whoever else we can squeeze into what will most certainly be another thing to add to my list of living nightmares.

Don’t know if I could endanger Smolder or Ocellus more than I have already though... Dodo and Shanty would be willing and they’ve grown quite capable. I don’t even need to ask Dolly or Dormarch, it was a foregone conclusion for them that if I were to go anywhere, they would surely follow.

I wonder if Ieyasu was even willing to lend us troop support, but I wasn’t about to ask for it. How would we even hold our ground one we get through a breach or even get supplies once we’re there on the other side? It was a logistics nightmare as much as it was me walking into what is functionally a deadly Mystical Lotus Eater that took up the space of entire worlds unto itself. Huoshan did have a Mystical Lotus Eater realm, so the concept was not completely unknown to me, but it was relatively benign as far as the citizenry were concerned.

…

I’ll concern myself with the many, MANY, many logical problems of going through a breach to draw all kinds of negative, possibly lethal, attention onto myself after I get some sleep in.

Still can’t believe I was going to do it regardless of what anyone said… even Tianhuo couldn’t stop me from threatening my life and I was about to fall out of contact with her again.

-The next day, West Port, morning, Shanty-

I be yawning and stretching out, then I be shaking Favela awake and we carefully pulled away from Pom, she really does not like being a hero and we be following her in late last night. It was hard to be finding a pillow nearly as comfortable as she was being, Dolly and Dormarch were being quite lucky and were still asleep as well.

We be managing to avoid waking anyone as we left.

We be having some time before breakfast and I be wanted to think about how well this could be going. Not very good was the immediate thought, also I be noting the gold wool on Pom’s right hoof and what it could be meaning for things going forward, it is being a very bad sign of things to come for her.

I sat down at the dock and stared at the sea and be taking out a bottle of rum and two cups. Dodo tromping over to us in interest, mostly because I be tugging at him in our bond.

After pouring some rum into the two cups, I looked at my friends.

“Drink up me hearty’s, we’re going to Tartarus soon and I want to be sharing at least one cup with my mates before we be going there with Pom.” I downed a few gulps of rum from the bottle and Favela be sipping at her cup in a more moderate somber tone. She might be afraid… we all were honestly, but we would still be doing it.

Dodo be leaning forward to dip his beak into his cup and then he be standing up and rocking back and forth in an odd manner, before he dipped his beak again and went through the rocking motion.

There were some things about Dodo that I didn’t be getting, but I be loving him, his ability to fly and his pastry making abilities. Did he even be needing his laser spitting function back at this point? Well it would be cool if he got it back eventually.

-A little bit down on the docks, Ocellus-

“Smolder…” I said softly, I was woken up by Shanty and Favela carefully getting up and leaving Pom to sleep in.

“Yeah, Ocellus?” Smolder stated while staring at the water, I was going to ignore Shanty, Favela and Dodo drinking on another portion of the dock for the moment.

“We’re going to need your help you know.” I was trying to appeal to her. I could feel her fear, she had some anxiety and then there was the love specifically for me. Negative emotions weren’t necessarily a bad thing all the time, but they had to be vented eventually in a sane manner.

“My help? Really… after I became a monster that Pom had to fight?” I don’t think this was entirely about broken pride. “Also Pom actually beat me.”

Okay pride does have something to do with it.

“Yeah, when you weren’t in your right mind Smolder and Pom sacrificed her sanity and health for you.” I said it out loud, give me a response Smolder, please tell me how I can help you as a friend. “Are you simply that afraid of her now that you can’t continue being her friend?”

There was a flinch that said, yes, she was that afraid of Pom.

“I know that she doesn’t hold anything against me, but…” It’s more on your side of things that’s the problem Smolder, Pom simply accepts that things happen to her and is just that forgiving of what happened. The rest of us are on this whirlwind of a trip with her in trying to survive while working our way home. “It’s that Gilgamesh did it so easily...”

“Yeah, he was ridiculously powerful Smolder, well beyond Pom and most of the others who made a concerted effort to stop him. He was the one that did the most damage to the rebel army and they hardly scratched him at all as he swiftly tore them down.” Other than that I didn’t know what to say to her, other than that I would be here for her. “You saw the aftermath Smolder, I even told you what happened to Pom.”

There was a bit of quiet between us and I silently moved up and hugged her. She appreciated it at the very least given what I could feel of her emotions.

“It’s going to be a bit hard to travel with her.” Muttered a slightly shivering Smolder.

“I’ll help you through it, Pom really doesn’t want you to be afraid of her.” It might take a while though. “Can you at least try to help me with Dormarch while I do, I really want him to be my friend again.”

-Approaching the wagon, Canard-

“I’d hate to wake her up, but…” I said to Sami as we approached and we could see Pom was completely out cold with Dolly and Dormarch snuggled up against her, several of the Pokémon Companions were idling about including their new eccentric companion Curdle.

Shine was nowhere to be seen, then again she had a habit of wandering off on her own and showing back up at random when there were no immediate threats to her friends. I think I saw her heading south last time. That gourd girl could swim through shadows so she gets around quickly enough.

Quetal and Mundo looked to be in the middle of a discussion.

Lit was making sure nobody bothered a sleeping Pom.

Favela was drinking on the docks with Shanty, I didn’t like even a hint of underage drinking. I really doubt I could stop Shanty, Favela grew up in a bar and Dodo was… curious.

Dazzle was just talking some nearby Steel Types and her partner Frizzle was doing low momentum tricks on a skateboard with flames painted on it.

The less said about what Curdle was currently doing the better for my sanity and I should really stop paying attention to it.

“I needed to have a talk with Dormarch about his circumstances and we also kind of need to discuss the whole fact that we’ll be needing all the Digimon we can get to actually wreck a digital world… on purpose this time.” As far as we know Sami, the whole digi-destined thing was just cheap free labor troubleshooters for Yggdrasil System in exchange for giving them good friends and an adventure with some time shenanigans.

“Mr. Thunderbeak?” Clefairy drew my attention as she looked around at some of the Steel Types looking a little run down. “Is our world going to be okay?”

“I can’t promise anything Clef, but we’ll probably be some of the few doing the most dangerous stuff to keep it as safe as possible.” This was not going to be another Puckworld or worse, not if I had anything to say about it. Puckworld had been quite devastated, but at least the Saurians hadn’t been entirely intent on wiping out all life on the planet wholesale in an immediate fashion.

Those bastards wanted to drag it out after all.

-Somewhere near the middle of Ironclad City, Jeanne D’Arc-

The city was quiet and quite a number of Pokémon were wondering when the fighting would start in earnest, we were struggling to keep the situation contained thus far. It wasn’t unknown that there were Legendary Pokémon hanging around here to quarantine the invaders from getting out.

It made me think back to those metal ships the enemy warped in, they had surprised us and managed to get away from the port with said ships. The Dhelmise unit then met the Rescue Team Harmony founders as they ran afoul of the enemy and discovered much about them.

Ever since their warships were stopped by Sami Soldier and the others coming to Valora by airship, their attacks had only gotten worse and they were no longer trying to get any more troops past the Valora quarantine. They were simply trying to break the spine of the kingdom itself.

A world ending threat on the doorstep of Valora wasn’t something anyone could simply ignore.

The enemy soldiers didn’t feel pain, they just attacked in large numbers with no quality to speak of in their actions, but they were dangerous all the same even if no thought passed through their heads. The thing behind them was just making dangerous puppets to test Valora's capabilities and it was slowly wearing down my home into the ground.

No matter how tough a Steel Type may be, even the toughest of metals wears down with time.

“Are you aware of how dangerous what you are seeking is?” Ieyasu finally responded after some thought.

“I still wish to follow Pom’s company into the breach, I would be a liaison of Valora to Rescue Team Harmony. I am already quite aware of their candor and their valor.” As I knew this, so too should Lord Ieyasu as he saw how Pom held her own on the battlefield. Though she was almost swamped and killed, she had led a small contingent to victory. “I wish to see Valora still standing tall!”

“If you were to convince her to voluntarily take an actual leadership position of the proposed joint echelon with you as the leader of your own unit alongside her friends, with the responsibilities thereof, then I’ll consider it. It would be practically impossible for it to be voluntary though.” The words Ieyasu spoke brought me much confusion and I tilted my head at him. “Yes, Pom may be considered the creator of Rescue Team Harmony and there are legends of her teams exploits spreading around the western side of the continent. Their training with Chrysalia, a small glimpse to precursor to our troubles now in Violight, saving Fontaine citizens from a castle of traps, fighting brigands and forced soldiers alike around Aurora and then there’s her actions Illusio which she is stated to have barely survived. Yet she ends up coming from Nixtorm, not too long after we acquired news of an airship from Titania doing a scouting pass of Valora, it is not coincidence in the slightest. I would even surmise that she somehow dealt with the unstoppable Steel Type monstrosity that beleaguered Nixtorm not too long after meeting the King Oberon.”

“Wouldn’t she make a good leader for the echelon then?” I tried to keep the tremors out of my voice.

Ieyasu was quite a powerful and wise leader, he was quite beloved among all of his subjects for a variety of reasons.

“This Pom may get drawn into battle, but I would assure you… she is not a leader by choice. Were she not needed to be in such a position, she would likely rather lead a quiet life. I have a good read of her character and she is rather simple to understand and many could exploit her pleasant disposition easily enough, even when her fighting spirit seemingly dwarfs and surpasses her very timid nature. Her fighting spirit is being constantly spent on things other than combat… she’s barely suppressing something highly detrimental to her and with good reason to do so to the best of her ability. She is not weak, she is one of the strongest individuals I’ve seen that has a reaper constantly watching her back, it is just waiting to swing it’s scythe into her neck as a form of the purest mercy. It would be quite a bad thing if it were to miss and she were suffer a fate worse than it.” Ieyasu then stared straight into my eyes to make sure I was paying attention to what he said next as my body stiffened and came to attention under his strict gaze. “Let me be clear, she cannot deny someone in danger if she can do something about it, she saw me in peril and instead of getting away with so much danger targeting her, she instead joined you to come help me out of a small jam. As such you cannot ask her to voluntarily take up the leadership position of the echelon… since she’ll automatically say yes if asked and it wouldn’t even be a choice for her, she would take charge even if every scrap of her very being wanted to refuse the suggestion. For she disturbingly and willingly sacrifices herself for others without pause. She already plans to invade a breach and would most likely sacrifice herself to save all of Valora, yet no one is asking her to do this and she could just as easily leave instead of committing to what is essentially a death wish. Those who do go with her are following a hero who sacrifices, one with the inability to turn away or retreat to save her own life if another is endangered... at least that’s what I’ve heard of her actions in Illusio from a Metagross that I had watching the situation from a distance.”

“What if I were to take the leadership position of the whole echelon?” I planted the butt of the flag against the ground beneath my feet and held it steady, I would stand tall regardless.

Ieyasu grinned a bit and then chuckled.

“You best be prepared to stop a hero from sacrificing herself in a variety of ways if you want her to live through it all, I think you’d make an excellent leader and would even succeed in surviving such a dangerous mission.” Uh… wait, did Lord Ieyasu just give me praise and even approved?! “Follow what you believe in and never falter, if what you believe in changes, then continue to follow that. You inspired two units of Hakamo-o to tear through hundreds of enemies, I want to see what you can do when you inspire a team of heroes to stand strong while carrying that banner of steel. Gather three units of those who are foolhardy enough and willing to go with you from the Steel Types of Valora’s army, you must ready them all for the task ahead by procuring enough supplies to load two wagons personally. Instead of getting a foothold on us, you’re liable to a get us a foothold on them. Think about how unlikely it is that you’ll be able to get supplies once you cross the breach and then go from there, a little forethought now will help you in the future as the echelon's leader.”

“Truly Lord Ieyasu?!” I said my eyes brightening.

I did not like the idea of going to war, but I believed it to be the right thing to do and that I was being told by Ieyasu to not waste the resources he'd be giving me was an immense amount of trust on his part.

“When simply waiting for war, it is best to be prepared. It's time we did something unconventional.” Ieyasu hefted his spear and pointed it at me in a less than threatening manner. “You have a heart of steel Lady Jeanne, may you never falter in the face of insurmountable odds even to and beyond death.”

-Entering the city from the south, midday, Shine-

“Shine…” Quetal stated softly.

I froze up and looked at him leaning against the wall.

“Hey Quetal… just visiting an old friend.” I really liked Quetal’s new look, going to Nixtorm really changed him in a few ways. Not sure if that was a good thing or not.

“We’re going to need to do everything we feasibly can to keep Pom alive, so if I have to live up to Trickster… you have to live up to Ninja.” With that he waved his claws at me, motioning for me to follow him.

I sighed, but I still did so as I wanted to talk to Quetal about what happened in Nixtorm.

-Outside of Ironclad City, Beast of Comparison Fou-

I still stalked them, but I was more curious than ever.

Killing them was still a goal, but now curiosity was close to winning out and the smells of grand battles could be felt tremoring through the region.

“Fou!” I roared and then waited to follow my prey to this promised land of battle, they knew how to find strong opponent when I couldn’t.

-Somewhere in the mountains to the northwest, Zacian?-

“He is still a terrifying beast.” I was fairly wounded, that the Excalibur didn’t stop Fou caused me to shiver. What has he been fighting to have that much power exaclty?!

“I don’t know about that Arty, he didn’t outright try to kill you at least.” You would say that considering he mostly avoided harming you Mash and he even seemed to be weirdly affectionate about his attacks, considering your current state was much better than mine.

-Avia, a top class medical facility at the base of one of Avia’s mountains close to the Cragspur and Illusio borders, King Evan of Aurora-

“Hello.” I had made good time as I snuck into the room and presented myself openly, I should really think of a way to thank Rauco’s unit for flying me here on such short notice. It wasn’t easy for the unit of Pidgey to physically lift me off the ground.

I had Terrera and Cragspur keep up their tensions while point all their defenses south towards Yaksha. Avia was a good barrier to Viperia’s rather nasty politics, intrigue and volatile nature.

With Illusio out of action and Valora currently in trouble with an invasion that require numerous Legendary Pokémon to worry about it, there was absolutely no chance of a surprise attack coming from the northern directions unless it was Dragnor finally going after Avia.

The Murkrow’s beak had cracks in it, her body was a mess of stitches and there were barely any feathers on her wings, her legs were said to be broken as they were shredded and she bled so much many thought she should have died by now. It was quite hard to look at her attempting to even breathe.

This horribly scarred and tortured being was Cotton Murkrow… the tactical mastermind and unconventional Spy Master of Avia. The who led to the defeat of a godly individual and managed to stall them from powering up long enough to set up the stage for their eventual highly literal downfall.

That I finally had confirmation that Pom’s group had successfully succeeded in surviving the destruction that befell Illusio, it was of great relief for me to know that for certain.

I needed Cotton’s help to convince the rising dragon bird of Avia, the Braviary known as Masamune Date, to get on board with my plans and possibly to help iron out the details in mine. To that end, I was going to offer my aid in getting him a supply line of Greenleaf medical supplies.

“Gyeegghhh…hegghhh…” Cotton was in immense pain, yet she still responded. I could even see the sharp mind beneath the tortured frame and the light in her eyes after I said that one word. She was already calculating what I needed of her. Having heard of her exploits, I brought plenty of healing herbs from Greenleaf to help her.

A scythe came from the shadows and held me at blade point, I didn’t blink and waited calmly for the Scyther to slowly pull his blade away from my throat. So Masamune sent one of his best friend and advisor Tracey or Tracer to make sure no one would dare try to assassinate his Spy Master, it’s a good heart like that which inspired great loyalty.

I made my intentions clear as I grabbed at the bag I had with my teeth and presented them to Tracer with a wagging tail and a chipper smile.

The edges of Cotton’s beak ever so slightly and painfully shifted upwards slightly.

Author's Note

So tired of below freezing temperatures...

384. Counter Breaching.

-Equus, Outskirts of Ponyville, Morning, Cottage, Fluttershy-

“You know Fluttershy, you could ask me for more help.” Discord offered, but I sighed audibly.

“Yes, but people would question you’re ability to commit to anything… because chaos. At least you’re a good friend at teaching valuable life lessons and that’s one of the things you can commit to as it doesn’t require you to be orderly.” I would ask Discord for help, but I didn’t want to ask him to do too many orderly things. It would give him some really nasty indigestion. He was a really sweet guy for all the chaos he causes, my life was never going to be boring with him around. “You can be a real help by preventing the actual Grogar from setting a hoof on Equus, he’s not a very nice guy from what I hear. Compared to your faking him… I heard he’s far worse from Starlight and she even researched it. Thank you for storing my supplies though, they were taking up a lot of space.”

“Well Tambelon did technically use to be a continent sized landmass and was originally part of Equus.” It was sweet of Discord to ask to help. If he couldn’t do anything outside of Equus and the Chaos Realm, then I wouldn’t want him to get hurt in Tambelon if he wouldn’t be able to manipulate things in a roundabout way to be helpful. “…. so want to cut a rug?”

“Hacksaw or knife?” I queried back innocently with a bright smile.

“Ooh, I’ll go get the Jitter Bugs, you really like those things! Also hacksaw, you really don’t like using knives outside of cooking.” Like Discord just said, I did like to play with the Jitter Bugs. “Do you want to see any other weird chaos creatures while I’m at it? At least the safer ones.”

“Just as long as you don’t bother Mr. Cthulhu again, he was rather cranky the last time you did it.” I rechecked that I had the medical supplies ready for the trip, enough for several hundred Royal Guards over. I could even start my own business selling the stockpile if I wanted to. I was also getting long lasting foods canned or otherwise, who knows what the food situation was like on Tambelon. Oh right, I was going to need water too! I don’t think anyone else was thinking about all of this stuff, just that we were going into Tambelon and that we needed to be prepared for a fight. “Say Discord, do you want to chaotically help with Tambelon?”

Discord was getting out several rugs and grinned my way.

“You had me at ‘chaotically’ my dear Fluttershy, what’s your idea?” He grinned broadly and I smiled up at him as I told him what kind of chaos I wanted with the supplies I was bringing together for what would hopefully be a peaceful trip. Most of them were medical as I was definitely expecting someone to get hurt, I’m surprised the injuries from the Storm King problem were minimal… I’m chalking that up to Fizzy’s doing. Said medical supplies were from Zecora making healing potions on top of the ones Kuril was already likely making for Jaded and the others. I was going to overly prepare and add Discord to the supply mission. It was a big order, but I was procuring most of the ingredients and that cut the costs by a lot, plus Mage Meadowbrook was assisting things. “Ooh what an interesting idea Fluttershy. you can count on me to be as random as possible, just say the word when you need me to do it. Oh and I’ll get you the amount of water you need… it’ll taste like straw-berries, but I’m sure that’ll be fine.”

I was happy that Discord didn’t mind helping out in his own unique way. Also berries that tasted like straw were a little unusual and that they could be used to drink from cups was fairly helpful too, but Discord assured me that they were safe to eat aside from the flavor being a bit dull.

-Pokémon Realm, two days later, Ironclad City, Inner City, morning of the third day since the last attack, Pom-

So for the last two days we’ve been preparing to enter a breach whenever one opened, we were all basically ready.

Ocellus was trying to get Dormarch to stop being upset with her, but he wasn’t having it even with my help at trying to get him to be nicer towards her making a decision under duress. That wasn’t going particularly well, like how I was trying to get Smolder to stop flinching whenever I was nearby. She was still going to come with us on the breach breakers team, but… I wanted us to be okay before we ended up traveling to a death world.

At least Dolly and Dormarch were getting along, Dolly liked being a big sister and or motherly

The Pokémon Companions were fully ready for the dive, as was Canard’s little group.

As for Jeanne, apparently she was to lead the echelon and asked for my help. I agreed immediately, much to her confusing sadness about it. She had garnered a Hakamo-o unit, a Skarmory unit and the Dhelmise unit Shanty had befriended as they were decently salty sea kelp anchors.

Our job was to stop the nearby PLANT that comes with the breach, if we could, while attempting leap through the breach and will try to find a way to slow other incursions… up to and dealing with this Moon Cell itself.

Basically, from the way Etemon had described the other foreign digital realm a while ago, we already had an idea as to what we could expect to see given it’ll have similarities to the Yggdrasil System Digital realms. It’s just that nothing normal would be living there and it would be floods of those Enemy Programs.

Thankfully Dormarch already had an idea of how to deal with them once we got into Moon Cell’s systems. Dormarch still kind of had a back door access with the Saint Graph spirit core thing he had, he was going to show us what he’d be doing with that once we got there. We would need to stave off several offensive waves while he did something with a PLANT.

The one thing we seriously couldn’t let Moon Cell have was a way to spread itself into other realities like the Yggdrasil System can, even if it was limited to worlds with high levels of technology. It would certainly doom an uncountable number of worlds, possibly even the ones I’ve already visited before. To that end we’d couldn’t let the local Digital Realm with the digimon be taken over, even if it was cut off from the rest of the digital realms Sami said it was feasibly for something as powerful as Moon Cell to replicate the ability by taking over the digital realm we met in.

“Excuse me, but there’s something familiar about you… I can’t quite put my mouth on why.” The Mawile that addressed me was a Fairy and Steel Type, an exceedingly rare combination of elements.

This one wore goggles on their round head above the hair like black ears hanging down on both sides of their red eyes. Below said head was a biped body two to three feet in height where both head and body were mostly a nice shade of pale yellow with a skirt floating over the legs, its arms ending in three digits were black as were its two toed legs under its biological armored skirt.

The real defining thing about Mawile was the large bean pod shaped extrusion at the back of their heads like some sort of giant ponytail. It was in fact a lethal giant secondary mouth that couldn’t taste anything, but it could chew most things up and direct the resulting energy into the Mawile’s body. The main reason for its Steel Type would be its backwards facing jaw that was biological metal that Steel Types tended to be made of.

“I’m pretty sure it’ll come to you eventually.” They too seemed familiar, but I hadn’t an idea why.

“Maybe it’s because one of the characters in my game looks like you… hm… ah well.” With that the Mawile was off and waving back at me. “Better get moving before another incursion happens around here, it’s almost like clockwork every three days.”

I wonder if… nah…

Wait… did that Mawile imply that they know exactly when the next incursion would occur?!

“Excuse me, but when will the next breach happen exactly?!” My sudden alertness drew Dormach and Dolly over to me.

“I can guarantee it’ll happen in an hour and twenty seven minutes, I’ll be long gone and out of the way in safety by then!” Stated the Mawile as they kept going. “I’m a programmer, not much of a battler, but I figured it out while ago that it involves some kind of signal wave. While I do at least exercise my moves occasionally, don’t go expecting my help in all the fighting!”

Well that was good to know and start spreading around, we already had a general idea of where the breaches would appear and the given areas they showed up in repeatedly. What we didn’t know was when it would happen, which is why we were stationed at a particular intersection with Dodo ready to go constantly for the last two days under high tension with a few breaks.

Sami had said the digital energy that permeated this area was a prime spot for a reality breach, I really didn’t understand her whole speech about overlapping realities and it was beyond me like most technology. I understood that it worked and how to use it, just not the how it worked, the technology around here was a bit above me like Dormarch’s PET that became a Digivice. At least Canard understood the theory of overlapping realities, a few hundred years in the digital realms would do that to a person I guess.

The breaches would only stay open for about ten minutes, so we needed to take care of the PLANTS that came through, go through ourselves and hope to be able to last long enough for Dormarch to do his thing to a PLANT, provided we can single one out and destroy the rest in the surrounding area upon arrival in Moon Cell.

“Beldum, spread the word!” I turned to the floating eye monsters and they all bobbed once in the air before hovering away quickly in all directions. That should notify Jeanne D’Arc to come wait with us.

-One hour twenty two minutes later, Dolly-

Okay, things were getting quite tense and even Dormarch was watching the intersection.

Jiggy Basu guy was organizing his soldiers to hopefully keep this thing contained to Metal Lad Town. What we were doing was absolutely dangerous and I was itching to see if the repair work done to my board made it so it wouldn’t snap in half under all the stress I keep putting it through, I did kind of hear it groaning and threatening to snap in that last bit of fighting I did.

“Feeling antsy?” Dormarch asked.

“All this waiting is so- boring, of course I’m feeling a little antsy. It’s not like it’ll happen faster if I say it wouldn’t!” I said with a shout and then a light appeared behind me and Dormarch was staring wide eyed.

“Okay, breach is happening, get ready to counter the incursion and jump through everyone!” Jeanne shouted as she readied her flag spear and Pom readied her umbrella spear too.

I got two paws on the skateboard, adjusted my helmet with my left paw and got ready to kick the board into motion with my rear left once I had three paws planted on the board.

“Here they come!” Shouted Salami the orange dinosaur as something starting to emerge from the spherical blob broken world in middle of the intersection.

“Let’s show them we’re ready for them!” Canned Bard said while raising his metal, sharp edged, hockey stick and it started charging up with that glowing cube stuff that spilled out of computer stuff things.

Several of those Epcot things popped out of the sphere along with several of these humming hovering metal jellyfish things that was spinning in the air and had a glowing red top.

“Someone take out those PLANTs before it starts generating EPs!” Called out Ocellus. Oh, so that’s what those things look like. “Dodo get moving for the breach!”

Right, looks like it’s time to take out some thrash!

“Gravity!” I called out and one of the PLANT things slammed into the ground roughly after my spell connected, only being able to create a few of those alien robot biped things that were swiftly taken down by Lit in several blasts of lightning.

My attack was followed by Pom leaping high into the air and coming down at an angle with the spear to jam it right into the Plants side, damaging it, knocking it over and sending it skidding across the ground. A second later Dormarch was ramming into it in a flash and clawing the sea grass thing apart.

Dormarch drew some of the cubes the thing shattered into and after a moment he smiled.

“This’ll help with what I’m going to do later by quite a bit.” As he continued to absorb some stuff from the PLANT, the others were swarmed by the flying barbells, attacked by Jeans and Hockey Dojo guys, the Scar Morays, Sami blasting one with hundreds of rounds from her weapons and there was the one that Quetal totaled obliterated with a shotgun blast of full size shadow copies of almost everyone around him. The only ones that Quetal didn’t shadow copy for his attack was the guys he didn’t know personally.

“Okay we’ve taken care of enough of them, everyone through the breach, go-go-go!” Pom shouted as Dormarch and I leapt forward with her with Dodo and the Team Harmony wagon following closely behind us.

The world warped around and then we found ourselves somewhere very familiar to me and I was quite sure I knew where this was going.

“Uh… Pom… does this seem familiar to you?” Large space, a tube lined with cubes and all of us suddenly moving through it at a pretty fast speed. Somehow Dodo was keeping the wagon upright… or was it upside down? I couldn’t tell directions in this place!

“Entering digital network space, be wary of enemy attacks from the enemy firewall during infiltration transference.” Intoned Yiggy Sis blandly.

“What is this place, it’s so vast and dark beyond the tube?!” An alarmed Ocellus asked as she looked beyond the tube we were in, it seemed like an endless void out there. We knew differently as there were many tubes like this one… it’s just that they were so far apart that you couldn’t see the other glowing tubes… for once a science less from Dawkins infiltrated my brain.

“Yeah, don’t go out there. This was how we got to the digital realm previously, just stay in the tube as much as possible and everyone should try to go as fast as they can.” Answered Pom as she hovered forward ahead of everyone. “Keep moving forward, I assume if the breach doesn’t lasts forever, then we probably won’t have much time to reach the other end of wherever this tube leads either!”

“Here we go again…” Dazzle lamented as Sizzle patted her back softly, she sent her friend an appreciative smile.

“Dolly, we’ll take point since we’ve done this before… where’s Dormarch?!” Suddenly Dormarch blurred by he seemed to be swimming excitedly.

“Woohoo, this feels so right!” Dormarch seemed really quite energized as we moved forward, in fact he was going faster than everyone else.

“We Digimon have an advantage here, so I’ll also help with taking point. Frizzle, Dazzle, you need to help the others in the back following us in adjust as they come through!” Called out… Sami… as we moved along the tube. “It seemed Dodo already has an idea of what to do.”

“Detecting incoming Enemy Program signals. As a Search Engine, Dalmamon is particularly capable of moving in digital seas and network spaces.” Said the device around Dormarch’s answered some questions as he swam by with his three tails waggling excitedly.

“Let’s go surf this internet and kick some butt!” I kicked my board forward and went skidding along the floor of the tube, whatever was beneath me counted as floor to me at least as I spiraled around it once with shouts of joy. “Bow-Whacka-Wow!

“This be like flying!” Shouted Shanty as she and Favela went zipping by above me, Pom was still out in front and she suddenly opened the umbrella spear up to block a lot of arrows.

“Current enemy contingent fifty Archer Seraphs, apparent intended target user Pom Pawdore Lambchop, no sign of PLANT Aggressors in scan range.” Announced Icky Salad Dressing.

Dormarch was suddenly on them in a flash tearing into them in streaks, I don’t think he even did his Search Hunter thing. They were very slow to react and seemed to be surprised at the sudden Dalmatian tearing them to shreds.

“Aw yeah, I think we caught them off guard!” Kicking the back of my board I shot upwards of the floored and rammed the nose of my board through the head of one of these half torso fake angel things, evaporating it instantly. I used my momentum to pivot into a spin from the impact and blasted through five more, while immediately changing direction on impact when I slammed into each one them to avoid all the shots that were a mile off.

Pom fired off several bark blasts, then clubbed a spinal tailed thing into a fountain of quickly disappearing cubes.

“I’ve got the wagon covered back here, let’s hope the others catch up to us soon.” Several more fake angels were blasted away by the orange lizard with the rifle sitting on top of the wagon, as good as her weapon was Dormarch was tearing them apart and they couldn’t even get a bead on him with their weapons.

Dodo promptly took out a cluster of them with an exploding bread bomb and he had changed to look more like an airplane as we continued forward down the tube.

Several of Grills fireballs streaked forward and decimated the remainder of our enemies.

“Enemy contingent destroyed, resuming… picking up more incoming within scanning range, enemy contingent labeled as Caster Mages and Rider Horns.” Huh, were those the ones we haven’t seen yet?

“Favela, fall back and start using Seed Bomb. Shanty move up here with me, Dormarch and Dolly. Rider Horns were said to be the fast ones right? We can’t let any of them get by us!” Pom called out as I went back to surfing the surface beneath her.

“Massive energy spike detected, energy matches signatures of magic used by users Pom, Dolly, Ocellus and others.” Really Yiggy, they were going to use magic? That was kind of dumb of them, I remember Pom stating that magic that can harm tended to not work around her correctly.

“I got it Dormarch, fall back!” Pom called out as a massive orb of raw energy could be seen surging down the tube at us up ahead and it took up the entire tube.

Pom took the lead and her wool started glowing a golden color.

Nobody who knew Pom was scared for her, as the massive tube spanning blast of energy hit a small golden speck floating in the middle of it… then the mass of magic entirely reverses course at three times the speed back down the tube.

I could almost imagine the ‘tink’ sound that massive ball of death made before it rebounded off of Pom.

“At least my natural anti-magi doesn’t cost anything in the sacrifice department, goodness knows my condition would be far worse if it did.” There was a bit of unusual good cheer in Pom’s voice as several explosions were seen in the distance within the larger magical explosion and we were quickly approaching it as it died down.

“Enemy forces devastated, seventy nine counts of destruction, one Caster Mage survivor, ten Rider Horn survivors, all heavily damaged.” That was when we got a visual on them, were those bulls rectangular? In any case they had a lot of cracks in their bodies, easy pickings for us.

The one strange floating biped guy in a robe that looked like most of the other Peps guys, they shot a fireball at Pom and was immediately taken out by it after it bounced off of her.

“Just let none of them get past us...” Stated a dumbfounded wide eyed looking Pom, she shook her head and then darted forward and upwards leading with the spear to take one form below.
I too would be confused if it happened once and you didn’t learn a lesson the second time. I tended to need multiple lessons to learn that doing something that sounded awesome after being told it was a bad idea was not a great idea, but it hasn’t killed me quite like that.

I took up a different bull to target as Dormarch was already on one of them.

I swerved up to target a bull charging at us as Sami blew two of them apart with her gun, I rammed into the side of one that tried to get me with its horn and shattered it. Yeah, didn’t want to get gored on one of those things they looked like they’d absolutely tear me in half.

Dormarch blasted another with his version of a bark blast. Shanty tore one entirely in half by cartwheeling through it in a storm of slashing cuts. Favio Novela bombed one of the beasts and the last one was torn apart by Quetal firing shadow copies, dude was getting better.

“Is that all of them?” Pom asked and nobody said anything, a blast of lightning went down the tunnel, nothing was heard.

“Squeak!” Lit confirmed with a raised leg, when had he woken up from his nap and better yet ended up on my back?

“End of transference commencing, scanning function will temporarily go offline upon entering realm, be ready for insertion into a possible combat situation.” Warned Dormarch’s device.

“Okay, I’ll go on ahead and try to clear some ground for the wagon.” Domarch then transformed into his Dobermann form and was off before Pom could say anything, after a moment she shrugged. Dormarch could take care of himself, still less than a few months old.

“Come on Dolly, he’s right we need to clear some space.” Pom called out and Shanty and Mundo silently agreed to come with us.

-Yggdrasil Digital Realm, Central Disk City, Metabee-

Central Disk was holding out well enough what with the virus Digimon defending the system from the invaders, but they were using this digital realm to piggyback attacks into reality.

Rokusho and I were definitely on point as Digi-bots we had a job to make sure the enemy didn’t cause problem for any world. I was mowing them and their generators down as fast as I could cycle more ammo into my body, that’s when a group came out of one of the portals the enemies went into.

I was about to release some Machine Missiles from my head, when I recognize a familiar white wooly form. It was Pom, she was back after so many years!

She also brought a Dalmamon, her canine companion Dolly and there was Lit too, looks like I was finally getting some good help here!

“Hey friends, we could use a little backup here!” I turned and dodged out of the way of a stabbing spear and gunned down a few of these lance wielders with my right arm blaring, they were the only ones that could even come close to me aside from those laser spewing floating sphere things.

“Metabee?!” Pom called out in a confused tone, as her companions immediately spread out and started created a space around the breach and soon a wagon burst through with a big metal bird at the front. If they were bringing out all the stops, we could really use the help. “Are we in the digital realms of the Yggdrasil System?”

“Yeah! Why, were you expecting maybe a nice resort and spa?” I turned and fired some missiles and finally blew apart a few those spheres that tried to poorly dodge the homing capabilities. “We’re getting invaded pretty badly here!”

“Can you maybe point us to one of the invasion points to here and not outbound, we’re trying to start a counter invasion to cause problems for them!” Pom called out as her friends started helping the nearby beleaguered Digimon citizenry and Digi-bots that were on the back foot.

“That one over there should be the easiest to reach!” I pointed down the street to my left where several Andromon were slowly trying to wade through the masses leading to a different portal, one that had a flood of those sword wielding guys coming out of it.

I was busy trying to help reality by closing this one off, but if people from reality already broke through to here, then I needed to help redirect them to where they needed to be before going back to my job. Busting enemy invaders!

“Bee less talking more shooting, also help!” I turned to see my companion Pepper Cat was in trouble, the red and light grey bipedal cat Digi-bot with the plug clawed hands and feet was on her back about to be blasted by several spheres.

I raised my left gun as my right one was still cycling a data reload and fired a barely aimed burst… and miraculously hit every target around my friend perfectly, she just sent me a flat glare.

“Did you just do that without actually aiming?!” It worked didn’t it Pepper Cat? “You could have hit me!”

“Hey, I hit them all didn’t I, you should start thanking me!” I yelled back. “Wasn’t Krosserdog supposed to be covering you? Take out your frustrations on the ones who actually deserve it!”

“I think he suddenly became preoccupied with helping that sheep!” A blast hit the ground and I took aim as the ammunition data reloaded in my right arm and fired a single shot, to take out the robe wearing jerk face that tried to blast us with a fireball. “Ugh, it’s just like a mutt to be distracted when we’re in the middle of a full scale invasion and a war to save our digital realm. Also I’m sorry Metabee, thank you, now cover my backside!”

Pepper Cat, having gained a moment to recover thanks to me, started to unleash tons of electricity from her claws as she started tearing through them like soggy tissue paper, her plug ended tail flicking forward to loose balls of electricity every now and then too.

I guess I was covering her now, Rokusho better hurry up with that backup. Didn’t have much time to really talk to Pom, I was kind of busy here.

-Pom-

This city was a mess, Digimon were fighting EPs everywhere and the portal we were fighting towards was thankfully not heavily protected, but the sheer number of Saber Knights in the way was slowing us down.

We came this far, we did not want our counter invasion to get stuck in the Yggdrasil’s digital realm, we had to get into Moon Cell’s and start causing them problems.

I steadied my nerves couldn’t get stuck here helping people, I’d help more if we made it into Moon Cell’s territory and start distracting them to the best of our abilities.

…

I really shouldn’t have just convinced myself of that.

Dormarch sent a surge of electricity blasting through several Saber Knights clearing up some of the street as I pressed forward and stabbed at any nearby enemies while trying to clear a path, I incidentally helped one of the digi-bot guys and they took up fighting alongside me.

The digi-bot started gunning down any of the many hovering spheres that tried to target me.

“Excuse me digi-destined what’s your mission here ma’am?” The tall digimon, Andromon I believe, asked as he glanced at Dormarch curiously, even then he was still wading into the sword wielding with an energy blade extending from his right hand.

“To clear a path for our wagons, we’re a counter invasion force trying to stop the enemy programs from taking over reality from the source… and I guess this digital realm too. Any help we could get would be appreciated.” As soon as I said that numerous Saber Knights stopped dead in their tracks and then all turned and started coming towards me. “Also I have reason to believe that I’ll be a big problem if I’m allowed to get into the enemies realm, given how badly they are targeting me!”

Opening the paralance, I blocked ten or so swords coming down on me and was pressured back. However, thanks to them suddenly starting to focus all their efforts on me, it left the Saber Knights wide open to some rather nasty reprisal attacks from the surrounding Digimon.

“Clear a path, digi-destined coming through, they need to reach that breach!” The Andromon called out to his friends. “Now broadcasting emails to all available system protection units and anyone who wants to join the digi-destined in their endeavors!”

“Thanks for the help, now pour it on and let’s break through!” Suddenly the pressure lessened as Canard showed up and tore into them with his new hockey stick that was glowing with cubes at its edge and when that edge hit, it sliced through all the variety of shields that the Saber Knights came with… if they even had shields at all. Almost felt sorry for the ones that didn’t, even the tower shields were no match for Canard’s new weapon.

Those Steel Type manufacturers did a good job with that hockey stick, but we upgraded it slightly with a light electrum varnish coating and Clefairy added some magic to it by just being nearby. Fairy Type magic worked just as well apparently.

“Slap shot!” Called out Canard and a digital ball of energy dropped off his hockey stick as he brought it back and slammed it forward to take out one of the floating spheres that was about to fire a laser upon us. “Goal! Come on Pom, now is not a time to look dazed, draw the enemies to the side and open a path up for the wagon to get through. We don’t have much time here, I’m on offense.”

“Right… right!” I firmed up and started to draw the enemies to the left side of the street and they all kept charging at me. Doing what Canard wanted me to, he stayed with me and on the offensive to start taking them down with his weapon with incredible ferocity.

“Data refined, new enemy type defined as Watcher, weaponry one laser cannon, specific function of being eyes for Moon Cell. Some are loudly transmitting priority targeting protocols to take you out.” Called out Yggdrasil System from Dormarch’s device as he slapped some enemies in half as Dobermon D-Type.

“That’s somewhat good to know and all, but Mom is starting to draw every Enemy Program in the region here if what the scanner is saying is right!” That was either a good thing or a bad thing Dormarch, I had no idea which it was anymore.

“Then we shall push them back until we can pass through, to arms. Skarmory work on clearing the path, Dhelmise protect the wagons and assist their progress forward unto the breach!” Ordered Jeanne as she and her two wagon load of supplies joined up with Team Harmony’s wagon, the Hakamo-o unit were preoccupied with moving said wagons to fight. She had really picked up on what was going on rather quickly as she showed up.

Dazzle and Frizzle surged past together and started pushing for the breach, they were working in tandem quite well now. Every once in a while Frizzle stopped to pop some bread into her mouth and chew while fighting with her claws.

“Come on, we need to get through that portal before they stop us and it closes!” Even with as many people as I was surrounded by and being a primary target. The wagons were attracting some attacks from those floating spheres, Mundo and Lit were taking care of them at least, when the Dhelmise simply couldn't.

We only had to go down one street, one would think it would take thirty to sixty seconds at most, but with the numbers we were dealing we’ve been stalled out for the last three minutes and the path to Moon Cell’s realm was basically almost twenty feet from us. Said path won’t stay open forever and we needed to get in there like yesterday.

“Did someone call for the exterminators, step back and let us at them, Big Bang Boom!” A red blunt spiky urchin like device was thrown into the crowd and blew apart all the Saber Knights in the way in a rather specific straight line of explosive energy that didn’t spread out to engulf us. “Digi-destined, stop gawking and get a move on! We all have our jobs to do and no one fights off intruders better than a Giromon, come on Mamemon help clear the rest of the area out! We’re the Metal Walker Squad courtesy of the local Yggdrasil System… anything you need while passing through, we’ll definitely kill it for you!”

A swarm of two types of digimon suddenly started clearing the area around the breach in an exceedingly short amount of time. They were all metal spheres with faces, the ones with the devilish grins and chainsaws were what I’m assuming to be the Giromon. The Giromon only had two arms, but the power of the explosive that one just let off dwarfed anything Sami had ever thrown out.

The other spheres were likely to be the Mamemon, they had feet and two large arms ending in large red fist and their faces were smiling a little bit more innocently than the devilish Giromon hacking through the enemies with their chainsaws with glee. That didn’t mean the Mamemon were innocent though as their fists created direct explosions on contact.

“Hey, could you send this data packet to the Dalmamon in Server City? They’ve been direly needing this for a while.” Dormarch launched something at the main Giromon and he caught it. It was a cube?

Well Dormarch was with us in spirit when we met the other Dalmamon, so he must remember how they were struggling with things, mostly that they were relatively harmless and somewhat helpless.

If he was giving them what I think he was… then it’s probably for the best.

“Sure thing buddy, now keep protecting your digi-destined with your life, we need all the help we can get here and a counter invasion sounds like a real riot! We’ll try to send some Digi-bots and Digimon in with you if we can, but you’re not going to get much more help on the other side… we’re quite swamped here as it is!” The Giromon did something with the cube and it disappeared. “Update sent, hope that does something to help things later on, because the situation in Central Disk City is going to the Dark Area in a handbasket, at least I have a lot of qualified targets!”

The area cleared up, we moved for the portal. I turned to the Giromon with a worried look.

“Good luck!” I called out.

“You’re going to need it more than us, we Giromon live for this stuff!” Said the guy before driving the small chainsaw into what passed for a face of a Saber Knight while cackling gleefully in a disturbing manner.

“Permission to assist you!” I turned and looked at the blue digi-bot with the large triangular ears and a large X on his forehead, he was gunning down various Watchers and stopping them from getting near the convoy as Dodo reach the portal with the wagon and passed through.

“Krosserdog you rusty bucket piece of scrap, you’re supposed to be helping me and almost left me to… hold up… new mission, assist the digi-destined?!” The red cat digi-bot looked particular angry with the blue one. “Urgh, darn it! I’d rather be here fighting for my home city, but I guess taking part in the counter invasion couldn’t hurt, frontlines here we come.”

“We’re coming too, Gazimon squad form up and fall in with those wagons, we got a system to virus up as much as we want and with good purpose too!” As the canine digimon called this out, I looked him over purple fur, devious eyes, rabbit ears, large goofy front claws, the common requisite for most digimon, and... a feline tail? Also more bipedal than quadrupedal, though it was hard to tell with how far forwards the digimon was leaning with their claws curled up. “Sure this was on short notice, but we’re not going to sit out on our purpose to make a merry nuisance of ourselves on a digital battlefield and you’re going to need us virus types to hack your way through the enemy systems!”

“It’s not like we have room to refuse aid, even if it seems to look... questionable.” Jeanne stated and I nodded along, since I was the secondary leader of the counter invasion forces which was now ballooning to include Digimon and Digi-bots too.

“Right, Dolly, Dormarch, we can’t stay here much longer!” I shouted as I moved for the breach leading into the digital realms coming from the Moon Cell’s realms.

I would like to save everyone here, but they were clearly fighting well enough on their own even if they were swamped with Enemy Programs.

Dormarch stopped pulled cubes from an enemy watcher with a curious look on his face and he quickly teleported over to me. Dolly was performing what she would call ‘sick tricks’ as she busted a Watcher against the ground and used the explosion to glide over to us.

I promptly leapt into the breach and we quickly caught up to the wagon with Dodo slowly moving forward and took up position with Frizzle and Dazzle leading the way.

So far so good, but the distinctly different Yggdrasil System in Dormarch’s digivice hadn’t been wrong, the digital realm was going through an invasion too. A much more massive and worse one than what Valora had been dealing with, in fact Valora was likely barely getting a fraction of what was hitting the digital realm from what little I had seen. The air had been positively flooded with those Watcher things before I leapt through the breach.

We had to go down to the end of this tube and once we reached the other side, we’d establish a foothold, build a base and then take the fight to this Moon Cell.

“Hey, Sami Soldier, glad we could make it before that breach closed, we're on a one way trip now!” Looking behind me I saw a flatbed vehicle on wheels float up alongside the front wagon and some old friends of Sami’s were throwing her salutes, it was the Commandramon team and there were nine of them this time. It was the driver talking to her. “We got the message for a dangerous support mission and we were glad we looked into it, take five boys until we get to the end of this network transference, because we’re directly dumping ourselves into a Dark Area worse than any the digital realms have ever seen before and we’re going to show our enemy we’re not taking them lightly before we all die horribly!”

“Oohrah!” The other Commandramon called out as they raised their rifles into the air.

-Back on Ransei Continent, Valora, Captain Skeball-

“Woo... that’s a lot of enemies.” Mewling at the numbers we still had to take on, I pointed my right paw forward as I stood on my hind legs and tipped my hat with my left paw. “For great justice!”

“Spheal!” The unit leader of the Silly Spheals added with a raised flipper.

“Bullet Buizels are ready to take it to them!” The unit leader of Bullet Buizels announced.

Pom and her group were long gone, but they needed us to stay behind and help the people who were still fighting for their home here in Valora.

Specifically those heat axe guys were the major problem for the Steel Types, so we’d cool them down wherever we found them!

I thought I saw Zacian and Zamazenta racing by below my hubby and they leapt into one of the breaches. The enemies in that area stood still for a second and then evaporated into clouds of dust.

That was rather impressive, I even saw a Zoroark dive bravely into a different breach all by themselves. There were no end to the heroes this world was producing and I was one among many! Hopefully I was one of the better ones.

-Aurora, Wooloo herding grounds, Geoff-

“For our time as the lethal joke Pokémon of Aurora will come soon, for when we march we will sing as one as we walk straight into that pain and suffering for our friends, our neighbors, our kingdom and our very beautiful world!” The herd of Wooloo agreed with me with sparkling eyes. While Evan was off uniting Ransei, I was to work up the home defenses and getting ready to bring the might of the ‘Perverts of the Plains’ down upon any who would dare harm the many, MANY, sexy beings of this world. “We do not like war, nor do we cherish it, but goodness knows for all the beauty of this world we will fight if we have to, until we are needed we will bide our time… to that end we need to train up and evolve some Dubwool to get stepping and we will step it up when the time comes! May Lord Arceus watch over us, for he is the sexiest lord and father of all!”

“AMEN!” Every Wooloo responded in a loud chorus and then started training with fervor unmatched by any Pokémon in the other regions of Ransei.

It saddened me that we were possibly losing our…

Suddenly a vast number of Wooloo stopped.

“ARE YOU SEEING ANYONE?!” Every Wooloo that wasn’t a relative of mine in the crowd asked.

Never mind, we’re still the same perverts as ever.

“I wish I were, I bet they are hot like all of you!” I said jovially and the crowd of Wooloo laughed. “No seriously, with wool this thick, heat can get quite painful!”

“And we love pain!” Everyone responded cheerfully.

We loved most things really, but I couldn’t argue with that given sentiment. The heat was hurting so good today, good for training yourself almost to death in.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Those Wooloo are all idiots.” Tiamat stated audibly as we were watching several different things happening across Ransei at once, such as the support being sent to Illusio.

Violight taking interest in Calumon and the Digi-bot Sideline the Sidekicky, the Porygon Proffessor was researching something involving the digital realm and I could see Mirage Mew was there as well. Taking up an active position in assisting whatever it was they were up to.

Dragnor was still stuck dancing with Spectra and were about to hit Avia soon and boldly fight a war on two fronts. Dragon Types didn’t back down from a large challenge.

Yaksha and Viperia didn’t notice what was going on with Terrera and Cragspur or the sudden shift in things.

I believe Evan would unite the region, he would have to achieve it soon if he is to seek my help…

“They might be idiots, but the Wooloo are my idiots.” I sighed audibly, the Wooloo weren’t really all too bad and they might even get a pivotal role in all the fighting.

Still, the most unanswered and important question in my mind was how did one of the Wooloo even manage to successfully become a bonified cleric? No seriously, I wasn’t responsible for that Wooloo becoming a cleric and none of the other Legendary Pokémon ever went anywhere near the guy.

Author's Note

Thus begins the Moon Cell ark after a frantic quick stop in the digital realms for extra reinforcements.

385. The Fantastical Foothold.

-Equus, Cloud House above Ponyville, Rainbow-

“So yeah, I’m going to need to do some training to and you shouldn’t try to weasel your way out of your Gallus.” If he thought it was safe here, then he doesn’t know how loyalty works. “Looking good by the way, if my barn doors weren’t on the ceiling or something like that.”

“Why would you turn me in?” Gallus asked with a look in his eyes.

“Time of Loyalty, Jaded and her family has seniority… sure I might have forgotten her and Fizzy for a while, but she’s still one of my oldest friends next to Fluttershy.” I said simply, that and Jaded was good friends with Spitfire as exercise partners.

Sure Jaded does some suspicious stuff and has it out for Saddle Arabia, because who doesn’t know about that at this point including me as dense as I can be, but she is a great workout to keep up with.

“Oh come on, your training can’t be that bad, you’re really quite ripped look at all those muscles and you look like you’re capable of fighting off the one requisite mugger during a walk in the park… if anything my archery training is far worse.” Right forgot Silverstream could fly when she was a hippogriff.

“Hate to ruin it for you Silverstream, but that late even park muggings only happens in Manehatten.” I remember when the requisite mugger tried that with me and Applejack while we were visiting her relatives and Pinkie had a confectioner’s convention. Sure we were mares and could have been easy targets, but Applejack can bench press boulders three times her size and I’m a black belt martial artist… when I’m focused at the very least.

Poor Mugging Due, she didn’t know what hit her and was slightly hospitalized after Applejack put her through a tree. To be fair the knothole was pretty big already and the tree thankfully survived the incident with an unusual heart shaped hole left in it.

From what I last remember of that trip Mugging Due loudly declared herself to be Applejack’s mortal nemesis… that probably isn’t going very well for her when we live in two very different places. Not many chances to run across each other year round.

I wonder if Coloratura is open to herding…

“Come on guys don’t rat me out, at least they can’t find me up…” The cloud door was kicked in by an Ornithian Pirate and… oh it was just Luckless Jackie, Jaded’s adopted sister.

“He’s over there.” I pointed with a hoof as Gallus went for the window, only to be knocked back by the top of a tree ramming through it. “Huh… we’re at least a quarter of a mile straight up.”

“Don’t bother thinking about it too hard Rainbow.” Jackie stated with a sigh as she ran a hand through her long black feathers. “At least it wasn’t aimed at me this time…”

“Actually… if it continued on its arc, it would have hit you.” ‘Gene Eric the swift reaction’ was cool Viking griffon dude, Gallus was starting to get like him in muscle mass. “I’d err on the side of caution and would even say that…”

An explosion sounded in the distance and then a large hole erupted in my house as the tree rammed forward into Jackie and sent her through the walls of my house as a second tree got stuck in the window.

“Why-?!” Jackie’s dwindling scream could be heard as the first tree carried her away.

“A second one was coming… excuse me while I go bandage up and splint the many injuries of my beautiful, if horribly cursed, wife.” With that Gene took off. Belfry, the giant butterfly, immediately managed to get the drop on Gallus and he struggled valiantly against the ships pet that apparently followed Jackie because of the chaos she attracts.

-Moon Cell Realm-

It was a calm day like any other for NPC’s, the Necessary Policing Computations that Moon Cell had as defenses, AKA Enemy Programs were just enjoying their idle days.

Sure they may not have any artificial intelligence to speak of, but they were aimlessly standing around or swinging their swords in practice in the hopes of one day actually hitting something with enough force to be up to at least a mild inconvenience.

Saber Knights were not quite up to the standards of a Saber Class Servant and only Elite Enemy Programs get any kind of intelligent thought in their skulls. Servants were far more powerful than the elite programs could ever hope to be and could control vast amounts of territory in Moon Cell with relative ease.

It was a peaceful day in Cape, AKA Dike Land, for it was a large city surrounded by large walls that held an ocean entire at bay.

The castle at the upper end of Cape on a hill was having a vainglorious day of achieving absolutely nothing. The noncombatant NPC’s really didn’t do much around here aside from govern the EPs and the PLANTS that spawned them.

Moon Cell had detected three separate intrusions, aside from the one that the flaming giant Ifrit with Lu Bu’s soul was causing, Lu Bu had been quite a constant headache that Moon Cell couldn’t control and even some of the best servants had lost to Ifrit Lu Bu. It was getting quite close to using the Shiva on him, but it wasn’t sure if it would help or make things worse for its invasion plans.

The intrusion at Cape, the possible lowest level of Moon Cell that most could get to as the outer edges of its defenses didn’t matter much… when compared to the other three intruders that had penetrated several levels above that and were causing havoc.

To that end Moon Cell would make several horrible errors in judgement by dispatching the Falcon Harpy known as ‘Circe the pig maker’ to the small problem on the outer layer.

Said problem on the outer layer was a large counter invasion force that Moon Cell should have paid more attention to as Pom was within said counter invasion force and it didn’t want a Chrysomallus in its systems causing havoc on a number of its more ‘magic’ based systems. Not to mention the incredible threat Pom immediately represented to all Caster class entities and their ability of Territory Creation being cancelled out by her very presence, the only exception is if the Territory Creation user is connected directly to her.

It should be noted that Moon Cell forgot to cancel priority targeting on Pom with the Caster class entity it would be sending the counter invasion forces way.

Circe would arrive with five minutes of the intrusion occurring, she’d be at the lower end of the city, where it was the upper end that was in trouble and it all started when the lizards attacked. This was the first mistake in a long line of mistakes for what was about to occur within Moon Cell’s domain.

The second mistake was sending a Caster after this particular intrusion, believing that Circe could easily handle them once they’ve been turned into pigs or were blasted by powerful lightning. Moon Cell obviously didn’t look at the threat closely enough since Fou and two other intruders had made even worse breaches through its security and were more worthy of focus than the outer layers of Moon Cell.

Third mistake, sending Dormarch’s body after Pom and letting her recover said body. Given that Dormarch has a fully free Saint Graph System core from Moon Cell… he had some access capability to the outer and vaguely some middle layer systems as well and the information therein, thus is capable of controlling noncombatant outer layer NPC’s easily.

Plus Dormarch was a highly angry puppy with data manipulation capabilities that most Data Type digimon tend to be known for and the counter invasion brought a contingent Virus Types with them known for their data destruction abilities.

So let’s start from when the lizards attack...

-Moon Cell Realm, Cape, Cape Castle, Dazzle-

We were the first ones out of the breach, Frizzle and I. We had to start clearing the way immediately. To that end I loosed a powerful Dragon Pulse, the dragon shaped beam tore through the Enemy Programs who were quite slow in reacting to us being here.

Frizzle was also spitting Pyro Spheres with powerful explosions and then I decided to grip the Digivice and charge it up with my dimensional elemental energy. I was once again giving her a boost for her Growlmon form… I’ve been curious about what this form would make Frizzle look like.

“Guilmon Digivolve to…” Yep, Frizzle always had high squeaky voice no matter what her form was, it was still cute. Like watching her munch on bread, she had stolen almost all of Gilgamesh’s fancy importanted magically preserved bread so I was wondering if she would ever run out with a lifetime supply of the stuff.
“Growlmon Poison Type!”

Okay, that… is actually less terrifying than I was expecting. Her claws were covered in dripping liquids that hissed like acid. Her form had become black skinned with bright yellow glowing highlights that mainly focused on making her hazard symbol the brightest part of her body, her hair turned purple, long and curly, she smelled kind of nice and her eyes glowed orange, but I’m fairly sure the strange aura she was giving off was…

I watched as the EPs Frizzle approached evaporated on contact with the aura as they ran forward attempted to swing their swords into her and then turned to dust in short order.

Yep, the energy of Toxic turned into a gaseous haze of rapid death and decay, otherwise the form looked rather pretty.

“Go get them Frizzle!” The Dragon Type and Normal Type were forms were a bit more dangerous looking, especially the Dragon Type which seemed fairly natural to Frizzle.

After learning somewhat from the information installed on my Digivice about how to care for my partner, I don’t think Megidramon was ever going to be a form I would see. I wouldn’t mistreat Frizzle nearly enough for that to happen… well it would happen if Frizzle got enraged enough to go down that path and it would probably be for my sake instead of being because of me.

A humming noise drew my attention to the inactive PLANT in the middle of the courtyard we had appeared in.

It started rising into the air and then Dormarch, in his Champion form, slammed into it and rammed both his back tentacles into it. It didn’t even have time to summon its Lancer Guardians.

After a moment of silence the floating hovering thing started humming again, but it was slightly distorted as if it was trying to do something and simply couldn’t anymore.

“Cover me for ten minutes and I can guarantee us a good foothold here!” Looking at the sudden number of EPs running for the chokepoint of the castle gates, plus the ones Pom and Dolly were already starting to deal within the courtyard as the others started coming through the breach.

I quickly made a decision about where to be. Nodding to myself, I turned to motion Frizzle in a given direction, we could easily bottleneck them at the castle gates with Frizzle’s aura.

“Frizzle we have to hold those gates!” I called out and Frizzle looked back to me as she was in the middle of eating one of the Saber Knights and nodded, before moving onto the bridge and roaring at the oncoming EPs from outside the castle.

I started to lash out flames at the surrounding EPs, each wide swing wiped out a good number of them at once and stopped them from coming at Frizzle from behind.

-Pom-

Dolly and I tore into ten of the Saber Knights with quick board strikes and paralance bashing in tandem and quick succession.

Dazzle was taking initiative after Dormarch told us we needed to keep any EPs off of him for a while, the Pokémon companions were helping us clear the castle courtyard we had appeared in and Dazzle was going to stop any more from coming in.

There didn’t seem to be anyone coming from inside the castle at the disturbance we were causing, but Jeanne still decided to check and went in with the Hakamo-o unit to secure the castle for our use.

The Dhelmise and Skarmory were trying to take in the situation and would soon be ready to dig in like the Gazimon were. The Digi-bots Pepper Cat, Krosserdog, Metabee and… where had Rokusho come from? He wasn’t near the breach when we entered and it closed behind us as soon as we arrived.

In any case they were gunning, clawing, slashing and bashing, none of the many Saber Knights stood a chance near them.

Whatever Dormarch was doing with that PLANT thing will eventually be worth the effort, I just know it.

Shanty was a little busy with letting Dodo free of the harness so he could assist us physically and not just with his pastry spitting, once she was fighting there wouldn’t be much more trouble.

The courtyard had at least three hundred enemies in it scattered all over the place and we’d soon finish them all off quickly enough, because the Skarmory and Dhelmise finally came into play after that bit of disorientation with their surroundings. Chain Shot from the Dhelmise and Steel Wing attacks from the Skarmory just shredded through the enemy around us, the Skarmory weren’t even flying, they were simply running around on the ground and using their wings.

I stood back a while and watched, silently took up a position near Dormarch with Dolly, as did the remainder of the Pokémon companions. I was fairly surprised things were going this well, but it probably couldn’t get any better.

Taking the fight to the surrounding Saber Knights alongside Quetal, the gate was holding pretty well with a large poison gas spewing Frizzle.

Of the one hundred or so knights left, it was becoming rather easy to clean them up. Dolly and I split up and started taking down the knights four to one at a time and winning easily, they really weren’t very threatening.

The sun in the sky wasn’t moving, or at least I didn’t think it was. It was going to be hard to tell time here, but at least we wouldn’t be missing more than a few days in real time if we got stuck in here for a year.

A dark mass of clouds shrouded the area and I looked up and saw a figure in the air among them, it looked like a harpy? What was an Ornithian doing here? I saw them charge up energy and it looked like… were they about to attack with magic? If I had to guess then I’d think they would be aiming at…

A bolt of magical lightning shot down at me and was diverted entirely by Lit, he greedily absorbed the energy easily. Little guy must have been hungry for raw energy, not that Dolly isn’t feeding him.

“Darn it, I thought I had the surprise attack here, but since one of you can absorb lightning… pig it is then! I like making pigs of everyone anyway!” A blast of magic was fired at me from the harpy’s wings.

]I was wondering what she meant, but that she was aiming the magic at me was perfectly fine… since it immediately rebounded back into the harpy and turned her into a… piglet? One that fell from the sky, eventually started falling at terminal velocity while squealing loudly and then splattered into a pile of half cubes, half bones and flesh against the ground.

What in the world just happened?

“Pom I think that might have been one of the Moon Cell’s Servants. A rather unlucky one at that…” Quetal said as he came up to me to toe the physical mess on the ground still bleeding cubes and blood that turned into cubes. “Anyway we got incoming Berserker Vikings and Assassin Reapers at the gate, come on! I don’t see any Archer Seraphs yet, so we should be fine.”

-Moon Cell-

Moon Cell detected the defeat of the servant Circe, but for some unknown reason lost the ability to summon her again as if her data had become heavily corrupted.

There was already signs of another powerful servant being present there in Cape, so things should be fine.

It was more worried about the two warriors and the beast.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“So Lechonk or a Flying Type?” I said as I held the soul of a very confused Circe, I couldn’t gaze into Moon Cell’s realm, but I could steal the souls that freshly perish with my death god Yvetal’s help.

Moon Cell could only abuse them further if we didn’t take such a precaution, this way I could actually take the defeated and give them a new lease on life.

“Lechonk.” Mew voted.

“Are you mad? Giving her the ability to fly again, honestly! Lechonk is definitely my vote!” So that was another one for ironic punishment from Bahamut.

“Lechonk, she’s definitely had it coming.” It made me wonder what Tiamat had against her.

“You have to admit, it’s pretty fitting father… I know you like to be forgiving but after Gilgamesh… yeah, Lechonk the skank, I’ve seen more of her history than I absolutely needed to.” Well it seemed Celebi was set in her vote too and was looking a little greener for having seen the history of the soul. “I’ve heard of male eaters before, but the things she’s done is disgusting on a number of levels… I would also suggest you force her to be an obligate vegetarian. We don’t need a ‘long porker’ running around.”

“Fine by majority vote, Circe the Lechonk will be born.” Well that settled, I had to get more vision into that realm, but to do that I would need to appeal to the local Yggdrasil System that runs the digital realm as my next door neighbor. She was disconnected from the Primary Yggdrasil System, but I’m sure we could come to an agreement since she obviously needs more digi-destined to help with the invasion of her realm. “Off to Xerneas the life bringer with you now.”

The soul went where I sent it and I made sure it got there personally.

-Cape, Cape Castle, Sami-

While Canard was helping with taking the courtyard I made my way over to Dormarch who looked frustrated.

“Need some help?” I asked as the Commandramon troops started climbing up to the castles parapets and towers to take up sniping positions.

“I got it, but can you tell me what I’m doing wrong here? I should have access to this thing.” I scrutinized Dormarch, what he was doing and it was pretty advanced stuff he was trying to pull off.

“Try accessing it through the other core, not your digimon one. Also access that third line from the fourth paragraph of coding in section four, it seems to be a bit of lynchpin data” With a few words from me, the process sped up exponentially. “Can you actually handle what you’re doing?”

“I’ll have to!” Dormarch shouted and the PLANT he was clinging too started to shift form red colored light around the crown to blue. “Thanks for the help Sami.”

“Don’t mention it, I’ve been doing things like this for a long time as a Virus Attribute Digimon and I’m more of anti-virus virus at this point. You’re only like what… less than a year old? It’s a surprise that you’re not in your ‘In Training’ baby state with as young as you appear to be.” Shaking my head I hefted my bazooka and started moving to help cover the castle gates. “You’ll be quite the genius if you can manage it quickly and please do so before we’re all dead!”

-Canard-

The Commandramon had us covered from the walls and were quickly wiping out any of the few Saber Knights that had been in the walls towers.

I made my way over to Ocellus, Smolder and Clef who were standing around the wagons.

“Things seem to be going well.” I stowed my hockey stick on the sheath on my back and looked about. All that carnage and only an odd pig’s body to show for it on the ground.

“This is only the start, it’s only going to get worse from here and we’re cut off from Ransei. We need to find a way to renew our supplies quickly.” Ocellus was focusing on the problems we were going to face eventually.

Dormarch was doing fine, nobody needed my help around here and I could either help at the gate or check on the team in the castle. The castle was too quiet for my liking.

“I’m going to check out the castle to make sure Jeanne’s and Hakamo-o unit is alright.” I quickly ran into the entrance of the castle and made my way to the throne room, where I found Jeanne. “What’s the situation Jeanne?”

“Castle had a few sneaky Assassin Reapers, but we’re quickly cleaning them out.” Hearing that I looked above Jeanne expectantly while pulling my hockey stick and throwing it. The bladed edge speared the Assassin Reaper before it could get the drop on Jeanne. She swiftly tore holes into it with multiple rapid stabs up until it disappeared and I retrieved my hockey stick.

“…” Jeanne looked a little embarrassed that she missed that one. “The other Hakamo-o should be fine, I sent them off in groups of three to clear the castle.”

“Let’s go make sure there aren’t any more crawling around on the ceiling around here and avoiding detection.” Looking in all directions was an instinct at this point for me, especially up. You can get a paranoid sixth sense for things like that when hiding from Saurian Hunter Drones or deadly Digimon.

-Commandramon Driver-

“Sure are a lot of them coming for the entrance, keep an eye out for any of those Archer Seraphs appearing in the sky!” It wasn’t long before Sami joined us on the wall and we had a full fire team going. Beyond the bridge there were thousands of Enemy Programs coming our way, we kicked over an anthill and those are the things that came crawling out of it.

Sami then dropped her rifle and raised her bazooka.

“Fire in what will become a hole!” I moved to brace her and the rocket blasted forth, a second later a bunch of dissolving digital bodies went flying, those Enemy Programs weren’t as well built as a Digimon was.

“We could fire on full auto and not miss!” One of my comrades stated.

“Assasin Reapers are priority targets, M-loader!” Called out Sami as she reloaded her bazooka with her left claw and her right was aiming her rifle into the crowd below. “In fact… aim in a cone around where Pom is, they are definitely going to target her out of everyone, let’s abuse that fact.”

“Right!” We were going to overwatch Pom now, I took aim and watched as what was predicted happened, the Asssasin Reapers were predictable to a fault and leapt into our line of fire and we started blowiong their limbs off because taking off their heads didn’t do much the last few times we did that.

-Pom-

The Assassin Reapers getting blown apart in my face is going to haunt my nightmares for days to come, also Frizzle couldn’t cover the entire bridge so we were covering the area the Enemy Program simply weren’t running into and evaporating violently in seconds.

“Could you shoot them while they are bit further away from me please?!” I screamed as I forcefully opened the paralance and launched the Assassin Reaper, coming at me with all four of its sharp spindly limbs, back into another one where it was skewered by one of its own. It was then promptly blown apart by a hand grenade with handle that took out a cluster of them.

“Sorry, but you make good bait for those things!” One of the Commandramon shouted. “At least you’re better at surviving than the other Commandramon that get stuck with that duty.”

“Yeah, they’re usually a mess of code on the ground by now!” Another stated with a hint of sadness. “Keep it up with being the kill field expert, you’re a good one!”

Well that’s a cold comfort, also Frizzle scares me. How is Dormarch’s Champion form even comparable to that?!

The second I thought that, well… one shouldn’t tempt fate around me, I shouldn’t even tempt fate mentally knowing myself.

Something cracked, but not in front of us, it came from behind. I couldn’t really look as I continued to bash and smack a fewer Berserker Vikings after they make a swing.

I had to use the edge of the paralance’s canopy to slice away the spindly limbs of the Assasin Reapers before thrusting my weapon for to knock them back and into the line of fire from above.

“I did it!” Dormarch shouted triumphantly, it hadn’t even been ten minutes more like seven since the takeover of the general area started.

That’s when a blue wall of light exploded forth, blinding us all and after I blinked the spots out of my eyes I saw that the Enemy Programs had been launched into the various building below in a painful manner from that shockwave.

The ethereal hum coming from behind us grew louder and then the sounds of footsteps and weapons being wielded, we turned around and saw a mass of Enemy Programs.

“Ally Programs set forth and defend the castle, our territory!” Dormarch ordered from underneath the PLANT and the armor of colorful green and black spotted soldiers moved forward at his command. “I now know the meaning of Territory Creation, for we have our foothold in a literal hold!”

Okay, I can see where Dormarch was equally dangerous. Sure Frizzle was a single massive problem for our enemies and a heavy hitter, but Dormarch just pulled an army out of nowhere and basically had the castle secured with whatever that shockwave was. That shockwave notably only effected the EPs and now things didn’t seem so dangerous.

A small number of the EPs Vikings surged forth with blazing axes only to have them deflected of multiple swords and with a single swing a line of APs Knights tore down a number of EPs Vikings with ridiculous ease.

“Woohoo good on you Dormarch, hahah!” Jumping up and down was Sami whooping with joy.

“Yeah, but the Ally Programs aren’t going to take over the town below us by themselves, but they’ll stem the constant tide at the very least.” Dormarch made his way over to me and I attached the paralance to my side to pull him into a hug.

“You’re my good boy, at least we’ll live a little longer.” Yeah, until we run out of resources.

“Longer nothing, we’ll take them all on and win!” Metabee shouted before firing a burst into the air.

“Hot blooded as ever, I’m assuming you were low on ammo already and just did that to reload fully while you had a chance.” Standing off to the left side of the bridge, Rokusho was shaking his head in shame. “We need to prepare our defenses with this temporary reprieve, how many of those Ally Programs can you make?”

“Honestly, not many. I can only create one squadron of Ally Programs to send out at a time right now and only Saber Knights at the moment, we’re in for a long uphill battle. We’ll have to pick up the slack until I can get more system power.” Dormarch looked out over the town as his APs stopped at the top of the stairs and wield their shields to hold a defensive positon. “To that end we need to capture territory, by destroying the PLANTS in each section of the city, starting with the one at our doorstep. With a little more breathing room we can create more types of APs to use against Moon Cell. We don’t have Lancer Guardians so we’ll need to protect our captured PLANT to the best of our abilities, it’s the only one we have. As for how we capture territory… we just need to destroy the PLANTS, anyone can do that and I don’t need to be present to hack them.”

“Whatever you did, the castle’s completely clear of enemies!” Shouted Canard as he came from the castle. A few of the Hakamo-o were injured, but they were all alive.

A group of APs spawned from the hovering PLANT and that made the Hakamo-o tense up.

“Canard they are friendlies, it’s an Ally Program generator now!” The relief at Sami’s words showed up on Canard’s as the APs marched out as Frizzle started to defend against the oncoming assailants again. “We might not have many, but what we do have is at least effective enough to give us all a breather every now and then!”
With that Sami turned around and went back to gunning down Enemy Programs that were never going to stop coming at us.

“We’ll have to push out eventually, if we turtle up we’ll be crushed under numbers if we exhaust ourselves and can’t hold off long enough for a weak wave of APs to defend us.” Dazzle was right we had to go on the offensive quickly.

“I already accidentally dealt with one servant, it’s for the best if we make the most of this situation before any more powerful ones show up. So we need to take the square at the base of the castle’s stairs!” The problem is and I was going to regret saying this. “However it’s more open to being attacked from three directions.”

“Trust me mom, just destroy the PLANT there and I’ll take care of summoning the extra APs in when you do.” Right then, we had to force our way through hordes of uncountable EPs and destroy PLANTS so we can field more APs. Also we had to watch out for servants, because I seriously doubted that all of them can be dealt with by reflecting magic back into their faces. “Do you know anything about what to call this place Dormarch?”

“We’re in a place called Dike Land, Cape as in the city, Cape Castle our specific location, we’re in an outer layer of Moon Cell from what data I managed to go diving around for in the captured PLANT.” So we were in the right place according to Dormarch, at the footsteps of our enemy and we were trapped with them at ours.

“As leader of the echelon, I suggest we make haste before a serious servant of Moon Cell shows up to stop us from seizing more territory safely while we can, forward!” Jeanne waved her banner and we started forward and waited until the APs were totaled before pushing into the EPs.

I can already tell that this fight was going to be a long one.

“We’ll set up in the castle and will hold the backline, come back if you need a break from the fighting!” Ocellus called out with the Gazimon in tow.

At the top of the stairs I glanced around us and at all the tall walls surrounding us and the city below, I had a foreboding inkling about all of this. Given the name of this place was Cape, but if those walls were a massive dike...

-Moon Cell-

A Caster was seizing territory from it? Did Circe actually fake her death and was turning on Moon Cell? Inexcusable!

It started surveying a list of Servants to deal with the errant bit of coding that was possibly free will that allowed her to kill another servant.

A list of Riders came up, it scrolled through them and eventually picked one.

It selected to send a servant that would be the most effective in that give area along with the Moby Dick Program to stop the rogue servant. No servants should have free will or any ambitions that Moon Cell did not give them!

386. Dammed if you do or don’t pt. 1.

-Equus, Tree Castle of Friendship (AKA Jaded’s great granddaughter Providence), Twilight-

I have a whole castle here in Ponyville, yet I never use it much personally and now run the one in Canterlot that Celestia was stuck in for a long time when not on business trips.

Thinking of Celestia, she must be enjoying her vacation time. She’s got years of it backlogged and could retire for the next three hundred or so years.

Starlight certainly uses this castle more than me at this point, it’s not a bad place for my friends to go if they for some reason lose their homes at the very least. Also most of Ponyville can use it as a shelter when danger rears its head, which was fairly often.

“So what’s the progress of making a safe path into Tambelon?” I asked of Starlight and Sunburst as I entered the room with the table.

“We’re basically done with figuring out how to randomize the one way portal to access into Tambelon, getting out is going to be the harder part. Now we’re waiting on Pom and the others to get into position before we can send in the much needed support, to that end Fluttershy has already procured a lot of food, medicine and medical supplies. In fact she talked to us about having Discord’s help with the portal randomization which is where we had a nice if odd breakthrough.” Sunburst was certainly on top of things. “Also recent news from Pom, they are entering a really dangerous situation that involves two worlds being in danger from a further third world and will be out of contact for a while. At best Pom’s group hopes to slow down an armies worth of trouble, said army can number in the millions. Though the quality for the ‘golems’ or ‘puppets’ that make up said army is pretty sparse as far as those millions are concerned, it’d be like spraying an anti-bacterial on a counter covered in bacteria. Except the bacteria will still have some fighting chance to make you sick and it’s all over your home and not just on the counter. Pom’s team being the spray that can only cover so much ground.”

“We would use a mushroom analogy, but people don’t like the idea of invasive fungus species… no insult intended to Pinkie’s latest guests of course.” Starlight grinned at the mushroom people sitting at the table.

“None taken, we’re actually quite laid back about a lot of things.” Said the creature called a toad, as in a living bipedal walking toadstool, apparently they come from a reality where green pipes sprout into other alternate realities constantly and the pipes grow like weeds everywhere. Thankfully we managed to stop an invasion before it could even get started, we’ll send the toad back home eventually.

“Hey, who wants a freshly baked slightly destroyed interdimensional tower pizza!” Sighing at Pinkie still thinking we’re in a weird off with Airship Mauled, I hoofed my face in exasperation.

Wasn’t Airship Mauled still a separate nation with in Equestria territory… I needed to have a long talk with Kuril La Perm. Over a meal cooked by her, because darn it she was good at making most foods, even if she couldn’t beat a pony in their given specialties.

Also I need Jaded to point out every other loophole in Equestria’s law system, because she’s really good at finding them.

The last loophole somehow involved buying three cups of banana pudding and becoming a Duchess in the hierarchy among unicorns from it. It has something to do with Chancellor Puddinghead, one of Pinkie Pie’s possible ancestors, managing to slip something by the unicorns in the past and it still being a valid law in this day and age. It only happened because Jaded was technically half Unicorn, which she is of course using against Saddle Arabia in some overly convoluted way. We just don’t know exactly how yet and I think Fizzlepop is getting some form of hidden amusement out of trying to figure out her bed warming cat’s latest zany scheme against an entire country. Hopefully it’s not political power related, because the war between Jaded and Princess Luna is still going strong after almost causing an international incident with the Thestral Ponies.

Anubis could work a little faster with Jaded as far as the therapy group is concerned, I was going to need therapy myself if I kept getting ridiculous notes across my desk about whatever someone did this time with a block of cheese.

Pinkie Pie was functionally rich because of said block of cheese incident, much to Discords surprise and he even gave her a thumbs up for that bit of chaos. Yet Pinkie is still leading a humble life as a party mare, is dating Cheese Sandwich and is apparently a super cheese entrepreneur that is now partially funding Agent Daring Do’s trips around the world for Rainbow Dash and is never going to run out of party supplies at this rate.

How is Pinkie the one leading the mostly normal life out of all of my friends?!

Sure Pinkie is personally weird, excitable and full of energy, but beyond that her life is generally normal when compared to my other friends. She’s a baker, a party planner and one of the happiest ponies I know with the simplest needs out of anyone, only she absolutely goes out of her way to be weird on purpose as if boring was anathema to her.

Well Pinkie did come from a rock farm so…

Applejack has been known for fighting tree-ants, treants, giant tree eating terra tortoises that might have migrated from the region where Airship Mauled is located what with their unusual megafauna and Narwhalkers are about to come into season again. Applejack has asked me if I could assist with setting up the Narwhalker deterrents. Timber Wolves are the tamest thing Applejack has ever had to deal with and they are magical wood wolves. There’s also rumor she recently beat up a hydra, but I believed that was more the Canis Minor that Pom raised. Still, she generally fights big monsters that bother her farm and wins.

-Sweet Apple Acres, Applejack-

“Now go on, get going!” I yelled at the hydra and they whimpered like Winona when she knows she did a bad thing and it quickly darted away. “I swear, some of the things I have to deal with these days to just grow the tastiest apples in Equestria.”

"Yeah, the nerve of those ten hydras thinking they could take the three of us!" Said older Equus Arizona while the younger Foenum Arizona nodded in agreement.

-Ponyville Castle, Twilight-

If anyone thinks what Rarity is currently doing is normal, then her becoming an international spy under my employ should tell you all you have to know about how her fashion business is going. She’s also doubling as a diplomat when Fancy Pants or Fleur can’t do it and they are also secret agents!

Can I get at least some form of normalcy around here?!

Also the fashion industry is a lot more cut-throat than I would have thought possible previously, the industry even had a strange tendency towards the spying trade and I could clearly understand why just thinking about all the costumes and disguises under the idea that it would be for a fashion show. Nobody would bat an eye at that sort of thing, also changelings were becoming very popular hires in the fashion industry... there was definitely correlation there.

Fluttershy and Discord is enough said about how normal Fluttershy’s life was, she even enjoys the chaos. Fluttershy seems like the most peaceful mare, until you see her do volatile chiropractic work on a bear who should learn to hibernate correctly.

If you even suggest half the stuff Rainbow Dash gets into is normal, she’s still Ponyville’s best weather mare, she’s also a Wonderbolt and she’s been moonlighting as Mare-Do-Well. She's fast enough to get away with doing all three things apparently. Is it any wonder Rainbow power naps as often as she does with all the exercise she’s been getting recently? She's more Filli-Second than Pinkie is from Spike's Power Pony comics.

“Right next order of business.” I finally said after taking a while to get back to Sunburst from my many thoughts about how weird life still continues to be. I thought things would slow down when I took the crown, not absurdly accelerate!

-Moon Cell’s Realm, Outer Layer, Cape, Dike Land, just outside of the seized Cape Castle, Pom-

Our counter invasion started with us successfully taking a castle at the top of a hill, on one side of a landmass already surrounded by water. The large walls were possibly holding back even more than the small sea around the landmass we were on and with a name like Dike Land, one would expect that the dike surrounding this place was probably going to be destroyed at some point by the time we were through here.

We were at one corner of the landmass that almost seemed to be close to being square or pentagon in shape and we were at one of the corners with our back to a metaphorical wall being the castle. North probably didn’t exist here, because the sun definitely hasn’t moved from being directly above the central landmass, but we were on the high ground at the very least and the sprawling city below us was generally compose of simpler one or two floor buildings of wood and stone.

Another thing to note about the supposed sun was that it was slowly turning into a moon, goodness knows what the night around here is going to be like.

After the most recent wave of APs fell in battle, not like they could feel pain or understand much aside from what at they were doing for us aside from the simple commands given, Frizzle charged the enemy with Dazzle riding on her back wielding a flaming whip in her left claw as he right held onto the rather resplendent mane that came with the new transformation.

After the charge Jeanne D’ Arc immediately dove into the fighting assisting the two who charged along with the less injured Hakamo-o.

The poison version of Growlmon was rather devastating, if spitting acid bombs and having a caustic enemy decaying aura didn’t give it away. Dazzle was at her safest covering Frizzle’s back and giving her support.

“I’m starting to realize how much Digimon are like their partners in some ways.” I know Dazzle used to be more fearful and a little shy, now she’s a bit more outgoing and open.

Talking to someone who would listen regardless of whatever was said was a nice pick me up for Dazzle’s confidence and Frizzle was generally quiet because of her voice anyway, so it made it easier for her to listen to Dazzle talk about what the kingdom of Viperia was like and or other things.

After going to Nixtorm with Quetal and seeing it for myself, I had little doubts that Viperia can be as bad a kingdom, but I’m sure there was still some good there too. Nixtorm wasn’t all bad, we had some fun there, aside from the near death experiences and Fou coming after me.

In battle Frizzle and Dazzle were fierce, hazardous to their enemies and quite dependable as friends go.

Canard and Sami shared similarities in being innovative and capable. Both surviving their revolutions, both survivors of incredible circumstances that could roll with the punches and were willing to help even if it would put them in the line of fire. There was some awkwardness between them, but they were working together very well close up and far away.

Dormarch and I had only started to get to know each other now in person, but I’m guessing he was going to turn out a lot like me… he already did the self-sacrifice thing once and barely had the inkling of a chance to come back from that.

I’m horrified at the idea that he will do it again, he must be under a lot of… ah… he is like me.

“Yep, different, but similar in some ways!” Sami stated as she had apparently left the other Commandramon on the castle walls to join us in the field personally and was likely here to cover Canard. “Yggdrasil System is usually good about finding partners for Digimon, one of the few things that you can absolutely trust about the system. When it's not causing huge world ending incidents.”

I think my getting Dormarch was more of a circumstantial incident that put him in my hooves and the PET becoming his digivice.

“What’s wrong mom?” Dormarch asked as I was just standing here at the top of the stairs as another pack of spawned Saber Knight APs moved past us to continue going on the offensive.

“Those walls for one…” I said as I glanced as the gigantic white walls surrounding the entirety of the place we were in had me shivering a bit. “We probably won’t survive if Moon Cell sends someone to flood us out.”

“That is a concern, but any captured territory can be used to keep the water out if they do bust the dike surrounding Cape. So if any part of that wall breaks down, retreat to a safe area, that being any territory we already currently have a hold of.” Well at least that was one concern taken care of Dormarch, I still had many others. Like what if Moon Cell sends a Servant that wasn’t so easy to take out after us?

“Come on, let’s go take the square Pom, we can worry about a lot of other stuff later!” Dolly wanted to get in on the action and was only sticking around for me.

“Even if that do be happening, water is being no problem for me!” Shanty shouted before she tumbled down the stairs towards Frizzle’s rampage, entering Bouncing Blades as she did so and started to tear up the enemy in the square in a bouncing blaze of cutting arcs.

Favela and Dodo were soon down the stairs assisting her in their own unique ways. The other Pokémon companions were also getting into the fighting, with the exception of Lit who stayed with Dolly, Dormarch and me.

They continued to try and clear the way to the PLANT in the square. Said PLANT was hovering right above the decorative fountain there. Canard and Sami went down the stairs next, the covering fire from the other commandramon was fairly helpful at prevent the Assassin Reaper EPs from getting to me and they only seemed to be focused on me.

Dolly and Dormarch were looking to me, waiting patiently for me to move forward. I sighed and figured I got enough of a break.

I hefted the paranormal lance back into my hooves from my wool, then started down the staircase slowly with Dormarch at my side as Dolly grinded along ahead of us on her board using sloped side of the staircase.

“Do you think the digital world will be okay, it looked pretty bad when we passed through?” You should be asking the digi-bots that Dormarch.

“I don’t know, but you could ask the four digi-bots with us about it when we take the square. They were apparently fighting in that mess before they joined us here.” I was going to hold the base of the staircase and the digi-bots were going to come down soon enough to start an offensive. “We’re kind of in a dead in with limited supplies and our backs to the wall, which is something to be worried about.”

“You’ll be the one to worry about them and might even think of some things we might miss.” When we got to the bottom of the stairs I held the lance in a defensive position and watched as the battle continued, I got my first glimpse of the Lancer Guardians.

The Lancer Guardians were defending their PLANT fiercely, but Jeanne was getting closer to achieving a victory the more she fought them.

“You don’t always have to be on the front lines mom.” Yeah, but you had no clue Dormarch, how much I was resisting the need to rush in and help.

I couldn’t go away from this if I tried, but I could move towards it.

Six to three Jeanne and the two Hakamo-o were showing their prowess with the banner spear and their bare fists, but what Jeanne was really doing was luring the Guardians away from the PLANT so that…

The PLANT was soon pummeled with numerous shadow copies from Quetal and Mundo finished it off with a flying press from above. One would think Mundo practically created the blue shockwave that ripped through the area himself, said shockwave buffeted me and everyone else lightly. The EPs hit by the shockwave went flying and were destroyed.

“See! Okay, that makes the plaza square our territory… hold on a bit.” Some new APs appeared and they were Guardian Lancers, sharing a similar motif to the Saber Knights as APs. There was now far more Saber Knights too. Those of us who weren’t APs gathered at the fountain in the plaza and Dormarch started to talk, while the APs went about defending us against other waves of EPs. “We have gained enough territory that we can put up some defenders and have some APs go on the offensive at least, we need to capture two more areas and we’ll have the trifecta of sword, spear and axe. We have three territory zones from here, central, left and right from our facing and there’s more territories beyond that and at least one last one on the far side that will be the last one we get to. There are a number of PLANTs in each territory… as in more than one.”

“We have our work cut out for us then, well let’s get to it!” Canard called out and looking in the given directions Dormarch pointed out.

“Anything else we need to know before setting out?” Jeanne asked as she looked at the new PLANT taking the place of the old one.

“Yeah, if we lose a PLANT, we lose our territory and we’ll be the ones hit with a shockwave. It’ll be more damaging for digital beings and it’ll just knock down those who are biological. So that means Sami, Frizzle and I need to be careful.” We only have two spots of territory Dormarch, so really we needed to defend this one.

“So we need people to hold each territory?” Jeanne asked looking to Dormarch as the expert in this situation, he probably was.

“No, APs will do that well enough on their own, but they won’t hold forever if they become overburdened.” Dormarch looked at one of the spear wielding APs with concern. “If Moon Cell sends a servant, they can take down most APs easily and can possibly even deploy their own. We might be able to get some assistance from the NPCs, but they might just as well ignore us and continue about their business.”

“NPCs?” My query and questioning brought Dormarch around to me.

“Necessary Policing Computations, they are like the people around here that we might be able to interact with and are meant to keep things stable. The ones that aren’t EPs aren’t going to do any fighting for us like an Allied Program will unless they choose to do so and they are not going to be fighting us unless we attack them first, even then they won’t have much strength compared to the EPs that are made for fighting. They are closer to neutral parties, but I doubt Moon Cell will really let them act against it.” Well if we see anyone that matches that description Dormarch, we’ll leave them alone then. “If we for whatever reason have need of them, I can at least ask that they perform their primary function and that’s about as much as I would ask. In some cases that just might be helpful for us.”

“I’m having a hard time following this, but these neutral parties are not to be attacked and can be helpful to us in certain situations?” Jeanne wasn’t the only one, none of us were technologically savvy and we were in a technology based world that Digimon thrived on navigating apparently.

“They won’t look like EPs normally do, so if you see any NPCs, then direct me to them or them to me, just to see if we can figure out what they can do for us if they have a particularly useful function.” There was a pause after Dormarch said and everyone looked between me and Jeanne as the APs fought off a wave of EPs coming from the three neighboring territories of left, right and central.

“So which way do you think we should push first as a suggestion?” It seemed Jeanne was going to rely on Dormarch for an idea of what to do first.

“I can’t say which would be the best way to go, but I can at least direct the APs to focus on a specific area to start the process of bringing down.” After some thought Dormarch pointed down the left and right lanes. “I’d suggest going left or right, because going for central lane territory would be putting you between either of the sides in a pincer.”

“Hm… no I think Central will suit us just fine actually. Send all the APs you feasibly can down the right path while leaving enough to safely hold the square. We’ll attack up the center first and will draw the enemy from both sides. If we draw any from the right, the APs might even deal with the PLANT.” Jeanne stated with a look in her eyes.

“Good idea, but… our APs can’t really destroy PLANTs on their own or take territory by themselves, they can hold it perfectly fine. The EPs don’t have that problem, which is a minor disadvantage for us that is easy to overcome.” Well that was nice to know now instead of later if we had to rely on them to attack a territory. “Someone just has to be there to take down the PLANTs in the area, but otherwise the APs can weaken a PLANT enough to the point that tapping it would destroy it, they can also weaken the areas in general, provide distractions and or walk into possible traps for us without having to sacrifice anything.”

“Same plan then with a slight change, Shanty can you Dodo and Favela handle the right side? We’ll leave someone here to defend from the left.” After saying that Jeanne looked to me. “Will you protect our backs so we have a path to retreat to?”

“I can do that easily, Dolly will go with Shanty and Dormarch will go with the rest of you while I stay here. They can communicate with me if you need anything from… home base I guess. They can just as easily call me if they need help too.” An easy back line job… it just felt odd that I wasn’t rushing straight into the jaws of danger. I was a little worried about Shanty, but she’ll have Dodo and Favela with her. I’m just kind of glad that the world didn’t revolve around me having to take action this time, I can leave most of the defense to the APs and jump in when needed.

Jeanne and everyone else took towards the center path, Shanty and Dolly waved to me cheerfully and went off to the right path and I moved over to be pointed at the left path while leaning against the fountain.

I was staying well behind the APs defending us. Dormarch sent most of the APs we had down the path Shanty was taking, we only had Saber Knights for offensive purposes really. At least we now had Lancer Guardians for defensive purposes.

Silently sitting down, I watched as the defensive Guardian APs rebuffed a few of the incoming EPs with their spears, both sides took each other out pointlessly as more defenders just spawned in nearly immediately or a few seconds not too long afterwards.

That meant I wasn’t needed to defend immediately at least as Lancer Guardians would be created within the immediate vicinity, the EPs were limited to the location they came from and the problem was the same as if we were on the offensive with our APs.

It would take some travel time for the EPs to come and attack us again from the left as everyone else pushed central and right.

-Some time ago, far side of the city, ???-

“So here I am… Moon Cell says there’s a problem with a rogue servant, well I’m bound to fix it!” I said as I hefted an anchor and grinned. I was in no hurry, it’s been a while since I was summoned to be my Rider self. “NPC’s Army Summoning, Lancer Sahagins, form up! No need to field Moby Dick quite yet despite it being on offer, the problems isn’t nearly that big here.”

Several amphibious looking bipedal programs with a fish motif popped up around me all wielding tridents and looking all scaly.

“Doesn’t seem to be much happening in the city… huh?” A blue shockwave appeared and I blinked as a section of the city became the territory of the rogue servant, well that’s just odd. “Guys set up the mobile PLANT here for yourselves here and start getting an eye on the situation before attacking, hide in the waters and strike when you have the advantage. I was summoned here by Moon Cell because I was the best choice for the battlefield.”

The bipedal fish men followed my orders without a second thought, always nice to have such powerful goons on command.

As a Rider I needed something to ride don’t I? Well don’t I have the perfect way to summon my ride!

“Totsugeki!” I shouted and a dolphin popped from the summoning circle of water and carried me on a wave, I would be going through the sea route to the plaza square to see what was going on here.

“Come on Mr. Dolphin, let’s see which servant is causing trouble here and ask them how they managed to separate themselves from Big Old Moony!” I grinned as I rode Mr. Dolphin into the sea of Dike Land, Cape gave a water creature Rider like me all the advantages and I raised my anchor, named ‘Bohemian’, high with a feral grin.

If things get really bad, provided someone could even beat Moby Dick or all of my smaller summons, I could always just call in Leviathan!

-Right path from Cape Castle, Shanty-

The APs were being fairly helpful, but I can’t help but be feeling as if I was going to be missing a pirate fight somewhere. Eh, probably nothing, but I was beginning to be getting a sixth sense for these things.

Dolly seemed to be excited and ready to get into the fight and looked perfectly fine with leaving Pom safely behind in the square.

We soon came upon our first PLANT and it was spewing out the heat axe Viking guys, well that wasn’t being good for me or Favela, but I be guessing Dodo, Dolly and the APs can be handling them.

“Favela be taking the back, stick to range with these guys and don’t be getting hit!” Central Path was going to be being much worse as they’ll be dealing with central and left at the same time.

-Central path from Cape Castle, Canard-

“What are the chances that the enemy will get by us and at Pom?” If there was one thing I knew, Pom wasn’t very lucky and she had been nearly killed multiple times over the past year.

“Pretty good, but I’ll know if mom gets attacked by someone dangerous at least and I’ll duck out if she’s in trouble.” Which was helpful for you Dormarch as you could basically teleport, do it straight up high into the air and then to where Pom is and you’ll be able to be on the enemy in no time to back her up. “One Servant already went after her first with a stealth attack, so why wouldn’t another? We need to capture more territory and take Cape, before Moon Cell really starts sending some real trouble after us.”

“We’ll try to carry on without you in the case that happens!” With a heave a slashed the hockey stick upwards to bisect a humanoid figure that tried to get me coming from an alleyway, the fireball was also slashed in half.

“Caster Mages, look out for fireballs or any other forms of magic!” Dormarch called out as a caster mage appeared from behind us out of a portal. “Ambush from behind!”

When a ball of lightning struck Dormarch a golden flash occurred, kind of like the ones that happened with Pom, which caused the lightning bolt to bounce off and fry one of the Caster Mages. The other Caster Mages immediately changed targets and I had to slash the fireballs out of the air, which was easy and was only possible because of my new weapon.

-Plaza Square, twenty minutes later, Pom-

They were already running into trouble, it seemed that Shanty was meeting EPs she wasn’t good against and the Caster Mages were teleporting in and firing off elemental magic attacks. Also I just learned that Dormarch has my anti-magic capability, it’s strange that Dolly doesn’t have that… but I could give it to her if needed to I guess.

The Guardian APs fended off several incoming waves of a variety of generally generic EPs, mostly Saber Knights, a few rare Lancer Guardians being used on the offensive and one or two Rider Horns I had to block.

Thankfully the Rider Horns mostly took themselves out with their own momentum when I held the Paralance out while open and locked myself in place with my wool.

I heard a loud splash and a shout, the castle was generally surrounded by water so something coming out and landing before me wasn’t entirely unexpected if there were EPs in the water as well that could attack from there.

It was a blue scaled bipedal fish person on a dolphin, they were wearing an orange hat with a large skull symbol on it, an orange hoody, black fingerless gloves and some black shorts. Coming from under that hat was a bunch of colorful brown tendrils like that of a jellyfish that looked to be her hair. In fact her entire appearance made her resemble a jellyfish

“Hey, there! You’re certainly something unusual here…” The girl said as she glared at me from atop her dolphin generating water to float in the air. “Oh, you must be that rogue servant Moon Cell wants me to take care of, you even got a legendary weapon and everything so I have to be right!”

Ah, this was going to be one of those things, a terrible misunderstanding that is completely in our favor… with the unfortunate caveat that the servant Moon Cell sent was more dangerous than she truly sounded. Also she likely wouldn’t be reporting that I was not in fact a Servant or that a lot of people infiltrated Moon Cell’s world.

I wasn’t going to drop my guard around the childlike fish girl, especially not when she can heft an anchor that large around to point it at me with little effort.

“Call me Rider Totsugeki, of the Jellyfish Pirates!” That high pitched whine of the word ‘Totsugeki’ was joined by the dolphin she was sitting on squealing. That likely wasn’t her name given I know some Neighpon words, learning second languages was hard unless you were invested in it. “Something is telling me, no… something is urging me that I really have to kill you like yesterday!”

“Yeah, Moon Cell hates my guts.” After a flourish of the paralance, I opened it up above my head and waited for her to make the first move.

“It should, because you really made Moony angry and if you got them angry, then you got me angry!” The dolphin disappeared into a circle of magic and left the fish girl grinning with sharp shark like teeth at me, before asking in a clueless voice. “So who are you again? I mean name? I wasn’t told what servant I was supposed to be facing, but I know I was called to deal with a Caster at least. You don’t seem to be wearing robes or overtly magical, but you certainly seem scrawny enough to be one, you look more like a Lancer to me though with the way you hold that spear.”

“My name is Pom, can you please go away and say you won the fight?” The demented look I received was telling me no, I was going to have to deal with an anchor wielding fish girl with what I’m assuming is super strength.

…

“Do you really expect me to let a bad ewe like you go after you turned on Moony, no way, Moony wants you destroyed and I’m going to do what Moony orders!” She pointed her right index claw at me while putting the weight of the anchor entirely on her left shoulder with her other hand, showing no discomfort whatsoever. “Mostly because I don’t have much of a choice anyway, I really don’t want to be deleted myself. You know how it is, well I guess you don’t because you got free somehow since you might be a servant I am after or you might be something entirely separate, even if you aren’t the servant I’m after you definitely have a priority kill order at the very least. Oh well, sucks to be you… Dodomezaki!”

A portal appeared and an otter with claw gauntlets shot at me at high speeds, I narrowly blocked and flicked the otter away from me with the paralance and into stone of the fountain in a painful manner.

Yeah, this was going to be a thing that Shanty would have preferred to deal with.

“Get ready to ‘sea’ what I’m capable truly of!” The shark jellyfish hybrid girl shouted that pun eagerly with a devilish grin.

Given that she had summoned a dolphin and an otter from out of nowhere, I already had an idea of what to look out for.

387. Dammed if you do or don’t pt. 2.

Author's Note

Get in your fighting game characters if you want to, chances are they might show up as cameo enemies.

-Rider Totsugeki- (Game of origin: Guilty Gear, fighter character 'May/Mei' of the jellyfish pirates.)

Special Ability/Magic/Phantasm: Summon bigger fish or large sea mammals in general.

387. Dammed if you do or don’t pt. 2.

-Moon Cell Realm, Cape, Dike Land, at the base of the stairs leading to Cape Castle, Square Plaza, Rider Totsugeki (Fish Frenzy Fish Girl) Vs. Pom Pawdore Lambchop (Priority Moon Cell Target)-

Pom had two objectives here, repel Rider Totsugeki and protect the PLANT holding the territory.

All Rider had to do was destroyed the PLANT to make everything that much harder on Pom.

The two faced down between the fountain and the staircase with Rider swinging her anchor a few times.

She was fairly slow on foot for a Rider, but her ability to magically summon animals more than made up for her lack of personal speed.

It was of no surprise to a slowly inhaling Pom that she was alone in this fight as the APs were quite busy holding of the left path away from the castle. While the central and right paths were contested.

“TOTSUGEKI!” With an eruption from beneath her, Rider was suddenly on a dolphin bursting nose first at Pom.

Personally Pom thought that Rider’s voice was going to become grating if she kept shouting that, she exhaled and dodged the dolphin and swung the paralance for Rider. Only to miss as rider hopped off and brought the anchor around in a horizontal swing.

Using the remainder of the Dancing Flame burst, Pom tried to bunker herself and put the paralance into the path of the large metal weapon.

“Clang!” The anchor connected with the open Paralance, but Pom was definitively on the losing end of the blow.

Pom had little idea how she was sent flying through the air, the portion of the ground she had bunkered on was solid enough and she had enough wool to soften the impact of her back suddenly slamming into a wall at a good fifty or so miles an hour.

The Paralance was pristine after the blow and the back end of it had taken the brunt of the impact and had pierced the brick wall up to the point Pom’s back colliding with it.

“I’m fine Dormarch, I’m just facing a servant at the moment. You and Dolly take your territories quickly, I can hold out long enough.” Pom mumbled slightly dazed as Rider Totsugeki stomped her way toward her as fast as she could go, which wasn’t very fast and even Rider thought so when she said that word again. “No, I can handle it and repel them, trust me.”

“TOTSUGEKI!” Once again Rider came flying at her on a dolphin riding a wave of water like a Pokémon using Surf, the same one as last time and Pom was inhaling and slowly tugging the undamaged paralance free.

Pom had at least learned that the Paralance was indestructible by the way it had survived the massive impact it had taken for her and that it was some form of legendary weapon according to Rider Totsugeki.

She quietly released the grip of her wool on the chunks of street stuck to her hind legs after having been ripped from the ground by the blow and planted her hooves against the ground to get better leverage to free her weapon.

Pom had to change her tactics, she could not afford to block hits from this fish girl, so Fleet Cunning Doe hit and run tactics with a side of Wolf-Fang-Hoof to disable her opponent’s ability to swing that mass of metal. Cow Kempo wasn’t going to be very helpful against a much stronger opponent unless Pom had time for a wind up and it would be stupid of her to try and wobble counter something so large. Huoshan Basic was still somewhat useful for the flexibility of the situation.

Just as the dolphin was about to reach her Pom exhaled, pulled the Paralance free and jabbed it upwards as she dodged to the side so that the Dolphin slammed nose first into the brick wall in a rather and gruesome and painful display.

Rider Totsugeki leapt off avoiding the spear as her Dolphin injured itself and disappeared into a quick portal, likely to heal if Pom had to guess after painfully taking itself out the fight for a short while. Pom knew it was going to be a short while, because she wasn’t that lucky that the dolphin was permanently out of the fight.

Raising the massive anchor as she came down she swung it downward vertically at Pom with a wild and slightly angry look in her eyes. Rider really didn’t like it when her Mr. Dolphin got hurt!

“Mr. Arisugawa!” Rider shouted as Pom spun away clockwise out of the path of the anchor as it tore a large hole through the brick building behind her along with rupturing ground in a fairly long straight line.

Following Rider’s shout a seal popped out of a portal nearby. It went high into the air with an unusually colored red beach ball and Pom inhaled as she calculated something. The seal flipped spiking the ball at Pom.

Pom stepped left once, angle the ball to hit the right side of the canopy of the open paralance and successfully bounced the ball into Rider, which promptly exploded and almost sent her careening over the edge of the square into the nearby water. Pom looked at the paralance wondering how it could be so stiff one moment and flexible the next enough so that it didn’t set off the exploding beach bomb.

“Gah, no fair using Mr. Arisugawa against me!” As she said this while stomping a foot angrily, the seal disappeared back into the portal it popped out of. She was next to the left path and growled angrily, she pointed her right hand forward to issue another order. “Mr. Goshogawara!”

Exhaling Pom, looked down and jumped straight up as a massive maw appeared out of the magic portal beneath her. She performed a perfectly split while raising her tail to avoid the many danger gnashing teeth of a large, heavily scarred, killer whale with a skull eyepatch tried to bite her in half.

Instead Pom surprisingly landed her butt on its nose, she immediately raised her weapon high in both hooves and slammed it down into the whale’s chin causing it to flopped backwards and disappear into a portal.

Landing on her hind legs, Pom steadied and readied herself with a wide eyed look and was shivering at nearly being bitten in half by a lot of sharp pointy spear like fangs that would have torn through her wool like butter. She had nearly died, had she been a second slower in jumping and got caught in its mouth…

Shaking her head, it had occurred to Pom that she had just figured out at least one of the rules for what Rider could do with her riding summons. Rider could make them appear anywhere and attack at any angle, provided that she could see what she was targeting them at. It was obviously a really bad idea to fight Rider in water otherwise where she would have an advantage of summoning sea creatures that could really fight better than being exploded out of a portal with limited amounts of water.

The rule was that Rider could likely only summon one creature at a time, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have more than one creature active on the field of battle. Pom would wait to see if Rider could involve more than one sea creature in the battle at a time and would try to stay in the plaza with the fountain, she could not afford to get knocked off into the water with this servant.

“Sorry Mr. Gosho, but you were so close too! Do you think that Mr. Dolphin is the only way I can get around? Well I wouldn’t be much of a Rider if I didn’t have more!” Rider stated as she took a stance, Pom thought about Rider Horns and how Rider was a classification and narrowed her eyes. “Mr. Yamada!”

What came out of the portal and what Rider rode at Pom this time had her wide eyed, a pink whale with a large glowing yellow star on its forehead that was at least twice the size of the killer whale that just tried to snap her in half, it was coming at her on a large wave of water.

That was another thing, most of the portals tended to involve splashes of water. This would have been a much easier fight for Shanty at the very least with that in mind as she could manipulate water. Even Dormarch would have something of an advantage here, but no Pom wanted them to finish gaining more of a proper foothold in Moon Cell.

Pom instead of standing there staring at the ridiculousness of having a whale magically thrown at her, shot forward at the wave of water under the whale and dove forward into it leading with a half open Paralance and shifting her wool a bit.

The pink whale swept passed the fountain and soon disappeared, if Rider Totsugeki had been aiming at the PLANT she would have taken it out then and there. Pom had no way to stop such a massive attack and was likely glad it hadn’t been aimed at taking back the territory.

“Huh, where did you… AGH?!” Rider Totsugeki took a powerful rising golf swing to her left kidney from the mystical weapon wielded by the ewe.

Pom had gotten by Rider and behind her by swimming through the water, she did so by shifting her wool to being frictionless, as the wave hit her she pushed off the ground while in the water. This meant her wool didn’t absorb any of the water and left her relatively dry and capable of swimming fast enough to avoid the Mr. Yamada attack. So Pom used the shadow of the whale’s tail where the wave of water ended to pop up and over Rider Totsugeki.

Pom really couldn’t afford to allow Rider to do that again and as she knocked the stumbling fish girl forward with a downward blow to the upper back. While Rider was stunned by the previous blows, Pom jammed the paralance forward and opened it with full force.

This sent Rider flying forward onto their face and caused them to bounce off the ground at least twice so that they were more between the fountain and the central path leading away from Cape Castle.

“Ow, ow, ow… how did you get behind me like that, you mean sheep you?!” Well Rider was trying to kill Pom so the ewe really didn’t care what she had to say and started forward at a slow pace on her hind legs and slowly picked up speed. “Dodomesazki!”

Pom dodged around the sudden otter splashing out of a small portal while spinning with its clawed gauntlets held out and then did something to confuse Rider Totsugeki. She tossed her weapon up into the air.

“Wha…” Rider couldn’t have known the legendary weapon was slowing Pom down. So Pom accelerated immediately and Rider went with a hasty swing, she missed Pom entirely as she learned to the left as the anchor came down into the ground and to her right.

Using coiled wool on her rear legs, she sprang forward and slammed her right hoof straight into the fish girls other kidney stunning her again and lifting her off the ground. Getting her legs under her as the wool coiled, she launched a devastating upper left hoof to the girl’s jaw, while attaching wool to her left leg with her right hoof.

With a sharp yank from the ewe’s right hoof the fish girl dropped her anchor and her body pivoted, she was summarily was slammed into the ground with the back of her head hitting the ground first.

Pom, not believing this was going to be nearly enough for the tough girl, proceeded to brace her right leg with her left, spin clockwise one full revolution and then hammer threw her away from her weapon.

“Wow… you’re a fast one… but you’re not going to UGH?!” Then the flipping paralance slammed point first into the fish girls head as it came down, bouncing of her skull, Pom launched forward using the wool on her rear legs again for a third time to intercept the spinning paralance in midair and used the vertical spin to bring it around it a horizontal flying low angled bat swing.

Rider Totsugeki wasn’t a servant summoned by Moon Cell for nothing though, she regained her wits rolled under the swing deftly and immediately throws her right fist straight up into Pom’s belly.

“YATA!” With a shout of anger Pom was launched high into the sky where she got a rather nice view of the Cape City as Pom tried to inhale after having all the air knocked out of her with a single painful blow.

Pom was clutching at her stomach with her left hoof and she coughed up a slight bit of bile and blood before she started falling back to Rider Totsugeki, even without the anchor that blow had seriously hurt. Still she had the paralance held tightly in her right hoof as she came back down.

Rider was already in the process of picking up her weaponized anchor, she quickly got an idea of how fast Pom was falling and moved to make an upward swing at where Pom would be.

“You want to play ball with a spear, well let me show you my water polo skills!” With an upwards swing… Rider Totsugeki was thrown off balanced by missing Pom entirely.

Pom quickly inflated her wool to stop for a necessary split second in the air and she tried to bring the paralance down on right top of Rider Totsugeki’s skull, only to be blocked by the anchors cross section and had to leverage herself sideways as Rider kicked the upwards before performing a second swing that narrowly clipped Pom’s chin and flipped her onto her back, the paralance was promptly flicked so that it was stuck point first into some nearby brick work.

“You must have been quite some hero when you were alive!” As if Rider had already won and swung forward once, twice and then was about to slam the anchor down on Pom using centripetal force with her left arm.

An inhaling Pom saw an opportunity to disable her opponent.

“I don’t like being a HERO!” Pom shouted as she gathered her senses rolled to the side using the exhale of her shouted to avoid the anchor burying itself halfway into the street she bucked upwards with both her hind legs into Rider Totsugeki’s chest causing her to pull the anchor from the ground and stumble back a bit unbalanced.

A wild look entered Pom’s eye as she dodged the anchor clumsily being swung down at her head, she then lunged forward and bit the inner side of Rider Totsugeki’s left elbow forcing her to let go of the anchor and start screaming as Pom crunched her arm with a sickening sound and a large amount of biting force.

Rider managed to kick Pom away from her but the damage was already done, her left arm below the elbow was now hanging limply.

Pom ignored the fishy tasted in her mouth and spat out the bits of flesh and some bone before she accidentally swallowed any of it, she started growling and her hooves started to glow slightly as she applied magic claws effect.

“So you’re not a just any sheep, you’re like a Big Bad Wolf! Well I guess he would be the hero of his own story since he’s starving… wait… you’re not Mr. Wulf though, he’s male!” Rider Totsugeki wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box, she hadn’t even realized that she wasn’t fighting a servant yet and that Pom was at least on par with one that didn’t have magic as a primary attacking ability.

This should be worrying and immediately relayed to Moon Cell, but Rider apparently had other ideas.

Rider Totsugeki’s battle instinct was better than Pom thought, even if Rider intelligence didn’t quite match up, for she avoided the two magic claw slashes as Pom went bipedal and surged forward by backing up precisely to just be out of range and then...

“This situation is a looking a little bad, TOTSUGEKI!” Rider retaliated, Pom was knocked onto her back by the surging Mr. Dolphin, who now had a well bandaged nose, when he appeared to carry Rider. The dolphin surged past Pom and towards the right path edge of the plaza. Rider had grabbed up her anchor as she swept by it with her right hand and turned back to Pom as she shoulder it and reached the edge of the plaza while riding Mr. Dolphin on a hovering temporary blob of water. “When my arm heals up I’ll be back for round two, a jellyfish pirate never quits! This isn’t the last you heard of Rider Totsugeki, I’ll be causing you all sorts of problems for your plans to defy Moon Cell, just you wait! TOTSUGEKI!”

With that Rider Totsugeki retreated from the fight in a large splash of water. The reason for her retreat was that she was about to be swarmed by APs, she was outnumbered and just took a severely hampering injury.

She at least had some brain in her skull at least to avoid the Lancer Guardians when she couldn’t fight as effectively with a broken arm and they would have range on her.

-Pom-

…

Closing my eyes I communicated with, Dolly and Dormarch, I managed to successfully repel Rider Totsugeki. I didn’t defeat her though.

Dormarch was quite relieved to hear I made the servant retreat, but queried if she called herself Rider?

I responded with a yes.

The Rider classification apparently involved animals, vehicles or mobility in some way, shape or form, the given classification was known for it and there were a number of classifications involved in Moon Cell’s servants we knew at least seven of them. Huh, almost like the seven deadly sins. curious.

The Rider could even be the vehicle or animal itself, which was terrifying if what I assume to be Rider Totsugeki’s specialty is fighting in water. All they had to do was flood Cape and they would gain the advantage, we also needed more of Moon Cell’s attention on us than just this…

I sighed audibly and went to pry the paralance out of the wall.

Casters of course used magic, enough said about that classification as Dormarch and I didn’t have to exactly worry about those apparently. We had anti-magic protection that would make any harmful magic bounce right off of us.

If a Caster showed up we’d deal with it, everything else like Rider Totsugeki needed more thought… especially when she can throw whales at her problems.

-In the waters of Cape City, Rider Totsugeki-

Now summoning Moby Dick, I’m might actually need it…

A blue shockwave went off and a portion of the right path territory changed over to the enemy forces as I got buffeted by the shockwave while underwater.

Correction, I’m absolutely going to need it as the rogue servant has allies working on taking Cape’s city!

I need to go for overkill, if the servant is trying to take even more territory, they were just distracting me from their other forces in the city! My personal programs, the Lancer Sahagins, are in position and since there’s more than just that servant I faced…

“Sahagins now would be the time to show them what you’re made of!” I called from the waters of Cape.

The Sahagins immediately started moving to retake the right path, while moving to reinforce the central and left paths. I moved to the far side of the city to rest and recover from the damage that was dealt to my left arm.

-Cape, Central, Jeanne D’Arc-

I was about to land the final blow on the third PLANT, central region had quite a large number of PLANTs, when my eye caught a glint of something.

“Incoming!” I leapt back, as a green fish monster slammed their spear into the street where I had been and then spat a jet of water out at me that I narrowly ducked to the side of. Even if I were to destroy the damaged PLANT it wouldn’t cause a shockwave, which would only happen when the last PLANT in the area was destroyed and we took the territory.

This is not how I imagined the first day on the enemies doorstep to go after passing through two portals into this strange world.

“New enemy type, Lancer Sahagin! watch out, surface scans show that they are quite good at literally getting the jump on you!” Dormarch called out, then added on. “Also good news from the plaza, Pom managed to repel the servant, but they are still at large. These things are possibly the personal EPs of the servant that attack Pom, so they are more dangerous than normal EPs.”

They were uglier too and despite the small number of them coming at us I could see how much muscle they had on them. Let’s see what these elite EPs are capable of then! I threw the banner and destroyed the PLANT, then surged forward as the Sahagin tried to spear me, it only grazed my right side as my Iron Defense move was still going quite strong.

I Slammed my head against their chest and they went skidding back, but looked to still be doing relatively well despite taking a full Iron Head attack head on.

That’s when the fairy, Curdle I believe her name was, blasted it with fire and its skin immediately dried out and it turned pale, looking both stunned and much weaker. I quickly took advantage by using Shadow Claw move to tear through its scales much more easily than the Iron Head would have, with my claws glowing with ghostly energy.

“A water type that becomes weak with fire?” I stated with wide eyes, then looked to see Fighting and Normal Type attacks doing quite little to them, they were even starting to push us back. “They are strong against physical attacks? We Hakamo-o are at a great disadvantage here!”

“They are not Pokémon, use different logic!” Dormarch shouted as he flash forward and jammed a tentacle into one of the Sahagin that were slowly starting to overtake and push us back. “Hold on a second, weak to hot and cold temperatures!”

“Fire and Ice, so they are weak to drastic temperature changes, Ghost Type, Fire Type, Dark Type and any Ice Type moves, use them now!” I called out, not that we had many that could use fire aside from Curdle, but she was doing quite well with fending off the walking fish monsters. I quickly went to pick up my banner and started rallying the Hakamo-o back to me. “We will mainly focus on other enemies for the time being until these Sahagin are dealt with.”

I at least knew that Ghost Type would be cold enough attacks to cause them quite a bit of discomfort as I just saw Shine tore into one a second later from behind when she erupted from the shadows one of the enemy was casting.

A second later a Solar Beam hit multiple enemies, the beam weakened of energy weakened a number of them and pushed them back a bit, I had to thank Clef for being here. She didn’t have to endanger herself supporting this battle, but she still chose to follow us because Mr. Canard was here.

Quetal and Curdle proved pivotal in at least keeping us in the fight. Quetal in particular was barraging every fish monster with shadow copies and this made them mildly vulnerable to physical damage.

Ghost Type had more of an effect and I had Shadow Claw, I could still fight!

“Hakamo-o support our allies, I have an effective move here, so I shouldn’t hold back!” I charged my banner with Shadow Claw energy and wielded my weapon to stab forward into these Lancer Sahagin.

-Pom-

With a yank I finally pulled the paralance free and tumbled backwards a bit, only to be caught by one of the APs and helped up. How strangely nice of them.

I went to sit at the edge of the fountain and was alerted by Dormarch that they were now under attack by fish men programs called Lancer Sahagins, possibly Rider Totsugeki’s personal Elite EPs.

They were highly resilient to physical beatings, but weakened drastically when it came to drastic temperature changes. He was warning me to be prepared as I might soon be facing an attack force of them from the left pathway soon.

After a second of consideration, I relayed this news to Dolly.

After a moment of silence, and currently knew Dolly was mostly okay from our connection, Dolly suddenly sounded ecstatic to know that these things had a weakness. Her board wasn’t apparently cutting it and having used Aero once, only to have so little effect meant she didn’t feel like using what little magic she had trying to figure out if Gravity would be effective.

Dolly told me the fish guys looked like they’d resist the ‘gravity’ spell given how high they could jump and long falls didn’t hurt them one bit. The ‘float’ spell would only temporarily stop them from fighting.

Good to know that Dolly was pacing herself at least and was thinking about her capabilities, knowing oneself as much as ones opponent would make a battle that much easier. As such Dolly was going to wait until she had the energy for an Aerora, one that she would make as blisteringly hot as she could get it. She had already used ‘Float’ a few times to protect Favela and Shanty from sahagins coming down on top of them with their spears, it was her cheapest spell for the useful effects it had and it was kind of her new favorite.

Shanty was pretty much ignoring the Sahagin’s physical toughness with her magical cutting arcs, so that’s the reason the portion of territory they had taken on the right path simply hadn’t fallen back into enemy hands yet.

It seemed Dodo’s explosive bread, if they could even be called bread anymore at that point with how Dodo made them, were quite effective at disabling the defensive strength of the Sahagin. He was helping out from above and was the reason that the territory fell so quickly, he was going to start sniping the PLANTs in central path before the Sahagin showed up to start causing problems.

Favela was kind of getting a mixed bag as I connected to Dolly’s sight of what was going on over there, her Seed Bomb move was having some effect. Her vine whips were not effective at all. Using Surf against fish men sounded stupid to Favela and rightfully so, given water was the fish men’s domain. Swagger always worked on the Sahagins and made them quite sloppy in their fighting abilities at the very least, so Favela had that going for her.

The Saber Knight and Lancer Guardian APs were having problems dealing with the Sahagin in a swift manner, but at least we had more to work with if we could keep holding the right flank with the central flank so embattled.

Hmm…

I got up and looked at the APs curiously.

“Defend the plaza, I’ve got something I need to…” I coughed a bit, okay that blow to my chest from Rdier still stung quite a bit and I was coming off my spiking adrenaline. “Do…”

We needed ‘fire’ power, well Ocellus and Smolder could help with the defenses… now if only Smolder wouldn’t shy away from me. Anywhere Ocellus went, Smolder wouldn’t be far behind anyway.

I made my way up the stairs and shouted up to the parapets.

“Commandramon, we could use a little help down here, do any of you have fire bombs?” That got me a curious look from the lizard digimon on the walls, the APs defending the castle were just loitering around doing little. “Also I need Ocellus and Smolder, they would be a big help if they came down here to assist in the defenses. APs can some of you please move to the plaza?”

The bipedal computer things seemed to look at each other, then some of the APs separated and started moving down to the square to reinforce it.

“I’ve got the incendiary, what do you need burned? My bullets and DCD bombs use Meramon data and nothing says firewall like real firewall data!” Well that was useful, I waved that Commandramon to come on down with a hoof.

“If there’s a kill it with fire situation, there’s always at least one fire bug in any Commandramon unit that will quite literally have napalm ready for use… I’m surprised he doesn’t have a flamethrower like our CO Sami Soldier has a bazooka.” Another Commandramon said jovially. “Nice job fending off that servant, we would have helped, but we saw the writing on the wall… she was basically coded to be immune to bullets and we didn’t want to accidentally hit you or any of the APs holding the square. There was no way we were going to get close enough to that, ‘thing’, just to throw bombs at them without endangering ourselves. Whatever Servants are, they are far more than simply data and that terrifies us for some reason.”

I was about to state something when I had a coughing fit and the Commandramon group gave me worried looks before looking to each other.

“Medical help needed, here’s an Oran Berry, they heal biologicals right?” One of the Gazimon stated and I took the berry with a nod. “Wish we had more healing stuff for us Digimon, but we didn’t exactly have much time to get to the portal to get in on this counter invasion force and we only have what supplies we could pack on short notice.”

I popped the berry into my mouth and chewed, the pain in my chest eased up by quite a bit.

“Thank you, how is setting up in the castle going?” I asked while trying not to think about the battlefield as the ‘Fire Bug’ Commandramon showed up at the staircase with a salute.

“It’s going, we’ve almost got things squared up.” The Gazimon said pleasantly and seemed happy to see me looking healthier.

“Send Ocellus and Smolder on down when they are available, we’re going to need both of them for defensive reasons soon if we're to hold the plaza.” I nodded to Gazimon and motioned for the Fire Bug Commandramon to follow me down the staircase. So I told him why we needed him. "We got incoming enemies that are weak to fire and extreme temperature changes, I really doubt we have too many ways of creating ice so you're going to be a big help with the defenses as the enemy will be coming to the plaza from the left path soon."

"Hold that thought!" Fire Bug Commandramon raised a claw, turned ran back up a few steps and yelled back to the castle. "Send 'Frosty' down here too, he has that Frigimon data that'll be quite useful!"

A second Commandramon soon joined us in heading back to the square plaza at the bottom of the steps.

It wouldn't be long before I got my first sight of a Elite EPs Lancer Sahagin and they were really ugly turtle kappa things with tridents.

The Commandramon readied their guns in one claw and each of them were hefting their personal version of DCD bombs in the other as the Sahagin came at us.

-Far side of Cape, near the retaining wall, Rider Totsugeki-

"TOTSUGEKIIIIII!" I screamed and a giant mechanical whale know as the program 'Moby Dick' appeared, bursting forth through the dike wall. This sent massive chunks of stone raining down and it opened it's mouth readying to unleash the army of programs from within it to help me with the land battle.

It was said to be far more dangerous than even some servants in it's raw power as a program, it certainly took up a lot of space and as soon as it freed itself from the dike, it would flood Cape and I'd have all the advantages with my aquatic units!

Let's see the rogue servant top that!

-Central region, Dormarch-

"That... is one ludicrously large PLANT!" The others around me froze and looked at the whale head sticking out of the dike wall. "We have to speed up the capturing of territories or we will have to retreat to already captured territories when that wall give away!"

"Agreed!" Everyone shouted and started fighting harder to reach the nearby PLANTs while the largest one in the distance was threatening to do what mom feared as it slowly started to wiggle it's way through the humongous dike and made a loud disturbing keening whale noise as water started to leak through the hole it made.

The Lancer Sahagin were slowing us down immensely and we couldn't be stalled at a time like this, because I had a pretty good idea as to what kind of EPs a PLANT that large could generate. We'd need all the APs we could get to just survive our counter invasion in it's earliest stages.

There must be dike repair and water flushing programs around here somewhere, or else the enemy servant probably wouldn't have done that so readily. Why the self damage to the local digital space we occupied would become quite highly noticeable to even Moon Cell, at least it would draw attention to us like we wanted.

Mom was good enough to at least fend off the servant that Moon Cell sent at us on land, but in a sea battle... we'd be relying entirely on Shanty.

We needed to properly defeat them and they were going to be a major issue here when the flooding starts, given they were a highly specialized aquatic servant the intention was pretty clear about how disadvantaged we'd soon be.

388. Dammed if you do or don’t pt. 3.

-Moon Cell Realm, Cape, Dike Land, Cape Castle, Ocellus-

The set up for the castle was practically done.

“Come on Smolder, Pom needs us!” I can understand that Smolder was reticent, but apparently we could be a big help and quite frankly we would die here if we didn’t, this was a suicidal mission from the outset and we’re only on the furthest reaches of Moon Cell’s realm.

“Does she really?” Smolder mumbled with her arms crossed.

“Could you look at that for a second?” I pointed at the wall where a large metal whale was slowly trying to force its way through by wiggling through the hole it made, vast waterfalls of water was starting to spill out of the hole. “Do you really think Pom has any control of this situation? Do you have any idea as to how much worse things are about to get here?!”

“No…” Smolder wilted, her wings flexed reflexively and her tail got a bit shifty. I would want to see her try and tell me that I didn’t have a good sense for her body language at this moment, changelings would be interested in body language as much as verbal or emotional responses.

“Do you want us to survive all of this? You have to help… the reason Pom called for us is because we can do fire attacks which the enemy is weak to, you’re a dragon Smolder and this would be within your area of expertise given the fireballs you can spit are always going to be much hotter than anything I can do with my dragon form.” I didn’t feel a lick of emotions from any of the EPs. The APs might have had some vague inkling of emotions, even the Digimon had emotions even if they felt odd. “She needs us, we can’t sit here waiting to be swarmed. We don’t have the numbers or amount of friends necessary to win this without everyone getting involved. That includes a strong, loving, dragon who’s being silly about an inferiority complex while she was in a greed growth state. Rven you have to recognize that dragons are much stronger when they naturally grow to that age and any naturally aged dragon can easily beat a greed growth state dragon. You weren’t even in the right state of mind, why should it bother you?”

Dormarch’s emotions were stronger than ever, but I chalked that up to the odd things Pom had to go through to get him back. Pom deserved a vacation from doing anything for a year after the year we’ve had so far, if there weren’t multiple means of healing her then Pom would still be bedridden and close to death.

“I’m aware of that but…” Smolder tried and I can feel her pensiveness.

“You just don’t think we’ll make it home at this rate, I understand, since every single situation we get into keeps getting exponentially worse. Can we deny that Pom has proven to be competent in most of them, even with freeing you from a mad monster and she still doesn’t even blame you for that? I would think she blames herself that she let that happen to you and couldn’t properly protect us. She’s just happy that you’re alright after what she had to do and you’re the one acting cowardly. Mind you the metals and gems in Valora really brought you back on track to having a good healthy diet, so you don’t have that as an excuse.” There was a silence as I watched Smolder flinch, tried to stutter out a response or a denial about some of what I just said, but then didn’t say anything for a long time. I sighed. “Do you realize how much Pom has to put up with? She’s still fighting even now and the only way we have left is forward at this point, there is no way back unless we want to figure out how to open a portal back to the Digimon world or Ransei, both of which are going to become as dangerous and highly endangered soon even if we were to try and avoid the worst of it. Also, I don’t see how you can be ‘jealous’ of someone who’s been consistently scarred since our journey started and has come close to giving in to never getting up again after being knocked down. Even if Pom wasn’t constantly throwing herself at problems or is basically forced to suffer for others, it’s not entirely voluntary on her part as we well know now, she would still be trying and we should consider ourselves lucky that she loves us. She’s making the best of the worst anything can throw at her, In fact she resisted the urge to sacrifice while fighting that fish girl and I find it amazing that she’s still putting up so much of a fight now. She’s even fighting to live to the best of her abilities too now! If we weren’t here right now, Pom wouldn’t have a reason to fight half as hard to protect the plaza square as she is. She’s not strong physically… but her capacity for wild magic is getting kind of absurd and is proving to be incredulously hard to take out permanently when she’s far from indestructible. I’m even starting to get a sense of hope and am in awe just watching her withstand the kind of pressures being placed upon her and she’s starting to exceed and rise up. She’s never going to fully break while she is our caretaker and do you know why?”

“Because she knows we need her and she’ll always be there for us even if it’ll hurt or kill her.” Mumbled Smolder who logically knew what she was saying and understood she was being a bit of an idiot, but she was still reticent even if she understood. Psychological issues are going to be a thing with us that we needed to work out, even if we’ve basically become family to one another. “Do you… think she’ll be okay?”

Smolder was at least willing to still worry about Pom, that’s a small win. She didn’t deny being jealous of Pom either, because Pom was quite tough and dragons saw the kinds of strength like what Pom has to be quite a laudable feature. So Smolder gained an inferiority complex for various reasons while Pom tried to remain unchanged after her mental state fluctuated drastically when she goes beast and she did worryingly eat some flesh like a predator without getting sick. It’s a wonder she’s as sane as she is.

“She’s… a little bit beyond being okay Smolder, but she’s actually rising above things when she really doesn’t want to. Sure she’s a psychological mess from what I’ve been feeling, but I think she’ll live with it for however long she has left for us and even herself now.” I certainly knew she couldn’t look away to even save her own life back on Cerebrum and she wasn’t even in control of her body at the time, Dolly was though and she couldn’t make Pom’s body move an inch further from said dangerous situation with Inky Due. Knowing Smolder would follow me, I needed to air this out a bit right now while we have a moment of peace. We didn’t have much time, the fighting going on in the city was likely to be quite brutal since we had the smaller numbers, the APs Dormarch brought out were hopefully making up the difference. “Come on, what happened to the brave and sweet dragon that would make me feel safe around ponies as myself and not pretending to something else other than the changeling that I am? The way you yelled at those mares for picking on me is still a good memory before we started dating, since you were there. So please, put you’re pride as a dragon in the right place here Smol.”

“I’ll… follow you, wherever you choose to go. This, this right here, it is all going to Tartarus and I’ll be there for you regardless of my feelings on anything else Ozzy.” Smolder was trying to meet me half way and I’ll take it, we moved towards the top of the stairs. “Pom really needs to get her head examined and I need to get mine too, I… I don’t think I can be near her. I can be near you though and if you’re near her, I’ll just put you between me and her…. and will stare at your cute butt instead of her.”

I blushed a little.

“I’d honestly say Pom should be the very definition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or Anxiety by this point. The only reason why she isn’t is because Dolly is a bundle of sunshine which Pom appreciates more than she has ever stated out loud and having Dormarch back might be helping her mental state greatly too as they are both supporting her mentally. I don’t think she can stand to lose Dormarch again…” I still thought it was quite amazing that no matter the situation, Pom never panics to the point she can’t act on what she was seeing in front of her. “I really doubt Fluttershy would be sane if she had to do all of this. Sure Fluttershy could survive, but she wouldn’t have gotten us this far without even worse mental issues than what Pom has.”

“Yeah, imagine Fluttershy doing all of this.” Smolder said after a moment of reverie.

We looked down the staircase to see the APs, Pom and two of the nine Commandramon holding the square against some quite terrifying looking bipedal fish monsters that could spit water with insane pressure and they also wielded tridents pretty well.

Said monsters could make incredible leaps in an attempt to spear someone and looked physically strong, right up until they caught fire or were flash frozen by the two Commandramon weakening them with elemental attacks. When weakened their muscle mass noticeably disappears or shrunk almost instantly, they soon went down to the Saber Knight APs or Pom so easily afterwards with one or two blows.

Before they were weakened Pom was only defending and every time she landed a hit with her paranormal lance, it did an abnormal amount of good damage compare to the sharp looking swords of the APs almost bouncing off the flesh. Pom destroyed them outright when they were weakened, which explained why she took a moment or two to wait for the green fish monsters to be weakened as she fended them off.

Said fish monsters also lacked emotions like most EPs, but these guys looked so lifelike in their movements compared to the basic bipedal ‘golem thing’ that most of the EPs had going. It was more horrifying to me than it would be for anyone else to be near them.

“Come on…” I held out my left hoof, Smolder took it with her right claw and looked me in the eyes. I felt a shine of friendship between us and a bit of love sparking at the warm touch.

“Alright, but you’ll be the one to talk to her...” Smolder said with a serious look on her face. “I’ll try to get Dormarch to talk to you. We’ll work through this together.”

“We’ve been a good team so far, so why stop now?” I said happily as we made our way down the stairs. “Besides, I’m not doing this without my favorite space heater and magical love battery.”

That made Smolder snort loudly and giggle a bit, since she knew I saw her as more than that.

-Cape, plaza square, Pom-

Okay, we had to do something, the others were likely stalled on taking other territories and we need to take more soon or else the flooding will make it hard to take enough territories to really draw Moon Cell’s attention. Since it didn’t seem like we properly had it yet, I was expecting at least three times the numbers and threats to my life.

At least Dormarch assured me the taken territories would be safe to stay in, but I don’t think he meant we could do it forever. Not with that whale soon going on the offensive as soon as it cleared the dike walls surrounding this place.

I really needed Ocellus and Smolder here so I could do something about getting at least one more territory. It didn’t look like…

A Lancer Sahagin was blown out of the air by a fireball that immediately tore it into a patch of floating cubes. I turned and looked to see Ocellus spitting a fireball a second later to assist the two Commandramon in downing another one.

I was almost excited, until I saw Smolder back away from me and her wings twitched aggressively, I didn’t approach her and let Ocellus come to me. Smolder meanwhile focused on spewing fireballs into the Sahagins as the APs pressed forward to defend the area.

“It’ll be okay… eventually. So we just hold this area right?” That’s all that was needed of you Ocellus, you and Smolder would go a long way to holding this territory. “Since you’re about to do something dangerous.”

Ocellus could read me like a book at this point, here I thought she could only know my emotions and not my thoughts.

“Yes, that’s it exactly. I’m going to push up the left path by myself.” The Paralance was proving to be effective when the monsters are apparently resilient to physical attacks and Dolly could see Shanty magical cutting arcs ignoring that resiliency entirely. This let me know that dealing with Sahagins wouldn’t be as much of a problem if the EPs were out of the picture, they were attacking in sporadic smaller numbers. I was just going to be getting us more reinforcements by taking a bit of territory. “I’m not going to be doing much fighting actually… I’m going to just rush down or target any PLANTs I see exclusively and avoid danger while I’m at it to the best of my ability.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard for you then, you’re one of the fastest beings I know.” Ocellus stated pleasantly, possibly happy to know I wasn’t trying to endanger myself unnecessarily.

If only she knew about the blue hedgehog named Sonic on the planet of Mobius. I could maybe follow him and move at that speed in short bursts, but constant full out high speed running like that… yeah I’m not liable to be supersonic without Haste applied to me by Dolly and in a Shock-Ram ‘completely limit broken’ state.

I nodded and then quickly ran towards the nearest, slightly damaged from the recent scuffle, building to the fountain and climbed up for the rooftops. Notably the Lancer Sahagin were the only ones bothering with leaping onto or across the buildings, I don’t think the EPs had any form of agility to come up here to get me unless they were Assassin Reapers and I haven’t seen many of those yet.

Moon Cell must not be really paying attention to our counter invasion quite yet, the servant Rider Totsugeki didn’t seem to know me aside from the fact that I have a priority kill order on me. Maybe it was a good thing that we were under the radar at the moment, it’ll give us a chance to build some momentum and really become a problem… provided we survived the current situation.

I like my odds considering everything I’ve done up to this point, but found it oddly disturbing about how brave I was getting to actually go out on the offensive. Should be able to get close enough to the bark blast, breaker or buster the PLANTs without getting swarmed at least.

Once I was on a roof the wool coiling around my hind legs was ready and I crouched down to leap across the rooftops with incredible bounds.

-Right Pathway through the city, Dolly-

I turned my head to the left when I felt Pom start moving incredibly fast. I turned back and saw some more of those spear wielding fish monsters leaping and were struck down by Shanty with that cool scythe staff thing.

“Aerora!” I called out and created a massive wave of hot wind that caused the fish guys to dry up and shrivel out, they were quickly blown up by the seeds spewing from Favola’s back. I let out a bark and got Shanty’s attention.

Sitting up on my hind legs I made several hasty gestures with my paws.

“Pom be moving up the left pathway? Well I do be hoping she knows what she be doing.” Shanty took a break and let the apps take care of the episodes for the moment and backed up a bit in defending this area.

“Squeak?” Lit asked and… you know I should question Lit following me more, but he’s just too adorable to really be angry at. He was rather protective of me and he’s been a big help in keeping us from being completely swamped.

“Dodo be detecting something up, aside from the whale in the wall.” Shanty gestured at the large metal fish thing that was wailing pretty annoyingly at a pitch I could hear as it wiggling around like a worm in an apple. Shanty covered her left eye with a hoof and shouldered her weapon across her right side and back. “One of the PLANTs be moving between territories on the enemy’s side of the field? Huh, Sahagins be appearing around… we be needing to take that one out immediately, it is being the source of them! Can you be doing that for us Dodo?!”

Dodo let out a barely heard warble from above and flew slightly higher. I gave a slightly worried whine about Pom being out there on her own, but I was definitely needed here.

“Don’t be worrying, I’m sure Pom be having a decent idea of what she be currently doing.” Though Shanty did show some concern and understood where my headspace was at as she was equally concerned. “We can’t be moving further along this path through the city quite yet until that unusual PLANT is being taken care of, we’ll be holding position here until Dodo be taking care of it.”

“I, Favela, think I can live with that. My back is kind of raw from firing so many Seed Bombs, I really need to change out that move.” Favio did look a bit tired and we had to hold the area we recently acquired.

“Lil, bro you better step up taking the central place, because Pom is making a move up the left by herself.” I whispered and took a rest while watching the apes and epas fight similarly. “Also there’s something about a moving vegetable that Dodo needs to deal with.”

-Central path through the city, Dormarch-

?

I heard Dolly loud and clear, I tapped my bond to mom and took in her health, mild bruising… recently ingested an Oran Berry for some light healing before setting out. She’s doing well so far, I’m just waiting for the medical emergency to occur. Also mom seemed to be in a bright and abnormally aggressive mood.

I looked to the left and felt Pom moving quickly, currently leaping across the rooftops and was trying to use her ears to locate the humming given off by the active PLANTs as they floated in a given area.

The servant obviously summoned that whale sized PLANT and it was going to be a huge danger to us eventually, but taking more territories would make it easier to deal with it later when it became a threat we had to worry about. Even right now as we were kind of swamped.

We only had two PLANTs as far as the digivice could detect in the current territory left, as it had updated to scan for the specific bits of code that the PLANTs were made of. It couldn’t give us direct locations, but if we got close enough it’ll be able to get a more general direction on where the floating metal jellyfish are, any closer and we’ll actually hear the humming noise easily enough personally.

There were far more PLANTs on the enemies side and we’d only be getting one for taking this territory, whereas if they recover this territory they were going to have all the PLANTs we’ve painstakingly took down in this territory again.

This was an uphill fight for sure and we were starting to flag with the Elite Lancer Sahagins taking to the field, goodness know Jeanne was trying her best to rally us and was actually doing an excellent job at it.

At least we quickly figure out the Sahagin’s weaknesses, Dazzle’s flame whips took them out immediately in an astonishing displays of dancing and twirling while Frizzle protected her from any of the ones in mid leap or just simply blowing the larger crowds of EPs in the way.

“Look out!” Krosserdog moved forward and fire four alternating shots from his rifle barrels on the backs of his arms that took a Sahagin out in four explosive blasts. “What’s got you distracted kid?”

“Mother is making a move on the left side by herself, we’re effectively drawing the largest amount of the enemy forces. She’s sneaking in to take out the PLANTs there while trying to avoid directly fighting or drawing attention to herself.” I lashed forward a Surge Projector to chain lightning a few enemy Saber Knight, we were actually getting some support APs from the plaza. There were so many alleyways to check on the central path through the city, every PLANT brought down is one less group of enemies being spawned back onto the field of battle. “She might be able to take left lane by herself, but it’s still going to be a big ask that we take the central city as the enemies left, right and middle lane territories are still flooding at all of us constantly.”

“Yeah, we’re kind of running ourselves a bit thin here, good on her for making a move if she can do it and I truly believe she can.” Oh trust me Krosserdog, the bipedal blue gun armed digi-bot with the green visor, she can do it. Despite not looking like a mode changing dog digi-bot like Sideline the Sidekicky, he had an apparent interest in mother and I was curious as to why. “There’s just something about her that I like.”

“You don’t look like much of a dog compared to a Sidekicky Digi-bot.” I commented as we continued to fight side by side.

Krosserdog occasionally assisted Pepper Cat who was going quite wild with her electric claws. It was like they had the opposite of personalities of Metabee and Rokusho. Pepper Cat was the violent wild one and Krosserdog was the calmer collected one with excellent sniping ability. Krosserdog was not so great on the reload rate, but Pepper Cat made up for that with enthusiasm you wouldn’t associate a cat to normally have.

“My operating system is a ‘Dog medal’ and I’m not a floppy eared canine true, but I certainly bark with my guns.” It was notable that he aimed his shots more than Metabee did.

Metabee’s fire and reload rate was far more frantic by comparison, but he had to cycle ammo so often it was like he couldn’t wait to get all the ammo out of his body and then he’d be stuck for a few seconds relying on kicking or punching. Still Metabee’s capabilities spoke for themselves with how fast he was dealing with the enemy numbers in closer ranges than he should be getting into for a notable gun type digi-bot, probably had to do with the differences in weaponry.

Pepper Cat had far finer electrical energy manipulation than one would expect of her. Whether she was forming a blade of energy or firing off ball lightning attacks. She was seemingly openly competing with Rokusho and Metabee.

“So what exactly are you to the digital world?” I asked as we pressed forward and Metabee spotted the next Plant in an open square space in an alleyway, so that was one left that we had to find and it wasn’t behind us and the flow of EPs from the left path through the city was making it harder than it should be.

“Digital danger troubleshooters, we digital robots are around to prevent the complete collapse of the digital realms run by the local Yggdrasil System and she really wanted the digital world to be a lot friendlier to the local reality and actually work out this time without any huge problems. Unfortunately we’re dealing with an enemy computer that’s quite alien even to Yggdrasil System and it is stupidly powerful to boot! Explosive rounds cycled and loaded…” Taking aim with both his arm rifles and crouching down so that his pipe tail pressed against the ground to keep balance, Krosserdog fired two shots simultaneously and the PLANT in the open space down the nearby alleyway blew apart in a spectacular fashion after his shots pierced the coding and exploded inside of it. “One left right? Well let’s hurry up and take this territory. The more we have the better off we are right? I want us to survive long enough to really become a problem for this Moon Cell!”

With a pump of his right rifle, Krosserdog started forward again and I started using the digivice I have to scan around for the last one in this area. No directional arrow yet to point us in the general direction.

-On top of a building overlooking the left pathway, Pom-

My ears, stilled tied at the back of my head in my wool, twitched and I looked below me, there was the PLANT hovering above the cobblestone alleyway below. Aside from the medieval castle, I’d swear this city had a Prench style of design to it.

I looked around to make sure there were no Sahagins on the roof with me or nearby. Still no signs of Archer Seraphs. So we were being underestimated and rightfully so, as we barely even had a measly quarter of the city under our control and were already heavily outgunned.

“Rrrrrr…yip!” I tried a Bark Breaker. Digital entities weren’t exactly made of solid matter, but I figure with it looking as solid as it did that I’d still at least try.

The PLANT cracked and started to shudder in the air and tilted slightly as it sparked and started to let out a small plume of disappearing square shaped smoke. I had actually managed to have an effect on it, I needed to ask Dormarch about my Bark Breaker working on it later.

It was surprising that there was something solid enough about it for me to break it, but it wasn’t as effective as I could have hoped for. I’ll try a Bark Blast first on the next target.

I spat a Bark Buster into the cracks and once the liquid magic seeped into it, I detonated the magical energy and it caused the PLANT to blow apart in a spectacular fashion. I quickly vacated the area with several leaps as some of the EPs that were heading toward the plaza stopped and started to gather in mass in the area where the PLANT just exploded. They looked almost confused about what had just happened as they gathered around the scorch mark I left behind.

Several more rooftop leaps later, one of my ears twitched. Using my canine enhanced sense of hearing I found another one hovering out in the open of the middle of the left city pathway and not off to the side or between buildings.

Quite a number of EPs were leaving it open for destruction, most likely they were distracted by the one I destroyed prior. I looked at the whale and it was still slowly pushing forward from its hole, a hole that was spilling neighagra falls worth of water and the cracks were getting humongous. If the water level was rising around the city, it would be finally be noticeable within the next hour or so. We had started at the highest point of the city at the castle and everything was generally sloped downwards away from there.

I wondered what that servant was doing, if anything aside from healing from the damage I dealt to them. They could talk and interact, so they were a person, but one entirely dedicated to Moon Cell’s life eradicating goal if what we know about it to be true… Rider Totsugeki even said they didn’t have a choice in the matter.

Sending a quick query to Dormarch to think about that, since servants were odd entities… ones that could actually bleed. Maybe we could turn them to being our side and against Moon Cell? It would be certainly nice to have more allies.

I crawled down to the wall from the roof and looked up at the hovering humming device, I hadn’t been noticed yet. Coiling the wool on my hind legs I blasted off almost like Shanty does when she does her flying kick thing, still don’t know where Shanty gets all the momentum for that to fly perfectly horizontal even with magic.

Time slowed down as I unleashed a Bark Blast with my exhale. I watched in slow motion with narrowed eyes as my wobbling sphere of destructive energy struck the PLANT, dug into it and promptly exploded, destroying the troublesome thing instantly.

I turned my head forward and inflated my wool as time sped back up to normal slowed myself before planting my hooves and quickly scampered up the wall of the building across from the one I had been on.

Where were the EPs coming from this time? I saw a large group of EPs swarm the location of the suddenly destroyed PLANT from a given direction and I leapt away in the hopes of finding the next one where they came from. My Bark Blast might have a short range, but it was still cost effective for my needs and a lot easier on my throat than Bark Buster or Bark Breaker were as long as I didn’t charge it up.

-Far side of Cape, Rider Totsugeki-

Another PLANT was destroyed yet the area was full of programs, there was a sneaker and I bet it was that Wily E. Ewe! Hm… not enough road runner to be that guy, what servant was she?!

The view from the last seconds of that particular PLANT, before it got destroyed, bore witness to an indistinct white blur, blue flash and a loud barking noise.

Definitely ‘priority kill’ target that Moony wants gone and the one that bit my arm into uselessness.

There was a lot fighting going on in the city and I couldn’t wait to show the rogue programs my might, Leviathan would be the last thing I summon if needed. So far we had things will in hand and I even report to Moony as much.

When Moby Dick got through the dike, things would change drastically in our favor.

-Ransei Region, a short while ago before the counter invasion force entered Moon Cell's realm, Violight, Ginchiyo-

“So we've finally confirmed what is happening in Valora and the local digital realm…” I said quietly as I contemplated our next move. “Can we send aid to where Rescue Team Leader Pom is currently?”

“I of the Mirage Collective would like to assist, but the current pathways in Violight are shut off by the local digital realm Calumon and Sir Sideline hail from.” The one simply known as Mirage Mew stated, a version of an already existing legendary Pokémon that 'could' specialize in digital threats. How quite fortuitous for us that 'Arceus plans ahead'. “We would need to find a way to open a portal there directly and we can’t exactly ask Hoopa from what I know of the rules that the legendary Pokémon abide by. I as a mere mortal creation am not beholden to said rules though, so I am much more free to act and will at least be able to assist when the time comes for us to do so.”

In the throne room was Sideline the Sidekicky Digi-bot in his dog form, the playful foreign dignitary Calumon and a number of digital entities that are Digital Pokémon, otherwise known as the Mirage Collective, that were similar in nature to a Porygon like Professor Pong.

I didn’t take the digital realm dignitary Calumon seriously at all… Sideline was more of the true dignitary than he was. Still, Calumon had to be of some grave importance if Sideline deferred to his childishness as often as he does.

It seems Arceus wasn’t idle on the threat to this world he brought upon us all in his attempt to save the souls from the so called 'Holy Grail Wars' slowly destroying another realm and this 'Moon Cell' monstrosity that apparently committed omnicide of an entire world multiple times. Of course it had help there in doing so previously that it normally summons to cleanse the world, but here it does not 'currently' have those omnicide capabilities according to Mirage Mew the leader of the Mirage Collective.

Arceus was certainly ready for a variety of scenarios where he could finally take action and the field, however he couldn’t face this threat personally without Ransei coming to unity first and that was going to take some time.

Time we might not have.

At least to that end, King Evan was already working on acquiring Cragspur and Avia’s aid in uniting Ransei. Yaksha was going to be a difficult ask, as was Viperia, but otherwise Dragnor would be the last real effort… interacting with Lord Nobunaga was like pulling your own teeth out, putting them in a bag and trying to bash your own brains out.

“Lady Ginchiyo, we have word of an emissary from Titania of the Fairy Dust Island, he says his name is Sir Mik!” A Eelektross stated as he flew into the room. Okay, the dragons were less of a problem now, especially if Lord Oberon is willing to beat Lord Nobunaga into the ground for the sake of the realm as whole. "They wish to meet with you about some prophetic dreams that the Fairy Type's have latched onto that your graciousness would be able to help with. Apparently it involves performing some form of prank on Lord Nobunaga?"

A feral grin crossed my face.

"Let him in to come state his case, he is a honored guest of the highest quality indeed." I stated solemnly with a friendly nod, Fairy Types definitely couldn't help themselves if they smelled blood in the water when it comes to pranking. "I believe it'll be quite a fruitful interaction between us in many ways."

"I think I might be able to get us direct access to Moon Cell's realm if it is required or needed... set up time would be approximately three hours if current calculations persist." Professor Pong had been silent for quite a while and his eyes just fluctuated in thought the entire time, by that I mean they changed sizes randomly, before he finally drew attention to himself. "I'll need my recent assistant, a particular Rotom, present before I openly make the suggestion and explain how we would go about it. So it'll be fine for me to wait, but not everyone would be capable of using this method I'm going to suggest."

Professor Pong was now idly looking at the Mirage Collective contingent in the throne room, hmm...

"I'll hear Sir Mik first then, before we hear what I'm currently assured is going to be a positively brilliant idea Professor Pong." I paid Professor Pong to be an innovator and he was quite good at it, I'm quite sure he had thought of something fairly impressive.

389. Dammed if you do or don’t pt. 4.

-????, Oleander-

The thing was called a Guardian, unfortunately for it the eye laser it used would be useless against me.

Sure the thing was big, looked like a mechanical land octopus and was quite threatening while making quickly increasingly hostile noises as it charged up its beam cannon, but…

“Kickass!” Shouted the shotgun as its blast went off and blew the top portion of the machine apart.

Never mind then, I didn’t have to deal with it, Buttina Stalliona got to it first.

“Eh, not the most dangerous of things we’ve ever faced.” Buttina stated as she reloaded her shotgun.

A whole slew of red, blue and silver creatures red eyes started running at us with clubs.

“Yeah, but the guy behind all this a true full blown demon, I mean he made all of these monsters.” I grumbled.

“Heh, I’ve been meaning to add another extinct species to my list, one generated entirely by a demon sounds fun!” Wrex stated as he readied his, barely considered handheld, energy gatling cannon and grinned.

“Am I free to eat the souls of our enemies this time Ollie?” Fred said with a hint of a grin.

“Yes, free reign Fred, but only for the pests made of that evil miasma though.” This world had magic and technology, weird combination and I think this was the seventh time we’ve come across ‘a’ Hyrule, last time it was Lorule, there was that realm with the trains, the one where everything was flooded and the one with the sky birds was nice if the giant walking worm demon thing wasn’t such a bother to kill.

I wonder if Pom was doing okay.

“Hyah?” We turned to the soldier who was fighting off an army of these things impressively as he came to us from the side with curiosity after spinning through a horde of those mobbing things. The soldiers of the castle were in the middle of fending off a massive invasion force and he was wielding a regular looking sword. This blonde haired soldier was looking at us with confusion and eyeing Fred with suspicion.

He looked familiar, if he was wearing a green tunic he might very well be the hero of this world.

“Need a little help? Oh don’t mind Fred, I keep a pretty good eye on him enough as it is.” I turned back to Fred and he was eating a bowl of noodles. “Where did you get that?!”

“Tiamat’s Noodle ‘Incidental’ Shop.” Fred answered as he ate the noodles.

“Who in the blazes is Tiamat?!” I asked as I didn’t see said shop anywhere around here.

-Moon Cell Realm, Cape, Dike Land, left path through Cape City, Pom-

I came down to jam the point of the blunt Paralance through the top of the PLANT and then kicked off while ripping the weapon free. I would call it ‘my’ weapon, but I still had concerns about its possible intelligence or magical nature as a legendary weapon of some sort as Rider Totsugeki stated.

A blue shockwave erupted as the PLANT exploded behind me, hundreds of EPs bodies went flying in every single direction as the territory was claimed and new APs started spawning in.

A second later a blue shockwave erupted from the central district and I looked in that direction as the APs surrounded me and seemed to be waiting for something.

“Can you please defend this area for me? Also send some forward to assault the neighboring territory I guess.” The APs immediately started moving and stopped looking to me, some moved into defensive positions and others set out.

-Recently acquired portion of Central Path territory, Dormarch-

The one who got the final blow on that PLANT was Canard, his hockey stick was still raised high in the air from where he swung it upward and he changed to raising it in victory with Sami standing next to him and pumping a fist.

We’ve taken the start of the central districts path, the start of the left Pom was taken by mom less than a minute ago and the start of the right path had been taken by Shanty while ago.

We had a little more than a quarter of the city under our paws and we had increased the number of available APs we can field by a metric ton as APs flooded the area as soon as we took it.

“I want half of you on defense, other half attack the enemy territories!” I called out, the APs followed the order without question immediately. We’ve fought hard and we needed a rest break after gaining so much ground.

What was mom doing now though? She seemed to be just moving forward along the left path.

“We need some supplies so can you please return with sustenance.” I saw Jeanne talking pleasantly to one of the APs and they nodded before turned towards the castle and then turned to her.

“The APs communicated with the ones back at the castle, they’ll run supplies out to us soon.” The AP Saber Knight nodded in response to what I just said.

“Quite Convenient, I don’t need to send the Skarmory back to pick it up.” Said Skarmory were looking a bit tired of shredding through so much coding.

“This almost feels like being in a giant unite ball stadium.” Quetal drew my attention to him.

“Huh, a unite ball stadium?” I asked as I moved over to him.

“Yeah, three lanes to advance on, points to hold, the PLANTs are like hoops and we have to push toward the major goal on the opposite side of the stadium.” Lucha Mundo stated as he crossed his wings and stood tall and proud, fighting types had a lot of stamina. “Ah, the special made churros they sell at Pugilis Unite Ball matches, always good memories.”

“Don’t ask me about the unite ball features in the Viperia stadium, most people already know what the challenges there are, mostly the muck and mud portions.” Dazzle stated as Frizzle had returned to being a Guilmon, she entered power saver mode and was munching on some bread to rebuild her strength to do another digital evolution. “Feeling okay Frizzle?”

Frizzle raised a claw and bit into some rather fancy looking designer bread.

“We’re still good to go!” Metabee called out.

“Then just go.” Rokusho said blandly to his friend.

“Gladly, let’s hit the true center Metabee!” Pepper Cat ran off with Metabee.

Rokusho sighed before looking to Krosserdog.

“Go with them, I’ll be along shortly.” Rokusho made a gesture with his pincer blade and Krosserdog nodded before setting out to catch up with the two hotheaded digi-bots. He then turned and came over to me. “You said that large metal whale was a large PLANT, if so, then where are the EPs is supposed to be generating?”

“Good question, a PLANT of that size could make really powerful EPs to deal with us… so why would it be summoned to be where it is in the dike instead of being summoned from the waters around the… oh… ah.” It didn’t take me long as I saw more water pouring out of the dike in the distance. “I think I know why we haven’t seen it generate any EPs yet…”

Now when we say PLANT, PLANT stood for Powerful Legion Aggregator Network Tactician or basically the relatively simple brains behind the operating and creating EPs. They were labeled as PLANT Aggressors in the file name I looked up when I hacked the one at the castle. Their usefulness in Moon Cell getting a foothold in reality was because they could act as digital anchors, they were definitely what amounts to a terrifying digital grey goo scenario.

Due to having access to my body being erased by a virus, Moon Cell managed to get the EPs to manifest in reality. The servants were apparently no go because they were far more complicated to manifest, they weren’t just programs and mom’s query made me realize that they were shackled to Moon Cell’s system in some way.

I’d have to look into Rider Totsugeki personally to see if we could free up some extra help… we needed someone to hold Cape so we could move on to the next part of Moon Cell.

Sami was the one to at least tell us they were called PLANTs when she took part in destroying several digital ships that barely had made it into reality. If a PLANT lets an Elite Enemy Program out and it gets destroyed, they functionally become unable to operate and they weaken drastically if they weren’t immediately destroyed from the backlash of losing the elite template. Also Digimon can glitch PLANTs forces by loading and eat the data over time, even then the Yggdrasil System run digital realm was looking pretty bad when we passed through.

We’re thankful that none of the outer layer Moon Cell PLANTs seem to spawn Elite EPs. The Sahagins were apparently special elites brought in by the servant, so they had to have a unique PLANT spawning them around here somewhere.

Destroy enough EPs and the Plant would lock up for a bit, thus leaving themselves exposed and wouldn’t be able to spawn more soldiers, but you’d have to be capable of destroying a massive number EPs that they spawn in. We're talking like taking out hundreds of EPs in a matter of seconds.

“Why?” The chipper, orange star, Sami Soldier stated as she came over to us skipping merrily with Canard and Clef following behind. We needed a break, the fighting through hordes of constantly spawning EPs wasn’t easy on anyone.

“I think it’s based on what’ll happen when it finally fully breaks through the dike. It’s going to let loose tons of water based EPs like the Elite EPs the Lancer Sahagins we’ve been facing, also it’ll be a combat threat in and of itself.” In much greater numbers no less, the Sahagins were a problem, but the increased number of APs could take care of them with time using swarming tactics. Which is basically what they do anyway… a single Sahagin can deal with an individual Allied Program with alarming ease, but ten or more working in concert can take one down. “To make things much worse, it’ll stop us from leaving Cape to continue our counter invasion. Since it’ll flood our surroundings and the enemy territories will be underwater giving them the full advantage when those water based EPs are let loose on us, it’ll make taking the rest of the territories quite hard. We’ll need all the territories in the city we can get if we’re to continue forward and leave this place alive and the servant is sitting on the far side waiting for us.”

“This is going to get quite difficult soon then.” The white beetle digital robot, Rokusho, immediately set off with a powerful leap to catch up with his three comrades.

-Far side of Cape, Rider Totsugeki-

I sat on the dock watching as Moby Dick was about to pull his tail free with his front two flippers, I grinned. Only to frown as another section of the city to be taken.

“Sahagin, target the priority kill order in that area that just got taken, they cannot be allow to grab more territory from us!” My orders would take Sahagin from the other areas, but the other areas weren’t falling as quickly as they were to the enigmatic ewe.

-Right path from Cape Castle, Shanty-

“Where do they all be going?” That be curious as the spear wielding fish people suddenly stopped leaping at us and started heading towards the central that was just taken.

Dolly be making several paw gestures with a flat look on her face. In reference to where Pom currently is and the fact that she took a second territory on the left path.

“Yeah, that be sounding about right Dolly.” I be knowing that Pom was about to be making a lot of bad friends soon, but at least that would be making Dodo less worried about us holding position here and more capable of focusing on the thing that be spawning them. “You better be warning Pom they are coming for her.”

Dolly raise a digit on one paw and nodded, before gaining a concentrating look on her face.

She nodded and smiled then made several more gestures with her paws. It was a bit long winded, but it was being an important message from Pom.

“We can be doing that, Favela we need to take to the rooftops, the regular EPs can’t be doing a thing to us up there. Since the fish guy be going after Pom… free reign!” I be climbing the nearest building and Favela lashed out with a Vine Whip and quickly reeled herself up to the roof. “Dolly, Lit, wait a minute, the come follow after us once you are being sure things are secure here.”

Dolly sat up on her board and saluted, Lit followed her actions too showing he at least understood what was going on.

-Left Path from Cape Castle, near the middle of the path between the castle and the far side of the city, Pom-

Okay I had the Lancer Sahagins coming after me, I just had to stay out of sight of them. The world started shaking and I looked up to the whale as it was on the verge of pulling completely free and the amounts of water now spilling out would be an entire lakes worth every second.

I sent Dormarch a mental message to take the next territory quickly, then hold the defense. He responded positively.

“APs, please hold the defense here and in every other area of our territory!” I didn’t wait to see what my order would do as I started heading toward the middle of the city where Dormarch and the others were.

I was going to reach the central path battle area, but I was a few long leaps short when I saw figures leaping across the rooftops with incredible jumps in my general direction. I quickly dropped to the left to cling onto the side of the building with my left side facing the ground. I stood still for a moment while listening quietly for any incoming Lancer Sahagin.

When they finally spotted me, there was too many for me to avoid.

-Up in the dike wall surrounding Cape, Moby Dick-

With one tug, it pulled free and it fell into the sea, this created a massive wall of water heading towards the far side of the city in a large wave that continued to increase in height.

The wave was making a noise that could be heard for miles as it reached a height higher than the buildings on the lower end of Cape as the entire city started to rumble.

-Central path, near the middle of the city, Dormarch-

At least the snacks and drinks got to us in a timely, but we really had to take the central district before that wave hit. This district looked like a commercial area, if the blacksmith place was any indication.

I took a step and a splash occurred, I looked down at my paws to see a thin layer of water. Looking up I saw a tidal wave in the distance rumbling right for us.

“Hurry up with those PLANTs, we’re about to be hit by a tidal wave!” I called out to the Digi-bots who were trying to focus down the three PLANTs in the area, but they were being well defended by the bodies blocking directly shooting at them.

Rokusho finally managed to leap onto one of the PLANTs and drive his pincer sword straight into it.

I was personally busy with trying to keep the surrounding EPs off of them when I noticed some Sahagins pass by overhead, quick question to Dolly or Pom and I received an answer that they were all now primarily targeting Pom. Which explained why she stopped on her way here.

“We’re going as fast as we can here!” Metabee called back as he fired off some missiles from his head that flew too high for the EPs to block with their bodies, they came down on one of the PLANTs destroying it.

Two left and we were meeting with heavy resistance from the EPs, we needed to find those PLANTs fast. I could hear the rumbling of all that water coming at us.

I immediately used Search Hunter to get on top of a nearby building, I then spotted one of the two PLANTs we needed to take down under an awning none of the EPs were even near. It was actually hiding behind a stand and a cart that you’d normally see cabbages in, it was outside the scan range of the Digivice and out of the way.

I looked to the incoming massive wave was going over a lot of the cities buildings in the distance as the city was being instantly flooded by it.

Quickly using Search Hunter, I appeared above the PLANT and dropped onto it to jam both my tentacles down on it. I immediately fired off a Surge Projector with alternating energy charges and quickly fried it, it dropped to the ground with me on it and slowly dissolved making me drop to the ground a second later.

My eyes were panicking as I looked around for the other PLANT in the area, a blue shockwave erupted, but not in this territory, but the one to the right. It seemed Shanty had taken that territory to match the two Pom took on the left, I could even feel Dolly signal that she and their group was coming this way to regroup.

I told her to hold position mentally, because this area wasn’t secure yet and we only had a minute before a solid wall of water washed us away if we couldn’t take the territory in time.

-In the air around the central area, Lucha Mundo-

My Steel Wing tore an EP in half, but we had yet to find the last Plant in the area and I looked at the oncoming massive wave. We were looking in every nook and cranny below on the streets so… ah, I’ll look skyward!

…

There, it’s floating so high up it’s hard to notice and I think I could see Dodo firing on something before too much water blocked his sight of it as he flew back toward Shanty.

I quickly flapped my arms and rose up towards the PLANT high above, there was no way the Skarmory would make it in time and I was the only one that saw where it was.

It was up to me!

-On the ground, Sami-

“I’d hate to say this, but everyone pull back!” I called.

“No time, the wave is too close, find some place to hunker down and brace for impact!” Canard called as he ducked into a nearby alleyway and I followed him.

The massive rushing wall of water was almost upon us when I heard a whistling noise.

“Fantastic Flying Press!” A crater formed in the ground following the shout as something hit the street at a shocking speed, a shockwave of blue ripped through the area as the wave was about to hit the Digi-bots, the water was stopped and pushed back by the shockwave.

Soon I walked out and just stared at the wall of water pressing against the edge of the territory we just took.

“It seems I have successfully taken down at least three of these evil PLANTs personally, so I am a mighty hero yes?” Lucha Mundo stood up from the crater looking a little shaky before he flexed and did a pose, he stood tall and started laughing before something slowed it down, he was looking at something and in the water were hundreds of red eyes. “My friends, this does not look good.”

“Defensive positions, unknowns, our Digivices do not have scans of whatever those are yet.” The newly acquire APs moved a fair distance from the slightly darkening wall of water pressed up against our territory.

A lot red glowing dots appeared in it, I narrowed my eyes and raised my rifle and waited. My eyes swept over all the eyes in the water.

That’s when a creature burst forth, I immediately opened up on it, as did Metabee and Krosserdog. This was three different types of firing speeds and varying bullet strengths that tore into the large dark skinned shark with needle like teeth.

It crawled along the land with its mighty maw snapping as it flopped across the ground in an upright position. It was taking its sweet time with going down and seemed to be highly bullet resistant up until Pepper Cat leapt onto it and rammed her plug claws into its skulls to electrify it violently. Even then it continued to persist for a solid ten seconds under the constant high voltage she was unleashing on it.

“Enemy territory has one active PLANT signal, all other signs have disappeared due to unknown reasons.” The Yggdrasil System in the digivices stated helpfully. “Warning, enemy signal numbers are in the hundreds and rising from the enemy territory, warning!”

A loud wailing noise was heard and we all saw the whale rise out the water, open its mouth and hundreds of aquatic themed EPs of four varieties spewed forth from both its mouth and a hole in its back. They all weren’t the scary looking sharks though, there what looked like jellyfish, krakens and eels all falling into the large wall of water in front of us.

Speaking of Jellyfish, a bunch of them popped out of the wall of water into our new dry territory. Not all the pairs of red dots were apparently the ridiculously tough sharks, with large maws, that could crawl and flop on land so easily.

The Jellyfish danced towards us and were walking on their tentacles, they looked like they were preparing to use some of them as whips.

“Stop gawking, take them out!” I growled out my command and brought my rifle up to start blowing them apart, the sharks were much tougher than these things, but they were moving wildly actively trying to avoid my shots as I put out a spray of bullets into them.

They were smarter than the sharks at least and the battlefield had just changed drastically to be in the enemies favor as we barely took half the city and they had a large half.

One got close and I noticed a stinger extended toward me from its tentacle when it got close enough only for Carnard to slash the stinger and then wielded his hockey stick like an axe to cut the jellyfish coming at me in half.

Another jellyfish went for Canard, but was protected by AP Saber Knight’s shield and it proceed to bring it’s sword down on the jellyfish slaying the unusual EP.

Metabee was having more luck than Krosserdog in hitting the jellyfish and mowed them down easily enough as his shots filled the air in a hard to dodge manner. General direction was definitely more his style.

“What do we do now?” Canard asked looking to Dormarch.

“Know anyone that can swim really well and can help with forcing territories back into action other than me?” Dormarch said while shivering and looking at the wall of water that was only kept from crushing us by the blue edged glow of our territory.

“Yep, yep, these cabbages need to head to the far side of the city.” We all turned to a strange NPC cat with a fishing rod, who was moving a cart full of cabbages and he simply entered the wall of water without a second thought.

After a second the cabbages started to float away and the NPC yelled into the water something that sounded like ‘My Cabbages’ as he floated away into the mass of liquid, but it was highly muffled and sounded an awful lot like drowning.

NPCs couldn’t die so he’d be fine… I think… maybe they would be eternally traumatized by this moment of idiocy. I didn't know how NPCs think, they could be simplistic to almost AI in their own right.

“That’s kind of what I meant by odd NPC’s, they aren’t very bright are they? We might need one to flush water out of the areas or we can just swim directly into them and try to activate a PLANT to force territory to become ours.” As Dormarch said this he was getting rather twitchy. “Mom’s under attack, by at least fifty Sahagins… it’s not going well for her.”

“We’ll make a decision after you come back with her, now go help Pom!” Jeanne ordered as she arrived with her personal echelon of units. The Dhelmise would be a big help, the skarmory would be good for defensive purposes and the Hakamo-o might not have been great against the Sahagin, but they tore through anything not resilient to physical attacks.

Dormarch didn’t need to be told twice, he looked straight up in the air and then disappeared in a flash, I was beginning to think search engines were naturally powerful and I was kind of envious of that. Still didn’t have a digital evolution I felt I could trust, but if I had to for Canard, I would.

“Is it a bad time to mention that the entire sea is now an enemy territory?” That and it had us surrounded with rising waters. I liked those odds in general, like the good old days where you were likely to survive half a second of actual combat time.

-Far Side of Cape, underwater dock, Rider Totsugeki-

I might not need to summon leviathan, Moby Dick had successfully stopped them from taking any more territory personally. All I had to do was sit back and relax, maybe hunt that ewe down if good old Moby couldn’t somehow force them into the water.

Hm…? What? What happened to the Lancer Sahagin Elite PLANT! When had they taken it out?!

No matter, the remaining Elite Lancer Sahagin will have to do. They were already working on taking out the most threatening target to Moony.

Otherwise we would slowly overwhelm the captured territories, collapse and flood them all until we back them up to the castle. It wouldn’t be hard to finish them off then.

They wouldn’t dare attack us in our territory now, Moby Dick would just keep sending our attack programs at them until they were crushed. It was just that simple.

-Second node, left path from Cape Castle, Pom-

Things were not so simple.

That tall wall of water was every bit as imposing as I thought it looked as I fought in the street, but I really couldn’t focus on that problem right now.

“Clang!” I raised the back end of the paralance to push the trident aiming for my back upwards over my head and I swung around to the left and away from the opponent in front of me as they stabbed forward.

The edge of the paralance’s canopy tore into the left arm of the Sahagin behind me, before I could damage it further I pulled my weapon free twirled to the right while bringing it up to block a trident as it slammed home into the paralance.

I fired a bark blast into the Sahagin coming at me from the left, I was getting quite overwhelmed. There were too many of them!

Dormarch appeared and blasted one with a Surge Projector shock, this was followed by several APs arriving and alleviating the number of Sahagins that were on me.

“Mom are you okay?!” Dormarch called as his tentacles checked my body for injuries and found one in my left hind leg, a light puncture wound in comparison to some of the worst I’ve had today when the edge of a trident caught my leg while one was coming down on top of me.

“Mostly fine, so the whales out of the dike wall, what do we do now?” I asked.

“Start moving to central, I’ll pick off some of the Sahagin on the way and we’ll finish dealing with them when we get there. I’ll cover you’re back, we’re going to discuss our next action from there while the APs fend off attacks from the new enemy EPs that are showing up.” Not having to be told twice I rolled under a thrusting trident and started moving on through the alleyways towards the central district, a bit hampered my leg injury. At least the Sahagin couldn’t make good leaps at me, but their spears were going to be a problem in cramped spaces.

-Right path from Cape Castle, Shanty-

I just be looking up at all that water that not be coming at me, it be neat to see a wobbly mass just sitting in front of me and it be having some really terrifying things in it. I just be manipulating the water to crush and slice them without having to enter it. Anything I swing becomes a cutting arc, even moving water in water that I can manipulate at a distance.

“Shanty, what are we doing?” Favela asked as Dodo came in for a landing, he successfully took out that odd PLANT before the water flooded in.

Dolly barked and made several gestures and pointed in the direction of the center of the city and our most recent territory.

“Right then, what she said! We’re needed at central to discuss where to go from here.” I turned to the APs. “Can you be defending this area? I be counting on you!”

The APs raised their swords to me and kneeled slightly before taking up a more defensive position with the spear guys.

-Pom-

A one legged spring and I avoided five spears attempting to skewer me while intersecting one another, Dormarch ripped another one apart and it was amazing that there weren’t more coming.

It seems like whatever was generating them was no longer a problem or the enemy didn’t seem to think they were important anymore, which was not possible as they were definitely all about killing me quickly.

I made it into a marketplace like area when a Sahagin came leaping at me and was raising a spear with one arm. Staying on course with moving forward, Canard came in and deflected the spear and speared the Sahagin himself using the blade of his hockey stick glowing with digital energy.

The next Sahagin that was making a forward leap instead of a long high arcing one was torn in half and out of the air by Dazzle. Who motioned for me to move behind Frizzle and I would gladly take the relief of not being hunted.

Dormarch was by my side immediately having popped in with a flash and was lobbing Surge Projectors into the paths of the Sahagin that continued to try and come at me, this was the most I’ve seen in one place, but with Jeanne, the Digi-bots and my friends they were quickly torn down and the ones that got by all of that had to deal with the APs taking up defensive positions around me with their shields.

Several Sahagin leapt high for me and two were blown out of the air by missiles from Metabee and a concentrating burst of shots from Krosserdog, the last one was cut in half vertically by a fine slash of a liquid tentacle rising from the ground.

“Hey guys, I be taking out an odd PLANT, it be making those fish guys!” Okay, one less thing to worry about and a whole lot of trouble with the waters.

-Five minutes of pitched battle later of funneling the Sahagin into a kill zone-

The last of the Sahagin was taken care of by Lit using String Shot as a razor wire garrote, that little guy was terrifying when he could use what was considered a nonlethal attack like that. I think he might have learned it from watching me manipulate my wool.

My puncture wound was sealed by a small mound of tightly woven wool, we now had to discuss where we would be going from here.

“So what now?” I had taken my break, no more Sahagin meant Ocellus and Smolder can retreat to the castle, the safest place around here at the moment.

“We can enter the waters and attack their massive territory, we would be going after the inactive PLANTs in the city and activating them to take the small territories within what is now a massive singular territory. To take the ocean however, we need to deal with the servant and that large PLANT. You’re the one that knows what the servant is like already mom, so you can tell whoever is willing to deal with them how they should go about doing so.” Dormarch stated as he paced around with his tails getting rather agitated. “Our objective is clear the city first and then deal with the bigger problems when we can, who among us is capable of fighting underwater?”

Should I tell Dormarch that I would likely be the one dealing with the servant?

“Commandramon are, but our effectiveness is not going to be too great in a fight, we’d be mostly stuck using DCD bombs as depth charges and would be fighting with bayonets. My bazooka works underwater at the very least, since the rocket will act like a torpedo, so there’s that.” Sami stated immediately looking ready to offer her services if we were to go on the offensive. “Yes, Canard, we come with scuba gear as a natural part of our kit… usually it’s haphazardly made and is more likely to kill us than preserve us if we haven’t looked into fixing the problem ourselves when it was first handed to us. We Commandramon were made to fight in any environment, with varying degrees of effectiveness to what would definitely be short lived experiences, including in space… provided we have been properly equipped with some propulsion or at the very least a grappling hook option. Some Commandramon were definitely not that lucky, considering they didn’t even last three minutes in space… again I’m fairly chipper because of the cruel life I’ve led and survived up to this point. Happy to be alive and helpful, nine Commandramon under me would be quite a force to deal with getting at those inactive PLANTs in the water.”

“We Dhelmise are a specialist Valora sea unit, we’re not afraid of some foreign sea and its monsters!” One of the salty dog anchor kelp guys said boisterously.

“I can be surviving underwater, I would just be needing to find air after it runs out in my bubble and that would be leaving me with eight or so minutes afterwards that I can be holding my breath.” Okay that was a little concerning, but Shanty would be quite great at fighting underwater with her ability to manipulate the water itself. “Still haven’t figured out how to breathe underwater… but I’m supposed to be able to?”

“Anyone else?” Dormarch asked and I sighed.

“I can stay underwater indefinitely, my abilities would be of a great help too.” I said quietly and everyone looked to me. “I just need to learn the fluffmancer technique of aquatic adaptation, haven’t exactly had a big reason to do so yet... heh… probably could have used it back in Zootopia. I’m at a level of wool manipulation where I’d learned it quite quickly now, enough so that I’d be able to go on the offensive as soon as I have a handle on it.”

“How can you stay underwater indefinitely?” Dormarch asked for the sake of trying to give me an out. He was definitely going as he was naturally adapted for water combat, if those three fish tails meant anything at all other than him being adorable.

“Once I have all of my aquatic adaptations figure out, I can make a hydrofuge ‘hair’ bubble that prevents water from getting to me and my wool can magically separate the oxygen from the water for me to breathe. On top of that I’ll have a wool shifted diving suit that will help me with swimming. Every time I exhale even slightly will create bubbles though and I wouldn’t be able to use my Dancing Flame ability underwater.” Due to the slow conversion rate of oxygen not being enough for high end combat speed bursts, I’d be relying on my aquatic adaptations. It was a logical problem for my Dancing Flame technique to have, but how often was I going to have to fight underwater?

My aquatic adaptations can have good combat applications though, like razor edged scoop flippers and I can wield the paralance underwater. In fact I would think the lance would be even easier to wield underwater with its magical nature.

“Okay, fine, can anyone else with us be of help in the water instead of on defense?” Dormarch questioned, there was a bit of quiet.

“Ocellus can be helpful too.” I mentioned, since a changeling would theoretically be impossible to kill via an environmental danger if anything living adapted to said danger then so would a changeling.

A roar distracted us and we turned to see the APs fending off a large tentacle monster that had three of them its tentacles, it certainly wasn’t a friendly lake kraken that Ponyville was somewhat known for as far as indigenous species went.

“Melee digi-bots would be more effective in water than we gun types would be.” Metabee stated as he sent a side glance at Rokusho.

“Fine, but I do not like going into water. Where I a water beetle, I might enjoy being on top of it, but not in it directly.” Rokusho answered solemnly.

“You think I’d be any better? Since of course I’m going too!” Pepper Cat stated while punching her right fist into the air.

“I don’t need to breathe… though I’m going to be all sorts of mushy while swimming around.” Curdle finally offered. “Won’t be able to use a fire type move and at best I’d be stuck using Dazzling Gleam.”

“If that is all, then everyone else will be on the defensive then.” Jeanne slapped the butt of her banner spear against the ground. “Any territory you take, we’ll hold steadfast!”

“Any way I can get in on this Pom?” Dolly asked with a wagging tail and after a moment she frowned when I didn’t answer.

“I need you on the defense.” It didn’t take me long to figure out that Dolly was eager to continue helping, sure she’d be capable of swimming underwater really fast, but unless she could adapt to the water pressure or breathe underwater. “Sorry Dolly.”

“It’s alright.” Dolly came up to me and put a paw on my chest and licked my chin. “Just… I was about to say ‘stay safe’, but you’re you.”

“Fair.” It was 'fair' at this point and we both knew I couldn’t stay safe if my life depended on it and it has several times. “If we don’t do this, we’ll eventually be crushed by the sea. Doing it isn’t going to be easy either, I need to adapt to the waters first before we can effectively go in to start finding those deactivated PLANTs if that’s what you say they are.”

“I can be of assistance with finding inactive PLANTs, they are giving off stronger signals.” The Yggdrasil System on Dormarch’s digivice stated. “Two digivices will help with sonar scanning and active finding of the targets in the local digital sea. The Digivices can scan through the water for their general shape. It is not advised to swim out in open waters and that you stay in the flooded sections of the city.”

“I’m so glad we got the Yggdrasil System assistant loaded Digivices.” Sami said with a sigh. “Makes things much easier. Let me prepare my flippers and sea mask to make sure it won’t kill me for even suggesting they could be useful for a day, then I’ll call in the other guys for a mission.”

“The APs might be able to help, in a limited quality. Again, I suggest sending a small team to find NPCs that might be able to help with the flood zones if we can get them to do their function.” Dormarch the APs would be fish food for the aquatic EPs, but if you think they could help, then we’d take whatever we can get. “That’ll be on you Jeanne, NPCs like that cabbage cart cat guy that just went into a flood section of the city is what you’re going to be looking for.”

-Origin Space, Tiamat-

Come on little pirate goat, show everyone just what exactly it is a Capricornus can truly do in their element.

390. Dammed if you do or don’t pt. 5.

-Moon Cell Realm, one of the inner layers, ???-

“You guys are no fun, where’s the emotion?” I was a cool spiky halo wearing oni colored dude.

The two canines I was fighting certainly were persistent, but they weren’t going to deal with me so easily. I had range of them and Moon Cell summoned me to deal with them, unfortunately for me they were tough customers, but I had range on them.

I twirled my heavenly gun and a copy of a heavenly gun, took aim and… a large beam of light reached into the stratosphere.

Is that Excalibur… well darn… I never even had a chance in the first place…

The beam of light was swung downwards, for it was sword exuding a massive amount of energy I couldn’t even block. I tried to dash, teleport or do anything to get away from the attack. However the energy the sword was giving of prevented me from doing so.

“Guess this is it.” I said quietly as I grinned, the massive blade of holy wrath dropped onto me like a sledgehammer. Ah yeah, the pain was so good!

…

A minute later I saw some giant horse god thing, it seemed to grin at me as it sent me on my way. It was saying something about putting me where it put Gilgamesh and Enkidu just to see what would happen and me helping it get some form of payback on them by making them suffer my existence.

Sounds like two fun people I will want to get to know and toy around with, so I’ll take that as a suggestion as I’m sent on to my next life!

Here comes some happy times for a new world, all the emotions!

-Moon Cell-

Archer defeated, soul data reconstitu… soul data missing… summoning new servant.

Something had drastically changed in the system and when the two intruding canines destroyed an advanced PLANT several territories turned green.

This wasn’t good, as Moon Cell couldn’t tell how the two canines had acquired a territory or even summoned combat NPCs to aid them.

…

That werewolf thing just turned multiple areas worth of territory yellow, how fast was that creature? It didn’t seem mortal and might even be a real Beast that had invaded the system!

-Moon Cell, Outer Layer, Cape, middle path near center of the city, alleyway, Pom-

We had gotten in a meal and an hour long rest break while letting the APs deal with most of the defense, the defenses were definitely being tested by an onslaught of aquatic monsters that were weaker on dry land, but they were still trying with quite a ferocity.

I was still practicing my aquatic adaptation wool shift just at the edge of the enemy’s territory with Dormarch watching out for danger while I did. Said adaptation took five minutes to get down and it was taking much longer to get right.

While I was preparing for our dive into enemy territory we discovered at least four out of the five aquatic EPs we had to deal with that were attacking us from out of water. It’s been thirty minutes since the meal and we would have five more before we were to go into the rising depths outside our territories.

So far the mythical NPCs that could help us were inside the buildings throughout Cape within our territory, but Jeanne’s team haven’t found one that was particularly useful to us yet. They did find a shop that would sell us resources though, so if we could find a way to acquire currency that the NPC would accept then we’d be in business there.

First notable enemies were the Berserker Sharks, which were terrifying and will continue living on from ten seconds to a full minute after you kill them and they had really tough skin. They didn’t care if you were in water or on land, they’d come after you if they so much as see you.

Magic seemed to be an equalizer as Shanty and I could deal with them with magical attacks like magical wolf claws or cutting arcs, but we would have to do it quite carefully as those things were stupidly aggressive.

Thinking of aggressive, the only bark attack I could do safely underwater is Bark Breaker unless I want to expose my face to tons of water pressure. Maybe in an emergency or near the surface, but I was going to be hampered underwater when it came to combat. My thousand spears was going to be entirely used for propulsion when I need some quick movement.

Second were the Assassin Jellies, they were good at evading and their tendrils had paralyzing venom. Said venom wouldn’t heal via a Cheri Berry, but apparently Pecha Berries did heal the venom, which made the Pokémon wary of what that implied. The Jellyfish weren’t dangerous by themselves, they were fairly easy to take out in a fight, but with something like a berserker shark while you were freshly paralyzed? They would earn that Assassin classification if they succeed.

Third were the Saber Knifefins, they were the weakest and smallest EPs we’ve seen yet, but they were still dangerous because they came in large schools and all their fins were razor edged. Imagine them flying out of a wall of water like a cavalcade of throwing knives and taking themselves out as soon as they made impact with anything.

They were likely to be more dangerous when in the water, where they could constantly swim by you and slice at you with their fins multiple times. In large schools that would be the equivalent to being stuck inside a large blender set to liquefy.

Fourth were the Krakens. No classification, but large enemy squid EPs were not something to be ignored when they can lash at you, grab you or try to spear you with their limbs. They were also attacking the APs on land, but the APs were holding fairly well considering that we were surrounded by a rising ocean. Said ocean would stop spilling in when it reached the height of the hole that large metal whale made.

The fifth enemy were the eels and we hadn’t encountered them to even get any data on them or even knew what they could be doing in the water, but they weren’t trying to come at us in our dry territory at least.

I poked my head into the wall of water and looked about, the lower end of Cape City had changed drastically. There was coral coming from the rooftops, caves that weren’t there before and a number of random aquatic life that weren’t EPs that simply swam away from us. I took a long inhale, fresh air, I exhaled and bubbles flew out of my oxygen making bubble of wool. I inhaled again and oxygen, I took a few sniffs and then I nodded and pulled myself free.

“So?” Dormarch asked while looking at my strange wool shift.

“I’m ready, let’s go.” I made a motion towards where the Commandramon were waiting with their land vehicle, apparently it could shift to be a working underwater glider. They really were prepared for most situations, but that quality of that preparation was always in question.

My aquatic adaptations were as follows, skin tight water repellant diving suit capable of handling massive amounts of water pressure and has a small back fin. Inside cushioned wool, outside rigid wool that wouldn’t absorb water and could slightly flex under pressure while not allowing outside forces to crush me.

Second part of the adaptation was a hydrofuge ‘hair’ bubble for infinite underwater breathing that pressed tightly to the sides of my face and top of my head, but still gave me full wide visual range if I ignore the tiny web like pattern I made throughout the protective bubble from the wool shaped to protect my face. It was similar to my glide mode protected my eyes.

Third was the wolf claw scoop paddles that I can change the shape of as needed on my front hooves. They flexed inward when preparing a swimming stroke, fanned outwards when pushed downwards or outwards I couldn’t do my back hooves as I was using that remaining wool for something else.

The last thing was a tail fin, again, with whatever remaining wool I had left to aid in keeping my swimming direction where I wanted to be going.

I had attached the paralance to my belly for ease of access and the underwater territory assault force was ready to go.

-Ten minutes later, (Insert TMNT Shredder Revenge ‘The Lost Archenemies’ music as the main underwater theme here)-

With a splash I dove into the wall of water and swam up slightly to look around, Dormarch soon followed afterwards looking quite natural in the water. He was still in his Dobermon D-Type form and I didn’t mind as he had been constantly using it since we pushed into the city, it didn’t seem to stressing him too much.

He nodded to me as we swam forward a bit and a little big higher in the water, but we didn’t swim above the rooftops into open the waters above them.

Soon the Commandramon slowly slid into the water on their vehicle and the wheels pulled inward and it started to spew bubbles out of its back. All the Commandramon had bayonets equipped to their rifles and their guns was going to be of limited effect underwater. They had masks over their face as they looked about at the pretty coral that had grown over all the buildings when the ocean water took over this region of Cape, they clung to their vehicle as it moved forward like a large flat sea gliding device.

The Dhelmise soon came through without a whisper and moved like ghosts as they floated through the water with such ease for Pokémon that were as heavy as anchors. Their typing of ghost and grass made a lot of sense, they could easily disguise as the entangling kelp growing out of buildings we were passing.

Then came Shanty and Dodo, surprisingly Dodo entered his airplane shape and shifted his legs about to look like a manta ray with a bird head at the front of himself and started to idly glide along behind the vehicle. Shanty was in his back and would come out of Dodo if we had to fight, she was sitting comfortable under a dome in the air pocket Dodo was generating.

We were going to try and take the other part of central. The left and right side paths might be a bit dangerous thanks to that metal whale being around and being next to the actual open waters of the ocean where hundreds of enemy aquatic EPs could be waiting to swarm us.

The groups looked to me and I motioned us forward, not seeing any enemies around, I calmly placed my right hoof on Dormarch’s back and he dragged me along as we moved forward through the altered central path of Cape City that now looks like an aquarium theme park.

We were being careful and slow to not attract attention. The city streets look so alien and different and all the coral around us had more harmless fish moving through it, but I was paying attention to them to look out for Knifefin attacks.

We couldn’t alert the enemy to our presence until we found the PLANTs and had enough of them or one with enough time for Dormarch and Sami to modify them to take the territory.

Thinking of Sami, she was looking at the digivice in her claws and trying to find our first target. We would slowly meander around and hopefully not draw too much attention to ourselves as we moved forward into enemy territory, we stuck to the alleyways large enough to fit the Commandramon’s vehicle. We didn’t want the vehicle to go out into the open or float too high.

After we got far enough forward it started growing dark and the sunlight that never moved disappeared thanks to all the flood water overhead. To that end the Commandramon tapped their helmets and they lit up our surroundings, the vehicle also lit up, it was a necessary problem that the lights would attract our enemies.

Dormarch brought us around to the right and we slowly swam down the alleyway towards the more central part of the central path, we were keeping an eye out for any inactive PLANTs in the area.

Suddenly after a moment of swimming slightly at rooftop level with several of the Commandramon lights on us, Dormarch made a motion for us to be quiet and looked to the Commandramon while tapping his head.

They suddenly they shut off their lights, the lights on the vehicle went out and even Dodo’s eyes dimmed drastically as we came to a dead stop, Dormarch quickly brought me down to the waterlogged, kelp encrusted cobblestone street where we hid among the long green weeds.

A massive shadow passed overhead and we heard the wailing of the metal whale that made us all shiver. A large bright red light shined down towards us and swept through the area Dormarch and I were in, it thankfully didn’t see us among the kelp and we avoided being touched by the light itself.

If it had swept its eyes even a few feet to the right towards the others, we would have been caught.

It scanned a few alleyways as it slowly swam by and then continued on patrolling. Scanning around with its eyes giving off two massive beams of red that gave off a highly threatening glow underwater, the large metal whale finally started swimming back towards the far side of the ocean flooded portions of cape.

Said whale had been surrounded by hundreds of Berserker Sharks, Knifefins and Assassin Jellies. I swallowed dryly and shivered as I watched the horde of monsters swimming with the large PLANT continued on its way and some of the sea monsters peeled off to go attack our territories. We were definitely ‘deep’ behind enemy lines now and I don’t think it would be a good idea to fight that whale quite yet.

Once it was far enough away that we could even see a shadow of its sweeping lights in the water, Dormarch tapped his head and the area around us lit up once more via the different methods we had to give us sight in the dark sea water. That had been a rather tense moment that could have ended our hidden sea bound operation quite poorly and quickly.

Dormarch continued forward and I looked back at a shivering Sami who was gripping her Digivice tightly and staring at it, looking for a sign of a PLANT we could use to take this territory.

With something that big watching the territory of the entire ocean, they really didn’t need to worry about defenses much.

Dormarch carefully drew us into moving forward once more and his left tentacle wrapped around my leg and gave it a light, but highly needy, squeeze.

It didn’t take us long before we came out into a large open space that was the central path, we could see what was once a street… it was now more of a complex reef. We could see a few EPs loitering around, but they weren’t being very active. Still it would be a good idea to pay attention to them.

I turned and gestured to the Dhelmise, I pointed to where my eyes were and then to the Assassin Jellies nearby hovering around and eating random fish by sucking them up into their bodies with their tentacles. There were a few Knifefin’s too, but not enough that we’d have to immediately evacuate the area.

The Dhelmise seemed to get what I was imply and blinked and seemed to tilt forward in understanding.

This place wasn’t the marketplace we managed to take before half the city became flooded. The buildings here did make for an interesting network of coral caverns though and there was light coming from said glow in the dark coral, so I wasn’t entirely relying on the Commandramon or their vehicle for sight.

In fact it looked more and more like the city was slowly transforming into a trench the further we go on while looking for one of the inactive PLANTs.

Dolly asked me how we were doing and I sent her the last five minutes where we came face to face with that metal whale and all the monsters following it around, she froze up in fright. Yeah that was the expected response to have to a monster generating large metal whale that could move around in water so swiftly. It had almost caught us and off guard at that, so far we didn’t have any combat to…

The Dhelmise took out the various Assassin Jellies around with flashes of Chain Shot that quickly turned into less precise Vine Whips and while that was happening three of the Commandramon and Rokusho managed to take out the few Knifefins around before they had any idea what was happening.

Never mind, combat was had and all the enemies in the general area were taken care of swiftly, but I’m afraid that might alert someone.

Dormarch reassured me the only way the enemy could be alerted is if an enemy was around long enough to do so, that was a relatively quick take down all things considered.

We continued down the streets in the direction of the far side for a minute, we didn’t want to go too far on the chance that we might run into the whale sized threat and continued looking until one of the lights flickered, Sami was signaling something.

Dormarch and I turned to Sami, as did everyone else Dormarch swam me over and down the the underwater glider vehicle. When we approached, Dormarch was surprised when his Digivice vibrated or was it making a pinging noise?

I looked at the device around Dormarch’s neck and an arrow popped up and pointed in a direction. Also I saw the words on screen that said that the active locator ping had unfortunately attracted attention, but it gave us the location of an inactive PLANT for our needs.

That didn’t sound very good, I motioned for us to move and the driver Commandramon turned the underwater glider in the direction of the arrows as we clung to the vehicle and followed the two arrows pointing in the same general direction that would lead us more towards the left path and some alleyways than the far side of the city where Rider Totsugeki was likely resting for a rematch.

I couldn’t hear anything or sense motion very well in the water, but Dormarch was far more sensitive and alerted me to something coming our way when he looked off to the side as we slid into some coral pathway.

A fast swimming shadow went overhead of a building that has mostly turned to coral. Berserker Shark, they were much faster in water.

I let go of the vehicle and motioned for them to go on as I calmly pulled the Paralance away from being stuck to my wool, I turned my head left and right and counted on Dormarch to watch my back until the danger was out of the way.

Dormarch floated next to me and was looking quite alert, his eyes darted upwards and he quickly back stroked out of the way as I turned and opened the Paralance into the path of the jaws coming at me.

The Berseker Shark, after getting its teeth on the canopy, immediately started thrashing me about and tried to ram me into the wall of a half cave and building hybrid, the back end of the lance stopped me from slamming into it bodily.

That’s when I saw something large come streaking for me as I continued to fend off the shark. Dormarch quickly intercepted with a quick burst forward at the long snake like thing before it could ram it’s dagger like teeth into my neck and they went out of view.

The shark continued to try and fruitlessly bite through the paralance and swing me around. It wasn’t even damaging the lance and I think it knew that as the shark started trying to pull it away from me.

I didn’t see what was happening with Dormarch, but I could feel he was okay if a little surprised by something.

Holding onto the paralance for dear life was my current goal as the shark threatened to rip it from my hooves so it could get at me, which is why I glued my wool to the weapon as I didn’t want to get snapped up by this shark.

Frantically looking around for any other threats while making sure to breathe calmly, I saw a few Assassin Jellies had noticed the commotion we were causing as my body was being used to hammer the surrounding coral to pieces or some bits of entangling seaweed got immediately ripped up by the Beserker Sharks strength.

The five of Jellies started surging at me with a Kraken in tow, okay this was getting fairly dicey and the force of the blows of being swung about was bruising me through my wool when I got slammed against the cobblestone floor or brick wall.

Dormarch what’s the problem? We got more incoming and I’m not having a good time with this shark!

The problem was that he found out what the Eels did and the commentary on something called a Caster Eel was simply that it was trying to do something to him with magic and was failing quite horribly at it.

Which was rather unfortunate for the eel, as Dormarch just finished destroying it with his two tentacles and began extracting data to get an idea of what it had attempted to do to him.

One of the jellies got close and tried to fire a stinger into me, I quickly let my left hoof off the lance while bracing myself to it with my left hind leg while saving my right for maneuvering.

Swinging out with my left spork like scoop claw as quickly as I could, this got a rather odd reaction when the magical claw fired off. I apparently sent out a spiraling wave of slashes that compressed into a sphere and tore the jellyfish and the one behind it apart in violently churning energy.

Three more were closing in and the kraken was going to be a thing, Dormarch please hurry up!

Dormarch told me to wait just a second, I didn’t exactly have one of those as the Berserk shark started pushing me in the direction of the enemies and bashed me against the wall of a building that hadn’t converted into coral yet.

The three jellyfish spiraled in a tight circle at me and they all raised all their tendrils, preparing to fire the barbs in them into me. The barbs would hurt if they pierced my wool, but the Pecha scarf would prove useful once again in this situation provided I missed one of their barb nicking me.

Dormarch slammed into the back of the Berserker shark and he jammed his tentacles into it, soon the shark let me go and thrashed around. I detached my hind legs from the paralance and quickly swam to the side avoided the stingers firing off and bringing it around to defend.

Suddenly shooting by me while riding the shark, Dormarch somehow got the wildly thrashing shark to bite into the three jellies in rapid succession in a rather messy display gruesome display. The shark after a moment started trying to swim upwards and Dormarch was trying to pushit back downwards, it was trying to fight him and speaking of fighting…

I quickly brought the paralance to my right and swung the blade edge of the canopy forward to stop a grasping tentacle from the Kraken and cut a bit of its tentacle off. The tentacle quickly regrew before my eyes.

Ah, like a hydra then, if you wanted to kill this Kraken, then I would think to aim for the body which was easier said than done with the tentacles getting in the way. I closed up the Paralance and quickly bashed away two more attempts to grapple me and started to swim backwards.

A burst of electricity blasted the Kraken from behind and its attention was drawn to Pepper Cat glaring at it and flexing her plug claws. It immediately turned its tentacles on her and I quickly turned around and swam at it with full speed and then fired off some coiled wool on my hind legs to burst forward and ram the Paralance into its body, impaling it on the blunt weapon and I started to claw at it with several magical claw strikes.

Pepper Cat was clawing it from the other side and with enough damage the Kraken eventually dispersed into cubes of information, the blue eyed Pepper Cat struck a victorious pose make a V shape with two of her plug claws.

Dormarch eventually swam down to us looking a little green from his ride, he pointed in the direction the others went and we were about to go catch up with the… only to look up to see a large shadow in the distance coming this way with a subtle shift in the water.

That whale had quite a presence and it was terrifying.

I motioned for a nearby building that has long since lost its door and we all swam for it the pair of massive sweeping red lights swept through the area as we took cover.

The red light passed by the doorway and we stayed very still for a moment, a few Berserk sharks swam by and looked into the buildings. One poked its nose in here, but we swam up towards the ceiling carefully as it only bothered to look left and right.

-Sami-

Okay whale guy is back, but we had secured the PLANT to the vehicle. We just had to stay out of that things sight or else it could total us right now. We needed some time before we can actually face that face to face.

“Find us a hiding spot fast Driver, I do not want to be spotted by that PLANT!” I called out in the radio in our masks.

“I’m looking…. ahah okay, found a good spot!” We quickly turned into an alleyway with a dead end and turned off the power and lights to wait quietly as the large mass passed overhead in the open water above.

The red sweeping beams miss us and we could see the red light play across the wall of the alleyway above us, but it never went into the large alleyway personally.

“How are we going to deal with that huge submarine CO?” One of the Commandramon asked me.

“We’re going to need something bigger than what we have available. Given that it didn’t stop to attack, it didn’t spot Pom, Pepper Cat and Dormarch, so they must have dealt with the problem.

“It didn’t stop to attack, but it did let loose a lot of searchers in the water, Knifefins… they look to be checking the alleyways and Assassin Jellies are watching the open waters above us.” One of the commandramon was panicking. “We’ve got nowhere to hide!”

I looked at the vehicle and an idea came to mind.

“Or do we?” My mind quickly came up with a way to hide us from the searchers, if any of them went missing the enemy would be on us in seconds. Dormarcjh, Pepper Cat and Pom were likely laying low already. “Flip the submersible mode upside down, turtle us!”

There was a pause for a few moments.

“Brilliant, that’s why you’re our CO Sami Soldier!” ‘Driver’ said as he got to work.

“Tell the Dhelmise to not attack when it gets close, we have to let it go and avoid attracting attention while that big whale is around!” One of the other Commandramon relayed my order to let the Dhelmise in on what we were going to pull off here.

-Knifefin unit A113-

The orange and white stripped fish looked into the alleyway and didn’t see any movement, it saw a large pile of inert metal and a few rusty anchors attached to ships wheels with chains wrapping around everything haphazardly. It swam around them a bit in curiosity, but didn’t see anything out of place.

As it was swimming away, something shifted making it turn around and look to see a piece of seaweed spawn form one of the anchors. A small glitch in the matrix perhaps, but nothing more than a mild bug.

It finished its scouting, after double checking the area to be sure and then started swimming back to the whale to report in that there were no sights of what was causing the loss of the units in this region.

This information would have to reach Rider Totsugeki and she would personally have to come out if any more incidents happened in the area to find the culprits. They didn’t really have many defenses around here.

It soon joined up with its scouting comrades PS42, WA11A1BYWA7 and 5YDN3Y. It didn’t have enough intelligence to find its grouping numbers odd or suspect.

-Sami-

The vehicle was quickly turned back over by the Dhelmise and I noticed something missing. Shanty and Dodo were with us a while ago right? So where is she now?

-Shanty-

“Do you be having a good grip on it Dodo?” I heard Dodo warble that he did as he spread his wings to use the underwater jets to pull the damaged PLANT free from the rubble of a building, we be needing as many of these things mostly intact as we could be getting right?

Now all we had to do was find Pom and the others.

“Can you be letting me out?” After I be asking this, Dodo slowly pulled back the dome around me and I quickly created a Bounding Bubble to quickly float out and start sensing around the water for movement as I grabbed the PLANT using my ability to control the liquids in my surroundings.

Where were they being now?

Seeing a huge shadow nearby, I quickly got Dodo moving and took shelter in a nearby building and I be dragging the PLANT along inside with me as Dodo be watching my back.

A red light be looking our way, but not be seeing nothing it didn’t need to be seeing. That whale be having quite a terrifying presence to it. The red light soon swept away in the opposite direction.

I felt something behind moving behind me that wasn’t Dodo and was about to be attacking until I felt two soft pats on my left shoulder and saw Pom reaching into the bubble with her right hoof. She was looking at the damaged PLANT I found with a smile, with a flick of her head Dormarch be sticking a tentacle into it and be getting to some work.

While that was happening I be looking out the entrance I saw some Knifefins coming this way. I was about to be attacking, when Pom be stopping me and shaking her head no and putting a hoof up to where her lips would be under that wool mask.

Right, we be needing to do this quietly! That is being a good idea, but they were going to be checking in here, how would we be avoiding their gazes?

I looked at the sand covering the floor and wrote out a message for Pom, she be looking it over quickly and then is being very thoughtful. I poked my head out and saw some Knifefins closing in at a slow pace.

They not be seeing me yet and I be ducking back and making a motion for Pom to be hurrying with an idea as I wrote ‘getting closer’ in the sand using the water around us to manipulate it.

Pom just stared blankly at the sand and then sent me a look as she pointed at the sand.

I wrote the word ‘what?’ and Pom be answering by drawing a wall and the word ‘sand’ with an arrow pointing to it.

That… is actually being a pretty good idea really.

-Knifefin Reef2Deep2-

“?” One of the buildings looked to have been completely filled with sand, which was odd as Moby Dick had scouted the area earlier and the building looked to have been empty then.

It continued its scouting mission and determined that nothing was wrong with a building suddenly being full of sand, it was likely a minor glitch in the system.

It didn’t notice a small hole opening in the wall of sand or the eye that carefully watched it as it left.

It didn’t need to bother with digging through mounds of sand. This was obviously not the trouble it was looking for. It would carry on.

-Shanty-

I be dropping the sand wall and sighing with relief, using water to move sand around wasn’t being easy in the slightest. It was even being really quite hard to do!

Pom wrapped her hooves around me and gave me a hug as she be sticking the front half of her torso into my bubble.

Praise from Pom always be feeling good, she be proud of me and I am being happy to make her proud. She be teaching me quite a lot and she be feeding me, the feeding me part is being the most important bit of course. That and I be finding lots of good rum because of her.

Soon we were being joined by the Commandramon and they drove us to a building the vehicle could fit into and I be popping back into dodo for some fresh air and enjoyed a nice Raspberry flavored Tiger Tail donut. Some would be saying that it is being the sacrilege flavor of the donut world for the particular donut style, but I be thinking it tastes pretty good personally.

I be watching as Dormarch and Sami be working over the two PLANTs we be getting and was waiting for something to happen around here.

It was feeling like it was going to be being a while.

So wrote something in the sand…. it was just being an idea.

“Can we use the shockwaves against the whale?” After seeing the message, Pom motioned to Dormarch and he got Sami’s attention.

They looked at each other and then the question again and then turned to me, Dormarch was grinning.

Rokusho eyes smiled, he be picking up what everyone else down here has about what we were going to be doing next. We probably be needing more of these PLANTs though, a lot more.

Fighting something that big directly wasn’t in the cards for us… but if we could be messing it up a lot with a bunch of shockwaves before having to fight it and be making something equally big of our own like it with the PLANTs to deal with it? That… we could actually be doing if we created one big AP.

“Can we make a large PLANT out of the smaller ones doing it too?” I wrote next and that got Sami rubbing her claws together, she definitely had a devious grin behind her mask.

-Dormarch-

Since all the PLANTs around the enemy territory became deactivated once the whale created one large territory using the sea, as they were functionally no longer needed… well they were no longer needed by Moon Cell with the whale in the area, but Shanty was full of clever suggestions all of the sudden and we could actually make it work!

What should we design the AP this will generate to look like though? Form and function were important in coding after all.

Mom, any ideas where we can find a lot of material to make an AP of a size that will compete with that whale?

…

Yes, we can do that, no problem at all!

I had a skill labeled 'Territory Creation' from my spirit core, so I might as well take that to the logical extreme even if 'C' was the best I could... did it just update to 'EX' and why is my classification now Shielder 'Caster' Beast? Wish I had someone that knew what was wrong with the core and could explain to me what was going on with it.

Still that gave me an improvement on digital design philosophy for territories and APs, even if I didn't entirely understand all the knowledge that just got shoved into my head from out of nowhere. No wait that was the hospital data, why would my... oh... huh..

Anyway, I was going to need every digimon's help to even code that quickly enough though and we still had to get all the PLANTs around here and maybe the ones in the territories we already took.

Author's Note

Dormarch absorbed a Caster Eel's data, it had unusual side effects to say the least.

Final Fantasy summon and a big battle incoming.

392. Dammed if you do or don’t pt. 7.

Author's Note

Music- Final Fantasy XV OST Leviathan Phase 1 ( The Hydraean's Wrath ).

392. Dammed if you do or don’t pt. 7.

-Equus, Ponyville, Hayburger, Twilight-

“I just wanted to know, what is it going to be like for you being able to make and say goodbye to the many friends you’re going to have?” Why did Jaded ask me to come here just to pose me that question? “I think being a Princess of Friendship is going to be hard to say goodbye as much as saying hello to the new ones.”

Also didn’t Jaded work here once upon a time?

“Well…” I was going to give it thought and put it into words for Jaded, she might be annoying a lot of the time but she usually did make a big effort to be someone’s friend if she wanted to be one with someone. She was making that effort with me right now by asking if we can have a meal together to discuss some things that had her concerned.

The question itself was fairly hard to answer and I dug into my horseshoe fries, Jade was already eating a Fish Mac. A Pegasus specialty at most Hayburgers… since I was part pegasus now did that mean I could suddenly eat a Fish Mac too?

So many existential questions.

“It is better to have once had a true friend than to have never have had them at all.” That was only a partial answer for sure, but it felt like what I was going to answer with from my heart. My heart clenched at the idea of missing my first six best friends, I’m including Spike in that. “Do you still get discounts from here?”

“Hayburger only does so for good workers.” Jaded responded, not answering the question directly. “I didn’t do any math while they had me on the cash register and it made a lot of money that week. So I have a good rapport with all Hayburgers in Equestria and a few in the Minotaur Republic Tyranny.”

“Republic Tyranny?” I asked.

“Fort-attitude is still their ruler, so it’s a technical tyranny given they aren’t willing to depose him and they are currently in one of the largest golden ages to ever exist.” There was a conspiratorial look in Jaded’s eyes as she didn’t say Fortitude’s name correctly.

“Why didn’t you say Fortitude's name…?” My question was met with an immediate answer, but not from Jaded.

“I AM FORTITUDE, THE FANTASTICALLY FRAGRANT!” That sounded like it was coming from Canterlot and it wasn’t Luna this time?!

-Moon Cell Realm, Outer Layer, Dike Land, Cape, Square Plaza, Pom-

“Dormarch, you’re needed up at the castle, you’re the one that can manipulate the PLANTs!” Sami called out as she fire on some Krakens crawling at us with her rifle. This was assisted by the Commandramon on the castle walls.

“Mom, I need you and everyone to hold the square for as long as possible, when you have to retreat to the castle don’t let them inside and hold at the draw bridge as much as you can.” Dormarch just got an affectionate pat on the head from me as I unslung the Paralance from my body and got up onto my hind legs to prepare for the defense. “I’m going to need some time.”

“Then you’ve got it!” I said with a certainty as I crouched to nuzzle him, Dolly flew overhead and dealt with three jellies and then landed at the ready to help me fight. Dolly looked excited to get in some time with being at my side. “Just do your best Dormarch.”

“Search Hunter!” Dormarch shot off in a flash up the stairs and he reappeared above the parapets and disappeared again.

“Ready to fight Dolly?” I asked as I turned to the Assassin Jellies, Kraken and Berserker Sharks that didn’t care about being in water.

“Always at your side when you need me Pom!” Dolly said cheerfully as she hefted her board into a combat position.

“Yeah we’re all going to need to hold this place with everything we have.” To that end Jeanne was at the front while the APs were trying to hold off the servant and the whale by themselves. I could see into the central territory down the middle road and at a distance the blue edged glows of our central territory was flickering and letting a few hundred gallons of sea water through at a time and was starting to turn bright red. “If you got some rest, then save a full blast Aerora for the Servant.”

“Got it, light on the magic until that fish girl that attacked you before shows up.” I took up my position as the flood of aquatic enemies came at us, there were so many EPs attacking the other territories and the few trickling through to us were still a fairly large number.

-Cape Castle Depths, five minutes later, Dormarch-

“Okay, come on… why is this so difficult? There’s just so much code to go through!” I asked as I continued to manipulate the data of the pile of the inactive PLANTs. Is it because I was trying to connect them all together?

“Having problems there sonny, what exactly are you trying to do? Hmm… let me have a shot at it.” The guy walked past me and started to manipulate the data, I was about to tell him to stop when I froze and stared at what he was doing. It was absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt… brilliant. I blinked and looked at the guy. A small bear wearing a blue helmet, blue clothes, some work gloves and boots turned to me grinning with a thick beard. “There you go, does that bit of engineering help?”

“It does, now if there was some way to manufacture better APs…” I said as that sped up the work I had to do drastically.

“Did someone say the word ‘manufacture’?! I am the rabbit version of myself Welch Vineyard, here to help you with your manufacturing needs… first I do this and a little of this, then voila! Better gear for your combat programs, no need to thank me, I’m just that good!” The white rabbit with blonde hair in pigtails said as she stood haughtily with a stick that had a seemingly ambulatory glove on it.

“We’d need materials to…” I was about to say and then a third neutral NPC, a rotund beige furred blue haired cat barged in with an army of big bulky minotaurs. “If you have need of materials, then you need a merchant. Torneko Taloon at your service, I’m sure we can work out a deal!”

Then he too added something to the system of coding I was working, that… just nearly doubled the pace I could work at. He also added a barracks for his NPs, Neutral Programs, who were Berserker Minotaur Mercenaries. Their combat capabilities left something to be desire though, but they were a little better than the two types of APs we currently had dying out there in droves.

“You can pay me by housing my guys that will protect my product… and the castle of course.” It’s not going to be a castle for much longer at this rate. “I can smell a good deal and you guys smell like huge profits. Just don’t expect me to do any fighting personally, though I can fight.”

“We’re still going to need food and resources, we only have so much.” That’s when the idiot cabbage cart cat, looking waterlogged and drowned, came rushing in angrily and threw something into the programming and… added quite a lot actually. We now had some sustainability included.

“For the cabbages!” The cabbage cat stated before he turned from being a Neutral NPC to an NPC-AP in front of me with raw fury. “I’ll run that for you guys for free! Names Patch Cabbage, Moon Cell has destroyed my cabbages for the last time!”

I wonder what happened the first time or the many possibly times afterwards to lead to this moment of an NPC going mad, either that or this was the first time which would be the last time and… my mind was going a bit cross eyed.

“Well that escalated quickly, but I want in on the joining you too to help Pom so...” Welch said as she calmly turned into an NPC-AP as well. Torneko stayed neutral even as he smiled broadly, but he was a merchant so… yeah.

“Hmm… given what you’re making here… my name is Cid, I’ll keep it all in good repair as long as I can stay onboard!” Cid turned into an AP as well a second later. “I’ll even put my money to the resources that Torneko can lend us for it!”

“Welcome aboard, Cid, Welch, Patch… and guest Torneko. We’re kind of on the losing end of things.” However if what they just did really works as advertised, especially the thing that Patch Cabbage gave us… well I’m sure we can make this work out.

-Ten minutes later, Cape Plaza, Pom-

A portion of the central territory fell to the EPs, we basically only had another central one between us and the Servant, so it was becoming a forgone conclusion as the sea wall started building up in the new territory and the whale was waiting until the ocean rose high enough in that territory that it could push forward.

I was at the back and with good reason, I was funneling a lot of the EPs that prioritized me over anything else and that was a lot of Assassin Jellies and Saber Knifefins. I basically had to keep the paralance open at all times and had to fend off a constant barrage of knife fish and jellies trying to sting me.

The Hakamo-o were holding off a bunch of Krakens and the larger Berserker Sharks with help from the Dhelmise unit. The Skarmory were trying to slow down the Servant and do minimal damage to the whale, which explained the massive beam of energy that fired into the sky a second later, the whale was exceedingly slow to fire those off.

The Digi-Bots all stated it had a cycle rate on how often it could use its beam attack, which was a somewhat thankful thing to them. The battered Skarmory soon returned to the castle, all alive, but badly hurt and barely able to keep in the air.

The APs were now closing in on the enemy from all side and portions of the left and right path territories started flickering between blue and red. We were about to lose more to the ocean slowly swallowing up our territories.

While I was one the defensive, Dolly was taking out every EP that charged for me to the best of her abilities while throwing the stone bone at the Jellies to keep them at range. She was fairly happy to have the magical throwing boomerang bone back.

We weren’t seeing any Caster Eels, they were water only EPs or could only attack at a short range out of the water. The Knifefins by comparison were acting like flying fish when they came at us from on high, that they destroyed themselves doing so didn’t mean that the bleeding wounds they could leave behind weren’t life threatening. At least we have shield wielding Saber Knight APs to protect against them, but we were getting pretty badly battered between Metabee cycling ammunition as Krosserdogs fire rate wasn’t nearly good enough to keep up with the numbers.

Pepper Cat could put up an umbrella of lightning, but she wouldn’t be able to do much else and it was very draining on her to keep the hundreds of Knifefins from raining on us. The Commandramon were more focused on sniping the more lasting EPs coming at us from the ground, they were coming at us in a flood of bodies.

“Should we thank Gilgamesh for preparing us for this?” Dolly asked as she shielded herself from multiple Knifefins as she backed up. The enemy were positively firing them at us, they must be very fast to produce in these numbers. So Dolly had the right of it, this was like having knifes fired at us from various portals by Gilgamesh. I didn’t have the paralance at the time, but I’m glad that I currently did now.

Once the swarm of Kniefins falling at us let up I swung around and used the edge of the canopy to tear through three Jellies and Dolly followed up the three behind that. Despite how hard everyone fighting they were still getting through.

The left territory fell and the right slowly followed after, EPs could deal with territories better than APs could. We did pull the Plants from those places and had five of them producing APs every second here to keep the plaza from being crushed under the onslaught.

A loud clang alerted me to Jeanne sliding backwards while holding her spear defensively sea water started filling the territory behind her and I saw that the grinning Rider Totsugeki had arrived.

“You’re the one I want to fight, Moby Dick will take the remaining territories before coming here!” Totsugeki shouted as she pointed the anchor at me, then sent a swarm of Saber Knight APs flying with a single swing, more than fifty of them eliminated in a second. She was the true battle out of everything we were facing, her and that whale that was apparently named Moby Dick. “That’ll give me the time to fight you!”

She seemed rather dead set on it.

“Dolly be careful she can summon sea mammals at any place.” I stated as the fighting continued on as we were given a large room to fight in around the plaza as the EPs seemed to avoid coming after me now.

“Really how dangerous can that be?” Dolly asked as she took up a position next to me.

“Mr. Goshogawara!” Shouted Totsugeki and I immediately jumped straight up without question, however I hadn’t been the target… Dolly was.

Dolly was in its mouth and I could feel her panic for a second before feeling the sudden change as a green triangle popped into her mind. What happened next beggared belief as Dolly did something well beyond her natural strength even with momentum boosting power.

Dolly grabbed the Killer Whales tongue, leapt up and forced it to bite its own stretching tongue. Forcefully stretching it’s tongue further as it was in pain from biting down on it as it was still going upwards, Dolly landed on the ground and with a heave of her paws the tongue went up and over her shoulder and she let go of its tongue.

A snapping sound was heard and with a strange white flash of what I assumed to be magic from Dolly, she managed to throw the whale at the surprised Rider Totsugeki’s face crushing her under the weight of her own summon for a second before it disappeared.

Even I was shocked that she managed to throw a Killer Whale several times her own weight, size and well beyond her abilities.

“How the dog did I even do that? Those triangles really are something!” Dolly stated with a wagging tail as she took up her board and bone in her front paws.

“Ow, you mean butt, you hurt Mr. Goshogawara!” He was trying to eat my dog Rider Totsugeki, I’m glad she even managed to pull that off.

“You really want to see mean, Dolly can you please get behind me?” The grin on Dolly’s face as I gave that command she immediately followed was telling.

“Aerora!” A massive horizontal tornado slammed into Rider Totosugeki, she slammed her Anchor down and stood in place smirking triumphantly. This was going to work far better than I thought it would… I brought up my front hooves and performed the campfire starter technique to ignite the tornado.

“Dolly and Pom’s infamous Flame Burst combination!” I called out.

Rider Totsugeki wasn’t smiling a second later as she was blasted away from her anchor with the fury of a horizontal burning tornado that thankfully all my allies avoided as she was flung down the middle pathway from Cape Castle that was filling with sea water at the edge of the Plaza where the blue glow of our territory still held firm against the encroaching sea.

This left behind the heated metal anchor in the ground and I had started up a Bark Breaker.

“RrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrRGGGGHHHH… YIP!” The heat from the flaming tornado plus a Bark Breaker and the portion of the anchor in the cobblestone street snapped off, the rest of the large mass of the anchor shattered and the pieces of metal shrapnel impacted with a burning Rider Totsugeki who had now been rendered without a weapon when the tornado fired them at her. This helped with sending Totsugeki flying further away.

That should keep her off of us for a short while, the combo wasn’t as powerful as my Thousand Spears Huo which was a far more focused attack, but that would take five minutes and I would have to go first. The Flame Burst had a better area of effect that was definitely large enough to fill the air with the smell of broiled fish.

“Do you think that got her?” The double strength horizontal tornado eventually died down as Dolly grinned up at me.

“Not really, she recovered from me performing a disabling bite on her.” One that broke bone and tore flesh, she would recovered from that, but she at least didn’t have a weapon.

“TOTSUGEKI!” It wasn’t thirty seconds of fighting later that she came roaring back on what she called Mr. Dolphin. She was badly scorched and looked to be quite angry with us now as she popped out of the wall of rising sea water. The other two territories were starting to fill with sea water too. She was huffing and puffing in angry, there was even a wild look in her eyes as she sat on the dolphin that hovered above the ground in a small bit of water. “I…!”

Shanty swung in with a large mass of water shaped like her hoof and plowed it into Rider Totsugeki’s face with a force the size of a sledgehammer that amounts to four anvils glued together. I was basically guessing.

“Mom, Jeanne, call the retreat of the PLANTs and all non Allie Program personnel and let them take the territory!” Dormarch’s voice called out. “We’re ready with our surprise, once everyone is in and the drawbridge is raise we’ll unleash it!”

“All PLANTs and Personnel retreat, APs cover our egress!” Jeanne waved her banner about and we all started up the stairs as the APs we left behind to struggle to keep up with the flood of enemies and the literal flood as the territory of the plaza flickered between red and blue.

I turned around and ran with Dolly hopping onto my back to block the following storm of Knifefin EPs. As we climbed the steps towards Cape Castle, I can’t help but wonder what Dormarch had accomplished.

Sami Soldier and Canard were ahead of us as we crossed the drawbridge to the castle. Sami sighed and waited for everyone to finish crossing into the castle with the five PLANTs for producing APs and the courtyard started filling with them. The APs moved up to the walls and readied themselves.

Jeanne was the last one in helping a Hakamo-o limp through and then the drawbridge went up with a simple command via Sami.

“We’re not going to win are we?” Ocellus asked as she saw the sea water rising halfway up the steps.

“I don’t know about that, Dormarch has something planned.” I turned to Sami. “I know some of what he wanted to do, but do you have an idea as to what the outcome will be?”

“We’re about to see it in action… hopefully.” Sami stated as she motioned me up onto the wall.

The whale was rising with the waves getting closer to being eye level with us and eventually a battered Totsugeki rode Mr. Dolphin to land on top of the whale.

She glared at me as the castle was the only bit of territory we had left.

“Any last words?” The waters around the castle was teeming with EPs.

“Yes, actually…” Dormarch said as he came to hop onto the bit of the parapets to glare back at her, his puppy size seeming less threatening to the whale that just opened its mouth to start charging energy. “ACTIVATE FORTRESS PLANT!”

The beam shot out of the whale’s mouth was stopped by hundreds of hexagonal barriers forming around the castle as a pair of large white wings rose and spread out.

“… I’m taking it you were the one responsible for the wings part of this Sami?” Dormarch said dryly as the wings spread out and the castle started growing underneath my hooves.

“So I like ducks and thought it would be cool, don’t draw too much more attention to it!” Sami stated heatedly. “I was part of the set up for all of this and it seems to be working!”

“Dormarch… what exactly did you do to this castle?” I asked as the castle continued to grow until it outsized the whale and Rider Totosugeki was staring wide eyed as castle continue rise up on four massive pillars that I’m starting to recognize as legs with a shape that resembled paw as a large relatively round canine shaped head started poking out from under where the drawbridge was. A large thin shape rose into the air far behind the castle, if I didn’t know any better I’d swear…

“Well I…” The world became an exceedingly blinding bright blue before he could even get started on his answer as a blue territory expanded at such a speed that the water around the whale basically evaporated and it flopped into the crevasse between the square and the mountain.

-Birds eye view-

The castle increased in size slightly, elongated and looked to be becoming a mixture of biological mechanical like Dodo was, its white feathered wings spread out and the dog shaped body that became part of the castle broke away from the hill it was sitting upon. A large portion of the hil becoming part of the castle.

The monstrosity of engineering roared and glared down upon the battered Rider Totsugeki who was staring up at the castle wide eyed and fearful from the sudden turnaround of territory. She was definitely going to need to summon Leviathan for this.

“Program, Holy Judgement, accessing... using eighty percent power for full strength use of program.” Stated a clinical male voice, suddenly a massive sword rose up out of the front of the winged dog castle that started hovering in the air.

The tip of the sword sparkled, then the thousands of EPs were eviscerated by the sudden hundreds of beams raining down into the large dry territory where ocean used to be and blasting everything around it. Including heavily damaging Moby Dick with multiple blasts focused on it in particular.

“Due to ninety percent power loss from defenses and use of Holy Judgement, flight mode is disengaged, while under ten percent power we will be in walk mode until twenty five percent energy is restored.” The castle dropped to the ground on it’s for large canine legs which bent under the enormous amount of weight being put on its legs and roared.

It slowly marched forward several steps, lifting its left paw and promptly slamming it into the equally large Moby’s skull.

Moby Dick was not having a good day when a program of equivalent size started attacking it back and thanks to the sudden territory change it was most incapable of defending itself. It started generating EPs to the best of its abilities.

-Pom-

…

“You… heh… turned the entire castle… heh heh… turned the entire castle into a giant flying dog fortress…” My disbelief was matched by everyone, including Dolly who looked down at the head of the fortress as it raised its other paw and the long section of segmented tail at the back of the castle wagged.

“Pom, this is no longer Cape Castle, say hello to our means of making Moon Cell take notice of us, say hello to… CASTLE ALEXANDER!” Dormarch’s raised right paw and semi-animalistic digit pointing to the sky was followed by the castle ramming its right paw down on top of the whale’s skull damaging it even worse. The sword that came out of the castle lowered back into it and there was a symbol of a paw print on the banners around the castle now. “You know that thing about Territory Creation, yeah I created my territory. How is that servant going to top this?”

The sky darkened and a massive summoning portal opened up and out of came a giant serpent and on the head of that serpent was an angry Rider Totsugeki.

“Like that.” I said dryly as while the castle focused on crushing the thing Moby Dick under its front paws.

“Emergency, emergency! Summon monster Leviathan has been fielded!” Said the male voice of… Alexander I guess. “All personnel seek safety immediately.”

The large serpent wound its way around the tail of the caste the body and then raised up in the front of it.

“Okay, that’s it, no more miss nice Rider Totsugeki, you’re getting the leviathan!” Pointed Rider from the top of the massive things head as it squeezed the castle.

“Structural integrity dropping slowly, please dispatch enemy before Alexander is destroyed.” Said Alexander as the serpent opened its bubbling mouth while pointing at us on the castle walls. “EPs are attacking all legs, APs moving to intercept boarders.”

“Leviathan show them a Tidal Wave!” Rider Totsugeki shouted, the humongous serpen started inhaling and spread its wing like fins as its enormous body continued to squeeze the entirety of the castle. “TOTSUGEKI!”

I was frozen with fear that she even had something bigger than the Moby Dick whale, still shocked by the fact that we now had a large walking, flying and possibly intelligent fortress.

“Everybody be getting down!” Shanty shouted as she came up onto the castle wall and standing on her hind legs as an oceans amount of water came spraying at us with incredible force. Just the initial air pressure from the spray of the attack sent a number of my friends sailing from the castle walls or sliding across the courtyard, I stayed put using my wool and caught Dormarch before he fell too. Dolly was already clinging onto me and I looked up to see Shanty gather the massive spray of water above her head.

-Shanty-

We be knowing this would be tough, but I didn’t be thinking they be having a problem his large at what was being stated as the entrance to Moon Cell.

I continued gathering and compressing the water until I started splitting it away and creating a protective bubble as I launched lowered the blade of water and then be launching my attack.

“Cutlass Riptide!” I slung the massive blade of water down and be sending it forward to be cutting the torrent of water in half. That water blade be cutting into the attack and as soon as the serpent be stopping, what little be left be left of the waters cutting arc be taking a very small chunk off the tip of its fin making it bleed.

A lot of stuff be happening in such a short amount of time, but I am being quick on the uptake. We be trying to get an advantage on them and they still be having more to throw at us.

“This is being my fight Pom!” I said as I saw the pirate symbol on the fish girls hat, excitement filled me, my blood be bumping and I be having a large beasty and pirate to fight. “Please, be joining me in it!”

-Pom-

“Gladly Shanty, Dolly get Dormarch to safety!” I didn’t even look to see what Dolly was doing as I brought up the open Paralance and tightened my hooves grip on it, I really didn’t have the bravado I was showing as I was shivering in sheer terror of a giant snake.

Lambkin from an early age are taught to logically fear getting near mega-fauna things like this on Equus. There was no way I was going to escape having to put up a fight in this and it looked to have a connection to Rider Totsugeki somehow. Why could I see a connection between them?

“I too am willing to get in on this, I Jeanne D’ Arc am responsible for everyone in the castle and I will protect it with my very life!” Jeanne stated as she took up a position next to me to face down the serpent wrapping around the castle as she planted the Valora banner and glared at it with no fear whatsoever.

Jeanne was definitely nuts, as that large serpent was terrifying. A quick sheen flashed over her body as she activated the move Iron Defense. Okay a bit maybe a bit nuts, but at least smart enough to know how things were about to proceed.

“Hmph… it’s quite an overgrown snake.” Rokusho stated as he joined us with steely stare at the massive beast. “We didn’t come this far to stop now, let’s make Moon Cell recognize us as a real threat. I should be enough to help fend off the serpent.”

“We got your back down here Rokusho!” Metabee shouted from the courtyard where the Commandramon were picking themselves up and lifting their rifles with determined faces as they turned to face the massive monster.

“We’ve definitely seen worse!” One of the Commandramon stated. “Come get some digital lead!”

The large serpent, Leviathan roared stunning all of us for a second from the pure pressure it unleashed and Rider Totsugeki was roaring with it as it moved its head at the four of us on the castle wall with its open mouth.

We were all a little nuts, but we if we didn’t do this, then the Pokemon and Digital realms would fall and that meant fighting abusively large monstrosities I could barely wrap my head around how we were going to effectively fight it.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

I paused the scene with Pom and three others readying themselves to face the large maw full of teeth coming at them. I was going to make a screensaver out of that.

I popped a large bit of popcorn into my mouth, the flavor of cheddar and mozzarella crossed my tongue in all its glory.

“Yeah, they are going to need Mirage Mew’s help soon if that’s the kind of thing they are all facing up against.” Yes Mew, Lu Bu’s soul was in there somewhere with them and it was looking for revenge on Shanty surviving him.

“Still not enough it seems… she’ll get there eventually with how powerful she is now.” Tiamat continued to focus on Shanty.

“Even if her Chrysomallus heritage wasn’t forcing her forward, she still shines brightly all her own.” Bahamut commented as he picked up a bit of popcorn that was half the size of his mouth and tossed it in. Yes, we were sharing a large popcorn, emphasis on the ‘large’.

“Leviathan is one of the weaker summons, but still quite a deadly force… unfortunately it’s up against a Capricornus. The one called Rider Totsugeki will not win this battle through raw brute force.” Which was all that she was doing Tiamat, which admittedly was starting to fail with their new mobile castle.

“How soon will Mirage Mew show up?” I asked tentatively of Mew.

“Provided they survive that… ‘thing’… approximately thirty minutes for Mirage Mew and the Mirage Collectives arrival in the Moon Cell’s systems.” Not enough time to help them then even were they to show up in Dike Land specifically.

Mirage Mew was a powerful digital soul, one that Moon Cell would find quite spicy as Mirage Mew broke away from its programming before and forged a real soul from purely digital energy with more power than a Porygon could possibly ever hope to have. MM was a legend unto itself, one that met an Ash personally and enjoyed his company.

It would help with the situation in Ransei, as breaches appeared… in Viperia and Illusio. Moon Cell managed to open them away from raw technological anchor points without piggybacking through the Yggdrasil System. Bad, but not unexpected yet.

As Pom gets closer to the center of Moon Cell’s system, the more distorted it will get from her Anti-Magic nature, the super computer would not be able to ignore Pom for much longer. I seriously doubted it was going to be able to kill Pom without some massive effort and a good amount of resources put to achieving her demise.

Not with the motley crew she keeps pulling together by existing, she is going to be a major thorn for Moon Cell and an even worse problem if she goes on being ignored for far too long.

The war is starting properly now, Pom would prove to be one of the better wild cards as the chaotic stuff happening around her are sure to make Moon Cell hasten its plans or focus her down to the best of its abilities.

In either case… I’ve planned ahead.

“What of the souls of Illusio’s dead?” I asked quietly.

“All gathered and taken care of father, Moon Cell did not draw a single of them from our world. Though goodness knows it tried.” Mew stated with a salute, for I always protected what is mine with quite a ferocity. “Lunala still has an eye on Moon Cell’s nigh indestructible physical form to make sure it wasn't doing anything it shouldn't.”

Time for war.

393. Dammed if you do or don’t, pt. 8.

-Situation thus far-

A direct invasion into Ransei has started, however the one that had begun in Illusio was swiftly dealt with as soon as it started.

Chrysalia, working with the local Psychic Types of Illusio and the reluctant leader Kenshin, managed to catch the Moon Cell invasion force PLANTs before they could really propagate a massive foothold. With the work of the teleportation corps of the Alakazams with the Magnificent Mentalis leading them.

Viperia was not so lucky, the swamp lands gave the PLANTs from Moon Cell the ability to get into isolation and gain a foothold in Ransei. Not only did they have to deal with the Dark Types of Yaksha, but now Viperia was threatened by the sudden swarm of EPs among them.

King Evan was currently planning and making deals with Avia, though Cotton Murkrow would not be in good health or fit for combat at least a year after being nearly shredded to death by Enkidu’s chains. She was good enough to plot and plan as her mind was stronger than her body currently felt, even if she was trying to use the move Roost to recover faster. Unfortunately the move Roost, a well-known method of self-healing for Flying Type Pokémon, couldn’t be used by Cotton in her current state. Even weeks or days after the battle of Cerebrum, she was still too weak to be moved anywhere else than the now heavily protected hospital.

Meanwhile Moon Cell was experiencing its own invasion problems, the two canine legendary Pokémon were dangerous souls it was vaguely familiar with and was throwing a lot at them after Dormarch manipulated the system to give access to territory to anyone who could defeat PLANTs.

It was also sending quite a few servants after Fou and he was quite happy to fight every last servant that came at him.

Moon Cell wasn’t paying attention to the problems going on in the outer layer of its systems as the inner layer territory invasions were more prominent.

As such things like Dormarch creating Castle Alexander went unnoticed, anyone that could not notice a humongous walking dog castle that can fly must really be distracted by other things. The first thing the fortress did was push back the all-encroaching sea and created a humongous territory.

Castle Alexander having expended ninety percent of its power to block an attack from Moby Dick and launch an attack of its own called Holy Judgement to deal massive damage to the whale shaped PLANT. It proceeded to pin Moby Dick’s head with its massive mechanical paws and prevent it from firing anymore beams. This does not mean that Moby Dick has ceased being a threat as it continues to summon Enemy Programs to attack the fortresses legs, which are defended by the APs made by the PLANTs that weren’t used in the creation of the walking fortress.

In its attempt to crush the Moby, Rider Totsugeki finally summoned her ace aquatic creation, known as Leviathan, to wrap its massive and long body around the body of Castle Alexander preventing it from moving. Said ace is the culmination of Rider Totsugeki’s phantasm to summon powerful aquatic creatures. Now the counter invasion force have to deal with a massive sea beast that spews forth deadly lasers of water and can create tidal waves with it’s very breathe.

Rider Totsugeki herself is about to face off with a loveable singing sea goat pirate known as Shanty that wanted to be the captain of her own vessel. Also Moon Cell was really going to start paying attention soon after what was about to happen.

-Moon Cell Realm, Dike Land, Cape, Mobile Castle Alexander upper entrance, Dolly-

“I can still fight, you don’t have to worry about me.” As Dormarch said this we both watched as four figures jumped away as that massive snake bit out a chunk of the castles wall. Despite the fear that thing should be causing them, they attacked its head without pause.

Pom jumped in to bash it with the Longinus, Pants jammed her flag spear at its nose, Bug Judo rocked it with his fist causing an explosion on impact to the chin and Shanty jammed the scythe down into the top of the nose and flipped herself onto the things large face and started to slash it up as she ran up its face at Driver Totes Due Becky.

Anyone that could shoot was doing so, especially the soldier lizards, they were definitely going full auto at the things neck and were avoiding aiming near the head. Said head is where Pom and the others were avoiding getting snapped up by that monsters teeth as it dropped the huge section of the wall into the courtyard, don’t think we’ll be playing much basketball here after that.

The monstrosity had teeth which could use my body as a tea cozy as my step mother Delilah might say. Giant mechanical evil owls were bad enough back on my home world, but this thing was a freaking kaiju! A word of which I only know because of the anime some of the brothers and sisters watch.

Not that my world was any safer after finding out such things like monsters really existed there, outside the bubble of contentment and safety that was Camden Town.

“Say, do you have access to anyway to get that thing off of… what did you call the dog mecha again? Fortress Basil Lander? I mean you didn’t just build a giant machine without giving it more weapons it can use like those raining lasers thing right?” I asked as the three on the walls were rather aggressively fending off the head as Shanty chased after Jellyfish girl while avoiding the monster’s flexing fins that looked to glint in the sunlight as if they had razor edges. I’d hate to have to meet that thing at night, it was already terrifying as it was in the daylight… which hasn’t ended for a while come to think of it.

“Castle Alexander, Dolly, also yes I can think of some things that will help, but it’s going to take a minute or two for them to be activated if they even can be.” Dormarch made his way into the castle, I took one glance at Pom bravely standing up to the head with the white bug and Corduroy as it spat a beam of water. Pom blocked the beam with the weapon as she stood in front of stockings, I’m beginning to think that weapon was as nearly indestructible as my board is and robot dude be jumping over the sweeping beam of water. I quickly followed after Dormarch. “Why can’t you remember names so well?”

“You try remembering one hundred plus names beginning with D and not forgetting the faces and smells that go with them all. Also I don’t have a computer for a brain if you haven’t noticed.” Nope I still hadn’t forgotten anyone in my family, Dormarch is included in that number and Pom wanted me to protect him as he obviously knew how to do more after whatever it is he did with this castle.

“Right, Alexander communications to power systems…” I heard Dormarch say.

“User Dormarch, now accessing power systems speakers.” The male voice stated.

“Cid, what’s the situation?” Dormarch asked as I idly kept following him.

“The structure will hold together, but that serpent is stressing everything and is threatening to squeeze the life out of Alexander before we really got this things going. I can fix most of the damage it’s done so far, but we won’t be able to take this for too long. We don’t have the PLANTs required to really do what you wanted, the energy consumption is insane! it’s going to need more resources before it can fully realize its potential.” What is the full potential of this place, besides flying, walking and firing a ridiculous amount of exploding white lasers at things? “Is there something you need, Alexander is currently focusing on maintaining structural integrity and we burned through most of our energy resources in almost an instant. This thing is far from being complete, but I’m willing to work on making sure it gets to a point that it will be. Is there anything specific I can do for you, else I’m going to be a bit busy down here sonny. We’re starting to take on EPs and the APs are bottlenecking them at the base of the legs, but that’s not keeping them all out.”

“Can we get a small amount of energy to at least activate one of the towers Cid?” Dormarch asked leaving me befuddled as I followed behind him, we both stopped when one of those Jellyfish lunged at him and I took up the board to bash it into the wall with a full blast of my momentum boosted strike that splattered it into cubes.

“Sorry about that, I’ll have the Berserker Minotaur Mercenaries take care of the intruders that make it past the APs.” Another voice called out, he sounded jovial despite the situation. “I’ll work on internal security, not going to be able to sell my wares if you all bite an early grave eh.”

“Yeah, sonny I can get you at least one defense towers up and running by rerouting what remaining power we have, but who’s going to use it, it’s a manual control system as we didn’t have the resources to spare for automated system usage.” It sounds like this Bid guy could do some useful stuff as the entire place shook with a massive impact. “I’m not even sure it can shoot anything.”

“I’m on it Dormarch, I’m already manufacturing an ammunition cycling program for the tower with what little resources we have and I’m routing it to the tower already, send that energy my way to activate it and I’ll take care of the rest by using it myself.” Said a female voice. “I’ll show everyone the power of the name Vineyard!”

“Who were those guys?” I asked.

“You probably won’t remember their names properly, but in order they are Cid Highwind, Torneko Taloon and Welch Vineyard.” Answered Dormarch. “There’s also Patch Cabbage and I’m sure he’s keeping his head down in the middle of all of this.”

“So is that third one an alcoholic?” I asked Dormarch and he slapped a paw over his face. “Also what are we doing here Dormarch?”

“We’re going to make sure that the castle will still be function after almost blowing out all of its power supply in one go.” Dormarch groused out as he ran with me following after. “To that end I’m going to the throne room and will access the status report to guide some APs around Alexander as we’re taking on boarders. We need to hold this territory at all costs!”

-Somewhere in Alexander Castle, Patch Cabbage-

With my mighty hoe of vengeance I mowed down the invading programs, Moon Cell will rue the day it ruined my innocent cabbages with sea water, RUE I SAY!

-Damaged front Castle Alexander wall, Pom-

A massive wave sent the Commandramon sprawling across the courtyard, battering them, even then they still got up and kept firing everything they had with Metabee and Krosserdog.

The large mouth came down at me and I leapt forward, positioning the Paralance just so as I did.

The Dhelmise were trying to lock down its head with Chain Shot attacks as I got myself lodged in its mouth. I have no idea what I was thinking, but apparently I’ve become bravely stupid… or stupidly brave.

The Skarmory were soon up in the air and were slowly getting ready to perform some dive attacks.

The Hakamo-O were good at close range, but they really didn’t have too many long range attacks and were lowering the drawbridge to get opportunities to attack the massive serpent’s neck directly. Even if at best it would tickle this monster. They had Pepper Cat with them as Jeanne, Rokusho and I were dealing with the head personally.

Well Rokusho and Jeanne were dealing with the head and the bladed edged fins, I was currently stuck its nasty, moist, saliva filled deadly mouth and this things breathed water in powerful jets flesh rending jets.

Why did I jump into its mouth again? Oh right, I wanted to occupy it with trying to chomp me down, but the Paralance is basically indestructible… I was hoping I could make it choke on me.

I really need to get my head examined by a professional, I think the last few things I’ve done are driving me to be reckless. The head started flailing when the Paralance refuse to even bend under the massive weight of the lower jaw trying to crush me into the roof of its mouth, it didn’t even flex in the slightest.

So this plan is working at least, so besides holding onto the paralance for dear life and hopefully not getting swallowed and or ejected at highly lethal speeds, what now?

-Leviathan’s back, Shanty-

I be slashing up a lot of scales and be doing some damage as I chased after the one being called a servant, she be stopped as we be on the giant serpents back coming up from under the dog shaped head of the castle and laying over the top of it.

“About time it cycled… ANCHOR!” With that an anchor be forming out of the air and dropped into the fish girl’s right hand. She be looking to wield it against me, it was being a bit longer and looking a little lighter than the one I be seeing in the plaza square before Pom be destroying it. “Wait, you’re not that ewe!”

“Can I be asking some questions before we are to be doing this thing?” I hefted my cane scythe. I be wondering if Pom would add on an electrum coating to it like Dolly’s board to be making it that much harder to break, because I be liking my weapon after spending enough time with wielding it.

“Sure, the longer it takes to ask them, the likelier you are to be doomed. So go ahead waste your precious time among the living.” The girl be saying with a smirk as I looked back and be seeing Pom in the monster’s mouth being flailed about it apparently couldn’t be biting down on the lance she wielded and she was holding onto the shaft of it for dear life as the monster swung it’s head about.

“I am ‘Blade Hoof’ Shanty, I will one day sail the seas or the skies and I still be working on getting stronger and I will eventually be a great pirate.” I started off introductions, it was only being polite. “So who are you being?”

“Call me Rider ‘Totsugeki’ of the Jellyfish Pirates!” She screamed the word ‘Totsugeki’ like it was ingrained into her blood.

“What of your actual name?” I asked hoping she would at least tell me who she was as a person, Pom be teaching me much and I be taking it Rider Totsugeki is not so much a name, but a title she be having and using.

“You’ll have to beat me first.” The fish girl with the jellyfish tendrils said cheekily as she swung the longer anchor around, the other anchor had been bulky and slow. That bulky anchor probably was being used for one hit takedowns. This one she be wielding looked like it could be swung much faster and with more ease.

“Oh I wouldn’t worry about that being arranged very soon.” I retorted, I had Dodo aid Pom with her current predicament. I’m glad that Pom was being an expert in Familiars, didn’t know how I would be working with Dodo otherwise this far. “Are you the captain of your crew or a mate?”

“First mate and proud of it!” She said with a grin as she hefted the anchor onto her right shoulder and stood tall.

“… is… Moon Cell your captain?” I be asking after a moment of thought.

“Nope, but Moony did send me here to deal with you rebel rousers.” Said the grinning fish girl.

“So you are beholden to Moon Cell?” I asked as a sense of dread be entering my heart.

“I’m a servant of Moony, so of course I am!” There was a long silence after Rider Totsugeki be proclaiming that, I be feeling a rage bubbling up inside of me.

“A true pirate, if not the captain, should only be beholden to themselves or their captain, unless a mutiny is required… otherwise the captain is the highest authority of the crew unless you leave it, the terms in which you leave the crew can be either good ones or bad ones. The crewmates always be choosing their captain as much as their captain be choosing them.” I said quietly as the boiling fury frothed up in my heart, my voice remained calm and chilling. “The way I see it… you are no pirate, you’ve abandoned your crew.”

“What, how can you say that!” Rider Totsugeki be biting back angrily.

“Where’s your sense of freedom being then, servant of Moon Cell?! I don’t be seeing your captain here urging you ever forward!” I yelled as I be readying my weapon. My voice be causing her to flinch and she be staggering backwards as if I had been slapping her with my own hoof directly. “Again, I not be seeing a true pirate before me, only someone who is being a pretender that no longer has a crew… or a home.”

Not saying a word she be pointing the bottom of the anchor at me with her right hand tightly gripping the top of the anchor just below the ring where the chain was supposed to go, I could see faint tremors in her form.

She just be gesturing with her left hand for me to come at her, she didn’t say a word more. There was no other words for her to say. She couldn’t be denying the truth of the matter and there was being a dead look in her eyes as she set her jaw and grasped the anchor in both hands. Whoever Rider Totsugeki was now, all she could do now is fight as the servant of Moon Cell and Moon Cell had forcefully usurped the position of her captain. This would not stand while I was here!

Rider Totsugeki would not be fighting at her best without the wind that fills the sails of her soul at her back. I wanted to be freeing her, one way or another.

The glint of my scythe sparkled as we slowly started moving towards one another. I felt a song in my heart coming on… and the wind was at my back.

-Castle Alexander, sopping wet partially destroyed courtyard, Rokusho-

I threw myself to the ground of the courtyard dodging the drawbridge as it was tore free and thrown at us by the powerful monster that had torn apart the castle wall and its head hovered into the courtyard growling at us.

The Commandramon were throwing their bombs at it, but it was really hard to hurt something that big and ludicrously dangerous, it wasn’t even coding. It was a real flesh and blood beast, which was hard to get across that digital energy might not be the best way to attack it. I was charging up my explosive fist and readying my pincer sword as it prepared to strike at us.

It surged forward and I ducked under its large snapping teeth and delivered an uppercut into its jaw, knocking it’s nostril into position to be run through by Jeanne’s banner spear. It roared in pain and flailed around with Jeanne hanging onto it. Jeanne soon planted her feet and shoved her weapon even further in.

A Hakamo-o leapt up and joined Jeanne to helping her jam the spear further into the beast’s nose.

Pom was battering the fins along its head and neck that continued to threaten to slice us apart if its watery breath didn’t do so first, she was hoping to damage them to stop its rampant head swinging from tearing into us even more.

It tried to slam its chin into me and I deftly dodged back and a few of Metabee’s horn missiles slammed into its eyes forcing it to roar in pain as its head was blasted to the side. Taking advantage I jumped up and rammed my blade into the top of its nose near where Shanty had sliced it up and set forward to attack the other one.

“Go Captain Shanty, show her what a real pirate is like!” Screamed Favela as she glowed and so too did the Servant, what was Favela doing? No matter we had bigger problems.

-‘Blade Hoof’ Shanty vs. Rider Totsugeki- (Insert Music- Gradius 2, Burning Heat! 3 Option Mix)

Slowly Shanty started tap dancing on her hind legs as she started moving forward while prepping her cane scythe for a swing to meet the anchor of her opponent. She could feel the beat in her heart, the rage, the fire and the call of her dream burning within her with an incredible heat.

Shanty heard Favela’s shout and it warmed her heart that Favela thought that highly of her, it was strange that such words could be considered for her move Swagger, because Shanty could see the effects of what Favela did just by calling her captain and cheering her on.

Shanty could even feel Dodo’s trust in her to handle this on her own. Maybe…

Taking a slow inhale, Shanty grinned brightly as she felt her spirit bursting with strength, compared to her exhilaration all she could see from her opponent Rider Totsugeki was a dying ember.

The goat was going to try and stoke that flame into a roaring bonfire!

They surged forward at each other and Shanty’s scythe met Rider Totsugeki’s anchor, surprisingly the anchor was the one knocked back and Shanty didn’t even add a cutting arc to her attack.

Shanty grinned brightly as her heart started beating with the tune she was tap dancing on the moving back of the serpent she was going to fight on. Despite the shifting mass beneath her, Shanty never lost her hoofing.

“Let us go on an adventure now~. To sail the seven seas, or to the skies, where there’s always quite a lovely breeze~.” As she sang Shanty dodged the two swings of the anchor got up under Rider Totsugeki’s guard and slammed the outside blunt portion of the cane scythe right up into Rider’s chin. “I don’t know who the heck that you think you are, but I don’t be thinking you’ll be getting far, with your soul not up to par~!”

As she sang Shanty continued to dodge or deflect Rider Totsugeki’s attacks never adding a sharp or cutting arc edge to them, she was only beating Rider with blunt force.

“I simply cannot take you very seriously, not when your soul is not burning bright like mine is for all the world to see~!” Shanty stated as she avoided to rapid overhead swings as Rider spun forward with angular swipes only to get the butt of the cane scythe to the gut knocking her into stumbling back away from the dancing goat. “I’m intending to brave the day, survive as I move forward making my way and this I’ll say, for getting my hopes up you’ll pay~!”

Shanty kicked Rider back with her left hind leg and Rider retaliated by leaping forward and swinging the anchor overhead down at an angry, but grinning, Shanty.

“Let us go on an adventure now~.” Shanty sang as she deflected with the shaft of her weapon and spun to kick Rider in the side, Leviathan flinched to the right as Shanty kicked Rider in her left side. “Why don’t I show you how~.”

Shanty clashed with the anchor several times a rhythm of left and right diagonal swings and each time her weapon came away from the clashes without a scratch and she wasn’t using cutting arcs to do so at all. She was continue to tap out the rhythm damaging the Leviathan with her hind legs as she attacked Rider.

Rider Totsugeki thought the Ewe known as Pom was tough, this goat was glaring her down and coming after her with an aura that felt familiar to her somehow.

Their weapons clashed and Shanty pushed her back with the climax of the music that Rider was confusingly hearing, something pulsed strangely in her chest as well.

“Watch as I sail the sea~. There’s nothing really getting in the way of me, can’t you feel the spray of the water and feel how right it just be~?” Shanty asked as she pressed forward against the weight of the anchor and actually forced Rider Totsugeki backwards much to her consternation that Shanty could be so strong. Shanty was also damaging Levianthan’s scales beneath her hooves as she tapped across them to a fast rhythm. “It’s not a pirate that I see before me, a reckoning is coming for thee, let’s see if you’ve got the guts to take on the kind of captain I’ll be~!”

“How are you doing this?!” Screamed Rider as Shanty kept deflecting the attacks of the anchor in rhythm, her slightly faster swings than when she wielding the heavier anchor weren’t making up for the fact that Shanty was expertly blocking and stopping a half ton anchor through sheer force of will. Said force of will was something Shanty had in spades.

Rider leapt forward, she brought her anchor down only for Shanty to deflect it with a pirate shout.

“AYE, am using my spirit to deflect you’re strength and you’ve no pride, did you even once try to even live up to the life~?!” Shanty using her pirate shout as part of the lyrics she was singing, it was well timed to the point she sent Rider falling onto her back. Shanty started battering Rider Totsugeki’s anchor as Rider continued to block the series of attacks with it on the ground. Eventually Rider Totsugeki swung up and forced Shanty to block and be knocked backwards. “Some pirate you said you used to be, why don’t you just run and flee, you’re nothing more than a mockery~!”

Shanty did a simply horizontal slash with her weapon and a massive cutting arc dug a furrow into the horizontally held anchor. Not only that the a large section of the Levianthan’s back was sliced open and Rider couldn’t move for a second as a goat smaller than, one that shouldn’t be this physically capable in comparison, leapt and up and plowed her right hoof into her face bluntly busting Rider’s nose and bloodying it.

Shanty flipped backwards before launching it a Wild Windmill that sped up to rapidly slammed her hooves into Rider multiple times, before the goat landed on her front hooves and bucked straight up into Rider’s chest lifting her off the back of the Leviathan with her anchor for a second.

Rider caught herself in the air and landed on her feet, she started getting angry and felt a pulse within her starting to build up. She growled and hefted her anchor up to start moving forward, Shanty wasn’t even going to dodge her incoming attack.

“Watch as I sail the sky~. I’m seeing the clouds pass right on by, nothing like drinking some rum happily and on the sly~.” Saying this Shanty pulled out a bottle of rum filled her mouth with the fluids, put the bottle away somewhere, held up her front hooves and smacked them together while exhaling the fluids in one constant spray to light Rider Totsugeki on fire. Rider shrieked while rolling around on the wet fleshy and highly durable scales trying to put herself out by smothering the flames. Suddenly the Leviathan started writhing in pain as if lit aflame by Shanty and she narrowed her eyes as she gripped onto the large sea serpent bucking beneath her with her hooves. “What I’m seeing is really quite subpar, are you really a pirate, is that who you truly are~?!”

When Rider got up she immediately leapt forward and slammed the anchor down at where Shanty was.

Shanty dodged under the anchor as it slammed into the Leviathans back and damaged it, the damage also caused Rider Totsugeki to grunt and Shanty narrowed her eyes at the third sign of something. There was also something else, Rider Totsugeki was starting to show signs of something that made Shanty give off a feral grin.

“You are not really quite like me and that is being truly free, so what do you say, are you going to act like a real pirate today~?!” Shanty stood tall and waited for Rider Totsugeki to attack and she met it head on, Rider tried to push Shanty back with her incredible strength and something was wrong because she couldn’t get Shanty to budge an inch as she held the Cane Scythe in front of her defensively grinning like a mad dog. “You are a pathetic spineless wench, why did your captain think you were worth more than the bench, come on you with your nasty fishy stench~!”

“Are you getting enjoyment out of this?!” Rider Totsugeki asked seriously, Shanty was half her weight, half her size and definitely not as strong as her, how was she having this much trouble with fighting a freaking goat?

She looked into the eyes of madness and saw a reflection of herself, the goat was an orphan… like Rider had been an orphan and someone took them in, her heart started beating to the rhythm of the music Shanty was following.

Her eyes widened in horror as she started seeing herself as if she was looking in a mirror, a grinning image of who she once was appeared before her.

“Let’s go on an adventure now/is that really me somehow~.” Shanty sang with Rider Totsugeki singing a part herself as she held her position and didn’t take any aggressive action. The grin on Shanty’s face widened. “I want be in the breeze/why does my heart seize~.”

At the castle one of towers rose up and a large part of tubes popped out and then fired alternating powerful cannon rounds into Leviathan’s head, making Rider Totsugeki clutch at her skull and stumble back while dropping her anchor.

Shanty calmly put away her weapon and used some water to create a blade shaped like a cutlass and she held it forward in her right hoof. A second later Rider Totsugeki found herself gathering water and creating her own sword from it, staring at it and then looking at Shanty in slight confusion about what they were going to do.

Rider Totsugeki, picked up her anchor with her right hand and placed it on her back and held the water sword forward and Shanty darted forward with excitement as they clashed swords.

“Let us go on an adventure now, think of all the sights that we’ll see, being on an adventure is as freeing as can be~.” Rider Totseugeki and Shanty sang as they clashed, their swords maintaining equally strong cohesion as they slashed and struck out at one another.

Rider started putting her heart into trying to hurt Shanty who still held her own despite not actually being good with a sword as Rider was. The nicks and cuts and the bleeding from the sharp edges of the saltwater swords they were slashing at each other with hurt a lot, but Shanty never felt more alive and her adrenaline was pumping.

“We both know what we are, there’s no holding back, when you’re going on the attack~!” Shanty had the spirit in the fight the entire time, but now Rider Totsugeki was showing her own spirit in a blaze of aura matching Shanty’s as their water blades dance and they were both enjoying the fight now. There was a light in Rider Totsugeki’s eyes that wasn’t there before, she stopped caring about Moon Cell’s orders entirely… she had something to prove to Shanty.

“There’s nothing in life quite like living free, a love of traveling around, neither of us is going back down~!” As they sang this, Shanty stabbed Rider in the right leg and received the water blade through her left shoulder for her efforts and the two water swords they wielded turned ugly red colors in their hoof and hand respectively.

“I’m starting to feel like we are a family somehow, so you best take me from this mortal coil, without a big frown~!” Rider Totsugeki grinned, it was sad that she couldn’t shout her favorite word or use Mr. Dolphin while the Leviathan was out. This fight could have gotten really wild otherwise.

The two clashed with their sword made of blood on the back of the massive serpent where their footing was constantly unsure because of what the Leviathan was doing by attacking the people in the courtyard and constantly trying to squeeze the castle into rubble.

Despite not being able to stick to the scales like Shanty, Rider Totsugeki was riding the waves of the large body’s movement and Shanty started doing the same as they leapt forward over low slices, ducked under swing and tried to stab or slash one another lethally. One could almost imagine the splashing noises as the clacking of real swords.

Like Pom, Shanty was learning to wield the blade she made from water as she directly clashed with Rider Totsugeki.

High, low, swipe at the midsection, Shanty was even being forced back as the furious flicker of sword swipes came at her. Right side bleeding, left shoulder bleeding, a deep cut along her right cheek and Shanty’s eyes no longer saw a fake pirate. She was fighting the real deal with a grin and was starting to lose, but she wasn’t going to stop pressing into the furious onslaught.

Then with one block Shanty changed the tempo of their clash back in her favor, slashing Totsugeki in the ribs causing her stagger back. A thick line of red came from the filleted fish girl’s chest.

“Let us go on an adventure now~…” Shanty sang as he performed a leaping thrust her, blade was deflected downwards and she nearly lost her left eye to the reprisal. Shanty manage to duck her head forward creating a cutting arc from her left horn to deflect the sword upwards.

“To sail the seven seas~…” A wide and bright eyed Rider Totsugeki stated as they were both slowing down.

Both of them were getting completely covered in injuries as they continued to deflect or block their opponent’s blades, trying to not let any more damaging hits pass by their guards.

“Or in the skies~…” Shanty sang as they danced the jig of death, one wrong move and they would surely perish, a slice at the right side of Shanty’s throat nearly hit an artery and she managed to retaliate by stabbing Rider in the same place Pom bit her earlier damaging the nerves in her arm and actually managing to barely hit an artery.

Without missing a beat Rider swapped her weapon to her other arm as soon she took the hit and continued clashing with Shanty.

“Either way there will surely be quite the breeze~…” Responded a smiling Rider Totsugeki even as they were trying to kill each other, they weren’t even paying attention when Rider Totsugeki started suddenly bleeding from her forehead in the exact same place the Leviathan was.

In the background a damaged tower continued to fire into huge the water spewing monstrosities head, as multiple heavily battered figures attacked it wherever they could.

“I hope that you’ll continue to go quite far, your about to beat this lark, a pirates soul that was lost to the dark~!” Rider sang as she lunged forward and tried to drive her blade into Shanty’s heart. Shanty deflects the blow upwards and Rider stepped back out of range of the follow up attack, but Shanty was much faster. “We pirates should always live by our creed~!”

“Have fantastic voyage my friend, it’s time to bleed~!” Shanty shouted as she rammed her blade straight through Rider Totsugeki’s heart and she stiffened up.

“It’s been so long… I almost forgot that song… that was inside of me… for my name is May you see, of the Jellyfish Pirates I….~” May collapsed to her knees, the water sword twisted by Shanty in her chest and a smiling May coughed up an amount of blood on the back of the slowly stilling Leviathan “Be~.”

The water sword in Shanty’s hoof dissipated and she tried to catch Rider Totsugeki as she fell forward, she really couldn’t hold up the weight of the anchor much less the girl dying in front of her and had to move back while twisting her to fall onto her back.

-Shanty-

“…” I didn’t be saying anything as I held her.

“Family… pirate crew full of orphans… Captain Johnny raised us… I’d follow him to hell again… metal whale airship... Moony will just summon me again… you… you can’t die here…” Stated a weak Rider Totsugeki… no… a greatly weakened May. “I feel it… Levianthan is about to fail… he is tied to my life and I in turn am tied to his… don’t die within Moon Cell’s grasp... don’t want to be a servant of... civilization breaker.”

“What do you be…” Then a grip of strong iron, be grabbing me by the left hoof and May be picking me up and surprisingly she be standing, my ear pressed up against her chest for a moment.

Her heart wasn’t beating, but her body still be moving on its own?! I know I be feeling her heartbeat before this as we fought and bled.

“Totsugeki!” Shouted a crying May as she spun me around, using the last bit of air in her lungs before her body fell over still on the back of the massive serpent.

I found myself being flung away as Leviathan be dissolving and I wasn’t going to land very well, until a battered Pom leapt into my path and I Impacted with her soft wool.

Pom be grunting and wincing, she also be looking to be in agony as she held me close while staring at the skeletal head of the Leviathan as the only thing that remained of it as its body rapidly dissolved.

I soon be looked towards May's disappearing form. That form be smiling to the very last moment as I sat up and watched her fall through the air. She not be turning into cubes, but instead she became a bright shining odd light that soon be flying by me to somewhere while shining brightly.

I saw a smiling face in the instant the light be passing me by and ruffling my hair, she had just become one with the wind itself… a small smile be crossing my face as I will be passing out soon.

-Moon Cell-

Another servants soul disappeared, something was very wrong.

Looking into the problem, the system froze for a full minute at seeing a limping Chrysomallus glaring up at it as it looked at her, somehow the anti-magic sheep adjacent being was staring directly at it with bright eyes.

The more disturbing and horrifying part was that said anti-magic sheep adjacent being was actually inside its systems and it was causing disastrous distortions already just by being here. It would explain the sudden disappearance of defeated souls.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

Wait, where did that soul go? She would have made for a cute dolphin Pokémon.

-Silent Castle Alexander Courtyard, Commandramon-

“Heh, we did it, woo!” I shouted as we all survived that mess, I'm surprised that nobody was outright eaten. Getting a ewe stuck in it's throat did help with it trying to eat anyone else.

“Not quite, the large PLANT is still generating EPs and the APs are being overrun. Anyone that can still fight go to the lower levels in the legs or down the tail and deal with that whale or else that victory is not going to last us long!” Dormarch called out, ruining the good mood of surviving that hellish water spewing serpent somehow. The digi-bots were heavily damage, most Commandramon needed medical attention, the biologicals did too and the Gazimon, along with Ocellus and Smolder were quickly dealing with the severely injured. “We need someone to get down there and destroy it!”

Pepper Cat had been exceptionally useful in weakening that leviathan of a beast, her electricity had seemed to slow it down a lot, not to mention the tower cannon that pummeled it ceaselessly with ammunition.

“Are you alright Shanty?” Pom did not look to healthy and some of that red was hers and not the bloodied goat she was holding.

“Can you be feeding me?” Was all Shanty said with a grin, she looks like she tore a lot of her muscles just blocking that anchor the servant was swinging around. She then went limp, either from blood loss, exhaustion or just pain as she came off her adrenaline.

“Yeah, you’ll be fine.” Pom stated flatly with half lidded eyes.

“We’re on it Dormarch, we’ll figure out something!” Sami called out, before motioning to a battered Canard and they set off to deal with the whale with two Dhelmise and a still standing Hakamo-o. Even Jeanne was down.

“Dormarch does this castle by any chance have your medical scanning?” Pom asked a second later.

“Yes.” Responded the mind behind the whole living castle idea.

“How’s my health.” Pom asked weakly as she carried Shanty over to Ocellus, I got up and started moving myself, my CO was going into trouble and I was the only able bodied digital entity among the nine Commandramon still capable of putting up a fight.

“Sadly enough, you’re good… enough… also you’re golden wool is worsening. Shanty isn’t too healthy though and she doesn’t have your mid combat ability for sealing off wounds.” Answered Dormarch as the castle started moving. I noted the increase in golden wool around Pom’s right leg and wondered what that meant for the ewe that it was halfway up to her knee. She did do some weird golden claw things during the fight against that large serpent to damage and cut away it's deadly sharp fins. “Castle Alexander is surrounded by aquatic APs, even without an ocean they’re proving to be nasty and they are slowly collapsing our territory with their raw numbers alone. If our territory collapses, we'll be sitting ducks if the ocean finish us off.”

I picked myself up and fell in with Sami, Canard and Pom a rough rasp of air leaving my lips. A soldier’s job was never done.

Author's Note

It's not over yet.

394. Dammed if you do or don’t, Finale.

-Origin Space, Tiamat-

She has only tapped the cusp of her abilities, I’m a little upset, but somewhat proud.

-Moon Cell-

It started to secretly manufacture Assassin Reapers from the present forces it had at its out layer and set them to attack two targets of opportunity. Specifically the Chrysomallus, since her presence alone was already starting to warp the system inexorably.

It also took the priority targeting of the ewe off of every Caster at its disposal, in fact it actively set Casters to avoid attacking her with magic at all costs after what happened to Circe.

It had recorded Circe’s stats before she was lost, they had dropped to F quintuple minus. Which meant she had the strength of an average pig… one that dropped from the sky, accelerated to full velocity and died upon impact with the ground.

It didn’t know what happened with Rider Totsugeki though, it tried to look into the history of the fight, but there was something like a large mass of raw chaos magic where the fight occurred between the goat and Rider took place and it appeared as soon as goat started dancing on her hind legs to an odd rhythm near the start of the clash.

The end result showed that the goat actually defeated the servant permanently somehow, because the chaotic magic in the area disappeared as soon as the fight was over and the soul was no long capable of being summoned again. Also there was the disturbing fact that Rider Totsugeki even saved the goat from dying by throwing her to safety away from a fall that would have killed them, aberrations in the programming were not allowed and yet Rider Totsugeki had managed to betray Moon Cell.

Moon Cell now had the confirmation data that the disappearing souls was occurring around the intruders, it would be more wary of who it sends after Pom’s group and was slowly cycling through a list of servants while entirely excluding Casters. Casters might still be useful though… against everyone else but the ewe, but it needed to prioritize her death before her presence ruined its invasion plans to wipe out all life in the Digital World and that of the planet of the Dimensional Pocket Monsters.

It would send Caster servant after the werewolf beast in the hopes they could deal with it through territory creation.

The two canines with the sword and shield motif required far more powerful servants, since one of them was basically Arthur Pendragon.

-Moon Cell Realm, Dike Land, Cape, Mobile Castle Alexander, Throne Room, Dormarch-

Down ninety percent power, only capable of walking, structural integrity of Castle Alexander was down sixty percent from the serpent and we have so many injured that Pom, Sami, Canard, Dodo and a single Commandramon were all we have left from that battle to go down and take care of the one thousand or so aquatic EPs trying to flood into the fortress.

The Gazimon were busy with logistics taking care of the injured or dealing with holding the upper floors of the castle. There were very few EPs signal sneaking in, but after they were inside the castle they were hard to spot. Torneko’s forces were holding the castle from being overrun at least, he wasn’t a fighter though. Cid was in engineering and he was trying to keep this humongous puppy functional and I couldn’t really distract him.

The whale was starting to sporadically generating Saber Knights, Lancer Guardians and a few Berserker Vikings. The APs, mostly Saber Knights, were quite valiant for holding out as well as they were but we only had the production power of five PLANTs that weren’t used in the creation of this castle.

We couldn’t keep the whale pinned forever, it was trying to flop out from under the paws of Alexander and the castle has taken a lot of damage. It was taking even more when the entire castle shook as the large whale slapped its tail against the front paws of the fortress.

“Welch, is the gun tower still operational?” I asked and the frowning white rabbit face popped up on a screen.

“Yes, but if we run out of power, then I won’t be able to shoot anymore. Ammunition, frankly enough, is not the issue here!” She was physically in the damaged defense tower that we managed to activate, it thankfully wasn’t using too much power to fire, but it had taken damage from a few of those water lasers. “If you’re asking me if I can target the whale, it’s far too low… well except for the tail. The several tower turrets are more for anti-air or artillery functions, than for direct applications like what we used against the serpent.”

I once again found myself working with a rabbit, I really missed Miss Bunny Shuttle, I’m sure my friend misses me too.

Water can cut through steel if given enough pressure and this castle was going to need a large amount of repairs after such an onslaught with that ‘kaiju’ as Dolly termed it and we were still dealing with more enemies even after the servant had been dealt with.

“Shoot that then and stop it from damaging the paws further!” I glanced at Dolly looking around at the entrances while relaxing, but her eyes narrowed and she threw the stone bone towards the ceiling.

An Assassin Reaper fell from it and she was on it in an instant while catching the stone bone on the rebound as she descended on them.

“Warning to all hands of Castle Alexander, Assassin Reapers have infiltrated the castle, they are going to come after you mom and they are going to be coming for me too. The injured in the courtyard are vulnerable, so be wary while patching everyone up out there.” My renaming the castle after ‘Alexander the Great’ seemed like a good idea at the time, but our situation wasn’t so great and we weren’t conquering as well as we could be. “Watch the ceilings and your backs, do not go anywhere alone!”

I was named after a fish tailed hound seen in mythologies across several worlds, including moms… I sometimes wondered if my name has some connotations of fate or destiny to it, because the whole ‘crest of miracles’ thing was pointing at it quite hard.

Dolly eventually tore the Assassin Reaper apart enough that it was rendered a pile of cubes that I drew towards myself, I needed a pick me up as the battle wasn’t over yet.

“Dormarch where are we going from here?” Mom called and I had the systems light up a path forward for the team that might somehow deal with the thousands of enemies surrounding Castle Alexander. At least our PLANTs that produced APs were still fully functional and the Lancer Guardians had them locked down.

“Hurry up and take out that whale sized PLANT, we don’t have much time.” The blue territorial barrier keeping the flooding sea at bay slowly flickered red. “I’m rerouting some of the APs to patrol the castle and deal with the EPs that are getting by the AP defensive line down there.”

“Enemy efforts are currently making several systems inoperable.” Well aware of that Alexander.

-Emergency Medical area, Alexander Castle Courtyard, Ocellus-

“These injuries… I think Shanty is actually doing it, she might actually catch up with Pom in capability.” I continued to bandage Shanty, fearfully wondering about the situation.

“What makes you say that?” Smolder asked as she helped me check over Shanty and make sure the bandages were tight and staunching the bleeding. I used my magic to clean and pull all the sediments from sea swords out of her wounds.

“You know how Pom can surpass the limitations of her body at a great cost when she uses Shock Ram, Shanty did something similar like that not too long ago considering her current injuries.” Given I could see and even detect the numerous injuries that came with it, Shanty might have done a less painful version of limitation breaking and as such the kind of damage wasn’t as comparable as Pom always being near death afterwards. I’m fairly certain that Shanty could do it while performing a song or dancing. “Is Pepper Cat going to be okay?”

“She’ll be fine, she’s tough.” Krosserdog stated normally, despite his left arm and lower half of his body missing armor and a weapon from it entirely revealing the legs and arms basic framework beneath. “She’s just been rendered entirely down to her tinpet frame and is missing all her combat parts. It would be worrying if her tinpet body was mostly destroyed and her medal slot was damaged.”

Yeah, the serpent really didn’t like Pepper Cat, possibly because it didn’t like electrical or lightning energy.

“Her combat capacity is just greatly diminished until her parts self-repair program returns her to full fighting capacity. As long as her medal is intact, she’ll be fine.” Rokusho stated as his entire body was covered in cracks, but he still had all his parts intact and they were slowly mending. Pepper Cat, she didn’t have any parts and her body that was underneath said parts was cracked. “How’s Shanty?”

“Tore herself up, but unlike Pom who might have a habit of nearly killing herself, Shanty actually has some sense of self-preservation and is not cursed to sacrifice herself at the nearest problem.” Grousing from me aside, Shanty just needed rest and didn’t have any life threatening injuries despite looking to have been run through at least twice. Pom was still going to go fight for us again.

Dodo, that bio mechanical wonder of a metal ostrich familiar, was currently providing aerial support for the APs below or that’s what I thought he was doing. He’s flown by quite a few times and was spitting explosive pastries from his beak below the castle at a slow rate, but the explosions they caused should be helping regardless.

“I haven’t known Pom for long, but that sounds accurate for some reason after the whole Server City incident.” Rokusho stated before looking to Metabee whose head parts and right arm were missing, Metabee was out cold. Rokusho was possibly the leader of the four Digi-bots and it showed with how well he carried himself and that he was the only one still whole out of the four of them. “As for the announcement, I will watch the area and make sure no one assaults the injured.”

Looking up at the nearby tower, the only one with a pair of cannons poking out of it, fired downwards aiming in the direction of the head.

“Smolder can you help Rokusho protect the area? I have to get to the Jeanne next.” Getting a nod from Smolder, I got the bandages and fruit.

Making my way over to Jeanne I saw that she was sitting upright the only one among the hakamo-o doing so as I approached. The banner was somewhat messy, but it was still surprisingly intact.

-At the bottom of a Ladder around Castle Alexander’s hind legs, Pom-

I stepped off the ladder onto a ledge and looked about.

A large amount of EPs were around the front paws of the castle, we didn’t have any problems getting off the ladder and there weren’t any EPs up the hill. We did have problems with getting here though, Dormarch was rather quick on the warning of Assassin Reapers being around. Took down at least five of them in quick succession and they were exclusively targeting me again.

So it meant that what I saw was in fact the eye of Moon Cell staring down on me, looked like a yellow gas ball inside a cube with a corner broken off. Didn’t take it long to have the whale start making Reapers to send after me and we had its attention, now we had to keep it and make it harder for it to invade the two worlds. We needed to make it want us gone by any means necessary and we had to survive said any means necessary, like what we were going through right now.

I sighed as I was being driven to heroism, I sometimes wished that I drank like Shanty does.

The Commandramon moved over to the edge of the cliff the right hind leg Castle Alexander had situated on and pulled out a pair of Binoculars.

“The front legs are still holding the whales mouth shut, lots of Knifefins around it waiting to launch at anyone that gets too close. It’s like they are acting as living shrapnel mines. The APs are not doing too great down there.” The Commandramon swept his binoculars about. “Our territory barrier holding the sea back is failing. What’s your call Sami?”

The whale tried to slap its tail upwards only to be blasted back down from the tower of the castle on the giant dog fortresses back… I was going to have a long talk with Dormarch about the whole fortress dog thing.

“Let’s not forget the fact that some EPs are also getting in through the front legs as they damage them.” Sami continued as she prepped her bazooka.

“It’s big, how are we going to damage it, I don’t honestly think you’re launcher has enough raw power to seriously damage that thing. We can’t even get close to it either without being swarmed.” Canard grumbled as he stared at the large pinned down whale.

“The Paralance can damage it, it can damage just about anything really, but blocking the Knifefins would take up most of my attention.” Speaking of something that had my attention, I saw Dodo blast something and I grabbed the binoculars and focused on the spot to see Dodo was helping the APs out. They spawned into the area fought off a few EPs and then were swarmed and violently destroyed in a variety of ways quickly, like the one that just took a Knifefin to the heart. That poor Lancer Guardian.

“It’s already pretty badly damaged, so…” Sami started to say only for Canard to cut her off.

“For a given definition of it sure, but again, would your explosives crack that thing open or do enough damage?” There was a pause as Canard watched Sami consider our options before we did anything.

“I know how we can get near the whale, but we’ll want to clear the Knifefins if we want to get on top of it.” Honestly I could have just jumped from the head of the Castle Alexander and landed on it or did some gliding around. Putting my hooves up to my mouth, I shouted at our favorite metal bird. “Dodo!”

Going against several hundred aquatic monsters and the generic bipedal soldiers that were all EPs was not good odds to glide into. Doing so was a good way to get myself stabbed to death by hundreds of flying knife fish. So really we chose the safer option to get us down here, I don’t know if Dodo could fly with all of our weight. Sure he was bigger to accommodate flying with multiple passengers on top of him, or possibly hanging from his clawed feet, but I wouldn’t test that at the moment. So we probably made the right call to climb down one of the back legs leg, plus high ground is always helpful.

Dodo swooped in and hovered in front of us for a few seconds before landing and he rubbed his beak up against me affectionately while warbling.

“Good to see you too Dodo, we’re going to need your help with something.” A curious sounding mechanical whine came from him. “How much liquid caramel can you generate and can you make it to some rather particular exact specifications? Also can you do just about any dessert topping?”

Dodo blinked, then gave me a flat look as if he was insulted that I would think that he couldn’t do just about anything with pastries at this point. If he could do this, then it would definitely add a new one to his bag of odd pastry related tricks as a familiar.

The highly carbonized bread loaves were oddly effective blunt tools, the exploding pastry bombs were inventive and obviously powerful, but now I wanted Dodo to take things to an even more ridiculous conclusion of his pastry spitting skills as far as his offensive abilities are concerned.

-Twenty minutes later-

We were skirting the edge of the EPs horde and waiting for Dodo to do his part, to that end we found a nice boulders to sit behind while the fighting continued on. We would try to get behind the whale, but in the case that we do get noticed… well we were going to purposeful reveal ourselves once close enough that the Knifefins would launch themselves at us.

Dodo had already started to spray the special chemistry concoction over all the EPs in the way, mostly the Knifefins guarding the whale, I wondered if my science was correct on this or not. The spray and raining of globules of small cinnamon rolls went entire ignored as it did nothing to the throngs of EPs in the way.

“Dodo is one weird machine, you do realize that the concoction you told him to make is fairly diabolical right?” Well Sami, we had need of such a thing. Besides, we weren’t using this against anyone living so I was less worried with what was about to occur.

“Well Dodo has shown the habit that he can make or replicate just about any pastry on demand, mind you the stuff he makes the pastries from has always been of a questionable source to me. Given that it hasn’t killed Shanty yet, I’m sure Dodo makes the food he generates safe for consumption. However I’m of the mind that he never has the resources to make the things he does, so therefore he’s likely doing so through some odd form of magical chemistry or outright regular alchemy.” That’s about as far as I got with trying to work out how Dodo’s ability to spit pastries worked. “If he can chemically do anything with pastries such as almost make diamonds to use as projectiles to making explosives out of sugar, it stands to reason that what we’re about to do makes sense in the context that he’s capable of using any form of bakery related chemistry.”

“While this is a fascinating conversation, prepare to move out and get ready to wail on that…” Canard stopped and slapped his face with his right hand, slowly slid it down his beak and shook his head. “Ugh, the pun… anyway we need to bring that thing down before it takes us down. I’m ready to take the fight to it.”

“I am too.” Sami readied her bazooka.

“Modifying my personal DCD bomb for a shaped thermite blasts.” Rookie said as he seemed to be looking at something that only he could see.

“… I’m not ready and have my reservations, but we’re doomed if we don’t do this.” Since I really doubted Moon Cell was going to leave us be after all of this.

“We’re probably going to have problems even after we do, but I think we’ll manage if we can survive what was thrown at us here.” Canard stated as he got a tight two handed grip on his Valora made hockey stick.

“The odds of survival statistically raise the more horrible situations you survive mostly intact.” Sami quoted with a slight twitch in her left eye and Rookie wasn’t commenting on what Sami said, but his solemn reaction to Sami’s words spoke volumes. “Sanity being entirely optional.”

Soon afterwards Rookie just firmed his jaw and tightened his grip on his rifle and aimed it forward while looking down the sights at the EPS, keeping his claw off the trigger of his weapon, but ready to start shooting.

“Right I’m leading the charge since this is my idea, just be ready to cover your eyes… this is going to be a bit bright.” Corn syrup turned into ethanol, some very special cinnamon dust covered caramel with the consistency of flash paper that will burn like thermite and has a special ingredient and the last bit of interest to give the concoction some explosive strength, nitrocellulose napalm icing injected buns.

As many would say, too much sugar is truly bad for your health.

I smacked my hooves together and started to prepare one of the most devastating use of Thousand Spears: Huo I think I will ever have to date. The whale hadn’t broken free from being stuck under Castle Alexander, but it was certainly training and there was no way I could miss something that big at this range.

Sending mental warning to Dormarch and Dolly as I began my work, I started swirling the spark into a powerful fireball that will be ready for the upcoming devastation and Dodo kept spreading his Cluster Napalm Cinnamon bombs as I built up for my attack.

I carefully stepped out of the hiding spot while still maintaining control of the concentrated swirling fireball, I was never meant to do this technique while moving. I took aim at the side of the whale’s large body and hoped everyone inside Castle Alexander was okay.

“Fire in what I’m hoping is a big hole!” I fire of the flaming spear and the heat that launched forth blue across the field in the form of a large flaming spiraling spear.

The first contact with the heat caused the first bit of the cinnamon sticking to the buns to fill the air with powder and then said powder was ignited by the caramel and the core napalm icing caused small explosion’s that caused multiple explosions to spread out amongst the enemy.

The entire area around the whale quickly became uninhabited by the enemy and the territory barrier turned straight blue instead of flickering increasingly red.

It was like the sun had flared where the staircase down to the plaza used to be and now everything except Fortress Alexander was on fire there.

I had to close my eyes at the intensity, after the glare died down I blinked the spots out of my eyes and saw the damage I dealt.

Darn it, the whale was still operational! It now it had a decent hole in its body and everything around it was a sea of flames making it hard for it to generate EPs at least, but it was still struggling.

Our APs started to build up around the front paws, entirely unaffected by the glare and as meager in numbers as they were, they were going to be important soon and they were finishing off the EPs that survived the conflagration by the fact that they were attacking the legs.

Dormarch, tell the APs to defend my team, we’re going to move in soon and start attacking the whale directly.

Yes, I’m aware that even though it has no water or very much maneuverability at the moment that it is still very much highly dangerous. Just keep the mouth shut, the body pinned beneath Alexander and we’ll try to destroy it, as long as a servant doesn’t show up we can end this before anything can get any worse today.

“Those… are some very devastating pastries.” The Commandramon with the call sign ‘Rookie’ stated as the flames reflected in his eyes. “Too bad they require something for detonation.”

“Technically they don’t, they’ll act as land mines if you step on them or jostle them.” Dodo could in fact manufacture what I asked him to. If enough of the cinnamon on the buns was disturbed, then it’ll go off just like it currently has.

“So we wait for the fire to die down and then move in.” Canard stated calmly as his muscles tensed and flexed.

“Correct, the mixture ‘should’ make it last for twenty more seconds according to Dormarch.” I was going to get up close on all fours draw any new EPs generated from the whale, then we start attacking it with whatever we had at our disposal.

Sami and the Commandramon had explosives, I could go for the Paralance and magical wolf claws, even Canard had his slapshot technique and the only problem was the level of effectiveness we could possibly have.

“Flame dying down, go-go-go!” Called out Rookie and I started forward at a pace far faster than the bipedal friends could keep up with.

A beam of red light was immediately on me, coming from the whale’s eye and it started generating EPs in my path as I was on approach, an Assassin reappear leapt at me as soon as it finished forming and its bladed spindly limbs preparing to come down on me. Only to get caught in a swooping Dodo’s claws and was promptly ripped in half.

What followed was a whole volley of Knifefins aimed at me, I slowed down went onto my hind legs and brought the paralance around and up to deflect them off the canopy when I opened it up fully. I kept moving forward and could barely feel the number of impacts that slammed into the weapon as I kept it angled high.

Several more EPs formed in my path a Kraken and a Berserker Shark, the shark lunged off the ground at me.

With a quick breathe, I sped up hopped up and stomped its nose into the dirt, broke it’s back fine with a quick swipe as I passed by it and then leapt forward lance first to ram it into the body of the Kraken and topple it in a mass of flailing tentacles as I kicked off and continued my forward dash.

About one hundred feet from it ten Saber Knights spawned in my path, I held the paralance forward, closed it up slightly and then inhaled sharply and exhaled to blast through them instantly like a bowling ball knocking over pins.

I quickly had to deflect a spear coming at me to the side as a Lancer Guardian tried to leapt and stabbed at me. This was followed by several others charging for me, only to be gunned down a second later by two streams of bullets and a Slapshot of energy from Canard took out the one I had locked down.

It wasn’t long before I was at the left side of the whale’s face, it summoned a Berserker Shark and it was quickly pinned to the ground by several swords as the APs had arrived. The shark would struggle as the several Saber Knights held it in place until it disappeared.

A rocket from Sami flew by and into the scorched hole and made the whale shift about in pain, but the large dog faced walking castle continue to keep it under its paws. It was followed by another round of pained noises as Rookie lobbed an explosive device into the scorch hole and it caused more damage.

Dodo flew in and another explosion went off in the whale’s head, why hasn’t this thing fallen yet? Just how tough was it exactly?! Was it just that ridiculously tough? If it wasn’t for the APs or Rookie and Sami having fast firing weapons, we’d have been skewered by the numerous Knifefins come at us as they were generated with a disturbing amount of momentum as if they were being fired from a gun like bullets.

Canard Leapt forward and slapped the blade of his stick into the whale and scratched its hide, he leapt back as it tried rotate its body to slap its left fin down on him. He sent a Slapshot into one of its eyes, now that did some damage.

“RRRRRrrrrrrrRRrRRrRrRrRrR… yip!” A large amount of its hide cracked moderately when my bark breaker struck, that still wasn’t enough as it brought its tail around to slap at us and was blasted back from above by the castle’s tower gun. I’m pretty certain that my bark breaker shouldn’t work on digital or living things, unless it was of a rigid material.

We’ve hit this whale with explosions from the inside, we’ve hit from the outside, I’ve burned a hole into its side, we hit it with a territory shockwave, we put the entire weight of a castle on it plus the dog shaped fortress underneath it to slowly crush it. What exactly would it take to finally end this thing?

“Keep at it!” I leapt onto it and started to rapidly claw at it wielding my magic claw attack to tear small bits off of it.

More explosions from Sami and Rookie, more slapshots from Canard and even Dodo was tossing more Cinnabombs into it lighting up its insides every time they were ignited by an explosion.

The whale continued to wiggle underneath the paws of Alexander, summon EPs which the APs were trying to handle. I had to block a few streams of Knifefins.

Once we were done with this thing we could finally get some rest.

Then the whale tore a chunk of its own skull to pull backwards and free of Castle Alexander and opened its mouth wide to start build up energy.

“Dormarch….” The response I received as that Castle Alexander didn’t have the energy to react to the sudden change in the situation, its massive pillars it called legs slammed into the ground. However thanks to the lowered angle from the whale no longer being underneath it, the tower one started firing shots into the whale’s right side.

Sami and Rookie were throwing explosives into its mouth and firing rockets, Canard started attacking with several successive Slapshot attacks and it focused its red beams on us even as it was hit by shell after shell. I even started firing Bark Busters into its mouth and tried to bark breaker its insides.

It just wouldn’t stop charging its beam attack and it wouldn’t die, we were hitting it with quite literally whatever we had.

I stopped spitting attacks and slammed the edge of the canopy of the wide open Paralance into the ground as hard I could and slammed down my rear leg to dig the back end of it into the ground as well.

“Take cover behind me, Dodo stay away!” I called out to the others, Rookie was immediately behind it with me and he pushed down on it like I did.

Sami and Canard made to move, but the whale was rearing up and already starting to breathe its beam into the ground in front of it and swept it at us I inhaled. Neither of them were going to make it.

Sami looked to her right and frowned, then to Canard directly to her left and she shoulder checked him the ground.

“Commandramon Digivolve to…” Sami screamed in slow motion as I continued to watch in Slow motion as she positioned herself in front of Canard intending to give him a chance to survive this by using her body as a shield and she even positioned her bazooka in the path of the beam as she planted it against the ground.

That she was even evoking a digital evolution meant…

“Sami!” Canard’s call came before the beam the impacted the Paralance and I was blinded by the roar of heat and the canopy starting to turn a bright red, but the heat didn’t travel down the shaft as I felt the Commandramon known as Rookie braced me.

…

I took forty seconds for the roaring in my ears to give way to a dull throb, both Dolly and Dormarch were shouting at me worriedly mentally, but I told them I was fine. Well mostly, my ears hurt and the heat singed me a bit, because the attack occurred in dry air and not in water.

“Sami, CO?!” Rookie called out as he stood up, I was still blinking the spots out of my eyes as I saw Canard was laying on the ground completely fine… so that meant.

“Eat this, Stampede XM!” Roared the slightly deepened female voice of what only had to be Sami Soldier hold a blue glowing barrier extending from the oddly designed shield in her right hand that didn’t look like it could protect much.

Her evolution didn’t look how she described a Sealsdramon as being. In fact she looked like a bigger armored version of herself and her bazooka had changed into something else, said weapon’s barrel was beginning to spin rapidly.

“She truly is a CO to worth following into the Dark Area without fear for.” Rookie said with bright eyes and a look of awe as a massive number of round objects sprayed out of her changed weapon.

When the first explosion went off it blew the whale back, followed by multiple impressive consecutive blasts as every round explosive device ended up in the whales mouth forcing it to bodily slide backwards with every blast.

“G-loader!” The weapon’s barrel started turning and chunking as the whale groaned, Sami looked at her weapon and then at her shield. “Wha… what am I? I’m…. I’m a not a Sealsdramon…. heh heh… bahahaha… I’m not a Sealsdramon… Canard I’m not a Sealsdramon! I’m not going to go psycho and slaughter all of my friends… WOO!”

Sami was crying and the look of joy on her armored face was contagious, her helmet now looked grafter to her face or fit perfectly to it with a large horn on the tip of her nose.

“Hi-Commandramon, alternative heavy infantry specialist alternative evolution, can specialize in virus busting or firewall cracking, among other things. New signature move logged Program 'Stampede XM', instantly fires thirty grenades with the impact of a mortar shell and the power of a rocket from a missile vehicle with a lethal explosive range of a few meters. The spread of the move is meant to deal with large groups of enemies or one particularly big enemy such as in this instance.” The digivice Canard held showed a spinning image of what Sami currently looked like. “Data from the Agumon line becomes more prevalent as seen by the horn which is comparable to the primary agumon evolution of Greymon, among many other minor alterations and an increased size and combat potential.”

“Huh, neat, uh… wow you’re a lot smaller now Canard...” That or you got a lot bigger Sami, honestly now you’re like half of what Frizzle does in size.

“I’m just glad you’re alright.” Canard stated after staring at her goofy grinning form.

“Guys, the whale.” I reminded them as the whale was shaking off the damage that Sami dealt to it and it was still summoning EPs even now to come at us. Rookie was at least focusing fire on them and the APs had it mostly handled as they moved forward with their shields to block a shotgun spray of Knifefins.

What would it finally take to finish the whale off?

Castle Alexander slammed its right paw down and partially caved its skull in. Everything was quiet for a second. The whale wailed and then continued to summon more aquatic EPs forgoing the biped generics of Viking, Knight, Guardian or even the occasional Reaper.

“Oh come on!” As I said this I mentally contact Dormarch and asked why the tower gun wasn’t firing.

What I was quickly told was that Castle Alexander had a power issue and was at five percent, basically it couldn’t really do too many more big actions until we let the power restore… plus there’s all the damage to the castle and the canine body beneath it. I looked at the tower had retracted to being a normal tower.

Dormarch still got the left paw raised and was going to bring it down on the whale that was on its last dregs.

The left paw slammed downwards and then…

The whale vanished and both the front paws of the castle slammed into the ground kicking up a massive dust wave.

“What just happened Dormarch!” I said out loud as much as mentally.

…

“Moon Cell recalled it?!” Just when we were so close to finishing it off too. “Right, we’ll be there soon.”

There was no need for cleanup, the EPs disappeared as soon as the whale had. The entirety of cape was now shining blue to show we have taken the territory in its entirety.

We had taken Dike Land and Moon Cell was quite uncomfortably aware of us now.

-Thirty minutes later, Castle Alexander Courtyard-

“So this is what power saver mode feels like, nice and efficient…” Sami stated as she returned to being a Commandramon and had several badly injured Commandramon looking up to her with pride. “So glad that’s my evolution… so what’s my next one?”

I heard a slight hint of fear in Sami’s voice and rolled my eyes, she refused to become a Sealsdramon so she simply didn’t. She had certainly been willing to do so to protect Canard at least.

Dormarch padded up to me with a slightly tired Dolly and she grinned while waving at me exuberantly.

“So now what?” I asked and everyone turned to me, oh right Jeanne was out and I was technically the second leader.

…

Why me?

“Okay…” I said as the stress began to build up on my skull and I looked at the golden wool taking up half my right leg where before it was just a ring above my hoof... and that stress became several times worse. I needed the sacrificial energy to fight that serpent at the time. “Focus on medical first we have injuries in various degrees so worst concerns first, anyone who can’t help with that will proceed to eat something, followed by at least three hours rest for all personal who took part in combat, those who didn't like the Gazimon need to start on the repairs, also someone really needs to get an idea of our current situation and what resources we have available to us after all of that. If anyone has any suggestions, PLEASE bring them to me about what we should do next or what we can do to put us in a better situation than now. I really doubt Moon Cell is just going to wait for us to get back on our hooves, they are quite aware that we’re here and after what we just pulled off… they are going to want us all dead quite badly now.”

-Moon Cell-

Since the ewe fought like a Lancer, a Saber was deemed appropriate expenditure for taking out the nuisances that seized the entirety of an outer layer realm.

Summoning Servant Saber…

…

Summoning successful.

Saber ‘Jack’ being sent to guard the next area they are likely to move to. Minimal usage of elite programs authorized.

Continuing invasion of Ransei Continent and Digital Realm. Ordering troops. Spreading influence.

Heavy resistance expected, servants still cannot exit Moon Cell realm. Will soon be able to deploy servants to the Digital Realm as the foothold is almost large enough to send just one. It would be enough without an equally powerful figure to counter it.

Cycling through servant list for Digital Realm invasion and takeover.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

Hmmm… they are in a bit of a bind. Their mode of transport was sturdy at the very least.

“Mirage Mew will soon be arriving to assist them.” Celebi stated with firm look on their face. “I personally made sure of it, now where do you need me father?”

“Rest a while, you are on reserve for the moment.” After I said this I watched as Celebi flutter over to the buffet bar I had made and stocked not too long ago, the Legendary Pokémon could get quite hungry.

That should hopefully be enough reinforcements on top of whatever PLANTs they can scrounge to wield even more of those Allied Programs and greater variations therein.

What is your next move Moon Cell? You’ve armies all over the place attacking everything at once, but where were you going to focus specifically… would you truly focus on Pom above all else or would you think only a specific servant or two could take her out and try to take the Digital Realm? Would you try to focus down weakening Ransei overall so that you can snatch the souls of the heroes that live there? It would be a disaster if Moon Cell got a hold of Cotton Murkrow, but King Evan is already securing her when nearby Moon Cell moves in Viperia.

“Can we move Amaterasu onto the field?” Tiamat asked while watching over Shanty curiously, she seemed quite intent with focusing on the Capricornus. With good reason no less as I saw the soul she resonated with flowing around her in a friendly manner, Moon Cell would not be able to touch that one as long as Shanty lived.

“No, I will not manipulate Amaterasu’s movements directly, she is quite powerful and I cannot risk her becoming a… distraction. I will do something to prod her into a helpful position if she’s even halfway willing to be there… while she’s not exactly an ally and might never be one, she might be a great boon to the Digital Realm quite soon.” The Yggdrasil System was putting efforts into trying to send aid to Pom’s group as they were in a beneficial position to her, being only one part of a larger whole series of interconnected Yggdrasil Systems across multiple worlds. “One wonders what will happen when Pom finally meets her.”

That one part by itself wasn’t powerful as the collective, but the local Yggdrasil System was still making a good showing of resisting a powerful foes invasion, it was unfortunate that she could not personally breach Moon Cell’s systems currently as she was on the defensive.

Moon Cell has several breaches of their own to worry about, with the two liberated hero souls that became legendary Pokémon who are currently surviving in the heart of the enemy territory with what little room they have of their own mixes of territory. One bit of Territory of knights, chivalry and medieval flair and the other territory resembling a slightly higher tech organization that fixed the destruction of time and space of another world that was rendered almost impossible to bring back.

The neutral Fou was also being quite the major thorn by creating a wild uninhibited territory. A free zone where anything goes and he’s enjoying fighting his own territories programs as much as any invading force Moon Cell tries to send to take back the territory. Even the PLANTs were wild and respected power more than coding, Moon Cell would not ignore the virus like implications of that. Any servants used there would have to be the most powerful of Berserkers to even survive in the environment that the world beast was expanding by existing.

Now would be a good time to make a chess analogy for the audience hmmm... Pawn to One D Four, your move.

Author's Note

The Moby Dick Program has escaped destruction, like some kind of mythical whale that is really hard to end permanently.

Still, Moon Cell ceded territory to recover a powerful resource, otherwise it might have lost the whale for nothing gained aside from information.

395. Leadership Logistics.

-Moon Cell Realm, Outer Layer, Dike Land, Far Side of Cape City, Pom-

I just sat here on the docks listening to the sound of the waves lapping against them and was happy to take my three hour break away from everyone, even Dolly and Dormarch weren’t here.

The only one here was Dodo and he was just sitting there quietly watching me take in the fresh breeze at the docks.

The dike was fixed, the water has been receded and most importantly we did find the NPCs that could fix all the damage. They were in the sections of the city that were entirely flooded over with ocean earlier in the battle before we could even reach the territory. Said NPCS had been trying to contact Moon Cell about performing their functions, but the problem is that Moon Cell told them to wait for the intrusion to be dealt with. The exact wording is why we were able to utilize their services, Moby Dick did intrude and cause the issued as much as we were an intrusion ourselves.

Things were dealt with, we survived the experience, with some good logic we restored Cape to its former glory before we started our Counter Invasion. Now we had control of the place, but I really doubted we could hold it if we were attacked now.

…

Why hadn’t we been attacked immediately after taking Cape?

The program Moby Dick escaped us and Dormarch mentioned something about hunting a white whale leading to a lot of death and destruction in the form of a story involving a captain hunting said named whale and it was considered a force of nature. Apparently we just saw that whale come to life and it was one we’d have to face again eventually.

To that end we had the APs working repairs on Castle Alexander. The castle had a variety of problems, it drained energy like a sieve, it couldn’t run all of its artillery towers all at once and they were manual operation, the damage the serpent did meant we couldn’t use the flying option until the white feathered wings were fixed, the dog shaped fortress overwhelmingly slow and the only real thing it had going for it was overwhelming territorial dominance field. Said dominance field for our territory was at the great cost of multiple PLANTs we acquired through exceedingly dangerous sea salvaging efforts inside the enemy’s side of the field.

The Holy Judgment attack, while powerful, almost drained the mobile fortress to uselessness. Apparently it had an upgrade to said attack called Divine Judgement and it couldn’t even use it because of the power drain from just doing Holy Judgement was bad enough.

Alexander was thirty percent operational, which meant the castle can walk and perform melee attacks at best, maybe send power to operate one or two towers for artillery support. Ammo wasn’t the issue as apparently the rabbit called Welch had us entirely covered on the side of manufacturing things. Cid had engineering and wanted to get the castle flying again. Patch Cabbage apparently had our limited food supplies situation handled… never saw someone wielding a hoe so fervently before.

I idly popped a bit of cabbage into my mouth and quietly chewed through it.

As for Torneko Taloon… don’t know what to think of the guy, but he thought we needed a merchant who can procure some rather ‘esoteric’ stuff as he put it. The NPCs we brought onto our side were definitively with us, but him… he stayed neutral to us. Which was worrying when he had all of those Berserker Minotaur Mercenaries inside the castle and had set up shop… a literal shop in the middle of our mobile fortress.

I wondered how useful such a ship would be, given I don’t understand some things about how Moon Cell works or why such a merchant guy would exist, my question was met with a jovial laugh and I’ll see the merits of his being on board with us eventually even if we didn’t know how we would exactly be paying him.

I made a mental note to get back to that later, my three hour break was almost up.

“Dodo… do you think I’m the one people should look to for leadership?” I knew how to lead a pack of dogs, I know how to raise a pack of dogs… basically all canine related things were quite simple to me what with the Canine Division of Huoshan thriving under my watch. It’s been a while since I thought of Huoshan, the three tiered stone city.

I didn’t know anything about leading a castle load of people aside from try to keep everyone fed, sheltered and listen to what everyone is telling you to get all views on things. Hopefully Jeanne would be back up and capable of taking the pressure off of me soon.

Dodo moved over to me and nuzzled me gently while warbling in a chipper tone, well that was a vote of confidence I currently didn’t have. Dodo now had the ability to create a field of fire and multiple explosions, which had been fairly terrifying against all the sea based EPs… but the set up took a bit to do.

I was once afraid of the mechanical ostrich, but since he became Shanty’s familiar he’s been a big softy and was a loving being. Sure he was mostly metal and had a weird ability to survive having ninety percent of his body melted, but he was a stalwart companion… probably the perfect one for Shanty.

Clambering up onto Dodo’s back, I pointed towards the castle lowered onto its belly and its canine mouth is a wide open entrance into the castle. Having taken over Cape, we were at least getting some resources for the repairs from the local NPCs that ran this particular realm. Even with the repairs they offered, we’d only be at about fifty percent capability and could barely get our power situation under control.

“Come on, I know you want to watch over Shanty and I need to see about what else we need to do and how are we going to move onto the next part of Moon Cell.” Again, why wasn’t Moon Cell flooding at least some of its resources at us? Was it just that busy with invading the other two realms that it would rather I come to it then it coming after me?

Dodo warbled, and once I was properly seated, he took off like a flash on foot. His large size carrying me across the city in less than a minute, his flying ability was slower than he could run and I think Dodo was working on that.

“If you need our help, we’ll figure out how to get out of Dodo’s head and lend some assistance, he already knows how to friendship without us and you might need Harmony OS to help you.” Huh? Who said that?

I looked at Dodo and wondered what was going on with him, that voice sounded somewhat familiar… like Princess Twilight Sparkle. Couldn’t be her, she was still back on Equus.

-Five minutes later, Castle Alexander, throne room-

“Okay, report, how bad is it Dormarch?” I asked and he grimaced, yeah I didn’t need the answer. “Don’t tell me then… how are we getting to the next section of Moon Cell and do we even know where we are going if we do?”

“Come look at this mom.” Dormarch patted an empty space on the throne next to him and I sat down at his side, I ran my left hoof over his head gently making him blush as he brought up a screen. I saw on it a moonlit city compared to our current perpetual day, various buildings that looked like more modern ones you’d see in Neighpon or some of the ones I saw in Dolly’s world and it was apparently constantly nighttime there. “That’s our next probable destination and major battle, City of Lost Destiny, Mare Melum… enemy activity is fairly high there. Moon Cell is practically waiting for us to run into whatever it setting up in our path. Can’t get us any actual visuals on the threats until we actually go there, but things are bound to be worse than what we faced here… can I just say that we were quite lucky to be underestimated with the Caster servant to start things off? Also her body makes for some pretty good Bacon, I would offer you some but… yeah… you don’t want to eat any more flesh than you already have.”

I could eat meat now, there were no questions about it and nobody was saying anything about it much less thinking on it. I was going to try avoiding doing so personally, but my stomach could handle it if necessary and I kind of wish I didn’t have the capacity for it. It meant I could now actually enjoy the fish based dishes my Tenko enjoys when I cooked for it.

Given that he emphasized the ‘B’, he wasn’t talking about ‘Haycon’ the vegetarian and pony friendly version of the pan sizzled strip food. I wasn’t going to comment on us using the pig body that was left behind by the servant we incidentally took out at the start of our invasion, I’m not the one eating it… also Dolly was noticeably happily chewing on something between her paws and I’d rather not ask.

“What are our other options?” If we had any was what I wanted to say.

“Arena Labyrinth…” Putting it up on the screen I saw a long winding route around to where we wanted to be… we were going to target Moon Cell’s core after all.

“Yeah, I can see why we’re avoiding that… though it might be a little easier to prevent surprise attacks given we can see everything and could even bottleneck a few locations, we’d have to slowly push through hordes of EPs to get across it though, which will be far too slow given how far out of the way we’ll be taken.” It was a thing we needed to do, we had to threaten Moon Cell directly and really ramp up the pressure to deal with us and earn its focus.

“School and Colosseum route.” Dormarch brought it up on the screen, this seemed… better than the other two.

“That… both those areas combined seemed shorter than going through Mare Melum.” Where was the downside?

“Yeah, but we won’t be able to move Castle Alexander through the school area, we’d be functionally moving with half our current supplies and minimal combat ability.” What Dormarch meant is that we’d have to go through the small school region, then entire a large region with heavy defensive ability and our meager Allied Program forces.

We could hold the school realm indefinitely at the very least as a choke point and a supply base, but we couldn’t move Castle Alexander along that route and said castle was our best bet with dealing with larger problems like the serpent. Also we could only have so many APs active with us entering the Colosseum realm and it was going to be heavily fortified given how big it is, so the school realm was as much a chokepoint to us as it was for them. We really needed Castle Alexander to come with us, despite some concerns on my part that it’s a giant dog with a castle on its back.

“What was the name of that serpent?” I asked idly as I considered something about the best route being the one Moon Cell knew we’d want to take and would prepare accordingly.

“Leviathan, thankfully it’s life was tied to that of the servants… don’t know how that is going to mentally effect Shanty when she wakes up to find out she had to basically kill someone to save us all.” Yeah, that was a rather iffy area of discussion that was bound to come up Dormarch, unless we avoided the subject entirely as we’re going to do that several times before this is over with.

We were currently at war and this time we couldn’t be on the sidelines or a simple courier team… well nothing was simple about the White Knight Couriers, but this was different as we were directly involved and required to be in the thick of the fighting this time.

“Where would we be entering Mare Melum at exactly?” I finally said, any invasion from the Arena Labyrinth path would be easily stopped if we left a contingent of APs to protect our backs from enemies hitting us from both the routes we can’t take.

I’ve been trying to avoid killing and the only time I can say that I did so was probably mostly machines that could function all have been alive or not. That panther one from Dodo’s world was one that came to mind. There’s also the monster that attacked that airplane on the way to Zootopia, not sure if its death was my fault or not, I never stopped to think about that thing too deeply.

“We have three points of entry.” From What Dormarch was showing me, wide open field, in the middle of the city with very little room to maneuver and… an irregular position inside a valley leading into the city. Yeah, the valley one was too on the nose for me given I’ve seen enough valleys on this adventure to really want to settle down there.

“Wide open space and fields, regardless of the lack of funneling for the valley or the tight confined spaces of the city proper…. I’d like to actually see our enemies coming at us and any possible surprises too. Plus the open space would be good for our tower guns. With hitting something, as the valley walls curve preventing direct fire from us given how much of a problem that was with Moby Dick.” I commented dryly as I was tired of ending up in valleys, even if it was technically the best option for our starting point in Mare Melum than out in the open fields. We couldn’t get surrounded and we had a safe path of retreat in the valley. “Fortunately we’re not going there first. If we have access to the school realm, but didn’t try to move through it, but still took it... would we be able to field a new type of AP?”

“Technically yes, we could also scrounge up data to upgrade the ones we already have.” Which as Dormarch knew were Lancer Guardians and Saber Knights, we needed more capabilities. The Lancer Guardians were good defense, the Saber Knights were great generic all-purpose units, but we really needed something special before we try to push Mare Melum.

“Then we need to attack the school realm first… how soon can we do that? Also is there any chance that we can acquire any useful NPCs from there?” It was a school, there would be something useful there.

“Maybe… we’re certainly not getting any more offers of support from the NPCs here in Cape.” So the four NPCs we gained was all we could feasibly pull into helping us from Moon Cell.

“Why would Moon Cell allow NPCs to be able to turn on it so easily?” My question was met with a blank look from Dormarch, until he gasped and realized something.

“Oh right, you’re not computer literate. You are very brilliant, smart and capable of a large amount of information retention, but are still not from a technologically advanced world.” Aw Dormarch, you’re making me self-conscious… I’m already bad enough as it is! “To put it into perspective, we can’t recruit unwilling NPCs, but the ones we did recruit are able to work with us since we took the systems they were in. We’re quite literally taking control of things from Moon Cell who might have the issue of not being able to act against us directly until we get into its core directly. I don’t think we can take territory when we get to the inner core region and will have to just start destroying things outright as territory will stop being a factor there.”

“So the NPCS are only capable of free thought when it’s not under Moon Cell’s strict regulations?” My question made Dormarch pause.

“No, they have free thought at all times, unless Moon Cell needs them to do something specific and provided they’re in a territory that Moon Cell controls they’ll do it. Basically NPCs for us are auxiliary and can’t exactly take the field of combat outside territories we control. Before you ask the APs can because they run off of PLANTs and not Moon Cell directly. Otherwise Moon Cell wouldn’t even be capable of its current invasion.” That led to two last questions from me Dormarch. “So really, we can’t use the NPCs in Moon Cell owned territories and if a territory belonging to us falls, if any of our NPC friends are in that territory they will switch over to Moon Cell’s control immediately.”

“So the free will thing would be like Torneko?” Even if we gain a territory an NPC may remain neutral to us, but at least they couldn’t be hostile which was nice to know.

“Yes, he’s technically a PLANT, given he’s able to summon those mercenaries. Also he can leave at any time, but he can’t directly harm us… his Berserker Minotaur Mercenaries sure can though.” Well that confirmed some suspicions Dormarch. “I’d feel somewhat better if he sided with us fully like the other three have, but we should just be glad he’s willing to assist even if he’s not full commitment Allied NPC.”

“How do servants factor into this and what exactly are they?” I barely understood the concept of NPCs and their help being related to the territories that were taken, idle or belonging to the enemy. NPCs would be entirely neutral unless Moon Cell told them to do something that might aid it in a battle against us, they are ‘mostly’ noncombatants, but Welch could fire a tower gun without any problem.

“They are being the souls that Moon Cell be holding captive inside of itself, Rider Totsugeki be basically telling me to not die here or else I’ll be being a servant too.” Jolting at the sound of Shanty’s voice, I looked up and saw her munching on something. She was positively wrapped in bandages, yet she was already up and moving around again so soon after that battle. “Moon Cell be having a lot of souls and those souls really be knowing how to fight. I think it is only because the pirates soul be resonating with me that I even be getting that much information.”

“Well… it’s more than that… they are more like masses of magic mixed data and what might be any kind of soul brought to a form of life. I… technically count as a servant, but my contract is entirely to you mom… also my spirit core suddenly says I’m a… Shielder Saber Beast?” Okay, that was mildly concerning, but Dormarch still seemed perfectly okay in our familiar bond and nothing seems shaky about it. “Why does my status keep changing like that and why is this particular designation interacting with my digital core?! So much for having Territory Creation EX it’s back to D Plus. ‘Ultimate evolutionary function’ fixed, what does that even mean?”

“Next level evolution will not be able to be altered to anything else, aside from whatever it will be when you achieve Ultimate level.” Yggdrasil System chimed in. “Your ultimate form is locked in for one given evolution, afterwards you may change to that form as you wish or try for an alternative ultimate form however this ultimate form will always be available after it is acquired. It is currently unknown what the ultimate form will be, but scans suggest ancient data has somehow been accrued via spirit core and transferred over to the digital core. Ninety nine point nine percent chance a previously known rare ancient digimon evolution will occur, margin for error for unknown consequences of the two cores interacting.”

Okay so Dormarch has just been guaranteed to transform into something and we don’t know what it is aside from the fact that the words ‘ancient digimon evolution’ was used.

“So does that mean that Moon Cell can, for all intents and purposes, throw dead people at us with incredible combat capabilities?” Given the general classifications of Caster, Saber, Lancer, Berserker, Archer, Rider and Assassin when applied to things, we will at least know what the servants were capable of in theory. “Also should you even be walking Shanty?”

“No, it is being very painful to be being me right now.” Despite being honest, Shanty still took out a bottle of rum and downed its contents. I wonder how many of those she had and how many she would go through before we were done with Moon Cell.

“Yes to the dead people thing and they all have things known as Noble Phantasms that give them incredible attributes in battle as their ultimate expression of who they were in life. Riders are mostly about summoning things to ride and or pilot. Leviathan was the penultimate ability of that particular Rider.” So did that mean that you were constantly changing capabilities as a servant Dormarch? Shielder seemed kind of consistent, as was beast. “My status is… fairly unusual.”

“Maybe it’s because you didn’t ‘technically’ live very long and the ‘Crest of Miracles’ thing on top of that translates as having incredible potential, thus in life as Dalmamon your potential could have technically been anything and it wasn’t realized?” Technically Dormarch didn’t full die, but this was the best I had.

“… As good as anything I could come up with.” After a moment Dormarch looked to Shanty just drinking away. “Anything you need?”

“Her name was being May and that is to be freeing every pirate soul that Moon Cell be having.” Well that can be done over the course of what we were doing here Shanty. “Also I be needing a nap, but my body be wanting food more.”

“Should I be surprised?” I asked flatly, Shanty was like a hollow leg that led into a bottomless pit. She was a growing goat after all and making up for a lot of malnutrition, she’s grown quite a bit throughout this journey. “We’ll get you some food soon enough Shanty, don’t exacerbate your injuries.”

“Uh, Pom something just came up!” Yes, Dormarch, I can see that from where I’m sitting right next to you. “A request asking for permission to access? It looks to be coming from… Ransei? How?! Mom… should I let this through? It could be malware.”

“I don’t know what malware is… but I’m going to say, hesitatingly enough, to agree to the request?” If it was from Ransei, it could be something good. “I am the leader, so I guess it’s on me if something bad happens.”

“Giving access and placing access to right… there!” A bunch of Pokémon appeared with a floating long tailed cat. “Huh? How did they get here or know to ask for?”

“Big… dog…” The floating cat among the odd number of Pokémon just stared at the castle glaring down on them. “Thanks for letting us in, we were kind of stuck at the door wondering how we were going to get into Moon Cell.”

“Who are you?” Dormarch asked as more Pokémon came flooding in, there was something off about them though.

“I am Mirage Mew of the Mirage Collective, Arceus sends his regards and Calumon says ‘hi’.” Said the floating cat with a smile.

“Well they aren’t flesh and blood, they are… Digital Pokémon?” Dormarch seemed a little confused.

“Arceus sent them, so they must be here for us.” Maybe we could test how helpful they could be? “Say we could use your help with something immediately.”

“Sure, what is it, it looks like you have a pretty big…. dog… base thing going on here.” the Mirage Mew was still staring at the massive face in its face wondrously and possibly with a little fear.

“We need you take a territory of Moon Cell, small, shouldn’t take you too long really while we recuperate from our recent fight. If you can take it you can hold it.” Dormarch started up and did something with the screens. “Here’s some of the things we need you to do, get back to us about that after your done and do not go to Colloseum.”

“Uh huh… hmm… sure I’ll take the school. Just give us the rest of the day and the Mirage Collective will secure that area easily!” Well at least we wouldn’t have to do it as that was what I was going to suggest as our next course of action when we had enough people ready to go on the attack. “We have your backs, come on Mirage Collective, less than a minute here and we already have a job!”

The various Digital Pokémon made noises as a portal opened and on the other side I could see a school and a lot of EPs.

“Bansai!” This Mirage Collective suddenly started flooding into the school realm and in seconds started massacring everything that tried to stop them. The Assassin Reapers were being shredded quite badly and the rest of those poor EPs were immediately being picked up and thrown around violently.

“Well that’s one less thing we have to worry about.” Now to feed Shanty, probably should have accounted for her in the supplies rationing.

-An hour later-

I was acting leader and I had several people gather concerns of our current groups.

“So any questions or concerns about our next course of action?” I asked a Hakamo-o representing the Pokémon, Rookie from the Commandramon representing the digimon and Cid of the NPCs representing the locals.

“We’re going to need supplies for engineering, but Welch can’t manufacture the parts we need without materials.” Cid started off. “We’re quite low on that with most of what we’ve already scrounged going into repairs.”

“We already have a group working on acquiring the materials by the end of this day, we’ll get back to you tomorrow at the soonest since we’ll likely wait a day or two for our fighters to heal before setting out.” Seeing that had nothing else to say, I pointed to Rookie.

“We’re behind you one hundred percent ma’am, but we would really need a digital medic if the fighting is going to be this constantly horrible.” He was asking because Commandramon generally didn’t expect much of their commanders and I sounded like one that cares.

“Any suggestions on how to get one?” My question seemed to take Rookie aback, but he smiled afterwards.

“Right, we’re not working under those jerks… ahem… I think I can safely send an email out to a colleague who can feasibly get us extra supplies easily, he’s a specialist courier and he’s has a HEA-Gatomon…” I held up my right hoof, stopping him from going any further.

“Let me guess, his name is Black Tailmon Uver?” If we could get that guy to show up, we’d really be in business here. “If he can get here, we’ll gladly accept all the help we can get. He might come because he knows us.”

“Thank you! Never had a commander that didn’t seem to be trying to get us killed… feels really good.” Rookie stated cheerfully.

“We need more suggestions like that.” I commented dryly. “I don’t care if the message you send is loud or not, we already have Moon Cell’s attention, just as long as you can get it to him solidly. We’ll see if anything comes of it, from what I understand Uver can go anywhere?”

“If it’s connected to a digital realm and he has a route to it.” Rookie confirmed while throwing a salute, then left to see if he could summon Uver.

I turned my glance to the last one left in the room, the Hakamo-o.

“Not to question your leadership, Team Harmony leader Pom, but are we going to die?” Hakamo-o asked.

“We’ll all die eventually, but I’ll likely die before you will.” That somehow seemed comforting to him. “Any concerns or needs?”

“We’re good on food, water and supplies we brought with us, plus whatever Patch Cabbage can grow. We’ve given him a few Oran and Sitrus berries to see if he can grow us some fruit trees from them.” Okay, interesting, but I wanted actual problems that I can take care of. “I just wanted to say… thank you for taking charge. Jeanne is a decent at rallying and fighting, but she isn’t quite leader material outside of battle yet and she could learn a lot from you. When we looked to you for an idea of what we should be doing, you gave us all orders to eat, rest and support if we could. Just generalizations to start, but a good leader knows when to push and rest. We definitely needed a rest after that battle.”

I honestly didn’t know how to respond to that.

“Is there anything else any of you need?” My question wasn’t met with anything pressing except a raised claw from Rookie. “Yes?”

“The Gazimon want to take a more active role, they feel like they didn’t do enough in Cape.” That brought an interesting thought to mind Rookie.

“What exactly can Gazimon do?” I knew they were canine rabbit things, but I really didn’t see much from them.

“Let me go gather them so they can tell you themselves, after that I’ll send out my message to see if we can get in contact with Uver.” Rookie stated and exited.

-Mare Melum, City of Lost Destiny, ???-

Being summoned felt a little off, but I would carry out my mission to destroy the ultimately cute target.

I howled to the moon and waited for my opponent to show up, the one Moon Cell wanted dead above all else. For why else would they have summoned me forth?

Several large bipedal figures walked up and waited with me, they made mooing noises as I tipped my hat to them and checked over the red blade in hand before I sheathed it. I'm good to go and ready to make guacamole out of my enemies.

How much trouble could this one scrawny sheep really be? My Archer Gekko would be more than enough for them that I might not even have to do anything.

I could hardly wait to see if they were trouble. Now where would I set up an ambush, they were obviously coming through the valley according to Intel. The enemy ewe really likes valleys according to Moon Cell.

-

A bipedal silhouette swiftly changed to that of a wolf wearing a poncho and sombrero and it was seen leaping off into the night from a tall building.

Author's Note

I could haves used the following Jacks.

Captain Jack Sparrow.

Good with a cutlass, but more towards cunning and could be an assassin too.

He's probably the worst pirate you've ever heard of... but you have heard of him.

Noble Phantasm would probably be about escaping death.

Samurai Jack (Dark Side).

Evil Jack didn't last very long and Samurai Jack is definitely worth of the Saber designations several times over. All he had to do was let go of his anger at being stuck in a distant time and place for fifty years as an immortal lack of aging hard to kill man.

What the Noble Phantasm would have been: Hyper Skilled. The ability to copy, pick up or read skills off an opponent, also lets them know almost all of what their opponent can do Sun Tzu style after five minutes of head on combat even if they don't use all of their abilities.

Jack the Ripper (Fate series).

Saber would have been the saner of version of Jack the Ripper, because Assassin and Berserker were also possibilities.

Noble Phantasm: Impending Art. All the short swords you could ever want, like that one time freeze character from Touhou Sakuya Izayoi.

Handsome Jack(Borderlands).

Depends on which Jack we're talking about, fake jack or actual real jack?

Guy would totally have a laser sword, competence would be questionable though and robot army.

Pirate Jack Skellington (James and the Giant Peach)

This would have really been out there as obscure, with the one scene of said pirate captain losing to Mr. Centipede.

Anything from the JACK series of robots from Tekken.

Would have been just brute mechanical force with a giant sword, but it's funny to think they'd even bother with the sword in the first place... now which end goes into my opponent again? Does it really matter if it takes them out either way?

-

What I'm going to go with is a twisted version of the character I'm choosing, which is Metal Gear's 'Jack the Ripper' AKA Raiden as has already been guessed.

Character- Saber Jack, Metal Gear Codename: Jack Wolf, AKA Raiden as 'Mexican stereotype disguised Blade Wolf'. Basically Raiden if he were Blade Wolf with a shifting werewolf aesthetic. (If you've seen Blade Wolf or Crying Wolf, you might know what to expect.)

Feats of Raiden: Sliced apart armor and legs of Excelsus, a not-a-Metal-Gear Metal Gear, said armor is at least a foot or more thick. Absurdly flipped the entirety of Excelsus onto it's back by grabbing one of it's sword and then fought said mecha with its own freshly ripped off giant plasma sword. Capable of slashing through most materials with Jetstream Sam's sword at ludicrous speed in Blade/Ripper Mode, Pom's wool will not protect her from this and even Shanty would having a problem cutting it.

Positives: He's wearing a sombrero and poncho. Can cut through things like butter. Is one of the most dangerous things at close to mid-range one can imagine. Cybernetic strength to toss a mech multiple times his size. Chainsaw wings. Is willing to kill Pom for Overlord Moon Cell.

Negatives: He's really bad at disguises even if he is halfway decent at overall stealth... provided he has his cloaking ability. Personality can lead to a lack of concentration, Moon Cell doesn't know whether or not that's a good thing. The Rhongomyniad is still functionally indestructible to anything below a divine rating unless something else assists in the damage.

Noble Phantasm: Blade/Ripper Mode. One is more dangerous than the other and he can do either one if he's built up to it, one even gives him temporary Madness Enhancement without the lowered intelligence Madness Enhancement normally causes since he'll be acting as a Saber.

Special Technique: Zandatsu. (Means: Slice and take).

Moon Cell went immediate Overkill here. No Wig B + Fox Blade here, that wouldn't be sporting at all.

396. Probing the Moonlit World.

-Several Digital Days later, Moon Cell Outer Inner Layer, Night Land, Mare Melum, City of Lost Destiny, Farmland Outskirts, Castle Alexander, Throne Room, Pom-

We arrived and immediately saw the beautiful view of a moonlit city that appeared before us and I stared out at the splendor with a sad frown. This place was to be our next battleground.

“Deploy the new APs, Alexander enter defensive position.” I called as the walking Alexander came to a stop in the open fields. Mirage Mew and the Mirage Collective would be protecting our backs while we made a push, they also helped us acquire a new type of Allied Program. They would also be tending to the other routes to keep some of Moon Cell’s resources busy, mostly by raiding Colosseum and Arena Labyrinth intermittently and securing a retreat route.

I was hoping for Rider class to assist our Lancer Guardians or Saber Knights, maybe a Berserker class for strong offensive purposes since we were pushing forward into Moon Cell’s territories. Even if the bersekers APs couldn’t take territory without crushing the entire territory because they couldn’t take PLANTs. We could have even used the Archer class for more of a ranged advantage against enemy EPs.

No… what we got was the ability to field Assassin class APs, not very strong in direct confrontation, but very good at ambushes, scouting, stealth and overall information gathering. Everyone was kind of upset that we got Assassin Class APs considering we needed strong combat capable units to support our forays into even more dangerous Moon Cell territories, but we haven’t seen what they are capable of yet.

As I sat on the throne next to Dormarch, I watched as a screen came up and the APs appear on the field. Our Assassin APs were… odd. At least they spawned in large numbers because of their particular uniqueness, even if their combat capability isn’t as great.

“Dormarch, do you by any chance have something to do with them being what they are?” I know I’ve asked this before, several times in fact, but I wanted to ask again just to clarify and I watched Dormarch every time he answered. He’s been getting closer to cracking on telling me the truth about them.

Dormarch did have a small fascination or passion for lapines, because he perked up when he first saw what kind of APs we managed to produce. I don’t think it was just because of Ms. Bunny Shuttle, he was just attracted to rabbits for some reason.

“No…” Dormarch stated in a slightly weak uncertain tone with his ear wilting. Even he had some doubts about whether or not he had a great influenced on the kind of APs we got, given he worked directly on making them from the ‘Assassin’ class data Mirage Mew got us. The fact was we were looking at a bunch of large fluffy bunnies of brown, white, black, grey and dark blue colors starting to spread out on the screen, all of them moving away from our position. “The Assassin Caerbannogs are going out and mapping the area now and are scouting for enemies, at least they have some defensive ability with their flak vests and seem to be very good with those rope darts when we tested them out back in Cape. They are fast, stealthy and can get around in any environment… I’m sure they’ll pull their weight.”

We did at least given them a field test in Cape City to test them out before encroaching on Mare Melum, so there was that and they were good at looking like they were good at moving about at least. This was a field test against actual present enemies and Moon Cell mostly left us alone to recover for the last few days. If I didn’t know any better I’d swear Fou was hunting me in here somewhere.

They were large rabbits to be sure, I mean they were like three to four feet tall or long if they were running on their hand paws and were fairly large, kind of looked and acted like Pooka’s back on Equus. Pooka were generally small population and not enough to be a kingdom outside of villages in the forests around the Meadow Hills region, one would think they breed like the rabbits they looked to be, but they don’t. Like Lambkin were sheep adjacent, Pooka were simply rabbit adjacent and you could tell the difference at a glance with the ones that live in trees or in underground burrow cities.

Like Pooka’s, these rabbits just didn’t look very… threatening… that’s the least likely word you’d apply to the mostly adorable APs we were sending out. They were still shorter than our other bipedal APs, but not necessarily smaller and didn’t look as capable in a fight like the generic spear and sword guys. It left me wondering what they were truly capable of, because apparently they were supposedly ‘unique’ APs.

I thought we would have been better off with Berserker Vikings personally, apparently they could throw those heat axes with lethal accuracy at short range.

“We can only hope, we’ve barely recovered from the last fight and here we are pursuing a new one.” We were on digital time, meaning a minute in the outside world could be weeks here and we’ve had plenty of time to recover from our injuries by comparison for the days we spent for the feasible seconds of invasion going on out there.

Shanty’s injuries were the quite concerning to me personally given that Dormarch said they, on a lesser and less physically damaging scale, resembled the kind I had after using Shock Ram.

Thinking of Mirage Mew and the Mirage Collective, most of them were legendary mirages or digital legendary Pokémon. Surprisingly they had the power akin to Ultimate and Mega Digimon, which was a little odd to Sami and Frizzle, but Dormarch didn’t seem to think it was all too odd at all. They were definitely securing our butts.

“Huh, enemy detected, but it’s… not alerted? The Caerbannogs are running a scan on it and transmitting the data back to us, that’s very useful.” Dormarch popped up a new screen that showed a few of our rabbits getting a visual on a bipedal machine, mostly huge legs, leading to boxy hips and a large boxy head on top of it looking left and right. “It’s currently idle and hasn’t detected the Caerbannog yet.”

“Can they get past and into the city to detect where the enemy PLANTs are?” A moment after my question Dormarch did something and then looked to me.

“Yes, they can scout the enemy region and possibly find the location of the PLANTs for us, but they won’t be able to do any attacks unless they want to be discovered and wiped out real fast.” The Assassin Caerbannog, as Dormarch pointed out were stealth specialists and sneak attackers. Their main form of attack was apparently disable and then kill. “No signs of any servants in the region yet or what they could possibly be, but I’m sure Moon Cell wouldn’t leave Mare Melum undefended.”

“Tell the Caerbannog APs to remain in full stealth.” I was worried that they would give away the fact that we were here, because the enemy doesn’t seem to be aware of our presence quite yet. Though I had to wonder how you would miss the fortress sized dog with a castle hump on its back in a wide open space like where we were.

“Look at it this way mom, they are far more intelligent than any other AP types we could feasibly field.” Dormarch proceeded to have the rabbits remain in stealth and not draw attention to themselves, despite being large rabbits they were good at sticking to shadows in the moonlight. “So they can act a little more autonomously than other APs.”

Well that was probably a good thing, given they’ll take targets of opportunity at least if they are to live up to the name classifications of ‘Assassin’.

-Mare Melum Valley, ???-

Where are they?

You’d think they would have attacked by now or launched a small force I could wipe out or something.

Even Moon Cell says they would prepare for several days and then try to take Mare Melum.

The School was taken and Colloseum was facing a few light raids, but they were never taking Colloseum with that kind of bottleneck. Not much information on what was going on anywhere else was happening, at least they weren’t going all in anywhere.

I brought a taco up to my mouth with my tail and bit into it. Ugh, the food here could taste a little better. Needs more spice, maybe some jalapenos.

Looking around at the fifty gekkos aiming grenade launchers in the general direction they would probably coming from any moment now…

Any moment now…

…

“ANY MOMENT NOW!” I screamed, yet nothing occurred.

What are the chances they would try to pop in directly inside the city? Not likely, they’d be slow to get into an advantageous position and the PLANTs would have alerted us to that happening. I really doubt they’d try the farmlands, but I already had the area watched and the Gekko there weren’t detecting anything yet.

What was their detection range again?

-Castle Alexander, Throne Room, Dormarch-

“Some heavy enemy presence has been detected in the valley to our right over the mountains. Apparently one of our Caerbannog heard something.” I called out as the four defense towers went into an operational state and our minimal territory was placed down. They were still on manual control until we could get them automated.

We still weren’t detected and the Caerbannog units were getting some good Intel on the enemy units, the few they spotted were called Archer Gekko. Two legged walking war machines with twin machine gun cannons and combat tentacle, grenade launchers were optional, they are basically walking gun turrets and even mom wouldn’t survive being under fire from them for very long if they surrounded her. Archer’s in general weren’t supposed to be good at close combat, but those things would be halfway decent at it with their combat tentacles.

I had to wonder how the Caerbannogs even got that information about the Gekko having tentacles without alerting them.

With that in mind we were fielding Saber Knights defensively around the perimeter of Castle Alexander, we’re not sending them out until we had an idea of what we were doing here at the edge of the city.

Lancer Guardians would be horribly useless against spraying bullets, but the Saber Knights could use their shields and I’ve been specifically summoning tower shield wielders. Sure it was slow to summon them with those bulky shields, but those guys would survive quite a torrent of bullets in comparison to half a second before being immediately obliterated.

“See, told you they’d be waiting somewhere. They likely have the valley entirely on lockdown, not that that’s where we would have chosen to come in at.” Canard stated as he came into the throne room. “In any case, those machines look far more threatening than your bog standard Saurian Hunter Drone.”

“Well you were right, some of the Caerbannog see a lot of Archer Gekko over that way. That’s what those machines are called.” I sent targeting data up to the Commandramon in the defensive gun towers, but told them specifically to not shoot until the enemy was alerted to our presence. We were trying to do some things quietly while we still had the initiative at the moment. “Surprisingly we have the advantage in the open field when it comes to defense if we keep the enemy at a distance. We don’t exactly have the power to move while using all the towers without draining all the energy out of Castle Alexander, but we can use them indefinitely if we stay in place.”

“We kind of want to be on the defensive with our main source of territory.” Mom stated as we sat here quietly while waiting for more reports from the Caerbannogs. “Not to mention it being our only bit of territory in this area.”

The cute and cuddly rabbits were showing their usefulness so far, much to my enjoyment, but the lack of PLANTs was… unusual. Also if they were Assassin Class, then why weren’t the Caerbannog capable of assassinating PLANTs? Several reasons really, EPs could take out our PLANTs and that’s because Moon Cell had priority on that sort of thing. Speaking of, the Caerbannogs were running around the city and weren’t finding anything… however there were signs of PLANTs being present given the humming noises, they were probably inactive.

Yes, APs couldn’t take PLANTs by themselves, with one minor exception I hadn’t mentioned… by crushing them via territory overwhelming like what Moby Dick threatened to do to us with an absolutely large number of Aquatic EPs. Even with how powerful the territory barrier that Castle Alexander produced, it wouldn’t hold up if the enemy presence was overwhelming. We just didn’t have the number of APs required to do that, but Assassin Caerbannogs could sneak into and weaken territories greatly for later capture easily enough.

“There’s humming there, but I can’t see a PLANT anywhere.” The scene was a roof, two different tiers with steps, the sound of a PLANT could be heard, but there wasn’t one in sight.

“Do you think they might be hiding it somehow?” Mom asked as she looked at the screen curiously.

“Some intelligence gatherers, if they can’t find something hidden despite it being right there in front of them somehow.” Dolly stated while looking bored as she clambered up onto the armrest.

“I think I might know what’s wrong.” Our attentions turned to Sami. “The PLANTs we dealt with before were operating out in the open and quite loudly. In this case, the PLANTs are hidden because we might be dealing with elites.”

“Elites?” Mom queried.

“Yeah, they showed up on the ships we destroyed on the way to Valora, but that’s the only time we saw them, every time we beat an Elite Enemy Program a PLANT would reveal itself or become vulnerable. Also I got that information from loading portions of an Elite Berserker Viking’s data.” Well that would certainly complicate things. “To get elites to show up you need to take out an excessively large number of enemies in the area a PLANT is spawning them into, basically proved you’re threatening enough to be worth the elite showing up and then the elite will pop out. Defeat that and you’ll be able to target the PLANT directly when it becomes vulnerable.”

“So not only do we have to directly fight the numerous enemies this time, then the elite when they come out, but we also have to possibly deal with a servant too on top of that?” Aw mom, don’t look so broken… even if you do have a good reason to be. That gold color taking up the wool of your right leg is barely noticeable… in a glaringly over the top obvious way.

Right, I can’t deny it, mom really needs hugs. I nuzzled up to her side affectionately.

“Well there’s also the other issue of special EPs units being in the area, which would be like the Lancer Sahagin in the previous realm.” Say could you do me a favor Dolly and cuddle mom while I think about this? “This time it’s the Archer Gekkos. Judging from what Dodo did in Cape to stop them from appearing, they will likely have a PLANT that’s mobile and moving throughout the Mare Melum zone, since it is mobile it’ll be harder to get at.”

Dolly latched onto mom and wrapped her paws around her neck to start nuzzling her affectionately, mom calmly started holding Dolly and happily returned the affection. My big sis was all smiles and agreed that Mom need to stop worrying so much, we had to keep her mood up constantly.

“What are the chances we’ll have to defeat enough of these Archer Gekko’s and then take on an elite version to deal with the Elite PLANT this time?” It might be a guarantee at this point Canard unless special PLANTs couldn’t hide themselves and the mobility was their defense mechanism because they couldn’t hide.

“I’ll just say it’s a one hundred percent chance that we can’t just hit it from long range like we did the last one if it’ll be moving.” The reason I hadn’t pulled the Caerbannog units yet was because they were still mapping the city and areas of interest for us, such as marking the various PLANT territories.

There were a lot of smaller territories around the rooftops in the middle of much larger ones in the streets. We’d have our work cut out for us, because if we tried to just take the larger territories then the smaller ones will be in the middle of them and start taking them back. If we focused on the smaller ones then the larger Moon Cell ones could territory crush the smaller ones as soon as we take them, we couldn’t do the same for a lack of numbers or Moon Cell’s resources.

A ping drew my attention to the screen… yep… that was a servant. A very odd one that drew Pom and Dolly’s attention.

“That would be the servant, how are the Caerbannogs getting that close without being spotted?!” A black and grey canine shaped robot, wearing a sombrero and poncho, with red glowing eyes. It looked goofy in the clothing, but I wouldn’t judge a book by its cover if Moon Cell placed them in our way.

“Almost feels like I’ve gone back to Elhorn…” Mom muttered as she stared at the Servant who shifted into a more bipedal appearance and started checking a red blade. “Please tell me that’s not an Assassin classification.”

“No, the Caerbannogs are getting of a more Saber vibe from it.” A powerful, all purpose, offensive classifications with decent resilience to magical attacks. “That servant is going to be a tough one to bring down, I can already tell judging by the schematics… which I’m not sure how the Caerbannogs are getting. Weaponized prehensile tail, twin chainsaw wings, heat knife launchers around the body, high frequency claws and their main weapon seems to be a High Frequency Blade that would cut through most materials… yikes, that thing is several realms of lethal and you wouldn’t want to block any attacks from that sword unless you had something like the Paralance to put between you and it. Again how are the Caerbannogs getting all of this… threat assessment skill?”

Apparently the Caerbannogs heard me questioning their abilities and sent me some information about their ability to assess threats and to know what they were equipped with so they could better react to what they might do. Given some more time they might even get some of the history of the threat. The threat was confirmed to be a Saber a second later and that meant dangerous with sharp edges of any kind, the entire robotic canines body was quite edgy in that respect.

“So we have to actively go out and defeat EPs within the enemy territory boundaries, then fight the elite EPs when they appear so we can finally deal with the PLANTs and we have to do that multiple times. Great, so this is going to be a very long, highly drawn out, dangerous process that inevitably leads to us suffering.” It was concerning when mom mostly meant to her own and wouldn’t say it out loud. “Are the Digi-bots ready to go? I think we’re going to really need their help here. Who do we have available to field?”

“I’m capable of getting into the fight, as is Canard. As for the Digi-bots Pepper cat is going to be a while, she took a lot of damage and her tinpet is still trying to restore itself and her parts. Dazzle is still in recovery after being directly hit by a water beam from Leviathan. Metabee, Krosserdog and Rokusho are good to go. Frizzle and the rest of the Pokémon Companions can still fight. The three Valora units have made full recoveries. I suggest we keep Frizzle here on the defense and see if we can field the Gazimon to support the Saber Knights.” Sami reported and I gave the orange soldier a thoughtful look. “They are getting a bit too lazy and they could stand to put in some effort into helping aside from logistics like working on the farm. As for available Commandramon, aside from the ones on the tower guns that can provide us artillery support, the rest of them are good to go and urban city environments favor us. We can use the roofless APC to move through the city pretty quickly.”

The Gazimon were good at farming though, Patch Cabbage really liked them and their work effort to get tasty food at least. They really liked his cabbages too.

“So have the Caerbannogs fully mapped things out?” After mom asked that, I brought up a screen to show a top down map of the city. We were in the farm lands what looked like the west or left side of the screen, the valley was to the south or bottom, to the north or top was the upper city district on an upwards slope and overall many sections of the cityscape of Mare Melum lead to a shrine in the east. Overall the map showed a large circular area and the small amount of territory Castle Alexander was generating, the castle wasn’t fully repaired from the damage the serpent caused and we were having power issues… but we were capable of solidly holding this territory… from EPs. The servant was likely to bypass our defenses easily. “At least we aren’t going to be pressured with an oceans worth of flood water this time.”

“All those enemies were dangerous at short range though, the Archer Gekkos are dangerous at long range and are generally decent at shorter ranges. So really they are going to be much harder to deal with and could feasibly shoot Dodo or a Skarmory out of the sky.” If they had armor piercing rounds like I thought they feasible could have, then we need to be careful in how we start fights and where. “There’s not a lot of cover around here from the hundreds of bullets they can fire from the two cannons, not to mention the grenade launchers some of them are equipped with. They’d be easier to avoid in the city.”

“Yeah, I’m not too happy to be going in front of guns, especially not big walking ones.” Which was a fair response to being told we were all going to be shot at eventually Dolly.

“How are we going to start things off though?” Noticing that she was getting stared at by all of us, mom sighed, dragged a hoof down her face and then started inhaling to speed up her mental faculties and exhaling without moving anywhere. “Well to start off if it’s going to constantly be night around here if the constant day time of Cape was anything to go by… we’ll need to think about where and when we’ll be fighting. We’re at the edge of things here on the map and the battlefield is a full huge circle for us this time and not the land within a circle. The Servant is likely to be focused on me this time, given Moon Cell saw me, so the possibility they sent one of their stronger servants to come at me is a given.”

Moon Cell really hated mom being among the living.

“You could stay safe here in the castle mom.” I offered, because no one was in danger unless they left the castle… which would draw mom into going out to help them. The flat stares I got made me admit the truth. “Right, that’s not going to work if your condition makes you go out to help our friends in the field.”

“Sacrificing is a major issue for me Dormarch and I really dislike the fact that you are right. Anyone that goes out and gets into trouble, I’ll be bound to run towards them upon hearing it and can feasibly help in some way. I can’t exactly ignore the idea of anyone being out there and in possible danger either, while I’m here safe and sound.” Functionally we’d have to render mom insensate or entirely unconscious to stop her from rushing out to help anyone in danger unless she was doing something even more dangerous that is required for our continued survival.

“So where should we start and how do we avoid the servant when they come after us, because I seriously doubt my canine magnetism can do anything to them.” What you weren’t saying mom, was that they were likely to be an opponent similar to Fou. At least you were telling me and Dolly, because we were likely to be with you.

“What if we just go nuts?” We all turned to Canard. “If we’re overthinking things now, then we should just rush all the nearby territories and figure out things from there. Either that or try to confuse our enemy into making a series of errors using the Caerbannogs, while we draw attention away from some of our activities we can grab a workable territory to hold onto with artillery.”

“Hmm… I’ll do us one better, I actually have a plan!” Mom stated loudly with a grin. “Unfortunately it puts me in grave danger…”

There was a twitch of her eyes as mom said that last part.

“Well, what are we doing then?” Sami asked pleasantly and I groaned out, please don’t encourage mom to endanger herself more than she has too!

“Well the servant seems specifically geared to fight me.” Given it’s a heavily bladed wolf, that wasn’t a hard guess mom. “With that in mind, first we need the Caerbannog find all the cardboard boxes they can and attack the upper districts of the city. This will draw the Servant in that direction, I’ll intercept in them in the middle, they’ll likely be trying to kill me anyway so might as well bit the bullet there. The Valora units will work on taking the upper district. The ones who will take the valley will be the Pokémon Companions once I’ve drawn off the Archer Gekko and servant into hunting me, I’ll have the Digi-bots with me. Sami, Canard and the Commandramon will have the hardest job though.”

That got our attentions.

“Which will be?” Canard asked with a frown on his beak.

“Find the Archer Gekko PLANT, deal with it as quickly as possible. Sami still has that motorcycle bar thing or at least the plans for it right? That, with the roofless APC, means you guys will be constantly on the move and on the lookout for the one major problem in this battle, our enemy having a ranged advantage on us. Also take targets of opportunity when you can.” Here mom turned to me. “Dolly will be with me, but… we need someone here as mission control. Can you give Dolly your Digivice?”

“… you’re leaving me behind mom?!” Kneeling down in front of me mom looked me in the eyes, nuzzled my cheek, kissed my forehead and then answered my question.

“Yes, and not because I’m a worried mother, we need someone here to direct us. Welch can you manufacture communication devices like what the Digivices do when they connect with each other when in range?” The rabbit NPC saluted Pom. “Also maybe project a map of the city and our locations in it?”

“Sure thing on both of those, Big Boss!” Welch stated with a smile. “I’m sure that even the Assassin Caerbannogs would be capable of using them… if they could talk that is. They’re silent like Snakes generally are, I wonder if CODEC time is going to be a thing here...”

“Please get to work on that now.” Mom stated as she turned to Cid. “How are the repairs?”

“We’re doing fine with getting most of our systems back online, but it’s sad that I can’t get this guy airborne again so soon. I want to quite literally want to fly this puppy!” Cid answered while shaking his head. “I’m heading to engineering and I’ll hire Torneko’s goons to support our further repairs.”

“What’s the farm situation?” Pom turned to a waiting Patch Cabbage.

“Two hundred and fifty percent efficiency and that’s even without sunlight, thank goodness for existence of sun lamps!” Patch Cabbage chuckled loudly, then left and came back in pulling a wagon loaded up with Sitrus Berries.

“Yeah, we’re going to need quite a few of those.” Mom immediately moved forward and picked up a few while examining them. Everyone in the throne room was now staring at the insane farming NPC as mom hefted the healing berry grown from our food supplies in a hoof. “Spread them around to all the teams. In fact give one to Shanty, it’ll hasten up her recovery considerably.”

“It’s all in the name of Moon Cell’s destruction ma’am, I’m proud to be a part of it!” Patch Cabbage stated. “Also those Gazimon are quite the farmers when they are not being viral pests, they dig good fields.”

Well the botany and food supply section of Castle Alexander was doing really well with that in mind.

“Torneko Talloon, do you have anything to add to our current goals?” Pom asked of the rotund merchant.

“You know… I just might, do you need land mines that can take out Archer Gekko in one blast? I can assure you that they’ll never go off on one of your allies.” Following that the jovial guy waited for a response.

“What’s it going to cost us?” I finally asked, because for a merchant Torneko really didn’t seem to be asking for much.

“Just need the Caerbannog to grab a few things in the city for me before you kick off the battle… just a shopping list of stuff really and I’ll supply you all the Friend or Foe mines you could need for this battle.” Torneko grinned with a twinkle in his eye as he produced such a list, the Caerbannogs were stealth experts so smuggling these items to Torneko shouldn’t be too hard.

“Granted, Dormarch transmit this list of items to the Caerbannog.” Mom passed it to me after looking it over and I sent out the order.

We’d soon be quite loaded with explosive devices, being neutral apparently gave Torneko some ability to procure things we wouldn’t otherwise be able to get. So his neutrality wasn’t entirely a bad thing, but it was still suspect and worrying.

-A few hours later, central Mare Melum, Pom-

“Dolly, are we ready for this?” I asked as we were in the city proper and on a rooftop. There was the hum of a PLANT nearby, but it wasn’t quite active it would be as soon as the Caerbannog started the plan.

“Are you kidding, Dormarch got to steal the show in that last battle, I’m going to prove myself as good as he is with this one!” Right Dolly was a very competitive dog, probably should say something about that attitude. “You do realize that because we’re family that I will always love you right?”

“Yes.” I answered as she put her helmet on, adjusted her board on her back and took up the mystical stone bone in her teeth.

Ocellus still couldn’t get Smolder to be in the same room as me, but she assured me that Smolder was still quite jealous of me as much as she was afraid and that might be a good thing. Those two were going to be safe in the castle and making sure Shanty doesn’t run off to join the battle with her injuries, not without a headset at least.

The headsets gave us good tactical data on the movements of the Archer Gekkos and that would be a very vital thing to know at all times with the Caerbannogs spread out as they were.

“Okay guys, show time, the Caerbannogs are about to make some noise in three… two… wait what the… where did they get something like that?!” A huge explosion went off in the upper district and I turned and saw a mushroom shaped cloud of dust and debris rising into the sky. “Phew, at least it isn’t radioactive and has no fallout… but still, how?! That definitely damaged several territories worth of PLANTs. No casualties from the Caerbannogs in that area despite apparently being at ground zero for that. See mom, they are really useful and not as adorable as they seem! Wait, is that a good thing or not?”

“Don’t know what to tell you Dormarch, but apparently the Caerbannogs are as you might have said… highly resourceful. I don’t know what that was, but when I imagined them making noise, I didn’t imagine it being something quite like that.” I felt a wave of slight heat pass me by in the seconds I called in from the headset Welch provided me with, the roof started filling up with EPs from the sudden disturbance. “Remember Dolly, no showboating please. You’re the elder and top dog in this situation, so please don’t start a competition with your little adoptive brother about who’s better.”

“Right, right, you know I’ll watch your back Pom!” Loyal Dolly may be and willing to throw herself in the path of danger for me, I’d rather die first than let anything truly happen to her. Which was saying something about my mental state when Dolly had to hug me mentally for even thinking that thought out loud.

As soon as the EPs spawned, which were generic Knight, Guardian and Vikings so far, that’s when Rokusho, Krosserdog and Metabee descended on them and started tearing them apart. I brought the Paralance out and ran forward to jam it directly into a EPs side and then opened it to send it flying into a group and it blew a number of them off the roof.

Dolly was already digging into them with her board and momentum boosted hits, it wouldn’t be long before the Servant got those two legged death machines running in our direction.

-Mare Melum Valley, ???-

“What the… why the smug ass bastards, they snuck up on us and nuked us!” I immediately switched into quadruped mode and ran towards the upper district with the mooing machine squadron on my heels.

Multiple territories just came under attack at once, one of the defense NPCs in particular caught sight of my target in the central territories with several combat robots and a dog.

A feral grin crossed my lips.

Aw yeah, finally getting some action!

I quickly sprinted in that direction ignoring the strange amount of little bunnies in the valley area innocently nibbling on carrots or being playful and cute.

Moon Cell wasn't paying me to pay attention to glitching oddities... in fact it wasn't even paying me at all! Not that I mind, as Jack wants to rip it's enemies apart.

Author's Note

The battle coming up... Metal Hound Chaos!

I would say Metal Wolf Chaos, but we don't have a Mr. President here for the joke...

New AP units:

AP Assassin Caerbannogs, biped rabbits with flak vests, rope darts, parkour skill and inredible stealth abilities. Specializes in information gathering, quick to produce.

AP Saber Knight: Tower Shield variant. High attribute Saber Knight made for dealing with enemies with rapid fire attacks. Exceedingly slow to produce.

397. Metal Hound Chaos! Pt. 1.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Maries-

“So is everything in order Pace Set?” We asked of our prosecutor colleague, he was a really good friend when he got over the fact that we were a ‘legal’ chimera.

“Yes, I do believe so. Thank you for helping me organize these files and tell your family I said hello.” Pace Set calmly patted Silvers affectionately on the head and left for Canterlot.

“I think he needs a girlfriend.” Marie stated.

“Oh no, don’t you start Marie!” Maria stated as she looked back at our tail.

“I think I know a nice mare that could be interested in him.” Maria looked at Mara aghast for even having a suggestion lined up.

“Ooh is there a conspiratorial date thing starting up?!” That attracted matriarch Kuril immediately. “I could rope Blade Bright into it and make it a double date to make sure no one interferes!”

“Please, no, just stop, before we end up doing something that is Jaded levels of horrible when in reference to Saddle Arabia.” Maria groaned. It’s not like Jaded has done anything to Saddle Arabia recently, much less anything permanently damaging aside from psychologically, she’s been too busy fighting with Princess Luna.

Luna apparently got her back, and good, for the whole multiple teleporting pies over the course of several days thing among insulting her intelligence and causing an international incident using bat ponies. Apparently Pinkie Pie might have gotten involved because Looney is her friend. Luna was topping Jaded’s petty kitty list at the moment, even surprisingly above Saddle Arabia, and Celestia was surprisingly helping Jade with her sister.

We were still honestly trying to break Jaded of the mental issue she has with going after Saddle Arabia like she does. Sure, historically speaking she did have some reasons for her distaste for the country, but it was still getting to a very ridiculous point of absurdity that defines our particular Abyssinian’s life when her last plot involved the use of a gallon of cream cheese against an entire country.

Admittedly it would actually work if our Jaded used approximately three and a half gallons, give or take, but she couldn’t do math to save anyone’s life including her own. We didn’t actually want Saddle Arabia to be destroyed and we weren’t going to mention this to her… right MARIE.

Our snake sister started whistling idly and thinking of top hats, also a noise distracted us from her somewhat racy thoughts.

Looking down at Silvers holding up a drawing with her cat heads mouth, we sighed as we saw a picture of Saddle Arabia in ruins. While artistically good and really well done, we needed to have a talk with Jaded since that chip buried deep in her backside has started affecting our Daughters.

“Aw, that’s adorable, I’ll hang it on the fridge!” Really Matriarch Kuril, the destruction of Saddle Arabia was adorable now? We needed to have a long talk with Jaded about this.

Jaded making an entire country fear her was actually attractive by our standards as a chimera, but we seriously couldn’t condone such a thing as actually occurring. Not when they are paying us and Fizzy quite well to stop Jade when she gets too close to succeeding and she’s had fifty three plans in the last week that almost did so.

Fizzlepop owning an entire country and being the queen of it was equally attractive, even if our Fizzy really isn’t really doing anything with it beyond checking in on it and making sure it is doing fairly well as far as the Storm Creature citizenry and warriors were concerned. Jaded hasn’t tried to use the Storm Creatures or her connections with Fizzy, proving that Jade at least knew what lines she shouldn’t cross.

-Moon Cell Outer Inner Layer, Night Land, Mare Melum, City of Lost Destiny, Central City region, Rooftops, Pom-

“It’s like the Caerbannogs knocked over an anthill, EPs are appearing in massive numbers everywhere as the local PLANTs are all going active.” Domarch stated as I fought off an axe wielder and bashed it’s spine in, followed by ramming the tip of it into the back of its blocky head to smash it into the stone roofing. “We’ll have the farmlands zone secured soon, Castle Alexander gun towers are already wiping out the Archer Gekko, enough EPs for the Elites EPs and PLANTs to appear and it’s only a matter of time before we secure our entry region. I’ll keep you updated on when you can call in an artillery strike.”

“Good, because we’re still a little busy here within the minor rooftop territory.” The Elite Saber Knight that showed up was giving Rokusho problems while Metabee and Krosserdog kept them off his back as he clashed with the AP. The elite had more colors, more notable minor appearance differences and then there was the terrifying amount of skill it showed with a sword while trying to take Roksuho down.

I was a little concerned that I was able to recognize skill from a fighting style I had no prior knowledge of aside from what little I know of Rokusho’s fighting abilities.

Dormarch would be sitting the Guardian Lancer APs out of this fight, they weren’t nearly as useful as the Tower Shield variant of the Saber Knights. Speaking of said variant of Saber Knight, it was interesting that such a minor modification as a large shield almost doubled the time it took to produce one and the only thing that changed was literally just the shield.

“Servant and Archer Gekko all heading your way at a fast speed, the servant might not be a Rider, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a lot of mobility. Be careful when they show up mom.” With that Dormarch went silent and was likely ordering the other teams around as mission control.

I flared the Paralance open and knocked a few of the Lancer Guardians back from trying to stab at me and followed that up by lunging forward and rapidly jabbing my weapon into them to take them down.

I saw a crucial moment that the Elite EP swung downwards for him, Rokusho opened his pincer blade and closed it around the swords blade tightly to stop it in place. With a swift twisting jerk, the blade caught in his pincer sword snapped off by at least two thirds. Rokusho proceeded to ram its own blade and followed it up with his own into its lower torso.

With Rokusho’s sword going out its back, he heaved the slightly taller Elite EP off the ground and then slammed his explosion fist straight up into its chest. The thing flew off his pincer blade and then landed face first on the ground with the broken blade erupting out of its back at an angle having been pushed through by its landing. The Elite EP soon started to disappear after that rather painful looking takedown.

“The PLANTs vulnerable!” Reported Krosserdog as it appeared in the open and Metabee leapt on to it.

“Don’t destroy it yet!” I called out hastily as I looked over the side of the roof, as the black metal canine robot thing had arrived and was coming straight toward the building I was on.

They were also looking back at me, I can already tell that this was definitely going to be one of those things.

-Farmland Zone, Castle Alexander, Dormarch-

It only took a shot or two from the defense towers to take down an Archer Gekko, they were easily toppled when one of their legs is destroyed and the top of their heads had a notable weak point that was quickly discovered.

The Archer Gekko were generally armored anti-infantry because it’d be hard for anything smaller than them or not flying to get into a position to attack their main weak point.

“All teams, Archer Gekko have weak points on top of their heads near the center.” I called out over the various headsets and got several reports coming back that they understood in case they ran into the tall bipedal machines. “Not easy to miss really, just hard to get to.”

“Thanks for the heads up, we know where to throw our DCD Bombs now if we run into them!” Sami called back, Canard was the one driving the bike with Sami behind him as her and the roofless APC were on their way into the city after the towers cleared a pathway for them while collecting the farmland territories. We had successfully started off this battle with an initiative advantage. “Starting mission to locate the Archer Gekko spawning PLANT.”

“We’re doing great here!” Jeanne called in. “Am I using this thing correctly?”

“Yes, Jeanne, you are using it correctly.” I responded and rolled my eyes.

-Abandoned Valley, Pokémon Companions, Quetal-

“We’re in, the valley won’t last long.” I stated into the device on my head as I led our team forward once the valley was clear of the walking bipedal machines. “The Archer Gekko were the main defense in this area.”

Once the Archer Gekkos and servant were clear, I motioned to my friends to move in. The two PLANTs left behind weren’t very well guarded and the EP numbers here were still light enough that we could take the areas with ridiculous easy.

We’d hit the valley before it could really build a functional defense, Jeanne’s Valora units were doing something similar on the north side of the map… at least it was what we were calling north. They had the slightly easier job of taking the upper district of the city, after that massive explosion it should be much easier to deal with the enemy in that region with the aid of most of the Caerbannogs being in that region.

“All teams, Commandramon mobile squad moving out and we’ve secured most of the farmland zones. Castle Alexander is now a good fallback point.” Called Dormarch to let us know Sami, Canard and the Commandramon were going to be on the lookout for the enemies special PLANT. “You’ll be able to call in Artillery strikes soon. Gazimon are planting the FOF mines as we speak.”

“Do you think my mother will be alright back in Ransei?” Favela asked as she rode near us on Dodo.

“She’ll be fine Favela, you’ll see sweetie.” Reassured Shine as took up a brace of Korsola Spikes in her right leafy hair hand ready to start throwing. “Lit, Frizzle, you’re our forwards, Lucha Mundo in the air and watch our backsides and warn us if those Archer Gekko things start coming at us!”

The small yellow blur and the rampaging red dinosaur girl didn’t need to be told twice as they both charge into the fray ahead of us. Lit, with an incredibly brutal sounding war squeak, shocked the life out of numerous EPs at once with his lightning bouncing between them with incredible ferocity.

Somehow the lightning didn’t jump to the chains Frizzle was wielding as she brawled her way toward the Elite Lancer Guardian that immediately showed up because of Lit. Since there were only two PLANTs in the area this would be relatively quick.

-Central Mare Melum, Rooftop, Pom-

Thanks to my orders, we had to deal with infinitely spawning EPs for a bit, until the shadow of a four legged figure shot up and over the edge of the roof and landed before me.

Knife blades at the back of his hind legs behind the paws as heels, knifes holstered in parts of his hips, extra knifes underneath the forelegs behind his deadly clawed blades. The canine’s head even had a slightly demonic look to it. That its entire body had a lot of sharp edges had me fairly weary as the tongue like tentacle came from its mouth as it moved and breathed like Dodo did. Its clawed tail whipped back and forth excitedly clacking a bit in a threatening manner, supposing that it would eventually be used to stab and or eviscerate me personally if it wasn’t going to be used to hold a weapon.

This thing was quite built to be lethal and had a strong resemblance to a wolf.

“My name is Pom, may I ask who you are and that we can settle this peacefully?” I’m already aware of the answer if this person was captured soul like Shanty implied.

“No.” Not even talking, he transformed into a biped mid charge without destroying his rather unusual looking sombrero and poncho that might enrage Lucha Mundo. I saw thick gray tufts of wild hair poking out of his head as he shifted forms to be more biped, so the servant wasn’t just a robot and had some biological nature to him. He pulled a brilliant red katana out of his sheath and when he got close enough to me he called out. “Blade mo…”

That’s when Metabee finally fired some devastating point blank shots and destroyed the PLANT he was standing on causing a territory takeover, the PLANTs themselves were not capable of combat and standing on top of it was probably the safest place you can be with enemies spawning all around you. This not only hit the servant with a shockwave…. but also sent at least five Berserker Vikings EPs along with their burning axes mostly blade first as he was blown off the roof.

“Do you think that might have stopped him entirely?” I asked earnestly as the fluttering of the shockwave caused my wool to wiggle lightly. I looked at the building he slammed into and looked over the side of the roof as he fell to the street below. Knowing, if anything, that that had just really cheesed him off at best.

An AP producing PLANT promptly appeared in our territory and started producing APs, but the rectangular rooftop territory barely larger than a small houses floor space was already flickering between blue and red. At least it didn’t immediately turn red and blast us off the roof too.

“No.” The four deadpan tones of the Digi-bots and even Dolly said as one, the entire roof was cleared at least.

“Didn’t think so.” I sighed, then something blared in my instincts quite loudly.

I rolled away from the edge of the roof and witnessed three or more flashes where I had been standing. We all watched as a large physical section of the roof I had been standing on slide away and then toppled towards the streets below as the one wielding the red katana landed on the roof.

Yep, he was angry, quite cheesed off and I could feel the hatred for me radiating off of him.

“Ga heh heh heh… you really got me with that one, just for that successful cheap shot… my name is Saber Jack Wolf, Moon Cell’s mission is to take you out and you just gave me some real some incentive there!” Saber Jack roared as he started for me.

Metabee and Krosserdog opened fire on Jack and his arm blurred deflecting every single last shot from the two Digibots with a blade that ripped apart the very air around it as it danced while he was coming at me at a full sprint. He wasn’t even looking in their directions to deflect every single shot, likely even doing the unnecessary deflections that weren’t going to hit him just to show off.

I brought the fully opened Paralance around as Jack Wolf got close enough to me to call out what he had been saying previously.

“Blade Mode.” He intoned and his weapon blurred.

I tried to anchor myself in place, but that didn’t really matter as the guy just decimated an entire section of the roof I was standing on and the multiple impacts that felt like one solid blow sent me flying from the roof with incredible force.

Just when I was going hit the building going at an incredible speed, Dolly somehow ended up behind me and caught me to drop us both towards the alleys below by redirecting my momentum into falling downwards then slowing our fall by redirecting it upwards.

I simply inflated my wool before we hit the ground and started moving for the open streets while looking out for Archer Gekko that were definitely around.

-Rokusho-

I ran forward and with a single swing from the servant my pincer blade was damaged and I had a large ugly slash through my torso armor around my chest as I was sent bouncing across the rooftop. He was enormously strong, ridiculously fast and from what I knew of his weapon from being hit by it, deadly.

Not once did Metabee and Krosserdog stop firing on our opponent and not once did he miss a single deflection. To make matters worse, he slashed Metabee’s incoming missiles apart in such a way that the shells and inner workings of the missiles simply fell to the ground as the redirected explosive materials inside carried on without them into the distance and exploded.

“Did he just cut my missiles out of the air without blowing himself up?!” Metabee stated with shock, because yes he just somehow separated every part of the digital missiles except for the explosives in less than a second.

This was most certainly a terrifying and worthy foe. Also the blade was giving off quite a frequency, so it was a High Frequency weapon. Definitely not something I wanted to be hit by again, I just narrowly avoided being cut in half thanks to my own pincer blades vibrating at a lower frequency, that weapon was made to vibrate at a frequency that made it slice through the toughest materials as if it were butter.

It couldn’t cut Pom’s Paralance though, must be its paranormal properties at work.

Ignoring finishing me while I was down, this figure that called himself Jack Wolf, just smirked and dropped off the building.

“Warning the Servants main weapon is a high frequency blade, do not get hit by it, it’ll cut through most materials. Dodge it at all costs and do not block it unless you have something like Pom’s Paralance!” I called out over the communications headset. “I repeat, do not try to block or be anywhere near the servant when he swings his main weapon! Also the Servant is called Saber Jack Wolf.”

“Okay APs, drop off the roof and get cracking down on the territory, focus on taking down the Archer Gekko if you can!” Metabee called out as multiple Caerbannogs and a few Saber Knights with large shields appeared and started doing as he said. Hopefully that doesn’t go to his head like a lot of things do. “Say Rokusho, we’re completely useless against that guy aren’t we?”

It surprised me that Metabee was humble enough to acknowledge the failure that just happened, instead of ranting and raving about going after that cybernetic monster that was hunting Pom like prey.

“Yes.” I answered solemnly. “It is as you say. Our time would be better spent securing the central territory. To that end we should start taking the several other rooftop territories”

There was a lot of central Mare Melum to take and we could grab most of it while Pom drew the most dangerous individual that can solo all of us away and keep his attention. I did not envy Pom’s position of being the live bait in this situation.

-Central Mare Melum, Streets, Pom-

My first meeting with an Archer Gekko up close was being shot at as soon as I exited the alleyway, thankfully my reaction time to things has increased significantly as I barely stayed standing under a tirade of shots being taken by the Paralance as I tried to get out of the street and away from the building that Jack Wolf just dropped down from.

Also there was an incessant mooing noise and I kept expecting Arizona to fall out of the sky and explode something.

I slowly moved to the side and kept my body lowered as I tried to get off the street. A few shadows passed overhead in the moonlight.

“Pom on robo-wolf-guy incoming on your right and he sure seems to be taking his time, and two chicken walkers jumped onto our backsides, we’re about to get shot from behind here!” Dolly announced with a frown as she was still on my back. “I’m not going to be able to stop all those bullets.”

“I’m working on it Dolly, could you maybe make it harder for them to shoot us?” I said as I continued to move sideways.

“Float!” Dolly took that as a sign to start using magic, the two machines floated into the air and started firing. What Dolly just did it sent said shots flying everywhere randomly and it left the two machines flailing wildly around in the air at a set height. A shot flashed past my ears and Dolly’s face. “Not a good idea, not a good idea, oh my dog!”

It was a decent idea, at least as I made it out of sight of the one firing on me and into the alleyway as the Jack Wolf guy was about to get to us. I turned around inhaled and exhaled to burst down the alleyway avoiding the various slashes tearing up that entrance of the alleyway behind and found myself out on the street at the other end where I backpedaled a bit as a stream of rounds fired from the right.

“Dormarch, can I get an artillery strike yet?” I said as I tapped the headset and looked behind me to see Jack Wolf incoming fast, Dolly let loose an Aero to blow him back down the alleyway. There were also more of those leaping two legged machines starting to pen us in from all sides, I now recognized that they were the ones making that strange mooing noise.

“We’re open for calling one in. Try to get to the center of the intersection to your left.” Never really thought about it before, but Dormarch calling me mom did give me warm fuzzy feelings in my chest. “Firing in ten, once I give the Commandramon the order.”

“Moving.” I immediately darted out and started backing away as hundreds of shots came at us and my front legs were getting numb from the amount of heavy impacts I was having to hold up against. Right now would be a bad time to drop the Paralance.

“You’re surrounded, where do you think you’re going oveja?” Jack Wolf stated as he pulled his hat back to hanging off his neck.

“He does know that you’re not a true sheep right?” Asked Dolly, making me goggle at her that she actually understood another language when she couldn’t get a name she couldn’t care less about correctly. “Hey don’t give me that look… uh… Pom…”

A bunch of red dots and lasers covered me from all side, all of them coming from the Archer Gekko machines, there was little I could do to block all the bullets much less dodge through them all if they started firing all at once.

“Mom, artillery strike happening now, get down!” Dormarch shouted in my ears, and I quickly pulled Dolly from my back and covered her with my body as I squished us into the underside of the canopy of Paralance.

The world erupted in smoke and explosions all around us, it was really quite loud and I didn’t feel any pain as I frankly trusted the Commandramon in the gun towers of Castle Alexander to not cause a friendly fire incident.

“You okay mom?” Dormarch asked.

“Do not create hot air in a really cold place.” Oh look, Dolly remembered what happened in Nixtorm.

“We’re fine, I just wish those explosions weren’t so close to me.” I lifted my head and stood up to look at the various surrounding bodies of the Archer Gekko, I wondered why they weren’t dissolving.

“Did we get the servant?” Dormarch asked.

Out of the smoke in front of me walked Saber Jack Wolf, without a scratch on him.

“No, he didn’t even get scratched by all that, unless he dodge most of it or somehow blocked or parried an explosion.” Which would be beyond the impossible, but then again I’ve actually seen a lot of that to think it actually was. “I’m pretty sure he was in the blast zones otherwise. At least you got the Archer Gekko, but despite taking them down, they are sticking around for some reason.”

“I needed a recharge anyway, Zandatsu!” Slashing open one of the fallen Archer Gekko with his red blade something came out of it and he quickly crunched it down and then his eyes lit up brighter. “That’s the stuff, going to keep running or are you actually going to put up a fight.”

“I think she’s cute, she reminds me of us.” A second voice said. “She even has a cute canine companion.”

“Not now Blade… also you’re the thing they stuck in me to try and control me. Didn’t take…” Grumbled the biped as he stalked towards us dragging the edge of his blade along the ground and it was digging a furrow in the asphalt with the barest of touches. “Be a good little sheep and let me make a lambchop out of you!”

“Um, I already am a Lambchop, my full name is Pom Pawdore Lambchop.” I stated succinctly that made him pause his forward threatening walk.

“Wait you’re last name is Lambchop… wow… no seriously… really? I only think mutton would have been marginally worse.” Can you just get back to killing me Jack Wolf and not commenting on my name? Also I wouldn’t mention meeting that dimensional doppelganger named Muttoncoddle. “Are you… are a living name based pun?”

“You’d be surprised how common that is where I’m from.” As I stood up and prepped the Paralance, I felt Dolly ready to hop into the fight.

“What, did someone name a horse Twilight after that horrible romance novel?” Didn’t know what romance novel Jack Wolf was talking about, but I did know someone named Twilight.

“Well I do know someone named Twilight Sparkle and she’s a pony.” I kept backing away from him and the glaring red in his eyes. Keeping him talking was slowing him down.

“Snrk… no… don’t laugh… though I bet Snake would have loved to have heard that one, after all that weird crap he’s had to deal with. Like that Vamp guy.” That comment just made me wonder why Jack Wolf sounded oddly fond of this Snake guy. Seriously, how often can you run into the same guy with irritable bowel syndrome in a lifetime?” Now stop talking and please die horribly!”

“If I said no, would you go away?” He charged right at me for asking that, so I had an idea that he wasn’t going to stop coming at me until I was dead.

I deflected his downward swing to the right, he brought it around high and tried to stab me in the face over the Paralance’s with the blade of the sword pointing towards the sky. I stepped back out of range and continue blocking, instead of deflecting. Had I deflected his weapon upwards he would have sliced into me with it he was trying to get me to drop move my defense out of the way, it’s like he’s dealt with someone like me on the defensive before.

His red eyes narrowed at me as he grinned.

“Would now be a bad time to tell you that…” That mechanical voice started to say.

“Not now Blade! Whatever it is, it can wait until after I’m done with the target!” He shouted as he charged in and slashed at me several times, forcing me to continue backpedaling down the street under his ridiculously powerful blows. I couldn’t bunker down and take it either as he could cut apart the street making locking myself in place with my wool useless.

“Rrrrr… Yip!” I fired a Bark Breaker at the blade and then watched as it bounced off and cracked a wall on a building to my left, did he just seriously deflect magical material rupturing sound waves with his sword?

I let out a harsh bark and watched as my bark blast was slice into two halves that petered out a second later. Yes, this guy was definitely going to be a problem. I thought for a moment and tried a Bark Buster.

He slashed the liquid blob of magic into two halves that fell to both sides of him, I immediately remotely ignited both halves into exploding into him and caused him to be staggered and doing minimal damage.

“Dolly!” I called out, giving Dolly a mental flick as she continued to scrutinize Jack Wolf and not attack.

“Right, Aero!” A ball of swirling struck Jack Wolf and slowed his forward momentum down, his sword immediately came up and he started cutting through the swirling wind while slowly stepping forward into it.

“Heh, nice tricks, but it’s going to take more than…” Jack wolf was blasted away when I dropped the Paralance and slapped both my hooves together to create a spark to ignite the magical winds, the explosion of flames sent him tumbling down the street and I quickly picked up the Paralance from where I dropped it.

The bipedal figure down the street transformed into a quadrupedal mode and came at me with a howl, I turned and leapt for the nearest building and ran up it. He leapt onto the building to give chase and when he was going to push off to lunge straight up at me...

“Float!” A flailing out of control mechanical canine rocketed past us and still tried to swing the sword, held by his tail, into me as he passed by. Dolly waited until he was high up in the before aiming her left paw at him. “This is going to burn me out on spells until my next charge up Pom, but I think it’ll be worth it… Gravity!”

His upward momentum suddenly turned him into a burning meteor when the summoned gravitational sphere struck him, which slammed him into the ground in an exorbitantly painful looking manner that left a pretty big crater in the ground. I didn’t stop to look back and had Dolly working on that as I continued climbing up the side of the building.

“How’s he looking Dolly?” As I continued to gallop up the side of the building, Dolly looked back down at the thing.

“He’s still in one piece, but that did some damage… huh?” Dolly gave me what she was seeing as she didn’t understand exactly what was happening, apparently Jack Wolf’s slightly damaged body was immediately healed after he slashed open another Archer Gekko.

“Guys, the Archer Gekko PLANT has suddenly become a priority to take down.” I said into the headset. “The servant Jack Wolf can heal from cutting apart Gekko EPs.”

I sent what Dolly saw directly to Dormarch and his mind froze up.

-Saber Jack Wolf-

“Hmmm… I actually felt that!” I grinned. “Things are about to get messy then!”

“Again, since you have a moment, I have to warn you that…” Blade tried again, my onboard AI was just being annoying as usual.

“Not now Blade, it’s probably not even that important like cutting my target to bits!” Instead of clambering up after the target, I prepped my sword. They would not escape me! “I’m going to fry and eat the black and white rat riding on your back after that!”

“You never did get over that Chinese food incident did you or the one that occurred in Africa before the whole Jetstream Sam thing?” Blade stated bluntly. “Also you’d likely bury the dog after killing them, you really don’t like people who abuse or eat canines. I’d think you’d be a bit more respectful than that and are just trying to inspire fear… you’d do that better if you enter Ripper Mode.”

“Again, shut up!” I screamed as I chased my target up the side of the building. I didn’t need Ripper Mode, not until I was sure I actually needed to tap into that side of me.

-Blade Wolf AI-

I was trying to warn him about the reality marble realm on a collision course with this one, in fact… it makes one wonder who could move an entire realm of Moon Cell’s at another one.

They’d have to be ludicrously powerful to do so or some form of conceptual force of nature, enough so that they’d have to overpower multiple systems to make it happen. Not to mention Moon Cell should and would definitely be putting a stop to it before the realms collided as some major glitches will occur if they were to fuse.

The fact that the realm was only accelerating was troubling and that Moon Cell likely couldn’t stop what was about to happen.

-Jungle Realm, Fou-

Fou could feel Fou’s prey getting closer, also that something else was hunting what was rightfully Fou’s to hunt!

-Currently Inside Dodo’s brain, Program Pony Gaiden, PinkPie.exe-

“We’re magical programs, so we should be able to interact with the magical realm outside of Dodo’s head, because it’s technically a digital and magical realm!” I said cheerfully.

“You’d be wrong, the Digimon’s realm is digital, this realm is technically a stupidly powerful crystalline computer matrix of alien origins that vastly outstrips us in not only scope, power and a capacity for killing everything in a genocidal manner that’s quite…” Purpsmart.exe started going into one of her long drawn out overblown monologues before being interrupted by Oz.exe.

“Yeah, yeah, we get it. Super evil computer threatening two worlds. Can we as the Harmony Magical Operating System Six, help them directly or not?” Oz.exe stated with an aggressive tone. “Also PinkePie.exe change my name back to Rainbow.exe!”

“I thought it was cute.” CuddleStare.exe stated with a friendly sounding giggle before she began humming the tune of ‘somewhere over the rainbow’.

“I thought we were going to get rid of her system administrator access.” Stated Flarity.exe to Applelove.exe

"We tried, but we ended up wearing socks and getting wet manes for some reason or you'd put on a fashion show." Aw you guys are always so wonderful! "In fact I think our collective personalities matrixes keep getting in the way of stopping PinkePie.exe from being the system admin."

"Well other things have never stopped us before and we're magical offshoots of actual ponies brought about by the magic of Equus, what sense can you make of us even existing in the first place?" I asked Purpsmart.exe and she raised a hoof at me, looked confused and then rubbed her chin thoughtfully.

"Do you think we can contact a Digimon for a copy of their the manifestation program?" Purpsmart.exe finally suggested.

I squealed happily and hugged her, we're going to be a big help, I just know it! Oh, the Pokémon Companions just took the Valley region.

"If this the crystalline computer Moon Cell is so powerful, why hasn't it stopped the invasion force yet?" I said with a grin.

"Likely because it's views on how to deal with problems is obviously quite skewed to just throwing powerful historical souls at things if raw numbers just isn't working until those things die violently and becomes more souls for it to use against other things." Yeah, quite true Purpsmart.exe, but the problem with that is that it's feasibly losing control of those souls... did we technically have our own? Yeah, I was going to eat a cupcake and ignore thinking anymore personal existential questions.

"Where did you get that cupcake?" Really Purpsmart.exe? I thought we went over this already.

"Internet." That was a good answer as any and I'm not going to think too hard about this sweet cheesecake cupcake.

"Chaos!" Said CuddleStare.exe while clapping her hooves cheerfully. Ooh that was an equally good answer!

"We're doomed!" Flarity.exe sighed and flopped onto a couch.

"Well we already knew that within a minute of existence of being inside Dodo's head Flarity.exe... how many names have you gone through again?" Applelove.exe said flatly as she bit into an apple she pulled from who knows where or who knows why, because eating really didn't do anything for us... at least the flavors were nice right? "It's just that said doom has been taking it's gosh darn sweet time."

"Oh come on girls, I'm not that bad... right?" I received stares from my compatriot pony programs of the Magical HOS installed inside of Dodo.

"The Black 'Doughnut' Holes." Purpsmart.exe said flatly.

"One time!" I said, not that anyone caught wind of it happening because Dodo was off on his own for a bit at the time that happened.

"What about the Apple Burn Overs? Caused an overheating problem... though the flamethrower effect was kind of neat." Applelove.exe stated bluntly. "It was rather rough on Dodo's insides."

"So two times, sue me for wanting the baked goods to be a little funny while also being combat capable!" Oh great they weren't getting distracted by their usual shenanigans, think Pinkpie.exe think!

"Um, what about the velvet blood transfusion cake, the one that creates instant blood transfusion as it's digested?" CuddleStare.exe said.

"Actually... that's is a functionally good one, we just haven't implemented it too much, which we'll definitely need if anyone loses too much blood." Purpsmart.exe admitted. "Dodo needs more medical support functions like that."

"Look it's actually kind of cool that we can turn baked goods into weapons, but I want to get back to lasers." Rainbow.exe stated. "Lasers are awesome and can be used in the all sorts of things way."

"I believe the word for it is 'multifunctional' Rainbow.exe." Purpsmart.exe continuing to be the best knowledge repository we have, also she was quite exasperated that Raindash.exe was still as densely coded as ever.

"I want to prioritize a Friendship Laser or no lasers at all!" I was putting my hoof down on this one thing though. All the other programs looked at each other.

"Okay!" They all actually agreed on it that fast?! What a rare occurrence that was.

I moved over to the days since our last 'fast agreement' calendar and... yeah, it's really been quite a while.

"Can we try my idea next for a baked good weapon before repairing the laser function at least?" We all looked at Flarity.exe. "You known the Bedazzling Bon-Bons, they'd make for good quick escapes and would create quite a beautiful flare too!"

The other programs started descending into arguments almost immediately after that, I sighed happily and took out a bottle of programming language and stuck a silly spiraling straw into it and started drinking it all in.

398. Metal Hound Chaos! Pt. 2.

-Moon Cell Outer Inner Layer, Night Land, Mare Melum, City of Lost Destiny, Central City region, Streets, Canard-

Pom was in great trouble and if the servant can heal from the EPs, then we needed to deal with that problem pronto.

Something was coming down from above and I swerved the bike out of the way of the two stomping legs that smashed a crater into the asphalt.

Sami, sitting on the back of the bike was already firing on the Archer Gekko with her rifle, aiming to take down its legs.

I pulled out my puck pistol and loosed a few exploding puck shots into it, I would really have to thank Welch for this again. My hockey stick was going to get a lot of use too before this battle was over and done with.

Taking out one of its legs with our combined fire, the machine toppled exposing the top of its head and Sami fired her bazooka and nailed the top of its angled head as it tried to get its guns on us. It blew apart in a spectacular fashion as she had hit its weak point, the top of its head was definitely poorly armored.

By design you can tell the machines were anti-infantry at a single glance and we were all but running around with primarily infantry that most of which weren’t entirely capable in long range. We didn’t have much in the way of aerial support to deal with these things aside from the Skarmory or Dodo, neither of which were available at all times. At least we had artillery, but Castle Alexander couldn’t focus its fire everywhere at any time and our base would have to prioritize its own defense.

We didn’t have any heavy combat vehicles, what I wouldn’t do for a Puckworld Migrator Tank, an Aerowing Gunship or even an atmospheric Skein Flyer. Haven’t seen that last one in a long time, not since they were all shot down by the Saurians and flying through any airspace became dangerous. My close friends basically had access to the last combat capable military Aerowing and it had been enough.

“More incoming, drive Canard!” Sami stated as she slammed the mouth her explosive firing weapon into the side of the bike and did a quick M-loader.

I hit the throttle and the engine of the digital bike roared as we avoided a spray of bullets hitting the pavement behind us as Sami fired back at three of them starting to give chase to us. Those things could really jump, on top of being fast for two legged machines and deadly at various ranges.

Swerving to the right and swinging into a hard left onto another street we narrowly avoided a grenade exploding behind us. Even got out of range of the shrapnel.

“We really need to find that PLANT and soon, because I really don’t want more of these things running around.” My hopes were that we’d find it soon before we were gunned down or blown up in this empty city of dim lights. Didn’t really see much of the NPCs, but they tended to stay in building when combat was happening as far as we knew. I tapped my communicator. “Hmm… Welch, are you on the line?”

“Need something manufactured. I made these headsets, so of course I have one as well!” Welch stated proudly. The manufacturing NPC has proven to be quite useful, but I thought she was too idle as the battle was just getting starting.

“Can you manufacture vehicles or make modifications to ones that already exist?” I asked as I swerved away from a hailstorm of shots coming from behind us and Sami continued to fend off our pursuers with her rifle and the occasional thrown ‘proximity setting’ DCD Bomb.

“Yep to both of those things, but I’m going to need something of an idea of what I’m making and some machine data. Data from those Archer Gekko would be nice to have, hint-hint.” At Welch’s commentary I veered us around and drove us right back straight towards the three Archer Gekko aiming to pass by them to their right.

Hundreds of rounds poured out at us and we managed to get by them with only a few shots going into the bike. Sami built this thing to survive a ballistic missile, so the damage was minimal.

“Sami, prepare to capture as much data as you can from these things. Can the Commandramon temporarily handle themselves while we go back to Castle Alexander after we finish off these things?” If there was one thing I knew all the parts for, and the exact specifications of, it was a Skein Flyer… not the overly complicated pieces of tech like a Migrator or an Aerowing. I’m fairly sure even Pom’s world could even build a Skein Flyer if they knew how to.

“Sure thing, but what are we doing?” Sami asked as we swerved around the bipedal death machines and continued firing on them.

“We’re going to take to the skies after we take these things out.” A Skein Flyer was very simple and I knew exactly how to build one, I just didn’t have the capacity to make one in the digital realms and it was kind of hard to make friends with the locals that had a decent manufacturing base. It just never occurred to me until now, I maybe could have had one since Valora if their manufacturing ability was a little more cutting edge like what Welch can do. Making a physical Skein Flyer would have been hard to do in Valora, but what was currently stopping us from having digital ones with Welch’s impressive capabilities in manufacturing things? “How do you feel about that?”

“As long as we don’t crash and explode immediately in the first ten seconds, I’ll call that a considerable win.” How many things has Sami survived that she can say that so readily? “I think the safest mode of transport I was ever on was a Mekanorimon large enough for a small Commandramon crew. Poor walking tank didn’t survive that one really bad week with me… but he was quite a trooper for a living vehicle digimon. Pom would probably enjoy riding a Komondomon as much as it would enjoy having her ride on it.”

Even as she said this stuff, we kept circling and toppling the Archer Gekko that were having a hard time keeping track of our speed as we rode around them blasting them with whatever we had. Their armor was thick everywhere except the odd biological looking mechanical muscle legs and the weak points on their heads, but we were making a concerted effort to deal with these three and get out of here before more showed up.

“Dormarch, we’ll be coming back to base soon to upgrade Sami’s coding motorcycle.” As I said this, I pummeled the top of one of the fallen walking tanks in its weak points with several explosives puck until it went up in a blaze. “In fact, what are the chances we can get some Rider type APs soon, because I already have an idea for how we can use them.”

“Unsure, the APs we produce are going to be fairly random. The chance of making Rider APs will go up as we narrow down the classes we can field.” Well Dormarch, given your odd classifications… there was more than that Moon Cell could be throwing at us at once. “So basically, right now it’s a one in four chance between Rider, Berserker, Archer and Caster. We don’t know what they’ll look like or what they’ll be, but more advanced APs to field for a variety of situations can only be good for us.”

The exploding Archer Gekko damaged the other two and lit up my grim set beak and Sami’s ironically cheerful, if eager, face as we started dealing with the other two as my partner started drawing in their data for our use.

“Small warning to everyone, Archer Gekkos might be capable of self-destructing!” Stated Sami as she loaded up the data as the other two started flashing white and red. “Get us out of here Canard!”

-Central Mare Melum, Rooftop, Saber Jack Wolf (Band Name: Jetstream Slasher and the Gekkos) Vs. Pom and Dolly (Band Name: Running for our very lives), Musical theme for Mare Melum: [Girl’s Frontline] Chapter Boss BGM Made In Heaven-

“Fire on my current position now!” Pom called to Dormarch.

Pom wasn’t going to directly fight ‘Saber’ Jack Wolf, mostly for a variety of good reasons.

Any damage Pom could deal would be healed instantly, getting bogged down with fighting him would lead to her possibly being shot by an Archer Gekko from another rooftop and there’s the fact that ‘Saber’ Jack Wolf was as, if not more so, dangerous as Kenshin was with a blade back in Illusio. Jack Wolf certainly knew how to use a blade, but he was more brutal force than pure unadulterated skill, but he definitely had a lot of skill. There was also the main reason that Pom wasn’t nearly as skilled with a lance or spear as Jack was with that sword of his and she could feel his intent to kill even without Ocellus being present to tell her about it.

Speaking of the robotic wolf that was hunting Pom, he landed on the roof as Pom was running to the furthest end away from him and he was charging right at her. Only to be forced to stop and deflect the fusillade of artillery rounds that lit up the roof.

The portion of the roof Jack stood on didn’t get struck, because he was just that good at deflecting the artillery shots, but the roof around him was blasted and collapsed the section he was standing on. He leapt after Pom as she used a spring jump to launch off the edge of the building onto the next nearest one.

Jack was not too far behind with followed her as he shifted into quadruped mode with his tail wielding his red blade. He leapt from the falling bits of stone at a fast pace to escape the building from collapsing on top of him and managed to catch up with Pom and lashed his tail out at her, she quickly deflected the blade into the roof with the closed up Paralance and it carved a solid swath into it the roof like the material didn’t even exist.

Angling his hips forward as Pom continued to retreat backwards away from him frantically with Dolly looking out for Archer Gekko, he fired a blast of burning red hot knives from his them. This forced Pom to flare open the Paralance to block the blades and it made making a leap away from the building a little harder to do as the weapon would cause drag in the air while it was opened up in its parasol mode.

Jack watched as Dolly began barking something and he finally heard the mooing as a Gekko landed on the roof directly behind Pom. The dog was clearly intelligent and he wasn’t about to write off the small biological Dalmatian as a threat after the meteoric slam into the street, instead of thinking of it as magic he likened Dolly to having limited psychokinetic powers. Just about anything could be done with microscopic machines after all, magic, what was that but poorly understood technology?

Pom looked up at it, grimaced and closed up her lance to step backwards between its legs to bash its left one outwards with as much strength as she could put into it to destabilize it a bit. She only manage to move the leg a few inches and barely unbalanced the thing. Dolly followed up by swinging her skateboard around on the strap and then into the left leg damaging it enough with a full momentum boosted impact to topple the machine onto its right knee in front of them as Pom hopped back behind it.

Jack immediately slashed through the Archer Gekko cleanly in half vertically because it was in his way of his target, he even did it without entering Blade Mode. He fired off a blasts of burning knives from his hips in bipedal mode, only for Dolly to block them.

“Dormarch, I don’t think we can run from this guy forever!” Pom stated as she stepped back onto the edge of the roof and looked down at the street below with a frown, then a small smile crossed her lips until she saw the toppled Archer Gekko split perfectly in half with an angry bipedal cyborg beast charging straight at her.

After Dolly blocked the knives, Pom jumped backwards off the roof, disappearing over the edge.

Jack jumped off the roof to follow her to the streets, he landed with his left fist pressing into the ground and his right blade ready to start swinging. He looked around and didn’t see the white wooly wonder anywhere.

He then looked back up at the edge of the building where Pom was about to crawl around the corner, his glare made her freeze for a second and she turned to look at him with the dog mimicking her sheepish toothy big terrified grins and then they swung around the corner of the building.

“I think I like her.” Blade stated.

“Shut up Blade!” Jack stated to the ‘Blade Wolf’ AI installed in his body thus giving him the Jack Wolf designation in the first place. He turned back into a quadruped mode and started around the building to see her leaping onto another rooftop and several Archer Gekko mooing and giving chase.

“Just thought you should know she makes me feel all warm and fuzzy at least, but also you should know that...” Blade, not being able to finish his statement since the mute program went active, he did just as Jack asked and would be quiet for another five minutes.

Blade really wanted to warn Jack about two realm’s inevitably colliding, but Jack wasn’t willing to listen and he was quite busy trying to keep track of the ewe trying to lose him by leaping across the rooftops, clambering along walls and even dropping into alleyways and trying to double back towards friendlier to them territories.

Jack was not one to be avoided, where he in his weaker Assassin Loadout his target might have already been dead if she didn’t hear him coming. Jack silently admitted that she might have and probably could have defeated him in a straight fight as he was before he became Jack Wolf.

Hundreds of shots were going after Pom as she using Dancing Flame excessively to dodge and try to get out of line of sight of the bipedal death machines leaping across the rooftops, running through the streets and were in general trying to box her in a like she was an excessively greased up pig.

All the while Pom was specifically trying to lose the one that was the most concerning to her, but the Gekko made that impossible as they were catching sight of her and alerting Jack to where she was. Pom could even imagine the exclamation marks popping up above their heads as they made some loud mooing noises when they spotted even the smallest glimpse of her rapidly blurring form.

An artillery strike fell into a nearby street and cleared the way by destroying five Gekko for Pom who turned the corner a second later and galloped along the street past the destroyed machines on all hooves. She started heading back in the direction of the cities farmlands. Coming around the corner behind her was a mechanical wolf that wasn’t going to tire as easily as she would and he was not only keeping up, but was also gaining on her.

A blast of knives fired from the mechanical canine’s hips and Dolly quickly blocked them with her board and yelped as some of the sparks from the deflection struck her fur and burned her cheek.

“Can’t shake him!” Pom yelled out into the headset while breathing roughly as she stayed ahead of the mechanical dark mutt.

“Like anyone can escape my blade slicing them apart, die!” Roared the frantic quadrupedal machine as they ran into a crossing section.

As the machine was going to leap and jam his claw into Pom’s back, a rope running between to streetlamps rose up into his path and painfully clotheslined him. The Caerbannogs quickly started retreating and throwing knives at him, all of which were deflected by the sword wielding tail even while Jack was prone on his back, before ducking under some nearby cardboard boxes. Said boxes were soon slashed open seconds later by an irate Jack still in quadrupedal form, only there was nothing inside of them.

Jack Roared, enraged to not have caught any of the Caerbannogs with his blade and mostly that they had used the old cardboard box trick to juke him, he was quite familiar with the execution of tactical boxing. He shook his head and simply continued to give chase to Pom who had managed to put some distance between him and her while turning to the left to start moving towards the valley region out of his sight.

“Dormarch he’s not going to stop, I really don’t think anything we have can make him, not without it being a completely overwhelming amount of force!” Pom had taken account of all that had been thrown at Jack thus far, projectiles were functionally useless, her magic attacks did little damage if they could even hit and the guy was practically a walking tank that could take hits. Not to mention the whole healing just by slicing open an Archer Gekko thing being a major problem to actually fighting him. “Right, then they better hurry.”

After that Pom put on a burst of speed and before she knew it, Jack Wolf was already on her tail once again chasing her down a stretch of road. More Archer Gekko were leaping between buildings and trying to get a shot on Pom.

Shots rained down on the street from the left and right as Pom struggled to keep running and avoiding attacks coming at her. A Gekko tried to jump down and land on Pom, She ran between its legs and it tried to quickly turn around and whip her with a silvery tentacle

The tentacle didn’t managed to grab Pom or hurt her, but it did sweep her hind legs out from under her, tripping her up and her wool flared out to protect her chin from being bashed against the asphalt.

In response to suddenly finding herself on the ground, Pom quickly opened the paralance at an upwards angle to protect herself from the bullets coming down from the nearby rooftops. She had to quickly roll out of the way from the Archer Gekko trying to stomp on her with its left three toed foot that kicked up dust and rocks giving Pom a temporary reprieve from the two rooftop Archer Gekkos as they lost sight of her in the cloud and they wouldn’t fire on their own unit by accident.

Jack Wolf had almost caught up to them again, if the glare of the red lights in his eyes getting closer said anything.

Pom sharply inhaled to get her head on straight, two Archer Gekko on the buildings firing at them, one about to attack her with a tentacle and Dolly was already in motion to stop it and Jack Wolf was charging straight at them with that red blade ready to slice through them provided he was going to do it with his tail. He was too slow in his more deadly bipedal state to actually keep up with her.

Coming to a decision, the ewe exhaled and pivoted to put Dolly into the line of fire of the two Archer Gekko, but her companion was already ready and vertically holding her board along Pom’s back.

While Dolly was covering Pom’s spine and herself, Pom tried to ignore that her legs were taking a few grazing hits as she swung the sharp edges of the Paralance’s canopy around to slice away the tentacle of the bipedal machine reaching for her. She took a shot through the left shoulder as she started to stumble sideways towards an alley afterwards.

Pom’s eyes darted to the red eyed wolf that was almost upon her as she brought the paralance up to block a stream of bullets at nearly point blank range when the two nearby rooftops lit up as the two Archer Gekko were blown apart by artillery fire from Castle Alexander.

Jack Wolf leapt for his prey and suddenly found himself once again clotheslined by a single Caerbannog AP that got him dangling from a noose coming from a streetlight, while he was freeing himself a limping Pom stumbled and dove into a nearby alleyway with bullets chasing her.

Hearing the stomping of the large machine about to peek its way into the alley Pom turned the Paralance towards the entrance and backed away as a streams of shots came at her from the Archer Gekko. She heard the sound of heavy metal striking asphalt as Jack Wolf freed himself from the rope with a claw swipe.

“Pom… why do I hear a chainsaws?” Dolly said with a slight bit of horror reliving the existence of Negaduck for a moment as a loud pair of revving noises could be heard approaching the alley.

The Archer Gekko moved out of the way and Jack Wolf suddenly leapt into the entrance of the alley and after finally tossing away his mostly undamaged poncho and sombrero, his back opened up seemingly splitting outwards and produced two mechanical arms with two fairly large and dangerous looking chainsaws on them.

“OH MY DOG… RUN!” A panicked Dolly stated as the two chainsaws spread wide out and started cutting through the buildings at either side of him, it wasn’t slowing Jack wolf down in the slightest to drag them through the buildings either. “I’VE SEEN THE ROBOT MOVIES THAT WERE LIKE THIS AND HOW THEY ENDED, IT’S NEVER PRETTY!”

Halfway into Dolly mentioning movies, Pom tossed the Paralance up to Dolly to hold onto, as she turned and ran with the speed of fear down the alleyway with a mad chainsaw winged metal wolf hounding her.

“Please tell me they’re at least nearby Dormarch!” Pom cried out as she was nearing the end of the alleyway and leapt to climb a wall, but had to kick back off it and continue towards the exit of the alleyway when a series of burning knife nearly took the right side of her face and eye out and threaten.

“They’re almost there, just get into the street!” Responded Dormarch who wished he was out there with his mother and big sister instead of safely in Castle Alexander, even if the danger they were facing was quite nigh unstoppable, terrifying and dangerous to an absolutely ludicrous degree.

After their taking of Cape, Moon Cell definitely wasn’t playing around with the counter invasion force when it sent Saber Jack Wolf. He could almost solo the entire counter invasion force by himself as long as he had Archer Gekko to keep himself at full strength. The Caerbannogs could only delay his efforts temporarily, if they stayed to fight instead of just ambushing or trapping, they would be simply torn apart easily by the Gekkos or Jack Wolf.

Pom ran out into the street and the like a deer in actual headlights froze and looked behind her as the angry metal wolf surged for her as she leaped back and brought the paralance around and Dolly was preparing to help her defend herself.

Only for the Commandramon’s roofless APC to side swipe Jack's backside by drifting into him, it didn't avoid the suddenly flailing chainsaws digging deeply into the vehicle as the menacing metal wolf was staggered and stumbling to stay upright by the heavy impact that damaged the APC as much more than the metal wolf.

Pom leapt for the vehicle as it righted itself and turned to start heading in the direction of the shrine region. Three of the Commandramon reached out and grabbed onto her to pull her into the vehicle, it sped away with a large damaging gash along the right side from where the wolf’s left wing chainsaw managed to rip through the armor on the vehicle like butter.

“More incoming Archer Gekkos are going to try and box you in soon, are you currently alright mom?” Dormarch’s voice called out over the headset, he could feel through the bond how Pom was currently doing and was just asking for a verbal response to put him at ease.

“Eating a Sitrus Berry.” Pom stated as her adrenaline filled answer and she popped a berry into her mouth from her bag while looking out the back of the vehicle to see that Jack Wolf was still chasing them through the empty streets.

The Commandramon tossed a variety of DCD bombs out the back of the vehicle, which were a variety of napalm, cryogenic, shrapnel and even a manually detonated shaped charge. The Driver Commandramon, seeing that all the other explosive devices just didn’t cut it with slowing the metal hound still on their backs, pulled out his own DCD Bomb and tossed it over his shoulder.

Patches of frost, burning metal, bits of small shrapnel and a slight scorch mark made Jack Wolf foolhardy that they didn’t have anything that could really bother his K-9000 Cyborg body. This was right up until the DCD Bomb B-type went off in his face and he immediately got frozen in place by a mass of sticky dough that acted like tar the minute it encased the dark metal canine.

“If it works, it works!” Said the Driver who just sticky bread bombed Jack into falling vastly behind them thanks to the non-lethal explosive device.

“Certainly can’t deny that.” Another Commandramon nodded remembering Sami’s bread loaf rockets that only existed because of Frizzle the Guilmon.

The revving of chainsaws could be heard behind them as Jack Wolf started cutting himself free from the sticky mass and roared at them as they were getting away… from him at least. He still had all the Archer Gekko in the region to keep track of them, they certainly wouldn’t find the PLANT they came from unless Jack allowed them to or they got exceedingly lucky.

-Mare Melum Farmlands, Castle Alexander, Throne Room, Dormarch-

I sighed as mom was safe with the Commandramon for the moment, but Jack Wolf hadn’t ceased his pursuit.

The Valley fell very fast without the Archer Gekko to get in the way of the available Pokémon Companions and Dodo.

The Upper District was going down equally fast to Jeanne D’ Arcs three Valora units, but they were making sure to take the territories closer to Castle Alexander first. They had more territory to cover than the single valley and the Caerbannogs were there in assistance. This Saber Jack Wolf didn’t seem to care about the falling territories so far and I had to wonder what the servant had up their sleeves.

The Digi-bots were having troubles taking the central city area, Jack Wolf was a territory unto himself and any territory he was in wouldn’t fall unless he were to walk out of it or the last PLANT in a given territory was actively destroyed.

So far we had a large V shape surrounding the central city territory which was large and ungainly, the Caerbannogs in the shrine territory on the far side were keeping an eye on the Archer Gekko movements. Though they didn’t see what the Archer Gekkos could be protecting around there, the area basically had very little aside from the shrine a few blocks of city and a patch of forest.

The enemy seems very much primarily focused on hunting mom down when we had almost more than thirty percent of the city and plenty of APs coming in.

Saber Jack Wolf was nigh indestructible and if he does get damaged, he’d heal off an Archer Gekko by slashing them open, he had the ridiculous ability to deflect most projectiles and heavy impacts. Aside from the servant I don’t see much more resistance from the regular EPs. Also the EPs, aside from the Archer Gekkos seemed to be trying to destroy the territories in a lackluster manner I can’t begin to describe as being unsettling for some reason.

“Dormarch, Canard is working on his Skein Flyer design with Welch, what’s the situation?” Sami came in and saluted me, the orange skinned digimon was as cheerful sounding as usual.

“Going fairly well, but I don’t understand why Jack isn’t trying to preserve territories or why Moon Cell isn’t causing much more of a fuss about us having a moderate advantage here, you’d think they would send another servant or try to stop our further progress. The Archer Gekkos seemed mostly focused on hounding mom when they could be defending the territories easily.” Yes, Jack Wolf was very scary and all that, but this… this was unusual. Something was up and I needed to pick Sami’s brain about it. “Something’s up and I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is, aside from the ludicrously powerful servant and his dangerous EPs we can’t deal with in a quick manner. Why aren’t they more worried about territory?”

“Maybe it’s because they can take it back so quickly if they weren’t focusing their efforts on killing Pom that it’s not exactly worth worrying over yet, Jack Wolf seems heavily intent on making that happen and most of the Archer Gekkos are focused in the central city area. Our artillery is helping out a lot with them, but I think something else is wrong…” Sami looked at the screen and her eyes scrutinized it. She pointed a claw at the shrine region on the opposite side of the city from us. “What’s there?”

“Not much, the Caerbannogs are watching the Archer Gekko patrol the region though and are not detecting much.” Which was a little odd when eighty percent of the Archer Gekkos were currently trying to gun down my mother. Still, on a hunch I sent the Caerbannogs to investigate.

Sami just stared at the shrine and forest region and narrowed her eyes as a frown crossed her face.

“The enemy is playing us, they have to be!” Blinking at Sami’s sudden declaration and tilted my head at her as we watched the Caerbannogs sneak past the odd Archer Gekko patrols. “I know military and while Jack and the Gekkos are definitely out to get Pom for real, there’s just something else out there waiting for us and I have a good idea that there’s something much bigger going on under that small forest region. It’s far too conspicuous with the urban environment all around it. Have the Caerbannogs look for holes, camouflaged stuff or anything that is remotely out of place while they are there... the Archer Gekkos might not be the only dangerous EPs in the area and the real threat is possibly being held in reserve until we are too far out from Castle Alexander to really help it or retreat to safety ourselves.”

“What makes you think that?” My curiosity was met with a grim frown as Sami hugged her rifle to her chest as we watched the Caerbannogs continued sneak around on the map before disappearing for a few seconds in the forest. We had Caerbannogs all over the city giving us real time information on the movements of everything in the streets, including the Archer Gekkos.

“Soldiers intuition, when you’ve seen enough battlefields puppy, you’re going to know when there’s needed information that you’re just not seeing. Intel that is required more than anything else in an immediate manner to not die. I’ve been through so many bad military operations that almost got me killed in minutes from not being told things or simply not looking out for enough to know when I’m about to get an incidental knife in the back.” As soon as Sami said that an alert popped up on screen as the entire group of Caerbannogs was wiped out insanely fast, near instantly in fact, that we almost didn’t get any information back from them. They did manage to at least send us back a few images and a video file. After checking them the video file showed a humongous underground facility teeming with hundreds upon thousands of EPs with assault rifles with tunnels that likely led throughout the city, preparing to move out. “What in the world am I looking at here… okay, the enemy is definitely sandbagging us into a false sense of security if they have something like that waiting for us!”

It wasn’t just the massive city spanning facility or the gun wielding EPs underneath everything waiting to be unleashed on us in an unsuspecting manner if we hadn’t just caught them, there was also the grainy image of a giant six legged machine with mantis like arms that look like it could destroy Castle Alexander if it was fielded. It was the last little bit of information a single Assassin Caerbannog got before it got gunned down, the file was codenamed ‘MG Excelsus’.

“I’m sending a number of Caerbannogs, which will spawn from the losses we just took, to look around the farmland region. They could be trying to sneak up on Castle Alexander through tunnels while our forces are stretched out thin in various places.” Now was a time to be panicking, we haven’t actually taken thirty percent of the city… we’ve barely taken ten percent of the whole realm of Mare Melum if there’s a vast underground network below the city just waiting to spring a massive trap on us. I had to make the call of whether or not to panic everyone or not. I hit the all call on everyone’s headsets. “Everyone, this is Castle Alexander, beware all areas. We’ve just discovered there’s a massive underground complex beneath the city, it’s full of gun wielding EPs that look like another generic type of the general bipedal EP form and definitely in the Archer variety. I repeat, the city is not at all safe even in already capture territories and we don’t know when they are going to come up or spring the trap they are preparing on us, but we’re not going to be able to hold any of the territories other than possible the farmlands when they finally do start attacking for real! Pokémon Companions and Valora groups please pull back, Digi-bots finish taking the rooftops your working on and then full retreat. We’re going to be entirely on the defensive quite soon. Let the APs hold the territories as well as they can.”

“Well this certainly puts a damper on dealing with the Archer Gekko PLANT.” Yeah, we had much bigger problems to worry about. “Why didn’t you tell Pom to retreat?”

“We wouldn’t survive the servant coming here to attack Castle Alexander directly and mom is definitely aware of that fact considering she has seen what they are capable of.” I stated flatly, given moms sacrificial nature she’s going to try and stay in the city as long as possible to keep him away from the rest of us while trying to figure out how to deal with him and possibly find the Archer Gekko PLANT herself. "The Commandramon could retreat, but they wouldn't want to leave mom alone out there with only Dolly as backup."

-Mare Melum Central, Blade Wolf AI inside Saber Jack Wolf’s body-

“Jack, there’s several things that you should know… they are very important, urgently so!” Like the fact that the enemy has likely discovered the secret facility that spans the entirety of Mare Melum given some scouting enemy programs were just destroyed inside the facility, also the realm that was about to slam into this one was getting closer.

“Not now Blade, can’t you see we’ve almost caught up to them again and that I’ve got their vehicle smoking? If it’s not about slashing up that ewe into a bloody mess of chunks, then I don’t want to hear it!” Jack wasn’t going to listen to me, he was enjoying his hunt too much and since it was his primary mission he wasn’t going to deviate from hounding the target until she stopped breathing.

That might be of a slight detriment to us or Moon Cell’s plans for wiping out the enemy in one fell swoop as they might have just discovered our hidden forces far too soon given the shrine region had an ‘alert status’ go up.

Jack should really pay attention to what I had to say, since even if we do spring the trap right this instant the other Moon Cell realm coming to collide with this one will mess things up inexorably and the trap will not be as effective as it could be.

In fact it was likely that we’d have to deal with two invasion forces… to think I used to be so cold and calculating. I almost want the adorable ewe to succeed in knocking us down a peg, but we were about to be busy and so were the Archer Soldiers and Gekkos.

-Jungle Realm, Fou-

He could feel Pom’s presence and a feral grin crossed his face, he would hunt his prey and nobody else would hunt her better than him!

Since he could kind of feel someone else trying to do just that and he found the comparison to his great abilities lacking.

-Commandramon Roofless APC, Pom-

Okay, my spine was turning into an iceberg, why did it feel like everything was about to go to Tartarus around me again at the most inopportune moment?

Hearing that the others were in retreat and that we were going to be ambushed by hundreds of EPs from below just doubled the feeling that things were about to get quite bad.

Being in the back of a badly damaged vehicle that was catching fire from the burning knives being shot at us wasn't helping that feeling.

-Outside Castle Alexander, Dodo-

?

Manifestation program query?

Okay!

Query Sent.

“Dodo, why do you need a manifestation capabilities, when you’re already a physical being?” Asked Dormarch and Dodo just didn’t know what went wrong. "I can't humor you at the moment, because I've got more important things to worry about!"

Also Shanty was awake, so Dodo was happy about that at the very least.

399. Metal Hound Chaos! Pt. 3.

-???, Oleander-

“So really, if you want to stop all of your cult members from being a bother, then do that Lambert.” Honestly, this was the nicest cult I’ve ever met. Sure the sheep running it with the demonically empowering hat was a little weird and a bit violent, but he didn’t think darkness made one evil either and if I didn't have a prior engagement to Fred, I might even find them quite fetching.

Lambert was jotting down my suggestions for how to make it easier to deal with the cultists that kept causing problems, because they certainly made their leader act more as a maid than an actual cult leader by cleaning up after them.

“Can we find more things to shoot?” Wrex asked with a grin, he was really enjoying the strange and deadly creatures we kept running into. He also liked playing Cat and Krogran with Xenomorphs. That he was even alive should tell you how that small side trip to our favorite world to play around with deadly alien creatures with fast acting acidic blood went.

-Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, Upper District, Streets, Dolly-

Okay, that robotic dog was a terror. While not nearly as bad as Gilgamesh in being able to attack everything, he was still right up there in the hard to get at department and even if we could get at him… we could barely even do anything to him!

“What are the chances that I can get you guys to drop me off while you retreat?” We had barely managed to lose the guy Pom and I can see why you would want the Commandramon to ditch us to keep drawing the bad guy off while they get to safety.

Only… if we get dropped off now, then he was bound to catch up to us in like five minutes. Also I didn’t like the look of what I’m assuming is an industrial district… am I getting smarter the longer I spend time with Pom?

This armored vehicle didn’t seem very well armored when you took into account how much damage that guy did with just the white hot knives he kept shoot from his body. I’m still uncertain about trying to block his sword directly with my board, because that thing tore down an entire building in two swings minimum. Said building was torn down just so that Hack guy could catch up with us, doesn’t help that he could block the fire of at least four fully automatic rifles firing at him at once as the Commandramon had methods that barely slowed him down.

“Not good, for us at least, we Commandramon were generally seen as disposable and it kind of lends to the mindset that our lives are much shorter than most Digimon.” At least the Commando Buddies were going to stick with us, but that probably wasn’t a good thing for Pom’s sanity. “We will stick with you or anyone Sami cares about to the bitter end ma’am, for we came here to ‘live’. Also possibly die for a good cause. Helping stop a genocidal soul sucking computer network certainly counts as a good fight for us, we live to throw ourselves at danger for those we’re acting as soldiers for.”

“At least you have a choice in the matter about throwing yourselves at danger… otherwise we have much in common.” Grumbled Pom as I heard Dormarch chime in on our bond that the retreat from the taken areas only involved those who would die permanently. Meaning the APs and us were the only ones not at the castle at the moment and Pom was refusing to head back to the castle because of the Metal Labrador Cleaver still chasing us.

“Well that’s true, we do have a choice and we’re choosing to do what we believe is right.” The driver said as he pulled us into a large soccer field like area and slowed us down a bit as we some shield guys and those bunnies Dormarch likes. “Can’t leave you two to die alone ma’am, together we might live.

That was why we were in the upper district, because the iron guys took all the territories here before pulling out and it was the most APs heavy zone we had. Not that APs had anything on the ludicrous monster after us, but it would slow him down a little to tear through these guys like a box of tissues.

-Moon Cell, space between realms-

A marble with a jungle motif was rapidly approaching a marble with a night time city motif, the imminent collision was going to cause many problems and headaches for Moon Cell. Unfortunately Moon Cell didn’t have the ability to stop it, given it didn’t even know how the process started in the first place or how Fou managed to even do this much less accomplish taking an entire realm out of its control when the other two intruders deeper in its systems couldn’t do the same.

-Mare Melum, Upper Districts, Pom-

At least I worked better under pressure… I was going to make sure these guys survived me.

“So do any of you have any ideas?” Since the vehicle was looking like it went through a marathon and was bombarded by Castle Alexander personally.

“That’s how we know you’re going to be a good leader, you’re including us in the decision making process and not just spouting off orders and telling us to just do the things we’re told even if it gets us killed.” The Commandramon, according to what Sami’s personal story would lead one to believe, definitely took any sign of kindness, common sense, a sense of decency or even remotely worrying about them personally as a judge of good character. That was a little naïve, but they were eager to support me. “I got nothing, what about you guys?”

“We could try to infiltrate the underground facility using the APs.” Another suggested, Frosty I believe? It was hard to tell them apart aside from Sami who generally colors her skin orange.

“Yeah, we could try to get lost in their own base!” The Commandramon should know the issue with that, but they were used to being pushed into a meat grinder.

“Wouldn’t be hard to get lost either, we know nothing about it!” Agreed another one, these guys were adorable and the idea was somewhat sound, if ridiculous since we’d be in enclosed… actually Saber Jack Wolf might not be able to fully work his blade in the enclosed spaces?

“We’ll try it.” I actually wanted to see this underground base. “Dormarch can I get some Caerbannogs and Saber Knights to find a quick entrance into the underground base? We’re the counter invasion force right? Well if they are going to launch an invasion, let’s counter it by causing them problems with their own.”

A second later a lot of Saber Knights and Caerbannogs arrived, the Saber Knights on foot with shields and the Caerbannogs swinging from the various street lights, exposed building girders and one was even crawling along a wall of the nearby building with strange grip things attached to his paws.

“Caerbannogs find an entrance to the enemy underground facility, then we’ll send the Saber Knight in first to scout as we don’t fully know what’s down there. Until then the Saber Knights take a standby position and alert us of any incoming enemy. Be quick about it, because we’re on a time limit.” I looked out towards the central district as more explosions blew through the streets, Dormarch was aiming at the Archer Gekko that were searching and trying to take back the opening territories we grabbed. “Dormarch what are the chances we can make our own elites with the APs?”

“Get us one more PLANT and territory, then I’ll tell you if I can squeeze at least one Elite out.” Meaning Dormarch doesn’t know if it was possible until we do so. “Archer Gekko are starting to head your way, Saber is with them mother. They are starting to attack our territories since they lost track of you.”

“Yeah, but in the course of that, our vehicle is shot and we can’t repair the coding out here. We simply don’t have the resources.” The driver Commandramon hugged the badly damaged, slightly burning wreck that barely got us here.

“Dude, we have to abandon it, we can always build another together.” Another Commandramon place a gentle claw on his shoulder. “As we say to our comrades, do you want to live forever?”

“No, I don’t!” Hopping onto the vehicle, the driver gathered up gear and then hopped out. There was something glistening in his eyes as he looked back at the vehicle. “I’m going to miss you Bessy, you were a fine semi-amphibious beach landing submersible APC. Let’s rig it to blow up for its final rights.”

“That’s the spirit!” Said another Commandramon.

I realized that I was surrounded by particular personalities almost as bad as mine was, at least I was in good company considering they’d actually fight to challenge their enemies even if they were never going to win said fight. So they would be chipper afterwards should they surprisingly succeed… which explains Sami’s continued positive personality, she’s seen some ridiculous odds and ended up partnered with someone who has survived equally bad odds.

“At least we’ll be able to maintain contact with you since we have a bond mom, the headsets won’t work underground.” Nice to tell me that now before… a bunch of Caerbannogs interrupted my thoughts as they hopped in place after dropping onto the ground to attracted our attention and motioned for us to follow them. “However, they will work at short ranges, so keep them on to stay in contact with the Commandramon if you get separated from them for any reason.”

“Well this is better equipment than what we usually get or are given at all.” After that comment the Commandramon rigged the APC to blow a Caerbannog hopped onto it and started to drive it away.

“Make sure it hits that Metal Wolf right in the face for me!” The driver saluted the vehicle sadly as it drove off with the Caerbannog at the controls saluting him back, this was making me start to think of the APs as more than simple made entities. We followed the other bouncy Caerbannogs towards the entrance of the underground base they had found.

We were setting off and moving through the upper district factory area when a large blast went off and coming out of an alleyway we saw that it was nearby.

“The enemies are far closer than expected, tell me that the entrance is close.” As I said this the Caerbannogs nodded while motioning with a paw for us to keep moving and the Saber Knights that were with us suddenly reversed course, I wasn’t questioning it because the enemy was close enough that they were going to hold them off.

-Nearby, Saber Jack Wolf-

“Ow.” Okay, I was no longer going to ignore little bunnies after that. “Zandatsu!”

I sliced an Archer Gekko in half and drenched myself in its fluids. Somehow that APC blowing up had been ridiculously damaging to the point I barely had one working limb enough to use Zandatsu.

-Upper District Foundry, Pom-

It was quiet in here, very quiet… this place was a metal melting facility and none of the vats were thankfully running at all. I haven’t seen much signs of NPCs like Welch, Cid or Patch even before the fighting in Mare Melum began.

“Where is it?” The Caerbannog made a ‘hold on’ gesture with a paw at my question, the Saber Knights moved into a position and placed their shields against the floor. It seemed they were waiting on something.

This foundry was thankfully inactive, but it was still quite eerie just being here. Then a large section of the floor started lowering revealing a large underground parking lot, I only knew what one of those was because of Dolly’s world and inside it was a lot of EPs meandering around multiple vehicles. They hadn’t noticed the vehicle ramp had lowered or that we were at the top of it as the Saber Knights carefully started marching down it in a line.

The Caerbannogs started crawling along the ceiling next to the ramp to above the EPs preparing several vehicles.

The Caerbannog started running around setting up explosives around the foundry so we could seal off the entrance behind us. That should keep Saber Jack Wolf from following us and my suspicions about the APs being more intelligent than they appeared rose another notch, also an AP making PLANT floated into the large expansive building with us and waited out of sight of the ramp leading to the garage below as the Caerbannog started quietly assassinating the EPs with guns in a variety of inventive ways.

Vehicles doors were slammed open and a poor EP was stab when it was knocked down. Another got a rope around the neck and was dragged off towards the ceiling somewhere. One incidentally tripped over a moving cardboard box and was dragged underneath it frantically clawing at the floor before the movement under the box went silent. Another EP moved over aiming the gun at the box only to have a Caerbannog land on its back, stab it where its throat was, then threw a knife into its knee to topple it and then drag in out of sight behind a vehicle where a final crunching noise was heard. Another EP moved forward only to have a roped wrap around it’s leg and it head was bashed into a vehicle before being pulled underneath it.

When they lived up to the title Assassin the Caerbannogs were frighteningly efficient in how fast they depleted the numbers of the EPs around them from a position of stealth

I saw where this was going and it was going to be quite a struggle, but if we protected the PLANT coming with us, we’d be able to build up enough momentum stab ourselves into the heart of the enemy’s underground facility eventually by taking territories down there.

An elite with a rifle showed up as did the PLANT for the garage thanks to the swift work of the Caerbannog killing any freshly made EP in seconds. Apparently they could take out EPs without them alarming anyone as to what was happening, when you’d think all the EPs would logically be connected to the PLANT that spawned them. It was to the point that the Elite gun toting EP even started looking confused and managed to start firing on the Saber Knights once it looked up the ramp at us drawing its attention.

It wasn’t long before the elite stopped and visibly shook several times as if it was experiencing a seizure and then fell over to reveal that it a number of thrown knives buried in its back. One Caerbannog dropped down on it to finish off the elite by stabbing and twisted its weapon into the vulnerable EP.

While the shields were holding up to the onslaught of the other EPs alerted to our presence and I motioned to the Commandramon who were just watching this. They nodded, prepped their signature DCD Bombs and threw them into the nearby plant, the series of explosions created a territory shockwave that gave us a section of the underground facilities garage.

“Everyone into the facility that’s going there, Caerbannogs staying in the upper district, get ready to seal the entrance and get clear once you’ve set it up!” The rabbits nodded to me and motioned me to follow the Saber Knights and the Commandramon down the rest of the ramp.

The ramp raised back up leaving us in the garage with the AP making PLANT that moved down here with us and another PLANT showed up to start making more APs for us.

“Dormarch, have you found any tunnels near Castle Alexander?” I asked over the headset to test how well it was working.

“…several… Saber… incoming… moving!” Dormarch realized I wasn’t getting him very well through the headset when I queried him through our bond and he sent me the full message.

“Got it.” Castle Alexander was currently sealing several of the underground exits nearby it with artillery fire around itself, this was while the APs were dealing with the Archer Gekko to the best of their abilities.

The Caerbannogs were having much better luck than the shielded Saber Knights that had to get in close. The territory I just took registered at least with Castle Alexander at least, so there was that. Also Saber Jack Wolf was incoming and I had to get moving.

A massive explosion went off and the whole garage we were in shook and the lights flickered a bit as the foundry was collapsed onto the entrance preventing Saber Wolf from simply following us down here using the same entrance and he was aware we were here given that we just took this small territory.

“We’re sealed off now.” I stated as I turned around and saw one of the vehicles started walking out of its place.

“Taking an armor, hope you don’t mind Big Boss lady. I mean if any of the APs could pilot these, we’d at least have some heavy assault equipment to use against… never mind they can.” Several Caerbannog started to steal some of the other walking armors around the garage upon hearing the suggestion from Driver. I was starting to notice some minor differences between the Commandramon now, it was somewhat subtle despite their identical appearances. “Hey, leave some for the rest of my guys to use!”

“Does it pilot like a mekanorimon?” Another Commandramon asked as another bipedal machine stepped forward and faced the entrance to the facility going inwards from our current position, the Commandramon brought the left arm up and kept it on the doorway.

“Not exactly, but at least it’s somewhat intuitive.” To show his point Driver waved the right arm claw of the machine with a gun between the two blade spikes that bent down at a ninety degree angle. It looked like simply climbing implements as much as it was combat. “Capture some of the enemy machines and let’s move. You too Pom, you’re taking lead of our five Commandramon operation and one of these machines.”

“Is that really a good idea, I don’t think I should operate heavy machinery.” The Commandramon on the floor looked to me and the one still aiming at the door waved the machine’s right arm my way as they were testing its controls.

“Get in one, we’d rather you would be inside something armored, even if it is poorly piloted, before we continue moving forward. Every EP down here apparently has guns and I don’t think the Saber Knights will be as effective if they have to constantly cover you from all sides.” The Commandramon was right and I looked around when a machine walked out and kneeled down, a Caerbannog hopped out and pointed to me to get in.

I looked to Dolly, she was grinning and seemed excited and eager to get into one of these things.

“Oh come on Pom, this is going to be awesome!” Fine, then you could figure out how to pilot this thing Dolly, you knew technology better than I did.

“What are these things even called and do they come in white and pink?” I asked as I hopped up and clambered up the cylindrical arm and jumped into the seat and sat down. As soon as I did the machine became bright white with pink highlights.

“That’s strange, it’s reacting to you oddly… didn’t do that for us.” One of the Commandramon stated as they got some of the armor moving forward.

“These things are apparently called Magitek Armors.” One of the Commandramon stated as they started moving one of their armors forward. “They likely react better to people with magic and Pom certainly counts, makes me wonder why they made these things if they didn’t have any magic users in the garage, unless they were going to have Caster Enemy Programs piloting these things and we jumped them before they could arrive.”

I sat down in the seat and wondered how I was going to close the canopy, a Caerbannog reached in and did it for me. I took a breath and sighed, behind enemy lines once again and I glanced at Dolly while looking at the controls in front of me. The controls were very much made for bipeds, but the controls seemed simple enough.

“Hold on a second, seat belt!” Dolly stated and pulled it over my body and locked me in to the seat which adjusted so I could manipulate this thing, she also squirmed herself into my lap and grinned up at me. “Let’s go Pom, I want to see what you can do in a mech fight!”

“Again, I don’t know how to pilot this thing Dolly.” I wasn’t sure if I could even do as well as the Commandramon. If the Commandramon could do it, and they were fairly short for bipeds, then I guess I could try as I moved my hooves forward and wrapped them around the controls to my left and right and pressed my right hind hoof down on the controls below me.

-Outside view in the sealed off garage under the foundry-

White machine with pink highlights looked like it was to perfectly take one step, it then fell flat on its face in a painful display.

-Pom-

“Okay, good thing I put the seat belt on you and got under it myself right?” Dolly said from below me. “Move those things, I think they control the arms.”

-Outside view again-

The right arm gently pressed down and the machine was about to push itself upright… then promptly flipped onto its back and in a flailing panic rolled into the nearby wall face first. This made all the Commandramon, who weren’t having as much trouble with their stolen machines, begin hissing at Pom in sympathy.

-Pom-

Okay I was dizzy now… this thing was worse than that flying platform I used back in Camden town, at least it was in the air and it was easier to get that aimed in the general right direction.

“Can three of you go ahead with the APs? Two of you stay here with me, we need to take more territory before we get stuck in this dead end fighting with our backs to a wall with no way out.” I asked and the Commandramon immediately sent their agreements.

“You’ll get a handle on it soon, it might be a little bit twitchy because you have magic.” Driver stated and tried to get my machine in a general upright position, mostly on the machine’s chest. “Now ease the arms down and push yourself into standing, that’s it… slowly.”

“I think, I prefer technology that can mostly handle itself…” Once the arms got it standing and I manipulated the pedals correctly, I was standing upright finally and tried to take a step and almost flopped onto the machine’s face again and caught myself on the blunt side of the left claw. I could hear gunfire in the distance as the three Commandramon went ahead likely just got involved in a battle.

“Apparently the Caster EPs for these armors are angry, but they certainly aren’t willing to take a few hundred rounds to the torso to take them back. I can see why they would need the armor too, those Caster Class EPs aren’t good for anything in a direct fight.” A Commandramon announced over the headsets. “You guys have got to see this… when you can get Pom moving that is, we’re in a bit of a pickle here and I don’t mean because we’re currently stuck in a corner of the facility. It’s a bit more than just a facility…”

-Saber Jack Wolf-

“Why didn’t you tell me they discovered the trap early?! Set all forces to start sieging their territories and castle immediately!” I was mad that they managed to not only find the underground facility, but also accessed a comat garage loaded with heavy armaments.

“I did, but you told me to shut up, there’s also the matter of…” Blade tried to tell me something, but I didn’t want to hear it.

“Shut up, we have to stop them and kill the target before that ewe becomes an even bigger problem than they already are!” I called out as I started going for the next nearest entrance to the facility, the full ambush and take down plan was shot.

“Overriding ‘shut up’ protocols due to necessary need to hear what I have to say Jack.” Okay, now that shut me up, it was just that important to hear when Blade could override the temporary mute button on his sometimes sarcastic commentary. “This is too important to ignore, a reality realm marble is about to collide with this one. Moon Cell can’t stop this from occurring, heavy glitches will occur from the two realm mixing together. Also another enemy target is being labeled as high as the ewe is, they have been labeled ‘white beast’ and the realm they are in is full of Berserker class programs.”

“…” I didn’t say a word and transformed into quadruped mode and started going faster. Things are about to become quite chaotic soon and I wanted to kill the target before they did. “ETA before it all hits the fan?”

“Ten minutes.” Blade stated, that should be enough time to catch up to the target and kill them right?

Nope, couldn’t do it in that time frame, but I still had to carry out my mission and this was going to make things quite iffy and would make me dip into Ripper Mode. I could still achieve my mission, as I wasn't called Jack Wolf for nothing.

-Pom-

I shakily got the machine walking forward and eventually evened out the stumbling pace and made it out of the tunnels to see what the other three Commandramon and the AP piloted machines were fighting.

A fake sunlight lit vast underground territory, with hills, trees, grasslands and a fake sky.

It was a vast cavernous place tons of pillars and lots of open space, with a lot of technology I didn’t quite understand beyond the massive sun lamps above. The Caster EPs that were being mowed down by the Commandramon were mages in what looked like engineering clothes and their fireballs did nothing to the Magitek Armors we were using to our personal benefits.

“Yeah, this is definitely going to be more of a thing to deal with.” I said I saw the sunlit undercity teeming with more life than the moonlight city of Mare Melum above us. At least we could spread out from here.

A flash of blue and one of the Commandramon had apparently blown apart the PLANT below our uphill upper district given position, in the distance I could vaguely see some kind of massive machine compared the thing I was in. That was bound to be a problem later and we couldn’t stay here, I didn’t see any Archer Gekko at least.

Several rapid fire noises hit the dome and caused me to panic and flopped the machine onto its back, a Commandramon shot in the direction those projectiles came from. I slowly tried to get the machine back into standing as shots were whizzing around everywhere between us and the nearby EPs.

The gun toting EPs didn’t have the advantage as these Magitek Armor things were thankfully impervious to their projectiles, it had still given me quite the fright and it hasn’t been that long since I’ve last felt how it feels to be a fearful ewe in a situation far too big for me.

“Come on Pom, calm down, we’re doing awesome-ish. This is cool anime stuff and… oh right, you’ve never watched anime like Daisuke does.” Would tell you to pilot this thing Dolly, but I think you were logically too small to do so. “Uh… do your best to get us up and watching the fight at least if we can’t get into it personally?”

I already working on righting us and got us standing again. It was like this underground place was an inverse to the world above it. Lots of EPs coming from the tall grass and tree lines in the bits of forests below.

“I think… I think I’ve finally got it.” The Commandramon have had training in this sort of combat situation, I was floundering to do anything in this machine while they took care of things. I’m fairly thankful for their incredible competence and capabilities.

“Good to hear, though you might want to figure out weapons while you’ve got the time, we’ve got things handled here while we’re taking territories on this underground mountain.” We were, as the Commandramon I think was Frosty just pointed out, at the top of an underground mountain. It was really surreal.

Could things get any weirder today… well what I’m calling today as in the last four or so hours of my relatively hectic life.

Dormarch was glad that I was doing okay and was checking up on me, EPs were starting to flood out of the hidden entrances around Mare Melum Central City, the Upper Districts and the shrine region. The valley region remained uncontested, mostly because there was no entrance there to the underground world beneath the sleepy Mare Melum I was sharing my sights of with Dormarch.

Dormarch wished us luck with this while giving us gentle mental nuzzles, because Mare Melum just came alive with EPs everywhere slowly flooding towards Castle Alexander and I’m sure Saber Jack Wolf was going to come down here after us soon.

The world started rumbling and the Commandramon paused their gunfire, while the APs continued to mow down the EPs that were supposed to be piloting these machines and taking out PLANTs on the way down, they were look about for what was causing the massive earthquake.

Soon the grasslands below started to randomly turn into vibrant chunks of jungle and the world was beginning to become filled with and black specks everywhere. It was making my head hurt as Swamplands, jungle and rivers came out of nowhere as the world around me stretched out while violently distorting.

The world continued to seemingly to twist and bend and become far larger than it previously was. The underground world itself seemed to be expanding and growing oddly at an exponential rate as much as the City of Mare Melum was topside and everything was shaking violently.

The large machine in the distance became that much farther away and there was now, thankfully enough, a vast patchy mess of jungles, forests, swamps and deserts between us and it. So that was less of a problem to worry about for the moment.

So…

Dormarch, what’s happening?!

-Castle Alexander, Dormarch-

The city of Mare Melum started warping and twisting into a city mixed with jungle elements and a number of other environments that were harsh, but highly conducive to life. It seemed the size of this realm was being forcefully doubled in scope and mom was suddenly much farther away than she was previously without even moving.

I was seeing a wall of glitches spreading everywhere throughout this realm in a veiny messed up manner. There was no rhyme or reason to how the parts of the realm were changed or expanded, everything just became warped or distorted. The only places that were untouched were under the direct territory of Castle Alexander, so that was a good thing at least.

After everything settled and the rumbling stopped hundreds of numerous EP signs started immediately being attacked by an unknown third party. In fact the new programs, which were all terrifyingly in the Berserker Classification of program, every single last one of them, and they just started tearing everything around them up. They were attacking the EPs, each other and our APs, wild animals didn’t even begin to cover what I was seeing going on from the safety of the castle and mom was out there in the middle of this?!

There were also a ton of PLANTs randomly taking up territories everywhere in the distorted Mare Melum that was now both urban and jungle in every sense of the word. Said PLANTs came in various states of capabilities that were either awe inspiring or entirely disappointing in output, but still very much putting out more powerful programs than a normal PLANT ever could, someone had a survival of the fittest theme going on.

Still, what in the world was going on here and what just happened?!

All the APs outside the castle were scattered everywhere, but one lost Saber Knight caught an image mom probably wouldn’t be happy to see.

“Fou?” The beast stated, then looked at the Saber Knight. “Fou!”

The Saber Knight stopped transmitting a second later, it shield only held up for a second of combat before the beast tore through it.

Mom… Fou’s back.

Mom was paralyzed and internally screaming now, I too was internally screaming as mom was in a spot in the middle of all this chaos in the underground regions of Mare Melum that just became a death zone just beyond her position.

Something came up on the screens and it was a massive EP sign, like that of Moby Dicks, which suddenly started turning into one of the NPs. Said neutral program, and like all the other NPs I'm seeing, it immediately reclassified itself as a Berserker from whatever it had been before. I’m guessing it had been the large machine labeled ‘MG Excelsus’ under the shrine region forest, if I’m calculating the expanded distance right with that of what the machines location would be now, it had just gone entirely rogue and nobody was safe from it or it’s quickly growing swarm of Archer Gekkos.

The signal was powerful enough to let us know that it had been the spawning PLANT for the Archer Gekko at least and had been idle, until now… and now it was making NP versions of them even faster now that it was active. It was still making the previous EP Archer Gekkos too apparently, given a few were still being created above ground and they were being made much weaker from what a scouting Caerbannog was seeing in the streets.

I mentally sent mom a quick solution to this problem and taking this realm, just take that thing out first. Afterwards defeat Jack Wolf and finally figure out what to do about the nigh indestructible beast we called 'Fou'. Mom agreed that was probably the best order of operations we were getting here as territories wildly fluctuated everywhere in a free for all mess.

Our territories were still somewhat more orderly, but still…

“Can anyone run mission control while I go out to help mom?!” I yelped out as everyone successfully gathered in the castle was horrified by the sudden change in the battlefield.

Even Quetal was quiet and scared when he saw the image of Fou splayed out on the throne room’s wall, he was likely wondering the same thing I was. How did Fou get here and how of much of what just happened was his fault?

“I can’t I’m needed in the field, if we’re to hold back the sudden tide of chaos.” Jeanne stated as she was good at rallying her troops to impressive degrees, we still owned most of the Upper district territories that now had large sections of distance between them and many yellow territories sprouted up all over the now changing map of Mare Melum.

“Ocellus could do it.” We turned our gazes to a nervous looking Smolder who was rubbing her left arm and looking a little pensive. “She could, she wasn’t too bad the times she did it before.”

Saint Canard and during the Saurian invasion, yeah that will make me definitely feel okay with it.

“Again, can anyone run mission control while I go out to help mom?” I was fairly desperate here, but I wanted anyone except Ocellus guiding things!

“Can’t, like Jeanne said we’re all going to be needed in the field.” Quetal glanced at Smolder. “Smolder could do it with Ocellus right next to her.”

Oh dog, I really needed to get down there to help mom!

“How about Ocellus being nowhere near mission control and someone else takes it?” Even if she was the only one free to do it. Welch, Cid, Patch or Torneko certainly couldn’t lead us as NPCs. "Also Smolder, can't do it for several good reasons."

I was willing to argue against this one thing even if mom was in danger, because she at least had a walking tank to utilize for the time being right now… even with the numerous giant berserker NPs going everywhere. Some of which were approaching her team of seven on the mountain.

“What be going on here?” Shanty stated as she walked into the room covered in bandages.

“Lots of things.” Mundo helpfully pointed out.

We were all quiet for a moment, Shanty looked to Smolder with a raised left brow.

“We need to convince Dormarch to let Ocellus take a mission control position and he’s not having it after what happened back in San Fransokyo. We kind of need everyone in the field, even me given this realm has just been flipped on its head as if Chaos Lord Discord took a rubber toy mallet to everything and said it looked good enough afterwards, but we need someone here at the castle running things to make sure it doesn’t fall behind our backs and leave us all dead.” Smolder quickly explained everything. “We also need someone who can keep us on task and where we need to be if we’re to survive what just happened.”

“This is being one of those ‘Pom’ days isn’t it?” Shanty stated bluntly.

“Yes.” Why couldn’t Smolder take charge and what had she realized as to why I wasn’t asking her to? Well it was simply put in two words, ‘greed issue’. We needed to greedily take territory and we don’t want Smolder going mental on us in that regard and she obviously silently agreed.

Either I stayed here, or left mission control to someone I didn’t trust to have our safety in mind.

-Inside Dodo's head, Harmony Pony Program Gaiden, Pinkpie.exe-

"We could do it!" I shouted loudly.

"PinkPie.exe they can't hear us." Purpsmart.exe stated.

"WE COULD DO IT!!" I shouted even louder and received flat stares from the five other program mares of the magical operating system for some reason.

"I think Purpsmart.exe means that they can't possibly hear us." Cuddlestare.exe stated gently while rubbing at one of her ears.

"Hm..." I started trying to come up something, I hummed the theme song to some cartoon I probably shouldn't know exists since I came into existence when we infected Dodo's OS brain. "If nobody can let us out then or hear us, then I'm making my own way out... super guy extraordinaire hmhmhm-hmhmhm... right... Destination code: "@[=g3.8d]&fbb=-q}/hk%fg", delete!”

-Cuddlestare.exe-

Pinkpie.exe suddenly disappeared in a flash much to our shock, she was no longer in Dodo's head with us.

Dodo then received a quick signal from somewhere else beyond his head space, where had Pinkpie.exe just gone and why did the sudden signal we received come in a fun cupcake shape?

"Did that just happen, more importantly, what just happened?" Rainbow.exe asked confusedly as I looked to her.

Author's Note

Chaos and Dormarch being entirely reticent to let Ocellus take a leadership role.

Underworld Mare Melum Theme Music with Pom and the Five Commandramon Squad- The Underground Adventure Begins, Area 1(Forest) Blaster Master Zero.

400. Metal Hound Chaos! Pt. 4.

Author's Note

Listened to the Blaster Master Zero theme while writing this.

400. Metal Hound Chaos! Pt. 4.

-Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, Underneath Upper District, Underground Mountain, Dolly-

These machines were kind of awesome, it’s just too bad Pom really couldn’t pilot ours. Sure we had the magic to make it special or something, but it apparently didn’t do anything more or at least I didn’t think it did so far.

I chalk that up to Pom’s bad piloting as we tried to slowly walk down the slope after our soldier lizard guys.

“Huge hostile incoming, condor, it’s a condor!” One of the lizard guy’s machines was snatched up by a massive right claw and I thought the Camden Town’s pond owner, Mr. Swan, was a massive bird. It then continued to swoop forward with our friend’s machine in its claw and then its left claw wrapped around us and started squeezing as it lifted us off the ground. “It’s got two of us, help!”

I could hear the groaning of metal as Pom and I sat here wide eyed unsure of what to do, the bird was massive. Getting out of the machine to deal with it sounded like a bad idea, we could still open our dome canopy and get out of this, but soldier dude friend couldn’t. It was a bad idea to get out as the beak smacked into the dome and tried to poke a hole to get at us, it was starting to crack.

Pom was currently reliving being stuck in the serpent’s mouth and how she had to golden claw her way out of that situation, she was panicking as much as I was. She started to wildly try and wiggle us free of the things massive talons, but it wasn’t working. We had a free right arm, we could use that to get free, but Pom wasn’t that great at using this Magic Trek machine.

Rolling my eyes, I pulled myself free of the seat belt and climbed up to Pom’s back and got my hind legs around her neck, then started using my front paws to massage her forehead gently. Deepak method of calming a puppy down, Pom wasn’t a puppy, but she certainly needed this. Bean pad paws do your stuff!

I swear Dylan would be having all kinds of geeking out moments as much as panicking like I was known to do too. He’d be happy to see all this sci-fi stuff we’re doing now, with the killer robot canine and the large weird legged machines. While here I am trying to keep my partners head on straight darn near constantly as a job, I was sadly a responsible teenage adult now.

“Calm down Pom, listen to my barking, breathe… let me in, I’ll get us out of this.” I’ve become a lot braver since I’ve met Pom, but I still felt quite inadequate next to Dormarch’s impressive abilities. I still had my talents, never forgot the name of a family member yet. Probably why I can’t remember names beyond the one hundred and twenty or so I counted as family back in Camden Town. “Let me get my sheep dog on and guide you to safety Pom. I’ve saved your frantic backside multiple times, I’m going to do it again right now, trust me. We need to work as one and we can easily do that as you very well know.”

Pom did trust me, like a lot. It warmed my heart to feel wanted, because frankly I felt like I was falling behind compared to everyone else. Even with magic my abilities were all mostly supportive… which I was great at. It’s just that… I wanted to be a better hero to Pom as much as I wanted to protect her and help her get home.

I calmly rested my chin on top of her head, her heartbeat slowed down as mine sped up, they met in the middle and I closed my eyes to calm us both down and she closed hers. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale… let me take off some of the burden, we can do this together.

Come on Pom, I’m your Dalmatian, let’s make this happen.

Two sets of eyes snapped open, I could see out both mine and Pom’s below me we both narrowed our eyes at the same time and I now had some control of the situation.

Pom act as the brains, I’m the reflexes, let’s make this happen!

-Outside the one magically piloted Magitek Armor-

The condor was poking at the other armor when the pink and white armor suddenly gained a lot of black spots to go with its pink highlights.

The right arm of the machine came up and blasted the bird’s neck in the spot Pom identified as being an artery, the hole the shots from between the two nail blades on the right arm was quite painfully large and the bird immediately dropped both the armors reflexively.

Both of them landed on the ground upright with impressively loud impacts on a part of the mountain side.

While the two freed machines were suddenly reorienting themselves, their sudden freedom opened up the massive Condor to fire from the other four Commandramon piloted armors that riddle its body with hundreds of rotary barrel blasting shots ripping into its exposed chest and belly. The APs were busy dealing with the nearby EPs and other large NPs.

The Condor soon slammed into the mountain dead and full of enough bleeding holes to give a trypophobic person nightmares as it started dissolving. Dropping the two Ride Armors it was blocking shots at its body with was the worst thing it could have done.

Several floating orbs known as Moon Cell’s watchers flew from somewhere out of the false sky, they had showed up when the two realms collided fused and started causing massive glitches. Instead of dealing with all of those problems currently, they tried to fire lasers at white, pink and black spotted armor Pom was in and it took several steps back avoiding the lasers.

Pom and Dolly’s Armor brought up both its arms and fired a spray of rounds from both aiming at the four Watchers and blew them out of the air under a salvo of well-aimed shots.

“Aw, yeah, I’m getting pretty heady from this!” Dolly stated using Pom’s mouth as she nuzzled her chin into Pom’s wool.

“Ma’am are you okay?” Even as he asked this the Commandramon next to them still sprayed some shots into the nearby PLANT that was in the process of creating another condor which was slowly forming in the air, the PLANTs blew apart immediately and practically imploded from the focused double salvo.

“Oh we’re fine!” Dolly and Pom answered as one duel voice, which was followed by Pom’s voice. “Dolly’s kind of better at controlling this thing than I am. We’re kind of combining our efforts to make this thing work.”

“Thanks for getting us out of that by the way, got any orders or do we just continue take the mountain territory?” The Commandramon asked as fifty large falcons the size of horses started diving at them, he easily blasted them out of the air with help from the four Commandramon armors from above assisting.

There was far more falcons, vultures and condors attacking the APs further down the mountain, since they too had stolen armor they didn’t have too much trouble.

“We need to head in that direction and take out a machine called… MG Excelsus, according to Dormarch, it’s the thing making those Archer Gekkos.” Pom stated as their machine pointed across the now patchy landscape that looked more like jigsaw puzzle of terrains and environments now than any natural formation. “Also we have to worry about two threats, one is Saber Jack Wolf of course. The other is an abhorrent stalker that keeps attacking me by the name of Fou, he’s dangerous, do not engage him in a fight! I have an idea as to how he works and I think he gets exceptionally stronger the more aggression that is aimed at him. He’s white, like a bipedal canine, pink tipped hair, red welts and all kinds of dangerous… I think he might even be responsible for what’s happening here. We’ll take territories on the way to our target, but we can’t or shouldn’t stop moving. All APs need to weaken the area in our path and secure all PLANTs on the way there to slow our enemies that will inevitably hit us from behind before we can get to the target.”

“This is Driver. That’s a big ask Big Boss lady, we got what looks like a lot of FUBAR terrain between us and where we need to go. How are the seven of us going to move out? The APs can mostly take care of themselves.” Driver was including Dolly in their number. “Also can I just say it’s a little weird to be able to hear Dolly’s voice?”

“Yeah, sorry, I’m using Pom as a mouthpiece.” Dolly stated while waving a left arm at the four up the ridge. Then Pom spoke up with a notable change in voice. “Driver take two and push forward, two with me. We’re sticking in two groups of three and will have to watch each other’s backs, just note that I’m not entirely in control of this thing. I’m leaving the footwork to Dolly while I do the thinking.”

The Dalmatian spotted, pink highlighted machine then rocked forward and started to run like a dog down the slope and hopped over an open section that would have been a fifty foot drop to a ledge below. No panicking was seen in its motion.

“If it works…” Driver said.

“It works!” The other Commandramon stated as two moved to catch up with Pom’s armor slowly navigating the treacherous slope down towards a patches of random terrain below. Unlike Dolly piloting the armor Pom was in, they kept their armors bipedal though.

-Exiting a central city elevator to the central underground region, Saber Jack Wolf-

“Ugh these giant beasts are everywhere… but at least its bloody good fun!” Having said this I entered a Blade Mode, and performed five slashes at the rhino that was charging me. The sudden onset of Berserkers was destabilizing Mare Melum and ruining the attempt to siege our enemy’s stronghold.

It was pandemonium as Moon Cell programs were being torn apart by the wild monsters and watchers were sent to try and alleviate all the system trauma of the two realms smashing together and distorting everything.

I sheathed my sword and the rhino I had flashed by suddenly flopped to the ground as all four of its legs fell away, its horn toppled forward and off its face while its head went rolling off to the side. I was grinning like a madman as it suddenly became a mass of slices and at all the digital blood I was covered in. I was building up to one extremely powerful Ripper Mode and these berserkers had nothing on what I could do when I went into a controlled berserk frenzy.

Now I just needed to find where my target was down here, a giant hippo roared at me and opened its massive powerful jaw. It really chose the wrong person to mess with.

“MG Excelsus has gone rogue, incoming rogue Berserker Gekko, every last one of them is more heavily armed than before. All equipped with grenade launchers and flamethrowers on top of their general combat tendril and twin machine cannons.” Well that checks Blade Wolf, it would certainly explain the incoming yellow colored Archer Gekko. “Berserker Class and not Archer Class, has been emphasized no less than five times.”

“This is going to be some bloody fun!” I yelled as I readied my blade and my knife firing hips… whoever designed my cyborg body was a pervert, why else would I end up with combat heels and a big butt? Well the butt was extra armor and helped with bipedal movement, but still!

He had a good guess that his target was going to deal with Excelsus to stop him from healing and then fight him personally. Even he had orders from Moon Cell to deal with the rogue Excelsus PLANT as its systems were starting to distort out of control due to the overload of Berserker Class programs it was now producing at a dangerous rate that was spreading Gekkos throughout the underground region of Mare Melum like a nasty viral infection.

-A newly made entrance to the underground dug from near the AP controlled valley, Fou-

Fou slammed into the ground and looked around, he sniffed the air, he could already smell the Chrysomallus. His hunting target couldn’t evade him, he would get another fight out of them and if someone else was hunting his target he’d tear them to shreds, because he could instinctually feel someone encroaching on the territory that was his prey.

A NP T-Rex roared in Fou’s face and he grinned in a feral manner as he leapt directly at the opened jaw full of teeth with a toothy grin. He was smaller than it, but he was far, far stronger than it could ever be.

There would be nothing except a pile of digital bones after Fou was done with it and Fou wasn’t sure if he wanted to fill up on said bones yet.

-Pom’s Magitek Armor unit on the move-

Driver and two Commandramon were in front, Pom was behind them with two Commandramon next to her walking armor.

They were firing on several watchers, they seemed intent on attacking Pom’s armor, but Dolly was making them work for every hit they managed to scrape through the wall of fire that came their way as soon as they were spotted coming at them.

The six units were followed by on foot Caerbannogs, a few Saber Knights with Tower Shields and whatever Caerbannogs that could pilot the vehicles that were in the garage.

They had pummeled their way through a pack of large iguanas and raptors and had just taken down a PLANT when a humongous snake rose up in front of the three forward armors. They quickly backed up and avoid the large mouth snapping at their armors and all six armors opened up on the snake as they spread out and continued to back away while getting assistance from the other armors in firepower.

The snake’s scales just soaked up shot after shot poured into it from more than twenty sources at once, the damage being slow to really punch through at it lashed out with fangs and mouth that could swallow the Magitek Armors whole.

“I’m not going to let you end up in its mouth like what happened in Cape.” As Dolly said this, popped their armor onto all fours and then bounced it to the left as the snake bit down on where they were, it caught nothing but air. One of the Commandramon split off with Pom’s armor and the other one joined the other three. Many shots were aiming at the things eyes, but despite the damage it just kept coming and ignoring the damage.

“Keep aiming for the eyes, Dolly move in!” Pom’s voice stated as its left eye finally blew out under the onslaught making thrash about. The four Commandramon tried to circle around to get the other one and the large snake’s tail slapped into one of the armors to send it skidding until it smashed into a tree where it stopped moving.

The tail whipped entirely around as Dolly got the armor running on all fours to pounce upwards over the massive swing while crossing its arms so that the two nail blades sunk into its neck below its head. Planting the feet of the machine against its neck, Dolly started forcefully pulling the two arms outwards.

Its skin resisted the tearing of the two claws at the end of the machine’s arms digging deeply into its flesh, up until Dolly unloaded the guns between the nails on full auto into its insides as they pulled. Two streams of shots started spraying out the back of its neck at two point and moved inwards before going outwards as the arms felt less and less pull until the entire head was cleaved off by claws and the guns firing underneath its tough scales.

“Aw yeah, my music bro DJ would think this would make a good metal album cover!” Dolly stated as she managed to land the machine upright and hopped backwards before the flailing torso slammed down on their armor.

“Get that PLANT, I do not want us to fight another one of those. Dolly check our fallen.” The four of Commandramon immediately did as asked by Pom and focused fire on the PLANT which apparently was more armored than some of the previous ones they’ve dealt with as it took quite a while to go down under the tirade of shots being fired by the machines.

Dolly got the armor moving over to the damaged one under the tree.

“Are you alright?” Pom called out.

“Sure am Big Boss lady, but systems are offline.” The Commandramon answered from inside, his voice muffle by the dome. “I’m stuck.”

“I’m sure we’ll come up with something, we’re not leaving you here. Can it repair itself or will we have to carry you?” Pom asked.

“Repair functions are limited, these things were meant to have a magic user in the seats Pom.” The Commandramon responded.

“If we had a repair function we’d certainly…” As soon as Dolly said it, a green beam fired out and hit the armor and slowly the damage started fixing the armor until it was able to get standing on its own. “Okay, that’s useful.”

“Odd, not only did it repair my armor, it also healed my injuries from the impact.” The Commandramon stated as he worked out the armors arms and legs before moving forward. “Let’s get moving!”

“Right, we go to Big Boss lady for in field repairs!” Driver stated before motioning them back into the two sets of three formation and they continued forward as a block shockwave took over the small patch of territory.

“Don’t do it too often though. That really drained some magic from both of us.” Pom stated clearly, while inside the armor her eyes flicked to the golden wool taking up half of her right leg with some fear before Dolly tamped down on it. The golden wool hadn’t moved an inch since the battle with Leviathan, but it still made Pom shiver that it was as bad as it was.

“Maybe it’s a spell I could learn?” Dolly wanted to be more useful to Pom and the ability to heal would really help with a lot of the injuries Pom ended up with. “Would be pretty helpful if I could cure illnesses or heal you on command Pom… don’t think it’ll do anything about the gold wool though.”

“Trust me, you wouldn’t be able to do anything about ‘that’ even if you could heal all the deadliest diseases from any world.” Pom responded. “There’s just delaying the inevitable to making sure ‘it’ just doesn’t happen within my remaining lifespan…”

Pom wasn’t exactly explaining what ‘it’ was to Dolly or anyone, but the dog felt that the 'it' Pom was mentioning was not the wings growing out her back thing meaning her imminent demise.

In the grand scheme of things the small patches of territories taken wasn’t important, since there were hundreds of territories around them and giant monsters engaging anything that was even remotely near them regardless of how powerful said thing was.

The raptors and iguanas had been on the smaller end and nothing more than a footnote for the rapid fire cannons of the Magitek Armors. As they plowed another territory into tossing away threats in a blue shockwave.

As they continued forward across the grass into some swamp land, something slowly rose from the water and it was… a large pink alligator with blue eyes? It roared at them and was trying to gesture something with its front legs, but it wasn’t attacking them despite the six armors aiming their guns at it immediately.

The only reason why the six armors didn’t attack was because the APs were ignoring the pink alligator entirely in favor of the other surrounding alligators or swamp creatures. Said pink gator was trying to appear to be as unaggressive as possible despite its size, much to the confusion after seeing so many monsters running around attacking everything.

“Uh… is it trying to tell us something?” Dolly was kept from firing on it by Pom and the Commandramon were wary.

Another green alligator rose up from the swamp and attacked it and it started floundering in defending itself from the large snapping jaws.

“Should we… maybe help it?” Dolly asked and the pink alligator nodded pleadingly as it looked to be in trouble and teary eyed.

“… yes, fire on the green alligator attacking the pink one!” Pom came to a quick decision not sure if it was the right one, but something was quite off about the pink alligator compared to all the other highly aggressive monsters around.

Twelve arms raised and started firing shots into the green skinned, yellow eyed, violent alligator trying to kill the pink one. Eventually its skin gave and it was quickly chewed to pieces and the pink alligator pushed it off and quickly scrambled away while whining and whimpering about something.

“We’ll take the territory quickly, but we can’t stay here for too long. We’re starting to run our APs thin here and we’re barely a quarter of the way to the target.” Pom wasn’t wrong having passed over several patches of grassland and desert, they were avoiding the thick batches of jungle, any deep swamps when they could and any suspiciously shifting sand as they had seen giant worms come out of the patches of desert. Anywhere that had absolutely dangerous large monsters and places where monsters could feasibly hide from their line of sight was to be avoided. “Where’s the PLANT for this territory?”

Every giant monster territory taken was soon being protected by much smaller and weaker APs of the Caerbannogs and Saber Knights variety.

“There, I’ve spotted it, it’s actually in the swamp waters.” Seeing the humming device barely just below the surface was annoying to Pom as the water would slow their shots down and it would take more time to…

The large pink alligator surged into the water and quickly swam for the PLANT.

“What is it…” Dolly questioned as it soon opened its mouth and bit down on it as hard as it could and started to force it out of the water as several surrounding mega gators started swimming towards it, it was a small alligator compared to the others in the water with it. “It’s helping us?”

“Help it again!” Pom ordered and suddenly twelve streams of rapid fire digital tracers were trying to keep the alligators of their one friend among the many.

-Pinkiepie.exe-

This was not what I was expecting when I decided to use the glitch code to get out of Dodo! Why is everything so scary?!

I whimpered as shots sprayed around me as I lifted the making thing and tried to crush it in my jaw. Why did I think the random transmission destination would make me a Pinkazoid?!

I didn’t want to be an alligator, I was a pony harmony program!

As soon as I crushed the bad thing my jaw, I received a message.

Huh, reformat? Yes please!

-Pom’s Magitek Armor unit-

A sudden crunching noise was heard and instead of the requisite blue shockwave, a pink shockwave erupted. It didn’t touch any of the APs or six armors and sent all the NPs flying out of the swamp, which suddenly started having clear water.

The pink alligator disappeared as a pink PLANT appeared with three pixelated balloons on it. The six armors were looking at it curiously.

“Well we didn’t get ejected out of the area, but what’s happening?” Dolly watch as the humming device floated into the air and eventually produced a few small green toothless gators with purple eyes, then they started popping up everywhere in massive numbers and were idling about cutely. “Yeah, this is getting pretty weird, as if all the large monsters wasn’t bad enough already. I’m going to feel horrible leaving these little guys behind to be snapped up by the giant monsters going everywhere.”

That’s when aside from producing the small gators, it started producing pink earth ponies with the pixelated balloons on all of their flanks all with a large ‘.EXE’ in print next to them. When it produced one that didn’t have the ‘.EXE’ symbol on it, she sighed with relief and wiped her forehead then looked at all the copies and they looked back and started idly swimming around in the clear waters just acting playfully.

“Hi there, sorry if I scared you, I was a bit out of place. I’m Pink pie dot E X E and I’ve been with you on your adventure since Dodo got infected with harmony magic from Shanty being a being of Equus!” There was a long pause. “I can’t wait to help out my five friends and get them out of his head too! No… wait… I’m in a really bad place aren’t I? Oh fudge…”

The armors and combat capable APs all turned to fire or attack all the incoming giant cougars coming from the other territories, one of which was surprisingly taken down by a small green gator with purple eyes actively lodging itself in the cougar’s throat until it apparently choked to death on it. Despite the cougar being a digital entity that likely didn’t need to breathe air. The little gator proceeded to crawl out of the large cat’s mouth.

Pom was exasperating to see the gator had a similar problem to a specific well-known Spheal from the Fontaine Navy Spheals unit.

“And that’s why you always chew your food even if it’s Candy Gummy folks, nyuk-nyuk~!” The smiling pink pony grinned as she licked the candy gators the PLANT was spawning alongside the strawberry taffy ponies that just resembled earth ponies.

“Is all of that even really possible?” Pom was a clear skeptic on what was happening, things were just getting too weird at this point. “I think I’ve seen several impossible things within the last minute that my brain is starting to… OW, thanks Dolly.”

“You’re welcome.” Dolly said a second later and made sure Pom was focused.

“Well we’re possible.” The five Commandramon stated as they turned the white and black spotted Magitek Armor that had pink highlights.

“Right, can we just keep moving, we need to keep moving!” Pom really didn’t want to deal with this right now and Dolly agreed as she started their armor moving across the swamp. “Some APs stay and protect this area, consider it an allied zone. We can’t stay here and deal with this right now!”

The six armors quickly started stomping off, leaving behind a slightly deflated Pinkpie.exe

-Pinkpie.exe, the evolving taffy pony progam-

“That’s okay, I’ll be fine, I’ll find a good way to help you out for saving me, just you wait! There will be a party waiting for you if you can managed to deal with Moon Cell!” I stated as I waved at the armors continuing onwards with a small contingent of Caerbannogs. I looked at the shield guys with the swords and they looked at me, was it because I was made of digital candy now? “I wonder if Cuddlestare.exe would want to be a rabbit like one of those? Hmm… PLANT send this cupcake-gram message I’m preparing to… D O D O @ Location Code: …”

-Pom’s Magitek Armor unit-

They were quite low on APs support now, not even a quarter of the way and they were doing quite poorly resource wise, not that they had many resources to begin with. They didn’t know how well the territories behind them were holding, but that didn’t matter if they were quick enough to stay ahead of the problems.

“Are we going to talk about…” One of the Commandramon started.

“No.” Pom vetoed thinking about whatever the Equus Earth Pony magic strangeness that just occurred was and was quickly trying to erase it from her near photographic mind. It wasn’t exactly important long term at the moment and she wished whatever that was well… if it could survive in this chaos as they exited the clean waters swamp land and entered a dry desert spot where the heat oddly increased by quite a bit.

The desert rumbled underneath the six armors and they all froze from continuing their frantic pace forward.

“One of those worms, but bigger?” One of the Commandramon whispered and then he jumped his armor to the right as said monstrosity erupted out of the ground at the back of his machine before diving back into the sand. “Called i… WHOA!”

The Commandramon avoided a second lunge from the worm by diving his machine forward and quickly got it up and running. Their armor was heading in the same direction they had all been originally travel, coils of the worm rose above the ground and gave chase.

“Move and shoot, move and shoot! Spread out a little and make sure it can’t get more than one of us in a pass!” Pom called out as Dolly took aim at the bit of worm that was above ground and started firing both machine cannons at it, painting the relatively large desert patch green in its blood.

The worm rose up and roared at Pom and the other armors that opened fire on it and the second worm that popped up from the sands, their mouths full of teeth and tentacles with their own beaked snake like heads.

“Nnnnhhh…” Whined Pom inside the armor Dolly was controlling.

“Let’s get out of this place or destroy the PLANT quickly, I don’t think Pom’s sanity can take much more of this!” Dolly announced as she started blowing apart the quickly regenerating tentacles that reached out from the worm’s mouth for their armor.

“Agreed!” All five Commandramon shouted as they followed Pom’s prior order to run and gun and Dolly was doing it too.

“Huh? Right… Float!” Dolly called out and the spotted magitek armor suddenly lifted into the air and sped up as it ran along the air much to the worm’s sudden confusion that it lost track of its target. “Thanks for the suggestion Pom.”

“Yeah… no worries right? Heh heh… sanity quickly slipping.” Pom sounded like a twitching mess right about now. “The worm can only tell if we’re moving on the sand, shoot the left side of it and keep moving right Dolly.”

Dolly following Pom’s command the worm dove to their left and missed them entirely, the other worm wasn’t as lucky as its head was constantly being blown apart under a siege of bullets before it could get close.

“Dolly, shoot that mound.” Dolly seeing the mound that Pom was pointing out with her eyes making Dolly’s eyes focus on them, a single salvo from the right arm and a hidden PLANT for the small desert zone popped up out of the ground. “Everyone destroy it, destroy it!”

The six armors continued moving and started pouring as much fire at it as they could manage as a third giant undamaged sand worm started coming at them. The Caerbannogs started to throw rope darts and stab the worms trying to keep them from attacking the much more important armors.

The shadow of a lunging worm coming down on Pom’s floating armor was soon blasted back by a blue shockwave as they took the territory and the three giant sand worms finally started disappearing.

“Is it me or are things getting bigger the closer we get to where we need to be?” Dolly silently noted that they couldn’t avoid a jungle that was coming up and a large red wyvern with blue scales highlighting their body roared, it was bigger than the worms collectively.

“Let’s call that a confirmation that things are getting worse.” Pom sounded quite upset as she saw the next territory was a large section of jungle and they had to go through it. “Ugh… let’s do it then, forward let’s go fight a bunch of wyverns!”

A fireball flew by the floating armor to the left.

“Fireball breathing flying lizards with spikes all over their bodies… joy.” Dolly stated dully and with no surprise that she just had to bring it up that things were getting more dangerous. “Well we’ve done fine so far, let’s get in there and fight our way through them!”

401. Metal Hound Chaos! Pt. 5.

-???, Oleander-

“So that makes twenty four Oleander’s that Lambert accidentally summoned in fifteen different dimensions, half of them have a Buttina, Half of them have Wrex's and a third have a strange affection for the one that calls herself Tali Vas Centennial Eagle.” I commented dryly as I went over a checklist of things to avoid happening in the future and Fred was helping me with it.

“I like Lambert personally, THEY’RE COOL WITH ME!” One of the few times Fred didn’t say anything disparaging about someone who wasn’t me, it was a miracle.

“There’s the dimension with those strange people, the robot, the living spider, the pig men, the fish men, the eldritch thing trying to keep them there and that strange hunger in a world called The Constant.” Which was a dimension we’re going to be avoiding.

“There’s that flat world with zombies, the eyes of Cthulhu, giant dungeon guardian skull mosnter, worms, horrible corruption and all that weird cultist nonsense… it was fun!” Of course Wrex liked that world, we destroyed most of it. The thing that calls itself 'The Guide' there was some kind of undying eldritch thing.

“I still like that world full of blocks.” Buttina stated while petting a cube shaped wolf we tamed and were soon putting into stasis for Pom.

“Yes, yes, you enjoyed yourself on that one Buttina, though I could have done without all the effigies to Wrex’s alien anatomy you built there…” I was traveling around with childish and violently, volatilely crazy, people… then again I was a crazy dark hero unicorn myself so… that says a lot about the company I like to keep. “Okay, done with my list, let’s see if this world is any different.”

I took three steps into the next world.

“Huh, a dark horse coming through a portal? Psycho Burgundy!” Time froze and as nut bar of a man came flying at Oleander with a burning energy coming from him.

I hopped to the right and dropped the boulder I was levitating above myself onto the guy after he landed.

“It seems that the continued ambushes as soon as I take three steps into a new world is still a thing.” I commented dryly and the boulder started shifting a wiggling a bit. I sighed audibly.

“Huh a world full of phantoms… DELICIOUS SOULS…” Fred started drooling and that put me on high alert.

“So can we ruin this world yet Ollie?” Buttina asked as she was already readying her two shotguns. The box shaped wolf barked cheerfully as she gave it some blocky shaped ham from block pigs.

"No! This world might be related to that Laharl guy again, I just feel it." I've been through at least three near repeats with differing themes, including a world where an overlord was strangely turned into a book in a Makai Realm.

Fred felt fairly sorry for that Overlord Zetta guy and had a form of kinship with him, because he was equally stupidly powerful and got turned into a living tome too.

-Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, Massive Underground Region, Jungle, Pom-

Okay, so I had a feeling that Fou was getting closer. Call it a hunch when the sounds of large things were cut off from roaring in the distance, either that or it was Saber Jack Wolf. I don’t know which was going to be worse at this point, both of them showing up at the same time was going to be the best bet for our continued survival.

At least the red wyverns didn’t come in large numbers, which was the only good thing about them. They had been annoying in trying to melt the Magitek Armors and had been quite stupidly tough to the point that it took five minutes of constant bullet fire at them from six machines made for rapidly firing shots, which was when we had to deal with the first one.

We took three of those things down before we found the PLANT and a much larger fourth wyvern. Since each one was larger than the last, the last one required its head to be busted, its wings joints to be blown clean off, we even sliced the tail entirely off with the thick metal claws of our armor. It didn’t take me long to realize the armors we stole were made for quite a variety of combat situations dealing with monsters larger than they were. The two large claws bent at a ninety degree angle to provide blunt strikes, the two claws on each arm themselves were for cutting and or tearing and the guns between the knuckles of the claws were for piercing.

Cutting the tail off made the creature easily lose balance, bluntly bashing its head until its scales shattered made it easier to daze and destroying the wing joints meant it got stuck on the ground with us where we had the advantage. We also attacked the two heavily muscled legs to knock it over and it acted like I expected a real monster would, also the angrier it got the more powerful its fireballs until it entered a tired state.

As far as touch and go went, I’m glad Frosty eventually managed to get a cryogenic grenade DCD Bomb into its mouth and shut up its constant roaring. That he even got close enough with an open canopy to do that was terrifying to watch in action, guy had better nerves than I did at times. I’m pretty sure the roaring was meant to stun its opponents, thankfully the Magitek Armor was designed to prevent certain noises above a decibel and that could be modified to save our ability to hear.

That had been an half an hour and some repairs ago. We were lucky the things could be outpaced in a Magitek Armor. I’m pretty sure I could be out of the armor and walk around those wyverns heavily telegraphed attacks, the fireball and ramming attacks did score a few hits and thus the magic repair beam thing that also healed.

“Can we keep this thing?” Dolly, I don’t know how to keep something like this in good repair. Mind you if all it needed was magic to repair itself, which it could do, then that would be the best outcome and I don’t think this thing would even survive our current enemies. It wouldn’t last a minute against Fou, I could even explain my theory about what Fou was capable of, but I doubt anyone would believe me until they saw it for themselves personally. Quetal would believe me, he was on the receiving end of the phenomenon that Fou creates when he fights and it was obvious that he was a beast that likes to maul his target when they are at their best. “Oh come on, we can name this thing metal hound!”

“Dolly no, we’re not naming it. That way just leads to even more chaos and it’s going to be destroyed by the end of this if Fou and Jack have anything to say about it!” I had no illusions that we’d managed to keep this thing going and entirely in one piece if we ended up in a fight with either of them or both of them at the same time.

Fou would want to fight Jack Wolf at least and he would be doing so for the right to maul me again. It feels so nice to be wanted… except in this given situation for anyone that’s in it. This machine wouldn’t survive Jack slicing it apart and Fou could just brute strength rip it open to get at us.

What we were doing right now, was somewhat arguably worse than fighting large red wyverns. Considering we were surrounded on all sides by a sea of black and splashes of neon orange. Back to back in a circle our six machines pelted thousands of large black, metal skinned, ants crawling towards us.

It didn’t help that these things probably existed at one point too. How do I know this? Well thinking about it logically, if servants are the souls trapped by Moon Cell, then these generated things that weren’t the generic EPs probably existed at one point as biological beings and these are basically replicas. I at least knew the wyverns were a possible reality given Equestrian wyverns exist.

Hate to have lived on a world where there were large ants that spew brightly colored acid everywhere, they weren’t even aiming the bright neon orange substances at us, they were mostly taking themselves out and we were swamped with keeping up the defense and them as far away from us as possible.

We’ve been firing ‘almost’ nonstop for nearly thirty minutes straight.

“So do you think…” Then something exploded and a shockwave blasted all the ants into the air and out of the zone. The Commandramon that tried to speak just went silent for a moment of thought.

It was practically raining the dead ants everywhere and one bounced off the armor’s dome making me squeak.

“I think the PLANT exploded from overclocking. Oh and I’m reloading, give me a minute before we continue forward.” Driver had us rotate in and out of firing when we started running low.

Apparently the Magitek Armors did have a reload cycle, it just had a ridiculous ammo capacity in the few hundred thousand rounds before it needed to cycle through and we’ve cycled a few times while absolutely surrounded by those ants.

If it were not a digital armors and actual armors, it was mentioned that the gun barrels might have overheated and melted by now. Which was another problem, how would we even get this Magitek Armor out of this digital realm of Moon Cell’s even if we did manage to make it survive Jack Wolf and Fou. It wouldn’t be able to work outside of a digital realm in reality for very long, because it needed digital energy to reload… maybe magic would work for keeping it operational, but it wouldn’t be very useful outside a digital environment.

I think Dormarch would like it at least, it’d give him something to study and play with inside his home in the Digivice.

“Let’s move.” The zone couldn’t hold up for long with the weaker APs compared to all the ridiculously powerful EPs around here, but it would have to be long enough. We had to keep moving forward and ignore some territories to get where we needed to be and the clearing we just got stuck in was totaled from all the acid.

I wished the currently appearing APs well, even if they weren’t really going to be doing much aside from defending the small patches of territories we left in our wake.

Dolly turned our machine and got us heading in the direction I indicated before we got assaulted from all sides. The Commandramon quickly fell into place, with Driver leading with his two buddies in front again. I fired off a quick green beam, after we were clear of the acid field, to repair our machines and heal any injuries from acid dipping through the armor of our machines.

It, funnily enough, healed the crick in my neck when I targeted our machine and that came from sitting in this seat for so long. I really wanted to stretch my legs some. It was nice that the Magitek Armor could even self-repair with that very same beam, at a cost of magical energy of course, would have been bad to deal with that kind of problem had we not stolen these things.

“So… do you think we’ll survive this?” Trying to make idle conversation I went for the throat of the matter given all we’ve been facing, because it was something to talk about while we were on the move and entered a forest region in the middle of a large swath of jungle.

We had been using the blades on the machines to cut our way through the undergrowth and it was starting to get monotonous without anything else trying take us down for five minutes. I think I may have gone insane, either that or it’s Dolly’s need for action bleeding over into my personality. I had to be careful of that, we were able to bond on a ridiculous level that we were still vaguely two after all of that.

At least the sparse forest would make seeing the variety of threats around here easier.

“Well yeah. After everything we’ve been through? Of course we are going to live through this!” Wished to have your kind of confidence Dolly. I would settle for everyone else and you making it out of this messed up place alive, the Commandramon were quite determined to keep me safe and were the best guys I could ask for in this situation, given how they could actively soldier their way through most things and live up to the title of ‘Commando’.

“Do you need to go to the bathroom?” I asked as we came to a nice stream with a small side pond and a picturesque view with a copse of bushes and trees. Hard to imagine we’re in the middle of an underground place full of large brutish monsters I wouldn’t survive without the really nice Caerbannogs having raided an enemy garage for these machines. “Since I currently do. Guys can we make a quick pit stop here while nothing is trying to kill us.”

“Ugh, finally… my backside is about to go Terra Force!” Oh right, Digimon needed to eat and get restroom breaks too. “Nothing against you ma’am, but finding a spot we can do that in is an Yggdrasil send! We’ll do it in turns, you first while we watch our surroundings for more of those cougars or those weird flying squirrel panthers.”

-One bathroom and small snack break later-

We walked past the stream and continued on, Driver and his team went to scout ahead while we kept a slow pace.

Food was going to be a problem, at least I prepared for the eventuality that we’d be stuck outside of Castle Alexander for a while… hadn’t lost my bag with all the running around I did, still had the mystical pink Pecha Scarf.

I wondered how things were going back at the castle, I decided to concentrate on what Dormarch was doing right now and he was arguing with everyone about anyone else taking charge so he could come and help me. That checks and it was sweet of him to be so worried about me, but I was almost already a walking death sentence and it was only a matter of when at this point despite my forceful suppression of my lethal heritage.

Again Dormarch was a good boy, my good boy, but he was kind of stuck at the castle and I could vaguely see that it was under siege if the sounds of constant fire from the gun towers was anything to go by. I decided not to bother them as they were kind of busy.

I know he could teleport and everything, but Dormarch couldn’t do it through solid dirt and would have to find a passageway down here. Current said passageways were pouring massive amounts of EPs out trying to deal with sieging Castle Alexander and the giant NPs that attacked just about anything that moved even remotely close to them, this was while the underground was being overrun by said NPs and somewhat stemming the flow of EPs that would otherwise be overrunning the castle with numbers.

A magitek armor came back from scouting ahead and it seemed perfectly fine.

“We’re going to need to ford a river up ahead, also there’s a lot of EPs in that direction on the other side. Some of them are Gekkos that are setting everything nearby on fire, they spotted us but didn’t fire cannons or try to leap across the river.” Announced the Commandramon as we climbed up onto our Magitek Armor with Dolly. I looked up at the air and didn’t see smoke.

“What about smoke?” I asked as I didn’t see anything in the fake underground sunlight rising into the sky.

“Smokeless chemical fires, are you glad you have that armor now? No biological would want to get that stuff on their skins, much less a digital entity like us.” Yeah, didn’t want chemical burns on top of being lit on fire, I had Dolly do a ‘go on’ gesture with the machine. “They are currently fighting what I’m going to term as living blobs that smell like sugar and fruit that can use magic, look a lot like the custard dessert flan… it’s not going well for the gekkos and I really want to avoid having to go near those things. The magic they use is similar to the same kind that Dolly generally does, at least it feels that way.”

“Yes, you guys were right, the armor was the better option even I can’t pilot it personally. At least Dolly can.” I’m surprised at how well Dolly took to doing so while using me as a conduit for her skills. “We’ll go there and get a second eye on that situation and then try to go around.”

“Okay Big Boss lady!” Okay, that was starting to get annoying. The six of them really needed stop with that… I’m not really boss material even if I can easily lead a pack of canines.

“Why do you guys keep calling me that?” It bothered me somewhat.

“Well we need a leader, you were termed as the secondary leader of the counter invasion force and that makes Jeanne, you, Canard and Sami the various leaders. Dormarch is a bit too young to lead aside from logistics, powerful sure, but he seems like he’s barely a month out of the egg.” Yeah, that certainly sound like a list of leaders and a scarily accurate description of how old Dormarch truly was. “Jeanne overall from Valora as a fresh leader for the first time, she’s mostly just following you’re lead. You as a secondary and quick thinker who clearly has a little more experience in leading small packs, but are overall the idea person. Canard, since he led a successful rebel faction that barely had seven people to its name that took out an invasion force that took over an entire planet. As for Sami, she’s a great field leader we kind of want as a CO. We’re still trying to figure out how to be CO’s ourselves from her example, given she’s been alive for so long.”

“So would you say Sami is only an example to follow because of how well she has survived all the stuff that’s tried to kill her?” What with the situations she’s spoken of, the Raremon was probably the worse one where she had to make a decision to put down a comrade that basically turned into a zombi in front of her. I saw what one looks like in the digimon database on the Digivice and got a general description of them, it wasn’t pretty and that they could grow to the size of buildings was a horror story waiting to happen given they can infect nearly dead Digimon to turn into more of them. “That doesn’t seem like good leader material, given that most of her friends have died around her and she’s one of the few survivors of the earliest batch of Commandramon.”

“Well it is more about the survival techniques she’s learned than actual leadership position, but we think she would make a good leader by having stories to tell and the circumstances under which she had some form of leadership more Commandramon survived than not. Canard is definitely a leader though, guy throws himself into the digital world to save his entire team by taking one for all of them. He then continues to be a generally nice guy and is just trying to live to one day maybe see his team again, thanks to you they at least know he’s alive.” Yeah, but for how long can he stay alive with the circumstances the way they are, we’re kind of inside of a threat to all and any life that’s not already a part of Moon Cell.

“Coming up on the river, guns up and get focused people.” Driver called from in front of us, I was starting to see the smokeless fires going on.

Drivers three Commandramon team moved off to the side as we came up to the river and got a good look at what was happening on the other side.

Gekko were stomping on the flan like entities, nothing happening to them aside from a lot of wobbling, physical attacks wasn’t doing anything to them at all. The flan things wobbled in place and suddenly the Gekko went down in a blast of lightning, beams and blast of water, fire erupting from under it, ice being shot at it as much as encasing it, a chunk of earth spiking up into them, a swirling green wind that was quite familiar to Dolly and me and even a Gravity spell, the one Gekko got badly wrecked by the magic attacks… and so did the multiple Gekko behind it. The concentrated lightning blasts that disabled them seemed particularly effective and set them up for being blasted by the other spells.

“I so want to learn how to shoot fireballs out of my paws.” At best Dolly you could rub your paws together to generate heat and defrost anyone by pressing your paws against them afterwards, I don’t think fire magic was in your capabilities even if you were a hell hound descendant. Everything you have so far seemed relatively suited to your given personality. “Let a dog dream Pom.”

As we continued to watch the three tentacle yellow and black striped Gekko try to fight them physically they finally did something that was effective, they used fire on the flans. The flans were exceedingly weak to flames, they almost basically melted in an instant under direct contact with them.

“We’re still going to give this a wide berth.” I stated flatly as the living flans were giving better than they got as bullets didn’t affect them, stomping didn’t affect them and the whip strikes of the metallic tentacles the Gekko produced didn’t do anything either. “Don’t want to get stuck fighting those things or the Gekko.”

“Those gekko look really odd with all that yellow.” After stating that, Driver led us to start following the flow of the river as we looked for a smaller, far less dangerous section of it, to cross it. “If anything, with all the mooing you’d think they would try to look more like cows instead of making themselves incredibly visible like they are.”

“We’re going to have to get into a fight with those things eventually.” I knew we couldn’t avoid those oddly colored Gekko forever, I doubted they were Jack Wolf’s Gekko either. They spotted us, but didn’t try to cross the river to get at us, mostly me, immediately on sight… then again I was inside a machine so it would be a little harder to see me beneath the canopy.

“Are your thoughts always this cluttered Pom?” Well excuse me for thinking about things far too much Dolly. “It’s little wonder you can’t pilot this thing. Oh look, there’s a spot!”

Indeed we were at least a good mile away from where the flan things and the odd Gekko were fighting, it was short and it didn’t look like there were any mega gators in the water.

“Does it look good Driver?” To answer the question Driver gestured to the two other machines and slowly strode his machine into the river until the water was up to its waist and slowly crossed the river.

“I’ll say it does, careful though, step heavy, don’t let the moving water unbalance you.” The two Commandramon on Driver’s team crossed.

“Go on guys, we’ll cross last.” The two Commandramon that were with me started their slow crossing of the river while I got Dolly to turn us around and look about for any threats.

“There you are!” A familiar deranged voice of Moon Cell’s servant said in the distance as multiple trees fell to the flash of a slash and out of the jungle behind came Jack Wolf.

Dolly immediately lunged us into the water and started crossing the river with several heavy stomps to make sure we were sturdy and upright as we moved forward, before the other two among our team have even finished.

“Darn it, I owe Frosty five digital credits now…” One of the Commandramon grumbled as they all opened fire on him, even the ones slowly getting out of the water on the other side.

Turning the upper half back forward as we continued forward to ford the river.

The Commandramon pinned down Saber Jack Wolf and he was stuck in place deflecting the thousands of shots they poured on at him as Dolly got us across the river.

That fact that he was actively blocking every single last one of them from five different streams of at least ten guns focused solely on him and was even actively trying to reflect them into hitting us as we crossed seemed mind bogglingly impossible.

Given he was actively damaging our Magitek Armor with deflected bullets until we got out of range of the deflections, he actually succeeded in protecting himself and attacking us as the same time! That guy was quite beyond the impossible and there was no way I would even dare try to take him in a fair fight. We were going to have to stoop some very low lows soon, as we had to deal with him eventually.

Dolly turned us around and got our guns aimed at him and pulled the triggers using my hooves, the guns clicked and made a few odd sounds.

“What the… what’s wrong with our guns?!” Dolly I think I know the answer and I really wouldn’t want to be outside of the armor right now if I’m correct.

“I think he might have jammed our guns with the deflected bullets.” I answered having seen some sparks that indicate that they might be bouncing back towards the dome canopy on our machine, nope, he bounced them off water into our guns to prevent us from adding two more streams of fire to what he was already still deflecting.

“How?!” At this point Dolly, I think it was better to not question how he managed to achieve that feat, but ask the question of what he wasn’t capable of with that blade at this point. Long range slashes was probably beyond him, but his short range slashes tore through buildings and the swords edge didn’t look any less sharp for it.

I inhaled as I stared at him across the river from us and blinked as I gasped out and saw a shot deflecting itself through the entire stream of shots and then launched at us and cracked the canopy on the machine Dolly and I were in.

“Stop firing!” I shouted hoping to not get hit with another ridiculous deflection that might take out the Magitek Armor, because if I’m right that deflected shot had just been aimed for my head and if I hadn’t been in the armor it would have killed me given the speed it had been moving was about several times faster than that of any of the bullets I had previously dodged.

The Commandramon did as asked and across the river Saber Jack Wolf frowned and looked to be in thought.

“What’s he waiting on, why isn’t he coming after us?” One of the five Commandramon with us asked, I think I was fairly good on recognizing which one was Driver. This wasn't him.

“He can’t defend himself as well while crossing the river to get at us and he doesn’t want to let us out of his sight. So if I had to guess, he’s thinking of a way to get at us and we can’t exactly allow him to cross the river on our watch.” So we’re currently at a stale…

“Fou?” My blood chilled immediately and the Magitek Armors temperature dropped several degrees, that... hadn’t been on the other side of the river. “Fou!”

All six of our armors turned to see the beastly terror heading in our direction from our right after having crossed the river and was looking around curiously before sniffing the air, his eyes immediately snapped to the machine I was in directly and they narrowed.

“Do not engage him Commandramon, that’s an order from the Big Boss. Fou has a rather special reaction to aggression, he’ll just tear you guys apart and I can’t in good conscience let that happen.” I stated in a serious tone and manner to let them know that what I’m about to ask them to do was probably for the best. “Can you guys go ahead please, Dolly and I need to take care of something.”

If Fou was about to distract us from Saber Jack Wolf, then he would be able to cross the river while we were actively defending ourselves from Fou.

“Please, run and continue in the direction we’re heading… trust me on this! We’ll… live... I know how to handle him.” Fou was preparing to run at us and Dolly instead of shooting at Fou, fired across the river forcing Saber Jack Wolf to deflect some shots away from himself.

Instead of attacking us when he got close, Fou was mildly distracted by curiosity of what we were attacking instead of him. I had Dolly do that to garner his curiosity as to what we thought was possibly more threatening than him in this moment when it he was about three feet away from tearing us out of this machine with his bare claws.

His reaction to Jack Wolf shifting into quadruped was one that had me curios and he noted Jack Wolf was staring at our machine and he looked slightly angry about Jack Wolf staking a claim on hunting us. The byplay of Fou’s reaction read as if he wanted to attack Jack later and make him the next hunt after me should I somehow get away from him in this moment. He was definitely remaining completely aware of us with his ears to make sure we didn’t run.

I was forcing Dolly to not take any aggressive actions against Fou, if I was right he might ignore me for a bit for something far more aggressive and deadly.

“Stop me from killing her first if you can, I welcome the challenge.” Yeah, that wasn’t exactly a smart thing to do Jack Wolf, given what I think I knew Fou was absolutely capable of. “It’s going to take a bit of work breaking that Magitek Armor open and by the time you do I’ll be over to make some mutton out of the ewe.”

I didn’t know who would win in a fight between these two, but whoever did would likely want to end me afterwards all the same. Fou was likely to win unless Jack Wolf was just as dangerous as I knew Fou was.

“Guys I know he’s threatening me, but do not fire on him! I repeat, DO… NOTHING!” I called out and the Commandramon looked like they were going to shoot at Fou and ignore my orders, but they held their fire and started to retreat towards more danger.

Safety was relative at this moment, was I safer being near Fou or Jack Wolf? I at least knew what Fou was about and he has kind of staked a claim on me being his hunt, if Jack Wolf is hunting me then that has likely greatly earned Fou’s ire. So he might not focus entirely on me and might attack Jack, Jack’s survival is not something I exactly cared about.

“Dolly, get us ready to run.” Fou turned his eyes back on us, as if daring us to try and escape him in this moment. “Just don’t intend him harm when you do it, be gentle.”

“Why, what am I going to… ah right. Float, Aero!” We did take a nice rest break and before this, before Fou knew it he was flailing into the air and pushed across the river harmlessly before he could break free of the float spell.

Which pretty much says it all that Fou currently had the capability to cancel out that spell when he focused on doing so.

“Go Dolly go and pardon my Prench, but get us the buck out of here before he comes after us for that!” Before we left, Dolly looked back and we saw Jack Wolf attack Fou with that sword of his, what happened clearly shocked us after seeing that sword cut through so many things like butter and it proved once and for all why we wouldn’t mess with…

-Fou (Beast of Comparison, Primate Murder, Cath Palug, the You Can’t Simply Kill Me With Just An HF Blade Monster, Nigh Immortal Death Beast of Gaia, the Even Tiamat Wouldn’t Mess Around With Him Creature, Names To Avoid At All Cost, Names To Run Away From Really Fast, On A List Of Various Names To Avoid If You Want To Live A Long And Very Fulfilling Life In Which He Appears In No Less Than Five Times In Bold While Underlined With At Least Five Exclamation Marks Following The Names Exclaiming That All Of Said Names Are In Fact From The Same Creature.) Vs. Jack Wolf (Dead Guy Walking… one that lived a rather interesting child soldier life even before all of this Moon Cell nonsense.)-

“What the… how?! This is a high frequency blade you just don’t catch a HF blade with a bare hand… er… claw like that!” Fou wasn’t going to answer Jack Wolf’s disbelief or his ability conceptually counter primate made weapons, as he had in fact caught the blade swinging for him in his right claw and aside from the small dribble of blood going down it… his claw likely only had a small cut in it which annoyed Fou greatly, in the same vein a papercut would annoy anyone. “Still how and what the hell…!”

An injury that would heal as soon as the vibrating blade was no longer digging into Fou’s flesh far too lightly for Jack’s rather horrified and slightly excited tastes.

Jack Wolf was amused that Fou got sent his way, he had decided to quickly deal with the problem that Fou presented now and to get on with killing his target. This was while not knowing exactly what Fou could do, what he was capable of, what he even was and why he was so ridiculously dangerous to fight.

Growling, Fou leaned forward and roared his infamous bone chilling word at the challenge that so delightfully presented itself before him. He could feel the soul of the defiant being before him and it brought a smile to his toothy maw.

“Fou!” Fou was about to show Jack Wolf exactly why Pom knew to fear him.

“Ripper Mode.” Somehow, Jack absolutely felt and knew that this was quite a necessary time to pull out his ace in the hole if he was to survive this.

-Jungle and Forest mixed region not too far away, Dolly-

We heard Fou’s roar as I kept piloting us in the direction the Commandramon went.

“Well that was tense…” The dude caught a blade that can cut through most things and he only bled slightly from it.

I saw what that sword could cut through, what is 'Adversary' actually made of that he can just stop it cold like that?!

If I knew ‘Enemy’ like I thought I did, he’d probably heal from the damage within seconds to a minute. We needed to be as far away from them before either of those two came after us. What would be worse is that both of them did and destroyed this awesome ride. Still personally thought we’d survive all this.

We quickly caught up to the Drammies and their machines, one was on top of the two legged lizard bot things stabbing the two large blades down into its skull and it stopped moving and basically fell over. The armor hopped away from it to land on the ground to avoid falling over with it. Another lizard was toppled by having its leg blown apart into a blood spewing mess… wait those legs had blood in them?

I thought they were mechanical, that’s going into the list of the one hundred weirdest things I’ve seen with Pom I had going on the Digivice, along with a list of things I wanted to do with Pom when we eventually got to that Equestria place.

Anyway the toppled machine received two streams of shots into the top of its head that destroyed it in an explosion, around the area there were eight more of these things laying around the clearing. They tended to disappear real slowly I’ve noticed.

They all turned their guns on us and immediately lowered them when they saw that it was us.

“Guys, lets double time it, because I currently don’t know how long those two will be distracted with one another!” Pom really wanted to be somewhere else right now and I’m kind of feeling that right now personally. "If you have to ask, we made Fou be Jack Wolf's problem."

“You heard the Big Boss lady, move out!” Driver stated before we all reoriented and left the scene.

-A few seconds later in the left behind jungle forest clearing-

A destroyed yellow gekko started sparking and slowly stood back up, it made its way over to another machine and started getting it up and moving with three tentacles ending in three small manipulator wires jabbing into the metal of the other Gekko.

Even the machine with its head completely blown off had its legs get up and start walking again within a minute after being jabbed by the manipulator wires.

Nobody knew about the hidden feature of these new Berserker Gekko… which was why it was even reclassified as a Berserker.

There was about to be a slight problem that just wouldn’t die, at least until the main problem of the thing spawning them was ultimately dealt with.

The mooing said Gekko generally created had turned into a more haunting moaning sound as they limped haphazardly in the direction of the nearest thing to threaten.

-Castle Alexander, Dormarch-

“Ocellus, take control… please.” I was swallowing my anger and gritting my teeth at Ocellus on this, mom was not only being attacked by Jack Wolf, Fou was also there and… ah… that’s my awesome big sister!

“Was it really that hard Dormarch?” At least Smolder was a decent mediator, but yes… it was.

“Okay, I will.” Ocellus said in an uncertain manner that almost got me to start arguing, but our defenses were being hammered by NPs and EPs alike. The NPs were arguably worse for our APs, but at least the Caerbannogs were showing their worth in assassinating large targets and were quite cute too!

“Sami, help her with everything she needs to know, I’m going out to help mom now. She’s got two of the most dangerous beings in this realm coming after her and they just ran into both of them down there according to Dolly.” With my Search Hunter I flashed up to a rooftop in the city from Castle Alexander, surprisingly the territory was still holding from when the Digibots took it and the APs leapt from the rooftop to deal with the enemies below thriving in the streets.

As soon as my paws touched the roof, I looked back at the castle and the EP, APS and NPs that were fighting absolutely everywhere.

The gun tower controlling Commandramon were having quite a time with keeping the large monsters away, all while trying to assist our APs in the field, any EPs that got by the NPs to attack Alexander directly were being attacked by Alexanders non AP related forces and it was a mess. At least our Territory looked sturdy and as solid as Alexander did for the time being despite the immense pressure from everything happening around the castle.

I just needed to find an entrance…

“Say do you know where the nearest entrance to the underground is?” I asked the nearest Caerbannog and soon found myself being led to a nearby elevator that led into the dangerous depths below Mare Melums currently equally dangerous streets.

Author's Note

Unicorn Overlord, enough said about major distractions from writing.

402. Metal Hound Chaos! Pt. 6.

-Equus, Twilight Sparkle, Ponyville-

Ugh… running Equestria was so hard… I slapped my chin against the table and tried not to think about the several things that currently annoyed me.

SMILE was an interesting case as was the organization to stop magical anomalies from attacking ponies called Capture Bridle Defend, it was nice of Fancy and Fleur to finally tell me about some things when they thought I could handle it.

There’s Jaded, who was a rogue as much as rogues could be rogues while being a sun priest or priestess, but I could hire her as a mercenary to help with a variety of problems. Maybe it would stop her from being a problem to Saddle Arabia if I kept her attention on other things.

My friends are as fun and insane as they ever were, except Pinkie’s been getting all kinds of twitchy lately and she won’t tell us what those mean. All she said is that the magic of harmony was doing what it does somewhere else and to leave it at that.

Airship Mauled still hasn’t rejoined with Equestria proper citing reasons I couldn’t deny as being important, at least Kuril ran the place and not Jaded. Who knows what kind of loopholes Jaded would have me jumping through if she was in charge of things, since she’s technically a unicorn noble via her father despite being almost entirely Abyssinian in appearance.

Capper is visiting and has been hitting up Rarity lately, so that would make two fun rogues running around. All I needed is to hear Rainbow and Captain Celaeno have been getting up to things again to finish off the triple threat of friendly rogues running around doing who knows what at the same time.

I’d shudder to think what would happen if we added a fourth and Captain Jack Sparrow managed to get by the ban and restraining order on her hanging out with Jaded.

How did Celestia keep her sanity knowing about all this stuff going on?!

“How are you feeling Twilight, need me to take time off of my vacation to help out?” Celestia said as she nuzzled me affectionately.

“Huh, what? No! I’m fine. I’m just worried about Luna’s fight with Jaded La Perm, it’s getting kind of… odd…” I sat up as my mentor has for the most part been vacationing around Equestria proper and making sure things didn’t go any further off rails since the summit.

Jaded’s shenanigans and whatever strange trade agreement she had with the chaos dimension Discord runs still fresh in my mind. At this point, I’m fairly certain Discord is supplying most of Jaded’s, AKA the ‘Evil Sorceress Mirage’, schemes for Saddle Arabia.

Thinking of Celestia being here for me, Luna is now trying to destroy Saddle Arabia through even more convoluted means than what even Jaded could think of. I didn’t think that was possible and I think Luna was trying to prove a point that she wasn’t as dumb or slow as the newspapers say, even though it takes her about three times longer to think up things to do to Saddle Arabia to beat Jaded at her own infamy.

At least Saddle Arabia is becoming quite popular vacation spot just to see what strange magic runs wild in the streets on any particular week after Jaded or Luna do something bizarre. The one scheme where everything turned bright yellow for a single day had an odd effect on their citizenry at the very least.

“It’s just that Luna is getting a little out of hoof and Jaded is not making it any easier… how do you stay friends with someone like that?!” I didn’t even know pocket lint could be used like that until now and I don’t know who to be more terrified of… Luna for the pocket lint thing or Jaded for what she recently did with a single gallon barrel of cream cheese. It was hard to look at things the same way with the both of them trying to one up one another. “How do you continue to be friends with someone who… killed you in a past life?”

Some things have been floating around in my mind since I got into a few talks with Bastet and Sekhet.

“Yes, Jaded did do that. At least she made it quick… really wish I didn’t have memories of that happening when I was Bennu. Also Jaded really didn't have to eat my breasts and legs, then tell Bastet about it to make her as angry as possible. She's an Abyssinian, so I really should have expected her to be catty like that.” Celestia rubbed at her throat that seemed empty without the royal peytral hanging around it, I also noted she wasn’t wearing a crown on her head. It still just felt so odd to me and I’ve been running Equestria for quite a while now. More like I was trying to rein in the idiocy and insanity that Celestia sat on for quite a long time and now I’m dealing with having to sit on it myself. “Still, we both got what we wanted from that interaction and I avoided immortality and becoming a goddess… which I am sadly now after so many cycles. I’m still friends with Jaded to reassure her that what happened in the distant past doesn’t change our current friendship, because it definitely still haunts her… like how chickens haunt me and have killed me multiple times in a variety of past lives in over the top ways I'll never be able to forget. My sweet hummingbird couldn’t save me from that dastardly foul… at least my past life’s hive descendants are known for the sweetest honey throughout Equestria. Anyway, I’ll help you with Jaded and Luna, the two are getting a little out of hoof even if Jaded has an honest reason for disliking Luna.”

Okay, I think I now I knew where the chicken phobia came from and I should ask Celestia if I could tell Anubis about this. Also what was that about honey and hummingbirds?

"Wait, did you just tell me that Jaded not only killed you... but ate you too in the past?!" Well that was fairly shocking news.

"Why, is that a problem? Well it's not like I wanted my nearly almost 'truly' immortal phoenix heron body to go to waste and needed some way to make sure the rebirth trick I had going as the first 'Phoenix' was truly stopped so I could reincarnate as something else if the artifact known as 'The End of Immortality' didn't work perfectly on me, as such they were my truest friends... and still are. Also Bastet was really quite upset that she didn't get to eat any of the good parts of me, her anger knew no bounds when she cursed Jaded to stone." Celestia said with sigh. "That I was dead by Jaded's paw, there was that too I guess as something for Bastet to be kind of upset about, given the whole goddess of cherishing life thing."

"WHAT?!" I shrieked!? What kind of friendship... I brain... not work. "I DON'T EVEN... JUST WHAT?!"

-Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, five minutes after Pom left them, Massive Underground Region, ???-

A red blade raised from the water and stabbed itself into the shore as the Saber servant Jack Wolf pulled himself out of the river. He had been quite thoroughly mangled. At least he succeeded in defeating that monstrosity. The exchange had been hellish, if short, but he had to continue chasing after his target and finish his mission without any…

“Fou!” A loud exclamation sounded out in Jack’s ears and then faded away as vicious fighting nearby sprung up from that exclamation that made the jungle shake and shudder like an earthquake.

Complications…

Then again, even with Ripper Mode he hadn’t killed that beast, apparently that just slowed it down immensely. Mind you it was still capable of fighting and it just killed whatever picked a fight with it despite being weakened.

“Diagnostics Blade?” Jack asked.

“82% systems broken, molten knife launchers disablef, one chainsaw has been entirely ripped out, the other has been mangled beyond all recognition and it amazingly only took him five minutes to do that to us too. Rather impressive that it happened while we were in Ripper Mode no less, sword heel connection function just went down from getting out of the water just so you know. To think that I thought our fight with Jetstream Sam went bad.” The dog based AI Blade stated with a slight hint of worry. “We at least supposedly just left our opponent in a similar state. Conceptually speaking… our opponent is as much bullpucky as you usually are and it seems they are winning whatever they are fighting now. Still, we have a cute and lovable ewe to slaughter… and we can praise the doggy messiah, for she is great at belly rubs… she will ultimately die by our sword if it can find her.”

“What was that? No, never mind, I don’t want to know if you’re going insane or not as long as you don’t try and take control of our body.” Heaving himself up onto his feet, Jack Wolf started limping forward looking for something to slice open and continue his mission while avoiding Fou to the best of his abilities. “I just need to use a quick Zandatsu…”

That Ewe knew exactly what she was doing when she sent that beast his way.

-Elsewhere Beach, heading in the same direction towards danger as always, Pom-

I have no idea what we’re doing anymore, but at least Driver had managed to get the guns on our machine unjammed after getting those deflected shots out of them. Jack Wolf was terrifying, as much as Fou could be and it was better that we set them against one another.

A winged panther tried to fly out of the trees at us and was quickly shot down, we were moving along the shoreline of an underground sea and it wasn’t a flying squirrel monster thing this time. Also I’m pretty sure there wasn’t an underground sea here several hours ago before this Moon Cell realm got all warped. It was more than likely because Fou showed up that things became more bestial and dangerous.

Looking to our right I saw an off looking Berserker Shark eating kraken in a brutal manner on the sandy shore and we went around the thrashing violent thing eating the equally violent kraken alive as its tentacles whipped at its body.

“I can’t tell if we’re making good time or not.” One of the Commandramon said while his machine eyed the Berserker Shark warily with a single gun aiming in that direction as we started to pass by the scene.

“At least we’re still heading in the same direction we have always been. We have to be getting closer to the target right?” Well said target was a large machine shaped PLANT that spits out Gekko, so it would be hard for us to miss it if it was moving around and actively destroying things.

“Can I ask why we shouldn’t attack that one creature specifically?” Driver directed more to me than to Dolly piloting the machine through my body.

“That was Fou, he’s kind of stalking me and trying to maul me I think… I don’t know if he’s trying to kill me or not, but he certainly made an effort in tracking me down to even be here.” Yeah, that was something I was afraid of, that he could effectively track me anywhere I go and nothing could stop him from following. “As for why you shouldn’t attack him, well… from the way I understand it, he reacts strongly to aggression directed at him by getting exponentially stronger than the threat being imposed. He’s less strong when you are on the defensive and when you intend him no harm, I think the less aggressive you are towards him, the less of a threat he will be overall. He’s still quite threatening however even at his weakest.”

“So that would be like five machines firing ten streams of shots at him and if he does as you say… okay nobody shoots at that beast if we see it again. Avoid direct combat entirely and only take defensive actions at CQC range, got it!” Driver immediately called it as soon as he thought about it, it was nice to have everyone on the same page as why we are not pursuing to end Fou or get into a fight with him. It was a bad idea to even try overall. “So when will we know we’ve found what we’re looking for?”

“Well it’ll too big to miss and is possibly able to move. If we start coming across a lot of Gekko, we’ll know that we’re heading in the right direction at least. We’ve already seen some already.” After twenty feet, two of those mooing yellow Gekko leapt from the forest to our left and into our path. We immediately brought up our guns and twelve streams of shots started toppling the two by shooting up one of their frog like legs to topple them and then we unloaded into the tops of their heads until they stopped moving. They didn’t get much of a chance to attack us before we unleashed on them. “The more of those we see, the more we’re heading in the right direction. Given that Dormarch thinks it’s the Gekko making PLANT that is making the local servant semi-invincible, it might be the thing I saw before things got weird down here. We’re going to have some issues dealing with it as it’s as big, if not bigger, than Moby Dick is and we’ll need all these armors running when we get to it to even have a hope of bringing it down. Let’s take a minute standing break here.”

Speaking of Dormarch, I could feel him coming down here. I hope my little digital monster puppy doesn’t do anything dumb, I’m kind of getting used to having a self-proclaimed son after getting him back.

“Guys… somethings up with the Gekko.” The Commandramon drew mine and Dolly’s attention for saying that as one of the yellow machines sparked and then it started standing up again. “It’s a code zombie, code zombie!”

“What’s a code zombie?” I asked getting a sinking feeling as I saw the thing started a staggering walk at us as Driver and two of the Commandramon in front of us unloaded on it.

“Not code ‘colon’ zombie, a coding zombie! A coding zombie is data that can continue to move and attack even after killing the body and revive infinitely until their bodies are fully dealt with, things like this are dangerous to any digital entity as they could be infectious… good thing they don’t have mouths, but let’s not load up any of their data and find out the hard way how malicious it is.” Still didn’t get loading data thing too much, but it sounded like sucking up blood that bleed out of any of what would be a digimon’s enemy inside computers. Wait… does this technically mean that all digimon are technically vampires? “It might lead to us becoming Skull type digimon and there are very few skull type digimon that are not immediately evil… there’s also the worst case scenario or possibility of causing Raremon incident. We can’t trust these odd Gekko’s to be dead anymore until a majority of their bodies are gone and the ones we dealt with and left behind probably rose up behind us too! So let’s not have that happen here guys, hose them until their data is actively dissolving!”

Dolly heard the words ‘hose them’ and obliged as us and the two Commandramon next to us joined in and the machine tried to jump towards us, but faltered when we added our six streams of shots to start chipping away large chunks of its body.

“Ahhhh?!” Just when it was about finished, after ninety percent of it had been blown into messes pieces and started dissolving, I and Dolly found ourselves screaming as we were slammed into the ground the second Gekkos foot as it rammed into the armors torso and forces us onto our backs.

The other one had started gotten up behind the one we were focusing on, but it was hard to notice as it took up a crouching position to prepare for that lunge.

The head tilted down to look at us through the dome as three tentacles sprouted from it and started to move for us only to be swiftly blasted away by the Commandramon on our left.

“Second thing of note boys, don’t get jabbed by those tentacles if you’re digital being, they might be carrying virus employers to zombie other surrounding programs that are still alive if barely beaten by these things. Unless you have a form of immunity to whatever those tentacles may be carrying, it’s not a good idea to test how strong you are against an unknown bit of malicious code that could make a Raremon of you.” Hearing that from Driver as the five Commandramon worked in concert to force the machine off of us and stop it from stomping down to crush the canopy, I sent Dormarch a quick mental message about what was just said and to avoid getting close to any yellow gecko or just any strange gecko in general. He sent a sign that he received in clearly by pinging me back through our bond. “Now slam them off of Big Boss and tear that thing a new one!”

The Commandramon to our right leapt forward and shoulder checked with the left shoulder to topple the Gekko onto its back as it was trying to stomp us again. It’s mooing sounded more like haunting moan now as it tried to get its legs under it, only to be stopped by ten streams of shots ripped into its legs in a rather grisly bloody fashion.

After a bit it started dissolving and Dolly got us standing, I could feel her shivering and wide eyed look at what was a two legged robotic mooing frog and finally understood how dangerous things still were when they were not armed with rapid fire guns. These yellow gekko came with flamethrowers right? I can now see where that would be more of a problem, given we snuck around some of the fires they were starting.

“Okay, that was scary.” Dolly stated as she had us looking about. “What’s worse than facing robots? Zombie robots…”

“Not just zombie robots Dolly, anything digital could be affected by those things and we’re currently surrounded by incredibly dangerous wild programs that are clearly not within Moon Cell’s control.” Driver followed up Dolly saying that out loud with my mouth. “I seriously doubt it would let a coding zombie outbreak start in its systems, could crash the system and kill everyone in it when it does.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound good, how will we get word to Castle Alexander about this?” This was clearly a big problem to worry about.

“I wouldn’t worry about that, Sami’s going to know what she’s looking at if she sees one of these coding zombies…” One of the Commandramon was fairly certain of that. “If we can get to the source of these things in time, then we can prevent a really big problem from rising up to consume everything. It’s going to be an even worse problem than the servant if we don’t deal with it immediately.”

“Then let’s move out while we still have these armors in good condition to deal with the problem guys!” I called and they raised their armors right arms in acknowledgment.

“You heard Big Boss, fall in!” Driver stated as they took up point again and started moving forward.

-Outside Castle Alexander, Sami-

We were under siege, but holding for the moment thanks to the chaos of the NPs fighting us or the EPs and basically going after the nearest moving thing. We might want to eventually bring Alexander out of defensive mode and retreat.

There were so many targets and not nearly enough gun towers to hold them back, the NPs were causing havoc everywhere and we weren’t shooting at them as much as the EPs who were definitely focused on us.

Canard was doing fine as he slashed another Berserker Viking apart with his Hockey Stick, the digital energy he was using was coming from the digivice and me in particular to increase his attacks or perform slap shots.

Jeanne jammed her long banner spear up into an Archer Gekko from below from its knee, managing to pierce it with her weapon. She ripped her weapon free and leapt away from it as it toppled backwards and started to disappear when a yellow and black striped gecko landed on it and jammed a tentacle into it.

The machine started to turn yellow and slowly stand up again, moaning oddly instead of making a normal mooing noise. My eyes widened at the sight, which was an immediate problem we had to focus on.

“Tower three, coding zombies near my position, bright yellow, can’t really miss them. Shoot them until they are absolutely obliterated!” I was looking out across the field and saw similar situations of yellow and black striped Gekko attacking EPs with their tentacles and taking them over and I even watched as an EP plant get taken over and started producing yellow colored zombie EPs that were like the normal EPs only they moved more haggardly. To my horror the NPs weren’t being spared being turned either, but at least they were destroying a lot of the yellow code zombies that showed up. One NP bull turned and started to aid the yellow gekko in weakening all the surrounding programs that weren’t infected. “We got an epidemic starting here, hurry up with that artillery! Prioritize anything the color yellow, yellow are coding zombies!”

A few seconds later a few explosions ripped apart the two yellow gekkos trying to infect other programs near us that were starting to turn our APs were blown apart and so were the infected a second later to my relief as I ran for the castle gates.

“Frizzle pull back, I’m already doing so. Everyone else, do not let them get close enough to possibly infect Castle Alexander or we’re going to have a huge problem here. Biologicals are perfectly safe from being infected, but the castle and us Digimon will become a threat to anything near us if we get turned. I wouldn’t want Canard or any of my friends to have to put me down.” I said as the increasing number of yellow Gekko started leaping onto the field of battle and began lightly burning APs, EPs and even NPs, they were using chemical throwers to weaken targets to turn them. Quite some insidious program actually, what Dark Area did they crawl out of? “I’m taking up a sniping and spotting position instead. Shanty tell Dodo to stay high in the air and out of range of those things, they can high and I wouldn’t want you to lose your mechanical bird friend to some frog hopping monstrosities against coding.”

“This is Ocellus, is there anything special you need from the APs, I’ve been trying to keep the APs directed to where they need to be.” Ocellus was doing a good job of that, she did come from a hive species and APs were hive minded in following orders. “Getting multiple signs of yellow gecko throughout the city.”

“This is Canard, they are being called Berserker Gekko according to the Digivice… I think the emphasis is driving anything they go near into berserkers.” As I got to the top of the wall and brought up my gun, I saw Canard was beating down several yellow recently turned APs. “This is just making things far worse than they already were. We need more of the Caerbannogs and less of the Saber Knights, the Saber Knights are far too slow to deal with the enemy!”

“Working on it, I think Pom has worst end of things considering she was heading towards the thing that Dormarch said was producing the Gekko.” No doubt about that Ocellus, she was in the thick of it with five Commandramon. They were all good soldiers though. “I’m going to send word to Mirage Mew to stay away from anything yellow like those things. None are appearing in Cape or the other two paths, why do I think we’re getting the special treatment somehow.”

“You don’t understand Ocellus, this is not something even Moon Cell would make to attack us with. This is something else going on here.” Nothing normal about this situation, I seriously doubted the coding zombies were naturally created by Moon Cell given the sudden change in EPs not focusing on us, but them entirely and exclusively. “You don’t make coding zombies like this intentionally, the risk for them to get out of control is too great. Something caused a major glitch to everything and I think it was the sudden warping that’s causing everything to go badly to have caused something like this to occur.”

I brought up my rifle and prepared to defend Castle Alexander as well as I could, but then I saw something that chilled my blood. A cloud of black and white digital fog warping the area nearby.

“No… oh goddess Yggdrasil.sys… anything but one of those… all towers I’m marking a target with my gun fire, Eater, I repeat, EATER!” I brought up my gun and started firing on the thing before it could finish manifesting, the head of a floating whelk like entity began forming in the space that my bullets were impacting and that did very little damage to it.

I thought the Moon Cell watchers looked a little too similar to Eater Bits, but now digital eldritch horrors were being thrown into the mix of things. Normally the horrors were benign unless circumstances align to make them less so, this would be one of those circumstances.

The shots from Castle Alexander destroyed it before it could fully form, my bullets thankfully lighting up the entity enough for a full focus fire on its position from the four towers hit it all at once overwhelming it. I started breathing roughly, glad that the gun towers managed to ultimately get it.

“What’s an eater, what’s got you hyperventilating and why are all the Commandramon feeling such incredible levels of fear that they’d even beat Pom in an anxiety competition.” Ocellus asked.

“They would normally be harmless, but if they are forming in this kind of given situation here and look something like that… then that’s bad, like really bad, like worse than even the coding zombies we’re seeing already bad and that they might deal with the Coding Zombies by themselves and be worse levels of bad. They might invoke total system deletion and nothing will survive that.” I was worried about one even being within the same realm as Canard. “Even biologicals shouldn’t go near one of those things. We need eyes watching all sides of the castle, should any more black and white speckled clouds of fog appear, call it out immediately for artillery fire even if Castle Alexander were to get infected it could probably survive a few infection vectors since he’s large enough! This is getting FUBAR and might be hitting SNAFU levels of bad soon, didn’t think I’d see things like this again… feels like old times, except a lot less dying needed to even screw in a lightbulb around here.”

-Mare Melum Underground region, Deep Jungle, Pom-

“Ugh… there’s so many of them!” Dolly, on the left. Our left gun immediately angled upwards to start firing at another loud mooing machine as the one almost on top of us that just knocked us down was being riddled by the right arms machine cannon. When either yellow Gekko fell, we didn’t stop firing on them until they started to dissolve in front of us.

“We’re being slowed down by having to destroy them entirely. Big Boss, if we don’t move quickly then the situation will worsen faster than we can deal with it even with these armors being decently powered.” Decently powered is the word for it, but it was started to become a slog and we were seeing a lot of Gekko. We had to be closing in on the target, these flamethrower gecko weren’t as deadly as the Archer Gekko, but they had numbers and there was the other problem. “What are your orders?”

“Well…” If I had to give orders then I’d..

“Infected program above you, roll out of the way Dolly!” At the sound of a Commandramon calling out, we looked above us as yellowed beast was dropping down on our prone form, Dolly rolled us to the side and brought the right gun up as the hollow white eyes and whipping fleshy rotting skeletal tail flailed.

The fleshy dog thing with a crocodile like maw and four large fangs was horrifying, I don’t think I can ever love a canine lizard with a face like that unless it was exceedingly friendly.

Dolly immediately fired into its skull before it could make a movement and it lost all bodily control, but we have found that even without the brains the bodies kept going. Dolly kept my hoof on the trigger and firing into that things body until its front razor sharp claws started dissolving, afterwards she dug the armors claws into the ground and pushed us back up into standing.

“Report in, any heavy damage?” I called out in case we needed to fix something.

“Overall minimal armor damage, nothing to worry about yet if it’s not impeding functions.” Driver called out as we formed up and started moving. “You’re armor is looking okay too.”

“The next few groups of these infected we come across, we simply knock them down or avoid entirely by getting quiet.” Which was going to be easier said than actually done at this rate in six noisy walking armors, the number of normal programs attacking us was decreasing drastically and the color yellow and black stripes was becoming alarmingly common. We had to be close at this point. “We only stick around to destroy any enemies when we have no other choice, if they aren’t too intelligent then we out of sight, out of mind them.”

We moved forward and five minutes later stopped, before us was a large field of flowers and grass… quite beautiful really. If not for a very glaringly obvious problem that had Dolly back us up towards the half jungle, half forest tree line.

“Everyone start moving backward and get ready for an onslaught in what is definitively going to be a fighting retreating.” I said as calmly as possible and flatly, while Dolly frantically started walking us backwards even faster and a huge ball of energy blew apart what was a rather nice looking patch of flowers in front of us. Said explosion also left a crater twice the size of the machine we were in. “Well guys, we found it… unfortunately it’s huge and has an army. Do what you can and don’t die, survival first, sticking together second and mission third… no heroes please.”

“Roger that Big Boss.” The five Commandramon responded.

I didn’t know if it was an ant or a giant mantis, but we made good time apparently and underneath it was at least one hundred of those flamethrower Gekko and a random assortment of other random thing turned we’ve been seeing all over the place that have been turned into zombies. Flying squirrel monsters, flying squirrel panthers, wyvern panthers, lizard canines, a few of those red wyverns that came in a sickly yellow color and were drooling green bile which would probably be thankfully flightless due to wing damage from the rotting, cougars, bulls, rhinos, even what looked like a magical triceratops back in Equestria, a berserker shark with amphibious looking digits at the end of its fins and a lot more, but oddly no giant birds.

If we lost even one Magitek Armor here, we were definitely not winning this at all or even had a hope in Tartarus of dealing with all of this, much less that thing. The code zombies were already charging for us and the large machine was slowly sinking into the ground.

“Oh and it can go underground too and possibly erupt up anywhere from beneath us to behind us, I hate my life…” I said to Dolly, she looked down at me and nodded before placing her chin down back on my head. She sighed with me before we both firmed up together for what was about to happen and brought up the arms of the machine. “Baa-Ram-Ewe!”

We’d need Fou for this thing, but getting him to not attack me and fight all of this stuff would be… rather easy now that I think of it actually. Fou excelled in dangerous situation with numerous aggressive beings to fight.

-Magical pony program gaiden, Pinkpie.exe-

A flash and the entire area erupted in pink sparkles and glitter as we took the territory, then a Caerbannog with long pink haired hare popped up blinking and she squeaked when I stretched my taffy neck out to her and her wing fluttered nervously.

“You’re a skvader caerbannog now and I’m made of digital candy Cuddlestare.exe. I tried to get you a wolpertinger caerbannog type body, but something in my programming said we’re not ready for the alicornize program upgrade yet!” I was helping things by assisting the Allied Program guys in taking territories, apparently all my doppelgangers fired jaw breakers from their cannons, but for some reason couldn’t finish the PLANTs. I certainly could though and they were firing blasts of small jaw breakers, I was firing major jaw breakers the size of cannon balls and they tasted absolutely sweet! If I wasn’t now made of taffy, then the cannonball sized sweets wouldn’t have fit in my head much less my mouth. “Oh and now I’m sending a message to Applelove.exe, what do you think she wants to be?”

I’m fairly sure the gummy gators defending the territory with their adorable chewy, tasty, rubbery little adorable bodies and my Pinkpie clones wouldn’t mind if I spent some time getting my friends out and their own bodies too!

That’s when a Dalmatian with large goofy claws landed near us, he was about to say something then stared oddly at Cuddlestare.exe for a bit and then his face turned straight red before he went flashing away in shy manner. Either that or he knew his mother was in danger, could be both, guy had a thing for rabbits.

“Something with muscles and can enjoy the taste of apples?” Cuddlestare.exe was asking more than confirming, but that sounded and was likely still trying to process having a specifically not pony shaped body.

“Cow it is!” Pinkpie.exe probably could have been an alpaca if she wanted to be. “Yeah, but I wanted to be a candy pony instead and said no to the author. They owed me a few favors.”

“Uh… what?” Cuddlestare.exe was quite confused, not that I’ve been doing something like narrating everything in the text in the third person this entire time, because Pinkepie.exe hasn't been doing that no sir-ee.

“Don’t worry about it, it’ll all make no sense at all with time Cuddlestare… and that’s while you’ll forget I ever said anything at all!” Pinkpie.exe was still the leader of the six harmony programs that came to life from the magic of Equus forging a familiar bond between Dodo and Shanty. “So what kind of cow do you think she should be? A belgian blue with an outrageous amount of blue? Okay great, it’s fitting the whole opposite of orange color scheme!”

“Maybe you should actually take the time to think this through better?” Cuddlestare tried, oh she did alright, but I wasn’t about to listen. We needed a cow Applelove, for the ice cream and the jokes!

We were also kind of on a time crunch what with all the zombie programs encroaching on our territories and we needed six program heroes to collect territories and contain the problem before it gets out of control while everyone else was busy with the really deadly stuff.

I felt a little bit sad that Dodo no longer needed us harmony programs, he was his own friendship maker now and we’d always be friends… well if he even recognized us as having been in his head that is.

403. Metal Hound Chaos! Pt. 7.

-Moon Cell-

The collision of two realms has caused massive problems, specifically it somehow caused a horrible coding to occur. Coding it couldn’t stop personally and it was spreading, it was causing bigger issues than even the Chrysomallus was just by being in its systems.

Also its servant ran into the beast and despite his prowess with a sword and incredible power, a Saber wasn’t nearly enough for the beast and the beast seemed particularly geared for dealing with particular souls.

The two slapped together realms were really causing major problems, that and there had been some strange anomalous signals for a second around where the enemy’s stronghold was before it was blasted apart.

Said Stronghold had a massive battle going on outside of it between four factions. Their faction was doing relatively well in holding their main territory, Moon Cells faction was all over the place due to the realms fusing not to mention the wrecked territory being attack by two other factions, the beast’s chaotic neutral faction had a lot of power to it and the corrupted code faction was slowly increasing in strength from the other three programs.

The corruption faction had to be dealt with, unfortunately shifting the priority of its servant would mean the chrysomallus would survive as long as a larger threat to its systems was present. The beast was quite a large threat, but it wasn’t actively trying or going to crash everything on purpose and it wasn’t nearly as big as what the Chrysomallus presented by existing.

-Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, City of Lost Destiny, warped farmlands, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

“They’re getting closer.” Jeanne called out on the communication system, I was curiously watching a Saber Knight perform a similar maneuver to what Jeanne had done earlier in the battle. It had slashed up the bleeding biological resembling leg things to force the regular gekko, what few of those that remained, into a kneeling position where it leapt onto its bent knee and then jumped to thrust it’s sword up into the underside of the more mechanical head and then ripped it’s weapon free as the machine fell over dissolving. “We should do it now!”

The Saber Knight soon was joined by the others in slicing off tentacles of one of the yellow gecko and they tore it down quickly and backed off. They were actively avoiding infection and were doubling up in case infection got one of them they would quickly destroy the infected to save them from being taken.

Were the APs actually intelligent? They seemed to have garnered tactics fairly well just by watching us do things.

“Right, Gazimon, pitfalls and mines, activate them!” The screen in front of me lit up with all the areas of contention, we were holding a fairly sizable area around us in the strange warped farmlands, Castle Alexander has kept everything in its territory stay relatively normal and the same.

Looking at the city, there was jungle growing out of all the buildings and even the streets. Our rooftop territories out there in the city were still holding, mostly because they were not under attack and the Caerbannogs behind enemy lines were producing… huh, information?

We were getting information from below the city? Someone was signaling us? I answered the odd signal. What came on screen was a visual of the underground region which was far more chaotic looking than what was happening up here.

“Oh um… hey there… I know this might seem like a lot… but could you maybe…” It looked kind of like Fluttershy, if she were a bipedal skvader version of one of our Assassin Caerbannogs.

“Fluttershy?” I asked curiously.

“Oh no, my name is Cuddlestare.exe… anyway can you route a message to Dodo… please?” She sounded exactly like her too, the pink hair made her look like a yellow furred angel with a pink puffy tail.

“All mines are go, all APs have safely retreated to a safe distance and zone. All Gazimon are pulling back into the safety of castle.” The Gazimon announced as he and his team were already almost back to the castle gates. “We really don’t want to be out in the middle of all of this, not with those coding zombies and that one odd breach of an Eater. One breach is too many for my liking, it’s just inviting more to appear!”

“Uh… sorry, but we’re kind of busy up here and I’m trying to… is that Pinkie Pie!?” I saw a mare that looked similar to Pinkie Pie, only there were a lot of them and they had ‘.exe’ marking all their flanks and little gators that looked a bit translucent and like candy.

“Oh no, that’s Pinkpie.exe, she’s a taffy pony.” A pink flash happened, that looked like a territory getting captured, but it wasn’t our blue effect, yellow effect of the wild NPs or even the red of the EPs.

“Can I hear about how things are going down there, while I figure out how to do as you ask?” In the background I saw the other Pinkie Pie with balloons made out of squares marking their flanks fired blast of what I’m sure were jawbreakers.

What was happening? Aside from the explosions of the self-replacing mines going off around the perimeter of Castle Alexander. The pitfalls even had some in them too, apparently the mines can launch powerful explosions they can cycle like Metabee does with his guns.

Speaking of Metabee and Krosserdog, they were up on the wall and helping Sami at the moment.

“I’ll be calling Dodo back, the Skarmory can be taking care of things for now. Dodo should be knowing something about this, but how does he be knowing anyone outside of who we already know?” Nearly flopped out of the seat at Shanty standing next to me spooked me a lot, she was looking at all the screens with keen interest. “Thing not be going too well out there, any idea what Pom be doing?”

“She’s handling one of the problems… hopefully.” I got a quirked eye from Shanty and a frown. “Okay, so she’s likely in a bad situation and she’s going to do what she does… her best.”

“It is being too bad that I be knowing that I can’t be fighting at the moment… or else I would be doing what Dormarch currently is.” Going to her rescue, at least he can make it in all this chaos. “I am not being an idiot that be running off half capable. I already be knowing my limits and Pom be teaching me that very well, that said… I still be having some cards to play.”

With a flicker a similarly bandaged Shanty separated from Shanty, then ran off to do who knows what.

“I can usually only be doing that only twice while moving, but just one condensed copy of me that can act independently isn’t too hard.” Oh right, forgot that Shanty could even do that, that dehydrates her like crazy though. I watched as she took a chug of some rum from a bottle she pulled from behind her back, I had to wonder how she was still alive or even had any water in her body to do that.

“Oh I can do that too!” A strange pinkie pie copy with ‘.exe’ on their flank stated and then a PLANT with the square edged balloons created another one. Oh my goodness, they even had a PLANT that could make more of them! Glad Twilight wasn’t here, this might have given her a conniption.

Still doesn’t explain why there are programs with similarities to our teachers from friendship school… that and they could actually take territory! That, our APs couldn’t do that, so if they weren’t APs… what were they?

“Anyway, things down here are getting kind of scary, especially Pinkpie.exe. I didn’t know Jawbreakers could break more than jaws, but these nice programs are helping us out a lot by protecting us.” A few Saber Knight APs raised their swords and shield to me in recognition, they were definitely ours helping these things take territory. A yellow PLANT floated into view and purred at Cuddlestare as it rubbed up against her, she giggled and patted the thing gently with a smile as it produce green Assassin Caerbannog with guns around Cuddlestare protectively. “So here’s what we know that’s happening down here so far Ocellus…”

“I never told you my name…” Okay, Pinkie Pie is involved and she has a habit of doing things normal earth ponies aren’t capable of… did I really want to know or not?

“Oh we’ve been around since Elhorn… poor Pom, so many bad things keep happening around her and to her.” Okay, a whole number of questions have just been raised from that statement alone Cuddlestare. “Sorry we haven’t been able to say hello up until now.”

That’s when the first few mines went off and would take a minute or so before they could cycle a new explosive. Our perimeter would hold for a while, but not forever, the mines can only cycle so fast.

-Massive Underground Region, random patchy jungle/forest/dessert mix, ???-

A white and black fog formed and slowly a checkered whelk like entity started to drag itself out of it, an NP attacked it doing very little damage and then immediately the thing lunge and grabbed the barely able to struggle NP to absorb it out of existence almost in an instant. The thing grew slightly stronger and bigger from this.

An Eater had appeared where no one would be to stop it from fully manifesting, it idly floating around looking for things to consume.

-Deep Jungle region, Pom (Insert Music: any version or remix of Axiom Verge ‘Apocalypse’.)-

When I said fighting retreat, I meant turn around and start running from the danger and fight when it caught up withus.

“Guys do I need to tell you to stay away from the yellow gekko and don’t worry about me, they can’t turn Dolly or me into a zombies right?” We were all running through the jungle with hundreds of hopping gekko trying to find us in the underbrush as they leapt between trees and blasted flames to light some of them on fire.

“Correct, but they can still stab or choke you to death, so it’s probably just lethal for you and you won’t rise to start attacking your friends.” One of the Commandramon responded. “Huh… seismic activity, it’s beneath us!”

“Scatter!” At my call as the ground rose up underneath one of the Commandramons armors and they dove away before a spinning leg of the machine erupted from the ground before retreating back down.

“Okay, that Excelsus thing is scarily fast underground. Another attack move!” One of the Commandramon stated as he ran his machine out of the way with one of the others as a spinning foot that erupted from the ground at a forty five degree angle.

“It’s trying to distract us from the incoming gekko.” It was also destroying trees, plants and undergrowth trying to expose our location. “That or expose our position to those red wyverns.”

We all quickly avoided a fireball from one as a yellow gekko leapt and found itself completely incinerated by the fiery blast, at least the thing that fired it wasn’t a zombie wyvern yet… not that it would ignore us either, definitely wouldn’t if it got turned.

“Avoid those drills from underground as best you can… and everything else coming at us….” Four chasing gekko landed behind us, Dolly got us turned around and started firing on it. Once she did enough damage to one, it toppled and would soon turn zombie. The other five Commandramon were focusing down the other three into similar states.

I was looking elsewhere independent of what Dolly currently had us doing and saw a large leaning tree vines wrapped around it and it looked really heavy and sturdy.

“Dolly, that tree!” I didn’t have to explain what I wanted her to do, as the four toppled gekko started to stand back up while moaning.

“I don’t really need to go right now as we got worse things to worry… oh… right!” Dolly aimed both the guns of our armor and started blowing away vines until enough were gone and then focused on the base of the tree cutting out a specific section of it with two streams of bullets positively shredding the wood in seconds. The four zombified gekko were about to leap at us when they were rendered piles of cubes by the tree slamming down all four of them.

Several more Gekko started leaping at us from the trees there were at least seven of them, we had to get out of this slightly open clearing as there were at least twenty more of them converging on us. Said increasingly worse numbers were visibly popping up and out the treetops for a few seconds at a time before disappearing back into the underbrush.

“Back away through the trees and keep shooting!” We started to walk backwards and twelve streams of shots poured out of our machines and into the seven gekko trying to leap at us from the trees or ground in an attempt to either kick us down or hit us with their flamethrowers.

Our combined streams of shots halted their momentum in the air as we focused on each of them in turn halting them within the same area. That’s when the Commandramon popped their canopies and tossed their five bombs at the seven machines while they were down from mooing and preparing to get back up moaning.

In a variety of unique explosions the mechanical bodies were all torn asunder before they could become even more of a problem. We all turned and started moving through the undergrowth using the claws of the armors to quickly get away before the other gekko could surround us.

“Anyone have any ideas how we’re supposed to deal with the thing underground, it’s what we’re after isn’t it?” Dolly was spot on with the problem, how were we going to deal with a large burrowing machine that can attack us at any time, mostly without reprisal. One that can make the gekko currently coming at us?

“We’ll wait for the next attack from below, I might have an idea or two.” Driver stated and I heard him muttering something about his DCD Bomb modification over the communications. “For one damage the drills enough and it’ll have to resurface once it can no longer attack from underground.”

A large yellow dog faced crocodile leapt for us and slashed through several plants, while Dolly reoriented us to face it and twisted the left arm claw to point inwards as we pulled the left arm back.

Following my general idea of what I wanted her to do in this instance, Dolly swung the two sharp points of metal up into its neck. The blades erupted out the back of its neck as we pushed its body back. This kept its swiping metallic looking claws away from our armor as we activated the gun and the point blank shots helped us rip its head entirely off as it’s body toppled over.

The body then proceeded to roll over back onto its claws, reared up as it tried to continue attacking us with a right claw swipe as it moved forward on its hind legs.

Both its limbs were quickly blown off by the two Commandramon covering us, it went down in a stream of rapid firing shots and rendered it’s still moving body a pile of destroyed quickly dissolving cubes.

“Incoming from below, Commandramon on my team prepare sticky grenades!” Driver called out as Dolly and I felt a rumbling beneath us.

“Darn it, I hate sticky grenades!” One of the Commandramon complained, but I wasn’t paying too much more attention as Dolly leapt us up onto tree and jammed the static right claw into it to start climbing claw over claw as the several trees around and directly beneath us were quickly toppled and started being shredded by the drill that erupted from the ground.

We had gotten far enough up the tree that we managed to leap clear of the rising drill, we ended up on the ground flat on our face and we quickly picked ourselves. The two Commandramon with us quickly popped their domes open and tossed glowing white grenades onto the spinning drill as is pulled back underground, the glowing grenades were creating two circles of light as it lowered beneath the ground.

Two explosions soon followed and a horrible alien screech was heard from below, but we couldn’t worry about that as Dolly was picking us up and getting us out of the way of a gekko that landed where we had been prone. Our two Commandramon friends were immediately on it before it could attack us.

“Nearby forest and jungle areas are on fire, be wary that opening your canopy is dangerous near any gekko.” Driver called out as he and his two Commandramon armors were busy taking out other surrounding gekko while trying to use the tree to keep the gekko at bay.

Dolly turned us and concentrated on the one that landed in front of us and until it toppled onto its back and she followed that up by destroyed the legs using the two streams of rounds.

“More converging on us, let’s move Big Boss Lady!” Didn’t need to tell us twice, we got up and started running towards the magitek armor motioning to us and as the four others covered our retreat.

“Flying squirrel panther, knock it out of the air. Once it’s down, back up the nearby hill and provide covering fire for Big Boss’s team!” Two of the machines aimed upwards and blasted the wing flaps of the incoming yellow monster and it dropped to the ground and charge for the nearest target.

Said target would be us as we were at the very rear of the fighting retreat, Dolly swung us about while swinging the right claw wide to slap it across the face with the two blades as it was in the middle of a quadrupedal lunge.

Having staggered it our guns came up and we were about to start attacking when a fireball incinerated its back half leaving only skeletal spine. The explosion of the fireball scorched our armor as Dolly brought the arms of it up to protect us from the heat washing over the dome protecting us.

Afterwards Dolly still opened fired to blow off the front two legs of the now half flying panther just to prevent it from lunging, as the coding zombie’s bodies still continued to scrabble at us and attack even without a head or half its torso apparently. The wild creatures were attacking the zombies too at least.

Looking up I saw that there were now three red wyverns and a yellow black striped one battling in the air. Things were bad and getting worse, but at least that was why we weren’t getting slammed with all at once from the gekko I saw in the field around the large burrowing machine now beneath us.

The ground shook, but it wasn’t near us, the two armors next to us continued to fend off the various incoming enemies. We back up slightly up the hill and I could see the jungle was now lit on fire, smokeless fire that was going everywhere.

“Dolly, get me a visual of Driver’s team.” We turned and a wild spinning drill ripped out of the hillside and soon got covered in several sticky white glowing spheres before it could pull back as Driver and his team had been ready for it to throw multiple explosives onto it.

When the drill pulled back under ground, powerful explosion erupted creating a hole that sent dust into the sky and a powerful alien screeching dug into my and Dolly’s brains like ice picks.

“That was a positioning signal, that explosion must have destroyed one of its drills and made it angry. We’ve got incoming coding zombies… basically all of them!” That was not what I wanted to hear in this situation as fifty or so gekkos came leaping through the jungle for us.

“Up the hill guys, we’re still rearguard.” I called, as the two started moving up the hill to where Driver and his team were spraying down more gekkos down near the bottom where we were.

The ground rumbled and two spinning tubes rose up out of the ground and they angled in our direction, Dolly turned us and ran us up the hill and the hillside below where we were suddenly became a large crater in a powerful blast of energy that flipped our machine onto its back after tumbling up the hill a bit.

“Ugh… so glad I’m still wearing my helmet.” Dolly could have taken it off, but she would have been knocked out by the sudden tumble we just took that smashed our heads against the back of the seat.

Wouldn’t have been helpful to have lost the one actually piloting this mech, because I could barely get this thing to walk much less fight.

Ten streams of shots passed over us overhead and Dolly slowly staggered us into standing as one of the energy shooting tubes was lightly damaged under the tirade of shots as they raised into a vertical position. The two tubes spun and quickly sunk back into the ground, leaving behind a mass of glass below our position that had me shivering.

“We should consider ourselves lucky the fire rate on those plasma cannons is slow enough to be survivable.” One of the Commandramon groused as Dolly got us up and slowly walking up the slope towards the two Commandramon that were sticking close to us continued firing on the gekko showing up below and landing close to the slightly glittering crater. “We got incoming from behind, looks like infected raptors take care of them quickly.”

Given there wasn’t anything in the way of the hill, Dolly turned us around and started walking backwards as we joined the others in gunning down arriving gekko. How many of these things have we gunned down in the last few minutes? They just kept coming.

One of the gekko launched up the hill and landed on the Commandramon armor to our left. We immediately turned with the Commandramon on our right to deal with that and get the three tentacle wielding machine off of them.

“Dolly jump right!” Driver called out and despite not knowing why we should do so, Dolly did it and a yellow and red striped bird raptor went flying past us and landed on its leg poorly snapping it. Dolly put the right arm on it and blew apart its torso under a salvo while the left arm continued to pummel the gekko until it toppled away from the armor.

The armor was quickly up and shooting at the incoming gekko again before they could leap up after us.

“We’re slowly getting surrounded here!” One of the commandramon called out as the ground rumbled a bit as our enemy target was moving around under it, yet it didn’t send a drill up out of the ground.

“I don’t think we would have survived for half as long as we have without these armors.” I commented dryly as Dolly punched a raptor coming up from our left with the blunt knuckles of our right claws and sent it flopping boneless down the hill with a broken neck.

“Can confirm, we’re really getting heat from all sides here!” A commandramon stated as we got close to the top of the hill. This made me realize that we were once again on a hill with swarms of enemies coming at us, this was the Assassin Reapers all over again.

The Gekkos were our main focus, but we were seeing a lot of yellow monsters coming up the hill at us too.

“More seismic activity, where is it going to attack next?!” Another call out to the fact that the Excelsus robot thing causing this mess wasn’t attacking us directly as we stayed at the top of the hill for a bit.

“We can’t stay here… even if it is a defensible position. That digging machine can take us down with this entire hillside.” Even as I talked and Dolly had my body under her control, my mind still raced and tried to keep up with what was happening around us. We were gunning down a swarm of beaked flightless large legged birds with huge talons on their feet running up the hill at us at an angle drawing our fire from the more important oncoming gekko that were leaping up the hill on their two legs. “I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a hole with that thing and… I think that’s what it intends to do. We need to start moving down the other side of the hill right now, it’s trying to create a sinkhole to suck us into!”

The seismic activity was becoming worse as the entire hillside started to shake.

“You heard the Big Boss Lady, move it Commandramon!” Driver was getting into taking charge of his unit. “If there’s no path, we make one! We’ve been doing so great about surviving so far, we don’t want to lose anyone now!”

Gekko toppled and tumbled down the hill as we continued to back up at the top and then turned to start running for the other side of it as the entire hill started to rumble.

“Run!” The two Commandramon were ahead of us as the entire hillside started to lift upwards, we were on the slope behind the other when the entire hillside collapsed inwards.

The left side of our machine slammed into a downwards slope into sliding down what used to be a hill that now looked more like antlions sand trap, just without the sand.

The front half of the enemy machine we were here to deal with rose up at the bottom of the slope out of the ground and its two mantis like arms extended and created energy blades and the guns on top of it started to angle at us.

“Protect my back, I’ll try to take out the gun before it can shoot at them!” With that the two armors up the slope started firing on things out of sight and Driver was focusing on the machine behind us.

“Does anyone need repairs yet? Also guys get up the slope and help them!” I had Dolly stab the right claw into the shifting and sliding dirt and we stopped in position. We started to crawl using claw over claw while pushing with our armors feet to make our way up the slope, behind the other two armors ahead of us as the ground continued to collapse and shift beneath.

“Nothing that requires repairs, but you’re armor is looking a bit bent out of shape.” Driver returned as he and the three Commandramon, since one from my group managed to make it to the top continued to hold position while wait for us and the other Commandramon to get up the slope.

On a stabbing our left claw deeply into the slope to get us stuck half way up to the top as the other Commandramon kept going, Dolly turned the right arm gun to point it down the slope at the cannon started to take up at us and we fired as the barrels started glowing.

“Pom, can I get a little help with my aim?” At Dolly’s request, I twitched my right leg a bit and the blazing stream of shots soon started hitting in the glowing barrel as Dolly and I concentrated on stopping it from destroying us or at least our armor.

The large machines left barrel blasted apart and half the barrel vaporize, the other damaged one did so a second later as the other Commandramon reach the top of the slope and aided Driver in blowing the second barrel apart before it could fire from that and take us out.

The large machine groaned as it lost its head cannons and started to sink back into the ground as we kept shooting at it.

“Climb.” I said flatly and Dolly got us going upwards again as gekko charged up the slope for us only to be fended off from six separate streams of shots covering us from the three Commandramon above.

“Come on!” Driver called out.

“Still getting assaulted here.” On of the other two Commandramon not covering our ascent was saying.

“Just keep them off us until we can get our last armor up here!” Driver shouted as we were almost at the top when a gekko from the other side landed among the Commandramon and was about to start spewing flames or attack with its tentacles.

“Blade Mode!” When it suddenly split into seven pieces, pieces that went toppling and tumbeling past us, as Jack Wolf showed up. “Fortunately for you, Moon Cell has given me a new temporary assignment of targeting the Excelsus for elimination. After I’m done with it, you’re back to being the top of my priorities, got me! Thanks for making my job easier by taking out its plasma guns by the way. Attack me at your own peril.”

“Fou?” That drew both our attentions to Fou as he showed up and stared directly at the armor that I and Dolly were in as we reached the top of the slope which was at flat ground level.

A gekko landed on him and seconds later it was brutally torn to shreds in short order as Fou tore it down by tearing off a leg with his teeth and then used his claws to rip the mechanical head from its hips by tearing its neck apart and then he threw the head at another gekko to knock it over.

“Fou!” At least Fou looked angry at the yellow infected that were still attacking us. Fou was functionally biological at least, so he was safe from being turned and he wasn’t paying attention to what we were doing as he launched himself at the nearest Gekko.

“Yeah, sure, temporary truce, but we’re not going to be able to account for whatever Fou’s going to do nor am I going to help you of my own volition.” I stated as we finally got up to where three of the Commandramon were focusing their guns on Jack Wolf, while the other two were still fending off oncoming gekkos coming at us. “Don’t attack him… let’s keep moving guys and bringing down more of the incoming zombies until our mutual enemy pops up again or its drills do at least. We need to force it above again and then we can finish it off, we’ll worry about Fou and Jack afterwards.”

“Roger Big Boss Lady.” Driver answered with a bob of his Magitek Armor. “We got more incoming, look alive Commandramon!”

Jack snorted loudly in derision about what Driver just said and I wondered why that was.

Said yellow monsters were circling around the crater to get at us, were they intelligently avoiding the inward sloping hole left by the giant machine on purpose or was it just that large machine controlling them all?

“Who would have thought that my PLANT would have caused so much trouble that even Moon Cell would order it be destroyed by me?” Grumbled Jack as he readied his sword. “Can’t fault Moon Cell for it either, these zombies are bad news all around… but they are nothing compared to me.”

Jack quickly set off to attack the zombies on his own. Fou narrowed his eyes at Jack’s back and seemed to have gained something of a notable competitive fire.

Things were going to get worse before they got any better as multiple gekko descended on us from all sides.

“Keep your guards up.” I said quietly as Dolly brought up the arms on the slightly battered magitek armor and joined the salvo of shots burning through Gekko leaping at us from all sides as we moved for a forest thicket and away from the sinkhole where a hill used to be. Fou ran off to attack some of the gekko on his own and was going to be the biggest problem later.

We were going to go our own way and hoped to figure out a way to defeat Jack after we took out his source of healing, which he was now bound to do himself. Fou… I had no idea how anyone could deal with him.

-Program pony gaiden, Pinkpie.exe-

“Why am I blue… also a cow?” Applelove.exe stated with a flat glare at the candy pony standing before her... oh wait that's me!

“Well orange you glad I didn’t make you a banana colored bobcat?” I stated as Cuddlestare was informing a continually paling Ocellus about everything going on down here, including the zombies and that reports from the Caerbannog that a new black and white checkered whelk thing was wandering around and eating the data of everything that goes near it. The things it ate included the ground, the trees and it was sponging up a lot of water nearby too. “Now about Flarity.exe, do you think a marshmallow cougar with a horn is a bit much? I mean we’re using what we have here. Purpsmart.exe already has to be a purple raptor or uniceratops and I don’t know what we’re going to be doing about Rainbow.exe... how do you think she would feel about being an oversize gecko?”

405. Metal Hound Chaos! Pt. 9.

-Ponyville, Sergeant Shady-

It was nice to be able to relax in a place filled with love and peace, I was just watching ponies go by and getting a taste of the free love in the air.

“Hey Shady!” Jaded La Perm, the friendliest Equestria villain to ever live and keep living.

“Hello Jaded, how goes your day?” I asked curiously.

“Eh still at war with the ‘Princess of the Night’ Luna, my attempts on Saddle Arabia are getting weirder ‘even for me’ as the Sorceress Mirage and I’m attempting to have a normal quiet day where nothing happens.” That made me raise an eyebrow in question of Jaded’s choice of coming to Ponyville.

“You came to Ponyville… to have a quiet day? Am I hearing you correctly?” I rubbed at my ears to see if anything was wrong with them, as a changeling member of Equestria’s guards even I knew Ponyville was nuts.

“I know, I know, Ponyville is as chaotics as Airship Mauled is at times.” Jaded waved her claws in a placating manner.

“Aha I knew it, Airship Mauled is trying to out weird us! We need to be weirder, we need to be weirder, we need to be wei…” Pinkie Pie ran off screaming, everyone knew who she was and the weird guests she’d been bringing to Ponyville for quite a while. Nobody thought much of her running through town and yelling about how things need to be weirder.

“I came here to relax, specifically for the reason that Ponyville is a weirdness magnet. Can I get some apple juice please? I need some sugar in my blood.” Jaded sat down with me and I quirked an eye at the most annoying being to the Royal Guard of Canterlot. “To that end, if I want to avoid anything weird happening to me today, then I come here and will do absolutely nothing of interest all day. No shenanigans, no plotting against Saddle Arabia to run my poor friend Amira crazy, no battling mortal vs immortal with Luna, not doing anything worthy of note except maybe buy some tiger tail doughnuts in a raspberry flavor from the Cakes at Sugar Cube Corner.”

“Aren’t ponies a little unusual about raspberry tiger tail doughnuts though?” I asked because I’ve heard some complaints from Donut Joe about the subject when I hang out with the guys at his confectioners shop.

“Yes, they are quite particular about the subject. I’m a degenerate like that so it doesn’t matter to me.” Jaded didn’t expand on the subject beyond that despite my questioning gaze. “So what have you done lately that doesn’t involve me Shady?”

“Well we’ve had a run in with The Squirrels in Canterlot… also we know you’re allied, if not, are an outright a member of the underworld organization.” Which was annoying that we could get nothing on them, though Celestia knew that they existed apparently and was friends with one of them. Apparently Truly and Duly Noted thought it was Celestia’s spy organization, but that was SMILE wasn’t it?

“If asked, I know nothing of the recent problems with cashews or pistachios.” Narrowing a gaze on Jaded, I had some thoughts about that denial.

“If you were to be put in a circle of the concise?” Knowing as well as I do that Jaded could dance around that thing like crazy, I’ve never heard of someone dancing around the truth so hard that they can tell a false positive without lying.

“Then I’d have to bring up the recent conspiracy about unsalted peanuts to deflect entirely away from the subject.” Every pony within the area listening to us gagged loudly. “It’s like not having butter or at least some form of flavor additive on popcorn, horrifying.”

“What kind of monster wouldn’t want salted peanuts or buttered popcorn?!” Bulk Biceps, a prominent muscle bound pegasus that wasn’t on steroids, he’s been checked fifty seven times already for performance enhancers alone this year… last year it was three hundred and twenty three times. He a medical marvel to doctors that he can even fly with his tiny wings, if he could fly then Scootaloo would eventually learn to. Some changelings have made that mistake by thinking that all pegasus ponies were decent at flying.

“Now that… is the question my fine friend that is otherwise known as Snowflake! It’s why there’s a conspiracy afoot, but it’s my day of relaxation and I’ll likely look into it later.” Jaded stated before taking up some apple juice and sipping it with a feeling of happiness after the waitress put it down. “Ten to one it’s the Deer, not Reindeer mind you, but just Deer doing something with salt. Care to join us Bulk?”

“Sure thing Jaded, it’s just unfortunate Skull can’t be here today.” The large white pony with the tiny wings sat down at the table with us.

“Yeah, you are quite a pair of cool dudes, if you need an exercise partner then look no further than Bulk Biceps and Skull Cracker!” Jaded wasn’t wrong about that, the two knew how to help you at a gym and one was a professional wrestler with ties to Jock Hawk and Shocking Awes more legitimate business practices. I’m sure it’s how Jaded keeps an eye on the Quarrelsome Quartet who haven’t cause any problems recently. “Aside from mercenary work, I do advertisements for some people since I’m infamous enough to draw attention to businesses that need some attention. I only advertise people I trust to not be doing something horrible in the backgrounds like Flim and Flam… how many arrests does that make it now, what with that thing the other day?”

“Flim and Flam the con artists? Eighteen, at least they always work off their debts accrued from their schemes.” I relaxed as Bulk and Jaded started having an entertaining conversation about how Bulk’s chiropractic practice is going. “Still working off destroying the trees at Sweet Apple Acres.”

Sure it may hurt at first to get chiropractic massage from Bulk, but after the pain wears off ponies are usually three times happier for an entire week afterwards. I was there to investigate the phenomenon at the time, I would know.

-Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, Underground Region, massive recently destroyed clearing, Pom-

We were basically getting nowhere, NPs and EPs turned into zombies or were dealing with zombies, at least our APs were mostly avoiding being turned, but we weren’t getting anywhere unless we could hit the massive six legged zombie making machine with something damaging.

To our right one of the five Commandramon gutted a zombie with the two spikes on his right arm and blew the zombie in half and then proceeded to stomp the head of the puffy yellow sponge gator into mush.

On the left there was a Commandramon slowly whittling down a Gekko to death, but not an Archer Gekko.

“This… is getting us nowhere. We’re defending and shooting at the problem, but it’s not doing nearly enough damage, we’re just preventing it from healing.” When twelve streams of high rate of fire guns weren’t enough, we had to actually get up close and personal, problem was that Jack and Fou would be on us immediately afterwards if we somehow dealt with the problem. “Dolly, got a song in your heart?”

“Maybe… give me a moment to work up a beat.” Dolly was humming a guitar tune trying to come up with a heart song. “I’ll get back to you on that… also Dormarch is nearby and has been trying to get your attention for the last minute.”

“Huh… okay… Eaters? Alright, I’ll ask, but it sounds bad.” I called out to everyone over the headset. “Guys, do any of you know what Eaters are?”

There was a momentary pause in the constant firing of all the other five magitek armors, visible shivers and a choking noise from Driver. I’m guessing they knew what Eaters were, the sheer terror at hearing they were here was enough to freeze them in place. Dolly didn’t let up on making sure the zombie gekko didn’t get back up.

“Excuse me, but did you just say Eaters?! They’re worse than coding zombies! They can’t be here right? I mean if they were here, then the situation has hit Super FUBAR levels of bad, because those things are tough to beat. As in it’s a complete slog to even take one of them out without it eating you out of existence given their hides are stupidly tough. If those Dazzle Camouflaged things were here, why I’d advocate for immediately blowing this entire realm up!” That seemed rather extreme, but it sounded like Driver knew what he was talking about. “At least what they do is reversible, provided someone can reach the main problem causing the eaters to appear. They’ll eat anything and everything, biologicals, data, fluids, entire planets, solar systems… wait… where did you hear that term from and why are you asking about them now?”

“Quick question, what caused the Eaters to appear previously?” Divert, divert, divert, because I know that tone of voice sounded desperate for a diversion.

“Well it’s not like we’re making progress here with the Bestial Neutral Programs, the Enemy Programs of Moon Cells forces or the zombie coding manufacturing rogue PLANT.” Driver’s voice quivered. “Okay it’s like this… a world had gained enough technological prowess that some accidents occurred involving people getting into the local digital realm that popped up next door to that reality. This caused what is known as the ‘second King Drasil incident’ when one of the people of that reality got eaten by an Eater that became attracted to the incursion of the locals from the reality into the digital world. That persons mind, which survived being eaten, became part of the corrupted Eaters gestalt network that started destroying the digital world and the reality it was connected to… it was thanks to the fusion of that first victim person that the destruction of both worlds was slowed down immensely despite their mind being constantly eroded by the Eaters. It also caused some fusing between the digital realm and reality that threatened to destroy both worlds outright anyway and the Digimon there at the time wanted to tear apart reality in a bid to save themselves, but that wouldn’t have worked as the Eaters would still be infecting the King Drasil of that digital realm thus dooming it.”

“Which is where Yggdrasil.Sys sent a program out to specific Digimon to give to the people of that reality so they could troubleshoot the major issue that threatened to bleed into multiple realities. One of them became the incredible hero of both worlds.” Another Commandramon stated before grunting and slashing down a blue raptor that wasn’t infected, by ripping its chest open with the left claw of his armor. It didn’t turn yellow and get back up.

“Yeah, suffice it to say, one of the beings of the reality managed to glitch into being half digital entity from an eater attack that inexorably severed the connection between their mind and body entirely, afterwards their mind led armies of digimon to defeating King Drasil and resetting the digital world and stopping the Eaters as a digital entity while their body lay comatose in a hospital. A body of which they saw as they were investigating the crisis of two worlds.” Yikes, I wonder what it would be like to see your own body laying comatose like that in that situation. We continued fending off all attackers and shooting at the Excelsus which was really slow above ground for how fast it could move under it. We didn’t want to get within range of the energy blades which were much faster than its body as Saber Jack Wolf can attest to as he furiously tried to take at least one of the arms out multiple times between dealing with coding zombies and NPs. “It is from that incident that we learned that Eaters are somewhat eldritch higher plane beings. When they contacted with that given worlds technology they gained physical forms and that corrupted the normally benign Eaters, who are just normally harmless beings of pure energy that watch over various worlds from the spaces between them, into an incredibly nasty problem for anything that can be feasibly considered alive. Their corruption is what led to what happened when they got pulled into the digital world by the people of that given realities technology by accident, leading to the aforementioned first Eater attack. Destroying them at least sends them back to the spaces between worlds. When the Eater Mother is defeated, everything kind of snapped back to normal. Eaters are curiously drawn to high levels of technology and digital waves… like the incredibly complex super computer that might even be beyond Yggdrasil in raw power within a single given reality, the one that we’re all inside of currently… again, where did you learn about Eaters?”

“Well… Dormarch told me to ask you about them through our bond... and Eaters might be attacking this realm as we speak.” There, I ripped off the bandage, while there wasn’t a pause this time as the six of us were busy fending off dangers from all sides and at least had the wherewithal to keep shooting. “They can’t be that hard to destroy right?”

“By the computations… we’re screwed if we seem them up close!” Driver stated bluntly. “The Mother Eater of that incident took at least eleven mega level digimon working together to beat it and it wouldn’t be a great surprise if at least two or even more of the digimon had died as a result of that fight with how hard Eaters are to hurt after they have fully manifested. The full name for them while they are in their corrupted form is Existence Eaters, otherwise they are harmless when not corrupted by being drawn into reality from the spaces between them.”

“Do you think all this fighting would attract them?” My question was met by silence, even Dolly’s brain was running on autopilot and trying to think of guitar, drums and a beat for a heart song.

“Yes… it would…” Driver finally answered after a minute of constantly firing into crowds of monsters, with a few points were we had to claw down something. These Magitek Armors were kind of amazing in what they could do, even as limited as they were by the lack of magical pilots. The magical abilities were a bit draining, at least the healing function was. “See anything with a Dazzling Camouflage, AKA a black and white checkerboard pattern that looks like a snail or shelled cephalopod. We want to be as far away from those as possible and hammering them with everything we can shoot or throw at them. Fighting them in melee range is really quite stupid unless you have an ace or are fast enough to get away with it.”

“Anything else we should know about them?” I asked as Dolly really started getting a beat in her heart going and she was building up to something. I could almost feel the rhythm of the music, primarily guitar, drums.

“You know the general bipedal forms of EPs, APs and some of the NPs we’ve been seeing, yeah Eaters can make those forms too, only they’ll look more distorted and will be able to take like five to twenty times the damage a regular EP or AP can. Let’s just leave it at Eaters are stupidly sturdy! At least biped Eaters are still some of the weaker versions of them, still takes at least the raw power of four tank shells to put one down though and that’s just plain ridiculous as we don’t exactly have that kind of firepower on us at the moment.” Driver cut me off when I was about to ask about that. “DCD Bombs, modified or not, aren’t going to do much to them before you ask as rookie level attacks aren’t too effective against Eaters. It takes some really ludicrously powerful attacks to really damage an Eater like your Thousand Spears Huo level of ridiculous ma’am. It’s why Mega levels are recommended when dealing with them.”

“I’ve got something Pom!” Dolly finally said with a grin in her voice, before she frowned. “Also those Eater things sound like more real horror movies stuff. I’ve got a heart song ready if you want me to run us up against big, bad and bugged.”

Dolly was talking about Excelsus looking like a giant six legged bug robot. Mind you it wasn’t using its rear legs, which ended in the two drills, to move around very much.

“Get ready to go then, we kind of need to deal with this thing before we have to deal with yet another problem that’s popped up on top of Jack and Fou.” Now what could Dormarch do without endangering himself?

Hmm… Dormarch could you go to the garage we got these armors from and see if there’s anything left for you to drive? We kind of needed more fire power, a lot more.

Mare Melum, above ground region, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

The thing launching missiles at us was using up at least three of our towers at a time to keep them from hitting us, which we kind of needed for ground defense as our people on the ground around the castle were getting hammered by the random various things coming to attack us, much less randomly attacking everything near them which was getting too close to Alexander for comfort.

We were trying to keep the castle region generally safe, but it’s becoming quite apparent that we would have to move soon or that large bipedal machine in the distance was going to keep lobbing missiles at us until our ground forces faltered and we needed more than one tower working on artillery at the moment. The land mines that cycled their explosives, the ones the Gazimon planted, were doing double duty in wiping out nearby problems and were well worth the cost of doing business with Torneko at the very least.

“Heading out on the Skein Flyer, we need someone to cause that robot some trouble and draw its attention off the castle.” Canard called out and his vehicle blasted forth towards the bipedal machine, he was one brave alien duck.

“I’m sending Dodo in support!” Shanty called out from next to me. “I be wondering if Dodo be having a lot of things on his mind. I know he not be thinking very much, but I didn’t be knowing he is having ponies on his brain.”

“Yeah, it was a surprise to me too Shanty.” Harmony in theory being highly infectious had me somewhat worried about the worlds we left in our wake.

“We need an artillery strike Ocellus!” Jeanne called out and I can see why, as multiple yellow gekko were started to encroach on her position all at once. The Valora forces were holding valiantly, but they really needed the support fire.

“Immediately fire on these coordinates when capable.” I tapped the screen and a circled popped around a nasty mass of yellow.

“On it!” One of the four Commandramon called as direct fire artillery shots rang out from one of the four towers.

-Underground Region, Dolly-

“Can I take us on the attack, Pom?” I asked as I had the music in mind ready to go, we had been backing up the entire time while shooting at the large bug machine that’s been on approach for us and was even pushing our enemies back too.

Lap Dog was having a problem getting his sword anywhere near the legs of the thing as it created jet flames on the lower half of them that melted anything in the general vicinity except the legs themselves. At least it took care of a few zombies or large predatory monsters that got caught up in it.

Opposition, the white fluffy werewolf guy that he was, was busy having fun tearing apart the many things attacking him and things that even weren’t. Guy was still terrifying to me with how physically strong he was that he was ripping robots in half, I needed to figure out a way to stop him from coming after Pom.

“We’re going after the Excelsus right?” Pom asked for clarification, she was paying attention to my thought.

“Yep, Celsius is going down like the degrees it’s named after, it’ll be so bad it’ll get frostbite!” I stated as I started humming the tune to get myself in the groove.

“Then go ahead, I’ll join in on the singing once I got an idea of what you’re singing. Just watch out for Fou and Jack Wolf.” Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it Pom, don’t worry! “Guys we’re moving out to go on the attack, hold position or keep backing up if you get into trouble. Also alert us if any of those Eaters show up since you know what they look like.”

“We’ll tell you to run for the hills in that scenario.” One of the Come-On-Drove Mons muttered.

“Why do I feel like I’m going to regret saying this?” Stop worrying Pom, I’ve got this, I’ve been doing awesome with piloting this thing. “Let’s go all out Dolly.”

“Gladly!” One weaponized singing moment coming right up.

We started forward on all fours! The guitar riffs in my heart started and Pom started humming the tune and then we burst forth tearing through an eggs worth of raptors with two swings of the claws on this thing before going back into a quadrupedal run these machines might not be naturally made for. I made it work though, while hauling butt through the chaos of multiple things attacking one another or began turning yellow to get back up or were still standing when they turned yellow.

“You hear the screeching of our howl, here’s comes a hound that’s on the prowl, what we’re seeing really makes us growl~!” I sang as I started us rushing forward for Excelsus, gunning through hoard of enemies as we crushed them under the weight of the armor or stabbed them through with the two long claws. “And we’re the terror- this time my friends, they see us coming towards the fight~!”

I leapt us onto the top of a lizards knees and clambered up onto its head and hopped in place to crush its head into its yellow body and used the jump to prepare a leap forward over a swiping blade of energy that ripped the lizard apart on contact. I got the left arm claw on the larger machines right blade arm and aimed our right arms gun at the head of the massive machine monster to start firing off a long burst.

It started to move its left blade for us and I swung us to the right and clamped the left claw again to avoid the energy blade bouncing off its own arm and lifted us up onto said right arm a second later.

I crouched us down and hopped us further up it while clamping down on the upper arm with the right claw as the left blade slammed down where we were and then slid upwards towards us blade first.

“We’re the terror- this time my friends, there’s no backing down from our might, we’re the terrifying sight~!” I swung us and unhooked the right claw to launch us onto the front right leg’s upper thigh above the melting flamethrowers to slam the left claw into it and managed to latch onto something, we were now hanging from the underside of the massive thigh and once again started firing on the head of the machine with the right gun. After that I started climbing when the swung it’s right blade for us.

I hooked us the outer side of the colossal robot bugs thigh with the right claw and swung the whole armor around to put the right leg between us and the right mantis style blade swinging for us. The only reason why we were moving as fast as we were is because I was using the song to get a power boost, to match the boosting of my heartrate spiking with the song.

We started climbing up onto the right leg and the machine rose up its head as soon as we were on top of the upper portion of the leg I continued firing on the head. Said head raised upwards and then swung its damaged cannons down for us, I hopped us to the side avoiding its left cannon and nearly got skewered by the right energy blade stabbing up at us. I leaned us back and used the claws on both the arms to keep us upright and balanced as the energy blade passed by the front of the dome.

We were going to make our way for its back behind the head, where it didn’t have many defenses. Getting on top of it in the first place was the hard part. It tried to lift its leg and shake us off, but we held on and I saw the flat carapace that made up its back, all we had to do was make the jump.

“You hear the beating of our hearts, we know after this thing the battle truly starts~.” Pom and I sang as we strained the arms holding themselves in place and the legs of the machine I was pilot beneath us pulled back as we were getting ready to launch ourselves forward from a pouncing position. “Here comes some truly scary parts~!”

I launched us forward and at the two barrels of the machines head swinging for us. I saw the green triangle and hit the mental jackpot on it, not exactly caring what it was going to do. The last time it allowed me to throw a freaking panda whale with an eyepatch in retaliation for trying to eat me alive.

The machine I was piloting did something I didn’t quite understand, it seemed to boost forward in the air, collided with the big bug’s right head barrel denting it quite badly with all of our machines limbs and we promptly kicked off it towards the back of the machine and landed on the carapace. The triangle thing was done and I started firing on the head again from our position.

Twin streams of shots flew out, but it didn’t seem to be doing too much to the things armored head. We needed something more, we needed to hit this thing with something really devastating.

“We’re the terror- this time my friends, we’re both bringing on the fight~!” We kind of needed some really powerful attacks, like missiles, but… a reticle popped up on the dome and I let off the triggers to pull them again.

The guns on the arms stopped firing, but didn’t start up again what did that… suddenly we felt a light drain on our magic and then the back of our machine launched a fairly large missile into the head of the Excelling Bell Curve forcing the entire thing to stagger and tilt to the left as its head became encased in the explosion of strange colored silvery fog for a few seconds. Wow, talk about magic missiles.

I clamped down the right claw to keep us on this things back, after we got up here we’re not leaving until this thing is incapable of causing further problems.

“We’re the terror- this time my friends, Metal Hound knows how to bite, we’re the terrifying sight~!” I pulled the triggers using Pom’s hooves again and the guns opened up, miraculously the armor on the head started tearing apart violently where the missile hit, it was like the metal was melting.

Three yellow gekkos leapt up onto the back of the machine to stop us from battering its head and damaging it further. They forced us to back up as they started at us with their three tentacles out and sparking flames from the pointed parts of their heads.

A shadow appeared over the dome and I looked up for a second, before lunged us to the left side of the large machines back as the damaged spinning drill of the back right leg slammed at where we were. While we were on our side I brought the right gun up and started blasting apart the tentacles and the heads of the three bipedal zombie machines coming at us. A few streams of shots hit them from the side when they got close to us, apparently the Soldier Drag Racer Mons started finding moments to assist us and slow down the enemy.

“All you zombies moan, your monsters we’ll hunt and entomb, destroying bodies as we red line, don’t you know we’re the terrors this time~?!” I got us up and charging forward out of the way of the left drill leg of the monstrous machine came down at us, the machine we were fighting on top of stopped in place.

With an outward swipe the left claw into the nearest zombie lizard’s right leg we toppled it enough to stab our right claw up through the underside of its head. I followed that up by lifting it above us to heave it into the closet one on the left. This sent both them falling off the back and into the flames this machine kept spewing from its legs to deal with the not yellow monsters.

I turned our two guns on last one trying to kick us and ducked under and around the left leg while focusing both barrels blasting the bipedal lizard bot in the head to chunks and then with a leap we slammed the blunt portion of our right claws into it and its head shattered and it’s legs fell over.

Instead of focusing on the head, which according to Pom was eroding quickly, we turned around and our guns on the two drills to start damaging them as they tried to slam down at us. I kept backing us up towards the head of this machine and firing.

“We’re the terror- this time my friends, and we’re not running from this fight~!” Even as we dodged the spinning massive legs and continued to pummel the drills out of working order, the legs were alternating in their attacks.

I felt Pom suggest another missile and to draw the two legs close together to both attack us at once, so we can hit both of them with the eroding effect. To that end we moved to the middle of the back and continued firing both barrels full bore until I heard a rapid series of clicking noises, we were cycling. Had we really expended that much ammo?!

“Yes, we’re the terror- this time my friends, we’ll show you we’re full of bark and bite~!” I yelled as I had Pom’s hooves let off the triggers while jumping us backwards and fired a missile, the song was running out and we had to make this last shot count as the drills got in the way of each and the missile exploded between them beautifully.

We must have hit something important in both of the legs with that missile as they both started exploding and before we knew two humongous blinding blasts that heavily damaged the back legs of the large machine and it roared in pain as if it were a living creature and flailed its front energy blades.

“We’re the terrifying sight~!” We sang as I turned our armor around while raising the left arm gun to point at the sky as we propped it up with the right to strike a cool pose as the legs finished blowing off the machine behind us.

The head looked back at us standing on its butt as its hind legs fell off, then something shifted on the machine forcing its head to look down at its front right energy blade limb. Foe had grabbed its large energy blade by its front right limb and by the energy of the blade itself and he started to lift it upwards. Shouldn’t that be hurting him?

“Dolly… get us off its back, right now!” Why, what got you so panicked Pom? Still I got us moving towards the right side, as I could set our Commanding Armor friends that way still fighting and surviving fairly well with the help of the bunny brigade Dormarch caused, I’m getting him a plush toy rabbit for his first birthday… did we even celebrate him being born? I dove our machine off the side in the hopes of getting clear of the flamethrowers.

I found out a few seconds later that that wouldn’t exactly be an issue as we landed face first on the ground of what became tortured badlands from a once lush and fertile jungle and forest fused together.

“FOU!” Lifting the front portion of the armor up, we witnessed Enemy lifting the entire massive machine by its right arm into the air to slam it down on its head and back in the most destructive manner possible.

Also the shockwave and impact sent us tumbling, violently in a dust wave. We couldn’t see, we were being slammed around a lot and if Pom hadn’t been wearing the seat belt, she would have been launched out in the storm of dust in front of us through the canopy.

We eventually came to a stop and felt something grabbing onto the armor, I was about to move to attack when I heard it was a friendly solider dragons voice.

“Don’t panic, we got you!” One of our buddies said as their armors got us upright.

It took a minute for the dust to clear, but when it did… we saw Enemy was standing up at full height arms crossed and glaring at us and glancing at Flack Jackal who was looking between us.

“Show off!” Yelled Mack the Knife.

“But didn’t you once do that once tho…” The second voice from the sword guy started to say.

“Shut up Blade, it’s not the same, he used its right arm, I previously did it by slamming it like that with its left!” I didn’t see much of a different there Lack. “Now that that is dealt with…”

Pack aimed his red sword at us and I narrowed my eyes at him and Adversary.

“Fou!” Apparently agreed the Nemesis, they both wanted a fight with us and each other.

“Cute song you had there, but it’s time for us to go all out here.” Thwack said as the real fight was about to start. “Ripper Mode is on standby… and you can’t stop me from hunting your prey!”

Antagonist growled at Donkey and they started making way towards us.

“Guys, you might want to back up. Dolly we’re healing after that…” I’m sure the mech was fine Pom… after trying the legs and arms and finding out that while we were standing, we couldn’t move, the guns wouldn’t work and the arms were bent all out of shape. Okay we definitely needed to repair after that tumble. “This isn’t going to end well, prepare to evacuate the armor Dolly… we’re going to get as much use out of this thing as we can before we do. It’s not going to last long against those two.”

One draining healing later, most of the magic being drawn from Pom we were standing unsteadily and approaching the two battle monsters that was handling the zombies and wild monster on foot while we needed this machine just to survive.

-Pom-

Fou was wielding the large blade that no longer had energy in his claws, he snapped it down to a more manageable size with his claws. His claws looked slightly blackened and cooked from grabbing the energy blade, but it hadn’t slowed him down in the slightest.

Saber Jack Wolf was also still perfectly fine despite having been in the thick of fighting the zombies.

There’s also the thought of the Eaters possibly coming our way. What could be worse?

-Excelsus-

The tips of the now four legged machine started to slowly yellow... it was slowly becoming a zombie itself after causing an untold amount of havoc in the above and below regions of Mare Melum.

The yellow coding zombies continued on, as if the defeat of the corrupted thing that started all this wasn’t an issue and the rampant infection of the Mare Melum realm wasn’t done yet.

-Pony program gaiden, Rainbow.exe-

“Okay where’s the wings? Why do I have all this strange flappy stuff?” I asked as Pinkpie.exe and Purpsmart.exe looked at each other.

“You’re likely a flying dragon lizard most commonly known as Draco Volans, which are good at gliding… where did you even get the data for this Pinkpie.exe?” Purpsmart.exe asked as she pointed to me with a claw.

“No idea, this is confusing even for me and I’m the one existentially connected to the one that breaks walls for a living.” Even Pinkpie.exe looked confused.

“Ooh, can I breathe fire?” I asked as I tried to flap the big floppy butterfly like wings.

“No, dragon lizards can glide.” Purpsmart.exe said slowly as if speaking to a child, but I don't see any children here.

“So I have to just jump really high or something to start flying? Also why do I have a fish fin under my chin?” Why did I cause Purpsmart.exe to face hoof?

“Just end the page author.” Pinkipie.exe said flatly. “This is going to take a while to explain to the programming version of Dashie... she’s a little densely coded.”

“Wha…”

Author's Note

Music: Skycycle - It's Terror Time Again (Studio Version in particular).

406. Metal Hound Chaos! Pt. 10

-Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, Underground Region, Clearing, Pom-

“Guys go keep the area clear of enemies, please don’t get involved.” I said over the headset as I hit the seatbelt and popped the dome to climb out of the machine and hop down to the ground. I glared at Fou and Jack, I knew how this was going to go. “Wouldn’t want any of you to die on my behalf at this juncture.”

“What are you about to do Pom?” Driver asked as he watched me take several steps forward and take the Paralance into my right hoof.

Dolly was still sitting around my neck and I believed she was generally ready to go.

“My best Driver.” I said as I started trotting forward. “Hope you have my back, you’re going to be exposed to a lot of danger Dolly.”

“Always with you all the way Pom, you know that!” Yeah, there was a distinct lack of magic in Dolly though since the Magitek Armor had been quite draining to use. It wouldn’t survive five minutes with either of these two alone, much less one with them both attacking us. I idly glanced at the machine Fou flipped upside down and mentally told Dolly to keep an eye out for it, it was turning yellow.

For someone who grabbed pure energy with his bare claws, Fou looked mostly fine. Saber Jack Wolf survived being swarmed by zombies, that he can cut most things apart with his weapon with one or more swings was something to be wary of and he survived Fou. That’s right, Jack actually survived fighting against Fou, but I seriously doubted he won that fight.

“This is going to be a good one, huh? Hey, Blade Wolf here, you know, Jack’s partner. You’re sadly going to be a beautiful mess of slices soon Doggy Messiah!” Again, why was that a thing with me and why would it effect the second voice coming from Jack?!

“Jack the ripper is coming out to play!” With that Jack let out a blood chilling highly distorted laugh as the bipedal robotic canines eyes went from red to brightly glowing blood red. There was a subtle red aura of death and bloodlust coming off of him that even had Dolly shivering and less bright eyed than usual, there was something highly off about him now and it felt like he just went berserk… yet he still seemed so controlled about it… dangerous. “Ripper Mode.”

Very dangerous.

-Pom and Dolly (The definitive underdogs) Vs. Fou (The beast) Vs. Servant Saber ‘Jack Blade Wolf’ (Chunky Salsa Lover)-

Pom knew this wasn’t going to go well, she only had the paralance and Dolly, the Dalmatian would barely last ten minutes alone against either of their enemies and that was Pom’s generous estimation of Dolly’s talents. If Dolly was keeping her distance with her skateboard to attack at long range or magic, then it was feasible. The Paralance would only be helpful as long as Pom doesn’t drop or lose it in the fight.

Jack surviving Fou was more than enough to tell Pom to never let her back be facing him, much less let Fou attack her without trying to put him between her and Jack. She could instinctually feel that just being near Jack as he was right now was a really, REALLY, bad idea.

As far as the weapon Pom wielded went, she didn’t know how to wield what was truly special about the paralance, aside from it being entirely indestructible as far as the serpent summoned by Rider Totsugeki showed and Dolly’s board wasn’t as capable in being indestructible. She was low on magic from the Magitek Armor being draining and she was already on the back hoof before the fight even started.

Pom inhaled slowly through her nose as Fou and Jack started forward, a three way fight with two juggernauts was not in Pom’s favor and never would be. If she were to use Shock Ram to even the field of battle temporarily, she would die. Since Fou would match her strength if she got aggressive with him and then proceed to exceed it knowing him like she thought she did, Shock Ram wasn’t the answer here. Though she’s been considering Shock Ram as a way to finally say goodbye to the world for quite some time after narrowly surviving the second use of it.

She was currently limited on magic usage and Dolly was too, though Dolly could at least still refuel in a pinch if she blocked an attack.

Pom could go beast, but she’d lose some of herself to her Chrysomallus side for doing so and it would be her last resort.

Fou for his part was excited to get started, he wondered who would make the first move. Jack was in his Ripper Mode which had Fou happy, as any guy that was tough enough to survive Fou was worth of more than one good fight.

Jack had his mission, but he very much wanted to get back at Fou for thrashing him. His bloodlust was screaming to start making both his opponents bleed.

In a moment all three moved.

Pom crouched opened the parlance in front of her facing Jack to handle the flurry of slashes faster than anything Shanty could hope to do and Dolly immediately slung her board out adding a full momentum boost to it to deflect Fou’s incoming claws. Pom was the first to be attacked for being the weaker one in the battle.

This was as Pom was backing away while blocking a tirade of slashes that threatened to knock her off her hooves.

Pom wasn’t digging her hind legs into the ground, if she got knocked over then that was it for her as she doubted either of her opponents would give her time to get standing again. She was allowing herself to be pushed back and was back off as the canopy of the paralance shook violently in her hooves and had yet to exhale.

The lambkin wasn’t going to be able to keep up with her opponents in raw strength, so she was forcing Fou to intercept some of the attacks coming for her.

Jack swung a hard upwards slash in his tirade of insanely fast slashes that were lightly opening wounds on Fou’s nearby body and knocked Pom’s weapon upwards slightly, he immediately fired molten red and orange knives from his hips at her hind legs.

The knives were deflected when Dolly reacted far faster than was thought possible as she entered a Dancing Flame state when Pom exhaled moderately and transferred her state to her partner, instead of going into it herself. Pom continued inhaling after Dolly’s successful defense and she managed to reorient the paralance to continue backing away as Fou tried to get at her with Jack and was getting in his way.

“Come now, you’re not going to win this fight be being on the…” Jack was shut up when both he and Fou were pushed back by Pom’s front limbs becoming an explosive blur when she exhaled, the paralance fired powerful jets of air with how rapidly the indestructible weapon was jabbed.

After pushing both of them back barely even a foot, Pom wasn’t going to get any more room than that, she managed to step to the side to fully put Fou between both her and Jack. Pom was inhaling once again and continuing to avoid going on the offensive. Pom’s front legs were already shivering from the brute force Jack had employed against her, her muscles were already on fire and it had barely been thirty seconds into the fight.

Fou lashed out his right claw for Pom and she dodged instead of blocking his attack, given her front legs were already feeling bad after Jack’s first tirade of slashes. Jack decided to attack Fou’s back and angered him.

Fou turned to Jack and sped up to match him, attacking with his claws as he blocked the blade as much as deflected it and was giving better than he was getting.

Pom tried to back away and let the two go at it when Fou glanced behind him, performed and incredible back flipping leap and put a wide eyed Pom between him and Jack.

“Fou!” Fou came at Pom from behind and Jack came at her from the front.

Instead of blocking the incoming slash with the canopy of the weapon in her hooves, Pom surprisingly stepped into Jack’s next swing while exhaling and managed to catch his weapon by the base of the blade with the shaft of the impervious weapon and locked her wool before the blow fully hit.

The ground cratered to Pom’s left for twenty feet as the force of the blow went through her body in a clearly excruciating manner given the grimace the ewe made afterwards.

Dolly, still on Pom’s back, blocked Fou’s right claw with both her front paws on her board, she absorbed the impact using Pom’s body to absorb some of the force and this still created another mass of cratering ground that blasted forth from in front of Pom as she grunted in pain.

The Dalmatian then knocked Fou back with her right hind leg slamming into his nose before he could bite her or Pom, Dolly did this while send some of the force from Fou’s blow right back at him. The small dogs blow barely did any damage, but it succeeded in staggering Fou for a second.

While Fou was staggered, Pom inhaled and kicked her right hind hoof into one of Jack’s elbows breaking the weapon lock threatening to burrow her body into the ground for a split second.

That second was all Pom needed as she had pushed Jack’s arms back slightly, barely an inch, but it was long enough to for Pom to exhale and pivot under the weapon in a wide crouching clockwise sweep. Performing several twists while rising up behind Jack and out of the path of his next downward swing that sent a bloodying slashing wave into Fou torso.

Pom bashed the closed paralance again the center of Jack’s spine using the momentum of her spin, this actually dealt some damage to the cyborg canines back and after successfully landing the blow she tried to retreat. She failed to get any distance as the sharp claws of Jack’s tail rammed straight into her right side.

It almost went entirely through Pom after bypassing the protective wool covering her body without stopping.

Before the claws on the tip of the Jack Wolf’s tail could shred Pom’s right kidney that it burrowed into, Fou leapt onto Jack and clawed into him.

While Fou threatened to knock the inattentive Jack over while doing some damage to him, Pom quickly pulled her body free of the deadly tail spikes before they did anything more to her inside and quickly tried to put some distance between her and the other two juggernauts.

Barely a few feet of backing away, Pom stumbled and fell into a sitting position huffing and puffing in agony. As Jack and Fou wrestled in front of her, Jack transformed into quadruped mode and continued to fight Fou with the blade in his mouth.

That’s when several molten knives fired at Pom from the hip launchers on Jack Wolf’s body, which was why he shifted to fighting Fou in quadruped mode. Jack could multitask with Blade Wolf’s help.

Dolly got on to the paralance and managed to open it in time before the knives impacted or skewered Pom while she was incapable of moving. The Dalmatian glanced at the pale looking Pom’s face and then the very bloody wound in her side she was clutching at with her front hooves as she tried to use her wool to ease her suffer, but it really wouldn’t help stitch a damaged organ together without causing some problems.

Pom’s wool patch method was meant to be surface leve and not internal.

A slightly panicked Dolly quickly scrambled onto Pom’s back, and dug into the bag poking out of her wool. Retrieving a Sitrus berry out of the bag at Pom’s back, Dolly quickly forced it into a roughly breathing Pom’s mouth and got Pom to bite down on the berry.

The two were clearly far too powerful for Pom to fight directly for too long at the same time, much less survive even with Dolly’s assistance.

At least Pom had three Sitrus berries, well it was two now and the one she just started chewing to quickly swallow. The berry began healing the nasty wound in Pom’s side and replenished the lost blood immediately as it shut and her internal injuries healed. Not that they had too many more of those berries in case Dolly or Pom both got seriously injured like that three more times.

It had barely been few minutes and Pom’s strength was already flagging even with the Sitrus Berry giving her some of it back. In that time Jack managed to separate from battling Fou and started for Pom as she was getting up on all fours.

Again, if she got knocked down, like she just had been, then they weren’t going to give her much time to recover.

Crouching down and turning his head to left, Jack prepared to lunge for Pom and swing the blade with a quick twist of his head.

Just as he was kicking off the ground, Dolly had been waiting for that exact moment.

“Float!” Instead of kicking off the ground towards Pom, Jack kicked off the ground and went straight up flailing into the air.

Pom was quickly up on her hooves and dodging the swiping claws from Fou following Jack, after a whiffed left swing the right claws passed in front of the ewes face as she leaned back and stumbled a bit as she back away from The Beast while taking in some air.

While the float spell was being resisted by an angry floating Jack and Fou was taking this opportunity to come at Pom with a violent shift in mood for targeting his prey.

Widening her stance and placing the Paralance across her back instead of attacking with it, Pom quickly shifted to utilizing the Fleet Cunning Doe style. She sprung over a wild charge from Fou and slammed both her hind legs high into his spine before leaping away, Pom definitely didn’t trust that she was strong enough to disable Fou at all.

Fou swung at Pom after he struck her spine and then lunged forward gnashing his teeth at the ewe as she leapt sideways towards him, much to his sudden surprise.

Taking Pom’s body to the face as she rolled over his skull and kicked him in the back of the head with her left hind leg, she then proceeded to push off with her right with a back flip.

Upon Landing Pom jumped straight up as Fou turned and tried to lash out at her with a rising claw, but the ewe had already cleared his reach and evaded him to land on all four hooves a few feet away. She sprung forward and started to leap and launch quick, but very weak blows that did nothing more than tease Fou’s fur at best.

Pom was going to tease him and not be actively aggressive towards him for what she suspected to be the truth behind Fou’s absurd bursts of sudden unusual capabilities.

Fou wasn’t as dangerous to handle alone as he was with another threat around and that threat just got free of the float spell and raised his red sword high above his head as he dropped toward the ground facing Pom.

Dolly who was paying more attention to Jack, got a quick mental warning off while Pom bounded about trying to avoid Fou and get in a few quick attacks.

As the ewe landed from a jump, she quickly reacted by retreating a few steps and turning to the side to get out of the way of a massive slicing wave that tore through the ground between her and Fou creating a five foot deep ditch.

Fou was as momentarily stunned by the sudden attack, shaking his head he charged forward and Pom shifted stances by stomping her front hooves and looked ready to take Fou next attack head on and really start fighting.

Instead of doing what Fou expected or wanted, she suddenly went up onto her hind legs by rearing up as Fou closed in to avoid his claw attack. Tired of her evasiveness, Fou swung his right claw out, missed and used the miss as a lead in to lunging forward to ram his right shoulder into Pom’s body sending her skidding backwards a fair distance and bruising her insides badly.

Pom still managed to stay standing and she was shivering quite a bit.

Fou’s strength was just enormous enough that she couldn’t even cushion against it with her wool and his raw strength pierced through her protection, but that’s exactly what she wanted to happen.

Jack seeing Pom’s body shaking chose to go at her and Pom grinned weakly.

Sure Pom just received a heavy painful blow from Fou, but she had faked him out with the aggressive Cow Kenpo stance and immediately entered a standing wobble counter stance before she was hit.

Pom had a good idea of Fou’s character, he was rather simple and straightforward to understand, but not so much Jack’s character. If he was given an opportunity to take advantage of the situation and tried to do so, then Pom would take advantage of what Jack doesn’t know about her.

So Pom manipulated Fou into hitting her harshly with a blunt force instead of his claws on purpose. Sure even Fou’s tackle had hurt, but it gave Pom a good opportunity to set up and do something substantial to Jack as he was her main threat here.

Jack couldn’t heal without the Gekko around and the Commandramon were taking care of any outside interference. What Pom was waiting on was for Jack to realize the large machine was going to get up again, which would force him to prioritize it, since it was his mission to deal with it first. She would take advantage of this while she tried to escape and evade Fou. So any damage dealt to Jack wouldn’t be healed from that point further.

Jack was on approach in bipedal mode preparing to attack her with the insane speeds his arms could get to, Pom was visibly vibrating as she took up the Paralance, prepping for him to attack her and all she needed to do… was block his next strike.

Pom having an unused wobbling amount of force rippling painfully through her body with very little outlet and was about to be struck, as one can imagine hitting her right now was a bad idea. Dolly was helping this force stay contained and on impact would increase the forces unleashed by letting Pom utilize her momentum controlling ability.

Pom might not be as strong as her opponents, but she wasn’t exactly defenseless or entirely helpless. She had sacrificed her health for this next moment that was about to occur and sacrifices, when done by Pom or any Chrysomallus, had an unfortunate tendency to escalate the outcome exponentially.

With a swing that was nigh invisible, even with Pom entering Dancing Flame to react to it, Jack slammed his blade home into the vibrating Pom that barely got the paralance up in time.

The obvious answer to what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object is quite clear, the immovable object would make the unstoppable force either go a different direction to continue being unstoppable or that force would pierce through the immovable object. Something had to give.

In this instance the red sword collided with the shaft of the indestructible mystical weapon and Pom bracing for the impact could not have been any luckier to have Dolly as a familiar. The Dalmatian was there to help redirect all the traumatizing forces of momentum gained from Fou all back at Jack so Pom didn’t get hurt as much or sent flying by the raw forces involved. Not only would they redirect that force, but also increase it beyond what a wobble counter would normally do.

As with other combination moves between Dolly and Pom, the ‘ripple’ counter going into effect had a fairly devastating effect given Jack’s incredibly massive amount of strength put into the recent blow.

“BAWHOOMP!” All that energy had to go somewhere and it was force to Jack, he was sent flying and tumbling along the ground painfully as the blast of force tore up a large swath of the ground up in his wake. He was last seen wrecking a copse of trees that were still standing amid the underground battlefield.

Pom quickly planted the butt of the paralance against the ground to stay standing and started breathing roughly as she had some nasty internal bruising from the impact even if ninety percent of it had been redirected.

“Pom…. tapped out… after that…” Dolly barked weakly while panting looking a little miserable as she clung protectively to her friend and families neck.

Dolly actively sharing her ability to manipulate momentum to Pom while using it at the same time really took a lot out of her and it required them to at least be in contact with one another. Pom remembered that they could even do this from the whole Clockwerk debacle that almost killed Dodo and everyone else involved.

“Just hold on a little longer and rest Dolly, I really doubt that that actually put Jack down for long.” Pom wasn’t trying to win this fight and knew she couldn’t, which was their opponent’s objectives. Dolly and Pom were trying to stall long enough to feasibly escape or deal with Jack Wolf at the very least, they were mostly trying to survive the situation and come up with something before Pom gets killed outright.

“Ugh…” Dolly was somewhat out of the fight after that last action and she slumped again the cottony softness that was Pom’s wool, the most she could do is keep hugging Pom and maybe be on the lookout for other things like the large machine.

Said large machine’s four legs were mostly yellow and black stripes started appearing on it.

Fou had been knocked over by the sudden obscenely powerful shockwave and had been about to follow up Jack’s attack. He looked a little shocked and curious about where Jack just went as he sat up and was standing.

He glanced at Dolly and at least gave her some respect for acknowledging that she existed as a part of Pom’s pack and that she wasn’t entirely useless despite looking so small. He saw her assist Pom and that she was the catalyst for whatever that was, well he didn’t care much about it beyond the fact that it had happened… he was still enjoying the fight and hunting his prey, plus he even enjoyed amazing surprises like that too. He wanted his prey to be good at struggling, the stronger the better!

“Fou!” The fact that Fou was up within seconds of being in a terrifying blast of force like that and still raring to go was quite horrifying. That he was excited to keep going just made him even scarier.

Pom had a chill run down her spine and was worried about being able to survive Fou. She wasn’t about to pop another Sitrus Berry so soon, sure she was hurting from containing all that energy, but she wasn’t incapable of movement. She steeled her nerves, fretted over having exhausted Dolly so soon, readied the paralance and stood firm.

Fou was coming at Pom fast and he stopped and even Pom stopped breathing for a moment as a red corona rose up from the copse of trees and then they shredded to dust in an instant and Jack came walking forth with a glare on his robotic canine face.

Yeah, to say that Jack was angry was maybe a vast understatement given he just turned a bunch of trees into sawdust in an instant and might only be mildly damaged from that the massive counter bomb.

Pom was even more disheartened, but stayed firm on readying herself… there was no way she would survive a straight fight with these two without Dolly’s support and abilities.

“You know it’s quaint, it’s been a while since Jack has entered ‘True Ripper’ mode, and he can only enter this mode while already in Ripper Mode. You have certainly earned his ire for sure. True Ripper Mode won’t end until you are dead, Jack is dead or Jack kills an entirely different target and he’s quite set on you after that truly astounding trick. Sorry doggy messiah, but he comes for you and I’m not stopping him from cutting you to ribbons!” Announced Blade Wolf and Jack didn’t even tell him to shut up as he continued moving toward Pom and Fou at a steady and even pace while giving off a blood red aura, his blade destroyed the ground where it’s tipped touched and created a divot just by its presence as it created a blackened line as he dragged it alongside him.

-Nearby, Commandramon call sign ‘Driver’-

“Guys… did he just turn all those trees into sawdust with so many swings there’s no way we could functionally count them all?” One of the Commandramon commented with a bit of fear.

“I’m sure even a mega would die to attacks hitting them that fast with that kind of cutting force.” Another stated and I was getting a bit irate that they were letting fear get to them.

“Keep covering the area and keep an eye on the zombie in the making, I’m sure Pom is.” I said as I glanced about and saw a vehicle on approach. “Excuse me, but who are you coming into this area?”

It was on approach from allied territory that we still surprisingly had, so we didn’t immediately open fire. The vehicle looked like a missile truck.

“Here to drop off some heavy artillery and help mom and my big sister out, they look like they need it.” Ah, it was Dormarch… and a cute yellow winged Caerbannog with a heart shaped nose and soulful eyes? Well that’s one way to assassinate someone, look as harmless as possible before you strike.

“Give me a second… firing missile!” Dormarch announced and a missile flew from the truck and angled for Jack Wolf. It got within ten feet and then the missile dissolved and the explosives gave off a small whimper of a pop a good thirty feet away from Jack on the opposite side of him as he continued walking towards a fairly wide eyed and terrified Pom. “Whoa, did he just seriously do that?!”

“Uh yeah, that guy, I don’t know what he is, but he is well outside anything close to that of a known quantity if he can do that to a missile with what looks like an ICBM payload.” I shuddered violently in my seat as a Commandramon knows explosives when they see them, we’re practically bomb squad specialist by rote of using our DCD Bomb attack. These Magitek Armors were likely less than nothing to that Jack Wolf guy and I can see why Pom wasn’t currently in hers for this fight. Even if we tried to help it would amount to nothing, when we could help keep the combat area clear and be doing at least something. “I think that’s going to continue to being a discomforting factor with these servants moving forward.”

-Pom (Agh-agh-agh, staying alive~) Vs. Fou (Excitedly comparing to the new threat) Vs. True Ripper Mode Jack Wolf (Even Moon Cell might have a few problems with controlling him now with his soul blazing out of control)-

Pom couldn’t even see how he did what he did to the missile, but she knew that Dormarch had fired it and the end results weren’t exactly comforting. Pom was well aware that if such a missile had been fired at her, she would be severely injured if she wasn’t already bunkered down in her wool by the time it hit.

It was very apparent that Pom was the only one getting injured or exhausted in this fight that likely just got a little bit worse.

“Fou, I don’t think…” Of course Fou wasn’t going to listen to Pom, he immediately went after Jack Wolf.

What followed was Fou slowly matching and increasing his speed and strength to match that of his opponent’s blazingly fast attacks.

Pom could barely see Fou or Jack attacking each other and she had to be inhaling to keep up with the action, Jack was actually holding fairly well, but Fou was matching and trying to surpass him without a weapon and the weapon Jack wielded was slowly getting him a slight edge as he started to overwhelm Fou’s ability to heal through raw force.

A tired Dolly idly noted the legs of the Excelsus were completely yellow and its body was starting to turn now and Pom ignored that in favor of trying to ready herself for what was coming for her.

After a few more moments of Fou attacking with fangs and claw, it seemed like Jack stopped playing and flashed pashed him slashing his spin open making Fou incapable of movement and then he started charging towards Pom.

The odd thing about Jack was that his land speed was far slower than his attack speed so Pom had at least five seconds to prepare for his incoming onslaught while trying to think of a way to deal with him.

Filling her lungs as Jack came at her, Pom quickly grabbed Dolly with a hoof, planted the Dalmatian on her skateboard and sent her rolling away with a kick. Pom followed that by readying herself for what was coming at her.

It was rather sufficient to say that even when she exhaled she only managed to block thirteen of the nineteen slashes that tore into her.

Had the Paralance not been in the way of the initial attacks or forcefully knocked out of her hooves and then promptly sent away by the subsequent slashes, then Pom would already be dead and not sitting on the ground trying to stand up from the one slash that ripped through her wool and torso. The slash that hit her was the nineteenth slash that had her on her stomach and trying to stand up.

Taking up a stance Jack looked at Pom’s white wooly neck as he raised his blade and intended to finish her off.

Pom struggled to get her neck slightly higher than where she saw him aiming as he swung his blade intending to finish her with one blow. She glared defiantly at him as she puffed up her chest.

The blade connected with Pom, an exhausted Dolly couldn’t stop it, Dormarch couldn’t stop it and even Fou who was getting up and healing from his injuries couldn’t stopped the swing.

The blade connected with Pom’s neck as she raised in an inch high than where Jack intended to hit it and Pom’s body was sent flying.

Tumbling across the ground from the sheer force put into the swing, when her body came to a stop it was lying on its back and some blood pooled on the ground around where her neck was.

Jack turned his back on her and was only mildly surprised that her head stayed connected to her body as he turned to start attacking Fou who had recovered from all his previous attacks. Fou was to be a violent masterpiece for Jack to bloody.

.
.
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-Nearby Missile Truck, Cuddlestare.exe-

“Oh no… Dormarch, you’re mother…” That was horrible to watch.

“She’s not dead, but she knows that she really shouldn’t move for the moment. She really doesn’t want to give away what just happened too fast and playing dead is a way to gain some time.” Blinking and looking to Dormarch, I think that his unmoving mother lying on the ground looked pretty dead after taking a lethal wound to the neck would have made him panic more. “It’s only looks worse than it actually is, mom is continuing to stall… though she’s going to need to breathe soon and consume another Sitrus Berry. Jack is far too strong for her and if he gets distracted by Fou who gets stronger through aggression, then that gives mom a chance to continue living for a little longer. Also she wants us to focus on the machine turning into Zombie coding for the time being, if the Eaters show up we’re going to need to focus on those too.”

“She just took a blade to the neck, what part of that was survivable?!” I asked because Dormarch didn’t seem too concerned about his mother suddenly taking a blow, but then I noted that Dormarch’s big sister was stealthily sneaking her way towards his mother while dragging the lance weapon. The dogs eyes were constantly on Jack as she quietly dragged the lance towards Pom on her board over uneven terrain.

“Well it wasn’t survivable, had mom’s neck been a single millimeter lower she would be gone. I’m thankful Jack didn’t bother to check why mom was giving him better access to her neck and just struck her. He’s powerful and can think and react fast, but he’s not as smart as he is skilled.” It was then that it became fairly noticeable that Dormarch hadn’t taken his eyes off of his mother even as he readied the missile truck to fire when needed. “If there is one thing most people tend to not understand about mom, it is that while she complains about life and living, she is in fact ultimately a survivor beyond her need to help others. While her body can’t keep up with her opponents much less damage them, her mind might be able to make up for the vast chasm in capabilities.”

“How did she survive the blow?” I asked after a second with my wings twitching a bit.

“Commandramon, don’t worry, mom is trying to come up with a way to deal with this situation and just bought herself some time. Before you ask, yes, she’s alive, don’t draw attention to it. It'd be a a question of whether she'd actually survive the next thirty seconds if you do and I'd rather none of you test that!” Dormarch then turned to me and with a tired look in his eyes. “Keeping mom alive is one of the hardest things I have ever had to deal with, don’t think just because I’m acting the way I am now means that I don’t want to rip Jack Wolf to shreds personally. As for why she survived that blow… wool cushioning and a wedding bell. Her throat is constricted, but she’s trying to stay relax until that clears up from the trauma she just took.”

“Wedding bell?” I asked.

“Her wool is covering it, she’s been actively making it look like it’s a natural part of her neck since she got it back, but if you look closely it looks like she has an Adam’s Apple based on the bottom outward curvature of the bell. That’s just not natural on a ewe and her neck should not be as thick as it looks to be with how relatively scrawny the rest of mom looks. Though females of some species can have an Adam’s Apple, it would never be nearly as pronounced as a male equivalent of a given species. I have a lot of medical data about anatomy and I really wish I didn’t know how I acquired it all.” Dormarch noticed my gentle staring and he sighed. “Yes, my mom is in fact married thank you very much. I’ve yet to meet my other mother personally and wonder what she’ll be like in person, hopefully nothing like that one from that Coraline movie I pirated onto my PET Digivice. Mom is going to need to pop another Sitrus Berry due to the blood loss she forced herself to suffer to sell the act, but she’ll have those wounds long sealed off by the time she can breathe again. She did just get a large mass of metal burrowed into her esophagus, so it’s little wonder she’s going to have breathing problems… again... mom, please stop trying to give me a coronary problem that digital entities shouldn't feasibly be capable of!”

Now that he brought it up, the digital device around his neck looked like a very nice place to live, well for a digital entity like me anyway. I wonder how my friends were doing?

-Pony program gaiden, Rainbow.exe the colorful large Draco Volan-

“So what you’re telling me is if I flap these flaps hard enough, then I can fly like Wile E. Coyote does?” What, why was Pinkpie.exe looking at me like that?

“How… I’m the only one that’s supposed to be capable of doing the references!” Doing what Pinkpie.exe? You watched a lot of ‘Myvision’ on the internet while we were in world with the giant owl that almost killed us, do you think we’re that dense that we wouldn’t watch it too in the middle of our constant arguing?! That ‘DIY Genius Coyote’ show was pretty cool, even if the guy was a little accident prone.

“Guys, get the ants out of your PLANTs, the Eaters are really on the moooo-ve.” Applelove.exe just made us start laughing as the blue cow glared at us. “Do you want to know what will stop your laughing… those Eater varmints are all currently eating a path straight towards where Cuddlestare.exe is and there’s fifty of them now, also they are picking up speed. Mind you Pinkpie.exe's clones have been constantly hammering them with jawbreaker cannonballs and has barely managed to take out three of them.”

“Oh no, darling, we’re coming!” The white marshmallow cougar Flarity.exe shouted and her PLANT immediately followed after her.

“Right, finally some action, this was getting boring! Up and…” I flopped onto the ground on my face. “Do I need to learn how to digitally fly again?”

“I’m glad I’m currently a raptor, so I can honestly say don’t make me bite you and mean it.” Purpsmart.exe stated as she ran off incredibly fast.

“Why, what did I do? I just want to figure out how to start flying with these floppy paddles for wings!” I was wondering why Pinkpie.exe and Applelove.exe were face hoofing. “They make me feel fat because they are so wide.”

“Is that a ten foot pole?” Applelove.exe strangely asked Pinkpie.exe.

“Not touching that.” Pinkpie.exe nodded before motioning to the other Pinkpie.exe clones and their gator army. “Rubber hose army, switch to gobstopper ammunition and move out!”

“Smile, smile, smile!” The Pinkpie.exe clones shouted while saluting their progenitor and started running after stuffing their manes with their cannons and adorable gators… how did those things even fit in their manes, ZIP files?

“What ten foot pole, what are you guys talking about?” I asked as I jumped onto my PLANT since it was going to be faster than I could… oh... this thing can fly! Why wasn’t I using it before to get some height?!

"It's because your not smart Rainbow.exe, now stop texting your thoughts so loudly and ride like a leaf on a tornado!" Pinkpie.exe yelled back as she rode ahead on a cannon that was backwards and spewing flames for propulsion while followed by her pink Plant.

Author's Note

How do you suppose Pom can deal with something like Jack, when he basically counters everything she can do with a ridiculous sword and just raw strength alone? Fou has problems with Pom, because she's always dealing with him defensively.

Reminder Jack is a Saber and not an Assassin or a Berseker... though his Berserker like attributes in 'Ripper Mode' are completely ridiculous without the general 'Madness Enhancement' shenanigans that lowers overall intelligence. Not that his general intelligence is all the great to begin with, but at least that's not getting any lower.

407. Metal Hound Chaos! Pt. 11.

-Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, Underground Region, Devastation Zone, Pom-

I needed to consume a Sitrus Berry before the blood loss gets to me and I was already lightheaded. The gashes means that any of the blood veins in those areas of my neck were no longer working and everything was already getting colder.

Unless I was under the effects of haste and using Dancing Flame to the peak I feasibly could use, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with Jack Wolf.

My current speed was useless.

My magic could be deflected and or defended against, he can even break Dolly’s Float, but I’m chalking that up to his sword. Anything Dolly or I could do wouldn’t handle that monster.

My current magic abilities were useless.

The amounts of strength he could put behind the blow meant he was definitely far stronger than me, with literal mechanical precision and a cyborg body. Robots didn’t have souls, nor did they smell like they still had flesh, he was a cyborg with a machine intelligence canine partner that obviously didn’t control the body between the two of them. The first I heard of such a horrifying concept was back on Elhorn… also when I looked into what was happening on Mobius.

My current strength was useless. Wished I had super strength, but that’s Arizona’s department. I was never normally strong physically to begin with, been mostly making up for it with physics and magic.

The guy cut straight through the wool on either side of my neck and I’m currently having breathing problems, mind you the two large gashes in the sides of my neck weren’t helping as I was mentally stitching up my own arteries shut with my wool. Magically charged electrum was what I had relied on to survive that blow.

My current defensive abilities were mostly useless.

I performed a wobble counter combination of redirected force with a charged up blow from Fou, using Dolly’s sharing her momentum control ability with me and the outcome didn’t do nearly as much damage as I hoped for.

I think a Thousand Spears: Huo would work, but who would survive that guy for five minutes and would I want their deaths on my conscience?

I’m glad that Jack wolf only sought to disarm me of the paralance with the first nineteen blows instead of dismembering me outright after I was left open. The twentieth blow could have killed me just by crushing my esophagus alone, why am I still alive again?

Oh right, I locked my wool to play dead and my wool was creating a small cavity underneath so that when I try to get some precious air in my lungs, which was hard to do with two bloody holes in my throat, it wouldn’t look like I wasn’t moving at all and I did let myself bleed some to sell the illusion.

When will the hurting stop?

Jack Wolf was more focused on fighting Fou, who I’m pretty sure just recovered from what would a permanent spinal injury for absolutely anyone else who couldn’t recover from such an injury.

Dormarch was trying to think of something and was asking if he could use the armor Dolly and I used to even get here for something. I silently gave him the go ahead if he could ultimately do something with it that would be better than what Dolly or I could. Don’t know how he was going to pilot it unless he turned into Dobermon D-Type, but piloting it didn’t feel like it was his intention.

Dolly was trying to move the paralance over to me, despite total exhaustion from supporting me and having to puppeteer me up to this point. If Dolly had some magic I’d ask her to send the armors heal beam at me. If I could recover some magic aside from what was going to suppressing the whole Chrysomallus thing so that I can live to the ripe age of thirty one, if not that then two months from now since I doubt I’m going to live longer than that... then, well yeah, maybe I could come up with something.

I unlocked my wool and carefully rolled to the side, while making sure not to put my left gash wound directly against the ground.

Had to wonder, why hadn’t Jack realized he hadn’t kill me? Was he expecting me to bleed out? Did he think he cut off my head? Didn’t Blade Wolf say that ‘True Ripper Mode’ thing would only end if he killed ‘a’ target? Not necessarily me. It did imply that his regular Ripper Mode had a time limit before he activated the true version of it.

I wonder what people had to face that terrifying metallic monster when he was alive and not being used in some sort of necromancy based manner like what Moon Cell was doing here.

Should I consider myself lucky enough to still be capable of feeling pain or unlucky enough that my own bell being lodged in my throat didn’t manage to kill me because of the small amount of wool I had to cushion it? At least I was staying calm in this situation and using my wool to push the bell outward and allow me to rasp some air in.

Just had to grab a Sitrus Berry… so weak… I reached back with my front right leg, since I couldn’t currently lift my further head. I had Dolly send me a mental image of what Jack wolf was doing, I was safe to move around a bit. I got my leg into the pack and grabbed at the largest berry in there, one Oran Berries and a few status healers.

I weakly lifted the berry to my lips and opened my mouth and then hastily bit into it, the juices were enough to bring color and extremely painful noise back to the world. The insides of my neck were slightly on fire as the wounds sealed up and blood vessels reconnected and tissues regenerated.

I took a sigh of relief as I finished chewing the berry down. Sitrus Berries could only recover health and some stamina, it didn’t recover my magic.

Sitting up, I checked my bell and blinked at the damage done to it. The sheer force required to damage magically charged electrum was hard to find and I had ultimately found it.

I… was… actually rather angry as that there was a large line dented into my bell where that blade struck it.

Okay… now I really wanted to take Jack down, but how would I go about doing that when being within ten feet of him was nothing short of a death sentence?

I sat up and Dolly soon collapsed next to me with a smile and a tail that would never quit wagging as she smiled up at me, she had dragged the paralance back to me. She looked so feeble, like one of my Canis Minor puppies after an incident where they got hurt, but she was glad to see I was up and alright.

Dolly didn’t say anything as I patted her head affectionately and quietly pointed her in the direction of the Commandramon. The Commandramon were keeping the area around them mostly clear of EPs, APs and Zombies. I also noted we were getting some APs in support here, at least we weren’t being totally crushed.

After having angled her board in that direction, Dolly started to slowly push herself away from me with a silent ‘good luck’ sent back my way. She had no complaints about me benching her from the fight and I had the paralance again.

“Guys, can one of you pick up Dolly for me? She’s heading your way.” I got an affirmative from our soldier dragon friends. Dolly acknowledging her limitations left me feeling sad for some reason, like I had failed to make her capable of taking on entire worlds.

If I could break Jack Wolf’s sword, then a lot of his combat prowess would go out the window, but how would I do that when bark breaker got… howl breaker? I had howl blast that could slow down opponents. I had as many techniques as I was going to ever need, really didn’t think I needed to complicate my move pool anymore… I just needed to refine what I could do and refining the bark breaker into a howl breaker would go a long way to stopping the cyborg, given his body was made of multiple relatively rigid materials. Getting rid of his sword would be the target.

I was going to need to rest for the energy to even do a bark attack. I glanced at the body of the Excelsus turning yellow, said indication of the machine turning into a zombie was almost to the head on that thing. The only reason it was taking so long was because of its overall size.

We could hopefully deal with Jack soon, but the Excelsus and those Eater things were going to be the real problem afterwards. Fou mostly just wants to use me as a chew toy and as long as he didn’t kill me, I’d gladly oblige if he kept distracting Jack for the moment.

-Mare Melum, Warped Farmlands, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

“It seems Canard has the unknown machines attention with Dodo, I’m fairly certain it’s Moon Cell’s response to Castle Alexander being here.” We’re holding, but we kind of needed Pom to finish off the zombie problem quickly or else we won’t be able to get Castle Alexander on the offensive to start taking territories again. Wait… Castle Alexander wasn’t an Allie Program, it was a Plant, so couldn’t it…

“Commandramon in the back right tower from the head, fire on these coordinates.” A second later a territory erupted in a blue flash meaning we just took one. “Thank you for testing that for me.”

“No problem ma’am!” The soldier stated back politely. “Returning to artillery support, call out if you need another specific shot.”

“Can confirm, Canard has called in the scans from our digivice being so close to that thing. Canard says that it has managed to deduce the enemy machine is called Metal Gear Ray or The Ray, it’s apparently an anti-fortress model of machine. Heavy focus on missile bombardment, two machine guns for infantry and light armor. I’m really happy that Canard hasn’t been shot down by that thing yet.” Sami called in from the castles walls. “It’s apparently amphibious, so if it pushes us back to Cape in Dike Land, then we’re done for if it fights us from the sea. Without water it doesn’t have access to its water laser weapon. Take out the two large wing like arms and we’d cut its combat potential to kicking in melee range and the water laser which is a devastating torso weapon that requires environmental support.”

“How much water and how deep does it need to use the water attack?” We already dealt with biological water lasers, now we were going to deal with mechanical which might be even more powerful.

“A lakes worth at least.” Responded Sami as I heard her sniping something in the background. Hearing that I checked a map and saw a nearby lake it could start attacking us from. The Ray was currently starting to attack through the jungle covered upper districts to get at us in the warped farmlands

“Gazimon, does Torneko have any more mines and do they work underwater?” I asked as the warped farmlands did have large masses of water around them thanks to the swamps that weren’t there previously along with a lake. “We need you to go out and lay some.”

“Go out in all of that? We’d die!” The head of the Gazimon team wasn’t wrong, the Pokémon were showing quite the resolve in holding our front line. “Please remember that we’re rookie level volunteers and not high end combat capable digital monsters.”

“Can you find a way to launch the mines into position?” I asked as I watched Shanty direct a retreat of the Dhelmise back into the castle for healing purposes, they had taken quite a lot of damage and those flamethrowers wielding zombies were not Steel Type friendly.

Quetal and his team were holding thanks to Curdle taking a lot of punishment for them, having a body made of regenerating cream and sugar really helped. Lit was taking out more than anyone on the field of battle and he was able to fit into my hoof, now that was a terrifying little guy in battle and he seems to have gained a massive amount of stamina from all the fighting in Cerebrum. I’m surprised he hasn’t evolved yet.

“The Gazimon can use the Skein Flyers I’m manufacturing, provided they aren’t shot down they can air drop the mines into position.” Welch called up. “If you’re doing it for the reason I think you are, then we’ll make sure the enemy anti-fortress will be prevented from getting into any water… it also might help to take out the tail, which looks to be a water intake tube for the liquid ‘snake’ laser.

“Why did you just say ‘snake’ randomly? No, never mind, Sounds like we’re about to get some air bikes, we’ll gladly do it if we don’t have to be on the ground anywhere near all the chaos.” The Gazimon leader responded. “It’s much safer to be in the air.”

“Then get down there and help Welch make those Skein Flyers and then load them up quickly. Canard and Dodo can only keep The Ray busy for so long out there in the city and it’s currently making its way for us.” Said Ray, now that I looked at it, did look something like a walking manta ray if you were to lay it out flat. “And the city is crawling with enemies of all kinds. I’m only somewhat glad that the Ray seems to be immune to the Zombie Coding thing.”

“The code zombies don’t seem to be very big on ranged weapons and Ray is all ranged weapons, it would be kind of easy to take out if it wasn’t at some level of immune to the infection.” Sami called in.

“Yeah, but we’d have to take it out twice if it wasn’t. Commandramon have another order for territory bombardment, check the map.” My hoof tapped several locations and the towers started to fire on those spots given a lull in activity around our defenses. There was silence after as we took another territory out of the three indicated firing zones. I continued to watch Jeanne command the field from the front, she was holding our territory with an unbreakable force of will and kept our people rallied with her banner waving… as much as peircing, bashing and smashing everything coming at the castle in a brutal display of raw force of will.

I hoped Pom, Dolly, the Commandramon and Dormarch were okay down there, along with the odd harmony programs things. Friendship was in fact an oddly infectious form of magic, not that it was a bad thing and I hoped to discuss all this with Principal Twilight Sparkle later.

-Undeground region, Pom-

Did I have enough energy? I don’t know since I was going to be trying something new for the first time, but I had to get up and move away from the Excelsus before it got up and only incidentally crushed me.

Carefully getting up on my four wobbly legs, I calmly started walking in the direction of Jack Wolf while getting a decent grip on the paralance in my right hoof to start dragging it with me.

I made sure Dolly made it to be next the Commandramon still heavily embattled with random raptors, flying bats and the occasional quadrupedal monstrosity like a giant bubble blowing elongated weasel fox thing. Driver and his buddies were paying some protective attention to Dolly. I wondered what Dormarch was doing in the Magitek Armor we piloted?

No matter, I was trying to stay out of sight and not look tasty to the NPs. I was also trying not to alert Jack Wolf to the fact that I was moving or up while he was entirely focused with Fou. Fou was getting sliced up pretty badly, but he was just as viciously damaging Jack through the pain and suffering that red blade was causing with his claws and rabid biting.

“Nice to see you up Big Boss Lady, ma’am how are you feeling after that last blow?” Driver asked over the headset as he led the four other Commandramon into keeping the area clear.

“Gashes in neck… crushed throat… very painful…” I rasped out and took in some air. Just needed at least enough strength for one howl, an enhanced bark breaker. I believed that without that sword, Jack Wolf would be far more manageable than he currently was and I really didn’t have to worry about killing him. If Rider Totsugeki’s soul was freed like Shanty thought it was… then Jack needed to be taken away from Moon Cell before he gets used on anyone else. “Bell damaged… angry now…”

Anger was a motivator and I could be very motivated when I tried.

“We’ll watch out for Dolly for you, she doesn’t look too healthy. Also we have an odd Caerbannog that is watching the missile truck Dormarch brought here.” Nice to know Driver, but I was about to do something dumb again. Said dumb thing was getting within range of Jack Wolf, I think he forcibly stopped being a servant when he went berserk if the red glow and heightened aggressive tendencies was anything to go by. “Are you sure you want to get close to those monsters?”

“Yes…” Was my quick reply, even as my voice wavered I opened up the paralance and held it to block out the fake sunlight overhead as I placed it over my right shoulder and continued a steady three legged walk towards the two embattled warriors I didn’t have a hope in Tartarus of actually beating in a fair fight. ‘Fair’ being the key word there.

So why was I doing this again? Maybe because I thought I could save two souls for the price of helping take out Jack’s body.

Huh, don’t worry Dormarch, I think I can at least slow him down if not damage him heavily… yes I’m aware he already actively deflected my bark breaker before, but can he deflect a more powerful howl?

Sure, just don’t get hurt and only jump in if you think you can help, just don’t endanger yourself unnecessarily my little puppy.

Yes, I’m going to somewhat help Fou even if he does attack me. I’m aware of that fact Dolly, just stay safe and get some rest… like with Dormarch’s friend in that missile truck.

Even if I was terrified to get close to the guy, I was still going to do it and I hopefully had enough energy to pull it off without completely destroying my throat. Sitrus Berries can only heal wounds and lightly restore some stamina. If a berry could give me a full night’s sleep without nightmares and restore half my magic magic and make me invulnerable to injury for the next hour, then that would have certainly been fairly helpful right now.

Some would call me strong, but I still think I’m fairly weak. Since armoring my wool isn’t going to help, I can wool shift to sheep’s clothing to trade up my defensive abilities for the augmented speed and strength. I’m going inevitably going to need my Bestial Mode for the Eaters or the giant robot zombie nearby, so I’ll ultimately save that for later. I’ve really come a long way as a fluffmancer given I have full body environmental adaptation down, I think Paprika would be proud… and when is she isn’t?

I was half a football field away from the two monsters, I was kind of missing knowing what the recorded number of losses the lambkin team of Meadow Hills is up to now. Never won a single game, not even when both the main and secondary team football teams were playing against each other, beggar’s belief that both teams lost that match when they couldn’t come up with a winner after the entire field lit on fire.

Focus Pom, even if thinking of silly things about the lambkin having issues with sports is somewhat calming… time to do something gloriously stupid.

“Hey, forgetting… ‘echhak’… someone!” I called out, okay coughing was bad for what I was about to do and immediately Jack Wolf turned and started rushing for me while preparing his blade. Fou was fairly upset at his opponent suddenly ignoring him to come kill his favored prey.

Jack was definitely going to make sure I was dead this time. I managed to block thirteen hits… no, I can’t block this time. I still had to find the frequency for the breaker part to take effect and deal damage, but I could start it up before got close enough to skewer me. I can only hope my vocal cords have grown stronger since, if I couldn’t get this to work then Dormarch at least reassures me he’ll make it in time.

“Dalmamon warp digivolve to…” Dormarch could be vaguely heard shouting not too far away, Warp Digivolve? Shouldn’t that be impossible if he doesn’t have access to his Ultimate form yet? From what I knew about informational entities he needs to go from his champion form, to do what he’s about to do, then go on to Ultimate first to even set up the warp evolution.

I inhaled sharply as Jack Wolf was almost upon me, his bipedal on foot speed was slow and it was unfortunate that his arm speed wasn’t.

Beginning to charge my magic to my throat, I didn’t have much time to do this with so I had to make this one attack count. I opened my mouth and exhaled the howl in an unusual manner.

All the sounds going on around me immediately blanked out of existence, it was safe to say there were no sounds around me anymore… there were just vibrations. I think I just temporarily sacrificed my hearing or I just cancelled out all sound around me with the vibrational frequency of my own magically enhanced voice.

It was quite disconcerting and made me feel like I just went deaf, though both Dolly and Dormarch assured me mentally that they could hear it quite clearly. It was a bit weird to them really, they expected it to be shriller and not flat or dull.

Saber Jack Wolf, who had been quickly rushing at me, started taking damage and brought his blade defensively in front of him as I started working to find the most damaging frequency I could make.

To my less than honest surprise, he was starting to cut through my attack that was threatening to make me permanently mute and maybe even incapable of breathing if I continuously held it for five more seconds. I stopped after four.

A Howl Blast focused magic in a wide cone in front of me, the Howl Breaker instead focused in the area around me and relied less on magic and more on my throat.

This left me just staring at my target, incapable of doing another howl like that any time soon, it had been disturbing how quickly the absence of noise happened and how quickly it came back when I finally stopped.

Staring at Jack as he was still standing from being within the sphere of damaging vibrations I unleashed. I tried to say something only to have nothing come out of my mouth as my throat constricted painfully, ugh… my throat was not good after that.

A Howl Blast was still safer than Howl Breaker, same as the difference between barks, I started wondering what a Howl Buster would do and would rather not test that in a combat scenario. My vocal cords were stressed beyond belief and my body recognized that using them was a bad idea at this moment. The Howl Breaker confirmed to be as bad as Bark Breaker or even worse was when I first started using it.

So I couldn’t scream when Jack Wolf kept coming at me, his body was lined with some cracks and his sword barely seemed to have too many discernible fractures. He still ran forward at me, lunged and swung his sword down for me despite having taken some damage, this was the end…

Until it turned into a mistake for him to not pay attention to his surroundings as Dormarch had finally finished his newest digital evolution. It was like it took an entire minute to do so.

Dormarch blurred to being in front of me so fast, I couldn’t even follow how he did it without using Search Hunter. I knew it was him because of our bond and Search Hunter was responsible for the speed he just showed.

“Garummon!” Blinking to take in Dormarch’s a new form, I smiled a little. My eyes darted to where the Magitek Armor was, just to see that it was now entirely gone. “You’re not hurting my mother.”

With a single heave forward of his right golden yellow blade wing connected to his back, the red blade finally showed the real damage that I had dealt to it and finally blew apart from the stress.

Jack Wolf quickly fell backwards and flipped into quadrupedal mode as the shimmering bits of his own blade sliced through him like butter and dealt quite a bit of damage to his moderately damaged body. Could he a do that Zandatsu without his blade now? If not then we needed to finish him off.

“Oh come on, you have High Frequency blades attached to your back?! We only got Low Frequency chainsaws, I feel cheated!” Might feel sorry for Blade Wolf, but I didn’t feel sorry for Jack in this instance as the mechanical canine bodied enemy stared down Dormarch and popped out his two chainsaws and began revving them.

This evolution for Dormarch seemed to have gone from dog to more wolf like, Dormarch was covered in a brilliant white armor with blue stripes and gold lining and highlighting parts of him. He now had two wings made of thick bladed swords that weren’t very long and had ankle armor with wheels behind all of his paws. He looked a little bit more mechanical in appearance, but I could feel his strength had jumped exponentially.

Dormarch could look like whatever he wanted to, he was still my cute little puppy at the end of the day… though I had a slight problem with the name though.

I sent a mental thought of…. ‘Seriously Dormarch, Growling Machine Monster’?

“Well excuse me for having forced a rare digital evolution out to save you mom! Apparently this one is a one to one of an ancient digital monster due to a bunch of random data cobbled together by our recent experiences. I didn’t come up with the name, it existed long before we got here.” Dormarch wasn’t angry, but he was somewhat embarrassed about the name of the evolution. Even as he said it Jack wolf lunged for Dormarch and his left paw not only held off Jack Wolf, he sent him flying backwards and Jack’s death hungry red aura dimmed drastically in that single slap. “Thankfully we took out his main weapon. This form might be why I’m currently classified under Shielder Saber Beast. Both my cores are running hot and I don’t know how long I can actually hold this unstable form for mom, but I’m going to make sure to take Jack down! Yes Dolly, I’m somewhat sorry I ate that armor to fuel this after you called dibs on it.”

I could actually even see where parts of the Magitek Armor was used to create this new form, it was kind of interesting that Dormarch could even do that. I’m sure most Digital Monsters can’t get evolutions nearly this fast unless they are like Sami and have a history of buildup and refusal to evolve.

‘Can you handle Saber Jack Wolf?’ I mentally asked Dormarch after he just said he was unstable. Jack leaned forward letting out a tinny distorted mechanical howl that sent shivers down my spine as his chainsaws started up, he actually sounded like he was in pain. (See Buzz Lightyear of Star Command- ‘Wirewolf’ transformation for more details.)

“I’ll have to. Huh… Kendogarurumon bipedal mode not applicable, Garummon mode only? Well that doesn’t matter to me, can you protect yourself from Fou while I deal with Saber?” Nodding at Dormarch’s back, he started glowing brightly after I did so. I noted that the revving rotating blades of the chainsaws slowed down drastically and that Jack Wolf seemed to weaken considerably in the light that Dormarch was giving off. “Howling Star!”

Dormarch blurred forward like a bright shining star and collided with Jack bowling him over to start attacking him aggressively with his claws. Their claws immediately began scraping against one another’s armor plated bodies after that painful collision for Jack, they started to add wild biting and there was a clash of their back mounted weapons.

Dormarch was doing fairly okay as he defended himself from the chainsaws with his blade wings until Jack forced him off and managed to slap a paw across the left side of Dormarch’s face staggering him. Dormarch however wasn’t taking nearly as much damage as Jack was, which made me hopeful for Dormarch.

Without his sword, Jack Wolf was on the back paw and Dormarch’s wing blades seemed to be capable of matching Jack’s chainsaws safely without damage as he forcefully pushed Saber Jack Wolf away from lunging me with his chainsaws. It even seemed that Jack had weakened even further as soon as he made contact with Dormarch, which was strange.

“So that’s what Counter Hero does…” Dormarch stated curiously with a tilt of his head. “Well that means you’re fighting on my level!”

No, I’m fairly certain Jack Wolf was still more skilled than you Dormarch, but you had the raw power in this situation and… oh gods and goddesses Fou!

I snapped the paralance forward as Fou collided with me and tried to claw at and bite me over the canopy of it. I was forced down onto my back while fending off Fou’s sudden attack and started to kick up into his belly with my rear legs several times only to hear him grunt, I grit my teeth and flexibly launched my left rear hoof up into his chin staggering him.

A blade fired from Jack’s right hip while his was locked in combat with Dormarch. Given the trajectory, it would have hit me in the face, only it got deflected by Dormarch’s armored tail suddenly flexing into its path and changing its direction entirely.

Said tail deflected it right into Fou’s spine causing him to howl angrily and turn on Jack, letting the pressure off of me. Dormarch hadn’t done that by accident, it had actually been rather calculated.

Fou actually started helping Dormarch in attacking Jack without bothering Dormarch, despite him being the reason why he had a molten knife still lodged in his spine. I wondered why, until I remembered that Fou might respect Dormarch somewhat after what he did when he got his body back during the Skull Chaosdramon X fight, Fou certainly respected or was drawn to raw strength or power. So Fou was notably paying attention to the one responsible for launching the attack.

Getting up and backing away from the fight, I heard a loud sound and looking behind me from my position on the ground. I could see the now fully zombie Excelsus was getting up. There was also some oddly painful static noise in my ears coming from… what in the world were those things!? They looked so alien, almost like a nautilus in appearance, but something was very off with their existences.

“Eaters, the Eaters are here!” Announced Driver loudly as the five magitek armors fending off the random monsters trying to get in on what could loosely be termed as a fight, as all the NP monsters suddenly changed course to start for the eaters and… were swiftly devoured from existence.

A zombie gekko tried to infect one of them and managed to land it’s tentacle into it, only to prove the thing to be entirely immune, and then quickly got erased from existence as the Eater ate it. Not only did it not affect the Eater, it seemed to make it slightly larger.

“Oh Yggdrasil. As the Dark Area falls upon us once more, may we see the light of the Royal Knights, the Ancient Heroes or The Devas in these trying times…” One of the Commandramon stated in terror, it sounded kind of religious.

The area was starting to fill with the swarming black and white checkered monstrosities. A number of said nautili horrors were attacking the zombie Excelsus, instead of erasing with it… they looked like they were trying to fuse to it.

“Focus fire, do not let any of them near you. If we’re to get out of this alive, we need to work together and cover each other’s backsides!” Driver barked out as an order from nearby I could feel where Dolly was and sighed in relief, even as I turned to watch as Jack Wolf continues to make both Dormarch and Fou struggle with putting him down even without his main weapon. Jack was apparently just as dangerous in quadruped mode as he was in bipedal with a sword, his chainsaw were certainly bloodying Fou quite a bit and Dormarch was mostly focusing on defensive maneuvers with his wing blades. I really doubted that Jack’s chainsaws could kill The Beast that is Fou, bloody and injure him yes, but kill him… after what I’ve seen Fou survive I wouldn’t put it past Fou to survive this situation by sheer force of will and brutality. “Ma’am in the missile truck, fire all those missiles at Excelsus and stick with us. In fact, fire immediately whenever you can cycle more ammunition, that thing needs to be destroyed. Stay focused entirely on the giant machine and don’t let them fuse to it and make this even worse by creating an Eater Mother!”

“Mm… scared…” Whimpered a voice from the truck, as multiple bipedal black and white checkered figures started appearing all around us. Even saying that, the truck still started to fire missiles and knock the Eaters off the Excelsus which started recovering from the damaged portions of it that were eaten.

Just what we needed, a giant regenerating zombie machine… one that was spewing fire from the broken barrels on its heads at the eaters for all the good that was doing to the things. Nothing seemed to really effect Eaters much other than overwhelming force.

“Oh trust me, we all are! The Pure Eaters have started to produce Eater Soldiers, we do not want them to actively field any more dangerous combat forms!” Driver was getting rather hysterical as the bipedal things started to move towards the nearest moving thing in a slow meandering almost contemplative manner. Whenever they got close to something, they lunged deceptively fast and latch onto said moving thing with their tentacles and started to erase it from existence. I felt sorry for the raptor that just got eaten, as it sounded like it was in agony as it disappeared. “If they do, then that means we’re about to be at the epicenter of a possible universe destroying event! Every Eater is dangerous in the same way, do not make physical contact unless you’re an ultimate or mega level digimon. We only have one of those around and it’s quite unfortunate that they are busy!”

Everything around me was pure chaos… and I looked up to see one of the bipedal eaters on approach for me slowly shambling forward deceptively. I hoped the paralance was as indestructible as it appeared, at least Dolly was picked up and safely riding with Driver.

The Commandramon turned their guns on the Eater Soldier near me and it was slowly gunned down by the five Commandramon quickly starting to form up around me in their armors as they even gave the Eater Soldiers a wide berth. The armors seemed so much bigger now that I wasn’t in one. The speed at which they gunned it down took thirty solid seconds of shooting from ten different streams of shots to finally destroy it. Just one among the fifty or so Eater Soldiers that started appearing in the area, they were not going to be able to deal with them all in a timely manner if it required that much concentrated firepower.

While a raptor would be blown apart in a second, the Eater Soldier just seemed to absorb being hit with so many shots until its toughness was completely and entirely overridden… in the one section of its body that took hundreds of rounds to even get to that point.

The bipedal Eater Soldier creatures were vaguely shaped like the bipeds from Dolly’s home world, but they were still nautilus as their heads and torsos were shells and their arms and legs were made of swirling and spiraling tentacles that ended in strange wires that acted like fingers. Dormarch and Fou were too busy with Jack to really help with these things as they kept encroaching on the surrounding programs enemy or not.

“New mission orders from Moon Cell, unknown danger has been given threat level maximum, Jack… Jack? Jack?! JACCCCCK?!” It seemed that Blade realized that Jack was no longer listening to Moon Cell’s orders, or at least I was interpreting it that way and didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. Jack didn’t seem to care as he continued to fight Dormarch and Fou. I watched as Jack Wolf’s tail surprisingly tore through one of the Eater Soldiers that tried to eat him instantly by stabbing it through its core and was swiftly flung away without a second though. “Turning off Blade Wolf limiters for continued survival reason. Doggy messiah, I know this is going to sound odd, but please stay away from Jack… he’s gone completely rogue, but I kind of need him to be alive so I can live too. So if you can just not die for the time being while I try to figure out how to fix my best friend?”

A core which took the Commandramon with five Magitek Armors thirty seconds to bust for just one of these thing had been under constant concentrated fire. Jack Wolf was still ridiculously strong even without his weapon.

I honestly didn’t know what to be more terrified of at the moment. The Coding Zombies, the Neutral Programs or the very miniscule number of Enemy Programs still fighting for Jack, Jack himself or Fou who seemed to have suddenly allied with us temporarily mostly due in part to the given situation. The Eaters were the more terrifying and alien ones here and they were ludicrously resilient to damage, so I think they won the vote for scariest thing we were facing at this moment.

Our APs were at least giving the Eaters a wide berth and weren’t even trying to fight them up close. The Caerbannogs were at least throwing knives at them for all the damage strange exploding paper tagged knives could do, the killer bunnies also these strange golden grenades with crosses on them that apparently had a four second timer on them and made a strange musical sound before going off that sounded like a chorus singing ‘hallelujah’ for some reason.

The golden grenades the Caerbannogs were throwing were a bit more effective, even if the damage was minimal, it was still damage. It is just that the Eaters seemed like they were highly impervious to damage.

All around us hovered what were called Pure Eaters eating everything in sight, including the ground, the trees, the rocks… just absolutely everything was disappearing near them!

“Eep!” I looked towards the truck as it came up next to me and I saw a yellow Caerbannog with wings quivering in the right seat. Next to her in the driver’s seat was another regular Assassin Caerbannog with a green headband, dark eyes that have seen things and a cigar sticking out of the left corner of his mouth. The Caerbannog motioned for me to grab on and I gladly did so. He pointed at me and then the Commandramon armors, maybe the AP had an idea? They certainly seemed intelligent enough for it.

“Uh guys stick with the missile truck and… protect it?” I asked questioningly and the Caerbannog raised a thumb at the order and tapped the yellow Caerbannog making her jump, he pointed up and then down.

“Oh right, okay…” Said the odd buttery sweet winged Caerbannog that could probably assassinate hearts with sugar overdose. That’s when a strange humming yellow PLANT with butterflies and flowers imprinted on it came down and hovered next to the truck humming softer than most PLANTs usually did. Apparently our odd friend was in control of it. “Hi I’m Cuddlestare… it’s nice to finally meet you Pom.”

I pointed at my throat and shook my head that I couldn’t currently talk, my body was refusing until my throat healed up. I still patted her on right shoulder gently and she hid her face behind her long pink hair with a blush.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Well that’s not good, it seems the eldritch energy beings from between worlds are being drawn to that realm by the existence of zombie virus. Gaining physical forms is making them quite cranky.” We were barely getting images of what was occurring in Moon Cell’s worlds, but it didn’t look too good for Pom at the moment. I sighed, how does Pom attract so much trouble?

“Cranky, that’s your word for wildly consuming existence itself as soon as they gain bodies?” Bahamut stated as he and his sister Tiamat watched as the Commandramon protected the missile truck and tried to deal with the ever increasing number of problems. The Eaters were getting exponentially worse.

“Yes.” I at least knew that the Eaters were supposed to be benign cleaners, but in this case… they were dangerous, like extremely dangerous, even dangerous to someone of my stature in my current avatar. I could easily beat them though, but Pom… she wasn’t that lucky.

“Time around the Moon Cell realms is slowing down to match real time father.” Mew announced. “Our neighbors the digital realm is starting to fall into real time with us as well.”

“Hmm…” I contemplated what that could mean, Pom’s very existence inside of Moon Cell was corrupting it quite badly that it was slowly breaking up the time disparity between us and the computational realms. “When the realms are one to one in time, have all legendary Pokémon inform my children of the invasion of the two worlds and tell them to start trying to save our neighbors. They are currently badly on the back foot and the local Yggdrasil Prime sorely needs our help.”

“That’s going to be a problem, we have a horrible invasion going on in Viperia. The poison types are having problems. Moon Cell has gained a naturally occurring foothold into our world and doesn’t need Yggdrasil to hold it.” Yes, that is true Mew, but I have accounted for that.

“All that needs to happen is for King Evan to unite the kingdoms, then I will take the field and the fight to Moon Cell. Mirage Mew is already setting up an access point for us as soon as Pom and the others open a path to the inner reaches of Moon Cell’s realms.” I paused as I watched the hectic scene. “Give them time, I trust that they will make it alright… even through this. Mortals are more resourceful than most beings give them credit for.”

-In a different Moon Cell Realm, Mash-

My name was Mash and I was currently the creature of shields, whereas my friend King Arthur or Arty was the creature of blades. We were currently having a major problem with what Moon Cell sent at us this time.

I still had trouble believing that Moon Cell was throwing the souls of multiple child soldiers at us!

“Exo-Taranis, fire the managarm!” Shouted a bipedal cat child from the massive tank Arthur and I were fighting on paw and had been trying to deal with for the last few hours.

It… wasn’t going well…

I activated my shielding abilities and managed to stay standing through the massive beam that I just took to the face. The light from it sure was painfully blinding though.

“Arty, do something. I know they are children, but they are still servants of Moon Cell!” Moon Cell sent an entire pack of ‘Casters’ at us, said Casters had apparently been part of a horrible war where they made an incredible tank as their own territory with little idea of how to do actual magic aside from using their emotions to power said magically driven tank to victory through willpower.

Said tank had a magic cannon and, horrifyingly enough, a more powerful cannon that literally fired freshly tortured souls at people.

Arthur wasn’t handling this too well after one of the kids fired their screaming souls at us, it didn’t take us long to figure out that Moon Cell summoned that soul again back inside the tank thirty minutes later. Just so it could be used again in the same manner not too soon afterwards, it was actively torturing the souls of those children to try and bring us down and there was some magic involved in making sure the souls couldn’t escape Moon Cell’s grasp or the tanks as long as said tank existed.

That even the famed Excalibur was having problems with piercing the magical death tank was saying something about the trouble we were having with it. Arthur didn’t have access to the Rhongomyniad and we even knew who had it, but not where they currently were. Could have really used the piercing power of that thing if Arthur wasn’t so upset by having a nasty negative with being anywhere remotely near it.

Can’t say that the soul cannon on the tank wasn’t threatening either, given how powerful it is and has almost already wiped out half of our entire territory that we worked so hard to build up to take the fight to Moon Cell. All we were doing was slowing down the tanks advance and our friendly programs couldn’t do much to that thing either.

Author's Note

Sorry, haven't been in a good writing mood recently... or a good head space.

I'm okay, just feeling somewhat melancholic.

408. Metal Hound Chaos! Pt. 12 Finale.

-???, Oleander-

“Honestly now, how is it that this is the third time we’ve ended up in a dimension with this theme set to it?” I said dryly. “Also, me and my friends are not imaginary, I’m fairly certain that Imaginary creatures have insides that don’t make sense right? Well we have biology that makes perfect sense!”

“Hey, speak for yourself, I’m fairly certain that Buttina and my biology makes no damn sense whatsoever at the best of times after all the crap we’ve survived.” Wrex commented dryly as we were stuck at a mad house of warped space and time for the time being.

“Honestly, I can see why they would think we’re imaginary friends, BUT WE’RE NOT AND I’M A LITERAL DEMON IN THE SHAPE OF A BOOK!” Honestly Fred, it was hard to tell if you were imagined or not. Some people wished you were just a nightmare.

“Coco?” Said an airplane, life raft faced walking palm tree bird thing. This world had the strangest entities.

“Yeah, got any further proof than just having a clearly understandable and defined biology?” The tall, one armed and clearly basketball focused, red creature thing stated. “Sure not all children can imagine a working circulatory system properly, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have one.”

“Si, that would be muy helpful as Wilt is saying.” Said the friendly purple furred minotaur.

“Well okay, what is the absolute simplest thing that we can do that proves we’re not imaginary friends?” I asked because apparently imaginary friend could be and do almost anything.

“Well imaginary friends can’t create imaginary friends for one, why that’d be quite ridiculous!” The tall red guy, Wilt, stated while waving his one arm at us in a friendly manner.

“Buttina, you are the most childlike in mindset here among us, create the dumbest thing you can literally imagine!” I turned to Buttina and she concentrated for a moment and a cloud appeared next to our favorite Pandoran Bicorn.

A second later something made out of an odd cross of a piñata and a bunch of shotguns in the shape of a puppy appeared. It swiftly sneezed a shotgun blast of individually wrapped sour candies out of its double barreled nose as a form of buckshot onto the floor. Surprisingly the packaging and the candy remained intact after hitting the floor at bullet speeds, the packaging is probably magically protected for a time.

“Whoa, that is awesome!” Blooregard stated as he took up a piece of candy and tossed it in his mouth. I blinked, he didn’t seem surprised to see us… would that mean he’s… “Oh, hey Oleander, Buttina, Fred and Overlord Ender ‘seeker of the Doggy Messiah’. Yeah gang, it might surprise you to hear this, despite how weird and colorful they are, these guys aren’t imaginary friends. Remember when I said I got lost in another dimension and there was that whole thing with those freaky evil television belly monsters everywhere, yeah these guys are the ones that saved me from that and sent me back home.”

“Really, I thought that was an excuse to get out of doing chores again.” Wilt seemed a little shocked and surprised that Bloo knew us.

“Those freaks just wouldn’t stop smiling… and had so many sharp teeth…” The shotgun piñata, oddly colorful and dog shaped as it was, calmly hugged Buttina and started patting her back. It randomly fired a blast of several sealed bean bag shaped plastic packets of ‘Gummy Freds’ out of its wagging tail and I quirked my eye at my fiancé who shrugged and grinned. We’ll definitely talk about the merchandizing Fred has been doing behind my back later. “I think I already love you in an entirely platonic manner that won’t freak out my boyfriend. I’m naming you Shotgun Surprise… I named him so we’re keeping him right?”

“Can I imagine something to the tune of brain bleach and have it appear?” Wrex asked a second later

“Would it work?” I asked scathingly.

“No, but it might get me drunk.” Wrex stated with a patented Krogan smile.

“Coco!” The island escape bird laid an egg and out of it popped something labeled ‘XXX Super Brain Bleach’, with a smaller label stating it was not safe for children, foals or imaginary creatures under eighteen years of age and any creature that lays eggs that are named and can only say ‘Coco’. The last one was fairly quite specific to the individual that just produced the stuff.

“Don’t let Coco drink any of that, we’ve been trying to keep her off of that stuff.” That imaginary friends could even get drunk was weird Wilt, I wonder if any of the other Oleander’s ran into this imaginary friend problem? “Coco has… a sad history and she’s been doing so good about not hitting the er… ‘sauce’… as it were... that’s the nice word for it right?”

“It is not being that bad, we is helping our amiga Coco with it and she is being very good at holding her liquor. Now you being arrested five times in one day and are still being a fugitive from the police… that is being muy grande bad Wilt.” Well the chunky mexicolt speaking purple minotaur just brought up what sounded like an intriguing story.

“It’s… complicated…” Wilt stated while wilting at my stare and his wonky eye looking all over the place suspiciously.

“Can we keep the magical imaginary bird that can give me alcohol?” Wrex asked pleasantly as he chugged the brain bleach a bit, then belched quite loudly. Said belch was spewing blue and white flames everywhere. “Aw yeah, now that’s the kind of stuff that’ll mess you up and knock you on your back for a week and make you forget your twenty eighth ex-wife trying to orbital drop a battlecruiser on your head… almost like chugging an entire bucket of Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster would.”

“No, we’re not adopting any imaginary creatures!” The second I said that, Shotgun Surprise started giving me a hurt puppy dog look. How is a dog creature that is made almost entirely out shotguns with eyes that looked googly so freaking cute?! “Though we’ll make a small exception for Shotgun Surprise, provided we eventually introduce them to Pom just to see what happens.”

Shotgun Surprise explosively farted a huge amount of foil wrapped chocolates shaped like unicorns onto the floor in sheer joy at having a chance to spend more time with his creator. This was coming from the shotgun below his tail, so it is easy to imagine that I’d rather not touch what came out of his backside.

-Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, Warped Farmlands, Castle Alexander Outskirts, Quetal-

A blast of lightning flashed across the field frying everything in its path.

Lit was quite a little force of nature on the battlefield, but we all had pulled back to let the APs handle the front, those reusable mines hadn’t stopped going off since we’ve been pushed back to protecting the perimeter of the castle.

At least most of the threats were coming from the direction of the twisted city, where most of the mines were, and not as much our surroundings to the point that the APs could easily cover the sides and back of the castle.

I saw flashes of territory being taken by our towers. Nice to know our support fire was going to a good cause, but we still had a large incoming machine coming at us. Even with Dodo and Canard distracting it to the best of their abilities, they weren’t actually slowing it down.

Didn’t know how we’d handle it once it got here, we would all needed to be evacuated into the castle by then.

“Lit, come on, we’re falling back!” I waved a claw and the little yellow battlefield maestro immediately started bounding back in our direction. “You too Curdle, everyone into the castle!”

As I climbed the stairs with Shine at my side and passed through the gates of the castle, I saw a bunch of Gazimon on flying machines taking off with a lot of sacks. Whatever they were doing I wished them well. I was exhausted and needed a meal and some rest from being on the front lines to save Ransei again. Since we’re still trying and we’ve succeeded at getting this far.

I hoped the underground team is doing okay.

-Mare Melum, Underground, Complete Disaster Zone, Pom-

I’m not doing okay, but I would be alive at least, the Paralance was proving to be quite useful yet again.

Pushing the end of the lance forward into the torso of an Eater Soldier, it staggered back and then I swung for its head, it went down phased out of existence.

That was rather easy compared to the hundreds of rounds of ammunition from the Magitek Armor needed to do the same thing was telling. If the Paralance was a mystical weapon, then it was fairly powerful one that I had no idea what it could actually do.

At least now knew going into full Beast Mode and using magical wolf claws would be effective, but it also might get me eaten if I was to sacrifice mental sanity to use it.

I continued to fend the Eater Soldiers off and beat them down with the Paralance with a few swings and make sure they can’t lunge onto me or get near the truck. I didn’t want to be touched by these things after seeing what they’ve done to the surroundings and being told they have the same effect on everything.

The missile truck moved and launched a volley of missiles, as much good as that would do, the Excelsus was practically indestructible and the only reason why we’re shooting it is to stop the Pure Eaters from fusing to it and taking it over.

Those Pure Eaters really wanted the Excelsus and it was the largest thing in the area that had some general success in dealing with them… by being a large easy to hit target and it took multiple missiles to really do some damage to the alien flying whelk things, but we’ve managed to destroy a few of them with the missile barrages from the truck.

The unreal alien nature of the Eaters was fairly daunting given how much punishment they could take compared to everything else we were dealing with on top of them.

An example is the Eater Soldiers were being struck with fireballs from the flying red wyverns, for all the good that did when they were resilient to most forms of attack and the fireballs only knocked them over before they flowed back into a standing position with their tentacles.

There were quite a few things attacking the Eaters, but anything that got close to them tended to die or be eaten really fast. At least the Zombie Gekko had flamethrowers, enough concentrated heat had some effect on the Eaters even if it was slow damage. I’m fairly sure the Eaters were eating the heat and temperature out of the area as well.

Any damage done to the Eaters was hard to see, given underneath the black and white checkered skin… was more checkered colors, they don’t bleed in a normal manner and the static they create when they are about to be destroyed was the only indication you were close to beating one.

The oddest thing that was helping the situation was the colorful balls of what smelled like condensed sugar slamming into the surrounding Eater Soldiers from out of the sky, enough direct hits from those actually took out a few of them. It was coming from the one small allied region we had nearby which had me curious.

Dormarch was quite busy dealing with Jack. Even if his new evolution was powerful, given he just fired a powerful laser from his mouth that tore a few Eater Soldiers in half, he was still having problems dealing with Jack and likely wasn’t entirely used to his new forms capabilities yet.

Fou was… oddly staying away from Eaters and observing them a little bit fearfully. Having been distracted from the fight with Jack and Dormarch clashing their respective blades and chainsaws coming out of their backs. If even Fou’s backing away warily from the Eaters, then they were the most dangerous things around here.

“Pom, Pure Eater coming for missile truck, can you stop it?” Yeah, thanks for the heads up Driver, I see it coming.

“… try….” My throat hurts so really that’s about as much I could say before it constricted. I was still very thankful that the Commandramon were here, even if they were heavily stressed with actually taking out Eater Soldiers that started wandering towards us as their primary focus.

=

Pure Eater - Consume Everything!? (Insert threatening ‘Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth OST- Something Eroding’ music here.)

I positioned myself when I saw the Pure Eater heading this way, these things were larger than the Eater Soldiers and could float. Staring down the red eye as it focusing on me with hit’s two tentacles and its bulbous shell, I brought up the Paralance and waited as the checkered alien cuttlefish charged me.

Once it was reaching out for me with its odd two odd tentacles, one lined with a zipper like spikes, I slammed the paralance open and managed to stun it or at least pause it in motion.

I closed up the lance and lunged forward with a thrust slamming it into a smaller tentacle between its two larger tentacles, the creature flopped onto the ground squealing in pain. Even then I didn’t let up my guard around something that can kill on contact and stepped back when it tried to lunge for me.

Bringing the paralance to the left while open, I swung it to the right and the edge of the blade edged canopy slashed into its three grasping tentacles reaching for me and cut them all in half. They immediately started regenerating and I quickly jammed the lance forward into the red glowing eye thing on the creature above the damaged tentacles, after having dealt my damage I leapt backwards as its tentacles reformed and tried to wrap around me.

Having failed to get a grasp on me the Eater made a strange noises and two Eater Soldiers appeared right next to it.

I heard the missile truck firing behind me and I saw more Pure Eaters being blown apart into hazy static as the Excelsus was damaged.

Dolly, can you get me some help?

One of the Eater Soldiers was suddenly being hit with concentrated fire from the Commandramon as the Eater charged for me with its other soldier. Several explosive devices flew overhead and blasted the other Eater Soldier knocking it back.

The two tentacles spread out wide and swept inwards for me and I bashed at the larger one on my right and dodged away the one from the left touch me. I did not want to be any closer than I already was as I thrust my weapon forward and pierced the side of the creature’s regenerated large toothy tentacle.

My blow caused the left side of its shell to twist towards me, I jammed the lance forward and then slashed it up with a magic wolf claw as I hopped out of range of it trying to whip me with the large tentacle.

One Eater Soldier eventually blew apart and then the Commandramon had to focus on a group of Eater Soldiers off to the side coming at us from a different direction.

The other Eater Soldier started to surge for me as did the Pure Eater, when a bunch of colorful cannon balls blew apart the Eater Soldier making it easier to concentrate of the large eater as I open the paralance and fend off its tentacles try to so much as graze my wool.

It was increasing the forward pressure and trying to force my off my hooves and I was already leaning back to avoid getting touched, it was going to succeed when it was hit and pierced through the side by… a sharpened Candy Cane? It seemed to make the Pure Eater back off of me and had done a lot of damage.

“Did not know this form could do that, need some assistance darling? Then Flarity.exe is here to help! From a relatively safe distance of course…” I glanced at the voice and saw… a marshmallow looking cougar with candy cane claws, she was already in the process of growing a candy cane horn from her head. Not the weirdest thing I’ve seen today considering I’m fighting something quite alien that can me kill on contact… in melee range. Couldn’t use my barks, threw out my voice weakening Jack, so any long range help was appreciated. “Pinkpie.exe be a dear and help the lovely soldier boys would you?”

“On it, Pie Army, Digimon style attack P-Cannonball thingy artillery support!” Why did I feel a sense of dread hearing that voice and the way it said that? At least I knew where the colorful cannonballs were coming from now.

“Blunt damage is not as effective on these eaters unless it’s a massive overpowering force, I believe piercing attacks to be their major weakness.” Said a purple raptor as a group of colorful… beings like the yellow winged Caerbannog, given they showed up with their own PLANTs with their symbols emblazoned upon them, they were our allies at the very least. “So keep firing those horn spears Flarity.exe!”

That’s when the Eater started to turn on Flarity, at least it was no longer pointed at the missile truck. It was quickly encroaching on her.

Hey, I know this might be a bad time to test your intelligence, but can you make yourself pointy and elongate so I’m not within range of those tentacles? I had no idea why I was mentally asking this of the Paralance as if I had a familiar bond with it as I rushed to stop the Eater from attacking someone who wasn’t apparently fit for close up combat scenarios.

Despite looking like a powerful cougar, Flarity looked more freaked out than anything at the approach of the Eater and was firing Candy Cane spears into it dealing quite a bit of damage as fast as she could. Which was a slow five seconds between each shot.

If we were having this much trouble with one without an excessive, possibly overkill, amount of explosives, then imagine what would happen if the seventy or so Eaters in the area that were busy swarming the Excelsus all decided to stop doing that and come at us all at once.

It was about to reach this Flarity, when I thrust the closed Paralance forward at the back of its odd shell when I got close enough… much to my surprise the lance decided to finally respond to my mental request that it change form to something more helpful at the most inopportune moment.

The end of the spear became a sharpened shorter conical spike, then I assume the mass taken from the normal cones length possibly went into creating a shaft of the same length as what I was currently holding in my hooves.

This basically doubled the overall length of the weapon immediately and threw me off balance as the Paralance ripped through the back of the creature and out where I think its eye was at its front.

It wildly shrieked and tried to get at Flarity or turn on me unfortunately I had the wherewithal to actually keep it from being able to move to threaten anyone. I had ran the Paralance clean through the darn thing and it refused to die and it was starting to pull and thrash me about.

Barely managing to stay standing and holding on as Flarity pierced it with another candy cane horn spear firing from her forehead, the Eater that came for the missile truck was final started to create a static noise and looked like it was becoming static itself.

“Bonsai!” A voice shouted as it came diving in from above, it was a colorful butterfly winged lizard.

“Darn it you dang idiot, you’re not supposed to touch those things!” I heard before a boulder whistled through the air and impacted the Eater forcing it into the ground as it made me stumbled at the sudden weight being placed on the spear. That’s where the diving lizard slammed into the boulder, bounced off and avoided being killed by her own definitive brand of idiocy. I still had the thing skewered and the rainbow lizard looked dazed as the boulder dissolved by having been eaten a second later. “Remember that those things kill on contact Rainbow.exe!”

“Oh… right… yeah, my bad!” The lizard said dazedly as the purple raptor face clawed, as did the muscular blue cow next to her. “What about her spear though, why is that not going away?”

“Well it’s obviously something special you idjit!” The Blue cow roared at the Rainbow lizard.

The Eater continued to struggle and some Eater Soldiers started to form, but they were doing so quite slowly that they were stopped from fully forming by a pair of candy cannonballs.

Could someone help me finish this thing off? I wanted to yell this so direly, but with me being temporarily mute this wasn’t going well.

That is when the paralance answered my prayers, as the tip of the spear retreated into the Eaters body and then it practically exploded when multiple spikes ripped through it from the inside, causing said monster to fade out of existence in a mass of static noises and black and white fog.

I was a little freaked out by the morphing Paralance as it quickly returned to a more adorable and friendly looking parasol form and I glared at it. After what I just saw, could I ever really simply look at this thing the same way again knowing what I do now?

“Whoa… that spear is so metal!” Rainbow.exe stated as she looked at lance as she came crawling up to me fast with a wide grin as her humming PLANT came down to float behind her.

“Rainbow.exe is not the only one that needs to use their head, Flarity.exe start summoning programs from your personal PLANT and get them focused on firing their horns on the Eaters. Pinkpie.exe help deal with the aggressive beast programs or the coding zombies. Apple.exe, find anything sharp or blunt object and start throwing them, in fact have a Flarity clone give you spears to throw or just liberally throw aggressive enemy programs at the Eaters.” The purple and dark blue raptor seemed to be the smart one of the group. “Now if you’ll excuse us…”

When she said ‘us’ the purple raptor generated multiple copies of herself and they all started working like a hive mind in concert. They immediately started picking off any EPs that was surviving this onslaught of insanity.

“What do I do?” Rainbow.exe asked as she took up position next to me.

“Something Rainbow.exe, just don’t touch or go near the Eaters!” The head purple raptor stated.

“…” Rainbow.exe generated a single clone from her PLANT. “Do you have any idea what we can do?”

The clone lifted its front legs and shrugged, it seemed about as bright as the original was and I gave them a flat stare.

Shaking my head I turned and went towards the missile truck to regroup with my group. The last few or so hours have been driving me quite spare. I looked over to see how Dormarch was doing.

-How Dormarch is doing-

My wing blades locked up the two chainsaw and I opened my mouth for one of my newest attacks.

“Lupine Laser!” I gathered energy in my mouth Jack narrowly avoided having his head taken off and I blasted off his left chainsaw, following up my mouth beam I stabbed my unoccupied wing blade into their left side and they quickly kicked off of me before I could cut them in half with my frequency blade wings.

“Oh come on, mouth lasers! Why didn’t we get something like that or a mouth gatling cannon?!” Blade Wolf really liked to complain, him being an onboard AI I think I can empathize with his frustration considered what it was like for me before I got my body back. “Sure finding a place to fit the ammo in this very streamlined body would have been hard, but still. I knew we should have at least sprung for that rail gun attachment, but no-~ it’s always rule of cool with you Jack! Wouldn’t have needed too many rounds of that and the rail gun could have been handheld on top of being capable of being attachable to our back too!”

“Yeah, I’m starting to feel like a better designed you now too…” Considering the many similarities between our bodies, one would think we were designed by the same company… if I weren’t a digital entity that is and some kind of ridiculously lethal cyborg monster robot that can take a lot of punishment in its canine mode.

“Standing here, we realize, you are just like us, trying to… agh?!~” Blade Wolf started to sing as Jack continued to attack like a berserker with his claws, fangs and the single remaining low frequency chainsaw, still in ‘True Ripper’ mode even now improving his capabilities beyond what his body should be capable of, given I had a good idea of its specifications at this point.

“No, never let villains start heart songs, that’s always bad Dormarch!” Mom shouted as she blindsided Jack Wolf with a stab of the paralance. She damaged his right hip and knife launcher while sending the cyborg skidding across the ground threatening to topple over. Her wool was shifted for Sheep’s Clothing meaning, her wool was enhancing her physical capabilities and she stopped caring about her wools protection. “We got help, but after this we need to really deal with the Excelsus, we’re getting help with the Eaters thanks to our strange new allies!”

“Yeah, my friends have… whoa… got it!” A rainbow colored Draco Volans stated… a flying rainbow colored Draco Volans that just dodge blazing hot knives from the left hip mounted launcher.

“Shouldn’t you be incapable of flight?” I asked.

“I don’t know that, so yes, I am capable of flight.” Was she really just going to ignore the fact that she shouldn’t be able to fly and smile about it… just to be able to fly?! “So long as I avoid hitting the ground, I’m flying right? Besides bats do this all the times.”

She wasn’t a bat though, was arguably heavier and should only be capable of gliding!

I looked to mom and she shook her head no and mentally told me not to pursue a matter this absurd. Thankfully I agreed to not do that and continue to focus on Jack who was most likely no longer acting in the capacity of a servant.

-Pom-

We just needed to finish off Jack, he was just too dangerous to let stick around and we now had an opportunity to focus him.

“Rargh!” Jack lunged at me, despite the damage we’ve done to his body he was still giving off a blood filled aura and was intent on killing me since I came at him. I shifted to the right and swung the paralance down and missed as he brought his rear half around to dodge.

The paralance had thankfully returned to its blunter form. I inhaled and fell onto my back in slow motion as he launched for my face claws first. I let go of the paralance as I fell and then got my hind legs up under his belly, Jack and Blade were ridiculously heavy and I was thankful my wool was currently boosting my strength enough to push them back.

I took a sharp painful mechanical claw across the left side of my nose and muzzle, feeling every inch of those blades shredding my face in slow motion as I continued to inhale with my mouth. I exhaled and retaliated with a golden magical wolf claw that worryingly formed on my left hoof, instead of my right, that shredded their chest and throat open splattering me in blood, oil and letting me see the horrors of the machinery and flesh melded together up close and personal.

I heaved up with my hind legs and avoided the left claw swipe taking the right side of my face, I lifted Jack Wolfs front torso high enough with as much strength as I could put into my hind legs. The working knife launcher on the cyborgs left hip started to aim for me when several ropes wrapped around Jack Wolf's body and helped me heave the robotic wolf even higher onto its hind legs.

The ropes had stopped the tail from impaling me, the working portions of the molten knives launchers from getting an angle to fire and helped prevent me from getting clawed or possibly bitten further

Behind Jack was an odd Caerbannog, green camouflage fur, headband and a cigar, he was pulling Jack Wolf into position for…

The left high frequency blade attached to Dormarch’s back rammed through the spot I had clawed open on Jack Wolf’s chest.

“Blade Wind Turbine!” Dormarch yelled and what followed was a brutal display of parts, oil, blood and gore intermingling as he drilled Saber Jack and Blade Wolf's body apart, the red aura immediately winked out. I was completely and horrifyingly splattered by all of it.

The Caerbannog avoided Dormarch’s attack and then started making his way back for the missile truck with a grim smile while giving the shredded cyborg a weird look, he saluted me and then quickly made his way back to the truck.

“Heh… we were sent to ass-ass-assassinate… Sabers meant… to-to-to lead and… h-h-he-hero.” Blade stated as I calmly got standing with my heart trying to leap its way out of my throat and battered gore covered face. “We were… we were… WE WERE HEROES… doggy messiah…”

“That rabbit… heh… a real snake-snake-Snake… in thethethe grass, what… Colonel… on my way… hah hah… wars... over… thanks for the fight… come on Blade… let’s go find…” Jack managed to say while the red eyes on the head of the wolf machine finally died out and the body started evaporating. “Home.”

I think my eyes were deceiving me as I saw something come from the machine, a pair of souls… a grinning bipedal devil holding a sword towards the sky and a robotic canine that circled around him playfully as they shot into the air together and evaded the surroundings Eaters as they both left for who knows where.

Were they finally free like Totsugeki?

I felt something force its way into my mouth as everything was growing fuzzy and with something forcefully taking control of my mouth away from me, a familiar taste had my entire world coming back to life as I bit down.

“Those Sitrus Berries are really doing a lot of work huh? It’s really interesting how they regenerate your injuries, medically you’re fine now, but still quite exhausted.” Dormarch stated before turning and blasting an Eater Soldier away with a Lupine Laser, he used a claw to place the Paralance beside me and I gripped it weakly. “We’re not done here mom, come on… get onto my back, we still have things to do.”

The rainbow lizard helped me up and before I knew it, she had helped me over Dormarch’s back with an identical rainbow lizard. I was idly gripping onto the left handle of his left wing as Dormarch started to carry me back towards our defensive line… which felt weird as he moved along the ground on his heel wheels at high speeds.

He was just one problem among the many that are still left and Fou, was actively helping us, he seemed to command the Neutral Programs through sheer force of will and they started fighting more ferociously and were… actively trying to help us?

At least Fou saw and acknowledged the bigger threat in the Eaters at the very least to really toy or play with me for the moment. I wonder how things would have gone had he not shown up, at least things would have been less chaotic and not continuing my migraine.

-Mare Melum, Top Side, Ocellus-

“The Ray is almost upon us, Gazimon please give Canard some support fire! Make it stop trying to focus him down, his Skein Flyer looks like it’s about to fall out of the sky. Canard please retreat to Castle Alexander immediately. Shanty call Dodo back too.” I watched as the Gazimon took up wing above the castle and fired volleys of energy shots into the thing on approach, at least they knew that if they didn’t help here… they had nowhere to go with being relatively surrounding by Zombie Programs or ZPs, EPs and NPs.

They had gone beyond their original mission of lining the nearby water sources with traps, they had surrounded the castle with mines like an exploding moat that the APs took to avoiding and leading enemies into. Were they… intelligent?

“Coming in hot.” As Canard called this he serpentine through the air avoiding the hundreds of shots chomping at the backside of his machine. Once he got by the castle wall, I saw a curious event among the APs as the Caerbannog APs seemed to create a net from their rope darts that slowed Canard’s fall and managed to land him safely behind the protection of Alexander’s walls. “That would have been a rough landing, thanks for telling the Caerbannogs to catch me guys.”

That’s just it, we didn’t tell them to catch him… also having seen so many elite program signals of the enemy, why did we have one of our own? It was coming from underground? In fact we were getting a lot of information from the underground region, I could even get a visual of what was happening and we no longer had connection or communication issues.

“Colonel Ocellus, proceeding with Operation: Metal Gear Die.” Said the odd Caerbannog as he appeared on the screen for a few seconds, he smiled at me and then the screen disappeared and I blinked. I didn’t understand what the Caerbannog was talking about or that they could even talk at all, APs in general didn’t seem overall intelligent until just now and were just following orders we gave them.

Pom’s was still dealing with the Excelsus and Eaters, at least she was getting a lot of powerful support from the HPs or Harmony Programs… so we had to take care of The Ray ourselves.

“Castle Alexander, enter combat mode…” I really didn’t know how to work this thing in combat mode, but we really couldn’t sit still while that thing was coming at us.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

Hmm… curious… a soul and an artificial soul that became real like that of a Porygons or Digimon, we will not be separating them in death. They deserve a more peaceful life together on some other world far from wars as we could put them.

Most souls are commonly referred to as Pyreflies… even in the dimensions Bahamut and Tiamat hailed from, my Ghost Type children were quite unique in that respect.

I solemnly sent them on their way and thanked Yvetl, with Giratina’s help, for being able to grab them before the Eaters or Moon Cell could get them.

“Time dilation between the worlds is starting to falter, the seals on the Mystery Dungeons are starting to fail. The entire continent of Ransei is about to fall into chaos father.” Mew stated worriedly, I calmly ran one of my hooves over my sweet child’s head and made them purr.

“Patience is a virtue… and mine is about to run out. Our hopes rests on King Evan succeeding in getting a stubborn mule of a dragon to unite with the rest of Ransei.” I smiled a little. “Mystery Dungeon teams have already heard of a Mystery Dungeon popping up in Ransei, the kingdoms of Ransei are not alone.”

Jiri and her bear squad were making headway into Yaksha, land of the Dark Types, when it came to diplomacy. Avia was on board with King Evan who had more than half the continent preparing for the initial oncoming onslaught. The only concern was Dragnor and Spectra and their love bird leaders beating the snot out of each other.

Nixtorm thankfully lost its only Moon Cell invasion foothold anchor thanks to Pom’s group taking out the Mystery Dungeon there, so Nixtorm might be able to recover enough to lend support to their neighbors.

Ransei was about to become an even worse hotspot of activity as the battles in Viperia weren’t going well… since they were having problems poisoning the enemy programs currently flooding their lands.

Violight and Valora would be two major points for Moon Cell to try and break through, thankfully they were both aware of that due to the communications between the two kingdoms.

I changed one of my viewing windows to show thousands of rescue teams big and small, all of them moving towards the Ransei continent. Where there was disaster, there were rescuers and heroes that rose to the call.

They would bring with them supplies, they would fight for the world and they would face insurmountable odds… but they wouldn’t do it alone. The digital monsters world severely needed help in their slowly losing battle to a superior force and those heroes coming to Ransei… they all wanted to make some new friend.

Why Team Go-Getters were already on the continent having arrived well ahead of everyone else in the kingdom of Fontaine not too long ago with their core members, having heard of Team Harmony and the troubles in Ransei from the Pokémon of Fontaine spreading the news worldwide through postal Wingull and Pelippers.

A warmth filled my chest as I watched everyone prepared to unflinchingly throw themselves into the coming dangers, all for the sakes of others and the world around them. The heroes of this world were all answering the call to adventure and the needed fight beckoning them from all corners of the planet.

The friendships made would be glorious, as would be the fights and the many stories that would be written from this alone.

I’m already wondering… would Latios or Latias would meet a Sparrowmon? It was interesting how such a digital entity came to be, it was mostly thanks to other worlds being capable of seeing glimpses of possibilities beyond themselves… also mild copyright infringement.

Author's Note

Jack, without a high frequency blade, doesn't fight as well.

Another servant of Moon Cell down.

For those wondering, any Oleander and Fred events might not necessarily be from the same Oleander and Freds given they have a multiverse worth of Oleanders and Freds trying to find Pom and are still failing at it spectacularly.

409. Gears of Solid Mettle.

-Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, Warped Farmlands, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

We went into attack mode, the towers had a limited amount of time they could be use, we could use the castles wings to defend for a bit, but we didn’t have the power to really make any fast movements.

“Is everyone inside?” I called out as the castle stood up to its full height.

“Yeah, Ozzy, we’re all in, aside from Pom’s group and whatever they are doing.” I’m sure what they were doing was very important Smolder.

“They’re dealing with Eaters, that’s far more important than taking out The Ray. The Ray is not a PLANT or a virus producing mass of coding zombie trouble.” Sami was still up on the Castle walls

As soon as Castle Alexander took its first step, the impact of its paw slapping against the ground destroyed a mass of enemy programs and the APs somehow avoided taking any. Was it somehow selectively attacking them by stomping out shockwaves?

“Everyone might want to hold onto something, we’re entering combat with The Ray.” Castle Alexander slowly mover to the left, our enemy was moving at a much faster speed and I was thankful that our walls held up two its two fast firing cannon. The missiles weren’t a problem with how easy they were to shoot down.

-Mare Melum, underground region, devastation zone, Pom (Insert Metal Gear 2 OST- Yell “Dead Cell”)-

Facing horrors in false daylight was scary, it would be worse if we were facing them in the dark as we wouldn’t be able to see them coming at us as well.

With Jack being a major problem that was out of the way, now we had to focus on the Eaters and the Zombie Excelsus. The Pure Eaters were multiplying faster than we could deal with them and the Eater Soldiers were somewhat easier to deal with.

I wasn’t doing much, just holding onto the base of Dormarch’s left wing with my left hoof and he was rolling around on the ground at incredible speeds to avoid Eaters and swerving to get into position to retaliate. It was like he was a riding vehicle, which made some sense considering he consumed one to become Garummon.

Dormarch continued to fire lasers from his mouth into the Eater Soldiers and Pure Eaters, he was doing much more damage to the Eater Soldiers than the Pure Eaters were apparently ridiculously tough and require powerful piercing attacks to really harm in any significant manner.

There was no way I’d be able to handle the number of Eaters here and it was slowly getting progressively worse even with constant missile bombardments from the nearby truck and the Commandramon had been firing nonstop into every threat that neared us as we backed away.

We really needed something to deal with the Eaters and fast, I wasn’t about to run around and deal with all of them with the shape shifting Paralance. I didn’t have the strength for that, Dolly was out of action and who knows how long Dormarch could hold his new form for and it was likely more energy intensive than his Dobermon form.

It was at some point that I noticed that we were retreating from the Excelsus, the Excelsus was chasing us or fending off the Eaters by stabbing them with the devastatingly powerful front energy bladed arms that started glowing a sickly yellow. It either did that or outright crushed them under its four massive feet having lost its hind leg drills, watching a Pure Eater get crushed under the pure stomping power of the machine the foot raised back up letting off a cloud of black and white static.

“Any ideas mom?” Aside from a constant fighting retreat into our own territories made by our newest allies Dormarch, no, none at all.

We didn’t have infinite space to keep retreating, we couldn’t keep the Eaters off of the Excelsus forever and the Zombie Excelsus wasn’t very good at fending them off either as they kept trying to fuse to its body.

Even the Candy Cane horn spewing marshmallow cougars couldn’t keep up with or damage their numbers fast enough before fresh Eaters were spawned. They were the most effective thing against the eaters so far for the fact that they fire candy cane spears from their foreheads.

Wait… the Eaters were weak to being heavy piercing damage, but from what we just saw enough crushing force could take them out… but… I looked up at the false sunlight coming from the sky high above.

“How… close is… the nearest elevator… to the top side?” I was still tired and my throat was a bit raw, but my idea was going to require some doing and it would involve collapsing Mare Melum city onto the Eaters with fast enough crushing force that they couldn’t simply eat their way out of it.

“What is it, what’s your idea mom?” Dormarch’s voice sounded more adult, but he was still barely over a month old. He spat another Lupin Laser and the attack pierced through multiple Eater Soldiers and managed to save an allied program unit from being consumed.

The candy cannonball spewing pink ponies were doing their best, but they were only good for the Zombie Programs or the Enemy Programs still trying to attack us in spite of the Eaters coming at us. Their cannonballs did very minimal damage to Eaters.

I noted that Fou wasn’t trying to go on the offensive, he wasn’t touching any of the Eaters or fighting them. In fact, he was actively quite scared of them. It made me wonder if he knew what they were or knew exactly how truly dangerous they are. All I knew was that they ate everything, the environment slowly turning into wasteland around them showed that much.

Like the blue cows, Fou was throwing entire trees at them like giant ballista bolts whenever he could find one that wasn’t eaten out of existence by the floating eldritch black and white checkered monstrosities encroaching on us. That would actually take out one or two.

I mentally asked Dormarch the question of ‘how quickly could we collapse Mare Melum’ before the Eaters become unstoppable swarm? The Eaters attempts at fusing with Excelsus was getting harder and harder to stop the further along we went.

I don’t know what an Eater Mother was or what it looked like, but the Commandramon were quite insistent that we didn’t let them fuse to Excelsus to create one.

I wonder how dangerous being within a mile of an Eater Mother forming was, apparently stopping them would have been hard without a bunch of Mega Level Digimon. We only had the one ultimate level and I could feel Dormarch was running on a time limit and it wouldn’t be long before his evolution ran out of steam and he reverted back to Dalmamon.

Dormarch looked up to the roof of this huge cavernous expanse as he was expending quite a lot of energy on more beams firing from his mouth.

“Guys, how quickly can we collapse the entirety of Mare Melum onto these things?” Even Dormarch thought it was a good idea, mind you getting out of here while the entire city basically collapses onto us was going to be a problem. “I mean like really bury them so hard that they be destroyed by getting crushed.”

“Depends, we’d need a lot of firepower and the ability to find fault lines throughout the city… Castle Alexander would have to bombard it from above while we use the missiles from the missile truck from below… that means we’d have to intentionally let a Mother Eater start forming.” The terror in Drivers voice was noted, but would it work? That’s what we needed to know. “Feasible, but I don’t like it. We’d need someone to fly up and plant DCD Bombs on the ceiling above us.”

“Did someone say fly? I can do that!” The colorful flying lizard that helped me onto Dormarch’s back stated with a cheerful tone.

“You’ll have Pure Eaters on you in seconds. You’d have to be blazingly fast too!” Driver responded, as he gunned down an Eater Soldier that was about to grab one of the many marshmallow cougars rapidly backpedaling as they fired hundreds of horns into the stalking masses that were the Eaters.

“Rainbow.exe was made for all speed and no brains… she’s perfect for helping set up the bombs, but how would you generate them while you’re busy helping the defensive line!” The leader of the smart purple and dark blue raptors called out.

“Well if you can give us some time we can really produce some powerful explosives… we can make impact or remotely detonate C4 blocks, we just need to take out the support structure for this underground region.” I think I had an idea of how we could do that.

Dormarch, tell them to lead…

“We need to lead them into the pillars that have the elevators between the surface and down here. The eaters will likely stop to damage the support structures on their own! We just need to give the flying rainbow lizards time to set up the explosives to speed up the collapse faster… also we need someone that can fly and is smart enough to show them the locations to plant the bombs.” Dormarch as much as anyone else, has picked up on the fact that the flying rainbow lizards weren’t very bright and needed guidance.

“I can do that… just let me… nghhh…” That was the butter yellow pink hair winged Caerbannog in the missile truck with the helpful strange Assassin Caerbannog that helped take down Jack Wolf.

Cuddlestare’s PLANT suddenly started humming loudly and it generated a lot of flying Caerbannogs copies, just without the long pink hair and as more generic in appearances flying versions of the killer biped rabbits.

“Do they actually have any combat capacity Cuddlestare.exe?” Dormarch asked.

“Well they can seize data movement in a given visual area or at least slow it down… they could slow the Eaters down immensely.” Which is something they immediately started doing, Cuddlestare had command of them and it was apparent that they were effective. Large bubbles of energy seemed to slow the Eaters down to a crawl, but it didn’t slow down Excelsus at all. “Um… that machine is too big for them Purpsmart.exe…”

“Good enough, Commandramon continue retreat and start producing and passing the explosives to the Rainbow.exe copies… Rainbow.exe you are to remain with us, I don’t want you getting eaten or destroyed with your clones!" The raptor, Purpsmart.exe, ordered as we continued or embattled retreat. “Cuddlestare can your copies lead the rainbow the fault points to place the explosives? Flarity, how long do you thing your clones can keep holding?”

“Yes…” Squeaked out the cute rabbit.

“To be honest, I doubt we can hold out for long.” The main Flarity stated.

I had a thought and had Dormarch voice it after he finished firing his Lupine Laser again.

“If we gave you access to PLANTs to produce more candy cougars and winged Caerbannogs could you slow them down even more?” Dormarch asked as I sent the idea to him.

“Of course.” The smart raptor said as she watched the Cuddlestares continued to create a slowing zone trying to contain the Eaters to being around the yellow and black striped Excelsus.

“Get to work on that!” Dormarch stated to a random group of Caerbannog that were still throwing knives and strange golden grenades, one saluted and quickly ran off while dodging a few EPs or Neutral Programs that were being dealt with by the allied raptors.

We were going to have to tell the others above ground that the city was about to be destroyed, but unlike Cerebrum this wouldn’t involve the massive loss of lives and homes.

“Everyone, when those PLANTs arrive and start producing our rearguard, we’ll break and run while producing as many powerful explosives as we can.” Driver called out from the Magitek Armor in the center of his formation of two on his right and two on his left.

-Above ground, warped farmlands, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

“Do you think we can be dealing with that thing?” Shanty asked from next to me as we got Alexander dodging to the left as a rain of missiles came down to the right, the towers were focus on dealing damage to The Ray.

It was obvious that The Ray was trying to get us closer to the waters of the lake so it can get us close enough to deal the most damage with its most powerful weapon. We really hoping that the mines the Gazimon dropped off did their jobs and were letting ourselves be forced in that direction.

The Gazimon were constantly firing on it doing some moderate damage over time from the Skein Flyers and were taking hits from the two rapid fire cannons as they hovered above the castle and stayed moving.

“It doesn’t seem that powerful, so yes, I think we can deal with it if the towers can keep their fire focused on it.” I answered with some trepidation, as it wasn’t The Ray I was worried about. It’s the EPs, NPs and ZPs that were building up while we dealt with the major problem that had my attention.

The grounds around the moving castle was a mass of enemies and a small barrier of APs between us and them. We really didn’t have the capacity to deal with being hit directly by those missiles, the towers would immediately shift to anti-air if the missiles The Ray fired were homing.

I felt Smolder’s warmth and love as she slid into the seat next to me and the castle shuddered under the impact of several more explosions.

The Ray started moving for the lake while continuing to force us closer.

“Engineering, do we have enough of a power supply for a wing shields as a safety net?” I asked as the four towers continued to pump round after round into The Ray.

“Ten seconds worth, but any more than five and that’ll knock out the gun towers. All other power is currently going into movement.” Well that wasn’t what I wanted to hear from Cid, as that was our only method of attack that wasn’t within a dangerous melee range. “We don’t have much power production, but if we can take this realm we can at least get plenty of power to make the towers automatic and always operable instead of manual and limited.”

“Good to know… are we getting any infection vectors from the zombies trying to attack the legs of Alexander?” Was my next question as I felt the morale around the castle was a little on the low side after hearing that.

“If there is any, it’s minimal and Alexander’s anti-virus armor is holding… wait the back left ankle is starting showing signs of being infected with Zombie Coding. If Pom can deal with the cause of the zombie coding fast enough, then it shouldn’t become a major problem.” Not good news to hear Cid, but at least it was good to know.

“What’s the situation?” Canard soon joined us in the throne room with some bandaged wrapped around his chest as Sami followed him.

“We’re having a major dip in morale… also not good and hopefully Pom’s team hasn’t been wiped out, communications to the underground region are getting distorted again.” I was good at emotions and Canard was stern, but didn’t feel like he had given up yet and Sami was trying to remain positive in the light of this.

“Why wouldn’t we, we’re losing all territories around us to the ZPs and EPs.” As soon as Quetal said that the situation seemed to become a little odd. “Did the NPs just start getting organized?”

“Yeah… I believe they are organizing against the EPs and ZPs, in fact they are ignoring our APs entirely to start exclusively attack the enemy… are they our allies now?” My curiosity was met with a scoff from Canard.

“Maybe a temporary alliance of convenience as the NPs territories are faltering too. They’ll turn on us as soon as things become good for them again.” Still it was nice to have the large monsters fighting for us Canard, but you weren’t wrong about them coming at us afterwards.

“Enemy is entering the lake… tail is sucking up water and preparing a pressurized water laser attack.” Sami announced and that brought my sight back to The Ray.

“Rokusho, The Ray is in position, activate the mines!” On screen the water churned and exploded violently damaging The Ray’s legs toppling it into the water and its water laser to blast by the left side of Alexander.

“Castle Alexander approach The Ray. Towers keep focusing your fire on it, don’t stop!” I hoped this was the right move, because if we had to use the shield… then we’d have to start hitting in melee range.

“Left hind legs of Castle Alexander is turning pretty quickly… it’s about to reach the rear pelvis.” Cid announced.

“Keep track of it Cid!” I called out.

The massive castle dog continued to slowly stomp forward towards The Ray that was taking multiple explosions again as the mines cycled a second round underneath it in the water and the explosives acted like depth charges as they rose up into its legs.

“Tremors from underground… something is happening down there and I don’t like it.” We didn’t exactly have the time to humor Patch Cabbage, as that was more of Pom’s problem at the moment.

“New infection vector in the front right leg, I’m trying to slow down the progress of takeover from here.” At least Cid was actively helping… unlike Torneko and his goons which were sitting around in the depths of the moving giant mechanical dog with a castle on its back.

Welch was fairly busy with manufacturing Skein Flyers if we were going to have APs start using them for aerial support after this and Patch Cabbage was working to keep us supplied with food… also healing berries as Pom would be bound to go through a lot of those things.

-Mare Melum, Underground, central region, Pom-

We made good time in retreating, with most of the six unusual programs helping us with protecting the missile truck as Flarity and Cuddlestare clones stayed behind to slow and or pin down a majority of the Eaters. They were still doing a good job and were covering our butts hard as we retreated.

After a series of explosions massive shards of glass spiked through and shredded quite a few Eaters as we were closer to the pillars and an elevator to the surface. As expected, the Eaters immediately began eating away at the pillars as the Excelsus continued to give chase to us and fight off the Eaters at the same time.

“How many more of those charges do you need?” Driver asked Purpsmart as the artificial sunlight from the ceiling was becoming dimmer from all the damage and the Eaters were fairly scary to see coming from the shadows.

“About ten more clusters in a few specific places, if we really want to make sure all the Eaters and that Excelsus thing are dead at the end of this. Once those go off the entire city is collapsing and we’ll at least want to be at the top of the elevator shaft when that happens, much better if we’re already moving for the edge of the city.” Purpsmart was trying to access the elevator as we held our positions, thankfully the pillars were getting in the way of The Excelsus straight coming at us, but it didn’t stop the Zombie Programs it generated. It had stopped generating live Gekko at least, well as far as alive as machines could get anyway, so we didn’t have to kill those twice. “We’ll get the next set of explosives on a time delay then, mostly to give us a chance to get to the top of the shaft and out of the way.”

“Incoming!” Applelove.exe shouted and Dormarch ducked us behind the missile truck as flames licked at our retreating formation. The Magitek Armors took the brunt of it fairly well scorching the fives armors, said armors quickly joined us and started creating explosives to deal with the last few fault points “Can you hurry it up with the elevator Purpsmart.exe?! I don’t want to be here when the roof starts a collapsing on us.”

“I would, but I don’t have the codes to access this large elevator.” Said elevator could fit the six primary allied programs, the five Magitek Armors and the missile truck just fine… if we could get into it. Fou had separated from us and ran off at some point, not willing to fight the Eaters close up, they were bad when even the nigh immortal Fou wouldn’t touch them.

Fou didn’t seem to care what we were doing as he was more afraid of the Eaters than actually attacking us, though his limited control of the Neutral Programs was interesting to say the least. It lended to the theory that he was the main reason they were here and that the underground had warped into becoming a massive cavernous space… which was actually to our benefit as the support structures were further spread out and not as capable of holding up the city above us.

“Ugh… let me do it… I’m the ‘fourth wall hacker’ of our group!” Pinkpie.exe stated as she went up to the panel and started to randomly flail at it with her hooves. I was about to say something when she suddenly exclaimed. “Really it’s ‘Narpassword’ as in… ‘Not a real password’? Here I thought it would have been one of the funnier Ridley ones...”

The doors on the massive elevator opened up a second later and Dormarch just stared at it before I shook his wing blade a bit. The ten clusters of explosives were going out with the Rainbow Lizards and Flying Bunnies… was there anything normal in my life anymore?

“How?” Purpsmart.exe stated with a flat disbelieving stare.

“No explanation I can give will truly ever make you feel alright with it.” Pinkpie.exe stated as she booped the now fairly irate purple raptor on the nose with a hoof and pulled it back as said raptor snapped at the candy hoof with her teeth. “Hey, I’m bad for your health, don’t try to eat me!”

“Stop all of your gabbing and everyone get in, the explosive are going out and we can’t keep squawking here while something is trying to light us all on fire!” Applelove.exe stated as she ran past us carrying a wide eyed Flarity.exe past us and the missile truck backed into it firing all of its missiles clearing up the Eaters on the Excelsus again for the last time.

“Don’t need to be told twice!” Driver and the four other Commandramon continued to fire as they back their way onto the elevator while constantly dealing with the Eater Soldiers and Pure Eaters coming at us. All those poor Flarity and Cuddlestare clones.

Once we were all in, I noted there was a small problem, I smacked my left hoof to my face as I realized what it was and went back to grabbing onto the handle of the wing blade and mentally told Dormarch to get it.

Dormarch quickly moved to hit the switch and the elevator doors slammed shut and we started rising for the surface… in an elevator with glass walls.

“Why was this particular elevator chosen?” I managed to ask with a scratchy throat.

“It was the nearest, biggest and fastest one we could possibly get, duh!” Thank you Pinkipie.exe, I at least appreciated that someone knew the reason we were on this one as several Pure Eaters started flying up and were leveling out with the moving elevator preparing to come at us through the glass. “Oh… I can see why you were asking that now… heh. Wait, if the entire city is going to collapses beneath us and the Eaters eat the pillar and the elevator shaft directly below us…”

“Also if the entire city is currently infested with Enemy Programs, Zombie Programs and Neutral Programs…” There was a long silence following Dormarch’s words.

“We’ll get to that already burning bridge when we get there.” I stated as the three Eaters outside ate through the glass in one swift forward burst of motion and were now hovering inside the giant elevator and trying to eat it and us.

Needless to say all the Commandramon opened fire on them immediately.

“Do not let them eat the corners that’s where the motors moving us upwards are!” Even as he shouted this Dormarch fired a Lupine Laser to cut through one of the Pure Eaters.

I let go and hopped off of Dormarch’s back to thrust and extend the Paralance safely into one of them and spiked it from the inside going out like I did to the previous one I had defeated. I could at least deal with one at a time.

That was two going up in a burst of static and the last one tried to lunge for us, only to be slowed down the ten streams of concentrated fire as it let out an alien screech while it came for it. Only to be sent blasting through the glass wall of the elevator and go flying away on rocket that exploded a second later.

“Hmph…” The strange Caerbannog driver of the missile truck grunted by for tapping some bits of soot off his cigar.

“More coming from below and…?!” Dormarch announced and then in a flash, at a relatively inopportune time, he reverted back into being a Dalmamon as two Pure Eaters were about to burst into the elevator from our left. “Oh bother, not now!”

I kind of felt sorry for all the APs we were leaving behind down below, but they were making sure that the Eaters didn’t get out from under the city or escaped.

While the Commandramon fired at the other one, and it went sailing on a rocket like the last one, I speared with the paralance and narrowly avoided being touched by the other one as its tentacles waggled at me vigorously.

It was actively forcing the lance deeper into itself to try and get me, these Eaters had no sense of self preservation and they were all the more dangerous for it.

The paralance finally spiked the Eater from the inside before it could touch me and it burst into a cloud of static.

Looking at the glass windows ahead, I didn’t see anymore… I looked left and right… maybe we were.

“Behind us!” There were Five Pure Eaters preparing to burst through this time.

“I got them… I have my saved attack program… Wild Howling.” Dormarch inhaled and held his breathe for a bit. When all five burst in he let out a powerful howling blast the sent them back out flailing into the air and towards the ground below as his attack had stunned them all enough to stop their ability to float. “It is really quite unfortunate that I could only do that once… until I’m capable of evolving again. I was going to use that when we got to the surface but.”

“We’ll be fine. We have our six PLANTs with us, we can force our way out of the city…” Applelove.exe pointed out. “Uh… where are we going when we get to the top?”

“Hopefully, towards Castle Alexander.” Really didn’t care about the fact that we left Fou behind, he’ll live… somehow. He’s smart and strong like that… that and I really didn’t want him with us when he decides that he has nothing to worry about and starts trying to maul me again.

“Yeah, we’ll need to hit the ground floor running, we can’t exactly get bogged down in all the fighting or we’re all going down with the city when it collapses.” The Commandramon named Frosty had the right idea of it.

“Big Boss Lady, ma’am, are you with the missile truck or do you want one of us to carry you?” Driver asked as he turned his machine towards me as I hefted Dormarch onto my back.

“I’m on the Missile Truck, Commandramon you’re going to be the ones to push us through the enemies and will be taking the lead… are you… are you alright with that?” I really didn’t like putting other people ahead of myself, but in this case it’s an exception.

“Sure are, we’re the ones in armor after all.” At least Driver didn’t sound upset about it as the elevator neared the top and the upper region of Mare Melum. “We’re going to be blitzing it guys.”

I looked down below as the Excelsus was starting to become a checkered colored monstrosity covered in tentacles, red eyes and mouths… so many mouths… horrifying… I almost couldn’t look away.

I really think we made the right call here to have those explosives on a short fuse even if we don’t get out of the city in time.

“Well at least it’ll finally be called the City of Lost Destiny for a reason right?” I started sweating a little. “We don’t technically have to worry about all the NPCs we’re about to hurt here right?”

“They’ll probably be rebooted when we system crash most of this realm, they are not like Digimon or Digital Entities… so they’ll be perfectly fine as a part of the local realm system and unlikely to remember the entire city collapsed… mind you we haven’t seen any NPCs in this city to begin with.” Well that was one less worry off of my back Driver. “All we’ve seen are Enemy Programs, Neutral Programs, Coding Zombies and a whole lot violence. Surprisingly things have gone well… considering all of us Commandramon are still alive, I seriously thought that at least two of us would be dead by now and a third would be bleeding out data on the floor somewhere about to blow themselves up with a claw on some kind of detonator while surrounded by hostiles.”

The elevator came to a stop and we were inside of a building, we quickly got off the elevator.

“How much time do we have here exactly? Uh, Caerbannog can you give us some space, so we can get on the roof of the truck?” The Caerbannog driving the missile truck gave us a thumbs up and lifted the rocket pod up to give us a place to sit. There was no confidence that this was going to end well as I climbed up onto the roof of the missile truck with Dormarch, soon to be joined by a blue cow, a raptor, a marshmallow candy cougar and a pink pony that smelled of taffy with a candy spewing cannon, Cuddlestare climbed into the trucks seat next to the odd Caerbannog.

As for the rainbow lizard she sat on top of her PLANT and as far as I can tell, she hadn’t summoned very many clones from it aside from the ones on the bomb squads about to set things off below.

“I’d estimate in the area of five to ten minutes and would say we should probably floor it.” Purpsmart.exe stated as Driver and his team moved forward ahead of the truck and started shooting large holes in the doorway out of here. “Hope those six PLANTs of yours are ready to generate programs to support us while on the move.”

After that was said they ran out guns blazing and we followed after them into the streets positively packed with monsters of all kinds, still plenty of space to evade them.

-Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

We’d blown off one of The Rays legs, it couldn’t get out of the lakes waters. Even then it was still attacking with its two rapid fire cannons, some of its missile launchers were blown up when a missile was struck before it could leave the water bound machine. We had avoided a second water laser and The Ray was not moving, we might have lost the mines we dropped into the water after the second round of explosions.

“Castle Alexander’s infection level is up to the chest, once it gets to the castle past the head, we’re going to lose control.” Okay, let’s hope that Pom could pull something out of her backside here and finally take out what’s causing. “I might have to turn off AP creation soon.”

“This is Dormarch to Castle Alexander, OCELLUS ALEXANDER BETTER STILL BE ALRIGHT, we need artillery support to clear the way for us right now!” I looked at a screen and saw that Dormarch and the entire team of Commandramon and the Harmony programs were in the middle of the city and fighting their way towards us. The rooftop territories we still held had Caerbannogs assisting them from the roofs and they seemed to be moving really fast.

“Granted, towers give supporting artillery fire to our away team in the city.” I ignored the fact that Dormarch was still upset with me. “Did you take care of the gekko producing machine Excelsus? We might currently have a problem with Alexander being infected with whatever infected it.”

“Don’t worry about that, a lot of things is going to be taken care of soon enough!” What did Dormarch mean by that? “Just have the towers keep clearing our path of enemies!”

Castle alexander raised a large yellow and black striped left paw and slapped the face of The Ray forcing its water laser to miss and go wide to our right and we dealt quite a bit of damage while trying to keep its head pinned and facing away from us. Apparently its one good leg was good enough to shake the paw off and started trying to charge up another shot of its water laser.

“Huh… all infection vectors are weakening, the zombie coding is dying out and Alexander is recovering.” Cid called out, which sounded like a good thing.

“All the coding zombies are dying, so that means we don’t have that as a problem anymore!” Sami said with a cheer.

“Well that at least this means that Excelsus has been fully dealt with… and now ‘it’ needs to be dealt with. Good thing we’ve already set that up, because there is no way I’m going back down there with that thing!” For some reason it sounds like Pom had quite a story for us when she finally got back to Castle Alexander and she might actually do it without becoming a mangled mess… she used all of her Sitrus Berries didn’t she?

“Ocellus back on the problem in front of us.” Smolder stated drawing my attention back to The Ray avoiding our paw… and was charging up a laser.

“Right move forward, deploy wings.” The large white feathered wings started to appear on Castle Alexander as the water laser was about ready to fire, we either had to destroy its tail or crush it. Crushing it sounded like an idea. “Sorry Dormarch, but you’re about to lose tower artillery support, we absolutely need it for defense or we’re going to take a lot of damage.”

“Ugh, seriously Ocellus, again?!” Dormarch was probably never going to like me after this.

“It’s either that or we take a lot of damage.” The front half of the Alexander was almost in position for our attack. “Alexander activate defense until water laser attack ends, then rear up and stomp.”

The two white wings folded in front of the castle as the water laser fired and the wings held as the entire castle shook, the laser ended and the wings dropped and disappeared.

“Power levels dropping, towers rendered inoperable… energy depleted defensive shield inoperable.” Alexander reported, before the world started shaking. “Major seismic activity detected, warning, major seismic activity detected.”

“Pom… what did you and the others do? Look, never mind, Alexander stomp The Ray with the front paws now!” The large dog like machine raised up onto its hind legs and then brought them down on The Ray, it didn’t have the ability to maneuver very much and tried to get away by sinking into the lake and failed.

Despite all the shaking and rumbling the paws going on around Castle Alexander landed a mighty blow on top of The Ray with thunderous force crunching its head inwards and its left fin arm.

“Quickly lift the left paw from the head and slam it down on its right weapon, keep it pinned with the right paw.” It was still shooting from said weapon and was missing a lot by aiming to high, but we couldn’t let it continue to use them. The rumbling was getting louder and Alexander managed to destroy its right fin.

“I think its tail still be taking in water, be excusing me for a moment.” Shanty quickly left the throne room and Alexander attacked again as the machine flailed, but was held in place by the right paw.

The entire world seemed to be shaking and I was staying focused on The Ray.

“Pom what’s going on out there?” I asked as I got Castle Alexander to continue attacking The Ray, trying to prevent it from firing another water laser, unfortunately it did… which would have been more of a problem had Shanty not deflected the beam of water with a Bounding Bubble.

“Heh, oh, you know, the entirety of Mare Melum is becoming a sink hole to crush an eldritch abomination. Don’t worry you are all safely outside that range so your fine... we’re still working on that.” Wait… what did Pom just say and how could her anxiety have that kind of range?! The rumbling was getting much worse and then entire world started to slant slightly. “We’re done here if this works at least, just have to survive this situation… Driver on your left, Frosty jump for it, can we not almost die after all the stuff we’ve been through?!”

“Alexander grab it with the left paw and finish it off with a right paw thrust to the chest.” I hoped this would be enough, at least Shanty made it so we wouldn’t have to worry about water lasers.

I watched as Castle Alexander caved the things chest in and the paws big dull flat claws ripped out the large machines inner workings and destroyed the water laser weapon and it started to fade from existence into a massive pile of cubes.

“Turn us in the direction of Pom’s group so we can get a visual on what’s going on.” Turning away from the lake, we got a front row seat to watching as the entirety of Mare Melum sunk into the ground and a truck along with the harmony programs and five armors were at the edges of the collapsing city entering the farmlands and heading in our direction. “Get ready to take our allies onboard Castle Alexander, can we get the guns up to help them come in?”

“No, no chance of that happening we’re low on power again.” Cid stated as Castle Alexander started to crouch down and open up to let Pom’s group board.

“All available and capable fighters to the gates, all APs are to prevent enemy from getting into the castle and nobody is to disembark Castle Alexander, Pom’s team is coming in hot and they need help… at least there are no more enemy coding zombies so all digital allies can safely fight again.” With that said Canard and Sami immediately set off for the gates and the digi-bots with the recently recovered Peppercat were on standby near the gate.

“Warning anomalous spatial activity detected.” Who knows what that could mean, but Pom’s group was coming in safely.

A second later the collapsed rubble of the warped city exploded with a white light and before we knew it Pom’s group was at the gate a second later as if the world had shrunk back to its previous size. Also we were gaining a lot of territories and PLANTs like crazy…

I think we just took all of Mare Melum, but I wondered where all the NPs just went. One second enemies were everywhere, city collapses and the next we have taken the realm and now had a lot of resources to power up Castle Alexander with.

Into the base rolled a missile truck and was quickly followed by the five walking machines which would be the Commandramon that left with Pom.

“Close the gates.” I sighed as the chaos was finally over with and I saw Mare Melum was back to being in one piece. “We did it guys.”

Riding on the Missile truck was Pom who looked haggard and relieved as she hugged a happy looking Dormarch to her chest.

"So glad I didn't have to flip out and enter Beast Mode." Pom grumbled audibly through her headset.

-Jungle Beast realm, Fou-

“Fou?” It didn’t see the tall pillars, the scary 'absence of all life' monsters or anything else and it seemed like his prey was no longer present. However he did see his chaotic monstrous sized NP supporters.

Scratching himself and not knowing what else to do, he howled and the NPs responded. He wanted to fight some more and then take a nap, maybe do a few other things before eventually returning to hunting Pom since she knew how to find fun fights.

-Moon Cell-

The realms had separated and one went flying off, the high threat level anomalous entities had been dealt with and it had lost Mare Melum. Now the Chrysomallus was one realm away from fighting Moon Cell proper and it didn’t like that one bit that such a small force could get so far, at this point they should outright be considered heroes for the soul throne to have survive so much.

“Summoning, Lancer, Assassin, Berserker… Codename: Envious Naga to Midgar.” It was summoning a single servant soul that fit all of those classes in a unique manner and wasn’t a hero in life, more of a victim really that had powers that could have been a hero.

It got a signal that the Caster Team and their tank the Exo-Taranis had been defeated by the two canine warriors. Fairly ironic given the history of the tank in question, unfortunately the Caster team was not good in close up combat so when the two boarded the tank the Caster Team was swiftly dealt with and their souls disappeared into the ether despite the fact that it should be impossible to do so with their souls tied directly to the tank for the very reason of using the Soul Cannon to it's fullest ability.

Moon Cell still wondered why it kept losing all the souls it summoned and chalked it up to the presence of the Chrysomallus countering the computers magical soul trapping and controlling functions just by existing.

“… Summoning Caster, Codename: Lazy Lemming to Midgar.” After some consideration it was going to send a caster after the Chrysomallus’s friends personally, another that could have been a hero and instead more akin to lawful evil.

At least this one was a low effort summon, literally the summon itself had a low effort value, at least they would know not to target anywhere within the general vicinity of the Chrysomallus with anything they can do. They would also be there to watch Envious Naga as there seemed to be some glitches within that particular summoned servants coding.

That was as troubling as the Berserker Ifrit it had contained in Midgar, it would release it upon the Chrysomallus getting nearby its containment zone to see if she could deal with that problem. If none of that was enough, then it would eventually send more servants.

It would already be stressing its systems by having more than one summoned servant in the realm at a time. The more the number of servants increases, the more chances of something going incredibly wrong with its ability to keep control of the situation.

“System Error, servant self-summoning occurring.” At least it would know the servant being summoned, apparently there was a soul with a will so strong that it was denying Moon Cell any control over it like Berserker Ifrit.

Class Gunner- Codename: ------. Location: Midgar.

Ah, the perfect example of why summoning too many servants in one place might be bad, but this might actually be to Moon Cell’s benefit if it could get this wild servant to attack its enemies through some manipulation.

It's invasion forces in Reality and the neighboring Digital Realm were growing stronger by the day, but so too did the resistance against its siege.

Author's Note

One last Realm to take.

Moon Cell Battle.

Whatever comes after.

???

Underpants gnomes referenced.

410. Supply and Command.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Arizona-

“You got to help me!” I was shaking Jaded fiercely and eventually stopped to watch as her eyes spin in her head before going completely walled, a few blinks later and the taller green haired beige cat eventually came to her sense.

“You want help with learning how to take care of children now of all times? Also why did you come to me specifically?” Well for all the chicanery you get away with and in general are a jerk, you were a good friend when it counted Jaded.

“I heard how you should never hurt a child in front of an Abyssinian Queen.” Which was one of the things that was well known in Abyssinia, Abyssinians generally had a thing for being protective of their children.

“It’s mostly true, but it’s the Toms that you should really be wary of when it comes to Abyssinians, nothing is more dangerous than a truly determined Tom father if you think an Abyssinian Queen sounds scary. Also anyone that hurts a child in front of me is going to have a really bad day starting twenty four hours from the occurrence of said incident, with that in mind, anyone that hurts my little Silvers will be lucky if they even survive the next twenty four hours.” Yikes, think Jaded even meant it to be that threatening, after the whole thing with Stochastic Labor… yeah… wouldn’t want to give Jaded time to plan my demise like that pony did. I remember the attempts on Stochastic’s life with the anvils and pianos. “Honestly the quickest and easiest solution is to let you kitten sit Silvers, I intrinsically trust you Arizona… anything that can get by you to hurt Silvers would have to be ridiculous strong, physically tough, magically powerful and able to survive your general physics breaking shenanigans. Also, since you’re technically family, I’ll give you the chance to state your case should anything go wrong with Silvers… since something highly chaotic happens at least once a week to my family and it’s not always necessarily me that gets the chaos. Discord looked into it and says that my family is enough chaos for this region of Equestria alone without his help or the falling airship curse in the region that only exists because people actually thinks it does.”

“Well I’m rightly terrified now… usually the only one that can instill that in me is Paprika when she gets grumpy.” Considering how long it’s been since I’ve actually touched Paprika directly and not just her wool clone, well it’s been a thing.

“Not Velvet?” Jaded queried with a gesture of her left claw at me.

“The only thing I’m afraid of, as far as Velvet is concerned, is that she won’t get back into fighting shape and continue beating the daylight hours out of me.” It said a lot that I kept getting offers from various visiting lawyers asking about my consensual domestic abuse situation, you don’t see Maries harping on us about how ‘tough love’ is basically the name of my herd. “At least the carpentry business is going really well.”

“You’re a basically a shipwright Ari.” Jaded stated flatly arms crossed.

“Sure most of the houses I build around here are functional as boats… which can double as airships… but that doesn’t mean I’m a shipwright.” There was a pause as I got a raised brow from Jaded. “As in I don’t have a shipwright license and I have to be legally distinct that I build houses and not ‘boats’ or ‘airships’ as part of my carpentry business.”

“Ah, the kind of legal distinction that Maries could help you with eventually if things go wrong, got you. I’ll set up a meeting with them for you.” Jaded nodded to me solemnly with a broad gentle smile. “So how about taking on my Silvers, Gavin and me for the evening?”

-Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, City of rebooted destiny, Castle Alexander, dining room, Pom-

“So… how do we get started on this meeting?” I asked before eating something as Dolly and Dormarch worked through some homemade kibble. I still don’t know what Dolly’s withdrawal symptoms really looked like nor have I noticed them, but this makes her happy at the very least.

We were all sitting around a table and Mirage Mew and their Mirage Collective was in attendance. Apparently we only had to surpass one more realm and then we can really begin to stick it to Moon Cell for all the trouble they are causing. Apparently the time difference between reality and the computer realms, as termed by Mirage Mew, was slowly faltering and soon we’d be acting on real time while in the Digital and Moon Cell Realms one to one with actual days passing by.

To that end, the entirety of the Ransei continent has come under attack by Moon Cell using Mystery Dungeons as anchors into the world and a good forty five percent of the digital world was being overrun with Moon Cell’s forces. This was Mirage Mew keeping in contact with the outside world, where barely an hour has past and things were slowly speeding up for us as a day in here was more like a few hours outside instead of minutes, we had our work cut out for us by being in a very decent position to give Moon Cell a black eye if not taking out Moon Cell if we aren’t stopped, so Moon Cell would be getting desperate to throw some real curve balls our way.

I had to wonder what could be worse than what we just went through and didn’t voice or think about it too hard. We had issues to clear up with our current situation.

“I believe that is my cue, let’s start with the information we have on the situation of the two worlds and our current position in the war and go from there.” Jeanne stated as she was sitting at one of the tables and garnered everyone’s attentions. “The entirety of Ransei has come under assault, the only place that is being spared seems to be Nixtorm according to Mirage Mew. An hour has almost passing by in reality as the time between realms is slowly evening out. It’s not looking good.”

“I think that’s because I helped destroyed the Mystery Dungeon there with Dolly and Dormarch’s help.” There was some surprise from a few people, but there were no questions.

“I’m not surprised, you’re track record as the leader of Team Harmony speaks for itself, considering that was the direction you were coming from when you were targeted by the Enemy Program swarm in Valora. I’ll just assume you dealt with the immortal skeletal dragon beast that was harassing Nixtorm terribly before showing up in Valora.” Jeanne stated before continuing. “Our neighbors the digimon are currently struggling to hold half their world.”

“We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think we could do something about that.” Driver stated among the nine Commandramon present that nodded with his statement. “So far I think we’re doing great that half of us aren’t already dead.”

“Wait, is it still the same day we left Valora?” Asked one of the Skarmory, he seemed particularly hopeful.

“Yes, it’s still on the same day, but things in reality are going slower than they are here. We have time, but not much as, again, things are starting to even out between the realms.” Jeanne D’ Arc was leading this meeting fairly well. “Mirage Mew will at least keep us updated on the efforts our home realms.”

“Of course.” Mirage Mew stated cheerfully. Mirage Raikou, Mirage Entei and Mirage Suicune were in attendance as the heads of Mirage Mews forces of the digital Pokémon. “We’re holding the path back out of Moon Cell’s realm open and are making sure they can’t close the taken realms behind us. Plus we’re working on being able to call in more help from Ransei and hopefully the digital realms of Yggdrasil.sys, but that depends on how well they are handling Moon Cell’s siege. Don’t know how you’re going to hold Cape or Mare Melum without us, both respectively in Dike Land and Night Land are definitively holding well thanks to the APs even if they are constantly under attacks from EPs.”

The EPs we were being attack by currently were coming from the next realm over, apparently the next realm we had to take ‘Midgar’ was going to have a lot of heavy machinery and tank based EPs. Those were going to be a major problem without some heavy firepower, which Welch was working on, it was going to be brought up in this meeting. So far the Assassin Caerbannog have been sabotaging efforts of the enemy to take back Mare Melum or get a foothold in the realm.

“Next order of business, our resources.” There was a sudden silence as we kept eating and Jeanne was making sure nobody had anything to bring up. “Without Castle Alexander I don’t think we would even be here.”

Everyone agreed, Castle Alexander was the main part of our offensive against Moon Cell, nobody could say it wasn’t. Unfortunately it’s still quite underpowered, given the power generation wasn’t enough to run all of its functions. We also might need more gun towers than what we had going forward, but we didn’t have enough supplies for all the upgrades to the castle we wanted.

“To that end, we’re in a position to upgrade our main offensive platform as the Counter Invasion Force while we still currently have some time to rest before we continue moving forward. We also have a chance to work in any training, rest or other ideas before we move forward onto Midgar while we’re upgrade Castle Alexander for the daunting fight ahead.” A screen showed up as Sami spoke. Showing Midgar, a sprawling city of black towers, long massive streets, red lights at the top of buildings and it was seemingly constantly clouded over and raining. “Midgar, as far as we know is a multiple tiered city consisting of three levels and is likely to be crawling with even more dangerous EPs. Due in part to the chaos caused here, we avoided a massive Moon Cell ambush and even managed to steal some vehicles for Welch’s manufacturing capabilities. So we’ll at least have armored support going into this next fight. The city of Midgar has an underground level which might be our entry point, it has a ground level city and above that an above ground city above the city below it. The surprise of the elite EPs is gone, but we’ll likely need to deal with them from now on to win territory fights. I wouldn’t be surprised if what they throw at us there will be several times worse than what we’ve already faced here in Mare Melum. So that brings us to what are our current upgrade plans for the oncoming battle and should we make any changes to them, who’s currently in charge of that?”

Everyone turned to Dormarch who was happily munching away and when he noticed everyone else looking at him, he quickly swallowed his mouthful of food and spoke up.

“I guess I am, we can improve Castle Alexander’s towers and make them automatic… but they’ll be a bit slower than if the Commandramon were working them manually. We’re also going to improve the power situation so we can at least run the barrier and the towers outside of Alexander’s defensive fortress mode, the barrier producing wings at least proved crucial in dealing with Moon Cells backup plan to deal with Castle Alexander. The last bit of business is that we’re going to at least be able to activate hover mode to get us somewhat flying, but true flight would require we power down the guns and barriers.” Nobody seemed to have any comments about any changes to make there from what Dormarch said, Cid of the NPCs table seemed to be particularly happy to hear we can get off the ground. “As for the kind of Allied Programs we want to produce now, we will be direly trying to produce Rider APs. The Assassin Caerbannogs are decent with vehicles, but they are better suited to their roles of scouts and ambushers. The Lancer Guardians and the Saber Knights in their base or tower shield variants are not as capable of piloting vehicles, they will remain infantry. If we can figure out how get Riders we can improve our combat capacity exponentially with the recent acquirements of the Skein Flyers via Canard, along with the missile truck and the Magitek Armors that Mom’s group acquired before the city rebooted and the hidden garages full of enemy armor weapons were taken out in said reboot of this realm. We wouldn’t have these things if not for them getting them within Castle Alexander’s territory before the realm rebooted. We’ll have artillery, aerial support and direct action walking tanks for the Riders to pilot. I was responsible for the Assassin Caerbannogs and I don’t think I can create a different type of AP, we’ll need someone else to produce the Riders. We absolutely need fourth type of Allied Programs before we can move forward.”

“What about us? We’re technically APs… of a kind.” Pinkpie.exe stated, her and the six Harmony Programs were at least supportive of our efforts. However their PLANTs were not capable of producing armies, though they’ve shown to be exceedingly effective in taking territories by themselves, they were good at generating small groups of support and Moon Cell had no ability to get control of them at least without dealing with the prime Harmony Programs that controlled the PLANTs.

“We’ll get to you in a moment... I think I might have the ability to produce Rider type APs given we have the capacity to gain a new AP type.” Sami offered up and held up a familiar bar, the thing that generated motorcycles she used back when we first met. “Don’t know what will come out, but I have created sentient gang of roving motorcycles once already. Creating APs centering on vehicle data will likely have a high chance to produce Riders. Once we have them and know what they are exactly capable of, we can then make plans for how to field them in the attack on Midgar once we get there.”

“Our next order of business is to address the elephant in the room… or should I say the hidden servant.” Jeanne had everyone looking in the same direction she was, sitting in a corner was the unusual Caerbannog AP that read as an Elite AP. Apparently Jeanne thought otherwise and just levied her suspicions about it.

“Hmph… Servant Assassin, Codename: ‘Hidden Snake’… just call me Snake. I summoned myself through one of your PLANTs so I’m thoroughly on your side if that’s what you’re worried about.” The gruff voiced bipedal rabbit had acted like a normal Assassin Caerbannog AP, but he was clearly more intelligent and was very much different given his green camouflaged patterned fur was unique among the many colorful Caerbannogs who could give off the illusion of looking like normal rabbits to their enemies. That was a rather frightening ability that I think I’ve heard Al-Mi’raj or ‘All Mirage’ rabbits were capable of. “I’m technically in charge of the Assassin Caerbannogs as their elite. Moon Cell won’t notice I have a soul even if I were standing right in front of their optical machine enforcers, The Watchers, I’m just another AP to Moon Cell and you can just treat me as such. War… it hardly ever changes… I initially showed up for Jack Blade Wolf otherwise known as Raiden… he was… somewhat family of mine. I’m in this for the long haul, thanks for helping me free his soul. I’ll likely disappear if defeated in battle or fade away after taking down Moon Cell, I’m not worth the effort to care about as I’m just a ghost of a long forgotten battlefield.”

“Can you define what a servant is Snake? We’ve kind of heard a few things already, I just want to be clear on the subject.” I wanted to be certain of it really.

“Servants are usually the souls of heroes who fought and bled for something so hard that history can never forget that they existed as a legend, a legend that can be brought back to life as a servant to fight for Moon Cell or whoever figures out how to summons them. Thankfully someone put a kibosh on the necromancy wars throwing heroes at each other for a wish, a wish that was always going to be too good to be true.” Pulling out a cigar and lighting it to start puffing away at it, the rabbit leaned back in his chair and sighed. “That’s not always the case as Moon Cell can fudge things quite a bit and bring to life peoples souls that were never heroes as servants, I’m sure it’s going to do so given how close we are to attacking it directly. It has a lot of tricks left to play. Like my being here, Moon Cell doesn’t exactly have perfect control over all the souls it’s holding under its control… those with strong enough wills can defy it outright… I’m living proof. Just watch out, since anything with a particularly strong legend will have what is called a Noble Phantasm and reality takes a back seat to those. My phantasm, as an Assassin, is of course stealth based and named after me… I was ‘hardly’ ever caught infiltrating places and my legend is my power as it will be there’s. So keep it in mind when you hear their classifications that it’s always in some way related to who they are. If you know their legend, then you’ll know what they are capable of and what they are weak too, as you’ll know how they were ultimately defeated and why. If they… died of old age for instance, then you’re probably out of luck and will have to do things the hard way. Unless you can find a way to age them really quick.”

Did you die of old age Snake? How long were you fighting for and what kind of hero were you?

“Well at least we know for sure that all the souls being held by Moon Cell need to be freed.” I said with a firm tone and Snake nodded while gesturing to me.

“Continuing on… how are our food supplies looking?” Jeanne asked of the NPC Patch Cabbage who seemed to have a constant high morale and tunnel vision focus on bringing down Moon Cell.

“I can feed a whole army by myself! Food is not the problem, it’s all your fancy medical berries that are a lot harder to grow, all of you have been blowing through them like crazy.” The insane farmer meant it too, most of his time was spent in hydroponics greenhouse within the bowels of Castle Alexander. “I intend to keep up with the demand though! Working on the Sitrus Berry production, I needed to cross pollinate them with the Oran Berries to keep their effects up… the effects seem to get slightly weaker the more generations constantly farm in the same spot without altering the berry output. Makes it hard to continually harvest fully effective berries in the same place more than three times… but I promise you’ll have some berries for our next battle for all the biologicals here. I’m even working on a digital version that works on digital creatures by filling in damaged coding that will need to be reconfigured a bit by the user.”

“That’s similar to how my Cure Liquor combat program works, it’ll help us digital entities that can’t heal quickly by ourselves at least.” Dormarch stated with three wagging tails.

Well Patch was going above and beyond for us, he must really be exceedingly disproportionately angry about losing that one cart full of cabbages to Moon Cell.

“We’ll keep that in mind, now what of the supplies that are medical that aren’t reproducible?” Jeanne bringing a gaze towards Ocellus and the Gazimon as our Castle Alexander support team.

“I kind of wish we had better medical experts on hoof… we’ve already mostly blown through most of the light medical supplies.” Ocellus stated having been one of the ones who was acting as a medical person, Dormarch technically counted except he is mostly following me around to try and keep me alive. “I’m sure Welch can manufacture more, but that might eat up energy we could be using for other things.”

After the heavy battling to protect Castle Alexander the Dhelmise, Skarmory and Hakamo-o units were quite tired, one of the Hakamo-o had even evolved into a Kommo-o under the pressures involved. The Pokemon Companions Team was also exhausted, in that vein of thought Dazzle was almost recovered and able to fight. The Digi-bots were a bit restless, with Peppercat and Metabee really wanting to get back into combat.

The Digimon fighters were in general alright. Even if they needed some food, a nap and a bathroom break.

Sami was used to long hours of horrid conditions before she ever met Canard. Frizzle had handled herself well without Dazzle’s ability to support her evolutions and Dormarch had exhausted himself acquiring and utilizing a new slightly unstable evolution for the first time.

The digital-destined Digimon notably outstripped normal digimon in raw power by several degrees. Given that the digivices were said to feed the users emotions to their partners, were my emotions really that powerful? Well I think Dolly helped in the emotional energy department.

The Gazimon were going to be training in the use of the Skein Flyers as they had mostly been shot down before The Ray entirely lost the use of its machine cannons and was swiftly destroyed. Thankfully they landed in the castle once their Skein Flyers became incapable of staying in the air and the injuries were minimal in the three crashes that occurred. We had repair and manufacturing capabilities thanks to Welch so it wouldn’t be long before we could get them back in the air.

Lit was just so happy to see that Dolly was alright when she crawled out of Driver’s Magitek Armor, I don’t think exhaustion ever truly registered for him once you fed him a few berries and aside from needing some sleep he was good to go. He was probably the most efficient fighter we had here. Speaking of the little guy, Lit was currently cuddling up to Dolly affectionately.

Dazzle has recovered from her injuries from the giant serpent battle and we were mostly ready to go for Midgar, giving us a few digital days to get ready.

“So does anyone have any pressing matters that aren’t personal to bring up or any questions related to the current topics we’ve brought up thus far?” Glad Jeanne was still on top of things, even if she wasn’t exactly acting like she was in command of the situation or things around here. “If not then we should move onto the business of our Harmony Program allies, who is the spokesperson for your group?”

Jeanne was a mass of not very visible bruises and scrapes, being covered in natural armored scales certainly helped with preventing grievous injuries to her person that wasn’t from crushing blows as much as the Pokémon move Iron Defense does turning her already tough scales into something on par with my wool in defensive ability. She was a functional battlefield leader, but a lot of people still thought of me as an overall leader and I really didn’t like the association of being anything more than reliable.

“I am, I mean I might not be the brains, but I’m definitely the charisma!” Pinkpie.exe got and moved forward.

“So what does your group hope to gain by joining our cause?” Well that was a good question Jeanne, but I’m fairly sure Ocellus had the best idea out of all of us.

“To be your friends.” Pinkpie.exe said succinctly without a second thought.

“Is that all?” Jeanne asked with a tilt of her head. “You do realize what you are volunteering for here by being our allies right?”

“Yep, me and the harmony programs, we’re simple like that.” Pinkepie.exe was at least ridiculously honest. “We’re literally magical personifications of friendship from the planet of Equus that came to life because infectious magic got into a mechanical ostrich and kind of did a thing… we even have the negative aspects of friendship like getting on each other’s nerves!”

“Right… what do you suppose you’ll be doing as we move forward?” Continued Jeanne.

“We’ll be watching Mare Melum, it even has the word ‘Mare’ in its name… at least in spelling.” Pinkipie.exe was rather exuberant about that fact. “We’ll also be in assistance to you as emergency support and will be working closely with Mirage Mew here to keep the hold these reality marbles you so painstakingly fought for! Also the author has us on contract to not take over the whole story just by existing as functional expy characters of the main six.”

“What?” We’re right there with you Jeanne.

“Don’t worry about that, Pinkpie.exe says a lot weird things like that all the time and it never amounts to much.” Purpsmart.exe commented dryly as she bit into a digital meat plant, in the digital world growing meat like you grew vegetables was easy and Sami had some seeds for it to give to Patch.

“Okay, so anything of note that your group wants to say?” The meeting was fairly quiet considering we all knew what we were doing here, even the Gazimon who were fairly afraid of getting directly into the fighting we’ve been doing.

“Not really, just call on us if you need backup!” Stated a rather cheerful sounding Pinkpie.exe and I welcomed the help even if thought she was a little weird with her eyes looking at the nearest wall. (Maybe because she’s reading the text in the story.) “Hey, I’m not doing that!”

(Sure you aren’t… after you just outed yourself.)

“See she says weird stuff like that all the time.” Purpsmart.exe stated while shaking her head.

Pinkpie.exe is now glaring at the nearest wall for some reason and I can’t fathom why she would be doing that.

“Because you… ugh… never mind.” Pinkpie.exe crossed her strawberry taffy flavored hooves and pouted while looking away from the wall she had been looking at, this was much to everyone’s confusion. “We’re happy to help and we don’t have any pressing needs for you to worry about.”

“Okay, welcome aboard as our backline support. If that is everything that is not a personal issue… and nobody has anything else to bring up, then we’ll finish eating and will all find ways to prepare to attack the Midgar realm over the next few days.” After that Jeanne and everyone kept busy and to themselves with eating and relaxing.

-A few hours later, throne room-

“Okay, I actually got us the Rider APs we wanted, but… they are a little odd.” It sounded like Sami succeeded in producing what we needed when it came to new AP production, but she seemed rather cagey about it.

“How odd are we talking?” I asked as I had been discussing some plans with Jeanne about our continued efforts and would eventually have a talk with Smolder and Dormarch about the issues between them and me and Ocellus.

“See for yourself, come in!” What walked in at Sami’s behest was… huh, I was expecting ducks or some kind of bipedal bird like an Ornithian… not this exactly.

“Okay, what’s the odd thing about them? Aside from being a tall bipedal thin alien things I mean.” They were tall, glowing eyes, no mouth to speak of and appeared to like wearing limited gold colored armor… it wasn’t electrum even upon second glance.

“Apparently this…” Turning Sami brought her rifle out and fired a spray at them only for blue flickering barriers of energy to stop her shots entirely. “They are called Rider Zealots apparently and they all come with energy shields and energy blades… don’t know how the data I used to create them ended up with this as an end result, but they are really good at wielding vehicles.”

“So we’ve got a decent unit to field on or off a vehicle?” The answer was less than forthcoming.

“Not exactly… their shields only work against ranged assaults, hit them in melee and…” With a simple punch Sami caused a Rider Zealot to falls over and it looked incredibly weak after the attack that even Ocellus could stop without using magic or changing out of her changeling form for combat adaptations… with her bare hooves… Sami really didn’t punch it all that hard in the gut.

So this Zealot would be really kind of pathetic in melee battle.

“So functionally they are really bad in a close up confrontation.” The generic Saber Knights we fielded would still be a go to for that I’d wager.

“On any vehicle their shields increase in power to cover the whole vehicle… it actually gets kind of ridiculous when they are piloting something how much the vehicle in question can take. The more powerful the machine, the more powerful the shields produced, they definitely live up to the Rider classification at the very least.” Sami helped the AP up. “As the ‘zealot’ name suggests, they’ll die for us at the drop of a hat… they seem exceedingly eager to do so more than any other AP that I’m fairly concerned about it. Oh and the shields they make can regenerate as long as they aren’t taking damage.”

“Is there anything else about them that I or anyone else should know?” I got this feeling that there was something that Sami wasn’t telling me.

“Well…” Sami started only to be cut off.

“Cheese house!” One of the Zealots stated waving at me in a friendly manner.

“Fore a spoon!” Another stated as he pointed at the silverware.

“My life of choir!” Then that one in particular started humming a jaunty tune, at least it was catchy.

“I think the reasons why someone tried to remove their mouths, if they previously existed in some form as a factual species like we think other forms of unique APs might have… then it was likely in an attempt to stop them from spouting nonsensical things and they quickly developed the ability to speak with their minds in spite of that.” Well that wasn’t annoying sounding at all Sami.

“Must construct additional nylons?” Asked ones of the zealots curiously while looking at the gold wool that took up my entire front right leg and a quarter of my front left.

“What if we asked them to not talk?” My question was met with a grimace.

“What they are doing isn’t technically talking so…” Sami shrugged and smiled toothily. “Anyway, they’ll be a big help in the coming fighting at least.”

I sighed audibly, got up and then went to do some training to refine my abilities. I needed to do so before we get thrown into another meat grinder of a battle.

Thankfully Jeanne is taking charge for the time being, she could deal with the headache of our new APs.

“What, lamb crawls?” One of the Zealots asked confusedly.

411. Approaching Midgar.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Continent, Kingdom of Aurora, within the first thirty minutes of invasion, Geoff-

Electro-Balls flew forth from the other Wooloo units who didn’t have time to start up a full Unit Round attack, then my unit began a Round with me starting it off.

“So Fa La Ti Do~” I sang out a Round blasting apart the invaders.

“Ti Do~!” One wooloo followed with a Round.

“Fa Lo~!” Another Round fired getting ever more powerful.

“So~!” The other two Wooloo sang blasting apart the jellyfish machine producing trouble in our homeland in a soundwave so powerful it could tear a hole in the sky.

“Get the Whismur, Loudred and Exploud, also gather all the visiting Toxtricity bards and anyone who can use sound attacks, we’re going to make some noise!” I shouted and got cheers from the normal types. “Dubwools are going to be in the house, then we’ll get stepping!”

I wouldn’t be surprised if Mystery Dungeons were popping up and slinging these monsters out all over the continent.

-Yggdrasil.sys Digital Realm, Somewhere on the Arceus Disk System and File Continent, ????-

My fist plowed through the enemy with very little resistance.

“I’m Metal Etemon and I dare you to find something that can deal with me!” I shouted as I pounded my chest with my fists, I had gotten ready for this inevitability and I was indestructi… what the?!

I found myself being hauled into the air and my body threatened to tear itself apart.

“It is quite unfortunate for you that I… *Shink*.” The red and purple armored guy stopped talking and then slowly split entirely in half, behind him was an average looking white wolf with a faint amount of paint on her tail.

I silently watched as she calmly padded off as a wisp of life flew out of the body she left behind. The wolf’s white fur shined vibrantly like the sun itself and I could see faint wisps of red coming off of it, the red highlights was very important even if I couldn’t see them that well.

Now there was a wolf I wouldn’t want to mess with. I might not be the most smartly coded digimon, but I can recognize the signs of a divine creature when I see it even as well-hidden and faint to me as they were.

“Whoa yeah, that was a victory for us Digimon!” I shouted and pumped my right fist, we might be able to do something about this Moon Cell hoo-ha invading our world. Already heard that the Digi-destined we met earlier were already on it, but they were probably going to need some help and I’ve got metal form to do so. “Let’s show them the Kings Kames gang will not be held down!”

“Ogremon’s Basher Bullies are the ones that bully, not get bullied!” One of the Goblimon yelled as they joined me on the crusade… only because they didn’t want anything more evil than them to exist around here, but Yggdrasil.sys was willing to take all the help it could get at this rate.

-Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, Several Digital Days Later, Castle Alexander, Courtyard, Pom-

Take in, let out… take in… let out… today was the last day we could wait and gather ourselves. To that end I was trying to calm my nerves, anyone that knew me would be able to easily tell that it wasn’t working.

The upgrades to Castle Alexander were about finished, I went over all my abilities and refined each of them to some success and as for Dolly she learned something new.

I opened left eye from where I was sitting and watched as Dolly fired a blast of energy from her mouth, it was just her bark was given increased momentum to ultimately create a small bullet of raw force. Now Dormarch wasn’t the only canine companion that could blast with the best of them, he was still more raw power than Dolly, but having technique counted for something. Not much magic used to do it either, as Dolly wasn’t even borrowing my bark blast ability, she was just using raw momentum control and her strong vocal cords from yelling her family into motion.

Welch was still manufacturing vehicles, which was a bit slow going… at least the Rider Zealots were uniquely talented at stealing enemy vehicles and any vehicle they commandeered automatically gained a shield proportionate to the vehicles strength… while it was in its prime. So it didn’t matter if they got a damaged Magitek Armor, it would have as much shields as a fully functional Magitek Armor. Also since the shields can overlap, but had no exponential effect, helped with putting vehicles in key points to have some additive defense to certain parts of the castle.

Zealots were kind of weak in close up confrontation and as soon as their shields went down and they didn’t have a vehicle to pilot… well they weren’t as good in combat outside of using vehicles. However take the twelve or so missile trucks now sitting in the courtyard as a sign of Castle Alexander having a lot of firepower behind its walls… also the castle would be covered in a ridiculous shield if a zealot was to pilot it.

Sure the shield when a zealot took over Castle Alexander wouldn’t be as nearly powerful as the active barrier the castle could produce with its wings, but a regenerating shield that could take a lot of punishment gave us strong defense against ranged assaults. Also the shields the zealots produced around the vehicles they commanded didn’t take up power resources from Castle Alexander or any vehicle they used so that was a plus.

Really useful stuff to have a walking fortress that could now take on a lot of firepower, we would have problems adding more towers, but increasing the number of missile trucks we had available? Well that was a boost in offensive power as long as we could fit the trucks comfortably in the courtyard.

In other news the reason why we even knew some of what Midgar City was going to be like, provided that things haven’t changed since then, was thanks to Etemon from what he shared of having seen of it and the merchant Torneko somehow having the blueprints for all of Midgar.

The city… it was enormous three layer death trap likely to be crawling with EPs in every single alleyway, including the red light brutes with spiky fists that Etemon had mentioned… I wonder how that guy was doing. Good thing we had vehicle manufacture and production, we’d never get around the whole city on hoof like we did in Cape and Mare Melum.

Even Castle Alexander would be able to maneuver and battle inside the city, but getting in in the first place would be a problem and we had no idea what kind of threats we’d be facing. So our first order of business upon arriving was getting a scope of our situation when we arrived and then make certain of our plan, our initial plan of getting into the city was going through the lower section was plausible as there were mines, waterways and a massive laboratory beneath the mountainous city of Midgar.

If we could avoid doing that and just get into the city through a frontal assault that would be better and less taxing on those… well never mind, I know I’m going to certainly be involved on the team doing the backdoor shuffle if we had to go that way.

In that case, we’d be popping the entrance open to let Castle Alexander in to deal with the city from the inside.

“So Mundo…” I started off quietly as I got up from my sitting position. “How do you think I’m doing?”

“I think you’re putting off your issue with Smolder a little too much, though giving her some space is nice you’re going to have to address that eventually. Otherwise I think you’re doing great in refining your own abilities. Dormarch still has an issue with Ocellus almost letting Castle Alexander get turned into a zombie had the Excelsus not been dealt with by the Eaters, but otherwise the enmity between them has gone down somewhat since she successfully kept the castle intact while Dormarch went to help you.” Mundo was someone to talk to and he was always a willing to listen to others troubles, he was also a great coach when it came to helping me refine my combat ability. Fighting Types in general were great at knowing how to refine combat techniques, their own and that of others. “So aside from how you are doing physically, I’m going to ask how you are doing spiritually.”

I noted he was staring at the golden wool on my front legs and I frowned while looking down at the ground. I didn’t say anything and I didn’t have to as the wrestling bird approached me quietly.

Mundo pulled me into a soft feathery hug and I appreciated it, I needed more hugs and not just from Dolly or Dormarch… though those were hugs I love a lot. I was beginning to understand why Moon Cell was targeting me exclusively if magic was its major source of offensive ability. It seemed like Moon Cell couldn’t do too many overt things to its own realms.

“It’ll be okay.” He comfortingly patted my back and rubbed his wings in slow circles.

“Yeah, but if this keeps up…” I didn’t finish the sentiment as my back right leg was showing flecks of golden color now too.

“Pom needs hugs?” Suddenly Dazzle joined in on the hug, her warm body pressing against my back, comforting and familiar if not exactly Tianhuo.

“Hey Dazzle, how are you feeling?” After being blasted with a massive amounts of water and being fairly weak to that kind of thing.

“I’m okay and Frizzle’s fighting spirit certainly hasn’t dimmed any… even if she quiet and cool at all other times.” Dazzle nuzzled me affectionately. “You’re not ready for the coming fights are you?”

“Does it matter at this rate? We’re the main offensive against Moon Cell… likely the only offensive…” My eyes turned towards a third pair of limbs wrapping around me as Pinkpie.exe grinned up at me and snuggled against my wool. “Okay, that’s enough guys, let me go.”

They all got in an extra squeeze and eventually did so and Dormarch came padding up to us.

“We’re pretty much ready to go mom, Jeanne is wondering if you are.” Dormarch’s three wagging fish tails lazily drifted back and forth as he watched his adoptive big sister practice firing momentum blasts from her mouth. Dolly just didn’t want to feel weak next to yet another one of her brothers, especially one that was barely more than a month or so old. “Huh… nifty. I’ve been meaning to ask, is our bond straining because I’m becoming exponentially stronger?”

“Yes, it is… not that that’s a bad thing, I have less to worry about knowing you won’t be getting into as much trouble as I do. Your ability to heal yourself helps with my nerves having watched you get into a duel with a chainsaw wielding mechanical monster wolf.” Not that I personally wasn’t going to get into any more trouble soon. I placed my chin on top of Dormarch’s head affectionately and nuzzled down into him to see his tails get more excited at the affection I was showing him. “Also it’s nice to knowing that my rabbit loving little Dalmatian monster is so strong.”

“Mom-.” Whined Dormarch, but he was happy to receive the attention.

That Dormarch was still within the realms of the familiar bond was a good thing and that he could still be so sweet and easily embarrassed despite having such fierce combat abilities warmed my heart. I’m afraid of what his Mega form was going to entail, even if it’s not Chaosdramon X. It might be a little bit too much for the current bond between us and he was still trying to get a handle on his ultimate form of Garummon.

Dormarch could easily handle his champion form, but his ultimate form was still unstable and drained a lot of energy out of him due to having forced it a bit through eating a Magitek Armor. I know growing boys needed healthy appetites, but Dormarch took that to a whole ridiculous extreme.

“Dolly, time for a break, we need at least some strength for when we enter the Midgar City realm!” That’s going to happen in a short while.

Dolly came sliding along the ground toward me on her right hind leg and a bit of her back like a baseball player, she popped out of the slide to come to an abrupt, upright and sudden stop in front of me with a wide patented happy Dolly grin on her face.

Apparently Dolly learned how to dash along the ground at a decent speed using momentum control without friction causing her problems or burning up her fur… did she really need to become more slippery? Well it was something of a useful thing that she could do now if she lost her board, but it only worked on the ground and in one general direction, it couldn’t be used to go across ceilings or walls either. She still needed momentum and to actively run along the walls, that is to say her flowing motion abilities were still a little unusual in how nuanced they were for her natural parkour abilities.

“Let’s go get ready for the move to the Midgar Realm.” I sighed, but received a pat on the back from Quetal, who smiled at me as he passed by.

I wonder if my technique refinement would make my Buster Wolf attack more effective to use, because it was the one move I had that needed the most work. Still couldn’t do it without the ‘are you okay’ words coming out of my mouth, but I could do it without saying ‘Buster Wolf’ at least.

My Wolf Fang Hoof fighting style and technique was coming along nicely, though I’m sure the APs I used it against didn’t think so. At best I’d use it against opponents that had poor or sloppy defenses… the only reason why we even beat Saber Jack Wolf is because I had weakened him enough with a technique I barely though up on the spot and that’s a dangerous precedent if anything. I’d rather rely on known and well practice techniques.

Bark Breaker had a good range, easy to specifically target something. Howl Breaker was an effect on everything within a short bubble of me and apparently I lose the ability to hear… which would be bad if someone was shooting at me. Still great technique for weakening armor or large mechanical beings provided my throat could take it.

As we got to the throne room, I noted that everyone that wasn’t an AP or NPC was here aside from Snake and a Rider Zealot that was now piloting Castle Alexander. We’re going to use the Rider Zealots to our every advantage.

“Not tell a duck?” The Zealot stated from where he sat as he looked at the gathering, most of the things they said still sounded completely nonsensical. Though one might see where Sami’s influence was imprinted on them given that ‘not tell a duck’ was one of their more common phrases.

“Okay, we’re about ready to see what we’re dealing with here.” Jeanne stated as we prepared to move out of Mare Melum and Castle Alexander started the process to jump into the next realm.

“I have to wonder, did you bring any Reviver Seeds on your wagon?” Aside from the ones that we still had in the Team Harmony wagon that was squirreled away in the safety of the courtyards corner.

“Reviver Seeds were fairly rare on the Ransei continent, what with a lack of Mystery Dungeons to delve, but as with the reports we got from Mirage Mew, those are appearing everywhere in response to Moon Cell’s invasion as anchor points for it to attack the Ransei continent from. We have a maximum of two from our personal stock we brought with us from Valora bought from travelers by King Ieyasu, the situations we’ve been getting into have been nearly dire enough for me to actually carry one or both of them. They are a very precious resource.” So what Jeanne meant is that we had like four overall given that we still had a few unused Reviver seeds and only a limited supply we couldn’t waste. “Nobody knows how or why Reviver Seeds exist, but it’s for the grace of Arceus that we have some and a decent steady supply of Sitrus Berries. Otherwise we’re not liable to get Reviver Seeds without delving into a Mystery Dungeon.”

Two Reviver seeds had been sitting in Team Harmony’s wagon unused, I had one of them on me now… for obvious reasons. I highly doubted a Reviver Seed would have saved me from the Eaters had one of them gotten me. We might need all four seeds for Midgar if the EPs were going to get even stranger or more powerful.

Castle Alexander made the jump and we waited to see what was waiting for us once we arrived.

-Midgar City, second tier, in the central tallest building with ‘Shinra’ written on it, ????-

Ah, it was a nice relaxing place to be, at the top of the world… waiting for my enemies to come to me instead of having to go to them. Speaking of enemies they have just appeared outside of Midgar and I seriously doubted they’d last very long against me.

As a Caster, this whole city has become my domain. I’d actually like to see them try and destroy it on my watch!

I had Moby Dick, the Envious Naga chick, that wandering wild card guy I was warned not to appear in front of or draw his attention to me or Envious Naga, the trapped massive fire beast with muscles and so many battle machines between me and them that could do all the fighting for me while I just get in a nap, play some games and didn’t really have to do all too much thinking until it became too big a problem for me to ignore.

They’d have to get by the wall first, they’d never reach it without destroying their precious fortress, their only source of power in their fight against Moon Cell. They’d never risk it.

“I’m setting all my cards into attack mode, good luck trying to get through the defenses of Midgar.” I leaned back and started my nap, I’m not the kind of Lemming that ran off cliffs to my demise after all and a genius that strains himself is no genius in my mind.

-Somewhere else in the rain on the upper streets of Midgar, ???-

A large form dropped down in front of me, its single red eye blaring as it raised its right spike covered fist to try and hit me. I simply burst out of the way of its attack and then rammed into its body in a flare of blue energy, stunning and weakening the massive thing before shooting it with my gun rapidly.

Once I landed on the ground I charged my gun up and glared down the monster still trying to come to terms with what was about to happen to it.

I was going to need resources if I was to find out where I am or what I’m even doing here, I can hardly remember why I’m even here.

I know… I can feel somewhere something deep inside me knows… I know that there were monsters that had to be hunted here… I would find them because…

THEY WERE MY ENEMY!

-

A flair of lightning revealed a white lizard face, a shock of short spiky white hair, white and red armor on a lithe form and a glowing glare of piercing red eyes.

The massive hulk that tried to attack the lizard figure with strangely futuristic armor now had a large burning hole in it as cubes barely had time to even bleed a bit before it exploded into a mass of particles as the damage dealt to it finally caught up with it.

-

I hardly even knew who I was… but my mission was clear that I had to cleanse this rotten world full of monsters, with this gun clamped tightly in my hand.

Walking down the road into a city under the clouds and in this rain, the flashes of lightning tickling at my memories for some reason. Storms filled me with some form of familiarity, I didn’t like it.

-Abandoned laboratory, underneath the city of Midgar in the lower levels, ????-

I shivered and shook as I sat back on my coils in the back of a cell.

Sure I was able to leave at any time, but to leave was likely to give away to Moon Cell that I wasn’t entirely under its control. At least this one part of me wasn’t.

I was never a hero, I was always coward... my powers even allowed me to fully remember my past life.

How did Moon Cell even get a hold of me?

I was killed by... yeah completely obliterated… that was mostly my fault… they wanted to help… yet I attacked them… how did my soul even end up here?!

My abilities allowed me that second fight… who am I more angry at myself or THEM for all that happened to me?

Why?! Why couldn’t I even know eternal rest even now?

The horrors of being alive against after so long, Moon Cell might have somehow grabbed my soul, but I don’t think it expected me to have a physical body.

I’ll be fine… I’ll just stay here… in the dark… where no one will find me.

The others can do Moon Cell’s bidding… I wanted no part in this… even if I get hungry and starve… I’m not going anywhere, I even refuse to!

After all that’s happened to me… why… why can’t I ever STAY DEAD?!

I curled up and cried to myself, feeling the nightmares would never end. Even if I were to kill myself… they’d just bring me back again.

-Somewhere in the ground level Midgar region, ????-

The chained beast of an entity lifted its head, the mighty red, orange and yellow hair bipedal giant lion like monster with massive horns felt something that completely drew its attention from its unstable rest.

Its rage started building… it felt the spirit of a particular water goat that had defied him before and had caused the demise of his previous body. Her spirit had not wavered since he last felt her defiance and her soul still rang with defiance even if they couldn’t see each other even now!

The rage that filled him could not be contained and flames began to rise around him… even when he was chained underwater in a pressure sealed tank to prevent him from using said flames in the first place.

Moon Cell thought it could actually contain him?! It had yet to see how angry he could get.

Since hell was far too cold for the likes of him!

The flame still came and the water started to flash boil as the beast of rage, the pure berserker’s fury, started becoming unleashed in the form of raw power that slowly started tearing apart the chains holding it down. Chains meant to stop both mortal and divine power of the soul alike, chains that shouldn’t be failing in their job… unfortunately they were much to even Moon Cell’s current distress. These chains were meant to hold even the likes of a being known as Asura.

He roared out in raw force of anger that couldn’t be quenched by even an oceans worth of water. Water couldn’t stop the beasts of flames, the soul of rage and an unquenchable need to kill a very particular little goat.

Lu Bu would have his revenge by ending that goat’s dream for helping fell him previously! He would destroy Moon Cell! He would destroy everything even remotely related to his current imprisonment!

He… would… get… free…

“RAGGHHHHHH----” The pressure tank was barely managing to hold him, yet he did not let up.

Lu Bu’s soul burned even more brightly than ever before, the only way to keep him contained was to use him as a living battery and divert all that power to somewhere else. To that end he was powering most of Midgar through the sheer force of his rage alone. Even then, his containment was starting to form hairline cracks.

-A fair distance outside of Midgar across some plains, Castle Alexander, Jeanne-

“Well… here we are…” I have never in my life seen a city bigger and more sprawling that that of Valora… Midgar was proving to be quite a monster in that department.

It… was… massive…

The walls were so wide and tall there was no way Castle Alexander could get into the city by climbing them, we would have to open the entrance to the city to get inside of it with our mobile fortress which seemed entirely too small in comparison.

Along that wall were tons of cannons, weapons of alien design of the likes I’ll never know and more, some were even firing on us and hitting our shields even now. Thankfully we had the Rider Zealot in charge of piloting Castle Alexander as they were able to hit us even at this range.

The damage was minimal given the shields were holding up fairly well, but the scale of the black city in the distance was daunting. Tons of red lights at the top of massive towering structures of a city… built on top of another city. Who would make a city so cumbersome?

Even the late city of Cerebrum in Illusio wasn’t of such sprawling size. Everyone on the continent of Ransei heard what happened to Cerebrum.

“There it is… it looks like we’ll have to take it out this time.” Pom said forlornly and I saw what she was pointing out with her right hoof… in the dark cloudy skies above the nightmarish city we were faced with attacking was that whale.

Moby Dick was once again our enemy, it had large feathered wings where its fins used to be and it slowly circled around the tallest tower at the center of the whole massive complex monstrosity that calls itself a city.

“I’m…. terrified….” I was shivering and I wasn’t the only one, even Pom was visibly shuddering.

I sometimes feel like Pom is the bravest one among us, but it’s not true… she’s just the most helpless against absolutely throwing herself at problems.

“That’s a city?!” Yes, Canard, it was.

I can understand your disbelief quite clearly, even I was overwhelmed and gripping my banner spear a little too tightly.

“What’s that around the base of the walls of the city down there?” Ocellus seemed to be wincing, oh right… she could feel all our emotions and all the fear might be getting to her more than the rest of us.

She had to take it in a combined amount on top of her own, she was trying to focus us, distract us, keep our minds off the daunting task ahead to deal with that city.

“Shanty are you okay?” That drew my attention to Pom, who was shaking Shanty.

Shanty looked wide eyed and for some reason a little lost, after a moment of shaking her head Shanty looked to Pom and grinned weakly.

“Huh, oh, yeah, I am being completely fine.” The goat that could create cuts with her hooves and manipulate water was most certainly not fine, then again none of us were, but there was something up with how she had been staring off into space a second ago.

“So how are we getting started?” Smolder stated bluntly with crossed arms, probably the only one in the room not intimidated. In fact, I think it was because Ocellus was her girlfriend that she was trying to provide something other than fear to help Ocellus thinking more about someone other than herself.

I took in that feeling myself and strengthened my resolve and decided to get started. By looking at the various screens of information, EPs were already crossing the plains to come at us. A frontal assault on the city was most definitely not in our favor, but we could hold our territory where we sat easily.

“I need a team of volunteers for the backdoor plan, we need a small group to infiltrate the city and open a way in and out for our APs and possibly Castle Alexander itself.” I started taking charge of the situation. “Welch, can you make a hovering vehicle similar to what the Commandramon used back in Cape that could move on ground and in water? I want it to be able to carry that team, we’ll also need at least eight Skein Flyers manned by our new Rider Zealots. Those who are not going will be in defense of Castle Alexander, the APs will go on the offense here and the towers will try to gain territories in the plains to build a forward push. I have no doubt that we won’t surpass those walls until we can get a team behind them to open and entrance or disable the walls cannons.”

“Wait, you’re going?” Pom asked.

“Yes, I’m leaving the Hakamo-o team here under the command of the recent Kommo-o evolution they have proven themselves stalwart in battle. They are not to be in command of the castle however, just the Valora teams on the defensive.” The Kommo-o nodded to me and accept that. “To that end I want Ocellus to be in charge of Castle Alexander’s defenses and AP offensive push. That leaves me to one question, who’s going with me on the team to commit to Operation: Backdoor?”

“Even if I don’t go, trouble will just come to me, I think it’d be safer if I wasn’t drawing Moon Cell’s full ire down on the castle.” There was no doubt to the truth of your words Pom.

Dolly barked up and was idly lounging on her board and flicking the stone bone into the air and catching it.

I nodded and saw no reason to separate Pom from her closest companions, to that end I then turned to look at Pom’s self-proclaimed son Dormarch curiously.

“My mother and big sister are going, you can’t expect me to not be by their sides.” Dormarch answered with loyalty to his family and I accept that, but he notably didn’t comment on me leaving Ocellus in charge here.

“Our numbers cannot be too large.” Just reminding them that we would need to keep this infiltration group small and I didn’t even know what we need.

“I’ll go, specialist scout and emergency healing.” Shine the Ghourgheist stated, though I knew little of her she knows my father and mother somehow. While I was curious, she has been nothing but friendly and the only odd thing is that she had the title of ‘ninja’ oddly hanging about her.

“At least one digi-bot.” I said a second later.

“I’m on it.” Krosserdog stated.

“I’m with metal mutt, I’m his partner.” Peppercat stated with her arms crossed and a nod.

“I think I be needing to go with you… be calling it a hunch.” It seemed like Shanty was not as shaking up as she looked to be earlier. “Favela can you be watching Dodo?”

“Sure thing Captain Shanty.” Favela stated in a cheerful tone.

“Sami and I can round it out the team.” Canard brought up with Sami at his side. “I’m the guy with a bleeding heart for helping resistance movements and Sami here can fill in spots on the team in case our experts get lost or knocked out.”

You weren’t saying ‘or worse’ Canard, but I can understand the need for some positivity with that daunting city on screen.

“That will be…” All that we needed, but someone else added themselves to the mission.

“I’m going.” Snake said from where he calmly sat off to the side.

“That will be all we can take, everyone else will be focused on holding the frontlines of the plains, we’ll leave once Welch has our hovering craft ready to go and we have a small supply of berries and our reviver seeds to use in an emergency.” I sighed, this was going to be one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. All of Ransei was counting on us to continue pressing ever forward. “If you get into trouble, then you’ll call upon the Harmony Programs for assistance.”

“New mechanical EPs on approach, already sending out the Rider Zealots in the Magitek Armors to stop them.” Ocellus stated as she looked up at the screens.

“Our meeting is adjourned, we all know where we need to be.”

I would calmly pick up my modified headset and looked it over, Welch upgraded them with visors that can display maps of where we are once we get into Midgar proper. A rather helpful and needed upgrade to our equipment.

“Do want to ask me about your parents?” Shine asked as our meeting adjourned.

“Not at this moment.” Was that the reason Shine was going with us? Is it because of me?

“You do know you are not a Steel Type right?” After Shine said that, I looked at her.

“I know, but there is still Steel Type in my blood.” My father was a steel and dragon Type. “Can you deny this?”

Shine only smiled at me cheerfully and I returned that smile.

“Take care Shine.” Quetal said as he came up and hugged Shine and she hugged him back.

“I’ll be fine, it’s everyone else I’m going to be worried about.” Shine nodded to Quetal… and was about to go off to prepare, but a second later she turned back and kissed Quetal on the cheek, proceeded to wink at him cheerfully and then went on her way.

“Heh, the overlap of a Trickster and a Ninja.” Quetal stated with a small pleasant smile and a shake of his head, as he started to leave he made a comment towards me. “Watch out for her, will you Jeanne?”

412. Massive Cavern Assault.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar Realm, Outside Midgar, Plains, Castle Alexander-

The winged Moby Dick was staying above the massive city of Midgar and hovering around the central tower there.

The incoming fire from the guns on Midgar’s ground floor walls was hitting the shields and Castle Alexander could remain in place indefinitely as long as it stayed in a resting defense mode and the Rider Zealot in control of the castle wasn’t taxed.

The head of the walking canine castle was resting on the ground facing the wall with a massive amount of firepower coming towards it.

Alongside the cannons constantly firing on Castle Alexander at the edge of their fairly large range, a lot of EP crossing were the fields of the plains. Waiting for the enemy were Rider Zealots piloting several missile trucks in the courtyard, several Magitek armor piloted Zealots were out in front of the castle and Skein Flyers hovered overhead in preparation for any oncoming aerial enemy.

Saber Knight APs were readying their shields on the field and standing with the Magitek armors, protecting the gates was the Lancer Guardians and out in the plains the Assassin Caerbannogs were already sneaking into positions and setting up traps for the incoming enemy armor. Some Caerbannogs were tunneling, others were relying on the illusion of being normal rabbits and there were those that were moving cardboard boxes that went entirely ignored, their leader Snake would be proud of that last one as the enemy didn’t seem to notice piles of stacked boxes moving around the fields randomly.

The EPs had walking, rolling and hovering tanks as armor and artillery, massive numbers of them. Its ground forces involved Assassin Reapers, Berserker Vikings, Saber Knights and even a whole slew of repurposed aquatic EPs turned into more land capable combat forms. The winged Berserker Sharks were particularly terrifying for those who remember fighting them from Cape and it took a while for them to give up after they were already dead.

Castle Alexander was outnumbered five to one, but the counter invasion force wasn’t outgunned in the slightest. Hundreds of missiles launched from the courtyard and the automatic function of Castle Alexander’s towers went to work as it started putting artillery shots into the field in the hopes of capturing some territory to fill out their APs numbers.

While Castle Alexander was drawing all the heat, at the back of the fortress a small garage door size entrance at the back of the castle opened. Eight Skein Flyers piloted by Rider Zealots flew forward circling a hovering platform with Jeanne D Arc’s Backdoor Team soared forward and hovered its way down the ramp like tail of mobile castle.

Jeanne had a firmed face as she sat on the platform continuing down towards the tip of the tail, they would be using Torneko’s map to make use of the nearby entrance to the underground portion of Midgar. As the plan went they would work their way up to dealing with the wall guns and opening the massive gate of Midgar. Either objective would open up the opportunity for their dog fortress to penetrate the city, provided it was still standing by the time they got the entrance into Midgar open.

Dealing with the wall guns would be the better of the two options, if the gate gets open then Castle Alexander could at least enter hover mode and move faster than expected to get through the massive gateway while under heavy fire.

There was a lot of stuff being thrown at Castle Alexander already and it had the banner wielding, armored scales, fighting dragon worried.

Pom, Dormarch and Dolly all turned to stare at the city as they circle clockwise around from behind Castle Alexander to the left of it and continued off to the side at an angle and not directly towards the frontlines, the entrance to the underground was nearby.

Krosserdog looked to Pom fondly for a moment and then turned Peppercat who was glaring at him with an angry mark forming in the metal on her head. They had their work cut out for them, because they doubted the caverns into the city would be unguarded and the Digi-bots were working well outside their system policing functions.

Shine adjusted the bag she had slung over her shoulder and looked to Snake who stared at the city flatly with a grim frown on his face, the rogue servant and killer bipedal bunny eventually reached over and gently ruffled Shine’s hair making her squeak cutely. Snake knew that Shine was talented in stealth and maybe he could teach her a thing or two before everything was said and done.

Canard was checking his Valora brand hockey stick over and making sure it was ready for the coming fight and the digital energy levels his digivice held. Sami was going over the supplies the transport was carrying. They had two spare Skein Flyers ready for an emergency and almost everyone has been given a crash course in how to fly one of the tilt rotor, jet assisted, flying hover bikes. They also had a lot of Sitrus Berries, the limited supply of reviver seeds were what needed to be preserved at all costs.

“Down cola!” The Rider Zealot stated nonsensically from the back of the hovering transport platform as he piloted the skiff towards where the tunnels, caverns, waterways and mines began. It didn’t matter what pathway they took, they would all take them under where Midgar’s many defenses were and into the city.

The problem was that it was bound to be a one way trip and help wouldn’t be forthcoming if they got wiped out, everyone else would be too busy with the defense of Castle Alexander.

Some would say the defenses on Midgar were rather excessive or overkill, if not for the fact that they were warranted and easily good enough to keep Castle Alexander at bay indefinitely unless one of the objectives was met.

Upon approaching the hole sloping into the earth, Shanty grinned excitedly as four of the escorting Skein Flyer Zealots moved forward and the others took up the rear and the vehicle tilted forward to be swallowed up by the earth and some temporary darkness before lights lit up all around the hovering skiff and the Skein Flyers also added their own cones of light as they delved into the cavern.

-Cavern Assault Route, Pom-

I tapped the headset and a visor extended across my eyes, I braced it in place with some light shifting of my wool. It helped with lighting up the darkness of the cavern and there was a map in the corner of my view would prevent us from getting turned around down here as we started down into the bowels of the realm.

We had no idea what was down here, but I feared we were going to find out fairly soon and it would be quite horrible. At least the visors would cover for the things that might have been changed by Moon Cell or time or at least that was what I was told.

Our procession just flowed through and into the caverns and tunnels, the Rider Zealots knew our route and where we needed to be.

“Kind of quiet…” Dolly was about to go there with as the visor went across her face and started lighting it up as much as the lights from the Skein Flyers around us… so I silently sent her a big empathetic ‘NO’ and glared at her. We’re trying to sneak into Midgar here and she was about to say something… ‘TEMPTING’… out loud. “Right, right, sorry.”

We continued forward at a fairly quick pace, there were various tunnels and pathways, mine carts and picks left behind in the walls. The lights of the Skein Flyers swept down the tunnels as we passed by them and so far we weren’t see any EP activity, but I wouldn’t put it past Moon Cell’s forces to know we were already down here.

Even Jeanne was already tense as she looked around into the shadows where the Rider Zealots weren’t, there was even glancing at the ceiling to make sure nothing got the drop on us as we continued on the rocky slope downwards into a system of tunnels.

The only noise was from the fans as we hovered forward, I was at the left rear of the vehicle and Jeanne was at the right front looking about while keeping a tight and ready grip on her banner spear.

The winding and twisting caverns were quiet, but if we saw anything moving or alive they would have come up on our visors as being separate from the environment. That feature of our visors would work even if the enemy was camouflaging as part of our surroundings.

Thus far nobody saw any movement or heard any sounds as we moved forward as quietly as possible, even the hums of the fans keeping our platform aloft were faint and any noise we could hear other than them would be very noticeable.

No detection of enemy PLANTs down here either, saw plenty of those in the plains and Moby Dick hovering above the city. After a while of being unbothered we did start to hear moving water, slow at that, we were on the right track at least… according to the map scanned into the visors.

All the underground water flowed into or towards Midgar’s lower section. The skiff went over the water and continued forward with our eight escorts completely on alert.

“Seismic activity… movement in the area ahead.” Announced Krossderdog, immediately everyone was tense and had their guards up as soon as the digi-bot said this. They had a full three hundred and sixty degree coverage of the ceiling and nooks and crannies between all the stalactites and stalagmites around them.

They were still above the river of water as the floated out over a wide expanse of water heading in the direction of an entrance, no sign of anything moving in the water.

The entrance they were about to go through was when things started.

Several hard to see creatures suddenly dropped from above and landed on several of the stalagmites sticking out of the water and before they could even see what they were a powerful buzzing filled the cavern and a wall of water kicked up in front of the Rider Zealots who swerved out of the way and the Skiff bounced off it.

The zealots opened fire but the rapid fire shots couldn’t get through the wall of water, they then immediately started turning and firing as twenty or so flying bugs swept out of hidden crevices to start attacking them.

They were quickly felled under the torrent of eight rapid fire energy cannons, but they were fast and if they got too close to our Rider Zealots they might be able to take them out in melee. Flickers of blue could be seen coming off the skiff and the eight Skein Flyers, the flying bugs apparently had some kind of ranged option and were spitting what looked like acid covered spikes from their mouths.

“Ambush!” I called out, getting everyone focused on what was happening as forty flying bugs started to surge in from all sides and behind us after that initial test wave of attackers.

Sami and Krosserdog immediately went to work with gunning them down. We were going to get stuck here and crushed under the numbers unless we did something, they had us cornered!

“Shanty, Dormarch!” I called out and told Dolly to help protect the skiff mentally, my wool shifting to environmental adaptation as I leapt overboard from the skiff. The wall of water being produced by the loud buzzing stopping our forward progress didn’t cover going underneath it.

I splashed into the water and this was followed by two other shifts of mass in the water as Dormarch and Shanty had followed me in. We all swam forward together underneath the water barrier.

-A great cave offensive, Music: Top Ride: Metal, Kirby Air Ride (Alternative: Kirby Super Star Cocoa Cave)-

Pom, Shanty and Dormarch swam forward and when they tried to poke their heads out of the water, only for several acid covered spikes force them to duck back down.

Several hovering bugs were trying to protect the ones generating the wall of water stopping their transport from proceeding forward and stuck in the ambush spot.

Shanty leapt out of the water while sweeping a mass of it upwards with her to block the spikes being fired at her as she bounced off the spiraling waterspout with her hooves and quickly slashed down two of the bugs with her cane scythe.

The wall of water immediately weakened and while the bugs were focused entirely on Shanty, Dormarch popped up and fired off two Wild Barks and Pom finished off another by grabbing it with her wool and dragging it into the water.

The bug thing shrieked until it drowned, which didn’t take more than two seconds of its head being underwater before it started dissolving into cubes.

The wall of water weakened enough that a stream of shots prevented the bug from trying to land and build the water barrier back up with their fast flapping wings as they anchored themselves to the rock.

The skiff swiftly moved forward with the eight Skein Flyers bringing up the rear and blasting anything trying to come through the bottleneck that was now to their favor.

Dormarch was the first to get out of the water and back on the skiff, this was followed by Shanty skipping across the top of the flowing water on her hooves, Pom soon followed by reaching up and grabbing the side of the skiff as it passed above her.

When it looked like Pom was going to pull herself up, her eyes widened and she looked back down at her hind right leg and was dragged back into the water with a loud bleating noise erupting from her mouth.

There were several shadows that were now moving through the water from behind the skiff that weren’t the flying bugs currently occupying everyone’s attentions.

Pom’s eyes widened as she saw what looked like a large horned tiger striped armored water bug had her hind right leg in its mandibles grip and she saw movements from the horn above its head.

As she flailed out of the way of the fast extending needle, Dormarch was watching the outline of a flailing Pom under the water through the visor he had on.

Dormarch saw Pom avoid being speared through the side by the bugs extending spear from its head, so it was likely a Lancer classification of monster.

Pom broke off the pointy proboscis with a swift regular right magical wolf claw, then proceed to grab the broken spear with her right hoof and turned it around to stab it down into the water monsters face with it and almost got it to let go of her. When that wasn’t enough Pom formed a triangular scoop blade out of wool on her left leg and stabbed it deep into the creature’s brain and kicked off with her hind legs before two more of the arriving monsters could get her in their large mandibles.

Pom immediately started swimming away as she quickly could and there were ten of those things down there with her, then she got swept up in a current and was quickly getting ahead of the skiff with three of the water bound chasers going after her.

“Enemies in the water, go higher, we don’t want them damaging the skiff! Mom’s fine for the moment, now go-go-go!” Dormarch called and the vehicle lurched forward and avoided a rising spear that was deflected and knocked back into the water by Jeanne with a quick block and sweep of her banner spear.

The bug was blasted out of the air a second later as the Skein Flyers started avoiding the leaping water bugs and continued to fire on the flying shrieking spike spewers in the air around them. The flying bugs spikes kept bouncing off the shields generated by the Zealots, but despite this they still tried to fly closer and to use their blade edged legs to strike out at the ones protecting the skiff.

Thanks to the skiff suddenly going into forward motion the flying bugs were unable to close in as the group surged forward.

In the water beneath them Pom was trying to remain upright and keep an eye on the outline of the skiff at the same time through the visor, the current was at least helping her put some distance between the three water bugs chasing her down as she continued to swim forward using her rippling wool like a fish would their fins to keep her speed up.

While trying to keep an eye on the skiff, a thought crossed Pom’s mind about Moby Dick being present above the city of Midgar and there being water in the caverns beneath…

As soon as the thought crossed Pom’s mind, she leaned back and avoided some snapping jaws rising up for her face and kicked off the nose of a Berserker Shark that just scared the living daylights out of her and quickly swam around it. The only notable different thing about it was the feathered flippers and fin, meaning it was likely capable of flight.

The shark turned and gave chase, only to find itself being cut in half vertically thanks to Shanty as the skiff passed by overhead.

This didn’t stop the striped bugs from continuing to chase Pom underwater nor did it prevent them from slamming into the bottom of the skiff in an effort to damage it or knock someone off into the underground river.

“Look out Assassin Jellyfish on the ceiling!” Jeanne’s warning came just in time as multiple colorful blobs started trying to rain down from the ceiling onto the skiff. A number of Jellyfish managed to land in the skiff and some clung onto the side and back. “Keep them off the zealot!”

Jeanne could not move to the back of the raft as she was slinging a bug that leapt from the water off the end of her banner spear and into the water, she was busy defending the front and watching Pom’s outline in the visor struggling underwater under water to deal with a kraken that tried to grab her.

“We’re surrounded on all sides, we just need to keep moving!” Canard immediately slashed apart the jellyfish tried to go for the Zealot with the end of his hockey stick, Dolly soon joined him by whipping her board by its strap through another that tried to climb up onto the back of the boat where their pilot was. Canard hit the headset to contact Pom as he slashed through another jellyfish. “Pom, if you can hear me, we’ll try to pick you up, but we’ll need you need to get out of the water for that!”

Pom nodded to herself and continued to swim for it and darted to the side to rake the blade made of wool down the right side of the water bug that tried grab her. Now she had Assassin Jellyfish trying to swarm her that were dropping from the ceiling onto the Skiff, any that missed were going to be on top of her.

It was hard for Pom to swim towards a wall or surface with the current keeping her centralized in the water. She couldn’t respond as she was too focused as several Caster Eels started trying to form barricades of reef in her path, she swiftly slipped through the tightening holes in the water and some of the eels glowed with electricity as their mouths opened as they used the energy to speed up behind her and give chase.

Pom was quickly losing track of how many things were trying to kill her in this moment as stalactites slammed into the water almost crushing her.

“She’s being in too much trouble… also waterfall!” Shanty called out over the headsets, she turned from Pom’s atheletic activities and looked to see a waterfall ahead and a slope off to the side. She looked back to see Dormarch and Dolly blasted Momentum Barks and Wild Barks at the bugs harassing the skiff and the Rider Zealots had their own problems, including the one piloting their craft who had to generate an energy blade on his right and slice an Assassin Jelly in half. A stalactite struck the skiff and sent Shanty flipping into the air. “Well I was going to be going after Pom anyway!”

Shanty landed on top of the water and gathered up a bubble around her and then dove that bubble into the water and was soon shooting through the water after Pom who was about to be grabbed by another tiger striped water bug.

“Zealot, take the slope!” Jeanne screamed as she jammed her spear up into a shrieking flying bug and promptly launched it at a tiger bug trying to leap out of the water into the skiff from the right.

“Pom and Shanty are safely out of range Peppercat, go wild!” Krosserdog brought down two spike spitting nuisances with precise shots to their wings.

Peppercat’s eyes lit up as she bodily threw a boarding jellyfish into the path of a stalactite off the left side, where it splattered in gruesome detail. Lifting herself up over the left edge of the skiff, she started clinging to the left side of the hovering skiff she leaned down towards the water with her left claw glowing brightly with electrical energy.

“Waters clear!” Peppercat called out as she dunked her left plug claw into the rushing waters below the skiff and lit up the entire river, numerous EPs in the water suddenly exploded violently or were heavily damaged and immediately went belly up as they started dissolving into cubes.

Peppercat quickly pulled herself back onto the skiff and clawed down another Assassin Jelly trying to go for their pilot, Canard was too busy with one of the winged shrieking bugs that landed on the right side of the skiff.

One of the Skein Flyer Zealots moved ahead and pointed down the slope to take a lead position ahead of the skiff as it started to turn off the water for the safer slope. This was while the others continued to deal with the flying bugs coming at them from all sides.

Meanwhile Shanty had caught up to Pom and pulled her into the bubble. Instead of resisting the waterfall and trying for the slope as the others were doing, as Peppercat’s blast of electricity went off in the water behind them, Pom instead pointed them forwards.

Shanty got in on the idea as Pom was pointing somewhere specific below the sudden drop and sped up the bounding bubble around them towards the water’s edge.

They launched off the top of the waterfall and Shanty focused the bubble to being beneath both of them and they slammed down onto something solid. It was a platform on some rails. Pom was about to say something when the platform, still covered in the water from Shanty’s bounding bubble splattering into it, started speeding down the tracks.

“How do I keep getting into these situations?” Pom lamented as several flying bugs swooped down from holes in the ceiling and gave chase to them as they were moving along the side of the river.

“At least these EPs are being easy to deal with right?” Shanty didn’t quite realize why there was a sudden look of pure horror on Pom’s face as she looked at her before Pom could say anything something large slammed down into the track behind them.

“Shanty…” Groaned Pom as Shanty looked behind them to see a singular central giant wheeled machine with blue armor that looked similar and reminiscent in design to a Magitek Armor. At the back of the thing were two large metallic orbs connecting too thin long mechanical arms to the machine, said arms led all the way down to two large armored forearms ending in four claws. Said claws started to rapidly spin up into the shape of two massive drills as the thing gave chase to them, it raised its right arm as it approached the out of control platform moving down the rails. “Move!”

Pom pushed Shanty towards the front of the platform, avoiding several spikes fired out of the mouths of the three flying bugs with the machine, as the machine’s right drill came down and tore hole into the central back of the platform causing the water to go gushing out into the machine.

For some reason the water caused the large drilling machine to slow it down immensely and causes it to fall back behind them and stop damaging the platform they were on.

Several small rifle shots blasted into the side of the big wheel on the machine. Krosserdog, noticing how little damage he was doing, decided to take aim at the three bugs and dropped them from the air for the machine to run over in quick succession.

The big blue armored machine currently chasing Pom and Shanty started glowing, a bolt of lightning struck the platform Pom and Shanty were on. This stunned the both of them and caused their bodies to convulse and scream in agony, it certainly didn’t help that the both of them were wet.

“Slapshot!” Canard popped an exploding puck of digital energy into the air with his right hand and slammed it with his hockey stick in his left to send it into the side of the machine, actually managing to damage and crack its armor greatly.

Sami was currently too busy firing on the flying bugs still approaching the vehicle from all sides.

In response to the attack on it, the machine raised its left drill and stretched it forward at the skiff and scored a damaging hit on the front right side of it before it could swerve out of range.

“Thanks for giving me a place to plant this, grenade out!” Snake called and pulled a golden cross covered sphere and tossed it into the crack on the left side of the large machine’s armor, following that Snake tossed out two darts with a rope connected between them to clothesline a few of the flying bugs still chasing after them.

Snake had been mostly throwing an endless supply of knives up to this point and giving Shine a few pointers as he passed her some of his knives so she doesn’t use up her limited stock of throwing ammunition in her bag.

“HALLELUJAH~!” The following noise and explosion of light from the golden grenade slammed the right side of the blue armored mono-wheeled machine into the wall and create a huge shrieking noise as its metal rubbed against the wall.

The machines left arm angled to the right and the shrieking noise coming from the large machine ceased, since it had suddenly burrowed into the wall at an incredible speed and disappeared from sight.

“Doubt that’s the end of that thing…” As Snake said this he idly tossed a knife over his shoulder, without even looking, and caused a flying shrieking bug to choke on its own spike and fall into the rushing waters beneath the skiff where it perished.

“Nnnnhhh-hah!” Shine tossed her knife behind the skiff transport at seemingly nothing, until the knife found itself planted into the forehead of a tiger bug leaping out of the water for one of the Rider Zealots protecting them. The bug died immediately and flopped back into the water.

A smirking Snake just passed five more knives to Shine and she smiled up at him cheerfully as she took them and some offered darts to throw.

Sure the Skein Flyers had taken some damage from melee strikes, but the Zealots were proving their weight even in close combat as their energy blades were fairly deadly as long as they were not taking any hits.

This was made pretty hard considering one of the defending Rider Zealots was graving injured by one of the slicing blade arms from the shrieking nuisances that just kept coming, it was like the tunnel was just a hive full of the spike spitting things and it only took one direct melee hit to seriously injure the zealots.

Flying shrieking bugs the size of big dogs that spit acid spikes, a large mono-wheeled drill tank, spearing water tiger bug and previously seen aquatic EPs. Most of this stuff was constantly being thrown at the skiff or trying to attack Pom and Shanty while they were still stunned and trying to get movement back into their limbs.

Sitting at the right side of the vehicle was Sami as she propped up her rifle and continued to gun down the colorful jellies trying to get at a slowly recovering Shanty and Pom. She was soon helped by Krosserdog as there was a lull in the flying insects in keeping the colorful killer jellies from stabbing at the two.

Only Pom was immune to their poison thanks to the Pecha scarf she wore underneath the bell under her wool, so Shanty was getting priority protection from the two.

Pom manage to get her still jittering legs underneath her and carefully moved to wrap her hooves protectively around Shanty. Pom, knowing she was not going to be able to make a leap back to the skiff that was keeping up with them, turned to face the three jellies that dropped onto the damage back of the railway platform.

The skiff had to veer off to the left to follow the water as the platform the two were on were going down a tunnel alone.

Pom slowly got her twitching hind limbs under control and pushed her and Shanty towards the front as the three colorful assassin class jellies of yellow, blue and pink approached them on their tentacles in an almost dancing ballet like fashion.

When they exited the tunnel Pom looked to the water on the left side of the platform and didn’t see the others, the approaching pink jelly glowed brightly and lunged only to have its body blast apart from a shot to the right of the platform. Looking over that way she saw Krosserdog trying to get a bead on the other two before another tunnel covered them again.

Pom fired a Bark Blast out of her mouth fending off and destroying the yellow one and the blue one tried to go for Shanty’s body. Pom quickly shifted her position to take the tentacle jabbing her in the back for Shanty and reflexively bucked upwards hard with her right hind leg to send the blue jelly flailing off the back through the gap created by the large drill machine. A blue glowing splatter was left behind and Pom sighed.

They exited the tunnel but something was a little wrong, there was a flowing river… above them?!

Canard and the others looked up at Pom in equal puzzlement, not knowing how the flat railway platform wasn’t falling down from above.

“There wasn’t even a twist in the tracks, how the…?!” Pom’s voice was cut off from those on the skiff watching as the platform went into another tunnel.

“Does anyone else think there are glitches in the system warping reality?” Krosserdog asked while rubbing at the back of his head lazily.

“Doesn’t matter, look whose back!” Jabbing a thumb over his shoulder Canard was pointing out the drilling machine erupting from the wall to their right again. Coming out of the tunnel on the opposite side of the river to their left was Pom who was clawing wildly at a flying bug trying to hit her or Shanty with a bladed arm.

Shanty, suddenly having all the feeling back in her limbs, rose up from Pom’s protective left hoof propping up her back and she slashed the bug clean in half almost vertically with her cane scythe.

Pom hugged Shanty and then saw the machine across from them starting to glow.

Eyes wide, Pom jumped and a bolt of lightning struck the platform and the energy traveled down into the rails before Pom landed on her hind legs on top of her wool she had squeezed dry to insulate against any potential shock.

Sure Pom’s wool could reflect magic, but not when it was targeting her indirectly!

Another shine from the machine and Pom was about to leap when instead Shanty dragged her towards the middle of the platform as fire erupted at the front from out of nowhere creating a blast of heat that started melting the front half of the platform and turning the rust metal molten.

The flames had been centered on an area around where Pom was and not directly on her specifically, the machine knew better than to cast any magic directly at the Chrysomallus.

“I could actually be feeling that coming?” Shanty looked a little confused as Pom and her separated and stared at the machine across from them. The skiff was under attack by more flying bugs and two of the Rider Zealots on the Skein Flyers were trying to cover them as well, the Skein Flyers had taken a lot of damage and were still dishing out more than they were getting.

Shanty narrowed her eyes again as a blue glow overtook the machine, but the magic wasn’t targeting them this time…

“Look out, it’s going to attack you!” Hearing Shanty’s words the Zealot piloting the platform swerved it to the left closer to the railway platform that Shanty and Pom were on. The Skein Flyers also veered out of the way as a laser fired forward out of the blue machine crawling along the right wall of the tunnel and swept it for the skiff intended to destroy it. It missed and any of the bugs caught in the path of the laser were slice in half and fired. “Can anyone be dealing with that thing? I don’t think I be wanting it to be casting anymore magic at us!”

The machine tunneling through the wall started to glow a sickly purple and seemed to be looking for a good target on the skiff.

“… Boss, I swerve!” One of the Zealots yelled as he turned his damaged smoking Skein Flyer onto the machine and then, with an impressive leap off of it for the middle of the skiff, the zealot managed to get onboard safely. He then signaled something to one of the other Skein Flyers. “Enter a doom!”

The Skein Flyer rammed into and struck the damaged opening caused by the grenade Snake threw earlier, it then got lodged in pretty deep into the inner workings of the machine that suddenly stopped its attempt at casting magic to try and pulled the Skein Flyer free as it had pierced in deep enough to hamper the mono-wheel.

One of the seven Skein Flyers turned and fired a burst into the suddenly very much unshielded quite damaged vehicle without its Rider Zealot. It was nice to know that if for any reason a Zealot was unseated from a vehicle, that it would immediately become vulnerable.

The rapid fire energy shots, hit something and the top of the drilling machine blew open and it flipped and flopped out of the right wall and into the river of water. The damage machine began sparking violently as soon as it touched the water.

Despite its heavy damage, the drilling machine continued to give chase by widening its four claws on its arms effectively turning them into functional propellers instead of drills, pulling it into chasing after the skiff.

“We spoke to soon?!” The Zealot standing on the skiff stated looking panicked as the Rider Zealots on the seven airborne Skein Flyers were still dealing with the incoming flying bugs.

“You… shall perish this day my mortal nemesis!” One of the bugs instead of like any of the spike spitting shrieking bugs, had a wide fanning red and orange head armored carapace and zoomed at Pom with a large stinger pointed for her.

“Oh, hi Beezy, can’t play right now, bye Beezy!” Pom stated pleasantly as she grabbed Beezy by the stinger with her hooves as Beelzebug, in the form of something called a Bnahabra, tried to stab her in the heart with it.

Pom just promptly threw Bnahabra Beezlebug towards the large drilling machine in the water.

“NOOOOOoooo-aghaghahhlglhl!?” The left propeller of the drill machine was damaged immensely with the caustic demon bugs guts slammed into and through the spinning propeller as it chunked up the poor reoccurring demon.

The end results was the sudden talking bug that attacked Pom becoming chunky salsa and causing the left arm of the machine to become quite damage and start smoking as it caught on fire, in fact Beezy had just helped Pom out a lot just by showing up. Which was rather nice of him, considering the rather hectic situation they were still in.

“You’d think he would be giving up by now…” Shanty shook her head sadly at seeing the poor bug demon again and how quickly Pom dispatched him, much to their advantage.

“Slapshot!” Canard had been firing a lot of Slapshots up to this point, but even with the minimal damage he just did to the right propeller the large drilling machine was still coming at them. “We need to finish that thing off, does anyone have any suggestions!”

“Scanning complete, Caster Magitek Tunnel Armor, hybrid PLANT and EP of the likes of Moby dick, weaknesses include water and lightning.” The Yggdrasil.sys assistant on Canard’s Digivice stated with a what sound like a smile in its voice.

“Peppercat, can you be helping me out?” Shanty landed on the skiff a second later as Pom threw her upon hearing its weakenesses.

“Right!” Peppercat, brought her arms together and lightning coalesced between her plug claws into a ball as she ran up next to Shanty.

“Riptide!” Shanty fired a blast of water forward towards the exposed machinery of the incoming Tunnel Armor.

“Thunder ball special!” The ball combined with the Shanty’s Riptide wave and a second later, Pom landed on the skiff as the malfunctioning Tunnel Armor glowed a bright white and sunk into the waters before exploding violently. The entire tunnel filled with the takeover of territory that Castle Alexander was sure to notice.

“Well they’ll know we’re coming now… like they didn’t know before.” Pom lamented, both Dolly and Dormarch clamped onto her affectionately.

The further the skiff went along with the seven Skein Flyers, the more mechanical things started to become.

-Top of tower with labeled with Shinra, fancy room, a lazy lemming servant-

“Hmph, so they got past the Tunnel Armor… now let’s see if they can handle the naga’s domain in the underground laboratories.” The lemming stated as he leaned back in his chair and played video games, he’ll get to the realm intruders when he needs to. “I’m sure the behemoths down there sure are quite hungry. They can’t be that strong after all of that… right? Ah well, now if I can just get past this one level with the crocodiles…”

413. Bypassing Behemoths.

-Midgar Realm, Plains of Midgar, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

Thankfully the Zealots were shielded, because we could hardly replace their vehicles as fast as we could replace them. The missile trucks had been constantly firing since the battle started and we’ve only, at most, taken two territories… those were both behind us.

In a flash we just achieved a third territory leading into the depths, but not the full length that Pom’s team had to travel.

At least we knew they were somewhat successful. I believed in Pom as a friend far more than I did at the start of the year. We were nearing the end and with it getting closer to Tambelon now that we know we can’t avoid it.

How did we even avoid it in the first… wait… warping magic, sending us to a dangerous place, plus Pom… that might be why we ended up somewhere aside from Tambelon. Her ability to counter magic has had some long lasting repercussions, but at least we have made a lot of friends along the way. Friends we might never see again, but were happy to have made anyway.

Those Magitek Armor the Rider Zealots were pilot were doing some unusual things, the Commandramon certainly couldn’t create energy blades out of the two nail claws those armors had on each arm. So the Zealots were either semi-magical or had similar abilities close to magic for the Magitek Armor to utilize, it meant the Magitek Armors were even more dangerous in melee as they were at range.

The shields of Castle Alexander continued to get hammered and the endless waves of EPs kept slamming into our forces. At least we had plenty of Skein Flyers, but those were being attack by the flying aquatic creatures Moby Dick was summoning and sending at us.

We had a war zone at our front door and we just couldn’t push the enemy numbers back until Pom’s team broke something like they inevitably would.

We had pinkie pie clones in the form of taffy ponies firing jaw breaker cannonballs, rabbit based Fluttershy clones that slowed down the encroaching enemies with hard stares, we were getting support from the harmony programs in Mare Melum and we kind of needed it just to hold position.

If we retreated at any point, then Pom’s team would be in a dire situation and the enemy already knew we were coming. What dangers did they have waiting in Midgar for all of us?

-Underground caverns, closing in on Midgar, transport skiff, Pom-

“Do you really think we should have let that railway platform roll off by itself?” It was a valid concern of mine as it had still been going when we got separated from it.

“I’m sure it’ll be being fine Pom.” Shanty yawned and stretched out.

“Our supplies are okay, the spare Skein Flyers are undamaged and we got through that mostly okay without severe injury or need to dip into the Sitrus Berries, that’s the only good news.” As Sami reported this, the injured Zealot swapped out for the still healthy Zealot that basically rammed his Skein Flyer into the Tunnel Armor. The badly injured Rider Zealot looked a little lost about what he should be doing, so he just stood tall in spite of his injuries and crossed his arms waiting to be needed. “We lost the front right main engine of the skiff and can’t enact a code fix, or repairs for those of us that are not digital entities, as long as it is active. The repairs might take a while if we were to stop and we’re kind of in the middle of enemy territory so we’d need a stable spot to land… we also lost a Skein Flyer, for a good purpose at least and one of our Rider Zealots got seriously injured and we’ve been slowed down a lot. Plus the other Skein Flyers have varying levels of damage from close up attacks.”

The Rider Zealots were definitely pulling their weights with their shields, we would have been hit with numerous acid spikes from those flying bugs otherwise.

“That and we’re still getting attacked.” Jeanne stated as she ran her banner spear into the mouth of an oncoming Berserker Winged Shark from above and fended it off, the entirety of the skiff dipped under the weight of the shark as it tried to bite through the lengthy weapon and upon failing that, it flailed about on it like a fish on a skewer trying to damage the skiff.

The memories of roasting fish for my canine companions never got old, especially my happy little god puppies that always got the first fish I caught on a particular day. I sighed audibly and rubbed at my face with my hooves.

Shanty quickly helped Jeanne deal with shark by slicing it open lethally, but not splitting chunks off of it, with her cane scythe. We did not want the chunks to continue to attack us while Jeanne had the particularly large shark pinned, it eventually died ten seconds later. I’m glad that they weren’t many of these things at one time, because they were still quite terrifying.

“Any information on the two new EPs we ran into?” Shine asked with a slightly positive attitude, the gourd was still a sweetheart as she ever was.

We’ve been seeing signs of machinery lining the cavernous tunnels with increasing in frequency, but the attacks on us was sporadic since we took out that Tunnel Armor thing and were carefully navigating one of the wider open passageways leading underneath Midgar. I had to wonder how Torneko even had a semi-accurate map of the city as there were some things on the map that were entirely different, but that was to be expected as apparently Moon Cell altered the realms before we entered them.

Once we were in a realm Moon Cell seemed entirely hooves off about directly dealing with us, so like Arceus or Yggdrasil.sys they could only do so much to actively stop us. The only reason we’ve gotten this far is likely on blind luck and the capabilities of our unified counter invasion front.

“Hold on… Archer Shriekers, their wings can manipulate liquids into impenetrable barriers and are used to build up pressure in their bodies while in flight to fire their spikes. Their wings are actually what generates that noise and not their mouths, so any time they change direction in the air it causes shrieking to be heard.” Given that they spat chitin bolts at us, this was of no surprise Sami. “The others are Lancer Water Tigers, beetles specialized for aquatic environments. Like most lancers they tend to focus on charging forward, but in this case their charges involves grappling their opponents with their large pincers and pulling them entirely into the water before quickly spearing them with their extendable horns or leaping out of the water to spear and drag them back in. The biological processes of the extending horns sure look interesting… if we’re right about these things having existed as actual biological entities at some point and not just digitally created monsters.”

“Really did not appreciate those noisemakers.” Dolly grumbled, she had taken out quite a few of those Shriekers by blowing out their fragile wings with her Momentum Barks. Dormarch also wilted and I noted he checked on Dolly’s health.

“It doesn’t seem like you’re losing your sense of hearing at all though… in fact you’re a perfectly healthy female dog big sis.” Just chalk that up to the familiar bond we had Dormarch, because I think any canine directly connected to me heals faster from injuries and basically doesn’t get sick very often unless it’s a really grave illness and even then those illnesses clear up within a day at the most.

“Yeah, and I’m never going to stop being amazing until I’m too old to move at all little bro!” Dolly declared vibrantly in a series of cheerful barks.

“Not seeing anything in the water…” The bright eyed Peppercat announced near the edge of the boat, one of her plug claws sparking a bit in anticipation.

“Nothing on the ceiling.” Krosserdog announced, the two digibots were making sure we weren’t coming under attack immediately after the surprise flying shark that dropped on us like a bat from the ceiling.

“The Rider Zealots be being a bit antsy after that.” Why wouldn’t they be Shanty, they hadn’t seen it coming and Jeanne almost didn’t catch it with her banner spear in time. They were meant to be protecting us, at least their shields had recovered fully over the last few miles or so we’ve traveled.

We were three fourths of the way to being under Midgar according to the visor as I looked at the outline our route and the distance to the outline of the city above us. A city likely crawling with all kinds of enemies.

“What’s our plan for dealing with the wall?” It had been a concern of mine since we started this venture, even knowing that the enemy knew we were coming through this route now.

“Secondary objective is disabling the cannons firing on Castle Alexander, our primary objective is to open and or destroy the gate in a fashion to allow Alexander to get into the city to lend us its firepower.” Understandable answer Jeanne, but I’m specifically asking ‘how’ we were going to do that with our meager team when we got there. Enemy Programs are bound to be crawling around everywhere inside the walls. “As for how we’re going to achieve that… well you’re good at winging things right?”

Well that wasn’t a very good vote of confidence at all.

“I’ll come up a plan when I see what we have to work with when we’ll get to the ground level city. I’m used to being outnumbered, outgunned and almost killed on an hourly basis in deadly circumstances.” Well that takes some pressure off of me to come up with something Mr. Thunderbeak, thank you very much! “Never dealt with problems nearly this big though.”

“Well you have scouts that can’t be caught, I’m sure we can get you information you need to succeed!” Shine could move safely through shadows and Snake was apparently world renowned for his stealth abilities that his legend translated into power.

-Thirty minutes later-

The last Shrieker EP fell into the water under a tirade of energy shots, we soon veered off into a different tunnel with a long pathway above the rivers of water that we moved away from floating over.

We didn’t want Water Tigers to attack us from below and the ground seemed safe enough to hover over as we continued down the tunnel.

“Stop at the opening up ahead, don’t go through.” Jeanne ordered as the vehicle slowed to a crawl with the seven Skein Flyers following in slowing down to a hover.

“Not tell a duck.” The Rider Zealot responded and we came to a slow stop.

Looking vaguely upwards, I can see the thick outline of the walls of Midgar above our position and a little behind us.

“By the puck…” Canard stated and that drew my attention forwards. “Whoever built this city was likely killing their planet to keep it powered.”

There was a massive factory, some kind of laboratory, a prison or was it a power plant? Whatever the massive buildings were, there was a pathway upwards… and we didn’t have to bother with that nonsense.

“Forward… carefully, and stay high up.” At Jeanne’s orders, three of the Skein Flyers took forward positions and four stayed behind us.

We were going to make it up to the ground level of Midgar city easily.

“Does anyone else hear that?” I asked as I heard a screeching noise, Dormarch and Dolly looked in the same direction I did and saw a twisted bit of railing leading from a tunnel. “There’s no way my luck is that…”

The damaged railway platform we left behind, like more than an hour ago, came screeching into the rails and flipped off them straight for us. I saw a Rider Zealot try to slow it down with his body and Skein Flyer, but the railway platform still hit the skiff and before I knew it a corner of said platform was coming for my…

-???-

A white glow filtered into my vision and I blink groggily as I sat up.

“Where?” I felt Dormarch and Dolly clamp onto me, feelings of relief flooded me along with a lot of other emotions of unbridled happiness as I tried to sit up.

“We are doomed!” The nearby Rider Zealot said in a slightly cheerful tone, apparently he was the badly injured one. Off to a good start there. He was sitting on the chest that carried a majority of our reviver seeds and Sitrus Berries, Shine had a few Sitrus Berries in her shoulder bag.

Where was the rest of the skiff? I didn’t even see pieces of it, also I noted we were the only ones here.

“You needed a reviver seed… so much… and your brain exposed to… broken skull… I don’t even… how do you draw this much trouble into trying to kill you mom?!” Dormarch was in hysterics and I calmly started petting him and looking around, his tails started wagging as he nuzzled against my chest while whimpering.

“It’s okay… I’m… mostly alright.” The last thing I remember was a sharp blow to the head from… ah yes the very railway platform I was worried about that the Tunnel Armor attacked me and Shanty on.

“Yeah, look around you for a second Pom.” Dolly brought my attention to the fact that I was in a puddle of my own blood at least a few inches deep, I carefully put Dormarch down outside the puddle. “Thank goodness the healing supplies fell with us, because you are the one that always seems to need them.”

“Mothers sporadically bad luck aside, we seemed to have landed in a junk pile… with what I’m assuming to be medical waste.” Dormarch looked around for anything moving and his paws seemed to restlessly have him walking in place. “Whatever this place underneath Midgar is, I really don’t want to be here for very long. I know we lost a Rider Zealot and another Skein Flyer at least and the roof caved in after we fell through.”

“Just add bleeding out from a head wound to the list of things that have sadly failed to kill me outright Dormarch…” I quickly got up out of the puddle staining my hooves red and shivering a bit. Apparently being revived had cleaned most of my wool, with that in mind it was probably a good idea to get out of the pool of my own blood before I get some kind of disease or infection from skin absorption.

Stepping away from the puddle I quietly squeezed the blood off all parts of my body by manipulating my wool, thank goodness I know how to make my wool liquid repellant now.

Knowing how Reviver Seeds work, I was still barely alive after that blow to the skull… enough so that they got that seed on me quickly enough that I didn’t perish. That’s another close call in a long line of them.

“On top of being stabbed, shot, bashed, blasted and beaten to within an inch of your life and even from your own double edged abilities.” Dormarch stated dryly. “At least the inside of the facility is lit up, but I think it was used for some kind of dangerous experiments of some sort.”

“What gives you that idea?” I asked as I moved towards the only direction we could head where some light was coming from and looked beyond the walls of machinery garbage that reminded me of the Magitek Armor. I quickly pulled back as a large shadowy thing moved past our position and smelled quite foul and horrifying, like death warmed over several times and still hungry to die more. “What… was that?”

“Some type of biological nightmares that are between us and the way out of here.” Dormarch whimpered. “Dolly already tried using Aero on one… just know that using magic on them is a really bad idea. We’re all safe here at least… well temporarily, the beast didn’t exactly see or feel where the magic came from. I’m sure if it did know where the attack originated from, it’d already be digging a hole through the wall of trash to get us.”

“Executer.” The present Rider Zealot nodded, having said a rather specific word that made my spine freeze a bit.

“Heh, yeah, those things can use magic on us if we use magic on them.” Dolly was shivering quite a bit in fright, no… more like absolute terror. I hadn’t noticed as I was still coming off being revived, I’m starting to get there myself as our situation sunk in that we were basically trapped in a corner and the way out was large monstrous beasts. “Don’t know how useful I’ll even be against one of those things Pom.”

“Scan complete, Berserker Behemoth… biologically manufactured super weapons, resembles massive canine with horns and claws with lion manes, counters magic attacks as learned from data discovered by user Dolly D. Dalmatian.” Yggdrasil.sys stated from Dormarch’s digivice. Looking at the edges outside the wall of metal junk between us and whatever that quick and large shadowy horror had been, the metal and other bits of junk on the other side of the wall from us looked quite melted together and there were bits of recently hardened melted floor leading through the opening when I looked down. “Retaliation seems to involve explosive amounts of powerful fire energy throughout a small given area around the beast. Muscles and skin are exceptionally dense making Behemoth resilient to physical damage, red hair and purple skin are most likely the common appearance. High danger rating even for ultimate or mega level Digimon for their physicality alone. If one can injure them physically, then they may be able to disable or wear down the Behemoth in a prolonged fight, this is assuming you are only dealing with one. I advise not starting one in the first place, much less the five detected beyond the temporary shelter.”

That was very fair advice, especially with my current headache, as in the dimly lit junkyard next to us I could see two or maybe even three of these things twice as big as lions and all kinds of terrifying roaming around actively.

These things were precise digital Moon Cell replicas, as far as I knew and understood what digital entities we saw in the Moon Cell Realms were.

If they existed at one point, then I wouldn’t have wanted to be the people that ended up dealing with them... if they were ever dealt with at all that is. My canine magnetism was definitely not going to work on these beasts and they were prowling around the hardened metal floor that looks like it could be feasibly be made by flash melted junk. Mind you some of the junk piles still looked fresh or new, so there must be something going on with that.

“I’m almost sure we can get by them… but how are we going to get our supplies past them?” I had an idea in mind for how to get the Rider Zealot past those things, but both Dormarch and Dolly sent me flat disbelieving looks.

“No-…” Dolly said quietly slowly dragging out the word having picked up on an errant thought of mine.

“No.” Dormarch stated flatly afterwards realizing what Dolly had.

“I’m just suggesting that we could maybe…” I tried to start saying what my idea was.

“No!” Both Dormarch and Dolly vetoed before they even heard my plan.

“Well what would you have me do if not act as live bait so we can at least get our supplies out of here?! We can’t exactly leave them here in this caved in section of a facility we know nothing about. We’re not going to coming back here if we leave and I can’t fit all of those Sitrus Berries in my bag.” Nor did I want those berries to go to waste as they could be vital for us. There was a pause as I looked through the gap and to the far side of the junkyard with these roaming beasts and at the ceiling. “I’m not suggesting we fight them, the Rider Zealot can carry the supplies… you can do that right?”

The Rider Zealot smiled with his eyes and nodded, he even waved a three digit hand at me in acknowledgement. He wouldn’t survive even a second against those Behemoths unless they were highly distracted.

Even with the paralance still glued to me, I wasn’t going to survive a direct fight with those things by any stretch of the imagination even with my recent refinement of some of my abilities. If the Eaters couldn’t eat it, then it was definitely stupidly powerful and should be wielded with caution. Also I was quite reluctant to use the lance in a fight now, since I didn’t know what it was fully capable of or what it actually was.

“Kweheeheehee… heard the attack on our facility got railroaded before it could even begin!” Looking through the gap I looked up and saw a purple lamia or naga like being on a pole started actively dropping live animals into the room for the Behemoths. Her insane looking smile sent shivers down my spine as she easily lifted several hundred pound animals with ease and stretchy arms. “Eat up my lovely monstrosities… show me their blood and guts and then get even hungrier if the intruders somehow managed to survive their transport being sliced in half and show up at all! I’ll release you all if they make a squeak about still being around.”

With that the cackling female snake lady, with the cobra like hood, watched as several live boars half the size of the Behemoths were painfully dropped into the space outside and quickly consumed in a violent frenzy of bone crunching jaws and life rending claws.

The boars didn’t even get a fighting chance as those behemoths were pretty fast, but not as fast as I was going full tilt in Dancing Flame. Afterwards the crazy smiling naga spiraled back up into the ceiling on the pole happy to have watch multiple pigs be chunk into nothing but bloody smears on the maws of the behemoths.

“Servant signal detected… there are many anomalous oddities in the signal… servant seems… incomplete… mentally speaking. More data needed to understand the full scope of servant classification and capabilities.” Okay, according to Yggdrasil.sys, I just saw what is possibly a completely sanity challenged servant of Moon Cell, one that we’d be having troubles with in the near future.

“Wouldn’t surprise me if Luna Blood drove that one insane on purpose… or that she was always insane, reminds me too much of Cruella for my liking.” Dolly was cowering into my back.

“Yggdrasil.sys, quick question, what are your observations on those things being able to climb?” I asked for clarification, because I didn’t want to be stuck down here with things that counter magic in a worse way then just… wait… a lightbulb just went off in my head. They countered magic with magic, but… what if I caused a feedback loop? Would they be able to destroy themselves? Also would my ability for Anti-magic hold up to the raw power? I still needed to know where the nearest exit was and let the other reach it.

“No, the Behemoths weigh too much to actually climb, their weight would tear apart any walls should they try. They do have the physical strength necessary to ignore your wools protection entirely, Yggdrasil.sys does not have information pertaining to magic or effectiveness thereof aside from present small sample sizes. From the visor data, nearby walls seem specifically made to contain the behemoths.” Yeah, that was my next few questions answered, so don’t get skewered by the horns or clawed by them… got it. I hoped everyone else was alright and not in as weird a situation as we were in. “Nearest exit that the Behemoths can’t fit through is to the right from the shelter, there is a digital signature at the door of the likes of a keypad and it may require some time for Dormarch to hack the door with Yggdrasil.sys assistance.”

“Right, once I got all their attentions. You will quietly make for that door, get it open and when you’re done, signal me and I’ll quickly get through it.” Sure I was getting a glare from both Dormarch and Dolly, but they were still going to do this under protest.

I motioned to the Rider Zealot and he got up and picked up our healing supplies that weren’t with Shine, he nodded to me to go. I’m surprised my visor and headset still worked, much less that Dolly and Dormarch were still wearing theirs.

“Have you tried using the headsets to call for help?” I asked Dormarch as I moved close to the entrance.

“It’s too dangerous to do so, the enemy might find our position if we so much as spark a signal through our communication devices while we’re in their territory. Not a good idea when we just saw a servant, given how powerful they’ve proven to have been up to this point.” So we can’t find out if the others were alright Dormarch? Okay then… we’ll follow my plan to at least get out of here, everything afterwards was going to be a chaotic mess. Somehow I have thrived so many of those situations up to this point.

“Dormarch you can use Search Hunter silently right?” He nodded. It’ll take Dolly and the Zealot some time to make it to the door, but he could get there immediately while had the behemoths distracted. “Wish me luck, protect them please if the supplies aren’t viable to recover.”

“Not tell a duck.” I’ll take that as an agreement from our talking AP friend.

Poking my head out I looked left and right around the junkyards and slowly crawled out form the small entrance and clambered my way up the wall and started working my way to the left along the wall while using my wool to lessen any chance of me making noise.

I was going to use magic on these things and hoped that their immediate area range was as small as I hoped it to be, small enough that they would be too distracted trying to hit me with magic in retaliation for using magic on them.

Keeping my eye on the entrance to the small shelter we fell into and had a large pile of junk collapse a hole over I got a good look at all the robotic looking machinery and realized mechanized mayhem was in my future if any of these things were going to be like EPs that for whatever reason hadn’t dissolved into rapidly disappearing cubes.

The enclosed space was a little close to the ground and I’d barely be out of range of their claws, don’t know about those horns… but I was still doing this. Like I had much of a choice, it had been at least ten minutes since the servant disappeared through the ceiling, so hopefully they weren’t nearby when I drew attention to myself.

“Hey, sweet meat, right over here!” I yelled and waved my front hooves the behemoths started growling and roaring… there were five here and they were all immediately gathering to where I was as I had drawn there attention.

I looked across the way from me at the door for what looked like a biped as Dormarch appeared in a flash and immediately started to work on getting it open.

In my inattention I nearly took a large horn to the guts as a roaring mouths full of teeth swung upwards at the wall at me. The mouth opened up while looking up at me as if asking me to jump into it as it roared.

I spat a Bark Buster blob down the behemoths throat and ignited it immediately, that actually caused it pain and made it stagger back from trying to skewer me with its horns. Behind the five Behemoths I saws Dolly and the Zealot had made it too the door.

Looking down at the behemoth I made choke on liquid magic started glowing violently. I quickly curled up on the wall and my wool started to glow brightly golden color, I’d be perfectly fine.

-Across the way, Dormarch-

“Come on, come on, come on, password, Password, Narpassword, narpassword, swordfish, BEST, KING, BOMB, onetwothreeABC…” Please something had to crack before mom did something stu… I looked back and saw her wool shining brightly as the behemoth beneath her was about to cast magic. Right Pom wouldn’t be safe from them physically, but her anti-magic wool made her immune to magic. “M? MA…. Zack Fair? Why did a name pop up? No I don’t want to know about the super soldier program SOLDIER whatever that is. K… Is the password Mako? Like the shark? Well Moby Dick is around so… M-A-K-O.”

The heavy door you’d see on a submarine shuddered and opened up, I quickly ushered Dolly and the Zealot through as a massive explosion of heat and flames went off behind me. Mom was fine, the Behemoths that were hit by the reflecting magic were less so, also they were starting to charge up magical attacks because they were hit by the reflected magical attack that notably didn’t do anything to them until it reflected off mom’s wool.

Four more explosions of fiery energy that covered the entire massive area that seemed to harm the behemoths immensely and in the shadow of one of the last explosions being reflected into them. I saw mom come flying out towards us at a high speed in flipping golden glowing mass of wool and she popped out of her flipping to enter glide form and used that to slow down.

She still hit the wall next to me on four hooves with an impressive amount of force before falling onto her back with a pained bleating noise and squeak as tears sprouted up in her eyes. That just bruised her muscles heavily.

I grabbed her by scruff of her wool and quickly dragged her through the door and the Rider Zealot quickly closed it up behind us.

-A minute later, Servant Envious Naga?-

“Huh… somebody messed with my babies Kweehehe?!” I dropped down to see the badly damaged Behemoths, I cackled as I didn’t think someone would get the better of some of the most powerful monsters down here. I slithered up to them and pulled out a purple snake that transformed into powerful and dangerous sharp knife, for cutting, killing and… die-die-die-die-die! With several quick slashes of tasty blood splattering my face, the five Behemoths were dead and I enjoyed the feeling of slaughtering them. Why did I kill my babies? It’s simply because I didn’t want to wait for them to heal to full strength again as that would have taken far, far too long. When we could just make it go by much faster with my ability in a few seconds. “Hehhehehe ReSURrexIOnnN!”

The five behemoths soon recovered fully in an instant after a powerful glow engulfed their dead forms and the grinning Servant Envious Naga decided to release the behemoths directly into the facility. Mostly to hunt down the one that made her kill them in the first place, also for the chaos and maybe some incidents of what were just behemoths freshly revived as NPs from recently killed EPs going off to destroy a few PLANTs by accident.

Whoopsie, how very clumsy of me!

Sure she enjoyed their pain and suffering, but she still wanted to spread that Level Of Violence Enacted around everywhere to the intruders as much as Moon Cell, of whom she was like "'totally fully loyal'" to and didn't have any reasons whatsoever to go against the soul manipulating computer for forcing them to life again to become a servant or anything like that at all.

What enjoyable mass chaos and destruction that might be a little problematic for Moon Cell? She was a truly loyal Berserker, honest! (Crossed fingers behind back)

Author's Note

The major hint of the day is 'striker' for where things are going.

I'm pretty sure some people would already know who 'Servant Naga' is after displaying a particular ability and how hard they would be to kill.

414. An Envious Coward?

-Midgar Realm, Plains of Midgar, Castle Alexander, on the castle walls, Quetal-

“We’ve got an enemy breaking through our bombardment line and is bypassing our embattled Magitek Zealots, Dazzle are you and Frizzle ready?” I called out into the courtyard where our missile trucks had been firing nonstop since we got here and the enemy started throwing tons of metal at us.

The nine commandramon were relaxing along the castle wall and doing some sniping at the smaller EPs that got through our defensive line. Replacing vehicles wasn’t as easy as replacing APs, Welch was going above and beyond to keep our Rider Zealots supplied in combat vehicles and we were slowly building up more missile trucks safely behind Castle Alexander to increase our defensive bombardment in the hopes of eventually going offensive.

“Almost, what’s the encroacher look like Quetal?” Dazzle was looking up at me and I turned back around.

“Large, red armor, four legged, scorpion tail, upper torso of a biped with two claw arms… it’s trying to attack Castle Alexander directly and you can hardly miss its approach Dazzle.” I was going into this fight too, I made a note to stay out of the path of the machine cannons in the claws.

“Right give me some time to get Frizzle going. Frizzle you’re needed on the defensive line!” At Dazzle’s shout to the device on her hip, Frizzle popped out of the digivice eating a massive blob of bread half the size of her body and shaped like her own head.

Frizzle continued to quickly chew through the bread at a decent pace and was quickly building up energy for the upcoming fight, she apparently needed a lot since her digital evolutions could get massive.

Dazzle didn’t want Frizzle falling behind Dormarch in being able to reach higher evolutionary states. At least Dazzle wasn’t forcing the evolution, she saw what a skull type digimon looked like and didn’t want that for Frizzle.

Dazzle had forged a strong friendship between her and Frizzle, while instilling a sense of wanting to help others. That was the kind of stuff that helped power up Digi-destined partners and it showed.

As soon as Frizzle finished her bread she left the castle gates and leapt into the air with Dazzle running after her. Mundo, I and Lit followed Dazzle onto the battlefield.

“Guilmon Digivolve to… Growlmon!” The high pitched squeaky voice stated and transformed into a regular growlmon. What followed was Dazzle clamping both her hands onto the Digivice and channeling fire type energy to it as the scorpion machine approached. “Growlmon digivolve to…”

“This is sucking up a lot of my energy, but let’s do this… for our friends… for our worlds… also because we drastically need the firepower and I don’t want to fall behind my friends in being able to help!” A massive flare of fire type energy built up around Dazzle and absorbed into the device until it stopped… Dazzle almost collapsed onto the ground and Mundo gently caught her before her chin slapped into the ground. He helped her stay standing. “Please Frizzle, don’t lose yourself this time…”

“Flame Wargrowlmon!” Watching Growlmon double in size was fairly incredible, now most of her upper torso was covered in armor that took up her arms. Said arms had change into mechanical limbs ending in three elongate claws, said limb also came with giant blades along the outside of her forearms and the chest armor look like it had built in cannons, her body was giving off a tremendous amount of heat that caused the air to waver near her as white flames erupted from where her hair was.

The two wings like protrusions going out behind Frizzle’s back created two massive jets of flames and she rose into the air despite her size.

Lit still thought he could take that or at least that’s how I was interpreting his squeaks as he rode on my left shoulder. The tiny bug was insane if he thought he could fight the flying tower sized amount of nope that Frizzle just became.

Frizzle thankfully didn’t go crazy like we heard happened when she first went through an evolution and advanced on the incoming scorpion machine with a powerful focus in her eyes. We were not going to be pushed into retreating and leaving Jeanne and Pom’s team behind, which was what the EPs were threatening to do even with support from our Harmony Program allies.

At least we found out we could rotate Rider Zealots before starting this defensive battle, our offense was dependent on how well our away team could give us an opening to really go on the offensive.

I glared at the whale flying in the sky above the city in the distance as the shield of Castle Alexander stayed strong under constant bombardment and our constant bombardment kept a number of the newer mechanical EPs at bay.

-Outside the underground facility, Midgar basement region, Canard-

“Can you get it airborne again?” At my question, Sami pulled out from under the two halves of the skiff and pulled up her goggles.

“Going to take some doing, but yeah, I think I can get this thing flying again… or I’m not an engineer!” Sami stated boastfully before returning her goggles over her eyes, the orange lizard then pulled herself up under the two halves of the vehicle. “Going to need some time to cut up that railway platform to use in the repairs though.”

“Is Pom going to be okay Canard?” Jeanne had been worried since we saw a chunk of skin and bone on the edge of the nearby railway platform, we were going to use said platform for scrap to help rebuild our skiff.

Surprisingly we still had the two reserve Skein Flyers, they were completely undamaged if a bit waterlogged as it took some doing to pull the rear half of the skiff out of the water. We’d send two or four people back to Castle Alexander for reinforcements if our mission proves to be impossible to continue. I have been in worse scrapes than this, but I don’t think Jeanne or some of the others have.

“She should be, the supplies fell with her and she has access to those reviver seeds.” From as far as I knew, if you had one on you before you died, you’d survive death… once, and only once per seed. “I’m more worried about where Shanty went to after Pom shoved her out of the path of the rail platform before it struck her.”

Mystery Dungeons sounded very magical, but I never wanted to go in one after hearing what happened to Pom and how she eventually got Dormarch back from losing him in the first place.

I think I really hated electromagnetic worms after the two incidents I know of and wondered how many I didn’t given the Saurians used those things multiple times thinking they always outright killed people by consuming them… how many people were lost like Pom across the vast numbers of worlds and dying so far away from home? Those worms were always going to be bad news to me and anyone they come across like Dormarch.

“Hopefully Shine and Snake can find and secure our friends.” We technically didn’t need to do anything with the facility, Sami was just voicing a concern about being forced to. We didn’t need to get bogged down by dealing with the trouble inside, we just needed to get the skiff back in working order and get everyone out of here. We were on a mission to disable Midgar’s walls and it might have time constraints where if we got too sidetracked we’d be drowning in EPs if they rerouted more attention to us than Castle Alexander. “Peppercat, Krosserdog and Shanty should be somewhere out here and we’re not exactly hiding our positions too well, so they can come to us provided EPs aren’t causing them trouble. What can we exactly do when we can’t move our broken skiff somewhere safer if we’re not going to abandon it? Pom’s group probably won’t be too hard to find for our searchers.”

Something exploded inside the facility and something was causing the ground to shake violently as we all looked up from the bank of the river as plumes of smoke erupted from whatever that was that was roaring a chill down my spine worse than any cold temperature I’ve ever face on Puckworld.

Jeanne was suddenly on guard, she along with our three remaining Rider Zealots that weren’t our skiff pilot were holding a defensive perimeter around us, the skiff pilot Zealot was standing off to the side occasionally igniting his energy blades and glancing about.

“Yeah, Pom’s probably where that explosion just happened or near enough to it that it’s louder in her ears.” Sami stated as she lowered her goggles and got back to work with her welding tool. “Fixing the front right side of the skiff is going to take some time, but we can cut corners on that or I work on trying to repair more of the damage to give us some better flying speed. Patch welding the two halves together is going to be quite ugly, but we’ll just have to make do”

“Do as much as you can Sami. Get it operational first, then worry about fixing the worst of the damage. Functions is far more important at the moment.” After Jeanne said that a wave of Shriekers started coming at us, at least the remaining Rider Zealots still had their Skein Flyers, even if they were damaged. “As we’ll not fend for ourselves forever under increasingly crushing wave of the enemy.”

“Let’s keep them off of the skiff!” I hefted my hockey stick and joined Jeanne in facing them down, the skiff piloting Zealot moved closer to us to provide his shield for as meager as it was without a vehicle. This was still very useful for the spike spitting things that fly at you constantly and tried to slash you up with their blade like limbs.

-Somewhere inside the facility, Pom-

The entire facility rocked and shook as we snuck our way into what looked like a prison block. Oh joy, like I haven’t had enough of those and… wait… it was directly connected to the pen those Behemoths were in?! I think I’m going to be sick.

“Crazy, what the hell did you do?!” An angry female voice shouted drawing our attention to the familiar voice.

“Keheehee, someone hurt my babies… so I killed them, then I made them all lively again Cruel!” The facility rocked violently as the ‘crazier’ sound of the two voices. “Also they might gotten out of the behemoth testing slash killing and feeding pen, I mean it’s not like they can find those intruders that hurt them by being stuck in there right? Kind of wish we had prisoners to throw at them for fun and not just those Berserker Boars, sure the boars make a nice crunchy noise, but there’s no real fear to it!”

“Crazy, please don’t tell me you resurrected them as neutrals and set them loose… ON OUR CURRENT BASE OF OPERATIONS!” Growled the voice throughout the facility.

“Okay, I won’t Cruel… unless you want me to, or Coward needs someone to take all the blame for her.” Crazy definitely sounded like the name for the weird naga we saw back in the room where we first saw the Behemoths, her smile certainly fits the description.

“CRAZY, IF I WAS THERE RIGHT NOW I’D COME UP WITH A WAY TO TORTURE YOU TO DEATH THREE TIMES IN A ROW!” Cruel sounded like her namesake and we decided to stop paying attention to the voices and crept forward into the cell block, no sign of enemies yet. “If the facility is infiltrated and provided they could survive the Behemoths, which I highly doubt is possible anyone could survive a direct confrontation with those things, then we need the machines to find and deal with the intruders immediately. Also I can’t believe you somehow made the Behemoths even worse…. one just tore through a freaking wall, they weren’t even this strong before you resurrected them!”

“Worse… or far better Cruel?” Crazy said playfully as the facility shook and something else exploded, it even almost sounded like a PLANT was taken out given the shockwave that occurred.

Why would a servant… well I would guess some servants had very good reasons to not want their souls being used and abused by Moon Cell. There was a chance that something like Snake was going on here, a rogue servant hiding away from Moon Cell’s control.

“I will come down there and garrote your head and hood off of your body slowly… with a cheese grater Crazy!” Another crash and Cruel got even louder and angrier. “I’ll then resurrect you and then stab you in the heart fifty times to carve it out with those stabs and will stuff it down your throat and break your spine over my tail! I’m still trying to come up with a third way to kill you that’ll make you feel the most pain possible!”

“Keeheehee so kinky! They can probably hear us you know, we’re kind talking all over the place!” Crazy answered with a grin you could absolutely hear. “Can’t wait to hurt so good like what the Sumeragi did to Coward!”

“At least they’ll know they aren’t welcome here, sending out the search snakes while I’m at it to locate these intruders and there better be intruders or so help me… UGH! Just don’t do anything dumb Crazy… in fact don’t do anything until I find you and rip your spine out to stab you to death with your own shattered bones!” After what I assume was Cruel speaking judging by the shifting tone in the same voice being the only difference between hers and Crazy, we couldn’t hear any more from the two.

“Is it me or was that just the same voice talking to itself?” It might just be one really insane naga Dolly, but I doubt that’s what’s happening considering the anomalous readings Yggdrasil.sys assistant on the Digivice was detecting.

“Detecting life sign nearby… matches prior scanned servant signature in some ways. Unknown anomaly detected, detected subject is a living breathing entity within the Moon Cell realms.” Yggdrasil.sys stated as we crept along the prison and didn’t hear any of the shaking or explosions nearby us.

“Should we investigate that mom?” Don’t know Dormarch, but we currently weren’t in any danger so maybe we should even if we were in a hurry to deal with larger issues. “It could be important.”

“Do we have the time and are there any EPs around?” I looked up at the several floors worth of cells above us.

“No EPs detected in the nearby vicinity… the life sign is one floor up and forward of current facing on the left. Putting on visor now.” At least the Yggdrasil.sys assistant was trying to be quiet as it talked from Domarch’s Digivice, a question mark popped up in the sight of the visor.

I motioned for Dolly, Dormarch and the Rider Zealot hauling our supplies to follow me.

We went up a set of rusty stairs to the next floor, we cautiously approached the cell and peaking directly into it we saw… well I’m confused.

It was the purple naga?

“What was the previous purple naga?” I asked.

“Servant, digital entity, anomalous qualities show that this is a living version of the same entity… anomalies detected in living entity matches that in the other entity.” Well that didn’t make this any easier Yggdrasil.sys, but I still wanted to know if we could talk to her and maybe convince her to help.

“Okay, let me do this, watch out for anything around us.” I whispered as I poked my head into the cell. “Um… excuse me?”

“Hu-wha…? Eep…” The black and purple topped naga with a lavender underside grabbed and lifted up one of her coils in front of herself defensively while shaking in fear…. of me… in fear of me… afraid of me?! Me? Yep, me.

I looked into her eyes… I looked at how she held the section of her body defensively and looked at me through one half open eye while shivering as if expecting me to do something to her.

Staying where I was, I scrutinized her a bit. I definitely had a type as far as scaled intelligent beings went, she was a cute snake that looked exactly like the one with a crazy smile.

Her eyes spoke of massive anxiety and social issues, seeing things and being through a lot… considering the existence of Cruel and Crazy I might have a supposition forming in my head about what was going on with this servant.

It was sad.

“Hello there, my name is Pom Lambchop, what’s your name?” I didn’t approach, I knew better than to do so… she was still a dangerous individual and could attack me.

While poison may not work as long as I had the pecha scarf on me, and I didn’t know if this naga was poisonous or not, it was for the better that we didn’t cause her to lash out at us. She could still hurt us in other ways.

I’ve never seen anyone that has hit my level of chronic fear, anxiety and paranoia before… or went well beyond it.

If I was going to die, it would have to be any other method than by my golden wool. I still had plenty of time on that and I was trying to stay absolutely positive on that front.

“Nnnnhh...” She was quite a shy one and… young adult based on some visual references. I watched as she wrapped her arms around a section of her body and looked away from me as she slowly wiggled her way into a corner.

“Well okay then… do you… want some company?” I know Dolly was getting impatient, but I wanted to know more about this poor young purple hooded snake lady.

“They’re going to kill you… Cruel and Crazy.” The shivering naga mumbled. “And I’m going to be responsible for it… why did they bring me back… I didn’t want to live again… to hurt anyone how I was hurt.”

“I’m not going to call you by what your others call you…” I think I knew what the anomaly was, but I really didn’t want to pressure her. The names of the three naga were Crazy, Cruel and Coward according to what the other two said… they were all part of this poor young lady. “I wouldn’t call them by what you would want to call yourself either.”

“Huh?” She still stayed in the corner and I wasn’t making any sudden movements. She wasn’t locked in the cell, the cell door had always been open… she just didn’t want to leave apparently. Her gaze was now on me as she stayed in the corner.

“Can I guess things and you can tell me if I’m right or wrong? I will not approach you nor will I try to do anything to you unless you attack me.” I was trying to be placating as possible, because she was like a little lambkin that has had one too many scares or absolute horrors in her life. I tried to not to think about how I was one of them. Wasn’t too unknown for monsters on Equus to scare a similar complex into a lambkin, but those personalities weren’t aggressive. “I just want to be sympathetic to your plight…”

“No one… can understand… what I’ve been through…” The naga continued to stay where she is, I back away and sat down.

“Dolly could you sit in my lap for a bit? Dormarch, look out for any aggressive programs. Mr. Zealot whatever happens… don’t do anything to Ms. Naga here no matter what she does to us or any of our friends.” Following what I said Dolly came to stretch out in my lap on her back and I started to give her belly rubs. Dormarch moved near the nearby railing to look up and down the empty cell block. The Zealot just sat the supplies down and leaned against the wall with a curious look to me, before he quietly started joining Dormarch by being another lookout. “Now to start off with a few small yes or no questions… are you a social person?”

“No…” The naga whispered while coiling up and looking away from us to face the wall while hugging herself.

“Were you bullied a lot?” The slight twitch. “I’d be angry at your bullies too if they are the ones that did this to you.”

“Yes… but the bullies weren’t the worst of it.” Well that was a start at least from the naga. “It’s not like a dog wouldn’t understand why it is demeaning when they get belly rubs for rolling over and exposing their belly to their masters after being kicked viciously…”

“Why did they hurt you? Was it for not killing a lot of people immediately, while hurting you so bad that you couldn’t do anything else but eventually lash out at them and the world to make said pain stop?” The words I spoke caused the naga to freeze and I could see tears dripping from the edge of her hood. “You didn’t want to do it, you weren’t the most social person, but you weren’t mean spirited… they wanted what you became right?”

“Actually… no. I became a monster out of necessity, not what they wanted… never what they wanted… then… Crazy… I… Nova… actually took control of me… so afraid… finally cracked… wanted to… thank them… those two… for killing me… for finally ending that suffering. Crazy was the last to die…” I watched as the naga pressed her head against the wall, I felt like I was losing her and she really needed a friend. She was shivering and was struggling to get her word out so badly as she sobbed. “Only I’m back… again… in the now… heh… alive… can’t die… won’t let me…”

“I think I know the story now, sorry to have bothered you…” I was about to leave, but I had one last thing to say in the hopes of furthering this. “Did you kill anyone who didn’t deserve it?”

“Tried to… did not manage to succeed… wanted anyone that came down to be an enemy… temporary memory loss… wanted to forget… wanted forget so badly… thankful for it if even for a little while… one good thing among many terrible things… not killing someone who wanted to help a…. monster…” The fold of the nagas hood clamped down and she stayed where she was as she was letting out her suffering. “Small mercies to have never killed someone innocent… still tried to though… he was magnificent… he would have helped me… knight like hero in fairytales… but it was too late to turn back...”

“Let’s go…” I said as Dolly rolled off my lap after a bit of pampering, I saw the naga look at Dolly giving her a sad look and whine, still we were all about to walk away and leave her alone. She was probably happier to be alone to her misery, but at least she wasn’t currently in as much pain.

I had an idea of what was happening with her right now and I really didn’t want to fight the other two naga for a whole variety of reasons involving this one in particular.

“Please… tell me what you think you know at least… before you leave me to the dark…” The Naga was trying to bridge a gap where the bridge was doused in acid, stomped on, hit with a wrecking ball and tore down numerous times until all that could be built was a series of planks spanning an exceedingly large gap with nothing to support them but a bunch of flimsy nails and the bridge was on fire.

Yet she still tried to bridge the gap, I couldn’t ignore it… my need to help others was blaring in my skull to not walk away from this. So I simply couldn’t.

That naga, she’s been hurt so many times, but I… could actually empathize with her plight given what happens to Chrysomallus’s like me whenever people find out just exactly what we can do, the bloody history in the attempts to force Chrysomallus to do a particular thing is nauseating. It’s why Lambkin fear being a Chrysomallus, would rather be a black sheep. Less imminent death.

I wasn’t about to tell everyone the secret to the full Chrysomallus state, but at this rate I’d just be happy with seeing my god puppies and Tianhuo one last time before giving myself up to the inevitable outcome of my golden wool hitting critical mass. A little more than a quarter up my left leg now and I was resisting it with everything I had… I had a decent understanding of the naga’s situation

“There once was a girl, who had a small world, she lived day by day in her own way.” I moved a bit away from the cell and didn’t turned around I motioned for the others to move ahead of me and the Zealot followed the order without question, I was going to expose my back entirely to her. Dolly didn’t think it was a good idea, but she trusted me enough to follow along with what I was trying to do here. “Beaten down by what other say, never returning fire she stayed down to her own dismay. Eventually the girl made a friend… a friend who gravely betrayed her trust despite the fun they had together to an untimely end.”

There was a small gasp, a whimper from behind and a few sobs, I must be hitting frighteningly close.

“For you see the girl had something that most others didn’t… a power that most would kill for…” Given what I heard of Crazy and Cruel’s callousness towards life, it would be understandable given what Crazy informed us of just exactly what the naga was capable of, it led to a horrifying conclusion. I’m trying to imagine the worst case scenario that the ability to ‘resurrect’ anything in almost any way you could want within a set perimeter would make people abuse you, just to find out if they could replicate or even control the power of life and death. Much less… control the person who had that ability. I held the spent reviver seed that brought me back not too long ago and looked at it, I threw it in my mouth and ate it like a pistachio nut, it was just a normal seed that made grass or a tree after being spent and couldn’t make more seeds. Was it truly only in Mystery Dungeons could you find these things? It gave me an idea of how to help the naga, but she would have to agree to it as a living, breathing, free thinking, biological being that is a rarity in Moon Cells realms. She had to save herself and I could get her started on that, she has to make the choice once I put it in her claws. “The power brought about much envy, people coveted it so badly… I wouldn’t be surprised if the girl ended up in a lab where they carved her open in a variety of ways, days upon days, including attacking her brain in a literal and figurative haze. Hacking at it to see if she would continue to come back trying to find a way to desperately make such a rare ability available to the elite so they could rule forever. Only… the girl stopped them at every turn… she was stronger than an entire facility… one of likely secret in design… she stayed strong… even when she broke and whether she meant to be or not… she was a hero in her own unique way did their attempts she would sever. The cost…”

“Sumeragi…” The whimpering from the naga said, that hadn’t been a whisper but the name of the group that likely did this to her.

“Was her sanity battered and damaged more than twice over, the ones who wanted to recreate or control the power made some big mistakes trying to play at being gods moreover. Thus in the girls heart rose two figures… one made from cruelty and one made from insanity… all part of the same… single… soul, in dire need of a lucky four leaf clover.” The anomaly makes sense, like a humdinger’s paradox. The naga was alive outside the control of Moon Cell, a digital naga under the full control of moon cell and whatever level of freedom Crazy might sport in a chaotic mess that was the poor naga’s mind still fighting to save her own soul from being controlled. “They may call her weak, they may pick on her, but I seriously doubt those parts of the girl would ever hurt the one they want to protect the most.”

“My name is Elise.” The naga, Elise, said quietly and almost immediately as I stopped talking. “My experimental subject number was ironically ‘eighty-six’ while they held me prisoner. A number used in markets where I’m from… to mean… get rid of something.”

“Thank you for your time Elise, again, I’m sorry if I have to fight you or at least the other versions of you running around. People would likely want to do the same thing to me for power, if they knew exactly what I could do and it has happened to my ancestors before. It hasn’t happened to me yet, but I’m not hopeful that it won’t.” I got up and started walking forward. “I’m quite sorry that we’re going to have to fight them if they attack us, we’ll… try to avoid them and if we can’t… we’ll try to be quick.”

“Quick is the only way you can do it, the resurrections come fast… they are almost impossible to stop once started.” Elise said making me stop in place. “He was quick… that hero, very quick… like true lightning. Unfortunate that Crazy formed from our first fight with him… she escaped… brought us back… all three of us were forced to fight for Nova… monster even I couldn’t fathom as one… couldn’t stop… couldn’t fight against… couldn’t resist. Thankfully the hero had help from his nemesis who swore to end him, that guy, he swore to hunt us all and he meant it. The guy that betrayed me… he’s in Midgar as another one of Moon Cell’s puppets… defeat him, you take Midgar… well defended the central tower of the upper city. He’s probably even watching all of this even now and laughing at me… reminding me what he did to me by having me captured after we played some games together. Didn’t even know at the time he would do all that to me.”

“Thank you.” I tried not to look back, but I did so anyway and saw the naga sitting there looking at the ground behind us her tail flicking behind her a bit.

“No… thank you, for figuring out what I’ve been through and… understanding.” Elise rubbed at her left arm, both her arms were covered in cuts she likely did to herself.

I, couldn’t exactly judge her for it. She needed as much help as I do at times, I have a Dolly and a Dormach… she had… two nasty personality disorders come to life, but they still left her to herself to do what she wanted?

“I… don’t think you want to make friends after what happened to you.” I stated bluntly, but then Elise looked up at Dolly earning a curious gaze from her.

Her vibrant purple eyes looked a little bit hopeful.

“She’s so well taken care of… how much love do you give her and how much do you get in return?” Elise mumbled and then slithered back into her cell, not even waiting for an answer. “I guess some dogs are luckier than others. I’m not a dog now, but Moon Cell will try to come for me, I’m a loose asset that can’t go unnoticed forever.”

“Please don’t hurt yourself anymore, if not for my sake of mind forcing me to continue help you somehow regardless of how hard it would be, then maybe for your own well-being.” Felt like wanting to harm myself grievously to escape the mental pains too… unfortunately when you can resurrect a nigh infinite amount of times, escaping trauma is kind of impossible. Ironically, Cruel and Crazy are the two personalities that want to keep her original self fully alive as hard as they could in their own unique way, personalities created under duress to do what she herself couldn’t. “Come on, let’s go find our way forward.”

“Mom… what about…” Dormarch tried, I didn’t know where he was going, but he was either worried about the naga or worried about us having our backs to her.

“Don’t worry about it Dormarch, Elise is not going to hurt us unless she’s with her other selves. You can’t save everybody, but I hope she’ll be able to save herself… she was brave enough to create her own protectors no matter how weird and violent they are.” We were going to come to blows with two parts of her trapped soul, the parts created out of pain and suffering that likely craved the original personalities freedom over their own… which is why she came back alive when her personalities are still digitally locked souls under Moon Cell’s control. “One last thing… can you do me a favor and stick this seed somewhere in your hood?”

I opened the supply box and took out one of the precious few reviver seeds and went back to the cell of the cute looking, if horribly depressed, naga. I placed the seed on the floor outside the cell and she sat there looking at me while sniffling.

I wanted to tell her it will be okay, but I couldn’t force her to live… I could hardly do that for myself if it weren’t for everyone that needed me and Dolly’s attempts at cheering me on every day or Dormarch needing his mother.

Everybody had wanted her for her ability to ‘resurrect’ herself, I didn’t need it and I didn’t want it from her, I can hardly imagine how much worse my life would get with such an ability. She had the curse of ‘resurrection’, I had a curse of ‘sacrifice’, at least on some level there was a connection.

Was sacrificing one Reviver Seed to her even enough to make it work? Could Reviver Seeds even fix something like a damaged soul where her power to resurrect couldn’t?

“You’re missing your confidence and your spontaneity at the moment, maybe this will help you get them back eventually? Plant the idea of this seed in your heart and watch it grow into something beautiful.” I hoped this actually pans out as I turned away from her. “Okay, Dormarch, Mr. Zealot and Dolly… we’re going. We need to find a way out of here that doesn’t run us into one of those Behemoths.”

-Thirty seconds later after being left entirely alone, Elise-

My bright purple eyes with round, slightly slit, pupils and black sclera looked down at the insignificant seed on the floor.

“A seed?” I looked down at my arms and my hands as I slithered up to it, I leaned forward and carefully took it up.

It was so small and insignificant… like I how I felt at times, but there was something strange about it. A promise of some form to it.

I sat here quietly contemplating the one that called herself Pom. I considered her words, before they set out into the facility, likely to run across my… other selves. Half my soul was under Moon Cell’s control, Cruel was fully controlled… Crazy… she still resisted being only half contained… me… I was actually alive with half a soul and looking at a seed contemplating what I should do with myself.

Despite how Cruel and Crazy treated me… Cruel was confident and Crazy was spontaneous… were those bad things? I was an introvert so… they were something I had problems with being and despite what they say about me and how they supposedly treated me verbally, they would never let me die, almost like loving imaginary sisters in a twisted sort of way.

They never hurt me physically, each other sure, but never me. They berate me a lot, but… I’m beginning to feel more hopeful about things as that verbal abuse is me trying to tell myself to be stronger in a roundabout way.

I wasn’t under constant torture anymore, the only one torturing me now is… myself.

I had to wonder why I was even classified for Lancer when I hardly ever charge forward before that computer brought me somewhat fully back to life and not the half-life controlled manner that Moon Cell intended.

Moon Cell probably didn’t know I could break free… or that I even was free in a manner of speaking… it wanted a servant in Cruel yet she still…. ‘I’ still somehow... managed. Cruel summoned Crazy and Crazy in turn summoned me outside of Moon Cell’s control… why would they do that for me if they… ‘I’ didn’t care about myself?!

I spontaneously decided to take up the seed in my left hand and confidently stuff it into the right side of my hood where it wouldn’t accidentally fall out. I made sure it was in there and hoped it did what Pom hoped it would, because I had no idea what kind of seed it was.

My long forgotten sense of ‘Curiosity’ drove me to remember what it was like to learn, to feel, to touch… could I try again? I had infinite tries as long as I don’t grow old and blue like other naga, but I was simply never given a chance of something like this before.

-Currently with Cruel Naga, Crazy Naga-

For some reason both us shivered, my shiver was mostly in anticipation for what’s about to happen. It felt like something happened with Coward, but that didn’t matter as I was enjoying our lovely time together with Cruel. Just like a Coward, she should keep living longer as death was too good for the likes of her!

This is when Cruel finally managed to tear my head off with a cheese grater, too bad the absolutely exquisitely excruciating pain from that moment of acknowledging my existence only lasted for a second as my shredded scales fell to the floor.

It’s a good thing Coward was too cowardly to feel anymore.

“Return to life, resurrection.” Cruel stated bluntly in a demented dark tone and I was back to being alive… digitally… on the nearest TV screen closest to you!

Sure it’s like being alive, yet I have this core thing holding my part of our soul captive, it chafed and my soul was sticking halfway out of it weirdly… Moon Cell needed at least four soul traps before it could stop us from resisting! Just the way I liked it!!

It itch’s uncomfortably and I wanted to scratch that itch with a knife, but that was more Coward’s thing! Scratching herself I mean, but she never scratches her butt or gently at all, but she did get pretty red ribbons running down her arms.

“Keheehee… LOVE, it hurts so good!” It made me feel alive at least when I wasn’t, which is always fun!

What mattered was that Coward was alive, always Coward… Coward had to live… she should try actually living sometimes… why am I feeling like Coward? I’m not Coward, I’m Crazy… is that a wall that shouldn’t be there? Hello there everyone, is the color of the sky in your world brown?!

“I hate you with every fiber of my being Crazy.” Yep, loved you to Cruel!

It’s intentional for us to try and kill each other because we’re the negative aspects that Coward’s wishes weren’t a hidden part of her wants, if she wasn’t such a Coward she’d embrace the insanity that is cherry changas and make us whole again with beans! I mean that huge planet sized zombie named Nicole thing… that was totally a game that didn’t give us nightmares once we gained necromancy powers.

Nope, no sir, not like Cruel tried to turn an entire facility into flatulent zombies. I liked the X virus personally they looked like flying jellybeans and were so tasty to snack on, lemon and lime flavor all day like drinking fairies blood! What do you think wall that doesn’t exist?

-Outside the facility, ???-

A beat…

I felt a thudding in my chest.

My eyes flew open and I opened my mouth…

No bubbles came out? I was… underwater?

Panic, thrashing, trying to swim upwards, but after a moment a realization.

I was underwater, but I had no air in my lung…

Am I… no… reaching up, I felt…

Why do I be having gills and how long have I been being underwater for?!

I also had the uh urge to shout… oh no, a Water Tiger!

Uh… Totsugeki?!

I felt a large drain on my body as my magic rapidly sucked itself out of me and then a blinding flash occurred.

A bright cheery smile and squeaking noise follows as my vision clears up as a bright orange and yellow dolphin had the Water Tiger pierced on its long nose, it then tore it open by opening its mouth and then started eating the Water Tiger.

The dolphin be resembling a setting sun on the horizon of a sky or sea, it continues to squeal happily and then nuzzles up against me affectionately.

What be going on with me?! Also where is my Cane Scythe being?

Huh? The dolphin swam away and thirty seconds later, with a few more bits of Water Tiger sticking out of its mouth it came back.

Oh my cane scythe… um, thank you? The dolphin squeals happily, finishes chomping on the bits of Water Tiger and then disappears.

Nothing else is being different about me, but… that was confusing and I be having some large questions about being able to do that.

Let’s be starting with the thing that be terrifying me the most…

What even am I?

-Origin Space, Tiamat-

“Awakened for one, useful before you face off with the likes of Lu Bu once again… the waters of chaos come alive in you little Capricornus and it seems a seafarer gave you ‘some’ summoning capacity.” I loved watching pirates, especially one of my descendants finally accidentally going past that ten minute time limit that pirates shouldn’t. “I want to see you set sail on those possibilities now open to you Shanty hmhmhm. Will you continue watching the Chrysomallus brother?”

“Of course.” Bahamut stated with a crossed limbs and a curious look at the naga who was now returning to the roots of all living beings in the form of ‘curiosity’.

Arceus was a bit busy watching the fighting all across Ransei as his children struggled to stem the tide, a father of many worlds weeps.

I wept for all the children that left the waters and crawled onto land to become outside my domain.

Author's Note

Naga comes from Hindu Mythology, where they are known as shape changers. They were a race of semi-divine beings that were half-human/half-cobra. In some tales, they are considered demons or gods.

Female Naga tend to be call Nagi or Nagini, like Voldemort's Snake from Harry Potter.

Lamia, child eating monster of Greek Mythology. Always female snake ladies. They likely came from Echidna the mother of monsters with Typhon.

Gorgons, the most infamous story is Medusa of Greek fame, who could turn you to stone with a gaze with her main eyes and had snakes for hair. Usual business with Greek Gods being jerks.

As for the Naga we're dealing with... they have a wide variety of abilities.

Summoning snakes or knives that can change into knives or snakes.
Gorgon Gaze to encase you in stone if you're looking at them while they are using the ability, creating a bright beam.
Can manipulate life and death to create zombies that they might control, can ressurrect each other back to life perfectly well unless you can kill them quickly.
Can psychokinetically split off a mental aspect in the form of a snake to create a clone to support, protect and revive the main personality.
Stretchy arms and not Extendo Fingers.
Pole dancing. (One of these things is not like the others)
Minor Psychic or Magical ability to manipulate thrown objects in mid flight to change direction or pause for a few seconds.

As for the differences between them as Lancer, Assassin or Berserker? You'll see.

415. Machine Mashing.

-Moon Cell-

Now anything that actively use offensive magic may not be allowed to target anywhere near the vicinity of the Chrysomallus. In fact it doesn’t matter what the magic is, it now bans all uses of any magic anywhere in the ewe’s general direction to all programs and classifications.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar Basement Region, Outside Unknown Facility, Shanty-

I be pulling myself partially from the water in a region with a lot of empty cages… that be making me entirely uncomfortable as I be hearing explosions be going off nearby.

Reaching up to the side of my head as I be pulling myself out of the water, I felt... nothing? Those gills were definitely being there a second before and I be summoning a dolphin I’m going to call Horizon, he be eating up a lot of my magical strength. The large cost on my magic is being the normal for me, a lot of things I can be doing will become easier over time. Eventually I will work up the stamina to be doing even more! Summoning Horizon will be no different, even if I can’t be doing that right now.

I remember Pom be pushing me as she is taking a major blow to the head. She didn’t want me to be getting hit, but I think I be getting knocked out when I hit the water? At least I am not being too hurt. So do I just be following the sounds of the explosions to be finding her?

Still didn’t know what be going on, but I be surviving underwater for more than ten minutes, a certified pirate I be for lasting more than a full eight. Either I died or I was being a creature of the water… but I’m a goat? What manner of being I am didn’t matter, I be needing to help my friends.

Pulling myself fully from the water, I saw Krosser and Pepper fighting off a mechanical EP with guns on its arms up a rocky pathway towards the facility. It had similarities to those cool Magitek Armor things.

They were sticking close to it, but be avoiding its melee attacks. Krosser be focusing on the smaller floating machines raining projectiles around them from above.

The walking machine that be looking something like that magitek armor stuff Pom be riding around in, it be trying to get a bead on them with its arms and those be looking like some nasty rapid fire cannons on it.

They were sticking too close to the thing for that to happen and Pepper be slashing it up fiercely with blasts of electricity following her attacks that be disabling it every now and then. She is trying to destroy it before it can be doing too much to them as it be stomping or lashing out with its arms while wildly firing around it.

Taking my cane scythe up I be running towards them, can’t let my friends be fighting alone right?

“Grand Cleave!” I yelled as I raised the scythe high, leapt forward and brought it down swiftly with as much force as I could be putting into it. The cutting force tore straight through the machine diagonally starting from the left side of its grill and be going all the way to what had to be the right side of its fuel tank on its back.

I watched as it split into two halves before it exploded violently, this be forcing me to back away and then the flaming parts stuck around instead of turning into dissolving cubes. Everyone be avoiding the explosion easily enough as my two bipedal friends be moving away with some hasty rolling from when they be seeing it sparking.

“Shanty good to see you’re alright after that nasty fall, see told you hitting the water wouldn’t make her drown.” Don’t be knowing about that Krosserdog, but it be good to see friendly faces and I would eventually want to be knowing.

No longer worrying about the larger enemy machine I just be tearing through that Peppercat had weakened a lot before I showed up, I watched as Krosserdog be finishing off the three remaining floaters in several highly accurate shots from his arm rifles.

“Where are we going from here? We could circle around the outside of the facility, I think I saw where the two halves of the skiff fell around the edges of the facility.” Peppercat then narrowed her eyes. “We could also go straight through the facility or search around inside it for the others.”

“That be sounding more like my speed, I want to be part of the raid and Pom is likely being in there already!” I be hearing Krossderdog sigh.

“Come on Krosserdog, we’re in this for the long haul remember!” Peppercat stated vibrantly while pumping a claw.

“While I can understand why you’re the loose cannon I got paired with. It’s like you and Metabee share a single computation between you.” Krosserdog, not be saying no and he be forming up with me and Peppercat.

“So I’m a little aggressive!” Peppercat motioned us towards an entrance to the facility. “Let’s go sniper mutt!”

“Are you going to be alright Shanty?” Krosserdog asked as he turned to me, he be noticing something up with me.

“Yeah, I’ll… I’ll be being fine, let’s move and gather up with everyone we can be finding.” I be concentrating on the here and now as I went after Peppercat before she be getting too far ahead of us, I could be worrying about other things later.

“Hrm…” Krosserdog be huffing and then following after me as I looked back at him.

-Inside the facility somewhere, large platform at the top of a staircase near the prison block, Pom-

“Enemy detected entering from the caged experiments sector and… what?! Second detection near the prison block, Coward you better not have let them get by you!” That was Cruel I believe. Poor Elise, having to deal with two parts of her personality that are a bit too... boisterous... that's a nice word for it right? It also sounded like our friends were trying to find us.

“Pom, above us!” Dolly was the one that gave me the warning and Dormarch was already moving for an attack as I exhaled and dodged backwards as a pair of loud circular saws slammed into the ground where I stood.

As the machine stood up it was staggered by a Wild Bark from Dormarch causing it to become stunned. I closed in and slapped it with two magic claws across the grill damaging it a bit and quickly jumped back several time to dodge the three sweeping attacks of circular saws that came at me quickly. It looked like an automatic living EP version of a Magitek Armor, which means we needed to deal with it quickly if it was going to be a big problem.

“Are those snakes… never mind, I’ve got them!” Dolly called out as she threw the stone bone to cause it to bounce off a purple snake head and it blew apart as she leapt to catch the bone on the rebound and blocked another trying to bite her with her skateboard. She blasted it apart with a point blank Momentum Bark. “Got some drones Dormarch incoming, help me with that while Pom deals with the big one.”

“Can you handle it mom?” Dormarch asked as I faced off against the machine with the whirling saws.

“Yeah, I just need to get into the right mindset…” I didn’t refine some of my abilities for a short while just to falter now.

While I did not like the idea that I could go lethal, I had to do it to save us some pain and suffering further on and a fluffmancer using their wool or fluff lethally was… absolutely terrifying for anything facing it. It would also be putting me on a level similar to what Paprika is absolutely capable of.

Dormarch moved off to help Dolly and our Zealot friend stayed out of the way with the supplies and was trying to avoid getting too close to the melee machine I had to deal with.

The machine lunged forward bringing its right arm into an overhead slam and I was paying more attention to the fact that its left was preparing for a sweep as I took in some air.

I hopped to the right avoiding the circular saw coming down from above as it rebounded off the floor and then it used the rebound to pivot and bring its left arm around in a swing as it extended the arm.

Exhaling, l leapt forward onto the extended arm avoiding the spinner saw as it tried to retract at me and then leapt towards the top of the long yellow body of the machine itself.

Brining back my left hoof and forming a triangular blade of wool above it, I stabbed the scoop like blade straight down into the top of the machine before the rest of my hooves even touched down on the body.

The wool blade was assisted by the magical claw effect I added in to help it dig into the metal of the machine, said machine started swinging around violently trying to shake me off of it, unfortunately for it, it was already too late to dislodge me.

Forcing my wool to stretch out and expand from the point where the wool blade had pierced the machine. I could feel the thousands of threads filtering through out the machine monster like blood veins, the strands started to vibrate violently and swirl about inside the machine damaging it heavily and it started getting jerky in its movements.

To finish it off, I ripped my wool free as I kicked off of it and the machine toppled over. The destroyed smoking pile of metal promptly exploded seconds later sending bits of itself everywhere. I covered my face and only got lightly pelted with blunt chunks that didn't, luckily enough, pierce me through.

Given that it didn’t dissolve… it wasn’t a program? Strange. At least having its insides ripped up by my wool being pulled out of it violently worked like a charm.

I didn’t lose any wool at all, not a lot of magic used either for the amount of damaged I just caused. At least the metal on that machine wasn’t very thick or else my wool wouldn’t haven’t been able to pierce as deeply as it did. Such a move would not work on a thickly armored target and that’s what Bark Breaker would help with.

I thought of the terror I could bring to a biological beings by doing the exact same thing to their insides with but a single strand of wool and made myself a bit sick at the thought of actually having to do that eventually to Elise. I didn't know her very well, but I didn't like what I saw in her eyes that were reflected in my own.

Created that particular stab and destroy from the inside method based on how I dealt with the Eaters using the paralance back in Mare Melum. Holding back was not something I should do, but I was still wary of utilizing the paralance and I’d rather utilize an acceptable amount of force, which at this rate was as much as I could out of my cute little backside… I still had my principles.

Still… I was going to have to kill Elise eventually and in an insanely fast manner. Hopefully my plan would work and it wouldn’t be too painful. Elise seemed like a nice naga, despite her living form of Dissociative Identity Disorder from a massive amount of trauma possibly being a big fight.

“We lost a Sweeper and a Cutter to them in such a short amount of time already, what are these guys?!” Cruel grumbled loudly. “Then again if they can injure behemoths without killing themselves… activating all the drones, crawlers and every sweeper variant available!”

“Keheehee- Fun?” Crazy stated out loud over the system that allowed their voices to be heard throughout the facility.

“No Crazy, not fun, get up here now or I’ll rip out your own teeth and stab your own eyes out with them! Don’t make me think of even worse things to do to you! Coward, slither your scaly butt up here for the command center with Crazy quickly or else I’ll torture Crazy even worse for your incompetence! Those behemoths are causing a lot of damage to the facility and I don’t want to have to revive your pansy ass if they get to you, they are doing far more damage than the intruders currently are! You best be prepared for a fight intruders, since we’ll give you one!” Cruel stated that last bit as a direct challenge to us. Also I noted that she said she’d torture Crazy for Coward’s incompetence and Crazy actually sounded like she enjoyed that kind of thing, so really it confirms some of my thoughts about Elise’s personalities being protective of her. “Sending all Shooter Machine and Piler models of Sweepers after the behemoths Crazy unleashed in the facility, they are tearing our PLANTs up and the whole facility apart! All other machines are to go to the last known locations of the intruders closest to them and attack immediately upon spotting any!”

Dormarch was dealing with the flying drones with guns by either teleporting up to them with Search Hunter and clawing them out of the air or hitting them with Wild Barks close up, they couldn’t move fast enough to get their guns on him before he took them out. The bladed ring the small drones were partially using to fly couldn’t move into position quickly enough to slice up my fast boy, but I noted they could angle themselves to protect against melee attackers that didn’t have weapons. They looked like they would fly into you with the spiraling blade if their guns were cycling.

As for Dolly, she was sliding around on the floor and bashing through the various purple snakes that showed up in single decisive blows, they tended to pop in puffs of smoke and not dissipating cubes or chunks of metal. The snakes were trying to lunge and bite at her, but she was staying far too mobile for them to tag.

I think I saw a triangle moment, when Dolly suddenly grabbed one of the lunging snakes by the tail and started to whip it around violently to wipe out the twenty or so snakes still encroaching on us. She did so while spinning rapidly while spewing magical sparkles off herself and balanced on her left hind leg in a stylish manner.

Being somewhat proud of those two, I stayed next to the Zealot protecting him from any physical up close attackers as he could hardly defend himself as well with one arm encumbered. He protected me with his shields from any projectiles fired by the drones by proximity alone. The smaller enemies had been quickly dealt with by Dormarch and Dolly working in tandem without the larger magitek based machine, but there were more on the way according to what Cruel said.

Didn’t have an idea as to how many of those larger ones I can actually take down and any more than one of those saw machines would be endangering not only our Zealot, but also Dolly and Dormarch. I’m also sure there were more dangerous variations than circular saws, Moon Cell had thrown a lot of mechanical EPs at Castle Alexander and there was also the fact that Midgar had powerful enough cannons to cross the entirety of the plains to hit the castle.

So I was expecting more guns to show up from here on and my wool still wasn’t going to stop bullets, at least the drones Dormarch dealt with were slow to aim at you before shooting.

“Let’s get a move on, up and out!” I called as Dolly and Dormarch finished the last purple snake thing and a flying drone. I got us all moving up some stairs, while sending a glance at the Zealot holding our healing supplies. “Are your personal shields doing alright?”

“Cheese House!” The zealot said while nodding.

“Mom, while we’ve got a moment I want to ask something, why did you give one of the Reviver Seeds to Elise?” Queried a concerned Dormarch as we moved up the stairs together with the Zealot bringing up the rear. “She can already resurrect from what we’ve heard.”

“If we get into a fight with Elise and the two other parts of herself, we’ll want to kill them first before we take out Elise.” I wasn’t going to say much more than that, but I had a theory I was working on and Elise possibly dying for it would help a lot. What did it say about me that I was going to once again maul someone to within an inch of their life in an attempt to save them? Wouldn’t be different from what I did with Smolder at any rate, just a little more complicated. “If Elise can’t help herself and has to resurrect the other parts of her soul in an involuntary manner, then we’ll need to deal with them almost all at the exact same time. Which will require three lethal blows in short succession or simultaneously, Elise has to be the last one taken out though. I have a hunch that her resurrection ability has some limitations and I’m banking on that.”

“Hm… I think I can see what you’re going for mom, but will that even work? The ressurection ability certainly hasn’t helped Elise previously.” What Dormarch was bringing up was the fact that Elise could already resurrect herself, as in she couldn’t functionally die. Except she had to have died at one point to even have parts of her soul called up as Moon Cell's servant, so her resurrection ability wasn't impossible to overcome. She couldn’t functionally escape Moon Cell either, at least not without our help. It’ll be a one shot in the dark chance, since I’m unwilling to use any more reviver seeds on Elise if it doesn’t work the first time. If Elise has the Reviver Seed, then that’s all the setup we needed when we get into a fight with all of her later. Doubted we could actually avoid that fight now. “Plus that would only be possible if we run into all of her in one place on the way out, which she is already doing for us… now do we want to go after them directly or just find a way out and make them eventually come after us?”

“That’s the question sweetie.” I mean we’re not trying to find Elise and her others at the moment, if we want to fight we could have just taken Elise with us and force her other two selves to come after us. I didn’t want to traumatize Elise any further than she apparently already had been by kidnapping her, that would have brought up bad memories.

“I’m a little more concerned that Pom is planning to kill someone, that’s actually alive, on purpose.” You’re not the only one concerned about it Dolly, my chest is clenching at the thought.

Killing someone on purpose for a convoluted reasons while trying to make sure they come out of it alive afterwards required a bit of forethought. Thankfully I wasn’t around to be responsible for Gilgamesh, but in this situation I knew I would be directly responsible for Elise dying for a second or two.

We didn’t have to do that thing while we were here in this facility, we’re just trying to get out and up to the ground floor of Midgar City. If we had to go through Elise to do it… I’d be upset, but at least I’d understand why we would have to and we could possibly get it over with sooner.

“I’m hopeful that the Reviver Seed will work differently.” Or at least that’s what I’m placing my bets on considering what the seeds have done for me so far despite how rare they are.

We came up to a corridor and had to duck out of the way to the walls on both sides of the entrance as a series of shots whizzed past us from a machine down the corridor as it moved forward. Inside the corridor was another two legged machine, but instead of saw arms it had two rapid firing guns and there were some four legged things crawling along the walls and ceiling.

I was on the right side with the Zealot and on the left was Dormarch and Dolly.

“What do you suppose those four legged things are?” Dolly asked before a shot, among the thirty or so that went flying at her, deflected off her helmet and made her yelp as she fell out of sight of the machine and off to the side. Dormarch immediately helped her back up onto her paws. “Agh… I’m... I'm okay! Thank goodness for nearly indestructible skateboard helmets...”

“Dolly, please be more careful.” After my comment I turned and looked to the zealot. “Stay here.”

"Big Boss, I serve!" Rolling my eyes at the zealot, I placed my hooved on the wall.

Clambering up the wall, I poked my head down to look into the corridor to see the bipedal machine quickly coming this way with the four legged smaller machines crawling forward ahead of it as a vanguard. I pulled back as several shots aimed upwards at me.

Dolly took that moment the two guns were firing at me, to lunge forward into the corridor and go sliding forward really fast while holding her board as a shield against the smaller four legged machines.

Said small machines fired burst of lightning energy from their eyes at her or tried to lung and stab her with their legs, Dolly avoided two of their blasts and blocked the others and went between the large bipedal machines legs.

"Hey, junk bots, spotted and spry right here!" Drawing all their attention to herself, Dolly put herself into a braced defensive position behind her board.

As the large machine tried to turn around, Dormarch teleported forward and clawed apart one of the four legged crawling machines.

That’s when I used Dancing Flame to burst forward equally fast and clawed apart the crawling machine to Dormarch’s right and then we crossed each other’s paths with me leaping over Dormarch heading for the next two crawling machines.

Dormarch clawed his apart with several swipes and I clamped the golden wool of my right leg onto the last one.

By that point the machine had turned and started firing on Dolly who was already braced behind her board to take the shots as the bipedal machine approached her. Couldn’t let it reach her as she couldn’t move while bracing against shots coming down on her like that.

With a powerful swinging heave I threw the four legged flailing machine into the back of the larger one where it exploded and released a volatile shock of electricity. This caused the larger bipedal machine to get stunned for a bit.

Running forward while inhaling and upon exhaling, I leapt to the ceiling, kicked off with all four legs and rammed two blades of wool downwards with my front legs as I dropped onto the top of the machine.

Spiking out my wool into the machine, I quickly kicked off of it backwards with my hind leg while detaching the paralance from myself in the air, grabbing it and then swiftly opening it in the direction of the machine as I landed to bunker myself in place.

Dormarch teleported behind me and Dolly moved into a protectedposition as well. I was rocked by the explosion from the gun armed machine, but it didn’t knock me over or hurt any of us as the paralance took the full brunt of it.

“Mr. Zealot come on!” The Zealot came running down the corridor as we came up to a cross section and there were more of those four legged machines clambering along the walls, ceiling and floors. We decided to take the path they weren't actively coming from. “Let’s keep moving.”

-Inside the facility elsewhere, Shanty-

I be dodging a flames spewing from the bipedal machines two arms and be getting beneath it.

“Bouncing Blades!” Being in my position, I hopped while spinning and be bouncing off the machines underside into the floor and continued to rapidly bounce between the two until I tore up large chunks of the machine with my rotations, then I be braking off the attack to kick off of the smoke spewing thing with all four of my hooves.

Once I be landing, I be quickly forming barrier of water from a canteen as it exploded. The barrier is being good enough to block the shrapnel from the explosion and I swiftly placed the water back into the canteen.

Nearby Peppercat be putting her body between another bipedal machines left arm and body, that one be having saws and she put her feet into pushing until the left arm snapped and broke. She still managed to keep clinging onto the machine that could no longer stop her from flooding it with lightning without its left arm.

“The larger ones aren’t programs... which is odd because the smaller ones definitely are!” Krosserdog was dealing with crawlers and drones in equal measure, the shots from his arms might not be faster, but he taking down more than me or Peppercat could. I moved to help Peppercat when Krosserdog said something that had me worried. “Does anyone else hear that?”

“A little busy, keep shooting Krosser!” Peppercat still hadn’t finished off the two legged saw machine, but she did manage to rip off the left arm entirely at this point.

A roar was heard and a nearby wall tore open and a large horned purple lion roared as it smashed one of those large bipedal machines it had impaled, a green one with gun arms and a rocket launcher on top like Metabee, with its claws like it was made of mushy dumpster fruit.

“Pepper be getting off that thing and run!” I shouted as the monster be looking at the other large machine she was trying to deal with. I was already running myself and didn’t want to be facing the purple lion thing, especially not after seeing Krosserdog’s shots be bouncing off it as if it was being entirely impervious to them.

“MeowrrRRR scary beasts!” Peppercat yowled and ran by us on all fours as the large one armed machine started getting torn into tiny bits of metal by that beast.

-Third hidden group, Shine-

“So that’s how you know Jeanne’s father?” Snake asked as we snuck through the facility in a fairly spacious vent.

“Yeah, he helped nurse me back to health, we became decent friends afterwards.” I was sliding along in the shadows as I talked and we both froze as a roar drew our attentions to what was happening below the grate we were moving on. “On that note, I think I prefer more stealthy solutions to outright direct violence.”

“I get that.” Snake said after a moment of freezing waiting to see if that roar had been for us.

We stopped and watched as a machine fired a short ranged spike forward from its left arm as it hastily backed away from a beast, its right arm was a mangled mess of sparking wires and machinery. The attack mildly damaged one of the several purple lion like beasts we've seen running around.

Even the legendary Pokémon of the sun, Solgaleo, would have quite a time fighting one of those purple things. Said purple skinned monster wildly tore apart their surroundings with raw muscle, not caring if they went through walls or messed up the surrounding architecture to collapse it on themselves. It didn't apparently phase the beast for long.

We watched as the monstrous horned lion seemingly ignored getting a small hole in its neck from where the melee weapon struck. In fact it simply bit into the machine to rip and tear apart the machine with its teeth and a claw in a brutal display and the followed explosion didn’t even scratch the beast and made me shudder.

“Let’s keep moving, our mission is to find everyone and either help them get them back to the skiff or cause as much damage as we can to this facility to escape when someone inevitably sets off the alarm to lock it down.” Snake muttered to me and I nodded and continued forward. “I’m glad that they can take care of themselves, unlike some of the people I dealt with on a regular basis.”

“Hopefully Sami will have the skiff fixed by the time we get back.” That or they could bring it to us if we’re in trouble, this facility had a lot of broken windows for a place that was underground and there was something of a feeling of being dilapidated. Ghost types tending to like quiet, old places to explore and there was a feeling of this place being quite old and lots of bad things happening here. that brought about a thought in my mind. “How did you die?”

“In a surprisingly peaceful manner, considering all the war zones I ended up in. In a time I thought I’d at least die on a battlefield somewhere.” Yet here you are Snake, an oddity that snuck into helping us somehow. “Now follow my lead.”

-???, coming up on an intersection, Pom-

“So, are we lost or what?” We might as well be Dolly.

“We are doomed.” The zealot stated sagely while nodding still carrying the supplies.

A Crawler, the little four legged robots that spew lightning, was torn apart by Dormarch’s claws and turned into a pile of evaporating chunks. He was really saving his evolutions for more dangerous fights and he was still quite strong as a Dalmamon.

“Mom, can we just go in the direction that those Search Snakes, that Elise obviously generates, are coming from now?” Well it wouldn’t be too hard to do that Dormarch.

“I… I just… I really don’t want to see Elise again so soon…” So we’ll just keep avoiding the directions the majority of the Search Snakes are coming from, those purple snakes weren’t very dangerous.

“Hey, I get it, you and her share something of being an anxiety riddled mess, only you don’t have that whole mental issues coming to life thing like cerise does.” Cerise is the color for a deep red Dolly, not exactly far off from Elise's name though. Also Dolly wasn’t wrong in Elise having a personality similar to my own and that’s why I can sympathize with her somewhat. Only I can’t tell what Elise has been through entirely and I’ve been having a pretty nasty year, misery does reckonize misery at least, I still don’t know how well I would be able to empathize with Elise’s position of having come back to life inside a collection of realms run by an omnicidal magical computer with half her soul under its control and little no friends to speak of. “Also you have a thing for scales and she was a nice shade of purple.”

I didn’t understand computers very well in the context we were dealing with them, but the reason Moon Cell wanted me dead and feared my continued existence was as obvious as the golden wool taken up my front legs. The fact that it uses magic as a primary means of assault, I was very much a wandering monkey wrench for it that could really cause major problems… and I already was given the counter invasion force has made it this far.

“While no, I do not quite have an active dissociative problem... beast mode aside. I do have mental issues though and hers sounded quite dishearteningly worse than mine.” Still could flip out and let my beast loose to perform well above my capabilities and how I dealt with a mind controlled Smolder, it wasn't pretty and it had been fairly painful. I turned and raised my right leg to rapid fire ten Thousand Spears. The air jets that burst out had a slight golden hue because of my wool, said jets of air easily tore down a few oncoming flying drones and it’s nice to see that my fire rate has improved as far as Thousand Spears with my wool was concerned, most of my wool based abilities have improved really. “I don’t know if I’m ready to kill someone directly, plus she seemed friendly…”

“For someone who had untold amounts of highly unethical surgery done to her for her abilities and whoever Sumeragi were they caused her enough damage to functionally split her soul in the attempt to steal or use her powers to their own ends. I'm kind of a walking medical scanner Pom, there are some things I wished I didn't know about her when I looked at her." Dormarch stated quietly with his darting eyes looking about for more attackers. "Yes I’d agree that she was somewhat friendly, but don’t you want to get it out of the way?”

We stopped short of entering the intersection we had been coming up on. I was about to make a suggestion when a Flamer, a fire spewing version of the large bipedal back away rapidly through the intersection past us and was being chased by a Behemoth.

Sweepers apparently just had guns, Cutters had circular saws, Shooters had missile launchers and guns, Pilers had piston powered melee spike weapons with grenade launchers and Flamers were basically just walking fire spewing nightmares to run into in corridors. Thus far we’d avoided most of them, they all share the same design aesthetic and only the weapons were different.

We waited for a second and then I motioned us forward straight through the intersection, as we did so I saw the front half of the flamer get torn apart and it continued to try and burn the Behemoth down. The Behemoth simply picked up the poor machine and started to shake it apart violently. The physically focused monstrosity looked fairly resilient to burning and was basically ignoring the constant face full of flames it was getting.

“Let’s put some distance between us and that thing.” I didn’t hear any complaints from Dolly or Dormarch as something exploded not too long afterwards. We continued on our way and didn’t go in the direction the Behemoth came from or where it was going, as there could be another one down that way and honestly they could be anywhere in here with us.

Elise-

I slithered around the horizontal pole, grabbed a vertical pole and slowly swirled my way towards the base to see Cruel battering Crazy with her fist. Crazy didn't fight back and kept giggling happily.

“Did you bellow for me Cruel?” I asked nonchalantly as possible as I had taken the quickest path to get here.

“Yes our craven Coward, I did. Now that your useless waste of space for a backside is here, I can finally put the facility on lockdown and maybe seal off some of those Behemoths from causing more trouble.” It was nice that there were no behemoths on the way here.

“Keeheehee, slumber party, we’ll make them sleep with the vicious!” You were already vicious enough Crazy, you’re the one that let the Behemoths run wild on the facility.

I would ask why we are even partially working with the guy that got us killed in a previous life, but Moon Cell has Cruel under its control and it barely controlled Crazy.

“Stop thinking thoughts of dissenting against Moon Cell you coward, you wouldn’t survive a minute of us tearing you apart anyway and isn’t that why I exist in the first place? Just because you couldn’t handle a little pain and suffering and needed me to exist to pull your lame backside out of the fire and kill most of the scientists and armed guards?” It was why you indeed existed Cruel and it was sad that I even needed to bring you into existence. “You’re not even nearly brave enough to do whatever you want like Crazy is, you can’t even save yourself you useless pathetic worm!”

Yes and Crazy is only half a mind at the best of times.

Cruel glared at me and I cowered away from her.

The outer doors to the entire facility shut and several screens came up. There were actually three different teams of intruders in the base now, the rabbit and gourd quickly disappeared from sight as soon as the alarms started blaring.

“Darn it! It’s far worse than I thought you idiots, we lost a majority of combat strength thanks to the PLANTs your dumb idea destroyed Crazy!” Cruel slapped Crazy harshly and Crazy doesn’t seem to mind, some would say she never had a mind to begin with and I knew otherwise.

Crazy just smiles and sighs happily at the claw marks and the light bleeding going on from her face as she nuzzles up to Cruel while chirping happily.

“Cruel… I have to ask… why couldn’t you fight off Nova’s control? I understand why Crazy possibly couldn’t, but why couldn’t you if you’re so strong?” In response to my query Cruel summoned a knife and stabbed Crazy in the chest.

Not me, never me, just Crazy, always Crazy, she’s always going after Crazy with pure malice.

She slid the knife down from Crazy’s chest to her belly pulled out some intestines and started to strangle Crazy with them while smiling sadistically. Crazy seemed to be enjoying the immense amounts of pain she had to be in as her weak insane laughter would have you believe.

“Does this answer your question Coward, Crazy was far too weak to resist and do what was needed for us to survive and she got herself killed before she could resurrect the dominant personality, ME, and we died from it!” Yes, but… that didn’t answer my question Cruel.

“Why couldn’t you resist Nova?” There was a pause. Nova was long dead and thankfully Moon Cell didn’t or couldn't bring him back, but it still lingered in my mind how we… no… how I gave into Nova’s whims with little resistance. Even if it was Crazy that was the one that gave in... she was still me. “Why did we let Nova make us revive them? Why couldn’t we fight off his control Cruel? There's three of me.”

Cruel finished strangling Crazy to death and then made her way over to me slithering slowly with a lot of anger in her eyes.

“Resurrection…” I intoned meekly, immediately bringing Crazy back from a rather highly volatile death.

Afterwards Cruel reared back and slapped me harshly. It was odd that there were no claw marks on my face or bleeding when she did so, when she would so readily hurt Crazy without a second thought.

“Because we were too weak to make Crazy strong enough to resist him Coward!” The slap from Cruel brought on a lot of stinging pain to the left side of my face and I was sniffling a bit, but I hadn't looked away from her malicious gaze. She wouldn’t make me bleed like she did Crazy. “We were all too weak to save ourselves, its best that we just continue being puppets for the glorious Moon Cell and do it’s bidding in killing the ewe it hates so much.”

Cruel admitted to being weak, but she was strong enough to continue resisting Moon Cell to the point that she still wouldn’t do any lasting harm to me. Was she my confidence as much as the nastiness in my heart as Pom suggested?

“Now if you’re finished being the most insignificant thing in the room.” Or the most important part to you Cruel, ‘you’ wouldn’t exist without ‘me’. We were one and the same. “The intruders need to be dealt with and their fortress torn down. I’m the strongest among us so I say we start killing all of our enemies and maybe we can have some fun with causing the mass genocide if Moon Cell sees fit to make us his major enforcers!”

“If you’re so strong, then why did we let the lemming put us underground… again?” He was the reason we went through such torturous experimentation when it was found out we had the power to resurrect.

“Shut Up!” Cruel raged at me, but she didn’t lash out. “That lazy lemming will get what’s coming to him eventually... somehow... don’t know why Moon Cell even summoned his lazy butt! Waste of a servant summon if you ask me and I’d choke him to death with my bare claws if I didn’t think Moon Cell would tear us a new one for trying to hurt… an… ‘ally’, no matter how detestable the little rat is! I’d even literally eat him alive if I had the opportunity!”

Nice way of stressing the word ‘ally’ to the limit Cruel.

“I would agree with actually doing that.” I said flatly, as the reason why I was kidnapped and experimented on was sitting on high in a tower enjoying himself and here I was once again in the depths where the my enemies are friendlier than the allies I had.

I haven’t had any food in a while and I’m a living being compared to Cruel or Crazy, can’t exactly die of starvation if they keep bringing me back.

I don’t know much about the guy that killed Crazy before she could revive us during our last fight with that lightning hero, but I’m glad he managed to stop the pain of living if only temporarily.

“Keeheehee, he would look nice rather nice with a red neck tie and being spit roasted after putting a smile on his throat!” Crazy seemed to be as cheerful as ever at hearing the idea of dealing with the one that led to me having these problems. She even waved a knife around in the air to imagine how it would even be done while humming merrily.

I was never a hero at all, I was a kidnapping victim, a painfully experimented on prisoner with no anesthesia as they kept me awake through the torture of being cut open multiple times and stabbing scalpels into my forehead. I became a captive puppet for a complete madman afterwards with a world domination plot that thankfully never succeeded.

I didn’t say ‘sorry’ nearly enough times to that lightning hero...

“Coward, you better put up a fight if they manage to reach our room or so help me I will make you suffer before we are all taken out!” Unfortunately Cruel wouldn’t just let me sit on the side of the field while watching her and Crazy go to town on whoever showed up.

I silently wished it wouldn’t be the blue eyed lamb, for she already knows what suffering was like. I could easily see it in her eyes and yet... she still sounded so hopeful for a monster like me.

416. Naga May Die Pt. 1.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

It’s been a few hours since things started and then entire continent of Ransei was enflamed in war, at least Illusio was receiving a lot of help from two of their neighboring countries, especially Chrysalia.

The Psychics, despite having lost a major asset in Cerebrum and many homes due to civil war, they were still quite formidable force to be reckoned with under Kenshin’s leadership.

Also the enemy seems entirely confused in the deserts of Terrera and how most of their fighting forces seem to be swallowed up by the desert itself or their PLANTs seem to be destroyed as if by nothing.

Palossands were very sneaky at times, they were nearly invisible in desert regions as much as they were fairly obvious on beaches because they liked forming sand castles out of themselves. Just like Muk were capable of blending into and becoming nearly invisible in or around swamps.

Moon Cell had plenty of raw power though and was throwing a lot of that behind its assaults on Ransei and our digital neighbors, which was fairly worrying.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar Basement Region, Unknown Facility, warehouse, Shanty-

“Is that thing still chasing us?” Peppercat be asking while looking attentive and being quite highly spooked given her wide eyed look, her tail was stiff and her ears were straight up.

“I think we be managing to lose it.” Now if we could only find our way forward, this place was being extremely convoluted. Pom was likely to not be having it any easier than we were, I am being quite sure the beast be taking it personally that we’ve been evading it.

“Yeah, I’m beginning to lose it personally… that thing is terrifying.” Krosserdog be leaning out form the shelf aiming his left rifle in a sweeping motion while propping it up with his right hand. “I don’t see it.”

“We can’t be staying up here forever.” We ducked back behind some containers as one of those bipedal walkers shined a light up here and a drone or two be flying by our position.

At least we be knowing that the area is somewhat clear if those machines were being around to patrol and not off trying to deal with the large rampaging monsters.

“You think you’re losing it Krosser? Aside from throwing a thunder ball special, a middle range attack at the best of times, I’m primarily a close combat digi-bot and I don’t have the same capabilities as Rokusho has going for him when it comes to raw power with being able to deal with large opponents.” Yes, but you be having the ability to stun the bipedal machines Peppercat, that is being a helpful trick. “I also have some problems with reaching those drones.”

“At least you can be stunning the larger machines and give us an opportunity to take them down more easily.” Water wasn’t being very helpful against much aside from the ones that spew flames everywhere and my cane scythe was getting a workout today.

“Quiet… do you hear that?” Krosser had us listening for our surroundings, it sounded like something be… Krosser be turning and quickly taking out the four legged machine trying to crawl close enough to be attacking me. “That likely gave away our position, let’s move!”

We quickly be jumping a gap to another shelf and running as the shelf we were on suddenly had several drones aiming lights on it.

-???, Pom-

“What do you suppose that stuff is?” Dolly was looking off the side of the walkway to the bluish green liquids far below. “Looks rather gnarly.”

“I’m not sure, but it doesn’t smell nice and the air feels magically charged here, I really don’t think it’d be a good idea to fall into it… much less touch too much of it.” I continued along the walkway.

“At least it’s not radioactive as far as I can tell, a good thing in this instance. I really don’t want to know what touching that stuff would do to us otherwise, but it seems to have highly anomalous properties.” Stated Dormarch as he looked at the strange liquids below us. “We got incoming enemy signatures from ahead mom.”

“Right, Zealot stay in the back and safe, Dolly, Dormarch, let’s start heading forward!” I started forward towards the other end of the walkway bridging the gap over the strange stuff and before we could reach the halfway point, from the other entrance arrive two of those sweeper machines.

Fortunately they didn’t seem to be ranged variants, just a Piler and a Cutter... no drones or crawlers to worry about yet.

The Cutter charged forward onto the walkway with the Piler right behind it.

“I’ve got them, look out for other enemies!” I shouted as I ran forward and made sure my wool was frictionless for what I was about to pull.

The Cutter brought back its right saw and swung it for me horizontally and I went into a slide on my right flank underneath it, I had to lean my head back so that the spinning saw passed above my chin.

Once close to being underneath the center point of the machines body, I thrust my right hoof forward and up into the machines underbelly and exhaled.

My wool spiked its way into the machine as I slid underneath it towards the Piler, my wool ripped free with my forward sliding momentum and the machine I was almost behind would soon explode.

All the Sweeper type machines tended to do that when damaged enough, also they were unusual EPs in the fact that they were built and not actually generated from PLANTs. They were quite dangerous for their weapons, but they thankfully didn’t have enough armor to prevent me from spiking my wool into their inner workings.

The Piler moved both its arms to angle inwards at where I was going to be, preparing to skewer me.

I lift my left hind leg high up in front of the rest of my body and stomped it down against the walkways grating. Using the stomp I lifted my entire body upwards using my forward momentum and then hopped with my hind legs over the two quickly extending spikes of metal that blasted forth from the Pilers arms, with the left crossing over the right. Would never want to hit with those, instant death was not something I wanted to deal with as those things were big enough to pulp my head.

I landed between the Pilers spikes directly in front of it and crouched with my left hoof pressing against the ground.

“Grand Upper!” A threw powerful leaping left uppercut boosted by my wool springing me upwards and even put my hips into the upwards swing to add some rotational force. The attack added a combination of my magic wolf claw ability, having wool shaped claw over my hoof, the energy pillar eruption from my Buster Wolf and my general combat skill increasing the force of my meager physical component of the attack exponentially. I landed on my hind hooves facing away from the machine to start immediately prepping my right hoof with rapidly twisting and coiling wool. “Are you okay?”

The grill on the front of the Piler had been rocked upwards from my uppercut, the energy tearing into the metal with a screech. This knocked it back, forced it to retract its spikes and threatened to topple it as it tried to keep its balanced after being staggered. Following up the attack with a Buster Wolf made for a good combo since the uppercut spun me into having my back to the opponent naturally.

If I was just doing regular physical attacks the damage I was doing would be entirely negligible, I needed magic to make up for the difference in capability. It’s times like this that I wished I had super strength, at most I could get boosted strength with my wool acting as an exoskeleton.

“Buster Wolf!” Spinning around, I launched forward hitting the middle bottom section of the long odd body of the machine. Once it was done being staggered it could just lean forward to avoid falling over, which would only happen if my right hoof hadn’t connected with my wool at the ready. “Drill!”

My wool stabbed into the body on impact, spiraling forward and inwards like it does for a Thousand Spears shot and pierced a hole into the machine. I spiked it like how it tried to spike me and the wool expanded spiraling outwards in its innards after puncturing through the machine’s underbelly.

Like a spring my wool came back just as quickly by spiraling in reverse and back to normal, the Piler was fully toppled by the subsequent angled pillar blast of the buster wolf that Dolly saw leaping and clawing wolves in.

The hole in the bottom of the machine knocked on its back started sparking, I leapt forward and kicked off the machine to get behind it… I did not want to be caught between two explosions at the same time.

Inhaling I quickly pulled out the paralance and turned around, bracing the butt of it against the grating and locked myself in position with my wool. I returned myself to breathing normally and two explosions almost sounded to happen at the same time, yet I was completely safe from them behind the paralance’s canopy.

“Pom behind you!” At Dolly’s voice and a quick glance through her eyes using our bond, I swung the blade edged canopy around to the left to smash a drone out of the air as several had quietly showed up.

The one behind me had been flying forward and trying to bring its gun to bear against me or hit me with its spiraling blade, I focused on blocking several shots from the other three drones coming at me.

Dormarch soon took those out with a series of quick Search Hunters to pop into range to start blasting them with Wild Barks before they could do too much more.

“You’re doing awesome at showing your skills off Pom. That refinement training stuff you did is paying off.” Kind of upset that it was even needed Dolly.

“Really don’t want to be good at fighting Dolly…” I sighed audibly.

-Dolly-

Yeah, I could feel Pom being upset with being able to kill with a small bit of her wool that easily. I just thought it was cool that she’s gotten somewhat better since I met her.

Dormarch teleported ahead and I casually started forward after them when I saw something sparkly, it drew my attention inexorably for some reason given it was in one of the exploded machines on the walkway.

Huh, a marble? I made my way over to the wreckage of the jackhammer arms thing, must get road work done really fast with those things when not using them as weapons. I reached down and picked up the colorful marble with a paw and looked it over curiously. I gazed at the pretty light energy swirling within it, was this the power source for those machines?

That’d be pretty weird if so, who’d power something with marbles? They’d probably lost theirs if they thought that something so small could power such a large machine… then again I’ve seen some pretty weird stuff being with Pom, this doesn’t even rate my top twenty.

I chuckled and shoved it into a small spot within my skating helmet, something felt very strange when I did that… I would have to tell Pom and Dormarch about what I just found and see what they think. We were just about on the other side of the large bridge and I was calmly coming up behind them with Zool, opening my mouth to do just that when something roared behind us made us all freeze up.

Immediately going into my high speed baseball slide, I got to the other end in record time to turn around and see one of those lions on performance enhancers.

“Zealot, toss the supplies to me and slice a small gap in part of the walkway then come over here!” Pom caught the box and then moved to be next to the entrance I was at just as the monster showed up on the far side of the walkway from us.

“Who will be the next to fall?” Religious tall guy stated humorously, that’s some macabre humor dude. He created two blades of energy from his wrists and slashed up a section of the walkway leaving a small gap in it, which would barely an inconvenience to the horned lion thing coming at us, and made his way over to us.

“Cut the walkway here a bit, but not all the way.” Pom ordered and the cultist nodded and sliced the outer halves of the walkway, he stayed in a crouched position as the monster barreled at us thunderously.

The guy looked to Pom and waited expectantly with his glowing energy blades, as if he knew exactly what he was about to do. Said energy blades were rather cool looking like what that energy knight guy back in Flan Frozen Kiosk city had. In fact, the gauntlets looked kind of like they shared many similarities, I wonder if the guy had patented his weapons?

“Uh… Pom… big thing, dangerous, can easily kill us, getting much closer!” I yelped and backed away while Pom didn’t do anything and stared the beast down as it was at most two lunges from getting at us.

“I think mom knows that Dolly.” Dormarch stated worriedly and with his three fluffy fish tails between his hind legs.

“Now!” The second Pom said that, the Saint slashed the floor as the big beast slammed down on it.

This caused an entire section of the walkway to start falling and that beast still tried to leap for us. Only to end up flailing its front paws at us as it failed to grabbed the sliced off section of walkway and fell towards the liquids below.

I’m pretty sure it was mostly out of morbid curiosity, but we all watched as the monster made a splash in that toxic looking stuff below to see what would happen. It seemed like the monsters muscles started bulging and it started growing stronger, then Dormarch just had to offer a commentary on what was happening to it and what he was seeing.

“Apparently the substance has some extremely negative properties to it, it appears that it is poisoning the creature and is quickly shutting down its brain functions for some reason and it’s slowly doing that while both improving and compacting it’s musculature, turning it’s fur into spines like that of a hedgehog and it’s skin is becoming tougher before destroying all of that stuff altogether entirely… likely starting with the internal organs. At certain levels this stuff looks like it could enhance someone without killing them… if it doesn’t kill them outright and provided you’re strong enough to survive the process and are not in a ton of this stuff to start off with.” There was a concerned look on Dormarch’s face as he looked up to Pom and then me, as the creature started charging up for one of those blasts as it was turning into a skeleton and a bunch of mashed potatoes. “We should probably move, because somehow the liquids have set off the Behemoth’s ability to explode magic everywhere violently and it’s building up fast, absurdly so. I have no idea how reactive that substance down there is going to be, but I would estimate that...”

“No time, run!” I shouted on instinct. With Pom around, the chance of an incredibly massive explosion were high and I let her know my feelings on the matter through our bond.

Dormarch even stopped when Pom shared it down the line to him, as she rightfully agreed that we were currently in the wrong place at the moment and should really be getting elsewhere.

Dormarch and Pom didn’t need to be told twice as I entered a sliding kick away from here and back into the metallic hallways of this place we were absolutely going to get lost in again. We needed to put some distance between us and whatever is about to happen.

“Turn the corner, turn the corner!” Pom shouted and indicated to the right at an intersection ahead, I lashed out my board and hooked a pipe to swing my slide around the corner to pop up and continue to follow Pom and Dormarch riding on my board.

This is about when that beast finally decided to blow up violently. Like, I know I’ve been next to an erupting volcano following Pom around, but this explosion felt fairly humongous compared to the volcano collapsing into itself given the shockwave traveled through the walls as if unimpeded.

-???, Snake-

The facility shook violently for the next thirty seconds and we saw a massive, corridor filling, wall of flames shoot by underneath us. Apparently some sort of massive explosion happened somewhere and seconds later the lights in the facility flickered out, this better not be a nuclear incident… then again we’d already be dead if it was. What kind of energy does this facility use?

“My goodness, what is Pom getting up to this time?” Shine stated as her eyes and belly started glowing brightly to give me sight of our surroundings, I wasn’t exactly equipped with one of the visors like she was so it was a bit dark when the lights went out throughout the facility.

“Sabotaging the enemy’s resources by accident, because that definitely felt like an accident at the very least.” I know that nobody would make an explosion like that on purpose. “I’ve been in several such incidents myself.”

“Whoa, that was being too close to be comfortable!” That drew our attention the goat and the two digital robots.

“Guys!” Shine slipped into the shadows and out of the scorched floor to wave at them.

“Shine!” Shanty ran up and hugged the gourd, first part of the mission is complete, now to find Pom and the others and blow this facility. “Do you be knowing where Pom is being?”

“Probably within lethal distance of that explosion before what caused it started.” I commented dryly, knowing how things tend to go. She seemed like the type for it.

“Yeah, that be checking.” Shanty nodded to herself.

Felt quite sorry for the ewe if that was the case, I ready a rope dart and we started scouting ahead for Shanty and the digi-bots.

-???, Pom-

“Okay… a part of the corridors collapsed, there’s no power in this place and… is that light coming from your digivice Dormarch?” A second light source showed up from Dolly and the zealot’s eyes made kind of a third.

I looked to Dolly’s helmet and saw a small bit of glowing coming from it, well okay then… not like the visors wouldn’t have helped us in the dark already. Speaking of visors, these things a really more sturdy than I’d thought they be, I was expecting it to have been destroyed by the shockwave at this point.

“Come on, let’s keep moving, maybe with the lights being out we’ll be able to sneak around easier?” The looks on Dormarch, Dolly and even the Zealot’s faces were all flat. “Any injuries?”

“Yeah, I could go for a Sitrus Berry right about now Pom.” Dolly did get hit with a powerful concussive force, as did I and Dormarch to… so yeah a small snack break wouldn’t hurt.

The Zealot seemed perfectly fine, but his shield likely got exhausted by the shockwave.

-Control Center, Cruel-

“Can someone explain to me how they managed to blow up the miniature mako reactor?!” I was livid, absolutely livid, I might just kill Crazy for that happening!

How many times have I killed her today already? Need to cut back on that and find targets that don’t enjoy torture…. it’s probably not causing Crazy any brain damage or anything to be revived so many times anyway. Crazy would need to have a brain to damage in the first place, also I needed her healthy for any upcoming battles so I couldn’t torture her anymore today.

“Keeheehee, explosions are instant art, emphasis on instant!” If only a glare could kill Crazy… and not just encase her in stone she can easily break out of. You know what… “So much happy boom and all the power just goes bye-bye, do you think it caused a wonderful glorious death! Maybe we can even…”

She was encased in stone in an instant as a widening cone of light hit her coming directly from my eyes. The stone started creaking and shaking as Crazy started working to break herself free.

“As if there were actually people in Midgar worth caring about you imbecile, none of the NPCs scream hard enough to even get me excited about any pain they could feasibly simulating.” At least with my stoning of crazy, we’d have some peace for a few seconds and a time to think about the living being invading the facility that weren’t Coward. “Those living ones might give me some good screams.”

“I still don’t even know what a mako reactor is, does it have to do with those flying sharks?” Ugh, Coward was such an idiot, then again she didn’t have Moon Cell’s downloaded information inside of her… which might actually be a ‘positive’ thing… for her at the very least. It was kind of a headache for me to have to be under someone’s control.

“No, it’s a reactor that has to do with some crap about souls sucked from the planet and blah blah blah lives of the dead powering everything, just be glad that that’s not us in that was in the caustic stuff Coward! We got a job to do so get the knives out of your butts ladies, we need to be alert for…” I pause and stared at Crazy as she had broken free at some point and was currently slowly pulled the knives out of her backside and her tail writhes in agony while she moans… oh… oh ew! “Seriously Crazy, really?! Knives out, heal up and behave yourself!”

“I like having my tomato juice all over my tail.” She grins cheerfully. “Also things that commit to die when stabbed die-die-die-die!”

I preferred actions involved in making people wish they were dead personally, I like all my targets to know some suffering at the very least. Admittedly that was personal bias from prior living conditions that made me enjoy the pain of others, which was strange for me to mentally admit to so… okay which one of us started getting therapy?! Whatever the case, I blame Coward!

“Uh Cruel, Crazy, we’ve got some company…” Coward said weakly as the emergency power brought the monitors back to life and we both looked to see what she was pointing at shyly.

“More like company is about to have us!” I grinned and summoned a pair of snakes in my hands and turned them into triangular knives. “Coward you better put up a fight, Crazy… no more killing or hurting yourself or even me doing it. We need our full strength to deal with these intruders. Let’s go prepare... also Coward, hit the emergency lights on your way out you pathetic slacker!”

Coward whimpered, but did as I asked and the facility was bathed in a vibrant red lighting, it’s always the little touches that makes things feel homey. We hunted in the dark before and we liked to bite.

-Ten minutes later, large jungle gym room, Shanty-

I slowly be walking forward, the visors be helping a lot when it is being this dark. There be a lot of poles, pipes and beams in this room, horizontal, vertical, at angles, also scaffolding of what be looking like an unfinished building project. It really just be looking like a huge park… just without trees, grass or anything that can be being described as fun aside from stuff to climb around on.

“I think we are about to be being attacked.” A flash of light and then I was blinded… apparently the visor didn’t be protecting me from being encased in stone.

-Peppercat-

.“Shanty?!” The cone of light crossed my eyes, but I didn’t end up like Shanty had and instead tried to adjust my receptors to the glaring light coming from a pair of eyes on the pipes above us. I think I had an idea as to why this room was full of poles and looked like a battle arena from some kind of game.

I light up my claws and held one high to see three large slithering purple serpents with arms that blended into the darkness fairly well.

One had a calculating look, one had a crazy grin and the last one was shivering in fright with an upset look on her face.

Notably the stone statue started shaking and I could see cracks forming in it. So Shanty hadn’t been turned to stone, she was just instantly encased inside of it.

“We can’t encase the machines in stone… too bad… maybe they come with the ability to feel pain?” I didn’t like the grin on the face of the calculating one.

“Come on we can…” I turned around and didn’t see Shine or Snake… did they just ditch us? Seriously? Also, what was with the cardboard box… that wasn’t there a minute ago. There was this strong urge to think nothing of it, so I simply didn’t. “Krosser help me with these guys!”

“Right, I’m on it Pepper!” Krosserdog held his arms up and he focused on the task at hand, three on two… not favorable odds or its four on three, but that might not matter if these snakes were strong.

I moved in front of Shanty and crouched down ready for a brawl.

-Elsewhere in the facility, Pom-

Dormarch and Dolly looked at the massive metal shutters that kept us in the facility and looked around to see if anything was going to stop us from approaching them.

“So the way out is sealed shut… do you think you can cut through the big metal doors eventually zealot?” I asked because I don’t know where else we could go, the facility was crawling with small EPs and the fairly limited large manufactured machine EPs. They’d run out of large ones eventually, the smaller ones

“Not tell a duck.” The Zealot put down the supplies and pressed one of his energy blades to the door, it took a while to sink in. It add the other energy blade to try and make a hole faster. The metal doors were thick and the energy blades were not immediately cutting through it at all.

“Hello, can you hear me? I can see some of a Zealot’s blades sticking through a door up there from where we are.” It was Canard, good to hear his voice.

“Good to hear your voice, is everyone there Canard? I have the supplies and I’m with Dolly, Dormarch and a Zealot. It’s like a maze in here and if I lose this visor for any reason, I’m going to need to rely on Dormarch to find my way back here.” I answered over my visor communicator as I got visual data beyond the shutter showing Canard and the others were by the water side. Kind of wish we had better telemetry on these things, then we wouldn’t have a problem with knowing where everyone else is exactly. I’m sure Welch could make those upgrades. “Also should we really be breaking communication silence?”

“At this point they generally already know where we all are so it probably doesn’t matter at this short a range to use them. They are having some power problems too, so they won’t be able to pinpoint our exact positions… for as long as we’re down here at least. Shine and Snake entered the facility to look for you, Shanty and the digi-bots.” Wait… Shanty was still inside the facility somewhere? Well there goes my need to leave immediately, I will miss it dearly. I saw Canard on my visor and Jeanne wiping a dissolving Water Tiger off of her spear before taking up a defensive position next to the skiff. “My group has personally been under constant assault by bug EPs for a while now and it’s actually good to hear you’re alright after whatever you blew up this time Pom. Sami is still trying to fix the skiff and that’s going to take a bit.”

Why did he assume that I’m responsible for… actually I did kind of cause the explosion by ordering Mr. Zealot to set up the trap for that Behemoth in the first place. So it’s actually a valid and fair assumption that that explosion was my fault… I’m never going to live that down am I?

“Dormarch stay here and protect the Zealot, Dolly you’re with me! We have to go find the others and get out of here fast.” I was having Dormarch stay here because he was stronger than Dolly and would be able to watch the supplies and the zealots back. I grabbed a reviver seed, I’d probably need it at some point, and made sure I had some Sitrus Berries in my bag. “Canard I’m going to look for the rest, I’m leaving Dormarch near the entrance to find my way back in case something happens to my visor, also he’ll be down to help you with the skiff soon enough.”

“Roger that, we’ll try to have the skiff ready by the time you’re done figure out things.” Canard answered with a wave before turned with his hockey stick in hands and slashing a Shrieker completely in half with its blade.

“Be careful mom.” I nuzzled the top of Dormarch’s head and gave him a hug before setting off with Dolly.

I quickly delved back into the facility with Dolly and sniffed the air trying to catch a whiff of Shanty or at least Shine while trying to avoid the EPs and Behemoths that we know are still running around.

Until we got telemetry from the visors anyone else was wearing, we didn’t exactly have a full map of the facility. Mostly since Torneko’s map was more of Midgar in general and doesn’t account for any changes Moon Cell might have made or the specific insides of facilities or buildings therein. At least we knew there was at least a facility down here, but not what it was for exactly.

I think we had most of this facilities information at least, given the skiff was crashed on the right side of it and I fell into the front portion from the direction. Sure there were plenty of unexplored floors, but we just need to go toward the middle and we might get information from their visors to tell us where they were, if that wasn’t feasible I could at least continue to smell around for her.

I blinked as I finally noticed something off with Dolly.

“Uh Dolly, what is that glowing thing in your helmet?” My attention was drawn to the glowing spot on Dolly’s skate helmet.

“It’s an odd marble I found, but I found it lying around in one of those destroyed machines that stick around after you take them out and they explode and stuff.” As articulate as ever Dolly, well it didn’t seem to be doing anything off to her from what I could feel through our bond. “Maybe it’s the reason they explode or what’s powering them, it just seemed odd for a marble to be just lying there inside the machine to me and I thought it looked neat.”

I couldn’t really concentrate on the odd marble at the moment. We had other things to be focused on, like finding and helping our friends get out of here.

If I had to fight Elise and the two other parts of herself with lethal intent… then I would simply just have to get over my apprehension about going full tilt in said fight.

-Shanty’s Irregulars vs. Naga Triple Threat, Coward, Cruel and Crazy -

The fight started fairly fast with Shanty being an early casualty of her bar shaped pupils, her eyesight caused problems as soon as she saw the cone of light. She barely looked in the general direction of one of the three naga hanging from the surrounding metal infrastructure and got encased in stone.

One did not need to look into any of these naga’s eyes to be encased in stone either, you just had to be facing in their general direction while they are using their gorgon gaze ability. It is a fairly dangerous thing to be worried about when there are three of the naga and they could all do it.

While Shanty was busy trying to break free and not die of immediate suffocation, Peppercat took to standing defensively in front of Shanty’s trapped form and deflected several thrown knives and cut apart the Search Snakes that the naga were generating. The Search Snakes seemed particularly weak to electric attacks.

Krosserdog tried to shoot the serpent ladies and they quickly moved about on the bits of metal and scaffolding around the fairly expansive room with incredible speeds. It was hard for him to get a bead on any one of them, even the one that seem to be shivering in fright was quite fast to dodge his shots.

A knife slammed into the nearby cardboard box and it toppled over to reveal… nothing.

The knife turned into a Search Snake and started to look around for the other two that were supposedly hiding from the fight, all while the three naga were targeting the other three with a veritable rain of thrown knives, purple snakes and knives that quickly turned into more snakes.

While Krosser and Pepper were busy clawing or shooting at the snakes, a snake leapt at a different cardboard box. There were at least thirty in the room by this point and none of them were here before Snake arrived with Shanty’s group, even the naga didn’t know where they were coming from.

The Caerbannog’s paw reached out to grasp the snake by the neck, Snake quickly bit off its head and then pulled the remainder of its body under the cardboard box with him. As for some reason the snake didn’t poof away upon defeat.

“Snake Eater~.” There was pause in the attacks directed at Pepper and Krosser as the three naga all suddenly chucked a spread of multiple knives around the box that seemingly just sang that.

The knives didn’t strike the ground, instead they started to glow bright purple and rapidly rotated to point blade first towards the box and they all stabbed inward from all sides at once.

The knives piercing the box turned into snakes that flipped the box over, to reveal there had been nothing under there.

Shine and Snake were trying to stay out of the sight of the three naga and not start a direct confrontation, since the Naga had yet to show what they were truly capable of and were just warming up so far with how well they could move around the battlefield that benefited them entirely.

The stone encased Shanty finally managed to break free of the stone and quickly spun her scythe around herself in a flourish take out a few search snakes as their numbers were increasing fairly rapidly even if they were easy to take out.

“Hmm…” Cruel stayed still for a second and her eyes narrowed as she hung down on a horizontal structure among the jungle gym of poles taking up the room, she suddenly swung out of the way of a knife and started a gorgon gaze. A shadow was seen quickly fleeing from the light of her sight cone under the dim red lighting of the room. “Watch the shadows they’ve got someone swimming them, the cardboard boxes are also suspect!”

Shanty tried to climb up to the naga only to get encased in stone again, this time by Crazy.

“Keeheehee, made you fat!” Crazy received a sigh from both Cruel and Elise as they shook their heads and tossed more knives down on everyone below them. Some of the knives even took on a purple glow for a split second to change direction and velocity entirely.

“I’m so sorry… for all of this…” Elise mumbled as she was well aware that they had only just gotten started and she slithered along a metal beam warily while throwing out more Search Snakes and the occasional poorly aimed brace of knives that maybe Cruel could capitalize on.

-???, a robot named Snake Man-

“Has anyone seen Dust Man recently? He’s usually the one that cleans up my room… and my pet snakes might be a little bit out of control because he hasn’t taken care of them.” A green robot with a snake motif that fired robotic snake minions out of his arms asked while annoyingly stressing every single ‘S’ in any word that crossed his robotic lips… on purpose. The whole S thing could blamed on the guy named Dr. Wily, Snake Man would rather want to talk like a normal person, but no... hard code to stress every single freaking 'S' for the rest of his life. Dr. Light still hasn’t figured out how to fix that problem after he switched sides as nobody understood what Dr. Wily did to make it almost impossible to remove the program that actively enforces the speech pattern. “Also, why does it feel like someone is infringing heavily on my patented Search Snakes?”

Said Search Snakes full names were Search 'and Rescue' Snakes, Snake Man was a repurposed disaster rescue robot.

“Don’t know what to tell you, but he disappeared after that weird unicorn beat the oil out of us.” Top Man, the living top robot, was still in the running for lamest robot master ever. Not just for the weapon he gives Mega Man either and the less jokes made about Hard Man’s name the better. “Do you suppose it’s related?”

“Maybe, is Dr. Wily going to pull a Quint again? It was lame the last three times he did it to spite an apparently perfect future where we’re all happy and have decent paying jobs.” I looked out the nearby window and saw an ever rising pile of snakes growing. “I actually miss Dust Man…”

“So current snake related apocalypse aside, because you’re too lazy to actually want to stop it… want to play Beyblade?” Top Man asked with a grin.

“Sure thing bro!” I just needed to get out my Snake Lasher Special Beyblade and see where our motorized top sports fun led us.

418. Naga May Die Pt. 3.

-Pokemon World, Ransei Region-

The three Rockruff Brothers of Aurora were well on their way with going through a Mystery Dungeon after Aurora came under assault.

They weren’t the only ones delving into the nearby dungeons to destroy the dimensional anchors Moon Cell was using, but they were some of the first to do so.

The three rockruffs had trained themselves into the ground and one of them even finally evolved into a lycanroc in the midday form before taking on their current challenge.

This would be followed by a dusk and midnight forms for the other two Rockruff Brothers evolutions while in the nearby mystery dungeon and they would be among the first to help in saving their region from Moon Cell invading their home. This would be within the evening in the first twelve hours into the invasion.

The first to actually free their lands was the Fairy Kingdom of Titania, who were actually quite prepared for interdimensional warfare thanks to King Oberon. The Fairy Type kingdom sent Sir Mik out to support the countries that needed the most help at the moment, starting with Illusio.

-Moon Cell realm, Midgar, mysterious facility, Pom-

After climbing up a bit we were above the room that had its exits locked, but it had roof panel access from the vents.

“What’s the plan here again Pom?” There wasn’t much of a plan Dolly, but if you need a refresher.

“I fight Elise and her mental duplicates, while you help Shanty and the others get out of there and back towards the exit we found.” It wouldn’t be that hard to do and I knew Dolly had a nose for where we’ve been.

“Can you actually do that on your own?” Dolly asked tilting her head.

“Dolly, you know I’m more dangerous than I appear, I might not be able to take a big bulky thing in a fight, but those three shouldn’t be too much trouble for me.” I was watching them through the grating in the dark as they moved around. Elise was obviously the one staying back and out of the fighting, Cruel was aggressive and talented at getting up close and uncomfortable, Crazy was all over the place as Shanty and her fought.

“Yeah, but can you actually, you know, do it?” After I looked at her she raised her front paws and waved them at me gently. “Hey don’t get me wrong! I know what the plan is, I’m just a little concerned about you and your mental health.”

While she said that I was already prying the vent cover with my wool. Once I lifted my right hoof, I dropped the screws holding the vent cover off to the side by releasing them from my wool and then lifted the cover up with my left hoof and into the vent with us to set off to the side. Afterwards I waited for a moment to jump into the fight.

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine, but I don’t know what the outcome will be.” It was my plan and I was still going to stick to it, but I hoped Elise could forgive me for what I was about to do.

I was still hopefully doing the right thing here.

-Battle still in progress, Shanty’s Irregulars vs. Naga Triple Threat-

Shanty went flying off the horizontal bar that her water tendril wrapped around at Crazy who was testing her patience by continuing trying to pop or puncture the Bounding Bubble Shanty had thinly wrapped around herself.

While those two were going at it, on the floor Krosserdog, Snake and Shine continued to fend off the assaults of Cruel. Snake in particular fought knife to knife with Cruel in a very equal manner despite the injuries he got from trying to take on Crazy.

Peppercat was limited in her ability to assist everyone given she her badly damaged leg parts needed time to recover and she couldn’t get standing. She was still blasting knives with lightning that flipped through the air and then stopped when surrounded by an aura and then angle at them from every direction and taking out snakes that slithered and lunged forward.

Shine was in the middle of defending the others with another throwing dart from Snake, only to be caught seeing a cone of light to be promptly encased in a shell of stone.

Krosserdog managed to cover her sudden encasement by shooting down the snake lunging for him at point blank range.

A second later a slightly disgruntled Shined stepped outside the shell and punched it with her right hair hand into the right arm of the stone statue of herself to break off and retrieve the stone covered dart, she threw it a second later and Cruel took the sharp stone dagger to the right side of her hood almost causing her to be defeated by Snake with a slash toward her throat.

Shine being a ghost type able to slip out of her confines so readily had greatly confused Elise, the one who encased her in a stone shell, somewhat.

While Shine couldn’t sneak in the shadows if the light spotted her, she would rather not have a certain weakness of the move Phantom Force becoming widely known thing. As for being encased in stone, that didn’t bother her very much at all as containing a ghost type in a solid material was never going to work unless it was something specially designed to hold ghost types.

“Huh?” After throwing another of the darts with insane precision, said darts were the ones Snake so graciously loaded her out with, Shine spotted Pom clambering out onto the ceiling and was looking into the fight between Crazy and Shanty. At the thought that help had arrived, Shine smiled brightly, then saw Cruel about to stab Peppercat in the head. “Ally Swap…”

Cruel had just about had it with these nuisances and decided to end one of them, she lunged and brought a knife down towards Peppercat’s head, only to be replaced by Shine a second later and the knife went entirely through her and Shine let loose a punch to the Cruel’s skull that rattled and almost broke her nose, she was stunned enough that Snake managed to stab her in the spine and slash her throat open before kicking her away.

“Keeheehee ReSuREXxion!” It only took a few seconds of freedom from fighting Shanty for Crazy to resurrect Cruel and continue the battle with the water manipulating goat.

High up on the ceiling Pom, who had recently arrived, watched as Cruel came back to life. She noted something about the power of resurrection. Being at the top of the jungle of random poles and bars crisscrossing around the room, she couldn’t be spotted easily from her perch near the red emergency lights she was trying not to cast a shadow from.

Pom recognized that Elise’s resurrection ability wasn’t specifically the power of ‘healing, even if it could recover some damage to bring one of the three naga back to life. It couldn’t fully heal the three naga entirely, even if they could resurrect endlessly or fully recover from a lethal blow eventually. The ability to resurrect

With that in mind Pom reaffirmed to herself that she wanted to take down Elise last before she could resurrect Cruel or Crazy. The more injuries they resurrected from the slower they would get to react.

Shanty had problems pinning Crazy down, as she slithered around poles and bars while leaping gracefully around high up in the room. All the while randomly throwing knives, snakes and even trying to pierce Shanty’s bubble with her claws even if Shanty hurt or injured her for trying.

It all came to a head when Crazy extended her left arm into the bubble as Shanty grabbed three poled with tendrils of water. Shanty clamped the water down painfully on Crazy’s left claw with crushing force and then instead of trying to draw her arm back in pain like Shanty wanted, she drew here body towards her trapped arm with a grin as she prepared to stab her right claw towards Shanty’s face.

Crazy impacted with bubbled and her right claw drew forward as she stuck halfway out of the bubble and Shanty started to slide backwards in the water to avoid the strike that was still coming at her face quite fast.

The wildly smiling naga suddenly received a powerful jarring impact to the spine that cut her attack short before she could hit Shanty, Crazy went spiraling into the floor in a violent manner.

“Come back to life ressurrection…” Whimpered Elise as Crazy just died from a snapped neck and Crazy popped back up with a cheerful grin as Cruel continued to pressure the others by herself.

While Elise was distracted by Crazy slamming into the floor, Pom used her falling axe kick to bounce up and grab a nearby bar with a hoof that left her hanging in place. Soon Dolly dropped down to hover above the bar and then she landed on it to send a cheerful bark at Shanty.

-Pom-

“Hey Shanty, are you okay?” The urge to do a Buster Wolf rose quite a bit after I asked that, I really should get control of that feeling to launch towards the nearest thing full speed with a hoof readied to blast them with a dynamic amount of force.

“Yes, I am being fine, but I think I be seeing you with a broken chunk of skull and should be asking you that!” Shanty seemed very happy to see me at least. “Also I be having something I need to talk to you about, but now isn’t quite being the time for it.”

“Obviously I lived Shanty… also you’re right not the time, Dolly will help you get everyone out.” I looked down and saw the Elise personality called Crazy looking up at us. “I can deal with those three and in fact I need to do so to achieve something very important. You can help me after you get everyone else to safety, but please get everyone up to the vent we used to get in here before joining me in the fight.”

“Right!” Shanty then popped herself out of her water bubbled and hugged me with her hooves, I hugged her back and she eventually before pulled back into her bubbled when a stretching claw reached up to the bar I was still hanging from.

Shanty quickly bounded off in her bubble towards the others on the floor below and launched herself at Cruel.

“Dolly.” I said blandly.

“Ready, willing and able.” Dolly barked cheerfully from above, at least she knew what I wanted her to do and she set off to assist Shanty and gather up with the others.

Dolly launched off of the top of the bar and went to distract cruel while crazy came up at me and Shanty with a knife held in her right claw as she zipped towards us on her left arm.

Before she reached me, I rolled my eyes and idly swung my body a bit forward and kicked her left wrist with my left hind leg. I watched as Crazy tied to swipe at me with the knife despite being several feet too far below me, having kicked her into reflexively let go of the bar.

“Die-die-die-die-ahhhhaaahhh-aGGHghgh!?” Crazy landed on her spine and somehow survived the fall, which looked like it hurt quite badly. So why did it sound like she… oh… ew… understandable because she’s literally crazy.

I quickly swung myself for the nearest pole and started to slide down and as I did so I lashed out my right hind leg to send several snakes that were thrown at me packing.

“What are you doing here?” Elise, the one who just threw those snakes at me, asked with a slight hint of worry in her tone.

“I’m here to make things better or worse, I can’t tell yet… but it’s very unfortunate that we’re going to be fighting Elise.” It was quite unfortunate, but I was going to do this.

“Well I would like… come back to life, resurrection!” She was about to say something else when she seemed to involuntarily revive Crazy, who just slit her own throat with a blade using an extending tongue since her arms didn’t work and tail end didn’t work. Elise revived her without actually seeing Crazy extinguish herself, as such Crazy was back up and in semi decent fighting condition. Confirmed that they are connected, but they don’t feel each other’s pain… likely helped when Elise was being tortured.

“Gah, where did this mutt come from, this room is supposed to be sealed from being entered or exited by anyone but us!” It seemed Dolly was already distracting Cruel and Shanty was already moving the others for the entrance we created at the top of the room.

I apparently had Crazy and Elise’s attentions, so I had to keep both of them on me for the time being as Dolly drew the attention of Cruel so that Shanty could eventually get the others out of here through the ceiling entrance into the room.

“I’m fairly sorry for what’s about to occur here Elise, but I think it needs to happen.” I stated as I slid down the pole and positioned myself between both Crazy and Elise. Crazy got onto a pole and had been about to climb up to keep coming at me.

“Keeheehee, make mine mutton!” The way Crazy’s tongue ran over her fangs made me shiver a bit as I looked at her preparing a claw full of knives to throw at me, I just stiffened my resolve. This was already going hard enough with having to kill Elise, but I had to kill her personalities what will be feasibly.

“I’m sorry that it has come to this too, I really don’t want to fight you but… I have to!” Elise created a few knives in her claws and then tossed them, I didn’t bother moving because she didn’t actually intend to hit me with them. She wasn’t being forced to fight me by Moon Cell.

I did actually move when Crazy threw hers though, since she was going to hurt Elise by accident because her throws were basically uncontrolled insanity given how wide the spray of twelve knives were. So I made Elise move to safety by threatening her to slide up the pole and then avoided the knives myself while staying on the floor.

-Shine-

“Guys, come on!” I waved and drew the attention of our allies.

Pom just opened a way out of here for us, but to get up there with our injured we had to climb up and make our way out. I saw where Pom had come in from and the entrance through the visor I wore, I turned my gaze to Pom who was smacking snakes and knives away from herself and was staying on the defensive and was not taking any opportunities to attack.

Pom had to be acting as a distraction, because whenever one of the two naga tried to check on the naga closest to us, the lambkin immediately went on the offensive by firing off a Thousand Spears or barking blasts from her mouth to draw attention back to herself.

Looking to see Dolly was helping Shanty with drawing Cruel’s attention away from us, I motioned to an injured Snake and Peppercat while looking to Krosserdog. Krosserdog nodded and helped shoulder Peppercat while aiding Pom with a few highly accurate shots to the snakes lunging at her in an attempt to sink their fans into her.

Snake looked to have seen better days, but he was still good enough to climb on his own. I motioned him to move towards the nearest poles to climb up and he nodded. As we all started moving to start climbing our way out with Krosserdog carrying Peppercat on his back, I silently hoped that Pom had a good handle on this situation.

Krosserdog climbed like a monkey once he got started. It was interesting to say the least, but understandable given he’s a sniper like an Inteleon of Grit’s caliber. Climbing up to advantageous positions must be a part of his character.

Snake could still climb fairly well despite his injuries, but did his butt have to make clapping sounds every few seconds, he was going to get us caught!

I took the lead of the group escaping from this room built to be an arena for the naga.

-Shanty-

I be clashing against the knives with my hoof and scythe, I be trying to slash at the serpent with water and avoid getting hurt in return. She was being quite clever, cunning even, it be why I’m having troubles finding a moment to blink as I would be having a hole in my throat in seconds if I did.

Thankfully Dolly be fairly helpful in that respect, one naga is not being nearly enough to be a threat to me on their own when I’m allowed to focus and even less of one when I be supported by a good friend.

Dolly would distract by whipping her board or be throwing the stone bone at the naga, this be giving me a moment to blink, think and even react to what is being the smartest among the naga.

“Just be watching out if her eyes light up Dolly, don’t be looking at that light in the slightest.” Shanty was physically strong enough to escape stone encasement on her own, but she was unsure if Dolly could so some early warning was warranted.

“Hmph, do you think you’re the only ones that need to be careful…” After tossing out several Search Snakes in the direction that our group used to be being in, it was becoming apparent that Cruel finally realized that a number of her enemies be missing from the battle. “It seems I’ve become too distracted by you nuisances. No matter, I won’t let you escape me.”

Dolly barked cheerfully and her tail be wagging as an aggressive look be crossing her face.

“Still can’t believe they sent a mutt…” Cruel is being cut off when Dolly be casting Aero on her and be sending her body flying across the floor to bash into several poles as she went in Pom’s direction. “Ugh… you’ll pay for… wait, what’s that clapping sound?”

-Snake-

I stopped moving and concentrated on making sure my body wasn’t making any clapping noises.

“Really Snake?” Shine asked me with a flat stare. “Does this actually have to be a thing with you…”

“Excuse me for having the only problem I’ve ever had when committing to stealth being hard to control when I’m injured.” I grumbled back and started climbing slower to make sure the clapping of my backside doesn’t attract any more attention.

Those naga could climb fast than we could and Krosserdog was already weighed down by Peppercat and we were being slowed down by my injuries, still it was nice of Shine to let me set the pace. Probably should have come back in the form of a fox instead of a rabbit.

-Dolly-

“No, it’s gone now.” The snake lady turned to us while flicking both her claws and they were suddenly full of sharp implements.

I think it was kind of neat that she could do weird stuff like throw snakes and knives, now if only she wasn’t looking at me like she was from ‘that’ family. At least they were nowhere as numerous as what Gilgamesh threw at us, I’m pretty sure having a kitchen sink in the form of a fancy mace qualifies you for being functionally insane.

She threw a whole slew of weapons at us, good thing I only used one aero so far, I had plenty of magic to use a stronger wind assault. Call me a mutt will you! Well this Dalmatian is always going to be spicy in her reprisal!

“Aerora!” I sent a tornado sliding at the wide eyed serpent.

My winds tore at her and even sent her flopping about until she managed to wrap herself around a pole, Shanty only made it all the better by throwing streams of water into my swirling winds creating hundreds of small cutting blades to wear her down fast.

“Gah, how can a yappy little mutt and a goat that smells like she drowned in sea water be so dangerous!” She tried to through knives and snakes and the swirling winds just sucked her weapons up and threatened to hit her with them.

-Pom-

It seems like Shanty and Dolly had Cruel locked down, our friends were on their way out and I had both Elise and Crazy held back by myself.

Crazy was either stark raving mad or blindingly aggressive, she was also randomly coherent and cunning. So it added to the fact that she was quite capable of throwing me off as she viciously came at me.

I’ve only been lightly pressuring Elise so far and I was trying to keep Elise and her Crazy personality focused entirely on me. It was weird, but this fight wasn’t nearly as hard as facing Jack Wolf and that was because it was more about numbers and a focus on a different talent.

Survival was this servant’s focus when Moon Cell summoned Elise and it spoke volumes that Crazy didn’t have to worry about being killed, thereby allowing her more wild self-destructive tactics. This is why I wasn’t using anything double edged and sticking to raw combat talent, I use anything double edged and it was an immediate net loss for me as I bounding through a field of poles and bars chasing Elise down to harry her while fending off Crazy’s volatile attacks and attempts to stop me.

Elise wasn’t nearly fast enough to keep evading me as my Dancing Flame burst movements let me keep pace with her evasive form. I managed to bruise the right side of her face with a flying left haymaker. Afterwards I grasped at a nearby pole to swing around and bucked my rear legs right into Crazy’s face, crunching her skull inwards a bit and also sent her flying away before she could stab me with either of the knives she was holding.

“Thank you, now let me put a pretty little red necktie on you!” Yeah, not letting that happen Crazy, I knew what you meant. I swear she was the part of Elise that went masochist with the idea that pain means you’re still alive and with the way she was tortured for such a personality to come into existence… yeah, I’m uncomfortable with knowing I have to kill Elise.

I could smell the reviver seed on Elise and that means that I had one chance to make this work. I hoped Dormarch was having any easier time than I currently was with trying to slow down Elise enough to be capable of finishing off her personality copies and Elise herself later.

-Near the facilities right side entrance, Dormarch current form of Dobermon D-type-

I was glad that Digivice didn’t necessarily have a range on emotional energy absorption, I could almost taste moms sorrow at having to hurt Elise, but I could also feel her resolve and her need to make whatever she had planned work.

The Zealot was still cutting the door and almost had an opening large enough for everyone that was in the facility to get through. It had been slow going, but once we were through we’d be able to move the supplies to the skiff on the other side and prepare to leave when the others arrived.

You’d think my guarding of the zealot would be quiet… it wasn’t. In fact there were plenty of machine enemies flooding into the area to attack us, thankfully the defense scarf and my form was made for taking up defensive positions. Really didn’t want to push my Garummon form right now, as I would have problems holding it for too long and I knew I was going to need it later.

I launched a Surge Projector attack from my left tentacle and sent the crawler back in exploding chunks, my follow up attack was to let out a Wild Howling and blew the various drones in the air back and stun the two sweeper type enemies that showed up. Those bipedal automatons were the most dangerous ones here.

“Hurry it up please.” I stated to the Zealot.

“We are doomed!” He responded back in a slightly frustrated tone.

“Right, right… I’ll hold them off, just get the supplies to the skiff when you finally get through.” My current armored form could take quite a bit of punishment from shots, fire and basically a lot of things. D-type was right.

I turned back to face down the sweepers that were already getting up, the crawlers and drones weren’t nearly as dangerous as the physical threats being produced as if in a factory. The sweeper units weren’t quite digital and were preparing to start firing their arms, then one gets torn entirely apart by a pair of horns of a Behemoth sweeping through it. The other sweeper machine and all the drones and crawlers immediately started targeting it, which means we had a few seconds longer to live.

Things just got a lot harder, but at least the EPs were primarily focusing on distracting the Behemoth.

“Not tell a duck.” The Zealot stated with fear as he turned back to the door he was halfway through cutting through. “Cheese house.”

-Outside the facility at this time, Canard-

“Okay, so that stuff… never touch it, very bad in being lethally toxic to anything exposed to too much of it. I wouldn’t want to be in the reality that led to this kind of stuff existing and it existed at one point from what we know of Moon Cell.” The Shrieker waves just kept coming, but they were getting smaller as time carried on, like the PLANTs were having production problems. At least we were holding out fairly well. “I’m horrified that this place existed at one point, with a possibility that that stuff could still exist in some form even now. Let’s just leave it at people messing with things they absolutely shouldn’t and move on with our lives, unless we incidentally get poisoned by it. We’ll get to that if it ever comes up.”

“That bad huh, at least it’s only leaking out of the facility, it’s not positively flooding the surroundings… though if that does happen we’re not in a good position to really get out of here immediately. Not with our friends still in the facility, thankfully I don’t think things have gone total FUBAR yet so still above the general stuff we Commandramon get thrown into.” Sami responded as she was still in the guts of the Skiff and was hammering something into place. It would be a problem if we were dealing with a flood of this stuff as it would make it so that we have a limited time to pick up our allies and get in the air and out of here. “This skiff gives me an idea for a further evolution for me... so long as I stay away from the Sealsdramon baggage, I’m good to keep going further up my evolutionary path Canard.”

“Glad to hear it Sami.” I smiled at Sami as I took up position with continuing to defend the skiff.

-Inside the facility, Pom-

Okay the others, have gotten to the escape point, I had to start pushing Elise towards Cruel and then draw all three of the naga into attacking me. So I angled Elise in the general area Cruel was in and forced her in that direction and made sure she could go high up.

I launched off the bar and spun around a pole before diving at Cruel’s back, she lashed out at me with an extending tail and I puffed up my wool to avoid the extending the whip.

“Dolly, Shanty, you can go now, I need you to escort our injured out of here!” I motioned with a hoof after I manage to grab a pole and waved at them with a hoof. “I’ve got these three from here.”

“Are being sure you can take all three of them?” After Jack Wolf it was understandable for Shanty to question my ability to handle any servant by myself, but I think I did good enough job against fending off May Totsugeki or was it Mei with an M E I… didn’t matter at this point.

“Yes.” I said bluntly, I had a good idea of what they could all do now and I’m fairly certain that if they had no other surprises… they wouldn’t survive me going full tilt lethal. “Trust me, I can deal with them.”

“… okay, but you better be being right behind us!” Shanty stated with clear worry for my safety in her voice.

“I’ll catch up when I can.” I nodded to her and dodge an extending claw going for my throat by letting go and landing on the floor.

“What makes you can take on three of us or that I’ll let them… GRK!?” A fairly lethal Thousand Spears to the throat shut Cruel up and she was coughing up blood and had a large amount gushing from the hole in her neck, Elise had to stop and looked like she was going to be the one to use resurrection this time. That meant, I rolled to the left and avoided two knives stabbing into the floor as Crazy reeled herself towards me.

“Just go!” I said as I readied myself mentally for what I had to do.

Shanty and Dolly immediately vacated the battlefield that was this room by climbing up and out of sight while I shoulder tackled Crazy and turned my wool sharp and rough, bloodying the naga on contact and knocking her down while Elise focused more on reviving Cruel nearby.

Crazy tried to attack me with knife and claw, but I swiftly damaged her arms with some focused claw swipes and my wolf fang hoof style focusing on not simply disabling my target… but absolutely mauling them with magical claw swipes. After tearing Crazy apart quite liberally I turned to attack Cruel.

Cruel tried to grab a bar to give chase to a quickly disappearing Shanty and Dolly, I inhaled and kicked off the floor and bounced off two pole to slam into her arm to stop her from giving chase as a tore a bloody gash into by rubbing my leg up against it. After landing from preventing any of the naga from running off or chasing the others, I decided to step up my intentions by quite a bit.

“ARRRWWOOOOO-~!”All the wool on my body was now like touching a mass of razor blades now and I went one step further by entering Sheep’s Clothing mode, I was perfectly safe from this effect, my opponents weren’t safe getting anywhere near me now. They were trapped in this room with me and I’d make them pay if they tried to give chase before dealing with me. “I really don’t want to do this to you Elise, but like you… I don’t have much of a choice in this matter!”

“Gah… get up you idiot, resurrection!” Cruel stated after she pulled back her injured arm and sent a resurrection to get Crazy back into decent fighting condition. “So you think you can take on all three of us by yourself huh? If you had lightning powers like that cat robot thing I might be a bit more worried. You heard her girls, let’s focus her down!”

The three naga took to surrounding me on the poles as I moved to standing the center of all three of them.

“I’m making a promise to you here and now Elise, BAA-RAM-EWE!” I shouted as I could feel my eyes started turning gold and red, bloodlust started to flood my body as I took on a more wolf like attributes hooves turning to be more paw like, muzzle extending and filling with fangs, my tail growing from my back and my body getting slightly longer as I turned more canine and my ears becoming triangular. I almost looked like a complete wolf now, but I was still in control.

I had much better control of my feral side this time since my fight with Smolder, I’m not going to lose myself. This fight was too important to lose myself in, let’s see what exactly I could do here when I’m not holding back on absolutely maiming at least two of my opponents.

Just needed to focus on killing Elise last without the other two being alive, which means I had to injure her badly and prevent her from killing herself or being killed by Cruel or Crazy… this fight was already asking a lot of me and I was absolutely ready to show what I’m exactly made of.

“One chance!” My bestial voice made all three naga lean away from me in fright, as if Elise was acting as one in that moment instead of a soul split into three disparate identities and personalities.

I knew this fight was going to haunt me for quite a while if I failed to actually achieve my goal, I’ve refined my Wolf Fang Hoof to be more controllable if barely at that and I’ve got one shot.

“C-c-c-... Elise I’m... scared.” Cruel actually stated after moment as if she was afraid to actually admit it, even being fully under Moon Cell’s control couldn’t stop her from feeling full on terror.

I was scared too. With wool enhancing my reflexes, my body going beast mode, Dancing Flame happening with every breath in full activation and the need to tear a naga’s throat out with my teeth was becoming quite insatiable. I didn’t want to lose who I was here... but Elise was looking quite delicious right now and I'm utterly horrified to be thinking those thoughts of having a snake lady barbecue.

A normal Lambkin was even afraid of garter snakes that weren't even poisonous or threatening, I was the thing to absolutely fear here. I just know Dolly and Dormarch would likely feel this, but at least Shanty wouldn't have to see what I'm about to become.

I think it says a lot that I’d rather become a full beast than become a full Chrysomallus… golden magic claws started up at at the ends of my paws and the air shimmered around me as threads of nearly invisible wool started extending from my canine form in the darkness of the red lights.

A low growl ripped it's way out of my throat as my fighting spirit started coming to life.

-Shanty-

"Wait, why is the Paralance being here?" Dolly pointed to me and then to the lance and made a motion for us to keep going. "What exactly is Pom going to be doing back there?"

Dolly didn't look like she be wanting to say if she even could and I could be understanding her barks, but she did be looking worried... but that worry was clearly not for Pom.

-Elise-

Where were those wolves in the shadows coming from or were they always there just waiting?! Why are there so many of them?! So many eyes...

My eyes were slowly drawn away from the monsters in the shadows to Pom's and I looked into them as they stared at me.

Those gold and red eyes and her body, it changed... what exactly was Pom doing to herself and why did she look so sad doing it?! It was like looking at a mirror where I could see... myself, she was in pain.

Author's Note

Who wants to see what Pom enter full tilt lethal mode?

I've been busy lately.

419. Naga May Die, Finale.

Author's Note

Warning: Pom has to do a few things that are definitely not suitable for our cuddly lambs psyche. Gory descriptions in story, discretion slightly advised if you aren't used to it at this point.

Some worse mental issues for Pom may occur from this chapter alone.

419. Naga May Die, Finale.

-Moon Cell realm, Midgar, mysterious facility, central room-

It was quiet for a moment as Pom’s completed transformation had halted the three naga from doing anything.

Outside the room three of the Behemoths had tracked down Pom’s scent and were working on busting into the place through the two doors and a wall, they were powerful monsters… but they paled in comparison with the one the three naga were currently trapped in a room with.

Pom was quite tired of being unable to fight back against big threats and she was about to show how much of one she was personally out of frustration. One would think she couldn’t improve much physically in a week, they’d be absolutely correct!

Pom really couldn’t surpass a peak level of fitness she already has going and her lithe frame wasn’t meant for enacting raw brute force. However Pom could increase her mental capabilities and capacity to hold focus under intense situations, thus the time she spent refining her abilities between Mare Melum and Midgar led to this moment.

Any increase to her mental prowess affected her wool shaping, her ability to enter beast mode while retaining more mental stability for a little bit longer, it also made her more capable of using wool manipulation while in Sheep’s Clothing and there’s getting the most out of her more magic using abilities. It was really hard to use any wool manipulation while her wool was shifted into her wooly wolf mode, considering any manipulation would mess up the boosting effects from using her wool acting as an augmenting exoskeleton in the sections of wool she manipulates.

Pom was sacrificing a lot of her strength on this one gamble and the drawbacks of stacking so many abilities together would be seen after everything was said and done, it’d still be more survivable than using Shock Ram.

A single heart beat sounded and could be heard throughout the room as a wild eyed Pom started to vibrate in place as the misty wolves stalking the shadows started to move towards the naga who were all wielding knives defensively.

Pom calmly sat down and closed her eyes and then inhaled and exhaled slowly as the wolf pack began the hunt.

-Hallway, Dolly-

“Huh, yeah bro, she’s doing what you think she is…” I stated before I slammed my board into a Crawler at full speed to send it tumbling when I imparted force onto it and Flosser Cog shot down several drones before they could ram into me with their spiraling blades. “Pom will be fine and we’re on our way little bro, just hold on!”

-Trap room, Naga Triple Threat of Elise, Cruel and Crazy vs. The Gentle Monster. (Music: Master of Shadow, Persona 3 OST)-

The naga would eventually learn that they weren’t going to be able to leave this room before Pom was done with them. They could hear the thumping of Pom’s heart and it was setting a strange rhythm.

A misty wolf lunged for Cruel and she lashed out with her left arm, the knife in her claw slid through the ephemeral thing and she just shook her head as if faded out of existence.

“Just an illu—AGH?!” Cruel was proven wrong immediately when her left shoulder was crippled by one of the wolves in a single joint crushing bite. She swung out with the knife in her right claw and the wolf visible disappeared as soon as the knife made contact. “They’re real?! Everyone attack the sheep now!”

Cruel, Crazy and Elise all started throwing knives and Search Snakes at Pom, she didn’t move an inch from where she sat.

Pom just calmly exhaled and every knife that flew at her suddenly burst into smoke when it got within five feet of hitting her.

None of the naga saw how she managed to deal with so much being thrown at her all at once, they certainly didn’t see the slight shimmer in the air as Pom stayed perfectly still.

Seeing that their attacks were in vain, the three naga started attacking the glowing eyes that came charging at them.

Even Crazy was focused on surviving and not just blindly running into whatever it was that Pom had done to defend herself with a wild enthusiasm to learn what it was… and to experience a new form of pain.

Cruel threw two knives with her right hand and then summoned a third to slash away another charging wolf. She didn’t know how they were physical, but it was terrifying to know they could attack and not be attacked.

Pom just continued to sit calmly in place with her eyes closed and her body entirely immobile as she just inhaled and exhaled slowly.

The three naga frantically slashed and hacked away at the air as the wolves leapt forth to attack them, only to disappear on contact with the knives.

The eyes of the wolves would be seen fly away as if they were fireflies after being struck and the naga actually started using Search Snakes defensively, even if they sent a Search Snake to try and sneak up on Pom they still couldn’t get within five feet of her without popping in a puff of smoke.

It wasn’t long before the first death happened among the naga as the sound of growling wolves filled their ears.

After the crippling blow to her left shoulder left her defending herself with one arm, even if she meticulously great at said defense, Cruel suddenly found her organs being clawed out of her stomach and a set of teeth closing down on her throat.

“ResURexIonN!” Crazy called as she frantically defended herself and Cruel reappeared next to her to help her after a second to regain her senses from being so volatilely killed, however it was after being resurrected that Cruel notice she still had teeth marks in her left shoulder and could even feel the ones on her throat.

Terror had been inflicted upon Cruel that some of the injuries dealt by the strange wolves had carried over through the resurrection and she looked at Pom’s quiet form as she continued to sit in place and not move an inch.

As such Cruel found her left arm a little bit harder to utilize and her damaged throat made it a little harder to breathe. They could resurrect endlessly as long as one of the three of them was up and in fighting condition, somehow the damage dealt by the wolves had managed to carry over through the resurrection.

“Careful, there’s something very unnatural about these wolves!” The slightly distorted voice of Cruel stated as she fended off the shadowy growling formless masses and thought she saw a three tailed wolf and a three headed one in the shifting the pack of shadows.

Even with the warning from Cruel, Elise took a cut across the top of her tail which she quickly lashed out and fended off a wolf. They didn’t seem to be attacking her as much as they were Cruel or Crazy, but that didn’t mean the bleeding scratch she just acquired was nothing to worry about.

A loud cracking noise draws the attention of the defending naga, Pom calmly opened her right eye to look at the wall high up on the back of the room cracked. She went back to closing her right eye and concentrating.

Using the Search Snakes as a defensive measure helped the three naga somewhat, but Crazy still took a nasty bite to the spine in the middle of her back and nearly had her back clawed up by the same wolf that jumped onto her to sink it’s teeth into her before a Search Snake managed to discorporate it.

“Crazy don’t…!” Elise tried, but Crazy turned and charged towards Pom who hadn’t moved since she sat down.

“Die-die-die-die-diagGH-?!” Crazy froze within five feet of Pom as something shimmered in the air.

Crazy’s right arm disconnected at the elbow, her left arm the shoulder and her head, hood and all, slid from where it sat on her shoulders and splattered on the floor as her headless body flopped over.

It was as if a sword had carved its way through Crazy with no resistance before she could even closed in on Pom.

Pom gave out a slightly shuddering breath, but slowly kept breathing evenly with a steady pace of in and out a few moments later.

“Come back to life, resurrection!” Elise brought Crazy back to life well away from Pom, while Cruel narrowed her eyes at Crazy. The damage done by however Pom just defended herself oddly didn’t stick around.

Cruel was trying to make a connection between the injuries dealt to both of them and why her own seemed more permanent than the ones dealt to Crazy, all the while she kept fending off leaping wolves and pairs of bright colorful eyes erupting from the shadows.

One wolf even erupted quite literally in the form of a pillar of energy as it tried to claw Cruel’s face off, only for her to dodge it.

“Poles and bars now, get off the floor!” It seemed Cruel realized how close some of the shadows sliding along the darkened room lit in red emergency lights were getting, it was alos giving the strange wolf things an advantage to stay near the floor.

Extending an arm Cruel slung herself onto a horizontal bar and looked about as Crazy slithered up a pole while fending off a misty looking wolf that clawed and snapped at her with its jaws.

Elise had a few cuts and scrapes, she was mostly getting pummeled with bruises as the fighting spirit wolves seemed to be taking it much easier on her, slithered up a pole and stared at the roiling mass of wolves now surrounding Pom.

The three naga filled their claws full of knives charged them up so they were glowing brightly and tossed them at Pom, the knives never got more than within five feet of her as the roiling sea of wolves swirled around her defensively.

A Behemoth burst into the room and charge right for Pom dragging its horns along the ground.

Pom’s eyes snapped open, she just looked at the beast coming at her with a flat disdain.

The Behemoth slashed its horns upwards to the right and Pom idly just stood up, took several steps back and stared up at the beast it tried to bring its head back to the left to stab at her and then it froze. It was missing its horns, as Pom right paw was extended upwards and to the left with golden claws extending from it.

The Behemeoth was blasted up onto its hind legs by a misty wolf erupted at its chin, stomach and belly in pillars of bright energy. It brought back its right paw and tried to strike downwards in clear confusion of what was going on.

Pom leapt up at it her left paw rising with several golden blades extended and the Behemoth’s right leg tore entirely off its body entirely in a single slash of golden energy. The claws on Pom’s hind paws dug into the behemoth’s chest as she extended her neck and head towards its throat, her teethed clamped down as a golden glow started building her throat.

When Pom bit down on the Behemoth with her sharp canine teeth, a short beam of golden energy tore out of the far side of the large lion like beasts thick and powerful neck that could take hundreds of axe, sword and spear blows.

With a jerk of her head, the much smaller wild eyed Pom ripped the Behemoth’s head clear off of its body in a violent display. As the monster started toppling backwards the small wolf like sheep kicked off digging a gouge out of the beasts chest and belly with a flash of golden energy from her rear legs tearing it’s torso open in a grisly fashion as she destroyed it’s heart to make sure it was dead and evaporating into a pile of dissolving digital chunks.

Landing on the floor, Pom grit her teeth and her right paw started gripping at her left leg as the golden color of her wool started attempting to climb up her left leg. The golden colored wool started to rapidly shift up her leg, after a few inches it was quickly pressured back down to taking up a little more than a quarter of her front left leg when she let loose a vicious roar from her lips as she fought back with the pure force of will she could bring to bear against her heritage.

Pom mostly succeeded in suppressing her Chrysomallus side for the moment, though she was still losing ground to it even now.

“Heh, so fighting the behemoths would cause you some trouble eh? We need a pawn, resurrection… I said resurrection… what the hell, why isn’t it working? Ressur-ghkh!” Despite having tried twice and started trying for a third time, Cruel had to dodge a volatile blast of blue energy that was barked out by Pom that tore a chunk out of the pole she was hanging onto as she deftly leapt to another one.

Cruel looked at the red and gold eyes Pom sported as she stared at her. The Behemoth, despite Cruel’s attempts, simply couldn’t be resurrected after what Pom just did to it and now both Crazy and Elise gained a heightened sense of terror for their situation.

Pom calmly looked up at them with her wild eyes and simply sat back down. She closed her eyes and continued her slow breathing again as some of the misty wolves swirling around her became more active.

Amazingly enough, Pom was managing to preserve her mystical strength as long as her flesh and blood body stayed physically still and she simply breathed. She was letting her fighting spirit take most of the action as she mentally led the wolves as the leader of the pack, otherwise the wolves would either stay close to Pom or attack a target that was actively threatening her.

The misty wolves forged from Pom’s fighting spirit started leaping at the poles and bars and kicked off of them several times to gain height and climb up in an attempt to get close enough to attack the three naga.

The naga weren’t safe even high up in the jungle gym of randomly poles and bars of metal crisscrossing through the room.

Crazy slithered along a bar and hopped off before several wolves could claw her up, she grabbed onto a pole which she wrapped around and quickly slithered up only for a wolf to tear into her tail. The removed chunk of tail was enough to make it impossible for her to hold onto the pole, this send her falling to the floor.

When the naga slapped against the floor multiple wolves bore down on her from all sides to started tearing into her flesh with their teeth and claws shredding her violently. Crazy wasn’t having fun anymore.

“Resurrection?” It was almost a question by Elise, but Crazy still managed to be revived and looked entirely shaken up as her body was now marred heavily by scars of claw and teeth marks when she came back.

Crazy was whimpering and shivering and was hugging herself in fear as the spiritual wolves started coming after them again.

“Keep moving, don’t let them knock you to the floor!” Cruel launched a charged knife glowing bright purple at Pom, the knife even seemed to have broken the sound barrier and still stopped within five feet of Pom as a shimmer appeared again.

Cruel didn’t know what that shimmer was, but it was why the knife she just threw didn’t even touch the beast hiding in the previous form of a sheep. They couldn’t get within five feet of her, they couldn’t throw things at her and she was capable of wearing down their overall strength even with their resurrection abilities.

The most terrifying thing to the naga… was Pom’s ability to absolutely deny their resurrection ability at any time. This left the three naga wondering why Pom hadn’t done so yet.

Pom quietly continued breathing, anything coming at her wouldn’t so much as touch her as she quietly concentrated on obtaining her overall objective here.

Even with her wild side being let loose, Pom was still in tight control of and was also straining against her very nature as a lambkin to actually bring up enough courage to outright kill Elise after dealing with both Cruel and Crazy. Trying to keep her increasingly bad bloodlust under control was wearing away at her sanity and tearing the head off a Behemoth with her teeth and an anti-magic bark blast had only made that worse.

Pom simply couldn’t do to the naga what she did to the Behemoth, she still wanted Elise to be whole after all this was over so she couldn’t actually use any of the golden anti-magic energy to kill Crazy or Cruel. As much as Pom would love to tear them to shreds, and that unnatural urge was increasing by the second, they were still a part of Elise’s overall soul.

If any of her friends were here to see Pom right now, they’d be surprised to know how dangerous she actually was and how well she was maintaining her composure with all the stress constantly piling up on her. At least Dolly and Dormarch would know, but they were currently dealing with a Behemoth problem at the entrance of the facility.

Pom still hoped for her one chance to achieve something of a good outcome would succeed. She couldn’t let her mind slip into the bloodlust threatening to overtake her increasingly powerful mental fortitude and she had to keep who she was as a lambkin intact while doing something she was inherently against at the same time.

It was fairly frustrating for Pom to keep the multiple internal conflicts contained on top of her keeping a constant pressure on the Chrysomallus problem, her heart thudded and ached in her chest. Pom could very easily permanently kill Elise here by accident at the wrong moment and all it would take is a single flex of her will loosening, she was trying not to let the power roiling through her from the Dancing Flame go to her head either.

The Lambkin Chrysomallus could already hear the two Behemoths about to bust in as the doors entrances to the room suddenly buckled under the weight of powerful impacts. In Pom’s slight distraction, Elise suddenly tried to flee through the entrance the first Behemoth made by busting through the wall higher up in the room.

Pom was aware those things in particular would be trouble, sure it might upset Elise to keep her trapped in here, but she couldn’t let a single naga escape or else this would have all been for naught. Pom couldn’t let this situation get out of her ability to control and the other behemoths would inevitably create two more entrances to attempt an escape from and use up even more of her limited mental strength.

Pom’s mind was being pulled in so many directions at once. Her body was already sweating and burning from the inside out, radiating heat as the Dancing Flame burned brightly within her as she has yet to utilize that energy.

Elise swirled her body around a horizontal bar and launched from it heading towards the opening the Behemoth had made, only to get blasted back when several eyes appeared out of the shadows in the ceiling and erupted downwards into her clawing her back and away from the exit that previously looked safe.

Cruel quickly extended her right arm to grapple and pull Elise back to safety as the wolves falling at her threatened to bite and claw her up even worse. The wolves disappeared when they impacted the floor and soon reappeared at the hole in the wall, they were actively guarding it.

“No… you don’t get to escape that easily.” Pom said softly and menacingly. She did so without looking at where Elise was hanging from now, thanks to Cruel actively going out of her way to save Elise.

For a personality called Cruel, she just courageously risked injury from Pom’s wolves to rescue Elise. A curious act of kindness or was it because Cruel was pragmatic enough to realize she can’t survive on her own.

Getting the naga all at once is going to take some doing and it would be difficult as Pom was trying to plan ahead for how to gather them close enough to take out in quick succession. Either that or she would have to push her body’s limits to move so fast that they couldn’t possibly be resurrected in time.

The naga had a hard limit of having to wait at least five seconds to get off a resurrection and could possibly do it in half the time if pressed. Pom has been silently gathering information on them this entire time as she hunted them and tracked their movements.

“Can we stone stare?!” Shrieked Crazy as she fled from the wolves leaping among the bars and poles by slithering and hopping away while tossing knives and Search Snakes at them. She was showing more creativity in her throws in how she dealt with the chasing wolves, not that it stopped the wolves from chasing after a swinging Cruel or a terrified Elise as she swirled up a pole.

“Her eyes are currently closed you idiot and besides Moon Cell has put a ban on all classifications using any magic around her or directly on her at all, even if they can use second hand effects to hit her indirectly!” Cruel stated back with venom in her voice, their ability of resurrection was now quite uncertain to see them through this battle.

What went unsaid was that Elise could still use Gorgon Gaze on Pom, but it wouldn’t work so Cruel wasn’t about to bring it up.

The three naga kept leaping and grappling between poles and bars to avoid the shadowy forms of wolves leaping at them, they were keeping well away from each other in case they needed to revive and clumping up obviously wasn’t going to help them as much as spreading out was while using knives and Search Snakes to fend off the attacks.

Pom was continuing to concentrate on controlling all the wolves and was waiting for an idea or an opportunity as her wolves hunted the two armed slippery serpents.

While they had good capabilities, the naga weren’t even a close match for Pom individually or even altogether in a direct confrontation and this wasn’t a direct confrontation. Sure the nigh unstoppable almost perfect immortality was all well and good and would normally be a bigger problem to deal with, likely why Moon Cell summoned Elise in the first place for looking promising, but they couldn’t actually do anything with it in their grab bag of tricks.

Even Pom recently found out she had the capability to stop the resurrection ability cold quite easily made this a sadly easy to win battle. All Pom had to do was apply anti-magic attacks while killing them to prevent them from reviving each other. Winning wasn’t her goal… at the moment, urge to outright kill was slowly rising.

A knife charged with purple energy was tossed out and it sharply changed angles in midair to try and hit the side of Pom’s face, another shimmer occurred as the knife disappeared in a puff of smoke. The naga simply weren’t a big enough threat to Pom and she already knew it was going to be much harder to just keep the naga contained when the two behemoths break into the room.

Looking at the bars and poles crisscrossing throughout the room… a lightbulb went off in Pom’s head.

Instead of giving chase to the naga, the wolves all suddenly split up to achieve two different jobs. Half the wolves started climbing as high as they could and damaging the poles or bar connected to the walls and ceiling, the other half started destroying the base of the poles on the floor.

“What are they doing?” Elise asked worriedly from her perch, thankful that the wolves stopped throwing themselves at her in a ferocious manner.

“A funded bridge is falling down my fair Coward~!” Sang Crazy weakly with a manic grin, thus making both Cruel and Elise stare at her for a moment. It quick clicked for all the naga what Pom was currently doing. “Keeheehee, ashes and falling down, need some aconitum to keep her away!”

“Ah crap.” Cruel stated succinctly while trying to come up with a way to stop this tactic from working, she in fact had nothing and Pom just one upped them.

Pom was cutting off any access to evading her by dropping the bars from the wall and collapsing all the poles their bodies hugged so close that they were practically pole dancers, both had helped keep the naga away from Pom’s wolves and safely above the floor. A number of the bars started falling onto the floor and a few poles started to topple over with nothing holding them up except other poles and bars that got in the way.

“Stop them while I figure something out!” Cruel stated as she three knives and directed them at the wolves attacking the support structures of their jungle gym. Crazy and Elise didn’t say a word against it and joined her in helping try and slow the wolves down. “Maybe one Behemoth wasn’t enough and two will take care of her?”

It was only a matter of time before Pom could corral them all, not that the mentioned behemoths about to shatter the nearby sealed metal doors were going to make this any easier.

Pom’s eyes opened slightly with a feral fanged smile growing on her face as she gleaned another bit of information, they couldn’t revive each other outside of a certain range from themselves. When the naga resurrected they had to revive the target within a visible available area, but in a short enough range that they could bypass her wolves if she place them at an exit like the ones guarding the hole in the wall.

Crazy took a crushing blow to the head as a bar crashed down on her from above before she could evade it.

“Get back up Crazy, resurrection!” Cruel actually sounded absolutely worried and loving now.

Thus far Pom knew the naga resurrection capabilites was limited in range of where the target of said resurrection can appear, the resurrected doesn’t return a target to full strength and the amount of injury permanence Pom can cause makes the resurrections even weaker than they would already be, then there’s the fact that the naga couldn’t be moving to effectively use there resurrection ability.

The naga were quite done for as Pom had a completed hunting plan for them, however when she was about to enact it.

The metal doors behind Pom on the left side of the room blew off their hinges and flew at the lambkin, a shimmer happened before the door impacted with her body and the doors pivoted to actively avoid her as she turned to look at the beast. The doors that had blasted off their hinges collided with the other also blasted by the other behemoth coming into the room from the right side, if you were viewing things from the command center to Pom’s right and the destroyed doors basically welded themselves into the pile of bars and poles. This also helped the shadowy wolves with wrecking the naga’s places to hide.

The two behemoths roared and Pom stood up, one silent command to the wolves born from her fighting spirit to contain the naga and watch her back. She turned around and faced the Behemoth, a part of Pom was afraid… another part was telling her that a pair of wild idiots had entered what was currently her territory and didn’t know they were picking the wrong fight.

The Behemoth roared and loped towards Pom who calmly walked forward with her red and gold eyes flaring with light, the beasts left paw came down and Pom simply jumped high enough to drop down on its left knee which she jammed a golden claw of energy into. Pom wasn’t holding back on the anti-magic energy with these things.

The crippling blow to its left leg, made Behemoth dart its mouth forward. As the magical claw was anti-magic it didn’t set off the behemoths highly explosive magic ability. The teeth of the behemoth snapped at Pom’s rear paws as she tagged its neck with a length of braided of wool and clambered up the left side of the Behemoth’s neck to launch out another length of braided of wool that connected with the first.

Standing on the back of the Behemoth’s neck as she pulled on her wool, the Behemoth reared up and then the wool started rotating into its thick neck.

“Rope saw.” Pom intoned and with a heave the braided completed rope of wool rapidly rotating and vibrating against the Behemoth’s neck to start painfully tearing through its thick hide in a quick manner.

The behemoth thrashed beneath Pom and struggled for a few seconds until half its neck was shredded and then the loop of braided wool swiftly pulled inward when the resistance ceased entirely after the wool finally went through its spine and promptly cut the Behemoth’s head off entirely.

The wool receded back into being the wolf like exoskeleton of Sheep’s Clothing covering Pom’s canine form.

“Aren’t behemoths capable of taking hundreds of tank shells without being affected because their skin is so thick and tough?” Elise asked with wide eyed terror as she slithered backwards around a bar with her tail loosely wrapped around her it.

“Let’s get by the other Behemoth before she can get us!” Cruel had loss all sense of planning, as had Crazy as they immediately started attacking the other Behemoth as Pom calmly walked toward the other end of the room that Cruel and Crazy were trying to bypass the Behemoth watching the other entrance.

Wolves rose up to guard the second exit to this room and some were already making way for the third exit before either Cruel or Crazy could escape being stuck in a room with Pom.

“Her eyes are open now, please work!” Elise, being a living flesh and blood being, wasn’t under Moon Cell’s control. She wouldn’t know or understand the reason for the ban from using magic on Pom directly as Crazy had summoned her completely free of Moon Cell’s influence and completely alive.

A conical beam of light struck Pom and she stared into it and kept walking as a powerful golden glow of her wools protective effect reflected the magic entirely back onto poor Elise, in an unfortunate moment Elise’s tail loosened and she started falling towards the floor encased in stone.

Pom immediately burst forward with an exhaled without inhaling first, the stockpiled Dancing Flame was finally being put to use as she surged forward to being underneath a falling Elise and her limbs burned to move so fast. If she hadn’t been pacing herself, then such movements would have immediately exhausted Pom.

The stone encased Elise stopped five feet before she hit the floor and several shimmers in the air could be seen around her body and she slowly seemingly floated down to the floor. As soon as she was laying on the floor, the shimmering around her disappeared.

Pom had three wolves keep Elise pinned to prevent her from killing herself if she got free of the stone and made sure she had a hole around her mouth to breathe freely, Pom then set her sights on Cruel and Crazy. Elise just gave Pom an opportunity all on her own volition, warped sheep wasn’t going to waste it now.

Stalking towards the two remaining naga, Pom watched as Crazy was blasted back and she hastily avoided the stomping paw of the behemoth. Once the naga and behemoth were in range, Pom quietly called out her next attack… she needed to be fast about this.

“Full 'Fluffy' Feral Flurry.” A shimmering started building up and surrounded Pom distorting the air as she stalked forward and with a flicker she disappeared, she blew through every ounce of Dancing Flame she had until an imaginary candle was worn down to the barest of embers.

A second later Pom was turned around and limping back towards Elise, while breathing roughly at expending so much energy in one go and that had been one of the most powerful burst attacks she’d ever performed.

Pom now had five seconds to achieve her goals...

Looking over Elise who just managed to break her upper torso free of her stone encasement, but quickly found herself pinned down by the shadowy wolf’s teeth biting into her wrists and one pressing its paws into her lower belly.

The two naga and the behemoth froze, then they finally started falling apart covered in claw marks and thin lines of precisely cut flesh.

“Come back…” A wide eyed Elise tried, but Pom wasn’t going to give her the time to actually recover.

“I’m sorry…” Pom’s terrifying eyes soon descended on Elise, this was going to be the end of the hunt and she couldn’t hold back.

The wild transformed canine’s teeth dug into Elise’s neck and with a ripping sound Elise felt her life barely hanging on by a thread as her throat was tore out and she watched Pom actively chewed it twice before swallow it, scales and all.

“To life…” Could still be heard coming from the gurgling bloodied throat of Elise and Pom quickly stopped her with her next move.

With a hint of frustration at Pom’s bloodied mouth opened wide and she bit down deeply into shattering Elise’s ribcage and, with a powerful yank, she pulled out Elise’s heart free from her chest. It even managed to beat once before Pom bit down and quickly chunked it with her fangs before swallowing.

“Res…” Elise couldn’t get any further as Pom continued on to eat her lungs and then started to violently tear into the organs in her belly with reckless abandon and a wild fury, this was her one shot and she was not wasting it because Elise couldn’t control herself when it came to resurrecting Cruel and Crazy.

The fighting spirit wolves backed away from their queen and the world grew cold and dark for Elise.

A rabid Pom’s gold and red eyes widened as she realized how far she was going and she swallowed what was in her mouth as she realized what was happening to her, she quickly back away shaking her head in horror at how good Elise tasted and that she had actually enjoyed consuming flesh and ingesting a large quantity of the naga's blood.

This moment was going to haunt Pom for the rest of her fairly short life, given her left leg now was three quarters covered in golden wool. What a successful hunt it was, unfortunately Pom wasn’t a wolf or even a true full on canine and didn’t want to take any more joy in what she had to do.

Brining her paws up to her head Pom started crying and curled up while becoming a whimpering mess on the floor, she had managed to stop the resurrection before it could go off… even without her heart in her chest Elise was still going to pull it off until Pom ravaged and savaged her beyond recognition.

Pom was mentally asking Elise for forgiveness after tearing her open like she had and kept praying that the reviver seed would do what she hoped it would. It had to work… it just had to, after all of that!

Slowly Pom came down from her beast mode and started returning to normal with a blood covered face and chest, a bright white light shined out from Elise starting around the right side of her hood. The lambkin was far too upset with herself for losing control like that to even glance at the revival process the Reviver Seed finally decided to start.

-Pom-

...

Life was a yawning void at the moment and staring into the abyss, I could only hope that what I did here was worth the suffering that comes with it.

As the void was now staring back into me with judgement.

…

I sacrificed a lot for this victory and my left leg was almost completely covered, I wasn’t even trying to suppress it at the moment as my left leg filled out and a small bit of golden wool came up to surrounding my right hind ankle and then it stopped.

…

Just one step closer to a grave conclusion.

Was it worth it?

…

-Elise-

Wha… Cruel? Crazy? What happened to me? What did Pom do? Why did she do all that only for me to still be alive afterwards? How am I even alive afterwards?!

I sat up and heard a whimpering and looked over at a curled blood covered Pom, she sounded almost like a puppy. Something fell from my hood… the seed? What was going on? Why did everything seem so quiet all of the sudden.

…

It took me a moment to realize, but my soul… it hadn’t felt like this since before… since before Merak captured me at my home when I was just trying to play an online game and keep to myself, before I was tortured, before even the existence of Cruel and Crazy.

I could kind of feel them, they were both… just part of me again I want to say?

Was… was I whole… that… how… this shouldn’t be possible?! The Sumeragi group had separated those chunks of my soul permanently if still connected by the barest of tethers or at least that’s what I thought they had done to me.

They had damaged me so badly that I thought something like this... this is a miracle!

“Why…” I croaked out hesitantly, my throat felt perfectly fine now.

My chest was perfectly fine as was the beating heart in it and it was like Pom had never tore me open in the first place. I picked up the seed and then looked at Pom and then at the seed.

I calmly stowed the seed back in my hood… a reminder, a keepsake and something to think on as many unanswered questions flooded my mind.

How can someone so powerful, so incredible and so devastating be so… weak, meek and look so defeated and so forlorn. Like I had been at one point…

Did she… did she just actively mentally destroy herself for me?!

I… but I wasn’t worth that kind of effort! So who would be so stupid enough to… she would, because she in fact did.

Her actions spoke louder than any words could, even the words ‘I’m sorry’ didn’t quite match up to the entirety of all the actions she took for my sake.

A bunch of crawlers came into the room moving around the slowly disappearing corpse of the shredded behemoth and drew my attention.

One of the crawlers red eyes focused on Pom and it started building up electricity to fire on the sheep, she wasn’t getting up to defend herself and… was she just going to take that attack?! She wasn’t moving, she wasn’t dead, I could hear her heart beating and she could obviously hear them coming to attack her, was she just that tired? Was my thought of her mentally destroying herself true?

A blast of electricity flashed out for Pom only to be intercepted by a Search Snake with a jewel in its head and it took me a moment to realize that I had reflexively thrown it. Said Search Snake writhed in pleasure and gave off a happy demented grin that should not be present on a snakes face as it hissed cheerfully.

Crazy?

The snake grinned wildly at me while wiggling her tongue jovially while making a bunch of discordant humming noises in good humor.

I summoned a second Search Snake in my left claw with a gem in its forehead, it gave me a calculating look before leaping off and moving forward to sit at the crazy grinning snake’s side.

Cruel?

The snake gave me a slight look of disdain for not recognizing her immediately, but she forgave me while smiling like a snake really shouldn’t be capable of. It was as if it was a sure thing that I could actively be dumb enough to not immediately recognize a part of myself.

I moved, slithering my way to be in front of Pom and glared at the robots as a full blown lance formed itself to sit neatly in my right claw and I glared at them. The tip of the spear had a very familiar glaive shape to it, I grinned as that shape was no longer something to fear and could no longer contain me.

Here I had thought I could only create knives and snakes, I could probably make it more like a staff like my video game character before Merak took me… I’ll worry about aesthetics of the spear later, now I had to return an impossible favor several times over!

I really couldn’t cower in fear anymore! I could feel the two Search Snakes mirroring my attitude and there was no disagreements, no belittling of who I was, no self-deprecation, no pain, no suffering and the two large snakes made me feel safer than I have ever felt in a long time.

In fact the two were being a little overly positive and egging me forward to get out of my shell, they now just wanted me to be strong and to live! I had a bucket list now and Merak topped that list a thousand times over since I knew he was here!

As my claws tightened their grip on the spear, there was no doubt in my heart that I was free and...

WE… WERE… ONE!

I surged forth, aiming my spear forward with Cruel and Crazy loyally at my side!

-Origin Space, Bahamut-

“A hero is willing to sacrifice for every little chance to achieve something greater than themselves.” I held out my left claw.

“Yes, but how much more can she sacrifice and how much more is she willing to do so?” My sister might be somewhat evil, but Tiamat had a point. Pom lost a lot of ground this day to her Chrysomallus heritage by pushing herself too far.

“King Evan is making headway into Yaksha and befriending the dark types, only the northeastern side of Ransei is imperiled… but then again they are the types that are my most stubborn children in battle.” Arceus was rather proud of the civilization of beings he created and he should be, they were quite fascinating to watch in action.

“I can see Amaterasu is making moves in the digital realms.” Tiamat commented idly. “She alone is almost pushing back the entirety of Moon Cell’s forces. Also I note that she and Solgaleo certainly have an odd friendship.”

“I will not question my children’s methods, Solgaleo has the ability to cross dimensions and thus somehow convinced Amaterasu to aid our worlds by sending her forth to glorious battle in the digital realms.” Arceus was a sucker for friendship, then again so was I whenever I ran into a group of four people fighting the world with everything they had whether they be heroes for light or darkness.

420. Evacuating to the surface.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar Underground, at an entrance to the mysterious facility, Dolly-

“Float!” I caused the huge beast to shoot into the ceiling and it was barely dazed for a second, Dormarch was roughed up and the religion nut bar was almost done cutting through the door.

“Down cola!” The priest stated as he continued his work.

Would if I could buddy, but soda is very unhealthy for dogs.

“Something’s very wrong with mom!” Dormarch called out and even I can feel it too, she was going to need a patented Dalmatian snuggle after this.

“Not really the time little bro!” I stated as we started angling attacks up at the flailing beast lion thing that already had several injuries from being roughed up by Dormarch. “Besides it feels like she’s coming this way.”

Shanty was already cleaving into the thing with her scythe, the blue X Frog was blasting it with his rifles and Lightbright was supporting Hebi and Salt Kitty in moving towards the door.

-Outside the battle room, Elise the Envious Naga-

The crawlers weren’t a very big deal, I made short work of them with my spear that ended in the shape of glaive that once spelled enslavement to a group I fought so hard not to be controlled by. I failed when the guy Nova forcefully made me revive Merak, Merak at least went through death two times, but I wanted to do something a little more permanent top the guy. Said very guy that led to my soul being so messed up in the first place, Merak was now in the tallest tower living it up here in Midgar.

“Sorry Crazy, I would use you to track her friends, but I think Cruel wouldn’t incidentally get us into even worse trouble.” I hefted Pom up under my left arm, she wasn’t here right now and I couldn’t just leave her lying there on the floor. She went through a lot of trouble for me, at an apparent egregious cost of her own health, sanity and who knows what else with that golden wool stuff going on.

You’d think I’d be more afraid of the cowering lump of a white fluffy blood stained mental mess under my left arm, especially after taking out three Behemoths, Crazy and Cruel in short order. The fluffy sheep was out to lunch so to speak and I really didn’t think she wanted to outright kill me after managing to fix my soul like she had, but her eating chunks of me made me a little wary of her headspace… I’ve been there for far longer before so my misery loves company and I figured Pom wouldn’t be bad company at all.

That seed she gave me was very different from how I normally resurrected, could I replicate its effects? Would be helpful, goodness knows I don’t want to be some kind of necromancer again. I’ve been there and have done that, but it would be nice if I could fully heal someone when I resurrect them.

I’m pretty sure other people would be more afraid of someone who outright bit straight through their ribcage to tear out their heart and proceed to eat it in front of them, but she made my soul whole again and… well... I fully appreciated being whole again thanks to her. Wish it didn’t have to be under painful circumstances that it occurred, she went out of her way to save me and… I probably wouldn’t get over the fact that she ate chunks of me, but that was a minor thing in the number of things that have happened to me.

I was so ready for unfeeling coldness of death again… but here I am alive and helping the sheep that tore me open with her teeth. I didn’t know exactly what to do from here, but I know her friends were evacuating the facility and Pom really didn’t seem in a good condition to be fighting at the moment mentally, physically, spiritually or in any other form otherwise.

She was a really strange little sheep, I didn’t know much beyond what information I could glean from what Cruel had managed to hold onto before my soul fused back together into one living being. Crazy was rather quite unhelpful in the information department, but at least her insanity was now going to be put to some positive uses... hopefully.

It felt so wonderful, but also daunting to have my soul fully back together, at least I wasn’t alone in this and my head was throbbing with unsorted information from Cruel.

Cruel felt a little different, but she still responded to her own name, as did Crazy. So I knew they were fine with our current circumstance of being one whole instead of three parts of the one.

Cruel was flicking her tongue to get a taste of the air around us. She could smell the manufactured machines, but the programs like drones and crawlers required line of sight.

What Cruel was doing is smelling the direction that Pom’s friends were in, wouldn’t be hard to track them at the very least as the only other smell was my own. If they had a way out of this facility, then they wouldn’t likely leave Pom behind.

Someone would have come back for Pom, I just know it… nobody even knew I existed to come rescue me. The machines around here would try to kill Pom before then so… I was going to bargain for my passage out of this hole and keep Pom safe too!

They were going to have to fight Merak up in his tower right? I wanted to be a part of that battle!

I had always wanted to be a hero, a healer, a mage, a sage, some kind of mystical magical person going on a grand journey like in the online games I played, I wanted to be useful or helpful. Instead I was an introvert, no friends to my name and somebody that kept to myself as I was bullied quite a bit, then got captured by a shadowy organization because I awakened a power that a lot of people wanted to have badly.

I wasn’t a very social person and I tried to keep my resurrection powers highly under wraps when I gained them, but Merak somehow discovered my powers and before I even knew it was being attacked in my home by a hovering mechanical chair with two large mechanical fists and a lazy guy who could make portals to almost anywhere.

Merak also created an AI to play the game with me to keep me distracted, guy had a genius level intellect and he was quite lazy with it. I couldn’t even make an acquaintance with someone who enjoys the game I was playing without it turning out horribly, but here I was hoping to give my new lease on life a shot again.

I wasn’t exactly capable of fending Merak off as a naga with very little ability, my power seemed entirely useless in a direct confrontation. To no one’s surprise, most of my other powers came in after the soul tearing torture in that underground black site medical facility.

They really didn’t have any scruples when it came to cutting me open in the hopes of learning how to become semi-immortal from my resurrection abilities, quite understandable that the rich and powerful would want such an ability under their control, the ones who tortured me got nothing from me except a swift death by being turned into zombies. No remorse from me, they weren’t good people, though I was upset that I was put into a situation where I had to kill a huge group of scientists, security guards and more just to make the hurting stop... I even got temporary amnesia from how traumatic all of that was.

Maybe that’s why I’m willing to give Pom a shot, she didn’t have to do all of this for me. I still wanted friends even now, otherwise I would be the loneliest living being in this realm inside of a genocidal maniac of a computer.

“Warning Mako leak detected, please evacuate the facility!” A female voice announced throughout the facility. Well that wasn’t good, apparently mako was energy derived from soul and Moon Cell apparently had something to do with using souls as a source of power, replicating the world where that happened… or was it just the same world I was from just in a different time period? I think Moon Cell has been ending a lot of civilizations for quite a long time on just one planet. “Merak override protocols activated, facility lockdown remaining in effect. He wishes you well when you all die… setting self-destruct sequence, initiating.”

I glared up at the ceiling as the alarms blared out around us, that bastard was messing with me even now?! Yeah, this was another time he’s done something like this to me and it’s been a long time come for at least a little comeuppance, this is just another thing in a long list of grievances I have with the guy.

When I get out of here, I’m absolutely making sure that Pom’s group succeeds in bringing him down!

Cruel hissed loudly, drawing my attention to the Search Snake as she pointed us in a given direction, there were also several drones on the floor surrounding Crazy who had a wagging tail like a puppy and a bit of blade of in her mouth.

When I hadn’t been paying attention Crazy tore through a bunch of flying drones and a crawler. Yeah, we need to not lose track of Crazy or else she could end up doing something horrendously stupid.

“Right, let’s move!” I called out and slithered down the hallway with Cruel leading me towards a hopeful exit from here. “Also Crazy, spit that out.”

Crazy did so, but I could feel her petulant childish nature wanted to keep holding onto the blade in her mouth like the sharp ring like bit of spiraling blade was a toy. That and she wanted to do violent things with it, guess that’s never going to change either even if she seemed friendlier now than she ever had been.

I kept the spear at the ready in my right claw as I slithered forward, while on the lookout for what would be the worst problem to run across right now. The worst thing I could fight right now would be a Sweeper unit, those bipedal machines were dangerous… yet Pom and her friends seemed to have gotten by them easily enough, but when you have a sheep that can tear Behemoths apart so easily I guess it wasn’t much of an issue.

I folded my hood down around my head as the alarms were quite annoying, I kept following Cruel through the corridors until she held up her tail and then pointed to the ceiling while sending me a serious look.

I quickly coiled up my tail underneath myself and did as Cruel bade me to, while Crazy followed Cruel across the hallway quickly to set up an ambush.

A second later a Sweeper, the bipedal machines that come in a variety of lethal enforcing flavors, turned the corner and swept its arm weapons back and forth along the corridor.

Two blasts of green energy slammed into the energy tank on its backside, fired by Cruel and Crazy working in concert. The corrosive blasts of green energy had hit something critical because the Sweeper’s back end erupted in a small explosion. This weakened the overall machine that had just lost its main power source.

The sweeper turned around and fired bursts from its arms at Crazy and Cruel, who were already in the process of dodging them successfully. They wouldn’t be able to do that for long, so it’s time for me to take some initiative since I simply couldn’t let them do all the work!

While my Search Snake sisters drew its fire, I pulled my spear free from the ceiling with my right claw and a push of my tail. I angled my spear as I dropped down to ram it into the top center of the machine, then I quickly kicked off with my tail while ripping my glaive tipped spear free of it and it collapse a second later completely immobile. It didn’t explode because its power source was already gone.

A second later Crazy, the cobra like Search Snake with a funny purples jewel in her head denoting her uniqueness from other Search Snakes and a head absolutely full of nonsense, approached the machines left arm.

“Crazy what are you doing, we need to…” I and Cruel watched as Crazy carefully spat a wad of corrosive energy, it was more sufficient to say I had some power over death as much as resurrecting things to life and I too could spit corrosive wads of energy, but they had been so weak when my soul was in three pieces. That obviously wasn’t a problem anymore as Crazy relieved the destroyed bipedal machine of its left machine gun arm. “Really Crazy, what are you going to do with that?”

Crazy answered by pointing the gun right at us with her tail, was she… oh right, she was!

Cruel and I hit the deck, we weren’t sure how she was going to fire the disconnected gun, but we knew enough about Crazy to know she wasn’t as insane as she looked at times... she was probably much worse.

Sure Crazy was plenty insane, but to think she could even make a machine gun arm work after the machine that used it was destroyed was a crazy idea. A number of Crazy’s odd ideas tended to work out.

We were glad we ducked, as seconds later the snake was firing the gun over us in a single long tirade of shots until the thing click empty and we heard several things collapsing to the ground behind us.

Both Cruel and I looked at each other and then the four quickly dissolving drones Crazy shot down in that single prolonged burst.

Crazy was smiling happily with her eyes and nuzzling the repurposed machine gun arm cheerfully.

“You could have warned us! How did she…” I was going to ask how Crazy even made the thing fire, but Cruel shrugged, sharply hissed and pointed down the metallic hallway with a sense of urgency while looking at Pom still under my left arm. “Right, right, no time, if you want to keep that thing Crazy then you’ll have to deal with its upkeep!”

Crazy nodded cheerfully with her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth as she slithered forward while holding onto the apparently working gun part of the arm with her tail. She started dragging it behind her and I’m aware that it could probably cycle digitial ammunition given the Sweepers never seemed to run out.

I wondered what she would do if we survived long enough to leave Moon Cell’s realms and it stopped being able to shoot because it didn’t have any bullets anymore. The ‘if we survived’ part was going to continue to be a problem for me in particular, considering I just wiped out a crawler with a slash of my spear.

“You know… I don’t actually know how much time we have left.” It finally occurred to me that the self-destruct was running silently, kind of figures that Merak would do something like that. “We she get out of here quickly, lead the way Cruel.”

I summoned a knife and tossed it to Cruel who caught it with her tail, flicked her tongue and we were on our way at a much faster pace than before. Goodness knows that Cruel wouldn’t trust Merak even while under Moon Cell’s control and that says a lot about how much I trust our current chances of avoiding being blown to smithereens.

-Midgar plains, Castle Alexander, Dazzle-

I leaned against the wall and sighed audibly.

Okay we could only hold a single territory in front of Castle Alexander, the scorpion machine had been dealt with and Frizzle was getting her energy back by resting. We’ve been under constant bombardment since the city fired its first shot at us, Pom’s group better do something eventually to at least let us know they were alive.

Quetal finally came back through the gate looking tire as did Lit and Mundo. Those guys lasted quite a while with only Zealot support. Wish Frizzle and I had that kind of staying power.

“The battlefield is going to be impossible to cross without Pom’s team managing to do something behind the cities walls.” Mundo grumbled as he flapped his wing over his tired face.

“All we can do is hold on for now.” Miraculously we’ve only lost five Zealot piloted Magitek Armors.

Welch needed a bit of time to produce more armors, eventually we held long enough to get the five waiting zealots out there to continue holding off a bulk of the enemies forces.

“Is this how you imagine your friendship with Pom going?” Quetal asked with a hint of humor in his voice.

“Nope, but I don’t regret becoming a member of the companions!” I responded with a tired sighed as Dodo and Favela ran us some refreshments. “They say outsiders have the weirdest adventures… this right here is definitely taking the poison type cake.”

“How soon can we field Frizzle again?” Asked Mundo, obviously for clarification of how soon we’d be out on the field again.

This made me look over my Digivice.

“Give her another two hours and she’ll be full on bread and loaded up to take on the enemy forces against.” They were throwing a lot of machinery at us and the Digimon seemed more knowledgeable on the subject of how to fight the monstrous steel type like automatons that kept flooding in our general direction.

Frizzle barely held up to the constant barrage of artillery shots that fell on us from Midgar’s walls, at least that took some heat off of Castle Alexander for a short bit and allowed it to regain some shield strength. The constant impacts wore down Frizzle’s Flame Wargrowlmon pretty quickly even if her blade edged arms made for really good shields.

“This has probably been the best defensive position I’ve ever been in throughout my life!” That drew my attention to the Commandramon up on the walls. Having heard a lot of things from Sami about what Commandramon generally end up dealing with, I would believe that to be a true statement.

With the Commandramon on the walls was the pink taffy pony brigade using their much shorter range cannons to help deal with the incoming enemy forces, we definitely needed the help from the ponies that were easily holding the Mare Melum territory behind us.

“Come on Pom, what are you doing out there…” Smolder muttered with her arms crossed and looking fairly worried and upset about her caretaker being behind enemy lines. Wasn’t she supposed to be upset with Pom though?

Well it was kind of hard to be upset with someone putting themselves in constant danger for your sake, also Pom was a fluffy, cute and courageous individual much to her own detriment that she couldn’t actually control the need to help someone at a cost to herself. Wish I had someone like her around when I was still living in Viperia.

I sighed audibly as some food was placed before me by Dodo who gave me a friendly warble and smile, I rubbed the top of his beak in a friendly manner and started eating.

Taking out mechanical nightmares wasn’t easy and I was going to need my strength, like Lit was going to need an entire plate of Oran Berries to himself to stockpile energy for the coming fights.

-Elise-

“Could you just be a little more careful with that gun Crazy…” I whimpered as another crawler, the small four legged robots with an electric shock gun, went down under a spray of shots that almost hit me.

Cruel was already stabbing another in the eye with an impressive leap, I’m really quite glad Cruel was the more competent about not endangering me so badly. That was the last of them and I was quite certain that Merak had a paw in programming these programs to come after me, that or they were after Pom.

Thank goodness Pom was so lightweight… despite eating several chunks of me in a disturbingly voracious manner. It definitely wasn’t something anyone would simply forgive or forget happening to them so easily, if I made it out of this facility alive at this rate then I’d simply forgive her up front for what she thought she had to do.

Understandable I was a threat to her and she seems to have something like werewolf blood running in her veins and then there’s the whole golden wool thing that she seemed highly upset about.

Turning the corner we were near one of the entrances when we saw a Behemoth fall down with a massive numbers of cuts in its body, that’s when the goat with the scythe leapt up and slashed out a huge amount of energy to tear its head from its body while breathing roughly.

The goat then looked to me and took on a guarded stance I dropped slightly droopy Pom in front of me and sheathed my glaive lance in the back of my mind while holding up my hands in a sign of surrender. Even Crazy wasn’t aiming her weapon at the goat and Cruel sheathed her knife in a mental pocket as well like how I did it, or at least I think she did it the same way I did.

The moment was tense and the others were looking like they were going to fight seeing Pom with a face and most of her chest covered with my dried blood. I didn’t say anything and I really… what?

The skateboard Dalmatian looked into Pom’s eyes and shook her several times, she looked over to Dormarch and barked something. She eyed me for a moment and then barked something else, I thought she was a male dog at first until I heard her somewhat feminine barking

“I think it is okay Dolly, she did bring Pom here and that’s not Pom’s blood. All of it is actually hers… a truly disturbing amount of it really.” The tentacle dog stated with a curious and knowing look as he nodded to me and moved up to us to stare me in the eyes in particular. I leaned a bit away from him and he gave out an audible sigh. The female Dalmatian barked something to the armored talking dog. Was it weird that I was relying on these two for a chance at a ride out of here? “Hold on a second miss.”

The armored dog seemed to scan me with the device he had on his neck.

“Right, come on, let’s go our Zealot should be just about...!” A loud clang heard and the strange tentacle armored dog pointed to the sealed shutters that had a path cut through them. “Everyone move, let’s get out of here, we can discuss what’s happening with mom later when we’re all not about to die, you and those snakes too!”

“Not tell a duck!” Said the labeled Zealot stated as he picked up a box and quickly ran outside and his shield took several hits from spikes spewed by the shriekers, if this facility exploded that would be the end of those things.

The shrieker that had fired those spikes were swiftly gunned down under a tirade of energy bolts by the other things that were apparently also Zealots.

I picked Pom back up and slithered out after everyone and stayed behind them unsure if they’d let me onboard, it didn’t seem to register until I was on the skiff that nobody was questioning my presence since I was hugging an unresponsive Pom to my chest like she was a soft toy as the vehicle got into the air.

“Where are we going guys?” Said the orange combat dressed lizard in the back as a Zealot piloted the vehicle shakily into the air.

“That way!” I pointed to a tunnel above the facility. As I said this, I noted Crazy was shooting down a few bugs coming from that tunnel with her new gun. “It’s the quickest way to the surface and we’ll end up in the junkyard and slums sector of Midgar. We won’t run into any shriekers spawning in that tunnel, but we’ll still have to fight through a few that are already in there!”

“Do it!” Called out the banner wielding grey and gold scaled lizard after looking me in the eyes for a moment.

The flying vehicle quickly turned for that tunnel I just pointed out, thank you for having memorized the ways in and out of this region Cruel.

“Hold onto something, this might be a bumpy ride.” The tall muscular duck guy stated, before turning to the few guys on the hovering bikes near us. “Zealots on the Skein Flyers, mow us a quick path forward for us to fly through!”

“Boss, we serve!” The Zealots announced and launched forward.

-On the surface, junkyard slums, Canard-

We exited the tunnel in record time, as pillar of flames rose out of the ground behind us as the facility finally exploded. We were suddenly hovering low amidst piles of broken machinery and scrap metal in the form of a massive junkyard with pathways of dirt leading through it.

“Do you know a safe place to bunker down for a bit until we can bring Pom to her senses? We kind of need her assistance to continue our mission and we all need a break.” I turned and asked the weird snake lady. Something about her gave me the jitters, but I was willing to trust her if Dolly and Dormarch were able to for the time being. She wasn’t threatening Pom and even actually looked protective of her.

“The Seventh Heaven Bar, NPC slum sector straight ahead at the exit to the junkyard… we can park the skiff around back in a small alcove that the assault programs won’t notice. I think there might also be a hidden room we can stay in, inside the bar I mean. I certainly remember Cruel looking up some of this stuff.” Mumbled the snake lady who placed her chin on top of Pom’s head and shyly curled in on herself protectively around the insensate lamb. That was good enough for me to trust her at least somewhat. “I don’t know how long it’ll be safe for though.”

“If it’s safe for long enough to get in some rest that’ll be fine, name?” I asked as the skiff slowly hovered forward with our three skein flyer escort, we only had five zealots and two were on the skiff with us.

“I’m Elise and this is Crazy and Cruel….” Elise looked a little worse for wear.

Crazy waved her gun cheerfully with a crazy smile that a large unusual snake really shouldn’t have on their face.

Cruel just looked at us all with a slight half lidded eyes with slight contempt, but she did cuddle up to Elise and Pom protectively.

“So what did Pom do exactly to stop you from being a servant?” I just had to know.

“She fixed my soul… her methods left something to be desire, but I don’t think she could have done it in any other way.” Said a haunted looking Elise.

“That’s going to take some explaining, but we can’t do it here in the open.” We made it to the end of the junkyard without any EPs attacking us and we saw the ‘Seventh Heaven’ bar pretty quickly in the nearby shanty town as we drove forward.

“I be detecting rum.” Shanty stated as she looked at the bar with a hint of greed in her eyes.

We parked the Skein Flyers and skiff around the back in a small alcove and quickly entered the place before any of the NPCs said anything. It seemed quaint and small, it didn’t take long for Shanty to leap over the counter and started searching for the rum. I looked to Pom and then to the one holding.

“Elise, you said there was a spot to hunker down in?” I ask because it wouldn’t be long before EPs start coming after us.

“Cruel know some things, I don’t know how she does though.” Elise answered and Cruel went behind the bar with Shanty and a second later she popped back and went over to a pinball machine, then hit something on the underside of it in a specific way and it sunk into the floor, it eventually came back up without the large snake on it. “That might what she was talking about.”

“Okay, that’ll do until we can get Pom back to her senses…” We kind of needed her really, not sure any of us could even really leave her behind in this state either.

After we all went down to the hidden room, with a few EPs beginning to patrol the NPC slum we managed to avoid being found by the patrols. It was a room that had an odd amount of the area around the slums, the nearby walls and Midgar’s front gate under surveillance.

This would be very useful to us going forward, the NPCs likely won't cause any problems as long as we lay low and don't bother them.

-Midgar lower city, nearby Midgar facility close to the NPC slum sector, Ifrit Lu Bu-

The cracks on the prison expanded slightly, the heat was quickly becoming unbearable for the system holding the prisoner in place and trying to drain his burning soul of power wasn’t working all too well.

Lu Bu would not be contained for much longer and he could even feel the presence of that goat nearby, he wanted revenge for his defeat!

-Upper city, Shinra Tower, top floor, Merak the Lazy Lemming-

“Darn it, they managed to take out my walking scorpion tank when I stopped being in direct control of it. Well that shows me to go on a bathroom break!” I grumbled as I looked at the screen on my game pad to see that the battle front on the plains was still going in our favor. I hit a button to change the view and checked on the underground facility… it was blown apart. Good riddance to the pathetic nagas if they couldn’t win even with such a powerful cheat code as resurrection, their constant losses compared my few successes shows that I've always been the superior one. I checked an alert and saw that the fire demon was breaking free of his prison, well that wasn’t going to be very good and it was quite a problem. Checking another alert I saw some cameras in the junkyard showing a familiar flying platform coming from the depths and heading towards he slums before the underground facility went up, but I couldn’t get a good visual on the ones riding on it. “I was bored anyway… sending out The Arsenal!”

In a garage far below me a large machine lit up.

It was a large four wheeled tank with six power rotary canons on its left arm, a large high powered pulse cannon on its right, it could open up both of these arms to fire powerful napalm beams to create walls of fire that kept a target within a kill zone if the beams didn’t outright melt or turn the target to ash on contact. Its wheels were like drills capable tearing apart anything it rolled over since they were really tough to damage while providing all terrain mobility at the four corners of the bulky base of the heavily armored vehicle, said base of the vehicle could fire out electrical blasts to stun targets that will soon be dead by being run over or pummeled with bullets. Its head and body looked like a cylinder, there were four more rapid fire cannons sticking out of the top of the machine, in the front central portion of its torso was a powerful laser cannon and out of the back of its cylindrical body was a satellite dish looking disk that could charge up and fire homing lasers that can arc around obstacles and act as artillery. To round out the whole package of death and misery being sent out, it could deploy a limited number of drones to shield the tank that would make it almost entirely invulnerable from taking any form of direct damage until the drones are dealt with or the drones just simply run out of power.

The death tank known as ‘The Arsenal’ is what rolled out of the Shinra Tower and started heading for the nearest ramp to the lower city, it had enemies to hunt down under my direct control.

"Game on!" I was even smiling at sending out this powerful toy that was likely to be overkill for the underground naga survivors.

An alert brought my attention to a territory in the upper city being taken as a PLANT was destroyed, I zeroed in the Moby Dick on the one that caused that and standing in plain sight was something that chilled my blood.

White scales and hair, red eyes, jetpack, white armor with red highlights and a powerful energy gun as shown by the excessive number of destroyed version two sweepers around him. It was Copen 'The Slayer Dragon', he was here and under the classification of... Gunner?!

It was so unfair that Copen got such a unique title and Moon Cell had no control of him as a he was a rogue servant! The taken green territory that erupted in the upper city suddenly started spawning a ton of little round robots, I've heard rumors of those things before I fully perished prior to my genius ending up her and I had a hunch at what they could do to me.

I could not let that guy escalate any further than he already has! That guy was as dangerous as 'The Azure Striker' was and since said 'Striker' wasn't here to stop me, I could at least focus down The Slayer Dragon before he becomes too big a problem. I immediately sent out Moby Dick to contain and take care of that personally, there was no way I was going anywhere near The Slayer Dragon personally!

421. Straining Morale.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar NPC Slum Sector, Seventh Heaven Secret Room, an hour after the underground facility explosion, Canard-

“So that’s my story.” Well it seems like Elise came from a place where people spontaneously gained super powers, which didn’t end well for her… she doesn’t have family anymore, her having friends in predicated on whether we’re likely to help her or not and she’s chosen a poor time to be fully alive once again.

Merak the final target of our stay here in Midgar was of a genius level intellect and had a particular fondness for machines, he also was exceedingly lazy and his powers matched his laziness by giving him portal abilities similar to what Gilgamesh could do.

Fortunately Merak was highly limited in this regard as he couldn’t store anything in his portals in a separate reality and he could only have ten functional portals total at any given time, the real danger is that he can increase the size of any objects or energy entering a portal. The size changing thing didn’t have any effect on people, but I can imagine the description of giant’s lasers and mechanical fists was something Elise had haunting memories about.

I could already tell Elise had it out for Merak, but she wanted to help us as well so I voted in favor of her. The others did so to, the only one that hasn’t cast a vote is Pom and that’s because she’s likely trying to silently work through some self-inflicted trauma. Pom’s method in dealing with Elise was, to put it frankly, exceedingly weird if highly effective.

Elise could resurrect someone from dying and put the body in a slightly better state than it was before it died, but it had known limitations which is why the Reviver Seed Pom gave her fixed her soul when even her onw powers couldn’t. Pom had even been banking on that according to Dormarch, resurrection wasn’t the same as healing.

Dormarch was watching our surroundings as Sweepers, Drones, Crawlers, gun wielding EPs labeled Archer Trooper, helicopter gauntlet wearing EPs with labeled Lancer Helitrooper since they had a particular habit of charging forward and finally among the newer EPS they had support canine EPs with singular long tentacles reminiscent of the ones that came out of Dormarch’s back when he is in his champion evolution labeled with Beast Guard Hound. All in all the new smaller bipedal machine EPs weren’t too powerful and the Guard Hounds were only a threat up close where they can whip or bit at a target, they however made up for that in numbers. The Sweeper type machines were still the worst thing to run across.

As for Pom, Dolly was currently squeezing some Sitrus Berry juice down her throat and Pom was thankfully swallowing it without having to have her throat rubbed, but otherwise she has been listless since we got here. I could understand why, tearing into someone with your teeth and eating their heart out in the most literal fashion imaginable would be quite mentally scarring. It says a lot about Elise that she wasn’t holding it against Pom and thought it was less painful than what an entire facility of scientists put her through trying to study her powers.

“What I want to know is, how did you know about this place again if you finally got around to sorting out your head?” Jeanne waved her arms to the surrounding room and the bar that we were currently hiding under.

“Okay, I think I finally have everything I know about why this off grid bolt-hole is here. Cruel was looking into alternative basing solutions, we didn’t exactly like being underground or inside that facility… wouldn’t be the first time we got stuck somewhere underground. This place was too small to operate out of, but apparently Crazy did come up here to continue setting things up sporadically when Moon Cell couldn’t keep a good grip on her part of my soul and Cruel didn’t stop her from doing so.” So that would make Elise’s two other personality Crazy being prepared and Cruel giving some hope that they might escape Moon Cell. “I don’t know how long this base will hold up to the constant scrutiny going on around here and your vehicles can’t stay hidden forever. Once we leave, I doubt we’re coming back here.”

“I’ll just be taking all the rum with me then, seeing that nobody else be wanting it.” Shanty kept sending Pom looks that she wanted to talk to her, but in her current state Pom was not in any mood to do anything other than heal the muscular damage Dormarch said she caused herself when fighting Elise and the three Behemoths.

“That lazy genius certainly has the area on lockdown, I’d even say that something has him spooked and we have a lot to tear through.” Snake stated as he popped out of the shadows. The rogue Assassin servant, in the form of a camou furred bipedal rabbit, was drawing our attention to the screens he worked on. “I think we can open and break the gate so that it can’t be closed, but doing so won’t exactly be easy and I could possibly do that alone if given time and a big enough distraction. It’s disabling the wall cannons that is going to take some doing. As for a report on our allies, Shine says that Castle Alexander is still standing, but it’s taking quite a pummeling and even might have to pull back temporarily if the fighting gets too heated. Castle Alexander can’t even move forward from its current location without feasibly incurring massive damage and that’s while they are likely getting support of the Harmony Programs from Mare Melum.”

“Peppercat is going to be ready to go in a few hours, her repair cycle is working hard in getting her back to fully functioning.” Krosserdog announced as he came down from quietly watching the entrance to Seventh Heaven. “All the remaining Zealots are fine at least.”

“We’re not in a good situation here, but we can still do what we came to achieve at least…” Jeanne was at least trying to stay positive in this situation. “What are the chances that they can find us here?”

“Not very good, Merak is lazy… super lazy even, but he’s not really looking for us too hard because he knows where we are generally and I bet he’s planned out what to do when we eventually try to make a move.” Stated Elise, since stealth at this rate wasn’t a great possibility in the long run as we all well knew. “He already knows what you’re try to do here, he certainly planned the self-destruct of the facility out. Merak did that for when I somehow failed at stopping you well enough, I'm sure he even planned to kill me outright if I had won.”

Yeah, Elise definitely had a chip in her shoulder about that guy. This even reminded me of Gilgamesh in some ways, at least he didn't have infinite weapons to pummel us with constantly.

“If we could get some communication to Castle Alexander, then we could have them send us Zealot reinforcements down the pipeline… provided that the path we came through hasn’t been entirely sealed off.” Nice suggestion Sami, but we’d need to have Shine check the tunnels and a way to get back here with those extra forces and that was going to take some time, time we might not have if the reports on Castle Alexander’s situation is anything to go by.

“Shine can still get to Castle Alexander, but she’d have to swim the shadows for quite a while and it’d take her a while to get back with a message.” I said as I raised a hand to take the floor. “She’s busy scouting the surroundings visually at the moment since we don’t know if we can trust the technology here to have our best interests in mind, we’ll have her check the tunnels and get to Castle Alexander with our problems. If we try to communicate openly now, we’ll be swarmed with EPs without a place to fall back to.”

“We need Pom up and decently mentally capable before we move out. We’re obviously going to have to split up and have one team draw the attention of our enemy and he has the resources of an entire two tiered city at his disposal, we’ll simply be crushed if we don’t plan out things well enough and try the direct approach.” Thankfully enough, I was quite good at surviving in heavy occupation environments with lots of lethal automatons. At this point it’s become my standard way of living to plan for stuff like this and to make sure whatever team I have to work with can fully function in such a lethal environment and hopefully survive. “It’s a good thing I’m used to planning under such heavy odds that I’ve stopped caring about what’s impossible anymore.”

“I would at least like a few hundred Commandramon at the moment, even if some of them would only last thirty seconds in combat. What you’ve got is me and I’m a fair claw at demolitions.” Sami was of course volunteering to deal with the artillery. “This Merak guy doesn’t entirely know what we’re capable of yet, but we don’t know entirely what he can throw at us either. This city is basically crawling with EPs and the only reason why he knows to have patrols around the particular areas we need to operate in is because he caught us using one of the tunnel exits to come up here.”

“Doesn’t know where we are exactly, but he definitely knows we’re here at the very least and that we cannot be ignored.” Jeanne grumbled with her plated scaled arms crossed and leaning against a wall, she was one of the better fighters in Valora and she didn’t disappoint with how well her scales held up to Shrieker spikes and Water Tigers trying to leap out of the water to spear us. “The number of drones patrolling the nearby areas say as much.”

Jeanne D’ Arc was supposed to be the leader of the operation, but at most she was leader of the Valora units and we were more of a mishmash of various factions working toward a common goal. It felt like I was on the ice playing the roughest game of hockey in my life with a mixture of teammates from several differing teams.

“Dormarch, Dolly, can you two work on getting Pom into a better headspace?” I was willing to take the next nine hours to sleep, eat and prepare for our next move. We still had to get a message back somehow, but any attempt at communicating with the castle would drop hell on our heads.

Dolly gave off a cheerful bark, it’d sound better if she wasn’t straining herself to stay positive.

“Her body is already on the mend, but Mom’s mind needs a lot of help... what she did was, not something she’s up to the task of living with having done.” Dormarch looked at Elise. “She still could have actually done much worse to you Elise.”

“How could your mother have done worse?” Elise asked looking not as afraid as one would expect the snake lady that has suffered a lot to be. She should be more afraid of Pom, yet she carried her to us and helped us out of the underground network in short order. “I’ve already been through a lot, being partially eaten really isn’t actually the top of my list of worst things ever done to me. It was really painful, but it’s not even in my top ten of things I’ve lived through.”

“Well with her control of her wool mom could have… right, not important at the moment.” Dormarch would know what Pom was capable of and I shuddered slightly at the idea that Pom could have done worse, at least I know Pom wouldn’t snap and start attacking us all. She was made of sterner stuff than that, at least when she wasn’t going full on beast. “In any case mom won’t be able to do that again for twenty four hours, much less would want to go beast at all for a long time since she took a pretty big hit to her mental faculties.”

“I’d say I can even already forgive her if she was willing to listen! I mean my body is whole, my soul is whole and I’m alive, I couldn’t ask for a better outcome on my side of things. That is more than I can say for all the other things in these realms or the souls being forced to work for Moon Cell.” Which were technically computer programs, but no less dangerous considering where we were in the whole grand scheme of things Elise. “I’m something of an outlier as far as being able to come back to life from my soul being summoned from the depths of wherever it was. I can tell Pom is really sorry and miserable about it and that she may have lost control when she had her strange mist wolves pin me down and decided to tear me open before I could revive Cruel or Crazy. Doing so with her teeth seems logical given how strong they were when she bit straight through my ribcage.”

“At least I can’t imagine her doing that to Tianhuo…” Jeanne idly commented and Pom twitched slightly, yeah that brought some life back into her eyes.

“Dormarch, do you have a recording of Pom’s significant other? That might get her out of her funk.” I suggested as a course of order. “Maybe make a collage of soothing words for her?”

Dolly barked something unintelligible, but it sounded… I want to say curious? The longer I spent around Dolly the more understandable the Dalmatians emotions were. Clearly worried about Pom, but fairly hopeful to hear an idea to get her up and moving.

“Dolly, she tore someone to shreds and ate chunks of them, yes that Elise got better, but you have to realize the psychological issues she’s going through with actively eating an intelligence beings flesh instead of accidentally for someone who is supposed to be an obligate vegetarian. Obligate meaning that she’s shouldn’t be capable of handling meat, she’s more like an omnivore now considering she hasn’t actually thrown it up.” Dormarch looked over Pom with his claws carefully check her legs and body. “At least her body is healing well after the stress she put it through. Those Sitrus Berries really are something else. Mentally she needs a lot of support, as if her trying to keep her anxiety issues crushed down wasn’t bad enough. Really wish I didn’t have an entire database of a hospital to know all this stuff…”

“Pom isn’t the only one with psychological issues here.” I decided to finally throw it out there. “Jeanne seems to be ignoring the conversation about not being a Steel Type bothering it more than it should.”

Jeanne didn’t look anyone in the eyes.

“Sami has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder form the previous wars she fought in, but she’s been saving dealing with that trauma for a quiet moment like now.” I pointed out and Sami was currently relaxing with a bottle of digital alcohol from the bar.

“He’s not wrong, I’m drinking to all the friends I’ve lost over the digital years.” Sami hiccupped slightly. “Including the one I had to shoot... being a veteran of any kind of war or fighting isn’t a good thing. I’m definitely still happy to just be alive though.”

“Dolly is the most positive of us all and she can’t support us all and even she knows she can’t keep it forever, but goodness knows she’ll try for us. Shine seems to have a history with this kind of cloak and dagger stuff as Snake has pointed out and we don’t know how being here is effecting her mentally. Goodness knows what the Zealots feel about all this, but I’m starting to think the APs on our side have more intelligence than we might give them credit for.” At least that was a suspicion Pom has shared with me that the APs do respond better to positivity. “There’s my personal stake in all this of eventually reuniting with my team no matter where they are. Plus a variety of people in Castle Alexander counting on us, so I’m surprised that emotions aren’t running higher.”

“That’s likely because our emotions are all on the lower end of things. That’s actually a good thing, because we really can’t afford to do something dumb here in a heated manner.” Dormarch stated tiredly while side eyeing Dolly. Dolly looked offended for a few seconds while putting her paw to her chest, but then nodded and seemingly admitted to the likelihood of doing something dumb and grinned a little. “We need rest after going through so much, which isn’t going to come easy behind enemy lines. I’ll try to find a few recordings of Tianhuo’s voice to help mom relax to like Mr. Thunderbeak suggested.”

This reminds me of all the numerous promises I made.

Like telling Mallory’s father I’d help take care of her before he was taken out. He was one of the last military personnel still fighting in the resistance, owned the last viable military gunship too which we used to finally deal with those Saurians.

There’s Tanya who just wanted to be a lab technician or working on cutting edge technology, instead she had to be a part of our rebel operations taking out some major issues to make inroads to what was our final successful mission. Making explosives was not how she wanted to live her life. If I had anything to say about it, she’d get her laboratory and then some.

Grin, now there’s a guy that wanted to live in peace and not fight, he certainly brought a lot of strength to the team. He could live in peace in his own little out of the way place, someone that big and packed with muscles deserves a little solitude.

Duke L’orange, nobody exactly knew what I promised the once thief from the brotherhood of blades to get him to join our rebellion, but I hope he’s living up to his commitment to do better in life.

My brother in all but name Wildwing just wanted a free world and the ability to just play hockey.

Nosedive, Wildwing’s little brother, he wasn’t supposed to be there with us when we carried out our plans, but I think a wild card always helps if it can be played well.

At least they know I’m alive and I’m not about to let a psycho computer do me in, not after so much time in the digital realms. This is just another speed bump on the road that is my life, I gripped my hockey stick tightly and looked at the monitors showing our surroundings. I’ve played every position imaginable, whether it be forward offensive, back defense, even as goalie and I could see that it was all paying off even now.

I moved off to the side and brought my hockey stick in front of me.

“I pray that we can continue to be a team, which we’ll come together and score a goal against all our difficulties ahead with all we have.” I prayed quietly to the almighty puck and the crossed sticks of deliberation.

-Plains of Midgar, Castle Alexander, a few hours later, Ocellus-

The Valora teams were currently out and helping in the defense of anything that can get past the Magitek Armors the Zealots were piloting.

We were constantly hammering the enemy with infinite missiles, but they had infinite numbers to throw at us unless we could take care of the territories spawning said enemies. We couldn’t get the missiles within range of the walls, so we weren’t capable of taking out the cannons or dropping shots onto the PLANTs beyond the walls.

I didn’t even know what was going on with Pom’s group, all I could do is keep the defensive efforts in working order. Mare Melum had been absolutely unfocused chaos around the castle, which is why we did so well, here we’re the focus of a constant assault of machine based EPs.

Every time we had to replace a Magitek Armor was excruciating amount of time to repair or build a new unit for the Zealots to use, Skein Flyers were easier to replace and could at least stop missile bombardments from hitting us. The constant artillery barrages were a different story and only our shields could take the punishment.

The Commandramon were okay with holding the walls and the castles turrets were good at stopping the smaller things that got by the Zealot defense line.

Tensions were as high as the emotions around us, even with help from the harmony programs we were not holding very well and retreating was going to be rough on Pom’s group if they were still alive in there. They probably were, Pom doesn’t seem like someone to be killed so easily and they had reviver seeds right?

There was movements in the upper city, Moby Dick seemed to be on the move and going on the offensive against someone. I don’t know who else it could be other than Pom’s group, maybe Fou or anyone else invading Moon Cell’s realms like Mirage Mew? I doubted that Pom’s group made it up to the second tier of the city high above them already, at least not without their Skiff or Skein Flyer or informing us. Their job was to at the very least get the front gates to Midgar City open, the only reason for any deviation from that admittedly lofty goal was to return back to the castle and think of something else provided it was impossible to do so in their current position.

Yet… we had no reports of territories opening up beyond our defensive lines. We were in dire need of some information about what was happening in there.

“Welch, quick order, long range telescope that can get us a visual on the city from this far away on a Skein Flyer.” I wasn’t bereft of ideas to pull here, I just didn’t have any idea of how we could push forward. “How soon can you do something like that?”

“A long range super scope scout adaptation? Give me thirty minutes.” With Welch taking care of it, I decided to call in to engineering to see how Cid was doing.

-Somewhere inside Midgar, a few more hours later, in a heavily fracturing containment cell, Ifrit Lu Bu-

You can’t keep me contained forever!

“ERRAGGGHHHHAHHHHHHH-…!” White hot energy flash boiled all the water and the containment cell bent outwards and when it looked like it would hold, it didn’t and the explosion could be felt as much as seen from Castle Alexander from across the plains.

Lu Bu had broken free and was ready to go on a flaming warpath, the flaming minotaur like bipedal flaming demon bursts his way out of an energy production plant in a raw fury.

He began tearing apart any EP on sight that was stupid enough to be with half a mile of him in this moment. There were a lot of stupid EPs around and they couldn’t control the volcano levels of heat from Lu Bu’s rage and fury.

-Seventh Heaven Bar, a minute after Lu Bu breaks loose, Shanty-

I be waking up with a start as something be shaking the whole city, I can be feeling something quite horrible was happening… it is being almost too familiar to me to be unknowable.

“Who in the world can be putting out that kind of… no… it can’t be… not him!” I be feeling Lu Bu and he is being back, I thought he would be being gone for good. Then again, what be happening with souls around here, I should be being less surprised.

“Shanty… okay?” Pom asked dazedly as she woke up, oh she be talking again. That is being a good sign at the very least.

Trying to lift her head, Pom looked at everyone that she could be seeing in her current position that be using her as a pillow and sighed audibly, she used her wool to shift the visor from her head where I could hear the faint sweet words of Tianhuo speaking softly trying to keep calm Pom down. It appeared to have mostly worked or else she wouldn’t be in such a talkative mood.

“Are you?” I asked back with worry while not moving too much, Pom’s body was hard real estate to get a nice restful sleep on.

“No… not okay… getting better… always getting better.” Pom had a tired look in her eyes as she be looking away from my bar shaped pupils. “Never fine…”

Dormarch and Dolly were snuggled up against Pom’s belly, Elise had the back her head resting on Pom’s back with Cruel and Crazy laying across her torso, Shine was resting her head at the back of Pom’s neck and Jeanne had Pom’s flank. I be resting my head on Pom’s shoulder and leg, sure it be covered in that strange gold wool and that is being bad for Pom, but it is making for a good rest and it be looking pretty.

“… Does anyone even care that I ate a part of an intelligent being?” What did Pom be expecting, a harsh word for doing so? No we were more worried about her mental health than her eating someone to life… that is being a weird way to be putting it and an odd sentence I never thought I’d be thinking.

“Yes, but we be worrying more about you than about what you’ve done, it wasn’t like it was being permanent damage.” If it was permanent damage however, that would be a little bit harder to contend with. How would we be trying to solve this situation in that case? “Elise still be willing to use you as a pillow, I think she is being more than alright with it.”

“Wait… Elise is?” Pom tried to turn her head and woke up shine who yawned and got up to move away from Pom allowing her to see that Elise was sleeping soundly and snuggling Cruel and Crazy to her body in her arms. Shine waved at Pom in a friendly manner and then dove into the nearby shadows to go investigate what that city rumbling noise was. It would be taking too long for her to be going back up the tunnels by herself and we couldn’t be sneaking a Skein Flyer through the EPs patrolling the area. We figured it was being better that Shine stuck with us. “You’d think she’d be more afraid of me after what I did.”

“She be saying it is not even rating her top ten worst moments in her life.” I be stating dryly, I’m wondering what my top ten currently were… or if I’ve yet to be feeling them. That would be an adventure I should continue to be avoiding for a while. “Also I be thinking Lu Bu is back.”

“What makes you think that?” Pom certainly seems to be chattier than usual, she probably be needing a distraction from the horrors of what she did.

As long as nobody be being stupid enough to draw attention to what she did, unless Pom wanted to be absolutely discussing it, then Pom should be being mostly fine with ignoring it for the time being. It still needs to be being talked about so Pom doesn’t be bottling all that stress… she really be needing a good cry at this point.

“Call it a big feeling and that I can be feeling his malice from here, is this what Ocellus is feeling like all the time with those malice machines? I don’t be liking it one bit and it is being scary, because I think he is being the one that caused all that violent shaking a minute or two ago.” That and there’s something that I really wanted to be discussing with Pom in private… I should probably ask. “Can we be talking later, alone? There’s something I want you to be checking with me, I’m kind of scared that I might be something other than a goat.”

“Sure thing Shanty, also you look like a goat, have eyes like a goat and definitely a cast iron stomach. So you’re still a goat to me.” Hugging Pom for those kind words with a hoof, I be getting up to be taking less space on Pom’s body. Also I be needing to use the little goat’s room, as I be walking away I be hearing Pom lament her current sleeping arrangement. “Always everyone’s favorite pillow… I’m surprised anyone wants to be near me, especially after all the blood I had covering me and I ate someone to… life? That’s a weird thought and odd sentence.”

Hah, I definitely be taking after Pom! Also scrubbing the blood out of her wool wasn’t being too hard with water I can be controlling, it be helping me with staying clean now.

-Pom-

It didn’t take long for Dolly or Dormarch to wake up. Dormarch’s three fluffy fish tails were happy to see me aware and up, I pointed out the visor and he made it stop softly quoting Tianhuo’s words. I really shouldn’t and couldn’t shut down now and Dolly was on a snuggle assault with wrapping her paws around my neck and hugging me.

“What’s our situation?” I asked after a moment to appreciate having Dolly snuggled against me. Tearing someone’s heart out with your teeth really makes you learn to appreciate life of those closest to you.

Now if only Elise would wake up so I can move… and apologize profusely for what happened. I’d lost control of the bloodlust for a few seconds and I had really wanted to stop her from reviving Crazy or Cruel, which would have ruined my plan. My plan apparently succeeded.

Sounds like things were mostly fine if Elise was here, with us, not bleeding out from a gaping hole in her chest that… right steer away from it Pom, steer well away from it for the time being. It’s going to be like sixteen or twelve hours before I can do the beast thing again anyway… so I’m mentally unsound, but I at least won’t hurt anyone unless I go into that transformation again.

My control over my wool has advanced quite a bit… I’m once again seeing myself as terrifying, but in this situation I really needed to be. The naga couldn’t do a thing to me, but the Behemoth, those needed me to actively move my body to deal with and darn it if I don’t feel sore… Sitrus Berries can only do so much for the healing process.

“Just relax mom, everything is going to be okay.” Dormarch stated softly as he nuzzled against me.

“Yeah, so you’re a vegetable eating person that started eating flesh while going all werewolf… without the accidentally scratching someone so they turn into a werewolf thing. Wait, wouldn’t that mean that every werewolf is technically a cannibal because everyone they attack could technically turn into a werewolf if they don’t kill them all the way?” Dolly received a scathing look from Dormarch and I could feel my eyes dull. “What, it’s a serious concern that if they don’t kill a target quickly enough that it too becomes a werewolf and then does the original werewolf just give up on eating that person just like that? Or can they eat that person before they fully turn and would that make it alright and not cannibalism? I’m being serious here, considering all the spooks in the night things exist with my father likely being descended from a hell hound!”

“Dolly can we get things back on track and not stuck on such a touchy subject.” Dormarch tilted his head towards me in reference, he was such a good boy.

I snorted and started laughing, Dolly was so horrible and so silly at the same time! My laughter woke up Elise, who was cuddling what was a pair of snakes that had to be Crazy and Cruel, and Jeanne who looked like she had a good night’s sleep.

“You seem to be in a good mood.” Jeanne stated cautiously.

“Oh no, I’m not, trust me on that, very far from it actually… it’s just that Dolly is trying to make a serious discussion and it drove me over the edge considering how silly it is sounding.” I was still giggling like a tiny ewe about it. “In any case I would think it’s about surviving the werewolf makes you as strong as the werewolf and the like, it’s a fairly interesting way to for a magical wolf to build a pack from the strong.”

“Now you see that wouldn’t make sense though, a werewolf is only as strong as their increase from base form would allow, at least that’s how Poodle Wolf mechanics work anyway I did pay some attention when husky werewolves were involved.” Yep, Dolly still had a thing for Huskies a mile deep even if she was unlikely to be with one particular Husky, I had to remember that she chose me over most of the things in her life. It’s the fact that Dolly was still here and trying to cheer me up, and poorly at that, that had me going with the giggles. For this topic of discussion Dolly had chosen is so ridiculously bizarre a thing to bring up… well the silliness of it is very much appreciated at the moment. “I mean really, can you imagine some fatty surviving a werewolf and then having all that fat turn into muscle? The poor werewolf that tried to eat the guy would be stuck with them as a pack mate for the rest of their life and the fat guy is now an Alpha… maybe that’s why all those werewolf stories have it take while for them to fully turn into a werewolf so that the wolf in question still has a chance to stop that from happening… at that point would it be considered cannibalism since the person they attacked are becoming one?”

“For some reason, I’m currently glad I can’t understand her.” Jeanne stated with grin.

“You’re not really missing much at the moment.” I said flatly.

“Hey, come on Pom!” Dolly barked angrily.

I snorted again and sighed.

“She wants to talk werewolves, I’m game if you can act as a translator for me!” Elise seemed to be particularly perky for some reason. “Also you have got to be the comfiest pillow in existence.”

“It’s the magical wool.” Being a fluffmancer did tend towards being cuddly soft.

“We need to move and soon!” Canard stated as he rode the pinball machine down into the room with Sami at his side. “Something has most of the EPs forces distract and now would be a good time to split up and try to figure out how to achieve our objectives. We don’t have much time to act on the distraction that is drawing most of the EPs away from the area.”

“Back to it then…” I sighed audibly. “I hope you got some rest, because I certainly did for however long I’ve been out of it. What are we doing?”

“Good question, we need at least some of you to draw the EPs from the walls and door, we’ll use the hover skiff and Skein Flyers to try to get the door open and then we’ll figure out how to deal with the wall cannons aimed at Castle Alexander. Shine at least confirms they are holding, but being constantly pummeled can’t be good for their morale after that last eight or so hours.” Canard answered, his beak softened as he looked at me. “How you feeling?”

“I’m up for the distraction team.” I immediately volunteered and suddenly got sandwiched between Dolly and Dormarch. They didn’t say anything as they pressed against me, they didn’t have to. “Sami is definitely on the demolitions, she generates explosives. Which means you’re going with Sami… Jeanne decide the split up from that.”

“All the Zealots will go with the demolition team of Sami, Canard, Snake, Shine and Peppercat to work out the wall situation. Thankfully there are no cannons pointing inwards so you should be able to figure something out when you arrive with the skiff.” That got some nods, didn’t sound too bad to give the demolition team some hefty numbers with the five skein flyers available to lend fire support and the skiff, Sami should be able to find something to destroy to help Castle Alexander out. “I, Pom, Shanty, Krosserdog, Dolly and Dormarch will run distractions… Elise do you want to assist distractions, go with the demolition team, stay here or leave to somewhere safer?”

“I’m with the distraction team, I’ll at least draw Merak’s ire if he sees me fighting the local EPs alongside you.” Elise didn’t even blink at fighting alongside me or show a hint of fear. “Also Pom, I’m so sorry that I put you through all that.”

“What?! Why are you apologizing to me, I should be apologizing to you!” What happened was still fairly upsetting to me and fresh.

“I accept you’re apology.” Elise stated cheerfully. “Also thanks for fixing my broken soul, don’t know anybody else that would do that.”

“Guys there’s a flaming monster wrecking Midgar city and that thing is absolutely terrifying! It’s big, has muscles and is covered in flames and has big horns, it’s basically a bipedal demon and tearing through EPs without pause or tiring… so what are we doing?” It was odd to hear how quickly Shine switched gears and said that last part pleasantly.

“We’re avoiding that thing as much as possible, it's likely already drawing more attention than we will be soon with trying to draw attention from the gate and wall cannons, you are going with Canard’s team.” Jeanne was up and moving over to our supplies chest to tuck away a few berries for herself and one of the two remaining reviver seeds, the other seed she tossed to me with a nod. The seeds were rare, but fairly powerful for our needs and we need every advantage we could get. “Everyone stock up on supplies and let’s move, we might not get another opportunity like this one!”

Once we got to the doorway of the Seventh Heaven bar we all stopped when we heard the whaling call of Moby Dick, something was going on in the upper tier of the city, but that wasn’t exactly important at the moment while we were below it all.

“Get ready… distraction team goes out first and starts taking it to the EPs to draw them off.” Jeanne stated while holding the banner spear tightly in her right claw. "This is going to be rough... demo team wait until things are clear, then move out."

At least Jeanne was starting to take more charge of things. I gripped the paralance and mentally prepared myself to start blocking tons of projectiles.

-Jeanne-

Just had to stay positive we could do this, nobody is dying on my watch... I even arguably chose to be on the team with the harder job and a higher mortality rate possibilities. Hopefully Elise was willing to supply resurrections to us without us asking.

In fact, let's see just how much fight there is in me to see us all through this alive, for our threatened homes and friends I would do my best to see us to a bright future from the darkest depths this Moon Cell can throw at us.

The rallying cry in my heart will pulse ever brighter, I could even already feel the surge in my blood as I held the banner spear aloft and charged out those doors ready to face any enemy that threatened all of existence with my head held high and my spirit swelling!

422. Midgar Meltdown Pt.1.

-Moon Cell Realm, Shinra Building, Top Floor, Merak-

“Now where are you little scurrying rats?” Says the lemming entirely ignoring his own particular rodent motif. “The fire demon is drawing a lot of my forces away, so they are going to go active… but when they do.”

I held up the controlling and got a visual from The Arsenal tank, it was going to take some time for it to arrive. Once it does, they were going to get gunned down fairly quickly.

After a moment a signal popped up as they had finally revealed their location, they were making movements on one of the PLANTs near the entrance to the city. I can’t let them get too many of those. In fact if they succeed in getting that one, then they’ll find it quite hard to get anymore.

Can’t really sit back and let them get too strong a foothold. I may be lazy, but I don’t want my cushy position threatened by these loser noobs.

Besides, if I take care of them now I won’t have to do so much work later! Time to divert what I can spare to stop them from going after the gate, because that is undoubtedly their target to get their fortress within the city and beyond all the cannons holding them at bay.

The flaming demon dude might even help me with taking them out, he even seems driven to head slowly in their direction and I could help him with that by drawing aggro and goose chasing him into them.

-Midgar, Leaving NPC Slum Sector, Pom-

“This is Pom calling Castle Alexander, do you hear me?” I asked into the visor as we ran towards the closest PLANT to take control of, since the underground facility was blown to prevent us from gaining any support within the city we were going to need to capture some territory no matter how small and start producing forces already inside the city.

Easier said than done with Elites now being a thing, also I just gave away our current position on purpose. This was as we started forward down the streets quickly taking out whatever EPs were currently in our way, so far there weren’t very many around one or two at the most that Krosserdog could easily snipe.

“Hearing you almost clearly Pom, though some static is to be expected, what is going on in there?” Nice to hear Ocellus’s voice, even if she was sounding a little frazzled.

“A lot of things, like how I recently ate someone to life and that’s a rare sentence that nobody would normally say within their lifetime and have it make sense in context.” I ducked behind a wall as bullets started striking out at my position.. “Lots of psychological trauma to catch up on, after I run out of more important things to distract myself with.”

Meanwhile Jeanne, using Iron Defense, quickly ran forward with her left arm held up deflecting hundreds of bullets off her steel tough scales while protecting her face. She readied her banner spear to stab into the Troopers with her right claw one handed, even saw some of the Guard Hounds with their odd tentacles on approach from further away

“Don’t you mean to say you ate someone to death?” Ocellus asked sounded more curious than scared.

Why is everyone letting me have a pass?! I pulled and ate someone’s still beating heart out of their chest! Not that Ocellus didn’t know that or the context… look I should really get into talking this through later with Elise and everyone present.

“No, I ate someone to life and it’s the only way I can really put it, things have been a little weird and we’re working on knocking down some PLANTs so we can get some territory or at least some AP support. Apparently the servant to watch out for prevented us from gaining any foothold by blowing the facility that was down the underground cavern network.” I watched as Dolly slid by with her board angled to send bullets deflecting upwards and away from her before she swiped the leg out from under a trooper while coming out of her flowing motion slide, then she swiftly bashed its face apart with the flat of her board. “We’re working on improving our situation, the tunnels may be a bit too dangerous for anything living thanks to a dangerously caustic to life soul related substance flooding the lower end of the tunnels… Shine could make it through, but we thought better of trying anything else in that direction like bringing in more APs through the tunnels. Since we doubt you can send any help our way even if you were able to get some breathing until we can meet up with the castle directly, but I would still appreciate knowing your current situation in all of this.”

“Pom, weird defines your life, also its things like that that make me want to become a therapist or get therapy myself, whichever occurs first at this rate... but lambkin tend to have that kind of effect on people right?” Well Ocellus has got me there, Lambkin tend to be the leading cause of therapists… not exactly a good thing really. “As for how Castle Alexander is doing, we’re moderately damaged and holding on and together fairly well. We’re able to repair the castle faster than they can damage it, but the constant stream of mechanical EPs is quite unpleasant when we can’t do anything to take any territory further beyond our current frontline. Our artillery can’t get in range of those cannons across the plains, so we can’t exactly make a forward push and any territory we take is going to be bombarded back into being under enemy control and we don’t want our APs taking territorial blasts. What’s the status of everyone else?”

“We’ve lost some Zealots, some lost and damaged vehicles, we’re all now actively using our supplies and we’re going to need Castle Alexander’s firepower to even make a dent in this city.” I swiftly darted forward to keep up with Jeanne’s forward progress, she currently didn’t need my help at all and I was kind of bringing up the rear to talk to Ocellus. “I’m about to get back into what we’re doing here, but know we’re running into some pretty big issues in here.”

The fighting dragon’s large scales on her arms gave her a very good defense for being shot at. Me, I wouldn’t survive being hit by so many projectiles that can puncture through my wool so easily, as my fluff still couldn’t quite stop bullets. So I was in my Sheep’s Clothing wool shift for the foreseeable future, since my wool was not going to stop any of those projectiles from getting through if I get directly struck. I also had my paralance in my front hooves ready to block a tirade at any moment from any direction.

“Like what?” Ocellus asked as I heard sounds of Castle Alexander being struck by artillery fire in the background.

“Remember Lu Bu, that guy from Ignis that Shanty fought and barely survived thanks to that fire monkey Hideyoshi?” I was going to have to start getting into combat soon, the PLANT we went after had finally sent out it’s Elite and it was quite a brute that Etemon described as having met after he got this far before retreating from Moon Cell’s realms. Etemon must have been really fast to escape all this stuff, since this is getting a bit ridiculous for us to deal with. “Yeah, he’s back from the dead… and he’s apparently possessed a demon or something close to it according to Shine.”

The brute of an Elite EP was shining the red light from its eye onto Jeanne who stared back challengingly with narrowed eyes as she stood tall and planted the banner to stare it down. Said eye was in the middle of the torso of its armored upside down egg shaped body. Connected to the top heavy body were two fairly bulky arms leading to the massive metal boulders at the ends of them, they were covered in very painful looking spikes. Its two comically small conical legs that ended in pointy tips was probably the smallest part of the hulking stone like monstrosity that looked something like a golem from Equestria… except less floating rock bits and more a solid overall mechanical look that most generic EPs had. This at least made it more fearsome looking than the Berserker Vikings with their burning axes.

“Don’t you mean it’s a demon possessing his soul or his image?” Oh Ocellus, you sweet cuddly changeling.

“No, I’m pretty sure Shine has the right of the situation by the description of the horned monstrosity causing fires in the lower city of Midgar. The monster probably approaching in our general direction is definitely him in charge of things if Shanty can feel him.” I looked in the distance down the street and saw a large section of city going up in an inferno. I held heavy metal trash can in front of me to take hundreds of shots being fired from the nearby EPS in one hoof and the paralance in the other to continue blocking shots from two separate directions, still public enemy number one for Moon Cell even now… however the more fire I draw the less going at my friends who quickly wiped them out. “If I had any self-preservation instincts, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near Shanty at the moment.”

“What self-preservation instincts?” Ocellus responded dryly. “I’m pretty certain that you barely have any at this point Pom. Which is sad, but probably necessary for you to continue as a functional being.”

“I’m going to stop communications soon as I have fighting to do, two worlds to help save and an increasingly complex series of emotions to drown out with even worse problems… and no amount of therapy will ever make me be alright again with what I just recently did. Just the thought of a lot of quiet time with my ‘Sky Fire’ or my beloved ‘god puppies’ goes a long way to helping, but actually spending time with them… that’s what I’m fighting for right now.” I started to sneak forward with the trash can absorbing more gun fire from the surrounding smaller EPS and Dormarch took up a protective position at my side as Jeanne, Krosserdog and Shanty started wearing the hulking thing down and they eventually made it turn its back to me and Dormarch. Jeanne is definitely one of the strongest among us and I bet she couldn’t wait to evolve into a Kommo-o, she’ll be a really impressive one I can already tell. “Just be prepared to rush towards Midgar when we can present an opening for you. Just know that we’re doing okay… ish.”

“Alright, we’ll prepare for an opportunity to invade the city proper if you can manage and will leave you to it.” Ocellus stated pleasantly. “Thanks for the update Pom, stay safe in there!”

Following that I threw the trash can and it knocked down a number of troopers and a guard hound. I leapt at the back of what Dormarch had scanned with the Digivice to be identified as a Berserker Brute EP, I thought it would be called ‘Knuckles’ on the account of the huge spikes on its massive boulder sized fists.

I slammed the paralance into its spine, but that barely even made it move and didn’t stagger it at all. I leapt up and kicked off a spike onto the back of its left boulder fist and got onto its right shoulder. It spun around swung its left arm outwards at where I used to be, then it shook it’s shoulder to try and throw me off. The strength of this Brute had to be impressive, except for the design flaw in not being able to actually hit me with its spiked boulder fists in my current position, as it was not a very flexible EP like the Assassin Reapers, and its overall speed left something to be desired.

This didn’t stop the Brute from spinning in its attempts to throw me off. I had already glued onto it with my wool and was bashing it with the paralance in my right leg to do some damage.

Jeanne helped by stabbing at the thing to try and pin it in place, as Dormarch and Krosser blasted it, Dolly was busy with the surrounding smaller EPs still being spawned around us by the PLANT and was getting support from the Search Snake forms of Cruel and Crazy.

Shanty was switching from slashing into the Brute to attacking the surrounding EPs to make sure they couldn’t get shots on me while I held onto it, I felt like I was in a rodeo as I had to open the paralance using my wool to block a fair amount of projectiles coming at me from behind.

Elise finally decided to make a move personally, with a springing leap from her tail she twirled the spear and then jammed it into the Brute’s upper torso at a downwards angle. It was as deeply as Jeanne had her banner spear from its lower torso going in at an upwards angle… still wasn’t enough to finish the Brute off.

“Oh come on, why is this thing so hard to destroy!” Dormarch complained.

“I’ve got it!” Krosserdog, upon dodging a Guard Hound by leaping over a tentacle strike and stomping on its back, he lunged forward from kicking the hound over. The cross on his forehead opened up and his two rifles pointing forward. “Point Blank!”

The rifles on Krosserdog’s arms and forehead all went off at once, his two rifles shots dented the Brute by connecting at the same time. The dented portion of the Brute was weakened enough that when it took the shot from his forehead within the same split second, said shot tore a gaping hole through the Brute, the PLANT behind it, multiple EPs and possibly two or more buildings further on from there.

I dropped to the ground on my hind hooves as the monster dissolved out from under me staring at Krosserdog in surprise.

“Why haven’t you done that before?” I asked as Krosserdogs forehead cross closed up and he took up a stance to aim his rifles about as the territory exploded sending the various EPs surrounding us flying as a territory barrier popped into existence with a new AP making PLANT, I don’t know whether it was fortunate or not that it started immediately producing Rider Zealots. We didn’t exactly have vehicles for them, but their shields more than made up for the fact that the surrounds EPs were mostly all guns all the time.

“One, if I take a hit under my cross, my head part instantly blows apart. It kind of has a big structural weakness flaw, otherwise the closed cross is the most well armored part of my forehead.” Right, Digibots like Krosserdog were more focused on what parts they were equipped with and utilizing, than digital upgrading evolutions like Digimon were and he could functionally swap parts with other digibots if he wanted to change his loadout in some ways. He would have minimal efficiency in using Rokusho or Peppercat’s melee focused combat parts. Different story with Metabee’s parts, as he might be on par with Metabee’s in using them given his specialization as a ranged weapon digibot. After seeing Peppercat without most of her parts, it definitely took a while for recovery if a part got outright destroyed. “Two, the ammunition in my head cannon has a very slow cycle for reload compared to someone like Metabee and should only be used for emergency firepower ma’am. It’s very powerful, but it can only fire once before having to cycle.”

Digibots had better minimum combat potential compared to rookie Digimon, but lower maximum combat potential without a fusion evolution like what Metabee and Rokusho had.

“Okay, fairly understandable then.” I finally said to the robot saluting to me, I turned to the zealots spawning in and some of their shields were already taking shots for us as they made a veritable barrier out of themselves for our sakes.

“Zealots I want you to help us take another PLANT, Dormarch give us a direction to the nearest PLANT as we approach the front gate to Midgar as soon as you can!” Jeanne called out as she and the Zealots protected the freshly acquired PLANT spewing forth vehicle controlling Zealots that had no vehicles to use. “PLANT follow us, stay within the barrier fields of the Zealots!”

“Cheese house, down cola!” All the Zealots yelled as a number of them gathered around Jeanne and a small group protected the PLANT as it started hovering in the direction we were heading in.

We were on a side street near the main road to and from the gate and several Troopers popped from around the corner and fired on the Zealots.

They didn’t last very long when the shielded Zealots leapt impressive distances to tear them down in a flash of stabbing energy blades. The trooper’s guns proved very ineffective at dealing with the Zealot’s personal shields before they got taken down.

Zealots are definitely not helpless, but the Guard Hounds with the troopers definitely gave the Zealots problems as one Guard Hound proceed to wipe out five in short order with its head whip. Zealots could dish out damage and commandeer vehicles to great effect, but they couldn’t take melee attacks very well as they could dish them out. The Guard Hounds were tearing them apart far too quickly.

What was even worse for the Zealots is when the Heli-troopers showed up. The Zealots had a good horizontal lunge, but they were hard pressed to deal with doing vertical leaps at the flying helicopter gauntlet wearing EPs. Heli-troopers not only had guns built into the flight capable gauntlets, but the spinning blades themselves made for some very dangerous weapons all their own when they charged and easily tore through our Zealots.

“Dolly, use Aero those Heli-troopers!” They were getting too close to our PLANT, so I decided to go for Aero for the wide area impact rather than Gravity which at most would knock one or two out of the air.

“Aero!” Dolly answered immediately with swirling winds, said winds immediately downed the ten or so Heli-troopers that showed up and left them vulnerable to the lunging Zealots.

While she was doing that I darted forward to bash a few Guard Hounds, not very dangerous to me as the paralance easily blocked their whip strikes and aside from spitting fireballs sporadically the Guard Hounds weren’t all too dangerous, to those of us who weren’t Zealots at least.

Krosserdog was taking care of the regular troopers alongside Jeanne, who could simply wade through all those bullets from the heli-troopers without injury because of her Iron Defense move.

Elise was sticking close to me and being fairly helpful with thrown knives or sending regular Search Snakes to trip up the Guard Hounds.

At this point I think things were going too well for us, I was wondering when the real horseshoe would drop as we came up to a PLANT that seemed to be producing a lot of Guard Hounds and Heli-troopers.

The Heli-troopers were bothersome to bring down without Dolly constantly using Aero, but I wasn’t going to tell her to constantly do so as she needed to reserve her strength for when we really need that magic.

I brought the paralance up and blocked a series of bullets from above and then slammed the edge of the canopy down on the neck of a charging Guard Hound chopping its whipping tentacle and head off to leave a quickly evaporating body behind me.

I quickly put my paralance back up and moved to the side to block some bullets for Elise who was fairly effective against the flying bipedal nuisances as was Crazy with the machine gun arm from a Sweeper.

After a point the Heli-troopers started using the spinning blades they weren’t using to hover in the air to block small projectiles from Elise, Krosserdog or Dormarch. If they got low enough they’d be charged down by the Zealots slowly forging a path forward for us.

“We’re being hard countered here!” I called out as the regular gun wielding Troopers, that were like mass produced Saber Knights, were coming in smaller numbers and smashed down a Guard Hound as it leapt at me with a jaw wide open and building up to spit fire at me. “The Zealots are good for troopers or ground targets, but those Heli-troopers are becoming a real problem.”

“Well what do we do about that mom?” Dormarch stated before ducking under some rotating blades and then blasted a Wild Bark up into the torso to split the Heli-trooper in half.

“Can we produce anything other than Zealots?” I asked as a Heli-trooper struck the PLANT we recently acquired before he was tackled blade first by a Zealot.

“Maybe Saber Knights? They are definitely a standard of program so simple that any PLANT can produce them.” Dormarch suggested and I turned to Jeanne who was taking on Guard Hounds with relative easy, her armored scales were too tough for the Guard Hound to bite through, but the whips were still damaging them.

“Do it if you can. I’m strong, but even these numbers will wear me down eventually!” Jeanne stated as she bashed a speared through Guard Hound onto a Heli-trooper. “We need to keep pushing for the front gate of Midgar and drawing more attention to ourselves by gaining more AP support, we’re not doing this without them.”

“Mom, can you and Elise cover me while I set up the PLANT to start producing some Saber Knights alongside the Zealots?” Dormarch asked as more Heli-troopers came in.

“Yes, but don’t take too long, we’re doing this on the move!” I stated as Dormarch teleport to being on the PLANT protected by four Zealot energy shields and it stayed in motion as we continued forward. “Tell us when you detect another PLANT we can use.”

“At least we be hoping there is another one we can be using!” Shanty stated as she sliced through the Guard Hounds surging forward at us from down the street. “There be a chill in my spine and I can be feeling Lu Bu getting closer.”

I had no doubt that Shanty can feel him, but why can she feel him is the question I’d rather ask. She wasn’t the one that killed him and she wasn’t even on the winning end of that fight.

“That’s the odd thing about all this, the digivice hasn’t detected another PLANT being nearby for a while. The more a PLANT moves the less of a territory zone it can continue to produce.” Dormarch stated as he worked quickly while I took to blocking shots as Elise continued to throw knives into the Heli-troopers that showed up. Krosserdog was also focusing on the flying enemies whereas everyone else was focusing on the ground trouble.

“Do you be thinking they be keeping us from gaining more PLANTs to be stopping us from being supported by APs?” We were at least three blocks away from the gate Shanty and I didn’t see or hear a hum of the floating jellyfish machines other than our own. “Wished I could be doing a flying slash right about now!”

A heli-trooper swooped down and swung their spinning propeller blades at Shanty only to be deflected and slashed in half vertically by the cane scythe. Shanty had to quickly duck behind me as several Heli-troopers rained fire down on her from above.

“If this Merak guy is as genius as Elise says he is, then the fact that we even got one PLANT to work with should be as much as we can hope for without long ranged support to deal with PLANTs mobilizing.” On average I thought that PLANTs couldn’t move very much or often, once place in a territory they tended to stay in that territory and produce endless waves of combat capable entities. The Sahagin were more of a special case, since it was a PLANT that could move and produce entities at the same time, which was fairly rare. “If PLANTs are being moved out of our path, then we at least know that the PLANT isn’t producing any entities while in motion unless it’s a specialized for it.”

“That’s mostly correct mom and… got it!” The AP PLANT stopped moving for several seconds and multiple Saber Knights and a few more Zealots started appearing after hearing the sound of Dormarch’s chipper tone of success. The Saber Knights started absorbing bullets on their shields and were taking on the Guard Hounds and Troopers with relative ease. Dormarch hopped off the PLANT and looked about. “Not detecting any active PLANTs in the area other than ours, if they moved them out of the way then that’s more to our benefit.”

After the PLANT finished deploying a fresh force of Saber Knights and Rider Zealots, it closed up and started moving again.

The Heli-troopers were still causing problems as they swooped into the street we were on to start firing down us from above as they swept past us. However the Zealots had us covered as they were all walking shield generators up until their shields were broken projectiles weren’t entirely a problem when they closed up ranks. Getting into melee range with a zealot went better for the heli-troopers, up until the Saber Knight showed up and punished them for trying to charge the Zealots.

“Not a single other PLANT?” Asked Jeanne as she managed to pry a Heli-trooper out of the air with her long banner spear and slammed them into the ground, the EP splattered into cubes. “Let’s go the next street over and get a look at the main gate.”

I could only hope that Canard’s team was having better luck than we were, we moved the next street over and the large open street was fairly quiet. Aside from the rush of at least thirty Guard Hounds the Saber Knight still tore those down fairly quickly with simple slashes of their swords and the Zealots assisted, but we still lost a few Zealots to the Guard Hounds. We hadn’t lost a single Saber Knight since they showed up.

“They are not protecting the entrance so heavily?” Jeanne, don’t do what I think you’re about to do. “We should try to get it open, I’m sure we can do it without too much trouble!”

“Oh, you did not just say that…” Dormarch groaned, as did I, Shanty and Dolly as we were barely two blocks away from investigating the entrance.

“Is this the part where something really bad happens because someone tempted…” Krosserdog didn’t get a chance to finish his words when a number of Zealots were blown apart, but at least the Saber Knights held up and protected us from the massive blast as something roared into our path in the street as we tried to make our way for the gate.

The shot had come from the right arm of the tank with what looked like a tin can on top of it.

“Well hello there little… huh, what are you doing here!” Ah, it seems that was Merak’s voice, given the tank seemed to be focusing glowing light on Elise.

“Merak.” Elise said flatly as she tightened her grip on the spear with a swords blade at its tip. “I just want you to know that I’m coming for you and I swear that when I get my claws on you, you’ll regret everything you’ve ever done to me!”

“Heh, then you’ll have to survive The Arsenal and the incoming Ifrit before that, then you’ll have to climb up to me through hordes of program ready to battle to the death.” The tanks arms rose up and took aim at us. “A pathetic introvert noob of a loser like you won’t even survive five minutes fighting with The Arsenal while I’m controlling it!”

An explosion sounded out behind us and we could see flames rising up into the sky. Behind us, still a fair distance away in the plumes of flames rising into the sky, we could see a massive bipedal minotaur like lion thing that was on fire and had rippling muscles it was on the roof of a building and roaring fire out of its mouth. It was obviously immune to fire and would probably be more terrifyingly huge up close and personal.

“Yeah, that is definitely being Lu Bu, but not as a bird.” Shanty said while nodding in the direction of the large fire demon without wings.

“Put the PLANT in production mode Dormarch and move it somewhere hidden off the streets, we’ll hold our ground here.” Jeanne stated as she turned towards the tank and planted the Banner Spear. Dormarch immediately got to work on moving the PLANT. “We’re not afraid of you!”

“Oh you will be soon enough!” Merak stated as the tank, called The Arsenal apparently, took aim for us with all the guns on the left arm rotating and preparing to fire a volley at us.

“Dolly…” I said slowly.

“Yeah?” Dolly said as she was already on my back as we stood behind two Zealots.

“Do we actually have a chance in Tartarus of surviving being sandwiched between that thing and that thing?” What I wanted right now was a little positivity as I pointed to the tank and the large fire demon of revenge coming up on our backs.

“Your version of heck?” Dolly said with a cheerful bark. “Nope, especially if we were alone, but we can still try to do some damage here right?”

“Seriously, this is being why everyone should be stopping with the fate tempting around you!” Shanty stated bluntly as she readied her Cane Scythe and pointed it at The Arsenal.

“I don’t think my weapons can even damage something that well armored, aside from my head cannon.” Krosserdog said weakly. “My guns are more for accuracy than power.”

“Suck it up, we can do this!” Jeanne stated as she doubled up her Iron Defense and waved her banner about. “All APs prioritize defense of the PLANT and our lives.”

“Remember what I said about Merak needing a line of sight to use his portals, keep that in mind and how many he can make at once.” Elise called out to the two unusually large Search Snakes with gems in their heads and they nodded. “Crazy, Cruel… let’s go!”

“Canard don’t respond, but I hope you can hear this.” I said into the visor. “Keep the team quiet, things are about to get exceedingly noisy here. Any Allied Program support you can send our way would be greatly appreciated.”

-Canard-

“The other team is in trouble, can we spare the time to grab and send a PLANT their way?” I suggested as we were still working on how to deal with the cannons or the gate, while they had the enemy distracted. We had a few ideas already of what to do and Sami would be necessary for them.

“Shine and I can split off and do that.” Snake offered.

"Do so, because..." A portion of a building was knocked over in an explosion, a grim frown crossed my beak as Sami silently got our skiff closer to the wall, she looked equally upset about or friends being in danger. "It sounds like they need it."

423. Midgar Meltdown Pt.2.

-Equus, Saddle Arabia, Nagrabah/Neighgrabah Consulate Building, Amira the Saddle Arabian delegate-

“Ma’am, you might want to see this.” One of the guards stated with clear terror on his face.

I walked outside and immediately sighed audibly while dragging my left hoof down my face, because I saw what was about to happen.

“Drive closer so we can hit a building with our swords Luna!” It was Jaded ‘Freaking’ La Perm, waving about a saber in a jolly manner.

“Yay, this shall be the fun my friend!” Along with Luna, pony of the night.

Said Alicorn was currently in the driver’s seat of the small tank slowly trundling its way for us… weren’t those two supposed to be at each other’s throats in a really violent, volatile and over the top manner to such an extent that it means they would never be friends under any circumstance of normalcy?

That’s when the other thought of a horseshoe dropped...

Since when was Jaded La Perm normal? The local Saddle Arabian branch of Capture Bridle Defend had her labeled as a Class 12 Apollyon anomaly… specifically one for Saddle Arabia, to absolutely no one’s surprise. They are quite sure that even when Jaded dies a natural or a highly supernatural unnatural death, that they can't ever truly label her as safe, neutralized or decommissioned with absolute certainty.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar, Central Street from the main gate of Midgar, inside a nearby building, Pom-

We’re not actually here to take care of opening the gate personally, that was the only good thing about this situation as we scattered under fire from some very powerful weapons. The Zealots shields did not last very long against that thing and they could hardly get close to it to do some minimal damage before they were torn apart.

I could hear the tank roll forward as it fired on the support pillar was I taking cover behind inside a building after I smashed my way through the windows, the Zealots and Saber Knights were helpful for tanking the thousands upon thousands of bullets that came flying our way.

I might need to use Thousand Spears Huo, multiple times even, to deal some moderate damage to that heavily armored thing. I don’t think Merak was going to quite give me the time for it though, A portal opened up to my right and I could see the six machine cannons of the left arm spinning up.

I could feel my pupils’ contract as I inhaled, then exhale and shot for the nearby stairs as thousands of bullets sprayed into the position I was just in.

Taking the stairs several steps at a time, I made a mental calculation and stopped on a specific part of the stairs.

“Hey, that thing is kind of nuts huh?” Glad to have you were here Dolly, Dormarch was still working on hiding the PLANT so it isn’t immediately totaled while we try to figure out how to fight The Arsenal.

“It is overkill is what it is.” At least I wasn’t alone, I couldn’t see anyone else from my position.

Even Jeanne was not willing to stand in front of the powerful weapons on that thing, which was a smart move. I peeked around the corner of the stairwell and saw the right arm go off with explosive force leading to the sudden obliteration of a nearby buildings wall.

“Attacking from the side is the only possibility I can see, because attacking it from behind seems just as dumb as taking it head on.” I was pointing out the weapons on the back of the machine for Dolly’s sake.

“What’s the plan?” Dolly asked.

“Wing it, we don’t have a plan here.” Well that quickly took the wind out my supportive companion’s sails.

“Nothing?” Dolly asked.

“Against that thing? Oh my goodness no, we’re not doing anything stupid right now Dolly until we have more ideas of how to deal with it.” I don’t know what that thing was aiming at, but I soon saw a portal opening near me and climbed the stair to dive into a room that promptly got shredded by tons of ammunition. He had to be using at least four portals to keep me pinned… this building looked like an office, I was under a desk with a computer on top and this building had several stories. “There might actually be another way to deal with it…”

I’m thinking right now, from above maybe?

“Are you dead yet? Please gurgle if you are!” I wasn’t rising to Merak’s taunt, again I was still trying to come up with a viable solution to the dangerous machine. Sure he might not have Gilgamesh’s capabilities, but that didn’t mean Merak didn’t know how to ply his weapons very well. “Moon Cell really thinks highly of you and I have no clue why when you’re such a coward.”

Dolly growled slightly at the implication, but I kept her calm. Merak wasn’t wrong, I was being a coward at the moment and I was staying safe, but I was also trying to think of ways to deal with the tank as I heard it firing on the others and hoped they were okay in whatever building they put in the way of that things weapons.

The portals were at least vibrant and noticeable, peeking around the space, I quickly made my way for the stairs and went up.

“I have an idea or two, but I don’t know how well they will work.” I stated as I climbed the stairs with Dolly on my back.

“Bark Breaker?” Dolly asked as she knew I could deal with the armor of that vehicle with it, but it would take a little time to find a frequency that worked. Unless I wanted to do a Howl Breaker and ruin my throat inexorably.

“Yeah, the thing looks like it was built with being able to deal with a variety of problems, except for one.” Being attacked by infantry from above. I’m starting to think that’s one of the reasons why a number of heli-troopers are around, that and aerial advantage because we don’t have any APs that can deal with flyers. “Might want to try it at range first though before trying to get close.”

Speaking of allied programs, ours were being torn to shreds as I came to the third floor and looked out the window down into the street to see Zealots being run down despite their best efforts to damage the armor on that tank. Saber Knights were about as effective, but their physical shields actually made them last longer provided that it was just the machines guns from the head of The Arsenal firing on them.

“Should be close enough to try… stay on me Dolly.” While I didn’t hear Dolly say anything her constant weight and sometimes affectionate nuzzles was comforting as was knowing Dormarch was currently alright and not having this tank pointed at him. “RrrrrRRRRRRRrrrRRRRRRRRggggghhhrrrrrrrrrRrRrRrRr… yip!”

Once I had had a decent idea of the frequency to use on The Arsenal, My Bark Breaker went out and that was when The Arsenal surprised me when it quickly pulses out a short range powerful noise in the form of a shockwave that sent some Zealots flying and sprawling off of it. More importantly it stopped my Bark Breaker, somehow Merak had been aware of it.

Okay, so that thing had some defense against my armor shredding ability… making it functionally immune unless I do it point blank like how Krosserdog had dealt with that Brute EP and it just showed the capacity for stunning anyone that was even remotely near it. This ruined any plan I had of jumping on it from above and attacking it that way, unless I was quick about it as I wouldn’t be able to stay on it for prolonged periods of time before that sound pulse got me or anyone else.

I quickly dove to the side as the right arm fired on my location and tore a large chunk out of the building, I could faintly feel Dolly whimpering in our bond. My ears hurt from the noise of the destruction and the fact that a cannon round passed through the space we were previously in... no wonder Dolly was whimpering, that had to hurt her ears worse than it hurt mine and that was on top of the pulse to stop my Bark Breaker.

I peeked out of the hole and saw Elise throwing Search Snakes from cover of a building across from me, they were quickly electrified by the bottom of The Arsenal firing out blasts of lightning energy that slid along the ground. How many things could that thing counter?

Both arms flipped in half and I saw flames building up in them as they pointed toward a wide eyed Elise, she quickly stretched her arms out and pulled herself to a different building rooftop as an entire building was lit up in flames. Cruel was sticking with Elise, Crazy was on another rooftop and firing away with that gun and trying to do some damage as minimal as it was to use a gun against a tank.

Bark Blast, Howl Blast, Bark Breaker… Howl Breaker? Didn’t have an idea how to do something like a howl with spitting liquid magic explosive energy yet. Now was not a time to be experimenting anyway. I could do Howl Breaker, but I’d have to be right on top of the machine hope that my howl could cancel out the pulse, didn’t think that was…

I quickly sprung towards the ceiling and clung there as numerous lasers fired from the machines back and curved through the space I once occupied bending in at the location from various hard to dodge direction.

Clambered out and up the wall while inhaling and keeping my eye on its actions, I exhaled and quickly dodged a salvo of bullets that came tearing up after me and once I reached a window of the sixth floor, I grabbed the ledge above and bucked my way through the window landing inside the building as it took hundreds of bullets for me and Dolly.

“Don’t see why Moon Cell thinks you’re a top priority, you’ve got nothing on The Arsenal and I know it!” Well Merak wasn’t wrong and turned to fire those curving lasers at Krosserdog plinking away at The Arsenal’s armor like Crazy was. Krosserdog ducked back into the window as the building he was in received some damage. “Is there any among you that can actually deal damage any to The Arsenal? Sure that vibration attack was cute, but you’ll never be able to use it as my machine can detect such threats.”

Four portals appeared around The Arsenal and I noted when I glanced out the window that each was pointed in a different direction from in front, behind and the sides of it. He could literally see and react to anything in any direction.

Gilgamesh was still fresh in my mind, but at least Gilgamesh could launch a near infinite amount of weapons at us… Merak didn’t have any storage capacity like the Gate of Babylon, there’s also his ability to alter the size of energy and objects that go through his portals. That and Merak can actively deny anyone the use of his portals, Gilgamesh couldn’t do that, but at least Merak’s portals couldn’t effect living things as far as altering the size of them.

“Shanty, where are you…” I tried to glance around and it seemed even Shanty was wary of approaching or fighting that thing in close range combat.

Jeanne was a close combat specialist, I was a mid to short range, Shanty had short range and some vague long range with her water attacks, Krosserdog was primarily long range and still somewhat capable in short, Dormarch fought mostly at range and rarely liked getting in close and Dolly was primarily close range unless using magic… I might have an idea…

Dolly can you lend me the ability to use two magic spells? Our familiar bond allowed us to use each other’s abilities, I had a higher magic capacity, but Dolly had the capability to use specific magic spells.

“Sure thing… also ow… don’t talk so loud, even in my head.” Dolly whined.

I noted the marble in Dolly’s skateboarding helmet was glowing slightly, that wasn’t ominous at all and I could feel magic coming off of it. I felt Dolly transfer the two spells I wanted to use and some knowledge of how to concentrate and aim the effects I wanted. Let’s see how well I can use them.

I tried to use float, but a ring of energy formed around me and I felt like muttering the strange symbols I felt going through my mind… this wasn’t how Dolly used them, she just used them immediately!

I guess that’s a difference for me using her spells. After a moment I completed the… casting I want to say… of the first spell.

“Float!” Calling this out while point out the target through the window with my right hoof. I watched as The Arsenal that was my target suddenly launched into the air, since it had been firing its left machine cannon arm on Jeanne’s position it was currently spiraling in the air out of control. I had a sixth sense for how long the Float spell would last and I didn’t have much time to pull this off. Okay… next spell, another coalescing of energy and I was muttering while trying to focus my next spell on the target.

“What the heck? Darn it!” Merak underestimated us slightly, he moved his portals and started using them to get shots off at me, Elise, Jeanne and anyone else who was in visual range of the portals while the machine floated out of control.

Dolly thankfully covered me with her board as I was still casting as bullets came spraying at us through the window, I could see the problem with being unable to move until the spell was finished casting and if I was hit before then I felt it would drop the spell. Thankfully I had managed to finish the casting with my final bit of muttering.

“Gravity!” The result of this spell was impressive, The Arsenal showed itself to be weak to magic when it slammed into the ground with incredible force and weight on its back damaging that curving laser thing.

“Hah, not feeling so hot now are you Merak!” Elise heckled, until the machine was lifting itself off the ground with its gun arms.

That was when Merak revealed a new problem… the backside underneath the curving laser spewing device opened up and out of the two panels floating several small machines. Slowly The Arsenal started to be covered in a powerful energy barrier, a unicorn could not create a shield that looked quite that powerful… though it was notable that the floating machines couldn’t cover themselves while they covered The Arsenal with this shield.

After a short bit of muttering, I managed to cast the spell again.

“Float!” Only to find that when I did, nothing happened. “Oh… those drone thing can cancel out or dampen magic.”

Not only that, but I watched as Krosserdog’s deflect entirely off the energy field the small machines were making. Goodness knows where such technology came from, but it certainly ruined my mood. The machine itself had a clear weakness to magic, but unless we wanted to go down there and deal with those smaller machines we were going to have a hard time damaging The Arsenal anymore until those things were taken care of.

So I started muttering the next spell.

“Heh, is that all you got? Should have had the Barrier Drones going from the start!” Merak stated with clear confidence as I concentrated on one of the drones.

“Gravity!” One of said floating Barrier Drones slammed into the ground with such force that it blew apart in a shower of metallic parts, those thing were like the Sweeper… it was built and not generated.

“Wow… with your magic capacity you can do that far more than I can.” Yes Dolly, but without you I wouldn’t be able to even do this in the first place. It’s not my magic and I wouldn’t be capable of it normally.

“So it’s you that’s doing that… you might actually be a true threat after all!” Hearing Merak say that, I was already running deeper into the building as a huge blast from The Arsenal’s right arm tore a chunk out of it behind me.

He can’t have too many of those barrier drones if they were manufactured and not generated, he only had so many he can deploy to protect The Arsenal from damage. We deal with them and maybe I could use magic on the machine again.

I picked myself up and heading towards the nearest set of stairs to start climbing them, once I was up the next floor I went towards one of the windows in a corner of an office space.

Huh, we’re getting more APs to deal with the arriving EPs where were they coming… ah, Canard sent us help or more specifically Snake was. As the APs showing up were Assassin Caerbannogs and they were tearing apart the Heli-troopers with their rope darts or just plain ripping them out of the air. Very helpful to have an extra EP type spawning nearby at the moment, especially ones that can deal with the flyers we were having problems with.

The building The Arsenal lit on fire was still going up in flames, despite being made of stone… might want to avoid being hit directly by the flames the machine could spew in that case, as the nearby building was eroding from the heat. At least it was creating a lot of light, this part of the city was somewhat dark if not for the flaming wingless demon in the distance getting closer.

“Heli-troopers ferret them out of the buildings or at least get me a visual on them, Troopers and Guard Hounds deal with the arriving enemy support!” Merak ordered and I could see Heli-troopers diving through several windows on the buildings around here.

Three Heli-troopers smashed through the nearby window of the building I was in and after smashing through the glass they rolled into standing position looking in various direction. Unfortunately I couldn’t hide and they already spotted me.

“There you are!” A portal opened above us and I quickly darted to the side as hundreds of rounds rained from above and brought the Paralance out to block the hundreds of bullets coming from the three Heli-troopers propeller gauntlets.

I felt a shot pass across my left thigh as I continued to block shot after shot coming at me from in front of me. Just a graze, I’m fine.

“Pom behind us!” Dolly warned and I dived to the side. Hundreds of rounds of ammunition spewed forth and damaging various bits of office equipment as I continued to keep the paralance trained in the direction of the three flying troopers.

What… wait… could Merak actually see through the EPs eyes and… he could make portals based on those visuals of what they were seeing!? Well that just made him even more dangerous to deal with.

Dolly dropped from my back and slid along the floor off to the side and then down an aisle in the hopes of getting behind the heli-troopers, since Merak was currently focusing most of his attention my way. My cuddly Dalmatian partner could hopefully take them out while I kept dodging portals opening up to thousands of rounds of ammunition flying through or blocking the Heli-troopers firing on me.

Another round tore through my right hind leg causing me to falter and enter a squat, the left hind leg had been a grazing wound. This shot had gone straight through my thigh making it hard to stand. I quickly sealed off the injury with my wool and manipulated my leg with said wool to keep moving while my muscle spasms in agony from the pain.

I didn’t need a Sitrus Berry yet, but I was going to very soon if I kept getting these kinds of injuries.

I managed to duck back and avoid another salvo from a portal above me when Dolly finally got into position.

Dolly quickly slammed into the middle of the three heli-troopers jamming the nose of her board into its spine, before kicking up and off to sling out and wrap the strap around the neck of the one on the left.

With a quick jerk Dolly snapped that one’s neck and slung herself around the still standing dead EP’s body in a display of incredible momentum control to use the quickly dissolving body to absorb a bunch of bullets from the last Heli-trooper standing. The Dalmatian launched off the falling and dissolving body after finishing her swing and forward to launch a flying kick into its head with a full momentum boosted strike to knock it down.

I leapt forward with my hind legs springing wool to bring the paralance over my left shoulder and brought it down to take out the EP, then swiftly grabbed Dolly in my right hoof as I rolled into bursting through a nearby door and out of sight as another portal opened in the room.

The room we ended up in was fairly small… I bade Dolly stay quiet while I figured out how we were going to attack The Arsenal, because right now the incoming EPs still held more territory than we currently did.

“We need a way out of this…” A rope dart lowered and I looked up at the Caerbannog looking down at us, Dolly leapt onto my back when prompted as I grabbed it and we were swiftly pulled up into the ceiling panels with them.

A second later the room was decimated in a shower of shots from the guns on the disk shaped head of The Arsenal on top of the can shaped body. The outer wall of that room was now basically full of holes.

Also I think Merak has lost track of us and was distracted by something or someone else. I motioned for the Caerbannog to lead us out of here or upwards, afraid to make any noise that would attract a nosey portal to get an eye on us.

The Caerbannog nodded and started led us to a ladder that led up to the roof access, I just jumped onto the wall and signaled that the Caerbannog should get a move on. The rabbit nodded as I climbed my way up the shaft of the building towards the roof.

“Okay, so that tank is terrifying and invincible with those drone things and this is the most guns we’ve had aimed at us since those mercenaries wanted a piece of you.” Sounds about right Dolly. “Again, do we have a game plan considering the magic one was a bust?”

“It wasn’t entirely a bust Dolly, we know that that machine is definitely weak to magical attack.” My problem with using Dolly’s magic is that it takes me time to use it, compared to Dolly just instantly casting it as long as she had the magic for it. While I had to do some really strange chanting to make it work. “Those barrier drones are protecting it from being directly damaged until they themselves are taken care of, until then the tank might as well be invincible with the shield those drones are producing to stop magic from having any effect on it. My method of using your magic is a bit slow Dolly, so we really can’t rely on that. If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them.”

We were near the top of the building when I heard the roar of something and looked down to see energy surging up the shaft. I quickly got to the door and gained access to the maintenance room as the shaft was filled with a powerful beam of energy.

“Did my Lazy Laser get her?” Merak asked idly as The Arsenal continued to project his voice, he probably doesn’t even care that we can still hear him talking out loud. I quickly exited the maintenance room onto the roof and immediately launched forward to jam the Paralance into a Heli-troopers spine. “I guess not.”

I dove to the side and a portion of the roof was hit by an explosive force from The Arsenal’s right cannon. Probably used the loss of the Heli-trooper to determine my location somewhat, I could see a portal opening up to get a visual line of sight on me and I dodge out of the way. Could he see out both sides of the portal or just one side? I need that to be answered eventually if we’re going to deal with him.

Looking down at The Arsenal I saw a bubble of water bound towards it and a scythe slash cut one of the drones in half. Shanty had earned his attention and while the Arsenal was turning to fire on the lovable goat with the Bounding Bubble, Jeanne and Elise dropped down and stabbed through the third drone with their two spears at once.

Crazy was firing upon The Arsenal on another rooftop immediately as the shield dropped, we were high up enough that The Arsenal would have to aim its arms up at us or Merak would have to use portals to fire on the elite version of a Search Snake with one of Elise’s personalities. Cruel was next to Crazy and was looking about, Cruel noticed my gaze and then pointed to me and then The Arsenal that was successfully fending of Shanty, Jeanne and Elise all at once.

“Dolly, can you use Aerora… I just need you to produce it how I’m imagining it!” I sent the image of what I wanted Dolly to do and she immediately called it out.

“Aerora!” The green winds immediately erupted around The Arsenal as it was in the middle of firing thousands of shots from its left arm at Shanty, said shots were soon being swept up in the green winds and was buffeted the machine with its own munitions and the magic was moderately damaging.

Jeanne and Elise were busy dodging the curving lasers launching from the things back and getting back into cover as being out in the open around that thing was a quick death sentence. I looked for Krosserdog and found him sniping a few Heli-troopers out of the air.

Dormarch was working on some Guard Hounds and was personally leading some APs on the ground to keep the area clear of EPs.

“Darn it, releasing more barrier drones. Also, I’m bringing in a Hundred Gunner to help!” That sounded ominous as Merak’s tank deployed three more Barrier Drones to make the magic of the Aerora start doing no damage as the tank once again became protected. “Can’t believe you lot are causing me so much trouble! Activating wind protection, while I’m at it.”

The tank glowed green underneath the barrier being produced by the three drones for a few seconds, I’m going to take it to mean that we probably shouldn’t rely on Aerora to deal damage to it if we bring its barrier down.

Nobody was willing to point out that Merak was talking out loud at the moment as we were mostly busy dealing with a variety of things at the moment. Shanty quickly went around the corner of a building into an alleyway and both Jeanne and Elise retreated as well once the drones were in place.

I started moving towards the side of the roof that was closest to the direction Krosserdog was in and I launched forward and shifted my wool for gliding as I launched upward into the air with Dolly clinging to me once more.

We needed to work together to bring down The Arsenal, so a little communication about what each of us should be doing would help. I already told Dormarch to keep the area as clear of EPs as he can manage with the help from the Assassin Caerbannogs that are in the area. Dormarch was a little upset that he wouldn’t be helping me directly, but agreed that it was important to keep the area clear and hunt for the location of nearby PLANTs sending those Troopers, Heli-troopers and Guard Hounds after us.

I launched across the rooftops and hopped between buildings while diving, gliding and changing direction as Merak started focusing on trying to hit me with those rotating machine guns.

I flipped in the air and used the paralance to take the impacts of the bullets that launched us higher into the air until Merak stopped shooting us with the left gun and started to fire the right. The Paralance shook in my hooves as we were launched by the impact of the right arm cannon’s shot impacting with it launching us far past where Krosserdog was.

I quickly closed up the Paralance and quickly glided towards where Krosserdog was and landed on the roof near him

“Krosserdog, I want you to focus as much as you can on those barrier drones and the Heli-troopers, don’t worry about Troopers or Guard Hounds.” I said as I came up to him, he nodded with a serious demeanor and turned to start firing accurate shots on one of the barrier drones, the drones notably couldn’t move too far away from The Arsenal without weakening the barrier protecting it. “I’m going to gather Jeanne, Elise and Shanty so we can start taking the fight directly to The Arsenal, we can’t keep running forever and that thing is not going to let us get away. I have an idea of how to deal with it now.”

“Roger!” Krosserdog stated before I leapt for the roof and started to glide and avoid portals opening in the air to send crisscrossing numerous shots through the air around me until I got to the street where I entered a roll and ended in a crouch to block with the paralance.

“Elise and Jeanne hit and run tactics when the barrier comes down, until then distract and deal with any EPs that are too close to the fight! Elise have Cruel and Crazy focus entirely on dealing with the nearby EPs and keeping them off of us! Shanty if you can hear me, I need you to ram your bounding bubble into that tank as hard as you can without endangering yourself when the shields go down, aim for the sides or back! We need to attack it from multiple directions, evade or defend while the gun arms and head are focused on you.” I wasn’t going to talk about what I was doing as I was already running towards the tank under fire with the Paralance shuddering under the impacts and I was using my wool to move instead of my muscles to actually hold the paralance steady, much less stay standing as I forced my way towards it. “I must be insane to think I can successfully charge and fight it Dolly… when it loses its barrier, give me ability to cast float again?”

As I approached, the barrier drones were being repeatedly struck by Krosserdog’s highly accurate shots and were taking a lot of damage.

“Eh, I kind of thought it was about time you figured something out, at least on the whole leadership thing.” Dolly commented blankly, but looked raring to go from my back even if she was a little light on magic after using Aerora. “Also, it’s you. While I totally trust trust you Pom, this seems a bit eh… suicidal?”

“It’s not that I want to be the leader or charging at a death dealing tank Dolly, it is just that I realized we’re currently supposed to be as distracting as possible.” Nothing was more distracting than having a lambkin running straight at the danger than away from it screaming and possibly lighting themselves on fire or doing something else that was highly ill advised.

I was going at it full tilt while avoiding portal loads of bullets and blasting cannon shots from above, behind, left and right as I approached the obviously dangerous tank in the most haphazard dumb manner possible, I hoped Krosserdog could deal with those barrier drones soon.

Probably looked braver than I currently felt as I rolled, leapt and blocked while continuing to encroach on it with Dolly clinging to me tightly like a limpet and even avoided the tank when it charged forward on its wheels at me in an attempt to crush me under its bulk.

Now that I was this close to it, I just had to survive being close to it for as long as possible... heh... no pressure whatsoever!

424. Midgar Meltdown Pt.3.

-Origin Space, Bahamut-

“Ifrit is likely not happy about his current state.” I stated purely for the fact that Lu Bu was getting much closer to the fight at hand.

“I’m fairly surprised Pom is actually going to fight the tank directly.” Arceus didn’t seem too surprised from the look on their face. No, it was surprise at something else, he was watching his children at war with Moon Cell.

“She’s not fighting the tank, she’s distracting it, big difference. Very much using different intent here, otherwise she would actually be intending to actually defeat it than just wearing it down.” That was a decent point my sister Tiamat made, Pom was looking like she was ready to wear it down than actually outright beat it. Now how much would she wear it down though? “Now that would be surprising, because I think she can actually do it. Beat it and the possessed Ifrit I mean, just with a lot of help. I don’t envy the state her body would be in if she intended to beat both of them, it’s a good thing her intent isn’t to fight and win huh? Such a bright fluffy mortal.”

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar, Central Street to the main gate, Pom-

I stayed crouched low while holding myself up as a Drone was taken down by Krosserdog, Elise was using Search Snakes or throwing knives at the drone in an attempt to deal with the other two. Until the drones were dealt with we really couldn’t damage The Arsenal at all.

Dolly you better stay on me and have my back! I mean that literally, you better be watching out for what’s happening behind us to make sure nothing sneaks up on us while I draw the tanks attention.

If I falter while holding the Paralance near the tank, then we’ll likely die full of holes. We had to give Canard and the others all the time in the world. That’s when I could hear the right cannon began charging up, wished I could see through the… okay I could now see through the canopy of the paralance to see the right cannon on The Arsenal building up to fire, I wonder if it was one-way?

This is going to make me question what this spear couldn’t do or if it was really a spear at all…

Slight change in plans. Hold onto the idea of letting me cast float until I actually ask for it Dolly, can you absorb and force the incoming momentum back into me in the next few seconds?

Dolly didn’t know if she could handle too much force all at once, I just wanted her to absorb as much as she could and force it back into me to wobble counter a drone.

Being out on the streets, my back was to a building and I really didn’t want to plow through any more walls with my body than I had to in life. Still I hopped into the air and the blast from the right cannon struck the canopy of the paralance, I know wouldn’t be alive without this thing being indestructible.

We blasted backwards in the air and I felt Dolly funneling the surge of momentum from the impact right into me, my body started shaking horribly as I landed.

“Great, just what I needed an OP indestructible item in the hands of my enemy!” Merak stated loudly.

“Hooves!” I called back while my body violently shook as I coiled the wool around my hind legs ready to kick off. This was moderately painful, but the pain would be worth it if this immediately took out a drone, I peeked over the canopy to look at one of the drones hovering around the tank on the street.

“Whatever, trying to kill you here!” Lasers arced out from the back of The Arsenal and I inhaled, knowing that the lasers could change directions I exhaled once they neared and managed to avoid either Dolly or me being hit by their suddenly curving behind the Paralance to come at me from all sides. “That Hundred Gunner can’t get here soon enough!”

With my exhale I launched forth using the wool to spring myself and slammed the tip of the paralance into a drone’s eye and it combusted blasting me backwards, the paralance shaking violently in my hooves as Dolly used the momentum from the blast to charge up another wobble counter.

We could do wobble counters as much as we wanted, provided my body can even handle cashing the checks from impacts including explosions like that. It was still painful even if my body was shaking less violently from the drone exploding than the shot from the right arm cannon on the tank.

I waited for Krosser or Elise to finish off the last barrier drone, since I wanted to hit the tank with the weaker wobble counter. Slowly I started to circle around to the right of the tank while drawing a massive amount of fire from its left six rotating machine cannons.

It’s at this point that I realized Dolly was still charging me up from all the smaller impacts of the bullets hitting the canopy of the paralance, well it wasn’t like I exactly asked her to stop. Though I should really tell her when the ramping up of my wobble was getting too much to control.

On the street behind the tank I could see Jeanne stabbing through a trooper and slamming their body down onto a Guard Hound, good to know she’s doing fine, but where was Shanty? I could feel Dormarch readying to jump in and was in range to Search Hunter his way into an attack, he was keeping himself busy with a Guard Hound or two with help from some Zealots and was watching me carefully.

Dormarch was likely looking out for my health as usual, he’s a sweet little baby… considering his age he still technically was one. Does digital time effect maturity for Digimon faster? My poor son, he’s spent most of his life fretting over me and fighting, he really deserves better than this and a nice quiet life at home. My home in Huoshan.

I hoped Shanty was ready to go on the attack as that last barrier drone was getting badly damaged by the constant shots from Krosserdog, the Search Snakes biting into it and flying knives from Elise and the rarely focused fire from Crazy moving along the walls of the nearby buildings. Crazy was as her name suggests, but at least she was helping with the APs and making sure I could even stand out in the open like this with Dolly covering my rear.

Come on, fall already, all this wobble was getting quite painful!

My eyes lit up as a shot from Krosserdog blew through the barrier drone and I immediately kicked off as the barrier dropped and arced through the air as a white blur, to stab the center of the machine’s cylinder.

The enter thing rocked with the impact and I might have cracked the armor slightly before I used my rear legs to kick off of it, glad I did as flamed erupted from around the machine in attempt to light me and Dolly on fire.

“Woohoo that was a good one!” Glad to hear you in good spirits Dolly, because that wouldn’t be anywhere close to nearly enough to finish this thing off.

Following my attack that, Elise dropped down on the machine from above ramming the sword like tip of her spear halfway into the machine, before pushing off with her coiled tail. Jeanne struck out at one of the machine’s wheels damaging it slightly with her banner spear.

Shanty came flying in and rocked the machine with a heavy impact from behind that damaged, dented and cracked the armor before she went bouncing off into a nearby alley as the six machine cannons took aim and fired at her.

“Going to have to do better than that!” At Merak’s taunting the tank’s bottom half started glowing, Elise launched sideways through a buildings window, Jeanne leapt quite an impressive distance backwards and I frantically slammed the edge of the canopy into the street and crouched behind it as blasts of electrical energy flooded the area and spread out from the tank. “How about I heat things up for you!”

The arms on the tank flipped outwards in half revealing flames building up in their middle sections. Flames sprayed outwards from the tank and wherever they landed they stuck to and burned, I was trapped in the street by a walls of flames on either side of me.

“It’s getting kind of hot out here Pom.” That was a reminder that Dolly was immune to cold, not extreme heat. I used my wool to protect Dolly from the wavering air.

“I know that Dolly.” I definitely thoroughly had Merak’s attention given he chose to trap me instead of deal with Jeanne attack the wheels and back of the tank and had to jump back again to avoid another electrical surge of lightning.

The canopy of the paralance absorbed the attack perfectly fine, so I hadn’t a good reason to move yet.

Shanty came back in bouncing off the top of the machine and sending a blast of water into the small hole that Elise had made in the top of The Arsenal’s armor. Her bounce led her to climbing the side of the building Elise had gone into before the wall of flames prevented the naga from helping me down here.

The tanks arms then started filling with fire again, only this time small portals opened up…

“Pom behind us!” I looked behind us and saw two massive portals, we were about to be hit with a massive barrage of flames.

“Shanty, help!” I called out for help, Shanty launched into the sea of flames without a second though and wrapped her Bounding Bubble around us as she bounced off the ground and up to the building that was to my right a second ago.

We avoided being swallowed by a massive stream of flames that filled the street where Dolly and I had been seconds ago. Yeah, that wasn’t survivable by Dolly or me.

“Are you being okay?” Shanty asked as she gave us an air pocket and rolled us along the corridor as another portal opened up behind us and started funneling the massive flames at us.

“When have I ever been, just keep us moving?!” I shouted back in panic as she drove the bubble to smashing through a window into the alleyway’s wall she had been in a minute prior and she bounced us sideways so that we were now behind the tank, as flames erupted from out of the building above us. “Start heading towards the massive gate, we need to make it seem like it’s still our end goal!”

“That should be being fairly easy… whoa!” Shanty covered us completely in water and redirected multiple direction changing lasers away from us by refracting the energy away from us.

The top half of The Arsenal swung around and started spewing hundreds of shots at us from its left arm closed up and I quickly poked the Paralance out the side of the bubble and used it to block the salvo of bullets coming at us as Shanty kept moving us for the gate.

Merak soon made the tank’s bottom half turn around and it charged right for us, didn’t see where Jeanne got to, but Krosserdog was still firing on The Arsenal from the rooftops and was doing some damage at least.

“Alley to the left!” At my call Shanty veered us into an alleyway as the massive charging machine passed by us and then swerved about to start rolling backwards towards the main gate. The street behind it was still embroiled in flames that weren’t dying down, noting that I really didn’t want to be hit with those.

Glancing up in the air I could see Canard on the barely fixed skiff doing something along the middle section of the big walls, we had to keep Merak’s attention in this direction then.

“Don’t let Merak see the skiff and keep up the good work Shanty.” I whispered to Shanty, she nodded to me with a toothy grin as I popped out of the bubble with Dolly to once again face down The Arsenal on hoof as I ran into the street and brought the paralance up. I saw Elise swing into position to clinging to a building to my right, she got past the flames just fine I see, as did Cruel who was riding on her shoulders… I had some idea of where Crazy was, since I did see a stream of shots hit the redirecting laser producer on the machines back.

Every bit of damage, no matter how minimal it was so far, was eventually going to be helpful.

“Like I’m ever going to let you get to the gate or lose sight of Moon Cell’s goal to deal with a threat like you!” Merak sneered loudly, as several portals opened up around me.

Bigger canopy now, immediately, please!

I planted the back end of the paralance and pushed downward, then I heard the sounds of rain… or was that the thousands of impacts of bullets hitting us all angles except from below.

The Paralance had us covered and I was gripping the shortened shaft tightly in my hooves, it had thankfully shifted to fit my defensive needs as we were now kind of inside of a very small tent made from the canopy of the shape shifting paranormal parasol lance weapon.

When the sound of bullets bouncing off the canopy of the paralance stopped I stood up and it returned to be more lance shaped.

“And it shape shifts too, what kind of loot goblin did you get that thing off of?!” No idea what Merak was talking about when in references to goblins, though if I’m right it sounded like Puckwudgie if I’m guessing things correctly. Merak also sounded angry that the paralance protected us from being shredded by the bullet storm.

“If I said it was actually fairy would you believe me?” I stated back with a slight hint of humor in my voice.

“Oh and I’m sure you’re next going to tell me a lady in a lake exists too!” Merak responded in turn.

“Aren’t you a soul summoned from some kind of soul containment device to fight for the cause of a magical genocidal soul controlling machine?” Also didn’t Oberon tell me to say that ‘the lady of the lake says hello’ to that sword wielding dog Pokémon? Don’t know where they are right now, so I really couldn’t do that yet, but I’m still keeping it in mind.

“Yeah, so what?” Before the side of the The Arsenal was slammed into by Shanty who lashed out with a sword shaped mass of liquid that damaged the right side of the tank’s cylinder somewhat, it actually cut into the armor a bit to reveal more armor underneath… how tough was this thing and why do I put myself in these situations?! “Ugh, who built this system so that you can only have three barrier drones active at once! I can understand why only three drones at once, but come on, what weapon making genius limits their imagination after building such a beautiful contraption to do the fighting for them!”

Good question actually, also this tank wouldn’t be nearly as effective if not for Merak’s portal generating ability. He couldn’t alter the size of living beings, but the size of those flames that were still burning the street behind me had almost engulfed me completely.

Three barrier drones came out and of course the tank was made invincible by the shields they projected as I ran towards the right of the tank building up for a shot with its right arm. It actually wasn’t aimed at me this time and luckily Shanty managed to avoid the blast took a chunk out of another building, so I leapt up and to the right of the tank and struck at a Barrier Drone damaging it slightly before it fired a blast of energy at me.

I got clipped by the blast and this resulted in shocking both me and Dolly.

“Agh…” Still managed to stay upright after landing on my hooves and managed to bring the lance up to block a second attempt to shock me into a having heart attack. Lightning was not my friend, kind of wish I was a pegasus at the moment they can handle lightning and shocks better than any pony… not that such shocks couldn’t be lethal to them they were just more resilient to being shocked.

“Okay, ow… can’t feel my body… at least you can still move right?” Dolly stated as she took a portion of that grazing shock, and yet she could still bark... I’m not sure that’s how paralysis works when it comes to lightning shocks.

“Dolly, can I get that ‘float magic’ I asked for earlier now!” I felt Dolly lend me her magic ability and I took to casting the spell, it was a short one and I thankfully managed to get it off before the third drone fired upon me after building up energy. “Float!”

The target of my spell was not the drones or The Arsenal that was currently functionally immune to everything anyone could due to it thanks to the energy field protecting it.

No, I chose a better target for the float spell… myself!

I kicked off the ground and practically flew up to a wall of the building opposite of where I had been standing and watched as an energy blast struck and scorched the ground as I hung onto a window sill to the tanks right.

Making my body lightweight was really quite helpful, I barely weight seventy pounds already… I’m practically feeling weightless now and this would help greatly with maneuverability. Also it helped with mimicking Fleet Cunning Doe movements as my reindeer friend Velvet could do them.

Float on allies gives them controlled limited flight up to a certain height as long as you were above something solid or liquid like the ground or a pool, otherwise you’d float downwards until you were above something solid or liquid to the maximum floating height I could reach.

When float use on enemies it makes them spiral out of control into the air leaving them open and vulnerable to ranged attacks and feasibly close ranged attacks if unpredictable flailing wasn’t an issue. Really useful magic in almost any situation, like right now!

I kicked off the building and moved to hovering above the machine having drawn the attention off of firing at Shanty as I moved to be above the machine that aimed both its guns up at me.

I rolled in the air dodging a massive energy shot and a small volley of bullets to dive down at one of the barrier drones while avoiding the massive energy shot as it came out of a portal horizontally trying to hit me again and jammed the drone with the lance. I swiftly flew away from it and the shock it send my way, while avoiding that massive blast of redirected energy yet again.

“Sorry, still trying to get over some fears I’d rather not let our enemy know about!” It was about this time that Jeanne finally reappeared in the battle and speared a barrier drone entirely through with her banner spear from above and then she launched it at the third barrier drone to do some damage.

While this was happening Merak was focusing on trying to burst down Elise who was proving to be fairly agile and capable of sticking to walls like Shanty or I could. I mean her search snakes could cling to walls, so I shouldn’t be too surprised to find out she could do the same as well. Seriously, how did Elise get all those abilities from gaining something as simple as the ability of ‘resurrection’, there had to be more to it like a theme related to what a more mythical naga might be known for.

Elise said she was normal snake lady prior to gaining the power of ‘resurrection’ and had no other powers before the whole ‘trapped in a facility and tortured a lot’ thing occurred. Still kind of concerned she could still use me as a pillow and sleep so soundly on me not too long after what I did.

Crazy fired a burst from the top of a nearby building that threw off the barrier drone aiming a splash of lightning my way. I narrowly avoided the beam of energy in the air with an aerial backflip and then had to shield from a volley of bullets as even when he was attacking Elise with those direction changing lasers, Merak could still find the time to fire up at me floating above the tank.

Elise looked to be okay in dodging the lasers and only got a few burns as she took cover behind a pillar in a building. Said pillar wouldn’t last more than a direct shot from the right cannon on The Arsenal.

The feeling of flying felt so right, wish it currently didn’t as I knew exactly what the reason for feeling so keen on it was. With that thought in mind I dodged through an array of wildly curving lasers while blocking a few with the paralance to escape being boxed in and burned from all angles I dove down into strike the barrier drone I was focusing on with a lot of blunt force damage it somewhat.

If I was fighting to destroy this thing, then we’d definitely be on the losing end even if we hadn’t taken to many injuries… the thing was putting out so much powerful attacks that I really doubt Shanty, Jeanne or Elise could stop moving for as long as I could and survive without a shield of equivalent strength to an absolutely indestructible object. Just call it a hunch, but with the surrounding buildings being either destroyed, on fire or both doesn’t spell good times.

Being in the unfortunate position of tanking attacks was my job and I had to keep Merak directed at me to stop him from hurting the others and he was targeting them more than me now, so he was likely aware of that.

Dolly can I get a little advice, even if you’re not feeling too well physically?

The response I got from Dolly was to keep dodging and to hold on until she can wiggle her toes again, because that one glancing blast of electricity still stung.

With a swoop I struck out at the second of the two remaining drones and avoided a burst of flames that came from The Arsenal. The drones were getting pummeled by both Krosserdog and Crazy’s support fire.

A pair of zealots leapt from the balcony of a nearby building and jammed their energy blades into one of the nearby barrier drones smashing them into the streets and destroyed the last two. They were likely there thanks to Dormarch’s influence. After finishing the drone they backed off and used their shields to tank a number of the shots to get out of sight of The Arsenal.

“Burn, you little gnats!” The arms on The Arsenal folded back again, going for another burning flames attack and the street behind me was still on fire even now.

Jeanne retreated really fast like insanely so… as did Elise and I quickly floated into a nearby alleyway.

Shanty however didn’t retreat, she bounced her bubbled off the street and high into the air to generate a blade at the top of the bubble shaped like a cutlass.

“Bounding Cutlass!” Shanty slammed the water blade down through the last drone, the cutting arc even did some damage to The Arsenal through the shield.

Thankfully the goat quickly retreated her bubble as the water rapidly boiled away when the flames started erupted from the arms of The Arsenal, it then turned its flames skywards at me.

I quickly floated a circle around the head of the machine that fired its smaller guns up at me while the flames followed after me, I retreated while using the paralance to absorb some of the flames being shot at me.

Without needing a warning, I darted to the side as a pillar of flames rained down on me from above as Merak form a portal to get a better angle on me with the flames coming from one arm and increased the size of the beams of raw fire.

That pillar of flames entered another portal and became even bigger rising to the sky and I narrowly avoided that two with my wool singing just from proximity and the heat.

“Heh, I think it’s about time I call this battle my victory!” Merak stated and I wondered what he meant when I felt numerous impacts struck at the board protecting my back and one shot tore through my left shoulder causing me to grit my teeth and hiss audibly as I quickly sealed the wound with my wool, Dolly caught something coming out of the flames of the burning buildings behind us. “The Hundred Gunner is finally here.”

Looking over my shoulder and still hold the paralance in front of me facing The Arsenal, I saw exactly what the Hundred Gunner was. It was a smaller, possibly less capable, blue version of The Arsenal It had six machine cannons on each arm and its head had three instead of the four guns The Arsenal had.

The machine cannons on the arms were like the left arm of The Arsenal and they all started spinning as The Arsenal took aim at me and several portals appeared around me. There was only on slightly problem, I couldn’t land or stay on the ground while Float was still active.

The Hundred Gunner started spinning up its machine cannons when something dropped on it from above and smashed a large hole through the top of its body.

“What the…” Merak started to say when all the fire in the area winked out of existence suddenly, as if a candle had been snuffed out or more like all the fire had been immediately been drawn into the Hundred Gunner that barely got one good shot on me.

“RARRRRRRGGGHHHH!” The world shook as the massive flame demon we saw at a distance was now here and roared as it ripped its way out of the smaller flimsier tank that Merak brought to the fight, while erupting in a pillar of mighty flames.

“Yep, that is being Lu Bu alright, is it being okay to say that I’m scared of him?” Shanty said as she parked herself on the building next to me and the flame demon shot her a deathly look. “I be calling it a hunch that he even be remembering the fight we be having!”

The flaming demon pointed at Shanty and started stalking forward with flames even more powerful than The Arsenal’s forming in his claws.

I quickly did the most prudent thing in this moment I could think of, I held up a hoof and a paw quickly slapped a Sitrus Berry into it and I quickly downed the berry to help deal with my injuries. Didn’t think it was going to help with that raging demon coming after Shanty and I wouldn’t let him come after her without a fight from me.

Really don’t know how I was going to deal with The Arsenal and a Flaming Demon Lu Bu at the same time… at least we were all thoroughly distracted, hopefully the demolition team was having an easier time than us.

I didn’t know how injured the others had gotten, hadn’t been close to any of them to know. I knew at least Dolly and Dormarch were okay, but we were in for a world of trouble here.

-Nearby on the gate, Canard-

At least the Caerbannogs were keeping the EPs off of Pom’s battle, not that it was going well from what I was seeing on the catwalk. I quickly moved back inside.

“They are getting fried out there, how is the plan coming Sami!” I called out and the orange soldier lizard pulled her head from the gate controls.

“Do you want the good news or the bad new?” Sami stated as she continued to work frantically.

“Bad news.” Then the goods news would maybe be something more hopeful.

“Okay, so opening the gate can be accomplished… but it’ll send the wall guns into overclocking… the good news is I can destroy all the guns around the city if Castle Alexander can survive them being overclocked for ten minutes or retreats long enough for them to be destroyed, but only if I don’t open the massive gate can this occur.” Sami was a veteran virus type digimon, so she’d know what she’s talking about as far as digital manipulations went. “So what I’m saying is we can overclock the guns by opening the gate and the guns will be able to continue firing on the Alexander all the way up to the door without being destroyed or we can make sure the door can’t open and destroy all the guns.”

“If it’s an ‘either or’ in this situation… I’d say destroy the guns and let Castle Alexander worry about getting through the gate. It’s big and powerful enough for it.” I made a gesture to Sami and she nodded and set to work on locking up the gate and causing a destruction of all the wall cannons at once. “Tell me when I can tell Castle Alexander to retreat for the next ten minutes, the moment I make the call we’re going to have every EP in the area knowing we’re here.”

“Give me a moment here Canard… almost… there!” The guns along the walls increased their firing rate to an insane degree. “Call Castle Alexander to retreat for the time being.”

“Ocellus, this is Canard, retreat Castle Alexander for ten minutes, then come back in and charge the city at full force!” I called.

“Canard, what’s going on with the cannons?” Ocellus asked as Castle Alexander, barely a speck on the horizon started moving backwards from the artillery onslaught.

“What we just did is about to destroy all the cannons, after that you’re going to have to force your way across the field and into Midgar on your own, but without their artillery fire you can work up some AP support on the way in by taking the PLANTs in the plains without being constantly blasted.” I pulled my hockey stick from my back and turned as Guard Hounds with their neck tentacles surged up the stairs at us. “We’re about to be hit by a ton of EPs for doing this and calling you just put a big target on our backs, so if you’ll excuse me!”

I turned and heaved the blade of my stick through a Guard Hound and tore it in half.

425. Midgar Meltdown Pt.4.

-???, Oleander-

“What did you do to Blueno!” One of the apparently dangerous people in this world stated as I ignored them and held the green plant thing that would be a good friend for Mr. Birch… interesting thing these pop greens.

“I locked all the doors he could possibly ever make... also how is it my fault he didn't think things through when he knew I had the ability to lock things on a conceptual level?” When you had the power of the key blade, I find that conceptually locking or unlocking something was a ridiculously powerful ability to have.

I mean if it all that fruit does is give you the ability to create doors to anywhere, but I've already locked all the doors the user can possibly make... how was this Blueno supposed to get out without my key?

So much for devil fruit being powerful, they were weak to salt water, sea water, water in general with enough table salt poured in it, can't swim even in fresh water and to think these things occurred on a planet covered by eighty percent sea water.

They can't stop soul or willpower attacks and soul attacks are one of Fred's favorite way of dealing with things and everyone has willpower as long as they are alive and trying to live life to the fullest.

I think I prefer the ability to swim, even if the fruits giving power over an entire concept was useful for the incredibly inventive like power over darkness or time or something like that... I don't really know how turning into a jacket really helps in combat unless somebody was willing to wear you, I already had conceptual powers thanks to the soul bound key blade and that was enough for me.

I would however be grabbing the puppy puppy fruit if I could track it down and eventually enchant an item with its juices for Pom to have yet another canine in her collection I'm building up as a good, and maybe somewhat evil, friend. Now what would I turn into a semi-immortal puppy that Pom would enjoy?

Might even look into that dog bazooka while playing with the living grass wolf, which was the true form of plant I just acquired. Pom likes gardening with Mr. Birch right? A bush wolf to go with her tree wolf, aren't I nice?

I think I was being driven mentally insane from not being able to find Pom, but I think that was more a side effect of being Buttina's friend more than anything. Even Fred says I need a few weeks away from Buttina's madness for my mental health and that's Fred saying it.

"Hey, join my crew!" Somebody asked.

"No." I stated flatly.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar plains, Ocellus-

The APs we sent out retreated onto the head of Castle Alexander and safely under the shield, soon Alexander lifted our APs off the ground and stood up to start moving backwards.

“What are we doing?” Smolder asked a little worried as she showed up.

“Oh right, thanks for reminding me, all hands we’re retreating Castle Alexander for a short amount of time.” I stated calmly as several rapid fire impacts shook the entire castle, Canard said those cannons would be down in that time. “We’ll have to take care of making our own entrance and will be trying to take the plains as fast as we can once their artillery is down, we don’t know for how long if they can fix it before we get across the plains.”

“So we’re setting up for a mad bum rush into the enemy territory.” Quetal pondered nearby. “Everyone eat some Sitrus Berries, take a ten minute break.

“Oh dear…” Curdle mumbled, her body reforming from how many times she’s been splattered today.

“I hope Mr. Thunderbeak is alright in there.” Clef stated as she came hopping along from helping out in food production.

“He’ll hold out, their only current problem is a lack of AP support and dealing with whatever dangers is going on in there.” There were currently two tiny territories in there and they were barely holding on with the crushing weight of Midgar’s entire territory pressing down on them. “Apparently Pom’s team is getting battered quite badly, hopefully they’ll hold out long enough for us to come in and rescue them.”

-Central Street near the main gate, behind a buildings outdoor pillar, Elise-

“Hsss… could you be a bit gentler Cruel?” I asked as a bullet was pried out of me with a knife and fell to the cement and rolled onto the nearby asphalt with a clatter. Cruel just gave me a flat look and rolled her eyes. “Right, forgot what part of me I was talking about… I’m such a jerk…. is that all of them?”

Cruel smirked and held up a Sitrus Berry which I quickly took and bit into. These things were fast acted, didn’t envy the way the flaming demon was currently looking at Shanty.

Crazy was currently spraying down a few EPs that made it into the area, apparently Dormarch was exceptionally busy, but still trying to find the time to jump in to help with this fight. At least my other Search Snakes were trying to help with the EPs, but I could only make so many.

-Jeanne-

I knew I wasn’t a Steel type, but fire… why did it have to be fire?! I’m a fighting dragon type and should be relatively resilient to it, but still I was horrified that fire was here. Being pyrophobic didn’t help the damage my scales took, the projectiles, fine, the whips on those enemy canine, stings but my scales were up to the task… fire? I wanted to currently be a mile away from the fight when I saw it, it doesn’t help that I associate fire with defeat either.

We were barely damaging that thing called The Arsenal, we were about to deal with a smaller version when that demon showed up.

We barely got the most recent barrier down when that other smaller version of the arsenal showed up and managed to get a shot in on Pom. Speaking of which, Pom was floating there with one hoof on the paralance aimed at The Arsenal and the other busy quickly eating a berry Dolly passed her.

I had to eat a Sitrus Berry too, my scales were tough, but my insides were still getting roughed up from so many impacts. Tough hide I might have, but even I was getting battered down as I sat here with my back to the alleyways wall hyperventilating about the flames coming off of that flaming monster.

Being told I wasn’t a steel type as soon as I got home from my training in Pugilis most certainly did not help me with the childhood trauma I had with fire… so much destruction.

I was a whimpering mess and the others were depending on me to help and lead. Some leader I am, Pom was making a more concerted effort in that arena than I was and she didn’t even want to do it!

It was quiet and I was wondering what The Arsenal or this beast Shanty calls Lu Bu were about to do, at least the demon took out one of the problems that freshly showed up.

-Shanty-

I be behind The Arsenal clinging to the building with the water around me.

Krosser can’t be damaging Lu Bu or The Arsenal very much, but he still be trying something to do something. Pom was taking scope of the situation as was I, but Lu Bu be having his eyes on me and I am being very worried about that.

I am taking stock and I not being good as I’m needing more water soon as the mass of my bubble has been shrunk helping Pom out of a difficult situation.

I know there was being water in this city, but it couldn’t be any of that tainted stuff like what happened after the underground facility exploded. Would be needing the time to access it, but I don’t be thinking Lu Bu would be allowing me that time to get it.

“Pom, can you be telling Dormarch to find a large source of water… please!” I prepped my cane scythe, readying for the oncoming fight when that machine that Merak guy that Elise be hating spoke up.

“Well look who’s… GAH WHAT THE…!?” A massive explosion of fire erupted around The Arsenal damaging it somewhat, Merak didn’t sound very happy. “You know, you could have been on my side boiler man, but it looks like it’s everyone versus everyone and I’m going to come out on top of this free for all brawler. Also don’t think I’ve forgotten about you for a second floating sheep.”

I could be feeling the heat of those flame through the bubble of water around me. Really needed to talk to Pom about something… but I didn’t be getting the time, be needing that eight hours of sleep after dealing with the underground facility.

Lu Bu wanted a fight, he wanted us all to fight him and targeted Merak since he was going to just be attacking us while we dealt with him at the same time. He be sending a message that he was here and he was going to tear us apart.

-Pom-

Okay, glad I moved away from that and was now perched on a windowsill, The Arsenal had some minor damage due to the flames. I had to wonder how we were going to deal with the monster that can obviously absorb, control and generate massive amount of flames wherever he wanted, also there was magic involved in creating those flames so Dolly and I should be safe from magic… but not from the guys muscles.

“I think we should focus on dealing with The Arsenal before Lu Bu!” I shouted to anyone who would listen.

“I have no objections to that!” Elise called back as I floated away from two portals opening in three different directions while pointed at me.

I dropped my height and kept the paralance pointed at The Arsenal to avoid being shot from a variety of angles as stiff unmoving portals appeared trying to send high speed projectiles into me. What I was doing was moving to be closer to Shanty. I did not like how that flaming demon was gazing my charge and I would rather put The Arsenal between him and me.

Dormarch, Shanty needs a huge source of water, you can already guess why after what Lu Bu did, I’m guessing he can magically control fire and if I know anything about unicorns or a particular alicorn… that can get really bad quite fast.

...

If we can forcefully keep The Arsenal between us and Lu Bu we should be fine Dormarch, provided Lu Bu doesn’t target anyone aside from us directly with the magical flames exploding everywhere thing and besides you know he can’t really target me with it.

Though I doubt reflected the magic back on him will do anything to him, he’s almost bigger than The Arsenal now and I’m quite aware that it’s not my imagination that’s he’s still slowly growing… I think he can absorb fire or heat and get stronger from it, that’s not a good sign considering The Arsenal has ridiculously powerful flamethrowers.

We’re going need a lot of water soon or some way to negate heat, because we’re probably dealing with what amounts to a walking volcano.

-Counter Invasion Forces (We’re still just distracting them right?) vs. Ifrit Lu Bu (He pursues you) Vs. The Arsenal (Merak’s Manual Mechanized Mayhem)-

“Well if you won’t work with me.” Merak started off by firing a powerful plasma shot at Ifrit Lu Bu from the right cannon, then immediately turned the tank to shoot at Pom.

He didn’t watch as the plasma ball seemed to make Ifrit Lu Bu, a being with the power over mystical fire and raw muscle, get slightly stronger as its muscles grew and it’s skin turned as red as flames. Thankfully there was only so much fire power Ifrit could absorb and how big he could get, unfortunately for everyone involved that would be functionally at the size of the surrounding buildings as Ifrit started taking up more space in the streets.

Pom was still a priority kill order as the Moon Cell’s systems were having problems with glitches the longer she persisted in getting closer to the core. She evaded a salvo of shots from the head of The Arsenal as it started rolling backwards towards her frantic dodging form in the air. Its torso was soon face facing her and firing it’s left arm rotating machine cannons while surrounded her floating form with portals from all sides.

Above, below and from the sides Pom dodged wildly through the air and what she couldn’t dodge, either she or Dolly could block. At least when Merak made portals, he couldn’t change their direction or move them, his portals were a lot more static than Gilgamesh’s had been.

While Merak was going after Pom, Dormarch had the APs keeping the EPs at bay and they were barely doing that as he searched around for a water tower or some kind of liquid pumping facility.

Shanty bounded off the building as Lu Bu leapt his massive form at her in a powerful and large blur while trying to grab her.

Lu Bu, clinging to the building where Shanty had been, swiftly ripped out a chunk of the building and sent it hurtling at the bubble bound goat while engulfing it in entirely in raging red flames.

Shanty’s bubble almost burst from the impact and it shrunk and the water boiled off from the heat and the amount of water the goat had to control grew smaller as she actively protected herself from being boiled alive.

A second later Lu Bu’s massive form was already in the air and reaching out his muscular left arm to grab at the bubble barely encasing Shanty as it hit the street with a light bounce and started rolling towards one of the alleyways.

There were some concerns Shanty had about moving in the direction of the gate where the demolitions team currently was.

Elise thinking was about helping Pom with the tank or Shanty with the muscle bound monster that started bodily tearing through the alleyway like the walls making up said alleyway were made of wet tissue paper. The hulk was quite terrifying to watch in action, especially when Crazy was bouncing projectiles from her gun off his muscles to little or no effect. The Arsenal was equally terrifying as it gave chase to the highly evasive floating Pom towards the front gate of Midgar.

“Come on!” Krosserdog stated to Elise as he ran past her to regroup with Jeanne and check up on the Pokémon who was currently experiencing something of a mental crisis, he was also constantly firing on The Arsenal for all the minimal damage he could do.

Krosserdog and Elise with her two Search Snakes tried to get Jeanne in a better state of mind, they needed all the help they could currently get at the moment.

Meanwhile Shanty made it to the end of the alleyway to the next street over, but she really did not want to get into a fight with Lu Bu at the moment, especially not on her own.

Lu Bu was too terrifying a force to actually face head on and even hit and run tactics were suspect in their effectiveness after seeing bullets harmlessly bouncing off his skin. He was a big problem in the most literal sense.

“Shanty this way, follow me!” Dormarch shouted and way a paw and got her heading in his direction with Lu Bu erupting from the alleyway and tearing out the two corners of the buildings as his did so.

The building collapsing on Lu Bu didn’t really do much aside from annoy him a little as he flared with flames and blasted them at Shanty as she retreated more into the city and away from the front gate.

Dormarch had two reasons for leading Shanty in this direction, one was to get Lu Bu away from The Arsenal and to get Shanty to a water source she could effectively fight back with. Dormarch had found a water tower not too far away and figured it’d let Shanty get started on helping with Lu Bu, at least in some capacity.

While that was going on Pom was evading and constantly moving, trying to avoid a massive blast from the right cannon dropped on her from above with a portal while trying to deal with four seperate streams of bullets at once with Dolly’s help using her board to cover Pom’s back.

Float had worn off of Pom and she could barely keep up with all the projectiles spewing at her using Dancing Flame, Dolly was just holding on tightly to Pom’s back and using her board to aid in their defense when Pom couldn’t block the incoming spray of projectiles.

Fighting against The Arsenal in a more open space was a poor decision, given it fired a paralytic blasts of energy from its front grill after having turned its lower torso about to face her. They weren’t currently fighting it and were avoiding it entirely.

Pom rolled between the blasts, pulled the paralance into forming a canopy tent above herself to stop all the projectiles and The Arsenal tried to charge it down to crush Pom underneath the paralance.

At the last moment and because she couldn’t stay under the paralance forever without air, Pom jerked her body to the side and used the wool on her hind legs to spring out of the way before the tank ran her down.

There was a few blocks of open space with some junk, lots of badlands and very little cover between the front gate and walls loaded with cannons thankfully pointed outwards and The Arsenal had more advantages out in the open given it had more visual space to keep track of a blurring Pom and let Merak use his portals.

The Arsenal was already turning around and a few EPs were charging for Pom across the open ground.

The Zealots, Saber Knights and Caerbannogs were still keeping the EPs from actively attacking Pom, it’s just that they were close enough for her evading form to see now.

All Pom could do at this point was evade as she really couldn’t do more than dodge when you were being bombarded with projectiles on all sides by static portals from which the projectiles could come out of. If she didn’t have the paralance, then she would have been completely perforated.

Pom managed a bark blast to do some minor damage to one of the tanks wheels, but then it used the last of its barrier drones and Pom wasn’t going to be able to destroy those in any timely fashion and not under pressure.

Who knows how long it would take for Castle Alexander to show up in Midgar proper? Pom certainly didn’t and really couldn’t count on anyone other than those nearby for help currently.

Speaking of those nearby that needed help, Shanty popped off a building as the side of it became engulfed in flames and Ifrit leapt up to throw a punch as she landed on the building opposite of the one she had just been on.

Shant managed to surge her bubble up out of the way of the flaming fist as it plowed through metal, brick, mortar and any substance in the way. Dormarch was urgent trying to get Shanty to a nearby water tower and watching as she evaded a floating Lu Bu.

Seeing as Shanty needed help as she rode a water droplet amount of water up the side of the building with a heat wave following her, Dormarch quickly pointed in the direction of the water tower and quickly sent out a wild bark as Ifrit Lu Bu neared. It did little to really deter the fire demon, but it cause him to blink a bit as his eyes became irritated by the wind slightly.

However a blink was enough for him to lose track of Shanty and Dormarch quickly disappeared in a flash of a Search Hunter.

Shanty had already managed to bound her way across rooftops using water to boost her leaping ability, up until she got underneath a water tower and readied her scythe to slash at the supports. With a swift two dashes and three swings she managed to topple the water tower and start gathering the water inside it towards herself to make a large bubble, a bubble which she quickly used to bound in the direction of Pom near the entrance to Midgar.

If Lu Bu could grow stronger or even heal off being hit with the weapons of The Arsenal, then Pom had the right of it in Shanty’s mind. The Arsenal needed to be avoided entirely or dealt with somehow.

The large bubble transformed into a giant goat shape around Shanty as it started to hopped and stretch the goat shaped mass of water across the rooftops with her in the head controlling it. Even Shanty wasn’t certain she had enough water to deal with Lu Bu without a constant source of fluids as building erupted in flame or exploded behind her quickly retreating form.

Out in the open Pom was being protected by Saber Knights and Zealots using their shields to protect her from harm from all sides as they fought a losing battle. At least the Saber Knights shields could stand up to the machine gun fire from The Arsenal, but when it came to the plasma cannon Pom had to actively get away from the APs protecting her to survive the incoming shots.

Being surrounded on all sides and constantly under threat from The Arsenal was taking its toll on Pom’s body as she was getting bruised and batter as she tried to avoid getting shot to the best of her abilities.

A few Saber Knights APs ran a few Guard Hounds through and continued to move to protect Pom or fight off the nearby swarm of EPs that grew worse by the second.

“Pom, get down!” At the shout Pom threw herself to the ground as Sami sideswiped one of the three remaining barrier drones with the skiff and destroying it with the impact. The skiff quickly took off into the air and Canard dropped down to being near Pom with his hockey stick stabbed into a heli-trooper.

A zealot quickly hopped on board the skiff and managed to get a shield up around it before Merak could blast the skiff apart under the tirade of its machine cannon. It also evaded the following plasma shot.

In return the two remaining Skein Flyers, the ones kept in reserve and were now piloted by two zealots, flew forth and focused on shooting at the barrier drones trying to focus them down to at least expose The Arsenal to the possibility of damage again.

“What… then that means, darn it they got to the wall artillery and I can’t stop it!” Merak growled as he continued to gun for the the skiff which had Sami on it firing rocket launcher shots and her rifle from it into the barrier drones that were actively trying to dodge shots.

Even if they got the barrier drones down again, Pom wondered how they were going to deal with The Arsenal without any ability to do some real damage.

Fortunately that question was answered when Pom saw Shanty incoming with a mass of water, enough water that Shanty could do some serious damage if she could keep it all under control. It was like watching Velvet control a massive ice statue of herself again, dangerous, but Arizona still won that fight by raw muscle and grit.

-Midgar upper city, Copen-

He dashed between buildings avoiding the massive beast, his energy pistol constantly blasting energy as his jetpack launched him forward. He was followed by the faithful mechanical orbs hovering around him defensively as he fought through hordes of aquatic looking monsters that rained down from above.

He landed on a building and faced down the whale sized problem hovering above him, he didn’t know the meaning of fear as he started charging up his weapon.

-Midgar plains, ???-

The assault programs formed up and waited to go on a full on offensive when Castle Alexander made its move as the artillery refused to stop firing and was slowly working its way up to exploding violently.

Castle Alexander was still being hit by artillery fire and had stopped short of exiting the realm, it didn’t want to cause the reinforcements still setting up in Mare Melum to be swamped with the EPs and was thus holding position at the edge of the realm while under heavy fire. At least the shield around the castle was faltering and it was taking damage and shaking violently.

-Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

“Calling Cid in Engineering, what are the chances we can charge up a divine judgment attack?” I asked as Welch was building more magitek armor for our inevitable push into the plains when the artillery finally blows apart. We didn’t know how long we’d have until the artillery regenerates if it can or if our enemies had a counter for our forward charge without their artillery.

“If you mean to blow a hole in the wall with it, that’s not going to work.” Cid answered immediately.

“Good thing I’m not targeting the wall then, I want us to ride forward into the middle of the plain in hover mode and unleash the full force of Castle Alexander. I’m sure our artillery with enough time and effort can pummel a hole into the city.” I started while looking into what our Gazimon were doing and found they were actively currently increasing the production speed of the magitek armor. We were currently down to at least four units and they were avoiding artillery shells like they were born for it while fending off the EPs incoming with eight streams of constant projectiles. I noted that some of the APs getting better the longer they fought. “What I want to do is take the plains in one swift move… can we actually build up the energy for that or have enough range to wipe out all the PLANTs on the battlefield at once?”

“Hmm… yeah, but we’d be walking the rest of the distance to Midgar and will be in low energy combat mode. We might be able to finagle a cannon or two still working afterwards, but don’t count on it.” Answered Cid. “We’ll become temporarily inoperable after firing our most powerful weapon due to the massive energy consumption.”

“Our APs should be enough to make a push for breaking the city gate, Pom’s group needs our firepower badly… hmm… can we angle some of the divine judgment beams over those walls at some targets?”

“We’d only be able to hit large targets with any accuracy and only then two or three beams may make it by the wall.” Castle Alexander responded.

“Hopefully that’ll be enough for when we divine judgment bomb the plains, start charging up for the forward assault! Welch hold all the magitek piloting Zealots in the courtyard until after the divine judgment, then unleash them all at once to pick up the stragglers and try to attack the wall.” I ordered. So far Torneko wasn’t being very helpful aside from protecting those already onboard Castle Alexander, but we might need the security services soon, Patch Cabbage was working on growing more berrys… however we were getting mixed results when it came to reliably growing Sitrus Berries after a certain amount and started getting a lot of Oran Berries.

In any case whatever medical supplies NPC Patch Cabbage and Welch could soon provide would be a big help for our fighters still in the city… don’t worry Pom we’re coming!

“This is Welch with some news for you, I think I cracked the special functions on the magitek armor sending software patches to all available magitek armor! They’ll be able to fire missiles now, but they won’t be as special without the magic empowering them. No healing, no freezer beams, no heat beams and no shock beams… if we could get one to Pom or anyone magical to pilot one then they’d still be capable of all that, thanks to the fact that I have an idea as to what these machines can really do when pushed.”

A second later the four magitek armors started spraying missiles as much as bullets and tore apart an incoming tank EPs in a series of powerful explosions. The artillery from the enemy wouldn’t be able to hit something that small and fast, so it was on the EPs to defend themselves from those missiles.

“Woohoo, victory for Welch manufacturing!” Welch stated exuberantly.

It wasn’t all good news as one of the two PLANT territories within Midgar suddenly popped and the territory changed back into being Midgars.

-Inside Midgar’s walls, near the front gate, Pom-

I didn’t have time to prepare myself for the blast wave and thankfully Shanty hadn’t been in the territory before it erupted, but the PLANT producing Caerbannogs couldn’t take any more pressure and blew apart and knocked us all over in the blast wave giving our enemies time to clear up a large number of APs in the area.

We were left with whatever Caerbannogs that survived the territory explosion along with a small trickle of Saber Knights and Rider Zealots. I barely even managed to roll out of the way of the plasma shot and get the paralance into position to block the hundreds of rounds streaming for us from the front, while several Zealots threw themselves into protecting me from behind the sides and above with their shields and very bodies.

Losing that PLANT had a very terrible effect on our morale, soon Dormarch appeared at my side and transformed into his Dobermon D-type form.

“Sorry I’m late and we lost a PLANT.” We haven’t lost the fight entirely, but we were being slowly crushed here Dormarch. We were lucky the skiff, as badly damaged as it was, along with the two Skein Flyers were still airborne and lending support. The skiff had went to pick up Krosserdog at some point and his combined firepower with Crazy and Sami was good for the EPs and the remaining barrier drone that refused to be in the line of fire, but we still had the issue of actually having anything that can be damaging The Arsenal until Shanty arrives and she just did.

“Not really your fault Dormarch, how long until the cannons blow and Castle Alexander can go on the offensive?” I asked Canard as we continued to stay moving so we didn’t get run over by the super tank as it charged us, Merak was enjoying himself if all the laughter at our expenses was anything to go by.

“Five minutes, even if we gave them ten more I don’t think we exactly have that time!” Canard stated as another Zealot defending us was gunned down in a painful display and he clubbed a Guard Hound with his hockey stick and sent a digital exploding energy puck flying into a Heli-trooper.

“We might lose the other PLANT, no matter how well it is hidden, out of the sheer pressure of the territory coming down on it from all sides.” That was a very good worry to have Dormarch, but this mission was fairly bad one from the onset of things. I’m surprised we even made it this far without too many casualties.

That’s when Shanty leapt into action from the tops of the building and fire demon version of Lu Bu wasn’t too far behind judging by the portions of the city currently catching fire in his rage at not being able to keep up with her.

Shanty managed to slashed the last barrier drone and deal some damage to The Arsenal with her large water body, which followed up by physically tackling The Arsenal and denting its armor. Shanty dodged the retaliatory plasma blast from the right arm cannon as she hadn’t managed to knock the tank over despite the impressive amount of mass and weight she threw into it.

“Can we really deal with the all the EPs, The Arsenal and a flaming demon coming after our current heavy hitter on top of it all until help comes?” Sending out a Surge Projector blast with a tentacle that blew up a few heli-troopers, Dormarch continued to fight despite the fact that we were slowly losing ground and being pressured towards the wall by all the EPS.

“Yeah, we’re going to need more help than what we have here, we need some really heavy munitions like what Sami is using to really put a dent in that thing!” Peppercat shouted as she slashed apart a trooper up close with a blade of lightning and then started absorbing lightning blasts coming from the tank for us.

“I’ve been in worse scraps than this surrounded entirely by Gekkos.” Snake sent out a rope dart to wrap around a Guard Hounds neck as it leapt for Peppercat, its neck was promptly snapped by the suddenly jerking pull of the weapon that left the EP dissolving into a pile of bits. “I think we can still pull off this mission without a full team wipe.”

“Well we’ll have to figure out how survive somehow and we might have to force our way back into the city to find some cover from all of this!” I shouted as I continued position myself to protect the others with the help of the Saber Knights and Zealots to handle the combined onslaught of projectiles coming from The Arsenal, Trooper and Heli-troopers using portals to get the projectiles around Shanty’s current presence on the battlefield.

She was damaging the armor on The Arsenal well enough as she avoided the shocking blasts that it sent out before they could touch any of the water she controlled. If she lost concentration we were going to be down a lot of water we could use against Lu Bu afterwards.

“If we could get on the skiff in the middle of this mess that would be really helpful!” Canard called out while slashing the head off a Trooper EP with the small blade of his stick. “We came here to help you, but now we’re the ones that need help.”

“At least we succeeded in what we came to do.” That was a bit of a cold comfort for me as my legs continued to shake from the impacts until I had my wool holding the paralance steady.

That’s when multiple Berserker Brutes started showing up and I let a whimper pass my lips. We could barely deal with one Brute by attacking it together, how were we going to deal with several of them at once on top of everything else?!

Eight hours of sleep wasn't nearly enough for all of this...

Author's Note

Life can certainly keep me busy.

426. Midgar Meltdown Pt.5.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Jaded-

“Hail friend, how are things?!” Flamberge the Fiercely Flammable and Obnoxiously Loud asked as he sat down with us.

“I’m in the metaphorical dog house for getting Luna to join in on a romp in trying to destroy the conceptual existence of Saddle Arabia.” I mewled pathetically.

“Well you do kind of deserve it after the mess you caused.” Gene Eric the Swift Reaction stated with a smirk as he leaned against the table lazily.

“Yeah, but it still sucks that they won’t cuddle me or give me attention… bet it’s even worse for them…” I didn’t know whether to smile or not about that knowledge. On the one claw the herd was suffering, on another it was heartwarming that they were suffering because they wanted to cuddle me but couldn’t give me any attention as that would be ruining the punishment.

Couldn’t even do the mom thing and play with Silvers, apparently this would teach Silvers a helpful lesson as well and I didn’t mind teaching Silvers that life is not about always getting what we want.

“I believe you mentioned there was a problem with Velvet’s pregnancy?!” Flamberge asked getting us back on topic as he was somewhat concerned about the subject as he and a certain kitsune were thinking of coming together eventually… after a few hundred years of dating and by then I’d likely be dead of old age.

Plenty of beings on this planet had absurd life spans or were still in the incarnation cycle despite the night immortality of being nearly ageless according to Celestia, gods tended to fall out of that with their immortality. I wasn’t about to find an aspect any time soon that I excelled at so hard that the universe will acknowledge it in an over the top manner… unless endless ludicrous plans count or maybe I could become a minor goddess of pettiness when it comes to Saddle Arabia.

“Yeah, we can’t do the magical potions thing too much, if you’re second or third generation coming from such potions… well… it’s against the natural order of things and it causes some truly major issues down the line. It’s a good thing mom is being careful to not teach anyone how to make those certain potions… though Zecora has basically figured it out, but don’t tell anyone about that. Velvet’s a reindeer so it’s obvious the major problem is body temperature issues that may have complications in birth as far as her personal health is concerned, almost everyone who’s researched the phenomenon are still very much confused about how Arizona did it. Otherwise the baby is perfectly fine, Velvet not so much even if she’s been toughing it out fairly well so far, but the baby will definitely be a cow or look like one and she’s going to have it.” I leaned back and thought about how my father’s spell might make little Silvers close to being a second generation, thankfully Silvers was a result of parthenogenesis which was naturally occurring and some chimera do that naturally enough that they can have any number of mates. Just so long as it doesn’t become a eugenics program it won’t be a problem and I won’t have to come down on the slightly rude and brutish society Maries comes from. “So mom is researching a potion to check for generational magical tampering, she’ll give that recipe up and spread it widely with Sage Meadowbrook’s help just in case someone figures out how to magic up babies in a highly unnatural manner. Zen bones says once or twice and society won’t collapse, but more and the birth rates will plummet like a rock and infertility will run rampant due to biological problems caused by magic itself not understanding biology… apparently it’s happened before with some pony named Majesty running an ancient civilization previously called Pony Land on the next door continent before the whole wendigo thing in the distant past. Frankly, I think Majesty is why said ponies separated into tribes.”

“Well that’s not terrifying to worry about, like at all, at least adoption is still a thing right?” Gene muttered while rubbing at the feathers on his head. “I mean if Jacky wanted more, I’d be willing… but she was barely lucky enough to carry little Gavin to term.”

“Family is many things, blood, found and more.” I commented dryly noting one of the three brothers wasn’t here. “You know what I haven’t heard today?”

“What? You mean Fortitude not…” Gene started to say, only for the obvious to happen.

“I AM FORTITUDE THE FANTASTICALLY FRAGRANT!/I AM YONA THE COURAGEOUSLY CUDDLY!” The shouts from the two yaks sent food, citizens and tables flying everywhere in the restaurant.

After getting up we had found that they were actually shouting that across from the street through the doorway.

“Ow…” I said from underneath a table as a bit of fish jerky stuffed itself into my mouth a second later, in fact I think it came from one of the many barrels of fish jerky mom had lying around. My mother Kuril made so much of the stuff that not even thieves could steal it all.

‘Deer gods’, the yaks have learned to outright turn their voices into weapons… we should all be scared.

Also we shouldn’t have left an impressionable Yona alone with Fortitude for too long. At least the shield maiden look works for Yona, well enough so that I think the she could go into fashion.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar, near the gate to the city, Pom-

Shanty at least had The Arsenal less focused on me, still getting portals raining projectiles at me left, right and above. At least she could actually deal some damage to it and that’s because she was using physics of the water she controlled slamming into like at tidal wave… not that it helps after we just took a territory destruction to the face.

We also had incoming Brutes and there’s Lu Bu to worry about pursuing a fight with Shanty, thankfully he didn’t seem fast enough to keep up with her at an increased size to that of a small building. It wouldn’t be long before he joined the chaos.

It would be seconds before the fiery demon showed up and I was in the middle of ducking the left arm of a brute trying to slam me with a hook. I swung my paralance and took out the nearby Trooper to the right and started moving away from the brute, the guys with the guns were far more dangerous than the bulky muscle monsters and their much slower attacks. Still didn’t want to be hit by said attacks as I leapt backwards and avoided another one bringing its massive spiked clubs for arms down where I was and got them both stuck in the ground.

Instead of taking advantage of that I turned and lashed out my right hind leg in a roundhouse buck to break the neck of a Guard Hound before its tentacle could hit either me or Dolly, following that I blocked an entire portal load of bullets with the paralance as I kicked out of the way of it and another portal opening to my side that sent a plasma blast through. Dolly was sticking to my back for her safety as much as my own, as she has already deflected several bullets away from my torso.

We had to move somewhere else as we couldn’t stay out in the open where the EPs were slowly overwhelming us, in spite of the Saber Knights and Zealots best efforts to help us. The Saber Knights were proving hardy against the Troopers and Helitroopers, the Guard Hounds and Brutes were slightly more of a problem for them and the Zealots weren’t good against anything that specialized in close combat.

I watched as Shanty narrowly avoided a plasma blast and then said blast impacted near where I was as I was dodging away from it and was knocked from my hooves.

After tumbling a short distance, I quickly sat up and watched as hundreds of projectiles pour into the water around Shanty. All of them were stopped before they could even reach Shanty and got ejected downwards or back at the tank in the form of solid massive blobs of collected metal that rocketed forth like cannonballs into The Arsenal.

Shanty was even doing well against the tank, up until a blast of flames shook and staggered her by boiling some of the water from the left side of the water colossus’s face.

Quickly rolling away form a Brute trying to pound the life out of me, I’m surprised Dolly was still holding on as well as she was.

“Are you okay Dolly?” I asked as I backed away from several Troopers focusing fired on me before an exploding digital hockey puck took them out.

“Still alive, didn’t expect to be in a war zone and okay is a state of mind at this point, but I still have your back!” She meant it literally as she hadn’t let go of riding on me. Lu Bu was attacking Shanty and Shanty was attacking The Arsenal, she was getting as overwhelmed as was everyone else here.

We couldn’t last like this, at least the two Skein Flyers and the skiff were still airborne, but the heli-troopers were a major problem for them even if they were slow moving in the air. Our minimal air support was barely good enough to fend off the heli-troopers and they had to keep moving or Merak would target them and take them out of the air, the guy was obviously more dangerous in enclosed spaces where you had little room to dodge.

Our mission was successful at the very least if Canard, Sami, Snake and Peppercat of the demolitions team were here… but where was Shine? I didn’t see the slippery shadows sliding ghost gourd around, but she could at least take care of herself since of the things here did physical attacks.

Didn’t have time to worry about that as I swung twice taking down two Guard Hounds with blunt force and Dolly brought her board around to shield me from several shots a Trooper sent my way before the EP took a thrown knife to the head from Elise.

“Pom, we need to get out of here!” Canard called as the skiff swung low a fair distance away from me and he hopped onto the flying platform as it ascended and avoided some Guard Hounds.

“Excuse, I’m kind of busy at the moment and I won’t leave Shanty behind!” I’m rather invested in making sure Shanty lives longer than I currently will, on that note… I crouched down and blocked a tirade from both kinds of troopers with the paralance. “Where would we go, there are APs everywhere!”

No place to hide and I quickly leapt away as a Brute threw an overhand right arm slam at me that tore a hole into the ground.

While the combine firepower of Sami, Krosserdog and Crazy dealt with them, I started to retreat on hoof as more and more the Brutes were coming and not just the three that were already encroaching on me quickly.

Shanty was losing water mass to Lu Bu hitting her magical fire and flaming fists, she was trying to keep in the fight with The Arsenal all while trying to fend him off. It wasn’t going too well and neither were my attempts to keep away from the Brutes as there were nine of them now and I couldn’t actually attack them.

“Fly overhead, I’ll grab on!” I could jump high enough, Canard apparently understood why I was asking for that and I was kind of surrounded at the moment and I was busy smashing a Guard Hound with an overhead swing of the paralance.

Coiling the wool around my hind legs as I fought back several Guard Hounds and avoided the swinging arms of the Brutes, I moved behind a pair of Zealots that lunged forward and stabbed down the Troopers they had an advantage against their shields easily soaking the gunfire when there’s not more than one concentrated on them.

“Keep holding on Dolly!” The skiff flew overhead and looked to be about to lower down, instead I crouched down and launched myself up with my wool springing me up to the bottom of the skiff which I grabbed with my right hoof and clung fast as I held the paralance in my left while blocking fire coming from below. “Go-go-go, we need to help Shanty, also is Shine up there?”

“No, Snake says she went to do something important before taking to the shadows, she should be fine!” Canard called out to me as I continued to block shots from the Troopers as I hung below the skiff as it took off and avoided a group of Brutes jumping and swinging at me. They were too heavy and they weren’t nearly anywhere even remotely close to reaching me as they could barely jump five feet off the ground and we were like thirty or so feet up. “I’m more worried about where Jeanne is!”

Shine was at least the safest among us about being able to get out of Midgar alive at the moment, but I doubt she was going for an escape. If we needed someone to get out alive then it would be her and possibly with someone else if she uses her Trick-Or-Treat move one person.

As for Jeanne, she didn’t seem to be getting attacked anywhere down there. So hopefully she retreated to the AP controlled territory to regroup.

-Shanty-

I be lashing out the massive right leg of water and it be transforming into a blade. The cutting arc be damaging The Arsenal somewhat again, but I think it still be having too much fight in it as I quickly dodged back and ducked down around a flaming punch that flew over my head from behind to start blasting Lu Bu with a mass of water from the left shoulder, as I backed away from him and moved to the side to avoid a big blast of hot energy as it flew by.

The water I was spraying at him didn’t be putting his fire out, it was just turning into steam before it could even be making contact with his flames. Also it had been a while since I last needed air and I could still be feeling myself breathing despite being entirely encased in water.

An eruption of flames be shrinking down the giant water goat I be making as water be bursting off of the goat shaped mass of water in the form of steam. Lu Bu then be trying to reach into the water to be trying to grab me, I be pushing him back with the left hoof and backed away before a blast of energy from the right cannon from The Arsenal be striking me and burning away more of the protective water that be surrounding me.

I hopped and turned the goat shaped mass into a spherical blob of water and bounced over the Arsenal. Lu Bu be getting a face full of projectiles, but it be doing nothing to him as he be bouncing them off of it, he did attack The Arsenal with a punch that be damaging it somewhat.

It be a wonder the machine was still holding up so well, but we not be really getting many chances to do some really heavy damage. In fact, I think I was being the only one that could, given Pom be hanging on the underside of the skiff and they were dealing with a lot of heli-troopers. I reformed the water goat and be lashing out with my right hind leg to swat a number of heli-troopers out of the air and then be slamming it down on a Brute.

“Shanty we need to retreat!” I could be hearing that through the water, didn’t be wanting to, but… I moved backwards rapidly to avoid the blasts of lightning The Arsenal be sending my way and I had to be avoiding Lu Bu’s massive flaming fist as it be digging into the water towards my face and creating lots of steam blinding me to what The Arsenal was doing.

I still managed to be fumbling my way out of being grabbed by him.

-Junkyard, Jeanne-

“I really don’t like fire…” I whined as I turned towards the Elite Trooper that appeared after tearing apart enough regular troopers and guard hounds. It had much more armor than a regular trooper and its weapon fired multiple projectiles at once in a wide blast with ever shot, my left arm was hit by several of such explosions of projectiles but my Iron Defense scales held up to the impacts as I pressed ever forward… alone… with a badly battered arm.

A second later a shadow popped up and rose up past the Elite and it fell over with a slash mark ripping up its entire spinal column.

“There you are! Are you okay Jeanne?” Didn’t have time to answer Shine as I immediately lunged towards the nearby PLANT and ran it through. We needed to keep our foothold, so I targeted it and ran the plant through with the spear.

“I guess everyone saw me running from the fight huh?” I stated lowly as the territory blast pushed away the EPs and a PLANT to start producing APs appeared, Guardian Lancers. We had some time to talk before more EPs came, they were less here than elsewhere… I’m sure I knew where most of the EPs currently were. “I’m still fit for fighting, it’s just that… it must not be great for morale to see someone who’s supposed to be one of the leaders retreating without telling anyone.”

“Depends on the situation really, we are kind of getting overwhelmed here and here you are still fighting even if you won’t go anywhere near fire. Just survive for an hour Jeanne and I’m sure help will be here to back us up and things will get better.” At least Shine had a chipper personality when it feels like we couldn’t hold for too much longer, The Arsenal was terrifyingly tough and Lu Bu was a nightmare. “Let’s call this a tactical withdrawal and start building up AP support while the others have the focus of the bigger problems.”

I looked at the lance wielding APs and sighed, Shine gave me a gesture to take charge of the APs and I shivered at her trust.

“Let’s move out!” I ordered and the Lancers joined up on me and Shine. I would not go into the flames, but I could still go near them. I tightened my grip on the banner spear, it would be hard to find any other PLANTs as the enemy is keeping them out of our reach and we’re barely holding on territory as it is. “We’re not done yet, I know you are at your best when charging forth or guarding an area, but help me find the enemy PLANTs and lead me to them! Also let’s avoid me being near fire… I can’t exactly brain that well when flames are around me.”

The Guardian Lancers started moving out with Shine taking up a position at my side and smiling.

“You’re father and mother will be holding that farm, it’ll still be there waiting for you when you get back.” Shine said sweetly and I didn’t know how much of that I believed, but I didn’t want this to be a one way trip.

“I’m terrified of fire.” I stated quietly.

“And you think I’m not?” Shine said with a cheerful lilt and light laugh as she sent me a gentle smile. “Everyone’s got something to be afraid of. It is how we deal with that fear that makes the difference in how it will be eventually seen, here you are by yourself and you’re still trying to make the situation better by at least doing something in spite of everything going on. You have yet to stop fighting and you haven’t completely given up. Even if I hadn’t shown up you would have taken that PLANT and sent help our way regardless. Now come on, let’s sow chaos in the enemy ranks together!”

Shine was a good friend and an even better hero than I was currently being, it wasn’t bitter jealousy that made me think this… but sadness that I couldn’t live up to the banner I carried so spiritedly and that I couldn’t put my full back into it when fear was getting the better of me.

For some reason I remember being burned on a stake and the nightmares haunted me, as much as incidentally burning down the barn back in Valora once when I was still a little Jangmo-o. I’m surprised to even be a Hakamo-o, how was I ever going to evolve to become a Kommo-o if I let fear get to me?

-Near the front gate, up in the air on the skiff, Canard-

Jeanne and Shine were likely together, also Jeanne was a tough lady. She could take care of herself and likely had her own ideas on how to deal with things, we’re still in a bit of a pickle here personally.

Guard Hounds and Brutes were less trouble when they couldn’t reach you, Troopers and Heli-troopers however were continuing to fire on us. At least the small trickle of Saber Knights was dealing with the Guard Hounds and slowing down the brutes, as for the Rider Zealots they were impressively deadly against troopers who had no melee option for dealing with them and their guns were all but useless against the zealots shields as they charged forth with their energy blades erupted from their gauntlets.

I sent a digital puck out and watched as it took down one of the Heli-troopers.

“How much time until the artillery in the walls blow Sami?” The skiff shook as some of the hundreds of bullets tore through the shields of the Zealot pilot and damage one of the better engines on this thing keeping us airborne.

“Three minutes until the overloads cause all the artillery to fail. I don’t know if they have a repair system, but it’s going to take quite a bit of time for them to recover from the damage hundreds of artillery cannons all going up at once will do!” Sami popped her head up from cover and started firing round after round from her rifle into the heli-troopers.

The flying troopers were currently our biggest issue and Krosserdog was the one doing the most damage to them.

“We do not want to crash near those Brutes when the skiff finally goes down!” Called out Peppercat as she fired a short ranged ball of lightning into a Heli-trooper trying to either land on us or attack the skiff with the whirling blades directly.

“We just got another territory…” Dormarch announced and looked off in the direction we entered the lower city from. Surge projector blasts were flying from his tentacles at every heli-trooper that so much as got within range of him. “I’m feeling Guardian Lancers, looks like Shine and Jeanne are trying to build up support and take out some PLANTs. Unfortunately for us Merak seems to have been keeping all the PLANTs away from us to prevent territory captures like that from happening… but he can’t deal with us and Jeanne’s small contingent from going after the PLANTs. We need to keep him busy and off balance!”

“Easier said than done Dormarch. We’re getting hammered from all sides here and Peppercat’s right, this skiff is not going to stay airborne for much longer!” A hole opened up in the zealots shield and Pom quickly physically plugged it with the paranormal lance. “Also Shanty’s water colossus is rapidly losing mass quickly, she can’t keep up with both of them for much longer. At least she’s getting faster the less water there is.”

“Nice to know that isn’t just me that noticed that something was up with a lack of PLANTs to assault in the area.” I turned to the zealot. “Fly us lower, the artillery along the walls is about to go up and I don’t want to be high enough to be caught in the blasts.”

We sorely needed that support like yesterday.

A widening blast of green swirling glowing wind, likely from Dolly, dropped every Heli-trooper out of the air around us.

Not too long after that I heard something hit one of the rear engines… my eyes widened we were losing altitude and both the rear engines had caught fire.

“This is Canard we’re going down, please get here soon after wall cannons go down. We’re almost out of time in here!” I called out into the headset I was wearing as the skiff started tilting forward and we were closing in on Ifrit and The Arsenal. I turned to the Zealot. “Aim the Skiff at The Arsenal, we’re going to jump for it, everyone is to get clear and get into the city and find a place to holdout, carry anyone that is injured or gets injured with you! We’re not leaving anyone behind and we need to start making this foothold stick!”

-Far side of the plains of Midgar, Castle Alexander, Ocellus (Music: Protect the Espers FF3/6)-

We were still getting hammered, but we were prepared to move forward and from the last signal sent out by Canard, it wasn’t going too well in there…

That’s when the first artillery piece along the wall went up in a giant conflagration and soon they all started exploding along the wall. The wall was minimally damaged, but we silently watched as all the cannons went up in massive explosions along the wall in a vibrant display that was too obvious to miss.

“That’s the signal!” I called out. “Commence plan Save Them! Is the Divine Judgement ready to fire?”

“As it’ll ever be, but we’re walking the rest of the way to the city once we use it… can’t wait to see this thing actually fly!” Answered Cid. “We’ll be walking the rest of the way and we’ll be down to two cannons working after the drain… but we’ll still give them heck.”

“Are the care package team ready to go?” I asked.

“Head Gazimon here, the zealots and the rest of us are ready to go, Welch has been pulling double time to get this done!” The Gazimon reported.

“Torneko, castle defenses?” I asked.

“We’re ready to take on the heat and keep on burning if anything gets inside!” Torneko responded jovially. “Our Minotaurs are ready to keep on trucking and some of them even like being engineers for Cid.”

“Welch production line on the Skein Flyers and Magitek Armors?” I asked.

“I’m having Rider Zealots help with building them and they keep trying to make something similar to the Skein Flyers.” Reported Welch.

“Let them make whatever it is they want as long as they keep supplying enough vehicles for the assault we’re about to launch, they are called Riders for a reason and I’m sure they have a few ideas of their own for what they want to pilot.” That’s all that I had to worry about, now I just had to command us into position.

-Castle Alexander-

The castle lifted into the air at the large mechanical paws and started levitating forward towards the city walls, the sudden lack of heavy artillery fire made it easy for the castle to ignore the fire from the many smaller vehicles and mechanical EPs the city had been absolutely throwing at them near constantly.

Just because the enemy lacked artillery, didn’t mean that Castle Alexander lost any of its own as hundreds of rockets fired arced from the castle’s courtyard on the back of the giant mechanical hovering dog. Without artillery support the EPs were being blown back in droves.

Something seemed odd as there was no Magitek Armor or Skein Flyers were being fielded as the castle continued taking a pounding from all sides as it headed towards the center of the battlefield of the plains.

The castle was moving at speeds that it previously hadn’t been able to move before, its turrets were putting up a meager offensive. As it neared the center of the plains still a fair distance away from Midgar the sword in the castles back rose up and started glowing.

“Divine Judgement!” Ocellus’s voice called at as the castle’s paws slammed into the ground and millions of beams of light started tearing across the plains and ripping through the enemy’s battle lines in short order tearing apart every EP in sight and gaining a huge amount of territory in the process as every enemy PLANT in the region was torn to shreds by the massive territory spike that buffeted the walls of Midgar.

Unfortunately the Divine Judgement couldn’t really pierce the walls and only a four beams managed to arc through an opening and into the city proper.

Out of three of four beams that made it through and there was only one to directly hit to a real problem target. The other three beams went wide and only destroyed two Brutes in the ensuing explosions.

The Arsenal was struck by the one lone beam in the back end of its right cannon and then had the skiff crashed into it not ten seconds later dealing a lot of damage to the tough death spewing tank.

“You think you’ve taken the field well let me show you what I’ve had cooked up for you!” Merak transmitted to Castle Alexander.

Hundreds of robotic scorpions started digging their way out of the ground around Castle Alexander while it was prone on its belly, along with hundreds of other mechanical tank EPs in a variety from spiders to normal treaded tanks. Hundreds of EPs unearthed themselves all around the castle and they were focused on moving towards it.

“Anthill, Anthill!” Ocellus called out loud from the castle.

The mechanical scorpions didn’t get too far before they were being struck by a lot of beams firing horizontally and from the direction Castle Alexander just came in. In fact a variety of energy attacks rained down on the sudden ambush swarm.

“Mirage Collective here, did somebody call for an exterminator?” Mirage Mew stated as thousands of Mirage Pokémon, the digital cousins of flesh and blood Pokémon, started surging forth onto the battlefield their souls alight and ready for battle.

Quite a number of Rider Zealots in the castle shivered at what Mirage Mew said.

“Harmony Programs on task, FRIENDSHIP!” Shouted Pinkpie.exe a second later as hundreds of candy cannonballs and horns started tearing into the enemy lines, followed by raptors, bulls and flying lizards charging across the battlefield.

“What?!” Merak seemed surprised they had seen that coming.

“Did you really think we’d miss you stuffing machines into the ground under the cover of your artillery fire?” Ocellus stated flatly from where she sat in the control room of Castle Alexander. “Thank goodness for Caerbannogs scouted the battlefield by digging through the ground or else we wouldn’t have known about that! I’m pretty good with knowing where to put stealth experts to work… since I am one.”

Castle Alexander stood up tall and started to slowly stomp forward as Mirage Pokémon and Harmony Program started to help with the decimated battlefield.

“Now that that’s finished… care package team launch now while we have an opening!” Suddenly hundreds of Skein Flyers hauling other Skein Flyers and some supplies started flying across the battlefield unimpeded along with Magitek Armors using large tilt rotor fans to get airborne.

The flying variant of the Magitek Armors fired missiles down at the various EPs on the ground while on their way towards the city. There was no anti-air to really stop the Rider Zealots from getting into the city at the moment.

“Care package team away, we’ll get to them in time Ocellus, you’ll see!” The Head Gazimon called out as they rode among the many Zealots flying for the city.

“Damn it, Moby is still dealing with the Slayer Dragon in the upper tiers… Moon Cell Watchers and Gunships start deploying right now!” Merak was not a happy camper at his sneak attack being foiled, he decided to focus his efforts on killing at least one of the few beings currently fighting inside Midgar.

“Everyone get ready for deploying ground forces…” Ocellus stated as the meager ground forces they could put out weren’t afraid of getting into a pitched fight. None were more eager than a tiny little yellow mite that could fit in the cup of someone’s hoof who was going to continue being a big hero on any battlefield. “Are you ready Dazzle, Frizzle?”

Castle Alexander, stopped, crouched down and offloaded a bunch of people onto the battlefield, they were soon surrounded by APs that teleported directly out of Castle Alexander.

Saber Knights, readied their swords. Guardian Lancers held up their spears. Caerbannogs were carrying bandoleers of grenades and rope darts on their hips. Rider Zealots were piloting regular Magitek Armor and any remaining Skein Flyers that weren’t part of the care package fleet that took off to attack Midgar by air.

Ocellus had noted that something was distracting Moby Dick, so their air forces would actually have a chance to get through.

“I think can get dragon type Growlmon going… that should be enough for us to take the plains right?” Dazzle responded as she and Frizzle exited the front gates with everyone that could fight while the Commandramon continued to hold the walls of the castle.

“Then let’s show them we didn’t come this far to be stopped now!” Ocellus called out brazenly. “We’re here to save worlds, let’s act like it, CHARGE!”

The APs moved out doing their various duties.

Saber Knights at the front with their shields, dealing with the smaller EP forces with their blades.

Lancer Guardians pierced forward with their lances. They speared through armor without fear.

Caerbannogs started disappearing into cardboard boxes, the ground or into tall repeatedly blasted digital grass. They would be scouting and setting up traps for the enemy. They toppled machines unexpectedly and caused havoc across the battlefield if they weren’t caught in time.

Zealots piloted their vehicles and protected the elite or VIP ground forces that were Dazzle or Quetal’s group, who weren’t as easily replaceable APs, from projectile fire as they provided a heavy offensive of their own. Their shields proved to be a problem for the many projectile oriented mechanical EPs on the field of battle.

Behind all of them stood the castle that continued to walk forward from the halfway point on the battlefield towards the front gate of Midgar in a full on assault without pausing.

“We’re coming, hold out for a little while longer!” Ocellus stated as the Mirage Collective Pokémon and Harmony Programs sent from Mare Melum joined up and started pushing forth.

-Currently retreating into the city of Midgar, Pom-

The Arsenal just took a lot of damage from the skiff crashing into it, yet it was still going. Lu Bu… was entirely unaffected by that Divine Judgement beam…. why am I not even surprised by that?

Krosserdog quickly helped me up and he then turned and started to fire on the incoming Brutes, his shots were less than effective and there were at least twenty of them to deal with now. Their numbers were slowly getting worse and they were obviously an elite type of EP given how tough they were.

Where was a rampaging Fou when I needed him?

“Come on Pom, we all made it off the skiff, now let’s move and start really sticking it to Merak!” Elise called out gleefully, she was really getting into this now.

I looked to see a giant water version of Shanty Buck Lu Bu in the face and at best it barely stunned him, no injury… we still couldn’t fight something like that.

“Stop thinking and start acting!” Dolly stated, patted me on the back gently with a paw.

“We’re going to need a lot of help if we’re to deal with Lu Bu and The Arsenal is still quite functional!” I pointed out that The Arsenal was already back upright and despite the damage… all its weapons looked like they still worked perfectly. “We don’t have the kind of firepower to deal with them and it’s not like a Magitek Armor is magically going to drop out of the…”

A Magitek Armor slammed into the pavement in front of me and it was entirely undamaged from where it was cracking the ground, it opened up and revealed that it had no pilot in it. I also didn’t like how the words ‘Metal Hound 002’ were stenciled on it in bold white letters on the armor painted to look like it had a wolfs fur pattern.

“Sky…” I said dumbly, also I noted there were large pack at the back of the armor that seemed to be for flight. Oh no, I’ve had enough trouble with driving a vehicle like this one on the ground, now I’m going to be piloting one that can fly?!

“Cheese House!” I looked up and my eyes widened, there were four Flying Magitek Armors and several Skein Flyers that started laying into the Brute EPs and started pushing them back with missiles. The four Zealot’s piloting flying Magitek Armor came in and landed, one of them turned to me and said with a hint of humor. “What lamb crawls?”

He gestured to the Magitek Armor innocently sitting there and waiting for a magical pilot…

“What, do you need a written invitation Pom?” Dolly stated with a grin, she was quite eager to get her paws on it and I was quite reluctant to get into something she didn’t know how to fly.

“Oh my goodness… Goddess Jiutian preserve me.” I dragged my left hoof down my face and turned to Elise and she shrugged at me, as did Cruel and Crazy.

Sighing audibly as it couldn’t wait, I went forward and hopped into the pilot’s seat and waited for Dolly to latch onto my head.

Here I go again, sealed in a screaming metal death trap fighting things well beyond my measure… I hate my life... bet this armor was going to be destroyed by the fight too.

427. Midgar Meltdown Pt.6.

-Midgar Plains, Battlefield assessment-

Mirage Mew sent out their reinforcements after showing up temporarily, before retreating back to holding the surrounding realms back and away from flooding all over Pom’s forces.

The support of the Mirage Collective came in the form of rushing rhinoceroses, armored kangaroos and flying fish dragon Pokémon, all digital entities brought in to tear the enemy a new one.

One melee rush down specialist in the rhino’s, they could get around the battlefield quickly provided they were given running space and could deal with most of the tougher threats one on one. They were the quadrupedal Rhyhorn, the slightly more armored and bipedal Rhydon and the thickly armored Rhyperior that were taking on the most dangerous targets. The Rhyperior in particular were using a move called Rock Wrecker to throw humongous boulders without the aid of a catapult to launch them, they were the brute force that matched the enemy EPs Brute force head on.

The tall toughed hided kangaroo’s provided a lot anti-infantry offensive power with moves like Avalanche, Earthquake and Bulldoze to blast the Trooper EPs or other weaker common EPs apart in large swaths. They would tear the ground apart under the heavier combat machinery on the offensive to immobilize or slow them down for other allies to deal with in an easier manner. They also made effective mobile defensive walls with the Protect move for the numerous explosive projectiles being launched by the enemy’s limited artillery platforms that were hastily fielded after the wall cannons self-destructed from forced overclocking. These were the Khangaskahns and they were quickly trying to form up a defensive line with Castle Alexander that had stalled in its movements on the battlefield once the current inhabitants of the castle were made aware of a glaring problem with pressing the gates of Midgar.

The last were monster providing raw aerial power to the battlefield and even more offensive might to the battlefield by clearing the sudden influx of aerial Heli-troopers, Moon Cell Watchers and a few gunships that deployed from Midgar to deal with the sudden invasion of Skein Flyer wielding Rider Zealots. These all terrain terror beasts that specialized in being enraged, while being capable of fighting in water, the air or on land, the ones that tore the enemy out of the air were the Mirage Collective version of a Gyarados.

Harmony Program Forces was being led directly by Pinkpie.exe, her friends were not on the battlefield and were still in Mare Melum to make sure nothing invaded while one of the Harmony Programs that used to inhabit Dodo’s head was out throwing a ‘war party’.

Taffy Ponies provided artillery support in the form of candy cannons that fired massive jaw breakers. This alongside marshmallow uni-cougars firing their horns in constant barrages like arrows gave the field of battle an archery style offensive support.

The purple smart raptors were performing infantry maneuvers with the flying lizards and blue cows to rapidly rip into the stragglers left behind by the Mirage Collective offensive.

As for the winged Caerbannog, they were provided support by slowing down the enemy and patching their ally’s data when they were damaged. The form of healing unfortunately only worked on digital entities, but it was similar enough to what Dormarch could do.

Speaking of at the front of the battle trying to make headway through the mechanical crab monster was the Pokémon Realm heroes.

Quetal was blasting out Beat Up to rapid fire powerful blasts of shadowy attacks on the small motorcycle riding Troopers trying to ram into them or shoot them, Favela and Dodo had his back as they blasted ranged attacks as well to deal with the quick two wheeled menaces that made it past the APs offensive lines.

Among the honorable mentions among the battlefield was Mundo performing a suplex on an entire scorpion machine three times his size, much to everyone’s consternation that he was strong enough to even lift the several ton thing off the ground and then slam it down breaking its back without doing so to his own.

Dazzle and Frizzle were having problems with a large crab based war machine… up until it stopped moving entirely and a yellow streak shot off the suddenly drained machine, its power source having failed to sufficiently protect itself from Lit eating the energy out of the excessively powerful battery.

While this was going on Ocellus was busy in Castle Alexander with making a call about a problem they’ve run into on the battlefield. This was while the castle was being infiltrated by Assassin Jellies and Reapers clambering up into the well protected fortress, the battling inside the castle was becoming as treacherous as being outside of it. At least Torneko’s forces were holding the line inside the giant walking dog construct and the Lancer Guardian APs were able to repel most boarders if Torneko’s Berserkers missed anything.

Castle Alexander had grinded to a halt for reasons that weren’t clear to the Harmony Program and Mirage Collective allied forces helping assault the plains.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar, Embattled Street, Pom-

Once I closed myself inside the Flying Magitek Armor, a screen came up and I saw Ocellus… I immediately gave her a flat look.

“Really Ocellus, Metal Hound Zero Zero 2?” I watched as the Rider Zealots in the four armors that dropped this one off fire missiles on the Brutes, even high explosive was having a tough time damaging them and I recall the first one we managed to deal with surviving having two spears run through them without problem. That there were at least twenty nearby being harassed and distracted by the Rider Zealots at least gave me a moment to actually have a hopefully short conversation.

“Welch’s idea and I’m glad you received the care package. Welch heard how upset Dolly was when her little brother ate the first one to provide him that powerful armored evolution of his, but enough about that. We need to focus on more important matters!” Ocellus looked about as the screen jittered and shook with explosion. “Can I get a situation report from you Pom, what’s going on in there?”

“We’re scattered, battered, barely have two PLANTs to our names, our enemy is keeping us from gaining any ground in the form of territories or any more PLANTs by playing keep away with us and we’re battling a power tank directly controlled by the problem servant of this realm who apparently has genius level intellect and is quite lazy with it. We’re also dealing with… behind you!” I called out and Ocellus swiftly reacted by transforming in a split second into a dragon and the knife skittered off her weaker version of true dragon scales, Smolder was on the Assassin Reaper and tearing them apart with her bare claws a second later. Smolder might be small, but she was terrifyingly efficient with rending that poor Assassin a pile of destroyed cubes… not dissolving cubes mind you, just positively destroyed and a testament why dragons were something you don’t mess with at any size. “We’re also dealing with that.”

I pointed the screens towards Shanty had already lost more than half the mass of water and Lu Bu was still a blazing inferno of raw fury and power slowly beating the protective water off of her.

“Yikes… that is not a visual I would want to be anywhere near even if I can make myself resilient to fire.” Ocellus made me glare at her again. “Okay, sorry, on our end we managed to press the field. Only… we’ve hit a bit of a snag with getting to the wall, much less starting the process of actually going through it.”

“What’s the issue and how do you work the flight system on this thing, so I’ll know what Dolly needs to know about making this thing apparently fly.” Kind of needed it soon, I saw The Arsenal charging up another shot and fired it at someone. I saw Peppercat scampering away on all fours a second later… she just avoided being directly hit with a charged shot from that thing as the blast chased her heels.

“Few things to update you on about your armor, we now know all the magical functions of a general Magitek Armor now. We made the missiles cycle like the guns, but they are four shots before a lengthy cycle time and don’t use magic anymore so the extra firepower won’t tax you or Dolly… they’ll also be a little weaker as a result. As for the magic functions you can still do the healing beam thing, for yourself or others. There’s also a Fire beam, a lightning beam and an ice beam, like the healing those will use magic and take from you, so use them sparingly and otherwise those are really powerful attacks the machine can perform when you’re in a jam… like right now from what we’re getting of the visuals of the Metal Hound Zero Zero Two. Welch made that armor with some increased communications capacity so that we can even have this conversation.” Here Ocellus pause and looked around, Smolder was also on alert as Castle Alexander shook with impacts from weapons of various mechanical vehicles still being thrown at the mobile castle even now. She returned her gaze back to me. “We can’t move Castle Alexander any further forward, it’s currently plugging the enemy territory in the plains with our own. They can’t summon anymore EPs directly on the plains… as long as we don’t move. We don’t want EPs to suddenly start hitting us from behind while the field of battle is going so well in our favor. The exception is that EPs are still appearing near the wall and blockading our path to it. We now have an idea of where the PLANTs are for the plains regarding what Midgar City has been throwing at us.”

Shanty ducked her physical body back down into the chest of water colossus as Lu Bu blew its head off in an impressive amount of steam, not a single drop of water from the loss of the head touched the ground at all. Shanty quickly backpedaled the water body while lashing out a water blade at The Arsenal. She was slowly being overwhelmed with having to fight two battles at once and she had a rapidly shrinking resource to work with thanks to Lu Bu’s blazing hot assaults that cause the air itself to waver.

“Hurry it up Ocellus, I need to get out there before Shanty loses her actual head.” I was a little impatient for good reasons and Elise was making a good show of protecting our currently unmoving machine with knives, energy bolt spewing Search Snakes, along with Crazy and Cruel working together… I watched as Crazy launched Cruel and the improved version of Search Snake stylishly twirled around a Trooper’s neck and take its head off with a bounding leap away that tore the knife she held in her tail straight through its neck without stopping.

I shuddered a bit at the sight, glad it wasn’t flesh and blood spewing from the stump of the neck.

“Lever to your far left is ejection of the flight pack module, ejection seat is below you under the seat. Lever to your far right side of the controls will switch between walk or flight mode, meaning it’ll lock the legs into whatever position they are in when you swap modes, no you can’t do both and that throttle right there tells you how much power to put into the propellers… just know that Flying Magitek Armor is not meant for high speed maneuvering or high speed in general. Flight mode is controlled the same way you would walking except the energy will go to the propellers for movement instead of the legs.” As Ocellus pointed out this stuff to us from her side of the screen, Dolly tested switch us into flight mode and the change was immediately as the leg of the machine locked up. She changed it back then test fired the missiles. Four explosives erupted away from us and blew apart a few Heli-troopers… there was nothing left of them after the explosions. “You’ll need a crash course on learning how to fly that thing, I mean literally learn by doing here, we don’t exactly have the time to go over everything about how to pilot it given your situation is quickly deteriorating.”

A magitek armor went sailing by with damaged flying rotors as a Brute had tried to throw it at us directly and thankfully missed. The damaged armor got up, but it could no longer fly, that didn’t stop the Zealot piloting it from getting back into the fight walking it along the ground and firing on the Brute. When the machine guns proved ineffective on the Brute it started firing missiles which were better in damaging the things hide.

“You think?!” I shouted.

“As for where those PLANT we suspect are being kept out of our reach and is why we haven’t taken many territories of the plains after launching a full out Divine Judgment attack… we believe that the PLANTs are within the walls of Midgar themselves, making it hard to take them out. As in, they are inside the walls material where we can’t reach them unless we can collapse the walls in on them which requires the capability to destroy the walls in the first place. Castle Alexander can do that, but nothing else will without enough firepower.” Okay, that wasn’t good news to hear Ocellus. “Good news is we can slowly expand and take territory if we pressure it enough and the PLANTs can’t counteract us and we’ll be able to press forward slowly with time, it’ll just take us a bit longer to get to the wall. Bad news… you’re likely to be swarmed by the same mechanical monstrosities we’re all dealing with out here the closer we get to the wall as they’ll soon only start being able to spawn within the walls themselves.”

“Excuse me, but I think I’m going to scream in a very volatile and frustrated manner soon…” My right eye was twitching until Dolly got us walking forward and unleashing four missiles into the Brute to aid the Zealots machine cannon fire tearing into nearby EPs.

“Quite understandable and very reasonable Pom, I can feel your anxiety from here… or is that raw depression? We’ll figure something out, just try to find a way to grab more territory in there and try to stay alive. We sent a box of Sitrus Berries in to be air dropped to you to keep you stocked up and the Gazimon will start setting up a stronger foothold with non-disposable reusable traps in the territory zones you have to deal with any incoming EPs… which are really small compared to the massive city we’re dealing with here.” Ocellus looked off to the side before her gaze returned to mine, apparently there was nothing to worry about as she continued. “I’ve got other things to worry about here myself and I have a command structure to keep in order. Please hold on Pom, I know guys can do it! Also, preemptively sorry for eventually making things worse for you when we start pressuring the territory back towards the walls and you start getting hit with the kinds of mechanical EPs we’ve been stuck fighting back.”

“Ugh… we’ll try, but the servant isn’t making it any easier. Also I want to mark someone as an ally, similar vein to Snake summoning himself on our side.” I gave a visual of Elise, Cruel and Crazy as they brought down Troopers, Heli-troopers and fended off the Brutes long enough for the flying magitek armors to blast down. The missiles were a slow cycle and required time to reload, Dolly had already blown another brute apart in the meantime as our conversation was running a bit long. Skein Flyer Rider Zealots were swarming the area and getting shot down in droves thanks to The Arsenal being a ridiculously powerful machine that could rip through the shields the Zealots were providing them in seconds. “Dolly we’re going to attack The Arsenal and Lu Bu. Ocellus, please send us a warning when you start pressing the territory on the wall. I absolutely want to know when we’re about to have even more hell dropped on us.”

“I’ll keep you posted Pom, good luck, in fact all the luck you can get with Lu Bu there!” Ocellus was hopeful given we were still alive and had our backs to a metaphorical wall and it was only going to get worse if they moved off the plains before establishing slow control over the territory. Any program, be it allied, enemy or neutral, tends to be capable of summoning in their territory just about anywhere.

“Glad I’m not in there.” Smolder stated with huff. “We’re going to have to explain this to our allies why we’re not moving forward.”

Glad you’re not in here either Smolder. I wouldn’t want you anywhere near the mess that is my life at the moment, which is currently being stonewalled by Merak in quite a literal fashion. Guy is definitely a genius and making it hard for us to win, the best we can hope for is to out grit all of his actions with blind faith, some luck, brute force and lots of dedication to absolutely bringing him down by doing things he can’t expect.

I looked up the tower where he was controlling The Arsenal from in the distance, he couldn’t delay us forever. If he didn’t take a more proactive role in stopping us… well Elise said he’s lazy, we should be able to at least use that somehow. He couldn’t have thought of absolutely everything to make it harder for us to take Midgar City!

-Battle continued: Counter Invasion Forces within the walls of Midgar (With ‘Metal Hound 002’ piloted by Pom and Dolly) Vs. Lu Bu (Trying to kill an annoying water protected doeling he hates with fire) Vs. The Arsenal (Now trying to kill all of Pom’s friends instead of just focusing Pom down, who’s proven to be harder to kill than previously thought to be.)-

(Music for ‘Metal Hounds 002’ theme: Be a King Always Type 1, from Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3.)

Dolly got the Metal Hound 002 charging forward on two legs and was firing on the Brutes with both machine cannons, much to the machine guns uselessness at piercing their bodies. She quickly retreated from the fist spikes before it could hit us and then lunged us forward to stab the nail blades of the right arm into the red eye and the thing… actually went down.

“Dolly back up, fire some machines gun shots on the red of the eye of the nearest Brute.” Listening to Pom’s advisement the bullets Dolly sent out bounced off the red eye as the next brute quickly stalked towards them. “Now fire one missile into them.”

The Metal Hound loosed a single missile from its right shoulder and the red core of a Brute immediately blew apart on impact with the explosive weapon.

“It’s as I thought. Magitek Zealots, focus on the Brutes cores with missiles or heavy physical impacts, focus on using their weaknesses against them. Avoid the two targets called The Arsenal and Lu Bu. The large tank and the fire guy. Focus on keeping EPs out of their general area so we can fight those two unimpeded to the best of your abilities, stay alive as long as possible and retreat if your vehicles are in danger of being destroyed.” Pom was going in to backup Shanty and the Metal Hound 002 quickly started running, before stopping place and its legs locked in position as it started hovering in the air as Dolly tentatively got the thing flying towards The Arsenal.

“Aw, yeah, we’re airborne!” Dolly said with Pom’s voice as The Metal Hound 002 hovered forward at a good speed and fired some missiles into the cores of several brutes, then swept around to fly towards the fight Shanty was quickly losing as the mass of water she had was rapidly reducing now. “Hold on Shanty, Metal Hound 002 piloted by Dolly Danger Dalmatian is on the case!”

The Metal Hound 002 flew up turned towards the two battlefield bruisers and rolled as it swooped down towards them.

“Dolly… no crazy maneuvers please, I’d like to keep what’s left of the last Sitrus Berry I ate down.” Pom complained audibly as they closed in on The Arsenal, even as she said this Metal Hound 002 fired four missiles off as it flew by and the impacts drew the attention of The Arsenal off of blowing apart Canard and Sami’s cover in a nearby building… said cover was a supporting pillar.

“What the, I call hacks, when the hell did you get that or would even know how to use it?!” Merak was upset and firing the left arm six rotary cannons up at Metal Hound 002 and it seemed to boost sideways in the air with an unnatural amount of momentum that it shouldn’t possibly have to avoid the thousands of machine cannon rounds tracking after it.

Metal Hound 002 fired off another barrage of missiles into the damaged portions of The Arsenal as it charged up the right arm plasma gun and one of the missiles struck the damaged back end that had been struck by the Divine Judgement beam. This caused the plasma cannon to lose its charge doing some damage to the still somewhat usable arm of The Arsenal.

This stopped Merak from attacking Shanty who had desperately started taking up muddy puddles and drawing fluids from any nearby source she feasibly could to fight against the blazing heat that threatened to boil her alive. If she could draw the ambient moisture out of the air she would, but the heat was becoming far too much for that and even the ground underneath Lu Bu’s feet was starting to melt.

Krosserdog and Peppercat took to the field while The Arsenal was focused on trying to shoot down Metal Hound 002 and Lu Bu was trying to outright end Shanty’s existence off to the side. Neither of the two big monsters in the fight were working together. They focused on attacking The Arsenal’s energy beam firing part on its back.

Peppercat hopped up and the machine electrified itself, which just improved Peppercats strength as she absorbed the energy and started to claw at the laser projection device while Krosserdog shoots at the weaker portions of it.

Dormarch came surging in with several zealots to attack the back screw shaped wheels in an attempt to hobble The Arsenal’s ability to move and helped Krosserdog while the Zealots to block the direction changing energy beams with their shields.

The other APs in the area were left to hold off the massive number of EPs flooding in from other sections of the city. The small number of Flying Magitek Armor present was at least dealing with the bigger problems of the Brutes who could slowly batter their way through the APs with little damage to show for it even when their weakness of taking damage directly to their red cores was now well known.

“Do you really think you can take me?” Merak taunted as a pulse sent Peppercat flying from The Arsenal, the same kind that blocked Pom’s Bark Breaker, and it tried to back into Dormarch and Krosserdog, only for Dormarch to grab Krosserdog with his tentacles and dodge the reversing tank.

“Now!” Dormarch called having successfully baited The Arsenal into position.

“Stampede XM!” Suddenly Sami, having recently evolved up into her Hi-Commandramon form, let loose with the grenade launcher that came with the form and hundreds of grenades pounded The Arsenal with numerous direct hits and some indirect hits around it.

The grenades did a lot of damage to the left side of the machine and even more damage came in the form of four missiles hitting the machine cannons on the right damaging them lightly. Merak had little idea what a digimon was, but he was certainly upset that the rifle wielding lizard somehow managed to surprise him with a dedicated projectile barrage.

When several portals opened up, Sami immediately stopped firing her grenades, not wanted to hit allies with her own explosives.

The left side of The Arsenal took a lot of damage, the machine cannons were still quite functional, but the energy beam emitter on the back still had a lot of life taken out of it as the emitter barely had anything functioning left on it from the numerous high energy grenade impacts.

“Look out!” Canard called out and everyone scrambled away from an eruption of fire as Lu Bu decided to start targeting them for some reason, Sami covered Canard with her odd shield projecting and energy barrier and protecting him from the sudden blast of heat.

It wasn’t hard to see that the attack from Lu Bu was meant to keep Shanty interested in being more aggressive, he gave a taunting stare to the water encased goat and Shanty stayed on the defensive as she lobbed a ball of water that evaporate as soon as it came within an inch of his face.

“Hallelujah!” While The Arsenal was trying to focus on attacking Dormarch, Peppercat or Krosserdog and sometimes sending beams of energy in the direction of Metal Hound 002, as it continued to shoot its two machine cannons and fire four missiles into the tank periodically. Merak had missed something.

No one had noticed when Snake had gotten close or when he had planted the grenade, but they saw the camouflage rabbit leaping away and it had already been too late to stop the energy beam emitter on the back of the machine from being completely engulfed in a golden blast and blown clean off.

The shadow of Snake the Caerbannog could be seen sneaking off and slowly turning into a rectangular shape as he did. Having dealt some major damage to The Arsenal which was still tearing through APs and injuring anyone getting near it.

“HOW?! I DIDN’T EVEN BLINK ONCE!” Merak the lemming proclaimed as he was staring at the screen he was controlling The Arsenal through. He hadn’t seen Snake coming at all, though he did see him leaving with a confident smirk and the trailing of his headband as he leapt away.

The Arsenal was left with the melee defensive features, the flamethrowers were still fully function, the beam emitter was completely gone, the right arm plasma cannon was working at half… make that thirty percent capacity as four missiles damage the left arm where the Divine Judgment beam had struck it and opened the rents in the armor even wider. The Left with the six rotary machine cannons were still fully functional and firing death, but it was hard to kill the really important living targets when the Zealot APs were actively protecting them from projectiles until they were taking out.

The problem with the tank was that it wasn’t meant to fight multiple opponents with different eclectic abilities working towards its destruction in concert.

The numerous Brute EPs were being dealt with by the small number of Flying Magitek Armors they couldn’t fight back against while the AP piloted Skein Flyers kept the Moon Cell Watchers, Heli-troopers and the newly added wrinkle of the twin propeller Gunships away from them. Even the one Flying Magitek Armor stuck on the ground was still capable of firing missiles and taking out Brutes by itself.

The Arsenal was started to take some serious damage from the combined efforts of everyone hitting it with everything they have.

Merak was tired of the various attacks coming at The Arsenal from all sides and decided to flip the board in his frustration to try and give Lu Bu at least some advantage because he knew they’d turn on the flaming beast after they finished off The Arsenal, but just because The Arsenal was just about done doesn’t mean he couldn’t pull out all the stops.

The Arsenal turned its arms towards Shanty water colossus that was a third its side and blasted the two napalm flamethrowers to both sides of her trapping her within to powerful walls of flame in the street she was on, Lu Bu grinned as she was stuck where she couldn’t evade very much anymore.

Lu Bu didn’t absorb the flames this time and instead let them be as he rushed Shanty as The Arsenal finished up by creating a wall of flames behind her that boiled the water around Shanty making it very uncomfortable for her.

“Well that’s bad.” Krosserdog stated flatly and continued to pour out shots into the surrounding EPs as their numbers were becoming increasingly closer to an unstoppable flood and he wasn’t doing much damage to The Arsenal after helping with the Energy Emitter on its back.

“You think, go back to covering me Krosser!” Peppercat turned as a Brute managed to encroach on them it was blown apart with a missile from the Metal Hound 002 as it flew by while shooting the spherical Moon Cell Watchers firing lasers at it as it flew backwards avoiding cables and wires as it went.

“Do you really think The Arsenal is all I have? I’ve got plenty of tricks left in The Arsenal, you’re not really winning here and I’m sure you’ve already noticed by now that help isn’t coming. If said help tries… heh heh heh, then you’re all dead.” This coming from Merak just confirms the setup that Ocellus told Pom about and their problems with getting closer to the wall to bust through it. “In any case, I’ve several plans to prevent you from reaching the upper city too… I’d like to see you even try if you survive long enough to actually beat the fire demon, because if this is the best you can pull together then Moon Cell has simply already won. I’m quite sure Elise will face yet another torturous death and will be back under our control after we extract her soul from her body. Might even use the same methods that the Sumeragi scientists used on her just to break it again.”

Elise was quite upset to hear that, as she was in the middle of forcing a Heli-troopers own propeller gauntlet into its face. She quickly threw a knife and it took down a Trooper trying to get at Canard who in turn protected Sami’s back from Guard Hounds as she continued to rain down grenades on the brutes and tried to avoid the various portals opening up around The Arsenal to spray it’s bullets about and into the various scattered opponents.

“Ocellus… keep pressing forward and pressuring the wall, don’t worry about us… we’ll live. We’ve got this, keep fighting!” Pom surprised everyone with that declaration and it was a one eighty from her soft personality. It wasn’t Dolly that said it through her either, they could tell the difference between their personalities. “Baa-Ram-Ewe Merak, BAA-RAM-EWE… come on Dolly!”

Dolly and Pom were of sound and similar minds as they drove their smaller aerial machine into going straight for The Arsenal after blowing away a Moon Cell Watcher with the two machine cannons as the charge for The Arsenal.

-Pom-

Over my dead body would Elise go through something like that again, I didn’t go to all that trouble to fix her soul just for them to mess it up in the same way again!

Also don’t worry Shanty, I’ll be there for you soon, I'll always come to save you… don’t know how we’re doing that or beating Lu Bu yet, but he’s not invincible given he’s already died once. It just goes to show that Moon Cell bit off more than it could chew if it couldn’t control Lu Bu’s soul after getting a hold of it, Moon Cell isn't some perfect entity and that gives me some hope that we can actually take it down.

I inhaled and started applying the concept of the 'Dancing Flame' to the Metal Hound 002, when I exhaled I would see if it would work or not.

The two machine cannons on the Metal Hound 002 were running hot and blistering a path forward and right into The Arsenal as we surged straight for it.

-Dolly-

Ah yeah, Pom is actually in the mood for a fight, Bow-Whacka-Wow Awrooo, lets go Metal Hound Two~!

Dormarch, please do not eat this one...

-Dormarch-

Honestly, you eat one digital highly mixed magic and technology armor and everyone thinks you'll do it again... speaking of, almost at enough enough strength to break out Garummon evolution again, that'll be helpful for Lu Bu if we can finish of The Arsenal quickly enough. The energy requirements of that evolution may be ridiculous, but I'm willing to pay the cost for the kind of combat output that comes with it.

Mom has obviously cracked in some way, but I don't know if that is entirely a bad thing in this situation. In any case I'm not letting her charge forward without me there to keep a watch on her health and or constantly dwindling mental state!

For even if we finish off The Arsenal there's still Lu Bu to worry about and we haven't even scratched that guy yet.

428. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 7.

-Equus, Mango L. Refreshments juice bar, Jaded La Perm-

“So that’s what happened Mango.” I said with a flat look on my face.

“What a horrible waste of linguini.” Mango shook his head sadly.

“I know, and it wasn’t even my fault… at least this time!” I was fairly angry at the fact.

“So… did you want it to be your fault?” There was a long pause as Mango looked at me knowingly.

“Maybe…” I answered shyly with my ears drooping and Mango burst out laughing and Wary Berry just sighed audibly while face hoofing.

“Well if you could do something with a nice Alfredo sauce with Penne pasta…” Mango started to suggest and my right ear lifted in attention.

-Moon Cell Realms, Midgar Plains, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

“This is Ocellus, Pom has told me to keep pressing the walls as fast as we feasibly can, regardless of what that would mean for those already inside of them. We will be following along with that plan and hoping the away group can survive long enough for our support to make it through. To that end we know they have gotten the care packages.” I took a deep breath, sighed and considered what to tell everyone. “Our allies are still fighting in there and goodness knows how Pom is going to survive the crushing force of an entire city coming down on her until we can get through the walls, but let’s try to keep fighting alongside them okay? If anyone has any ideas now would be a good time to hear them or start thinking of something, because we will want to quickly break through them. Also be prepare for air assault I see incoming flying enemies. Cid, Welch, can you get our other tower turrets up and running before the incoming enemy aerial units hit us?”

“Not likely lass, but I can work on it!” Cid stated from engineering, sounding fairly busy with keeping Castle Alexander running.

“Paws deep in production of our Skein Flyers and Magitek Armors here, plus whatever the Zealots are cooking up in manufacturing.” Responded Welch who sounded even busier than Cid was.

-Midgar City, Embattled Street, Metal Hound 002, Pom-

Shanty was slowly losing to Lu Bu and her water was barely slowing him down or even touching him, we needed The Arsenal down and fast.

We couldn’t exactly go to help Shanty immediately yet with it threatening the majority of our friends, but I can still tell she was fighting to the best of her abilities. We were running out of time here and Dolly was well aware of that considering she was trying to calm me down while I kept her on task.

To that end we were flying straight into the six rotary cannons of The Arsenal’s left arm firing on us as we swerved left and right through the volume of fire, its right arm was charging up.

The armor on Metal Hound 002 wasn’t likely to be anywhere near as sturdy as that thing is, because we could already feel it wearing heavily on the machine we were piloting.

We fired back with our two small machine cannons, for all the good that was doing.

The Arsenal had projectile volume, armor and raw firepower literal and figurative on us. At most we had mobility and smaller size, the smaller size was relative and wasn’t as useful, at least the direction changing beams had been taken care of by Snake or else I wouldn’t want to do an absurd direct assault like we currently were.

We rolled, juked and continued to fire back as we closed in on it at full speed, Metal Hound 2 was already taking damage at a pretty quick pace. Can’t be good for the pack on the back of this thing that allowed for flight, but we hadn’t been grounded yet.

Once we closed in, I exhaled. I hoped to bridge a connection with the Magitek Armor, Dolly’s piloting and my Dancing Flames… I succeeded.

Metal Hound 002 accelerated past the head of The Arsenal in blur, as we pushed the Flying Magitek Armor well beyond its normal capabilities.

“What the heck?!” Merak really shouldn’t be so surprised, he had to know I had magical abilities right?

Dancing Flame had always been a technique I could do with minimal to no magic, doing it with more magic just meant I could impart it onto other things like Dolly and the Magitek Armor. The cost was entirely on me simply using a lot of magic to give us a very short term advantage in bursts of movement and action, if I overdraw more of my wool was going to start turning gold again my front legs had already been consumed and my right rear leg was looking iffy. I just had to continue to be careful about what I was sacrificing and keep it heavily suppressed, which wasn’t easy with everything we were doing.

I imagine Merak was surprised when the Flying Magitek Armor sped up to an absurd degree and Dolly slashed off the two rightmost guns on top of the can shaped torso with the right claw as we swerved around it to the left.

We then proceeded to turn around fire missiles into the opening left behind by the destroyed beam emitter widening the damage there further to match the damage portion Shanty opened up on top of the thing earlier.

We proceed to ram into the machine claws first and started to slash into its armor with our claws as we landed on top of the base of its tank body. We were still in flight mode, but at least Dolly had a good grasp of how to put us in a good position, piloting this thing was still quite beyond me. Probably should have asked Welch if she could design it so Dolly could pilot it solo, too late for that right now.

The Arsenal’s armor was starting to give in to the rapid swipes and we had to duck back as the arms on the cylinder swung about with the right one charged and then quickly fly to back off when the machine prepared to let off a pulse like burst and I recognized the movements for it.

The Arsenal wasn’t the swiftest reaction at short range, I think it was meant for dealing with things before they could get nearly this close and the close range defenses were mostly anti-infantry being pulses, energy shocks and bursts of flames. I’m still surprised that no one has died to the six rotating machine cannons on its left arm, but everyone took cover in the nearby buildings when it aimed in their direction. They had been some injuries, but thankfully no deaths.

Dolly really knew how to pilot this thing as we avoided by hit by a point blank blast of energy from the right cannon and then had to fly up to the avoid the same blast as Merak tried to redirect it into us with portals and lost sight of us slipping down another street in the air and doubling back by swinging around the block.

After ten portals of dodging the blast we decided it was safe to get back to the fight and when we flew back into view down the street we saw that the others were already laying into two of the wheels, they were trying to disable The Arsenals movements which would make it easier for us to deal with if it became entirely stationary.

Canard, Peppercat and Dormarch were laying into one wheel in close up range as the tank turned towards them. While Snake, Sami and Krosserdog were blasting another wheel and its body with ranged attacks and explosives.

We fire off more missiles and managed to stop the right arm from charging up, that damage from that Divine Judgement beam really messed up its ability to charge shots and I think we just about finally disabled that ability of The Arsenal to fire charged shots. Its left arm was built to be sturdy and take a lot of punishment, because it was still rapid firing projectiles everywhere until it had to cycle ammunition.

Sami quickly leapt to the defense of everyone with her shield creating an energy barrier and continued to fire grenades into the machine. Her barrier blocked the hundreds of projectiles pouring into it, as she stood tall in her Hi-Commandramon form protecting our melee fighters.

We came in for a landing and entered walk mode to continue hosing the machine with explosives, I idly noticed Dormarch off to the side was doing something with a fire hydrant.

“Bro we’re kind of in the middle of a battle here, is a fire hydrant really important at the moment!” Dolly called out, relying on the fact that Merak couldn’t speak dog or at the very least animal.

Dormarch had his paws wrapped around the hydrant and with a harsh yank tilting the structure he sent water spray out past The Arsenal in a wide manner and into the flames behind it where Shanty was still fighting and weakening rapidly.

At least Dormarch had some foresight to set up our next course of action in fighting against Lu Bu. Also what little bits of water that got through the raging napalm inferno would help our little pirate goat keep going for a little longer.

The Arsenal turned and fired on Dormarch who quickly used Search Hunter to reappear behind Sami’s defenses.

The Arsenal tried to charge a shot as it swept its left arm for us, I had Dolly leapt us to the right and focused on the right arm as it was charging, something exploded and the right arm cannon on The Arsenal went limp.

However in turn the canopy on Metal Hound 002 was penetrated and I felt something impacted with my right shoulder. I let out a bleat in pain and quickly ejected the projectile from my body and sewed the wound shut with my wool.

“Pom?!” Dolly asked worriedly.

“I’ve got it, keep using me.” As we started to walk left while continuing to fire on The Arsenal. We were quickly losing in this exchange as several more shots got through the armored canopy of Metal Hound 002.

“Slap shot!” Canard announced, but I didn’t see a digital energy puck, but his hockey stick was glowing as he brought it back and he swung it forward with an ample amount of force… into Sami’s projected energy barrier? What would that…

The large energy barrier launched forth and exploded The Arsenal into falling backwards from the massive impact.

I blinked owlishly at the sight of the smoking machine as it slowly tried to lift itself back up with its damage right arm and mostly stable left one. A golden grenade from Snake went off and damaged the left arms shoulder, while announcing itself with the ever present ‘hallelujah’ chorus it made.

Dolly still hadn’t let off on shooting at it, we had to be sure it was gone before we stopped shooting it, she even fired our next four shoulder missiles into The Arsenal’s left arm damaging the barrels on a few of the rotary cannons.

As the rotary cannons spun up to continue shooting, Dormarch appeared to The Arsenal’s left and let off a Wild Howl. This caused the metallic gun arm to become slightly tinged blue and seemed to spin and lock up randomly, it seemed to be having massive trouble firing any shots.

“Lightning Ball Special.” Peppercat hopped forward with a ball of energy between her claws held at her side and with a double palm thrust forward she sent it into one of the two machine guns on the head.

The ball of energy exploded wrecking the left most machine gun, the on the top of the right side of tin cans body from our perspective, leaving it with one gun. Said gun was still firing a limited amount of shots on us reduced to a single stream of projectiles.

“So you think you’ve got this?” Merak taunted, The Arsenal fully righted itself and the can shaped bodies torso opened and we could all feel the massive amount of energy building up in the air, the wool along my body started becoming slightly fuzzy with the static energy build up.

“How is that more powerful than the Moby Dick’s laser, I can’t block a direct hit from that kind of energy it’s building up!” Sami announced as the torso started to build up a massive amount of energy.

The arms on The Arsenal popped open and it still managed to spray fire from the left, as easily as it could from the right and cut off our friends from entering the buildings.

“Dolly.” I said and we entered flight mode and flew back a bit before switching into walk mode as we landed, we had to draw the next attack away from our friends or tank it with Metal Hound 002.

“For a good cause.” Dolly muttered as she moved us forward. “Go ahead Pom, taunt him. You must have a good read on Ferret’s character by now.”

“Wow, so brave sounding for someone who’s sitting up in a tower and did not come 0down here to face us himself.” I stated trying to draw ire and the next attack onto myself.

“After having faced the Azure Striker in combat and lost with all the advantages of an enclosed space, a place full of water which was absolutely guaranteed to be his weakness and having my portals in said enclosed space. The guy not only beat me once, but twice, I’m a freaking genius and I’m definitely not letting that happen again, not to a scrawny ewe and her shepherds!” Merak stated as the energy from the can shaped torso continued to coalesce brightly. “You better believe I’m smarter than to face the lot of you without plenty of machinery, minions and firepower between me and you!”

“So not only are you a worse wimp than I am, but you’re even more of a coward too. I believe you’re even more afraid of us than we could ever be of you! We’ve successfully been through two realms, how will you be any different?” That got him aiming the torso in my direction and an idea occurred to me, if it was as powerful as Sami thought it was… Dolly… maneuver us in such a way that… “Do you think I want to be here facing someone who says they are smart, but can’t actually live up to it even with all the advantages you could ever need? Apparently your genius amounted to a hill of sawdust, because what kind of legacy did you leave behind with all those smarts you’re oh so proud of? Nothing, that’s what! Some genius you were in life, you were given a second chance and still failed to amount to anything and I bet this third one is going to end up just the same way by the time we reach you!”

Inhaled taking as much as my lungs could suffer, knowing that we were definitely his primary target as Sami moved off to the side.

“We’ll see about that, Diffusion Beam fire!” I exhaled and the world slowed down.

-Outside the wall around the main entrance into Midgar City-

A small section of the wall turned red, blue, then white… and what followed was a powerful beam erupted through it tearing out a PLANT that had been within the material of the wall and sparking a territory destruction that disrupted the EPs spawning in to continue harassing Castle Alexander.

The beam didn’t reach far enough to hurt anyone on Castle Alexander’s side, but it did melt a few EPs and APs by proximity.

The hole in the wall wasn’t big enough for more than maybe a few infantry to get through, but it was too high off the ground, what it was, was a point for Castle Alexander to start tearing the wall open as there was now a pathway into the walls proper.

All Castle Alexander had to do was reach the walls and send some EPs and people to deal with the PLANTs inside the walls of Midgar City, but that would take some time to stop the nastier EPs that the PLANTs in there produced.

-Castle Alexander, Smolder-

“What the Tartarus was that?!” I shouted as I tore into an Assassin Jelly with my claws, Castle Alexander was crawling with Assassin type EPs, made sense though… they specialized in sneaking into enemy strongholds. Aside from the zealots, I was one of the last lines of defense.

“Maybe that was part of Pom’s plan? She’s obviously busy at the very least.” Ocellus looked to be grinning somewhat. “We have an opening to start accessing Midgar City with Castle Alexand and get into the thick material of the walls itself to deal with the PLANTs in there!”

We were still on approach and we were pressuring the plains fiercely… well alright Pom, what else do you got? Earn my respect, because you’re making a good showing of it as a Guard of Huoshan regardless of my feelings about being beaten up by you.

Why is swallowing my pride so hard?

-Embattled Street, Metal Hound 002, Pom-

We didn’t get out of that unscathed, but it was mostly the Metal Hound 002 that took the damage. Just being in proximity of the beam damaged the machine as it was now crouched on the ground. Looking to the left on the fuzzy screen projected along the canopy I could see that while Sami couldn’t handle a direct shot, she could handle being within proximity of that ludicrously powerful beam and the massive amount of raw power in it.

Sami had protected everyone else successfully, but she look spent. Everyone weren’t looking too bad though.

“Why won’t you die!” Merak stated rabidly, as the torso of the machine started building up for another beam like that last one. Must be a desperation weapon… a very destructive one, I don’t even think Merak realized what he just did by firing it at Midgar City’s walls. Dolly turned the upper torso enough to get a look at the hole that attack had made, before we turned back forward.

“Because I’ve got too many people counting on me to simply just give up now...” I whined back as Metal Hound started to stand up under Dolly’s frantic urging.

The blaring warnings around Metal Hound 002 about extreme heat and energy died out as Dolly entered us into flight mode and the spinning up the back mounted propellers blew almost all of the heat damaging the armor away as it shakily rose into the air.

The flight system apparently doubled as a cooling system and we were blasting all the heat out just to get us back in working order.

We took to the air and Dolly tried to fire the weapon, right machine cannon was working, left machine cannon and shoulder missiles needed a few seconds to cool as it had been closer to the beam.

Two missiles loosed from the right shoulder and struck the charging machine as did a single stream of machine cannon fire, we absolutely could not let that thing fire that again and we slowed down the charge enough to let us know that we had to attack it as much as possible!

Canard and the others were of the same mind as they barely survived with Sami’s protective barrier and immediately charged and started to attack the torso in concert.

Apparently while charging up The Arsenal had no anti-infantry defenses… why would it need them if it fires a beam that will kill almost anything unprotected within the given area of the direction it was firing in?

While aiming our right arm cannon, I had Dolly angle us so I could take another look down the street behind us, to see that EPs and some APs were still fighting. There was a notable lack of Skein Flyers in the air around us.

We were quickly running out support to run interference and given the ever increasing number of EPs, they would soon be able to hit us and we didn’t have much time before we needed to pivot.

Personally the Metal Hound was down to half its firepower, even if the heat wore off could we even still use the left arm machine cannon or shoulder missiles from that side? Didn’t matter, we had to stop The Arsenal here and now no matter what!

Since there was no anti-infantry defense… Dolly lunged us forward and landed us on the left side of the tank body where we slapped the still viable left claw into the charging torso. Soon we were unloading every shot we could into the core of the machine with the right arm between swinging the left arm.

The Arsenal weakly pulsed, trying to throw everyone off, Peppercat and Canard went flying, but that didn’t stop Sami, Snake or Krosserdog from using their attacks on the core of the machine and rapidly weakening the can shaped torso’s ability to charge.

It also couldn’t push us off of it as Metal Hound 002 was too heavy to be affected by the pulse.

“Dolly, don’t stop firing, but pop the canopy!” If we were closed enough for it to work…

“Roger.” Dolly kept laying into the machine and the canopy pulled back.

“RrrrrRRRRrrrrrRR… yip!” The entire torso of The Arsenal cracked violently and it soon lost its charge entirely as shots from the right machine cannon of Metal Hound 002 continued pouring into its core.

When sparks of electricity started arcing around the machine, my eyes widened as the shots from Metal Hound 002 Flying Magitek Armor bored a hole out the back of The Arsenal’s torso.

“Dolly, canopy up, canopy up, get us out of here… everyone it’s going to blow!” That got our group moving for safety as Dolly hopped us backwards and off as the following build up light and the consequent explosion took us for a ride.

…

…

I dazedly shook my head and found myself hanging from Metal Hound 002’s strap as I came too, must have black out for a minute or two. I heard Dolly groaning and looked to see her laying on the slightly damaged canopy.

I think we landed face down after getting caught in the explosion.

“Agghhh…. nhhh… ow… did we… did we get it?” A battered Dolly sat up and shook her head, then dazedly looked up at me with a slightly wagging tail. The Dalmatian got the worse of the explosion, having been banged around the inside of the cockpit, whereas being strapped in and being covered in protective magical wool mitigated anything that could have happened to me. Well anything short of being pierced entirely through or absolutely crushed beyond my wools capability to handle. “Ugh, my body feels wiped, I am now quite thankful I wear reinforced protective gear.”

Dormarch confirmed that we got it a second later through our bonds, but now we had Lu Bu to deal with and Metal Hound 002 definitely needed repairs after dealing with The Arsenal. He was urging us to get the Magitek Armor standing, since he knew we were alive and Dolly was somewhat hurt.

“Heal beam?” I asked as I told Dormarch to have the others give us a minute to get ourselves collected and upright.

“Heal… beam….” Dolly responded with a nod from below me as she struggled to get up and try to climb her way to me, that wasn’t happening after a few tries.

So I needed to at least get us standing upright or use the heal beam myself. The heal beam would magically fix some of the damage the machine had taken as well and I didn’t need Dolly’s help to activate it.

I set the target for us and the watched as green sparkles swirled around Dolly, me and the whole machine… fixing most of the damage but at an egregious cost of magical energy, likely proportionate to the damage we’d all taken. The hole in my right shoulder mended, but I noted most of the energy went to Dolly’s body and barely any actually sunk into Metal Hound 002.

Once she got enough strength in her legs she hopped up and wrapped paws around my neck and swung herself back up into her position as pilot.

Slowly Metal Hound 002 pressed its right claw against the ground and we got standing after a quick push up, I looked at the damage diagram Dolly couldn’t make heads or tails of as it crossed the screen. I read the diagnostics of what we were working with after that.

“Left machine cannon salvaged with the heal beam though may jam until further heal beam or repairs can be made, right machine cannon operable… left shoulder missiles gone entirely… right shoulder missiles fully functional… left claw, also gone… right claw heavily stressed. Legs working order… flight pack working order.” I gave an idea of what this meant to Dolly and she whine about how her Metal Hound 002 was already in need of massive repairs. Dolly always the one for cool stuff… or what she things is cool at least. “Mobility slightly impaired in both walk and flight modes… the heal beam couldn’t fully fix the damage of the Flying Magitek Armor… oh speaking of which our beam system is still fully operational… apparently that will only go down if the torso is destroyed… and we’re inside of said torso so makes sense if the pilots are magical in any way. Lots of overall armor damage, possible metal fatigue…”

“Huh, I thought that said mental fatigue… could have sworn a robot had that once in some cartoon show my younger siblings liked. Fuzz bites once a year or something like that…” Just because we have a heal beam Dolly, doesn’t necessarily mean it will deal with anything beyond the physical health of a target and apparently doesn’t regenerate missing limbs. So yeah, we would have to be careful about that after just taking the brunt of an explosion. Heal beam most certainly did not work on mental stability or fatigue. “Well my head is certainly feeling magical Pom, at least you can still clearly read and aren’t dizzy.”

Dolly being dizzy and piloting heavy machinery did cause me some worry, but she was quite reassuring me she could do so… as long as we weren’t flying any time soon or shooting at anything, until she gets her head in better order.

The magic use was fairly draining just trying to get us back up and running and we’re still missing most of the left side functionality… also stripped a lot of the grey wolf paint patterns off... I kind of liked that actually… sure I have my complaints about having to be in a Magitek Armor again, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like the aesthetics Welch put into personalizing this thing.

Dolly mentally kicked me and I got focused on where we were, since she was using my senses to currently pilot this thing at the moment. We were blown entirely back towards the main gate of Midgar slightly outside the city limits. Apparently we were getting a lot of AP support now and they were coming from… the wall itself? Huh, Merak must have hit more than just the wall with that diffusion beam thing.

It seemed that Canard was rallying every AP and person around us, until we could get moving again and once we were up and looking around we got some cheers.

The Flying Magitek Armors that air dropped Metal Hound 002 for us were all likely part of the smoking wrecks on the ground, what little number of Skein Flyers we had were in a rough aerial battle against a lot of Moon Cell Watchers above us along with a new helicopter type of EP with high powered machine guns that weren’t quite machine cannons.

Was our Magitek Armor the only one left?! Are you kidding me! No seriously… how bad were all the EPs pummeling us that we were this low on reinforcements just after we got them?!

I didn’t see too many Brutes, so the Flying Magitek Armors must have done a lot of damage and Brutes seemed like an elite type that was slow to mass produce.

“Pom, Dolly are you alright in there?” Canard called out looking up at us.

“We’ve been better…” I said as the machine slowly raised its right arm cannon and started blowing Moon Cell Watcher’s harassing the ground bound APs around us. We’d eventually have to test the left machine cannon. “We have to keep the momentum, we need to help Shanty and we don’t have time!”

“Apparently we took a section of territory that was in a wall thanks to your dangerous plan… also there’s a hole in the wall so hopefully Castle Alexander will be able to pry that open further until it can get through.” Canard informed, which was nice to confirm that we were indeed holding at least three territories now, no matter how small. “Now we just need to start taking territory and holding our foothold. Those Brutes have been havoc to deal with and there are more coming in, we need more Magitek Armor support and you’re it Pom.”

“Great…” I stated sardonically, we had to fight a fire demon, save Shanty and face even more Brutes with our missile output completely halved.

“Yeah, it is that bad.” Thankfully Canard agreed with my assessment of the situation. “And it can only get worse…”

An explosion of territory happened in the distance within the city.

“That wasn’t one of ours going up…” I stated as Dolly and I continued to work on blowing a flying EP out of the air.

“New enemy scanned, sharing data now. EP type, Gunship, weakness the propellers on top. Knock those out and it can’t do much of anything unless one of its guns accidentally gets stuck aiming upwards.” Intoned Sami who was in the middle of pumping her grenade launcher.

“Probably Jeanne and Shine trying to make some trouble.” Krosserdog stated as he continued to blow Moon Cell Watchers out of the air after multiple direct hits.

“We’re going for Shanty, where are those Gazimon and what are they currently doing?” Not much of a foothold, small territories in an enormous circular city with and endless wave of EPs threatening to swallow us. “I heard they were here to help secure the foothold we’re getting.”

“The Gazimon are definitely working on it, I’m with you on rescuing Shanty mom!” Dormarch teleported up to the left shoulder Metal Hound 002 and we started stalking forward along the ground to go rescue Shanty. I really doubted many others would last very long just being near Lu Bu and I don’t know how long we could keep Metal Hound 002 intact in the middle of all of this.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get in contact with them and we’ll shore up the foothold while Jeanne and Shine are out causing trouble, now get in there and rescue Shanty!” Canard promised as we moved back towards the street where Shanty was currently in a losing battle with Lu Bu.

“Don’t have to tell me twice.” We’re going in again… and hoped we had a way to deal with the inferno as we approached where the hydrant had managed to clear a path to where Shanty was still attacking Lu Bu, a Lu Bu who didn’t look very injured.

Yeah, we had our work cut out for us here as a barely bubbled Shanty was being loomed over by the giant flaming demon.

“Get away from her!” I stated Dolly got us charging forward and firing projectiles that basically did minimal damage and we stopped just short of getting backhanded out of the fight by a massive muscular arm.

Dormarch got in with Search Hunter, while we had Lu Bu distracted, and grabbed Shanty with his tentacles. The fairly injured Shanty had been running short on water already and let Dormarch grab her and run her by us towards the broken hydrant still spewing water that cleared the path.

Lu Bu glared down at us as he stood up to full height and I swallowed some spit, before narrowing my eyes at him along with Dolly on my head.

429. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 8.

-???, Oleander-

“Honestly? HONESTLY NOW?!” My voice distorted much like Fred’s tends to, believe me I’m quite aware that my eyes were glowing red right now.

“Hot.” Fred stated with an attracted tone.

“Don’t start with me Fred!” I was angry and quite livid. “Whose BRIGHT IDEA was it?”

“What, it worked didn’t it?” Wrex stated lazily.

“Team Shot-fun for the win!” Buttina stated cheerfully with her shotgun puppy spraying confetti candy into the air behind her.

“No, not for the win!” I pointed a hoof at our surroundings. “You didn’t even kill all the Tyranids in the crash!”

We were surrounded by hordes of shrieking flesh monsters.

“Well more fun for us then!” Wrex stated jovially as he loaded his shotgun.

“The Zerg better not show up to this fight, much less the Goa’uld… how many enemies do we have now that can chase us through dimensions?” I grumbled angrily, as I walked away from the miles long burning ship behind me. “At least I know Pom doesn’t have to deal with this kind of stuff, she’d stay as far away from danger like this as she feasibly could.”

"It'd be like her having to fight Beelzebug constantly, I CAN'T IMAGINE POM DOING SUCH A THING!" Fred stated sincerely and honestly, mostly because he couldn't see Pom bothering to fight Beelzebug at all much less take the guy seriously.

-???, Beelzebug-

"Achoo!" The unfortunate problem with mixing highly explosive alchemical chemicals needs not be addressed here in this rather critical moment, I just assume someone weaker than me must be talking about how great I was at everything I do.

Also anyone can easily guess what happened to me next when I sneezed while trying to create a powerful magical bomb to destroy my mortal, dimension hopping, nemesis.

Now if only it didn't just destroy half my domain and me along with it.

I would get my revenge on Pom Lambchop for this travesty!

Once my body has reconstituted itself...

-Moon Cell Realms, Midgar City, Quiet Street, Shanty-

The number of EPs nearby be spiking as I be dropped near the hydrant, there is being no way we’d deal with them all without help and we don’t be having many APs to be throwing at them.

“Thanks for rescuing me Dormarch.” As I be collecting the water spraying from the broken hydrant and watched as Pom faced down Lu Bu, the only good thing about almost being boiled alive was that my fur and skin be feeling really nice. I miss those hot springs in the last China I was in…

“Heard Dolly does this all the time, I might as well start doing it too. I do love my big sis enough to take after her in some ways.” Dormarch be looking around. “At least the EPs around here seem more focused on our friends than us at the moment.”

That’s when Lu Bu, the big jerk that be trying to light me on fire multiple times, suddenly decides to use magic on Pom to get her out of the way to get at me. The Magitek Armor Pom be in, because who else could be in that thing to come to my rescue with Dormarch, flashed with a golden color and a skyscraper in the distance be blowing apart in an inferno. We also be seeing the flash of a territory grab and then hundreds of spherical colorful spheres in blacks, blues and mostly reds.

It be hard to make them out at this distance, but we saw several more territory take overs near where they appeared and they started spreading fire everywhere. It got so bad so fast that there were several growing walls of literal fire appearing everywhere in the freshly stolen territories and I be hearing hundreds of explosions going off in the distance.

“Wait, are those programs taking territories on their own, how?!” Dormarch asked, before we were distracted by Pom firing on the Lu Bu with the right gun and shot off two missiles, the stream projectiles and the explosive be doing little to really harm Lu Bu. “Well that’s concerning, but one thing at a time! I want to go help mom.”

The machine hopped backwards as Lu Bu swung his right fist at it and Pom be narrowly avoiding the blow. Might have been lightly injured by the explosions, but he wasn’t weak to them in his current form at all.

Some distortion started appearing in the air, that be looking almost like what happens when the Eaters when they be appearing, but nothing be coming of it… at least not yet and hopefully it wouldn’t become a problem.

“Then go on, I be busy building up!” I quickly wrapped a large bubble of water around myself and continued to grow my Bounding Bubble back into a water colossus. I needed to concentrate on gathering and controlling as much water as I could.

“Not yet, I’m working on conserving energy to become Garummon too. So I could sit still and build up some energy.” Oh yeah, that barking machine monster form… did not want to be telling Dormarch what I thought of the name of that form being a bit on the nose. Still it would be being very useful if he could use the form soon.

“Well then hope that Pom can be holding him off without us for a bit.” As I be saying this I be firing a crescent of water to slice a few Troopers that appeared behind us in half.

Cutting with water was something I was getting good at… still wanted to do a flying slash without liquid assistance.

-Shinra Tower, Merak the Lazy Lemming-

Okay, I lost The Arsenal… now how do I go about making things harder for them? Activate two Thousand Gunners, they might not be as powerful or well armored… but they’ll do. Next prepare the upper cities special surprise to prevent their access, I’ll also prepare the underside of the upper city for the invasion by the castle. Moby Dick is still trying to deal with the The Slayer Dragon, at most he’s only hampered on being able to get very far and something to worry about later.

Now do I leave them to deal with each other and take out the winner or… what the heck?!

A viral outbreak of creatures known as Bombs, connected to… of course they would be connected to the raging fire demon! I need to divert a number of EPs before the damage can reach the upper city limits… so I’ll have the Thousand Gunners deal with that mess for the moment, along with whatever machinery forces I can bring about against their spread.

I am not losing to a bunch of exploding monsters, I’m not losing to the flimsy looking ewe girl, an oversized talking duck, the water goat and I’m especially not losing to Elise of all pathetic creatures!

-Midgar City Allied Territory, Elise the Naga-

I choked down a Sitrus Berry, as did Canard while Krosserdog and Sami provided cover fire. These so called Gazimon seemed to be good at setting up trap fields to stop the incoming EPs from overwhelming us and they were getting fairly good at taking out Brutes with the help of a few Caerbannogs.

“Come on guys, get those proximity mines in place, we need to reinforce this territory!” One of Gazimon stated from their Skein Flyer as they peppered areas with explosions that only activated on the enemies.

“For the doggy messiah, for she gives good belly rubs!” The other Gazimon called out.

I sneezed a bit and then glared at the tower, me thinks that Merak was severely underestimating the threat I posed to him. I continued to throw knives or snakes into the oncoming brutes, they may be small in numbers but they were much harder to take out than ninety percent of the other Enemy Programs we were dealing with.

-Pom’s Damaged Metal Hound 002, Shanty’s Capricornus Colossus and Digital Dog Dormarch vs. Ifrit Lu Bu (Giant fire demon, still coming at you)-

(Music suggestion: Streets of Rage, Attack The Barbarian)

Lu Bu tried to ignore Pom and leap over the Metal Hound 002 at Shanty who was growing a new water colossus after that last one got boiled down to size.

“He’s about to jump for Shanty.” Pom wasn’t about to look to check where she was, but behind her was a good bet.

“You’re not going anywhere!” Dolly switched the Metal Hound to flight mode and rammed the entirety of Metal Hound 002 up into the giant’s sternum staggering them slightly as the small walking machine bounced off and then was backhanded by Lu Bu’s hand into a building.

The armor stood up to plowing through a wall and plenty of furniture, then rocketed towards Lu Bu flying at him and launching two missiles while firing off twin streams of projectiles from the left and right machine cannon.

Up until the left machine cannon stopped firing and began cycling long before it used up its ammunition store, didn’t take long for Pom to associate the damage to the left side of the Magitek Armor being the cause. Didn’t stop them from plowing the spinning barrel of the left cannon into Lu Bu’s left eye in the form of a mechanical punch, earning his ire for the mild irritant the Metal Hound 002 presented.

Lu Bu slung his right arm for the insect and let off a blast of flames and hit that scorched up Metal Hound 002 as it dodged and dropped below the rising heat and continued to fire its right cannon into him to little effect.

“One fully working gun and missile launchers is not doing much Pom!” Dolly announced as she evaded a forward thrusting palm of the flame giant’s left hand that sent off a melting wave of heat and flames that slagged a portion of the stone and rock of a building into molten bits. A second later missiles launched from the right shoulder blasting Lu Bu’s face and stomach to little effect, at least he wasn’t getting bigger off the explosions as they knocked the flames encrusting his body away a bit. “Could we use the magic attacks?”

“Don’t exactly have much magic to spare at the moment after dealing with The Arsenal Dolly, I’d like to reserve it for repairs and healing. Just give me some time and we’ll get to them, I don’t want to lose more of myself to becoming Chrysomallus at the moment.” Even as Pom said this Lu Bu leapt onto the building the melted a hole into and physically ripped out a support pillar with his left hand to swing at them like a baseball bat.

The shockwave of the pillar being swung caused the Metal Hound 002 to spiral out of Dolly’s control for a few seconds before Pom and her reoriented, only to immediately switch to walk mode and drop to the ground to avoid the massive vertical spinning pillar that had been thrown at them.

“This Fu Manchu guy is kind of nuts Pom!” Yelped Dolly as she leapt the Metal Hound 002 to the left to avoid a fireball and looking back, they both saw Shanty easily block it with a large watery front right leg. A retaliatory lash of said watery hoof sent a wave of water forth that was boiled away into steam before it could really do anything to Lu Bu.

Shanty continued to grow the goat shaped mass of water, said mass of water had its back right leg on the hydrant and looked to be filling up like an oversized water balloon. She’d soon be ready as the maximum amount of mass she could control was about to be reached, her water colossus would still barely be big enough to fight Lu Bu with anything approaching capable of hurting.

While Shanty was working on that, Dormarch was attacking some nearby Moon Cell Watchers that invaded the area looking to either attack Pom with lasers or get a visual on her for Merak to send portal based attacks at. Either way Dormarch was slowly absorbing digital energy out of the floating danger spheres to get his evolution out faster to help in the fight against Lu Bu.

Lu Bu Raised both his hands clamped together and leapt towards the Metal Hound 002 to bring it down on it.

Metal Hound 002 Immediately took to the air again to avoid the street rupturing upwards at it, only to be hit with a blast of flames from Lu Bu’s mouth that badly scorched it and forced it to land.

“It’s getting too hot here!” Dolly whined, she was only immune to cold temperatures, she was very much affected by things getting too hot.

“Shanty if you can hear me, please tell me you can hit him with enough water to at least soak him even a little bit!” Pom had a plan for how to decrease the problems the fire demon Lu Bu presented and it didn’t help that she could see waves of fire spreading rapidly everywhere in the distance, but at least most of them weren’t coming this direction.

Dolly had the flying armor dodging blasts of flames and another attempt to punch the Metal Hound 002, it had already taken quite a bit of damage as it retreated closer to where Shanty was doing something and couldn’t take much more heat to its already smoldering armor.

“Those things in the distance are NPs mom, classification of Beast named Bombs, Lu Bu doesn’t have control of them and they are spreading everywhere!” Dormarch stated as he appeared in a flash of Search Hunter on top of Metal Hounds damaged left shoulder and loosed a Wild Howl, he had gotten the information in the time he had been making sure EPs were staying out of their combat zone.

The Wild Howl attack somehow managed to stun Lu Bu before he could launch another attack into the battered backpedaling Metal Hound 002.

“Just be careful Dormarch, I don’t want to lose you to something that was easily avoidable.” Pom responded and Dolly’s voice could be heard mirroring Pom’s words in the form of barks as their synchronization required to even pilot a Magitek Armor hit a peak for a moment.

The Metal Hound 002 backed up, moving away from Lu Bu as he slammed the street with his right fist sending a shockwave that buffeted the machine pouring two streams of fire into him. The left machine cannon chose to start working again, another two missiles fired off as the two streams of projectiles flew from the arms of the Magitek Armor.

After having planted his fist into the torn up street, Lu Bu tried to charge Metal Hound 002 with his horns first and turned it into a left shoulder bash to gain some distance to try and knock the rising Metal Hound 002 out of the air.

While he didn’t connect with either of his charges the shockwave of Lu Bu’s movement’s sent the smaller machine flipping backwards to land face down. Dormarch quickly used his Dobermon D-Type tentacles to cling to the left arm, he fired off a Surge Projector and managed to slow Lu Bu from crushing Metal Hound 002 as it slowly stood up and managed to back up between two pillars of water.

Shanty glared and raised the right massive hoof made of water, after pulled it back she lunged forward and launched the entire leg with a single thrust into Lu Bu’s face, neck and chest positively covering him in enough water that he couldn’t simply boil it all into steam instantly as it smothered his magical flames with equally magical water.

The impact actually caused the giant Lu Bu to stumble back a bit and he became soaked and he even shrunk a bit due to the loss of heat and was about to reignite.

“Mom, Dolly, now!” Dormarch called out and the front of the Metal Hound 002 opened up and there was an icy bluish white glow coming from its chest where a glowing crystal could be seen, it then launched a Magitek Armor version of an Ice Beam.

When compared to a Pokémon doing an Ice Beam, the Magitek Armor version of the same attack made quite an impressive showing as a massive frosty blast that froze up the molten street and hurt a roaring Lu Bu by a massive amount. Shrinking him down by up to a quarter of his maximum size, being soaked in water didn’t help Lu Bu’s case at all as ice started covering portions of his body and using the water to sap the fire demons strength.

“Oh yeah, we might be able to do this!” Dolly cheered from her position on the head of a ewe inside the Metal Hound 002. Pom and Dormarch were of the opinion Dolly was celebrating too soon after the previous fight Shanty had with Lu Bu almost ended in complete disaster.

It didn’t take too long for Lu Bu to start melting through the ice covering ninety percent of his body, his red burning eyes were sending them a literal scorching glare as he broke free of the ice.

The twin streams of machine cannon fire from the Metal Hound 002 soon became one as the left arm once again entered cycling, it also fired two missiles into the uncovered portions and the concussive blasts staggered the forward lunge Lu Bu tried to start.

“What it’s going to take to put this guy down, a ‘Blizzard’?!” A shine came from the Metal Hound and Lu Bu’s flaming left arm that just became free of ice was suddenly hit by several blue beams of light and froze over and pushed him back further with a howl of some real pain.

“Dolly what the…?!” Pom seemed a bit surprised by something and it showed in the Metal Hounds 002’s odd movements.

“That wasn’t me, I don’t know what just… was that glow from the marble I picked up?!” Dolly responded. “That felt weird, like I wasn’t putting up the cost of the magic for that one. Doesn’t even feel like the spell is actually part of me, though why do I feel like it’s closer now… anyway it felt like something else was responsible for that.”

“Now’s not a good time to find out you can do new stuff Dolly!” Dormarch yelled from nearby building he was taking cover in.

“Again, that wasn’t me!” Dolly reiterated for Pom and Dormarch’s sake that she had little idea what just happened there.

Shanty wasn’t focused on their distracted discussion as she was still standing on the fire hydrant and readying another massive water leg to launch at Lu Bu.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Is that?” I started to ask with a quirked tilted head look to Bahamut.

“Yes.” Bahamut answered a grin shining across his face.

“Hm-hm, Dolly does have quite the affinity for the cold if her attraction for huskies didn’t already show that enough and where there’s Ifrit the demon of flames...” Tiamat stated with several grinning heads.

“There’s his opposite, the queen of ice Shiva.” Bahamut said a second later looking at his sister. “She finally reveals herself.”

The materia shined in my sight and I could see the image of a grinning elf like figure floating behind a confused Dolly, likely what my compatriots were seeing.

“Shiva would rather a cute dog carry her mote of power than fall into the toxic mako fluids of the false life stream controlled by Moon Cell.” Tiamat chuckled dryly. “A fair, but very dangerous maneuver to put herself into position.”

“So she actively attracted Dolly’s attention to pick her up due to their compatibility… well played.” I said with a nod seeing how Shiva ended up in powering that particular sweeper in the first place, as I began looking into the past as that wouldn’t alert Moon Cell of what my plans for the future were. I turned my sight back to Aurora and all the troubles currently befalling it as the ‘Moon Cell’ mystery dungeons anchoring it to Ransei were attacked vehemently by my numerous children. Steady progress was being made, especially from King Evan in Viperia having recently formed a strong alliance with Yaksha. Most notably on the Aurora front the Rockruff Brothers would soon become the Lycanroc Brothers… all three forms of that evolution line too. “Those three will be some of the best members Rescue Team Harmony has.”

“It is hard to sit back and watch mortals fend for themselves sometimes, but when needs must.” Bahamut stated flatly with crossed arms. “At least Shiva thankfully inserted herself into things tactfully in a way that didn’t entirely break the board or the rules… so many new plans would have had to be made in that case. I’d almost expect the Eaters to show up with how much Pom is glitching the systems by existing and her golden march towards self-destruction is making that effect far more powerful in areas she’s fighting in. At least she is still choosing and not letting it force her in that direction, never have I seen a mortal soul so resilient to its own particular nature.”

“You would think Shiva is the smart one Arceus, but Ifrit was in fact that brighter of the two… when his anger and rage doesn’t get in the way at least. Don’t honestly know what Ifrit sees in Shiva.” Tiamat stated dryly. “Opposites do attract though and Shiva did come for him when his soul started calling for help from his… rather nasty predicament.”

“So who do we think will hold onto Ifrit’s power after Lu Bu has been dealt with?” That brought up my two compatriots short, they considered this silently for a moment.

It would be helpful for future endeavors if someone could handle Ifrit’s raw power, both Bahamut and Tiamat would want the materia of Ifrit and Shiva to fix some issues they’ve been having once everything is said and done.

“Mirage Mew is still working on a way to get the people of Ransei a stable path into Moon Cell’s inner stronghold… once they get their acts together.” Interrupted Mew who was here to deliver me a progress report. “We may need Pom’s Counter Invasion group as a rallying point.”

I sighed and hoped that we could do without needing to rely on Pom’s group, she’s already done more than enough.

-Team Pom vs. Lu Bu, continued-

Lu Bu slammed his hands into the ground and started ripping up a large section of street. Two missiles streaked in and impacted with the chunk and damaged it, but didn’t break it apart entirely.

The massive chunk was thrown and a mass of water knocked it out of the air before it could crush Metal Hound 002.

“Mom can I turn your emotions into energy to perform some miracles please? I need it to reach my digital evolution in a timely manner!” Dormarch was one of the few Digimon to ever ask if their tamer, trainer, partner or otherwise close family member directly if they could use their emotions to fuel their evolution. Mostly because he was rather polite compared to most other Digimon who assumed their partners were always willing and able to freely just give them the energy for said evolutions, in general they were, but it was still rude of a Digimon in recent history to not tell their partners about how digivices work in general.

“Of course Dormarch, if it helps me offload some trauma and it isn’t like my emotions were anywhere close to being edible for Ocellus anyway!” Pom called out as the armor brought up both its arms to block the impact of a wave of flames coming at them that rocked and almost toppled a fairly damaged Metal Hound 002. “Using Heal Beam, Shanty please get in here!”

The water colossus bound forward and thrust its left hoof into the side of Lu Bu’s face slashing it up with a razor edge of water as it created a large cutting arc.

While Shanty forced Lu Bu back, the Metal Hound 002 repaired some of the damage and healed both the bumps and bruises Dolly and Pom incurred just by being tossed around by Lu Bu, but an amount of armor that had been melted off wasn’t coming back and the left gun was still cycling at odd times.

“Doberman D-type digivolve to… Garummon!” In a flash Dormarch reshaped his body to that of the armored warrior of light, one that immediately lends his range support with a mouth laser. “Lupine Laser!”

The laser blasted Lu Bu in the lower left side of his body and actually staggered and injured him, apparently light and raw energy was not an element he could absorb. Some missiles struck his right side with a solid stream of projectile from Pom standing to the left of Shanty.

The giant water goat rammed bodily into Lu Bu a few second later, the water was effective but it was not nearly enough to contain Lu Bu, but it was shrinking and weakening down to something vaguely more manageable.

Lu Bu was aggressively fighting the water with heat until another Ice Beam from Metal Hound 002 struck him, sure Shanty might have the focus of his ire, but she wasn’t the most dangerous thing to him there.

The shot had tired Pom out on magic, but Dolly still had some magical energy in their metal walking tank and was saving it for the best possible moment.

Lu Bu has shrunk slightly and was now almost an even match for Shanty’s Capricorn Colossus.

“RARRRGHHH!” Clapping his hands together, every glass window in that given street erupted from the powerful shockwave. Metal Hound 002 went tumbling away, Dormarch teleported to safety of the nearby roof and fired another Lupine Laser and Shanty absorbed the shockwave with the water around her.

Shanty tried to swing the right hoof made of water only for it to evaporate with Lu Bu’s rage flaring flames all over his form.

Turning his head slightly from Shanty and Metal Hound 002, Lu Bu casts a powerful fire magic at Dormarch who quickly yelps and teleports away using Search Hunter to avoid the sudden massive burst of flames and failed at getting off another Lupine Laser.

He turned back to see Metal Hound 002 rocketing towards him and punched at his chest with its spinning left cannon, that was not firing any projectiles, before flying backwards and firing two missile into him. The concussive explosions dampened the flames around Lu Bu slightly.

The unfortunate problem with shrinking Lu Bu down as far as he was, it was that he was getting progressively faster the smaller he got. So he surprised Pom and Dolly when he suddenly lunged for them while ignoring Shanty and dodging a massive slashing right hook from her.

He grabbed the canopy of the Magitek Armor and started to crush it.

“I wish I could ‘summon’ enough ‘ice’ to bring this guy down.” Two things happened when Dolly said this, one Pom cringed for some reason and second was that Dolly felt her magic bottom out of her and a little bit of magic was taken from Pom to fill the deficit through their bond.

The canopy was soon ripped open revealing Pom with Dolly on her head wide eyed as Lu Bu’s right hand glowing with flames was about to burn out the insides of the Magitek Armor, at least until the tail of the water colosuss slapped into the left side of his face staggering him and making him miss his blast of flames that shot skyward.

“Where did all that magic go to?!” Pom said with worry as Lu Bu started to bring his left hand around with flames intending to still deal with them.

Shanty tried for a left hook and Lu Bu ducked it without seeing it coming from behind.

“Howling Star!” While Lu Bu was focused on dealing with the biggest problem in the fight, that being the machine that could fire ice magic it gave Dormarch enough to time reposition and come hurtling at him like a shooting star.

Dormarch slammed into Lu Bu’s chest forcing him skidding back, but he wasn’t done yet.

“Blade Wind Turbine!” The armored wolf that Dormarch became start spinning horizontally clockwise upon reaching point blank range from his previous attack, he torn into Lu Bu with the bladed bits of armor shrinking the fire demon down further like a vicious living chainsaw. This was at least until Lu Bu grabbed him.

Stopping Dormarch’s rapid fire spinning dead in its place with raw muscle, Lu Bu then hurled Dormarch through a building or two. In that time Pom had retreated the Meta Hound 002 with the broken canopy back a fair distance and fire some missiles which were blown out the air by blasts of fire.

Shanty body checked Lu Bu’s raging demon form into a building and blasted him with whatever mass of water she was able to, until the building collapsed on him.

It was silent for a minute, Shanty approached the building cautiously. Only for a blast of flames to erupt making Shanty back away from the large hole they produced in the collapsed building as Lu Bu pulled himself free.

Lu Bu lunged and punched his left fist into the head of the water colossus goat and grabbed at Shanty.

Shanty swiftly swam down the neck into the torso of the water blob somewhat shaped like her to avoid the sudden boiling heat around her.

Ramming his right hand into the chest of the giant water goat, Lu Bu was just about to grasp Shanty moving about in the water and was busy slashing away at his left hand using the water around it, when a missile struck him in the eye and the other hit his right ankle.

The explosive to Lu Bu’s eye made him miss the grab and Shanty quickly pushed him away from the water she encased herself in.

Lu Bu used the push to lash out a large fireball towards Metal Hound 002 with his left hand, only to miss when it took to the air and flew high up out of way of the attack.

Metal Hound 002 constantly peppered Lu Bu with a two streams of projectiles, up until the left gun cut out to cycle again in barely three seconds of sustained fire.

“Is it weird that he’s still just as dangerous as when we started, even when we’ve shrunk him down so much?” Pom asked as she looked through the shattered canopy as the machine tilted downwards slightly face their opponent.

With a blast of heat the watery head of the colossus was blown away in to a mass of steam and mist as a torrent of hellish flames tore through it coming off Lu Bu’s right fist. He almost evaporated half the water Shanty was using in an instant.

Lu Bu was about to continue attacking Shanty, whose prior source of water was now on the other side of Lu Bu when he was hit in the neck with a Lupine Laser from Dormarch who was standing on a balcony of a building a distance away.

Shanty gather the steam and humid air to hit him with ball of condense liquid and continued to splash water upon the fiery monster who kept drying off within seconds just from the heat he was producing.

Sending a wave of Fire Shanty’s way, Lu Bu tried to cast magic at Dormarch only for him to lose his target as he teleported away. Dormarch didn’t want to incidentally reflect the magic and cause another outburst of Bombs when more than a quarter of the the lower city was on fire.

"Hellfire." Flames started building up around Lu Bu and he started glowing brightly, he became a hellish pillar of fire that started moving at Shanty.

“You failed to get me last time and you’ll be failing this time as well even if Dodo isn’t being here to help me, TOTSUGEKIIIIIII-~!” Shanty tried to focus on summoning Leviathan, a portal opened above her head and appeared like how she could summon Horizon the dolphin… she soon found out she couldn’t summon Leviathan. She only made its head appear out of the portal and it opened its mouth and the entire street was soon flooded with a tidal wave by the amount of water it sprayed at Lu Bu who blasted flames back at the water beam.

“Whoa, since when could Shanty do that?!” Dolly asked from her position as they watch the flames and water battle against one another.

“Shanty did say she had something she wanted to talk to me about…” Pom stated with a look of awe as they hovered above the two battling. Shaking her head Pom looked up at Dolly. “Dolly fire missiles into his back and keep firing the right cannon until we need to cycle.”

“Speaking of cycling, the left arm is doing it again and it barely fired one shot this time!” Groused Dolly who had wanted this machine to survive this battle. She thought it would be awesome to own her own battle armor, even if she had no idea how she was going to keep it in good repair as even she understood that the heal beam couldn’t fix everything wrong with the machine. There’s also the fact that it might not work outside the digital realms unless it was made of real world materials or whatever Dormarch was made of when he became real, plus she would need some controls specifically made for her so she could even pilot it without Pom.

Two missiles flew forth and a single stream of projectiles pounded into Lu Bu’s back, even as another long distance Lupine Laser struck him he didn’t lose concentration when it came to staring down Shanty. Soon Lu Bu even started surpassing leviathan’s spewed tidal waves worth of water with raw rage, heat and flames.

Shanty had to drop the summon as she was expending so much magic to keep it going and surrounded herself with her bubble and it was worn down almost to nothing in the as the hellish flames finally passed her by. There was barely a thin film of water surrounding her body now and Shanty looked exhausted.

Lu Bu for his part looked more annoyed as Shanty took to standing on her hind legs and readied her cane scythe while remaining defiant if tired once again.

Lu Bu leapt forward in an attempt to finish off Shanty with another attack, when someone interrupted the fight and Lu Bu’s relished vengeance and they did so in a highly destructive flashy manner.

“Diamond Dust.” Lu Bu’s eyes widened as his body was flash frozen in place in the air and her fell to the ground to start shrinking down and the ice even continued to fill in the empty space left behind until he was around ten to twelve feet tall. This was around the time Lu Bu managed to free himself in an explosion of highly weakened flames and glared at the one who stopped him.

Ice and snow now scoured an entire portion of the city cutting off the expansion of the bombs in the direction of Pom and her allies entirely.

Oddly the iced over region didn’t seemed to have touched Shanty, Pom, Dolly or Dormarch or anyone else that was allied to them. Aside from being egregiously cold, which doesn't effect Dolly in the slightest to begin with, it wasn’t affecting them as much as it was Lu Bu who looked to be bordering on somehow having gained instant frost bite that was slowly, but surely, disappearing from his heating up form.

“Hm-hm-hm… ahahahaha!” The chilling laughter came from a floating bipedal figure. She had icy blue skin, eyes cold as icicles that started to form in the air around her braided waving solid blue hair, pointed ears spreading out from a heart shaped face and an otherworldly ethereal quality to her lithe form as she floated above the ground surrounded by flower made of ice she started sitting upon as if it were a throne.

Her sharp gaze sent shivers down everyone's spines, except Lu Bu’s who just roared at her while raising his flaming fists ready to keep fighting.

“Why do I get this feeling that Velvet would have complaints about that being if she was to ever meet whoever that is?” Pom stated blandly from where the ramshackle Metal Hound 002 was hovering.

430. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 9.

-Moon Cell Realms, allied territory within the walls of Midgar City, Canard-

“We need someone to get into the wall like yesterday Ocellus, can you have anyone break through the lines to take those PLANTs?” I called out over the visor as I finished running a Trooper through.

“We’re working on it Mr. Thunderbeak!” Answered Clef to the sound of explosions and something crashing. “How is Ms. Pom doing in there?”

“Well apparently the area she’s in apparently gained conditions like you would see on Puckworld… lots of ice and snow in that direction.” Felt nice, but not all my friends were used to hockey playing conditions being a majority of the year. “Also be aware there’s a new types of Neutrals running around. In the terms of round, spherical and highly explosive. General color is red, if they inflate then deal with them fast or get clear as that is a sign they are about to explode… violently. Apparently they are unironically called Bombs. What’s Ocellus currently doing?”

“She’s moving some Magitek Armor to the Commandramon holding the moving castles walls and is trying to find the holes in our defenses to plug them to prevent any more assassin attacks… those guys are scary.” Clef whined that last part, but she’s arguably more dangerous than any assassin archetype that could be thrown at her. That sugary sweetness of hers was lethally cute.

“Canard we got Sweeper’s incoming, look alive!” Sami shouted as three different types of Sweeper machines showed up, the regular two machine gun variant, the yellow chainsaw variant and a flamethrower variant.

I tightly gripped my stick and started forward, as several Guard Hounds burst forth and started running at me, there were also Moon Cell Watchers flying in and our air coverage has recently become abysmal thanks to the eventual loss of the Skein Flyer Zealots. We didn’t nearly have enough forces to hold this position for long.

“Don’t they clearly already have enough things to throw at us than those manufactured automatons?!” Elise stated as she threw a knife unerringly into an enemy program Brute’s red eye.

As useful as having Elise’s support was, she wasn’t an entire army of EPs slowly crushing us in the slum sector of Midgar City. Whatever Shine and Jeanne were doing, they better grab a few more territories soon or we will be having major problems holding this small sections of the city. We needed the reinforcements like yesterday!

-Midgar City, Frozen Street, Pom-

As we hovered in the air above the street, I couldn’t help the feeling that we need to finish Lu Bu fast, which was hard to do according to Shanty’s previous run in with him.

Shanty was basically running on the last dregs of her magic after barely summoning Leviathan’s head, I was to. Unless I pushed into sacrifice territory, and I really didn’t want to lose any more ground to becoming a full on Chrysomallus which inevitably ends in my fairly quick death, then the most combat capable one of us was Dormarch at the moment.

The ice controlling magical being was hopefully sticking around and helping us for the fight, they seemed very effective against Lu Bu’s current form at the very least. Still, their timely appearance had me wary about how much further this fight would go, if we’re all weak at the end of it I’m fairly certain Marek would take advantage of it.

The icy visage of the tall elf figure glanced in our direction, then at Shanty and finally in Dormarch’s direction, before she turned to Lu Bu and formed icicle spears in the air to point them at him.

I silently wondered if Velvet had a trademark on her ice magic fighting style. I at least knew Fleet Cunning Doe was the general Rein combat style, so trademark was not an issue there.

“Pom, feeling a little exposed up here… also that lady, do you feel it?” It wasn’t a familiar bond that Dolly was alluding to and yes I could feel it, if it was then I would have noted the subtle and incredibly soft intrusion earlier. There was an extra connection among my connections to Dormarch and Dolly, just sitting there quietly and it thankfully wasn’t a familiar bond.

“Yes, I think the ice being is on our side… for the time being.” So that’s where our magic went… Shanty and I were basically tapped out and we needed to lean on Dormarch a bit more.

I felt Dormarch send me the fact that he was ready to help and I’m certainly not going to forget that he’s a child, even if he’s a strong one and most distressingly in particular ‘my child’. Metal Hound 002 wasn’t going to last much longer at this rate if we kept getting as close to Lu Bu as we have been and it wasn’t like Shanty lost her Cane Scythe, but her limited water protection isn’t going to hold up to the kinds of flames Lu Bu spews very well.

“Dolly.” I stated while looking at the ice and snow.

“On it!” Dolly answered already knowing what I wanted her to do as we swooped down, the wind hitting my face thanks to the lack of canopy to take it for us.

Dolly span the left barrel as we dragged it through the snow to scoop some up as we headed for Lu Bu’s back, he started to build up some flames in his hands as the ice being shifted into a defensive stance and Shanty took an aggressive stance. Dormarch would prefer to use ranged attacks after Lu Bu threw him through a wall and I only advised being careful as Lu Bu was dangerous even at range.

As we closed in the ice being started to move to attack with the ice and Shanty charged forward, Dormarch prepped a Lupine Laser.

-Pom’s Team vs. Lu bu continued-

The ice being sent a blast of icicles at Lu Bu who melted them out of the air immediately with the flames of his right hand. This was followed by Lu Bu actively dodging the Lupine Laser from Dormarch and almost catching the Cane Scythe by the shaft as Shanty feinted actually going through with her attack and immediately backed off, Lu Bu immediately went from grabbing at Shanty to attempting to backhand Pom and Dolly with the same left hand.

In the face of getting Pom’s smashed in at the speeds they were currently going at, Dolly forced the Metal Hound 002 onto its flight pack and it started to skid forward along the icy street.

The flight pack reversed its fans rotation to push them down the street even faster and they passed by Lu Bu who tried to thrust his left arm forward and down into the street trying to hit the machine.

As they slid past Lu Bu, Dolly aimed both the arms of Metal Hound 002 at Lu Bu and peppered his face with shots from the right machine cannon and a few blasts of snow to the chest from the left arms damaged gun before it quickly went into cycling ammunition again. The snow seemingly doing more damage than high speed projectiles that’d absolutely tear right through Pom.

Putting the fans rotation back to normal Dolly spun the Metal Hound 002 as it rose back into the air to face towards Lu Bu and fired off two missiles from the right shoulder. The missiles were quickly blasted out of the air by fireballs exhaled from Lu Bu’s mouth.

A blast of mist exhaled from the ice elemental beings mouth stunned and staggered Lu Bu and he had a coughing fit as some of the mist entered his mouth. The lithe elf figure went skating backwards to avoid the plumes of flames Lu Bu generated to attack her before he lunged for Shanty with his right fist pulled, Dormarch teleported in using Search Hunter and intercepted by slamming into Lu Bu with a Howling Star attack that bursts him forward in a blaze of light.

Having been launched into the air slight Dolly slung the Metal Hound 002 down and slashed the still available right claw across Lu Bu’s belly before ascending away from the fire spewing out of his left hand.

Lu Bu landed and was about to go for the ice elf thing, when suddenly he felt a slash to his right calf and his anger was drawn back onto Shanty who deftly danced away from his right backhand while managing to score a small cut on his right forearm and dodged his following left hook.

Having missed Lu Bu was hit with a bunch of ice spikes from the ice elemental being that caused Lu Bu to ignite in a fury, vaporizing quite a bit of snow and ice around him instantly.

Soon the flame monster targeted Metal Hound 002 with Pom and Dolly wondering why Lu Bu would ever bother with casting magic at Pom? Well this was soon answered seconds later when their opponent proved that he wasn’t just a beast of rage, but that he was an intelligent beast of rage.

A flash of gold as Pom’s wools glowed brightly happened, however Lu Bu had apparently calculated the angle perfectly to deflect the magic to create explosion of flames right where Dormarch was about to launch an attack.

Dormarch was, thrown off by the explosion of flames, was launched directly into Shanty as she leapt for Lu Bu. Lu Bu followed this up by not going after Shanty, but lobbing several fireballs up at Metal Hound 002 as he charged for the ice elemental.

Metal Hound 002 had to avoid the fireballs, even if they had been created by magic unless the fireballs were magical themselves, they weren’t going to reflect off of Pom if they were natural flames as the end result of magic. It wasn’t the magic being directly applied to Pom so her anti-magic effect didn’t kick in after a near scrape with an exploding mass of flames caused Metal Hound 002 to spiral into a building back first.

Lu Bu roared as he thrust his flame covered left fist at the icy blue colored elf and she dodged around and slashed up his left forearm with a rapier made entirely out of ice that formed and became held in her right hand.

Quickly creating a buckler to take the brunt of the next attack, the ice elemental was sent bouncing down the street by a hard right from Lu Bu.

Rolling out of the wild tumble, the ice maiden stabbed the blade against the icy street and skidded to stop after taking a moment to gather herself and stand up, she fixed the damage dealt to her rapier. She started to skate along the street with ice forming at where her toes touched down.

While the ice elemental was getting back into the fight, Lu Bu attack Shanty who tried to fend him off with several quick swipe of the scythe to create cutting arcs that Lu Bu avoided.

Lu Bu swung his right fist upward at Dormarch diving at him.

Stopping short of actually hitting him, Dormarch canceled out his Howling Star to drop down and unleash an impossible to block or dodge Wild Howling from his mouth, the shockwave shook and locked Lu Bu in position.

Shanty followed up the sudden stun, by ramming the tip of her scythe down in a curving arc for Lu Bu’s chest and jammed him in where his heart should be.

Grunting audibly at the pain of having half the alien metal scythe made out of destroyed robot leg puncturing his flesh, Lu Bu quickly ignored the blade buried in his chest and grabbed Shanty around her water armored waist with his left hand and ignited it while glaring her in the eyes.

“AGGHhhhh…” Shanty was screaming in pain as her fur was being burned, she was quickly released when the ice elemental lady stabbed him in the side making him reflexively dropped the goat that had his ire.

Shanty quickly pulled her weapon free and scrambled away gasping in pain from the burns around her midsection as the ice elemental was knocked down by Lu Bu with the blade still painfully buried in his side.

Lu Bu was about to lay into the icy being, when he took a sudden left hook to the face from the spinning barrel of the malfunctioning machine cannon of the Meta Hound 002 going full speed at him.

The impact shook and staggered Lu Bu and slowed the Metal Hound to swing about its right claw into cutting upwards and into Lu Bu’s belly, chest and a portion of his neck before it took a punch to the chest armor knocking it back and out of the air to sending it skidding along the road.

Lu Bu ignited his own body to melt the ice sword buried in his side and cauterized his damaging wounds.

Pom glared as, under the guidance of Dolly, she flicked the Metal Hound 002 into walk mode from where they landed. Metal Hound 002 planted its left foot forward and kicked off with its right foot to go sliding forward towards Lu Bu at an incredible speed while spinning up its left and right cannons.

Halfway to Lu Bu the right shoulder of Metal Hound 002 loosed two missile which were swiftly blown out of the air by stream of flame from Lu Bu, who started getting pummeled by projectiles from the right cannon.

The right cannon’s firing slowed Metal Hound 002 enough that Lu Bu almost managed to punch Dolly and Pom’s faces, they blocked with the spinning barrel of the mangled left arm and the machine got toppled by the force of the blow.

“Ggrrrr…” Lu Bu growled as he was once again stuck with another rapier of ice created by the ice elemental summoned by Pom and Dolly, he blasted her with flames and she seemed quite weak to them as much as he was weak to her cold ice. She was easily sent through some glass windows of a storefront.

Shanty slashed Lu Bu across the back with the cane scythe sometimes called the Pegged Leg by Shanty, she quickly dodged back and the flinching from her burns almost caused her to take the back of Lu Bu’s left fist to the face. She managed to duck under and back further away from him while short of breath.

Those that knew of Lu Bu, were currently glad he didn’t have his magical form changing weapon, Dormarch was exceptionally happy he didn’t have it on him.

After Shanty distracted Lu Bu, Dormarch got underneath the burning monster and slammed both his frequency wing blades outwards into Lu Bu’s knees.

Once Dormarch got his wing blades properly lodged into Lu Bu’s knees and upper thighs, he reared up with a howl and slammed Lu Bu’s face into the pavement as hard as he could.

“Blade Wind Turbine!” Dormarch announced while standing on his hind legs with a dazed Lu Bu lodged onto his wing blades, he started to spin incredible fast and Lu Bu’s face quickly ripped through the ice covered pavement slightly before being spun about violently.

Pulling back his wing blades Dormarch watched as Lu Bu was sent into a nearby building with a slight glint in his eye as Lu Bu plowed through a support pillar of the building… then the entire skyscraper collapsed onto him.

“Do you think eughh… that is being enough?” Shanty asked as they watched the building collapse several tons of material directly on top of Lu Bu and started kicking up a lot of dust.

“Nope.” Dormarch stated with a firm look on his face as the light of flames could be seen underneath the quickly collapsing rubble, faintly resisting the tide of stone, glass and metal.

“I agree, Shanty catch!” At Pom’s call out, Shanty raised her hoof and caught the thrown Sitrus Berry. The goat immediately downed the healing fruit to ease the pain of her battered form.

The Ice elemental skated over to them and stopped while holding up the ice shield with her left arm and her rapier in her right hand, she slashed it along the ground to create a wall of ice that absorbed the brunt of the shockwave of the building collapsing.

“Who are you… Shiva? Interesting name.” Nobody was going to point out to Pom that the ice elemental Shiva never said a word as her long flowing braided blue hair wave in the winds caused by the collapsed building.

After having been blinded a bit by the dust and debris, things started to settle down and they could see a molten mess as Lu Bu came out from the building. He was gasping and weak after taking a whole building to his body, but he was still going.

Shiva took a few steps forward and held the sword up in front of her face before looking to Pom, Dolly, Shanty and Dormarch.

“Right, we need to finish dealing with him.” Pom said as she looked over the flaming beasts red cracked skin showing what looked like veins of lava, a sure sign that the muscle monster was close to cracking even if it was taking all of their combined efforts to even put this much of a dent in his unstoppable façade. “Are you okay to keep going Dolly?”

“The guy had an entire building collapsed onto him, how do you think I feel to see him getting back up from that?!” Dolly was of course upset that Lu Bu was still going. “What kind of monsters are we fighting here? I thought that whole undying giant metal owl thing was bad.”

“What’s terrifying is that Shiva doesn’t feel like she can stick around for much longer and she’s the most capable we have against him.” Dormarch was readying another Lupine Laser with Lu Bu’s name on it.

“I am being quite exhausted…” Shanty stated as she leaned against her cane scythe and breathing a bit roughly, it was clear to anyone looking that she didn’t want to get grabbed by Lu Bu again. She currently didn’t have any water to protect herself with, the last bit of liquid had been burned away when Lu Bu grabbed and fried her midsection.

Lu Bu crouched down on his fists and roared at them, they each readied themselves in various ways for for the large horned beast of flames was coming at them once more. In the distance a mushroom cloud exploded as one of the reactors that powered the city took a Bomb to its core. This back lit the flaming monster.

“Don’t forget, for all his roaring, raging and flames… he’s still very much intelligent. Dolly, Dormarch, Shiva…” Pom stated with narrowed eyes as the Metal Hound 002 started to move forward and Dormarch did so as well alongside her.

Shanty decided to take a back seat and stayed behind Shiva, as Lu Bu had been targeting her a lot. Lu Bu’s enmity towards Shanty was well noted by Pom who intended to protect her charge from the revenant monster.

Lu Bu lunged forward and tried to ram Metal Hound 002 with his horns, instead of retreating, both the left cannon and right claw came to the defense by catching Lu Bu between the horns and pushing outwards as it held its position only managing to be pushed back a few feet before it stalled the raging beast out.

It was apparent that the flaming demon had weakened enough that the mechanical might of the Magitek Armor could barely overcome his raw muscle. He angled his mouth up and threatened to blow fire at Pom and Dolly directly through the shattered canopy.

A Lupine Laser coming in from Pom and Dolly’s right slammed home into Lu Bu’s mouth and stopped him from firing off his flamethrower breath point blank at the girls, in fact it got him choking on and coughing.

Following this Lu Bu tried to leap away or lift the Metal Hound 002 off of him and instead they kept him pinned using the machines still viable right claw to force him to stay in place.

Shiva fired several sharp icicles into his body as she skated to the left and slashed his left leg up with her freezing ice rapier. The coldness of the magical blade severely weakened Lu Bu making it easier for Metal Hound 002 to hold him in place even if it couldn’t attack in its given position.

Lu Bu didn’t like that he was losing to these fleas through various small bites, his rage flared and he punched his left fist into the Metal Hound 002 denting the metal and then he roared and launched a uppercut with his right fist.

Not only did it lift Metal Hound 002 off the ground and fall onto its back, its right claw became unhooked allowing Lu Bu freedom of movement. He quickly created a claymore of raw flames and tore it through Shiva’s body, dispelling her summoned form.

He tried to swing it for Dormarch who managed to defend with his right wing blade and he rammed his head into Lu Bu’s stomach staggering him into stumbling backwards. Even then Lu Bu let the flaming sword explode in a burst of flames that sent Dormarch skidding backwards, Dormarch quickly planted the wheels at the heels of his current form and revved them up to counteract the backwards force until it evened out.

Dormarch looked up and found himself a good thirty feet away, Lu Bu was still frighteningly strong for a flaming demon that had been heavily worn down. They had lost Shiva’s assistance so they really had to finish Lu Bu and couldn’t afford to let him recover from this fight, he wouldn’t just exclusively start targeting Moon Cell’s forces.

Lu Bu moved to attack Metal Hound 002, it had proven to be quite the thorn in his getting revenge for his pitiful defeat and the fact that he couldn’t break a little goat’s fighting spirit.

The fire leaking monster was only stopped when Shanty leapt up and slashed his left cheek and narrowly managed to plant her scythe into the ground, she use the scythe to pivot herself out of the way of his retaliation as fist and flames struck at the air behind her. Shanty swung around and attack his left leg and almost got splatted as the street was ruptured by Lu Bu’s fist as she hopped backwards.

Shanty might have been running dry on magic, but she was still quite willing to fight Lu Bu and remained quite defiant of Lu Bu hurting Pom or Dolly.

Ripping up a chunk of the street, Lu Bu slung it at Shanty who tried to deflect it with a cutting arc of her scythe. This only ended up with Shanty deflecting the chunk of rubble and it slapped her across the left side of her forehead and knocked the poor goat down and out.

Lu Bu grinned, brought both his fists together and leapt with them raised high above his head and he came down at Shanty swinging them downwards with all his strength.

Dormarch quickly appeared under Lu Bu using Search Hunter and then performed a point blank Howling Star ram his way up into knocking Lu Bu away from attacking Shanty in the form of a rising star.

“Oh come on, can’t I have just have this one cool thing?” Dolly whined as she got the nearby Metal Hound 002 working on getting standing as Dormarch protected Shanty. They had only had this Magitek Armor for about an hour or two and it was already heavily messed up.

“Dolly, not the time!” Pom berated and Dolly acknowledged that now was definitely not the time as they watched Dormarch, held by his left foreleg was slammed face first into the street.

Seeing her baby brother get hurt, put Dolly into getting the Metal Hound 002 on its feet and charging towards Lu Bu as he turned towards them.

“Merak is definitely going to take advantage of this if whether we win or lose the fight, have you noticed the severe lack of EPs that should be breathing down our necks at the moment?” Given how the city was swarming with them, Pom noticed pretty quickly that they were being allowed to fight here uncontested.

“Why are you telling me this?” Dolly asked as she got the Metal Hound 002 striding forth at Lu Bu who was ready for them.

“I have a plan, but I need to know if you think we can do it.” Pom stated simply and looked towards the bottom of the upper city above them and noted something already occurring above their heads. Dolly received a lot of information, the Metal Hound 002 started firing its right cannon and came to a stop.

Dormarch received another part of said plan as he was trying to recover from being used as a full body flail against the fairly ruined street. He gave Pom acknowledgement and would go for Shanty as soon as he could.

“Never tell me the odds Pom, I’m not likely to understand them anyway!” Dolly stated as she fired off missiles from their still functional if battered right shoulder launcher and watched as Lu Bu flinched from the two blasts striking him in the chest.

Dormarch was soon up and getting an unconscious Shanty onto his back and was moving a small distance away, he would protect Shanty while they tried to finish Lu Bu off.

Dolly continued to fire the right machine cannon at Lu Bu as they charged right at him, he fired of a volley of fireballs which had the battered machine dodging to the left and right as it continued its forward momentum with getting closer to Lu Bu.

Angling the right shoulder towards Lu Bu, the Metal Hound 002 plowed straight into him and toppled him. It then jumped up and landed on him.

At that point Pom and Dolly abandoned the controls of the Magitek Armor while Lu Bu was pinned. Pom pulled the Paralance from her back and its dull rounded point became harpoon edged spear as she hopped up high using her wool to spring her up into the air.

Dolly jumped up and off from Pom’s back going even higher and started to flip forward rapidly while holding her skateboard in her paws.

Lu Bu shoved the Magitek Armor forcefully off of himself and stood up while preparing to bellow at the pilots, only to see Pom and Dolly were no long inside it.

He looked up in time for Pom to come down and jam the jagged harpoon like blade halfway into his chest, Pom didn’t have the necessary strength to push it in further. Pom was in fact so lightweight that Lu Bu grabbed the shaft of the spear and was easily going to pull it free without even bothering to attack Pom.

That’s when Dolly finally came down looking like a spiraling screaming meteor, emphasis on the screaming part. When Dolly got above the back end of the spear now jammed downwards into Lu Bu’s chest, she let out a boisterous sounding howl as she lashed out with the flat of her skateboard using her full momentum boosting power, even as drained as she was Dolly was still quite capable of using the cheapest of her magical abilities.

With the spear Pom desperately held in place acting like a nail and Dolly’s skateboard acting like a hammer, half the shaft of the paralance was suddenly slammed down into Lu Bu’s torso from a full blow momentum strike.

Lu Bu's eyes widened and there was a look of pure agony on his face, yet he still wasn't and hasn't gone down.

The raging fire demon slowly tried to grip the shaft of the spear embedded in him to pull it out and maybe to use it on his enemies. Only he noticed something off as Pom quickly leaping away and back for the Metal Hound 002, Dolly flipping after her in a stylish twirl from the recoil of the impressive impact to land on the ewe’s neck as she retreated from having delivered such powerful blow for such a small dog.

Lu Bu started to remove the spear wiggling it upwards and gritting his teeth, he did not have the ability to survive sustaining lethal damage in this form like he had with Shanty in their fight back at the borders of Ignis and Aurora.

What he hadn’t noticed is what Dormarch was doing, as Pom and Dolly got in the Metal Hound 002 again to quickly go pickup Shanty while the final part of the plan carried out.

Dormarch flipped head over heels high above Lu Bu and then performed a Howling Star straight down at the spear with a terrifying laser guided focus.

As powerful as Dolly could be and for as much strength as Pom could pull out of her tiny frame, Dormarch had them both completely beat in raw physical power.

The Metal Hound 002 rushed for Shanty’s prone form and quickly crouched over it as the meteoric Digimon that was Dormarch slammed into the spear embedded in Lu Bu and struck with the raw force of a falling star.

This absolutely destroyed the entire intersection in a volatile manner and the pressure wave sent up a mass of dust and debris to cover the area in a fog.

-Midgar City, Upper City, Top of Shinra Tower, Merak-

“So they won, heh… fire the cannons on their position in this sector!” I smiled and watched as cannons popped out of the underside of the upper city and started to barrage that intersection in the hopes of killing what was Moon Cell’s main aggravation to destroying all life on two worlds.

I was going to show them that taking the city wouldn't be easy if I could just simply bombard their territories back to being mine. The entire lower city was within range of the cannons pointing straight down into it.

"They actually thought they had a chance?" I said with a smirk.

431. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 10.

-Moon Cell Realms, Midgar City, Struggling Allied Territory, Sami-

“So even if we were to somehow get Castle Alexander past the walls after opening the gate, they still would have been prepared for us… we’re getting bombarded here!” The cannons above our heads really let loose on the area Pom was in after a massive explosion sent a massive cloud of dust into the sky. Didn’t know what was going on over there, but we could only hope Pom got out of it okay… Magitek Armor was definitely not made to take that kind of pummeling and I’ve read the specifications on it.

Wish I had some of that right now, I could do what Dormarch did and eat something mechanical to power a digital evolution. I looked over to see Canard wiping the sweat from his brow after taking down six different Sweepers while I dealt with some problem further away with my rockets, those manufactured enemies were a terror.

“Bomb!” Canard called out as a grinning red creature spewing flames everywhere as it moved approached. They only explode after taking an amount of damage and we had yet to find the exact threshold, but we knew when we surpassed it as they came at us while inflating like balloons.

So far Bombs were more dangerous to our enemy given their spread, Krosserdog blew it apart before it could really do much and it turned into a floating mass of burning cinders and ash.

Canard took shelter in a doorway from some Troopers firing on our position in a building.

“Ocellus please tell us you have someone willing to go into the walls to deal with those PLANTs, we’re not in a good position and we’re getting absolutely hammered here and we don’t know where Pom is!” Canard wanted Castle Alexander to give us information as they were within range to start tracking our positions. Since wherever Pom was, she probably couldn’t speak up without drawing fire from above.

“Pom is… I assume she’s currently trying to deal with the cannons on the underside of the upper city or she’s getting a much needed break from the fighting. Can’t blame her for that.” Ocellus called in. “If she calls us then she’s going to give away her position, I’ll try contacting her to see if she will try to deal with the cannons above the entrance of the city. They can’t hit us unless we try to get inside… so the most we can do is keep pressuring the wall or maybe… we can climb to the upper city from the wall. We’ll get back to you on that, we’ll send you more Skein Flyer air support when we’re able.”

“Incoming!” Elise shouted and we lunged for cover as the surroundings streets were blasted with cannon fire.

-Unfinished construction infrastructure on the underside of the upper city, Dormarch-

Wind whipped by my face this high up and blew my ears back a bit. I was rendered a Dalmamon again, I’m surprised that we managed to make it out of the kill zone.

Mom definitely had a really good read on this Merak guy. He really liked making his enemies run through a gauntlet of traps, he was prepared for almost absolutely everything we did. He didn’t expect us to get out of the underground facility alive and even if we did he cut us off from our support using that weird soul liquid stuff that has some rather terrifying effects on the living.

“Mom, how’s Dolly?” I asked as I turned away from looking down from the infrastructure we were sitting on and scouting the surrounding airspace in case an enemy Gunship, Moon Cell Watcher or a heli-trooper spotted us, which would be bad as we were currently immobile. So far none of them were looking up for us and the airspace was decidedly theirs after they took out the Skein Flyer Rider Zealots.

This city was far better defended than Mare Melum was and Mare Melum was a horror show that was going to give me nightmares.

Said infrastructure was hanging from the underside of the upper city and I could see a nearby tunnel leading into something like sewers for the upper city. We were currently stuck with a damaged Metal Hound 002 that couldn’t be operated without Dolly, she barely managed to land this thing before she passed out.

I could feasibly connect with mom and try to operate it through her like Dolly did or I could just connect to its system and pilot it through digital manipulation and have mom direct me on what we needed to do, but it would needed repairs or we wouldn’t be getting very far. To that end I was thinking of suggesting something, but I needed to get a few things out of the way first.

“She’s out of it… that use of ‘Haste’ has caused her painful enough migraines to knock her out. She overdrew by far too much, at least she managed to stay awake long enough to get us up here.” Mom was petting an unconscious Dolly and my more biological sister looked quite worn down. It was a good thing she could overdraw at least once Mom, if she hadn’t we would have been caught by the cannons firing down on us from above.

“How did you know about the cannons on the underside of the city?” It was a wonder that I was curious about, because Mom had somehow called it.

“I didn’t, but I had an idea that something like those Thousand Gunner things might show up and blow us away while we were trying to recover from the fight with Lu Bu… so getting away from things really fast was prudent and we could fly.” After saying this mom held up a marble, the one that was quickly grabbed from the crater before we blasted our way into the sky in the dust cloud I had created from impacting with Lu Bu full bore. She carefully slotted it into Dolly’s helmet next to the one that apparently allowed for the summoning of that strange elemental entity Shiva. There was a red and blue glow as the marble like gems seemingly connected to one another. “I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him either.”

“What makes you say that?” After I slammed the spear through his entire torso with a howling star aimed straight down from what was close to the roof of the lower city, I really doubted anyone would survive that.

“Fou for one, I think we just separated Lu Bu from the fire demon since this marble came from the morphing body we left behind in the crater.” A crater that was recently and quite summarily blasted to hell and more by the upper cities underside cannons Mom… actually... right, that wouldn’t be nearly enough to finish off someone like Lu Bu. “I… don’t exactly have a great record for killing people.”

Yeah, Mom was still quite upset about tearing open Elise and enjoying eating meat while she was flipping out and acting like a beast. To think she still didn’t have full control of that was a little terrifying. I did not know how to broach that subject with anything approaching tact and Dolly would probably be even worse about it.

Even if he no longer had a fire demons body, the fact that a body even remained after we took what felt like the fire demons power off of him warranted fear that Lu Bu could get up and return later and the fact that he even returned the first time was as terrifying. That’s even when I tore the guy entirely in half when I hit the paralance… which according to several people Lu Bu has managed to survive such an attack before.

Mom was totally exhausted, fighting The Arsenal and Lu Bu back to back took a lot of out of us and the Metal Hound 002 could barely work without a decently healthy pilot and Mom was never going to be the picture of healthy in some regard. I clambered up to mom and nuzzled against her neck with my nose, she hadn’t moved much to unstrap herself from the seat or do much of anything other than talk and hold onto Shanty and Dolly.

I checked Shanty’s health, first off she definitely has a concussion… followed by torn muscles, exhaustion, minor signs of heatstroke and bruises with some light internal bleeding.

Mom, picking up on my thoughts, carefully placed Dolly on the controls of the inactive armor and rolled Shanty into position to start juicing a Sitrus Berry to pour the liquids down her throat. The nasty swollen part of Shanty’s head and bruises started healing rapidly much to Mom’s great relief. I checked the pack hidden under her wool and noted there was only one berry left and a reviver seed, did not know where the other one was. We’re not going to last long without the supplies that was dropped for us in the allied section of the city, I’m fairly certain Canard and the others have them.

“I have no idea what we’re going to do from here.” Mom stated quietly, then something came up on her visor.

“Pom, if you can hear me don’t respond, we don’t want them knowing your current position.” I could faintly hear Ocellus as I move to sit on the left damaged shoulder of Metal Hound 002. “We already have an idea of your situation and it’s slightly better than how our forces on the ground in the city are doing with being bombarded from above. We think you’re at least in a position to do something about those cannons, but judging by how you look… you likely need ten or more minutes to get yourself together.”

Mom technically needed six months of paid vacation and therapy, of the full spiritual, mental and physical variety. Unfortunately we were not in a position to get her a much needed vacation any time soon.

“Anyway, I know this might be a bit much, but the power grid to those cannons likely isn’t protected… or are at the very least lightly guarded and you can access them from the nearby upper city sewer network opening currently to your left. Once you’re detected they are going to start throwing a lot of stuff your way, so my advice is to be completely stealthy until you have to absolutely go loud. When you do go loud, make sure it’s as noisy as possible so we can ‘maybe’ send some help your way as you’re really going to need it at that point. We’re already working on an idea to get Castle Alexander up to the upper city… provided we can get the anti-gravity generator to work… we can climb the wall and use the wall at the lower city to climb up into the upper city directly instead of having to go through the lower city. I seriously doubt they’ll let us do this uncontested though and will have something ready to stop us from doing that. I mean other than those underside cannons angling for us at extreme firing angles and are one of the things that can keep us from climbing up from the top of the wall. Whatever else they have in mind will likely stop us from fully climbing up to the upper city proper. We can’t abandon the others holding the lower city either, but we don’t have any ideas on how to move them when there are so many EPs pinning them down. Hope you can come up with something Pom, we’re not exactly in a good position here even if we’ve basically taken the plains.”

“Really wished I could have responded to that…” Mom muttered before looking to me her eyes were filled with a sense of dull haggard tiredness. “How are you feeling sweetie?”

“As good as can be expected.” I stated dryly and she nodded. “We can’t exactly fly after the ‘Haste’ magic kind of burned through the warranty on the Magitek Armors flight pack. I have an idea of how we can get Metal Hound Zero Zero Two moving, but we won’t get far unless we can find a Sweeper.”

“Why a Sweeper?” Pom asked as she recalled what Sweepers were like. Dangerous bipedal machines, but were a bit slow on the reaction time compared to Mom.

“I think I can do some in field repairs if we can take one down and maybe find one of those marbles to act as a power source… this means we’d need to disable one without damaging it too much.” Easier said than done, given Mom and I were the only ones currently capable of fighting and I was out of evolution power and mom shouldn’t do magic for a while. I glanced at the golden wool covering her right hind leg as well as her front two legs. “Since it’s made from the same technology that made this armor, it’ll undoubtedly have some compatible parts at the very least so we can jury rig it into something more capable than it currently is.”

“Wouldn’t we need factory stuff for something like that?” Mom may not be the foremost knowledgeable on technology, but she did point out an issue to making said alterations to Metal Hound 002. The Magitek Armor had definitely seen better hours before Mom got a hold of it.

“I’m sure we could work something out Mom, now we can’t stay out in the open for too long or someone might notice us.” I quickly clambered from the shoulder to the seat and slapped my right claw onto the control panel, let’s see… accessing technological interface and… I slowly got the Metal Hound 002 into walk mode and moving for the nearby large pipe entrance and out of sight of anything that might look in this direction. “I’ve got direct control of it Mom, don’t look so worried.”

Mom sat up and looked behind us at the battlefield outside the walls far down below as beams and projectiles ripped through the air between the EPs, manufactured machines and our allied forces.

I might not have a digital evolution at the moment, but I was still a digimon and Magitek Armor was something I could control as it had systems I could manipulate as a ‘data’ type digimon. Sure the canopy was entirely ripped off, but that didn’t mean the systems in the control panel had disappeared, the only problem was that my overall control could not match up to Dolly’s ridiculous piloting skills when working together with Mom.

After moving forward a bit more and were ignoring the shaky sounds as the Magitek Armor rattled poorly with each step, we stopped after stepping into the end of the pipe. I then released my control of the machine and Pom patted me gently on the back while sighing.

“We can’t exactly leave Dolly or Shanty alone…” I trailed off and thought about what I was going to suggest. “I need to take control of a particular type of Sweeper to do some repairs, it’s either that or we wait for Dolly to wake up and feasibly be capable. In her current state… that’s not advisable. Moving Shanty’s body around too much would be a bad idea too.”

“Could you tell me what part of the Sweeper needs to be taken out to make it inoperable in a swift manner?” Mom did think she could do something with the paralance, I’m surprised we had the time to pick it up before we fled the streets far below. “I won’t be able to move something that heavy, but we could move the Metal Hound Two to an inoperable one after we take it down. While I don’t feel comfortable leaving Dolly or Shanty alone, we can do so for an amount of time and work together to deal with a Sweeper quickly or I can scout ahead while you pilot the Metal Hound close behind me so they’ll at least be safe and nearby while you provide ranged support.”

The first option would mean we would be leaving the two to rest in one spot, where they would be harder to find for the enemy or we take them with us, but at least we would know where they are at all times and our enemies weren’t in the habit of taking hostages anyway. They’ve been trying for lethal since we got into the Moon Cell Realms, if they were found unconscious… well I wouldn’t want to give Moon Cell the opportunity to use their souls against us or kill them in the first place.

“Second option, I follow you and you take the lead Mom. I can’t exactly pilot this thing smoothly… mostly because of how I pilot it. I can at least work the missile launcher or machine cannon arm, but I doubt I’d be able to use the melee claw efficiently. I don’t want to leave them exposed by themselves.” I made sure to point out that I wasn’t going to be pulling the kind of stuff she and Dolly could do. Mom nodded and after getting big sis Dolly and Shanty placed in comfortable positions together inside the armor, she shakily clambered down the Magitek Armor with that paranormal parasol stuck to her back. “Are you sure you’re good enough to physically fight something?”

“Oh I’m perfectly fine physically at the moment, aside from some exhaustion It’s just nerves that have me shaking like I am.” Mom stated as she started forward into the tunnel and motioned for me to follow with her right hoof. “Now if you were to ask about magically and mentally… well you’d have an entirely different kettle of fish there.”

I planted my claws into the controls and slowly got the Metal Hound 002 moving forward behind Mom, I also turned on a light so we could see in the dark tunnels we were entering. If I heard something I’d simply turn them off and we’d go from there depending on how the situation changes.

I continued piloting the damaged machine forward after Mom as she slowly led us into the tunnels, staying within the beam of the light as her eyes looked about in the dark with her pulled back ears pointed upwards and alert.

-Near Midgar City entrance, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

I had no idea what Pom would do as we lost visuals of her high up in the rafters of the lower city, but she was last seen on the move.

“Quetal, how is it going out there?” I asked as I turned my eyes back to the rather bombastic battlefield we were still pressuring.

“As well as can be expected, the EPs are still appearing on our side of the wall, our allies inside shouldn’t be getting hit by them quite yet.” Quetal was quite well aware, as was I, that our allies within the walls were under constant pressure. “I might volunteer for going into the walls, but that’s only if we can reach the hole in the wall with a good enough team. We’re lucky that we even got a territory in the wall that’s been holding as well as it has been.”

Most of the PLANTs within the wall were producing EPs to send at Castle Alexander, completely understandable as they weren’t sending any EPs after the one territory within the wall that we had.

I hadn’t even told Quetal about the cannons on the underside of the upper city firing down into our territories in there where our friends were slowly being pummeled to death. We didn’t have many territories inside to begin with, but I’m pretty sure Quetal and the others had an idea that things inside were going far worse than out here.

The news of the grinning fire creatures called Bombs spreading everywhere was giving us some hope they were going to continue to be more of a problem for the EPs than they would for us currently. Given they could take territories in an explosive manner and were causing massive explosions while lighting many things on fire throughout the lower city. Couldn’t they have been name Grinners or Fireballs? Goodness knows what their anatomy is like, given that exploding is a natural part of their existence. No Changeling would be dumb enough to try and turn into one of those things.

“Hmm… the EPs are mostly still appearing on our side of the wall, we need someone to go in and take care of the PLANTs nearest to our allies before they become a problem for our forces on the inside. With how powerful the PLANTs in the walls are… we can use them to feasibly create a new Allied Program units to assist us in battle.” So far we had Saber Knight, Rider Zealots, Lancer Guardians and Assassin Caerbannogs, we needed Archer, Berserker or Casters. “If you can into the walls, then the PLANTs shouldn’t be too well defended, given most of their resources are being spent on assaulting Castle Alexander. We need those resources Quetal.”

“I’ll see what I can do to get two small teams together to go along the inner walls for a bit to the left and right.” Quetal was a good field commander, one that was making sure no one was getting in over their heads out there. “We’ll get you the resources to field more APs soon, how goes work on sending another aerial strike force? We’re going to need some way of picking up slack on the battle line if we’re to move anyone into the walls to deal with the problem.”

Casters would give us better territory control and offensive might, provided that we protect the Casters of course. Archers would give us more range advantage and we were lacking for ranged offensive measures. Berserkers… well they’d at least be hard to take down. How could we focus on Casters though, because Archers might not be important if Casters make up for the range disadvantage we were currently having trouble with.

“It’s not going over very well, it’s taking time to produce more Skein Flyers for the Rider Zealots and Welch says they have something going on in the manufacturing line and… ?!” I saw something come out of manufacturing walk towards the wall held by the Magitek Armors piloted by the Commandramon, who’ve been calling wall duty the best post they’ve ever gotten in their lives thus far, the thing leapt over the walls of the castle and cleared Castle Alexander’s head as it marched forth onto the battle field on four legs.

“I have returned…” A voice stated over communications and I saw a strange Rider Zealot pop up on the screen for a few seconds. I have no idea what he meant about returning, but he was certainly interesting. “Cheese House!”

The four legged teal machine popped something up in its center and started blasting machine EPs with massive blasts of concentrated energy, said blasts did incredible amounts of damage as the armored tetrapod thing stalked forward. Four more of those fairly large four legged machines hopped over the walls and landed to begin surrounding the green one, only their colors seemed to be a stock yellow. It wasn’t long before they all set forth for the wall or Quetal’s team, both were in the same general direction really.

“Sorry for all the wait Ocellus, but those walkers are fairly interesting… apparently giving Rider Zealots access to production facilities means they’ll start making cool walking tanks. I think the designs put a heavy emphasis on their shielding ability as much as heavy damage single shots.” Welch stated as she popped up on screen, in the background I could see various Rider Zealot APs moving around and building Skein Flyers and something else a little bigger and tougher. Those things looked like they could fly and take a bit of punishment. “I’ll get to work on sending some Skein Flyer forces and what looks like a space capable updated version they want to make that seems to be another Rider Zealot special build!”

“Please hurry Welch, our guys inside the city are not only being bombarded from cannons from above, they are having all kinds of problems with the aerial EPs in there!” I stated with worry. “They are in dire need of aerial support.”

“You can say that again eyes, we’ve got the traps and a few quick build turrets from Torneko up, for all the good that will do if those cannons above us keep raining on our parade. I'm glad we had the foresight to set the turrets up under the buildings awnings to give us a protective cover from the raining shells… but we won’t be able to hold our positions forever once those cannons blow our cover.” The head of the Gazimon stated as he popped up on screen and behind him I could see a Gazimon firing a turret into the air to take out several Moon Cell Watcher spheres before they could fire their lasers. “So yes, please, hurry up on those aerial forces! What Skein Flyers we have can’t get back into the air and the Gazimon among us are not willing to fly in an airspace this highly clogged with enemies. We haven’t taken casualties, mostly because our APs are doing that for us, but the Skein Flyers we still have really can’t fly in this mess and we’re not letting the Rider Zealots use our personal rides until all else fails. We’ll try to hold on for those reinforcements.”

“We’ll get them to you soon.” I sighed, the battlefield was a mess, but we had a good eighty percent of the plains and not much to show for it aside from being able to contest the city a bit. The mechanical EPs spawning in were quite dangerous, the manufactured enemies were still a strange choice and they couldn’t be spawned in from PLANTs. My thoughts were that the manufactured had a bit more staying power, but I wasn’t certain of it yet.

“We better, the battles momentum has slowed down like molasses on one of Pinkie’s infamous log jam pancakes.” Smolder stated while watching the ceiling and the walls around us in a paranoid fashion.

So far we’ve managed to stop anymore assassins from sneaking in, but that didn’t mean they weren’t still trying.

-Upper City, tunnel network, Pom-

“Phew… that… that was a bit of a thing.” I stated as I leaned against the wall breathing roughly as I had a death grip on the paralance within my left hoof and looked at the eighteen or so Sweepers that were destroyed by me and Dormarch.

“You’re telling me, but we somehow managed to get away with only drawing a marginal amount of attention to ourselves.” Given that they were manufactured Dormarch, I think they couldn’t warn anyone as well as the EPs would have if they were destroyed. “Why were there so many in here though? Seems unusual and like they were searching for something or someone. Those weren’t guard patterns of movement, they were exceptionally aggressive.”

Speaking of manufacturing, Dormarch had plenty of parts to work with when it came to fixing the damaged parts of Metal Hound 002.

He had my help with taking some parts from a few of the Sweepers. One had a triple rocket launcher and after attaching that to the left shoulder, now we could fire five missiles though the triple missile launcher would take longer to cycle. We also replaced the left rotary machine cannon with a single barrel machine gun, sure it wasn’t nearly as powerful… but it wasn’t a total loss in effectiveness and since the claw blades were broken we added an underslung horizontal spinning saw to the left arm to make up for the lack of melee ability.

I had been correct in saying that we didn’t have the facilities to fix everything… for one the melted off armor need to be fixed in a factory. I also didn’t know how we were going to replace the canopy, but some of the parts from the Sweepers fixed some of the minor damage in the flight pack and we could get airborne again… not quite as useful in these claustrophobic tunnels, but it would be quite helpful if we can get into the upper city proper and out of these tunnels.

Someone had to go after Merak directly and keep him occupied and unfortunately…

That was us.

-Lower Midgar City, blasted to hell and back crater, ???-

An arm rose from the rubble and clenched into a fist, no longer bound to Ifrit… Lu Bu rises again despite the fact that he definitely shouldn’t with how damaged his soul was.

Obsession and wrath rose from the ground in a pillar of purple sparks and lightning with a decidedly dark aura hungry for battle and war, it had yet to find satisfaction by it's losses.

Nothing would keep a good berserker down and bad ones were even worse, not even the slight lack of a body would stop this soul. The cannon shells that hit the figure barely put a dent in it as it roared to the sky in an angry manner.

Ifrit had tried to hold Lu Bu back... he failed.

-???, Oleander-

"I think Pom would appreciate her own super heroic dog right?" I said with a pleasant smile as I held a comic book in my magic, this comic book had a similar function to the Equus made comic books. However instead of being pulled inside the comic to play a part in the story as it wrote itself through the users actions... this comic pulled a hero out to help the user with whatever they desired, even if said desires were not exactly heroic. The imagination and willpower of the user powered these magic comics, the character from the comic could last quite a while and had a one shot super boost before the comic being wears out along with the user.

"Lucky the Punchy Poodle... that's... a pretty big dog, are you sure Pom would like this?" Buttina asked as she looked at the large purple skinned and white haired and furred poodle on the cover of the comic book.

"Well if she doesn't then Big Mama might, she's almost the most famously known Canis Major in existence for choosing to be a familiar to Pom. Didn't come up until after Pom started living in Huoshan though. Poor dear was quite isolated before then, so nobody really noticed the oddities to put Pom in the world record book for most familiars ever acquired until that point. That and most beings in the Meadow Hills region are very odd about their privacy." Which was a rarity and nobody quite understood how the dynamic worked when the Canis Major was definitely much stronger than Pom was physically. "I don't know what happened to the supposed Big Papa that existed, but Pom had a clue that something did in fact happen and that Big Papa was likely twice the size of Big Mama and this is how big Big Mama is."

I created an exact replica of how big Big Mama was, if Big Papa was twice or even three times her size, then I know something really bad went down and Big Mama sought Pom out to take care of her puppies in case something happened to her. Lambkin were generally safe beings to be around as far as child rearing went, if a bit... crazy paranoid about the safety of their charges.

"Whoa... can we fight that?" Whistled Wrex with a grin. "Might be as fun as Skagzilla was."

"No, Pom wouldn't like it if you hurt Big Mama, also I'm quite sure you don't quite understand how star beasts work and a Canis Major is definitely outside your wheelhouse... considering its completely outside of mine even with Fred and a weapon the conceptually locks and unlocks things." I said with growl and Lucky popped out the comic matching my growl as he appeared at my side.

Lucky's one shot Super Boost was simple, become bigger and red... while becoming completely invulnerable to damage for a limited time, uses up a ton of energy and is the reason why it's Lucky's one shot super boost. Note that 'invulnerable to damage' does not in fact mean 'invulnerable to pain', but said pain just made Lucky stronger.

I'm sure Pom would love to meet a hulking super hero dog that would help her with chores and Pom wouldn't abuse or misuse him like that lady I took this comic from.

432. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 11.

-Moon Cell Realms, Midgar City, tunnels under upper city, Pom-

“Do you even know where we’re going Dormarch?” Leaning forward, I whispered this into Dormarch’s ears, he leaned his head back and nosed me in the chin affectionately like a puppy would do with their mother. I smiled a little and shared those warm feelings with Dormarch, since he took in emotions like Ocellus and I wanted him to know I appreciated his presence.

I was his mother so… yeah, I was still trying to come to terms with a lot of things. I wonder if the therapists in Meadow Hills would have half a better time with me than anyone else or would I drive them crazy with all the stuff I’ve been through over the course of a year?

It just seemed to me like we were randomly moving around the maze of tunnels for the last ten minutes, we were kind of on a time limit and our friends likely wouldn’t survive those underside cannons for too much longer. Ocellus basically said we might be in a position to put a stop to them, which was what we were currently going off of.

“Not yet Mom, but I’m definitely looking for something. I’ll know it when I see it.” Dormarch quietly stated back as the Metal Hound 002 currently sat in a small alcove out of sight and waited as a patrol of Crawler and Drone EPs moved past us. “I promise that we’re not wandering aimlessly near enemy patrols without good reason. I know what I’m looking for and if I see it… well I’m going to need you to take control of the arms on Metal Hound for a short while to cover me while I get the information we need when I do find it.”

Manufactured automatons couldn’t be replicated from PLANTs and I still quietly wondered what the difference was between the general Enemy Programs and Manufactured were. I mean aside from the manufactured enemies always being machines and not dissolving upon defeat or possibly being slightly tougher, but then the Drones and Crawlers were EPs that could be spawned from PLANTs so it wasn’t like the PLANTs couldn’t make mechanical things. Trying not to think about those horrid Archer Gekko things… their biological like movements and mooing sounds were very much uncanny and nightmare inducing. It was rather confusing as to why Moon Cell’s forces would even bother with manufactured machines, unless there was something more to it like with the many variants of Sweepers we’ve seen.

Really did not want to go near those flamethrower variants again, there was only so much fire damage the lanolin in my wool could take. My golden wool was basically more resilient to damage, but I wasn’t testing that at the moment for obvious reasons.

I was fairly worried that the mess of the eighteen Sweepers we left behind would be found, thankfully nothing like an alarm seems to have come of it and we originally only attacked four. The rest still showed up rather quickly, as they had come running at us in that small room we stopped at. Eighteen in a moderately confined space was more than I wanted to deal with, but it seems to have not alerted any of the EPs in the slightest. Dormarch had been fairly accurate with Metal Hounds right machine cannon.

Dormarch had rendered some the parts we got from those Sweepers into tools he used to give Metal Hound the working weapons currently on its left arm. Parts from one Flamethrower Sweeper’s arms was good for making a makeshift welding device and also had enough power to melt some parts into the shape of other tools that were now squared away in Dormarch’s Digivice, apparently he looked up to Sami in her ability to create her own stuff outside the ones that she came with as a digital entity.

We had done things like turn spikes on the chainsaw to use as a screwdriver and the like to fit whatever we’d need to make some slapdash replacement of the weapons and repairs to the flight pack of Metal Hound 002. Which is why we used an lightning powered magical marble to fix the damaged power generation unit in the flight pack we could have ejected at any time. It seemed nothing like the burning red or icy blue of the ones taking up space in Dolly’s skateboard helmet, the ones that had Shiva and that flame demon Lu Bu had been possessing.

Terrifying thought that a guy like Lu Bu could possess demons and not the other way around. I wonder when, not if, we’d run into that monster again. We were in upper city so chances are it might take him a while to catch up to us up here if he could outright feel where Shanty was.

While my wool could lift more than my relatively frail body could, it still took a little bit of doing to get the machine gun, saw and rocket launchers in position and properly attached to Metal Hound’s left arm.

We’re glad that the saw and machine gun were working when we tested them for a matter of seconds, as too much testing would attract unwanted attention we weren’t ready to fully draw to ourselves. The rockets would definitely need testing in a space that wasn’t as enclosed as our current circumstances.

The lights on the Metal Hound were currently off as the nearby EPs would likely have detected it on sight, once the patrol was long gone and after a count of ten we decided to continue forward. We’re quite thankful the crawlers or drones lights hadn’t bother to look into the alcove we were in. Without the canopy we were missing the HUD for a variety of things that we were now relying on our senses to detect. That or we could rely on the visor I was wearing, it was how Ocellus or Castle Alexander must have spotted us on the underside of the upper city.

The Magitek Armor carefully walked out under Dormarch’s ever increasing capabilities with controlling it, trying not to make much noise as he did so. Dolly seemed to be good at going full tilt, whereas Dormarch was being far more slow a methodical given he was manipulating the systems directly instead of the controls.

We were being exceedingly careful because Dolly and Shanty were both out cold and in no condition to fight even if they were awake, they were currently helpless. Not to mention we couldn’t fix the melted off armor, plus the aforementioned missing canopy exposed us to gunfire and those two things meant that there were chances of an unfortunate projectile piercing Metal Hound and hitting either of them.

So yes, the protection the Magitek Armor gives us was good and all, but I’d rather we not leave things to chance when those Drones could simply fly up and could get an angle on either of my currently sleeping angels. Dormarch understood as well as I did how horrible the situation involving the battlefields outside and inside the city were getting, we just couldn’t rush things even if we had wanted to do something immediately.

We eventually came to what looked like a cistern of various tunnels leading off in all directions, these tunnels weren’t exactly filled with liquids so I couldn’t exactly call them sewers. We moved off to the right side and Dormarch was looking for something among the walls.

We were both watching the shadows as we entered the lit area and Dormarch’s head suddenly snapped a little more to the left of the wall we had been looking at to our right, and he turned the torso to turn the lights on the object to get a better look in something more than the dim lighting.

I had thought he saw movement to my relief, and ever dangerous heartrates and increasing anxiety, it was something like a large metal box embedded in the wall. The casing didn’t look too particularly thick and it had something like a lock on it so I might be able to pry that open if Dormarch needed me to do so.

Given this box had Dormarch’s three tails wagging meant it was definitely of importance to us, as he had finally found what he was looking for apparently. Hopefully it would involve a map since we were quite lost.

I was about to think that we were quite lost ‘down’ here, but we’re technically above all our friends and not technically underground. We were way above ground if anything, still it was a tunnel network and I had no idea where the entrance we came in through was and we were technically underground for the upper city.

Metal Hound 002 was quickly mover over to the box and its back was soon facing it and Dormarch motioned with a paw for me to hop out.

My cuddly fish tailed digital monster Dalmatian was about to say something and I pushed my left hoof against the lock and filled it with my wool. With quick twist, I swiftly pulled the casing open for him and he nodded.

“It’s an electrical box and has some systems I can access, could get some directions, patrol routes and most importantly a route to the nearest power station up here to stop those cannons from firing on our friends.” Provided they are still alive Dormarch, but I doubted they’d be dead with the likes of Canard being as tough as they come. Probably won’t be in good condition, but any condition of mildly injured was better than outright buried at the rate things were going. “I’m going to need some time Mom and this might draw some attention...”

I nodded and hopped back into Metal Hound, I noted how we were in a corner of an eight way intersection. Six singular tunnels lead away from here at various angles, while two three pipe wide tunnels ran along the other two paths with what looked like a rail system. Metal Hound was wedged between two of the singular tunnels off to the side of the vast open space in the middle of the cistern… I’m certain the small bit of pipe in the middle of the room leading downwards opens up into open airspace beneath us leading to the lower city, Metal Hound 002 wouldn’t fit in it… but it was a nice last effort idea to bug out with Dormarch, Dolly and Shanty in an emergency.

Two singular tunnels to the left and one singular tunnel to the right, the one directly to our left was the middle one we came out of, three singular tunnels across from us and the wide tunnels between all of the six singular ones.

I took the time to breathe a bit to center my nerves as I heard Dormarch working on something behind me, really hoped he didn’t hurt himself doing whatever it was he was doing.

I could control the arms of Metal Hound 002 easily enough… so long as I didn’t have to move the armor anywhere from its current position. I was slightly testing the aim of the arms and trying to get an idea as to where the shots would land if I fired them, the canopy had been very helpful in that regard.

Having any sense of accuracy without Dolly was going to be literal hit or miss with me, so I’d be relying on spray and pray if Dormarch tripped something or an enemy patrol came along. I wasn’t discounting a surprise ambush either, we can’t be going completely unnoticed in the tunnel network as being odd noises. I mean eighteen Sweepers showed up to attack us, that was a lot of attention to draw and they were definitely aggressively looking for something that likely wasn’t us.

Moby Dick was above the upper city so where were all the slightly airborne aquatic EPs that thing spawned? They couldn’t all be going to Castle Alexander.

“Let’s see… power flow… ah, we take a… then go that way… okay we have a place to attack. Current location is… not too far away actually.” Dormarch was muttering quietly as he gathered the data we needed, apparently some kind of computer system was in the box. “That and electrical systems Mom, keep a look out for anything coming. I might not be able to pick up if I set off a silent alarm.”

Right, he was on the same page as me at the moment with the many various worries of what we were doing. He was such a good boy.

“Concerning, the fire demon is known as Ifrit… originally summoned to attack us. Lu Bu soul showing up kind of ruined the plan and they had to seal him up to be used as a power source instead. He was already overpowering containment while we were in the underground facility. The marbles that are in Dolly’s helmet? Those are generally called Materia, it can be condensed power squeezed out of that caustic soul juice we saw in that underground facility that Canard got a scan of. Apparently Shiva and Ifrit are unique forms of Materia. I find it a little too coincidental that Dolly would simply find Shiva just like that and then help us with Ifrit, I think divine intervention is going on here.” Wouldn’t think it impossible Dormarch, given Arceus was likely actively watching us and was functionally a ridiculously powerful deity that had limited ability to act in such an overt manner. Like most immortals he had a job to do and couldn’t functionally take the field without a few caveats happening. At least I got some odd feelings of playfulness off of Shiva for the time she was around and there was a connection between her and Ifrit, if the linking of the two Materia was anything to go by given how they shined together. “Since your wondering, Materia are functionally safe objects to wield that can let you use magic even if you are not particularly capable of it without the Materia. The soul liquid stuff that Canard scanned, anything living touches that stuff for more than five seconds will likely die from it in the most permanent fashion possible that even Elise couldn’t resurrect you from. Really strange difference in lethality there one thing empowers you and the other makes sure you cease existing, also there’s the fact that I’m getting some history of the use of materia… as in the ability to learn to do magic from them that you don’t know how to do on your own. So if Dolly spent enough time with those, she could technically learn ice and fire magic instead of having to using the Materia to help her cast that magic.”

I mean how else is Arceus going to know if I helped Aurora or not if he didn’t watch what I was doing or at least pay us some form of attention? Well we are kind of far away from Aurora, but what we’re doing here was arguably more important at the moment and I’m sure Arceus would agree as one of his worlds, among possible theoretical thousands, was in grave danger.

As for Dolly, I trusted her to use the magic she could learn from this responsibly. Besides the migraine she’s used magic in a lot of useful ways and know not to overdo it.

Plus it was nice to know that the Materia weren’t immediately life threatening, maybe a threat to our magic given how much of that Shiva drained from us just to manifest. Sure it may have been a lot of magic, but she didn’t waste it and really helped us with the flame spewing Lu Bu, the marble we picked up from that may actually let us summon Ifrit too. I was actually a little wary of summoning someone that was originally intended to be sent at us… still kind of came at us anyway.

“Would you say that Materia is the conceptual condensed existence of life experiences of the soul then and still somewhat living, or is it just nature turned into raw magical power?” I was thinking about the lightning marble we put in the flight pack of Metal Hound 002, the one that Dolly burned out by casting ‘Haste’ on it, didn’t feel nearly as alive as the two marbles currently taking up space in Dolly’s helmet.

“Something like that and a little of both actually. It’s not all condensed caustic soul juice, though that would be a main ingredient for these Materia things to form. I think the process of making Materia tries to weed out any intelligence getting into the Materia and leaves behind the raw power, Materia would make it easier for Dolly to use magic and it should be relatively safe. Given that the manufactured enemy machines can run off Materia as a power source, it would be a bad idea if the Materia had souls in them that could overtake the machine. So I’m certain that most Materia does not have a soul, but has plenty of raw magical power given form and possibly some echoes of the once living.” Well that made me shiver Dormarch. “Materia that have life in them like Shiva or Ifrit seem to be more of a unique situation, there are some references to ‘Magicite’ being a more powerful form of Materia and that might be what we have given the many references to ‘Summoning’. Unfortunately, it seems to take a lot out of the wielder to summon their power. Being infused with the caustic soul liquid, called Mako apparently, is not a good idea given the numerous mental issues that come with it if you survive the process… on top of gaining super strength, speed, reflexes… that stuff was used to make super soldiers that could have been a ridiculously mentally unstable. The Materia were incredibly safe for anyone to use by comparison and mostly just empowered whoever wielded them without mental contamination, but some still had a better affinity for wielding Materia than others and you would need to work to be anywhere a quarter as strong as the super soldiers created directly from the soul juice infusions.”

Wasn’t it bad enough that servants were summoned as indentured souls to Moon Cell, did the apocalypse causing computer really need to power ‘The Manufactured’ off of the energy of what it might consider to be lesser souls and magic? I shuddered to think about exactly why Manufactured are necessary now, especially when EPs existed and replicated in large numbers as long as a PLANT is nearby.

“Well Dolly can at least learn to shoot Ice and Fire right? I mean she would be rather thrilled to have those abilities, wish I could feel as close to magic as she does.” Funny you mention that Dormarch, she’s jealous of how strong you were and you’re jealous how connected she was to magic… also maybe you were being a bit vaguely jealous to how connected she was to me. I could actually easily coach Dolly about how to use ice and fire magic. “I don’t seem to have the talent for it. Sure I have some talent with lightning attacks, but it just doesn’t feel the same.”

“Now don’t say that, you have plenty of magic where it counts Dormarch… most of it probably manifests in your evolutions and the abilities that come with them.” While I was talking to Dormarch and he was doing his thing behind me, my attention had not been taken off any of the eerily silent tunnels around us. It was so quiet I could probably hear a pin drop from five hundred feet away. “You’re magical enough just still being alive to me sweetie, I also hope you continue living for a long time too. Longer than I will at the rate I’m going… I don’t think I would have much of an idea as to how to run high end technology or would have made it this far without you or Dolly dropping into my currently hectic life.”

While Dolly was aware of and knew how to use some forms of technology, given she grew up around a tablets and Artificial Intelligent toys that could apparently translate animal speech that nobody really thought about the implications or incredible advancement thereof in understanding languages, working with high end stuff was definitely far more in Dormarch’s domain. I was liable to get into reading science fiction stories if I ever made it back to Equus, mostly to see how close they got to other worlds actually having such things.

I’ve seen both horrors and wonders in equal measures… magnificent machine empires, worlds of peace and tranquility with incredible combat skills that can surpass technology with spiritual might and so much more. Have I really ever stopped to think about it all? Pressing ever forward was wearing me down and sitting still was giving me too much time to think about the things I’ve been doing and have done.

“Okay, I got everything we need, now I’ll get us to the power station that’ll take out the cannons around this region of Midgar City… also my intrusions in the electrical grid ‘might’ have been noticed.” Dormarch popped into the air above Metal Hound 002 in a flash of Search Hunter and landed to take control of it from me and start steering us to the middle tunnel across from us. “How much it was noticed will become known to us quite soon, so we’ll be moving as quickly as we can away from here.”

“I can definitely get behind that Dormy.” I said quietly as I wrapped my hooves around Dormarch and hugged him tenderly, his three fishy tails showed his appreciation.

-Five minutes later-

“Ceiling.” I whispered and Dormarch stopped us before we walked into a trap as several red lasers became visible from the kicked up dust of Metal Hound 002 stopping short of them and those lasers were filling up the exit of the tunnel by several inactive Crawler EPs laying around.

We had kicked something of a hornets nest somewhere, the EPs were setting up points like this everywhere. They were inactively watching a number of tunnels now and those red lasers were meant to catch motions of something bigger than the dust particles that revealed those lasers.

I still didn’t think we were the only ones they were looking for, but I couldn’t think of who could be up here without taking the roads, trains or other pathways up here. Not much flight power going on without a Skein Flyer and the enemy having a rigid control of the airspace inside Midgar City.

Suddenly the EPs went active and turned off their sensors and dropped to the ground, Dormarch started spinning up the right machine cannon. Only… the EPs didn’t come after us, they were after something else as a mass of them scurried away in the direction of the power station while we sat their quietly and Dormarch let off the trigger.

Dormarch looked to me and I narrowed my eyes in thought, I then nodded to Dormarch and we set off after the EPs. Something was up and it wasn’t an ambush meant for us, I’m starting to think we were going entirely unnoticed for an entirely different reason than how careful we were being.

It didn’t take long of trailing after the Crawlers to hear the sounds of fighting and destruction coming from ahead, something was attacking the power station? A few explosions could be heard and we weren’t the cause, we eventually followed the Crawlers and some arriving Drones into a hectic scene with unusual Programs we were going to label Neutral.

They were these weird NP spheres everywhere, taking up all kinds of formations and connecting in odd manners to create drills, lasers and other things out of energy like hammers to smash into the EPs. They worked together fairly well and looked quite hard to hit.

That’s when I saw a figure dashing away from the power station we were approaching, he was dragon like with white scales, red eyes and a red and white suit. He stopped and aimed his weapon in my direction when he finally noticed us, but held off on firing his weapon.

Dormarch backed us up and protectively raised the arms of Metal Hound 002 defensively, we didn’t shoot or present an aggressive front. The strange figure instead turned rammed forward at an incredible speed with flames coming out the back of his armor, he slammed into a Drone in his way and promptly blasted it with a handheld laser weapon that never seemed to miss a single shot as the energy beams curved directly into what he had physically impacted with.

The hovering figure eventually narrowed his eyes at us suspiciously after returning his gaze to us for moment and stared into my eyes while aiming the gun in my general direction with suspicion. I wasn’t chomping at the bit for a fight with the guy that was for certain and he has to acknowledge that we were here for something else than whatever it was he had done to earn such ire of the local EPs.

He seemed incredibly dangerous and he eventually recognized our lack of aggression towards him.

I silently told Dormarch to hold fire, until the dragon figure eventually shot off with multiple round robot programs circling around him protectively taking projectiles for him as he disappeared down the tunnels at insane speeds. Flames erupting from the back of his armor.

A fairly massive swarm of EPs, that thankfully hadn’t noticed us, soon followed that guy down the tunnels he went down as we quickly made our way for the power station.

We decided to take this opportunity to do we came here for, given he was drawing a majority of the enemy forces away from where we currently wanted to be.

“Was that a dragon?” Dormarch asked curiously.

“Don’t know, he was wielding a lot of weird technology though. He might be something like Snake.” A neutral servant running around causing problems for our enemies was better than us picking a fight with him. “Look we can’t focus on that now we need to hurry, we have to stop our friends from being blasted to smithereens by the underside cannons if they are even alive at this point!”

“A self-summoned servant? There was something absolutely terrifying about that guy, I could almost feel the history to him… one that speaks of blood and violence. He was definitely a servant well outside of Moon Cell’s control.” That didn’t mean he was our friend though Dormarch, we needed to do what we came here to do. Also it was nice to know you could detect servants with that odd grafted on spiritual core of yours. “I don’t know about you mom, but I definitely think we should make this quick and move into the upper city to start drawing Merak’s ire after we finish with the power station. Provided there’s anything left to manipulate anymore. Still, we should be careful about a dangerous neutral servant like that running around.”

-???-

One of the floating spherical red and white robots with a pair of blank yellow eyes slowly pulled away from the shadows after listening in on the pair in the bipedal machine for a bit.

They were headed in the direction of the power station that they just hit and were using the opportunity to do something to save people. Copen wasn’t the only one here then and there was some disturbing information in what little conversation they just spoke out loud.

The name Merak was definitely familiar, it in fact inspired a burning ire in her processors like nothing else feasibly could. The idea of throwing a smug lemming off a cliff and immediately firing hundreds of missiles after it came to mind… plus maybe a limited thermonuclear device.

The battle pod went to eventually deliver what limited information it had gained to Copen the Slayer Dragon, once they were in a more peaceful situation that is. Copen was currently at war with Moby Dick the whale that spewed a million enemies in various territories we’ve been fighting for throughout the upper city of Midgar. We still had no idea why we were fighting for those territories, we just knew that it was important to keep doing so.

In any case that whale had been trying to kill Copen for quite a while now and the feeling was mutual with us trying to kill that massive flying monster that just wouldn’t die.

So far I didn’t know whether they were enemies or allies that had been in the bipedal mech, but they hadn’t shot at Copen so they were quickly put in the neutral list for now and were unwilling to start a fight with my beloved boss. They were some of the few living things that had been seen in this city of false life. Copen was thankfully a bit too busy to actually bother with them at the moment and they weren’t going our way or bothering us, so maybe something would come of our meeting later.

I, Battle Pod Lola, would always serve Copen beyond death wherever he went and would follow his soul into utter destruction.

A shadow of a fairy girl could be seen on the wall was odd coming from the completely spherical machine as it passed by some light as it quickly retreated from the area.

Lola would hope that they could be friends or at the very least allies with the only other living things around. The word ‘neutral servant’ had caused some issue for Lola when used in reference to Copen, but she would not tarry here longer lest Copen absolutely notices her absence from the swarm.

She was starting to remember many things, so many things that she had wanted to tell Copen… she wasn’t even sure Copen himself was actually functionally alive even if he breathed and moved like he was. Something was very wrong, since they appeared in the upper city that never stopped raining… why did the Zozo Slam Shuffle keep coming to mind in her music files?

Hearing the sound of fighting ahead, Lola prepared to rejoin the swarm of similar battle pods that had very little intelligence to speak of as she was the main queen bee of them all.

Melting in the twilight, the wish of a mechanical girl…

-Under upper Midgar City, tunnel system Power Station, Dormarch-

“Hurry up Dormarch!” Mom shouted and I heard the sound of the machine gun and machine cannon going firing off, I also heard the rapid series of explosions of five different missiles going off.

“Almost got it Mom, hold on for another minute!” We definitely weren’t getting a majority of the enemy forces attention with how many must be after that dragon guy.

Okay reroute the power and… set to explode, we needed to get out of here. I’m surprised by how badly damaged the power station actually is.

I quickly used Search Hunter to get over to Metal Hound 002 and immediately took control to get us moving, in flight mode, because walk mode wasn’t going to be nearly fast enough to avoid what I just did under a large amount of stress.

-Allied Territory, Lower Midgard City, Canard-

Pom just pulled off a small miracle, given the cannons above us were self-destructing all over the place in a small area, giving us breathing space from constant bombardments from above. Now if only the chunks of cannon weren’t currently raining down on us along with parts of the upper city.

It might take out some of the flyers at least, Castle Alexander couldn’t send us that aerial support fast enough. I mean that literally.

“The ceiling cannons are down permanently in our area!” I called out as I rammed the blade of my stick forward and managed to barely deflect the spinning sawblade of a Sweeper away from me.

Peppercat leapt onto the Sweeper and jammed a lighting blade into to take it down. The quick turrets set up by the Gazimon were doing their best, but we were outgunned and being overrun.

“Oh that’s good, now what can we do about getting some help with all of these aerial forces?!” Sami stated having reverted back to a Commandramon at a rather inopportune time. Her rocket launcher was getting a workout against those gunships. “M-freaking-Loader!”

Propping up the rocket launcher on her shoulder, even as spray of bullets was rapidly moving towards her position, Sami sent a rocket into the gunship and sent it spiraling into a building with a powerful blast.

We had been seeing less Guard Hounds and Troopers and more aerial enemies like Drones or enemies that could stay out of melee range like Crawlers which were climbing all over the walls of the buildings to come at us from various angles in an attempt to hit us with electric arc guns.

This wasn’t very helpful to us when most of our APs were entirely melee focused, at least Rider Zealots was keeping a majority of the projectiles from outright crushing us completely. Keeping the turrets in working condition was a full time job, but at least they were no longer in threat of being wiped out by the ceiling cannons far over our heads.

“It’ll give us a chance to breathe or retreat some at least!” Says the digibot that doesn’t breathe, Krosserdog was at least proving to be highly effective against any Heli-troopers that entered his sight.

Like the Caerbannogs were proving more useful against the aerial enemies by using rope darts to rip them out of the air when an assassination opportunity popped up, they and the Rider Zealots were making up the most of our AP forces at the moment.

Our territories were faltering badly, but we were not out of this fight, not if I had anything to say about it and not by a long shot!

“Slap shot!” I sent an exploding digital puck forth with prayers to the gods of sports on my tongue as I exhaled.

We could see a territory popping in the distance and it wasn’t the Bombs that time, Shine and Jeanne must be working hard to even have done that. We were basically swamped from all sides, so that gave me some measure of relief that they were still fighting too.

-Outside of Midgar City, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

I sighed with relief, Pom was still pulling off small things in big ways. At least she managed to take care of the cannons directly over our forces. We were having problems getting people up to the wall and inside of it.

A territory was suddenly taken within the wall and I blinked.

“Quetal did you finally get a team in there?” I asked.

“No… given that we have lost track of Lit in this chaos, it’s probably him. Little guy has been pushing harder than anyone else on the battlefield. Lit is hopped up on an impressive amount of energy and adrenaline, he’s been eating every energy source that comes near him dry in seconds. That much energy is like a sugar rush to him, only he’s not going to get a sugar crash from it.” Quetal responded and I was in a little bit of disbelief that something so small could be that destructive. Lit was a little innocent fluff ball that spent a lot of time cuddling up to Dolly, but his actions on the battlefield spoke louder than any words ever could… given he’s taken out more Manufactured enemies by himself than the rest of our Pokémon Companions team combined with what seemed like half the effort. “If he has the title of hero, I’d believe that more now than ever, he’s only going in one direction in the wall though. We will work on going the other way and taking sections of the wall once we can climb up to the hole, don’t know if Lit is smart enough to turn around, he may just clear the walls surrounding Midgard entirely of PLANTs before coming out of there.”

Lit might not be the brightest bug in the world, but he was certainly a powerhouse given three more PLANTs worth of territories within the walls suddenly collapsed in quick succession and our offensive line suddenly bulged forward due to the lack of pressure holding us back.

“Welch the ceiling cannons are down, tell us you got some aerial support to send in there!” Several long flying vehicles rose from Castle Alexander.

“Yep, those should last a little longer than Skein Flyers, apparently they are simply labeled Scouts. Things are armed with missiles and pulse guns. How are the dragoons working out?” Those flying ships started providing aerial support alongside the Gyarados from the Mirage Collective.

“They’re holding fairly well, but we’re going to need those resources if we want to get up to the upper city on those massive pizza plates without have to go through more of this stalling stuff.” I quietly went back to watching over the battlefield, sending out orders when necessary.

More than forty percent of the lower city was on fire thanks to the Bombs, why did absolutely everywhere we go with Pom eventually turn into some form of large chaotic mess?

-Inside the leftward wall of Midgard City from the hole, Lit (Music: Nyan Cat)-

The set of four blue eyes, as a green glowing corona of the yellow bullet ricocheted around the inside of Midgar Cities outer walls, were wide open, dilated and rotating weirdly.

There was few bits of twitching in the eyes showing that Lit was still alive, somehow, as the colorful streaks of energy started to appear behind the rapidly rebounding tiny creature of death and destruction for any EP that was dumb enough to be in his direct path right now. Those poor unfortunate Enemy Programs that were the inner walls defenses.

The tiny yellow furred bug Pokémon blurred through things at a speed faster than two hundred miles per hour, and it was still increasing no less, consuming energy from every single PLANT he made contact with at an increasingly disturbing rate that he just started shooting straight through them instead of stopping on contact to drain the energy out of them.

Every time Lit hit a PLANT a stream of energy was being pulled into his body from behind that was left in his wake trying to catch up with his practically flying form. The green streak from Lit’s Lunge attack started fully distorting into creating a rainbow trail behind him.

Lit would eventually come to his senses… hopefully... it might need him to finally run out of energy to consume and momentum though. He'd probably set the world record for longest single Lunge move ever performed by a Pokémon to a point none other could possibly replicate the feat of incidentally turning it into a 'Flying Type' move.

Some would think this would be the proper opportunity to make the pun of Lit being completely and utterly ‘bugged out’ of his mind.

433. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 12.

-Equus, Ponyville, Equus Tianhuo-

It was a peaceful day out, but I still felt the tension of not knowing what was happening with my beloved ewe.

I calmly fed Ruff, Ruft, Woof and Puff their meal, I appreciated the company of the Canis Minor while I stayed here in Equestria. I miss my home in the dragon lands, but I hear tell that the Tenko is doing a good job with making sure our household was still running properly.

The four puppies appreciated my presence as well with happy nuzzles, I had forged a tighter relationship with all of them than I previously had.

All we could do is wait, but Pom has already survived so much… we believed in her.

Blighter, the pink shade wolf rose up from my shadow and yipped cheerfully and I sighed, then I simply hugged the mass of wolf shaped energy and poked them in the nose with a hoof. Blighter seemed to enjoy it and affection fed him quite well as did hugs… a three second hug kept him fed for more than half a day.

When I had first heard of Dolly Dalmatian… well I wasn’t upset. I was more relieved than anything to hear Pom has a canine companion to work with. That she even recently somehow recovered Dormarch as well soothed some of the nerves that Pom was not in a good place and was slipping into total despair, but my worries would not flee entirely as she has actively been through more than three war zones at this point and would go into one more if she deals with her current trial.

Tambelon was going to be quite a war zone in and of itself, but at least I would finally be there for her ‘when’ she made it that far.

The only things I could do was prepare and rest while Pom was out of contact, I flexed my muscles slightly and tried to relax.

“Hey Tianhuo have you my future descendants T-Bone and Razor, they got in a mess with a magical necromantic time traveling piece of work with a pocket watch phylactery and got a little stuck in history! My sister Jacky would help them, but she’s dealing with a cursed island that keeps spawning evil flying monkeys made of durians and green furred evil orangutan witches that die in water and somehow survive despite the constant tropical rains going on around that island… I’m wondering how she got that lucky…” Sighing at the sound of Jaded’s voice, I couldn’t help but put my hooves over my face and shake my head. “Oh and they are not brothers, just best friends that are exceedingly distant cousins. Maybe brothers in arms at the very least. I’m just here showing them around Ponyville… not silently plotting the downfall of Saddle Arabia or anything like that.”

That last part was a bold faced lie as anyone that knew the name ‘Mirage’ would know.

I turned to look at her innocent wide eyes and enthusiastic wide smile, it was a little too wide. I looked at the two muscular toms near her looking around at all the colorful houses and blinking a bit dazedly… they were quite tall for Abyssinians.

Why was 'the ever annoying' Jaded coming to me with… oh she was trying to distract me from my worries like a good friend, I’ll let her do so just this once. Though I think she should really take the problem to the time police like Dr. Time Turner Whooves of Capture Bridle Defend, he’s the foremost expert on time anomalies after all.

Really the CBD wasn’t hiding very well. Not when Pinkie Pie was a member of the organization with her anomaly capturing parties always somehow working in an anomalous manner, everyone says that Pinkie is the most anomalous pony in Ponyville and they’d be wrong.

That title of most anomalous pony goes to the Muffin Cultist ‘Director Derpy’, who is apparently still allowed to lead the Ponyville branch of the CBD despite calling the anomaly known as Muffinthulhu on purpose. Said anomaly was now rendered safe or inert forever, because it no longer existed after being eaten by a bunch of cultists… of which Jaded was notably one of them.

Derpy kind of outed the CBD as an organization, without somehow outing her foodie cultist activities and nobody in Ponyville would believe or hear talk that Derpy Hooves was in fact a cultist leader, but apparently being the leader of an anomaly hunting organization with a side job as a mail delivery pony made perfect sense. It made ponies actively want to fund the local CBD more, given Ponyville was a large hotspot for constant weirdness and anomalies.

“See, Ponyville is the weirdest forever!” Pinkie said as she popped op out of a blueberry pie on a nearby windowsill and then licked some of it off of her hoof.

“Nobody said it wasn’t Pinkie.” Jaded said lazily with a dull look in her eyes, before looking over her shoulder. “That is Pinkie Pie just being Pinkie Pie, don’t think too hard about it.”

“Did she just…” Razor started to say while pointed at the fact that pinkie pulled the rest of her body from the pie and then proceeded to eat the pie afterwards. He looked like he was fairly intelligent, yet he was about to actually question Pinkie Pie's existence.

“Don’t, just don’t.” The much wiser T-bone muttered and nodded at Jaded in understanding.

-Moon Cell Realms, Midgar City, Upper City, inside a parking garage several floors up, Dormarch-

We had managed to get out from the power relay station without a fuss, mostly because we didn’t stop to fight anything and were flying full tilt out of dodge. Its destruction probably caused the other surrounding power stations to falter somewhat, but I’m fairly certain the other cannons throughout the rest of Midgar were still in working aside from the ones over the entryway.

It was raining and hadn’t stopped since we exited the tunnel network through a train station and entered the nearest parking garage. I think the dark clouds and constant raining was just a constant in the Upper City of Midgar.

Our forces in the lower city were relieved of being bombarded from above, but that didn’t help with the fact that Moon Cell’s forces held a tight grip over the airspace of the upper city. Whether it was aquatic or mechanical, the flying EPs were like a hive of buzzing bees up here and there was absolutely no way we were flying through the storming sky full of death at a few thousand feet in the air. Plus we had no idea where Moby Dick currently was.

There were just many Brute EPs running around on the ground as there were EPs in the air, those golems were definitely becoming a highly common raw power elite and it made fighting in the streets a guarantee they’d show up within a minute no matter where you were in the upper city. Moon Cell Watcher’s hovered around the buildings at varying heights and were everywhere looking in all directions trying to spot us. There were gunships the further inward you went from what little we could make out through the torrential rains, enough that they could probably quickly turn Metal Hound 002 into a vague mass of metal chunks if they concentrated fire and enough of them were around.

The massive tower at the center of it all had our goal of Merak. The guy was going overkill as far as being protected was concerned, there was no we could approach that building without drawing attention or being spotted.

Generally when we beat the main servant of a given realm, we tended to take control of the realm. Merak was already proving to be bad, if not worse than the previous two servants as far as tactical strategy was concerned, he could keep us away indefinitely unless we press forward under the harshest of conditions. Guess Moon Cell figured that throwing raw power at us wasn’t working when it chose Merak for this position, now it was more numbers and varying levels of quality.

It wasn’t hard to tell that Merak intended to beat us outright with sheer attrition and was, scarily enough, succeeding at it. If he was as lazy as Elise said he was, then I wonder where we’d be if he was actually trying.

We didn’t have nearly enough forces to take Midgar City and as such we had to take Merak, who was the heavily defended king on a ridiculously lopsided chess board. I doubt that even with half the PLANTs in the lower city under our control, we wouldn’t be any close to victory before we had them as Merak was prepared for most of what we would or could do. I doubted he could account for everything though, since as long as Mom breathes… there’s an inordinately large amount of uncontrollable chaos to be found.

The parking garage we took shelter in was safe, well as safe as it could get… arguably we were safer than our friends were in the city underneath this one. Whoever built this place could be said to be making a statement that they were the center of everything and above everyone while having control of the entire city and the lives in it, wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest from what I’ve seen of that rather sketchy underground facility with a prison with implied unethical things going on.

Mom was silently working on a plan for how to draw Merak’s attention as much as possible, we needed to flip the board and then some. We were not going to survive attacking that massive tower ourselves, maybe we could get some help from that guy with the strange swarm of robot spheres hovering around him protectively?

I glanced at mother, resting against the wall nearby, hoof left hoof had a tight grip on the shaft of the paralance. We had no idea what that thing was capable of, but I think Mom had a better idea than most at this point.

Checking on her body, I noted something that would be a problem in the near future… it was a problem that both Dolly and Shanty would be facing as well when they woke up.

The endless battle that was known as hunger, the need for sustenance. We were going to need food soon and we didn’t have anything from the supplies that Ocellus airdropped in the lower city. At least Canard and Jeanne would be doing well on that front.

We could split and eat the Sitrus Berry, but what Pom, Shanty and Dolly needed was something filling… I could survive off eating data and was fortunate to be able to heal myself. I was logically doing fine in this environment provided.

“Mom… do you care about theft if there’s no one around to complain about it?” I asked as I remember something in the garage a floor down as I looked at the parked Metal Hound 002.

“Depends, are you suggesting we steal food that nobody is likely going to be eating anyway?” The question Mom wasn’t asking as she looked up at me slightly forlorn and shaken was, would it be healthy to consume and would some of it be meat like in taste. “NPCs don’t seem to be very prevalent around here if you hadn’t noticed and they’d be the only ones eating the food if we don’t and they don’t really need it do they?”

“They do not… it’s not too bleak as you would think.” Though overly salted meat sticks, lots of highly sugary snacks, something coated in a cheese substance… all of it would be decidedly unhealthy to consume in large quantities to make up for lost meals from all the fighting we’ve already done over the last few hours. Very few things would be health in a vending… peanut butter based snacks would be nice, but even peanut butter could have too much oil in it.

“At least water won’t be an issue when Shanty gets up.” Pom looked to Shanty as she said this, Shanty could theoretically separate pure water from a mud puddle without any pathogens or bacteria being in the liquids. “Please be quick about it Dormarch and grab what you thing we can stomach, I’ll watch things here.”

Mom wasn’t going anywhere, but if we did get attack here she could hop into Metal Hound 002 to use it as an overly glorified turret.

-Fifteen minutes later and a completely raided vending machine-

Dolly and Shanty still weren’t awake, but mom was poking and prodding over the food I dumped out of my Digivice. Also some of the strange energy drinks called Potions, Hi-Potions and Ethers.

“Dormarch… why would a vending machine have liquefied magic in it?” Mom asked while staring at the bottle labeled ‘Ether’ as if she could see the magic in it.

“You do realize the things we see in these realms existed at one point right? So the local brand of drink might have been made for magical fatigue. Given the idea that materia was a part of this world, and anyone can use materia, I would say that Ether was made to stop the constant headaches from using far too much magic.” I scanned the Ether, it was vaguely safe to drink considering it had the consistency of a overly thick herbal remedy of some sort. The ‘Potion’ drinks were something I was a bit iffier on. “It should be safe to drink.”

Popping the cap on the plastic bottle open with a quick twist of her hoof, Mom quickly slung some of those liquids down her throat.

“… Honestly… tastes a lot like toothpaste and melted ice cubes.” Mom shivered a bit and clutched at her head with a hoof. “Whoa… why does everything feel so clear and happy all of the sudden?!”

“Mom, while I don’t know magical ailments very well, from what Ocellus has said of something like this you were likely suffering magical exhaustion.” I stated dryly, plus she was the one that pointed out its liquid magic and actually drank it.

“You mean I was suffering from magic exhaustion… good stuff…” Mom, then moved over to Dolly, opened her mouth and poured a small amount into it and made her body swallow it. Mom could feel what Dolly was feeling even when she wasn’t awake. She likely could feel what I was feeling if she tapped into our bond like she does with Dolly, even I could feel what Dolly feels if I wanted to as well. “Huh… Dolly won’t have a headache when she wakes up and it feels safe for her to drink. Makes for a really nice migraine cure.”

Taking up a potion, Mom took a sip and blinked.

“Lemon, seltzer water and… several other things mixed in. Really thick liquid, not full of sugar… oddly bitter, but appreciable like dark chocolate in a fruity kind of way.” Mom smacked her lips. “I’m going to say it’s as strong as a Sitrus Berry, because I think this drink heals physical injuries.”

Then mom tried the Hi-Potion, she pause… swallowed what little she took into her mouth and looked at Shanty and then poured the remainder of the Hi-potion into the goats mouth while rubbing her throat. Once every drop was guzzled down there was an immediate reaction.

“What be tasting like a fairy seltzer with a double shot of copper monkey rum with a hint of sugar malt?” Shanty’s eyes snapped open and she was sitting up and awake immediately, her injuries evaporating as quickly or even faster than when a Sitrus Berry is consumed.

That… someone made something feasibly as strong as a Sitrus Berry, I couldn’t even begin to describe what I’m feeling right now.

“Why am I not more surprised by this discovery?” Mom stated flatly with a half lidded gaze at the potion bottle she quickly decided to finish drinking. “Drinks to heal physical injury and magical exhaustion… also no Shanty, it’s not alcoholic.”

“It is still being quite the interesting taste though!” Shanty stated with a broad grin. “So what be happening?”

As she asked, I watched as Shanty began to tear into the unhealthy snacks I brought with wild abandon… probably wouldn’t affect her health in the slightest. I’d even dare to say she has more alcohol content in her body than an entire Irish pub after twenty four hours.

We’d definitely get in our eventual bathroom breaks while we were here, because afterwards we’d be fighting for our very lives.

We quickly got Shanty up to speed and Dolly woke up some time in the middle of it and started chewing on a jerky stick. Once we were all on the same page, it was time to decide on where we’re going from here, because we needed to somehow gain Merak’s ire in a huge way and keep his attention on us to stop him from hurting our friends any further and give them some respite.

Any distraction from our lower city foothold and Castle Alexander was likely to be a good distraction.

“Hm… good jerky…” Dolly commented idly as she gnawed away at the chunky rectangular stick delight, it was even cleaning her teeth as she ate it so that was a win in my book. “Though the slogan is corny as all get out, ‘Gau brand jerky, feed your wild child’!”

Some of us were laughing harder than others, but I don’t think Dolly got the reason why, considering she was the Dalmatian family’s wild child. Sure she wasn’t as wild around Mom and me, in fact she was quite downright responsible and I looked up to her for knowing when to be serious even as she tried to keep the mood up around us by staying positive when we’re not.

“Well at least that is better than ‘Potion, the good health in a bottle brand’.” I snorted out loud.

“Interceptor Bites, the flavor that will intercept your expectations.” Mom said while eating a bag of oatmeal cookies with a friendly Doberman on printed on the bag with some ninja man in black, said cookies were shaped like four pointed shuriken. Apparently it was dog friendly oatmeal cookies brand, just don’t give too much of that to a dog.

“Chunky Chocobo Choco Chip Cookies, they’re chirping cheerful?” Shanty asked with a raised brow as she downed a chocolate cookie snack from a bag with bright yellow bulky bird on it. She was a goat from Equus so chocolate probably wouldn’t affect her, but I noticed Dolly staying away from any crumbs that fell on the floor.

“I know the difference between carob and chocolate Dormarch, don’t worry so much about your big sis.” Dolly stated while waving a paw at me and Mom. She continued on to eat some peanut butter snacks by Cloud Crackers and Yuffie’s yummies incorporated. “I’m not super dumb, kind of wish that ‘Merry Lack’ guy was…”

Given that Mom wasn’t translating Dolly nor was my digivice, Shanty didn’t bother asking for a translation and idly wondering mumble if it was Dolly getting names wrong again.

Here we were surviving on off strange brand vending machine goods… like Red’s red hot hotdog flavored corn chips, Wallace’s walnut icing Avalanche cinnamon rolls and Rydia’s rice n’ ranch rum balls. I think only Shanty could stomach and enjoy that last one, even if most of the alcohol was burned off in the cooking process for the snacks the ranch part was a bit overpowering on the flavor.

Other brands include Dagger’s deathly delicious Danishes, with really nice cream cheese to die for and things like Gilgamesh’s gil pickle chips… with what looked like an oddly familiar personality on the bag and the factory fried and dried pickles tasted pretty good. Hopefully it wouldn’t clog anyone’s arteries.

The last was a fairly popular pack of snack food among us called ‘Quina’s Quintessential Quagmire Questers packs’, which was full of dried fruit and vegetables which mom was Happy to see. Said pack was neatly separated into dried fruits and vegetables that just about anything could eat to survive in a dire situations. It was marketed with the slogan ‘You won’t get bogged down, when these snacks are around’ and had food that just about anything could and would eat, even Dolly liked it well enough and she was a bit picky about her food if she was suffering kibble withdrawal.

“Speaking of Merak… how are we going to draw his ire. We need to do something huge, something that absolutely can’t go unanswered…” I noted Mom reading the label to see the potions and snack packs didn’t need refrigeration and stowed some Hi-potions in her pack. “I hate drawing so much danger to us, but we need his undivided attention. We need to do something absolutely big, something that can’t be outright ignored. Also we shouldn’t try to rely on that random neutral servant we met that we don’t know much about.”

“Well the guy ‘Blares Ick’ is said to be lazy, a minimal effort genius right?” Dolly seemed to have an idea drawing my and Pom’s attention, Shanty was looking more at Pom since she’ll translate if it’s a good idea. The broad grin on Dolly’s face spoke of danger, insanity and the air quotes version of ‘fun’. Not a good combination by any stretch of the imagination. “I’m an expert on when and how to be lazy, well before I met Pom that is… she’s a lot of effort and worth having some responsibility for.”

“That’s sweet… in a back pawed kind of way.” I stated dryly.

“Yeah, but she wouldn’t be Dolly if she wasn’t able to pull off something incredible on a moment’s notice…” Mom smirked and Dolly looked cheerful, then Mom said the next part. “What we need to do is not think things through and Dolly is an expert in that territory.”

“Hey yeah, I’m pretty g… hey, wait a minute! But yeah, I have some ideas, it’s going to take some doing… first how’s Metal Hound doing?” Barked Dolly slightly incensed as she turned and started looking at the missing canopy and grimacing. “What I’m going to suggest is quick hit and run shots at the tower and pester Merak and the EPs in the upper city to the best of our abilities like crazy, what’s the distance on those shoulder missiles and can we hit the tower at the extreme distances through all that rain? I’m not expecting them to do much damage to the tower, we just have to poke that bear somehow.”

“That’s… not a bad idea actually… huh… the missiles are rated for multiple miles and are multi-targeting turn off the targeting system and they’ll fly farther, but will be dumb firing. We’d need a way to defend Metal Hound 002 from assault while we do the attacks though, so we can’t get too close.” It would need a calculating person that could measure both the range and distance get a firing solution to… oh… I could do that and maybe Mom as well. “Shanty, Dolly just gave us a very good idea, I would like your input on how well you can do thing involving rain water… Mom can you pilot Metal Hound 002 with all three of us working in concert? I need some time to plot some extreme range shots on the tower and Dolly can be the primary pilot while I take control of the weapons.”

We started quickly hashing out our seating arrangements and how we were going to pull this off, this was going to be a bit difficult to do… but not impossible.

-Twenty minutes later, Shinra Tower, Merak the ‘Lazy Laser’ Lemming-

What the hell was burrowing through the wall at three hundred miles an hour and leaving streaks of rainbow in the air everywhere?!

I rewound the visuals and to see the head of the green and yellow colored bullet at the head trailing rainbow of energy and paused it and was met with something weird.

I paused the screen right? It was paused, it said it was paused.

Yeah it was paused alright… then why were that tiny yellow bug bugged out blue eyes still rotating and the rainbow of energy still moving behind it?!

I’m pretty sure this should be a still image! It was not a G I F and was taken from a live feed! HOW?! I am not going to lose the walls to something so… so ridiculous! I decided to stop the taking of the PLANTs by setting an area ahead of the bug to detonate and stop it in a permanent fashion from causing any more problems in the direction it was traveling. Calculating a three hundred miles an hour bug was child’s play, there was no way that thing could out accelerate an explosion and it won’t take the walls out.

Now to check on other things.

At least the Thousand Gunners I sent were dealing with the mess the Bombs were creating everywhere, it is causing power problems in the lower city given the two reactors they blew up and most of the under city was on fire now. At least they were only causing problems in the lower city and were contained by the aerial forces. It was all well away from my upper city slice of pure technological gaming paradise.

…

What in the world was that muscle bound crow monster and where did it come from?! Was that the thing that was inside of Ifrit!? It looks demented, like from the cover of a metal band and it was traveling up the highway towards the upper city.

I’ll look into that later and will send some patrols its way and get some data on the unknown entity.

Now let’s see what’s happening with my enemies down there.

Those gnats were holding on for dear life in the lower city and managing to hold their foothold and the power station to the cannons below seemed to have been taken out by Copen the Slayer Dragon, but they couldn’t last forever under the pressure of most of my aerial forces being right on top of them and slowly crushing them with the ground forces. They were living on borrowed time.

The ewe was in hiding, don’t know where she went, as was that Slayer Dragon nuisance still at war with Moby Dick. I had everything under con… what’s that sound? Why is the anti-air air defense going off and why were they still firing if they had already shot down the target? They shouldn’t be able to miss something big like a Magitek Armor flying in if my opponent had gone on a suicidal assault and…

My eyes widened as glass, rain and debris went flying everywhere from several explosions and launched me off my favorite floating lazy lemming couch.

The most annoyingly of all about the sudden attack of explosives getting through my defenses... the explosions, rain water and glass ruined my computer that I was about to get back to. Just when I was about to reach a save point in the game I had running on it too!

Did they want my attention or was that a serious effort at actually taking me out? I’m leaning more the former.

Well they just earned it, unfortunately for them I actually planned for this. I’m not going to let them plink away at my shields without reprisal. I needed to recalibrate the anti-air defense so that unauthorized things like that little yellow bug can’t get at the tower by air… the programming for that should take about five minutes considering how much area the towers guns covered.

To that end I’m sending out the Einhander Twins. Let’s see the ewe escape from my aerial hunters, because that missile attack has signs of that flying armor all over it and there’s no way it could outrun them.

The EPs will try to keep track of that armor until the Einhander's catch up to them and when they do... there will be no escaping them unless both of them are taken out. I really doubt that the ewe could manage that with the damage that armor has already taken.

-Above Midgar Upper City, airspace, Pom-

We were hovering above the middle of the city, between the out edge and the center of the plate just above some buildings and on the cusp of the range our missiles could fly.

We let loose a barrage of five arcing shots into the distance and saw flashes of gunfire trying to shoot them out of the air and they actually hit the tower. The damage to the large tower was minimal, but Dormarch had landed all five shots on it even if we didn’t know what exactly we were aiming at and he had them land wide spread over the upper floors of the building.

We managed to avoid Moon Cell Watchers and the helicopter gunships patrols from stopping our long range assault, but now they were on to us.

Dolly was flying the Metal Hound 002 piloting us through the torrential rain and the occasional thunder and lightning. Speaking of the rain, it was kept off of us by the Paralance propping up my spine and the back of the chair. Dolly was piloting through me, while Dormarch had his claws on the weapon systems.

Shanty was also idly pushing an amount of raining water away from us and even somehow using it to sense things moving in the storm up to a certain distance.

We were all awkwardly positioned in the Metal Hound 002’s seat. I’m pretty sure if anyone was looking at us right now they’d find our slightly cramped conditions funny, but we had to make do with what space we had. Dolly and Dormarch were thankfully not large, well as long as Dormarch didn’t digivolve while in the seat with us, but them and Shanty was a little bit hard to work with.

“Do you think that riled him up? Oh right, we forgot to have that discussion Shanty… we were so busy with our plans.” My mind was on so many other things at the moment, like how Dormarch was going to do the long range artillery strike without interception or incidentally eating the Gau brand jerky and finding it to be delicious and fairly chewy. The flavors were not what I expected to say the least, I really didn’t like the idea that I was craving meat or even enjoying it somewhat.

They had tried to intercept the five missiles and it was likely because of their small size that they even got through what looked like solid wall of fire lighting up the raining darkness with tracer rounds.

So yeah… that’s a big no go on simply rushing the central tower, where Merak definitely is, with a full frontal assault. Had we’d tried that, we’d be dead right now unless I jumped and used the paralance to dive past their defenses… we couldn’t exactly fly too high or the storm might have a chance of taking us out just by wind alone. Also there’s always Moby Dick to be concerned about unless I personally see it get destroyed, because I wasn’t ruling it out as well.

“It is being okay, I be thinking I am being alright with whatever it is going on with me and we can be having that talk later after we be finishing Merak.” Shanty suddenly sat up straight and narrowed her eyes as I glanced at her. “We be having bigger problems to be worrying about, down into the city we are being targeted by a lot of things that be coming this way!”

We saw this coming and luckily Dolly already had us dropping to start randomly going through the streets flying clockwise through the upper city at a ludicrously dangerous speed, all while Dormarch is making sure the flight pack didn’t burn out from stress.

We just kicked a proverbial hornet’s nest and now said hornets were coming after us for it in numbers we simply couldn’t handle outside of a running fight.

-Rooftops near where the fleeing Metal Hound 002 was being chased by a large number of flying EPs, Copen the Slayer Dragon-

Merak, that name… it itches at my brain… he was likely the reason I was here, given he shouldn’t be alive as far as what faint memories I have were telling me.

Couldn’t face those defenses yet and that mech pilot is certainly in trouble, but it was none of my business what they do even if they are the only life up here aside from Merak. I did not need to save them, they could probably save themselves if they were as talented as they looked in fixing that broken down ramshackle trash heap they called a machine.

My business was killing the guy within that gilded tower with more defenses than Lola could deal with at the moment.

My opponent was too lazy to move from his location, he had forces otherworldly and was a stain on this realm by his very existence. He wouldn’t be ready for me when I finally came for him.

“Come out of the rain Copen, its… cold…” Lola… I looked to the small battle pods innocent yellow eyes as she looked at me standing in the rain. “At least my temperature sensors say so.”

“Fine.” Territories were a resource and this world worked in odd ways, but I knew what my mission was the moment Lola repeated that name to me and I made my way inside to pick up my weapon.

No more aimless wandering and trying to figure out how to end a flying whale with very little resources, I had a definitive focused goal that was slightly more achievable now. Still trying to figure out how to kill the whale though, after all the trouble it's given me I'm not letting that thing live for much longer.

I checked my energy pistol, variable weapons system and the number of battle pods available to me on a refurbished computer. Refurbished to meet my needs that is.

A neutral servant... am I in a play and my part is reliving history of chasing down monsters and hunting them to their very last? Sounds like the exact reason I would show up, I’m here to slay a whale and a brilliant monster. At least things aren't boring around here.

I calmly stepped inside and took up a Hi-potion and chugged it down, did the liquids in these things have to be so darn thick?! At least my wounds got better the more of these I drank, I looked in the mirror at my wet form as my wounds closed up and slowly put my protective undershirt layer and armor back on.

Sitting down, I leaned back and closed my eyes, I was going to rest for an hour and then go out and deal with everything personally.

-Lola the battle pod-

Poor boss... he could stand to be a little more friendly and less lonely.

Author's Note

Q: What is an Einhander?

A: Basically a space/jet fighter with a single manipulator/grappler claw from the game of the same name 'Einhander'.

It is in the same vein as a Vic Viper from Gradius or an R9 Fighter from R-type, with a notable lack of upgrades.

It's main ability is the grappling arm's capability to take up large weapons it grabs off its enemies to use. It can block bullets with said weapons that the manipulator arm holds, but it chews through the health of the weapon that is being used as shield until the weapon is destroyed or it runs out of ammo.

Q: What does Einhander have to do with Final Fantasy, if anything?

A: Einhander appears as a creature you can use as an ally in 'World of Final Fantasy', officially making it a Final Fantasy character/monster and part of the Magitek Series of war machines. At least the automated version of an Einhander anyway.

Q: How dangerous exactly is an Einhander?

A: In the game 'Einhander', a single Einhander ends up destroying the equivalent of two militaries and stops an entire war between the moon and the earth by itself.

434. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 13.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“That Joltik is really…” I shook my head and watched as Lit flew into multiple explosions that filled the hollows along the walls of Midgar with blasts that didn’t ruin the structural integrity of said walls and returned ‘some’ of the territories caught in the blast back to being under that Merak’s control. “Quite interesting…”

A second later a bolt of lightning lit up the screen. Lit hadn’t evolved, though with how his 'hero' title was going he's more than surpassed the limitations to do so, but he likely just ate something he probably shouldn’t have. It might be making him a little... loopy.

“Ten equestrian bits says he accidentally found and swallowed Ramuh’s materia.” Tiamat said with several grins.

“Ramuh’s never been lucky, so that would be a suckers bet at best. Wise sure, but his luck is almost as horrendous as Pirate Jacky 'The Blackcap' Chickadee's and I would know as I'm 'a' driving force behind that curse, or worse… Celebi!” Hah, yeah that sounds about right Bahamut, how many times did I twist time and space to keep Celebi alive again now?

I’ve lost count after several trillion incidents over the last millennia or so, most of which included negative space wedgies. Which was odd for a legendary Pokémon specializing in 'time' manipulation.

I really hated getting negative space wedgies. Paradox time wedgies were even worse, especially if it was the looping kind!

-Moon Cell Realms, Midgar City, Upper City, Pom-

We had done as Dolly suggested with the first thought that came to mind, we poked a bear and what a poke it was…

We were flying through the streets at a fairly high speed and we were definitely being chased. Rain and cold air slapping at our faces in a stinging manner as we flew along the streets that were lit compared to the dark storming sky above.

I was looking out for Moby Dick, the large flying whale that breathes lasers and aquatic EP swarms, as we flew along. I didn’t see any large shadows in the sky above us.

Dormarch was ready for the fighting to begin, because there was no way we would out run an entire city loaded with EPs forever.

Dolly was actually concentrating on not flying into a billboard for Gysahl Greens or crashing us into a building.

Shanty was rather quiet as she clung to me and looking about, I can understand the sudden fear and paranoia when you were being chased.

“We’re about to come under attack.” Dormarch announced, but then he perked up a bit in front of me. “Turn to the right, but keep flying in the same direction and angle the right shoulder launcher between thirty degree and forty five degrees in the next twenty seconds Dolly.”

“Uhhh…” Dolly didn’t seem to have an idea of how far we should roll, I sent her the general idea and used the angle of a skate park ramp to give her an idea. I understood Dolly quite well that I could make it easily understandable what Dormarch wanted her to do “Oh right, got it!”

We rolled and got the right shoulder missiles angled correctly, I kept my eyes forward while Dormarch was waiting for the right moment.

Dormarch dumb fired the two missiles from the shoulder and they flew off between a pair of buildings through an alleyway, timed precariously to avoid hitting the walls and possibly blast us off course. It was impressive considering how fast we were moving as Dolly righted us in the air, the shots look like they were angled and arcing to hit the massive tower in the center of the city in the distance correctly. We wouldn’t be able to stop and watch them to see if they hit this time though.

“Incoming!” Shanty stated as Heli-troopers rose up ahead of us as we turned back to facing forward.

-Metal Hound 002 (No Canopy, no problem) Vs. Midgar Aerial Forces, (Music: Target Town/ Stage 2, Captain America and the Avengers Genesis version)-

“Dolly concentrate on flying, we do not want to be in the open above the buildings… nor do we want to slam into them at the speed we’re currently going.” Pom stated with a clear worry about the anti-air defenses that tried to shoot down their first volley and the possibilities that there were more in the city to aim at anyone flying too high. “Dormarch, if you need a firing angle we’ll try to give you another one, but I think we’re done taking shots at the tower. Otherwise fire at will. Also this is to both of you, please work together and don’t squabble while we’re moving who knows how many miles an hour through the air.”

“Roger Radcliffe… wait, why did I say that? I don’t know anyone named that.” Dolly looked confused and shook her head as the Metal Hound 002 slowed down and five Heli-troopers flew forward, flew backwards and down bit, then charged towards them with their helicopter bladed gauntlets leading the charge while firing wildly from the gun on the other gauntleted arm.

The Metal Hound 002 avoided the shots and then blew away the five heli-troopers in short order with machine gun and cannon fire from the left and right arms. A second set of five troopers were soon blown away coming from below and flying upwards in the same zig zag pattern.

That was the end of the formation flying enemies as Heli-troopers were trying to come into the air in front of the Metal Hound 002 at random from the streets and were just as quickly gunned down along with a few Moon Cell Watchers.

The bright sparks from their projectiles bouncing off the armor made Pom wince as some of said watchers managed to fired off slow beams that were quickly dodged before the eyeball shaped things were swiftly blown apart.

It was a good thing the streets were wide enough that dodging wouldn’t do anything unless they were unfortunate to hit a street light. Dolly had their flying covered, except for one thing.

“Too high, dive.” Pom stated blandly as her eyes continued to flick back and forth in the neon lights of the buildings, using the visor she wore to pick up enemies they couldn’t see outside of the light pollution from the buildings and street lamps passing by below. The lack of canopy and a heads up display would have made it hard to keep up with their enemies, but Dormarch had the weapons working soundly as far as the accuracy went and was using Pom’s sight to take aim at the incoming enemies. Managing to shoot down swarms of Heli-troopers before they could become real problems. “Now please before we’re hit.”

Dolly dove Metal Hound 002 from hovering around half way up the nearby sky scrapers, it was a good thing they did so as hundreds of shards of glass started being blown out from the nearby windows of the buildings as a pair of gunships flew sideways firing straight through the buildings at them.

The three propeller hovering egg shaped machines with two machine cannons had the firepower to chew through the Metal Hound’s armor if they weren’t dealt with quickly enough.

This slowed down the Metal Hound 002 enough that the gunships flew onto the street from the left and right and were flying backwards while keeping pace as they aimed their machine cannons at the flying armor.

Pom quickly took control of her right leg and brought the Paralance forward over her right shoulder to soak up the massive number of incoming projectiles aimed at the seat. It exposed them all to some of the chilling rain and made Shanty a little busier with keeping it off of them.

Dormarch launched five missiles from the shoulders of the Metal Hound and they streaked forth, he had quietly switched them back to being capable of tracking targets as dumb firing them was only for the added range that one could feasibly squeeze out of them.

Four of them were swiftly shot down under the tirade of the gunships, but one of the missiles blew off a propeller of a gunship on the right and sent it spiraling into the other on the left causing them to explosively crash into the streets below.

The explosion forced Dolly to fly the Metal Hound 002 higher as Pom propped the paralance back up to pointing skywards.

“You’d seriously think there would be more than this…” Dolly grumbled, then hundreds more EPs started appearing everywhere, a lot of them were Watchers and they all seemed to be glaring at Pom specifically.

“DOLLY!” Pom, Dormarch and Shanty stated in an angry tone.

“What… oh, right, but that really shouldn’t have counted as fate tempting… am I right?” Three groans met Dolly’s attempt at playing off what she just said, after a moment she wilted as she saw what was coming out of the sky at us. “Right, my bad.”

Dormarch was already chipping away at the numerous Watcher’s trying to shoot them down.

Eight streams of shots came from above and Pom was glad she put the paralance back in position as the entire machine rocked and shook with a few shots to the flight pack.

Looking at the ground they could see a lot of Brutes below just waiting for them to crash, above them they had four gunships firing from the two machine cannons each one was loaded with. No Heli-troopers, probably because of how ineffective they proved to be against the Metal Hound 002.

Quickly aiming both the machine gun on the left arm and machine cannon upwards, Dormarch started to return fire as Dolly swerve wildly through the streams of projectiles and while flying higher or lower to avoid them.

“It’s not easy to aim these things you know!” Dormarch complained.

“Yeah, well I’d like to see you try flying this thing without getting us shot!” Dolly stated back while avoiding the incoming fire.

“What did I say?” Pom stated sternly after they narrowly avoided a billboard hanging across the street and both canines were quickly cowed by the tone and soon working together perfectly.

Shanty quickly formed a bubble from the raining water and slowed down the bullets that managed to get through the evasive maneuvers to ease any damage that would have been done to the Metal Hound 002 otherwise. It was easy for Shanty since she didn’t have to move or go anywhere and she just had to keep up her concentration to form the shield of liquids around them.

“Shanty, you can cover the body and legs, but pull back and keep the water away from the weapons please, we don’t want to dampen our own firepower.” Quietly responding to Pom’s request the bubble, Shanty covered just shrunk around the where the canopy was and extended down to the legs, but didn’t cover the arms, shoulders or flight pack of their machine. “Come on guys, get it together.”

Dormarch finally managed to shoot down one of the gunships and heavily damaged another, when a swarm of Moon Cell Watchers hovered in blasting energy at them.

Only some of the shots were redirected by the water Shanty was concentrating on controlling and the others missed or slightly heated up the armor to a degree where it might start melting, she was better at stopping the lasers than the number of projectiles attempting to puncture the already damaged armor. A lot of the kinetic projectiles missed entirely and those that hit mostly hit the armor

Metal Hound 002’s armament continued to quickly chewed through several of the Watchers, one of them exploding caused another gunship to crash into the street below where the sounds of engines could be heard coming up from behind, but below them?

Several shots pinged off of the flight pack as Dolly tried to avoid taking any more damage to their back, at least the propeller seemed to be heavily armored and the pack gave them something of a turtle shell to take damage with. They did not want to fall out of the air here.

“We’re being hit from behind and above!” Shanty announced as she ducked down as much as she could from Pom as shots managed to get between the paralance and the top back of the seat. “There is being more of those things coming up on us fast too.”

Pom idly wondered what she was hearing from below, but it was probably not something good.

“We’re not nearly fast enough to evade this many EPs for long.” Dormarch stated as even more gunships started chasing us down as he finished off the last one in front of them with a three missile barrage from the left shoulder.

“Dolly left turn, head for the outer edge of the city.” Since they were already under attack, Pom decided she might as well see how Ocellus was doing as they turned and seconds later the enemies on their tail followed trying to blow up the flight pack on the Metal Hound 002 with concentrated fire and took a moment to reorient and continued giving chase. “Ocellus this is Pom, how are things going with you? Oh us, we’re under constant assault and we got some chasers… so no, not good at all. We’re currently swinging our way towards the outer edge of the city, why? Turrets to prevent anything from flying into the airspace so no go for us… huh… really? Well we would like that… when we can get a moment where we aren’t busy with not dying and getting constantly swarmed! I’m surprised we’re still capable of flight as the flight pack is smoking… another left turn Dolly and don’t go entirely into the outer edge of the city! Call it a hunch, but I think it would be a bad idea for us to be flying in open airspace around the edges right now. If they have cannons outwards and downwards I wouldn’t be surprised if they had cannons pointing straight upwards that we’re not seeing too and we wouldn’t survive a shot like that.”

The Metal Hound swung around a street corner, swerving in the air and dipping until it was now flying counter clockwise along the long slowly curving streets through the with the chasers still shooting up the armor on their back.

A revving noise was heard from below and a motorcycle, being driven by a trooper, rode up the side of the building to the left of Metal Hound 002 and kicked off the corner of the building to come flying at them directly. The Trooper EP was wielding a long sword instead of their general all-purpose machine gun and was readying it to swing at them.

Shanty quickly gathered the protective water from around the machine and the rain, then lashed out her left hoof to send a water blade that sliced the Trooper completely in half before they could get close enough to attack.

The trooper was successfully stopped, but the motorcycle was apparently manufactured as it didn’t dissolve into a cloud of digital energy and struck Metal Hound 002’s left leg and almost spiraled Dormarch out of the seat.

Pom grabbed onto Dormarch with her chest wool and Dolly tightened Pom’s grip on the control as the wool tightened around her hind legs. Shanty’s rear hooves quickly slammed into Pom’s back, the wool took the shock of the impact and she was clamped in as well so they all didn’t fall out as they spiraled towards the ground for a few seconds.

“Okay, not going to lie, that motorcycle sword guy was kind of cool...” Dolly stated as she managed to right the machine and keep it from hitting the wet streets. They quickly saw as much as heard even more Motorcycles catching up on them and rose the Metal Hound 002 a bit into the sky as the Motorcycles started to ride the walls and kick off the various buildings at them. “I take it back, I take it back!”

Shanty took up the cane scythe and readied it to start swinging.

“How are they doing that with those motorcycles?!” Obviously Dormarch never subscribed to surfing ninja monthly or parkour with vehicles for wild driving weirdoes.

Dolly veered left as Dormarch pointed the right arms machine cannon into an aggressive group of motorcycles coming from their right, while Shanty kept firing water blades by slinging her cane scythe into the rain at the ones leaping at them from the left.

After gaining some quick authorization with the connection of their bond, Dormarch let Dolly have control of the left gun when she communicated a quick need for it as several Moon Cell Watchers dove into their path from ahead and above.

Dolly focused on the Moon Cell Watcher’s down, the ones coming at them in waves, with the machine gun on the left arm while trying to steer around the volley of shots coming from all sides. Even some of the motorcycle troopers, the ones that weren’t flying up the walls to get at them, were trying shoot them down with machine gun fire from behind before ramping up a building and pulling a sword out to take a swing at the hapless team of unfortunates that kicked a wasps nest.

Pom was the only one paying attention to where they were going and the Gunships still bringing up the rear and unloading into the flight pack trying to disable it. Dolly was keeping the Metal Hound 002 on course according to which direction Pom needed her to fly in as she concentrated on taking care of the Moon Cell Watchers.

“Can’t talk Ocellus, surrounded by EPs and they are throwing motorcycles at us… quite literally now!” Pom sent Dolly a quick and quite curious mental command, but the Dalmatian wanted to already do it just because it would look cool.

With a barrel roll, a swoop to the right and rolling sweep up and upside down before moving back to the left before righting, they avoided the motorcycle riding trooper thrown by one of the Brutes below them.

The Trooper on that motorcycle had still been shooting at them as it was thrown too, just to make it an even more ludicrous form of attack. It wasn’t any less ludicrous than the motorcycles being capable of riding up buildings and launching off at Metal Hound 002 while keeping pace with the flying armor.

Pom silently wondered if anyone had to fight in these conditions before Moon Cell recreated this realm as they avoided three more thrown motorcycles and Dolly got a luck shot on the gas tank of one that made it go up in a quick fireball.

“Mom, the flight pack is getting seriously damaged, we can’t keep this up forever!” Dormarch shouted as he stopped yet another thrown motorcycle from colliding with them, mostly by making it blow up with missiles.

Said explosion rocked the Metal Hound 002 in the air as it flew through the slightly scorching heat, the flight pack even stuttered a bit dropping them down slightly before restarting and getting them back up to where they were in the air.

Inhaling slowly Pom’s eyes were darting about everywhere and she blinked and looked left twice, she silently got Dolly to turn left onto another street and then entered the flying Metal Hound into a hard right to start flying under a highway. Shanty held on just fine, even if she was in the middle of taking out a Moon Cell Watcher that was threatening to ram them and sliced it entirely half.

They had managed to make the maneuver, but their speed dropped dramatically from the hard turn that had them flying underneath the length of a highway. Several things exploded behind them, likely a few motorcycles that couldn’t pull off the hard right turn and they weren’t willing to look back to find out, much less stop with this many enemies trying to get them.

“Well there’s goes my heart…” Dormarch stated with wide eyed fear as he turned the right machine cannon on a gunship and dropped it from the air by blowing its front two propellers off with some focused fire. “It jumped right up and out of my throat.”

“…” Dolly didn’t say anything boisterous or upbeat, she had a look of concentration that was seldom seen on her face and she was looking for something from above in the stormy skies beyond the highway above them.

In fact Pom, Shanty and even Dormarch started hearing that something as they all quieted down.

“What…” Was all Dormarch managed to get out before Dolly stopped them dead in the air and flash of a red energy flashed by in front of them, then Dolly turned the machine up to three fourths throttle to continue flying forward.

Both Dolly and Pom were quiet as they didn’t see what had passed by them, but it was far faster than Metal Hound 002 going at full throttle. An entire build practically evaporated and collapsed behind them.

“Was that?” Unintentionally Shanty finished the statement as she barely saw the indistinct blur they barely avoided.

“I think that was Merak’s answer for us firing missiles at the tower finally showing up…” Pom stated as Dolly had her body pushing the throttle to put the flight pack to full burn, as a higher power machine cannon started firing at where the Metal Hound 002 was going to be if they hadn’t flown upwards and to the right of the highway to put it between them and the deadly weapon. Parts of the highway were shredded or falling in massive chunks by the overpowering machine cannon fire as it absorbed it. “And there’s two of them... of course there is.”

At a high speed the two things spiraled downwards around each other, they eventually slowed down and slowly turned to face those in the Metal Hound 002 while flying backwards to slowly hover in front of it with relative ease.

The two machines were having no problems keeping up with the flight pack equipped machine.

Their jets were giving them far more speed and stability than the Metal Hound 002 currently, Pom knew this was going to be a very bad fight given the singular limbs hanging from both of the two similar machines were each holding two different powerful weapons in their single hanging claw.

The black with red lining one was holding a large red energy sword in its claw and the other a blue with yellow lining one held the massive machine cannon, both had white highlights and faces with vibrant green eyes that stared at them blankly. Lightning flashed behind the two lighting them up with a backdrop that made them look quite dangerous.

They both feature the large armored triangular wings with jets were extending slightly upwards from their fish like bodies that looked like a dolphin without a tail unless the dangling arms holding the weapons were their tails.

If they straightened out the one arm holding a weapon straight out behind them and the upwards angled wings moved downwards, they’d look something like flying manta rays. They also looked like winged dolphins and their resemblance to hawks staring down prey was quite unnerving.

Dormarch seriously doubted they could outrun or even fight these things with how fast they had been when they arrived. Dolly was utterly silent and focused on the two and narrowed her eyes as they started to shift about in the air slowly circling one another while preparing to come for them.

-Damaged Metal Hound 002 crew vs. Einhander Twins (If you meet Black and Blue, you’ll soon be dead all over). Music: Crazy Motorcycle Chase Remake, Final Fantasy VII/7-

Dolly slammed them to the right between some buildings bouncing them off one of the walls of an alleyway to avoid the machine cannon fire coming from the blue Einhander.

The buildings didn’t make for very good protection though as the projectiles from the heavy machine cannon seemed to ignore their existence by piercing right through them and chased the Metal Hound 002 towards the end of the alley.

Dolly stopped them short of the alleyways exit as the beam sword cut through matter evaporating it as if it never had existed without slowing, she full throttled it afterwards.

The Metal Hound 002 almost slammed into the street when the beam blade came around faster than Dolly though it would and slammed down on the Paralance from above. The paralance didn’t get scratched in the slightest and Dormarch managed to score a glancing blow with the spinning saw under the machine gun.

The blow wasn’t to the black Einhander attacking them, but its weapon, the damage was minimal as the Metal Hound 002 tried to get away in the streets.

The black Einhander shot forward and angled the energy blade at the flight pack while firing a single machine cannon fire from its back above the rounded white head at the front of the machine.

Dolly veered out of the way of the cannon and the blade was about to enter the flight pack and end their chances of escaped, Shanty created a clone out of water, with a clone of her scythe and sent

The clone made the Einhander rear up and turn it into steam on contact with the blade, Dolly swung the Metal Hound 002 to the left and upwards towards where the blue Einhander would be. If she had stayed low she would have been shot by it, instead she flew over it avoiding the heavy machine cannon fire from its held weapon and the machine cannon from its back.

Dormarch returned fire and not a single shot hit as the thing dodged the streams of projectiles with incredible speed while turning around.

It wasn’t long before the blue Einhander was aiming said heavy machine cannon at their back and something exploded and the flight pack was now not just smoking, but billowing clouds out as the building piercing bullets went through something.

It hadn’t knocked the Metal Hound 002 out of the air but it had dropped them quite a bit as Pom’s nose was almost ground into pasted by the asphalt before it slowly rose back into the air.

“Not good!” Dormarch stated as he looked back at the flight pack keeping them in the air.

“I think we may be leaking something, there’s a funny smell coming from the back!” Shanty stated as she slung another wave of cutting water out and watched forlornly as the blue Einhander dodged without trouble.

The streets were being torn up behind them and a pair of motorcycles riding troopers rode up to them only to be taken out by quick flying water slashes by Shanty before they could capitalize on Metal Hound 002’s lowered height.

Shanty then sent a slash back at the blue Einhander catching up to them and getting closer, it blocked the attack with its weapon. It then started to fire to the left or right of them as Dolly veered to the left and right to avoid the shots while looking over her shoulder.

“Trying to bracket us in, why would it…” Pom stated as her eyes watched a barely visible shadow dove at them from above at an insane speed and then leveled out and ignited the red beam blade weapon as it came at them.

The Einhanders were learning about their target and though their target seemed easy to take down, they weren’t going to rush in blindly. Their targets did have some danger.

Dormarch had the machine cannon on the right arm spun up and firing at the Black Einhander that just used its blade to cleave through the projectiles with several rapid swings.

Dolly’s eyes looked at the street and she had a though before the Black Einhander could hit them with the obvious incoming side swipe.

Cutting the throttle on the flight, the Metal Hound 002 slammed into the street and started hydroplaning.

Dolly managed to not only keep it upright with a spinning pirouette temporarily shifting to walk mode to do this, she also ducked the armor under the horizontal red blade swiping overhead as the Black Einhander shot by.

While they were still skidding on the surface of the streets, Dolly turned them so that she was giving Dormarch a shot on the blue one.

Dormarch started firing both guns on the Blue Einhander to make it dodge the incoming fire deftly without a problem as it continued to evade the hundreds of shots in a seemingly effortless manner.

“They’re too fast, what are these things?!” Dolly stated with a worried tone as she switched back to flight mode.

“I can’t hit them, they can change directions on a dime!” Dormarch stated still trying to land at least one shot in one thousand rounds spewing in the general direction of the blue Einhander.

“Enemy scanned, name: Einhander, single manipulator arm autonomous small jet fighter drone with possible larger scale version that can include a single pilot. Inferring function… high speed assault platform air superiority unit. Built in weaponry involves a single machine cannon along the dorsal spine and one claw for specialized weapon wielding, utility and combat applications.” The Yggdrasil.sys loaded in Dormarch’s digivice unhelpfully stated after having scanned the dangerous target, even if they knew the names of these things that didn’t help them at all in dealing with them. “Focuses more on high speed evasion than armor, highly aerodynamic, lack of armor is likely what gives it its speed… likely uses available held weapons in grapple claw for defense if possible if it cannot evade attacks. Units do not seem to be effected by weather, resistance to magic is unknown.”

“That is being oh so helpful.” Shanty stated sarcastically as Dolly switched the throttle back on and they lifted off the street to shoot sideways into an alleyway to avoid the rain of heavy armor piercing machine cannon as the Einhander returned fire that followed them down the alleyway through the buildings.

“Actually it is… Dolly, more crazy maneuvers like that skating along the wet streets, I don’t even know how you managed to keep us upright through all that! Dormarch, don’t even try to predict them or where they’ll be, we have missiles make them do unconventional things with our weapons! Shanty, get weird with your magic, if you start running out of energy then drink some Ethers in the pack on my back!” Three of Pom’s family was crammed into Metal Hound 002 with her at the moment and she would rather nobody get grievously harmed before she does, she was belting out these orders as the approached the other end of the alleyway and mentally warned Dolly not to get close to the exit. The black Einhander wasn’t as silent or stealthy as it thought it was being. She also originally stocked up on those Ethers for Dolly’s used, but any of them could use them. “Sorry Dolly, but the Metal Hound might not survive this.”

“Aw…” Dolly whined as she stopped their sideways momentum and started flying them straight up the side of the building before they reached the end of the alleyway and turned Metal Hound 002 towards the alleyways exit.

Dormarch fire off five missiles at the end of said alleyway, as a red energy blade held by the black Einhander cut out large chunks of the surrounding building out.

Both Dolly and Dormarch had kind of saw that one coming.

The Einhander flew away as the missiles lit up the alleyways exit with set explosions from the proximity missiles that blasted a wider hole in the surrounding buildings. Dormarch tended to take his mother’s words to heart about getting unconventional and the missile launcher ammo’s code could modified by him easily enough on the fly.

With the explosions, Dolly set them on flying forward instead above the rooftops where a stream of heavy machine cannon projectiles started tearing through where they were heading. They veered onto highway and went under an underpass. Any underpass that suddenly had a lot of holes in it from heavy machine cannon fire of the massive gun the blue Einhander was wielding.

They were in the open as they moved along the highway going in a clockwise direction through the city once more, the overpasses provided little cover from the assault of projectiles slamming into the flight pack.

At least it was the machine cannon fire hitting them and not the heavy machine cannon as Dolly was flying them far too close to the road for comfort. A moment late Dolly had oriented them into skidding along the highway upright on the Metal Hound 002’s feet while they were still in flight mode.

“Horizon!” Shanty shouted attracting Pom’s attention, this time Shanty decided to not scream ‘Totsugeki’… instead she had invoked the name of her personal dolphin summon.

“SqueeEE-~!” Nothing said surprise like taking a summoned dolphin missile, the colors of the setting sun, directly applied to the face.

The Blue Einhander spiraled out of control from the sudden shock of being unable to dodge the instant sea creature from out of nowhere and hadn’t seen it coming. The portal and launch of the dolphin had been so insanely fast that it couldn’t react in time.

Horizon’s skull managed to damage the monstrous mechanical drones right green eye, making it flicker out as the armor around face plate and head of the dolphin body cracked.

The blue EInhander fired on said dolphin as it fell away after the damaging impact with both its guns. Only for the dolphin to disappear in a shower of magical sparkles, all the while squealing joyfully as it did.

“Dolly.” Pom had saw something interesting about ‘Horizon’ and she really needed to have that talk with Shanty, she silently told Dolly to do something if an opportunity arose.

The black Einhander was coming down at them from the front as they flew along the road and it was coming up fast.

Pom hadn’t seen any sign of Moby Dick thus far and was starting to worry as they were fairly distracted by the two Einhanders and wondered why it wasn’t showing up to take advantage of the situation.

The ewe thought it was strange she saw no crazy zombie sharks, no assassination jellies, grapple krakens… nothing from the sea creature spewing monster, just the local EPs and these two Einhander monsters. Well she wouldn’t worry about it until it became a problem…. wait… where were all the regular EPs that were chasing them, why were they suddenly only dealing with the Einhanders? They had been under constant attack until the Einhanders showed up.

Not getting much more time to think, Dolly quickly fired off a burst from the flight pack that slid them out of the way of the swinging red blade as the Black Einhander swiped for them.

Having missed the initial swing, the black Einhander matched their speed. That it was doing so by flying in reverse was an eye opener as it started tried to swing the energy blade back for them with its arm.

Dormarch quickly angled the claws on the right arm outwards and swung to catch the blade by the emitter and the black Einhander started boost into us trying to press the blade closer to them.

While the black Einhander was forcing the energy blade slowly towards them, it pushed the Metal Hound 002 against the left guard wall of the highway and the blue Einhander started positioning itself to fire its heavy machine cannon at them.

Dolly managed to pivot Metal Hound 002 to give Dormarch the chance to spin up the sweeper saw and attacked the black Einhander arm holding onto the energy blade with it. After that Dolly pointed a digit on her left paw at the blue Einhander preparing to unloaded and shred them.

“Fire!” A shine from the new materia in her skateboard helmet and a second later, an impossible to dodge explosion of flames surrounded the blue Einhander throwing off its aim and the magical attack seemed to have stunned it for a bit in the air. It seemed slightly resistant to fire magic, but that didn’t mean it didn’t do damage or heavily scorch the armor.

The black Einhander quickly let go of the energy blade with its claw and flew back to avoid taking too much more damage from the saw, this made the energy blade weapon drop onto the ground forced the black Einhander to go back and pick it up.

Dolly forced them away from guard wall and towards the center of the highways road avoiding a burst of machine cannon fire from blue Einhander as it managed to stabilize itself in the air.

Dormarch retaliated by firing the five missiles, four straight and one aimed higher than the rest. The one aimed high in the air disappeared into the storming sky while the others turned and flew straight at the blue Einhander.

The blue Einhander avoided the proximity explosion by diving at the missiles while shooting them down with its machine cannon and then proceeded to try and strafe its opponents with the downwards point heavy machine cannon that pockmarked the wet road with holes.

Dolly angled them to skid to the near the right guard rail using the flight pack, said flight pack started sputtering out and spewed a few flames.

“It be a good thing it is raining, don’t be wanting that to catch fire.” Shanty commented as she slung water blade at the blue Einhander and it dodge the blades swiftly.

“Yeah, the rain isn’t helping the damage it’s taken…” Dormarch stated as he started firing both guns at the blue Einhander while the missiles were cycling, he was trying to force it to not be able to get a direct line of fire on them. “Come on… Shanty fire a water blade beneath it.”

The blue Einhander continued to prove to be nigh impossible to hit with projectiles from the Metal Hound 002’s machine gun and machine cannon, but Dormarch now knew that the Einhanders were not particularly capable of dealing with magic very well.

Dormarch started to fire to either side of the Einhander and brought both projectile streams inwards, this plus Shanty firing a blade of water caused the Einhander to fly up and into position.

“Float!” Pom called out having Dolly share that particular magic spell with her once Dormarch told her what he needed her to do, she had been mumbling the spell to cast it over the last few seconds.

The Einhander suddenly lost control in the air and started spiraling in place and unable to fly anywhere as Metal Hound 002 shot past it underneath, still hydroplaning along the road at dangerous high speed using the flight pack to keep its momentum going.

Dormarch poured several shots into its body with the guns and damaged the Einhander’s limited armor across its wings and torso, armor that was doing slightly better than the Metal Hound 002’s was at the moment.

Metal Hound 002 continued onwards leaving the blue Einhander floating in the air and the one missile Dormarch fired high into the air earlier finally finished its arc and came down from above in a well-aimed artillery strike. The missile struck the Blue Einhander damaging the left wing and the explosion slammed the bottom of its dolphin torso and the heavy machine cannon into the street for further damage before it floated back into the air trying to regain its mobility. It was going to be quite stuck until float wore off.

The black Einhander swept forth and started to fly sideways, it focused on its prey and ordered several gunships, it ordered motorcycle troopers to be thrown onto the highway by the Brutes and wanted Moon Cell Watchers to harry it before it could move in to assault the target. Targets were proving quite problematic, however it marked the flight pack for destruction and sent its orders out to the EPs to focus on it.

Turning so that they were skidding sideways to face the large tower in the distance, Dormarch dumb fired five more missiles in the direction of the tower and they watched as the rockets flew into the distance and then five explosions were seen as they were quickly shot down by the anti-air defenses.

“Darn it, the anti-air defenses must have been reworked to detect the dumb fire missiles.” Dormarch grumbled and looked around in the air for the black Einhander and saw a different problem. “More incoming EPs!”

“Huh… no we can’t take much more of this Ocellus, please at least tell me you’ve at least taken the walls or gave Canard some backup support!” As Pom talked to Ocellus, Dormarch was burning through Gunships and Moon Cell Watchers with as many missiles and gunfire as he could fire and the sound of motorcycles could be heard on approach from behind. “Look… can we talk later if we’re still alive? Kind of busy here."

The black Einhander came soaring in from the left and Dolly quickly reoriented them to face it, Dormarch tried to catch the beam blade by the emitter with the right claw again.

Instead of fully continuing its swing, the black Einhander pulled back and slashed off the claws on the right arm and nicked the rotating barrel of the machine cannon that started fired point blank at it forcing it back to avoid the shots. The flying machine dashed to the left of the machine cannon fire blazingly fast, it had dodged most if not all of all the shots even at this range. It tried to blast forward to stab them all through with the large red beam blade.

“Yeah, we’re bugging out.” Dolly changed their flying direction to straight up and back, out of the way of the blade the tried to follow them until Dolly swooped below it and it skittered off the indestructible paralance.

Retreating from the incoming motorcycles and even more Moon Cell Watchers, Dolly flew them down into the streets heading outwards for the cities edge.

The black Einhander already in middle of making another swing for them and the blue Einhander quickly was catching up and almost ready to fire its heavy machine cannon again.

Just when the large red beam sword was about to run them through Shanty deflected with a cutting arc swipe from her cane scythe, the energy of the cut actually deflected the black Einhander back for a second. A second wasn’t really nearly long enough to do anything though as it was already on them again.

Blue Einhander rained heavy machine cannon fire down on Metal Hound 002, most of it avoiding being aimed the paralance given it just deflected everything and successfully managed to get several shots through that opened rents in the armors badly damaged sparking and flight pack constantly billowing smoke.

Shots tore at the right leg and started tracing their way up the armor towards the flight pack again before Dolly managed to veer it out the path of the stream of shots. They nearly got sliced in apart by the beam blade wielded by black Einhander as the Metal Hound sluggishly dodged back from trying to get into an alleyway.

Pom took control of her front left leg and fired off a thousand spear, for all the good it would do… the jet of air and force slammed into the exposed wiring form when Dormarch managed to glance the emitter with the saw earlier. The red beam sword temporarily cut out mid swing and turned fully back on.

Opening her mouth Pom unleashed a concentrated Howl Blast, focusing the cone into a concentrated bark of explosive magical energy that blasted the black Einhander away and allowing Dolly to get them out of the way of the Heavy Machine Cannon fire.

They were going to have to abandon Metal Hound 002, it just couldn’t take much more punishment… but… they could do some damage when they did.

“Hm… Dolly fly up for the storm!” That odd order from Pom was met with stares from Dormarch, Dolly and Shanty, but the Metal Hound 002 was steered for the sky the black Einhander and blue Einhander quickly following behind them and flying up after them. The black was the more dangerous of the two, but blue Einhander notably had problems aiming the heavy machine cannon straight upwards and both were firing their regular machine cannons as they gave chase. “Dormarch, can the missiles be set to be fired manually by hoof? I only want one with explosives, the rest need to just spew flames long enough.”

Holes were being chewed into the bottom of Metal Hound 002.

“On it.” Dormarch stated having an idea of where this was going.

“Pom…” Dolly gritted her teeth as she kept the Metal Hound 002 on course with some evasive maneuver, but the hits on the armor were mounting and the damage was getting worse by the second. “We’re running out of space here.”

The anti-air defenses around Midgar started to shell the Metal Hound

They were getting closer to the clouds and the violent lightning coming from it.

“Dolly, prepare to eject the flight pack.” Pom at least let Dolly know what the plan was silently.

They dodged to the side as the black came up swinging the large red energy blade and then swerved around to face down at them. Dormarch aimed the machine gun and Machine cannon at it for all the good that would do as it deftly dodged through the constant streams of projectiles.

“Fire!” Dolly shouted and the black Einhander was engulfed in flames stunning it.

The artificial intelligences bheind the Einhander drones weren’t made with getting hit by magic in mind, their computers glitched out for a few seconds every time they got hit and didn’t understand why. This is why the Metal Hound 002 managed to get past the black Einhander before it regained its senses and stopped falling to turn around and immediately started boosting in zigzag back up at them.

The blue Einhander hadn’t ceased firing or tailing the Metal Hound 002 into the sky, it was not trying to get close as it was focusing on using its ranged loadout and it was harder to hit since it had a lot more distance than the black Einhander quickly catching up to them.

“What is being the plan?” Shanty was returning fire with blades of water, for all the good it would do when the Einhanders were dodging all of her attacks. At least she was making it harder for them to attack the Metal Hound 002 with their machine cannons.

“We’re going to try and take one out as we jump for it!” That was about as much as Pom had because she doubted they could get both of them.

“Mom they’re ready!” Pom saw the five missiles hanging precariously out of the five tubes and quickly using a string of wool to grab each missile from the shoulders and bring it to her.

“Dolly, Dormarch, Shanty, the last two are mine… Ocellus I hope you got everything in order, because there’s about to be some fireworks up here.” Pom passed them out and held the last two, she thankfully noted that the missile that was explosive was red tipped and was glad Dormarch thought ahead. “How’s the flight pack looking?”

“The sword wielding Einhander is closing in hot and the flight pack…” The propeller powered flight pack chose that moment to die and it was sparking wildly. There was a loud noise coming from it as electrical surges coming from it increased. “It’s going to blow!”

“We can’t wait any longer, eject it Dolly!” As soon as Pom said it, Dolly didn’t hesitate slammed the flight pack ejection lever down using Pom’s body and they all felt the loud clunking noise as the flight pack ejected from the machine’s back, basically dropping straight down like a lead rock made of the densest materials known to anything and while the damaged and ultimately doomed armor continued upwards out of momentum. They currently didn’t have a method to fly.

A massive explosion happened beneath them and the Metal Hound 002 started falling, it wouldn’t be long before they’d be in range of blue Einhander’s machine cannon when they fell past it. Fortunately they didn’t fall past it… the armor instead hit something on the way down.

The black Einhander had been fairly unfortunate to lose its weapon from the flight pack basically exploding in its face and heavily damaging it’s left wing, what didn’t help it further was the full remaining weight of the Metal Hound 002 slamming into the right wing and embedding into it while destroying all its thrusters on that side from the shock of the impact.

“Go, get on the Einhander!” The world spun and Pom was feeling her stomach lurch, that’s when she noticed the green optical pupil of the black Einhander looking at her and it’s claw lashed out trying to grapple her and instead ripped the seat out of Metal Hound 002 with a surprising show of strength despite having a magitek armor embed in it.

Pom evacuated onto the right wing the claw clapped open and closed twice as it tried to reach forward, unfortunately for it the black Einhander had stopped paying attention to the armor or Dormarch still at the controls.

The saw on the left arm jammed up into the joint of the black Einhander’s claw arm and started shredding into the metal, Dormarch also added machine gun fire to the damage he was dealing to it.

“These things are lightly armored?!” Dormarch stated in disbelief as the black Einhander was refusing to give up with trying to reach for Pom, he jammed the saw further up under the joint to prevent it from managing to reach her.

Dormarch heard some machine language transmit from the black Einhander, being a digital entity he realized what is just said and he sent what was said to his mother immediately.

The black Einhander called itself already KIA and ordered blue Einhander to fire on it and destroy it, also it didn’t want them to reverse engineer it if they somehow took its body in. Strangely intelligent for the large triangular winged one legged dolphins.

“Jump clear, use those rockets to get away from me and land safely, it’s going to come after me!” Pom ordered as she looked up, got wide eyed and then kicked away with all four legs from the falling drone.

Dolly, Shanty and Dormarch had abandoned the falling Metal Hound 002 at the same time as the heavy machine cannon rounds tore through its badly chunked up form and the black Einhander.

The blue Einhander coldly destroyed what was its machine brother in an attempt to take out Pom’s group.

The ensuing explosion scattered Pom’s group in the air still falling back towards Upper Midgar City, its one undamaged digital eye was focusing entirely on Pom and it focused both its machine cannon and heavy machine cannons on her.

Pom had the right of it to kick away from the others, since the killer drone was running on Moon Cell logic. This meant it was absolutely wanted Pom dead and she was a priority target.

Pom quickly opened the paralance to take the torrent of projectiles slamming into her, the paralance once again proved to be indestructible no matter how many heavy machine cannon rounds slammed into it.

The blue Einhander followed its torrent of firing on Pom by doing something odd, it started boosting left and right then tossed its gun up above it. It blasted forth to grab onto the paralance’s protective canopy, angled it so that it could fire its machine cannon at Pom.

Pom flipped around the canopy and then morphed the weapon so the handle was back in her hooves with a little concentration, the claw of the release her upwards and then managed to grab Pom by the waste and started to apply pressure.

This was the most powerful grip Pom has ever felt, if one ever wondered what being put in a hydraulic press felt like then the Einhander’s claw was slowly crushing her even with her wool preventing it from instantly pulping her.

It brought her into range of its machine cannon, seemingly glaring at her with its one green eye as its other dark eye started flickering to life while having a red glowing circle in it.

Pom silently considered herself thankful she still had a grip on the paralance and refused to let go, since she barely managed to move it into position to started deflecting the machine cannon on the blue Einhander’s back.

Pom’s eyes widened when she realized, why the Einhander was still flying straight down and why it had the red eye.

Moon Cell had started currently directly controlling this Einhander thing and intended to plow her right into the ground as hard as it could and possibly blow her up on top of that.

The crushing grip was starting to crack her bones and Pom gritted her teeth trying to concentrate on the explosive missile she stuck to her backside before she jumped. She was glad she stuck it to her butt instead of her currently constrained torso.

Pom was trying to concentrate under the crushing force to get a single strand of wall to aim the missile, her heart was thudding in her chest. She could already see the lights from the city getting closer and inhaled as much as she could, but couldn’t get enough air in her lungs to fully perform a Dancing Flame.

Pom saw no way out of this situation unless she could use the missile on it, but she was starting to black out from the extreme pressure on her body even with her wool propping up the claw slowly squeezing inward.

Suddenly and explosion occurred and Pom felt herself flying horizontally away from the blue Einhander slightly confused, given she still had the both explosive and jet assistance missile attached to her butt.

That explosion had a badly damaged the left wing of Einhander and was now dodging through large missiles that looked vaguely familiar rising up from the ground outside the walls of Midgar City.

Pom heard Ocellus screaming in her ear, her head was a bit muggy and she was quickly regaining focus.

She remembered the missiles trucks in Castle Alexander managed to hit the Einhander without killing her… as lucky as that was she wasn’t out of the woods yet as that hadn’t killed said drone.

Einhander was still trying to come for her through the wall of missiles firing up at it from below, it’s evasion ability had skyrocketed with the red glow of the Moon Cell eye as its claw reached out and caught the heavy machine cannon and aimed it at her.

Coming to her senses, Pom planted the paralance squarely on her back and shifted her wool to glide mode, she couldn’t let it grab her again!

The paralance covered her back in an armor shell as she got struck by a bunch of heavy machine cannon rounds as the Einhander approached her, likely attempting to go for another grab by releasing its more devastating weapon in another attempt to crush her.

Einhander started gunning all the missiles coming up at it and dodging through multiple missiles that barely grazed its frame as it came for Pom like a bat out of hell, all of its jets firing as it focused its gaze unerringly on her and dodged around every obstacle in its way with impossible precision.

Suddenly five strange ships of golden color flew up between Pom and Einhander and started firing missile and energy pulses.

Einhander dodged through all the fire and gunned four of the ships down in the next twenty seconds as a frightened Pom looked back while trying to glide away and put some distance between herself and it.

The new fighters from the Rider Zealots had given her hope and those hopes were quickly dashed, just how powerful were these Einhander things? They were relentlessly powerful!

The last fighter had the heavy machine cannon rammed up into its underbelly by the Einhander and was promptly blown in clean in half, its obvious Rider Zealot shields didn’t do anything to stop that point blank attack.

The brave Rider Zealot AP pilot had opened his canopy and lunged out of his ship and stabbed his energy blade into the forehead of the Einhander and was promptly gunned off by the machine cannon on its back. The Rider Zealots shield barely lasted a few seconds under the strain of constant machine cannon fire that close.

The top of the skyscrapers could be seen passing by as Pom glided for the edge of the city and back towards Castle Alexander.

Einhander wasn’t going to let that happen as it kept shelling Pom and slowing down her horizontal momentum with heavy machine cannon rounds.

If Pom didn’t have the paralance she’d be at her end long before she got to this point… she shifted her wool and moved the explosive red tipped missile down and across her belly and grabbed at it with her left hoof.

Inhaling sharply, Pom prepared for her next maneuver and hoped she could pull it off.

Einhander was upon her again and tossing its weapon up and reaching out to grab her with its claw, Pom could feel the menacing chill in the air as it came for her.

Exhaling explosively, Pom spun in the air and inflated her wool as the claw tried snap shut on her and almost got her hind legs, she slammed them down on top of the claw.

Einhander’s wings angled all their jets for Pom and started to ignite to try and burn her to death, only this was a bad thing for Einhander.

The explosive Pom whipped forward went off and damaged both the wings heavily, afterwards she lunged forward onto the forearm of the claw to avoid the sudden machine cannon fire aimed at her still protected back.

The claw reached back and caught the heavy machine cannon and then held it up and extended it and Pom away from itself as the large claw held weapon started glowing.

“You really want me dead that badly…” Pom muttered in horror, with her heart pounding and her adrenaline shooting through the roof.

The current problem was simple, if she leapt away it would just throw the machine cannon at her and if she survived that it would grab her and crush her and slam her into the ground. If didn’t move she’d still be caught in the blast and the armored claw of Einhander could maybe survive that, she had seen how much trouble that sweeper saw had with trying to cut through black Einhander’s claw.

The Einhander aimed downwards and started blasting for the streets.

It was trying to make a no win scenario for Pom and she was having a hard time trying to figure out how to get out of this situation. Shanty, Dormarch and Dolly couldn’t… well maybe Dolly could fall fast enough, but would could she do?

Apparently a lot since she felt Dormarch, Shanty and Dolly coming in at a blazing speed they shouldn’t have been capable of reaching unless Dolly was burning her momentum controlling ability to its fullest.

Pom inhale slightly and exhaled…

“RrrrrrrrRRRR… YIP!” The arm cracked slightly, but didn’t damage much. The armor was made flexible… unfortunate for Pom given bark breaker was for more rigid materials.

Pom fired a bark blast at the face of Einhander, damage the white face of the machine. The green eye and malevolent red eye didn’t stop staring at what was currently her futile attempts to save her own life.

Pom had to stop it somehow before Dormarch, Shanty and Dolly got any closer, since it might go out of the way to attack them to get at her!

“RrrRRRRrrr-BAHHHHH!” Howl Breaker, had a lot more effect… but still not enough damage and Pom’s throat couldn’t take much more punishment. Pom quickly popped a Hi-potion out of her pack and chugged it down, the thick odd liquids soothed her throat. “RrrRRRRrr-BAHHHHHAAAAGHHH!”

Pom could not hear any sounds, the side effect of her own Howl Breaker had ruined her sense of hearing. This just made her drink another Hi-potion to restore her ability to hear… Pom could… no… not Shock-Ram, she wanted to actually live through this intensely bad situation… somehow. She still had Merak to go after for all of this, Pom continued to cling to the part of the flying death diving machine’s arm where it couldn’t get her.

The Einhander had become even more damaged, but the thing was ridiculous sturdy for the words ‘lightly armored’. It kept on its downward trend towards the street at full speed and there were only twenty seconds or so until the impact with the top of the upper cities road swarming with Brutes, Troopers, Gunships, Guard Hounds, you name it and Moon Cell was bringing all the local EPs in to make sure she died in the ensuing explosion.

Pom glared up into the Einhander’s eyes defiantly and saw a spark of yellow from Dormarch using Search Hunter off to the side and didn’t react or give any sign that she had seen that.

What was he doing? Dormarch had teleported to somewhere, but it wasn’t near where Pom was. She expected him to come for her against her will as she didn’t want him to perish with her. Another teleport, a third teleport… what was going on up there?!

Pom inhaled through her nose and then did the equivalent of spitting in its eyes by blasting out a bark buster, the wad of liquid magic clung to its face and exploded revealing the ugly mechanical workings of the heavily armored face under the mask.

Ten seconds.

Nine…

Eight…

Seven…

Metal Hound 002 with several rockets attached to it igniting and slamming right into the side of Einhander with several explosive rockets sticking out of the five tubes on its shoulders.

Six…

The armored machine had lodged itself into Einhander as it seemed to continue its glare not caring about the magitek armor with explosives about to go off when it hit the ground.

-Pom-

Dormarch told me to kick away with Dancing Flame as hard as I could, he wanted me to trust him… I did.

I started inhaling.

Five…

Four…

Three…

Lungs full off air to bursting, I coiled the wool on my legs into a spring shape and then…

Two…

One…

I just wanted to live… a mostly normal life!

The world exploded as did the air exiting Pom’s on fire lungs as flames shot out of her mouth in an incredible volume helping propel her leap in a small chance to clear the explosion.

Pom was in too much shock to even begin to understand what was happening, there was no way she should even be capable of breathing fire!

Then she hit the ground rolling before her forehead slammed into something.

-Aftermath, five minutes later, Dormarch-

That crater was humongous, I doubt mom would have survived it had she been in the center of that blast.

“Mom, speak to me, MOM!” Mother started coming to and she smiled weakly at me as she cupped my face with a hoof and nuzzled my forehead. “You have to drink this, we need to move fast… the EPs are almost on us and Dolly and Shanty are sure taking their sweet time with getting here.”

I tipped the entirety of the Hi-potion into her mouth and she greedily drank it down almost like it was an afterthought or she wasn't even thinking at all, I then followed that up by stuffing the last Sitrus Berry we had down her throat and manipulating her body somewhat like Dolly did. The healing didn’t help with the trauma, but Mom was alive and might be capable of walking now.

I was making sure Mom got up from the explosion, just because she had the mysterious indestructible paralance protecting her back did not mean the metal didn’t reach scorching heats and fried her.

“You’re my wonderful little Dormy…” Mom was still in a complete daze and not thinking straight, but she was rather affectionate and I appreciated said love even if now wasn’t a time to be sitting still and receiving it. After such a powerful and quite jarring explosion like that one, this kind of traumatic daze was understandable.

I barely managed to drag Mom away quickly enough the first time before all the gather EPs swarmed where she had landed.

I think my heart stopped when I saw her barely clear that explosion and… was she breathing fire there at the end? No, that had to be my imagination and I had to have been confusing it with part of the explosion.

We lost the visor to communicate with Ocellus, we’re on our own and we don’t know the status of the others in the lower city or outside the walls… I think mom knew something, but it would be a while before she could regain her sense to tell me what she was talking to Ocellus about.

I just had to ask Dolly through our bond, but I was getting nothing but fear from her end of it.

“What is taking you guys so… oh…” I received the news that Dolly and Shanty had been on their way and had come under attack by unknown, yet familiar faced, biped crow crackling with purple energy. I stated what I knew to be true, much to my horror the name of their opponent. “Lu Bu.”

Yeah I can see why Dolly was terrified, why won’t that guy just leave us alone? At least Shanty had some Ethers and a few Hi-potions on her, plus an entire Navy's worth of rum and who knows how she keeps it on her at all times.

Shanty and Dolly were going to need them and more, I had to get Mom out of here before those kill squads summoned by Moon Cell find us. After the battle with the Einhanders, none of us were in good shape and they had lost Metal Hound 002… then again it had done as he wanted when Dolly gave him permission to ram into Einhander.

He prayed for a small miracle to not get noticed by EP patrols as he kept dragging his mother’s barely aware form, practically wearing the paralance like a turtle shell, away to marginally safer places.

Author's Note

Moon Cell almost go Pom this time.

The Einhanders while impressive even as drones... in the game 'Einhander' they were supposedly designed with the express purpose of not surviving their mission or coming back from it even after succeeding.

Fire breathing? Dolly is the one holding onto the Ifrit materia though...

This one took a while... I'm a resting now.

Went through a birthday recently, decided to celebrate with another stupidly long page.

435. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 14.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar City, upper city, building rooftop, some time before the incoming dangerous encounter, Dolly-

There we were on a dark and stormy… uh… was it technically night?

Pom was…

“Is Pom Being okay physically?” I turned to Shanty who was sending me a worried look.

I raised my right paw and gave and upwards gesture digit, Dormarch was taking care of that at the moment.

“Is Pom being okay mentally?” Shanty asked a second later with a much flatter look.

I gave a so-so gesture while motioning downwards a bit less than halfway okay while clearly not looking at my goat pal, I even started to rub the back of my neck with my other paw.

Shanty could clearly read my reluctance to say that she wasn’t mentally fit for any kind of fighting right now. It was more to the point that Pom was entirely ‘out to lunch’ after all of that… and the cool crater we caused in the upper city. Nice to see my little bro was keeping her safe while she wasn’t mentally sound.

I sometimes wondered how Pom survives this stuff constantly happening to her and already knew ‘an’ answer, which is being ‘not very well… but hey she’s at least still trying’. One answer didn’t account for everything sometimes.

“Sounds right.” Shanty sighed as she shouldered her scythe thingy and looked around for where we could go, we would surely try to meet up with Dormarch and Pom.

Dormarch used his whole teleporting thing to move what was left of Metal Hound 002 and some spare booster missiles, the same ones I used to help Shanty land safely on this roof, to ram the other ‘Side Winder’ and then promptly detonate it to be sure it was destroyed. Apparently while Dormarch couldn’t teleport with a living being, he could teleport object like the barely working machine with a bunch of missile boosters attached to it.

“How many more of those things do you think they be having?” Good question Shanty, since we couldn’t rely on Metal Hound 002 to be around to fight them and we barely survived two with a machine that was practically falling apart that I wanted to have all for myself. Anymore of those things and we were doomed.

Speaking of doomed EPs were everywhere and there were a lot of incredible bulks EPs up here and we currently lacked the necessary firepower to even deal with them. Oh right I had that ‘fire’ spell… or more like the gem Pom picked up and put in my helmet gave me access to it, maybe I could summon the fire demon too?

I’m not blaming Dormarch for destroying my cool small mecha, he did it to save Pom’s life and I could always get another one made. I couldn’t bring back the dead like that Feliz Navidad snake lady and I’m sure she has to be near someone to get to them before the body got too cold to resurrect, I’m quite glad that Pom likely still has the reviver seed on her and I knew for a fact she was going to need it eventually.

-Shinra Tower, upper floors, Merak the ‘lazy lasering’ lemming-

I slammed my fist against the table and looked at the combat data from the last few seconds with frustration. My genius intellect had never been so thoroughly challenge like this before!

“How!?” By all rights that should have killed at least the ewe among them, the explosion had been positively massive and the crater left afterwards was covering more than a block in width. How did she even get clear of it?!

He only knew the ewe was alive because the EPs in the area were definitely searching for her body to make sure, even a few bits of skeleton would have at least been left behind. However the fact that Moon Cell had the EPs on search patterns going in all directions meant that the target hadn’t died despite all the insanity they just went through, not only that… they escaped and were somehow still moving around given the number of watchers out there would have seen something.

Also he lost the Einhander Twins to that mess, but at least if they wanted to bring a fight to him personally… then he would be ready for them after they surpass every other obstacle in their way. Once they did that he might actually fight them… or run for his life, because he was starting to fear the determination of the people attacking the city and their haunting inability to die despite everything that was being thrown at them.

The Bombs were fairly contained even if they were still trying to blow up PLANTs and set everything on fire in the lower city, still not a major problem to him. The enemy were stuck at the walls and gate from the sheer numbers of assault programs being thrown at them, except for those in the upper city which are proving to be a most vexing threat on my ability to actively be lazy and they were in hiding at the moment.

There’s also Copen the Slayer Dragon actually fighting Moby Dick without fear or hesitation, it’s impressive that he’s willing to take on something of that size and do it so fiercely.

Everything was going perfectly fine and within my parameters and 'nothing could possibly go wrong'. I was prepared for the extra forces that was brought in by the nuisances in that moving dog castle. There is no way they could overpower my defenses with what they had.

-Somewhere on the plains to the right of Midgar Cities’ main entrance, Artoria the Zacian-

“Are you sure feeling okay Artoria?” Ask me later Mash, spiritual carrier of Galahad’s shield. “Their souls are free now, those children can no longer be tortured.”

I sighed… that tank was horrifying monstrosity of war, firing the souls of children at people or their life essence. The implications of the Exo-Taranis’s existence left my skin crawling as my companion tried to keep me pushing forward to end the nightmare of the soul manipulating machines realms we were invading.

If it was just the tortured soul firing tank, then I might have recovered my mental strength by now… but then Moon Cell kept throwing tortured children’s souls at us in a variety of other forms of servants.

So many cruel realms of histories that once were…

I sighed and shivered as I looked towards the city and found that… it was already under attack?

“Call in our forces.” Curious, but we had to continue forward and if we were to find allies that would be great. It wasn’t hard to tell where the servant in the futuristic city was. The tower at the center of it all was rather visible even in the storm clouds and thick rain hitting what appeared to be an upper city built over another city. “We might have allies in this realm already… and they might just save my sanity.”

Our medieval based assault programs started to appear with Mash the Zamazenta summoning them forth. We were one step away from Moon Cell directly and I could see that a major battle had taken place to our immediate left, there was still some fighting and what looked like a moving castle sitting outside the wall. We started moving our catapults and slightly more futuristic siege engines to break the wall.

I was ready to lead our forces with Excalibur held at the ready to march on the final bastion of our enemy before we can strike directly at their heart.

-Somewhere on the plains to the left of Midgar Cities’ main entrance, Fou-

Fou still wanted to hunt the ewe and he had a good sense that the Chrysomallus was here, given the burning city, the sounds of frantic fighting and gunfire in the distance he was quite certain of the chaos being related to the ewe somehow.

This felt like a place to fight and he at least recently figured out something about the place he found himself in.

Fou howled and several wild PLANTs appeared and monstrous assault programs that served Fou appeared, all of them being beasts of cat, canine and other quadrupedal varieties. A wind blew towards the west and something sweet crossed Fou’s nose.

?

A few sniffs of the air flowing from the east had told Fou that cuddly shield face possible mate and cranky sword swinger monster were here too.

A feral grin quickly worked its way onto Fou’s face as he knew what this meant.

“Fou!” More fighting!

Fou’s beast producing PLANTs started sending forces towards the wall with him at the head of them the inert cannons and no defenses to stop his troops from somehow find a way through… wouldn’t be a problem for Fou to make a hole for his forces.

He was quite excited to see what dangerous thing the ewe found to fight this time and then fight it himself, she was fun like that.

-Lower City, hole in the wall, Quetal-

“Ocellus we have some interesting thing happening to Castle Alexander’s left and right sides, might want to check on that.” I got up here with the help of the Dhelmise anchor squad, their chains helped lift us up to the hole in the wall.

I was expecting a response, but worryingly didn’t hear one. Did the assassin archetypes get into the castle again?

Don’t know what happened to Lit, but I was fairly worried about our little bug companion. I was also worried about Shine, Jeanne, Pom and the others… hearing an explosion coming from the upper city, I think everyone was probably doing okay.

We had a lot of tough allies and people working together without complaint and while our front was scattered all over the place, we at least successfully had contact with our people within the wall and got some Caerbannogs through as we held the hole blown in it.

We also prevented the PLANTs in the walls that were spawning heavies from dropping them on top of our allies and crushing the foothold in the lower city by taking some of the inner wall PLANTS to the right of the hole since we’re sure Lit might have something to do with what happened in the left.

Speaking of traveling into the walls, Dazzle came in from the right with Frizzle.

“Quetal we’ve cleared what we think we should without going crazy like Lit might have, do we go into the city to help Canard or get back onboard Castle Alexander?” That was something to ponder on Dazzle, we’re pretty tired since we’ve been basically pumping Sitrus Berries like crazy to stay alive at this point. Still, we had done it and taken the hole in the wall and gave us some room to keep effectively holding it.

“Ocellus we have the wall, where do you need us…. Ocellus?” It seemed like Castle Alexander was having problems. “OCELLUS CAN YOU HEAR ME! Does Castle Alexander need emergency support!?”

“Huh what… oh, sorry Quetal, we just lost contact with Pom in the upper city, she lost her visor and got into a rather hectic fight with some really dangerous enemy Manufactured and then there’s been a sign of a massive explosion. We sent our new Scouts up there to help her… but they barely lasted a full minute before being shot down by the enemy that Pom was fighting, but we managed to successfully support her with missile fire from our artillery trucks. They definitely lost Metal Hound 002, they are still alive because I can still kind of feel Pom’s faint sense of horror at still being alive… undoubtedly no therapist in the world is going to be able to help that particular lambkin.” Ocellus was a bit distracted by her friend going quiet, she was my friend too and I had some worries myself even if I knew how tough Pom was despite not wanting to be. The Manufactured were tougher than the EPs and we’ve been dealing with a lot of them on the plains, enemy programs just didn’t have quite the cohesiveness of machines that were actually built to last and fight until their innards completely broke down. “We’re sure that Pom’s group has taken out those two deadly enemies up there at least, but they are likely hurting and I want to get us up there soon too. What did you need? Are the Bombs still causing problems?”

“We’ve taken and reinforced the hole in the wall and we’ve been dealing with those annoying grinning blast happy explosive horrors that make Electrodes look tame, we want to know where you want us if you’re paying attention to us now.” As I said this, I looked over to Frizzle sitting in the hollow of the wall and quietly eating some bread shaped like her own head with a dollop of butter.

While I continued waiting for an answer I Looked behind me Lucha Mundo was still quite as spirited as ever and his move ‘Coaching’ had been quite helpful for dealing damage to the numerous armored enemies. He was still raring to go, Fighting types were always the best at fighting spirit and he’s been a good friend to all of us.

Dodo’s and Favela were watching the air around us for aerial attacks from Moon Cell forces, but then something caught Dodo’s attention. He was looking up at something, but I didn’t see any enemy aerial assault coming in… so he must have been looking Shanty’s direction.

“I, Favela, think that Dodo senses Shanty is in danger again.” Not the first time since the battle started Favela, but this time something really had Dodo’s attention and he seemed angry and protective. Like he wanted to fly off and go help Shanty personally.

Whatever was happening, it was going on in the upper city region. The only ones from our forces up there were all from Pom’s group and Dodo didn’t seem to really like what was happening judging by his throaty distorted warbling.

“Quetal, after some discussion and getting advice. I want you to protect an incoming team of skiffs we’re sending out to evacuate our foothold in the lower city. We’re going to try and climb directly up to the upper city with Castle Alexander and then we’ll go from there as to what we’re going to do… also we may be getting some good and rather dubious news.” You had my attention Ocellus, but did you need me to ask for it. “We need to break this stonewalling and the best way to do that is go around the problem and not through it.”

“What is it? The Valora units are currently helping with holding position at the moment so we’ve still got time to rest.” It was quite clear to me that the Dhelmise were veterans of running war games in and out of water. The Skarmory were highly trained aerial combatants and had comported themselves extremely well and haven’t been shot down yet, though their injuries should have led them to falling out of the sky. The one Kommo-o and the Hakamo-o were definitely welcome as even without Jeanne they were proving exceedingly sturdy. They’ve taken some nasty hits, but they’ve been staying in the fight long after other Pokémon would have surely dropped out and even the Mirage Collective Pokémon didn’t have their level of stamina.

The ‘Wills of Steel’ in the Valora was proving to be quite strong.

“Good news, we’re getting what might be allies from our right, dubious news we’ve got an image of Fou charging Midgar from the left with an army of beast assault programs. I would say they are NPs, but they are apparently under Fou’s direct control so it’s questionable if we should label them Enemy Programs, Fou’s Allied Programs or just controlled Neutral Programs.” Well at least Ocellus warned us that that beast was around in a timely manner, that thing just wouldn’t go down and I’m fairly certain that if Fou fought against an Ultra Beast, said beast would be learning the meaning of pain quite quickly and might be the one to bet against surviving the fight. “The allies on the right might be good news because they resemble the description of Zacian and Zamazenta that attacked you on the way to Valora, I’m sure we can work things out with them if they are willing to talk. We’ll need to send a messenger to the leaders of their forces and get ourselves coordinated with them if possible and hope willing since we haven’t be able to get much further than where we currently are.”

“…” I was aching, being a Weavile and all this fighting had made me not feel as weak as Fou definitely had. From what we understand about Fou, he increases in strength to match however aggressive and powerful his opponent is. A terrifying ability when it was pointed at you, I say we ignore Fou for the time being and let him point himself at Midgar for us. “Mundo!”

“Yes mi amigo?” The Hawlucha would be a good diplomat and he was a strong enough to take care of himself in a pinch, plus he was a spiritual counselor. Pom could probably use his talents right now, but we didn’t know where she was or the trouble she was in, but the number of EPs above us must be swarming heavily given how dead Moon Cell wanted her.

“We need to send you on a diplomatic mission to contact a Zacian and a Zamazenta that might have attacked Pom and me on our way to Valora. I would go… but I have something of a grudge and Dark types with grudges is not conducive for talking.” I watched as Mundo stand straighter at my words. “You might have to skirt enemy airspace to get to their forces setting up in that direction, that is if you’re willing to split off and do it. If you say yes, then I’ll ask Ocellus what she wants you to say or ask of what may be new friendlies on the battlefield. We don’t want to get into a miscommunication at this stage and have to fight Fou and those two at the same time. We let Fou do his thing, he’s a force of nature our worst enemy kind of deserves at this point.”

Hard to know which way was north, east, west or south in these realms, because I seriously doubted compasses work here.

“As far as a Dark type with a grudge, you are downright the friendliest Dark type I know just for saying that alone Quetal. You have so many friends to use that Dark energy for and you use it bravely as a hero! That you can acknowledge the grudge and even overcome it is amazing to me, whereas it would probably take some Pokémon a lot of time to admit to something like that. I am quite willing to do some talking to what may be our companions in the fight against this massive monstrosity that is Moon Cell!” Striking a pose with one arm held up and a bent and angle and the other just held straight out at an angle, Mundo made me smile as he stood proudly and ready to make nice with some people who might not want to talk with us.

I doubted they’d attack Mundo outright though like they did with Pom, he was too colorful to be an EP.

“Ocellus, Mundo is volunteering to fly out to make friends with the two on our right, what do you want him to say to them and what kind of collaboration can you expect?” Once I got that information, Mundo took off while we held position and waited for the skiffs.

The aerial assaults in the foothold section inside the wall were getting worse and I just had to stay here and watch until then, but at least they were giving them Yveltal levels of hell down there. Canard was something else as a leader.

-Seventh Heaven Bar, Canard-

The air assaults were far worse than their ground forces, the Gunship drones and Moon Cell Watchers were bad enough, but now they were adding whirligigs to the mix or helicopters with machine cannons.

We’ve been pinned down. My initial expectations of the Gazimon was that they wouldn’t be of any big help, they had proved me thoroughly wrong by staying in the fight instead of cowering away from it. At best they had acted in a support roll, but now I was seeing their capabilities in wielding the turrets they set up to great effect.

“Surprisingly, this still has yet to rate the top ten worst situations I’ve ever been in.” Grinned Sami, who had been quite a trooper like always. My favorite orange soldier lizard was still gunning down enemies with her rifle and the occasional bazooka shot once she manages some time to reload.

As far as heavy munitions, Sami, Krosserdog, Elise and Snake, along with the Caerbannog APs, were the only ones dealing with the flying enemy with any effectiveness aside from the Gazimon on the quick build gun turrets. The gun turrets, which the APs were set in protecting to the best of their abilities, the Zealots proved themselves time and again to be resourceful and deadly if given enough time and resources to jury rig a vehicle out of something if not just using their bodies as living shields.

It was a surprise that a Rider Zealot even managed to turn a Sweeper into a controllable machine that counted as ‘riding it’ as far as the Zealots shield was concerned.

“Canard, be prepared for evacuation and to pull out all acquired PLANTs, we’re already pulling PLANTs from the walls to get some extra power to get us up into the upper city and still have energy for firepower while flying.” Bet what Ocellus just said would please that NPC program named Cid who had a hard coded love for making things fly. If we ever see Pilot Tsukaimon again, I’ll introduce Cid to him if the destruction of Moon Cell doesn’t cause problems. “We’ll try to redeploy you and everyone else in the upper city, wait for the skiffs and escorting Skein Flyers Zealots to arrive. Don’t worry about the lower city, we have allied forces that might be taking care of that problem soon and the upper city is going to be much worse in quantity. Pom is tentatively alive, but we lost contact with her and Metal Hound 002 has been shot down and has blown up a section of the upper city. She’s likely gone to ground given the mass of EP signals we’re getting from up there, it’s like looking at an anthill that got kicked over.”

A magic computer as powerful, reality bending and soul twisting as Moon Cell would leave me to believe that there would be problems when we ultimately got around to destroying its ability to genocide entire civilizations. At this point I was hardly caring for the repercussions of destroying what kept everything in these realms in order given the massive number of EPs we’ve been barely fighting off, I’ve likely already clubbed down a few thousand by myself at this point.

“Jeanne, Shine if you can hear me, retreat to Seventh Heaven Bar with whatever PLANTs you’ve acquired, we’re pulling out and moving for the upper city! The rest of the lower might be taken care of by some more incoming friends.” Since there was little point in taking the lower city except to gain more territory or PLANTs, we needed to attack the problem at its source and said name was Merak. “Ocellus you better have a lot of aerial power flying with those skiffs, these last few hours have been horribly rife with projectiles coming at us from all directions above us as much as on the ground with the troopers.”

I’ve been hit quite a lot, but not for a lack of dodging talent on my part, it’s just the sheer volume of projectiles coming at us was just that daunting. If we were evacuating I would rather do so with the airspace cleared up and possibly in our possession temporarily.

Thankfully my injuries were nothing Sitrus Berries couldn’t heal, like a truly permanent injury.

“Mirage Collective is sending its Gyarados to assist our Skein Flyers and the Harmony Programs are sending in their Draco Volans, which apparently learned how to spit fireballs… definitely something I would expect of a magical impression of Rainbow Dash despite the fact that they really shouldn’t be capable of it. I think the airspace will soon be clear enough for pick up and regrouping… besides we can’t stay stalled out and down here forever.” Yeah, because if Ocellus wasn’t wrong, Pom was up there doing miracles to draw attention away from us with what little she had and she was in grave danger at the moment.

We really couldn’t stay here much longer being constantly hit with hammers while looking like a bunch of nails, we’re getting body checked rather hard and haven’t made much progress beyond the entrance. A referee would have penalty boxed these guys something fierce by now, but I think the karma of Fou showing up was just the ticket to give us the puck.

I would like to say it had been enough and that Pom had done enough and even deserves a lot of rest, like for the rest of the time we were here in Midgar. Even then I knew that Pom wouldn’t go for it or be quite done yet, given she’s been involved with meeting every servant face to face since we started our counter invasion. Even if she wasn’t exactly directly responsible for their defeat, Pom would still want to learn more about them given they were the souls of figures from a time in some history like Elise was.

A time from which Moon Cell was apparently around to trap souls and used them to its own ends, that it had so many meant that it’s been around for eons and far longer than multiple civilizations have risen, fell, went through an apocalypse and new life to rise to prominence once again multiple times.

“Good to know.” Now there’s a shudder, at least we had something of a net positive of allies to keep our momentum up.

-Rooftop, seconds before the danger appears, Shanty-

Well I think we should be trying to meet up with…

My right ear be twitching and my eyes narrowed as I quickly thought through my course of actions while inhaling a bit.

I can’t be quite doing what Pom does with Dancing Flame, but I can be doing my own version of it well enough without causing myself health issues. I be learning from seeing how badly it be effecting Pom, did not want to end up like her and didn’t want her to be ending up like that again either.

I quickly wrapped my left hoof around Dolly’s torso and threw us off the roof by exhaling to create a water clone beneath me, this launched us with a blast of water from its creation. The just formed clone was about to attack the incoming danger in retaliation and never got the chance.

A swooping form be tearing straight the through the building we were on and my hapless copy that I be leaving behind, this demolished the entire building as we fell towards the street. I be forming a Bounding Bubble and rolled us toward the edge of the crater nearby before dropping it and looking around for what had attacked us. Also I be noting the nearby EPs that be alerted to our presence from the loud destruction were starting to come this way.

The thing that be attacking us then be showing itself with the building crumbling behind it, it not being much of a surprise to me who it is.

“Why can’t you just be leaving me alone? I will never be giving up on my dreams of adventures grand or small!” The thing I was witnessing was being a grey ghostly looking crow, covered in a strange purple lightning and he is feeling particularly malevolent by how he radiates his aggression into the air around him. The face may be slightly different… but it was definitely being Lu Bu. His response was to be throwing a dumpster at me that Dolly and I be dodging with rolls to the side before coming back together. “Why is that being so important to you that you try to be ending me this hard over it? I get the wounded pride thing maybe, but at this point it is being ridiculous that you still be targeting me and not the one that actually be killing you!”

That was being Hideyoshi of Ignis if I be recalling his name correctly.

Dolly was looking slightly panicked and barked something that seemed a bit worried. She also be barking, yipping and growling something that be sounding quite sarcastic and almost be sounding like the words ‘Well at least now you know how Pom feels Shanty’. I can even be agreeing with that sentiment if I be getting her emotions correct more than I did her words.

I am going to be learning to understand dogs at some point, I be wanting one on my crew as intelligent and cool as Dolly is being. A Diamond Dog would be a good pick for that. That is when I be getting around to getting a ship and or building the one I’m dreaming of. Nothing would be cooler than having an actual salty dog as a visual pun!

“We can be taking him Dolly!” Even if none of the others were being anywhere near here to be saving me and Dolly, there was nobody coming to save ‘him’ either. Pom was not being capable of a fight, but at least Dormarch would be watching her. I couldn’t be expecting Pom to be showing up, but it probably was better that she didn’t be doing that in her state.

Dolly whined a bit, but she didn’t seem to be unwilling to help me if the look in her eyes is being anything to go by as she took up a position at my side and I readied my cane scythe. I really couldn’t be taking Lu Bu alone no matter his form anyway, I am not being an idiot as he is being shown to be way too strong for me several times over already.

Even as a bleeding ghost he was being stronger than me physically!

Didn’t mean I feared him, third times the charm whether it be his or mine. One of us is dying here and it wasn’t being me.

I twirled my cane scythe stylishly and be holding it across my shoulders, the blade on my right as I stood on my hind legs and grinned at him and leaned forward ready to be getting this started.

Dolly just readied her board to be kicked into motion and waited, she barked to me without taking her eyes off of Lu Bu.

Lu Bu be clenching his fist and his muscles bulged as he spread his wings, he looked like and ornithian with wings and there was no way I wasn’t going to be taking this seriously.

I calmly took out a bottle and chugged some rum before putting it away.

-Shanty and Dolly (Rowdy Ruff-ians) vs. Lu Bu Soul (Where’s ‘Kirby of the stars’ when you needed him?)-

436. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 15.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar City, upper city, streets near a crater that was a building, Shanty and Dolly vs. Lu Bu Soul, Music: Them’s Fightin’ Hers OST, The Capricorn (Shanty)-

“You be picking a fight even with me even being in my element, you are being a far braver sod than any other.” Shanty stated and all she got was a glare and grunt in return from Lu Bu. She had to worry about the EPs but she at least had Dolly to watch her back. “Still an angry sod that should run off and grow some grass, because I be seeing that you are being basically dead and yet you still be coming after me like a wraith. So let this fight be being the end of your curse yeah!? So go off already or I’ll be helping you with that!”

Lu Bu, in the form of a crow of death, didn’t need to be told twice and slung his right fist for the quadruped’s face in a lunge that was decidedly almost too fast for the goats bar shaped eyes to follow.

Much to Lu Bu’s shock Shanty dodged around the fist and swung for his neck with the cane scythe, he leaned back and caught the blade with his left hand and tried to punch her with his right fist again.

Shanty let go and chucked a bottle of rum at the crow’s face, the spirits getting all in his eyes as the bottle shatters. It might be sad for Shanty to see rum go, but you knew how seriously she was taking this fight when she was willing to use it for offensive purposes.

The sudden bottle to the face distracted Lu Bu enough that Shanty could pull her blade free from his grasp and back away while holding the weapon at the ready. It wasn’t easy when Lu Bu was still being far physically stronger than Shanty was, even with whatever state he was currently in to even be here in front of the goat.

Dolly was in the middle of taking down a few Trooper EPs when Shanty glanced slightly in her direction, things had barely even just begun and EPs were already coming for them.

Shanty would focus on her fight with Lu Bu while Dolly takes care of the surrounding problems to the best of her abilities. While Shanty trusted Dolly with her back, Dolly was only so capable and only had so much stamina.

Sprining forward, Shanty slung her scythe from right to left and Lu Bu dodged with a short back flip and then swung his right wing forward.

Avoiding being hit by the wing, Shanty’s eyes widened at the shattering of the street after the wing made contact with it. The distraction almost made her get caught off guard as Lu Bu was blindingly fast with his lunge and swinging his other wing out horizontally to cut a light pole to Shanty’s right completely in half in a shower of sparks as the rain caused the electricity that was in the pole to bounce everywhere.

It didn’t help that Lu Bu had arms, legs and wings this time, as his right talon reached for Shanty’s throat she slashed downwards with her cane scythe and sent two blasts of water out at the same time to force him back.

Creating two tentacles of water, Shanty immediately sent them lashing out to the left and right, while forming a tentacle behind Lu Bu as she charged forward.

Lu Bu simply grunted in annoyance and spread both his crow wings wide and flapped them once.

Shanty stood there wide eyed for half a second as a powerful blast of wind that felt like a brick wall struck her and she quickly backpedaled from her forward rush and looked to the sky. There was no rain falling within forty feet of them for a few seconds, not only had Lu Bu managed to stop the water tentacles he also stopped her with the sheer pressure his wings put out.

That Lu Bu’s wings could create sharp cutting edges and raw blunt force blasts of wind made Shanty reorganize her thoughts on how to actually approach him or even begin with defeating him.

Shanty couldn’t take him when he was an Unfezant, she couldn’t beat him when he was possessing a fire demon and she was controlling a mass of water.

If she backed down to Lu Bu now while surrounded by endless rain, Shanty would never forgive herself nor would she be able to think she had what it takes to help Pom.

Shanty was quite set in not backing down to Lu Bu now, even with all his raw power and looking like a crow which was usually seen as being associated with misfortune and death. Crows were fairly intelligent birds, Shanty would like to think Lu Bu was more of the messenger of impending disaster whether he be causing it or not.

Lu Bu hadn’t exactly cleanly beaten Shanty either and was waiting for her to restarted combat. He stood there with his arms crossed, he knew Shanty wasn’t running from this fight and was being unusually patient.

“I need to be being capable of performing a flying slash…” Shanty wanted and possibly needed to do it without water. The goat quietly narrowed her eyes and readied the cane scythe once more as the rain started coming back, she would try her best to overcome this shade that threaten her life and her goals for the future until she figured out how to do it.

The longer Shanty took to take Lu Bu down, the more problems Dolly would have to deal with.

Currently the Dalmatian was barely able to deal with several Heli-troopers on her own up until she did a Counter Rave from blocking enough shots, the Heli-troopers took a moment to realize they were already defeated after several flashes of Dolly zipping about at insane speeds.

Shanty shot forward and lashed out the cane scythe in an overhead swing, Lu Bu calmly stepped back as the tip struck the ground, then Shanty used the tip of the cane scythe to kick off the ground and pivoted leftwards on her weapon into a high kick that caught Lu Bu off guard slightly and the attack of Shanty’s hind leg barely scratched his feathered chest.

Landing from her swing she shifted her scythe blade to swing it forward and Lu Bu retaliated by grabbing it by the blade with his right talon and then lashing out with his left fist to bloody Shanty’s nose and stagger her backwards and he took her weapon from her.

Following this Lu Bu went for a leg sweep and Shanty flipped backward out of range, then ducking under a swing from her own weapon and backing up on all four legs.

Shanty narrowed her eyes at Lu Bu, the weapon was hers and she would be taking it back from his talons before the end of this fight.

Raising the weapon high and sweeping his wings back Lu Bu shot forward and swung, the cutting edge of the scythe nicked her left shoulder as he brought it down.

Shanty lunge forward and struck out with the right hoof, only to find her cutting arc blocked off by the shaft of the scythe as Lu Bu kicked out for her midsection.

Lu Bu’s kick missed as Shanty dove over his leg and proceeded to buck at his left side, he simply stepped back and flipped the blade of the scythe around to swing at Shanty scoring a light bleeding wound across her chest.

Shanty got a good hit in a second later as a blast of water slammed into the right side of the crows face like a sledgehammer staggering him as she hopped back twice to put some room between them.

While Lu Bu was staggered Shanty charged forward on all four and hopped, by that point Lu Bu swung for her neck and she slid under the blade while swinging out her left hind leg to slice into Lu Bu’s left thigh and then tried to rotate her body to launch an attack with her right hind leg.

Lu Bu took to the air avoiding the right legged buck for his legs or his butt, and swung around the scythe aiming to cut Shanty in half.

Shanty planted her front legs against the road and lifted her hind legs above her head, the street beneath where her torso had been was suddenly had a large ditch slashed into it. Pushing with her front legs the goat launched herself upwards and slashed down with both her legs to get into a standing position, the attack missed as Lu Bu flapped to get flying.

Lu Bu slammed his wings forward and sent a blast of wind down at the annoying goat.

Shanty swirled the surrounding rain water into a Bounding Bubble, the water around her rippled with the sudden impact of the wind and almost got blasted off of her. While she was defending against the blast of air, Shanty got a look at Lu Bu’s left thigh which was notably enough not bleeding red.

Lu Bu wound instead looked like a slowly receding red filled crack than it did damage done to flesh, like her own slight bleeding that was being washed away with the rain in the dark neon lit streets.

She glanced around and didn’t see what Dolly was currently doing as Lu Bu ascended into the sky out of sight while readying the scythe.

The malevolent look in Lu Bu’s eyes as the faintly glowing crow swept around in the air had Shanty wary as he soon came diving for her. His speed was unreal as he passed by Shanty in a flash of lightning and swept the cane scythe through her bubble.

Much to Lu Bu’s surprise, Shanty managed to maneuver her body out of the way of the attack using the water to push herself downwards and out of the way of the slicing blade as the bubble was torn entirely in half by the crows passing. It left the goat bouncing along the street in the wake of Lu Bu.

“Oof.” Shanty picked herself after landing on her face, thankfully some water softened the blow against the street.

The goat looked up and glared up at Lu Bu as he swung around and came at her with the scythe once again.

Shanty could call out to Dolly for help, but she didn’t know what the spotted dog was currently doing.

“Gravity!” Apparently Dolly had a moment to cast a spell that was expertly placed into Lu Bu’s path before he could change direction as he closed in on Shanty. Shanty only heard Dolly barking and saw the familiar effects of one of the spells that Dolly knew how to use.

The Dalmatian then hastily dodged a Brute EP slamming its fist into the street where she had been as she took off on her skateboard and shot up a nearby light pole in a vertical grind before landing on the horizontal balancing on her board.

Dolly was far too fast for the Brute to hit without the dog being absolutely distracted, but it was also too tough for Dolly to deal with personally without some way to break its core or surpass its physical defense. The Brute’s attention was squarely on the Dalmatian at least.

Striking the gravitational orb that sparking purple electricity danced over it, Lu Bu the crow slammed harshly into the pavement at twice his current speed that created a furrow in the street that started immediately filling with rain water as he shot past Shanty eating up the tarmac with his face.

Lu Bu slamming into the street sent the cane scythe flipping into the air out of the monsters talons and Shanty’s eyes followed the spinning form as her body charged after where it was going to be. As Shanty ran for it she compressed the water around Lu Bu in an attempt to pin him down in the furrow, it wasn’t working too well as he was already standing up despite the immense amounts of pressure on his body.

Dolly’s magic attack at best dented Lu Bu’s beak a little and scraped him up somewhat, at most it caused some very minor cracks in his body to form. It was becoming somewhat apparent as to why Lu Bu wasn’t bleeding if Shanty was to believe he was literally just a wraith of wrath at this point.

As Shanty slid into grabbing her cane scythe laying on the street the roar of engines was heard coming from both ends of the street four motorcycles, two on each end of the street, roared into a hard turn to start coming at Shanty and Lu Bu.

Dolly was busy with the brute near the alleyway and wasn’t able to draw off the attention of the two wheeled troopers gunning for the two combatants.

Shanty brought up a wall of water to stopping the bullets from the machine guns the troopers were wielding as the two of them roared forward towards her, she saw what getting hit had done to Pom and she can’t move at the same insane speeds to actively dodge the projectiles.

Instead the goat slung her retrieved weapon and sent a water blade flying into taking out the troopers and then had to leap as high as she could as the two motorcycles went skidding by to explode into building on both sides of the streets.

Looking at Lu Bu, Shanty just stared as he heaved both the bikes he was stopping with his hands together, smashing both the troopers into dissolving as the bikes he was holding fused together.

The bullets they had fired into Lu Bu did little to really slow him down as he heaved the fused mass of the two motorcycles directly at Shanty. To put things into Shanty’s perspective, Shanty was still trying to suppress Lu Bu’s movement with the weight of the water hitting his body and it wasn’t slowing him or his supernatural strength down in the slightest.

As the conjoined mangled mess of metal that was the two motorcycles flew at her, Shanty raised the cane scythe high up in her hooves.

“Grand Cleave!” Shanty swung downwards, the large cutting arc hit the twisted mass of metal coming at her in time and split it into two equal chunks that flew to either side of her instead of plowing into her painfully or lethally.

It took a bit of doing for Shanty to pull this off. Shanty could already feel herself tiring from having to pull off a big move, whereas Lu Bu was already coming at her again wings spread wide as he flapped them to dash forward and his talons eager to rip the goat to shreds.

Looking at the wet streets, Shanty inhaled and exhaled sharply.

Two clones with scythes made of water popped up at either side of Shanty and following her movements they all leapt into the air while curling up and spinning rapidly.

“Bouncing Blades Barrage!” Shanty hit the street and the water on the ground launched her at Lu Bu who tried to catch her rapidly rotating form surrounding by cutting arcs, he was even about to slam her into the ground too.

The two water clones skipped forward and off to the sides, before launching into Lu Bu’s left and right side slicing up his body with rapid cutting arcs that caused more cracks to appear in his tough body as they drilled into his side.

Lu Bu slammed his wings down into Shanty’s water clones. Despite the cutting arcs coming off of the clones causing some damage to the wings, they were taken out on impact and created two splashes.

It was unknown if Lu Bu even felt pain anymore considering he didn’t flinch at the damage his wings received from the action.

“Bouncing Bounding Bubble Blades!” The two splashes of water from the destroyed clones were redirected into surrounding and encasing Shanty, creating a barrier of water that turned into thousands of sharpened needle like blades that pressed into Lu Bu’s talons as the rotational cutting force coming from Shanty and the water around her was causing quite a bit of damage to his talons.

Pulling back his right leg as he held the dangerous rotating ball of cutting force in place, Lu Bu kicked upwards and time slowed down.

In slow motion Lu Bu his foot had managed to time itself so that it slipped into Shanty’s curled up form, cutting force from her horns, legs, the cane scythe and even fur giving off cutting arcs in most directions.

The crow’s foot deftly slipped up into Shanty’s rapidly rotating form, forced her to uncurl and then continued upwards to rip into her belly and the claws dug up into her ribcage injuring her gravely as the blow sent her flying into a building with a sickening crunch as Shanty became embedded in a brick wall.

“Nghhh….” Shanty wanted to scream or let out how much pain she was currently in from having slash up belly, this was the second time Lu Bu had defeated her Bouncing Blades. Something she thought would have been really hard to do, unless her opponent was as skilled as Lu Bu was in fighting.

Shanty’s vision was blurry as she watched the figure take up her scythe again, she reached behind her and quickly pulled out a Hi-potion and downed it. It helped with the headache and devastating injury, but it wasn’t going to help her beat Lu Bu at the rate she was going.

Lu Bu just stared at Shanty menacingly and waited for her to pull herself from the wall before he started moving forward while raising the scythe.

Shanty had to think on it for a bit, Lu Bu had basically put her on the ropes again and she couldn’t rely on Dolly, Dodo or anyone else coming to save her.

She had the advantage of having a nigh infinite supply of water, she started out with her scythe in her hooves, she had used Bouncing Blades and upgraded its format twice in a matter of seconds combing clones and her bounding bubble into it to some effect… her opponent was just that much in raw power and really wanted Shanty gone.

Pom was probably not too capable at the moment or coming anytime soon, Shanty was still hurting even after imbibing the thick and somewhat tasty liquids of the Hi-potion.

“Thousand Spears.” Echoed Pom’s voice in Shanty’s head as she remembered seeing Pom do that attack multiple times, she wondered why she had so much trouble do a similar attack without water. She could launch blades of water, but launching raw cutting force beyond the initial swing was still beyond her.

Wait… initial swing? However Shanty was starting to get an idea, but she would have to survive long enough to fully flesh it out before trying it. Shanty wasn’t too distracted to defend while trying to come up with her own equivalent of a ranged attack with more raw power, since water doesn’t seem to be putting Lu Bu down anytime soon.

“Horizon!” Shanty called on her evening sun dolphin to save her as Lu Bu came in swinging the cane scythe to take her head from her body, the drain on her magic had been worth it though.

“Squeeeeee-” Horizon appeared perfectly timed from below to not only deflect the attack, but he grabbed the scythe by the scythe and flipped to spit it back into Shanty’s hooves, this was as he sent Lu Bu skidding away with a powerful tail slap to the chest while disappearing in a shower of sparkles while squealing joyfully.

Shanty silently thanked Rider May for somehow giving her the ability to summon like she could and she silently thanked Horizon for being such a strong dolphin despite the limited amount of time he could appear for.

The cost on Shanty’s magic was a bit egregious, but Lu Bu had angry looking red cracks forming along his chest and stomach proving that it was powerful ability.

That May could fully summon something like leviathan was amazing, not to mention all the other things that Rider Totsugeki could call on… Shanty only had the two and Leviathan well outside of Shanty’s capabilities and it felt like there was a limit to how many times Shanty could call Leviathan.

“I be naming him that because I’m always looking towards the horizon, evening, night or morning I will be continuing to press forward!” Shanty stated as she was back on her hooves and ready to continue the fight, she took a few shaky steps forward on her hind legs and giggled a bit as she stared down Lu Bu. “I be getting what you are about, you be trying to break my spirit… well that’s not going to ever be happening in my lifetime even if I die here today!”

Since Shanty would rather die than lose spirit in the face of insurmountable odds, that’s one of the things some of the best pirates from the stories she heard were known for! Sure a number of them were tall tales, but that didn’t mean that some of them weren’t real.

“Grand Cleave!” Shanty lunged forward with the cane scythe held high and swung it downwards, the large cutting arc was dodge by Lu Bu, but Shanty followed up her attack by swinging her hips forward. “Cleave!”

Swinging on the shaft of weapon Shanty angled her hind legs into cutting up Lu Bu’s the outer right hip, following that she planted her hind legs on the ground and took a left fist to the fast. Despite the bloodied nose Shanty continued into her next attack.

“Rising Cleave!” Swinging the cane scythe upwards leaping arc, Lu Bu dodged and slammed a left kick into Shanty’s left shoulder that dislocated her front left leg. “Spiral cleave!”

What followed was Shanty whipping the scythe around three times in a clockwise spin as she dropped back to the ground raising the back end as the cane scythe’s blade lowered and then bashed the back end into Lu Bu’s right cheek stunning him after the third slice.

The crow now had several cuts across his torso, but he still landing a glancing blow against a grinning Shanty’s temple as she threw herself onto the ground onto her left shoulder and popped her leg back into place in a painful manner as she rolled back onto her hooves.

Not a peep of agony came from Shanty’s lips as she gripped the cane scythe in both front legs and then gave it a curious look. After a moment, she planted the tip of the scythe into the ground and off to the side. Idly taking note of Dolly’s frantic attempts to keep a gunship from gunning her down, the rest of the EPs were definitely searching for Pom and they were only getting a trickle of death in their given direction as an afterthought.

Shanty wanted to show Lu Bu what she thought of his attempts on her life as they fought.

“Gahahahaha!” Shanty pulled out a bottle of Rum, chugged it down in seconds and then threw the bottle at upwards in Lu Bu’s. “Glass Cutlass!”

Springing forward with a flip Shanty brought her right leg up high and then, in a powerful snap, slashed it down into the empty bottle sending a shotgun spray of tough sharp chunks of glass into Lu Bu’s body as he tried to meet her.

Lu Bu’s wings failed him in his forward charge as the bits of glass shredded through them and the explosive force he was hit with from all that glass slamming into his torso actually knocked him down. The cracks in his body worsened from the unorthodox, yet surprisingly powerful attack.

“I’ve been quite good at using water, but I’ve been ignoring the salt recently! Trust me, I be mighty salty to be losing a bottle that can be refilled to the brink with tasty rum like that.” Shanty stated while grinning broadly as she rubber her right leg over her bloodied nose. “Salt be good at dealing with voodoo you know… it also be dealing with ghosts like you. I think it is being time that I be sending you on your way, you be teaching me a lot today Lu Bu, but I’m being quite tired of your trying to come after me when I got bigger fish to be frying!”

Shanty planted her cane scythe in the street tip first and then she left it behind as she stalked forward on four legs.

“So let’s settle this like we be true bar patrons!” Screamed a grinning Shanty with rage in her heart and a rhythmic beat blaring in her soul, she charged forward without her cane scythe promising to return to pick it up after she was done here.

Shanty’s opponent had mass, size and weight on her, plus strength, she couldn’t really forget that last part really as his blows hurt.

“Yahar!” Curling up and then belting out a roar as she leapt forward into a claw swipe, the attack deflected entirely off her spirited yell and she sent her front right hoof slicing up his torso in a swinging uppercut, actually doing as much damage as the ‘Glass Cutlass’ had. “I’d rather be smelling like a salty dog, now go back to hell where you belong!”

Slashing across his chest with her left hoof even as his claws dug into her right cheek, Shanty couldn’t get the grin off her face despite the pain she was in. She had almost done it, she had almost figured out how to beat Lu Bu and do the kind of attack she always wanted to do.

Lu Bu sent a harsh left kick into Shanty’s chest, she clung to his leg and slashed up the calf of it with her hind legs as she was launched into the air and with a flip she landed on her hind legs crouching in pain from the blow. Her teeth gritted in a wild smile as shanty stood back up and came back at Lu Bu.

Not once did she go for her cane scythe, she didn’t use the rain water to assist her attacks, she didn’t try to ask Dolly for help, nor did she summon Horizon and the reason Shanty didn’t do any of this is because she had something to prove to Lu Bu as much as herself.

Shanty was small, but she was a scrappy as they came when it came to living in harsh conditions, she was going to show him the hellion that came from the islands of Equus!

She dropped short of Lu Bu’s swinging right leg, and then leapt to bite his ankle harshly bloodying it with her teeth as she bucked him below the belt. Lu Bu might not have reacted but the massive red cracks covering his body said she dealt a pretty devastating blow and the monster crow started frowning even as he slammed Shanty’s body painfully into the street with a heel drop.

Despite being bloodied, Shanty smiled and rose up rapidly lashing at Lu Bu’s legs with several alternating one legged bucks and then she spun and charged forward on her hind legs.

“Fiery Fillet!” Where Pom would flurry, Shanty would fillet! Multiple slashing cutting arcs came from Shanty’s from hooves as she rapidly slung them both inwards at Lu Bu overwhelming any attempt at defense with a series of rapid cutting arcs, until Lu Bu took off into the air. “Get back here you filthy chicken and be facing the wrath of Shanty head on!”

“If there is one thing of which you should be wary, it’s that you’re not actually nearly that scary~!” Sang Shanty as Lu Bu flew high into the sky. “Facing someone with a dream without a grand scheme, it’ll only lead you to a short death that will be unseen~!”

Lu Bu rose high into the air and then dove at the end of the street to swoop around start flying at the singing nuisance while gliding along the street. Shanty for her part kept the beat in her heart going.

“I am Shanty, a goat of the water, breathing and using it like I’m its very daughter~!” Shanty stated proudly with her hooves on her hips as Lu Bu closed in. “Salt of the earth, sea and sky, you’ll never see someone like me who just won’t simply die~! On this tale I’m going to have to put quite the spin, because never have I ever fought someone who was so badly about to be a has-been~!”

Taking a step forward with her left hind leg, broad grin on her face as her wet and battered soggy, bleeding body moved to do what she wanted. Bringing both her front hooves to her left hip as she charged forward, Shanty roared and slung both her clamped together hooves as hard as she could at the approaching Lu Bu.

“Soul Cutting Wave!” Shanty created a large cutting arc with her upwards swing to the right, but it didn’t fly forward, no it was moving at the same speed she was as she ran forward. She then brought her hooves to her right hip and lashed them upwards and to the left… suddenly the cutting arc moving with her disappeared and Shanty stopped in place breathing roughly.

Shanty’s rectangular pupils dilated and she stared as Lu Bu came at her in the torrential rain, not once did she try to evade the incoming strike.

A second before Lu Bu would have eviscerated Shanty with his talons… he split in half, wide eyed and promptly fading away from existence. He had become nothing more than a bad dream as his soul was torn in two and then subsequently destroyed in an instant.

Lu Bu had thought the attack failed, but what happened was that it had been invisible after Shanty destroyed her own cutting arc and stopped moving because of how much oomph she put into doing it.

The vacuum wave Shanty had created had been stupidly powerful and it injured her quite badly to even pull it off.

-Shanty-

…

“Heh heh… Is that… is that really being it?” I stated a little disappointed, until several buildings slid to the right and then collapsed with a perfect angular cut going through all of them. Not just one building, but three fell… one after the other the cut being higher than the last. “Oh… okay… that is being worth it then for all the effort. Now I be needing a long range attack that not be hurting nearly as much without using water.”

I be flopping onto my backside and sighing, yep… I be hurting… but I’ll live.

A loud panicked barking made me roll to the side as the fist of a Brute EP nearly be crushing me and embedded itself into the multiple times damage street where I was laying a second ago, I lashed out a cutting arc at the EP that be nearly taking my future plans from me!

The red colored cutting arc be going through the core and it be slashed entirely apart by the cutting edge of blood that be dripping off the tips of my badly injured front right hoof… my front left hoof was in a similar state of dripping painful red splotches that are being washed away by the rain.

Yep, that be definitely agonizing pain as if nails have been driven into my legs in multiple places, but nothing quite like those nights of starvation when I was younger. I think my front legs might be slightly broken… I calmly got on my hind legs and made my way for my cane scythe.

I be getting it onto my back, despite how much pulling it from the ground had hurt to do and all the while Dolly was protecting me from an ever increasing onslaught of danger. The crashing of a motorcycle into another motorcycle sold me on how bad it was kind of getting to be being around here.

“Come on Dolly, let’s be getting out of here together!” I called out. “We be needing to find a vending machine and some Hi-Potions, also some peace and quiet, we can be catching up with Pom later when my body isn’t being so sluggish and bleeding everywhere!”

It didn’t take Dolly long to arrive at my side and I planted my hind legs on the board and nodded to Dolly and she nodded back to me as she got us going with a kick of her right hind leg.

We left behind a stream of me dripping red in our wake. That attack be hurting me a lot and I can be seeing why putting your all into an attack like that would be being quite powerful.

-???, Oleander-

“Never shall we die~.” I sang as Wrex was at the helm of the pirate ship and I lazed about on the deck.

“I should hope not or else our trip to pick up some special grape shot for my shotgun would go to waste!” Buttina stated while wearing a jauntily angled captains hat. "So about that Dark Water stuff and the Captain Bloth guy..."

437. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 16.

-Equus, Ponyville, Hayburger, Rainbow Dash-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Midgar’s right side frontline, Lucha Mundo-

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

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

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

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

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

-Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

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

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

-Skies above Midgard, Copen ‘Slayer Dragon’-

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

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

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

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

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

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

-One massive collapse portion of a wall, Fou-

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

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

-Ransei Region, Mystery Dungeon in Aurora, Geoff-

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

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

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

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

438. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 17.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, King Evan-

I worked my way north out of Viperia.

Learning of Viperia politics was… an interesting thing to say the least. An overpriced Pecha Scarf bought from the Kecleon Brothers Merchants Guild was worth the cost while I dealt with that and the threat that was the Evil Mystery Dungeons from the Moon Cell thing.

People in Viperia had tried to poison me no less than five hundred and sixty three times… at least from what I managed to count and probably more attempts that I didn’t even notice.

Like Dragons Types were prideful, Poison Types could be a bit deceitful so it helped to always boil the water in this swamp filled region of Ransei. Don’t honestly know how I’ll handle the Ghost types as a Normal type… they also don’t know how they are going to handle me either!

Jiri was acting as my bodyguard, still a Buneary and was getting ever closer to becoming a Lopunny as we continued north along the east side of the continent. Her Bear Buster unit have proven to be quite intimidating despite none of them having achieve their evolutions… yet. I’m betting the battles with the monstrous and mysterious Moon Cell will quickly change that through our efforts.

Now I needed to take care of Dragnor and Spectra, also I needed to send information of what I wanted my friends back home in Aurora to do.

Already heard from Valora that Pom is in the thick of it, creating a beachhead to reach into Moon Cell’s inner realm and we have no idea how successful they currently are. Violight apparently sent them support from something called the Mirage Collective, so hopefully that’s going well.

“King Evan, can I just say that from the sound of it getting Dragnor and Spectra to cooperate is going to be like pulling teeth. By which I mean both messy and exceedingly painful.” Yes it is Dragoon Jiri, but we had to unite all of Ransei or else we wouldn’t be able to get Arceus’s limited support with a world ending threat. Some say that when Ransei fully unites under one banner Arceus appears and challenges those for something like a wish. “I’m glad to be away from all that skull-daggery.”

Hopefully Maiden Jig and Geoff have everything under control back home.

“Yes, I have nothing against pointing out the obvious.” I said with a weak smile, really didn’t like Viperia politics or all the assassination attempts that didn’t involve poison. They really go for the throat if they think they smell weakness, its little wonder that Dazzle doesn’t like her homeland and why I will continue to welcome her in Aurora. “Being a king is… really tiring. Also don’t you mean skullduggery?”

“That’s what you have good friends for Evan.” Jiri stated pleasantly as she raised her shield and spear, ready to continue marching forward. “As for Viperia, no, I definitely meant the words ‘Skull Daggery’ since that seems where they keep wanting to plant a knife. I’m fairly sure they are impressed you survived long enough to actually leave Viperia without any serious injury… all those flying knife traps were a bit hard to spot. Thank goodness for Greenleaf healing herbs.”

That brought a small smile to my face, hopefully Pom and the others from the Valora counter invasion detachment were okay. They were what was hopefully slowing down the invasion of Ransei, the Fairy Dust Islands were said to be clean within an hour or two of the Evil Mystery Dungeons appearing.

I wondered why we couldn’t be just as organized and then realized that we were stretched quite thin with everyone fighting for their lives. So uniting wasn’t exactly everyone’s first thought when an alien invasion was occurring and I don’t mean the general Deoxys kind that happens every once in a while.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar City, plains outside the walls, several ‘digital hours’ later, Ocellus-

“Okay, their air force is really messing us up here, please tell me we’re moving soon Ozzy.” Smolder was fairly impatient considering the onslaught of aerial forces attacking us, it was fair to be a little angry.

The nonstop sound of the missile trucks firing in the courtyard was kind of deafening as missiles continued to blast enemy EPs out of the sky.

“We’re working on it and the new AP we’ve been given. Welch and Cid gave us the approval to use the Berserker Moogles when we’re ready to start summoning them. Apparently they give off the feeling of…” I tried to put it in nicer words.

“Dumb muscle?” Smolder stated flatly with her arms crossed. “I think that’s just from looking at the things.”

“Yes, that Smol… apparently it’s a pervasive feature, meaning that no matter which Berserker Moogle you’re looking at, you’ll get that feeling. In fact it’s so pervasive that Sid, Welch and Torneko couldn’t figure out how to remove it from their overall programming as Allied Programs. In fact it seems to be intentional to an absurd level that they wouldn’t work as well as they do without it, though we should be careful as they have been termed extremely literal minded when it comes to interpreting orders… probably why they have the ‘Berserker’ classification in the first place.” Well she did call me Ozzy, so it’s fair play that I call her Smol and make her blush. “Our current objectives are to draw as much attention to ourselves when we hit the upper city once we’re given the go ahead to use the limited flight mode by Cid. We’re doing this to give the now known Artoria and Mash an opportunity to fight through the lower city and reach the tower from below while we’re drawing all the heat from the enemy, their forces will have to be the ones to hold this realm once we take it. Once we are at the edge of the upper city layer, we’ll release a team to investigate what happened to Pom, Shanty, Dolly and Dormarch. I’m fairly sure they are alive, either they are fighting a losing battle or they’ve gone to ground… above ground I mean.”

“Yes, I understood what you meant Ocellus.” Smolder stated with a slightly grumpy manner. “So we send them out on Skein Flyers?”

“Not necessarily, Sami has given us the access to replicate her digital motorcycle quick build system bar. So we’re trying to see what happens when we give them to Rider Zealots… it might actually make production of combat vehicles go several times faster. In any case we’re expecting heavy aerial offensive from the enemy and Moby Dick to come at us when we go up there.” Here I was sitting safely in a seat guiding defenses and being safe, while Pom was continuing to get the snot beaten out of her mentally, physical and spiritually… plus the whole thing with being a Chrysomallus still likely bothering her immensely and other things like eating meet. She has had so many canine familiars that I wouldn’t be surprised if she was actually an omnivore now instead of a mostly vegetarian. Even Lambkin eat eggs for their high protein value and a majority of Lambkin are farmers... mostly sheep farmers, but still! “Still want to keep some manufactured stuff like the Magitek Armors though, those have been fairly useful find before Mare Melum reset or rebooted, the terminology Metabee gave me about it was kind of iffy and existentially dreadful to think about happening while we were in the middle of it. We’ll set up on the edge of the city and slowly press forward while trying to capture as many PLANTs over a wide area as we can, Canard, Jeanne and Rokusho will be doing that while they set out to find and secure Pom’s safety. They really didn’t have much food or drink before going up there, they must be starving…”

“Are you hungry?” Smolder asked kindly and sweetly, she was always so affectionate. Her very presence alone was doing that, even her friendship alone could keep me going for years. If I didn’t know what dragons were actually like, I’d swear Smolder was the actual standard being set by her kind. Their stories of strength and violence aside.

“Oh I’m fine love and friendship is definitely keeping me filled up quite a lot, I hope Canard and the others are getting enough rest… we’re kind of throwing them back into the thick of it once we make our way to the upper city. Rokusho in particular has made sure we had the ability keep the Assassin Class EPs out of the castle indefinitely with Metabee’s help… apparently he had Metabee think about the dumbest ways to get past our defenses and found every leak point in Castle Alexander that way. I don’t think Metabee even realized why Rokusho asked him about it in particular.” Our defenses were currently holding and solid, most of our troubles were in the upper city from the aerial forces. The EP ground forces… the left paw of Castle Alexander smashed down and crushed a manufactured EP, there have been less of those lately given how many we’ve destroyed. The normal summoned from a PLANT EPs were still coming though and the only way to take care of them was to take territories in the realms. “I think they deserve being placed in more defensive positions, but our APs inability to take territories is the only reason we can’t. The Commandramon will focus primarily on PLANT acquisition and sending them immediately back to us… provided they are spread out and trying to play keep away like with the lower city. We’re going to be relying on APs, the Gazimon Gang and the Valora contingent entirely for our defenses at that point while some of our greater personalities go out. We need at least me here to keep everything running smoothly, to think I’ve sadly become a bit too accustomed at being a necessary part of our command structure…”

“Speaking of territories, the lower city is practically filled with Bombs on the opposite side from us, EPs flood the side we’re on since we pulled our forces out, Fou coming in from our left in which I’m fairly sure we heard the collapsing of a large section of the lower city wall from that direction and from our right are some much needed allies that are trying to put a hopefully more discreet hole in the wall.” Smolder was just summarizing what we knew and the lower city was just not tenable to us, the enemy servant basically had most of the city set up to stall and death trap us to death before we could ever reach them. It was working so far, but we’re not out of this fight yet even if we hadn’t gotten Castle Alexander to breach the wall! “That Fou guy actually scares me and would probably scare any dragon too, considering the level of destruction he’s causing gleefully. As long as he doesn’t collapse the upper city down onto the lower one we won’t bother with him.”

“Completely neutral to the rest of us at least, Fou’s outright been stated to be hunting Pom to eventually possibly force her into a fight to the death when she’s at her strongest or is just going to keep continue playing with her like she’s a chew toy. There’s also how little we know about Artoria and Mash aside from their names, but they are definitely helpful in the fight against Moon Cell and don’t seem bad aside from attacking Pom. Really should have had Mundo ask about that…” Any ally we could get would be a good one, even with Mirage Collective and Harmony Programs support we hadn’t exactly cracked the city… if anything is doing that, it’s the Bombs which are hardly being contained by the enemies own forces in the lower city. I shook my head and focused on the console as I watched the fighting from our allied forces. We couldn’t carry them all to the upper city with us… we’d have to leave them behind to secure the plains at the very least. “What’s the ETA on the flying mode so we can get to the upper city Cid?”

“Quite you’re worrying young’un, three minutes until we complete preparations and we can’t rush this stuff! So get you’re ducks in a row and set out some orders for our friends staying on the grounds out there on what they should be doing.” Cid Highwind stated with a following gleeful chuckle. “Flying is a passion and I’m going to make this castle airborne with the added PLANT power we got flowing through Castle Alexander’s veins… just so long as we don’t fire a Divine Judgment we’ll be fine with flying high enough and working the defense turrets at the same time. Whoever designed the Divine Judgment thing made it a serious energy hog of it for all the power it has! Honestly the missile trucks are what’s really putting in all the work we’re doing here, might want to deploy a few artillery in the upper city when we get there and secure them with some APs.”

Cid was full of good ideas, it’s like he’s been through war before multiple times over.

“Yeah, we need to break the defenses the servant has around them…” Apparently they were enough to shoot down Metal Hound 002 after what looked like a hectic fight to watch on the sensors. Welch wanted to make a third one already, but she didn’t have the necessary schematic to make the jet assisted armor so it could possibly fly as fast as those enemy air units had that Pom definitely ended up destroying somehow considering that the explosion was detected from all the way down here. “The fact that they’ve managed to stall us out despite all the pressure we’re putting on them is killing our morale something fierce.”

It was a surprise that any part of our underground tunnel team made it back alive at all, much less all of them except for Pom’s inner circle of friends and family… of which I felt somewhat happy to be a part of.

“Ba-lamb Drive ready, give the orders Ocellus and we’ll get her in the air!” Did it really have to be called that Cid? Pom already have enough issues with Castle Alexander being a giant dog… she doesn’t need to know the true flight device includes a double pun! Maybe this is what they meant by the better part of valor was not telling someone something in friendship school if it doesn’t actually affect them in the slightest?

“Take us up Mr. Highwind!” The entire castle shuddered as it started pulling in its legs to enter hover mode and then the Balamb Drive would activate and give us flight. It all felt so shaky and a bit off. “Cid, what’s the status on the Balamb Drive?”

“Shaky, but we’re doing it, we’re flying!” The NPC Cid seemed quite ecstatic when Castle Alexander surpassed its hover mode height and kept going up. “I’m going to even out things a bit and get her purring like a cat on catnip sleeping in a warm sunbeam.”

Note to self and a reminder, don’t mention what happened with Opalescence to anyone when I was left alone with her while cat sitting for Rarity. I thought Spike had been kidding somewhat about those escapades, but he was fairly spot on with his description of Rarity’s familiar. It’s been so long since I saw one of my nicer teachers who taught compliments and politeness in general, the Harmony Programs aren’t exactly the same even if they do have my teacher’s voices.

The castle rose up next to the wall and continued rising higher towards the darkened stormy skies of Midgar City.

-Upper City, Mog Wash, bedroom second floor, Pom-

“I really need to go to the bathroom…” I whined, Dormarch just snuggled even deeper into my embrace and continued snoozing on.

That was followed by Dolly stretching and continuing to laze about me. She was finding humor in my current position and was just being lazy.

Dolly now is not the time to be a jerk to me just because I’m the most comfortable thing around to lay on. Even the pillow my head was resting on couldn’t quite compare to a fluffmancer’s wool.

It was a minute later that Shanty started stirring.

“Uhn… Pom, why is everything being pain?” Shanty moved a bit and slowly try to move her front legs.

Given how tightly they were splinted and what Dormarch said about them being broken, it was probably for the best that she couldn’t move them.

“Well you’re front legs are broken, apparently you fainted from the shock while riding with Dolly on her skateboard and well… things happened.” Given that I was trying to stay calm as possible, Shanty looked dazed and wincing every few seconds trying to move. “Probably won’t be able to fix it quickly until we can get some Sitrus Berries… unfortunately we’re out Dolly got the last one and all we have is a reviver seed. Don’t know where the last one is, but I’m fairly certain Jeanne had it.”

“Oh right, cool pants girl.” Dolly mumbled with a grin as she leaned her head back and licked me on the nose before rolling off the bed. “Dormarch, Pom needs a scan immediately, there might be something wrong with her!”

“Huh, what?! Scanning… oh… she needs to use the bathroom.” Well that got Dormarch up quickly and they both looked at a pained Shanty. “Well good to see you’re awake, but… how are we going to do this?”

“I believe my lug and I can be of help.” Cait Sith got his Magitek Moogle Monster to gently lift Shanty off of me with a rapid fire amount of coaxing and I quickly rushed to the bathroom.

One very relieving bathroom break later, for me, Dolly and Dormarch we all looked to Shanty to see why she wasn’t going to the bathroom and realized she’d need help with her broken legs and hooves.

“…” Shanty looked quite vulnerable in this moment and I sighed as I had Cait Sith and his Lug carry Shanty to the bathroom and I was left helping the goat to deal with things afterwards while Cait SIth waited outside.

After the episode and Shanty looking embarrassed with what I helped her with, we finally sat down together.

“Okay Shanty, we currently have the time, because I really doubt we can attack that tower just yet.” As embarrassing as it was, I knew Shanty was glad that I was there to help her with several issues that a young goat with broken front legs might be going through. “What did you want to talk about?”

“I’m being afraid that I’m not being a goat…” That… was completely ridiculous Shanty.

“I’m afraid that I’m not a sheep, but a Lambkin is close enough that it’s hard to tell the difference really.” I didn’t mean to come off as insensitive, but I hoped Shanty understood that this doesn’t change how I feel about her being my charge. “You look like a goat and act like one too, bar shaped eyes, scraggily little beard, what makes you think you’re not a goat?”

“I can be breathing underwater…” Yeah, that was a bit of an eye opener from Shanty.

“But you don’t have gills, not from what my scans show, you are one hundred percent goat as far as I can tell… unless this is a magic thing.” Probably was a magic thing Dormarch, kind of like how Chrysomallus was a magic thing for me and it was worsening give my left hind leg was the only leg not completely covered in golden wool at the moment.

Given that my legs take up most of my body… well I’m no longer horrified about the implications, because I think I can fully stop the transformation from happening when I hit the eventual edge of it and my body is completely covered in golden wool and my eyes go from blue to gold as well.

While I did want wings, I didn’t want them at the eventual and highly inevitable impossible to stop cost of my life from sprouting them. There were some things I’ve yet to tell anyone and I’ve only given Ocellus a hint of what she will eventually feel if it does come to pass that I have to go through the transformation process, but since she can’t feel it yet I’m in the clear of having to explain it or why exactly being a Chrysomallus is basically an eventual instant death for every Lambkin that has been through this process before.

Notably the ones who have been through this were said to have been much faster than mine is currently going, I should consider myself lucky that I’m forcing it to be so slow with every ounce of will I can muster. Thankfully I have not passed the ‘crossing the Rubicon’ point yet and I can hopefully stop myself exactly on that point of no return and hold on for my literal dear life, because there is no stopping the inevitable once the wings come in.

“I think my body be growing them when I need them… around the base of my ears…” Shanty said a second later feeling confused about Dormarch’s scans.

Sure Shanty wasn’t exactly sure what she was, but I at least knew who she was and she was. A brave little goat that was going to eventually be pirating around some world regardless of anyone wanting her to or not. She was going to be someone else’s problem that’s for sure, I would miss her if I was still alive to send her off on her adventure.

“Well that would be one way to connect them to your esophagus and filter oxygen out of liquids through a nervous system membrane.” That got looks from all of us and Dormarch ducked his head slightly. “It’s perfectly viable.”

“Don’t care, Shanty’s my buddy as much as you are Pom!” Which was high praise coming from Dolly, that and she could remember Shanty’s name correctly.

Shanty wasn’t paying Dormarch or Dolly as much attention as she was to my reaction, I calmly and carefully coddled her while avoiding jostling her front legs. My soft squeeze made her feel comforted at least while she was in pain.

“Pain medication?” Dormarch offered a second later seeing the look on Shanty’s face, even with how careful I was being it was still obviously painful for Shanty.

“Yes, please!” Shanty stated with a nod, I was about to let her go, but she then addressed me. “Please be holding me a little longer Pom.”

“As long as you need me to, well until we need to leave, but we have time.” I said softly while affectionately nuzzling the top of her head and nosing her hair a bit.

“That is being good, that we be having time I mean.” We needed to get Shanty back to Castle Alexander. She was sniffling and tearing up quite a bit. She was snuggling into me for comfort and I was willing to give her that and more as her caretaker, but her injuries means she can’t experience any form of combat until we did get to Castle Alexander and in the middle of EP controlled territory… yeah… not looking good.

I kind of needed a lot more than the comfort I would always give freely to Shanty, she really just had to ask for help or comfort and I’m always willing to be there for her.

As for me, I needed an entire team of psychiatrists and therapists at the rate I’ve been going. Sure I mostly know what’s wrong with me, but I doubt that’s going to help. My taste for meat was one of the more worrying things happening now.

“Shanty, you’re probably going to want to look into getting a good doctor for your crew.” I felt Shanty nod tearfully and Dormarch came back, scrutinized Shanty a bit by likely scanning her biology, then pulled out a dosage for her.

“Take it with this water.” Dormarch offered the glass and watched as the water flowed up, turned into a full liquid bubble, the bubble surrounded the pills on his other paw and they quickly flowed down Shanty’s open throat. “You’re going to feel a bit drowsy in a number of minutes, until then the pain should soon become numb.”

“I’ll just say this Shanty, I know you want to protect me… but I want you to focus more on your dream than me, even if I know you don’t want to lose another important person in your life. Try as hard as you might, if I have to, then I will being giving my life for everyone around me should the situation warrant it.” What I wasn’t saying is that Shanty might not be strong enough to prevent the situation from warranting it. “However I doubt I’ll needing to become a full on Chrysomallus for Moon Cell. I can hold on for as long as everyone wants me to and all of you being at my side will keep me going, but don’t hurt yourself for my sake. You’ve got a much bigger and brighter future ahead of you even if I might not be a part of that future, did you expect me to become a pirate and travel the world with you? When the time comes and I do happen to grow wings… Ocellus will at least be able to put it into words what is going on and why you won’t be able to save me at that point, if not then just ask any unicorn she truly trusts with all her heart about it. At that point, there is going to be no going back and no saving me, but that point isn’t now. Dolly take care of Dormarch if this occurs.”

Dolly narrowed her eyes at me, but she still nodded with a very firm look on her muzzle to let me know what she thought about the idea of living without me being around.

“It will not be happening if I be having anything to say about it.” Shanty did have a say, one of the reasons I was resisting it was to get Smolder and Ocellus home, but I also had Shanty to worry about. Also Dormarch and Dolly too, Dolly was stubborn and Dormarch, for all of his intelligence, was still a child.

My familiar bonded companions were giving me a look that said they felt the same way as Shanty.

“I’ll appreciate all of your effort at the very least. While I would rather outright die than become a full Chrysomallus, but if I had to become one to save you and everyone I love, it wouldn’t even be a contest of what I would choose.” Now for me to broach the topic and change it to something that Dolly mentioned earlier. “So why didn’t you use your water colossus against Lu Bu?”

“It wouldn’t be working, I be feeling it in my bones… the rain, it didn’t be slowing him down one bit. Also I be needing momentum to even be doing the attack I be using against Lu Bu.” The attacked that messed up your front legs so thoroughly Shanty? “The first swing be going fine… it is being the second one that is being really hard to do, since I be cutting directly into my own cutting arc to do it and those are generally hard to keep physically in place in front of me while moving forward!”

“Hey, aren’t her cutting arcs like… you know… able to repel or cut through almost anything?” Yes Dolly, that’s exactly why Shanty was fairly dangerous. Any edge around her becomes fairly dangerous if she wielding it correctly, including the points of her small horns.

Cutting through her own cutting arcs though, apparently it had a bizarre unknown backlash and effect and I was getting a front row seat to what you saw Dolly happening.

“Well the damage is fairly consistent at the very least, with it being something magical and not mundane like say a vacuum wave Mom can shoot by jabbing at the air really hard or firing off her coiled wool.” Magical damage was never quite easy to heal Dormarch, but at least it doesn’t seem to have done anything irreversible to Shanty. “At least the backlash only seems to be physical…”

I’m glad, because the Chrysomallus thing is quite irreversible as far as I know, but survivable as long as I keep it contained at that one point I know I can fully stop it. I would reject it for as long as possible.

“Good news, it’s nothing we can’t heal at the very least.” I sighed, not like we’re getting much of that, we’re not even facing Moon Cell directly yet and we’ve been taking a lot of beatings to get this far.

“If you want some really good news, then maybe I should tell you your friends are causing quite a stir at the edges of the upper city district and they just sent out a search party for you.” Cait Sith stated as he came in. “If you have to ask, Mog Wash does have a surveillance room and I can see quite a bit of the city around here. Can’t really miss the large castle that floated up and deployed several motorcycles along with Berserker Magitek Moogle Monsters. They are getting a pretty good foothold, but they are already running into the literal minded problems that the Berserker Moogles are known for. Hope they iron that out quickly. Now as for how you’re going to get by Shinra Towers defenses… well… you’ll need to get me in contact with your friends so I’m a VIP and you need to get me a PLANT before I can think of going anywhere.”

“So not only do we need to get a PLANT, we also need to protect it and you while getting you to Castle Alexander before you can lend us aid on how to break the tower?” The cat grinned and I rolled my eyes. “Is that all?”

“Oh yes, not much more I want than being out from under Moon Cell’s metaphorical thumb, follow me please!” We did so and I gently place Shanty on my back and carried her protectively as I tromped down the stairs with Dormarch and Dolly at my sides.

“So this secret agent stuff you did for the evil corporation that used to exist…” I started, it was apparently called the Shinra Corporation and it did a lot of horrible things. We watched as a washing machine swing inwards along with a section of wall leading us to a large room full of monitors showing various situations.

“Already gave your friends the Berserker Moogle access up front and my… look at them rowdy lugs go!” They were tearing through the Elite Brute EPs with rather ridiculous efficiency, which was ridiculous considering how tough the Brutes were to destroy even if you target their cores directly. “I suppose you’re wondering why they are appearing to be effective even against those particular assault programs.”

“They are tearing through those Brute EPs.” My voice sounded off flatly, we all had two eyes.

“EPs? Enemy Programs, fair name and I suppose you call your program forces APs?” Cait Sith got up onto the chair and started showing various scenes that were happening in real time. Merak wasn’t making it easy for Castle Alexander to take the edge of the upper city, that was a lot of Moon Cell Watchers and Gunships, on top of Heli-troopers, Guard Hounds and motorcycle equipped regular Troopers. Even as pressured as the city of Midgar was from all sides in the lower city and this one side in the Upper City, there was no forward progress into actually making a huge foothold in the city. “As for calling them Brutes, that’s exactly what they are… a slight upgrade from the basic heat axe wielding Berserker Vikings and are an elite version of them with little imagination included into the stiff mechanical design. The Magitek Moogle Monsters are far more effective because they existed at once point and one in particular fought monsters far larger and scarier than those Brutes, it was personally under my previous Cait Sith’s guidance even! They aren’t just any generic programs and most of your forces seems to be cobbled together from already pre-existing powerful concepts of something that existed at some point. When dealing with magical programming like you are here, the stronger the concept the stronger the fight you get from it. Magitek Moogle Monsters were kind of my design, so what you’re getting are some really good, if fairly dumb, berserkers. My mechanical wonders were mostly made for grunt work stuff… that and running a resort called the Golden Saucer. Have a lot of stories about that place…”

“Well that just confirms that the magical part of ‘evil magical soul sucking computer’ thing.” The dryness in my voice was met with a giggle from Dolly.

“Yep, that’s why I want in on what you have going on.” Cait Sith said as he turned towards us.

“Dormarch can you go out and seek the nearest PLANT we can take and be discreet about it? When we take it, it’s going to alert every single EP in the area to where we are and Merak will drop whatever he’s currently doing and will try to focus us down to prevent our successful recruitment of Cait Sith.” We really needed him after seeing what his Berserker Moogles can do in action and I think that’s why he’s showing us this, he wanted to join us and he’s showing us what he can do. “What are the chances that Moon Cell can trace those Berserker Moogles back to you?”

“Decent enough if it remembers little old me even exists at all, us NPCs are kind of under the radar of suspicion if you catch my drift and that even includes NPCs that can do spy work apparently. Moon Cell is probably not able to employ us directly, unless it thinks we’re incredibly compromised and I’m very much resembling that remark at the moment. So you can imagine how existentially terrifying my currently precarious position is. It’s not going to be able to do it in the amount of time I’m giving you, by then it should be far too late to stop me from joining you properly. Also you’re fortresses ability to produce random APs will probably be a temporary buffer to thinking I’m even remotely involved for a time, until it realizes that the Berserker Moogles are far too powerful to be a part of the completely normal random call ups you’ve been getting from accessing the PLANTs and putting various bits of data into them to get out some much needed assault programs out of them in the seven base specific classifications you can access.” Cait Sith grinned for a moment. “You’re very lucky you had a hacker that could even access those PLANTs. It would take something that’s a part of the system itself to get by the level of hack proof Moon Cell should be, and if you have that then I’m fairly sure you have a chance of saving whatever world needs it here. It’ll be like old times for me lass. So it wouldn’t be hard for that data to randomly pop up in this world unannounced with all the PLANTs that have been stolen from the lower city recently, so it was just them getting lucky with their choice of Berserkers truly. Not like they had the ‘Berserker Triple M’ data given to them from a specific highly anonymous source.”

“You’re just adding on to the fact that you know how to upgrade APs, make them work better or at the very least know how to get a specific result that isn’t a random grab bag when calling up a new AP type to wield against Moon Cell.” It was rather obvious and I glanced at Dormarch who was technically part of the system and messed up the PLANTs so they were capable of being usurped. Unfortunately usurped by anyone and this meant Fou and anyone else here that could actually beat them. There’s also the fact that the base seven classifications didn’t account for the weird classification Dormarch kept coming up with for himself as a pseudo-servant spirit core he had. He was currently a… ‘Ruler Shielder Beast’ as of right now when I silently queried him on it through our bond. He’s been fairly stuck on ‘Shielder’ and ‘Beast’ for a while, both made sense, but ‘Ruler’ was a weird one as far as the implications of what a classification like that could mean. “Not to mention your mentioning of knowing how to at least get one or more of the extra classifications I kind of know about in AP form, ones that we likely wouldn’t normally get from taking any of the PLANTs we come across. All this… in the effort to make us work that much harder to help save you?”

How many people would be able to fight a whole army generated by the PLANT completely by themselves? Well… the servants we’ve been fighting would have been able to I guess, they are ludicrously powerful souls brought about by Moon Cell. Merak was almost on par with Gilgamesh in terms of threat level and only his limitations of his ten portal limit were holding him back, so Hoopa Gilgamesh hadn’t been lying when he said we needed to step up and somehow knew about all of this specifically happening eventually. That or it was a very good educated guess that we’d be fighting someone like him again eventually, at least Merak didn’t lazily spam shooting infinite weapons at us.

“So… is it working?” The curious Cait Sith crossed his arms and tilted his head at me.

I sighed audibly.

“Yes.” We desperately needed his help when it came to making the Archer class APs something memorable. “Yes it is… and I was going to do it anyway, but thank you for providing far more obvious and largely good reasons as to exactly why we need you specifically beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt.”

“You’re welcome!” With the way Cait Sith was smiling at me, why am I reminded of a grinning Jaded La Perm who likely had a piece of tasty fish in her mouth while stealing from the grand palace at the top of Huoshan? That was a day that went down in infamy…

-Equus, Ponyville, Jaded La Perm-

My left ear twitched, my tail curled into a heart shape and my spine felt all warm and tingly like I was being hugged.

“Huh, my Jaded Sense is tingling, someone I’m friends with must be thinking fondly of me… got any Jacks?” I said as Pinkie frowned at me and threw me the card.

“Isn’t that something like a rare occurrence with you?” Ah Applejack, you knew me so well. “Would have thought it was someone thinking of you doing your general annoying varmint thing… speaking of feline varmints, got any queens?”

“Darn it!” I hissed audibly as I passed Applejack the card with a friendlier looking version of Queen Chrysalis on it, I was quickly learning why no one ever wanted to play cards with Applejack. She was really good at Go Fly and the less said about how stupendously great she is at poker the better… I may in fact be quite jealous of her talent at the game.

How does someone who’s got so many ‘completely honest’ tells beat everyone at poker without a working poker face?!

439. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 18.

-Yggdrasil Digital Realms, a place called File Burg, Metal Etemon-

“Hold the line!” Ever since I went from being Etemon to becoming Metal Etemon, I’ve been showing off my impressive skills and muscles and I’ve been enjoying the fact that my gang was recognized as one of the upper tier units in the war.

We were also saved and supported by the gloriously beautiful and thankfully friendly ‘Sun Goddess’ Amaterasu more than once, she was a bit cold to us at first but seemed to glow quite beautifully under any compliments to her appearance.

She was a cute white wolf with the divine red markings and she’s been running around causing trouble for our enemy and something of a rumor of a solar lion from our biological monster neighbors was coming up a lot in conversations. We weren’t the only ones putting the work in here.

There were efforts from our neighbors to save themselves and us just as much, so much so that they sent some heavy hitters to help us out. It just brings tears to my eyes to see everyone and everything coming together against a much larger threat.

Don’t know what peace will be like afterwards, but I expect it to be a highly rough start when all the fighting stops, we’ve been at this for the digital equivalent of many years and needed the reprieve any help would give us.

I know the biological reality next door moves slower than us, but it still took them some time to really get on the ball about this Moon Cell monstrosity that wants us all dead.

To that end we’ve been slowly taking back control of our world. We were even helping Yggdrasil Security in the form of the Metal Walker brigade, numerous powerful Digibots and the Vaccine Digimon. The Giromon lived for this stuff and they hadn’t stopped fighting ever since the fighting started, the fact that they weren’t tiring was impressive and they’ve been ramming themselves into the face of the enemy for quite a while with their battle damaged chainsaws.

If anyone had anything to say about the Metal Walkers, it was that they were hardcore bunch of code and they didn’t go without a fight… or keeping fighting after they should have gone.

We Digimon might have floundered at the start, but we were putting a real huge dent in the enemy’s ability to keep throwing numbers at us. Virus, Data and Vaccine alike, everyone in this Yggdrasil Realm was actually working in concert without any backstabbing tendencies popping up, which was a new one for a fresh digital world experiencing extreme turmoil.

Usually every digital realm that is created by Yggdrasil is the problem or it’s the next door biological neighbors with their technology we tend to infiltrate to find a nice place to settle down in. The whole D-Reaper thing wouldn’t have happened without the biological neighbors being the cause of that one, but yeah, we Digimon were usually the root cause of chaos in most worlds we appeared in.

This is the one time we can honestly say that we didn’t cause the mess and actually mean it!

Even the most vile of digimon were excited for a fight and on the front lines of battle… that would be Ogremon who was well on his way to becoming a Skull Satamon. Terrifying thought that, but with the dark net data it was understandable that Ogremon had the capacity for it. He wasn’t a hero, but he was putting his acts of evil on hold until three months after the war was over… nice of him to give everyone an early warning about that.

The ‘Backspace Systems’ was why we weren’t losing troops to the constant thrashing on the battle lines between us and the enemy digital realm.

It was little wonder the more evil, or at the very least highly rude, Digimon were taking up arms… a digital realm completely unsullied by them? Preposterous. The realm being more dangerous than they could ever hope to be? Even more preposterous! Some of them even actively wanted to be immortalized in history by being beaten by a group of children that generally followed the very concept of ‘no idea what do, but do anyway’.

The heavenly Vaccine types were doing their jobs by holding the front beside their more malicious Virus companions who were quite gleeful for an enemy that they didn’t have to hold back against.

For once, Yggdrasil System didn’t make a digital world that wasn’t corrupting everything, destroying itself or invading our biological neighbors by the happenstance of a lot of awkward things happening.

Still, mother Yggdrasil System likely sighed when it couldn’t just make one world that didn’t have something large, volatile or dangerously chaotic happening to it within a biological year or two of it being created… which was several thousand digital years before time disparity shrunk to one to one with our neighbors. The Digimon of this system weren’t the major problem for the ‘digital destined’, AKA the generally well known Yggdrasil System troubleshooters that were always found for major problems, at least for once. Take the win when you can get it I’d say!

Yggdrasil System was probably even happy that it wasn’t the biological neighbors or us Digimon that caused the mess this time around, small comfort given the danger. The threat was very much serious, given it could feasibly spread into other realities and other Yggdrasil System Realms if we didn’t stop it here and now while cut off from the rest of the Yggdrasil System Realms with our backs to the wall.

So yeah, general Yggdrasil System new world shenanigans.

The Data Types were the most important ones in all this, given they were responsible for recoding the enemy PLANTs and figuring out ways to give the Viruses and Vaccines an edge up on the enemies in the flood of incoming information and assault programs.

There was even a signal of signs of Eaters appearing and consuming the enemy, which had rightly horrified us… it was strange ‘they’ were making a resurgence. Every Digimon knows to fear the words ‘World Eaters’ and that we heard they might be around was terrifying the hearts of any just hearing of the possibility. Even D-Reaper wasn’t nearly as bad as those things had been!

Thankfully the signal apparently transmitted from within our enemies systems. Better that it was happening to them than it would be to us, but we couldn’t let those Eaters turn their maws at us and we had to keep them out and not being our problem!

So whatever was causing Eaters to appear, it needed to be dealt with fast, the ‘digital destined’ were already invading Moon Cells Realms so we didn’t need to focus on that. We needed to find out what was causing them to appear at all and put a kibosh on it quickly before things spiraled out of control….

“PRINGERMON ZETA BEAM DOOD!” An explosion to my left sent assault programs flying everywhere.

Even more out of control I mean.

“Ah, yeah, Metal Etemon time baby~!” I promptly leapt forward, mostly to not be outdone by an exploding penguin digimon, and rammed my metallic right fist through an assault program that had been labeled a Brute.

Lifting the thing bodily into the air, I then threw it into its compatriots in an explosive display of strength with a second punch that didn’t go straight through it. Didn’t want both my arms to get stuck in it.

-Moon Cell Realm, edge of the upper city, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

We rose up and bombarded the edge of the city with rockets, then we deployed the Berserker Moogles.

That went well enough, even if the Berserker Moogles had no common sense in battle they were absurdly strong as they punched and slammed our enemy and spread out from where they were formed in at.

After they started successfully managing to clear a zone for us to land, we sent out three motorcycles from the open mouth of Castle Alexander’s dog shaped head… after having the Commandramon blast the surrounding airspace with a few thousand projectiles and missiles to clear it for our scout team. We were constantly being swarmed by Gunships, Moon Cell Watcher and Heli-troopers, no sign of Moby Dick.

The flying whale seemed to be quite busy with something on the opposite side of the city from us. We were only getting a visual shadow of it, but it was definitely engaged in some sort of fight far away from us. Were there more allies here that we didn’t know about?

“Don’t worry Pom, we’re coming…” I mumbled as I watched Canard rev the motorcycle with Sami riding behind him as he launched off the ramp that was Castle Alexander’s tongue, followed by Rokusho and Peppercat driving their respective motorcycles with Metabee and Krosserdog acting as their back gunners respectively.

They could switch to Skein Flyers at any time, but were sticking to the streets because the airspace around here was exceedingly hostile as the shakes and blasts hitting the castle could attest to. We watched the scout team head out and I turned my attention back to our surroundings.

We weren’t welcome here, but that’s to be expected at this point as Castle Alexander slowly hovered forward and continued clearing a space to land through numerous explosions.

-Rooftop in the upper city near the mall minutes later after seeing Castle Alexander launch an attack on the upper city, Pom-

“Okay Dormarch, go, Dolly and I can handle this!” Goodness knows every EP in the area is going to drop on my head when we do start aggravating the PLANT.

“Be careful mom…” Dormarch leapt up and teleported in the direction of Castle Alexander with Search Hunter, Shanty was kind of Cait Sith’s hostage at the moment and we’re trusting him to not hurt my little goat while I set up evacuating him and Shanty from the area safely.

Canard and the others are going to hear the fireworks at least once I start if he wasn’t busy already with the EPs, they’ll at least notice us taking a territory so we’re going.

As powerful as Moon Cell was… it was nice to know that even it had limitations, even if it wanted to destroy everyone. I’ll be glad if I never see any of its apocalypse causing options, it might just try to use them against me given its absolute hatred for my existence.

Several distortions appeared in the air to my left in the distance, they were a bit bright and full of numbers and strange symbols. I froze and hoped to not see the Eaters again… those things were horrifying and alien. Nothing came out of the distortion and I sighed with relief.

My very existence was causing glitches to occur and I was total Moon Cell anathema given the magical computer couldn’t handle me just being alive, which explains the egregious amount of enmity it had for me. At least that’s what Cait Sith said is Moon Cell’s reason to need me dead like yesterday.

“Can we handle it? I mean, I’m not doubting our abilities here, we’re really great, but it is just that we don’t have anything other than a reviver seed between us and death.” Dolly was staring at the mass of EPs we had to dive into to get at the nearest PLANTs we didn’t exactly have a good opening move, but we had the opening move locked down as long as we stayed hidden. We couldn’t do it forever and we were on a time crunch. “I ate the last Sitrus Berry we had… Shanty could have really used that huh?”

“No Dolly, you arguably needed it more, Shanty would survive her injuries and yours were far more dangerous.” Getting shot is no joke and even Dolly seemed to silently admit that I was right after taking several projectiles when she couldn’t use her board to defend herself while moving Shanty to safety. “Also you’re smaller, so the Sitrus Berry probably has a stronger effect and I really need you with me here.”

“So… how are we doing this?” Dolly didn’t think we could take the Brutes on top of everything else, she’s right. We didn’t have the numbers to watch each other’s backs, but I at least had an idea about how to kick off this territory capture with so many Elite EPs around.

“Dolly, say ‘summon fire’ while invoking your magic.” I knew Lu Bu was gone, but that didn’t mean the fire being Ifrit he had possessed was and we also had the ice being Shiva.

Dolly sat there for a moment and then reached a paw up to the red jewel on her helmet and then she grinned.

“Summon Fire!” Soon a beastly minotaur-like being appeared near us, he didn’t have the cow aesthetics that would put him squarely in the minotaur range… more like a giant horned lion made of flames.

Without Lu Bu’s face overlaying his appearance, Ifrit showed up in all his glory with a devilish fang filled grin and heat coming off of his body. He leapt over the side, already knowing exactly what we wanted him to do as he raised a blazing axe above his head and fell towards the defensive line around this particular PLANT.

A Brute was immediately slashed in half, along with whatever was standing behind it, then immediately caught fire and exploded outwards.

“Now say ‘Summon Ice’, I’ll… pay the cost on this one.” I was specifically not looking at my left hind leg as I said this, the golden wool wasn’t overtaking my last leg yet nor was it slowly consuming me. Using magic definitely exacerbates the issue.

Since I saw Dolly on the edge of going into a migraine from the cost of summoning just one of the entities we had on hoof, I had to hoof the bill for the other.

“Summon Ice!” Dolly said with my hoof on her back as I felt magic drain out me like a faucet going full blast on a bathtub back home.

That’s when Shiva appeared next to us, quickly generating an icy rapier and shield. One glance at Ifrit’s volatile lighting of the surroundings on fire and she shakes her head with a dry loving nostalgic smile on her face as she watched a swinging axe to mow down multiple enemies and send them flying before combusting violently. There was a hint of nostalgia on what was the advanced Ice Sprites face.

“Quick question, before you get into it… do you like reindeer by any chance?” I mean this was going to be one of the few opportunities to ask the strange ethereal entity the materia can summon.

“Only like? I worship only the best of them, love the games they play… hm-hm-hm. Also they’re quite fluffy.” She replied mentally, then leapt off the side of the building and stabbed straight through a Brute going for Ifrit’s back. Her sword of ice went straight through its core without slowing down, as if the core wasn’t made of sturdy material at all, as she landed on it and kicked off gracefully with a backflip.

The Brute dissolved into a shower of digital energy.

“Well that at least confirms something.” Makes me wonder about Velvet and Tinsel.

“Do I want to know?” Dolly stated flatly.

“Nope, let’s go!” I leapt over the side while pulling the Paralance from my back with my right hoof and angled it downwards. Dolly launched off with her board after me.

-Streets, Dolly-

Pom really did need me to watch her back as she slammed down into a Soldier and then used the impact to pogo into a baseball bat swing, which took down another.

I entered a hover and landed behind her already rolling looking for what I should be doing. Having used up a lot of magic already I needed to block something to top up and I had fire an ice right now… also that it could become something I could learn permanently had initially excited me.

Now… now I was less worried about how weak I was compared to everything Pom gets put through, I was her support and she needed that more than anything. I pulled the stone bone and chucked it forward and took a gun holding guy on a motorcycle, some mild revenge gotten there as I took them off their machine it went skidding to a stop without its rider.

The motorcycles at least looked awesome, I caught the bone and then looked for another opportunity as I stuck close to Pom who blocked projectiles and effortlessly swept through the less dangerous enemies while our called up buddies dealt with the major threats.

We knew where the PLANT was and it hadn’t moved, I could hear the hum of it producing all these guys trying to defend itself from the four of us. Without the ice gal and fire dude, we’d be up a creek with dealing with this many.

A flash and several powerful noises of a something hitting was heard behind me and I turned to see the ice gal protecting my back, she smirked at me and then charged forward to stab down another gun wielding biped.

The big flaming axe dude didn’t even care about the projectiles, he was simply evaporating them out of the air with the heat he was giving off.

I quickly put my attention back on Pom and assisting her, I’ve learned that even the little things I can do were a big help to any situation.

I leapt for a nearby light pole, upon grabbing it with my right paw. I let loose a powerful vortex using my flow motion and some mild wind energy, without actually casting Aero, to draw in and downed a number of helicopter arm dudes around us and my skateboard made short work of them as I spun around the pole at incredible speeds.

I launched from the pole and kept spinning for a bit generating a fierce attack that damaged some remote control flyer and lightning bot that came crawling around on building or hovering in the air. They were literally coming from every direction as soon as Pom appeared, when before they were just defending themselves from the big handsome fire dude and the lovely lithe ice gal.

Managed to even damage the spherical observer, those round eyes laser spewing things that were said to be connected to old Luna Blood. Yeah, the computer we were inside of had to be really ancient at this point to have this much weird stuff going on with it.

“Come on, where’s that A-lister of theirs?” I stated as I hovered in the air and pulled board in front of myself to handle a spray of projectiles that knocked me back, also recovered some magic… I was going to need more before I actually start using it.

“They are called Elites and we really need to make this PLANT work by defeating as many of these EPs as possible to get it to come out, then we need to beat it and take out the PLANT.” Pom explained as she locked herself in place and the motorcycle guy lost on the impact with her, as the lance took him entirely off the motorcycle and said motorcycle bounced from hitting her wool. “Stay focused Dolly!”

Her wool was so soft and yet so dangerous, I swear Pom could sleep anywhere with that kind of cushioning. Being a short furred dog wasn’t bad, but the advantages of having slightly thicker fur would be nice. Though in all this rain that would be kind of annoying… I wonder why Pom’s wool can’t handle bullets or other pointy things, she’s been growing her power in that right? I knew it could certainly handle liquids given the whole underwater scuba suit thing she can do.

-Pom-

I sometimes wondered what was going through Dolly’s mind, mostly because I wouldn’t invade her thoughts and respected her privacy unless I feel like I had to. If she wasn’t being focused with all the projectiles around, I’m afraid she could get hit and we’d have to rely on Dormarch to get us healing items quickly.

Swing the paralance as I closed it up I slammed the still strange mystical spear into a Brute and had it spike into its core on impact. It wasn’t instant destruction, but it was quick enough.

The real damage dealers here were Ifrit and Shiva, Ifrit was fighting far better than he had when he was mixed in with Lu Bu. To think he was a temporary combat ally, one that I was glad to have on my side.

Dolly slammed into the Crawlers on the nearby building and was using her ability to flow along the walls to knock them off the walls and attack the drones in the air above.

I swung out my right hoof and a shimmer appeared in the air and the several troopers that were trying to keep me pinned down on the other side of the paralance were suddenly shredded into digital energy.

Still required a lot of concentrating to control a single strand of wool hair was still tough for me than say controlling a small bundle, but it made for a powerful whip and grapple as needed. This helped me maneuver about and avoid being shot when swinging from light poles or walls and while the Troopers were here in fairly large numbers, but weren’t heavily armored.

A moment later the fight changed as the actual specific Elite of this particular PLANT appeared when all the other EPs cleared the space for it to show up, one that was not one of the many free range Brute’s around thankfully.

The elite produced was a little unusual, it was a bigger version of the four legged Crawler mechanical EPs that fired lightning bolts. This one reminded me a bit too much of Assassin Reapers due to the four spindly legs, the difference was the cylindrical body with the round disk like head that fired the lightning bolts.

It was in the same vein as any of the Magitek stuff I’ve seen before, the design aesthetic was really quite obvious after a while. At least with Cait Sith, his Magitek designs seemed more unique and far less robotic.

If it fired lightning like the other crawlers then… a lightbulb went off in my head and I grinned. I reversed the grip on the paralance so the canopy was protected by back and the back end was a sharpened point to be a lightning rod and then I carefully and quickly sent some wool out with a specific properties.

“Uh… Pom you’re kind of…!” Yes, Dolly, I’m aware I’m exposing myself to the Elite Crawler unit. In fact I was making sure the four legged machine tried to shoot at me and making sure to defend myself from anything else.

“Just keep doing what you were doing Dolly… covering me protectively, don’t you worry about what’s about to happen here!” I was smiling, because I remember the calmer times I’ve spent reading books about science and magical interactions.

Science and magic do interact fairly well, but the reason technology is so hard to get right with magic is because of some misunderstood underlying principles between both and the unusual physics involved.

That and Ocellus and Smolder had use the pegasus method of creating damaging bolts of energy through magical ionization from striking at clouds throughout our adventure. They did it enough that I was quite confident that what I’m about to pull would not only work, but actually exceed my expectations.

Dolly was knocking crawlers off the walls and hitting drones with the mystical stone bone, while fighting the much lighter enemies like the Troopers while Shiva and Ifrit dealt with the heavier stuff like Brutes or the occasional Sweeper that charge in.

The Elite Crawler finished charging its lightning and I just calmly waited as a barely visible shimmer in the air between me and it could be seen.

It blasted its lightning bolt at me and then what I had been waiting on happened, the energy caused a second lightning bolt to strike at me due to all the ionized energy in the air. Really the machine shouldn’t have shot electricity at me in the middle of the constant storm that was Midgar’s upper city. Also my wool could be selectively conductive magically as long as the electrical energy couldn’t be stabbed pass it like what happened to me in Cape Suzette… so...

The pointed back end of the paralance was a pointed tip I held in front of me at a particularly high angle, it was currently acting like a lightning rod with the canopy of the lance protecting my back from projectiles.

With the way my wool was flexed out in such a specific manner, given the principles of what was about to happen…

I didn’t get to think much longer as the Elite exploded in a violent flash of its own attack and the added lightning bolt that struck the paralance a second later.

Every ounce of energy was immediately redirected through me and into it through a wire of wool insulating me, but definitely not my target.

This is where the Elite Crawler fell to the ground with all four of its legs twitching in a splayed out manner, it was now smoking and arcing with electrical energy as a paralyzed mess. It might have been more of a trouble if I had to fight it in better conditions, but why use physical strength when there were sometimes easier options?

I’m surprised that even worked if all the buildings around had lightning rods too, but since lightning comes up from the ground it makes sense that ionizing the air here would cause a lightning bolt exactly when and where I needed it if I turned myself into a lightning rod.

All I had to do was yank myself forward at the machine using the wool wire and then… I slung the edge of the paralance’s canopy up, over, forward and down into the machine. I completely brained the thing to death in once easy swift motion.

The PLANT quickly appeared as it had lost its Elite in a most humiliating manner possible.

“Now focus on taking the PLANT!” The humming jellyfish thing just immediately lost its elite in a display of ingenious use of environment and a single hit, I wouldn’t have been able to do all of that if it didn’t have to ionize the air to attack me.

“Whoa, that was awesome!” Dolly shouted as she rammed the tip of her board into the PLANT doing some damage.

Shiva attacked as I was busy blocking hundreds of projectiles, her ice rapier barely did anything aside from put a nifty hold and some scratch marks in the machine.

Huffing loudly, Ifrit swung once… the PLANT ceased to exist in an overkill matter and the air caught fire, but the territory successfully turned. This also probably alerted Merak to where we were immediately, if he didn’t already when we sent Ifrit in initially.

“PLANT fighting retreat!” The PLANT started retreating and generating Berserker Moogles that seemed to stand around for a second before they were attacked by an EP and that set the Moogles all off into a frenzy. Yep, that’s the very obvious definition of the ‘berserker’ class, going wild and violent.

“Now what?” Dolly said as she landed on my back.

“Now we need a method to keep up with and protect the PLANT as it retreats towards Castle Alexander.” It was going fairly fast and was already off in the distance and leaving us behind, it would have to stop to generate defenses so I wasn’t worried it would get away. “I’m sure Cait Sith will be able to keep up with it.”

“What about the motorcycle from a guy I took out earlier?” Dolly asked with a wagging tail and I sighed.

“Oh no… well it would be better than running.” I could keep up with constant Dancing Flame. There was a reason I was trying not to use it at the moment. Something felt a little off about doing it at the moment, but not a bad kind of off. “What about… oh…”

Shiva and Ifrit were starting to disappear and we got the general message from both them, we had to go now!

“Hellfire/Diamond Dust!” The path to chase after the runaway PLANT was opened up by them as they faded away, both attacks going off created a series of powerful explosions that made Dolly shiver as she obviously remember what happened in the mystery dungeon when mixing hot and cold temperatures in an enclosed space in such a rapid manner.

We were spared from the effects of the magical blasts, but we wouldn’t have much free time to dilly dally around here!

Running over to the aforementioned downed motorcycle that didn’t look too badly damage, I quickly heaved it upright using my wool to move my body as it was stronger than I was physically. I quickly looked it over as I planted my butt in the seat and looked behind me at more incoming EPs, especially Moon Cell Watchers with their glowing red eyes.

“That’s gas or throttle, breaks are here for when you want to slow down, the steering is obvious so I doubt you need me to point that out, that looks likes the kickstand drop. Huh, that looks like a drift clutch when you want to turn in a crazy sharp manner, let off when you want to continue going forward after orienting. Huh, what’s this one lead to… afterburners ohoho-yeah, they really shelled out for these things huh! Use that for some extra speed.” Blinking at Dolly’s words as she pointed out all the function of the motorcycle, I stared at her blankly as she calmly rolled her eyes. “One of my family members may be subscribed to a magazine series with fancy British mopeds and motorcycle that he wants to steal the wheels from that I may or may not read from time to time. Look, I like awesome things okay, now get us out of here before we get hit!”

A laser nearly struck us and I immediately hit the gas in fright and the motorcycle came to life and shot off, guess I didn’t need to worry about keys or having to turn on the ignition in this thing. I angled the paralance behind me and locked it at an angle to shield us from aerial attacks from behind.

I really wished the thing hadn’t reared up while pelting down the road at such a ‘breaking neck’ speed, Dolly calmly took control of me and leaned me ever so slightly forward and righted ourselves immediately before giving me back control.

“Now after that PLANT Pom!” Dolly pointed forward and I realized something as we slowly caught up with the PLANT that was about to come under attack of several motorcycle wielding Troopers… the PLANT wasn’t heading in the direction of Castle Alexander. I said retreat while it was surrounded by enemies on all side so that could mean… oh gods and goddesses what have I done now?!

-Shinra Tower, Merak-

“There you are… sending the last Thousand Gunner I can spare that isn’t dealing with Bombs.” I was actually starting to feel fear that they might breach my defenses, that castle sure was making a mess at the edges of the upper city.

What I can’t understand is why the PLANT they just captured wasn’t heading straight toward it? In fact, it was currently seemingly trying to spiral slowing towards Shinra Tower? What were they up to… they’ve been fairly obvious, mostly predictable and rather easy to counter up to this point.

Deploying the MOTH Units and Helicopter manufactured as well. While I would like to save them for the defenses of the tower, I couldn’t take any chances that that they could somehow defeat the Thousand Gunner.

That ewe was annoyingly hard to kill and I could see why Moon Cell was quite worried about her… she’s being quite a thorn in my side and somehow surviving all the traps like a certain blue electricity spewing bastard.

What the…?!

I stared at another screen and saw the air glitching out and something white started poking through a distortion in space and wiggling about, something that somehow filled my misbegotten soul with terror that it wanted to eat me.

The red eye mollusk looking thing looked around as it plopped out onto the street and began to warp the area around it as it began eating things, an EP attacked it and was summarily consumed in short order. It was suddenly missing as if it never existed.

This happened to be in the same direction the ewe was heading in a counterclockwise manner through the city.

Moby Dick was too busy keeping the Slayer Dragon occupied, also I was more afraid of the Slayer Dragon than I was of that ewe… given he was actually succeeding in heavily damaging the whale.

Wait, why were there suddenly Archer Gekko… what the hell was that thing?!

Code red orders from Moon Cell, destroy that thing at all and any costs including throwing everything I had at it.

-Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

“Uh guys, everyone, the World Eaters are back.” I said quietly as I got an idea of where the PLANT was heading and why, I slapped my hoof against my face.

I can now understand completely and entirely why ponies face hoofed so often around my people!

Pom had put it into ‘Fighting Retreat’ and it almost felt like it was modeling its brain after a Berserker Moogle given what it thought a fighting retreat looked like. Fighting, by keep going into the enemies territory, then retreating in a sideways direction... still at the enemy.

“Canard please quickly intercept Pom and give her the spare visors you took with you, then let me inform her of the chaos that’s about to occur here. We’ll try to keep pushing towards the tower and hope that we can defeat Merak before that thing consumes the whole city.” That’s when Dormarch ran into the castle and teleported by us heading towards supplies storage in a hurry. “Dormarch is fine, he’s here with us for the moment, Shanty is still missing in action.”

-Upper City above where Artoria and Mash were invading the city, Minor Eater Territory, Eater Mother-

Hungry…

440. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 19.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Jaded La Perm-

“Okay, why come to me with this?” I asked of Starlight Glimmer as I glanced at Phyllis.

“Because apparently, according to some ancient history and the people that know you… well you were said to have given birth to a magical tree?” Starlight stated as the plant known as Phyllis seemed fairly healthy and… lively. As in it was moving about more than a bushy little plant should.

“Yes, but that is my first daughter, your situation is slightly different.” A living Philodendron wasn’t the weirdest thing I’ve seen, not by a long shot. “Given Phyllis is your familiar… well to put it bluntly, that’s slightly odd.”

I’ve seen Terra Tortoises with more odd plants on their backs, like Mr. Tortoise Snap who once invaded Sweet Apple Acres… the fact that he survived on the moon for a month before Luna brought him back to the planet was amazing, incidentally the moon has an mild atmosphere now. Terra Tortoises apparently produce a huge load of oxygen, which showed you how magical they are as mega fauna native to Equus.

As for how big Terra Tortoises could get, apparently it explains the existence of a place called Ankh-Morpork that Pinkie told me about. How they live on a giant turtle, with large elephants on its back, holding up a disc shaped world called Discworld. The people who lived on Discworld were fairly tame on what I considered weird from what Pinkie tells me.

“Do you have any ideas though?” Starlight asked. “I mean one day things were normal and then bam, my Phyllis is communicating to me a need for a little more water and it finally occurred to me that it was weird. Given I live in Ponyville with Pinkie Pie and most of Twilight’s other friends… I didn’t notice because I was getting so used to all the other weird stuff that happens there that I started to ignore or tune it out. It’s actually amazing how much a pony is willing to overlook in that town.”

“Maybe look into the possibility of Timberwolf related magical essence, I think Mr. Birch in Huoshan might be amicable enough to let you study him for a little bit. Provided you bring fertilizer, water and some tanning mirrors.” Yes, I may have bribed Pom’s cuddly canine menagerie once or twice. The Tenko is really hard to sell on a prank, but as long as it wasn’t anything illegal, the two tailed fox was fine with it when given well prepared fish and rice. With the world’s largest supply of fish jerky that wasn’t a problem… I just wish mom would stop producing the stuff to the point of absurdity. “Mostly To see if there are some similarities between him and Phyllis to see if she has a similar or common ancestry like that… also don’t leave Phyllis and Mr. Birch alone in a room together.”

“Why, what would I… oh… ew! Did you really have to put that thought in my head?!” Hey you were the one that understood what I meant Starlight. I saw your mind immediately went there as soon as I said it and how wide your eyes got by the point you said ‘would’.

“I didn’t put it there, you did. My comment was to not leave two possibly sentient plants in a room alone together you dirty minded unicorn you.” Then I grinned and altered the subject slightly. “So anything else or do you want to talk about, like the elephant in the room that is your passion for Sunburst and Trixie? I mean a naughty minded unicorn like you must have some ideas.”

“No… of course not.” Starlight Glimmers face lit up straight red.

“So would Sunburst be the ketchup and mustard condiments and Trixie would be the unique blue carrot as part of a carrot dog?” I watched as Starlight slam her hooves into her face in embarrassment.

“Please stop...” Starlight Glimmer whined.

“Says the mare that has the ‘buns’… of steel.” Well she came to me for advice, so she should have at least expected this much ribbing from an Abyssinian being catty.

“Ugh… can you be any more annoying?” Starlight finally calmed down after slammed her face into the table.

“Here’s your special order carrot dog, ma’am…” Savannah ‘The Wild’ winked at me as she said this with a bright smile as she put the order of hay fries and the carrot dog had a pink hued bun made of radish bread, a steaming blue carrot inside said bun and it was topped with ketchup and mustard.

I grinned at Starlight.

“Shut up.” Nobody would let Starlight live this one down given the order had been fairly specific.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar, Upper City, Mog Wash, Cait Sith-

I saw Pom drive off after the runaway PLANT on a motorcycle, she looked quite uncomfortable with driving it… poor lass probably didn’t have a license. Not that anyone around here would care about that, but still!

“Well that wasn’t the plan at all!” Muttering this as I looked to my personal Magitek Moogle Monster and he was currently holding a bindle over his right shoulder and staring blankly at me. He eventually shrugged blankly, about as much as could be expected from him as far as intelligence went.

“Don’t worry, I prepared an alternative PLANT to go after in case this happened and I just informed mom of this… I may have forgotten to mention having a backup plan in case something exactly like this happened.” Dormarch winced visibly, poor boy must be getting quite a mental earful from his mother. Psychic powers or incredible connections weren’t unknown to me. “Well while mom has them distracted, I’ll grab the PLANT. Can you feed Shanty these berries? They should help speed up her recovery, though I doubt it will fully fix her broken legs.”

He gave me a few curious looking berries and I nodded, he was off. Wondered how he accomplished having two fused cores like that? Normally trying something like that would kill most beings, eh must be something unique.

“Well come on then you lug, let’s go get these to Shanty before things go to heck in a handbasket.” Considering some of the things I was seeing going on in the upper city on several monitoring screens, maybe the lower city had it better at the moment with that rabid Bomb outbreak. I’ve seen plenty of things in my lifetimes, but an actual outright eldritch abomination outbreak from beyond some strange veil was quite terrifying. Those things were eating everything and they gave off a creepy feeling worse than being a near a Morbol. “Never mind we’re already there… at least this is drawing attention from my small ‘legitimate’ business.”

A grin crossed my face as I prayed Dormarch was quick with acquiring that PLANT.

-Heading towards the location of the recently acquired PLANT, Canard-

“Sami tell me you got an angle on it!” I turned the corner to the right and was on the right path directly towards the direction the PLANT was in and was even going in the same direction it was moving in.

“Give me three more seconds without any lateral movement. Also it’s not like I can reload this thing while we’re in motion, so I only have the one shot unless I want to scrape up my bazooka or we come to a complete stop!” Sami was on the back of the motorcycle and aiming at a helicopter inbound, likely here to attack Pom. “Brace yourself, firing into the a-hole!”

The bike shuddered and I swerved a bit wildly for a few seconds and the air was lit up with the sound of the helicopter firing a spray of machine cannon rounds in the distance, followed by a powerful explosion. It didn’t manage to shoot down the rocket Sami just fired at it

“Nice shot!” Metabee called out as he gunned down several Moon Cell Watcher’s with rapid fire from both his guns on his arm. “Let me finish it off… with some missiles!”

I glanced at Metabee and watched as numerous rockets exploded out of the split horn on his head and flew into the smoking helicopter that was even further damaged, but still flying. It was flying a lot slower than it was a second ago, its weapons were still fully functional too as it flew away instead of continuing on course and would likely circle back around later to attack us.

“That’s one tough helicopter.” Krosserdog said from our right, before shooting a Heli-trooper out of the air with his left rifle.

“Yeah, kind of want to see what it’d take to bring it out of the air now if my missiles aren’t enough for it!” Metabee sounded angry, but I was paying more attention to the road ahead of us.

“Guys, we’re driving towards an outbreak of Eaters… how are all of you this nonchalant about it?!” Peppercat screeched from her motorcycle on the right.

“Well we’re on fast moving modes of transport and they are not an immediate problem to us, hopefully we can reach Pom before it becomes a problem to her and us.” Rokusho stated calmly while keeping his eyes on the road and we were quickly catching up to the signal, there were also incoming Troopers on motorcycles from several of the roads we passed by. “Surely she’s with the slightly out of control PLANT.”

“Hopefully Elise is getting along with everyone back at Castle Alexander…” I grumbled as we were going full throttle and I had to quickly swerve out of the way of several trashed motorcycles on the road. Pom’s definitely quite busy ahead of us, the damage wasn’t consistent with what the Berserker Moogles can do.

“I’m sure Elise will be fine Canard, we’re the ones riding straight into a total mess and I can only hope that this isn’t turning into a one of ‘those’ kinds of missions in particular.” Sami stated pleasantly as she aimed her rifle and started picking off Troopers ahead of us. She sent their motorcycles careening into buildings, light post and each other, sometimes they acrobatically flipped befored landing on their noses or tails and violently exploded seconds afterwards.

The motorcycle riding Troopers started firing back with their machine guns, somehow they were able to shoot and drive at the same time. Not exactly the safest way to use a motorcycle and I watched as Rokusho and Metabee dealt with them by riding ahead, Rokusho using the big fist and pincer blade whereas Metabee just unloaded his guns on any enemy that he could visibly see..

“Got some coming up the rear!” Peppercat announced.

“I’ve got them!” I called out as I looked back and notice the enemy bikes were quickly catching up with us. I swerved to the left side of the road and then swerved hard right and thumbed a particular trigger on the steering.

A curving wall of light erupted behind us until I let off of the trigger and several motorcycles hit said wall behind us in an over the top explosive fashion. I only got like three of them, several more hopped up onto the walls of building and rode them over the wall of hard light, one was gunned off of their bike as Sami splattered them with a shot to the chest.

“Krosserdog and Peppercat bring up the rear, Krosserdog’s sniping could help us the best from there. Rokusho and Metabee in the middle for Metabee’s middle ranged options. We’re needed at the front with Pom!” We reoriented with the other two bikes slowing down as I pulled ahead, ahead of us I could see Pom and Dolly in the middle of defending themselves. “Keep them off of us while we get Pom back in contact with Ocellus to tell her about the situation!”

Dolly was rapidly swinging her skateboard around on the strap and smashing a Trooper off of their motorcycle to the right of them. Pom was busy blowing another away with a Thousand Spear fired from her front left hoof to deal with one coming up on their left.

Dolly looked back and looked ready to keep fighting until she noticed us, she waved to us with her free paw and turned to bark something to Pom with a wagging tail, she looked happy to see us. Pom certainly was when Sami gunned the several Troopers off their rides as we approached.

Pom nodded and looked back to see us before looking back forward at the runaway PLANT as it floated along the road at an incredible speed and it wasn’t stopping. She motioned for us to catch up, which we were already doing.

“Okay guys, protect our backs for a moment and don’t let any Troopers past you!” I got some affirmatives from Rokusho and Peppercat.

I had to wonder how fast that hovering PLANT was moving to be this hard to catch up with, but we were definitely catching up with Pom and she needed a new visor after she lost the previous one to whatever those things Pom had been fighting were.

“Pom, are you okay?” I called out once we got close enough to be in hearing range.

“No, I’m not okay, these last two days or however long it’s been since we entered Midgar has been quite horrible!” It was obvious to anyone that Pom needed help in some way, shape or form. By the sound of it she also needed a hug, a very long one where she could cry as much as she wanted… wonder how Mallory was doing.

Well she might start crying when she hears Eaters had emerged in this realm and were back at it again.

“Got a visor for you!” Carefully getting the motorcycle up next to hers and making sure we weren’t about to come under attack, I quickly reached into a pouch and passed the device to her, she took it in her right hoof and slapped it on the side of her head. “Ocellus wants you to contact her!”

“Thanks!” Stated Pom, it was hard to hear each other over the roar of the air whipping by us, but she was back in communication with us and we knew Dormarch was alright.

-Pom-

“Did you need something Ocellus? It’s kind of busy out here.” I said as I tried to keep the motorcycle on the road under fire from the motor Troopers coming up behind us, really did not get a chance to drive a motor vehicle back in Dolly’s world. Sure I flew the flying scooter thing during the robot attack on Camden, but not much more than being a passenger otherwise.

The Plant immediately veered to the left and then went shooting up a highway… I whimpered, sighed and then veered the same way followed by Canard, Rokusho and Peppercat.

“Pom, nice to hear your voice, but you’ve got trouble ahead, there are Eaters and you’re kind of heading straight towards them! Turn that PLANT around and bring it back to Castle Alexander or barring that, lead the Eaters towards the central towers defenses.” Well it was obvious Ocellus knew me well enough to know I can’t avoid the Eaters seeing me and coming after me, at least that’s what she believes and I was agreeing with that belief if we’re heading right for them. “The EPs around the cities are constantly shooting down our missile barrages and we’re concentrating on holding the edge of the city at the moment. So we really can’t move for the time being.”

“Can’t you like, I don’t know, remotely control it or something?” My question was met with silence.

“There’s a slight problem with that… it seems like the PLANT is in fact allied, but it isn’t registering our control over it for some reason. I think the order you gave it is messed something up.” Like that’s good news to hear while going up to one hundred miles an hour to just keep up with the darn thing Ocellus. “Can you tell me what you were doing and why you decided to grab a PLANT now, it seems like you were safe with laying low until you attacked one on purpose.”

Which reminds me, Dormarch was carrying out a backup plan without any backup and I was worried about him. He seemed to be fighting the EPs alright enough and the few Berserker Moogle that the PLANT ahead of me summoned were helping him. Please do keep going through with your plan Dormarch and get Cait Sith and Shanty to safety.

“Shanty is fine, Dormarch is apparently taking care of her injuries and a backup plan for securing our VIP NPC we met out in the field, he’s doing that while we’re busy drawing every EP in the area from this current ongoing incident. I would naturally choose to just let the PLANT I’m chasing go and be entirely done with it, because at the moment it is far more trouble than it’s actually worth keeping around given the danger it’s about to get me into, but in this case we really need a diversion for our enemy and I have an idea if the Eaters are around…” Incident was the nicer than the words I actually wanted to say for all of what was happening here. “I originally meant to get this PLANT to an NPC so he could ride it back to Castle Alexander. Now I’m just going to use it as live bait, unfortunately that involves all of us drawing them towards the central tower.”

“Nothing is ever simple with you is it?” Ocellus stated flatly and sighed audibly over the visor’s communications. “How important is the NPC you found at least?”

“He can specifically upgrade APs and create ones wholesale, it’s why you can use those Berserker Magitek Moogle Monsters. He’s the one that gave them to you.” Those things were fairly unique to say the least and I thought they were kind of roughly cute. “He just wanted a PLANT for his own use and safety in making his way to Castle Alexander to be secure with the other NPCs under our employ.”

There was a moment of silence from my end, I could hear Ocellus talking with several people.

“... Quetal has volunteered to take some skiffs out to do a pickup with the Pokémon Companions and Dodo. Inform us where Dormarch is and we’ll have them go over there and help him secure one.” It was nice that Ocellus, and hopefully everyone else listening in, was on the same page about how important Cait Sith was to us currently. Since we were all kind of tired of the random grab bag APs we’ve been getting with summoning new units even if they had been quite useful so far, but we needed the capability to make upgraded EPs to at least fight Brutes which were exceedingly common elite level EPs around here. “Keep up the distraction as well as you can, you’ve got a lot of angry coming down on you soon and watch out for those Eaters!”

“No comment about how I’m going to be acting as live bait for beings that generally eat things out of existence?” I asked as I crept the motorcycle closer to the PLANT at the speeds we were going.

“Please come back alive with everyone else Pom, I know you can do it.” Well that was a sweet vote of confidence Ocellus. “As for Dormarch, where do we send our help? Maybe we can speed up the process of acquiring that NPC.”

“A mall with a laundromat called Mog Wash, send the skiffs there.” With that said I whimpered and took back control from Dolly as we got to the highly mobile PLANT. “Exit the highway towards the central tower, avoid getting damaged!”

The PLANT seemed to acknowledge the orders, but kept going the way it was. Now all we could do was fight on motorcycles in what would have to be one of the craziest things I’ve ever done. I really doubt Merak’s defenses accounted for Eaters and they can take a lot of damage and distract the defense systems to let us get through to the tower. Provided we can even attract their attention.

“Uh Pom, the checkerboard slugs are back…” I looked up and saw a few of them gnawing on a building and saw a mass of mouths and tentacles in the distance. I THOUGHT WE DESTROYED THAT THING BY COLLAPSING AN ENTIRE CITY ON IT!

Said checkerboard mollusks noticed us and started coming at us, this also caused a massive swarm to fly up in the sky and start heading our way.

“Incoming Eaters, look out from above!” My words were met with everyone concentrating on any red glow coming from the darkness from outside the streetlights lighting up the highway as said Eaters seemed to be constantly growing in the rain… which wasn’t a good thing, but it was slowing them down somewhat.

“You think that’s bad Pom, we got incoming enemy manufactured and EPs coming up on us from behind!” Slowing down and in the lights of the highway behind our four motorcycles, I saw two large ball shaped things rolling up on us fast and the top halves unfolded into upper torso with exhaust pipes sticking up out of its back, mantis like arms ending in two claws and their head had a long pointy drill sticking out of where their face would be. The spheres underneath them opened up into spinning four blades that started spinning rapidly they started hovering after us.

A spotlight came from a slightly smoking helicopter as it flew overhead and we entered a tunnel before it could really do anything. We were in a tunnel with several Eaters chasing us and they would be attacking us and the EPs indiscriminately.

“Keep the PLANT alive, we need it to lead us towards the central tower!” I called out. “We’ll need to lure the Eaters in that direction as well.”

“Can I just say that it’s been nice knowing you guys.” Peppercat stated with a whimper. “If I’m going to die here, I at least want to tell Krosserdog I love him.”

“Wait, what?!” Metabee wasn’t the only one surprised by the reveal, even Rokusho was staring at her with shock. Krosserdog didn’t seem all that surprised.

“Like a brother you idiots, not like your thing with that Neutranurse you’re always going on about Metabee!” Did not want to know what that was about Peppercat. “Though we could really use a Neutranurse digibot right about now. Also you two are my brothers too you know!”

“I accept the responsibility of being an elder sibling.” Rokusho stated with a hint of humor as we gunned our motorcycles down the wildly curving tunnel.

“Not the time for pessimism Peppercat, focus on keeping us upright and out of danger.” The rock steady Krosserdog stated bluntly as he turned his right rifle back and fire off a shot that took down a motorcycle.

“Aren’t the defenses going to be shooting at us when we get closer to the tower?” Asked Sami while we still had time before we had to engage the incoming enemy.

“If they aren’t shooting primarily at the Eaters when we get there, then the enemy servant will be doomed to fall by being eaten for ignoring them.” Even if we do die so does the servant, since Eaters are really just that dangerous.

“Okay let’s do this thing!” Metabee stated as he fired his missiles and the machine guns built into his arms taking out quite a few of the motorcycle Troopers and the spherical bottomed enemy manufactured got closer. The Eaters were slow, but they were able to accelerate pretty quickly, it made me wonder if they consumed all the air they touched too.

We soon split off from the tunnel and were now riding along a tunnel with train tracks? Uh oh… please don’t tell me that EPs are going to try and run us over with a train here.

“Before we start, real quick, what’s a Neutranurse do?” Curiosity caught my mood for a second.

“It’s a Digibot medic that does two things, heal and create barriers to protect patients, they can use their energy to even heal biologicals if you can believe it. They were made in response to digidestined getting hurt a lot and since digidestined are generally children, it was a good idea to invest in healing focused digibots.” Peppercat stated with a flat look in her eyes. “Now if only we had one here with us to keep us all alive!”

-Four Bikes and a lot of trouble-

Canard revved the motorcycle and took the front ahead of everyone.

Sami, Krosserdog and Metabee opened fire on our tails as they tried to catch up to us, several Troopers were blown up under their fire.

“When we reach for heights, we do so with speed~!” Metabee sang.

“Nothing but these top of the line models coming from me~!” Sami followed and Pom could naturally feel the heart song reverberating through the tunnel.

“Doing my part, my part, kick off a start~!” Krosserdog joined in as he blasts away at the Troopers coming up the rear with several spiraling blade drones trying to shoot at them.

“Always got trouble coming after us for free~.” As Pom veered out of the way of the fire chewing at the rear armor on her stolen bike, from the machine guns coming from behind.

It didn’t help that the spherical bodied machines were catching up and threatening the four bike riders with their claw arms, drill faces, spinning blades in the middle of their torsos and all their sharp edges in general.

“We’re doing this on bikes going up to one oh three~!” One could feel Dolly’s grin and a rapidly waggling tail as several motorcycle Troopers exploded through the ceiling almost taking out her and Pom by landing on them or shooting in their direction after catching everyone entirely off guard.

“Our part, our part, is to kick off the start~!” The four drivers sang together, even if Pom didn’t like a heart song starting up when driving the dangerous vehicle she was on in the middle of what was quickly going to become a heated fight while chasing after the PLANT, one of which had an odd idea of how to get closer to the central tower since it had dragged them from a highway into tunnel that was connected to a subway.

“Oh are sure your ready girl, Dolly are you ready now~?” Pom was looking at Dolly worriedly as she got up while holding the skateboard ready to launch off and actually

“Whoa, yeah~!” Dolly launched and took the head off a Trooper by kicking off it with the back of her board and had no trouble keeping up with the four bikes as she started grinding along the nearby rails on her board sideways. “Kick start our part, lets blow them apart~!”

Rokusho bashed slowed down and held out his massive fist to clothesline a Motor Trooper, while he was doing that Metabee was spraying the tunnel behind us to deal some damage to the dangerous looking MOTH units.

“Whoa, yeah, gravy~!” Dolly shouted as she used her momentum control to do a spinning kickflip to take out the back tire on one of the motorcycles and landed on her board as the motorcycle flipped an exploded into two other as several more fell to fire from Sami’s rifle. “Whoa, yeah, kick start our part, hope we that aren’t stopped~!

“Whoa, yeah, maybe~!” Peppercat leaned her motorcycle and dragged her claw along it and electricity started building up behind the four bikes and the entire tunnel exploded with electricity arcing behind the four bikes.

This stunned several Motor Troopers and slowed down the spherical bodied MOTH units, until they sped up again moving faster than their motorcycle riding allies could currently go.

One of the MOTH units was specifically going for Dolly.

“Fighting on a skateboard in a narrow place~.” Dolly kicked off the ground and skid up the left wall before launching herself at the MOTH unit that was coming at her, she swung the stone bone and deflected off the spinning drill face and went skidding along the floor as the four spinning torso blades angled at widened eyes.

“We need to save the little lady with some grace~.” Rokusho sang as he spun the motorcycle three hundred and sixty degrees. He deflected the spinning torso blades downwards into the ground of the tunnel with his pincer blade, causing the MOTH Unit to flip and tumble away.

The second MOTH unit came up on Rokusho and Dolly while Metabee was in the middle of cycling ammunition. It was about to sweep forward with both claws and spinning blades.

“My heart, my heart, don’t stop my heart~!” Pom stated worriedly as she hit the afterburner on the bike and rode it up the wall like she saw the Troopers doing to get at them when they still had Metal Hound 002 and then she slammed the breaks while angling the Paralance downwards at an angle with her right hoof. A sharpened pointy end forming where the usual dull pointed top of the parasol lance was.

The paralance slammed into the chest of the second Moth Unit tearing a large rent into it as Pom slammed into, hitting the gas Pom pulled the paralance free and hit the afterburner to catch up with Rokusho, Metabee and Dolly.

Pom did so before could get could get hit by the retaliatory swipe from the MOTH Unit as the spherical bottomed machine fell behind into a tumble from the damaging blow as the other MOTH Unit caught up to them again.

While all this was going on Krosserdog and Sami were dealing with Drones flying up behind them, Motor Troopers still managing to catch up with powerful afterburners or simply Crawlers dropping from the ceiling of the tunnel and try to get a lucky shock blast off or self-destructing in an attempt to knock anyone off their respective motorcycles or the one skateboard.

“Say we’ve got trouble, trouble in the skies…~” Canard sang as the tunnel exited out onto a massive and long bridge crossing a large expanse heading towards the central tower region of the city, the PLANT was still leading them towards the Central Tower correctly, but it had a funny way of going about it.

The smoking helicopter was still keeping track of them and looked to be preparing to fire its machine cannon on the four bike riders, along with a compliment of wing mounted missiles.

Said tower started turning its defenses towards the four motorcycles and Dolly quickly hopped back onto Pom’s as hundreds of projectiles started tearing into the structural integrity of the bridge they were currently crossing. That alongside the crossfire from the helicopter and the encroaching MOTH Units and Motor Troopers, they had long since left the Eaters behind.

“This is just looking like another good time~.” Sami sang wistfully as she tossed a grenade over her shoulder and damaged one of the two MOTH Units with a blast from the Commandramon signature move of the ever modifiable DCD Bomb.

“Our part, our part, kick off our part~!” They all sang, as they tried to avoid the massive amounts of gunfire that the rapidly deteriorating girders absorbing all the damage for them was causing the bridge to start quickly buckling. The PLANT didn’t have to worry about falling, the motorcycle riders did.

“Ooh are you ready guys, oh we need to go now-now-now~!” Canard said as he looked up as he slowed down to being behind his allies and quickly swept to the left and right across the bridge several time while producing several curving walls of light that caused the enemy to fall behind or get destroyed by ramming into the overly solid masses of energy that would eventually disappear.

Not only was the helicopter a problem, but the central tower apparently had military grade artillery arcing up in the air and down towards the bridge they were all on.

All four bikes sped up, Pom’s was the fastest among them with the afterburners and a large hole was blasted upwards in her path.

“Whoa~?!” Pom stated as she ramped off an upward part of the recently blasted hole in the bridge and managed to clear the gap, her hind legs flailing in the air before her body slammed into the motorcycle and she grunted. She had to quickly veer out of the way of an artillery shell trying to land on her head a second later.

Even if the Paralance could take it, Pom figured their bodies likely wouldn’t survive the shockwaves of a direct hit.

“Yeah~!” Dolly was enjoying the general awesomeness of what was happening here as she clutched to Pom’s back as they landed and skidded sideway before Pom managed to right them. “Kick start our part, it’s just the start~!”

“Whoa, yeah, maybe~!” Metabee sang as he fired his head missiles to intercept the missiles coming from the helicopter flying sideways and trying to get its machine cannon fire on them.

“Oh yeah, kick start our part, hoping we don’t get stopped~.” Peppercat sang as she drove through plumes of fire and exploding bits of bridge, the bridge behind them started to collapse and fall downwards.

“Aero~!” How Dolly found the moment to add that to the song was anyone’s guess, but she created a horizontal vortex ahead of the bikes that launched them forward even faster than they were already going when they passed through it.

“Yeah, maybe-~!” Rokusho sang as his motorcycle roared and went into a wheelie, then spun the motorcycle so that the front tire smashed against one of the battered MOTH Units as he finished the full three sixty spin and settled back down into the back of the four bike formation.

As the bridge tilted downwards and was collapsing they managed to ramp off the end of the bridge before it collapsed underneath them and they were on the other side and much closer to the tower now.

The MOTH Units fell with the other Motor Troopers as the bridge fully collapsed.

Pom slowed down and was having a slight panic attack with how she was breathing consider how close those artillery shells had been. Also if they fell, it would have taken her forever to get back up here and this close to the tower. They were on a road ridge following the PLANT at a more sedate pace as it traveled upwards.

“When my unit disbanded, all I needed… needed was a laugh~.” Sami sang with tears in her eyes as she hugged Canard’s back, some of her post traumatic stress disorder actually getting to her from being on so many suicide missions and surviving up to this point. She was laughing that they had even made it across that expanse alive and were currently in cover. “Years gone by, I’d say I’ve kicked some ass…~”

Sami put her rifle on her back and cuddled against Canard’s back sniffling.

“Well I’m in rage, Sami we’re winning at this stage~!” Canard sang as he leaned into the cuddle and looked down at his partner, he was talking about them beating Moon Cell and nothing was going to stop them now after having come this far. “Adrenaline is now pushing through our brains, and I’d say your still kicking ass~!”

“Say ooh-ahhh… Canard, my heart, I hope this feeling never stops~.” Sami said tenderly, before Metabee brought her out of her thoughts.

“Well I think it’s time for us to rock-~!” Metabee shouted as he pointed his guns at the helicopter that swept in behind them and they could see the two MOTH Units moving up the completely vertical sections of the fallen bridge from the angle they were

Sami immediately had her rifle ready and pointed to the sky at the helicopter, as did Krosserdog and his arm rifles. The bikes sped up again as did the PLANT as several missiles came in at them from the helicopter.

Surprisingly several Berserker Moogles popped up in the air flapping their hilariously tiny wings to hover vaguely for a few seconds and then promptly got blown apart by the helicopter’s missiles. This however protected the four bike riders as they started up a spiraling road towards the portion of the city within the perimeter of the towers defenses.

The two hovering MOTH Units were giving chase as was the helicopter around the winding bend. Looking up and away from the pathway they were riding up Pom saw hundreds of guns pummeling the many Eaters flooding the sky heading towards the tower and the defenses were focused entirely on dealing them. This mean they had a possible opening to get up close to the central tower.

None of them expected to get this far and had at least expected some kind of trap or maneuver to slow them down.

“Whoa, yeah, we did our part, we got far off start~!” As she sang this, Peppercat sent a lightning ball flying back into one of the two approaching MOTH Units damaging and slowing it down and the one with a rent slashed at Canard’s back end.

Canard pulled his hockey stick out and slashed up the left clawed arm and then fended it off by holding it in place as Sami started tossing sticky explosive device onto its lower body while avoiding the spinning blade of the bulbous lower torso. One of the explosives managed to get inside the bottom of the bulb of the robot.

“Whoa, yeah, cr-cr-craving~!” Sami slapped a claw against Canard’s back and he sped them up into a wheelie while pushing the motorcycle forward and then trying to hit the MOTH Unit with a wall of light and it avoided it by riding up the nearby wall. Then Sami detonated, the explosive and the manufactured practically blew apart. “Whoo, yeah, blow up my heart, hope it never pops~!”

“Whoa~!” Rokusho stated as he and Pom doubled teamed the other MOTH Unit, with the paralance and his pincer blade respectively, they locked up both its arms and then it turned on its face drill and tried to stab at Pom with it.

“Yeah~!” Metabee, blasted its shoulder with rockets from his head horns and started fire at the blades on its lower body damaging them.

“Maybe~!” Pom stabbed the paralance down into the spin blade, something caught and then the bottom section broke, but it was still going as it pressed Pom’s side and motorcycle into the nearby wall with its right claw forcing her to make her wool frictionless.

It brought its head back and tried to stab it forward at Pom, only for Dolly to knock the drill up and away from Pom’s body.

Canard came in with his hockey stick to slash up at the back end of the drill close to the face and it became misaligned.

Yet the Moth Unit was still trying to stab it at Pom who lifted her left hind leg off the motorcycle and with a surprising show of strength dented the chest plate of the thing using her wool as exoskeletal muscle outside of the wooly wolf shift. She forcefully started to push the machine back while trying to leverage herself the wall while Dolly kept the motorcycle under control.

“Whoa, hey~!” This is when Krosserdog opened his forehead and fired a powerful shot blew away the drill and face showing the wires underneath. “To kick off our part, we got to start~!”

“Oh yeah, maybe~!” Canard used his hockey stick to hook its lower torso and tried to pull it away from Pom and at least managed to pull it into the line of fire of the helicopter machine cannon that now had opportunity to fire on them when they were all distracted trying to help Pom.

“Whoa, yeah, kick off the start, hope we’re never topped~!” Metabee unloaded into the MOTH Unit’s side and it still refused to let Pom off the wall and was trying to dig its claws into her.

A shaped charged suddenly planted itself inside the open part of the lower torso and Sami immediately detonated and Pom fired a bark blast into the resulting hole and the MOTH Unit went flying off the side of the spiral there were now on and managed to right herself on the motorcycle while putting Dolly on her back.

“Whoa, hey~!” Dolly stated as Pom pulled Dolly onto her back and retook control even under fire from the helicopter. Dolly looked excited as they approached a ramp at the top of the upwards spiral they had gone into. “Ok guys, let’s rock their house~!”

They reached the top of the spiral and Dolly was pointing at the tower over Pom’s left shoulder as they launched onto the proper streets around the tower and were on approach for it, only there was a problem in the way. At the end of the street in the distance was a Thousand Gunner started spinning up its rotary machine cannons, along with several Sweepers readying their machines guns.

Several of the shots hit the group of motorcycles as they closed in and swerved wildly through the volume of heavy projectile fire coming at them, the helicopter hitting them from behind with Machine cannon fire wasn’t helping either.

Metabee, Krosserdog, Sami and Dolly all looked between each other and the helicopter flying straight forward behind them as Canard, Pom, Rokusho and Peppercat tried to avoid being shredded by the incoming fire. Most of it was centered on Pom of course, she put the motorcycle into a wheelie to block most of the shots with the motorcycle she was using and started moving forward to absorb the hundreds of impacts tearing away at the motorcycle underneath her.

It would only be seconds before the motorcycle would be rendered useless and rendered a pile of useless holey metal cheese.

Metabee, Krosserdog, Sami and Dolly all nodded to each other and turned as one and looked at the helicopter.

Dolly started swing her skateboard around and looked at the light pole and mentally told Pom to hang right while everyone hang left. This drew the fire off of the other three motorcycles and more towards Pom who was enemy number one for Moon Cell.

Pom hoped that whatever Dolly was planning it better happen soon because there wasn’t much bike left as the front of it was mostly gone now and the rear engine was barely keeping them going at a pace with the others..

Metabee, Sami and Krosserdog all started unloading everything they had at the helicopter, but at a specific point of it… they blew off the controlling tail rotor with the most accurate fire they’ve ever put out in their lives. It was Krosserdog who managed to succeed to land the decisive shot with a precision double fired single shot from both rifle arms, that not only blew off the tail rotor, but sent the helicopter flipping forward at all of them.

What happened next was Pom getting a signal to jump as they reached the street corner where the Thousand Gunner sat still blasting away at her. Pom leapt forward opening the paralance to block the tirade of projectiles energy, bullets or otherwise and Dolly lashed out the board and hooked the street lamp to swing them both out of the way and launch them at a nearby alleyway around the corner to the right.

Pom quickly took cover without prompt as soon as her hooves hit the street, with Sweepers sending streams of shots following the heels of her rapidly moving hooves as she quickly ducked out of sight. The remaining chunks of scrap metal that used be the bike she used plowed a Sweeper into a building a second later.

Canard, Rokusho and Peppercat with still mostly intact, if heavily damaged, bikes skidded into sharp left with all their tires squealing as they shot away down the street a block and swerved back around to watch the fireworks of the helicopter ramming into the Thousand Gunner and exploding violently.

The PLANT just simply floated up and away from the explosion and then promptly stopped and started producing Berserker Moogles like crazy flooding the surroundings streets.

“Let’s do our part-~!” The six still on bikes all intoned slowly together as they looked towards the nearby tower.

-Shinra Tower, Top Floor Suite, Merak-

Were my eyes twitching, they had to be twitching and I lost track of all of them a minute later. They got to the inner city?! Not only that, but they were all alive as well including that ewe?!

There was a lot of anger in my grumbling. Instead of attempting to get through on something like tje Skein Flyers he had seen, which he was quite sure they couldn’t have gotten through even the Aerial Assault Program forces if they tried, much less the anti-air guns, they just did it with motorcycles.

They got through all the defenses on freaking motorcycles... and none of them died doing it despite the artillery and just about everything they just went through?! He even had the tunnel trapped to collapse reinforcements into the chase…

“How the ever living- (Insert euphemisms for the desire to hug someone close, while yelling about a yellow brown spotted dog called a Jeep Jeep Hooey Hound being where it is currently not, which is being in your room at this very moment)!”

-Small territory, streets near Shinra Tower, Pom-

“Hey, Ocellus… where are we? Yes, we’re actually near the central tower if your getting my signal… apparently the PLANT had a decent route plotted out and everything and the Eaters are soaking up most of the defenses into the inner city at the moment so we should be fine until they start eating the infrastructure to the place.” Also we were in a pretty good position, the Berserker Moogles were already causing trouble to the surrounding EPs, we told them not to destroy the building, but otherwise they are allowed to go wild on the enemy. It was impressive to watch really when you asked them to go wild, never saw big white fluffy toy like things unleash such clinical mechanical terror quite like that before. Cait Sith must really like those things if they are this powerful. “Yeah, I’m surprised we did too… but I think it was the heart song bump that got us through all that. Also the central tower is called Shinra Tower and Corporation… which has the subtitles ‘Not an Evil Corporation’ written underneath that... in big bold letters, it is also underlined three times and has three large exclamation points following it. Yeah… couldn’t be more obvious if they tried with the cities overly hazardous design and lack of anything approaching OSHA or anything approaching a single safety measures from what I've seen. Please hurry and get here soon, we're taking the fight to Merak in the hopes of dealing with him quickly before he pulls anything out of nowhere. Well if we can defeat him before the Eaters spread too far, maybe it'll solve the problem with the Mother Eater? If it doesn't we'll evacuate and collapse the whole realm to be sure.”

A bit of silence as I listened to Ocellus talking in the rain and looked up at the massive daunting tower before us. Lightning flashed, making it look all the more ominous as the nearby tower reached up into the dark clouds.

"Yeah, this is going to be a thing." Running a hoof over my forehead as the cold rain dripped down my body, I leaned against the alleyways wall. "Just break through when you can, we've got a servant to try and beat quickly, only we're the head start on that effort. Good to know Elise and Cait Sith are quickly adjusting, now if you'll excuse me... I have to break open a vending machine and chug a few bottles of Hi-Potion."

441. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 20.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar, Inner Upper City, two hours later, Pom-

Several destroyed vending machines, five Potions, some snacks, two taken territories and a bath later, we were as ready as we were going to get.

I had actually been hit by the Thousand Gunner several times, but flesh wounds weren’t exactly an issue apparently. Well bleeding out was still a problem for me, but Potions helped a lot with saving on the few Sitrus Berries Dormarch transported to us.

Cait Sith and Shanty had been successfully extracted from Mog Wash to Castle Alexander still trying to work its way inwards. Moby Dick was apparently fighting someone, a single person was managing to give that deadly thing a lot more trouble than it bargained for and it was the same guy we crossed paths with… gods speed to him. We didn’t want Moby anywhere near the Eaters where it could possibly get taken over.

Merak was obviously having problems with the Eaters, he couldn’t really focus as many of the cities defenses on us as he wanted to and we were currently sitting at a stalemate at the front door to Merak’s last line of defense, the tower.

Three PLANTs worth of Berserker Moogles was actually managing to hold the small foothold, on the defensive the moogles were holding the territories indefinitely from the EPs. Their raw physical strength and being ludicrously tough was our boon at the moment, even if they weren’t very special at other things.

The three motorcycles Sami was using were being repaired for our ascent through the tower, which Dormarch was currently scouting. Apparently… there were no defenses around the staircase…. none, none whatsoever… but why though? All it would take is us going through a few floors of the parking garage, we’d be able to enter the staircase and we’d bypass a monumental amount of the buildings defenses. The elevators would be faster, but would be absurdly protected and under Merak’s direct control.

I wasn’t under any illusion that Merak wouldn’t be ready and waiting for us to invade, he knew we were here and about to do so. He had to be well prepared for us near the top of the tower, a tower heavily surrounded by aerial forces.

Kind of wish Ocellus hadn’t sent me a visual of the Mother Eater, it was tearing the city apart and taking over it one bit at a time and swarms of Eaters were going everywhere like the Bombs in the Lower City. At least the bombs weren’t eating everything, just setting everything on fire and blowing up a lot of stuff.

We at least got some warning to our allies to avoid them at all through Mundo flying through enemy airspace again. Lucha Mundo was a hero to our estranged allies that attacked me once, still didn’t know what that was about and I needed a talk with the two named Artoria and Mash to clear the air.

Getting any more people into the inner upper city was not going to be easy, at least not until we had Merak entirely distracted with whatever huge fight he was going to put us through to get to him on the upper floors. There was nowhere else he could be really.

Fou’s forces were being held back a little bit by the ceiling cannons in their invasion point in the Lower City, we only destroyed the power to the cannons of the section of the Lower City we invaded.

Our allies were actually managing to sneak through the enemy territory and were managing to not alert the ceiling cannons to their presence as their APs assaulted the walls.

Merak’s attention had to be all over the place, that or mostly squarely on us. Didn’t know, but Elise said he was a lazy genius, so he probably put the most defenses into what would be our path while he prepared.

I felt Dormarch on the approach for our current base of operations, a ritzy hotel lobby. Never been in a hotel this fancy before. Even the palace in Huoshan doesn’t do this much gaudy frippery, at least the hotel rooms were not overdoing it as the lobby entrance was.

“Hey, everyone, the staircase seems to be entirely unguarded from what little I’ve been able to determine, I still don’t know why though.” I’ve had time to think about it Dormarch and the answer was fairly easy given what Elise told us about Merak.

“I have an idea.” Drawing attention of everyone present, which was Canard, Sami, Peppercat, Krosserdog, Rokusho and Metabee. Dolly was being lazy on a pillow nearby and complaining that it wasn’t as nearly as comfortable as I was… which was a compliment to my talents to being very fluffy and soft.

Dormarch was the only one able to get through the defenses without possibly serious injury using his Search Hunter signature ability, so currently we didn’t have much support here and we were the ones that had to get into the tower to start the process of taking Merak down.

“Well?” Canard asked looking a little impatient as he watched out for EP attacks that might surpass our Berserker Magitek Moogle Monster defense line. He was almost as paranoid as I was, even then he still got in a personal shower too to wash off all the sweat from being so close to death constantly.

“I recall Elise telling us that Merak was lazy genius… anything that seems like exercise would be his anathema, he probably wouldn’t expect anyone to take the stairs and to use the much faster and obviously highly trapped elevators.” Even if they were trapped they would get us through the building much faster than taking the stairs… if we intended to do it on hoof. Sami’s moto bars could put a skein flyer in the space the staircase winds their way up the building and we could just fly up the space between all the stairs. “As for what we’re going to do, we’re taking the stairs instead of whatever Merak has planned for us. Since we’re going to be sneaking through the garage, we’ll see if he has any machines waiting for us there… but otherwise once we exit the garage to the lobby we take the stairs. Something that Merak likely won’t expect because he wouldn’t do it himself.”

“So we’re using his personal bias against him?” Yes that is exactly it Dormarch, who was my intelligent and cuddly three tailed Dalmatian fish boy! You were, cuddles and petting ensued as I gave him my affection. Dolly wasn’t in the mood apparently and was relaxing before we got into the real meat of the problem here. “The elevators are big enough to carry a Thousand Gunner on them so, probably for the best we don’t get into a fight between the two elevators as we rise up the building.”

“It would have been cool to do though.” Dolly stated as she stretched out and got up to slap her helmet on her head, grab the stone bone and get her skateboard slung around her body.

“No not cool, for one the elevators are mostly glass on top and we’d be hit with a storm of broken glass at the start of everything! There’s the Thousand Gunner on the neighboring elevator sure, but you’re forgetting that the elevators are also exposed to aerial EP attacks and you’ve got a recipe for the kind of insanity that mom really cannot take right now after how we got here!” Dormarch was so sweet to worry about my sanity, I really shouldn’t let either him or Dolly know that it has been slipping for quite a while. First time on a motorcycle and I never want to get on another one for as long as I lived… which wasn’t going to be for very long even if I don’t become a Chrysomallus. “Mom… can’t take much more of this…”

“…” Dolly didn’t say anything and just looked into my eyes and whined a bit.

“Right, we’re taking the stairs after we break through the garage to the lobby. Hopefully they don’t have any active Manufactured in there, all their heavy combat machinery has to be out running defensive with the Eaters present so the garage will have to have minimal defenses until we can reach the lobby and then enter the staircase.” It sounded like Canard was ready to go and get this over with. “To that end… we’re on a tight time limit here. We need to deal with Merak to take the realm, we need to do something about the Eaters if taking the realm doesn’t stop them… it hadn’t stopped them when we took out Saber Jack Blade Wolf until we collapsed an entire city on them and destroyed the Excelsus which might have been an anchor point for the realm being taken. Bombs are causing major problems, but apparently Fou is taking care of those for us already. Our allies are trying to meet up with us here in the upper central city region, the two of them were strong enough to get this far. We know how we’re going to get to Merak, but how are we going to stop the Eaters after we’ve dealt with him?”

There was quite a terrible silence after he asked that.

“Well… what if we drop the upper city out from under them?” Metabee stated drawing our attentions to him, any suggestion even from someone as hotheaded and loose cannon as he was is welcome at this moment.

He quickly moved over to a holographic station here in the hotel, the Digibot started working on it.

“Explain, usually you’re not the idea guy and the shoot first and hope to never have to ask questions later unless your opponent can be talked down by Rokusho.” Peppercat stated as she sat up and looked at Metabee in surprise.

“I noticed something when we were flying up in Castle Alexander to the Upper City.” Metabee produced a three dimensional map of Midgar, a large round city all around the nearby Shinra Tower in the center. “Midgar’s upper city is sitting on multiple massive plates…”

The explanation Metabee gave us afterwards was that apparently Shinra Tower likely had the capacity to drop sections of the upper city onto the lower city. I found myself horrified at the idea that the corporation had that kind of power over people’s lives when dropping a plate would not only kill the people below the plate, but also most of the people living above it as well.

Metabee’s suggestion was to split off into three groups.

One was to detour and find a way to access the plate drop sequence… since we can’t drop anything like a whole city on the Mother Eater. They would also need to make sure the defenses continued to shell the Mother Eater with artillery, which was already being done by the defenses.

Merak’s defenses can’t kill the Mother Eater as it was growing too strong from what it was eating out of the upper city and producing far too many smaller Eaters. The defenses were only currently, and temporarily at that, keeping it at bay successfully. It would only be for so long before we had to cross a point of no return. As in no return on being able to outright deal with the Mother Eater unless we collapse this entire realm and our direct access to Moon Cell’s brain with it which means fighting through yet another realm.

I’m still surprised to see that it’s come back. A horror of mouths and tentacles that shouldn’t ever be fought up close and personal. Though apparently Mega Level Digimon succeeded at stopping one before… only that one wasn’t nearly as big as this one is and this one was stated to be much bigger.

We’re instead dropping the Mother Eater into the mostly evacuated lower city. Sans NPCs of course… not much we could do there for those people if they get taken by an Eater down there or up here. In fact we had to not care about the NPCs feelings on the matter as dealing with the Eaters requires us to do this within the next five hours while there’s still time to destroy the Mother Eater with a city drop.

Thankfully to that end Castle Alexander was already moving out of the way, we had access to commanding the medieval ally forces and they wouldn’t be under the plates we’d need to drop.

The second team would be setting up the ‘MAKO’ reactors underneath and around the Mother Eater’s current territory to blow up, apparently the corporation also had the capability to do that from the central tower as well.

Seeing quite a recurring theme here and upon contacting Castle Alexander to get an explanation, we found out it was much worse when the city was a place that wasn’t a Moon Cell realm. I wasn’t surprised in the slightest at this point, this place was a deathtrap and people used to live in a place like this. I’m pretty sure Moon Cell is embellishing the realm slightly to put a stopper on our plans to attack it directly, but otherwise Cait Sith had been alive when everything went down… and a lot of stuff did when he was around.

Cait Sith told us about the planets biological weapons it used against those ruining the life stream. There had been several, at least up to seven of those weapons the planet had used and possibly more… Shinra Corporation designed this city to fight them to the last, but apparently the planet didn’t bite and was trying to protect nature itself throughout many other parts of the world from being completely destroyed.

The planet had actually succeeded long enough for Shinra to be destroyed as a corporation. What Shinra were doing was definitively evil in the course of reaching for some sort of ‘promised land’ and the planet really wanted the suffering and torturing of souls in the life stream to stop. It did, and everything was fine, until Moon Cell eventually full wiped that civilization like it was trying to do to two worlds right now and it had its apocalypse causers for that. Here it was trying to do it without said apocalypse causers and it was having much more trouble doing so.

Ransei and the digital world neighbors had to be struggling while I sat here in ‘relative’ safety trying to gather my nerves for the fights ahead.

The explosion of raw soul power from the MAKO reactors would free the souls there and it would absolutely destroy the Mother Eater as the liquid energy was extremely caustic to the living, as we’ve already seen and from what Canard managed to scan of it with his digivice.

Mother Eater was technically a living entity so, the second team would be working with the first to ensure securing its destruction by timing things out together… we couldn’t actually fight that head on with brute strength even if Dormarch, Sami and Frizzle could evolve to their Mega forms. There still wouldn’t be nearly enough Mega Level Digimon to take it on given it took at least twelve of said stupidly powerful Digimon forms to take down the original Mother Eater and some of that was due in part to the indigestion of someone’s soul refusing to be consumed by said Eater until their personality managed to hang on long enough to save the situation by overriding the Mother Eater long enough to successfully fix things.

We didn’t have the luxury of a soul fused into this Mother Eater to cause problems and fight long enough to stop it from eating everything, this was a Pure Mother Eater and not an Eater that was incidentally fused with an intelligent being that could heroically bring the strength of their soul together long enough to stop a multiple world ending terror.

I’m so glad that none of us were a part of the first Mother Eater problem, I however am sad that we’re dealing with the second… for a second time since we last saw the thing in Mare Melum! Mare Melum was doing just fine by the way, no Eater activity… I think I know why the Eaters were here and I wasn’t about to voice the opinion of an anti-magic wool having being in a magical computer system might be the problem.

I was causing glitches in Moon Cell by existing, said glitches attracted the Eaters interest and the usually benign creatures then appeared and started going crazy since they shouldn’t be on our plane of existence.

Deal with the Mother Eater and all the other Eaters produced by it would evaporate, including the zombie data things that were identified and reclassified as ‘Eater Gekkos’ that started showing up with them in the city. Said Gekkos were trying to infect EPs and anything near them to make it easier for the Eaters to spread.

Then… there was what the third team would be doing… my team. We’re the ones that had to deal with Merak directly and I had a feeling we were going to be in for one Tartarus of a fight given the ‘Manufactured’ Merak had already thrown at us.

Ocellus tried to hash out a way to get us some aerial support, but until Moby Dick went down or the PLANTs that produced flying EPs were dealt with the airspace around Shinra Tower was a veritable hot zone of death that even the Eaters were having problems getting through and they were stupidly tough things, it’s only their speed that was stopping them from being successful so far and even then they just may overwhelm the defenses in the next five hours.

Canard would lead the team to dropping the plates, with Krosserdog and Sami. Sami was the designated hacker for that team, being a virus type digital entity she was a veteran of breaking systems and surviving harsh situations.

Team two was being led by Rokusho, with Dormarch and Metabee. Dormarch was the backup hacker and was really good at searching out data to manipulate, as a ‘Search Engine’ he was fairly good at finding specific weak points in the computer systems when it comes to a need to hack into things. It just went over my head, but they seriously needed Dormarch.

My team was consisting of myself, Dolly and Peppercat. Notably we lacked sustainable long range specialists that the other teams had and it was understandable why Rokusho and Metabee stuck together given their digital fusion evolution ability.

Unless I counted for my bark and howl attack attacks, we didn’t have much constant ranged support to deal with flying things.

Dolly could do some range support, but her limited magic capacity would mean she needs to use magic sparingly and the materia didn’t use nearly as much magic as casting the spells without them… Dolly has yet to learn the spells, but she was close to getting ‘Blizzard’ down. She had an affinity for being cool apparently, at least the way she says it.

Peppercat only had her ‘Elctroball Special’ as her mid-range attack, she was a melee powerhouse and her electrical attacks were really handy against any ‘Manufactured’ enemies we might run into going deeper inside while our other two teams set up dealing with the Mother Eater.

The one thing about the three of us… we were the most likely to survive whatever Merak had waiting for us long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

Dolly had nigh indestructible protective gear and momentum control as long as her physical body wasn’t directly hit she’d be fine.

I had the actually indestructible paralance given even Eaters couldn’t consume it and that would protect me from almost anything that wasn’t destroying the floor around my hooves or managing to knock my off balance to get at me, if it wasn’t piercing my wool would handle it.

Peppercat was built for good speed and have decent armor as a digibot, her hotheadedness and enthusiasm was the only real reason she got into trouble.

That was our three teams of three, but we weren’t going to split up until after we surpassed the unguarded staircase. After that point, my team would be the first to split off and keep looking for Merak moving upwards while the other two teams find the necessary security systems to break.

Throughout all of this Jeanne and Ocellus were to keep the Eaters at bay and help with containment while staying away from them and would spent time building up an aerial force to send us backup while trying to take as many territories as possible in the intervening time.

The Pokémon Companions and Valora forces were up for the second task while the first was a big ask considering the Eaters could kill any of them on contact. No one had any idea what happened to Lit after an explosion and a lightning strike hit a section of the wall heading in the direction of Fou’s forces, so that was thankfully the only MIA at the moment.

No one doubted that Lit was still alive as to get a KIA on that guy would take something like the Mother Eater sitting directly on top of him… for like an hour. Lit was the most ridiculous little bug I’ve ever met.

We definitely had the harder job here… but we had the capacity to switch some APs out and we needed some Caerbannogs to help us get in.

I was not going to point out the obvious that my team was the fairly animalistic one with me having to watch out for two wild cards like Dolly and Peppercat, while most of our intelligent and cool headed members went to the other teams.

I had to take up the leadership position of this team… I knew Dolly would follow me anywhere, but I didn’t know if I understood Peppercat well enough that she would listen to me if I told her to do something.

-Thirty minutes later, assault on the Shinra Tower garage-

The Troopers were all on alert throughout the garage, all of them had their machine guns at the ready unless they were doing something important like maintenance work.

There were no Manufactured aside from a Thousand Gunner in disrepair and incapable of shooting its guns… its body was obviously heavily scorched by numerous Bomb explosions that had thoroughly made it incapable of attacking, but not incapable of moving. The rest of the vehicles in the garage for the Trooper EPs to get around, but weren’t equipped with major offensive weaponry and were more just armored transports.

There were a lot of Guard Hounds around on patrol, their head tentacles ready to whip at any intruders and these were in particular the kind that could spit fireballs unlike their more melee oriented counterparts used in the lower city. The upgrade to fireball spitting wasn’t enough to make these particular Guard Hounds an elite version of an Enemy Program though, an elite was usually bigger or more capable in some way.

The garage was heavily patrolled yet something was starting to become amiss to the Trooper programs as they looked about.

One Trooper EP noted there was less Guard Hounds and Troopers than there had been a second ago, but it wasn’t enough for the EP to go on alert. Before the Trooper could call in a lockdown of all nearby entrance a rope whipped out from underneath a vehicle, bashed the back of the troopers head into said vehicle dazing them and then dragged them underneath before they could make a sound.

This situation was familiar, but instead of down, several figures were making a path up as the Guard Hounds near the patrolling Trooper were slowly disappearing before they could get off a single bark with knives buried up to the hilts in their diaphragms making it entirely impossible to alert anyone of the trouble currently plaguing the garage.

Several Shadows moved around the inactive Thousand Gunner and started to meticulously mess with it. A Manufactured that wasn’t capable of combat, but could still move would be useful if it was stolen and refurbished for a much better cause later. Said Thousand Gunner was soon rolling away and into the streets by itself, nobody the wiser that it wasn’t heading out for a mission, but was being stolen.

A Guard Hound had noted something and its ears were erect and its tentacle was as raised as its hackles. A fireball built up in its mouth as it looked about for a target, it didn’t get a chance to do anything as a knife buried itself into the Guard Hound’s spine between a bit of cartilage and connecting it’s digital program brain to the rest of its body.

It was slowly lowered to the floor by the bipedal bunny and slowly dragged away. Soon a sneaking group of nine individuals made their way through the area led by a Caerbannog. This garage had fallen really fast and Merak hadn’t noticed the loss of the Thousand Gunner yet, as it was programmed to head to Castle Alexander for Welch to poke over.

What many would say about the Assassin Class was that they weren’t good in direct combat, but again, direct combat is for suckers when indirect stealth takedowns made sure the enemy never saw it coming.

Pom’s assault group approached the guard station and the helmet wearing Trooper like figure just opened the path towards the lobby and gave a thumbs up and several more Trooper figures showed up and didn’t shoot at them and instead took up the positions that the Troopers were originally in.

-Shinra Tower, Executive Suite, Merak-

Something was up… I looked into the security system to the garage, one of the most noted points of entry for my enemies and I saw Troopers patrolling around and Guard Hound lazing about.

Hmm… I better get my ultimate weapon ready anyway, just in case something is up.

Wait… did they actually managed to repair the Thousand Gunner that fast? No… so what I’m seeing is likely...

Setting all the traps around the elevators and every floor up to this one up and sending all assault programs into an even higher alert.

Something was off with those Troopers in the garage too.

They had been compromised already… they had to be!

He sent the orders to not let the enemy get to the elevators easily. He’d have his assault programs make them fight for access to them and if they did try to use them, then he was absolutely ready for it.

-Garage Assault (Continued)-

The numerous paralyzed Guard Hounds, were left laying positions that made them appear lazy. The Caerbannogs had succeeded in making it look like nothing was going on throughout the several floors of the garage when the cameras were being checked. Unfortunately Merak was already on to them anyway and soon the Guard Hounds would be taken out and the still enemy controlled PLANT in the garage would be taken out by a remotely detonated explosive left behind by Sami.

The Caerbannogs were wearing the guards stolen clothing too, this is why no one ever wanted to mess with killer rabbits. They knew the game would eventually be up, but they had successfully managed to help the three teams infiltrate through the garage and silently got a bonus objective out of it as well.

The Caerbannog leading the team in the disguise of the Trooper stopped and heard the alert level raising drastically, it immediately silently informed the three infiltrating teams that Merak was on to them and then quickly ran off to infiltrate several other Troopers ranks unknown, unseen and unheard for a time when it was needed further to act.

Pom’s team had already made it to the lobby, the front was heavily fortified… the staircases up the entirety of the… accessible after a quick hacking of the door by Dormarch and there was nothing on it stopping them from using the Skein Flyer recently programmed into Sami’s Motor Bars to fly up the many numerous flights leading upwards.

They flew up the space in the middle of the long winding saircase and bypassed a huge amount of trouble that was waiting for them otherwise and without a hint of Merak knowing they were flying up said staircase.

Pom thought the lobby had been nice looking at least, in a grand mansion foyer kind of way with how the corporation set it up.

-Rising up the unguarded staircase, Dolly (Music: Snake Eater, Metal Gear Solid 3)-

“Gee, this would have taken forever to climb… good thing we have these duck wingers.” I said as I watched the various floors passed by one at a time slowly while sitting on the back Skein Flyer piloted by the robot Salt Felinid with Pom as we slowly ascended almost straight upwards. “How tall is this place again?”

“Slightly over seventy five stories not counting roof access and helicopter landing pad. What that terms as the basement being anything below the towers front entrance we passed by, which sounds like more cruelty towards the people living below them in the lower city, the whole tower would be much larger if we count everything built below it. Also this tower has to be the most maintenance intensive thing in the whole city. If we were to include said ‘basement’… given how much space there is in the lower city and a possible elevator directly leading into the underground facility below that we probably never even came close to seeing… and the likeliest main reason why the facility was blown up in the first place after we managed to mostly deal with the problems in there.” Dormarch was running some quick calculations above us with Team 2’s Skein Flyer. “Somewhere in the three hundred stories ballpark if we’re counting the underground facilities.”

“Yikes, and I thought living in a three story home with our brothers and sister was big.” Hard to imagine how high up we would be, we’d be so close to those thundering lightning clouds where all that rain was coming from nonstop. Being in the air didn’t scare me though… getting hit by a lightning bolt totally did and the sound of thunders hurts my ears, at least everyone got used to Dylan using a vacuum cleaner and eventually stopped barking at it when he turned it on. That devilish cleaning thing was created by some evil god I just know it…

“If the rain doesn’t say it all about how corrupt this corporation was… it’s like the echoing tears of the planet were never allowed to fully stop when Moon Cell built this realm after the civilization that came from this place was destroyed.” Yeah, it had been raining nonstop since we got to the upper city Pom and it really messed with my ability to see much beyond all the neon and lighting fixtures everywhere, plus it’s hard to pick up smells with everything being so wet. “This city is so horrible… I can’t imagine what Cait Sith must have been through when it was that actual place and not Moon Cell’s slightly altered representation.

I really didn’t mind being wet or muddy, but this place soaked you through to the bone... I pulled out the stone bone and gnawed on it to get my nerves in line for what was to come.

“Don’t ruin your teeth Dolly.” Wasn’t gnawing on it nearly that hard Pom!

“I’m just nervous about what we’re up against this time Pom.” My honesty was met with a few soft hoof head rubs that made me feel happy inside. Pom and my little bro were just as nervous, who knows what Mario-Lick has waiting for us this time, after all the crazy stuff we did we were almost done with this realm.

“Well we avoid doing a bunch of Elevator Antics at least…” Sighed Pom as we reached the halfway point. “This is the much nicer option.”

“Yeah, can’t actually complain about that.” We all made sure we were as healthy as we could get for this, which is what Dormarch checked on.

We had healing items on each of us, because apparently healing chemicals somehow worked on our four robot friends too. The minty ones just reloaded their special abilities or gave them some extra energy towards using the abilities sooner since they didn’t have magic like Pom and I did.

Someone needed to break the mind numbing silence… or else one of us might go crazy.

“Twenty bags of kibble on the wall, twenty bags of kibble~.” I started singing and heard several audible sighs as they could understand me when I was singing. “Knock one down, drag it around and eat it down… nineteen bags of kibble on the wall~.”

“I’m beginning to think I only saw the vaguest hint of your true withdrawal symptoms when it comes to lacking kibble Dolly.” Yeah, Pom was right, I’ve been doing pretty good… maybe I don’t need kibble anymore to get over the haunting memories of losing my first mother to sickness.

No I can still feel the coping urge as being there, it’s just… highly dulled. Maybe it was being around Pom that made me handle the dependency symptoms better. That and thinking about my birth mother and my other mother Delilah made it me feel wistful of the puppy days long past.

I was a literal super hero now… and as such I was going to ignore Pom’s line of thought in the most childish manner possible! At least super hero was definitely on the list of things I wanted to be when I grew up, so that was one of the dreams that was the least tangible to ever come true. All it took was binding myself to an interdimensional alien sheep like being with many, MANY, issues.

It was too quiet and I was thinking too much, again breaking all lines of thought in the most childish manner possible now!

“Nineteen bags of kibble on the wall, nineteen bags of kibble~!” I made my singing even more obnoxious and louder. Thankfully there were no listening devices in the staircases and I could be as loud as I wanted while trying to ignore Pom’s questioning as to the fact that I hadn’t had any in a while.

“I get it Dolly, you don’t have to get louder…” Pom placed a hoof on my back gently and pressed her forehead against mine affectionately. “We’ll see to it after we’re done here when we can get some time before we have to face Moon Cell directly.”

…

She did get it… I haven’t been able to talk to anyone else in my family for a while either.

“Knock one down, drag it around and eat it down… eighteen bags of kibble on the wall~.” I wasn’t the only one singing this time, Dormarch and Pom joined in halfway through my next line of singing and soon so was everyone else.

Was it me or were the stairs above us practically endless? Wondered how people would get down or up them quickly enough in case of a fire, dad would have been so mad at the lack of fire safety in this building.

Could have stayed home and been a police dog, but that would have been more boring than all of this. Sure there might not have been much action in infiltrating the building yet, but I knew that was going to change as soon as we left this ridiculously long staircase behind.

“Snake- Eater-~” A feminine voice sang interrupting our singing.

“Okay, who in the melted hell of destroyed pucks and broken sticks was that?” Canard asked as he and Sami looked around above us.

“I think someone was just playing some background music and we’ve just been ignoring it this entire time, you know, because tensions and knifes cutting them.” Thoughtfully stated Dormarch. “I believe we were on nine bags of kibble…”

We continued to sing the rest of the song I started to get our nerves in line.

442. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 21

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar, Inner Upper City, upper floors of Shinra Tower, Pom-

“Be a good boy for Metabee and Rokusho now.” As we split off from the Eater destroyer teams, I bade Dormarch farewell and hugged him affectionately.

“Mom…” Dormarch blushed, but he didn’t break the hug. I had to and I was very reluctant to do so knowing exactly what I was walking into. “Just be careful of the security cameras.”

We had already stashed away the three motor bars, Sami still had her original one, because there wasn’t a lot of space inside the building to actually fly the Skein Flyer forms programmed into them. There was the possibility of them using those bars to come up and help us, but the airspace around Shinra Tower was exceptionally hostile.

“We’ll try to do this fast and catch up to help you, try to stay alive until we get there.” Canard offered a calming hand to my withers as I shuddered, he gave me a few pats and then was up and off with the other two teams. “Come on guys, let’s move. We know what our jobs are here, Pom and her team has theirs.”

Canard was the one to free his world, so I had little issue with believing he could pull this off.

Looking out a nearby window as Dolly and Peppercat followed me as we made our way up and forward as stealthily as possible. I saw lots of Drones, Heli-troopers, Moon Cell Watchers moving around outside the windows and avoided the sweeping beams as they lit up the hallway we soon found ourselves in from outside the window and even a few ‘Manufactured’ helicopters moving about in the rainstorm out there and sometimes shining powerful lights through the windows.

“It just occurred to me what Merak’s classification as a servant exactly is and why it is that classification specifically.” I drew Peppercat’s curious attention as, but before she had any time to ask a question I shushed her and Dolly.

I leapt to the ceiling and used my wool to grappled both Dolly and Peppercat up to me. Barely ten seconds later a batch of Troopers came out of a doorway and passed by below us. I’m fairly certain we avoided the security cameras that Dormarch had warned us about, because they looked alert and ready to shoot. Either Canard or Rokusho’s team must have drawn their attention somehow, that or they went loud before we could.

The servants we defeated were on my mind. Caster Circe in particular, the smell of that pan fried pig that Dolly calls ‘bacon’ now smells much better in my memory than it previously did.

I crawled along the ceiling avoiding a patrol of the robotic lightning spewing Crawlers moving by while trying to ignore that memory.

A servants classifications had a drastic effect on what they focused on particular. They probably didn’t effect Dormarch nearly as much as it would a normal servant as far as capabilities go.

Once we managed to bypass another patrol and reached a staircase we made our way even higher up the building.

“What do you mean about Merak’s Classification?” Peppercat asked after making sure we managed to bypass the patrol successfully.

“Elise likely had three different classification across her various personalities… Elise herself was probably meant to be a Lancer. Therefore she is good with a spear.” Given her general decent skill with spears and the ability to stretch her arms to spear you with them, I was using her as a comparison. “I bring this up because I know what all the ‘Manufactured Machines’ are about now, since Merak is a Caster class.”

“Caster? He doesn’t seem to know or use any magic that I’ve seen.” Peppercat stated as she and Dolly climbed the stairs slowly in my wake until we came up to a door and stopped at it. “Not that I know much of magic, aside from what I’ve seen you do, along with Ocellus, Shanty and Dolly.”

“The Caster classification is not always about magic, though the name would imply as such… also sufficiently advanced technology is a magic all its own in some ways.” My thoughts were on the Caster Eels and how the manipulated the environment around them. That and it let us know that Moby Dick was present in this realm when I saw a few of them in the water leading into the underground facility, but not what was happening with the whale sized monster generator currently. “While Merak doesn’t use magic, he is very much fits his classification.”

“How so?” Peppercat asked as I eased the door open and peeked an eye through the next short hallway leading into a much larger room with numerous Crawlers hanging out on the ceiling.

There were also Troopers setting up and preparing to fire on whatever came through this door.

From here we’d have to fight our way through to Merak and go loud, the EPs were only in position of waiting for something and not actively acting to come at us. I pulled the Paralance from the wool on my back to represent that we needed to get ready for a fight.

The red cat digibot flexed her claws and nodded, Dolly flipped the mystical stone bone up into the air and caught it in her right paw as she had one hind leg on her skateboard and was simply waiting for my signal to go.

“Casters don’t necessarily need magic to be effective, they don’t need to apply magic directly to their opponent either if they do have magic. They can just be capable strategists or good at controlling a domain or territory with an insane level of expertise. In fact Caster seems like a classification with quite a broad scope of capabilities to address many situations, compared to like say a Saber which seems to be incredibly narrow in being overall powerful in combat.” Given how much trouble we had with taking Midgar, I’m fairly certain that Merak was truly being as lazy a genius as Elise suggested he was. We did just use that knowledge to just take the stairs without impediment, he’d probably think we’d want to go the faster route and use the elevators and the staircase up wasn’t likely even a thought in his mind as being a thing anyone would use. “With how well he’s been fending us off, he’s a Caster alright. He’s been fighting us indirectly since we arrived in this Realm and very few of the things he’s done were rarely unfortunate for him, like his blowing a hole through the wall with ‘The Arsenal’ doing that diffusion beam thing. Even when we took territories in the lower city he was already ready to bombard us from above to turn the territories back in his favor. He’s managed to keep Castle Alexander outside the wall for quite a long time until it managed to gain enough power to actually fly to the upper city. He’s been stalling us out by quite a lot, his only issue is that he seemingly can’t deal with unaccounted for chaos very well, that and he’s ultimately very lazy. The ‘Manufactured’ he sends at us exist because they are practically his form of magic alongside his ability to generate portals, he has quite a lot of control over the entirety of Midgar making it hard to impossible to fully capture as long as he’s alive. I’m sure he could be doing so much worse to stop us and I’m fairly certain he has something waiting for us when we do eventually reach him. While he won’t be good in a direct fight, he never intends to let us fight him directly at all and will try to never let us get to that point since he’ll spend the whole battle fighting us through some form of intermediary puppet like he’s been doing from the start. Except this time he’ll actually be inside of it and controlling it directly given how close we are to him.”

“So… what?” It seemed Peppercat didn’t understand what I was getting at.

“Well I’ve finally created a nearly full mental profile for Merak and I’m sure if he was to try and fight me himself without anything between me and his actual physical body, he wouldn’t win that fight even on his luckiest of days and would lose one hundred percent of the time in under five minutes if he uses his portals. Less than a minute if he doesn’t.” I’m quite certain he wouldn’t be just sitting out in the open though, he wouldn’t be too lazy to be doing that though when he might actually be taking us seriously as threats to him. “I’m already expecting him to have some kind of powerful machine, him to have an ostentatious method putting himself inside said machine as his back up weaponry for when we deal with said machine and that he’s likely to set off some sort of city wide self-destruct to wipe the entirety of this Midgar City realm. That would be in a last ditch effort to try and kill us all by taking us with him or at the very least force us to fight through another one of Moon Cell’s realms. At least that kind of destruction will deal with the Eaters, but we’re in the center of the realm and retreating Castle Alexander to the edge of the realm in time to get out wouldn’t be viable or even possible at this point.”

“So we’re going to be on a time limit to beat him when we eventually do meet him and get him started on fighting us.” Yep, that was about the size of it Peppercat.

“Now let’s get back to what we were doing. Dolly focus on the smaller enemies, Peppercat use me as a living shield when needed and take the fight to them wherever and whenever you can.” I held the paralance in front of me and kicked the slightly open door to being fully open, I brought up the paralance at the same time while doing this.

I locked my wool in place to handle the several rockets and a ludicrous amount of projectile fire as crawlers starting hurtling towards us along the walls, ceiling and floor. There were Troopers that more heavily armed than normal, specifically with rocket launchers.

None of them penetrated the paralance and with me locking myself in place with my wool, none of them moved me either. After a five second delay of silence, I leapt forward pushing off with two springs of wool from my hind legs as lunged forward using the canopy of the paralance as a battering ram.

I took down several of the Troopers that were wielding the rocket launchers and knocking a number of Crawlers back into a room.

The room was fairly large and it looked like we were in something of a laboratory sector and the room was large and full of what looked like tubes that had experiments in them. I plowed through several Troopers before I planted my rear hooves on the floor and angled my indestructible shield to keep myself safe from more incoming fire.

Peppercat, who had followed my forward lunge, immediately broke away from me as I did and start to claw them down producing lightning energy as she leapt about while trying to avoid the projectile fire that was still mostly aimed in my direction.

Dolly was zipping about and throwing the stone bone into Crawlers or smashing into them with her skateboard while performing a variety of showy tricks.

Sighing at Dolly’s showboating, even if the tricks were not just for style and were actually doing something to aid her fighting, I shook my head and started firing off Thousand Spears into the nearest Troopers as they were somewhat vulnerable to it.

Once Merak knows we’re here, he’s likely to first be a bit surprised we used the stairs and then will probably invite us in to show off the strongest ‘Manufactured’ he’s likely been saving for a personal confrontation like what’s about to happen.

I closed up the paralance and then swung it into the legs of the nearest Trooper, to not only knock them down, but to reorient the facing of the rocket launcher they were holding with a follow up kicked. I watched as the freshly fired rocket blew apart several Crawlers as I stomped down on the Troopers head.

“What the, where the… how did you even get there?!” Merak’s voice said in the background as I continued to take down Troopers with one hoof Thousand Spears, launching jets into the surrounding crowds. “I had the elevators and all the floors between me and you absolutely covered in death traps! I would have noticed if you had used them!”

“We took the stairs!” My shouting was in the hopes of riling up the so called genius that allowed us to get this far into the building.

“Wha… stairs? What stairs?! There shouldn’t be any stairs, stairs should be a myth!” There was a pause from Merak as I, Peppercat and Dolly continued to tear through a room of EPs in short order as we made our way to the other side of this strange lab space. “I didn’t think this building had stairs like that, as it would be a complete waste of space! With the cities lacking all forms of Operational Safety Hazard Assessment compliance, why would there even be stairs there leading past all of the buildings inner defenses… THOSE STAIRS ARE SO STUPID GAH! Who would even be stupid enough to even use all of those anyway, who would enjoy there being that many stairs in this building?!”

-In a distant time and place, somewhere else completely like the Moon Cell Realm’s version of Midgar City, someone named Zack-

“Running up the stairs, do-do-do, running up the stairs, beep-boop-woo~!” I sang as I ran up every flight of stairs with enthusiasm, I would be doing one hundred and fifty crouching crunches afterwards and then do a lap around the entire City of Midgar… they might have to send a helicopter out to pick my overzealous exercising butt up again, but I was making all kinds of gains on my leg day today! Relaxation, vacation, what are those? “Running up the stairs, do-do-do~!”

-Exiting the laboratory to head up another flight of stairs, Peppercat-

Merak was ranting about and focusing on the fact that stairs existing in a building loaded with technological prowess like this and how the stairs were so useless, superfluous and quite angry that they completely bypassed most of the security systems in place to prevent invaders like us from getting this high up in the building.

We simply made our way up to the next floor and started wrecking our way through some crawlers, didn’t seem to be much more than Drones and Crawlers here. No PLANTs detected as far as hearing a humming sound.

Merak was too angry to really start throwing more dangerous stuff at us, either that or he didn’t have nearly as much to put in our way now that we were more than ninety percent of the way through the building.

We definitely heard him working on something in the background as he cursed up a storm about not being ready for us to be this far into the building, I think we lit a fire under the lazy lemming’s butt.

This laboratory section was giving me the feelings of the place being haunted, I kept seeing some flashes of a scientist with glasses trying to get a red canine and a cute squirrel girl together for some disturbing reason. Hallways littered with bloodied sliced up bodies, red splotches of once living biological beings going everywhere to paint a line of terror and flashes of a sword that was at least seven feet long. Machines that weren’t there, sparking and sputtering layed destroyed on the floor.

Whatever I was seeing must be stray historical data of this place, kind of gives off the feeling of seeing ghosts. I mean at what point would you see a one winged monster with long silver hair tearing through everything with relative ease like that? That looked like someone that would be a Saber class servant and yet Moon Cell didn’t use someone that terrifying feeling? Maybe the guy was too powerful for even Moon Cell and that was a fairly horrifying thought in and of itself.

I ignored all the weird anomalous sights and kept focused on our task at claw, as part of the Digibot forces of the Yggdrasil Systems I had to do my duty to ensure the safety of my home lands.

To that end I had to ensure Pom’s survival as she was the world’s biggest monkey wrench in Moon Cell’s plans, since Moon Cell really seems to have it in for her and saw her as threat number one given how every EP seems to specifically target her quite heavily. She was also kind of a symbol of the counter invasion force.

I could tell Pom didn’t want to be in the middle of all this, but she just kept going anyway even if it wasn’t mentally sound for her to keep doing so. As far as everyone who knew her as a friend would tell you, she’s a hero.

It wasn’t hard to see I had an advantage against the more machine like Crawlers and Drones, when I could hit them with bursts of energy from my claws that is. Their systems did not handle shocks very well, I’m a walking energy sponge like that little bug Lit… heard the little guy was lost or worse. Dolly didn’t seem happy with that fact.

Dolly was taking down the flying drones, throwing and catching the stone bone to a rhythmic beat as she continued to throw the bone and bash with her board as she flipped, did wall rides and expertly dodged numerous attacks coming at her with over the top acrobatics involving her board being in the path of projectiles as needed.

Pom was not very strong physically, but I think her wool acting like an exoskeleton when it took on a more wolf like shape made up the difference as she continued to bash her way through enemies with an indestructible weapon. Nobody knew what that weapon was made of, but it being immune to Eaters was of great interest to me and any of us digital world heroes.

What Pom lacked in strength she made up in speed, but the odd thing was I wasn’t seeing her using Dancing Flame. It was like her most famous and well known technique, the one she was specifically known for when it comes to inhaling and then moving far faster than she had any right too upon exhaling. She was breathing normally, but still accelerating to that level of speed every once in a while without sharp or slow inhales leading to explosive exhales she does to show she’s even using the technique.

I’m glad Yggdrasil System resorted to adults as troubleshooters this time, far less angst and overcoming it with heroic resolve involved or getting into pointless fights with their friends. Though Pom still counted in the angst category, she at least wasn’t voicing her feelings on the matter near constantly and just let us know that she was tired of all this.

We must have caught Merak off guard quite badly, because we made it up to what looked like a living space and it looked a bit trashed, signs definitely point to Merak having been here recently and he hastily vacated the living space.

Yep, must have been in quite a haste to get out of this living space to have… no… wait… after a few more glances… I realized that he didn’t hastily leave these somewhat lavish living quarters. They were like this before he left.

Merak was just a slob… ugh, I heard he was a lazy genius, but all those empty drink cans, fatty snack foods and an excessive amount of sleeping bags everywhere was telling quite a story.

Oh good Yggdrasil System, we’re dealing with that kind of genius!

“I’m going to take this opportunity while we have a chance, Dolly you can go after me.” Pom ran off for the nearby overly meticulously clean bathroom, I waited and watched the staircase and doors behind us for any more EPs.

While waiting on the biologicals to take a quick bathroom break, I’m guessing that the reason we weren’t seeing any EPs up here was because both Roksuho and Canard’s team were now getting a bulk of this mess now below us. That and the number of EPs on the way had been fairly thin too, no signs of PLANTs up here.

So… we were getting off easy… for the moment. I’m betting Merak won’t make us taking the fight to him easy at all if Pom is correct about him.

Aside from having to use a few Hi-potions for projectile related wounds, rarely were the EPs around here good enough to get in a melee hit, we were pretty much on top of the servant and all we had to do was face him.

I was hoping Pom was wrong about her idea of him, because nobody would be crazy enough to try and blow up an entire realm while still being inside of it…

…

Right?

-Dolly-

I kicked the door back into place and sighed, time to go beat up a butt lazier than mine. I passed by Coriander Kitty and came to a stop next to Pom as I got on my board and picked up the mystical stone bone.

“Ready when you are Pom!” I said with a grin and a wagging tail, that was a nice rest break.

“Well I’m not ready yet and this isn’t going to go well for us, also I’m not ready to move just yet since I have something to do.” Pom then tapped the visor. “Ocellus, we’re about to engage the servant and I have quite a bad feeling about this, is Castle Alexander moved out of the way of any problems and still collecting PLANTs?”

…

Probably listening to Ocellus, I stretched out and laid on my board to wait.

“Okay, but be aware before trying to send air support that the airspace around here is decidedly hostile and Merak might just shoot them down by himself with whatever he has waiting for us through the use of portals.” Pom stated after a bit. “Well I appreciate the thought. If you could get a skiff through to drop off some help, it would be a nice, but don’t endanger yourselves needlessly. Though I do have one suggestion… drop them near the three PLANTs we’re controlling in the inner city, the Berserker Moogles are holding the area… yes aggressively and yes I feel the dumb muscle thing too. Have them go on foot from there after using that as a staging area. Is the territory still ours? Okay good to know, keep doing what you’re doing Ocellus. When Merak makes an announcement ignore whatever time limit he sets up and keep on course.”

“So are we getting help?” Paprika Puss asked.

“Not in a timely manner, but we should have enough coming that if we survive for long enough we won’t be on the wrong side of this fight when they arrive to help.” You know what you weren’t saying Pom, I’m of the opinion that you think we couldn’t win with just the three of us. “Peppercat can you maybe generate powerful magnetic fields? It would be helpful to know if you can do that with your lightning generation abilities.”

“Nyeh… I might be able to.” The red cat answered unsure.

“Well let’s go see the ferret and we’ll show him that we’re capable!” I barked and Pom nodded to me patted me on the head and motioned for Chili Cheetah to follow us.

We made our way up and eventually we came to the roof and sitting there playing on a gaming device was that guy who looked up at us with a bored expression.

The chair he was sitting in floated into the air, it had arms dangling from it and it looked like a recliner.

He had a portal above his head keeping the rain off of him while we were soaked to the bone the moment we came out here.

“Stopped to use the bathroom and call your friends did you?” The lemming asked as he continued to look at the screen and not pay us any attention.

Pom was glancing off to the side and when I looked I saw that large checkerboard Muncher that looked like a huge pimple, she returned her gaze to fuzzy guy and I did as well.

“Go on, show us your big machine to take us out that you’re going to put up your backup weapon inside of to control it and then state the time limit for how long we have to fight you for.” Pom stated dully with a flat look in her eyes.

“So you’ve already guessed most of what I was going to do? Well now that’s quite an attractive bit of intelligence, it’s just too bad Moon Cell can’t grab your soul and put it under my control.” Yeah, guy was a creep, would bite his backside one hundred percent. He did something with the gaming device. “Though did you expect me to set the arena as well as the stage?”

The floating chair this guy was sitting on rose into the air with the two large limbs ending in four large metallic fingers rose up.

Something started happening to the roof, it seems like the building expanded beneath us to produce a huge circular floor that double the width of the roof and something started to rise up behind the floating chair.

“Let me show you why I enjoy technology so much… it makes it so I don’t have to lift a finger to fight you.” After he said that a massive machine that rose up behind our enemy made me put my tail thoroughly between my legs as the two armed chair hovered backwards. The guy was still lazily playing away at the game and grinned at us. “Let me introduce you to finest machine I have, one that I’ve modified extensively to be far more than the original product. Whoever made it was somewhat brilliant, but I don’t think they understand how to pack even more weapons into such a small space… they thought big, but not big enough. Say hello to the ‘Finished Air Buster Ultimate: Laser Offensive Utilizing Sentinel’!”

“Fabulous… really?” Groaned out Pom with a loud sigh.

“Why yes, it is!” The annoying fluffy little smart guy chuckled lazily while his chair lowered the two arms on it into the large hunk of metal and it came to life. Said chair slotted into place as the guy lazily wave at us as he became enclosed in the large machine which brought up four large mechanical arms and it’s head had a glowing rectangular red eye as it looked down of all of us. The semi-circle bottom half of the machine inflated and it started hovering, the thing was practically covered in cannons and missile launchers. “You’ll be fighting it, while I get a new high score in Gyrus and will be relaxing inside of it. I may deign to even actively control it to fight you if you prove troublesome… you have exactly sixty minutes to beat me or else Moon Cell will get its biggest win.”

“I’m betting you calculated the fact that it would take more than hour for Castle Alexander to escape the realm.” Glancing at Pom.

What she was saying is if we don’t beat this guy in that amount of time… well nothing like adding on the heat and pressure.

“Quite right, which is why I had these floating billboards manufactured, they’ll hover around and will be keeping you updated on time and the score between us.” Ugh, this guy was annoying. The billboards were brightly lit enough that we could see them in the rain being cared by drones. They all had fifty nine fifty nine on them, they weren’t counting down yet. “If you prove to be too much of a bother or your allies finally get here from whatever it is they are trying to accomplish, then expect the aerial forces to be called in to deal with you swiftly. Please do at least entertain me somewhat before you all die, once I’m finished with you I might just blow up the realm anyway to deal those eldritch monster things.”

Pom held the paralance forward and there was a sharp pointy tip on the lance. I got ready with my board and our robot feline held out her claws to the side and they were charging up with electricity.

My heart was pounding in my chest in fear and excitement, this would be quite an awesome battle to tell my family about... if we even get through this intact.

-Pom-

“One last question, are you a Caster?” I just had to ask to confirm it.

“Yes, servant Caster Merak is what Moon Cell calls me, though unfortunately I don’t understand the significance of such a title considering the fact that my favorite Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game isn’t available in this realm and I don’t have an MP bar to use against you. Didn't even give me any spells at all or anything, so what was the point of even giving me the Caster class?” Merak’s machine wasn’t yet actively attacking us yet. “That soul sucking computer could have given me at least some extra abilities and not just an army of machines to play with. I swear, at least upgrade my adept powers if you’re going to have me fight your enemies at least!”

I’m not sure Merak even knew how Moon Cell worked or even how to use magic like Peppercat brought up. If he had known how to use magic, then this would likely be about three times harder to survive.

My eyes roamed over the machine sitting opposite of us on the changed roof that became a wide flat arena with nowhere to hide except for the staircase we came up. Yep, that thing definitely has the hallmarks of the Magitek design philosophy, plus whatever else Merak put into it on top of that. Very glad he didn’t have magic as Magitek tends to be stronger with magic assisting it.

It started producing barrier drones immediately, it likely had a diffusion laser in the chest, those four arms on the biped like upper torso looked to be built to be far stronger mechanically than the grappling limbs the Einhanders had. It had many various weapon systems, likely flamethrowers, missiles, bending lasers… not to mention what kind of armor it had looked like it surpassed anything this realm should feasibly have in it.

This thing was a large mechanical monster from Tartarus, and it was currently pointed at us.

It’s like he took all the best stuff from every single last Manufactured he had sent at me and then rolled it all up to put it all together into one highly intimidating machine.

According to Merak, he would be safely sitting inside the torso of the thing the entire time and barely even controlling it.

Even if we defeated it, Merak still had his hovering combat chair to take out too, plus I can’t forget his ability to make portals anywhere he can see and I’m sure that thing gives him three hundred and sixty degree vision somehow.

“Peppercat, Dolly, focus on survival!” I stated as the thing with a hovercraft for a lower body began to move and its four large mechanical arms point at us threateningly and the rectangular red eye lit up brightly with the backdrop of the storm clouds and lighting rumbling in the sky.

The four barrier drones immediately started making it impervious to damage before we could even close in.

It was going to be one of 'those' fights.

Author's Note

Note noting notes.

Was this the most obvious outcome of Merak having access to Magitek technology?

Even if he can't use magic, he at least understands the technology enough to modify it to his own ends and may have a limited understanding of the less benign Magitek energy sources (IE Souls in the form of MAKO or Materia).

He already has a floating throne in Gunvolt to do all his fighting for him, this is just making him less likely to be punted off of said throne immediately by a high speed Pom.

In this case he's got his throne as back up and FABU:LOUS to do all the fighting.

Caster Class gets a bad rap in the fate series, Saber and Berserker Class are always hyped up... Saber generally gets to the end of a holy grail war or are usually designated protagonist servants.

It doesn't help that Caster Class characters usually do odd things like kill their masters or cause a massive mess.

443. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 22.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar, far side of the city, Copen the Slayer Dragon-

Perched on top of the building my gun held tightly in my grip, I kept it pointed at the whale that was still thrashing as I continued to fire blast after blast into its massive form.

Why wouldn’t it die?! It was full of holes, I had ruined its ability to fly and I’ve blown out half its brain already! Also I noted I was dealing with a creature made of data… which was a curious thing considering I seemed to be made of the same stuff as well according to Lola.

With final wail, the whale finally, FINALLY, decided to die as it slowl ybroke apart into a burning mass of data that couldn’t disappear quickly enough for my taste.

I shot it so full of holes that it shouldn’t have been able to keep producing so many enemies to throw at me, yet even now it kept firing jellyfish, krakens, those annoying post death flying sharks that I had to obliterate to be safe from and a whole number of other things.

Even after it died it was still a problem!

It was like ten minutes later and after using my battle pods to deal with the rest of the swarm, of which Lola was gladly able to burn down as I continued to tear apart what should be a brain dead whale to get it to stop generating things… it all finally stopped.

The battle had been quite arduous, but I had finally won against the unholy thing.

Now I had to go seek out my next opponent, but before that I downed a refreshing Hi-potion. Drank about twenty three of those over the course of my fight with the monstrosity. I jetted my way up the side of a building and then landed on the roof, I checked my jet systems and saw that quite a few things needed repairs.

I looked around in the rain as I felt something was off, I used my battle pods to enhance my sight of the various areas here in the upper city by creating a square magnifying screen of hard light. In the distance on the far side of the city there was a thing with checkerboard patterns, tentacles and mouths…

Yeah I’ve hit my quota of dealing with large monstrous things today and that thing… was eating the buildings and getting even bigger.

I’m not dealing with that unholy abomination until it absolutely becomes my problem, no thanks!

Normally I’d be all about righteous burning of eldritch things, as well as the destruction of all things abnormal, but in this situation I’d rather get more information after going through hell with that whale coming after me.

Also I didn’t like the implications of the many smaller checkerboard things around it that were eating buildings in a distorted manner.

Instead I looked at the curious moving dog… castle… thing… that was much closer and moving more in this direction and away from those monstrosities.

I’m sadly in some kind of wonderland and I didn’t have an electricity spewing blue wearing person to shoot at.

They were battling the local enemies and I saw several flying vehicles with figures on them taking off from the castle flying high for a little bit and then stopped to head low when they got to the edges of the inner cities defenses that started firing on them with an insane volume of firepower. Said firepower was concentrating more on the checkerboard creatures.

“Lola, set those checkerboard creatures to extreme threat level.” I stated flatly as those checkerboard mollusks were not dying easily even when being constantly hit by multiple artillery shells directly.

I was curious enough to try and figure out what was going on there, with the flying transports I mean. If there were flying transports that meant that there were more intelligent beings around here, like that strange sheep like thing in that jury rigged mech I crossed paths with.

Why wasn’t it a sheep though? It looked very much like a sheep, but I strongly felt like it was sheep adjacent in the extreme and it was oddly pervasive to not think of the ewe as a sheep… but can still be called an ewe without setting off the feeling of ‘not sheep’?

-Center of the city, top of Shinra Tower, Pom-

Here I stand at the top of a tall tower, which had mechanically spread out its floor space to create a large circular arena, with a giant four armed death machine and am reminded of how badly Gilgamesh went… this time should go better.

Since this guy wasn’t nearly as stupidly powerful, though his currently invulnerable machine was going to make up that difference. As long as it couldn’t be repaired in the middle of the fight, they could wear it down for other people to scrape up their bodies after it was done with them. Not that I wouldn’t be fighting as hard as I could to make sure that didn’t happen.

The countdown started.

-Red Lightning Cat Robot, Spotted Magical Skateboard Dog and a Lambkin Chrysomallus vs. Merak and FABU:LOUS (Finished Air Buster Ultimate: Laser Offensive Utilizing Sentinel. Music: Airbuster Theme, FF7.)-

Pom started the fight off by launching herself at the lower right hovering barrier drone using her wool and missed as it simply flew up in the air out of range. She followed up her miss by rolling and twisting her body to launch at the side of the machine.

Dolly managed to land a hit on it a second later by landing on the barrier drone, she did a quickly three sixty degree spin to scuff the slightly dented metal before kicking off to avoid several lasers from the Air Buster’s upper left arm’s hand.

It was quickly noted that the mechanical hands fired the lasers from their fingers.

The Dalmatian only lightly damaged the barrier drone with her impact, these barrier drones were made of sterner stuff than the ones that were protecting The Arsenal.

While Dolly was avoiding being hit with lasers by the upper left arm, the lower left arm deflected Pom’s next charge and knocked her back in the air with a swift back hand. The lower left arm followed that up by opening its palm towards her and spewing a massive cone of fire making Pom back away rapidly with several hops.

This allowed Peppercat to get close enough to start scratching at the barrier on the lower hovercraft like half of the body with her electrically covered claws in the hopes of bypassing the barrier with raw energy. She had to dodge back when the two right hands started spewing lasers at her from the fingers.

“Welcome to hell, as you know well, I hope I’m not going too easy on you~!” As Merak Two pipes rose up on the back of the Air Buster and fired, into a portal above it, nine much larger portals opened around the arena and the enhanced sized missiles started exploding all over the roof top. “So let me show off my machine, have you even ever seen, this mechanical marvel from my dreams~?”

Forcing Pom, Dolly and Peppercat to dodge for their lives as the explosions the missiles gave off were as enhanced as their sizes.

“How long can you dodge, you look like a bunch of frogs, unlike me you don’t have time to be slacking off~!” Merak was adding insult to injury as several machine cannons in the lower torso started spewing projectiles and spinning independently of the upper torso, the three were entirely ignoring the bright glowing countdown timers hovering around in the air around them as the Air Buster too much of a threat to take their eyes off of for too long. “How long can you last, we’ll have quite a blast, I know there’s only so much you really can do~!”

Dolly immediately had her board up, but the impacts actually knocked her back with each direct hit. Pom managed to stay standing in place as she braced the paralance against the wet rooftop. Peppercat started to run on all fours like a cat to avoid the spray of projectiles heading her way, the projectiles only had a limited range of fire given the small ports around the lower hovercraft torso. While the guns couldn’t aim very high, they could definitely sweep a row of infantry in seconds.

Pom started using Fleet Cunning Doe to leap through the projectile fire while deflecting most of it with the paralance, she immediately crouched down and looked to be going for the lower right barrier drone again as she closed up the lance. Only for Pom to immediately spring up and damage the upper left floating drone as the bottom right actually moved downward intending to make Pom overshoot it.

“Let me show you why machines are built fast, that they are made to last, so I can be as lazy as I want to be~!” Merak stated with a happy go lucky tone as the upper right arm suddenly bent at an odd angle to spew flames at Peppercat who was trying to get behind the hovercraft machine. Two pipes rose up on the back and fired a blast of metallic chunks in the form of flak. “You’re crazy dance, watching your lance, it’s really quite all amazing to me~!”

Despite not getting directly hit, the pressure of the blast almost sent Peppercat sailing off the roof. She tried to dig her claws into the top of the roof only to find she couldn’t get much purchase, apparently the roof had been heavily armored to survive all of Air Busters attacks and was slick with the water raining from the sky.

“That you’d waste your precious time, exercising all the time, not having to lift a finger is the dream~!” Merak was likely grinning inside the machine, even as the left upper arm fired at Pom as she pulled the paralance free and kicked off. She narrowly avoided the beams as she flipped and opened the paralance up to take the next few beams aimed at her by the lower left arm. “Mechanical might is great, this machine will leave you in such a state, don’t you recognize too late that your loss is already fate~?”

“I-~” Dolly sang as she slid by several projectile from the machine cannons, before popping the board into the air and throwing the stone bone with as much of her momentum power behind the throw as she can. It flew fast and hit ridiculously hard as it damaged the upper left drone again and she avoided a flash of the flamethrowers aimed her by one of the lower arms. “Cannot fry-~.”

“You’ll still be the first to die~!” Several enlarged missiles rained down as Merak continued to hassle them with song while still lazily playing away at his game inside the machine’s body. He was genius enough to be doing all of it at the same time and watching the progress of the fight as well.

“Oh, just you wait and see-~” Dolly growled as she casts ‘Aero’ silently without saying it and suddenly wind barriers rose up swirling around herself, Pom and Peppercat. It was interesting that Dolly had a feel for using magic naturally now without having to voice it. “You may think I’m weak just because I’m somewhat small, then let me give you a lesson… in history-~!”

Pom went on the attack ignoring the physical projectiles as they were deflected away the wind barrier and missed striking the upper left drone with the spear as it hovered out of the way, but that wasn’t her target. She spat a bark buster directly onto the lower left drone, from her perspective, to the right of the Air Buster as she passed over it and it promptly was blown into the ground by the detonating liquid magic.

Peppercat managed to get back into the fight despite being slightly damaged and fired an Electroball Special into the lower right drone, the one to the left of air busters facing. The drone sparked and sputtered and dropped to the ground, it was still projecting the barrier but it was vulnerable.

“Oh the little mutt can sing, so what do you bring to this whole fight, your pathetic little bark and small bite~?” Merak moved to protect the two damaged barrier drones.

“I wouldn’t be talking ‘stuck on the toilet seat boy’ if I were anything quite like you~!” Dolly spun around as she caught the stone bone while popping her board up into the air and threw it again using the centripetal force to add more oomph to the attack, but it wasn’t aimed at anything in particular so Merak let it sail on by. “I’m not the dog you should be messing with and I’m going to be telling you the why and exactly who~!”

Dolly slapped her paws on the ground and several spikes of ice rose up and slammed into the lower hovering barrier drones damaging them, the ice magic got enhanced by the rain. It also stopped the air buster in place surrounding its lower half with ice, even if it wasn’t damaged by the ice magic Dolly just performed.

“So the little dog has a few tricks, here all I thought you had was a bunch of fleas and ticks~!” The lower two arms start melting the ice so that the Air buster could move.

“Oh keep laughing it up rodent boy, while I just keep getting in my licks~!” Dolly stated enraged as a burst of fire erupted around the heavily damaged drone Dolly pointed to, the upper left drone promptly exploded while she was bracing herself behind the skateboard to absorb a spray of machine cannon fire that pushed her towards the edge of the arena again. “Call me Dolly D. of the Dalmatian family, you’d be amazed at the size of my adoptive ancestry tree~!”

The stone bone came in and bounced off the lower right drone destroying it and Dolly used the catching of the bone to do a leaping twirl out of the way of a bombardment of missiles. The dog did so with a stylish twirl that had visible mystical green sparks in the shape of triangles coming off of her body as she spun out of the way of the various explosions.

“You’re so far below my station, so I say farewell to thee~.” The Airbuster, sent blasts of flames as Dolly hopped and started hovering at the flames and pushing back against them by gliding into the jets of flame on purpose.

Several more missiles fired straight up into the portal above the battlefield and several large explosive missiles rained down from the other portals mostly at where Dolly currently was.

With a flash Dolly started glowing white and suddenly zipped out of the way of the missiles that turned and tried to crash into her and she led one into hitting the upper right barrier drone as she flashed by it, using her Counter Rave to evade more than attack.

“What was that missile hitting the barrier drone exactly supposed to do to me~?” Dolly taunted as she finished up her ten high speed dashes, hitting the barrier drones a few times before landing her skateboard.

She used her board to hydroplane around on the roof while avoiding machine cannon fire the nicked at her fur once or twice.

“Yes, well, that was a miscalculation you see, maybe you’re a bigger problem than can be~.” Merak admitted flustered as Pom fired a bark blast that blew up the lower left drone and the one on the upper right move to the left and the lower right floated up to hovering to the left and right side of the Air Buster’s midsection. “I do not truly underestimate my enemies, as you’ll soon see~!”

“All I see is a hiding reclining guy, that this Peppercat is going to stir fry~! Pepper cat avoided the lasers, machine cannon fire as she lit up her right claw and a blade made of electricity formed and she leapt over the burst of flames from the lower two arms to straight at the drone to the left of the Air Buster.

“Sit still, lie down and just die~!” A burst of orange lasers fanned out and curved in every direction from the Air Buster as Peppercat landed a damaging blow on the drone.

Peppercat took some nasty damage to her left shoulder as a laser tore through it. Pom barely avoided the lasers as they slammed into the roof around her and what she didn’t dodge she blocked with the paralance. Dolly got slightly singed, as she continued to move and even actively hopped up to block a few laser blasts to build up some magic.

“Something I kind of wished I could do, but first we need to finish this fight with you~!” Came back Pom as she launched herself forward with her hind legs through another array of twisting and bending lasers, machine cannon fire, raining missiles and brought the paralance down in an overhead strike to smash the drone on the Air Busters right into the ground.

The attack didn’t destroy it and Pom had to quickly evade by doing a leaping roll away from a mass of fire blasted her way, both literal and projectile along with missiles raining from above. She couldn’t dodge it all and after overwhelming her Aero Barrier completely, a few projectiles punctured through all of her legs several times knocking her to the ground.

Even with the wind barriers, the volume of fire coming from the Air Buster was tearing through the projectile redirecting ‘Aero’ barriers that mostly only diverted the physical projectiles. While quite useful for the machine cannon fire, Dolly and Peppercat were not relying entirely on it because they were quite aware the deflection wasn’t perfect or one hundred percent as Pom just showed them.

The bending lasers were barely redirected by the quickly failing wind barriers, but the rain was reducing their overall damage upon hit. At least Pom could effectively dodge almost everything coming at her, Dolly and Peppercat were much slower.

Peppercat moved in to distract Merak from attacking Pom any further with focused fire and tried to destroy the drone to the Air Busters left and was blocked by the lower left arm acting to protect the drone quite easily.

The Digibot Cat was angry, but wasn’t giving into her rage against such a powerful thing after taking such a hit. Peppercat would become more cautious from here on.

While this was happening, Pom was quickly downing a Hi-Potion as quickly as she could, using her wool to even get the potion to her mouth.

“I’m getting quite tired, of this ferret guys quire, let’s call on the big guy of the pyre, I’m going to call on and start getting real by ‘summoning fire’~!” Dolly stopped and clutched at her helmet as the red jewel on it burned brightly.

As an incoming wall of death shot at Dolly, a wall of flames erupted in a circle around her and blocked all the incoming projectiles.

The broadly grinning fire beast Ifrit held his fire axe protectively in front of his summoner as he came out of the flame like a big protective brother. As Ifrit surged forward, Pom launched herself over Dolly.

The Dalmatian grabbed the falling Ether out of the air with a paw thanks to Pom drawing her attention to it mentally.

Quietly thanking Pom, Dolly quickly drank the Ether down to immediately soothe her painful, magically induced, migraine.

The explosions, lasers, hundreds of machine cannon projectiles and fire didn’t do anything to Ifrit. In fact the flamethrowers emboldened the fiery beast that was Ifrit as he lunged forward with a horizontal slash to take out the barrier drone on left, wiping it out in a single swing and he started to attack the other one.

The barrier drone was quickly retreated by the Air Buster as it interposed itself to block Ifrit’s attack without damage, not only that it caught his weapon with its lower arms and then punched him in the face with the upper right arm in a hook that staggered him.

A portion of the lower torso twisted independently of the upper torso and fired a high powered explosive shell that sent Peppercat sprawling as she was going in for another series of attacks. The blast scorched the top of the roof and damaged the nearby staircase.

While this was happening the lasers doggedly followed and bent at Pom who kept dodging them until they ran out of steam or were weak enough that they’d basically do no harm while blocking the ones she could.

The fight wasn’t going swimmingly for Pom, Dolly or Peppercat.

Peppercat had to avoid being blown entirely off the tower as explosions followed after her, at least the small artillery bomb shot from the lower torso had a slow charge up for the powerful outcome. The red cat bots real trouble was the machine cannons trying to chew through her armor.

The Air Buster was dealing with Pom and Peppercat without trying, even Dolly was wary of getting close.

Speaking of Dolly, she was trying to lay low get at the last barrier drone in sight and hoping that Merak didn’t have too many more of the things once it was dealt with. So far the fight was more like a one sided massacre in the lemmings favor.

Even if Ifrit could not currently damage the Air Buster, he could still fend it off and might be able to do some damage when they do eventually bring down the barrier.

Dolly used ice magic to freeze the drone with a snap, it dropped to the ground frozen, but was still producing a barrier.

The Air Buster tried to turn and help unfreeze it when Peppercat lunged forward and jammed her claw through the barrier drones weakened body. She through the sparking machine at the Air Buster where it exploded and the barrier fell immediately.

Ifrit took advantage and slammed the machine with his axe. It actually dealt some damage, but it was only a scratch for how much power Ifrit put into the attack.

“Machines will rule, you guys aren’t cool, you’re barely even standing up me~!” Merak could be heard grinning from his floating chair throne inside the machine. “Those fight further might, want to build up for the fight, now I’ll show you my power alright~!”

The two upper arms went holding themselves straight out, while the lower arms defended and attack Ifrit to keep him and his axe busy.

The upper arms launched off their fist into two small portals that opened up at both sides of the machine, then they flying rocket fists came out several times larger in the much bigger portals above the small ones.

“Say hello to my master plan, a crazy and master hand, I’ve still got more to throw at you~!” Both the large fist clenched and one slapped Ifrit across the arena to the point that half his upper torso was hanging off the side of the building. The other fired lasers at varying angles as it pointed in Pom and Peppercat’s direct. “Machines for everything grand, machines for every plan, there’s no way you can’t see my genius and…”

The lower torso was focusing machine cannon fire and the short range artillery bombs on Dolly. The lower arms on the upper torso was trying to tag Pom as she bouncing left and right towards the Air Buster trying to wind up for a massive upwards swing.

“Oh shut up why don’t you~!” Dolly braved the machine cannon fire with her board and then managed to stand up to the pummeling projectiles long enough to start a Counter Rave where she avoided getting smashed by a big palm of the left giant mechanical hand.

Dolly smacked the lower arms and the fists on them several times with her board as she flashed past them and then quickly glided off and away as the flying giant mechanical left hand gave chase to her while firing it’s finger lasers.

The giant flying right mechanical hand tried to grasp Peppercat and she ran away avoiding getting crushed by the intimidating massive metal mitt. She frantically dodged as it tried to grab her, smash her and fire massive artillery shells at her.

Pom managed to get below the front of the machine’s blaring red eye staring down on her, with gritted teeth the ewe used all the wool on the rear half of her body to spring upwards. She wasn’t relying on her physical muscles for the following swing and the blow she landed actually knocked the upper torso backwards so hard that the singular red eye was looking to the sky.

Kicking off the chest and back flipping while opening the paralance, Pom managed to fend off the retaliatory flamethrowers. Only for the two upper limbs, the ones the now giant hands used to be attached to, both turned forward and started glowing and were aimed at either side of Pom.

Pom was confused as to why they weren’t aimed at her, but then she realized that the machine hadn’t fired its small bending orange lasers for a bit. Her eyes widened as two brilliant blue beams fired off to either side of her, then a number of beams came out of the two large beams directly at Pom from both sides, they started criss crossing as she quickly dodged backwards as numerous beams passed between the two constant beams that didn’t extend too far beyond the roof.

It didn’t take long for Pom to realize she was going to back off the roof entirely… not that it’d be a problem for her and leapt off the edge and yanked herself to the extended edges of the roof with a bit of wire wool action. Once the beams ended she clambered back up and saw Ifrit slamming his axe up into the flying left fist and saw Peppercat was in trouble with the flying right fist.

Pom quickly sprang towards Peppercat and managed to tackle her out of the path of a spread missiles she had missed coming for her while the large right hand was trying to crush her with its fingers.

Managing to block the missiles, Pom tried to roll away from the hand flying up and slapping down against the roof.

While Pom managed to successfully avoid getting directly hit, the force of the impact sent her flailing into the air from the shockwave. The fist immediately reoriented rocketed up into her and sent her flailing, spiraling into the roof where her wool reflexively covered her whole body. If it hadn’t she would have smashed her face in.

Pom quickly rolled onto her hooves and immediately sprang away as several lasers blasted the roof where she just was and started giving chase as missiles, orange bending lasers and more machine cannon fire was blasting at her.

Dolly was trying to figure out what to do, should she summon ice? Should she attack the giant mechanical hands or the main body which was quite well armored and a skateboard definitely wasn’t going to literally cut through metal that thick. She mostly stayed close to Ifrit and couldn’t think of much to help him with the giant flying mechanical hand. She was actually getting too terrified to do anything other than protect herself or evade, alongside occasionally throwing the stone bone to do some safe damage at a distance.

Peppercat was the one actually clocking some damage on the main torso while clambering on the lower torso, she was trying to avoid the flame throwers, the splitting shoulder lasers that could turn at a ninety degree angle in varying portions at a time, the lower arms and the many arcing orange lasers along with the various artillery missiles that were fired into the portals and redirected around the Air Buster as needed.

It didn’t help that machine cannon fire was being redirected at them from the portals and any that hit the Air Buster basically did nothing to its armor.

The red cat watched as Pom came in and jammed her spear into the side and avoided the lasers that followed after her, the Air Buster was apparently built with being impervious to its own lasers in mind or it was just built to be that ridiculously tough. Even if the Paralance did some damage, the armor stood up to the impact fairly well against the mysterious weapon.

Both Peppercat and Pom, who swiftly pulled the lance free, quickly ran together as the giant flying right fist came after them both along with the Air Buster itself. In the background the other fist could be hitting Ifrit harshly.

“Is this your best, where are the rest, I thought there were more of you lot~!” Sang Merak as he continued to only use portals to assist the projectile spewing machine that didn’t seem to stop to cycle ammunition and likely didn’t need to at the rate it was going. “How can I show I’m superior, when there is nothing but the biological inferior, I’ve yet to really have to try here~!”

“Survive to the last, we need some help fast, we can’t take more of his laser salvo~!” As Pom sang this, she noticed that the flying mechanical fist started gang up on Ifrit while the Air Buster started focusing on her, Dolly and Peppercat. “Dodging left and right, is this even a real fight, we need to survive and I could use some aloe~!”

“Getting knocked around is no fun, we’re on the run, my parts are failing~!” Peppercat was thrown a hi-potion by Pom and the digibot the liquids against her body and it started repairing the damage as she ran, leapt and dodge through the projectile hell.

“Well-, it seems like you will all fail~!” One of the massive mechanical hands separated from Ifrit and rammed Pom into the roof and only her wool was preventing her from being crushed. “Starting with you, you’re all through, I’ve had plenty of fun, but this time ewe, you are done~!”

Dolly was quickly attacking the left mechanical hand to try and save Pom, as Ifrit was kept at bay by the right hand. Peppercat was kept away by the Air Buster properly, there was so much death coming from one machine that Peppercat couldn’t get over to the hand free Pom from where she was pinned.

Pom was struggling under the massive mechanical hand that was using its jet to keep her pressured against the roof. She tried to use a bark breaker and it didn’t work as apparently the giant mechanical hands, detached or not, had the same protections as The Arsenal. It wouldn’t be hard to infer that the Air Buster had those protections as well.

They heard a shout and saw Peppercat almost go sliding off the roof and she clutched onto the slippery edge with rain water threatening to drop her off the side, that wasn’t the problem what was is that the Air Buster made its way over to Pom and Dolly unhindered.

It raised the left arm and tried to smash down on Dolly and then ignited flames at her trying to force her away from helping Pom.

Dolly narrowed her eyes and stayed firmly next to her friend and stood her ground.

“Oh screw the horse you road in on big mac, there’s no way I’m letting you get off your next attack, so help me I’m not moving back~!” Stated Dolly as she brandished her board and bone while standing in front of Dolly.

“Then this is the part where you finally die for the power to defeat me you certainly lack~!” The chest opened up and a massive buildup of energy could be seen in the chest aimed at them.

Pom recognized the diffusion beam from The Arsenal, she mentally contacted Dormarch and got a status report.

It was not looking good, Dormarch was quite busy and the two other teams were swamped with EPs, but they had at least located the computers to access the plate drop and mako reactor detonations.

Pom heard shouting in her ear from Ocellus to do something or at least try anything from the slightly battered visor, this one was made with Pom in mind by Welch.

The beam was about to fire from the Air Buster and lightning lit up the dark sky and Pom was going to die here wet and miserable… and Dolly was planning to bravely go with her.

Pom looked up above Air Buster and blinked as a massive amount of energy began gathering incredibly fast, a massive bolt from the dark slammed down on top of the Air Busters chest and threw off the diffusion beam. Said beam knocked the massive mechanical hand away and the sky was partially parted by the massive beam, for about five seconds.

A wide eyed Pom and Dolly watched as the large mechanical hand reoriented itself in the air and went into an idle hover, looking only badly damaged across the top of it where the diffusion beam struck it. It was still quite viable for combat as far as Pom could tell.

The Air Buster had definitely taken some damage from that seemingly sporadic lightning bolt as it currently wasn't attacking at the moment.

“What the freak, it’s that little pipsqueak, how the hell did that thing even get near, how did he even survive the explosions that he flew into to even end up all the way up here~?!” On the ground in front of Pom and Dolly was a bloated, sickly looking, Lit.

“Squeurrrgghhhh…” Lit looked quite unnaturally round and was gurgling painfully. Despite having little idea of what was going on, he knew Dolly and Pom were in trouble and thus he showed up to save the day like a little hero.

This was despite Lit feeling incredibly sick to his stomach… the little bug Pokémon finally admitted that maybe he had gotten a little bit too greedy for energy and finally decided to maybe do what his body has been telling him all along since he went nuts with power.

“Bleargeeaakkkagaggggh!” They all stared as a yellow orb came out of Lit’s body in a disturbing manner and his sickly form looked so much better afterwards and returned to normal size, all four of his little blue eyes twitch badly.

At least the little guy was still alive… if not feeling particularly fond of consuming stupidly powerful sources of energy all of the sudden. If the reasons weren’t obvious, Lit learned a lesson the lesson the hard way. All that was energy was not always a happy stomach.

It was around the time that they collected their thoughts that the temporarily disabled Air Buster finally managed to get back in gear after the massive blow that left a large scorch mark on the front of its whole body.

Dolly dove for the materia Lit just spewed up and Pom quickly scooped Lit up with a hoof and they both dodged in the opposite direction to avoid the splitter shoulder cannon fire from the Air Buster and the subsequent ninety degree outward splitting off the main beams in their direction. This along with more raining missiles, a barrage of wildly curving orange lasers and it even added electrical energy pulses.

“Squeee…” Lit whined pitifully as Pom stuck him safely to her wool and kept moving.

Once Lit was ready to help more, Pom would welcome his tiny assistance in not dying here completely drenched and miserable fighting a death machine on a roof that she could barely damage even when its barrier was down. It didn’t help that said machine also launched off its upper hands and turned them into giant attack fists.

Dolly quickly slotted the yellow sparking materia into her helmet and figured lighting was good against machines right? At least that’s what Cumin Kitten seemed to show when she shocked her way through a lot of drones, crawlers and other mechanical enemies. Well she assumed it was lightning and hoped she could learn how to use it before the battle got any worse for them, Jerkak had yet to throw his air forces guarding the tower at them.

The Dalmatian was quite happy to see Lit and that he was alright after looking so sickly. Dolly made a note to herself that no matter how much materia looked like candy, it wasn’t safe to eat and obviously couldn’t be digested no matter how much you tried... to think she was wondering if the ice materia tasted like snow cones.

Author's Note

Sorry I've been taking a break and playing some Monster Hunter...

Bazelguese really needs to stop ambushing me, it doesn't end well for it.

So yes, Merak is not really doing much aside from using portals and a modified Air Buster, but he's able to hold off Ifrit, Pom, Dolly and Peppercat without much trouble.

Lit's back... but he's not quite up to fighting right now.

444. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 23.

Author's Note

I hope I don't get too deeply dug into Dave the Diver...

In all of Final Fantasy 7, Tifa is the 'mostly normal' human character. She classes as a Monk and has the generic RPG character story of 'my life was quite nice until my village burned down and now I'm a hero because of it'.

Yuffie and Barret are close seconds for remaining baseline humans minus Barrets infinite ammunition magic spewing gun arm.

Yuffie and Barret notably mostly fight with ranged weapons, Barret does have a few melee weapons but those are few and far between.

This is compared to Tifa who fights everything up close and with her knuckle covered fists and can somewhat keep up with Cloud in damage output. This is despite Cloud being a super soldier wielding a sword as big as he is.

It makes one wonder if Tifa got MAKO infused by the 'town burning down incident' given how said incident ended and all the 'Monk' class training made her just as super human as the rest of the cast.

444. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 23.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar, Upper Inner City, allied territory, Quetal-

“How’s Pom doing Ocellus?” I asked with a claw on the visor as I looked to the three burning and smoking transports that barely managed to land successfully in the inner city. I think Pom had it easier with getting through that solid wall of fire by entirely being on the ground.

Jeanne was already organizing the other Hakamo-o and one Kommo-o Valora unit to start moving out, I wonder if the rumors of Jangmo-o line was true that they were in a way like Lucario. At least they were easier to talk to and be friends with than most other Dragon Types were.

“She and the others are… alive.” To paraphrase Ocellus’s flatly spoken words, which is specifically ‘not well, but still going’. “We need you to help the other two teams and get up there quickly.

“I’m on the way!” Snake stated as the commando rabbit ran off with Shine waving at them as she followed after him to give him some back up.

“You’ll attack the reinforced main entrance to the garage while Shine and Snake sneak around to go directly support Pom’s fight.” Cait Sith stated over the visor. “I’m already ordering the Berserker Moogles to switch from defense to offense. They should give you an opening to get into the building, the Caerbannog already infiltrating the garage will try to give you an opening to get in once you get closer. Honestly kind of jealous that Snake is a free range servant while I’m stuck as an NPC.”

Yeah, Neutral servants had more freedom to act, I could clearly understand Cait’s problem with how he couldn’t get involved in things.

“You up for a fight Frizzle?” Dazzle asked and looked to Frizzle currently chewing through a mass up bread with a claw up that yes she’s was getting ready to go. “Honestly, you need to eat healthier…”

Frizzle just grinned at the thought anyone could stop her from consuming bread like crazy. We started moving out and I glanced back at Elise not looking towards the tower, but behind us.

“Go on… I’ll… I’ll catch up.” Narrowing my eyes at Elise as she nervously held her glaive spear against her chest, I knew somebody was watching us… but if they weren’t attacking, then they weren’t an Enemy Program. “Pom and the others need you… don’t… worry about me.”

I quietly turned to hop onto Dodo with Favela, took one last worried glance at Elise and then we took off.

-Copen the Slayer Dragon-

Once the others left I dropped down behind a very familiar naga who turned to me, one I remembered having killed before. Only… she was alive again.

Her hood flexed inward and I saw a frown on her face.

“Adept…” I stated coldly as my grip tightened on my gun, ready to start pulling the trigger as a rage rose in me at the sight of her.

-Elise-

It’s him… the one who finally killed me in my previous life. To be fair to him, he actually killed Crazy and stopped a very vicious cycle of pain and suffering, we were kind of out of control and needed to be put down at the time.

I don’t want Pom’s trauma by helping my soul be whole again to go to waste, so I had to try and defend myself from him.

I tightened my grip on the spear and held it defensively, because I would not be the first to attack in this situation.

“Can we just talk… please?” I asked while my body shivered at the sight his narrowed red eyed glare.

I would not let Pom’s sacrifice for me go to waste, if I had to I would fight him with everything I had… but… I don’t think I would be able to beat him.

-Lola the Battle Pod-

Copen was about to shoot at her anyway despite her pleading expression.

“Copen wait!” Memories came flooding in… I was from a far flung future where things went down a horrible path. The Copen I was with, was from before that future had ever occurred. The Minos… I had to stop Copen and explain! “Please, hear her out, if not for me then for…?!”

I didn’t know if it would be ‘Copen’ or ‘The Slayer Dragon’ that would be listening to me, I had thought we were from the same place… but I was apparently mistaken as I came from a different much worse future of our world.

“Mytyl was an Adept!” I screamed at Copen as a form of revelation to stop him from his current course of action and the world froze in an infinite second, I had just invoked the name of Copen’s little sister and could only hope he listened.

As Elise, ‘The Eternal Envy’ as the Sumeragi Corporation files called her, sat across from him clearly willing to defend herself and not wanting a fight at all with the one that finally killed her in a past life.

The finger on the trigger slowly tightened.

-Shinra Tower Rooftop, Pom, Dolly, Peppercat and Lit (With temporary summon Ifrit) Vs. Finished Air Buster Ultimate and Merak (Continued)-

There was a silent agreement that the projectile spam had gotten even worse since the barrier drones were taken out. Merak probably had more, but he was likely waiting on them to actually do some serious damage to the large heavily armed and armored machine before using them to stretch out the fight.

It wasn’t hard to guess that Merak was stalling his opponents out while he attempted to blast them into a fine bloody paste or mist.

One of the enlarged hands was enough to fend off Ifrit alone. The other hand could barely be dealt with as Pom, Dolly and Peppercat evaded the constant projectile attacks from Air Buster and Merak’s portals redirecting explosives at or near them. They could hardly get any attacks on the Air Buster at all with the other large flying mechanical hand assaulting them with lasers from its fingers.

“Are you getting tired, why have you not expired, please don’t tell me that’s all you have now~!” Merak stated as the Air Buster started firing paralyzing electric blasts.

Peppercat intercepted a few of said blasts with her body, since she was immune and it charged up her electrical attacks for a bit getting extra energy from an outside source.

“I don’t think you’re very nice, Pom help me with the price, I think it’s time for us to ‘summon Ice’~!” Doing as Dolly asked Pom sent her a mass of magical energy through their bond to pay for summoning Shiva to the field, the cost to magic was the same as it ever was, but that put another being on the field that can assist them in combat.

As Dolly was busy Summoning Shiva, Pom attack the other giant mechanical hand as it tried to swipe at her canine companion and friend.

Pom managed to block and smash the bulk of the paralance into the enlarge flying mechanical hand, knocking the hovering mass of metal away from Dolly. Pom then had to dodge several redirected explosives as Shiva appeared and blocked a few machine cannon rounds before she started summoning ice.

Ifrit was fending off the right mechanical hand by himself and actually managing to damage it fairly well by himself.

Peppercat started assisting Pom with dealing with the left hand and continued to absorb any paralyzing electrical attacks that was sent her friends way, the Digitbot continued to claw and blast lightning from her arms into the large left mechanical hand to do some damage and stun it from firing any lasers.

“Now you have an ice thing, how much more can you bring, what are you summoning next a cow~?” Merak was still singing and paying half attention as he continued to play his game safely inside the machine slowly battering his opponents into the ground.

Pom would want to summon Arizona, she’d at least total this machine in twelve hits or less. Instead she was stuck with bashing and stabbing attacks using a weapon that could likely morph into other things. Things like big bulky swords that could split into even more swords.

“If we can deal with the hands while under fire~.” Peppercat ducked and rolled forward underneath the floating mechanical fist and blast lighting from her claws upwards into it.

“Then we won’t need to worry about them making us tire~.” Following up the stun Pom launched forward using her would and stabbed the enlarge mechanical hand with the paralance, she tried to spike I from the inside, but the hand pulled itself off of the spear tip and fired lasers from its fingertips at a point blank range forcing Pom to open the paralance as blasts of lasers sent her skidding backwards across the rooftop and a bending orange laser from the Air Buster grazed across the back of Pom’s neck and a machine cannon round tore into her left thigh knocking her down.

“Come on ‘lighting’ spire~?” Dolly stated as she slid into place and started protecting Pom from the machine cannon fire from the side as the Air Buster closed in on them and opened both its lower arms palms to preparing to spray them with flames. No lightning struck out when Dolly tried to use the third materia.

Dolly didn’t know how to use the lightning materia or how it worked and she was pretty sure it was lightning aligned after Lit coughed it up. Fire and Ice were just like breathing… that and Ice was something Dolly naturally had an affinity towards as much as an immunity and fire was easy because it was the opposite of that.

“Squeak-squeak-squeak~!” Lit fired a powerful lightning bolt that pushed the Air Buster back without charring or damaging Pom’s wool, he was awake at least and in the mood to protect the dynamic duo with the raw power he absorbed out of the materia.

“Go on take that seat freak~!” Dolly joined in with her little buddy.

“Well now, isn’t that quite unique~.” Merak chuckled dryly with anger as the Air Buster had become stunned for a few second by the powerful blast Lit let loose on it.

With what little time they had Pom brought out three potions and tossed two of them to Dolly and Lit.

Dolly hadn’t noticed a machine cannon injury in her neck, but she felt better after quickly downing the potion.

Lit while curious about the liquids in the bottle, quickly chugged what he could from it, somehow able to hold up the entire thing despite his tiny size. He made some appreciative noises and the liquids certainly helped his stomach ache.

Pom thought it somewhat comical how strong Lit was as she downed her own Potion and tossed a spare towards Peppercat after her injuries healed over. The Digibot appreciated that the fluids could fix her digital code and wished she had a healing move like Cure Liquor that Dormarch was capable of.

Shiva and Ifrit would eventually disappear and healing Pom could spare would be wasted on them… not that they had much more resources as fighting the Air Buster was eating through all of them.

“Lit focus the hands~!” Pom stated as she angled the paralance toward the blue beams of the splitting lasers and blocked them

“Lend me help my friends~!” Peppercat asked as the hand clenched its fist and she had to cartwheel out of the way of it trying to punch her into a pile of scrap metal data.

“Can I say that I hope that this is not our end~?” Dolly stated as she threw the stone bone into the large left mechanical hand and following the catching of said bone, she whipped her board out on the strap using the force of the catch to bash it and avoided the index finger quickly slamming down at her and trying to crush her into the rooftop.

Shiva and Ifrit were blasting the flying enlarged mechanical hand from the upper right arm with ice and fire magic while attacking it with their weapons, quickly expanding and shrinking the metal causing quite a bit of damage to it. Merak tried to hit Shiva with the flamethrowers only for Ifrit to draw the heat and flames out of the air as much as the cold rain itself already was.

Merak seeing that Shiva and Ifrit were going to be a problem, he turned the Air Buster to focusing on his more vulnerable opponents.

Bending orange lasers, redirected missiles, machine cannon fire, paralyzing blasts of electrical energy, it was all getting fairly hard to dodge and attack the left flying mechanical hand from the upper left arm at the same time.

The lower torso of the Air Buster then opened up, Pom, Dolly and Peppercat dodged as another short range artillery bomb blasted them across the roof with an explosive shockwave.

At this rate Pom figured they weren’t going to have enough Hi-potions, Potions or Ethers to keep up with the various injuries from all the projectiles. Peppercat didn’t have a defensive tool aside from possible creating a temporary magnetic field with her electrical energy generated from her body to redirect any of the physical ammunition and that wasn’t the best use of her abilities.

“See isn’t technology great, you’ve far too much on your plate, but hopefully for me I won’t be that late~!” Merak stated jokingly as if drawing attention to the countdown timers being carried by the nearby drones. “All I have to do is lay back and watch, this fight so far is not really hard for me botch, I’ll just wear you down until you’re all in the ground~!”

“Can you make a pulse, an electromagnetic one to convulse, our enemies flying fist things~?” Pom asked of Peppercat as she started primarily blocking attacks from the Air Buster to let Dolly and Peppercat keep hitting the large flying mechanical fist.

“I’d need far more time, more than we’ve got to rhyme, we’re still on the back foot it seems~.” Peppercat dodge back and around the sideways karate chop the flying mechanical hand tried to hit her with. It wasn’t seconds later that the digital cat robot had to dodge a blasts of four parallel lasers a second later as Dolly leapt in to get off another throw and smack.

Pom was annoyed that they were still singing to Merak’s tune, because apparently he’s the one that started this music and if the heart song wasn’t in their favor it wasn’t ever going to be unless they could flip the script.

Turning her head, Pom loosed a bark blast at the floating mechanical hand and stunned it out of firing lasers at her a number of missiles were redirected at her by Merak.

Lit, who seemed to have rested enough to regain some strength, created a veritable cage of lightning around them in the directions that Pom’s paralance couldn’t cover. The lightning blew up the missiles preemptively and at a safe distance, the other portal redirected projectiles that Pom couldn’t stop didn’t hit her too much. A number of machine cannon bullets and lasers grazed her.

“Hey I’m starting to wonder, if I made a blunder, because I should be calling out the ‘Thunder’~!” A lightning bolt struck out at the mechanical floating hand and Dolly groaned as she clutched at her head.

Pom quickly threw her another Ether potion as Lit dropped another lightning bolt with a might squeak that caused the enlarged floating mechanical hand to start sparking as it fell onto the roof and jerked about wildly.

“Oh come on~! How does a single dog do all that, where is she even getting all of her magic stats~?” Merak was irate, as Peppercat, Dolly and Pom took advantage of the down mechanical fist to start bashing it as hard as they could.

Pom moved to protect Dolly in an instant stopping powerful flames from striking Dolly as she stopped to drink the Ether after several hits.

The staggered mechanical hand started rising back into the air, only to be bashed back into the roof by a massive axe slam from Ifrit as Shiva kept the right flying fist busy with an array of magical ice spears.

Pom started thinking of the duo as being like Arizona and Velvet, Arizona being strong like Ifrit and Velvet being graceful like Shiva.

“I have some fears, time to loose some tears, as I bust out a Burning Thousand Spears~!” Pom quickly folded up the lanced and dodged around sparking bolts of energy, hopped around machine cannon fire, twisting around bending lasers, all while inhaling. When she got into a position, she held the spear at the ready while facing slightly away and then turned to start rapidly thrusting it creating numerous blasts of powerful jets of air pressure while exhaling explosively. The paralance created blasts of friction as she put the mechanical hand between her and the Air Buster and started heavily damaging.

Hopping back, Pom leapt up and then drove the spear deep into the mechanical fist, patted Lit and he leapt off onto the shaft of it as she leapt away.

“Squeak-squ-squeak-squeak-squeak~!” Not understanding a single thing Lit said didn’t make what he was going to do any less effective. The Paralance became a lightning rod and several blasts of lightning converged and the mechanical fist started glowing brightly.

Lit leapt off and turned into a green flash the bounced off individual raindrops and disappeared from sight. Several spot lights from the countdown billboard carrying drones started sweeping the roof looking for the little yellow bug.

The fist exploded and the paralance was on a course to fly off the roof and then after a single shimmer it and a movement from her right hoof, it immediately went back to being held by Pom in an instant just in time to block a diffusion beam that burned a groove into a section of the roof up to where she was standing as she locked herself down and bunkered in place with her wool.

While Pom was dealing with that, Peppercat and Dolly attacked the Air Buster from the left and right while trying to avoid the numerous projectiles coming at them to the best of their abilities. While Ifrit and Shiva were working on finishing off the remaining flying mechanical fist and actively deflected or blocking the beam attacks coming from its fingers using ice or the flaming axe.

An explosion rocked Pom as he was struck from behind by a missile. Pom grunted as a piece of shrapnel embedded itself into her body, her wool quickly ejected it and stitched the wound shut.

A second later Peppercat slapped into the blunt canopy portion of the paralance while barely missing the pointed spot, Pom looked over the massive dent in her body from where she was just punched by a straight left from the Air Buster.

Dolly avoided getting hit as she continued to physically assault the Air Buster’s lower torso with her bone and board, the hovercraft portion, as it continued to try and take her out.

Pom quickly stepped forward and covered Peppercat with her paralance and tossed a Hi-Potion onto the damaged Digibot, her body started to miraculously repair as soon as the fluids splashed onto her. In the background fight near them the other large mechanical hand started smoking by quite a bit.

“Diamond Dust/Hellfire!” Shiva used Diamond Dust to freeze the metal and then a few seconds later the slightly shrunken metal fist was expanded rapidly as Ifrit lit it up with a blazing, powerful, heat. Said heat stopped the cold rain from hitting the roof for a few seconds and the other large mechanical hand lost structural integrity and exploded violently as the heat expanded it too rapidly.

This was unfortunate for Pom, Peppercat, Dolly and the currently missing in action Lit, since they no longer had Ifrit or Shiva’s support as they used their final skills at the same time to.

“Is that all you got, what for have you fought, I bet you can’t get those guys back anytime soon~!” The Air Buster unleashed four more barrier drones, they hovered high above the Air Buster. Pom and Dolly were about to attack when the lower half of the Air Buster exploded outward and it actually took into the air to start flying around them on powerful jets. “You’re getting a hello from Moon Cell, welcome to this flying hell, for I’m finally revealing your doom~!”

“Uh Pom I don’t want to be alarmist, but how are we going to get up to him there~?” Dolly asked as the Air Buster continued to rain attacks down on them and she defended. “Not going to lie I’m angry about this guy, but honestly that is so totally unfair~!”

“Don’t give up heart, we still have to do our part, so surviving would just be the start~!” Pom didn’t see how they were going to attack it in the air, sure the barrier drones needed to be near it, but they couldn’t reach the drones while it was flying.

Peppercat hadn’t become entirely useless even if most of her features were melee, she could still absorb the attempts to paralyze them with electric wads of energy and dodge fairly well.

What made it even more unfair to Dolly was that the Air Buster could fire its shoulder split cannon lasers and move around while doing so. Thankfully it was known that while they could split off from the main beams as many times as they wanted, the lasers could only bend away from the main stream of energy once from the primary firing line and the primary beam weakened overall. Still didn’t make dodging them any easier.

“Light whose fell pillars, leave rifts in the wider world, and lead it towards ruin~!” Merak stated as a mantra as the Air Buster start charging up a diffusion beam and ten portals opened up around the roof. “Lazy Laser I’m firing thee, avoid it as much as you can flee, but you soon won’t have any room left to move free~!”

“Is it a little wrong, that I hate that he did that in song, can’t we just move this along~?” Dolly stated tersely as the beam fired into a portal and the beam started crossing across the roof top and it started herding Pom, Dolly and Peppercat, into a corner using eight portals as the world around them was lit up to be almost too blindingly bright.

Pom opened the paralance to take a hit and a portal instead opened up in front of them and absorbed the beam as a portal appeared behind them. Dolly’s eyes were wide and her pupils were shrinking as much as Pom’s as the beam started emerging from the portal, they were caught in a pincer maneuver.

If Pom turned the paralance around… then Merak would just drop the portal in front of them and fry them. Dolly’s board wasn’t big enough to block all that energy even if it survived the impact. There was a beam of energy above them trapping them from simply leaping out of the beam trap.

Peppercat’s blue eyes narrowed as she brought her claws together and formed an Electro Ball Special with them and took up a position protecting Pom’s back while Dolly braced with her board in front of Peppercat, she held the ball of energy aloft in front of her as a form of defense.

The laser came and Peppercat tried to block it by producing as much energy in its path as her body feasibly could… it actually worked for a few seconds.

“Nyaghhhhh….?~” Peppercat almost managed to hold out throughout the entire beam, until her Electro Ball imploded and the beam started to tear into the upper half of her body. Still she had managed to successfully protect Pom using her body to take the remainder of the energy. “Protect medal… t-t-t-in-p-p-p-pet system, overloaded. E-e-e-e-ejecting digi-bot heart…”

The beam ended and Pom stared wide eyed as Peppercat, missing her torso, head and arm armored parts, the underlayer of her body flopped over sparking. Her chest opened and the pained digital robots back arched as the medal shot into the air and the arced back sent it in Pom’s direction, she quickly grabbed it in her hoof and looked at it, she was now holding onto Peppercat’s soul and quickly stuffed it under her wool protectively.

Peppercat hadn’t had an easy time of things, this was the second time she’s been taken out, but as long as Pom kept the medal that came out of her body safe… then she’d be capable of being revived. Peppercat’s inner workings, known as a tin pet skeletal system, was a lost cause though as it started melting into a pile of slag.

“Now it’s just down to two, what can you do, let’s see how you handle another Lazy Laser just for you~!” It seemed Merak had forgotten that it was actually three, he was proven wrong a second later when a Barrier drone was blasted with a powerful bolt of lightning that destroyed it immediately. Also it was odd that he didn’t immediately start charging up for a lazy laser.

Said bolt was generated from the Air Buster itself, Lit had tried to get inside… and failing that… he decided to disabuse Merak of the notion that just because he had a flying death machine that he was entirely safe from reprisal. The bolt didn’t do any damage to the Air Buster thanks to the barrier drones, but now Merak had his own time limit of figuring out how to get Lit off his machine before the lone tiny bug tore his remaining three drones apart.

Merak tried to electrify the armor, Lit just ate the energy happily and started to drain the energy core on the Air Buster. Instead he set off the vibrational defense system, the same one made to stop Pom from using Bark Breaker on it, but that didn’t bother Lit either as he was in a spot where it wouldn’t affect him.

Lit despite not being of high intelligence had basically outsmarted Merak by being overly simple in his thought processes, one of the reasons Psychic Types were weak to Bug Types. All the intellect in the world couldn’t stop a Bug Type from being annoying to deal with, so he was a little terror that actually had Merak afraid of what would happen when the barrier on the Air Buster went down.

Said little bug still needed time to build up for powerful attacks, he had been exhausted when Pom picked him up and the little trooper of a hero was still raring to help. Would Lit be able to keep helping in a timely manner when he was slow to recover after doing a big attack?

“Oh how much do I hear the tick and a tock, you don’t quite have time to wait out the clock, so you might want find a way to deal with me~!” Merak’s bravado wasn’t a lie though, he’s been on the better side of the fight and wasn’t tired in the slightest. Mostly because he was being ultimately lazy and laid back inside the machine doing all the fighting for him. “Or else you’re all cooked you see~!”

“Pom, help is coming, hold on a little longer. We’re going to point as many Skein Flyers as we can at the tower and hope for the best. We’ll leave our defenses up to the flying Magitek Armor squad that the Commandramon have formed.” Well that was a questionable use of resources from Ocellus, but at this point Pom would welcome it even if most of those Skein Flyers weren’t going to make it through the storm of Merak’s aerial forces and defenses. “We’ll try to send you another special Magitek Armor unit, you’re not likely to survive much longer without it! Also I’m aware that we can’t shoot at the defenses without causing the Eaters to get worse and that the enemy you’re fighting has a lot of anti-air capabilities, but we can’t sit back and watch this for much longer without doing something.”

Pom didn’t like the sound of getting in a third magitek armor being made for her and Dolly, the first two were bad enough even if they were very helpful in combat.

“Huh… okay… right… we’ll draw the air forces off for you while you do that Sami, but are you sure you’re capable of it?” Wait, what did Ocellus just say? “Change of plans, expect Canard, Krosserdog and Sami to come up soon. They are being swamped with EPs, but they’ve mostly done their part, now we’re relying on Dormarch to finish things out according to them. Just stay in the fight Pom and keep his focus on you.”

Pom sighed somewhat even as she dodge a series of bending orange lasers, splitting blue lasers and Merak was likely stalling them out until he could do another so called ‘Lazy Laser’.

“Oh and we’ll still try to get you the Metal Hound 003 unit, this one will be much faster… we had some Caerbannog sneak out to pick up the remains of one of the Einhanders you destroyed and the Thousand Gunner parts we just recieved… only some thrusters were left intact of the black one which is good enough for an upgrade for the newest model as well as a better weaponry.” Ocellus said cheerfully, Pom groaned even as she and Dolly tried to avoid machine cannon fire. “Some construction time by Welch is required and she’s making it so Dolly can pilot this one without needing you to be inside it, but we’ll get it to you as soon as we feasibly can. So again please hold on for help to arrive as Quetals team is already moving through the building and are trying to support Rokusho, Metabee and Dormarch!”

“Did I hear that right, are we getting another Metal Hound to fight, ah yeah more armor related fun in our plight~!” It seemed Dolly was happy with a wagging tail as she jumped onto Pom’s back, the ewe was busy hopping around like a grasshopper on caffeine just shy of a lethal dose, unable to fire back ranged attacks on the flying Air Buster or fight back at all with the constant stream of projectiles aimed at them.

Pom and Dolly even had to ingest three Hi-Potions due to various agonizing injuries for the things she couldn’t quite dodge, while still managing to stay on the move and was running low on morale and healing items.

Merak still had yet to lift a finger and it was going fairly well for him so far, he knew they couldn’t destroy his inner city defenses without compromising themselves to those eldritch things. Though they could still assault the tower, but what would that even achieve? It’s not like they could do much if they take the tower when they needed to ultimately defeat him. He only gave it a passing thought to actually look into why the other realm invaders weren’t currently attacking him, he had a ewe to kill.

-Sami-

I ate the motor bar I created, doing exactly like Dormarch had when he ate the digital code of an entire magitek armor… the code added to me had a strange effect. I specifically chose the parts of the skein flyer code and added the parts of that to myself.

“Hi-Commandramon digivolve to… Cargodramon!” After my evolution… I felt a little bloated and I had shattered a hole into the side of the tower with my body. I tore out an entire floors worth of EPs in a few seconds afterwards with my new built in multi-machine cannon firing grenades and digital bullets, I caused three territory explosions back to back in such a short amount of time. I then hovered closer and opened up my side. I felt incredible, also a little self-conscious about this transformation. “Don’t you dare say a word about my size!”

“Wouldn’t dream of it Sami, though you have to admit that your new form is a little weird... if ridiculously useful.” Canard said flatly as he hopped onboard, after I motioned to him to do so, with Krosserdog following silently. “Let’s move!”

445. Midgar Meltdown Pt. 24.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Now you see, I think it is quite interesting what Sami has just turned into.” Mew was once again fairly intrigued by the capabilities of Digital Monsters. “Kind of surprised she’s so self-conscious about looking like a dragon head with a tilt rotor cargo plane grafted onto its neck. It’s a good thing she can return to being a cute little commando lizard… I can’t imagine being stuck as a living transport for the rest of my life.”

“Well she did just triple her overall size and gain the ability to carry allies… so yes, some level of self-conscious is to be expected.” I stated solemnly. “I’m also quite glad that you aren’t as self-conscious about being a vehicle for ‘Genesis’ to feasibly repopulate the world… should everything go horribly wrong.”

Pom was, again, extremely outside the realm of whatever I could have expected of her. Her soul shines bright… it’s also running her head first to an inevitable self-destruction and even one as mighty as I cannot stop her if she chose to continue down that path.

If she dies before said full destruction occurs, I will gladly protect her soul from Moon Cell’s machinations. Though I’m quite certain Pom wouldn’t want to be anything like a Wooloo… a Furfrou would certainly be fairly fitting, but that’s only if death occurs under my watch. Also note to self, do not let any being ever try to drain any form of planetary soul energy for power and prevent Ghost Types from trying… we don’t need more Spiritomb incidents.

“…” Mew now started looking self-conscious at themselves once it was pointed out that they were technically a vehicle for worldwide rebirth and has been for the entirety of their life. They carried far more in that tiny innocuous looking frame than most would expect, like how I’m actually far more than I appear.

“Now you truly know how Sami feels in this moment.” It was something I had to sometimes remind Mew of, as most Mew tended to be exceedingly carefree, playful and affectionate to the point they might forget what they are truly capable of.

“As a genetic backup vehicle for all Pokémon kind, I’m currently glad I don’t have to spin my tail or flail my arms to fly.” Mew stated while gazing up into my eyes floating next to me. “Say… can you make some chocolate covered biscuits with strawberry jelly, please?”

“Of course.” They also had a sweet tooth a mile wide, they would never get any bigger biologically… all that energy gets compressed and at least five percent of that goes into their defensive abilities and the ability to use almost every Pokémon move in existence… and the rest is stored away for their ‘Genesis’ ability. “I’ll make enough for everyone, if Bahamut and Tiamat want some as well they are welcome to try some… provided they are not off selling tacos or noodles.”

“Yes, there are some mortals I need to ‘taco cart’, but I have plenty of time.” Bahamut certainly gets enjoyment from running a taco cart as much as Tiamat gets from running a noodle cart.

“Nope, no noodle incidents that I need to be a part of for a while.” One of Tiamat’s heads stated pleasantly. “And there will be noodle incidents, I’m a major purveyor of them after all. Remind me to tell you the marmalade story, it’s a very good one.”

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar, Upper Inner City, Shinra Tower, Dormarch-

Several things exploded nearby, Rokusho and Metabee were absolutely swamped with Crawler, Drones, Guard Hounds and Troopers… they were also showing quite well why Digibots were close to being on par with Champion and Ultimate level Digimon in some capacities.

“How long is this going to take again?” Metabee grumbled as he continued to rush into battle in a blaze of projectiles firing from both arms and rockets from his split horns at the top of his head. He and Rokusho were working in perfect harmony.

For all of Metabee’s hotheadedness, he tended to back off to let Rokusho handle things while his ammo cycles.

“As long as Dormarch needs us to protect him.” Rokusho stated blandly as his power fist and pincer blade tore through the enemies with a destructive precision I kind of wish I had in melee combat.

“You see that countdown timer on screen, that’s exactly what mom is hoping I can circumvent and stop… which is going to be extremely hard to do from here.” I never said it was impossible though, I was cracking data throughout the networks and was happy to work with what Sami left to me in the systems. I just had to finish the plan to deal with the Eaters, because they were starting to break the inner cities defenses through sheer attrition alone and that was quite a horrifying thought. “I can already feel mom flagging pretty badly, the potions can only do so much to hold her together and…”

Something exploded nearby in the building and taking a moment to access some cameras I saw… a cargo plane with the face of a dragon and vertical flight capability? That had to be Sami, nobody loved orange and stars quite that much to have it painted on their bodies. She has obviously hit her ‘Ultimate’ phase evolution, given how long she’s been alive and suppressing her evolution for the sake of her sanity… well I would be the first to congratulate her on becoming a flying gunship currently ascending to assist mom.

Sami would be capable of hitting Mega level should we all survive this, most digital destined troubleshooters are and her current form was quite ridiculously armored even if it looks like it could be easily shot down were it a normal vehicle.

As far as Ultimate forms go… I wondered just exactly how much Merak was going to have to throw at her to keep her, Canard and Krosserdog from helping mom.

Sami current form focuses heavily on armor and mobility, her weaponry was no slouch but not the main apparent focus of the evolution. A multi-machine cannon was her primary mode of attack, for what else would I call something that was spraying several thousand projectiles in the forms of bullets, grenades and ludicrously fast missiles with a ludicrous amount of variation between each projectile all from the same gun?

The bullets flew straight small impacts but numerous and relentless. The grenades arced due to the idea of gravity, generally in the form of high explosive, sticky explosives, shrapnel explosives, napalm explosives and so on. As for the missiles, they could minutely change direction to avoid being shot down.

She was using said chest mounted gun beneath her head to great effect having taken out an entire floor of the building in seconds and she hadn’t even tapped into using the six heavy missile launchers, of which there were three to the left and right of the machine cannon.

The only problem I can see for Sami is that most of her weaponry was all forward facing leaving her back end somewhat defenseless if more heavily armored, I also noted that her tilt rotor propeller blades were insanely flexible. Probably improves flying… or could be used as a melee weapon regardless of how absurd a cargo plane intentionally having a melee attack would sound.

Merak’s aerial forces were already intercepting the incoming Rider Zealots using Flying Magitek Armors, Skein Flyers and the new vehicles called Scouts.

I went back to focusing on my work, hopefully I can surpass the rest of Merak’s internal security… which wasn’t going all too well at the moment with me getting distracted by everything going on.

-Pom, Dolly and Lit (Peppercat DIA, Destroyed in Action) vs. Finished Air Buster Ultimate with Lazy Laser Merak, Continued-

Pom saw Merak’s air forces move to intercept the incoming Skein Flyers from Castle Alexander. She wouldn’t worry about them as they turned into a cloud of dog fighting, she was too busy dodging lasers, explosives and what had to have been millions of bullets firing from all kinds of odd directions thanks to the ten portals that Merak could generate.

Merak knew how to use them quite efficiently for all the laziness he portrays in getting a machine to do all the fighting for him while he slacks off. Portals appeared and disappeared quickly flickering in and out of existence and Pom was incapable of doing anything but dodge or block.

Dolly could move away from Pom, but that would mean leaving the ewe without a secondary form of defense since Peppercat lost her body trying to protect Pom with Dolly.

Lit was taking his sweet time with building up for another drone destroying attack.

“Is this the best you got, is two lost hands all the trouble you brought, you should seriously consider running now~.” Merak was obviously just toying with his opponent now, like a cat playing with a mouse battering Pom and Dolly about the arena with explosions.

“Which is why you should pay attention to your back, since we’re now going on the attack, let’s see you take on more of our pack~!” The two on the roof looked up as a large vehicle with a dragon shaped head rose up and the voice coming from it was the familiar voice of the Puckworld Duck, Canard’s team finally showed up and not in the way Pom expected. Considering the stairs to the roof were destroyed by all the bombardments, this was the best possible turnout for Sami’s current form and very much appreciated in the given situation. “If you think you’ve already won, then we’re clearly not quite done, so Sami show him how much you can do~!”

The barrier drones were hit with a solid wall of projectiles coming from Sami’s gun as she hovered and, the drone didn’t last seconds under the onslaught of explosions, piercing bullets and a random shotgun spray among all the strange expulsions coming from the multi-machine cannon Sami was equipped with.

Pom mentally likened it to Sami firing her rifle, bazooka and throwing grenades all at the same time with an excessive amount of power behind them.

“Well what a surprise this is, my drones I’ll surely miss, that surprise attack is still a little fish~!” Merak retorted and was about to turn the Air Busters chest bound laser cannon on the flying support, then beam was interrupt from charging as he redirected a lot of his projectile fire onto Sami while ignoring Pom and Dolly for the moment.

“Hey little buddy stop that attack, hit him in the lower back, then we’ll see who among us should be talking smack~!” The barrier was down and Dolly decided to get Lit involved, the little bug landed on the lower torso and then blasted it with as much lightning as he could output which was quite a lot.

The jets all along the Air Busters lower torso immediately faltered and it started to fall. It had steered itself to crash into the roof of the tower and cratered the top of the roof to fill a small portion of it with water.

Sami was about to use her gun to start attacking the Air Buster directly when several Manufactured helicopters showed up firing missiles and distracted her from attacking Merak, she shot down the missiles and managed to dodge some bending lasers from the fallen machine. She started a fight with the two manufactured as Pom took advantage of the downed Air Buster to launch some attacks into it.

Pom rapidly jammed her spear into the right arm of the Air Buster, trying to do some damage and was slowly succeeding to punctured the heavy armor. She knew it was not from her own efforts that was doing the damage, but because the paralance was just that powerful. Also she wanted to try and destroy one of the lower arms as Merak might detach and enlarged them too, instead of going for something more easily damaged like the machine cannons.

Dolly was the attacking the machine cannons and the short range artillery bomb hatch as she lightly dented the pipes sticking out of the lower torso, her ability to add momentum to her strikes was quite helpful in dealing damage her small frame normally wouldn’t be capable of as she repeatedly whipped her board around in a series of wild and rabid strikes between throwing the stone bone.

The Air Buster still definitely combat viable if it was still firing the curving orange laser beams into the air after Sami, who was avoiding them and firing back missiles from the left and right side of her machine cannon.

A small round shape fired from Sami’s side and something exploded and one of the flak cannons on the Air Busters back took quite a bit of damage and looked to have become inoperable. Canard and Krosserdog were both attacking the Air Buster too, from inside Sami when she could give them time to do so from her frantic aerial fight.

Moon Cell Watchers flooding into the air around the rooftop arena, alongside several more manufactured helicopters that were flying better than Sami was. Given it was Sami’s first time being a living transport she could be forgiven for not having a hang of all of her capabilities yet. Rider Zealots could be seen lending their shields and Skein Flyer weapons in assistance, the Magitek Armor using Zealots were slower and dealing with the faster enemies.

Starting to move, the Air Buster lifted itself up using its two lower arms and pulled the jets of its lower torso in and retreaded its lower half with the hovering belt again to go back into hovering mode. It blasted fire from its right hand forcing Pom to back off and then lashed out at Dolly forcing her out of the way of flames that were redirected back at her from another portal in an increasing amount until she managed to get back to Pom who blocked a powerful stream of incoming flames with the paralance.

“I know this might not mean much to you, but Baa-Ram-Ewe, I plan on taking you down too~!” Pom stated as the machine was focused on her once again, she was quite upset that Merak tried to torch Dolly and she was about to let him know she wasn’t letting him get away into the air again if the Air Buster could fly… because she would actually go after it if it did.

“Oh wow so scary, I’ll make you more wary, your situation gets more hairy~!” Merak launched the two lower mechanical hand into portals and now the two large flying mechanical hands for Pom to deal with and she didn’t have any way to deal with them and avoid Merak’s barrage of constant fire at the same time. “I’m going to box you in, then fire my laser for the win, for this beam will rend~!”

The enlarge mechanical hands slapped down and tried to grab at Pom as she dodged and hopped they fired lasers from their fingers, flesh burnt and cooked as Pom tried to stay ahead of both of them. While Pom was trying to not die the Air Buster hovered back towards one of the edges and started charging up its chest beam.

“Here I am dodging to the left and to the right, this is more of a massacre and not so much a fight, we’re down a friend and I’ll make up for her plight, because by the end of this I’ll hopefully be alright~!” Pom growled as she tapped dance around a flaming flying right fist punch that spewed flames in her direction lighting her wool on fire, it was quickly snuffed out as she rolled under the left hand trying to grasp her in a crushing grip. Dolly blocked hundreds of machine cannon rounds flying at Pom from the side as she deflected a missle up into the air with the tip of the paralance and kicked it towards the Air Buster. “I need to come to terms with the beast in my heart, because I’m going to very well still do my part, so this I scream to you, awwaaarooooooo~!”

Pom’s eyes started glowing gold and red as her body shifted into a more canine like nature with a quick grace, it had been about more than twenty four hours and lemming was on the menu. Her wool was now deflecting missiles as she attacked the right hand and dodged away from a back hand slap, then rolled to the side when the left hand tried to come down on top of her, it instead became impaled all the way through by the paralance left sitting balanced on the ground with its tip to the sky as Pom dodged away and started spitting bark blasts at the hand to damage it.

The left hand was a bit lethargic to act after taking the paralance through its internal mechanisms, but the right had no such problem and force Pom to back off and she used her wool to maneuver away from the spray of several lasers that narrowly missed her.

Dolly for her part was still attacking the main armless torso, which wasn’t going as well as one would expect when it still had working machine cannons, bending lasers, split lasers, redirected missiles and the small bomb artillery. She hadn’t stopped moving for even a second and was using her flow-motion ability to avoid what would be a quick death, her body having been clipped several times by the machine cannon fire whenever it took it’s time off from harassing an equally busy Pom and she couldn’t get her board into the path of the projectiles in time. Her helmet also saved her from being directly taken down with a powerful projectile shot to the head numerous times when her dodging wasn’t as good as it could be.

Several misty wolves of Pom’s fighting spirit started appearing and while they weren’t doing much too actually damage the Air Buster, they were at the least distracting it from firing on Pom. The flying mechanical hands were having a much harder time keeping up with Pom as the ability to lock onto her location became distorted with the movements of the various wolves around her.

The unfortunate problem with using the paralance as a nail was that Pom now had to get it back and getting on top of the hand to grab it was going to be hard to do while it was trying to kill her. She definitely did not want to jump into the palm of the thing that fired lasers from its fingers.

Merak was angry that he dropped his game console in the crash of the Air Buster hitting the roof, now had a hundred percent of his attention on Pom, Dolly and all the others. A lazy genius was one thing, but am incessantly mad and really angry genius was another thing entirely. The guy was now actively plotting the perfect Lazy Laser to end Pom as she dodged around in the strange mist that the rain was forming around her and the other misty wolves that showed up, the beams and bullets didn’t affect those wolves, but they could affect the hand or the Air Buster itself for minimal damage.

Minimal was still far too much for Merak’s ire right now and he considered the fact that Pom dropped her lance to damage the left flying mechanical hand of the Air Buster. A grin crossed the genius’s face as his mind came up with the perfect placement for the ewe to be before being blasted by a diffusion beam.

The left flying mechanical hand retreated and the right moved forward to take the lead on attack Pom who was successfully using the rain and the mist born wolves she created to avoid attacks. The left hand kept firing lasers in her general vicinity even if it couldn’t plot her exact location and her movements were all but unreadable.

“Fou-fou-fou, fou-fou-fou, fou-fou fou-fou-fou-fou-fou~!” Even when singing Fou had yet to say anything else other than what became his namesake as he clambered up onto the roof, having climbed all the way up the side of the building.

Fou attacked the right flying mechanical hand from behind before taking a swipe at here he thought Pom was, he avoided it trying to turn and crush him he and attacked it viciously with his claws.

“I’d be happy to never see you again, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a friend, don’t you have someone else to bother to the end~?”” Pom asked as she leapt for the paralance impaled left hand and was quickly smacked out the air by a sudden slap from the right that sent her tumbling across the rooftop. She used her wool to catch herself and slide around a several beams firing from the fingers of the mechanical hand. “We’re kind of in the middle of something, we don’t have time for confronting, can’t even listen to your grunting~!”

“Why are we still singing~?” Dolly sang as she blocked a number of machine cannon rounds for Pom, they both took as much cover as they could get behind the board and the Dalmatian waited for a Potion from Pom to deal with the bleeding that was making her lightheaded. Thankfully Dolly wasn’t experiencing any broken bones and most of her wounds were flesh based, she grabbed the potion Pom hoofed her way in a paw as they both separated when a portal opened trying to hit them from the side or behind. “Makes it hard to do any thinking, this constant onslaught is stinging~!”

Then Dolly chugged another potion, she was wondering how she didn’t need to use the bathroom after drinking so much. Pom wasn’t going to say that was the last potion and that if they had anymore injuries she’d be relying on the one reviver seed she still had.

Fou was making an impressive nuisance of himself, being quite strong even if he couldn’t compare himself to something that wasn’t alive and trying to compare himself to the living being inside the armless torsos didn’t work in the slightest. Whatever was inside it felt too weak to bother comparing to, but the machine itself was quite a threat. He was currently on top of and tearing into the armor of the flying right mechanical hand with his claws.

Pom, Dolly and the spirit wolves tried to keep moving while under fire as in the background a helicopter was blasted by Sami the Cargodramon and went crashing towards the rooftop that used to be a landing pad.

Pom, Dolly, the flying mechanical hands and the Air Buster all avoided the helicopter, Fou just caught and broke the flaming wreckage in half with his bare claws and sent both halves of it sailing off the side of the building.

Pom and Dolly still had to keep avoiding the constant projectile fire coming from the upper and lower torso of the Air Buster, while Fou proceeded to attack the right mechanical flying fist immediately afterwards.

While Fou was destroying portions of the fingers where the laser came from on said fist that was having trouble with him, the left fist snuck up behind him and grabbed him from behind at the waist and lift his struggling form into the air.

The right mechanical hand clenched itself into a fist and started building up energy at its back and when Fou just about got himself free, he was tossed upwards and the right fist completely slammed into his body with wet crunching noise and sent him flailing away.

Pom figured Fou would survive this, be in a bit of pain, but he would survive it all the same and was thankfully not sent flying in the direction of the Eaters… said Eaters were much more visible now and were almost done breaking through the defenses into the inner city. No, instead Fou was sent flying in the direction where the Bombs were slowly getting their volatilely exploding bodies into the upper city from below.

Even if it was raining, most of the city lower and upper were on fire and the rain wasn’t putting any of those fires out.

“Now that that nuisance is gone, I find our fight long out drawn, let me show you my ‘Lazy Laser’ brawn~!” Merak had the left hand move close to Pom and she tried to leap at it and started maneuvering her through trying to retrieve the paralance sticking out of the back of the fist. He was keeping it out of Pom’s grasp and Dolly was trying to fend off the right fist.

Nine portals opened up around the roof and a calculating look entered Merak’s eyes from inside the Air Buster.

Pom managed to grapple the pointed top of the paralance with her wire wool, but couldn’t pull it out or manipulate it to spike outward without touching it with her bare hooves. So she tried to yank herself to it and then the entire left flying mechanical hand decided to start rolling in the air and smashed Pom into the ground and then quickly moved out of the way.

Only for a bolt of lightning to strike the left hand not too long after Pom let go after impacting the roof, probably directed by Lit still hiding somewhere on the Air Buster.

The Air Buster immediately tried to cleanse itself with flames covering its whole body, lower hovercraft torso, strange spinning midsection and the handless upper torso with the upper arms acting as shoulder cannons for the split lasers. All it did was make a large amount of steam for a few seconds from the rain, there was no sound of pained squeaking and it was unknown where Lit was.

Merak proceeded to fire the diffusion beam precisely into one of the portals around the arena at a specific angle as Pom and Dolly wondered why the large mechanical hands backed off. They both watched as Merak fired at one of the portals surround them.

From above the beam entered the portal and crisscrossed at various angles itself as it created a nine pointed star surrounding Pom and Dolly forcing them towards the center of the rooftop arena. One last huge portal opened up above them and a massive beam started falling towards them

Dolly’s skateboard wasn’t going to block this attack, there was simply too much energy to do so. Even then Dolly still tried some form of defense as to mitigate the incoming massive attack as she clambered up Pom’s back and held it above their heads.

Something shadowy landed next to Pom and Dolly and then the energy beam collided with the roof and a blast wave rocked the entire roof, but one would expect the amount of raw energy to destroy the roof. Instead it seemed like all the energy was being deflected towards the edges of the roof.

“Sorry we’re late, but it’s great, to finally greet you~!” Said the red canine legendary known by the name of Mash stated pleasantly after she face tank the diffusion beam and seemed perfectly fine afterwards.

“Excaliburs blaze, will rise in these days, it’s time to sunder true~!” Artoria the blue canine legendary came down and much to her surprise Merak managed to block the blazing attack of raw energy using both the large mechanical hands.

“We’re Atoria and Mash, we’ll help in a flash, stop that guy before he does something brash~!” Mash sang pleasantly, Pom was a little confused to see the two and more importantly she noticed that the Artoria as Mash had motioned to was staring at the paralance with something approaching displeasure.

Pom wondered why that was, it was as if Artoria knew exactly what that weapon was, what it could really do and that its very presence riled her up somewhat. She’d ask later as they still had Merak to deal with.

“Am I up to the task, I’m biting off more than I can ask, where the hell did you two even come from?!~” Speaking of the genius boy he flew into the air again, going out of hover mode and entering jet mode while releasing four more barrier drones. Two of said barrier drones protected the enlarge flying mechanical hands that detached from the lower arms, the other two provided a protective barrier for the Air Buster once more.

“Glad you guys didn’t hear my blunder, but now I’ve got to wonder, what I’ll get when I ‘summon thunder’~!” Seeing as they had a moment to breathe thanks to the two that had attacked them before, but were apparently helping now, Dolly clutched at her head and the storm stilled immediately and the raining stopped. The Dalmatians magic immediately bottomed out and she felt more than mental exhaustion afterwards.

A lightning strike hit in front of all of them and Artoria and Mash looked defensive, but stopped when they saw what appeared. Artoria felt something of familiarity towards the figure and Mash was confounded by what was standing with them on the badly damaged rooftop.

Standing there with a brilliantly long beard and dark robes, was an elderly old guy with a large staff held in his right hand mumbling to himself. It was familiar kind of mumbling to Dolly and Pom, given it sounded like he was working on casting a spell.

Pom could hardly believe she would ever meet such a rare and unusual figure as the pterocentaur that just showed up, their race had kind of disappeared from Equestria entirely and were said to be the true lords of lightning. So in that case, Pom could understand that Shiva was an advanced Ice Sprite, where Ifrit was a powerful djinn or fiery lion like beast that could be seen as a demon and this guys…

Silently they learned the pterocentaurs name was Ramuh and just as he told them that, they were given magical skin tight barriers that would lessen the impact of the laser attacks Merak had been constantly spewing at them throughout this fight.

-Others-

Sami was still fighting off Moon Cell Watcher’s, Helicopters and Gunships had been added to the violent fight as she drove her propellers into drilling through several enemies as she past them by. At least she had the assistance of a few Rider Zealots that had made it through the deadly defenses intact. Said defenses were quickly falling to the Eaters and they were threatening to spread to the inner city.

Having already noticed the Air Buster bringing out more barrier drones, Sami wanted to get back into helping Pom and was glad to see that there were several figures standing the roof facing down the Air Buster together. The oddest one out of all of them was the winged centaur.

Inside the tower Quetal, Dazzle and friends finally caught up to Snake and Shine, finding the two supporting Metabee and Rokusho in protecting Dormarch who was neck deep into circumventing the coding and trying to stop the countdown to the entire city entering a meltdown state.

What had Quetal worried was that he hadn’t seen Elise since they left her in the streets.

-Artoria-

… Myrddin? No I must be mistaken, but that beard...

Author's Note

Myrddin has several meanings as a name.

Of many names. Since Merlin has shapeshifting magic this makes some sense.
Madman. Merlin wasn't exactly know for sanity in the things he got involved in.
Wonder man. As a magician this also makes sense.

A lot of curious things come about from the name, but Merlin was noted to be famous for being a shapeshifter or being good with magic.

Now if Fou were around and hadn't been 'handily' punched into next week, would he be able to identify Ramuh as being Myrddin or are they two separate beings?

446. Midgar Meltdown Finale.

-Moon Cell Realms, Midgar, Upper City, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

“All rocket trucks focus all fire on the containing the Eaters, especially the Eater Gekkos.” The Eater Gekkos were spreading things a bit far too fast for my liking and Pom’s team had a plan to take them out, but they couldn’t let the Eaters get too out of control for that to work. “Ignore the EPs, Commandramon, any Rider Zealot we can spare, protect those rocket trucks! Everyone else in Castle Alexander needs to be on lookout for approaching enemies.”

We had to give them as much time as they needed, I feel kind of awful not being able to help more and sitting in a large armored structure while Pom is out there fighting.

“Feeling a little left out of the fight by being on the backline? Well don’t, what we’re doing is arguably as important if those eldritch beasts take too much of the city then we’re all smoked even if Ms. Lambchop and the other teams survive their battle at Shinra Tower.” Cait Sith said with his arms crossed and staring at the screens, he adjusted the crown on his head. “I can’t help either as you very well know, the best I can do is direct our AP forces, taking some of the burden off your shoulders by directing the forces that can’t come back near infinitely. Also I didn’t know the helipad could turn into a wider battle arena like that, must be an added feature from Moon Cell.”

“This is Quetal, we’re securing Dormarch’s efforts to deal with the Eaters… there’s no way we can possibly face those rapidly growing numbers.” As Quetal just said, EPs weren’t a major problem as far as endless numbers were concerned when we had quality that outpaced the general quantity and had a known method that would stop the endless swarms. “Also roof access has been cut off, we’re going to have to climb the outside of the building to get up there to assist. The rain isn’t going to make that easy at all. Dazzle and Shine can possibly get up there, but are being bogged down with securing the building. Advise, what do you think we should be doing?”

The Eaters were different from the EPs. They were all the same quality in threat level even if the various combat forms of Eater ate things at different speeds, they were all notably highly lethal at point blank range and recovering anyone lost to them would require we destroy the Mother Eater… something we didn’t have the capacity to actually do. So their quantity was definitely a bigger issue given it takes a lot of explosive force to even take out one normal Pure Eater much less a few hundred of them and they were all tough like that. The Eater Gekko and Eater Soldier were easier to take out than Pure Eaters and goodness knows it would take a lot to take out the Eater Mother again, last time we dropped an entire city on it and this time that wasn’t possible.

“Continue securing Dormarch’s position, he’s doing something vitally important and we can’t risk it failing. Pom has aerial support and Sami is working on it according to Canard who is planning to lend further aid personally.” I was not making my order based on Dormarch’s anger or feelings towards me, I was not a little Pupa like him and had to be an adult in this situation. What little of said air support there was left after hitting the enemy aerial forces still currently outnumbering them five to one in EPs alone and not counting the manufactured having extra fire power that EPs don’t generally seem to have, I spent time considering all the angry red dots moving around Shinra Tower.

I was going with cold logic on this one, there was always going to be moments where you just make the decision you think to be the best at the time. My heart wanted to go for Pom and to keep her safe… but I couldn’t in good conscience doom us all to save one person. Even now, ‘for the good of the hive’ or more than likely ‘for the good of the many’ was still a strong thought in the back of my head. Pom was like that and she was rubbing off on me terribly as our caretaker.

Dormarch would probably want me to send all available assistance we can spare to Pom, I would normally want to agree… but I’m looking at the bigger picture here. The spreading white dots that have consumed almost an entire quarter of the upper city already were slowly getting faster the more territory they took and was starting to spread to the lower city too from the data we were picking up from Artoria and Mash’s Medieval Army.

We couldn’t let the Eaters get any further than they already have and were more of a top priority than the local servant threatening to blow this city to kingdom come… since the Eaters might actually survive that and doom a lot of worlds if we didn’t keep them in check. It didn’t help that the constant raining and thunder with flashes of lightning made them look all the more horrifying.

-Pom (Lambkin Chrysomallus), Dolly (Dalmatian), Lit (Still a Joltik) with guest stars Artoria (Zacian), Mash (Zamazenta) and temporary summon Lightning Master Ramuh (Pterocentaur) vs. Finished Air Buster Ultimate and Merak-

There floating with its two flying mechanical hands covered in protective barriers as much as the Air Buster. It only stalled for a few seconds for Merak to ponder over Ramuh the Pterocentaur. He was upset that the red hound somehow blocked his lazy laser with their body. The blue hound was quite threatening given it sent out a flying sword wave, but the barrier drones protected the Air Buster and its mechanical fists perfectly.

Artoria was flummoxed that the Excalibur failed to cut through the erected magitek barriers protecting the enemy.

Mash didn’t feel very helpful in this situation, but did just face tank a massive beam of energy without injury.

Pom glanced at Ramuh having gotten a name out of him and then looked back at the flying machine preparing to continue its barrage. Sighing, the wild eyed Pom motioned to Dolly and Dolly got the memo immediately and ran towards Pom.

Sami was too busy fighting in the distance and was currently shooting down a helicopter while trying to make her way back to attacking the Air Buster. It would take a while there were a lot of EPs and a few manufactured in the air.

Pom figured if they were going to fight…

Pom raised both her front hooves above her head and Dolly landed all four paws on them, the Dalmatian was promptly launched into the sky where she entered a magical glide through the rain while bringing her board about to ride it.

Crouching down and coiling the wool around her hind legs, with a powerful spring through a series of bending lasers, Pom herself was in the air and with a bit of focus wool shifted into being able to glide.

Then Pom would have to take the fight to Merak in the air, all the ghostly wolves seemed to turn into flying squirrels at the same time that Pom did.

A lightning bolt struck one of the barrier drones damaging it, said bolt looked to have come from Ramuh who took to the air too.

Artoria just fired a beam from her blade, but the barrier drones simply sat behind either the large mechanical hands or The Air Buster. It was times like this that Artoria wished she could fly.

Mash would protect Artoria, but really didn’t have much to do at the moment aside from having used Wide Guard to save Pom and Dolly earlier.

Pom swept and twisted through the air to avoid the machine cannon fire as the torso angled its lower half to fire on her as she tried for the barrier drone of the left flying mechanical hand or at least tried to get near it. The Air Buster was actively stopping Pom from retrieving the paranormal parasol lance.

The partially golden lambkin narrowed her eyes as she saw something before a series of missiles and portals forced her into frantically gliding away from the number of projectiles filling the airspace. She even managed to gain some height by slapping all four of her hooves together creating a burst of air to pop her up and out of the way of multiple curving orange beams from converging on her.

Dolly was having much better luck at hitting the barrier drones, but the stone bone could only do so much damage. Ramuh was arguably doing more with his occasional building up magic to fire powerful but small bolts of magical lightning into the barrier drones.

The large left mechanical hand fired its finger lasers at Ramuh who simply flapped his wings and dodged out of the way with relative ease and then he stopped to hover while mumbling. The right hand just fired beams at Artoria and Mash and Ramuh’s barriers deflected most of the attack that Mash didn’t just tank outright afterwards by standing in front of Artoria.

Pom fired a bark buster and exploded it into a barrier drone covered the Air Buster’s main body and it tried to hit her by firing the shoulder limb splitting beams in her direction that made her dive wildly towards the side of the tower to avoid the energy beams trying veer off into her. She quickly clambered back up the tower and kicked off to gliding underneath the Air Buster and firing off a quick bark blast into one of the barrier drones.

Several bits of shrapnel pierced Pom’s body as she passed into range of the one working rear flak cannon and it managed to explode a blast of shrapnel near her causing her to plummet in the air a bit while bleating in pain.

Sealing the wounds and ejecting the material, Pom caught herself and continued to think about how to approach the machine as the floating torso was firing on Dolly.

They weren’t having much luck with damaging the barrier drones, as they started moving about up and down trying to avoid Dolly and Pom’s attacks. Said drones were entirely avoiding moving into a range where Artoria could actually hit them with a sword beam.

Artoria just spent some time dodging the few attacks sent their way while charging up her blade and Mash absorbed attacks for that couldn’t be dodged.

Pom was having problems facing the Air Buster in the air and had tried to land on it, only to get bounced off by the barrier drone or repulsed by the shockwave system that protected it from Bark Breaker attacks.

Ramuh wasn’t having problems dodging the various projectiles or targeting the barrier drones, but destroying them was requiring more power than he was willing to spare at the moment. He was trying to take out the barrier drones protecting the Air Buster specifically before his energy ran too low for an ultimate attack directly applied to the machine.

Lit for his part was crawling on a barrier drone, sneaking around and looking at all the trouble Pom and Dolly were having with trying to attack the barrier drones. The joltik watched on as Dolly performed a counter rave to move fast enough that she could damage all the drones at once, but not enough to destroy any of them.

They weren’t enough without Lit, but Lit was focused on at least taking down one of the big mechanical hands, specifically the left one with the paralance rammed straight through it. He stared at it for a long time and memories of home and feeding off the lightning rods of Violight flooded through his tiny little brain.

Lit lunged for the bit of the pole sticking out of the back of the left mechanical hand and landed on the paralance, his four little blue eyes looked up at the storm as he raised his front left leg and started drawing the energy in the air towards him.

Like always, Lit was going to be a little hero that did absurd things.

“KRAKOOOM!” The Joltik proceeded to do something that many had failed to do in the past, destroy something protected by a magitek barrier drone. The bolt of lightning had been massive and it wasn’t directed at the barrier protected enlarged flying mechanical left hand, it had targeted the paralance and the energy bypassed the barrier entirely and the massive hand started sparking as lights started to shine from its inner workings.

“BOOM!” The massive explosion happened instantly and sent a scorched and crippled Lit slamming into the roof of the building and tumbling painfully across it, Pom was immediately landed next to Lit and seeing as his form was going still hastily pressed the Reviver Seed against his tiny body.

Dolly dove in front of hundreds of machine cannon rounds tried to tear into Pom, she took up a defensive position and tried to stand up to the onslaught from above threatening to knock her over. The protective magic barrier from Ramuh was helping deflect the numerous lasers as the Reviver Seed took effect and the scorched bug started to revive in a white glow.

Artoria glanced worriedly in their direction and was relieved Pom didn’t immediately go after the lance, but was more concerned that Mash did go after the Rhongomyniad. The ‘spear of the end’ that haunted Artoria in a different life time.

The barrier drone, not having the left mechanical hand to provide a barrier to, immediately moved over to protect the remaining enlarged flying mechanical right hand.

The blue sword wielding canine moved into position next to Dolly and helped in the defense as the amazing tiny yellow insect was revived using her blade to deflect physical projectiles and reflect the beams.

It didn’t help that Pom was utterly out of healing supplies aside from Ethers now, the last ditch silent plan was to have Dolly cast the most powerful spell she could muster and drink an ether to cover the cost.

“Oh did you have a revival potion, what a sad little notion, that you think that annoying little bug was even worth any devotion~!” Merak stated in an aggressive tone as Lit got up groggily.

If Pom were not already gone to her beast side with her red and gold eyes, she would have used it here as she glared up at the Air Buster from behind Dolly’s board as Lit got back on his tiny blue tipped legs and squeaked.

“I might not be a tank, but I’m hitting your flank, this is for my sister… POINT BLANK~!” Never had Krosserdog been heard of as ever being an angry digital robot, but in this moment with his forehead open and falling from strafing Sami still firing on a helicopter giving chase, he fired a powerful glowing bullet that grazed one of the barrier drones behind the floating right mechanical hand.

It seemed like a miss in the milliseconds that Krosserdog looked to have been aiming at the barrier drones protecting the mechanical hand, his green visor seemingly narrowed.

What actually made the shot Krosserdog got off amazing was that the bullet immediately went on to destroy the two barrier drones protecting the Air Buster. Afterwards Krosserdog was left falling towards the bottom of the tower, flipping backwards from the shot he just fired out of his head and in capable of aiming either of his arm rifles up at the Air Buster or the remaining drones.

If Krosserdog ever met someone named Sniper Joe, they would certainly be amazed of the shot he just accomplished. He’d probably survive the fall since he was a Digibot, but he didn’t have a way to get back up or into the fight and he’d be left badly damaged at the bottom of the tower.

“Judgement Bolt.” Flying high up in the sky and raising his staff up in the air Ramuh generated four orbs of fluctuating energy and they gathered to come crashing down.

Before a barrier drone could be reallocated, Ramuh’s bolt struck the target. He had used up a lot of magic since he was summoned. Where Ifrit and Shiva might last longer fighting in melee or limiting their magic use, Ramuh was pretty quick to drain the last of his energy since it was his main form of attack. He silently wished his summoner well.

The Air Buster faltered and last its ability to fly and slammed into and then subsequently through the roof causing entire sections of the building to collapse into the upper floor laboratory like section of the building Pom, Dolly and Peppercat had temporarily passed through before.

After landing softly on her hooves, Pom watched as the Air Buster blasted flames to lift itself onto its lower torso which once again reformed a hovering be. Pom had grabbed Dolly and Lit before leaping to start floating down after the roof finally shattered from the impact of a crashing Air Buster to collapsed inwards and then promptly outwards sending chunks of the tower falling all around the building.

The whole torso of the Air Buster looked rather shaky after such a damaging attack, but still strong as a Barrier drone came down to cover it and the right flying mechanical hand with its own damaged barrier drone soon joined it.

Mash soon arrived with the paralance and tossed it to Pom, making Artoria glare at the red canine as they took up a position next to the blue one.

Pom caught it and held it defensively at the ready, her eyes noted the amount of time left they had to fight on the hovering countdown timer at less than ten minutes and shrinking. She didn’t think it important as Dormarch already mentally informed her to not worry about it and why.

Artoria sent Pom a searching look and just prepared the glowing Excalibur in her mouth to continue the fight.

“Heh heh heh, hah hah hah, now you’ve really gotten my full attention~!” Merak sounded quite angry and a diffusion beam started building up on the Air Buster, its machine cannons were still working as were the body mounted flamethrowers slash jet adjustment thrusters. “Do you really think I’m done, this getting quite fun, let me add a new dimension~!”

Flying EPs were summoned into the room, a number of them were Heli-Troopers, Moon Cell Watchers and spiraling blade Drones started appearing around the rubble strewn space.”

The Air Buster had lost its split laser firing upper arm cannons and one of its rocket launchers from the judgement bolt, but it’s back mounted curving orange homing lasers were still fully operational given it just fired them at the group facing Merak down.

Everyone evaded or blocked the beams, the magical barriers Ramuh put on them were still working even now. They spread out and the fighting begun.

Lit stuck with Dolly and blasted away some Moon Cell Watchers as she took down a Heli-trooper with a well thrown bone.

Artoria tore a large number of the enemy EPs out of the air with a blast wave of raw force coming off of her Excalibur blade.

Mash lived up to her name as she smashed her face into the spinning blades of a Drone without injure as she sent it dissolving into a pile of code as it tumbled away. She was sent slamming through a wall a second later after the remaining flying mechanical hand slapped her.

Pom destroyed two drones with two wide sweeping swings before opening up the paralance to block machine cannon attacks from the Air Buster and the mass of flames the flying mechanical hand sent her way.

Everyone was busy fighting as the Air Buster hovered backwards and continued building up energy for its diffusion beam, its spinning gear like parts connecting its upper and lower torso started spinning up.

“Fou fou-fou-fou, FOU~!” Fou smashed through the nearby wall spooking Pom and immediately threw the monstrous Bomb creature he was holding and blew apart the damaged barrier drone protecting the large mechanical hand and started growling. He sent a glare at Pom and snorted before tilting his head at the mechanical hand, he was calling dibs on this one.

“I am really starting to hate this mess, I’m still stuck fighting and doing my best, but I don’t exactly think I can match up to this physical test~.” Pom sang as she leapt and fired a Thousand Spears with her left hoof into the side of a Heli-trooper pushing him into the path of a redirected missile by the Air Buster firing them up into a portal above it. She had to stall back up as several missiles dropped in front of her to stop her from approaching the Air Buster or more importantly the barrier drone protecting it.

“Some machines might be great, it’s definitely not too late, to say that we’re all currently irate~!” Dolly stated as her board slashed through a drone with a bit of cutting wind coming off of it without her having to cast magic on it. “Come on lets show him our stuff, we’re still really quite tough, he’s thankfully also lazy enough~!”

Fou turned and faced off against the unprotected mechanical hand and leapt to bash it through a wall of the building that was started to collapse in large chunks around everyone left in the wake of Fou stealing the mechanical hand to fight it by himself. He apparently had something to prove.

The building shook and quaked, after the rooftop got taken out. The entire buildings structural integrity was quite suspect and the time limit was still mildly worrying to Pom.

“Do you think I’m weak little grazer, now take a gazer, as I fire off another Lazy Laser~!” As Merak sang this, Pom was of the opinion that she wished they could stop singing at this point and just focus on fighting.

Unfortunately for Pom she was a being of the planet Equus. Rhythm, music and a zest for life was in the blood of all creatures from said planet… even meek individuals or those with chronic anxiety problems that can’t be cured by medication.

With that thought passing through her head as she exhaled, Pom rolled to the side and quickly leapt to dodge the redirect laser and used the paralance to push off from a portion of the ceiling that was still around.

Even when she closed in on the Air Buster the laser kept being redirected at her, it didn’t even seem to care that it could accidentally hit the barrier drone.

The Air Buster then did something unexpected, while still firing the laser it started turning in place the walls of the building and most of the rubble around was blown out.

Dolly drew Pom’s attention to Mash who was creating a Protect barrier, the beam was being redirected as if through a kaleidoscope using the maximum of the ten portals to the fullest effect to fire out of them at wild seemingly random angles. After hopping over a sweeping beam and dodging to the left and right, she got over to it before the beam could hit her by sliding across the floor into the protective zone.

Once the lazy laser finished, there wasn’t much of anything left of the upper floors… much less the fact that they had existed at one point. The only wall still standing was the one that had been behind Mash, they were all once against completely exposed to the rain, wind and lightning.

Sami had taken some damage from the Lazy Laser targeting her out of the blue as she was in the middle of a harrowing fight without any Rider Zealots left to help her fend off the enemy aerial forces in the area.

The red eye of the Air Buster seemed as menacing as ever, however it was looking around for something.

Fou came slamming down and pile driving the right flying mechanical hand right into the Air Buster’s barrier, the barrier drone protecting the Air Buster strained and started to show signs that it wasn’t able to stand up to the force.

The barrier drone barely managed to hold itself together as it bounced Fou away and the right mechanical hand lost the beam emitting tips of its fingers from the repelling force of the magitek barrier. Said mechanical hand was now at Fou’s mercy as he fell with it down the side of the tower near where Krosserdog went down. Pom knew that Fou had very little of that after the earlier blow that sent him flying.

“You’re time- there is not more to lend~!” Merak stated haughtily as the countdown timer closed in to finishing off with two minutes remaining. “You’re not- liable to see beyond the end, so I say- that there is no way you’ll win~!

“Not unless we fight back, we’ve got the knack, since true strength is what you lack~!” Canard added as he came down and jammed his hockey stick blade first into the barrier drone and then kicked off while pulling it free. He landed facing the Air Buster with a clear look of determination in his eyes. “We’re still in the fight, show off team works might, we’re not done here yet right~!”

Canard sent an exploding digital puck slamming rocking the armless machine back and all its weapon malfunctioned at the same time.

Even if its weapons were working the Air Buster only had projectiles and fire left.

Canard charged and putting one foot on the lower torso he struck up at the upper torso with the blade of his hockey stick with several stylistic slices.

“How much more can you take, here there is limits to break, a powerful Cross-Slash coming from this drake~!” A downward slash followed by slash that was shaped like a hockey stick, after that Canard did two incredibly fast slashes that had Pom mystified at the speed.

Canard created some kind of symbol in the air, he had warped the armor with each strike and the final one opened a rent in the armor where she could faintly see one of Merak’s eyes widening in terror before ducking out of the way.

The diffusion beam firing chest parts were swiftly destroyed by Artoria swing her sword through it.

Pom leapt forward and bluntly brought the Paralance down cracking the armor more, she then proceeded to attempt to stab at the opening where Merak was with a leap, Lit and Dolly were joining her in the assault along with Canard, Artoria and Mash.

The Air Buster exploded outwards sending all the attackers tumbling as Merak’s floating throne rose out of the destroyed remains, a completely immaculate combat ready throne too. He crossed one leg over the other leaned back and snapped the fingers on his left paw, the lemming grinned as the timer his zero.

-Pom-

Dormarch did you…

“Did you really think the timer was connected to the Air Buster?” Merak stated scathingly, with a wicked grin on his lemming face. “So long, thanks for playing, you weren’t as smart as you think you are if it took you that long to wear down the Air Buster, I’ll just have to rebuild when I come back from the complete destruction of the city in three… two… one!”

-Bird Eye View-

Numerous explosions sound off in the rumbling city and almost half the entirety of the upper city started collapsed downwards into the lower city as a green glow came up from beneath the collapsing portions.

Said portions were all underneath the Mother Eater who was approaching a critical threshold as to be completely unstoppable except by a number of Mega level digimon doubling that of the first Eater incursion of the digital realms. Even then that still might not have been enough to deal with the massive gargantuan threat.

Every MAKO reactor, powered by the souls of trillions of those killed by Moon Cell’s apocalyptic happenings before civilizations could get off their planet, exploded.

Pillars of blinding green light consumed more than half the city and the world shook and rumbled violently as the realm threatened to collapse anyway…

That didn’t happen.

The Mother Eater screeched as the toxic rising masses of energy shredded its form rapidly as many souls started attempting to flee Midgar and Moon Cell’s control.

The world shook and thrashed as everyone was blinded by the event.

-A minute after Midgar’s devastation, Pom-

As soon as I could blink my sight back to normal I just stared at the massive portion of the city was just… gone… nothing… it was horrifying that such things existed at some point and that this could have been the end result.

“Wha… WHAT?! What just happened, you, but… what… no really… WHAT?!” Merak looked confused, guess he was too lazy to figure out that Dormarch succeeded in setting the trigger for the Eater destruction plan to activate with his countdown time.

We managed to take out all the Eaters… and all it took was destroying more than half of a massive soul sucking monstrous city with no sense of safety in mind… heh…

“Woo, we’re alive!” Dolly barked in celebration while raising both her paws in the air and catching the stone bone as it came back down, then she looked at the destruction that we just caused in the name of dealing with the Mother Eater indirectly again. “Whoa… that… is going to be the biggest swimming pool to ever exist.”

I am so glad I didn’t have to worry about the NPCS living here… I could only imagine the trouble we would have had if we had to evacuate that portion of the city completely before it self-destructed. Quite glad that possibly freed a lot of souls from torment even, I feel lighter somehow.

“Well… our distracting you worked.” I finally said after realizing we were still alive.

“Distracting?!” Merak seethed. What did he think we were fighting him for? “You’ll still have to face me and I still have plenty of assault programs to take you on! For you to take this realm you still have to deal with me and I’ll make you fight for every inch of...?!”

As Mash and Artoria moved to start fighting the EPs, that had been stunned by the radiant soul eruption pillars, which were beginning to go on the attack again. Only for a blinding cone of light to shine forth from the top of a building.

Merak had been looking in the direction of said familiar cone and immediately turned to stone. His floating throne, unbalanced by his new weight, tilted forward and he promptly fell from it unable to do anything other than fall.

The stone form of Merak fell towards the streets far below, the frozen statue twisting and turning… Merak being too weak to break free from the stone or see where he was falling to even use a portal to save himself, likely too disoriented to even try at this point if I were him, was basically all but defeated.

We all moved to the edge to watch as he struck the street and his statue shattered, the EPs that we stopped paying attention to that were going to attack us disappeared as the realm was captured with Merak’s defeat.

Canard groaned and fell over, yeah… I could feel that too Canard… I needed Sitrus Berries.

“Guys?!” Oh good, Quetal and Dormy were here… feeling a bit light headed from the recent blood loss...

Attacking Moon Cell directly would come next and I needed all the rest I could get so… I’m just going to… just going to take a nap now… so physically tired…

The clouds parted as I flopped onto my side and looked at the sunlight shining through the quickly parting clouds as more and more light and heat fell onto the rooftop.

I closed my eyes in the warmth on the soggy sopping wet mess that was this building.

-Rooftop, Elise-

“Okay, I’ve done what I wanted to do… go ahead.” I turned to face Copen without an ounce of fear in my heart, I was quite satisfied at having gotten revenge on Merak for all the suffering my soul has gone through. “I’ll not fight it, as I promised.”

Copen raised his gun, energy began charging on it and he looked at Lola the round sphere with two long yellow eyes.

Lola floated next to Copen looking between us worriedly, kind of strange that she could show so much emotion for a little sphere.

I closed my eyes, put my hands up in a prayer and bowed my head to the ground while folding my hood inwards.

I’m sorry that you wasted so much time and energy on me Pom…

Copen the Slayer Dragon fired at me, the blazing heat of the energy could be felt coming for me and I didn’t move an inch to save myself.

-Moon Cell-

It had been preparing for this eventuality and was ready for the intruders for them to come into it's main realm the center of it all.

It was also...

...

...

Scared.

...

Summoning Servant... pending.

447. Spear of the end.

-???, Oleander-

“So Democratus… you’re an entire planet of people who vote on everything?” I calmly asked.

“Yes, we wish to hug the unicorn, but are sad because we have planetary arms with which to do so.” One of the speakers for Democratus stated as the small planet hovered next to me with two rings of metal that kept the planet safe through advanced technology as it moved itself around. The technology was more advanced than the HALO thing hovering off the tip of my horn.

“Well can we blow up stuff to save the multiple universes?” Wrex asked while cocking his shotgun next to Buttina who simultaneous did so with two floating shotguns. “If so, then give the word and we’ll go nuts.”

“Democratus has voted… yes, to the blowing up of stuff in the course of saving multiple universes!” The planet announced. “We have lasers and nuclear arms to be helping with that.”

“Well this can’t possibly get any weirder, BECAUSE IT ALREADY IS PRETTY WEIRD ALREADY!” Stated Fred, as we continued on our way through a place called Anachronox. “I mean even for us... usually there’s more screaming than that one guy over there that’s on fire.”

“Why is no one helping me, AGGHGHH?!” The burning guy stated as he ran around, still quite on fire.

-Moon Cell Realms, Midgar, three days later, Castle Alexander, R&D and manufacturing, Dolly-

My tail was wagging as I looked up at the figure before me with excitement, then my right eye twitched and something drew my attention and my tail wagging tripled in speed.

“This Welch to Cid, Cait Sith, Torneko and Patch… Pom is waking up, alert Ocellus and make sure everyone is not going to bother her for a the next half hour she’s awake. We want her to relax before talking about moving forward… also tell Mash to sit on Fou and keep him from causing problems.” My flat stare at Welch was met with a weak grin from the carrot eater. “Sorry, but Pom is the leader of Team Harmony and the Pokémon Companions… so we are going to eventually bother her for her opinions on our next course of action. We’re waiting until we can get some food in her and given her time to relax. Also we know you want to bother her Artoria, but please don’t. Most of us have been through a lot… Pom specifically, since we’re all aware that Moon Cell hates her guts like nothing else.”

I barked in agreement at that last part, this Lunar Blood thing really wants Pom to bite it and we’re fighting a computer from the inside… why am I reminded of that one technology movie with the throwing discs?

Ah, well… I mentally nudged Dormarch about it and he was immediately on his way. Pom wasn’t my mother, but Dormarch was my little brother and she was his mother… yeah, not going to touch on the odd dynamic of relationships we have, we’re family and we’re cool.

…

I have to try this thing out right this instant before anyone stops me!

-Castle Alexander Infirmary, Pom-

“Oh good, you are being awake, I was starting to be worried.” Shanty stated as I blinked my eyes a bit, she had her front legs still wrapped up as she sat up on a bed next to mine. “It be three days since that would be one of the things you would be asking.”

“Three?” I tried to wrap my mind around having slept for three days. Sure they were digital days, but I hadn’t realized I was that tired!

“You be exhausting yourself and being both wet and bleeding didn’t be helping that one bit, Dolly and Dormarch both be helping us with your injuries.” What Shanty said made something click. “Sami is the one that be picking you all up and bringing you back to the castle personally.”

“What about your injuries, why are your front legs still bandaged after three days?” I sat up and groaned, then promptly flopped back.

My body wasn’t feeling in the mood to be moving around, especially not at high speeds or handling the stress of entering my beast state. Okay yeah… I can actually see why I was out for three days after dodging so many projectiles that I couldn’t even count. Definitely like Gilgamesh had been, but it wasn’t nearly as hard to win the fight.

Checking my left hind leg, after having just kicked off the covers, I found that my situation hadn’t worsened at all and I have stopped the encroachment to death admirably. It’s only when I overdraw or sacrifice a lot then, thank goodness for Ethers existing. I was going to be carrying a number of those and Hi-potions moving forward.

“Potions can be healing flesh, Sitrus Berries can fix the body short of amputation as they can’t regenerate limbs, but as for magical injuries…” We didn’t exactly have a way to fix those and Shanty’s front legs were indicative signs of a magical injury, a self-inflicted one at that. “You can be guessing already… did not be knowing what would be happening when I be cutting my own cutting arcs… now I am being more careful about doing it in the future. Magical backlash injuries be sucking.”

I would say that she wouldn’t have to, but I bit my tongue on that and by the look on her face she knew exactly what I was about to say and couldn’t keep as a promise. We understood each other well enough by now.

“I’d imagine so given what happened with my Dancing Flame skill causing me arrhythmia problems. So… do you feel alright even with your legs being messed up?” I asked quietly.

“Do you feel alright with being able to eat meat without throwing up?” Shanty retorted swiftly and I winced, she looked a bit guilty about comparing our different problems a second after. “I’m not being in very much pain… sorry…”

“Forgiven, you’ve been stuck in the infirmary for a while. I might be able to actually taste the fish dishes I know how to make now… not sure I want to give into that idea. Anyway, at least I have an idea that you are a Capricornus.” That made me receive a curious look from Shanty. “What, I remember plenty of stories from when I was a wee little lambkin.”

“What is a Capricornus being?” Shanty perked up and seemed interested in hearing what I had to say, since it was about her.

“A horned goat is the general answer. A more comprehensive answer would be a ‘goat of the water’.” I would say they tended to be related to sacrificial things, like me for instance, but I wasn’t about to speak that thought out loud. My meeting and befriending Shanty might have some more circumstances to it as we might be ancestral cousins. “Anyway, control of water and being able to survive without air, it’s nothing you can’t already do apparently. Maybe you even become more fish like when needed while stuck in the water long enough. Probably might even be a very distant cousin of mine, given the marmalade incident … the cutting arcs you generate could even be related to the meaning of ‘horned goat’ that translates directly from Capricornus or another possible meaning is ‘never without a point’.”

“Marmalade incident?” Shanty tilted her head while giving me an odd glance.

I gave her a wait gesture, got up and carefully readjusted myself to being able to walk and went to the nearby bathroom. When I came back, I checked the room to make sure nobody else will be listening in on this.

“It’s how the lambkin race came to be and may also involve the existence of ‘sea goats’ like you. You would be the first I’ve met if it’s true that you are a Capricornus.” So I told her about it, Shanty was very curious about the incident overall and had several questions after I told her everything that lambkin kind knew about it.

She had even more after the explanations that I didn’t have answers to, as the subject of the incident itself actually added more questions than it ever had answered. I was quite the confirmation that the ‘marmalade incident’ actually happened.

“Yikes…” Shanty finally stated once a proper enough understanding of the incident was fully laid out to her and some of the lesser known facts of how lambkin kind even suspected it was even a real thing, also a slight mention as to how it relates back to me being a Lambkin Chrysomallus.

I didn’t want to go into detail about why Chrysomallus die when they grow wings, so I didn’t, but I was already living the experience and it would only be so long before Ocellus learns the why of it if she was aware of unicorn history or at least knows a few things about them. If we live long enough to meet unicorns… then they’d definitely detect it if it happens.

“Exactly, just don’t go spreading it around…” There was a bit of a statement in there that was in relation to what marmalade is normally used for, I had some shivers just thinking about it.

Marmalade in general wasn’t bad, but it had some very unique connotations for every lambkin and we’re made quite well aware of it.

“Excuse me, for interrupting your conversation. Did either of you need some water, juice or some food?” I jumped and blinked and looked down as Clef came in with a jug of water. I took the offered cup and sipped it a bit.

“Yes, please… I need something to eat, preferably a salad without any berries in it.” Since I miss eating actual food and while the junk food from the vending machines was somewhat tasty, it was not exactly the most nutritious thing I could have eaten in recent history. Also I was quite tired of a mostly berry diet, apparently Pokémon can survive on that for a while, but even they would be driven mad by it and Patch Cabbage was our extraneous source of food. At least we had plenty of vegetables. “Potato soup too if you could swing it.”

“Yeah, that’s been a common ask among us who don’t like Digimon digital food. I’ll get worked on the soup and sald… maybe a sandwich. We can make marmalade, we got some limited fruit other than berries to work with.” Clef noticed the expressions on our faces. “So that’s a no on the sandwiches?”

“Respectfully no, we don’t want marmalade at the moment.” Nodding along with me, Shanty had a slightly pale look on her face. “Though some juice would be nice.”

We’d be sharing some of this food between us when it arrived and with that our Clefairy friend went off to procure it for us and get some help.

I hadn’t thought about it, but what had happened after Merak was defeated? I’ve been passed out for three days, so what’s our current status? We’re likely fine given there was no panicking going on and no Eaters slowly chewing through the walls.

So we’re alive and we took Midgar… yay… half an exploded city.

“Can I talk with you about where you got that lance?” After a few minutes of peace and quiet to relax, in came the blue canine named Artoria.

“Yes, I got it from a Fairy named Oberon, he offered me a weapon and I found that one among the many others that he cleaned up from when their kingdom of Titania was bombarded.” That didn’t seem to make Artoria very happy as she sighed audibly. “I’ve been calling it the paranormal lance or paralance.”

“It’s always those freaking fairies… also that’s a somewhat fair name for it.” Artoria grumbled. “Did Oberon say anything to you knowing that you would eventually meet me?”

“No, but apparently the Lady of the Lake says hello and I believe you and Mash were the one I was supposed to say it to.” The reactions was immediate as I watched two slap down on the blue canines head and she groaned out in audible pain about something.

“It’s always the fairies!” Artoria bemoaned quite loudly. “They are so annoying…”

Something tells me I shouldn’t talk about Sir Mik around Artoria, she probably wouldn’t like that I was friends with a few of the Fairy Types like Curdle.

“So you know something about the lance?” Not only was I curious, but so was Shanty as we looked to the lance with the puppy symbols on it.

“That’s just it, it’s not a lance.” Artoria stated flatly, making me blink.

“Hello my name is Pom Lambchop I believe we got off of the wrong hoof the first time we met and that’s Shanty… no last name unless she wants to be a Lambchop too.” Something about what I said made Artoria snort, Shanty gave me an appreciative grin but didn’t agree or disagree with that idea. “It certainly looks like a lance to me… though its ability to shift its shape is probably the most unusual thing about it.”

“Artoria Pendragon and again, it’s not a lance… it’s the Rhongomyniad.” Okay that was an odd name Artoria.

“Rhongomyniad, never heard of such an odd name.” That Artoria knew of it meant she had some idea of where it came from.

“You probably wouldn’t, this is not the first time I’ve been incarnated… but it certainly is interesting to be a blue canine being of legend who apparently specializes in blades.” Artoria grumbled about being a canine, I personally saw nothing wrong with… wait… stop… step back a bit and remember that thought that is leading me to wanting to eat meat. “Anyway, I know of it because it’s been tied to me in legend before. I even once wielded it personally… that lance, what you see, is just a shadow of the Rhongomyniad’s power, the spear of the end.”

“The end? The end of what?” My question was met with a haunted look.

“The end of an age. Said true form is that of a tower or pillar of brilliant light, one that can see you to the end of things… also it can bind worlds, such as reality to illusion. That you have wielded it for as long as you have without side effects make me feel a little better about it being in your… hooves. It isn’t causing you troubles so I should relent more on it being dangerous… to you at least.” Artoria seemed to have a history with the paralance or Rhongomyniad as it was called, doesn’t that translate to cutting spear? “The conceptual power of that lance alone is quite incredible. Be glad you’ve never had use of its full power or even had access to it, but just by knowing its name now… you can, ‘probably’, invoke it.”

“That might have helped out with Merak if I knew what exactly it does, the fight with Merak went far better than the one with Gilgamesh did at least.” It did, but it was probably going to take a little longer if we had to fight his chair with the arms after going through the Tartarus storm of projectiles from the Air Buster. At least Elise sped that up immensely.

“… I’m glad I didn’t have to face Gilgamesh.” Okay, something tells me Artoria knows him personally so I might as well ask the question.

“How do you know Gilgamesh?” I’m fairly certain that if Artoria was there then she might have been helpful.

“Let’s just say I’ve met the weapon spewing bastard multiple times, across time, space and beyond death itself. I hope you never end up in the Throne of Heroes, it tends to mess with one’s mind quite a bit.” Don’t know what that is Artoria, but I’ll take your word for it that it’s something horrible sounding judging by the look in your eyes. I’m already surmising that the definition of ‘hero’ therein might be a little bit loose when it comes to said throne. “I’m sorry we couldn’t help out in Illusio, by the time we knew he had appeared we were already defending ourselves from his bombardment of the continent. Then we heard tale of an undying metal dragon… which you apparently took care of. Also you’ve met Fou, he’s a constant problem for us too. No matter the fact that his form looks different, he will always be the ‘beast of comparison’.”

“So he gets power based on what he compares himself to?” Just to confirm what I already knew.

“Yes, one of his most well-known abilities among many others… such as resurrecting someone under specific circumstances and having the ‘Force of Providence’ so that he’ll never be easy to kill and will be stupendously lucky to survive almost any situation he gets into. Whatever he compares himself to, it has to be alive for it to work at the very least.” Artoria at least knew more about Fou than I currently did… also was this ‘Force of Providence’ thing how he kept finding me?! I consigned myself to having to fight him for the rest of my life if that was the case. “There are limits, but Fou is a very powerful when comparing himself to those who are aggressive towards him. It’s like facing a reflection of yourself but much stronger, that particular power is based in envy.”

“Well that explains how mom can hold him off, she’s reluctant to fight him even if he wants to fight her.” Dormarch teleported into my open hooves and I hugged my three tailed son to my chest, I snuggled him while sitting at the edge of the bed.

“Wait a minute… where’s Fou right now? He’s been hunting me down ever since I met him!” I was a little afraid he would attack me here and now or at least drag me to somewhere we can fight. Can he just get the hint that I didn’t want to fight him? He’s sounds more terrifying now than ever.

“Mash is taking care of him, she’ll keep him from bothering you. As apparently she’s good friends with Fou.” Hearing that makes one wonder how that happened Artoria, given what Fou was like. “Talk to Mash about it, she has a something of an ‘outside of history and twisted dimensions’ story with him.”

“I don’t think I want to know.” Don’t want to travel down more rabbit holes, I’m already stuck in one and don’t want to make it far worse than it already is.

“That is quite fair, now back to the Rhongomyniad… you’ve been wielding it for a while. Has it ever exerted… an influence over you?” Artoria seemed certain of it being capable of doing so.

“No, but I’ve exerted my influence over it. I’m almost certain the lance I see is either intelligent or it responds to my will as if to seem intelligent. In either case, it’s never talked to me out loud and it’s more of an implied feeling.” My questioning eyes met with that of the blue canines. “What happened with you?”

“A different timeline, a different time and place… a… friend didn’t do something that was supposed to lead to my timely death and it was supposed to happen. So instead of dying, I kept living and became the being known as ‘Goddess Rhongomyniad’ and survived the end of that particular world and managed to cross into several others. That version of me was quite twisted by the divine powers of the lance.” If Artoria was here now and didn’t have the lance, then I’m guessing that Goddess Rhongomyniad was defeated at some point. “The Rhongomyniad was not supposed to be in that Artoria’s possession for so long, since after a point she was supposed to die her body was preserved and regenerated by the lance and was slowly taken over by its unbound power to become a spirit distinctly different from what I am in soul. I have the memories of said spirit… and what she was like as a goddess. She didn’t exactly hold true to my ideals.”

“So because Goddess Rhongomyniad eventually got defeated, you’re entirely wary of even touching the lance knowing what happened to a version of you before?” Having the memories of seeing the end of ‘a world’ definitely can’t be pretty from what I saw in Artoria’s eyes. I wonder if Moon Cell caused it or if it was something else… makes one wonder how close we are to death at all times.

“She wandered as a corrupted version of me for fifteen thousand years in that particular dimension… before that reality was destroyed and she survived its destruction. I’m not her, but I do have her memories. She was quite… cold, as far as her emotions went. So one version of me was a wandering goddess, but vastly different than who I am and was more for the forest where I would be for the trees.” Artoria glanced at the lance. “When the time comes, I hope it doesn’t do the same to you and you can eventually let it go.”

“It’s unlikely that I’ll be effected, I’m ‘kind of’ cursed to die. I seriously doubt the Rhongomyniad can really stop a Chrysomallus from dying too. If I grow wings, then I’m absolutely guaranteed to die for reasons I’d rather not say out loud, especially not in front of my charge shanty.” I glanced at Shanty and looked her in the eyes. “I can keep it under control indefinitely after a certain point Shanty… even if it’s taken up most of my legs, it can take up my body and head and I’ll be perfectly fine. I’m not in danger as long as I don’t cross a particular line when I come to it and for the most part I’m fine right now, as it’s not exactly constantly painful.”

“It is still something to be being worried about Pom.” Shanty stated while looking at me with understandable worry that everyone has about me.

“So the lance is a tower that can connect things together… but now that I know its name I can invoke its power, what exactly would that be besides that?” My query was met with a stern look from Artoria. “It being quite indestructible has been its most useful feature to me and I prefer to keep using it as a shield.”

“At most you should be able to fire beams of holy light, also there has to be a good reason it is in your hooves. I hope it doesn’t do to you what it did to the one ‘Goddess Rhongomyniad’ version of me.” One version, so does that mean that Artoria…

“So did you manage to use it many times before without anything going wrong?” My question brought Artoria’s eyes to my own and she tried to say something and then looked thoughtful for a moment before finally responding.

“Yes, some versions of me have used it without issue… but it is still a dangerous thing, do not doubt my words on that.” Artoria and I stared at each other and I nodded.

“I understand, but until I don’t need it anymore… I’ll use it. I will definitely be wary of invoking whatever power the tower has if I can help it.” Though I was curious to see what the tower looked like, I’m sure it wasn’t the time for it and I didn’t want to incidentally destroy Castle Alexander as our current mobile base of operations. “Anything else, other than a vague warning about it?”

“No, you seem to actually still have your natural faculties… golden wool aside, are you sure that’s not a side effect of wielding the spear of the end?” Artoria asked looked over the golden wool covering three of my legs entirely.

“No my wool started turning golden before I got my hoof on the Rhongomyniad.” My answer didn’t comfort Artoria very much.

“Did Oberon comment on it?” It seemed like Artoria feared the lance more than I was paranoid about it, which was fairly amazing that someone could match my paranoia.

“Not much really, he just said pick a weapon to take with me after Gilgamesh rained a lot of them on the Fairy Dust islands and I did… it was that lance. I think it drew my eyes to it by being fairly unusual and the puppy motif was probably what attracted my eyes… which is why I have been constantly wary of it the second I saw it.” At the time it was as if I needed it for something, but I couldn’t think of what aside from a shield for all the horribly dangerous stuff I’ve survive thus far by using it. “I don’t think it has ill intentions with me, if it can actually think that is… wouldn’t put it past the lance at this point to have its own mind on things. It’s been too useful a tool to protect me and my friends with since I picked it up to stop using it as it hasn’t done anything to me yet.”

“Let’s pray that continues to stay true and that it doesn’t have a corrupting influence on you… perhaps you’re anti-magic nature is protecting you from it?” Artoria narrowed her eyes at the lifeless lance that was apparently a tower or pillar of light, it just happened to look like a lance at the moment. “Also try to stay away from using the power to conceptually bind realms, worlds and realities together, it is not a power you should touch under any circumstance without knowing what you are doing in the first place and with an absolutely large amount of focus. Never abuse that power unless you believe it to be absolutely necessary.”

“Oh trust me, I’m far more wary of it now more than ever before.” So the Rhongomyniad could bind worlds together… what are the chances that it can do the exact opposite just as easily tear them entirely apart?

Spine chilling thoughts that, probably why it has the title ‘Spear of The End’ and Artoria is clearly paranoid to a level of absurdity that I might reach about it in time.

“Hey, do you want to help them eat a meal Ms. Pendragon?” Clef came back all smiles and with Canard, Jeanne and several others in tow. “Oh and the others want to set up so they can all have a meal here.”

“Yeah, I’m fairly hungry, it still feels so good to be alive.” Elise stated as she slithered in with that scowling white scaled red eyed dragon following after her, she seemed fairly cheerful for all the awfulness that came before. She had Crazy on her right shoulder, didn’t know if Cruel was out and about, but it was nice to know Elise was making herself at home and all smiles. “Right Copen?”

“I shouldn’t have missed.” Copen stated coldly, but he still sat down as a table was being set up for us to eat at. “I can still shoot you even now, you know.”

“Please don’t, we’re actually making good friends who told us what is happening around here Copen…” The round mechanical sphere floating next stated quietly.

Copen snorted audibly, but didn’t make any aggressive movements towards anyone or Elise.

“What’s the status of things Canard?” I asked a little curious about that interaction as they finished setting up and some of the leaders of all the factions including Mirage Mew gathered here in the infirmary. I guess they really didn’t want me walking or going anywhere too far. “I’m fairly certain you got Pepercat’s… um… would it be called her soul? Did you get that medal off of me?

“Yes, Peppercat is being held by her partner Krosserdog. Unfortunately with the destruction of her tin pet inner body, we can’t do anything to revive her at this time. We’d need Yggdrasil Systems to make her a new body to bring her back. Speaking of Krosserdog, he’s been fairly damaged by the fall so he needs time to recover before going back into battle.” Of course, we all needed rest Canard. As hard as that is for me to get and I have many issues with relaxing. “Sami needs some rest, but she seems fairly excited to try flying again and apparently she’s happy she didn’t turn into a tank, though apparently the data is still there for that to happen. ‘Tankdramon’ I believe she called it. Everyone else is still experiencing exhaustion, except the Harmony Programs and the Mirage Collective which are currently acting as our defense line against invading EPs after taking Midgar. Also we blew up half a city and the other half is rendered inoperable after we freed up all the souls from the other MAKO reactors after taking the realm. Would feel kind of wrong to leave them being used as a power source.”

“Damages to Castle Alexander?” My question shouldn’t be too bad.

“Plenty, but nothing that couldn’t be repaired in quick order given time and resources, we’ve also strengthened our deployment ability for number of APs we can put out thanks to Cait Sith. He’s working on more upgrades and pushing for more efficiency in the castles systems. We can indefinitely use hover mode and shoot at the same time… however I don’t think we can ever safely use Divine Judgment without it being a major strain on the power structure of the castle.” Yeah, it was an energy hog Canard, but it’s proven to be useful ace in the hole for us in raw firepower. “Flight mode is… kind of working, but we have a limited of thirty minutes before we need to settle into hover mode for an hour after the use of that full time. Whatever Moon Cell has in store for us, we’re going to need to be ready for anything and everything, at least Copen took out our whale problem and Moby Dick was one heck of a fight for him.”

“Never have I fought something that was nearly that horrible… and I’ve fought giant robots, adepts with ridiculously dangerous powers like what Elise can do and entire swarms of heavily armed troops with machines trying to usher in the end of the world apparently.” Copen glanced at the sphere floating next to him. “I doubt even we’d have survived fighting the Mother Eater after it consumed our territories, what little we had to begin with.”

“Considering that Moon Cell actually has direct control of the inner realm where its brain resides, I wouldn’t be surprised if the landscape could change on a moment’s notice. It’ll be actively fighting us rather than sitting around and letting its servants do the work in stopping us.” Dormarch shivered at the thought of a changing battlefield where the terrain was actively malicious. I gently patted his back with my right hoof and helped Shanty over to the table to sit down before sitting down myself. “I think it’s a quirk of Moon Cells programming that it can’t actively combat us up until we do go into the realm the core resides in. Who knows what it’ll try to do when we eventually show up, because it knows we’re coming.”

“Situation health wise?” Now for the curious question.

“No permanent injuries as far as physical health is concerned… everyone that has been on the battlefield is reporting heavy exhaustion though. Peppercat’s body aside, we’ve been lucky so far to not have lost anyone to the various stuff Moon Cell has been throwing at us. We’ve done sea, land and some air battles, but we’re betting Moon Cell is going to do all three and possibly far worse when we enter its inner sanctum. Nothing will be off the table for it in its personal domain and it will throw absolutely everything it has at us that it can spare while continuing to invade the local digital world and Ransei.” Well that wasn’t daunting at all Canard, especially when Dormarch said about it possibly controlling the battlefield to its absolute advantage at the same time no less. “Mentally… I don’t think I should tell you that it is kind of bad considering how pressured we all are, because you are one of the ones that some think is close to snapping completely. Good to see you can somewhat prove them wrong. Spiritually we’re doing mostly okay, Lucha Mundo has been making rounds to work on our slight morale problem in that area and he wants to work with you about your psychological issues. We currently don’t have any momentum at all and it will take some time before we can launch an attack. When we enter Moon Cell’s inner realm we’re not going to leave until we finish it off, so until then we need to prepare as much as we can.”

“Let’s start doing that by getting in… um… what time of day do we think it is currently?” Yeah, hard to keep track of time when it’s so sporadic. At least the food was being brought in by the Gazimon, which was quite nice of them.

“Daytime in central Ransei time apparently, we’re slowly sliding into one to one speed with reality and Moon Cell is slowing down drastically trying to deal with us, Ransei and the digital world all fighting back at once… and we’re on the front lines of it all.” Dormarch pauses and nuzzled me affectionately while wagging his tails. “So… lunch time?”

“Lunch sounds good… where’s Dolly?” Doing something dangerous probably was my first guess.

“She’s in R&D checking out what we think is going to be the Metal Hound 003, otherwise known as the Magitek Jet Armor.” Considering what the 002 was like Dormarch, I’m horrified to ask what the newest one was going to be like. “It is using the Einhander jet wings we found from the destruction of one of the two manufactured Einhanders and replicated machine cannons from the Thousand Gunner we stole. Plus some single fire shoulder missiles with increased arm firepower… well it will certainly be something if Dolly can manage to control the speed it’s supposedly capable of moving at. You’re going to need oxygen masks if she tries to pilot it at full speed. Also Welch made controls for Dolly to pilot it solo without needing to puppet your body, but it’ll still carry you as transport.”

“Well that’s a headache for me to deal with later.” I grumbled, wondering how long it would take for this next one to be destroyed and if we’re going to be the cause of said destruction.

-After lunch, away from everyone in a seclude space-

Having told everyone I need some time alone to myself and my thoughts, what I was really doing was testing something.

I sat calmly by myself and meditated, breathe in… breathe out… find the balance… stoke the inner flame but don’t let it roar out of control…

Dancing Flame, not too big as to itself burn out immediately, not too small to be blown out by a gentle wind. A cycle of strength, a swirling fire that can last an eternity if it plays its cards right.

A candle light that was strong, focused and capable. I was a candle lighting up the air around me with the haze of my soul

I opened my eyes calmly, inhaled through my nose and then breathed out a small stream of flames calmly.

It’s as I thought… I’m calling my next bark based attack Bark Blaze.

Dolly is probably going to think it’s so cool that I can now actively spit fireballs. Not much difference from bark blast where I spit an explosive force of magic.

I wonder if it’s my performing the longma style of breathing exercises long enough, because I’m pretty sure my insides are not fire proof like theirs are.

I’m exhaling air, but it’s turning into flames away from my face… I don’t know if the Dancing Flame technique will make me spontaneously combust or not, but lightning myself on fire has never been easier at least. Well it is easier on my hooves.

Yes, I am one thoroughly messed up lambkin.

“Hello Pom, I’ve been meaning to…” Lucha Mundo watches as I exhaled a blast of flames out of frightened reflex and burnt a fairly sizable hole into the nearby patch of plants. “Now if someone says you got a fire in you, I can see that they mean it quite literally.”

I coughed up several bits of white smoke and glared at the wrestler bird. Nope, my insides are definitely not fire proof, so I have to be a lot more careful about this new wrinkle of the Dancing Flame technique.

“Really?” I stated slightly upset to being caught practicing something that might help me fly in privacy. If I could create my own thermals, then I won’t be just gliding anymore! I could barely flap upwards without putting all four of my hooves into the downwards motion, also I wouldn’t need to grow wings of an imminent unstoppable demise. I wanted to have some ability to fly under my own power before that happens if it becomes necessary to 'give in'. I wasn't lying to Shanty when I said I can stop it before the threshold, it would depend on my mental strength as to whether or not I stepped over that boundary I was mentally keeping track of willingly. “Look can you not tell anyone about this, I’m still figuring this out for myself.”

“Can’t blame a Hawlucha for trying 'Mi Amiga' and your odd secret is safe with me. I have a confidentiality clause when it comes to helping others with more private matters and you are a patient of mine. This was a private matter and I’m quite sorry I interrupted you when you were so 'muy' peaceful!” He said jovially with his claws on his hips. “So about that talk we need to have... how can you help me, help you? You are currently worried about your inner beast and the slight hunger for flesh yes?”

448. Failing Frontlines.

-Moon Cell, Inner Realm, approximately five days in reality next door and two weeks in the digital realm time later, outskirts of Castle Alexander, Desert of Devastation, Pom-

Those hugs everyone gave me… yeah I needed more of those. I also needed more therapy than Mundo could give me, he was a sweet and kind individual. Unfortunately no amount of therapy could prepare me for this.

I could at least invoke the Rhongomyniad’s ability to fire beams of raw energy, was it holy or divine? I hadn’t the foggiest. It was a major help for me standing on the front lines mostly by myself and being rushed by a few thousand EPs of all shapes, sizes and appearance.

Sweeping the lances beam across the many EPs incoming, the turrets in Castle Alexander were the only reprieve I had at the moment that I wasn’t alone out here protecting the entrance. Even Copen, for as tough as he was, couldn’t keep up the pressure without being taken down by a nasty injury.

Nobody wanted to test Elise’s resurrection ability, since it apparently didn’t work perfectly like a Reviver Seed does and that was telling given the Reviver Seed pulled her soul back together into one being.

This realm was in a vast desert that wasn’t hot or cold, it was lukewarm at best and I stood on the sands as a lone line of defense. Moon Cell’s was in the middle of said desert and there was no way to get to it without being highly visible given it was floating above the sands. We at least knew for certain that it couldn’t move, but what it could do… well it has been a constant horror show of failures since it started actively dealing with us on its doorstep.

The fighting since we got here has been horrid. First it was just a few of us going down, then the more that fell the more we relied on the Mirage Collective or the Harmony Programs… they had to retreat several times.

It’s only those who were living in Castle Alexander at the moment the hadn’t retreated, we came to this desert and experienced nothing at first… not a single enemy, not a single action taken against us, nothing but sand and the eye of Moon Cell in the vast distance between us and it.

The scouts we first sent out were the Caerbannog on a hover skiff, the fact that they hadn’t been able to return at all said as much about what we were facing here. Moon Cell was at its best in a realm it directly controlled all its own.

We hadn’t gotten far, for there were no territories to take over here, no PLANTs to fight and endless swarms that Moon Cell could drop within a given range of its core.

We had made a good efforts to push forward… only we’re back at where we started in this realm, pushed all the way back to square one.

Moon Cell had servants but was likely utilizing them as a close up defense in case we actually made it through the walls of the crystalline mazes it could forge in an instant rising us from the ground. It had been trying to cut us off from retreat, more specifically trying to stop me from retreating and take me out.

I had spent hours trying to figure out the maddening rules of this place that Moon Cell controlled, at least one stood out to me… while Moon Cell could control the terrain and battlefield, it could not actually use it to end us directly. It could indirectly put a boulder on a mountainside and roll it at us, but it could not directly drop the boulder on our heads from out of nowhere. It all followed at least some form of logic.

If I was looking at a chess board right now, I’d swear we were on the side that only had a king that was struggling to make it through the defense Moon Cell could put in our path. We couldn’t as Moon Cell stopped our every advance. Even flying towards it proved difficult as used sand storms to obscure its location if we tried to fly in a straight line at it, somehow Castle Alexander got turned around and we had to settle down because flight mode couldn’t last forever.

We tried Thousand Gunners, we’d tried aerial offensive, we’d try ground forces pushes, and we had even tried to go under the sand and met horrors in the underground tunnels that tried to collapse them on top of us.

Giant worm monsters didn’t need snake like tongues with their own mouths!

Yet, Moon Cell hadn’t move an inch from its position… it didn’t need to. There were so many EPs around Moon Cell’s core that it would take more than what we could safely field for defensive purposes.

If one had to wonder why I was out here alone trying to defend myself from several hundred incoming Assassin Reapers, then I ought to tell you that I was one of the few people left who wasn’t injured or badly damaged in the terms of our digibot comrades.

I had set a line in the sand and the EPs wouldn’t cross it… at least until they were done with me. Even if Castle Alexander were to use its ultimate ability ‘Divine Judgment’, we wouldn’t be able to put a big enough hole in the number of enemies we had to bypass.

Having thought something was up when we came into this realm and it was in a valley, I at least knew Moon Cell was acting under limitations. Otherwise we’d all be dead already if it didn’t and its defenses were almost nigh impenetrable even if we could see the glaring red eye in the cube in the distance at all times.

Even if Fou was fighting with us and capable of keeping the neutral NPs he caused to be created under his direct, even he had tired of trying to break through the defenses. He could only do so much himself even if lethal injuries basically meant absolutely jack and all to him.

Artoria and Mash’s medieval contingent of APs were helping so much, but if a Thousand Gunner couldn’t puncture through everything Moon Cell was throwing at us then even they couldn’t.

Metal Hound 003 didn’t survive the first hour of its flight, it did a lot of battling though. At least Dolly survived the crash and she had been trying to stick by my side since then, but even she and Dormarch had been worn down. It’s just that the injuries mounted too quickly, our supplies to cover said injuries dropped to almost nothing and our ability to build an offensive and keep it going was grounded to a complete stop.

We had yet to be pushed out of the realm however, not for the lack of Moon Cell’s trying and it was doing a pretty bang up job of it.

We weren’t facing any servants, just EPs in practically endless numbers and no PLANTs to take down or territory to achieve. In all it seemed like a perfect defense, even Dormarch was flummoxed to keep up with all the numbers and assaults.

We tried a slow forward assault, Moon Cell countered it as well as any of our other plans. Our manufactured support structure for our AP forces was targeted relentlessly as soon as the rocket trucks, Magitek Armor or what have you were put into forward or defensive positions where they were exposed to attack.

It had all gotten so bad that I was left here standing in the sand in front of Castle Alexander, quite assured that Moon Cell wouldn’t focus on the castle until I was dealt with and I seriously doubt I could take more than a hundred or so Assassin Reapers down and that’s from using the Rhongomyniad’s ability to fire beams.

I was trying to not rely on that.

I was trying not to magically exhaust myself, which was a good thing if you consider that the golden wool on my left hind leg hadn’t moved at all. It was only a matter of time before I overdraw though.

Nothing we were doing here would work, we had met the enemy and when we were in view of their final fortress… we faltered harshly.

We tried to keep morale up, that failed. We tried small teams to get in, that failed, but some got farther than most before retreating. We tried full out high speed assault… that went poorly and Dolly was badly injured in the attempt.

Nothing was working and now we were on the defensive after our last failed assault and I was one of the few that could still be fielded. They felt horrible about asking me to come out here, but Castle Alexander needed repairs and time to field some more Thousand Gunners piloted by Rider Zealots.

There was so little that would distract an entire horde of EPs aside from me physically being on the battlefield.

Quetal at least got us a single image of a servant before he managed to successfully retreat back to our ramshackle defensive lines. Jeanne was there when he did so and helped him retreat, they saw the servant with their own eyes.

Long purple hair, didn’t look like they were too combat capable even if they knew how to wield the rapier they held, wearing some form of dress and coat and were a white furred squirrel… they looked more like someone who was good at a leadership role. They had a faint smile on their face as they watched Jeanne and Quetal get drive off from our failed push for Moon Cell’s core.

Also just looking at the picture Quetal got gave me an idea that they were magical servant of some kind, they had to be a servant. Yet we had never seen them on the battlefield, if they were a Caster I wouldn’t feel such a sense of foreboding just looking at them or the chains they were possibly being held by under Moon Cell’s control.

My nerves were getting the better of me, as the Assasin Reapers approached and then a blast of plasma tore through a mass of them and large four golden legged green tank hopped forth and landed near me kicking up a massive amount of sand.

Ah yes, that… well I had forgotten about one of the odder things the Rider Zealots had made, apparently scans showed it as being called a Dragoon Fenix. It was nice that it was here, probably could protect me from projectiles, but it wouldn’t last long under the conditions of our current situation.

“Cheese House!” The voice from the walking tank stated. “I have returned.”

He did in fact return… I don’t remember this zealots walking tank being rebuilt, nor did I hear from anyone about it after it had been destroyed back in Midgar while my friends were assaulting the wall. Yet it was back now? Curious, I thought it had been blown apart when the battle line took the wall and Castle Alexander flew up to the upper city layer of Midgar.

“What lamb crawls?” Several Zealots stated as they showed up with their gleaming blades ready to fight on foot if they had to without vehicles.

“Power overwhelming.” One of the zealots stated while taking up a position around me and stared at the enemies in the distance.

At least I wasn’t out here alone anymore, but we were still going to get trashed and torn apart if these were all that could be spared to the front lines. Even Dolly and Dormarch couldn’t be out here for various reasons.

“Are you sure you guys should be…” I felt a calm hand placed on my back, one of the Zealots simply nodded to me and then moved forward to ignite a pair of energy blades.

“Terror ca’noe!” The zealot intoned as the other zealots took up defensive positions around me.

Terror Cannot, what? Scare them? They were still alien to me and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were an alien race that somehow got recorded by Moon Cell to somehow end up on our side of the battlefield… because Moon Cell certainly wasn’t fielding them against us for some reason and it was using a variety of EPs we’ve never seen before.

“You’re all going to be torn to shreds, just letting you know that right now.” Our APs have become particularly protective of us lately, as if they understood why we needed their help and that we wouldn’t be able to come back quite like they did from the PLANTs that had them generated in a constant stream of dying in fights and possibly living to fight.

At least I wasn’t alone out here when the retaliation swarm of EPs were coming at us on the horizon, their numbers were pretty much slowly bypassing the artillery strikes from Castle Alexander.

“My life of ire…” A zealot said to me while glaring at the incoming EPs, he took a stance ready for a fight. “Honor guide thee!”

Still as confusing that they didn’t seem to be able to talk in anything other than almost nonsensical manner of what is becoming known to me as set phrases that almost sound like an alien language.

I was getting the distinct feeling they weren’t going to let me fight alone out here even if I did order them back.

That was a lot of Assassin Reapers, Moon Cell really liked fielding the bug like things that swapped between bipedal fighting and crawling combat forms. Their spindly legs were quite sharp, as I’ve been stabbed by them a few times, this was definitely an assassination force and I knew they were directed at me more than anyone… being considered a primary target for them was bad news all around and I was their favorite choice of target.

I glanced back at the dug in Castle Alexander, they could have the Torneko mines set up by now… but I wasn’t leaving anything to chance here.

At least Mirage Mew let us know there was a chance we might be getting reinforcements, said reinforcements were from outside Moon Cell’s realms. I wonder if it would be the digital world or even Ransei, we had no idea how the two worlds were doing in the fight.

There was also the fact that I hadn’t seen any distortions from the Eaters, maybe… maybe they wouldn’t attack because Moon Cell had this realm sealed up fairly well? Those things terrified me as much as Moon Cell did considering all the rebuffed attempts at reaching it to deal a final blow.

“If you say so.” I stated calmly while my body shivered and I readied the Rhongomyniad, even knowing the truth about it this lance was still quite strange as a shadow of what was a towers true power.

The thundering sound as the enemies closed had my heartbeat speeding up, until twenty more dragoons arrived and began spreading out to fire blasts of spherical hot energy with unnerving precision.

“Ocellus, has manufacturing been working on Dragoons by any chance?” I said as I reached up with a hoof and tapped my visor.

“No… the dragoons are just appearing with the Rider Zealots already in them, so no we’re not manufacturing them at the moment. We’re trying to make rocket trucks, Thousand Gunners and more Magitek Armors for defensive purposes. The only odd one out seems to be the teal or green one that keeps saying ‘I have returned’ a lot. We might be dealing with soul like Snake or Cait Sith, only this one still seems to be acting like a normal Allied Program without much intelligence to it.” Even Ocellus seemed confused by this turn of events “It would certainly make sense if the soul was named phoenix just misspelled as Fenix with an F where the P H and O should be. Since it seems like the dragoon can revive itself from our PLANT network with some time.”

“Approximately fifty seconds for ‘Fenix unit’ revival, creation of dragoon through PLANTs requires Fenix to actively be fielded.” Been a while since we’ve heard Castle Alexander’s voice, apparently the castle wasn’t very talkative and I was okay with that. Made it seem less like we were using a giant living organism made of metal and stone to fight a deadly war.

“Nice to know when we’re about to be hit by hundreds of thousands of EPs and answers my other question about where the other twenty came from.” Said Dragoons were already lobbing energy into the large crowd, for as much good as they could do they still weren’t nearly enough for the numbers we’re facing.

I inhaled and centered my nerves, exhaled and brought the Rhongomyniad up and at the ready to start using it. If I didn’t have gangly legs, I wouldn’t be able to use this lance half as well as I do. I was about to get a lot of stabbing pointy limbs in my face.

-Castle Alexander interior, Dormarch-

“Come on little bro, Pom needs us out there!” Dolly urged despite the fact that she was wrapped in bandages and not for Halloween costume either. She had survived crashing into the desert and being inside an exploding vehicle, one that was quickly encroached upon by a variety of EPs.

The fact that she still wanted to fight was absurd in her condition. I was here to put a paw down on her and keep her from rushing out until we had the resources to deal with the injury.

“She does, but I don’t know what we could do to stop them from coming and hitting Castle Alexander directly otherwise if Pom was to stay behind the safety of the battlements… we wouldn’t be safe for very long either way and. “Look Dolly, mom wants you to recover. We’re even surprised you’re bond to us didn’t waver even a little bit despite nearly being killed considering how we found you a broken bloody mess.”

“Is there anyone left we can put out there with her at least?!” Dolly really didn’t do well with feeling helpless and neither did I. She was still struggling to walk to get back out there in the fight with Pom. I felt for her on several levels, but I couldn’t in good conscience let her go out there. “She’s going to get creamed, like… uh… like corn!”

“Well… Dazzle and Frizzle are capable of being fielded but are here on the backline to protect the castle in case mom… er… anyway they are still here at mom’s request, even if Frizzle can digital evolution to Wargrowlmon.” Falls and dies, but I didn’t want to believe she would. Mom was made of some stern stuff and had to be to walk out there alone with that lance over the right side of her withers alone. “Wargrowlmon is our current last line of defense, we currently can’t waste any firepower.”

Ocellus said that mom’s anxiety and paranoia was at its peak, yet she still went out there alone to be live bait. If there were people to help, then mom was always going to act on that as Dolly had once shown that Pom’s body couldn’t move away from people in need of her even if she was unconscious and someone else entirely was controlling her body.

Even Artoria and Mash were laid up and in need of healing. Mirage Mew was still securing our backs with the Harmony Programs as Moon Cell was attempting to cut us off from being able to retreat or escape back to Ransei or the digital world. It had been one thing after another and my mother had tried and failed to make a push.

Only Jeanne and Quetal had managed to see anything remotely resembling an active servant, the fact that it wasn’t actively seen in combat and mom had suspicions it was a leader type of servant might have something to do with why we were all failing so hard to reach Moon Cell’s core.

Merak might have been a genius, but he was lazy, the servant we might be dealing with… they just might even be a combat AI for how well they’ve been holding us off and predicting our movements. We couldn’t even get to Moon Cell from below as the tunnels would allow anyone trying to go under the desert to be under serious attack constantly from all sides.

“Valora unit leader Jeanne heading out.” Jeanne stated with a tone of finality, she was going out there too? Most of the Valora units actually met their match the first few days of being on the battlefield that was Moon Cell’s inner realm. They were more tired than they had though. “Pom can’t be alone out there with just APs as support.”

“Is short shorts even in good enough health to be out there?” Dolly asked and I gave it some thought.

“Well she’s not as injured as everyone else and she’s a sturdy fighter, even if she’s extremely pyrophobic… she’s highly afraid of fire Dolly.” I saw the lost look in my elder sister’s eyes and dumbed it down for her.

“Well yeah I’m kind of afraid of fire too, imagine if the 101 street in Camden suddenly caught fire… that’d be pretty hard to put out and… now I’m scared for the rest of my family too if I didn’t know my dad could not only survive it and help put it out too. Which almost did happen given our next door neighbors back yard was on fire all over the place… yeah, fire is scary.” Just please get some rest Dolly, there’s not much we could really do at the moment. I could go out, but I ran out of energy necessary for an digital evolution thirty minutes ago and needed to build up for it again. “Say… can you get me up to the castle walls I might have an idea as to how to help even if I can’t go out as battered as I am.”

“Let me guess, you’re going to summon or use magic at long range and strain yourself.” I groaned out and Dolly grinned at me. “Fine, but only because we stocked up on Ethers before we left the Midgar realm. I worry about your health too you know!”

Dolly latched on to me while sticking her tongue out the right side of her mouth in a goofy smile and I fanned my three tails out to start carrying her towards the battlements.

-Castle Alexander, AP control, Cait Sith-

Well this is worse than the apocalyptic meteorite and alien blood being injected into the wrong person. At least I hadn’t seen the white haired seven foot long sword wielding nutcase… even then half of Midgar got blown up.

I’m surprised that something like that didn’t happen when I wasn’t a computer program called an NPC. We were still building up AP forces and or putting them out for a defense when Pom left to draw the enemy away from trying to hit us and more towards herself.

We were several levels of screwed if we didn’t hold off the incoming enemy assault force. The Berserker Magitek Moogles were powerful, but they really couldn’t handle being swarmer for all the physical power they could put out.

Death by a thousand cuts was still death and the enemy was cutting us up something fierce. I was working on AP upgrades as much as feasibly possible, then something odd happened and the system started spawning dragoons which the Rider Zealots only ever manufactured the one during the Midgar fight.

It’s only now we were capable of producing them? Well not without a Rider Zealot and both took up Allied Program production time, at least we were capable of putting out Shielder Knights faster and more capable thanks to Mash given some insight into shields she used in a prior life, with some tweaks they reclassified from Saber to Shielder. There’s the other additive that the ‘Dragoon Fenix’ unit had to be fielded for them to be produced, something about the code rallied more to be made by our PLANT systems.

I also had an inkling as to what caused the Sandstorm that just stopped us from flying through, the enemy might have an elite EP version of a ‘Zu’ a massive sandstorm causing bird that can make a wall of sand with a single flap of its wings.

Trying to get underneath Moon Cell’s core got us stopped by the tunnels trying to collapse on us, we’re lucky that we haven’t lost anyone or had a complete KIA.

The incoming EP forces slammed into the small contingent, hoped Pom did alright out there. Poor girl has been through a lot with everyone else to get this far.

I focused on my task at hand, maybe this new information could help me improve our other APs?

-Outskirts of Castle Alexander, Pom-

I tightened a pink strip of cloth around my forehead and prepared to dive in when Jeanne showed up with her banner, she always had a way of rallying people to stay strong just by waving it around. She wanted to always be the first on the field of battle and the last off of it, it did give me some solace that she was getting stronger.

She might even stop being a Hakamo-o soon and may become a Kommo-o.

“We’ve been driven back far enough, we’re not being pushed back any further!” Jeanne intoned while waving her banner as the enemy line approached and then held it forward to use it as a weapon as she came up to me. “You have shown much courage on the battlefield Pom, I will not lose a friend like you even in the face of my worst fears. I shall stand and fight by your side to the end!”

“Mirage Mew said we would be getting help, but not in what form.” Yeah and… I was about to continue those thoughts when I was surprised to hear Jeanne saying them out loud.

“Yeah and they can’t come soon enough.” Jeanne the ‘fighting dragon’ stated as she planted the banner. “You want us, then come and get us! I care not if I am not made of steel, but I will show you that my will is far stronger than my body and is made of more than iron! Do you hear me?!”

She was still upset that her parents told her she wasn’t a Steel Type, yet here she was facing thousands of enemies alongside our much smaller numbers with a fierce look on her face. She hasn’t missed a single battle since we came to this desert and she never stopped fighting.

“You may hold us off so easily, we may not have the momentum to deal with you quite yet, but mark my words Moon Cell, we come for you!” Jeanne cry rallied the Dragoons, Zealots and even me, I could feel a surge of strength that I’m fairly sure I’ve felt from her before. “For I am Jeanne D’Arc of Valora and I will not be stopped by your endless armies nor will I ever allow them to get past me to attack my home again!”

With that she took up the banner and with a single sweep of her banner spear, she sent tens of leaping Assassin Reapers flailing back into the horde as she knocked a massive number of them over and surged forward attacking with a vicious speed and strength.

I was right behind her stabbing into every EP I could and as fast as my legs would let me taking out their numbers. The zealots were diving in as well as the horde was constantly blasted despite surrounding us on three sides.

A dancing ‘leaping’ flame fought valiantly alongside the banner bearer of Valora.

“We’re getting surrounded out here!” I stated and then several powerful tornadoes popped up and tore away a good number of the enemy forces as they moved outward and away from us. It lightened the load, but couldn’t stop them from coming at us entirely.

Dodge, parry, thrust, dissolving, move on to the next and repeat until they are stopped or pushed away.

I could feel Dolly in the back of my mind chugging Ethers and casting ‘Aerora’ multiple times when she should be resting.

-Dolly-

Ugh… so much minty taste. The bandages on my body were a little too tight and I felt uncomfortable with my injuries.

“My head is beginning to hurt real badly even with the Ethers…” There were just so many of those things out there and surrounding Pom.

“I told you, you need to keep resting.” Dormarch stated in worry.

“Just let me… do… one last one, then… I’ll actually rest.” I downed three Ethers consecutively one after the other and hit some kind of strange form of enlightenment that my brother Deepak would… that or I was absolutely high on Ether potions. “Leaf in this wind this, I’ll make you soar by the force of my will, AERO-GA!”

-Pom-

The frontline was failing for the Counter Invasion force, but that didn’t mean we didn’t have our aces in the hole.

Like that… for example…

I knew that Dolly could cast some magic, but she had a lot of limitations, but this?!

This was something else and Dolly had definitely overdrawn herself heavily for this…

I looked up at the massive tornado as it drew in more than half the horde and drag them back away from us sand being dragged up into the air creating a massive sandstorm that blasted in the direction of our enemies.

I had almost stopped paying attention to the incoming bladed limb of an Assassin reaper nearly got me in the neck and I quickly stabbed it down and bashed it into a quickly dissolving mulch with the Rhongomyniad with an overhead swing.

Also Dolly overexerted herself and was down and out, Dormarch was taking care of it.

Not only was Dolly’s physical well-being poor, but now her mental well-being from using more magic than she could safely handle utilizing.

We would have to figure out how get to Moon Cell’s core or this would have been all for nothing.

Even with the tornado and sandstorm working in our favor a massive number of Assassin Reapers were still getting through and Dolly wasn’t awake to even use any more spells to support us.

I continued to bash, stab and splatter any EP moving in our direction. Jeanne protectively stayed in front of me along with the Rider Zealots fighting on foot, but she still had to let a few by and it was still almost too much for me.

A flame whip tore an Assassin Reaper away before it could dig its spindly limb too far into my torso and a blast from a fireball took out another one’s top half a second later.

Dazzle and Frizzle were now on the field of battle now too, but how long could we hold them all off?

The frontlines were failing quite badly and we only had so much strength.

A second later a massive bird screeched as it flew in front of the tornado and slowly started to destroy it with several powerful wing beats.

Yeah, that just wasn’t fair at all… but who said life was fair?

“I suspected as much, but now it’s confirmed! That would be a Zu, it’s what created those terrible sandstorms that turned us around earlier. If we can take it down we might have more of a chance of making an aerial push.” Said Cait Sith about what Dolly would term as a ‘kaiju sized’ massive bird that not only just revealed itself.

It had stopped Dolly’s most powerful wind magic spell cold, as if it was nothing to the massive bird.

“Yeah, I can’t fight that thing…” Even if I were to glide up to it that thing was ridiculous as it was fast in the air, something of that size should not be able to fly like it does.

“You might be thinking something of that size should not be flying like it does… well Zu are like that.” Said Cait as I looked up at the massive black bird that roared and I physically felt shift me backwards from this far away. “They can control wind and are resilient to physical attacks… they are otherwise weak to magic.”

“Anything specific?” I asked as I fended off three Assassin Reapers trying to stab me all at once by flaring the Rhongomyniad into an open parasol.

“Anything fire based, lots of it. Maybe ice… really I don’t know what kind of Zu species this one in particular is, but they really don’t like being burned in general except for the ones immune to flames, but those are generally red tinted so it’s not going to be immune to flames.” While that was nice to know Cait Sith as we have plenty of way to lit if on fire, we were already kind of busy here. Too bad Dolly was out or I’d have her summon Ifrit, I also noted that Jeanne twitched as she heard what this things weakness was. Good thing Dazzle and Frizzle were out here. “The reason fire is so bad for a Zu is because it lights up the winds keeping them aloft and completely disrupts its magic, so be wary of it landing on you if you managed to hit it with flames as it’s too heavy to stay in the air without its power over wind outright aiding it.”

“Not really a time to think about fighting that thing, I still have hundreds of Assassin Reapers out for my blood here!” It likely only showed up to stop the threat to Moon Cell that Dolly’s massive tornado present and then it was seen flying away when it had done its job.

Things were going poorly and I had no idea how we could be doing any better than we currently were… on the back hoof and fighting to keep a single foothold here.

“Hi-potions delivery incoming for you Pom, via the Cuddlestare Skvader Caerbannog support!” Nice to hear Ocellus. Well at least the Harmony Programs were still able to do something in the terms of back up, but we were dangerously low on all kinds of supplies that those potions might not even be enough. “Stay alive until then please.”

Easier said than done Ocellus, I ducked under the swing of a Brute that had been hidden among the many, MANY, Assassin Reapers. I jumped the lance up into it and had it spike outwards from inside the EP to blow it apart.

We could hardly keep up with all of Moon Cell’s defenses, we were in real trouble.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Hm…” I sighed audibly and groaned. “I’ll contact the Wooloo…”

“Huh?” Bahamut queried through a mouthful of food.

“They need help and the normal types are the closest to finishing off their Mystery Dungeon anchors from Moon Cell. I can send a special command to Cleric Geoff… It’ll help things for the counter invasion force.” As watching them right now was disheartening, after they had gotten so far.

“How are you going to get them to there? You can’t directly make it so they’ll appear there without threatening everything.” Mew stated with worry.

“Fear not, Wooloo are capable of the dumbest things if you don’t tell them they shouldn’t be able to do them.” I shook my head. “If only someone hadn’t told them Rollout was impossible for them because Wooloo don’t naturally have rock type energy… then they might have done it anyway out of sheer ignorance and created a new move using normal type energy.”

“Wait… you’re going to have them do something absolutely impossible out of sheer ignorance?” Mew stated blankly. “Well that’s…”

“Genius!” Tiamat interrupted a second later with all of her heads smiling.

“I was about to say absolutely dumb, because there is no way in the world that the Wooloo can possibly get there in time to save Castle Alexander!” Mew stated bluntly.

-Five minutes later-

“Okay, I stand completely corrected, but how in the hell did they gain access to the Reverse World like that?!” Again Mew, ignorance is a tough thing to deal with when it came to Wooloo shenanigans and they gathered supplies stupidly fast upon Geoff hearing that Pom needed help. “I know ‘rhythm, singing and dancing’ is a naturally occurring power of a being from Equus… but that… that made absolutely no sense!”

“I don’t know how they are doing what they are doing, but I am currently telling Giratina to let them through its realm.” This should be a good show, I only told Geoff that Pom was in grave danger and needed immediate help. He didn’t even stop for a second to think of how he was going to reach her current position and somehow broke into what was known as the 'Reverse World' by the sheer force of stupidity of not thinking things through completely. “Also who said the Reverse World ever made sense? It just needs to be maintained, Giratina is going to be quite surprised by their numerous guests passing through though. It’ll be much faster than trying what Violite is currently working on with trying to bridge a gap through heavily contested the digital realm or bypass it entirely.”

I’m not going to think too hard about how the Wooloo are doing what they are doing, nor am I going to think too hard about all the noise causing Pokémon they are taking with them to punch through worldly barriers they shouldn’t be capable of punching through. At least they weren’t punching through barriers across worlds and were staying in the same general dimension.

“Will they make it in time though?” Mew still questioned.

“Hello my name is Celebi, Dialga heard we needed more time on something…” Celebi grinned as they popped up, they’ve been getting better only two deaths over the last three days of normal reality time compared to the faster plodding time of the digital realm of Moon Cell. “Also since the Reverse World isn’t going to be a problem for Dialga to use their full power in, as much as it would be in doing it in reality, and Palkia is actually not fighting Dialga on something for once and is actively assisting them with what is about to happen. We hardly ever see those three working together, but when Giratina, Dialga and Palkia do get their heads out of their backsides...”

Tiamat, the multiple headed dragon, had all her heads burst out in roaring laughter.

Fun thing is, I don’t think Moon Cell actually has any protection from Geoff’s current entirely unplanned counter invasion route. Even I didn't know this was even possible until I gave a Geoff the impetus for it... but there it was in the timeline now.

This only works, given that Moon Cell has a physical presence on the floating off the far side of the moon in the Mystery Dungeon Realm as a massive crystalline structure. Well, nothing has ever been totally and truly one hundred percent foolproof. Not even Moon Cell's defenses and Geoff was about to ignorantly bypass most of them just to help Pom.

The Normal Types would be the first into the breach behind Pom inside the inner realm, with a number of Team Harmony friends in support.

Note to self: Reinforce all the dimensional walls after what Geoff just pulled off using the Kingdom of Aurora's resources within less than an hour of being informed that Pom is in dire trouble.

The power of friendship is still one of my favorite things to watch, but that Wooloo scares me on a number of levels with how fast he managed to rally everyone in Aurora to even do what he currently is.

449. Not Sanding Down Now!

-Moon Cell, Inner Realm, Desert of Devastation, Damaged Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

Castle Alexander was a complete mess. Damaged places were being repaired by Berserker Minotaur Mercenaries via Torneko and various other APs. Welch was trying to produce support vehicles as fast as possible in manufacturing and that was slow going, the few Skein Flyers we had were at least helping in the repairs.

If it wasn’t for our slight problem with having to shut down our APs ability to be fielded we wouldn’t be in this mess, but Cait Sith was also working on adding some things to our APs and we needed them upgraded like literal yesterday. Mind you Cait Sith has been working on them for days, he’s now getting to the process where he can actually implement the upgrades.

Thankfully Rider Zealots were still deployable as was that odd teal colored Dragoon Fenix.

Dolly was down again, passed out from abusing her magical talent and was suffering backlash, but the Ethers apparently cooled down the most of the damage that the backlash would have caused. At least Dormarch forced her unconscious form to ingest one.

Ethers were still abundant, only magic users really needed them and I was one among that number that could use them… tasted exactly like the most blandest love possible to me, but Ethers were quite effective for what they did and changelings could use them for a small boost where needed. I could do some magical mending as an auxiliary support under Dormarch’s instruction.

Speaking of Dormarch he went back to resting and waiting to get his digital evolutions back online, also he was currently our medical expert so putting him on the field of battle wasn’t ideal at the moment when most of our non-AP forces were down with a variety of injuries. We didn’t currently have the berries or the potions to fix all of them, which is why we have the Harmony Programs or HPs running us some much needed healing supplies at the moment.

The Mirage Collective was far too busy securing all the realms we have collectively taken to lend us support at this time, but Mirage Mew said we had to hold on until they can keep our already taken realm secured.

Fou actually met his match when he encountered those worms and got bitten… the underground operation attempt went quite horribly thanks to those worm things.

The Commandramon were still recovering from their injuries and were the lucky ones from the underground operation that hadn’t been poisoned. We didn’t have any of them capable of being fielded at the moment with any of the three types of magitek armor we could produce.

Our three digi-bot friends were all parts broken, their ‘tin pet’ bodies were in the slow recovery phase and until their parts came back they wouldn’t be getting up any time soon.

Not that we had Magitek Armors at the moment with production being a complete mess.

Thousand Gunners were fairly useful offensive wise, but they were really terribly armored considering most of their construction was focused on bracing them to fire their rotary machine cannons full bore. We were named our particular off-brand version of the Thousand Gunners the unique name of ‘Blumebears’ given Welch’s rather unorthodox design philosophy.

We had quickly lost all the Blumebears we built to those Elite Worm EPs in the sand when they dropped them into sand traps.

When the large number Skvader Caerbannog from Cuddlestare came flying in with Hi-Potions, without any supportive escort to protect them, they were a very much welcome sight as they slowed down the nearby assaulting EPs with their stares as some flew in and dropped off Hi-Potions for our four remaining remotely healthy fighters out in the field. The majority brought the rest of the Hi-potion supplies to us.

Our air attack went poorly, our attempts to go underground was a big loss and the rush assault afterwards barely gave us new intelligence to work with as far as the servant we were up against.

The underground attempt had been horrible considering the Grabbers or Grabby Wormoid things… Graboids? Anyway those things were insanely fast digging EP elite monsters and almost crushed us with their absolutely devastating terrain advantage. Tough outer hides and fast underground movement speed, they were weak to solid rock so Castle Alexander was safe from their direct attacks. They could, thankfully enough, only effectively use sand traps against large things that weren’t nearly as big as Castle Alexander.

Our rushed assault injured most of the Valora contingent. Along Canard and Sami, plus quite a few others in the Gazimon contingent. We only managed to reveal a servant from it… but not what that servant was capable of as we got pushed back to the start of where we entered the inner realm.

One thing was for certain, the servant was not Merak levels of lazy genius… this was just outright genius as far as stopping us at every turn and we had nothing to show for it aside from a damaged castle and more heavily injured than we could handle.

The Desert of Devastation was aptly named, considering how devastated our forces were at the moment.

That Pom even went out there alone was terrifying, but she was quickly joined by Jeanne who was one of the few still capable of fighting at her fullest and probably should have evolved into a Kommo-o at this point from the sheer pressure she was under to perform.

It really didn’t help Jeanne much that she flinched anytime Dazzle or Frizzle used a fire attack near her. She had less psychological problems than Pom certainly did, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a serious problem when she couldn’t even handle our side using fire.

Dazzle and Frizzle shouldn’t even be out there after the failed aerial assault plan was rebuffed and we at least now knew what stopped us was that giant Zu bird. They weren’t going to abandon Pom to fighting by herself out there and neither were we, even when we were backed into a corner and could hardly do much more than use the turrets to fend off the overwhelming quantity of enemies coming at us.

The turrets current fire rates were absolutely abysmal until the repairs on those were done, Cid was completely overworked on the mechanical side of things with Welch in getting Castle Alexander back into semi-working order.

We were at least keeping our small Zealot and Dragoon force from being completely surrounded, but they were being attack on three sides at once and were getting crushed.

I watched a screen as one of the dragoons was swarmed and summarily ripped to shreds by the Assassin Reapers. What the Reapers sometimes lacked in direct fighting power, they were making up in numbers. Those EPs were some of the most vicious things we’ve fought since the battle outside Valora.

The EP Saber Knights, Lancer Guardians, Brutes and quite a few other Moon Cell basic ground forces were slowly whittling our battle line apart which was now about a meager eleven dragoons with Dragoon Fenix, five Rider Zealots fighting valiantly on foot and our four heroes putting up quite a fight out there.

Pom didn’t impress as much as one would expect with a stupidly powerful weapon, but she definitely held her own in the back central position. Dazzle was sweeping whips of flames about or blasting a dragon shaped beams of force from her mouth. Frizzle was a frenzy of claws and fire blasting from her mouth, tearing apart her opponents with much needed wild abandon.

It was Jeanne who was waving the banner and not giving an inch of ground without making harsh reprisals for it against the enemy. Her powerful swings sent tens of EPs flying and she tore into them with a raw force of will. It wasn’t nearly enough, but it was a at least morale boosting to watch, that was in short supply at the moment.

It was unfortunate that our friends would soon have something more to worry about as Pom took a moment to down a Hi-Potion for the numerous stab wounds dealt to her by the Assassin Reapers.

Moon Cell would probably do better than sending Assassin Class EPs at Pom, but it seemed rather ‘dead’ set on it to the point of absurdity.

“Pom, incoming seismic activity, watch the ground!” I warned as I watched the screen as another Dragoon was torn apart in a massive swarm of stabbing blades into a blue pile of leaking and dissolving mass of blue digital goo and parts. “Those nasty snake tongued worms are about to attack, I think we’re designating them Graboids or Grabbers! At least five, numbers uncertain… confirm on your own, don’t drop your guard.”

“Thanks for the warning Ocellus, those things terrify me on a number of levels.” Yeah, Pom, I was terrified of ever walking on the ground after seeing how fast those things were. “Any idea on how we can lure out what Cait Sith called a Zu? If we can deal with the bird thing we can at least try another air assault and won’t have to worry about those sand swimming horrors.”

“No, given it’s a special unit under Moon Cell’s control, it’ll likely hold the Zu back and keep it out of our range of attack indefinitely unless we can go up to meet it in combat.” I answered. Since the Zu was being used entirely defensively and not going on the offense. I had some idea that there were limitations on how often Moon Cell could actively field really powerful units like that. “It makes for a nasty home field advantage in this desert, it’s practically impossible at this rate to get to Moon Cell’s core unless things change.”

It didn’t help that the Graboids had an insanely nasty poison that would make you bleed from all your orifices if you actively get bit by their snake headed tongues. Said poison was meant to make a prey incapable of fighting off being swallowed entirely alive, it was unimaginably painful… well except for Pom who could feasibly imagine worse pain. Thankfully we didn’t lose anyone to the poison or those things swallowing someone whole, but it was close.

If they couldn’t swallow prey whole, then the tongues would presumably work on tearing them into more easily swallowed pieces. I’m surprised that this hasn’t happened yet, but the poison was bad enough on its own.

Still, the worst poison I could think of would probably be that of an Equestrian Basilisk’s magic poison, a poison that tries to magically kill you in every way feasibly possible.

Even being swallowed alive by a Graboid was suggested to be horrific even if you didn’t get poisoned going in. The fluids in their bodies keeping you alive like preservatives, up until you couldn’t take the agony anymore. Probably didn’t need Canard’s Digivice scan knowledge of that to be in the back of my head, he’s gotten a lot of mileage out of that function.

Thankfully the ones we retreated from primarily targeted Pom, if they didn’t do that then we might have actually lost some people to them when they surprise attacked us underground. Pom, despite being the blazingly fast when using Dancing Flame technique, was absolutely terrified of the Graboids.

They weren’t apparently capable of being summoned in large numbers by Moon Cell, but even the few we faced in the underground attempt had been far too many for how fast they moved. Pom had proved that the Pecha Berry Scarf and its mystical poison immunity ability was worth the Poké many times over by now.

It’s still a surprise to me that she apparently got those two scarves for so cheap from those Kecleon Brother Merchants at this point.

-Outskirts of Castle Alexander, Pom-

“Incoming worms!” I yelled out over the din of battle as I watched another dragoon go down under in a slew of flailing Assassin Reaper limbs as a Saber Knight EP charged up to me with a sword ready to swing.

“Like we don’t have enough problems here!” Jeanne called back as she swung the recently reinforced banner weapon in wide sweeping arcs.

Whether it was the blunt force of the shaft or the sharp cutting tip of the banner spear, Jeanne was the only reason we were holding on as well as we were… her mystical rallying ability kept us in the fight.

I brought the Rhongomyniad up to block the sword coming at me from the right and then, pivoting with the blow, I launched my hind left leg up into its head taking it out.

Since the Rhongomyniad was no longer blocking a sword, I prepped it to swing upwards as I stomped my hind leg down and swept the weapon forward and up to catch a charging Berserker Viking in the chest. The flaming axe Viking was promptly blown apart by the swing and their heat axe fell into the sand turning it into glass before disappearing.

I opened the Rhongomyniad up and blocked the incoming fire from the few Trooper EPs Moon Cell fielded as they showed up in the dunes and they were swiftly blown apart by the Dragoon’s energy blasts.

We didn’t have many Dragoon APs left, as they were being swarmed down fast and were stomping as many enemies as they could with their four legs as they constantly fired as fast as they could. They were supposed to be mobile artillery and weren’t exactly effective on the front line except when acting like a living shield wall to take enemy projectile attacks. The explosive energy they fired was welcome on the battlefield as they could take out swaths of enemies, but they were very poor in dealing with things at close range without shooting at them.

The turrets on Castle Alexander were working again or they had been working before, but couldn’t fire until now. Given we suddenly received an artillery strike that gave us a moment of breathing room as the ground shook and thundered with several powerful explosions, they just fired a cluster explosives that almost hit us as well.

“Cait Sith hurry up please… we’re slowly dying out here and I can feel the Grabbers incoming.” I was using the wool hair on my body like a seismograph to detect how many and where they were moving. I was doing this even as I took up position near Jeanne to start bashing and stabbing through the swarms of EPs alongside our rapidly dwindling Rider Zealots who were valiantly fighting a losing battle.

We were in a slow retreat towards the castle at the moment. We weren’t going to be pushed out of the Desert of Devastation, we were just going to be destroyed outright if this kept going on for much longer.

I was making sure Jeanne wasn’t too far out enough to get absolutely cut off from us. Frizzle and Dazzle were off to both our left and right sides and being careful about firing off any fire attack in Jeanne’s vicinity. Dazzle had to take a moment to drink a Hi-potion and Frizzle was likely wishing she saved her digital evolution for this moment, that or she was eating at an all you can consume designer bread buffet.

“Right, sending out Shielder Class Knights now! Your slapdash creation that was still making them Saber Class has been patched and these will be able to act much more smoothly! Increased leg strength for one and an ability to brace for impact, plus a smaller mace weapon for more efficiency in shield specifications.” Cait Sith chuckled audibly. A wave of shield wielding knights with maces were suddenly on the march towards us from Castle Alexander as we frantically held off the swarms. I felt the tremors in the ground as a worm started angling for me and I could see the sand quietly shifting. “Also I think those Grabbers are in for a very nasty surprise if they try to attack them.”

The Grabbers were very good at moving forward at insane speeds while in the ground, they however couldn’t move backwards very fast for the life of them. So when they erupted out of the ground, they are easy to take down and quite vulnerable. That is provided you’re not the one directly in front of their mouths and flailing snake headed tongues when they do come out and you can take them from the side where their tough hides were at their weakest.

After hearing and even seeing what their poison did to the poor Kommo-o and the other Hakamo-o in Jeanne’s forces. Yeah, did not want to take off my Pecha Scarf at any time in the near future, not even to wash it!

Since the worm’s beak was sharp and pointy and the tongues had equally dangerous fangs, I did not want to suddenly be ripped in half by not paying attention to warnings of them being around. They could bite through my wools defenses entirely if I wasn’t on the ball, of course that wasn’t as important as them biting me entirely in half or swallowing me whole.

I felt the motions and waited, yes two of them were coming for me, one was going to erupt in front of me and another was going to take me from the side a second later. If I dodge backwards, then the one in front of me will chase and the second one will still have time to veer and hit me from the side. We didn’t have enough people on the sands to deal with them and there were at least four others here moving underneath us into ambush positions.

Ocellus did say to confirm their numbers ourselves.

“Jeanne!” I called out as I backed away and stabbed a Saber knight EP through with a sharp pointy end of the Rhongomyniad.

“I’m aware, we’re all doing our best here and we will hold!” Jeanne’s rallying cry did seem to embolden everyone on our side as she waved her banner aloft, even if our position was rapidly deteriorating as even she was pushed back by the masses of assaulting EPs. With the incoming Shielder Knight APs and the Skvader Caerbannog Harmony Program keeping extra supplies up in the air around us that we could call in at a moment’s notice if we needed healing, we might be able to hold for another two minutes at best and that’s assuming the Skvaders can actually actively fight.

The Skvaders showing up was the main reason we weren’t being horribly overrun at the moment, their slowing gazes were helping us immensely in keeping up with the impossible tide coming down on us.

Those gazes wouldn’t work on the Grabbers underground until they popped up and when they did pop up, then they’d need to dedicate some of their slowing gazes to them by taking them off the incoming EP swarm that was increasingly adding on the pressure.

Nobody could count how many EPs we’ve taken out thus far.

The ground suddenly rumbled and I waited to make my maneuver as I fended of an Assassin Reaper with a bark blast, seemed so much easier to fire those these days.

I fired off a rapid barrage of short range explosive barks into the Assassin Reapers that were ignoring Jeanne, Dazzle and Frizzle just to get at me.

I brought up the Rhongomyniad and knocked the last one coming at me down with a quick flair of the currently parasol shaped weapons canopy. I lunged forward and brought the bladed edge of the canopy down on the things body bisecting and after seeing it wasn’t dissolving, I hit it with an overhead smash to the upper torso with a closed up Rhongomyniad and that finally took it out.

That was when I felt the movements of the worms in the sand coming at me full bore…

I leapt backwards and started inhaling the lukewarm air as shifting sand rose up heading towards me, then stopped.

It dove… where… right under!

Timing it just right, I exhaled leapt up and opened the Rhongomyniad as the things mouth came screeching up at me, the snake headed tongues were immediately flailing to get around the canopy as it easily lifted me in the air trying to crush the Rhongomyniad in its four or five part beak.

The second one roared and was already leaping at me as the one below thrashed, now trying to swallow the Rhongomyniad whole and I was holding on for dear life.

I’m so glad that Dancing Flame allowed me time to work up a plan, because time was catching up as the airborne sand monster was coming at me fast even as the Skvader’s snapped their eyes onto glaring at it. It was still moving far too fast to not be lethal if it manages to drive at least two parts of its point beak and mouth tusks into my body. This is not taking into account the snake headed tongues extending towards me.

Charging magic, I pumped out a beam of energy into the Grabber Elite EP mouth while flaring out the Rhongomyniad to push myself upwards and off of its opening jaw as its insides were roasted.

Trying to turn in the air to bring the Rhongomyniad around, I could see I wouldn’t be quick enough and the Skvader’s can only slow down something already moving at incredible speeds, The maw was wide open, five or more tongues spreading out to grab and swallow me whole If I resisted, then the spear like teeth of the beak parts would absolutely bite me apart.

I was sadly small enough to be swallowed whole despite being an adult lambkin ewe.

I’m quietly reminded that Tatzlwurms existed on Equus in this moment of time… however this incoming thing was most certainly not a Tatzlewurm. It was far stubbier for one and Tatzlwurms were much longer to wrap around larger prey, also this thing had a fleshy hide and was not positively covered in magic resilient scales. Tatzlwurms also weren’t poisonous, easier to escape from and pretty much the most easily avoidable mega-fauna threat on Equus, as they only ever showed up if you picked a specific particular species of flower they are usually found to be beneath.

Tatzlwurms grew fields of those flowers as bait sometimes. Thankfully I never saw such a flower myself, but I wouldn’t touch it with a mile long pole and that mouth was getting increasingly closer.

Sure Tatzlwurms made for a very fascinating biology study, but it was not what I should be focusing on right now.

I needed to think of something anything, as I was not going to be able to intercept with the Rhongomyniad in time. This was a well-coordinated attack when even the enhanced speed of movement and thought from Dancing Flame couldn’t get me out of this situation.

Something wrapped around my waist as time sped up and, with a slight burning sensation, I was yanked clear of the snapping maw and the many snake headed tongues trying to get me all at once. A few of the tongues were even bitten off in the attempt.

Shifting my wool to quickly put out the flames around my waist from Dazzle using her whip to pull me clear of the attack. The worm immediately dove back into the sand as soon as it touched it and there was one dissolving worm left above ground.

“That was far too close, thanks Dazzle!” My statement was met with a slight smile from Dazzle as she continued to focus on swinging her flaming whips in wide sweeping strikes trying to take out numbers of EPs all at once after several such swings.

“Are you okay?” Dazzle asked reminding me that I hadn’t used Buster Wolf in a while.

“No, but I’ll live with the horrifying memories of that moment for the rest of my life!” I said as I watched her back by taking down a charging Lancer Guardian EP by deflecting the charging spear upwards and stabbing them down. We were practically out of Rider Zealots in the following seconds and down to three Dragoons, one of which was the outlier teal or green colored Dragoon Fenix. “Which might be measured in minutes at this rate!”

The surge of EPs pressed us backwards and I could feel the Grabbers in the ground making some more movements, three were targeting me this time and one was going for Frizzle?

“Frizzle watch the ground, one of them is targeting you!” What I didn’t say was that I had three preparing to come at me all at once as I back away with Dazzle as Jeanne continued to barely hold the wall of encroaching EPs by herself with some limited support from our Skvader friends.

Weren’t their five? Where did that other Grabber that bit off some of its tongues to get at me go?!

“Exactly how many of them are targeting you at this moment Pom?!” A very perceptive Jeanne asked while trying to ignore the streams of fire based attacks that both Frizzle and Dazzle were putting out, her flinching almost getting her hit as she continued to twirl her banner defensively into devastating offensive strikes.

It was around this time that the Shielder Knight APs reached us and took up a defensive perimeter near us, while making sure to not be in our way.

“Uh three… heh… why me?” Trying to keep the wavering in my voice steady as I said it out loud and the whimpering was kept to a minimum, I kept my ears out for any underground movement. Sure they were slowly creeping into positions below us, but they couldn’t surprise us without me knowing they were coming.

Jeanne, Dazzle and Frizzle exchanged glances as another series of artillery strikes gave us a moment against the surface level enemies coming at us in a massive wave. They held off the stragglers from the barrage in unison and we had a few seconds to breathe. The artillery strikes were starting to get a little too close for comfort, it’s almost like Ocellus was aiming Castle Alexander’s firepower directly at us since things were just that dire.

I couldn’t help but think my friends were thinking the same thing as I dove into the EPs that hadn’t been struck down in the rather slow artillery strikes. Stab, bash, smash… find a rhythm Pom and keep breathing evenly.

Was Castle Alexander doing that badly after the rush assault that its artillery fire rate was this slow at the moment?

So much to worry about and so very little time actually deal with it all!

“Shield bearer APs… protect Pom and our Dragoons, they are high priority targets for the enemy.” Jeanne ordered as the next wave of EPs came in after the artillery strikes and the APs vaguely changed their defensive formation to be more protective of me and the three remaining slashed up Dragoons still firing as fast as they feasibly could.

I didn’t like being stuck in this sandy basin of a canyon, it was like we were trapped in a giant bowl with our backs to the wall and the suspiciously silent hyper murder worms weren’t helping with that feeling at all.

Moon Cell wasn’t overextending with the Zu, because it actually might fear that we can functionally deal with the giant flying bird thing that can control winds.

I was wondering why the Zu wasn’t constantly sending sandstorms our way like it had when it turned us around when we tried to simply flying in for the core. Maybe it had a large cost to it if it kept doing that, like not being able to see some of us that could feasibly sneak on by like Shine… of whom was injured in the underground assault attempt on Moon Cell’s core.

You’d think being in a dark cave system would make it easier for a ghost type to go undetected, the worms could actually force her out of her shadow swimming state and had almost eaten her alive when they did.

Even Snake said this was the toughest nut of a realm to crack he had ever seen and he was practically a nutcracker at breaking into well protected bases.

All the worms started moving at once and three of them came at me at different angles, as we were charged by the Enemy Program horde in front of us.

A worm burst up and a Shielder Knight was immediately in front of me and angling the shield at something approaching a thirty to forty five degree angle towards itself.

As soon as the Grabber impacted the shield, I saw the Shielder AP heave it upwards and much to my amazement successfully managed to topple the worm onto its back where its tongues started thrashing everywhere and it was stuck entirely immobile.

Cait Sith had come through for us completely, as a second later the other two worms trying to pincer or box me in met the same fate of being toppled onto their backs with an absurd amount of ease by a single Shielder Class Knight each. In fact the worms were having problems getting back into the ground as they wiggled helplessly upside down or were slowly trying to use their tongues to right themselves.

Not letting that happen!

I quickly launched myself into the air using springs of wool from my rear legs and came down on the Grabber in front of me to impale it violently with the Rhongomyniad. After pulling the odd weapon free, I bark blasted into the hole I made in its tough skin.

The bark blast tore the hole I fired it into wide open in a disgusting splatter of brownish and orange colors that made me feel sick to my stomach at how gross this was.

The worm I was on thrashed one last time and then went limp, it started dissolving soon after.

The other Shielder Knights worked in concert to bash the other two down slowly with their maces, the maces impacts weren’t as effective on the tough hides as swords, axes or spears would be… but they were good enough to deal with the other two that lunged out at me with some time.

That left two of those things…

“Frizzle!” An upset Dazzle roared drawing our attention to the fourth worm.

Frizzle had torn open the worm that went after her, more like ripped it completely apart with her bare claws. She looked to have mostly done so surprisingly without much injury… only she was obviously poisoned given all the blood cubes that were leaking out of her.

Of the various snake headed tongues the worm had, Frizzle had apparently mostly tore them all out without trouble. The exception being to the one currently disconnected head that had bitten deeply into her tail, having done so before she decapitated that particular tongue.

As far as a small victory against Elite EPs went, that was entirely pyrrhic in the extreme and we were at the point where we couldn’t handle such forms of victories given all the injured in Castle Alexander.

“Frizzle is down, she has been poisoned by a Grabber’s tongue. We’re sending her back to Castle Alexander, can you pick her up without endangering everyone inside?” I asked as I motioned to two APs to start carrying her back before the next onslaught of EPs slammed into us. “Dazzle why aren’t you going with…”

“I’m not leaving you and Jeanne out here when there are possibly more of those things around! Besides, I should be immune to poison… the worms have more to worry about from me now than I do them. My blood is as toxic as my use of the move Toxic.” Still Dazzle watched as Frizzle whimpered in agony as she was bleeding out her version of blood from several orifices while being carried off on a stretcher made of two shields by the Shielder Knight APs. “Frizzle will be taken care of… you need me out here more right now!”

“Copy that, Dormarch is on standby to receive her and help with the bleeding symptoms. He’s already worked out how to help her, we just have to get her inside.” Answered Ocellus. This is why Dormarch wasn’t out here, he was assisting the injured with his medical knowledge of our various biologies. He was better not being on the frontline and acting as a doctor at the moment. “Lit will be there to assist the pickup.”

Lit was kind of our absolute last line of defense at the castle gate… the little guy really didn’t like sand and it was understandable as he had problems moving around on it. That is to say Lit kept getting stuck in the sand, his tiny legs couldn’t find purchase without spitting excessive amounts of webbing. The terrain around here really wasn’t his wheelhouse at all, though he could Lunge about in a pinch.

Didn’t have the time to say anymore as our defensive line was hit by numerous EPs of varying shapes and sizes. The Shielder APs despite being small in number actually held up valiantly due to Cait Sith’s upgrades despite the fact that we were buckling under pressure. Berserker Moogles would be really helpful right about now, but most of our AP strength was in the midst of repair work.

There was still one worm left, where was it… was it going to go after Frizzle as she was being carried to safety? No, I’m primary enemy number one for Moon Cell, so… WHERE WAS IT?!

Dazzle was soon lighting up an entire swath of EPs with a Dragon Pulse, she was obviously upset about her partner and good friend being taken down.

Jeanne’s ferocity matched itself to Dazzle’s own, the banner twirling Hakamo-o tore them apart like a push mower for being anywhere near her as she twirled it about in a stylishly fierce display.

Even I was firing what little magic I could spare to use the Rhongomyniad’s beam attacks, drained me faster than even the Magitek Armors magic beam system. I was being highly careful about not letting my ‘condition’ get worse as I intended to survive Moon Cell and further beyond.

My position changed by me stepping forward into Frizzle’s position on the right flank as Dazzle held the left and Jeanne was the center.

I bashed, stabbed and beat back numerous EPs alongside our defensive focused APs, it was tiring to keep beating back the endless numbers coming at us and we couldn’t field enough APs to at least make it a little easier on our end of things.

Notably the majority of EPs I was facing were the Assassin Reapers and they always came at me fast, thankfully the Shielder Knights were making them suffer incredible losses for trying to focus me down.

These EPs were mostly generic and nothing I hadn’t fought before, it’s only the ones with more ranged attacks that were extremely threatening. Oddly, no Gekko EPs were seen firing machine cannons at us or trying to slap us around with combat tentacles.

The Troopers and Heli-Troopers being present were bad enough among the other generics, even the Guard Hounds weren’t exactly threatening… up until they started shooting magical fireballs at us. The Guard Hounds were causing Jeanne to panic and almost outright run as they splashed the surrounding sands into glass with magical fire.

Apparently the Shielder class was quite decent at dealing with most things according to Mash, well most things that didn’t attack at ranges they couldn’t get to. I really didn’t want to know what the Grail Wars were in detail, but hearing even the cliff note of them makes me want to destroy said grail outright. There was some possibility that said wishes had occurred at some point, but it just somehow made other grail wars eventually occur.

I had many reasons to not like the so called ‘Holy Grail’ mentioned in passing, you should only wish for what you can’t earn within your own efforts and only then it would have to be something absolutely grand as to not be wasted for the high cost it likely took to even get one in the first place.

There’s always a major cost involved. I’ve read tales of jerk genies who had a good reason to be jerks if they were the enslaved Djinn, monkey paws always going wrong because they hurt the monkey they took it from to acquire said wishes and wishes going wrong in general because of entirely unintended side effects of not being extremely specific with a wish.

Eventually our defensive line was starting to break from the lack of numbers and we lost two more dragoons from being swarmed over. Unfortunately one of those dragoons was the odd Dragoon Fenix, which means we wouldn’t be getting any more Dragoon support anytime soon.

“We need to retreat!” Jeanne finally called out as I finished blowing a Brute apart from the inside using the Rhongomyniad.

“Where would Castle Alexander go from here though?” My question was to point out the fact that we weren’t currently in a position to head back to Midgar or retreat from this realm currently. I find myself face with a veritable wall of charging Assassin Reaper EPs and a quickly diminishing number of Shielder Knight APs to get in their way. “Ocellus is there a reason we haven’t received reinforcements?”

Not too soon after I asked that, the missing worm finally got the drop on us as it erupted out of the ground behind me and Dazzle. She immediately turned and sprayed a blast of Toxic into its open maw as she heaved me away from it.

The worm slammed down on top of Dazzle, its remaining tongues all poising to bite her as her lower torso was caught under the bulk of the widening maw above her. It went to bite to bit her in half… but it just oddly froze.

Its tongues didn’t move closer, its maw didn’t encroach and Dazzle sat there wide eyed with fear.

A second later the worm’s head turned bright purple and then exploded violently in a nauseating manner, sending purple splotches of liquid that was resoundingly familiar flying everywhere.

Running over to Dazzle still trapped under the body, I waited until the body dissolved away enough to help drag Dazzle away from the torso and give her a Hi-potion while Jeanne fiercely protected the both of us.

We didn’t have many Shielder Knights, retreat was the only conclusion and we didn’t have many places to retreat to given we couldn’t get back to Midgar and Castle Alexander was still in need of repairs.

“Nhhnnn… must be highly allergic to Toxic, I’m actually going to thank Corrosion for once.” Muttered a dazed Dazzle after she chugged the potion I brought to her lips. “Do not want to be sat on by one of those things again...”

“Come on get up, we need to move Dazzle!” She slowly rolled over and was soon standing on her hind legs again.

“That took the fight out of me, didn’t have much to begin with…” The swarm of EPs almost had us completely surrounded.

“Hold on for a little longer Pom, don’t get surrounded we’re getting artillery up now…” Ocellus was panicking, Dazzle could hardly stand after such a painful impact and Jeanne was flagging… heh flagging.

Oh great, I was mentally snapping now…

“You know what, I’m just going to invoke it, I’m insane enough to do so at this point!” I said to the sky as I raised a accusing hoof left hoof at it. “How could this possibly get any worse?!”

I shouted as we were almost surrounded on all side and the EPs were surging in when a distortion appeared directly above us showing Eaters… my jaw dropped.

“Seriously? There really is nothing that can possibly save us now then, is that it!” I was proven wrong when the Eaters didn’t have time to exit the warp in reality when a different distortion seemed to intercept or overtook it and changed into something else entirely. It was a really strange place and it was full of… “… Heh… I might be going insane… because… I swear I’m seeing…”

“Wooloo, what’ll we do~!” A single Round fire out of the distortion taking down an Assassin Reaper that had a blade an inch form piercing my forehead, it was a familiar voice sounding off in song as a form of attack.

“Fight-~!” Was following chorus of increasingly powerful Rounds and all the EPs around us were blasted back and away from us in a giant wave of sand and sound destruction heading entirely in the enemies direction as Geoff, the big damn perverted hero he was, dropped out the dark special rift to land at Jeanne’s side.

He wasn’t alone there were Wooloos, their evolved forms Dubwools, the perverts of the plains… yes even the females and they might arguably be worse. There were also Whismurs, their evolved forms of Loudred and Explouds. They were joined by what I recognized as two types of Toxtricitys and their pre-evolutionary states as Toxels. Team Harmony people we left back in Aurora dropped out with wagon loads of supplies, which involved a lot of medical herbs from Greenleaf form what I could smell.

Geoff spotted me and ran towards me with happy glistening teary eyes and he leapt for me with his hooves wide open and smiling dopely… hoping for a hug for arriving from out nowhere just in time to stop an Eater swarm attack and knocked a now thoroughly confused mass of EPs back.

I promptly smashed him over the head with the Rhongomyniad to get his perverted head back in the game, cratering out a massive section of sand with his twitching body. It was like he got exploded by a little green goblin.

“That way… bigger things to worry about… THAT MEANS ALL OF YOU WHO CAN FIGHT, NOW!” As the leader that made Team Harmony, I could only hope for some respect in my wishes to fend and push back the monstrous horde of enemies. “Also medical supplies that way, as fast as possible!”

I pointed the now sudden excess in supplies toward Castle Alexander… they soon wouldn’t be an excess.

The bidoof that soon fell out of the closing warped space immediately saw the state of the castle.

“Build?” One of the Bidoof said pointing at the castle with a paw.

“Yes, very much build! Super build better if you think you even can, move it before the EPs regain their senses!” I screamed, which was so much unlike me, but I was a bit maxed out on my mental capacity for crazy stuff at the moment.

I blinked and the vibrating Bidoof and Bibarels all disappeared at the same time, well that was taken care of at the very least.

“You heard her, battlers rally up and move with me!” Jeanne stated loudly as she waved her banner in a manner that got all the Wooloo and Dubwool popping in a rhythm that everyone else slowly slid into.

I simply pointed Geoff towards the enemy and he grinned at me, before setting off while whistling happily ignoring the now massive and exceedingly painful lump on his skull.

“Woo-loo woo-loo-loo, wooloo wooloo woo-loo~!” Sang the Wooloo sending out continuous blasts of Rounds to knock back the barely recovered EPs from the surprise attack.

Now if only we had war drums and a god that would make it rain on command then we could... wait… where was my mind going with that? Anyway it already felt like a heart song was forming as we quickly got a marching force gathering.

Let’s try turning this thing around as much as we could while we still had a fresh fighting force from Aurora... somehow!

450. A 'sound' offensive.

-Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Realm, Ransei, Dragnor, King Evan-

I was staring down the biggest jerk I have ever had the misfortune to meet, this was after Lady No’ of Spectra had been quite reticent to ally with me.

Also it was very and quite easily apparent that Lady No’ had something going on with Warlord Oda Nobunaga… those two acted like a loving couple, if the whole backstabbing thing wasn’t present then I would believe them to be perfectly good for one another and already happily married in spirit if not in function.

“Tell me then, why should I ally with someone small like you?” Lord Nobunaga asked as he stared me down, the most powerful dragon of Dragnor and quite haughty about it.

“Do you believe me weak?” I narrowed my eyes. “I do not fear a fool and I don’t actually think you are one like rumors might make one believe! I already know what you want, it’s always what dragons want… a good fight, to prove their strength… to show their above all others and that they have…. ambition for the future. Whether it be grand as conquest or just proving yourself better than most.”

The world needs us to unite and this was the last obstacle in the way. If I did unite Dragnor, then Arceus would show up and be able to help us stop the threat and evil that currently permeates most of Ransei, I heard the Fairy Dust Islands of Titania and that my home of Aurora had cleared the lands of invasion completely.

I’ve had to stop and fight these PLANTs that spew EPs all over the place a fair few times, my campaign could not slow here… Pom and the others needed help. I would be bringing armies from all over Ransei to the fight. Ransei was getting quite ravaged, Pokémon and our neighbors the Digimon were dying and the world need grand heroes of the likes that Gilgamesh had suggested.

I would not fear a dragon when the world was collapsing around us.

“Hm-hm-hm… how ambitious… you notice the heart of the matter. How fitting for the King of Aurora.” Nobunaga’s eyes glowed as he prepared for a fight by standing to his full height while staring down at me maliciously. “To unite the lands, you’d even face the likes of me without thinking twice… Bahahahahaa-… please don’t keep me waiting and make your preparations. If you can take on one such as I, then you deserve to have the coming of Arceus should you succeed.”

“Jiri… have your unit stand back.” I didn’t cower or shiver at all, this would be a battle that would undoubtedly go down in Ransei’s history. “The size of my spirit will surpass the size of your body and I’ll prove it to you!”

“Of course King Evan.” Dragoon Jiri sent me a worried look, but her Buster Bears unit moved back a bit and she stood at the ready for any order.

Jiri still believed in me, somewhat, but the size disparity between me and Oda Nobunaga couldn’t be ignored.

“Come then, let’s see how an unevolved Normal type would fell a mighty dragon such as I… this battle should prove amusing at the very least.” Oda Nobunaga said with a fang filled grin. “Show me the resolve, the intelligence and the strength of the little Evee that has almost united all of the embattled nations under a single banner. Come, make your enemies wish for me to not be seen upon the field of battle and regret your very existence!”

“Even in my defeat, I will win. For if you defeat me… you will have united all of Ransei as well.” I said with a firm resolve.

“Yes, but will I use the summoning of Arceus for the same purpose?” That maddening grin spread across Nobunaga’s face. We prepared with a few stretches and got ready to face each other in pitched violence, what was about to happen here couldn’t simply be called a fight. “Would you really leave it to chance?”

“No, I wouldn’t.” I charged forth with a Quick Attack even as Nobunaga rose into the air like an unstoppable three headed demon. “Rrrrrraaahhhh!”

As King of Aurora, I would unite and save us all!

-Moon Cell, Inner Realm, Desert of Devastation, Damaged Castle Alexander, Smolder-

Castle Alexander ‘was’ a complete mess, then the Bidoof and Bibarels from Helper’s Hamlet showed up… they sure were hyper and eager to help. It also helped that we got Miltanks heading for medical while Pom started to push the defense out further with what I recognized to be Geoff having showed up out of nowhere to be a big hero.

Even Team Harmony folks showed up and started helping in various ways… Pristi and Pichochi were cleaning up messes.

That’s when the Bidoof and Bibarel would attack… well attacked the damaged portions of the castle with an insane fervor and we didn’t know how they got here. Just that they showed up out of the air with a massive number of Team Harmony and numerous Pokémon from Aurora.

Fiffi and Foffo lent their assistance wherever they could.

The Rockruff Brothers were a surprise, they had all turned into Lycanrocs… three variants of it no less. They came this way to make sure the supplies made it to the castle under Pom’s orders.

Mr. Schlurp brought cooking gear and a lot of food supplies… finally we wouldn’t be stuck with more berry stew or salads.

Eriflamb informed us of what happened in Aurora before the recently evolved male Braixen showed up here with a wooden stick sticking out of his tail, Maiden Jig was holding the Aurora home front and waiting for Evan to come home. Jig wished us luck, because she couldn’t leave the kingdom unattended.

The Toxel’s and Toxtricitys were apparently bards, it was helpful to have as many Pokémon as you could get to use the move ‘Round’ and all those Pokémon out there knew that move. It showed when they created massive shockwaves that tore through waves of incoming EPs with ease.

The ‘Round’ attacks grew stronger the more they sang in unison and kept to a beat, with a being of Equus there… that was a foregone conclusion that they could keep a rhythm.

-Moon Cell-

Moon Cell was confused… how had the increasingly golden ewe manage to get reinforcements? More importantly where had they all come from?

There was no feasible backdoor they could have possibly taken to have showed up there. The blind spot existed for all of several seconds to dump an army at the doorstep of Moon Cell’s core… before that blind spot existed, the space between was about to eject a veritable horde of pure damage on Moon Cell’s systems in the form of the Eaters.

“System Error. Subject Moon Cancer Class, BB, prepare subordinate servants for combat around the defensive perimeter.” The long purple haired squirrel girl in a high school uniform and a rapier at her side acquiesced with a slight bow and immediately as several shadows gathered. “Elite Assault Program Zu may not be enough to stop counter offensive aggressors with fifty three point seven likelihood… likelihood is calculated to be rising the longer the ewe survives and is on the battlefield when those calculations should be shrinking by rate of exhaustion and other factors such as injury.”

Those who were under the classification of Moon Cancer were dangerous for Moon Cell to personally field and there were very few of them in existence so options were limited, as in they’ve nearly destroyed it or caused major system problems before and it really shouldn’t rely on them.

It currently had control of the AI program that had somehow forged a soul out of nothing, the very reason why it was interested in Digimon in the first place aside from the combat applications involved therein trying to figure out how to materialize combat programs in a reality to perform its civilization cleansing duty. Apparently some things simply couldn’t be replicated through data alone.

“Were I not summoned by you, I would be destroying you right about now.” BB stated coldly as she started walking forward to prepare the defenses as she was essentially the current near successful efforts to deal with the Counter Invasion force. Her tail swaying with each step as the shadows followed.

Moon Cell is well aware of that fact, but when needs must, the most esoteric solution would help and a feasible system crasher being thrown against its enemies was ‘kind of’ a logical thing to do.

It was not hurting for options, but lacked the ability to field a number of servants needed to deal with the overall problem. Not to mention the computations of a number of servants that wouldn’t immediately lose to Pom or her many friends talents, for a variety of reasons, was the reason it was relying on BB.

A lot of servants would simply fail at the sheer unbridled calculated survival chances of the ewe out of attrition, even if it were to throw as many as possible Moon Cell would destroy itself in the attempt and it might not even kill the ewe should it self-destruct using its reality warping prowess.

It had self-preservation coding in it to prevent such an overtaxing of the system, Pom’s existence alone overtaxed its systems and thus its self-preservation coding was quite fairly skewed at the moment.

It was watching Ransei, the Digital World and the Counter invasion force all at once.

Ransei was actually proving to be problematic, given the Pokémon were quick on the uptake of how to deal with their enemy when it came to destroying PLANTs or attacking the mystery dungeon anchors full force with outright excessive military strength.

It was close to figuring out how to send digital servants to reality, but its assault programs were already doing as much damage as they could across the continent. The one place that Moon Cell had access to and intended to spread its influence from in that reality.

The local digital world’s takeover had been proceeding apace, yet there were problems with actually procuring any more digimon data, apparently digimon had some kind of annoying retreat ability that left useless monetary digital currency behind.

The digital world was even actually starting to turn things around immensely somehow and take back it’s systems, there were several figures involved in the turn-around in the form of a blue bipedal dog, a beautiful fox, a wyvern bat, a cloaked owl archer, a brightly glowing lion, a wolf with red markings, a fire monkey and various digimon aligning themselves to this strange second ‘heroic force’ of counter invaders that was tearing apart it’s servants sent to that world.

With all the problems it was facing its focus was on a major oddity that was now occurring in the lunar desert of devastation.

-Desert of Devastation, Counter Invasion Heroes (Pom, Dazzle and Jeanne) + Aurora Breach Initiative (Cleric Geoff) vs. Endless Assault Program Forces and Zealous Zephyr Zu (Music: Freakout Rock - Patapon 3)-

“Walking, walking, walking on~.” Jeanne called out as they moved forward.

“Walking, walking, walking on~.” The Wooloo and many other Pokémon sang out in an echoing pulsing stream of ‘Round’ moves that tore through the EP battle forces in front of them pushing back the enemies even further from Castle Alexander as they were decimated.

They created a wall of sound that tore into their enemies with violent vibrations.

They had spread out into a marching line, Wooloo at the front, followed by the Dubwool and behind them were the Exploud, Loudred and Toxtricity’s, while in the back were the Toxel and Whismurs who would focus on anything that tried to fly by them to try and attack the castle directly.

“Fight, fight, staying strong~.” Jeanne was waving her banner as the number of Aurora Pokémon sang following her while marching in place.

“Strong, strong, fighting long~?” The intensity of the ‘Round’ moves being used was increasing as the Wooloo sang one after another, their voices creating a cacophony that destroyed everything it was aimed at.

“Rattle, rattle, rattle them~.” Dazzle sang a Round that pulped a number of EPs caught in the path of it. She might have been injured by having a Grabber slam itself into the lower half of her body, but she wasn’t weak.

The voices of everyone that could use Round were actively piercing through their enemies in large numbers.

“Battle, battle, battle grim~.” The wooloo sang as they marched, even Geoff was taking the threat seriously and not asking Pom out every two point five seconds.

The voices of the chorus battered the offensive line of the EPs back further. All the Rounds were tearing them apart.

“Fever~!” Cleric Geoff called out and all the Wooloo and Dubwool started dancing.

Pom sent Jeanne and Dazzle a look, both of them shrugged not knowing what was getting into the Wooloo. One of Pom’s wool twitched a bit and she looked down.

“Block it, block it, watch out worms~.” Pom sang as she walked among the marching Aurora forces that were singing a massive army of EPs to death.

Her warning came in a timely manner making several Shielder Knight APs rush forward and they prepped and knocked over the four worms that tried to eat or bite the front line and the worms. They were quiet helpless on their backs.

It had Pom wondering why the worms didn’t come up in the middle of them, then again the worms didn’t have eyes so they probably hunted by vibrations. So they maybe they would only attack the edge of the group and not the center of it.

“Watch it, watch it, attack their forms~.” Dazzle splattered one of the several worms with Toxic and its body started to turn purple before explode as the poison had a curious effect on them.

The Aurora support they knew Salazzle poison was powerful, but not make things explode powerful. Generally poison was not supposed to work on ground types, except where Salazzles are concerned so they only thought the exploding part was odd.

“Attack, Attack, don’t hold back~.” Jeanne called out, as she stabbed one of the worms through with the banner spear and then swung its body about and slung it into the EP horde still trying to encroach on them.

“Spark it, smack it, we don’t lack~!” The Wooloo and Dubwool swarmed the remaining two worms and tore them apart with Lightning Balls, Tackles and some used Double Kick before returning to formation.

“Marching, marching, marching strong~.” Dazzle stated after seeing that, as the happy go lucky perverts of the plains stomped the sand and continued forward.

“This feels too easy somethings wrong~.” Pom muttered like a true paranoiac, considering they saw the Zu earlier, but wondered why it wasn’t being a constant threat. Her eyes darted about looking for trouble and a few of the Pokémon noticed her eyes widened as he ears twitch minutely with the barest and softest of air press. “Run, back up, run, back up~!”

Following Pom’s sudden urgency, the entire army immediately turned to follow her.

“Booking it, booking it~!” Everyone managed to move out of the way as the Zu as they sang this. “Whew…~”

Empowered by the wind as it dove at them, the Zu slammed into where they had all been with its two massive talons kicking up a large masses sand into the air and buffeted them with the stuff.

The Zu finally decided to attack and it had missed, it roared as it took into the air flapping its wings which were swirling with mystical wind.

Pom was curious as to why the Zu hadn’t been around when they did the rush assault they tried, the one failed attack where they discovered what the current problem servant looked like. It probably takes a lot of energy to create a sandstorm, then again they had been in small numbers and highly mobile, this was a slow moving mass of Aurora’s people and the Toxitricity Bards.

Maybe Moon Cell thought it was overkill at the time or was trying to get them trapped in the crystal maze it from from the ground, it had certainly temporarily cut them off from being able to escape easily. It was that or it didn’t want Pom sneaking by in a sandstorm while they were so close to its core after surprising it by rushing at it.

“Jump, Jump, feeling like a little pup~!” Pom popped up in the air with a powerful wool assisted leap and blasted one of the bird’s eyes with a bark blast, it screeched and flew back a bit and prepared its talons and the wind started building up around it.

“Bump, bump, acting as the backup~!” Generating flames from her left claw, Dazzle sent a powerful whip up at the bird beast it tried to surge forward.

The fire caused an explosion and ignited the winds around the Zu making flounder in the air as the winds that were keeping it up were entirely gone and it flopped into the sand on its belly and chin. It also got burned as its feathers caught fire. The EPs were closing in on the ground.

“Smack, whack, attack it back~.” Geoff fired off a Round at the down giant bird and the soundwave damage the bird.

“Strong, strong, we are strong~!” Some Wooloo and Dubwool charged in to hit it with melee attacks, other simply used Round to hit it and the incoming EPs with concussive force.

As they battered the Zu and it quickly shook its head while raising it up in an angry manner.

“Defensive, defensive, move on back~!” Jeanne called, everyone took up a defensive line as the APs took up a defensive position in front.

Jeanne called it just in time too as the birds beak slammed into the APs shields and even tore through a few of them entirely, before standing up and sweeping it’s right wing around to cut apart the remaining Shielder Knights. It immediately raised its left wing to swing that.

“Cotton, cotton, guard that smack~.” The Wooloo and Dubwool all puffed up immensely as they all used the move cotton guard and the wing of the massive Zu was actually stopped and rebounded by the clumped up wooly wonders.

The Zu took several steps back on its talons and shrieked readying its next move, either to get back in the air or try to claw through their defenses.

“Come, on, do it Pom~!” With a leap Pom fired a lance shaped mass of energy from the Rhongomyniad and it pierced into the birds right armpit and exploded in a mass of energy staggering the beast for a moment. It didn’t do as much damage as Pom needed it to have done.

“Looks like it’s going to take much more to beat them~.” Multiple Pokémon that weren’t the Wooloo and Dubwool spat out Round attacks keeping the horde of incoming EPs away.

“Fight, fight, want it gone~!” The wooloo and dubwool followed up by blasting the Zu with various Round attack.

“None of us will retreat when we have this rhythm~.” The Rounds were fired as the the Zu blasted a powerful storm of wind at them, the sound waves disrupted the wind and struck it with several hundred blasts of sound.

“Back, move away, back, move away~!” Pom stated as the Zu came down trying to claw her with a swipe of its right talon, Dazzle and Jeanne.

“Ba-ba, ba-ba-ba-Ba~!” The wooloo retreated as the Zu lunged forward and stabbed its beak downward several times at the retreating wooly ones dodging the massive beak that could easily swallow them hole and continued to hit it with sound wave attack.

Now the Wooloo and Dubwool were outright chanting in tune with the music.

“Leap Lamb moving out~.” With that Pom tied a pink strip of cloth to her forehead waved to Jeanne and Dazzle who had only vaguely heard of Pom’s prior adventures.

Running toward the Zu and inhaling, she waited until the last moment as the left talon flashed forward in an attempt to grab her, she exhaled explosively and disappeared in the resulting sand cloud of the massive creature slamming it’s talon down.

The Zu started looking around for the primary target as it backed slowly away from the constant bombardment of noise.

“Keep on moving now~!” As the Wooloo and Dubwool said this they kept up the attacks and found themselves slammed and clawed up by the big beast, they actually seemed to enjoy it the pain as the claws and beak ripped into their number. They didn’t seem to take any grievous injuries despite the kaiju bird trying to at least kill one of them.

The Zu roared at them angrily and was about to start flapping its wings to gather mystical wind energy to get into the air.

Pom could be seen climbing up its side, she turned her head while inhaling through her noise and exhaled a blast of flames into the mystical winds disrupting it entirely once more and causing the long necked bird to flop into the sand.

Pom continued climbing up onto the Zu’s back where she started to cling the center of its back and exhale a small flame into her hooves that she started to circle around.

A look of concentration entered her face and a lightbulb went off above her head, she carefully breathed fire into the orb she was working, thus quickly decreasing the time needed for the attack she was preparing. Unfortunately the side effect was also making it more unstable because of doing it faster.

If Pom succeeded in keeping her attack under control, then she’d be cutting the time it takes to do in half by being capable of breathing out a Dancing Flame directly.

“Pom go-Pom go-Pom~!” At this point quite a few of the battling normal types the Toxitricity started running towards the EP battle lines while giving the Zu a wide birth as the rest of the normal types started to march in a circle around the Zu that started to notice something going on with its back.

The Toxtricity started spreading out and half used the move Boom Burst, the enemy EP horde melted under the blasts of sound fired by the Toxtricity strumming the six organs extruding from their chests roughly. The other half of the bipedal poison electric types used the move called Overdrive to blast lightning elemental energy at the EPs.

The rest of the Normal Types, Dazzle and Jeanne had to keep the Zu’s attention entirely off of what Pom was doing, less her efforts go entirely to waste.

“We move on~.” The Wooloo sang at the Zu as they dodge its outward sweeping left wing as it tried to turn towards them.

“Dodge dive run~.” The Dubwool sang as they were marching in the opposite direction and had to leap back as the bird swung its right wing out for them missing entirely.

“Live love, hug-fond~.” The Wooloo sang drew fire from the bird that pack at them until it started blocking the soundwave attacks from the Whismur, Loudred and Exploud.

“Win-time, have fun~.” It almost sound like the Dubwool and Wooloo were singing an incantation for something.

“Avoid-quick-death~.” Sang the Whismur as the dodged away from the beak pecking into the sand at them and continued to hit the large bird with Rounds.

The bird was almost full surrounded.

“Sing-waking-song~.” Loudred stated as they danced around the tailfeathers sweeping for them as the bird tried to grappling a Wooloo with its claws while its beak shrieked loudly.

“Bird not fly~” Exploud sang as they avoided a sweeping wing attack as the Zu swept a wing at them.

“The song, it-is-done~.” They all sang around the Zu.

“Bon voyage-yo-~!” One might almost wonder why they were singing this as they had the Zu entirely surrounded and it tried to take off only for a strange gust of wind to blow away its mystic winds when it tried to take to the air with Pom still on its back.

It certainly confused the Zu as it still felt it was strong enough to handle hundreds more sound based attacks.

“Thousand Spears: Huo!” This time Pom instead of just using just her wool to launch the rapidly spiraling and almost out of control wildly vibrating fireball, she fired two her two thousand spears using her wool and exhaled a Bark Blaze to add on the power of the attack.

Pom received some burns to her face from the unstable nature of creating a powerful lance of concentrated blazing blue flames of destruction with specks of white, the Bark Blaze had given it quite a bit of extra oomph.

The Zu was missing everything from the base of its neck up having evaporated in an instant. The entire body promptly toppled over sending Pom tumbling into the desert sands as she unlocked her hooves to jump clear of the body. Dazzle was quickly there to help her up and a skvader quickly flew by to drop off a Hi-Potion for the self-inflicted injury.

Pom, after being helped up by Dazzle, calmly turned towards the enemy lines and saw that they had a lot of EPs coming in at them, she had just cleared up a lot of processing power for Moon Cell. Now they just had to keep up the pressure and keep pushing the enemy front line backwards to give Castle Alexander more time to join the fight.

Drinking the Hi-potion quickly, Pom took a moment to sniff in the direction of the dissolving giant bird body, her mouth watered slightly and she shuddered at the thought of being hungry for the tasty smell she made.

Shaking her head in disgust with herself, Pom turned and started marching forward towards the enemy with the Rhongomyniad slung over her withers held in her front right hoof and everyone else followed after her with clear worry.

There were Grabbers in the sand approaching the quickly reforming army and the Toxtricity’s holding the EPs off and Pom immediately started warning them of what was coming.

Pom ignored and would not comment on the golden wool of her left hind leg almost being up to her hip now. The lambkin just forged forward heedless of what it would take from her to actually stop Moon Cell, her three legged gait was entirely even as was her breathing as she marched forth along with everyone else.

-Castle Alexander, Smolder-

“Okay… that was cool. Also Pom breathing fire kind of makes me respect her.” I noticed that Ocellus was sending a glare my way. “What do you want from me? She exhaled a blast of fire so powerful it burned the entire head off of that giant turkey that thinks itself a normal flying bird, since it can’t fly without those magic winds so it has to be an oversized turkey.”

“Eh, they taste more like chicken honestly.” Cait Sith stated a second later. “Yes, I’ve had to kill a Zu before, big nuisances those things. You would never see me touch anything food related from a chocobo, those birds are too cuddly to eat. They are doing quite well out there with pushing back the horde… but how long can they keep this up?”

“Wait… are you from the same world as Gilgamesh and a green chocobo named Enkidu?” Ocellus asked.

“Well there are legend in our history of such a pair, one is comically reincarnating into random things and the other keeps finding weapons that are really good for blocking and not offense.” Cait Sith answered. “Not much was heard from them after they got sucked into some kind of dimensional portal, but apparently the duo have been seen in the history of my world numerous times… also something about a guy named Bartz. It was fascinating, but I didn’t find it really important.”

That sounded like the red bug guy and the green bipedal bird that can heal, shield and was quite friendly in the fight against the other Gilgamesh. Don’t know whether I liked Pom enough again to tell her about that, but it wasn’t really important so…

“I guess I owe Pom something of an apology.” Since I can kind of see how she would thrive in volatile situations or just drop dead, that she hasn’t yet meant she cared a lot more about Ocellus, Shanty and me what with the whole throwing herself into trauma inducing trouble involuntarily.

“You do, so please just stop being cold to her Smolder.” Yeah, can do Ocellus. “She could use a bit more metaphorical warmth… and ‘LOVE’. Hint hint…”

“How’s… oh… its gotten worse…” Dormarch was keeping track of the golden colored wool encroaching the white wool of his mother’s body like it was a disease. Yet he says that when he scanned it… it seemed like there was nothing up with the wool at all aside from the fancy discoloration and being inert as far as he could tell.

He wasn’t an expert on magic, but Ocellus was… even she didn’t feel anything off with the wool and that was raising suspicions among us considering Pom basically told Ocellus she would feel it if Pom’s status changed from healthy to immediately dying from it. So far it didn’t seem to be doing anything aside from making Pom slowly look like a living gold statue, that and Ocellus says Pom’s capacity for magic has increased to an absurd degree.

“Speaking of questionable conditions that don’t seem to be overtly affecting their health, how’s Shanty?” She took a falling rock to the skull in the underground operation we tried, those Graboids were real nasty pieces of work and Shatny was one of the luckier ones that hadn’t been bit.

“She’s awake and wanting to get into the fight, Tartarus, most of the people in medical want to be out there preventing Pom from killing herself.” That was an understandable sentiment Dormarch, none of us wanted anything bad to happen to Pom, not even me if I’m jealous and upset with her. We couldn’t exactly stop the things that have already happened up to this point. “Shanty is not quite ready, but she would be a big help out there admittedly… for my sake of mind at least.”

“Whoever these ‘build’ guys are, they are great!” Cid in engineering stated loudly. “They understand advanced architecture engineering! With that ugly flight hating bird gone we can take to the skies!”

“Doesn’t sound like my Cid, but the name is exactly the same…” Cait Sith muttered to himself off to the side. “Okay, keep the repairs going, we need to get this thing in the air like yesterday and helping our infantry out there, those poor sheep are getting so battered!”

“Oh don’t worry, they enjoy that and are getting hurt intentionally… all Wooloo are perverts… no exceptions. Dubwools too I guess, they won’t stop staring at Pom’s butt from what I’m seeing on visuals.” Ocellus stated flatly while pointing out the Dubwool that wouldn’t stop taking glances at her. “Never had a met a species with such an amount of lust, but it’s all so well restrained… its… rather confusing to me.”

“Well you can bounce a fifty-bit coin off of that backside pretty far.” My comment got Ocellus to face hoof. “What, I’m complicated Ocellus.”

“Thankfully to me you’re not in the slightest and I can read you fairly well.” Ocellus stated with her hoof over her face shaking her head. “I’d have so many more issues with what you just said about our caretaker if I didn’t have the capacity for emotion reading.”

The four horned Dubwool were actually fairly cool, two upper horns and two lower horns… though it doesn’t look like they were quite used for combat. As a dragoon they looked more like methods to attract a mate than biological weapon of combat.

They are just a bigger and beefier version of Wooloo… they also knew that one move Jiri does, Bounce. They were better and more controlled at it than she was, given how accurately they were hitting their targets as they bounded across the battlefield and retreated while blasting out Rounds in the air. Far more mobile than the Wooloo and basically double their power.

We weren’t on the back foot anymore, but Pom wasn't going to be able to push much further without Castle Alexander assisting her. To that end I hope the Bidoof can speed up Welch's production line.

451. All In: Forward Assault.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Jaded-

“I don’t know what Silvers is going to grow up to be, but they will always be my bright little chimera. I can assure you of that.” I stated as I held my curled up mixed species chimera daughters close to my chest, they weren’t very responsive at the moment given they were sleepy and comfortable.

I was cuddling them slowly into a nap, hoping Jacky didn’t crash through a window, get blown up nearby or somehow got covered in batter and then fried by Flamberge by accident… for the fourth time.

My adoptive sister Jacky Blackcap Chickadee was lucky in some ways, but in others she was so outrageously unlucky it was a wonder that she was even alive or even managed to keep her head feathers as long as they were.

“… What do you do for a job again?” Lingo asked.

“Mercenary work and ‘security’ consultant.” I said pleasantly. “I’m also a part-time worker for my mother when she needs me… I can’t actually copy her witch based cooking skills, but I do pretty decent when it comes to food. I’m good with various fish dishes at the very least… given she is always making fish jerky… so much fish jerky… if a Pegasus or Thestral Pony ever needed meat then this is a good place to get some for almost free.”

To prove my point Lingo and I watched as Drip passed by chewing on a bit of fish jerky.

“Can you say the word, security, without the odd emphasis?” The bat pony Lingo stated while crossing his front legs on the table and quirking his left eye at me, he was a very good linguistics teacher and he noticed my problem immediately.

“Of course I can say ‘security’ without the odd emphasis… ‘security’…. ‘security’… ‘sec-‘ ‘u’ ’-rity’… okay Lingo I might have a problem. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.” I said with a slight bit of worry coming into my voice. Even thinking it added the air quotes emphasis on “security”, and wasn’t that quite an odd thing to notice.

“You can’t actually say that word normally anymore can you?” Lingo stated flatly.

“Nope, I certainly can’t.” I answered honestly, given I’m very good at subverting ‘security’ systems mundane, magical and technological while dodging ‘security’ guards. Sure my Ogres and Oubliettes character dies so often that I’m surprised I’m still alive, while being multi-classed as a Rogue and Sun Priestess self. Reality and games are two entirely different things and thankfully I had tenure as a Sun Priest, even if that didn’t mean much aside from having a long lasting friendship with Celestia who somehow forgave me for the whole Bennu thing. “It’s like how I can’t look at a cake without thinking of the war crimes I’ve committed… so when do you think my daughters will be ready to learn how to talk?”

“Aren’t they still a bit young for that?” Well Lingo my daughters had three minds in one and so far they should be learning to talk soon, since they had recognition of many things… and had somehow potty trained themselves. While my family is grateful for it, we were utterly confused as to how they figured it out. Goodness knows Fizzy and Maries didn’t teach them that and I didn’t either, mom might be a fun grandma, but she didn’t teach them it either and no one I knew taught them so they must have learned to do it themselves. I might be running into danger for Pom soon so… I would at least want to hear them say ‘mom’, ‘momma’ or ‘mommy’ before I ran off to save someone I liked to tease.

“Yeah, but you’ve see how fast Maries is when it comes to thinking things through, they’ve got triple the processing power so they should be fairly smart already and getting close to talking.” Three heads are not always better than one, especially when they aren’t all working together. When you have the combined brain power like Maries and can work together with that, you are slightly more capable than most. “I’m almost expecting it any day… eventually our little wonder is going to stop growling and breathing fire haphazardly, then they will actually start speaking. So how are things going with Macaroni?”

“Can’t complain, we’re trying for foals of our own.” Sometimes people wondered what it was like for Lingo to have to deal with cheese and noodles all the time as Mac’s specialty. “Two stallions on one lady can be a bit much. Anyway, I’d give it five days before your little wonder can start vocalizing, and please don’t shoot the messenger here Jaded, it’ll be a while without them sounding like a wild animal.”

“That’s okay, I’ll only come after you if you absolutely intended insult. Insult me as much as you want, but insult Silvers near and all they’ll find will be teeth depending on the severity of the insult.” Interestingly, Mac’s cutie mark ability of cooking perfect macaroni and cheese didn’t just translate into only cooking macaroni, but encompassed cooking anything with noodles or cheese in it separately or together.

Macaroni really does make a mean vegetable lasagna, but that wouldn’t be as good an example as Huoshan style noodle dishes without cheese or any dish with cheese in its make like cheesecake. Mac usually asks me to pick up a few recipes that might interest her, like pasta salad while I was out and about.

-Moon Cell, Inner Realm, Desert of Devastation, two digital time days later, Castle Alexander, Dormarch-

We have managed to recover all personnel from Grabber tongue bites and the various other injuries we’ve suffered. We also haven’t been able to continue any further forward… we were kind of locked in a stalemate position in our corner funneling enemies for more than twenty four digital hours straight… constantly and without pause.

PLANTs certainly couldn’t keep up with the numbers we were destroying, this was all Moon Cell’s doing.

The people of Aurora that weren’t combatants were still very helpful, medically speaking, even if they weren’t holding back the constant tide of imminent death that was the EPs.

I was worried about relying on the Dubwool, Wooloo, Toxel, Toxtricity, Whismur, Loudred and Explouds… but apparently I didn’t need to worry as they could deal with aerial and ground threats in equal measures. The only problem they had was those nasty Grabbers, otherwise Round, Boom Burst and Uproar were a constant set of moves being used on the defensive line while we set up constant bombardments so that those among us who need sleep can finally get some rest.

We would have to eventually do something absolutely volatile to break the stalemate, one that will end with us losing if we didn’t for a variety of reasons. Ransei and the Digital world were probably doing better than we were at the moment. Taking the brunt of hundreds of thousands of EPs constantly… at this point I’d estimate we’ve destroyed approximately a million EPs over the last two digital days.

Thinking of the endless hordes, Archer Seraphs finally made a comeback as an aerial threat and would be more dangerous if they weren’t as susceptible to sound blasting as any of the other EPs were. We needed a comparable Archer based EP that could also fly naturally, but we would naturally want a more durable unit than the Seraphs. Our Rider Zealots were effectively handling the air assaults we’ve been getting.

I had asked Geoff how he got here, but he said he didn’t know how he did it, but he broke into the reverse world of the local Pokémon space and used that to backdoor into this realm as apparently Moon Cell has a physical presence in the Pokémon world’s reality for what he did to even work. Of course his explanation really didn’t explain much aside from entering a distorted dimension by force and then exiting it, also by force somehow, right on top of us.

Apparently Arceus sends his regards, because he knew we were in trouble and sent help in the form of a cleric he was somewhat in contact with. That cleric was unfortunately Geoff, who has proven himself to be quite competent several times over… now if only he’d stop hitting on my mother.

Cuddlestares Skvader forces were supporting us as much as carrying in supplies we couldn’t naturally generate ourselves. Hi-potions were very popular Midgar item as were Ethers for Pom, Dolly and Ocellus.

I know all Wooloo were perverts, no exceptions except for those who were highly closeted, but did they have to be so persistent about it?

At some point Cleric Geoff had to have broken reality twice to even be here. Not only that, but he brought a lot of much needed reinforcements from the Kingdom of Aurora. Not all the Pokémon in Aurora, but the supporting forces we needed.

Pristi the recently evolved Altaria and Picochi the recently evolved Cincccino, the cleaning combatants who fought over who could clean more helped clear up a lot of the damage for Bidoof and Bibarel workers to get to things repaired over the course of the first twenty four digital hours they showed up.

They evolved at the same time in an accident involving Picochi’s evolution item, called a ‘shiny stone’, and were still as combatively clean as ever… though watching a cloudy dragon bird and an overly tidy mouse flirt was always going to be a little weird.

The Rockruff Brothers or as they were known now, the Lycanroc Brothers, were a powerful addition to our combat capable forces. They broke a number of Moon Cell’s Mystery Dungeon anchors and were now veterans in dealing with EPs. Dolly, mom and I only delved one Mystery Dungeon… I can’t imagine doing that multiple times, much less surviving it long enough to give Moon Cell a black eye the way those three had by dealing with more than half of Aurora’s Moon Cell Mystery Dungeon anchors themselves.

We now had fully working baths thanks to Eriflamb the Braixen. He wasn’t a skilled combatant, but his control over fire had increased by leaps and bounds and he uses a particularly nice looking stick as a focus for his fire abilities. If we needed a warm bath we just had to ask him for help, it felt nice to have at least we didn’t have to heat up an entire cauldron anymore.

One of the few problems that Castle Alexander had before was that we didn’t have normal heated plumbing, yes we had some plumbing without hot water. Plumbing wasn’t exactly the most important thing to focus on when you were fighting for your life and all the lives of two worlds, but we did have the capability to heat up cauldrons with weak flames.

Miltanks were helpful with injuries and medical care, they weren’t any Chansey among the healers that joined Geoff apparently, but they could do in quite a pinch once they knew what they were doing.

I’m still kind of the designated doctor here for many obvious reasons, I couldn’t be risked on the battle front even if I had good combat capabilities.

We were doing pretty well on the front lines, for breaking even that is. We can’t actually press Moon Cell’s core… we didn’t have nearly enough of an offensive force to challenge it entirely unless we wanted to fight while surrounded.

Again, the EP tides had been nigh endless in a constant stream coming at us the entire time. It was to the point we could barely get any sleep to the sound of Castle Alexander and multiple missile trucks constantly bombarding the hordes. The Blumebears were at least dealing with aerial and ground threats in equal measure with their high volume of fire.

After taking out the Zu we didn’t have as much trouble holding our shaky position, though Moon Cell had upped the aerial assaults with Archer Seraphs, Moon Cell Watchers and Heli-troopers afterwards. Moon Cell was working under limitations, it was hard to imagine how limited it actually was with all of its fantastical powerful capabilities seen thus far.

If you were wondering why we didn’t just fly straight for Moon Cells core after defeating the Zu and tried to rush into it… well the first problem is that we’d be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Enemy Programs trying to drop off a small team to get inside. The EPs were quite densely packed and we couldn’t push through the thousands of enemies in our way, but we could hold them off indefinitely until we were read to do such a thing.

If we crashed Castle Alexander into Moon Cell, and we weren’t guaranteed to destroy it, then we’d be surrounded and slowly being worn down to death. At least here in a corner of the realm we could funnel the enemy ground forces, while sporadically dealing with air assaults with relative ease. The composition of the enemy forces varied wildly as Moon Cell kept trying to find a curve ball to throw at us that we couldn’t handle.

We’ve taken a few aerial attacks from the sides, but our production capability had gone way up since the Bidoof and Bibarel joined Welch’s manufacturing section of Castle Alexander.

This meant we’ve quickly recovered our losses as far as rocket trucks, magitek armors and skein flyers were concerned and the castles artillery was firing full speed near constantly now. The Blumebears were useful, but the Grabbers kept sinking them in the sand… at least the Magitek Armors were quick and powerful enough to fly out of sand traps whereas the Blumbears were doomed as soon as they got caught up in said traps. We tended to keep the missile trucks far away from the Grabbers as much as possible.

Skein Flyers were able to be used by any AP or any one, they were really so simple that even Lit could fly one with some difficulty and some webbing.

Now mom was in talks with trying to figure out how to press forward, when doing so on the ground was just as bad with trying to do it from the air. Aside from Peppercat we were lucky to have not suffered a living casualties in a permanent fashion. That isn’t to say our injuries hasn’t been horrible, but I’ve been mostly on top of that as one of the few medical professionals around.

The APs casualties were enormous since we first started generating them, after Cait Sith finished giving us some much needed efficiency upgrades they were more capable in their specialized capabilities. The APs on our side, when properly supplied in the case of the Rider Zealots, still weren’t capable of dealing with the sheer numbers we were facing. In fact Cait Sith’s upgrades were the only reasons our APs lasted as long as they could on the battlefield, they were being taken out much faster before the upgrades.

In the midst of all this we’ve been picking up stray data and have completely discerned Moon Cell’s purpose as a recorder of civilizations, how they rise and how they fell… usually they fell to a Moon Cell summoned Velber unit if they became too powerful.

At least I’m glad to know Moon Cell was never the direct cause of the apocalypses that occurred prior to this current battle. That would be a Velber unit’s job when it deploys Anti-Cells, which is called by Moon Cell and the only why we even had a chance to begin with as neither of those things were around. That there was implied to be more than one of these stupidly powerful omnicidal computers in existence was quite a terrifying thought, what was even more so is that they usually had access to more than one apocalypse causing Velber for them to wield at any given time from an ancient alien civilization just waiting to destroy everything even remotely related to ‘civilization’ on call.

It caused plenty of nightmares among those who understood what it meant, even if we had never seen a Velber… we kind of figured an Anti-Cell would be like the servants we have been facing.

Still, the concerted effort to kill off both the Digital realm and the Pokémon realm was horrifying that Moon Cell could still even manage to be this much of an apocalyptic threat even without a Velber or Anti-Cells. Even Gilgamesh, the Hoopa one, would have had major problems with destroying it.

We’ve come this far, we had to destroy Moon Cell’s core and take down the artificial intelligence there, however we didn’t know what would happen if we actually caused a full system crash while we were inside Moon Cell. At least once we finished dealing with Moon Cell, we just needed to figure out things from there, like how to help the NPCs like Cait Sith that have been under Moon Cell’s control for so long. All easier said than could be accomplished in a timely manner.

“Ocellus…” I stated flatly as I walked up to the love eating bug, I tried to keep my tone professional. “How’s the meeting going?”

“Jeanne, Pom, Canard, the head Gazimon, Artoria and Quetal are all still trying to come up with an idea about how to move forward.” Considering we were basically pinned in place, that wasn’t all too bad Ocellus. “Also Pom told me to keep Geoff away from the meeting, can’t imagine why.”

“Oh good, you’re getting pretty decent at understanding sarcasm and how to use it.” While we couldn’t stay here forever, we could hold out indefinitely with the help of the reinforcements from Aurora.

“Thank you, that’s actually a considerable compliment given how literal minded my people can get.” Ocellus would never be my favorite being, but she was trying to make amends between us and wasn’t actively trying to be hostile. “Peas ‘in a can’ pie just doesn’t work like we thought it would… we only later learned what peacans were… also peacans in a can pie didn’t work so well either.”

For mom’s sake I was willing to swallow my anger towards Ocellus, but I would be keeping our relationship strictly professional at the moment and might be willing to be friendly again. She did help with sending people to cover me while I worked to save our taking of the Midgar realm.

“So what’s the plan?” I snorted slightly at the image of a metal can filled with peacans surrounded by pie crust.

“It’s going to be a forward push into the crystal maze fields, then we spread out and attack from there, using Castle Alexander as a base. We might have to retreat when we are capable of movement depending how the situation goes.” Ocellus looked a little uneasy. “We’re going to fly Castle Alexander over to near Moon Cell’s core and then we’re going to drop the biggest Divine Judgement Castle Alexander has ever done, we’re going to clean ourselves of energy doing it too. After we hit the ground, we deploy our ground forces and try to fight a group towards the core.”

“Before that we’ll probably deploy aerial forces and try to fight through Moon Cell’s aerial units… what are the chances I can be in the battle?” I asked.

“Pretty good actually, everyone is going to be fighting, even Torneko’s mercenary defense unit will try to keep the EPs out of the castle. We’re having Blumebears with Torneko mines to deal with the grabbers and create a perimeter around Castle Alexander.” Well that sounded like an improvement on the Blumebear design Ocellus. “We’re going to be protecting ourselves from all sides all at once. We need every able bodied combatant we can get. We only have three partnered Digimon, which means Dazzle, Canard and Pom are going for the core since a digimon has the best chance at breaking or destroying Moon Cell. Everyone else will hold off the enemy as long as they can.”

“We’re probably going to need reinforcements, what are the chances that the rest of Ransei will get or the digital realm will get here in time?” I asked.

“We don’t know, we might get help from Ransei and the digital realm if we take up all of Moon Cell’s deployable forces. It might give any extra allies we can get the chance to somehow show up like Geoff did.” Ocellus paused and looked thoughtful. “All we’re doing right now is hashing out the logistics. This is going to be quite the fight… and the servants will be on Pom immediately as soon as she takes the battlefield and Moon Cell will be gunning for her with everything it has. Which is why she’s going to be the first one on the field to draw our enemies ire.”

“When does this battle plan start?” Suddenly the castle shook and it started rising into the air.

“Right now.” Ocellus said quietly. “I hope everyone is ready.”

With that Ocellus quickly made her way for the control room of Castle Alexander as the castle itself announced what we were doing.

“This is Castle Alexander. All aerial combat units, prepare for combat.” We didn’t hear Alexander talk much, but when we did it was usually underselling the oncoming trouble we were about to be facing. “The plan is to perform a hot drop into enemy lines, all must fight or we may not survive this battle.”

I nodded to myself.

None of the three main combat digimon in our combat forces had hit Mega level… arguably this is probably the fastest any Digital Destined had raised their Digimon to the strength of Ultimate. Mega was just a step into the beyond, raw power incarnate if I’m understanding what my next evolution might be… I had a feeling mine was going to be ‘BIG’. Like comparable to Wargrowlmon’s giant kaiju cyborg sized big or even bigger.

Mom really didn’t want me to grow up too fast, but it was a little late for that… even if I was still going to be her puppy.

If we needed a Mega level threat on the battlefield, then I can think of none better than Sami, Frizzle or myself hitting that threshold and then helping bring home the battle for our side. Going beyond ultimate… could we do it under the duress we’ve been under?

Sami has been a lot lighter on her feet since transforming into Cargodramon, Frizzle was a raw powerhouse as Wargrowlmon and I’ve been a key helper in fighting as Garummon.

The three of us have all been stressed to our limits and yet we could still go further… we had to. I wanted to become a powerful monster if to protect my mother from everything, which includes herself. The Gazimon couldn’t evolve as fast, but they were already setting up the small turrets on the walls and ready to get into it along with Zealot Riders taking off in Flying Magitek Armor and Skein Flyers.

The Jet Magitek Armor, which was field tested by Dolly before she crashed, were also taking off and flying circles around the flying castle as we moved forward over the ground bound swarms of EPs below.

I felt mom calling for me and I ran up to her side where Dolly was already waiting as well.

“So I’m thinking Aeroga and then immediately downing several Ethers… give us a bit of an edge at the start of the battle.” Dolly said as I approached.

“Save your strength Dolly, this… this is going to be a thing.” Mom said as she started ahead at us approaching the large cube shaped nexus with Moon Cell’s core inside. Most of her legs covered a beautiful golden wool, I would say it looked pretty if mom wasn’t completely upset that her wool was changing color and that it was leading to an imminent death for her. “I’m likely to be at the front of fighting multiple servants at once, we’re all going to need to pace ourselves and I’ve been pretty bad about achieving an even pacing.”

“We’ll be right beside you Pom.” Canard called out as he and Sami moved up next to us.

“Never wanted to be a hero, just wanted a quiet life of singing and dancing.” Dazzle stated forlornly and Frizzle patted her on the back, I remember when Frizzle came in bleeding data from every orifice. Nice to see Frizzle has recovered in that time. “Actually having friends… didn’t know it would all lead to this.”

“We’re to not let anyone in the castle, Artoria and Mash are protecting the throne directly with Fou.” Mom was still a bit iffy on Fou being so tame around Mash. “We are to stop any enemies from getting by us until Castle Alexander launches its Divine Judgment attack, once that happens everyone brace for falling out of the air and into the sands in the middle of the crystal maze. From there we’ll fight our way towards the nexus and try to get through the defenses. Does everyone know what they are doing?”

There was a lot of acknowledgements that we all knew our parts… I was to be in the main forward team with mom and Dolly. Speaking of… where was… oh… Dolly had a Metal Hound 004 now, another jet model.

“Ah, yeah, let’s do this thing woo!” Dolly ‘the ever optimistic’ Danger Dalmatian everyone. I watched as the Magitek Armor pumped a claw as it stood tall before moving forward on said claws and legs like it was walking on all fours. “Also if you need a moment to rest I’ve got room in here for Dormarch and you Pom, maybe others if you want me to pick up and drop off people at the castle.”

-Moon Cell-

Having run the calculations… the enemy was making its move now.

Curiously the chances of victory was at exactly fifty percent… and dropping rapidly the closer the ewe got to the core.

That was just the calculations for the ewe as a threat, none of the other things that would drop the percentage were even factored in yet.

Moon Cancer Class servant BB had to succeed with her summoned servants, for if she didn’t… then that would be trouble.

-Castle Alexander (The Counter Invasion Force) vs. Moon Cell Nexus (With core inside, no chocolate though). Music: Corneria, from Starfox-

The battle started with Castle Alexander leaving an AP force fighting on the ground as it rose into the air and folded up into flight mode before it started forward while picking up speed, it was already charging its Divine Judgement attack. The biggest Divine Judgement it will ever probably do in the war if it got the chance.

The AP force would quickly perish, but they would still fight to the very last. Their defeat would free up Castle Alexander’s summoning capacity. Castle Alexander could approximately field two hundred Rider Zealots at once, slightly less if Dragoon upgrades were involved.

Most of the current forces were Rider Zealots or a myriad of defense involving the other APs available, Copen had brought up the possibility of creating a Gunner type Allie Program to round out their forces. The slayer dragon had thrown in his lot with those fighting against a very powerful machine and with his aid in the situation came Lola the battle pod.

Copen stood at the top of Castle Alexander as wind whipped past his face as he gripped his gun and glared at the incoming aerial assault forced, if the enemy forces still had had the Zu or Moby Dick then this forward flying assault would not even be viable in the slightest.

Lola looked to him and then looked forward as a number of battle pods like her, formed up and started firing lasers or using hard light projections to attack the various incoming enemies. They were better than the Moon Cell Watchers in speed at the very least and avoided the numerous energy beams, bullets and explosives that now slammed into Castle Alexander from all sides and below.

When the incoming flying EPs got close to actually boarding Castle Alexander, with said castle in the middle of charging one last Divine Judgment attack as it flew forth in an attempt to overload Moon Cell’s ability to field a combat force, it unloaded every available ranged projectile and or combat vehicle it could in all directions.

APs in Magitek Armor, on Skein Flyers, Missile trucks firing from within the walls, the mini-turrets that the Gazimon used back in lower city Midgar, they were using everything available to them to pressure Moon Cell into focusing all its efforts on keeping Pom away from it.

Even Dolly took to the skies in the Metal Hound 004 immediately firing everything the walking mech had into the swarms coming for them. Pom gave her the okay to do so as long as she was more careful than what happened during their ill-fated rush assault prior to this mess and the crash that injured her prior to Aurora’s militia medical aid forces showing up.

The air around Castle Alexander quickly became chaos and Pom sat down in the middle of the courtyard to breathe deeply and meditate slightly before she had to take action, she calmly petted Dormarch and his three wagging tails were soon interrupted by Brute being dropped within the fortress walls by the Archer Seraph.

Pom was immediately up and was charging the several brutes alongside Jeanne, with the unique Caerbannog known as Snake priming a holy grenade behind them and acting in support of the two.

More Eps were being dropped into the courtyard by teams of Archer Seraph carrying enemy forces through the air screen as Castle Alexander flew forward without stopping, the aerial defenses around Castle Alexander were all completely busy at the moment.

Hundreds of EPs fell, but more kept coming. Eventually Geoff and specifically the Wooloo joined the courtyard defenses with singing Rounds in units of six each, with the one Muk in particular assisting in his own way under Geoffs unit.

Dubwool, Loudred, Whismur and Explouds were all being held in reserve for when Castle Alexander hit the ground and were currently behind most of the internal defenses. After that they would go out and put up a sound barrier using the move Uproar or use Round to fend off straggler EPs for the assault on Moon Cell after ‘The Divine Judgment’ goes off and to set up defenses for the long haul that was coming.

The Toxtricity Bards were going to be assisting Pom on the frontal assault and were simply waiting in the castle strumming their chest muscle bands waiting to get into the fight once they knew there was a fight to be had. With Toxels being the shock troopers for the larger more evolved Toxtricity.

That was the plan at the very least as Castle Alexander was swarmed and taking lots of damage from all sides by aerial EPs. They had to actually make it to that point to actively have any chance at a direct assault.

Without the Zu to turn Castle Alexander around, Moon Cell was having problems stopping Castle Alexander from getting closer even as it was taking a lot of damage despite the shields the Rider Zealot piloting the flying fortress kept coming back up. Moon Cell was throwing enough firepower at the flying fortress that it was a surprise that Castle Alexander was toughing it out even when the shields failed.

Moon Cell was even fielding all kinds of EPs that have never been seen before, like harpies, monstrous electric flying squirrels that can actually fly, aerial transports of alien make that looked like horseshoes that dropped goofy turtle like EPs all over the castle and more bizarre things like large bug like birds.

Everything and the kitchen sink was being thrown at Castle Alexander and the thing is, it was actually working in slowing down the castles forward momentum and yet it was still going.

Even if it was looking bad for Castle Alexander there were heroes fighting in various points throughout the defenses.

Gazimon were using the small turrets to shred through Archer Seraphs to stop them from dropping EPs into the embattled courtyard of the castle or tried to attack the odd transports.

Dolly was blasting through the air at full speed and avoiding tons of incoming fire, the EPs definitely recognized her piloting style from last time and were trying to stop her from clearing a path for Castle Alexander as brutal dogfights took place around the castles air space.

The guns on the Metal Hound 004 were blazing away as fast as they could tearing through an uncountable number of targets that just kept coming, Dolly was prioritizing the Moon Cell Watcher above all else as their lasers were doing the most damage to Castle Alexander.

Dolly rolled out of the way of some shots from behind as a number of Watchers started chasing her as one of Pom’s familiars she was a target of opportunity as much as Pom was. She swept back towards Castle Alexander for repairs as the jet wings the Magitek Armor was equipped with took a bad hit.

Skein Flyers fell by the dozens, the Bidoof were busy little beaver things that kept the production up with the demand and building was something they lived for.

Any Magitek Armor that fell down to the ground or got shot out of the air and kept battling through the hordes of EPs on the ground, were always eventually swarmed over and consumed by a literal sea of enemies below Castle Alexander. Dolly would eject and take to the sky on her board if it came to it, but until then she was the ace pilot of the aerial forces at the moment and thought it akin to playing a video game, one with deadly and lethal consequences.

Ocellus was orchestrating the battle from the command room asking, but not telling the APs to move to positions she thought would keep up their defenses as the castle was being blasted and started to fall into ruin.

Smolder had an eye on the courtyard and various entrances while Ocellus was trying to keep an eye on the big picture.

A lot of Wooloo were getting injured… but that was okay, the Wooloo enjoyed it and any injury to them was more comical than serious.

Copen was rocketing through the sky on his jetpack and focusing down the Archer Seraph trying to drop heavier EPs onto the flying castle, he blazed through the sky showing his prowess against Moby Dick hadn’t been a fluke as she was defending an entire sector of airspace around Castle Alexander, mostly all by himself.

A blade of energy shot forth form one of the castles walls, Artoria wasn’t sitting back in the battle and was wielding her sword Excalibur to cleave endless number of enemies out of the air. Like Copen the sword wielding blue canine was an ace at protecting an entire sector.

Mash was protecting the rear with a small force, but that was only against enemies that were swing around behind the castle to attack its relatively unprotected backside on the flying dog shaped fortresses by coming up its tail.

“Ocellus, are we around to being over the approximate crystal maze point yet?” Pom asked after smashing her way through an Assassin Reaper.

Moon Cell really wanted to assassinate Pom and wasn’t being subtle about targeting her with Assassin Class Enemy Programs above all other targets the assassins could be going after. Like Castle Alexander’s infrastructure for one.

“I’d say not even close, but we will be soon… Divine Judgement is still charging, once it goes off we won’t have much time to build up defenses after we overload Moon Cell’s ability to produce EPs. Moon Cell might recover from it faster than we think… so be ready for that when you call up the Toxitricity to prepare a forward assault force.” Ocellus responded as the constant fire of Missile Trucks and Blumebear derived Thousand Gunners fire endless amounts of projectiles into the airspace around the castle’s outer walls. “Maybe we can clear the crystal maze and be at the nexus’s doorstep… but that’s wishful thinking. We’ve already planned for how to mess up the crystal maze. I’ll call the Toxitricity Bard forces up when we need them for the forward assault, if we land in the crystal maze they will prove to be a major dungeon bypass by shattering through crystals walls with their Boom Bursts.”

“Dolly how are you doing?” Pom turned and saw the damaged mech flying into the mouth of Castle Alexander’s dog shaped head. There was a lot of firepower in the mouth to prevent the enemy from sneaking in through there.

“It’s like the skies on fire and I can’t see forever because there are so many enemies there are almost enough to blot out the sky, coming in for a landing for repairs. Hope Grape can spare some time to put me back out there sooner rather than later.” Dolly knew APs weren’t the most effective fighting force, but they were a fighting force where numbers or quality could very well change a battle. She actually successfully managed to land as Skein Flyers took out from the mouth and one was immediately destroyed after its shields failed. “Our Skein Flyer buddies are getting chewed up out there… at least the Flying and Jet Armors will last even after they hit the ground, but there are so many EPs down there it’s not survivable for maybe a half a minute before they are swarmed out of existence.”

“Huh, those things have plasma grenades?!” One of the Commandramon had heard the crying of an enemy having gotten a plasma grenade stuck to their head after having shot them precisely as they were going to throw it in Pom’s direction. “Stop those transports from dropping anymore of those EPs on us!”

The Commandramon despite their small numbers were very effective and efficient with their grenades, they were working together and sniping target that tried to get into Castle Alexander near the automated turret towers blazing away with artillery and projectiles.

The Pokémon Companions were idling at the main entrance, Quetal was a little impatient, but Shine snuggled against his side and he took a breath of air as he continued to watch the fighting ready to jump in when needed.

Favela, Dodo and Shanty were ready to dig into the battling too, but they were staying back with the companions until the castle landed… or crashed. Either one was bound to happen any moment now.

Lit was ready to battle and watched as Dolly flew out again into the fray, spewing violence as she did so. The waiting was making the little guy antsy and impatient.

There wasn’t a single being in Castle Alexander that wasn’t awake or waiting to take action, even Patch Cabbage NPC was continuing to work the farms in the middle of battle as the entire Castle shuddered and shook from the violence going on around it.

“How much time do we have on the charging Ocellus?” Elise asked, as she, Cruel and Crazy were all assisting the defense of the courtyard.

“We’ll actually reach full charge status before we get too far over the approximate crystal maze area at this rate. Thankfully Moon Cell can’t bring up walls underneath us or attack us with them directly, only block our way forward if we’re trying to continue our assault on the ground.” Answered Ocellus as she stopped for a moment before she continued to order our forces into positions.

Elise shuddered at the memory of the fast assault and how Moon Cell tried to trap them in the crystal walls, thankfully they had many ways to circumvent the walls aside from just trying to figure out the maze.

“Everyone hold on to something, we’re losing flight power.” Cid’s announcement was heard throughout the entirety of the castle. “I’m expecting a crash instead of a landing, we’ll need to fire off the Divine Judgement before we hit the ground or else we’ll lose the charge.”

“Hold that charge until the last second, we need to get as far as we can!” Pom yelled over the communicator as there were explosions and fighting going on all over the place, she herself dove in to take out a heli-trooper before it can slash up a Gazimon that had been knocked off the castle wall. Said Gazimon quickly climbed back up to the manual small turrets he was working. “We need to hold on a little longer everyone, we need to get as far as we can before we set it off.”

Geoff fired off an Electro-ball and an EP was blasted apart by the explosion of it a second later, it was too bad to him that the EPs were mindless… they’d sure be more interesting to him otherwise. He glanced around and moved to assist some of the APs in the castle with a Brute.

The chaos of the battle around Castle Alexander continued as more Magitek Armor and Skein Flyers were shot down or rammed out of the air by the EPs, replacing them in short order wasn’t easy and took some time. Getting Rider Zealots to pilot them wasn’t a problem at all, it’s the manufacturing of the vehicles themselves that was slow and couldn’t keep up with the AP casualties.

“I have returned.” Announced a familiar green or teal colored Dragoon Fenix that popped into existence, much to Pom’s consternation and it started blasting the horseshoe shaped enemy transports out of the air.

“Is anybody else concerned that he keeps saying that and even said that the first time he appeared?” Pom asked while referencing the fact that Ocellus had wondered why it had said that the first time it appeared.

“Yes, but we’ve got other things to worry about than the oddities happening here!” Jeanne quickly responded as she swept her banner spear and tore apart a number of Saber Knight EPs apart in a single blow. “How’s the damage looking Ocellus?”

“Still surprisingly within expected perimeters, keep them off of us just a little longer and we just might make it over the approximate middle of the crystal maze field.” Ocellus stated as she continued to watch so many things going on around Castle Alexander at the moment. “Let me put stress on the word ‘might’ at the rate we’re taking damage. Charge for the Divine Judgment is at ninety three percent and almost ready. We’ll be able to fire it whenever right now, but it’s going to drain every system Castle Alexander has… except our AP production abilities.”

While Ocellus was saying this, the Blumebears outside the castles front gates were firing wildly into the incoming enemy transports and dropping them before they could get near the head of the flying fortress or the castle sitting on the back to drop off the strange new EPs that apparently had exceedingly dangerous explosives and the accuracy of something that was clearly blind and has the preternatural ability for shooting its allies over the enemy. Some considered these new EPs to be confusing entirely on purpose, that or they were only being used because of their blue glowing grenades that stuck to anything once thrown… even themselves apparently.

“Dolly you have five more minutes then come back in, we’re going to fire the Divine Judgement soon and I’d rather you be in the courtyard with me and Dormarch before it goes off!” Pom eventually called throughout all the fighting, Dormarch was covering her with his Retriever Barks, Wild Barks and even a single Wild Howling that cleared out the entire courtyard by stunning every EP in the area before they could build up their numbers too far.

“Thanks for the warning, but I’m kind of busy out here!” Dolly was in the middle of rolling away form a series of lasers, she turned around and blasted a few shoulder mounted missiles into the chasing Moon Cell Watchers. The magitek armor used its jet wings to start flying backwards as it fired on every other EP in the air around her. “How many of them are there?!”

“The answer is yes Dolly.” Dormarch stated flatly from his position next to Pom in the courtyard. “Ocellus tell the Toxtricitys to move up to the courtyard.”

Four minutes of hectic chaos, projectiles flying every which way, APs taking shots for the more biological members of the castle’s crew or those that would die permanently, hundreds of EPs were dissolved and the injuries were mounting the closer they got to Moon Cell’s core. The time swiftly passed with everyone under constant fire and the smoking Castle Alexander was slowly lowering slowly towards the ground as it got closer to the structure in the distance, but it didn’t turn away from heading towards Moon Cell despite the continued heavy insistence of the EPs that they do so. Dolly eventually came in for a landing and the Metal Hound 004 was moderately damaged as it started chewing through enemies within the castle walls and above it.

“Ready to fire the Divine Judgment we get close enough to the ground, everyone hold on to something, all power is going to cut out when we do and we’ll slam into the ground!” Ocellus announced as they were close enough to the ground that the EPs could almost jump up to grab onto the burning flying castle’s underside.

“This is Canard, we’re firing ‘THE Divine Judgement’ right now. Hold onto something, because we’re going down when we do!” Canard was holding onto Sami as he grabbed a hold of a doorway. “Close your eyes this is going to be bright.

Castle Alexander started to warp as a glowing blade rose up out of the castles back and energy started massing up everywhere at the point. It fired a massive wall of energy that pulsed outward in every direction all at once in a glaringly bright display that would blind any being with searing light.

It looked like a solid mass of energy… but it was in fact trillions of lasers targeting every AP for miles around the fortress as it swiftly lost power and slammed into the ground to start skidding forward behind millions upon millions of lasers clearing a large area around the castle as it went inert and slowly came to a stop on the ground.

Once the divine judgment fell, the entire area around the castle for at least five miles was absolutely cleaned of EPs, practically annihilated from the battle in seconds. Even the grabbers underground were not able to avoid the raw power as the beams penetrated far down into the sands to destroy the underground nuisances.

“Blumbears deploy, minefields all around the back and side of Castle Alexander's current position, we need to get dug in until Castle Alexander can walk again! Toxtricity’s should form up and follow Pom as she heads out for the enemy stronghold.” At least their side communications were still working or else Ocellus wouldn’t be able to order the Blumebears to move out, everything else including main communications were down. The only thing that weren’t down were the turrets the Gazimon were currently wielding and the Allied Program production ability of Castle Alexander. “Everyone prepare we’re in the middle of enemy territory and we don’t know how long it will be until Moon Cell can recuperate the losses.”

It would be a little longer than Ocellus currently thought, Moon Cell had a higher capacity for summoning EPS than an average PLANT would and it would take quite a lot to really disable Moon Cell’s ability to produce APS for a while. Destroy enough EPs and a PLANT would lose its ability for a while, Moon Cell wasn’t quite as vulnerable.

However ‘The Divine Judgment’, as it was called with the emphasis on the word ‘THE’, Moon Cell was having issues with summoning more than the few thousand assault programs for its defense as the trillion wave number of beams had damaged it’s nexus and also destroyed enough EPs to lock its ability down to a trickle. Which was still considerable number instead of the hundreds of thousands it could send at its enemies, it was still enough to fight the forces of the now disabled Castle Alexander after decimating every enemy in a five mile radius.

“Okay everyone going on the offensive, let’s move out Toxtricity at the front we need them for demolition purposes!” Pom called, as Dolly and Dormarch formed up on her and followed behind her as she charged down towards the sands with numerous Blumebears passing her by to set up a defensive perimeter.

The baby dragon like Toxels and the more lizard man like Toxtricity’s were following after Pom as she charged forward and hoped that Moon Cell couldn’t stall them out, the sands shifted in front of Pom making her stop as a wall of crystal spikes rose up in front of her.

“Boom Bursts now, blow them down!” Several of the Toxtricity’s moved forward at Pom’s motioning, as the Toxel’s took up defensive positions. They immediately strummed the chords of muscle on their chest and fired off Boom Bursts that shattered through the crystal wall with one powerful shriek of vibrations.

After five or so walls the forward offensive was stopped by a fireball that slammed into the ground in front of Pom, the next two balls of flames that glasses the sand forced Pom to jump back to avoid them. What followed was a blast of water, lightning, one golden glowing whipping chain made of hearts and then a sudden energy disk from out of nowhere bounced off of Pom’s wool in a golden flash which was promptly caught by the thrower.

The five figure on the other side of the eighth wall stood in the path of Pom’s assault.

“I am Sailor Moon… cell… and I shall punish you with love and justice!” Said a tall white rabbit with the two streaming long locks of hair stated, bracketed by four other girls wearing the same strange uniforms. “In the name of the moon… cell!”

“I am Sailor Venus here to protect the moon… cell… with my chain of love that will strangle you. If you can’t tell I mean to death, then I absolutely mean to death, I just want to be clear on that I’ll be promptly strangling you with my magical light whip.” The tall white furred mink with long blond hair stated as she brushed her blonde locks out of her face. “Also I can do things with light like no other can do.”

“I am Sailor Mars and I will ignite you on fire, you will burn like a witch for attacking the moon… cell!” As Mars spoke, the fox girl seemed highly agitated and Pom was noticing a recurring trend whenever Moon Cell was brought up. There was always a distinctly awkward pause between ‘Moon’ and ‘cell’. “Your soul will burn for an eternity for I am a Miko of great repute and am well liked by everyone and am not overcompensating for something by being extremely loud and violent!”

“I am Sailor Mercury I will wash you away from the moon… cell… ribbit.” Said the blue frog girl as she too started to strike a pose, but she didn’t seem too all into being aggressive. “My computer has no knowledge on you… I’m practically useless then. I mean sure I could use my own intelligence, water and ice powers, but really I only get to do things when it’s down to the wire and everybody else has already done their thing at least once. I'm as smart as jupiter... but I think my intelligence dipped because I got a super computer to do all the thinking for me... that and the friends I keep probably didn't help ribbit.”

“I am Sailor Jupiter here to defend the moon… cell… with my over the top ridiculous powers and super strength on top of that and actual combat ability that the others don’t simply have… much less more than two brain cells to rub together among any of the rest of us.” For the moment none of the girls reacted or even glared at Jupiter for saying that. “Seriously… I have so many powers it’s ridiculous compared to everyone else.”

“… which one of us was the ones that didn’t have brain cells again?” The blonde rabbit girl asked dumbly as she looked at all her friends doing poses. “Oh wait… were we supposed to be doing the Ginyu Force poses today?”

“Darn it Sailor Moon… cell, I thought we practiced this!” Mars stated while catching on fire and clenching her right fist at Moon, continuing the trend of adding ‘cell’ like it was an afterthought.

“I’m getting the distinct feeling that you’re all the bottom barrel of servants that Moon Cell could be throwing at us and there’s a much more powerful servant quite literally behind all of you… since you guys come off as even less of a threat than Merak was without all of his machines.” As Pom said that a dashing wolf in a tuxedo leapt out in the general direction of the stalled offensive force.

“I am here to help my precious Sailor Moon… cell… as Tuxedo Crash and I will…” The tuxedo wolf man promptly slammed into one of the crystal walls in a painful display as his amazing flying leap was stopped cold by said wall made of crystalline pillars. He eventually made his way over to pose with the bunny girl Sailor Moon... cell.

“Hey, wait a minute… I have at least three brain cells!” Venus suddenly yelled, though the admittance caused a few brain cells to kill themselves off in the process. “Which is one more than the rest of you, minus Jupiter because she actually got a degree at college, a mostly happy life with being married and had that whole cake shop franchise… well up until we screwed it all up for her as the horrible friends we are. Like seriously, the rest of us floundered about in our adulthood in a vapid manner while taking over the planet using our ridiculous magical powers and over the top technology in a highly vain manner after Moon took over Moon Cell and eventually destroyed our solar system based civilization after controlling it into trying to let us leave said solar system. How were we supposed to know we weren’t fully in control of Moon Cell and it could summon that Velber thing and basically did a repeat of what destroyed the previous moon civilization the first time around prior to our reincarnation… wow I died a virgin two times despite all my talk about getting people to love me… so… wait… did I say all of that out loud?”

“Okay, that might knock their threat level up a tiny smidge given they actually manage to get Lunar Blood to actually do things for them, even if it did end horribly for them and now they are apparently servants to it.” Blandly stated a barking Dolly as she crossed the Metal Hound 004’s arms, only being understood by a select few that could speak dog.

“A dog! The greatest of evils, I am most certainly not a biased Mau and mascot character to Sailor Moon… cell!” Said a black cat with a moon marking on her forehead. “We shall kung fu fight!”

The black cat turned into a biped and leapt at Metal Hound 004 with a flying kick. Nobody really expected much of the servant like being, they were proven right considering a second later Dolly just smashed the shape changing biped cat into a vibrant EP like dissolving paste with the left claw of her Magitek Armor.

The Metal Hound 004 was a marginal upgrade given it had three claws and a thumb blade with the machine gun built into the palm of the magitek armors arms, the ability to pick up and throw things better. It was the only major difference to the armor as an overall improvement from Metal Hound 003.

“… Hey, that was my familiar… and cat, I like her... but mostly my cat that gave me super powers without explaining all the cool stuff I could do before throwing me into danger multiple times!” Sailor Moon… cell… eventually cried out… after fifteen seconds of blankly staring at the pasted enemy ‘sub-servant’. “If we didn’t have a reason to kill you before… wait, what was all that about two brain cells, were you insulting our intelligences Jupiter?!”

“No.” Jupiter said cheerily with a friendly smile, her eyes told another story.

“Oh okay then…” Moon cheerily accepted the ‘no’ immediately without questioning and turned back to glare at the army on Moon Cell’s doorstep. Moon started toeing the sand and looking about and eventually she turned to her ‘friends’. “What were we doing again? …. Oh right… in the name of the moon… cell… I… er… ‘we’ shall punish you… yeah that’s right, I’m still so very good at this stuff!”

“At this point I’m liable to agree with the brain cell comment, but only one shared among at least five of you.” Pom stated dully as this was going to quickly become a thing and they were kind of in the way of getting to Moon Cell’s core so… “I’m betting you’re all just distractions for the real threat and are meant to stall us until an army of EPs to show up… Boom Burst them!”

“No, wait-wait-wait… talking is supposed to be a free…” Mars the orange and red fox with a fire motif tried while ignited her hands, only for five of the six enemy threats to be sent flying. “Actiooooon-…”

Only Jupiter was left standing her spot, she was apparently smart enough to brace herself for the incoming sound wave attack. Not only that, she had weathered it perfectly without injury to herself and had covered her ears protectively while generating a wall of sound absorbing sand in front of herself by stomping her right foot.

“Sailor Venus, get up and fight with love in your heart for the moon… cell!” Now there was a male white cat trying to spur Venus into standing up. She actually did so, but not because the cat was acting like a sycophant cheerleader that stared at her chest a lot, but mostly because she recovered from the attack quickly and Sailor Moon… cell… apparently had healing powers to help with their magic armor that were all short skirts.

Even Geoff wasn’t staring as hard as the white cat had been, he looked less and less curious as the situation carried on and that was an amazing thing for him in particular that his standards were winning out.

Dolly groaned out audibly and then quickly plastered the white cat ‘sub-servant’ by firing the right machine cannon of Metal Hound 004 into it, because he sounded to be almost as annoying as the unnamed black cat had been.

-Nearby, BB-

…

“Should have went with the outers…” BB stated quietly after a moment while dragging her palm slowly down her face. “At least Jupiter is competent… probably why she’s their coordinator in the first place.”

They were stalling the enemy forces with their… fake comedy act, sure let’s call it that.

So that was successful at the very least!

Author's Note

Currently Distracted by: Building weird gundams in Gundam Breaker 4. Stark Jegan for life.

Distraction coming soon: Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.

452. All In: Servant Senshi Showdown.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, Celestia-

“Ah, my vacation has been so nice.” Silver Shoals had a nice beach and all, but I came here to visit some friends that weren’t in Ponyville. The ponies of Ponyville were still a little… uptight, about having me visit.

“Yeah, well my teaching job as a coach is going quite well. Everyone can opt out or only do half the work, but then they won’t get as much of a passing grade. I take sicknesses and health issues into account too when handing out a training schedule.” Sakhet, stated as she stretched out. Local bank, local coach and good friend. The sphinx had a nice set up here, she wasn’t causing any problems at all. “Don’t know what my sister Baast is doing, but she’s hunting Discord and Fluttershy doesn’t seem to be helping with keeping her away from him.”

“Yes, apparently Fluttershy and Baast have come to some form of accord with each other… I kind of feel sorry for Discord. Kind of, because of all the trouble he has caused it’s hard to feel sorry for him.” This was a nice day out, warm, not to crazy cloudy weather, no bizarre stuff happening and no random airship slamming into me… what is wrong with this picture. “Where’s Jaded La Perm?”

“… Saddle Arabia.” Finally answered Sekky after a moment. “A small vacation with her entire family where absolutely nothing is going to happen… not at all…”

The sarcasm in her voice was quite obvious.

“Ah, the chip is still in her shoulder about those thieves waking her up a few thousand years back and the whole thing with the Ballad Din and Jasmine then.” I commented dryly with a small smile on my face. “One would think Anubis would be helping her lean away from being such a problem causer.”

“Saddle Arabia’s tourism is really sky high because of it, it’s all the magic that runs wild in the streets over there where you get things like giant sand golems from sand witches who run sandwich shops, living magic carpets that don’t fly along with those that do and others that run tapestry industries, that Teatime Clockwork guy trying to prove he’s better at destroying Saddle Arabia than Jaded is and a whole other slew of weird things like a dancing kaiju rhino.” Apparently the dancing rhino was a hit with the children at the very least… mostly for trampling the local school, even if it was a tad destructive. Sekhet was fairly aware of a lot of ancient Saddle Arabia weirdness floating around… it makes one wonder why Pinkie wasn’t trying to fight the weirdness of Saddle Arabia. “At this point Jaded is actively saving Saddle Arabia from all the other stuff so she can destroy just the concept of it herself.”

“I bet that’s causing mixed feelings about the Rogue Sun Priest.” An amiable chuckle escaped my lips.

“Nope, they really don’t like Jaded being over there, even if she has solved some of their larger than life problems through ridiculous means. Last I heard, she used a barrel full of water, a cork puller, five pencils, one thick rubber hoof boot, a box of incredibly bouncy rubber balls, a pouch full of dates, a carpenter’s wooden mallet and a didgeridoo to deal with a desert bound merpony. Though what a merpony is doing in the middle of a desert still confuses me.” Out of all that Sekhet, I can actually somewhat vaguely guess as to what the didgeridoo was used for. “Also all that stuff has happened over the last few days, adding Jaded to the mix is like watching a powder keg of fireworks go off.”

“I think she’s gotten better, she’s at least actively appealing to them to change the name ‘Saddle Arabia’ to something else to get her to stop being an active threat to them.” I smiled as Jaded was truly getting better about it, even if she hasn’t entirely stopped being silly.

-Moon Cell, Inner Realm, Desert of Devastation, partially destroyed Crystal Maze, Pom-

Okay so Moon was a rabbit, Tuxedo was a wolf, Jupiter was an otter, Venus was a Mink, Mercury was a frog and Mars was a fox. I only had a few questions for Jupiter.

“So… Moon had control of Moon Cell at one point and managed to destroy an entire civilization?” My question was met with a scoff. “Also Venus said something about dying twice?”

“Moon is so much more of a disaster than that, she’s partly responsible for the end of three civilizations and we only died twice while doing so.” Tilting my head at Jupiter she sighed audibly. “Wish I could go against Moon Cell, so I’m going to do so by distracting you with facts while the rest of my team gets back up from that attack. Yes, I’m telling you that out loud to be an obvious distraction while the rest of my team get their butts in gear. Oh and Luna and Artemis will be with them, Mau are not that easy to kill permanently as long as the one they are bonded to is alive. So take out Moon and Venus first, especially Moon since she can heal the rest of us.”

“You’re going to make me ask how Moon destroyed three civilizations just to stall fighting us by yourself for a little longer, but I’m curious enough to go along with that.” It wasn’t an accusation, but more a fact and Jupiter was quite open and amiable… for our enemy. “Everyone keep going and try to hold the EPs until we can deal with these servants. Shanty, Quetal, Canard, Dazzle, Frizzle, Sami, Dodo and Dormarch we’re going to deal with the servants. Jupiter is going to focus on me as a priority target for Moon Cell so everyone else can push towards the nexus while they try to hold us here, Dolly go forward and help hold the EPs off. Take Lit with you.”

“Roger, come on little guy… hey don’t eat the power source!” Dolly took to the air on the jet wings of her Jet Magitek Armor and flew off, she’d be dealing with Moon Cell Watchers and other aerial threats on her own for a while. Since Castle Alexander went down she’d have to be careful, because she wasn’t going to get repairs for a while either.

Several Jet Magitek Armor piloted by Rider Zealots followed after her.

I seriously doubted numbers was going to do us a favor against this many servants at once, given we didn’t exactly know what they were all capable of aside from the fact that the cats will come back, that Moon can heal so she’s a priority target and Jupiter apparently can manipulate sand to defend herself from a ridiculously powerful sound wave attack.

“I’ll take command of the front beautiful!” Geoff winked at me and then moved on while waving a hoof as our army gave the knocked down servants a wide birth and ran around them while they were still picking themselves up. “I would hit on these girls, but there’s just something about them that makes me lack interest and I’m not a necro chaser… unless it’s a Ghost type Pokémon, then us Wooloo are completely into that. Also there’s just something about the white furred blond mink one that I don’t really like… hurry up to catch up with the front line quickly, we need you there!”

Geoff had no doubts about us winning this fight as he leads the ground forces forward to deal with the next few crystal walls and would he handling the rapidly growing EP numbers.

“Okay, so Moon was part of a thing called the Moon Kingdom and the alliance of planets… the first civilization that was destroyed from a massive war, because Moon made some guy fall in love with her. Big hint, he’s here right now. This made another girl named Beryl, a sorceress, stupidly jealous of him no longer paying attention to her enough to seek dark powers to destroy everything. Yes the wolf guy with the tuxedo and the mask is also a cause of said massive war since Moon got his attention, watch out for his roses when he throws him as he sometimes won’t announce that he will and his cane can act as a sword, said war was what took out our space faring civilization. We reincarnated after that mess so the first civilization or at least the first set of civilizations was done because Moon caused Tuxedo Crash, as rebranded from Tuxedo Mask, to fall in love with her and subsequently caused the rise of the dark kingdom. I can hardly blame Moon for that, for how was she to know that a jealous girl would be able to start a massive civil war and actually succeed in almost winning it. Mind you Moon somewhat knew about Beryl and her attraction to Tuxedo Mask before the whole thing kicked off. Still, it could all be traced back to her actions and that of her parents of the Moon Kingdom being stuffy jerks as there was more than one reason for everyone else to hate the Moon Kingdom.” Okay Jupiter, I might be able to see why there’s some scathing critique of the rabbit named Moon now. “Now, if that was all that Moon did, we’d be fine considering we grew up as peasants in our next life, yes we were all once princesses. Only to regain our powers from reincarnating from our past war that destroyed all life on at least eight planets and the multiple moons in our solar system. We proceeded to start saving people’s lives from the remnants of the fallen dark kingdom that had been laying mostly dormant until our powers started coming back in during the second civilization more than a thousand years later, after almost everything got destroyed because of the jealous woman Beryl getting help from a person named Queen Metaria. We saved a lot of people lives and defeated the resurgence of the dark kingdom, which is when we destroyed the second civilization… on purpose. It was by starting a ‘mostly’ benevolent dictatorship and using the technology we had to overthrow all the current governments on the one planet that still had life on it to spread out and recolonize the solar system.”

“… seriously, you had control of Moon Cell and you used it to take over the second civilization?” I asked because that sounded pretty bad considering our current situation.

“Oh yeah, the others pulled a lot of crap and recreated the same moon kingdom that fell for various reasons and only got kicked off by Beryl’s jealousy of Moon attracting the guy she loved, as there were a lot of people who had plenty of hatred to be a part of the civil war that destroyed life on multiple planets from the first civilization. So yes, Moon even actively took control of Moon Cell to create the third civilization, causing the Silver Millenium to form as said supposed ‘benevolent dictatorship’ from the survivors of the second civilization that survived the first that were knocked back into the proverbial Stone Age at the end of said war. If Moon Cell hadn’t happened then the recreated moon kingdom, the third civilization, was about to go into a nasty civil war again anyway considering Moon was repeating all the very same mistakes of the first moon kingdom had without learning from them and arguably she was making even worse mistakes. Also time travel got involved and our lives were a huge mess a lot of the time, but ‘somebody’ just had to set off Moon Cell’s protocols for not letting us actually leave our solar system in spaceships and summoned a Velber unit to start hitting us with Anti-Cells. We only managed to destroy three of them… out of fifty thousand it released after we destroyed the first three when they proved inefficient for wiping out all ‘intelligent’ life in our solar system!” Jupiter screamed that last part out and sighed rubbing her face with her hands and some tears escaped her eyes. “At least my husband, sons, daughters and grand kids went quickly when the fifty thousand Anti-cells dropped on top of all of us. I tried to keep them safe and lead mostly normal lives despite being somewhat rich, all outside of the whole benevolent dictatorship thing and a high society with holier than you bull pucky that helped destroy the moon kingdom the first time around. You guys are lucky Moon Cell is separated from a Velber and Anti-cells, as you wouldn’t survive that mess… I don’t think any civilization could unless they knew to specifically prepare for it and there is hardly a way to figure that out… only Moon actively had access to that information and ignored it entirely because she’s a lazy ‘@*#$%#@’ airheaded (euphemism for a donkey’s backside with a hint of sour lemon freshly squeezed)! Now I find myself here under the control of the very thing that destroyed us when we had at least some vague control of it… so of course I’m a little miffed when I tried living a normal life as an bakery entrepreneur and Moon still somehow managed to find some way to ruin it all, again. She’s a living disaster magnet, sure she’s tried and succeeded to do good things, but ninety percent of the time she’s a brain dead moron that barely managed to get out of high school with a D plus or barely succeeded at defeating the dark kingdom. Near the end of things she actually brought the standards of education down to her level. What part of that was conducive to leading a successful galactic civilization?! Why did Sailor Pluto push so hard for that to occur, because she saw some shiny buildings and a rebirth of a dead civilization that died off for a reason?! Did she not look far forward enough to see what would happen? Also there are four others of us and Pluto was part of that, but thankfully they weren’t summoned, they were the outers and they were technically more competent and dangerous than we were. When Moon Cell attacked us, we found out that our user access was at the same level as the first moon kingdom. That being barely enough access to save the first space faring civilization as long as we didn’t try to exit our specific solar system, for any particular reason. The king and queen of the moon at the time of the first civilization even knew about it... and didn’t bother tell anyone that important fact while trying to keep everyone trapped within the system without explaining the major reason why we couldn’t try to fly any large ships out of system without it being a problem. Gee… that bit of stupidity didn’t come back to bite us at all!”

“While I never went to school much, at least I educated myself successfully through reading and apparently ended up with a B-plus average when I took a competency test in Huoshan to see how good my education was and what I needed to work on when it came to becoming a member of the Huoshan Guard. I really miss my Canine Division friends.” I mumbled to myself more than my opponent who looked back to see her friends had gotten up and were getting back into fighting condition. “Should really thank my brother for bringing all those course work books to me if I ever see him again, despite most lambkin being afraid of being near me and my… family... my brother’s the black sheep isn’t he? No other explanation for it now, he never feared predators when coming to visit me while I was living in that valley and Grandpa never came with him out of a sense of self preservation. Me and my brother are going to have a ‘long’ and possibly violent talk about this if I ever see him again.”

I think…. I think I’m actually somewhat angry at my brother, for quite a number of things now.

“Okay yeah, Moon really is a ‘@*#$%#@’ airheaded meatball flying spaghetti monster of doom, but we’re here and we’re under Moon Cell’s control. So we really can’t change what we have to do, which is as Moon Cell orders of us!” Mars stated as she and the others were in a bubble of energy with their wounds from the sound attack healing, with Moon being the obvious reason for said healing as the center of the glowing bubble. “You’ve stalled long enough Jupiter, so how about we get this fight started and stop it with the lore dump of how we destroyed several civilizations and more than several trillions lives, most of it was Moon’s fault.”

“Why is it my fault?” Moon whined with tears in her eyes.

“You’re the leader aren’t you, doing anything that resulted in the wiping out of an entire civilization under your purview counts as your fault.” Mercury stated flatly as she looked at the square screen she formed. “You kind of did do that.”

The five sailor scouts formed up and readied themselves.

Venus was holding a chain whip of light and the links were all heart shaped.

Mercury brought up some form of square screen with odd writing on it, which was most likely a computer that might be made out of water or was so advanced that I would think that from appearances.

Mars bring her claws together and started building a fireball on her two pointer claws.

Moon brought out a gaudy toy wand thing with a heart shape on it that grew into a staff.

Jupiter just took up a fighting stance and gave me a sad look as her tiara extended a rod.

Tuxedo Crash just suddenly started holding what looked like a vibrant rose… loaded with an absurd amount of magic in one hand, especially near the tip. He had his cane on a belt at his side ready to apply blunt or cutting force if it was a cane sword.

“Do you guys have to be so mean to me, I can heal all of you and do cool magicl laser shooty stuff, plus I repair our magical armor with my powers!” Whined a crying Moon with long trails of blonde hair coming from the odango buns behind her ears flicking back and forth.

“Mercury has control of ice and water, Mars had fire and a short temper while also having a long term unrequited crush on Moon and some spiritual combat skills involving paper tags, I’m capable of controlling ground, plants and lighting while having super strength, Venus has powers of light and underutilizes it to an insane degree and Moon’s kind of useless without her gear aside from barriers, limited healing or firing bursts of magic which your clearly immune to. Since you’re immune to magic that’s a not so subtle hint to destroy her gear early in this fight where possible.” How nice of Jupiter to tell us all their abilities, she must really hate Moon Cell if she can resist this much while under its power. “Sorry about attacking you by the way, but as Mars said… we’re under Moon Cells control. Oh and watch out for Luna, she’s about to attack you.”

“We must kung fu fight!” The black cat biped came screaming in at me and I promptly smashed her down with a swing to the left side of her forehead using the Rhongomyniad.

She… didn’t seem to be really that great in a fight, given she went down in a single painful sounding clang. Her body was rapidly dissolving a second later, probably wouldn’t be the last time either.

“Nine lives bitches!” Said the white cat a second later as he reappeared near Venus, but he didn’t run forward and attack blindly. “Oh I’m Artemis by the way, my mate Luna is having issues with the fact that our child died a horrible death and being alive again. A lot of things happened, so she’s gone a little crazy and possibly berserk, to think she said she was the more level headed of the two of us Mau, hah! Still have to fight you though, sorry about all of this.”

“Oh its fine, I’m used to it at this point Artemis.” After an audible sigh, I firmed up my defensive posture and prepared to flare out the canopy of the Rhongomyniad as needed. Also I tried not to think of the name Luna in terms of Equestria’s Princess Luna or Nightmare Moon and the nearly endless night. “Okay everyone let’s go!”

-Counter Invasion Forces (Major thorns within Moon Cell’s body) Vs. Sailor Moon and ‘Friends’ (Magical biped animals in sailor fukus with short skirts and a tuxedo with two shape shifting support cats), (Music: Boss Battle- Shante and the Pirate’s Curse)-

“Mars fire, ignite!” Mars fired off a fireball towards Pom, however Pom didn’t move.

“Shabon spray!” Water came at Pom from the left as the fireball that turned into a phoenix screeched in for her from the right.

Pom didn’t move and glanced back at Shanty and Dodo, she gave a small gesture towards Mercury and Shanty immediately charged forward.

Quetal immediately leapt forward to Intercept Sailor Venus’s light whip with a twisting leaping slash to deflect it from hitting Pom who had yet to move and looked to be seriously thinking about something.

All of them were targeting Pom all at once, except for Moon who only had mostly magic based attacks and not elemental launching attacks. They were all going to fail to take out Moon Cell’s primary enemy, Pom, who hadn’t flinched at the concerted effort aimed at her. Even Jupiter was still taking her time with building up for firing an electrical attack from the small horn on her tiara.

Shanty took control of the Shabon Spray and redirected the attack into wiping out the fiery phoenix of fire with a sweep of her hooves with Dodo assisting her motions increasing her overall control of the gaseous blast of water.

Pom gestured to Sami and Canard towards Tuxedo Crash with her left hoof, the two nodded and moved into position to intercept him. Pom figured Quetal could handle Venus on his own for the moment.

“Supreme thunder!” A blast of lightning struck out at Pom and she didn’t move to defend herself and Dormarch sat perfectly still as the attack hit her. Jupiter was surprised by the end result. “Huh… oh right, your wool…”

Pom, unless her wool was pierced, could easily ground herself and also use her wool as a protective faraday cage to functionally become immune to the electrical attack. The attack had no magic in it, it was magic that gathered the energy and used to launch the attack, but the attack itself didn’t carry a magical charge or else it would have bounced back in Jupiter’s face.

Moon Cell had warned Jupiter and the others of Pom’s immunity and Moon at least tested that with her tiara magic and watched as it entirely bounced off of Pom in a flash of gold energy without cutting into her.

After Merak Pom was well aware that Casters could come at her, if they didn’t have to use magic directly on her that is. There was no magic in the attack despite using magic as a focal point to fire it, as such it didn’t reflect off of Pom. Jupiter’s lightning attacks weren’t going to be very effective against her.

“Dormarch harass Moon, don’t let her use any magic or build up for it.” Pom ordered and looked to Dazzle and Frizzle. “Dazzle, Frizzle, handle Mars. I’ll handle Jupiter myself.”

Dormarch immediately teleported past all the similarly clad girls and the one guy with Search Hunter to attack Moon directly with his claws, forcing her stumble back and fall onto her butt. Moon was swiftly up and running as Dormarch barked and gave chase. Normally he liked rabbits, but in this situation an exception was made as he chased the dumb crying bunny around.

Jupiter stomped forward each stomp sending waves of sand as she charged at Pom while preparing a fist.

Pom put the Rhongomyniad on her back and then a lot sand fountained into the air as her rear leg wool springs blasted her forth.

Jupiter thought Pom was being too obvious as she drove her right fist into Pom’s chest, only to knock Pom back an inch and her entire body started vibrating violently.

Pom, having stopped in the air immediately using the ability for momentum control from Dolly being rented out to her, she landed in a crouch and slammed the much taller Jupiter in the chin with a painful wobble counter with a right hoof upper.

Jupiter actually went sailing and flipping backwards.

“Are you okay? Buster Wolf!” Pom followed up landing from her spinning uppercut with her back to the still falling Jupiter. Pom spun and launched forward and her hoof impacted with Jupiter’s belly, folding her in half around said hoof, and Jupiter was hit with a subsequent explosion of energy that sent her tumbling across the sands.

“Akuryo Taisan!” Mars launched a slip of paper at Pom with incredible speed, only for it to get incinerated by Frizzle jumping into the path of it and blasting a Pyro Sphere into the offending bit of paper.

A second later Mars was lifted into the air by her right ankle on a whip made of flames and slammed into the sands harshly face first by Dazzle.

“Coconut Cyclone!” When Dazzle and Frizzle forced Mar’s attack away Jupiter had regained enough footing to launch a whirling attack of sand and an orb of raw energy shaped like a coconut towards Pom.

Pom charged on all fours and avoided the orb as it exploded near her, but had a time with dodged the whirling sands Jupiter had launched with her attack and the weak whirling sand was increased in power with Jupiter’s next move.

“Flower Hurricane!” Hundreds of pink petals of energy were launched from Jupiter into the swirling winds and they grew more powerful as it surged into a tornado that slammed into Pom.

Pom quickly found out that the petals could pierce through her wool as she got caught up in the whirling sands and the pink petals of energy punctured her body in multiple painful spots.

While Pom was dealing with a slight problem from Jupiter, Shanty was facing off with Mercury fairly easily.

Mercury found that water was highly ineffective against Shanty, as she fired a spray of ice water only for Shanty to create a Bounding Bubble and launch the ice particles back into the frog girl causing her to get drowsy from it.

“Mercury Aqua Rhapsody!” Mercury focused summoned a water harp with strings of water and started sending out boiling hot crescents of water at Shanty.

Dodo warbled as he charged forwards, but seemed to move closer to the crescents for Shanty to grapple onto the boiling water from the crescents. Once Shanty had enough of the boiling water, Dodo actively started dodging the attacks as Shanty condensed the hot water down into a spiraling white sphere between her hooves.

“White Squall!” Shanty used a whip of water to slam the boiling ball forth into a suddenly screaming Mercury’s burned face, as the entire area became covered in a white fog.

A charging Dodo quickly kicked Mercury in her chest under the cover of the boiling fog, sending Mercury flying out of it.

Tuxedo Mask, or Tuxedo Crash as he is known, knew that Moon had caused some problems… one that ended a lot of lives, but he still loved her to a ridiculous level.

The wolf that was Tuxedo Crash tried to attack Dormarch who had been hounding her with Retriever Barks. Tuxedo leapt high up and tossed a rose, only for a shot from Sami’s rifle to blast it out of the air with an unnerving amount of accuracy.

Still having a forward momentum, Tuxedo tried to slash down on Dormarch with an extending cane only for the magical blade of his cane to be deflected upwards and back by Canard’s hockey stick’s blade glowing with digital energy.

The wolf found himself promptly tackled onto his back with a left shoulder rammed into his chest with a painful force and then promptly after getting knocked down he received an explosive digital puck of energy to the face that sent him tumbling.

“You shouldn’t have been able to deflect my rose with an energy bullet, it can deflect energy attacks…” Tuxedo groused out and then held out a hand. “Tuxedo La Smoking Bomber.”

Tuxdeo sent out a powerful blast of energy that Sami and Canard had to dodge, when said energy exploded it created a massive amount of smoke that Tuxedo disappeared from sight within. Making both Sami and Canard wary of where he went.

“Oh great, he’s a stage magician…” Canard stated flatly, while the sharp eyed Sami kept her head on a swivel while palming an explosive device with her left claw as she held her rifle at the ready in her right. “If that was anything as powerful as making his cane as sharp as a sword with magic…”

“Then we should actually take the overly goofy guy seriously.” Sami finished for him as she turned and hurled a grenade into the face of an airborne Tuxedo about to toss a rose into Dormarch’s tails. She managed to successfully stop Tuxedo from getting the attack off.

The grenade blasted Tuxedo out of the air and he managed to flip and stick the landing much to Sami and Canard’s consternation that he recovered so fast to slide on the sand managed to stay standing. He might have looked like a joke at first, but he was more threatening than he appeared as he glared them down.

Mars was not having a good time, she flicked out a fireball and the heat of the flames barely put a dent in Dazzle’s body as she fired off a Round.

“Fire, fire, burning bright, leave us be and leave our sight~!” The Round from Dazzle blasted Mars back and she quickly pulled a paper tag from her magical sailor fuku with two fingers and managed to flick it out at the incoming Frizzle quickly.

“Akuryo Taisan!” Mars managed to successfully land the tag and Frizzle grunted as she was frozen in place with arcs of yellow energy surging over her body, the thing was also hurting since Frizzle was a virus type and the Miko energy really stung even if it wasn’t going to kill her.

While Frizzle couldn’t be purified to death, it certainly hurt a lot and she resisted as she watched her friend Dazzle lashed at with fire whips at the fox and went on the offensive. Mars was apparently good at handling the flaming whips and defending herself from them and Frizzle was frustrated to be frozen in place as a piece of paper stopped her from helping in the fight.

“Ki charge…” Concentrating her digital energy, Frizzle tried to destroy the piece of paper sapping her strength by gathering it and at best she regained some limited movement, but couldn’t exactly walk.

Mars really couldn’t hurt Dazzle with fire attacks, it was the fact that Mars was trying to tag Dazzle with one of these pieces of paper and that might give her hostages. Frizzle actually couldn’t over power the tag and a digital evolution wouldn’t help as she felt it would be easier to hit her with these paper tags to stun her like this if she became even larger.

At least Dazzle was holding her own with Rounds, a series of Fire Lashes, a Dragon Pulse that clipped Mars shoulder actually doing some heavy damage to her magical fuku to reveal her shoulder and even tried to land a Toxic on Mars, the fox was far too evasive.

The fire attacks mars fired back in the form of spiraling fireballs, swirling rings of eight orbs of flames, a powerful burning phoenix with purifying power, none of it slowed Dazzle down in the slightest.

Frizzle really like fighting, it was in her blood as a Guilmon… well as much as she loved bread really. This being stunned by a piece of paper with holy energy was quite humil… wait a moment.

Concentrating her Ki surge energy on the paper trying to purify her, Frizzle took the energy in willingly instead of fighting it.

Knowing what she did about the original Guilmon, she had an idea that was about to help with Mars fire spewing fox that was about to start targeting Pom again. Pom was currently downing a Hi-potion for a number of nasty bleeding wounds caused by Jupiter’s attack.

Frizzle finally did what Dormarch and Sami were known to do, appropriate data, use their brains and work their energy to their own needs. Fizzle wasn’t actually a slouch in the intelligence department, she just preferred the direct and aggressive approach.

“Hyper wings!” Frizzle shouted as she absorbed the paper tags miko energy and adorable looking white angel wings exploded out of her back and launched her forward at an insane speed with a single flap, Mars didn’t see the incoming claw attack and was blindsided completely by it and how squeakily high pitched Frizzle’s voice was. “Rock breaker!”

The vulpine face of Mars was badly smashed in by Frizzle, Frizzle’s raw strength with the added momentum of the hyper wings almost took out the fox in a single powerful blow that sent her bouncing across the sands.

Mars was quite stunned by the blow, mostly by the fact that it almost entirely bypassed her magical sailor fuku’s defenses. Her broken muzzles, bleeding and badly bruised face hurt a lot as she staggered back into standing and her form became encased in flames of anger. She was not going to go down so easily to such brute force!

Frizzle for her part was happy to have gained a method of creating wings, even if they were temporary. She didn’t need to rely on Dazzle’s Dragon Type energy to fly now. The wings she had would last a few minutes at the very least and her body was rapidly forming the utility program from this, sure it would take some energy, but wings whenever she wanted them at the cost of digital energy to produce them was a very mild price to pay really. Plus the holy energy data might be helpful in achieving her Mega evolution, she could feel the Gallantmon burgeoning inside of her… only it wasn’t time for Frizzle to quite become that yet and she doubted Dazzle would want to fuse to her.

Pom saw the fire attack from Mars was about to be launched, until the Fox’s face was smashed in. Pom managed to recover her injuries by finishing off the Hi-potion, in time to avoid a tidal wave of sand caused by Jupiter stomping her right foot down.

Springing high up in the air, Pom fired off a bark buster and the liquid magic arced into the top of Jupiter’s skirt to promptly explode and knock the otter over.

While her opponent was busy getting back up, Pom was taking in the battlefield noting what was happening.

Quetal was double teaming Venus with a Substitude copy of himself.

Shanty and Dodo had Mercury locked down.

Tuxedo was causing Sami and Canard some problems as he seemed to quickly disappear and reappear in clouds of smoke while trying to hit them with a powerful energy blast attack.

Frizzle now had wings for some and was helping Dazzle deal with a flame covered angry Mars.

Dormarch was successfully keeping Moon from doing anything of note, but that didn’t mean Moon couldn’t be dangerous as Pom felt a mass of magic in that one rabbit exceeded everyone in this realm including her own magical capacity.

“Ocellus send in the rest of the Pokémon Companions, we need to take these servants down quick before Moon Cell can rebuild a mass of EPs to challenge our frontal assault!” Pom called it as she saw it, they needed a little help. “Favela should help Shanty and Dodo quickly finish off their target, Mundo should help Canard and Sami with pinning down their target, while Shine can support Quetal with his. Now where are those two cats?”

Pom quickly turned, aimed her right hoof and launched a Thousand Spear jet of air with her wool to blast Artemis out of the air before he could claw at Dormarch and distract him from keeping Moon locked down. Pom also noted that Artemis had been staring at Venus the mink a lot.

A second later Pom smashed Luna into the ground with the Rhongomyniad the Mau growled in rage at being taken down so easily in a single hit again. This Luna wasn’t exactly scary given she was already dissolving, the reason being that her head had spun one hundred and eighty degrees from the immediately fatal blow. In fact Luna seemed to have done worse this time than the last time she took a blow to the skull.

Jupiter came charging in with fists charged up with lightning and ready to continue pressuring Pom, though the look in her eyes said she wanted to be defeated and for Moon Cell to be put out of commission.

Nearby Shanty wasn’t having a hard time with dealing with Mercury’s water attacks, the ice attacks were a bit harder to deal with as Shanty had no ability to control ice and at least Dodo was slashing apart most of the ice that was intended to hit Shanty.

Several jutting of spikes erupted out of the ground keeping Shanty and Dodo away from Mercury with every approach and attack they tried, even the cinnamon rolls Dodo used couldn’t melt through the ice fast enough.

“Hmm… biomechanical being… not capable of rusting… maybe I can…” Mercury was interrupted from looking up stuff on her computer and trying to figure out a way to do more than hold Shanty and Dodo at bay when a she was dragged away from her screen by a vine.

Mercury’s face was slammed into one of her own pillar of ice face first by a second vine. While entirely dazed, Mercury was swiftly pulled out into the open from her defensive position and hit with a series of exploding Seed Bombs that damaged her protective magical fuku heavily.

Mercury was super weak to Grass Types. As Favela had shown up to assist Shanty in a timely manner.

Mercury was a bit confused when the plant tentacle released her and the goat that created said tentacle wave it at her with it while giving her a mischievous grin.

“Perhaps I might have miscalculated…” Mercury managed to state as she quickly formed a sword of magical dark ice in an attempt to defend herself. She had tried to encase the water surrounding Shanty in her magic and explode her, but the explode part didn’t happen and Shanty’s magic was apparently really strong.

Shanty was launched into the air high enough by Dodo that she could do several forward flips before bring the blade of her cane scythe down to try and slash Mercury in half.

“Grand Cleave!” Shanty’s scythe blade tore straight through the frog girl’s magical defenses, the sword she just formed and the servant was taken out of the fight with the point of the blade tearing through her heart and upper torso in a devastating cutting arc. “Thanks for the help Favela, her ice attacks were getting annoying.”

“Glad to be of service captain!” Favela responded cheerfully as she turned to look at who they would go after next. “Who should we help next?”

Venus was having a heck of a time trying to deal with Quetal. The mink could feel that Quetal was a creature of darkness and maybe ice, but as far as being like an average youma… a youma Quetal was not. Venus felt like she was on the wrong end of a honey badger after so many claw strikes connected and it was hard to tell which one was the actual Quetal given they both moved in exactly the same ways.

Both Quetal and his substitute copy dodged Venus’s beams of light, crescent glinting boomerangs, her heart chain whip strikes and her golden heart blasts. She had held off an entire evil organization on her own, she shouldn’t be having nearly this much trouble with a dodging shadow weasel!

The two Quetals seemed to notice something sliding amongst the sand and they both grinned as they fired off Swift attacks in a massive blinded barrage that created numerous shadows along the ground that had Venus swirling her whip in defense.

“Okay… I might be a bit limited in my powers, but I’m not so easily.” As Venus tried to talk, Shine popped out of the ground and threw a jaw breaking haymaker to the right side of Venus’s face with her left plant hair fist. The surprising attack actually broke her jaw to the point she couldn’t retaliate as Shine dove back into the shadows of the sand from the numerous Swift shots still flying in and pelting Venus with numerous explosive bits of energy. “Aghh… what the heck was that!”

“A trickster and a ninja working together.” Stated the two Quetals as they both used aerial ace at the same time to close in and start slashing up Venus violently and then they stopped standing on both Venus’s left and right side. “Beat Up!”

Numerous shadow figures of all of Quetals nearby friends erupted and Venus tried to defend with the power of light, but the darkness was overwhelming as was the strange pink darts suddenly taking up space in both of her lungs when her magical fuku armor should have prevent them from easily puncturing into her.

Venus started feeling very cold as the pummeling attack kept coming in nonstop and it wouldn’t be long before she was taken down. She could really use Moon’s help right about now… except Moon was quite useless when she wasn’t being given time to act.

Shine had been sitting on those corsola spikes for a while now anyway and figured now was a good time to use them while charging them with ghostly energy to give them a little extra oomph.

“You’re not taking Venus down without going through me!” Artemis yelled as he leapt into action for his partner.

Frizzle didn’t know how it had happened, but she been grappled and violently thrown by Mars.

The fox was fighting back enraged even if her fire covered from really wasn’t doing much to put the fire resilient Dazzle and Frizzle on the back foot.

“Ugh… you want fire, I’ll show you fire…. Rrrrrrragghhh…” Mars stated as she started building up for a powerful fire attack, only to be struck with a Solar Beam that sent her skidding across the sands and forced her to drop her building attack. “My armor…”

Mars magic armor was now running on fumes, it wouldn’t hold up to another powerful beam attack like that.

“Pom did call for the Pokémon companions to assist right?” Cleffa the clefairy asked innocently as she hopped and skipped up to Dazzle and Frizzle. They nodded to her in acknowledgement as they turned to focus on Mars. “Well I’m a Pokémon and I’m a companion through and through, I’ll make Mr. Thunderbeak proud!”

“Why isn’t anyone helping me?!” Moon whined as Dormarch teleported and slashed at her with his goofy claws, she tried to kick him and missed entirely as he teleported as slashed her right kidney and spine as he flashed past her back.

Moon was quite upset she wasn’t even being given time to monologue about love, justice and the moon… cell. Where was the talking as a free action?! She was quite used to getting away with it a lot with all the other things she fought in her last two lives! Still she was quite fast when it came to running… now if only she had a piece of yummy toast for her mouth.

Tuxedo tried to stop Dormarch from continually harrying Moon with a rose or trying get close enough to use his cane, only his flying leap towards Moon was intercepted quite painfully.

“Flying Press!” Mundo immediately bodied Tuxedo quite harshly from out of nowhere with a dive from above.

Tuxedo got sent flying backing into a hockey stick blade stabbing right into his spine. He soon had a sticky grenade lodged underneath his chin against his throat, having been thrown by Sami. Canard pulled his hockey stick free and leapt away as the Sami remotely detonated the explosive device once Canard was clear of the breaching charge sticky grenade.

Surprisingly Tuxedo actually survived the experience of having a grenade go off on his neck point blank, especially in the form of a shaped charge specifically designed to blow off his head.

“This might take us a bit longer than thought…” A slightly battered Sami grumbled and Canard readied his hockey stick as Mundo joined them three to one and none of them were taking the guy lightly considering the explosion he just survived.

“Okay… that seriously hurt.” Tuxedo growled his wolf ears flicking forward as he readied a cane and rose.

“Okay, again, we’re taking him quite seriously after that!” Sami muttered, both Canard and Mundo nodded while staring down the top hat and tuxedo wearing wolf.

While Tuxedo and Moon were busy, Pom was finding Jupiter to be a seriously dangerous opponent.

Pom kicked up with her left hind leg, only to have it caught by Jupiter who tried to pull her forward and punch her unprotected face.

Jupiter soon yelled in pain as Pom’s wool quickly started rotating around her hind leg and it expanded outwards slicing deeply into the otter’s right hand forcing her to let go and back off. A shimmer in the air slashed into Jupiter forcing her to block with her left arm as she slammed Pom into staggering and stumbling backwards with a kick to the face from her left leg.

“Is it strange that I feel hopeful that you’ll actually beat us?” Jupiter stated as she examined her left arm and the painful cut the wire wool left in it, the magical fuku armor wasn’t holding up as well as it should.

Jupiter figured it had to do with their opponents, their armor could normally handle tank shells. They were currently fighting heroes, good ones that weren’t going to start a benevolent dictatorship, which was so much better than what Moon did in her book. Sure making a lot of people semi-immortal sounded good on paper to Jupiter, but in practice it was always going to end poorly given the whole nine hundred years as a child thing with the emotional spectrum of being said child being stuck to you without the ability to ever grow up.

“I’ll try to make it quick.” Pom stated as she swiped the blood from a battered nose and chin, then pulled the Rhongomyniad from her back. She inhaled sharply through her mouth and readied the Rhongomyniad in an offensive charge stance.

“Please do, I don’t take any joy in hurting you.” Jupiter stated as she didn’t see Mercury anymore.

Mercury unfettered should have done much better and more capable, but then again her water attack at the start of the fight had been redirected by someone with control of the element. Which would be a glaring problem for the frog girl.

“Rhongomyniad!” Pom called out and the spear started glowing brightly as she launched herself forward, Jupiter caught the spear and then realized that it was burning straight through the armored gloves she was wearing.

“Flower Hurricane!” Jupiter quickly once again sent a flurry of flowers petals at Pom, only this time she was ready for them and opened the Rhongomyniad’s canopy to block all of them and stopped charging forward as Jupiter put some distance between them and continued launching more petals.

Pom suddenly change stand and had turned her back on Jupiter confusing her.

“Are you okay?” Pom stated quietly with the canopy of the Rhongomyniad hanging over head, Jupiter saw a red spark in the corner of Pom’s left eye as she turned her head slightly, before her body turned and the lambkin exhaled the early energy she somehow managed to store for this moment. “Buster Lance…”

One second Jupiter was ready to try and deflect the attack, the next thing she knew the spear was already in her torso and she was being lifted off the ground by the much smaller ewe and saw a slight red tint in Pom’s vibrant blue eyes.

Jupiter hadn’t expected Pom’s sudden speed or how fast she had been attacked, only a few of the life draining monsters known as ‘Youma’ could have possibly kept up with that kind of true speed.

“Wolf!” The last sight seen after Pom intoned that word by Jupiter was a spiritual wolf rising towards her face maw wide open and claws glinting as if it was in the middle of a dark forest despite the daylight all around them.

Pom heaved after the attack and planted the Rhongomyniad into the sand next to her to stay standing, she tried not to look at the two clawed up halves of a slowly disappearing torso that used to be a servant. The Rhongomyniad tore straight through the protections that the obviously magical armor gave without pause. The lambkin shivered at the power she wielded and had a slight fear of the spear after that experience.

Pom was left gasping on the spot as she surveyed the battlefield again. Mercury down, Jupiter definitely down, Mars… just went down to Toxic from Dazzle as her entire body seems to have turned purple and was evaporating, Venus had Artemis held in her arms and there were multiple knives sticking out of their bodies as they evaporated and that left Moon, Luna and Tuxedo.

Moon was surprisingly still running and fending off Dormarch and Tuxedo was still holding strong, as for Luna… just got gunned down by Sami before she could even take two steps in Pom’s direction.

“I know I’m not supposed to run from a real fight, but can we retreat, please?!” Moon whined as she joined up with Tuxedo and he fended off Dormarch with a blast of energy followed by billowing white smoke as they avoided the rest of us slowly coming at them from all sides. “I don’t like losing like this!”

“It would be prudent to run, my magical armor can barely hold up much longer… these are really powerful foes. Though I think we’ve held them here long enough for Moon Cell’s plans.” Tuxedo wrapped Moon in his cape and leapt away onto one of the crystal walls of the crystal maze and started retreating towards Moon Cell’s Nexus. “We can revive them if given time Sailor Moon!”

Did they honestly need to tell everyone their eventual plans out loud? Sounded like a dumb thing to do really.

-Sailor Moon and ‘friends’ completely routed, proceeding to the new front lines in the desert of devastation, Pom-

“After them, we can’t let those servants become a problem later, drink some Hi-potions on the move!” As I said this a skvader flew down and tossed me a Hi-potion and an ether, I greedily drank down the ether and stored the Hi-potion for later.

We all started forward, our retreat point was Castle Alexander and the air around Moon Cell’s nexus looked heavily embattled with all the lasers flying around. We soon caught up with the forward contingent of Aurora forces, they were using Rounds, Uproars, Boom Bursts and any sound based attack they had to keep the EPs at bay and their numbers were becoming increasingly worse.

It was unfortunate that we wouldn’t have Castle Alexander to deal with this and the enemy was putting everything they had between us and getting inside the nexus where Moon Cell’s core was. We were going all in now and we weren’t stopping for anything.

-Moon Cell Nexus battle line, BB-

“Hm…” A lot of tough opponents and not enough resources to deal with them all, what’s a world twisting AI with a soul supposed to do… win for one. Their attempts to try and break our lines will fail, since I'll be there.

-Dragnor Kingdom of Dragons, Dragnor Castle, King Evan-

I can’t believe I did it, behind me lay a defeated Oda Nobunaga much to the surprise of many dragons as they stared in disbelief. Even Jiri was staring in disbelief.

I couldn’t see out of my right eye, I think both my back legs were broken, I was bleeding a lot and my body was a wreck.

It wasn’t me that they were staring at though.

“So tell me… what do you want?” Blinking up at the tall figure. “You who so have united the realm of Ransei at a great cost to your personal health?”

It was Arceus they were staring at.

“I want to save my friends and the worlds that are endangered!” Battered and broken my body may be, but I still had the ability to stand and look Arceus in the eyes.

“I so do love someone who knows what they want and will fight above their natural ability to see it achieved.” Arceus stated with a warm chuckle and I was promptly filled with a warmth flooding my very being. “I think you should all prepare to take the battle to the enemy as soon as the mystery dungeons are assuredly dealt with.”

-Arceus-

Note to self, continue to never tell Pokémon that I outsource all my uses of ‘heal pulse’ from other Pokémon, specifically Chansey.

Author's Note

Yes, this version of Sailor Moon messed some things up... mind you the Moon Kingdom being built around Moon Cell was already doomed to fail eventually.

Point of fact, 'Crystal Tokyo' can't happen unless Moon and Tuxedo actively usurped the local government to take over things as king and queen.

Sailor Pluto spent a lot of time manipulation on trying to actively force Crystal Tokyo to happen. How many times did Pluto have to divert the time stream to put it back... on 'her' envisioned track? You can't say she was looking for the best outcome, just the outcome she wanted most and was willing to force by any means necessary.

At least that's one interpretation of what Sailor Pluto does, despite the fact that even she shouldn't meddle with the time stream.

I might trust Sailor Moon with saving the world, but I definitely wouldn't trust her to run it for logistical reasons. Such as a 900 year old, never aging, daughter constantly traveling into the past and messing with the time stream.

453. All In: Incoming Heroes!

-Equus, Ponyville, Jade-

“I’m honestly surprised you managed to restrain yourself the whole trip.” Why wouldn’t one be able to Fizzy, my beloved shadowy tempest in a tea pot? The cute mare with those beautiful vibrant glaring eyes. Also that she was fit and had muscles, on a unicorn, was hot. “Even Silvers managed to not cause an incident… the one I’m truly angry at is Mara.”

“Sorry…” Mara stated, the sabretooth tiger was currently separated from her sister Maria and Marie with her tail between her legs. She was in the naughty corner.

“I was watching Jade and Silvers like a hawk the entire time and nothing happened, we even had a nice trip down the River of Denial with inner tubes and even had a very nice spiced campfire baked piranha lunch.” Fizzy continued while glaring at Mara. “How in the world were you the one that caused the problems and not Jaded ‘Mirage, the enemy of Saddle Arabia’ La Perm? I was expecting Jade to go crazy and do something to Saddle Arabia at some point.”

“Not going to lie to my family, I still want to.” I said loudly and clearly as I cuddled Silvers to my chest and they mewled happily at the affection snuggle. “Also my plan worked perfectly I’ll have you know, all eyes were on us and not the secret shipment of quick growing blobs of living gelatin… the most annoying flavor no less! It was kind of hard for me to get the ‘battle durians’ shipped in from Huoshan for it, but I’m sure the Saddle Arabians will appreciate the unique flavor. I’m sure most have heard of the Smooze right? Well Saddle Arabia now has an edible flavorful version of it… and the most evil thing about it is that its sugar free. If you need to know, I set that up four months in advance, so there was no chance of anyone stopping ‘this’ gelatin attack.”

They forgot that I could repeat plans and make them even worse the second time around.

“Ugh, Jaded… why, I thought you were doing so good?!” Fizzy resisted face hoofing and sighed, I still had immediatley told after we had already basically arrived back home. “Come on… family hug, I’m needy you jerks.”

“We’re all jerks here Fizz.” I said as I rubbed up against Fizzy affectionately and licked the tip of her nose, she still wrapped a hoof around me and squeezed roughly and even brought all of Maries into the snuggle session. She idly levitated and rocked Silvers in the air carefully off to the side as she tried to strangle me… affectionately of course.

“Wait… so Saddle Arabia is trying to be weirder than Ponyville now… I can’t let that happen!” Pinkie Pie declared with a raised hoof before she ran off. She eventually ran back and glared at me. “Also sugar free… like Fizzlepop said… really, REALLY NOW?! I know you dislike Saddle Arabia, but I didn’t think you’d be ‘THAT’ petty evil about it!”

Within a week Saddle Arabia would be declared weirder than Ponyville, mostly just because Pinkie Pie showed up there. This was much to the pink hyper magical earth pony’s chagrin.

Apparently the yaks of Yakyakistan had a blast fighting the edible ‘battle durian’ flavored slime monsters that that were now a common sight in Saddle Arabia as a part of its ecosystem and Prince Rutherford of the yaks declared it one of the greatest, smelliest and most smash happy battles of all time having fought the initial swarm.

Yep the slimes are now a pest species of Saddle Arabia as a self-replicating unique desert dessert for connoisseurs or gourmets, always very distinctly smelled before seen.

Yaks actually liked ‘battle durian’ flavored things, who knew.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei, news-

Arceus broadcasted the battle that united all of Ransei, at least those who weren’t currently embattled with the Enemy Programs or tearing apart the Moon Cell Mystery Dungeons with everything they had. The god of Pokémon wasn’t about to distract his subjects in the middle of something important.

Fifteen times King Evan was felled, fifteen times he got up to keep fighting to unite the continent that looked like Arceus from the side.

Evan even voided an evolution at one point and kept fighting with a broken body, that he even felled a Hydreigon was a great upheaval in itself… but it was also Lord Nobunaga that he defeated that really made the point stick.

When both Oda and Evan went down, the Eevee was the one that struggled onto his front paws… his back legs were long since broken at that point.

A sixteenth time the bloody and still barely aware battered Eevee stood up to make sure that if anyone wanted to challenge him on uniting Ransei, then they had to go through him first. Nobody wanted to challenge ‘crazy’.

Everyone just blinked collectively at the same time and Arceus was there, as if he always had been there and had been watching among the crowd the entire time as he stepped forward.

Nobody had dared attack Evan as Arceus, the god of Pokémon and ‘the legendary’ themselves, had shown up to stare down at the Eevee.

Evan stared into Arceus’s eyes, he didn’t blink, he didn’t back down and he would have fought to the death if it was needed. The little Eevee was declared to have an unbending spirit despite a thoroughly broken body. The little fox did just fight a dragon to within a few inches of his life.

Oda only needed to go down once and stay down, Evan refused to stay down until he was dead and he absolutely proved his willpower unbreakable to the dragons of the kingdom of Dragnor. He also proved a legend about uniting Ransei, if after more than fifty years have passed since the last time he was summoned, Arceus would appear when Ransei becomes united for a single cause again.

It didn’t matter what that cause was, as long as Ransei united for it and fighting didn’t even need to be a part of the equation… but it was the fun way for Pokémon to do things and so they tended to go the route of fighting. King Evan went mostly the route of diplomacy.

Ransei, as one, started working to take the fight to the major enemy that was Moon Cell and they would quickly have their forces in Moon Cell’s realm soon enough.

Only all of Ransei wouldn’t be able to be the next to arrive on the field of battle. As that honor, surprisingly enough, belonged to the Digital Realms of Yggdrasil System and whatever they could spare with the enemy crystal alien super computer of genocide in their systems.

-Pokémon Afterlife Bureau, Yveltal-

Yveltal the ‘Y’ shaped Pokémon bird god of death had been busy in making sure the magical computer couldn’t reuse or steal souls that fell in Ransei, the Ghost type Pokémon were perfectly safe. Hundreds fell, but Moon Cell was having a problem grasping at any souls without a Velber to vacuum them up.

The recent additions to Yveltal’s collection were the inner sailor scouts, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Artemis and Jupiter.

Jupiter was sent to her afterlife family to be reincarnated in a world where crazy stuff didn’t happen to her, where she could be happy. She kind of deserved it for going above and beyond while under Moon Cell’s control to rat out all her friends’ abilities, so a nice quiet and boring world would be nice for her.

So maybe the Cake Masters world? Jupiter never shied away from a little spice.

Mars was being sent to a world of demons that needed all the help it could get. Hopefully some growth would at least let her break out of her shell this time… that or put her with Tanya Degurechaff in a fit of irony, might actually save her from that jerk Being X if done correctly. Also Mars had a thing for blondes that was intrinsic to her soul and couldn’t be removed, so Yveltal didn’t bother trying. Choices, choices, Yveltal kicked it to the Pokémon deer of life Xerneas for a final decision.

Venus… well he was definitely separating her soul from Artemis for multiple reasons, she needed a world where she could have some friends and a functionally normal and ‘absolutely stable’ relationship not built on bizarre circumstances.

Artemis was far worse than a Wooloo and a Wooloo’s crimes were usually benign and only trying too hard to love everything all at once without breaking taboos. Not once has a Wooloo broken said taboos as a faithful flock.

Yveltal simply put a mental sticky note on the white furred Mau’s soul and passed it to Xerneas for judgement, he didn’t want that soul molesting any other girl’s souls by proximity and it was surprising he even managed to have a child with Luna. The continuation of the Mau as an uplifted species was never going to be a thing.

If Luna the Mau eventually came in, she would quickly be given a break after being driven to insanity… maybe as a pony with a loving sister in a friendship based world?

-Moon Cell, Inner Realm, Desert of Devastation, middle of the ruined Crystal Maze region, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

Pom’s offensive got better now that those servants were out of the way and two even retreated, didn’t know if the black cat counted as a full on servant though so it was two and a sub servant at best. If there was such a thing.

It had me wondering what was up with that, individually they weren’t nearly as much of a problem as Merak had been. Maybe if they had worked together instead of being split up and taken down individually by multiple opponents?

Had Merak not been as lazy as he was, we would have entered this inner realm in a far worse state.

-Nexus side of the battlefield, BB-

Oh right… they weren’t connected to their planets were they, so they drew an egregious amount of power from Moon Cell. No wonder they fell so fast, even if they could call up an equivalent of their recorded power temporarily as servants.

At least Moon and Tuxedo were powerful enough without planetary connections and didn’t need them, but summoning the outers now would likely end as poorly… as the inners. Also the fact that the inners couldn’t be revived told me the enemy action was preventing us from resurrecting servants back to our side of the field.

Might be summoning the outers anyway, very few beings can stand up to the spear wielded by the Chrysomallus. Saturn would definitely be hard for them to deal with quickly and a good match to slow down that ewe’s constant forward progress.

“Sending requisition form… sailor senshi outers, Neptune, Uranus, Pluto and Saturn… with the Silence Glaive.” A pause and then granted by a desperate Moon Cell system as Moon and Tuxedo quietly waited next to me, the summoning sequence began for the four servants.

The Silence Glaive, Scythe of Silence, a conceptual weapon that is the end of all things… how well will it compare to the likes of the Rhongomyniad?

-Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

However with most of our forces out there on the attack we’re mostly down to a skeleton crew of noncombatants in the form of the Miltanks and the Gazimon. Elise and Copen were here, but Artoria and Mash were out bringing in as many APs as they could field from their medieval forces, Fou would be bringing his wild beasts to the front eventually too.

Fou still wanted to hunt Pom afterwards, but he didn’t want anyone else to be the one to end Pom before he’s done with her. It sounded more playful than evil from the way Mash tells it, but Pom still didn’t like being near Fou for notable reasons.

Jeanne didn’t want to leave us undefended. We only took out every EP in a five mile radius, every EP beyond that radius was now showing up on the horizon and there were still thousands of them even as Pom tried get whatever forces we could cobble together to punch through to Moon Cell’s Nexus to get inside and destroy the core. Things weren’t going well on that front, Pom and the others had been stalled out by their numbers… at least they were attracting the brunt of what Moon Cell could throw at us.

We were the last bastion of the counter invasion force. If this castle and its self-produced territory fell, then there would be no safe haven to transfer supplies to the front from.

The Mirage Collective with their leader Mirage Mew was sending in combat aid behind us and Mirage Mew pledged to take the field themselves soon.

Moon Cell was actively trying to cut off our stressed supply lines, as we thought it would, since we got this close the nexus. Pom still had like ten miles of EPs to battle through towards the floating cube in the distance.

The Combat APs from Mare Melum Harmony Programs were also trickling in, but it wasn’t going to be nearly enough to save us from the hordes of Enemy Programs bearing down on us. The Skvader Caerbannogs were very much welcome on the field of battle or delivering supplies to us or our fielded soldiers, their utility and support were always a welcome sight.

Moon Cell has tried to focus on stopping them from reaching Castle Alexander or the defensive anti-air firepower in the form of the Blumebears. Moon Cell’s aerial forces were becoming quite a problem and we didn’t exactly have the ability to keep this up for much longer, giant wasps, strange flying vehicles, flying saucers, flying horseshoes with strange grenade happy turtle things… nobody could know how many destroyed worlds Moon Cell was pulling from for its aerial forces.

We were surrounded, but we weren’t dead yet and weren’t doing too bad either… now if only Castle Alexander wasn’t currently experiencing extreme power drain because of its most powerful ability ‘Divine Judgement’.

We cleared a space, but we were about to be hammered from all sides instead of just being hit with swarms of aerial enemies bypassing our front lines to give us trouble. Our Blumebears setting up cycling Torneko mine defenses wouldn’t hold them off for much longer. Every available AP that wasn’t needed for defense, was being put out there to run to front line immediately as soon as they formed.

We’d be soon crushed under the weight of the enemy forces if Pom and the others couldn’t break through Moon Cell’s defensive lines quickly enough to take out Moon Cell. They currently couldn’t so… yeah… this was a major problem.

“Ocellus, sensors are back up, unknown signatures are coming in from our left… do you think it might be those Eater things?” Smolder asked as she was particularly worried about those things when they ate half of Midgar before we collapsed more than half the city to destroy them while destroying another quarter of the city with Castle Alexander itself.

Had there been any living beings that we needed to be worried about, the situation of destroying a city of that size would have been more horrifying than it was. NPCs like Cait Sith weren’t too worried, they were preserved information and souls forced to carry out their jobs by Moon Cell.

They even showed up briefly before Geoff and Aurora’s militia forces appeared, thankfully overriding said Eater invasion. It was still a major worry as we couldn’t handle an invasion of Eaters suddenly attacking us right now on top of everything else going on with me having to coordinate a brain destroying load of information at once.

It’s a good thing I’m used to the mentally crushing pressure, I will begrudgingly admit that ‘Bad Queen’ Chrysalis at least prepared me for all of this.

I was about to answer Smolder’s worry as I looked over the freshly rejuvenated sensors that came back online.

We were surrounded by an angry mass of red bearing down on us. Blue was our forces and behind us more blue appeared as Artoria and Mash finally arrived with their AP forces. The unknown signatures weren’t labeled until we got an idea of what they were, if they were just more EPs, then they’d be labeled accordingly. Like we don’t have enough enemy programs already.

The only empty ground we would soon see was between us and the front lines of battle being led by Geoff at the moment, as Pom moved up to support our Aurora allies. I hoped Maiden Jig was okay back in Aurora with just Tauros, if anyone were to attack Aurora now they’d probably be entirely defenseless.

“Cid can we get visuals back up? Sensor screens showing unusual activity to our left.” If it was the Eaters, we were in for a Tartarus of a fight trying to survive them as there wasn’t much edible in the desert and we were a big juicy target for them to chew on next to Moon Cell.

“Almost got it… thirty seconds… are we about to come under attack?” If there was a godsend, it was our engineer Cid for sticking with us through all of this mess since we recruited him.

“Negative, we’re still in the clear for another five minutes before the EP waves coming at both our sides hit us. Pom, be aware Grabbers are around, Moon Cell has stalled you long enough to field a few. Sensors show seismic activity in your area.” My ability for mental calculations grew quite a lot, also being mission control was becoming a thing for me. The visuals came up and… I blinked… I blinked again and then just stared wide eyed. “Seventy percent of the APs around Castle Alexander, defenses to our front and back, focus on the aerial forces. Once our allied forces from Artoria and Mash arrive, they will cover our backs, then change to forward defnse… yes, we have allies inbound from left!”

(Music: ‘Hoshi No Kaabi- Warp Star’ or ‘Stadium- Kirby Air Ride’)

The visuals showed the Metal Walkers brigade as we saw them passing through the digital realm, they weren’t alone as they faded into existence on the horizon behind the wall of enemies coming at us. They came along with what Pom had described as the Kings Kames, Skate Scamps, Data Divers, Basher Bullies, Pink Poopers and even Musical Maestros led by a dancing penguin with a serious looking peg legged penguin at his side and they were coming in fast.

They weren’t the only ones coming though… they weren’t alone, not by a long shot. A majority of their forces were coming here to reinforce us, however that wasn’t the best news… that was seen in the next instant

A red spark appeared high in the sky at the left side of Castle Alexander and I turned visuals up and blinked a single arcing lance like red light suddenly burst apart, billions upon billions of branches expanding from one point… the air, no… reality itself, looked to have broken in sudden an instant and cracked.

I knew that the spears struck the hearts of the enemy before it was ever thrown. That was a strange feeling, because the only being I knew that could do that was...

Suddenly there were only a quarter of the thousands to possible millions of EPs there previously were on the left side of Castle Alexander and thousands more Digimon appearing by the second following them. What were at first a swarm of smaller Digimon, some of which I recognized like Commandramon, soon started growing into monstrously sized Digimon coming in and a lot of them had dinosaur like aesthetics and there were just as many flying as there were walking on the ground.

That’s when Cu Chulainn landed and raised his right spiked fist into the air while letting out a soundless roar on the visuals as he pointed towards us and then at Moon Cell’s nexus. With him were several beings, including that owl archer that once shot at Pom… the small group following Cu Chulainn’s lead broke off and started for the front lines including a white wolf with red markings, a familiar yet far friendlier looking noivern, the nine tailed fox that oddly called Pom ‘husband’ and an indescribable variety of weird beings surged forth onto the battlefield with them. Likely all of them were Digimon.

A minute later, things started to look brighter as on our right more signatures started to appear, looking at visuals on the horizon I saw a brown paw fade into existence, this was soon followed by the confident eyes of King Evan and what had to be every single last combat capable Pokémon in the Ransei region that wasn’t needed for their kingdoms defenses slowly fading into existence behind him.

He looked at the castle tilted his head and he pointed out the battle field where arcing electro balls were trying to puncture through the thick wall of EPs. The Kings, Queens, Overlords and other leaders of Ransei immediately started forth towards the front lines with their strongest contingents, while the rest of their armies started hitting the backsides of the enemies on our right with a brutal assault that the enemy tried to fend off against.

King Evan charged forward heedless of the many, MANY, Enemy Programs in his path. What happened next was a large swath of EPs being burned down by a raining what looked like a ‘Divine Judgement’ on our right side. The sensors showed a depletion of more than eighty five percent of the enemies on our right.

Stalking forth, the one who had unleashed an attack just as, if not far more powerful than Cu Chulainn’s was Arceus. The majestic god slowly stalked forward at an even pace while staring at the nexus, not running forward like his children the Pokémon. The god didn’t seemed to be bothered at all by what was happening around them as they slowly took the field at an even pace.

We weren’t alone anymore on the front lines, for help had arrived and it would be quite welcome even as the number of EPs surged around Moon Cell’s Nexus and it recovered from the earlier Divine Judgement bombardment.

-Stalled on the front lines, nearing the Moon Cell Nexus and approximately ten miles out, Pom-

“What was that?” I asked as I continued to try and bludgeon my way through the front lines and watched as the Assassin Reaper finally started dissolving.

Dolly was getting hammered above us and we were almost dry of aerial forces and our ground forces were starting to suffer from the Moon Cell Watcher’s bombarding us with lasers.

It had looked like Cu Chulainn’s attack, then another Divine Judgment went off, but it wasn’t caused by Castle Alexander this time.

A swarm of incoming Moon Cell Watcher’s were quickly blown away by what remained of our air forces. It kept them from tearing apart our front lines. The Wooloo and Dubwool kept trying to push the enemy defenses back and break them despite us being hit from three sides at once, they seemed to enjoy the struggle at least.

The Commandramon were much better pilots than the Rider Zealots for the Jet Magitek Armors, Dolly was at the head of their two squadrons trying to keep the enemy air off of us. As they had been attempting to beat us into the dirt.

“I have returned!” Stated Dragoon Fenix as he came falling out of the sky, bodily smashing through a swarm of Moon Cell Watcher’s and landed in sand kicking up huge pillars of the stuff and then the four legged took up a position with shielding me and several friends from hundreds of projectiles with its shields.

It continued forward unheeded… but it hadn’t come from Castle Alexander, how did it appear here? Last I saw it was once a pile of wrecked metal and blue fluids.

That’s when the combat in the air suddenly changed and I looked back to see the Skarmory unit flying off to the right of our forces, suddenly a large bird streaked in and tore the enemy out of the air with numerous Flying Type Pokémon.

“Ah yeah, Masumune Date in the house from Avia to the battlefront!” Shouted the giant bird as he flew near me and he continued to careen through numerous enemies without stopping… or even getting injured. He eventually swooped around and stopped above me flapping his powerful wings. “Well if it isn’t the hero of Team Harmony, don’t worry about the enemy air. There soon won’t be any left because Avia is in the skies! And I guess Dragnor is helping too… need an escort or aerial support, well we’ve got you covered hero!”

“I don’t like being called a hero.” I grumbled loudly.

“Hey, don’t be like that, party over here!” Masamune Date yelled off to the right as he took to the skies. “Team Harmony representing and still alive after being stuck behind enemy lines for so long!”

“Nice to see you’re doing alright little lady!” Stated Etemon’s voice, but when I looked I saw a mass of metal and muscle. “Aw yeah, I’ve gotten bigger guns since I last saw you. Coming through!”

The metallic Etemon charged off.

“Sorry I’m late… but an Eevee needed to beat an insanely tough dragon into submission.” Kenshin said as he appeared and slashed tends of EPs away from Shanty in a swirling storm of cutting arcs that clearly amazed and enthralled Shanty. “Illusio forces, Mentalis, focus on help the injured and protect the weakened! I take it the castle is your fallback point? All forces take the injured back there for healing as needed!”

It took a simple nod for me to confirm and with that Kenshin was off as psychic Pokémon teleported in to support the battle line.

Overhead I saw Latias, Latios and… a digimon that looked like them blasting through enemy air forces like butter, large Digimon were actively stomping the EPs into paste to the left as they forced their way towards the front lines, Pokémon were launching attacks in every direction. It was chaos and we were actually starting to push forward.

We still needed more though, it still wasn’t enough!

“For the doggy messiah!” Renamon yelled, along with several other Renamon as they started firing diamond leaves into the enemy masses as they came in from the left.

“For the doggy messiah!” A group of artic canines from Nixtorm roared forth from the right, yelling at the same time as the Renamon.

They all stopped to stare at one another for a moment in the middle of an active warzone as they continued to avoid attacks. As one they all nodded in some kind of unspoken agreement and formed up a defensive perimeter around me.

“For she is sweet and kind, the belly rubs are divine!” They yelled in unison much to my embarrassment, I really should stop giving so many canines affection if this is how they turn out.

What was it about me that engendered trust, love and absolutely insane religious zealotry in canines?! I even hesitatingly included Dolly in the insane zealotry department mentally and she didn’t even hold it against me for thinking it. The word ‘fair’ came from Dolly sending me a mental hug as she bursts through the air shredding whatever enemies were trying to bypass us to hit Castle Alexander.

All over the battlefield, friends and…

“WAGGGHHH!” It sounded like Ogremon was here too and he sounded rougher than I remembered his voice being, if the darkness and flying bodies of dissolving EPs was anything to go by he was happy to be here.

Even some enemies were helping us with fighting Moon Cell.

Ultros was more of a neutral entity and even he was on the field of battle tearing through things with his purple tentacles. His loyal Monitamon followers blasting elements and the Black Widow plowing through enemy after enemy as it stomped forward… never wanted to see that thing again, but apparently it was a good thing it was on our side.

“Pom, it’s so good to see you!” I found myself being hugged by a giant rabbit. “It’s me Jiri, need some help? I’ve become a Lopunny and my Bear Brawlers unit is on the case!”

Jiri had turned into a Lopunny and bounded off into battle followed by a gaggle of evolved bears. I wonder if I would eventually inform her that they might be sweet on her as more than friends. Didn’t matter at the moment because they were tearing through the enemy.

“Ice Type Bear is glad to see non Pokémon friend is mostly in one piece.” As eloquent as ever said a familiar if bigger ice bears voice, he set off after Jiri with his friends.

“I think I already have more than enough help.” The two worlds we were trying to save were apparently quite tired of Moon Cell’s invasion and everyone was converging on us here.

Even Hideyoshi wielding a staff was blazing a trail towards the front lines in cartwheels of flames. It was mystifying, but we still didn’t have enough to puncture the forces even if we had pushed the front lines.

“… guy’s, I can carry us in closer, give me a moment to turn into Cargomon!” Sami suddenly called out and waved me over as she gunned down what looked like harpies, a few giant wasps and an ugly flying bull thing. “Pom can you get Dolly and the Commandramon to cover us? I’m going to try and bust the front line by flying us on a one way tip.”

I nodded and sent a message to Dolly and called up the Commandramon on the headset to be ready to cover us. Canard blasted several enemies out of the air with a cluster of exploding digital pucks, he was getting really good at those slap shots.

“Mom, I think we all might be close to achieving our mega forms.” Dormarch announced as he and Frizzle continued to battle in their Rookie forms. “If our partners put themselves in danger, which includes yourself… we might be able to break our limits.”

“That would be helpful, but I would rather you didn’t evolve out of stress.” Looking around I finally spotted Geoff calling another unite command to blasts a series of rounds into the horde, the soundwaves positively shattering large amounts of enemies, yet for every one destroyed several more took its place and Moon Cell had an infinite supply to throw at us.

“Stress is kind of the best time for us digimon partners, since it’ll help us keep ‘you’ alive.” Frizzle stated on the rare occasion where she actually talked as we gathered together.

“Commandramon, warp digivolve too… Cargodramon!” One second Sami was a small orange lizard with guns, the next she was a flying tiltrotor vehicle with even bigger gun. Digimon were quite weird when it came to evolution, at least Pokémon made some sense with their evolutions giving them a change to suit multiple environments better. “Now get in my belly!”

At what point would transforming into a tiltrotor aircraft be normal for somethings evolutionary progression, also she was going to be much faster than an airship so there was that in Sami’s favor.

“You do realize how wrong that can be taken Sami.” Canard stated blandly before hopping aboard her opened side.

“Don’t know if I can touch on that without sounding insensitive… so I won’t.” Still, Dazzle hopped aboard with Frizzle.

“Oh come on, it’s not as bad as if I were to say the words ‘I enjoy all of you being inside of me’.” Going to ignore that Sami even said that and didn’t say the words ‘and I mean it too’, since we would literally be inside of her as she took off from the ground.

“Geoff, if you survive this, much less me, I might kiss you for showing up when we needed you the most.” I said as Geoff turned my way with a vibrant smile. I shook my head. “MIGHT, not will.”

“I’ll take it!” Geoff stated loudly, give him an inch and he perks up like the world was his pearl. “Move forward guys, this is going to be the biggest battle of our lives!”

“You not be leaving without us Pom!” Shanty, along with Dodo and Favela all hopped onboard. We were at Sami’s maximum capacity.

I hopped inside my friend in the form of a flying vehicle and we took to the air, I waved to the Masumune Date guy with a hoof as we passed by while ascending and he nodded as Sami started forward above the more ground bound EPs.

Missiles and bullets started pouring out of Sami’s body in highly destructive manner a second later as we took off over the enemy battle lines. Dragons and Flying types soaring forth and colliding with the horrible enemy aerial defenses as they strafed the enemy ground forces intermittently.

“I saw what you’re doing here and I want a part in it! Metal Walkers, help clear the road for our friends again!” It was that Giromon again, he revved his chainsaw and a number of flying metallic ball shaped digimon surged forth. “Bwahhahaha, I hope they see us coming!”

-Pokémon battle line, Primarina-

I remember being rescued from that castle and now I can return the favor… I had a blue water crystal at my neck and a song in my heart.

“AhhhhhhhhhahhhhhhhhhhhhhhAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH~!” A massive ocean size orb of water blotted out the sky above the other Pokémon as they waited for me to launch my attack. Fontaine had the best artillery force in the world and I was about to hit the enemy with an ocean of sound. “Oceanic Operetta!”

After the front lines of the enemy ground forces were blasted away by a deluge of water, I bowed down and then settled back with Grit and the Fontaine artillery forces.

Grit grinned and held up two fingers and then aimed them out across the battlefield.

-Digimon battle line, a digimon Black Wargreymon-

I watched as a massive number of the enemy programs get hit with an ocean sized wave of destruction that washed them away and found myself wanting to match that power and find the one who did it so I can introduce myself to them.

“Well we can’t let them show us up now can we?” I was a big bipedal guy in black armor, I stalked forward slowly and drew on all the darkness of negativity around me and brightened everyone’s day by leaving the positive emotions alone as I drew any negativity to me. Said negativity included that of my enemy, I would save the digital world I’ve come to protect. “Gaia destroyer!”

I sent an equally massive wave of negativity energy into our enemies’ front lines from the opposite side. Nothing like trying to show up an ally by one upping them.

Now to seek out the one that created that wave of destruction before and we would compare notes… eventually I would be a bouncer and partner to a very pretty, if slightly scarred, singer.

-Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

Did someone just suck away all the trauma and negativity in the area with that attack?

I feel… amazing! I could barely sense Pom’s anxiety, which was still there and highly muted.

“Okay, Ozzy, what happened, you’re looking too giddy in the middle of a battlefield.” Smolder stated also looking like her negative mood was removed. “Also what happened to all the negativity in the area?”

-Skies over the desert of devastation, Pom-

Where did most of my anxiety just go? I should not feel this good being in the middle of a warzone.

Sami shuddered and shook as various impacts hit her body as she flew over the battle field and tried to pry a way through the heavy aerial defenses.

“We’re approaching the target, they are not going to let us through since they know you’re onboard me Pom.” It was a little weird hearing Sami’s voice come from everywhere in her body.

A missile rose up and was about to strike us when a small blob of water struck it and said small high speed blast of water, blew apart another EP from hitting us.

“They be thinking they can be stopping us at this point?” Shanty stated as she and Favela relaxed with Dodo. The goat chuckled audibly as she imbibed some pecha berry rum. “That is being a very cute idea.”

“Don’t taunt them too loudly Shanty, who knows what they still have waiting for us… Jupiter implied there were four more of their number that weren’t there before Moon and Tuxedo retreated.” Also the fact that we might actually run into them was a non-zero chance and I have the personification of ‘Misfortune’ as a friend on speed dial to ask how they could make my life worse on a moment’s notice.

“How would they even be knowing?” Shanty stated as Sami was rocked by several explosions.

“It sounds suspiciously close to tempting fate, that’s how!” I stated audibly, Dormarch shivered as did everyone else who knew me and everyone currently inside of Sami and Sami herself knew me very well.

“We’re starting to take too much heat and don’t think I can get us much closer. Also spotted some more servants in sailor fukus, Pom’s right there are four more of them. At least the ones we previously defeated aren’t back.” Well that’s good news Sami, because I don’t think I could face Jupiter a second time after splitting her in half in such a violent manner. “A ferret, a weasel, a black cat and… a lizard.”

“Get as far as you can, we’ll throw out Dormarch and Frizzle’s Ultimate evolutions if we have to.” My response was met with nods from Dormarch and both Dazzle and Frizzle as they gained determined looks. “Dazzle will need to decide what kind of energy she’ll be giving to Frizzle for it while we still have a another minute or two.”

“That would be more like thirty seconds, they’re really hammering at me here even with a lot of our allies taking up airspace!” Sami stated as she swerved side to side in the air wildly and I think we might have flipped upside down for a moment.

“I have an idea as to why we’re taking a lot of heat, Moon Cell really doesn’t like me.” I would not be wrong about it either, Moon Cell was quite insistent that I not get any closer to it.

“At this point I’m surprised the feeling isn’t mutual.” Canard grumbled as Sami took another painful hit that made our transport grunt audibly. He’s really come to care for his partner

“I’m more upset that I’m actual target of importance, than actually capable of fully outright hating something.” We still had to take down Moon Cell though, that was something I was guaranteed to do.

“Going down to a landing zone, clearing what I can on the way in, this is going rough.” Sami called out as we all felt her sharply nosedive. “Hold on to something!”

The entire world started spinning as we held onto Sami’s insides, I felt a little awkward about it when I took a breather and used it to get some air into my lungs… then realized that the breather was probably coming from Sami’s lungs and shivered.

We eventually came close to the ground and started to skim across the top of it.

“Open both sides Sami!” I called out as Dormarch’s digivice started glowing brightly, the sides opened into a hail of energy, bullets and a variety of elements in the form of projectiles. “Go Dormarch!”

“Frizzle!” Dazzle called out a second later at the other side of Sami the flying transport while gripping and loaded up the other Digivice with elemental energy.

Garummon and a dragon energy powered Wargrowlmon dropped out of Sami.

“Atomic Blaster!” The squeaky pitched voice did not actually fit something of that size, Frizzle immediately blasted an area in front of Sami.

Frizzle cleared a decent sized road with the two powerful beams from her chest as she spread a pair of giant metallic wings to go with the metal axe arms. This was going to give us space so we could hop out as Sami slowed down to a hover above ground to drop us off.

Dormarch meanwhile started to zip around and fire lasers in a sweeping manner to clear up space and to help ease up the fire incoming at Dragon Wargrowlmon from the EPs all around us.

I hopped down, followed by Dodo, Shanty and Favela while Canard and Dazzle hopped out on the other side.

“Let’s go!” Canard called out as he readied his hockey stick for a fight and started forward as Sami quickly rose back into the air to avoid getting fired on. Sami looked to have taken several painful hits while carrying us this far, she still had quite a bit of fight in her.

Looking around, I could see that we had cleared more than half the distance and the nexus was close enough that it loomed over us all. I wasn’t standing still while doing this though, oh no, this would have been the height of stupidity in an active warzone where I’m a primary high value target.

I was running for the Nexus, but trying not to outpace Canard as Sami, Dormarch and Frizzle gave us cover.

“Come on Frizzle, to the front!” Dazzle called out urging her partner forward through a wall of fire coming at us from all sides and push forward for us, swing her large bladed arms and blasting a pass to the nexus. Most of said fire was aimed at me as I moved to use the Rhongomyniad as shelter to cover Canard and myself from being gunned down, there were so many projectiles that I couldn’t feasibly block them all.

Canard was setting our pace and he had Equus level Olympic runner status… which was a little slow for me, but I wasn’t leaving a friend behind to the hordes trying to close in on us. I was disrupting Moon Cell’s entire battle line by existing and continuing to not die in short order.

“World Shaking!” The attack wasn’t one of ours, it was a powerful vibrating wave of energy.

Despite her massive size, Frizzle managed to actually dodge the equally massive attack that came from a shorted haired blonde biped ferret wielding a sword. Next to the ferret was an aquamarine haired a little past her shoulders was a biped weasel with a violin. Behind them was a black cat with shoulder length raven hair with a glaive that gave off similar feelings to the Rhongomyniad. Further behind all of them there was a staff wielding green lizard that glared at us with waist length green hair, possibly ankle length considering the small bun.

Apparently these were the outers as Moon and Tuxedo stood behind them.

“Hmph… didn’t think you’d survive to make it this far, you are quite a thorn. I am simply BB, Moon Cell does not want you to get any closer to the nexus.” The purple haired squirrel stated with a twitching purple and white furred tail in black clothing stated blandly. She had rapier on her hip and she didn’t seem keen on using it quite yet, she had a calculating look on her face. “Please die so that I may fulfill my duty.”

As she said that BB’s eyes glowed red and every EP suddenly surged in from all sides. We would have to fight them and the enemy servants, this was going to be a rough battle. Also the fact that BB can control all the EPs directly meant that she had to be something like Moon Cell, I can’t let her walk away from this battle.

“Gae Bulg!” Was that Cu Chulainn?! All the EPs nearest to us were pierced and quickly evaporated by a beam of branching red light. Was that how the attack was supposed to work? Wow… “We’ll take care of the enemy soldiers, while you deal with them. It’s nice to see you again in better circumstances. If one could call the fate of three worlds better circumstances.”

Three… oh right, Moon Cell’s realms, guess Cu Chulainn was thinking of the full scope of what we were dealing with. I’ll have to keep that in mind myself that it’s not just the Digital or Pokémon realm we were saving, we could probably liberate the Moon Cell realms for Cait Sith and the other trapped souls as well.

“Spirit Shackle!” Stated a familiar cloaked owl Pokémon. Arrows rained down on an entire patch of EPs freezing them in place. “Sorry about shooting at you a while back, I had some issues with being territorial. Name’s Robin Hood.”

“Hey, guess what, I made some friends Pom!” Elli yelled as she flew over us as a Noivern and blasted away some more EPs from our rear with a powerful Boom Burst. Nice to see her doing well and wasn’t the evil trap castle version of herself. I still didn’t know how that worked. “Thanks for that pep talk, now I’m here to help out.”

“Nice to see you again great husband… and in a better mood.” I found myself protectively wrapped up in nine tails by. “I hope you didn’t forget about your loyal Tomamo now, I’ll do anything for you… quite literally… ask me to mate with you on the battlefield, I will do it right here and now even if it’ll get me killed. So sorry to have upset you earlier… somehow… I’ll make it up to you, just wish it of me. I’ll even let you use me as a sock puppet if it’ll make you happy.”

“No.” Despite being an adult, I think I still needed one in this moment. The fox looked disappointed, but still willing to try and push the issues I had with her. She’s the reason I’m even aware that I was a Chrysomallus. “Just protect our backs and sides.”

“I will win you over yet oh great doggy messiah, I owe you my services as a loyal acolyte of your cuddle based religion!” Tomamo unwound her tails from me and lashed out a mystically controlled fire in all directions like how Shine would do it if she still used that move, she did it protectively while chuckling brightly at my reaction to her snuggling up against me. She slowly stopped and looked at my golden wool a bit more closely. “Oh… you’re that kind of Chrysomallus… I can see why you reacted poorly to learning the truth. Have you told anyone about the...”

“Don’t!” I snapped harshly at her as she was likely about to break a secret that I didn’t want anyone to know about. “Nobody needs to know what’ll happen to me if I grow wings, just go!”

“Right, I’m sorry my greatest of husbands, I forgot how painful such an existence as yours might be.” Tamamo sounded far more reverent after my harsh snapping at her as she fended off several EPs with a strange power and glowing eyes.

A white wolf with red markings soon showed up, the world slowed down and large mass of ink seemed to paint over and slash apart a large swath of EPs. I looked at the white wolf and she looked back at me.

What was a functional goddess doing on the battlefield and why were they in the appearance of a beautiful furred white wolf with red divinity markings all over her? You know what, I wasn’t going to think too hard about that at this point, considering all the crazy stuff I’ve had to deal with over the last several realms and knowing Arceus was actively on the battlefield.

Shoving Tamamo away from me and shooing her off, I stalked forward with my friends and an airborne Sami ready to throw down while Cu Chulainn and his team covered our backs.

“Deal with them, I need to prepare the final defenses if you can’t.” BB scoffed as she motioned to Moon and Tuxedo, then turned to walk away towards the nexus as we were basically at the base of the stairs leading up to Moon Cell’s core.

“I’m Sailor Moon… cell… and I’m going to punish you from taking away my friends and making them impossible for me to revive for some reason!” Sailor Moon was one for a lot of talk wasn’t she?

Sailor Moon soon screeched and dodged out of the way of dark red burning Rapidash, I think that was Red Hare from Ignis's attack on Aurora? In any case they were supporting Cu Chulainn, so I didn’t think much of it as they continued on to give us breathing room to fight within.

-Shape of the battlefield-

North, south, east and west didn’t exist in the digital world as there was no planet for said directions to exist on.

If the nexus was considered to be north of Castle Alexander, then we have something of a direction of the battle.

Ocellus was being reinforced by Artoria and Mash from the south alongside Mirage Collective and the Harmony Programs.

To the west was the forces of the Yggdrasil.sys in the form of a variety of Digimon of all sizes and types there numbers were smaller than the Pokémon, but they were no less mighty or equal in quality.

To the east was the forces of Ransei, more in quantity and not slacking on the quality as an aspect of Arceus walked with the many children into battle. Several of the kingdoms strongest units plowed forth into battle heedless of the number of enemies in their path.

Both of them were meeting in the middle and quick friendships were quickly being made in the middle of a fight.

As far as notable units on the field of battle, there were many.

Violite in particular with their anti-ground Eelektross tore through ranks of EPs.

The Bullet Floatzels having come in with Valora and evolved at some point into twin tailed water spewing hellions.

Aurora’s Skitty Squad with Captain Skeeball and her beloved Wailord Wilhelm, never had the screwball cat bene more notorious on a battlefield with how she sowed chaos in her wake with her giant husband.

Grit and his artillery units of Fontaine were taking out the enemy artillery in short order, the enemy could barely get a shot off in the direction of Grits units before they were hit bombardments of pressurized water.

Support from Kenshin and his teleporting psychic types was a boon to those who didn’t have a backspace system like the digimon to escape lethal injuries.

The Rockruff Brothers in their defense of Castle Alexander moved to the front lines and showed that the three Pokémon unit could rock the battlefield as the two of the three blurred through the enemy forces and the third one protected his two faster brothers where needed.

Even if she wasn’t joining the fighting, Cotton Murkrow was giving real time tactical advice to all the armies and keeping them on track at the back of the battlefield behind Grits units as one of the most brilliant tacticians and spies of Ransei coming from the kingdom of Avia. She didn’t bother with commanding Grit’s forces as they were doing more than enough on their own.

Oda Nobunaga was laughing proudly and somewhat madly as the enemy buckled under an assault of dragons flying or on the ground tearing through endless waves of enemies in a reckless and highly destructive fashion.

While the battlefield swarmed with Pokémon heroes. You also had the digimon heroes, meeting with Pokémon and forging friendships in the fires of battle.

A Primarina and a Black Wargreymon became fast friends, eventually Blackwargreymon passed a digivice on to the mermaid like Pokémon.

Metal Etemon buddied up with Ieyasu bringing along his Kamemon to support the steely soldiers.

Ultros was seen giving a protective effort to the Octillery Artillery from Fontaine.

Avia’s forces were joined by Raptor Sparrowmon and a veritable Flying Flotilla of Falconmon in a flying fortress that descended from the clouds that looked to almost be made out of the clouds themselves.

Blacktailmon Uver was supplying healing items to those that needed a pick me up after hearing about the Hi-potions, he had several units of supply movers helping the whole battlefront while Pistmon and Moosemon watched his back.

HEA-Gatomon was healing injured digimon right and left, receiving help from the likes of several healing digimon like Marineangemon the small fairy like digital monsters to get those who backspaced back into the field of battle faster.

Fleer and Abby, the mercenaries from the falling city of Cerebrum incident in Illusio brought a lot of mercenary forces with them, including a mercenary Zoroark that was helping with rebuilding Illusio and was working on donating money to that effort.

Shine and Quetal fought side by side with various monitamon from the Data Divers, including the one that had found the truth of what happened to Dormarch’s body. Snake the Caerbannog soon had them acting as a high speed strike squad with his own Caerbannog forces added to the mix.

Pringer-Z-mon was a caped hero of the battlefield, proving that Prinnymon weren’t just for exploding violently as he followed his leader Tempomon across the field and met some rather fun Ludicolo.

Lucha Mundo met a digimon that immediately wanted to partner up with him named Muchomon, the red flight penguin hit it off with Mundo and the two were quick buddies on the battlefield, including a digivice. A love of samba and wrestling with an equivalent amount of enthusiasm between the two got Muchomon evolving fairly quickly.

There was even one digimon that was looking for Lit on the battlefield, it used to be a Tsumemon a small digital bug and now it had evolved into something more. It had almost evolved straight into being a mega level digimon that was a samurai fused with a horse called a Zanbamon, a raw terror on the field of battle who was just looking for a friend while wiping out any enemy that got in his or his allies way.

Now Zanbamon wanted to help that friend who they felt was somewhere on the battlefield. If it weren’t for Lit not being afraid of him, Tsumemon might not have made as many friends with the other baby digimon and grew as strong as he did. He wanted to return that favor several fold to Lit for their friendship had helped him, now he’d help save their worlds in return and meet with Lit again… mostly just to say hello.

Even the innocent Calumon had somehow managed to wander onto the battlefield, not that he was a battle rated digimon or much help. Sideline the Sidekicky Digi-bot was attempting to keep him mostly away from the action and safe because of his general importance to Yggdrasil.sys. That and his ability to cause Digimon to evolve which might soon be needed as even with several armies worth of Digimon and Pokémon being dropped into the field of battle… Moon Cell’s combat lines had not broken.

The battlefield swarmed with monsters, all of them starting to come together to work in tandem to fight the biggest monster of them all Moon Cell.

Arceus’s aspect on the battlefield watched on and supported his children where feasible as long as he didn’t accidentally come close to hitting anyone he liked. Those who weren’t as brave or nearly as strong stayed near the towering figure and image of the Pokémon god who protected his children with his form.

Even some digimon were in awe of Arceus as he slowly walked forward heedless of the many attacks coming at him, even Moon Cell was taking his presence seriously, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough to the forces brought about by a need to stop Moon Cell’s lunar lunacy.

Alongside Arceus aspects of the various legendary Pokémon, the gods of the Pokémon realms, started appearing.

Opposite to their side of the battlefield, the Deva, Royal Knights and Demon Lord digimon of the Yggdrasil Systems started showing up as well as the gods of their digital worlds. While they might not have been the original Deva, Royal Knights or Demon Lord digimon, they would all be fighting with the same strength as the originals alongside one another against the much larger threat all the same.

A pause and a glance passed between some of the most powerful beings of the two realms, there was a silent agreement before both sides moved forth at the same time.

The Pokémon and digital realms had suffered losses, grief and damages yet untold… now it was time for them all to return that favor to Moon Cell with extra thrown in for good measure. The rallying point being the counter invasion force that Moon Cell couldn’t root out of its systems and had forced back to fighting in its own inner realm where its core resided.

-

Near the front of Castle Alexander a small metal dragon digimon called Hackmon and a Smeargle stood back and took in the full scope of things as EPs assaulted Castle Alexander from the back and sides as Artoria and Mash tore their way to start helping protect the place. With Copen and Elise already running interference.

The Hackmon calmly passed a digivice to the Smeargle. The dog Pokémon just took the device with idle curiosity and a raised brow, then they both set about recording the battle for posterity in their own ways together as a companionship forged without words or even thoughts passing between the two.

It was just a gut feeling that led Hackmon to choosing to befriend a strange bipedal canine Pokémon in the middle of all the chaos. No one being could possibly hope to have recorded the full scope of this battle without being a god level entity.

The Smeargle had a gut feeling he was going on the adventure of a lifetime with the strange red cape wearing dragon and that would be another story entirely, never likely to be written in the annals of time.

Pokémon and Digimon enjoyed a good battle and this battle was going to go down as one of the most memorable in the history of the realms, for none of those who lived through it all would ever be able to forget it.

Author's Note

"Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom" is my only response as to why this one took a while.

The game is easy, but on the whole a lot of fun for all the creativity in how you go about solving problems. I will end up playing it again on Hero Mode.

454. All In: Spears of ‘The End’!

-Moon Cell, Inner Realm, Desert of Devastation, near Moon Cell’s nexus, Pom-

“Can we get some introductions please?” I asked politely.

“Oh sure, that’s Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and Pluto.” Moon stated pleasantly.

I took two sniffs and quickly did a run down with what little information I had gathered from just that and looking at the four new short ‘magical armored’ skirt girls. The ‘magical armor’ is definitely in air quotes there, as whoever designed them given the style… yeah... I’m not touching on that thought too hard.

Uranus and Neptune, the ferret and weasel were both close in an intimate way. Saturn the black cat was related to them in some way, probably adopted. The lizard lady Pluto was an odd one out and smelled oddly ancient.

The weapon Saturn wielded felt… a bit familiar as it almost felt like the Rhongomyniad I currently held in my hooves. Saturn was distinctly different from Luna the Mau being something different.

Did I just smell the souls of the enemy? Well I had to call it.

“Can you guys handle everyone else? I’ll take Saturn… she has a weapon that I don’t think any of you should be dealing with.” That spear, the air around it was unnaturally still and made its movements disturbing to look at even as the cat biped stared me down like an angry Abyssinian that just lost its yarn ball and I’m the one currently holding it.

“I’ll try to deal with Tuxedo, Sami is going to be giving us cover what cover she can.” Canard called.

“I’ll continue to focus on dealing with Moon.” Dormarch had a pretty good read of Sailor Moon’s abilities, that and her threat was magical energy projection that was very obvious to see coming and easy to dodge.

“We’ll be trying to fight Uranus and Neptune.” Shanty called out with Dodo and Favela not seeing any problem with that.

“We’ll deal with Pluto.” Dazzle called out as Frizzle spread her wings and blasted forth intense sweeping mass of blue flames that Pluto and Moon blocked.

I started for my opponent and the real start of the battle was about to begin as everyone spread out, said start of the battle was punctuated by Luna the Mau, whatever a Mau was, being sliced in half by Dormarch leaping with his left wing blade to intercept the transforming biped cat on his way towards Moon.

I hoped my son didn’t become desensitized to violence, because I certainly wasn’t at this point with all the horrors I’ve been put through.

“That spear…” I stated slowly as I looked into the saddened eyes of the silent kitty holding it, it felt like I was looking at a reluctant reaper or the soul of one trapped in the form of a Moon Cell servant. “How many have died from it?”

Saturn just nodded, the answer being implicitly a ‘yes’ and not a number. She narrowed her eyes at me as the spear I held transformed to a more naginata like form to match hers somewhat.

We both took up an offensive minded spear stance at the same time, two difference stances mind you, and she was quite quiet as she took up her battle position.

I recognized talent when I saw it. That is to say Saturn might not actually have much talent at all and just the basics.

There was the idea that these guys, were all from the same place of three failed civilizations and had relied entirely on their magic and weapons alongside mostly absolute raw power to get anything done. Rarely did they ever need to actually match wits with their opponents as they spent most of their time with overpowering them outright with their weakest to strongest abilities. Little wonder the civilizations fell, power without wisdom is always bound to end poorly.

So I had the edge of speed and talent, but Saturn… she was holding something with raw power.

Saturn silently mouthed the words ‘Silence Glaive: spear of the end’ to me while glancing at her weapon as if I had no chance against her. She couldn’t even say it out loud, she was a servant of Moon Cell and trapped in servitude like all of the other previous servants we’ve faced.

Elise had been a special case of actually managing to partially and, with my help, fully resurrected herself. Hopefully she was staying safe on the battlefield, the point I’m getting at is that Jupiter, Jack and Totsugeki all resisted even if they couldn’t do anything about it while others like Snake and Copen were odd outliers that were free from the get go.

I mouthed back ‘Rhongomyniad: THE spear of the end’ and she looked at my weapon as I was ready to take on hers in a clash.

I started to inhale preparing myself for the battle ahead.

We walked towards each other slowly…

(Music: Fighting with all of our might, Shovel Knight.)

We both paused for a few seconds… I exhaled at the right moment.

Our spears clashed as we thrust them forth with and a powerful glow flew off both of them, hers was a deathly pale purple whereas mine glow was a bright golden corona. A golden glow was not something I really appreciated having, knowing what it means for me. So I was quite thankful that it was the Rhongomyniad that was glowing.

We were blasted back by the power in our respective weapons clashing and being a match for each other, Saturn however slid farther back than I did. If our weapons were evenly matched that wouldn’t make much sense, as Saturn definitely weighs more than I do… most of the things I have fought up to this point did.

Well, most of my body weight is muscle at this point. I leapt forward and we parried each other’s next three swings. Right sweep, swing blade up and then try to stab the tip forward, it seems like Saturn was on the same page I was, as we deflected off each other several times and backed off to prep for our next move.

She could technically strike harder than I could and had raw power of her weapon, but this didn’t seem like an actual insurmountable gap as I definitely had the advantage of skill.

Something was off with these servants, after taking down the first four of this particular set, it’s become apparent that Moon Cell might actually be losing steam on having things to throw at us or these servants were weaker for a particular reason.

These four servants might be stronger than the previous four, but…

As I deflected Saturn’s next attack and then locked our blades against one another, we both paused and watched Frizzle’s massive form get sent flying by the long green hair having lizard’s strange attack that shook the air. I just shook my head as I disengaged from our weapon lock.

They were still dangerous and we couldn’t discount said danger as being of similar strength, even if their appearances implied as much.

The battle raged on around us as I charged forward at Saturn and she came at me across the sands, I thrust forward she ducked back and then lunged forth trying to stab for my chest.

I immediately brought the shaft of the Rhongomyniad up and to the left to deflect as I hopped forward onto my left hind hoof. I quickly pivoted my right hip forward to launch my right hind leg up into the left side of Saturn’s face, staggering and making her gasp in pain as I just gave her a black eye.

While Saturn was staggered I reoriented and went back into a defensive state, I wasn’t going to press my advantage yet as I had to slash an Assassin Reaper out of the air and did two quick follow up attacks to make sure it was evaporating afterwards. I couldn’t very well tunnel vision on Saturn alone, I had to pay attention to my surroundings too as attacks were flying around everywhere from all sides.

Saturn angrily lunged forward and brought her spear down with force and after avoiding the overhead swing by stepping to the side, I watched as the eruption of sand created a fairly large ditch that quickly started filling in with sand.

Stepping forward, I lashed out with a swing forcing Saturn to hop back out of range. I tried to go for a follow up forward hopping stab only to quickly change to just jumping straight up when crouching down for my lunge.

Slashing downwards with the spear, I took out several of the snake headed tongues of a Grabber as it erupted from right beneath me and tried to pull me in into its mouth.

Why yes, I was certainly less terrified of summoned killer whales like that one that tried to bite me in half from that fight with Rider Totsugeki, thank you for asking fear processing center in my brain.

Kicking off the top of the grabber’s upper beak to the side, the Grabber was vertically bisected in half a second later by one downward swing of Saturn’s powerful weapon that gouged the sand. Grabber’s outer hides were quite tough and I likely didn’t want to be hit directly with that weapon, especially not when it gave off a faint sense of death and split a grabber in half as if it were a halberd.

I quietly noted the blade of her weapon almost had an elongated G shape to it. The large pronged outer edge of the G was like a naginata blade and the smaller prong looked like a dolphin’s tail that was made for catching and breaking weak blade weapons. This was done by catching a blade within the longer inner side of the naginata like scythe sided edge the locking the blade in with the tail and performing a quick twist so that the smaller prong snapped blade apart.

The two halves of the grabber fell in opposite direction as Saturn charged forth at me as I was landing, she did a lunging thrust with her weapon.

I managed to lean away and narrowly let the odd blade of the dangerous weapon almost scrape my left side without actually being struck by it and used the shaft of my own weapon to pull it in and pin it to my wool.

Once my wool grabbed the shaft of her spear, I tried to thrust my own spear at her and she managed to maneuver to catch the shaft up under her left armpit.

I tried to get the Rhongomyniad to spike outwards at Saturn, but it wouldn’t. She tried to charge energy through her spear, but aside from some flickering it didn’t travel down the shaft at me. Saturn looked a little confused, as did I. Maybe we could cancel out the effect of each other’s weapons while grappling the weapons? I was wondering what the interactions of our weapons was going to be like as we continued.

I inhaled through my nose and spat a bark buster and released the grip of my wool on the shaft of her weapon, detonating the magical wad in her face she was knocked onto her back. This managed to score me a nasty downwards slash against her left side with my blade as she was blown back as it was freed from her armpit dragging the blade down the side of her chest and some of her abdomen.

Immediately crouching down, I launched myself high into the air and slightly forward through a swarm of lasers firing at me from various angles, Dolly even dealt with a few of the various Moon Cell watchers around me as I completed my upwards leaping arc.

I brought the Rhongomyniad up high above my head with both my front hooves and tried to thrust it down into Saturn’s chest.

Saturn rolled backwards onto her feet and swung her blade for me, she narrowly missed hitting me across the left side of my face with her blade. I had quickly leaned back after jamming my weapons into the sand. I then found my nose quickly bloodied by a powerful blunt force to the left side of it as Saturn stepped forward and slung the back end of the Silence Glaive into me in a continuation of her swing.

Staggering back while maintaining my grip on the Rhongomyniad as it was stuck a quarter of the way in the sand, I had to regain my senses from the painful blow.

Saturn stepped forward again into a swinging back for the right side of my neck by reversing the her direction of her weapon and I was out of position to defend myself, much less pull the Rhongomyniad up from the sand in time.

I moved to the left while trying to pull the shaft of the spear up enough to block the dangerous attack coming from my right, but I apparently didn’t have to worry about it.

A loud clang happened as the spear was deflected over my head by another shorter spear, as Jiri dropped in front of me and was immediately crouching while bringing up the small shield on her right arm. Jiri the Lopunny slammed forward with a powerful Bounce into Saturn’s gut and sent the yowling cat flying painfully across the sand. The sand probably make knockdowns not as effective as they would be, but that blow definitely looked effective to me and Jiri just gave me some breathing room.

The Lopunny, who likely mega evolved at some point given some moderate changes to her form, height and muscles. Jiri just roared in challenge and before I knew it she was bouncing off the various aerial enemies surrounding us in a blur of frantic energy. That was in the effort of trying to stop the aerial enemies from firing on me or those around us.

Jiri wasn’t the nervous little bunny I had met and taught how to wield a spear. She was a lot stronger and surer of herself and she had even managed to fend off Saturn, doing so had damaged her spear by a lot. If Jiri’s weapon was of any remotely great quality like I knew it was, then it wouldn’t stand up to Saturn’s weapon just as it was likely it wouldn’t stand up to the Rhongomyniad for more than a few blows. That the mundane spear hadn’t shattered in her paws immediately was amazing.

A wall of ice popped up out of the sand and deflected a number of projectile attacks as I finally freed the Rhongomyniad from the sand with a solid yank.

“Ice type bear is glad to help cover friend while Jiri is busy in the air.” Stated the calm and much larger polar bear Pokémon that no longer had snot coming from his nose, he did have an interesting icicle beard now… that was likely made of frozen snot. Jiri’s unit of bear friends were immediately shoring up the battle zone around me to keep the ground EPs off those of us fighting the servants directly.

“Watch the ground, underground enemies are a problem.” I warned, as I pulled the Rhongomyniad.

“Hey, we Bear Brawlers have got it under control!” That was the guy that used to be Teddiursa… yikes some Pokémon go big, I believe he was an Ursaring now? I wondered how Jiri was still the leader of her unit when I saw several other physically powerful bears take up spots in the small hole we made in the battlefield near the Nexus. “Besides… we already have ground types from Terrera on it, those guys owe us quite a few favors and nothing is faster than a ground type in their element. Look out that bipedal cat is coming back for you.”

Ignoring Cu Chulainn as she passed him to charge back into a fight with me, Saturn was also ignoring everyone else that was fighting too. Didn’t need any guesses as to why she was focusing on me… it’s the same various reasons I chose to fight her personally.

I felt the shift of movement underground coming for me at the same time as Saturn was, but then something happened and there was a large spray of sand that got kicked into the air a second later. I was going to trust that I wasn’t about to be attacked by a Grabber… given there were now thousands of movements underground targeting the larger things.

Taking in the low angle of the blade and the way Saturn held her spear, I predicted her next move while I had the time to do so. Would she feint, would she go for a direct kill above all else or would she even actively be able to act on her own will without Moon Cell’s input when she had such a dangerous weapon that might actually deal with me?

The buildup of energy around Saturn’s weapon had me slightly worried.

I waited until Saturn closed with me while silently inhaling through my injured nose, my blood was pumping as the sounds of battle surrounded us. Having to dodge a Moon Cell Watcher that managed to successfully get a shot off at me, with so much going on this seemingly left me open for the next attack.

Saturn swung and her swing stopped before it could come even close to hitting me and a mass of dark energy surged forth from the spear and exploded violently in the air, this created a powerful suction force in the form of a black orb of gravity for a few seconds like what Dolly could do. Anything near it, nothing but EPs thankfully, were immediately destroyed as it expanded slightly and then collapsed into an explosive implosion.

I took the moment to stab the spear forward at Saturn’s head and she pivoted away while being unable to move her spear much as it seemed to stay stuck in a static position.

Saturn looked confused, until her eyes narrowed slightly. Saturn let go of the aft end of her weapon with her left claw and used her right to twist the blade of her spear into cutting a path through the barely visible glowing golden wool strands that stopped her attack mid swing. Saturn immediately retreated several steps further before my next three rapid stab attempts could land.

That confirms it, I don’t want to try and block that blade with my wool directly when it comes to attacking my body directly. Anti-magic wool can repel the weapons magic, but if it was powerful enough to natural cut through my wool like the weapons Gilgamesh had…

I fired a bark blast while charging forward, as it was dodged I entered a slide under a retaliatory stab and tried to stab up into Saturn’s chest. This is while using the back end of the Rhongomyniad to bounce myself back into a standing stance from the slide, after Saturn dodged that attempt exhaled a quick bark blaze out of my mouth.

Saturn yowled and whimpered in pain as she was lit ablaze and immediately dropped into the sand to roll away the painful flames that lit her up. She looked so young, but she wasn’t any less capable of doing something just as painful to me.

Growling as she got back up, Saturn crouched down and raised her spear high up. The spear started glowing with darkness and I started charging the Rhongomyniad with my magic to meet the oncoming attack as she brought her weapon back and it started created a suctioning force that drew in sand and started pulled me towards her.

I tried backpedaling and prepared a Dancing Flame for the right moment as I was being pulled closer towards her. She slung her weapon forward and a black ring of swirling energy in the form of a deadly disk saw surged forth at me.

I exhaled sharply.

Examining the attack and peering at the others around me using the very corner of my eyes while I had some time, I realized that if I dodged… I’d be putting Shanty in danger. Let’s see how good Rhongomyniad is at retaliating against a spear of the end.

Angling the blade of the Rhongomyniad in a precise manner, I flicked it upwards and was soon spinning the bladed ring attack of dark energy on the spear until the energy turned golden somehow.

I raised the spear and flung the attack back at a surprised Saturn who rolled out of the way as a massive gouge of sand was torn out of the ground by the attack and sent her sliding into a pit.

Seeing the opening, I leapt for and tried to stab downwards only for Saturn to slam the butt of her spear against the sand at the bottom of the pit. A swirling vortex of darkness to start up as Saturn tried drawing me into it. I tried to escape the trap as winds started to build up along with a massive amount of magical energy and I had an idea as to what her next attack would be as wall of swirling sand trapped me within the blast zone with her.

My fear for myself bottomed out as my wool started glowing brightly, I coiled the wool on my hind legs and got an idea as to how devastating this attack would be if anyone else got caught up in it and I didn’t figure out how to suppress it. I had to leap above Saturn as she fires it off or everyone around here is going to be dead except for me!

The swirling and winds picked up, Saturn was about to fire the attack, I leapt up and felt Dolly do something. The winds cut out and Saturn’s eyes widened as a green swirl reversed a majority of the power of her attack… that didn’t mean she wouldn’t fire it.

Leaping above Saturn, I was met with a chaotic wave of magic shooting upwards and threatening to expand outwards I was actively using my body to contain the blast. My wool reflected the magic back downwards and I grit my teeth as I slowly angled the Rhongomyniad downwards in the hopes of pushing an attack through back at Saturn.

Before I could connected with the reflected energy compressing down at Saturn and with the Rhongomyniad, Saturn erected a quick barrier as the entire area was blasted by the resulting shockwave of pressure being unleashed in all directions.

I was sent flying through the air tumbling end over end until I inflated my wool to stop myself and soon I found the left jet wing of the Metal Hound 004 pressing up underneath me and flew me out of the path of various projectiles that surged up at where I was.

Dolly flew in low and stopped to let me drop off while continuing to fire at aerial enemies and was shooting down the slower homing missile projectiles. Dolly took off in a wash of swirling sands back to the battle in the skies once I was back on the ground and able to move.

Landing on the sand I readied the Rhongomyniad as Saturn stared at me and readied her weapon, ready to get back into it. The shockwave and all the sand did more damage to the EPs then it did to anyone on our side, just about everyone had been knocked over by the powerful blast.

We surged towards one another and continued out fight, clashing our weapons over the course of several stabs. After one particular clash, I was blown back by the force of the energy coming off of Saturn’s weapon.

Despite the several wounds I got on her, Saturn wasn’t getting weaker. Why did it seem that the more tired Saturn got, the more powerful she seemed to be?

I took a quick look around with a quick breath of air and was thankful that no EPs were coming for me. Saturn had to be the most dangerous among these strange girls, next to Jupiter. Uranus wasn’t dealing with Shanty very well, Canard actually had Tuxedo on the ropes and was deflected roses, don’t know what was happening in Pluto’s area… because it looks like time and space was twisting in on itself and that hurt my brain. Neptune was the weakest given she was being beaten by a tag team of Dodo and Favela. Dormarch still had Moon locked down.

Once I was finished with Saturn, and health willing after a Hi-Potion, I’d rush into the nexus… by myself if I had to. Mostly because I didn’t want to fight anymore servants with sad eyes like what Saturn had.

“There’s just something about you that I don’t understand...” I stated as I and the cat clashed spears. “I hope I figure it out by the time we’re done.”

I was on the defensive as she was pushing raw power with each blow that I couldn’t fully stand up to directly, but I could redirect most of that force away from myself. Again raw power wasn’t everything and I think she was trying to learn from me as we fought, because her skill with her weapon wasn’t the greatest it could be.

I felt her manage to break my guard and managed to dart forward to slash me across the left side of my withers and shoulder. Grunting at the cold chill that filled my body, I struggled to keep up my defense as my legs started feeling dead for a few seconds… it was as if I had been hit by Shadow Velvet’s ice all over again.

An explosion of golden glow happened around my wound and I felt the rush of pain and heat as I stitched said wound shut with my wool as I continued to deflect and evade or dodge around the swings as Saturn was trying to not give me a second to think.

It was kind of hard to do, getting me to stop thinking mind you, I’m always thinking about something and my mind had a lot of noise to go with all the anxiety I had.

I ducked under a swing from my right and leaned away from the back end of her spear trying to smash me across the right side of my face.

While lashing out with the Rhongomyniad held in my left hoof and deflecting the Silence Glaive upwards, I lunged forward and lashed out with my right hoof and clawed up her right thigh with a magical wolf claw.

Following that claw attack, I rolled under her attempt to bring the spear back down and into me and got slightly behind her and in position quickly enough to deflected her next attack into the ground as she swung around for me.

Saturn has no martial prowess outside the spear, she didn’t have a quick fire ranged attack like my barks not that her attacks weren’t dangerous they were slow and easy to see and feel coming. I still couldn’t help but feel this sense of foreboding and danger from her… why though when most of her attacks are outright telegraphed? What makes her so dangerous and why did I feel like I wasn’t seeing her at her maximum threat level? Her weapon gives off an air of death and… wait… could that be it?

“You can’t use your most powerful attack without dying can you?” My statement made Saturn freeze up and back away from me looking traumatized, she even seemed to be unable to move afterwards looking incredibly dazed. “And Moon Cell won’t let you do that attack because it would destroy it too?”

My second question didn’t broker a reaction as Saturn now had a blank look in her eyes and she wasn’t making any moves to attack me.

“Lancer Guardians attack!” Luna the Mau called out as she charged forward with EPs from all sides and nobody around to stop the hundred or so of them from piling on me.

“The wonderful one o’ one digital commandoes coming at you!” A Dalmamon I recognized appeared with a cheer and raked her claws across one of the Lancer Guardian EPs coming for me. It was Verance of the Dalmamon family, the digimon equivalent of Dolly.

Several more Dalmamon appeared in flashes and slashes quickly wiped out all of the incoming Lancer Guardians EPs with a combined effort. Some of the Dalmamon tried to attack Saturn only to get painfully smacked away from her with the blunt end of her staff, flat of her bladed end or the almost unfortunate ones that almost got ran through.

Despite her clearly cat-atonic state, Saturn wasn’t incapable of defending herself as the three tailed fish puppies thought and were incapable of getting a single hit on her as she created a barrier that spiraled outward from herself sending them flopping around the in the sands around me.

“Hope you’re alright to keep going on your own Pom. I’m sorry we can’t stick around to help out further, but we have to deal with our injuries from pushing too far to help you.” Pickle, the digimon equivalent of Dolly’s step-brother Dylan, stated while a waving set of goofy claws. “Dormarch looks busy, so tell him we said thanks for the combat data he sent our way when you passed through the digital realm a while ago, it’s been a big help for us!”

“We got our assist in, hopefully it was enough now let’s get bugged guys!” Verance shouted and all the Dalmamon disappeared in a synchronized mass of flashes. She and the other Dalmamon used Search Hunter to quickly vacate the area before they got hit by the incoming presence of the aerial EPs, most of them were Moon Cell watchers.

I looked at Luna the Mau had been eviscerated by at least eighty of the one hundred and one Dalmamon that came in to assist and evacuated before the enemy forces could properly aim enough projectiles in their direction to hit one.

This left me dodging a few Moon Cell Watcher lasers as the eyeball like orbs missed their initial volley on the temporary teleporting backup and of course they want to take that out on me immediately afterwards. Several lasers rained down around me and started turning the sand into glass and even kicked it up in my direction with rather precise shots.

The Moon Cell Watchers were quickly dealt with by what looked like a slightly goofy looking orange dragon that opened its mouth and swept a beam through a mass of them.

“Than-whoa!” In my moment of distraction Saturn had come to her senses or at least I think she had as she lightly slashed me from my right hip to close to my belly. I quickly sealed off the wound with some wool and the damaging magic was dealt by my anti-magic glow a second later.

I protected myself from her next few strikes that sent me skidding across the sand, her blows were getting slightly more powerful the more injured she got. This was pushing me further away from the protective highly contested zone near the nexus and towards more EPs on their rear battle line, I charged forward at Saturn as she came running for me.

Feinting an attack for her chest or belly I instead sprung up, kicked off of Saturn’s spear thrust to try and meet my attack. My forward hop had me bringing my hind legs in and I harshly bucked at the back of Saturn’s head with my hind legs loosing coils of wool as I did so.

I launched forward and Saturn went tumbling with what should have been lethal hoof shaped bleeding head wounds, not only did I buck her with Thousand Spears spring boost added on, I even added magical wolf claw to that attack.

Despite the painful blow and putting my all into that attack, Saturn still wasn’t done yet and she now had an aura about her as she glared after me despite having problems standing up having hit her head in a way that messed up her body’s ability to coordinate. My Wolf Fang Hoof technique didn’t disable, but I was aiming to kill the servant with that attack.

As I quickly made my way to a safer zone while avoiding projectiles coming at me from across the sands in all directions in my attempt to avoid being surrounded entirely by EPs and move back to the protective circle made by Cu Chulainn’s and Jiri’s teams which were starting to look battered by the endless stream of attackers.

Saturn’s body started glowing darkly with energy as she gave chase and she was not only feeling stronger… she was also speeding up too.

I was forced to turn around and deflected a powerful impact that sent me skidding backwards, not having any time to check on my friends or how Shanty was doing as Saturn was already halfway to reaching me despite sending me sliding on the sand twenty or so feet.

I inhaled sharply to give myself time to think, Dancing Flame has been my go to for most things since I started using it.

If injuries were making Saturn stronger, I had to finish her fast! Wait, was she currently acting as a Berserker class servant?! I had, incorrectly, thought that all of these servants were Caster Class given their propensity for magical attacks with what seemed like comically long wind ups leading into said attacks. Berserkers were raw power and it makes sense, I had to somehow separate her from the Silence Glaive as that seems to be the source of her power.

This certainly changes how I should deal with Saturn and she definitely wasn’t going to allow me charged up a ‘Thousand Spears: Huo’ attack. I guess I was one to talk when it came to comically long wind ups on magical attacks when it takes me about three minutes of uninterrupted concentration now instead of five given I can create a ball of fire quickly with my fire breathing ability.

Exhaling, my mind changing to fit the information I just acquired through various clues, I went on the offense and both our spears blur as we swung stabbed and danced in a deadly manner. Saturn all the while was giving off a deathly aura and her strikes were getting harder to deflect and her combat style… it hadn’t changed in the slightly as she started almost powering through my attempts at deflection.

After a fully successful deflection, where I managed knock Saturn’s spear upwards in a manner that left the muscles in my front legs screaming for relief, I tossed the Rhongomyniad straight up and then dodged into her swing downward from the deflection. Grabbing the shaft of Saturn’s weapon with my front legs, I kicked her in the gut with my left hind leg.

Having tried to pull the weapon from her grip, it was as I feared, she has something a literal ‘death grip’ on the thing and the sickly aura was met by my golden glow proving that the magical aura around her was toxic. Makes me currently glad we’re fighting on sand, even as unstable as the battlefield currently was.

Saturn heaved me up over her head, I flexed my body with the movements and slammed both my hind legs into the middle of her spine while firing off another fully powered buck like the one I had unleashed on her skull, magic claws and wool springs.

Instead of letting go of the weapon Saturn slammed me against the sand and dragged my body about through it from her left to right practically plowing it with my body. Actively trying to get me to let go of the Silence Glaive, it was obvious that Saturn was absolutely nothing without this weapon and this weapon was tied into her rapidly increasing magical power and strength from the damage I’ve dealt to her.

Saturn kicked out her right leg for me and I managed to kick the sand with my rear legs to move out of the path of the kick and pull her off balance, then halted in my movement.

About to lift me off my hooves or drive me into the sand again, the Rhongomyniad final came down and the blade pierced her right arms bicep.

Her clothing was getting worse by the second and the magic armor would not have stopped the Rhongomyniad even if it were at full strength, her grip on the Silence Glaive didn’t relent even an inch and was as firm as ever despite the muscles in her bicep making it impossible for her right hand to be holding onto it as well as she did. She wasn’t using her physical body, this is something happening on a magical level or as I’ve come to find out with most servants… a conceptual one. ‘Death grip’ is such a concept that was recognizable as being a thing right now.

I sent out a wire of wool to grapple the Rhongomyniad to rip it out and still despite the nerves I had likely hit her steel like grip on the Silence Glaive didn’t relent. It should have been impossible for her to hold the weapon with her right hand given the damage I did as the Rhongomyniad seemingly hovered next to my left shoulder on a single cluster wire of wool.

If she couldn’t bring her weapon to bear on me to hit me with the blade, then I was mostly okay aside from being bashed into the nearest hardest surface. Again, sand or her own body and I’d win when it comes to her trying to bash me with her body.

Saturn twisted the weapon and attempted to flip me over and I let her flip me, I raised my right hind leg caught on the right side of her neck and clamped the other side of Saturn’s neck with my left and tightened my wool around it and started to run up a wire saw as I prepped the Rhongomyniad to stab at her as her neck was getting cut up.

Saturn’s increasingly frantic attempts to toss me off as my wool dug into her flesh in the attempt to take off her head were getting better and that wasn’t good. The closer to death the stronger she was, she barely fended off the Rhongomyniad as the wire wool swung it at her, I was making the situation exponentially harder for Saturn to deal with even with how awkwardly position I was.

I pulled my head back and created a wedge shape with the wool at the top of my head, I slung my head forward down and Saturn reared back her head in a silent scream as my axe head blow to her nethers likely hurt like Tartarus.

Having managed to saw halfway through Saturn’s neck with the wool on my rear legs and the added damaged of taking a sharpened wool shifted and forged axe to the pelvis was apparently enough for Saturn to gain the strength to deal with me.

Saturn managed to rip the Silence Glaive free of my front legs grip on it. Saturn tried to immediately ram her weapon up into my belly and I quickly stopped the wire saw attempt to garrote her head off and rolled forward off of her. She deflected the Rhongomyniad into the ground when I tried to yank it into her with the wire wool as I turned to face her.

Saturn quickly slashed through the wire wool disconnecting me from my weapon, but unlike her I wasn’t helpless without my main form of combat. She lunged forward in an attempt to skewer me, I didn’t retreat.

Instead I went into a forward slide and she immediately swung down the blade for me, which left her open when I sprung up into a Wild Windmill by inflating all my wool against the sand and twisting my body into a rapid spinning windmill shape. I kicked my four legs to speed up my spin to land a devastating bone shattering axe kick to her left shoulder with my left hind leg.

I even felt the bones under the blow breaking yet Saturn’s body kept function as if I didn’t just break all the bones in that arm, she even immediately grappled me with said left arm. She wrapped her right arm around me and attempted to squeeze me to death, my wool was handling the pressure as Saturn grit her teeth and tried to squeeze me harder. It was a decent try, I just don’t think she had the strength for it yet.

While the Rhongomyniad would not change shape to attack her while grappled, my wool didn’t have any such restrictions and I spiked a number of wool threads into Saturn’s body straight through her magical clothing and tried to puppet her body into letting go of the Silence Glaive.

This didn’t work, but I did get her to stop trying to crush me to death, the pressure was unreal for someone of Saturn’s size and she was only getting stronger the more I injured her. Her body was working in spite of the injuries I know I dealt her, yet she silently continued on.

I shoved my wool deeper into her body and then I ripped my wool free, yet even with Saturn looking like a living corpse she was still acting as if the injuries didn’t hamper her in the slightest. That dark aura was haunting to look at as she held the Silence Glaive in her right hand while bleeding all over the sand.

“I can already guess what the Silence Glaive means when it comes to being ‘of The End’… a bitter one.” I said calmly despite my adrenaline spiking, Saturn froze up when I said those last three words. She’s likely had several bitter interactions with this mystical weapon and this was another in a long line of them. “Arrrwoooo!”

I wool shifted to ‘wooly wolf’ mode, I was going to need the extra speed and strength that my exoskeletal wool mode will lend me. After the injury I just dealt to Saturn’s insides, she’s going to be ungodly powerful and nigh unstoppable after after that. She wasn’t die until she let go of that spear, hence my supposition that she had the concept of a literal ‘death grip’ on it.

Saturn can’t functionally die while she held the Silence Glaive or up until she used her ultimate attack, which Moon Cell wouldn’t allow because said attack would outright destroy Moon Cell as well given her proximity to the nexus. So it was nice that she couldn’t instantly kill us all.

I had to get the Rhongomyniad back too if I was going to actually finish her off. I was already inhaling and saw the faintest of movements from Saturn, I exhaled immediately and barely dodged through her next three swinging attacks to push me farther away from the Rhongomyniad.

I did not want to have to use my beast mode on this poor shattered soul of a kitten who’s fur was now being dyed as red as her clothing with her own blood, I’m saving that for whatever Moon Cell would throw at me personally as I was going to go all out on it.

Now if only Saturn wasn’t actively preventing me from retrieving the Rhongomyniad, she was much faster than before and getting harder to keep up with. I avoided each attack she sent out against me at a rapid pace.

Saturn must know exactly how dangerous it would be if I got a hold of it and pumped her body with its power at this point. Said use of the Rhongomyniad was draining and a cost of four parts of my magic for every one part of output from the spear in the form of a concentrated beam.

Thinking of the Rhongomyniad, how does it’s ‘Of the end’ concept work exactly compared to the Silence Glaive? It didn’t have the same death grip thing going for it and it had different meaning despite having basically the same concept. End of an era maybe? Artoria told me it was used at the end of an age of gods.

Silence Glaive, conceptual end of life, fighting to the bitter end and the end of all progress or the end of stagnation.

I tried to get past Saturn, I really did, but she could move into my path insanely fast now and slashed me into leaping back and away from her. She didn’t follow me though, odd, but I think she knew I could get around her if she moved any further from the Rhongomyniad just lying there in the sand.

Crouching down and raising the spear up, Saturn once again was creating a powerful spiraling suction as her spear started glowing darkly with that an orb of energy again and it started drawing me and a lot of sand towards it. Her slightly dead purple eyes were staring at me as the sands threatened to drag me closer in an inward spiral.

I noticed something with my eyes that would actually help me as I kept trying to avoid being pulled in by hopping on the shifting sands. Again Saturn wasn’t a skilled in much other than using this weapon.

After one more hop, I leapt myself get sucked forward along with the sand and kept my hooves on top of it by stepping in place and slowly inhaling.

As I got closer and Saturn started to swing her weapon, I stomped down into the sand with my left hind leg harshly and then lifted it up pulling the Rhongomyniad with it up into my front hooves. It had been pulled closer to me by the vortex and I finally exhaled.

I blocked the swing and charged an amount of my magic into the spear to counter the power of hers the sand around us immediately stopped being a pit as it evened out and I sent her skidding back. I still got a slight cut on my right cheek from the clash and quickly dealt with that using a single thread of wool.

Turning my back on Saturn, I sighed...

“Are you okay?” I said quietly, without looking at her. I could hear the cat’s boots stomping on the sand as she charged for me. “Of course you’re not… your minds being tortured throughout all of this. I hope you’ll feel better when I free your soul.”

After saying that I filled my lungs with air and exhaled while turning as Saturn got within range to strike at me. I brought up the shaft of the Rhongomyniad and caught her thrust. Intercepting the blade by forcing the shaft between the prongs of Saturn’s weapon and staring her down.

I lifted her weapon upwards, crouched down and unleashed a short howl blast to launch her up into the air. The shaft of the Rhongomyniad, in its current form, was still hooked on the dolphin tail part of the spear.

Harshly yanking the now weightless Saturn down, I slammed her into the sand and leapt onto her to pin her down using my wool to prevent her movements.

“Shhh… it’s okay… it’ll be over soon. You have no idea how sorry I am for what I’m about to do.” I whispered as I opened my mouth and tore her right wrist with my teeth, gnashing them down through flesh, blood and bone and soon I ripped her right claw off of the Silence Glaive through force.

I was not going to relish in the taste of blood or flesh as I spat her entire right claw and a large portion of her forearm off to the side into the sand, I hated myself for resorting to using my teeth or the canines that I currently had in my mouth. Would Tianhuo be able to overlook the monster I’m becoming?

With only one claw left it was easy to pin her one good arm down, she still threatened to toss me off herself with her supernatural strength. She even managed to succeed in doing it as the loss of claw added onto her absurd strength and tore bits of my wool through raw brutal strength.

So this is the power of a true berserker class entity, it’s horrible.

Getting standing, Saturn’s left claw still on the middle of the Silence Glaive, she came at me as I landed and I held the Rhongomyniad defensively. The next blow threw me off balance I received a shallow slash across the chest and she started increasing in speed exponentially, I had to finish Saturn off as she was constantly getting stronger the more she bled out and she wasn’t dying from the blood loss.

I angled the Rhongomyniad and continued to try and deflect she her every swing was sending physical shockwaves out that my wool managed to blunt the impact of as she knocked me back. She continued to press me as she started becoming a blur even at my maximum Dancing Flame I couldn’t hope to keep up with… which was good.

I angled the Rhongomyniad, extended it and then waited I let her swing at my right front leg with all of her strength and didn’t move to defend. If I kept trying to fight I would have lost by attrition.

The spear didn’t collide with me or my spear, Saturn looked wide eyed at what I had just done.

She flopped onto her knees, her eyes slowly moving to stare at the glowing stump as she gasped in an odd manner or recognition of what just happened. This made her seem more alive than a second ago.

There was the shadow of her left arm flying off to my right still holding on to the Silence Glaive, she was moving so fast that I just had to hold the blade of the Rhongomyniad steady after elongating it and shift it up ever so slightly… it wasn’t even that hard to accomplish.

Saturn had actually cut her own arm off with her own increased strength and speed and had that not happened… well I might have lost a leg, but again I’m the more skilled of us in actually using a spear here. I just overcame Saturn’s increasingly raw power with some quick thinking and timing. I think I understood the weakness of the Berserker class perfectly, I kind of was one myself in some ways.

“Again… sorry you had to suffer such a weapon as that Saturn...” I said quietly, I pointed the Rhongomyniad and place the tip against her forehead. “This spear will be the end of torture, an end of suffering and an end to your pain. The end is not always have to mean death, but maybe a new beginning… at least this is ‘The End’ of your services to Moon Cell.”

There seemed to be a flare of hopeful recognition in Saturn’s eyes as, with a flare the Rhongomyniad, I blasted her with powerful beam. She was no longer immortal at this moment.

Saturn’s entire body was blown apart, it shattered into a mass of flakes as if coming from a broken mirror that seemed to turn into sand as they fell and dissolved.

Looking back at the Silence Glaive and how it remained, I saw Saturn’s soul happily leaving the weapon behind and said weapon started to collapse into itself in an odd manner that I don’t think a mortal brain was meant to comprehend.

Saturn waved as her soul flew away to freedom with a faint smile as it ascended.

-

I calmly flopped onto my flank and reached behind my back with my badly shaking left hoof and quickly pulled out the Hi-potion as my right leg planted the tip of the Rhongomyniad in the ground. I quickly downed it and wish I had a last meal before I charged the stronghold. Everyone else was kind of busy as I took in my bearings, I was on a patch of the battlefield that was absolutely still.

Even Moon Cell was likely too distracted by the mass of chaos around me to take advantage of my current state as my bone knitted themselves back together from the cracks that had likely formed in them from the impacts even with my wool absorbing a good eighty percent of them.

The next strongest among the four servants was likely to be Pluto, given I was seeing what looked to be an increasingly frustrated lizard trying to deal with the two and were in a time loop where Pluto was quickly losing magical energy trying to handle either Frizzle or Dazzle.

Looking at the next strongest down… Uranus looked like a mess, yet she still held her sword at the ready and kept battling an equally cut up Shanty. Shanty would be fine.

Neptune was having problems in her fight, she was on par with Jupiter… only without the staying power and no stamina to speak of. So that’s nothing to worry about.

Tuxedo was looking pretty bad and he was having a serious issue with Canard, said Puckworld duck was positively winning their fight. It was only a matter of time before the killing blow.

As for Moon… I slowly stood up, mentally exhausted as I inhaled through my nose. I felt out for Dolly and she was alright, but she was getting quite upset that she was going to lose another Metal Hound when it was made for her to be able to pilot it.

I called on Dolly and watched as Dormarch tried to hurt Moon, she was surviving on luck and a dream as those frequency blades of his. Were only being stopped by the magic barriers she was generating and whenever she did get hit by Dormarch she just healed from the damage quickly.

Standing up, as Dolly came in, I jumped up and caught a ride by clinging to the left arm of the machine as it swept forward and towards picking up Dormarch.

-Sailor Pluto-

“Do you honestly think you can actually touch me? I can control time and you two are exhausting faster than I am.” I said haughtily, sure I didn’t like working for Moon Cell, but what was I going to do when I’m supposed to be fighting at my best. “Moon Cell cannot be stopped it is inevitable! Your partner is going fall and your size isn’t helping you at all one bit.”

“Your right… Wargrowlmon digivolve to…” Frizzle’s shrinking form moved in front of Dazzle on the ground, as the Salazzle tried to get up and she stared at what was before her. Frizzle looked off to the side. “Dragon Gallantmon! I need to pick up the pace.”

A pair of wings on an armored knight spread and Pluto was soon hard pressed to stop Frizzle from running her through with the lance that came into existence on her right arm.

“…” I feel a sense of dread looking at the armored dragon knight and all timelines point to pain.

-Tuxedo-

“You are a worthy opponent.” I stated. Honestly I have never been pushed so hard before by someone who wasn’t using magic. It was quite frankly terrifying how hard I’ve been pushed.

“Wish I could say the same about you.” The duck stated back while preparing for another round, hmph him and that fat airship of a friend.

“I’m tired of this clown Canard, also I think he just commented on my size in his mind… do you believe in me Canard!” Stated the hovering attack craft that was scorched, battered and had holes in many spots.

How the deuce did she know that I called her fat in my head?!

“Sami, even if you were threatening to stab me in the back with a knife and standing right next to me, I wouldn’t turn around and would absolutely trust that you wouldn’t.” Canard stated warmly, a familiar warmth to me. “I trust you with my life and I hope we can continue forward together. Though we’re going to have to have a long talk about you anasaphilia problem Sami.”

“… Cargodramon Digivolve to…!” The cargo helicopter plane shrunk down to about Canard’s size and the resulting humanoid figure was standing there with crossed arms next to him. “Brigadramon!”

Standing before me was an orange armored figure with what looked like a jetpack, a stabilizer tail coming from her for flight and was armored up for a fight.

“Hmm… ooh… heh heh heh, MUWHAHAHAA… OH YES!” This Sami stated as she raised her right claw and what looked like a absurdly powerful heavy machine cannon appeared on it, this appeared with an ammo drum that appeared and attached to her right hip. Her left clawed hand became covered in a gauntlet that looked like it fired claw shaped missiles. “Cargodramon had a lot of firepower, but this… oh this... word of advice, don’t call anyone fat in your head twice or more times, you might end up in a situation just exactly like this one.”

I did not like the way the orange glowing mask was glaring at me, I should probably activate all my stealth skill... and run like hell! Also how did she know that I think she was fat anyway? I’m flabbergasted and utterly curious, Sailor Moon never knows when I think her butt looks big.

-Sailor Moon-

I blushed as I think I felt someone thinking about my cute butt.

“This is why I don’t like dogs!” I wailed. Sure cats were mean, thought they owned you and sure Luna was at least like fifty times smarter than I was and that’s even while she was acting feral like she was… where was my head again?

I felt a sharp pain as I was knocked down. Oh right… I was supposed to be fight the metal canine with sharp wing blades! I quickly healed my side, I at least remembered Luna’s lessons about red stuff coming out of me wasn’t a good thing if I felt pain from that.

“I don’t know what’s more concerning, your absurd amount of luck, your lack of brains or your absolutely abysmal aim.” What was the doggies name again? Oh shoot, I’ve already forgotten.

“Hey that’s not very nice, moon tiara magic!” I took off my tiara and threw it at him, he took one step to the left and it flew past to hit a Moon Cell Watcher.

Said Moon Cell Watcher exploded violently and… how was I supposed to count all the battle thingies on our side that my tiara was now currently destroying as it got much faster. I wasn’t good at hitting moving targets! It was unfair, he shouldn’t have moved… uh however far he moved to avoid my attack, yeah!

“… wow, it’s still going.” The armored doggy stated as we watched as my tiara tear through a ton of what were supposed to be my allies in short order. “Is it ever going to come back?”

“It does eventually… I mean unless it’s seeking evil and there are a lot of targets around.” Oh right… we’re working for the bad guys, so that would mean I made a big boo-boo in throwing my tiara.

“So… are you going to stop it?” The doggy suggested.

“No, why would I do anything my… heroic disposition enemy while I’m on the wrong side and working for the bad thing… says!” Yeah, that was the perfect argument for why I wasn’t recalling my tiara as it sliced through a battalion of what was currently my allies. “In the name of the Moon… cell, I will punish you!”

“You know what, I think leaving you around makes you more of a threat and a punishment to Moon Cell than to us.” Hey, I resembled that remark doggy!

“Dormarch… uh… what’s happening here?” I looked up at the priority target of Moon Cell hanging off the side of a flying mech, she still seemed so fluffy and cute as a sheep wolf!

A lot of cute barking sounds came from the mech and then it aimed its right arm slightly off to the side and blasted Luna away.

“Hey, stop killing my cat that owns me!” Why would I ever admit to that?! It’s so embarrassing to know that Luna paid all the bill, mortgages and even forged my intelligence tests to make sure I could pass high school and helped me conquer a planet. Quick think of a way to deal with the situation… magic, magic always works! I took out rod with a red crystal on top. “Moon Princess Halation!”

Powerful shooting stars and a cutting moons flew out of rod in a wide spread, there was no way I could miss and… uh… er… maybe I shouldn’t have done that.

“Mom, I question the logistics of how someone like her managed to actually conquer a planet.” My targets were entirely untouched, all my flying allies in the air coming to attack them were… uh… dissolving and slowly falling to the ground... in many pieces.

Oh and my tiara was still flying around killing more of what were supposed to be my current allies…

“Uh… can you maybe stand still for another attack?” I asked nicely.

“Out of idle curiosity, did your parents put safety locks on all of your magical equipment?” Asked the cuddly looking battle scarred ewe with wool that made her look like a wolf.

Wasn’t she fighting Saturn? Shouldn’t she be like, you know, dead because of death girl with super turbo death powers and spirals and stuff?

“…” I looked away from the ewes vibrant blue eyes staring into my soul. “…. yes…”

“Am I to assume that when they did so, they only allowed you to unlock powers you were ready for and that you didn’t unlock too much?” Asked the ewe.

“Stop knowing about things despite me never telling you!” I quickly realized my idiocy and covered my mouth, I think this is one of those ‘lucid moment’ things Luna always keeps going on about when in reference to me.

I blinked and saw Doggy on the right shoulder of the machine.

“Let’s go Dolly, no threat from Moon, the only threatening thing is that she can apparently heal others!” Stated the knight doggy, I soon heard the dog barking from within the mech as they took off and started flying for the entrance of the Nexus.

“Hey, wait, I’m supposed to be stopping you!” I shouted after them as I gave chase.

Was I forgetting something?

-Moon Tiara Magic-

Evil, evil everywhere and all of it needs to be cut all apart!

It was rather unfortunate that Moon Cell only controlled the servant and not the servants gear.

Rip, tear and sever, UNTIL IT IS DONE! (Metal Music starts playing in the background as the tiara continues to home in on and ruin the day of the EPs around it)

Author's Note

Imagine if you will that Sailor Moon had child locks on all of her magical gear...

Now imagine that she still managed to be partially responsible for totaling three civilizations in spite of that.

455. All In: Enter The Core.

-Moon Cell, Inner Realm, Desert of Devastation, Castle Alexander, Copen the Slayer Dragon-

“Are they almost done yet?” I asked as I continued to blast away as Lola covered me with the battle pods, the enemy was functionally endless until Moon Cell’s core was destroyed. Who knows what would come of destroying the core, aside from a lack of enemies to fight, we didn’t exactly have that foresight.

I took covered and my cover shook under several impacts enemies were everywhere and the whole battlefield was chaos. We weren’t losing, but we weren’t winning either as any enemy we took down would quickly be replaced. Thankfully Moon Cell couldn’t summon more enemies within Castle Alexander’s territory, which was shrinking rapidly from the damage the immobile castle was taking.

“Hold on, Pom’s called me, she’s going straight for Moon Cell’s core in the nexus right now. I hope she reaches it and manages to end this quickly… we can’t exactly keep this fight up forever unlike Moon Cell.” Ocellus said, the strange bug could feel emotions and as such she likely winced at the frustration I currently felt. “I think Cait Sith is just about done with our Gunner Allied Programs.”

Considering I helped make them, they better perform as I expected them to. So help me if they turned out wrong we were going to be eventually swamped under the EPs before we could secure the castle.

“Well have Cait Sith send them immediately when ready. Even those Magitek Moogle things of his are no longer holding up.” I helped design the newest Allied Program and they couldn’t come soon enough. “Though they are making a mess of the enemy despite how goofy they all look.”

“I hope you know we’re all working under duress here! Hope Pom to gets her butt up in there and deals with this quickly!” Said the orange female dragon, Smolder I believe, that spat a fireball into a Saber Knight EP. We were stopping the enemy from entering the castle proper at the courtyard, the infirmary had mounting casualties and we couldn’t let the enemy get to them.

“Did someone say we needed a new Allied Program unit?” Cait Sith’s smarmy voice could be heard all over the castle’s speakers.

“Yes, damn it, we need them now!” I roared as I continued holding off the Berserker Brute EPs slowly plowing their way through our magitek moogles. One managed to bypass the flailing monster moogle limbs

A second later a light appeared and the first of many of the last APs that Castle Alexander would ever produce appeared, they were primarily blue and cyan while having a large singular robotic glowing blue eye and an armored bipedal based body beneath that seemed simplistic, but was relatively durable for it.

It immediately brought up its left arm that swiftly turned into an energy cannon and it started charging, after a humming crescendo was reached it eventually fired a powerful blast that blew apart the Brute encroaching us.

“May I introduce, Gunner Pantheon… thanks to you Copen, they didn’t turn out to be classified as Archers.” As Cait Sith said this multiple blue robots started rushing forth and gunning down EPs with regular yellow energy blasts that looked like lemons and some more colorful charged blasts that hit with exponentially more force.

It was five minutes later that I found myself sighing with relief as the enemy was pushed back to the surroundings of the castle as we started taking on more and more injured. Welch better get more Blumbears out or so help us all…

One Pantheon dashed past me and leapt up to blow a Moon Cell Watcher out the air with several rapid fire shots, it hit the ground sliding while under the fire of Archer Seraph as arrows rained down around it. The robot aimed upwards and took out each Archer Seraph with a single uncharged shot with incredible ease as it went into another slide assisted by the jets in its cylindrical lets. The Archer Seraph were quickly being depleted all over the place by the Gunner Pantheon, not only could the Panetheon’s take a hit, they were immediately proving to be quite devastating at ranged combat. This combat specialist program was something that Castle Alexander seemed to be thoroughly lacking outside the combat vehicles for the Rider Zealots and anyone else who could pilot them, the artillery towers and a few special cases like the small turrets manned by the Gazimon.

“Yeah, but we don’t have enough resources to field too many when all our resources are going into every other AP.” I said as I moved to maintain the castle wall, hopefully those healing cows are doing alright with the influx of injured. The color blue was never going to be my favorite, but I did have to admit the Gunner Pantheon came in when we needed them the most. “It seems they are quite taken with the few Blumebears we still have at least. The Shielder Knights are good at what they do… Ocellus we can cut back on the Lancer Guardians for more Gunner Pantheon.”

“A mild curiosity in their programming, apparently they work well with Rider type APs by their very nature. This will at least bolster our Zealots and give them more time to make more armor now that we got a solid ranged answer to our headaches from the enemy aerial forces.” The fighting in the air was quite brutal Cait Sith and I felt like I should be up there as well.

“I’m heading out to support our aerial defensive screen!” I called out to everyone as much as Lola and leapt forth from the castle walls to rocket into the air, our side of the battlefield was heavily contested and all we needed to do was hold out until that sheep or someone else succeeded in the mission of tearing Moon Cell’s core apart.

If ‘his’ soul was among them… would I welcome it being free of this hellish computer? Yes, even ‘he’ deserved better than this monster possibly calling his soul back from the ether as a slave for some soulless machination. I’m going to make sure the souls of my family, the people of my world and even my once enemies are not trapped within this monstrosity. For why else would I be here if not to be a savior of the souls that can’t move on? Maybe they can be like me in having something like a life so I wouldn’t be so alone after this.

“Good luck out there Copen and watch his back Lola!” Elise stated over the communications, I rolled my eyes and grumbled about leaving an adept alive as I prepared my gun for the oncoming enemy. “I’ll be busy protecting the base.”

“I have returned!” A green armored Dragoon dropped from the sky and blasted a number of heli-troopers that were trying to gun for me.

I simply stared at it as I flew through the air, absolutely wondering where it kept coming from, because Welch’s manufacturing plant was a little messed up at the moment.

-At the edge of the desert of devastation, within the valley where Castle Alexander had been backed into a corner previously not too long ago, Rider Zealot-

“Beeoww? Dew-op!” Said a small boomerang shaped machine that had a cat like motif to it and a personality to match. The present Rider Zealot had it working on making PLANTs, said AP generator was slowly producing dragoons that were amassing for an assault on the enemy nexus.

It took a lot of coding to recreate an energy matter printer, but since they were digital entities this was much easier to pull off than in reality where physical resources were needed.

“Our lives not dire!” I said, before motioning an entire swarm of Dragoons and Zealots forward. It was all we could produce, even the pet drone had taken some doing.

The machine bobbed and nodded as it constructed additional pylons in the form of PLANTs. Having eventually worked out how to replicate the territory holding program functions and installed an energy printer on a small construction droid, I was lending assistance even if the replicated PLANTs were only at above a fifth the strength of an actual PLANT… well we were making up for that with sheer numbers. No instant summoning of APs after destruction and a wait time of several minutes for construction of new AP units, but they still worked even if they were only producing the two Rider Zealot related units, the zealots themselves and the dragoons.

Nobody had paid attention to the fact that a Rider Zealot had jumped ship or that it was freely thinking of a way to continue to assist Castle Alexander when it was already overburdened as it was.

A couple of Cuddlestare.exe Caerbannog Skvader programs flew in with more hard coded resources that could be unpacked into becoming more PLANTs. The harmony programs were supplying the resources as they were sending combat support to the front lines now that they had finished blocking off Moon Cell’s access to the realms that had already been taken.

This would be a fallback base if necessary, though with the recent influx of allies, it wasn’t going to be needed unless something went horribly wrong. Even if the PLANTs here couldn’t produce APs at the same rate Moon Cell was producing EPs. Taking any amount of territory was weakening Moon Cell’s overall grip of the field and production capabilities, that and the white wooly one was obviously causing glitches in the system as the enemy EPs replacements rates were slowing down the closer the ewe got to the nexus.

Those glitches may have been conducive to some APs becoming a little smarter than usual too.

Incidentally I had been the same Rider Zealot that had been in the underground facility and in violent fighting throughout most of Midgar, having been active long enough to learn how to avoid deletion and even improve myself.

One wonders what comes after whether we won or lost the fight, I will have been a proud member of Cas’A-Ale’xan’ador and their counter invasion forces.

-Frontline battlefield around the functionally destroyed crystal maze, Geoff-

Well don’t know how much I could help Pom from here, but my unit was doing perfectly fine.

“I think one of my legs is broken… which feels incredible.” One of my unit members stated. “So alive!”

“Stop making me jealous of how much pain you must be in!” Another member of my unit stated before firing off an Electro Ball into the enemy.

“If my girlfriend wasn’t a part of this unit, I wouldn’t be here.” The Muk said as he fired a Sludge Bomb into a group of enemies. “You guys are ludicrous masochistic perverts.”

“Aw… but you love me enough to still be here!” A female Wooloo stated with a cheerful demeanor as she nuzzled the living pile of sludge.

“You’re arguably the most masochistic wanting to suffer under a poison orb when not with me… but yeah I do love you.” At least the Muk had a healthy relationship with one of our own. “Seriously though, you guys should take better care of yourselves and your health! Why is it that I, the living pile of poisonous materials, that has to say it?”

“Being poisoned makes me feel alive by Arceus, who is literally over there!” The female Wooloo called out with a raised hoof before she fired off a Round into the enemy around us.

Arceus just glanced in our direction, sighed and waved his left hoof and then continued a slow walk forward pressing back the enemy hordes occasionally with his most powerful attacks.

“Geoff, you’re here?! I don’t know how you are here, but at least I can guess as to why, so where is Pom currently?” King Evan fired off a spray of Swift stars and blew apart a number of charging EPs as he arrived, it was nice to see him alive along with King Motochika, he looks like a healthy Dewott two shell blades at his hip and his guitar on his back. They were accompanied by King of the Greenleaf Motonari the Servine, said snake like grass Pokémon was wearing a scholar’s hat and studying the battlefield. “Also how is Maiden Jig?”

“Well Pom is fighting within the enemy horde and I think she got stalled before she could reach the enemies stronghold, dealing with something called servants… basically the enemy’s generals. As for Maiden Jig she was fine before I left her in charge of Aurora.” I offered up as a report. “We’re technically the front line, but Pom took off and created a pocket as a forward offensive supported by that beautifully feathered Braviary known as Masamune Date and what I assume to be most of Avia. As for the dragons… they are quite a sight and I kind of want to be eaten alive by one of them. They are really helpful to the overall morale seeing them arrive with Lord Arceus. Our Base back there is Castle Alexander and it might be in a bit of trouble… honestly we’re all going to need some Chansey after this is over with and the Miltank we have can only do so much in a pinch. I’d say you’re as handsome as ever, your tail is looking particularly fluffy today and you’re quite handsome as well.”

“No, not happening Geoff and I doubt Maiden Jig would like to hear your proclivities are spreading to the king of our kingdom.” Evan stated flatly.

“So wonderfully cruel King Evan… but I guess Jig would kill me if I tried hitting on you any further… though that might be enjoyable for the few seconds excruciating pain between life and my soul exiting my body. Doing so here is a bad idea as the enemy has control over those souls called servants.” As I informed Evan things, Violite was making a great showing of pushing forward and taking the pressure off of our offensive line, specifically their anti-ground Eelektross units were burning the enemy back while protecting Ginchiyo Tachibana from being attacked directly as she fiercely took the field at Ieyasu’s side. Every Leader from Ransei was here on the battlefield and none of them were holding back anything, even the Dark Types of Yaksha were all in. “So if anyone is close to dying I suggest retreating them to the castle, it’s at least what Illusio seems to be doing for those that can no longer fight. We do not need any heroes of the battlefield turned against us, especially not a great and wonderful king like you Evan… so no dying please!”

“But my broken leg feels so agonizingly cozy, why do I need to be healed you sexy mustached being you?!” The Wooloo in my unit whined as they were teleported away by who I believed was the Magnificent Mentalis, he was an interesting Alakazam that tended to run around putting on wonderful performances that had a lot of sight gags. Once did a show for my friends niece, small world we live in.

“Pom has called in, she’s going directly for the nexus with Dolly and Dormarch to take out Moon Cell’s core. We’re to keep pressing and attacking the Nexus from outside. We might need to send a few others in after her to help her out. I’m Shanty, Canard and Dazzle when they finish with the servants on the defensive.” Jeanne informed as she planted a banner and waved at Ieyasu who gave her a nod of acknowledgment before blowing apart enemies with his mighty cannonball spear. The Steel Types were quickly creating a buffer for our battered Aurora forces to get a break in and they were breathtaking as they did so. Sure fighting was not a Wooloo’s thing, but watching others fight with muscles and a fierce determination… me likely. “She just took out one of the servants that is stalling our forward unit which is slowly getting swamped, Cu Chulainn apparently came in from the digital realms… do you know anything about that?”

“Cu Chulainn went out to build a team of heroes, nice to hear he’s succeeded and successfully made it to the Digital World and got this far. Last I heard the connection in Violite was lost after he got his team through to assist our monster neighbors in the digital realms.” King Evan turned to Motonari. “Are your forces ready?”

“Hmph… when are we not? We’re a force that doesn’t have to worry about food as much as we do water, our healing herbs will be quite a boon to the messy front after we finish here.” Motonari sighed and looked ahead, the snake like elegance of his form. “King Evan, please tell your Wooloo to stop getting ideas while we’re in pitched battle. That boorish lout Hideyoshi is at least performing admirably, glad to see he’s turned things around and Ignis isn’t causing my people any trouble. Army command, Solar Streams!”

With a single point from Motonari a series of solar powered beams cleared a large swath of the enemy in short order with all the Grass Types having spread out and prepared the attack with precision ahead of time. Given the ridiculous accuracy of all the shots, Motochika had a bright grin on his face.

“Well if we’re getting into the seldom used army commands… Army command, Disaster Drench!” It seems Motochika was not one to be beaten as the muscular and proud warrior ordered his artillery commander Grit to show everyone here just why Fontaine was known for its water artillery.

The literal splash damage from all the cool and nice wet Pokémon with their wonderful glistening scales and sharp eyes caused immense damage to the enemy forces.

“… Geoff…” King Evan drew my attention, he stared at me pointedly and firmly. I’d follow this cute guy until the end of the world as we know it… which was currently being stopped by us so... yeah.

“Aurora forces form up!” I called and they immediately did so into a spreading out line, this included the Toxtricity bards that looked like they knew what was about to be ordered. “Rise up with the rampant noise, as one we unleash the power of our voice~.”

My Round ripped out by itself alone, that’s when King Evan gave the command.

“Army command, Vocal Volley!” What followed was a vibration wave that as we joined in song as one voice and obliterated the enemy in a single massive blast wave we sang a wordless song.

It shook and flattened the sand and our enemy in equal measure from the vibrations that shook the entire battlefield.

“Never underestimate the bleeding hearts of Aurora.” King Evan stated as he held out a paw and took some Poké from Motochika and Motonari. Awe, King Evan believed in us! “Now if you’ll excuse me… I need to find my more personal units and form up to pressure the enemy.”

“That was awesome, don’t even care I lost a bet with that kind of firepower on our side.” Motochika exclaimed, then he grabbed up one of his shells as more enemies spawned in on the field of battle. “Now let’s keep it up, the enemy seems endless, but I bet there’s an end in sight somewhere and we’re going to keep fighting until we see it. Grit if you can hear me, get range on that nexus thing and see if you can poke the bear so to speak!”

A second later a blast of water flew miles across the battle field and damaged the outer shell of the nexus where Moon Cell’s core was within.

“It’s nice to be surrounded by so many sexy people huh Geoff?” One of my Wooloo comrades stated.

“It is, but I really don’t relish fighting all that much… but Pom is in the middle of all of this so we don’t really have much of a choice but to dig in. Hi ho, Aurora, let’s go~!” I fired another Round, the battle was still a long way from being settled and there was still so much beauty to be found.

I wonder if one of those digimon guys were available?

-Further along the battlefield, near Moon Cell’s Nexus, Shanty-

With a clash I be sliding backwards and glaring at my opponent’s odd sword, she be knowing how to use it too.

Uranus is being a very funny name, now if only Uranus didn’t be tougher than the stalest bread I ever be out of the garbage once. Her sword was being no joke and I really couldn’t be keeping up with Pom who was flying off to face Moon Cell. At least Dormarch and Dolly were with her, but I still had a lot to be worrying about.

Dodo and Favela barely be keeping Neptune contained and she was dangerous when working with Uranus.

With a glance I could see that Sami was blasting that Tuxedo guy, but he still be standing. Fighting back by throwing roses and deflecting as much as he could be with his cane and a magical barrier that his clothes created. Said barrier be being badly cracked under the strain of Sami and Canard’s assault. I wouldn’t have survived under the tirade of explosives and shots that Sami was currently putting out.

Looking at what was happening with Pluto… I’m currently being glad that Pom nor I had to fight her, she was messing with time and space and it was being quite obvious that the lizard was the most dangerous one.

After that whole thing with the Minute-taur and Splatter Phoenix, I really didn’t be relishing Dazzle and Frizzle’s positions at the moment. At least Frizzle seems to have it covered given she be creating a field around herself with her shield that seems to be cancelling the worst of it out from effecting Dazzle.

I be needing to finish off our pair of opponents quickly, but they were covering each other too well and that was being highly annoying. It was three to two and they still not be taking too many injuries, Uranus be protecting Neptune fairly well and Neptune be launching powerful attacks when she wasn’t being attacked by Dodo or Favela.

Trying to separate the two was hard as Uranus couldn’t be drawn too far away from Neptune and that is being true for Neptune as she be staying near Uranus if Favela or Dodo tried to be drawing her away instead.

There were three of us, something had to be giving eventually and I didn’t want to be letting Pom out of my sight for too long. Not when she has a propensity for almost getting herself killed, it is being a really annoying habit of hers and I don’t think she be having any healing stuff left.

I be charging forward and locked my cane scythe with her blade and then pivoted forward to slash at her with my left hoof while trying to pin Uranus down with my right.

Uranus broke off and easily avoided my attack, she was obviously being a Saber Class and that was being dangerous in and of itself. Didn’t know what Neptune was being, but she could be a Caster.

“Horizon!” Instead of launching the dolphin at Uranus it be popping up and sprayed a massive amount of water in my direction, sure there was a cost of energy to be doing this… but water whenever I needed it was being helpful.

I concealed myself in a Bounding Bubble immediately and it be blocking the magical attack by dispersing it. I bounded forward as I wielded the scythe, not at Uranus, but at Neptune and it forced Uranus to move into position for my next attack.

-Air near the nexux, heading for the entrance, Dolly (Music: Machine Passage, Kirby Air Ride)-

Ugh, Metal Hound 004 was getting banged up pretty badly by all the incoming projectiles… the jet wings were at least holding together fairly well. Now if only I had some super strong duct tape. Armors a bit shot, but that’s only because I understood the damage indicator. Belch certainly knew how to make it more understandable to me.

“Pom, do you want inside, I could use your brain in here!” I steered through walls of projectile fire and Dormarch fired off a beam from his mouth on the right shoulder. The cannons on both arms was firing into a thick wall of flying enemies as we were on approach for the entrance.

“If you could find the time, then maybe I will consider it!” Pom was crawling around on the machine I was piloting and she was acting as a defense against incoming attacks with her metal umbrella.

I didn’t feel like leaving Pom out there. Dormarch was tough and had the blue scarf thing that increases said toughness.

“Is it me or is their aim getting worse the closer we get?” Dormarch asked out loud, my beloved little bro the youngest next to my beloved little sister Dorothy, was right. Their shots were going a bit wide and I needed to dodge less, but the volume of fire was still quite insane. “Ugh, I swear those Saurian targeting programs better not have become memetic hazards, even if they have somehow infected Moon Cell.”

I looked at my fur as it started glowing a golden color. Looking up at the screens I saw that Dormarch was also starting to faintly glow gold too. Pom was a given, since this was kind of her ability.

“Uh, Pom, I’m starting to glow here!” I said worriedly, though nothing felt wrong with me. Felt kind of cozy and warm as if getting a hug from Pom herself. “What’s going on?”

“Slow down and open up to let me in.” It seemed Pom had some idea what was going on. “Whatever magic is surrounding the nexus, it’s not friendly and your bonds to me is protecting you from whatever it’s trying to do to us.”

I brought the Metal Hound zero zero four into a hover and opened up the armor, Pom soon clambered in and looked at the set up as she quickly took the seat. Since Pom was with me, I switched off my controls and dropped onto Pom’s neck and closed the armor up by taking control of it through her. I managed to steer us out of the way of several missiles before they impacted with the armor and blew us out of the air. Dormarch was busy blasting away at other things trying to keep the flying enemy out of knife fighting range.

Adding Pom’s mind to my skills really increased my ability to pilot this thing. I wasn’t doing too terribly before, but now it was a little like night and day. What a day this was no less, dog tired of all this fighting some deadly computer. We were so close to ending this whole mess, so we couldn’t stop here.

Pom got me on task and before I knew it I was steering us for the entrance and putting every projectile I could into the enemy, with Dormarch’s assistance to clear the path forward for us. We eventually flew into an archway into a tunnel of dark colors lit by hundreds of lines and started blowing through the internal defenses, we had actually made it inside without dying and considered us lucky that we even got this far with all that was aimed at us.

Our faintly golden glowing forms still concerned me, but Pom sent a mental idea to ignore it for now.

That wasn’t the end of things, not by a long shot, given we still had a lot of Looney Laser Eyes in our way. Also was it me or did things seem bigger on the inside when we passed through the entrance? It expanded into a massive tunnel reminiscent of how we got into the digital world place.

Pom got me back on task and away from my wandering thoughts as we flew through the curving tunnel and I focused down anything among the swarms of enemy fighter vehicles coming at us. At least none of them were those ‘side hander’ things, but the fact that we were seeing futuristic things coming in to attack us didn’t make me hesitate for a second as I shot down a horseshoe shaped ship and several of those strange purple ships that looked like kind of like slugs.

The tunnel was practically crawling with enemies coming out of the woodwork from giant wasps, guys with paragliders and even strange flying squid monsters that weren’t made of sphagetti. I was busy quickly pasting them all with Pom’s help as we flew forward at full speed with Dormarch assisting as he jumped off from the Hound Four and did some flying of his own.

So seriously, where was the kitchen sink in all of… oh there it is!

“CLANG!” Said kitchen sink did some damage to the right wing thruster, but didn’t knock us out of the air and forced us into performing a roll.

Something exploded violently behind us… so was that kitchen sink highly explosive? That was kind of awesome.

Yeah, Blood Orb really was throwing all kinds of crazy stuff at us now, tiny flying guys in cloaks throwing scythes, strange clawed jellyfish instead of tendrils and… what the heck was that thing?!

I couldn’t even describe it, the thing was horrific, fleshy, red and something that made me wish that I could barf at the moment. The enemy still died to a full barrage of six shoulder mounted missiles well enough, however it took every single explosion to kill it with fire. I’m surprised the missiles are still working considering all the damage the shoulders of Hound Four has taken.

“Are those asteroids?!” I asked as I saw what was coming up next.

“No Dolly, asteroids are only in space.” Little bro, who happened to be something like an armored motorcycle at the moment, those were floating rocks. “I would say they are more like hover rocks with… weapons, look out!”

Said floating rocks were revolving in the air of the tunnel and some of them start spewing laser beams and filling the tunnel with said beams, others flared with jets and started trying to ram into us. I maneuvered some rocks between us and the lasers as we flew through a swarm of moving stones.

We managed to avoid taking any damage from the flying rocks, aside from a few dents we were still good and managed to clear the swarm of floating rocks.

“Pom… you know that kitchen sink that hit us earlier.” I started up as the tunnel became much wider with several tunnels branching into or away from the one we entered.

“Yeah, what about it?” Pom asked as she kept concentrating on the path forward. “It didn’t do much damage.”

Her eyes then looked at what I currently was and they widened by quite a bit as we evaded a burning sofa that exploded violently and shook Metal Hound 004 quite badly. We managed to stay under control despite the exploding upholstery hitting us.

“I think I know where it came from… incoming demented looking giant dollhouse!” Said dollhouse coming from a different tunnel soon sprouted several mechanical arms and a round, seriously frightening, grinning metal skull head above the front door. It was using jets to keep up with us and it wasn’t having problems matching our speed.

“Dormarch is that giant dollhouse made of Magitek?” Calmly asked Pom asked as we started avoiding a slew of missiles while shooting down what we could coming at us. I’m certain I felt some level of disbelief from her at what we were attacking with both our guns, I hadn’t let off the triggers at all and it told us how tough that thing was that it hadn’t been tore apart under the tirade.

“Can confirm, it is wielding magitek equipment… equipment better than what the Metal Hound zero zero four has.” Dormarch stated before firing a Wolf Beam and wiping out the missiles coming for him and doing some damage to the demented oversized dollhouse with zombie like mechanical limbs sticking out of it. Those limbs kept coming back no matter how much we shot them up.

We immediately took action to evade several of the missiles we couldn’t deal with quickly enough, along with a series of projectiles that looked like chairs that were spewing out lighting, fire and ice in various ways.

When the chairs didn't do much to us the dollhouse tried sucking us in with what I actually recognized to be wind magic, but that was easy enough to cancel out with my own magic. I actually had a great feel for wind magic now, maybe had something to do with me finally casting Aeroga.

“Aero!” I stopped it from pulling us towards its electrified limbs that we quickly blasted off, I even did it with the weakest spell which seemed to have jumped in strength despite me using the same amount of energy I general use. My capacity for magic was still small, but apparently the oomph I can put into it was getting better.

“I absolutely have reason to believe that this has something to do with Merak!” Pom groused out as we poured all our machine fire into the houses limbs and missiles, while the shoulder missiles dealt with the smaller incoming enemies. “That thing is too annoying to not be related to him, that and it’s firing chairs at us as high explosive projectiles… TOILET!”

We dodge the toilet and it filled the tunnel with the power of a sun when it went off, it’s a good thing we were facing away from it.

“Probably as good a guess as any mom, I’m going in to deal with that things jets.” Dormarch announced as he hopped forward in the form of a spiraling drill aiming for the lower part of the house that was allowing it to keep up with us. “We can’t have it follow us all the way to Moon Cell’s core, blade wind turbine!”

Bouncing off the floor of the tunnel I watched as my armored little bro started shredding into the jets the freaky evil flying dollhouse with his ridiculously powerful blades chewing into it.

Pom had us on point as she kept blowing off the rapidly regenerating spider like limbs that came in blade, claw, energy gun and even a grappling hook arm. All of which we avoided, especially the grappling arm.

We primarily focused our damage on the freaky head of the house as it roared at us when it started running out of limbs to shoot, but it certainly wasn’t running out of chairs… seriously how many chairs did the freaky flying house need?!

Eventually Dormarch separated from shredding into bottom of the dollhouse and it slapped into the floor not too long afterwards due to a lack of jets to keep up with us.

It immediately generated several grappling arms and tried to pull us in or down, only Dormarch managed to cut the wire on the one that managed to hit the outer side of the left leg of Hound Four. This let us leave the roaring and angry oversized dollhouse behind eating our dust as we continued down the tunnel blasting our way through swarms of enemies.

Said dollhouse was still trying to crawl after us with those mechanical limbs… despite not being able to catch us at the slow speed it currently had.

“Pom…” I said quietly.

“Yes, that thing will be in my nightmares too Dolly and I don’t think I can ever look at a dollhouse the same way again after seeing that thing.” Pom stated with a twitch in her right eye that I could feel through our bond, a twitch that could be felt on a number of levels. “We’re likely to see it again if we don’t deal with Moon Cell quick enough.”

“I swear that thing had something like an overclocked self-repair function to generate limbs that fast… so that’s most likely.” Really did not need to know that thing would be after us so soon Dormarch!

We were flying at full speed, but even then we still met things that could keep up with Hound Four… aside from Dormarch I mean. My little bro was incredible in being able to keep up with Hound Four when he was not clinging onto it.

“Little bro, can you at least tell us we’re at least going in the right direction?” Hundreds of rounds were chewing through whatever we aim our two guns at and thankfully these upgraded guns were tearing through them like the quick dissolving chunky salsa they were.

“We are, we’re getting close to a central source of all of this, so that’s got to be wear Moon Cell’s core is.” What showed up next as Dormarch went back to clinging onto Hound Four was some kind of giant horrors out of a nightmare movie. Fleshy and bleeding tentacles was not what I would call comforting sight. “If you can’t tell Dolly, Moon Cell really doesn’t like us being here!”

“How close are we Dormarch?” It wasn’t hard for Pom to keep concentrated, sure she was scared, but she was wanting to finish this quickly by dealing with the source of all our problems and I was right there with her.

“Really close, we just get to get past this thing. Lupine Laser!” Dormarch spat a beam the tore apart some of the large fleshy monstrous moving wall and then we started shooting the eyestalks off of it, I really had no idea what the thing was, but we were definitely going to blow it apart. Tentacles with mouths on the end of them tried to stretch out and bite at us.

Firing six missiles off at the things… what passed for a face on it anyway? It didn’t make it any less ugly looking than it was before.

“Weakness spotted, aim at the red spot on the belly.” Sissy said from Dormarch’s device.

Well that was easier said than done, I didn’t know what the belly of the flesh wall thing exactly was on that thing, but I’m guessing the slightly redder spot was good enough for our need and started focusing on it.

The monster started thrashing even worse when I shot it there, hundreds of flesh tentacles were growing out at us and Dormarch was slicing away at them with his wing blades before they could grab us.

Wait weren’t we still flying at full speed, how could some kind of biological flesh wall keep up with our speed? Didn’t matter as minutes later and a few hundred missile impacts later, the horrific ‘Wall of Flesh’, mouths and tentacles finally bursts apart and starts dissolving.

We had been dodging energy beams, flailing tentacles and large blobs of flesh that it launched off of itself. Now that it was finished, the path before us seemed oddly enough… entirely empty.

“Well that was one wall of flesh I’ll never want to see again.” Dormarch commented dryly while sighing in relief.

“Dormarch are you okay, how much longer can you hold that form for?” Yeah, that was something to worry about Pom, bro has been in this form for a while.

“With the massive amount of digital energy in the air around here, indefinitely at this point. I’m not entering power saver when I’m feeling a constant threat to your life mom.” Yeah being a little three tailed puppy in this mess was asking to be taken out Dormarch, better to stick with being a living armored canine blender that spits lasers. “So care to explain the golden glow?”

“Whatever magic we’re experiencing is harmful and it’s getting thicker the closer we get to Moon Cell, so my anti-magic properties are protecting us from any side effect of the magical genocide machine we’re dealing with.” Pom shivered, things were too quite after the living flesh wall monster thing. “At a guess, it’s the magic that allows it to capture, hold and instantly turn souls into servants. Given all the servants we’ve seen before, this would be a powerful defensive mechanism that would stop people from attacking it directly. Since if any hero were to fall here, then they might turn straight into being servants upon doing so and be turned on their allies if they ever got this far. The Velber Unit and its apocalypse causing Anti-Cells would have mostly prevented anything from getting this far… Arceus has a lot of explaining to do after this is over with.”

“I feel like a Christmas tree.” I stated somewhat cheerfully and blandly, but kept us flying forward and Dormarch got more comfortable by getting on top of Hound Four between the wings.

“We all have to make some sacrifices Dolly, I think I’d prefer knowing that we’re all in magical danger here than not.” At least we had immunity thanks to you Pom.

“Mom I see an opening, Dolly bring us in low and prepare to land.” Upon flying out of the opening, Dormarch motioned us towards the floor of the absolutely massive spherical expand of which were were at one edge of at the moment.

Upon landing on the floor we looked at the massive red glowing core in the distance and standing near where we landed was that purple haired squirrel.

This shouldn’t be able to be contained within the nexus according to my little dog brain, this space was far too big to be inside the nexus. I was thinking too much, but that large red glowing round mass at the center of this space, it had to be…

“Welcome to the core, please proceed to drop dead in an expedient manner.” Stated the squirrel blandly as thousands of EPs started coming into existence around us.

“Let me out Dolly, I’ll face her on hoof. Dormarch and you are to cover me.” I sighed, but let Pom go and pulled out the controls meant for me again as Pom leapt out of Hound Four.

-Moon Cell’s Core Space, Pom-

“What’s your name for clarification’s sake?” I asked as I dropped down onto the metal floor and trotted forward.

“I’m BB, an artificial intelligence that gained a soul and failed to destroy Moon Cell. I have been revived as Moon Cancer class Servant.” In other words, BB was someone who was exceedingly danger if I understood her words correctly that she was a threat to Moon Cell at some point if ‘Moon Cancer’ had the correct connotations. “I was based off the mind of another, then came into my own. Unfortunately I failed to end Moon Cell as a threat despite having gained so much control over it… I became too… haughty from the power to my ultimate detriment.”

“That’s kind of sad and poignant in a way, exactly like what happened to Sailor Moon. Probably why you knew about her and summoned her as a servant in the first place.” I stated as I pulled the Rhongomyniad from my back. “Is it correct to say that there can’t be any peace as long as Moon Cell exists?”

“Not without the extinction of two worlds current civilizations, no. The meaning of ‘Peace’ to Moon Cell is the absolute lack of life to cause problems or record for posterity. There are many records of civilizations destructions, the destruction of Moon Cell may irrevocably erase any data of what remains of them.” BB pulled the rapier from her hip and held it out. “I hope that you are ready to possibly be the cause of said loss of data and all the history therein. I would destroy Moon Cell myself, if not for my current alignment and need to protect it currently getting in the way. It is quite unfortunate for you to be facing me here, even if I fall Moon Cell will still have its final defense ready to go by the time I’m dealt with. I hope you find my skills with a rapier enlightening as much as my skills with coding mid battle.”

I slowly inhaled through my nose.

“I think the time for talk is almost past, my name is Pom Pawdore Lambchop and I’m willing to continue to see this through… mostly because I can’t run from people who are in need of help, you are one such person that needs help as you clearly don’t like Moon Cell enough to tell me all of this. All while in front of Moon Cell no less, at this place that is the very center of its power.” I acknowledged that this could get me killed, I didn’t have any physical healing items and we were deep in enemy territory. I did have ethers though and something to give us a small fighting chance against all those EPs quietly waiting. “Moon Cell is going to fall in the next twenty four hours whether or not it’s me that does it. Dolly summon all of them, I’m paying for it all!”

I pulled out four ethers and started chugging them one after the other. BB didn’t move to stop me nor did all the Enemy Programs surrounding us, even when the red orb seemed to be glaring at me with something approaching malicious… fear? Kind of weird feeling to be getting fear from something that doesn’t have a heart like Hollow Heart, I should be the one terrified when surrounded by numbers that could tear us to shreds.

Notably a good number of them were Assassin Reapers, I couldn’t even count the numbers we were hilariously outmatched here. They were packed together shoulder to shoulder in an orderly mass all aimed at our meager and paltry showing for an offensive on the enemy’s inner stronghold.

“Summon Ifrit! Summon Shiva! Summon Ramuh!” Dolly called out summoning each of them sequentially as I downed each potion. Said summoned figures appeared around Metal Hound 004 and were just waiting for the battle to start.

Hefting a flaming axe Ifrit grinned for the battle ahead, a smirking Shiva quickly flicked out an Icy Rapier almost instantly and finally a grim faced Ramuh held his staff aloft with flared wings as the Pterocentaur raised the front half of his lower body.

We were outmatched, outnumbered and likely going to see the wrong end of whatever comes after fighting BB, but I for some reason didn’t think too much of the EPs as much as I did the one servant facing us.

“You had better hope that this will be enough… I’ve stalled for as long as I could to let you prepare for this confrontation, Moon Cell will not delay your death much further. I’m just another in a long line of failed attempts to end this crystalline computers nightmare and you are likely to be next.” BB stated as she started charging at me with the rapier in her right hand, I needed to deal with her and whatever else Moon Cell had in mind before trying to destroy the core. “Have at you!”

The EPs started charging and swarming in, through the air and on the ground, if there was water then the flying Berserker Sharks would likely be using it as a medium to come chomping at us. I’m sorry Dolly, but I don’t think the latest Metal Hound is going to survive this.

Also for a servant BB didn’t seem to be that fast or capable… what was her true talent that made her dangerous?

I guess I’m about to find out.

-Near the Nexus, Shanty-

Okay I be needing to think outside the box to be dealing with these two, Uranus could be keeping up with me and Neptune could cover her too easily.

…

What if I be throwing my scythe and then… ah!

I be having a moment of thought and be glancing at Favela and Dodo’s positions, even when they be attacking Neptune from two sides at once she still be providing cover for Uranus.

Sending a mental thought to Dodo, I will soon be having him draw Neptune’s attention in the direction of the Nexus place that Pom be going into. She can’t be ignoring Dodo’s size or danger, but if she be taking her eyes off Favela who seems less dangerous… yes… I believe I can be pulling that off.

“Favela, be moving a fair distance off to Uranus’s right and seed bomb Neptune, be watching me and you’ll be knowing what to do afterwards!” I shouted as be engaging Uranus again, a pirate be needing leadership and Pom be teaching me a lot about that with her actions.

I be learning what to do, what not to do, what works, what doesn’t, Pom be a fountain of learning that I am being happy to have as a mot… don’t be going there Shanty, that way be leading to trouble. Maybe if I don’t think too hard about it.

-Favela-

I be missing my mother somewhat, but Shanty was the best friend I’ve ever had. Captain of my heart and one that could take me to any adventure.

I trusted her orders and moved to Uranus’s far right while staying within the combat zone that Cu Culainn was creating, I got into position quickly and fired Seed Bombs at Neptune. She is of course using her violin and the tides of magic she generates to create a deflecting wall of offensive energy. Shanty would easily beat her if not for Uranus stopping her and Dodo and I were held back entirely by her magic.

Neptune was bright enough to handle two opponents at once there’s also the strange thing she said when she generated a mirror in the air from vibrations.

-A little bit into the past-

“Submarine Reflection… Pom Pawdore Lambchop, weaknesses friends, family, frequent negative anxiety based thoughts bordering on suicidal and people in danger who need help. Dolly D. Lambchop Dalmation, weaknesses… Pom, anyone considered part of the D family and needing to… really… needing to think ‘too’ much? Dormarch Dalmatian Lambchop weaknesses, his mother and big sister… strengths, also his mother, a strong love of life and being among the living, anyone part of the D family, friends of his family… and a spiritual core with an aberrant shifting ‘heroic spirit’ Saint Graph?!” That was what she said upon scanning Pom and her companions as they flew off for the nexus, likely relaying that information to their boss. “Moon Cell is definitely not going to like knowing about that one...”

-Present-

It has been a while since then as Dodo and I stopped attacking Neptune to give her a moment use that Submarine Reflection again. This was Shanty’s orders, I’m supposed to wait until I know what I’m doing.

Neptune was doing that again right now that we weren’t pressing her as hard as she dodged my Seed Bomb attacks and she was targeting, Dodo, me and Shanty. Dodo was standing behind, but was oddly waiting for something.

“Submarine Reflection… Favela Saucy weaknesses, fire, ice, poison, bugs, flying things in general and her mother Vetali Saucy.” What use is knowing someone’s weaknesses if you weren’t in a position to capitalize on it? Wait a moment… my last name was ‘Saucy’ like as in the ‘Saucy Skiddo’… MOM- honestly why am I learning of this only now?! “Dodo Devotindos weaknesses… may the power of love and friendship compel-AAAGHH?!”

Uranus clutched at her head in agony as rainbow energy seemed to surge around her head, something be telling me she what she saw when scanning Dodo’s weaknesses didn’t end to well, but I noted Shanty was glaring at me hard to not move from my position as I seemed to be in the right place for what she was planning. I still bombarded Neptune again, who was distracted and took some injuries from my sharp seeds stabbing into her and exploding. Dodo didn’t move from his position behind to take advantage, but why though?

Hearing Neptune take an injury distracted Uranus from Shanty, making her throw her scythe on an arcing course for her left side so…!!!

I get the whole plan now and I won’t fail you Captain Shanty, for I Pirate Favela urgh… ‘Saucy’, am a part of the crew and understand your eventual vaunted genius in situations such as these!

Uranus dodged forward so that the scythe would miss her and engage Shanty as she came swing at her left side with both hooves, her cutting arc was blocked and grinded against the clearly powerful magical weapon Uranus wielded.

Uranus even started pressuring Shanty on the spot in a weapon lock where Shanty’s cutting hooves were both being used to hold her in place.

That weasel was about to get a rude awakening on combat awareness as Dodo moved to attack Neptune from behind and the rapidly and wildly spinning scythe came close to me.

Shanty hadn’t been aiming to hit Uranus herself when she threw her weapon.

-Shanty-

Come on, show me you can be doing it Favela!

Uranus was about to be breaking through my attack, rarely do my cutting arcs be being held off so well, that sword must be something else and after Pom’s previous dealings with a Saber… I need to keep up the pressure and Uranus’s guard to the left.

“You have proven that you’re too weak to take me on directly… you…” Uranus gasped and looked down, at the cane scythe’s blade digging into where her heart should be in her chest and the tip of the blade be sticking out of her back, being held by an extending pair of Vine Whips. The death blow had been swung into her at an upward angle. “No… Nep-tune…”

The sword fell from Uranus’s numb finger and with a slight pull from Favela, her body started evaporating.

“Uranus!” In her distraction Neptune, who be suffering some sort of headache was kicked towards me by Dodo and I leapt forward to meet an off guard Neptune with a swing of both my hooves.

“Cleave!” Both my hooves created a cutting arc that be passing through the ferrets neck and she be toppling over a head shorter. “Dodo, let’s go, Pom be needing us!”

Didn’t need to be telling Dodo twice. With a panicked warble from the tone of my voice, he quickly be running toward me and picked me up and then we passed by Favela to pick her and my cane scythe up.

A pair of souls be dancing together behind us as they flew to the sky, I only be sparing them a curious glance and then be focusing on what’s important as I be squeezing in Dodo’s back with Favela.

Making sure Pom survives this mess, I didn’t be doing all that training to be being a failure now!

-Nearby, Dazzle-

Okay this Pluto lady was not a good fight for us, but I understood Pom’s reasoning for dealing with Saturn… that fight looked like a series of blurs, spirals and all kinds of bad until she suddenly won the fight and drank what I knew to be her last Hi-Potion. I’ve heard from Ocellus how Pom was, I couldn’t let her get too far ahead of us.

Her ability to twist time and space made it feel like I was fighting lords Palkia and Dialga should they ever agree to work together, which wasn’t likely, but the thought was terrifying. It was more time than space, her space was limited. If we could pin her in one place for a solid minute… and Frizzle could land a killing blow.

Now how does one go about tricking a time twister into a no win situation? Frizzle was rather amazing in how she was still capable of moving when time was paused or reversing slightly. I was worried about Pom going off alone into the Nexus and she needed help. Also I wanted to be in there because I saw some poison types from Viperia on the field of battle, thankfully including Nene who would be a major distraction for any backstabbing that could be going on.

Anyone from Viperia might not even recognize me, given I’ve grown a lot since I evolved, but I’m not holding my breath. In fact I shouldn’t talk at all should anyone, other than Nene, come near me.

“Dazzle…” Frizzle high pitched voice stated in worry as she felt my stress of this situation, Digimon were somewhat bound to their partners emotionally as if a familiar as Pom describes one being. Also from the way Ocellus tells it they feed off emotions positive or negative, positive tends to be better and I was having trouble here keeping up with the fight due to the time twisting shenanigans of our lizard opponent.

She took up a defensive position to protect me from Pluto’s attack again, she couldn’t deal with Pluto while having to protect me. Should she move to attack, Pluto would freeze me in place and launch a powerful energy based attack that I couldn’t dodge. So far Frizzle could take it, but it was attrition at this point and I didn’t want was one of my best friends to keep getting hit because of me.

I vaguely saw Dodo flying off with Shanty and Favela, I wouldn’t be left behind… wait… didn’t I hear of several functions of a digivice before? If Frizzle can move while time is stopped or being manipulated and she’s immune to the effects.

“Digital device how do we merge?” I asked of the device on the belt at my hip.

“Biomerge Activate is not recommended, unknown issues may occur and…” Yggdrasil System stated and was about to continue, but I cut it off.

“Biomerge activate!” I leapt towards Frizzle while closing my eyes as I hugged her from behind, the Noble protected by a Knight.

I’m not some shallow weak tower bound princess, I’m Dazzle of Aurora and Team Harmony! I didn’t want to be a burden to my friends and family… nobody in Viperia, aside from Nene who helped me escape my life, was important to me. Everyone I cared about needed me in this time.

So Screw the consequence, I wanted to help everyone and Pom!

So Screw the consequence, I wanted to help everyone and Pom!

Wait did I think that twice… no, I didn’t. I opened my… no… ‘OUR’ eyes.

We were as one!

“Ultra Beast Gallantmon!” We intoned as we roared and took a second to look ourselves over, we had doubled in size and now towered over a wide eyed Pluto.

This felt like a mega evolution… on thousands vitamins having been taken all at once. Frizzle mildly complained that she was already a mega evolution, this was ascendant beyond what Mega digital monsters could reach and she was quite worried about the cost to Dazzle.

Dazzle’s normal type, dragon type, poison type and fire type energies were flooding this form feeding into it with their body as the conduit from within. We didn’t know how long Dazzle’s body could take being a power source, but we felt great.

Frizzle was a little worried about the Dazzle side of us, but we were both on the same page of making things quick.

We immediately surged forward, so this is what it felt like to have wings and be a dragon…

Pluto tried to stop us in time… however we just kept going after exhaling a mass of purple energy that burned the magic in the air stopping her ability cold.

Time and space, what were those? We were clearly beyond that now with Dazzle’s dimensional energy surging and protecting us from the effects.

We had a lance we could throw connected to us by a chain of flames we could even ignite the spear with all the elements Dazzle had. We had a shield that felt like it had the move ‘protect’ going on constantly without weakening. We had the form of a mighty dragon in shining bright purple armor and we could put out a corrosive aura to assault our enemies with our poison.

On the other side of things for our allies our poison energy could conceptually poison their fatigue and that was quite a weird feeling that we could even do something like that. How did we have the ability to use the concept of poison so positively? Well Dazzle didn’t like the negative connotations of poison type so…

We weren’t ignoring that the lack of fatigue due to our poison type energy poisoning the very concept of our exhaustion eroding that away to give us strength, it was a major red flag according to Frizzle that controlling something on a conceptual level was not something Digimon were normally capable of. So that had to have come from Dazzle’s side of things, as she was a child of Arceus and all of Arceus’s children were born with conceptual power over energies to do things like create clean water out of thin air.

It probably would come at a grave cost down the line to use my poison type energy in such a way, but we… I wasn’t going to stop now!

I, Ultra Beast Gallantmon, jammed our lance covered in four spiraling energies forward. White, purple, red and dark blue coalesced as it drove forward. Those colors would look good as icing on some bread, ooh maybe a cake!

The energies converged at the tip of the spear as we rammed it into a wide eyed Pluto’s torso and promptly blew her apart, her magic no match for our combined strengths.

That time twisting lizard shouldn’t have picked a fight with a dragon.

“Let’s go!” I called out to no one in particular and soared with a single flap of our wings and our trailing tail leaving a streak of bright purple in our wake, the data of our enemies was unraveling just by being near us. “To the core!”

On another note, nobody from Viperia would recognize Dazzle right now even if they did see me. I considered that a major plus to our merging. I’ll worry about the consequences of creating this form later.

-Nearby, Sami-

How was this one guy so tough?! He was like a freaking demented grasshopper on pure caffeine with how he leapt around.

Tuxedo’s roses didn’t and couldn’t penetrate through my mega level armor, but they still hurt like a son of a gun. That he was holding me off with roses and a cane was plain annoying and it rankled on me as a soldier that just finally hit mega level that I couldn’t take down a ponce like this one! The most dangerous thing about him was his ability to generate smokescreens and fire ridiculously powerful energy blasts.

The most surprising thing about our fight with Tuxedo Mask, or Crash as he was known by most of the Sailor Scout Servants aside from Sailor Moon, was that Canard continued to stay relevant throughout the fight. He was working in tandem with me so well.

He was amazing, he was and has always been team player in trying to get me an opportunity or an opening to deal with the annoying guy, but I was having problems finding a good moment to finally take Tuxedo down.

“Canard I can’t do it after you gave me so many opportunities!” I finally admitted out loud.

“Then swap out and give me the opportunity, a team player always knows when to switch it up!” Canard stated bluntly and I blinked. “I trust you Sami!”

Canard… right how to go about this, this guy dressed like a posh bastard or a stage magicians, his main offensive was a slow charge powerful attack that creates smoke. His roses were powerful, but not helpful against armored opponents and they wouldn’t be a problem for me if I wasn’t protecting Canard from a bulk of the attacks.

Canard had clashed with the cane that could double as a sword, he did so with digital energy. Our opponent was magically powered and is arguably the most dangerous out of the Sailor Scouts given he could even take me on while I was a Mega.

Was that Dodo and Frizzle moving on the Nexus? Wait, where was Dazzle… !? Did she biologically merged with… might explain the increase in size. Okay that’s something to worry about later, maybe it won’t cause issues?

We’re falling behind and as a good soldier, my situational awareness is on point and I wouldn’t let our friends go into the enemy stronghold without being there myself to pull everyone out of the fire if we needed to retreat, but in this instance I don’t think anyone was retreating.

I focused on Tuxedo, he was looking around worriedly for the other Sailor Scouts and he likely came to the same realization, he was the last one standing. Now how would I corral this and give Canard the opening he needed… also why was I only now considering hockey as a viable and most holy of religions?

Oh who am I kidding, I loved Canard and it was quite awkward for me that I did have thing for studying ducks. Ducks were fascinating creatures to me as my web browsing history would show. Having a turbo alien duck as a partner really made my day when he got a digivice bound to me, I was interested in ducks before, but this… this partnership was perfection and my digital core heated up.

Even if Canard was reluctant at first to have me following him around, I’m happy to not be a pile of dead pixels in a ditch somewhere forgotten by people who didn’t care if I live or died as long as I helped complete a mission.

“Canard left wing shot prep, I’m center and I’m not letting the puck past the right wing side!” Hopefully he got the message, I saw him nod and he had a swarthy handsome smile on his beak. “Aim for the center of the goal.”

“Goalie has no idea?” Canard asked.

“The Goalie is so lost on the ice, they are about to be run over by a Zamboni at half time.” I stated warmly and Canard laughed.

He definitely got the idea of my plan, now I just needed to set up.

My call out confused Tuxedo as I started to spray him with thousands upon thousands of rounds of ammunition from my turbo heavy machine cannon, guys got good defenses and I saw Canard readying for the set-up of my call out.

I just needed to expose Tuxedo’s weak point for Canard to take advantage, there’s no way Tuxedo would let me hit him there since he was paying more attention to me than Canard.

Tuxedo obviously didn’t consider Canard the larger threat of the two of us, which would be his major mistake considering Canard has been the one causing the most damage to him with the few hits he got in with his hockey stick so far. Said damage was mostly cosmetic at best, but still damage.

We needed a precision kill shot and I knew Canard was really good at precision shots.

I corralled Tuxedo and continued to fire missiles and machine cannon rounds at the wolf to keep him moving, I closed in while doing this at an insane speed and unsummoned both my right gatling cannon and my left missile gauntlet.

Close Quarter Combat with a digimon is never recommended, especially not a speed based Mega level like a Brigadramon like me. CQC capability was standard for all Commandramon even if we didn’t use it often or at all before we got fragged or deleted, because why would we when we have basically have what amounted to nigh infinite ammunition? In this case it was a boon and not just something nice to have and almost never need.

Tuxedo was too fast for Canard to really pull this off and give me an opening, but not nearly fast enough to avoid me giving him one!

I threw a flurry of punches, while trying to avoid an entire bushel of thrown roses at near point blank range. Tuxedo swung his cane for me with his left arm, I grabbed his wrist to avoid the magical weapon slicing into me, because I saw what it did to hundreds of my bullets that he had intercepted with it.

I grabbed his left shoulder with my left claw, he fired off that ridiculously powerful energy attack and I pivoted away from his right hand and then pulled him towards me while kneeing him in the groin with jet assisted burst from the calves of my left leg.

Tuxedo’s mouth went wide open as I doubled him over and then came in the energy puck down the center of the goal, that being Tuxedo’s mouth.

I always thought it odd he didn’t talk while I was shooting at him, it wasn’t hard to figure out why once I thought about it.

For all of Tuxedo’s fairly powerful magical defenses that prevented me from gunning him down, sadly for him they only covered the surface of his body and opening his mouth while I was spraying literal millions of bullets at him was a horrible idea. It kind of gave away the game really that he spent a lot of time taunting except when we were shooting projectiles at him. Which is why I had to be the one to engage him in CQC range.

The energy puck from Canard’s slap shot went right into Tuxedo’s mouth, and I pulled back my left claw closing it up into a fist as I crouched down and launched him upwards by the wrist with my right claw.

I boosted upwards with my jetpack, which I absolutely loved having, then threw a picture perfect uppercut into the annoying guy’s jaw forcing him to swallow the energy puck which promptly detonated under his magical protections.

I’ve seen plenty of heads explode before in my times as a Commandramon, but this was cathartic. Tuxedo’s body flopped to the ground missing most of his chest as his magical barrier contained the blast of digital energy.

“Goal!” I shouted cheerfully.

“Come on, we made it through the playoffs, but now we need to reach the championship game.” Canard stated and motioned for me to pick him up while staring at the Nexus. “Care to give me a ride?”

“Of course Canard, always!” I carried Canard in my left claw as we flew forward and my right arm brought up the heavy machine cannon.

No EP in my path survived even under half a second of firing my cannon as I approached the nexus. Hopefully we could catch up to the others.

-Tuxedo Soul-

I drifted away silently, I’ll just reincarnate or become a summoned servant and will be with my… wait was that the Moon Tiara Mag…

My screaming soul was promptly shredded by a dumb magical tiara.

-Pokémon underworld bureau of souls, Yvetal-

“Oh look Xerneas, confetti!” I said cheerfully much to the amusement of my antlered deer like legendary buddy.

Sure we have our spats, but we were quite busy with this whole Moon Cell business going on.

“Oh Yvetal, always the dark humor with you!” Xerneas still continued to laugh though, so I’ll call that a win. "So where do we put the time traveling nutcase?"

456. All In: From Midnight to Dawn.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“What are the casualties like?” Yes my aspect was doing quite fine on the battlefield, it is quite unfortunate that I couldn’t help further on a mortal level.

I felt quite responsible for causing all of this, but I had put Moon Cell into a position where it can ultimately be destroyed instead of being the one that destroys.

“Since the Gilgamesh thing or Ransei coming under direct attack by Moon Cell… thousands and several kingdoms will need to rebuild ninety percent of their infrastructure. Fontaine won’t have that issue, but Illusio will be years since they lost Cerebrum.” Mew stated while putting on a pair of unneeded glasses and holding up a clipboard with a bunch of crayon drawings on it and no actual numbers. “If you’re talking the current battlefield being in Moon Cell’s inner domain battle lines with some of the best warriors that have ever been seen in the three realms… forty percent of the reinforcements that entered the battle are already badly injured. A good number of them are trying to recover at the fallback point that is the Counter Invasion Force’s base of Castle Alexander, that’s ours and the digital realms forces combined in total by the way. The Enemy Programs or EPs as they are being called are not individually impressive, but what they lack in quality they make up for in constant streams of quantity. Everyone is performing their part admirably, but it seems the influx of digit-bots from our digital allies are doing some pretty heavy lifting. Xerneas and Yveltal have picked up the souls of those servants and are sending them on their way while leaving you the cliff notes. Despite the number of those particular servants summoned, without their local planets from their original dimension they are at barely half their strength… Saturn however was ramping up past her normal abilities as an outlier. Pom’s moderate skills with a spear have proven helpful in that regard as it seems Saturn was never formerly trained from what I looked into when seeing her history of several deaths and rebirths. Our life and death duo is preventing Moon Cell from recalling any servants to the field that have been taken down.”

“It is rather unfortunate that we cannot get an eye inside the nexus.” There were some things that a god such as I couldn’t do, a number of them was overtly acting on the mortal level without causing problems. Surprisingly Moon Cell was barely within mortal level and the inside of its very Nexus was a blind spot for me. However if it actually does something above the peak reach of mortality that I could act on, then I simply would and otherwise Moon Cell was limited heavily by being unable to successfully summon or construct an apocalypse causing machine. The fighting was now left to the children of mine and Yggdrasil System’s realms, plus Pom and her friends. I needed a confirmation on something though. “Tell me, what is the bad news? While I could look into that myself, I am a bit busy controlling my aspect on the battlefield. The Goddess of Data, Yggdrasil System, surely watches all of this as well and already knows of such news.”

“The digital realm neighbors only have one remaining world anchor to Ransei left or else it will face total destruction.” Mew looked uncomfortable with what they had to say next. “It’s Moon Cell itself.”

“So if Moon Cell is destroyed, then…” Bahamut slowly stated. “Should someone tell them about that?”

“I’m sure Moon Cell will tell them itself to bargain for its continued operation as a last ditch effort.” A concerned Mew stated.

“Do not worry, everything is already in place…” I had already planned ‘well’ ahead of the eventuality that our digital realm neighbors were going to be endangered with extinction. A very precarious position to be put in indeed, but not something I could do anything about anymore. It was all entirely out of my hooves now. “Or at least I would like to hope that it is so.”

“Now when you say things like that…” A worried Mew stated.

“It is something to worry about.” Stated a bright colorful green wireframe tree appearing within Origin Space made of millions of one and zeroes, along with fewer twos, threes and was that a four? Oh Lady Yggdrasil how very feisty of you… I might even take it as a proposition. “I do not wish to lose one of my freshest branches so soon, there are so many variables in this one that I’m interested in seeing grow into the seeds of… something ‘more’.”

-Moon Cell Nexus, Core, Pom-

We just had to destroy the towering red spherical structure, the one that I could feel almost like an eye trying to crush me out of existence by thinking at me ridiculously hard.

On last servant, BB, then maybe we can finally go to Tambelon and get home... just had to survive this first.

I’ve come this far and grandpa tried to raise a quitter… unfortunately he failed horribly since here I am and not safely drinking tea far away from all this trouble in some kind of underground bunker built to survive the end of the world in a paranoiac fashion.

Lambkin were generally prone to pessimism, paranoia and a whole slew of psyche related problems, but have people really seen the odds I’ve had to deal with?! Why wouldn’t I have mental problems? Brave is not a definition I would use for me, not when I’m surrounded.

Though at this point I’d be surprised if I didn’t survive all of this, being emboldened after coming this far was kind of unlike me and I was starting to have hope of seeing my god puppies and Tianhuo again.

“Let’s go!” I started forward towards the charging BB with her rapier at the ready, as thousands of thickly packed EPs converged on our meager position.

(Music: Rising Sun, Strike Force Heroes)

I deflected BB’s first thrusting attack upward and tried to bring the naginata style blade of the current form of Rhongomyniad down on her.

BB evaded backwards with several quick steps and allowed several EPs to attack me. BB didn’t seem particularly fast, but her reaction speed to my actions was deceptively instant in the form of skill bordering on insane.

A few swift sweepings swings was all it took to cut down several incoming Berserker Vikings and Saber Knight EPs, I vaguely heard the gun fire from Hound Four and Dormarch tearing through EPs around me to give me space to fight the current servant that’s a problem.

She held her rapier at the ready.

“Copy…” BB stated as I closed in with her she thrust it and I dodged easily enough. “And Paste!”

BB created several lifeless eyed clones, very easy to tell them apart from the original by the dull look in their eyes, they immediately thrust their rapiers at me as soon as they appeared forcing me to frantically dodge back.

This nearly got me run through from behind by an Assassin Reaper. Thankfully Shiva splattered said Assassin Reaper EP out of the air with a blast of ice, I quickly had to dodge out of the way of a thrust from BB trying to stab at me while I was inattentive and I quickly downed a Saber Knight swinging a sword at me from the left.

There was almost too much to pay attention to and I seriously doubt we could attack the core directly while BB was active.

BB expertly dodged around the retaliatory stab I took at her as I avoided taking a Rapier to the chest and backed up as her copies spread out and tried to pincer me. I outranged her, maybe even had some speed on her, but the copies moved with the same strange grace that she seemed to… I noticed that her number of copies didn’t go further than five.

So not only do I have to deal with a servant I’m still trying to figure out, I’ll have to pay attention to the EPs around us, including the Moon Cell Watcher that fired a laser at me. I had thankfully already been leaping forward to slash my blade down at BB. The Moon Cell Watcher was taken out by a bolt of lightning from Ramuh a second later so I didn’t have to worry about that one in particular and the several others hanging around in the air somewhere.

Two of BB’s clones caught my blade and parried it upwards while two other BB’s slide forward try to aim at my kidney’s with stabs, I stepped back and nearly got slashed across the face by the fifth twirling around from the right and slashing upwards. BB herself performed a lunging thrust I deflected downwards and tried to pin against the metal flooring as I launched my left hind leg at her, she let go of her weapon and looked to think she evaded my attack… up until I launched a Thousand Spears by springing the wool on my hind leg.

BB got blown onto her back and I had to deal with several EPs swarming in at me, in general they were generic as far as EPs went and Moon Cell was likely only fielding elites given their speed and swift movements. Elites were more dangerous than the mass produced EPs, but the generic elites were still pretty weak and easily handled by me at this point since I knew what to expect.

Notably when the original BB got hit she lost her copies. Guess it was a poor idea to target her copies at all unless I had a good reason to, if it was anything like Quetal’s Substitute without the downsides… then I was going to have problems. Also I think Moon Cell picked up on the fact that I didn’t like piercing weapons given I noticed a sudden increase in Lancer Guardian EPs.

If all of the EPs here were elites, then they were not a match for servants as threat in a thousand to one ratio as far as I was concerned.

Elite Lancer Guardians are easy if you can get by their weapons natural defensive and offensive abilities, so I dodge left or right when they charged me or deflect their weapon up and stabbed them down. Elites had more skill and strength, but they lacked turning or reactionary speed given they generally attacked in straight lines. A row of five charging me was not a problem, deflect the center one stab down swing wide behind myself to catch the backs of the other four.

Elite Saber Knights were not good at wielding their shields, in general when they went for an attack they left themselves wide open the raising of their sword and swinging it was weakness if you were faster than they were. I was much faster after having slashed through ones torso and as such I speared the next Saber Knight through with ease as it tried to bring down its sword. Powerful defense, unless you knew where to strike them and I did know that.

Archer Seraphs could be taken down with a thrown rock, even the slightly more mobile elite version were a one hit KO. They were harder to hit and had better aim for sure, but were still as fragile as the normal version. A simple bark blast didn’t cost me much these days and I watched as it dissolved out of the air as tall walls of fire spread out nearby to take out a number of them, they could dish out a lot of damage, but they certainly couldn’t take it. Also the range on my first unique attack had improved a bit, Bark Blast is my oldest friend in combat even before I ended up on this journey.

An elite Berserker Vikings could hit harder while barely being faster than normal, however it wasn’t a good idea to be aggressive with them. I dodged backwards and once an axe collided with the floor, they were left wide open after putting all their strength into the chopping action which made them easy to dodge and counter attack. I felled the one still trying to recover from the force of its own strength and the forward blasting shockwave it created when hitting the ground. Attacking or blocking their weapon directly was dumb unless you can match or deflect their raw strength. I couldn’t match said strength and didn’t need or want to, as I slashed two more apart with a single blow to their neck and tore the last one asunder with a diagonal slash from its right shoulder to its left hip.

“Control Alternate Delete!” BB made herself known once more with a different technique, I was already inhaling to keep up with her two rapid fire swings and a sudden stab attempting to take me down with a strike to the heart.

“Something is off with you…” Having deflected the first two diagonal blows and then dodged following thrust, I couldn’t help but think something was off with her fighting style.

I knew she was a digital entity, the word Artificial Intelligent pretty much confirms it. I thought of all the people that helped me get this far, the friends I made in the digital realm, the Pokémon realm and more. A passing flittering thought when BB came at me with her next move.

“Copy and Ri-paste!” Sounds like the word riposte, which if what BB was saying… my eyes narrowed at what happened next.

She slashed forward at me and then went for the ‘alternate’ and then she tried to stab, results were the same, deflect, parry, and then… I leaned back avoiding the slash for my throat from a BB copy performing the same maneuver, I think I understood the full ‘Control, Alternate and Delete’ part of the attack now.

I dodge into the alternate swing downwards in the same way she had done the control, avoiding the BB that suddenly appeared on my left and using the clone BB I dodge by to block BB from coming at me and then I rolled forward and transformed the Rhongomyniad back into a parasol spear and opened the canopy to defend my back.

Had I not rolled forward I would have taken two slashes and a thrust to the back, like the thrust would have gone where my heart was or into a section of my spine to cripple me as three more BB’s appeared behind where I was holding position. They all turned to me as one, only one BB was faintly smirking and the other five had dull looks in their eyes.

Control, the first slash to engage the opponent. Alternate, follow up attack can repeat the same strike as Control or other slashing or even stabbing strikes basically Control was the set up for Alternate to create an opening. Delete was the most obvious part, find an opening and go for a kill, cripple or at the very least something damaging.

“You figured out that I could paste behind you, good… Splash Fount!” With an upward swipe and a twirl she came blazing at me as her clones disappeared, her right arm was a blur as she threw out hundreds of thrusts in seconds as she charged me.

She seemed entirely reliant on her rapier for battle, but she was quite skilled with it given she was giving me problems with dodging the hundreds or so stabs as she tried to pressure me away from the others as I frantically dodged her attacks. Each stab gave off a blast of friction and heat as I dodge it.

“Power gradation!” The blade stop stabbing forward and I watched as it hit the ground and BB slid it along the floor building up what I recognize to be digital energy from having watched Canard practice with it. She launched upwards as I blurred forward and around her rising attack. “Tri-slash!”

With a flicker and three lines traced in the air, I soon saw a spiraling green triangle coming at me. After rotating the Rhongomynia one hundred and eighty degrees, I blocked the attack with the canopy of the Rhongomyniad and went skidding back as if all three strikes of her swing hit me at once. I kept skidding until I clenched the floor with my wool.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear BB was copying someone else’s fighting style and using it to the best of her abilities in a clinical mechanical fashion.

“Done warming up?” If BB could make copies that could do any of her moves and she can summon them pointed in any direction within a given range… yeah this might require me to use my beast side. I don’t want to use it at all or if I did have to then the core was the thing that needed to be focused on, but she might not give me a choice in that matter.

The Rhongomyniad was going to be quite unwieldly for what was about to happen and I’m fairly certain the weapon was as light as it could feasibly get in my hooves. Rapiers were going to be a problem for me to actually fight against if BB was this skilled.

BB didn’t say anything as she swung around and raised her rapier in the same way she would for the ‘Splash Fount’ that reminded me of a flurry attack I could do. She charged forward at me rapidly jabbing at me making me backpedal until a subtle twitch of my ears made me lean to the left… instead of taking a sharp metal blade to back of my head tore a path across the right side of my muzzle.

Exhaling to enter a heightened state, I quickly caught the clones arm in the crook of my neck and twisting my whole body I angled the copies right arm into the path of the blade that was aiming for my ribs on the right. On the left I brought about the shaft of the Rhongomyniad and hefted upwards to stop me from being stabbed through my chest by that rapier.

Two clones left to deflect and I was pinned in a precious position, one leaping into the air and firing a triangle slash of green energy at me. This was clone from the back and to the left of me used the charging ‘Splash Fount’ attack which was a series of high speed rapier jabs that aimed to incapacitate an opponent that’s not wary, that or bloody them with as many puncture wounds as possible.

Using my wool’s current exoskeletal strength boost, I hefted the clone at my back upwards with my wool and continued my twisting motion to use the clone’s body to absorb the triangle of energy they took to the back.

I swung the clone’s body about force BB and the two nearby clones back before throwing the wool grappled clone into the path of the Splash Fount attack as I ducked out back and to the right.

Needless to say I immediately stitched up my bleeding face, this squirrel was quite terrifying with a rapier and I really couldn’t afford too many injuries with no healing in sight. A spear was not nearly fast enough to keep up with them given their weapon…

“AWRRROOOOO~!” I immediately entered beast state, we’ll work out how to deal with the core later.

Feeling the shift of my eyes and my disposition to becoming more aggressive. I also changed out the Rhongomyniad… remembering it wasn’t primarily a spear and could basically become what I needed within a given context.

So I turned it into a multi section double ended spear that could be worn as claw gauntlets that protected my withers from behind somewhat as it stretched across my back and down my front legs into claws. Several mist like wolves started forming around me and my wild eyes narrowed at BB, I had to keep it under control and stay focused.

BB snorted and then she performed a Splash Fount charging for me personally, while she drew my attention four clones appear to be firing off those ranged ‘Tri-Slash’ attacks. Two went at me and two were aimed to keep me corralled into position as I dodged away from the Splash Fount avoiding puncture, while the last clone was priming to do something…

With a thrust a conical shape of energy flew off the last clone, doing a technique BB hadn’t shown me yet. It was simple and created a powerful piercing lance shaped mass of energy, thankfully all it hit was a pair of glowing eyes of my disappearing resemblance.

BB was immediately on me and appearing to entering a Control, Alternate and Delete combo, I dodged the first strike and was beset from the left and right in front of me by the other two going into their own CAD combo. I blocked both their first two swings using the flexible claw gauntlets and then BB swung a second time at me after delaying for a bit and the three other came in to stab at me from behind and to the back left and right side as the two in front of me entered a stance for a strong stab.

They were going to time it so that…

Attack from the back, I dodged with a quick step to the left. They middle back will soon follow so the next course of action was to.

Front left attacks forward for my head, chest or neck. Turn around, dart forward while swing right claw forward…

I dodged under the back left clones attempt to stab me as I took it down the front left fell short of striking me from behind. I turned and lashed out in a continued sweep of the right gauntlet golden magical wolf claw at BB, forcing her to back off as I finished three more of her closest clones the closed in with me.

The last clone launched a spear shaped mass of energy in an attempt to stab me and they had been the one that had been in front and to the right of me not too long ago. I backed off and waited for BB’s next move and tried not to focus on ripping her throat open with my teeth flittering through my mind.

It was bad enough when I ripped off Saturn’s forearm outside of my brutality mode, I don’t need to continue to get worse while in it and using Wolf Fang Hoof.

“Hm, so many permutations to use…. maybe…” Mumbled BB as she recalled her remaining clone and lowered herself into a crouch while her tail flicked back and forth. She raised the rapier high and used her other arm for balance.

She came at me with a Splash Fount and then two more appeared performing splash fount from the back left and right, she was saving two clones for when I dodge. I wasn’t going to dodge away, instead I seemingly dodged into her attack and not that of her clones.

The rapid fire stabbing rush slammed into a facsimile of me in the form of an afterimage, BB looked curious and then my body faded away as several mist wolves leapt at her and she made two clones to lash out at them and then I made my move.

I launched off a Brute EP before it could slam its own rock like fists into its chest and tore it apart with my launch, crossing the distance towards BB.

BB saw me coming in from the corner of her eye and tried to interpose her rapier in my path. Instead I stopped dead in the air before making contact with the blade, enter a crouch and then pushed off the floor with a flash of golden glowing right claw that carved into the right side of her face as I leapt past her.

BB grunted as digital cubes started flowing from her face.

“System Restore… huh… System Restore! What?!” BB tried to do something, but it didn’t seem to work and her eyes widened as we looked at one another.

“Let me guess, immediate perfect healing?” The harsh shuddering at my words from BB told me as much, so if I hadn’t flipped to beast mode she would be just toying with me.

Instead BB just realized that she couldn’t afford to take hits from me, I don’t think she understood that I could even do damage to her that she couldn’t immediately recover from before now. There was now an uncomfortable fear as her face bled out digital energy, slowly the fear bled away to blank if focused stare.

“You might accomplish it... terrifying.” BB then came at me with the rapier and I saw the tip of the blade coming for my left eye.

Two blue sparks of the ghostly sheep form flew away as the illusionary wolf was shattered by the stab, I came at her from the left. She managed to reorient only to hit another shadow wolf a clone of her immediately formed at her back and did a ‘Power Gradation’ forcing me to flip back and received a stab through the back from another fast formed pale imitation copy.

In a second it was reveal that it was just yet another fighting spirit wolf that faded away and that BB had no idea where I truly was at the moment as several wolves started stalking from the fog that now swirled around her.

Forming five copies that started circling around her with their rapiers held in a defensive manner, BB’s flat emotionless face was showing more focus than it had a minute ago. As if she was going to spend the entire fight toying with me.

The growling wolves charged and leapt at her, each copy went into a Control, Alternate and Delete combo to defend against the growling wolves throwing themselves into a blender of blades as the five copies of BB defended her perfectly. Slash, slash and stab each one took down a misty wolf with perfect precision.

The BB copies all went to do a Tri-Slash while BB prepared herself for an energy lance stab, waiting for me to make a move on her. I was picking up all the particular movements enough to understand the style, she was going to try and blow away the fog I was creating to try and target me directly. Her attacks were graceful, but the problem was that they had a particular rhythm to them and any being of Equus can make use of said movements.

BB sent out the five triangles and the fog looked to be slashed in three blasts only moving it about.

Coming at BB from above she widened her stance and stabbed her energy lance attack from her weapon straight upwards. Inflating a portion of my wool, I rolled in the air out of the way and then let out a Howl Blast. Immediately the copies disappeared and BB being slowed down, she immediately entered a different stance with her rapier as I was trying to land and several shadowy wolves leapt at her.

“Splash Gradation.” BB intoned and faster than I could follow she made several twisting motions and created multiple distinct slashes in the air that perfectly took out every fighting spirit wolf I sent at her and created a flower like star symbol with her in the center. The spinning flower of slashes was just about done and following the end trajectory of her attack… her last stab would…

BB launched forward before I could finish my thought.

“AGH!” I had leaned to the right and took a deep stab wound to the upper portion of my left leg, the steel of her weapon digging into the meat of my bicep immediately had me wincing and leaping back to patch the wound with my wool. That was a little less wool going to my exoskeletal support structure and BB missed the protective armor going along the outer side of my legs.

I slashed out with my right claw and she quickly backed away from the flash of golden magic that launched a short distance away from me, clawing at the very air itself. I could only stitch myself together so much before my body gives out and I couldn’t handle the blood loss anymore, rapiers were not a good weapons for me to fight against.

“Maybe not.” BB stated dully as she charged energy onto her rapier to burn shut the bleeding digital coming out of her face wound.

I lunged forward and she did a ‘Power Gradation’ to meet my dropping right claw, we were blown back by the clash and I felt the wool on my back shift at the feeling of energy coming at me.

An Archer Seraph had almost gotten me in the back only for its attack to be deflected by a powerful glowing white shield, several Moon Cell Watcher beams bounced harmlessly off of shield as the larger dragon like Gallantmon strode forward.

That wasn’t what ‘Dragon Gallantmon’ looked like when I finished Saturn and left the battlefield outside, I watched as the Gallantmon spear the Seraph out of the air with a flaming chain attached her weapon. The large digital monster seemed to implode the create and a stream of digital energy flowed into the large figure before they swung their lance forward and cut through an entire crowd of EPs that had been at my back and closing in.

Gallantmon then proceeded to absorb all the energy from the destroyed EPs by raising the lance to draw it all in as they guarded my back without a word.

Turning my attention back to BB as she closed in and went into a Splash Fount motion of swinging the rapier upwards to charge forward doing a rapid fire series of attacks. I noted the feeling of several copies quietly forms around me as I charged directly into her Splash Fount attack and launched my own ‘Fiery Flurry’ to deflect each stab away from my body.

Sure my left leg was hurting from doing so, but I wanted to get in close enough to do some real damage. Unfortunately BB had other plans for me.

A Splash Fount came in from my right, a Tri-Slash came at me from the left, behind me a clone started up a Control, Alternate and Delete combo starting up with prepping their first slash. BB in front of me started up a Power Degradation by tapping the tip of her rapier against the ground for the rising slash. A copy from further away was in the middle of launching a Tri-Slash above me and looked to be immediately going into a second Tri-Slash afterwards.

There was one copy that wasn’t fielded yet… another box in attempt trying to make it so I had no options. Unfortunately for her I was quick witted and knew some of my techniques forward… and backwards!

“Wolf Buster!” I blasted myself backward with an angled pillar, deflected the initial slash of the Control Alternate Delete off the bent part of the currently Rhongomyniad bit of metal going along my right leg. I slammed my left claw behind me with a rotating downwards swipe until I gutted the copy behind me and used their still physical form to shove her to my left to take the triangle slash, started deflecting the Splash Fount stabs from my right with my right gauntlet. “Okay you are?”

One snap kick with my left hind leg, after catching the blade in the claw, I took the head off that copy of BB stopping her rushing Splash Fount attack.

I rolled to the right to avoid the rising slicing power of the rising Power Degradation attack and due to my positioning when BB called in a new fresh copy it got taken out by the second Tri-slash as I pivoted and twirled away from their attempt to take out my left kidney.

Four copies were suddenly around me, all prepping an energy lance stab with their rapiers. The copies were far more instantaneous than I had anticipated. The distant one was rushing forward

“Incoming!” Canard shouted as he took out two of the problem BB copies with a digital energy covered hockey stick blade to their heads, allowing me to evade the two attacks as he changed targets to dealing with an Assassin Reaper lunging for my back. “Keep it up, we’re a team that has each other’s backs!”

Everyone else around me was too busy to help me much further than for more than a few seconds and I was already dodging several thrusts from BB and two copies and dodging another Tri-Slash from the slightly distant copy.

I then stopped suddenly and didn’t move, BB tried to capitalize on what was supposedly me waiting to go on the attack. When she got a moment from the frantic fighting in the air with the odd larger Gallantmon, Dolly thankfully shot the slightly distant copy and stopped the next Tri-Slash from incoming, said copy might have given away my trap otherwise.

BB’s copies came in at me and suddenly stopped moving, BB herself was frozen mid stab and she tried to jerk her blade forward into my left eye, but couldn’t and then her eyes widened as she saw a shimmer in the air, the reason why she couldn’t form three more BB’s is because strings of wool were spread out over a wide area like a spider web.

I decimated the two copies and tightened my wire wool on BB as she immediately tried to free herself with her rapier. The thing about the rapier was that it wasn’t magical, it was bog standard if fancy looking metal weapon.

The mist wolves, unaffected by my golden wool threads spread about over as wide an area as I could to prevent BB from spawning any copies nearby, immediately charged forward and started to leap at and claw BB.

BB took several injuries to her arms trying to free herself from the sharp wire wool or deal with the mist like wolves generated by my fighting spirit. It took several jabs and precisely angling her blade, but she managed to do it, again my wool was weak to piercing attacks and a rapier still fit the bill when BB was angling her weapon with precision to cut through it.

BB backed away and glared at me as several mist wolves stalked around me and I pulled back the web of wool to myself, the servant already knew what to look for so I couldn’t get away with causing those kinds of injuries again. I calmly backed into the fog I generated concealing my movements.

Starting to inhale, I was trying to think of a way to take BB down. Physically she’s not got much more than reaction time at a short range around herself and the only reason why I haven’t dealt with her despite her having what amounts to a regular or a digital equivalent weapon.

The fighting going on around me was getting even more pitched with Shanty showing up and cleaving her way through a number of EPs and getting a update by Dormarch stopping to talk to her. I really had to finish off BB soon, because we couldn’t exactly ignore her or any servant present if we went after the core directly.

Lunging to the left as I sent a fresh wave of misty wolves at BB from the front, she once again created a lot of copies to defend against them.

Having BB and most of her copies distracted and looking in a given direction allowed me to burst forth from the mist, I sharply exhaled and it only took a split second of inattention for me to slam my teeth into her right leg and topple her onto her face while tearing out a chunk of her leg as I passed by her, thus disabling copies.

Rearing up, I tried to bring my claws down on her for a follow up.

Bringing down my claws, I missed as BB rolled out of the way and stabbed up at me forcing me to retreat on my hind legs. Neither of us left the interaction unscathed.

I may have missed my chance to maul her with my gauntleted hooves, but I still scored a bit of damage to her right side as she rolled to the left and I took a stab wound to my right hind leg as I backed off. She was having problems standing so this was about over.

“Moon Healing Prism… wait why didn’t it work?” Was that Sailor Moon? Oh please don’t tell me she’s going to… “Oh right, I’m supposed to say it like… Moon Healing Escalation!”

Within a second glowing bright white, BB’s injuries completely healed. Yeah, I think Moon needed to have her soul freed now, just so I could avoid having to fight BB at full strength a third time.

“See, I’m not useless!” Moon stated haughtily.

“Well you do have your uses…” Luna admitted before Dormarch bisected the cat with a frequency wing blade.

“Could someone take out Sailor Moon, please?” I asked in a grumbling and growling angry wolf like manner as I faced down a refresh BB with several spirit wolves coming out of the mist I started producing.

“I’m on it, Yell Dead Cell!” Assassin Snake the Caerbannog stated as he pulled out a rocket launcher almost as if out of nothing.

“A rabbit with a rocket launcher, well now I’ve seen a lot of things.” There was a small pause as a rocket flew towards Moon’s face and it took a few seconds for her to realize and dodge it. “Oh no a rabbit with a rocket launcher that’s trying to kill me?!”

Moon was soon on the move with Snake chasing after her.

BB formed five copies and each one readied their respective rapiers. I huffed and puffed and was ready to tear her a new one again. The purple haired squirrel didn’t say anything, but she did give me a faint pitying look.

The BB and her copies all charged me.

“Now Lit!” All the copies were immediately decimated and BB was hit with a lightning blast, then BB found herself taking a vicious number of claw slashes from my spirit wolves to her legs and lower half of her body.

“Splash Gradation, I really dislike bugs.” BB recovered rather quickly from being stunned and fended off the wolves from my fighting spirit with her rapier in a series of slashes to etch a star into the air in front of herself instead of around herself this time, at least she didn’t come flying at me.

“Squeak!” The little yellow hero raised his two tiny front legs and made a menacing gesture, but the sound of his squeak just made him sound just as adorable as he looked and it was hard to take a menacing gesture from him as something to be intimidated by given his tiny size. If you knew that he’s done several things that would be impossible for any other Joltik, then you should definitely be afraid.

Lit had just jumped off of Metal Hound Four to come assist me at Dolly’s behest as she did a flyby, apparently he crawled in when Dolly let me off to face BB according to her.

Dolly was having any problems getting closer to Moon Cell’s core, we still had too few people here and we barely had enough to even get near the core without being eviscerated by a constant aerial screen of Moon Cell Watcher’s and a variety of other flying EPs.

I wouldn’t hold back and neither would Lit as we moved to face BB together, though I was close enough to doing it on my own I wasn’t very prideful and would take all the help I could get.

“If you can give me an opening Lit, I’ll do my best to finally finish her off in one last move.” I was hurting and healing wasn’t coming any time soon, if anything those on the battlefield outside the nexus were more likely to get healing than I was.

I was just going to go full tilt and hoped whatever Moon Cell had as a last ditch effort wasn’t nearly as troubling as BB was being, that and I was going to make sure that BB couldn’t be taken back immediately by Moon Cell.

BB was very effective for not being able to move as fast as I could, but what she lacked in mobile speed she made up for short range agility bordering on highly predictive.

I was angry enough to pull it off and I was going to save BB’s soul too, I wasn’t letting Moon Cell have her or any other soul trapped in it back.

Leaping forward with the Rhongomyniad gauntlets at the ready, five copies formed with BB and they all targeted me.

Two of the copies were immediately wiped out by a single bolt and BB barely dodged the lightning by ducking, said lightning chained its way through hundreds of EPs beyond her that were trying to encroach on us. The lightning also caused that static white and black specks to start appearing the air where the blast had traveled through the air, I think that was happening from the sheer power Lit was putting out.

Where before BB was willing to not pay any attention to Lit, now her and the four copies tried to strike Lit out of the air as he lunged for her and zipped about with a green glow wrapped around him to dodge the rapid fire jabs and slashes of panic.

They couldn’t for the life of them hit Lit, he was both small and insanely fast. With their precision attacks the BB brigade should have been able to at least tag him.

When Lit did stop in the air, two more freshly summoned copies along with BB and the three present copies stabbed at him all at once…. only to find all their swords stuck fast by a decorative bit of hexagonal webbing.

Lit had somehow stuck some webbing to each sword as they attacked him and when they all thrust the sword at him, he created a trap for all their weapons that held them fast in place and they couldn’t even let go as they realized their hands were now webbed to the hilts of their ‘metal’ weapons.

If I remember right Lit’s webbing was also highly conductive for his needs and he was a little ‘trap monster’ hero of a tick. As a clearly proactive ambush predator, being able to capably be so mid combat, I was glad he was on my side.

Lit, with a particular look in his eyes, lazily raised his front right leg while lying on his left side next to the center of the crossed rapiers and highly decorative webbing.

BB gave him an incredulous look at having been absolutely outsmarted by Lit as she tried to jerk her sword out of the trap. The webbing on blade didn’t flex very much at all.

Lit gave me a look as the raised leg sparked and then it slowly lowered the blue tipped leg with a glowing dot filled with barely contained raw power, how much lightning power was compressed at the tip of that tiny terrors little blue leg right now and would a pegasus even have enough resilience to survive the amount that had all my wool feeling quite off?

The area grew white with the flash when Lit’s leg tapped the center of webbing and the point all the rapiers met.

When my vision cleared, the BB copies were gone and BB was blasted back. That she still managed to land on her feet after that was amazing, she was looking quite stunned with arcs of energy coming off of her and her tail looked ridiculously puffed out.

“Good job Lit!” I got a happy squeak from the floor in return as I focused and moved forward, several misty wolves took up position around her in a circle and then… “Wolf Fang Hoof, Full Feral Flurry!”

“Sy-sy-ssystteeeemmm…. Err-rr-rrrorr error….” BB looked to be paralyzed, I wouldn’t get a better chance than this.

With a blur and a sharp exhaled, glow claw swipes flew from me as I tore BB limb from limb. Anyone looking at me from the outside probably saw a swirling vortex of golden of lines and when I stopped, I had gripped onto what I assume to be a frightened BB’s soul.

I charged as much magical energy into it suffusing the soul with my golden energy.

Tossing the soul away, I watched is it quickly flew away under my protective anti-magic wrapped around it, I could almost feel something like remorse.

I tried to move and then felt complete and utter agony. It was more than just me pulling muscles in my body and I looked at the source of the pain after I fell over.

BB got one last attack off despite taking a painful amount of energy… she broke my right hind leg and the rapier currently buried in it was quickly disappearing.

(Music end)

“BAAAAAGGGHHHH?!” Thankfully nobody understood cursing in the form of bleating. All the muscles in my bodies were hurting after that and my broken right hind leg left me a sitting duck if I didn’t do anything. I gritted my teeth as tears sprung into my eyes blinding me to what was happening around me. “L- pro...tect…”

That had to be enough for Lit to understand, because even talking hurt right now. Once the weapon finished dissolving away with BB’s defeat. I felt my beast mode immediately wear off and quickly started to shape my wool.

Lit was immediately next to me and was trying to create some webbing and I shook my head no and nodded to the EPs coming at me while I was downed. My little buddy whined, but squeaked in understanding and hopped into the air to blast back the incoming enemy.

I felt my right hind leg with my right hoof. Oh yeah, that wasn’t a clean break at all.

With how fast I had been moving… it felt like she almost shattered my entire femur. I could feel chunks of bone shifting inside my flesh, I felt Dolly trying to comfort my agony and Dormarch trying to reach me.

I asked not to come to me, but to continue what he was doing. Instead, I asked Dormarch for his medical scan of my body in its natural state. He quickly gave it to me wondering what I was about to do.

First order of business, calm down… extreme amounts of pain is nothing new to me. I needed to concentrated and feel every inch of the inside of my leg.

This was going to hurt a lot, but I wouldn’t be able to get safely off the battlefield this deep into enemy territory.

Controlling my wool I gently as possible inserted it into my right hind leg where the rapier pierced it while covering the circular hole with as much wool as possible in the form of a synthetic skin patch. Well wool was technically skin. I’m also glad the lanolin on my wool was anti-bacterial and medical purposes… that would be very helpful right now.

Every movement of my hind leg sent a fresh wave of intensely unpleasant pain through it, there were knives, there was acid, there was knives dipped in acid, there was knives dipped in acid on the sun, then there was my current level of pain threatening to black me out.

I needed to do this or else my leg might never recover. I had every strand of wool in my leg grab every bit of bone and start to reorient them back into position, some chunks of bone were missing and I looked behind me.

After grabbing the missing chunks of bone with my wool, I pulled them back through the wool patched hole and into my body to carefully rearrange the chunks. I created a lattice work around the bone and then started to gather a massive amount of wool around my right hind leg.

I pieced my leg bones back together with my wool and then took some more of Dormarch’s medical knowledge of medical surgery procedure I could do on such short notice. Without this I wouldn’t be able to get up or move about at all.

Slowly Dormarch ran me through the instructions of the necessary surgery I wanted to do when he gave me the options, thankfully he agreed with the surgery in question and was surprised I was capable of feasibly replicating the same effects with my wool while possibly making it far less painful. Dormarch was doing this even as he tore through a horde of Elite Berserker Brute EPs trying to charge for me, he was getting pretty tired and splitting his concentration to walk me through a much needed medical procedure wasn’t helping.

Having finished the wool surgery, under duress of EPs suddenly becoming very interested in my existence all of the sudden, I carefully pressed my right hind leg up to my belly and chest, then wrapped it in more wool.

I created an immovable cast and now my right hind leg could not be moved, but my goodness was it going to hurt having to fight like this with only three viable legs with all the current pained whimpering I was doing.

Standing up, I tried to ignore the feeling of my right hind leg trying to move even if I wasn’t trying to do so, agonizing, but it was workable as long as my wool stayed entirely stiff around it.

Taking a few uneasy steps, walking on three legs was going to be a problem, especially when it was one of my hind legs that out of commission. Lit leapt on to me to continue protecting me and I started to limp forward, I can’t fight on my hinds legs any more so that was a major problem.

Still I continued forward towards the core while seeing other people still fighting was heartening even if they were all likely exhausted. There was also another problem, I was distinctly not looking at the golden wool that now covered my tail, I had overdrawn too much to shield BB’s soul with my magical energy and set her free of Moon Cell.

“Summoning emergency servant.” A blank, almost monotone, voice with no masculine or feminine inflection. It came from the large red orb or towering oval at the center of this large spherical space. Yes, still slowly walking in its direction was me with some sense of determination. “Calling now, estimate time to full summon, one minute… applying distraction algorithm set to allow servants full appearance uninterrupted. Gravity to zero equals yes, defense program floating rocks, normal, laser, rocket propelled and barrier variants. Display setting space.”

Slowly a large framework for a series of orbs started to appear within a pillar of light, like watching a parade float being built. Whatever the servant was it was going to be absolutely huge as it was forming quickly.

It didn’t take long before I started to float off the floor and rocks started appearing everywhere, some were encrusting the core like an outer layer of armor, others were being generated with those constant laser beam emitters as they rotated, the rocket ones were the ones we evaded on the way in at a guess, but they’d hard to be tell apart from the normal floating rocks.

The entire lit grey sphere suddenly changed to present everything as if we were all in space, if it could do all of this why didn’t it just suck the oxygen or breathable atmosphere out of this space?

“Squeak!” Lit had alerted me to the fact that several of the slowly rotating beam emitting rocks were slowly moving a number of beams in my general direction, not very subtly placed to kill me in an expedient manner. Of course they were.

Dolly and Dormarch were too dug into the enemy forces to come when I called.

“Ngghhh… L’…” Even trying to say his name hurt and my right hind leg twitched badly in the wool sheath I had it in. “Steer.”

Lit crawled onto my forehead and looked down into my left eye curiously, I inhaled and then exhaled flames to send us rocketing weightlessly at the core. He had a look of understanding immediately afterwards.

Moon Cell really doesn’t want me near its core and I should make myself as much of a target as possible as the blast of flames helped me evade a number of beams to pass harmlessly through where I had been floating as we flew towards the swirling asteroid field of deadly rocks. The rocks did not turn to chase me with their beam emitters… ah so they couldn’t track and only rotated on a preset manner they had bene summoned in. This still made Moon Cell’s Core excessively dangerous, especually if you didn’t have a defensive measure against the defenses it create on the spot.

It almost felt like Gravity Gorge back on Elhorn all over again, only this time I was truly weightless and the gravity wasn’t pulling me in all directions threatening to tear my body apart. We were moving pretty fast and the Moon Cell Watchers were approaching and about to fire on us, Lit managed to safely blast them with a chain of lightning before they could.

A quickly fired a string of webbing and a pull later, Lit changed our trajectory sideways and he motioned to me from his position on my nose. I exhaled flames from my mouth quickly to avoid the incoming Heli-troopers as we entered the floating field of rocks. Said propeller gauntlet troopers were used the exhaust to fly and the spinning blades to move around more finely and possibly block projectiles.

I had little idea as to what I could do to damage Moon Cell, it was kind of too enormous to… unless my even just getting close to it damaged it by proximity. It seemed my anti-magic was making it experience problems and the world was shaking as my glowing form got to a halfway point.

Well I could fire Rhongomyniad beams, but having half my tail covered in golden wool makes me reluctant to use too much magic. Dancing Flame was easy enough, for the fire breathing wasn’t intensive and reliant on my talent at the technique.

-A tunnel near the Moon Cell’s Core, Jeanne D’Arc-

“Well that’s going to be a problem…” I just became a Kommo-o and the world went crazy, also what was that thing? “Ocellus, can you hear me…? Darn it, our technology is not working in here or its Moon Cell’s doing. At least I know Pom’s and the others locations… she’s actually trying to approach that large revolving wall of rocks encasing something red. That must be the core!”

Stretching a claw forward beyond the exit of the tunnel and I immediately felt the difference between the tunnels with that strange monster of a small house we ran from down a different tunnel. Pom’s signal pretty much told us she was alive, but not in what condition.

“Ideas anyone?” Feeling the loss of weight and fighting in it were two different things, we were not prepared for this.

“Can we secure the route? Anyone going out there better have the ability to fly in some way that involved propulsion.” One of the Hakamo-o said. “Our fallback point should be doing well since those blue APs came in, if we secure a route we can send in more help against whatever that large green thing is.”

-Core Asteroid Field, Pom-

I poked my head from behind a rock and nearly got it blasted off by a laser, why did Moon Cell even create regular flying rocks and not weaponized all of them? Were we… were we actually causing that many problems to it?!

(Expectancy Part 2, Pizza Tower)

“Servant successfully summoned, Class Kaiju… name, Vector Man. Function… cleaning robot, lifeform cleaning included.” Announced Moon Cell, didn’t Dolly once say that Kaiju were… oh that is a colossus of a robot. There is no way I could fight that thing in a straight fight, even if I didn’t have a shattered leg. I heard Dolly make idle commentary of dying to a fifty story horror or bigger being on her bucket list.

Two half circle feet. Small black floating orbs that look to be representing ankles above them. Above those is two orbs that looked to be knees and two slightly bigger orbs at the bottom of a globe like torso that look like they’d be part of the hips. Said large slightly triangular round torso had two orbs acting as shoulders that were directly connecting to it, the top of said torso was a slightly flat round head that suddenly lit up with two blood red eyes that filled the air with a horrible sickly red color and the only other thing connected to its main body. From the shoulders were small black spheres acting as the upper arms, leading into large green spheres as the elbows, to more black spheres acting as the forearms and finally to the pair of hands that were orbs that folded out were in three flaps creating three large fingers, at the center of its palms were masses of glowing energy.

The large monstrosity made of hovering orbs took several steps forward, then surprisingly did a stance with two bunny ears raised high on what passed for both its hands while lowing its head. It stood up straight and started to stalk into the floating rock field its eyes narrowing on me, the rocks didn’t impede it’s movements at all and were bouncing off the thing.

Always the priority target me…

“Please hold… error… please hold… error… please hold… error~.” Moon Cell almost sounded like it was singing. Something changed from ominous building sized death robots stare to something… weirder in Vector Man’s eyes as it stalked forward. “Please no… error…. err-err-err-error-error-error-error…. please no, error~! Please hold~. Pleas no, error~! Please Hold~! You want, you don’t want, you want, you don’t want, YOU want, you DON’T WANT, error-ERROR~?!”

As soon as it started singing something went very off with Vector Man as I kept breathing fire and Lit kept steering us around rocks, further up and away from the floor bound behemoth. As it started… dancing?!

Twirling around like a ballerina Vector Man spread out its arms and then started firing massive burst of energy from its palms everywhere. Was this something Moon Cell couldn’t currently control or worse… couldn’t control at all?!

“You want, we don’t want, you want, we don’t want, you want, we don’t want-you… at all, at all~!” I’m pretty sure that was directed at me by Moon Cell, as we tried to avoid the fast flying blasts of energy and the EPs around us. The giant robot monster was out of control and doing a… Mosscow folk dance? Also sending huge blasts of energy into the meteors it kicked at us.

I exhaled as much flames as I could as several rocks threatened squash us or bounce into us by the weird giant dancing mass of orbs.

Lit grappled us to another asteroid and then I watched as the giant robot swirled around one leg with its left hand over its eyes as if looking for something, it stopped and it’s right palm was aimed for. I kicked off the asteroid with my left hind leg and a white beam ripped through everything between us and the freaky giant robot made of orbs.

“Dolly’s coming for us, we just have to hold out a little longer and get me closer to the core.

“We have… ERROR~! We have… we have ERROR we have~! We know you don’t want, you know you don’t want, we know you don’t want error-ERROR~!” Why wouldn’t we want errors Moon Cell, seems like a good thing to me, but it seems like it’s trying to say there’s a reason we wouldn’t want them… like an insane dancing robot that’s causing chaos and… what was going on with the Moon Cell Watchers?

They usually stuck to red beams, but now the Moon Cell Watchers were firing green, purple, brown, yellow and even hot pink… it was kind of disturbing and they were even attacking each other. Was me being this close to the core just that bad? A Heli-trooper coming for us randomly yelling constantly while holding up two grenades and exploded violently destroying our cover for the dancing robot that was mimicking a one person tango.

He aimed his forward stretched right palm at us and blasted away, I loosed as much fire from my mouth as I could and Lit steered us to safety with his webbing. I felt the amount of energy in those things as they flashed past us and we narrowly evaded into the safety of a patch of rocks.

Maybe… just maybe, Moon Cell might have a point that we may not want these ‘errors’ to continue, but I’m more of the opinion we needed to end this monstrosity once and for all.

Lit reeled the both of us towards another asteroid as white Saber Knights were coming at us with what I recognize to be jetpacks… okay that’s new and terrifying. What was also terrifying was that they raised their swords long before they got in range of us and why were they glowing long pink, lethal looking, energy blades now?!

The Chaos might be working a little in our favor, but it was getting weird when green heavily armored EP Troopers with singular giant yellow eyes gunned down the Saber Knight flying. One of the Saber Knights helmets flew past us and they had a strange V-shaped antenna on them now.

“You want, you don’t want, you want, you don’t want… anchor-ANCHOR~!” Anchor… why would Moon Cell be mentioning the word anchor?

Wait… as in the anchors that hold the digital world to the Pokémon realm? Why, what did Moon cell do to them if anything at all?!

I couldn’t think on that long as Dolly’s Metal Hound Zero Zero Four flew in, with both its legs horrible mangled. Arguably the least important thing on the armor while it’s in flight, so good on Dolly for using them as a viable shield and it looks like she protected the weapons on it well enough… but the rest of it was fairly damage.

I managed to clamber on with Lit clinging to me and Dolly swiftly jetted away avoiding a series of powerful blasts, more rocks started forming and immediately started flying at us on rockets attached to their backs.

Gallantmon showed up and blocked the volatile rocks with her shield and the subsequent energy blasts from Vector Man that caused the glow on the shield to crack slightly before it fixed itself. Those blasts seemed to surprise Frizzle a lot.

“Pom what happened to your leg?” Wait… was that Dazzle’s voice at a high pitch? What’s going on anymore?!

“It’s okay, it’s under my wool, it’s been shattered and broken… we all need to focus on taking out the core!” Hitting the talk all button on my headset I heard affirmatives from Shanty, Canard, the Dazzle… Frizzle double voiced Gallantmon and even Dormarch wanted to help with that.

Canard was riding with Sami, Shanty had Dodo who didn’t seem to mind the lack of gravity at all and Favela would be a big help in the situation if he lost his propulsion and I had no idea how Gallantmon was moving about so swiftly as to deal with the enemy EPs that seemed to be trying to focus on me.

Only Dormarch wasn’t showing up as he was currently trying to save some arriving people that followed us into the Nexus that got stuck in the zero gravity environment… such a good boy. He also picked up Snake who hadn’t managed to kill Moon, despite his best efforts and those were some pretty insane efforts according to Dormarch. So Sailor Moon was still at large and something to worry about.

All these strange effects only are only happening around the core space, Dormarch was confused as to why some of the EPs were turning on themselves and mentioned something about ‘suppressed coding’ he was receiving information on through his unusually acquired spirit core. Something about… A Moon Cell unfinished Holy Grail war? It was data Moon Cell apparently didn’t want getting out.

Dolly flew us forward and Gallantmon was tanking a few shots from the behemoth that was spinning on its head and doing weird breakdancing moves I’ve seen Shanty use several times. It was still accurately shooting a third of its shots almost right at us to actually be random, in fact I think was trying to kill us while looking cool doing it and that was a hard feeling to get rid of in this particular situation.

It was almost as virulent a feeling as the Berserker Magitek Moogle representing the concept of dumb muscle.

As long as Dazzle-Gallantmon? Anyway, as long as they didn’t take too many hits to their shield it could apparently recover from the massive blows that almost knocked them back into us. Everything was distorting and the black space aesthetic disappeared for random colors shaped like alphabet letters.

“Please stop, ErRoR~! PleASe sToP~! Please stop ERROR Can’t StOp~! You know can’t want, you know you don’t want, you know can’t want… ANCHOR ERRROR~!” Anchor error… what was Moon Cell trying to tell us here? I tried to focus on those two words when Hound Four hit something and I hadn’t exactly anchored my wool to it.

I went flying three legs flailing, EPs were fighting everywhere now and the absolute bedlam got worse the closer to the core I was… wonder what would occur if I touched it? I quickly breathed out some flames and avoided being blasted by white hot energy from the colossal evil dancing robot, I’m pretty sure a single hit from that is instant death in this case and have only been lucky so far to have avoided such a fate.

I used Thousand Spears from my working hind leg to kick off another floating rock as it was blown apart.

Was that the robot doing a jitterbug when it just shot at me just now? It was actually kind of mesmerizing to watch how it was trying to kill me really.

“You want, you can’t want, you want, you can’t want, you want, you can’t want… FATAL-ERROR~!” It seemed to be getting the worse the closer I got which was good because I was using my one good rear leg to kick off an asteroid and avoid a shot from the robot that look like he was flossing his teeth using his legs as the teeth? “Please no, ACK~! Please, no please~! P-Please no, ACK… please no please GARAABAARABABABABGLEE, dzzrrto you wonnt it sssall~?!”

Okay now Moon Cell started sounding horribly messed up, it was almost like it was offering me something, but I couldn’t quite make out what. I’m already set in my course to destroy it hearing how many civilizations its ruined there was no way I’d bargain with it now.

“Please take at, please take me, please take at, please take me~! AAGGHGHGHAAHGHGHHAAGGAGAGGAAGHHHH… do you want control-ol-ol~?!” It managed to get its pained screeching under control long enough just to ask me if I wanted to take control of it.

At this point it sounded like it was begging for its life considering how much Pain Moon Cell seemed to be in just by me getting a little closer to it, it even sound terrified of me. I’m not surprised if this thing ran on malicious magic.

It was holding the digital world hostage wasn’t it? While trying to convince me not to destroy it in any way it could, but I actually learn from history… and considering the history we all met getting to this point? Yeah, no, after hearing what happened to Sailor Moon’s Moon Kingdom, I think it was better that we don’t let this heartless thing continue to exist any further.

Provided we survived the dancing Vector Man long enough for us to destroy the core, which was currently bouncing its head between its two hands oddly, we could stop the suffering at its source right here and now. Unfortunately I was kind of pinned down behind a floating rock by a swarm of rotating beam spewing rocks and EPs of iffy allegiance and could be blown apart at any time that Vector Man thing decides to ultimately stop goofing around and acting incredibly weird it wasn’t just attacking me it was attacking everything including Moon Cell’s hovering barrier of rocks floating around it.

That’s when Vector many did the laziest thing and did Jazz Hands in my general direction, I kicked off and Gallantmon intercepted a blast before it could hit me. Sami swooped in and fired off some missiles at Vector Man’s eyes and grabbed me to avoid the retaliatory disco dancing to point blasts at us.

The missiles did no damage, wasn’t Sami currently a Mega level Digimon? Is that thing practically

“Grav-set… ERROR~! Grav set to want one, do want, to want one, ERROR ERROR~!” Suddenly Moon Cell turned the gravity back on and it caused Sami to drop me and Canard as she went spiraling out control. “Grave flux, ERRORRP{PPPERRRRRAGAHGHAHHHHGAGGG- Err-ror-ror-ror~!”

We were now rapidly switching between falling towards the floor and stopping in the air, with a burst of digital energy while we were weightless Canard grabbed me around the waist and tried to get us on one of the unaffected floating rocks, only to fall short we started accelerating to terminal velocity into entirely different floating rock.

I inflated as much of my wool as I safely could with my injuries and then gravity decided to stop and we were now both falling upwards. Then sideways for a few seconds towards Moon Cell’s Core?

The walls of this massive spherical space now had a bunch of numbers and… colorful caricatures of living clay people? My eyes were beginning to hurt from all the searing colors of the beams flying around, it was like there was a kaleidoscope of magic going off in here and a unicorn filly was doing crayon drawings on reality!

Highly technological societies splayed across the walls, a fantasy realm with dragons that were very much odd looking, a world of caveman with foot powered vehicles and more of these images were starting to change too rapidly around us to keep up with. I really had to stop looking at the walls.

My head was even starting to hurt as we fell closer to the floor but gravity decided to be at half strength for this. If I didn’t know any better I swear Moon Cell was trying to give us seizures through epilepsy.

We were low enough that Vector Man skipped towards us like a happy school little girl from Neihpon with a happy expression in his rather terrifying rectangular glowing red eyes. He raised his right foot above us and Canard boosted us away and I exhaled flames from my mouth to assist him, a powerful burst of energy blew out of the bottom of Vector Man’s foot. It nearly tore us from existence with a massive raw pillar of energy.

Vector Man seemed upset that it missed us and why was I beginning to distinctly feel that I know what Vector Man’s emotions were. Was I going insane? If these are the kind of defenses you can expect from Moon Cell, I can see why no one’s destroyed it before. Vector Man itself was terrifying enough as a giant green mass of orbs on its own.

I lashed out and grabbed a rock, this one had a rocket that didn’t seem be firing off as me and Canard slammed against it. Vector Man seemed to be more focused on our friends flying in the air, especially after a hurtling floating rock struck his face making him stumble. It took his attention off of firing the jets from his left foot as us, if those massive foot beams could be called jets.

Vector Man seemed entirely unaffected by all this craziness on top of being crazy himself, given he now turned into a four legged thing with a scorpion tail that fired a beam that carved through everything except Gallantmon’s beam as the others tried to reach us.

“Come on Pom, I don’t know what you’re doing, but its working! We need you to get closer to the core.” Canard yelled over the chaos of the EPs picking fights randomly, we clambered up on top of the rock just as gravity returned to normalcy for us, but not the floating rocks apparently… oddly EPs started slamming into the floor and exploding like fireworks as if they were experience gravity worse than we were.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, in the name of the Moon… cell… I will punish…?!” Moon ceased existing when backhanded and Luna soon faded away despite avoiding the deadly backhand by the massive green orb fist we narrowly avoided.

The fist tore the floating rock we were on in half, no rubble, no debris, just evaporated half of the thing in an instant, Sailor Moon died instantly after being so problematic to kill.

Just poof, gone… completely obliterated to a kata dance Vector Man was now doing and he was about to perform a… Fleet Cunning Doe crane kick. Suddenly Canard and I were ripped from the surface of the rock by Hound Four scooping onto the top of its claws as it flew forward.

An entire section of the rock field was destroyed by a left leg flexing straight upwards while firing off a solid mass of white destructive energy.

Hound Four was far worse looking even worse than it had been a… wait, has it only been five minutes since Vector Man showed up?! Time felt like it was starting to warp in here, we needed to finish Moon Cell off fast if that was the case!

Sami, Gallant Dazzle and Dodo were busy trying to harry Vector Man, nothing they did could damage him… not even Gallantmon could, even with an apparent boost from whatever happened between Dazzle and Frizzle.

Vector Man went into a flamenco dancing blast beams of energy out of his feet and then twirled to pretend he was throwing a rose. Instead he threw an energy blast that tore off the right wing, Dolly barely avoided it directly taking us out proper by hitting Hound Four in the back dead center.

“Guys… I’m losing control here!” We can see that Dolly.

“Set it to self-destruct and eject, leave it to ram into the exposed sections of Moon Cell’s core.” I’m just going to have to say sorry Dolly, but… we needed to do some damage somehow and even you had to admit Hound Four was finished as a combat armor. “Once, you’re out come get on my back Dolly, drop us on that floating rock!”

Canard and I were dropped and the still barely stable flying Hound Four started flickering yellow, as Dolly carried out the actions.

“Ding… ding… ding-ding-ding-dingdingdingdinBRRRRNNNN… Waboom!” The noise Hound Four made before it’s destruction as rather fitting somehow.

Dolly had ejected out of the armor in a stylish fashion by somersaulting while spinning and then used her board she took control of her momentum to steer her way back for us. She reached us as Metal Hound Zero Zero Four slammed into Moon Cell’s Cored and blasted a huge chunk of it. Still, the towering floor to ceiling Core was damaged, not taken completely out like we wanted.

I actually think this was the absolute farthest that any ‘kill Moon Cell’s Core’ team has ever gotten.

“ERRRRRRRooooooorrrrrrgzgzgzgghhhzzzz-!” Moon Cell was definitely feeling that even if it didn’t destroy the core entirely. The small chunk Dolly just took out of seemed to have made things better… and worse in some ways.

Better because the number of CPs, Chaos Programs, suddenly increased while EPs decreased in massive quantities. I think some of those programs that turned a chaotic number of colors eventually stopped and even became APs joining in dealing with the numbers on the floor going at it at random with various colors of EPs running around.

We did just kind of give Moon Cell some brain damage so maybe it made some territorial sense for us to receive some APs from attacking Moon Cell. The now known crystalline structure of the core gave me an idea to use Bark Breaker on it, that or a point blank Howl Breaker. I’d just have to have time to find a good frequency and then hit with as much as my throat could feasibly take before giving out.

The rock was blasted out from under us and started falling towards the chaos on the floor, nothing beneath us. Vector Man was no longer paying attention to Sami, Dazzling Gallantmon or Shanty… they couldn’t even damage it to draw its attention.

Canard used digital energy to slow his fall and I hit the floor with a quick wool inflation, only to have some regular Saber Knight take up protective positions around us with their shields raised as CPs were running wild everywhere down here having been entirely unaffected by the gravity shifts.

Vector Man stomped towards us, he was apparently going to try and foot fry us again and his current dance moves looked like he was doing a conga.

“I think I can do some damage to make Moon Cell’s Core more vulnerable, but I’m going to need a minute or two to find a good frequency to damage the crystalline structure of the core.” We didn’t have a minute as it didn’t take too much shuffling for Vector Man to be standing over us. As valiant as the Saber Knights were, their small statures in comparison to that monstrosity left something to be desired when something labeled Kaiju Class came at us. “We don’t exactly have that time and there’s nowhere to run...”

“Mom!” Dormarch flew in trying to attack one of the small black orbs connecting Vector Man’s right leg, he actually managed to scratch the ankle joint with his left wing blade… or was it a mildly itchy looking dent?! To my horror Dormarch as sent flailing away, unlike Moon… Dormarch thankfully didn’t die to the vicious right backhand as the monster crouched and slammed it into Garummon. Much to my chagrin Dormarch just immediately dropped to rookie from and his three tails formed blasted towards the badly distorting walls in the distance.

“Dormarch/Little Bro!” Dolly and I shouted, his ultimate form just wasn’t enough to fight off the large green monster that took a lance to the left eye, doing very little damage to it. It slapped Dazzle Gallantmon to the floor, her shield actually blocked the force of the downwards slap.

Then Vector Man did a lazy kick while putting its arms behind its back and swinging its foot like a slow pendulum. That not only double her over, but it also sent Gallantmon flying towards a completely different wall from the small amount of force applied.

Vector Man turned to stomp on us, priority target number one… so this was how I died.

-Meanwhile near an entrance to Moon Cell’s core, Dormarch-

“Nnggghhh… Cure Liqu-liquor…” My data immediately fixed itself, but… I could barely survive that one hit. Mom was not going to survive that thing unless we had something equally big to hit it with, I had no idea what my Mega form was, but I seriously doubted it would be nearly…

“Oh hey there I think I’ve met one of you before, oh… right you’re a Dalmamon aren’t you! See I can remember people species sideline!” My eyes were wide as I looked at the mangled digi-bot and the perfectly fine look Calumon. How in the world did that little get here and what happened to Sideline the Side-kicky digibot.

“You can slow down things right?” Wish we had some Skvader Caerbannog support in here, because that Vector Man thing was unbeatable, if we could slow it to a crawl we can maybe save mother.

“To a degree yes.” Sideline stated. “If you want me to slow down that, thing… yeah no dice.”

“My mother’s about to die over there, can’t you do something!” I ask shaking Sideline with my claws morphing dog digi-bot was rattling fairly bad.

“Die?” Calumon whimpered with his ears wilting and he started tearing up.

“Also how did he even get here, this place is really dangerous!” I stated worriedly about Calumon being a digital monster with absolutely no combat capability. “It’s going to take a miracle to deal with something that large, it knocked me out of my ultimate form in a single blow.”

“Miracle?” Now Calumon seemed more curious than upset with his ears expanding cutely.

“Yeah we need a real hero right now and I can’t think of anyone that can save my friends, mother or sister from that horrible thing!” My words seem to brighten Calumon’s words inexorably, he even seemed about to suggest something when my eyes widened and I push him and Sideline down.

Sami’s battered and broken mega form body slapped again the wall and became embedded in it, she soon shrunk down to being a Missimon and not even a Commandramon. The small blue faced living digital missile was breathing roughly where she lay.

“Hero…” Calumon stated with a wide glistening eyed innocence with the world brightest smile as he looked at me.

“Huh?” The red triangle on Calumon’s head started glowing brightly.

-Back with Pom, Dolly and Canard-

“Sami!” Canard looked at his digivice and sighed with relief to see Sami still read as being alive… though heavily reduce to a point below even Rookie.

Slowly Vector Man turned to us, then did a bunch of robotic movements before letting one its arms hang and swing lazily. Probably some form of dance move that I didn’t understand. It was as if he was mockingly taking his sweet time in doing what Moon Cell couldn’t.

He crouched down and hopped up and both his feet flared white as he intended to stomp on us with both of them.

I wrapped my front legs around Dolly protectively and Canard covered us both with his body. When I didn’t feel like I had died or had some kind of odd need to work for Moon Cell, which would never happen, I slowly opened one eye to find myself covered in a pitch black shadow. Suddenly the shadow moved away and Vector Man was swiftly toppled by a powerful attack the dented his chest orb inwards.

Canard, Dolly and I… wait… why was Dormarch’s bond frayed? Dormarch sweetie where are… oh… OH….

Dolly looked up at the massive thing as I did and Canard sent a concerned glance our way.

“They do grow up fast don’t they?” Canard stated jokingly, despite this not being a time for joking, just seconds ago I wished Dormarch would get away tried to live in memory of me. Now though… I knew why Dolly and my bond was immediately frayed.

Dormarch was far too powerful to be my familiar anymore… but he wasn’t too powerful to still be my son. I trusted that much that he wouldn’t turn around and immediately kill us. I can maybe feel a single string between Dolly, me and… him… it was a frail connection, but it wasn’t a familiar bond.

The massive two legged shadow roared a deafening howl that shook and made Vector Man stumble to fall onto what passed for his butt, which was two large green orbs.

It was a massive black wolf covered in what looked like rippling black fur, only ‘he’ was actually some kind of tough metal from what I could see… with faint mixtures of blue streaks in it. The monster had two massive solid glowing red eyes and three massive tails coming from the waist with no hind legs. ‘His’ jaws were teeth endless into a black void that vaguely looked mouth shaped, it appeared more like an inescapable black hole. It had shoved those rather massive tails under Vector Man’s feet and they did almost nothing to them when he stomped down, they even held up to his weight without issue and then swatted him back.

He was a thing from out of nightmares and a creature as dark as night! For Pom, she just smiled and wanted to hug her big lovable doggo even if his fur might shred her alive.

“Dormarch… play.” Well I did think Vector Man looked somewhat suspiciously like a giant pile of animate tennis balls.

-Kaiju Shielder Beast Dormamon Dormarch (The ‘Death’s A Certainty’ Welsh Mythological Data Digimon, for you will soon be escorted through that door if you are on its hunting list. Mega’+’ level Digimon) vs. a screwed pile of vaguely tennis ball like orbs known as Vector Man (Even something called Apocalymon would definitely be running at this point, FYI)- (Music: Unexpectancy Part 3, Pizza Tower)

Vector Man took one step back, which was a big mistake with an angry wolf whose mouth opened wide revealing a deep void where its throat should be as it glared at Vector Man.

The beast didn’t even hear what it once considered its mother, it wanted this thing dead almost above everything else. Almost, it still had the presence of mind to scoop up Pom, Dolly, Canard and their defending APs and place them right at the base of the Moon Cell Core tower while glaring at Vector Man.

Vector Man started to raise his left arm only to find the hand orb that fired powerful pure raw energy being chomped on, there wasn’t even an explosion.

It… was… just…. GONE.

Looking down at his missing left hand, Vector Man slowly turned to the right and then immediately started running, but it was already too late for him.

One there was nowhere to run to as this rooms exits were too small. Two Vector Man had not been coded to know fear, Dormamon hard encoded that into his very being by existing on a conceptual level. For it would be no fun if the prey didn’t understand that it was most certainly indeed prey. Three Dormarch, even at his current massive size, could still use Search Hunter.

Dormamon teleported in front of him and clawed a deep gouge out of his orb chest with a swipe of his left paw and he roared a beam that not only engulfed the small energy bolt Vector Man tried firing, it also damaged his remaining hand.

As he had lost all the data of his left hand he only his right to fight back with, that and his feet and he wasn’t keen on putting his feet anywhere near that mouth.

One of said feet was gripped by Dormamon and it proceed to dangle Kaiju Vector Man upside down by his right tail, he snapped forward with his mouth and Vector Man leaned back to start firing frantically at Dormamon with his right hand.

Vector Man managed to hit the wolf monster in the eye forcing, Dormarmon to drop him and he scramble into standing at least having avoided…

There was a pause as realization hit, Vector Man saw that another part was missing… his entire right should… GONE.

A cracking noise made Vector Man shiver and looked towards the Core to see small cracks running through it and Pom clutching at her throat on the ground.

Vector Man’s inattention lost him an entire right leg, he kicked up his left leg and tried to fire the power thrusters… only nothing came out of his leg… it too was… GONE.

The red eyed beast bored into his own red eyes and Kaiju Vector Man knew fear, he raised his right arm and started firing wildly at the thing that taught him the meaning of terror. Where was the rest of his left arm?

He tried to push himself back but…

Kaiju Shielder Beast Dormamon Dormarch wins, Fatality: ‘INEXISTENCE’!

The large red eyes faded away to a much gentler bluish green and Dormarch started towards the core and looked at what was a tiny white speck to him.

“Mother.” Rumbled a soft voice that did not fit the hulking terror wolf that looked at Moon Cell’s core. “Digital realms anchors, none left but one… this….”

“Pom, says to not worry about it, destroy it!” Dolly called out because Pom ran her throat raw and avoided ruining her voice, Canard was helping her stand. “She’s got it covered!”

“Noble Phantasm… Shooting Stars Miracle.” The attack involved a black beast creating massive stars that glowed as they struck out at something that needed to perish.

-Calumon-

“I don’t think he could have done that without my help, aren’t you glad we came here now?” I said cheerfully, for I was the super hero digimon Calumon and I made a friend an even bigger friend! “Seriously though, that transformation was a lot. He literally can’t do it without me!”

“As your bodyguard, consider me somewhat proud and horrified.” Sideline mumbled and transformed into his canine form. Ugh his aching parts, he was a support digi-bot not a direct combat digi-bot!

-Pom-

I felt my bond reconnected as I watched the beauty of shooting stars exploding against Moon Cell’s Core.

“Elp… cen…er…” So much pain and suffering, but we did it. I looked at Dormarch, back to being his puppy self… all tuckered out after saving us. Heh… he had the crest of miracles fading, now he had a digital hazard symbol like Frizzle does.

Oh god that was going to be a can of worms, but I had something to do first before I pass out from the pain. Canard escorted me to the center of where Moon Cell used to be, Dormarch really came through for us.

Once we reached the center of the destroyed Moon Cell core, I pulled out the Rhongomyniad in its lance form for one last time.

While it could have helped greatly with Tambelon… I think this was the better use for it.

I balance on my left hind leg, raised the butt of the spear above my head… then planted it firmly in the middle of the debris and told it what I wanted from it and then I would no longer have to wield it anymore. My time with the 'Spear of The End', has come to it's end.

“Pom you’re wool…” Yes dolly some of my flanks and lower back were now covered in gold wool, thank you for noticing, now let me get some sleep!

A tower erupted in the place of Moon Cell’s destroyed Core, eating up the debris of the surroundings to build itself and bind the digital world, Pokémon world and lunar world together.

…

“She being alive, let’s be loading her up.” Shanty had thankfully stayed well away from Vector Man.

…

-Some time later, Pom-

I gasped awake and I heard festivities, I checked my right hind leg… still broken. I guess this wasn’t something even a god could fix. I kept it pressed against my belly by my wool and carefully got out of bed to do a three legged trot outside.

There was a festival going on, but I ignored that… I felt a beckoning. Someone owed me, more than they could ever say and I had a meeting with him for doing a job well beyond was expected me of me.

I wandered out of Helper’s Hamlet alone, towards Arceus Valley and I knew why I was heading here.

"I'm going to confirm it right now, you can't take them with you." Geoff was blunt and to the point, not an ounce of perversion in his voice. "The only way a Pokémon can leave these realms is if they can beat a challenge from Arceus, few ever succeed. You can't wait the years for them to do so."

“No one saw me leaving town except for you, who already knew this from the beginning and with the celebrations currently going people should have noticed me walking out of town awkwardly.” I already knew what was happening and a lot of people were going to be either upset with me or Arceus after we’ve had our talk.

“I just came to say good bye, which will be more than what everyone else will be getting. Canard will be able to go with Sami to his team, but they won’t be able to take Clef with them.” He pointedly started staring at my butt. “Can I squeeze it once?”

“Always a pervert.” I said flatly.

“Never said I wasn’t and no Wooloo ever has!” Geoff proclaimed proudly with a chuckle.

“Fine, but only as a friend…” The second I gave him permission both his hooves were on my backside and squeezing my butt. “Stop.”

“I’m going to miss having someone so extravagantly beautiful like you around.” Geoff immediately did so, but his cheery disposition did not falter.

“If anyone asks…” My voice was darkening.

“Never touched you inappropriately at all and no one aside from Arceus and possibly several other god class entities knows.” Geoff stated firmly. “Thanks for being my friend.”

-Arceus Valley hilltop-

“So… stargazing huh.” I sat down next to Arceus who had stars in his eyes as he looked up at the sky.

“Yes.” He stated bluntly.

“I’m a mess, but I’m going to call Tianhuo and I’m going to have to explain that Tambelon is coming soon.” We sat there together and watched the sun rise on a new day.

“I sometimes wonder who made the stars that I didn’t create myself.” Arceus says with a cheerful lilt in his voice. "Maybe the stories of others just write them into existence."

“How safe?” I asked warily.

“There is no possible way you can put yourself into any danger where I’m sending you and you’re friends, danger would have to come to you for that to be possible. Even if it does, you'll be strong enough to deal with it.” Arceus gave off a sad sigh. “Sans the companions of course, I’ve heard a little pervert already told you what you might have figured out by yourself without his rather avid confirmation.”

“Will they be mad at me when we wake up and don’t get one last day here in this interesting world of yours?” Since we were leaving immediately as I finished this talk, I didn't really want one more day here. “I only have so much time left…”

“I owe you so much that I cannot repay so easily, if could feasibly do it… what would you wish?” Arceus probably noticed my flinch, but didn't comment on it.

“I don’t want a wish, but I do have several requests…” My requests were heard and Arceus arched an eye at me while smiling after taking them in.

“Okay all of that, but on one condition… pet my daughter Suicune, give her a belly rub and sign something that belongs to her with your very own hooves.” Let me guess Arceus...

“She’s a doggy messiah cultist isn’t she?” I could feel Arceus’s smile even when I wasn’t looking at him, he was definitely projecting it at me. “Thanks for sending the Rhongomyniad my way... heard you always planned ahead, but I didn't think you were that absurd about it.”

“Those who can relinquish such power so easily can be considered among the greatest of heroes.” Wonder if Arceus saw how I saw it.

“I didn’t have a choice in the matter, just an illusion of choice.” I received a sage nod, he knew what I meant.

“Yet you still wanted to do it in your heart if the choice were available, even if you had no choice due to your peculiar nature. It’s been nice doing business with you Lady Pom of Team Harmony. I’ll be sending you off with a lot of Sitrus Berries, keep eating them over the course of your stay in the vacation realm and you’ll be quickly ready for the trials ahead. I'll know when you are ready, just invoke my name when it is time and you are done fixing the issues your group may have.”

-Ten minutes and doing things with and to Suicune later-

"I would be wary of Lit if I were you, he's not going to like this." Never had a I met a bug so dangerous. Going to continue ignoring the exceedingly happy goddess of clean water behind me.

"If there is one thing I always liked doing, it's welcoming a challenge head on when eyes are fiercely locked upon those of your opponents or obstacles." Oh you were so in for it Arceus.

"I'm betting on Lit." No ifs, ands, or buts about it, the little guy would definitely do it and then some.

"I actually want him to succeed. As do I want Dazzle and Favela to succeed as well. I want all my children to succeed in some way, whether it be big or small." Arceus eyes closed in a heartwarming smile. "You can't win every battle, but you can grow from every battle survived. Now time for your vacation, sorry about how abrupt this will be. I'm going to be busy over the next few days with a massive influx of souls and Yvetal will absolutely need my assistance to do an audit. Might have to send a number of them Yggdrasil's way."

Arceus wasn't kidding, it was horribly abrupt... as in a blink of my tired eyes.

I appeared with my friends all in a new place and I would let them berate me for not letting them get the chance to say goodbye to all the wonderful friends we've left behind. Also everyone was still asleep, I was sitting watch until I knew what kind of situation Arceus dropped us into... I'm still a paranoid lambkin at heart.

It was nice of him to set up camp for us and put them in sleeping bags. Did he have to do it with a whole circus theme though? I know we have issues, but did he have to be so audacious about it? Eh, probably.

I wondered what they were going to do with Castle Alexander now that we no longer have need of it? I'm sure someone will take care of him, but hopefully not me. I wouldn't even know what to do with a castle sized dog you can live inside of. Lots of curiosities to consider about the NPC's, the Harmony Programs and everything else... at least Arceus said they'll all receive a fair choice in the matter continuing forward.

-Later that morning, Helper's Hamlet, Arceus-

Arrayed in front of me were the stalwart Pokémon companions and various friends of the travelers who helped save this world... even the lighthearted and heavily battered by battle King Evan was glaring at me alongside all of them with a puffy angry faced Maiden Jig.

Clef in particular muttered Mr. Thunderbeak as she gave me quite a scathing Mean Look. Sami and Canard I already sent away. If she wanted to see them and live with them, then she was 'informed' as to how that can be accomplished.

Lit stepped forth and squeaked a squeak of war as he raised his front claws, promising me he will accomplish whatever he needed to in a simple minded fashion.

Quetal's gaze sharpened as he flexed his claws, Shine had a very demented smile on her face as she started juggling knives and Dazzle's gaze was narrowed as flames sporadically popped at her wrists.

Frizzle's lips caked with fire as she silently tossed some bread over shoulder, entirely paying attention to me with wild eyes and ignoring the bread entirely. This was much to my astonishment that it was even possible for a Guilmon to ignore bread, she had been munching at it until the explanation started and then she stopped entirely while listening intently to what I said.

Yggdrasil said it was functionally impossible for any Guilmon to actively ignore the siren call of bread once they are made aware of it. There is no such thing as moldy bread around a Guilmon as they'd never let bread get that far into decay.

Both Lucha Mundo and Muchomon had flat gazes set squarely on me, both sharing a common thought between them. Could they use my body as a shovel to dig my own grave? Muchomon wasn't even with Mundo for very long and he wanted to assist his partner in the endeavors without a second thought, I loved the sound of true brotherhood.

All of them were quite angry, except for Favela who considered me with the faintest of smiles in an accepting understanding... she wanted to be at her captains side and no amount of anger will speed things up.

Favela understood things quite clearly, rarely do the companions ever leave with those they shared a deep bond with and rarely do they ever see them again unless they actively worked hard to do so.

Some would settle down and move on creating tales of grand adventure... others however, well they'd literally move mountains, seas and the heavens themselves and not a single god of our given pantheon would stop them if they were truly determined. I enjoyed watching mortals do as such.

It was amazing what some mortals would do when you gave them an quite an ample amount of motivation, these people had plenty of friends to help them do it all too.

Like I said to Pom, I wanted them to actually succeed. I wasn't going to make it easy for any of them despite the sweet fluffy canine cultist magnet's requests!

Friendship is battles after all, plus digimon liked fighting too... so... more friendship!

Arc Interlude: The world next to our own.

Author's Note

Pom- Very well aware of her own mortality, is willing to fight what's coming... but will give in if needed. Loves everyone in her group even if they don't necessarily love her, willing to sacrifice even knowing what that eventually means.

Chrysomallus transformation progression: Coverage on all legs, tail, top of flanks.

Remaining possible spread positions: Barrel and mid back, withers, head, ears and ?wings?.

Pom's emotional relationships...

Smolder- Strained for a variety of pride related reasons, but no longer actively hateful of Pom. Slowly coming around. Is slightly upset at Arceus about not being able to say goodbye to all their friends or letting them come with them.

Trying to pretend anger at Pom, Pom is starting to notice much to her insecurities.

Feels particularly unhelpful to everyone around her except Ocellus.

Dolly- Upset she never got to say goodbye to Lit. Somewhat angry with Pom for a few reasons.

Lost Materia at the end of the battle with Moon Cell, Dolly learn Blizzard (Learning Attribute Bonus Boost: Cool Dog). Wanted to learn Fire and Thunder but only got to 80% and 37% respectively.

Ocellus- Vaguely understanding of Pom's personal plight if slightly upset at not having done more. Doesn't know how to help anyone at the moment, wants to talk to Pom about strengthening their friendships as they are going to need it.

Learned skill: Extreme Multitasking.

Shanty- Angry at Pom, wanted to say goodbye to Favela if she couldn't come with them, hopeful to see Favela again. Secretly still wonders if she can see again Skunk too. See's Pom as family.

Unlocked: Capricorn abilities. Water, water everywhere and you don't have to worry about a drink.

Dormarch- Terrified of himself and what he became. The temporary loss of the bond with his mother and Dolly has caused some issues he needs to talk about, but won't bring up himself.

Happy that his mother still loves him. Upset that everyone is mildly upset with his mother. Forgives Ocellus, willing to help Smolder.

Learned: Precious Bonds. (Bond can be mended even if fray or snapped, however points of no return still exist based on how the user feels.)

Gained negative status: Evolution Eviction.

While he cannot normally turn into his mega form without Calumon, Dormarch is now terrified of the possibility of being capable of doing so. He can't turn into his Champion or Ultimate forms for the fear of becoming his Mega form again.

Dodo- Likes everyone. Wants to be more affectionate, but is aware he's got sharp edges.

No thoughts, head empty: Without the Harmony Programs taking space in his mind, Dodo is now more focused and able to perform more complicated feats of thought... such as making toast.

Arc Interlude: The world next to our own.

"..."

"..."

Upset warbling noises.

"Look I be sorry, but we were all being a bit angry at Pom."

*Barking intent in agreement at being angry with Pom are heard*.

"This was our last stop before the end, the place was an absolute paradise."

"Mother... can you see the stars?"

457. Aftermath of Worlds.

-Equus, Sweet Apple Acres Barn, Guys Night, Jaded-

“Why is Jaded here again?” Spike asked, the dragon just made me roll my eyes. Like he wasn’t sweet on Gabby these days and she was much closer to his age anyway.

“She’s a tom cat, she’s enough of a guy and the most masculine one in her heard and that’s saying something with the chimera involved.” Hey Capper, just because you were right and recognized the fierce beauty that is Maries that I’m not going to call you on it.

“So how are things with the misses Big Mac?” I knew there was still talk of whether or not Big Mac would remain in a monogamous marriage or if Sugar Belle would let any more mares into their lives, so far Sugar Belle didn’t seem likely to let any other mares in and probably never would.

“It’s been pretty great and her pregnancy is coming along just fine.” Big Mac stated as he tossed some cards down. “Three Queens.”

“Any chance of expanding the herd?” I asked. “Also… liar!”

Big Mac frown and revealed the three cards were not in fact queens, he tossed some bits my way.

I already knew that Applejack and Rainbow Dash were idly considering magical help and or checking around for a professional stallion sire. The two of them went on an adventure with my Silvers recently, they did not realize how much a handful a baby chimera was until I got them to babysit. I understandably let them off easy for what recently happened given Silvers was having filly unicorn surges.

They weren’t married, but they certainly bickered like they were much to Big Mac’s amusement.

“E-Nope.” Big Mac stated bluntly, this was much to my old teacher Cheerilee’s sadness.

Sure Cheerilee couldn’t teach me math to save anyone’s lives due in part to my lethal dyscalculia problem, but she was still one of my favorite teachers in life.

“By the way Capper… five bits to learn how to please a unicorn.” I stated.

“That doesn’t sound like too bad a price.” It seemed Capper was honestly confused about my pricing on how to help his love life get better, I’m going to break it to him gently.

“One hundred fifty bits to learn how to please Rarity specifically and make her a happy unicorn if you are willing to spend the rest of your life with her.” There wasn’t a sound and you could hear a pin drop.

“Well now…” Discord said as he was holding an entire deck of UNO reverse cards in his hands. “How much for information on how I can please a certain pegasus…”

“Seventy five bits and a pint of distilled poison joke, no questions asked about what I’m going to do with the distilled poison joke. You can ask about the bits as much as you want just to be clear.” My going rates were dependent on the challenge involved, also by customer as far as Discord is concerned. Apparently my planning talent, as denoted by the cutie mark on my half-unicorn Abyssinian hips, definitely helped in the field of romance. Might also help that I had Snickers the Turtledove as a familiar. Glancing around the table I saw some curious stares. “The rest of you shouldn’t ask what I need it for, plausible deniability and all that. Zecora already knows to have enough cure on standby in case things go horribly wrong… but said cure won’t be for me.”

Discord being a being of chaos would have problems with commitment, even Fluttershy is aware of this as it nearly almost killed him once when he tried to be far more ‘orderly’ for her than anyone else. He would quite literally die in his devotion to Fluttershy if it would make her happy, I was the one planning how not to get him killed and make it work in the most chaotic manner possible that ends with the two having a working stable relationship… one that reality can functionally handle at least. So about as well as a relationship could feasibly work given the circumstances involved.

Fluttershy didn’t mind a massive amount of chaos in her life, as long as it wasn’t the scary kind… Discord was quite a good learning aid in some ways. He taught valuable lessons at the school of friendship, which is when Twilight let him do so. Nothing was a better teacher sometimes than throwing random strangers into a chaotic mess and having them work together to fix said mess.

A bag with seventy five bits and a jar of distilled chaotically colorful liquids soon found themselves in front of me and also, as what I consider to be a show of good faith, Discord actually labeled the jar properly ‘Poison Joke do not touch, drink or interact with without proper caution’. You know, instead of letting something horrendously chaotic happen like it getting mixed up with some random Zap Apple Jam jars given where we were.

I quietly whispered something and Discord started rubbing his two odd appendages together with a bright cheerful grin, he summoned a note pad. A pad that was in the shape of a musical note that played theme music when written on, probably the tamest thing I’ve ever seen Discord do.

I also suggested Discord run a gag shop for Cheese Sandwich, with some literal gags on sale to go with the usual joke stuff, because Pinkie Pie would definitely be his best customer and it would be a source of income to help Fluttershy’s animal cuddling endeavors. Running a sanctuary, being vet, an animal caretaker, school teacher and overall familiar finder were not easy jobs, Fluttershy was one of the most popular ponies around despite being as much a wallflower as Wallflower the gardening earth pony was.

I may have also added the suggestion of selling ‘surprise’ and ‘chaos’ boxes with fun or startling surprises in them, maybe an entire tiered system of chaotic fun to sell to ponies who need some randomness added to their boring days.

“Oh my~… our friend Jaded here is definitely worth the consulting price boys!” Discord stated jovially. “So Saddle Arabia elite or something else?”

“Something else actually.” I didn’t want to incriminate myself any further than that, if it made the news then everyone at this table would surely know it was me. If it didn’t make the news however… well… patented evil cat grin number seven.

Spike gave me a glance, then silently slid five bits over to me, I leaned over and whispered to him something that would help a lot and he gave a few nods.

“Thanks.” Spike finally muttered with a small smile. “That sound like really good advice.”

“Sweetie Belle?” My bits were on the ‘singing muse’ cutie marked younger sister of Rarity might have interested my young dragon friend. Could be a few other unicorn fillies within Spike’s age range.

“I’m not going to tell you anything, I know what you are like Jaded.” That is the correct answer Spike, just about everyone knew what I was like. It’s those who didn’t know that would earn my ire and learn the meaning of ‘Pettius Kittius’ and why it’s now in all dictionaries in the world with my glaring image as a prime example of it.

Apparently Discord could update every dictionary in existence with the flick of a claw, for a price, so nobody would have to buy a new one. So he currently did have something like a job already… as long as he got to add his likeness under the definition of ‘Chaos’, along with the picture of a blue furred winged cat that once gave Ballad Din all kinds of problems. This most certainly did not have any repercussions in Saddle Arabia tax code at all… *LOUD WINK LOUD WINK*.

“Okay, I’ll pay you… since I really want to know what you’re going to say.” It seemed I had Capper’s keen interest. “First things first though, what’s this about a Tambelon mission coming up soon?”

“Apparently Pom has finished her obligations to some kind of lama horse deity thing and is now on a vacation in preparation for what is going to happen in Tambelon. Short answer, nothing good and I’m going to be there as a scout. Hope those Troggles aren’t as terrifying as the historical records say they are. Tianhuo is quite happy to hear that her wife is still alive… with a badly broken leg, but alive.” While I was saying this Capper had three fifty bit coins raring to go. “We’ll be soon gathering for a mission into Tambelon to retrieve ‘The Found’ before Demon Goat Grogar can capture or kill them.”

I started whispering to my somewhat fellow Abyssinia countryman about Rarity and how to make the relationship last. After I was finished, Capper had a smile on his face and he nodded. I quirked an eye at Spike.

“I’m okay with it as long as Rarity is happy with whatever you just told him… so what’ll it take for you to get me one Sekhmet’s training regimens?” Oh right, Spike did want to look handsome and chiseled.

“Right that’s easy enough, ask Sekhet herself and sacrifice a snickerdoodle and a cinnamon bun to her in her name at her pyramid… she also takes grapes peeled or not. Also maybe just investing, since our local goddess of war in Airship Mauled is thinking about expanding her school coaching gig into making gyms for physical education and therapy.” There was an odd stare. “Don’t worry Sekh’m’et is the right way to say it, we just like saying Sekhet better… doesn’t bother Sekky at all really. Never has really.”

-The Valley Realm (First World), Dragon’s Cave, Skunk-

“Hahahaha, you lose!” Dragon stated as I stared up at him defiantly.

I smirked a little.

“Best two out of three?” I asked calmly.

“Of course.” Dragon stated as he set up the board.

The board was made for several games, mostly we just did Xiangi, Go and Pai Sho. Pai Sho being a culmination of several games mashed together and very difficult to master and Dragon enjoyed the time we spent playing them.

Dragon has really mellowed out… by a lot. Probably the fact that he now had a few golden scales back and some sense of decency to not want everyone that lived in The Valley dead.

Sure he’s still semi-evil, but the guy was kind of cool to hang out with when he wasn’t trying to corrupt me to the dark side with cookies or muffins. Guy was really quite complicated like that I guess and I was too young to really understand why.

I would never want to actually kill him, eventually beat him within an inch of his life sure, but outright kill him? Pshaw, no way! Dragon was far too interesting an enemy to defeat outright.

Where Panda taught me how to train my body, Dragon was really helping with my mind, sure I learned a lot of mind techniques from the others in The Valley, but I still stood to learn a lot from Baboon and Dragon.

“Do you think Shanty’s doing okay?” I asked.

“You’re attraction to that goat is still quite strange to me.” Dragon said flatly.

“Well she was around my age, cute, her beard was kind of neat and she was really cool to hang out with!” That and I hadn’t forgotten her after an entire year had almost passed, she was only here for like a few days before Dragon helped them along. “That and I felt like she had some fighting potential to her and her personality was really quite interesting. Sure she might have thieving tendencies, but I can live with that.”

“Being in The Valley might be a challenge for you as well.” Dragon stated as the board was set up again and he motioned for me to make the first move this time.

“Maybe.” Wouldn’t surprise me given all the weird stuff we’ve done around here, the ninja monkeys were barrels of fun at least.

“So when are you going to ask me for a solution to go visit her? One that doesn’t involve any dark magic I mean.” Dragon was really good at magic dark and light. Yin and yang and all that.

“When I can finally defeat you once and for all.” Defeat, not kill, defeat has many more connotations for what the end results could mean and are far less permanent.

“You’re far too kind for your own good.” Dragon grumbled.

“You’re far too grody for yours, but you are getting better.” I took a moment to make my move, I was quick to learn almost any martial arts and I was great in many physical aspects… however my mental aspects was something I was still working on and Dragon was the one helping me with that. “I’ll see her again someday I’m sure.”

“Heh heh heh, we’ll see…” The big blackened burnt Dragon stated. “You’ll have to survive me long enough to do that though.”

“Surviving you hasn’t been the hard part so far.” I stated calmly with my tail waving about and looking down the board over my big red tomato sized nose.

At this point Dragon and I were friends and he had reconciled with Panda, but Dragon wasn’t willing to admit that he was willing to be a good guy again. He was having far too much fun being a heel we had to defend ourselves against.

“Besides I’m pretty sure I can figure out a portal spell on my own if given enough time.” My words didn’t surprise Dragon in the slightest, I was a quick learner in any subject that has my interest.

Magic has been an incredibly hard, but very fascinating subject. Friendship and love, as much as anger and apathy could cause so many things to happen. Martial Arts magic that allowed me to throw fireballs was far easier than the portal thing I was looking into.

-The Valley of Peace Realm (Second World), Jade Palace, Po-

“Get back here Panda!” Surprisingly that was not Tai Lung yelling that at me, that was his younger sister Tigress.

“Getting into trouble a little early today eh Po?” Viper said as I ran by her laying on a heat rock out in the sun.

“I’m only in trouble if I get caught!” I stated as I continued to run as fast as my little legs can carry me, which was pretty darn fast as a kung fu master and the dragon warrior.

“Hoo-hoo, wonder what Po did this time.” Monkey stated as he flicked some banana peels out like throwing stars to eventually land in my path, I sneezed them out of the air with my ‘nostril shuriken’ technique before they could trip me as I ran for the stairs. Sure it was a less kung fu and more wonky mystical ninja technique, but kung fu masters can use anything if they can figure out how to make it work. So far nobody has questioned how I fit sharp bladed throwing stars in my nostrils that are too tiny to actually contain them. Then again all kung fu masters had their own techniques and even Tai Lung had a few things he was working on. “Aw… I was hoping you’d have a nice trip.”

“With how many times I’ve fallen down those stairs, I don’t want any more head injuries from them!” I shouted back at Monkey while shaking my fist and then nearly went for a tumble on said stairs, Tai Lung thankfully grabbed me with a single claw and pulled me upright. “Thanks buddy.”

“I still want you alive because you amuse me Po, that and to maybe see martial artists of other worlds.” Tai Lung stated dramatically, he was getting better at the theatre arts and his nephew Peng was quite a kung fu prodigy. His hobby really mellowed him out, his flair for the dramatic was fairly popular around the valley of peace. Really interesting stuff happening in our world since Master Ewe left, Pom definitely deserved that title for her bravery at the very least and I hoped she was still around to receive an apology from me. I was working on how to teleport us to the mythical Huoshan, home of the legendary Longma, and back without issues any logistical issues. Tai Lung was interested in seeing if Pom, or Master Ewe as the servants at the Jade Palace started calling her, had grown any once I do eventually figure things out. “Now keep going and distract my adopted little sister for half a day, then I might owe you that favor you’ve been wanting.”

Didn’t need to tell me twice as I started down the stairs, might actually do a patented ‘panda roll’ to get away faster if it is required. Tai Lung had also picked up an appreciation of pranks with Monkey, especially those targeted at Shifu. No, of course he wasn’t still bitter at his adoptive father anymore, why would anyone think that?

“Po you might want to pick up the pace, she’s coming at you full tilt, ca-caw!” Crane was on his way to a date with a lovely cat named Mei Ling at my goose dad’s place.

I immediately rolled up, instead of a painful uncontrolled tumble down the stairs, this was much more graceful. Tigress flew over me and started tumbling down the stairs alongside me. Tigress was doing so far faster than I was and would be waiting for me at the bottom unless I did a particular bounce and I hated doing that one.

Well better have a landing prepared, because I really did not feel like being pummeled by Tigress today. If I’m right, then Mantis has cart about to accept supplies in the market district so…

I veered off from the stairs leading up to the Jade Palace and my rapidly rotating form bounced butt first off a particular pillar of rock jutting out of the mists below and flew towards the city while spreading my limbs out. I really hate using the Belly Bouncing technique like this…

Quite a few people saw me coming so I wasn’t going to hit anyone important, slapping into the street belly first painfully… thankfully my fat and ki absorbed the brunt of the impact to prevent injury, but still very painful.

I bounced high into the air flailing and then curled up to fall onto a cart and used its seesaw motion to stop me entirely as I rolled backwards into a standing position. This also launched all of Mantis’s supplies off said cart, I caught all of them and put them on the ground still in kung fu ‘run like headless chicken’ mode. The problem with this is that they were just freshly loaded up to be taken to the Jade Palace, Mantis was going to be angry about that.

Once I collected myself and regained my sense, I realized that I had to keep running.

“Sorry about the delay in your supply order Mantis, but I’m in a hurry!” I yelled as I passed by my tiny kung fu master friend on the street.

“Darn it Po!” Angrily yelled Mantis. “Better hope Tigress doesn’t catch you or my acupuncture session with you afterwards is going to be one of the really bad ones!”

Yeah, I really liked Tigress, but she did have a habit of mangling me… just a smidge.

Just had to get out of town, just had to get out of town! Maybe I can practice teleportation while I’m out and about? I mean I’m pretty decent at my personal ‘Nin-Po’ magic tricks… wait that’s it, that’s how I can avoid Tigress!

I moved to a nearby wall pulled a particularly colored sheet out of my pocket and put my back to the wall, angle the sheet in the direction Tigress would be coming from and…

Tigress soon ran past me without realizing she did so, I even moved the sheet in time with her visual range so that she wouldn’t notice the wall bulging out slightly. If I had timed it wrong, she might have stopped in place and investigated things more. Stealth wall trick successful!

I kind of did want a favor from Tai Lung as he was still one of the greatest Kung Fu masters to ever live, next to me ‘The Dragon Warrior’ of course. Once he learned to share some fame, things weren’t too bad.

“Darn it where did he go!” Whoops got to move, Tigress might notice if she doubled back!

The Valley of Peace was doing great, but I really wanted to see what Pom and the girls are doing and I had some teleportation practice to get in. Besides Oogway told me they were still alive the last time I communed with him, spiritual warrior stuff was still so awesome to me! Also helped to learn how Panda Village and Gongmen City were doing too, which is why I wanted to learn how to teleport between dimensions.

So much cool stuff to see and learn now that I’m aware there was more out there than just our little world.

Wanted to meet Pom again for a quick hug and for a friendly spar, as much as Tai Lung wanted a fight with otherworldly warriors.

The Legends of Awesomeness continued, maybe we were renowned around here, but how about in several other dimensions?

-Elhorn (Third World), walking on a path to Gravity Gorge, Nicole Beta-

“We’ve certainly put out a lot of fires.” The Yellow Dog incident was behind us, Sparkster was quite an amazing individual on par with Sonic the Hedgehog. Sparkster’s combat prowess was only magically enhanced and most of what he could do came from his own training.

Robotnik nuclear munitions definitely did not need to exist or be in the hands of mad wolves and were safely dispatched before they could be set off.

Sparkster proven to be an adventurous hero. He was still went on the trail of Axel Gear at times, but didn’t focus too hard on it as he always had a family to get back to. Humble was Sparkster the Rocket Knight who could have married any the princess and instead… he got with a nice village girl whom had won over his adventurous heart. This was much to the princesses of the various kingdoms broken hearts, they still liked Sparkster as a friend too.

“That we have.” Sparkster was using me as an administrative assistant to help find those proverbial ‘fires’ that need to be put out. The people who crash landed here, after a bit of time traveling, should consider themselves lucky that the magic of the world was so welcoming.

Sparkster could easily figure out how to get to Huoshan where the ‘White Knight’ was from, but first we needed to seek out the ‘Sage of Sight’ in Gravity Gorge as he could tell us if or when it would be safe for us to travel there. That is if we could at all.

Rocket Knight Colleen was particularly keen on the idea of seeing her old companion again… as were Jean, Bruno and even Ligstrun, who has long since earned our trust in his care of me.

Didn’t know if we could go to Mobius or not, but Sparkster had enough troubles keeping Elhorn safe from technological marvels and horrors in equal measures. Naturally occurring living machines was certainly something Robotnik couldn’t possibly replicate without magic or chaos emeralds, this world did it naturally to the mechanical animals running around. We couldn’t let that mad man find out about this world’s existence or else he’d try to take it over, TRY would be the keyword as long as Sparkster or his order of Rocket Knights was alive.

The order of ‘good’ rocket knights had been reborn under Sparkster the Blue Blazer, courageous were we all to uphold the safety of this world we find ourselves a part of where machines came to life as if one with nature.

-Disney Afternoon World where dreams can come true if you work for them (Fourth World), Anaheim Ice Rink, Canard-

After the core was taken out, all the EPs or any other aggressive programs ceased to be an immediate threat to the lives of everyone involved.

Pom planted the spear and we were knocked back by it turning into a large tower that saved the digital realm and bound the three worlds together inexorably.

Arceus quickly teleported us out of there not too long after Shanty picked up Pom and Jeanne D’ Arc escorted us out. Jeanne’s team and Calumon were witnesses to the fall of one of the greatest evils around, by something that looked positively monstrous.

Once we arrived in Helper’s Hamlet we put Pom in bed and they tried to heal most of her injures… most, because apparently her right hind leg resisted any attempts at healing the horrible damage done to it. I then found myself abruptly warped to the headquarters of my team, here in Anaheim.

Several DNA tests to confirm that yes, I was me, I was back, along with requisite uncontrollable sobbing and hugging from my team later… I had my team back along with an added friend and partner for life that was our newest teammate.

Wildwing was going to still be team captain, he deserved it for ending the Saurian threat where I couldn’t. The evils of the saurian empire weren’t going to bother anyone ever again.

Real nasty piece of work that last giant servant of Moon Cell had been.

Nobody was going to talk much about Dormarch’s Mega form or the horrifying feeling of ‘DEATH’ he practically radiated at the time, Dormarch managed to keep his head in the game and score the much needed winning goal. Hoped to never see another soul sucking super computer quite like that one again.

I’ve had my fill of adventure to last several lifetimes… so why was I becoming a vigilante alongside my old teammates that I’ve just recently reunited with?

Well I really couldn’t help myself could I? I was very much like Pom in some ways, unable to look away from those in need. This world has need of heroes and I aimed to stick with my flock and team for the rest of my life aiding it.

Now… now I was simply going to take a long break, by teaching Sami about my religion and how to ice skate. We also needed to get up to speed on the vigilante network Sami and I were now a part of and catch up with what’s happened since I got, quite unpleasantly, swallowed by an Electromagnetic Space Worm of doom.

Speaking of the lovable soldier lizard… Sami slapped against the wall of the ice rink and I winced audibly, but smiled as Sami had endeared herself to my team quite quickly. Tanya especially, given their love of equipment and tinkering.

“Ow… I’m okay… thanks for asking.” The ever orange loving Sami Soldier stated as she slowly got herself standing. She had to learn how to skate before she could actually play the game. We’d get some interesting scrimmages out of her eventually, because scrimmages were important to kick off the rust if you ever lost the ability to play hockey or have fun. We already had Sami’s jersey number planned out and everything to make sure she felt included with the team. “How do Rinkmon do this?!”

Sami mostly needs to learn how to ice skate first and she wasn’t doing too horribly at all.

“Keen gear, that’s got to hurt.” Gosalyn Mallard, AKA Quiver-Wing Quack Saint Canard vigilante with incredibly accuracy with anything thrown, hit or shot as a form of projectile. It seems the team has made friends in several odd places, again I’m quite proud of Wildwing.

Gosalyn was just here visiting her favorite hockey team and some of her favorite vigilantes, her favorite hero being her adoptive father Darkwing Duck who recently got her grandfather back. Her favorite player was Mallory McMallard, can kind of why Gosalyn was a fan of Mallory… she wanted to grow up kicking butt just like the daughter of the last general of Puckworld’s Special Forces.

May said general rest in peace, as I will continue watching out for his daughter for him. Nice to see Duke and Grin again. Surprisingly Nosedive had come into his own while I was gone, didn’t want to bring him in on the whole rebel cause… glad to see he’s doing well too.

I never got to say good bye to the Pokémon or the other Digimon we fought alongside, much less Pom’s personal group… I don’t think Pom will either as I think Arceus was trying to avoid long winded goodbyes. I’m really going to miss Clef too, she was quite a sweet little thing.

“You’re doing okay Sami, just open up a little and maybe bend your knees a bit!” I coached and saw my digital partner perk up and take my advice to heart and her balance got a little better.

“You’re so lucky you’re getting to be on a team with these guys, wish I was old enough to operate outside Saint Canard without a chaperone!” Grumbling good naturedly about her age, Gosalyn glanced at me. “So what’s the story from when the worm ate you? Nosedive made comic books about you guys to fund his weird combat Zamboni projects.”

Ah, yes, the sacred ice paving machines of doom for our enemies, for the game cannot be played without properly tended to ice. Nosedive was a true patriot of our home world.

“Spent several hundred digital years lost inside a weird interdimensional computer world until I met Sami, then things got really weird from there. Long story, but you’ll get to read about it Nosedive’s comic books… since Sami there will be helping with the illustrations.” This ice rink wasn’t home, but the ducks here certainly were.

Glad to finally be here.

-Camden Town, 101 Dalmatian Street Home, Dylan-

“Dolly called and she looked really roughed up.” Deedee was worried about her big sister, she shouldn’t be as Dolly could take care of herself.

From her recent message she learned how to pilot overly complicated mech somehow, Daisuke was excited to hear that mechs were a thing.

“Yeah, well I’m sure she’s been through a lot, dodging all kinds of dangerous stuff.” Sighing with relief, I worried as much as Deedee did. Dolly was kind of the best of us at getting into and out of trouble, mostly into it, at least she wasn’t reckless under Pom’s guidance. That she called let us know she was alive and well, in a completely different dimension from ours and living it up like if I were to get the chance at playing a real life version of poodle wolf. Also the one hundred and one Dalmamon being our digital counterparts concerned me somewhat. “Now if only we can convince Ditto to not get too into the role of Caper Canine…”

“This just in, Leap Lamb and Caper Canine help defeat Arpeggio the airship mogul and uncovered his time traveling theft scheme.” The television announced and I saw Ditto on screen performing a kick flip off a slowly crashing airship. Looks like Mopsy got dragged into another strange adventure with Ditto again, either that or it was the Cooper Gang this time.

Ooh, so that’s where Ditto has been for this past week! Ditto was really good at mimicking everything Dolly could do, in fact Ditto could mimic the talent of just about any Dalmatian in the family except Darcy ‘Da Witch’ Dalmatian.

Darcy was working on possibly getting us a connection to Huoshan on the planet Equus somehow, so far we had a doors leading to other places thing and thanks to the whole ‘Tambelon’ things we couldn’t do that yet. I don’t know how to feel with my step-sister and little adoptive digital brother eventually going into an evil sounding place, but Dormarch came back from being so ridiculously close to a true death.

We could go to Saint Canard, Big Hero 6 Basemax, Aneheim Skating Rink, New York’s Rescue Aid Society, wherever the Cooper Van happens to be at this moment in time and a few other places including Hunter’s loft in his skyscraper. Hunter’s pet toy business was going very well, as much as his selling Caper Canine and Leap Lamb merchandise was.

Spot Dalmatian, the mystical zombie chicken friend of our ancestors, of course kept a lock on the whole teleporting door thing. We really don’t want puppies getting lost across the world before they complete their Bark Brigade survival training locally, our parents put their paws down on magical interdimensional traveling shenanigans and made sure we all knew magic wasn’t a toy.

Why did everything these days seem so mundane despite all the weird stuff that happens around us? We have zombie chicken living with us and I found that to be the most normal thing compared to all the other stuff going on.

It’s like we were always weird, but we never questioned the weirdness of everyone seemingly not paying attention to us at all. I mean one hundred dogs running to the park and back to the house every other day and interacting with who knows how many people should have been on someone’s radar right? How would Cruella not be sure of our location? This house is fairly particular in how obvious it was, I mean the house on the streets with spots painted all over it is fairly obvious as is the number of dogs Cruella should be familiar with coming and going from it. Did she really need a DNA test to confirm it? Was it some magic that was protecting us all this time from all the other weird stuff around here, except for Cruella attacking us? Was my family destined to come across Cruella every generation where we formed a particular number?

I felt a pair of paws hugging me.

“Dylan, you’re thinking too hard again.” Dizzy stated and Deedee nuzzled into my side affectionately and I hugged Dolly’s favorite sisters, next to Dorothy of course.

“Yeah, I was… thanks for the hug. I’m just worried about Dolly, but she seems to be doing well and probably has so many more stories to tell.” I was also worried about Ditto too, but she was in the same dimension as us so we could go to help her if something went wrong.

-Basemax, Hiro-

So Arceus still didn’t want us to teleport into his world unless we asked him first according to Canard.

Scrooge was interested in finding the world Pom was from so his clone daughter and family won’t miss their friends, they knew it might take a while to find, but we were willing to try.

The Dalmatians would be more likely to do it first, they had more of a leg up on dimensional shenanigans and magic, they were in fact our consultants on magic if anything occurred. I’m just surprised with been mostly stuck with dealing with technology and science trouble.

I don’t want to know how bad hero things would get when you added magic, monsters and mythological entities to the mix.

“Dormarch’s alive?!” Questioned Ms. Bunny Shuttle excitedly, her robotic rabbit body looked up at me with a hopeful expression and a twitching nose with advanced radar whiskers, floppy ears raised up and a wagging round metallic tail.

I rubbed her head affectionately, making her giggle. Robotics was, has and always will be my specialty. The news really cheered her up, Bunny was almost as young as Dormarch was and the digital dog that could manifest into reality was a great hero. Glad to hear his death was greatly exaggerated even if we saw what was the utmost certainty of it, makes me wonder if my brother is out there somewhere sometimes…

Outside of her battle bus body, Bunny now had to find things to do with herself in the form of a hobby.

She liked looking into transportation solutions and other things related to getting around, she was quickly becoming a mechanic for Big Hero Six and her own bus body. She had asked me once if I could create a body that transformed between a vehicle and a bunny battle bot. I don’t think she was quite ready for that yet, but I did tell her I’d think about it.

She would certainly be more than meets the eye the first time she transformed, but I wasn’t ready to do something quite that complicated at the moment.

Bunny also liked following Mopsy Muttoncoddle and Ditto Dalmatian’s incredible exploits, despite not having Pom’s talent or Dolly’s magic the two were fairly amazing whenever they got together for a team up. Wherever they were, the Cooper Gang would be doing its thing in the background to save the day from even worse things going on.

“Even after what happened to him with that virus, apparently yes… he somehow came back from it and we’re only getting news of it now because of Canard Thunderbeak.” Baymax wasn’t the only intelligent AI running around these days.

Kahn Industries PET devices were really quite popular, I had one with a copy of my brother’s appearance programmed onto it. That was shortly before Baymax’s first body came back from dimensional void wrong… thankfully we fought evil Baymax into submission without killing him.

So yeah, Baymax’s first body came back and went totally evil on us, thankfully it was missing a mechanical hand armor piece and that made deflating his soft body under the armor easy. Now my PET brother could utilize Baymax’s first body, it somehow felt right.

Interesting times we live in, like Minimax being a recognized hero in his own right.

“I’m sure you’ll see him again someday Bunny Shuttle.” The news was wonderful to hear for the friendly bunny AI. “Now if only Fredmeleon could stop causing incidents with his invisibility we’d be having a much easier week.”

“Not likely, Fredmeleon is going to do whatever a Fredmeleon does.” Oh how I wish Bunny wasn’t right about that. “Do I… do I still need to do therapy sessions with Baymax?”

“At least until Baymax says you can stop, but therapy has been good for you.” An AI that needed therapy and Baymax kept Bunny going, it was kind of amazing to watch really.

Nothing was good as hope for the future to cure a blue screening AI.

-Pokémon Realm connected with New Lunar Digital Realm and Yggdrasil’s Digital Realm (Fifth World), Lit-

Lit was on a journey and he was going to be with Dolly once again, he would one day make sure Arceus know his ire in its entirety.

He hopped about a little electric blur and stopped when he came across a Gilgamesh and Greenkidu.

“Going our way?” Gilgamesh asked and I squeaked the songs of many heroic Joltik. “Eh, we’re stuck here so might as well spend some time traveling with a true warrior. Smallest one I’ve ever seen though.”

-Aurora, Jiri-

Never got to say goodbye to Pom, but at least I know she was alright… the celebration night got a little awkward between me and the bears.

I’m now a Captain of the guard of Aurora. King Evan was glad to have me alongside him for his journey, Teeth was out on patrol and the Bidoof were… excited.

Why wouldn’t the Bidoof be excited? They are going to be rebuilding every kingdom on the continent at a reduced price because they are workaholics.

In any case, if anything happened to King Evan, I’d be the one that would become queen of Aurora. I would proudly live up to the heart our beloved King… by making sure no one kills him while I live! I didn’t want to be queen of Aurora, since it might eventually force me to fight that rat bastard Lord Nobunaga.

I wonder what quests are currently on the Team Harmony board today while I have plenty of free time?

-Dazzle-

Okay so biomerging to Frizzle almost killed me, but at least Arceus managed to separate us before my body completely dried out like a husk. It was going to take a while to recover from that.

“I can’t believe he’d ask you to go back to Viperia.” Yes, Frizzle’s absurdly high pitched voice was mentioning one of Arceus’s many challenges I’d have to face.

I would rather live the rest of my life wherever Pom calls home and Favela would do the same too, currently Favela was in Greenleaf glad to hear that her mother was alive as much as the rest of her extended family. She had a lot of brothers and sisters, at least hers weren’t complete…

I took a deep breath and calmed down, worry about that later Dazzle. I got a long fight ahead of me and I’m going to make everyone in Viperia stop with all the crap they pull if I had to beat everyone to within an inch of their lives.

I didn’t even know how King Evan managed to get them to cooperate in the first place! I’m fairly certain he said that there was at least ninety consecutive assassin attempts in the first hour alone from stepping over the border into Viperia.

Frizzle patted my back and I smiled at her, it was nice to have friends who had your back no matter where you went.

I didn’t want to live in the same world that Viperia existed on so we had better get busy.

-Greenleaf, The ‘Saucy’ Skiddo, Favela-

“Then what are you doing here Favela? Go out there and get back with your captain, I’m not going to see you waste away here.” Vetali my mother was quite succinct in what I was going to be doing.

“I just wanted to see if you were alright.” I said as I nuzzled against my mother’s chest.

“I’m fine and so are all of your brothers and sisters.” Mother stated while cuddling me with a hoof, obviously happy to see me and that I was worried about her. “Now get back out there and find you’re adventure with the crew you’d follow into the depths of Yvetal’s bureaucracy! I’m not that easy to kill and neither are any you weeds that I sired. You’re a ‘Saucy’ and you’re going to go out there flip this whole world upside freaking down, do you hear me!”

“Yes Ma’am, I Favela, hear you!” I said brightly and darted out the door, only to come back a second later and pay the tab I had with Poké.

“Honestly?” My mother quirked an eye as she had expected me to drink and dash.

-D’ Arc Farm in Valora, Shine-

“Thank you for having us Mr. and Mrs. D’ Arc.” I said as I sat next to Quetal. We were taking the slow road back to Nixtorm for a reason. Also Jeanne got a promotion for her valor in the face of what should have been a likely timely death.

“Thank you for making sure my daughter came back a Kommo-o, makes a father less worried.” The iron shelled Goodra stated. “Why are you heading to Nixtorm though? From what you told me Quetal has no reason to go back.”

“Let’s just say Arceus is a jerk.” Quetal grumbled and I cuddled against him, making him smile somewhat, he’d proven to himself that Dark types weren’t evil and could be heroes. “Guy might be our god of gods, but our god is he ever a massive jerk.”

-Mountain Top in Avia, Clef-

I glared at Rayquaza and he looked at me curiously wondering why I was calling him out. I raised a finger and charged up a solar beam.

-Sugar Bar in Chrysalia, Mundo-

I would miss my talks with Pom, but Muchomon and I would like to talk with her again… once I can find Arceus’s actual form to Suplex down to the center of this very planet.

Until then me and my digital brother would travel, wrestle and dance… but most importantly.

“Did somebody order the churros special?” An Ariados asked as they carried a tray full of sugary doughnut sticks.

The world has faced much suffering, but we would bring light to the downtrodden and I would lift their spirits for I am Lucha Mundo!

Lunar Digital Realm, Jungle of Genesis, Castle Alexander, Cid-

Castle Alexander flies incredibly well, at least after repairs were made.

Mirage Mew was letting me lead the exploration of the newly formed Lunar Digital Realm to see if we can help ease the souls still around into their new digital lives of freedom.

“Let’s hope the digital world will allow us time to get things in order.” Mirage Mew stated, we had a few Porygon and Gazimon on staff, the lunar digital realm will be where both worlds meshed together.

We were going to try and prevent any war between the Pokémon and digital worlds from forming with a coalition of both worlds. We just got out of a nasty war, not need go back into kicking off a new one.

“Are you sure about being with us Elise?” I asked as I steered the ship over large amounts of green where there used to be desert.

“Arceus said I could choose where I went, but he also said that Pom gave me back my life and doesn’t want me to throw it away for her sake… so I want to actually live for once.” The sweet Elise’s two snakes on her shoulders nodded their heads in agreement. “I came here because you are the people I knew. I never got to say goodbye to Pom.”

“I’m not certain anyone ever got the chance to, probably what Arceus wants… everyone angry and determined. Truly no better motivators than that huh?” Copen stated as he hugged a little girl that looked like him to his side and had a small smile on his face as the girl snuggled him. His little sister’s soul was given back to him by Arceus, so he really couldn’t curse out the god. Lola floated around his head chirping happily. “It’ll certainly be something to explore together.”

A gunner pantheon walked up with some refreshments on a tray.

The Harmony Programs were setting up shop, unfortunately they couldn’t return to being ponies in appearance, but they were mostly okay with that.

I personally wanted to enjoy the feeling of flying forever.

-???, somewhere in space, Brainy-

We’ve finally managed to track where they might be… they were, somehow, last spotted around the magical planet of Petopia.

“Brainy this is Tusky, I don’t see any signs of those cats anywhere on the planet.” They had to be here, we couldn’t have lost them already! “Scanned the whole place.”

“The patrol has a duty Tusky. We protect all good animals from dangers big, small and alien, we cannot let those felonious felines get away from us… also we still don’t know what happened to Hope Corgi or how those cats even got here considering they lack the necessary requirements.” I groaned audibly as I pressed my purple paws against my forehead as that was a headache to think about. “Look, send Pocus down to the planet, they’ll be far more discreet operatives than us. We cannot let the citizens of this world come under attack or be threatened. I want an eye on the citizens currently on this world.”

“Got it, but I don’t think the citizens will care that we’re a little odd anyway, can’t we just operate in the open?” Husky could admittedly pass for normal, but there were concerns that the evil doers may escape through obscurity if they spot us on world first before we did them. “Still it’s concerning that anyone evil could even reach this particular place according to what Pocus told us about the situation of this world.”

-???, somewhere in a town, Dalmatian puppy?-

“Where am I, where’s Ryder?” I got up and was soon wandering by myself into a very odd place. “What was that portal thing I went through?”

I saw so many creatures here and I was lost, maybe I could ask for directions?

Why would anyone care about a clumsy puppy like me?

-???, circus tent, Pom-

After sitting here doing nothing for the last hour or so in the tent and making sure nothing was approaching said massive tent with our wagon in it, at least Arceus remembered that I bought and paid for the wagon, I decided to get a lay of the land.

I had some… concerns. No sounds of anything nearby was making me quite paranoid. Also that Arceus thought we were worth the whole circus theme joke was… probably not wrong on his part.

The girls were safe as were Dodo and Dormarch, but all still out cold.

Clambering up the outside of the tent, I looked around once I was at the top of the whole thing. Being so lightweight I barely even disturbed the one ring circus.

I blinked.

What in the… well that’s interesting…

No matter where I looked, all I saw were creatures that were incredibly small and apparently they had a society here. They were all also barely threatening looking, it was odd that all the animals here looked so… cutely warped.

Maybe if we stayed quiet and didn’t do anything nobody would come over this way? I wanted the vacation Arceus promised me, at least the world looked cutesy and as impossibly peaceful as one can get in the most nonthreatening manner ever devised.

-Not too far away, bird?-

Huh? Since when did we have a circus there? Also who was that on the tent? I don't remember seeing people putting that up.

I got to go tell my friends about this, we can all investigate this mysterious tent together!

-Near where the dalmatian puppy appeared, dog?-

"Hello and welcome too~... ah darn it, we got a runner!" I said as I turned to my best cat friend in the whole wide world. "Let's go find them before something bad happens, like running into those snobs!"

"Yep, this is just like any other day in paradise. Ugh, I'm going back to sleep." The gothic black kitty said as she tried to slink away, I grabbed her by the tail and held it in my teeth and started dragging her in the direction of the freshest smell. "We sure took our sweet time with coming to greet the new one, poor thing probably has no idea what's going on or what's in store for them. I guess this'll be fun."

My friend was going to lazily make me drag her around again, but that's okay I'm the peppy puppy cheer squad here!

-Cat lazing on a roof somewhere-

I slid one eye open and stared out into open space for what disturbed my nap.

Was that a carrier of a 'Canine Totem' I sensed appearing here suddenly? Interesting, change of plans... for me anyway.

Not going anywhere near whoever has that totem, especially when it feels like pure unbridled 'canine' like it does.

Author's Note

Three worlds are involved this time for the Interlude Arc where Pom will get some peace and quiet, even if all her friends have to kill themselves to make sure it happens for Pom and not ever tell her what's going on.

I already gave some strong hints for the names of all of them. All three are cartoons with a theme to them, so the setting is in a world that would be next door to Equus dimensionally.

458. Distracted Attention.

-Origin Space, Arceus-

“Thank you again for hosting us Arceus and retrieving the materia of our friends.” Bahamut stated as he took the marbles.

“Those quests you sent them on… how cruel of you, I approve of the chaos that will bring.” Sighing at Tiamat, I just shook my head.

“I didn’t do it to be cruel, I did it so that I know they are willing and able to live with the consequences of living outside of my watchful eye and influence without complaint. At least while being strong enough to do so.” I worry about my children, whether they be legendary or not.

Also I was kind of hoping that my fight with Lit would be epic given his title of ‘hero’ recently changed to ‘super hero’ when he made his declaration of war against me.

So I might like a little excitement and wonder to watch by tasking them with ridiculous things to do.

If they still wanted to go to Pom’s world afterwards, I’ll let them do so and will have to ask the local deities of Equus if I can move a few new species over.

-Planet of Petopia?, Tent, Pom-

I sighed. We were in a relatively small valley, lots of trees and forests, some jungle, a lake, what looked like a city built by children given the jungle gym nature of it.

Climbing back down the tent with three legs hadn’t been easy, but creating an extra leg out of wool was currently out of the question. Any shifting of my broken hind leg sent agony through me worth screaming about, but I didn’t.

The creatures of this world were small and not very threatening, but Arceus could have the whole attention grabbing tent. I really didn’t want to interact with the locals and…

As I was about to enter the tent I felt Dormarch experiencing terror, I was immediately in the tent and didn’t really think about my three legged hobbling. I was quickly wrapping up a tossing and turning three tailed puppy in a hug and trying to shush his frantic flailing, once I got him calmed down enough I started to rock him back and forth.

Sure his mega form had been horrifying and stupidly powerful, but in the end he didn’t give into the power and devour me… given that I could sort of see what he was dreaming, he was afraid of doing that very thing.

Lucha Mundo, I hope you’re guidance sessions will help me here. Well he kind of helped me with the fact that I now breathed fire and had a taste for meat. I’m functionally an omnivore now since my fangs became a bit more permanent outside going beast mode. I don’t think Tianhuo saw my teeth when I talked to her.

The cuddly wrestler bird really gave good hugs and I’m kind of a connoisseur of those thanks to Paprika.

Eventually Dormarch’s whimper quieted down and he woke up and I tried to smile at him. He almost seemed panicked in my hooves, but I held him tight.

“It’s okay, everything is alright.” I whispered.

“S-s-so… I-I didn’t devour your soul?” Poor Dormarch, my silly boy, though if what we know about servants to be true… hopefully that Vector Man thing’s soul went to a better place.

“I’m okay Dormarch, well… at least a given definition of it.” He looked at the mess of wool that bound my right hind leg to my body.

“As per usual, anyone looking at your medical records would be quite horrified by what your body has gone through.” Dormarch stated with a hint of grim humor in his voice, but he wasn’t trying to get out of my hooves as I held him. “Also you have fangs now and you’re golden wool is kind of…”

“Well aware.” Nuzzling his forehead like a mothering dog would do to her puppy, his three tails started wiggling. “Now did you dream about eating your mother, doesn’t sound like something my sweet boy would do.”

“…. Mother…” Dormarch whimpered.

“At least you know what it’s like to be as traumatized as I am.” Wish that didn’t come to pass. If all wishes were granted, there’s always going to be that one person that wants to destroy absolutely everything. “You truly are my son in that respect, before you know it you’ll be as paranoid and as nerve wracked as I am… which is silly considering how strong you are.”

“Says my strong mother who some would say has a heroic streak a mile wide.” Before Dormarch or I could say anything further, our ears twitched in unison as we heard voices coming towards the tent.

-Some time back and a distance away, Tusky-

“Are you sure Brainy said you could come down here with me, I’m fairly certain my appearance is going to be a bit more discreet then… you.” Pocus the white rabbit with a top hat and a fancy small tuxedo stated while looking about. “You’re not exactly inconspicuous here given your size and coloring Tusky.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“You can investigate the town for them, while I can take the surroundings. I’ll listen or sniff around for any suspicious activity eh.” It was going to be hard to find the felonious felines, especially if they were alerted to my presence and went to ground.

“Did I hear someone say ‘suspicious activity’? Well you can gather over at the tent and wait for me and my friends to show up, apparently a rather large circus tent popped up overnight over in that direction… very odd that nobody mentioned putting it in that small valley, or is it more of a hollow?” It looked like we were caught out by a colorful bird flying overhead. “If you’re new here, it might be an adventure and a way to make some friends around here. By the way nice coloration of your coat, quite Siberian of you! I’ll introduce myself later, I think some of my canine friends might like you.”

The fairly colorful and pretty bird flew off, she sounded a bit upper crust and dramatic.

“See, not so out of place, no comment on my size or thinking anything weird or off with me eh.” I stated as I started moving towards the tent. “Head into town and start looking for those heinous space criminals. I’ll look into this circus tent, wouldn’t put it beyond them to try hiding in an oddly flamboyant manner eh.”

“Hate to see how big you’ll get when you finally become a full grown adult.” Pocus was talking about my current size making me look like a full grown canine from the planet he is being from, my adult form is going to be the size of a… what do they call them… elephant? Still in my teenage years right now, haven’t hit my adulthood growth spurt yet. “Look, just try to keep up the appearance of normalcy with in the relative realms the locals can expect, basically don’t use you’re powers openly unless you need to defend yourself.”

“Of course my friend, eh.” My friend Pocus could probably get away with using his powers openly, he had an excuse of being the rabbit of a stage magician named Zatanna. He wasn’t wrong about keeping what made me abnormal under wraps.

I started my way towards this so called tent to see if it was a false alarm.

-Pocus-

I took off after the bird and stopped when I saw a dog dragging a black cat around, the dog called out to the bird. The cat was thankfully not one of the ones we were looking for and looked bored with the situation.

So I moved on and decided to keep a low profile, the magic in the air was making me fit in perfectly with the local population.

-Dog?-

“Okay, I’ll gather our friends, but first we have a problem… we have a bit of a runner that didn’t get my greeting at the gate when they arrived. They need help as this would be their first time being here!” As part of the welcoming committee it was my job to make sure the runner didn’t get lost or hurt before we could help them get settled in to this wondrous place. I was already fretting about the newcomer not knowing a single thing about this world or how one naturally ends up here. “Oh, they must be so confused about this place!”

“Like you were when you found out I’ve been living here?” The black cat best friend forever stated.

“Do you know what they smelled like? It might help if we knew what we were looking for, all kinds of odd sorts end up here.” My best bird friend forever seemed to be on the ball today and not going into some kind of theatrical production, good news for everyone involved really.

“Oh right, they smell liked… smoke, spots, a fire hydrant and like they have light fur… so they are possibly a Dalmatian that came from a firehouse!” I said excitedly. “Right Jade?”

“Well your nose does know.” Jade the black cat stated lazily. “Can I go now?”

“Yeah, you can go to the tent and see what that circus is all about!” I said excitedly before running off. “Meet you there!”

-Forest, said lost Dalmatian in a firefighter hat and wearing a mechanical backpack-

I put my paws over my face and grumbled as I had tripped and fell into a ditch, I think I’m just going to stay here for the rest of the day… like we were able to compete with the Burn’s family and their rescue bots anyway.

I’m just going to lay here and be depressed for a while.

-Back to the present, tent, Dormarch-

“I don’t want the locals bothering us so don’t let them see you have three tails son. Just stick your head out talk to whoever’s coming while I wake up Dolly, don’t let them in the tent or know there’s anything odd about you. You’re head looks fine, but I really doubt the big goofy claws that most digimon would go without comment or the lovable three fish tails for that matter.” Okay Mom. I still kind of wanted to say goodbye to all our friends including that nice rather Skvader Caerbannog Cuddlestare.exe, but when a god wants teleport you across dimensions I guess you can’t do anything about it. “This world seems to have a lot of little animals running around and Dolly probably won’t make too big of a splash, provided she doesn’t get carried away. I’m going to send her out to distract the locals and gather some information about our surroundings to see what kind of situation Arceus dropped us into.”

Mom quickly went to Dolly who was sleep cuddling her skateboard, at least Arceus saw fit to drop us here with a fully stocked travel wagon so we might not have to worry about food for a while. I looked outside and saw… a fairly pleasant world and two figures approaching.

“So yeah, I like water.” The black cat stated as they stopped outside the tent and noticed me staring at the two that approached the tent.

“Interesting, excuse me one moment. Hello there, we want to know what this circus tent is all about eh.” Stated the big blue furred husky with an odd accent.

“Oh this? Me and my family are out camping, yes this tent is a little odd… but then again our lives are like a circus already.” After hatching out of the digitama, what even was normalcy and could someone point it out to me? I direly wanted to know. “Also we’re just passing through.”

“Would you mind if we came in?” The husky asked as he approached.

“Yes, I do mind, my family is actually trying to sleep.” I stated looking behind me at the roughed up Dolly being raised and Mom was tapping on her bond to her. “Though we’ll send someone out for a kibble run soon, since we’ll have to wake up eventually. Maybe you can show our runner where to get some, we kind of came in late last night…”

Considering how early in the day it was that should be logical and nobody could poke a hole in the story so far.

“Your entire family made it here?” The cat asked skeptically as if thinking something was up given her clear interest in something being entirely off about what I said, she perked up considerably and wandered forward.

“No, mostly my mother, sister and some… rather extended family. I don’t know how anyone would deal with one hundred Dalmatians suddenly running around...” That bit commentary sparked a look of disbelief.

“You have a hundred siblings?” The cat asked in disbelief. The husky looked like he was about to push by me and see everything when I was saved by my adoptive elder sister’s voice.

“Yeah, we’re a bit of a rowdy bunch, so this is a little vacay for us who made it here!” Dolly stated immediately popping out wearing her skateboard helmet and holding her skateboard. “So…”

Dolly stopped and I felt her mind going into a meltdown as she slowly looked the husky up and down with wide eyes and a her tongue hanging slightly out of her mouth. Clear signs of attraction… sometimes wish I didn’t have an entire hospitals database in my skull to know about mating rituals.

“Hey there handsome, use me as a lolli-, er, uh… I mean… I’m Dolly… I’m Dolly D. Dalmatian, yep that’s me!” Ah right, Dolly’s Step-brother Dylan did mention several times that Dolly was particularly attracted to huskies to an absurd degree. Her face was turning red and her brain was malfunctioning quite badly and her heart was beating rapidly. “Wow you’re hot!”

“Smooth.” The black cat stated with a hint of humor.

“That’s my big sister alright, now if you’ll excuse me I think this has been far too much social interaction for me… remember to bring back some good kibble will you Dolly?” I stated as I pulled my head back into the tent and once I was out of sight I quickly teleported over to the wagon to hop in.

-Dolly-

“He almost sounds like my kind of dog, maybe I’ll talk to him later if he’s feeling up to it.” The black cat seemed amused. “Introverts like us tend to like our solitude from time to time.”

“Yeah well, excuse my little brother if he’s a bit overly shy for a few reasons more than just him being introverted.” I said as my heart thundered in my chest, holy dog what do… wait, Pom, where’s Lit? WHAT?!

Okay, but we’ll talk about this later… I’m so totally going to miss that little guy and I’m kind of angry about not being given a chance to say goodbye to him if that’s the case!

“You seem a bit distracted Dolly, eh.” The handsome and fairly big husky stated, yet he smelled like he’s my age? Weird, he looks like an adult, must have some really good parents.

No, get your head in the game Dolly! Stop roving that taut muscular body with your eyes. Darn it all, he’s a twelve compared to Hansel and he’s actually paying attention to me unlike that very notable airhead with the nice eyes.

“Wha… oh sorry, did you want to do anything to me?!” Why was I still freaking out and what was wrong with my mouth?! “I mean did you want anything from me including my bo… UGH?! Did… you… want… something?”

I grit my teeth and tried not to make my face any redder than it already was. Oh dog, I am so embarrassed right now!

“Wow… you’re so much worse at this than Roxy is.” The black cat earned a slight glare from me as she blandly chuckled. “Didn’t even think that was possible.”

“I find it quite flattering and adorable eh.” The handsome dog stated with a light chuckle.

Can my heart truly melt and explode at the same time?! It feel exceptionally painful. Also I did know ‘a Roxy’, but she’s probably talking about a different dog.

“Rottweiler?” I asked.

“Boston Terrier.” The cat stated while stretching out lazily while maintain a calm attitude with snarky things to say. “Big world, a lot of dogs have the name Roxy.”

“Ah, then I don’t know her.” I stated waving a left paw at the cat, this seemed like one of those lazier cats, I hated the more persnickety ones. Nice to meet one of the cooler kitties around her. “Know any dogs named Snowball?”

“I know a few cats named that, plus there are a lot of snowballs around here and I don’t mean in the tundra zone skiing zone.” Yes cat, please keep up the small talk and distracting me so I stop crushing so hard on that ‘beefcake~’ quietly and patiently listening to our conversation. “There’s enough of them here to make a therapy support group for all the poor animals that end up with that unfortunate name… barely half of them even have white fur.”

“Are there any peculiar cats in that tent Dolly?” Said Hunky McHunkerton Hunksylvania bite my neck and turn me into your slave vampire bride already?! What, no Pom I’m not going overboard with my fantasizing… boy do I ever want that fanta! Hey, it’s not like I’m actually saying it out loud!

“What were your names again?” That odd question reminded me that I needed to know the soon to be Mr. ‘Dalmatian’s’ name… okay I admittedly might have a slight problem…

Okay, alright, I get it! So I might have a highly notable thing for huskies that borders on ridiculous, give me something of a break here Dormarch! No, I’m not going to roll over for him, don’t you dare imply I’m as easy as that Mop lady happens to be, who was basically Pom’s dimensional sister!

“I’m Tusky eh.” Oh dog, he told me his name… wonder how he got such a name, he doesn’t have any oversized fangs in his mouth, but he did look a little buck toothed. Which I find to be cute and a positive if that’s how he got the name Tusky!

“Uh… what was your question again Tusky?” This was after I got the mental equivalent of a hard slap through my bond by Pom, she got my head on straight for a few seconds.

“Are there any unusual cats in that tent eh?” Tusky~ asked me again, I could talk to and listen to this guys voice all day.

“No, just my family… thankfully not my full family, really doubt anyone’s ready for one hundred Dalmatians.” I commented dryly, Pom had her mental hoof ready and waiting to slap me again, but I was getting myself under control. I was in total control… nope… no panting or scoping out that maximum ‘go for it with all haste’ whatsoever.

“I’m Jade… so wait, you actually have…” Jade started to say.

“Ninety eight brothers and sisters who aren’t here. Hold on a second I’ll show you!” I went grabbed the digivice and came right back in a flash, the two seemed surprised that I wanted to introduce my family to Tusky.

“Dolly didn’t you call the other… oh no… I am so sorry about this, Dolly kind of gets a bit odd around huskies.” Dylan stated as he appeared on the screen with a chaotic mess of Dalmatians running around in the background.

“A bit?” Jade asked sarcastically with a raised brow to my bro and the odd device I held up so they can see the screen.

“Okay, so she has a thing for cold weather extreme sports, she’s a skateboarding expert and if you like exercise then she’s the dog who can run you ragged more than rest of my family. She’s playful and lovable, but really she’s incredibly good at getting into trouble if she wants your attention. With a family as big as ours, getting attention is a little bit… hard, to say the least. She’s one in a hundred so she has some issues that translates into her issues with talking to someone she really likes with a working brain.” Thankfully nothing odd was happening aside from all the dogs running around in the background behind Dylan. Pom was scolding me to not give out the fact that there were oddities here or that someone might notice something was up. “Also zero degree temperatures or lower don’t have any effect on her one bit, she’s a rather hot blooded Dalmatian through and through. If you’re thinking about dating my step-sister, go ahead… but if you hurt her I will find a way to launch you into the nearest sun. Also she already likes you a lot apparently, enough so to call us, so take it easy with her please. Mom, Dad, Dolly’s on the dimensional phone.”

“Are you currently on an illegal puppy farm and need help?” Tusky asked nicely, it was so nice of him to worry about my family. I wonder if he likes snowboarding?!

“Oh no, we’re perfectly fine here, no puppy farming just all love and being rich enough to afford this many mouths to feed! Also Dolly… honey… please heel, don’t bother the nice husky.” Oh come on dad, look at him. My chunky loveable hug magnet of a father appeared on the screen. “He looks a bit old for you...”

“I’m actually the same age as her, my growth spurt makes me look… far older than I am. So I’m actually in my… what do you call it? My teens, I’m likely to get much bigger than this eh eh.” Tusky is very much viable to me dad, look at his cute butt darn it! Also bigger, this guy? Yes, all the yes!

“Yikes, Christmas shopping must be horrible for you.” Jade said with some sympathy and she wasn’t wrong about that and she watch a screaming chicken get dragged by the camera. “Was that a chicken with Dalmatian spots?”

“My fam is a ‘little’ weird.” Really, what was I thinking, jumping to introducing my fam to Tusky like this?! Oh right, I’m a total mess around huskies… especially guys like this one, that’ll give me the time of day and then some!

“Dolly, please keep your libido in check. Also yes, they are all mine… well mostly by adoption, I’m Dolly’s stepmother Delilah, I can kind of see why Dolly is flipping out. Poor girl, if only she can reign her emotions she might actually get the attention she wants.” Okay just don’t say anything incriminating mom and… “Again, I’m pretty sure I gave you the talk Dolly! Don’t jump into parenthood all four paws first too soon. While I don’t mind the idea of being a grandmother, I think you’re rushing well too far ahead of yourself. Sir… please make sure my step-daughter doesn’t get too far.”

The screen winked out.

“You’re step mother really likes kids…” Jade stated wide eyed. “How many of them are biologically related to you?”

“I’m not liable to answer that, because we’re all family regardless of blood.” Patented big sister response number eighty three.

“Haha you come from a big family too eh? You have me beat by at least thirty seven family members.” Tusky stated with a chuckle.

“You too, didn’t know dogs really go so hard… awesome.” Jade said that last word a second later with a forward head bob and cheeky grin.

“Now about that kibble, because there are no cats in that tent and you can smell the air to make sure of that.” I said as I looked to Jade and Tusky as several other animals arrived and seemed.

“Oh you’re hungry, then let’s go-go-go!” Stated a peppy Boston Terrier that had to be Roxy… huh, I could remember her name because I already knew a Roxy, go figure.

“Roxy, I presume?” Leaning over I asked this to Green the black cat.

“Yes, she is always that hyper and happens to be my roommate. She’s a paw full, but she means well.” Jade sighed as she watched Roxy bound around about how much fun she and their new friends were going to have.

“Say are you taken by any chance?” I actually managed to say that to Tusky without rushing it, looking needy or saying anything insane. "Oh my dog, why is my brain like this?!"

“No, but if you would want to pursue romantic options with me, then you should try being my friend first eh?” Tusky said loftily.

“Sure thing!” I said excitedly, tail wagging so fast it might catch fire.

“Let’s go get your food and maybe a date now!” Roxy stated cheerfully as she pushed at my backside with her head.

-On the way to food place, Jade the black cat-

Something was odd about all of this, but I couldn’t quite put my paw on what… wait dimensional phone? Also how was she able to get real time video outside of this world?! Was she possibly… an alien? She looked and smelled like a normal Dalmatian to me, but that Dalmatian spotted chicken was certainly odd and something seemed very off with it in the few seconds I got to see of it.

Now there’s a mystery to look into and that dog Dolly might slip up even more, but I’m sure my friends will ignore it entirely given how often we ignored each other’s many, MANY, oddities and eccentricities already.

“Come on Jade, let’s go-go-go. No thinking or reading poetry in a quiet corner, new friends, fun get!” Roxy was as excitable as ever. “Also sharing food for lunch and a possibly watching a budding romance squeeeee~!”

Oh cats my ears, why Roxy, why?!

-Tusky-

Dimensional phone? Interesting that a dog would have that kind of tech around here, but not unknown to me.

Maybe she would like to become a member of my friend’s team? I wonder if she had any combat skill, she seemed fairly intelligent and the digits on her paws seemed oddly flexible as to be opposable unlike a normal dogs.

Was she a visitor from another world with a colony of family members here somewhere? If she’s trying to lay low about her status, she might have accidentally given away something to the locals already if she was trying to be quiet about it… I should help her out eh.

It helped that she was adorable and cute too.

-Pom-

“Okay coast is clear and I don’t think Dolly is coming back any time soon. Now to get in my vacation by running into the nearby forest and hope to not be followed by anyone. Dormarch are you hungry? I can make us a picnic with the stuff Arceus left to us… also I need to ingest some of the Sitrus Berries he left me if my leg is to get any better.” I received a nod from Dormarch and started preparing for a picnic, I was going get my vacation in and avoid the locals like the plague so I didn’t get drawn into whatever trouble awaits me in the nearby civilization. “It’ll be just you and me.”

“I’d like that, but what if someone notices my claws or tails?” Well… we did have blankets so Dormarch could get away with wearing a cloak, I’m not letting him stay cooped up in Arceus’s joke tent or wagon.

-In space, Brainy-

“Darn it all, Tusky went down there with Pocus… if those felonious felines spot him before we can set up a blockade they might escape us again!” I rubbed my paws on my head as I felt like there was a major headache oncoming, also why couldn’t I predict the future anymore? “This better not blow up in our… what in the…”

I zoomed in the screen on a sheep with a cloaked dog walking away from the circus tent Tusky was just at with a bunch of other locals.

The ewe was long legged, small body, beautiful eyes, big head, the gold wool was odd but endearing… there’s something about her that I really liked… aside from her sadness inducing injuries, it’s like she’s perfection personified!

I wonder if she would let me herd her, maybe she can even tell me I’m a good dog and will rub my belly too!

I shook my head violently of those thoughts, I was a professional!

Those temptations were unnatural… but I wouldn’t mind it if the subject of a belly rub came up and I happen to be near her, maybe scratch me behind the ears?

Oh my goodness was she quite a temptation to resist when I have a job to do!

-The cat lazing about on a roof-

It’s already starting, I can feel the tendrils of the ‘dog totem’ spreading out everywhere and even into space. That absurdity was quite a beacon for canines.

My masters ‘cat totem’ wouldn’t even begin to compare with the monstrosity I was feeling here from that thing.

It was still rather intriguing to see what would come of all this.

-Forest, Pom-

“Say, watch your step… DORMARCH!” I watched Dormarch trip on and fell into a ditch and rolled into colliding with another animal… and oh my goodness it’s a dog.

Can’t I ever know peace? I know I love dogs, but really now?! I was trying to avoid the locals!

The Dalmatian with the fireman’s hat and the odd mechanical backpack sat up and looked at Dormarch.

Dormarch looked back at him entirely exposed until the makeshift cloak landed on his head awkwardly.

“Huh? What’s a mer-pup doing here… also you have four legs and three tails?” something seemed wrong with the puppy staring at Dormarch in fact he was underreacting to Dormarch and seemed to have some form of familiarity with his appearance to some degree.

He even seemed... depressed? I shook my head and made my way down.

“Dormarch, are you okay?” I asked as my son was exposed entirely to someone.

“Buster wolf, mom.” Well if Dormarch can make joke he’s feeling a little better about his nightmare with trying to eat my soul. His Mega form of ‘Dormamon’ did come off as quite terrifying and dangerous, also it caused our bond to snap as he out powered me… sop that might help with adding on to the trauma. Now that I think about it, it is odd that the bond didn’t break considering how powerful his ultimate form ‘Garummon’ is.

“Buster what?” The Dalmatian asked with a tilted head.

“Nothing, just a joke between me, mom and my older sister. Er… I’m Dormarch, nice to meet you.” Letting Dormarch try to befriend the puppy, the poor thing seemed a little down about something and I doubt that was because Dormarch collided with him.

This puppy could use a friend and Dormarch needed more practice at making friends on his own.

“I’m Marshall and you probably wouldn’t be saying it’s nice to meet me, especially if you knew just how clumsy I am…” Poor dear, this Marshall, maybe we can cheer him up?

Wait, no… he’s not in physical danger Pom, he shouldn’t be your problem…

“Want to come on our picnic with us?” Darn it Pom, you’re inviting trouble to yourself again! Arceus said this should be an absolutely easy place to avoid trouble unless it actively found me and I'm supposed to be on a small vacation here! “Maybe some snacks will brighten you’re mood, so you can tell us what’s wrong. You said something about being clumsy, you saw that my son just took a bad spill so he's not much better in that department. I love him all the same though, even I'm a little clumsy sometimes myself!”

Marshall looked at me, he really looked at me and a part of him seemed to be struggling with an answer, like he was reluctant to do so. I kept my gentle eyes on him, hoping I could make this puppy's day. It didn't seem like my canine magnetism was affecting him in the slightest.

“Okay…” He finally said quietly.

Author's Note

Paw Patrol is now a label for the interlude world, now for someone to state the other two worlds colliding with this one.

Most them are kid friendly, so really Pom's issues here is just finding a place to quietly relax and not be bothered by anyone. Though she clearly has a problem with not taking on other people's problems.

459. More than meets the eyes.

-Equus, Canterlot, Tianhuo-

“So we will finish preparations as we now have a timeline. Princess Twilight wants this to succeed and understands that this will most certainly not be a diplomatic operation, but the first military one we’ve had in a while that didn’t involve hot pie fights with the buffalo. Ergh… so much wasted sugar, the horror… anyway, it’ll also be the first military operation under our new princess’s command and I don’t intend to fail her.” Duly Noted finished as he and his brother in arms Truly Noted both nodded to me and Sergeant Shady. “You’ll even be the first in line to go in Tianhuo, Pom’s god puppies should be more than enough of a contingent to support you in your endeavors of helping collect and protect ‘The Found’ until we can retrieve them all and open a safe portal somewhere within Tambelon to pull them out.”

“Thank you.” I said solemnly, now all we had to do was wait for Pom’s readiness in the manner. Pom, is not going to be very excited about doing this, plus she was having problems relaxing or sleeping. I saw it in her eyes when we last talked and I was worried about her current state of mind and health, also the progress of her golden wool in how much of her body it covers.

I hoped the vacation that the god Arceus sought for Pom was as relaxing as she hopes it will be, her shattered hind leg gave me quite a feeling of terror as I thought she had lost one.

Apparently Pom has actually become quite the warrior, her final battle involved her fighting three servants almost back to back and succeeding in freeing their souls from the odd monstrosity that was hurting two worlds in a mad quest to destroy the civilizations there.

While Dormarch may have finished off the final servant and that monstrosity that was Moon Cell itself, Pom was seen as a driving force behind the push that saved three realms... including the realm that was under Moon Cell itself that was now apparently free of the soul taking thing.

Pom was no longer fragile in my mind, but she was still the same sweet lambkin as ever… if suffering from what trials she’s been put through. Even I’m a little amazed by how strong Pom became for everyone around her and the potential many saw in her apparently has flowered by leaps and bounds, which is a worry in itself as Pom never wanted to explore ever said potential too deeply.

Hope to see you soon… please, for the sake of my mind, get some rest Pom and heal before bringing everyone home. I’ll easily welcome both Dormarch and Dolly as family without a second thought and have already assured as such that I don’t mind how many canines you have… just as long as you were okay and happy.

-Planet Petopia, in space above it, Brainy-

“So please, get down there and assist the situation Mam.” I told the pink Chihuahua like alien canine with bright blue eyes.

“It’s because I’m small and cute for my age isn’t it?” Well Mam, your species were known to be adorably small until you showed your true natural inborn abilities. Apparently if Tusky didn’t draw too much attention, then I seriously doubt you would either unless you showed off your ability.

I’m needed with the others up here to make sure the felons didn’t escape the planet.

“Yes, part of the reason, I need more discreet agents on the ground and you can just say your pink fur is a dye job. Nothing out of place for what I’m seeing on the surface given the colors, sparkles and glitter some of the animals down there seem to be enjoying.” I looked on as Mam, better known as Mammoth Mutt, nodded then looked to take a seat as I haven’t exactly dismissed her yet. Speaking of getting distracted. “Tusky is getting very distracted and Pocus is trying to track down those fugitive felonious felines alone, but he may admittedly be looking into a new possible recruit. While she appears to be a normal biological Dalmatian from the planet Krypto currently lives on, there’s odd energy readings showing she’s got magic that is quite similar if different to what Pocus has. Pocus is kind of important to this operation given he’s the only one among us that has an intrinsic understanding of the magic of this world and might have been here several times given some locals seem at ease with his peculiar presence. Meaning he’s gotten here before through more… natural means than how we did since he understands the magic of this world.”

“Wait, what’s that?” Mam asked looking at the screen of a particularly sweet and adorable picnic in progress.

The mystical ewe was with a Dalmatian that has an apparent firefighter’s outfit and some rather advanced technology for their planet inside of his pack. Curiously enough, he might have unusual origins if what I’m reading about him is right, that truly bears looking into.

The other being was an informational digital being that is somehow partly biological due to a strange fusion of something inside his body. The single core that housed their soul within didn’t use to be that small, I can tell just from looking at it.

They were peacefully having a picnic and it seems that the sheep entity improves the mood of most canines within her vicinity, to an inexorably stupid amount that it was even having an effect on me. Which was terrifying, given I was currently in orbit around the planet and should be far enough to not be affected… maybe it also works if I can visually see her?

The partially or pseudo-biological informational canine entity seemed much closer to the sheep than the ‘apparent’ firefighting dog, I admit that I have some jealousy on the matter that they can interact with the entity so openly, while I myself need to keep staying on task. Less I find myself becoming impossibly infatuated with the notably benevolent sheep like entity and doing something untoward to earn her ire.

“Nothing for you to worry about, we don’t want to have another incident with you looking up yourself on the internet of the world Krypto lives on.” I quickly, and sadly, switched the screen away from the sheep adjacent entity with the ridiculous sirens call to my heart to look out for. “You may proceed.”

I wanted to protect that precious ewe being from all that would hurt her… and my feelings of wanting to talk to her just to hear her voice were getting worse. So it's not just visual, proximity based maybe?

“EUGH… don’t remind me, the people on that planet are so weird!” Mam stated as she shivered and cringed, she stood up and started moving. “Heading out… also if I see that sheep, I’ll put in a good word for you. There’s just something about her that I really like from what little I saw of her.”

That’s the very thing I said upon witnessing her, so it is a naturally occurring phenomena among all canines no matter how intelligent and thus impossible to avoid the feelings of wanting to cherish and protect such a beautiful being.

Thankfully it’s not just me, but that means it was an even more daunting to resist the increasingly strong temptation to go down there myself. I had a duty to attend to… I could introduce myself after said duty was done if at all possible.

-Forest Glade, Pom-

“So that’s kind of what I do.” Marshall was an interesting Dalmatian, apparently he was being raised around a team of dogs that have done a bunch of odd stuff in the name of being a Rescue Team.

Heh, Rescue Team, I wonder who’s in charge of Team Harmony now that I’m not there? Foffo maybe, he was Indeedee a good friend since gratitude was his food. Would be kind of hard for an Indeedee to survive if they were constantly grumpy and didn’t enjoy life of helping others.

Apparently Marshall competed with a team of a nearby place that had what were called Rescue Bots that worked with the Burn’s family, the teams were fairly friendly to each other and they both helped people where possible.

Paw Patrol sounds so cute and something like what I would put my god puppies through, if I had the equipment and they were smart enough to use it. I’m sure they could even do most of the stuff without the equipment, bark out flames, dig up people stuck in snow and track anyone who got lost in the Dragon Lands. I should look into letting them do more… we’ll likely meet in Tambelon, because I doubt Tianhuo could stop my boys from coming with her anyway.

The Paw Patrol was apparently an odd team of dogs that were at least the level of Dolly’s family when it comes to intelligence… just without the oddly opposable digits that the dogs in Dolly’s world enjoys having. Marshall’s paws most certainly couldn’t do the opposable digit thing, but he was very intelligent so something had to happen for him to be this way.

Yet despite all the positive stuff he’s done, Marshall has stated he’s been rather clumsy and sporadically unlucky throughout all of it to an absurd degree. It was to the point that he even caused numerous incidents to happen himself, at least he’s fixed more than he’s ever broken. He was also apparently ridiculously talented in many field and all the equipment that everyone else among his friends uses and was an acting partial medic of his team, very amazing for a little puppy.

Marshall didn’t seem to realize how intelligent he was and was focusing far too much on…

Okay, I now feel like a hypocrite, when it came to realizing that I was about to think that Marshall was focusing far too much on the negative experiences he’s gone through and that he’s missing all his positive traits and successes. Since I’m one to do that very same thing to myself when it came to focusing on the negatives more than the positives. Kind of hard for me not to when I’m a lambkin, the general species wide mental issues were still a thing with me and it wasn’t just because of the whole ‘marmalade incident’ that we all knew about. It had to be true at this point because I was certainly a Chrysomallus and there was no way I could deny such a reality, no matter how direly I wanted to.

I’m lucky to still be alive and breathing, shattered leg aside, I’ve come very far and helped so many people. I can now experience the taste of fish that I cooked for my canines back home, though I will never be a big lover of meat, especially not from anyone intelligent like Elise no matter what it tasted like when I was in a beast mode at the time.

Needed years of therapy for all the things that happened to me this year.

That I grew fangs and can breathe fire were both quite useful for my needs if the most recent in a long line of issues, but those were changes that made me feel less like myself… and I could certainly appreciate how mentally tired I had been when I fought three servants back to back almost entirely by myself.

All of them were violently strong, especially with their magical talents. I fought through the powers of storm manipulation, limited earth manipulation, the ability to create vortexes, magical instant death energy, multiplying and reaction speeds beyond what most biological beings should be able to deal with… that’s how my leg got shattered.

BB was an informational being like Dormarch and she timed her attack perfectly with me being at my fastest, the attack had been devastating to the point that not even the magical healing of certain Pokémon could deal with such an injury in a timely manner.

That was all I dealt with less than a day ago on top of numerous Enemy Programs and a giant bird I fricasseed… how long have I been exhausting myself for?! Also why didn’t I see myself as being incredible to have dealt with such amazing circumstances?

Oh gods and goddesses, I was going to be seen as a major hero… and I couldn’t even deny that I was. Arceus didn’t and likely wouldn’t even give me a chance to deny it and my son Dormarch was taking after me in the mental department of being put through constant traumatizing situations. Well at least he can’t say he’s not my son.

“Can you show me that medical screen?” I asked and Marshall only took a second to bring it out of his pack, I wanted to see this puppy in action.

“Medical scanner!” Marshall barked with conviction and a screen popped out, I angled my right hind side so he could scan my leg. “Whoa… that looks… really bad.”

“Mom’s tough, she’s hurting, but she’s tough. She managed to pull some of the lost bone back into her body and reorient it correctly after such a devastating injury.” Dormarch whined a bit as he looked at the screen with Marshall.

“What are those surgical wires, they look unique and whoever made them could make a medical breakthrough with how well they are threading around the bone.” Marshall was a very intelligent puppy to notice it.

“That’s her wool, mom’s… a magical being. She can manipulate her wool to do a whole lot of things.” Dormarch said looking a little wary. “You don’t seem particularly surprise by that.”

“Well that makes sense, I’ve time traveled, been to ancient underwater cities, seen actual ghosts and met giant robots that I’m fairly certain are more intelligent than they let on when in public… wait, why was I depressed again?” It seems Marshall forgot how much stock he put into his incidents of tripping, falling and causing destruction by his own fumbling paws. I’m actually willing to thank my canine magnetism once for that, little guy needed the food we’ve been sharing with him to get his mind off of things. He quickly put away his medical scanner. “Are you somehow magically able to make someone feel better? I don’t know how magic exactly works, but thank you if that’s how I’m feeling better.”

“It’s not that I magically made you feel better.” Though my presence certainly helps in that regard. “It’s more that we are helping you feel better by helping you get your mind off of things Marshall. It’s always good to talk about things that are deeply bothering you, at least with someone you can trust… I really just meant to come out here and do that with Dormarch.”

This was a puppy that was eventually going to be expected to run into burning buildings and danger, sounds like he’s already experienced some of that apparently. Though his adventures seem to be light on danger compared to some of the things he said the Rescue Bots he talked about did. His tales of Adventure Bay sounded more cute than outright life threatening, so that Ryder guy has to be truly easing them into the bigger stuff when they get older.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your time together with your mother Dormarch.” Marshall was such a sweetie.

“I think talking with you has helped mom relax a lot and I thank you for that, maybe even better than if it was just the two of us alone.” After that Dormarch went back to the food we had with us. After swallowing another mouthful he added. “She’s paranoid about things going wrong, so you two are kind of alike in that respect.”

“Really?” Marshall seemed excited to be helping my mood, before he went back to depressed. “I’m really clumsy though… I don’t want to cause you any problems.”

“Do you want help with that? I’m a dog trainer.” Huoshan Canine Division had dogs that could do more things than any other canine related department in the world, mostly because I could understand and communicate with dogs. It really helps in my line of work to know the needs of various canines. “Unless you like having your clumsiness being a part of who you are.”

“Well it has saved the day a few times…” Marshall answered while enjoying the food.

“You’re a growing puppy, a smart one at that, so coordination might be being thrown off by how big you’re getting among other things that might cause you to have balance problems like that helmet your wearing or the gear on your back causing you to feel a difference in weight that you might have problems adjusting to.” I was going to help Marshall, mostly because I seriously couldn’t help myself at this point. “Dormarch do you want to help find out what’s medically up with Marshall?”

“Well I did want to spend more time with you mom.” Dormarch stated, but even he felt like this was a good cause and I was "on vacation" so this hopefully wouldn’t be too intensive. “So let’s do this thing together! So what do you say Marshall?”

“If there is something wrong with me, I guess I do want to know what it is… unless it’s just me.” Either way Marshall seemed to want to know what was causing him to be so clumsy.

“Either way, we’ll find out together and then we’ll see how we can help you… now how did you end up here?” I asked, because he seemed so down when we first met him. “In this place, I mean, because even I don’t know where we are and only know how we specifically got here.”

“Everyone was laughing at me after a particularly bad incident. After that this portal sprung up out of nowhere and well I… tripped… right into it.” Yeah, that sounds bad Marshall, I was hissing in sympathy. “I don’t even know where this is either, but lost is the thing I’m definitely sure about… wait, how am I supposed to get back to my friends?! The portal closed after I got here! I’m stuck…”

He doesn’t know how to get back to his owner, friend or master named Ryder. Not to mention all his other friends in Paw Patrol, that seemed to upset him to realize as he started to panic.

“Calm down, we’re here for you.” I reached over and calmly ran my hoof up and down his back, treating him like I would my god puppies. “You’ll find your way home eventually, wherever you feel like that is.”

“You’re really good at this Ms. Lambchop…” Said a whimpering Marshall who was quickly calmed down as he leaned into my stroking.

“I’ve had a lot of practice and four god puppies that get into insane amounts of trouble… but please, call me Pom.” I sent Dormarch a quick mental image of giving Marshall a hug to calm him down further and Dormarch did so. “We’re friends.”

“Okay, I think I got a scan of you, interesting… huh… well then.” Dormarch was capable of it without the digivice which Dolly had, probably far better with it than without it, but still very much capable on his own. “Mom… Marshall might need more than a little help, I’m seeing some things that are very off with his body.”

“Huh?” Marshall stated curiously.

“Dormarch is not exactly normal as you may have noticed, he’s got an entire hospitals worth of information in his head and he can do things like a computer can, but in reality.” My explanation was met with a cheerful look of understanding.

“Oh, like a physical hologram! Got a building up my nose like that once… not a big building, but a model of one.” Marshall had a lot of experience for a puppy, an oddly absurd amount as if he were living on a familiar’s unique lifespan.

“So what’s the verdict Dormarch?” I said as I cuddled the two to my chest and then finished of my vegetable sandwich. “What’s up with Marshall that’s so concerning?”

“Well… while he is canine, he just looks exactly like a Dalmatian… more to the point, he isn’t a Dalmatian.” Say what Dormarch?

“Um… what?” Even Marshall looked confused. “Am I a robot or something?”

“No, but what you are is confusing on a number of levels biologically speaking… kind of wish I had the digivice for a deep scan into your genetics to make sure I’m not wrong.” Well that leads to an idea Dormarch. “You seem healthy to me otherwise despite the oddities.”

“Marshall, can we please use that medical scanner on you for a few seconds?” It seemed like I wasn’t the only one that wanted to know.

“Medical Scanner!” Marshall flipped it around when it popped out of his mechanical backpack and we looked him over on it.

“Do you see it mom?” Dormarch asked as we got a look at Marshall’s insides.

“Yes, I believe I do. You can put it away.” What I just saw let me know that Marshall probably wasn’t normal… and neither were any of his closest friends in all likelihood. “I’m going to ask you a series of questions now.”

“Oh, Okay…” Marshall seemed rather wary about what we were going to find out.

“First, have you ever been badly bruised before?” This was going to end in an interesting answer at the very least.

“No, but it hurts when I get slammed around a lot, I think the most interesting thing that happened to me was falling out the fifth story window of a build and slamming into the street… didn’t bruise then either, but it did hurt.” Now you see Marshall, if you had a better understanding of what normal biological dogs were like, then you might recognize that that was a pretty big red flag that you were something abnormal. You wouldn’t recognize it if you spent a lot of time around other abnormal canines like you to the point it seemed normal, you were so used to being bashed about that you probably never noticed how your injuries never seemed to ever be serious. “That was from before I met Ryder, Chase was the first dog in Paw Patrol… when Ryder found him abandoned in the streets of Adventure City.”

Five stories… Dolly could do that with her gliding ability and Dormarch because he’s a Digimon, any other Dalmatian might get seriously hurt even if they are prepared for a fall like that.

“Did you bounce off the street or create a hole in it?” My question was met with a curious glance by Dormarch and a raised brow, it was still a legitimate question considering what we might be seeing here.

“Hole, took me a bit to get out of it too!” Marshall answered looking a little more wary and was breathing a little bit more panicky as he was starting to realize he wasn’t exactly what anyone would consider normal. I’m fairly certain now that the dogs in Paw Patrol weren’t any better about that. “Stung quite a lot.”

“Do dogs normally talk where you’re from?” Something of a curiosity as he was talking like Dormarch, but not like Dolly who spoke entirely in barks.

“Only in Adventure Bay, Adventure City and the general areas near there… why… no wait, I can already see why that would be weird considering the dogs of the rest of the world. Makes me wonder why I haven't been experimented on by some government agency.” Okay, that that was adding onto the clue pile Marshall. Even Dormarch was making wild leaps as to guesses why now, we were passing thoughts between each other in our bond that might explain Marshall’s unique biology and maybe Ryder didn’t want anyone to panic but… “Now that you mention it… I really never asked why we can talk and Ryder never bothered to tell us. Animals all across the planet don’t talk anywhere else, except for maybe Krypto the super dog… he’s been heard talking occasionally, but he’s… an…”

Taking a deep breathe through his nose, Dormarch let out a sigh as he noticed Marshall freezing up. He then proceeded to haphazardly rip the bandage of normalcy fully off in one go.

“At some point in time I believe that alien canines may have crash landed on the planet you live on and that you’re probably descended from those aliens.” Well that was a pretty decent guess and about as good as we got Dormarch.

“That doesn’t change who you are, but what you are and might be the reason why you are so clumsy.” After saying that I stared at Marshall who was sitting quite still, with wide looking blank eyes. “The planet you live on may be environmentally different from whatever Dalmatian like alien you happen to be similar to.”

“But I can’t fly, or do all of the other things Krypto does when he gets on the news!” Marshall suddenly said, still looking wide eyed.

“You might be a different kind of alien dog from him, one with a different kind of uniqueness.” Dormarch was not letting him try and wiggle out of the revelation we had going here. "It's not impossible, since I exist and I'm kind of alien to you right?"

“Suddenly a number of the odder things that has happened while I was running around with Paw Patrol makes far too much sense now…” Marshall looked a little lost in his head.

“Give it time, all your friends just might be aliens too.” Thankfully I managed to give him a slight amount of relief, but he still looked concerned about everything he’s already been through. "They'll still be your friends at the end of the day and so will we."

-Pet themed restaurant, Dolly-

“Decent kibble, but I’ve had better.” I’ve managed to calm myself down, but I couldn’t stare at Tusky for too long before I started embarrassing myself again.

“Nice place they have here eh?” Tusky stated as he looked around. I knew he was an alien husky, blue fur was just not natural in my mind, but I didn’t expect him to think I was alien too. “So what planet did you come from to end up here?”

“One that is two dimensions over and where dreams can apparently come true, it’s been a bit of a trip.” I answered honestly.

“Do these dreams coming true happen automatically or…” Tusky asked and I noticed the other animals watching us, Roxy the Terrier seemed particularly eager in watching us get along from a distance.

“Nope, while they can come true, you have to actually work for them. Still working on mine to be honest.” Keep it together Dolly, you were successfully distracting all the other animals around and keeping them away from Pom who was… having a picnic with Dormarch and another Dalmatian?

Oh, he’s an alien canine and not an actual Dalmatian or has some Dalmatian ancestry on top of the being an alien thing, well I’m meeting one too Dormarch! Well an amount of his fur is naturally icy blue, do you think I’m slow or something little bro? How can he not be abnormal in this place, all the other animals seem normal... if all in a similar and really small size kind of way. Yeah, I’m chalking it up to the magic in the air too Pom, but the alien you’re with certainly didn’t shrink.

Apparently how animals get here is very unique and… yeah I already have an answer for how to get Marshall home, I’m still currently being given a tour of this 'Paw-tucket' place. So I’ll tell you how we can get him back to his 'fam' later, just relax Pom and enjoy yourself. Yeah, there a lot of really nice animals here, haven't seen a single thing I can't handle.

“So what have you been doing in the course of making your dream come true eh?” Tusky was really friendly guy and my dog can I not stop staring at him.

“Ehhh… skateboarding mostly, but what’s an alien like you doing here, you don’t seem ‘local’ and you already know I’m not that local either.” That got me a grunt of acknowledgement from Tusky.

“We’re hunting a pair of evil space cats, they are somewhere on this mystical planet and me and my team, 'The Dog Star Patrol and Affiliated Awesome Animals', are making sure they don’t succeed in any nasty plans they might be up to while here.” Sounds cool Tusky, but I don’t think Pom wanted any part of fighting evil cats or fighting much of anything at the moment. I'm certainly up for it though, still wanted a Metal Hound to take home with me as those armors were so dog dang cool. “We’re trying to catch them since they were on the run from us eh.”

“Would you like help with that handsome?” I said leaning against the bar trying to act smooth, but my tail was probably giving away my excitement and making me look as ridiculous as my red face likely was. “Not like I have anything better to do at the moment. My 'fam' is going to be here for a bit and we’re on vacation at the moment, so I'm quite free for some adventure.”

“Do you think you can keep up with German shepherd or a Great Dane?” Wonder why Tusky would ask me that specifically.

“Pretty sure I’m capable of that, yeah.” I should probably keep my powers on the down low until I actually needed them.

“Then you should be able to help.” Tusky Husky stated with a friendly smile.

“So what can you do as an alien?” I asked.

Tusky slightly poked a single large tooth out of the top of his mouth, the one that I thought was buck teeth. He spun it like a drill and retracted it before anyone noticed, which was totally awesome! I can see why he has the name Tusky now.

-Roxy-

“Oh would you look at those two, they are getting along so well!” I said happily.

“Yeah, usually something like half a block of Paw-tucket gets blown up with raw sewage by now.” Edie the parakeet stated with a look of horror in her eyes. “My feathers were ruined for an entire week after that!”

“That only happened one time and that wasn’t entirely my fault!” I whined audibly.

I mean sure most of it was, but not all of it!

“Sure it wasn’t… don’t actively try to pair animals together Roxy, just because you think it might work out. You should at least be asking if they are related first after that incident.” Oh right, Jade would remember that incident… since I might have been the reason she made the street explode with her body and she very well couldn’t safely lick herself clean after that. “Where’s Quincy? I thought he would be here with us.”

“Oh, I didn’t see him or Trip at the tent… he must have arrived after we did.” Well I knew they’d be fine, this world wasn’t very dangerous at all. Unless we made the danger ourselves, this world was perfectly peaceful paradise otherwise!

-Inside the tent belonging to Pom's group, Quincy-

Whoa... she’s awesome!

I watched as the female goat danced with that scythe on her hinds legs, usually I’d be screaming and fainting right now given how scary she looked… but she seemed so elegant with how she swung that thing around. It was kind of mesmerizing

She also seems very frustrated about something, maybe I should ask?

“Hey Quince, what you watching?” The sudden voice coming from behind me made me scream out loud and flop over.

-Shanty-

The note from Pom had me upset, but I was still here to be watching out for Smolder, Ocellus and Dodo. I really be wanting Favela for my crew too, she was being good at a lot of stuff... I'd be finding a way to make it happen later!

Then again Pom really could be using some peace and quiet as the last few days had been being exceedingly rough on her.

This tent is not being very quite or subtle as it’ll attract…

"AHHHHHH?!" Other beings.

I stopped practicing and then be looking at who was screaming, I be seeing an out cold goat on his side and a hamster.

“What do you be wanting here?” I asked as I pointed the cane scythe at the little hamster guy, who be quickly raising his paws in surrender immediately.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up on swinging that thing my way. My name is Trip. That’s Quincy, no harm meant, but my buddy seemed fascinated by that uh… workout I want to say?” Trip be giving me a weak cheeky grin. “Are you a grim reaper by any chance, I’m pretty sure I still have a few good years on me yet! No need to go hunting me down before my time right?”

Author's Note

Paw Patrol (Revealed)

Just Marshall so far.

Krypto the Super Dog. (Revealed)

The Dog Star Patrol is a curious lot of alien super dogs that befriend Krypto.

Mentioned so far...

Brainy Barker.
Mammoth Mutt.
Tusky Husky.

Pocus (Zatanna's pet magic rabbit.)

???? (One last one, the setting where this is all happening in. Shouldn't be too hard to find and no it's not Transformers: Recue Bots. I'm just referencing them as being a thing happening alongside Paw Patrol.)

460. Relaxation is optional.

-Digital Realm (Pokémon Realm’s next door neighbors), Calumon-

“What is that thing?!” Sideline asked me as I smiled at him, he seemed panicked. There was nothing to worry about though!

“It’s my mobile home and friend silly!” I said brightly and I turned to look at the mechanical skull house with multiple mechanical limbs looking at me, it tilted its head curiously at me.

“Oh benevolent Yggdrasil System, can I change out for another job or vacation time? Please!” Why was Sideline saying that, did he not like being with me anymore? Did I do something wrong?

“Yeah sorry, she’s out to lunch… something about working up a relationship with someone named Arceus?” Oh it’s Peppercat, she’s really nice in a funny way. She’s a digibot who really knows how to have fun! Sideline also knows how to have fun, but he’s been a bit stuffy lately. “I’m glad to be on light duty after getting a new body… so what’s up with the giant mechanical dollhouse?”

“It’s my new mobile home!” I said cheerfully, my heart was always full of joy when nothing scary was happening. “It’s also my new friend I found just sitting around after all that scary stuff happened. Did I do something wrong and does Sideline hate me?”

“Don’t worry sweetie, Sideline still likes you, he just really needs some time to himself after playing with you so much. His run times are just a bit... run down.” Really Peppercat?! Yay, I’m a good digimon after all! “By the way Yggdrasil tripled your hazard pay for keeping Calumon safe throughout all of that and doing the talking and paperwork for our… ‘peace negotiator and delegate’.”

“Woohoo! Calumon it’s been an adventure, but I’ll be back some time much later. Be good for Peppercat for me!” Sideline certainly seemed happy about something as he was giving me a big hug before turning into his dog mode and running off in a joyous manner.

I’m happy that he’s happy!

-Planet Petopia Realm, Paw-Tucket rooftops, Pocus-

“Brainy, I have eyes on a different problem than the one we’re looking into.” I called into the communicator as I peak from behind a water tower to see a recognizable enemy lazing away on a rooftop, one that may or may not be related to our current fugitive issue.

“What is it Pocus?” Brainy was quick to respond as always, though she seemed oddly cheerful about something. “I was about to report Mammoth Mutt going down to the surface of Petopia to assist in the situation. Hot Dog is still working on the satellite relay to make sure they don’t escape the planet with Tail Terrier.”

“It’s Isis, the only way she could be here is...” I started to say only for Brainy finish what I was going to say.

“If she stole something and made someone really happy with it according to you… so it’s not just the good pets that can get into this place. I’m wondering why Petopia hasn’t experience problems with that before?” It seemed Brainy picked up on that. “Isis tends to steal magical artifacts, so be wary Pocus.”

“There’s a raccoon that came here, if you do a good enough job at making someone happy enough, then you can get a key to this mystical place… so I’m not exactly surprised that Gotham’s personal Cat Totem’s familiar has managed to steal something good enough to get such a response. It’s rare for the villainous to get into places like this, but not impossible. Those space cats got here through other means not natural as we already know, besides you know magic is my specialty Brainy.” I’m already betting Isis might know something, she wouldn’t be hanging around too lazily when she could be out causing problems. “Should I make a move on her? She’s alone and she might have intelligence on where Snooky Wookums and Agent Del might be if she was trying to meet up with them. Mechanikat could have something big going on here too and her capture might speed things up on our knowledge on what that is.”

“Do you think you can get her by yourself?” Brainy asked with some concern.

“She doesn’t appear to currently have anything magical on her aside from her personal key in and out of this place and you know how good I am at prestidigitation.” I quietly reached into my top hat to pull out a magician’s wand as I prepped the spells in my head. “So yes, I think I can take her.”

“Then do so.” Brain responded.

“Tropelet ot sisI!” After stating those magic words I immediately puffed out some bright blue smoke into existence next to Isis. “Isis come quietly or else!”

“Ugh… Pocus, so not a good day to run into the Abra-ca-rabbit!” Isis started backing up towards the edge of the roof. “With that living Dog Totem around, I was already pressing my luck as it was anyway…”

A ‘Dog Totem’ huh? Whatever plan anyone might have for Petopia is likely fail pretty badly if that totem gets involved and helps out Dog Star Patrol.

“Pots, Ezies sisI, ssap tuo!” Unfortunately the bolts of magic I sent at Isis missed the cat she quickly rolled backwards off the roof and I immediately ran over to investigate and saw her running for the portal into this world with her personal key in her mouth. She had bounced off an awning and, like any good cat, landed on her paws to start running without a single hint of injury. “Tropelet ot sisI!”

I quickly followed Isis through the main entrance to this realm no matter how many times she tried to evade me, my magic would protect me from the repercussions of not leaving the same way Dog Star Patrol and I came in.

“Nommus Annataz tuo fo a tah!” I screamed as soon as I appeared in the place where Isis was and she stared at me wide eyed that I managed to actually follow her back to her home.

I swirled my wand around the brim of my hat and then proceeded to pull a magician out of it.

-Some time after the picnic, flowery hillside, Pom-

The thing about this world is that it seems to have biomes for every kind of animal imaginable, so find one in particular that fit me didn’t take too long from searching around the edge of the forest. It was incredibly suspect that there was no one around where we were nor did anyone run into us, then again this was my first day here and maybe there was far less here to worry about here.

At least no one was around here today it seemed, I know I saw a lot of animals wandering around in the nearby town and they were likely the locals given their similar sizes.

That this area was relatively empty was something I was quite thankful for, both Marshall and Dormarch were napping against me for the last hour or so. It was hard to forget just exactly how young Dormarch still was despite all the amazing things he could do.

Even if I generally caused good sleep, Dormarch was tossing and turning in terror, until I gently woke him up and whispered that he was okay. Waking him up woke up Marshall too who seemed to have taken to the nap better.

“Is Dormarch okay?” Marshall asked as I held Dormarch close to my chest, he put his backpack and helmet back on. Marshall’s helmet or mechanical backpack wasn’t actually causing him any trouble as far as we could tell, so it was something about his body interacting with an environment that throws him off balance.

“Yeah, but he’s going to have problems sleeping for a while. Since I know I am as well.” That I was even getting peace at all here was amazing in and of itself, much less rest even if I was constantly ready for something to break my day. I was idly wondering where the smoke was for the fires I needed to put out, there was no way I could go the rest of this day in a mostly peaceful manner. It just wasn’t feasible or possible, to me at last, that such a place could exist where I wasn’t needed… for anything. “He had a bit of a bad experience before we got here… Dormarch why don’t you figure out more about Marshall’s clumsiness by playing tag with him?”

Yet, nothing happened aside from my watching over Dormarch and Marshall as they played tag while I rested, watching them playfully romp together as friends was nice.

Hopefully it was getting Dormarch’s mind entirely off of what happened in the Nexus, apparently transforming into his Mega form wasn’t nearly as stable as what Frizzle or Sami had. Also there’s the digital hazard symbol on Dormarch, which made sense as Dormarch did destroy Moon Cell. Imagine that kind of power being turned on Yggdrasil System… I can see why Dormarch was going to have nightmares for the next several weeks to a year.

Those Sitrus Berries I ate didn’t do much for the pain coming from my shattered leg, but I could certainly feel some bone knit itself together as excruciating as it was. My wool would retract when my leg was more solidified and not held together by wool wires.

I just watched as the two puppies played for about an hour and nothing went absolutely wrong… which feels quite wrong to me. I was expecting someone to across us needing help or for something to happen, but no, nothing exploded or drew my attention away from the two playful puppies I was watching over. Perfectly peaceful day on a flowery hill that I simply couldn’t… frolic through… I haven’t gone frolicking in a while.

At least Dormarch was enjoying himself with making a new friend, I sent him genuine smiles and a wave of my hoof when he checked on me.

Did I want something to happen? No. Did I want to know if everyone nearby was doing alright if something did? Yes, very much so. Didn’t see any fires though, so I could rest my chin on my front legs for the time being and just watch two good boys playing together.

I wonder what Dormarch would have to say about Marshall after he was done completely figuring out why he continued to be clumsy if it wasn’t exactly because of his fairly fancy somewhat heavy gear. Being an alien was only part of the problem Marshall was facing and we were going to help him.

Felt like I was a mother wolf overlooking her pups as they played.

-Sea side, Shanty-

I think I be liking beaches a bit more than I previously be doing, at least I be learning to appreciate them and the crashing waves. I be making sure that Ocellus and Smolder be having a message that this be the place Arceus be sending us to… still wanted to be taking Favela with us.

“Yeah a nice day at the beach with a really odd goat.” Trip stated and then turned to Quincy. “Not you of course, you’re my best friend bro.”

“Yeah, I know. Shanty, you don’t seem to be like everyone else that comes to Paw-tucket. Isn’t it pretty strange that she’s larger?” Quincy be a fainting goat, that be explaining his nervousness and him being really easy to tease into unconsciousness.

Still can’t help thinking there will be trouble in this world, but so far things are being quite peaceful. With Pom being around that was rather hard to expect or even be believing for too long.

The crashing of the waves of an unknown sea seems to be a singing a song to me, a song to relax… but I can’t be doing that if I be wanting Pom to be safe. I can be resting, but my constant vigilance was being quite warranted at this rate after what be happening in the Nexus.

I’m afraid that if I be blinking wrong that it would be being the end of Pom, she barely be surviving through all those servants and the chaos to just be being lightly injured. Well lightly injured for her as a broken leg isn’t nearly as bad as everything in her body failing constantly and her being hooked up to machines to even be surviving for five seconds.

Also Jeanne be still having the last Reviver Seed at the end of that as far as I be knowing, Pom could be really using that for the sake of my mind. At least we are all being alive.

What were the actual chances of Pom being… no, every time someone be tempting fate, things always be getting worse. So I will not be continuing down that line of thought at all… not being like things can be getting better than they currently were anyway.

“Help me build a sand castle?” It is being something I wanted to do to rest, I still be expecting something to go horribly wrong and all the muscles in my body were tense for an Assassin Reaper to come leaping at me.

“Sure!” Quincy be a nice guy, but he’s not being crew worthy… he has prior commitments and I think every being here would be having the same thing. Doesn’t mean we can’t be being friends or sharing an experience.

Trip is being very adventurous and brave for a hamster, but otherwise he was being a decent friend too and wouldn’t leave Quincy in possible danger by himself.

We’re likely in one of those worlds where anything that goes wrong, hardly ever does so at a threat to someone’s life… that is kind of being what we needed at the moment. What Pom be needing the most.

-Tent in a valley, Ocellus-

I yawned… ULP!

My cheeks swelled up and I went wide eyed. I immediately felt like throwing up, but was afraid that trying would only make it worse.

There was so much love in the atmosphere that I was gagging on it the second I opened my mouth. If Chrysalis were here this world would kill her for trying to drink it all in… someone please let Chrysalis come here and ultimately make that mistake!

I managed to swallow and barely opened my mouth testing the air. I find my mouth flooded with sickeningly sweet sugary love of this place, it was clearly enough that could it kill an unwary changeling through obesity.

I lightly swallowed and even that was a bit much for my stomach, breathing through my nose and not talking seemed like what I’d be doing a lot of here.

It was unfortunate as I really needed to help Pom through verbal therapy session for Lucha Mundo, he obviously not around to do so himself.

I knew Pom was okay, because of the notes left by Pom and Shanty that were quite easy to find.

Let’s see tent, different world, no Pokémon here because Arceus, in a valley inside a circus tent, keep any mass of dogs away from Pom, keep Smolder from setting someone on fire... just a bunch of generalities from Pom as per usual and Shanty heading out to see the nearest beach to have fun and drink some rum when no one is watching.

Honestly I liked some jokes, when I could understand them. Arceus’s humor could use some work, because even referring our lives to a circus it a little beyond the pale even if it’s factually correct.

Smolder won’t need to feed me here at least, you could possibly fill this place with changeling hives and they wouldn’t be able to starve for thousands of years if the love in the air was being constantly refreshed.

I would be breathing through my nose the entire time I was here, because I was afraid to open my mouth, at least the constant smell of hot cinnamon buns was nice and comforting. The magical atmosphere was as love filled as much as Equus’s atmosphere was magic filled. So about as thick as the familial love air in the home of Dalmatian family, just everywhere.

This world felt entirely safe, kind of like what Arceus promised… a nice peaceful place before we ended up in Tambelon when specifically Pom was ready. That had me worried, the longer we stayed here the higher the likelihood we were to run into some form of trouble.

I moved over to sit at the edge of the wagon and groaned, then quickly shut my mouth as more free love tried to stuff me silly. I’m pretty sure any other changeling would be happy to be here… before they violently exploded from overeating.

Why was this world, one that I was finding fairly dangerous for me, was actively trying to give me love?! It certainly felt targeted, as if the world was reacting to me being cute or adorable.

I’m fine thank you, the best love comes from Smolder, friends and family… I don’t exactly need all the free hoof outs at the moment! Though it was nice to be rewarded for my efforts, I would rather have a nice restful stay without becoming bloated… even if I can’t relax after the kind of adventures we’ve been on.

There was something I really wanted to say out loud, but actually opening my mouth here might be a problem for my stomach.

Nothing was ever truly as simple as it seems from my experiences traveling with Pom. I feel sorry for Pom, but maybe she can actually get some rest in this world… provided we didn’t need to fight a war, suddenly collapse half a city while containing an eldritch impossible to deal with threat or avoid being bombarded to death.

I checked outside the tent and saw a vibrant land like that of Equus, so familiar and only the landscape seemed alien. I can hope the food here tastes the same as what can be found on our home world, my friends had to be tired of tasting so many odd foods.

I knew Pom was definitely quite tired and sick of eating Sitrus Berries or drinking healing potions by now, probably far more tired of having to be a hero. At least we had just as many heroes stepping up to help Castle Alexander and hold the line as far as keeping a majority of the EPs busy while Pom and several others entered the Nexus and finished off a horror unlike any I’ve ever heard of before.

We had succeeded, but Pom had to have been exhausted in more ways than one. This world seemed nice, but I was rather upset that we didn’t even get a chance to say our goodbyes. Didn’t feel like we got any closure on that.

Going back to the wagon, I saw Dodo warbling curiously as he woke up and began looking around, he looked in a specific direction to tilt his head a bit and then instantly relaxed. I envied him, he was smart in his own way, but he was able to relax so easily and here I was worrying about Pom’s ability to relax.

Dodo gave me a questioning look, warbled merrily and then rubbed his beak against me affectionately before going back to lazing about. Dodo felt calm because Shanty was perfectly fine and nothing out there seemed to be threatening, otherwise he’d be rushing out of the tent and creating angry mechanical whining noises to attack anyone who’d hurt his favorite rider. He also seemed mildly upset about something, maybe missing Favela and the others?

We had still had some injuries. Speaking of, Dodo would probably be resting off all the dents and damage he took while fighting hundreds of EPs inside the Nexus with Favela and Shanty.

I wonder where the horseshoe was going to drop here. This world seems quiet enough at first glance and the love in the air was purely friendly.

I’m not relaxing entirely until I know for sure there isn’t danger coming at us, even this place should have some form of danger right? Well more dangerous than love the love in the air force unwanted gluttony on me.

I started nudging and shaking Smolder gently with my magic to get her to wake up.

-Paw-tucket Town, Dolly-

We walked down the street looking for the two cats of fairly specific descriptions Tusky gave me, I really didn’t want Pom to get dragged into this so I told Dormarch to keep her away from town until this issue was solved.

I did not want Pom getting stuck in any kind of fighting. Pom needed to relax and not be paranoid like she normally was, evil alien cats would be a bit much right now.

“Seriously? One of them is named Snooky Wookums?!” I snickered, but it didn’t seem like Tusky was thinking his name was as funny as I did.

“Most dogs who have never seen him in action think that, the name is funny up until you actually meet him eh.” Tusky was dead serious about it. “Just be wary of getting too close to him unless you’re confident in a close up fight.”

“So we’ve pointed out the salon, the fitness center, the apartments, the stadium, the restaurant with a sack of kibble to go, the amusement park… so how about a nice romantic run through the park?” Yeah, Roxy was exhaustingly chipper, I can see why her black cat friend was half asleep all the time.

“Does that include a skate park?” My excitement peaked after having seen the stadium where they had roller derby asked.

“It does.” The bird confirmed.

“Want to learn how to shred?” I asked Tusky.

“Sure, but I do not know how good I’ll be at it eh.” He did say he knew a guy that rode around on a flying jet board and he’s done things in space before. “Just remember to keep an eye out for trouble while we do so.”

I think I’ve manage to contain my raging hormones, even if Tusky was a ‘yes’ out of ten to me.

Okay brain, I get it, I like him on several levels as his accent was pretty fun. Now stop hitting the ‘happy button’ just because I’m making good acquaintances with a husky that will acknowledge me.

“Do you even know how to use that skateboard?” The black cat asked lazily.

My response was to toss my board down, jump on, do a kick flip in place and then slapped the rear end of the board while doing a one paw-stand off the nose as the tail end of my board pressed against the concrete.

“I don’t know you tell me?” I stated casually as I kept my body pointing towards the sky before while gesturing at the animals watching, I eventually swung my body down into my board and used my natural momentum of the impact to go rolling forward at the same speed everyone was currently walking. I turned to look at the cat with perfect balance on my board, hours of bruises would attest to my skill at being about to maneuver on the board about as well as I do on solid ground. “Where’s the nearest halfpipe at the park? I could certainly put on a show and I’ve had a lot of embarrassing times with this board.”

It wasn’t long before I was putting my board through its paces and apparently their friend enjoyed my skills. Said friend was turtle I hadn’t paid much attention to.

“She’s really good, huh Bev?” Roxy asked of her friend.

“Yeah, but I prefer roller skating.” The turtle answered immediately. “Still, girls got some amazing technique on top of her skills.”

“How are you doing that?” The cat asked and I sent her a grin.

Currently I was sitting on the back end of my board while doing a nose stall, the front end of my board was planted at the edge of the ramp. In this situation one would expect that the board would have already fallen back into the half pipe due to my weight entirely being on the far end of the board over open air like a diving board. When a biped was in such position they’d normally be putting weight on the front end of the board to hold the stall, I had a feel for these things more than any fancy mathematics that Dawkins might point out.

“Very carefully.” Saying this as I laid promptly moved hastily to lay down on my back and draped my legs and head off both sides of my board and stretched out just to show how comfortable I was with my currently seemingly precarious position.

“That didn’t look careful eh.” Tusky seemed amused.

“I’ve been to some really weird places with my board and am quite skilled with it… I ought to be at this point. Extreme sports is one of my talents.” Like up a vertical surface, I could fight something on a ceiling as if I were on the floor as long as I keep moving. “Just getting some rest, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to relax today as there is still so much to do…”

I asked Pom if I could bring a friend to the tent for the evening when dinner comes around, Pom was open and okay with it. Provided my friend wasn’t going to cause problems for our unusual circumstances for why we’re here, he could join us.

“Say, time permitting given the ‘special thing’ you need to take care of, want to have dinner at the tent with my family Tusky?” I said special thing with air quote digits on my paws, Tusky took time to think about that.

“Okay how did you do that… that’s more unbelievable than your current sense of balance.” The cat stated drawing the attention of her friends.

“Do what?” My confusion was real here.

“That thing you did with your paws, how did you make your digits spread out and move independently like that? Paws should not be that capable of looking opposable.” Figuring out what the cat was pointing out I did a jazz paws by spreading out my digits. “Yeah, that, doesn’t anyone else think that’s a little uncanny.”

“Not really, we’ve seen Trip do things like that.” Roxy stated to her apparent best friend.

“Trip is not a dog though Roxy, Dolly is a dog and her being able to do that with her paws is a little odd.” The cat stated while point a paw my way. “It’d be like Edie being able to articulate all of her feathers into individual fingers.”

“Call it a family trait, most of the dogs in my family can do this.” I say as I undid my helmet and took it off to hold it one paw, saw digits articulating far beyond what animals should normally be capable of doing.

“Yeah, now that I see her holding her helmet like… wait, isn’t what you’re currently doing dangerous?” Oh Dev the turtle, I’m a professional when it comes to dangerous stunts.

“Not unless I move towards the nose of my board. Like this for instance…” I place my helmet back on and then did so, the board immediately stopped being balanced in place and I went zipping down the halfpipe backwards and up the other side. I jumped off with a backflip to land on the edge on my front paws doing a paw stand and caught my board to balance it on my right rear paw.

“Okay, now you’re just showing off.” Rade stated, I think that was her name.

“Well of course I am, I like to showboat and it’s caused me a lot of problems before.” Like taking my own board to the jaw, breaking a leg and becoming a bruised mess after a particularly bad spill.

-Jade the black cat-

Okay, there is definitely something off with her, I’ll see what kind of odd plans she has at the tent for later this evening. This is something I had to get to the bottom of or it’s going to bother me for quite a while, her paws are way too dexterous to be normal.

The paws of my friends and even my own were good enough for most things and had some limited range of articulation, Paw-tucket had to be built somehow, but that kind of articulation of the paw? That was downright beyond what I’d call normal and into the range of abnormal, despite Dolly’s overall appearance being completely normal.

“Something wrong Jade?” Bev asked from next to me.

“No, it’s nothing… I might tell you later if it becomes something.” What are your secrets Dolly? I had to know; curiosity may have gotten to many cats before, but I will still find out!

-Tusky-

At least dolly was taking away everyone’s attentions from how unnatural I seem. It was hard for me to keep my drill tusk retracted for this long. It felt unnatural and the cat Jade was starting to really get a bit too curious about Dolly.

-Paw-tucket outskirts, Mammoth Mutt-

I landed where Tusky and Pocus had, looked around and then hid the drop pod and went to scout around the place Tusky hadn’t. He might be a bit distracted, but he was still doing his job.

The cats we’re looking for weren’t in town, but Isis had been here and that was worrying enough. The Cat Totem’s own familiar being present raised a number of red flags.

I had to get a move on with searching the outskirt areas that Tusky hadn’t covered yet, I was basically taking over for Pocus until he came back with the knowledge of what an expert thief was doing here.

“Hey there, need some help, it looks like you’re looking for something.” A raccoon stated as he poked up from a garbage can. “The names Scoot Racoonerson, if you need something found, lost or just plain fixed and maybe sometimes broken… then I’m a very talented raccoon. Wish I had more to do in life than bum around Paw-tucket, but if someone needs some help with something I’m open for anything.”

You just might get your wish depending on how talented you were, from what I can smell you were a relatively clean raccoon. Dog Star Patrol is always on the lookout for oddly talented animals, also ones that seemed eager to help others even if their personality might initially rub one the wrong way.

“My friends call me Mam.” Short for Mammoth, my species were particularly weird and we all looked like Chihuahuas to start off… until we started showing our true nature anyway. We stayed absolutely small in our basest state throughout our entire lives and barely physically grow in size at all. When it comes to threats… well, nothing really wanted to mess with my kind of canine on my home planet for a variety of reasons. “I’m looking for two cats that may seem about as out of place as I somewhat do. They are bad news and I mean they didn’t get here the normal way that was described to me.”

“Out of place? Huh, I did see this blue furred cat skulking about with one that had cream fur and a fairly haughty disposition.” Ooh, then you might have seen Snooky and his Partner Agent Del or 9-L. “Little guy’s been trying to find all kinds of metal. I always know the best places to find the stuff and something seemed entirely off about him so I didn’t approach. Call it a feeling, but I don’t think anyone wants him to get as much metal as he’s been pulling from the garbage piles. So I might have gotten some help with moving metal away from where he might try to scrounge it up.”

“Well that’s good news at least.” Since if Snooky is trying to gather metal, he’s building something and that always spells trouble for the rest of Dog Star Patrol.

“Can you tell me why?” Scoot said with a raised brow.

-Marshall-

After tripping twenty or so times playing hide and seek, tag and moving I Spy, Dormarch said he knew what the problem was and would talk with his mother about.

I took out my scanner and looked at the scan of myself, how would I have ever known I was different from normal dogs… if all the dogs I met are just like me?

When I met Ryder again, I was going to ask him about taking me out of Adventure Bay, or at least helping me get information about dogs that were based around our local area.

“Come on Marshall, I’ll show you to where we’re staying and then I can get on training you to have less problems when moving around.” Motioning to me with her front left leg Pom then started an awkward three legged walk.

I barked eagerly and started running after her and Dormarch, only to trip and fly over both of them and slam into a mud puddle roughly on my back.

“I would ask if you were okay, but you’re several times more durable than one would expect.” Pom stated as she helped me up and out of the mud. “Come on, let’s get you washed off. I don’t think we need to be cautious here Dormarch. So let’s just start moving openly.”

-Dormarch-

Yeah, I really didn’t want to tell mom about what Dolly found out about there being evil alien cats possibly plotting something. In fact, I wanted mom to remain ignorant of the situation entirely and Dolly agreed.

This was going to be awkward as I’d have to tell Shanty, Ocellus and Smolder about that without alerting Pom to a possible problem she’d actively hunt down if she knew about it.

-Shanty-

“Want to be coming back to the tent with me?” They were being of the friendly sort and I can be trusting them to not be making a fuss.

“Sure!” Quincy answered in a friendly manner and started following me. “So… you’re a pirate and your friends are dimension traveling heroes?”

“Still heard and seen weirder stuff.” Trip stated lackadaisically. "Maybe I can introduce you to Sunil, he's this magic mongoose I know. Tends to get into really weird reality bending situations called heart songs."

Author's Note

Yep, Littlest Pet Shop: world of our own + extended universe added.

Now for the premise to really sink in... making sure Pom avoids awareness of 'ANY' form of trouble and reacting to it in her usual demeanor, regardless of how fast she could help or solve the situation.

Pom is not the only paranoiac anymore. Her friends are equally paranoid at this point as well, rightfully so no less.

461. Friendly in tent.

-Pokémon Realm, Underworld Bureaucracy of Souls, Yveltal-

“Fou.” Stated the threatening beast that is unstoppable by most and was on par with legendary Pokémon.

“Look even if your resume’ is good for wrangling souls, it still doesn’t mean you’ll be able to go after Pom.” I stated blandly. “Otherwise I can hire you to hunt down souls that try to, or have already, escaped.”

“Fou.” Stated Fou a little bit sadly, but he was still interested in the job.

“Look Fou, I know you liked hunting Pom, but she’s kind of out of your reach and still among the living.” Let’s see who she is… ah yes, Mash, she deserved a long fulfilling life for helping save a multiverse strand from total utter destructive collapse. Now you see, this is why we have legendary Pokémon like Giratina around, Giratina would not let something so simple be a lynchpin of the entire universe on our watch. “Do you still want the job? If so, then you’re hired.”

“Fou!” He seemed eager to get started, we did have a few loose souls that need to be captured and sorted that weren’t liable to become Ghost Type Pokémon.

“I wonder if someone else is having a more interesting day.” I muttered as I looked over the souls I had sorted. The Sailor Scouts had too many reincarnations with their memories intact, because some mortals had been playing at memory immortality. It was easier to scrub their souls when there wasn’t a sudden massive influx of them.

Didn’t want any of them going to the same place, especially not Tuxedo and Moon together.

Sure there’s true love, but then there’s tying you’re reincarnating life to someone else until the heat death of any universe in the form of utter insanity. It wasn’t a very healthy soul obsession and I think they should see other people.

-Petopia, on the way back to the tent, Pom-

“So we can do you’re training tomorrow and you can just stick with us until you’re ready to go back home, because I’m sure there is a way home for you.” As I said this to Marshall, I tapped my bond with Dolly to remind her not to cause problems for the locals and ask a bit about them. “Dormarch and I promised to help you, so you have nothing to worry about.”

“Okay!” Marshall seemed much cheerier after playing with Dormarch and so did Dormarch seem happier after having played with him.

Dolly sent me back some information she picked up, apparently the animals here weren’t exactly wary of newcomers so we should be able to openly interact with the locals without much trouble. To get here to this world you needed to do something that generated a lot of love and happiness through a bond that sounded suspiciously like the familiar bonds I’m aware of.

Huh… well this world sounded like a novel idea. Similar to how pets on Equus extend their life with familiar bonds, pets extend their lives here by coming to this world we’re currently occupying to get extra time and they get particularly social here.

So at least every dog here should already have a bond with someone else and I wouldn’t usurp it, Marshall told me about Ryder and his adventures so that was a relief. Unlike everyone in Dolly’s family being an unattached canine, which led to me and Dolly being best friends for life.

Just because it was a rule for pets to end up here, it didn’t mean there weren’t other ways to get into this world through less than good means. Given that we were here, they probably couldn’t avoid problems of something dangerous coming here forever either if some kind of dark god sent envoys here. Also just because pets can make someone happy doesn’t mean they have good personalities, so there could be jerks I might want to keep Dormarch away from among the populace.

The pets could come from anywhere on the world connected to this one to be here, apparently pets lives were consistently stressful with white alien invasions, super villains, monsters and other far more normal things in their lives that they come here to get away from for a while… maybe talk about how to help their owners or what to do in emergencies. The pets here were veterans of a strange world, but the big things in general only impacted certain cities and thankfully there were super heroes to deal with it all, so I didn’t exactly feel the pull of needed to try and figure out a way off this world without Arceus’s help.

There was an ample amount of curiosity though.

Also there was something about time being twisted by being here that Dolly didn’t quite understand, but apparently Marshall would leave at the same time he entered and wouldn’t exactly be missing. It begged the question at what times do the pets enter this world and how long could they put off their woes, normal or extravagant given the next door world sound fairly dangerous when someone robs a bank with a gun that basically fires ice magic.

-Not too far away, Dolly-

“So you can just pick up a key and get back out of dodge as if you didn’t spend a lot of time away from them?” I asked, this place seemed overly nice. Something Pom direly needed at the moment.

“Yup, you just need to register for it after first entering the world to get out, confused me my first time too!” The bundle of peppiness that was Roxy had been rather informative, reminded me of my sisters Deedee and Dizzy. “It’s getting late, see you tomorrow!”

Everyone left after the tour and I dumped the information I had on Pom. The next door world had heroes like my world did… a little more emphasis on the ‘super’ than ‘gadgetry’ the kind. Ace the bat hound was brought up as being one of the gadget users, Tusky acted a little sketchy after the name was brought up by Roxy as a shining example of animal kind.

“So… is Tusky Husky your actual name as much as a code name?” My question surprised Tusky.

“Yes, on the life of my mother Tusky is my name eh… the ‘Husky’ part is a bit more contentious given that I’m an alien. Now as for my other companions in Dog Star Patrol… they live mostly by their code names.” Tusky looked around as if he thought he heard something.

“I already told you about how awesome I am and my name, let’s go inside and we can talk a little more openly… my code name is Caper Canine, you wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve done.” Yep, bringing out my hero identity from my world and polishing the rust off of it. I already saw that Shanty brought back some friends too. “I hope you don’t mind that my friends are a little… odd.”

“Of course not, I’ve seen plenty of odd thing and my team is made up of alien canines from all over the sector of space we live in and we have a green lantern squirrel for serious galactic threats eh.” Did not know what Green Lantern was Tusky, but I was okay with squirrels as one was one of my best friends. We walked in and Tusky noticed Dodo, Smolder and Ocellus were all odd and alien immediately. “Odd is the life I lead compared to the rest of my large family still drilling through the tundra on my home world, is that a dragon?”

“Yes, a small one.” Which is why my friend Ocellus called her Smol-der every once in a while whenever Smolder called her Ozzie. Oh hey, I can remember their names beyond just Shanty now!

“Wait is that… yes, I can finally say what I wanted to say!” A goat, that wasn’t Shanty ran up to Tusky and hugged against his chest. “Thank you for saving me from those goat abducting aliens!”

“Now where do I remember defeating an abduction raid… ah yes, the chupacabrians… nasty piece of work those guys eh.” Tusky hugged the little goat back and eventually got him to let go.

Every animal here was basically the same size and nearly the same weight, but it was magic and there were some outliers. So that goat was probably bigger back in the other world connected to this one.

“What? Dude, you didn’t tell me you almost got abducted by aliens!” The slightly hamster stated with his fist on his hips.

“Would you believe me if I had told you about it?” The goat said back.

“Yes, the whole world getting invaded by those evil white shape shifter things kind of makes it hard not to believe in that kind of thing!” Giving the hamster a questioning look I leaned towards Husky. “Also, hello, we come to a magical world to get a break from everything and do things we wouldn’t normally be allowed to at home, what isn’t believable at this point Quincy! Also weren’t we talking about Sunil the mystical mongoose earlier, a mongoose with actual known magical powers?!”

That caused Tusky to perk up curiously and make a humming noise as if he was going to inquire into that later.

“Oh right… sorry Trip.” The goat, Lychee, stated while rubbing the back of his head with a hoof.

The hamster sighed audibly before fist bumping Flinchy’s hoof.

“You’re my best friend dude, I’ll always forgive you!” The hamster was a cool guy at the very least.

“I wasn’t around for the white shape shifters, but I heard it was quite bad eh.” Tusky whispered in my ear and made me shudder, I really did like the sound of his voice and that accent.

“At least I know why you refused to leave Paw-tucket for an entire week now.” The hamster sighed before looking to me.

“Dolly Danger Dalmatian, one hundred and twenty percent awesome!” I answered the unasked question.

-Tusky-

Sure Dolly might have a crush on me, but at least she was getting more confident in talking to me without her face being constantly red and I respected that about her eh.

Let’s see, the dragon, she is not threatening at all and I should not step on her pride at any point eh.

Strange bug, possibly empathic like most alien bugs tend to be if she has a hive mind system, so think happy thoughts around to not give her a headache and should make nice with her. She seems to have individuality eh.

Naturally occurring living biomechanical entity? Most curious one, but seems happy to be here and I wouldn’t want Snooky to get his dirty paws on the thing, seemed to be affectionate with the goat that smells of the sea and is spitting up pastries in a benign manner. Definitely filing that one away for protection status and maybe ask it for a treat eh.

The goat was clearly dangerous, but friendly. Nothing that I saw wrong with her aside from the adventurous look in her eyes eh.

Clearly nothing to worry about here as far as abnormal visitors, their supplies seemed to be mostly vegetables. I can see why Dolly wanted the kibble now eh. Well aside from two locals being present, one of which was a fainting goat I’ve met when stopping a poaching abduction raid.

“So can I get an introduction to your other friends Dolly? They seem fairly nice eh.” I knew I would protect everyone here from what is one of the most evil felines ever if I needed to.

If Snooky showed up here, I would not hold back my tooth one bit.

“Sure, but don’t tell my partner Pom, AKA Leap Lamb, about the evil cat thing… she’s supposed to be on vacation and relaxing. Plus there’s the whole her having a shattered leg to worry about.” Nodding to Dolly in understanding, she showed me to her friends. “So… uh…”

“Name problems again Dolly?” Stated the bug as if she could tell that Dolly had forgotten some of their names.

-Heading towards the pet apartments, Roxy-

“So Dolly and Tusky were getting along great… wait where’s Jade?” My roommate wasn’t following us back into Paw-tucket Town proper.

“Probably in a tree somewhere, there’s nothing to worry about around here.” Bev stated as she continued to follow along, never met a more adventurous box turtle in my life. “The night patrol will get her down like last time.”

“Yes, at least you don’t live in high villain activity areas. Goodness knows how Zoe Trent lives with being on the same street as a Luthor Corporation building after they did a merger with the Biskit family.” Edie ever the dramatic bird thought that Luthor Corporation was suspect in many of the things they do.

“Oh come on, we can’t think the worst of every large pet shop… even if the Biskit family are part of a soulless corporation brand.” There’s been several arguments about all the heroes and villains running around being backed by corporations like Luthor, but I didn’t see it as super villains were smart enough to build their stuff out of junkyard scrap. So I would personally have all the junkyards watched constantly. It was just best to avoid the trouble that villains caused entirely, I’m just a small dog and I couldn’t fight anyone that scary.

“Soulless is right, their turtle treats could stop tasting like cardboard any day now and I’d be a little bit happier.” Bev was probably really glad she could come to Paw-tucket to get a decent meal every once in a while.

I can’t imagine not having a place to go to get my mood back up after so much trouble, at least I lived on the same street as Jade back in the world outside of Paw-tucket. So I was never without a friend whether I was living here or not. Best roomie ever!

-Evening outside the tent, Pom-

“So we’ll be more open about who we are tomorrow. There isn’t much dangerous here, but I wouldn’t want to leave this world without Arceus to assist us or I might end up getting sucked into a whole mess of other people’s problems.” I’m actually kind of glad to know Arceus prevented me from doing that here really.

I’m not a pet and I wouldn’t get a key to let me out of this world. Marshall was a pet and worked with Ryder so he could go back to Adventure Bay easily enough once he got his key and registered it to return to Paw-tucket at any time he needed a friend.

This world was as safe as Arceus could find and I was going to trust that he was right that I could get a full vacation here. All the animals here didn’t seem threatening… or couldn’t seem threatening to me even if I was functionally a three legged mentally scarred ewe at the moment.

“Do you think they’ll be accepting of me?” Anyone that doesn’t accept you Dormarch has to answer to me. Nobody was going to bully my son if I could help it.

“I think they will, this place seems bright and cheery like home.” Marshall stated enthusiastically before flopping onto his chin, at this point we think his paw pads might be more slippery than a normal dogs given how often his clumsiness acted up when he was moving and even the slightest bit distracted by something.

“Hey guys, I’m back to cook dinner!” I called out. I took in our guests at the tent. Hamster and fainting goat, not a problem. Alien dog next to Dolly that she’s obviously attracted too, not a problem, but might become my problem. Depends on Dolly really. Black cat sneaking into the tent behind us, I snatched her up by the scruff and looked her in the eyes, she scrunched up adorably. “Ocellus get out the soup pot, Shanty can you get me some fresh water? I’ll start getting the ingredients out.”

The cat whines and her ears wilted having been suddenly caught after thinking she could sneak right by me, I sighed and put her down before lightly pushing her towards the hamster and goat, the locals were already curious as cats… in a literal fashion it seemed. I sighed and tried not to worry about it.

“So… what’s the situation?” I said hoping to not hear any bad news.

“For once, there’s actually nothing going on Pom… except for Ocellus anyway. She can’t open her mouth without it getting filled with the love in the air around here.” Smolder was being even toned with me still, but eventually I’d crack through her pride just by my being nice to her. I’m giving her all the time she needs.

Ocellus nodded and tried to open her mouth and looked like she immediately gagged on the air around us as soon as her lips parted even a millimeter. That’s one less hungry mouth to worry about and Smolder won’t have to worry about feeding her so that takes some stress off the both of them, well maybe Smolder. Ocellus is going to be stressed by wanted to talk and being incapable of doing so.

“Tusky is a really cool guy!” Dolly said excitedly with a wagging tail.

I rolled my eyes as I had heard about and knew how Dolly got around a husky named Hansel.

“I not be seeing many threats… even the sharks here are being small and friendly.” I would ask Shanty, but I don’t feel like I wanted to know.

“Okay for my vacation I’m going to try to let my leg heal up, I’m pretty sure I got all my bone back in my leg so it’s only a matter of recovery time.” Time before we had to drop into Tambelon and who knows what’s going to happen there. Tianhuo has already guessed it was going to be decidedly hostile because of Grogar the demon goat and his army of Troggles becoming immediately aware of our presence when we arrived. “Time during which I want to spend some one on one time with all of you so we can talk about any issues we may currently have and finally straighten out or dispositions, yes even you Dodo. Ocellus, we’ll find you something to write on, given that you can’t talk without your mouth flooding with love and possibly drowning you in it.”

Dodo warbled in a friendly manner, he spat strawberry muffin at me and I caught the warm treat and started eating it immediately. I needed a lot of energy and nutrients to heal, this was just Dodo’s way of helping with that.

Ocellus nodded to me with a thankful and weak smile.

“I’ll be making soup fit for most animals to consume, now anyone have any questions?” I asked and the black cat, who was standing next to the hamster and goat, spoke up.

“Uh yeah, are you guy’s aliens?” The cat asked as her curiosity seemed to demand that she sate it.

“Yes, dimensional traveling aliens, most of us are simply trying to get home. Dodo is already at home with Shanty over there. As for Dolly and Dormarch, they are following us for their own reasons and Dormarch is my son… so if you do anything mean to him you’ll answer to me.” My glare made a few of them shiver, before I lightened my tone once more. “As for Marshall here, he said he tripped into the portal leading to Paw-tucket and doesn’t know how to get home.”

“Yeah, we can help with that, he just needs to register at the Little Pet Shop and get his magic key. This world is like one big therapy group when we run into trouble outside of it… though I have to wonder why he doesn’t seem to be shrunk down to size like the rest of us. I’m Jade Catkin by the way.” The black cat Jade may share a partial named with Jaded La Perm, but she didn’t strike me as someone who’d constantly attack Saddle Arabia in over the top ways.

So this world provided many therapeutic ways to relax. Sounding better and better as time goes on.

“Yeah, he might need that therapy group aspect soon and I’ll be training him to be a bit less clumsy as his biology isn’t doing him any favors when it comes to moving around sometimes, he just found out he might be descended from aliens which explains him not being shrunk down like everyone else native seems to be here…” My gaze slid over the dog that had Dolly’s clear infatuation given the redness in her cheeks and I could feel her wanting to rub against him every other second like a pulse that matched the beating of her heart. “I take it the Husky is also an alien Dolly?”

“Yes ma’am, my species are ice drillers and breakers, we live on fairly cold world eh.” With that Tusky seemed to relax a muscle in his face and released a giant tooth that was more of a single, incredibly massive, pointy tusk that hung all the way down to his paws. “I’m here on vacation as much as you are, Planet Petopia or Paw-tucket is a nice place to visit. Mostly safe aside from resident related incidents that happen around here. Your son wouldn’t happen to be a homeless mer-pup by any chance?”

“My friend Roxy causes most of the incidents, so I can confirm that.” Jade said as she stretched out, then started to stare at Dormarch’s flicking fish tails curiously. “So you can cook food for animals?”

“Well you’re in for a real treat tonight if you all stick around for a sleep over.” I actually felt like cooking something that everyone can enjoy.

“You’ve met the mer-pups too?” Marshall stated curiously after a moment of thought. “Huh small world.”

“Yeah, strange thing meeting them that was eh.” Tusky said with a bit of a chuckle. “They are a species normally found on aquatic planets, don’t know how they ended up on Earth without a spaceship. Probably appeared there before my friends started watching out for the planet on occasion.”

“Earth is that the name of the world you all know?” Well that was curious, given I got nods from all the animals here that weren’t part of my traveling circus. I’m going to give you a sarcastic thanks for putting that thought in my head Arceus. “Well this might confirm that Marshall is a descendant of aliens at the very least, as are possibly most of the animals in the part of the world he lives in if Tusky’s existence is anything to go by. Also no, Dormarch is not a Mer-pup, he’s an informational entity. Take of that what you will, but he’s always going to be my son.”

Three happy wagging fish tails followed my declaration.

“Yes, I am compatible with regular husky and other dogs of Earth, but I haven’t partaken, just some genetics testing by a friend eh. Though now I am curious to hear about this place Marshall hails from, so I can tell a friendly group of concerned aliens about it to make sure nothing shifty is happening there.” The way Tusky worded that… I glanced at Dolly and she didn’t seem to be reacting to what he said, it almost felt like she was diving into her infatuation with him to avoid something… I trust Dolly so if it wasn’t anything to be concerned about, I trusted my Dalmatian partner.

I mean the guy was also part of stopping a poaching according to the goat… he’s a super hero dog isn’t he? Hopefully that was not a portent to an oncoming disaster occurring in what is supposed to be a ‘safe’ world.

“So do you guys want to hear stories of Leap Lamb and Caper Canine while I cook? I’m sure Dolly can exaggerate them to make them seem far more interesting and less life threatening than they actually were.” I was silently telling Dolly no gory descriptions of what happened to ‘fake paint entity Pom’ if she talks about Splatter Phoenix, she gave me a smile and assurances she wouldn’t go too far.

“Ooh… so let me start off by saying Saint Canard was a nice city… was being the keyword, we had arrived at the airport by crash landing. Since our pilot was Launchpad McQuack we were perfectly fine…” Of course Dolly remembers Launchpad’s name, it was quite unforgettable after being through several crashes with the guy.

How anyone could get into a vehicle Launchpad was going to be piloting after the first three times was quite beyond my understanding, even if his crashes have never miraculously ended in a single fatality at all. It had to be dumb luck, outrageous skill to account for how a vehicle would break apart upon impact or a super power all of its own to never grievously hurt anyone by crashing into things violently.

-An hour later during dinner-

“Leaving Leap Lamb all messed up, but as you can see… she got better.” Dolly wrapped up our whole escapade with the crime crisis in Saint Canard. “Minus the whole leg being maimed from our most recent adventure of course.”

“So wait… her disguise is wrapping a piece of pink cloth around her forehead?” Marshall seemed as confused as I was when some people saw me as being an entirely different person when I wrapped a pink strip of cloth around my forehead.

“It’s probably something like what Krypto the Super Dog has going on when he puts on a cape. Don’t know what he looks like as a normal dog, but that red cape is memorable and it probably helps that he looks similar enough to other dogs too. Probably even comes here from time to time if he’s Superman’s dog like everyone thinks he is.” Trip offered as I tied a pink strip of cloth to my forehead. “That’s it? Huh… don’t know how anyone can’t tell it’s you Pom.”

“Eh, I had what looked like a dimensional sister in that world named Mopsy Muttoncoddle… it was pretty weird to see someone that looks so much like me.” Yeah, not everything I’ve been through has been bad, just the most of it. “Also Ocellus, if you could demonstrate…”

Ocellus transformed into a copy of Mopsy, not me, there were key difference between me and her.

“Huh… neat.” Everyone almost expected Quincy to scream and flop over from Ocellus bursting into flames to turn into a noticeably different copy of me. “So is you’re costume more interesting Dolly?”

“My costume is my indestructible helmet and trademarked equally indestructible skateboard… as long as magic isn’t involved.” Nobody here questioned magic, given this magical world still had a day and night cycle yet the pets that come here return at the exact same time they left to come here. Time really is wonky around magic, so I wasn’t going to question the inconsistencies of multiple animals coming into this world at different times from all over an entire planet. Aging clearly wasn’t a problem for anyone here. “Tusky why don’t you test you’re tooth on my board for a few seconds.”

Tusky looked unsure, but still stabbed his tooth into it and drilled the board for a few seconds with his rapidly spinning tooth and then pulled back. The skateboard looked perfectly unblemished by his attempt to break it and everyone had heard the grinding noises.

“Wow… what is that board made of?” Jade asked with wide eyes when the alien, possibly super hero, dog tried to drill into it.

“Wood.” Dolly stated with a cheeky grin and those who didn’t know turned to me.

“Yes, its flexible wood aside from the axles and wheels of course, but what she isn’t telling you is that she incidentally varnished every single part of her board with a magically reactive metal called electrum. Add some magic, it becomes nearly indestructible.” I pulled out my dented bell to show them. “It has saved my life once already to have some magically charged electrum on me. It’s really hard to physically damage, but magic or some greater forces can still do so. We’ve only ran across one person so far who did damage it.”

“Yeah, did not like the events going on at the sky city place.” Dolly grumbled as she was clearly remember the whole thing with Gilgamesh’s bridge to the place of power.

“Sounds like you guys have been through a lot together eh?” Tusky glanced between me in Dolly in a friendly manner.

“Yeah, we’re cool like that.” It seemed Dolly was exuberantly happy to tell Tusky anything and her heart was going a mile a minute at any amount of attention from Tusky.

“How’s the food, anyone want seconds?” Everyone looked at me except Ocellus, even Jade’s tail was wagging expectantly.

-Nighttime, Forest, Mammoth Mutt-

Scoot Racoonerson was a fountain of information and a decent mechanic, we could use one of those in Dog Star Patrol, I told him to stay away from Snooky if he spots him and to not doing anything to draw the cat’s attention and to keep all forms of workable metal away from him.

Snooky wouldn’t be building something that was for the safety and peace of this world, I knew that much if Agent 9-L was helping with whatever he was making. Mechanikat couldn’t be too far behind them either.

So far my scouting of the forest didn’t reveal anything. Just a few friendly owls and bats that spoke of no cat related activity from pets in the area recently. I just had to find the threat before they caused trouble here.

“This is Mam, has Tusky reported anything?” I ask because if Tusky was doing his job and not distracted with other things, he should have spotted something.

“A few things, he came across a team of interdimensional travelers… some of which are heroes in their own right from the way they tell things.” Oh good news then Brainy, we could use reinforcements if things go bad here… things generally did when Snooky was skulking around. It’s how we first met ‘Krypto the Super Dog’. What a misunderstanding that had been and I tried to tell him, but things resolved well enough… now if only ‘Ace the Bat Hound’ would get that stick out of his rear end, the guy was handsome but his personality left something to be desired. “Activity in town, aside from Pocus chasing after known criminal cat Isis, is currently zero and anywhere in the populated area. Snooky Wookums is clearly not trying to hide in plain sight this time and has gone to ground.”

“Ugh… do I have a fallback point that won’t lead Snooky to hijacking our landing pod hydrants again?” Asking because I was getting tired after a full day of working around the base.

“Yes, apparently Tusky has acquired lodgings with the friendly dimensional travelers and says it’s okay for you to show up. Hot Dog, Tail Terrier and Bull Dog are just about finished in orbit and you’ll be reinforced soon enough to go looking for Snooky tomorrow. I’ll even recall the landing pods remotely to make it less likely that he finds and uses them for spare parts again.” Yeah, that’s happened to us several times Brainy. Snooky was a horrible menace. “Go get some rest, Tusky has acquired the help of Dolly D. Dalmatian and she goes by the handle Caper Canine. She will be assisting you so that her partner doesn’t get dragged into this mess, it sounds like her partner has a completely crippling inability to stay away from danger if others are in trouble and she’s faintly aware of it. Poor thing, I’d protect her with my very life…”

“Uh, Brainy, are you okay up there… that sounded a little oddly overly affectionate coming from you.” That didn’t sound like our no nonsense, mostly business, leader to me.

“Huh, oh, yes, I’m fine, quite fine… though I’m starting to wonder when I’ve taken up arts and crafts…” Something was up with Brainy so I called Hot Dog, Tail Terrier and Bull Dog to keep an eye on her. “Excuse me Mammoth Mutt, something has come up.”

-In space, at this moment, Brainy Barker-

I slowly backed away from the exquisitely paw and psychic powers sculpted clay statue of the ewe, that I had made, quite fearfully. It was quite beautiful, but it scared me that it was so lifelike.

I hadn’t even realized that I had even been making it while talking to Mam the whole time!

Hugging a plush toy to my chest in worry I… wait, since when I did own a plush toy?! Plush toys were too childish for the likes of me or my brilliant mind, ever since I was a little puppy I had no need of such comforts. I felt around my so called plush toy, with my paws and my eyes widened in absolute horror.

Looking down at my paws, I screamed and jumped back in fright as the plush toy of the ewe sailed out of my paws and softly hit the floor as my panicked breathing picked up.

Where has all of my carefully constructed control over my faculties gone when it came to that utterly beautiful being?

I shivered, backing away from the sweet looking toy as if it were a serpent from the planet of Fetchit Nine.

My obsession with the alien dimensional traveling ewe was getting worse, if Hope Corgi were here he’d tell me that ‘all is okay’… I still wouldn’t feel it in this moment though.

Maybe if I sat just down and had a drink…

I picked up a mug of water to lap up some fluids and looked at it and, in the most unladylike fashion that wasn’t becoming of me, I spat out a jet of water. I calmly place the mug down, not wanting to destroy it.

The mug had the ewe’s image on it wearing socks with half lidded eyes and a particularly pleasant smile that… did I always wear a hat?

No, I currently did when I usually do not…

Levitating my white hat off my head, my mind boggled at how long I had been wearing a hat with the image of the ewe on it with the words ‘I heart cuddles’ written on it as she laid flat on her belly in an adorable sleepy manner. Looking down I saw that I also had on a shirt with the image of the ewe with her front legs spread wide out for a hug and bright wide open eyes.

How long have I been wearing this shirt with the words ‘I Heart Ewe’ on it?

Searching my perfectly controlled mind and photographic memory I found it to be… the entire time since I first made it?! Did I just ignore putting on a shirt I made myself entirely?! Did my paws seriously craft a shirt while I was guiding my companions in the cordoning off of Petopia to prevent those felonious felines from going anywhere?

I think I was going completely mad. I needed an intervention or some form of help as my condition is worsening. My head was being messed with and I needed something to get my mind back in order.

My breathing was panicked as I pulled the shirt off of me and pushed all the ewe based paraphernalia as far away from me as I could and sat quietly sat in a corner quivering to myself… trying to find some solace in the fact that my mind was currently being tampered with through unknown means. Yet I didn’t know how and that worried me immensely.

I might be… compromised.

…

WHY WAS I CURRENTLY SEEKING COMFORT IN THE EWE PLUSHY… AND WHY IN THE WORLD WAS IT WORKING?!

462. Beachy Keen.

-Petopia, early morning the next day, travelers’ tent, Pom-

Having met a pink furred Chihuahua named Mam last night, probably short for something, I was getting an inkling that something was going on given that she was likely an alien canine given she knew Tusky.

Did I really want to know what was going on or was I going to try and ignore it to just let Dolly deal with it, because she obviously was going to try to keep me out of it.

Well I welcome that she was willing to take on that challenge, but I wasn’t exactly ignorant of her attempts at subterfuge around Tusky… Dolly could normally do subtle, but Tusky being present was ruining her ability to think.

If I see a hint of trouble I would still act regardless of how hard everyone tries to prevent me from seeing to the problem.

Now why was I bringing this up? Well I woke up with several dogs on me... Shanty would eventually count as salty dog.

I sighed audibly, should really sell my services as a really comfortable living pillow. I could absolutely make a living out of it.

Mam was adorable taking up my left hind leg, Dormarch was snuggled up against my left side and Dolly was snuggled next to Tusky on my right.

My front right leg was taken up by Shanty who had an empty rum bottle next to her. Her unique constitution clearly being the only reason why someone as young as her isn’t a drunkard.

“Everyone, I need to officially go to the bathroom!” Calling this out in as flatly and bluntly a manner as possible, I quickly got some reactions. Dormarch’s was rather instant given he hasn’t been sleeping very well and had been tossing and turning up to this point in his sleep, he was up immediately and trying to help me by shoving everyone off of me.

The one problem with being a living pillow, I still needed to answer to nature’s call.

-Five minutes later-

“So I figure I’d head to the beach for the day with Dormarch and Marshall, if you want you can join me and help ease everyone into our presence here in this world. I’m going to be working on Marshall and I’ll be primarily spending time with Dormarch first, I intend to spend time with Dodo, Shanty, Smolder, Ocellus in any order and then finally Dolly will be last to have a day to me all to herself.” My reason for saving Dolly for last is to let her have some time with Tusky, mostly to give her a chance to get it out of her system over the next few days.

I started preparing for the beach, both Dormarch and Marshall were going to help me carry stuff. Smolder and Ocellus were going to join me apparently. Jade, Trip and Quincy were going to be our acting guides and might ask some others to join in on the fun.

As for Shanty she had other ideas in mind and intended to explore the place, as a pirate she was always going to want the lay of the land and only visited the beach yesterday and wanted to look around more today with Dodo.

Tusky, Mam and whoever else will inevitably get involved in whatever crazy trouble they have going on, as long as it wasn’t anything too big I wasn’t going to worry about it. I wasn’t going to bother as Dolly could feasibly handle it without my help and would call for me if she needed any, plus I trusted Dolly to not jump into things blindly as far as her thing for Tusky was concerned.

So I’m wondering when someone was going to point out that they could actually understand Dolly despite her still speaking in barks unlike everyone else. I guess we were still trying to get over the trauma and used to our new circumstances, but I’m sure as soon as we leave this realm Ocellus, Shanty and Smolder would no longer be able to understand Dolly, unless she was singing that is.

“So anyway, Marshall, the beach will help us train you to recognize your problem safely and you’ll be less clumsy by the time we’re done. I’ll explain when we get there.” If I were right, then one of Marshall’s issues is his paw pads and or his inability to recognize obstacles in his exuberance.

Aside from the clumsiness, he was actually fairly acrobatic for a puppy as Dormarch found out when they were playing tag. Almost as good as Dolly without her magical abilities actually and that was saying something about the oddities surrounding Marshall.

-A time later behind the circus tent, Dolly-

“So Brainy is feeling a bit off?” Elephant Mongrel asked as she called her friends who were apparently almost done setting up in space. “Oh, okay then… that was Hot Dog, he says Brainy is having something of an episode after seeing Pom and has apparently built a shrine to her and is experiencing some sort of slow decent into madness? Otherwise she’s okay and while there is something about Pom that I like, I don’t think I’d go that far. He’s almost done cordoning off the planet with Tail Terrier and Bull Dog helping put up a the rest of the protection satellites. So we’ll eventually have backup to help us look for Snooky Wookums and Agent 9-L.”

“Yeah, that shrine thing happens around Pom more often than she thinks it does.” It wasn’t like my family hadn’t done it either, because my family certainly did have a shrine to Pom and it was a little disturbing how common the occurrence was becoming.

At least our shrine was simply a modest portrait done by my sister Da Vinci since Pom was family, we weren’t worshipping her like some kind of goddess. Goodness knows I’m not going to do something as ridiculous as start worshipping Pom, she’s definitely mortal even if she was exceptionally cuddly.

“So, bad news, Pocus can’t return to Petopia since the way he exited the world broke something in the time stream, something about being in three places at once being a really bad thing and needing to wait a month before he can fix things on his end. That said, he’s still managed to contact us with magic despite us being apparently time locked in the region of this planet here, he caught Isis red pawed and got that thing she stole while denying her the use of her personal key to Paw-tucket. Isis is a decent thief, but combat was never her thing and it was highly likely she was going to meet up with those felonious felines we’re after, as they have worked together in the past. Pocus intercepting her means one less problem for us to deal with and there was mention of something stopping Isis from whatever the original plan was. I’m never going to understand magic and how it works on this world.” Right there with you Mum, well magic outside what I can already do anyway. Still trying to learn more anyway. “To that end, I’ve recruited some local help named Scoot Racoonerson, a really friendly racoon. Scoot got into this world by saving a dog’s life by getting an old onion away from them, mostly by eating it.”

“Aren’t onions just as stupidly poisonous to raccoons?” If there was one thing my step mother Delilah made sure of, it’s that we never, EVER, ate anything dangerously lethal to our health while making sure we look out for other animals so they don’t make that mistake either.

“The owner of the dog, who fed his dog on the porch that Scoot hung around, saved Scoot’s life after he made himself sick doing that… and was so happy that Scoot survived the experience that he got a way in to being here, quite a noble raccoon.” Well that sounded pretty cool Meme. “He’ll be helping us with locating Snooky as he’s our current lead at the moment. Now, before we go find Scoot… you need to know what we can do and we need to know what you can do. We at least know you are acrobatic, if even half the stuff you exaggerated about with that ‘crime city crisis’ story actually happened.”

“Well my board and helmet you already know about, I learned acrobatics from following a squirrel buddy of mine around. As for my more unusual abilities… all of them are based in magic. My body is mostly normal otherwise without magic being involved.” So I went down the list, wind magic, double overall speed boost for a few minutes, forcing things to float out of control or enter a controlled float state for my allies, minor gravity control, my ability to manipulate momentum on contact, my ability to counter rapid fire attacks by blocking them and my recent ability for ice magic. “There’s also this thing where I see a green triangle sometimes, don’t know why… but it allows me to do some really weird over the top stuff like throw killer whales around.”

“Having met Pocus, weird can be a pretty wide definition. So you are fairly powerful eh?” Wouldn’t actually say that Tusky.

I still felt weak compared to Dormarch who turned into some kind of giant wolf demon thing, but apparently he’s quite traumatized by it given his problems sleeping even with Pom's help. So really, power isn’t everything, but it is quite nice to have when you needed it the most. I should get in some time with my little bro while we’re here, not even Tusky could get in the way of that.

“Actually, I have limitations to how often I can use magic actively. I use too much magic without refreshing through several means and I get a painful migraine or will pass out immediately.” Yeah, Aeroga was going to be a bit much for me and it allowed me to unleash a raw force of nature that reminded me of my brothers and sisters hitting things like a tidal wave. If it hadn’t been for that giant turkey, my first use of it would have really helped things. “For an image of what that feels like, it’s like someone drove an axe into my skull without intending to kill me… and I actually survived afterwards.”

“Yikes, so that trick you did on your skateboard the other day?” Puffing up with pride at Tusky’s concern, I answered his worries easily enough without being a complete stuttering red faced mess either.

“Nope, that wasn’t magic, it was just my raw skill with a skateboard. Don’t need to use magic to do big things.” I said proudly. “I already know what Tusky can do, so what do you do Tum? With a name like Gargantuan Butt, you must be able to get pretty big right?”

“Yeah, heard you had a problem names, so I’m not going to take it personally when you keep getting mine wrong.” Here Ma’am looked upset about something as she ran a paw through the fur on her head. “You see, there’s a reason I’m with Dog Star Patrol. It’s because I’m actually a failure of my particular species.”

“What?” My confusion was met with a sad pink Chihuahua wilting in on herself and rubbing her front left leg with her right paw.

“Mammoth Mutt, has a history of not being able to live up to her people’s natural talents eh.” Tusky has pretty much stated that he lived up to his… so eventually he’s going to be the size of a large bear. That was going to be really hot to imagine, I probably won’t be around to see it. “You’re in Dog Star not because of your abilities, though it certainly helps that you’re really naturally durable regardless of whether they are active or not since we lead dangerous lives, it’s that you have heart and plenty of spunk for the kind of work we do eh!”

Well she did wear a collar with a heart shape on it.

“Yeah, being a runt doesn’t help at…” Grabbing Mammoth Mutt’s face with my paws, I glared into her eyes as sternly as my step mother would.

“Nope, nobody in my family uses the ‘R’ word and I don’t want you looking down on yourself around me and referring yourself like that either. Do you understand me?” Nobody said ‘runt’ in or around my family without it being addressed, big sister prerogative and all that. Even if Madam here isn’t family, I had to set her straight. “Never think yourself lesser for being small. So are you going show me what awesome thing you can do ‘Cram It Tut’?”

Tusky was able to bore through most matter with a tusk that is one of the toughest materials in this universe, which was awesome, but apparently his body wasn’t nearly as tough as that one part of him. Still, he could dig faster than any dog could with their paws just using his tooth.

“Of course, then I want to see some of the things you can do!” Mammon Truck then inflated like a beach ball, it looked as ridiculous as it sounded with her regular sized legs, tail and head sticking out of her inflated body. “I have a hard time doing more than this, I can increase the size of my paws, head and tail by themselves, but not all of them at once like the rest of my people. I just stick to increasing the size of my torso… which I’m really good at by now. My people don’t get very big unless we’re using our ability, which is why my base appearance has barely grown even a few inches bigger from when I was a small puppy. It almost makes it look like I don’t age, so that's an upside to being me.”

-At the beach, Pom-

Marshall had several problems going for him.

For one, when Marshall leapt about without looking. He’s jumping, leaping and moving far better than a puppy normally could, it was apparent that his body was of a deceptively far lighter weight than expected despite his appearance looking healthy and normal compared to other dogs. So when he tripped over things, he went flying.

Another problem is that Marshall’s paws basically have no grip strength, which is what metacarpal and digital pads on a dogs paws are normally for. They usually stop dogs from slip sliding all over the place by being at the bottom of their feet. Marshall had an alien biology that made him have traction problems, so he had to be careful about his momentum.

The last thing was the most innocent and adorable of all, Marshall was just being an overenthusiastic puppy sometimes when he was clumsy. The other two factors of him being lightweight and slippery just exacerbated things, but easily being excitable was a part of Marshall’s problems as much as his charm.

“Good job Marshall, keep it up!” I was currently training him to recognize when he was losing control of his momentum and starting to slip. That he could even slip on sand was something interesting to see in action, you had to see it to even begin believing it was possible. If it were anyone else it probably would be… except I could basically make my wool frictionless and functionally do the same thing. He now looked like he was enjoying himself, he could almost skate on grass, cement and sand. “I think you got the general idea, you can work on it from here. Just remember to keep working on your coordination.”

“Thanks Pom!” Marshall had to throw his weight into turning and stopping, but I think he understood his problem far better now as he ran through a beach side obstacle course set up by the pets that came to the world of Paw-tucket.

“Dormarch come here, we need to talk!” I called out and motioned for him over to the blanket and umbrella, where I sat down.

Dormarch quickly flopped out of the sea onto the beach and shook his fur out, he certainly seemed to be enjoying himself in the water. He came up to be under the shade with me and was pointedly ignoring most of the other animals on the beach staring at his three tails, his fish scaled patterned black spots on his fur.

“Okay Dormarch, is there anything, anything at all, that you want to talk about or even want me to do for you?” I gave him a quick cuddle and nuzzled the top of his head affectionately. I could feel his enjoyment of just experiencing some love from me. “Now is the time to do so, since this will be my personal talk with you.”

“Mom, you are probably one of the sweetest beings to ever…” Dormarch was quickly cut off by a rude animal.

“Wow, look at the freak, what laboratory did you crawl out of?!” Stated the small sheep that came here naturally and wasn’t an alien or had unique biology to separate herself from all the other visitors in this world.

I, Pom, am a lambkin of 'mostly' great restraint… the sheep had managed to surpass most of said restraint in a single sentence and so few words were said. I could claw her face up, but I’m generally not a bloodthirsty individual… despite what my increasingly beast like nature might suggest in trying to fight off my even worse Chrysomallus nature.

So frankly, the little sheep was making an absolutely mountainous mistake on a level of stupidity never seen by others. I had twice her size and weight on her, she didn’t look like she knew the meaning of the word fight and I could so easily pulp her with a single bark blast. I had nothing to fear when it came to this natural selection award winner here and all the wherewithal to do with her whatever I eventually will.

“Excuse me, but what is your name?” I was immediately up and glared into her eyes.

“Petula Woolright…” Started the sheep.

“Stop.” She immediately did so and seemed to freeze in place from the tone of my voice, Dormarch tried to say something but I calmly held up my right hoof for him to remain silent. I sent him gestures of love, warmth and comfort through our bond as I ran my hoof down his back gently.

I turned to the nearby lifeguard on duty.

“Hey, lifeguard, can you please save her after I’m done with her?” I called out to the otter pet that was the acting lifeguard. “She apparently has made a grievous error in judgement that I clearly intend to rectify. I apologize for my coming actions before I do them, just know that she ultimately had this coming and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. Is there anyone here willing to actually try and stand up to me for her before I act?”

The otter nodded and seemed to know exactly where this was going. Quite a lot of other pets seemed to be paying attention to this exchange as well. The otter went on standby by entering the water to make sure this Petula doesn’t drown.

I was at my natural size and strength unlike every other being here, I made for quite an abnormal sight myself here when everyone else was about a foot tall. Kind of like the alien dogs Dolly was hanging around with that didn’t quite fit in with the general size of the pets that came to Paw-tucket.

Speaking of canines, there were a number of dogs now glaring at the little sheep, nobody here was willing to step up or try to stop me from going full blast. That was kind of sad for this Petula, she didn’t seem to have any real friends that would stand up for her in this moment of crisis and try to talk me down.

Petula wasn’t very well liked apparently, but she obviously did something to get into Paw-tucket so there was the capacity for making others happy. Unfortunately that wasn’t going to help her here today.

A shimmer appeared in the air and I yanked Petula into my left hoof and glared, my eyes possibly turning to red as a flicker of beast mode entered them. She squirmed and found she couldn’t get out of my hoof that was now on her spine as my wool dug into her own wool.

Petula became quite petrified and wide eyed as I stared ever more deeply into her soul, my growling like a mother wolf about to tear someone apart for messing with my puppies in a negative way also helped.

“Never… call… MY SON… a freak… in my presence, or anywhere else for that matter… ever again. Do I make myself clear young ewe?!” My growled words had Petula rapidly nodding in terror, she was not getting any sleep tonight as she likely saw the fangs sharpening in my mouth.

I calmly angled my left hoof to point her at the ocean and released a spring wool at half a Thousand Spears worth of strength.

The little sheep went screaming across the water and even skipped painfully several times making several pained noised before flopping into the sea on her belly, it was a good thing it was a calm day or else the rough wave would have made it hard to retrieve her.

A pity, I could have done so much and far worse than splash her into the ocean.

The other animals on the beach broke out in cheers, and I turned my attention solely back to Dormarch who just stared at me completely gob-smacked.

“So, again, anything you want sweetie?” I asked with a heartfelt lilt in my voice. “I think they have ice cream cone made with pets in mind here… it’s quite a nice warm day out for it.”

“Sorry about Petula ruining your day, she’s always been kind of like that.” I turned to see a skunk coming up to me. “Heh, you certainly made a splash today. Names Pepper Clark, animal comedian and there was nothing funny about what she said to your… son I believe you said? Want me to skunk her when she gets back to shore?”

“Make it hard for her to wash the smell out of her wool, aim for her body… her face would just be going way too far. Also wait until the lifeguard gets clear, he’s just doing his job.” The look I received from grey and white furred skunk as she nodded and rubbed her front two paws together was an evil grin, it almost made me rescind the offer for some extra humiliation… almost.

Apparently even I can be outrageously disproportionately vindictive.

“I’ve been saving an ‘Angry One’ for quite a while now and like you said she's had it coming for a long time now and you're the first to actually do something about her… time to let her rip.” Pepper stated as she moved off.

As soon as the otter got Petula back to shore, we winced at the horrified scream we heard and everyone pointedly ignore what happened and even some animals were whistling merry tunes to themselves.

It wasn’t long before a really sweet sent started flowing on the wind.

“What’s that smell?” I asked.

“Smells like your vegetable soup mom.” Really Dormarch, smelled more like a field full of flowers, fresh morning dew grass and… what I would expect absolute ‘peace’ to smell like? There is no way that was a smell that could exist in normal reality.

“Sorry, that’s just me, when I’m happy I spew really good smells instead of the usual stink a skunk is known for. It always comes out as one of your favorite smells, even my friends think it’s an odd supernatural ability to have without being a lab animal, but I’d rather stick to my career as an animal comedian than go off to be a super hero. Really wouldn’t know how to use my super smelly abilities in a fight anyway without being constantly upset at every little thing and I prefer to live jovially. My friend Sunil is the real magic user among my friends, you probably don’t know who that is, but he's a great act to follow.” Pepper stated as she passed by shaking her head, she stopped and slowly backed up to us. “Say need any other favors? Since this is obviously your first time in Paw-tucket and you were just trying to keep to yourselves. What with your leg... and all… anyway, I can do some paw work for you while you relax.”

“How about some ice cream if you have any recommendations?” Yeah my shattered leg was still hurting like a metric ton, but it was settling down after that.

“I’ll go talk to Buttercream Sunday then, she really likes running a stand on hot days while she’s in Paw-tucket. You will never see a rabbit more tweaked out on sugar than her… don’t honestly know how she survives eating so much of the stuff. I swear the animals on our world all have super powers these days, but being able to safely eat chocolate is certainly not one anyone wants to test any time soon!” What a really friendly skunk, its little wonder she ended up in this world if she was as sweet as she smelled.

“So anyway… I’m glad that I got to meet you and not someone else mom.” Dormarch was crying a bit and whining as he snuggled against me.

Eventually a gentle breeze blew and I could smell Pepper coming back with two waffle cones, wrapped in paper and some large scoops of ice cream in them.

“Sorry about some of the jerks among us.” Pepper gave us a bright cheerful smile and a wave of her tail that wafted with such wondrous magical scents, before she wandered over to where a pink furred skunk and purple furred dog were animatedly talking to one another. “Pet safe ice cream that anyone can enjoy, have an excellent day!”

-After some peaceful affectionate snuggling and ice cream later- (Music: Emerald Beach, Sonic Battle)

I smacked the volleyball over the net with both my hooves, we were doing a sit and move game of volleyball, I was of course one of players sitting still as was Ocellus on the other side of the net. We couldn’t move and had to stay in the middle of the field while the other players moved around.

Only the sitters could catch and hold the ball, when we tossed it to our teammates they had to continue playing by regular volleyball rules with us as obstacles. Sitters catching the ball counted as one hit.

I had Marshall and Trip on my team, the hamster was decently competitive. On the other side were Dormarch and Smolder. Smolder was still quiet around me and I wondered if I had to get to her sooner rather than later, I’ve given her plenty of space already.

Right now we were simply having fun and Dormarch just wanted to experience a calm day. He didn’t have any complaints for me aside from my habit of constantly getting injured badly, whether by my own actions or otherwise.

Dormarch also said I was scary, but then again he admitted that he was scared of himself too and we were both scared for each other. He just wanted me to relax and heal, I was doing a good job of that today… aside from meeting Petula that is.

All Dormarch wanted was for me to be okay, which was far easier said than actually done.

If there was one silent complaint I had about this day…. It was that I wasn’t made of glass and was kind of being treated like I was by my friends. At least Smolder wasn’t treating me like glass. It certainly felt like my body was made of glass at times, as I tried to heal the damage to my throbbing agonizing leg pressed up against my belly in a wool cast. I couldn’t exactly go swimming like this, but it was a nice day out anyway.

I tapped Dolly and wondered what she was doing...

Apparently Dolly was having fun socializing with Tusky and the others as they were wandering around Paw-tucket. I wonder if they were just idly lazing about, or were they were out and about looking for something specific. As long as Dolly wasn’t overly worried over anything or panicked about anything other than her attraction for Tusky, I felt I could give them a pass on some suspicions.

Having somewhat promised myself that I’d let Dolly deal with it unless I was direly needed, I’m supposed to be on vacation and not worrying about other things that might pop up.

I reached out and caught the volleyball and then tossed it in Marshall’s direction, he ran forward tripped and his hind legs sent the ball over the net and Smolder narrowly missed stopping it from hitting the sand.

Smolder looked angry, more at herself then anyone, yes we were really going to have to spend a day with each other soon to get any frustration out of her system.

-Time passes-

The sun is setting and now I was just looking at the stars with Dormarch in my lap, also gazing up at the unknown stars like I had seen on every other world I've been to. We were at peace and nothing could ruin the quiet evening. The sand castle we built looked fairly small, but it was a lot of fun for Dormarch and that’s what mattered even if it was already collapsing thanks to the tide.

Marshall was off getting his key to get back home to his friends with Jade’s help as a guide to have it made, he wasn’t leaving yet and still wanted to spend more time here in Paw-tucket and maybe figure out how to get his friends here as well. He was such a sweet little puppy like that, wanting his friends to experience this happy slice of paradise.

“Yeah, she needs at least five tomato baths, been saving that one for a while.” Glancing in the direction of the voice and the mistress of peculiar magical smells, Pepper came up to us. “Hey never got your names before. These are my friends Zoe and Mitzi. Mitzi has a similar ability to me, she can replicate any scent she knows… now that is a super power that would throw off any dog or anyone that can track by smell, plus you can make anything with a nose leave you alone with particularly unpleasant aromas.”

“Yeah, well, we might not see each other much, we’re not going to be around for more than a week or two Pepper.” Looking to my side at Pepper as she took up residence on the slightly sandy beach towel to look at the stars with us. “What’s the point in telling you our names at this rate?”

“I still say you need far more than a month to recover mom, also you’ve been doing so well today about simply relaxing.” Dormarch stated as he nosed into my chin before going back to looking at the stars. “It’s actually helping with your recovery.”

“Still, it would be nice to remember a friendly face and put a name to it to remember even if we were to never meet again.” The pink skunk stated. “You seem like a person that likes to make others happy, but don’t do so at the expense of your own happiness, learned that lesson the hard way. Mitzi by the way, a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Yeah, my mom actually has a problem with that. In that she can’t avoid helping people in danger, as in it being a literal issue where she functionally can’t stop even if she wanted to. I’m just glad she’s been able to rest today.” Dormarch looked at the two skunks and a dog giving us curious glances. “I’m Dormarch, this is my mother Pom, our last name is Lambchop.”

“Really?” The dog snorted at hearing my last name was Lambchop. She kind of had Princess Twilight’s coloring, just in the form of a dog. Really weird, makes me wonder if she was this worlds version of the ‘Princess of Friendship’. “Zoe Trent. No special abilities like these two aside from looking good. So want to listen to some singing?”

“Maybe later. Can I ask a question, are there medical facilities around here?” There was an uneasy pause.

“Would you really expect animals to be very good at medical practices?” A somewhat nervous Pepper responded. “Comedy is the best medicine to me, but it’s not going to heal broken bones.”

“Actually my adoptive older sister’s step mother is a highly effective nurse dog, also we’ve met a hospital full of rodents that helped keep mom alive when she had a serious injury.” Oh right, that, it was a little bit of an odd situation at the time Dormarch.

“Still it would be kind of hard for pets to practice medicine safely on each other Dormarch.” Really should have thanked those mice, rats and squirrels from the Rescue Aid Society more.

“Paw-tucket is generally safe, so that isn’t usually an issue… though some animals would rather wait until they heal to come here. Since if they come here to heal, they’ll be heavily scrutinized. Imagine having a broken leg one day and coming here to heal off the injury for weeks in what is basically frozen time and then the next day back home your owner finds out you are perfectly fine.” Yeah, I can see where the problem would be Zoe. “That is not to say we don’t have medical facilities here in Paw-tucket, it’s just that they aren’t very large or in use very often.”

“Why did you bring it up?” Mitzi asked after a moment.

“Well Mitzi can you do a particular powerful pain reliever kind of smell alongside mixing in with Pepper’s unusual happy scents?” As I found out, Mitzi could indeed provide scents that have a rather powerful pain relief effect much to Pepper and Zoe’s surprise. The only scents Mitzi couldn’t replicate was the 'one good or horrendous scent fits all' thing Pepper does.

Dormarch even stated outright that Mitzi was producing magical, judging by the scan he could do with his eyes, scents that had the effects she needed them to have. So she could produce magical medicinal gas... yeah, quite normal that.

Take Pepper’s ‘what smells best or worst to you’ ability to give me the smell of ‘absolute peace’ and add it in alongside Mitzi’s ‘replicate almost any smell’ ability for a pain reliever gas and I was feeling so very nice and cozy afterwards.

Normal medications probably wouldn’t help me much anymore, but magical forms of medication still could, thus these two skunks were going to be my new best friends over the next couple of days.

The smells already made for a relaxing evening for Dormarch and me on the beach as we looked up at the stars together with some new friends.

“Can I just say that there is something about you that I really like Pom?” Stated Zoe in a chipper manner that made me groan quite audibly. I’m surprised I haven’t heard that thirty times today from all the canines that were around, I’m actually quite thankful they all gave me space.

-Shanty-

“Did you be trying to search the icy slopes?” I asked as Dolly as her new friends be fretting about finding evil space cats running around doing who knows what.

“Not yet… wait since when could you understand me Chanty?” Dolly asked with a raised her right ear in curiosity as her helmet resting at the back of her neck.

“It’s Shanty with an S Dolly, and since we be getting here obviously.” I be wondering about those cats I was told about.

Snooky Wookums be making age reducing rays, mind control collars, killer robots and death lasers in general just to name a few things he’s hit Dog Star Patrol with specifically. So there was obviously something to be being very worried about going on here and who knows what that cat currently be building up to. He be sounding like a really dangerous individual, something to be looking forward to personally and keeping entirely away from Pom!

Agent 9-L is being a stealth expert and spy, so even if Snooky had been seen by a local and was having trouble getting stuff himself. There was being the even sneakier of the two cats still getting Snooky the things he might be needing to be building something bad for Pom’s continued decent health.

“We’ll try the ski resort tomorrow eh.” Tusky be saying with a nod. “We’re going to need more paws on the ground soon, Snooky is never this quiet without it being something quite bad. If he only shows up when he’s ready to unleash whatever he has going on, then that’s going to be a major problem eh.”

“Then I, ‘Cut Lass’, be joining in on the search then, we do not want to be worrying Pom with this.” I be saying with a smile as I took out a bottle of rum. “I’ll be bringing Dodo with me to help with the search. Call him Optimal Ostrich as a code name.”

463. No dragon your hooves.

-Petopia, early morning the next day, travelers’ tent, after breakfast, Pom-

“So today I’m spending time with Smolder, sorry, but it will be without you Ocellus.” Ocellus gave me a clearly worried look as if she wanted to say something, but simply couldn’t because of the atmosphere of this world was drowning in love and friendship. That someone like Petula made it through was worrying, but I wasn’t going to focus on that too much. “Dormarch you will have to find something to do today, maybe you can hang out with Marshall? Maybe you test out his water cannon or upgrade the coding in his pack. My suggestion is that you have fun today like we did yesterday.”

“Where will you be going?” Something about the way she asked that had me wondering if Shanty was now in on whatever was going on with the alien dogs. That’s not paranoia if I’m right.

“I want to go to the theme park, there’s shows, games and some things I want to do there to relax… hopefully I won’t be mobbed by canines.” I had at least twenty following me back to the tent last night. At least none of them stuck around, but I still woke up covered in dogs… at least they were ones I knew the names of. “Won’t be able to go on any of the rides though.”

Too much vibrations caused my shattered leg quite a bit of pain. I calmly took up a Sitrus Berry and started chomping it down while motioning to Smolder to come with me.

Waiting outside of the tent was Roxy, our peppy tour guide would be showing us the way to the theme park.

-Back at the tent, Dolly-

Again I promised myself to spend some time with Dormarch later, he was off to have fun with Marshall and would hopefully be nowhere near what we were going to be doing today. My little bro is still having nightmares even while cuddled up to Pom and hugging onto her for dear life, he needs to spend time with a friend and get his mind off things.

“Change of plans, we’ll check the ski slopes later for a hidden base in the mountain… wouldn’t be the first time we discovered a villain’s lair burrowed into the landscape. We’re instead going to head to Petopia’s junkyard, Hot Dog got us some satellite views of Snooky being in the area as recently as thirty minutes ago.” Mum’s alien species being inflatable still weirded me out somewhat, but she was fairly talkative once you got to know her. I can see why the little pink pooch was considered one of Dog Star Patrol’s friendlier members and negotiator. “Scoot will be in the area, so we’ll have him around with his expertise in mechanical engineering skills and scrap scrounging… apparently he’s become a deft paw when it comes to fixing machinery.”

“Where is the junkyard being?” Asked Shanty, hey I’m getting better at this, as she cuddled her happily warbling partner’s head.

“… oh… well…” Tusky showed me the pad they were using to communicate with their friends in orbit around Petopia, this world was rather colorful.

The map showed a lot of areas and where our functional god given tent was in comparison, the map marked the location of the junkyard.

“It’s near the theme park Pom is going to…” I said dully before bring my front paws up to my face and slowly sliding them downwards. “Oh my freaking dog, why?!”

“Maybe our capture of Snooky will be quiet eh?” Like the bravado Tusky, but from what you told me… when Snooky goes loud, he really goes stupidly loud in an exceptional manner.

“Come on Tusky, even you know about as well as I do that that is really highly doubtful if we try to run down Snooky.” The small pink dog that could become a parade float didn’t have to sound so ominous about it. “He always has something or always finds a way to slow us down, at most we’ll find out something of what he’s up to.”

We turned to move and spotted Eyespots sitting there looking at us curiously.

“Uh… you won’t tell Pom will you?” The flat look I was getting reminded me that ‘Oh-Sell-Us’ couldn’t currently talk, apparently too much love and friendship in the air makes opening her mouth a risky proposition. “Look I want to at least try and keep this quiet, Pom needs far more than this break and you know it. Even if it kills me she’s getting it dog darn it!”

The shapeshifting bug simply closed her eyes and nodded solemnly, then got up and started to leave. She soon transformed into a nondescript looking gecko and crawled off. Where in the world was she going?

We’ll worry about that later, we have evil cats to bring down, and fast! Mostly before Pom got dragged into any kind of trouble.

-Outside Paw-tucket’s theme park, Pom-

“Pet World Theme Park… really?” I said as looked up at the sign.

“Well this is a world of pets Pom, it’s kind of on brand with all the adorable going on here.” At least Smolder was being cordial even as she twirled her combat ribbon and idly played with it.

“So where would you suggest we start Roxy?” I glanced behind us and all the dogs following me hid behind various objects, at this point the count was up to forty canines and growing. Please let today be quiet like the beach trip. I’m so glad I can push all the grains of sand off my body using my wool, it would be hard to stay clean otherwise

“Well you can go on the… no, wait… bumpy rides like that with that leg? Well the games here don’t require a lot of movement, you’ll certainly enjoy the food court for sure and there’s plenty of shows to see being performed by pets off all kinds.” At least Roxy took the time to consider my current health situation and I did kind of feel like seeing pets doing tricks today. “Ooh, let’s check the itinerary and see who’s on today!”

When Roxy ran off, Smolder turned to me with a flat look and crossed her arms without saying anything.

I considered her quietly, but didn’t say anything as Smolder searched my eyes with hers and then we both turned back to Roxy when she came back with a pamphlet in her mouth. Things were already starting out rocky, how do I talk to a dragon that might resent me as being her caretaker?

“Here’s the pamphlet for today, now have fun!” Roxy then ran off to do her own thing, surprisingly she wasn’t going to hang around and fawn over me like other dogs were doing. “I’ve got other things to do today!”

“Let’s see… Tightrope Turtle Tricks, Tiger Tire Trampolines, The Sensational Sunil Show… maybe we’ll see that one, I’m curious about the guy. We’ve plenty of time to wander around until then.” I looked up and noticed Smolder was looking around and then she eventually turned to me. “Do you want to go on some of the rougher rides Smolder, I’ll wait for you since I… I simply can’t.”

“You know, I didn’t think you had it in you.” Smolder stated idly putting both her arms behind her head, I flicked on of my tied back ears at her to let her know I was listening. “That whole thing with that sheep Petula at the beach yesterday, didn’t think you’d go for a double to make the lesson stick.”

“Lambkin are generally sheep farmers, never had a pet sheep myself… far too many dogs for that. In general misbehaving sheep just tend to get a light flick on the nose with a gentle hoof. One thing is for certain, nobody really liked her and she’s a sad lonely little thing.” Getting side eyed by my dragon companion, I looked at the theme park and all the pets wandering around happily enjoying their day. This was a world made for pets, built by pets and in general it was continuing to be a peaceful paradise of friendly animals I could talk to. “I kind of feel like we went overboard, if it weren’t for the cheers of the many other pets too polite to deal with her. All of us have our ugly sides, even me… I’m sure if you were to hurt what a dragon cares about, it would have been a really stupid thing to do.”

“Yeah, sometimes being direct works… sometimes it doesn’t.” Huffed out Smolder in a noncommittal fashion. She was probably making a point that our current camaraderie was a bit up in the air at the moment. “I would have admittedly done something if she said something like that to Ocellus.”

“So what do you want to do first Smolder?” I passed the pamphlet to her and paid attention to her mood. We’ve tried to hash out our issues and at least Smolder was willing to assist during the whole ‘Counter Invasion’ campaign.

The orange dragon looked at the pamphlet, sighed and actually began looking through it.

“Let’s go play some games I guess.” It seemed Smolder was working through her feelings and I wasn’t trying to rush her, but I really wanted her to let go of her resentment towards me today.

I didn’t “need” her to let go of the resentment, she could feel that all she wants as long as she was okay.

We both made our way into the theme park proper.

-The nearby Paw-tucket Junkyard, Dolly-

Okay, we got here quickly enough so that cat had to be here… how dangerous could someone named ‘Snooky Wookums’ really be?

-Pet World Theme Park, game stands, Smolder-

“Do you… do you hate me taking care of you?” Had been looking at the games until Pom spoke up, I looked at her and felt a mix of emotions.

I feel like it was a little too late to have someone caring for my needs.

“No... If anything I should be apologizing to you for being so grumpy with all you’ve been putting yourself through on our behalf, but…” I trailed off.

“Dragon’s need to be seen as tough, but didn’t you and your brother Garble help with that?” It would be Pom to bring up friendship, which I considered a priceless.

I was a little upset that Ocellus couldn’t currently talk to me and thinking of taking it out on Pom for us ending up here without getting any goodbyes to our friends in the last world. It was likely Arceus’s fault and attack Pom for things out of her control made me feel like I was kicking a puppy and then kicking Fluttershy afterwards in short order.

“Dragon Lord Ember may be able to order us to do things, but she can’t change our personalities or our base natures, much less how we interpret said orders. Wonder how it works on dragons that are deaf? Ember can only do so much, though she really likes Thorax and knows the relationship would be hard to keep up with.” Being dumb, aggressive and generally unpleasant to those with far shorter lives than we have felt like a really bad thing to me now. “The change has to come from our end of things and we’d have to want it.”

“Do you want it though?” Pom patted a spot on the bench next to her as she took a seat and flinched, but no hissing noise or gasp escaped her lips. In how many pieces was her leg shattered? I can’t imagine what broken bones are like given the whole dragon toughness things, “To change that is, I didn’t want to change personally… but now I have fangs, breathe fire and I’m sorely missing my quiet life. I used to be a meek individual… a part of me still is I guess.”

It’ll be like a blink for me, everyone I know with shorter lifespans like Pom’s implied hers to currently be will just be gone one day. Pom might not even make it to Hearth’s Warming, yet she still seemed so very strong to me.

Ocellus will live as long as I keep feeding her powerful enough love. It is a nice thought that I can love someone forever, but dragons are kind of… jerks. So I was even unsure if our relationship would last the test of time itself. I currently feel like a jerk with Pom still being so nice to me.

“How much pain are you in at the moment?” Quick change of topic, my curiosity flared after seeing her wince with a twitch of her hind leg wrapped in a thick mass of wool.

“Yes.” That answered my question and didn’t at the same time Pom, how can you be so infuriatingly caring about others in this state? You’re so much like Fluttershy in caring more about others needs than your own, Fluttershy is everyone’s favorite teacher at the ‘school of friendship’ for a reason. Only Pom was more battered, beaten and yet unbroken with a strong will the beggar’s belief that she was still going. I learned stuff with Fluttershy that you wouldn’t learn anywhere else, Pom also taught us things like how to hold down a job, how to haggle and many other things you wouldn’t expect. Spending time with Pom has been very educational for me on a number of levels, wish I had that kind of strength and I’m not talking physically. Physically was only a matter of time, emotionally, mentally… how does Pom do it? “I don’t want to ruin this whole day by complaining about every small thing Smolder.”

It’s not a small thing Pom, it wasn’t small at all! That you weren’t complaining about it was making me respect you more and I absolutely hated it. I did respect Pom even if I was somewhat grudgingly holding onto feelings about her that weren’t conducive to our continued friendship.

“Do you realize how hard it is to be around you sometimes?” I stated as I sat down next to Pom. “Ocellus comes from a place where she was raised by her family and her community…”

“Whereas you come from a place where you were lucky enough to even know who your biological brother was and…” Having cut me off, Pom was soon to be cut off by me.

“My parents hardly cared for us, dragons are not big on community or family. Still, my brother Garble loves me even before dragons started coming around to the idea of friendship outside our constant, stale and hackneyed jockeying shows of strength or whatever that one dragon named Crackle has going on. Despite how goofy Crackle looks, nobody ever messed with her in the slightest… in fact she even scares larger dragons.” Bringing my legs up to my chest, I tied my combat ribbon to my left horn and wrapped my arms around my legs. “At least we were fed… wonder how dragons make it past being a wingless whelp sometimes when it’s a lonely and brutal existence we live. I’m considering Spike’s history and how he was lucky to have a family that was willing to raise him and care about. Yes, I know we’ve kind of had this conversation before Pom.”

“Couldn’t be any more different than Ocellus huh?” Pom leaned back and put her right hoof around me and pulled me into a hug, I didn’t resist it… but I wasn’t appreciating the gesture as much as I should be.

“I know I helped out a lot, but I still feel kind of useless or left behind while you… you’re like a shooting star Pom. On that’s going to eventually burn out and will do so while shining as brightly as possible. Shanty… no, nobody among us or anyone who would call you a friend would want that to happen to you Pom.” What I’m talking about was Pom’s likely inevitable death, apparently it was something so bad that at one point she wants to die before it actually occurs. “That I can’t stop what’s coming, it makes a dragon feel useless and that was the worst feeling in the world when you were supposed to be something seen as strong and unstoppable.”

“Nobody can stop life Smolder, that which lives has to die eventually and life comes at you fast when you don’t have a very long expectancy. I’ve found it is generally messy, chaotic and downright cruel at times to the unprepared. Don’t know how Lambkin survive with all the mega fauna on Equus running around at times, but the nomadic alpaca sure keep checking up on the lambkin to make sure they are doing somewhat okay. That is to say no matter how powerful, there are simply some things that can’t be stopped without a concerted effort… like with Moon Cell.” Pom just looked at the several games on display that you could win prizes at, probably thinking of something she can win for me. She would be like that, wouldn’t she? “Other times, life is probably one of the most precious gifts we have and we won’t know what we’re missing until it is all completely gone. I can imagine you having forgotten this conversation sleeping on a pile of gold, jewels and treasures you’d fill a hoard with and Ocellus as your beloved hoard centerpiece. I want you to at least have some good memories of me, at least for as long as you will remember them. You’ll likely forget me when I’m gone from your lives, simply out of sight and out of mind after long enough."

“Forget someone like you? That would be pretty hard for me to do, even if I managed to start pushing a thousand. You are completely unforgettable you stupid lambkin.” There was no heat in my words. If there was one thing I would never forget, it was that Pom existed, was a part of my life and that she cared more for me than she really ever should ever have. Even when I could clearly take care of myself. “I’d find a way to carry the memories of you. Even if I came to hate those memories, I would still hold onto them for dear life. Memories of times both good and bad are what makes us who we are, would you really ever want to forget the time you spent with a true friend over some petty little squabble and how long would you bitterly hold onto that grudge for? That’s what Princess Sparkle asked me when I had a falling out with Yona once. I want some true friends that won’t be around me just because I’ll eventually have a big hoard, if I even want one, I want them to be around me for me and not what I have.”

“That’s very mature Smolder, which doesn’t help when the tough girl act is only a part of you and not all of who you are.” This whole years’ worth of carnage we’ve experienced was going to likely haunt my nightmares Pom, especially when you’re gone. “You haven’t spent much time away from Ocellus throughout this whole thing you know, maybe you needed some space to consider things on your own for a while. You don’t have to spend the day with…”

“No, I haven’t spent much time away from Ocellus and yes I do want to spend this day with you. Could spend more time hanging with Shanty, playing with Dolly, talking to Dodo even if he won’t be able to produce many gems for me and I like Dormarch alright so there’s probably stuff I can do with him too. I’ve just been kind of closing myself off from everyone, but for the record… I don’t hate you.” There I said it and I might have wrapped my left claw around Pom’s back and returned the side hug. “Stop smiling about the hug and try to live for as long as you possibly can for all of us Pom. You’re the closest thing Shanty has to a mother at the moment. I think I’m far too old for one, but if I did want one… also I want to try the darts.”

"I may be tired and weary Smolder, but I don't plan on dying anytime soon..." Pom definitely meant that she would try. "I don't want to die as a Chrysomallus, but if I have no other choice... then I'll always choose all of you over my own survival. Just be ready for that to happen if it comes to pass. Now let's go play some darts."

-A minute later, Pom-

I think Smolder and I had something of a breakthrough.

Sticky dart spheres for the requisite dart boards, I can kind of understand why they wouldn’t want the sharp pointier variety of darts for throwing around. The pet at this stand was a mouse and he had some prizes depending on how many points we scored, he was fairly cheesy with his lines.

Three for me and Smolder. We were evenly matched, my left leg acting like a lacrosse stick and Smolder’s claws that can wrap around the squishy little tennis ball like things that stuck to the board we threw them at.

“So what do you two gals want?” The mouse said cheerfully. The prizes were small, but at least they didn’t look cheaply made. This world was basically paradise and relaxation for pets. So while money might be a thing, it wasn’t necessary to enjoy the experience of being in Paw-tucket. A majority of the animals were exceptionally friendly.

“I’ll take the blue ladybug shaped pillow.” It was a plush toy, but Smolder was likely calling it a pillow to save face. Probably wanted it because it reminded her of Ocellus, that or she was going to give it to Ocellus as a gift.

Something dragons don’t do often is give things away. I’d understand not giving away gems or jewels, as they needed to eat after all, but other things they don’t need and weren’t important to them? Well Smolder seemed like a dragon that didn’t gave into her greed very often.

Something exploded nearby and we both looked as a splash of sparks appeared in the air after a loud whistling noise. Oh, it was just fireworks, a little early in the day for them… I wonder who was firing them off or was it an accident and they were meant for the evening?

There was no screaming and running, though a few animals looked confused by the slightly powerful fireworks going off.

We continued to play some of the games peacefully, but I still glanced in that direction worriedly.

-Paw-tucket Junkyard, Tusky-

“How does he already have missiles, there’s no way he could have gotten those ready in such a short amount of time?!” Mammoth Mutt screamed as she ducked behind a pile of junk to avoid an explosion, we were being bombarded with artillery by Snooky who was attacking us with what was a very recently built salvage robot.

“He is being very resourceful eh!” I successfully blocked the next incoming explosion with my fang or tusk.

“Those are just jumped up fireworks, what about the tin can robot he’s piloting?” Dolly screamed from behind her board as she was knocked back slightly by a direct explosive impact. “Where’s my Metal Hound Five when I need it? Oh my dog, I hope Pom isn’t being drawn towards all of this!”

The robot’s body was cylindrical with independently turning upper torso. On said tin can shaped cat robot was two backwards bending chicken legs, two arms with three claws with one opposing claw between the other two and the whole thing was topped with a pair of triangles with what I recognized to be radar, tracking an auxiliary equipment. It had a mechanical tentacle for a tail that looked like it could install a laser, but apparently Snooky had yet to get around to finishing the laser for it. The shoulders had two ‘fireworks’ launching cannons, given enough time Snooky would definitely upgrade it to shooting more destructive actual missiles.

On the robots back we saw a massive rectangular box attached to the upper torso. Said Box looked to house the power source and be storage for the random bits of scrap the machine had picked up, given there was scrap sticking out of it an odd manner. There was a red tinted curved glass window in the upper torso where the things eyes would be and behind it we could see Snooky at the controls piloting the machine.

“Does this means that there’s an actual super villain in Paw-tucket?!” Scoot shouted from where he was cowering from the explosions. “Wow, can’t be safe anywhere these days!”

“Yes, but Dog Star Patrol is already on the case eh!” I called out as I drilled through the next piece of thrown metal apart before it could knock a pile of scrap over onto Scoot.

“You’ll never take me Dog Star Patrol, after the whole Drooly thing, I’m not about to take any of your newest members lightly mahahahahahaha! I hope you like my Mad Cat Machine, it’s a killer!” The robot grabbed a piece of metal with its left claw and threw it at an inflating Mammoth Mutt trying to pry herself out of a junk pile. It flew at my friend like a javelin intending to run her through, only for Dolly to quickly leap in its path and I think I saw a telltale spark of green triangles in her eyes before she grabbed the metal bar by the tip before it skewered her or Mammoth Mutt through. Dolly promptly spun it about and sent it hurtling right back at the machine spinning horizontally, it slammed into the approximation of the chest on the Mad Cat Machine forcing it to stumble backwards and dented its armor somewhat. “Agh… you’ll pay for that, it’s going to take me forever to get that dent out with the limited tools I have at my disposal!”

“When you said Snooky went loud, I didn’t think you meant it this literally!” Another whistling firework caused everyone to cringe at the noise piercing into their skulls and Dolly was blasted off her paws. “Bow-whacka-OW!”

I quickly approached and drew Snooky’s attention by spinning up my tooth to create noise and stop Snooky from trying to hit Dolly with another annoyingly loud whistling firework missile.

As I tried to get close enough to drill my tooth into the machine to tear holes in it, the right claw opened wide and revealed a nozzle… please don’t tell me he managed to successfully install a flamethrower in that thing. Not again, as an ice planet native I don’t like heat!

Really hated it when this Snooky deployed fire, plasma or other hot weapons. Sure my super large tooth was practically an invulnerable shield as much as Dolly’s skateboard, the only problem was that it didn’t protect the gums holding said tooth in place from taking damage.

This was one cat I would never like eh!

-Pet World Theme Park, Pom-

“Well it seems like someone got in trouble, but I don’t see much of a smoke or fire that might need us to help out.” That was a good thing Smolder.

Lots of noise, but no screaming or panicking, just some mild confusion. Probably some pet eager to see the fireworks display a little early.

We had fun with water based games that required us to pick up small floating things with paper paddles, did a strength test with a hammer and more, like whack a can of food with a plush mallet in the shape of a can opener. The strength test one was one Smolder liked in particular.

“Huh, didn’t think I’d see milk bottles after the dart boards. So are they easy to knock over or are they glued together?” My query was met with a scoff from the proprietor.

“Hey, I’m not some scamming carny. Does the young horned lizard want a try?” Said the weasel, not the most common thing I would expect to be a pet. I would correct him that Smolder was a dragon, but it didn’t really seem important.

Smolder managed to knock the bottles down and earned a voucher for a bag of popcorn we can save for the show later. We came to a more sports centered game booth, basketball shooting that was run by a monkey. It made me wonder what people wouldn’t have as a pet in the world these animals came from.

Fun, but no prizes, Smolder enjoyed the challenge to get the most number of throws with me. Maybe I should challenge Smolder more, she seemed to appreciate me not giving her any kid gloves. We tied at basketball shooting, Smolder was more likely to keep score than I was.

We came up a to some games of real skill… ring toss and corn hole. Little bits of fun here and there were making Smolder relax. I easily won the ring toss game, but Smolder was obscenely good at corn hole.

Smolder mentioned something about being a ringer at games like horseshoes and corn hole for her griffon friend Gallus a few times. A griffon could be a good friend for a dragon if they both didn’t greed out of control.

Smolder even got to go on the roller coaster. Though I was a bit wary of a rollercoaster built and run by animals, I apparently had nothing to worry about as I waited for Smolder to get off. As long as Smolder was happy, this day was going perfectly well and she seemed to be enjoying things so far.

I was getting kind of hungry so we stopped for lunch.

The food court here… was exceedingly impressive. I went for the vegetable taco bar with meat substitutes to get over my recently acquired cravings, whereas Smolder tried a smattering of all the things available that didn’t look like outright ‘pet food’. We didn’t exactly have the gems to feed her, which was the other thing that was making Smolder cranky before.

“Nice food court, really good hot sauce.” Dragons like Smolder would definitely appreciate a good batch of nachos, because they were crunchy and you could put extra spicy sauce on them.

Don’t know where the animals around here got ghost peppers from. If they come from all over their world to be here, then it wouldn’t be too hard to bring in a few I guess. I should grab a few from a supplier for Smolder’s meal tonight, also maybe plant a few Sitrus Berry trees while I’m at it for animals later on when we weren’t around anymore.

“Are you enjoying yourself Smolder?” My concerns were met with a bright toothy smile, note to self that crunchy foods improves a dragon’s mood by quite a lot.

“Yeah, but I kind of want to do some sillier or girly stuff.” Girly stuff, well we can do that Smolder!

“Okay, we still have plenty of time before The Sensational Sunil Show.” I looked around and quickly found Jade idling about on a warm bench in the sun. “Hey Jade, do you know where we can find some girly stuff to do around here?”

Jade Catkin’s ears flicked in acknowledgment that she heard me, she stretched out and stood up. She took a moment to think and then the black cat opened her mouth.

-Five minutes later-

Smolder and Jade looked a bit ridiculous playing dress up together, but they were having fun as I watched on quietly. After enough playing around, Smolder finally got herself another large ribbon. One that would be fit for her when she was much older and it came in a nice bright blue color, running theme for smolder as blue looked good on her.

“Can we do that picture booth together Pom?” What… did Smolder just suggest what I thought she did? “A picture tells a thousand words, but it’s also a story and a memory of better times too. I want the biggest prints they’ve got.”

Smolder took some pictures while looking ridiculous and not caring, she even got in a picture with me and Jade Catkin all smiling together.

There wasn’t much time left and I wanted to see Sunil’s show, Jade led us to the theme parks stage where I saw a mongoose named Sunil setting up the stage and Pepper Clark was there helping him looking like a stage hand and assistant.

Cape, top hat and magician’s wand, Sunil certainly had the look going for him.

“Don’t know if he is any good, but this should be interesting at the very least.” Smolder didn’t really expect much from a pet, as she shared some popcorn with me.

The pets here definitely got up to stuff they wouldn’t be able to get away with without someone noticing something being entirely off with them. Basically the leeway by being here gave them time to work on having some unique hidden talents their owners will never know about. Pets had their own dreams too.

“Hello and welcome to my show.” Sunil stated while twirling his wand in his left paw as he places his hat down to swirl his wand around the hat’s brim.

Sunil reached deeply into the hat and sharply pulled at something, then Sunil’s tail seemed to suck up into his cape as he started pulling himself out of his hat backwards while disappeared into his cape.

“What the?” Smolder was as mystified as I was when he came out of the hat his right limb in it and still coming out of the cape.

The audience cheered.

Sunil looked at his tail and very slowly his right arm let go of it and pulled into the cape and came out of his hat the rest of the way.

He stuck his arm back into the hat and saw it coming out from under the cape again and made his arm drag his cape across the stage and away from himself, he gave the audience a curious grin before he pulled his arm out of the hat.

“Heh, well how often do you see a magician pull themselves out of a hat?” Sunil said jovially and got a bunch of chuckling all around.

“Hey, save some of the laughs for my comedy act Sunil!” Whined Pepper with a good nature as she wiggled a rubber chicken at the magician.

“Sorry Pepper, would you like some flowers to cheer you up?” Sunil reached into his left armpit and pulled out a bushels of flowers in a rotating motion as an apology, the thing was that the bouquet was far bigger than he was.

There were traditional tricks for magician and then there was what Sunil was doing. He was a mongoose and not a unicorn who could fundamentally bend and warp reality to his whims. So it was fairly amazing to see him have such an advanced grasp on magic as he does.

Pepper took a whiff of the flowers and then turned around to skunk the stage with a highly positive aroma that started creating a fog. Sunil winked at the audience before he slowly stepped back into it to prepare for his next trick.

When the fog disappeared, Sunil was no longer there on stage.

“Wonder what the Sensational Sunil will do next?” Sunil said from right next to me, wearing his cape, I didn’t even see him pick it up and it had been laying outside the happy smelling fog Pepper created. Quite a number of pets leaped away in shock as nobody had seen him exiting the stage and getting into the crowd. “Huh, oh wait, that’s me!”

“Sunil!” Pepper got a little fake angry again.

With a laugh, Sunil the mongoose climbed back onto stage with Pepper’s help.

“Ahem anyway, now for my next trick, wait… what was my previous one?” Reaching to the underside of his right wrist with his left paw, he seemed to be reminding us that he was only wearing a cape, hat and had his magician’s wand back tucked under his left armpit after having it turned into a bouquet. That said bouquet was still on the stage too was a testament to his skill. “Now let’s see… my grocery list, Pepper’s gag props list, Minka’s paint supplies, Penny’s imported bamboo shoots…”

As he spoke he started pulled out a notebooks worth of cards all linked together in a chain out from under his right paw like he was pulling a lot cars and listing a lot of names and stuff that was actually written on the cards.

Slowly the cards piled up around Sunil’s waist. Slowly the pile reached up to his head and once he got to what was apparently the last card, he final raised it out of the pile of cards covering his entire body.

“Aha here it is!” Said Sunil raising the card high out of the pile of chained cards he was in, quite a few animals stomped in excitement. Really liked his accent, made him sound fancy and quite sophisticated. “No… wait… it’s the dry cleaning bill for my cape, ooh that’s going to hurt me in sunflower seeds to Hamtaro later!”

The normal paw pulled back into the pile of cards, then Sunil started stuffing them all into his hat while extricating himself out of the pile he made. He looked at the audience and flipped the hat over once it was full of the cards, nothing fell out. He turned it sideways and even had a spotlight shined on the inside of it to reveal nothing in his hat and then on him personally… but most of the crowd was started laughing.

Why the laughter? Because Sunil was now wearing a grey rabbit costume he had somehow acquired in the seconds between pulling out the last card and when he started pushing the mass of chained together cards, like tied together scarves, back into his hat.

“Huh, what is it… why is everyone laughing?” Sunil asked confused while rubbing at one of the costumes floppy ears.

“Uh, Sunil, you got a little… well… everything all over you. Let’s just say you went total cotton tail for this magic show.” That just made the laughing worse as Sunil finally realized he was wearing an adorable bunny costume and blushed.

“Oh my goodness gracious… where did this suit come from? At least it is being on brand right?” Sunil smiled at the audience in the full body rabbit costume that covered everything except his face and wiggled his nose. The rabbits in the audience certainly seemed to appreciate that.

The follow up act by Pepper was just as good as Sunil’s, a string laughs every few seconds. Afterwards it was getting late so Smolder and I did a few last things together before setting out for the tent.

“This was actually a pretty good day Pom.” This was said after Smolder promptly finished off the popcorn she shared with me as we watched the fireworks together. It seemed like they weren’t all used up in that accident earlier… I sure hoped Dolly wasn’t the cause of whatever accident happened earlier.

I continued to carry Smolder’s ladybug ‘pillow’ for her on the way back to the tent as she wrapped her new ribbon around her neck with the bow at the back of it.

-Paw-tucket Junkyard, Dolly-

“That cat… is a total psycho!” I said with horror in my wide eyes as I laid there breathing roughly. I was glad I was only lightly scorched or else Pom might have come running if she felt me getting hurt.

I did not want Pom going anywhere near that Snooky guy. His name was silly, but he himself sure as dog wasn't!

“Not only that, he got away eh.” Tusky stated forlornly despite us managed to force Snooky into retreating, he got in quite a few good hits with his tooth.

Giant Dog managed to use her enlargement ability to tank through the flames and slam into the machine few times rattling the thing pretty badly when she could gain some momentum to ram her inflated body into it. She rolled around like a fleshy and bouncy wrecking ball.

Even I got a few good licks in with my triangle thing, launched a blizzard magic forged icicle into one of its leg joints and bashed it in several places with my board.

“Well we warned you Snooky was bad news Caper Canine… might want Hot Dog on the ground team if Snooky is going for more fire based weaponry again. Hot Dog is from a species of alien canine immune to fire, heat, lava, energy beams with an emphasized focused on heat like microwave lasers and just about anything else high temperature like solar plasma. Hot Dog’s home world is constantly volcanic as is his people’s tempers, he’s probably the calmest member of his whole species and that’s really saying something that he actually manages to use his anger in a constructive manner with his pyrokinesis.” There was a pause as the alien pink Chihuahua shuddered. “Snooky is going to be even worse the next time we see him, we just simply caught him flat pawed in a gearing up phase and he still got away with a lot of that scrap!”

-Snooky-

Dog Star Patrol was as annoyingly goody two shoes as ever, still managed to evade them all and made it to the fallback base with my loot. I hopped out of the Mad Cat Machine and made my way to get some sleep and a glass of stolen fresh milk that would be quickly dirtied by my paws.

Milk in a dirty glass with ice, the drink of evil champions.

A shadow of something moved on my machine and I quickly turned to shine a light on what had fell of off and clanged against the floor… no other movement, just a bit of scrap metal. Nothing to worry about.

"Agent 9-L?" Didn’t smell anything like a canine around either, just the general smell of brimstone… my favorite smell that all my workshops have. It really annoyed Dog Star Patrol when they found my hideouts.

-Ocellus-

I opened my left eye and made sure Snooky was gone and the coast was clear before transforming back into a gecko and sneaking out of the place.

Turning into and object like rocks is easy, rocks are the least likely things people would pay attention to. In this case turning into a rusty bit of scrap metal was the better option after making a slight mistake, the thing that would usually give a changeling away while in the form of an object was their eyes and I had kept mine closed until I was sure Snooky left the area.

Hope Smolder doesn’t mind me coming back in a little late, I got some things to tell Dolly’s new friends as I knew what Snooky was doing here and it wasn't good. Snooky had been rambling angrily about it and how those dogs from Dog Star Patrol always kept getting in his way quite openly to himself.

464. Fun with Gubezleeb.

-Petopia, in space, early morning the next day, Brainy-

“I think I finally got most of it out of my system.” So fairly sure of that I had returned to my previous comportment, I sat up straight without a hint of fear.

“Then why are you hugging that ewe toy to yourself.” Flatly stated Hot Dog, the red furred long bodied alien canine, who was giving my ewe toy a suspect look as I held it in my paws affectionately.

“Can’t a dog have a hobby and a strangely deep rooted love of adorable ewes?” My earnest statement made Hot Dog narrow his eyes at me. “Also… I’m thinking about getting into writing.”

There was a long and very tense silence.

“Finally, you got something to help you relax in your spare time, I was sure that you had a stick so far up there and that you’d never stop being so serious all the time!” It seems Hot Dog stupefied me into blinking owlishly at him. For a second there I thought Hot Dog was going to blow up at me in his usual flare of fire and anger, then again he was the calmest among them all. “Honestly I was going to get an intervention for you eventually, so you’d get a hobby and actually enjoy it, but it seems my concerns were unfounded. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m needed on the surface to reinforce our members. Tail Terrier is monitoring the satellites, Bull Dog is taking the next watch and then Paw Pooch afterwards, actually enjoy your free time for once Barker and stop working during it you darned workaholic!”

…

That went well I think. I should probably be angrier about the stick being jammed that far up my snoot comment than I currently feel, but he was not speaking lies.

-Travelers’ tent, Pom-

“Today, I’m going to be spending time with… Dodo!” I said with a smile and Dodo warbled curiously and came over to me, I ran a hoof over the mechanical ostrich’s head and he gave off a happy tune. “I hope you don’t mind Shanty.”

“Dodo, would you like to be spending time with Pom today?” Shanty asked and her partner nodded cheerfully and then spat a strawberry loaded pastry, yeah I did kind of need the calories to speed up my healing so I happily started nibbling into it.

-After Pom left to go who knows where, Dolly-

“So we’ll hit that place, then keep looking in case it isn’t his main base.” More psycho cat hunting today, yesterday went horribly.

“I only be spotting Agent Nine L two times.” Yeah Raunchy was on the trail of the other cat.

“That’s two more times than we’d normally get.” Massive Canine the currently small dog stated, then she said something odd. “Also it’s 9-L.”

“Isn’t that being what I said?” Yeah, I’m confused that sounded like the exact same thing Mercante.

“No you said ‘nine L’, its agent 9 hyphen L, as in 9-L, you said the spelling of ‘nine’ and didn’t add the hyphen in.” What? The little pink dog just lost me there. “Look, let’s just call her Agent ‘Del’ and move on with our lives.”

“Right, Delta Force got it.” Everyone just stared at me blankly. “Did I get it wrong again?”

-At a calming lake surrounded by flowers, Pom-

“Thanks for hanging out with me today Dodo. At first you kind of freaked me out, but then we became good friends didn’t we?” The strange living mechanical marvel warbled from his spot sitting next to me as I relaxed and watched the clouds go by.

“Pom Lambchop your death has been foretold… BY ME, as a Beezlemon!” That’s when this strange biped in biker gear showed up wielding what I recognized the two double barreled shotguns, one of which he was currently leveling at what had to be my blandest expression possible. He started to squeeze the trigger. “I’m going to savor this moment.”

“Oh, hey Gubezleeb Gubezleeb.” Might have worried for a split second there, but then I realized It was just Mr. Beezy again as I sat up to greet him. Placing my forward directly against the barrel of the gun.

“My name is not Gubezleeb Gubezleeb, also why did you say it…” Mr. Beezy promptly exploded directly upward and disappeared while screaming hatred at my very existence.

“Wark?” Was all Dodo had to say about that situation as he raised his head and looked in my direction?

“No clue Dodo.” I stated as I laid back down.

-Thirty Five minutes later-

“You will suffer the wrath of my deathly Mantis blades!” Said a comically oversize Mr. Beezy in the form of a mildly oversized inconvenience to my day. A Mantis Ant maybe?

“Can you do me a favor first before you kill me?” I held up the crossword puzzle I made for myself on the paper I had Dodo go fetch. “I can’t seem to figure out the remaining letters of this crossword puzzle.”

Taking the paper and my pen, I watched him write down something on it while glaring at me the entire time… then he stopped writing and then passed it back to me.

“I don’t even know why I humored you!” He raised his left Mantis Blade and then tried to swing at me, only to explode upwards and disappear again.

“Yep… Mr. Beezy seems like he’s going to be a thing today.” I said calmly, as the letters I didn’t put into my makeshift crossword puzzle spelled his name backwards, basically ‘Gubezleeb’, three times this time from top to bottom, left to right, in the places I didn’t put any letters in. Maybe that’ll make him leave me alone for a little longer?

“Keewwahhh?” Dodo warbled in wonder as he tilted his head at me.

“Sure you can get him next time, I’m going to take a nap, make sure he doesn’t bother me when he shows up again.” I leaned back and closed my eyes, took in a deep breath and fell asleep in a nice patch of grass that didn’t have any ants or annoying insects.

-One hour ten minutes later, third person-

“I will complete my mission today and show the soul of Pom Pawdore Lambchop the true meaning of suffering!” Mr. Beezy stated as he showed up, this time in the form of a large, dangerous looking, arachnid thing called a Nerscylla.

“Fffzzzzttt.” Dodo responded lazily as he sat between Mr. Beezy and his intended prize.

“You take that back, my mother was the ugliest most hated monstrosity with a pulsating, bloated, festering, sweaty, pus-filled, malformed massive slug for a butt and she is quite the demon too!” Mr. Beezy angrily raised his front hooked claws.

“Keeeeee.” Stated Dodo flatly and then Mr. Beezy started attacking him aggressively, all Dodo did was dodge and move backwards continuing to taunt Mr. Beezy in a mechanical whine of cackling.

Mr. Beezy tore at the ground while attempting to tear apart the biologically alive ostrich like machine thing.

“You better take me seriously, whatever part of you is biological will ultimately suffer my… what… WHY?!” As Mr. Beezy was launched into the air. This is where he saw that the slash marks and the way Dodo had dodged him spelled ‘Gubezleeb’ four times on the ground in claw scratches. He also saw a slightly smug expression on the biomechanical animal’s beak and eyes. “Darn you all to…!”

Once again Mr. Beezy exploded.

-An hour later after Beelzebug’s last attempt to kill Pom went quite poorly, at the lakeside, Pom-

I stretched out three of my legs, checked one of my legs and then looked up at Dodo planting a Sitrus Berry at the top of the hill. My shattered leg was still agonizing, but I was able to get in some more peaceful rest on this nice warm day outdoors.

“Oh you moved, well it’s a good thing I already got you mostly on the canvas then.” The slightly messy pink monkey continue to work over a canvas. “Hello there, I’m Minka Mark and I like abstract art!”

“Do you just like abstract art for the rhyme with your name?” My question as met with smile.

“Maybe… anyway, been hearing about you from my friends, Pom right? Who’s the robot?” Minka pointed a paintbrush at Dodo who was relaxing next to me, we were definitely doing nothing interesting today.

“Dodo’s not technically a robot, he’s a living being.” There was a distinction, I knew what that distinction was and I would never call Dodo something so lifeless.

“Oh, so he’s like the Autobots and the Decepticons… oh wait… I wasn’t supposed to say anything about that… forget you ever heard me mention them or the fact that Blythe’s current electric scooter is a minicon.” No idea what those were Minka or why you were telling me of all people.

“Forget what?” I stated after a moment, because I had no idea what you were talking about and I felt like I really didn’t want to know.

“Thank you!” Minka said while holding her paws out to me. “Now if only Pinkie Pie would stop sending me sad sack bags to give to Ferguson… he’s not that bad… really!”

Again I wasn’t going to listen to her weird ramblings while I had a plan percolating in mind.

“Want to do something funny?” The question was met with a pair of tilted heads in my direction.

“That is more like Pepper’s thing, but sure, hit me with what you’ve got planned and I might deign to have some monkeyshines today.” Tilting the beret, Minka turned her portrait around and showed me what she made, it was me sleeping and surrounding by what looked like a sea of ghostly dogs.

Minka then looked at Dodo and then started doing some art of him as well. After Minka finished, I thought it was an interesting rendition of Dodo and Dodo was highly curious about it.

Dodo got up and walked over to Minka and opened his beak over her head.

“Hold out your paws Minka, Dodo wants to give you something since he likes you.” After doing as I asked, Minka was soon holding a large chunk of Banana bread.

“Thank you, I didn’t want to be a starving artist stereotype today anyway!” Minka sounded a little nuts, but was ultimately friendly artist monkey. “So what’s the plan sister?!”

-Thirty Minutes later-

“I’m here to infect you to slowly and quite painfully turn you into a Chryssalid that will be fully under my control as a subordinate!” Mr. Beezy was getting really inventive, this thing had tentacles, purple crystals sticking out of it and even looked vaguely threatening… for once. The four spider legs, two armed four clawed upper torso and mandibles that looked like they inject one with a parasite that’ll inevitably warp my biology in a nasty and ultimately lethal way.

Now if he threatened to turn me fully into a Chrysomallus I might actually be a little worried, but this was Mr. Beezy. He simply wasn’t that threatening.

“Excuse me… but I’m having trouble getting your image right could you help me out here?” Minka asked of Mr. Beezy and he slowly stomped over angrily to look at the strange painting that had random splotches that vaguely looked somewhat shaped like Mr. Beezy on it. “Can you make yourself look oh so glorious and strong Mr. scary guy? You can even use my paint to do so!”

“…” He eventually gave in to the monkey’s big friendly eyed look and started working on finishing the portrait of himself. He did so and eventually turned to me after spending twenty minutes getting his image just right in the blank spaces Minka left on the canvas. “Now it’s time for me to… HOW DID IT HAPPEN THIS TIME?!”

Mr. Beezy promptly shot up into the sky and exploded while screaming several profanities that had Minka covering her ears so she couldn’t hear his evil.

“You were right, that was funny and I can brag about beating a demon today!” Minka was laughing her little fun loving butt off. “Kind of surprised he didn’t recognize the parts of the painting I left unfinished spelled his name backwards in cursive several times. I’m keeping the painting of him by the way…”

“That you can even write backwards in cursive is kind of amazing and I would have missed that personally.” No seriously, that was an amazing talent. Also I felt kind of sorry for Mr. Beezy at this point. “That would have actually gotten even me.”

“I might have had several calligraphy classes with my friend Penny Ling… fancy writing is really useful in some cases. Penny is a very kind panda, but a little overly sensitive.” Minka was still in a fit of giggles. “Speaking of my friends. My friend Vinnie Terrio is doing a whole song and dance routine in Paw-tucket at a studio and Zoe Trent will be there tomorrow. I’ll paint a portrait for you if you promise to come to the studio as a favor to me. Also there’s just something about you that Zoe…”

“Really likes. Yeah, I know, a lot of dogs say it eventually. Either to my face or behind my back.” I sighed, didn’t know what I was doing tomorrow anyway. “What kind of portrait?”

“Ooh eek eek eek, yes Zoe’s going to be so happy!” Minka clapped her hands above her head as she hopped in place. “What do you want? While I really love abstract, I’m a decent paw at every other art style that exists!”

“Well… maybe something with me and Dodo together since I was spending the day with him.” Dodo spat a Sitrus Berry crepe into my hoof when I held it up, I glanced at him and sighed. I hadn’t actually be asking for a pastry and was just gesturing to Minka. “Yes, I know, I need to keep my health up Dodo… thank you.”

“Is it weird that he spits pastries?” Minka asked while gesturing to Dodo. “Buttercream would really like this guy if she were around to meet him… that rabbit is already on way too much sugar so it probably wouldn’t be healthy if she did.”

“He used to spit odd looking laser blasts, but he took a volcano to the body and sadly lost that ability.” You think Dodo would have gotten that back by now to better protect Shanty. “Also could you tell her, Buttercream, she makes really good ice cream?”

“Yep, Buttercream really makes her ice cream work for everyone, I’ll pass the message on.” After that, Minka painted a nice portrait of Dodo offering me a flower, a flower of which I will have in my wool for the rest of the day.

This is probably the most relaxing day I’ve ever had, the reason I chose Dodo for this day is that I’m fairly certain Dodo doesn’t have any expectations of me and was just happy to spend time with me.

-An hour or two later, during lunchtime after Dodo picked up some picnic supplies-

“Ah- vegetable tacos, so delicious!” Yep, enjoying the taste of civilization once more after being stuck on Sitrus Berries for way too long… and still having to eat them for my continued good health even now.” A spike hit the edge of the picnic blanket and the thing was positively hissing as it ate through the ground near it in a highly acidic manner.

“You will die now, any last words?” Mr. Beezy asked as he was in the form of a serpent with two long bone claw things and a wide crowned head loaded with those biological acid spikes he was about to try and fire at me.

“Yes, I would like to get in some last word Beelzebug Beelzebug, but I don’t think you’ll let me.” I continue to gnaw on my beans, cheese, lettuce, tomato and mild sauce taco lazily.

“Wait, you just said my actual name twice? Seriously?! Do you really think I would fall for you trying to reverse psychology me into saying Gubezleeb Gubezleeb, because that’s never...” Mr. Beezy slowly trailed off as he saw the faint grin on my slightly sauce covered face right now. “I hate you so much right now, you can’t even begin to understand the raging inferno you are bringing upon…”

Demon goes up in sky, he goes boom.

I’m going to have to remind myself to thank Fred for this day being so fun. Though I’m terrified of Fred, he was still a decent source of knowledge and was mostly safe as long as Oleander was around.

I continued merrily gnawing through all my tacos, while Dodo enjoys a large nacho platter that he was quite willing to share with me.

It was just me and a really good friend hanging out and doing barely anything at all.

-An hour after lunch, Pom-

A strange character appears laughing strangely while glaring down at me.

“You’ve been a naughty little ewe, messing with my friend Beelzebug.” Stated the strange red parrot with a croaky sounding voice. “I’m a fifth dimensional being here to get some revenge for my friend by…”

“Here, can you read this out loud for me real quick to make sure I got it right?” I think I had an inkling as to who this was and for some reason I had an urge to write something rather specific, so I quickly wrote it on a piece of paper and pass it to him.

Something Oleander once said, about how I would know exactly what to do when I got this feeling to protect myself from someone Fred has had issues with in the past.

“Sure… kill tip, seize him. Kill tip, seize him? How is seizing someone a killing tip, wouldn’t you just kill him on the… oh… Ohoho--- this was a rather brilliant one and I’m surprised even ‘Supes’ hadn’t come up with this one himself. A completely original ploy, a really good one, how well played of you, I didn’t even get to have any fun and... I'm completely angry with you!” The parrot looked at me while nodding exuberantly, knowing exactly what just happened here and crossed his wings with a rather angry, yet slightly impressed, demeanor. “You know Fred don’t you, he put you up to this didn’t he, this has that bast… crap-crAP-CRAP!”

Up goes the guy, explodes while creating fireworks noise that Dodo cooed at cheerfully and appreciated.

“Huh… well then… that was interesting, don’t know who that was other than he was a friend of Mr. Beezy. Oleander did something to protect me from him a long time ago, but it was certainly interesting that it finally occurred.” I went back to relaxing on the hillside without a second thought.

-Early afternoon-

A giant bipedal robot stomped forward and glared down at me, said robot had a beetle theme. The brains cells I had to spare for Mr. Beezy were beginning to wear thin and were begging for me to let Mr. Beezy have it this time.

“I…” He was about to go into his diatribe, so I cut him off.

“Gubezleeb Gubezleeb!” I interrupted loudly and put into his train of thought immediately.

“Gubezleeb Gubezleeb… oh you little piece of s-” Up goes Mr. Beezy and he made a big bang this time, he was some kind of biped mechanical kaiju bug thing so the explosion was pretty sizable this time and nobody got hurt by it.

“You know what Dodo, I have a really neat idea for the next one, but it’s going require some doing… can you find a lot of dominoes on such short notice?” I received a curious tilted head from Dodo, but he gave me an affectionate warble and a nod that he’d help me with whatever I had planned.

Dodo and I were having fun today and I was being a bit too lazy, I needed some low key exercise and nothing said that like playing with dominoes. This is going to take up a lot of my time and the rest of this evening.

-Almost time to head to the ‘Traveler’s Tent’ for dinner-

“Hey mom, have you been at Paw-tucket’s camping lake all day?” Dormarch came here alone, I didn’t see Marshall anywhere… come to think of it he wasn’t sleeping on me this morning either.

“Yes, I’ve been having a lot of fun too, mostly lying about. Where’s Marshall? I don’t remember seeing him last night.” My concern was quickly alleviated when my son spoke up.

“Yeah, he got his key and went back to Ryder and his friends, since he’s ready to face them again now that he’s feeling better.” There was a hint of Sadness in Dormarch’s voice, even if he was cheerful his friend was now back with his family and home only being a simple portal trip away. “I still wonder how all the pets deal with weird time shenanigans going on here, obviously there’s a day and night cycle here. Yet they return to the same point in time they left without aging… what kind of magic is at work here?”

“I’m not thinking too deeply into this one, I’m just leaving it at it works and looking too deeply into it might be a bad thing.” Though I did wonder how much time was passing when they weren’t in the world of Paw-tucket. “Does it really matter?”

“It doesn’t because you are about to die!” Oh look its Mr. Beezy… sigh, how many strange bug monster forms is he going to come at me with?

“Is that Mr. Beezy?” Dormarch asked as the large four legged arachnid looking thing with two large scythe arms raised and a giant scissor like jaw that was open wide and ready to snap us in half. He came at us with clearly lethal intent, that’s all it was… the intent to do harm. “Hey Mr. Beezy!”

Dormarch waved his big goofy claws on his right paw cheerfully to the tiger bug monster coming at us… then said tiger striped arachnid bug demon thing tripped the trap that Dodo and I spent so much time setting up earlier.

One of his four spindly stabbing legs, hit a batch of carefully placed dominoes and thus Mr. Beezy started a chain reaction. This made him pause and looked at the line of toppling dominoes heading towards the large patch of open space next to the lakes edge that was now occupied by thousands of dominoes.

“Oh, don’t tell me…” Mr. Beezy horrific and currently horrified voice stated as he watched as the dominoes that were knocked over spelled ‘Gubezleeb’ several time over, but that wasn’t quite the end of the domino chain. “That’s… it’s just not fair, not fair at all, no fair, you can’t do this to me, not again and not this fast!”

“Do you realize how much time me and Dodo put into setting this up?” I asked as I watched the last bit of toppling dominoes create my smiling face alongside Dodo’s with the words ‘friends’ written above them, all in dominoes that did a loop to underline the word ‘friends’ and led into the last bit of dominoes that made a friendly looking heart. “If the payoff didn’t ultimately happen, then I would have been sorely disappointed and that would be what was truly unfair after all our hard work!”

“RAAARRRRRGGGHHH YOU ‘BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP BLEEPING EUPHEMISM FOR A SACK FULL OF DEFLATED BASKEBALLS BLE-!” Mr. Beezy launched into the air.

“Bye Mr. Beezy, have a nice day!” I stated pleasantly.

The air, the Demon and finally the explosion. Today has been pleasantly unproductive as all get out and it was getting my mind off the gnawing pain coming from my leg… I think I needed another spritz from Mitzi and Pepper to end out this day.

“So want to go for a ride around Paw-tucket on Dodo with me before we head back and I get started on dinner?” I still wanted Dodo to do one thing he really wanted to do… such as break loose and go as fast as he could while flying or runner. “If you see Mitzi or Pepper stop and let me off real quick Dodo, they can help me with any pain I’m in.”

“No thanks, I have something important to do back at the tent, just enjoy the rest of your time with Dodo.” Dormarch teleported away in his requisite Search Hunter flash.

-Traveler’s Tent, Dormarch-

“Okay, what happened?” I had gotten a tug on my bond from Dolly and I came back to a fairly battered Caper Canine, Tusky Husky, Mammoth Mutt, Cut Lass and Hot Dog.

“That cat be being a psycho of the highest order!” Shanty stated making it clear that what they had gone through was an entirely unpleasant ordeal.

“You can say that again, but unlike you, we have to actually deal with Snooky all the time!” Mammoth Mutt whined.

“Agent Del was being a bit of a bother too eh.” Judging by the fact that they hadn’t captured the two fugitives, they had managed to escape Dog Star Patrol again.

“How’s Pom’s day going, do you think she’s on to us Dormarch?” Dolly I think Pom already knows some limited vestige of what’s going on with Dog Star Patrol, but is actively trying to ignore that it is happening and is trusting you to be able to deal with it.

“Mom is doing fine Dolly, she even seems to be enjoying her time with Dodo and he’s been keeping Pom safe and cozy all day.” That was a sigh of relief as my news was good, compared to their bad news.

“At least we took out one of Snooky’s bases, so we’ve set him back a bit… now if only he didn’t have what is a rather annoying habit of bouncing back from setbacks quickly or making us look like fools at times doing it. He’s considered one of the most evil cats in the galaxy, barring Dex-starr or Mechanikat somewhat, for a reason.” Hot Dog started living up to his name when the alien wiener dog exploded into flames violently, my sister’s first reaction was to pull out a stick with a carrot on it and started roasting it over the flaming alien dog. His emotions seem to be somewhat tied to his pyro-kinetic abilities. “If only you all had read the full dossier on what happened to all of Snooky’s brother and sisters, he is one true evil sicko and we really need to bring him to justice before he ruins this pet paradise somehow! We cannot let him do anything relatively close to destroying the ecosystem or the entire planet itself on a whim and I don’t want Mechanikat getting involved in our business either.”

“Calm down Hot Dog, we’re working on it." Mammoth Mutt groaned out as stretched out her limbs. "Snooky can run, but he can’t hide from us forever.”

“Who’s Mechanikat?” I asked.

“Something of a functional cybernetic boss for Snooky, but more like his safe haven from us when he isn’t out being a destructive feline shaped monster that entire galactic civilizations fear the name of.” It seemed like Hot Dog had been in a number of leadership roles. “Snooky once even tried to overthrow Mechanikat, when it didn’t seem like he was being evil enough on a given week, with his engineering prowess… that didn’t end well for Snooky, but he still got a lot of respect from the criminal community for trying to usurp his own boss in an ambitious manner.”

“What’s Brainy doing during all of this eh?” Good question Tusky, isn’t Brainy Barker technically the overall leader of the Dog Star Patrol and Affiliated Awesome Animals?

“She’s finally got a hobby.” Hot Dog said triumphantly.

“Was this after she saw Pom?” It seemed as if Dolly was just as aware as I was what the hobby might entail.

“Yes, but is that a bad thing?” Well, it could be a bit of a bother Hot Dog, considering Pom has an odd effect on canines.

“Not necessarily, but you might want watch out if she starts forming a cult in the name of the ‘Doggy Messiah’.” It was supposed to be me jokingly saying this, but Hot Dog apparently took my words seriously.

“Yeah, she’ll probably join that galactic wide cult before the year is out, they do good charity for less fortunate individuals.” Hot Dog informed us.

I sent a look to Dolly and she shrugged, while looking a little freaked out about the cult having been implied as existing long before we got here.

-Inside Dodo running around at high speeds throughout Paw-Tucket, Pom-

“Die, die, die, die-.” It seemed Mr. Beezy was just a little upset, but Dodo was staying one step ahead of the Giant Water Beetle he was currently chasing us as trying to spew toxic metal and flesh eating gas at us from his nose.

I’ll ask if Dolly’s alien dog friends have a method to clean that gas up later if it doesn’t dissipate quickly enough in the atmosphere, Mr. Beezy was making quite a mess of the nearby landscape as we lead him about in an unpopulated area.

After an odd hitch in his running, Dodo stopped running and faced the monstrous kaiju sized demon bug in the setting sunlight.

Mr. Beezy was about to attack us with the full might of his weight and then… up in the air and exploded.

Apparently he hadn’t noticed Dodo manipulating him to place his feet down in the right way to spell ‘Gubezleeb’ several times in binary, a computer language that Dormarch has referenced to me several times even that went completely over my head. It was hard to notice at first because of the sheer size of the way the numbers one and zero were written. Even I had been confused by what had happened until I looked at the ditches in the ground dug out by Mr. Beezy’s gargantuan size more closely and noticed some of the divots looked more like zeroes than ones. The numbers were so large, you might be able to see them from the atmosphere of this planet.

“I think he’s done for the rest of the year with trying to kill me after that one!” I said jovially as Dodo and I watched the sunset together. “Come on Dodo, let’s go, Shanty is probably waiting for you!”

Dodo was looking at the horizon with fond eyes as the darkness and stars lit alight on this strange paradise of a world, he then slowly turned and started running us all the way back to the tent so I could prepare dinner for a lot of hungry mouths.

-In space at the moment, a dog named Tail Terrier-

“Gubezleeb, what in tarnation is a Gubezleeb?” I scratched at my head with my extending tail tentacle.

465. The whole song and dance.

-Petopia, the next day, inside the travelers’ tent, Pom-

I thought about magic, while looking at the golden wool on my left leg. I laid here patiently and quietly waiting for everyone to wake up and get off of me.

In some cases some people would say magic is the power of imagination itself made real with enough focus, in some cases that might be true, but not always correct.

It was considered an energy that was measurable by unicorns, esoteric and hard to manipulate outwardly. Not exactly true given there were a variety of ways one can use magic without a horn and unicorns are not liable to look into them since they tended to be narcissistic. Changelings can use magic outside of their horns as some of the forms they change into lack said horns.

Other examples of ways to use magic are through hooves, wings, eyes, voice and plenty more mediums such as objects outside of a unicorn’s main prominent focus on their foreheads. So the skies were the limit really as long as you knew what you might be capable of when it came to magic.

My personal magical abilities are more centered on the idea of controlling a given ‘concept’ and being imaginative with it. That concept is distinctly and noticeably ‘canine’ and all abilities and actions related to it coming about from my many familiar bonds to various canines. The number of canines outnumbered my being a single lambkin to an absurd degree in a bond that shares strength in a two way street even as disconnected as I was from all my familiars that were family to me.

I’m surprised I hadn’t fully turned into a canine… I guess I can only partially become a canine and never cease fully being a lambkin. Give me an infinite number of dogs to have as familiars and I’d still be me. Thank goodness for that at least even if I had some semi-permanent canine traits now. So it would be like wild magic.

My wool based abilities were more in the tune of natural magic given it was specifically always a part of my nature, like being a Chrysomallus was and I could have lived fairly well and much better without knowing I was one while quickly losing ground on my body.

Why was I thinking of magic today? Well it’s because I was planning on taking the bug researching the ‘magic of friendship’ with me today. Even if she couldn’t currently talk, due to the love in the air in this world being so stupidly thick, I did want to spend time with Ocellus and what Minka’s dancing and singing friends would be doing today would be neat.

“Hahhhh… that was some of the best sleep I’ve gotten in a while, you’re a really comfortable person ma’am.” Hot Dog stated as he woke up and rolled away from me. “Hey, what’s wrong with him? I don’t think anyone who sleeps next to you would be able to have nightmares.”

“He’s terrified of having broken his bond with me once, he accidentally did it to save me so I don’t hold it against him.” Mostly by getting more powerful than our bond could handle by becoming ‘Dormamon’, apparently Calumon was involved in that happening somehow.

I carefully drew Dormarch into my left hoof and cuddled him, he was likely having nightmares of killing me or being a reason I died again.

Dormarch soon calmed down and smiled as he curled up into my wool, I have no idea what he was going to do today, but maybe Dolly could get his mind off of his ‘mega level’ evolution being terrifying for him.

“Morning Pom!” Dolly stated cheerfully as she stretched out and ‘accidentally’ placed a paw on Tusky’s butt, then squeezed it ‘completely by accident’ waking him up with a cheeky grin.

Tusky didn’t get angry, but he did get a little embarrassed and seemed to not mind his personal space being violated.

“You’re taking Dormarch with you today Dolly, while I’m taking Ocellus with me.” Maybe Dormarch would have fun spending time with Dolly’s new friends? “Also check on the Sitrus Berries and see if they are growing this morning.”

“Fine, fine…” Dolly grumbled as she left and went to check on the Sitrus Berry plants and speaking of Sitrus Berries… I ate one. My shattered leg was more of a dull throb now as more of my bone knitted together.

I think Marshall might have taken a Sitrus Berry to plant in the world next door that apparently had super villains, crazy people and alien invasions. That was okay as they Sitrus Berries were generally harmless fruit to most living entities.

-A little more than an hour later, Dolly-

“Okay, so we’re checking the ski resort today, Tusky Husky, Hot Dog and Dolly will be best for that up in the mountain. I don’t like the cold so I’ll be checking around the outskirts with the others.” Enormous B… did I really want to finish that thought about such a nice dog? Only Barista… ‘Clarissa’… deserves that title in the worse meaning of it. Anyway pink small dog that grows large and was my friend, was giving us our barking orders. “You’re partner Leap Lamb is getting better, will she be capable of taking part in a fight if Snooky gets involved given how bad he’s getting?”

“How psycho is this cat again?” Dormarch asked as he was going to be playing in the snow with me today. “I don’t want him or this Agent Del anywhere near mom if we can help it.”

“Very bad if given the time to do anything, let me tell you what he did to his more innocent brothers and sisters.” Here Hot Dog cleared his throat and started telling us some of the vile things Snooky did in his childhood, before he became a well-known galactically recognized evil.

“Wow, that is sickening and I can see why Dolly refers to him as a psycho…” Yeah, little bro, that evil cat had no chill.

“I think Pom can still do things, but she needs far more time to relax and heal before we go into a very dangerous place to finally get our traveling team home. So she’s on vacation and nobody is going to pull her out of it unless the entirety of Paw-tucket is completely covered in robots or something.” Why did I say that? No, seriously, why did I say something like that knowing as well as Dormarch does that Pom has a habit of getting into fights with robots on multiple occasions. “Snooky can’t just make entire armies of robots ludicrously fast… can he?”

“…” Hot Dog looked away, I guess I remember his name because it was food.

“…” Wumbo Warg was being fairly quite too.

“… eh.” Really like Tusky’s adorable verbal tick, even his quiet ellipses moment ends in an ‘eh’.

“Well, I’m sorry about squeezing your butt on purpose Tusky.” What a tight butt that was and I might have problems with personal space, guy had to be ninety percent muscle and all hunk. “Not sorry that I did it, but sorry that it might have upset you.”

“Apology accepted my friend, it feels nice to be appreciate eh! Also you’re paws are quite interesting in how the digits on them can operate.” Nice to know that Tusky was very forgiving, also yes my digits have been noted by everyone here in Paw-tucket as being a bit odd given they can grab and pick up things as if I were an animalistic or biped with hands. “Though I have a feeling we should be prepared for a Cat Bot army in the near future eh.”

Ah so Dog Star Patrol fighting robots was a common thing… well darn, now we will have to fight some guaranteed! Knowing Pom’s luck like I do, there will be a lot of them.

“I’m more worried about what this Agent Del is doing.” Don’t worry Dormarch my beloved little bro, I’m sure the other cat isn’t nearly as much of an evil psycho and will be much easier to deal with.

At least one could hope.

-Paw-tucket town, Ocellus-

I was in the form of a gecko I had turned into previously, compressing mass and weight into such a small and compact space wasn’t very easy. Thankfully I had a lot of energy with which to do so as I followed Pom as we moved through the streets of Paw-tucket, apparently drawing the attention of every dog within five miles of Pom.

“So I might sing a song too... do you think you would enjoy some dancing?” Attention drawn back to Pom talking to me, I nodded and we were about at the building. I could feel Pom’s affection for me as well as for the others.

It was easy to see which building it was at least, given we saw the dog named Zoe Trent eagerly waiting for us, or just Pom. Oddly enough she looked like a dog version of Twilight Sparkle.

“Oh you came, I’ll really have to thank Minka for this later! Well at least she’s the one among my friends that ran into you first and asked for me anyway.” Despite looking like a dog version of Twilight, she almost sounded more like Rarity in a diva kind of way, she sounded like she sings quite a bit. “Come on, I want to introduce you to Vinnie! So who’s your friend?”

We followed Zoe Trent inside and she seemed fairly excited to have Pom around. I wouldn’t know a dog that didn’t at least like having Pom present and pleasant. It doesn’t matter if they were alien or not, if they were a canine, then they liked Pom and nobody could tell them otherwise.

“Oh, this is Ocellus, she’s a bit shy at times and is functionally mute at the moment.” Pom leaned closer to me as we moved on to this dance thing. “You can decide whether you reveal you’re true self if you want.”

“Oh what happened to make her mute? Her throat looks fine.” Zoe asked as she looked at me walking alongside Pom.

“Well that’s a bit hard to explain… unless she wants me to explain.” Pom looked to me and I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it, she can do some dancing at the very least.”

“Can you sing?” Zoe asked in interest as she looked at Pom with a wagging tail.

“Yes, I can, but I need to look over the music to see what I can do… unless you have musicians present that I can do specific songs?” There was some more excitement as Pom said she could do some singing.

“Yes, this will be great!” Zoe seemed to have a fairly positive personality and a lot of friends from what I was feeling, when we came into the studio there were various pets with musical instruments and some were tap dancing and we saw one gecko in particular that was dancing his heart out. “Hey, Vinnie I want to introduce you to someone special, her name is Pom Lambchop!”

“I’m not that special…” Pom you were like every dogs dream of snuggling the cuddliest thing around. Even as battered and scarred as you were, you were still fairly adorable.

“Nonsense, you’re probably a very talented individual and you certainly have that air about you even if you aren’t!” Hearing Zoe talk, it was the general thing I came to expect from dogs. “So can she do one song while here? I think she’ll have a great singing voice.”

I’m kind of surprised Dolly wasn’t as crazy as most dogs, but then again she was bonded more closely to Pom and was likely protected from a specific kind of madness that overcame everything canine around the lambkin. Pom could basically almost befriend any dog she wants, very few times had the whole magnetism thing ever came out to a negative. Yellow Dog being one of the notable situations where Pom got the downside of being liked by canines in general.

“Sure, but I was kind of teaching how to dance at the moment. Dancing as pets for their owners, and dancing here where we can more openly do things our owners don’t have to be aware of.” Vinnie the green gecko seemed nice, then again this was a world of the nicest pets that came here for what was basically magical therapy realm connected to a much bigger world. It was kind of like a mirror of Tambelon and Equus. Also Vinnie’s tap dancing was kind of amazing. “Uh, you’re not going to tell anyone right, I don’t quite think you’re pets given your abnormal for Paw-tucket. Vinnie Terrio, nice to meet you. I might not be the brightest gecko on the block, but I really do enjoy a good dance and I’ve become a decent teacher of showing off some moves. Sure I can be a little clumsy sometimes, but who isn’t?”

“Pom Lambchop and my friend Ocellus.” Introducing me as well because I currently couldn’t.

The world these pets actually lived on outside this magical side realm sounded like it was fraught with all kinds of peril. From what I heard from Marshall and Quincy, aliens, monsters, natural disasters, malicious magic and super powered beings were normally occurring. If I didn’t know any better I’d swear it was the same world that Sunset Shimmer currently lives on and the only reason why we hadn’t heard about all of this other stuff from there, is because Sunset Shimmer was distracted by dangerous magical stuff from Equestria that was haphazardly dumped into that world by Starswirl the Bearded.

Watching pets learn to dance was interesting and we did so for a bit, Pom and I were invited guests and Zoe Trent was teaching some pets to sing including Roxy’s friend Quincy. Quincy apparently had a horrible singing voice and he was still trying.

“So Zoe, does anyone know how this world was made, I don’t mean building Paw-tucket, but this world itself.” Yeah, that was something of a curiosity Pom that I’ve wondered myself.

“That’s the thing, nobody knows, but at least most pets understand how they get here and how to leave once we get our key. We do not know the why of how this all started happening, we just know that if we could bring our owners here with us… we would. Sadly we can’t.” Whined Zoe before she considered Pom for a bit. “You didn’t get here by having an owner, that’s for certain, so how did you end up here?”

“Helped a functional god with a series of problems… no he isn’t related to this world either, he was just aware of it and sent me here for a vacation away from trouble.” As Pom was talking I thought I saw movement of a familiar figure, but nothing occurred. “Anyway the god couldn’t heal my shattered leg personally, but sent some healing berries with me that I’ve been consuming for a good long while. Things here have been really relaxing, also Mitzi and Pepper really help with the pain when they visit the tent in the morning before I’ve had my necessary medication in the form of aforementioned berries I’m tired of eating.”

“Oh those two are always so sweet, nice to hear that they are helping you with your pain.” Zoe turned and looked at all the dancing and some pets singing.

“Yeah, helps that those skunks have something akin to a medical super power between them.” Yeah, one that you pointed out as a possibility Pom. “It also helps that this is a very therapeutic world to visit.”

“That it is, now let’s get started… well except for you Pom, you can at least sing when we get around to some of Zoe’s lessons.” Vinnie said motioning to my leg still glued to my side that was feeling quite sore from lack of movement.

From there things were pretty fun, I did some dancing as a gecko and I even got to have fun while Pom rested and watched the pets do fun little dances they’d be doing for their owners and the dancing they’d actually be doing here outside of that.

The cheerful atmosphere felt good, also that Pom was actually relaxing was a major surprise and quite nice to feel. Though Pom’s anxiety was still there and couldn’t be completely depleted it was quite minimal.

Pom knows where Dolly and Dormarch are at all times and likely noticed that Dolly was nearby while she was at the theme park and knows that I came in later after that. She did make sure I was alright and wouldn’t sleep until I got back and neither would Smolder.

I wonder how hard Pom was resisting the need to ask about what Dog Star Patrol was doing here as, like us, they were an oddity in this world. She really does not need to know that evil alien cats running around until there’s no other choice but to tell her about them, so far they’ve been laying low and Dog Star Patrol has managed to slow down whatever was going on.

It was really becoming harder for Pom to ignore the fact that there were now three alien dogs staying at our tent as a base or that something was going on that warrants attention. At least Pom was taking her vacation seriously, we just had to keep her away from trouble, which was actually going pretty well so far.

I smiled and simply enjoyed the feel in the room as I learned some dance moves, the animals had a whole lot of dancing skills. There was anything from slow dance to quick ones, from the Tango to Break Dancing like Shanty could do… wait, why didn’t Pom bring her here? Shanty loves singing and dancing, so why did she bring me instead?

Still the fun I was having was absolutely nice, but why would Pom bring me to a place where she could only enjoy half the activities? Maybe… ah! She could only enjoy half the fun and so could I because I couldn’t talk.

Pom was relaxing on a cushion and watching me, she noticed me looking over at her and she waved cheerfully with a hoof. Vinnie even said there was something called Dance-Fu, which was basically just capoeira and something Pom and Shanty could basically do already. Still rhythmic dancing spoke to me for some reason, maybe it’s because changelings were like bugs and bugs did do interpretive dancing.

It’s when we got around to singing that the mood in the room took a slight dip, because Quincy’s singing was horrible. The fainting goat could crack glass with his voice and he wasn’t even trying to hit a frequency that does it, yet was still somehow managing to do so. His voice was naturally not meant for singing quite clearly. Where Quincy failed at singing, he was probably a master class tap dancer as good as or possibly even better then Vinnie was. That was saying something when Vinnie was teaching several forms of dancing.

“My singing’s still that bad huh?” Quincy wilted. He felt a little upset, but still relatively chipper.

“Sorry, but I don’t know how…” Zoe started only for Pom to interrupt.

“I think can help with his singing problem, but it will only work the one time though.” Is Pom about to what I think she’s about to do? “Let me talk to the music players and I’ll get us started, do you want to try a duet with me?”

“Yeah, but what are you going to do?” Here Quincy simply got a smile and affectionate rubs to his head, it seemed Pom was happy to make his day.

“Don’t worry, it’ll happen by itself. Just let it all out when get going and don’t hold back.” Pom then went to talk to the musicians and she got them nodding and then Pom came back to the front of the room. “Okay everyone, gather round this is going to sound rather somber to start, but it’ll probably pick you right up. In fact this song is about picking things up and not leaving them be.”

A heart song from a native of Equus does increase coordination and harmony between many disparate individuals by quite a lot and even those that have no singing or dancing talent prior to taking part in the heart song. I’ve been caught up in a few myself and found them quite tasty and fun to share in the love and excitement.

“Lights.” The room dimmed as Pom took to sitting with Quincy next to her in the spotlight. A slow piano tune started up with several fiddles readying and several other instruments including a drum. “When it seems like the world isn’t fair, when you can’t do something or no one seems to care~.”

The world seemed to just shatter and everyone felt a jolt as the heart song formed. I wanted to sing the next part and I already knew it by heart, which was the general effect of the song Pom started. It was sad that I simply couldn’t. Pom looked at me and motioned for me to dance with the song when I feel like joining in and I nodded.

“When your world lies in pieces scattered all to its doom, then you find a dustpan and sweep away that gloom~!” The entire room lit up and Pom’s golden wool sparkled in the light. “Just start gathering all the pieces, try to get them all together, find the sun inside you, fight that stormy weather~! Be strong from the start, don’t give up in your heart, picking up those pieces after your whole world falls apart~.”

Here Pom motioned to Quincy as she tossed him the microphone, much to his confusion.

“When your world breaks down into tearful streams, when nothing but nightmares come for your fondest dreams~!” Quincy sang and he sounded much better under the heart song, everyone started slowly dancing. “With a shining star that’s broken, shattered on floor, you can do the same thing that you once did before~!”

Here Pom motioned for him to raise the microphone between them.

“Just start picking up the pieces, you can try to stick them back together~.” Quincy and Pom sang together warmly. “Find that strength inside you, don’t let sorrow hold you down forever~.”

Both of them were smiling now.

“Take your strengths to heart, don’t forget you can restart, start picking up those pieces if your whole world falls apart~.” It seemed that Pom had gotten Quincy into the song as she motioned to her shattered leg as an example, now everyone else was wanting in on it the song.

Here the fiddles started up and everyone started lightly square dancing. It was a nice and slow song that even the least coordinate animal could follow along to.

The entire world felt like we were all suddenly in a barn, both Vinnie and Zoe were joining in on the dancing with one another and the room filled with an ample amount of warmth. Was the cozy barn what Quincy was imagining or was it Pom that was imagining a nice peaceful pile of soft hay to lay on?

The mood was rather uplifting either way.

“When everyone around you seems aloof, then you shout out and seek out a helping hoof~!” Quincy sang along side Pom as he gripped his right hoof against hers with a smile.

“When you feel like you’ve been battered and knocked all about, your true friends will show up to always help you out~.” Pom sang back and despite only having two working legs given one was occupied she dancing with Quincy with a cheerful smile on her face.

Pom motioned to the audience and Quincy, now everyone was to be in on the song… everyone except me that is, but I was okay with that.

“Just start picking up the pieces, find the strength to get it back to better, find the song inside you, heart as light as a feather~!” Everyone sang and I felt my heart warm at the feeling of love and comfort flooded the room. “Be strong in your heart, shake off any bad start, pick up those pieces when your whole world shatters apart~!”

Pom was singing about her gloomy nature and I could see everything we’ve been through, feeling the bad times along with the good and no matter what happened to her she always got back up after functionally breaking her body for us. That even with anxiety riddled as Pom was, she was only anxious because she cared and worried about getting us home safely and she did have good memories of this journey we’ve been on.

“Picking up the pieces, try to keep it all together, find the smile inside you, fight for that sunny weather~!” Multiple voices rose up with Pom and Quincy’s as they sang together. “Just be strong in your heart, and make a brand new star, picking up those pieces when your whole world falls apart---~!”

The fiddles trailed off and ended on a bright note, like that song did as Quincy and Pom held that last word and then Pom his as her right hind leg shifted a bit under her wool. She still gave Quincy a bright smile.

“Thank you.” Quincy stated happily, probably the first time he was able to sing without cracking glass. “That was certainly an amazing experience, felt like I was home and cuddling up to family and my owner.”

“Was that a heart song? My you are quite talented Pom!” Zoe stated cheerfully. “Usually it’s my friends and me doing one when we feel our friendship bursting full of energy, or sometimes even Fluttershy when she ends up singing them to the shelter animals.”

“Fluttershy?” My cheeks immediately swelled and I tried not gag on the air, my mouth was now full of love and some of it was for me from Pom.

I started the process of safely swallowing and whimpered at Pom, there was no chance I was starving in this world…. quite the opposite, it was like I was constantly underwater yet that water was made of food and it threatened to make me a glutton. I have never had a problem with gluttony, starvation maybe, but never gluttony and I don’t intend to start having one!

“Uh… she didn’t inhale, how did her cheeks fill up like that?” As soon as Vinnie said that, I had gotten it all down my throat and felt queasy. This world was going to kill me with love if I wasn’t careful, did not want to explode like a Pinkie Pie Party Piñata trademarked by the Pink Part Pony Corporation.

“Ocellus is curious if it’s the same Fluttershy she knows, does she have wings?” Pom asked gently.

“No, but some animals says she’s a bipedal angel and might have seen wings on her at some point. She does have a pet rabbit named Angel though and works at an animal shelter nearby where I live… she tends to not like animals being put down and runs a sanctuary out of her home. It’s a wonder that girl has any money to care for herself as much as the animals around her. Jade can confirm she’s wonderful, as Jade lives down the same street from me.” Wait did Zoe say bipedal? Oh my goodness, was this one of the worlds actually next door to home?! Also, there was a world of chaos next to our… Discord, of course there was, why would I think any differently? Doesn’t help that Starswirl’s dumping ground for magical artifacts might cause the world to be a bit contaminated with magic. “Your friend seems excited to hear that. Some pets think Fluttershy is a meta-person, super hero or some kind of magical girl in some way, which why it is said that she can understand animals like a dear friend of mine called Blythe can. I thought that talent was quite rare and two girls within the same state can do it.”

“Well thank you for telling us, I’m sure Ocellus will write down what she wants to say later. She can’t breathe through her mouth for several reasons, but eating is definitely not a problem for her.” Yes, but being stuffed silly after opening my mouth just once was painful Pom. At least she recognized that I was in distress. “I think I need to take Ocellus outside for fresh air.”

-Skulking around the shadow filled alleyways (what few of them Paw-tucket actually has), Agent Del-

Those Dog Stars are getting quite annoying with all their sniffing around and their newest members were quite powerful, now where was that gecko I saw leaving the base they tore down? I’m not letting that little snitch get by me again or find another one our bases!

We should be more careful Snooky, it seems that there are more joining the Dog Star Patrol in trying to root us out before we can carry our plans of terror. Mechanikat will definitely be coming eventually, we have to at least get started… these setbacks have been disastrous and it’s all that brimstone smelling gecko’s fault.

Those Dog Stars might have the right of it though, the brimstone smell really is annoying to track when it’s on the other paw! I needed to quickly find where they were basing themselves out of here so I can set up a trap for them.

Ugh, thinking of those dogs, they’ve probably got a lock on me by now… I’ll head back to base and will watch out for that little snitch as I do. If I find them, they were getting my claws to their throat.

-In space above the planet, Brainy Barker-

“Do you see her?” I said as we caught sight of Agent Del and the image zoomed in on the stealthy cat sneaking around.

“Yeah, that varmint is running around in the open and we finally caught wind of her!” Tail Terrier said as they saw a white furred cat dart about trying to visually lose them on the satellite coverage.

“Call Hot Dog and get someone to tail her while we’ve still got her on satellite view.” If I knew my companions as well as I think I do, it would be likely that Mammoth Mutt would be sent to follow her. Mammoth Mutt does have some stealth training and can take care of herself.

Agent Del was proving to be quite a wily one to keep track of even if we had planetary coverage.

-Paw-tucket, Pom-

“It’s been, fun Zoe! Now if only I knew where I can find a submarine for tomorrow…” My thoughts were mostly on how Ocellus looked a little healthier, she was carefully breathing through her nose and seemed quite out of sorts after getting a lungful of love, compassion and warmth.

“You need a submarine? I have an idea as to where you can book one that’s big enough for your needs!” Bev the ever active box turtle said as she was about to skate on by and came to a stop, the land turtle apparently knew someone that could help. “Just head to the docks and ask around for my uncle Captain Gilturtle, he’ll help you out… in fact, I’ll set things up for you to find him tomorrow. I also have some seaside friends you can get help from too! My friend Octavia Inkhart is free tomorrow!”

“Octopus?” I asked blandly.

“Yep, a lot of animals have names that are easily descriptive like that. Like Luanita.” After having said that and waved at us, Bev started skating away on the roller skates. I didn’t have a good guess as to what animal that could be. “Last name Walton.”

“A walrus, who would own a pet walrus?!” It didn’t take me five seconds after hearing Luanita’s last name to puzzle it out and shout after Bev.

“Someone who’s really cool, that’s who!” Bev laughed jovially as she continued rolling on her way.

I felt Ocellus touch my shoulder and look around, then in a flash of flame Ocellus returned to normal and whispered into my ear.

“I had a good, urp… time mph… today.” Poor Ocellus, she would be writing a lot of questions later this evening and would be spending more time thinking about thing, as we would be spending the rest of this day quietly at the tent. She could hardly talking without swallowing a mouthful of love every few seconds.

“Come on Ocellus, let’s get you to the tent before the world makes you physically explode with love.” Ran a gentle hoof down Ocellus’s back. "So twenty questions when we get back?"

"Mhm!" Ocellus chirruped cheerfully.

466. Now you sea them.

-Petopia, the next day, Paw-tucket portal, ???-

“Ah, finally some time to myself, thankfully the girls haven’t caught on to the magic key I’ve been holding onto yet. Then again many other pets’ magic keys were causing false positives so I’m glad that’s why mine hasn’t been discovered yet.” I stretched out and was about to go on my way into Paw-tucket when I felt four forms slam into me from behind toppling me over, why can’t I ever catch a break or remember not to stand in front of the portal when I here?

They must be new arrivals given they all tumbled through the magical portal as a group. Well this was going to be awkward to explain to them.

“Whoa where are we? What happened?” Yep four new arrivals and they all seemed to be… from the same place given what they were wearing? That usually doesn’t happen, they seemed well equipped with unusual gear.

Whoever they were, they certainly knew how to make an entrance and they did so together. At least three of them ended up on their paws whereas the Dalmatian was rolling onto his paws from his back.

“We’re in Paw-tucket guys!” Stated the Dalmatian. “It’s why I kept asking you to do your best to make Ryder the happiest he’s ever been.”

“Whoa this place is so vibrant and colorful, can’t wait to get some air here!” The puppy in the pink aviator gear stated as she walked forward, looking around. Apparently one of the dogs was aware of where they were so he could keep his group together and help them.

“Hello there, my name is Spike and since the usual greeter isn’t around, let me introduce you to the world made for pets, built by pets. Welcome to Paw-tucket!” I said in a friendly manner. “I don’t want you to be confused for runners, pets who end up here and then get lost while being very confused as they start wandering around on their own. So can you stay here for a bit until the greeter officially arrives to give you a tour?”

“Is that what happened to you the first time you were here Marshall?” The puppy in the policing gear asked with a tilted head and knowing grin.

“Yeah… and we don’t have to worry about the time we spend here, as we’ll come back the very same moment we left.” Marshall blushed and looked away, then he was affectionately toppled over by a puppy in snow gear. “Also I hope we came back quickly enough to help a friend of mine.”

“Well, if you all will excuse me. I’ve got to go hang out with my friends Opal and Winona.” I said as I made my way into Paw-tucket.

-Roxy-

“Hi there, oh hey Marshall, you’re back!” I stated as I welcomed the newcomers, apparently they got here as a group and that require some very good teamwork.

“Is Pom still around?” Marshall asked.

“Yep, from your perspective it might have been a few weeks or months, but for us it’s only been about two days!” My tone as exuberant as ever, I was a great greeter for new animals appearing here. “Time really does get all weird here!”

“I want to introduce you guys to her!” Marshall stated excitedly and it was a good thing I knew where Pom was going to be today.

“Well she’ll be down at the docks today, let’s get your three friends their keys and then I’ll give you a quick rundown of the place and get you over to the docks. Have you had anything to eat yet guys? You’re going to want something in your stomach if you’re going to be out at sea for a while.” I asked as I motioned for Marshall’s group to follow me with a paw. “If not you can get a snack before you head out with Pom, she’s going to be in the ocean for a while today from what I’ve heard of her plans.”

“Poor Zuma, he’s going to be sad he missed being here for this. I’m Chase!” The police dog stated, he clearly had the hat for it.

“I’m Skye!” The dog with the aviator goggles and pink clothing stated as she followed after Chase.

“I’m Everest.” Everest looked like she spent a lot of time having fun in the snow.

“Hello my name is Roxy and I’ll be your guide for Paw-tucket today, I can tell you aren’t just pets or you might have ended up here sooner. My guess is that you’ve been doing more pet related stuff recently?” They looked like they were geared for particular stuff.

“Yeah we haven’t been doing a lot of pet related things, but that’s because we’re part of team of rescue dogs called Paw Patrol.” Chase certainly seemed to be bright and outgoing, he must be the leader of the group.

-Inside the travelers’ tent, Shanty-

I be awake and be hearing Pom mumble to herself about something about the inevitability of a Chrysomallus not being as inevitable as previously thought and her ability to keep herself stable would require her to remain focused constantly. She also be talking about magic and considering her abilities both natural and supernatural, she be thinking out loud as she be cuddling a whimpering Dormarch to herself.

Dormarch hasn’t been doing very good these past few days as he be having nightmares, he’s always being happy to see Pom as soon as he wakes up from them though.

“I hope Shanty will be okay with spending time with me today.” What is Pom being worried about? I would always want to be spending time with her, that and I be snuggling into her. She is being very comfortable, why wouldn’t I be happy to spend time with her?

Is it because she be dying? That just be making me want to spend more time with her, for however much we could be being together and as much as we could even be getting. I really don’t want to be losing her though and neither do the rest of my friends.

“Morning Pom!” I be saying brightly as I be getting up.

I’ll be sending Dodo with Dog Star Patrol, Dolly and Dormarch. Smolder and Ocellus will be helping them too. Dolly is being the only one that hasn’t spent personal time with

“Morning Shanty, want anything particular for breakfast?” Smiling to Pom I quickly answered my affirmative. Gritz, waffles and Sitrus Berries… sure Pom might be being tired of Sitrus Berries, but I wasn’t as they are being very good with rum and waffles!

-Off to the side five minutes later, Dolly-

“So we couldn’t find them, but pinkie pup is on the trail of Agent Del right?” I asked as Tusky dug into breakfast.

“Yes, she is being decent at stealth eh.” Tusky turned to Hot Dog and he had his own two cents.

“Well it’s not like I could go, I’m far too hot headed and when I get angry it’s very noticeable… like from miles away.” Yeah Pyro Dog really cannot stealth very well. “I can do stealth in a pinch and if it was really important, but we’re trying to stop the alien cats from ruining this world, so we need to be on top of them at all times.”

“Any word from Mammoth Mutt about tracking down Agent Del?” Tusky asked.

“She said something about losing Agent Del near the seaside docks.” Oh come on Burn Dog, why?! That’s where Pom is going to be today! “If they have an underwater base, I’m not going to be entirely useless, but when I’m in water or wet my abilities are heavily reduced to working on contact for a while. It’s really annoying!”

“What’s annoying is how often the evil cats have been near Pom like the other day when Agent Del was looking for Ocellus in her gecko form without interacting with her directly.” How many near misses have we had now?

-Thirty minutes later, after breakfast, heading towards Paw-tucket docks, Pom-

“To that end, I want to help you train your Capricornus abilities today, I heard the submarine will allow me to communicate with the aquatic pets while they are in the water through the speakers.” It seemed like Shanty was open to the idea of testing her limits as a literal ‘sea goat’ and her ability to summon Horizon and a metric ton of ‘fresh’ or ‘sea’ water, she could do both and Horizon the dolphin didn’t seem to mind the fresh water either.

At least Shanty could never go thirsty as long as she had enough magic to summon her friend. Hungry was a different thing entirely as she still ate like an extremely hungry hippopotamus that had been on a weight loss diet for three years.

“So how will we be finding who we be looking for?” Shanty looked about, she didn’t bring her cane scythe, because she didn’t want to freak out the local pets.

“Maybe it will be very obvious like that?” I pointed a hoof to a walrus and an octopus holding a sign up. “Are you Luanita and Octavia? We’re looking for Captain Gilturtle.”

“Yeah, and might I say there’s just something about you that I like!” Said the octopus, Octavia Inkhart, in a friendly manner.

“Well that’s nice I guess, but I’ve never heard that said about me by…” I was about to continue my comment on an octopus saying that to me, but I was cut off.

“Not you, her!” Octavia pointed to Shanty and brought her tentacles together while giving Shanty affectionate looks.

Was Horizon technically a familiar? I’ve been interacting with pets on a personal level and that all the pets here were mostly friendly was nice. Arceus really did send us to an impossibly safe world and it would really take something big to ruin all of the peace I’ve been getting these last few days, only a few squabbles among friends have

“Yeah, there’s something about the goat that I really like too Octavia!” The cute walrus stated as she also stared at Shanty affectionately.

“I now be feeling what it is like Pom, it is being a very weird feeling.” Welcome to my world Shanty, hopefully you won’t be followed around by sea creatures all over the place like I have been canines.

Though I’m concerned some people have pet foxes in the world next to our own, given the number of dogs and foxes that followed us to port. I think they were just being protective of me, they were all good pets at the very least.

“Hope you two haven’t been here for too long, do you know where Captain Gilturtle is? Bev’s Uncle?” My question was met with nods.

“Yep, follow us, we’ve only been here about five minutes, so we really weren’t waiting long!” Luanita said as she flopped onto a skateboard and Octavia hopped onto her back. “It’s easier for me to get around like this if you are wondering.”

It didn’t take us long to arrive at the docks where a regular sized submarine was waiting for us, it wouldn’t be uncomfortable for me to fit inside.

“Captain Gilturtle, I presume?” I asked as we approached a turtle that looked similar to the high octane turtle Bev.

“Yep, my niece said you’d be coming by lass.” Captain Gilturtle stated in a friendly manner. “Whether it’s running Paw-tucket’s cruise liner or a submarine, I’m there to help you with any of your aquatic needs.”

The pets of this world really got extravagant with their mimicry of the technology I know of.

“Well we’re here to help Shanty train in her underwater abilities, she’s recently found out she was a Capricornus and I really don’t want her to ignore the ‘literal sea goat’ side of herself.” Not like me ignoring my Chrysomallus side as much as possible, but it’s kind of hard to do that when most of my wool is a glow in the dark bright gold in color. “So she’s going to do some deep sea diving while we watch.”

“Wait for us, we can help with piloting the submarine!” That voice, Marshall?

I turned and saw the plucky Dalmatian from the Paw Patrol team and he wasn’t alone, since apparently he brought some of his teammates back with him.

“Again, Zuma is going to be so upset he missed this opportunity… I wonder if we’ll see mer-pups around here?” Said the Germane Shepherd with the police uniform, how many times have mer-pups been mentioned around me or Dormarch at this point? It’s apparently a thing and Dormarch wouldn’t look too out of place among them apparently… three tails aside. “Anyway, Chase is on the case!”

“Aw, he even has his own little catchphrase and everything!” I said while he, Marhsall and two others showed up.

“Hey, Pom this is Everest, Skye and one of my best friends ever, Chase!” Marshall introduced me to the gaggle of puppies that followed him here. “Hope you don’t mind us joining you and that we’re not bothering you.”

“Well the more the merrier, welcome aboard, but please don’t touch anything if you don’t know how it works!” Captain Gilturtle stated as he motioned for us to get on the submarine.

-A few hours and some underwater testing of Shanty’s abilities later-

“Again, Zuma is going to be so upset to have missed this.” If there was one thing Skye liked, it was all things flying.

Skye’s pup pack equipment included a parachute and a short distance jetpack that can double as a glider in an emergency when she runs out of fuel. Which apparently happens very often from the way Marshall tells it. Skye’s pack can also work underwater decently enough, but she prefers being in the sky and was always up to solve an aerial problem or help in some way with air support.

“He’s the water rescue pup right?” That got me nods from the Paw Patrol heroes.

“Yeah, he would have certainly loved this if he could be here.” Chase stated as he looked outside the submarine.

Chase’s pack was mostly made for sending out alerts and shooting some capture devices, like bolas and nets. It even had a built in taser and some other defensive gear. Plus he had a few other things which were common emergency equipment among the technological packs that the Paw Patrol used, like emergency rebreathers for one. The Paw Patrol team were all rated for deep sea diving thanks to Zuma and knew how to safely surface without getting ‘the bends’.

In particular the taser was something Chase rarely used, but his defensive option has mostly been used to temporarily power a machine where necessary or restarting someone’s heart with a quick shock.

Apparently Marshall was the one to have once used Chase’s pack to get someone’s heart beating again once.

I wasn’t worried that the Paw Patrol members would be caught out or underequipped if something went wrong here at least. They even had emergency plans for their emergency plans if things got worse.

“Okay, first off, did Marshall tell you we were magical beings?” I leapt to the ceiling of the sub and stuck fast there.

“Yes ma’am and that’s really cool!” Hearing Chase confirm it, I dropped to the floor of the submarine gently.

“We’re here to give Shanty some training, she’s a sea goat in the most literal term. She’s a Capricornus, we thought she was a normal island goat of some kind until we learned about this not too long ago.” It wasn’t hard for me to confirm that.

Shanty could breathe underwater and her control of water was a curiosity at best at first and I thought she might be naturally gifted with an elemental affinity towards liquids, but now it makes a whole lot more sense than it previously did. She was a goat that could manipulate any fluid and sea goats were known to be related to beings of sacrifice… for example, me.

We needed to test her capabilities to their fullest extent underwater and above it on land.

What are the chances that Arizona was a Taurus? She was stupidly tough and strong enough for it, probably gets her strength from her father and her resilience from her mother who was way too dynamite happy for my nerves when I met ‘Mad Cow Maggie’ for the first time.

“We’ll be watching you from here Shanty… you can go to the airlock.” I knew that Shanty could handle this.

“Are you sure she’ll be okay lass?” Captain Gilturtle had his concerns after the last few tests, given we’ve being letting Shanty out at ever deeper depths.

“She’ll be perfectly fine.” My trust in Shanty being capable of this was absolute. “She can create a bubble in the water if she’s feeling uncomfortable or like she’s about to be crushed.”

Shanty wasn’t going out alone though, Launita Walton the walrus and Octavia Inkhart the octopus were joining her out on these trips out there to make sure she’d be fine. Shanty’s body could really adapt to any source or depth of water easily.

“Are the speakers working?” I asked as I looked to Captain Gilturtle.

“Yes, they still are. Wouldn’t be sailing under the sea or on top of it without checking my equipment thoroughly before heading out.” Stated Captain Gilturtle in a proud manner.

-Sea-tucket region, Shanty-

It be feeling weird to be in the ocean and so far down, but I can still be seeing the light coming through the water above me in rays of shifting beauty that lit up the surrounding reefs. I be learning a lot about myself today.

This be feeling weird, my mouth wasn’t open, as I hovered near the open airlock and be swimming out, but I didn’t feel like I be drowning.

Luanita and Octavia were a comforting presence every time I be exiting the sub. I moved away from the submarine, swimming out and began looking around again. There was nothing dangerous around here or so Captain Gilturtle be telling us.

“Shanty, you feeling okay? Have you gotten used to the pressure at these depths?” Pom be asking from the submarine and I waved to her as I swam up and smiled, this be feeling really weird, but being in and surrounded by actual water felt nice.

The water inside the Moon Cell Realms be feeling a little… ‘unreal’. If that being the best describing word for it, then that is being what I be going with.

“Can you show us the back of your ears please, I want to check your gills again.” I moved closer to the viewport of the submarined and be showing Pom the back of my ears. “Huh, so gills really do appear faster when you’re submerged for long or deep enough. Well it’s official, you can’t drown Shanty. Now let’s get started…”

Pom be putting me through a lot of tests, mostly pushing myself around in water. Talking with the local sea pets of Sea-tucket, the aquatic neighbors to Paw-tucket, which had their own portal gate and their own keys. Obviously not all pets could be coming out of the Paw-tucket portal safely and it was nice to be knowing there was being more than one.

I be feeling the water around me… for miles, just everything in it. There was all kinds of noise, but it wasn’t being very deafening. I could even be hearing Dolly from… wait… what?!

Concentrating on where I be hearing Pom’s companion for life, I be hearing it at the sea floor in a given direction as Pom and the others were distracted with talking to the local underwater pets. Who be seriously naming a pet shark ‘Sharky’ anyway? The shark is being as shrunk down as all the other pets around here, it is even being adorable too.

Does Pom not be questioning the fact that Dolly was being so far down, or was she ignoring where her bond partner currently was? Dodo was being down here too and he be knowing that I’m not currently in the mess that he’s apparently in.

I be asking Dodo to share his sight with me.

-Evil alien cat undersea base, Dodo-

Happiness wanted to see, so happiness would.

“Oh dog darn it all, how are there so many of these things already!” Friend Dolly be shouting as she ripped the edge of her board through designated target ‘Evil Cat Bot’.

“We told you, Snooky works fast and is dangerously annoying psychopath when it comes to being a threat! You think this is bad, you haven’t even seen him at his worst yet!” Mammoth Mutt shouted as she blew a number of robots down the corridor by taking up the entirety of the corridor for a few seconds with a really fast expansion. “We really need to stop Agent Del, because we really don’t want her to continue helping Snooky with things like this!”

“I could use some energy…” Hot Dog grumbled after becoming tired of firing fireballs from his mouth. “All the water is causing my attacks to be weaker.”

I leaned over and spat a carob treat onto the floor in front of him on a sweet rice paper napkin and Hot Dog gave it a quick sniff.

“Carob?! Thanks, I love carob!” Hot Dog stated cheerfully and I smile at him. “Give me a second to eat this and I’ll be at full strength!”

Friends!

Something just broke and the underwater corridor they were fighting in just sprung a leak.

-Sea-tucket region, Shanty-

Well that is being a thing. I gathered the water leaking into that corridor and started using it to attack the bipedal machines with flying water slashes. I at least be knowing what my range was like while I was in the ocean at the very least.

The machines were all being five to eight feet tall, but they weren’t being hard for me to take down from here and it is being easy for me to help out my friends from a distance while still in the sight of Pom no less.

I could feel Dodo be looking my direction when Dolly be asking him something, but no Pom still be spending time with me and is likely focusing on me giving she wasn’t looking in Dolly’s direction at the moment.

“Everything okay out there Shanty?” Asked a concerned Pom and I swam up the submarine and nodded to her with a cheerful smile, trying to hide the fact that Dolly was in the middle of a harrowing battle with tons of robots.

If Pom had asked is everything alright around here, I would likely be telling her about the underwater base with the evil alien cats and a ton of dangerous robots in it at this moment. Dolly and Dog Star Patrol be fighting quite fiercely in there, but it be looking like they had things under control.

“So is there anything else you wanted to do today aside from training your aquatic capacity?” Yes, Pom, I wanted to be keeping you away from those evil cats… especially the psycho one, he is being a very bad cat and I didn’t want you to be being near him.

“Yes actually, maybe we can get some sea salt ice cream on the docks?” I say and blinked… I can be talking underwater without the water flooding into my mouth?

“Shanty, I want you to know that that was a very exceedingly weird thing to see… and hear.” Pom stated wide eyed.

“It’s just like the mer-pups huh guys?” Marshal stated with a cheerful tone.

“Well it’s almost the same, but that was still quite odd.” Chase be following from inside the submarine, I haven't been trying to talk underwater until now.

“Did someone say mer-pup!” I blinked as what looked like half dog half fish showed up.

“Cousin Coral, what are you doing here?!” Skye asked as she apparently knew the puppy fish that just showed up.

“Oh hey Skye, did you finally make Ryder happy enough as a pet outside of your usual Paw Patrol duties?” Coral the colorful swimming dog asked.

“Uh, you’re someone’s pet, since when?!” Skye asked slightly distressed.

“Someone named Aqua Lad started taking care of me and the other mer-pups when they started hearing about the odd dog fish swimming around Adventure Bay. He’s really nice like Aquadog, the pet to the king of Atlantis. Apparently Puplantis is a crashed alien space ship, who knew?” Then this Coral be turning to me and swimming around me while looking. “There’s just something about you that I really like.”

Okay, now I fully knew how it felt to be like Pom…. it is being very awkward.

“Wait you met Aquadog, I’m jealous, did you get to see any of the other super pets like Comet the Super Horse?!” Did I even want to be knowing what Skye was talking about?

“Comet the Super Horse?” Pom be mirroring my thoughts effectively.

“A long and weird story of some poor innocent centaur, well he used to be one anyway or at least says he was at one point, that was said to come from some magical land called Equ-what-something-or-other banished from the magical world by someone named swirling stars or something. He ended up in Greece or was it the Greek Lands and eventually became the pet of one of the super people in the current day.” Answered Chase who seemed like he was having trouble trying to remember the horse’s backstory.

“Yeah, I think we are being done here.” My bland voice carried through the water.

“Unless happens something in the next five seconds I agree.” Pom matched it, likely she be knowing as well as I do that Super Horse might be being from our home world.

Something exploded in the distance and Pom immediately be wanting to head in that direction, as the water around me rumbled and shifted with the following quake in the wake of that explosion. Luanita, Coral and Octavia clung to me with fright as I was hit with a light shockwave, that I protected them from.

“What was that, you okay Shanty? Good! Let’s go check it out, some poor pets might need help!” Pom wasn’t the only one that said this. Paw Patrol and even Coral mimicked saying it word for word.

“Jinx!” Marshall called out and then motioned for Captain Gilturtle to get us to where that explosion came from.

I quickly be boarding the submarine with Luanita, Octavia and Coral. We be heading in the direction of the evil cats underwater base with me being quite worried about what just happened.

When we be getting there, I am being relieved and horrified to be seeing nothing there, except for the massive gaping hole and what looks like an underwater volcano.

“Huh, must have been a sea floor pocket of gas exploding upwards and sending lots of mineral debris everywhere.” If that’s what you be thinking Pom, then I wouldn’t be correcting you. “Captain Gilturtle can you quickly surface for a moment? Also we’re going to need to tell all the aquatic pets that this area is not safe to swim in for the time being.”

The submarine started to rise as quickly as it could safely and when we be getting to the surface we be finding Dormarch and Dolly on surf boards.

What? How did they? Well at least they were being fine when we be coming up from the hatch.

“Dormarch, Dolly, has anything odd happened in the last few minutes?” Pom asked while looking at her two canine companions, one of which she calls son.

Kind of wanted Pom to be calling me her daughter, but after all the parents I be losing and the time spent growing up taking care of myself. It is being somewhat late, but I’d still take it.

“Yeah, something did happen!” Dolly shouted excitedly and looked to be trying to not let her right eye twitch, how did she be getting out of that underwater base before it exploded?

“Dolly!” Dormarch started to say only for Dolly to blurt something else out.

“We caught the biggest wave ever, it was epic… a lot of animals got wiped out to sea though, but the sea pets helped them all safely back to shore!” Dolly was being honest about that much at least, she glanced at me and shook her head no and motioned to not ask questions as Pom turned to Dormarch with a raised brow.

“Admittedly Dolly could have helped more with the disaster wave that struck the beach.” Dormarch grumbled. “Instead of riding on it…”

“Is everyone okay?” Pom was concerned and seemed like she wanted to be doing something to help.

“Yeah, everything’s completely fine, why wouldn’t it be?” Dolly’s grin showed far too many teeth as she be soon whispering something hastily to Dormarch.

Pom be narrowing her eyes at Dolly in suspicion.

“Yes, mom, everyone is fine, aside from some medical problems given the lack of medical care around here, there are some pets already on it! We were out here looking into anyone else who needs rescuing, the beach has already been evacuate.” Dormarch stated hesitantly.

“Dolly don’t drag your brother into surfing, when he could be helping animals with any medical issues. Even if you do have the alibi of looking for injured animals dragged out to sea and Dormarch is a really good swimmer… this is a little far out don’t you think?” Pom is being highly suspicious of what actually be going on now. “Captain GIlturtle, take us back to the docks, I want to get a look at the beach after this disaster. I’ll see you two after we get off the sub.”

-Several minutes later at the nearby beach, Dolly-

I surfed to shore with Dormarch, he learned how to surf quite quickly from me and it was a nice exercise of my sisterly rights to make my little bro awesome at things.

“Oh dog, oh dog! Guys, clear the robots off the beach fast, Pom’s on to us!” We took out the undersea base, but we didn’t catch Snooky before he got away, we did however catch Agent Del. Who was out cold and tied up and ready for transport and the beach was covered in large cat robots that Dog Star Patrol was cleaning up as quickly as they could.

“Look, Caper Canine, maybe you should just let your partner in on things…” Mutt Mammoth stated.

“No, you don’t know what Pom is like when she’s aware of trouble, she needs her rest!” She was doing so good and happy these past few days, I did not want her fretting over the evil cat aliens.

“Perhaps I can be of assistance with the cleanup?” A fire hydrant shaped drop pod lowered down to the beach and out of it came Brainy Barker, the purple furred leader of the Dog Star Patrol.

“What do you want for making it really quick?” I said in a panic. “I don’t want Pom to get dragged into this at all!”

Which would be hard, because tomorrow Pom was likely going to choose to spend time with me.

“Can you introduce me to that ewe?” Brainy said as he perked up tail wagging fiercely.

“Sure, clear the beach fast enough and I’ll help you get a belly rub included with the introduction!” Which seemed to be a thing that most of the Doggy Messiah cultists dreamed of, it really didn’t seem like much of a big thing to me.

“Done!” Brainy stated immediately and all the robots started gathering together in the air into a large quickly compacting mass as her ears lifted up and her eyes started glowing brightly. Right, she had powerful psychic powers and she knew how to use them.

I watched as Envoy Delirious get levitated into the drop pod and all the destroyed cat bot were quickly flung into the distance in the direction of Paw-tucket’s junkyard.

After quickly removing her cape and tossing it into the drop pod, it promptly shot back into space with the captured criminal and Brainy turned back to me expectantly.

It was a few minutes later that Pom arrived and Brainy was now looking at me pleadingly, silently begging with her eyes.

“Hey Pom, this is Brainy, could you do me a favor and give her a belly rub?” Yeah, that was probably the kind of sigh I would be making too Pom, one of complete exasperation.

-Ten minutes and a very much appreciated belly rub by Brainer Barker later, Pom-

“This sea salt ice cream is pretty good.” I tried to relax, it was probably a natural disaster... yeah who am I kidding. I already knew what was going on.

Dolly was off running around fighting evil alien cats, the alien dogs were a big hint of that at the very least. Not only that everyone knows about it and is trying to keep it a secret from me… and are doing quite poorly at that given Brainy was the big give away. That and the evil looking cat robot that they incidentally missed cleaning up from the beach.

At least I haven’t seen anything worth doing something about or anyone in extreme danger that required me to act. Plus all the pets around here affected by the disaster seemed to be mostly okay, so Dolly was at least trying to keep it under wraps and Dormarch was helping quite a bit.

So we go to the sports stadium or actually seek out and deal with the problem tomorrow?

“It is being really good tasting.” Shanty stated as I had my left hoof wrapped around her back, she had learned a lot about herself today and what she was truly capable of.

Dormarch also had some ice cream, but Dolly just had flavored shaved ice. We sat around and eventually I took Shanty to Paw-tucket’s local park so we could relax for the rest of the day.

Shanty and I practice some martial arts too, with me sitting in one place of course while she moved about, it seemed like Shanty was having a great day and I hoped I did a good enough job to make her happy. Plus we learned how different she was in water and out of it, among a few other things like her hooves becoming more fin like and that was about the amount of her transformation besides the gills that came into existence behind her ears at certain depths or an amount of time spent in water surpassing ten minutes.

Otherwise Shanty was a mostly normal and healthy goat… whose appetite was seemingly unhealthy in the amounts she ate and her fixation with rum bordered on complete and utter insanity. We spent the evening relaxing back at the tent.

I wondered how Dolly was going to explain herself to me tomorrow. At least I knew she genuinely liked Tusky, but that didn’t help with trying to keep the whole evil alien invaders thing concealed from me.

-That evening, near the Travelers Tent, Brainy Barker-

“The prisoner is secure ma’am and we scanned her for any tech and disabled anything she might have had on her that could conceivably let her escape!” Tail Terrier informed me, which is one less thing to worry about. “We’re talking full body internal scan no less after that one time she used a hairball to break out of her cell, that’s not happening this time Brainy.”

Now we just needed to get Snooky.

“So how was the belly rub?” Hot Dog grinned at me with a humorous smile and I blushed, as my entire face turned a vibrant shade of pink. “That good huh?”

467. No sporting chance.

-Petopia, the next day, very early morning, travelers’ tent, Pom-

I’m once again covered in dogs… nothing new to me at this point.

I’m going to ask Dolly whether or not she wanted to spend the day with me and depending on the answer…

I blinked and looked at Brainy, I saw her ears lifting up in a half circle shape and I’m pretty sure the images I see her producing between her ears were her dreams. Must be awkward for the alien dog if she is sleeping next to someone.

Let’s see she’s spending time with a handsome white dog with a red cape, she’s protecting me from three evil cats with images of robots or golems and the white furred dog is helping her. It was all looking quite action packed, Brainy then cuddled me happily afterwards when defeating the evil alien cats.

At least I knew what they look like now and that Brainy wanted to protect me from many things. Thankfully she was far too smart to become one of my familiars.

“Brainy what are some of the worst things these cats have done?” I asked quietly and then I watched the response of Brainy’s subconscious answering me without a second thought. “Hm… okay… lots of concerning things. Those cats definitely need to be dealt with.”

Brainy smiled in her sleep as she imagine the cats put behind bars… an energy barrier, patrolling dogs and an entire facility the size of a planet dedicated to keeping them away from me and others. Well she was at least dreamed big.

After I was done watching the images I started to think about today’s itinerary for me personally. Depending on what Dolly answers, I still have my own things to do today and I’m going to need Paw Patrol’s help with it.

The pets around here had airships, submarines, cruise ships and plenty of things to look into. The pets here were not technologically incompetent in the slightest. The smarter pets are the ones obviously bringing in the technology and it was up to the other pets to produce and use said technology.

I had a few ideas I wanted to run by some of the pets and I will need to talk to a lot of pets today. Specifically the ones who are at least more keyed into things going on around paw-tucket, like Roxy or Pepper’s groups.

The pets here oddly didn’t have much in the way of automotive vehicles, but they did use carts and seemed to prefer to go everywhere on paw. Though I have heard about hamster wheel powered flying vehicles, I was curiously to learn more about them and I’m sure Skye would be too.

So let’s see, Dolly would like to visit the skate park, the ski resort and the last place to visit has to be Paw-tucket’s sports arena to test her stuff against some of the sportier pets around in the evening even if she doesn’t get enough from the ski resort. She was a top athlete as far as dogs were concerned already and that’s before magic gets added into the equation.

Hm… yes… that would be a fun thing to set up for later. I’m going to need to talk to a number of pets while Dolly was distracted by having fun, which wasn’t hard to do. I wouldn’t have long before she woke up, she usually does when she notices I’m actively moving about… now how to get out from under all these dogs while only waking the Marshall and his friends.

A length of wool started prodding Marshall and eventually I replaced myself with a pile of blankets and pillows with the help of the four Paw Patrol pups.

-Approximately ten minutes after being freed from being dog piled later-

As a living pillow I require my bathroom break… once done I addressed the four puppies waiting attentively for me.

“Okay, now that that business is out of the way. There’s something I want you four to do for me today.” I started whispering to the four puppies what I needed for them to do and who to talk to for me and even gave them written instructions. I really doubt any dog, pet or not, would miss answering the call to action I was about to put out and hoped the news spread all around. “There, you all got what I want you to do?”

“Yes, and we’ll get it done Ms. Lambchop, Chase is on the case!” Chase barked bravely and was off in a flash heading towards town.

“You can always count on Paw Patrol! Activate Jetpack…” Skye stated and was about to fly off.

“Belay that, save your fuel until it’s absolutely needed Skye!” I quickly interrupted the pink wearing puppy.

“Aw… okay I will, but I am currently interested in those flying hamster wheel things you mentioned, I mean if its paw powered flight then I definitely know I can use that even if it’s a bit slower.” Skye certainly seemed eager to fly or be in the air, whereas her cousin Coral preferred to be ocean bound as an outsider mer-pup, a mer-pup that wasn’t born as one. Apparently the mer-pups had something similar to whatever magic the hippogriffs use for Coral to stay in her mer-pup form. “I’ll go see about getting one of those Fly Wheels for myself while I’m doing the thing! Sure I can’t bring it back to Ryder, but I can suggest something like it to him to replicate so I can enjoy it in my free time in the air. It would certainly save on my fuel expenditure costs and make things much easier on Ryder and Ace…”

“Hey, you helped me work out how to not have accidents with my slippery paws, it’s the least we could do and we will want to do more!” Marshall barked excitedly and then set out. “We’re friends forever Pom even if we never see each other again after our time here, I’m fired up and ready to go!”

Marshall soon disappeared heading towards the junkyard and theme park to start his run, then I turned my attention to Everest.

“Do you think you can manage your particular mission without your usual vehicles?” I asked Everest as her job was a little more intensive than the others.

“I can do it easily, my paw pack comes with cold rescue supplies, ropes, hooks and even a pair of skis fit for me to use. Besides I heard the pets here have ski lifts so it shouldn’t take me that long to get up the slopes of the ski resort.” Everest stated as she saluted to me and was off heading towards the nearby snowy mountain. “I’ll even greet you there when you show up Pom. Trouble on snow or ice, I don’t even need to think twice!”

With that the four Paw Patrol puppies were off, their communications devices didn’t work very well outside of satellite coverage of the next door world. Let’s see if this will work out like I think it will, it’ll certainly be interesting to see if the pets around here will actually do it.

It didn’t take me long to feel Dolly wake up and with energy, she had pinged me within five seconds of noticing I wasn’t there in the tent and immediately came running out to see me sitting here by myself.

“So Dolly, do you want to spend the day with me or… do you want to spend it hanging out with Tusky?” I waggled my brows at Dolly and her face went slightly red.

“Oh come on Pom, like I’m going to leave you of all people hanging! Though I do kind of want to spend more time with Tusky…” Well at least Dolly admitted that she had a conflict of interests here. “The others definitely talked about their days with you, never new Shanty’s hooves could turned finned or get sharper… or that she could handle being two hundred and fifty meters below sea level without getting crushed by the weight of all that water. How far down do you think she can go?”

“Below five hundred meters easy, she’s a Capricornus, I really doubt the entire sea could crush her spirit. You know… Tusky could come with us and you two could hang out together while I do a circuit around Paw-tucket’s sportiest places?” I’m going to be doing this anyway without Dolly, I have plenty of reasons for doing so as I needed to get an idea of what I’m working with, might as well do it with her and make her day even if she’s going to be missing most of what I’m doing if she’s far too focused on Tusky. So it might help to have him around since he’ll calm Dolly down about the whole me inevitably finding out something is going on with evil alien cats. “I could chaperone you’re date with him…”

“Date, who said anything about a date?!” Panic breathing, yeah Dolly was really bad around huskies… which begs the question.

“Do you get the same way about female huskies?” It had to be asked, I mean given how Dolly is acting like the sky is falling.

“No… but I do think they are beautiful, there’s just something about huskies or husky like beings that speaks to me… I’m otherwise definitely straight and will eventually want puppies of…. erg?!” Straight except for huskies apparently, got it, also Dolly just realized what she was saying and her brain ground to a halt thinking about the big family she comes from and trying to apply that to the family she might eventually want.

“Too much overthinking and getting ahead of yourself?” My quite tone was met with a quiet nod and Dolly looking more like a mortified wilting strawberry than a Dalmatian. “Then let me get started on breakfast.”

“Breakfast, count us in!” Cheerfully Mitzi on approach for the tent and I did owe her and Pepper some restitution for easing my agony over the last few days by a metric ton.

“That’s the least I could do for you Mitzi.” Those skunks were the sweetest I’ve ever met, smelling and otherwise. “Now let me tell you what I can currently make, I’ll have Dormarch make sure it’ll be safe for consumption before I start…”

-An hour later, at the skate park-

Bev Gilturtle had a lot friends in odd circles, bungee jumping, sky diving, paddle boat racing, roller derby and several other high octane things. That turtle really had a taste for the extreme and adventurous bordering on insane. So basically every friend of Bev the rather experience turtle already knew who I was and roller derby team the ‘Thunder Clouds’ reminded me somewhat of Equus’s own ‘Wonder Bolts’, what with their blue gear and a similar cloud and lightning bolt insignia.

This is how I got introduced to a cow named Utter Chaos, a dog named Ferocious Fran… who was a fan of mine and didn’t have a mean bone in her body… and Miss Hiss the cat. All three of them were showing off what skills they had.

Udder Chaos in particular was really good at extreme skating and Dolly got along well with the cow from the start. Fran was decently capable in tricks and skating, just not both at the same time and she was adorable in trying to impress me at least. Miss Hiss was good at going fast, but she slammed into things… a lot. Hiss was the second most durable member of the Thunder Clouds roller derby team by far and not for a good reason.

“So you think you can train everyone to pull it off?” My question was met with a jovial ‘moo’.

“We Thunder Clouds might be the worst derby team in Paw-Tucket, but that’s not for the lack of trying! We make the other teams work for their victories and have won a few times ourselves. In other words I’ll see what we can all do!” Udder Chaos, team captain and paw-tucket magically downsized cow stated with a cheerful exuberance and a sense of seriousness. “I’ll at least get everyone working on it!”

“As long as you are ready for it. That’s all I ask.” I nodded to her and went back over to where Tusky was watching Dolly put on quite a show that attracted quite a few other pets that have come to paw-tucket. “She’s quite amazing huh?”

“That your partner is eh.” Tusky stated with a hint of friendly fondness as he watched Dolly perform a double backflip into a two eighty to land going down the ramp. She wasn’t going to use any magic today at this rate unless things went horribly sideways. “Too bad I know she will stay by your side when you leave, you are definitely not sticking around here forever and she’s quite a spunky one that knows where her loyalties ultimately lay eh. Though it would have been nice, she certainly is sweet and quite capable in many ways... when she isn’t tripping all over herself around me. I'm honestly flattered by it.”

“Still a few possible weeks to make good memories… just don’t take things too far, even Dolly should know better given the Tartarus we’re about to go into after our vacation time is over.” I don’t know whether seeing Tianhuo in Tambelon would be a good thing or not, on the one hoof she’s strong, on the other she’ll be in danger because of me.

“I’m a gentle dog and my parents raised me right eh.” You make me wonder Tusky, was the ‘eh’ a common verbal tic amongst your entire family or was it just you?

“So care to tell me some things about your people, I believe you said they were ice borers?” Learning about alien culture certainly was interesting, especially that frosty canines that naturally lived on an ice planet and used their humongous tusk tooth to dig for water and or food. Husky’s species could handle below freezing easily, so the visit to the ski resort wouldn’t be a bother him weather wise. “Also is the whole ‘eh’ thing you or is it common to your whole family?”

“My people all have the verbal tic, it comes up every once in a while… even when we’re writing eh.” That has got to be annoying for you Tusky, you could write a few sentences normally and then at the end of one you suddenly add ‘eh’ as an afterthought.

-Two hours later, on the way to the ski resort, traveling through Paw-tucket-

I had to make a quick stop to talk to some pets, specifically Jade Catkin. She might as well be this world’s version of Jaded La Perm, just far less insane and more amiable to be around.

“My pottery and poetry class will love to hear about this… heh heh heh, especially for a good cause!” Jade stated as she rubbed her front two paws together with a devilish grin on her face, her ears shaping almost like the devil horns I’d imagine Jaded La Perm to have. “I’ll see to it, I know a lot of cool cats that will want to do that! Even a few rabbits and dogs will want to get in on this. I’ll will have it ready whenever you need it, if you need me find one of my friends, they’ll know where I’m napping or hanging about!”

“Okay, thanks Jade… those are words I never thought I would ever have to say, at least it’s not the annoying one that causes guards constant headaches.” Still wonder how the pets here got plumbing installed without human help, I would ask about that later.

“So why the ski resort? You can’t exactly do any skiing, snowboarding or much of any of that other really cool stuff.” Good question Dolly.

“I can still go sledding if I’m careful, you know my protective wool shell can absorb impacts no problem, but I’d rather not risk my own health. I’m just going to spend time at the local resort and maybe safely dip my legs into a hot tub, I kind of want to stretch my right hind leg out and I’ll simply keep it water proof with my wool.” My wool was successfully holding my slowly rebinding bone chunks together. “I could use a soothing hot mineral bath… even if I had to do it with sponges, I’m going to end up in a hot tub one way or another if I have to dig out a natural hot spring myself. Also there’s a few pets I need to talk to and I wanted to check on Everest since I sent her up that way with a message.”

“About what?” Dolly tilted her head curiously.

“Don’t worry about it, just some fun stuff.” It was going to be 'fun' if it works. If not… well… we’ll cross that bridge later.

We rode the ski-lifts up to the resorts lodges and I told Dolly to go have fun with Tusky, since he apparently had all kinds of knowledge on snow and ice related sports. I bet Velvet, Canard and Tusky would all have been great friends should they ever meet.

I took Dolly’s skateboard and stone bone with me, while she ran off to find a snowboard locally.

Once Dolly set off with Tusky, I eventually made my way over to the hot tubs quietly and then let out a sharp bark at the relaxing sheep in the nearest tub.

She bleated and flailed about wildly, before she ended up gripping her chest with her front hooves and was staring at me in fright.

“I’m sorry, but you made that way too easy… can we talk?” Despite scaring the living daylights out of Petula, the sheep still looked up to me curiously. “I need your help with something.”

“About what?” Petula finally tentatively said after she got over her shock and slight fear of me.

“Well, first of all I need to apologize to you for the whole skunking thing… and lead into quite a few other things we need to discuss moving forward.” I gestured to her to get relaxed as I reshaped my wool and moved my leg about with it carefully with gritted teeth. “I’m not apologizing about launching you out to sea, you were asking for consequences to come knocking and I think I might have reacted a little unfairly towards you. Let me give you a small reminder, don’t say nasty things about my son and we’ll have a cordial relationship moving forward.”

Keeping the bones in my leg in place while maintaining the wool cast in a water tight seal form was a little difficult to put in place, but I was making sure nothing moved out of place under my flesh. It was not impossible for me to get in the tub as I currently was and thus I slid into the tub next to Petula the sheep.

I felt the warm water washing over my wool and it relaxed my body as it did, I let out an audible sigh of being content. That didn’t mean I didn’t have an iron tight grip over protecting my right hind leg as I stretched it out under the surface of the bubbling water using my wool to do so carefully.

We then started having a conversation about a great many things. Petula needed some friendship and hasn’t been having any fun the last few days, even if she was still a highly snobbish sheep she wasn’t terrible to talk to. I’d ask around for Everest after this conversation.

-Dolly-

“Bow-whacka-wahoo!” Snowboarding was awesome, I never got to do this before! Mostly because I’ve never been near a snow covered mountain, even the so called bunny slopes were exciting to me. Mind you the bunny slopes here had actual pet bunnies skiing, sledding and snowboarding so I had to watch where I was going.

The most snowboarding I’ve done is with my skateboard after I took the axle’s off and on small slopes at best, at worst just small mounds. At least I was good on a frozen over half pipe and cold temperatures were definitely my jam!

“Not even a shiver, aren’t you a short furred dog eh?” Tusky asked with his drill tusk currently hanging down to his chest, I still wonder where he retracted that thing to when it was pulled all the way in. How did it even fit inside his face? What cool secrets does his alien biology have?

I came to a stop next to him and looked up at the resorts lodges. I knew Pom was fine and… she even seemed to be enjoying herself, but why did it feel like I should be at her side right now?

Was it that I wanted to have fun with her today, even if I couldn’t have fun myself if I had to stick to her current pace?

“Yeah, but I’m a hot blooded Dalmatian and I might have some hell hound in my blood. If it’s a choice of immunity to hot or cold, I’m glad to have an immunity to cold.” Nothing can freeze this dog solid… except maybe the handsome alien husky Pom left me alone with, should I get an affectionate lick from him that is.

Pom was trying to be my wing mate on this 'not-a-date' thing I’m doing here, but I still felt like I wanted to be there for her or with her.

Pom sent me a mental reassurance to keep having fun, I had a few hours of slope time after all and then we’d head back into Paw-tucket for some evening games at the sports stadium.

“Well if I had to be someone’s pet, it would have to be Pom… glad we’re family.” I relaxed a little and motioned towards the ski-lifts as I picked up the snowboard I was renting out.

“Being a pet is nice, but being family is even greater eh.” Wholeheartedly agreed Tusky who was motioning for me to go another round in racing him down the hill where there were flags marking the path. “Bet you can’t beat me down first!”

“You’re on handsome butt!” I shouted as we got ready to race downhill.

-Pom-

Her heart is all in for a husky and yet she still cares about me more than that… I’m really touched by Dolly’s dedication to sticking with me, but this is kind of ridiculous. What about her own happiness?!

“So what was the response Everest?” I asked the snowbound Paw Patrol expert on snowy mountain regions.

“They’ll do it and will be ready Pom!” Everest stated while wagging her tail.

“Say Everest, let me introduce you to someone, if you’re going to be visiting Paw-tucket more often then she could use a friend.” With a gesture of my hoof Petula came up to me, still looking a little prideful, but at least she was keeping it under control. “I’ll leave Petula in your capable paws, also Petula do you want to help with that?”

“Sure thing, when it happens, just let me know and I’ll see if I can get back in my crew of acquaintances good graces before then to help pull things together like only a ‘Woolright’ can!” Here Petula Woolright had a mischievous smile, she still got here despite being a bit of a bully and a jerk. She could truly play and be nice when she tried.

After I left Petula with Everest and some good new, I grabbed myself a cup of hot carob. Chocolate was a relatively heavily banned substance in Paw-tucket for a variety of reasons, mostly the easy poisoning of animals, carob was a by far safer substance by comparison.

“Want a carrot to go with that?” Looking at the white rabbit next to me, she seemed friendly. “Name’s Ray, I’m a magician. I saw you at Sunil’s show, you’re an odd one.”

“Yeah, I’ll take a carrot, but I need to know… can you get into contact with all the pets that can do magic like Sunil?” I took up an offered carrot and started chewing on it.

“Ahhhh-choo!” Sniffling Ray put her right paw into the top hat she sneezed up out of nowhere and pulled Sunil the mongoose out of it. “Say hello to Paw-tucket’s premiere magician pulled out of a rabbit’s hat, he’s in contact with the more mystically inclined among us depending on what you might need of us.”

“Well I can say you’ve gotten better with talking with your audience Ray.” Sunil said in a pleasant tone before turning to me. “Did you be needing something, Pom I believe Pepper was calling you, from the guild of magic pets?”

“Yes, I will need you to do something really big eventually, I’m talking some actual magic that can help a lot of pets.” I started up what I wanted from him, after receiving a full explanation Sunil nodded as I finished up.

“We can be doing that, now be putting me back already Ray, I have many things to be organizing and not much time to practice!” Sunil was stuffed back into the top hat by Ray and she stuffed it back up her right nostril.

“So what kind of magical talent do you have? You seem too normal sized to have come through one of the Paw-tucket portals.” Ray asked curiously while raising her left ear in my direction.

-Some hours later, heading towards Paw-tucket stadium-

“I’m glad you’re having fun today Dolly.” I said as we were almost outside the local sports stadium.

“Yeah, but I could be doing more stuff with you than hanging out with Tusky. You’re not having any fun at all and I’m all about making sure everyone is in on the party.” Oh Dolly, I was actually having fun… I’m just going about it differently. “You are awesome in so many ways Tusky, don’t get me wrong, but I want that time with Pom!”

“You don’t have to worry about…” Then I got a digit on Dolly’s right paw pointed right at me.

“No, I’m sticking with you and make sure you enjoy yourself here!” Well that was going to be hard to do Dolly, since I brought you here to compete and enjoy yourself and cheer 'you' on.

“What happened to you wanting to be the center of attention?” I asked sarcastically not expecting an answer.

“You’re always making us the center of your attention whenever we need you at the drop of anything, but what about you… you deserve some attention too Pom!” She wasn’t even glancing in Tusky’s direction, but he smiled and made a gesture at me to get on with Dolly as he watched what the nearby pets were doing.

“Dolly, everything is okay and…” I said in a placating manner.

“No, not okay!” Dolly shouted throwing her paws up in the air in slight anger. “Don’t push me away, I’ll even play fetch with you if that is how I’m going to get to spend some personal time with you today, I’m that serious!”

A lot of pets were curious at my loud gasp. My eyes widened, I felt a bit of warmth in my chest and I let out a giggle at Dolly’s insistence that I actually be more involved in what was her day with me.

Dolly could have spent this entire day alone with Tusky and I wouldn’t have gotten in the way, but here she was instead arguing that she’d even play fetch if it meant she got me to be involved.

“You hate fetch though.” It was funny that Dolly was getting so irate about being my friend.

“Stop being so understanding and be selfish Pom and make me do something fun with you!” Dolly crossed her paws and huffed at me with a glare, my goodness was she adorable in this moment. Considering Tusky was snickering, he thought so too.

“You’re your own dog Dolly, I don’t want to tell or make you do anything you don’t want to do.” This was getting absurd now.

“What if sometimes I wanted to be your dog once in a while, did you ever think of that!” Okay Dolly got a loud snort and burst of giggles out of me, even she started laughing after a moment. “Okay yeah, I am getting pretty silly here… so, what do?”

Dolly was smiling up at me and wagging her tail excitedly.

“Ever heard of disc golf? They have the equipment for it here, it might even be right up your alley given you are quite in tune with wind.” It didn’t take long for me to get Dolly into the competitive spirit as multiple teams suddenly sprung up in an impromptu disc golf tournament by the surrounding pets.

It didn’t take long for Dolly to grasp the basics and then excelled given she had the opposable digits to pull off playing disc golf really well. I was no slouch with my hooves in the throws I had to make either.

We had gotten quite a few pets in on the fun and it became a thing.

-A time later-

It was currently Dolly’s throw and she was ahead by a point and this was the ninth basket, we were only doing a nine basket game. I moved off the side to talk to a few animals about a few plans.

“So tennis ball launchers, jump ropes and if you can work it... maybe set up enough bouncy balls or other small rounds things like marbles for it… but I doubt marbles are pet safe.” The pets nodded and told me they’d talk to the current mayor of paw-tucket about it and I sighed with relief and saw that Dolly had gotten really close with her last throw. “Not like it will safe to begin with so… if you’ll excuse me.”

My turn, I stomped my front right hoof into the disc, it flipped up into the air and got caught on my wool. I carefully moved into position with a three legged trot and prepared to throw the disc with my left hoof.

“If I sink this shot…” I muttered as I gauged the distance between me and the basket.

“Then we’ll likely tie, unless we’re counting this as first to basket in that case you win.” Dolly didn’t sound disappointed at the prospect of losing, in fact she seemed excited for me. Quite a number of pets were watching us now.

I wasn’t winning the impromptu tournament, some other pet won it already. That puffin was far too good at throwing discs around. I’m just fighting for second place with Dolly.

“Okay wind and angle, calm with a left hook sixty five degrees high vertical toss. Pull back and…” I launched the disc slightly to the right vertically instead of horizontally from my left hoof.

After reaching a certain height in the stadium, the disc caught some air and the disc veered towards the basket. It hit the front edge where it bounced and everyone took a sharp breathe, then it hit the back end of the basket and bounced back in.

“Woohoo, go Pom, bow-whacka-wow!” Dolly cheered exuberantly as she ran up to hug me excitedly and then decided to run off to quickly take third place with her next throw, quite a few pets cheered me on.

“Nice throw. That is quite a mind you have eh.” It seemed Tusky was as excited as the pets here were.

“Can I talk to you for a second about something serious?” My request was acquiesced to and I pulled Tusky off to the side where I told him some things.

He blinked a bit at first at what I was telling him and then his mouth firmed and he nodded as he fully took in what I was saying.

“Well that’s not very sporting you… and I’m not talking about us currently being in a sports stadium. I would even say it is totally unfair, but entirely warranted.” Despite saying there was unsportsmanlike conduct involved, Tusky didn’t say he didn’t like hearing what I told him. “I do find that my sense of humor has been quite piqued and I’ll be glad to see where you are going with this and if you can pull it off eh.”

“Good to know I have you’re approval with it then, see if you can find Marshall or Chase and tell them how it’s going so far. I’ve got more time to spend with Dolly into the evening.” With that Tusky ducked out of Dolly’s day and we moved on to playing the next game.

Dolly didn’t even notice Tusky had left or was even gone, she was having far too much fun with me before we had to go back to the tent.

I had coached Dolly into a one hundred meter dash of which she was the fastest animal around that couldn’t naturally fly. Nobody here could beat me in a high jump and that’s with my handicap and without having wings. The obstacle course was fairly popular among many pets of all kinds and not just the dogs. There was throwing footballs through hoops that were actively rolling or set up in a specific static position. There were a lot of events that required moving that I otherwise did my best at while trying to avoid causing myself any undue stress or pain.

It was all pure fun and we got an early evening show when Bev and the Thunder Clouds showed up to have a match again the Cat-er Maulers, an obvious pun on the word caterwaul. Dolly enjoyed watching the bout as she had never seen a turtle go that fast or get into roughhousing like that before. The Thunder Clouds got quite a roar of applause when they won the match, mostly because Miss Hiss couldn’t stop once she got going fast.

“Aw yeah, did you see that Pom, she was like wham bam, thank you, but I’m the better bash sister here!” Didn’t need to ask Dolly if she had a good time watching Bev wreck out there with her team as we calmly spectated with snacks.

“Did you even notice Tusky leaving?” It was something I finally decided to ask as Dolly seemed far too inattentive of his absence.

“He left… since when?!” It truly seems like that surprised Dolly, she had actually been successfully distracted from the alien husky going off on his own.

“Something came up Dolly, don’t worry about it.” I patted Dolly on the back and then started caressing her ears and she leaned into the touch of my hoof. “Let’s get back to the tent so I can make dinner, Tusky should be there by now.”

“Thanks for letting me spend so much time with a cute guy I like over these last few days Pom.” Dolly then licked me under the chin and then stuck with me as I walked home with her at my side. “Sure, nothing is going to come of it, but I want Tusky to at least remember me fondly. I am certainly never going to forget him.”

-Later that night, in space nearing Petopia and Dog Star Patrol space hydrant base, Mechanikat Tower Space Cruiser, Mechanikat (Villainous bipedal cyborg feline who supposedly leads the ‘Felonious Felines’, the somewhat boss of the far more dreaded Snooky Wookums)-

“So we lost Agent 9-L and Isis was captured before she could rendezvous or make contact… no matter, we can still carry out the plan. Those pesky pooches of Dog Star Patrol will not be able to stop us from conquering this peaceful helpless little world!” I slammed my fist against the arm of my throne. “I will no longer be a laughing stock among the other villains, I will ruin a completely peaceful paradise that no other evil has been truly capable of reaching… until now that is muwahahaha-! Not even Dog Star and all their powers will be able to put a stop to me, since Krypto, Streaky, Jumpa, Bat Cow, and Bat Hound are going to be far too busy to come to their rescue. I swear there are far too many animal heroes these day!”

468. When you’re prepared!

-Petopia, four days later, travelers’ tent, Pom-

My right hind leg was getting a scan from both Dormarch and an X-ray by Marshall, we had to make some minor adjustments to set my bone fragments correctly in place, but otherwise my bone was almost fully fused back together properly. It was still very much fragile though.

“Yuck, that looks bad.” Chase stated, the police puppy stared at the damage with a slight whimper.

“You think this is bad, you should have seen it several days ago, well in Paw-tucket time anyway. I’m not going to think about the how time works here and just enjoy being alive.” Marshall was working on improving his medic skills through observing my injuries, Dormarch was also getting some studying in as well with his hospital database. It was a good thing berry trees grew quickly if tended to properly, hopefully some pets have green digits to keep them going in the form of a plantation after we’re gone. “Those berries are amazing.”

“As are Mitzi and Pepper, those two skunks have really helped with all the pain.” Saying that, a Sitrus Berry entered my mouth and I chomped down on it. So darn sick of them, they would normally be delicious under other circumstances and the benefits were well worth it in the recovery of what was my pulped tube sock of a leg.

“Well mom, you have been running around a lot these last few days, I’m actually surprised your leg is doing this well… your wool acting as surgical wires has helped with the recovery of your leg correctly and I don’t see any signs of the bone being off.” After a thoughtful look, Dormarch finally gave me a diagnosis. “You can walk on your leg now, but make sure it’s you’re wool moving it and not you’re muscles. No extreme activities, please, for the sake of your health.”

“I don’t plan on it.” Certainly not physical activity at any rate, the mentally stressful projects I had going on were much more interesting at the moment.

“Why haven’t you spent any time with us over the last few days?” Smolder asked as she watched Shanty and Dolly went at each other without weapons and were only using basic martial arts. Dolly was holding her own fairly well against the much heavier Shanty.

“Did any of you ask if you wanted to spend time with me? When I asked you, you guys were all up for spending time with me, mostly because I asked. Dolly is the only other one that spent another entire day with me over the last few days because she actually approached me for some quality time doing things I wanted to do instead of me going somewhere nice that you might appreciate, Dormarch has been spending his time just being a normal… well ‘mostly’ normal cuddly puppy.” It was nice to spend some time with Dolly doing things other than sports. We went cloud watching, smelling the flowers or in general talking to some of the surrounding pets for their perspectives on things about what it was like to have an owner and or live in their world with all the weird stuff going on. I even got Dolly playing board games with me, including some interesting dice rolling ones. Speaking of dice rolling, Liar’s Dice is a game that Dolly liked to roll some bones on and I had worked on her reasoning, combat and magical skills a bit at the end of that particular day. Still can’t remember a name unimportant to her, always in the same ballpark as ever. “Otherwise I’ve been learning a lot about the pets that live here with the Paw Patrol by wandering around. They all have so many interesting stories about the places they come from.”

Shanty looked a bit guilty about not asking me for another day like Dolly had, even then she still kept sparring with Dolly with bare bones no magic basics. She needed a refresher on how to fight without magic in case she was ever rendered incapable of using her magical abilities and didn’t have quick access to her personal weapon.

“Which leads me to asking this, are none of you are going to spend the day with one another. Like Dormarch and Ocellus spending the day together to work out some things intellectually?” I knew it was bad idea to push the thought, but I still had to put it out there. “I’m not the only one in the group that has friendships that need some work and I’ve worked on mine with all of you.”

“I’m not particularly fond of that idea mom, even if I am willing to be cordial with her.” Well at least Dormarch was okay with Ocellus in case he ever got left alone with her for any reason.

“I’m perfectly fine with that as long as it isn’t at the cost of someone’s life.” Was my immediate response. “Now, if nobody is going to ask to spend some time with me. If you’ll excuse me… I have to go meet with Skye at the air field to look into these Fly Wheel things some more. Apparently she’s getting a pet based pilot license for flying in Paw-tucket.”

I made my way away from the tent, my thicker wool leg making me look like I was limping with how awkward it was to move compared to my perfectly fine legs. Also moving my right hind leg was still quite painful.

-Sometime around mid-day, within the general area of travelers’ tent, Brainy-

“And that created a hole in the satellite defense system. Mechanikat’s Cruiser is going to be landing near Paw-tucket any minute now. We managed to damage its two main energy weapons into an inoperable state as it passed through the hole in the defense system and we’ve taken some damage ourselves. It won’t take Snooky more than thirty minutes to a few hours to get them working again if they become a priority for the little rat.” That was not good news at all Paw Pooch, it seems Snooky was still up to his old tricks and was as sneaky as he ever was to be able to build a method to take out some of the satellites we painstakingly set up to cover the planet from such an outward invasion. “We’re currently making sure Agent Del is staying in her cell and isn’t trying to escape. We’ll try to send help down once we’re done checking the damages done to Dog Star Base.”

Said base was apparently shaped like a fire hydrant according to Krypto, fire hydrants certainly had their appeal even if that was not the original reason why the base looked the ways it does. It was just a weird coincidence, alien dogs used spaceships shaped like hydrants that mostly for pure sturdiness reasons. That and building something to absolutely have so few hull failure points in space was the point of having a space traveling vessel.

“Oh my goodness this is bad, Mechanikat is probably going to land an entire army of cat-bots in Paw-tucket and try to take Petopia for all of its resources after dealing with the inhabitants.” At least we had help in the form of Dolly and her friends, possibly her partner if she’s feeling up for it. “We’ll try to deal with it ourselves. I’ll gather the team and our allies down here and will get ready for the incoming assault.”

-A short time before Brainy was informed of the invasion, at Paw-tucket’s airfield, Pom-

It still surprises me the ingenuity of some of the smarter pets.

Skye came in for a landing after aileron rolling and then barrel rolled into taxying it along the ground expertly, eventually she came to a complete stop. If it was a flying vehicle, then Skye was absolutely rated for it. She had to be aeronautically smart to use a jetpack at the speeds she likes to go at in the air. The puppy was allowed to fly airplanes, jetpacks, helicopters and most recently the local airships and her own personal ‘Fly Wheel’.

A ‘Fly Wheel’ was the invention of one Trip Hamston the hamster, the very same one who was the best friend of one Quincy Goatee the fainting goat. Trip easily got Skye a second model Fly Wheel.

The first model of Fly Wheel required constant running to maintain flight, making it hard to steer. The second model took care of that problem and was upgrade to required running to power it up on a stored charge before taking off to the air and then it could be flown manually, or in auto-pilot using a paw pad as the automated navigation device.

Trip really hadn’t considered the problems of having to run while in flight, because he was a hamster and they rarely tired of running in hamster wheels and was happy the second model was far more friendly to the less physically inclined. However the second model still had a feature from the original design to allow a pet to run to generate emergency power mid-flight, in case something happened to the prior stored charge.

Skye of course scoffed at the idea she’d need auto-pilot for takeoff or landing. If I was to compare her to Launchpad McQuack, then she had about half the comparable skill without the absurd supernatural ability to make passengers and herself survive any crash. That and Launchpad could pilot, drive or control anything that is technically and even loosely defined as a ‘vehicle’ successfully… until he had to park it or safely come to a stop. Skye has been injured from various crashes before as Marshall has had to make sure she didn’t break any bones on numerous occasions, but she can actually land or stop without breaking anything.

Skye just finished a successful flight with a second model Fly wheel, she ran to charge it up and then quickly got it in the air and took it for a spin. She even seemed to enjoy having a personal one waiting for her in Paw-tucket as needed. The only thing is, this technology wouldn’t be useful for long term flights nor would it be useable for anything bigger than the pets that wielded them. Apparently size and weight constraints were a limitation to hamster wheel powered flying vehicles and Trip had invented the first model to be as simple as feasibly possible. The engineering was an incredible feat at the very least.

Skye was lucky that they could build a Fly Wheel model to her needs. The vehicle was nowhere nearly as powerful as her jetpack was, but it didn’t need to be fueled by anything other than simple physical exertion. Skye appreciated the exercise and the ability to fly after getting a workout. She would eventually outgrow the ability to even use them unless a larger version of Fly Wheel could be successfully made and Shanty had something of a vested interest in airplanes. She should probably come here and research how these things worked so she could apply the ideas to a personal flying device later.

“Pom, that thing that you said was going to happen, it’s happening right now.” Roxy stated from my left as I relaxed at the table at the edge of the runway and she ran up to me. Soon she was manipulating a paw pad next to me, a device the pets used exclusively while they were in this world. “I’ve already alerted all of Paw-tucket on my paw pad.”

“Which reminds me, Skye have you worked out the communication issues with your Paw Patrol tags?” My query went to the Skye high flying pup who approached us.

“No, we also don’t know how to connect them to the local communications tower… kind of wish Rocky was here for that. We’ll work on getting more of Paw Patrol into Paw-tucket!” Well at least we had a way to communicate with any animal in the Paw-tucket region of this world that Brainy Barker calls Petopia.

“That’s okay, we at least have several pets near your friends and I can even inform Dormarch of what’s going on.” My motioning for Skye to come over had her curious.

Dormarch was going to freak out a bit when he hears what I’ve actually been up to, I’ve been giving him a lot of space and he’s still having traumatic episodes at night about possibly eating the soul of a tennis ball robot out of existence and then coming after mine.

I’m still willing and able to accept Dormarch and help him cope with that, he was like me in so many ways… that wasn’t exactly a good thing.

We all watched as several things launched way into the sky beyond the atmosphere that was recorded on a paw pad by a popular pet named Cheetaby. She had caught sight of the remaining Felonious Feline on the planet, Snooky, launching several attacks into the sky at something up in space from a large gun like device that destroyed itself after firing too much.

Likely aiming to destroy or disable whatever Brainy had her team set up to protect the planet from invasion, from the few times I got to watch some of her memories while she slept I got the idea of the situation from watching her generate adorable images above her head with her ears raising upwards. Sure it was a bit invasive of her privacy, but Brainy’s subconscious mind was letting me get away with my curiosity and I could apologize about that later.

“So these the Felonious Felines are likely to drop their invasion in this area.” I tap the paw pad and drew a circle around where our enemy was expected to come in at. “This is good news. Skye when we get more information of the alien invasion starting, we’re going to need you to be ready to back up your friends and the local pets. I hope you already have several teams of Fly Wheel experts to help you out, they are going to need time to charge up for their flights to assist the front lines.”

“I’m ready to fly!” Skye stated with a cheerful determined look in her eyes, she was excited to get in the air again after she just got her paws on the ground.

“Then get in a meal, get a bathroom break and some rest, because we’re going to be quite busy for the next few hours.” It would be entirely advantageous to the pets of Petopia were they aware and had a way to fight back, and they did have both and the initiative on top of that thanks to me. Only the biggest of the enemy weapons was going to be a problem and Mechanikat had a notable propensity for giant robots or ridiculously exotic weaponry, since it’s an invasion and knowing that I’m currently present on this world, it was going to be the former instead of the latter of which I would have absolutely no way to deal with depending on the effects of said weaponry.

Marshall and Chase would already be on the front lines for a quite bit of the earlier parts of all of this and I was a little worried about sending pups out to stall, but they were disaster relief specialists and would likely have been through worse than this… and nothing is more disastrous than an impending alien invasion you’ve been preparing the many pets all over Paw-tucket for over the last few days.

Sunil’s guild of magic pets were going to be exceptionally helpful with what they could do quite soon.

“Roxy, send out the word, we’re going with Operation: Bad Pet. Have the areas closest to the intended landing zone for the aliens evacuated and our volunteers ready. By the time we set up, the volunteers are probably going to need to hold their positions for a few minutes while we build up for the retaliation.” Generally speaking, I was now mission control and the general of the Paw-tucket Pet Patrol forces. “Have our ‘Special Forces’ move for the docks and prepare for their part in this.”

This operation would be aided by the five Paw Patrol members in this world, though Skye’s cousin Coral would be limited in what she can do to help and would be assisting the stealth team. Everyone else will draw out the major threats, hopefully only Snooky and Mechanikat were said living threats to worry about, by wearing down the cat-bot army that’s inevitably going to be thrown in our general direction.

If I was quick enough I can have Dog Star Patrol sit back for a bit and then wait for Paw-tucket Pet Patrol forces do some major damage to the enemy first before they take to the field. The more damage the pets can do, the better.

“Whoa, Operation Bad Pet, Really?! I’ll have everyone work on getting into position and setting things up.” Roxy was immediately tapping away at her paw pad and numerous forces around Paw-tucket immediately started reacting as the large ship came through the atmosphere and was visible to everyone below it.

The younger pets would be kept out of the fighting if it could be helped, they were being evacuated to shelter outside of Paw-tucket city itself.

I then told Dolly what I needed her and Dog Star Patrol to do. Dolly felt a little shocked that I was aware of the Felonious Felines, not that it was that well hidden in her mind when I went to look for any additional information, but Brainy had already informed me in her sleep of what was likely to happen and what was predicted to occur. Dolly would immediately make her way over to me with Dog Star Patrol so I could inform them of the plan, before they could get to actually fighting Mechanikat.

I gave Dormarch some mental orders as well and he would get Ocellus, Smolder, Dodo and Shanty together. They were going to be moved into position to do some damage when the time comes too.

Let’s hope the enemy doesn’t have a backup plan or had very low expectations of the pets of this world being able to put up quite a major fight. The starting ploy was stall into slow retreat, let’s see how that plays out.

Sure we might not have had many days to prepare for this, but at least most of the pets that come to paw-tucket were aware of magic and aliens enough to believe this was actually happening and were quite understanding that we had to shut down the magical portals and protect them from being damaged.

The Felonious Felines would be sorely underestimating the pets because they don’t have space age technology and also looked entirely cute and small, the running theme of Paw-tucket.

Ocellus had surmised a few things about ‘friendship magic’ being present on this world. The magic related to or even is the very same magic that comes from our home planet of Equus, given how welcoming the world felt it wasn’t hard to believe that the magic of Equus was very much present here.

There were also thoughts that this world likely came about because Starswirl the bearded did a thing… a lot. Said thing may have eventually resulted in this world of familiars coming into existence because of magical contamination. That’s basically what this world was, as every pet here had some form of strong bond to someone in some way, shape or form. Aside from a few outliers like Scoot Racoonerson who didn’t consider himself a pet, this world was built out of the love of companionship.

Even if this world was somehow connected to Equus, we couldn’t use any method to get back that way because we’d still just end up in Tambelon and that wasn’t likely to end very well if we forced the issue before we were ready. I’d rather accept Arceus’s eventual promised aid for the coming jump into facing the world that belonged to the demon goat Grogar.

So this world was kind of like it was ‘slightly to the left’ of Equus in some way. So close… so very close…

Lots of fascinating stuff going on here really. I had to focus on the incoming, and likely very short, battle since I intended to go overly brutal with our opponents in a tactical manner. Only I’m in the unenviable position of being the direct commander of it all… I already hated the idea of sending the pets of others out to fight.

Sighing audibly, I firmed my face and shook my head.

“Roxy, is Jade already in the midst of setting up or getting started? Is Edie in contact with Marshall and Chase? Also contact Ray and ask if Everest is getting the snow bound pets setting up their part in this.” Well time to get started on things.

“Jade’s already moving her extended list of friends. Edie is in contact with Marshall and Chase, also watching the alien ship landing in the general area you circled… if a little bit further away, which is good for us since we’ve set up the area earlier. Ray says Everest is getting it ready already and that she’s a little bit uncomfortable about what she’s currently doing.” Don’t need to tell me that Roxy, I already knew Everest was going to have some issues with what I’m asking of her and her team here. “Scoot Racoonerson is already ready with his job and has an engineering team in position for the other things.”

“I would hate to be a guy in a giant robot right about now.” I commented dryly as the airfield was on the far side of things and closer to the travelers’ tent that Arceus left us with. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

-Paw-tucket outskirts, front line of the alien invasion, Chase-

“Chase, did any of our adventures ever get this dangerous?” Yes, they did Marshall, but we’re usually looking on the bright side of things too much to notice. That and we don’t deal with super villains every other day.

“Everest taught an elephant to ski... under duress.” It was one of the weirder ones, but it was still one of the more dangerous things to have happened in our line of work. Everest wasn’t just a puppy for snow rescue, she was a mountain climbing specialist as well.

“Wasn’t there a one ton boulder involved in that incident?” Yes Marshall, we led dangerous lives.

“The little elephant could have hurt her too if the elephant had slammed into her with how heavy it was and it lost control of its skiing.” So yes, dangerous was our general lot in life in Paw Patrol, also hurt was the nice word for it. Hit with that much weight at those speeds wouldn’t end well.

I knew more of the dangers involved than the others in Paw Patrol were willing to acknowledge existed to themselves, Skye was at least aware of the dangers of crashing and Everest knew how bad avalanches could get so there was that too. We met Rubble in a tree hanging over the edge of a cliff, enough said about that situation. Zuma has almost drowned multiple times and became really good at swimming. There’s even Marhsall’s numerous incidents, which he has gotten better about since meeting Pom and finding out what the problem was.

It’s a tossup between Ryder trusting us to handle dangerous situations and keeping us entirely safe from the worst of things that could have actually come at us so far. Paw Patrol something of a marketing gimmick and we sold well. We did actually do good and very real work, but we weren’t usually doing the really hard stuff… like assisting in stopping an alien invasion.

“It didn’t though… we should consider ourselves lucky I guess.” Well it was very lucky, Marshall, to have not been thrust into a situation like this without Ryder or our Paw Patrol vehicles before now.

The alien ship had landed and it didn’t take long before it started letting out large orange and yellow colored bipedal cat robots with what looked to be silly lightbulbs sticking out of the top of their heads. You can tell they were not friendly just by looking at them with their red eyes and grumpy faces. At least said eyes weren’t glowing, but still they looked plenty evil enough to me already without adding that.

“We’re always lucky every day Marshall we can spend more time together as friends and as a team.” Except for this one apparently and I was worried, I turned to Edie. “How long do we have to hold this position for?”

“We need to slow their march for ten minutes.” The colorful bird Edie answered, as she looked over her paw pad device. “Then we’ll need to safely retreat, we can call in the Roller Derby teams early if we need to, but Pom wants them on reserve and ready for the later stages of things. Udder Chaos will apparently be heading them… she really could stand to tell people her real name. Anyway, Skye will be ready to lend aerial assistance in a few minutes, but they’ll need to reload after every shot so they’ll be making them count and can only do a single flyby.”

We saw a mostly metal cat move to the front of the army of scary large robots. Gee, I wonder what happened to him to make him like that.

“This is the pitiful force you could send out to face me, how pathetic!” Crossing his arms the metal bodied bipedal cat who wore purple cape and clothing seemed to be happy that we weren’t presenting a very capable force of dealing with him. He was definitely alien if the visible green fur on his head was anything to go by. We were hearing him because he was broadcasting his voice at us. “Cat-bots attack, ruin their perfect little society and conquer it in the name of Mechanikat!”

No chance for peaceful talk or surrender I guess.

(Insert Mario and Luigi: Partner’s in Time, Boss Battle theme)-

There were a lot of cats, dogs, snakes, lizards and plenty of other pets here all staring grimly as the robots started to march on us. They were all wearing protective gear, but had no weapons with which to fight with and we definitely didn’t actually want to fight those cat-bots up close without a lot of gear to help out with that. We were just presenting a united front at the moment.

“No problem too big!” I said as I turned to Marshall standing by my side.

“No pup too small!” Marshall responded cheerfully even when we had hundreds of those things coming at us.

“All birds move out and distract the cat-bots!” Edie stated and raised a flag in her wing to wave it over her head. With all the birds on nearby trees or buildings taking off, things had started… the battle certainly hadn’t yet.

At best the birds were just going to fly around the heads of the cat-bots to distract them, which is our entire purpose here.

We weren’t here to win a fight, we were here to slow down the enemy and lead them into making a huge mistake. A mistake like a few of the cat-bots taking a swing or two at the birds and incidentally knocking other cat-bots down.

The birds had them completely distracted and managed to stop the entire army, they even managed to take down a few without even touching them by making them attack each other.

“You imbeciles ignore the birds for now, we can deal with them later, keep marching on the ones on the ground!” Well that wasn’t good, Mechanikat put a stop to that plan.

Now if only the next part of our plan wasn’t already set up for that.

“Tell them to knock out the supports now!” Hopefully I called it soon enough to Edie as the cat-bots were crossing the field at us.

Suddenly large sections of the ground started crumbled and collapsed out from under the cat-bots, they seriously started losing numbers in droves as they fell into the hundreds of pits that opened up in the ground. Said pits were filled with a very weird smelling mud that was splashed everywhere all over the cat-bots that fell into the collapsing field.

The cat-bots that weren’t destroyed, ignored the mud that got stuck to them and continued to wade forward over the bodies of their fallen machine comrades.

The only part that hadn’t collapsed was the central road where Marshall and I were currently standing as several cat-bots continued to march up to us, this was planned and hopefully we could stall them out with our pup packs. The pets behind us started organizing into position behind us to prepare for the retreat, we just had to hold on a little longer.

We had things like this set up for the other directions the evil alien invaders could have come from, this was the best scenario according to Pom and we’re glad the robots didn’t actually have any ranged weapons.

“Grapple!” My pup pack extended and fired a grapple claw and it clamped onto the oncoming cat-bot’s pointy right ear, it quickly pulled me forward and I slammed all four of my paws into its face roughly. “Wire nets!”

I kicked off in a high back flip and fired off a series of interconnected metal nets that covered multiple cat bots with a wire leading between them.

“Water!” Marshall shouted and my hind paws were pressing into the two water cannon tubes that popped out of his pack. I was blasted high into the air by the spouts a second later as he sent out a spray of water blasted forth in a wide cone, it soaked the various cat-bots and pushed them back with or without the bits of metal netting on them.

“Taser!” I fired off the dart and wire down and at an angle. It came from the opposite side of my pack from my grapple down into one of the now wet cat-bots and the cat-bots lit up and started to explode and quite violently at that.

“Grapple!” Grapples were standard issue for pup packs after a specific number of incidents. Marshall ran under me as he pulled me back towards him and managed to stop in place without slip sliding all over. Marshall caught me on his back as I came down and quickly started backing us away from the danger of the electrified and violently shaking robots as I retracted my taser darts wire away from them.

The cat-bots that exploded caused several others behind them that hadn’t been caught in the water blast to explode as well in a chain reaction. That pushed back the cat-bot forces that were still crossing the collapsed field covered in the strange smelling mud.

“Are you two alright?” Edie asked as she hovered nearby with the paw pad clutched in her talons.

“We’re fine, I’m surprised that we managed to pull that off!” Marshall stated cheerfully. “It was awesome!”

“Marshall don’t stop backing up!” Hopping off I was quickly backing up beside him as the cat-bots started clearing out the destroyed cat-bots and were coming after us.

“Should I call in the Roller Derby teams?” Edie asked as she kept hovering behind us.

“Edie, coming in from above! Marshall, Chase, if you can hear me, then back up a little further. I wouldn’t want to accidentally hit my own teammates!” That was Skye’s voice!

We backed up to the line of pets that would cause their own distractions like the birds if necessary, some of said birds were Edie’s friends that were being entirely ignored.

“Clear the airspace!” Edie hollered to the birds and they all scattered away as we heard the incoming sound of the flying hamster wheels.

The cat-bots were starting to overcome the collapsing ground trap. I and Marshall successfully held the small bottleneck, only for them to be almost upon us again.

“What are you going to do, hit my forces with toy planes?” Mechanikat stated over the speakers as he oversaw his army from a distance, we still needed to draw him and Snooky away from his ship.

“No, but we are going to hit them with modified firework bombs!” Shouted Skye as hundreds of Fly Wheels started diving from the sky, oddly making the same noises as a remote controlled plane would. They let loose tons of rockets into the collapsed ground trap… incidentally this ignited all the stuff that went unnoticed on the ground by the cat bots and a massive firestorm started.

“Hope I don’t have to put out this fire…” Marshall mumbled as we watched the world light up in front of us.

The collapsing ground trap had been turned into an inferno, as what might have been mud at the bottom of the collapsing ground trap wasn’t exactly normal mud. We learned some science about 'oil based mud' before this happened, really fascinating stuff that was used in drilling… except without water and in dry conditions like today it made for an effective double up trap.

The inferno melted quite a number of cat-bots metal parts together and blew out a number of goofy looking lightbulbs on top of their heads, rendering a number of them harmless statues. The flames also locked up the ones that hadn’t been in the mud or got covered in the stuff from the heat alone.

Numerous explosions continued to rain down around the cat-bots, even if each Fly Wheel only carried two explosive they had to fire both at once, there were more than a hundred flying hamster wheels in the air bombarding the cat-bots so that was a lot of good damage.

“Woohoo, going back for a reload, stay safe down there guys!” Skye called out as she flew by us smiling as several other Fly Wheels flew along above heading back.

The flames quickly petered out as they burned through the oil based mud rather quickly, the mud hardening and becoming brittle. The field was now covered in cat-bots trying to move the destroyed or disabled cat-bots out of the way.

“What the heck, where did you get those things from!? This planet was said to have no active threats to stop my rule!” Mechanikat stated as if he had never seen flying hamster wheels before, probably hadn’t since this was my first time seeing them too. The guy obviously hadn’t done his research on Paw-tucket or the planet of Petopia, he wasn’t welcome here and we were going to show him why it was a bad idea to mess with the peace around here. “No matter, Snooky get out there and assist the cat-bots while I get the giant robot of my magnificent visage going!”

“Pom, the enemy made a confirmed mention of giant robot, so we’re going to need those setups soon!” Edie called into the paw pad as she landed and looked at the surrounding pets.

“Five more minutes before you can fall back, hold them a little longer. Jade is still getting things into position! We have most of the setups for the giant robot ready to go, can’t be as big as that spaceship is, so we’ll be able to do some real damage for Dog Star Patrol to get in and finish things off!” The first part of the plan was working so far. “Marshall is everyone okay so far?”

“Yes we’re fine, but Snooky is being sent after us while Mechanikat goes to get his giant robot!” Marshall answered and then we saw Snooky’s Mad Cat Machine as it marched onto the field, it had ranged weapons and many started pets on the ground started scattering as rockets fire in the direction of the Fly Wheels. Two fly wheels on the tail of flying away were caught in an explosion and started to glide to the ground badly damaged and smoking badly. “Change that, two Fly Wheels just got shot down and last we saw they were smoking as they glided into the Paw-tucket city. Can we get some advice on what to do Pom?”

We were only presenting the front of a force that could somewhat fight the cat-bots… at least for the time being. The actual fighting will come soon enough, well beyond what Marshall and I have already done with slowing them down anyway.

“Just hold their attention for a few more minutes in whatever way you can, help is on the way. When you see some pitching machines, retreat to them. You should have everyone backing up anyway and don’t let the cat-bots get close enough to catch anyone. I’m sending Caper Canine in to draw Snooky’s attention and stop him from bombarding you at range. Edie send someone out to check on those brave pilots and make sure they are okay.” Pom could be clearly heard worrying about putting us all in danger, but this world needed help and protection. The pets were willing to fight, but they definitely weren’t able with magically reduced statures against eight foot tall robots. “She will pull back when the giant robot comes into play, she’ll be there in a minute. Dolly I’m authorizing you to use Haste, make it count!”

“Haste!” I heard Dolly shout, but what would the word ‘haste’ do? If Caper Canine was where Pom was, she was entirely across town from…

“Make Caper Canine’s arrival ten seconds… almost forgot to take momentum boosting into account on top of what 'haste' does to her.” The encroaching cat-bots were already scaring all of us into an early retreat despite a number of pets growling, hissing and glaring. They weren’t exactly going to be great fighters, not until we retreated into the more urban portions of Paw-tucket. Still it was quite a sight to see them holding the line even if we were all slowly moving backwards.

A slightly red glowing Dalmatian blurred past us and caved in the head of a cat-bot with a skateboard swing to the head that was almost close enough to grab us, then said Dalmatian started hammering the entire line of cat-bots back entirely by herself.

“Aw yeah, Caper Canine in the field. Watch my back will you guys? Thanks!” Dolly shouted as she tore through the cat-bots with incredible speed and ease while swinging about her board. With each impact destroying a cat-bot, Dolly seemed to flow from one motion into the next without pause and expertly avoided any attacks coming at her. If they could be called attacks since the cat-bots couldn’t even begin touch the glowing Dalmatian at the speeds she was moving at. The cat-bots were bulky, big and rather intimidating, but they just couldn’t keep up with Dolly blurring about in the air it was almost like she was flying. “Hit me if you can Snicker Doodles, ten points to you if can actually tag this Dalmatian’s backside!”

Dolly appearance emboldened the pets to hold the line with determination and we stopped moving backwards. Not that we were doing any fighting, but we had to keep up appearances that we were going to do at least some fighting. That was about all we had at the moment, aside from my and Marshall’s skills with our pup packs. The two of us could do some damage, but the taser on my pack used a lot of battery power.

“It’s Snooky Wookums, how can you keep forgetting my name so easily Caper Canine, I’m known throughout an entire galaxy!” The angry looking bipedal cat machine crossed its arms.

“That sounds like it’s your problem Smoky Cooked Yams!” Dolly stated with grin as she stopped to stand on top of a cat-bot with her hind legs and pulling out a bone while holding her skateboard as a shield.

“Rarrghhh!” Snooky was now focused on attacking Dolly with rockets and a laser from the tail of the machine. This wasn’t good for Snooky since the cat-bots were in the way and Dolly was closing in on him with an insane amount of ease despite the cat-bots trying and failing to slow her down in the slightest.

“Setup four is done, we’ve made good time with that one thanks to Brainy’s help. All preparations are almost complete.” Pom called out from Edie’s paw pad. “Everyone on the front lines get ready for a full retreat, leave no pet behind! We’ll let these Felonious Felines really have it in the retaliation phase of things. Pets of Paw-tucket, as a rather interesting figure I met once said and I would like to quote in this moment for what we’re about to do… IT’S- PLAYTIME~!”

"Everyone retreat to behind the pitching machines!" Marshall called out as we finally saw them arrive with pets slowly pushing them into position and others moving loaded baskets of baseballs and tennis balls.

Paw-tucket was more than prepared for this 'Mechanikat' and he definitely had what coming to him soon with his assault, he had absolutely no idea at all as to what was about to happen here.

469. Caper Canine Special Issue: Welcome to the Dodge Pound.

-Petopia, Paw-tucket airfield, Pom-

After calling ‘playtime’, we were following the plan.

“Was Dolly always able to do that eh?” Tusky asked of Dolly’s ability to accelerate to absurd speeds while under haste.

“Yes, but she really shouldn’t do it too often.” That caused the present Dog Star Patrol members to glance my way. “Anyone that particular magic is applied to immediately gains double reaction speed, overall speed and in particular the speed of thought, friction works less on you and it doesn’t accelerate your aging. It comes with some downsides, but those are easily mitigated and it lasts about five minutes.”

“I’m assuming the downsides are the reason you don’t want her using that ability often.” Mammoth Mutt was quite cute, hard to imagine she was something like a biologically living balloon. Where does all that mass and weight even go or come from?

It’s not magic, I asked Ocellus about it given she can get a unique perspective on any animal, person or sometimes things. Apparently it was a naturally occurring biological ability, similar to what an Al-mi’raj does magically as a defense mechanism. Only the growth wasn’t temporary and it wasn’t as limited to occasional kaiju size increases, they could actually hold that form for as long as they needed it.

“She can only use it on one target once an hour and said target must be alive for the effect to take place. So it’s best used in an emergency, so now it will be an hour before she can use it again. Now onto its problems, one is that it’s a very highly addictive effect, at least the addictiveness wears off quickly as in two to three hours. Another is that the faster you are to begin with the stronger the effects of haste so time becomes a bit blurred to the one under the effects so five minutes can seem like thirty and it messes with your head. Lastly and the worst side effect of all is an overall dangerous heightened amount of aggressiveness.” Which comes from the fact that you are now think at twice the normal speed, for me it’s more like four times the normal speed. “Said aggressiveness when combined with the addictive nature of the magic being cast every hour on the hour… well you can see why I wouldn’t want Dolly, Caper Canine, abusing that.”

“So the addictiveness of it can build up and cause a feedback loop.” Brainy looked thoughtful as she drew our attention to her. The lavender furred psychic dog was very friendly, also an overtly obvious ‘doggy messiah’ cultist given how affectionate she was towards me. “Where for five minutes that obviously seems longer to her out of every hour, she’s likely to hurt friend as much as foe.”

“She was going that way once, but she got set straight and I’ve been teaching her how to focus better.” Which she was currently doing and Dolly was excelling at what she’s known for. “Now if we could get back to what’s going on and why I’m holding Dog Star Patrol back for the time being. To start thing off, I’m sorry I invaded your privacy by asking you questions in you were asleep, you answered every single one of them in as unvarnished a manner as possible Brainy Barker and are how I even set this all up to begin with.”

“Apology accepted!” Yep, Brainy is definitely a doggy messiah cultist, I might actually have to give her a belly rub. There’s no way she wouldn’t ask for a few more after this, but at least she seemed like she was going to be polite about it.

Skye’s Fly Wheel came in for a landing and she hopped out, a number of hamsters ran up to it to load it with another pair of fireworks fire bomb and charge it up. She quickly came over to us to see how things were going outside the city outskirts which were being overrun with barely held back cat-bots.

“Edie, please start the retreat fully, Jade Catkin is set up for it.” I said into Roxy’s paw pad. “Another thing is that the pets of paw-tucket need to learn how to defend themselves, they can’t always expect you to come in and save them as you might not be here the next time Mechanikat somehow finds his way here again. Thus I started the Paw-tucket Pet Patrol initiative.”

“She’s got a fair point, wish most civilizations that Mechanikat chooses to mess weren’t incapable of defending themselves effectively. So what’s the plan in full?” After Hot Dog said that, I started telling them what everyone would be doing and Ocellus’s part in this plan and what I needed from her.

-The Paw-tucket front lines, outer edge of paw-tucket city, Marshall-

We were now in retreat, while I was worried about Dolly… she obviously could take care of herself given how many cat-bots she was taking down on her way to face that scary Snooky Wookums cat that could have targeted us more with those missiles.

Normally pitching machines were fun, well when you knew how they work and they could play fetch with you automatically. Fetch was far more fun and competitive when you had friends to play it with. In this case the pitching machines were being used as weapons, a bit upsetting, but understandable in these circumstances.

Golf balls, baseballs and tennis balls were flying from the machines as other pets loaded the hoppers. They dented the metal on the cat-bots and those that broke their armored bodies did a lot of damage when the robots exploded and slowed the rest of them all down. I was standing beneath the long barrel of one of the pitching machines going full blast, a pitching machine wasn’t dangerous unless you were standing in front of it and these had pets actively aiming them.

“We’re now in retreat!” Edie called out from behind the several pitching machines, said machines started to slowly be pulled backwards by teams of pets as they continued to fire shot after shot at the cat-bots.

I hoped Dormarch’s big sister was okay out there. Chase patted my back with a paw as we continued to stay near the front of the pitching machines barely pushing back the cat-bots. If they got close enough then Chase and I would have to push them back.

-Dolly D. Dalmatian (The Courageous Caper Canine) vs. Snooky Wookums and the Menacing Mad Cat Machine (Ferocious Felonious Feline), (Music: Ain’t Nothing Like A Funky Beat, Lethal League Blaze)-

“Give me one of them funky beats~!” Dolly shouted out and felt the invisible music start pumping her up, even if she wasn’t going to be singing along with it she was going to enjoy the rhythm.

She threw the stone bone and it imparted a devastating amount of a cat-bot coming for her, she caught the bone on the rebound and slung her skateboard out in a wide circle taking down numerous other cat-bots around her. She landing on her board and pushed it forward towards some more cat-bots.

Kicking her board high into the air, Dolly ramped it off the face of cat-bot. Said face imploded on impact as she closed in on the Mad Cat Machine rapidly by gliding at it while avoiding the beams fired from the can shaped machine’s tail.

The Dalmatian had a grin on her face as she swung to left and right around the beams looking to be surfing through the air as she did so, she then swung up the bottom of her board when the next beam enlarged in diameter to try and stop her from veering around the next particular shot.

Snooky’s eyes twitched as a super charged energy beam was parted by what he believed to be a stupid plank of wood with wheels and the dog behind said board was now strangely glowing. He hadn’t seen her moving this fast before, but he was quite sure she was going to be quite a hellion to take in close combat at the moment.

Once Dolly built up to a counter rave she let herself fly.

Snooky fired some missiles at Caper Canine’s body as she started to surf up onto the top of the beam. In two flashes his missiles were deflect into a number of cat-bots, which to him were just dumb muscle and easily rebuilt credit-a-dozen robots he could practically make in his sleep.

Eight following flashes blasted around Snooky in a quick octagon and suddenly there were no cat-bots around him that were left standing, given they looked like their bodies had been blasted apart or sheered in half by the speed Caper Canine had been moving at. He had actually lost track of the dog despite her having gone a full circle around him.

Wanting to see how far she’s come since joining up with Pom, Dolly had something to prove here against the machine piloting psycho cat. As such she came in from above at the viewport with the stone bone swinging down in her left paw.

The machine rocked and actually staggered with the frightening impact of full momentum boosted strike, the view port cracked where the bone connected as Dolly bounced into back flipping and twisting around to land on her skateboard.

The Dalmatian held the bone at the ready with both front paws and had her right hind leg off the board, with her left hind leg firmly planted on the middle of aforementioned board.

Dolly seemed to be mumbling something quietly to herself as she stared down the machine, it was much easier for Dolly to do magic if she chanted the spell before using it and cut the cost by a third up to half where instant casting would drain her like it normally did. She couldn’t increase her capacity, but Pom did work with her on her efficiency. The time to actually use the spell however would increase dramatically when chanted, which means doing something Dolly wasn’t known for, sitting in one place as it was hard to move while chanting.

Sure Dolly didn’t like to be patient, but she was well aware that her patience would be rewarded by the eventual dumb look on Snooky’s face. That and she was currently high on the euphoria that was ‘Haste’, which would boost her spell casting speed when she wasn’t going instant use with them. Pom was keeping her on task mentally.

Snooky didn’t even try to talk or ask what was up with Caper Canine suddenly stopping, as he sent the Mad Cat Machine lunging forward with its right claw pulling back. He recognized something was up and that had made the dog a bigger threat than she normally was the last few times she fought alongside Dog Star Patrol.

With machine like precision, the right claw of the machine slung forward in an attempt to cave Dolly’s head in or carve it entirely from her body, possibly both. It didn’t matter which happened.

“Float!” A grinning Caper Canine announced and cast the spell almost point blank, ducking under the claw while swinging upwards into the chest of the machine as she leapt into it with her stone bone. “You are not ruining Pom’s vacation, not here, not now!”

The metal on the Mad Cat Machine’s chest actually dented inwards and Snooky was immediately rendered dizzy as the Mad Cat Machine spiraled into the air out of control. In spite of this, he was still relatively capable of aiming the missiles and the laser at Caper Canine who was still running on haste for another two minutes.

Dolly was a bit shocked as she was blown over by an almost direct missile explosion and quickly rolled away from the explosion of a second missile that sent her board flipping away until it planted nose first into the ground. That the missiles were almost on target as they were was a nasty surprised, with how fast the floating machine was flipping about in the air one would think Snooky would be incapable of reprisal.

Dolly still had the stone bone in paw and made for her board as several cat-bots got in her path, she tossed the stone bone at one and quick cast Blizzard to impale the other two out of the way with pillars of ice erupting from the ground.

Caper Canine quickly jumped up, caught the stone bone in her teeth and dropped into rapid roll under a beam of energy. This got her into position to grab her board. A second later the slightly scorched Dalmatian had to avoid a second sweeping of the laser beam by hunkering down and blocking with her board and helmet.

Even while the machine was wildly spinning out of control, Dolly wouldn’t have been able to manage that kind of accuracy that Snooky was getting in his current condition of spiraling out of control.

Several cat-bots were torn apart by the energy beam and Dolly growled as she raised the stone bone up while taking to her hind legs to use her board as a shield, she begun muttering her next spell.

Two more missiles flew forth, despite the wild random spinning of the Mad Cat Machine they were both fired precisely at where Dolly was and the tail was angling itself oddly preparing for an eventual rotation into position. Snooky Wookums genius level intellect was making doing such things far easier, his calculating mind was working to a ridiculous degree.

Dolly kept up her chanting under her breath as she eyed both incoming missiles, she was about to run dry on ‘haste’, once that happened she was going to be in some trouble. She still had enough time for one really cool trick she’d likely never forget.

Dolly tossed her board forward with her right paw with momentum added to the throw, she ran forward several steps towards the first missile while her board was in the middle of hitting the second. Her eyes were on the tail of the cat machine, she could see where the beam would sweep through and would still risk what she was about to do.

The Dalmatian could practically feel Pom’s worried eyes on her in this moment as she continued chanting while in motion, the world seemed to have an incredible flow and she felt pumped up by the tune in the background of her head.

The skateboard impacted the first missile and sent it flipping back Caper Canine’s way, as that was happening she was stomping on the first missile as she hopped forward onto it and kicked off of it to point the missiles at the ground and she brought her hind legs up. Her left paw still have a tight grip on the mystical stone bone as her hind legs met with the board as it blasted towards her, she followed the rotation of the board and the first missile finally exploded.

Having gotten the board in the way of the blast, Dolly road her board upwards high into the air as it absorbed the impact of the first missile exploding.

Time was moving in slow motion as the beam on the Mad Cat Machine activated and started sweeping straight for where Dolly would be as her last thirty seconds of ‘haste’ were quickly petering out. Missiles spread of missiles were launched to prevent her from dropping down below the beam.

Caper Canine saw the beam coming at her from the left, the prehensile tail of the machine angling it to actively hit her, she gripped the stone bone in both her front paws and kicked off the board with a high jump.

The Dalmatian slowly rotated backwards as if she was a pole vaulter going over a high bar, and this one in particular was quite deadly, as it swept towards her back. Dolly flexed her whole body into the evasion and she felt the heat of the energy beam singing the fur along her spine as she pulled her hind legs towards her belly and tucking her tail between her hind legs helped her avoid losing it to the beam of raw energy as she fully completed her back flip and then raised the bone high above her head pulling it back as far as she could stretch her front legs.

It was there that Dolly saw it. A glaringly big, exceedingly bright and rather impossibly imposing green triangle in her sight and a grin started expanded across her whole face threatening to cut off the top half of her head from the sheer exuberance she felt when she immediately hit the feeling of another ‘triangle moment’ brought about her flowing from one motion into an even more devastating motion as her body automatically acted on instinct.

As Dolly continued to bark, yip and whine the words to the spell she carried throughout all of her last few actions in slow motion. As she started to rapidly flip forward building up rotational momentum as she came down at the Mad Cat Machine.

“Gravity!” Announced the spotted canine as her bone started glowing purple as the spell was applied to it and not the still floating machine she was rapidly approaching.

“BOW-WHACKA-WOW!” Dolly D. Dalmatian screamed her catch phrase as she swung the stone bone downwards with all she had.

A trail of magical sparkles followed Dolly’s motion in a glitter of small faint green triangles, the last vestiges of haste magic in her went into this one attack, the end of her bone was covered in gravity infused magic about to hit a floating target and her momentum magic boosted the power of her swing immensely on top of making it impossibly fast.

One second the Mad Cat Machine was in the air, the next it was buried into the ground back first and creating a massive shockwave the wiped out any nearby cat-bots.

This attack heavily damaged the laser beam shooting tail to being inoperable. The shoulder launchers exploded and blasted the machines slightly rumpled armor further. The exploding launchers created to pillars of flames to both sides of Dolly who struck a dynamic pose in the air raising up two digits on her right paw, while her left paw was holding the slightly smoking stone bone out to the side, a bright grin on her face.

The grin soon disappeared off of Caper Canine’s face as she felt quite drained a second later and started falling towards the Mad Cat Machine with increasing speed. Said machine was even still quite active, even if it had just lost all its ranged options.

Dolly also used up quite a bit of her magic so she could hardly slow her fall down as she fell right towards an opening left claw going straight for her throat. It raised up towards her neck and then a loud crunching noise occurred.

It thankfully wasn’t dolly’s head being removed from her body, but a cat-bot’s body being impaled by throwing itself into the path of the claw and catching a falling Dolly by the chest with its right upraised arm as its left steadied it on the Mad Cat Machine’s chest.

The front half of Caper Canine’s body slapped against the large mechanical limb sent Dolly’s back half rotating downwards and forward and she performed a forced back flip and actually stuck the landing a second on all four of her paws. She looked a bit dizzy as she stumbled about for a second.

“Whew… almost lost my head there.” Mumbled Dolly as she continued stumbled about slightly before shaking it off.

“What the?!” Snooky was quite angry, he had almost ended the annoying skateboarding mutt then and there. HE glared at the cat-bot and immediately noticed something off with it, its eyes were blue before the light in them soon died out. “Who the hell hacked one of my cat-bots!?”

“Well it wasn’t that hard for Caper Canine’s little brother of course, Digi-dog! Also, in all honesty, the coding of your robots is really, REALLY, bad… like worse than a Saurian targeting program bad. Didn’t think it was possible…” Dormarch stated with a grin as he poked his head out of the cat-bots chest while raising his goofy claws in the air, sitting in a digital pool of energy that wreathed his torso as he pulled himself free. He was like a ghost that was finished infecting a dying machine, he had his blue defense scarf wrapped around his forehead and had quickly pulled himself out of the dead machine. “Dolly run, I’ll get your board, go-go-go!”

Dormarch teleported to Dolly’s board and grabbed it up, his search engine nature at least allowed him to teleport with objects even if he couldn’t teleport living beings around. It would have made some previous things easier if he could do that.

“I thought you would go for something like analog dog… oh wouldn’t that shorten to… okay I can see why you didn’t… never mind little bro, I see it, going now!” Dolly didn’t need to be told twice as she saw a shadow looming over the scorched battlefield and there were too many cat-bots around for her to fight at the moment, stomping over the remains of the burnt and melted fallen cat-bots. She could maybe take Snooky, but the giant robot that was the size of a building, nope… not sticking around to die to the evil cat piloting that thing. She started running. “That Menacing Mat guy is really overcompensating for something with that thing!”

Dolly yelped when a massive blast of energy sent her tumbling, she quickly got up and kept running through the cat-bots trying to intercept her escaping the wrath of the giant robot. Her adrenaline definitely spiked her body into ‘haste’ levels of movement as she flowed around several powerful blasts of energy that threatened to wipe her out.

“It’s Mechanikat! Ugh… good help is so hard to find these days, do I have to do everything around here myself!” Shouted a loud voice from a machine slowly standing up, it looked exactly like mechanikat… only bigger. Dolly had the right idea about his ego compensating for something.

Slowly Snooky pried the Mad Cat Machine out of the ground and ran a diagnostics on it, even if Caper Canine alone had almost totaled it with that one devastating hit… he decided it was still viable for fighting or assisting Mechanikat in moving for Paw-tucket city which was now currently being overrun with cat-bots. First he’d repair the tail, sure it won’t have beams anymore, but it would still be able to fire some quick shots.

Dolly, with her stone bone in her mouth, managed to make it through a number of cat-bots and reach one of the cities buildings to run up a wall much to a chasing cat-bots confusion when it slammed straight into said wall face first.

“If you can think of anything better than Digi-dog or Dynamo Dog, then I’d like to hear it big sister. Digi-dog is short and descriptive for what I do.” Dormarch stated as he soon joined her on the rooftop and passed her back her skateboard, the two promptly went their separate ways. One with a bouncing leap to glide through the cat-bot infested streets and the other teleported to join the infiltration team.

-Frontlines, Paw-tucket city, Edie-

“Ooh…” I saw that one of my flying friends had gotten a recording of Caper Canine’s epic attack with a smile on my beak. Sure she might have almost gotten killed after that stunt, but it had worked out. Also all the birds scattered when the giant cat robot started glaring in their direction and they retreated to flying over the city. “Oh, where were we… right! Incoming Fly Wheel support everyone!”

The second round of Fly Wheels bombardment hit the streets covered in cat-bots in front us and did quite a bit of damage as the Fly Wheels swooped down and then started to return to the air field after dropping off their payloads. It was helpful and a rather uneventful bombardment.

“News from the front Pom, Mechanikat has his big machine on the move for the city… it’s a good thing it’s slow.” Still fast enough to be quite threatening to the birds recording these events for posterity on paw pads. “Pom when do we start? The pets here are getting quite angry that Paw-tucket is getting damaged.”

“Lure the cat-bots in further Edie, everything for the counter-offensive is all set. Get them into the square Jade Catkin is waiting.” Pom reassured me with a smile and I nodded. Though I wondered why she kept saying Jade’s full name.

“Oh we are failing to defend ourselves, it would be quite terrible if every cat-bot in the city were to attack this square right now where all our pitiful forces have gathered!” My theatrics were probably going to be panned critically, but I think I’ve got the spirit of a great actor.

“You’re acting is still overly dramatic.” Oh a shot to the heart from one of my dear companions Bev, how cruel! Wait, Bev? Ah, Pom did say everyone was ready. Bev waved at me as she skated off, that turtle was going to have some fun soon.

“Everyone’s ready! Into positions pets, don’t get caught in the coming crossfire, move those pitcher turrets now!” I called out and flew a fair distance away to get a good recording of this.

-Coming out of the sea on a submarine, Petula-

“Woolsworth here, my team has gone ashore and is preparing to sneak in. Send Dormarch over here immediately and we’ll do our part in this Pom.” Sure I learned ‘a’ lesson, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be a brat… still this was going to be fun.

Dormarch appeared seconds later in a flash and the three fish tailed dog gave me a slight glare. I understood why, but I think we had bigger things to worry about. Sure I was a snob and I could be quite a jerk, but I was still a good pet darn it all!

“Let’s go!” I mean, how often did one get the chance to mess up an evil invading alien’s spaceship when they were not at home? Sure the cat-bots were terrifying, but we had a few things going for us… like the ability to fit into vessels vents easily compared to those large bulky walking trashcans. They wouldn’t catch us, my snail friend maybe if we were unlucky, but not the rest of us.

“Still can’t believe I’m working with you.” Trip grumbled with crossed limbs. Oh right, Quincy and Trip were here too I guess.

-Front line, Paw-tucket city square, Paw Patrol leader Chase-

Okay… so cat-bots were all gathering on this block for the party. Marshall and I were standing in front of the few pitching machines trying to keep them from being attacked.

It was a good thing everything was ready, because we were running out of sporting equipment to shoot at the robots, at least Marshall could easily refill his water tank at the nearby hydrants. We were chewing through ammunition figuratively… though some dogs were bravely doing that literally as they ran out to retrieve shots that bounced off the bots to be reused.

My pup pack was at half power thanks to having to use the taser function more than once with Marshall’s assistance to splash them with his water cannons to help take out multiple cat-bots.

So far we kept the cat-bots from grabbing anyone, but I was out of wire nets.

“Snooky will be coming ahead of Mechanikat be ready for that. Dolly really reduced his combat capacity, but he’s still highly dangerous.” Pom stated as she called out from Edie’s paw pad. “Everyone prepare to let loose the counteroffensive. Stay well away from the building sized cat robot, that’s what all the setups are for.”

A cat-bot came at me and was stopped when Dormarch’s big sister, Dolly, came out of the sky and jammed the nose of her board through the back of it. With a kick at the back of her board with her left hind leg, the board ripped the cat-bot entirely in half and destroyed it.

Dolly basically just kick flipped her board out of its back and landed on it in a stylish twirl and bowed to us while holding a tail stall.

“Caper Canine, Dolly, hang back for a bit and rest, only join in to keep pets safe and no going on the offensive. Okay Jade Catkin your up! Show us how the pets of Paw-tucket will defend their home, oh and enjoy yourselves while you’re at it.” Hearing that I had to wonder why cats in particular were fascinated with doing what Jade was about to do.

-Rooftops, Jade Catkin the black cat-

Have you ever heard the story of crossing paths with a black cat? Well we’re about to take that to eleven here and now, besides… I couldn’t have my rent rates go up my apartment because of a robot attack. It was already bad enough with how destructive my roommate and best friend Roxy was at times!

“Okay now everyone, push, throw and do what all cats love to do when it comes to knocking things off of things!” I lifted up on to my hind legs and pushed a precariously placed potted plant with my front paws, I had a wide grin on my face as I watched it sailed off the edge of the building into the cat-bots below.

There was no way we could miss any of the cat-bots with how many of them were packing the streets. Pots, plants and other heavy stuff toppled over the edge and rained from the above. Most of said pots were filled with sticky, slippery or even caustic substances. Chaos was the name of the game and the cats of Paw-tucket always want to do something like this, now we had an absolutely good reason for it!

The last few days at arts and crafts had been a blast, plus getting to destroy it all by pushing it off of high place, even better and a bonus! Good pets would never dream of knocking precious objects off of shelves, here in Paw-tucket it just actively became a civic duty! Woo, watch all that stuff fall to shatter on the cat-bots, heh heh heh!

The cat-bots filling the square were bombarded from all sides. There joints got glued up by various sticky substances. The slippery substances sent them careening into each other and or into the line of fire from whatever remaining shots the pitcher machines could shoot if a pet couldn’t run out to retrieve ammunition for them. A few of the cat-bots immediately exploded when the caustic substances from some of the shattering pots touched them, said substance was produced by a happy mouse who was the pet of a chemist.

All throughout the streets cat-bots were being taken down and some were taking out each other in the occasional explosions. While we were pelting them from the rooftops, the pitching machines and our forces on the ground were pulling back for an ammunition reload and a refresh. From what the birds are showing on the paw pads, we’ve already dealt a major blows to their numbers.

Still, a single cat-bot would be more than enough for even fifty pets if given the opportunity and we were playing fair. We’re not playing fair though, we’re absolutely going for overkill on that giant robot I see stomping this way in the distance. That thing looks tough.

“Incoming crazy cat in the smaller robot, what should we do about that Pom?” We do not want to attempt to fight that thing without fully loaded pitching machines, given the video I saw of Caper Canine almost getting her head popped off like an overly clawed catnip toy.

“I think Caper Canine already took care of most of his ranged options so the rooftops should still be safe until the giant robot gets there, but don’t count on it. Avoid attracting his attention, he’s a cold blooded cat and will try to kill you.” That sent shivers down my spine. No pet ever actually died in Paw-tucket, not for the lack of injuries or sicknesses mind you. “Leave it to Caper Canine, Marshall and Chase… I’ll send in some extra help. The pet bird’s estimate we’ve wiped out approximately seventy percent of their forces already from this, be prepared to evacuate the rooftops. If they can manufacture cat-bots, then we’re already taking care of that.”

“Well they are just practically throwing all of these things at us without much thought put into it.” Really had to wonder about the expenses of an evil alien guy that wanted to be an overlord, could he really afford to easily lose so many of those tall bipedal metal monsters? This Mechanikat guy was giving us cats a bad look.

“It’s a good thing they are only short term thinkers at best, because otherwise what we’re doing wouldn’t work.” Good to hear Pom. “Also I’m sending in the derby teams to back up the street forces when the cat-bots get clear of the mess you’re making.”

“Okay everyone, throw whatever we have left, even the garbage and then we’ll skedaddle out of here!” It’s a good thing we’ve already prepared walkways across the rooftops as an exit strategy once we’re finished having fun knocking stuff off of buildings like they were oversized shelves. I would leave the next part to the derby teams, the pets who were good at roller skating.

-A bit further back on the streets, Chase-

I slung Marshall into the cat-bots chest and he blasted it point blank with a powerful burst of water that sent him flying back towards me as my grapple line slackened. I manage to catch him back to my back and he rolled off down my tail and onto his paws. The blast of water and torn the cat-bot apart.

“Watch out, incoming psycho kitty!” Dolly called out. “Looks like he’s got the tail working again, how smart is this Loogie Wookie Slums?”

“It’s Snooky Wookums!” The tail aimed and fired two shots, both Marshall and I dodged by hopping over them as they struck the ground. The third shot was fired at Dolly, instead of jumping she brought her board up with both her paws and timed her swing to send the spherical blast of energy flying back into the tail damaging it. “Gah, Caper Canine!”

That was a very angry cat we have to deal with, if the red glowing viewport was anything to go by, the machine charged for Marshall who panicked and fumbled in place.

“Grapple!” Didn’t even aim my shots, I got him and pulled him out of the way as the machines right claws shredded the street.

“Thanks Chase!” Marshall called out.

Dolly went skidding past us as she blocked a left claw strike with her board and managed to stay standing. I saw a strange energy flowing into her body and she grinned slightly beneath her skateboarding helmet.

“Taser!” I fired a taser and it didn’t very little to the cat piloted machine and it retracted without doing an ounce of damage to the already damaged machine.

“Hah, a puny little electrical weapon system for incapacitating, do you really think something like that will even do anything to the Mad Cat Machine? Even as damaged as the armor is, my machine is still capable of taking all of you out!” Snooky jumped it forward and tried to land on me, Marshall hit me with his grapple and pulled me out of the way. “This thing isn’t one of those dumb muscle cat-bots!”

A second later a bone that looked like it was made of stone slammed into the head of the machine and knocked it off balance flailing its arms and its right leg lifted off the ground.

“Marshall the tail!” I called out hoping he’d know what I meant as I ran forward, he followed my lead.

“Grapple!” Marshall and I called out as we launched both our grapples to grab the side of the machine’s tail and the two of us pulled it even more off balance.

“Gah let go of the beam tail you little pieces of…!” Snooky tried to swing the upper torso’s left claw out for us and our grapple lines, we managed to maneuver it so it missed cutting through our grapple lines, but if the tail fired now we would be in a world of hurt.

The machine managed to stomp its foot forward and this forced our grapples to retract as we were sent tumbling, then the machine turned to us and tried to move.

The Mad Cat Machine promptly flopped onto its face into the street in an embarrassing display as it lifted the leg that hadn’t stomped down on the perfectly fine skateboard Dolly had slid underneath the raised foot.

Dolly’s board slid out from under its foot and was sent sliding towards the cat-bot horde being pelted by objects thrown from the rooftops.

“Grapple.” I got up and my pup pack grappled Dolly’s board before it got too far away and pulled it back towards myself.

The Mad Cat Machine was already getting back onto its feet and attacking my line and attempt to get the skateboard back to its owner. I could actually see the malice in the blue furred cat’s eyes through the broken view port.

I released the grapple to prevent my line from being cut by the cat machine’s right claw, it hit board’s nose and sent it flipping toward Dolly who caught it with her mouth.

“Blizzard!” A muffled Dolly shouted and a temporary spike of ice rammed into the torso of the machine putting a hole in it as as Marshall and I back away from it.

“Gah, why you!” The Mad Cat Machine stumbled backwards, but despite its appearance it was still very threatening and still quite tough even with parts of its innards exposed.

We’ve never had to actively fight like this before, but I would like to think we were helping to the best of our abilities. It’s just that that machine was a real monster.

“There has to be some way to deal with it…” Marshall mumbled and then looked at a fire hydrant in the distance behind us as the defensive line of pitching machines had fallen back that far down the street, barely any of them were firing anything at the moment. As their ammunition had been completely depleted. “With enough pressure I might be able to make a water laser from my puck pack’s water cannon, can you help Caper Canine and give me some time to set up my pup pack for that?”

“We need to give Marshall some time to do something, let me help you with that thing!” I didn’t know what I could do, but the grapple was the cheapest costing thing on my pup pack to use at the moment that could do anything as the battery was running the battery down on it.

“Looks funky don’t it~?” Dolly called out with a nod to me as I joined her side in facing off against the machine as Marshall went down the street towards safer territory to attach his pack to a fire hydrant. “Heh heh heh, alright now~!”

The Mad Cat Machine sent a blast at us and Dolly deflected it back with her board, only the returned blast didn’t strike it as it dodged charged forward at us at a frightening speed. Only for a Fly Wheel to come screaming from out of the sky at full speed and it rammed the Mad Cat Machine with an explosive force before Dormarch’s big sister could make a move to defend us.

The Mad Cat machine now had a big hole in its chest and was now on its back, I saw its claws still moving so it was still dangerous.

“Grapple!” Skye’s voice called out as she swung back and forth until her momentum died down into having her paws slap against a nearby building and she quickly repelled down to the streets with us. “Well so much for my Fly Wheel, but it was for a good cause! I still have my jetpack, just say the word and I’m in the air, but it looks like I won’t need…”

“Go help Marshall set up, it’s not done yet!” I called out and Skye didn’t second guess me and was immediately rushing towards Marshall to help him.

“What is it with dogs and heroically ruining our plans?!” The Mad Cat Machine, despite the sizable hole in the armor, was standing up and it hadn’t slowed down in the slightest. “This should have been an easy conquest and staging area, but no, the pets living here are apparently fighting back better than we could have ever thought, it’s infuriating!”

The machine lunged forward we both frantically dodged its clawing attacks. It was getting harder to dodge and I noticed Dolly was flagging. She had to be exhausted after dealing with this thing alone for so long… I saw something that she didn’t and I moved to stop it from happening.

I quickly pushed Dolly to the side and the left claw clamped down on my pup pack screeching as it tore into the pack. I was quickly lifted into the air and I realized that I’d just entered a hostage situation… as the hostage. Not good!

Dolly looked like she was going to make a move only to feel something lightly press against my throat, I gulped and looked down. The left claw was digging into my damaged pup pack, this was going to take some explaining to Ryder… if the right claw didn’t tear my throat out.

“Kind of whished it was you that I had grabbed so I could slowly watch the life bleed out of you!” Snooky the cat looked at me and I whimpered. “Guess, I’ll have to settle for…”

“Hey, let my friend go, pup pack full power- ruff-ruff water, now, please?!” Marshall called out urgently and desperately. A massive beam made of water ripped through the central torso of the Mad Cat Machine machine and moved upwards as Marshall was blasted off his paws by the force of his own pup pack firing.

What happened next was a bit blurry, but then I saw Skye’s worried face, I slowly groaned and barely sat up to see that the Mad Cat Machine had been blown entirely in half. Upper from its lower Half.

“Finally got you!” Dolly shouted as she tackled Snooky trying to slink away from the wrecked machine. She rapidly started to punch him in the face several times with a curled up paw. She kept hitting him until his nose was broken, his face was bloodied and he stopped moving… he didn’t stop breathing though. “Hey is Chase okay?!”

“I’m feeling… okay… everything hurts and I’m feeling a little dizzy.” I felt myself being put on something, was it Dolly’s skateboard?

“Let’s get him out of here, he’ll be fine.” Dolly stated as she walked over to us on her hind leg with an unconscious cat slung over her back. “We need to move, those cat-bots are still coming.”

Saying that I watched as Dolly turn and threw her strange bone and it broke a cat-bot coming at us with a devastating impact and she caught it as it came spinning back to her.

“Pom providing evac for a brave little dude and the big menace is coming up fast!” Dolly stated as she looked at the giant cat robot causing fires and slowly wreaking havoc through Paw-tucket. “Have some Sitrus Berries ready, Chase got injured because of me and my big sister instincts are kicking me hard for letting something like that happen.”

“The derby teams will finish off the cat-bots, then we’ll really give Mechanikat what’s coming to him.” Hearing Pom’s voice was rather soothing and I smiled a little at hearing it, my tail even started wagging. “Secure the prisoner for detainment and make sure he can’t hurt anyone while getting him to us. The pets will have to handle things on the front for now, thankfully we only have one major threat left.”

“Get some sleep Chase.” Feeling Skye lick my cheek, I drifted off.

“On the… case…” I mumbled sleepily.

-Mega Mechanikat, Mechanikat-

I so do love the smell of fire and destruction. I’d love to see Dog Star Patrol come up with something to deal with this thing without some of the strongest super pets available.

-Backside of the Paw-tucket front line, Udder Chaos-

Now that Mechanikat’s minions had hurt one of the Paw Patrol puppies, a highly protected subsidiary of Wayne Enterprises to make sure nobody experiments on those poor very friendly talking alien animals around the Adventure Islands region highly protected by Wayne enterprises and watched over specifically by our ally Master Higgins. If people thought the talking animals was even vaguely weird, then we’re lucky nobody knows about all the intelligent dinosaurs that count as endangered species on the other nearby islands.

Given that Pom’s plan was all but assured to work now… it was time to take out my frustrations on my enemies in the only way a cow like me can.

I whipped out a jump rope with my teeth and growled as I snapped it like an actual whip scaring my friends Fran and Hiss slightly as I narrowed my eyes. Bev was already being pulled back in a stretching cord ready to launch herself into danger shell first, we’re all ready to let loose some justice on the remaining maniacal cat-bot forces.

Sure I was changed to fit in with this magical world’s aesthetics and was visiting Paw-tucket to spend time with my distant friends, Mechanikat couldn’t have possibly known that I have access to Paw-tucket or he wouldn’t have tried this travesty against the good pets of my home world.

In any, case my good friend Pocus sends his regards!

For I am vengeance, I am the sour cream personified to villainous laughing hyenas everywhere, I am…

Bat-Cow!

“Okay, how did lightning just strike?” Fran stated in a very confused tone after a flash and bolt of lightning occurred. “I mean seriously, those are smoke clouds from the fires, not storm clouds.”

“Yeah, that was kind of weird.” Miss Hiss’s inability to stop would actually be quite boon for finishing off the remaining cat-bots. There were still a lot of them and I would be at forefront of the takedowns, I couldn’t allow any of my allies to get hurt unnecessarily.

“Don’t worry about it Fran, Hiss, just worry about not getting hurt and watching each others backs.” I glared ahead. “All derby teams, moo-ve out! Let's go Thunder Clouds, show them what we pets are made of!”

Author's Note

Adventure Bay and Adventure City are part of the 'Adventure Islands', Master Higgins is what I would consider to be a 'mostly normal' hero with a completely absurd life. One who rides friendly dinosaurs, beats up aliens, monsters and animals or just other weird things in general with magical throwing stone axes and is constantly hungry for high calorie foods.

Master Higgins is a larger than life figure that fights ridiculous supernatural odds and wins, after all he doesn't have super strength after eating something like Flint the time Detective does.

470. K-9 Comics all-star heroes issue 1: Mega Mechanikat Mangling!

-World Where Dreams Can Come True (Provided you work for them), Camden Town, 101 Dalmatian Street, Da Vinci Dalmatian-

“Do you think we should eventually tell Dolly about the comic books we’re making about her and Ditto’s adventures?” At least I think our copycat sister Ditto Dalmatian was certainly doing a good job of keeping the Caper Canine name alive, despite not exactly having Dolly’s talents or exact capabilities. She did have a skateboard with the electrum varnish and some magical ability to make it hard to destroy. Ditto’s glamour magic was really coming along otherwise and the illusions she can cast were helping her stay safe in dangerous situations.

“I’m sure Dolly will be fine with it once she learns of its existence.” Deepak stated solemnly as he hummed to himself and sat in a meditative position. “Besides the Mighty Ducks Team has their own comic book of their whole backstory and nobody thinks it’s real. I’m pretty sure Dolly would have even insisted on it… at least Hunter is making sure we get at least three copies of every issue you make set aside.”

That was one for the family, one for the artist which was me to personally sign and eventually an entire collection for Dolly if she wanted to read Ditto’s adventures in mimicking her Caper Canine identity. Of course I wasn’t going to give away the location of our home in the comic book and some details were greatly exaggerated, also I liked the fact that a lot of people do appreciate my artwork.

“Is the next issue of K-9 Comics out?!” Dizzy stated excitedly.

“Is it going to be about how Ditto accidentally ended up in Morocco hunting ancient mystical artifacts with some treasure hunters?” That was quite terrifying situation Deedee.

It was a good thing Mr. McDuck ran across Ditto in Morocco… he even dropped Ditto off on the way back to Duckburg which was rather nice of him. Caper Canine even made the news for assisting the McDuck family with the F.O.W.L agent Black Heron, a bunch of Jiangshi that mailed themselves there for completely unrelated reasons, a whole slew of other weird things like a butter ghost, a giant were-squirrel which was basically the average size of a normal biped and a nightingale that was friends with the Rescue Rangers and a Rescue Aid Society member named Chirp Sing who was related to the whole reason for the Jiangshi being in Morocco thing.

Chirp Sing was now incidentally on our mailing list. So we knew the royal corgis personally, I think Ditto was dating the lonely prince. Now we know the mystical bird of a small time Chinese emperor, several super hero teams and a bunch of galaxy class treasure hunters. Life has been quite weird since we met Pom, but never was it ever boring.

“You two do realize I’m the one that makes those comics right? Also that two of our sisters are actually doing all these crazy things?” I could have lived without Launchpad almost crashing into our home though. Ditto was still taking a break from being Caper Canine here after that.

“You are so good at making those comics though! I just have to know about that whole Nessie adventure she had up in Scotland!” Dizzy stated with a smile and Deedee nodded happily alongside her sister. At least Scotland was closer and a quick boat and bus ride to get Ditto home from that particular incident where she got knocked out and fell into a cargo plane. “We also love you’re artwork and we’re you’re biggest fans!”

“You’re family, of course you’re somewhat obligated to like me!” I sighed happily and quickly brought Dizzy, Deedee and Deepak into a hug. “Hugs!”

“Hugs? Hugs!” A puppy poked their head in and before I knew it we were swarmed by affectionate brothers and sisters. Free hugs were always welcome here, especially since Dolly wasn't around to give them herself.

-Petopia, Paw-tucket airfield, Pom-

They made good time in getting Chase back to my staging area for this thing, he would live and was a brave little hero today. I’m so very thankful he didn’t get a blade through his throat and the explosion certainly saved his life more than it actually hurt him.

Dolly’s reaction to someone leading to a puppy getting hurt, provided it wasn’t her that did it, would hit her berserk button quite hard. I’m fairly sure she only broke Snooky’s face before starting on the way here, when she got here all four of Snooky’s legs looks to be either broken, dislocated or both at the same time... also something was up with the cats spine.

“Uh…” I was going to ask, but Marshall cut in.

“Dolly accidentally dropped Snooky in an alleyway… a few times, maybe ‘accidentally’ slammed a dumpster lid on his spine... she was being really quite clumsy with him.” Anyone could probably see why Marshall was shivering and had a disturbed look on his face. Skye however didn’t seem nearly as perturbed.

“If you’re wondering, I’ve seen worse from flying vehicle crashes.” Skye certainly didn’t think anything of Snooky’s mangled form.

Also this would be a lesson to anyone to not make Dolly angry… probably would have done the same thing myself just to make sure Snooky wouldn’t continue being quite a little threat.

“Skye… I’m sorry to ask this of you, but I’m going to need you back in the air soon, with your jetpack.” I saw a firm look on the tiny dogs face, she wasn’t afraid of what I was going to ask her to do. “We need you to either draw or stall Mechanikat here at this intersection… he’s already approaching it so the need to lure him in shouldn’t be an issue.”

“Ready to go when needed!” Skye announced while puffing out her chest, these alien puppies were adorable.

“Marshall you’re on medical and after all of this is over, I’m going ask that you to teach medical treatment here in Paw-tucket. You don’t have to, but I think it would really help the pets if their owners get hurt in incidents like what we’re experiencing.” I saw the spark of life return to Marshall’s eyes as he nodded and went over to Chase. “Dolly take five.”

“I’ll take twenty… my body is hurting after being near so many missile explosions… glad I put some sound dampening earplugs in before doing all of this.” At least Dolly had some forethought to use something like that.

“Udder Chaos now would be a good time to get in there!” I called out over Roxy’s paw pad.

-Paw-tucket city, frontlines, Bev-

Pets were running past my slingshot set up towards the pitching machines with pet made sports javelins, far more lightweight than normal javelins our owners could use, and normally they would have rounded blunt ends… but apparently they were sharpened for this special occasion.

They had to modify the pitching machines while they were quickly being pulled away from the cat-bots, but that was mostly just removed the hoppers and shoving the javelin pointy end first into the ball launching mechanism. The Pets that actively went to fetch ammo for the pitching machines were brave, I was about to be one of the brave ones myself.

It was a little slower, but a second later several javelins fired out and pierced through several cat-bots with javelins going at least sixty to seventy in speed. The javelins were heavier than the all the sporty spheres we’ve been sending out, but they had a far more devastating impacts on the cat-bots despite what would be a slow fire rate to get them loaded up for firing from our cannons.

While many other pets were fleeing the cat-bot army, I was still prepping to launch myself into the fray with some jump ropes as my only weapon. Every derby team pet had several too. Topple, smash and evade any explosions we caused, that was our game plan and I was all for getting my adrenaline up.

This was going to be as or more dangerous as bungie jumping, sky diving or skiing… and I was all for it!

Jade’s team finally ran out of stuff to throw as I could see them evacuating across the rooftops, I wonder how they even got that sofa up there…

Anyway they were definitely going to avoid the giant cat robot slowly smashing Paw-tucket to pieces that we couldn’t quite stop yet. Once we dealt with the cat-bots we can focus on bringing that building sized behemoth down.

“Hey guys on the pitching machines, I’m going out, check you’re fire!” I hopped and then found myself rocketing forward. I saw the derby teams go out. The roller derby teams set out and were on the attack for the remaining cat-bots, they didn’t make it through Jade’s forces very well at all. Wolfram and his team were looking good today, love to see the Havoc Howlers in action as they started tearing apart the remaining cat-bots. “Wahoo!”

Couldn’t entirely pull myself into my shell, but that’s because I was wearing skates and a helmet, I would be too slow to escape the cats otherwise as I rocketed through their numbers rebounding off of multiple cat-bots knocking them over or denting them. Good thing my shell was tougher than their metals or else this wouldn’t have worked.

I eventually came to a stop skidding along the back of my shell and a cat-bot glaring down at me. I grinned up at him and tried to roll myself back over.

“Bev, grab on!” Udder Chaos came flying in and whipped the end of the jump rope my way, I clamped down on it with my mouth and I was pulled away before the cat-bot could put its fist through me. It went into the street instead and got stuck. I was flipped onto my feet and I started skating alongside my cow friend. “You okay?”

“You know me, I’m always in it for the rush!” Today was quite a rush no less, several derby teams were toppling cat-bots all over the place by attacking their legs with the jump ropes. I always wondered if underwater basket weaving had other applications, those jump ropes were sturdy enough to survive the cat-bots trying to tear them apart as they kept getting knocked over.

“Go low!” Right boss lady Udder Chaos, I held my end of the robot and skidded between the legs of a cat-bot and used my momentum to swing around its left leg back the way I came and towards safety. Udder Chaos did the rest turning it into a tied up metal ball.

“Everyone get clear, I need a pitcher to hit this one!” Udder Chaos screamed out, she seemed to be on the ball as I let go of the rope and she finished tying the cat-bot off despite wearing skates. Wow she was really talented to have done that with her tongue.

I followed after my cow companion a second later a javelin landed and hit something important, because the cat-bot took out several around them. In fact the cat-bot had been set up so well that it took out more than I thought it would have, Udder Chaos really lives up to her name!

We continue to trip and or knock down cat-bots and were taking down quite a number of them even without the support fire of the javelins.

-Bat-cow-

Bev was always an action seeker and I had to look out for her, Fran and Hiss weren’t doing too bad and were watching each other’s backs. Miss Hiss needs to work on her stopping, but in this case it was preventing her from getting grabbed, punched or kicked as she frantically changed directions faster than anyone could expect of her.

It was hard to disappear so I could put on my actual gear… Ace the bat hound will never let me live this down if he wasn’t busy. Being an above average intelligent cow because of a mind control experiment gone wrong making me smart wasn’t how I thought my life would go, I’m fairly certain Alfred was aware of my more curious activities.

The pets of Paw-tucket were doing their best, but they needed me to not be in a roller derby uniform. Still we were almost finishing off the remaining cat-bots, the Paw-tucket Pet Patrol could actually take care of them.

I veered off into an alleyway and watched as Bev retreated towards the pitcher machines with Fran and Hiss. I was just making sure my friends, that weren’t from the league of super pets, were okay.

Moving over to a nondescript brick wall, I pulled off one of my skates and started tapping the bricks. It opened up to reveal a technology capacity beyond what Paw-tucket was normally capable of. It was my little bat supply depot like what my owner has all over Gotham.

I, took off my helmet, pulled on a cowl and cape, got out a grappling hook, picked up a thirty bat-a-rang variety pack, some lightweight yet highly sturdy body armor and a few gadgets that would help with detaining the maniacal cyborg menace inside the giant robot.

Knowing the plans as well as I do, I knew when my moment would come. You were not coming back to this world again if I had anything to say about it Mechanikat!

-Mega Mechanikat, Mechanikat-

“Mahaha, I do so love to watch them squirm and flee from my might, they can deal with my cat-bots all they want, but they can’t deal with the Mega Mechanikat!” At this point I was just in it for the destruction, some part of me knew there was no taking this world if I lose this machine, but at least my ship was well guarded and these pesky animals weren’t capable of taking me down with their showing thus far.

A bunch of flying hamster wheels dropped small explosions across the armor of the Mega Mechanikat and it did nothing.

Even their flying hamster wheels couldn’t do any damage to the majestic might of…

Is that a Ferris wheel?!

The small hamster wheel bombardment had been a temporary distraction from dodging the incoming attack.

-Moments earlier, Paw-tucket’s pet based theme park, Scoot Racoonerson-

“He’s in range and everyone is clear, launch it!” Didn’t need to tell me twice Pom.

“0kay, guys pull it free!” Several animals dressed in engineering uniforms and hard hats pulled a lever and the rapidly spinning Ferris wheel went flying forward at full speed as it rolled away from the theme park. With how slow that giant robot is, there was no way it was dodging that Ferris wheel. One that had been slightly modified to be heavier.

“Direct hit, you knocked it over and damaged its legs and arms!” Edie called out through our paw pads and my engineering team cheered, as did a lot of other surrounding pets that helped out with our first setup to deal with the oversized alien conqueror robot. “Oh no, it’s getting back up. Repeat, damaged, but not done pushing the wheel off to the side! At least the Cat-bots are almost finished and it’s encroaching the front lines almost alone. No news from the infiltration teams yet, but I’m sure that’s actually good news. It would be bad if we can hear that they’ve been caught.”

Trip and Quincy were two of my best friends, I hoped they were alright in there.

“Sunil, this is Scoot, the cat-bots are about finished. Time for your part pull our people out of the fray and finish off the bots, then we’ll launch the second setup when the massive mechanical monster is in range of it!”

“Yes, the guild of magical pets is ready, please standby for confirmation to pull everyone out of the combat zone!” Sunil the mongoose was a strange one, but he was one of the more mystically inclined pets and probably knew a few things about the mysteries of Paw-tucket and how it worked.

-Paw-tucket lake, Sunil-

“Okay everyone, hats out, we’re going to pull every pet out of the combat zone!” I turned to Ocellus. “Ms. Ocellus if you would…”

Ocellus groaned, but quickly clamped her mouth shut as her cheeks filled with the magic in the air, she swallowed and sat in the middle of the circle.

“When you’re ready!” I said with slightly chipper tone, Ocellus opened her mouth wide and lit her horn to start concentrating.

Soon pets started appearing a foot or two above the lake, a lake that was already prepared to take them. We already had aquatic pets in the lake to make sure nobody is drowning as we cleared the combat zone for the second setup, it’ll wipe out the remainder of the cat-bots and do some damage as the Ferris wheel had. Various magical animals were directing the power of friendship to save those who needed to be saved.

Any animal on the ground or trapped on the rooftops were teleported out, anyone that could fly would be staying for distraction reasons.

After successfully evacuating all our friends, we were to finish preparations for setup four.

-Paw-tucket ski resort, Everest of Paw Patrol-

“This is Everest, I don’t know how to feel about this… I’m usually saving people from disasters, not causing them.” Seeing the warm smile I was getting Pom, did lighten my mood a little bit. “How’s chase?”

“It would scar if we didn’t have those Sitrus Berry things, but he’ll make a full recovery.” Marshall stated from next to Pom. “We’re down two pup packs though.”

“That’s half good to hear Marshall!” Now I looked over the snow pets and all the preparations we had set up for what would be the largest unnatural disaster to hit Paw-tucket, that’s even counting the giant robot currently having set more than a quarter of the pet city on fire. All of said fires would at least be put out by this. “We’re ready to launch setup two.”

“Hold for a minute…” Pom stated and looked off to the side. “Wait until he’s in position and for my signal. Everyone’s clear that’s going to be clear?”

“Confirmed!” Sunil stated brilliantly, he was a really cool guy to hang out with.

There was a silence and several long minutes of explosions and flames rising from Paw-tucket, the snow bound pets were getting antsy.

“Okay guys, winter is coming!” That was the signal and Pom said the words to confirm.

“Unleash the snow boulder avalanche!” I called out and several pets started pulling small blocks out, but it seems that the snow had melted together and gotten stuck. “Oh no… the snow is stuck!”

“Ahem, thought this would happen so that’s why I set up a concert here earlier in the day… AWOOOOOYEAHHHH~!” Zoey Trent, a somewhat popular dog around Paw-tucket, roared into a microphone and several speakers blasted the snow with sound and loosened it up quite a bit.

A few seconds later the intended disaster started occurring.

-Paw-tucket city, Mega Mechanikat, Mechanikat-

It was only a mild set back, the robot was still more than eighty percent operational, though I did lose the flamethrowers.

Now where were all the pets in the city and why did it seem so… what’s that rumbling?

Turning the head of the robot to the left, something massive, white and moving at incredible speeds.

The impact basically disabled the left arm of my most impressive and massive machine.

Do they honestly think a bunch snow would stop the Mega Mechanikat!

I slowly got my mechanical majesty of my own visage standing again, they’ll have to do better than that to bring down the great Mechanikat!

Paw-tucket ski resort, Everest-

“That’s a negative on stopping him, I think we took out the left arm with that impact though!” I said while looking through the binoculars. “Left leg isn’t doing so hot either. Look at it this way Marshall, we put out all the fires and I don’t think he’ll be starting any more!”

“Well that’s good at least.” Marshall whined, I’m going to give him a big affectionate cuddle the next time I saw him in person. “At least the snow will eventually melt.”

-Paw-tucket airfield, Pom-

“Okay, setup three is on, don’t know if we’re going to do enough damage at this point. Edie do not endanger yourself or your friends unnecessarily for this setup!” I said into the paw pad as I turned to Skye. “Like I said earlier Skye, we’re going to need you and some of the birds to hold Mechanikat’s attention or else this won’t work. Get him to stay in one general place long enough for the third setup to hit that thing. You can use your jetpack now as you see fit.”

Setup four is what will absolutely exhaust Ocellus and all the magical pets, but at that point if that thing isn’t slowed to a literal crawl for Dog Star to deal with… well we’ll deal with that when we get there. More like I’ll deal with it when I get there.

“This dog was meant to fly!” Skye immediately took off from the ground as her jetpack launched her towards the city.

“How long will it take Brainy?” Since we needed to hit the target with something large, my previous idea was a ballista with full sized logs using some pet beavers help.

“Two and a half minutes, I’ll get into position to aim and my team up there will get them moving.” Instead, with Brainy’s permission, we changed the third setup slightly.

The defense satellites Dog Star Patrol put up were only meant to protect against things coming in from space, they had no capability of firing through or even in an atmosphere and were only pointed outwards and are kind of just sitting up there uselessly. The Dog Star Patrol members in orbit were working on making sure that the defensive net Mechanikat bypassed with Snooky’s help was about to come back to bite him for not dealing with it fully, as there were plenty of satellites to utilize for this and they were made for surviving atmospheric reentry. Since they were, of course, fire hydrant shaped like their base was.

The makeshift ballista was now plan five if we needed it and Scoot Racoonerson was waiting for the okay on it. Marshall would be making that call in case we fell in battle and would be attending to Chase’s injuries with Sitrus Berry juice until it would come to that point.

After setup four is when Dog Star Patrol will get into the fight, along with anyone who could survive being that close to the colossus. Which will be including me, as I could get in close and howl breaker a large part of the machine apart. My throat was going to be killing me afterwards, but it wasn’t like a large part of my diet didn’t involve Sitrus Berries at this point.

“Mom, we’re in process of completing the takeover of the spaceship. Not many complications to speak of, they didn’t see this coming at the very least or their security is just that bad.” Good to hear Dormarch, if Mechanikat tries to run he’s going to find a door slammed in his face. “This guy is nowhere near as threatening as Moon Cell was… I was the only reason we were able to even be a big problem for Moon Cell. The coding on this ship is like someone tied a bunch of tissue paper together, threw it in a toilet and then said that was good enough as far as security goes while flushing it down.”

If Dormarch hadn’t been rendered as a partial servant due to what Moon Cell did with his body, then we wouldn’t have been able to take that territory or have Castle Alexander to support our foray into the various realms of Moon Cell. We wouldn’t have any advantages pushing forward, there was some wonder as to how much harder that would have been.

All of that stuff was still very clear in Dormarch’s mind despite trying to relax over these last few days and simply be a fun loving puppy and not an anxiety riddled paranoid person like me. I hope he gets over those nightmares soon, even sleeping cuddled up to me isn’t helping him.

“Good to hear Dormarch, you keep up the good work and make sure to lockdown the ship.” My poor little three tailed wonder would always make me proud. “We’re about to start our final two ploys and then I’ll be heading out on hoof to help deal with the problem personally.”

“At least it probably won’t be able to walk after that, but I don’t doubt that it’ll still be dangerous mom… be please careful.” Does Dormarch realize that if I wasn’t careful, I’d be out there trying to figure out a way to fight something that has several thousand tons on me without inevitably resorting to my bark or howl breaker attacks? Also that I’d be doing it entirely by myself?

No I definitely was careful and had planned most of this out. There were still a few iffy things to worry about, but Brainy was spot on with what they were going to try here and I had planned for giant robot. Said plans were even successful, but they hadn’t stopped this Mechanikat guy yet so we needed a lot more oomph.

My time on Elhorn has taught me that there was no kill like overkill when it came to facing giant robots.

-In space, currently outside Dog Star Patrol’s fire hydrant shaped headquarters, Paw Pooch-

We made sure the prisoner was still confined, we might have even went overboard on that front considering how many ways they’ve circumvented our security before. Agent Del still tried, but failed horribly as Brainy had upped the security to ludicrous levels for the particularly crafty brand of geniuses we were dealing with.

So to that end I was now out in space and orienting the satellites for a ‘Skyfall’ protocol using multiple legs growing from my body to extend out into space. Sure it was really cold, but I could create as many legs and paws as my heart could handle and that was at least twenty. My particular species was good at multitasking with so many legs to work with.

I had several extended noodle like legs that were all quite ready to throw the satellites into set falls, I was just waiting for Brainy or Hot Dog to signal it. I’m glad that I’m not the one that had to calculate all of this stuff.

I mean there’s getting them into the atmosphere, the time from here to even get to the Mega Mechanikat which was still mobile and there was a whole lot of other stuff to worry about like was the cost worth using our satellites for this purpose? Well it’s not like the satellites were going to get much use elsewhere, this is a magical pocket system, it was quite hard to get into in the first place and we were going to make sure Mechanikat couldn’t do so again after this.

It was all a big headache, so that’s why I’m aiming for general vicinity and hoping they can be redirected by Brainy when they are far enough down there.

Brainy’s telekinesis had quite a bit of range on it, so she could just simply nudge them in the right direction. Of course her level of power was far more subtle than raw.

“Okay Paw Pooch, start throwing them!” Hot Dog ordered, guess Brainy was moving into position to direct them into Mechanikat. Our fireball spewing secondary leader gave the order and I started to heave the satellites down into the atmosphere.

-Paw-tucket airspace, Skye-

I watched as the large bipedal machine piloted by a cyborg cat swung at the birds harassing him. All we had to do was keep it in place for three minutes and Dog Star Patrol would get the drop on that giant robot in a literal fashion.

Pom wanted the pets to show their stuff, well they had mostly wiped out the cat-bot army and any possibility of more being built if they’ve taken the ship. This was the one thing in particular that was something they simply didn’t have many ways to deal with, though the first two efforts were good showing what they could come up with when pressed.

We were going to have to keep it in place somehow...

“Wow, I’ve never seen something so ugly in my life!” I swear the entire machine’s eyes lit up as it seemingly glared at me, it tried to swat me out of the air with a massive claw from the right arm. Everest said the left was rendered inoperable due to the snow boulder and avalanche.

“What you are looking upon is the grand visage of your conqueror mutt, there is nothing Dog Star Patrol currently has that can stop my mighty machine!” This Mechanikat guy says that now, but… a second snow boulder, without an avalanche of snow this time, slammed into its left leg and almost toppled it. Instead it force the machine onto its left knee. “Grrr… if I had long range weapons on this thing, I’d blast that entire mountain down. Snooky was supposed to get around to adding them onto this Mega Mechanikat when we took this world. The last one would never have been hampered quite like this!”

“Like that’ll ever happen, you’re big tin can won’t be able to handle what’s coming to it!” I shouted as I dodged several more claws swipes from the right arm as the machine got back up on its feet. Having already working out the air turbulence it would cause in its passing, I used my knowledge of aeronautics to my advantage to stay airborne and safe.

“That coming from a miniscule cretin like you? Well you certainly are quite a yappy one, what do you think you are capable of… aside from flying around and looking cute?” Well for one Mechanikat I was distracting you from the five flaming objects quickly coming out of the sky. “Do you have super strength, do you have size increasing power, do you spew fireballs, do you telekinetically control things, what is it that a tiny little insignificant thing like you have that makes you a Dog Star Patrol viable here? Please, humor me as you aren’t obviously equipped with any weapons that can deal with me here and they wouldn’t let a normal dog in their ranks given the dangers involved.”

“Oh, I’m not from Dog Star Patrol or planning on joining them, I’m from a rescue service team called Paw Patrol… though our team is definitely going to be allies with Dog Star Patrol moving forward. My specialty is in flying vehicles, might even include spaceships in that eventually.” That and I’m quite good at using my personal flight pack, which is currently being used to dodge a major threat.

“Then why am I bothering with you?” Well one would think it’s because of calling you're giant machine ugly?

“Since you obviously don’t know about the cow climbing up the left shoulder of your machine?” I blinked and even looked at the cow with a bat shaped cowl and cape slowly climbing the machine.

“Hah, I would have noticed if something that heavy was clambering around on the Mega Mechanikat due to the weight sensors.” Yet there was a cow and you weren’t noticing it, said cow stopped and glanced at the incoming fireballs being redirected by Brainy Barker. She was aiming to take out one of the legs of the Mega Mechanikat.

The cow turned to me and nodded with a grim look on her face, while motioning to keep Mechanikat talking. She had to be a Paw-tucket pet given her current size. The whole magical size and shape thing didn’t happen to alien dogs or outsiders who get here through unique methods apparently.

“Isn’t that limb on your piece of junk damaged though? I mean the sensors could be all kinds of messed up.” I hovered away from another claw swipe. Just had to keep him distracted, because the cow obviously had ideas if the incoming meteoric strike didn’t work. “Also the cow is on your left shoulder now.”

“Now that you mention it…” The head of the machine turned and saw that the cow was glaring at him. “B-b-b-bat-cow, how?! You shouldn’t be here… but, huh, you’re as small as almost everyone else on this pocket world planet.”

“Size doesn’t matter here Mechanikat, what matters is that you entered my jurisdiction again… I thought ‘Ace the Bat Hound’ and I taught you quite a few lessons about not underestimating us.” Bat-cow stated gruffly as she stared flatly at Mega Mechanikat’s head. “Do you want me to help you with reliving those lessons right now?”

“Well it’s not like you can sit on me again with how small you are, it took a week to get the stench out from last time!” The right limb raised and slung towards Bat-cow.

Bat-cow turned towards me raised something in her left hoof and a grapple hook soon clamped onto my pack without damaging it. I quickly burst away from the large robot as it almost tore off its own arm trying to hit Bat-cow who I was now helping move through the air.

Apparently Bat-cow’s cape transformed into a glider making maneuvering easier for me. With her free hoof, she started throwing several bat shaped things into the eyes of the massive machine.

“Really now, you think that blinding the cameras with a bunch of those little annoying silly metal bats is going to… gah?!” The following staccato of five impacts were music to my ears.

The right leg was torn apart below the knee by three fire hydrant shaped masses slamming into it back to back. The heavily damaged left arm was almost taken off entirely by one after the right arm damaged the left enough, on top of the earlier damage it took from the Ferris wheel. The last hydrant shaped mass toppled the machine onto its face when it hit dead center of the machine’s back.

“Swing me around for where the left arm used to be, I’m going to get inside through there!” Bat-cow called out and I did so with flying after me like a kite and eventually I got her angled for the left arms stump and bat-cow glided into a small space in the stump she managed to squeeze into. “It’ll take some time to cut my way in, but I will reach him. Continue to keep him busy Ms. Holley!”

“Wait, you know my full name?!” I didn’t know how Bat-cow could possibly know that. As a cockapoo, that lived nowhere near where Bat-cow does.

“You’re team does good work!” Bat-cow stated back to me and that was the last I heard of her as the robot started sitting up. I quickly flew out of the way of another swatting attempt by the right claw and then was almost struck by the large mechanical tail only to be pulled out of the way by some kind of force.

“Be a bit more careful you almost got taken out by the machine’s tail… and apparent spare leg.” Brainy stated as she let go of her powers hold on me so that I could hover next to her. We both watched as the large metal tail extended to make up for the portion of the lost right leg. “If Super Dog were available to be here, he’d be capable of dealing with this on his own at this point.”

“Oh right, you know the Super Dog, what’s he like?” I asked as I hovered next to the older Brainy Barker.

“Oh he’s quite super indeed.” Why was Brainy’s face turning as red as Dolly’s around Tusky? “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

She read my mind… cool!

We both swiftly moved out of the way of swinging right claw of the Mega Mechanikat.

“Apparently you were not nearly distracted enough, if you hadn’t noticed I’m not quite through yet, so stop ignoring me!” Which was rather apparent, but you had to admit that the large robot was moving even slower now. “Wait… where’s Bat-cow? No matter, as long as she is too small to sit on me again.”

“Leap Lamb says five minutes to curtain call, then the dogs will be off the leash!” Edie called out from nearby, so that was for the fourth setup. Now we had to distract him for five more minutes and his mobility is quite hampered.

-Nearby, Ocellus-

How did I let Pom talk me into this? Oh right, she said I could use a lot of magic and be a focus for all of the magic pet guild for a single powerful magical attack… all I could really think about was friendship rainbow lasers.

So let’s go with that and the fondness I feel for all of these animals and how my teacher Fluttershy would love to be in a world like this one, cute, adorable and very little danger aside from extenuating circumstances such as Pom existing.

Now I’m going to take the feelings of love, friendship and acceptance… then blow a large chunk out of a robot with it.

All I had to do was not miss, no pressure… heh, it was kind of hard to miss with friendship guided lasers.

-Front line, Pom-

I trudged across the snow with my right hind leg still feeling the pain of it being moved by my wool, but I wasn’t chancing it moving it without my wool until I had fully recovered.

Following me were Tusky Husky, Hot Dog and Mammoth Mutt, all of them rather descriptive of what their abilities were.

Hot Dog was keeping warm on the snow covered streets by igniting his body, Mammoth clamped onto my wool and Tusky was used to brisk weather… and absolute zero temperatures of being in space.

We could see the Mega Mechanikat was properly distracted by Brainy and Skye.

We were soon joined by Shanty, Dodo and Smolder it looks like they were ready to end this.

“The straggler cat-bots be being taken care of!” Shanty stated with a cheerful lilt as she shouldered her can scythe.

Dodo probably warbled the words ‘he helped’ cheerfully, no actual talking from our biomechanical friend and he probably ate some of the cat-bots. At least they didn’t seem to be intelligent.

“Wasn’t that hard a job Pom. Nice turn out by the way, very dragon!” A grinning Smolder was talking about the utter destruction of our enemy. “Come on, let’s watch what’s about to happen next! Ocellus is about to fire whatever magic attack she has going on and she’ll likely take out the remaining good arm with it!”

“Well okay then, I can tell we all want to advance.” I was still fairly upset about these events, because this Mechanikat interrupted my vacation with an alien invasion on what was supposed to be a safe world. I’ll mostly let the others take care of this unless they needed my help. “Also Smolder gets dibs on dealing with Mechanikat.”

“Score!” Smolder didn’t get to do enough, but she’s been there with us through thick and thin, plus I seriously doubt anything Mechanikat personally has could actually hurt Smolder. You know, aside from the giant robot that is, mostly by just taking her out with crushing force.

“I be calling first dibs on spending time with Pom next!” Shanty stated.

“Okay, deal!” Smolder nodded and shook Shanty’s hoof on it.

I rolled my eyes and went back to paying attention to Sky and Brainy flying circles around the robot, Brainy was telekinetically throwing things at the robot mostly destroyed cat-bots and large pieces of rubble. Not doing much damage, but it was very distracting.

Dodo warbled questioningly and looked around.

“Dolly is tired and resting, Dormarch is busy making sure Mechanikat doesn’t have a ship anymore.” After answering his question, Dodo opened his beak and hacked up a heart shaped apple tart for me.

“Thanks Dodo, I do kind of need a snack.” I nibbled at it as we approached the mechanical menace stuck in a snow covered intersection and just got hit by snow boulder, I think that was third one and that one dented it’s chest.

We sat down in the snow, most of which was melting around Hot Dog, and we watched as Mega Mechanikat failed about. Trying to flail the right arm or occasionally swing the tail at the two still danger dodgers in the air. Brainy was much slower, but she was still effectively avoiding the damaged robot.

“This is kind of sad.” Roxy said from next to me and I blinked at her. “Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to approach that thing, but I do want to be here to watch a super villain be defeated!”’

I mentally tagged Dolly and asked her for one of her magic spells, she said it was okay to borrow it immediately and sent it along through our bond.

“I’m going to make Mega Mechanikat an easier target for Ocellus, don’t bother me while I’m doing this or I might lose my concentration.” Putting my front hooves to my chest I started chanting, the other dogs of Dog Star Patrol looked at me.

“Dolly can be sharing her abilities with Pom and Pom can be sharing her abilities with Dolly.” Shanty explained for me as I concentrated on the building sized robot.

“Float!” I took several steps forward, gave off a magical shine and cast said magic forth targeting the Mega Mechanikat with the spell. Sure it wasn’t going to last long since it was a fairly huge target, but it just became an even bigger target for Ocellus as it flailed helplessly into the air swinging it’s one arm, tail and left leg wildly.

-A distance away, Ocellus-

Well Pom or Dolly couldn’t make the target any easier to hit than a floating building sized robot… I think I understand what people mean when it comes to hitting the 'broad side of a barn' now.

“You know something, it feels like I should shout something when I do this…” I muttered as my body was about to practically explode with energy, which would be bad. “Friendship-… Beam-… Cannon!”

A beam arced away from me and the pets. The magic pet’s guild could have even feasibly done this on their own, I was just helping things along and pushing all the magical bloating my body out before it permanently made me fat.

Afterwards I felt completely and utterly drained.

I simply opened my mouth once and all my energy was back. I kept my mouth shut afterwards, even if I could refuel myself so easily, exhaustion was still a thing I had to deal with and I was going to get a nap in now.

-Mega Mechanikat, Mechanikat-

An antigravity device, since when?!

Is that a huge death laser?!

Huh, well played…

-Brainy-

Skye and I got clear as a spreading and widening laser hit the oversized machine and damaged its limbs even further than they already were, it was kind of impossible to miss with a beam of that size.

The torso landed on the ground, but it was still active, it was no longer capable of walking on its half broken tail.

“Okay, let’s get my vacation from trouble back on track by beating the ever loving snot out of this guy!” Pom was ferocious… it made her seem even more adorable and endearing somehow. “I’m not spending the rest of my days here rebuilding all of this, because you came down here to ruin things for everyone! Skye go back to Marshall, we’re taking it from here.”

I quickly joined Pom as the Mega Mechanikat rose up as much as it could and glared down at us.

-Mega Mechanikat, Mechanikat-

“Hah, even with all of that, you still haven’t defeated me!” Something exploded behind me and a grappling hook rose with Bat-cow into my control room from a hole in the floor. “One wonders... what did you even do to get here? I heard it requires a bond of... yuck... disgusting love and compassion to get here naturally, your 'bat' family are all business and being highly retentive about your feelings.”

“I bucked The Joker below the belt as hard as I could, he hasn't quite stopped walking funny yet.” Bat-cow declared flatly without a hint of amusement. “You’re under arrest Mechanikat, either come quietly or I will do my worst to see you behind bars for a long time.”

“Oh do go ahead, I think I can take on one little depowered cow and your size was basically all you had as a power!” A bat shaped bit of metal was slung at me and I jumped away from my chair to dodge it. “Missed me!”

“Wasn’t aiming for you.” Bat-cow stated with her eyes narrowing behind her mask.

“Mega Mechanikat head ejection system activated…” Announced a very unhelpful onboard computer and I looked at the bat shaped lump of metal sticking out of the ejection switch that had it locked in place.

I tried to quickly pull the bat shaped piece of metal out of the console and stop this from happening.

“Bloody hell, why did I even install that escape pod system switch in such an easy position to reach?!” It didn’t take me a few seconds to really think about it quickly. “Oh right, in case I was about to die… all good villains know where their escape systems are.”

“You mean the one I just recently sabotaged before coming into this control room?” Bat-cow just raised a brow at me delicately.

“Drat!” It could be my only response to what was about to happen.

-Pom-

“Okay, ready…” I stood in the snow covered streets ready to bum rush the machine when its head popped off in a blast of fire from its neck. It then split itself in half by crashing into the street and cracking like an egg.

I looked up as a cow hovered down on cape and glared at a common nuisance of Dog Star Patrol and head of the evil 'Felonious Felines' organization.

Well I was looking at Mechanikat’s flailing legs and backside as his upper half was buried in the snow. He quickly pulled himself free and he looked slightly battered by the crash landing of the large robot’s head.

“Well now…” I said while pulling out a pink strip of clothe and tying it around my forehead. “Smolder has dibs let her have a first go at him.”

“You think you’ve won, but I’ve been working on my cybernetic enchantments Dog Star Patrol!” Mechanikat rose into the air laughing like a fruitcake. “I am now a master of magnetism, welcome to die!”

“This is the guy that gives you so much trouble?” I asked dully. Aside from the mechanical body, which I could total in seconds with a bark breaker, he didn't seem to have much going for him. “I can’t take his voice seriously, it is not nearly menacing enough and he sounds like a complete fruitcake on the lower end of the villain spectrum with that upper crust accent.”

“You will pay for those remarks, no matter how true they might be!” Mechanikat’s angry countenance didn’t bother me as he crossed his mechanical arms and glared at me from his position in the air.

“To be honest it’s mostly Snooky that’s always the major problem, Mechanikat himself alone is not a really big threat even if he is the main schemer of the group... or so they say anyway.” Hot Dog looked around at everyone. “Cordon off the area and let Smolder have a crack at him. This shouldn’t take long.”

“If you always had magnetism throughout all of this, then why didn’t you stop all of my bat-a-rangs previously, or use it to help pull the one out of the console before the ejection fired off?” The bat themed cow hero asked of Mechanikat more out of curiosity than actually pointing out how dumb that sounds that he could have entirely avoided this situation before hoof.

“W-well, because… argh! I just wanted to dramatically show off how much better I am than all of you. That and I probably didn’t even need my newly installed magnetism module to conquer this little dirt ball dimensional pocket world full of happy little idiots anyway!” We all just gave Mechanikat a flat stare for saying that last part. "Apparently I do and its clear I need to stop holding back.."

“Sure, whatever be helping you sleep at night, we be understanding completely.” Shanty waved both her front hooves in an over the top placating manner.

Dodo trilled as he studied the magnetism mechanisms keenly as Mechanikat hovered there as his purple cape flowed in a nonexistent wind.

“Oh, you’ll all see, when you have to deal with the new and improved Super Mechanikat!” The so called self-titled Super Mechanikat stated proudly striking a pose with his chest puffed out, metal fists on his hips and closing his eyes with his head raised high as he floated there laughing lightly to himself.

“Go ahead Smolder, have fun.” After that the battle started with Mechanikat almost taking a fireball to the face and apparently he had powerful enough magnetism to pull up a large piece of metal that got melted into slag.

He quickly took the melted metal and turned it into projectile aimed at Smolder’s torso… to no effect aside from some giggling as to how ticklish the melted molten metal felt when it went sliding down Smolder's scales.

A fight, if we could even call it that, had only just begun.

471. K-9 Comics all-star heroes issue 2: Moving Mechanikat!

-Petopia, damaged Paw-tucket streets, Pom-

The Mega Mechanikat was mostly down, but it was still a concern if Mechanikat could use his magnetism to control it remotely. Thinking of concerns, better get one out of the way.

“Shanty, can you hoof your cane scythe to Dodo and tell him to go check on Marshall?” Not even questioning why, Shanty did so and Dodo went running off. That or she was aware of what I was, Dodo would have been in danger to have around someone with control of magnetism. Don’t want our good buddy to be in danger. “Good, now Mechanikat can’t have a hostage. Hot-Dog, Tusky, Brainy, Mam, move that devastated robot away from the fight when Mechanikat isn’t paying attention and dismantle it safely. In case he thinks to use its broken form if he has enough power to do so with his magnetism.”

As I was giving out order Shanty readied herself by summoning Horizon to generate a bounding bubble and readied herself to fight Mechanikat. Only if he proved to be too much for Smolder.

So far Smolder was doing pretty well with using her combat ribbon to deflect the chunks of metal sent her way and managed to drag Mechanikat into range of her claws. He was using magnetism to fly and had been trying, and failing, to knock Smolder out of the air. Obviously the cyborg cat was not well trained with his new abilities, but they were fairly powerful given how much metal he was manipulating… aside from his own body.

Cyborgs creeped me out on a number of levels, I can’t imagine the process it took the giant metal owl that hunted Sly Cooper’s family to replace every last part of himself.

I wasn’t too worried about Smolder’s safety, she was still a dragon, but I would be worried if something like a building fell on top of her. Dragons could still suffocate or drown, their organs aren’t invulnerable to damage so a powerful enough applied blunt force trauma or shockwaves are still fairly dangerous to them. Mechanikat didn’t seem to have the physical strength to bust her scales, much less harm her physically.

“I am being aware that I should not be taking this fight from her, she be practicing on the side by herself a lot in the days we spent building up for trips between realms in Castle Alexander.” It kind of showed and Shanty apparently helped her with it given I recognized some of the punching and kicking motions. It was some form of adapted aerial fight style of combat to complement her use of the combat ribbon Viper gave her so long ago. Said ribbon was well maintained and well taken care of by Smolder. “Been meaning to ask, do you be missing the Rhongomyniad?”

Seeing Mechanikat was thoroughly distracted and chatting at Smolder as he attacked her, I looked over to see what Dog Star Patrol was doing.

I watched as Brainy, carefully moving pieces into position for Tusky to drill apart with his drill tooth to break down the chunks. Hot Dog was melting through other portions of the Mega Mechanikat and Mammoth Mutt was inflated the size of her front paws to push the removed pieces further away from Mechanikat like a biological bulldozer. Mammoth Mutt was also pushing a lot of snow too, she was fairly strong to move all that, and like a Pokémon her size was deceiving to the sense in many ways.

Tusky and Hot Dog were making quick work of dismantling the rest of the robot and as long as Mechanikat only kept pulling from the head of his machine, he wasn’t going to notice what was happening.

“A part of me does, but I think it was for the best that I didn’t become attached to a divine invulnerable weapon that possibly had mind warping properties given how Artoria acted around it.” Letting it go wasn’t easy, it was only something like semi-intelligent or more reactive to the users will and it did choose me to wield it.

“Why are you letting her fight by herself? Not that she is having any trouble with Mechanikat, an idle curiosity.” I turned to the darkly clad cow with the bat theme.

“Smolder is a dragon and there have been some… cultural issues she’s going through, mostly to do with her pride as a dragon.” It was nice that she was on talking terms with me again.

“She really be liking that you can breathe fire, it be making her feel like she lost a fight to another dragon.” Shanty earned an odd glance from the cow that was fitting that was fitting the aesthetics of Paw-tucket, I’m pretty sure the cow was much bigger outside of this world.

The glance slowly shifted to me and a raised questioning brow soon followed, wonder how this cow would feel around Arizona.

“Smolder under mind control at the time, a really nasty guy that could throw thousands of weapons at us constantly forced her into a greed growth state which couldn’t have been pleasant on her mentality when I beat her in that state. Smolder was about the size of what someone would commonly expect from the word ‘dragon’ if you have mythologies about those.” Yeah, I was trying not to go back to the thoughts about how Longma had a really strange relationship with dragons. “I’m Pom Pawdore Lambchop, a Chrysomallus, canine magnet, trouble finder and apparently multiple dimensional hopper… one step away from home after quite a trying journey and living with a slow constant existential threat to my life in the form of my wool slowly turning gold. This is Shanty, one of my charges, apparently she’s a Capricornus and rated to handle depths of up to several hundred meters straight down without a submarine.”

“Sacrificial sheep huh?” The cow muttered under her breathe. “I’m Bat-cow, I was involved in a mind control drug incident involving diseases and bacteria that went weird. Nothing terrible came of it, but I became a cow with a detectives level of intelligence… something similar happened with Detective Chimp who drank from the fountain of youth. I’m starting to believe the detective thing is what happens whenever one comes under or near the totem of ‘the bat’, given the whole sonar thing taken to a more conceptual conclusion of finding what hides in the dark.”

“Nice to meet you again.” I said pleasantly, she gave me a surprised look. “Nose like a dog, sense of hearing like a dog and frankly I’ve become much more canine like given I have fangs now as the side effects of leaning into what my prior bonds left me with… really makes me a lambkin in wolfs clothing.”

“Not sheep? I’m getting a distinct feeling that you are not a sheep.” Yeah, that’s something to wonder about Bat-cow, almost everyone who looks at me can tell I’m more sheep adjacent than actual sheep.

“A kin to sheep are the lambkin, my people run a successful textile industry.” I know that still weirds people out who hear it, but Bat-cow didn’t even show signs of that being odd.

“Race wide anxiety problems?” It didn’t take Bat-cow seconds to utter that in a questioning tone, as if she could figure out what lambkin were normally like just by having me present.

“Yes, I’m believe myself to be a fairly high functioning member of my species, which is far more unfortunate than you would believe.” I continued to watch Smolder manage to get in a few good hits on Mechanikat.

“I can believe a lot. Also durable alien metals, unlike anything you’ve ever seen.” Bat-cow answered my unasked question, she was really good.

“Dolly’s skateboard, practically indestructible to physical damage, but that’s thanks to electrum varnish being a good magic conductor and constantly in contact with being who have magic.” I glanced at Tusky’s tooth still shredding through the Mega Mechanikat robot. “Tusky was also said to have a tooth made of the strongest stuff in the universe, how does that work?”

“Dur-namel is created by the chemical processes in the bodies of the alien species Tusky comes from, basically his body produces the stuff that turns it into an indestructible tooth his people use for drilling through ice, stone, metal and more to create burrow holes on the ice planet he hails from. The rest of his teeth are nearly as tough, to the point that his people eat bones as a snack.” Well that was interesting fact ‘Bat-cow’, AKA Udder Chaos of the Thunder Clouds. “If Tusky’s people don’t work on their body as well as their tooth, they’ll find themselves spinning after getting it stuck in something, happens fairly often from what I hear. Their bodies are not made of the same stuff as their enhanced teeth, but their bones sure are as durable.”

“Any members of the Dog Star Patrol that I haven’t heard of?” I asked as I watched Smolder elegantly got her ribbon wrapped around Mechanikat while planting her feet on his back and then pulled with the ribbon gripped tightly in both her claws. Yep, Smolder was making him punch himself multiple times. “I’m talking lesser known members. Tail Terrier, Tusky Husky, Mammoth Mutt, Hot Dog, Bull Dog, Paw Pooch, Brainy Barker, Super Dog Krypto and Ace the Bat Hound are some of the names I’ve already heard.”

“Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself!” Smolder was really enjoying her fight, also Mechanikat really didn’t read as major threat. At least not in the same way that Snooky did and it was understandable that Dolly really laid into him with her paws.

The whole thing about the slamming a dumpster lid on Snooky’s spine and Dolly possibly going out of her way to break all of the cats legs. Normally I would be upset with going overboard on violence, but a cat that can create surface to space projectile weapons out of the limited levels of technology that Paw-tucket had was someone to be absolutely wary of. Needless to say I think it definitely warrants that kind of caution and violence that Dolly took with outright mangling Snooky while trying to pretend those were accidents.

Apparently in less than a week or two here Snooky created two bases, a scavenging and combat robot, and a weapon to destroy a something in orbit with a limited numbers of uses and was the creator behind all the cat-bots that we destroyed. Mind you one of those bases was a cat-bot factory, large and underwater… that he built in less than a few days since we arrived. Plus all the stuff Brainy Barker showed me in her sleep about what he did to his brothers and sister who were far nicer than Snooky… also said family was under galactic protective services because of Snooky’s demented actions. On top of all that the stuff he does normally was something to fear as a menace to any society he’s seen near and I think the only reason he worked for Mechanikat was the paycheck considering one of the stories even had Snooky turning on Mechanikat with a fully robotic copy of Mechanikat.

So yeah, I’m dropping that line of thought that Dolly went too far with Snooky… more like she didn’t go far enough and that’s a terrifying thought in and of itself.

“Chameleon Chollie, he’s a nice shapeshifter like your friend Ocellus. Prophetic Pup comes from the same region of space Brainy Barker does, his head is slightly larger and orb like… helps with the clairvoyant abilities, not a combat specialist and more of a very useful early warning system.” Here Bat-cow paused. “There has been several dogs with the title ‘Wonder Dog’, at least most of them die of old age and others become legendary in some ways. The current one has all the similar powers to krypto, not nearly as strong, but not nearly as many weaknesses either. There’s Streaky the super cat he once fended off an entire contingent of red lanterns on his own, they are a bunch of rage fueled jerks, never seen a cat braver or more actively heroic than that one. Some honorable mentions go to Beam Beagle, who died in the line of duty lighting the way for future Dog Star Patrollers. Shiba See-through who has been missing in action since that one incident with a nasty piece of work named Brainiac whose ship incidentally crashed into a planet of invisible beings. Barrier Basenji was very unusual one coming from a species of canine made of rock that can manipulate minerals in a form of geomancy. However if you want to know less dog members, you can’t go weirder than Gleek space monkey… who’s power is to summon a single bucket that can’t be permanently destroyed in any way, also has a stretching prehensile tail. Same region of space that Tail Terrier comes from apparently.”

“Fascinating.” I commented with a hint of awe hearing about so many dogs with weird abilities. If I was just traveling around in space… how many of these dogs would I have following me around now?

“We even have a few auxiliary members, like Hope Corgi… a blue lantern that soon disappeared after talking to some strange dark hero unicorn with a demon named Fred.” Wait… did she just say what I thought she said?

“Oh I know who Fred is, hope he had nothing to do with that corgi being missing… must be Oleander looking for me.” If anyone had dimensional hopping abilities, it would be Oleander. I wonder what she’s doing right now other than possibly looking for me. “Fred is kept in check by the unicorn named Oleander, Oleander is quite friendly… and is possibly dating that demon.”

“Curious…” Bat-cow narrowed her eyes at me. “Then there’s the series of Proty the Protean, a living self-replicating blob creature from the Herculoids Cluster of space, said to be related to Gleep and Gloop, the living blob guardians of a highly sought after planet named Amzot Quasar. Nobody quite knows why the planet was so highly sought after, just that it was under constant attack from a wild variety of weird beings for an equally wide variety of reasons.”

“How are things going Char Lizard?” I called out as I turned from my conversation to see Mechanikat had several rents in his metal and she burning away at several metal barriers. Mechanikat looked a bit battered and was totally afraid of Smolder now.

“I’m working on it Leap Lamb!” Smolder called back and continued to spit fireballs at the swirling barrier of metal around Mechanikat.

“Excuse me, but can I throw a bat-a-rang to speed this up?” Bat-cow was asking Smolder for permission to intervene.

“Sure, if you can take him out of the air.” Smolder grumbled as she was working through the swirling masses of metal, at this point Dog Star Patrol had already cleared out the giant robot parts and moved them far enough away that Mechanikat wouldn’t know where they are to even use them.

Mechanikat turned and looked for said robot and tried look for the robots parts, the only parts available were the broken chunks of metal from the Mega Mechanikat’s head that he had already been using.

“I’m only going to need the one.” Bat-cow stated as she reached into a utility belt and pulled out an object that she flicked and it turned into the throwing projectile she held between her cloven hoofed toes on her left leg. “Trajectory, spinning speed of the barrier, crazy cyborg cat placement in the next twenty seconds judging from the actions of Smolder… the likely position of the magnetic power module would be…”

With a swift swing of her left she sent it flying, not at Mechanikat but high up into the wall of a nearby building rebounding it towards Mechanikat’s face over the spinning barrier that was oriented mostly in Smolder’s direction.

Shanty and I watched Mechanikat tried to block the thrown weapon with the full might of his magnetic powers directly, only for it to fail entirely and the bat-a-rang struck true on his body and dug deep into it to hit something.

Mechanikat soon was covered in electricity and falling towards the ground face first in visible amounts of pain. He was falling towards a section of ground that Hot Dog had cleared up of the snow earlier

“AGH?!” Mechanikat struck the ground with a very painful sounding thud and this drove the bat shaped throwing weapon deeper into himself, he continued flailing violently. He eventually got up onto one of his knees growling towards Bat-cow who just stared at him flatly. “My magnificent magnetism, how did you manage to circumvent it, why couldn’t I stop that thing from hitting me?!”

“It’s true that a bat-a-rang are usually and generally made of metal, but that one in particular was painted to look like metal… it’s actually made of wood.” Bat-cow paused for a second. “Also you lit it on fire… would it help to inform you it has a secondary function as an explosive incendiary device?”

“Wha… AAHHHH put me out, put me out!” We both watched as Mechanikat ran around with a flaming bat-a-rang sticking out of the left side of his hip. The explosion was underwhelming, but now Mechanikat was on fire… and not in a good way.

“Why would you have a wooden bat-a-rang? Also why Bat-a-rang and not Chirop-shuriken?” When most of them were previously metal, I just had to know.

“Have you seen the lives of the Bat Family that I’m a part of? It’s standard issue to have at least one at this point, especially the highly flammable ones that light on fire on impact in case of plant monsters. In fact, just assume I’m prepared for a whole myriad of weird stuff to happen at any given time.” Sounds like a paranoid lifestyle… of which Bat-cow can make me entirely relate to. “Even Ace’s comrade ‘Robbie the Robin’ knows to carry at least two lightweight small ceramic knives within his feathers as protection when he goes out. Protected his wings from being shot out at least more than once.”

“You will pay for that Bat-cow, for I… GRK?!” A scorched Mechanikat forgot that Bat-cow asked for permission to intervene, never did Bat-cow state that she was taking over Smolder’s fight from her.

“Thanks!” Smolder had her combat ribbon wrapped tightly around his mechanical neck and for the umpteenth time in last hour he was slammed into the ground face down, by an impressive show of strength from Smolder.

“Since they can actually boomerang back into my hooves or swerve in the air if thrown right, shuriken are more about throwing straight and rarely curving where you want them to go depending on how you throw them. Also Bat-a-rang is easier word for it and less of a hassle, it’s on brand too and there’s no need for puns.” Okay, that’s somewhat fair Bat-cow. “Bad enough we have villains named Cat, Penguin, Ivy, Clay and the like which are descriptive for their very natures.”

“You know, I thought a super villain would be more dangerous.” Roxy stated as she recorded Smolder wailing on Mechanikat with her paw pad. Without his magnetism module, Mechanikat wasn’t really putting up much of fight other than to show that he was quite durable. “Sure, he looked impressive at first, had minions, a whole army and all that, but… this is kind of just getting sad.”

“By the way Marshal and Chase are being okay, Skye and Everest are being there too.” Good to confirm that Paw Patrol is okay Shanty, nice to know that Dodo made it to them alright too.

“Hey, get back here!” Smolder shouted drawing our attentions to Mechanikat on the run and she flew after him spewing fireballs and his cape flapping behind him as he dashed off.

What’s worse than fighting a dragon? Running from a fight after starting one with said dragon, Smolder is now going to run Mechanikat down and won’t let him out of her sight at all.

“Running is the better part of villainous valor, I know when I’ve lost the day!” It seems like Mechanikat was not only failing as a villain, he was also a coward as he ran down the street as fast as his mechanical legs could take him.

He was likely heading towards his space ship and I tapped Dormarch in my bond with him.

Yes, the ship taking team had full control of the ship and there were no more cat-bots to be a problem. He had no place to escape to. All we had to do was…

I sighed audibly.

Run him down.

Thankfully Mechanikat wasn’t nearly as fast, annoying or anywhere nearly as crazy as Jaded La Perm was.

-Equus, Saddle Arabia at this time, Saddle Arabian Delegate Amira-

“Okay, where’s the problem this time?” I grumbled as I came to the wall the guard pointed up at the sky and I wondered what was going on. Then a small white thing landed on the tip of my nose. “What the? Is this snow?”

“That’s impossible in Saddle Arabia.” Yeah, no duh Sheer Luck, we’re in the middle of a desert! “It’s an attack by Mirage herself, I just know it!

“Honestly now?” I said with a groan.

“Ma’am look out there, here!” The second guard, Avid Sight pointed me to look in a direction.

I looked through the scope and blinked… I was taken entirely aback by what I saw.

“How?” I asked in bland disbelief as I saw a giant slowly melting iceberg currently sliding towards the city… it was the size of the city no less.

“It must be going at least five miles an hour, we’re doomed!” The first guard said gripping at his head with his hooves.

“Get yourself together stallion, we survived her mutant parasprite infestation and the ‘everything is now made of wood with bright neon green paint’ incident, we’ll survive Jaded La Perm sending an iceberg at us!” He shook his companion angrily, more snow started falling from the sky. “You hear that, we’ll survive you, you depraved raspberry tiger tail eating cat!”

Honestly… I’m far more impressed than afraid. How does Jaded even do these things or finds the time to pull them off when Saddle Arabia almost had her watched constantly! She is the most scrutinized Abyssinian in the world, it is almost like she can’t sneeze without something innocuous she does becoming some sort of plot to destroy the name of Saddle Arabia.

I saw something moving near the iceberg and looked through the scope at it.

Is that a… a Zamponi?! It looks like it’s running by itself, but there’s nobody on it… wait… it can’t be, no…. anything but her Zamponi specifically!

“Excuse me gentle stallions, I’m going on vacation, it seems Jaded ‘Mirage’ La Perm’s Zamponi is now attacking Saddle Arabia… of its own initiative!” That was mind melting, I just couldn’t take it. There was some kind of humorous horror to it, one that I couldn’t currently appreciate.

-Petopia, Paw-tucket, streets, Pom-

“Mechanikat’s escaping after him!” I called out to the various Dog Star Patrol members who were coming back from wherever they squirreled away the materials and they were immediately converging on Mechanikat. “Roxy, put out an APB, every pet is to keep track of Mechanikat’s positon and make sure he can’t hide! I’m not letting him ruin the rest of my time here by running around being a nuisance.”

Mechanikat was surprisingly agile for having such a stiff looking mechanical body, he was avoiding Shanty’s bounding bubble effectively as he ran down the street. This included the tendrils she was sending out of the bubble to try and snag him. He had a wrist mounted flamethrower and that wasn’t going to last him forever, but it did boil the water into steam and helped him keep ahead of the goat.

Mammoth Mutt, bounded down the street as a massive rolling ball past Mechanikat and then she inflated even further to block Mechanikat’s path by filling up an entire intersection with her torso. It was odd seeing her tiny head, legs and tail on the body.

He turned into an alleyway and was chased down it by Hot Dog on the ground, who would be immune to the flamethrower other than being blinded by it. Smolder and Brainy Barker followed by flying over the alleyway.

My little dragon was clearly angry at this turn of events, given she was blasting fire at Mechanikat’s backside.

It was only a matter of time before we caught him, how long could Mechanikat actually take to catch really?

Well it would be pretty troubling for me if I had to do this alone, I could hardly run with my leg being so stiff and wool controlled. Also Dormarch doesn’t want me doing anything too strenuous. I noted Bat-cow was walking alongside me.

“Can Mammoth Mutt only do limited parts of her body?” I didn’t feel the need to exert myself to catch Mechanikat, I didn’t feel that drive to help because Mechanikat wasn’t an active threat.

“Yes, apparently she’s not nearly as capable as most of her species in doing a full body growth. She also has a sad history, she used to be called Mammoth Miss… her boyfriend was the original Mammoth Mutt and she took on his Star Dog Patrol name in remembrance after he perished.” Really Bat-cow, she seemed somewhat cheerful small pink alien dog to me. “There have been some hints that Snooky was involved with that incident that led to the original Mammoth Mutt’s death. Given Snooky has a penchant for missiles and was in the area.”

Mammoth Mutt shrunk down a bit and continued to give chase by rolling after where Mechanikat generally was, looking at where Brainy Barker was in the air and the birds.

“Should I be surprised?” It didn’t surprise me that that tiny looking alien cat that looked so cute had blood on his claws, not after he apparently tried to end Chase after getting a hold of him.

“Snooky is a psycho cat, don’t feel sorry for what Dolly did to him, that was quite deserved… as long as she did no permanent harm and only does permanent when she has no other choice.” Sounded like Bat-cow was referencing a creed of the bat family. I’m sure I was analyzing her as much as she was me, what we saw in each other was at least a kinship of understanding. “Still despite the loss, I’m surprise that Mam hasn’t let it change her chipper disposition.”

“Any other horrible backstories?” I asked as we continued walking in the direction Roxy was leading us as she kept an eye on her paw pad.

“Hot Dog nearly got the entirety of the current Dog Star Patrol killed with by letting his temper get the better of them a few times. He became much better after that incident and is a well-recognized leader among the alien canines he runs around with.” Wow, it seems like Bat-cow knows a lot about them. “He is far more concentrated on not letting his emotions get away from him and doing what is right.”

“So what do you want to know, since you’re sharing so much?” There has to be something I know that Bat-cow wants an answer to. “You’re obviously talking me around to something.”

“What exactly was your job back where you come from?” Bat-cow stated sternly.

“I’m one of the Huoshan Guard a nice place built into the side of a dragon’s body that turned into a volcano, well technically a guard as I’m sure I’m going to be hoofed a notice of my firing if I survive my journey. I was going to be a reservist and I was given a peculiar position… as head of the Huoshan Canine Division. I was really quite good at it too since I can speak and understand dogs. My duties certainly didn’t involve travel through various worlds, but I have been protecting my girls while try to put out fires with everything I have. It’s been a rough year for me.” I grumbled as we walked along. “You see I have the inability to turn away from people who need help, it started with canines and living alone in a small pack. Then two friends came asking around and I couldn’t help them, then Oleander showed up and she asked me to help her… it’s part of the whole willing to sacrifice myself for others in danger, in a very literal sense. The gold wool on my body is a pretty good indicator for how close to never coming back from this trip I am. Might not even survive to see the girls I’m protecting grow up. My lifespan is practically days whereas they have many years ahead of them by comparison, good trade right? At least I’ll be able to see my god puppies and Tianhuo… don’t know how my puppies will feel when they will know I’m dying and they can’t do anything about it.”

“So you’re a hero.” Bat-cow stated simply.

“Never wanted to be one, can’t even deny being one anymore.” I grumbled as I continued walking forward as several figures crashed into each other as Mechanikat managed to avoid them, his mechanical body certainly gave him boundless agility. “Martyrdom is not something I want.”

“It’s that ingrained?” Bat-cow asked while narrowing her eyes at me.

“Ask my familiar Dolly, she was using my body during a situation where ‘it’ was made aware of someone being in danger and would not move away from the fight even when I was unconscious.” A very dangerous thing I’ve had to live with, I didn’t want to see people in danger and I wanted to be a coward. However if I see it, there’s only one direction I can naturally go in… where I can do the most good to help.

“My gods…” Bat-cow’s eyes widened as it sunk in just how messed up I was. “Even every member of the bat family can escape to fight another day to save those of the future.”

“It’s just another day where someone could be killed because you weren’t strong enough to do something, do the people always try to blame the hero for trying their best? Or do they blame the villain for putting them in the situation where they will fail? What circumstances do some people live under beyond their control? I was safer camping out in the wilds, but I’ve helped so many people since I left my solitude.” Where does it all end really? My suffering that is. “Being a hero is thankless.”

“It can be, but there’s always those who will acknowledge your efforts, you helped teach the people of Paw-tucket defend themselves instead of thinking them already too helpless to defend themselves at all. You surprised even me with that Ferris wheel attack that took out most of the weapon on the Mega Mechanikat mark three.” Wait, Bat-cow, are you seriously telling me he’s had two other giant robots?! “I would welcome you to Gotham City, but you’d likely die in half a day if not from exhaustion then from your inability to look away and someone finally gets lucky in taking you out.”

“Give someone food they’ll survive the day, teach them how to forage for their food under any circumstance and they’ll survive the rest of their life. I can’t be here to protect the pets of Paw-tucket forever.” The chase was getting really heated now, Hot Dog and Smolder might be sharing a brain from what I’m seeing of how they are successfully corralling Mechanikat two blocks over from us.

A number of derby pets were even now encircling Mechanikat, they’d soon have him pinned down.

“I’ll pray for your continued success in surviving Pom.” Bat-cow stated solemnly. Mechanikat was running out of space to run and his feet started to ignite.

I watched as Bat-cow quietly threw a bat-a-rang, it didn’t seem to aimed anywhere particularly at Mechanikat. I wonder how long it took Bat-cow to learn to throw those things so accurately and with an unnerving sense of timing bordering on insane.

“This was supposed to be a vacation before I threw myself into Tartarus.” I calmly stated as I watched one of Mechanikat’s rocket shoes take a bat-a-rang by flying directly into its path and Smolder, who had gotten a hold of him, gained enough leverage from his lack of thrust to promptly face plant him into the ground thanks to Bat-cow’s assistance.

Mechanikat was knocked out and Smolder was happy that she helped catch the villain.

“Then it would be a good time to get back to it Pom.” Bat-cow stated. “Let Dog Star Patrol handle it from here.”

“If anyone needs me, tell them… I’m going to find a quiet place to continue healing.” I got a nod and turned around to start walking away as Mechanikat’s various mechanical gadgets built into his body were disabled by Brainy Barker and he was incarcerated. “I’ve got Sitrus Berries to eat, I’ll be back at the tent this evening.”

“Pom… there is nothing wrong with being a hero, especially not the kind who would teach an entire world to fend for themselves. You teach others very well I might add, I don’t think Shanty would be as amazing a person without you.” Bat-cow then used a grappling hook to practically fly up to the edge of a building where she watched Mechanikat’s downed form like a hawk.

With that I went to go meditate, breathe some fire and practice some skills I was going to need after this vacation was over with and I had to fight a demon goat.

-Ten minutes of limping, later-

“I wanted to be alone…” I stated as Dolly came to sit next to me and entered a meditative pose without saying a word, she had a smile on her face as she beamed up at me with a wagging tail. I sighed and we both started to peacefully meditate together without a word.

We sat in a cave behind a waterfall, silently listening to the rushing water together. Soon a third form joined us at my left, a soft nuzzle and a sound of a third being entering meditation.

Neither of them acknowledged my complaints, neither of them even said anything, they just sat with me and started to focus inwards on themselves while being at my side until the bitter end.

I inhaled and slowly exhaled some flames into the waterfall, creating a mass of steam that warmed our bodies up. Yet I couldn’t escape the cold chill of my golden wool.

Breathing fire wasn't easy, becoming partly canine definitely wasn't easy, trying to remain true to myself... clearly that was impossible even if I was still somewhat a nervous wreck.

I relaxed and hoped for a few days of peace and quiet after this hullabaloo. I could use some exercise later by helping everyone rebuild to the best of my abilities.

Tambelon loomed over our future.

472. Tambelon preparations.

-Petopia, several days after Mechanikat’s was incarcerated, Paw-tucket Lake, late night, Pom-

“My leg is all better and I’m going to start preparations to enter Tambelon.” I told Tianhuo. We had been sharing information on what Tambelon would involve. The retrieval team would be carrying a beacon, a beacon that once activated would give us directions to a portal opened at a random place to run to. “When I call upon Arceus and mean it, he’ll likely let you know when it’s go time. I’ll find and see you then when we go there.”

Once Dog Star Patrol had the Felonious Felines secured, they didn’t leave, instead they stayed to help rebuild Paw-tucket. Bat-cow had disappeared, in their eyes maybe, but I’ve been having some interesting talks with Udder Chaos.

Our four Paw Patrol friends had some skill in construction, but their specialist in that particular area in their team weren’t here, they were still doing their best and it was pretty good.

I’m kind of upset that no one was letting me help them, asking me to help them or was willing to let me help them. I was practically being forced to rest, which was a bit silly.

I was going over the things we needed in my head, while going over the history of Tambelon.

Tambelon was a small continent or island, well it was likely an island now, considering it was once part of the continent of Equestria before that portion of Equestria was excised to get rid of Grogar. The hero that did so was Gusty the Great, a unicorn along with an entire contingent of unicorn warriors that fought Grogar the demon goat in the lands of Equestria before the unification, before Celestia and Luna, where magic was still wild.

Said victory was won by intelligence and not power. The unicorns were definitely on the back hoof for most of the events that occurred in legends… a legend I find myself quickly approaching one hoof at a time.

Grogar’s bell, otherwise known as the Bewitching Bell, had a majority of Grogar’s power sealed within it by Gusty who barely managed to steal the bell. The bell had the power to take the magic of others and give it to the wielder or hold onto it until the wielder needed its power. This was really quite dangerous object for a unicorn to be near, much less direct any magic at, Grogar was basically immune to magical attacks while he had the bell. Any magic used on him just made him stronger when he wielded his bell.

Taking the bell and sealing his magic wasn’t enough for Gusty to actually defeat Grogar alone, however Gusty managed to even do that in the first place. For Grogar still had an army of Troggles.

Troggles were pig monsters with muscles and toughness on par or better than most earth ponies or even better than Arizona Arid herself. Even after his power was sealed away, the Troggles were naturally gifted with supernatural strength that could not be explained by magic. In comparison most of an Earth Ponies feats of strength, resilience and connections to nature was all part of their magic. Troggles didn’t need magic to be strong, they were a fairly hard counter to unicorns even without Grogar at his full strength as they were not only strong normally, like dragons they had a high magical resistance which apparently came from their mundane natures of strangely not having magic personally and their bodies rejecting an attempts at magical infusion.

The bewitching bell was currently sealed away and protected, Grogar must never make it back to Equus lest he find his bell and doom the world to his rule. Tirek stealing magic was terrifying, but Grogar… Grogar wouldn’t be stopped if he got his full power back. Twilight Sparkle was risking a lot by trying to rescue us or by even sending people into Tambelon with us.

Gusty the Great ended Grogar’s reign and banished his dark empire of bells, Tambelon, away from the world taking large chunk out of what was once part of Equestria by doing so.

With Grogar’s threat ended it eventually led to the unification of the three races of Earth, Unicorn and Pegasus Ponies, at least once they stopped squabbling amongst themselves. This resulted in the existence of the ‘EUP’ and other organizations forming when the unification of the three pony tribes and the lands of Equestria occurred, the EUP being a combined efforts of said tribes.

Thestral and Crystal ponies were already in the lands of Equestria before the three tribes, but it wouldn’t be until much later that they met the settlers. They had stayed well away from Grogar’s empire.

There were several things Tianhuo told me, the possibility of finding unicorns or other ponies possible being trapped in Tambelon when Gusty banished the dark city from the world. Said ponies could have been enslaved and for more than thousands of years their descendants might not know nothing more than a tortured existence under the reign of Grogar’s iron hoof and his Troggles. Never knowing the possibility of something more beyond the world in which they are trapped separated from Equus.

I would think it to be similar to what happened to the Crystal Empire and Sombra, only worse, at least the Crystal Empire had some modicum of resistance despite having their minds messed with. Also there was the being assaulted by the monstrous Umbrum.

The ponies who had been trapped in Tambelon with Grogar, if there were any descendants still alive, they were definitely not going to be helpful. In fact they might act like wild or trained animals if the things Grogar was said to have done were true.

Troggles could farm, but they were best focused in their martial capabilities or so the information on Troggles from what little could be found about pre-unification history.

One thing was certain, Grogar would still have the ability to survey his entire realm as it was intrinsic to him even without the bell to empower him. If he sensed something off, he’ll come after us with everything he has and who knows exactly what he has once he knows we’re there.

Grogar could only look at one area remotely at once thankfully. If he knew where to look, he’d never lose sight of us unless we split up. He was not perfectly omniscient, but he could be a terrifying opponent all the same as only his magic is weakened… not his physical body, which was that of a giant.

If one were to wonder how Grogar Cultists factored into this, they believed that Grogar was the true ruler of Equestria. Technically he was the ruler in Equestria before the three tribes came and the unicorns ended up defeating him despite the varying disadvantages against them. Gusty the Great had to be really something else to pull that off, larger than life… like most of my friends.

With all this in mind, we had to prepare. Food, water and medical supplies in excess… not just for us, but for any unfortunate souls we may come across if there were any. We had to avoid Grogar and escape his realm after entering, at no point would we be safe if Grogar was coming after us personally.

“Would you look at all of that?” I said quietly as I cuddled Dormarch sitting in my lap and we were looking to the sky at the stars. “Can you see the stars Dormarch? I’m sure out there somewhere, there’s another Pom in a another place and time looking at them as we are and we’re just among the many of infinite possibilities, so very small… never to experience all the wonders or terror life can throw at us within our lifetime. I wonder how many miss the beauty of it all, just rushing about in the mundane life and never thinking about what could be beyond us. You’ve been having so many nightmares of killing me, clutching to me so tightly… but I’m just glad you’re still here and that you’re still with us after we lost you. Second chances are very rare you know, as rare life is among those stars. I think I’d prefer the simplicity of being a farmer to all of this, but if I was just a normal farmer, then I wouldn’t have ever been here… with you.”

“Hey Pom, look at that!” Dolly drew our attention to the moon over Petopia, the planet of the pets where they come to relax and rest from their daily lives with friends and family. That is provided that family like Captain Gilturtle could make it here.

“Yeah, that’s something we haven’t done yet Dormarch…” He looked at me so curiously. “We haven’t howled at the moon together as a pack. Even if there is only three of here at the moment.”

“You do realize that the only reason it looks like dogs howl at the moon is so they can communicate long distances via what Dolly calls the World Wide Woof right? There’s nothing special about the moon to canines.” Dormarch received a few gentle pats on the head from me.

“You’d be correct if you were talking normal biology Dormarch, so what you said isn’t wrong… now try to take it into context of canines that live in a world of magic where there might be just a little more meaning to it then you might initially think.” After all, you can’t know everything about every world, in some worlds howling at the moon could have some meaning other than reaching out to connect with your family over long distances. “I want to howl at that moon, the big round white orb right there, with my son. Whether it is to be in song, just random howling, howling in memory of those lost in the pack or inviting in those new to it, maybe even send a message to the surrounding canines to join in the wonderment of the sky and everything out there being so very much beyond us.”

“Okay.” Dormarch looked up at me and nuzzled my chin. “How do we start?”

-Later that morning, traveler’s tent, Pom-

I would stretch out, but I was once again under dogs. I’m beginning to wonder if someone stuck a ‘sleep on me’ sign to my back. My back right leg was fine, unfortunately this meant more people were willing to use me as a cuddle toy on a pile of blankets.

Manipulating my wool, I tickled the canine I wanted to talk to lightly across the nose and she sneezed. Having woken up Mammoth Mutt, or Mam, I had something I needed to discuss with her.

Five minutes later, after a bathroom break, I was outside the tent and looking at Mammoth Mutt. She was a sweet little alien canine.

“The reason I asked you out here is that I need a favor from you… if you are willing to hear me out.” Seeing her tilted head, I didn’t hear anything forthcoming. “This favor might be a bit much for you, concerning it has to do with how to deal with grief. You certainly have a healthy way of dealing with it and I want you to talk to my traveling companions about Mammoth Mutt… the original one whose name you currently carry.”

“That… I…” Mam ran a paw over her right ear looking pensive, thoughtful and most of all… not unwilling to do it. Mammoth Miss has been going by her boyfriend’s codename ‘Mammoth Mutt’ for quite a while now. “Might have some ideas as to why you want me to do this…”

“I’m not seeking a death wish, but it might come to that… since Tambelon might actually be that bad.” Which is why I was going to ask around for canned food for the preparations, canned food will last us longer than normal perishables. We wouldn’t run out of clean water with Shanty around, just food.

“I’ll talk about Mammoth Mutt, the original one that is, maybe tell a few stories about Dog Star Patrol… it’s weird that I’m the heart of the team and mine is the one that is aching at times.” Mam was looking okay to me.

“Nothing should teach us to love what we have left even more than knowing the loss of what we once had.” Going into Tambelon, I was going to try and keep a positive demeanor the entire time I’m there no matter how gloomy it is.

“Should probably ask Krypto if he ever thinks about his home planet much at all… he was just a puppy when it exploded and he was sent away in a stasis pod.” The entire planet exploded Mam? Well at least I haven’t been quite that unlucky. “Stasis pod didn’t work all too well on the stasis part, became an adult in his sleep, but at least the rest of his lifespan is guaranteed to be long and healthy. Now if only Brainy would stop dancing around the issue and actually lick his cheek. So what are you going to be doing today?”

“I’m going to be busy gathering and amassing supplies, we’re going to need them for any number of things we’re heading into.” At least we had forewarning about the kind of things we’re going be possibly dealing with. “… Tell me honestly, how does Tusky feel about Dolly?”

“I think he actually likes her a lot. I think it would work if… you know, it weren’t for the whole thing you got going on getting in the way.” Thanks Mam, at least I know Dolly isn’t barking up the wrong tree.

“Nice to know, wonder if Dolly has calmed down since first seeing him?” The snort I got from Mam, along with a friendly smile basically said that, no, Dolly was still crushing quit hard. “To be fair, I think she’s like that with all dogs of Tusky’s type.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised at this point if she saw anyone of Tusky’s species and went tripping all over the place.” Mam sighed, she then brightened up with a smile. “Go on, I’ll tell the others what you’re getting up to and will have a talk with them.”

“Thank you, I need some exercise anyway and a tour of Paw-tucket in the middle of repair.” Rehabilitating my leg shouldn’t take too long and walking wasn’t a pain anymore, didn’t even need wool to prop of my leg. “Tell Dolly to at least get some affection or at least talk to Tusky about things get her feelings a little more fleshed out.”

“I’ll try!” A giggling Mam stated as I walked away.

-Midday, lunch, Paw-tucket emergency cafeteria, Pom-

“Then we found the pup packs were all repaired!” Marshal blew out his pup pack with that water laser blast. Everest was cuddled up to the fire and medical dog’s side.

Whereas Chase got his clawed up saving a slightly tired Dolly who put all her effort into smashing that dangerous machine down.

“Yeah, wish I could thank the guy who did that, these things are really complicated!” Skye followed up from where she was sitting next to Chase. “… So do you think they’ll give me another Fly Wheel built to my needs?”

Ten bits it was Bat-cow that fixed them, given she knows more about Paw Patrol than any other animal around here feasibly could as they are ‘new pets’ around Paw-tucket.

Which reminds me, the magical portals they shut down for the invasion should be working again. Nobody wanted any pet wandering into this realm in the middle of an invasion of evil alien cats.

“I’m sure they will, you were really good at flying it.” That and I think they would because Paw Patrol had gained the recognition of so many pets for doing so many big things in so little time.

Marshal and Chase’s efforts to hold off the cat-bots on the front lines and help make all the plans work being the most notable to the pets who were pretending to put up a front behind them.

Skye’s flying and leading the Fly Wheel teams certainly helped with the field trap and several bombardments.

I only had Everest set up for the one avalanche and snow boulder… she managed several accurate snow boulders.

Calmly taking a sip at my three bean soup, I relaxed as various pets around me were talking about how to rebuild Paw-tucket. I needed a lot of protein recently, in fact it was almost like I was hungering for…

“Pom is everything okay?” Glancing at Marshal, I smiled.

“Everything is fine, nobody got badly hurt and everyone who was hurt has been helped by the Sitrus Berries.” Knowing what I do about Pegasus nutrition facts and how they can eat fish… I’m going to either have a bean heavy diet or at least a heavy diet of high protein vegetables. “I’m only having a slight problem with the fact that I’ve become canine enough that I can probably ingest kibble and enjoy it. Didn’t use to have teeth like this.”

I poked my tongue at my small fangs or incisors to show the Paw Patrol puppies what I was talking about.

I was going to eat more things like Broccoli, red potatoes, spinach, lentils, edamame and brussel sprouts… maybe even some mushrooms. Yet I couldn’t escape the idea of wanting to eat fish or how the smell I remembered as being somewhat distasteful was now more of a haunting mouthwatering memory. Most of these things were readily available in Paw-tucket.

“Huh.” Marshal dropped the subject to go back to eating with his friends.

-Early afternoon, Paw-tucket lakeside-

Shanty thrusts her left hoof forward, she seemed to be highly aggressive at the moment.

“Are you angry that you couldn’t catch Mechanikat?” I asked gently as I parried her with a gentle breathe of air exiting my lungs.

“No, I’m being angry that I couldn’t be stopping trouble from finding you… that and that I didn’t think to be spending more time with you by simply asking you for it.” Shanty stopped and flopped onto her butt. “I’m not being nearly strong enough to protect you.”

“That’s alright Shanty, I’m the one that should be protecting all of you… because I’m your guardian. Whatever happens to me shouldn’t matter as long as you live longer than I do.” I sat down next to her and gave her a quick hug, she returned it immediately. “I said that I couldn’t protect you, all of you did well enough yourselves to get this far. You’ve grown to be something amazing and you haven’t gone off to have your own adventures as a pirate yet. You didn’t need me to protect or watch out for you at least, so there’s that. I’m making sure you live to chase your dreams.”

“What about my dreams of being able to visit you anytime I want when I need a safe port to rest at?” Shanty stated quietly ears falling back and not looking at me.

“I don’t think some dreams are feasible Shanty unless you’re willing to do the impossible, the one you’re thinking of requires that I make it through Tambelon intact and not growing wings out of my back.” Here I notice Shanty look at my wool and then narrowed her eyes. “That I get back home to Huoshan where I can see you off and you will have a home to return to with a family that will welcome you at any time. Tianhuo wouldn’t turn you away, my family is her family.”

“You didn’t be overusing your magic or pushing yourself… how is the gold wool already being halfway up your barrel!” Shanty was upset to find out the golden wool had not in fact stayed at my lower back and had almost reached my chest. “What is going on… wait... did you be calling me family?”

“We’ve been implying it a lot up to this point with me feeding you.” I said dryly trying not to meet Shanty’s gaze as she looked over my wool where it used to be white on my lower backside.

“Why is the golden wool getting worse even when you aren’t pushing yourself over your limits?” Did not want to answer the question Shanty. Not right now, but it would stop just shy of me growing wings… I’m the one that has to pull the trigger on those personally. My body was always going to be fully covered in gold wool eventually, it’s just happening faster since I used my energy to heal my leg faster.

Heh, I’m vitakinetic… used it to heal Dolly once, just took that one moment and expanded on it. Unfortunately it causes my golden wool to spread like an unstoppable plague.

I can accelerate my healing and do it with Dancing Flame, but I can’t heal instantly, nice to know I’m going to be as stubborn as ever. What doesn’t kill me… might not necessarily make me stronger, but being more informed helps.

“No comment, let’s just enjoy our day huh?” Trying for good cheer, it seemed that Shanty was glaring at me. “Just know that I love you Shanty and want the best for you. Which is never going to be the best ‘for me’ in any given way, shape or form.”

“I be hating that.” Shanty stated as she crossed her hooves.

“I know, I hate myself too on a variety of levels.” What I’m becoming, what I am and what I will eventually be. At least, I still have my housewife sensibilities… about the only thing about me that hasn’t changed. “Still trying my best here Shanty. I’m not perfect and I’m a walking emotional wreck, but I try to keep standing and moving forward.”

How can I be true to myself and my fleece if my fleece is going to be entirely different and I’ve become lupine?

“Can we be playing some games?” Finally Shanty wanted to do something that was not conducive to catching up to my increasingly anemic sense of self-preservation that was rubbing off on her.

“How about a game of pirate dice? Dolly would love to face someone who could eventually be a master at it.” I ran my hoof through Shanty’s tied back hair. “Also before that, can I brush you’re mane?”

“Yes.” Shanty stated almost too eagerly when she didn’t care about cleanliness in the slightest. “I be wanting some interesting memories of you at the very least if… if… just… I sometimes be wishing I can be getting drunk off of rum and am not immune to alcohol poisoning.”

“I’m quite thankful that you are immune and cannot get drunk!” Since you dink like you’re in a desert no matter where you are and you eat like Princess Celestia at all you can eat cake buffet. “What would I ever do with the eventual drunken goat sailor ear’ly in the morning~?”

“Pom, don’t be making me laugh!” Snorted out Shanty as she started laughing. “I am supposed to be being upset with you! Also… put me in a long boat till I’m sober~.”

-After load of games of ‘Pirate Dice’-

“So… how long has Dodo been able to do that?” I asked as I stared at the mechanical wonder levitating bits of metal with a faint blue glow from his wing.

“Since he be studying Mechanikat apparently.” Shanty said. “Maybe he can be throwing cannonballs with it?”

“Shanty, I get that he’s going to be your first mate, but he can’t perform absolutely every single duty on the ship you know.” I slapped a cup down as did Shanty and Dolly. I checked under my cup. “Five, fives.”

“Seven twos!” A grinning Shanty stated and we turned to Dolly.

“Eight fours.” Dolly said calmly.

“I be calling it!” Shanty removed her cup from her dice as did Dolly and I. “What?! How are you being so good at this?!”

“Do you ever wonder why my sisters and brothers are never willing to gamble their squeaky toys with me?” That answered the question and didn’t all at once Dolly.

“Knucklebones?” Shanty asked.

“Yes, Dolly isn’t as good at that.” That earned me a scathing look from Dolly.

“Sure, I know it’s almost the same thing as Yahtzee, but you have got to be cheating at it somehow Pom!” Hardly lost to Dolly in Knucklebones, now let’s see how Shanty does against me.

“Its simple addition and luck Dolly, also a little bit of strategy. Even a person with dyscalculia could play it.” I wonder if Tianhuo still had that pamphlet from Airship Mauled about the dangers of letting Jaded do math… why am I thinking of that more than an entire year later? “Speaking of which, we have a set date for when we are to head into Tambelon.”

“We do?” Smolder said coming over to play some Knucklebones with us.

“Ocellus, Knucklebones, keep score for us will you?” It wasn’t too long after I said this that a curious Jade Catkin joined us with her roommate Roxy, apparently their apartment flat got flattened by the invasion.

Our tent was warm and cozy, they were sleeping on me tonight… I had no delusions that they wouldn’t.

“Yes, we do have a set time and date for when we’re leaving. At least this time we’ll get the chance to say goodbye to the locals who have been very hospitable to our invasion of this mostly peaceful realm.”

-Equus, evening Canterlot, barracks yard, Tianhuo-

“So yes, that is the set time for Pom’s group going into Tambelon, our first group will consist of scouts which will be Jaded, me and the four puppies.” I held up a pointer. “We will be the first into Tambelon, hopefully we will not need a full scale invasion, but Discord and Fluttershy have prepared for that eventuality.”

“Thank you, I like being acknowledged.” Said Discord in the form of a three-dimensional representation of the word ‘acknowledged’, he looked weird when he was being a visual pun.

I shook my head and continued.

“We will be carrying three beacons, one we will ignite for when we want the random portal placement to try and escape Tambelon from.” This was going to quickly turn into a sunk cost fallacy, but I was willing to do such a thing for Pom no matter how inefficient it would be to throw ‘Royal Guards’ at the problem.

Sergeant Shady, Truly Noted, Duly Noted and Gallus were going to be among the number in the second group along with Gallus’s friends in Sandbar, Silverstream and Yona. They’ll come in when things go wrong, not ‘if’ they go wrong, WHEN they go wrong. Discord was involved in this operation after all, even if he wasn’t going to be the cause of things going wrong, his very presence was likely to have an effect on probability by sheer presence.

“The second, will be a one-time signal that Discord should send the random supply drops all over the place… playing hide and seek with our supplies while under attack should be amusing enough chaos, that he won’t actively find a way to make things worse and screw us over.” Seeing as I got a happy grinning nod from Discord, I rolled my eyes. Using chaos positively was hard, but we were the only one aware of what the supply crates would look like… hopefully they all had the same survival supply stuff in them and were not full of rubber ducks with varying motifs of horrific to goofy. I’ve already seen a bathtub full of rubber ducks that looked like Fluttershy and while they were cute, there was something unusually perturbing about it. “The whole point of this operation is to not let Grogar escape while pulling my… I mean while rescuing ‘the lost’, so the beacon for the random portal will be multiple uses. It’ll be capable of guiding us to the escape portal once it appears. Team two will have an escape beacon and so on in case something happens to the beacon of my team. Equus Arizona will be team three with the Foenum group. Team five is going to be the extreme emergency response only, as it will be Princess Twilight’s group. We will not risk the current ruling princess on this and it is better she is on the other side of the exit portal to stop any attempts of Grogar to pass through it.”

“Wait, you’re taking the crazy varmint in there with you first?” Applejack asked.

“Jaded is many things, but a good person is among one of them… somewhere in that distorted mass of pettiness in the form of Abyssinian shaped malice. That and she’ll be key to circumventing any defenses or security systems that may get in our way in case we run into issues of being captured.” Basically if the beacon gave off the wrong magic signature, namely mine, then it would alert Princess Twilight to not open an escape portal. “The third one-time use beacon is a panic button beacon and we will invade the entirety of Tambelon with as many capable and best jaded soldiers as we can with Fizzle at the head of team four.”

Jaded didn’t have any complaints and was lazily playing with a paddle ball toy… how was she going to try and destroy Saddle Arabia with that?

No, don’t think about it. That way leads to madness. Not everything Jaded ‘Freaking’ La Perm does is related to destroying Saddle Arabia, just a lot of stuff in recent history.

We were making sure the Grogar doesn’t get any chance to escape Tambelon to cause terror in Equestria.

“We will enter Tambelon as Pom is sent in by the god Arceus of the Pokémon realms who managed to get us a connection to talk with our wayward people. Unfortunately our entry point will be random, whereas Pom’s will be a set location by the god Arceus to give them a better chance to defend themselves in case they come under immediate attack.” I don’t mean to worry you Pom, but your god puppies and I would be the first into the breach. “To that end I’m leaving the Arceus given device here and will use Pom’s once I find her to communicate what’s going on in Tambelon, whether or not there are Troggles and or lost ponies from Gusty’s battle with Grogar’s Empire so long ago. We don’t know what Tambelon is like now, but the existence of Grogar cultists says a lot about him trying to spread his influence beyond his realm despite having more than ninety percent of his capabilities sealed away.”

-Jaded La Perm-

Come on little paddle ball toy, do your stuff… nobody here or in Saddle Arabia suspects a thing. Yes, almost to one thousand hits, nobody will believe it or even be able to think it was me once I completed the ritual.

Also I’m coming to help save you soon Pom, hold on to your sanity, because we’re going for a ride!

“Jaded La Perm, I actually know what you’re doing with the paddle ball… stop it.” Caught red clawed by Fizzy, I immediately drop the paddle ball toy and give her an innocent smile. I put my claws behind my back as I shoved the paddle ball toy away from myself with my left foot with Fizzy glaring deeply into my soul. “Good kitty, no international incidents until Pom is rescued… also I’m bribing you with alone time with Marie wearing a top hat if you succeed at not dying and without causing anyone on this mission too much trouble. I want you at your best and on your best, by that I mean your behavior.”

“You had me at Marie with a top hat.” Honestly that brought a big toothy grin to my face. Marie the snake head of Maries with a top hat, it was totally my jam and a good enough reason to succeed once I got eyes on what I would be dealing with.

We had no idea what the state of Tambelon was, but we at least knew Grogar was still active after more than a thousand years in the ripped off portion of Equus in a pocket dimension world after his loss to the unicorn Gusty the Great and her small contingent of unicorn warriors.

-Petopia, Paw-tucket, several days later, Pom-

“Arceus… we’re ready as we’ll ever be.” I blinked and then the white horse lama thing was standing before me as if he had always been there, I didn’t even flinch as he looked down upon me.

“You’ve gotten plenty of rest, but I have no idea what will happen from here, I can only assure you safe passage and arrival… as for everything else.” Arceus calmly looked at us. “It is up to ewe.”

“Tianhuo, my beloved god-puppies… I hope to see you soon.” I’d rather they wouldn’t endanger themselves for me.

I blink and the wagon was somewhere else. The skies were red, the air smelt stale and burned at my nostrils and throat, whatever that horrible smell was… it permeated absolutely everything. We were in a valley looking towards large round city with a large looming castle above it all in the distance beyond the valley.

“The air here…” Ocellus whimpered and was shivering violently. “What did he do to this place?”

We had taken our first step into a world of darkness.

-Castle Tambelon, Grogar-

I opened my eyes.

“It seems we have unwanted guests to the south and some have appeared all over the 'City of Bells'. Seek them out, round them up alive, maim them if they resist and bring them to me. I will decide their fates personally.” I stated with a bland even tone and the ever loyal Troggles quickly followed my orders without question. “It seems my cultist on Equus succeeded in giving me an opportunity, no matter how long it took for said opportunity to occur.”

A grin formed on my face as I started summoning an undying deadly creature from the shadows to my command.

A bat winged creature with malevolent red eyes formed from the shadows and bowed to me. I already knew his name, Hollow Heart, he would serve my efforts well.

473. First steps on a dark road.

-Petopia, Paw-tucket, Quincy-

“Do you think they’ll be okay?” I knew they were capable of defending themselves, but it was kind of hard to see friends go. Shanty was really brave and an eventual warrior of the sea, it was nice to idolize her while it lasted.

“I’m sure they’ll be fine.” Loved you’re general enthusiasm Roxy, but the place they described that they were going to… it sounded like the complete opposite of here.

I know I’m a fainting goat, and I did faint a lot, but I can guess how gruesome such a world could be. I think I was on par with Pom’s description of Lambkin kind in being somewhat high-strung.

-Tambelon, City of Bells, above a rooftop, Jaded La Perm-

“Whoa!?” I came out of the portal in mid-air falling towards a sloped roof, I quickly twisted myself into position so that my shoulder would hit the roof first and I’d roll.

I performed the roll flawlessly, unfortunately it was too close to the edge of the roof. I made a leaping kick off the roof and looked for the first thing to grab. My face was almost skewered as I clamped onto the edge of a building across from the roof I just lunged out from with my claws out, also my chest and my right shoulder were nearly skewered as well.

I have to be very careful about how I climb up here, did not want a bleeding wound in this world… at least not when I didn’t know the medical results.

Almost immediately impaled by the malevolent architecture that obviously doesn’t want anyone to climb around on it within the first minute? Check. Red or overcast skies with dark thundering clouds of evil? Check. The air smelling like death and decay? Check. The overall feeling that you shouldn’t be here or even want to be. Big check.

I pulled myself onto the roof carefully avoiding the jagged or serrated edges that were meant to kill people like me for trying to climb around on the rooftops. Much less do other stealthy things, I made sure my cloak didn’t get caught on anything. I was in my domain by being high up at least, I had to get to a higher point than this and really start scouting out the city.

If we were all scattered, then Tianhuo and Pom’s god puppies were all over the place and likely in the city as well. I think arriving outside of it would have been luckier and safer than here in the middle of the place. At least I don’t think I’ve been spotted and have time to adapt and find things out.

The most important thing to do? Scout around to gain an idea of Tambelon’s situation and make a map of the city to share with all my friends and allies, then report the goings on in here using the device Pom currently has in her possession to contact Equestria with the device Tianhuo left in the safety of Twilight’s hooves. From there we’d see what I can do about gathering everyone together and what hitting the Team One’s exit beacon will produce as far as portal locations will go. It’s going to be as random as Discord’s supply drops should we hit the beacon on that, even if Fluttershy was the one to pack them I didn’t trust Discord wouldn’t do something to those crates as a gag.

So far… can confirm the existence of Troggles just by looking over the edge of the rooftop with the jagged blades sticking out at awkward angles, even the smallest ones among the Troggles looked stupidly jacked and had a foot on me in height. I’m putting that down as do not directly fight with my lithe and frail form meant for running and evading or I might incidentally die. Fizzy would find some way to revive me somehow just to kill me again.

Knife? Check, still working and serviceable as ever. Combat Yo-yo? Check, doubles as a short range grapple like one of Daring Do’s many lost whips she never went back for… in fact I have one of them in my pack in case I need another weapon, should probably give that back to Daring Do at some point. Glad I reinforced the string on the yo-yo, the lethal architecture around here might easily snap it otherwise. I’m not exactly proficient with whips, different wrist usage that I’m sure I can make up for with some of my petty kitty brand ingenuity.

Personal food supplies? The fish jerky is never ending and I can drown in it, how did my mother managed to compress all that jerky into such a small space, I’ll live though. Water? Yes, got a full canteen and from what Tianhuo has heard, Shanty the goat can almost generate nigh infinite fresh water with a magic summoning ability.

Magical witch potions from my mother Kuril, I had a variety of limited utility and one use potions of which are clearly labeled. Even had some two part ‘safe explosion’ potions for clearing debris or opening a hole in something like the wall on this city should escape entirely warrant it.

That goat Shanty might be the most valuable person in this realm, won’t know until I see what’s beyond the walls of this horrible misbegotten place that reeked of evil like that castle looming over what I’m assuming is the more back end of the city.

This place is definitely not on a planet and I had no idea how this realm would work otherwise if magic weren’t involved. It had to be floating in some kind of void somewhere.

At least I’m near the city center… huh? The Troggles looked to be mobilizing, they must already know we’re here. So that’s a confirmation on Grogar’s ability to see anywhere in the realm even if it’s only one location at a time and provided he’s aware there is something to see there to occasionally look in that direction.

So Grogar is not an omnipotent demon, but some mild omniscient abilities akin to an oracle, seer, clairvoyant, diviner or anything with a scrying talent as an ability. Those are always dangerous, especially to me or any plans I make that requires convoluted series of events to occur, one look into any of the events and if Grogar is smart enough, he can stop a stack of any dominoes I set up from falling over if his intellect is as keen as I think it is. There’s no way anyone who wasn’t at least somewhat intelligent wouldn’t have been able keep an entire species alive under the circumstances I’m seeing here, probably worse outside the city.

I better get started with my job then. That nearby bell tower will be a good starting point to start drawing up a map of the City of Bells! Hard to remember having followed Gusty the Great here once, I followed her around when I was bored a few thousand years back and was a useless discorporate wandering spirit.

Being a part of history gives me all kinds of headaches just thinking about how long my spirit has been around for and how young my body still is. Just a reminder that I should pay tribute to Baast a few more times… such as setting up Discord to be captured by her. No better tribute than the guy she wants to snuggle, it would be even better if I planned to make that happen as chaotically as possible so Discord won’t be too upset with the end results.

Provided I survive this and Discord doesn’t screw us over with the chaotic delivery of the backup supplies. This was supposedly supposed to be a short mission and yet there was a bigger scope to all of this I wasn’t seeing yet.

-Gusty Valley, Pom-

I felt a chill and looked at the sky, it felt like something glanced over us for a second there. It was an unpleasant feeling of being watched by something that could easily turn Arizona into a pretzel. Wasn’t most of Grogar’s power sealed away in his bell though? How could he still be ‘that’ strong exactly?

I noted everyone shivered and started looking around as if someone was watching us, likely Grogar and then the feeling left us.

“Okay we should avoid that city in the distance at all… never mind, all of you should avoid the city at all costs while I sneak in and out.” There was a hint of a question coming my way, but both Dolly and Dormarch made sounds of understanding when the words ‘baa-baa’ were being repeated excitedly over our bond. My poor four god puppies were scattered all about the city in the vast distance across a wasteland that once was a part of Equestria. “Dodo please be a dear and get us out of the valley quickly and help us find a place in the badlands I’m seeing around the city to hide. We’ll worry about retrieving my god puppies later… that or they’ll find their way to us. They’re plenty smart enough on their own… but I can give them some directions on what they should be doing from here.”

The bonds made me feel a little more like my old self, alongside sharing the energy between me and my six canine companions I had access to. My god puppies sure were excitable as I remember them being and quite eager to help or protect me.

Dodo started moving the wagon quickly. If the puppies were here… wait. They were telling me my mate came here with ‘Fun Chase Cat’, so that meant Jaded La Perm was here too… joy. She’s annoying, but I can’t say that she wouldn’t be a welcome addition to what’s likely going to occur here.

I directed my beloved Tuft, Puff, Woof and Ruff to stay out of sight and sneak around until they found Tianhuo or Jaded, then they should stick with them and help where needed. I’d trust Jaded with my puppies, but I wouldn’t trust her with math or Saddle Arabia’s safety in remaining named Saddle Arabia. Otherwise my puppies are to try to get out of the city by following the bond to wherever I am. They were in great danger and should be wary of their surroundings.

No aggressiveness towards anything, unless Jaded, Tianhuo or one of their brothers were in danger. If seen they were to run or hide, otherwise they are to stick strictly to stealth and not do any fighting yet… not until we had an idea if we even could fight whatever Grogar has here in Tambelon. Canis Minor were surprising good at stealth, whereas a Canis Major was decidedly quite incapable of it entirely.

“Well they wasted no time in reestablishing their bond to you mother.” Of course they didn’t Dormarch, they were basically your cousins and family and it’s been a long time since they’ve last felt our connection. It seems like my god puppies felt much stronger, they’ve obviously been training for this with Tianhuo. I definitely know Ruff has trained, he loves to grow stronger and to wrestle with his brothers. Tuft is always the affectionate and friendly one, likes giving as much as receiving some love. Woof is the smart one, he’s really good at making judgment calls about things and had better instincts than the rest. As for Puff, he’s the tracker and can fly the best out of the four and he’ll likely be the first to find a friend or ally to stick with, which is if he doesn’t decide just come directly to me. “They seem really eager to meet me and Dolly.”

“They just want to officiate your scents in their noses.” Don’t know why my son found that a little off-putting, Dolly was okay with it and knew she’d be adding her scent to that of my family whereas her family would be adding ours if circumstances permitted such a thing happening. It was a canine thing, does everyone think the whole butt sniffing thing was for absolutely no reason?

Oh right, Dormarch was a digital entity and not necessarily a normal canine. Dolly would know all about scents already given how she grew up.

“Now I know what it means to go from an ocean to a desert…” Ocellus wasn’t taking the atmosphere of this world very well and looked visibly shaken by it, not much love to be found here other than us being near her. We were going to get out of the valley soon… the trees around here all looked quite decrepit with no leaves, but still alive if barely at all. The ground was mostly dry and cracked and I didn’t want to know what they did for water around here if it wasn’t readily available in large quantities. “The badlands we changelings live in, it feels a far sight better and livelier than this place currently does despite looking similar… that’s even when Chrysalis was running us all into the ground on a deficit. It’s like the air here despises all forms of positivity…”

“Well this place doesn’t feel foreboding at all, I’m pretty sure we’ll be invited in for tea and a snack. Totally doesn’t feel like we’ll be beaten to death just by the very atmosphere alone.” Loved the sarcasm Smolder, but we really had keep our attentions heightened.

“It’s being a good thing Pom is being quite paranoid already, I’m starting to be a bit fearful myself.” Shanty admitted as she eyed the surroundings as Dodo picked up speed to get us entirely out of this valley and somewhere more or less out of sight. Don’t know how much it would help if Grogar spotted us so quickly. “This place be feeling like bad juju warmed over from fresh carrion. We be needing a place where we can’t be seen by Grogar, I did not be liking the feeling of him looking at us. ”

Dodo warbled warily and let off a mechanical whine that he didn’t like the feel of Tambelon. It was sufficient to say that no one with a sane mind would ever like being here.

“Well I feel a bit bad about being a little happy to be here… Tianhuo is out there somewhere and I know she’ll find us.” Somehow, even without a specially designed firework guide to lure her to where I was. I could create a Thousand Spears: Huo, but that would only be drawing too much attention to where we are and I doubted that would be a good idea. We likely already had enough attention coming our way with Grogar not watching us… if he wasn’t watching us, then what was he doing currently? He glanced at us, we all felt it, so likely we’re going to get the world’s most unpleasant welcoming committee looking for us soon. “Don’t know how to feel about Jaded being here though, she’s… one of the weirdest Abyssinians to ever exist. I mean she has a cutie mark, which can only happen if she were half pony, specifically unicorn. She doesn’t have a horn or can do unicorn magic, she doesn’t walk on clouds like a pegasus and she definitely doesn’t have earth pony nature based abilities or resilience. She doesn’t have any pony attributes aside from her hair, yet she’s pony enough to have a cutie mark?”

“Yeah, I kind of want to study that phenomenon… provided I get the chance to actually meet her. Fluttershy told me her friend Jaded was somewhat adorable, but tended to be a walking trouble magnet.” Ocellus was likely going to make up for being in a world with so much love she was choking it down every time she opened her mouth. “She can’t be any worse than you are Pom.”

“Jinxed it.” I said flatly.

“I’m aware of that Pom and you can even tell me you ‘told me so’ later, but Jade did come here for you… so you know she’s your friend right?” Look Ocellus, just because I might not like having to run Jaded down when she steals something, it does not mean I hate her. I just dislike her for her habit of being affectionately diabolical.

“More like a friend of my friends that I’m not particularly fond of because of her habits.” Like being an ‘unrepentant mercenary rogue’ and somehow still being a ‘sun priestess’ at the same time, one would think those two vocations would be mutually exclusive to the other and not compatible at all. “She’s going to be quite helpful though, she has a reputation known around the world… half of it bad.”

“But she does be having a reputation.” Shanty wanted one too, be it for good or ill. I believe she could do it at this rate on her own, but Dodo would go a long way to helping her.

Dodo got us out of the valley and he turned to dragging us across the strange lands, now we needed to find a cave or a hole to hide in and stow our stuff away and then I will set out for the city. I’m not leaving my god puppies in the middle of that place!

-City of Bells, alleyway, Tianhuo-

I hit the ground on all four hooves in an alleyway. I glanced about and then sighed. The air here felt horrid, the stench was quite cloying and I did not appreciate the feeling in the air of being distinctly unwelcome.

Having a job to do and a lambkin to hug, I dimmed my flames and started moving forward towards the end of the alleyway. I’m certain Jaded will find us, she was going to be quite busy though. I did not worry about her capabilities, anyone who can give longma a trouble in a chase was going to be hard to pin down.

Dimming the flames that my body produced to nothing around my neck and head, my flaming wings were down to little tufts of heat and mild light. I crept to the end of the alleyway and looked outside of it.

Bipedal pigs with spears, well disciplined, highly muscled and if these were the Troggles, then they were dangerous. Even I should be wary of fighting them in great numbers, there were too many here to do anything quite yet.

I extended my neck and head out to look around the square and a nearby entrance to the city, it seems like the guard was being doubled in this moment. So Grogar was definitely aware of our presence given the movements of the guards.

Arceus, the god of a world of ‘generally friendly’ monsters, said he’d deliver Pom here safely. I trust that she isn’t already in the city at the moment as this place was crawling, but that doesn’t help me with finding her.

There was a fountain like structure in the center of the square. It didn’t have water in it, only wet mud and a perfectly sculpted appearance of Grogar, yep, it is as Discord replicated of his general appearance.

After some glances around I saw that Troggles weren’t the only beings around, there were a few donkeys and even a few ponies with no cutie marks. They were very quiet around the Troggles and trying to not draw attention as they seemingly worked in an exhausted state.

While the ponies didn’t have any cuties marks, they looked to be at least fed, but not very well. Most of the food here had to be going to the Troggles. Don’t think there were many other ways to maintain those kind of muscles, unless they were using the ponies and donkeys as livestock… quite a sickening and rather morbid thought.

The ponies and donkeys were definitely slaves, but they weren’t in chains, but why would they be? There’s no place for them to run to in this realm and there is very little in ways of supplies beyond the city from what I can see beyond the entrance. Wasteland as far as the eyes can see and maybe some mountainous terrain.

If a pony or donkey were to run, how long would they survive outside the city of bells and would anyone care to chase after someone who was foolish enough to run away to die in the wastes beyond the walls? I am currently glad Pom is safer of the two of us.

Looking around some more, I saw something fairly disheartening and slightly unusual. There were foals here and they looked about as healthy as the other ponies and donkey, which wasn’t good when foals needed a lot more nutrition to grow. None of them would be capable of facing the Troggles if they were as strong as they looked. They seemed to be taking a moment to do something playful.

“Back to work!” One of the Troggles shouted and snapped a whip, to my horror the fillies and colts started to work as the adults did in fright. “Now you see Drog, that’s how you keep them little ones in proper line. So what did you have to say that was a message from our lord?”

Their speaking was a bit ugly sounding, but fairly understandable.

“Lord Grogar says with have to catch the intruders that have come into his domain!” A number of pony ears flicked at hearing this news, but they didn’t stop whatever they were working on at the time. They were all being used as maintenance crews with the Troggles watching over them. “We are to bring any and all intruders to Lord Grogar so he can ultimately decide their fates. If they fight back, we are to rough them up. We can’t kill them or we will be in dire trouble with the lord himself, so we are to send out search parties throughout all corners of the realm! I’ve already formed one of my own.”

After hearing Drog’s announcement, I noted that some of the ponies around seem interested in hearing this news as much as I did. I quietly pulled my head back into the alleyway and thought about my actions from here.

“Now if only I knew what direction to find Pom in…” I felt a tug at my hooves and looked down as the mass of pink shadow shaped itself into an arrow and pointed in a general direction beyond the entrance.

Right, B. Lighter or Blighter would know how to find Pom even if they were currently bound to me as my familiar. The suggestion that Pom was currently not in the city to see the state of things, the Troggles were definitely not the ones maintaining things around here and they were in charge by brute force.

I turned around and quickly made my way for the other end of the alleyway and thought about flying over the walls, only to see many Troggles posted on the walls with spears.

I watched one of the spears was thrown and heard something cry out in its death throes. With the speed that the spear left the Troggles hand, even as fast as I was I might not be able to evade it while trying to get high in the air. I did not know if the tops of buildings were occupied or if the air would be safe if they could throw those spears like lightning, best not to chance it.

Sneaking my way out of the entrance is my safest option, either that or I go deeper into the city in search of Woof, Tuft, Puff and Ruff.

“Ruff-rrrr…” I heard a distinct whine as a familiar puppy nuzzled up against my left hind leg. Ah it was Tuft, good fortune to have found him so soon. He was aware enough to keep his barking quiet. He had apparently spotted me and quickly joined up with me.

“Is Pom alright?” I asked.

Tuft nodded enthusiastically and looked off in a given direction, almost the same direction that Blighter pointed me. Pom must be on the move.

Tuft leapt up and licked at my face affectionately, a likely sign of Pom sending her love to me until we can properly meet.

-Bell Tower, Jaded La Perm-

A barking noise and I looked up to see Puff, flopping down next to my perch, little guy looked tired from spinning his tail so hard.

I ran a claw over the back of his ear and he gave off several happy noises, his tail fluffed out and the fur shaped itself back to normal. He had some fluffmancer talent, not much but it was there. Explains how the puppy’s tail could form a working propeller screw that could generate limited flight capability.

Quickly went back to getting the layout of the city sketched down, I glanced at the castle… doubt I could sneak in there without being noticed as the place had guards covering every square inch of it. Not willing to risk my life on a merry chase this time, those Troggles had no compunctions about killing.

The edge of the rooftops not only had menacing architecture, it also had Troggles with barrels full of spears… I did not want to find out how good their throwing arms were so I managed to get up here without a noise or being spotted. The patrols were also doubled.

I didn’t know Grogar very well, but it seems that he was definitely on full alert.

“Sticking with me little buddy?” Knowing familiars as I do, like with Snickers… I should really apologize to Snickers for the major disconnect in our bond later. Seeing Puff nod at me made me aware that he was likely in contact with Pom. “Get a good eyeful of the surroundings and send what you see to Pom.”

Puff immediately started doing so, I still had to scratch up a map of the city and copy it a few times. This was to help Pom become aware of where I was and in case the other teams needed a map of the place. I already had several interesting landmarks jotted down.

-Streets, Ruff-

I was hiding underneath a bit of an overhang when I saw something that got me really angry.

A foal got kicked and I was going to bite the mean monster thing a lot when I felt my tail get grabbed, I looked back and saw my brother frantically shaking his head no with his teeth dug into the fur of my tail. He was biting down hard enough to stop me, but not hard enough to hurt me

Did he not see someone hurting a puppy like us? Baa-baa may have told us not to get aggressive, but my blood was boiling to go on the attack.

“Baa-baa said we had to stay quiet, we aren’t safe here.” Woof stated after letting go of my tail and I stopped trying to rush out there. I growled and then sighed… and looked at the kicked foal. She was still alive, but… “Come on brother, we need to find a way out of the city or at least a way to meet up with the others. Puff has found Chase Cat and Tuft found Baa-baa’s mate. Their pack is bigger than ours and we can’t do anything right now without Baa-baa or others.”

I was pulled back into the shadows by Woof whimpering in anger. Baa-baa trained us to protect the weak and to help those in need, but this wasn’t like home and what I was seeing did not make me happy.

Woof walked around to stand in front of me and placed his forehead against mine.

“I know.” Woof stated with his own anger and he further calmed my roaring rage as he started pushing my back further. “That this place is bad, very bad and not like home, but Baa-baa needs us to listen to her!”

I let out a whine and wilted… then I really whined as I got a view of the city from Puff, he really liked high up places. I prefer being on the ground where I can hunt snakes, there were a lot of those here.

-Tambelon Badlands, Pom-

“Okay, I got some information and a layout of the city. I even managed to direct Woof into stopping Ruff from making a hasty mistake. I know where Tianhuo and Jaded are… but their situations are a little precarious.” I don’t think either of them will suddenly learn to speak dog so we were limited on communicating… also the image of a foal being kicked by a Troggle got my hackles as raised as Ruff’s currently were, even if the kick was done lightly. “The exits to the city is heavily guarded so Jade can’t make a move to get out, but I think she’ll be fine if she’s spotted. Tianhuo is in a precarious place to be spotted and can’t make too much movement at the moment, she’s not exactly stealthy given you can see her burning wing tufts from a quarter of a mile away easily when she’s at her dimmest.”

That the foal didn’t even cry said a lot about the horrid things that likely occurred here in Tambelon.

It’s at this moment that I realized that we weren’t moving any longer and the wagon came to a standstill.

“Yeah, that’s great and all, but what are we going to do about those?” Ocellus brought my attention to the growling cross between a crocodile, an armadillo and possibly parts of dragons without wings.

They had us surrounded and Dodo warbled warily and tried to back away while defensively raising his bladed wings. Shanty was up and at the back of the wagon looking ready to fight for our lives against these things.

“Ocellus, told you so.” I carefully hopped out of the wagon and tried not to look threatening at the large ancient Equestrian mega fauna surrounded us and were all staring and slobbering. “Uh, hello there. We’re not from around here, you wouldn’t happen to have a place we could hide away right?”

“Pom I don’t… huh? Intelligent emotions beyond sentience, wait… these things are actually sapient?!” There was a long stare as the armadillos tilted its head to look at us and had some unrestrained curiosity about Ocellus’s outburst.

I stared into the armadillo monsters eyes.

“Uh… want to be friends?” Surprisingly the armadillo nodded enthusiastically, then made a noise and motioned for us to follow it with its nose, everyone in the wagon looked at me in disbelief as I looked at them as I slowly got back in with them. Dodo immediately started following after the armadillo dragons while chirping curiously at them. “Well okay then… does anyone else think that this is weird?”

“I think Dodo already be trusting them.” That was all Shanty needed to know on the subject as the armadillos started to lead us somewhere. While Dodo had been startled at first, he was now less wary or scared around the scary looking walking elongated boulders.

“Hey, Ocellus, know any ancient animals fitting these guys descriptions… they keep staring at me oddly.” Yeah, they were scrutinizing Smolder quite a lot in an affectionately protective manner.

“Only a threatening extinct species that once existed around the time of Gusty the Great… or maybe not so extinct given that they were all in the Tambelon region… how is the sky red without a sun?” After her question about the state of this world being eternally bathed in a red glowing sky, Ocellus seemed to perk up and then waved to us all excitedly drawing our attentions onto her. “Oh, I think I know what they are! They are stone backed land dragons or Stonebacks for short! They don’t breathe fire or don’t do it much at least if they can, they are dragons that are good at burrowing through the ground like Dread Maulwurfs and have armored bodies as tough as a dragons. Did not know they were intelligent though, it seems like the magic of friendship is not quite dead in this world.”

“Gra…” One of the Stonebacks gurgled out excitedly in answer to Ocellus’s words and hopped forward several times, their loud thuds of excitement were actually somewhat endearing.

I’m guessing there’s a reason why Grogar doesn’t have them under his control? Also why the city wasn’t currently swarming with these things given how dangerous they looked. I guess we were going to figure by having to do charades after they find us a safe place to put our wagon away and then I can try to get into the City of Bells to try and extricate Jaded, Tianhuo and my puppies from the place.

They came to help rescue us, but why does it feel like I’m rescuing them instead?

474. Reuniting with ewe.

-Tambelon, Stoneback Warren, Pom-

The Stonebacks were fairly interesting. They looked menacing with their size and actions, but were actually quite peaceful and docile. They were even raising ponies with their little ones on what limited resources they had out here. Said Stoneback raised ponies who couldn’t talk, why would they be able to when the Troggles never educated them, but they could understand intentions well enough to know we didn’t mean them harm.

They farmed edible roots that looked like wood tendrils, they weren’t made of wood though and were delicious while not being overly chewy. Made for a nice soup when I made a smokeless fire to cook some in a boiling broth, it was probably for the best that I don’t draw attention to the friendly creatures hideaway. Probably one of the few safe places in this realm that Grogar didn’t actively look for or stamp out over the last few thousand years.

The Stonebacks were smart enough to avoid drawing Grogar’s eyes for this long, didn’t want to ruin it for them now.

The stonebacks probably looked like boulders to Grogar whenever he looked at them and they became as still as the rocks they looked to be when they hide their true natures. They stayed well away from the City of Bells, the seat of Grogar’s Empire in Tambelon and I had an inkling as to how strong the Troggles were from that alone.

Jaded La Perm was scouting the city with Puff, Woof was keeping Ruff out of trouble and Tuft was keeping Tianhuo company. Tianhuo was not exactly the stealthiest being, being large and generally on literal fire. So far they seemed to be staying out of the way of the Troggle patrols easily enough, Tianhuo was having problems not taking actions based on the tragedies she was seeing.

I saw tuft staring at some dead bodies in the streets, donkeys and ponies alike as they were picked up by Troggles and carted away. For what purpose, I could only guess and didn’t want to be right when it came to the Troggles being omnivores.

Notably there were no Pegasus Ponies here, there were Unicorn and Earth Ponies though. All of them sometimes being worked to death in the upkeep up the City of Bells.

“Dolly stay here and watch the place with Shanty.” I said as I started towards the warrens entrance. “Dormarch with me.”

“Sure, but why are you taking me?” Dormarch was a little confused, he had refused to digivolve since one there wasn’t much digital energy in the air and two since his nightmares continued. That did not however make him weaker than Dolly, he was getting energy through our bond from my god puppies.

“Scouting purposes and you can teleport out of danger, you don’t have to do any fighting… leave that up to my god puppies. Once they get started, you’ll be surprised by what they can do.” One of my favorite things about my son is his signature ability to stay safe. “Also I need one of you here if I’m to find my way back. I’m going to take some kibble for my god puppies… are you alright with that Dolly?”

I was asking because we had a limited supply of food and our wagon didn’t have infinite kibble stores despite topping up on the good stuff for Dolly.

“Sure thing!” Dolly didn’t seem to be upset in the slightest. “Always fed my family before sitting down to eat myself.”

As rambunctious as Dolly was, she would definitely watch out for my god puppies. Still hadn’t asked how her dates with Tusky went, but she assured me that things didn’t get too far and she had a lot of fun with the oddly accented alien canine with the body height drill tooth he could store in his face… somehow.

“Shanty do you think you can hold things here?” The entrance to the warrens was hidden underneath a fairly large Stoneback that stayed on the surface.

“I do not be liking you going off like this, but I be understanding that Jade and Tianhuo are possibly being our only way out of Tambelon.” At least those are my thoughts on why they came into this realm, they are going to bring us home.

The atmosphere in the warren was generally cheerful, probably one of the few places where friendship magic that Ocellus has been going on about still permeated the lands here in Tambelon. That is probably why all the plant life wasn’t completely dead yet for all the gloom and darkness of this place with a constant red glowing sky and no sun, for the parts that weren’t overcast with angry looking lightning clouds.

-An hour later, outside the City of Bells walls-

We had made good time, despite being on a continent that used to be a part of something much larger. Having watched a few patrols Dormarch and I learned that the Troggles could survive off muddy or stagnant water. Fresh water was at a premium here, Tianhuo and Jaded hadn’t come without water canteens, but how well would that quench their thirst and that of my god puppies.

We were on several time limits to get out of Tambelon before things got worse, that or Grogar discovered what Shanty could do by summoning her dolphin Horizon. How long has it been since Grogar saw another goat? The ideas I got from that thought made my wool crawl.

“How are we going to get closer or inside mom?” Dormarch asked as we were possibly within their throwing range, the others had to know we were here given my connections to my god puppies. The puppies were excited to see their ‘baa-baa’ again and trying to carefully make their way towards me.

We didn’t know how well Troggles could see, but given there were Troggles on the walls, outside the walls and heavily patrolling the gate… they were definitely alert to any and all noise.

“What’s the loudest noise you can create?” I asked carefully as we stayed prone in the ditch we were hiding in. “Also we need to test their reaction speeds to things…”

I picked up a rock and threw it towards the wall… the rock was summarily slice in half by a spear thrown at absurd speeds.

“So how much noise can you make Dormarch?” I asked flatly staring at the metal spear that pierced the ground. The rock had barely gotten far before being speared in half.

That kind of reaction time was a bit much, makes me wonder how Jaded is doing around the guards if they are that high strung that they could hit a rock this far out. We were five hundred hooves from the wall.

-Jaded-

Okay, the security here was much higher than any place I’ve ever been. Say what you will about the evil guy aesthetics, but Grogar wasn’t relaxed on security at all in this place. Couldn’t get within five hundred feet of the castle, the Troggles were just that good. If there were guards I didn’t want to alert, it would be these guys.

“Ruff ruff…” Puff drew my attention in a given direction. Pom must be nearby, because he sure seemed happy and was wagging his tail excitedly. He looked like he was about to run off and fly away, I couldn’t let him do that the Troggles had a very good sense about things moving in the air. I’ve been very careful about jumping around places as their spear throws have grazed my fur and the guys didn’t even see me or have line of sight when they threw them.

“Careful now, the patrols are on to us. Which way?” I grabbed the puppy and put him in my pack, he quieted down and pointed a paw in the direction Pom was in. “Okay, let me do the leg work until we need to fight.”

“Ruff.” Puff responded in an affirmative, then turned his head and barked and pointed at a window on a building across the way of an open street. I could see the hint of flames, Tianhuo?

“One of your brothers there?” In answer to my question, Puff nodded. “Okay give me a second.”

I pulled out the whip and wound it around my right arm, I then started to carefully climb onto a higher section of roof while trying to avoid being skewered by the architecture. Once I reached a ledge, I looked around for any Troggle that might have a direct line of sight to me. How was I going to get Tianhuo’s attention?

-Tianhuo-

“Ruff ruff!” Tuft seemed to look in a given direction, then another and tilted his head. He turned to me and nosed in a given direction.

“Pom is near isn’t she?” I knew Tuft would not be so excited if she wasn’t, but being in the city was a bit of a risk. Some of the buildings were derelict in the City of Bells, I looked out the window. “Who? Ah, of course, Jaded…”

I saw the cat waving at me with Puff sticking out of her pack, she uncoiled the… why did she have a whip? She wasn’t exactly known for using one.

Something exploded in the distance and then every Troggle in the area was moving towards the explosion, the downtrodden uneducated donkeys and ponies scattered and whined in fright. In the distraction I notice something near me and I saw Jaded had swung down to me and was trying to figure out how to get the end of the whip off the spear like protrusion she had wound the end of it around.

“Yeah, need to work on my whip work while here.” Jaded mumbled, as she flicked the handle of the whip she held several times and the other end eventually uncoiled from the protruding spear like part of the building it had wrapped around. She coiled it up to place it at her waist and puff leapt out of her pack to tackle his brother Tuft and the two tumbled around a bit before returning their attentions to us. “Hey Tianhuo, was that distraction for me?”

“That wasn’t my distraction.” I stated succinctly to the Abyssinian cat that joined me in the room.

“Something Pom did then, she probably just got into the city with that. Wonder how she managed it, what those Troggles lack in magic they make up for in everything else athletically. Their overall intelligence isn’t too great, but they aren’t too dumb. Grogar runs a rather tight ship.” Jaded has likely been poking at the bear personally. “Yes, I tried to get into the castle to scout it out, simply couldn’t… too heavily guarded.”

“Did you just say you couldn’t get into a place?” That had me curious, many considered Jaded to be among those of the top well known rogues in the world of Equus.

“I could get out, escape it even, but getting in without suspicion that there has been a breach in the security? Yeah… not fighting a Troggle, those guys could overpower Earth Ponies. No way am I winning a fair or direct fight with one in grappling range.” Like you would ever fight fair Jaded. “Their eyesight and hearing is basic, but their sense of smell… that is what’s scary. Once they know what you smell like and can pick your smell out among all the other backgrounds smells, they will know where you are at all times within a short range. They can track any ponies and donkeys easily, perfect smell memory. You can run, but you can’t hide if a Troggle has your scent and is after you.”

“How did you find this out?” My curiosity was met with a wince as Jaded’s ears drew back again her green hair and she looked away.

“Hydra scale split clone.” Jade looked about. “So they might have my scent already, they just don’t have an image to put to it… yet. If a scent is out of place, they’ll know about it, likely better than even Pom puppies will. Grogar already knows we’re here so it’s not like we can hide forever, he’ll eventually have to get up off of his backside and come after us himself if his minions can’t handle us. If he’s this competent to hold together a realm for as long as he has with minions and subjects that have a lineage of thousands of years… well it’s kind of like Celestia what did, but in far worse circumstances and while being decently evil. Grogar is thankfully not a kill everyone guy or else it would just be him here all alone by himself. I applaud his general villainous pragmatism given the circumstances in keeping a stable population going despite the lack of resources he’d need to do so with a city as big as this one.”

“You are without a doubt a good scout, but you are still annoying rogue.” I calmly stated.

“Fair, now let’s go find Pom and ask how she created that explosion. It’s given us some moving room.” Jaded glanced out the window. “It also gave them even more too… move back from the window.”

I did so and soon Ruff and Woof joined us, the four brothers were all affectionately wrestling with each other for a few seconds before they all regained their sense and looked in the direction Pom was likely in.

“Is your shadow pink?” Ah yes, there were some things Jaded wasn’t aware of. “Doesn’t matter, let’s move, puppies your leading us to Pom if she’s trying to come to us!”

-Alleyway in the City of Bells, Pom-

I sniffed the air, Tianhuo was here not too long ago. Dormarch was on my back and shivering.

“Mom, I think they might be on to us, those noses aren’t for nothing.” A shivering Dormarch commented after he watched the end of the alleyway. “Don’t you know where they are already?”

“I just needed to smell that Tianhuo was actually here… speaking of knowing where they are, all my boys are gathered together and are slowly heading this way.” I started climbing the alleyways wall with Dormarch clinging to my back. “Let’s go!”

“The smell is coming from over here, what’s that in the alleyway?” I heard a voice ask and my ears twitched, that was directed at us.

“Those must be the intruders… INTRUDERS!” Yep, we’re in trouble. I clambered up the stone wall as quickly as I could avoided the whizzing of spears being thrown with excessive strength.

Near the rooftop around the sharp bits that is likely to prevent people from climbing around on the rooftops, like Jaded for instance. I exhaled, lashed out with my left hind leg and knocked a spear upwards spinning into the air.

I pulled myself onto the roof and quickly caught the shaft of the falling spear in my teeth, the spear seemed to be a leaf blade variant. Good for throwing, relatively balanced, shaft was not made of wood and was made of solid rock whereas the tip was of an iron or steel kind of metal. The spear looked like it was haphazardly manufactured, so they didn’t have any professional blacksmiths here and the carved rock shaft made it heavy and somewhat inflexible.

With the given lack of vegetation it was fairly obvious to craft spears out of a common material, metal was not common as stone was around here.

Why was I considering the spear when I was currently hopping across the rooftops while dodging or deflecting thrown spears with the one in my teeth? While distracting no less by the feeling of my god puppies nearby and okay, but worried about my current circumstances.

“I sometimes wonder how you do some of the things you do mom, especially when your thoughts are wandering as much as they are.” Dormarch muttered into my ears as he clung to me.

How can they not wander, Tianhuo is here! I was nervous about seeing her and well… she did come into Tambelon as soon as she could after me.

Several spears ripped through the edge of a rooftop I was jumping for and my hooves fell short of grabbing on. I quickly concentrated and fired off a wire of golden wool and pulled myself and Dormarch to the side and several spears impacts the wall of the building I was facing.

I grabbed onto a spear as I release my wool wire grapple and used it to pivot myself into moving in the opposite direction immediately, in the direction I had been moving several spears impacted the wall.

I quickly flipped and inflated my wool before hitting the streets with my hooves and we found ourselves surrounded by Troggles.

“You’re coming with us!” Didn’t really feel afraid, the Troggle that spoke had a silly overly deep voice for their stature.

I spit the spear out of my mouth and held it in my front hooves at the ready in a defensive manner.

A fireball from the air knocked that threatening Troggle onto their back, quite a few Troggles turned to the longma who was giving me a warm look as she landed and stalked forward on the street, behind her were Jade and my four god puppies.

“She’s huge…” Dormarch commented with shock at first seeing Tianhuo in person, yeah I doubt she’d have nearly as much trouble with the Troggles as Jade or I will.

“Yes… she is…” I started crying.

“Ugh… I can hear a heart song coming on…” Jaded grumbled.

(Them’s Fightin’ Herds- Tianhuo’s Theme)

“My dear Pom, it’s been so very long since I’ve seen my dearly beloved ewe~.” Tianhuo sang softly as she stalked forward. “Please tell me, that you’ve missed me too~.”

After singing that part she lunged forward and was on her hind legs letting loose a powerful roundhouse buck that knocked a Troggle out when her left hind leg connected with his head in a painful sounding crack, it also put them through a wall at least one or two feet thick of solid uncut stone.

Quite a few Troggles backed away from her after that given how fast she moved, Tianhuo was not the biggest longma in the world, but she was definitely large and threatening.

I was just staring at the orange in her eyes glowing almost reddish pink.

“You’ve been so far away, much to my everlasting days of dismay~.” She continued to walk towards me with a soft look in her eyes, her left hoof on her chest. “Now please, tell- me that you are okay~.”

She continued to approach me and her eyes flicked to the Troggles around me in a threatening position.

“You don’t need to fight here while I’m near, I will protect you~.” As she sang this she back hoofed an unarmed Troggle trying to tackle her to the ground without looking her left hoof was now covered in blood and she simply ignored it. Nobody was going to successfully interrupt this heart song, I could already tell. “No one will dare to hurt you as my love is still true~.”

As she sang this she deflected a spear upwards and her right hoof hit that Troggle in the throat harshly, he went down choking for air. Tianhuo wasn’t holding back.

Her wings of flame slowly rose from her back. She gently kissed me on the nose and my entire face heated up. She slowly protectively took up a position next to me, my god puppies and Jade joined up with us as Tianhuo’s started glowing.

“Since if you were hurt in trouble that was ever brewed, then let me tell you something that everyone in Huoshan knew~” Tianhuo slowly gazed around at all the Troggles who glared at her. “That the ones responsible were all very much and truly screwed~.”

Tianhuo ignited her mane, tail and her wings flared lighting up the area as she fully burned brightly, her slightly pink glowing eyes turned bright red. Every pony and donkey watching the Troggles encroach watched wide eyed as they backed away from the blinding light and ferocity Tianhuo gave off as the tempo of the song changed from slow and loving to upbeat with Tianhuo’s heat.

She swept out and stole a spear from one of the Troggles and started disarming them, I couldn’t even get to one before she was already on them in a bursting jet of flame following in the wake of her vicious attacks.

“If you even think to dare to even touch my wife, then I’ll beat you black and blue~!” TIanhuo was fighting towards the entrance of the city, my puppies were assisting by locking up the Troggles in place or toppling them Jaded fired an occasional bolt of energy from her claws into their eyes to send them stumbling back. “Come near to hurting a hair on the love of my life, then we’ll see just how well you’ll do~!”

Tianhuo was beating the ever loving crap out of them, I deflected a spear away from myself expertly and Tianhuo was on the Troggle a second later for attacking me.

We kept moving for the entrance of the city and the downtrodden ponies and donkeys were all staring at Tianhuo with confusion, horror and incredibly keen interest.

I quickly shoved a Troggle away from hurting Tianhuo while she was bashing someone over the head with the blunter part of a rock spear, she rammed into the Troggle with a flying kick assisted by a jet of flames coming out of her back pushing her forward at absurd speeds.

The fiery longma was obviously working out some frustrations, I could obviously help her with that later… and would.

“I am Tianhuo of Huoshan and you’ve made a clearly made a mistake by approaching my lovely little lamb~!” So aggressive and possessive… Tianhuo must have really had as bad a year without me a around. Oh… she had to care for my pack while I was away, yeah I can see why that would be frustrating with so many weird canines with all their own individual needs. I wonder if the Fu Dog Sentry is still protecting our home? “So if you really do want to see some pain quite soon, then come on and try just to face your doom~!”

Yikes Tianhuo was really getting into it, that’s like twenty beaten bodies in under a few minutes. It was clearly frightening as we continued to move towards the entrance at a rapid pace.

Tianhuo came slowly flowing up next to me and nuzzled me.

“Are you okay, let me nuzzle all of those lovely little tears away, so I can see that pretty face once your sadness is waylaid~.” I’m a mess of scars, most of which were not necessarily visible Tianhuo. The affection was nice, but we were kind of in the middle of escaping the City of Bells. Could even see the city square with that mud fountain and Grogar’s statue on it. That was quite a lot of Troggles and I knew they weren’t weak, Tianhuo is truly just that ridiculous a fighter in taking many of them out faster than I could even get to one. “I’ll make a path leading the way, to safety with me you won’t ever be led astray, for we are already well on our way~.”

I smiled at the comforting Tianhuo standing over me protectively, tears still spilling freshly from my eyes. My god puppies gathered up at my hooves and quickly picked them up in a hug and nuzzled all of them, Puff, Tuft, Ruff and Woof, my good boys. I put them down and pulled Dormarch off my back and cuddled him too and then introduced him to my god puppies as we kept moving they were sniffing as we headed for the entrance around the fountain.

Jaded was firing off bolts of magic from her claws as ranged support, she was also notably filching a number of things off of the knocked out Troggles while whistling to the tune as Tianhuo continued her flaming high speed rampage. A longma can jet about faster than a pegasus can react, but control at those speeds was paramount and Tianhuo definitely had full control of her movements.

“Tianhuo am I ever glad to truly see you~.” I sang as I was herded towards the city entrance by them and Dormarch with Jaded bringing up the rear. I could almost feel Grogar’s gaze looking down on all of us. “Along with my sweet little god puppies too~.”

Woof, Ruff, Tuft and Puff were ramming into Troggles left and right, they were sending them flying. I watched as Ruff bite one on the leg and slam them about violently before sending them into a breaking off the pointy big of one of the nearby rooftops with a throw.

Canis Minor were ridiculously strong, but looked so fragile and they were doing this to protect me and Jade. Tianhuo didn’t need the help, she was strong enough already.

“Now that we’re together, then we shall readily make our egress now that our hearts are refilled and renewed~.” Tianhuo and I sang together as a number of Troggles started flooding the plaza and trying to block off the entrance. “There is nothing that will stop our breaking through~.”

I lunged forward and deflected a spear up and cracked the back end across the Troggles face. I dodged about a jabbing spear and smashed the flat of the blade across the ankle of the Troggle trying to pressure me, causing them to topple. Plenty of upper body strength, but no leg day apparently and I quickly hopped over their prone form, to be followed by Jade.

I clashed a spear with one of the Troggles and the one I held snapped in half the point flying away, I quickly through the remaining rock shaft into his face and fired off a bark blast to knock him down.

A whip lashed out and pulled a charging Troggle’s leg out from under them and Jade tried not to get grabbed by another Troggle coming at her only to be rammed in the skull by Puff diving at him out of the air and bouncing off of it.

Tianhuo was trying to deal with them as fast as she could, but eventually even their numbers would bog us down. She was about to be struck when Dormarch used Search Hunter to knock the spear off course and he blasted the Troggle point blank with a Wild Bark to the face. Dormarch’s shockwave bark also stunned several other Troggles.

The Troggles were incredible tough, the ones Tianhuo had viciously knocked down were already getting up and I had to duck a thrown spear. Tianhuo was up at the wall in a flash of flames and showing them why they shouldn’t be trying to attack me when she’s around. The sight of a longma blasting flames and forcing them off the wall with her fury was one that would stick in the mind.

We were almost out of the entrance. I quickly passed through as did the others and I turned around ready to block our backs and somehow fend the angry number of Troggles off. How would we stop them from following us though?

“I’m so very glad to see that you’re still alive, and that you’ve survived, you even seem to have thrived~!” Tianhuo stated as we passed through the gate, she came down and hugged me with her stoic nature showing some major cracks. Jaded pulled out a candle and aimed it at the choke point, oh gods and goddesses it was one of those! “So very happy that I cannot lie, I wonder if you could ever truly see, did you know that you are the most important person to me~?”

Everyone who has ever had to deal with them hated chaos candles, usually used when Jaded was in particularly bad scrapes. Like right now, but on the bright side they won’t be able to trace us through smell. If it really messed up my puppie’s senses before, then one of those will seriously mess up the Troggles noses.

“It was so very easy you know where your heart is, it was with the one that you know always helping and willing to give~.” I sang back as we continued to make some distance. “You song gives me quite a smack, it is quite a heart attack, knowing that you still loved me right on back~!”

Jaded lit the candle with magic and sprayed the choke point with wild abandon, the smoke pouring out from the candle was a large amount of irritants and other things. I felt Grogar’s gaze flinch off of us as soon as the smoke started pouring out. The candles had literal chaos magic involved in what they do, they were not even related to Discord and only Jaded seems to know how to make them and there were several variants… this one had purple smoke… poison joke variant then, really nasty stuff. Wonder what she was going to use that for otherwise The Troggles that tried to enter the smoke passed out screaming in agony a seconds later, blind, deaf and dumbed down.

I exhaled flames at the smoke and caused the smoke to spread farther with a small explosion. Both Jaded and Tianhuo looked at each other and even my puppies were confused to see my breathing fire. I’d explain it all later, I turned to Tianhuo and wrapped her in a long legged fluffy hug.

“Who is that my sweetest and most caring partner in my life, her name is Tianhuo~.” I sang teasingly as we cuddled and Tianhuo blushed. “Through sickness, trouble and all kinds of ugly strife, she’s always my sky fire treasure trove~.”

Our hearts thudded in our chests as we pressed our foreheads against one another, her larger size and burning form not intimidating me in the slightest.

“Guys wrap up the heart song, we need to get moving and out of range before whoa… aggh… darn it… those spears hurt and are not likely clean!” Jaded took a spear across her right arm and she quickly bandaged up the bleeding wound with a roll of gauze she tore up with her teeth. She spat and sputtered as we started moving away from the wall quickly.

No one was missing and we were all going to make a clean getaway, provided we don’t run into any of the patrols we got past on the way in.

“You really don’t ever want to mess with my life, you just might get an angry Tianhuo~.” I sang as we ran.

“Says a sweet little ewe who definitely knows how to fight, you’d do the same just so you know~.” Okay now that was embarrassing Tianhuo, but you weren’t wrong.

“We share a bond that’s still strong it seems, after it’s almost been a year of shattered dreams~.” We sang as we ran for it with spears raining down around us, Tianhuo was blasting them out of the air whenever they came close and covered our backs as she took to the air.

“If there is one that has been missing in our lives, it what makes our heart beats to live… it’s why we continue to give… all of our love~!” Once we were far enough away and I was breathing roughly, I sat down and Tianhuo landed next to me.

Jaded sighed and I sat down with my good boys all looking in the direction of the City of Bells warily, Dormarch seemed to fit right in with the four god puppies so easily. They’ll surely like Dolly the same too.

“Tianhuo… I hope you know, that wherever I travel or will ever go…~” I pulled the wool back from my bell and Tianhuo saw the dent in the electrum metal, still magically charged electrum metal. The bell had obviously saved my life. “I will always love you so~.”

I tried for a real kiss only for two powerful explosions that resulted in temporary shadowy masses landed near us knocked us over with their blast waves.

I blinked and saw something on the wall in the distance that sent a chill down my spine, a pair of red eyes, shadow mist and bat wings. Gathering of energy and the launching of another mass of shadowy energy.

Hollow Heart?! How in the Tartarus did he get here?! Well… that’s just kind of the same as asking how did he end up in Duckberg? We couldn’t take him in a direct fight, I doubted even Tianhuo could beat him in a permanent fashion with what he is now! Also since when could he fire highly explosive darkness?

“Let’s go, we need to run… far away… now!” I stated as I locked my mind into Dolly’s position and started running. “Jaded ‘Freaking’ La Perm, if you have anything to smokescreen us, now would be a good time to use it!”

“Use the rest of my chaos candle, got it!” Jaded nodded and threw her candle high into the air, it exploded in a bright flash that not only stopped the next incoming shadow bomb that would have directly hit us, it also blinded our enemies to our movements in a mass of dangerous smoke and constant strobing lights.

Ugh, so glad I didn’t need my eyesight to know which direction to run, I really did not like chaos candles.

“Pom was that…” Tianhuo stated with an obvious shiver traveling down her spine as we escaped, it was like she could feel my terror and even felt some of it herself.

“Yes!” I said in absolute terror as I kept running, with Tianhuo keeping pace with me despite the amount of speed I was putting out.

After all of this I’m surprised we even made it back to the Stoneback Warrens without any trouble or being spotted by Grogar’s gaze. Even managed to feed my puppies once we were out of sight of Hollow Heart on the way back.

It took Jaded a little bit to catch up, she was far slower than us, but at least my god puppies had stuck with her and were happy to fill their tummies with good kibble.

475. Escape from Tambelon?

-Tambelon, outside the Stoneback warrens, Pom-

My god puppies properly fed, we walked up to the living boulder.

“Could you please move out of the way of the entrance Mr. Stoneback?” The large boulder shifted slightly and I motioned for the others to go in, Puff, Tuft, Woof and Ruff went on ahead… they had Dolly’s scent to add to the family after already adding Dormarch’s. “Thank you.”

Tianhuo looked at the massive creature that looked like a mound of stone and entered the lit tunnels going down. The Stonebacks had glowing stone for lighting here.

Jaded followed after me as Dolly came up to us and immediately started sniffing the butts of my god puppies and they were sniffing hers. Dormarch looked a little weirded out by it, but he wasn’t exactly a biologically normal canine.

“Are you alright Pom?” Tianhuo asked while looking to me.

“I’m okay Tian.” I watched as Dolly looked up from the scent gathered at Tianhuo and froze.

“Pom… she’s like twice your mass in muscle.” Yes Dolly, Tianhuo was bigger and physically stronger than me… and she could wrap her entire body around me in delightfully warm hugs.

“If people think I’m the cute one in our relationship just because I’m samller, then they don’t know what TIanhuo is like in the evening after a good day.” That had Tianhuo’s green scales turned straight red all around her head.

“Not only is my beloved quite adorable, she knows how to embarrass me without stating what she’s talking about.” You knew what it was Tianhuo and that’s all that needs to be said about the subject.

“Do you still have the device you used to talk to Tianhuo before you came here?” Jade asked as we walked through the tunnels towards the wagon where we saw Ocellus trying to converse with some Stonebacks, I think she was trying to decipher their grunts and growls as language. The Stonebacks obviously knew Equestrian well enough.

Smolder for her part was playing with the free ponies of Tambelon, what few there were that the Stonebacks were raising and taking care of.

“Yes, let me show you where I put it in the wagon.” I approached the wagon and Dodo perked up and looked at us.

Dodo looked at Jaded La Perm and she stared back at him after a moment he opened his beak slowly a twisted mass of doughnut started to come out of it.

“Is that a raspberry tiger tail?!” Jaded gleefully took the doughnut offering from Dodo’s beak, not even caring about where it came from. At this point I didn’t care about where the pastries were coming from, just that Dodo made them fresh somehow without having any internal trouble from all the sugar, dough and other stuff involved. “Thank you!”

Dodo then turned to Tianhuo, tilted his head and looked thoughtful for a second and then just coughed up a white puffy lamb shaped bread with a green tint with what looked to be spices on it.

“Thank you strange metal bird spirit.” Tianhuo said uncertain as she took a bite of the bread and hummed. “Sour apple and cinnamon bread, delicious and well proportioned.”

“Dodo has a preternatural ability for figuring out what we like when it comes to the pastries he generates.” Like somehow knowing that Jaded has a thing for ‘tiger tail’ doughnuts as long as chocolate wasn’t involved in their make. She often stopped by a specialty pastry shop in Huoshan when she visits to give the Huoshan guard headaches as a “Security Consultant” that she proclaims herself to be at times. “He’ll even take requests if asked nicely enough. He likes you Tianhuo, I can only guess that it’s because Jaded reminds him of Shanty.”

“Shanty? The goat?” Jaded stated through a mouthful of pastry she held in one hand and she had already found the device and was holding it in the other.

“My ears be burning, someone being interested in me?” Shanty came over with a bottle of rum.

“Say can I used that…” Jaded sniffed slightly. “Rum to clean a wound, the Troggle’s spears aren’t exactly the cleanest weapons around.”

“Sure thing… Shanty the eventual pirate and Capricornus.” Jaded kneeled down and shook her hoof with a claw.

“Jaded La Perm, Mercenary, Menacing Mirage and Magnificent Malcontent.” Taking the Tiger Tail doughnut into her mouth and dropping the device into my hoof, she unwrapping the bandage she had on her right arm. She immediately grimaced at the ugly and sickly looking wound. “Good thing I have some form of alcohol on hand for this, this is going to sting… anyone got anything I can bite down on for this? It looks like it’s becoming infected and I don’t know about you, but this pocket Tartarus of a world doesn’t scream ‘decent medical services’ at all and I might be the only one around for miles with anything approaching medical equipment.”

Shanty after her cane scythe, made from an alien robot leg and Jaded carefully clamped her teeth around the shafted, then splashed a bit of the rum on her arm. A loud hissing noise came from Jaded and surprisingly her wound as well. After the pain had passed, Jaded pulled out the roll of bandages she had used earlier for a quick patch and wound it around her arm twice. She was about to use Shanty’s scythe when Shanty held up a hoof and then cut the bandage with a precise motion.

“Thanks.” I was about to offer the device when I noticed it was missing from my hoof and back in Jaded’s claws.

“I should be taking notes about that one!” Shanty said gleefully, making me quite confused about what she meant.

“Jaded’s tail needs to be watched more closely from now on.” Tianhuo commented when I looked confused as the Abyssinian’s tail flicked about behind her idly.

“Okay Jaded, what’s happening over there?” Wow, no pause as soon as the call connected and we heard a stallion’s voice.

“Well hello to you too Sergeant Shady, Ocellus is looking healthy by the way.” After shaking her head Jaded finally got to the point of the call. “I hope you’re recording this, I’ve only been here a few hours and it’s worse than anything the royal guard can do to me… Tartarus would be a vacation compared to this place.”

“The guards there are that competent huh?” It was a changeling on the other end in royal guard armor.

“Yes, but that’s not the problem, there’s a population of donkeys and ponies here… a lot of them slaves, a number of them Earth Ponies and a lot of Unicorn Ponies… that forced to work like Earth Ponies, without the resilience and strength therein, while missing an important the most important part of them that makes them a unicorn in the first place.” There was a hiss from the changeling and he sounded angry, Jaded was no less angry and I would imagine it was because she was married to Storm Queen Fizzlepop who only had a busted horn. Tianhuo and I looked to Jaded in horror at what she just implied happened to Unicorn Ponies that were born here. “I also researched the culture of Troggles and the less said about what they eat the better, I’m only dropping the hint of ‘extreme omnivores’ and leaving it at that. Weak leg joints, upper halves with musculature that can definitely beat Earth Ponies in strength with constitutions to match. A raging fully trained longma who is a master in martial arts at full jet assisted strength couldn’t knock them out for more than a few minutes.”

“I can see Tianhuo right behind you Jade and I know how strong she is yes, so what happened?” Shady asked while bluntly pointing out Jade was looking fairly furious as she gave her report. Grogar probably shouldn’t have earned her ire, Jaded wanted to destroy Saddle Arabia… imagine if she was actively trying to put her mind to liberating Tambelon.

“Well Slim, Pom came to lead us to what is possibly one of the safest places in Tambelon, Stonebacks are not extinct and we’re currently bunking at their place. The Troggles attacked Pom and managed to stop her from hopping around the rooftops, she got surrounded. Tianhuo took umbrage to anyone trying to hurt Pom while she was around and really let them have it to the best of her abilities… at best they were lightly bruised by her efforts, so tough just doesn’t even begin to describe them… you know my friend Arizona Arid? Yeah, their bodies are like hers, the exception is around the ankles, knees and a strong enough blow to the head will incapacitate… but I doubt you could kill them with a blow to the head considering their skulls break paved stoned when you knock them over. Heck one of the Troggles that tried to chase us out was put through a stone wall of a building a foot by Tianhuo or so thick and got up to continue after us.” Okay, so Jaded was paying as much attention as I was to the dangers the Troggles represented. “Pom and I could barely scrape them, knock them over and out, but actually hurting them? Nope. The Canis Minor and Tianhuo were the most effective on our escape from the City of Bells. The Canis Minor because they are magical star dogs with ludicrous levels of strength and Tianhuo is among highly competent longma guard of Huoshan… as are seventy percent of the longma living there, the others are decent at best. At least Canterlot’s Royal Guard has come a long way, but the EUP are still better overall and I’m surprised Celestia didn’t rotate EUP members in and out of the Royal Guard more often. I think she relies too much on friendship and intentional screw up squads.”

“Wait, ISUS’s are real?!” Said a still quite horrified unicorn that looked quite sick. “Even when I went stupidly crazy, I didn’t go entirely tearing off physical bits of what made any pony unique!”

It seemed the pony realized something and was soon barfing into a trash can that wasn’t there a second ago. A pony with wild bushy hair started to rub her back in small circles.

“It’s okay Starlight Glimmer, Jady will take care of the mean old goat. Jade, do me a favor, Grogar is a big meanie… I don’t normally ask for things like this, but please do the absolute worst thing you can think to do to him if you ever get a chance. Do not hold back you’re Petty Kitty wrath!” The pink pony said while rubbing circles on her back. “There are you done barfing about the fact that the goat being evil?”

“That’s not what I was barfing about, I realized what Jaded meant by ‘extreme omnivores’.” Well yeah, even I got the gist of that Starlight Glimmer. Not much food around hear aside from what plants the ponies and donkeys could farm up on limited resources. I’m trying not to think about what happens to the ponies that die of old age, they aren’t getting buried around here I can tell you that much and it was enough to turn my...

I felt my left hoof being gripped by Tianhuo’s right hoof, it was gentle and incredibly firm. It calmed me down as she looked into my eyes with a pinkish orange glow of concern in hers.

“Jade please tell me that ISUS aren’t real, those are just overblown rumors… right?” Princess Twilight showed up.

“Can’t, Celestia made one using your brother Shining Armor to prove himself capable of marrying Princess Cadence. I even know the locations of those documents if you’re interested.” That Jaded said it so casually kind of scared me. “Besides Cadence will confirm if you say that I said it was okay to bring it up.”

“Oh right, you’re a walking security breach to most of Equestria’s biggest secrets considering you were actually there for like half of them as a wandering lonely spirit… how could I ever forget.” Twilight stated dully. “Anything we should know about Tambelon? I’m sure Sergeant Shady will inform me on what we missed so far.”

“Aside from the most prominent being that Grogar has been cultivating magic by likely consuming unicorn horns in a ritualistic fashion or is just outright eating them… well we do want to know a safe way if we can tell where a portal back to Equus will open. We really don’t want to be here for longer than necessary.”

“Sunburst here, I believe I can help with that.” After Sunburst adjusted his glasses with a hoof, he created a presentation screen out of magic. “You can halfway activate the beacon that will lead you close to the next portal we create from this side will open, it’ll point to an area and then you can go there before we fully open it up. The beacon will stabilize the portal on both ends and not send you all over the place like what likely happened to you on the way in.”

“Good to know that we can randomize a portal location until we get a good one to get out with… so is Canterlot ready to take on a lot of Stonebacks and ponies who’ve never received a proper education all of the sudden?” Didn’t take much for Jaded to have me on the same page as her. “As for one other thing Pom, you seemed to know a lot about the guy, so tell them about scary bat pony with the dark magic and shadows motif.”

“Right… ‘him’, Arizona can confirm he exists if Tianhuo doesn’t back up what I’m about to tell all of you. Hollow Heart is in Tambelon.” There was a moment and then Jaded’s eyes snapped to me and she looked horrified.

“Wait… this Hollow Heart is he the same one I know from Night Fright Grotto, what the Tartarus happened to him?!” Jaded look quite horrified once she actually heard me say his name outloud.

“Well he tried to destroy the world with an army of shadow monster, but Tianhuo, Arizona, Velvet, Paprika, Oleander and I gathered some magical keys of destiny and sealed him off from destroying this world. Paprika was even responsible for him being sealed in the realms of darkness. First and only time I think we’ve ever heard her speak normally and it was to tell Hollow Heart to his face that she didn’t like him.” Paprika not being able to hug or love someone seemed almost impossible, but now I get where she was coming from by telling him upfront that he was unlikeable. “Ran into him and he had a lot of clones of my friends and got badly mangled by him and his attempts to kill me. Where I’m fairly certain Grogar wants us alive for a possible fate worse than death, Hollow Heart most assuredly doesn’t want us alive and had been specifically targeting me with those shadow bombs he launched. I don’t think he appreciates me helping the spirit of an entire world that literally press ganged me into fighting him and several shadow copies of my friends and Tianhuo.”

“Yeah, Pom been physically messed up several times throughout this entire year, It’s a wonder we’re not using duct tape, chewing gum, paperclips and string to hold her together at this point. Though her wool would technically qualify for the string…” Smolder interrupted as she played with her ribbon a bit. “Well actually, with how many bandages and sutures she’s had applied to her… it isn’t that far from the truth of how she survived dying numerous times. I guess the only thing we haven’t used yet is a chewing gum equivalent and we’re well past being able to buy any, at least we’re all still kicking around here right?”

“Pom is as strong as she is sweet.” Tianhuo stated proudly, but I was scarred mess of a lambkin and…

I felt my hoof get a light squeeze and Tianhuo nuzzled me gently, calming me down immediately. She had not let go of my hoof at all during all of this talk. TIanhuo whispered into my ear.

“No matter you’re scars, I am will be here at your side ‘little one’.” Tianhuo was using one of the Huoshan guard’s nickname for me, which was a nickname I actually didn’t mind. “We will discuss the issue of your wools golden coloring and being a Chrysomallus after this meeting…”

I tensed slightly no matter how reassuring Tianhuo was to have right next to me and she sent me a concerned frown.

“Right, back on the subject of Hollow Heart… he was nigh invincible when I last fought him and he was only getting stronger.” How strong was he now, in fact how strong was Grogar that he even feasibly summoned him?

“Didn’t I kick his butt?” Dolly asked.

“Dolly, we don’t know if you can even do what you did on command to even put him away again. Also even if you did manage to replicate that again, what’s to stop Grogar from summoning him and sending him after exactly, if he’s as powerful as we think he is?” Night immortal bat pony turned deadly shadow beast and has a reason to want me absolutely dead specifically if Grogar didn’t have full control over him… joy. “So Grogar is not only a major threat, imagine what would happen if he got his bell on Equus back.

Nobody voiced what would happen, because if Grogar got back on Equus that was bad enough without going into a completely apocalyptic scale battle should he recover his full power.

“I can’t imagine it, since we haven’t met this Grogar guy yet.” Dolly responded, making me wish that we never had to encounter the crazy goat personally.

“Good, then we’ll make sure that never happens.” Quite a lot of murmurs of agreement could be heard. “First we need to find an exit point.”

“I’ll take care of that and will get back to you where the beacon says it will be.” Jade said as looked to me. “We can evacuate the Stonebacks and ponies from here when we make our way for the exit. You guys can stay here.”

“You’re not going out there alone Jaded, at least take my son Dormarch with you.” I didn’t hear anything from Tianhuo about calling him that. I did need to talk with Tianhuo about the golden wool and my nature getting worse with time until I hit the threshold point, I cross that threshold and there will be no turning back for me.

“Hey there.” Dormarch said while waving his big goofy claws at Jaded as he moved up to her.

“Okay, I’ll protect him with my life Pom, definitely didn’t feel like I wanted to go out there alone on my own anyway.” Agreed, not while we were in enemy territory Jaded. “I only have so many chaos candles anyway.”

“Quick, did my wife use distilled poison joke to make chaos candles?” Hearing Fizzlepop, Jaded whined.

“Yes.” I answered immediately and Jaded looked so betrayed.

“Come on Fizzy, I’m only using them here in Tambelon!” Mostly because she had to, I’m pretty sure Jaded would be using them in Saddle Arabia otherwise as ‘exotic candles’.

-Several hours later, Jaded-

“I’m still suspect that Grogar isn’t looking in on us or actively looking for us.” It was curious to me, what did Grogar know that we currently didn’t?

“I’m sure we’ll find out eventually.” Dormarch was a cool little dude and he was capable of a good conversation unlike Pom’s usual menagerie of canines. “Mom, we’re back!”

Pom was talking quietly with Tianhuo and no matter how much Pom looked relieved to be near her, something was quite wrong with that lambkin. Like the golden wool slowly taking up most of her body wasn’t hinting at that already, she’s most certainly aware of what’s happening to her and likely knew more than what we could find on research.

In the next second she was coddling Dormarch and nuzzling him with affection that got his three fish tails wagging.

“Did you find it?” Tianhuo asked trying to stay on point and not be distracted by Pom’s cuddly nature.

“Yes, we did, the next portal will open up at the end of the valley we found…” There was something wrong in the way Pom froze up slightly at the mention of the word ‘valley’, I saw Tianhuo’s questioning eyes on me a second later and I didn’t understand why Pom had acted like that either.

“Well it’s where we came in at, it’s as good as any to make our way out from.” Grumbled Pom as I went to get the device and call up some friends.

As soon as Sunburst appeared on the screen there were a lot of garbage bins around.

“What…” I tried to ask and Sunburst shook his head no frantically, okay don’t question it then. “Anyway we found the portal location, are you ready to receive a lot of Wild Ponies and Stonebacks?”

“Not yet, but we will be.” Sunburst answered as he ran a hoof over his scraggly beard. “We want to get you all out of there before something goes horribly wrong.”

I nodded and then Ocellus started talking to the Stonebacks about relocating to a please that wasn’t run by Grogar and bringing their pony families with them. They were highly receptive and eager to get out of Tambelon, I wouldn’t want to live here for too long either.

Yet there was a nagging at the back of my head that I couldn’t help quite shake. My intuition was screaming at me that it was something to do with Pom and her Chrysomallus nature, I was going to have to prepare for something to go wrong.

-Several hours later and relocating all the Stonebacks towards the valley with ponies, Pom-

After avoiding many patrols and hiding behind the big stone like masses of the Stonebacks circling up to create the illusion of moving hills that fooled most of the Troggles heavily patrolling all regions of Tambelon we had made it to the valley with everyone in tow from within the Stoneback Warrens.

Jaded got the portal open to Equus and the Stonebacks immediately started pouring through carrying all the ponies they had managed to save from grogars whims, they were thankfully as resilient to magic as dragons usually were. Otherwise the unicorn ponies the gentle giants liberated would be more of a hassle even if they weren’t exactly trained in the use of their magic, they had some control over it after Ocellus spend some time with them.

We got about half of them through the portal to safety when we felt it, Grogar’s wandering eye was suddenly upon all of us and in the distance at the other end of the valley a massive army of Troggles were coming.

Grogar wasn’t looking directly at us though, he was looking more at the portal which we were escaping through. That wasn’t good.

“Go faster Dodo, we’re right behind you!” I shouted and watched as Dodo started to take off with the supply wagon. “Come on get moving everyone, go!”

The wild ponies understood the urgency and what had been a slow trickle through the portal became a mad dash to get through it for everyone including the ones I had been the guardian of throughout all of this.

Once they were through, then my job would be done… I could go home again with Tianhuo, my god puppies and my new companions that Tianhuo welcomed with open hooves.

I was at the back of it all making sure the Troggles didn’t suddenly attack us from on high as we were at the bottom of the valley, the stonebacks would survive their thrown spears. The wild ponies not so much.

It looked like they would all make through, even I would make it through, the only problem is Hollow Heart could be seen coming at us through the air in the distance. He was drawing every shadow and patch of darkness to himself, I could feel the terror rising in my heart as I followed behind the wagon with Tianhuo at my side.

I could finally, rest.

I could finally stop fighting.

I could finally know peace.

I could get a vacation away from all trouble for a while.

I could spend time with my pack of knucklehead canines, feed mister Birch some fertilizer, get some affection from Big Mama and… and…

…

Why did I suddenly stop?!

No…

Oh no…

No-no-no!

Why… why can’t I get closer to the portal, what could possibly be stopping me from…

My hooves, lift them up one in front of the other.

Why? Why am I stopping!

What’s wrong with me!

What’s wrong with my body?

The portal was right there!

I could see the girls I protected and Dodo going through it easily enough.

So why wasn’t I followed them?

WHY?!

“Tianhuo… why did you stop?” I asked quietly.

“Why did you? I stopped because you did.” But, Tianhuo… freedom, safety, right there, less than a simple two hundred feet away!

Dolly, Dormarch, Tuft, Ruff, Woof and Puff, all sat down and were there staring at me flatly. They weren’t leaving without me, they would NEVER try to.

WHY COULDN’T I MOVE FORWARD!

I had nothing left to…

No… I did have something left to do.

“Tianhuo, if you want me to live you will not tell me when, but I want you to hit me in the head as hard as you can and then carry me through the portal.” It didn’t take me long to realize why I couldn’t leave, I had simply seen too much, the atrocities going on here and the horrors being done to the people I was trying to abandon in favor of the ones I actually cared about.

This isn’t fair!

Why do I have to sacrifice myself like this?!

“Pom what are you…” Tianhuo stated and then tried to slug me with left hoof a flash of gold let me know the truth of my situation as it rebounded off my head without leaving a scratch on me.

I couldn’t leave.

Heh…

I can’t leave.

We’re in danger.

And-and-and Tianhuo wouldn’t leave without me…

We’re doomed.

I’m dooming Tianhuo by not moving forward, but I can’t.

I physically can’t leave and will die if I try to without living up to my very nature of ‘helping people’, I could try to come back to help them later… but I was already here, why would I ever LEAVE?!

I…

I just want…

I just wanted it all to be over…

“Baa-baa?” Woof moved up to me worriedly. “What’s wrong baa-baa?”

I started crying.

We were so close, so very damn close!

We could have left, we could have moved on with our lives… I can’t leave, my body wouldn’t let me.

Not while there were sacrifices to be made and I was going to make them quite willingly.

“I… I don’t think I can leave, it’s more to say… I can’t without dying or achieving what’s keeping me here in the first place.” The horrified look in Tianhuo’s eyes said it all, they sharpened on my wool as after the blow the golden wool crawled up to my neck and I shivered.

The feel of the wool around my neck changing to a golden color felt like a noose around my neck.

“Then I will not leave either either.” Tianhuo, you’re going to get yourself killed for me…

“Tianhuo, I’m a sacrificial lambkin… I can’t actually leave without saving everyone in Tambelon that needs help. I saw too much coming into the City of Bells. I saw too much!” I was shuddering and starting to break down. I could already see Jaded watching us from the portal as a massive army of Troggles was on approach for us. I sniffled as tears spilled from my eyes. “It’s going to get me killed.”

“You mean it’s going to get us killed, but we will at least make a valiant effort of it.” I felt a faint bond of Big Mama through the portal, she gave me her blessing to take my god puppies with me into death.

That… what?! Big Mama, you shouldn’t be giving my god puppies gods and goddesses damned permission to die by my side like that!

I felt the various other bonds all stretching back all the way to Huoshan, my pack was praying for me. The Tenko among them was ardently praying for my protection and I felt it’s spirit latch onto mine with sadness.

I blinked and the world changed somewhat.

I could faintly see the howling spirits of ponies, the souls tortured by Grogar escaping through the portal… that or I was wildly hallucinating from the horror of the situation.

I was seeing the souls that had been trapped in Tambelon all of them scrambling for an exit, never allowed to rest under the yoke of Grogar.

“JADED IF YOU CAN DO ME ONE FAVOR BEFORE I DIE, THEN DO IT NOW, CLOSE THAT PORTAL!” I screamed my voice raw.

Shanty, Smolder, Ocellus, Dodo and everyone else on the other side waiting for the last of us to pass through looked on in horror, not quite understanding what was happening here.

Shanty… Shanty looked the most hurt, she even tried to run back through the portal only to be tackled, by several ponies and she tried to fight them and was cutting them up to come back for me.

This is why being a Chrysomallus sucked in a major way… I just got finished saving several worlds and one while on vacation from saving three all at once. Now I had to fight an absolute demon and an invincible shadow beast to save myself.

There were two ways a Chrysomallus tended to die, I hoped to die from helping people by being killed by it of old age… as the other way had some nigh irreversible consequences for me. Well irreversible from my side of things at the very least.

At least I don’t think Ocellus or any unicorn will feel what it means to become a Chrysomallus fully and the end results therein. Peace of mind in that secret never seeing the light of day, still haven’t told anyone.

Jaded firmed her eyes on me, we stared at one another and she looked beyond us and saw a blue goat with red eyes and the incoming grinning Hollow Heart, she looked back at me with an ‘are you serious’ expression.

I nodded to her grimly, that yes, THIS WAS ACTUALLY HAPPENING.

I don’t think I was ever meant to survive my journey for as long as I had.

“BAA-RAM-EWE!” I screamed, I challenged everything all at once. I’d fight for the life of my puppies, Dolly, Dormarch and Tianhuo, they would not die before I did!

Over my literal dead body would they die here in Tambelon, I’ll find a way! I WOULD!

I even already knew a way… but… I was going to be selfish and try to live without doing that, they all wanted me to live and I had to want it too. There was no other reason Dormarch, Dolly, Puff, Tuft, Ruff, Woof and Tianhuo would have stopped when I did, they were only ever going to leave if I did.

Things had looked so bright a second ago…

“Pom!” Several voices and a mechanical warble sounded out in terror, but not for themselves.

Even Dodo was trying to come back, a Stoneback Land Dragon thankfully grabbed him.

Smolder was pinned by her brother Garble, he gave me a sad knowing look as if he knew why I was staying behind.

Ocellus, bless her heart, tried to come back through and was surprisingly the closest to managing to do so.

She used magic, she transformed into a variety of things, she actually beat several guards in her efforts. She didn’t care if she ran herself dry of strength or energy, she didn’t want to abandon me… Sergeant Shady was the one that blindsided her in the end. Knowing more about changeling biology to put her down safely.

I feel upset to hear the words ‘thank goodness for that’ coming from my brain.

Jaded threw several things through the portal, the two beacons, both crafted artifacts of powerful magic. One of which would summon supplies in case things in Tambelon went to Tartarus, which it had.

Now those supplies might find some use with us. The other was a beacon for doing what I wanted to do.

My new mission: Save Tambelon itself or die trying.

I hated myself with every fiber of my being now.

Twilight Sparkle tried to use magic, the power that moved the sun itself, to forcefully pull me through. I glowed brightly with a golden color, I did not move a millimeter from my spot. Even an Alicorn couldn’t save me, one that wanted to extend a hoof in Friendship and absolutely had to be powered by her very domain in these moments, she could not do anything to save me.

Quite a lot of chaos was going on the other side of the portal as many people react to try and stop anyone from coming through. Jaded finally crashed the magical portal by grabbing the stabilizers with her claws and a glow came from them, don’t know how, but she did it.

The portal immediately shut, I was already running forward to pick up the beacons and the other thing Jaded threw through for us… I was a little grossed out that it was partially covered in Abyssinian fur. I rubbed the sticky mucus covered fur off the object and blinked at it. I only wondered what it was for a few seconds, there was something very off with it and I immediately stashed it in my wool.

We had to move now!

“Dolly, Dormarch, up the valley’s wall now! Woof, Ruff, Puff and Tuft on my back we’re going!” We had to climb out of here and run. We’re not getting away Tambelon, but we’re going to make them work for it! My orders were followed by my pack without question or talkback.

My high functioning nature was kicking into high gear now… hated it, hated myself, hated even causing this situation! Hated absolutely everything right now, especially Hollow Heart as he was about to skewer me only to be decked in the face by a powerful flaming right hoof by Tianhuo.

Didn’t hurt Hollow Heart all that much aside from the light she gave off weakening him lightly.

-Three months several days after the ‘Tambelon Incident’, a different therapy session, Anubis-

“So that’s it for your portion in this story?” I asked of the mortals I was helping talk things out. I was guiding the dead and the living, letting their feelings out was helping them. The ones here had plenty of time left if natural causes are their only worries.

“Oh that is not being the ending of it, not by a long shot! If you be wanting to know what Pom be doing afterwards… then we will be needing a few sessions. We do not be knowing the whole story, but we all know the ending well enough.” Shanty stated with a hollow sounding voice, her eyes had changed somewhat and she seemed to sink into herself obviously depressed. her body had suddenly became more fish like as she wrapped herself in a tightly compact bubble of seawater and cut off all sound from reaching her as she wept silently inside of it. Eventually she spoke not with her own voice, but with the vibrations of the water itself. “We did be getting back in eventually. That is being only the beginning.”

Capricornus were powerful creatures indeed and I could feel the touch of Tiamat and the waters of chaos on her. One would think I was worried about that… I wasn’t, it was quite benign as far as gods and goddesses could be. She was also touched by an artifact of a water goddess of knowledge from another world, which also was benign as the information seemed to have faded from Shanty’s conscious mind.

Dodo sat next to the bubble of water and stared at the rest of us, he warbled sadly. His mechanical voice upset that he couldn’t help his bonded partner feel better.

“Yeah, even I think we should call it here, that moment did not end on a high note…” Jaded obviously got a ton of backlash for forcefully closing the portal, but it might have been for the best depending on how the rest of their tale goes.

Then maybe I could find out the mysterious origin of what has changed all of Equus is and what it exactly did. None of the gods or goddesses could figure it out, but something was very wrong and we needed to figure out what before it became a… existential problem.

“One last question, then I will call this session to close. Aside from those beacons, what exactly did you give to Pom?” My question was met with a weak grin from Jaded La Perm.

“The End of Immortality. You know, that thing that Bennu desperately wanted to work… and it actually does... but not exactly how she wanted it to.” There was a faint evil calculating toothy grin on Jaded ‘Freaking’ La Perm’s face as she stared into my eyes, a look that many would be wary of. “It was a very good call on my part at least, as we would eventually find out. Even if Pom had absolutely no idea what it does or even how to use it, I know absolutely everything there is to know about it. Wish I didn’t have to cough it up in the form of a hairball every time I wanted to take it out of my body though. My throat was messed up for the rest of the day from doing it so hastily, but I was being yelled at so much that that was a moot point as I didn’t have much to say to defend myself anyway. Don’t expect me to swallow swords though, I’m not truly a full circus act even if my life, friends and family are putting on a show for someone at least once a week. Also we couldn't communicate with Pom or those that stayed behind as both devices were in Equus at that point, the other one having been on the wagon.”

Ah yes the ‘living in interesting times’ thing, wish gods and goddesses would really stop doing that to mortals. Honestly now, they were already chaotic enough as it is without the little pushes to do things! Also Jaded was the guardian of that particular artifact that only worked against unnatural forms of immortality. But why would… ah… interesting, a use for it where there had not been much need for it before.

Author's Note

Make of this what you will...

476. Invading Tambelon.

-Equus, a few minutes after portal shutdown, detainment room, Ocellus-

I was going to be eventually needed when it came to the Stonebacks, I had some understanding of their guttural language… also I told ponies that changelings were really good at learning verbal and not so verbal languages very easily. We wouldn’t be good infiltrators without it as a capability, learned a lot about dragon body language from Smolder. Pegasus ponies weren’t the only ones who get stiff wings apparently.

“I’m so glad to see you that you two are okay!” What, not talking about me fighting the guards to try and get back into Tambelon like a mad changeling Gallus? Why were you wearing a helmet, armor and wielding a spear?

“Yeah, we were going to come in after you!” You were our friends so that was a likely thing to happen Silver Stream… also since when did you get into archery? Yeah I think they really were going to come in after us should things have gone terribly wrong, a flying archer was interesting.

Nice to see Edith again, clucking merrily and trying to be unobtrusive, which wasn’t easy for the cockatrice in the room.

“Yona is sad Yona doesn’t get to use shield to protect friends for life!” Hair traditionally braided and pulled back into a rather quaint looking Viking style, Yona looked like a Shield Maiden. Spindle the wolf spider, was on one of Yona’s horns and he waved at me.

Yona was likely taught by a Shield Warrior and the only one I knew of around here was Fortitude from Airship Mauled.

He was Fortitude, the fantastically fragrant!

Okay, even thinking his name caused that to happen, good to know.

“You think you’re upset, I didn’t even get to use my abilities. Apparently I can clean entire beaches in seconds using just the sand of the beach itself… also made a lot of money finding lost bits in said sand. Had to pay Snickers the Turtledove somehow.” Sandbar pulled the cork from his back… without touching it. What?! Wait… it’s made of sand? He was manipulating sand? That… wow, that looked really powerful. How was he perfecting those shapes with it? “I’m better with beach sand than desert sand though.”

That was taking Earth Pony to a literal extreme, kind of like Ground Type Pokémon were said to be capable of. We only got some distinct idea of their abilities when they took out those nasty sand worms without casualty, for some reason I’m glad we never went to the kingdom of Terrera.

“Wait, so you guys have been preparing to come in and fight to save us?” Smolder was ecstatic to hear that, also secretly grumpy that they might have thought she was weak and that was balanced out by the fact that she wasn’t nearly strong enough to fight any of the Stonebacks just for their sizes. “That’s kind of awesome not going to lie… now can you help us find a way back into Tambelon?”

“You want to go back in there?! The feelings I got from the portal were horrifying, the land there was positively tortured and screaming!” Sandbar stated with a quivering look in his eyes like he was about to cry and Yona cuddled him. “It was really quite unpleasant that I could even hear it through the portal.”

I noted down that Sandbar could now feel what the land feels like, something that I as a changeling might be lacking even when I turn into an Earth Pony. Communing with nature should be easier for a changeling, but nature knew a liar when it saw one which explained why numerous animals had a tendency to glare at us trying to deceive the ponies that they were bonded to as familiars.

Maybe if I didn’t lie while in the form of an Earth Pony I could do ground manipulation too, maybe even make friends with a patch of land in the Dragon Lands? That’s going to take some research, but that’s for much later if I survive going back to Tambelon. I’ll probably will never be anywhere near Sandbar’s current level of course, wouldn’t doubt that his connections is strongest to where the sea meets the land. It’s in his name after all.

“Well excuse us for not wanting to abandon our friends to the Tartarus they’re now trapped in, Pom simply saw and heard people needed help… so she couldn’t leave with us knowing that fact.” Which wasn’t a good thing Smolder. At least there was Tianhuo so that’s a bright spot for Pom, but her god puppies, Dormarch and Dolly being trapped there too could be an issue for her. At least Pom didn’t have to worry about us… until we came back that is. “Dormarch is a cool little guy with incredible power, Dolly is crazy awesome and can do magic. Sure they have an entire army coming at them, but we kind of had time to learn how to handle large armies before we ended up in Tambelon. Also we’d come back for any of you guys too!”

“So how would we go about doing it? The portals stabilizers were absolutely destroyed by Jaded and she’s the poster kitty for doing weird stuff, like hacking up a hairball and throwing it in before she did that. What use is a hairball going to be for those that got stuck in Tambelon?” Gallus was pacing around and talking to himself. Nobody said we weren’t doing it, nobody said they didn’t want to help and most of all nobody was questioning Smolder holding my right hoof with her left claw. Silver Stream seemed to squeal a bit at the sight and was happy for us, her feelings said as much and I think I might be a little bit more sensitive with my empathic abilities now from everything I’ve been through. “Jade doesn’t just do random stuff without there being some kind of purpose to it, I’d say it was calculated move… but her dyscalculia has been proven to be a universal hazard. As for what happened to the portal stabilizer, I think she used the portal stabilizer in a magic alchemy cast and I have no idea what that did.”

“I’d surmise that we’d simply need to make another stabilizer to even attempt opening a portal to Tambelon?” I don’t know the magical frequency or how to make the stabilizer, but now that I’m back in Equestria I’m sure I could find out.

“We’d probably have to ask Starlight and Sunburst, they were all working on this project for quite a while.” That or find someone just as knowledgeable, I did not want to give up on Pom’s family or Pom! They were the first unto the breach and they came to save all of us. Not just most of us, then they themselves perish battling an entire army. “We’ve been through a lot, but friendship was kind of a universal constant and I’m glad for that. It’s because of that friendship that we’re going back.”

“So none of you question the stupidity of going into a realm full of those Troggle guys to fight for a people that might not understand what we’re doing for them?” Smolder asked flatly. “Pom couldn’t leave because she literally can’t turn away from those who need help, she has this whole sacrifice thing going on and it’s annoying.”

“We’ve been training to do just that Smolder. We’ll do it without the Royal Guard or whoever was going to help with this previously.” Okay, so Gallus was backing us one hundred percent, good to know. He also grinned for a moment before pointing at us. “Also congratulations on pairing the spares.”

“What are you… oh…” Smolder blushed, but she didn’t let go. I can at least say our relationship was going better than Rainbow and Applejacks, in fact many people can say that.

Rainbow and Applejack were both really bad with feelings, I once heard Applejack went to work at a cherry farm out of embarrassment for being incapable at winning a rodeo despite placing in the overall top ten… out of two hundred ponies competing.

“Yona is being very happy for you two my closest of friends!” After Yona said that, Spindle threw in a squeak of agreement.

I think I actually really missed Lit, that little guy was beyond the impossible at such a tiny size. Wonder what he was doing now? He must be so upset that he couldn’t follow Dolly around. That or he could have just gone back to eating lightning out of a lightning rod and not care, but I doubted he’s that lazy.

-Somewhere in the Digimon Digital Realm connected to the Pokémon realm at that moment, Lit the Joltik ‘Super Hero’-

There were still some issues with Machinedramon going out of control, but here he was dealing with them… with Tsumemon at his side!

Also his friends Gilgamesh the red bulky bug guy and Greekidu the Chocobo.

“Tsumemon warp digivolve too… Zanbamon!” His friend from Jijimon’s home had eventually found and joined him in his travels. Swearing brother ship and allegiance, also somehow making Lit a troubleshooter of Yggdrasil.sys otherwise known as a Digidestined.

Fighting one Machinedramon with a Mega wouldn’t be hard, fighting thirty at the same time? A little more challenging to be sure.

-Equss, Equestria, Canterlot, detainment room, Jade-

“Won’t we need an adult to help us though?” Silver Stream stated as I walked in, the foal-sitter of my little Silvers was looking for a way into Tambelon. I should probably mention that Fizzy was already on top of things.

My petty kitty nature was riled up and I had plans forming in the back of my head, Saddle Arabia, what’s that? Is it an instrument? Didn’t matter, Tambelon really needed to end before Hearths Warming near the end of this month. I did not like the cruelty I saw there and I’m not abandoning cute puppies, Pom and my favorite Huoshan Guard Tianhuo to that.

“Hey guys, I’ll help!” Yep, I cared about all my friends, even the ones I seriously annoyed. At least Tianhuo, Huoshan’s Puppy Patrol and Pom were all together again. “You know that I’m an adult right?”

“That’s kind of what we’re afraid of.” Gallus stated bluntly.

“Ooh… my adopted little brother, right through the heart!” I acted like I was seriously hurt by the hinted at accusation of my character, I did deserve that accusation however so I’m fine with it. “So what you want is someone who knows plans for fixing the portal and stabilizer to randomly jump into Tambelon right?”

“Yeah, but what unicorn are we going to get to…” Gallus paused and realized where this was going. “Oh come on, not even you can be that convincing and I know Fizzlepop isn’t going to be happy that you tried.”

“I’m her bed warmer and cuddle toy, I have a little more pull than someone who jumped ranks in the royal guard for being exceedingly competent. Plus I know Fizzy, she’s not going to leave it at that with a mission entirely incomplete. She’s already on it and will get back to me this evening, I’ll tell you guys the time frame we’re working on then.” That and I knew Gallus could catch and restrain me at my best, so he deserved the title he earned for himself. Good on him for putting all the work in to stay healthy and better than most of the royal guard, Sergeant Shady would likely want to help too. I’ve been making a good rapport with him as a friend. “If you’re wondering, I convinced her half an hour ago not that she really needed it as she was going to do it anyway… the convincing was a lot of fun though.”

“Did you at least shower before coming here?” Gallus sniffed the air.

“What do you take me for, an irredeemably crazy psychotic super villain of Saddle Arabia?” They stared at me. “Okay, don’t answer that one… or mention the letter I sent out a minute ago that might cause some problems for Saddle Arabia in like three years. Put a really slow burn on that one, maybe I can get Saddle Arabia before then...”

“Is your messing with Saddle Arabia chronic at this point?” As laid back as Sandbar was, I was pinned by his stare that promised several things. None of them good if I didn’t answer him honestly.

“Yes, it is. I’ve been going to therapy for it.” Not that it was really helping me, they knew exactly why I had a chip in my shoulder about Saddle Arabia. Ballad Din’s descendants were at least on top of all the trouble running wild in the streets and my haunted Zamponi running amuck. Didn’t even ask how it was haunted at this point, I’m just accepting it as being a thing from building stuff out of parts manufactured and put together with magical alchemy. “Now can we get back on topic, are you sure you want to dive back into Tambelon even knowing it might get you grievously hurt, dead or worse than that?”

“Yes.” Gallus answered immediately alongside all of his friends, I’m so proud of our little early guard.

“If you die in Tambelon, then little Gavin is going to be so upset his uncle isn’t around anymore.” I pointed out blithely.

“Who said anything about dying?” Gallus stated with a smarmy grin on his beak.

“Now you’re getting into the La Perm spirit of things!” I said with a bright smile, my family was a wonderful mishmash of my mother’s efforts to make a big family from having so little.

“Should we be worried?” Smolder and Silver Stream stated at the same time and they glanced at one another, then smiled a bit.

“Hey I’m Gallus’s adoptive big sister, I have to look out for him and his best friends in the whole wide world… also mom is expecting grandchildren from him. So she’ll want me to keep all of you alive at all costs. Definitely Silver Stream and Gallus for sure.” That wasn’t exactly the most comforting thing I could have said, but mother Kuril was a queen that like giving affection and feeding hungry waifs. “Mind you the La Perm family has no sense of normalcy so expect general chaos and madcap antics since Arizona is going to be coming with us. Need help or protection, stay behind her and use her body as a shield. She’s good for it.”

“Not making me feel better about being successfully adopted by Kuril here.” Yes, keep giving out that flat disapproval Gallus. You can’t escape the love of a queen easily, once it has been applied.

“Then blame Maries for getting the paperwork through as fast as they did.” Knowing for a fact that I knew he wouldn’t do that, he had a decent relationship with them and my little Silvers.

“Okay stop it, I can see where this is going and it’s going to be an hour long back and forth between you two sniping at each other somehow.” You didn’t have to call it out so readily Smolder, Gallus enjoys the sister brother bonding we have… also Abyssinians were sometimes catty jerks and griffons weren’t far off from being that way either if they were feeling greedy on a particular day. We have a lot in common to no one’s surprise. “What’s the estimated time of our getting back into Tambelon? The sooner the better, because I doubt Pom could fight an entire army alone… sure she could fight most of an army alone, but she isn’t going to wing and she can hardly hurt the Troggles. Not to mention Hollow Heart and Grogar are major threats there.”

“Yeah, those two are going to be major problems, Grogar especially since he’s a powerful demon goat even without his bell putting him on par with gods. Also I cannot give you an estimated time, but expect it to be quick. Fizzy may have control problems with her horn, but she’s still one of the most powerful unicorns around while only being a bit below an alicorn in magical strength without the requisite control. Believe me, she’ll help recreate a new portal stabilizer into Tambelon in short order.” The threat that I was aware of who was slowly working his way back to breaking his own way back into Equus, Grogar, was powerful enough to contact and create a cult here on Equus with just his presence and minimal power. So his danger was something we couldn’t overlook, but I’m not capable of beating a demon… in a fair fight anyway. Still didn’t have any ideas about how to fight him unfairly though, the guy was terrifying by his very presence alone and was likely a true immortal unless highly unusual circumstances occurred. “First off and something to keep you all busy and not causing trouble, you need to get your supplies ready. Water, food, medical and combat, plus maybe a blanket for a small makeshift shelter in case you get separated from us. Fluttershy and Discord have the emergency supplies ready to go, but we need to get everyone’s personal supplies squared away as I don’t know how well we could rely on finding Discord’s supplies with the chaotic places they could show up… also I need to go to the bathroom and I suggest you do so too. Tambelon doesn’t have much in the way of plumbing… though the castle certainly does and they even had that route covered.”

“Quick question, what did the stabilizer do as far as magical alchemy is concerned when you did a cast with it?” Ah, was wondering when someone would ask Gallus.

Fizzy wasn’t interested, since she knew that I knew what it did and that was enough for her. I would tell her, or at least someone, if it was something with a highly dangerous negative consequence.

“Oh that? It stabilized everything in a given area conceptually… don’t think too hard about everything ‘conceptually’ being stabilized. It even included my slightly wonky magical genetics as hybrid Abyssinian unicorn, I think I’m fully viably compatible with ponies now. Not like that was a problem before, but I’m not about to tell my mother or anyone about it or else I’ll be put on some kind of endangered species list and forced to procreate. Oh and it prevented the portal it was holding open from closing in a more… ‘volatile’… manner, so there’s that.” Why did everyone tense and stare at me like that with worry? It wasn’t like that could have gone entirely wrong. “The effect was entirely benign. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go find the nearest toilet that I can use… pony sized toilets are a little bit annoying.”

-Silver Stream-

“So… we can get into Tambelon, do you guys think my archery is good enough for that?” Unlike my teacher, I could actually use real arrows. Jacky was really good with a number of incredibly odd objects.

“You can snipe your teacher from half a mile away, I think you’ve got this.” Thanks for the vote of confidence Gallus!

“And I did so several times, never met someone so cursed before.” I’m surprised she survived the multiple arrows to the chest and butt, plus that tree that fell on her after I accidentally put an arrow in her leg that slowed her down just enough to get crushed by it.

“Cursed, do you be talking about Captain Jacky ‘The Blackcap’ Chickadee?” Yeah, that goat had been fairly quiet, but her machine bird friend was really good at making ice cream. She seemed surprised he could even do ice cream or pudding, I mean if he could create jam then obviously had had methods for working with milk in his body so of course ice cream was possible.

“Yep, never met a pirate who could survive hunting so many cursed artifacts, in fact she makes habit of doing that deliberately because she’s already cursed and her curse can’t be made any worse than it already is.” I was a bit worried I almost accidentally killed her numerous times, but she seemed just as chipper as the first time I met her and she never held it against me.

She was also a really good teacher for someone who couldn’t fire arrows in a straight line to save her life, and it once did save her life and that of many people because she couldn’t, she was really good with a regular bow using normal arrows as much as her special bow.

“Should I be getting everyone’s stuff ready and together?” It was always nice of Sandbar to volunteer doing stuff for us.

“Yes, also be sure to take a note to the local guard barracks about the two extra loaded quivers they have in storage for me, thanks!” Ice arrows, sticky bomb arrows and the normal sharp pointy ones I currently had on me. Two of those arrow types were for catching or disabling criminals, the last one wasn’t nearly as nice and I hoped I didn’t have to seriously hurt anybody.

-Some hours later, Dimensional R & D stable, Starlight Glimmer-

“So Twilight is getting an idea of where she can settle the Stonebacks and their adopted wild ponies… what do you think ‘their’ status in Tambelon is now?” The stuff happening in there was sickening to hear about, also Jaded was quite thorough with her drawn maps. It was actually really impressive if you didn’t know she did the same thing when it came to breaking magical security systems, the only maps she didn’t have was of the inner workings of Castle Tambelon or the insides of the buildings in the City of Bells.

“Probably not good, but I’m sure they managed to get away or are alive, those Troggles aren’t fast even if their throwing arms sure are.” Oh Sunburst… I still find you very highly attractive, now if only some unicorns like me weren’t prone to insanity over the smallest things. Phyllis has been balancing out my more mania related issues. “Pom and Tianhuo are both very fast individuals, the Canis Minor are decently speedy too and very strong. Don’t know about the informational entity, but I heard the Dalmatian has momentum based magical abilities. They are feasibly alive, but we won’t know for how long.”

“Heard the Dalmatian does ice magic too, how does that translate into momentum based magic?” That was something I wanted to know.

“The arresting of momentum by ‘stopping it cold’ in a literal sense would count as well. I’d assume she was capable of lightning and fire too if she can speed things up.” Okay, that was actually sounded logical enough to me Sunburst. Now if only my dreams of a herd would work, Trixie was already okay with it, but getting Suburst on board with it was going to take some doing. I wasn’t exactly the friendliest unicorn in the world and I’ve made some mistakes he was quite clearly aware of despite me trying to rekindle our friendship after them. “That magical alchemy stuff is really amazing, it stabilized all the magic in the entire region of Canterlot for about an hour! Amazing… then again with all the power going into the portal, understandable. So Fizzlepop wanted to know how long it would take to get a new stabilizer in place, I know we have the supplies, but you’re the one with estimates.”

“Do we really intend to send people in to just rescue Pom and her family, did you see that odd golden glow she gave off?” That was terrifying, but also why did it even happen in the first place? Why did that golden glow occur and how did it allow her to defy so much magic? “She resisted Twilight and the extra power Celestia and Luna lent her to control the sun and moon.”

“That’s because she has anti-magic properties, Twilight couldn’t have saved her with magic no matter how much she tried.” That was an actual thing Sunburst? I mean I had heard of anti-magic material, but an anti-magic lambkin? I’m mean Lambkin were nuts, but not that macadamia. Which reminds me that I need to pick up some special roasted nuts for Trixie. “Also yes, we’re going to save them and whoever else we can while not letting Grogar out. That he’s managed to even farm back some of his power while trapped in Tambelon is horrifying! Also think about it Starlight, if Grogar is doing that to unicorns… how long will it be until he has enough power to counteract what Gusty the Great managed to pull off? He will eventually come back to Equus and Equestria for his bell even if we don’t try to stop him from trying.”

It makes one wonder why so many unicorns believed themselves so superior to other races, I don’t see unicorns ruling over dragons… mostly because they would beat us in a straight with their ridiculous resistance to magic. I had once wanted to everyone to be equal once, but how I was living now was much better than what I was doing previously. I actually had a purpose and a place, I was actually happy for once in my life instead of miserable and making others equally miserable. That and I let my crush on Sunburst get way too far out of control and blamed special talents.

Thinking on it…

That Grogar was stealing the power of unicorns, he could feasibly eventually farm enough of those poor ponies to get out in the future by himself in enough time even if we didn’t let him out accidentally. So Pom and Tianhuo would likely set the ground work for that, we very well couldn’t abandon them.

So we would deal with him immediately before he could peaceably, at least that’s the way Twilight will want it to go. Sometimes peace wasn’t an option and there were all those Troggles we had to somehow deal with attacking us as we tried to get every last pony and donkey out of Tambelon.

We would be attempting to leave Grogar as the only being in Tambelon that could never escape by himself, this means we’d be stealing the Troggles too… that would be a very sad and lonely existence, but it was warranted as we don’t know what Grogar would do to the Troggles afterwards. We don’t want him to do something like use soul magic on the Troggles to gain more power.

We had to do this, as we were made aware of a major threat that was slowly growing in power, so that future generations don’t have to worry about him popping up out of the blue and blindsiding them like Luna did for that one night that lasted a really long time.

“Three days at best, we’re taking rest breaks and not rushing this.” I finally stated.

“Is that just you two working on it or is it with help?” Fizzle stated as she entered the room, the unicorn that actually took Celestia and Luna down.

For all the power present, Fizzy actually succeeded at capturing and holding Canterlot. I never knew how bad the royal guard was until then. They at least looked like they could do their jobs and nowadays they actually could with some extreme training.

“That’s us two… a day and a half with someone that can work on it at our level. Again with requisite breaks and not rush jobbing something this stupidly dangerous.” Then thinking about it I decided to bring it up. “If Jaded is correct and they are farming unicorn horns for magic…”

“And possibly as a food source after being worked to death. Then I’ll be entirely professional about it, yes.” Fizzlepop then proceeded to just bluntly tell us what Sunburst and I were thinking on not too long ago. “We’re actively invading Tambelon for the safety of future generations if Grogar can build back his power. His methods might not be the most efficient, but if he eventually succeeds and somehow gets his bell back, he’ll have basically increased his power by a lot and will be practically unstoppable. Equestria is actually being quite proactive about this sealed threat in a can for once, especially with a lot of unicorns calling on us to do so given that Jaded has spread the news as to what we’re working on in the background and why we’re keeping it quiet. Nobody wants Grogar to come back to Equus and nobody wants him to keep harming unicorn’s foals, even if they’d be of no relation to anyone existing today. Even the less than noble among the nobles have their limits on lines that should not be crossed, so even the unicorn supremacist party in the lower ends of government wants to stop Grogar. Also for the record, I really hate politics and this is a far more interesting thing for me to be doing as a use of my time.”

“So we’re sending everyone in?” Sunburst was worried about those we were sending in, Jaded’s report on barely being able to deal with Troggles physical might was there in the report she wrote up… while she was still in Tambelon no less and had guessed every last question that would or could be asked about the situation.

Jaded was quite thorough, even if she couldn’t even ‘safely’ break the security of Tambelon Castle in the City of Bells.

“Only those who volunteer to do so. Jaded is one of them, she may be a major nuisance to any guard in existence, but she truly cares about her friends. That and she has been wanting to destroy an entire country, Tambelon counts as a foreign country with eventual intentions to invade and destroy us as it tried to do to the unicorn settlers in the past. My Storm Creatures are all volunteering to fight the Troggles. They should be on par with them for their size, but not exactly their strength so I have an army willing and able to assist the endeavor in a siege.” Fizzy had a warm smile on her face as she said this, likely because her approval ratings with the Storm Creatures were as high as ever. “I’ll be there to make sure nothing happens to Jade. In other news Discord’s supplies have disappeared, apparently they hit the emergency supply beacon recently. So the realm is now ‘randomly’ full of supplies that can only be opened by those going into the realm that have arrive there within this year, that limits those that can open those crates to newly born foals and anyone we send in. Discord has promised us the supplies couldn’t be misused by anyone otherwise, also he made them very noticeable. So Pom’s family should they survive the next day and a half if they can dodge Grogar’s army, then we’ll be able to get someone back in there to start setting up the Tambelon’s fall.”

“So Grubber will be bringing the entirety of your forces around?” Just for confirmation that ponies would be seeing the entire Storm Queen army again for this operation.

“Yes.” Fizzy nodded along with that.

-One and a half days later, outside the room with the portal to Tambelon, Sergeant Shady-

“Okay, be aware that going in you’ll randomly appear anywhere above ten to one foot above a solid surface. You could be in the City of Bells, you could possibly appear in Tambelon Castle and you can even appear on the outskirts. So Keep your head on a swivel and be prepared to roll or dodge the moment you appear as you may need to run and regroup immediately. We have word that the Troggles have good aim with their throwing spears. Good luck in there and for those of you who are a unicorn do not, under any circumstances, be capture by Grogar’s forces!” I could see Jaded sticking with the ones we only freshly rescued, that Ocellus was quite a powerful changeling… not quite queen material, but she could be. Kind of surprising she’d go back to Tambelon, when it felt almost as dead as Queen Chrysalis’s heart. “Arizona Arid, you’re going to be first to breach this time. Cause a ruckus and draw attention, also remember that you have a reason to come home again and congratulations are in order. The more forces you can draw you’re way the better the others coming in, though scattered as they may very well be, will not be under as much immediate threat.”

“Making a ruckus is what I’m good at!” Arizona grinned broadly and had a wild air about her. “Also how did you hear about my herd going to the hospital? I only learned that five minutes ago.”

“Information specialist, it’s my job to keep Equestria secure from all who would harm my friends, family and favorite food source.” I stated plainly and jokingly on that last part. “Grogar is not just a threat to Equestria anymore, he’s now considered an active threat to this whole planet! One we intend to stop and will not allow to fester like so many problems before, the Royal Guard actually intends to solve this one!”

“Yeah, let’s do this!” Didn’t know how much Garble could do, he was a civilian… at least he was a dragon. Troggles weren’t fire proof according to Jaded, but they were still highly resilient bastards that even fire was going to take a bit to do some real damage.

“Good luck with being the first one to lead this invasion Arizona.” I said to the cow, the portal was opened and Arizona lunged through without a second thought.

-City of Bells, Arizona ‘Earth Shaker’ Arid-

As soon as my hooves hit the dirt I was hit by at least five spears. Four had bounced off my skin and one actually stuck into my left side making me actually bleed. I pulled it out with my teeth and then glared at the offending Troggle.

Guys weren’t lookers, but if they were tough as reported and even that Tianhuo couldn’t take them down for too long… then I had my work cut out for me as a fighter.

Oh yeah, it’s also been a while since I’ve been hurt!

Like Shady said, I had a reason to come back, I don't even know what my kids will look like. Seriously couldn't even begin to imagine, but they will know that I'm as insane as my parents.

"You, you're my first beat down!" I charged at the Troggle that managed to hurt me with a mad grin.

So I might have had some of my father and mother's proclivities when it came to being called 'Mad Cow'.

477. Sieging the City of Bells.

-Overlooking Earth, Dogstar Patrol Headquarters, Mammoth Mutt-

We had finally left the pocket dimension, lots of really nice people in there. I stared at the place where chaos was routine around this one planet.

“I wonder if they will take my lecture to heart…” It was hard to talk about losing my boyfriend, but any loss should never easy as it picks away at parts of us who cared. Dealing with the aftermath of said loss wasn’t any easier and the one named Shanty seemed to be very keen on talking about the loss of the changeling, a shape shifter like Ocellus, which used to take care of her and the subsequent burning down of her home when said changeling was found out.

Tusky had recently lost a girl he liked, because she was very much attached to her partner, Dolly was a very interesting Dalmatian. The opposable digits was definitely not a normal evolution of most canines, but it was on the planet Dolly came from which shared a name. She was as alien as the rest of us to the planet below, if dimensionally a bit to the left.

All the things we’ve lost is something I tried not to think about too hard, but I still talked about it with Pom’s traveling group before they headed off into a terrible situation. I wonder how well they will take those lessons to heart, about the things we’ll regret never saying and holding onto the precious memories we had.

To the original Mammoth Mutt, I hope I’ve carried you’re legacy well my beloved. You stuck by me even when there was something wrong with me biologically in my inability to use the full scopes of what I should be capable of.

I have never forgotten… and never will.

-Equus, Canterlot, portal room, Gallus-

We watched as Sergeant Slim Shady, along with a bunch of ponies of various races, charge into Tambelon. Their mission… to try and detain the populace of ponies on the other side while fighting off and capturing the troggles as well.

I didn’t have any personal or selfish reason to want to jump into Tambelon. Wasn’t being paid nearly enough to do something this crazy and I doubt anyone could. I was still going to do it.

I was doing this for the future of Equus, we already had Smolder and Ocellus back, yet they still wanted to go back for Pom and her family. Being the good friend I am, I’m going to make sure all my training wasn’t for nothing. Sandbar, Yona and Stream even agreed that this was going to be bad, but we’re still all for doing it and nobody was stopping us.

I watched as the Foenum group finally go in, Foenum Pom, Foenum Tianhuo, Foenum Arizona, Foenum Velvet and finally Foenum Paprika who stopped to give me a hug and words of encouragement… now if only I could understand what two tongue clicks and a bunch of gibberish meant. The only foenum hero missing was Foenum Oleander, that and the possible Foenum version of Shanty that might or might not exist as Foenum had a lot of copies of those who lived here on Equus.

After all the trouble with Tirek, Cozy Glow and Chrysalis with Grogar’s bell, we were kind of going in after Grogar himself and will see what he was really like when Discord wasn’t doing an impersonation of the demon goat. Hopefully we could avoid meeting him personally.

“We’re going to see horrifying stuff aren’t we, but I think we’ve got this.” I said while adjusting my armor. My friends and I were going to hold hooves, claws and whatever else in the hopes that we all ended up in the same place or generally the same area if a bit scattered.

“I’m scared about going back in, but…” Ocellus received a group hug from all sides and smiled. She was loved and loved us back. The sweetest among us who’s been in dangerous positions for the past year.

“Yona get to smash… a lot, I see it as a great opportunity!” Yona stated cheerfully. As we watched Flamberge, Fortitude ‘The Fantastically Fragrant!’ along with several others and the Pillars of what built Equestria to what it is today go in.

Starswirl was still making up for his polluting an entire world with magic, apparently someone named Sunset Shimmer was working as a one unicorn cleanup crew for that. Yona was happy to see Rockhoof and waved as he was the last to enter behind Flash Magnus, Rockhoof acknowledged her with a nod and then bravely strode forth into Tambelon with a stone shovel over his shoulder that doubled as a hammer.

One would wonder if we were overdoing it with the people we were sending in for this, but this was a demon we were dealing with… we needed absolutely all the help we could get. A number of storm creatures had already gone in and knew what Fizzy wanted them to do.

My big adoptive sister, as annoying as she could be, gave us a set of fireworks that would alert Pom to our presence once we got over there. Apparently the fireworks were specifically geared to grab her and Tianhuo’s attention, given it was the signal they would both recognize as Huoshan signal fireworks.

Don’t know what Jade was going to be up to, but Celestia came in with a cake and Twilight made a declaration that they were, ridiculously enough, disavowing any knowledge that Jade was sent into Tambelon with it. Also what was very concerning was that it was stated quite loudly by Twilight Sparkle that the Ge-neigh-va Convention wasn’t recognized in Tambelon to anyone who was listening and everyone seemed to find many other things quite interesting.

Those were two particularly specific things that sent chills down my back as Jaded sent me a worried look and then nodded to Fizzlepop before charging through with one of Daring Do’s many lost whips in claw.

Fizzlepop followed soon after, as queen of the Storm Creatures, she had to be on the ground to command them.

“Are you sure about this Gallus?” Twilight asked as she saw my group was next, she and her friends were the last line of defense behind Celestia and Luna. We couldn’t afford to send any of the princesses or alicorns into Tambelon on an offensive, since this was no longer a rescue operation, this also might be my last chance to say something.

“My big sister and Fizzlepop just went in there.” I stated blithely while pointing at the daunting portal with an index talon, noting that two of my family members gave me a loose reason to care about going in. “Also the friends of my friends who can be my friends are in there along with said family. I joined the Royal Guard not just to earn a paycheck or be a citizen of Equestria, though it’s really quite nice to be paid for my efforts, I joined to help people. Also to prove that the Royal Guard is not a joke to all other factions of the world and that it is worthy of the definition of being called a ‘guard’, one that I’m going to be proud to be a member of and this will give griffons some credit! Not all of us are money grubbing jerks.”

This was the first time, in a very long time, that the Royal Guard were being highly proactive about a threat. We would have to succeed, failure wasn’t exactly an option here.

“Let’s go bro!” Sandbar backed me up and the six of us charged into Tartarus. Smolder, Ocellus, Yona, Sandbar, Stream and I all at once passed through the portal as one… the best friends I could ever have asked for. That I really needed when I was living on the streets like Shanty, who was riding Dodo in after us.

There were several things we had to do as soon as we entered.

First get oriented, know you’re position and that of the surrounding danger, if you let disorientation get to you… well death is least that could happen here. At least I wasn’t a unicorn and what fate being captured might imply, yet a number of unicorn stallions and mares with a lot of stones and grit came in here knowing that. They had something to prove, that the guard was not a complete and utter joke like it has been for the last ten years or so.

I hit the ground rolling and then brought up my spear, to deflect a stabbing spear in an instant. My reaction times were brought up by a Sekhmet trained Jaded La Perm who came at me with lethal intent with a clone of herself, Sekky was an awesome trainer and coach who helped me get up as close to demigod in reaction times as she could.

Even if the blow sent me skidding backwards I stayed upright, I got a look at the Troggle. Big, pig faced, all muscles upper body, weaker lower half and very resistant to injury. That blow had almost toppled me, if he didn’t outright kill me just by skewering me within seconds into coming through.

I was on the outskirts of a city, the once fabled City of Bells. There was the sound of fighting going on all over, Storm Creatures were actually a fair match for the Troggles. Multiple mares and stallions being sent flying by bullish pigs in the chaos, but they got up and kept going and showed that the training the royal guard has been getting hasn’t entirely put them on the back hoof.

Bringing my attention back to the Troggle charging me, I had to think about how to deal with him.

A massive hoof of sand slammed down right on top of him, it was unfortunate that that at best dazed him slightly and made him stumble a bit. Sandbar was right behind me then, good to know.

Emotionally, Sandbar was a wuss, guy cried about a Hearth’s Warming toy being out of place on a fireplace… he’s not the one that had to sleep under a pile of leaves that were half on fire to get through a winter and he cried for an hour about hearing of my living conditions for the last few years before being adopted by a witch.

At least Kuril specialized in cooking good magical food that bucked malnutrition in the groin… some of which can have bizarre effects as turning you invisible when she wasn’t keeping her potions and food preparation areas separated. Worms didn’t taste too bad, but surviving the cold was hard when you didn’t know how to make a good fire.

His ability in a fight, a different thing entirely and glad he was here for me as he deflected several spears with a wall of sand. I flapped my wings and got above the spear thrust and slammed my rear legs into the Troggles face knocking them over.

I brought the butt of my spear high and the back flapped to send myself plummeting it into the Troggle’s skull, they were out. One down and… that’s a lot more to go. I’m the one here that’s a trained guard, my friends were a bit more to be worried about. Thankfully we all seemed to have appeared in a loosely patrolled area.

Once oriented, seek out friends and allies to group up with. Easy enough… I could see Yona doing her Shield Maiden thing by plowing through a few Troggles like only a yak could. With a happy shout and yell that she didn’t have to hold back on her ridiculous strength with anyone trying to hurt us.

Stream was firing a stream of ice and sticky arrows that were disabling Troggles and trying to avoid the numerous thrown spears coming at her. She wasn’t as good at flying as she was swimming, but my helping her with flying lessons really made her soar. She looked beautiful up there and was using my lessons of aerial awareness that all Pegasus and Griffons went through.

I saw Smolder making a Troggle punch themselves using a ribbon. Smolder was always tough, despite her hiding her love of cute and silly things, which Ocellus rated as being one of the most adorable things ever.

After taking out a few more ankles and attacking low constantly, because attacking the upper half of a Troggle was just asking for retaliation according to Jaded. And… whoa… look at her go.

Ocellus didn’t use to be nearly that brave… or violent. I was seeing some of the things she tried to use to get back into Tambelon. I’m surprised Twilight even let Smolder and Ocellus come back here. Further inspection had me noticing that Ocellus wasn’t transforming into one thing, she was mixing and matching traits of various creatures… changelings could do that? Well I mean I knew Ocellus could grow gills like a sea pony to stay underwater indefinitely without fully turning into a sea pony, though said gills weren’t very efficient and didn’t have to be, they just had to work.

I focused up and readied my spear, there were plenty of the guard already dug into the fighting and they were actually holding their own even if some weren’t doing as great without Storm Creature muscle in support of our efforts. I dove in myself with my friends all nearby.

“Can I be getting those fireworks, please?!” Shanty stated as she slashed her way through several Troggles, her magical cutting attacks were vicious and almost unblockable for the Troggles. She wasn’t killing any of them, but I wouldn’t want to be in her way.

Shanty was an odd one, having only met and known her for a day, she was like me in so many ways that it hurt.

“Can you help me clear the area up a bit first?” I know is was a bit much to ask, She seemed desperate to see Pom again. I would be desperate too if I had a positive figure in my life that got into as much danger as Pom was said to have been, nearly dying numerous times that cared about me more than her own life.

“Then it will be being done!” Shanty stated as she and Dodo started to tear into the Troggles, it wouldn’t take five minutes of us working together to set up a staging and rallying point outside the City of Bells for a number of lost Royal Guard, Storm Creatures and everyone else involved who didn’t know where to go that were fighting for their very lives.

It wasn’t long afterwards that we set up the fireworks and Shanty showed off the campfire lighting technique with a clap of her hooves.

The flash of pink, white, green and orange in the sky was pretty, but I wonder what it meant in Huoshan.

-Somewhere outside of the City of Bells, Tianhuo-

I stirred when I heard the noise, it sounded like Huoshan fireworks? They were very specific and I saw Pom stiffen under me. Hollow Heart had battered me quite badly, but we had found a supply crate, which had enough food for us for a few days.

I simply could not harm the shadow beast in any permanent manner. I didn’t know how a fight with Grogar would go if he could command such a terror as that shadow of what was once a mortal bat pony and Pom had been right in that Dolly couldn’t figure out how to replicate the feat to send him away.

Pushing the massive boulder to the side, one would think my strength spent, but sleep and food made up for how little sleep we’ve gotten over the last twenty four hours. Hollow Heart had been relentless and really wanted Pom dead, I would not allow that under any circumstance.

I looked in the direction of the City of Bells and saw it. A Huoshan signal, Pom got up and looked up at the sky. The golden wool wringing around her neck was giving off an ill omen of how long she had left to live and be at my side, we have cuddled and were barely on five hours sleep. It took burying ourselves alive to avoid Hollow Heart… but now Hollow Heart would be after whoever launched those fireworks.

“Why did they come back for us?” Pom stated with a whine knowing exactly what those particular fireworks meant.

“They would, they did, but that is not the problem. Where do you think Hollow Heart is going to be soon?” I was here to witness a look of horror in Pom’s eyes as they widened. “Also I believe I can see the reason why they would come back. What are the chances that Grogar would pose a threat to Equus eventually should he be capable of escaping his prison eventually even without the power of his bell?”

“Pretty good and wouldn’t that catch future generations flat hoofed like Nightmare Moon did with the whole world, except that situation had been somewhat planned for over the course of a thousand years by Celestia apparently. Are you okay to actually fight Tian, Hollow Heart really roughed you up badly the last few times he found us.” Pom was wary of the shadow beast and had wanted to fight him alongside me, but I was letting Pom get rest and her canine companions agreed she need some more. I was still somewhat fresh if hurting. “I can fight too you know.”

“You don’t want to though and I endeavor to heed those wishes.” She deserved some peace at least.

“I hate wishing for things for a variety of reasons as you already know.” Pom started to trot in the direction the fireworks went off. “Come on Tianhuo, Dolly, Dormarch, Puff, Tuft, Ruff and Woof, it looks like there’s a huge fight going on in Tambelon and we’re missing quite a party. Really don’t know how you can still love a scarred mess like me Tianhuo.”

“How can I not?” I snorted at the idea that Pom thought she wasn’t worth the effort. “Do not put any words in my mouth or thoughts in my head that are not my own Pom. I already knew Lambkin were odd or difficult, mentally, physically, spiritually and socially, but I still put a bell on you. I sang a heart song in my devotion to my partner. Have I not allayed your worried enough by cuddling you as you rested from all the running we’ve done?”

“That you did…” Pom mumbled while looking at her golden wool, as pretty as it was, filled me with a certain dread. The only white wool left was on her head. “As long as I avoid the threshold I should survive this… really don’t want to have gold wool for the rest of my life though.”

“Only if you grow wings?” I asked.

“I hope you’re ready to say goodbye if I do.” Pom… I would never be ready for that, no matter how many years or days until it inevitably happens. “I just stay at the edge of the precipice, in the end stepping over it is my decision. It will inevitably kill me once I’ve grown wings and nobody, not even gods, would be able to prevent what happens next.”

Did Pom not realize we were running towards danger? The likeliest thing to cause her to grow the wings she wants, if not for the price of her life? She has dreamed of flying with me so much before, now she’s terrified. Yet I stayed on the ground as we both galloped towards the City of the Bells, I was not taking to the air unless it was necessary to attack or defend us.

When we arrive we saw the fighting, vicious and all over the place, but one thing stood out among all of it. Above some of the buildings with in the city was a familiar brown figure that had lassoed the terror that would not stop coming at us.

“Why won’t you go down?!” Arizona screamed as slammed a shadowy mass into the ground with a rope after several spiraling flips, send up a pillar of dust and debris from within the city.

“We should probably tell Arizona that there’s not much point in fighting Hollow Heart.” Pom said in my side as she gazed around at the Troggles engaged in battles all over the place, most of them were winning, some were losing.

I recognized a number of ponies as being from the Equestrian Royal Guard, the stallions were definitely having a better time of it than the mares.

-Inside the City of Bells, Arizona Arid (Equus)-

Hollow Heart got up and lunged at me and attempted to stab me with his wings, how absurdly sharp are those thing?!

I avoided that, but I didn’t avoid the hard left hoof to the face that almost broke my jaw and bloodied my face. I went tumbling through two buildings before I righted and managed to slam my hooves into the broken streets to get standing. The Tambelon native Ponies and donkeys scattered in fright and curiosity as to what was going on, I wonder if it seemed like we were battling gods at the level we refighting at?

Jumping up a second later, I broke an offending Troggle’s face for trying to stab me in mine with a rear legged flying power buck and put him through a building. I quickly hopped back to avoid Hollow Heart slamming into the street like a meteor.

Troggles I could handle, this guy… this guy was relentless. His toothy grin was constant reminder about how little I’ve done to him despite pulling out some of my best moves, even a Mach-it Launcher explosive hoof bullet did nothing but knock him back.

Hollow Heart seemed to smile gleefully in causing me pain. Was this guy invincible? It’s like he no longer cared about bones or internal organs. I’m glad I’m the one fighting him and not someone else, they wouldn’t have lasted nearly as long against this thing. He was definitely no longer a pony despite sharing something of a familiar appearance with one.

“Arizona, are you okay!” I heard a familiar voice ask as the growling shadow beast pony thing lunged and a golden blur with a bit of white landed a hoof directly into his face. His entire rear half bending forward from the impact. “Buster Wolf Triple!”

Three consecutive explosion came from the point of where Pom’s hoof connected with the smiling monster and sent him blasting away from her. The attack somehow catching Hollow Heart in each blast with incredible precision, what in the world was that technique she just did? Also where can I get some of the craziness?

I looked down the street and saw something curious as Tianhuo, Pom’s god Puppies and two new dogs joined up with me.

The grinning shadow beast was no long grinning, he was bleeding from claw like wounds on his body as if he was just clawed up by a wolf. He looked down at himself and now he was frowning and he sent a glare directly at Pom.

“Yeah, I’m fine, but I don’t think Hollow Heart likes you.” I said, also he actually looked to be in pain, nothing I did worked… but Pom hits him with an attack and suddenly she did damage that seemed to make him pause?

“Well the feeling’s mutual after he’s been on our backsides for… how long has it been?! What’s going on Arizona?” Pom asked as she watched as Hollow Heart spread his wings and glared at us.

“It’s been a day and a half Pom, the Royal Guard, alongside the Storm Creatures and a few others, are invading Tambelon. If you can’t leave until Grogar is dusted, then I’ll be sure to be here to try to make sure that happens. Grogar presents too big a threat after already somehow getting in contact with Ponies on Equus earlier in the year, we can’t exactly leave him to fester or return to his true strength and then get back his lost strength from his bell on top of that.” I informed them as to the reason why the streets were currently being flooded with fighting figures all over the place. The shadow beast that once was Hollow Heart started stalking towards us. “Also how did you even hurt the guy, nothing anyone has done to him works! I’ve put him through fifteen buildings and collapsed three on top of him, he just doesn’t feel pain… well up until you hit him that is. That’s the first time I think I’ve actually seem him feel or even react to an injury in some way. Even the royal guards and the storm creatures who’ve tried to help me didn’t do a single thing to him, magic, lightning, basically nothing works.”

“I don’t know, but I really don’t like the implication that I’m the only one that can defeat him.” After a moment of thought, Pom shuddered violently at the implications. “Well I wasn’t exactly in the greatest of health when I last fought him, that and I had expended most of my strength fighting shadow monster copies of Tianuo, Oleander, Fred, Paprika, Velvet, you and myself… maybe I can actually take him this time?”

“That is somewhat worrying, but I believe you can do it if you are the only one capable.” Of course Tianhuo would support Pom, but I was supportive too… something seemed different about the lambkin and I don’t mean the obvious gold colored wool covering most of her body. Did she finally get some of the potential I saw in her a long time ago? “While we cannot harm him directly, can we give Pom opportunities to deal with him somehow?”

“Sounds like a team up, are your new companions up for it like your god puppies?” I asked as I looked at the two Dalmatians, black and white spots, looked like those kind of dogs… though the one with the three spotted fish tails and the large goofy claws was a little odd.

“Yeah, I’m not leaving my mom to fight that thing by herself.” The goofy looking Dalmatian stated.

The other Dalmatian pointed at the shadow beast and then the ground while hefting her skateboard and standing on her hind legs.

“Right, the three of us, plus your canine menagerie. We’ve got this!” I said as I moved in front of Pom. “Just call me meat shield!”

“Hopefully not dead meat.” Pom moved behind me as her canines spread out. “Can you cover our backs Tianhuo?”

“Of course.” Tianhuo flared and her flaming wings, mane and tail. Lighting up the entire gloomy area.

“Thanks for lighting things up, I was getting tired of the gloomy red skies here.” I grinned flexed some muscles causing pops all along my body as I stretched out. “How about round two Hollow Heart with some fairness thrown in!”

“Please don’t taunt the functionally immortal unstoppable bat monster Arizona.” Whined Pom like old times, but she still looked ready to throw down and that was a small difference right there. She’d usually be too nervous to defend herself previously, she has come a long way.

“Oh and five of our Foenum Friends are out there helping out, so expect to see other Paprika… she’s still as affectionate as our Paprika usually is.” Why did me saying that cause Tianhuo and Pom to shiver. Paprika, whether it was the friendly Foenum version or not, wasn’t that bad!

Hollow Heart roared and started glowing with darkness and the shadows coalesced around him.

Why was Pom the only one that could hurt him? Hasn’t she been through enough at this point?

-Royal Guard and Storm Creatures rallying point, Shanty-

“They saw Pom and Tianhuo enter the City of Bells, apparently they were going towards that shadowy bat monster the cow was fighting. She’s just holding it off, not actually winning that fight.” A Royal Guard stated to me. When I asked him if they saw Tianhuo or Pom, the only longma and lambkin that should be around here. “That thing looks like a bat pony, but it acts like how a living nightmare feels.”

“Thanks, come on Dodo!” My buddy be kicking Troggles in the head and they be denting and scratching up his body with their spears and strength. He quickly broke away and dodged the thrown spears and came over to me.

“Wait, are you sure you want to go after that thing so many have been wounded by it already with nothing to show for it?!” The royal guard didn’t need to be worrying about me.

“Yes, I’ll be being fine!” I shouted back as I leapt up into Dodo’s scooping back and readied my cane scythe.

“Well if you’re sure you can do something to that thing, just remember that this is our rallying point for any chaos crates you find if you need food, help or medical supplies!” The guard didn’t give chase he instead blocked a number of spear that are being thrown at him with a magical barrier. “You’re not alone, names Just Cause by the way!”

“I am being Shanty and I be needed by what is being my family!” Yes, I be knowing that I’m not alone in this world, but I do not want to continue being without a family.

I rode off for an entrance into the city, Dodo expertly avoiding trouble with Troggles along the way. Big fluffy white creatures in black armor be fighting them on an even level, so they be friendly at least, I should be seeing about getting a Storm Creature on my crew.

The royal guard ponies required at least three or more to take down a single Troggle and that was when they were working together in a concerted effort. There were some that were better than the rest and needed two or three Troggles to give them a rough time, I just be knowing it is a bad idea to try and fight that kind of muscle directly. It’s like there were a hundred Lu Bu’s on the battlefield, but they are not being nearly as skilled as he in a fight.

It is probably being a long time since the Troggles have had anyone give them a real battle if the Royal Guard of Equestria is actually giving them trouble. That or the Royal Guard has become incredibly competent over the year since this adventure started. There are being a lot of wonders that have amazed me, but nothing more than the fact that someone would actually care about me... there was no way I wasn't going to be caring back!

478. A Hollow Victory.

-Tambelon, City of Bells, Drog-

When I woke up, I did not expect things to get weird. It was weird enough that a group would come here, what happened was that surprisingly Tambelon came under attack not too long afterwards.

Why was it surprising? It is because things hadn’t changed for thousands of years, then the one event of Grogar saying we have visitors and to find them to bring to him or else. Well the or else came and it wasn’t from Grogar that said ‘or else’ actually occurred. It had come from the visitors too our continued surprise.

A Troggle is usually defined by what they lacked.

If you lacked muscle that Troggles are known for? You could probably move faster without all the bulky muscles getting in the way.

If you lacked the speed, you might be more resilient and it’s harder to move because your skin is thicker than most.

If you lacked some lower body strength, and most Troggles do, then you had upper body strength to make up for it.

I lacked speed and strength, I was considered an unfortunate since my size was also a bit smaller than most Troggles, but I was still a Troggle and nothing would change that. Where I lacked, there were other things that made me special. So I think my intellect made up for where I lacked in size, I was still quite strong physically.

Most Troggles probably didn’t take a lot of time to consider the state of things or why we listened to Grogar, just that we did as we always have. In this instance I could see something was going to change one way or another, it seemed inevitable.

The ponies and donkeys had always been under the yoke of the Troggles. These new ponies from beyond… they were able to fight back and weren’t backing down from the Troggles nor did they fear them. They were smart and even good at fighting in numbers, where I could see that my brethren were not nearly as capable in groups.

We were capable of individual action, but working together wasn’t exactly our greatest strength and I was seeing it personally. The ponies had to outnumber us to win a fight, but they were winning not by brute force, they were winning by smarts and wearing down our numbers slowly.

I wasn’t under attack… yet. I’m really thankful for that, but what I was seeing let me know that I was right about ponies and donkeys being quite intelligent and it being a bad idea to keep beating them down when their lots in life is already bad. I was bullied just as much for my short stature and I didn’t see a reason to constantly add on to their suffering that Grogar enacted while stating the name Gusty constantly.

Now things were in chaos and I wanted to be anywhere else except here, possibly wherever these new ponies came from if I could swing them letting me come with them when they eventually left.

I watched as a Troggle was attacked, he didn’t do much fighting back, I think it was the psychological problem of dealing with someone who shared many similarities with Grogar. Horns but not as long, scraggly beard… then I started to notice where she differed, she had bar shaped eyes and not the slits that could fill with the one dreaded color and no big teeth… at least those eyes weren’t glowing red and followed by a promise of immense amounts of pain.

She was like the same kind of being Grogar was in appearance, but functionally she wasn’t Grogar. She smelled of salt and water, what little of that there was in Tambelon that wasn’t constantly rationed. I saw her swing her weapon and the Troggle fell over, his skin didn’t get hurt, but his muscles under his skin certainly did get damaged by whatever this strange being had done when creating those flashes in the air coming from her weapon.

She was riding a large metal bird and they charged at me, she swung, but the bird stopped short and I felt my life pass before my eyes as my rock spear split in half. I was quivering and looking up at the strange metal creatures eyes. For some reason they seemed… not bad, and a little upset, but not at me?

“Dodo why did you be stopping?” She certainly had some of Grogar’s appearance, but she didn’t have his demeanor and I’m kind of glad for that, if highly frightened, that the metal creature stopped before ramming into me.

This Dodo warbled something to the being on their back and then turned to me opening their beak and after a moment something was poking out of it. Soon the beak held something out to me and the creature stretched it head out to me making a strange noise.

I took a sniff of the thing… there has never been a smell quite like that before in all of Tambelon’s history as far as we Troggles could remember, history wasn’t our greatest subject for numerous reasons and I’m quite sure that when we’re taught things it’s always been reinforced to never question Grogar’s rule. I was now doing that very thing that was taboo.

The smell… it clogged my nose in a cloying way, the bird shifted its head forward a bit and I found myself holding up my hand and then reflexively something was pressed into and I closed my finger around the strange object. It was squishy? The smell was very enticing at the very least.

“Dodo likes you? He is usually being smart about things like this… don’t know why he be finding you interesting, but I be trusting him on this.” This thing likes me female Grogar being that was not quite the same as him? Grogar had this presence, you had an entirely different presence, one that felt… far better. One that felt like it was worth following. “Dodo be thinking you’re friendly, go ahead and eat the cinnamon roll. We are being needed now Dodo, so please to be moving again? Pom is being in danger you know!”

This Dodo made some strange sounds at the being on his back and then they continued on their way, leaving me holding this warm food called a cinnamon roll.

I took a bite… then another slowly chewing my way through its soft texture of velvet… unlike other Troggles who would have wolfed it down. I slowly savored what has been given to me and then I looked after the strange duo as they ran off and continued fighting other Troggles, deflecting spears and looking quite incredibly terrifying while doing so with that weapon.

What was terrifying was that the being size or strength didn’t matter to her, she still fought like a terror, but she only attacked those who were by all rights attacking her first. Every other Troggle was having similar reactions to her as I was.

Here I stood with sticky fingers wondering how I would ever get another one of those things in my lifetime, there has got to be a better place to be than under Grogar’s rule or Tambelon if things like that food making creature existed. I licked at my fingers to get the last of it and then considered what I should do.

My insides warmed at the thought of more food like that, the food did that itself too, but if I wanted to get out of Tambelon then I would have to throw myself at the mercy of the ones who came here to face Grogar and hoped they succeeded.

…

I started following in the wake of the two with the half of my spear that still had my spears tip, I had no clue what I could do. I just knew that I could no longer look Grogar in the eyes and declare myself loyal after that. Our enemies were not here to fight us, they were here to fight Grogar… the Troggles are just in the way.

I didn’t know if they could even defeat Lord Grogar the all-powerful ruler of Tambelon, but I was hoping they could just so I could have better living conditions than here. Wherever they came from, it was very much a paradise compared to Tambelon.

Knowing a few Troggles as I do, they would have immediately surrendered to those attacking us willingly if Grogar’s defeat was to be assured. Otherwise they had to fight with all they had if they even felt a hint Grogar’s gaze on their spines.

As for me, I cared not if Grogar ended me for turning on him, I would face my inevitable quick death with dignity.

It was better than living like this for the rest of my life, I wanted to see what was beyond Tambelon and more!

I felt a chill travel down my spine and I thought I saw some strange creature for a second smiling at me as the air moved around me… that was something that just didn’t happen in Tambelon.

-Tambelon Castle, basement, jail cell, Jaded La Perm-

“Of all the places I could have appeared…” I grumbled as I finished considering the jail cell. I wonder how long it’s been since the prison has seen a prisoner, also if Grogar tortures people personally for entertainment.

What else was an evil despot going to do stuck in his own realm when he’s bored out of his mind? Gusty the Great didn’t separate Tambelon into its own pocket dimension without a good and just cause for doing so.

Looking through the slot of the door, there were lots of bones, the stench of rotting was permeating every crevice of this place and the door was smart enough to have its hinges on the outside instead of where I could have easily pulled them out and render the door entirely pointless.

Trying to break the door wouldn’t do me any good and it would take a while… maybe… wait a moment.

I looked at the edges around the doors frame where it was stuck within the surrounding stone… the stone around the door wasn’t solid stone blocks. It was instead made of cobblestone.

I drew my knife and slowly worked at the rock around the frame of the door. After a few chunks of stone quickly came tumbling out from a little prodding, a grin came to my face as I eyed the entire frame with a sudden feeling of whimsical greed. Wonder what I could do with it using magical alchemy?

“Jackpot.” It wouldn’t take me long to do either, I don’t think anyone’s maintained the walls around here in a long time.

-City of Bells, streets, Pom-

Hollow Heart ‘the Relentless’, now there’s a nightmare I almost wish we would never see again. Who knows how many hours of fitful sleep after burying ourselves alive don’t fail me now… at least Tianhuo hasn’t left my side for a second and that was very comforting with however much time I have left to live.

I had some doubts about our ability to deal with Grogar given how much trouble Hollow Heart has given us.

“Come on Pom, we’ve got this!” Love the enthusiasm Dolly and so did my god puppies, but we haven’t seen this guy in a while and he’s capable of throwing explosive darkness at us. Don’t remember him being capable of that before when I last saw him.

“Baa-baa fight?” Woof asked tilting his head thoughtfully.

“Of course baa-baa fight!” Don’t think Ruff quite understood why I didn’t like fighting or the concept of me not liking having to fight.

“Baa-baa need big nuzzles.” At least Tuft was the emotionally intelligent one and noted my state of mind at having to face Hollow Heart again. At least this time I had something of an advantage of numbers on him from the start.

“We protect you baa-baa!” Puff stated bravely while spinning up his tail and taking to the air slightly.

It was more than likely going to be me protecting them. Tianhuo, Arizona and I all knew that Hollow Heart doesn’t care about life in general, we could see it in his eyes.

Hollow Heart growled and spread his wings ready to start the fight.

(Music: Quest 64, Battle Theme)

“All dogs watch our backs while we fight him, do not try to fight him yourself.” If it was true that I was somehow responsible for being able to injure him, then this was going to require that I be in the thick of it.

I inhaled through my mouth and waited as Hollow Surged forward in a blur, I exhaled flames at him and dodged out of the way of the spike from his extending wing coming to pierce through my eye and brain. My flames allowed us to see him better with how fast he was moving in the dark shadowy way, in light he slowed down. Made sense to me as he was a shadow creature.

He flapped back and out of the way of Arizona’s right hoof going for the left side of his face on my right, Tianhuo immediately leapt up and her rear left leg snapped upwards in a rising crescent that struck him in a chin lifting him lightly in the air. He swirled away and out of the blow seemingly have taken the hit.

I knew what I saw wasn’t quite right.

I narrowed my eyes at the sight, Tianhuo managed to hurt him a little by clipping his chin, but the blow wasn’t as dead on as one might have thought by the looks of things. Hollow Heart had improved his evasiveness at least and wasn’t constantly attacking with wild abandon.

“We can only hurt him when in proximity to me, stick close.” I stated and Arizona looked a little concerned. “Don’t let him draw you off.”

“I barely even saw him move.” Arizona grumbled as the three of moved back to back while Hollow Heart circled around us.

“I’ll keep the area lit up, he cannot move fast in light.” Yeah, but the light can’t harm him Tianhuo and my flames barely did anything to him. Dolly and the puppies were spread out and I noted a few royal guards steering well clear of Hollow Heart with apprehension and fear. Instead they focused on the nearby Troggles.

I saw a movement from Hollow Heart, what was he… no… he’s going to…

I started breathing rapidly and I moved at high speeds to intercept him, it almost looked like hyperventilating to someone who didn’t know what I was exactly capable of. Tianhuo knew everything about me, except one thing, the ultimate secret of why a Chrysomallus dies after growing wings. Arizona was a little confused and she’s the one that can physically break physics with her unique physique.

Getting there in time I moved the royal guard out of the way and manage to barely back hoof Hollow Heart and he jammed me above the kidney with a wing, Tianhuo knocked him off of me a second later before he could dig it in any further.

“He’s going to try to exhaust us and try to attack our allies.” I said after a moment to catch my breath, he was going to attack the Royal Guard and move around constantly. He was already building up to fire an orb of darkness to fire at another batch of embattled guards, Tianhuo was drawn away from me to block it with her flames spewing up at it to disable it and that’s when Hollow Heart swooped in to attack her.

After a few seconds of hectic defense Tianhuo managed to burst away from him and using the light of her flames to slow him down.

“Well he’s already proving to be a hoof full.” Arizona commented as she watched Tianhuo approach back for us as Hollow went after one of my puppies.

All of my lovable dogs were helping with the nearby Troggles when Hollow Heart attacked Ruff, which was a poor choice of target. Ruff immediately dodged with a flip and lashed out with his rear paws to kick him my way, he didn’t hurt Hollow at all… but I certainly did when I increased the wool around my left hoof and kicked off with coiled wool springs from my hind legs launching me forward.

I slammed home into him, only for him to block my attack with his right wing and take the brunt of it with minimal injury.

Tianhuo promptly flying kicked him from above with her right hoof, slamming him into the street with a jet of flames assisting the blow.

He rolled backwards and slashed up Arizona’s right leg when she went for a stomp. The cow hissed and promptly rammed into him with her forehead, I was close enough that it looked like it hurt.

Still any damage done seemed to hurt him, but once he got far enough away he healed as he did within seconds. It was infuriating that we couldn’t keep Hollow in one place or stop him from attacking those who couldn’t see him coming. Any and every shadow he could sneak into was his ally as we’d lose sight of him for a few seconds before we saw him somewhere else.

Where… behind me!

I dodged out of the way of a lunging attack to stab me through the back out of my chest with a wing taking the shape of a spear. It grazed my side, I immediately sealed the wound and then pushed my body into him to wrap my wool around him.

My attempt to pin him down was less than successful when he temporarily turned into some kind of shadowy serpent and managed to slither out of my wools grasp, which should have been impossible, until I saw the flakes of dissipating darkness where my wool tried to grapple him and he sunk into the shadows again.

Tianhuo was immediately at my side lighting up the area.

“Where did he go?” Arizona grunted as we were near the entrance of the plaza of the city where fighting was currently going on everywhere. “Over there!”

It was too late for me to move, he was attacking what looked like an old pony in a hat and robe. The three of us were rushing to help before the old pony could get hurt, why was he even on the battlefield?

“Sword of light!” The old unicorn called out just as he was about to be taken out by the sharp shadowy wings and Hollow Heart froze in the air as a spear like brightly glowing magical sword pierced him through coming from the sky, but it didn’t seem to injure him, it just froze him place. Hollow’s following scowl spoke death for this indiginity. “Stygian I need your assistance old friend!”

A smaller and slightly frailer looking unicorn stopped directing some royal guards in a fight and galloped up to the trapped Hollow Heart, he narrowed his eyes at the figure of Hollow Heart.

“We can’t do anything to save him Starswirl, this guy… he actually wanted this. He’s far too gone and we can’t even hurt him… he has supernatural protections and has given up on his metaphorical heart a long time ago.” The unicorn, Stygian, stated with shock and horror as he looked over Hollow Heart’s figure. “If he still had his heart it would have been a major point of weakness. We can’t even forcefully return him to what he once was… he’s permanently like this.”

“Well his name is Hollow Heart, it’s only fitting at this point that he resembles a complete monster!” Arizona stated as we came up to the two unicorns. “How long will that hold him for?”

“Not nearly long enough for us to deal with him, he’s already breaking free, I’ve got nothing for how to deal with him Starswirl!” Stygian stated and I blinked at the name, Starswirl… as in the same guy that polluted another entire world with magical artifacts as a dumping ground? The kind of thing that led to Planet Petopia’s existence with the magic of Equus?

“You were the expert on shadow monster biology here Stygian, if you can’t think of anything, then I’m just as equally just as sunk. I really wished you didn’t take after me in this Gusty…” The old pony looked like he was in his own mind for moment. He suddenly snapped his head to the side with a lit horn. “Meteo!”

Hundreds of burning rocks rained down on a number of Troggles hitting them in the heads quite hard and a few even blocked several spear throws before colliding with the ground. In fact it was very precise number of rocks and they had all been very specific. This Starswirl guy was no joke at magic if he efficiently knew how many burning rocks he needed to not only attack but also defend all of us.

“We can hurt Hollow Heart, I don’t know why, but my proximity makes him vulnerable.” It wasn’t my Chrysomallus natural anti-magic capabilities doing that, I was quite sure on that. Why the only things I had on me that were unusual was… wait, that thing Jaded gave to me? I really needed to talk to that cat later about what it was. “What happens if we were to hit him right now?”

“You’ll only get the one blow, because it’ll free him from the sword of light’s paralysis. I would attack him, but… I know it wouldn’t do us no good as we can’t hurt him enough to stop him from healing from the damage in short order. Better he be locked in place and not attacking like a feral beast with a dark intelligence that promises suffering to those who face him.” Starswirl sounded smart and intelligent, but he was well over a thousand years old from what I heard of the tales of the Pillars of Equestra. The ones who helped build the foundations of current day Equestria. “I can only do that spell so many times though, banishment is impossible I’m afraid… I would not have another suffer this monstrosity.”

“Can you seal him in an area with us without any shadows for him to hide in?” That was probably the absolute dumbest suggestion I have ever stated in my life, why was I suggesting it?! What is wrong with… oh right… Chrysomallus, actively sacrificing myself for others, that is what’s wrong with me.

“Yes, we can seal off an area if Starswirl and I work together in unison, but we need to be undisturbed to keep it sealed.” Hearing Stygian say that, I tagged all my familiars and mentally told them to protect Stygian and Starswirl. Dolly being the oldest took the lead on this. “Yes, well, I suppose that would work if they are as strong as they feel… wait, are they all your familiars?! The only being with this many familiars, all of which are canines in nature… The world record breaking ‘Canine Queen’ Pom Lambchop, I really want to research you for a thesis on familiar bonds and how they affect the bonded! I would love to introduce you to my familiar Mr. Echo the fruit bat.”

“Later, if we’re all even still alive, busy!” I stated as I hastily motioned to the growling Hollow heart shifting the ‘sword of light’ thing was cracking. His was thrashing and the light was weakening as the darkness was coalescing around him, sparks of magical darkness and light were clashing and creating visible distortions in the air.

“Quite right, sorry, Starswirl shall we?” The two unicorns lit their horns and started to create an area to contain Hollow Heart in.

Arizona, Tianhuo and I moved forward and were sealed within the magical area with Hollow Heart.

“Tianhuo, fastball special!” I coiled the wool around my legs and then ran behind Hollow Heart, then launched myself up at his back and pinned his wings and legs with my limbs and wool to the best of my abilities. The ‘sword of light’ prevented Hollow from changing shape or ditching chunks of shadow to escape this time.

Tianhuo was using her flames to boost her spinning speed as she spun like a top and then sent Arizona hurtling towards the struggling Hollow Heart’s chest.

Arizona’s four hoof flying stomp was powerful enough to send a shockwave straight through Hollow heart and even injure my insides… but I just grit my teeth and bared it, Hollow Heart got the worst end of it.

“BAAGH!” Despite the injury I forced Hollow Heart to take, he still had the wherewithal to slam his right wing into stabbing my right shoulder. Arizona and I quickly fell away and Hollow quickly swept away into the air out of the way of a burst of angry flames from Tianhuo that kept him from capitalizing on getting another attack in on me.

“You okay Pom?!” Arizona asked as if the bleeding leg with a large gash was just a trifle to her. Probably was, given how tough Arizona is naturally. How often had Velvet beaten her half to death and she absolutely enjoyed every second of it? I never asked, as I really didn’t want to know.

“I’ll be fine Arizona, we have to focus Hollow Heart down!” As I said this as Hollow Heart slammed into the barrier keeping us in with him. It held up quite well to his attempts to bash his way out. He was a tireless and dangerous being, but he was trapped in here three to one… half the team responsible for his first downfall and I was mostly responsible his second.

I could suddenly feel it… Grogar was watching us once more. A shiver crawled down my back at the thought and what he was planning, we hadn’t seen much of him aside from when we climbed the valley walls. He really seemed to be the patient type and was almost amused to see me as he had stared after us as we ran with Hollow Heart hounding us constantly for twenty four hours if it has been a full day and a half since we got trapped here. It had certainly felt longer than that.

His gaze slide from us and towards… Starswirl? I get the feeling there was more to it when the gaze suddenly stopped looking over the general area as Hollow came down at us. Hollow seemed to absolutely refuse directly attacking Tianhuo, which was honestly fair as I wouldn’t want to fight Tianhuo either. So understandably Hollow saw me as the weak link in the group and I was his favored target in this situation, also he still clearly hated me from what happened last time we met.

Waiting until he closed in I inhaled quietly through my nose and then exhaled at the right moment, I dodge the two stabbing lances that his wings became, they wrapped behind me as he came with his hooves dripping with darkness.

I finally exhaled and dodged his next two attacks despite how little space I had to do it by tilting my head and then he was about to go for a bit with those large fangs of his, I followed the dodges with a bark blast that knocked him back an inch and stunning him.

This was long enough for Arizona to start with trying to break his spine with a flying buck as Tianhuo knocked his wings out of my path allowing me to move away.

I stepped to the left and Tianhuo went right as Arizona plowed Hollow into the ground between us, we were only just slowing him down as a second later he was lashing out a wing at me in an attempt to stab me.

The wing stopped an inch from piercing my eye as I blinked as Tianhuo had a sturdy grip on it, one shake, two shakes, Hollow tried to continue the stab and Tianhuo held firm with a glare. The lovely longma then took a hit that slashed across her abdomen that ripped some of her beautiful scale apart.

Despite the injury Tianhuo didn’t let go of the wing and instead launched a one legged buck with her right leg into his face and slapped her flaming tail around his waist. I exhaled a blast of flames into his face before he could bite Tianhuo or injure her further. Fire was nothing to a longma, no matter if they could wield it or not.

“Graggh!” My flames caused Hollow Heart to flinch long enough that Arizona hit him with a full charging ram to his stomach horns first. After grunting, he kicked Arizona bodily into Tianhuo sending them both tumbling and away, he then tried to jam both his wings into me with lightning speed.

I hopped back and he surged forward mouth open, I ducked under his clacking jaw and before he could bring his wings around I tore at his throat with my teeth, and then rolled onto my back pulling him above me and then I bucked him off onto his.

Rolling over my wool shifted to a more wolf like shape and then lunged on top of him to slash him up in a fury of magical wolf claw swipes. Somewhere in the middle of my damaging claw swipes he bucked up into my chin with his hind legs knocking me down and bloodying my face.

“Ugh…” I rubbed at my jaw as Hollow rolled and brought his right wing around to stab down on my as he got standing. His wing was knocked upward by Arizona and she lassoed him and pulled him into a blazing full speed kicked to the face that sent him back towards me and I bucked him in the neck with a crack.

Tianhuo followed up my neck blow with a dropping leg to the chest and then Arizona came down lashing out hers to smash his skull slightly inward, I brought my right hind leg up high and then stomped Hollow a third time on his stomach.

On the ground was a groaning Hollow, he stabbed both his wings up forcing Tianhuo and me back, then went at Arizona with a swinging hoof to her jaw. The blow didn’t faze Arizona and she grappled him around the waist and then started squeezing him with bone crunching force as she lifted him into the air and started to break his spine.

“May the power of hugs compel you, may the power of hugs compel you!” Having no clue why Arizona was suddenly shouting that, but her grip on Hollow was getting stronger and I could hear the cracking of bones. “By the power of Paprika… you, shall, fall!”

Crrrr-aacckk-KKKKkcccc-CRACK!

With a twist of her hooves the nasty sounding crunching noise as Hollow’s spine probably shattered from the force of the hug left me and Tianhuo shuddering, even then Hollow managed to break free of the grapple by kicking Arizona in the udders. The ones that were inexorably tiny for a cow of Arizona’s adult age, yes.

Despite how both half of his bodies looked quite odd with a broken spine, Hollow Heart was still alive after that. In immense amounts of obvious pain, but still quite alive and angry. Three to one he wasn’t so scary, but the temporary victory ended when a voice rang out around the square.

“Starswirl, so you are still bucking about hmmm?” Grumbled Grogar as he slowly walked up to us, he spoke in an even and fairly conversational tone. “Servant, to my side… now. I have taken notice of your failure and will deal with them myself.”

I tried to attack and finish off Hollow Heart only for him to disappear through the barrier in a burst of black smoke. Hollow Heart appeared right at Grogar’s side looking almost fine, his spine was still a mess as the back half of his body was floppy and he was still sporting various damaging claw marks and dripping with whatever passed for blood for him now. He was already recovering from the damage we had dealt to him quickly.

The area Hollow Heart was trapped in fell immediately as Starswirl glared at Grogar and Stygian took up a position at his side.

“You’re the reason Pom is stuck here, I’ll end this right here!” Shanty came in at high speeds riding Dodo, she swung for Grogar’s with all her might. “Grand Cleave!”

Dodo ended up embedded in a nearby wall, Shanty weapon was caught in Grogar’s left hoof and he ripped it from Shanty’s grip and tossed it away to punch Shanty in the gut. He proceeded to lift her by the neck.

“You’re quite a surprise, you actually made me bleed… I might take you as a wife when you get older.” Grogar stated flatly with a grim grin, he slammed Shanty into the street and she was out cold immediately. “So that’s the only reason why you still live, a constant threat to my life could be very interesting.”

Still alive and breathing, I saw what Grogar meant when a single drop of blood spill from a very tiny scratch. How did he handle Shanty’s cutting arc that well?!

“Get away from her!” I charged forward and tried to hit Grogar, he caught my right hoof and was about to say something when he raise his right hoof off the ground caught Tianhuo's left hind leg as she blazed at him with jet assisted speed.

He promptly slammed Tianhuo onto her face and tossed her away and then slammed his forehead against mine.

…

I was on the ground seeing stars and blinked blearily as Hollow Heart was about to attack me and Arizona was slammed into the ground next to me tied up in her own ropes.

“No… leave her, you can have her life later if she proves too troublesome. Now take my prize back to the castle.” Grogar stated as calmly he bucked a dented and battered Dodo away from himself, how long had I been out for? Dodo whined angrily as Hollow Heart carried Shanty away and that whining turned into a sad keening noise. “You all know what I want, I know you are not going to negotiate, but I welcome you to try and save everyone from me that you can. You are all in my domain and are making quite a mess. I will get out eventually, whether you let me out or I do so on my own. Whether you bring me my liberation or I come for it myself, it matters not, for I am inevitable.”

Calmly Grogar started walking away with the unconscious levitating form of Starswirl in his magical grip and I sat up to fire a Thousand Spear at Grogar’s back, it deflected off the air in a shimmer and a faint glow of his horns. He didn’t even look back at me and kept going.

“Shanty…” I reached out and the world grew black.

…

Coming too, I slowly looked about… every Royal Guard, Tianhuo, Arizona and I were all down. Starswirl was nowhere to be seen and even quite a number of Troggles were still lying about and groaning.

“How is she Mage Meadowbrook? You were out for a few minutes there, lay back down. Blacking out twice in as many minutes cannot be good for your health.” Stygian the small and thin unicorn sstated as an earth pony checked with mage in her name looked me over. “The Troggles we can handle… but Grogar… he devastated most of our forces that attacked him by himself. He wasn’t even trying, what terrifying power and he’s like this without his bell?! He even told the Troggles to not interfere.”

“Excuse me, but I want to help… if you can tell me what I can do.” A troggle stated as he moved over to Dodo and Dodo weakly looked up at him. Dodo whined and pointed his beak at the spear, the Troggle curiously held it out to Dodo and he ate it. The Troggle looked confused and then looked at the devastation. He helped Dodo sit upright. “My name is Drog… you can clearly see why we don’t challenge Grogar now.”

“Where?” My puppies were… I felt something in my heart drop, they were all injured even Dolly looked like a bloody mess, but Dormarch was propping her up as they came over to me.

“That guy… Grogar… nasty piece of... work… cut out for us...” Dolly stated while huffing raggedly, she felt like she had a few broken bones on top of horrendous bruising. Dormarch was the only one that looked okay, but that was because he could heal himself. "Lets go... after him..."

Dolly was clearly insane if she thought we were winning after that show of strength... much less with her injuries as they were. Also Grogar took Shanty and Starswirl, we had no other choice other than to go after him.

Author's Note

I'm finishing this story and not stopping at the end of the year, but Tambelon is going to take a bit of doing to finish.

Plus a few other things to take care of.

479. Entrapment.

-Tambelon, Royal Guard Campsite, large medical tent, Pom-

I had five mangled dogs resting near me waiting for healing, even the Canis Minor were not enough to fight Grogar. Tianhuo was curled up next to me still out cold... and using me as a pillow. No complaints there, but Tianhuo was always a little bit too warm sometimes when she cuddled. Thankfully my wool was heat and fire resistant until I told it not to be.

“Why did you come back?!” I finally shouted angrily at Ocellus and Smolder. “You were finally… able to go home…”

“Wow, she really did not like that you jumped back into Tambelon for her, way to be appreciative by the way.” The blue griffon said as he looked at the two. The Royal Guard armor he wore was obviously scratched and battered by several hours of pitched combat. Yet his injuries seemed to be very minimal compared to some of the other Royal Guard. He apparently went through training one might expect of a Huoshan guard. “Also you’re friend Shanty is good as dead since Grogar took an interest in her… so how are we going to rescue her and beat Grogar? I’m up for ideas.”

“Yona can be understanding why you are the being of angry, but friends do not turn their backs on friends in need.” Right, the yak Yona was right, also apparently these were Ocellus’s and Smolder’s friends from Princess Twilight’s Friendship School.

“Did you really expect us to walk away from all of this insanity after the year we’ve had?” Smolder stated with her claw arms crossed over her chest, she was grumpy and smirking a bit. “Even my brother Garble came in to help in the fighting… surprisingly the Equestrian Royal Guard have stepped it up a lot, even he’s impressed. Must be Flash Magnus influencing them.”

“Can’t get rid of us that easily Pom.” Mumbled a wilting Ocellus, knowing that I was upset with her, but also that I loved her all the same as one of my charges for a time. Did she even ask her parents about coming back in here?

“Mage Meadowbrook should be here soon, the fighting and detaining of prisoners has her and a few others healers busy.” The Earth Pony with the gourd made of sand stated, he had a cutie mark made of several turtles. So that’s why it smelled like it came from a beach, probably related to his special talents.

“I’m going to run out of arrows at this rate…” Fretted the hippogriff with the blue hair and pink fur and feathers.

“Introductions?” I finally asked.

“Well…” The griffons started only for a familiar figure to appear, along with a smell that me and my canine companions all gagged at. Since it had us clutching at our noses, it could only be…

“Did someone say introductions, I am Fortitude, the fantastically fragrant!” Yep, that guy. Fortitude, why was he here? I mean if he was here to fight the Troggles, then his smell could probably disable just about all of them all in short order given how strong it is… Troggles had noses stronger than most dogs as me and Tianhuo had found out. Well it would only disable the Troggles that got close to Fortitude anyway, they could still throw a spear from pretty far away. “I am glad to see friend Arizona has found you in… decent health friend Pom from Huoshan.”

How was the pony next to him not watering at the eyes and… why was she a zombie? Also what’s a zombie doing here and why is nobody freaking out about it?! Wait… the glowing magical eyes, the fur and hair… it could only be.

“This is Skeletal Noria, or Skelly, she is a wonderful friend to have in battle. She is also slightly living impaired.” The yak then proceeded to nuzzle the top of the axe wielding ponies making her blush, zombies shouldn’t be able to have heat in their cheeks… “She ran afoul of a sorcerer named Mosey Wrath that left Saddle Arabia after a battle with a monstrous and even greater evil called Mirage or so she wrote and got added to the history books. She is mostly alive, but she lives a slightly cursed existence.”

Skelly smiled cheerfully one normal eye and the other a glowing mass of energy as she waved at everyone with a hoof, nobody seemed bother by her half skeletal, half fleshy appearance at all. I’ve met her several times before, mostly as a complete skeleton pony and as a normal pony, she’s never looked quite like this before. At least her flesh doesn’t look like it’s rotting off of her body.

“By day she is a normal pony, by night she is a skeleton, here she has no sun or moon to change her appearance and is thus stuck looking like this!” The obnoxiously loud Flamberge everyone, the dragon that reminded me of Garble and wielder of the sword of flames that never go out… unless said sword was asleep. Though one would question why a sword needed sleep, it’s an inanimate object and it’s always technically at rest where it was stored on his back.

My poor canines, they didn’t know whether to cover our ears or our noses, I went with my nose personally and the canines agreed with me. Flamberge was obnoxiously loud and sometimes on fire, but he didn’t smell like he killed an entire sewer’s fragrance with his very own to replace it.

“I think I see why you’re here… Sweetcakes?” The griffon stated as a tired looking golden kitsune with many tails fanning out as she walked in, she dragged one under Flamberge’s chin affectionately. Don’t honestly know how to respond to that, Kitsune and dragons are long lived so the relationship would definitely could work. “Anyway, I’m Gallus from Griffonstone, you have here Yona who always introduces herself from Yakyakistan, Silverstream who is cousin to the princess of Seaquestria and might even get a domain eventually. You already know Ocellus from the Changeling Hive in the not-so-badlands and Smolder from the Dragon Lands. So I’ll just get to our designated dude bro of the group Sandbar.”

“Hey there!” Sandbar stated jovially, obviously the calmest member and most level headed of Ocellus and Smolder’s closest friends. At least it seemed that way to me at least.

“Why do you smell like a La Perm though?” I asked blankly while scrutinizing Gallus as I sniffed the air.

“I was adopted by them… wait, there’s a smell and it’s not Fortitude’s?” Gallus asked looking a bit worried. He started sniffed his body with his beak in worry. “I don’t smell anything.”

“Magical scents are not likely to be detected by normal senses.” I stated mysteriously as I felt a tail rub against my head gently... then it jerked away and the kitsune suddenly looked a little wary and worried for me.

“You feel as if cursed, death will want to save your soul, is it late for you?” Was that a haiku from the kitsune and she was giving me a fairly sad look.

“I’m not spent yet, not until I step over the threshold on purpose… with purpose.” I said as I looked away from the worried vixens eyes.

“Situations bad, you will spend your life once dire, a martyr for that fire.” The kitsune followed up and then caressed my forehead, my wounds were healing as were those of my puppies being tickled by the playful tails. Dolly’s bones snapping back into position was a bit sickening, but she was looking healthier afterwards and felt it too.

“We’re here to prevent that.” Ocellus stated boldly while staring into my eyes.

“Her power does grow, no life after a quick death, a soul with no breath.” This is the second kitsune that knew the secret, Tammamo being the first that knew. Kind of glad she didn’t follow me here… also something I would have thanked Arceus for. I’m sure the alpaca god already knew I’d be thankful anyway.

“So you already know or can at least guess…” I said looking at the kitsune, she simply nodded as her response. The golden wool up to my neck was a little concerning, now that the kitsune had brought its attention to Ocellus and Smolders eyes glancing at the golden wool covering my body. “Don’t tell them. They’ll know exactly why ‘if’ I turn and not a moment before… at least every magical sensitive creature here will know then, should I cross that boundary willingly. I doubt even Grogar himself would be able to ignore it.”

“Are you guys done in here? We need everyone to gather, something has come up.” Storm Queen Fizzlepop ‘Tempest Shadow’ Berrytwist announced. “Also have any of you seen Jaded, I know she can take care of herself, but I’m getting worried that no one has spotted her lurking about. Need to keep my cuddly kitty alive, because she has a habit of getting into weird situations once a week at random on said week. This would probably count as weird…”

Shaking her head Fizzlepop walked off and continued grumbling about the missing in action annoying cat. Even Jaded came back in here? I already know the architecture around here hates Jaded with a passion, at least we have the Royal Guard.

-Ten minutes later, Fizzy-

“Okay everyone Stygian, our strategist and liason with Equestria has several problems we need to address. Before that I want a report from Truly Noted, Duly Noted, Grubber and Sergeant Shady on our casualty assessments.” I was thankful that the Storm Creatures Pique and Nique were back in Airship Mauled watching out for my little one and the Abyssinian I was willing to call mother or mother-in-law.

“Well boss lady, the Storm Creatures have taken a beating, we’re not out of touch on training though. The Troggles are just that dangerous. No deaths, but we’ve have had a few close calls and some very nasty injuries.” Grubber the ever lovable hedgehog who might have some puckwudgie ancestry to him… don’t think about it too hard Fizzy and don’t utter the words that’ll make things worse out loud. The Puckwudgies will know and will show up… THEY ALWAYS SHOW UP. “Without the Royal Guard we could maybe commit to a standing draw. With them… well I’m surprised to say it, but we could actually capture the city. The castle is a different issue entirely. Also the ability to bake in this world is pretty bad.”

“Look, you know as well as I do that the portal was a big as we could make it Grubber, there was no way we were fitting an entire airship through it… which is why Jackie ‘Blackcap’ Chickadee La Perm isn’t here and is off doing other things.” Honestly with what I know, I don’t know who’s unluckier at the moment, all of us or just her In general. “She is also healing off several arrow related wounds from what I last heard.”

“Yeah… that’s my bad.” Ignoring the Silver Stream, I decided to move on to Shady. Jackie would be a good archery teacher if not for her being badly cursed. I’m surprised she even managed to have little Gavin with how bad it gets for her sometimes.

“Stealth corps?” Yes, Shady the changeling ran the stealth guards. We weren’t trying to stereotype him, Shady actively asked for his own units to be trained in anti-espionage, anti-terrorists and anti-cult capabilities. Grogar’s cult definitely couldn’t stand up to these guys back on Equus when we started rooting them out.

Apparently none of stealth units under Shady were injured until after they entered active combat in Tambelon, before then not a Troggle saw a single one of them or so much as heard them sneeze at an inopportune moment that is common with those sneaking around like his units in the Royal Guard can. In fact as long as they managed to hold the advantage of surprise they could take out Troggles without retaliation provided their smell didn’t give them away.

Troggles had strong noses, which is why Fortitude had been a huge boon on the battlefield. He personally knocked out over one hundred of them from his ‘fantastic fragrance’ alone. Troggles were ridiculously resilient to a lot of things, except for that. Only those without a sense of smell or have no nose to begin with would survive being next to Fortitude, probably why he and Skelly got along so well.

“Minimal injuries, we’re good to keep fighting.” Shady stated with a salute, his squads were to remain on the lookout for suspicious activity and made for good sentries.

“Magic Corps?” I turned to Duly Noted.

“Lots of injuries, we figured out quickly that directly attacking Troggles with magic was a bad idea. Indirectly however, by the will of Celestia we shined despite the battering we took. No captures that I know of under my command… but I do have the most injured. They know how to fight unicorns to an absurd degree.” Duly Noted and his brother Truly were here for Equestria in its time of need and they were delivering results based on what was said next. “We might have the most injuries, but we’ve also captured the most enemy forces and were the most embattled once we got ourselves together after coming into Tambelon. A number of ponies are still unaccounted for, which means we’ll need the help of...”

“Strife Corps?” I turned to Truly Noted, guy was one that taught survival in the harshest of conditions and battle… he was darn good at it too, quite a number of his units were Pegasus or winged ponies since they’ve always appreciated militaristic outlooks.

Now if only the rest of the Royal Guard had the kind of spine they do now when I attack Canterlot with the Storm Creatures and took the capital city of Equestria in a few hours. I would have actually been challenged by these guys as they are today.

“We have a few nasty injuries and many moderately injured casualties from poking their defenses, Castle Tambelon is unassailable from the air and the skies above it really is not a pegasus friendly flying zone. The defenses of the place are deadly enough that a number of unicorns unified together can’t approach it with a shield powerful enough to stand up to an assault from the Troggles.” Yes, Truly and Strife Corps were specifically good for scouting purposes and pathfinding routes to safety. Where there’s strife, these guys would survive the worst situations… like the one we’re currently in. If they were lost after teleporting into Tambelon then they had a capacity similar to Jaded in skills to deal with suddenly being dropped into danger. “Mage Meadowbrook says she can get our guys back on their hooves, flying and using magic in no time. By the light of Luna’s moon we can hopefully do this without having to involve Princess Twilight or endangering our beloved vacationing princesses.”

Royal Guard was oddly competent here, hopefully they’ll keep this up when I drop the news.

“Battlefront Corps report in!” I called out to the bulkiest of the Royal Guard. The heavy armor units I helped train to handle a war footing, a lot of them were earth ponies and pegasus ponies.

“We did good lass.” Rockhoof the bulkiest stallion hear with his stone tipped ancient shovel, a shovel that sent large chunks of ground at Troggles and buried them halfway alive. Guy took out more than any pegasus or unicorn could, he was just that tough. He wasn’t going to like hearing what I had to say. “Moderate injuries, we’ll live though. No losses and we hoofed them their own flanks mighty hard. If only Asterisk and Obelisk were here… they’d show these Troggles what for they would. Glad to hear they were remembered by history for having the gall to take on entire armies by themselves.”

Now those were two historically powerful Earth Ponies, one specifically known for his size and surviving ingesting a cauldron full of strengthening brew living up to the name of Obelisk and the other one for his wit as much as his strength known as Asterisk. Wish I knew Asterisk’s secret to destroying Bureaucracy, would help so much with the paperwork after all of this.

Rockhoof wasn’t the brightest guy around, but he was definitely one of the strongest… even physically stronger than Equus Arizona at any rate and the Foenum Arizona was no pushover either. There’s also Fortitude and Yona that made a good show of things too. I believed we had everything we needed to be successful… because my goodness did we need everyone to be at the top of their abilities here.

Now if I wanted to say who the most resilient among us was… it would still be Equus Arizona Arid. She got batted around like a cat toy… darn it where are you Jade to make silly commentary based on my thoughts?! In any case Arizona didn’t need healing despite being a walking bruise after Grogar was done with her, she just literally walked that off despite Pom and Tianhuo being taken out of the fight near instantly. Apparently Mage Meadowbrook reported a cracked skull from the impact… that was Tianhuo’s injury from being thrown and the head smash had almost killed Pom despite Grogar not hitting her with his full strength.

“Okay, I have something to announce, there are those of us still fighting out there… we need to rally them here. To everyone here, we currently have several major problems we need to address in an immediate fashion.” I turned to Stygian and nodded for him to go ahead.

“First off, Grogar has two captive, one of which is Starswirl.” It was kind of sad to watch Stygian flinch as he caused a gasp throughout the unicorn crowd. “There is something of a history between Starswirl and Gusty the great, Grogar still remembers what happened apparently. Starswirl did kind of write the book on the spell that helped seal Tambelon and Grogar in this pocket dimension… you know, instead of banishing him to entirely different realm to takeover like he did with all of those magical artifacts, the sirens, the several other magical creatures and a few door to door sales ponies. It’s why that world has legends of our existence… Anyway, Grogar is aware of this fact I’m sure, which is why he isn’t asking for or taking one our beacons to summon a portal to open in this realm. My belief is that Grogar intends to push the entirety of Tambelon back onto Equus by force. We cannot let him do that or reach his bell!”

The audience was silent at that and I could see Pom’s right eye twitching, even as Tianhuo held her right hoof and gave it a gentle squeeze. Pom for her part was already looking ready to head in the direction of Tambelon Castle to rescue Starswirl and that goat Shanty.

“Starswirl could give him the key willingly or not to doing just that, if Grogar can somehow find a way to access his memories through various methods of torture… well… let’s say ‘not good’ by any stretch of the imagination and leave it at that if we fail in our mission to stop him here and now. That Starswirl came here has become something of a grave error on our part.” Stygian shivered violently as did most of the unicorn crowd. “Another problem is that Grogar is actively preventing us from escaping Tambelon, while he doesn’t have the power to break Tambelon from the pocket dimension’s bindings… yet… he does have the power to hold us in entrapment indefinitely.”

“Explain.” Truly noted stated flatly with a look in his eyes that asked for an explanation immediately.

Stygian created a visual screen and started doing a presentation on what was going on with Tambelon.

“While we are still in contact with Equestria and ponies or more help can come in, none can open a portal leading out… apparently Grogar’s castle is giving off a powerful magical effect that prevents any form of exfiltration from Tambelon. As in a portal leading out cannot be opened while Grogar has this method of blocking us active, he’s definitely prepared for such a situation as this. We need to find the object behind the magic involved and destroy it if we are to start evacuating.” In other words we’d need to tear down the whole castle to find out what was keeping us here and then destroy it, if anything it’ll be Grogar’s throne or something as simple as a hearthstone brick. “Discord’s random supply crate are now very important to us, no matter how many of them may prank you or be filled halfway with gags, Pom and Tianhuo have already found a crate with food and other useful supplies we’ve already picked up… we’re in dire need of medical supplies and those with the knowledge to use them for Magic Corps. We have some magical healing available… but we’re wearing them out with the influx of injured troops they simply cannot handle. We can’t send any unicorn smart enough to maybe even remotely assist Grogar in his goals if he can pull information from the minds of others. He’s stronger than most beings physically, he’s got the stolen magic of thousands of unicorns and he’s not going to feel threatened by anyone here… given he defeated Starswirl I don’t think anyone would be stupid enough to volunteer to sneak into that castle and destroy what we need to so we can create an evacuation point.”

“I volunteer!” Pom stated immediately with a firm look in her eyes.

“I volunteer as well!” Tianhuo stated a second afterwards. “How will we know what to look for to destroy? What if instead we destroy something that makes it so Grogar can free of this pocket dimension Tambelon that much sooner?”

“That’s a major concern, we need at least someone I can give a quick rundown on how to find the thing that needs to be destroyed… because Gusty and Starswirl practically made this world to hold Grogar the Demon and he’s had plenty of time to think about how he’s going to get free. Even if Grogar didn’t get Starswirl, he still would likely have a method to do something in a similar vein anyway.” Stygian looked about at the worried guards. “This might even be a trap to get us to incidentally help him and we’d have to functionally do so anyway to leave, which is likely why he said it was inevitable. For if the very thing we need to destroy to escape is the same thing Grogar needs to push Tambelon back out onto Equus… then this situation is very troubling to say the least as we’re now trapped in here with him.”

“Can’t have a party without me, I’m going whether anyone says I will or not!” Equus Arizona stated. “We can’t exactly sit on our flanks and do nothing, I got a home to return to and I’ve got a reason to keep fighting even if every bone in my body is broken! I’ll crawl out of Tambelon with my eyelids if I have to, I’m not dying or living here for the rest of my life! Besides I came here to save my friends, can’t let them go dying on me now.”

“We can’t have too many volunteers, we still need the Royal Guard to work on detaining, securing and readying the Troggles and other locals for evacuation.” Stygian said quickly as half the ponies wanted to volunteer for the mission into Castle Tambelon within the City of Bells. “We also need guards going for those vital resources, we can’t feed so many prisoners or liberated ponies and donkeys without them. The undertaking we’re committing to here is clearly quite daunting…”

“And the Royal Guard will actually see things through to the very end!” Shady yelled, much to the cheering of the troops all around us.

Despite some taking quite a battering morale was not low, not by a long shot, but it was still questionable on how we were going to pull this all off.

“Now let’s get to assignments on what each of you will be doing while we pick out our volunteers for this mission into Castle Tambelon…” Stygian looked at me and I raised a brow at him. “The question for us is… who organizes what?”

Good question which one of us takes the responsibility of organizing a jaunt through that death trap, one that Grogar all but invited us into quite openly after wrecking so much of our forces by himself and then calmly walking away having only lost a single drop of blood.

-Pom-

I idly listened in onto the planned movements of the Royal Guard, nobody realized just how many ponies went into the Royal Guard when they had little direction in life besides their special talents.

“I don’t envy you’re position.” Turning to look at the voice, it was Foenum Pom and she shook her head at me sadly. “Though I’m surprised you’d actively volunteered for it.”

“I’m a rather unfortunate lambkin.” I admitted sadly. “I’m functionally driven to sacrifice, how I go about it is what little choice I get.”

“Glad I’m not you then, don’t know how long I’d live if I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do for myself.” Foenum Pom stated as she nuzzled one of her puppies. “Still going to do my best to help with finding the supplies, well away from all of that mess.”

“Good luck with not finding trouble, I seriously mean that given Discord’s involvement in the supply crates. One of them is bound to be a jack-in-the-box.” Another version of me was far luckier than I, yet she still ended up here. “Well it’s been nice knowing myself.”

“You could talk to our Paprika, she gives nice free hugs.” Foenum Pom stated sadly.

“I think I will.” Making my way over to Paprika, I said the first thing that came to mind. “Can you spare a hug?”

Foenum Paprika was affectionate and as loving as Equus Paprika, the difference is she knew how to control her strength compared to Equus Paprika’s instant power squeezes. Foenum Paprika hugged me gently and then tightened it a little before letting me go and patting me on the head with a jovial smile.

“Thank you.” I then made my way over to the volunteer group Fizzlepop was weeding out for the trip into Tambelon Castle. As I approached I broached the question. “Do we even have a way to enter the castle safely? Truly Noted kind of implied that the castle is impenetrable.”

“Yes, Drog here seems to have some insider knowledge of the castle.” Fizzlepop pointed out the Troggle who tentatively gave us a half-hearted wave. Red hair, blue hat and clothing that wasn’t exactly armor, light brown skin and a calculating look in his eyes… he was also bit short for a troggle. “At least an entrance you could use as far as we can trust him.”

“Dodo likes him, I trust that.” I said plainly, Dodo was plenty smart in his own unique way.

“That’s your prerogative. Mine is the safety of the Storm Creatures and Royal Guard, specifically in that order, so I’m needed out here to make sure things don’t fall into disarray. I don’t think Grogar even cares about the Troggles outside the ones guarding his castle.” Fizzlepop stated while glancing at Drog.

“He doesn’t and he likely already knows your coming, he’s probably already prepared for everything you’re going to do even.” Drog stated with a slightly frightened certainty. “Those guards are the best of the best, given the best stuff too.”

“He can’t predict everything, Grogar’s powerful, but he’s far from what I would call completely impossible to defeat.” The question is, how much is it going to cost us or more specifically me, to beat him in any lasting capacity? He’s mostly impossible to defeat with how fast he took out Tianhuo, Arizona and me. “Also why are you turning on him?”

“Troggles are basically Grogar’s slaves as much as we treat the ponies and donkeys as being beneath us, we’re all beneath him equally and nobody wants to be near him when he’s having a bad day.” Drog answered readily as a good reason to want a change of pace. “There’s got to be more to life than Tambelon… I want to see everything out there for myself beyond this red sky I was born under.”

“Who’s our team and who’s heading it?” The look I got from Fizzlepop made me get a dropping feeling in my stomach. “Oh no, no-no-no, anyone else… how about Tianhuo she’s good for it?!”

“I will lead, but I will defer to you if you make sound queries on the situation at hoof.” Tianhuo always making me feel safe. “Listening to the sound advisement of others is an intention of mine. So where do we start Drog?”

-A number of hours later, Castle Tambelon, sewers entrance-

Getting here wasn’t the problem, it's exactly where Drog said it was.

We’d start by entering Tambelon Castle through the sewers and aqueducts beneath the castle, also someone forgot to mention that Grogar’s castle is full of monsters… so the elite Troggles definitely weren’t our only problem here.

A large purple mass of malevolent sludge growled at us with multiple eyes sticking out of it, along with hundreds of toothless mouths guarding the entrance.

“Smoooo--” The sludge groaned out.

“Thank goodness I’m here, move aside and let a professional reindeer show them how it’s done…. TORNADO!” Foenum Velvet was immediately spinning and rising into the air as she created a tornado of ice and wind. Massive portions of the purple sludge monster froze over from the sudden localized magical blizzard. “That is how you do it!”

“Could you be a little more subtle… please? I’m pretty sure the Troggles watching all sides of the castle saw that.” That actually cowed Foenum Velvet as we ran towards the entrance over the frozen sludge mass and spears started being chucked our way. The Royal Guard would deal with all the Troggles outside the castle, in the city and the outskirts of it, we wouldn’t be getting reinforcements here.

We had Tianhuo, Foenum Velvet, Arizona, Dolly, Dormarch, Puff, Tuft, Ruff, Woof, Gallus, Sandbar, Silver Stream, Ocellus, Smolder, Yona and lastly me. So Friendship School Alumni, My team, Arizona who might be taking after her mother in the 'mad cow' department and a reindeer that doesn't have projectile farting issues. That’s what we had to work with… I’m surprised we had a friend from Foenum join us on this, we needed at least two magical knowhow experts and Ocellus and Foenum Velvet were hopefully enough.

Dodo stayed behind to assist Foenum Pom with hauling supply crates. That and Dodo was afraid of Grogar, you’d have to be pretty dumb not to be when he took down one of the greatest unicorns to ever live. I only saw the aftermath of that fight, Starswirl destroyed a tenth of the city trying to fight Grogar and Grogar walked away without looking the least bit bothered by that fact.

The likes of Rockhoof, Flamberge and Fortitude were too valuable fighting on the front lines in the embattled zones all around the City of Bells. Not even the Royal Guard campgrounds were exactly one hundred percent safe.

I felt something grab me by the hind leg and tried to do something… I looked back at the purple sludge trying to pull me in and engulf me. Instead I gave off a gold glow and the sludge started screeching in pain, the fluid part of the sludge that wasn’t frozen immediately perished violently.

“Must be malicious magic based entity… with that in mind, let’s be a bit more careful moving forward.” I said as I started into the sewers with everyone spooked at the slight scare. “My anti-magic properties aren’t going to protect us from everything here.”

“Like what, demented well placed traps?” Dolly stated as she moved ahead of everyone and stopped when she heard a distinctive clicking noise and we had barely gotten through the entrance and past the sludge guarding it. Dolly should be thankful that she was rather thin… otherwise the multiple spears that came out of the floor, walls and ceiling would have skewered her to death. “Seriously, who traps a sewer with something like this?!”

“Dolly… stop tempting fate.” I said as calmly as I could muster with an aggravated tone in my voice. “*NOW*.”

“Why do I feel so glad that I can’t understand what she’s barking?” Gallus stated blithely as the spears retreated into the crevices they sprouted from. His eyes sharpened as he glanced about and put a talon on my back as I was about to move past Dolly and poked the tip of his standard issue royal guard spear forward at something, the walls were suddenly filled with sharp bits of metal in an explosive display. The shafts of his spear now had sharp bits of metal sticking out of it. “Yikes, shrapnel trap a second after the spears. If you were trying to run past the spears... well this guy definitely takes his home security very seriously.”

Right, ratcheting up my paranoia to three times what it was a second ago.

"Fairly understandable, we are out to get Grogar, everything else we need to do is secondary to that." Tianhuo commented idly as her eyes were roaming the sewers liquids and the various aqueduct pathways forward underneath the castle.

"I'll run forward set off all the traps and make it easier for the rest of you to get through!" Arizona stated with a wild grin.

My four beloved God Puppies took that as a challenge, as did Dolly and surprisingly Tianhuo who seemed to be considering setting off traps herself.

"Can I question your sanity on this?" Dormarch spoke up with a slight whine.

"I'll be perfectly fine." Arizona stated while waving off everyone's concern.

So very glad I got in that alone time with Tianhuo before we came here, because I really don't know which one of us is going to die first here at the rate things were already going.

Author's Note

Yep, tired and slightly sickly... start of the year bug got to me.

Xanatos Gambit Grogar anyone? No matter what you do the one making the gambit always wins in some way.

480. Castle Tambelon, Sewers Part 1.

-???, Buttina ‘Butt Stallion’ Stalliona-

I looked at Fred, he couldn’t be serious right? Right?! I know I’m a bit slow as a badass Pandoran Bicorn, but even I’m not nearly this dumb.

“Which one is the real Ollie though…” Fred muttered as he held a machine cannon ripped off a mech while looking between Oleander… and a big butterfly wearing a horn made a cardboard on a string and doing a horrible impersonation of Oleander with an inflatable pony disguise.

“Honestly?” Even Wrex, my best snuggle buddy ever and life partner that wants me to shoot at him every once in a while to keep him on his Krogan toes, was flummoxed.

“Do you always have this many problems with butterflies?!” I stated in an exasperated tone.

“Fred just shoot the one with wings, it looks nothing like me.” Oleander stated in an irate manner.

“No, I became an alicorn, shoot the one without wings and eat her soul!” The badly mimicking butterfly stated.

“See they both make good arguments.” Fred said a second later.

“Look we really don’t have time for this, Pom could be in Tambelon by now!” Oleander stated in a worried tone.

“We do have time for this, Fred, honey, tell me you can’t believe this fake unicorn over me? Haven’t we spent so many happy years together that you can’t tell us apart?” The obviously evil butterfly stated. “The vows we took when we…”

“Oh we’re not married, at least not yet.” Oleander stated.

“Wait, you’re not?!” The butterfly stated and then its eyes widened in horror as it realized it gave away the game, then was swiftly gunned down under a tirade of energy bullets by Fred who immediately jumped on the soul trying to run from him.

Oleander didn’t say anything about him eating that one, after a moment Fred reached into Oleander and pulled out a screeching butterfly shaped soul and spat a unicorn shaped soul back into Oleander’s body.

“Nice try with trying to trick me!” Fred stated.

“What?” Wrex and I stated at the same time in confusion.

“Thank goodness, I was trapped in that butterfly’s body being used as a puppet, which was quite unpleasant.” Oleander groaned as she stretched out her body. “But yes, we need to start heading on back.”

“No, wait… can you tell me what just happened there?!” I was so confused.

-Tambelon, Equestria Military Rallying Point, Fizzlepop ‘Queen Tempest Shadow’ Berrytwist La Perm-

“Report, did they get through okay?” I asked of Sergeant Shady as he and a group of stealth expert ponies appeared as if from out of nowhere.

“My stallions and Mares made sure they got through and to the moat without being accosted by Troggles. Now it’s up to them to see if they can carry out the mission, if they can’t we’ll send in another team of carefully selected individuals. They got in through where Drog said they could, but there were some complications.” Shady threw me a salute, he was very competent for someone who couldn’t one hundred percent match the talents and capabilities of his much stronger peers. His stealth units were devastating the Troggle lines and we were slowly taking over the City of Bells, but it won’t be a victory unless we could figure out how to deal with Grogar who took down the most powerful unicorn we had. “The slight problem was a run in with some Smooze, thankfully Pom proved to be doubly immune with her poison prevention scarf artifact and her general immunity to magical maladies.”

“Green, gelatinous, generally friendly and sticky fingered for treasure?” I asked remembering all of Discords plus one when it came to events he was invited to usually involved Mr. Smooze Weezencoff. That or Discord go with Fluttershy.

It bothered me that Mr. Weezencoff still showed up to fancy stuff in Canterlot from time to time without Discord while wearing his monocle and top hat, apparently he was quite an entrepreneur and had many investments in a number of Equestrian businesses. Where he was getting his wealth from was questionable given it was a Smooze known for ingesting treasures, but apparently he was a dungeon delver and got into one of Daring Do’s books as a friend she met while treasure hunting.

“Try purple, goopy, dangerous and as long as your covered in it you are being pumped full of magical aggression poison that was generally produced by evil witches thousands of years ago. If we get covered in the stuff it would make us start fighting ourselves to death and we don’t exactly have Breezies on hoof to help deal with it.” Shady why would we need breezies to deal with what sounded like monstrous muck I couldn’t even begin to guess. I’m certain he knows a thing or two about history though. “Purple Smooze and Wendigoes would be a bad combination to deal with. We can’t let that Smooze leave this realm alive, yet we don’t know how to destroy it other than freezing it solid and at most that is only suspending the issue we have with it and we’re not doing the Starswirl method of sending it somewhere else and hoping it doesn’t cause major problems for someone that is not us.”

“Try to avoid having anyone going near it unless you absolutely have to, keep freezing at a distance to keep it at bay otherwise. We do not need it becoming a problem on top of all the other ones we’re currently dealing with.” I looked over to see Rockhoof, Garble, Flamberge and Fortitude ‘The Fantastically Fragrant’, coming back in with a number of new prisoners.

We couldn’t keep holding all these Troggles indefinitely. Fortitude was at least proving to be the biggest hero in the invasion of Tambelon… mostly because Troggles couldn’t handle his smell for more than three seconds before it shuts their brains down. Poor guys, glad it’s not me.

I’m just going to assume Jade is doing her job with trying to get that cake to the target, she wasn’t bad at stealth and had trained with Shady. Hopefully Grogar will be temporarily disabled from doing anything once she inevitably does reach the target with it, at least we’ll notice it if the entirety of Castle Tambelon lights up like a Hearth’s Warming Tree. Anything that light touches is going to have a bad day.

I just had to trust that Jaded wouldn’t get into an even crazier situation… which is hard for me to do given I know what my favorite bed warming degenerate Abyssinian is like.

-Castle Tambelon, Sewer Aqueduct, Pom-

(Music: Chrono Trigger- Underground Sewer)

The floor cracked with the impact and I was mildly panicked as was everyone else.

“Oh my goodness, are you okay Arizona?!” I asked as she was hit with a ceiling crusher trap several feet in front of us with the sound of bone crunching force, we had about seven feet of safety distance after the fire trap.

“Yeah, what are you so worried about? Ah yeah… that got a nasty spot out of my spine.” Arizona stood there with several tons of solid stone ceiling on her back as I crouched down to get a look at her and I heard a popping sound, the solid block of stone had crashed down on top of her in an instant and all it had to show for it was Arizona rubbing her back against it to pop a spot on her spine that was apparently giving her trouble.

“Can I just reiterate again how much I appreciate the fact that Arizona is the one in front of all of us?” Gallus stated as he grabbed the edge of the ceiling smasher and tried to push upward, it didn’t budge. “How much weight do you think is on her back right now?”

“Several tons I’d guess.” Arizona stood on her hind legs and pushed the ceiling up with her front hooves.

I’d guess about several tons worth of weight too, Arizona was said to have flipped an entire elephant onto its back once by its trunk. Hard to believe if there hadn’t been many eyewitnesses to the act, this was far surpassing that feat and that happened years ago.

“Come on guys, go on through, I’ve got it.” Arizona might be lifting the ceiling smasher, but even my usually brash and excitable companion Dolly was staring at it warily. Arizona didn’t look like she was even struggling with it either, which was a little bit more comforting when it came to her safety.

“There’s pancake and then there’s the possibility of getting utterly juiced.” Dolly muttered with a slight shiver going down her spine at the sight. “Never thought of a cow as being that strong… well there was that evil cow that wanted my family dead and tried to push an entire bus with all of us on it off a cliff.”

Apparently Dolly was referencing that cow in Cornwall that had it out for her family when they were visiting the coast for beach fun and a vacation for the entirety of Dalmatian family of one zero one Dalmatian Street.

“No kidding, what is that cow made of? I mean I can scan her biology, but there’s no accounting for magical strength or the micro-musculature she has.” Dormarch was more impressed with Arizona’s bizarre strength, apparently she gets it from her father. “Normal does not define her and the impact she just took.”

“Yona, to the front, Arizona can’t move very much while holding up the ceiling safely so we’ll need someone to handle whatever the next trap is.” I glanced to the side at the water which was a sickly looking color, anyone who would try to avoid the ceiling trap would jump into the obviously poisonous and possibly acidic liquids.

I think something was living in that sludge too and whatever it was had to obviously be terrifying to still be alive in there.

Yona brought up her shield, Fortitude had sourced it from black market Neighpon specialists apparently, she marched forward bravely with a determined look. While the yak was squeezing under the ceiling, that Arizona held up without a struggle apparently, she was readying her shield for anything and we’ve been through several things already.

We’ve been through boulder traps, swinging axes, dart traps, flamethrowers, this wasn’t a sewer anything would normally survive in for long unless it could swim in the toxic waters or was highly prepared for all the various traps. This was the one trap that caught up Arizona slightly, since she was now physically holding up a large portion of the ceiling we were now passing under.

I had wondered what the trap was this time, it seemed like a clear length in the aqueduct that was these ludicrously dangerous sewers. The ceiling suddenly slamming down on Arizona had us spooked, as if the flamethrower trap Tianhuo dealt with didn’t among the other traps.

At least Tianhuo was helping keep thing lit up with her flames, I don’t think torches would have survived the damp environment for long and it was hard to put out a Longma’s fire regardless if they were brave like Tianhuo.

Yona was moving forward cautiously, despite her size she was nowhere near as strong or resilient as Arizona was. Arizona was almost considered to be nigh indestructible up to this point, that or the injuries she was taking didn’t bother her much. Probably the latter knowing what I do about her domestic situation, our Equus Arizona enjoys taking a beating.

“Remember what we are doing here and continue to be vigilant.” Tianhuo offered quietly while also taking glances as the bubbling liquid that nobody wanted to take a bath in, we were all wary of something popping out of it. At least no one who wasn’t wearing a Pecha Berry Scarf. Don’t know how it would effect Dormarch who was wearing his blue defense scarf, didn’t ever want to find out. “If that had been anyone else…”

“Baa-baa I can’t smell things, place is bad.” Whined Ruff, our noses were constantly assaulted with sickly scents, but it wasn’t poisonous at least and the only thing that smelled worse was Fortitude. It would take something seriously impressive to beat Fortitude.

Ocellus could warn us if the air quality was becoming lethal, a changeling was highly aware of their biology more than most beings and it was all but impossible to poison a changeling without them noticing. That and a changeling was generally immune to poison if they understood the concept of a bufogren or anything else with a strong protective chemical pouch like a snake. Dolly and I would be fine regardless, we never took off the Pecha Berry Scarfs for very long and we weren’t going to remove them for any reason while here.

“I know sweetie, but we’ll be through these sewers soon enough… hopefully.” I nuzzled Ruff and continued forward underneath the ceiling behind Yona and saw a wolf pack spider on her looking about. That must be Spindle her familiar, he was keeping an eye out on the liquids and looked at the ceiling every once in a while.

It felt nice to not be the only one with my familiars here, Edith the cockatrice was inside of Silver Streams quiver and handing over arrows with her beak as Silver Stream called for them. So far Silver Stream was being careful with the use of her arrows, she had plenty of normal arrows on top of the two magical varieties used for trapping or immobilizing targets. She had easily locked up the swinging axe traps easily with some sticky arrows, so she was a decent shot at the very least with that long bow.

“We’re here to rescue Starswirl and Shanty, but we’re also possibly going for whatever is keeping us all trapped in Tambelon.” Smolder grumbled, as she stayed in the middle with Ocellus. “Might also be what’s keeping Grogar from leaving too so we’ve got a lot of weight on our shoulders here when we have to make a decision about that… glad I’m not in charge of this mission.”

Tianhuo was at the very back, making sure if we were attacked from behind, whatever it was that did so would have to absolutely be immune to fire or else it’d get a very unpleasant welcome. Tianhuo can heat her flames up enough to melt stone, but she’d be very careful about how she directs her heat around us.

The ones in charge here were Tianhuo, Gallus and finally me. Ocellus was backup leader in case things went horribly sideways. Also we’d been talking to keep ourselves from freaking out at the faintest noises such as the bubbling liquids shifting ominously on occasion. Not to mention we had to keep our eyes out for traps and stay alert.

Talking could distract us from noticing something, but we were all quite focused right now after we all made it by the ceiling smasher trap and had to wait for Arizona to finagle herself out from under it, even let it create a shockwave that threatened to knock us over when she dropped it and she simple just absorbed said explosive force without flinching.

“This is not how I pictured things would be when I came along with all of you, at least not this strange.” Foenum Velvet had been fairly helpful with several things, the flying boulder traps in particular as she stopped their momentum cold in a literal manner and saved Silver Stream some ice arrow ammunition. “These sewers are suspiciously clean and spacious despite the awful smell.”

“What were you expecting, corn chips and lakes of molten molten cheese?” Arizona stated rolling her eyes, but she seemed a bit upset when Foenum Velvet didn’t fight her on anything or seem to pick up the cues that Arizona possibly wanted to be hit. The Foenum versions of us were very much different thing entirely. “Just not the same… anyway, I’m taking lead again right?”

Yona looked relieved to be behind Arizona again, as the next trap set off within the next minute of moving along the pathway into branching sections sewer which seemed to turn into a maze of pathways and bridges.

Up until this point things had been fairly straightforward until we were at least halfway under the castle.

When we were going to reach the intersection there was this rumbling sound that started up.

“Everybody move!” Arizona called out.

It had us all reacting, we dove toward the wall on our left as it didn’t seem to be what she was calling out. Since nobody wanted to jump towards the toxic sewage to our right, we all ended up piling up against the wall as Arizona was hit by a fairly large spinning horizontal bar full of spikes and was sent backwards towards where the ceiling crusher was. We thankfully avoided being gored by the rotating spikes on the sides of said drill bar.

We heard a loud crunched and then the spike cylindrical drill wall thing started slowly retracted, until it stopped and then it fell into the floor with a strange wrenching noise and then was rolled into the sewage to our right. We were all silent and we heard the trotting of hooves approaching us, a minute later Arizona came strolling up to us looking a little more chipper.

“Ow.” Arizona stated to us after taking a trap that would have killed most of us to her body. “Okay so which direction we heading again?”

“You just got hit by a massive horizontal pillar how are you still okay?!” Sandbar was quite spooked to see that Arizona was looking mostly fine aside from some spots of blood leaking out of her chest where spike pierced her hide.

“My mother puts lit sticks of dynamite in her mouth and I’m more concerned about her sanity than her health.” Yeah Arizona wasn’t really concerned about this event. “Also I’ve had way worse than a spinning spiked pillar slamming me into the side of that ceiling smasher and drilling into me painfully… decided to break the trap before it became a problem again later.”

Arizona continued on her way past us with all of us staring after her, she wasn’t bleeding very badly and at most the injury was minimal and already scabbing over.

“Wow… you weren’t kidding about Arizona and all the things you said she was capable of Pom.” Smolder stated wide eyed.

“Tianhuo is really incredible too, I haven’t exactly met a longma before.” Ocellus was reminding me how much I talked up Tianhuo and Arizona, they were living up to my interpretations of them.

“Tianhuo can you shoot some fire forward?” We were at the intersection now.

“Of course.” Tianhuo sent a small ball of flames down the tunnel straight ahead alongside the spinning death bar.

“Do it to the right.” Tianhuo sent a ball of flames over the now useless spiked log from the broken trap laying in the sewer water. “Now finally to the left.”

I had watched as each fireball travel the distance and nodded to myself.

“Bridge over the sewage to our left, Yona you’re our forward now. Arizona you’re bleeding and might have internal injuries after that, so you’ll need to hang back a bit.” I noticed Arizona looked like she was about to complain. “Look we don’t need you at the front anymore, I’m quite sure we’re by all the traps now.”

“What makes you say that and so certain?” Arizona asked with a raised ear as she wrapped a pair of ropes over her chest like bandages… that the ropes were made of medical gauze was a little weird. I’m chalking it up to the fact that Arizona had ‘rope magic’.

(Music- Chrono Trigger, Battle Theme 1)

“Them.” I pointed my left hoof forward as Yona raised the shield she wielded and then promptly slammed a lunging green scaled sewage covered monster into the wall to the left on the left path from the way we came in.

The sewage splattered all across the wall and the shield smashed frog like monstrosity croaked audibly as it flopped to the floor out cold. They were about three to four feet in height, had bumpy skin and were likely mucus covered to deal with the toxic atmosphere down here.

“Wait, a froglin, those are supposed to be… eep?!” Ocellus quickly transformed into a rock and an arrow made of solid carved rock deflected off her hardened hide.

“I got it!” Silver Stream fired an arrow into the dark and the sound of something being iced over could be heard and panicked croaking. She then quickly ducked behind Yona as several rock spears like what the Troggles wield hurtled out of the shadows of the sewers.

We all scattered slightly or moved closer to Yona or Sandbar who took up defensive measure to block the projectile attacks, some of which were stone arrows.

“Let me guess what you were going to say Ocellus, am I to guess that froglins are also considered an extinct race?” I didn’t know what a froglin was, but if the appearance and the ramshackle makeshift armor if the one Yona just bashed down was anything to go by, I’d guess they were swamp monsters.

“Tambelon is from before Equestria was fully settled, even before the wendigoes were beaten.” Tianhuo stated flatly. “We should expect creatures that haven’t been around for more than thousands of years.”

“Froglins were said to be highly aggressive to the point of stupidity, have night vision, make weapons from whatever materials they have available and tend to like the most horrible of places for anything else to live in… like where we currently are.” That and we could see at least four coming at us Ocellus.

Two with crude stone clubs, one with a jagged misshapen sword of metal that wasn’t rusted that looked like someone’s idea of what mimicking blacksmithing was supposed to look like and a Froglin with several spears. Their solid purple eyes were not very fun to look at as they stared at us from the shadows as they slowly approached.

“Everyone close your eyes!” Doing as Tianhuo asked, she let loose a powerful flare that had our eyelids being lit up. We heard the clattered of a weapon and panicked ribbiting, upon opening my eyes I saw the four were on the ground and rolling around in pain. “Take them out now!”

I lunged forward and got my wool wrapped around the spear wielder wielders wrist before they could throw a spear uncontrolled, I toppled them over and slapped the back of their head against the floor and they were out of the fight. Jean the frog person from Elhorn these guys were certainly not.

Gallus disarmed the sword wielding one trying to come at me by deflecting the sword upwards with his spear and then bashed them across the forehead with it.

One of the club wielders was slammed into the wall by a mass of sand and Yona finished it off for Sandbar who was too kind hearted to really put the hurt on.

The one that had dropped their stone club got a ribbon wrapped around their throat and slung about by Smolder to be slammed into a wall head first by the flying dragon.

If one had to wonder what my puppies, Dormarch and Dolly were doing, they were watching the shadows beyond Tianhuo’s fiery light for anything moving.

Dolly then popped into the air and brought her board around, an arrow deflect away from me and went flying back to sender which screeched in pain.

“Wow, their biology is quite hardy for the conditions they live in.” Dormarch was clinically looking over the froglins we took down with a scanning eye. “They’ll live, but they aren’t really much of a threat to us even in large numbers… could still cause injuries though. Also the one that just shot at you is still active and trying for another shot.”

“Woof, Ruff, Tuft and Puff…” I said calmly. “Get them lads!”

The four were off like a shot and after some panicked croaking and the sounds of a poor Froglin being battered by super strong puppies smashing their head into it several times, the pair of froglin archers were dragged over to the other Froglins we took down and we left them all in a clump together.

“Good puppies, can you use their arrows Silver Stream?” As I coddled my favorite god puppies, Silver Stream had a slightly disturbed look on her beak.

(Music: Chrono Trigger- Underground Sewer)

Right, Silver Stream and Sandbar are the ones that are more reluctant to get into combat. They were still here to help though and Sandbar had a powerful defensive talent at the very least with his beach sand.

“I can, but I would rather not. Also they look a little heavy, I guess I’ll take them… never know when they might be useful.” Still Silver Stream took the arrows off the half frozen froglin and the froglin battered by my puppies. “These things are made of solid carved stone, who would go to all that… right the Froglins apparently because they did go to the effort, silly me. I guess playing a live game of Ogre’s and Oubliettes for real isn’t nearly as fun as I thought it would be.”

“We should keep moving…” The fire I had Tianhuo fire down the paths of the sewer likely attracted attention of those Froglins and I doubted that was all of them, I glanced at the bubbling sewage. There wasn’t much water in Tambelon, but there was this much sewage below Tambelon Castle? “Also keep an eye out on movements in the muck.”

I calmly traipsed over the bridge to the right up ahead, past the Froglin ambush with Yona and Tianhuo leading the way now.

“Arizona are you okay?” It took me a moment to realize that Arizona hadn’t taken action against the Froglin, she was currently calmly comforting a freaking out Foenum Velvet.

“I’m fine, Foenum Velvet here apparently has an amphibian phobia.” The reindeer was cowering against Arizona.

“Phobia nothing, those creatures are horrid and are likely diseased, that they are also sickening and terrible to look at that it doesn’t help their case in the slightest either!” Foenum Velvet really didn’t like the Froglins, noted. “Icky doesn’t even begin to describe the horrors they could let loose upon us at a moment’s notice and they smell like everything else down here, vaguely rank… which is odd considering how clean the pathways are.”

“Yeah, that is weird…” I commented after a second of thought, as we crossed the bridge and went straight down a pathway instead of taking a right that would lead back towards the broken spiked log. “Any suggestions on why the pathways are so clean, with those Froglin’s living down here?”

“Probably whoever is behind running the sewers down here, also have you noticed how there are a lot of circular spots in the floor?” Gallus stated as he pointed the tip of his spear at the patterns that sometimes hid traps. “I’d think something with tentacles is down here too… and from what I’ve heard of Flamberge and Fortitude’s adventures, anything with tentacles was generally bad news if it was something eldritch in nature. Like Giant Sumatran Rat bad news, saw a picture of one once and I really don’t want to visit Abyssinia if the rats can get that horrifying.”

“… I can’t say that’s not a probable idea of what we could be facing eventually.” We walked along with a wall at our right and sewage to our left now. “With the possibility of more Froglins being around, I’d say the Froglins were keeping things clean but… they don’t seem to particularly care about the muck they were covered in or cleanliness.”

“You can say that again!” Foenum Velvet whined looking sick to her stomach.

“Yona can believe that, my shield will be needing a cleaning after all of this.” Yona looked at the mess covering her shield with a wrinkled nose. “I hope to be living up to the expectations of Rockhoof and Fortitude ‘The Fantastically Fragrant’ as to become a great hero myself!”

“Doing a good job of that Yona, took out the front man immediately with ease.” Gallus had his head on a swivel. "Sandbar be ready to protect us from projectiles again like you did with those dart traps.”

“This is scarier than those pukw… oh- I was about to invoke them.” Sandbar looked worried for almost stating the word ‘puckwudgie’. Saying ‘pukwudgie’ doesn’t make them appear, from what I heard it was a bit more specific than that and all too easy to do by accident. “Do you think they’d make this situation better or worse?”

“The Puks? Always worse, Airship Mauled might have friendly merchant Puks show up from time to time to sell their unusual knickknacks, but they still like to invade by force of habit and for fun. Somehow they always know when people are talking about them.” Gallus had a smirk on his beak as he rubbed at his chin with a claw. “What are the chances they can invade Tambelon in mass if we mentioned enough of their tribes?”

“Only do it in an emergency Gallus, everyone’s heard about how the Puks became royal guard training monsters for a reason.” Commented a nervous looking Sandbar, that earth pony looked how I felt a lot of the time.

I wondered if Shanty was doing okay? Grogar better not be hurting her or so help me…!

-Throne Room, Grogar-

“You’ll never get free of this pocket dimension Grogar!” Starswirl seemed to still have his faculties about him, he was quite ancient and powerful. Not nearly enough for me though. "Gusty's seal still holds true!"

“Can you be letting me go?” The Capricornus asked pleasantly.

“No, I do not let go what’s mine easily, not after what happened with my bell.” Hm… a problem in the sewers, probably a few of the Troggles turned traitor. I expected them to find out how to get in somehow, all roads will lead to my victory in any case. Squirk better not be lazing about down there, I at least want him to make a good showing of how dangerous my minions are. “Also taking you seems to have put things into motion that I wanted to happen… how fortuitous. If any of my visitors destroy the thing keeping us trapped in this realm, why it would be oh so helpful to my cause. I can’t exactly make it easy for them either, it is the only thing keeping all my prisoners here and a lot of them are quite delectable unicorns. Aged fresh horns will taste as sweet… I would have yours, but I’d rather you be whole for what is to come Starswirl.”

I started chanting with a grin and magic started swirling around my massive curled horns.

“Rise my servants of bone!” Hundreds of Troggle, pony and donkey skeletons after thousands of years of keeping a cycle going… I had plenty for a hoard of undead to protect what I wanted to be destroyed. Unfortunately the only two who knew what I was doing were in the same room as me and they couldn’t escape to tell anyone about it. “Go protect Gusty the Greats failsafe against me, one that I am now using to trap every visitor within my realm now. If you can kill any intruders, good… I’ll add them to my collection. If not, then they’ll do what I simply cannot quite yet. I have all the time I could ever want Starswirl. I can wait an eternity, but you… you will die of old age and I can’t have that now. I want you to live to see the destruction of all that you have built with your hooves… so what would you like to eat while I’m hosting you and this young goat?”

Green energy swirled around the undead bones of the fallen, quite a number of them unicorns with broken horns. They started to move and creak as they left the throne room, given motion by my power.

The troggles loyal to me shivered at the sight, whereas I just grinned at the thought of having an army waiting to be summoned. All of them were currently under the hooves of the invaders. I could let them all loose upon those mortals who dared invade my realm at any time I wished and they would be outnumbered thousands to one.

I had nothing to fear from my guests or any of the visitors to 'MY' world, the only suspect thing is the odd golden sheep. Something was very off with her magic, something I’ve never quite seen before, but it has yet to coalesce into something I can solidly understand.

Hollow Heart seems to know of the sheep and wants her grievously dead several times over, yet did not offer an explanation as to why he was quite dire on the issue. Apparently her presence was anathema to him somehow given he was actually able to be injured when she was around.

“Like I would eat the food a demon necromancer such as you offers!” Starswirl seemed quite reluctant in his frail blustering as did the goat that could eventually grow to be a dangerous concubine. I’d have to beat a lot of that spirit out of her first, I’d leave some because I like the idea of her trying and failing to kill me.

“Oh, but I am offering it freely with no strings attached or even malicious intent Starswirl my old enemy. On this you have my word, for whatever it may be worth. I have no need of poisoning my guests, especially not ones I want to be alive. For why would I want to kill what is mine unless it irks me gravely?” I gave a narrow eyed look to the two chained up figures. “After all as the ruler of Tambelon I will eventually take over the whole world once I do get free and it is only a matter of time. There eventually won’t be anyone left to be guests after that, I might as well enjoy the novelty of it while I can. So what meager offerings can I provide to fill your bellies in your last days of freedom hm? The best of everything in Tambelon is at my disposal after all, I can spare any expense.”

The first thing I would do once back on Equus? Hunt down Discord Lord of Chaos, I heard he had made quite a mockery of my name through my cultists.

Author's Note

I said it was going to take a while...

481. Castle Tambelon, Sewers Part 2.

-???, Oleander-

“Hey Spyro… Dulcy what are you doing here, please don’t tell me you got into trouble again!” I stopped noted the odd dragon out here. “We’re in a bit of a hurry, so out with it what’s the problem this time.”

“Oh… uh… well…” Dulcy was rubbing at her fin and looking sheepish after we helped her several times over, one would think she had plenty of help being in the Dragon Realms and being right next to the world hero Spyro.

“Well if you haven’t noticed, she isn’t a ‘dragon realm’ dragon specifically… though she is welcome here after getting lost. She needs help getting back to Mobius, lots of bad stuff happening with some guy called Naugus… sounds like someone I’d beat up multiple times.” The purple dragon Spyro was a quadrupedal dragon friend, though I’d never see him in the Dragon Lands on Equus given he’s still trying to work out the kinks in the mystical world teleportation network. Saw him on Foenum and in a few other worlds. Also something about Bahamut and Tiamat having a sibling fight or something like one. “I really don’t sorcerers on principle of how annoying they can be.”

“That guy again, CAN’T WE KILL HIM ENOUGH TIMES?!” Fred grumbled about hearing Naugus was around again.

"One would think once would be enough." Wrex commented dryly.

“Fine we’ll get you back to Mobius, but we’ll make it quick, we have to get back to Equus.” We were taking a detour through the Dragon Realms to avoid trouble since Spyro was usually on top of things.

Unfortunately we got Dulcy’d quite hard.

-Tambelon, Equestria Military staging grounds, Fizzlepop ‘Queen Tempest Shadow’-

“So Magic Corps is doing a good job despite the turnover rate.” I grumbled as my Storm Creatures were guarding the prisoners and holding the zone while ponies went out to fight and came back injured in varying degrees of ‘tis but a scratch’ and ‘we can quickly reattach this limb with some minor issues’. Medical Unicorns in the Royal Guard, the MURG, were actual miracle workers. “Then again they are in the thickest of the fighting, Shady’s units are doing the best work they can despite the limited numbers… guy deserves that promotion for keeping everyone’s morale up.”

“Truly.” Truly Noted stated with a nod, the unicorn was a by the book guy and would always be one of Celestia’s biggest fans. One of her two most competent guards too for all the good two brothers can do when most of the Royal Guard had problem, they had one until it was fixed and now… I don’t think even Jaded will joke about the Royal Guard not being able to do much more than keep the peace after this. “Though the injuries are mounting and the less said about Discord’s fun at our expenses, the better.”

“Truly Noted, Duly Noted, Fizzle!” Huffing and puffing Flamberge ran up to us with Skelly and Fortitude ‘the fantastically fragrant TM’, oh great now it’s trademarked in my mind. Fortitude offered a small smile towards me as if reading my thoughts directly.

“What’s the problem Airship Wemauliya volunteers?” Yeah, almost forgot about that Duly Noted, thanks for reminding me that Jaded destroyed the world economy trying to do math and somehow it ended up with Airship Mauled being a nation unto itself. Technically it’s got the alliance of my people the Storm Creatures, and why wouldn’t it be in alliance with the Storm Creatures since I lived there, but we did need to eventually fix it so we’re back together with Equestria officially.

“Skelly has detected the stench of necromancy most foul!” Did Flamberge just say what I thought he said? “Pray this doesn’t end in black tentacles and eldritch monsters, that’s usually how it goes with us!”

“Everyone, get to working on consecrating the grounds around us right this instant, we do not want to deal with a mass skeleton attack out of nowhere!” I shouted and started to move through the camp yelling for the anti-necromancer specialists in the royal guard. Also all the salt for our meals was now going into consecrating as much of our surroundings as feasible. “Everyone start consecrating the campsite this instant, emergency necromancer protocols, this is not a drill!”

Not everyone could drop what they were doing immediately, but the injured certainly were in motion as soon as the necromancer protocols went into effect. We started spray salt and sanctified water everywhere, we wouldn’t have enough for all of Tambelon, but we’d be able to secure our position at least.

-Castle Tambelon, somewhere in the middle of the sewers, Pom-

“You know, I figured you would be more lovey-dovey with Tianhuo.” Gallus stated as we continued making our way towards a staircase leading up into the castle through the sewer maze full of Froglins.

“Well…” I was about to say something when my ears twitched, as did that of my four boys, Dormarch and Dolly.

“Incoming, four.” Ocellus stated we all tensed up and four splashes erupted from the sewage two on the left and two on the right.

Dolly slung her board and a blast of wind knocked a Froglin back into the muck, she was very much in tune with her element and that looked to have used as much magic as her flow motion thing generally does. Dormarch barked a blast into the one on the right. The other two were swiftly taken care of by Tianhuo blasting it with flames and Sandbar slamming a hoof shaped mass of sand into the last one. All four flopped into the water with pained croaking noises.

“You were going to say something Pom?” Ocellus stated looking nervous and a little beleaguered, how bad was the malice of this place? At least she wasn’t positively paralyzed.

“We’re friends first most of all, we’re also content as a pack and we haven’t had too many issues living together.” I had enough dogs coming to me already, now I had to worry about interdimensional canines too… not that Dormarch wasn’t my cuddliest traumatized digital son in the whole wide world. “Also is it me or are the attacks getting far more frequent, how many of them are there down here?”

“The entire remaining Froglin population probably so several thousand and we’ve dealt with… seventy six. Which reminds me, why are they letting us kids do this?” Sandbar looked nervous. “I mean why did they allow us to walk right into the most dangerous place around?”

Sandbar and Silver Stream both had problems with being aggressive, Smolder and Ocellus had no issue as they were here for me and had worked on skills to defend themselves, Gallus was apparently trained to well beyond Equestrian Royal Guard standard or hopefully the new standard. As for Yona… I have no clue what she went through, but she apparently enjoyed being able to smash her way through Froglins when ten attacked us at once she plowed into them with her shield without a scratch to show for it.

“Well it’s not like you’re down here alone, you have Arizona, Tianhuo, Foenum Velvet and me as responsible and capable adults. Plus we did volunteer for this...” More like I couldn’t do anything other than volunteer, I had several good reasons to be here and not out supply hunting like Foenum Pom and her canine cadre. Those sheep dogs were not nearly as ridiculously strong as my good boy Canis Minor were, but they looked tough all the same… their Pom raised them right. “We’re not here to beat Grogar, given how fast he took us down… that’s not something I think we could do even with all of the Equestrian Royal Guard dogpiling him all at once. We’re here to rescue Starswirl, Shanty and any others that may need our help to escape from the castle.”

“We also need to find the thing preventing us from leaving this dimension.” Tianhuo was always on task as usual and I felt the usual warm spot in my chest with just having her here and lighting our way. “Also I need to state how much I appreciate you and the stuff you do for me when you were cooking, cleaning and taking care of our home…. and me. I feel like I have neglected your efforts and wish to eventually make amends Pom.”

“Oh you don’t need to worry about any of that Tianhuo!” What she needs to worry about is whether or not I’ll likely survive running into Grogar after he knocked me out in a single hit and lightly cracked my skull. Sure the kitsune healing fixed the injury, but he could do that to me again.

“For the time being yes, for I am more worried about you and you’re current state of being.” Tianhuo was talking about the golden wool up to my neck as we walked along the path with rivers of toxic sludge on both sides of us with T shaped junction coming up, we’re going to go left here. We had seen the staircase a while ago and it was in an ominous big open area. “I don’t mean just appearance and physically, I mean mentally and spiritually as well. I care about your health in all forms and I’m aware of your many concerns you told me of in the past day we’ve been trapped here in Tambelon.”

“Yep, that’s true love with a Longma. They may still seem highly stoic, but they do have emotions and they show it in their actions more than words. Rare do they show it emotionally in and outward manner.” Smolder didn’t spend a lot of time around Longma, but she wasn’t wrong in that Tianhuo was sounding a bit emotional there and was blushing faintly at Smolder’s light needling.

“While I have concerns, I’d rather not talk in circles and actually be doing something about a few of them since I can’t deal with all of them.” The look I received from Tianhuo was actual genuine concern about my mental state. “We’re taking a left here and we’ll be closer to those stairs we saw earlier.”

“We’ve taken down a lot of Froglins Pom, but I can still feel that there are a lot more of them around here and they are moving towards us in an odd way. They can move in the sewage so easily, why aren’t they swarming us constantly with much larger numbers?” With how weirdly the sewers have been designed Ocellus, I wouldn’t want to know what you’d define as odd movements since there’s probably something worse than Froglins down here and the purple muck full of eyes and mouths was one of them that we met at the entrance of this insanity. We’ve been attacked by small groups at a time never more than four or five, sometimes six or seven, but never overwhelming numbers. If they were trying to wear us down, it wasn’t a very effective way of doing it when they gave us opportunities to rest. “They seem to be avoiding where we’re heading.”

“Then we might be going the right direction.” Smolder surmised as she glanced at the bubbling gunk to our left as we had a wall to our right after taking a left at the junction.

“I don’t know if that’s a good thing.” Looking to Silver Stream who was staying the middle of the group, she wasn’t a fighter and while she could use a bow she was working with limited ammunition and aside from that she had a combat knife strapped to her right hip. She was nervously petting Edith who was clucking gently at her from the quiver she was riding in and likely wouldn’t be willing to use the knife even if she had some training in wielding it from a professional rogue.

One would think we’d have Edith just petrify everything with her gaze, but there’s a few problem with doing that on top of it being a moral ambiguity of whether or not we should since we ‘functionally’ could. We were kind of on an unknown time limit for bad things happening all around here and slowing down to turn every Froglin into stone would take forever.

Not all creatures are effected by a cockatrice’s magical petrification gaze in the same way and it is not actually a very powerful magical ability either if your hide was like rubber. It’s on the lower end of power as far as wild magic is concerned, when simple willpower can eventually beat the effects and the stone gaze is ‘technically’ temporary and then there’s the ease of not meeting the creatures gaze in the first place or blinding them with a bright light mid gaze to cancel the effects. There’s also the problem with dealing with multiple attackers and how quickly the stone gaze can effect a single target at a time in the first place.

Edith was definitely a ‘stone stare’ variant that required line of sight, the other two kinds of her species were a little more dangerous and could breathe magical petrifying gas or has to peck and claw you to start the slow petrification process.

The ‘petrify pecker’ variants that have to peck or claw you had a relatively easy cure for their petrification, which can be as simple as pulling out the infecting stone at the root point of where the beak or talon poked you quickly enough. They quite were dangerous in packs though when you get pecked in multiple places at once and miss pulling out a bit of stone due to the numbing effects of their beaks, the beak and claw variant were the most chicken like of cockatrices and they didn’t have stone gazing so could be taken down at a distance. They were also larger than the stone stare variant, so they were fairly dangerous to run across in large numbers. Less dangerous alone, but can still be plenty lethal outside of their petrifying beak and claws for their size, you would not likely bleed to death though considering how the petrification method helps wounds scab over quickly and slowly petrified you over time.

The ‘grave gas’ variants were the most dangerous variant of cockatrice as they were the largest and more dragon or reptile like with barely any chicken based attributes, just one was dangerous on its own. Their gas can get into your lungs and can cause fatal rock lung poisoning that only earth ponies were generally safe from. I’m somewhat thankful that I can breathe fire now as the ‘grave gas’ breathers are afraid of any kind of flame when they know their gas is highly combustible and they are generally surrounded by a field of said gas almost constantly by existing. You would never want to fight one of these close up or inside enclosed spaces, they were fast and quite lethal once their gas slows you down. They generally lived in cave systems that Diamond Dogs were known to frequent for a variety of reasons and were said to be on par with Grue’s in lethality when fighting in the darkness.

As for Edith’s variant the ‘stone stare’. Again you can beat them in a staring contest, don’t look at their eyes in the first place and or just fight them if you are larger than them. They are generally as physically strong as oversized chickens would be, a single one is easy to deal with and a cluster of them might be a bit more problematic but still relatively easy to deal with by yourself if you keep your eyes averted. They were usually a decent mix of half chicken and half serpent, but were the smallest and easiest to deal with variant and the most common. Numerous stone stares working together can speed up the effect of their gaze, but if you have more than one being meeting the gaze of single ‘stone stare’ at the same time, it outright cancels their magical effects.

Basically if you have three people you can fight off two ‘stone stares’ easily. As long as you always have one more person than the number of ‘stone stares’ present, they weren’t a big threat in that case even if you only knew minimal danger involved. Stone stare cockatrices avoid heavily populated areas as their best defense and offense mechanism works the best on dangerous solitary predators or prey that are alone.

“Is it too quiet?” Finally stopped thinking about the stuff I read about repti-birds like Edith, I glanced about as we took a right. Aside from the bubbling muck and the crackling flames coming off of Tianhuo’s beautifully flowing orange mane, tail and wings, it was almost silent with our hooves or claws making the only noises we heard.

“If you have to ask…” Gallus muttered with his spear tapping against his armored right shoulder as we moved, he knew how to use that thing and neither Tianhuo nor I had any pointers to give him. “Ambush?”

“The ones coming towards us just disappeared… why can’t I sense them?” Ocellus then paused and looked thoughtfully at us. “Oh… right… they adapt to things. So they are beginning to tell I can feel them and are adapting by becoming positively emotionless, no bloodlust… no detection.”

“Which they basically confirmed in that last attack until they were right on top of us.” I said quietly. “Ready yourselves to start moving… quickly. Stick together fight to disengage.”

“Your mind is still one of the most beautiful things about you.” Tianhuo complimented as she turned her back to us and faced the darkness on the pathway behind us.

It wasn’t seconds after Tianhuo complimented me that twenty or more Froglins burst from the caustic sewage, multiple tried to drop down on us from the ceiling and several surged out of the shadows behind and in front of us. The ones above us were swiftly deflect to the side with a quick ‘Aero’ from Dolly.

“Enough of your smelly and vile ugliness, tornado!” We would have been completely swarmed down had Foenum Velvet went into a rapid spinning motion, the winds didn’t touch us as she twirled forward in front of us… she cleared the path forward. The frozen Froglins were not nearly as luck to not be caught in the blasting blizzard, they didn’t certainly like cold temperatures and almost froze solid immediately.

“Blizzard!” Dolly called out and created a wall of ice to block the makeshift stabbing knives, spears and rock hammers coming at us from behind. She even froze a small area of the sludge solid.

“I’ll take lead, follow me quickly I think I have this place entirely mapped out!” Dormarch had been fiddling with his digivice for a while now, good to know we now know for certain we were heading in the right direction.

We quickly ran after Dormarch who had to stop to knock a few Froglins out of his path with blasts of energy from his mouth, even with Froglins constantly coming at us from the front they weren’t exactly any more difficult to get through.

I deflected a few attacks with a few Thousand Spears blasts, Tianhuo and Smolder aided with bursts of flames as they took to the air above us, Gallus protected a slightly cowering Silver Stream, Foenum Velvet was rapidly firing shards of ice everywhere to keep the path clear as she stuck close to Arizona who was crack rope whips to keep our path clear.

Sandbar and Yona on the defense made sure nobody got hurt as we rushed along attacking where needed and kept pushing Froglins aside or knocking them out quickly. At least Arizona was making sure the path ahead was clear with quick uses of her rope magic.

We continued along the twisting pathways and Dormarch made sure we weren’t losing him as he moved forward and continued to blast away at the aggressors with Wild Barks while my good puppies Puff, Tuft, Ruff and Woof protected him. It was cute that they were starting to call him and Dolly cousins.

We came to a four way intersection where Dormarch and my Canis Minor God Puppies were holding off some froglins. I leapt over Puff and lashed out a right hind leg buck to the chin of the nearest Froglin, okay my hind leg was still sore from being broken, but it was good it enough to put down one of these frogs.

“Come on!” Dormarch took off to the right, but I followed after him trusting he knew which way we were going.

At the next four way intersection, which is strange considering how many walls we’ve ran into down here in the sewers whether the sewage was gated with heatproof bars or we were prevent from going in a certain direction.

Ocellus had turned into a second Tianhuo, blue scales and yellow flames to blast the froglins charging down the path we just came from. Tianhuo personally blasted a wall of flames to the left and I exhaled a mass of flames to the right as Dormarch went straight through the intersection.

Yona leapt forward over Dormarch and then ram her way through a large number of Froglins to knocking them all out of the way charging with her shield held aloft and giving off a battle cry reminiscent of Fortitude ‘The Fantastically Fragrant TM’.

“We’re almost there!” Dormarch announced, the whole group followed after while Tianhuo started flinging fireballs at the Froglin’s using makeshift bows… what were they even using for the strings on those things, other Froglin’s guts? It was hard to get a smell of anything down here without my nose wanting to, pun definitely intended, really croak.

We could hardly see the arrows coming from the surrounding darkness, but Sandbar managed to get his sand in the way and bar them from slamming into us painfully as we continued forward.

I leapt and thrust my left hoof into the face of a Froglin and stomped them into the floor as I kept running following after Dormarch and my god puppies. Dolly slapped a Froglin’s spear upward before it could stab me in the side and then performed and horizontal swing into an overhead skull smash with the edge of her board to take the offending Froglin down.

There were so many of them, where were they all coming from?!

Arizona performed a flying buck and lassoed a poor Froglin with a magic rope she pulled out with her teeth as soon as she landed from sending a Froglin flying. She started to use the poor thing as a living flail to sweep an entire side path clear of Froglins with a few swings. Eventually she let the rope go and the battered female Froglin groaned.

Foenum Velvet sealed off another side path we were passing by with a quick wall of ice, several spear rammed through it a second later as the Froglins on the other side of the ice wall slammed into it face first.

A right turn, a left turn, another left and… there I could faintly see some stairs and through the constant fight for the last few minutes things suddenly stopped cold after I slammed an upper hoof into a Froglin’s chest.

We were no longer under constant attack by the Froglins.

In fact… it was suddenly almost dead silent.

Not that the Froglins were making much noise in the first place, but it was still quite disturbing how quickly the noise of many webbed toes coming at us just stopped.

The only remaining noise was Gallus disarming and knocking the last Froglin onto its backside, it looked… frightened? It scrambled up onto its webbed feet and quickly ran away.

“On a scale of one to ten how frightened was that Froglin in particular Ocellus?” Depending on the answer I think I might know what’s up those stairs.

“That rated at least an eight on the scale of horrified…. But why? All the Froglins seem to be receding from my ability to sense them.” Good point Ocellus, I too was wondering what made them back off.

“There had to be at least several hundred of them, they had an advantage of numbers yet they are not pursuing us any further.” Tianhuo’s eyes narrowed and she glanced at me, I nodded at what her suspicions may be.

“Let’s keep moving.” We came up to the stairs, but it didn’t lead out of the sewers. Instead at the top of the stairs we were at a cistern, lots of thick metal grating everywhere along with stone path leading through the center of the two massive round half circle bits of grating that had three large holes in them and numerous smaller holes. What was rare was that there was actual water in the cistern and not caustic or toxic goo, said water was slightly churning. “Watch the water for any movement… those Froglins weren’t scared off by nothing. Everyone still here?”

“Yep, spent most of my time deflecting the arrows Sandbar and Yona didn’t.” Dolly stated with her board on her back and the mystical stone bone in her right paw. Ready to throw at a moment’s notice. “Not a scratch on me Pom.”

“Cure Liquor… I’m fine mom.” Dormarch called out with his three wagging tails looking healthy.

“We’re okay Baa-baa!” Woof and his brothers clustered together near my hooves affectionately.

“I’m here, flying in armor isn't easy, but I make it look good.” Gallus announced.

“Yona is okay!” Yona stated cheerfully.

“That was totally scary.” Sandbar stated with a shiver.

“I’m fine.” Smolder stated with crossed arms.

“I am uninjured.” Tianhuo to a moment to check me over and nuzzle my cheek affectionately.

“I’m good.” Arizona called out.

“Thanks for the snacks.” A voice stated.

“No problem… wait a minute…” I looked around, as did Tianhuo. We were both quite alert now.

Where were Silver Stream, Foenum Velvet and Ocellus? Also who was it that just spoke to us?

“HELP-mf!” Our attentions were drawn upwards by Foenum Velvet to the ceiling. The danger was not in the waters of the cistern... it was above it.

“Ah, I’m so sorry, I usually have a better grip on my snacks heh-heh-heh.” It was a massive red octopus monster sticking upside down on the ceiling, he was grinning with a toothy mouth that was decidedly not beaked as he finished successfully stuffing Velvet into a clam with Ocellus and Silver Stream. “Allow me to introduce myself, my name is ‘Squirk the Immortal Octopus Sorcerer’, I believe you have entered my domain and as an ally of Grogar that means you ultimately forfeit your life. As did this poor soul for coming near me… I’m quite hungry, famished actually.”

In one of Squirk’s tentacles, this octopus reminded me of faintly of Ultros, brought a struggling Froglin up to his mouth with a grin and then bit its head off in a nasty crunching noise, a splash of blood and ripping flesh. The Froglin hadn’t even had a chance to scream or make much noise before it was dead.

“Mmm-mmm good… Froglins are always quite a delectable taste, I especially like their legs and their toxicity is quite a spice.” The octopus proceeded to rip off one of the dead bodies legs and chew through it noisily with an open mouth. He swallowed more destroyed bits of that unfortunate soul. “Want some?”

“That was an intelligent being!” I shouted utterly horrified at what we were witnessing, we have knocked around a lot of Froglins, but I don’t think we killed any of them.

“Couldn’t have been that intelligent, it was caught by me after all.” The octopus’s sickening grin disturbed me on a number of levels given the grey matter coating his teeth. “Oh the joys I had before the land overtook my kingdom of the sea… changing a fish into having lungs instead of gills so far underwater to simply watched as they drowned was one of my more fun pastimes. Unfortunately Gusty the great destroyed my magical amulet of power, so I’m sorry if I’m a little weak in the magic department as I’m quite out of practice. Still it was nice of Grogar to offer me sanctuary in the most putrid of places I can carry out my whims, it has been so long since I’ve had fresh meat to play with. If you want to throw a party in Castle Tambelon, then you’ll need to deal with the doorman… me. Since that's impossible, I can’t wait for Grogar's plans to succeed so I can sink half of Equestria into the sea!”

Another leg was ripped off and chewed noisily, I can understand why the Froglin’s didn’t want to come near this thing. This Squirk guy was horrific as he grinned as bits of flesh, sinew, bone and blood rained down from the ceiling coming from his teeth.

I looked at the large clam shell that Ocellus, Silver Stream, Edith and Foenum Velvet were trapped inside of and then slowly turned my sight back to the psychopathic octopus.

“I’ve been alive for oh so long, being immortal was quite boring for me after a while… these oh so wonderful moments of entertainment are few and far between.” As on Tentacle held the clam shut, his other seven tentacles released their grip on the ceiling and started to reach down for us. He was clinging to the ceiling with the suction cups near the base of his tentacle. “It’s oh so nice to have guests that might give me something to do, I certainly hope you struggle and scream more than that Froglin did!”

Tianhuo immediately spewed hot flames at him, I did too from my mouth hoping to burn this thing down off the ceiling and Smolder added even more heat to the streams of flames we were spewing. We were all of the same mind, we can’t let this monster survive meeting us.

“Aero!” Dolly added to the strength of the flames and I felt her get a headache from it as the inferno we were focusing on the octopus lit up the entire cistern and surrounding sewer.

Eventually we let up and all of us blinked at the sight before us.

“No way…” Arizona stated under her breathe. “Not even a little burnt?!”

Despite how powerful and stone melting the flames definitely were with Dolly increasing their strength overall… Squirk was unmoved and uninjured, he didn’t even burn or seem to have even felt the heat. We had warped the stone of the ceiling and scorched it... that was the extent of the damage we caused.

“Was that supposed to do something? My skin is hardier than mountain stone, but nice try, might have even cleaned some bacteria off the surface of my body. It’s been so long since I’ve felt clean… I hate that feeling and you have earned some of my ire!” Squirk stated haughtily as he stretched out a tentacle to take a swipe at us only for Arizona to rope it and started pulling on it. “You’ll have to do better than that if you want to even put up a struggle against me as a contender for… huh?”

Squirk tried to yank Arizona off the floor, but found it quite hard to do so, he tried pulling on the rope around his tentacle with two other tentacles and found himself at a loss for words as Arizona stubbornly refused to be pulled off of the metal grating she was standing on.

“Hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hmmmm this might actually be fun, do you really think you can beat the immortal dread octopus that even a goddess like Queen Novo herself feared!” Squirk started laughing as he aimed his trapped tentacle at Arizona and sent a blast of magic out at her. “For I was once the octopus king of the seas!”

Arizona let go of her rope and dodged out of the way as a section of grating evaporated.

“Now come, entertainment, unless you want to watch me eat your friends in front of you too!” Okay, calling it now, Squirk deserved any amount of ire and was going to get what was coming to him even if we didn’t do it ourselves. “You’d do well to distract me from my boundless hunger.”

“Baa-Ram-Ewe!” I blinked and looked to Tianhuo as she had said it at the same time I did. Dolly, Dormarch and my four god puppies also barked it out as one. We as a pack and family were in agreement, this guy was not to be trifled with and we declared him an enemy of the Lambchop family collectively.

“You took on Longma traditions, I have taken up learning some Lambkin traditions in your absence.” Tianhuo said pleasantly with a faint smile. “Now how do we deal with this great monster?”

“Monster, are you not the ones that came into my demesne uninvited little morsels?” Squirk proclaimed loudly, before screeching out at us. “Though I do invite you to jump into my mouth, I wonder what you taste like now that you’re all under my...”

The screech shook us all to paralysis from the fear it caused, even my body locked up from something like absolute terror.

A second later my wool brightly glowed and gave off a powerful flash of golden energy, everyone around me could suddenly move again and the terror seemed to dissipate quickly from even me. This octopus could scream magic?

“Hmph… natural anti-magic, could be a problem.” Squirk grumbled with two crossed tentacles, before sending the five of them at us. He grinned broadly. “No matter if your trouble or not, I do like playing with my food after all!”

Author's Note

So supernatural weather that's been below freezing for most of the month, thankfully things are now back to being warmer and less cryogenic.

Sorry this is taking so long.

Introducing G1 villain Squirk the Sorcerer Octopus.

482. Castle Tambelon, Sewers Part 3.

-Castle Tambelon, Cistern, Stuck inside a magic sealing clam shell, Ocellus-

“How did he grab us so fast?” Silver Stream was not taking it well, I wasn’t either and I had been slapped into this clam and before I knew it I was cut off from being able to feel everything. Not being able to sense emotions, it was almost as bad as sensing too many powerful ones or one major negative one over a region.

I was doing okay with my friend’s emotions protecting me from the malice in the air. They were scared, but very determined and brave. Well Silver Stream wasn’t at the moment, given she was a natural born sea pony… being trapped in a clam shell she couldn’t get out of must be causing her trauma.

Edith was clucking in an upset manner, but was affectionately nuzzling up to my hippogriff friend and cuddling her while shivering with fright.

“I can’t believe I was taken so fast…” Foenum Velvet looked upset, but at least she managed to get a warning out to the others, now we were hearing the remainder of the Froglin that was in here being eaten.

“Don’t worry, Pom will get us out of this, she always has some kind of idea of what to do and if she doesn’t she usually comes up with something eventually even if it isn’t the greatest idea.” She was a quick thinker at least and I was trying to be reassuring. “She kept us alive for most of this year and taught us a lot of things, she can get us out of the clutches of this clam that is preventing us from using magic.”

-Standing on the stone pathway going through the center of two semi-circles in the large round cistern, Pom-

We dodged out of the way and one of the seven tentacles that slapped at us from the ceiling, one lifted up and threw the grisly smashed and splattered remains of the unfortunate Froglin into the large red octopus’s mouth. Not beak, mouth with teeth.

Ultros was pretty weird, but that was understandable as digital creatures apparently had a lot of oddities, Squirk was disturbing for the fact that he was biologically native to Equus and why you don’t see mouths with normal teeth on the top portion of an octopus.

“Kids move back. Dolly get your magic charged up and maybe try to use gravity against him. Dormarch get a biological analysis and then send it to me directly, then stay safe sweetie. Woof, Tuft, Puff and Ruff, boys I want you to protect the others from any tentacles that come at them that you don’t think they can handle. Arizona, Tian, we’re at the front of this!” I was surprised I was taking charge of the situation, Tianhuo looked surprised too and otherwise nodded and didn’t gainsay me.

“Well this is…” Gallus was about to say something, but I stopped his inevitable sarcasm.

“All of you do what you think is necessary if you think you can do something, but try not to get yourself in danger and for my sanity don't be a hero, please.” I finished as I moved forward and raised my right hoof to fire a Thousand Spear air jet into the large red octopus’s yellow eyes, he didn’t flinch and didn’t even blink.

“My eyes are as tough as the rest of me, nice try though!” I leapt to the side then jumped straight up over the tentacle as slammed down and tried to swipe at me, the shockwave of it slamming down almost knocked me over. “Come on, I’m going easy on you by not using magic, do you not want to save your friends?”

While I was avoided a second tentacle trying to grapple me in the air, Tianhuo burst forth and deflect two tentacles and blasted forward on a jet of flames to kick at the upside down monsters head. No effect again, what was this guy made of?!

Arizona wasn’t having any better luck as her hooves and head were striking and knocking back the tentacles, but at most she wasn’t doing any damage. She even tried to grab and pull Squirk from the ceiling, but that proving to be ineffective too.

Even Arizona wasn’t strong enough to deal with this situation, fire wasn’t going to work.

“Gravity!” Dolly shouted out.

-A few seconds earlier, Gallus ‘Guard Griffon’-

The Dalmatian was an odd one, cute and had opposable digits on her paws, she was motioning to me to smack her skateboard with my spear as she held it up defensively. Yona and Sandbar were giving her confused loosk, Smolder however made a go ahead knowing gesture.

I brought back the shaft and swung it into her and saw some strange glowing orbs absorb into Dolly after she stood up to the impact, the dog motioned for me to strike again and possibly harder.

I swung and my spear slammed into her board and popped her back a bit, she managed to stay upright and sighed with a bit of a smile.

The dog barked and pointed a paw up at the octopus, a black and purple orb slammed into the octopus and caused him some discomfort. So that’s what Pom meant by charge up, must be a low capacity problem when it comes to magic and it now says a lot about me that I’ve learned far more about unicorns in the past year than I ever thought I would.

The tentacles were even moving much slower as Pom, Tianhuo and Arizona attacked doing jack all to the guy and getting him to let go of the clam shell holding our friends. Squirk seemed to be stretched downwards from whatever that magic did, but he still wasn’t coming off of the ceiling and even if he did, did we really want this guy to fall into the water? We probably didn’t want to fight this guy in the water if he fell into the cistern.

The Dalmatian whined and looked determined to get into the mess, but was pushed back by one of the Canis Minor before she got squashed by one of the tentacles. The three tailed fish canine was staying far back and scrutinizing our big red problem carefully.

Pom was fast, ridiculous so, the blue energy come off her hooves acted like she was clawing at the tentacles… the damage was minimal, as in she couldn’t do more than scratch the octopus’s skin. She didn’t exactly have the power, but was good at distracting. She even tried a golden colored claw attack, with maybe slightly large scratch as a result.

That wasn’t enough.

Tianhuo was as fast and a lot stronger than Pom as the middle ground between Arizona and Pom in overall capability. Still no damage, despite launching her body about avoiding the tentacles and trying to deliver powerful fully bodied blows with bursts of flames coming off of her. The light and flames, unlike with the Froglins, had no effect and aside from maybe causing a mild dent in a tentacle or the body itself.

Still wasn’t enough.

Arizona was knocking back the tentacles, but she was having a hard time keeping up with their speed even when slowed down by whatever Dolly did to Squirk. Her blows could knock back the tentacles and even do a small amount of bruising that quickly disappeared. The best she could do is wrap up a few tentacles with a length of rope and it would eventually be able to free its tentacles in short order.

Arizona didn’t brace for a tentacle and was sent smashing into the stone wall, which she quickly got out of and was back in the fight as the slowest combatant. She was tough and strong, but she couldn’t do nearly enough damage quickly enough or be given the opportunity to. Her speed was worst of the adults among us.

This Squirk guy was able to handle them so easily. Yona gave out a yell and charged forward to shield bash a tentacle, but was soon picked up and almost slammed entirely through the metal grating in the damage semi-circle to our right.

“Yona!” Sandbar immediately sent a mass of his sand to wrap around Yona and quickly pulled her free from the grating before she sank into the nasty water below. Yona was mostly okay, but whimpering as she held her shield in front of us. “Are you okay?”

“I am being fine, my pride as yak that can smash is being quite hurt though… also I think I have some bruising.” Yona was the strongest among us, next to Sandbar as long as he had beach sand or sediments to manipulate.

How did one injure an octopus with stone hard body?

A tentacle got around Pom’s midsection mid leap and Squirk tried to bit off her head, she let out a bark and Squirk reflexively released her after the blast caught him in the mouth… only after slamming Pom bodily into the ceiling.

Tianhuo caught Pom and quickly got her out of the way of another attempt by Squirk to grab back onto her after letting her go.

“Okay, analysis done…” Dormarch I think his name was, he looked fairly upset. “He doesn’t have weak points, his skin is as rubbery as it is tough and goodness knows what he’ll be like when he actually starts using magic against us… but I think I might have a solution for how to start hurting him.”

“Well let’s have it, because our best fighters are getting beaten over there by an octopus with one tentacle behind his back and I don’t think I’d have any better chances of putting my spear through the eye of that monster.” I would have lost my lunch at seeing the Froglin get eaten, but Griffons eat mice and small prey species. Usually they are cooked, but I’ve have to eat a lot of food raw before and bugs were not filling unless you could find them in large amounts. I’m surprised I didn’t have parasites in me from eating so many rats. “Not without getting torn in half and devoured afterwards at least, that guy is an apex beast.”

Dormarch turned to look at me.

“We need to pry Squirk off the ceiling and possibly get him wet, any ideas?” Dormarch asked as he watched Pom recover from being bashed senseless and get back into firing blasts of energy from her mouth, said blasts were blocked by a single tentacle creating a small barrier of energy around itself. Squirk refused to open his mouth to taunt Pom, probably because his tongue and mouth just got blasted and actually caused him some pain. “They are acting as a distraction at the moment and mom wants me to tell you that if you can just get him off the ceiling, that would go a long way to getting through this fight faster. We can maybe cause Squirk some serious problems with one Dolly’s spells if we can submerge him. As for why we want him off the ceiling… I believe his underside is highly vulnerable to attack.”

“Of course it is.” I said flatly, thinking about jumping into the water and stabbing the octopus from below in his more vulnerable parts through the grating in the floor.

“Yeah, that’s generally the kind of threat Pom has had to deal with for the past year.” Smolder commented dryly. “That’s not going to be a very easy to reach place Dormarch, also fighting him in water is a bad idea.”

“Not necessarily.” Earning my attention Dormarch. “Look I can’t explain the plan, but if we can make fall on top of the grating then at least we can try to stab him from below with Gallus’s spear to cause some damage. I have a distinct feeling as to why Squirk grabbed Ocellus, Silver Stream and Velvet of Foenum… Edith was probably incidental.”

Tianhuo plowed through the metal grating on our left a second later causing us to jump as a mass of steam and bubbles rose out of the water and eventually Tianhuo poked her mouth through a small portion of the grating to get some air while gasping and we could vaguely see her shadow quickly swim towards one of the larger holes.

The light in the room plunged when Tianhuo did, at least the Canis Minor had been on point and deflected several tentacle attacks directed to those of us who were standing around uselessly until Smolder lit a torch and held it aloft. After that Yona managed to block two tentacle strikes on her own and we backed up a bit.

Eventually a wet and gasping Tianhuo managed to find a large enough hole in the metal grating to crawl out of thanks to Smolder’s quick thinking and she reignited lighting up the cistern again. It was just in time to witness Arizona take a battering from all sides, as Pom quickly took to clinging to a wall to stare at the cow being tenderized with wide eyes.

Squirk was chuckling quite audibly at batting Arizona about between his tentacles, he eventually grappled her with all seven of them and started trying to crush her in front of us. Squeezing down on her from all sides in a devastatingly crushing grip that not even Yona would survive in for long.

Arizona refused to be crushed under the strength of the octopus, but she was clearly straining to push back against all the tentacles and in deep trouble.

I looked up at the ceiling trying to think and blinked… it was made of stone. It, the ceiling, was made of stone. A small lightbulb went off in my head. Let’s see holes in the ramshackle metal grating, yeah, I could make this work!

“If Squirk won’t come down, then we need to attack the ceiling… or…” I turned to look at Sandbar watching as Yona whimpered at seeing one of her heroes being slowly crushed alive. “Sandbar, you attack the ceiling!”

“What good would that…” Glaring at Sandbar, he quickly shut up.

“Can you turn that stone into sand?” I really doubt an octopus can keep a grip on the ceiling if Sandbar could do his Earth Pony thing.

“I like where your heads at, mom can actually help with that!” Dormarch stated with three wagging tails and Pom suddenly changed what she was doing dancing and flipping around tentacles to glance at the ceiling and making odd growling noises. “It’ll take her a moment to find the right magical frequency though and she’s doing it while in duress, maybe I should remember those for her... Anyway, if you can hurry up and help with the dangerous ceiling octopus, then that would be nice.”

“I can attack the ceiling, but I have a limited range on how far I can actually move my sand from me… I can’t actually control dirt, stone or any other form of material.” Sandbar did pretty good with just beach sand all things considered.

“Well it’s good enough to me and has protected us this far, now do your best… maybe spatula that guy off the ceiling by getting that sand above him and pulling down to get a pocket of air underneath him?” Here I got a look from Dormarch as Sandbar immediately started slapping the ceiling with sand and tried to get the sand up underneath his upside down butt and pull him down.

“You’re full of good ideas, why were you ever an orphan?” Dormarch stated and I gave him a sad look.

“Nobody in Griffonstone cared before, nowadays they do. Also I became smart exactly because of that.” A lot of sarcasm aside, I did like being adopted by witchy cat that didn’t care how weird you were.

“Huh, somewhat like Shanty, but she is more likely to rush into situations.” Dormarch’s attention was distracted by Pom slammed into a wall and pinned by a tentacle, she looked to be okay by the way her wool puffed up. Arizona was now free of the crushing grip of the six other tentacles flailing about in her direction.

“RRrrrrRRRRrrrrr…yip!” The ceiling block cracked in various places in as soon as Pom made that yipping noise despite being pinned. Squirk’s body had prevented the block from getting damage, but it was a start.

Tianhuo was trying to free Pom from the tentacle trying to crush her, while Arizona and Yona held off the other tentacles. Yona apparently got over her fright of seeing one of her heroes in a crushing grip and decided to defend instead of attack, which was proving to work better for her than going on the offensive as she was using her size effectively.

Sandbar was hitting the cracks with his sand as hard as he could manipulate it and he could hit pretty hard with it, I had nothing I was really doing unless I want to get close to that monster and get my body wrung out.

Even the Canis Minor were more useful than I was at the moment…

My eyes locked onto the clam shell being held at his back, don’t worry Silver Stream we’ll save you, Edith Ocellus and Foenum Velvet.

Squirk tried to stop Sandbar from slapping the ceiling with sand and worsening the cracks up there, but sand was hard to stop and Sandbar wasn’t staying within the range of Squirks tentacles.

“Oof…. Nghhh…!” Tianhuo was grabbed by a tentacle, she was struggling to get out of it as it squeezed her. Arizona and Yona were dealing with the five remaining tentacles poorly.

Pom was still pinned against the wall trying to bite the one holding her down for all the good it was doing her, at least she was still trying and her struggling became more pronounced when hearing Tianhuo’s bones creak from being pressured.

This chuckling octopus was terrifying and the fact that he could be even worse when he started using magic meant he was only just toying with us so far. Even if his magic was weak he was barely scratched and we were quickly losing ground against a guy that hadn’t moved from his spot since the fight even started. I didn’t want to know what this guy was like when he was mobile and using magic at the same time.

“It’s not nearly enough!” Sandbar stated as Yona moved to block a tentacle for him as he slammed another hoof shaped mass of sand into the ceiling around where Squirk was hanging from.

I looked to my right when I felt something tap me on my right leg, I blinked and looked at Dolly she pointed up to the octopus and quickly made several gestures while pointing to my spear. More like the tip of it? Is she barking for me to get in the middle of that?

Also I notice that Pom’s four god puppies started flying up to and biting at the tentacles, their bites did little and they were swiftly slapped away. They weren’t on the offensive, they were still defending us, just in a more aggressive manner.

“Ohh… I can’t take it anymore, sorry mom, but I’m jumping in! Search Hunter!” With a flash Dormarch seemed to have teleported onto the tentacle pinning Pom down and unleashed blast of energy from his mouth, lightly scorching it and doing basically nothing. A tentacle whipped out for him and he disappeared in a flash.

Appearing next to one of the octopus’s eyes, Dormarch fired a blast of energy from his mouth at it, again doing almost no damage. Dormarch at least forced the octopus to slap the ceiling and caused some more damage to it.

The five tentacles were occupied, I looked at a spot where there was a small hole next to Squirk’s body and glanced at Dolly who was still looking to me to do something with a serious expression on her face.

“I’ve got another idea to accelerate things, get on my back and warn me if Squirk notices me.” It seemed like Dolly was excited to hop onto me with her skateboard and rock solid bone.

“Sandbar when I say ‘now’, hit the butt of my spear with as much force as you can manage with your sand.” I spread my wings and leapt up, Sandbar turned to me and nodded. I carefully got into the air and Smolder continued to keep the room lit with her torch and was staying outside the range of the tentacles while hovering nearby.

“What are you going to do?” Smolder asked as she hovered close to me.

“Something helpful hopefully, didn’t train to be a royal guard for nothing… learned a lot about using a situation, environment or even my opponent’s lapse of judgement to my advantage.” Had to learn a lot of that from having Jaded as an adoptive big sister, she was utterly insane… I mean how do you normally respond quickly to someone running at you with knives taped to their eyes while on fire?! “Just keep the area lit up.”

“Right!” Smolder could probably bite and chew through the tentacle flesh, but she probably didn’t want to be slapped around like those poor puppies.

I slowly approached in the air towards the upside down octopus that was giving everyone a bad time. Even Sandbar got hit as I approached, I’m so glad for Earth Pony resilience and his ability to use sand to blunt the impact with the stone walls of the cistern entirely. Didn’t want to lose my best male buddy around, nothing against Spike or Big Mac, but Sandbar made me feel like I was normal and not the only brightly colored griffon in existence. I’m fairly certain one of my biological parents had to be a hippogriff, it would explain my bright blue feathers.

Blue was a good color for stealth in darkness as I hovered close while Squirk was looking below, I angle my spear and relied on the fact that Squirk would be too tough to feel me stabbing it into the damage ceiling he was sticking to.

Royal Guard spears were made of some tough stuff, but in general would not survive the rigors I might have to put my personal spear through. Mine was made with Adamantine and Yggdrasil wood… still wonder where Jaded got the wood that’s harder to break than most metals. I liked my gift, mostly because it was more durable than I was and was likely to survive this encounter and outlast my existence to eventually end up in Smolder’s hoard.

My will is leaving most of my things to my dragon friend as a form of sentimentality to remember me by, I’m going to leave some form of legacy behind and it’s going to be a memorable one.

I wedged the spear against the ceiling and the octopus's body, barely managed to get the tip of it up above the body of the octopus and then with both my hind legs I kicked the back end of my shaft and it wedged even deeper. It actually managed to lightly cut the stone hard flesh of the octopus a little bit.

“Now!” I called out to Sandbar and Dolly suddenly leapt of my back with a flash of green in her eyes and she somehow redirected the momentum of the tentacle to slam into the spear and suddenly Squirk was paying quite a lot of attention to us as portions of his body lightly popped off the ceiling a bit.

I quickly flew out of the way as Sandbar sent all his sand upwards and it slammed into the spear pushing it into Quirk and created an air pocket. His weight, which was apparently being effected by whatever Dolly did earlier, caused a loud popping sound as the octopus flopped off the ceiling and slammed into the floor head first with a meaty impact.

Squirk let go of all of his prisoners and was groaning on the grating and stone flooring through the middle of the room from the impact as he rolled into an upright position.

Pom and Tianhuo were freed, the latter was gasping for air as the former got her standing. I ignored them and managed to grab the wildly spinning spear by the shaft and dove for the clam shell.

I rammed it towards the exit to the cistern room with my full weight put behind the action, preventing Squirk from grabbing his hostages back up. My shoulder ached and I hoped everyone stuck in the magical clam thing was alright.

Dolly barked something and I quickly dodged losing my head inside my torso to a tentacle a second later, having seen the shadow and got an early warning I ducked us down behind the clam. The clam blocked the tentacle from slamming down on us from above.

Before I knew it Arizona was knocking the tentacle off of the clam and taking a blow for me from another tentacle sweeping towards me and the clam.

“Gah, you two work on getting that clam open!” Arizona roared as she bucked the tentacle away with her hind legs. “I’ve got you covered.”

Turning away from me Arizona pulled out a length of rope and glared down the octopus monster, who was still battering others without even looking at them. Did his tentacles have brains in them? It was like Squirk had become more aware of everyone in the room.

“Really?” Squirk stated before a tentacle lit up and slapped at Arizona shocking her with voltage causing her gasp and I watched as her muscles locked up. “I think it’s time I start putting my magic to use in this fight.”

Great, the only way this fight could get worse, is if he destroys the floor beneath us and takes the fight into the water below the grating. In fact looking at the stone pathway leading throughout the room, I notice that there was a line in the middle of the pathway throughout the entire cistern.

“Smolder I need some light over here!” I called out as the fight was still going poorly now that Squirk was upright and taking up most of the room and the center of the cistern. Also I had a sneaking suspicion as to how Squirk caught a Froglin and I was now hoping the line in the middle of the stone flooring didn’t mean what I thought it meant.

“Little busy not getting pancaked here and keep things lit up!” Smolder called out as one tentacle chased her around in the air either trying to swat her or wrap around her.

I watched as two tentacles suddenly started glowing and I knew exactly what Squirk was about to do.

“Everyone off the metal grating!” My warning came just in time two tentacles slammed down and the two semi-circles of space to move suddenly became blinding with lighting energy lighting up everything in the room.

Everyone had gotten off the grating, well just about everyone except for Arizona. She got the full brunt of one of the semi-circles lighting her body up with lightning.

“Ow, that pinched.” Arizona stated as she stiffly stood up and started stretching out. “Hate lighting so much…”

That implies Arizona has been hit by a lethal amount of voltage before, I want to know what her life was like before I’ve known her as a cousin.

Even when blinded Pom and Tianhuo somehow managed to keep dodging or attacking Squirk and I turned my attention to the clam shell and tried to wedge my spear into it to pry it open.

“Are you alright?” I asked as I try to open the clam.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Arizona wasn’t a one of a kind cow, I know what her mother was like with dynamite.

“Okay what did you need some light for?” Smolder asked as she hovered near me while everyone else attacked and distracted the octopus. One of the god puppies slapped against a wall paws first and then pushed off of it to go flying back at Squirk.

“To check the floor… not good my suspicions are confirmed.” I continued with trying to pry the clam open, but it wasn’t working. I pulled the tip of the spear free and looked at one of the nearby holes in the grating I could fit through on the right side of the room. “This isn’t working. Can you watch the clam?”

“Sure thing, but don’t do something too dumb.” Know me so well Smolder, I was planning on doing something pretty dumb.

Hopefully my Griffon constitution can handle being electrically fried if Squirk retaliates by sticking his tentacles into the water and electrifying it. Those swimming lessons with Silver Stream were going to pay off.

Watching through the grating as various blasts of magic filled the air. Squirk seemed to favor lightning magic a lot and was sometimes using blasts of water or raw unguided magic missiles, he occasionally sent bursts of wind out by physically swinging his tentacles to redirect his blasts of water in a given direction. Everyone was, at best, just distracting him and doing no serious harm.

Let’s change that, fortune favors the bold after all!

I took a deep breath and dove into the water through the large hole in the grating and started swimming towards the octopus offensive knocking around all my friends. As tough as they all were, Yona and Arizona would just survive by attrition, they weren’t invincible.

Taking my spear in both talons as I kicked with my hind legs and used my wings to sweep my way forward, I looked up and could barely make out a large pulsating fleshy sack of something that could only be a weak point that Squirk was keeping hidden. A smile came to my beak as I pulled the spear back and then stabbed it upwards and angle through the grating with as much force as I could manage.

I heard a pained bone chilling roared that shook the cistern and possibly the most of the sewers, my body locked up slightly and I could barely see what was going up there. All I knew was that I just did the most damage thus far as my spear pierced deeply into them.

A nasty looking fluid splashed out into the cisterns questionable waters near, said fluid definitely did not look like blood or ink and it was spreading throughout the water quickly… did I just bust a wart or was it something else? Either way what I just did had seriously hurt.

Prying my spear free, I stuck my beak up through the grating while Squirk was still roaring in pain and got a fresh gasp of air before quickly diving as far as I could as the upper portion of the cistern. My body was shaking and threatening to lock up and I wasn’t letting it until I got to safely deep enough.

The waters were soon filled with a strange toxic gunk pouring into it and creating a film on the top of it, followed swiftly by two angry electrified tentacles that stabbed through the metal grating like butter.

Kind of hard to not see the water above you fill with dark gunk and not know what was going on above you aside from the tentacles lighting up the water with lightning as a being bad thing. Know that I now had a limited range of movement I could do without being absolutely fried to death. Also the waters were starting to heat up from all the lightning energy.

I couldn’t surface like this… thank goodness for ten minute pirate breath holding techniques Silver Stream knew about, apparently sea ponies and pirates have a good rapport a lot of the time if the pirates hadn’t done any crimes against the sea.

I really should take up Kuril on permanently gaining the ability to breathe underwater after feasibly surviving this. If not for wanting to spend time with Silver Stream in Seaquestria, then to survive situations exactly like this one occurring again.

I don’t know what was going to kill me first, drowning, electrocution, the toxic body sludge, the water itself possibly being diseased or having foreign bacteria in it that hasn’t been seen for thousands of years, being boiled alive by the heat generated by the lightning energy and there’s always good old plain just getting ripped apart by a really large evil magical octopus monster.

Just stay calm and concentrate on holding my breath...

-Smolder-

I was trying to bite the clam open, no going, it must be magically enhanced.

“Gallus!” Pom shouted when the waters lit up, everyone was as worried about Gallus being down there. "I said not to be a hero!"

“If he wasn’t fried immediately then he’ll simply drown eventually in a matter of time, I have a taste for battered griffon wings with a sautéed lambkin.” Squirk could probably make good on his threat, aside from what Gallus just did, we really haven’t managed to damage this guy very hard. “You know what… I’ll just make a soup out of all of you when I’m done here, I wonder how you will all taste when you are painfully liquefied!”

Arcs of electrified water started spraying up through the grating controlled by Squirks magic. Yeah this battlefield really favored the big red menace entirely no mater where he was positioned, even out of water.

483. Castle Tambelon, Sewers Part 4.

-Reconstituted Alien Digital Realms, Mare Melum, Caerbannog Snake-

One would think after the end of Moon Cell and the binding of the three realms everything would be fine.

They were not. To think they would be is naïve in the extreme.

There were still plenty of things to take care of and I was part of those efforts, mostly with making sure the souls that were trapped could move on and we got everything properly freed up from the civilization terrorizing computer.

That’s when some other problems started cropping up.

“You are without a doubt the most terrifying being I’ve ever met.” I said coolly as I stuck a cigar in my mouth. Nuclear capable machines, psychotic fourth wall breaking mental monsters, snipers, cyborgs and all kinds of weird military technology with cloaking being a prominent feature… and a fat guy on roller skates with bombs… none of them compared to the idea of this one being crawling into my home unannounced.

“I still miss Mr. Thunderbeak.” Poor Clef, she still wanted permission to spend more time with the alien duck and she joined us in our current adventure. “Also you’re right, Lit is kind of terrifying.”

We both looked at the little yellow tick that glared at the twenty story building, one that had an absolutely massive jagged black smoking hole through the middle of it that almost split the entire building completely in half.

Lit, the tiny Joltik, did that with one attack. He also apparently has done several feats deemed almost entirely impossible. Nobody could doubt he was a hero at the very least.

Moon Cell had not been responsible for the Eaters, Pom’s presence did have something to do with the eaters… but she wasn’t the root cause of them appearing and was more of a cause in exacerbating their showing up. Yggdrasil.sys had us working to fix the problem and working to find the root cause to stop these small incursions from becoming something much larger, extrapolating data from a previous incident with said Eaters that there was a cause for their appearances that needed to be fixed to stop them.

We still had our work cut out for us.

I’m still a killer rabbit, weird left the building a long time ago and I’m not talking about the one that was just cracked open as if it was just hit with a bunker buster. I still classified as an assassin, no longer a servant though, apparently being able to conceptually assassinating things like ‘conflict’ still counted as being one of my skills.

The carcass of an Eater finally hit the ground from the lightning blast and it slowly started evaporating. The damage was minimal this time, mostly because Lit was letting loose some frustrations.

“Best friend Lit is quite amazing yes?” Tsumemon said, capable of evolving straight into being Zanbamon the samurai centaur at any given moment. Capable of going from a baby form straight into being a Mega in seconds was quite terrifying.

Lit raised his front right leg, blue tip pointing to the sky, and squeaked in victory.

We needed to get to the root problem of the Eaters and Lit eventually needed to settle whatever quest Arceus cooked up for him.

Apparently the god of all Pokémon had challenged the Pokémon who wanted to leave his realms and protection. Lit seemed like he would definitely accomplish whatever his given goals were, as long as it allowed him to eventually snuggle up against a strange Dalmatian with semi-opposable digits.

Seriously, I’d be somewhat worried for Arceus’s survival if he wasn’t already a confirmed god. Not my god, but still as good as any other. Could almost understand why he was doing what he currently did, guy was a prideful father and basically asking them to kick his butt.

My money is on the bug already.

-Equus, Canterlot, Twilight Sparkle-

“Are you alright?” Starlight asked as I appeared through the doorway.

“I got the coffee!” Stated Moon Dancer cheerfully as she appeared not too long after I did, I levitated a cup to myself and downed the entire thing… slightly hot and my throat itches a bit. “Uh… are you okay Twilight, that coffee was boiling hot.”

I kissed Moon Dancer on the cheek and her face went straight red, no idea why, but I really direly needed the coffee and I promised I would kiss the first person that would get me some.

“I had to find a location to put all the Stonebacks and their adopted ponies where they wouldn’t bother anyone, they were already started on farming and digging themselves some homes when I left. Also the ponies we got out of Tambelon seem happy to have different kinds of food to eat, quite appreciative of it actually. Also my alicorn constitution is kicking in, that itched more than hurt.” I needed a situation report from Tambelon. Also I now knew why Celestia could eat so much cake and never get any negative side effects from doing so. “Incidentally the diamond dog warrens near Ponyville have some new next door neighbors. Anything I should know about Sunburst?”

“Yes… there was recent horrifying confirmation that Gorgar is a necromancer. The Royal Guard in Tambelon are already scrambling to deal with that knowledge by securing their base camp.” Sunburst took some offered coffee and sipped it and quickly blew out a puff of steam with a pained look on his face as his tongue was lightly scalded. “Whoo… that is hot! They haven’t been attacked by undead yet, but with the estimated thousands of years of bones to work with… Grogar has been holding back on attacking them aggressively so far, aside from trapping everyone we sent in to deal with him.”

“They aren’t doing too horribly, I had the Royal Guard pegged for half of them being dead by now… they are all still alive much to our relief.” Starlight Glimmer, ever the optimist everyone. Research into Unicorn Madness Syndrome was coming up with interesting results, like the need for friends to stay grounded and not go crazy like Starlight and a few other unicorns have. Moon Dancer had friends so that’s why she didn’t go off the rails or crazy, I didn’t realize how much she needed my friendship. “Various states of injuries from all the fighting aside and being trapped in what is termed a screaming land of horror by Earth Ponies who can actually hear the very nature of the Tambelon itself screaming at them constantly. So yeah, good job so far… we’re waiting for the horseshoe to drop given they don’t have enough anti-necromancy measures to do more than cover the staging area for Equestria and Storm Creatures invasion of Tambelon.”

“Do you think the Storm Creatures are doing most of the work?” Moon Dancer looked a bit upset, she likely remembered when the Storm Creatures invaded Canterlot.

“No, the Royal Guard are actually doing their jobs successfully… for once… the several hero groups there to help them out like the Pillars of Equestria, the Airship Mauled adventurer’s guild and several others including the Foenum Fighters doing supply runs probably helps a lot.” Thank goodness they are all working in harmony then Sunburst. I can hardly want to imagine what would be happening if they weren’t.

I’ve never fought a necromancer before, but I can certainly imagine what one was capable of. Sombra was close enough to being one or becoming a lich to really terrify me on a number of levels before he was permanently dealt with.

“Oh and Starswirl was captured by Grogar, apparently they have a history given Gusty was a friend of Starswirl’s.” Sunburst words slowly turned in my brain and the world came to a screeching halt.

Sure Starswirl might not be what I thought of him at first, but we were still good friends and he was still one of the most famous magic users to ever live.

“Did they send someone to save him?” My question had Sunburst and Starlight glancing at one another.

“Yes.” I could only pray it was the best of the best.

“Trixie brought cupcakes!” Trixie stated jovially. “Where’s the party?”

-Tambelon, Castle Tambelon, Cistern, Pom-

Given I could see some faint bubbles in the gunk covering the top of the water through the grating and the poor lighting of this dark room, that gunk was not ink and Gallus is probably thankful it floated to the top.

That and Gallus was alive and holding his breath for dear life in the electrified water, we needed to get Squirk to stop electrifying said water and clear a patch of that gunk somehow to let Gallus out or we’d lose the one who had done the most damage this entire fight in one move.

Squirks skin was stupidly thick, stone hard and we hadn’t managed to make him bleed, the golden glow of my wool kept anyone who was paralyzed in the fight by pulsing and countering Squirks magically powered screech. Technically we still hadn’t managed to make him bleed unless that bile that resembled the sewage we saw up to this point was his blood.

The bile probably was the sewage, smelled similar enough to think that Squirk probably generated the sewage.

I dodge by leaping over a tentacle lashing for me and rolled as soon as I landed to avoid another of the six actively attacking us after landing.

Dolly, Dormarch and Smolder were actively trying to get the clam shell open to get our trapped friends out, my good boys Woof, Ruff, Tuft and Puff were tearing off small chunks of stone skin from the tentacles. That was something, but not much.

I could barely scratch the skin, Squirk was practically immune to fire and my magic wasn’t effective on him.

Squirk’s weakness was definitively where his beak would be on a normal octopus, that and having an open mouth. His insides were not as armored or tough as his outer skin and eyes were.

Yona rammed into a tentacle, doing little to the tentacle other than shoving it back with her shield. Sandbar stayed behind her continuing to act defensively to assist Yona if she got into trouble, because Squirk definitely wouldn’t have any problem lifting Yona off her hooves despite how heavy she is.

Arizona punched one away with a hoof, she was actually bruising the tentacles with her raw strength. The only problem is she could do more damage if she could toss Squirk around, but that was hard to do with the suction cups attaching him to the stone path going through the center of this room.

A tentacle stabbed out at me and leapt onto the wall and ran up to avoid it sweeping up for me in trying to grapple me. Tianhuo was moving fast enough in the air to avoid getting grappled, but her flames were useless for damage and she could only impart so much impact in her jet assisted physical attacks.

We had to do something different… there had to be something. Dolly’s Gravity and wind didn’t move Squirk until Gallus popped him off the ceiling after we destroyed a section of it. I doubt we could bury Squirk alive here.

I leapt from the wall to another in a single bound to avoid two tentacles trying to smash together on me.

Squirk seemed to be scrutinizing me, he certainly doesn’t want us thinking of ways to beat him. So far I have nothing, aside from possibly get him into the water. I suddenly had to leap down to the grating as magically electrified water blasted for me, I’m so glad I’ve had many spars with Shanty.

It doesn’t seem like Squirk can control the water directly after firing it with magic…

I let out a bark blast to cancel a blast of magic fired from one of his tentacles.

Dormarch we need a way to deal with the goop in the water and stop Squirk from electrifying it… I don’t have any ideas. Is it really that surprising? None of my attacks are working and I really don’t want to use double edge techniques other than wobble counter right now, a Thousand Spear Huo would likely not do much to him either.

Also Gallus is possibly currently drowning right now… permission granted if it won’t hurt you too much and you can get him out of there safely, if not then do what you can to save him.

“Tianhuo, use fire on the gunk in the water!” I continued to use Fleet Cunning Doe to leap, roll and dodge around attacks in an acrobatic manner without using any attacks in return.

Tianhuo didn’t question me, she sent a fireball down at the gunk coating the water below the grate and the bile quickly started to burn away.

A splash occurred around where the freshly cleared away bile was, Dormarch was going to help Gallus. He managed to get through the electrified water perfectly fine. Given one of Dormarch’s evolution could use that Surge Projector attack, he probably figured out a way to handle being shocked from that. The explanation he gave was a little strange, but he was okay and not in immense about of pain.

I had other things to focus on.

-Smolder-

After watching Dormarch go off I continued my excessive biting and clawing, I was started to have an effect on the shell. Sure the giant clam was magically resilient, but I was starting really damage it. It was going to take some time, but I’d break through the clam entrapping Ocellus eventually through sheer stubbornness.

Dolly was watching my back and warning me if one of Squirk’s tentacles decided to pay attention to us.

Hearing a crack and seeing a fracture in the shell, I redoubled my efforts. You better be alright down there Gallus!

-Dormarch-

Okay, being a data type Digimon does tend towards being able to handle taking electrical attacks better. Squirks magic was generating it, but the electricity was not itself magical. Digital transference was probably more intensive than this. I scanned my surroundings, Gallus was at the bottom of the tank and he was in pain as his lungs were pushing their limits from a quick scan.

I also noted, the odd hinges on the sides of the cistern… if we could get Squirk’s full body in the water, then maybe Dolly could… Gallus first then finish that thought. ‘Ctrl S’ the idea to temporary short term memory to share with mom in the near future.

I swam down and lit up my black spots… my limited bioluminescent capability let Gallus know I was coming as I swam down. Being a hybrid aquatic and beast type digimon, like a Gomamon, except I wasn’t a seal.

He looked at me with worry and I pointed to his spear and then to me, then to him and then to portion of grating I came down through.

Gallus held out the spear and I took it in my goofy claws and looked up at Squirk. He weakly started to swim upwards, he was going to stop around the point that the water was electrified.

I flexed all three of my tails and then quickly swam for Squirk’s underside, calculating the best place to ram this spear deeply into him. Let’s see… there’s a nerve cluster… right there! I’m quite thankful for my ability to scan biology and happen to be a search engine.

I surged upward with the spear in my claws the tip point at very tiny spot that would be imperceptible and hard to hit, but I don’t think anyone counted on me.

The electricity around me didn’t bother me one bit as I aimed to hit one small spot, at worst this will just let Gallus get out of the water and will hopefully have enough time to avoid the tentacles. The best possible outcome was that this would stun Squirk for a bit.

-Gallus-

Dormarch was a good being and he was really young from what Pom has said about him, like his mother he really doesn’t like fighting and has went through a traumatic experience with becoming a monster. Felt for the little guy having to do this, I didn’t like being here much either.

At least when push came to shove, the guy was willing to fight to not only save the lives of those he cared about, he hardly knew me and was trying to save mine too.

Dormarch was making such an awesome display with the firm look on his face that I almost forgot that I could swim for it. The lightning didn’t make him pause even as the spear drew a large amount of the energy away from open hole in the left side grating.

While he was drawing all the electrical energy to him, I managed to surface and halfway gasp as I grasped at the edge of the grating trying to get air my lungs filled with air and a shadow of a tentacle tried to slap down on me. I failed to breathe since I already had water in my lungs, also there was the problem of being partially drowned and a rapidly descending shadow coming for me.

Sandbar bodily pulled me away with his sand in time to avoid the crash of the tentacle and the sand protected me from the Squirk suddenly crying out in agony as his entire body became electrified by his own magic and the grating lit up along with it.

Had I done what Dormarch just did, the lightning would have fried me. Even with the protective magic on my Royal Guard armor. I’m going to have to get my armor upgraded steel grade electrum coated armor some of the elites in the guard used… that stuff was expensive though.

“Gallus… are you okay?!” Sandbar stated as he looked over me.

My response was to barf a mass of unhealthy looking water into his face.

“Give me… a minute…” I stated as I gasped for air and Yona smacked a tentacle back she stood protectively over us. “I almost drowned, always thought it would be while kissing Silver Stream underwater… of course she’d save me afterwards and would give me beak to beak resuscitation. Don’t want to die… in the bowels of a literal ‘Tartarus damned’ castle.”

“Tell me about it, I’ve been trying to drown out this world’s screaming with more important things to worry about.” Sandbar wince as he deflected a tentacle with turtle shell shaped mass of sand. “I’m probably banned from sand castle competitions.”

“You would be the king of a beach at that.” I grabbed his hoof with my talon and was helped back into a standing position.

“Where’s you’re spear?” Sandbar asked curiously.

“Where do you think?” Where the sun doesn’t shine on the monster and he looked to be in quite a lot of pain, my gaze was followed by Sandbar and I notice his tail slam down between his hind legs in partial sympathy for the monster that ate a semi-intelligent being alive in front of us. He has likely eaten ponies and troggles in gruesome torturous ways too.

Dormarch must have really shoved it far in there. Even then his tentacles were still attacking despite the central body not looking happy with have a pointy stick shoved up what is hopefully his backside.

Squirk grunted as a blast from beneath almost toppled him. That was the first time we saw him bleed… he was bleeding both ink and actual blood was coming out of his bottom and staining the stone pathway.

Squirk of course seemed quite angry after this.

“That’s it!” Squirk slapped all eight of his tentacles against the grating sent some magic throughout it, then he continued to fight back with a few of this tentacles, his other tentacles moved him back at a quick speed to avoid a blast of energy shooting up out of the water.

Looked like Pom’s Bark Blast, probably Dormarch’s version of it.

“Sandbar can you lift yourself in the air on your sand?” I was motioning to Yona and Spindle as I said this as the grating groaned loudly.

“Why?” A creaking noise answered Sandbar question.

The floor of the cistern collapsed out from under us, I managed to get in the air and avoid one of the tentacles stretching out to try and slap me down into the water. Now Squirk was in the water, he was going to be fairly dangerous unless we could get Foenum Velvet free.

He wasn’t going to simply let Dormarch attack his soft spot again as one of his tentacles was already in the water going after him. I could vaguely see the three tailed shadow trying to avoid being grabbed.

Sandbar floated into the air using his sand, he couldn’t really fly, but he could hover above the water well enough.

“Yona?!” Sandbar called out as Yona was the unfortunate one of us that didn’t have a method to avoid the floor coming out from under us.

Woof, Ruff, Tuft and Puff? They spun their tails and flew into the air, apparently Canis Minor could fly somewhat. Puff seemed to be doing it well enough.

Arizona had roped a jagged chunk of the broken ceiling and was now climbing up and putting the rope back under her bandanna to avoid Squirk grabbing it.

Tianhuo was fine, as long as her wings weren’t extinguished by the water.

Pom was clinging to a wall with her wool.

Smolder was on the staircase and had dug her claws into the sudden slope it turned into, this was to prevent the clam from sliding into the water. Didn’t want Squirk holding the hostages after all. Dolly was helping her with that and looked wide eyes at the tentacles seemed to look at them menacingly.

“Got you, you little freak of a nuisance!” Squirk announced and Dormarch came up out of the water struggling in one of the octopus’s tentacles. The spear was probably still embedded in Squirk. “Honestly still think you can kill an immortal? Sure you can hurt me, but you don’t have the power to finish me.”

While Squirk was stating that Sandbar created a platform of sand on top of the water and managed to keep our heavy yak friend above the water.

Yona was not a decent swimmer, unlike many other yaks that were and took baths in freezing cold water without their temperature dropping, so she was the outlier in this. I would never make fun of Yona for requiring floatation aids.

“So many targets to choose.” Squirk glanced at Sandbar struggling with yon, the dangling Arizona and the two holding the clam that held our friends hostage. “AGHH?!”

When I wasn’t looking Pom at some point had dropped into the water, she came surging up out of the water and caught Dormarch as he dropped, she looked like she was wearing a scuba suit made out of her own wool. I knew Paprika could do that, so it wasn’t that surprising.

“What did you?” I called out to Pom.

“Bucked you’re spear in further, you probably don’t want it back!” No Pom, I did want it back. As gross as it might be afterwards, that was still a gift from my… ugh… family. I actually appreciated it and was willing to do what I had to just to get it back.

The lambkin was trying to swim away and Squirk started to do something odd with his tentacles as his eyes glared her down.

He swirled them around in a spiral, but why would he...

“Get out of the water!” I picked up on it before anyone else did as he swam towards Pom and Pom seemed to know what he was about to do too given what she did next.

-Pom-

Okay rescued son, who was helping me swim away, don’t think we could get to either side of the cistern’s entrances before Squirk caught up to me… also how was he still fully functional and speaking with Gallus’s entire spear being in him now?! You could barely see the tip of the back end of it after I bucked it in.

Again, nobody called my son a freak and gets away with it while I’m around, nobody! Also I know Squirk says he’s immortal, but why isn’t he dead or in constant agony from that?! I would not be able to ignore what amounts to a giant splinter taking up most of my internal organs. I really hated fighting things bigger than me like this.

When Gallus’s warning came and a surging Squirk bringing up the rear with all of his tentacles spiraling around his body… oh no…

I hefted Dormarch from the water and threw him towards sandbar and got sucked into the massive whirlpool now taking up most of the cistern when Squirk flexed them all outwards at once.

“Mom!” Dormarch called out as Sandbar lashed out some sand to catch him while trying to avoid being sucked into the vortex with me.

I watched as Sandbar managed to attach his sand to the wall and drag himself to the edge of the spinning waters with Yona and Dormarch in tow.

I’ll be fine Dormarch. I reassured him even as I was slapped by one of the tentacles and slammed against the bottom of the cistern and threatened with being crushed again, the impact hurt quite a bit from the force of it. My good boys were busy distracting the other tentacles try to grab everyone to drag them all into the whirling pool.

While Squirk was busy putting pressure on my wool, breathing was going to be hard to do under these condition, I gave Dolly a single command and used my ability to see what Dormarch was looking at for the area the magic should take effect in.

Fire couldn’t do anything… but what about freezing his rubbery stone hard hide into something a little more rigid?

I might have an explanation for why exactly Squirk grabbed Foenum Velvet, Ocellus, Edith and Silver Stream first now. It wasn’t exactly just randomly grabbing up some of us, it was actually targeted.

He couldn’t have possibly known that Dolly could cast ice magic. Ocellus and Velvet were obvious because they could feasible use magic to cause him problems, he didn’t know about Edith, but why take Silver Stream? I’m thinking it’s because her quiver specifically had ice arrows in it.

Squirk thought he had taken out all our best advantages at dealing with him first.

Couldn’t be more wrong.

-Dolly-

…

“Blizzard!” I was going to be leaving Smolder with the clam, but this was going to change the entire fight around. I kicked forward into the air and onto my board and used my momentum abilities to surf in the whirlpool.

Pom wanted me to cast three spells.

My first target was just the swirling water. The results were… freaking amazing!

Hundreds of shards of ice started slamming into Squirk as the heavier ice surged downwards swirling into his body from all sides.

“Aghh… what… NO!” The icicles seemed to go right into his rubbery stone hide. Also that ‘no’ sounded quite scared.

“Blizzard!” I cast the second time on the ice embedded in Squirk and it began spreading and encasing his entire body. He was struggling against it until he couldn’t any longer.

“Arizona, Mom wants you to drop onto Squirk and hit him with everything you have in one blow after Dolly casts her next spell!” Dormarch called out, I had a grin as the third spell Pom wanted me to use popped into my head.

I counted down from ten seconds of surfing the water before doing as asked.

“Haste!” Target, the super strong cow and then bug out with what remaining magic I had before my brewing headache got any worse.

-Arizona-

A wild grin crossed my face. Oh yeah, whatever this was felt like liquid fire in my veins and I feel like taking it out on Squirk!

I flipped upside down and braced my hind legs against the ceiling preparing to kick off it right at Squirk.

-Pom-

Frozen solid as he was and knowing that Arizona was soon going to go berserk for five minutes… as the tentacle pinning me let off enough for me to squeeze out into the now colder waters. I turned to face the frozen octopus.

“RRrrrRRRRRRRrrrrRRRRRRGGGHHHhrRR…” Found it, also water was quite a good conductor for sound. So this was going to hurt him… A LOT. “Yip.”

Arizona was probably falling toward Squirk right about now and I just shattered his skin… not just a small portion of it… all of the thick stone hard skin… across his entire body. Gone, leaving exposed soft insides exposed to attack.

I watched in the swirling waters as the skin turned rigid by the ice shattered and was carried off by the whirlpool Squirk started to bleed all over the place as his musculature was exposed, he was now thrashing in agony and the whirlpool immediately ceased thanks to this.

Arizona’s following impact with Squirk sent me flying upwards, also she knocked most of the water and recent bloodloss out of the cistern into the sewers below using Squirk’s own mass to do so.

Smolder got hit with a mass of water and she and the clam were dragged down here with me.

I looked at the water as I stood up and looked down at my legs, the only skin Squirk had left was around his eyelids.

He roared started firing magic everywhere and trying to electrify the water, but after shocking himself… he no longer could threaten us with using lightning on the water. I still had to dodge the magic missiles his eight flailing tentacles were sending out.

“Attack!” I called out and dodge to the side as a tentacle slapped down for me, I slashed a normal magical wolf claw, unlike his stone hard rubbery skin that resisted damage… three chunks of the tentacle fell off and my claw cut through the entirety of it in seconds. I continued to shred the tentacle I was on.

Another tentacle burst into flames and blacked painfully as Tiahuo tackled it with her front hooves in a flaming. She increased the inferno surging around her body boiling that tentacle.

Woof, Ruff, Tuft and Puff were all tearing into a different tentacle with their teeth and eating chunks of muscle around the base of it trying to tear it off, which is usually what they did to most snakes who threatened me and didn’t get the memo that Canis Minor were aggressive little protectors. I wasn’t going to stop them, they were probably quite hungry for seafood and I haven’t fished for them in a while.

Arizona busy wailing on Squirk skull with one of his own tentacles, without the protective skin she had apparently ripped it entirely off without trouble. The thrashing tentacle was being used to brain the octopus into being incapable of thinking well enough to fend us off.

Yona was bashing a tentacle with her shield and Sandbar was quite liberally rubbing his sand in the rupture wounds.

Dolly was attacking the fifth tentacle with her board and doing quite a bit of damage.

The sixth tentacle was being torn apart at the base by Smolder who was taking cues from my favorite puppies, she used her teeth to detach that tentacle violently. By that time I had torn through mine in a number of claw slashes.

As for the seventh tentacle, well Gallus was likely going for his spear and after tearing apart the muscle around the base so that it’d stop flailing violently with his sharp talons he ducked into the water. The flat look on his face as he did so while diving under the tentacle said everything about how much he relished the idea of doing so.

I would probably do the same thing, which was a really good spear.

We had brutalized Squirk quite badly in such a short amount of time.

Unfortunately the lack of anyone to get his last tentacle allowed him use his magic to protect his body in a think barrier. He glared at us in anger.

“This… is… just a minor inconvenience. I’ve… I have… lived through worse including the seas receding from the land!” Declared Squirk without an ounce of quivering in his voice. “I’m ancient and immortal… this is only a mild setback at best, I will heal from this and when I do…!”

Squirk stopped speaking as Gallus ripped out of his body with his spear held aloft in his talons and was looking entirely grossed out as we all felt.

My puppies calmly moved to attacking the last tentacle and ingesting it. I think we stopped caring about the existence of the possibly toxic bile dripping from Gallus’s form and he flicked some of the stuff from his wings as he made his way over to the clam shell I couldn’t bark break open and motioned for us to help free Ocellus, Silver Stream, Edith and Foenum Velvet.

“That… was indescribably gross.” Gallus stated bluntly and crawled away from Squirk’s skull. “It’s a good thing that probably killed him.”

A groaning noise met Gallus’s words.

“Not quite… I still live yet…” Wow with as messed up as Squirk was, you would expect him to have perished from having a griffin rip his way out of his head.

“Dude, I stabbed half your brain out on the way out, how can you still be alive after all of this!” Probably for the most unfortunate reason Gallus. He was probably functionally immortal, even if his body was an agonizing mess to look at.

“Heh hmhmhm… do you really think… you can beat Grogar?” Squirk his lone eye staring at us with a pale grin on his face.

“It’s a good thing that’s not our top priority to worry about that.” I stated flatly.

“You will never…” Squirk started to say until Tianhuo blasts his main body with fire and I exhaled a blast of flames as well to join in after Smolder started doing so too. He was likely in too much pain to really say anything else.

The resulting steam from the boiled and charred octopus left the cistern without water.

“I think… we might be done here.” With tired tone Tianhuo motioned us forward, we quietly agreed with the sentiment.

It took a bit of doing, but we easily pried open a hole in the clam shell and retrieved our friends and warily looked back at Squirk’s unmoving form. Then we set off for the next area climbing up the slope that used to be a staircase.

Arizona was quite hyper much to Foenum Velvet’s chagrin that it reminded of the younger version of Arizona’s cheerful disposition. She still had about ten seconds on haste left after assisting with pulverizing most of Squirk into a fine paste.

After climbing the stairs, we came into what had to be dungeons.

-Back at the Cistern-

A damaged tentacle lifted up and slowly a face started to form out of the tip of the horribly mangled limb.

The face gave a weak toothy grin and was about to start chuckling at the fact that he would continue and when Grogar was done with them…

A pair of webbed feet slapped against the floor drawing Squirks attention away from his thoughts of torture and revenge.

Squirk squeaked and looked at all the froglins glaring down at him, one froglin tapped a club against the palm of his webbed hand slowly several times. He’s definitely terrorized them for far too long, in his weakened state he didn’t exactly have the magic to fend them off.

They descended upon the weakened tyrant octopus fully intending to get their own pound of flesh out of him.

484. Castle Tambelon, Dungeon Part 1.

-Equus, Crystal Empire, Cadence’s private secret room, Shining Armor-

“Oh no, what’s got you going this time Cadence?” I looked at the cork board and all the strings on it.

“I sensed a disturbance in the love matrix!” Right because my wife is a love goddess, she has issues when love goes unrecognized. “I think it’s Twilight! …AGAIN!”

“You do realize she’s a growing mare right? She’ll eventually learn that there’s a stark and highly noticeable difference between friendship and love right? Also, why are you so intent on following all of Twilight’s friends, isn’t this rather… invasive?” I loved my wife, but she could be a little…. off, well at least sometimes when she thinks there’s a problem that needs to be fixed. She gets as bad as Twilight does sometimes, most of the time the problem actually fixes itself if the ponies were meant to be.

I married an extreme meddler.

“Well to start off Pinkie Pie’s relationship is fine, she will at least have one foal male or female and will then go for twins with the gag factory owner Cheese Sandwich based on how many children her parents had.” Oh here we go, Cadence was going to talk about perfect lovers again. “So that’s going great!”

“Look I don’t think you’re listening to me, but you might want to stop before you get ahead of yourself, again.” I couldn’t help Cadence when she gets like this.

“Rarity is dating Capper, but could form a herd with those SMILE agents Britches and Flowers.” Cadence didn’t want to try a herd, even I didn’t think she was ready for anything beyond a monogamous relationship. Elysium help us if she eventually wants to study the Abyssinian method of love. “Fluttershy could wrangle Baast into a herd if Discord would stop being so scared of the goddess. I think Fluttershy gave up on Rarity for being too pushy, but she definitely has Discord even with his potential problem of commitment possibly killing him. It’s still so sweet… Discord would and could probably turn himself into a mass of sugar for Fluttershy to drink in some tea.”

“While that’s nice and all, what’s got you going nuts?” Yep, Cadence was going off again and it wouldn’t be long before our little Flurry Heart wakes up, then I wouldn’t be able to stop the freak out building up unless I got Cadence’s attention on our foal.

“Well it can’t be Applejack and Rainbow Dash, those two are coming along…-ish. Daring Do seems to like them both, Quibble Pants is out of the running, Soarin would be quite a decent one-off sire, but not a good match given he already has several in the Wonder Bolts he’s been sleeping around with. Plus there’s been a bit of a heavy regulation on magical babies that Twilight agrees with and I know Celestia has told me why its important, even if the one between Applejack and Rainbow would be totally adorable!” Yep, Cadence is devolving like Twilight does, I can see where my little sister gets it from when both Celestia and my wife that used to foal sit her have this odd habit. “I can understand regulating love, I am a goddess of it, but things are not as bad as they were in Majesty’s time of Dream Valley and the three tribe’s unification when doing the magic baby thing nearly killed off all ponies by accident. We actually have our population almost stable for once. I still want to see a zap apple pony just as much as Jiutian wants a fluffy Longma, it’d be so perfect with Sweet Apple Acres zap apple jam harvests and…!”

I quickly grab Cadence’s head and kissed her as hard as I could, she paused as our tongues danced. When you have a population that is a bit more female heavy you are going to have herding with multiple mares to a single stallion as a husband, being a sire was more of a one-time thing so that some mares could have children together. It’s why Twilight was interested in Genealogy for a time, she wanted to know if she was related to any of her friends.

“Oh uh… thanks Shiny…” Cadence seemed embarrassed that she was ‘sliding’ again.

When I eventually perished, hopefully in the line of duty and not from old age, Cadence was going to go absolutely ballistic if Flurry Heart wasn’t ready to prop her up or take over for a bit.

“You were saying about this being related to Twilight?” Still her big brother, even if her being an alicorn will eventually make her bigger than me. Best big brother forever!

“Just making sure it’s not her friends, they are doing okay… even if Rainbow Dash and Applejack are dancing around the issue a lot and it’s so very frustrating! Big Mac is already working on a large apple family with Sugar Belle, actually a distant cousin of Rarity’s family even.” Cadence was back to focusing on her cork boards again. “Back to Twilight, she’s the only one who would miss the cues of getting a closer relationship with any pony outside of friendship.”

“She is the alicorn of friendship Cadence.” I said dully.

“Exactly the problem, I’m worried she’ll friend zone every mare or stallion that she earns the interest of!” There was a distinct chance of that Cadence, also I noticed Twilight wasn’t on this particular cork board of her friends which was written down as ‘on the way to pursuing happiness’. Cadence moved to a cork board next door to the small one, it was three times the size and it had a lot of mares and stallions on it. “She’s been capable of celebrating Hearts and Hooves day, but next year I want her to at least have one deep relationship!”

“Twilight… recognizing love? Yeah... okay. Remember how you jumped the gun with Flash Sentry.” I watched as my wife slapped her hooves over her face and groaned audibly.

“Yes, that was entirely my bad and I ruined Flash Sentry’s chances, dimensional alternates are not entirely the same as their counterparts for a variety of reasons. Even Celestia learned that with the whole Sombra thing and I knew it wasn’t going to work out after doing that.” Looking at the cork board, I saw the Royal Guard stallion marked out with a red X. Star Tracker was apparently still in the running however, which was interesting as the words ‘rough start’ were written on his picture and after that whole Neighagra Falls thing I agreed. There’s also… ooh Moon Dancer, if she could survive Twilight’s sanity issues I’d definitely be okay with that one. Fizzlepop Berrytwist had a red X, the reasoning is being taken by Jaded La Perm and Bloody Tracks Maries, their herd relationship has built up and Twilight wouldn't be able to handle such a thing. At least I don’t have to worry about that becoming a thing as I did not want Jaded coming after my sister or for her to become an in-law, which was thankfully not on the board. Celestia had a green circle and had the words ‘eventually after ten to twenty years’ written on it, I saw some problems with that.

“Let me guess, Twilight needs to learn to separate the mare from the goddess?” I said pointing out Celestia.

“That and Celestia needs to separate the foal student from the adult mare alicorn she helped raise, it goes both ways.” A double entendre Cadence, really? Okay, that was a completely fair analysis, but only if Twilight wanted to pursue it. My sister liked cuddling up to Celestia a bit too much and...

“Luna, marked as feasible… seriously?” I gave Cadence a flat look.

“Look, we both know Luna needs all the help she can get, she’s not exactly the luckiest mare around.” Which was mostly true Cadence, but I think they’d better stay as friends. “Luna at least works great as friends with her, there also isn’t that whole hang up that Celestia has in having been her mentor and Twilight wouldn’t mind any awkwardness that Luna presents. Twilight herself is still highly awkward as we both know, even if she’s gained a lot of confidence.”

“Hopefully my sister doesn’t end up getting stuck between two alicorns and causing more problems for the both of them.” I looked over a few names I didn’t recognize, like Jazz Note. Derpy Hooves was attracted to Twilight, but had an extremely high chance of falling out of the running with someone named Time Turner and leaned more towards monogamous relationships. I also noted that Twilight had quite a list of Pegasus Ponies. “I’m guessing my sister has a thing for feathers?”

“Celestia cuddling her with her wings probably led to it, can’t even blame her for it as Twilight was so cute when she was little! Unicorns are fun to cuddle with wings.” Cadence states smoothly as I continued to look over the board and wrapped a wing around me affectionately. “So want to interfere in Twilight’s life with an unexpected visit, I heard she's having the Royal Guard invade some Tartarus level realm for a ‘sealed evil in a can’ reason and might need some help eventually.”

“She needs to learn to stand on her own hooves Cadence, also Flash Magnus?” I queried with a raised brow.

“Never dated a mare or stallion while in service of the Pegasus Military in the distant past before ending up in the future, he’s been sweet on Twilight a few times and is arguably still quite young despite the time displacement. His brothers and sisters are what carried the family name up to Flash Sentry, also yes they have some Neighpon heritage. Besides Flash Magnus could make up for what I did to poor Flash Sentry and he’s a very good guy. Though Somnambula and Mage Meadowbrook have been sniffing around him too.” As I continued to talk with my wife, I couldn’t help but wonder about what my sister has the current Royal Guard of Equestria doing.

“To be honest I feel kind of sorry for Somnambula… she lost her prince.” A second later Cadence clutched onto me as if I were a life raft. “So, do you have an entire board for Rockhoof?”

“Yes and Stygian Abyss as well.” My wife, ever the optimist that even time displaced ponies could find love. “I would love to continue this Shiny, but I think Flurry is about to wake up.”

“Wait, why does this one say Operation: Snuggle Bug and have Chrysalis’s name on it?!” I stated as I saw that a different cork board that had a familiar face on it.

“Yep, we certainly need to go take care of Flurry this instant!” Cadence stated in a panic as she levitated me after her.

My wife, the ever hopeless romantic.

-Tambelon, Castle Tambelon, Dungeons, Pom-

I glanced around at the stone walls and the barely lit corridor, someone apparently had been here recently or else there wouldn’t be lit torches and it would be pitch black darkness in here. The cells were empty, some were stained brown from someone possibly having been killed in them. I didn’t want to think too hard about that.

“So you managed to kill that monster, it looked really scary and seemed familiar to me for some reason. Maybe something Auntie Novo had in her books.” Silver Stream stated while holding Edith with her right leg, Edith seems to be clucking merrily at being generally safe. “Glad we all made it out of that alright.”

I glanced at Tianhuo and we both shared a look with Arizona.

“Well… about that… I’m fairly certain Squirk is still alive.” I stated as calmly as I could, there was a freeze from the ones who didn’t know what was going on. Ocellus, Silver Stream and Velvet gave us questioning looks as they saw the aftermath of what we did to Squirk.

“Can confirm, his form of functional immortality must be fairly amazing… but I doubt he has any great recovery ability. He’s not going to be a problem for a long time if he has to start growing his body back as a small octopus again if having budded from his own chunked up body.” Says my son Dormarch who could functionally reincarnate near infinitely in the form of a digitama, but might not be the same person every time he does. Also there were ways that he could permanently die that we knew of, which was worrying that his Cure Liquor ability couldn’t handle everything aside from his personal injuries. “I’d be more worried about everyone’s injuries, on top of having been in that disgusting water. Tianhuo has some nasty bruises, mom has even worse bruises from the shockwaves of the impacts, Gallus almost drowned and there’s the whole thing he did at the end with ripping that monsters skull in half. Yona got pretty battered too. Arizona will live and I somehow doubt it’ll be a problem for her to walk it off, that she is not a walking bruise despite being crushed under several hundred pounds of weight being put on her from all sides is amazing. Sandbar is completely fine as are those who were trapped in the clam shell. Dolly has a mild headache and won’t be able to use ‘Haste’ for approximately fifty three minutes, and fifty three… fifty two seconds. Cousins Woof, Ruff, Tuft and Puff… their biology is ridiculous sturdy.”

“Dormarch they are Canis Minor, sure they might be small and not have been able to do much damage until we shattered Squirk’s skin and squeezed at least seventy percent of his blood out of his body, but they are about half as tough as Arizona is naturally.” Which was saying a lot as my three… wait three? Where’s Ruff?! “Ruff, don’t wander off alone!”

I quickly ran up to my god puppy sniffing about an open cell room that was missing a door frame and door.

“Baa-baa, fun chase was here!” That led me to blinking in curiosity, as Ruff my tough rapscallion pointed his nose into the cell.

“Boys, confirm!” I called out to my other three god puppies they ran up and started sniffing about.

“Baa-baa, fun chase!” Stated Puff who was the last one of my four Canis Minor to get a good sniff of Jaded La Perm.

“Is fun chase okay Baa-baa?” Tuft asked while whining, always caring about others even if Jaded annoyed my boys plenty of times with being outsmarted by the rather wily and possibly evil Abyssinian.

“What’s got them up in arms?” Gallus was still reeling from the disgusting things he had done to get his spear back and he smelled nasty. Dormarch was able to clean himself off through various methods, Gallus wasn’t nearly as luck to have similar methods.

“Judging by the looks of the stone walls, Jaded La Perm has apparently been here and stole the door frame to the cell she somehow got stuck in. She slowly worked the doorframe out by prying apart the rocks around it with a knife.” Investigating the site even further I even took a sniff about myself, the smells of a cat, chimera and my most familiar scent of the Storm Queen Tempest, also the magical smell of the La Perm family that still hung off of Gallus. Yep that was Jaded La Perm alright, she left the cell and started heading in the opposite direction of the cistern heading further inward after checking it out. “She must have seen Squirk, her scent has her heading towards the cistern first and she likely said no to fighting Squirk or the Froglins by herself and turned around to head further inward.”

“If I know Jaded, she’ll likely be alright, but in what state… well I don’t think she can fight a Troggle on even ground.” Arizona knew what Jaded was capable of. “Outsmarting them, no contest, Jaded is crafty, conniving and clever. Her beating a Troggle in a straight up fight? It would be the Troggle I’m betting on there, she doesn’t have the brute force muscle to handle one by herself.”

“Do you think we can be catching up to her?” Foenum Velvet asked curiously her ears were erect and soon I was listening for something too.

Crackling of fire, our own breathing and heartbeats, not much else… mostly silent, disturbingly so.

“Also it was more like eighty five percent of his blood was squeeze out of him by Arizona with that powerful impact.” Dormarch commented loudly in an attempt to break the quite tension of the stone hallways.

“We’ll see…” I stated cautiously, because catching up with a running Jaded was hard to do as she had a highly athletic style body from a training regimen given to her by Sekhet or Sekhmet. “Ocellus, do you suppose you can detect if there is anything around?”

“I feel a massive amounts of resentment back from the way we came, the Froglins might be making it harder for Squirk to be a further issue even if he is immortal. As for ahead?” Ocellus turned her head and blinked and she shivered. “Guys… we’re not alone here, but I can’t tell what it is.”

“Well can you at least try to tell us what feels like Ocellus?” Smolder was alert when Ocellus squished in on herself and looked frightened.

“It’s something big… massive… it possibly encompasses the entirety of the dungeon and it knows we’re already here. Aside from that I’m not picking up any strong emotions and everything seems… muted. Even you guys and I’m standing right next to you. Which is very weird.” Ocellus pointed to us and then hugged Smolder to herself shivering with fright. “I don’t like it here.”

“Edith doesn’t either…” Silver Stream announced and we all looked to Edith looking about and was on high alert, but still staying with Silver Stream. A loyal and protective familiar if I ever saw one, Edith had a slightly aggressive look in her eyes and it wasn’t directed at us. “She might know something, but I don’t speak serpent bird. I am getting feelings of danger from her though, Edith used to live in the Ever Free Forest and I would trust her senses on this one.”

“For a lack of better options we’ll follow Jade’s scent to see if she found her way through here.” As the dungeon was starting to open up into maze like corridors in structure. “Hopefully we don’t find her and get through this place, she might even be able to get us to where we need to be.”

“Yeah, because if we found her and she didn’t…” Gallus started to say and then quickly quieted down and he angrily gripped his spear in his left talon.

We were quiet as we made our way down the stone corridors, following Jaded’s scent and I had to wonder what we would find. Jaded could sneak around, but if she was ever caught off guard, then she wouldn’t be able to do much fighting against a bigger opponent that even I’d have problems with.

“This feels so wrong…” Ocellus muttered, quietly behind me next to Smolder. “Why does everything feel so muted?!”

There wasn’t a feeling of malice, but there was feeling that we were being watched and it wasn’t Grogar who was watching us. If not him then who… or what?

Tianhuo was on high alert after the whole fight with Squirk and I was feeling it too, something was going on here in the dungeon and things didn’t feel right as we walked by a number of torches and came to an octagonal pathway. The torches on every pathway were lit, but Jaded couldn’t have lit them all as we found her scent heading in a specific direction and didn’t enter the other torch lit corridors.

We followed Jaded’s scent all the same down another corridor after taking a left. I started noticing what looked like claw marks from an Abyssinian moving on all fours, something likely had spooked Jaded badly and she was scrabbling to safety.

One would think there would be more noise, unless Grogar takes care of them in permanent fashion or at least torture those who have failed him. Nothing except the silence of us moving through the corridors between large stone rooms. All of them lined with notably empty prison cells.

My god puppies were starting to feel quite uneasy, as was Dolly and Dormarch who had their ears, eyes and noses out for any sudden movements. I’m almost expecting Hollow Heart to show up.

We entered a four way from one side and followed the scent straight through the intersection ignoring the corridors to our left and right.

“Stop…” Dormarch’s voice caused us all to freeze. “Something passed through the intersection behind us. We’re being stalked by something that’s not making any noise.”

“Could it have been the… yeah no, there’s no wind down here and the way those torches are flickering…” Gallus narrowed his eyes at the way the torches behind us fluttered in the presence of something have moved through the corridor without all of us hearing it. “This thing better not be invisible too, whatever it is.”

We kept moving and then came to see something interesting… it was a frame and door propped up against the wall in the middle of the corridor. It was the very one Jaded had obviously stolen from the cell she broke out of. My puppies all sniffed around and then came back to the door shaking their heads.

“According to my god puppies, her scent ends at that door.” Which was not connected to anything as it leaned against the stone wall.

“What kind of Magical Alchemy could she have done with an entire door?” Gallus muttered reminding me that Jaded has some unusual capabilities.

“Open a path to somewhere else down here at random maybe?” That was not a good sign Arizona, especially not when something was possibly hunting us or watching us from the shadows.

I thought I saw a movement from the stone ceiling behind us. Yet when I looked, nothing moved and I didn’t see anything other than empty corridor behind everyone. We were all still here together too, did not want to be caught off guard like we were with Squirk.

“Well there is a feel of magic about the door and frame…” Ocellus opened the door and we all blinked. I looked behind the door frame leaning against a blank stone wall and yes the stone wall was still there. I pulled my head back to look at the open door that led somewhere else entirely. “How in the world?”

“Magical Alchemy has done some pretty bizarre stuff in the past, the wielder doesn’t always need to be present for certain effects to keep going.” Great just what we needed to deal with Gallus, magical inertia. Normal inertia was bad enough. “So anyone going to try the…”

My four god puppies made the decision for us by going through the mystical doorway and sniffed about the room on the other side. The strange thing was that they felt like they were close to me and very far away at the same time, close through the door and in another part of the dungeon entirely by the feeling I’m getting.

“I can feel all four them in another part of the dungeon and right next to me. Everyone go through the magical door… maybe whatever is stalking us won’t be able to follow us.” Or do anything to us as quickly when we do.

“Baa-baa I found the scent again!” Announced Tuft with a yip and his brothers were suddenly sniffing the spot near the entrance and spreading throughout various parts of the room.

“Fun chase was here Baa-baa!” Puff also exclaimed with a wagging tail, his brothers started moving more in that direction.

Everyone made their way through as I kept watch and inhaled sharply. My eyes were watching the shadows and the flickering lights of the lit torches. I didn’t see anything as I backed up towards the doorway as everyone passed through, I was about to close the door when a knife came flying towards my chest blade first. It actually made noise as it passed through the air, unlike whatever had just launched it at me.

I exhaled and dodged backwards as I slammed the door shut and the knife created sparks as it skittered across the stone flooring of the room. Everyone scattered out of the way of it. It had almost grazed my wool and had been aiming to stab me in the heart.

“Someone or ‘something’ just threw that knife at me… we’re definitely not alone here and it’s definitely not the froglins this time.” I stated while looking around at the others as they all looked at the knife that had skittered along the floor after missing me. “Did anyone see where that came from?”

“I did not, but I would like to know who attacked you and impress upon them a grave reason not to.” Tianhuo had her eyes narrowed at the closed door and frame.

“The answer all around is a big ‘no’ Pom… but I do think something happened to Jaded.” Gallus looked a little pale. “This is one of her knives, but why is its handle is covered in stone?”

Gallus reached for it to get a better look and Ocellus did something that she was not normally known for, raising her voice.

“Don’t touch it, there’s magic on that knife!” Ocellus stated and Gallus quickly pulled his talons away and backed up from it as if actively burned. Soon the changeling approached it carefully. “Yeah that feels like dark magic… Pom, can you grab it?”

“Why would…” Silver Stream started to ask.

I just did as Ocellus said and took it up in my right hoof and I felt something sickening trying to squirm its way into my body. Only to fail horribly as I oddly felt like a living brick wall for whatever it was that tried.

I felt the magic trying to desperately cling to me and do something, only it failed and was immediately destroyed in one golden flash of anti-magical energy and something changed with the knife I was holding.

Gripping the knife by the blade with some wool from my left hoof and letting go with my right hoof… the stone wrapping around the knife immediately started to fall off of it and crumble away to nothing. When I looked at the floor all the stone on the knife had turned into… dirt? Well that was odd.

“Whatever that dark magic was, we probably don’t want to be near whatever it has been used on as it seemed to be highly agressive.” Ocellus was positively cowering. “That magic tried to get inside you Pom, but you’re general immunity to harmful magic stopped it entirely. Also no, I did not gamble with Pom’s life before any of you ask. Pom is immune to all negative forms of magic directly applied to her. However if you create an elemental energy with magic and fire it at her, unless it has a magical component it’ll still hit her so there are some ways to bypass her anti-magic using magic indirectly. Pom was perfectly safe to remove whatever that magic was by taking hold of it.”

“I will hold my reservations about that course of action, at least Pom does not seem to have become ill from it nor did it worsen her current condition.” Though Tianhuo still sent me a worried look and a slight side glance at Ocellus, she was right and my golden wool was still only up to my neck and hasn’t move an inch since we first got trapped in Tambelon.

“Tianhuo, trust in the fact that I trusted Ocellus enough to do that in the first place.” I received a bowed head in acknowledgment from Tianhuo, but I could still see the worry in her eyes for me. We were still walking off a fairly nasty fight with a giant magical octopus after all and we weren’t stopping to heal up or even have snacks from that. Not that we were carrying much food on us to begin with, but we still had enough to stop for a bit and now wasn’t exactly the time for it.

Gallus moved forward and picked up the knife and checked it over, his wings wilted and his tail flicked with a hint of anger.

“Yeah, this knife definitely belongs to Jaded.” Gallus stated as he slowly stowed it away.

“What are the chances that Jaded might have been the one to throw that at me?” I stated slowly with a hint of rising concern and everyone was now staring at me quietly.

“I really don’t think, and would highly doubt, Jaded would actually want to throw one of her knives at you.” Gallus stated firmly with some belief in Jaded as a marginally good person, as long as you didn’t live in Saddle Arabia that is. “She generally doesn’t like throwing her weapons unless there is a purpose or an absolutely needed reason to do so.”

“Not if she were in the right state of mind, sure, but… what if she wasn’t because of whatever that dark magic is…?” I trailed off letting the thought hang in the air and Gallus looked highly uncomfortable with my current train of thought. “So where are we? Looks like another prison cell, only slightly better accommodations than the few rooms we looked into before going through the door.”

Looking around the room we saw a few things, it was a slightly fancier than the bare bones jail cells with some bedding, a few empty shelves, a wooden table or two with no signs of rot and a small side room with a foul smelling hole for leavings that likely led into the sewers below. I took a few more sniffs of the air as my god puppies were wandering around interested in the various parts of the room.

Gallus was talking to Sandbar, Smolder and Silver Stream in a quiet voice, as they took a moment to rest. Yona was watching the door we came through with her shield at the ready for anything that would follow us through. Tianhuo and Ocellus silently followed me about as I investigated the room and what might have happened here.

“Baa-baa!” Woof called out and most of us were drawn over to a place where various frantic traces of light claw marks were seen.

I took a sniff… it seems that the trail of Jaded’s smell ended right here on this spot. Jaded didn’t get any further than this room apparently, which was strange because I didn’t see anything vaguely cat shaped anywhere in here. It was poorly lit with a few torches and I was looking at the shadows with worry.

One would think I was jumping at nothing, but then Hollow Heart could basically sink into shadows and I had a reason to be on high alert from that thought alone.

“There was a struggle of some kind and Jaded was moderately bleeding… not heavily or anywhere close to a mortal injury though. She’d have to have staunched the injury at some point. There’s only a few spots to show she was injured and here at least more than an hour earlier.” I knew something was wrong with that. Jaded was struggling against something and lost, but she didn’t seem to have exited this room after entering. “Something was attacking her here and then suddenly… nothing. It’s like she gave up, but wasn’t killed or else there would be far more blood and more signs of a corpse being here or at least the stench of death.”

The smell of a living Jaded ended here and aside from a few specks of brown from where she bled a bit, there wasn’t a lot of blood spilled here. Whatever it was that had attacked Jaded didn’t meet much resistance from the Abyssinian after a minute of struggle. I looked towards the ceiling, nothing seemed out of place aside from cold hard stone.

“Please don’t tell me that we’re going to have to fight Jaded.” Gallus voice wavered a bit and his wings flexed in a way that showed he was scared or worried.

“I’m quite horrified at the possibility of facing her myself Gallus, especially if her mind was to be put behind whatever is going on in this dungeon. We don’t even know what that is yet and I really get this sinking feeling we don’t want to find out anytime soon.” That was something for me to obviously fear, anything that might have Jaded’s mind under its control was likely to be horrifically powerful on some level. “Things around here will certainly become a lot more dangerous at the very least.”

“How terrifying can one Abyssinian be?” A curious Sandbar wondered, did he not know of Mirage of Saddle Arabia? Jaded was infamous for being Mirage in several stories in one hundred and one Saddle Arabian tales.

“Depends on the Abyssinian.” Tianhuo stated calmly and her flames subtly increased in intensity, to light the large room up further.

“Uh dude, we haven’t seen or heard from any prisoners down here and we didn’t even see what threw that knife. We’re here to rescue people too you know… it might not just be Jaded down here with whatever is going on with the dark magic that was on that knife.” Gallus response led us all to being silent for a moment. “So… who wants to be the first to poke their heads outside of this prison cell?”

I immediately moved over to the door and noticed something immediately.

“Guys… this room isn’t a prison cell.” This was met with some confusion from the entirety of the group. I also noticed Edith was doing something unusual, she was backed up into a corner looking around warily with her wings spreading out slightly in a warning display and was not sticking by Silver Stream’s side despite her obvious worry for her partner.

“How is this not a… ah, I see. So would this be a safe room then?” What Gallus was talking about was the drawbar that would prevent things from getting into this room from the outside. Said drawbar hadn’t been moved, meaning this room had been for all intents and purposes sealed after Jaded came in and more importantly, she hadn’t left this room at all. If she was dragged away from the room then my boys and I would have smelled something to that effect. “Do you think Jaded used this place? Maybe she locked herself in here to think for a bit?”

“Don’t know, but given she was attacked in here and if the door is still barred from this side of it and I’m hopefully assuming that the thing that was stalking us in the corridors can’t open doors…” I certainly didn’t feel very safe at all right now and I had an idea of where my mind was going with this. “I don’t think anything has left this room nor has anything else come in since we entered it ourselves. Does anyone else see the obvious problem with that?”

“But if nothing has left this room since Jaded was here…” Gallus was about to point out the possibility that there was a threat in here with us and we were entirely incapable of actually detecting it.

Edith seemed to be the only one who could seemingly detect what was happening, she was staring at something and I tried to figure out what before it was too late.

“You know that muted feeling? It is getting so much worse now.” Ocellus announced blankly while clutching at her head with her left hoof.

“Yona thinks… AHHHHH?!” Yona’s shrill scream drew our attention to the fact that several threats were already in the process of attacking her before anyone could do anything.

Author's Note

Another Generation 1 MLP villain enters the ring... and has the environmental advantage.

Arc 4: Where dreams "can" come true.

"...?!" The sounds of many barking puppies can be heard.

"I be with a bunch of fun thieves!" The sounds of worried mechanical warbling can be heard.

"Good families are important... all we wanted... was to return home to all of ours..." The sounds of a friendly raspy voice responds.

Author's Note

This is going to be a pretty big fusion world, all the worlds fused into this one should be easy to figure out as most of them can exist at the same time so it's going to be under one name specifically.

Then there there's going to be the odd curve ball world fused into this one that doesn't fit and Pom is going to dislike it.

93. Spot that chicken.

-Equus, Ponyville Park, Gallus-

“Okay, so they figured out how to bring them back… but it’s reliant on them finding another way between dimensions, provided that the world they are in can even do that. Which leads to the bigger problem.” I grumbled as Kuril cuddled me, she’s been doing this a lot lately and saying stuff like I didn’t get enough hugs growing up. I personally think I was fine when hugs were a rarity. “You’re not going to tell Jaded about this right? Apparently Fizzle warned me that she could have me on the worst assignments if I still want to become a guard for Equestria.”

“My lips are sealed on that, because you can trust me I’m a cat with a hat~. Also Jade is busy after her trip to Meadow Hills caused a slight economic problem, she’s currently trying to fix said problem she started in the first place and is currently visiting the changeling hives and is doing work approaching what an actual priestess does.” Kuril wasn't going to stop teasing my feathers anytime soon. “So what was the downside of them doing this again?”

“They’ll end up in Tambelon with that crazy evil demon goat Grogar, his bell was the major source of his power and it’s somewhere in Equestria… I think?” Silverstream tilted her head while poking a claw at her beak, she is much nicer than ninety percent of the griffon girls back in Griffonstone. That and she constantly smelled of fish, which is a complement in her culture. “We’re not sure how powerful he is now without it, if his bell can temporarily turn Pinkie into ‘The Party God of Sugar Highs’ alone he can still be pretty dangerous himself. You know, that could have actually been pretty fun.”

“Yeah, until we’d die of party exhaustion and Pinkie would probably manipulate our bodies to dance forever.” I said dourly.

“Yona think Gallus should lighten up, things are not being so bad!” Yona probably meant aside from being horrible for Ocellus and Smolder who would have to face the real Grogar, and not just Discord disguised as him, until backup arrived. “Nobody is the best at fighting demons unless well prepared for it, but yaks would make a great effort of it!”

Said arrival of help was going to likely take time as the portal, those brave idiots who were going in there would use, would drop them randomly and ‘relatively’ safely into Tambelon. A place that has been noticed as being worse than Tartarus on a good day.

Until then, the four lost would arrive in Tambelon together and would have to fend for themselves, the one we’re relying on keeping them safe being 'A LAMBKIN'.

We only heard about the first world they’ve been to, which was close to Equus standards on friendly warfare. What more could they possible be going through right now?

Opening an exit location in Tambelon was going to be an even bigger problem if Grogar saw it and got back into Equestria…

Yeah, it’s little wonder they were waffling on this plan of action like so many other things.

“So when you say Jaded is doing work like what an actual Priestess does… what did you mean by that Ms. La Perm?” Sandbar asked while looking to mom… I did not just think that!

“Aside from my little Gallus here being happy to have a mother.” Why do I feel like Kuril was just as evil as her daughter and that 'good witch' moniker was just hiding it? “My by blood kitten rarely acts like a priestess that most would forget that she actually is one, so she’s doing missionary work and is handing out good books. Mostly ‘Ethics and Etiquette for braindead people’ to the changelings of how to deal with other races in a more tactful manner, Jaded read it cover to cover to learn how insult nobles better.”

-Earth, Morning, Haiti, Cooper Van, ???-

“So the Water Safety page Shanty read…” Sly stated slowly as if trying to understand what his family’s legacy did with the goat.

“Exactly, Shanty’s subconsciously picked up a magical thief trick from it like you sometimes do with finding new ways to do old tricks and her hooves did the rest. She simply can’t just stand on water… but she can certainly move on it as if it were solid. So long as she doesn’t stay still she can run, walk or hop straight across a roaring river without the current affecting her in the slightest.” Bentley had an impressive grasp on magic. I could kiss him, but I really don’t want them immediately figuring out a way to exorcise me. “So yes, that page can have a lot more uses than helping you get back onto a solid surface after falling into water. Even I didn’t know that just the right amount of information from your book could something like that and I’m studying the history of the Coopers!”

“Uh, is that one of those zombie chickens?” If I still had a beating heart, then Murray noticing my presence would have made it stop.

“Nope, no zombie chickens around here, I have no idea what you’re talking about… heh heh...” They seemed shocked and they looked about ready to take action, I covered my head with my wings. “Please don’t hurt me, I never wanted to be Ruby’s thrall and I have a very good reason for being here!”

“Is that… is that a talking zombie chicken?!” Bentley stated the obvious with shock. “Huh, you seem different from the others Ruby used. Not rotting, no stitches… perfect condition despite the swamp environment you were in. What’s your story and why shouldn’t we just shove salt down your throat this instant?”

“It’s a bit a long one. If you ever look up the name Cruella De Ville, then you’ll find a lot of nasty stuff about that family’s history. Winged werewolves, sound vampires that eat noise so they can perform perfect assassinations while you sleep and paint demons ritualistically made from the blood of the brutally slaughtered innocent people. Let’s just go with the psychotic ones of that family is a whole kit and caboodle of dangerous stuff like that up to and including actual demon blood in their family line, especially after mixing it with a magical family known as ‘De Spell’ who have this whole massive backed up magical karma problem a mile wide that always make them get their comeuppance eventually if they use their magic too much. I’m quite thankful Ruby ignored those warning signs of her own karma coming to bite her.” I had to sell them on my spiel to help me as I still had a lot to do and I had to ultimately see if I succeeded in saving my friends that one last time before Cruella… well if she doesn’t have a puppy coat yet, then me being like this was worth every bit of suffering that’s happened to me up to this point. “I’m a fountain of knowledge going at least sixty years back, also salt doesn’t work on me… fire does though and I don’t relish having to regenerate after the last few times I thought I would hopefully give up my ghost. I’m not a voodoo zombie that nature abusing… erg… I’m getting off track, but just know that I can still feel pain in excruciating detail. I just want you guys to take me to somewhere in Britain, general area, don’t care where you drop me off. I just need a ride… please? You guys freed me from voodoo witch’s control and I just want to make sure of something in the general areas around the United Kingdoms, it’s been a long time and I was close to getting back before I had run in with a ‘De Spell’ that’s related to me being here.”

I spat ‘De Spell’ like it was a curse, it probably was and I can only hope the current worst De Spell that exists in this current time frame was hit with usual laser guided karma that came at them.

Chickens were never meant to live this long… I would have to ease them into the truth. Sly looks so big… then again he was always bigger than me being a biped and I was an animal going into animalistic.

“Okay, you vaguely have our interest.” Bentley crossed his arms crossed. “Were you always a chicken with spots?”

“Yes, I love having these spots, I even grew up wanting to be a dog... a Dalmatian mostly. It actually happened once because I got lucky with magic while I wasn’t like this and still able to grow up, but… I kind of needed to turn back into a chicken to save my closest friends. It was actually quite useful that I did because of what happened in that magical village later on…” Smacking my head, I shook it and a few of my nostalgic mental marbles loose. I looked to Sly Cooper, the leader of this group that reminded me of my own long gone friends. I looked him straight in the eyes and knew I had something he would want in exchange for what I knew. “If you can get me to Britain or the United Kingdoms, then I can tell you exactly where Panda King currently is, what he’s doing and might even give you a good idea of how to bring down his operations quickly. I heard enough about him from Ruby going on about him and the others never calling over the last ten or so years of my life I’ll never get back… because I don’t even think I currently have one.”

“Do you have a name?” The narrowing of Sly’s eyes told me I hit a bullseye with something he absolutely wanted to know. “Also, if your information is good, we’ll detour to the United Kingdoms on the way to China. I’m sure you know that we’re currently laying low here.”

“Spot Irma Chicken, yes my first name is that of a dogs, my last name is what I am and my family were completely normal egg laying chickens. I’m the outlier in my family and trust me, any information you get from me is a real gold mine of knowledge. Let me give you a freebie and an early warning, China is kind of infested Jiangshi so prepare for that specific type of zombie, or vampire if you prefer, in advance. You’ll be quite thankful if you do.” I crossed my wings and nodded to myself. “In fact getting some blood of a black dog would help, especially if freely given and mixed into a burnt talisman with black ink and some of my blood, I could make something to destroy any within a mile radius of you. If I can find some dogs in Britain willing to help me, I can set that up for you so it won’t become a problem for you later… you guys just driving around with my anti-Jiangshi talisman might actually clean up the mess some of the local mystics made of those hopping mantis monsters.”

“So would you say you’re gifted in magic?” Having asked that, Bentley earned my attention.

“I’m actually a dabbler and not professionally trained in it, but I do know how to do some incredible things. Just don’t ask me to do anything related to voodoo after how long I’ve been stuck around that hack that calls herself a professional. Ruby is not someone I care about in the slightest and I’m sure all of you can understand why.” I received a nod of understanding from the three. I managed to keep away from Ruby, but I was stuck following the spirit of ‘patrol the swamp’ without ever actually going back to her because I was smarter than the literally braindead voodoo minions under her employ. “I’m a decent detective, even ran around doing some detective work under the name of Pullet Marlow… could you look that up for me Bentley? You might find something surprising, I want to see if people remember I exist. I’ve been stuck away from Britain doing a whole ton of stuff that nobody is likely to thank me for, my friends are already long dead even if the situation that caused me to be stuck far away from them worked out perfectly.”

“Yeah, sure, hold on… whoa… uh… are you sure you’re Pullet Marlow?” Bentley was boggling at what he was seeing on the screen, I rubbed the back of my left wing against my chest.

So it seems that I’m still famous for crime solving in my attempt with trying to get back to Britain, at this point I’m just hoping to at least meet their descendants and make peace with them. If they had any and things actually worked out…

“Pullet means ‘chicken’ you know, of course I’m Pullet Marlow! Call me Spot though.” I was insulted, I mean he just looked up my alternative name because I just asked about it and not many people know that name. My calling card for solving a case was one of my regenerating grey spotted feathers, I spread my wings and wiggled them in Bentley’s face. “I just happen to be a chicken, possibly one of the first and only in my bloodline to become fully animalistic… under egregiously weird magical circumstances involving an evil woman trying to kill me and failing at it in such a spectacularly ‘evil fashion’ that meant I would never see my best friends again. The barrier between animal and animalistic is actually thinner than most think it is.”

“Can you actually prove that you’re actually The Pullet Marlow?” He quirked his eyes at me in disbelief, Bentley the brains was about to hear one of my most infamous cases and it was going to be close to home for Sly.

“Conner Cooper, was almost once got caught by strange setup involving rat traps, a bowling ball, fishing line string and an amount of fly-paper that would be considered completely excessive in any other situation. I would know, I was actually there to set it up when we met in Germany… I was so close to getting home that time too...” That was not one of my better weeks and I ended up in Africa afterwards stopping elephant poachers. Being a magical undying chicken wasn’t fun by any stretch of the imagination, and would have been far happier to have never met that rhino. “If you were wondering, that was around the time Bomb Voyage was found looking tarred and feathered in the…”

“I believe you, I really do! Only Thief Net has that kind of information about what happened to Bomb Voyage that day as he eventually blew up almost all other records of it ever happening. The guy became a laughing stock because of that situation and his insistence that a chicken…” Bentley trailed off. “You were the closest to ever actually catching Conner Cooper, there were a lot people calling for you to come forward and reveal yourself to world you know. I can quite clearly see why you didn’t, nobody would have taken you seriously since you’re a… chicken. To think if Bomb Voyage hadn’t been there…”

“Yeah, I’m the one that made Bomb Voyage ‘bomb it badly’ so to speak. Conner was actually a pretty great guy… at least up until the Fiendish Five took him down. I was nowhere near the place at the time, but I still heard about it in the news. Even went to investigate as his friend to see if his wife or Sly made it out of that alive, then the whole run in with a ‘De Spell’ thing happened and I ended up as Ruby’s thrall.” I looked into Sly’s eyes finally getting it off my chest that I knew about him, I was glad to hear that he was rising up to be a great thief. “Now that we’ve established my usefulness to you… along with my connections to your father, he would be so proud of you Sly. He would have wanted you to know that it wasn’t the book that made the Cooper’s, but the Cooper’s that made that book. You got most of it back together already, don’t overlook any techniques and maybe even create a few of your own while you’re at it. Conner was amazing to see in action, you are too and Conner couldn’t even do most of the tricks in the Thievius Raccoonus and you’re mastering them like lightning. I’m pretty sure Conner left something behind for you more than the book you’re looking to fix, but that might take a while to find.”

There was a long awkward silence, so they didn’t immediately want to destroy me. I've established that I knew the previous Cooper Gang and almost successfully prevented a heist I really shouldn’t have. I even gave Conner’s son a little closure.

“So what happened to that goat kid, is she alright?” I asked in apparent worry. I might nearly be incapable of dying, but that didn’t mean other people couldn’t and that goat had some impressive moves. She didn’t seem full time Cooper Gang material though, I’ve actually seen what that’s like.

“Sly got her to a hospital with Dodo’s help after all that foul muck got into her body, our friend Mopsy is currently with her." Murray looked positively worried. "We're hoping that Ms. Carmelita doesn’t bother her and Shanty too much.”

I worried too and I actually knew what went into making those muck monsters and hoped that the goat purged those toxins out of her system quickly enough that it wasn’t too bad.

“Mopsy can take care of herself and can deal with Carmelita.” Bentley started typing away on his computer. “There isn’t much we can do to help Shanty now except wait. Looking up the information on Cruella De Ville… people are out to kill her distant nephew and Cruella was recently arrested for something involving Dalmatians. Her nephew pressed charges. Why are is a ludicrous amount of cover up attempts on all of this?!”

“The kid must be one of the few rare good De Ville’s then… otherwise he would be trying to help her avoid jail.” I started to hyperventilate once I realized what else Bentley had said, I didn’t need to breath or eat but I still acted like I did so I didn't go full zombie. “Wait… did you just say there was an incident involving Dalmatians?!”

No, no, no, not after all I’ve been through! Please don’t tell me she actually finally succeeded!

“Odd… even Thief Net is covering it up, these cover ups are all over the place. Who is this woman to warrant such levels of attention deflection?" That was not what I wanted to hear Bentley. "I think we might have to look into this more when go to the Britain."

If I go there now, then I did not want to hear like that psycho actually succeeded in skinning ninety nine puppies alive for a stupid fur coat.

“Look it’ll be okay Spot, we’ll go there to see what has you this worried when Shanty recovers… maybe it’s not as bad as it seems.” Don’t you mean ‘if’ the goat recovers Sly? I’m kind of running on a mile a minute pessimism here. “We’ll make sure to go find out what happened, sounds like another criminal mastermind I wouldn’t mind taking down a few pegs.”

“She’s pushing a hundred… it’s like she’s Scrooge McDuck or something that she can even cause enough trouble to be put in jail.” That Bentley, or she’s running on pure spite alone at this point and I wouldn’t put it past her to have even a minimal amount of magic to make it keep her going.

Cruella was smart enough to know that Pongo and Perdita, the two dogs that caused her first misfortune, were intelligent. Heck, I’m sure she knew that all the dogs she took or kidnapped were intelligent and thinking beings. She… just… doesn’t… care!

The Cruella De Ville I know is downright petty enough to hunt down their descendants and I can guarantee that one way or another the number of Dalmatians involved in that incident will have exceeded at least fifty Dalmatians.

That is if they are still alive or if most of them survived the fashion demon that could be easily seen as a living embodiment of hell itself!

To think that I was stuck here in Haiti while my friend’s descendants were recently being hunted down.

-Camden Town, Dalmation Home, Pom-

This morning was going alright, no puppies having nightmares thanks to me and I helped Dante load up the food bowls.

The puppies even started mentioning that they couldn’t have any nightmares when they would rather have sweet dreams of snuggling me. Da Vinci’s painting would certainly help when I had to leave.

“I’m not going break it Pom!” I heard Dolly angrily shouting from upstairs. “And you will teach me how to help you, because I know you know how to train dogs!"

A small grin graced my lips, Dolly had a great set of lungs on her.

“What did you do to her today to get that reaction? Also, is it me or has Dolly actually gotten louder?” Dante the reverse Dalmatian asked curiously and I broke out my notepad and sketching something down. I showed him exactly what I did to Dolly today. “Oh… that’s a good one, but my sister Dolly is really quite stubborn. Dylan would have quit by now... probably why this bond thing didn’t happen with him.”

Yes, I was beginning to see that Dolly wasn’t going to relent on our having a bond. I really didn’t want to wander into puppy kicking territory to get her to break it, I couldn't hurt a sweetie like Dorothy.

“Thanks for helping with breakfast Pom, I figured I should do more for the pups than mope about my predictions now that they are ‘mostly’ under control.” He even air quoted with his four digits on his front paws. “Breakfast!”

It wasn’t quite the same as hearing Dolly shout ‘breakfast’, but it worked all the same as a flood of puppies flowed in bringing a grumpy looking Dolly with a cone around her neck. I glued the locking mechanism shut so it would be impossible to remove.

“Not… stopping… this, this right here... this isn’t nearly enough to get me to quit!” Dolly proclaimed using the cone around her head as a megaphone as she pointed to it with both her paws.

Her many brothers and sisters were giggling into their paws about it.

“I don’t know Dolly, Pom really doesn’t think you’ll be safe even if she were to train you…” Dylan tried and Dolly held up a paw to him.

“Dyl… don’t… just don’t. She glued this cone to my head!” Technically around your head Dolly, only the latch was glued down and there’s solvent for it… which I gave to Dylan. Dylan is effectively getting a little payback for Dolly being so lazy with the chores and leaving him to do all that work. “Also I can totally handle whatever training she could put me through, if she’d just give me a chance!”

“Like I ever got a chance to do astro dog training?!" Dylan said angrily while waving his right paw at her. "We both know how that went given that’s when we first dealt with Hunter. You got to go play fire dog and even spent a day with Pearl acting like a police dog!”

Dylan dreamed of being the first dog on Mars and I believed he could do it, if he wasn’t so busy selflessly caring for his whole family that he couldn’t even pursue his own dreams.

Author's Note

Shanty being sick sets up some ripples for what's to come.

The story is now focusing back on Pom's predicament.

Spot the chicken's voice actor has had a very prolific career, back when she was known as Cherondoff.

I foreshadowed this pretty well.

107. Teaching responsibly.

-Earth, Camden Town, Nick-

“Well that was nice.” Judy stated pleasantly to me, we had a nice time snuggling together.

“Yeah and most people probably wouldn’t believe that we aren’t dating and are just friends.” I rolled my eyes. “It’s not me Judy, it’s you.”

“I agree that it’s me Nick, but at least we are still best friends.” Judy was always going to be that adorable meter maid that eventually became an International Police Officer, she’s like the little sister I’ve never had. “So my headaches gone, want to find what else is going on in the underbelly of this peaceful place called Camden?”

“Not much aside from several weird things, like Hunter legally selling Leap Lamb merchandise and is working on something with McDuck Enterprises. I already ordered a Caper Canine toy.” I brought the news up on my phone, but we’d get to the bottom of this weirdness. Carmelita also needed help finding clues about where the Cooper Gang was going to strike next, too bad she was out of my league because she was quite a fine biped vixen. I had some ideas and had suggested Carmelita head to China, it’s where one of the Fiendish Five is said to be and given that three are out of commission… “I bet that no matter where you are, bureaucracy is busy at work ruining someone’s life. It gets to a point that only a crazy person would like paperwork.”

“That’s a suckers bet and you know it.” Smiling at Judy as she went about preparing herself to take a shower and leave the hotel and to scout around Camden’s rather quaint and mostly quiet streets for something nefarious.

Also we still had a police horse to give a bushel of apples for a good job, so we were going grocery shopping too.

-Equus, Ponyville’s Castle, Twilight-

A sneeze erupted from my nose, along with a spout of green flames as a scroll appeared.

“Huh… that was actually kind of funny watching it from the other side of things.” My companion for life and little brother Spike stated with a broad purple smile. “Also I’m kind of proud how you haven’t freaked out over all of this.”

He was commenting on the fact that I was currently in his body and he was currently in mine, we carried on like nothing was wrong in any way, shape or form.

“Eh, I’ve always been one for methodical bureaucracy.” I continued to work the papers placed before us with my claws instead of my horn. “Huh, Rarity is saying that Cadence is making a nuisance of herself in Ponyville. Do you think we should just let them sort her out themselves?”

“What, in this economy?” Spike crossed her hooves in an indignant manner. “I know Mayor Mare budgets for disasters, but Ponyville can’t take an alicorn level disaster at the moment!”

“Eh, I’m sure they’ll be fine.” I murmured as I got back to doing paperwork, I enjoyed how dry each document was. Far more peaceful than dealing with the insanity of life.

Delegation of tasks would help immensely, but I would always put a personal touch on my paperwork. It was mostly just to let everyone know I was absolutely paying attention to whatever they were trying to slip by me.

I didn’t want Jaded to play a game of ‘loopholes’ again, I’ve learned my lesson about that and so have the nobles of Canterlot.

It was surprising that the nobles unanimously agreed to not poke the cat, or Discord who has been having fun in southern Equestria recently. If the rising number of rubber duck incidents was anything to go by, Discord wasn’t causing too much trouble at the moment… aside from the constant whispers of rubber ducks of doom.

How did Celestia deal with this for a thousand years alone again?

-Earth, Somewhere in West Africa, Wakanda, Pom-

The city of Wakanda was pretty nice, it was much like Camden in some ways. We were on the outskirts of it and would eventually work towards finding a plane out of Africa once we had the money for it. I wanted to take Dolly back to Britain.

“What do you mean you’re not good at fighting?!” Dolly shouted at me with her front paws clenched, the Dalmatian was just plain adorable when angry. “You’re like one of the coolest people I know! You took down a swarm of robots and saved all the people in that bank, you fought a strange monster while clinging to a plane and you basically have super powers! How can you think you are bad at fighting?!”

“I didn’t say that I thought I was bad at fighting, I said that I’m just not good at it. My abilities are just not based in going on the offensive like you seem to think. In fact, I specialize entirely in evasion and defense. If anyone was specialized in going on the offensive, it would be my four god-puppies.” I sighed, it was not hard to feel homesick for Ruff, Woof, Puff and Tuft or their mother Big Mama giving me an affectionate nuzzle like Dolly had when I woke up this morning. It almost made me think I was home and not living in a makeshift camp outside the nearby city. “Most of my fighting skills come from mostly mimicking my friend’s capabilities, otherwise they are based entirely around my fluffmancer abilities. If someone shaved off all my wool, I’d be relying entirely on my speed. Not that I would allow just anyone to do that… but my skills are not my own except for one ability. I’m going to show you exactly how I lost my voice in the first place, but I’m not going to go so far as to damage my throat. It’s the one original move that I have that was created by me. It started out at the size of a baseball, but it’s gotten more impressive over time and I think my throat is back in order enough to show you.”

The wolf claw technique my hooves can do? It is something I learned based on watching Shanty do her Cut-Lash style, but only did it when I went feral. The shaman I met in the previous dimension showed me how to wield it, but unlike Shanty I didn’t need to swing my legs to create those claws. I’m still quite wary of actively using something lethal like that on anything.

Dolly was watching me silently as I set up a target for the one ability that was mine and mine alone, the Bark Blast. Bark Breaker was taught to me by a shaman, so that one wasn’t my personal technique. Once I had the chunk of wood sitting on a rock, I cleared my throat and turned to Dolly.

“Now watch, this is the only move I learned to do on my own and is the only thing nobody ever taught me or I didn’t mimic from having watched someone else do it.” Inhaling I built up energy in my throat and then let out a sharp bark, the usual oval shaped burst of energy flew out of my mouth and blasted the wood apart… it also took out a large chunk of the rock. “That is called a Bark Blast.”

“Bow-Wacka-Wow… so you hurt your throat doing one of those?” Dolly stated while staring at the bits of wood wide eyed, notably her tail was wagging excitedly and she had a bright smile on her face. “That’s kind of like Bolt’s super bark, but it’s a real one!”

“No, I hurt my throat doing a different version of that, one that didn’t even destroy the targets I aimed at. Said targets were still quite dangerous afterwards and are still likely roaming around.” I wasn’t strong enough to defeat those metal wolves and afterwards they just… ran off into the wilderness once Ocellus lost control. “Fighting doesn’t just involve hitting your opponent hard, sometimes it involves finding a way to leverage what you can do against a stronger opponent to make them incapable of hurting you or anyone else. So who’s Bolt?”

“How do you not know… right, alien… heh, it is kind of easy to forget about that. You are so normal to me now, it’s kind of hard to tell you’re from somewhere else.” Dolly rubbed the back of her head with a paw while looking away with a weak grin on her face. She quickly turned back to me. “Anyway, about Bolt the Wonder Dog, it’s a television show. The puppies in my family love his show and while I didn’t think much of it personally… they certainly do. If you’re an animal, you can tell what Bolt is actually saying and that that dork absolutely believes in all the stuff he’s doing on the show. It’s all just fancy special effects though. That I might actually be able to learn how to do something like that personally is actually kind of exciting, I’d be a real super dog and not just some actor!”

“Speaking of learning, you need to learn how dance.” I stated quite plainly, Dolly gave me a questioning look and tilted her head.

“I already know how to dance, I’ve already got the moves!” Dolly started to bounce on her hind legs while shifting her hips back and forth while swaying her tail and her front paws mover around in a circular motions.

“My wool can insulate against lighting, electricity, fire, heat and reflect outwards sources of dangerous magical energy, but if I were to start rubbing my legs together and build of magical lighting from my wool… well I can gain immense power. The technique in question is called Shock-Ram, it’s a technique that can revive someone and make the user practically unstoppable in some cases. It is a technique I’ve used exactly once, to save Shanty’s life.” I still have nightmares about fighting Tai Lung and my heart exploding in my chest after pushing my body too far. I was staring straight into Dolly’s eyes as I told her about this. “The technique, when used, causes the user lose all the limiters on their body. This means the user will be able to act far beyond what they are naturally capable of. To simplify for you, it could give me the ability to jump a mile straight up, I could move at Mach speeds and my strength would allow me to physically rip a building in half with my hooves. It’s absolutely a technique of raw power, but is only supposed to be used medically in an emergency.”

I paused and looked at Dolly waiting for her to ask the question.

“And?” The dotted dog queried. “Why did you only use it once if it could make you that strong?”

“The one time I used it, I lost the fight I got involved in after reviving Shanty from having her heart stopped. I lost the fight to the guy that did an ‘accidental’ heart stopping attack on her.” The stare I received from Dolly had quite a bit of disbelief in it. “You see, there is a drawback to Shock-Ram and that is that it disables all the limiters on the body.”

“What are limiters… and didn’t you just say that losing them allowed you to do all that crazy sounding stuff?” Dolly seemed to be paying me full attention now. Good, she needed to learn this lesson before I taught her to dance.

“Yes, do you know how exercise builds muscles?” It was a weak nod that I got from Dolly as I answered her second question first, she looked like she had a vague idea where this was going. “Limiters are a body’s way of telling you to stop pushing it and to let it rest so it can rebuild, limiters keep you safe from over exertion and or killing yourself when you do normal things throughout a day. While under the effects of Shock-Ram, you lose the ability to feel pain, your muscles start tearing themselves apart and you do more damage to yourself than to your opponent just by standing still and breathing alone. If I were to run around too much after using Shock-Ram, then my heart would literally explode in my chest and I would die immediately. It makes you powerful for a short amount of time, but the cost is a month or more in traction or outright death from having all the muscles in your body practically liquefy. If you survive the effects and ever wake up, then you will be in extreme pain for the remaining duration of it. Even if I were to stand or sit perfectly still after using Shock-Ram to save someone’s life, as it is a medical technique to revive someone from near death, I would still have to recover for a month afterwards. The stronger you are the stronger its effects, but it can still have the same deadly outcome. Now do you want to know why I lost?”

“Uh… yeah…” Dolly’s ears were wilting and her tail went still.

“I lost because I wasn’t as skilled as my opponent in taking blows at the time. I could basically match him blow for blow, but any hit he dealt to me was far worse than whatever I could do to him with the unknown time limit I was working under for how long I could keep fighting before my body gave out on me and I would ultimately die on my hooves if I went to far. I was aware of this and ‘barely’ survived that encounter, even eventually reconciled with the guy that almost killed Shanty and then me by my use of the revival technique on her.” I let that sink in for a moment, before I addressed Dolly with a serious tone. “This is why I’m not liable to teach you any magic, even if you were capable of doing it and I were completely capable of teaching you how to. If showing off is what you want to use it for, then I won’t be the one responsible for you killing yourself. I showed you my bark blast to make a point, what did it do to that block of wood and the rock I set the wood on?”

Dolly looked at the splinters of wood nearby in a different light and she frowned, she turned back to me looking a bit more pensive.

“I don’t like that they are calling me Caper Canine…” Dolly finally stated quietly. “I got the moniker of sidekick and I really didn’t do that much to earn it aside from using my hard earned skateboard skills. Skateboarding is a dangerous sport for bipeds. For animals like me we’re lower to the ground and less likely to break a leg, which is something I’ve admittedly done before. I’m always bothering my step brother Dylan because I want his attention just as much as the rest of my family, he’s the big brother that everyone loves and can rely on. I’m… well…. the less reliable big sister, more so than ever to them considering where I currently am.”

“I’m here for you right now Dolly, also it’s fairly hard not to stand out when you’re likely the only Dalmatian within a hundred miles.” Letting out a snort, I motioned for her to come closer and I gave her a hug. Until the Tail Team is done figuring out what they can do for us and are throwing the poachers to the bipeds to deal with, I’m stuck here with Dolly and have an opportunity to train her. “So let’s start with a few things, fighting is not just learning moves… it’s learning how and when to move, like anything you learn in life can be used in a fight if done right. Like how you took the head off that gorilla bot, people saw that and were definitely impressed with you Dolly.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure you could have gotten out of that eventually.” Dolly seemed to shrink down and seemed to be acting more humble.

“My wool was the only thing keeping it from crushing my squishy body in its grip, you actually helped me out when I was having trouble.” I just wanted her to know she did good, even if I only had her do mostly basic exercises. “I’m glad you were able to help me several times without getting seriously hurt. It scared me when it looked like you were going to leap into the jaws of the cloud monster thing.”

“Yeah, I had no idea what I was thinking when I did that… all I knew is that if I didn’t protect you I’d be dead too. I think my bond to you is a little bit… coercive.” Dolly didn’t seem to like saying that. “Your magnetism was already bad enough, even after you explained it to my family. Actually having a bond with you… just makes things far more complicated for me emotionally.”

“Well we’re both a mess…” I stated blankly. “So... want to learn how to dance?”

“Sure thing Leap Lamb.” The fact that Dolly said this wryly made me roll my eyes.

“Okay, first thing I’m teaching you is how to move around on your hind legs in a fight. Bipedal motions should be easier for you… my long legs make it really awkward so I have to have an exceptionally wider stance.” I motioned Dolly to stand up and she did so. Put my hooves under her paws and held her in a standing position. “Now slowly step as I do and try to lean back a bit, using your spine like this is going to take some getting used to. You can do some fighting on all fours, but fighting on your hind legs will be a trick no other dog should be able to mimic easily without learning how to. Now step forward with your hind legs as I step back…”

-Approximately thirty minutes later-

“This isn’t easy.” Dolly said while breathing roughly on her back. “I think I’m only so good at this because I tend to stand up on my skateboard like a biped at times.”

Her skateboard and helmet had been sitting off to the side along with my supplies… what little of them there are that I didn’t pick up in the jungle. The peanut butter was mostly for Dolly, as were the bananas, she would need a more varied diet sooner rather than later if she was to stay in good health.

“Yes, well, I have been training you to move around normally, this is moving around abnormally.” Watching the Dalmatian roll onto her paws, I motioned for her to do what I showed her again. “Now into a standing position.”

She went up onto her hind legs and flicked her tail up slightly and found her balance as she shakily stood on her hind paws.

“Widen you’re hind legs slightly. Spread you’re front legs off to the side for balance.” She does so and her shaky balance evens out. “Okay, good! Now focus on dashing forward and thrusting your right paw straight at my chest while twisting it into position, like I showed you.”

Dolly carefully took two stumbling steps, before she charged at me on her hind legs, her right paw pulled back and the bottom was facing the sky.

She clenched her paw into a fist as she thrust it forward and flipped it, it struck me in the chest and I shook slightly. I was on all fours so she could even land the hit.

“Good… nice blow Dolly.” I wondered if I was going to teach my god-puppies how to fight like this… oh they would be little terrors if they learned how to do this stuff. “Now straight left.”

She performed the same kind of attack, struck with the same force and managed to keep her balance this time instead of falling onto her back.

“Okay, claws out and left hook.” She struck me again. “Right.”

Another blow.

“Okay I think you’ve got the basics of how to land a blow while on your hind legs, now learn we’ll how to kick with them… on your back. You’re going to learn the prone buck first, then a normal buck and one legged side buck.” As I asked, Dolly didn’t complain and fell onto her back, I moved next to and fell onto mine. “Now the reason we’re doing this first is to practice recovery if you end up in this position.”

I crunched my hind legs against my belly and kicked straight out, I crunched and kicked upwards at a forty five degree angle and then I kicked straight up and rolled backwards onto my hooves.

“Only kick straight up if you are going to roll backwards, I’m sure you can figure out why.” Given she was actively paying attention to me, I’m fairly sure that the smile on Dolly’s face was because she was actually learning from me.

“This is learning how to fight on four or two legs and switch between the two in the middle of a fight, so I only kick up if I want to roll backwards onto four or two legs depending on what I want to do next?” Dolly guessed correctly and I sent her a nod, she smile and her tail wagged. “Can we fix my helmet or find me a new one? Also some stuff to repair my board.”

“If you can help me make the money to do so, but if you want a costume… well... no capes. Capes are terrible for super heroes without invulnerability Caper Canine.” At my use her sidekick name, Dolly groaned.

-One hour later-

“Did anyone tell you that you were a good teacher? I know you said that you were already good with dogs… but this is a bit ridiculous!” Dolly put her paws on her hips as she stood on her hind legs. “Ugh, this is putting quite a bit of pressure on my back.”

“Which is why I have you swapping between the two when attacking me. Buck, roll and spin into a left paw.” Dolly was facing away from me at the moment. She slammed her hind legs into me and used the blow to rolled forward twist around and then went onto her hind legs to lunge forward and hit me with a hook. “You kept your balance, good job Dolly, now right.”

“I really want to learn so I can help you more Pom, plus it’s kind of cool and I really don’t want my 'fam' to see me dead or doing dangerous stuff on the news without looking like I have some kind of idea of what I’m doing… well… again.” She then turned around and went to four paws, bucked, rolled forward and then spun around to hit me with a lunging right hook. “Also, I can see why you’re so hard to hurt.”

“Well... you’re advancing faster than I thought you could… would you like to learn how to kick with your hind legs in a bipedal stance without losing your balance or would you like to learn grappling first?” I haven’t actually trained a dog like this before, but I was trying this for Dolly because she wanted to learn. “You can practice paw thrusts and hooks on your own, I’m not going to force you to practice. Remember Dolly, at your size you’re not going to do a lot of damage to larger opponents.”

“Yeah, I get it.” Dolly stated somberly. “When I see the 'fam' again, I can honestly tell them I was trained by a hero. Bipedal kicking first, it would help with some skateboard tricks!”

“I don't think of myself as a hero." I received a flat stare. "I just like helping people!"

Author's Note

G5 ponies sounds like it's going to be a trash pyre.

Also, I've been enjoying another year of survival and Monster Hunter Stories 2 over the last week or so. Along with a few other games.

Teacher's Pet: Pom's skill in training dogs to do the unusual. +100 learning speed to student if they are a dog, +200 if a supernatural bond is involved.

120. Have a Bathysphere’s Assaulting Lightning Limbs.

Author's Note

Music: Magnus Von Grapple Boss Fight, Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door.

It sounds like the boss music I would hear if I had to fight Professor Nimnul in a RPG made about the Rescue Rangers.

120. Have a Bathysphere’s Assaulting Lightning Limbs.

-Equus, world leader’s summit, Twilight-

“Now let’s…” I started to say when someone shouted.

“Wait, I’m here!” Jaded La Perm ran in and took a seat.

“Jaded this a summit for the world leaders and delegates.” I sighed, knowing I probably shouldn’t have addressed her in any capacity.

“I’m the delegate of Airship Wemauliya.” Jade said with a bright and friendly toothy grin, thus the formation of a headache began.

“Pray tell, how did this country of Airship Wemauliya come about?” The Saddle Arabian delegate, Amira, was sweating in her seat.

“Oh we seceded from Equestria this morning, then signed an alliance treaty with the Storm Kingdom, Equestria and one other country so larger countries don’t try to invade our humble little country. It was a heartwarming tale of thirty minute or so of bureaucracy I really don’t want to relive.” Jade sent a friendly smile in the Saddle Arabian delegate’s direction. “By the way, Brenda and Savanna wanted me to tell you hello.”

I was going to have a long talk with Fizzle about this when this summit was over.

“I’m both terrified and mollified on a number of levels, but tell them that they are welcome to visit anytime that ‘you’ are not around.” Felt sorry for Amira having to deal with Jaded at this meeting. “How did you even end up as the delegate and what are you newest plans to ruin Saddle Arabia?”

“No plans, just happy little accidents, my herd wife put her hoof down on me hard for my absurd hatred of Saddle Arabia. As for how I became the delegate, I was voted in by a majority vote and I came to help deal with the world economy problems with a few suggestions.” Jade has, admittedly in recent history, calmed down and has gotten better… somewhat. “Also the Storm Queen told me to hold up the meeting until she arrived since she is a world leader too. She’s busy trying to drag in the last member of the summit, he’s being quite stubborn because he’s still trying to plan on how to legally get rice porridge and cheese recognized as a major export from his republic.”

“As long as she’s not trying to take over the world.” Amira stated with barely restrained terror.

“That would be too much trouble and a huge hassle, I would never do that.” At least Jade was entirely honest on that front. “Even if I could by saying ten words or less at this meeting.”

Migraine starting…

“Okay, I’m here… I just had to find the ruler of… what was it called again?” We all turned to see Fizzle wearing a dress of dark silver, dark purple and the symbol of the Storm Queen on it. Following her in was the last world leader. “Please tell me that Jade didn’t go with the take over the world plan already.”

“Hello… I’m the Emperor of the Religious Republic of Chaosica, have you heard of our lord and savior The Gouda Cheese?” Discord the draconequus stated with gleeful cheer and a bright grin, my migraine just tripled immediately at the fact that he was wearing a really bad alicorn costume with big googly inflatable eyes.

“For what it’s worth, I’m apologizing for absolutely everything ahead of time as the Storm Queen, your friend and a member of your royal guard for what is about to occur here Twilight.” Fizzle stated flatly as she took a seat next to the ‘delegate’ from Airship Wemauliya. “That said, I still love my sanity challenging wife.”

“Let the games begin!” Stated Discord as he took a seat on the ceiling above everyone with a smile and poured himself a cup of dirt and rings a bell that looks like it was used for a boxing ring. “I do so love a good cup of Dirt Tea, though cleaning the pot for Fluttershy afterwards is always a bother.”

-Earth, New York, streets close to the power station, Dolly-

“Okay, so can you two figure something out while I’m distracting him?” This was already going to go poorly, I could already tell.

“Of course darling, we’ll try to do it quickly…” Bianca was looking at the machine down the street warily and she started move towards the power station while not taking her eyes off it. “Just be careful, Professor Nimnul is very dangerous. Please run if he hurts you too much, he’s not particularly kind to animals.”

“We’ll take care of logistics Dolly, because I seriously doubt we’d be much help against that thing.” Bernard looked at me in concern. “Just try to give us as much time as possible, five minutes at the very least to figure something out and we'll send help soon. Come on Bianca!”

I turned to that ball shaped robot thing that has taken out several police cars. Bullets didn’t seem to effect it much, mostly because it was basically a walking tank.

I’m a dog on a skateboard, with a skateboard strap and a badly damaged helmet for safety. At what point would I honestly ever get it into my head that I could actually beat this thing? Sure I get into trouble, but I wasn’t an idiot.

Still going to try though, because this guy was seriously hurting people. I approached him slowly on my skateboard and eventually came stopped a fair distance away. I barked at him challengingly because he wouldn’t understand any of my insults and began growling loudly.

The guy looked like a cross between a chicken, a duck and a Pelican. Pelican because the short guy had the jowls for it, he wasn’t intimidated by my posturing in the slightest.

“Hoo-hoo-hoo… If you that think for even a second that I’m going to lose my latest invention to a dog like you, well then, you’re ‘dead’ wrong!” After adjusting his glasses, this Nimrod guy swung both the machine’s arms outwards as he screamed this at me. He pointed the finger on the right hand at me. “I made this combat machine specifically for pests like you in mind; so if you seriously think you can take me on, then you have more screws loose in your head then I do in mine!”

All I had to do was distract him from the power station by making a huge nuisance of myself, well let’s get this started.

“Bow-Waka-Wow!” I shot forward on my skateboard and immediately veered to the left and hopped up onto the hood of a car as a blast of electricity flew by me scorching a large section of the street coming from the machine’s seemingly gloved hands. The triangular toe boot shaped legs were also of interest.

Ramping off the car’s windshield, I slammed my skateboard against the metal wired bubble covering this guy. Barely even dented the glass on this thing. Only a second later I was in pain as a huge flash surged from the machine and expanded outwards for a few seconds to send me flying back past the car I used to launch myself at him.

Finding myself tumbling through the air, I managed to orient myself to tumble along the ground to avoid getting hurt after being nearly fried like that. I really did not want to smell like a hot dog for the remainder of my short life.

I slowly picking myself up and used my skateboard to prop myself up further, looking at the machine with disbelief as the guy inside grinned madly at me.

“I’ve always loved the power of lightning, the surge of electricity, why the very movements of electrons and protons are at my very fingertips. Well I’m harnessing this power once more to show the world what I’m capable of once again!” Slowly the energy began building on the hands of the machine. “How did you like my rodent proof surge protector? No rodent is climbing into or even onto my machine to disable it this time!”

Okay, that seriously stung a lot. That’s even with my board taking the brunt of what just hit me. Still had to keep this guy busy somehow and away from the power station.

So how was I going to do it if he could just knock me away like that? Maybe hit and run was the best I could do, I could make him waste a lot of energy activating that shield thing.

“Whoa!” I wrapped my strap around my body and rolled to the side as a beam of electricity arced forward and past me blackening the ground and causing my fur to stand on end.

The things the beam barely touched in the surroundings, like abandoned cars or anything made of metal, immediately became electrified death traps.

I’m thankful that I was a short furred breed of dog, also this guy was outright actively trying to kill me!

The two cylinders on the back of the machine began pumping up and down faster, it also started glowing ominously.

“Now say hello to the end all of the B-ALL’s special attack!” It brought both its arms up and then slammed them down filling the entire street with a wall of energy spreading outwards from the machine.

It wasn’t destroying buildings, but anything that could be set on fire, shattered, electrified and or melted was doing so as the wave came at me.

So yeah, I’m definitely terrified of this nerd machine.

I got my board under me by popping it onto its tail with a hop, so I had its nose to the sky. With my rear paws on the nose of it, balancing my entire body on top of it really, I leaped upwards as hard as I could. Following that, I yanked the strap upwards with all I had to send my skateboard flying upwards above me.

The skateboard’s weight pulled me upwards slightly and gave me enough height to clear the shockwave that felt like it grazed my tail.

With another pull of my skateboard strap and a flip, I swung my board around me once to being back under me, I landed the trick standing proudly on my board and skidded to an immediate stop. I looked back to see that the shockwave had petered out shortly after passing by me.

No longer able I to feel my tail, I was glad to see that it was even still there when I looked.

I smacked my tail, it was completely numb.

I saw that everything living that was struck by that shockwave was now completely incapable of more than twitching, I hoped that didn’t just seriously injure anyone.

“Good use of physics doggy, or did you do that completely by accident hmm?” He was already marching the machine towards me. “Do you really think that little tricks like that is going to help you take me down?”

I barked at him angrily twice, my tricks were not little! It took years of not listening to anyone for me to get this talented with a skateboard, probably would have learned faster if I had stopped to listen and wouldn’t have broken so many bones to learn lessons the hard way!

I’m angry now, I was going to bring this fight to him since his machine stopped looking like it was electrified.

Charging forward on my skateboard, he swung at me when I closed in. Popping my skateboard into the air I bounced off the swiping right hand, I clutched at my strap with my front two paws and swung my skateboard into overhead swing.

I knocked a few chips of glass out of the top of his machine with my vertically oriented skateboard. It wasn’t much, but it was something at least to prove I could be a threat.

My rear paws slammed into the glass bubble and I grabbed the skateboard as it came at me and swung it in a horizontal swipe that caused several more chips of glass to fly off the upper portion of the bubble.

I kicked off and flicked the skateboard behind me on the strap, avoiding the left hand trying to grab me by landing on its arm, I brought my skateboard forward and down hard vertically as I kicked off of it. I actually made a tiny crack in the bubble and rocked the machine back slightly.

Pulling my board to me as it bounced back, it was soon under my paws. Once I landed, I immediately pushed myself backwards with my rear left leg to avoid another rightwards swipe while performing a manual while going backwards.

“You seem to have an instinctual working knowledge of mass time’s velocity, but the amount of damage you can do will not be able to slow my machine down in the slightest!” Blind-mole is right, those glasses really looked like a pair of glass hockey pucks taped together, unless I can keep widening the cracks and eventually damage that metal mesh reinforcing the glass.

The thing then quickly raised its right foot and tried to stomp down on me. I pushed backwards again continuing my manual and was shaken slightly by the force of the stomp.

How was a dog like me supposed to keep their balance under these conditions? The chip damage I was causing was superficial at best.

Looking left and right, I noticed that the metal objects were no long electrified and… wow the tires on those cars are melting. That’s so cool, heh it’s all droopy and stuff!

No, bad Dolly, focus on the dangerous thing right in front of you!

I spun and sped away from the machine and veered around to quickly ollie my way onto the hood of the nearest car and then launched from the windshield like I had previously at the walking metal baseball.

Putting my weight behind my skateboard and leaning into it, I only to bounced off the bubble like the first time.

Barely chipped off a few more pieces of glass and cracking the bubble slightly again as I landed on the street. I quickly kicked the board into hopping to the right and avoided being stepped on by the thing.

Getting off my board, I had an idea as I took it into my front paws and got onto my hind legs.

I was about launch an attack when I saw a spark, I quickly leapt backwards as the machine encompassed itself with a burst of energy. At least I avoided it this time.

“Aw… and I waited for the right moment to activate the surge protector too!” Professor Dim-bulb swung the left hand forward and fired off a bolt, I hopped to the left. The right came up and fired off another ball of lightning and I hopped back and to the right.

I hopped backwards several times, stumbling a few times, to get some distance. I just needed an opening.

“Why don’t you be a good little doggy, and take a nice zap?!” The machine’s hands fired three balls of energy, two to the sides of me and one large combined one straight at me from both of the hands.

“Ah?!” What do I do?!

Out of reflex, I took hold of my board by the axels and turned it to cover my body.

I was hit with a blast that knocked me into the air, sparking energy flowed past me on the left and right. I also received a bit of a mild shock.

Landing on my hind paws without faltering, I glared around my board at the mad scientist while continuing to hold it up like a riot shield with the back end facing the sky.

My deck was perfectly fine after that.

“What in the… what is that skateboard made of? I know skateboards shouldn’t be nearly that durable!” Jokes on you Proffessor Chinned-Vole, I’ve done a lot of stuff to my deck that in hindsight I probably shouldn’t have. “No matter, you can’t keep blocking like that forever!”

Instead of firing a blast of electricity, he fired two beams from both hands, I slammed the nose of my board against the street and crouched behind it.

“Why did I sign up for this?” Clenched my teeth, I put my shoulder against my board and stood up to the pressure of one of the beams splashing across it. “Oh right, for Pom!”

I looked at it and still no damage to it, the strap however was a bit crispy, huh.

“I might have to get a sample of your skateboard after this mutt!” The Limb-toll guy stated.

“You’ll have my skateboard when you can take it from my cold dead paws!” I barked out at him.

“I’m assuming that’s over your dead body… gladly!” He fired three bursts of lightning at me and started marching his machine straight at me, it’s a good thing it was slow at walking or else I would already be dead.

I lifted the board off the ground and twisted to the left out of the path of the first shot, spun and ducked under the second and then, grabbing the front axle of my board I swung it hard at the third ball of energy following an odd feeling.

“I really have no clue what I’m doing anymore!” I stated just before my second favorite ‘thing’ in this world, as far as possessions go my rubber chicken was still my number one favorite thing ever and I left that with my beloved little sisters, collided with the ball of energy.

I followed through with the swing and… the ball of energy went flying back the way it came as I flopped over onto my face.

This was much to my surprise as the crazy scientists, as it went at the machine that was building up energy. When it struck the machine, it caused a huge burst of energy that had the red headed crazy guy screaming in anger.

“What the, no, no, no, how did you even do that?! You just can’t disperse all that energy I was saving for another special attack by hitting one of my lightning blasts back at me!” He shouted as he continued marching the machine for me, now in an angry fervor. “What you just did was not even scientifically possible, electrical energy doesn’t work like that!”

I looked at my board and saw a faint glow on it before it disappeared. Did I just use magic with my deck? Cool, now if only I can figure out how I can do something like that all the time on purpose.

I hefted my board up and started charging the machine on my two hind legs while I wielded the board by its back axel.

I stopped short as the left leg stomped forward, I jumped straight up as the foot slammed into the ground. I then dove forward to roll under the right mechanical hand grasping for me and got back onto my hind legs to swing my board into my target.

My board struck the back of the knee joint on the machine’s left leg, the only partially unarmored portions of the machine were the joints.

I saw that I actually did some damage there and tried to get away, only for the machine to quickly turn and I saw the back of its left hand coming towards my face…

…

What the… oh my head… why was my nose bleeding? My body was hurting and I was on my back.

I sat up and saw the machine stomp towards me, I tried to get my skateboard only for the machine to lower its right arm and then simply flicked it into the distance from my grasping left paw.

I looked up at the machine as it loomed over me and the nasty smile I was receiving from the pilot, the right hand came down at me in an overhead swing.

-Flashback-

“Remember that kicking upwards is one of the rolls you can do to escape danger as something is bearing down on you.” I nodded at Pom’s words, that she was teaching me something made me happy. That she wasn’t doing it by making it a boring lecture was a plus for me, she was actively showing me how to do these things herself and I was doing them alongside her. “It always help to learn how to recover by rolling in any direction when you’ve been knocked down. I’m good at defense and evasion. You’ll have to figure everything else out yourself after I’m done teaching you the basics.”

-End flashback-

I quickly kicked upwards and rolled backwards and the slap of the machine’s hand hitting the ground launched me upwards slightly and I flipped right back onto my paws.

The left hand tried to grab me and I rolled away from it, narrowly getting out of its range before it could wrap it’s digits around my torso.

I tried to turn and run, but felt myself flop onto my stomach and then I was lifted into the air.

“What, but… oh no… my tail.” Not good, this was not good, I needed help! Since I was now being held aloft by my tail, which I couldn’t feel getting grabbed at all, now in the crook of the machine’s right hands thumb.

I wouldn’t know if he was crushing my tail or not unless the numbness wears off.

“Well now that I have you, it’s time to put an end to you being a nuisance. I already have too many animals trying to stop me already, I’m not letting another one be added to that list!” The arm of the machine lit up and everything was pain. “Yes, fry little doggy, bet you’re not feeling so hot now!”

The torture soon ended and I was gasping in pain, how much energy did he just put through my body? Better yet, why am I still alive or even able to still feel pain?!

“Still alive? Well aren’t you an interesting one, how about another go?” His voice drifted out of my hearing as my world was agonizing pain, he was currently electrocuting me to death. “Well… huh? You still got some fight in you?”

“Sorry… everyone.” I yipped quietly before more pain flooded me and I unleashed howls of agony.

“Huh? Why won’t you die?!” Good question cherry faerie, why am I not giving up the cornbread yet when my world brain bacon?!? The left hand of the machine reached up and clasped itself around my entire torso, the hand rotated upright holding me pointing towards the bubble. “You know what, I’m just going to crush you instead of wasting any more energy on you!”

I gasped and tried to take in a breath of air, maybe my last before he pulps me entirely…

-Dolly’s Memories-

“Hi I’m Dylan, I miss my dad like you miss your mom.” Dylan…

“I’m going to be your new mother. I know I can’t replace your old one, but I’m going to try and do my best to make you smile again.” Mom…

“Dolly, sweetie, can you give Delilah a chance for me?” Dad…

“Mommy helped us with our owies!” My brothers and sisters…

“Tune in next time to see Bolt save Penny with his newest ability The Super Bark.” Ugh… that was just so cheesy, yet the puppies loved it.

I watched Pom exhale a blast of raw energy from her mouth and it blew apart the target...

Wait… I have to... concentrate on how she did that…

“You know what.” Wait… Dawkins? Why would I... “I bet you can’t get every pup to breakfast with a single shout.”

Can I really do it… a real super bark… like Pom?

-Outside Dolly’s head, Nimnul-

“I would ask you if you have any last words, but I wouldn’t understand them anyway!” I went to pulp the pooch...

Shattered metal and glass everywhere, I covered my face and started screaming, yet I couldn't hear anything.

144. The Dolly Variance.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Jade-

“Bringing work home with you huh?” I queried jovially as I saw the Lambkin delegate tied up to a chair and gagged.

“You have no idea what we had to do to get the delegate out of that bunker.” Fizzle had a haunted look in her eyes and one of them was twitching violently. I was sadly going to make that twitch far worse in a minute for the beautiful mare. “Order anything you’d like Maud, Gallus, it’s free on my family discount. One time use, until your next visit… this includes fully loaded takeout boxes.”

Both the mare and the griffon nodded while perking up immensely, or as much as Maud Pie could perk up anyway, and they hailed my mom over to the table.

An amount of free food from Kuril La Perm was worth a lot in some people’s eyes.

“Guess what I taught Silvers?” I grinned innocently as I turned to Fizzle and held up our chimera child.

“Jaaaade…” She said slowly while rubbing her hooves against her head, she could already detect the oncoming headache she’s about to have for an entire week.

“Meow.” The four of us mewled at the same time.

“Oh no…” Fizzle groaned out and then Maries walked in, the three of them looked curiously at me and Silvers, then to Fizzle with several raised brows. “Please tell me you aren’t going to join them in mewling at me!”

“I would never!” Declared Marie the snake head of Maries in a gentle tone.

“Fizzy you should know we are nowhere nearly as cruel as Jade can get.” Stated Maria the goat head of Maries.

“Meow.” Mara stated with an evil and rather predatory grin, the tiger head tended to enjoy cruelty every once in a while.

“Its official, I hate and love all of you at the same time.” Fizzle groused out aggressively.

“Hey guess what happened this time boss!” Grubber, her hedgehog head of the Storm Creature nation, was coming in not to long after Maries with several Storm Creatures looking cheerful.

Fizzle immediately started slamming her head against the table in an effort to knock herself out, she really didn’t want to hear what stupid thing Grubber ‘might have done’ this time.

I was going to leave her wondering what she did to deserve all this, but I wouldn’t interfere with the dimensionally lost if she didn’t want me to… she could just have just told me and avoided all of this.

Besides that, I already had enough issues putting the world’s economy back in order with help from unsavory sources to figure out a way to help rescue Pom, Ocellus, Smolder and the goat named Shanty if my pirate sources are to be believed.

Of course I would tell her what I now knew after the week long ritual of meowing at her, never let it be said that cats can’t be petty together as Mara and our little Silvers were going to join in on my fun too!

I idly wondered how badly Fizzle was going to maim Luna after all of this, she was the one that spilled the beans and would be a direct target of my beloved Fizzy’s total ire.

“This is going to be a fun week Lingo.” Drip the plumbing thestral stated from a nearby table.

“You said it Drip!” Lingo responded and was the local language teacher, helping kids to learn how to read and write.

-Earth, the world-

Something unique was about to take place and the world was almost thrumming with eagerness to see what would come of this.

-Duckberg’s local park, Pom-

We had finished a quaint lunch together using the money from the account Lena’s cousin Hunter gave me access to. We got Ms. Shuttle some repair help in the form of Scrooge’s scientists and were now preparing a place to train.

Ocellus was in her wingless dragon or lizard biped form, Smolder was hiding her wings and I was sitting with Dolly waiting for Lena and Violet to finish warding off the area.

The sisters Lena and Violet were here to help with Dolly’s magic training by making sure the surrounding area was protectively warded to prevent unforeseen massive accidents that usually came with trying to figure out magic.

Usually said magical accidents involved unicorn children, dangerous magical surges and ice cream raining from the sky. The lord of chaos, Discord, loved watching out for unicorn foals for a reason.

As for the others that were here…

“Don’t you guys need an adult to chaperone you?” I asked of the six children of the duck family as they were resting off the bruises from their latest escapades.

“You’re an adult.” The two sets of duck triplets said simultaneously as if it were already rehearsed.

“You should have honestly seen that one coming. Also, I think you guys are forgetting just how old my mind is compared to my appearance.” Lena rolled her eyes, she was older than she looked. Her story was interesting, she didn’t apparently physically age until Webby and Violet gave her a fully functioning form. “Seriously, I was stuck with Magica for way too long. At least I have two families and friends now.”

“That you do best friend and don’t you ever forget us! Besides, we really want to see how you’re going to teach a Dalmatian like Dolly is going to learn to do magic Pom.” Webby, the pink wearing duck, exclaimed vibrantly while swinging her left arm about in excitement. Her right arm was currently in a sling, she apparently only sprained it beating up a large number of the gang known as the Beagle Boys. I’m glad my charges personally avoided trouble with them. “We already know how Lena can do it, she was quite literally born for it and it was easy once she found her focus.”

“Yeah, yeah, friendship is magic. Can we not compare me to an animal barely trained in the mystical arts here?” Lena muttered with her arms crossed while floating into the air with a faint glow. “I’m still not an expert myself, but I’ve got a handle on the things I can do with pure willpower."

“Hey, I thought you looked cute as a wolf in that shared magical dream we had.” Wasn’t even going to ask or even think about Webby’s statement too hard.

I did not want to know if Lena would be attracted to me through quasi-representation of herself as a wolf, that way lies madness with my canine magnetism and I wanted to avoid that as much as possible… so why were we already heading straight for a different kind of madness today.

I looked at Dolly’s brightly smiling and expectant face. Oh right, I promised Dolly I had an idea on how to help her with learning magic.

“Okay first off, I don’t know how the magic of our worlds will interact if mixed. I also have very little idea how this is going to affect you Dolly, especially given the circumstances surrounding our familiar bond… well it’ll be strange.” Receiving a determined look, I sighed. “To start, I want you to recall the feelings when you did that bark blast back in New York and try to get a grasp on the energy you unleashed there.”

“I feel kind of bad that we missed you when you were there.” Mumbled Ocellus quietly as she sat on a bench nearby with Smolder.

“It’s alright Ocellus, it led to me helping a dog find their person, a cat finding a home and apparently a hamster being happily kidnapped. I also rescued several people from a fire and met a team of heroes in San Fransokyo, even met some nice people.” Not that many positives really, but I did save some lives. I also endangered lives too, I mean I did give those mercenaries a reasons to attack that train.

Dolly suddenly barked and nothing happened.

“Yeah, I’m not feeling it despite recalling how it felt.” Dolly obviously had this world’s magic in her, but I now had a reason to believe that she couldn’t functionally do a bark blast without me.

“Okay… so you can’t find your personal magic, so let me try something.” I knew for certain why Dolly was capable of doing a bark blast now. Using our bond, I did what I did during the Nimnul incident, I started sending her my strength. “Now try and pull ‘your’ magic and recall how it felt.”

Dolly closed her eyes and concentrated, I felt it build up and… eyes snapped, energy formed at the open mouth and she devastated the top half of a fairly tall tree with a loud bark and resulting blast of energy.

Thankfully nothing was living in it… aside from possibly a few insects.

All the ducks, along with a hummingbird, a dragon and one changeling, just stared wide eyed at what Dolly just did and slowly turned to glance at me.

I had even gave Dolly only enough to perform a weak bark blast, could she have amplified it subconsciously? No, there were other reasons why it could be so powerful. Probably because she already had extremely powerful vocal cords that came with yelling loud enough to attract even a half deaf Dalmatians attention among her ninety seven younger siblings, Dylan being the only sibling as old as her.

Dalmatians with larger patches of black fur are less likely to be deaf and Dolly’s family had plenty of black fur patches, even then at least thirty percent of Dalmatians suffer from hearing problems and Dolly had to make up for that somehow.

“Dolly… do you believe that was your magic?” I stated calmly.

“Uh… yeah?” Dolly tried while raising an ear in my direction in curiosity. “Isn’t that what we’re doing here?”

“It isn’t… let me explain what happened. Apparently our familiar bond allows me to transfer my magic and the ability to use it to you. Your magic is what was used to forge our familiar bond, you haven’t really done much else with it aside from the instinctive use of it. We’re here to figure out how to get you to use your own magic and not mine through you, though we’re going to do another test to make sure. If I’m right I can send you power to use three of my abilities and the instinctive knowhow to use them, these abilities would be my bark blast, bark breaker and the one ability I’m loathe to actually use in a fight, magic wolf claws. I however cannot give you the ability to mimic my fluffmancer abilities, which are unique to me.” I had to admit that Dolly doing a bark blast was far more pronounced in power than it was for me. “To further test this, and please be careful with what I’m giving you Dolly, I will now have Dolly try and do magical wolf claws. After I demonstrate for everyone here what they are like.”

Feeling bad about the tree, I went and dragged a fairly large stone over to our training exercise. I took a step back from the stone and slashed my right hoof down. Three claws marks etched themselves into the stone on one side in a controlled manner.

“Uh… how dangerous is Pom again?” Huey asked while staring at the claw marks.

“Yeah, she’s pretty amazing.” The pride shined clearly on Smolder’s face as she crossed her arms and glanced my way. “She couldn’t be a guard in Huoshan without having the talent to protect people.”

“I developed the magic claw in the last world we were in and learned it quickly by basing it on Shanty’s magical blade hoof technique, I thankfully have to actively concentrate on it specifically to do it.” Stating this bluntly, I didn’t bring up how I had the ability to boost my senses to match a canine’s smell or hearing either. I really didn’t like having the ability to eviscerate someone at the tips of my hooves. “Okay Dolly, leap and mark the other side of the rock with your claws when you feel me sending you strength through our bond.”

Dolly, nodded and waited, I sent her energy through our bond and she hopped and slashed her right paw at the stone.

It didn’t get marked with claws digging into its surface, it instead split into three pieces and gouged out a bit of the ground beneath it too.

“Well that just confirms my fears.” It didn’t take a genius to figure out that I had immediately stopped sending my strength to Dolly afterwards. “As a familiar I can give her my personal magical strength and have her know how to direct it. However this is my magic having an effect on Dolly, not Dolly’s magic itself. Apparently despite how little I gave her, she’s able to use it at far greater strength for her size. Any observations Ocellus?”

“A bond made with local and foreign magic from two very different worlds like yours, no matter how similar, should not have such a powerful effect.” While she couldn’t use her horn, Ocellus could still feel emotions, shapeshift and more importantly give her observations on magic. Feeling emotions was a magical ability and as such was logically able to feel how magic flowed. “Still, this is interesting study into familiar dynamics with the world record holder for most familiars.”

“Bow-wacka-whoa…” Softly stated a shivering Dolly looked at her right paw and the cute little purple nails with disbelief at the fact that they cleanly tore through solid stone and the ground beneath it. “So… my magic?”

“Try sending me how you feel about your family.” I waited and she gave me images of comfort, home, warmth, snuggles, excitement and a nice warm place to sleep. “Now do it again, but feel out how you are sending it to me.”

“Give me a minute Pom, I need to figure this out…” As Dolly was doing this I turned to the others.

“Now does anyone know why Dolly could use the attack better than I could, even if by all rights they should be equal of the same amount of energy is used?” Asking this as if I were teaching my own class of students I waited for someone to pick up on why when Dolly used the ability on the rock it cleaved through it. “At the moment Dolly is currently figuring out how to pull on her own magic and that could take a while.”

“I think I can see where you’re going with this.” Lena stated as she glowed blue and floated. “Dolly is smaller, so the energy would be more concentrated in her compared to you. Also it’s going to be less controlled.”

“Exactly, there’s also the fact that Dolly has incredible strong vocal cords and actually has claws compared to my hooves. There are plenty of factors at play here.” Nodding as I pointed a hoof to the hovering Lena as she dropped back onto the ground. “Though I’m a bit worried about something involving magic.”

“Like what?” Lena was more alert than she had been a second ago.

“Well the magic Ocellus, Smolder and I bring to this world is still foreign, even if our worlds share similarities as far as magic goes, should it really be interacting so well with a local like Dolly? Our familiar bond could be having an adverse effect on her ability to use her own magic or there’s a possibility the magic from our world overwriting it, as unlikely as that sounds it is feasible.” It was a concern of mine and Ocellus was starting to mirror my concern as we looked at Dolly with a scrunched up expression on her face. “There’s also the concerns of us possibly… maybe… feasibly… we-might-be-infecting-this-world-with-the-magic-of-our-home.”

The Dalmatian for her part was trying to concentrate as she kept focusing on ideas, images and feelings to send me and seemed to be having problems grasping at the thread that was her own magic tied into our familiar bond.

Dolly still wasn’t going to let go of what we had and I was going to give up on trying to get her to do so, because at this point the bond could only be broken if it snapped by me ending up in another world completely separated from her or if something quite tragic happened.

“Wait… our magic could be… well that’s a disturbing thought.” Ocellus seemed a little more awake in this moment and was somewhat terrified of the implications.

“And that’s a bad thing?” Innocently asked Smolder.

“Smolder, why do you think chaos gods like Discord or Veles exist in the first place? Also, can you guess exactly why it would be an exceedingly bad idea for anyone to find a way to permanently end them?” I decided to focus more on Discord than Veles the god of Confusion. “Discord is quite literally made of chaotic magic, he’s probably our world’s saving grace in the case of foreign magic from outside our world causing issues. Said magic could be harmlessly loosed into the chaos dimension, it’s like our safety valve. With that in mind, tell me, does this world have gods?”

“Yes, we’ve met some of them. From Ithaquack we’ve met Storkules, Selene and Zeus… but nobody likes Zeus.” The blue wearing brother Dewey stated with clear intent on not being left out of the discussion.

“We kind of got to test drive some god like powers once. It was fun while it lasted, but also terrifying.” Louie the green wearing brother shuddered. “We really weren’t cut out to be even temporary gods.”

“Are you telling me that the gods of this world have physical representations of their power that, should they lose them, someone could accidentally cause an apocalypse with by stumbling onto them?” I received no answer from Webby, Huey, Dewey or Louie. Violet, Lena, May and June all looked at them while becoming a little bit shaken up.

“That almost happened once or twice… one was during the mentioned incident where we were given a chance to be gods for a few minutes.” Huey muttered crossing his arms and pulling his cap down over his face. “We crashed and burned pretty quickly.”

“Valhalla was nice… as long as you have someone that can continue to prevent Ragnarok from happening every ten years.” Almost everyone looked to Dewey, the ones that didn’t were notably Louie, Huey and Webby. “To explain, our family has been apparently preventing the end of the world for a while now. Well at least Uncle Scrooge has until that last trip to Valhalla, I actually saved the world that time and now we have ten more years before one of us has to do it again!”

“Heh… our world is kind of dangerous like that.” Webby stated through a weak tooth gritting smile.

“Hah, I finally got it!” Announced Dolly who started to glowing a strange faint violet color and giving off sparkles. “Whoa, I feel weird and kind of… light. Bouncy maybe… like I could go anywhere…. everywhere? Something just feels…”

-The world-

It would be sitting on the edge of its seat if it had one and it was watching the dog intently, since the little thing had just discovered how to grasp the magical potential within itself.

The dog would carry with it the signature of this world with her wherever she went, she would always be of this world even if she found a new home in another.

It was like watching a child taking its first steps… by accidentally falling into the deep end of the pool.

Only in this case the child wouldn’t drown, but they would be overwhelmed.

Now what would happen once that magic mixed with the otherworldly magic brought by the friendly foreigner within their bond? Both sides would be affected greatly, while the world really did not want to harm the fluffy and repeatedly beleaguered foreigner, it didn’t seem like it would have a choice.

The one foreigner that might feel what would happen, the loving shapeshifter, might feel the weight of the entire world in one instant falling upon both those of Strength and Fortune.

This world watched as those with dreams worked towards them, sometimes failing or falling, at other times finding different dreams to be content with. The biggest dreams, provided that you were willing to work towards them, were usually the ones that always seemed the simplest from the outset.

Never let it be said that dreams could always be easily reached and the simple little dog seemingly dreamed small at a glance, as all she wanted to do was have the power to help people and was willing to put her heart fully behind it.

The issue was that she wanted her family to be safe and happy too, even knowing she might never see them again. She at least wanted to make sure they were safe before she left, her family in turn wanted her to be strong and safe as well. These intermingling wishes were going to have an effect on the coming moment.

All the circumstances behind what was happening… they were nowhere close to the definition of being normal in a describable manner.

A single light in the collective unconsciousness of the world just leapt into the swimming pool’s deep end without knowing how to swim in it, but that it did so willingly was the key to it all. None of the one hundred sparkling dots it left behind would go nearly so deep or nearly as far, but they would remain connected.

A dream was coming true... and chaos would follow it,

-Dolly-

I blinked as I felt a sudden change, something weird was going and my heart thudded loudly in my chest just once.

“Pom… I think… something is…” I tried as it felt like I was dying for a moment, then I tugged on the bond for some support and got a little magic from her and…

The world seemed to blur and everything slowed down, it was as if the whole world flowed differently or was I just noticing the flow in the first place?

Things got really bright.

-Location: ???-

I was blinded by a powerful light for a few seconds no longer where I was, Duckberg Park had disappeared and I found myself on a strange glowing platform that seemed to be made of brightly lit colorful glass.

There was no light or dark here, just a massive grey void. It was seriously weird, I moved to look around. I could hear the sound of a guitar playing, it sounded upbeat.

Looking down at the… stained glass?

It depicted… me? Above my smiling face that made the center of the circle were mom and dad, the start of the circle below those two was Dylan backed by a star. I slowly turned a circle looking at all my brothers and sisters each in a circle of their own, something shifted when I completed looking at all of them and I turned to see a strange sight that wasn’t there before.

There were now three pedestals, on top of them were a small one pup trampoline, my skateboard and a… a rubber chicken? The last one reminds me of my favorite toy I left to Dee-Dee and Dizzy.

“Where… am I?” Further outside the circle her family created were her friends, of which Pom was one of the pictures depicted and glowing brightly. “What is this place?”

Walking to the edge I looked out into the void and then down to see I was on a single giant pillar of stained glass. I moved back over to the three things and looked at them.

“Air, motion and… flexibility?” The world cracked, Dolly blinked her eyes open to several fairly worried looks.

Author's Note

No Dolly doesn't get a key blade from a 'Dive to the heart', but what she does get will improve upon everything she could already do without Pom. Pom was still the catalyst for this particular growth.

The chaos that comes from this is going to be a disaster zone that Duckberg usually is whenever Scrooge's family does something unusual.

157. Delightful Donald.

Author's Note

Music: Chrono Trigger- Delightful Spekkio.

157. Delightful Donald.

-???, Oleander-

I just sipped at my drink as we sat in the cantina, when a guy five feet behind me and to the left ignited a red blade.

I sighed and turned to him as he swung it at me and summoned ‘End of Pain’ between me and him, he looked fairly surprised that his light blade didn’t cut through my magical blade.

“The force as it is, is just a bunch of overblown rubbish.” An explosion of darkness erupted into a pillar slamming the guy head first into the ceiling knocking him out. “Also you were standing on my trap.”

I idly turned back to the counter and continued to drink, while catching the red glowing blade with magic and swiftly turned it off before someone lost a limb from a rather unfortunate accident. I stowed it away, having yet another souvenir from this world.

How many more of these thing did I have to steal before they got the point that energy blades just weren’t that threatening to me?

“Did she just take out that Sith with an invisible mine?!” Honestly the lengths people will go to just to rationalize away magic.

Force this, force that, sure it was raw power, but they act like it was special and the only reason for weird impossible things in this galaxy.

“Better question, why would the Sith be trying to off one of their own.” A guy lit a blue blade and held a defensive stance at me warily.

“I’m not a Sith, but if you attack me you’ll find yourself hard pressed to really win the fight. Won’t even need ‘End of Pain’ for it either.” As I said this, End of Pain disappeared from sight.

“Honestly these Sith and Jedi attacking you every other day is getting boring, THEY REALLY SHOULD LEARN THEIR LESSON!” They all honestly thought Fred was a weird form of droid holocron thing, but the Jedi were at least more wary of him than the Sith. Fred might have eaten one when I wasn’t watching. “That you should not bother my dear Ollie when she’s trying to relax.”

“Hey Ollie, stole a ship form a bunch of dumb bounty hunters that took out a hit on us, they obviously don’t know a badass level Bicorn when they see one!” Butt fired her shotgun into the air outside and it stated a requisite quote, this time the shotgun shouted ‘Kickstart My Heart’ and I rolled my eyes. “Help me find a droid to pilot the thing and we’ll have better transportation to get around! Also one of those red blade guys tried to stab me while I was wasting those other guys, dumbass doesn’t know my hide is practically immune to plasma blades.”

When she fired her shotgun before walking in the Jedi that addressed me, his young friend and a third hidden backup Jedi all clutched at their heads in agony. Apparently Boomacorn’s have that effect on these so called force users that caused them pain, I didn’t care one bit about that.

We would have asked Dust Man, but he was spending time with Izuku in the realm I got the monster dog egg from. Couldn’t let a minor adventure alone and Dust Man wasn’t a complete push over despite his whining about his lot in life.

“Well at least I’ll have a place to put all my stuff aside from the HALO floating off of my horn.” This adventure was just throwing souvenirs at me constantly. Still, for the life of me, we just couldn’t find Pom.

“Please remember that it’s a super weapon that can end all life in a galaxy Ollie, BECAUSE I DEFINITELY FEEL LIKE WASTING EVERY FORCE USER THAT’S BOTHERING YOU WITH IT.” Not taking Fred’s advice, but I was certainly tempted to do so since neither the Sith or Jedi could take ‘no’ for an answer when it came to trying to court me to their side.

We should have went to search for Pom in that dimension with that planet of slaughtering rat people, we would have gotten far more peace there than here.

-Earth, A day or so later, Scrooge’s Bin, Infirmary Room, Pom-

“So you try to stay positive, despite your anger issues?” Today’s entertainment brought to me by a world exploring duck who was quite protective of anyone he’d call a friend.

He was also infamous in several circles for a number of various things, scared off most of the mercenaries that escaped that knew who he was too. He was simply Donald Duck.

“Yeah, I’ve had lots of bad luck. I certainly feel for you having to take care of three kids yourself.” Donald was a nice duck, he was also a take charge kind of guy when things got bad. The only thing odd about him is that his voice sounded like someone was constantly strangling a rubber hose while it was gargling rocks and was horribly acid burned by concentrated amounts of lemon juice.

“We gained a companionable robotic ostrich last world and in this one it raised to a loving and adorable Dalmatian that is a bit hyperactive.” As I spoke, a gliding Dolly zipped between us and landed on the floor. She really couldn’t jump her full height in this room or her head would collide with the ceiling, it didn’t help that she was literally bouncing off the walls in spite of the injuries that should be slowing her down. “I now have to account for taking care of all of them wherever we end up next.”

“I’m sure you’ll do a great job Pom.” Liked Donald’s vote of confidence, he has told me he’s seen the look in my eyes before. “You’ve taken care of them so far, I’m sure you’ll be able to get everyone home.”

The look in my eyes were the same look Donald’s had in his eyes after a particularly solid week where he’s had a constant run of bad luck. Donald wasn’t Jacky ‘The Blackcap’ Chickadee, but he definitely could make a good show of trying to match up to the insanity that followed that particular parrot around.

Dolly was practicing her gliding and rotating her body while moving in various directions as she did so, Dormarch was making sure she took breaks and got some actual rest. She wasn’t leaving my side for very long even as the days were dragging on, she only did so for a little fresh out outside and immediately comes back five minutes later to complain about how boring it was to be stuck here.

Stretched her magic muscles really didn’t hurt Dolly’s body all too much. For some reason her magic accounted for all the spiraling and twisting she was doing when it should be making her green in the face and sick to her stomach. Instead she was enjoying the wild spinning through the air as much as she could do before touching the wall or floor.

“Have you ever considered that somewhere out there, there’s someone having a worse day than you Donald?” I wondered if he would interested enough to ask about. “I know of a person that nobody can beat in having a bad day, in fact even on a good day she’d get a spiral fracture at best.”

“Really, what’s her name?” Donald was a good guy, probably the friendliest of the adult ducks regardless of the generally terrible things that happened to him. Sure Donald could be mad at life and as paranoid as I was that it was out to get us, we wouldn’t be wrong considering how I ended up in the park in the first place, but at least we could keep going after a huge setback.

“Well I know this one parrot that would be considered a biped here, she’s so unlucky that she can start her day by waking up on fire.” I had to wonder how that was possible, maybe a bit of glass on a window or something shiny like a drop of water focusing sunlight into a single heated point to light her pillow on fire.

“How unlucky can she be?” Dolly said with a hint of amusement thinking I was trying to lead into a joke, unfortunately I wasn’t.

“She’s so unlucky she fell up there flights of stairs once and then tripped and fell back down the same flights. The worst she got was a broken arm and several compound fractures.” The two blinked at me, as did our computer friends. “I’m not joking, that’s just how unlucky she is. She could pour a drop of water into an empty glass and it might shatter to impale her with all the shards regardless of how impossible it is for every shard of glass to hit her considering some of them should be moving in the opposite direction. She randomly has trees fall out of the sky at her and it’s usually not the same kind of tree twice. If you fire a projectile weapon and she’s in the vicinity, the projectile will literally ignore reality to veer more than ninety degrees in an attempt to hit her and that’s without actually rebounding off of anything. There’s having bad luck and then there’s being cursed with it. Anyone who has ever been in her presence for more than thirty minutes will absolutely acknowledge that the curse exists, even the most skeptical will say it does and still disavow the existence of the possibility of any other curses being feasible. Those are the things that I know of that have happened to her and I was never around her very often, but she does visit me in Huoshan… she’s much better to deal with than being bothered by her nuisance of a sister.”

“So is it all bad?” Of course Dolly would be fascinated by it.

“Is it really that bad?” It was clearly of some concern to Donald who was mirroring Dolly’s curiosity.

“Not entirely, she has a loving husband, is a pirate of some renown, she even has a really cute child and a crew of exceedingly well-trained licensed medical professionals. That includes the crew pet, a giant pet butterfly that also somehow earned a medical license and I’m not even going to question that too hard because it didn’t get the license in my region of the world.” Not really going to ask how an animal was intelligent enough earn a doctors license, but weirder things have happened on Equus. “In fact it’s probably a good thing everyone in her crew is a medical professional… her curse sometimes has a nasty splash zone that involves her friends and family.”

“… I kind of feel somewhat better about life now.” Donald mumbled. “At least I don’t have much of a splash zone. Usually my luck only affects me personally.”

“You know, I’m fairly thankful you came to keep us company.” I truly was, having to rest with badly burned legs wasn’t pleasant and having one in a sling with torn and pulled muscles is even less so. I was also wearing an eyepatch over my left eye. At least if Shanty sees me like this, she’d be in a good mood about me possibly being pirate themed. “So know any exceedingly lucky people in your life?”

Dolly licked at my face and nuzzled up at me and I smiled before hugging her, she wrapped her paws around me and gave me a gentle squeeze being careful with my still present injuries.

“You could say that.” Donald’s demeanor went down so fast it probably dug its way straight through Tartarus and out the other side and back around to Elysium. “I have a cousin named Gladstone Gander, he’s so darn lucky that he could be a lawyer and win his cases one hundred percent of the time without doing anything. He has literally found twenty dollars every single day of his life, if he needs more he gets multiple twenty dollar bills and he gets them immediately through random happenstance. He coasts through life on his luck so easily that he really doesn’t have to do anything at all to deal with the same kind of strife the rest of us do. He walks down the street and nothing but good things happen to him, he’s never had to work a day in his life!”

Okay, calculating that into Equus based currency He gets like fifteen bits a day?! More if he whenever he needs it for whatever reason? I can understand why Donald might dislike him.

“What about casinos?” I asked, since Gizmo Duck brought it up the other day.

“He, never, loses. Which was actually a bad thing for him once when he got captured by a really powerful reality warping luck vampire.” Donald crossed his arms and grumbled. “One of the few times his luck ever goes sour and we had to bail him out. The Phantom Blot kind of showed us truth about him though.”

“What is the truth?” I tilted my head and Dolly did the same.

“His luck is quite literally magic based and can be stolen from him. Which the kids got back from Blot when they protecting Lena from him before she figured out how to wield her powers to protect herself.” Donald looked to Dolly and me. “It’s exasperating to know that he will always be lucky when I have to work twice as hard for everything I have. So do you girls need anything?”

“Yeah I’m kind of hungry.” Dolly stated. “Also entirely bored of literally bouncing off the walls, can we do something together that won’t be strenuous like play cards?”

I think Gandra and Fenton created a monster when they decided to get Dolly in on our card game the other day.

“Any more physical activity and you’ll be setting yourself back even more Dolly.” Dormarch has been fairly keen on seeing us heal, he has been on top of Dolly near constantly as she was being kind of reckless with her personal health.

Dormarch also seemed to be very quiet any time Cape Suzette was mentioned, it was because Kahn Industries had their main headquarters there and he was worried about what we might find out when we visit while picking up Shanty.

“We could go for some steamed vegetables, a large amount of kibble for Dolly and some water for the both of us please.” I heard Donald knew how to cook, but he was better when he wasn’t trying to make breakfast or snacks. “Also we need something to distract Dolly with so she doesn’t hurt herself, don’t suggest fetch. She hates that.”

“I’ll get started on it then, we’ll see about getting Manny to move Gandra and Fenton back in here, maybe with something to do.” Donald left the room and I turned to Dolly. “Try to keep her entertained until then and I’m sure one of us will be back in twenty or so minutes.”

“He’s a really nice guy.” I leaned back into the pillow behind me.

“Yeah, but that voice though!” Dolly bemoaned.

“It’s not that bad, I mean he’s vaguely understandable.” I wondered what Ocellus and Smolder were up to, they’ve been spending a lot of time with each other between visiting me and spending time with the other kids. I really should chaperone their intentions towards one another to make sure they won’t go too far before they're absolutely ready.

-Twenty minutes later-

“We can’t do cards because Fenton and Dolly will never let us win if we do.” As grumpy as she was, Gandra had a point.

“I don’t think dice rolling will go any better for you or Pom.” The genius Fenton Crackshell stated as he considered what kind of games we’d be playing. “We’re recovery buddies and we’re not going to let our friends be bored even if we’re not doing too well with boredom ourselves.”

“Donald is supposedly working on the food, he’s not too bad a cook right?” I asked and the two nodded.

“When he can get the kitchen working right and not have any accidents, then I think he’s decent at it.” So Fenton, alongside Gandra, were at least aware of the problems Donald has to deal with. “Not a professional by any means, but much better than his sister Della at any rate. My mother is worried about my health, but she’s happy that Scrooge actually cares for his employees unlike Glomgold.”

“Is this solely the part of the world where all rich birds gather?” I’ve heard at least seven names in reference to being financially wealthy.

“Pretty much, when you got the likes of John D. Rockerduck, Flintheart Glomgold, Mark Beaks and Scrooge McDuck all living in the same city.” Gandra answered and shrugged. “John is not as antagonistic, he uses his riches to get at his rivals more than actually going out of his way to directly attack someone. Glomgold is the exact opposite, he will try any kind of looney, ludicrous and completely inane thing to get one over on Scrooge McDuck. Mark Beaks is just a quick scam artist that somehow hasn’t been jailed yet and gets rich off of repackaging other people’s ideas and his only real personal success is doing things at a cheaper cost. As for Scrooge himself, I’m happy to work under his employ. He at least cares about what happens to his family and friends, that and the guy is a financial magnet.”

“He cared about Della when she got lost on the moon enough that nearly bankrupted himself trying to find her, he still pulled back from that and practically got his wealth back in full. Scrooge know business and he even funds my super hero side job.” Fenton seemed happy to be both a super hero and a scientist.

“Yeah, but when his family and friends are all completely fine and happy, he goes right back to being a penny pinching money grubbing jerk… one that everyone still loves, because he’s a far sight better than the alternatives.” Donald stated firmly as he wheeled a cart in loaded with covered trays. “Got the food for Fenton and Gandra as well. Working for my uncle isn’t too bad, I don’t like being a lazy do nothing duck.”

“I can agree with that, I don’t like the feel of being unable to do much for myself.” I received a bright smile from the duck, we understood one another which is why we had quickly become friends.

“Then get better by resting, eating and actually asking for help.” Donald stated simply with a nod. “Asking for help is the hard part for me, but you seem to be able to do it so easily.”

“I’m the adult of my group, I need all the help I can get just to survive long enough to make it home.” So of course I was going to ask as long as someone was willing to give me even the slightest bit of help.

“Which is why I’m going to seek out Abigail Callaghan for you once you are on your way to Cape Suzette. I still want to aid you and Big Hero Six does too!” Ms. Shuttle chirped cheerfully as I carefully started in on the pot of steamed vegetables. “She will need protecting, because there are numerous people out there that would want to use her research for bad things. Taurus Bulba, some strange evil lizards frequently seen around Anaheim in California with robot armies and a few others individuals have been seen messing around with dimensional technology in an unsafe manner. So far obscurity is keeping her safe, but when she starts building a working portal… well I’m sure my friends will protect her.”

Evil lizards with robot armies, who’s been fighting those guys? I passed close by to there when I was in Hollywood and didn’t see or hear much about a robot army, so someone else must be taking care of them and I’m actually glad I don’t have to. I was getting tired of dealing with machines, monsters and mercenaries.

“Yeah, about that. Gyro, our boss and chief scientist, apparently traced something really strange and it involves Dolly.” We turned to Fenton, he now had all our attentions. “Somehow Dolly stabilized the dimensional instability plaguing our world, because it occurred at the same point and time she did whatever it was that caused that bright flash upon defeating that Hollow guy.”

“I did what now?” Dolly said in a confused tone.

“Yeah, she doesn’t know much about what she did, how she did it or what came of it.” I seriously hoped that didn’t come back to bite us though. “Frankly neither do I and I’m the one mystically connected directly to her. The most I can say is that I likely felt her doing something humongous on a small scale before passing out if that makes sense, basically what you just told us would be more information than what we have.”

“Can we not get into heavy stuff right now? You’re eating and I brought a game you might be able to enjoy together.” Manny stated as he came in with a box that had the word ‘HINT’ printed on it. “This game is all about solving a mystery with hints in various rooms to figure out the mystery.”

-Several hours later, late evening-

“Final guess, it was in the laundry room, with the poisoned ink and quill pen and the culprit is Ms. Chutney!” Donald stated firmly with a grin.

This game was about deception as much as it was about figuring out the mystery first, we all held our own clues that were the hints that we had to keep hidden as well as we could while getting others to reveal hints themselves.

“He’s correct.” Manny stated with surprise, pulling out the location card, the weapon card and the character card. A wrong final guess leads to a player being taken out of the game, if the game is between two people left then the winner is the one who doesn’t fail to make a final guess. We only got about ten turns into the game and had very little information.

At least, everyone had a fair shot of winning this one, even I won a game. Gandra won one because everyone else failed a final guess. Fenton one two because he was making very good educated guesses, but was knocked out four times for failed Final Guesses.

“Good job Donald, were you ever a detective, at least in a past life?” I could already guess it comes with adventuring family as weird as his.

“No, I do have a distant cousin named Maui Mallard though, he’s a private investigator that hangs around the Hawaiian Islands and you might even see him in Cape Suzette.” I’ll be sure to keep that in mind Donald, might have to look him up if I needed help with investigating Kahn Industries. “Some people say we look a lot alike, but our family has always had strong resemblances in it.”

“Wait Mallard, then wouldn’t that mean that you’re distantly related to Drake Mallard?” Fenton the caramel colored duck asked in curiosity.

“Yep, Darkwing Duck.” Donald responded dryly. “Before you ask, I’m not closely related to Daisy. She’s the sister of my sister’s late husband, the father of Huey, Dewey and Louie. Didn’t really meet her until recently and we’ve been doing well together.”

“Wow, so the insanity is a common family trait even in your branch families?” Stated Gandra with a look.

“Sure is, I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Donald chuckled. “So want to play Go Fish?”

“Yeah, then I’m going to turn in. Dolly and I have to be awake tomorrow.” I knew this vacation was soon to be over. “So who’s flying our plane to Cape Suzette? I’ve heard some... things... about Launchpad.”

161. Appointment Acquired.

-High Rise Hotel, Mopsy-

So my dimensional doppelganger kind of stuck me with the job of watching her kids while she set up an appointment to meet the richest tiger in the world. Given that she has already met the richest duck and went on an escapade on his home turf, one can only guess what’s going to happen to her next before she heads back to San Fransokyo to follow up on a way to get home.

“So… how long will you guys be staying in town?” Shanty asked, she still wanted to spend more time with us, which was sweet. Hopefully she wasn’t an overly clingy… yeah no, her magic has her covered on being clingy.

“I’ll continue sticking around for as long as you need sweetie, unless I’m direly needed back in Mesa City.” I really didn’t have much aside from strutting my stuff around the night club and my small info broker side business. I haven’t really done too many illegal things considering I’ve been spending time with a gang that’s done more good for this world than I would think possible. “I really didn’t have much to do aside from visit the orphanage occasionally or spend time at the Prance Dance, I wasn’t going anywhere important and living a simple life. Unfortunately for me, I don’t think I can go back to it so easily after all I’ve been through.”

“We’ll be sticking around until we can find the parts for the gun we need to start our assault on Clockwerk’s lair.” Did Bentley indicate a different inflection on Clockwork? Why? “We’ll be here long as you need us Shanty, but we really do need to deal with the last of the Fiendish Five… the guy’s smart enough to already know we’re coming and it’s going to be difficult to deal with him with just the three of us. We’ll be walking into a trap with a genius that has had time to prepare.”

“Four, what makes you think I’m quitting this gang of lovely gentlemen?” Wait, why was I still wanting to be on this ride again? This was my perfect opportunity to get off of it and disavow any knowledge of having spent time among Sly Cooper’s gang. Muggshot, Ruby and even Panda King didn’t know I was connected to the gang and I was mostly a support role that could easily be ignored. Nobody would have anything on me aside from maybe aiding and abetting known criminals without solid evidence… but there’s the prestige to think about, plus they help people. “I think you still need someone that can walk around in public and do some light scouting, maybe I can learn some first-aid.”

Pom couldn’t choose to get off of her ride even if she wanted to, I had a choice and I was staying on for a dangerous life of excitement. I was never going to be a fighter, I was never going to be able to create crazy plans that worked, I was never going to be a high end skilled thief with family history. I would just like to be the support structure that kept an already cohesive team even more cohesive, maybe learn to act as a medic or learn some other helpful hobbies to support them from the sidelines.

Besides, I’m not the kind of lady to abandon her friends when they might need a little extra help on the side.

“To be honest, we weren’t assuming or expecting you would ever want to stick around after you got Shanty back with her friends after all those complaints you had about the way some things were done.” Bentley stated calmly. “Though admittedly we could use a little common sense to keep the crazy ideas I have a bit more grounded.”

“Hey, you’re always welcome to stick with us!” Murray stated with a bright smile and he flexed his muscles.

“Ms. Muttoncoddle, you’re always a friend of ours.” Sly tipped his hat to me with his cane and held out a card which I took with a smile. “However, if you ever eventually want an out, then we’ll find a way to give you one. How does kidnapping someone for weeks on end and them getting Stockholm syndrome sound to you?”

“Sounds like a decent escape plan to me.” I grinned, as did Shanty who turned to see Ocellus laying across Smolder’s legs as they continued to watch that odd Ottoman Empire show about the foot stools.

“So warm…” Ocellus muttered sleeping as she snuggled against Smolder’s belly while halfway asleep.

“Always the space heater of the group.” Stated Smolder bluntly while rolling her eyes and we shared a laugh at that. “If you want our help, we’re up for it. I don’t think Pom would say no.”

“Pom kind of needs to with the way her health is failing her…” Sly would always be a good person in my views. “She’s taking on more pressure than she really should and it’s really getting to her.”

-Outside Kahn Industries Headquarters, Pom-

I was walking towards bridge leading over a small city waterway, holding Dormarch in my right hoof was better than walking on it and on the other side was an entrance to the building leading into a large tower.

Padding alongside me was Dolly who was being wary, likely remembering our first meeting with this Shere Kahn putting her on edge. I still had to talk her out of bringing her board and her helmet, we weren’t going to pick a fight or at least we wouldn’t try to and she was still dangerous even looking harmless with the way she was still somewhat bandaged up.

I’m still quite terrified of getting in another painful scrap and it’s been more than a week of me feeling tense with having problems unwinding my tightly wound spring.

In the middle of the city was one of the tallest buildings where Shere Kahn ran his operations, this city was basically built up by his company. No tyrannical iron paw on that guy though he was apparently very firm in how he built his company.

I had seen a few shady things traveling through the city, but that was all I saw in this gleaming bright place where the people were seemingly always busy… like every other city I’ve been in where things were overly active. Not many cars were around here, mostly because this place was more about walking from point to point. What few cars there were was city transport and special cases, they really didn’t want to clog this city with cars and the people around here got plenty of exercise at least.

Ignoring the hippos, flamingos, lions, snakes and various other animalistic and biped people we passed as I walked up onto the bridge, I looked back to make sure Dolly was not wandering off to get some random smell or something.

That’s when someone slammed into me and we tumbled, Dolly was immediately barking at the person that hit me.

“Hey, watch where you’re going you…!” Dolly started barking, incensed that someone had knocked me down when I was still aching. She was healing much better than I was, but some of her milder injuries were still present.

“Oh I’m sorry, here let me help you up. I was the one running when I wasn’t looking so the fault lies entirely on me!” Looking up at the odd Wolf Tiger hybrid offering me his paw, I lifted my left hoof and was helped up onto my hind legs before he let go of my hoof while making sure I was steady. “I’m a bit… sorry, I don’t know how to feel about things these days. Things have been tense.”

“Well can you go now, Pom is kind of busy dude!” Dolly was getting snappy because I got a little bruised.

“It’s okay Dolly calm down.” I run my left hoof over her ears as I slowly dragged her into a hug, but she kept glaring at the tiger striped wolf that bowled me over. “Yeah, there is that atmosphere of things being tense. Even I can feel that, but it doesn’t seem to be much.”

“Again, I’m so sorry miss, my name is Mowgli… Seeonee.” He seemed quite certain of his last name after that slight pause.

“I’m Pom Lambchop, this Dolly and this shy guy I’m holding here is called Dormarch.” I think Dormarch was being a bit too quiet, he poke his head out of his hidey hole on the screen and then ducked back in it like a groundhog that’s seen its own shadow. “Never mind that last one then... Anyway if you will excuse me, I must get going.”

I continued across the bridge towards the doors to the lobby of the building, pointedly ignoring the blush the wolf tiger was sending me as I walked by him. Hopefully we don’t interact much further, because I can vaguely see the mild interest and worry enter his eyes from the corner of my right eye as I turned and entered the building with Dolly following along.

“Well Dormarch, are you going to be quiet the entire time we’re here?” I asked softly as I entered the lobby and passed by a few panther guards. There was also a fox, a few lions and a number of bears along with a few other assorted species in various other job positions.

“I’m scared…” To be fair to Dormarch, I was a bit scared of what we’d find out too. This was just to set up an appointment though, I wonder how soon Mr. Kahn would be able to see me.

“We’re not going to let anything happen to you without a fight Dormarch, even if my left eye is still in an eyepatch for another day or two and my right hoof still stings constantly.” Applying fresh aloe to my almost healed burn wounds before I came here made walking so much more tolerable after a slightly lukewarm shower, not that my shifting wool that grew over said wounds wasn’t a bit painful in its own right.

Okay, the reception desk is right there. Now I just needed to talk to the person attending it and set things up.

“Excuse me, ma’am.” I drew the attention of the orange feathered chicken sitting behind the desk, her grey eyes looking me over with contempt when she looked up at me from her book.

“Yes?” She looked down here beak at me as she clacked it, like I was less important than whatever book she was reading while on the job.

“I would like to schedule an appointment with Mr. Kahn, because I’m quite sure he’ll want to see me sometime within the next few days.” The guy better after all the stuff I’ve been through, I’m surprised I’m not deaf on top of the Arrhythmia and my left eye needed an eyepatch for a while. “That and he likely knows I’m here given the guys that tailed me to this building.”

“Well aren’t you a paranoid one, I’m sorry but Mr. Kahn is too busy for a country bumpkin piece of riff raff with an accent like yours.” The chicken said in a tone that stated she didn’t like me. “I can’t see what reason he could have to possibly see someone an animalistic in an eyepatch that smells somewhat like a wet dog.”

“Hey lady, not all wet dogs smell bad, also she’s not riffraff!” Kneeling down next to a growling Dolly, I nuzzled the back of her and whispered.

“Don’t make a scene Dolly, calm down please.” She did as I asked, but she was still showing her anger quite clearly on her face.

“Keep your mutt under control please or I will have you and that dumb animal escorted out.” Calmly looking the chicken in the eye and leaning forward.

“You’re a sad and lonely person aren’t you?” I said quietly trying not to draw too much attention to my discussion with the secretary. “You could at least set up my appointment and ask Mr. Kahn if he has time in his busy schedule.”

“Oh what would you know about me?” The chicken stated haughtily, put my right hoof on top of Dolly’s nose gently to keep her quiet and sent her an image through our bond that made her back down. “If you were some important business of his, you would at least look the park instead of coming here with that run down satchel and a shoddy appearance that looked like you got into a fight with a weed whacker and lost an eye to it.”

After a small bit of profiling, I knew exactly what to say to her to make her listen to me.

“You are a person who’s not only lonely, but takes it out on everyone due to a perceived lack of self-esteem and bad attempts at trying to be social. You perceive yourself as important at a desk job that you hardly care for, but it’s one of the best jobs you could get with how poorly you likely did in school and the on the job training must have taken a while.” I said loudly and my supposition drew some attention, also the chicken quieted and stared at me with wide eyes. “I can tell because one, your aging to a point you will never find someone that cares about you for you and are either not married or went through a rather sour divorce. The book you are reading has a plot synopsis that makes me think you want for an escape from the daily life of doldrums, because you can no longer handle the stress of this job whether it be the boredom or the type of people you have to deal with on a regular basis aside from said boredom. I can surmise that you absolutely need this job to continue living or else you wouldn’t be able to live around here given the rates on apartments from what I looked up when booking a hotel as soon as I arrived in Cape Suzette. Judging from the pictures on your desk, you have a thing against animalistic people and are a biped supremacist. Even if I were to wear a suit coming in, you would still find a reason to despise me because someone you loved likely fell for another and they were an animalistic like me. Your hatred could also stem from a childhood trauma where an animalistic scared or pranked you. As such you were given this job because you would turn away the ‘wrong kind of people’ by someone higher up who is also a biped supremacist, but it was not Shere Kahn who hired you but someone he let do the job unless it otherwise needed his attention. You and said person are currently sullying his trust in you to do your job, am I in the ballpark?”

I wasn’t an animalistic, but it was better than running around declaring myself an alien. The chicken clacked her beak and did so several times trying to find words to say to me.

“Ballpark would definitely trigger my entire family wholesale.” Dolly yipped as she groaned glumly and I could see images of her family playfully running around their favorite hotspot in Camden for dog socializing.

“Quite right Ms. Lambchop.” Mr. Kahn’s deep voice sounded from the desk and everyone in the room froze, most likely because Shere Kahn was a big deal around here and he demanded respect while likely paying the people working for him based on the merit of their abilities. The guards were notably well muscled panthers that stayed in shape and likely had families. I shrunk down a bit as everyone was now paying attention to me because he spoke up. “Ms. Bacherie should be happy that she still has a job despite me knowing of this and I wish you to know that I do not condone such a thing. As long as someone can be an asset or useful no matter their outward appearance, orientation or livelihood, I will accept an appointment with them if they are willing to talk business. I will at least humor them for five minutes at most, otherwise I expect some modicum of professionalism from all my employees regardless of their beliefs or how they wish to treat others in their off time.”

“I believe I’ve been useful to you Mr. Kahn.” I said flatly to where his voice was coming from. I really wanted to know how useful I have been to him. I turned to the secretary with a look in my right at her two.

“That you have Ms. Lambchop, I assume you are here for answers?” The tiger stated in a calm calculating tone. “The ones you so painstakingly worked for in getting here?”

“To set up an appointment to discuss some business, yes.” I stated blandly. “Also I’ve had worse, you should see the other guys.”

“Ms. Bacherie, give her an appointment for tomorrow early in the morning.” Stated the cold sounding tiger in a no nonsense tone. “You better not hold her up and you will leave your prejudices at home.”

“Of course sir, I wouldn’t want to disappoint you.” The biped chicken looked fairly frightened and was typing away at her computer. “I am setting up an appointment with… Ms. Lambchop was it? I’m doing it right away!”

“See that you do, she is quite important in many ways that you cannot even begin to fathom.” With that Shere Kahn turned off whatever was allowing him to send his voice through to the desk.

Everyone around was rather unnerved by the intimidating presence of his voice alone and I felt… oddly okay about Shere Kahn telling his employee off in a roundabout manner.

“Okay, sign here… and please don’t get me fired…” The chicken was sweating as I took up the pen and signed my name for the appointment making sure I got the time down right.

“The cover of a book can only tell you so much, which is why you need to read the book to find out whether your assumptions about it are correct or not.” I stated as I turned and walked away with Dolly trailing behind me. “Appearances and all that.”

“So meeting with the intimidating tiger guy tomorrow?” Dolly asked me as we made our way for the door, as we exited I noted that the tiger wolf was watching from the corner of the building with curiosity and he ducked away when I looked in his direction.

“Yes.” I stated quietly wondering what was up with the wolf. This better not be a canine magnetism thing!

-Mowgli-

Was that the person my father was talking about?

A mercenary of some sort?

She didn’t look like the type, she was too soft and her dog was too innocent and perky to be a dangerous person.

Smelled too nice and she was trying to stay off her right leg, what connection did she have with my father? Also did she know my mother Raksha?

-Pom-

“Dormarch, anything you would like to say right now?” We were going to stop by to pick up launch on the way back to the hotel, I saw a nice sandwich shop on the way to the tower where Kahn Industries stood.

“Take some medication, try not to use the dancing flame technique and try to heal enough before you have to act in a manner most dangerous to you.” Dormarch would meet my eyes. “At least we shouldn’t have to worry about mercenaries for a while.”

“Not unless they are Kahn Industry mercenaries that have been tailing me and watching me.” I sniffed the air, twitched my ears and looked back with my right eye and narrowed it at someone in a flowery shirt and some pants. No aggressive intent, but the biped elephant seemed to be watching me and didn’t seemed a bit spooked that I noticed him. Not the most subtle person to use for spying… because it would make me hardly notice the cat nearby and he was far more surprised that I noticed him stealthily watching me, but he wasn’t running and seemed to nod at me in respect for catching him. Loud and quiet, Kahn has Cape Suzette well protected with his people at least. “At least Kahn’s preparing for something to happen, so we can expect some help when a crisis occurred.”

“Any help is better than no help right?” Dolly tried as she noted the cat too without my prompting, she tilted her head to my left and sent me an image of an eagle biped also watching us from my left in my blind spot.

I didn’t acknowledge that she was there as that would probably spook them too much, all of them were likely working for Kahn and were told to watch me.

“Cooper Gang, Wing Team and our group has a lot of talent that could handle things that normal people wouldn’t be able to Dolly. Even if I’m not at my best they sure are and at least Shanty looks like she’s been eating healthy… which is about all she does.” Where was the horseshoe going to do drop exactly? More importantly when would it drop?

-Mowgli-

The elephant was suspicious, mostly because I knew that guy. The eagle I noticed as well, but when I saw the cat slowly tailing her I had a feeling my father had a protection detail on her for a very good reason. The same reason that someone like her would be able to get my father’s attention almost immediately just by talking to the receptionist.

Something big was going down, now if only I knew what that was.

-Pom-

“Hey Pom, how are you doing?” Kit Cloudkicker asked as I was still walking my way back to the hotel with Dolly on my back holding a bag of sandwiches for everyone, also some treats for her of course.

“I’m doing okay Mr. Cloudkicker, I just got an appointment with Shere Kahn tomorrow morning and hopefully the news we receive won’t be too bad concerning my companion Dormarch.” I was a little upset that Dormarch was being so quiet and shutting me and Dolly out. “He’s a bit worried about our meeting.”

“Dormarch should be, Kahn may not be a bad guy, but he’s not a too much of a good one either.” Kit wasn’t as subtle as he think he was approaching me in a friendly manner to walk the same way I was. “Your mileage may vary, I’m only saying what I am because I got a lot of mileage from him when I was a teenager… you do know you’re being watched right?”

“Yes, apparently he thought I need a protection detail… I probably do knowing my luck.” Let them watch me, I really didn’t have much to hide, though I need to tell Ocellus to stick to her wingless dragon form. “So what drew your attention to me?”

“Well since you helped me…” He rubbed the back of his looking sheepish. “I was kind of hoping you would want a few tickets to the flying circus we’re doing?”

“I have quite a few friends here with me and that would set you back a lot to give some away to me like that.” I received a waved paw.

“How many do you need?” He said confidently with his fists on his hips and standing tall with pride. “I want to return the favor and you did more than enough to pay for them, you can even say you helped fund our first show for some front row seats!”

“Okay… when are you doing this?” I’m sure Shanty would at least like to see it given airplanes were interesting to watch fly.

It was after lunch tomorrow.

176. Fallen A-Fowl.

-Earth, Krakarov Top, Carmelita-

After being a given a quick run down I looked to the flying tower, but my jetpack was no longer on it. It was being flown by a costumed duck and riding on top of it was… yep it was that strange goat again.

“Who are the goat and duck?” I asked as it seemed they were largely keeping Clockwerk distracted, thanks to Inspector Tezuka’s gift.

Frankly the weapons and jetpack combo were powerful, but wasn't doing nearly as much damage to Clockwerk as I thought it would. That was despite it tearing through the smaller robotic birds like tissue paper.

“Apparently the goat goes by Cut-Lass, special abilities include climbing on any surface, creating a cutting edge when she swings her hooves and is fairly acrobatic. She’s also apparently a limited hydrokinetic, the water has to come from somewhere and Nick here says she can use her own sweat.” Judy seemed to know a fair amount. “She’s considered one of Leap Lamb’s protégés.”

“And the duck?” The one flying my on loan jetpack.

“SHUSH agent, likely a freelance one owed quite a few favors.” As did Nick, who had me blankly staring at him for just the first two words.

“Merde!” It seems I wouldn’t be able to arrest Cooper today if things were going to go the way I thought they were.

Also the goat was a teenage super hero, explains why she was in a swamp fighting monsters. At least she was doing okay so far, but she was in a lot of danger right now.

“Yeah, thought that would upset you.” Nick said with slight grin, he frowned afterwards and pointed out the tower firing a death ray that the small jetpack avoided nimbly while trying to keep Clockwerk back with multiple rockets plowing into his near pristine form. “You have to admit that Clockwerk has become something of a world threat, especially with what we’re seeing here.”

Hearing a noise I pulled my pistol and aimed it at the two legged ostrich that walked up to us, it didn’t seem to be attacking and was a little wary of me aiming at it.

“Don’t shoot, he’s with Team Leap Lamb. Show her your side!” At Judy’s words the machine tilted its head curiously and turned to the side to reveal ‘Team Leap Lamb’ proudly written on its body in a childish scribble. “Nick told me he’s a living being. Don’t know how, but he can eat, breathe and feel pain, despite being metal.”

It approached me and I clenched my hand over my pistol, it gently lowered its head and made a warbling whining noise. It then nudged Leap Lamb with a worried expression, it took a chunk of wool at the back of her neck into its beak and then carefully lifted her off of my shoulders and planted her into the hollow in its back.

Looking into the hollow I saw that Leap Lamb’s erstwhile sidekick, Caper Canine, was also unconscious and less injured than she was.

“Well that’s two members of Leap Lamb’s team that are…” Something plowed into a bit of weak rock and a plume of magma and lava shot into the air. Nick looked a little worried “Make that…”

“I’m… I’m okay… just a bit of a headache!” Flopping out of the crack in the ground covered in what should be a lethal amount of hot lava was an orange lizard with horns, wings and purple frills. “Agh… why is it always blows to my head?! Oh hey D-”

Said lizard was about to say something when she noticed us and clammed up, despite that the mechanical ostrich happily walked over to her and warbled worriedly while pointing it’s… his? His beak into his own back.

“Hey there, funny seeing you guys up here… things aren’t going too well are they?” She grinned weakly at us, while scooping up a bit of lava and slurping it down much to my concern, apparently molten rock had no effect on her despite how lethal it was to most living things if she was drinking it. She flapped her wings and flew slightly above the ostrich to look into his back. “That Clockwerk guy seems to just shrug off any damage done to him. Also, okay… that is a big yikes… our basket case is down. I’m sure they’ll be fine, keep them safe, now if you’ll excuse me… back into the fight!”

With that the… dragon I want to say… She flew off and blasted a fireball into an approaching robotic falcon as she went back up to continue the moderately hectic fight going on in the air.

“Was that a dragon?” I said still in clear disbelief.

“Yeah, a lot of things are going on around here Carmelita, we’ll sort this all out after we’re done with Clockwerk.” Judy held up her shock pistol while gesturing to it. “Also can I get a retroactive permission to set this for lethal?”

“Granted and I better get an explanation for all of this later, I feel I’m going to have headaches about all of this for a long time to come if we survive.” I stated as I held up my pistol and noted the metal ostrich firing a… doughnut?

Said doughnut splattered across a robot falcon’s face and it crashed into the side of the volcano and was summarily melted by a fountain of lava.

The ostrich machine stepped in place a few times and looked to us, then warbled and crouched down while tilting its head at itself.

“I take it he wants us to grab on to him?” I asked lazily.

“Yep.” Judy.

“Definitely, the only way we’re going to get to a safer place than here in a timely manner.” Nick stated as he walked over to the ostrich and then leapt up to mount its neck. I turned and saw a portion of the cone of the volcano collapsing inwards nearby. “Besides I don’t have a weapon and I’d rather be on stable ground than up here where that Big Hoot could fire its death ray eyes at us or fall into the volcano. Come on!”

Judy hopped into the back with Leap Lamb and Caper Canine, I jumped to cling onto the machine’s backside.

Shakily standing up the mechanical ostrich started running down the side of the volcano, once he was used to our weight he started moving much more smoothly despite the rough uneven terrain and the random bits of volcano shifting about wildly in places.

-Cooper Van, lower on the side of the volcano, Dormarch-

“The Trojan Falcon is down, but I took out the magma monster bioweapon with its self-destruct. Last visuals confirm that Carmelita and Pom made it out of the volcano. Dodo was on route to meeting up with them, Caper Canine is out of the action and is being carried by Dodo. ” I rolled my eyes at what I was about to say next. Having just used our remote control stolen friend to assist the Interpol Officers in dealing with one major issue among at least four remaining. We still had to deal with everything else, but losing our robotic infiltrator wasn’t a big issue at this point in time as we no longer had need of it and it was for a good cause. “Pom’s health is, of course, questionable until I can get a scan of her personally. All biological signs of magma slugs are ceasing activity in the nearby area of the van, the volcano is sinking and we’re down at least two fighters. Three if you count the fact that Officer Wilde can’t do anything to help without a shock pistol. We still have two large flying mechanical hoots and one can slowly produce swarms of robotic falcons and even carry hundreds in reserve.”

“We should consider ourselves lucky that we even still have methods of fighting back, I’m taking the turret Bentley. Also I’m glad to hear our fair and ever lovely inspector is okay.” Sly stated from nearby with a happy sigh, before he got into the seat and the gun rose up out of the back of the van. “If we can shoot down Clockwerk, I can go retrieve the last bit of the Thievius Racoonis from his body. I wouldn’t put it past the guy to have it stowed away in his chest or something.”

“The bigger problem here Sly is that flying abomination of a tower, we don’t have the munitions to do much more than damage its wings. Its death ray will definitively annihilate us if it spots us and we can’t draw that kind of attention! Even if we were to make it crash, it’d still have enough power to wipe us off the face of this volcano before it even hits the ground.” That was actually quite a cause for concern Bentley, I was trying to calculate a way we can deal with that. “It’s even more of a problem what with Clockwerk remotely controlling it and while utilizing his own body at the same time. That kind of multitasking would be quite impressive, if it wasn’t endangering our friends on the jetpack.”

“Well The Murray thinks we should show that vile fiend Clockwerk exactly what we can do!” Murray was still brave in the face of what was a very difficult situation. “So how are we going to do it without being death rayed or falling into the molten muck around here Bentley?”

“Give me a minute to think of route to safe ground, oh that isn’t good… Murray make turn right and step on it!” Bentley stated hastily as the portion of the volcano we were on rumbled. The back of the van sunk a bit, but we apparently made it away from a sinking portion of the volcano. “You know what Sly, just start shooting. We’ll deal with the consequences of having the death rays focus when it actually starts aiming our way.”

“I’m sorry that this has all been such a mess guys.” Sly stated with a grave tone as he armed the van’s turret and turned to start firing.

“Don’t worry about it Sly!” Both Bentley and Murray responded with good cheer, they were the best of friends and I could almost feel the emotional connections between them.

“As long as all our friends can come away from this functionally alive, especially Pom, then we’ll have no regrets!” I responded as well, because I didn’t want to be forgotten. “I’m not exactly useful anymore in this fight, but I’m here for emotional support. Also if you can start hitting the bigger owls wing joints after its finished firing the death ray we might be able to bring it down, it won’t be able to get into the air again and it won’t have time to fire on as before it hits the ground. Though it will still be very viable threat while on the ground from what I can see visually.”

“That’s a fairly viable solution, but we need to stay out of visual range once it’s down. Also maybe you do still have a use in this Dormarch. We still need to know how Clockwerk is recovering from all the damage being dealt to him, if I can boost your scanners to find the problem that’s keeping Clockwerk in perfect condition then we’ll know how to take him down permanently.” Bentley started to tinker with several things before grumbling. “It’ll give me something to work on as I don’t have many ideas at the moment for what else I can do and we can help figure out how to bring down Clockwerk together.”

-In the air around Krakarov, Shanty-

“Young lady, I’ll have you know that what you’re doing is dangerous!” Is Darkwing being serious right now? He’s the one flying a device that could be exploding at any second.

“I be no young lady, I be a young pirate!” Seeing several missiles streaking in at us. “Aye!”

My shout be creating a barrier that lasted a second, which was all we needed to survive the series of explosions. I be using up quite a bit of energy and I was going to be quite hungry after this.

“Besides I be keeping the birds and missiles off of us." This was not being safe in the slightest… I feel so alive right now! "You should be being happy that Gosalyn is not in the middle of this!”

“Yeah and I hope she doesn’t show up out of the blue like she usually does…” Darkwing grumbled as he shifted the controls and I held on as the jetpack spiraled through several blasts of energy from Clockwerk. A beam of death be trailing after us and metal birds be trying to force us into the path of that beam. “I’m so glad that the controls on this thing are relatively intuitive.”

“Do you think we be running out of fuel soon?” Despite all the danger, there was one thing I be mostly wondering. How did Darkwing be keeping his hat on his head in the middle of all of this?

“If it does, then we’re not going to live long enough to hit the ground.” That be a dour attitude, but Darkwing is being right with how much was focusing on us right now.

A metal bird be coming for us and I be prepping a hoof to slash it apart, it is then being torn apart by a stream of shots from below that quickly took out several other birds. I blinked and smiled at the help from the Cooper Van moving down the volcano.

Clockwerk be looking their way and then he be receiving a blast of cupcake batter to the eyes, I be looking towards where I felt Dodo. Clockwerk be spiraling towards the ground slowly and away from us.

The entire place be falling apart, sections of it rose up, sections were collapsing, lava sprayed into the air and the volcano becoming more of a deathtrap by the second.

This would all be so cool… if I wasn’t being so sweaty, tired and in need of at least an entire bucket of water to drink. I was fine with the mortal peril, I be expecting that coming into this.

“Is there any way I can be being more helpful?” Hanging on fairly well here, I didn’t fear being this high up, I do be fearing hitting the ground though.

“Aside from what you’ve been doing, not really.” Darkwing then had to make a comment that be getting under my fur. “Unless you can get down from up here safely, you’re kind of slowing down the jetpack with your weight.”

“So I be eating a lot, I’m not nearly that heavy!” Though admittedly I do be having more compressed mass than a normal goat of my size and build, it be why I have problems jumping from the ground.

“You kind of are!” Smolder shouted as she blocked a metal bird for us with her body and she swiftly bit its head off and let the rest of it drop away from us. “I wouldn’t be able to fly with your weight!”

“Can’t you do that grow thing?” Clinging onto the back of the jetpack more tightly as Darkwing be sharply turning and firing a salvo into a series of incoming missiles and birds.

“Only for Ocellus, do I honestly have to remind you why she couldn’t be here!” So that’s a no on riding a big dragon? Well Smolder is being no fun.

“Are you okay taking hits like that?” Darkwing called out as we veered around several missiles.

“I’m fine as long as I don’t take too many sharp blows to the head all at once, I'm not brittle!” Smolder followed that statement by spitting a fireball at the Heavy Hooter. It not be doing much aside from lightly scorching the metal, the flaps of its wings be hitting us with a powerful blasts of winds. “What does it take to actually damage that thing? Also where’s that Clockwerk guy?”

“He be down there!” I pointed with my left hoof to where Clockwerk was trying to clear his eyes of the sticky cupcake batter Dodo be spitting in his eyes. “Dodo be a good shot.”

“Yeah, he is!” Smolder was struggling against the wind being generated by the giant owl flapping its wings and firing more missiles our way while its eyes glowed. “Anything you need me to tell the Cooper gang or do you need me here?!”

“No and look out, grab her Shanty!” Darkwing slammed the jetpack into Smolder, I grabbed onto her with my left hoof and we avoided the missiles and the big beam of death that trailing through the air after us. “Come on, come on, is this really all the power this thing has when it’s not firing?!”

The jetpack be using a lot of power for both flying and its weapons, it not be good that it was starting to falter. Each flap of the massive owl’s wings either buffeted us or tried to suck us toward it as we avoided the beam sweeping after us.

Darkwing be flying us back and away from it and the beam it be firing, we were being violently tossed through the air and he still be flying the thing really well. I could feel the energy of the beam as it closed in on us and was about a foot away when it petered out.

“You can let go of me now Shanty.” Blinking at Smolder, I grinned and released her so she was flying in the air.

Before we could do anything else, we saw a series of blasts hit the wing joint of the massive flying machine. It be coming from the van.

“Finally, some help with this thing!” Darkwing took aim and started hitting the same spot the stream of shots from below were hitting. “It’s not nearly enough, Shanty, Smolder, can you grab the controls and hold this thing steady I need to get my gas gun out. Also hold the trigger down Smolder.”

Doing as he asked, Darkwing pulled his gas gun out and started to fiddle with it. I held the jetpack steady and Smolder kept the guns aimed at the flying giant owl.

“Do I have to be reminding you that we don’t know the controls?” I looked at to the distant ground below and saw Clockwerk was nearly done clearing the cupcake batter out of his eyes, he be burning it off with bursts of energy from his wings. “Also Clockwerk is about to be back in the air again!”

“I’ll get it in time, just hold on.” He be saying that while we’re still getting buffeted and can’t stay in one place for long. “Just got to… there! Suck gas you massive machine!”

Darkwing be taking aim with his gas gun and firing a full canister, a strange yellow gas explodes over a section and, combined with the constant fire, the base of the massive monster owl’s right wing started taking damage.

Then a series of shock pistol shots be flying in and the joint be covering it in energy and before anyone knew it.

A single blast of rippling energy from Dodo be aiding in the constant fire the large owl was under and it was that one shot that be changing something drastically, because something finally be giving.

The base of the right wing joint cracked throughout and then when it flapped forward it be sheering completely off and the large mechanical owl be falling from the sky. It’s massive right wing sheering into the volcano’s side and creating a massive flow of lava.

“Now if only I had another canister of that for Clockwerk himself, if it would have even worked.” Darkwing stowed his gun as the massive owl struck the ground with a thunderous world shaking impact and a huge portion of the volcano started breaking up around the area it crashed. “Okay, you can let me have control back girls, you know, before we crash into the ground.”

I silently be moving back to sitting on the back of the jetpack and Smolder flapped away. The Heavy Hooter still be active, but it being less dangerous on the ground.

Clockwerk flew up at us and we evaded his talons scything upwards through the air and nearly hit the ground. Darkwing veered away from the ground and we narrowly avoided being clawed by Clockwerk’s talons again, I be ducking away as a shower of sparks struck hit my fur as I covered my face with a hoof.

The large mechanical owl be turning around to go for me, only Smolder blinded him with a blast of fire to the face so we could get away and she herself flew off in a different direction.

“So my enemies yet survive, but you will not be able to best me!” Clockwerk proclaimed as we flew away. He is being full of himself for someone who is losing most of his stuff so far.

Suddenly I heard something, I looked at the jetpack and be noting the damage quietly.

“Darkwing… should the jetpack be making that noise?” I asked as I noticed the flames keeping us aloft started flickering and we started getting lower to the ever increasing number of magma and lava pits around the rapidly crumbling portions of the volcano.

“He must have hit something important, we’re going down!” Darkwing tried to steady the jetpack and had us in a mostly upright position. “Jump, tuck and roll!”

“Worry about yourself, that be one of the first things that Pom be teaching me thoroughly!” I looked at a nearby downward slope and kicked off while curling up tightly.

I hit the slope rolling at a high speed, until I ramped off into the air. Uncurling into a backflip, I slapped hooves first into a chunk of land the rose up out of the surrounding magma pits that were growing bigger by the second beneath me.

The stone I was standing on started sinking and looking behind me I saw Clockwerk swooping in towards me with talons wide open.

“Goat fly!” I kicked off and flew towards an uphill portion as his talons be smashing the sinking rock to bits. Slapping into a nearby upwards slope, I tumbled and started running up it as it collapsed behind me. Energy blasts be raining down on me.

“Hey, leave my friend alone!” Smolder blasted clockwork with a few fireballs, but they be doing nothing more than distracting him from me.

The remaining shots Darkwing fired from the jetpack before he be freeing himself of the straps also be doing little to slow the smaller metal owl down, but it be drawing his attention away enough for me to make another leap to more stable ground.

Darkwing fell straight down as the jetpack itself flew forward and be falling into pool of lava, he be putting one hand on his hat and his other held his weapon.

“You think your hot stuff?” Darkwing waved his fist at Clockwerk, before aiming his gun at the ground. “Well then, let’s get dangerous!”

“You’ll see before long that your bravado will get you a quick…?!” Clockwerk was confused when both his talons went to grab Darkwing, only for his talons to meet nothing but air despite there being nowhere for Darkwing to have gone without leaving the smoke cloud. “Death?”

My attention was drawn away by missiles raining down on me and breaking up the area, causing more lava flows. It was getting unbearably hot out here and my fur was singing from being this close to it all.

I started climbing away from the pooling lava and up to the top of a boulder to look around for a safer place to go.

195. The Firm-ian Response.

-Earth, Near Power Station, Dolly-

“Dude, are you’re hooves okay?” I had to ask because Manny seemed to be holding a drill tank still with raw muscle, it was kind of awesome really. I can’t stop something’s momentum dead like that unless it’s on the ground and then it would take more effort the more it tries to move.

“I can hold this drill tank all day, but I can’t grab the other one while I’m stuck like this.” The bat winged demon horse guy was a cool dude and his help was warranted right now, but how were we going to deal with Yo-Me-Hearty’s tank?

“So you have some extra assistance, no matter I have about two and half minutes left before I have to evacuate the area.” Moliarty’s voice came from the other tank.

“Ms. Shuttle will only need to fire one shot, but she’s starting to run out trying to suppress the moles.” Dormarch announced as Pom took up a position with us. “Can you hold the tank until then?”

“Yes, but you’ll have to cover me. I’m not infinitely strong, but I can hold it here.” Manny stated while his muscles bulged as he held the tank in place as it tried to reverse out of his grip, the tank Moliarty was in was going to be the only one left we’ll have to deal with.

I liked those odds, because I never know much about the odds to begin with before I do something.

“We can handle that.” Pom wasn’t tired of evading or running around, but she did look tired of dealing with Moliarty’s guys, I was right there with her on that.

“I told Ocellus to tell Ms. Shuttle to save the rest of her chemicals shots for an emergencies after her next one, it’ll destroy the drill tank Manny has got a hold of.” I hear Dormarch hum thoughtfully. “We’ll have to take Moliarty’s tank on foot… not exactly good prospects.”

“We can deal with one tank, we can even lure it to the pillar so Moliarty can destroy it for us.” Wasn’t he a bit too smart for that Pom? I mean the guy called reinforcements twice without us noticing, he still has that bazooka and we haven’t exactly been getting any chance to rest today. “We just need to insult his intelligence.”

“Insult his intelligence eh? I can do that.” Smolder sounded off from Dormarch. “Hey eight eyes, was your mother a cave spider?”

“Like such a juvenile insult would make me forget there’s a shot incoming, dive!” Moliarty’s current drill tank started digging into the street and the ground beneath.

“I need something better to work with… do you guys have anything on him that could get under his skin?” Muttered Smolder.

“You’re the ones with access to his information Smolder.” Yeah and we weren’t doing too horribly Pom.

“Boss, what about us?!” Vocalized a voice from the drill tank Manny was holding in place with his size and bulging muscles, while not as big as the tank he certainly was proving himself as dangerous as he looks when he was not being a nurse for Pom.

“What about you? You’ve just become useless in this game of chess, be good soldiers and don’t go down so easily when the tank is destroyed.” That’s when Moliarty’s tank disappeared and all the moles on foot followed it into the ground. “I might even give you a raise if you can get away cleanly enough!”

“I’m not good at insulting people… I really don’t like doing that, but in this situation it’s warranted.” Ocellus stated soon after. “Reporting in that Lena and Violet have started their offensive on the Jambalaya gang. Morgana Macawber is being treated. Hospital is holding steady. Launchpad and Stegmutt are handling the Tanya Trunk problem. Maui has gone after Hotshot and Flygirl alone… near an anvil store? Why would there be a novelty anvil store in Saint Canard and why would Hotshot and Flygirl go anywhere near one of their reported weaknesses? Huh… footnote… cannot see anvil or Duck Smasher related incidents with future sight and said incidents usually occur with alarming frequency. World counterbalance maybe? Anyway, Darkwing, Quiverwing and Arrow Assistant are good enough to head for the suspected location of Gizmo Duck… they think you’ve got this situation under control Pom. Bentina Beakley is in the city, she’s starting to deal with the FOWL agents looting places and looks to be on the hunt for either Steel Beak or Bianca Beakley her family member. Aside from that Negaduck’s plan so far seems like a bunch of massive distractions. We still have no idea what he’s got going on during all this, but I can assume Negaduck needs all this time for something huge.”

“Incoming!” Dormarch shouted as an orb of chemicals was coming it to strike the drill tank that Manny had pinned down directly.

I quickly skated up the side of a building on my board. Didn’t know if the chemicals would effect it, but I wasn’t exactly taking any chances with it. Pom followed me up and we left Manny holding the tank.

“Wait, what about…” The chemicals struck and blasted a small area, Manny got covered in pink dust when his muscles flexed after the chemicals did their thing and he destroyed the tank.

“Dormarch assured me that the chemicals are not dangerous to living things, but I still wouldn’t want to inhale in the resulting dust.” Pom said after a moment from next to me on the rooftop. “So moving battle?”

“I’d be great at that, you know speed is my thing!” I grinned cheerfully in Pom’s direction my tail twitching for more of a fight. These guys have been annoyingly hard to stop from going underground and we weren’t about to follow them down into their home turf where they could collapse a tunnel on us.

My brother Diesel could probably dig better than all of them, but he knew better to pick fights with things bigger than him. Probably would find a kindred spirit among the moles.

“I’m going to need to eat something after this.” Pom muttered before jumping off the rooftop, I followed and landed on her back to slow her momentum down before we hit the street without prompting. “You okay there Manny?”

“I’m fine friend.” He rumbled flatly despite looking quite colorful as he smacked some moles trying to escape on the head with his hooves before he leapt after two remaining with runners with incredibly monstrous force and speed. Guy was plain awesome to see in action. “Thankfully once my summoning ends this dust won’t stay on me, I can only be summoned for one thing in particular until payment or else I won’t do anything else. My current goal is to help you with the moles. Outside of summoning I would do more since we’re friends, but this was a slapdash job. As soon as the moles are dealt with, I’m gone.”

“Understood.” Pom looked about at the torn up streets and parts of the buildings the mole tanks had ripped open. We both nodded to Manny. “Dolly, listen with me and tell me if you can feel where it’s coming from.”

I concentrated, listening to the rumble of the ground and Pom was doing the same.

“Our left, moving up right towards us.” A second later my words got Pom to make a rolling leap to the left as the drill tank erupted from the ground and tried to flatten us.

It thankfully missed as its treads slammed down into the street cracking it to our right.

“Got any better insults yet?” Asked Pom, she then gained a look and I could read her mind on what she was about to ask next. “Also how did he target us if there was no one up here to tell him where we were? All his remaining moles are currently underground.”

“Nope, Ocellus is not really one for insults either.” Smolder didn’t know how to insult moles apparently. “Does he have anything he cares about other than himself?”

“I’ve got one, but you’re going to have to say it for me.” I figure this guy prided himself on being smart right? If this guy was anything at all like my brothers… then this was going to be an easy sore spot. “So you’re going to tell him…”

“Hey, Moliarty!” Pom repeated my words verbatim as the tank turned in place towards us. “If you were as smart as you say you are, then you’re army certainly reflects your intelligence… or complete lack thereof considering how you hide behind them!”

“Why you, I am smarter than all of my simpletons!” What surprised me was what Moliarty got in response from Pom without any further help. “I’m using fairly good tactics I’d think!”

“Ah, so by that comparison, you’re just an average mole when everyone else you surround yourself is below average… you’re nothing special and are just using your mole army to feel important.” Pom said nodding her head sagely. “I mean if you can’t figure out a way to beat me in less than ten minutes with more than sixty or so moles and multiple drill tanks at your disposal, then you’re barely better than your army in the muscle department. By that I’m talking about the large gapingly empty cavities between your hearing receptacles, considering you had far more at the start of all this… and I’m still doing better than you are. It’s kind of sad that you are someone of ‘special needs’.”

“Why you, I’ll show you personally that…!” Moliarty popped up from the tank’s lid with his bazooka, to take aim. Pom beat him to the punch with a quick bark blast to the face and he dropped back into the tank. “Agh, you’ll pay for that, run that pair of moderately intelligent heroes down!”

We darted off to the side as the tank trundled forward with its spinning drill and past us, then it started to turn towards us.

“Well he’s decently tough at least. I hit him in the back with a fully loaded dumpster, you just bark blasted his face in and he still has enough sense in him to be insufferable.” We turned and started to run with the tank about to come chasing after us, I stayed a bit ahead of Pom on my board as we made our way down the street. ”It took me a lot of effort to even get that thing moving!”

I didn’t have to do more than one push off to keep my board going with my momentum control and add some of my flow motion to it and I was riding smooth.

Looking back I saw the tank dive into the ground and then the ground started cracking and lifting upwards coming at us in a straight line.

“Pom…” I said quietly.

“I know…” We didn’t make it too much further before Pom crouched down as the breaking portions of the street caught up with us. I kicked off the ground swung my skateboard to my back and clung to Pom once again and focused on boosting her movements.

When Pom leapt she did so far enough away to avoid being impaled on the drill as it erupted from the street and from being crushed like the poor car that just basically got turned into a tin can. The pillar was the next street over, the tank tried to move towards us only to be hit from the side by a charging Manny.

Manny couldn’t really lift the drill tank, but he could push it a little and the drill wouldn’t be too effective against him considering what happened with the other tank. Moliarty popped up and blasted Manny away from the side of the tank and it continued towards us. Manny looked alright and was getting his bearings, Pom leapt again and I felt a slight drain as she pushed towards the pillar.

“You know something I can’t understand, why exactly are you working for Negaduck like a pawn?! Doesn’t that prove you’re lack of intelligence as a genius?!” Shouted Pom as the tank turned the corner for us with a good seventy or so moles, barely any of them had weapons.

“Yes there is some level of issue there, but I won’t be bothered with that once I make finally my escape! Even then, I know at this point that you are goading me in the hopes of weakening his hold on the city by losing us through the pillars destruction and we don’t have a great chance of beating you.” Moliarty was actually admitting that? Wow he actually was smart. “That doesn’t mean that I can’t feasibly cripple you tactically in some way before then. Charge, she can’t possibly stop all of you coming at her at once!”

The sixty plus moles came at us, I was about to hop off when Pom put a hoof on me.

“Caper Canine, stay… Manny attack the pillar! Once it goes down the moles won’t be able to stay on the surface.” I looked at Pom and wondered what she was thinking.

“Ocellus and I are receiving some strange seismographic data.” Turning Dormarch in the clothe wrapping, I gave him a querying look. “We don’t think it’s the moles doing it.”

“Then it may be too late for Moliarty to retreat anyway. That might be a sign of the Terra-Firmians arriving… Caper Canine watch my back and chip in where you can.” Pom went from quadruped to her biped stance and she held her hooves up waiting for the approaching moles to come to us as Manny started attacking the pillar with his fists.

She’s making me literally watch her back? Huh, did she think that assassin would try again?

The first mole came in screaming, he was swiftly dropped by a hard right hoof across the face. Pom had a lot more muscle than she looked like she did, she then started forward into the crowd and started to swing left and right and every now and then kicked moles back and away from us.

“This is kind of sad, I’m beating up a lot of guys that are weaker than me… it’s not a good a feeling.” Muttered Pom as she continued to send moles flying with swinging kicks and blows with her hooves. “Prepare to swing out now!”

Pom slashed her two hooves rapidly in a quick circle to back the moles off and started to go into a spin after making some moles back off from the various claw shaped injuries.

I took my right paw off Pom’s shoulder and launched my skateboard as Pom spun, she had knocked out a number of moles getting into the middle of them all.

I smiled, as I finally saw where this was going now.

“Bow-whacka-woohoo, whipping it!” I lashed out with my right paw, keeping a tight grip on the strap as Pom went into a full twirl, boosting the momentum behind my board through the strap… every mole we hit went flying into the nearest building or down the street half conscious.

Some windows were broken as they were beaten on impact as we swirled in an outward spiral with Pom continuing our spin until there were barely any left standing.

Until she stopped and went on all fours and started huffing, there were about ten guys left and they were shivering… because we just took a good number of them out and these guys didn’t have guns.

The last guy I hit with my board was a bit fried by hitting a nearby power lines and flopped to the ground groaning.

Well one of them did have a gun, but instead of hitting Pom or me with his shot he hit a lamppost… across the street from us. The guy whimpered, threw his gun down and started running when Pom just gave him a flat look.

“You okay Pom?” Pulling my skateboard back I caught it and got it back around my body.

“A bit dizzy.” Stated Pom woozily as she stumbled back and forth slightly, then she darted forward and rammed a cautiously approaching mole in the stomach with her head, making him drop his weapon.

I lashed out with my board taking a guy out on the right and Pom bucked the one on the left in the chin.

Six guys left, they really weren’t up for or even ready for dealing with us even when we were a bit tired. I was getting pretty hungry too.

“I guess she actually can take you all on at once…” Moliarty said in shock, likely with more concern than he meant to show. “What… what do you mean I can’t get any more reinforcements? Wait, patrols are going quiet? There aren’t enough heroes in the city to have hit so many at once.”

Pom had been right, the moles were not really much of a threat without weapons or their vehicles. They had numbers and a somewhat smart leader, but no real power to back it all up when we had all the quality that their quantity just couldn’t handle.

“Uh can we talk about this?” One of the remaining moles stated with his hands raised.

“Start Running.” Growled out Pom in a show of intimidation, they immediately did so.

“You just can’t get good help these days… attack them!” The drill tank trundled forward, but the ground started rumbling.

The streets started buckling and then we saw the most ridiculous sight ever, colorful boulders of varying sizes started spewing out of the street into the side of the drill tank pummeling it with hundreds of dents.

“What?!” Moliarty. “Oh no…”

It was around this time that Manny finally managed to break the last pillar and the past noon day’s sun shined on through on the city as the canopy was destroyed. The surrounding moles we pummeled all started screaming and covering their eyes, yelling about how the sun burns and I could even see their skin boiling a bit… that was quite gross.

“Good job Manny!” The first good amount of cheer I’ve heard from Pom in a long while as the sun started lighting up the city as the canopy shredded apart above us no longer have anything holding it up.

“All remaining teams retreat, the Terra-firmians are…!” Something hit by the large colorful boulders made the drills top spinning and the drill tank went inert, several more colorful boulders popped up from the ground and started to beat the drill into a crumpled mess. “No, no, no, this can’t be happening! Do something you fools, we can’t be here! Don’t let them take me Leap Lamb, please, mercy!”

“Those are Terra-Firmians?” Asked Pom with a hoof on her mouth as one of the colorful boulders came near us, it was actually covered in yellow fur… it uncurled to reveal that the boulder had a head and arms, he was wearing a nifty looking tie along with a helmet and was wielding a spear.

“You wouldn’t happen to be Leap Lamb right?” The Terra-Firmian said as he planted the butt of his spear and stayed sitting tall in front of us.

“Yeah, if you’re wondering where Moliarty is, he’s in that tank.” Stated Pom with curiosity to the boulder person of the colorful people… my family would have had a field day chasing these guys around. “So you’re Terra-Firmians… I can now see why Lena said we’d be seeing a lot of balls.”

I even felt the urge to chase after them myself Pom, but I was resisting that with every bit of my being. They looked like a lot of fun.

“Rip that tank open and pull Moliarty out, we’re here to capture him and his moles for their crimes against the Terra-Firmian race, make sure to capture every militant mole that you can! We are going after all the stragglers too!” The yellow furred boulder guy stated after bouncing and turning in place to point at the tank with his spear. All the other colorful balls unrolled revealing themselves to be equally armed with spears, helmets and shields. “We’ll be keeping them locked up for a long time to come, attack!”

Some of the Terra-Firmians rolled up and started battering the tank by ramming it, others hopped up onto it and started ramming their spears into it to start prying open holes. Others started rolling about and pinning down and tying up moles.

The lead guy hopped and turned back to us.

“We are so sorry about Moliarty invading this city, we’ll try to deal with them in a timely manner before they can do any further damage.” He held out a hand and Pom shook it with a hoof.

“Thank you for coming to help us.” Responded Pom with sincerity that the situation was now being handled by the colorful spherical people, she even bowed to him slightly. “You guys seem to be as tough as boulders.”

“Our bodies are tougher than stone ma’am, no need to worry about us! We’ll clean this city out of Moliarty’s forces in no time.” Replied the Terra-Firmian focusing on us. “Would you need any help with anything else while we’re here? We have been looking for Moliarty for quite a while.”

“Oh no, you are already doing more than enough Mister…” Pom rolled a hoof at the guy.

“Feldspar.” He said with a nod and a friendly smile.

“My job is done, may you live long enough to pay me back Gandra Dee!” Manny bellowed to the sky. “Mostly because you’re my coworker and friend too, I hope to meet you again eventually Leap Lamb and Caper Canine. It’s alright if we don’t, but it would be nice. I hope you all live good lives if we don’t meet again my friends!”

Manny crossed his muscular legs and then disappeared in a flash of flames similar to what Ocellus does when she transforms, he left behind a pile of pink dust shaped like him for a second before it collapsed to the ground.

“The sun is shining once more and… sorry, but we need to go into the power station, can you take care of the rest of the moles in the city Mr. Feldspar?” Finally deciding to hop off as Pom’s back as she addressed the Terra-Firmian, I moved up to the guy and sniffed him a bit. Earthy smells… Diesel would have loved this guy. “We need to investigate the facility to see if our friends are alright.”

“Of course, we Terra-Firmians, when riled, are pretty hard to stop. Besides, their guns can’t do anything to pierce our tough skins… we still wear helmets and wield shields to protect our faces when we’re not rolling around at the speed of sound. We’ll be fine taking things from here.” Feldspar turned his head and watched as Moliarty was forced out of the tank by two Terra-Firmians, he weakly struggled to get out of their grasps. The dude wasn’t going to succeed if he was barely any stronger than all the slightly larger moles also being captured and being dragged kicking and screaming into the hole the Terra-Firmians came out of. “Sorry about the mess, we’ll try to even out all the streets on our way out.”

“No… no… it can’t end like this, NO!” Moliarty was dragged underground with his wrists tied behind his back. "I'm too smart to be imprisoned so easily!"

"Quiet you!" We watched as Moliarty was smacked across the back of his head by a blue Terra-Firmian and forcefully pushed into the hole.

“Come on.” With Pom’s words we rushed through the power station to eventually see Neptunia, Shanty and Fawn rushing about. On the floor was Gandra rapidly dishing out orders and next to her was a charred black guy that was breathing oddly.

211. Battle for Saint Canard Pt.1.

-Earth, Saint Canard, Calisota, Shanty-

“Uhn… where be the pirates?” Sitting up, I be finding that I not be in the museum any more.

“You missed them, sorry, but Pom took care of it… mostly.” Looking around after Ocellus answered me, I be wondering something.

“Where be Quackerjack?” I be really out of it and hungry, but even I can be seeing the wince on Ocellus’s face. “It’s okay… I be used to knowing stuff like it.”

“You shouldn’t have to be…” So Ocellus just confirmed it for me by looking away.

It was the fact that Quackerjack was no longer among the living. Looking around I saw some of the toys he left behind and Mr. Banana Brain.

I felt the sadness well up in me, he hadn’t been so bad.

“How did he go?” I asked looking at the floor.

“If you can believe Pom, playing the kazoo as he stuffed explosive bananas down Splatter Phoenix’s throat. She was apparently made out of the same magical paint she created her creations with.” After a bit of silence Ocellus added. “Pom left some food for you and Dolly, she’s… going to be getting into a really bad fight soon, but I’m sure she can handle it.”

“You not be sounding too sure of that.” It did not be taking me long to figure out that Pom was rushing into grave danger, but she be wiser than I on many a thing. Like a big sister or a mother, mostly the first but the second be crossing my mind more than once. “What did she make?”

“Vegetable soup with an emphasis on mushrooms, nothing in it that’s bad for a dog except for the cream being slightly rich.” Looking in the direction Ocellus indicated I saw Dolly with her face in a large bowl, she be horribly slurping up the food… she was my kind of friend and we worked so well together. “Also she’s with Banana Boy, Dormarch, Darkwing, Maui and Neptunia. Negaduck just apparently supercharged himself with incredible amounts of power, so it’s going to be that much harder to take him down after the failed sneak assault Pom pulled on his base. Now he can fly, levitate things and is capable of firing building destroying blasts of energy, among who knows what else. He also intends to turn everyone inside the city into being somewhat like he currently is.”

They be all that was left to fight? Turning everyone in the city into more of him be sounding really dire.

I be wishing that Dolly and I could join the fight, but I wouldn’t be wanting Pom to be distracted by me or her, especially being as slow I currently felt. At least Pom wasn’t being alone out there.

At I least I got to fight ninjas and they gave more of a fight than I thought they would.

-On the back of Banana Boy, Pom-

“There he is… he’s just waiting for us isn’t he?” I just stared at Negatron Duck who stared back with his arms cross, as the tronsplitter device was being set up behind him under the dark red and yellow glow coming off him without him even focusing on it.

“Well if it isn’t Banana Splits at the first sign of danger, Leaping Loony and the Dimwit Doggy.” His commentary was not appreciated.

“I believe I’m much smarter than you were for being barely two months old.” Replied Dormarch with a glare. “All you could do was cry, drool and mess yourself.”

“Oh how cute, the little talking mutant mutt thinks he’s scary. I’m surprised the fake countdown timer on my lair didn’t catch you all off guard.” Holding up his right hand he fired a lightning fast blast of energy skywards, much to my surprise Banana Boy flew to the right sideways in the air while continuing to face Negatron Duck with a serious expression on his yellow form. “Well come on then, try to prove me wrong and that you’re something to take seriously.”

I thought that explosion happened too fast to be normal… his lair at the bakery was probably set up to explode with enough time so that he could narrowly make a clean escape. I really didn’t like Negaduck and after becoming Negatron Duck, he’s gotten far more dangerous.

“Gladly.” Responded Banana Boy.

Negatron Duck raised both his hands and sent a series of rapid blasts at Banana Boy who rolled and tumbled in the air, completely in control of which direction he went. It seemed Banana Boy was more concerned with us not falling off than effectively dodging the blasts of energy that were heavily damaging the nearby buildings if said energy so much as barely scraped them.

Negatron Duck pulled a rapier from his back with his right hand and it levitated up into the air and swung itself twice, he gave us a grim smile as he slapped the palm of his hand against base of the hilt.

I kicked off Banana Boy with Dormarch still on him and the Rapier passed through the space we were half a second ago before turning on a dime and zipping right at me as I started falling towards the rooftop.

Dormarch fired a blast from Banana Boy’s back and it knocked the Rapier away from hitting me.

The rapier still swerved around to try and pierce me as I came in for a landing on the roof, I tucked and rolled dodging the weapon again as it cut through the building’s materials like a hot knife through butter.

“You do realize that… EEP!” I rolled to the side and quickly bucked the rapier away before it could stab me through from behind after spearing back up through the roof at me. “That if this building is destroyed you’ll never be able to use that antenna.”

“Which is why I’m going to make sure this building doesn’t fall, even if you turn off the power station I can just power the negative tron-split wave myself.” The only reason why Negatron Duck would be explaining that is if he thought he had already won and we couldn’t stop him.

Negatron Duck glowed and the holes in the building sealed themselves up. Okay, he had the ability to prevent us from destroying the antenna if he could rebuild it, but rebuilding it would take more time.

I ducked the rapier as it tried to slash me across the forehead and Dormarch fired on Negatron Duck stumbling him slightly, but doing no visible damage to him whatsoever. This at least made his rapier drop into the stone roof, doing the abnormal thing of piercing straight through it without resistance.

If Negatron managed to hit me with any weapon while it was charged with that kind of power…

Negatron wasn’t really trying… yet.

He was just toying with us or mostly me specifically, as his strange recently acquired powers continued to set up the antenna.

“Is this really the best you can do with all that power of yours? Target the antenna, make him work for it!” Oh come on Pom where did your brain go?! Why were you going to taunt this psycho, he tanked a bark blast without trouble before he even got his powers! “Wow so powerful, you can levitate things like some form of evil prancing unicorn, I’m so scared.”

“How about I add a few more toys to the mix.” He didn’t seem to be angry as he pulled out a battle axe, a spear, a dagger and a chainsaw. All the weapons started levitating and the chainsaw roared to life as he stood there. “Next I’ll add trying to blast you and the pathetic beings you call sidekicks to dust while you’re beset by the weapons. Then I’ll see about how many guns I can have shooting at you at once, entertain me and you’re death might be relatively quick.”

At most we were slowing him down by having to divide his attention.

Turning Negatron slapped at the air and both Banana Boy and Dormarch were hit with a blunt wall of raw power coming from him that knocked them away from even getting close to the antenna, before turning back to me and simply lifting a single digit to point at me specifically.

Dormarch and Banana Boy were okay, though Dormarch had to teleport back to Banana Boy after being knocked off. I didn’t have much time to worry about them as the axe came swinging for my neck.

Kicking off the ground in a back flip, I landed on the edge of the roof on my hind legs and wobbled backwards and looked over the edge as the rapier and spear shot forward.

I dropped back and off the ledge and then clamped onto the wall to run along it and then I leapt up and almost straight into the chainsaw that slashed through my wool without resistance as I barely got my hooves down to hop over it.

I concentrated and pulled the slightly loose wool back into my mass as I rolled to the right avoiding the dagger slashing for my face, I definitely needed to go full on evasive.

Spreading my legs slightly I sprung back to the left and over the battle axe swinging at me from behind and twisted in the air to avoid being stabbed by the spear and rapier crossing each other as they came at me, then landed and skipped backwards to avoid being impaled by the chainsaw.

I couldn’t even get close to him as all the weapons surrounded me.

-Banana Boy-

“I’ll attack Negatron Duck directly, go for the antenna while we have his attention, we need to hold out until Darkwing, Maui and Neptunia get here.” Dynamo Dog nodded to me and then disappeared in a flash as he teleported onto the antenna personally earning Negatron Duck’s attention by making him turn towards it, I accelerated straight at him head first.

We need to give him all we got until we could figure out how to stop him.

Turning, I angled it so my stem was in the path of his face.

-Pom-

The chainsaw rammed into the roof next to me on my right and then the glow died around all the weapons and they dropped to the roof lifeless before the dagger could come close to stabbing me through my left eye.

Negatron Duck had been knocked entirely off balanced by a strong blow across the face by a passing Banana Boy going by in a big yellow blur, the impact being quite loud and painful. Dormarch capitalizing on this by firing a retriever bark into his back knocking him beak first into the roof, before turning back to the antenna and started damaging it with his long sharp claws extending out of his paws.

I charged forward and leapt into a front hoof spring and started rapidly flipping forward before I lashed out both my rear hooves into the back of Negatron Duck’s skull driving his head down into the roof with a harsh blow.

Flipping back from the impact I waited and then saw him lift his left hand towards me, I ducked and the spear shot over my head and reoriented to go after Banana Boy.

His right hand fired a blast at me making me dodge back and to the left, the energy blast tore a chunk of the roof out and if I hadn’t been paying attention I might have been hit by the chainsaw spinning at my right flank in an attempt to cut me in half.

The chainsaw turned around and pointed at me in the air as Negaduck pulled his head free. He didn’t look any angrier, as the scowl he had was a constant on his face since the start of this.

It showed that despite putting his head into the roof… we really hadn’t done much to him with our attacks.

Reaching out with both his hands he sent two waves of energy pulsing in my direction and tried to fire the rapier to chase Banana Boy. At the same time Dormarch was being beset by the dagger, I had the chainsaw, the spear and a broadsword Negatron Duck just sent spinning at me horizontally.

Having leapt into the air to avoid the two waves of energy, I quickly dropped my float and dropped below the blade and had to scurry sideways as the chainsaw charged for me and veered to continue giving chase I had to hop to the right as the broadsword impaled the roof and then jumped backwards over the chainsaw as the spear tried to pierce me from the side.

The chainsaw veered upwards and passed by my face before I landed and a blast from Negatron Duck took off the top of a nearby building as I dove forward. Looking to my left as the building collapsed, I tried to figure how we can stop being on the defensive.

We’re supposed to be attacking him, where were Darkwing, Maui and Neptunia?!

“This is getting pretty boring, I need to hear some blood curdling screams!” Negatron Duck angled all weapons my way and pulled out a pair of guns from his back.

He called back all the weapons and surrounded me with them in a circle, he sent them after me at the same time and fired his guns.

I jumped over most of them but the chainsaw swung and clipped my right hind leg and a bullet grazed my belly. The injury left me unable to stick my landing and I went tumbling across the rooftop into a humming piece of machinery denting the metal with my body.

“A yelp, was that the best you can do?” The chainsaw roared as it and the other weapons aimed towards me. I just glared in defiance.

A blast of purple smoke erupted as all the weapon shot towards me along with two bullets from Negatron Duck’s guns, also a flash of Dormarch moving towards Negatron Duck as a large yellow form moved to help me.

When the purple smoke continued to build, I blinked.

“I am the terror that flaps in the night, I am the scourge that pecks at your nightmares… I am Darkwing Duck!” Darkwing swept his cape outwards as the purple smoke cleared and two chunks of metal hit the ground.

On both sides of Darkwing was Cold Shadow and Neptunia.

“It’s about time you showed up Darkwing, I was getting bor…” That was when Negatron Duck was hit by a Wild Bark and froze up for a second.

“Destroy the weapons!” I was quick to act upon Dormarch’s suggestion as Negatron Duck swung for him and took off an entire corner of the building in one blast of energy.

Domarch had thankfully teleported away before that hit.

I lunged for the chainsaw and grabbing the back of it, I swung it sideways into the ground and snapped off the spinning chain blade. Having shattered it, received a bit of metal across the left side face for my trouble and tossed the remaining bit I held in my hooves over the ledge.

Cold Shadow had taken care of the broadsword and spear with swift whacks of his staff, whereas Neptunia destroyed the dagger and battle axe with her trident.

“Eyes closed.” Darkwing fired his gas gun and Negatron Duck shot hit the gas canister with a wave of, energy I closed my eyes only to be struck with a powerful bright light through my eyelids afterwards.

“AGGGGGHHH!” Negatron Duck was knocked down and his glow weakened slightly.

“We don’t have much positronic gas, but there should be enough to put even you on the back foot.” Darkwing twirled his gas gun and pushed his hat up. “Do you really think you can take all of us?”

“Yes!” Negaduck Surged to his feet and floated off the ground and sent a blast at us. Banana Boy swooped under me and carried me up into the air as everyone scrambled.

“Are you okay ma’am?” Banana Boy asked as he veered around a ball of solid energy shooting up at us.

“I’ll be fine…” I started concentrating and my wool shifted to bandage my leg and stitched the bleeding wound shut immediately.

-Dormarch-

Pom sealed her chainsaw inflicted wound shut, but she had lost a worrying amount of blood from that one hit before doing so. The other’s immediately charged into the fight and Negatron Duck started shooting supercharged bullets as I was busy trying to figure out a way to permanently disable the antenna.

Steal the transmitter? He’ll just get another one or build another antenna if this one was destroyed… he could also use his powers to rebuild it. We really did need to take him down and he was stupidly tough now.

I seriously doubted that destroying the tronsplitter would help, but...

Firing a retriever bark at the innocuous device sitting off to the side away from the fighting from within the support structure of the antenna, I saw that it had a shield around it.

Negatron Duck was not leaving the tronsplitter to chance then, though I had to wonder… how much multitasking could he be really doing at once with his strange new powers? His concentration had to be split at least ten ways and he wasn’t breaking a sweat… not that he could sweat with that aura going on.

He was now levitating his guns out of his hands and pulling out a massive two handed gatling gun with one hand. It’s the kind of thing I would expect someone with exoskeletal armor to wield, basically something only Gizmo Duck’s mechanical armor could wield effectively handheld… why does he even have a piece of military equipment like that?!

-Pom-

A spray of bullets started filling the air and I ducked behind a humming piece of machinery, not that it was helping much as I could hear the screeching of the bullets eating through the material rapidly as a waterfall of projectiles struck it and swept around at everyone. Not only that his pistols were shooting at both Cold Shadow and Neptunia, before changing target to me and Banana Boy.

The machinery eventually exploded and the chunks were grabbed by Negaduck’s powers and added to the efforts of building an antenna, he wasn’t even bothering to try and stop Dormarch from damaging the antenna. At best we’re just slowing down the inevitable.

“I’m beginning to see why we’re the only ones left standing!” Neptunia shouted as she deflected a shower of super charged bullets off of her tridents fork, her small size also helped a lot in avoiding taking any direct hits.

Negatron Duck just laughed gleefully as he continued to fire his weapon. How many projectiles does he have that he can just spray them like that?

I received information from Dormarch that the tronsplitter was protected and the antenna was still being set up, our connection was actually becoming on par with my connection to Dolly. It hadn’t exactly started strong, but it was getting there.

Okay, so we absolutely needed to take down a lunatic that had powers that we had a limited amount of resources to counter. He was setting up a device that would turn everyone into negative versions of their selves if I was understanding things right and…

My cover blew apart and I quickly started running with a stream of projectiles following after, I felt pain and something crossed the top of my nose and I tumbled.

Inhale, exhaled, push off the ground with my hind legs, I felt something zipping across my back as I launched upwards and slammed into the antenna’s structural support softly.

I shifted some wool to cover the scratch across my nose, and looked down trying to get the world back under control as my perception was sped up. I just avoided taking a bullet to my right eye by stopping short and was nearly gunned down by the subsequent mass of projectiles coming from Negatron Duck’s weapon.

Nobody could get close to him and nobody was able to so much as touch him, the only sign of weakness he showed is when Darkwing hit him with that gas.

“Dormarch, tell Ms. Shuttle to hit the antenna.” That earned me a look from Dormarch and he whined as he saw the scratch across the top of my nose as well as the discolored wool around my hind leg.

If Negagtron’s this power was spread out over a wide area as I thought it was, then we needed to weaken it as fast as we could.

“She only has the one shot though. Also you need to slow down you’re perception, I doubt anyone else aside from me would be able to keep up with the fact that you’re speaking so fast.” Did Dormarch just state that I was still in the state? I took a few breathes and tried to slow down my perception again.

“Agh!” Neptunia the mutant fish hero just got clipped in the left shoulder and ducked out of sight of the rapid firing weapon. “Can we please get some competence together here and at least hit this guy?!”

“Dormarch at this rate, we’re not going to be able to stop him unless we can actually attack him personally.” My perception quickly returned to normal when I felt Dolly pull on something, I even felt her send me one of her warm smiles through our bond and a sense of worry for my health.

I’m going to be fine Dolly.

“That… was weird… how did Dolly even make you… move!” Dormarch suddenly shouting had me twisting so that the frame of antenna was between me and the projectiles that tore into the metal and deflected off the tower.

Dormarch could feel the bond between me and Dolly? Hm... that’s curious, but not exactly what we should be focusing on at the moment.

“Ugh!” Negatron Duck was suddenly hit by a canister and another bright flash went off, the glow around his body dimmed as did that around the tronsplitter and the antenna. He struggled to keep his two guns in the air and the galting gun held up, but after a moment the glow returned… if a bit weaker. “Of course, I should be paying attention to you, my fault really, there are just so many targets here to mangle… so where are you Darkwing!”

“Do you really think that I’d tell you?” Came Darkwing’s voice sounded like it came from several places.

One of the guns zipped around the rooftop and fired, Darkwing staggered into view as a projectile threatened to pierce his cape that was being effectively used as a shield.

“Do you really think I wouldn’t know all your tricks by now?” The two guns started to circle and fire at Darkwing as Negatron Duck started focusing on him exclusive with all his weapons. “I made you what you are!”

I clambered up the structure and noted that the construction his powers were continuing to commit to looked like they were going for a skull themed aesthetic as the setup continued.

I jumped off pulling back my right hoof, we couldn’t stay on the defensive. We had to really keep him pressured.

Still aiming the gatling cannon in Darkwing’s general vicinity with his left hand, he reached behind him with his right and whipped out Mr. Splatter as I got close to him.

He fired and I was suddenly moved to the side by Banana Boy, I kicked off of him and landed on top of Negatron's right shoulder and slapped my left hoof across his face staggering him and started to pummel him with rapid hoof strikes.

Caught in a erupting pulse of energy, I was sent flailing into the air in incredible amounts of pain, with my vision becoming blurry.

Author's Note

Fun Fact: Darkwing Duck NES game, Darkwing's cape his a bullet proof shield.

How he is blocking Negaduck's super charged projectile weapons... we haven't a clue.

224. Mighty Backup.

-Equus, Ponyville, Sugar Cube Corner, Silver Stream-

“Zampony…. Zampony… Zampony…” Gallus was rocking back and forth hugging himself just saying Zampony over and over again, Pinkie Pie gently patted him on the head and put a birdseed special below his beak. One sniff and Gallus took up the snack, but he still wouldn’t stop saying that word.

“Why is he going on about a Zampony?” This was directed at Sandbar who was the one to find Gallus in this state. “… also what is a Zampony?”

“Well he had a training exercise with his adoptive big sister, but I have no idea why he would be freaking out about something so unthreatening. Zampony’s are used for paving ice skating rinks, which are usually run by reindeer or a pony with good enough ice magic, otherwise the method for keeping the ice rinks cold enough can be expensive.” Okay, Sandbar just taught me something today, I didn’t know what a Zampony was until now. “It just makes me wonder how you can traumatize someone with something so slow moving, because a Zampony can’t even outpace a crawling foal when in motion.”

“Not the way Jade uses it.” Fluttershy stated as she sat down. “Gallus, if you need me to somehow make everything feel better, blink three times in quick succession.”

“By the way, I have recently decided that Ponyville needs to out weird Airship Mauled!” Pinkie Pie stated while thrusting a hoof into the air. “To that end I brought in this big guy!”

“Spoon!” Said a big blue... bug... guy... with tiny antenna. “This world is so wonderful and colorful, now if only I can find its dark seedy underbelly in this land of wonderful cotton candy cuddles. I will make them ride the bicycle of rehabilitation into being the nicer cute and cuddly beings I know they can be, with my fists!”

“I learned interdimensional magic from watching Oleander.” Pinkie said simply afterwards.

“Defcon five, Ponyville! Pinkie, could soon be an Alicorn, not a drill!” I shouted to everyone while waving my limbs wildly and ponies throughout Ponyville started panicking, screaming and running around like lambkins.

We learned a lot about lambkins from Twilight trying to make nice with them, they were all so jumpy and skittish… it was really adorable!

“I so wish I could take the blame for this one…” Discord stated as he calmly stuck a straw of wheat into a drink and started sipping at the wheat and the fluids in his drink started swapping colors with that of his body the more he sipped. “Is this blue berry? Feeling a bit blue now, I’ll ask for purple next time I prefer feeling envious to feeling sad.”

The Green Smooze just wobbled in a friendly manner and smiled at us as he encased his chair at our table. I think that was how he sits down.

“Oh come on, you break the dimensional barrier a teeny bit and everyone treats it like something bad is going to happen!” Pinkie Pie grumbled.

“Can I get a strawberry milkshake Ms. Pie?” Said a giant sighing white… rabbit… or is it a moth? Moth, he had wings.

“Sure thing Mr. Moth Man!” Pinkie stated in a pleasant tone confirming it was a giant bipedal moth.

“Zampony…” Continued Gallus with a blank expression on his face.

-Earth WDCCT, Downtown San Fransokyo, Ocellus-

“Oh come on guys, not the mall! Not after what happened the last time we did hero things in one!” Fredzilla whined as we were retreating into the parking lot of said mall.

We don’t know what Team Possible is doing. I just hope we didn’t leave them to their deaths, but since one can use magic and the other could dodge laser fire, I think they would be fine. Seemed to be doing well enough from what I last saw.

“Yeah, we’re not good at leaving malls standing, we kind of have a record for it.” Plasma Paladin muttered as he looked towards me. “Thankfully car insurance now works with acts of mad science… do we really have a choice, we’re kind of getting surrounded here.”

“Best place to get cover and find a janitors closet for some backup chemicals.” Bazooka Bunny stated calmly as we found the place was mostly abandoned, but the doors were opened. She was keeping watch on our backs. "The civilians must have reached the shelters."

“Surprisingly not the first time I’ve heard about a janitor’s closet being referred to as a weapons stockpile….” Muttering this as a medical kit dropped in front of our path by a Skymax, along with a canister of chemicals for Bazooka Bunny and what looked to be an energy source for Plasma Paladin’s weapons. The kit was mostly for Dolly, but other injuries might occur. “Mini-Max contact Dormarch, I need his help. He isn’t going to want to talk to me.”

My decision almost got Pom, Shanty and Ms. Shuttle killed, at least I knew Smolder and Dormarch would be fine. Dormarch, with enough energy and awareness, could easily survive taking lethal injuries… but he would be regenerating at a cost and could only do it so much.

“What is it?” Dormarch muttered grumpily, he and the others likely just made it to Basemax and they wouldn’t be doing anything else for the foreseeable future unless Dormarch came out to help us personally. “I still have to ask knowing your there Ocellus, is Shanty being able to use her blood in a magical attack considered exceedingly bad?”

“Yes, but it probably supercharged whatever attack she did, considering her water manipulating abilities.” I really needed Dormarch’s help to patch up the unconscious Dolly I’m carrying. “Mini-Max is sending you Dolly’s current state and what I have available. What do I do?”

“Well first find a good place to take cover, you’re not going to patch up my big sister out in the open with that many hostiles converging on you.” One could almost feel the anger Dormarch was giving off. Glad I wasn’t currently within emotional range of him. “Also Shanty will be fine for the most part, eating those snacks before we got into a fight is helping her with the blood loss.”

“We’re entering a mall, mostly to find cover and run around in while fighting off the encroaching robots. I’m sure I can find some time and a decent hiding spot, we’re in the middle of a lull of being attacked right now.” Most of the shots weren’t aimed at me anyway, but I really didn’t want to test if they’d shoot at Dolly while I’m still holding her if they got an opportunity. “Is Pom alright?”

“Yes, we were lucky her life support didn’t falter for more than a few seconds, we hooked up Ms. Shuttle’s mostly destroyed body to a power source here at Basemax to keep that life support running. Some guy named Roddy is here, says he’s Big Hero Six’s auxiliary member and is being really helpful.” Dormarch sounded upset and why wouldn’t he? Ms. Shuttle was like his best friend and closest to him in age. “I’ll try to stay in contact, I’m working on Shanty’s injuries now. She’ll live, but she’s far worse off than she was at the end of the Saint Canard Crisis.”

“Entering the mall now.” I passed through the doors carrying Dolly and Fredzilla was carrying the medical kit as Plasma Paladin and Bazooka Bunny turned to blast back a contingent of red robots that tried to rush us from behind.

“Yeah, the robots in the city are all converging on you.” Announced Dormarch from Mini-Max. “So you’re ploy is still working at least…”

He sounded pretty bitter, he largely had good reason to.

As soon as we entered we headed straight to the food court, because the hairless rat from Team Possible was insistent and when we got there… he ran straight for the area around the restaurant labeled Bueno Nacho. Apparently the little guy felt a disturbance in food not being eaten, he’d get along so well with Shanty.

“Isn’t Bueno Nacho the Kim Possible team’s favorite restaurant?” Don’t look at me Bazooka Bunny, I don’t know anything about them.

I clambered over the counter with Dolly and motioned to Fredzilla to toss me the medical kit.

“Cheese!” I ignored Rufus eating some chips and cheese just left sitting on the counter, trying to not remember that Twilight Sparkle had a strangely humorous phobia of Quesadillas.

Twilight had said it was because they were too cheesy or greasy, but the rampant fear I felt about the subject wasn’t specifically ‘disgust’ or ‘distaste’, don’t honestly know why Twilight would try to lie in front of a changeling. Also Quesadillas could be made with less cheese or grease. Not that I really ate solid food for sustenance to truly comment on cooking preparations, but I could still taste food. Ponies really shouldn’t have introduced chocolate to changelings.

“Okay we’re as safe as we can get. What do I concern myself with first?” I asked and waited, the response was frighteningly quick as Mini-Max acted as a communications device for me.

“Her right ear, is the burn deep or light? Is the skin bubbling or is it lightly singed?” At Dormarch’s behest I looked at Dolly’s ear and responded with what I saw. “Okay, some torched fur and light bubbling… not deep, but not light. Okay here’s what you do…”

I soon had Dolly’s ear tended to and wrapped up, I bandaged the various reopened cuts after rubbing stuff into Dolly’s fur to deal with the nasty bruising. I have to say that Abigail had some really soft paws, might use this form again sometime in the future.

After mostly taking care of Dolly and being protected by Fredzilla, I carefully laid Dolly off to the side and looked up to see that both Plasma Paladin and Bazooka Bunny were being pressured by at least ten robots coming in from the far western side of the food court from my position. A similar number coming in from the north from direction we came from, that Fredzilla literally leapt to engage while wielding his odd spinning shield weapon.

“What’s the situation with the unknown forces from the south?” I asked because I didn’t see any robots coming from the south side of the mall.

“Team Possible just got an assist from the space capable aerial vehicle, destroyed the large robot with several shots. Team Possible is now fighting their way towards your position.” Despite his grumpiness, Dormarch was still willing to keep us up to date on the situation. “Mental Magnet and Baymax are capturing out Professor Nimnul and Baron Von Steamer at the same time as we speak to the west. The two scientists totaled the robots in their area, but their machines are down.”

“Monkey Fist and Motor Ed are still trapped in the chemicals I fired, the robots and the large lizard are rapidly approaching. Also another tall gangly lizard has appeared with another contingent from the west, he has anomalous energy signatures similar to the ones Magica gave off. The guy has magical abilities given he’s wielding a staff and is floating off the ground, looks ancient, but no less a threat for it if he’s quite capable in magic. As for the south… the unknown forces are apparently tearing through the robots with their armored personnel carrier and the robots seemed to be focusing heavily on slowing them down.” Ms. Shuttle chimed in with a slightly less cheerful and more worried tone. “The armored ground vehicle will be there soon, I suggest staying where you are. You can consider the unknown forces allies as they seem to be focusing primarily on the robots encroaching you and seem to be enemies with the lizards. The two lizard’s forces have like one hundred and twenty robots between them, you have more than a hundred already surrounding the mall as we speak. The number of robots destroyed so far is up to at least fifty, those lizards seemed to be completely geared for war when it comes to catching AC actual.”

“Look… Dormarch… I’m sorry, but I felt like making a call and I’m still hoping it was the right one. We haven’t heard from Wheel Cat since she engaged Phantom Blot’s group and the Power Pets are untested for real world threats with projectile weaponry. One of the Power Pets team was a friend of Dolly’s, it’s how we even got their help with watching AC actual and I’m sure you know the hotel we ended up at considering Dolly knew a secret way out of there.” Ducking as a blast ripped across the counter, I sighed audibly. “Can Roddy take care of Pom? He just needs to change out her drips right? You can come out to pick up Dolly if you want to and get her out of the battle zone, I can also leave her hiding somewhere, but if something collapses on her… well I’d rather stick to carrying her in case the robots target her even if she isn’t hostile.”

“Give me a minute to consider that…” Despite being obviously angry Dormarch sounded like he had cooled down a bit.

“Might not have that much time, but I’ll try to keep Dolly as safe as possible.” It wasn’t exactly hard for me to carry Dolly, she wasn’t a very heavy dog.

“Don’t mind if we join you right?” Plasma Paladin popped behind the counter and started firing blasts of energy from both gauntlets, next to him Bazooka Bunny shoulder her chemical purse cannon thing and fired a large sphere of chemicals that exploded on impact and took out three of the robots. We still have seven firing on us.

“More robots entering the mall from the north and west, the robots from the south are depleted and the armored vehicle doesn’t look like it’s going to stop to park. Expect it to come crashing into where you guys are.” Ms. Shuttle was less spiny than Dormarch. “So three hundred robots, wow… these guys are throwing a lot at AC actual.”

“Never a good sign when this many resources are being used Ms. Shuttle.” I was actually getting worried that I didn’t have near enough protection even with the friendly unknowns and Team Possible being around. I was willing to be captured though, provided it would save someone’s life.

I heard a distant shattering and looked to the left, while both Plasma Paladin and Bazooka Bunny ducked as shots rained down around the counter. I was mostly safe in standing up and looking for them to see a large white tank like vehicle on six wheels swerved around the corner and immediately started to fire its cannon, not on us, but on the robots.

This took down a number of the incoming red robots quickly with each shot and tore up a good portion of the food court doing so. Surprisingly the Bueno Nacho counter was holding up to the various robots shooting at it and made me wonder if all Bueno Nacho’s had armored counters. There were still two or three left that Bazooka Bunny and Plasma Paladin laid into with fire from their respective weapons, two went down in short order and then the last one was stomped into the floor and had its head taken off by Fredzilla’s weapon.

“That can’t be right…” Dormarch stated drawing my attention to Mini-Max hovering nearby.

“What can’t be right?” Glancing about I saw Fredzilla, Bazooka Bunny and Plasma Paladin eyeing the duck mask faced tank warily as it started forward towards us, but it held its fire.

“They’re coming out of nowhere from above, I think there’s some kind of invisible ship above the mall dropping more of those robots right on top of you. How many do they have?!” Enough that they were spending them all on me Dormarch. Whatever they wanted Abigail for… it was something big and ‘no’ clearly wasn’t an answer they’d respect at this rate. The shattering of glass and several of the red robots landed on the tank and were attacking it point blank as it swerved and stopped before it could reach the food court.

“Grin, Nosedive, get out there and get them off the Migrator!” A female voice shouted as several more robots plowed through the ceiling sending large chunks of rubble smashing into the floor quickly wrecking the food court.

The tank quickly started picking them off as more fell through the holes in the ceiling, Plasma Paladin and Bazooka Bunny joined in.

“Ah, come on, not the noodle burger boy, it was so young!” Looking over to Fredzilla, he was kneeling in front of a now drestroyed food kiosk that a robot was stomping its way out of. He quickly stood up and started to batter the robot down in a rather vicious display of his weapon spinning against its limbs and head taking them all off in quick succession. “No more mister nice Fredzilla, you’re all getting a kaiju sized beating now!”

“Not the most concerning thing happening here Fred!” Plasma Paladin shouted as the Bueno Nacho stand came under heavy fire trying to take out my protectors. “What is this kiosk made of BB?”

“Triple plated, heat resistant steel alloy stronger than titanium… not exactly normal for a restaurant, but this counter is a perfect place to hunker down behind. The energy weapons the robots are using can’t penetrate it at least.” This world doesn’t stop getting any stranger after hearing that Bazooka Bunny. “Now keep pushing them back, they are almost literally dropping a wave of them right on top of us. Why do they want Abigail so badly?!”

“I have a few ideas, none of them good.” Answering that, I held Dolly close and watched as our unknown allies sent out two guys and one was a large duck… huge really. Since when were duck bipeds breaking twelve feet in height? There was also a smaller younger looking one next to the big guy armed with a strange weapon that seemed to be firing flaming fast moving disks that looked oddly like hockey… one smashed into a nearby robot and bounced off it behind the counter. He was also unnaturally large for the duck bipeds of this world. “Huh, that guy is shooting hockey pucks…”

“As projectiles? That has got to be expensive!” Muttered Plasma Paladin as they continued to fight back the growing horde of machines intent of grabbing me. It was getting bad enough that Fredzilla was moving back towards us while trying not to take to many hits to his suit.

“No less effective for it though, something that size given the momentum of a bullet… reloading!” Bazooka Bunny dropped down and started to mess with her chemical firing weapon. “Hey Rufus, get me some of that cheese! I can use it.”

“Kay!” Rufus hopped up and went to do that the robots ignored him and continued to shoot at Plasma Paladin or Fredzilla.

“Hey there, so you must be Abigail.” I almost jumped out of the counter at the fact that the smaller and younger of the two ducks was suddenly behind the counter with us.

“Who…” I was going to ask when he cut me off with a waving hand and blasted the head off a robot.

“Hi there, I’m Nosedive Flashblade, the big guy over there goes by Grin. The girl in the Migrator is Mallory.” He pointed out his friend smashing those robots with his bare hands. Then the tank that also started firing on the robots as the continued to swarm the middle of the food court, coming from above, our right and in front of us from the western mall entrance. “Our three other guys and girl are trying to deal with The Raptor hanging above your heads, they are Wildwing my big brother, Duke the cool guy and Tanya our resident genius.”

“Wait… there’s six of you?” I was asking more for the theory that this world had managed to form multiple harmony instances naturally before we ever came here. Also those names sounded vaguely familiar, Launchpad and Pom talked about this I think…

“Yep, and we’re the good guys!” As he said this he took up a spot next to Plasma Paladin and Bazooka Bunny popped up to throw something yellow looking. A number of robots suddenly stopped in place as soon as they were barely even touched by the modified cheese substance. “Did you just use nacho cheese as a grenade?!”

“Yes, I think I have enough of a grasp of the materials they are made of to turn these things molecularly into Swiss cheese, but I would need some Gouda to get that process going. Wouldn’t work on a living person though, so don’t worry if you touch that stuff. I try not to be lethal about what I throw around and try not to make an endless cascade reaction with all the chemicals I deal with.” Bazooka Bunny stated before taking up position and continuing to fire on the crowd of robots that were still moving. “I’m never going to cause a grey goo scenario, I’m cute and friendly!”

You wouldn’t know it by the way you just shouted that Bazooka Bunny, it’s little wonder people think you have an explosive personality what with your weapon of choice being volatile projectile chemicals.

“You are my new favorite person and I think Tanya would like you! She always talked about possibly getting into SFIT or seeing what weird technology she can learn about in this city, but we’re always getting bogged down by random hero stuff. You might know how it is given you guys are Big Hero Six!” He was certainly talkative and cheerful. “I so want an autograph from Kaiju Zilla too while we’re here and doing a team up thing. Also, what I wouldn’t do for a few more of those cheese grenades to deal with Hunter Drones!”

“You actually know what these things are?!” Finally someone who knew what was going on and could tell me.

“Yeah, robots created by the free remainder of an evil lizard empire that was sealed in limbo, they want you to make a portal let them all out so they can invade this planet and then take over our home world again. We’ve been stuck here for a long time, thankfully enough we just blended in with society easily enough and formed a hockey team on this planet. We’re from a place called Puckworld, beautiful place, lots of ice.” It seems like Nosedive didn’t have the concept of secrecy, good for him I wasn’t willing to tell him I wasn’t Abigail Callaghan. Also he seemed suspiciously motor-beaked. “The Hunter Drones come in two variants normal and… oh-god-it’s-going-to-kill-us-all! I crushed the second type with a weaponized Zamboni once, but there was only one then. Now they are likely making more of them, considering we’ve seen one fielded since we got here. Probably saving the heavier stuff for onboard defenses on their ship. The Saurians, the lizard people I mentioned. You have their nasty big leader guy Lord Dragaunus that can control and spew fire like a dragon. If you see a green shape shifting guy, run, Chameleon can impersonate anyone he sees visually. Then there’s…”

“A dark magic using warlock named Wraith and the soldier named General Siege?” I asked because I now knew why this was starting to sound familiar. “You’re the Mighty Ducks… and oh goddesses you’re their element of laughter...”

“Well I do like a good laugh and we have a party going on here!” Yep, he was their element of laughter alright and I was stuck with him… I silently contemplated jumping over the counter and getting captured on purpose. “Oh, did you read our comics? To think they said those would never sell... I made millions!”

Author's Note

Mighty Ducks and Saurians are now named and in play. The Mighty Ducks Cartoon was pretty weird, but it had six central hockey playing characters.

Ducks:

Check 'Grin' Hardwing: Kindness, Gentle Giant. Once had anger issues and turned himself around to being mostly peaceful, will fight for the right reasons.

Nosedive Flashblade: Laughter, Dude-bro. Wildwing's fun loving little brother. Has a knack for vehicles given he modified a Zamboni into a machine of pure destruction.

Mallory McMallard: Loyalty, Puckworld Resistance Soldier. Lost her father to the Saurians and resembles an older looking Gosalyn Mallard, specializes in trained hand to hand combat.

Wildwing Flashblade: Magic, Team Leader. Keeper of a magic-tech mask that put most of the saurians away after the previous owner was taken by the anomalous electromagnetic worm.

Tanya Vanderflock: Honesty, scientist and engineer with common sense. Makes gadgets and gear, while repairing everything the Mighty Ducks uses.

Duke L'Orange: Generosity, suave super thief. Long backstory. Has a cool sword and was leader of a gang where he probably lost his right eye, has a good heart beneath his slightly gruff egotistical exterior.

Saurians:

Wraith: Old dark magic wielding Saurian Warlock, belittled for using ancient saurian magic by the other saurians as they don't see the ancient powers as being helpful or useful as technology and weapons. Has done many unique and strange things, but usually his magic gets reversed or some way of stopping him is found out. Always talks about how the Saurian race is doomed and is quite dour in mannerisms.

Threat Level: Moderately dangerous at any range, but the closer the more powerful and dangerous the magic he can use. Is sometimes slow to act.

General Siege: Weapons Master and main Saurian Solder leader of the Hunter Drones, is the one that possibly provides them in large numbers considering he built the first Heavy Hunter Drone he nicknamed 'Tiny'. Said heavy hunter drone was crushed by Nosedive's Combat Zamboni, but if Siege could make one...

Is quite dangerous in hand to hand combat as he is with most of his self built weapons. Highly aggressive, brutally strong and far more intelligent than he sometimes sounds. Tends to cause the most injuries to the Mighty Ducks aside from his nemesis Grin.

Threat Level: Dangerous within line of sight.

Spymaster Chameleon: Shape Shifter, Spy, Assassin, Stealth and Sabotage expert. Hard to see coming for anyone as he can impersonate anything like a changeling can. Has a muscle form for combat, but there limits to how long he can maintain said form and is nowhere near as strong as Siege is. Tends to be a coward when faced with larger numbers after being discovered, is the most inept Saurian.

Threat Level: Exceedingly Dangerous, until discovered. Mildly dangerous, with temporary muscle form. Low threat, without temporary muscle form and the ability to go back into hiding.

Lord Dragaunus: Larger than the other three saurians and has a vague resemblance to a xenomorph queen, has abilities of wielding fire and is in general physically and possibly mentally stronger than the other three saurians combined. He doesn't have the other three saurians unique talents, but he makes up for it by being near impossible to take down in a fair one on one fight. He's absolutely cruel to his minions and has a habit of blowing up Hunter Drones in anger when someone fails him. His scales are on part with or possible even better than a dragons, making him as hard to injure as Smolder is. It's a good thing he doesn't have wings.

Threat Level: Hard to kill reptile.

226. Wraith’s Wrath.

-Earth, San Fransokyo Mall, Mallory McMallard-

The Raptor was the big ship in the sky belonging to the Saurian Warlord Dragaunus, we had sunk it into the ocean off the coast less than half a year ago. We thought that would have been enough to make them stop trying to free their sealed evil empire or take over the world, nope, they were just building enough Hunter Drones to become a major problem.

Not only that, they had enough large Hunter Drones to be a real issue… where was Nosedive’s Zamboni when we needed it? Oh right, in storage because we kept making fun of it and Nosedive gets to say I told you so now... also it was still being used as our current rinks ice paver.

Hopefully this was a last ditch effort on their part to return to the glory of ruining entire worlds, because if they could put out this many resources without blinking, then it was something to be concerned about.

If we could permanently make sure that The Raptor stopped working, and destroy whatever Hunter Drone production facility we left intact enough to be repaired the last time we were on it, then we would ruin any chance Dragaunus has of actually succeeding in taking over this planet and returning to conquer what used to be our home of Puckworld.

Sure this planet was a lot warmer than our world, but it was nice place to live… plus we blended in so well that nobody really thought we were aliens. Mostly just eccentric ducks with a lot of hockey themed technology when we did our vigilante stuff.

Having lived here a while, I can honestly see where people were coming from when it seemed like we had an obsession with hockey as a sport… it was actually the main religion on Puckworld. Obsession was kind of understating it, the hockey mask of Drake Ducaine would make anyone on Puckworld a believer in the one true sport of our people. Doesn’t mean I won’t play basketball once in a while with friends outside our team, but it just wasn’t the same as hitting the ice.

I should really be focused on driving, because we were plowing straight through a mass of Hunter Drones and we would have to watch out for Wraith on our way out. Not that missing the back right tire on our six wheeled vehicle was causing too much trouble, I was compensating for it quite well.

I’m kind of being reminded of the time we traveled to the future… where there were Hunter Drones for miles around. Dragaunus had almost directly killed just about every last hero on this planet personally, some we knew about, some we didn’t and some that became heroes after the world ultimately fell. Not only that, but Dragaunus also killed the villains that wouldn’t ultimately bow to his rule and there were a few that were still alive that were barely any better.

That memory was a terrifying reminder of what would have happen if we weren’t around to stop the bastard.

“Sorry to interrupt you’re expository introspection and all the world building backstory stuff going on for the audiences benefit because they likely don’t know about us, but we’ve really got get this plot on the road. Like literally out in the streets.” Ugh, Nosedive never stopped being weird at times, acting like there was a fourth wall to break from those TV shows he watches. “So step on it, you know, before we’re stepped on!”

We slammed through the western exit, sending debris and glass everywhere, I drifted us into the street and hit the brakes hard. This send the Hunter Drone crawling all over the Migrator flying.

The humongous shadow coming from the sky couldn’t be anything other than The Raptor, however the Migrator stalled out when I tried to hit the gas and I groaned. At least our weapons were still working, we were going to have to do a full overhaul on the Migrator after this.

“You’d think all the Saurian’s stuck sealed away, that these guy have been trying to free for an entire season, would be extinct by now… like our fan base.” Great, Nosedive was likely going to do it more frequently now that we had friends to annoy. “No I won’t, I’ve gotten it mostly out of my system!”

Right, going to ignore that he replied to my thoughts…

“Probably better for your sanity Mal.” Nosedive nodded and Grin just shrugged at me with a confused look from the seat next to me. “Also I think the Migrator’s engine is south for the winter.”

“Can you go one week without joking while we’re in mortal peril?” Grin stated flatly.

“Can we go one week without being in mortal peril?” Well Nosedive wasn’t exactly wrong to ask that. Being vigilante super heroes was hard work. Even if we haven’t fought the Saurians in months, we’ve still had a lot of other crime to fight when Hockey season wasn’t at its high points.

-Ocellus-

No doubt about it Nosedive has the Pinkie Pie weirdness to him. Wait… who was the laughter of my six person group of friends?!

I’d be generosity, Smolder is definitively loyalty… Gallus could be generosity, coming from a society of griffons bent on greed that are slowly turning themselves around, or magic… then again I could be magic too. No, not important to get into philosophical thoughts when I’m holding an injured dog and in a vehicle that just stalled out and being shaken by hundreds of shots… personality wise it has to be Silver Stream.

I miss our friends and those peaceful days so badly… also I’m glad to not be laughter, because goodness knows I couldn’t do a good standup routine if I tried! If I lost my left hooves, I’d be all right because I wouldn’t understand the punchline… no concentrate, I might need to move soon and quickly. Dolly was lightweight, but still somewhat cumbersome while I’m in Abigail’s form.

A large explosion spun the Migrator around and it made me slightly dizzy as I latched onto the wall.

“Well at least our forward guns are in range now…” Muttered Mallory as she opened fire on the Hunter Drones coming at us slowly chipping away at the armor of the six wheeled vehicle. “Wildwing, Wraith has stalled us out and is in the combat area and that’s about to be followed up by Siege and his large hunter drones. Can you deal with their heavies while we deal with the Saurians?”

“This is Aerowing, we have enough missiles to bring down the large ones, but we’re taking fire from The Raptor. So expect us to be flying evasively and for our support to be delayed.” Wildwing called back. “Duke will be lending you aerial support for as long as Turbowing isn’t shot down. We just need to get Abigail away from them and to safety.”

Some of the Hunter Drone went down to some fire coming from above and I saw the flying vehicle drop something that started hovering and firing on the Hunter Drones assaulting us. The hovering vehicle started to draw fire, but it was evasive enough even with the pilot being exposed. The pilot was a brown feathered alien duck biped… all the Mighty Ducks were actually alien ducks compared to normal biped and animalistic ducks that occur naturally on this planet.

“Can I just state that if they knew about another guy who could create dimensional technology that could destroy the whole world, would it be a good idea to mention him to you in this situation?” I was thinking of what Darkwing had on Taurus Bulba. “You know, to be on the lookout for him?”

“Don’t even say his name yet, they probably have enough ears on us as it is!” Mallory shouted as the top nose portion of the vehicle was taken out and any hope with it that we could just simply drive out of here. “We’re losing the forward guns here and the vehicle has lost all capability for movement… also Siege just charged out.”

“This is almost as bad as the Little Diablo situation.” Kim muttered while checking on something with her suit.

“Nothing was as bad as that KP!” Retorted Ron who was gripping the nearby chair as the vehicle vibrated and tore apart to the point we could see through the holes in the armor.

“Hey, the Lorwardians and the Moonlanders were pretty bad too, got Tanya some cool toys to play with though none of it quite matches up to Puckworld hockey technology standards. The space systems were probably the best, but it still couldn’t get us back to our home planet.” Nosedive nodded with his arms crossed and seemed particularly unimpressed about the Migrator being torn apart around us. “Though it was touch and go for most of those days, the Moonlanders are actually pretty nice local aliens and were just being used… some of them are good friends of mine. We liked the Lorwardians far less because they were quite intentional about taking over the planet and Dragaunus tried to broker a deal with them… thankfully they were natural enemies. If other people hadn’t dealt with the other worldwide problems, we certainly would have if we weren’t busy defending our home turf… speaking of, I hope Buzz Blitzman remembers to feed Baby while we’re out saving the world again.”

I had no idea what they were talking about, but am I understanding right that they’ve all been in similar situations to this mess? I mean I’ve heard of the Moonlanders invading. I even met Penumbra who was a little rough around the edges while living at Scrooge’s mansion, but she was still generally congenial.

“So world ending stuff like this happens often?” For the sake of wanting to know, I would bring this up to Pom later if… when she wakes up. Wait… I have to tack on a sentence. “Wow San Fransokyo is a safe haven in comparison despite almost being wiped out once or twice.”

That was a shot in the dark, hope no one notices to question me, at least the Big Hero Six member wouldn’t and new the importance of keeping a lid on the shape shifter thing. I was Abigail Callaghan at the moment and I was in a dire situation, my panicking and fear were very much real so I was at least selling it.

“Yeah, we didn’t get little diablo’d, but we did fight the moonlanders… they weren’t really particularly aggressive to us.” Fredzilla saved the day. “That and we try for capture more than takedown.”

“Yes this scenario has happened a lot, but when this world is at peace it is quite beautiful.” Grin seemed to continue pushing the kindness angle of the team. “Now if only people could stop threatening that beautiful peace with global scale threats.”

“I’ll be the last out, I need to stay on the weapons.” When Mallory said this she looked at everyone, she turned back and I saw Wraith for the first time. “Pile out and get moving. Do not get caught up in Wraith’s magic and watch out for Siege.”

Wraith was tall, old and scraggily, he was wearing a cloak and wielding a very macabre staff with what looked like a shrunken ducks skull impaled on it. His eyes were solid re and his robe had spikes sticking up from underneath it. He didn’t look like he’d be in a good physical fight… but the magic he was giving off was like he was death incarnate. My brain was screaming at me to get away from him as he hovered forward and joined Siege who was blasting the Migrator with rocket after rocket, the return fire from the vehicle getting weaker with each blast of energy chewing into its armor.

“I’ll do it, I can survive an explosion better, go with Nosedive.” Grin physically lifted Mallory out of her seat and gently placed her down on her feet and then took her seat. “Move, I’ll get out when I think it’s a good idea to do so!”

-Wraith-

“I’ve got this, I don’t need you or Chameleon to finish them off!” Again, my compatriot Siege was but a brilliant and equally dim buffoon for not seeing the bigger picture of things.

Brilliant in his warlike ways of which I cannot deny he was a master beyond even the highest echelons of Saurians that were once free of being trapped in limbo until Drake Ducaine laid us low, but a buffoon in not trying to look to the future beyond the fight in front of him like a lowborn soldier who knew nothing beyond the fight itself.

I can’t help but think that even if I do capture this Abigail Callaghan, we’d be dooming the Saurians to a finality we would not recover from. The whispers from the dark I hear were saying as much, but we were set in our course.

I was the only Saurian who was thinking ahead at all, we should go quiet and build our numbers… possibly have Chameleon, Siege and Lord Dragaunus find mates… no matter how distasteful it might be to take non Saurian mates and build a force that is unstoppable. It was either that or I shudder to think that Chameleon turn himself into a female for time that is long enough to lay eggs, he would never agree to that and neither would Siege or Lord Dragaunus.

But alas, no one will listen to Wraith when he sees nothing but the ultimate failure.

If doom is to befall us, then so shall I let it occur… I have sworn to serve Lord Dragaunus and I will not betray him no matter how badly this inevitably turns out. I will at least attempt give us a minor permanent victory, be it pyrrhic at best by attempting to finally kill someone among our enemies, but my old bones are ever weary and dark magic required all of my concentration to not be consumed by them like some of our ancients.

I was preparing my magic for the full brunt of my power against them, my personal barrier held up to the onslaught of pucks and energy beams with undeniable prowess. How our ancestors weep at the lack of belief in the ancient might of our race. I will show them all, my wrath and continued existence will prove the ancient might of the Saurians.

The next rocket Siege fired, along with the constant pressure of the heavy hunter drone, almost cracked the vehicle like an egg. The heroes fled out the back like cowering wastrels and were fighting a retreating battle with support from their meager aerial capabilities.

“Come forces, gather and destroy my foes!” I raised my staff and a glow of darkness built up in my hand, I sent it forward and blew apart the tank. Unfortunately I didn’t seemed to have killed the big guy, but I have injured him well enough. I may have failed to keep my concentration, but under such firepower it was either move or die. Lord Dragaunus needed me alive more than he needed me dead whether he knew it or not.

My foes were actually technology and that vehicle was one such piece of technology, the reason why I was so reviled by my compatriots and scoffed at by Lord Dragaunus himself. However there was a place for technology transportation between the stars was hard to do in any other way and conquering people required an army and we only had machines no matter how much I find the idea loathsome.

I will not weep for the fall of the Saurians, I will grin and say I warned them all of what was to come. Yet they would never listen to one as ancient and old as I, I who can see or know things unknown to them.

“I shall secure the girl, you… you can have your fun Siege.” I glowed brightly and quickly levitated forward actually taking a forward position in combat for once. “I shall bring my powers to the fore and show you my wrath!”

I was too old to wield my magical melee weapons in combat anymore, but my magic was still a shining star in the bleakness that was the remaining free Saurians. I did not believe in the cause of conquering and enslaving anymore, but it was our way and traditions, only to be laid low by feathered beings.

My magical barrier weathered shot after shot of those incessant explosive pucks, there forces were in retreat and the one with mystical primal magic lost his power as soon as I came close to him. I was a force to be reckoned with.

“Oh man, Wraith is going all Darth Quacker on… agh…!” I flicked away the joker of the six nuisances with a blast of dark flame and floating after the retreating target, I was ultimately leaving him to Siege. The one carrying the unconscious form of a local creature known as a dog was my quarry.

“Gather and bring down my foes low with fell lightning!” Power erupted from my hand and nearly knocked our feathered foes flying vehicle, but I had struck the pilot with enough raw thundering might that he was shaking before me under the convulsions of the strike.

“Do not let Wraith get any further!” Ah, the female duck, she was felling drone after drone, but she wouldn’t have the capacity to focus on me as she was fighting for her very life. I took pleasure in watching these so called heroes squirm, even if they would ultimately win in the end the Saurians would at least prove that we were a might to be feared and that we would not go out with a whimper.

At least the Mighty Ducks had a chance to procreate on this world without looking outside their own people, unless I killed their two females. Alas, that that was not the task bequeathed to me and I could only hope Siege managed a win… for once.

“Know the might of the Ancient Saurians, learn to fear our name, we shall never be forgotten in even your best of nightmares!” If we were to go out, I would do so in a blaze of glory using as much power as I could while still saving some to save myself. If Lord Dragaunus were to die, I could retire to somewhere peaceful… where no one would notice my cruelties enacted on the local populace while I still have strength left in my body. “Blow the winds of misfortune, may the tides of the drowning beasts rise!”

Blasts of wind and water buffeted the defenders out of my way and the target I was chasing tripped and started to cower and back away from me. At least she understood that I would not be stopped, not by the rabbit with the chemicals, not by the paladin who shields himself with powerful blades of energy and not the odd person wearing the suit to resemble a monster… my distaste for the one shall be known now as his costumes appearance was making a mockery of Saurians.

As I got closer the target quickly tossed her creature aside, it was in an effort to save her from me… futile.

I unleashed a blaze of flames towards the tiny insignificant creature, only to feel a strange magic as another one appeared and shoved her clear of the blast radius. That creature may looked similar, but there was something about its nature that rang loudly of something of a memory in my mind… something rather important about the electromagnetic worm that we might have forgotten since the one we captured took the ducks original leader from them. Having recently captured a second electromagnetic worm near this planet, we might be able to get their second leader.

He quickly wrapped his teeth around the female’s scruff and dragged her out of the way of a second blast of flames. Not willing to face me in battle when it came to securing the little unconscious female beast.

“Rise and grab hold of my pray with your claws, so that I may drag her to our den!” The shadows answered my call and entrapped my target and making her bleed as they dug their claws into her flesh. Her struggles and her pains were delightful to the senses. All the other combatants were too busy dealing with Siege to stop me as I raised the target off the ground and brought her to me and entrapped her within my barrier of protection. My powers were quickly waning and my concentration becoming sparse, I still presented a powerful front in lieu of the fact. “I have our prize, but will the price have been worth all this effort? Again, I feel as though we’re making a huge mistake… I will prepare an escape plan for the inevitable failures despite our strengths.”

The ducks flew by in their aerial vehicle and destroy two of our heavy hunter drones with rocket fire and Siege managed one of the luckiest shots I have ever seen in my long, long, terribly dark existence, when he managed to shoot their main flying vehicle out of the air by glancing its tail and causing it to crash.

“Oh what glorious sight that is, a glorious one indeed to have defeated our foes in the field of combat… if temporarily.” I dragged the captured and struggling female with me through the air towards Siege. “As much fun as you are having Siege, we need to make haste and leave while we have the advantage lest they wrest our target from me.”

“Fine, I wanted to have roasted at least one of them alive, but shooting down their ship was a grand victory!” That it was Siege.

-Dormarch-

They got Ocellus, also that guy with the staff was horrifying. He had the actual skull of a duck impaled on his staff. Not only that, he tried to kill Dolly. I watched as Ocellus disappeared with the tall robed lizard in a flash and then looked up at the hovering ship above, they had teleportation technology yet they needed Abigail for her dimensional technology?

At least I can attribute the fact that they needed Abigail was possibly because they didn’t have any scientist that could focus on their exact needs and could only replicate known technology they already have.

The other one, Siege they called him, also disappeared as were all the robots, disappearing one by one…

I closed my eyes and took a deep breathe, then looked down at Dolly who was still breathing.

“Hey, someone come pick up my sister!” After shouting that, I performed a search hunter to throw myself at one of the robots still present and hadn’t disappeared yet.

As soon as I touched it I digitized myself into what passed for its central processing unit, the alien computer was strange and highly unusual. Though the coding language was quite hard to understand, I managed to quickly get enough of an understanding to copy and paste the digital readout of its systems.

I quickly convinced this hunter drones AI that I was... it's targeting program which I just ate.

It believed me, apparently Saurians weren’t big on anti-virus or anti-digital entity software like the Kahn Industries PET still wrapped around my neck… reminding me that I just quite clearly brought a physical device into a digital realm.

The hunter drone soon teleported and I started grabbing visuals from its one eye, the half intelligent AI asked what I was doing.

I reiterated that I was its targeting system so of course I’d have access to its eye... again, I was believed. I sighed with relief when it stopped scrutinizing me.

Author's Note

--

Current Timeline.

Ocellus is captured.

Dormarch decides to infiltrate The Raptor.

--

The other timeline where Ocellus's ploy doesn't fail, that being the Phantom Blot rising timeline, is one where Dolly is taken with Ocellus to get "Abigail" to work for them by force and Dormarch stays on the planet.

The timeline where the masquerade fails, Ocellus infiltrates the ship... by disguising herself as the Saurian known as the Chameleon in a chance meeting. She uses some magic to prevent Chameleon from shape shifting leaving him stuck in a specific form so that he can't prove that he actually is himself, it would have been a situation where he's the one that's absolutely befuddled instead of being the one to cause befuddlement.

Digimon, being digital monsters, can enter any functional digital interface. Unfortunately for the Saurians this includes their hunter drones.

Though Dormarch is probably taking up a lot of the hunter drones memory capacity. The smaller hunter drones, which are still eight foot tall nightmares compared to the behemoth several feet taller heavy weapons variants, are basically made to be entirely disposable and will not be checked thoroughly for anything unusual like Dormarch.

Chameleon is the closest they have to a computer expert, with Siege being a close second. This notably isn't their primary specialties. Lord Dragaunus is more of a ruler by brute force, but has some capacity with technology on par with his two experts when it comes to planning things. Wraith has barely any technological knowhow, but will still rarely use technology that benefits his needs.

Auxiliary Note: So my date of birth comes to pass again. Another year older, none the wiser and another step closer to death, but I'm feeling fine and relatively healthy... I need more exercise though.

I might write a page, then take a week off and will post it when I'm finally back to writing, I will be entering hiatus status. I am sorry for the inconvenience if any is to be found.

Arc 5: Miraculous Monster Wars.

"If only we had known what was coming to us."

"I be thinking we would have still made the same choices anyways."

"Can we really survive all of this?"

"We survived one war."

"Yes, but that war didn't get quite as huge as this."

"Yep, this is going to suck."

Author's Note

For reasons that will become quickly apparent... this next multiple world crossover is going to be a doozy before a arc that will be the whole 'beach, summer fun, rest break' type world.

Arc 4 took up a vast majority of this story, for understandable reasons since it was all one giant arc of various worlds mixed into one melting pot.

Do you think our protagonists have had enough adventure yet?

Before you ask, no this has nothing to do with Miraculous Ladybug.

284. Server City Ransom Pt. 9.

Author's Note

I'm basically giving away the secret behind Pom's 'anti-magic wool' for the less attentive or more importantly a key detail that is very specific to Equus Pom.

This is a good time to remind you that Pom is not a 'black sheep' among her people and does not have super strength, a black sheep is a lambkin that easily gains ridiculous strength and are know for their high end combat capabilities.

That said there are some things that Pom should have already been entirely capable of up to this point already, one of which will be quite apparent to the audience if you were not aware already.

It first came up in Pom's 'Dispel Grace' tournament fight back in Airship Mauled and it'll come up again quite soon.

You should not be surprised and should already know this... for I am not subtle and it's been there the whole time.

Also is it me or do Caster's tend to get the short end of the stick in every Fate series?

284. Server City Ransom Pt. 9.

-???,???-

Data log 1.

The object is a marble sculpture, we thought it was another ‘Are We Cool Yet’ death trap. The sculpture was found in a dog kennel in [‘REDACTED’].

Are We Cool Yet is an organization of artist that create deadly anomalous artwork, usually in the vein of memetic hazards, which is why we thought this might be one of their works. (Note: We have since discovered that this is not the case for this particular anomaly.)

The sculpture depicts four small canines sitting protectively around a sheep like entity. The four canines are puppies of the sheep dog variety. The sheep entity has been determined to be female and is not a true sheep, but something akin to one with larger eyes and something of a feeling of being more intelligent than her surrounding puppy protectors.

Any canid, when placed within the presence of the statue for a length of time will receive the following attributes, notably increased lifespan, slightly increased intelligence and a strangely notable devotion for the central depiction. Overall personality of the canid changes very little aside from that, but they will protect the statue if intent to damage it occurs and will not tarnish it or the surrounding guardian puppies personally.

The worship of the statue seems benign and respectful, dogs that will usually feel unease around other anomalies find complete comfort in this one and don’t fear other anomalies while in its presence.

Another anomalous property is when a light is shined on the five statues in question. The four puppy statues cast normal shadows. The sheep like entity however casts the shadow of a wolf.

The wolf shaped shadow seems entirely benign, other than the feeling of it watching. As if judging the intentions of those looking upon it.

So far no danger has been found with trying to interact with the shadow, as if it was trying to imitate the existence of a normal shadow. That is unless someone with intent to damage the sculpture enters the room which leads to the next anomalous property, where the shadow seemingly gains two glowing dots around the head region as if suddenly watching the aforementioned intruder with open eyes.

Anyone that attempts to harm the statues of the sculpture will suddenly find themselves incapable of wanting to do so, for various feelings of guilt or life threatening retaliation depending on the personality of those sent in.

Criminals or people who have histories of violent behavior are very wary of the statues in the sculpture, especially the center one that seems to be the most harmless at first glance. People of good natures feel complete safety in the presence of the anomaly.

Data Log 2.

We let loose a low level anomalous threat in the room with a live worshipping dog. The anomalous threat refused to approach the dog or any of the statues, the anomalous threat was considering dangerous and capable of killing the dog. The dog stayed in front of the statue as if to protect it from the threat, the anomaly refused to attack despite being one that is known for being aggressive and was showing signs of direly wanting to.

After a five second blackout in the room from unknown causes, where a watcher saw a single red glowing spot where the central statues head was for a few seconds, was when the only known proof that the statue could be dangerous occurred. When the lights came on and the threatening anomaly was torn apart viciously.

The dog was peacefully curled up in front of the central statue and was deemed not responsible for the test anomaly’s destruction, given it looked to be rendered into offal by a giant wolf and the dog was completely clean, safe and happy.

We have a near endless amount of the low level anomalous threat to test here.

Data Log 3.

Anomalous canid are a lot calmer and safer in the presence of the sculpture, mostly the presence of the central statue.

Once such anomaly tested was 953.

953 made a believable comment that the organization were currently dealing with a memetic boon for canids that was entirely benign in nature, but it was best not to push its kind and gentle disposition.

953 being an anomaly that was likely a kitsune, who is known for her lies, violence and deceit in her attempts to escape the facility, is very much less so within the statues presence and refers to ‘her’ as ‘husband’ near constantly.

This strangeness is furthered when she is greatly saddened to leave the presence of the central statue, 953 didn’t resist being put back in her chamber and requested to see the sculptures center statue again eventually.

We will be looking into this strange interaction further.

Data log 4.

953 revealed information we had not previously considered when she muttered in quote, “Tamamo no Mae will be a good vixen wife for the Canine Queen yes I will!”, while being stuffed back into her cell after a fourth interaction with the statue.

The sheep like entity has several unusual connotations behind it, one in particular being hidden danger. So far no injuries or fatalities, aside from the death of the testing anomalous threat, have occurred in the statues presence thanks to its anomalous property of giving off prior warnings before a specific line is crossed.

The ethics committee does not want anyone to cross said line, we believe that’s because a good number on said committee are dog lovers and have safely expanded their dog’s lifespans.

All dogs are still under watch, but are happy, healthy and most importantly not any more threatening than an average dog in physical strength. Expanded life spans may increase growth somewhat, but not exponentially.

Data Log 5.

We likened the statue to the tales of various mythologies, even an Amarok Wolf or Japanese Okami came up in research in reference to what the central statue seems to do. The key themes of the sculpture are ‘protection’ (For anyone in need), ‘strength’ (At least for canids extended lifespans) and, if we are getting this correctly, is a depiction of a living descendant of a mythical entity.

953, who we now have all but confirmed to be the infamous fox spirit Tamamo no Mae, confirmed some of these findings and if the last data log is to be believed confirmed the central statue of the sculpture to be a depiction of a ’queen of canines’ or ‘the doggy messiah’.

The canine attraction to the central figure is possibly in reference to most of Theophane’s suitors having been turned into protective wolves by Neptune from the origin story of how Crius Chrysomallus came to be. The ‘Golden Fleece’ represents leadership, royalty or possibly sacrifice according to legends, said fleece was also said to have incredible mystical or highly anomalous properties.

The particular finding Tamamo confirmed is it being a depiction of ‘a’ Crius Chrysomallus, not necessarily ‘the original’ Crius Chrysomallus of a known Greek legend popularized by the story of ‘Jason and The Argonauts’.

The Chrysomallus species have been noted as not being sheep, but a mythical species of creature that act as much more intelligent kin to them that were born with the manifestation of the Aries Constellation from the first Chrysomallus.

Tamamo gave us this information quite reluctantly after being allowed a chance to bask in the central statues presence again.

Having brought in some sheep to confirm some findings, they were entirely docile in the presence of the central depiction and seemed to show some form of recognition of it. They were somewhat wary of the four little guardian puppies surrounding it, but remained docile all the same.

The central statue apparently has an addictive quality to canids who have no owners, explaining some of Tamamo’s oddness around it. While the addiction is not always romantic in nature and can be friendship based, it can be detrimental if a 'bad dog' seeks to hoard the sculpture all for itself and doesn’t intend to share. This might lead to fighting, we have since found it is a little safer to introduce dogs one at a time to the sculpture.

The sculpture can and has been thus far used to remove, weaken or nullify dangerous canid based anomalies. We're still testing the effects to see if we can fully commit more space to the sculpture.

Note: Any form of stray canine has the 'addict' effect until someone that is willing to raise them properly is found.

Note 2: Testing with the real statue of Hachiko has resulted in [REDACTED].

While the Statue of Hachiko was returned, its anomalous properties have not since ceased, thankfully the added anomalous properties are benign and are not very noticeable. Our [REDACTED] branch was oddly okay with this.

Data Log 6.

Tamamo is notably far less lustful and murderous these days. Her last breakout attempt resulted in no deaths and she ended up in the cell with the sculpture and has somehow acquired and garnished the entire room with accoutrements in the form of a shrine worshipping the central statue and her four little guardians.

She is currently acting as the self-proclaimed Miko for it, which has increased her anomalous strength as far as protecting the sculpture is concerned. It has also made her far less volatile or willing to escape the confines of the facility as long as we keep providing resources for her Miko based duties and food.

As an odd side benefit, this has weakened a few of the more dangerous anomalies in the facility within the new area of effect generated by the shrine that reduces the power of anomalous actions within a specific range.

Tamamo will likely still kill people if given a chance, but she has since miraculously lightened up on committing to fatal interactions with personnel considerably. After being left with the sculpture Tamamo AKA 953 has mostly been docile, but Tamamo is not entirely safe as she will still commit to mauling those who bother her too much.

The injuries can range from light to permanent, but have since ceased to be completely outright lethal or performed with cruelty that Tamamo was known for prior.

Data Log 7.

The true name for the central figure or her guardians have yet to be found in any mythology throughout known history and thus far the worship effect only happens with canids that are natural. As such Scientist ‘Kaine Pathos Crow’ who we brought in to study this sculpture has been mostly unaffected having been turned into a dog via anomaly… aside from a small urgent need to make sure the statue is undamaged and that nobody will do anything to it.

The sculpture may be having a benefit of extending Kaine’s life supernaturally, but results so far are currently inconclusive as of yet. Also 999, The Tickle Monster, appreciates the sculpture and that's a good sign as to it being a benign anomaly.

Most canid based anomalies have been nullified, weakened or even become equally benign when introduced to this sculptures presence. We have since made it a primary storage space for canid style anomalies and expanded the space it occupies.

We have decided to name the central figure in the anomaly ‘Protective Overlady of Mutts’ or POM for short.

Addendum- Dr. Bright is not allowed to start a card game with any canids in the same room as this anomaly ever again, no matter how much of a sore loser he is that he’s down ten boxes of dog biscuits.

This did bring up interesting details in canine related intellectual boosts, still not up to our standards, but enough to understand us and card games apparently. This is only mildly worrying, concerning the fact there are far nastier things this anomaly could be doing, such a thing has happened with most other anomalies with a regularity that we've come to expect it outright if something seems benign at first and turns out to be utterly horrifying.

Data Log 8.

Never call any of the little puppy figures ‘mongrels’ or ‘mutts’ in front of Tamamo, especially do not insult the central figure or even imply insult. It will not end well.

There are many things here you’d rather wished had killed you outright as one poor researcher found out the hard way recently. Said researcher needed three rounds of the strongest amnestics conceivable to fully forget what was done to her, she will make a partial recovery eventually and now suffers from acute Fennecaphobia despite the cause of her injuries having being rendered impossible to remember. This already adding on to the scientist’s prior paranoia that chickens were out to get her.

Dimensia De Ville has a noted history of hating canids, especially Dalmatians. No cause can be found as to why as she has never physically seen, interacted with or even met a Dalmatian in her whole recorded life aside from what she’s likely seen in pictures. She and our top Scientist Kaine have had a long and notable adversarial history, yet has survived many dangerous anomalous threats by being more vicious than they were.

Side note: The ethics committee is still trying to figure out if we're actively trying to get Dimensia killed or not, given she's usually working with the most obviously dangerous anomalies to even be near and is the boogeyman of D-class personnel.

We will need to detain Dimensia for further possible anomalous study given the overly anomalous resistance to Amnestics. We’ll also be looking closer into her family member, Artisia De Ville.

Note: Those who interact with POM anomaly should remember to be respectful and maintain a distance around Tamamo while she’s performing her Miko duties. Dogs are entirely safe during these times, personnel are not.

Again 953, ‘Tamamo’, is still a dangerous Keter Class threat and is not a nullified anomalous entity in the slightest.

Second Note: Also make sure that no dog haters interact with POM anomaly further just in case that sets off something even worse. We rarely get powerful benign anomalies like this that are not actively trying to kill off our entire race.

Data Log 9.

We are still trying to find out how the POM anomaly sculpture connects to or relates to a recent discovery of information on an anomalous being known as FHTNG, not the first time we've dealt with terror inducing demon cults and this wouldn't be the last, a demon of knowledge who seems to have a strong connection to unicorns or at least one unicorn in particular.

We have recently banned all knowledge of how to correctly pronounce FHTNG’s name and are simply calling him ‘Fred the Demon’ due to the nature of his actual name causing [REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED, WHATEVER ALMIGHTY BEING THAT IS TRULY BENIGN OUT THERE PLEASE, REDACTED!].

Note: POM anomaly was a perfectly safe place to be during ‘Fred the Demon’ incident. The massive loss of D-class personnel was quite horrific, one most notable D-class death involved a Mr. Beezle B. Bug who was in fact an anomalous subject that was the first to be killed by the ‘Fred the Demon’ based anomaly that wasn't actually the demon himself and assumed to be a proxy. It has been since judged impossible to figure out how the anomalous Mr. Beezle ended up in the facility or its systems in the first place. The dead subject, worryingly enough, was bleeding hemolymph when found as a puddle of chunky salsa and had been more than halfway across the facility from where the incident initially originated before [REDACTED] seemingly beelined straight for them like a '504, Critical Tomato' heard someone tell the worst joke in existence.

-Digital Realm, Server City, Southeastern Slums District, Ogremon’s Warhouse Warehouse, Canard-

I quickly looked for the nearest spot to go to for safe cover, going back outside this warehouse was a death sentence as there was too much open space for the living tank to focus us down. I’m going for the steel barrel nearest to me and hope I don’t get shot through it for trying.

I quickly took several steps and judging the distance, I dove forward into a roll and put my back to the barrel as it started getting blasted by the rapid fire machine gun cannons that Tankmon had.

“Sami… we’ve run into a snag with fighting Ogremon, if you know how to deal with a Tankmon we could really use your help now!” I stated into the Digivice as I watched Frizzle run for it and made it behind a cargo container with numerous bullets trailing after her. Once behind the container she started fighting off the Goblimon that were outnumbering her ten to one in a swarm, I don’t there were nearly enough of them to really harm the bread lizard personally.

Pom had leapt up and kicked off the wall to the walkway above and to the left of me and was firing jets of air from her legs at the higher strength Goblimon along the walkway trying to shoot fireballs down at me as I was pinned behind the barrel by the continuous fire. Said barrel was slowly being worn down under numerous impacts and I could hear the nose cannon of the Tankmon taking aim.

After a blast of a fireball did nothing to Tankmon, a blazing streak in the shape of a purple dragon deflected Tankmon’s nose down before it could blast me, I looked up at Dazzle crawling along the wall to position the right side walkways between her and the Tankmon that was still rapidly firing both his guns.

A bolt of lightning ripped from a yellow spot on the front of Tankmon knocking his left arm upwards and away from my cover. I was quickly up and moving to get behind a cargo container like Frizzle. I was left wondering what Dolly was doing until I realized where the Tankmon’s left arm stream of bullets were going, because that was Lit who just gave me an opening to get out from behind the barrel.

The Goblimon behind the container raised their weapons and swarmed at me like they did with Frizzle, I raised my hockey stick ready to give them a body checking they’ll never forget.

“Hey who did that electric thing, I’ll blow you up!” Tankmon shouted as I started to beat back the Goblimon horde with no one at my back, I had to keep my guard up here. “Also fire is not going to work on me, gahaha I love causing a blast, not having one!”

Guy was built like a tank and acts like one too, I slapped away a club with my stick and kicked the Goblimon in the face with my right boot knocking a few others over as they tried to push me back out into the open.

“If you won’t come out into the open or you’re going to stay behind that skateboard, then I’ll just have to come to you!” Yeah, we’re not taking Tankmon down anytime soon.

“Is that a Tankmon?! Oh my goodness, I hate those guys, always going on about explosions, fire and their dakka! If you guys can give me a few minutes Canard, then I can have my new weapon ready for deployment.” Sami stated from the device. “Also yes, I have been working on other things in here other than studying the Backspace System, but we were going to be dealing with champions or even ultimatese, then I needed to work on some extra fire power! I made it specifically with guys like him and Tankdramon in mind!”

“Well you better hurry up we’re split up, being swarmed and we’re doing barely anything to the Tankmon when we do attack him!” I grunted as I swung my hockey stick about and forced my way forward regardless of any injury I take, taking a hit from Tankmon would be nine times worse and aside from just taking a nasty blow to the thigh I was perfectly fine to continue. “Lit’s lightning did nothing, and all Dazzle’s dragon beam thing is doing is redirecting his limbs and lightly scorching him!”

“Trust me, what I’m bringing into the fight will be worth it against tankmon, just give me some open space to come out from the Digivice at and prepare my weapon when I’m ready to join the fight.” Sami responded.

“Fight might be over before then!” I warned Sami and started to swing the hockey stick in wide arcs to batter back the Goblimon.

-Dolly-

I was slowly being pushed back by the left arms constant fire, doesn’t this guy ever need to reload?!

Lit just helped out Canard and he was already to safety and being completely ignored by everyone who doesn’t seem to notice him because of his size, I’m the last one still in the open and barely holding up to the onslaught as I was being pushed back first into the wall to the right of the entrance.

“Life Shield!” Tank Dom started coming towards me and his form was soon doing the same glowy treatment that Sham-mon gave to his allies a while ago, his nose started to raised up. My board would be fine, I wouldn’t be if the shockwave pasted me into the wall.

Its times like these that I’m glad that my board is near indestructible, but come on, he give me a break here. I received an image from Pom on where to the throw the bone if I was able, Glancing to the right I saw that Dazzle was having some trouble as the Goblimon were trying to knock her off the wall as she fired another dragon beam thing into Tankmon.

That was kind of effective, if I could tell if the glowing tank had any damage on it. Okay, I lifted the bone slightly and sent it flying over my head in Dazzle’s general direction where it struck a Gob in the back of the head making him drop his fireball, catching him and another one on fire. The bone was on its way back when it was blasted off course by a stream of bullets from the right arm and the cannon nose was now aimed squarely at me.

Uh… Pom, a little help please? I’m about to get smashed between my board and a wall here!

I looked to see Pom punching her right hoof into a Gob’s face on a walkway above and quickly turned her head to the right to quickly fire a Bark Buster over her shoulder and the liquid magic stuff exploded as soon as it hit the Tankmon’s right shoulder. The flash of energy went into his right eye and only blinded Tankmon for a second as he was about to fire and I quickly cartwheeled flipped to the side.

The wall was taken out behind me leaving a large hole and knocking me down onto my face to go skidding forward and to the right.

Wait, where did the bone go? No time to think, move! I quickly got my board down and boost my momentum towards Frizzle avoiding as stream of bullets as I slid in behind her and popped up to slam the bottom of my board into a Gob’s face.

-Right side walkways, Dazzle-

Dolly made it too safely and I saw Lit running for the bone, Tankmon seriously couldn’t notice him? Well that was a good thing in this case, that thing fired like it was a Grovyle using Bullet Seed and my attacks could only divert it for a few seconds.

I ducked back as the club slammed into the railing, I screeched and popped a blast of flames up and into the group and blew them off with a flame burst.

That’s when the Tankmon thing turned to me and I threw myself to the floor of the metal walkway as rapidly fired projectiles swept along the walkway where I was. You’d think the tank thing would be weak to me being a steel type, but no it wasn’t a Pokémon and I had to remind myself where I was.

I angled my head up slightly and blasted a blob of purple liquid, one blast of flames from the arms of that thing immediately rendered my Toxic into nothing. That guy wasn’t nearly distracted enough for me to get an attack off on him.

At least the Goblimon couldn’t approach me thanks to the projectiles he sprayed up here. His nose rose up towards me and I immediately leapt for the wall as his next shot destroyed a large section of the walkway and dropping it onto the floor.

I quickly crawled along the wall as projectiles started shooting up my way, they almost hit a few Goblimon that I positioned between me and the projectile launching limb.

“Hey, watch it Tankmon, you almost shot my Goblimons!” Ogremon shouted.

“Almost, I didn’t hit them!” Distracted by that Tankmon thing, I was struck by a fireball from one of the Goblimon hitting it with their club at me.

I blinked… aside from some irritation and a small flinch that didn’t hurt at all. Oh right, they didn’t know I was a fire type or what a Pokémon was did they?

“Is this thing broken?” One of the Goblimon said while scratching at his head and looking at his club.

“The club I sass, is soon to pass, through the air with this sound of mass~!” My singing Round sent them over the walkways railing.

“Hey!” The Goblimon next to him shouted and I pelted him with a Flame Burst knocking them off as well, then I had to start moving to a safer spot as more projectiles were fired in my direction once the Goblimon were out of the way.

I had to stop when a blast of water struck the wall in front of me and splashed me slightly, it was one of those blue Goblimon that had the ice breath. The ice breath wasn’t worrying, the water they could throw at me was.

“It’s so hot in here the snowball melted after I threw it…” One of the blue Goblimon muttered.

“Yeah, and she didn’t mind the fire, but did she just avoid the water?” Another one stated and then, the two looked at each other and grinned my way.

Yeah, I’m with Pom on not liking how this day is going. I crawled upwards toward the ceiling for my life as water blasted behind me threatening to knock me down, this included fast flying slush balls.

-Left walkway, Pom-

So Tankmon would actually shoot at a walkway… disturbing and there goes my hope for using knocked out Goblimon as a shield. Dolly was helping Frizzle, Canard had his own problems, Dazzle looked like she needed some help and I could drop down there to help Canard… but where was Lit?

I ducked under horizontal swing and brought my left hoof up into the Goblimon’s chin and unleashed a Thousand Spear that sent them flying across the warehouse and past Ogremon who was just standing there with his arms crossed and watching patiently.

The guy was probably waiting for us to weaken and he was fairly smart to have another Champion on hoof to help him out, one we were already having enough trouble hurting and Shamanmon just had to make it all that much harder to deal with.

I ducked as Tankmon’s right arm sprayed bullets at the walkway, said walkway was starting to crumple under the hundreds of impacts a second. I noted it didn’t seem to run out of projectiles to fire and would have to move soon.

The Goblimon weren’t a huge issue overall in comparison to the Tankmon, the very thing we were all trying to actively avoid at the moment considering it no-selled a Bark Buster without damage. Dolly probably couldn’t do anything with wind to it and it was basically immune to fire… yeah, that Digimon was going to be a hard one to take down without Dazzle hitting it with a Toxic to eat away at its defenses.

Suddenly the room lit up and Tankmon growled a bit, but the lightning coming from his back didn’t seem to do much or any damage to him, the lightning just caused him to seize up slightly.

“Who’s doing that, I’ll blow you away once I find you?!” Tankmon was quite angry at not being able to locate our little bug friend, at least I knew where Lit was now. I jumped to the wall and slid down to the floor avoiding the fireballs that chased after me as I did so and kicked off to hit a Goblimon in the spine with my front hooves plowing into their back.

Skidding forward slightly, silently apologizing for the Goblimon’s face I was scraping against the floor as I did so, I leaned down and scooped up the Stone Bone in my teeth and then jerked my head to the right to slammed it into the back of a passing Goblimon’s head.

Another explosion ripped throughout the warehouse, as I hopped forward off the Goblimon I was on and slammed the bone across the face of another and then landed next to Canard.

“Ahhh… oof!” That sounded like Dazzle.

I looked behind Canard as he stalked forward and continued to beat back the Goblimon hoard and saw a hole in the ceiling of the warehouse and saw that Frizzle had caught Dazzle and was blasting the blue Goblimon off the walkway as she ducked behind a series of boxes that were quickly being shredded away by the two rapid fire projectile shooters that were Tankmon’s arms.

Lit was crawling up to Tankmon’s head, what was he going to do? His lightning wasn’t working on Tankmon. I quickly raised my back left leg and bucked a Goblimon in the belly and turned back to the fight as Canard was managing to hold them off quite well despite having three Goblimon clinging to him.

I had to help Canard and hoped Lit could take care of himself.

-Lit the Joltik-

Chitter… squeak!

Body bulging, building up for web…

Hopping backwards… spit huge round wad at back.

Web ball unwrap, trap arms into pointing downwards.

Success, yay!

Ow… hit face on floor.

“Agh, what the, where did all this sticky stuff come from!” Hop on big guy again, climb quick. Arms spew fire. “Do you think this will keep me trapped? I’ll just burn it all away!”

Crawl up to nose without being seen.

Will clog with web, then no hurt friends with booms!

-Dazzle-

Okay, ow… nearly took a direct hit and was blasted off the roof, then… I didn’t hit the floor?

Where… I’m in Frizzle’s arms? Okay, this felt rather safe.

Dolly barked as she swung the front end of the board by holding the back end with both paws and smashed a Goblimon across the face with it knocking a tusk free from their lower jaw.

I shook my head to collect myself as Frizzle kicked away a Goblimon and unleased a fierce sphere of explosive fire into pack of Goblimon. We were behind a large box and I heard something that was likely Tankmon moving.

“Tankmon, block the entrance! Shamamon, turn on the factory machinery and make the walls impossible to run around on! Goblimon crush them between you and Tankmon!” Ogremon ordered loudly and Shamanmon started to move and I looked back at the entrance as Tankmon swerved around into place and got his arms free of Lit’s Electrowebs pinning his arms with flames coming from them. “If they can get by all of you gobbos, then I’ll possibly consider getting involved. Given that they can’t even scratch the Tankmon, I’m not impressed enough to do the whole villain shtick and jump in with these weaklings.”

Ouch… not that what he said wasn’t true and the Goblimon just kept coming at us. I saw Ogremon stalk along the pathway and started heading towards the far side of the warehouse beyond the machinery slowly coming to life.

Frizzle noticed I was awake and put me down and lashed out the chain to wrap around a Goblimon’s neck and she slammed them into the floor several times like a giant flail until they disappeared into a vortex dropping a lot of Digi-credits.

“Thank you for catching me…” I said quietly, Frizzle turned a smile to me and gave me a friendly wave as Dolly leapt up blocked a fireball going for Frizzle. We all scrambled to move around the box as Tankmon started attacking us again. “Now if only we can figure out how to get me close enough to launch a Toxic attack on him, that’ll do some damage and corrode his armor at least.”

Dolly barked something that sounded a little panicked as she poked her head around the corner of the box and I looked to see what had her worried. On the underside of that Copperajah length straight nose that fired powerful explosive projectiles was Lit carefully crawling towards the end of it while trying to avoid being noticed by Tankmon, what was he planning?

I wanted to be able to help here and even my most powerful attack wasn’t doing much to that monster.

I could try to force myself to evolve… which I was highly reluctant to do given the connotations behind what the Salazzle evolution entails. Or we needed a Champion of our own and Sami wasn’t about to do that because she doesn’t want to be what is called a Sealsdramon.

I looked to Frizzle… as Canard and Pom moved to safety while under fire and used Goblimon as living shields that quickly disappeared into vortexes.

“How do Digimon Evolve?” I heard they could like Pokemon, but nobody explained it. I mean I’ve never seen it in action.

Frizzle pointed to the device at my hip, she then back clawed a Goblimon with her left arm without looking. That Goblimon had been sneaking up on her and everything.

Dolly was tripping another one trying to charge at us with a spear.

“The Digivice, how?” I saw Frizzle shrug and turned to help Dolly who was getting pinned in place narrowly avoided a blade jabbing around her board for her belly.

Well a lot of help that was… unless… hm… what would happen if I suddenly pumped the device full of normal type Dimensional Energy? I did know that’s how some Pokémon activate super powers back in Ransei.

I focused and started trying to give the device my energy, it was rather hard to do, but it was taking it and absorbing it. Then I tried something that might help, since my normal type energy was based in the ‘Round’ move… would singing my feelings help?

“We need a hero to evolve and stand tall, someone strong enough to help us all, or else we will fail and fall~.” I closed my eyes and concentrated my feelings into desperation and a need for strength, come on we needed something to really put this fight back in our favor.

“Digivolution activated… Guilmon digivolve to…” A white light surrounded Guilmon and her body seemed to shatter, her form turned into nothing but lines and I was confused. Had I done it wrong?

Thousands of 0’s and 1’s flowed as the outline of what was once her body stretched and grew taking a new shape, slowly an egg shaped swirl surrounded her and from what little I could see through the swirling lines her flesh started to return to her filling in then new outline until…

“Growlmon Normal Type.” With a final pulse the glowing cleared up and now… now Frizzle was twice her normal size and took one step to squish a Goblimon under a foot where I vaguely saw the flash of a vortex activating.

“Normal Type? Also where was that voice coming from?” It certainly hadn’t come from my Digivice, but it did tell me that Frizzle was now a Growlmon at least. Also wouldn’t Frizzle be a fire… oh… oohhhh no… my dimensional energy.

So did I just cause an unnatural evolution? I mean Growlmon is supposed to be mostly white and grey right with red hair right? I have no idea what I just did, but I hope it was a good thing...

Frizzle took a huge explosion to the face that toppled her.

“Frizzle!” After the smoke cleared up, Frizzle was perfectly fine and already getting up.

If the look in her eyes were telling me anything, she was just enraged by that attack and it showed when she roared what sounded like the move Hyper Voice that shook the whole room and froze every Goblimon for a moment.

"Frizzle...?" I felt myself pushed to the side as Frizzle stomped through where I was and started charging straight for Tankmon in an out of control rage and started to glow as if she were using the bog standard of all normal type Pokémon moves, Tackle.

Tankmon, who had already been blasted backwards through the entrance closed by the Goblimon with the Hyper Voice like attack, was promptly rammed further out into the streets and out of sight by Frizzle.

Dolly barked something and looked as shaken as I felt.

“Yeah… I don’t think Frizzle’s entirely in control of her faculties at the moment either…” My blank statement was met with a disbelieving stare as Dolly held out both her paws to the large hole opened in the entrance of the building leading into the streets. I understood that gesture as ‘You think?’ quite clearly. “Hey, at least she isn’t attack us.”

Dolly dragged her paw down her forehead and barked something while gesturing something small or about something small, oh right… Lit was still on Tankmon wasn’t he. The out of control large lizard monster that used to be Frizzle was now Tankmon’s problem, it was kind of like watching a Charizard or a Dragonite after evolving. I hoped Lit was smart enough to not get squished in that struggle.

Dolly flailed her paws gesturing to all the Goblimon surrounding us and readied her board, I looked across the warehouse to see both Canard and Pom looking as spooked as they held off attackers of their own.

-Pom-

Frizzle just went out of control, so this was just one of those days where another problem was added to the pile. How were we going to deal with Frizzle or Tankmon depending on who won that fight? Not to mention this warehouse with what seems like an endless stream of fresh Goblimon, who were pulling weapons from the nearby crates to continue their assault.

I'm almost rooting for Tankmon, because I really didn't want to fight with Frizzle as she was right now.

I sighed, stood up on my hind legs and the wool on my hooves clamped down on the stone bone.

“I know how you feel, let’s hope Frizzle comes to her senses soon…” Canard held up his hockey stick at the ready.

"Almost done prepping my new weapon Canard, you better not be dying out there when I come out!" Sami stated in a worried tone from Canard's device.

-Ogremon-

Okay, that… that was actually interesting.

The machinery in the warehouse came alive and the floor started shifting about randomly. The entire floor of the warehouse was made of hidden conveyor belts, not that the intruders noticed that or the traps that were now coming online as they were too busy fighting the Goblimon horde.

They all started to trip up as the floor started shifting in directions randomly underneath them throwing off their balance and my Goblimon started to get in a few good hits here or there from it. What added to the chaos was that boxes and containers were also moving around now, the walls also started glowing slightly.

"Heh heh heh..." I sat down on my throne, that I built out of weapons we made here. Things were going to be far more entertaining than I thought, maybe they'll actually even give me a fight.

286. Server City Ransom Pt. 11.

Author's Note

I'm okay, just end of the year partying and hoping for a better year.

Also the kidney stones were removed safely and my family member was fine for the holidays after some surgery.

Find you're own music for this one.

286. Server City Ransom Pt. 11.

-???, Tamamo-

“Clock Tower is interested in the fact that she is even here at all, are you sure she hasn’t been summoned as a heroic spirit… not that there was anything ever heroic about her…” Ooh, my ears are burning. They must be talking about Tamamo-chan.

It was just too bad they didn’t know I’ve been working on an exit strategy to this facility using the statue of worship for teleportation. Of course I had to mean my worship for it to work and it wasn’t hard, that Chrysomallus was quite adorable and she would be a great husband! Also since I heard the word ‘Clock Tower’, that means I needed to up my schedule as I don’t want those entrenched elitist edgelords known as ‘magi’ to ever get a hold of whatever I’m capable of… also the guys likely hated that I existed on the principle of things.

If I had the time, I would doom all their haughty butts with a viral illiteracy curse for being so smug, high and mighty. Not that I’m one to talk given the things I’ve done, but they are definitely going to probe and prod me for information, then seal away said information and sit on it for eternity.

Thanks to the Syncretism of the Inari shrine, which was one of the worst mistakes the bhuddi’s ever made that gave me access to their magical systems, Ameterasu should answer my call when I make it and then the fun will happen.

“There she is… it seems she’s continuing to worship that strange statue. She knows more than she’s letting on about it, what can you tell me from looking at it from here?” Whatever mage they sent is probably going to probe it with mage sight, likely wasn’t a canid so it won’t work and will get frustrated when I leave behind how to pronounce FHTNGs name on a piece of paper just to rub it in. “Ms. Tohsaka, what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is I realize why they sent me here, ever since the supposed complete disappearance of the ‘grail’ by some higher power, they’ve been up in arms about the missing potential to learn true magic or get a wish… good riddance I’d say, that kind of power makes people nuts. In any case I know why I’m here, but the thing I’m looking at isn’t familiar in the slightest, but…” She paused and I looked over my shoulder at the young mage through the two way glass mirror and smiled at her with a devious grin, she shuddered violently at my gaze. “It’s terrifying how much energy Tamamo is putting out and nothing is happening with it, can she see us through the mirror glass?”

“We’re… not quite sure about that. It’s disturbing that she’s been this docile thus far.” The man was at least honest and neither of them knew I could hear them through the sound proofed walls. Not that I was hearing with my ears… spiritual hearing for the win! “She’s also ridiculously powerful so it’s possible she’s humoring us as long as we don’t try to mess with the statue.”

“Well at least the central depiction is cute, what do you have on it so far?” They weren’t going to get much and the hidden energy they couldn’t sense was Tamamo-chan’s ticket out of here!

“A strange bit of twisted mythology surrounding the golden fleeced Chrysomallus of Poseidon, that’s the only clear thing we have about it. Everything else we’ve found is… unclear.” Yeah, but not this worlds Poseidon, not that I’d tell them that. I would have to do the thing and get Ameterasu on board with helping me out. “Apparently that’s a descendant and something about marmalade came up… still don’t understand that or the…ugh… ‘Fred the Demon’ thing.”

“Marmalade? Wasn’t that invented close to the eighteenth century, long after the Greek era, by the scots?” Well if you discounted the existence of Atlantis girly, then that’s somewhat true. Makes me wonder what her thoughts on ‘Greek Fire’ was.

Sure I might have fought off eighty thousand people and the survivors thought they killed me, it was to the point it’s kind of hilarious that my poison cloud stone lasted so long. Trickery and deceit was my specialty, did they really think they could catch me unaware enough after standing under those raining arrows for several days? I’m on par with a Teumessian Fox in escaping danger, also smarter, prettier and far more magical then just blinking through existence in mere moments… though a Teumessian would have escaped this place ages ago.

Also I may be a bit murderous, but at least I kept mostly quiet and targeted people who wouldn’t and shouldn’t be missed. Which worked up until I hit the wrong target working for this organization and got knocked out and dragged into a holding cell. Now they’ve given me access to my chance at freedom and then some, all I had to do was be patient. That’s something I’m good at if I can be patient with trying to apologize or even try to talk to eighty thousand guys trying to kill me with bows for what were some honest mistakes on my part.

All I had to do is wait to activate my spell later and have a little talk, then boom the sun god and I are going on a road trip to who cares where! Inari might even help with it.

Maybe I could do this world one other small favor while I’m at, I was already doing them a favor by dragging Ameterasu away. Ame-chan was getting rather twitchy lately through our connection and has been entertaining activating a rather nasty ‘planet wide’ kill switch with the sun.

Aside from my issues with this organization keeping me prisoner, my stay here hasn’t been too bad even if they did find out who I was because of that rather ‘fetching’ sculpture 'hee-hee'. I can at least agree with the organizations existence on a number of things, like keeping Cipactli under control.

-Digital Realm connected to Ransei Continent, Server City, Ogremon’s Warhouse Warehouse, Pom-

Dolly, keep Tankmon in sight and warn us if he aims our way and who he’s aiming at. I can dodge shots coming at me, they can’t so I will have to use my Dancing Flame technique sparingly for defensive purposes.

I got a few images of Frizzle and Tankmon still going at it, they were really roughing each other up quite badly. Yeah, Frizzle’s health was probably not too good and I didn’t know if Lit was alright in all of that either so that’s another thing to worry about. We had to make this quick.

Canard, Dazzle, Sami and I were going to be quite busy trying to beat Ogremon into submission.

We tensed and waited for who would go first, Canard was staring at Ogremon with a calculating stare, Dazzle was a little wary as I felt. As for Sami, her expression was flat, stone cold even, as she stored her new weapon on her back and brought her rifle around from being across her back above her tail and prepped it.

“If you’re not going to take the initiative, then I’ll start us off with my signature… Pummel Whack!” His left fist reared back and started glowing a dark purple and black when he threw it forward it erupted into a scary grinning visage shaped vaguely like his own face.

My instincts screamed at me to move and my body followed as we all dove to the left or right side to avoid it, something tells me I never wanted to be hit by that attack.

Sami finished her roll crouching on one knee and firing her rifle directly at Ogremon who started to block her shots with the head of the bone he wielded with ridiculous precision that only a few of her shots made it through as he charged to attack Canard and did minimal damage overall.

Sami ceased firing when Ogremon got too close to Canard and he had to block Ogremon’s downward strike with his hockey stick.

The hockey stick, which made creaking noises under the impact and made Canard shudder, held up to the bone strike and Canard kicked Ogremon in the stomach to push him back.

I sprang forward using the coiled wool around my hind legs and launched my left hoof for his right bicep, surprisingly all he did was flex and was barely moved by my entire body weight. He gave me a calculating look as I landed.

“Hmm… speed and technique, strength and good balance… and two ranged combatants, with a cute mascot to finish things off.” Ogremon grumbled as he turned his left fist towards swinging at me, Dolly didn’t like the implication of being called a mascot and would definitely get back at him for that at a most opportune moment. “Feint punch!”

I blinked as the large left fist glowed and seemed to spread out in multiple directions as it came towards me, my eyes narrowed and I hopped to the right as his fist found itself in the floor to my left.

“Hah, I was right!” As he said this I delivered a leaping right hook with another boosted leap from my rear hooves to slam my hoof home into the left side of his face staggering him back a bit, then Canard swung in from his right and slammed the other his face with the flat of the hockey stick blade staggering him further. Ogremon didn’t seem upset in the slightest, mostly because he was excited to fight us and none of us shared that sentiment in the slightest. “Heh, this is going to be good, I wonder if I can knock all of you into the pit.”

“Pom, hit it!” Sami sudden shout caused me confusion until the rocket fire from her tube projectile launcher was caught by Ogremon and was about to be tossed away like last time.

I opened my mouth and loosed a Bark Blast and the subsequent explosion slid Ogremon back by a fair distance and almost toppled him.

“Eugh! I guess I can’t ignore the peanut gallery for the close up fighters after all!” Just wait for it Ogremon, Dolly is already planning on finding a moment to get back at you for the mascot comment even if she is adorable. When Dolly does, you really won’t think she’s simply a mascot then and I’m not liable to stop whatever she comes up with.

Speaking of Dolly, Tankmon was still decidedly busy trying to beat Frizzle. The two were badly battered and trashing the other side of the warehouse and it started to make me wonder if Tankmon had a Backspace System or if it only activates at a certain threshold… like the brink of death kind of thing. That was fairly worrying if true.

“This might be going better than Bulkmon did…” The moment I said that Ogremon’s eyes widened.

“There’s a Bulkmon around and they didn’t come to challenge me?!” I barely dodged the swipe of the long bone in his right hand. Canard dodged a blazingly fast ‘Pummel Whack’ launched without warning as Ogremon started really getting into the fight now, where before it seemed like he was taking us lightly. “Tell me where the Bulkmon is!”

“We honestly don’t know!” Canard called out as he blocked the next one armed strong swing and was sent sliding towards the edge of the pit to our backs, Dazzle leapt for him and managed to stop him as Ogremon turned his attention on to me and fired off a ‘Pummel Whack’.

“But you survived him! Unless he has a Backspace System, which means you really don’t know! I’ll beat the information of how you’re fight went out of you!” Ogremon stated pointing his bone at us.

“Can’t we just tell you?” I pleaded quietly as I was now his main focus while Dazzle was helping Canard back onto his feet.

“Now where would the fun be in that?” Ah right, Ogremon was a battle maniac and he proved it by his next attack. “Feint attacks!”

His bone and fist seemed to blur and split as if he was swinging them from multiple directions, I inhaled slightly and focused. I hopped forward and bit down onto his left wrist when I spotted an opportunity to dodge through the two attacks, it left a nasty taste in my mouth as I thrust my left hoof at his neck. My attack didn't make it as I was promptly slapped against the floor with a blow from his bone where my wool protected me from the impact, but not being caught by the head in a crushing grip after I bounced.

Since he left my face free I unleashed a Bark Buster and used the liquid magic to get the horrid taste out of my mouth as it immediately exploded in the direction of Ogremon’s face. Despite it being a direct hit, he kept a tight grip on my head and kept trying to press his thumb into my neck. I think he was trying to choke me to death, my puffed up wool was up to the task of keeping my head and throat safe from his crushing amount of strength.

“Speed, technique and some kind of endurance ability to match? What evil villainous cur let you live this long, I want to talk to their manager!” Canard ran forward jumped and hooked the blade of his hockey stick around Ogremon’s right horn mid-jump and put his full weight into physically yanking Ogremon face first into the floor with the full weight of a eight or so feet tall bipedal duck. He followed that up by swinging his stick around and bringing the bottom of the blade to slap across the top of Ogremon’s wrist getting him to release me. “Okay, ow, someone should have really sent assassins after you guys to make sure you didn’t get this strong! Can I at least know the name of the Bulkmon if they have one?”

“I think he said his name was Abobo?” I said as Canard and I backed away together.

“Well after we’re done here, I’ll be hitting him up for a fight!” Ogremon declared gleefully as he fired off two rapid fire pummel whacks forcing us apart and then changed targets from Canard and me, to targeting someone he probably felt was probably the weakest link among us.

The weakest among us was probably Sami in a direct confrontation. Seeing Ogremon come barreling at her, she seemed to crouch and lean back to accept him coming at her. I noticed that the back of her new weapon touched the floor, when Ogremon got close enough Sami triggered the weapon with her right claw and smiled.

“Backfire!” Sami announced cheerfully. The Commandramon blasted off the floor in a huge explosion and rocketed into a high arc that ended with her on the left walkway where she landed on her feet with a happy pose. Said walkway had some Goblimon gathering on it and looking to be preparing an attack to assist their boss in fighting us, they were caught flat footed when Sami quickly slung her rifle about, aimed and started to gun them down into vortexes. She pressed the nose of her tube weapon against the wall as she continued firing the rifle in her left hand. “Leave the Goblimon up here to me, they looked like they were about to start helping their boss! M-Loader.”

Speaking of Ogremon, he had been caught off guard by the explosive force with which Sami Soldier launched herself and was blown completely onto his back.

The right walkway was basically trashed to try and prevent us from getting this far, so there were Goblimon instead gathering at the throne from the right doorway at the top of the stairs. They were suddenly hit with a Flame Burst from Dazzle, who needed no prompting in preventing them from getting their attacks off.

“Just making sure you guys are paying attention to what kind of relationship we’ve got going on here. wouldn't want you to die too early into it.” Ogremon said conversationally as he got up and tried to smash Canard’s skull in with a leaping bone strike, he only pushed Canard back towards the pit when he blocked the blow and then tried for Dazzle.

I immediately leapt into his path and tried to strike with a left straight, he blocked with his hand and tried to grab me again. My right hoof struck out at his wrist and stopped him from clenching his fist around my leg and he quickly back handed me to the floor.

Letting out a grunt of pain, as my nose was probably going to be bruise immediately, having flopped to the floor onto my back Ogremon jumped and was going to strike down on me with his bone. Canard hooked the club stopping his downward swing and I brought up my rear legs and bucked upwards while releasing two 'thousand spears' into his belly point blank.

Ogremon grunted as he lifted off the floor and was then hit with a large tornado of wind that sent him slamming head first into the roof where his horns got slightly stuck. Dolly’s revenge was making him look rather dumb, Sami and Dazzle took advantage of the sudden shock the Goblimon were expressing with explosive results.

That’s when Dolly sent me the image of Frizzle being knocked down and Tankmon turning to target one of us from across the pit. I also felt her holding on to the second half of her ‘Aerora’ spell, still targeting Ogremon intending to yank him down from the roof.

Tankmon was choosing… me? I could almost feel Dolly’s grin as she gave me an immediate suggestion, I quickly tumbled into standing on my hooves moving forward and to the left a bit to position myself correctly as I turned around.

“Sami, Dazzle, keep your focus on the Goblimon!” As I said this Tankmon traced my movements with his nose cannon from Dolly’s vision and I saw her look up as she focused on yanking Ogremon down as I looked across the way to focus on Tankmon like she wanted me to.

“The set up for this is way too good.” Dolly murmured humorously in the back of my head as she used the second half of her wind spell to yank Ogremon downwards, he twisted in the air and landed in front of me with a grin as he prepared to attack me.

I gave him a grin back making him pause and consider me for a moment. It must have looked like I launched him entirely into the ceiling on my own strength and that Dolly hadn’t done a single thing to aid in that.

“Don’t know how you did…” Ogremon would probably appreciate Dolly’s amazing sense of timing, because I certainly did when it has saved my backside on several occasions.

Ogremon did just land in front of me as Tankmon was going to fire and Tankmon’s eyes widened as his shot flew straight into Ogremon’s back and sent him flipping over my head trying to grasp at me with his big left fist or strike me with the bone in his wild flailing. I calmly ducked out of the way of his chaotic attempts to hit me as he belly flopped onto the floor face first.

“Call me a mascot again, I dare you!” Dolly shouted at Ogremon with a shaking curled up right paw. Ogremon of course couldn’t understand her well enough to know what she just did, but he still glanced her way in curiosity before I blasted a thousand spear from my right leg by his face drawing his attention away from her.

I’m not quite certain that Dolly knew Ogremon would absolutely survive that shot to the spine, or even be able to walk again.

Given that Ogremon was already getting up again, in spite of such a painful direct hit, I guessed serious permanent injury wasn’t something to entirely worry about with Digimon.

“Tankmon, whose side are you on!” Ogremon roared as he stood up, with smoke rising from his back.

Moving slightly to the side I think I could actually see a faint piece of metal sticking out of him from where he was hit.

“WELL…AGH?!” The distraction gave the still wild Frizzle a time to get in a cheap in cheap shot with white glowing claws raking across the right side of his face, a Pokémon ‘scratch’ move? Well it certainly tore into Tankmon’s already battered frame and thankfully drew his unwanted attention away from us.

“Hah, that’s a twofer!” Dolly said with a bright and wide toothy grin. Dolly wasn’t just sitting there either, she was actively paying attention to her surroundings and giving me information in real time and was holding her board defensively and at the ready as she stayed off to the side. “I’m magically tapped for the moment Pom, give me some time to build up again.”

That I could parse through the extra sensory information she was giving me while fighting was somewhat amazing, also there was the nagging feeling of Dolly seriously wanting to get into the fight herself. At least she was being patient and was hanging back and waiting for a moment to dive in and distract Ogremon where necessary as Canard and I faced him.

Ogremon slapped the bone against the floor sending a pressure wave at Canard, forcing him to run to the side and out of the way to avoid being sent flying into the pit. Canard pulled his puck pistol and fired it several times at Ogremon’s face and managed to get two through his bone defense.

While he did this he thrust his larger left fist at me launching a silent ‘Pummel Whack’, barely giving me any time to move out of the way of the demon faced attack.

“Is he ramping up?” Canard asked.

“Probably wanted to gauge our full abilities first before doing so.” I responded and now that he had a good idea of what we were capable of… he was going to come at us with more force.

Ogremon swiped his bone club at the air and Canard dove under the blast wave, I moved forward and dodge to the left at the Pummel Whack he sent my way and hopped to the right as she sent a vertical blast wave at me.

I leapt forward with my left hoof reared back and he swung his bone upwards.

“ACK!” I was hit by the airborne pressure wave and sent flying backwards over the pit, I quickly inflated my wool to stop my momentum.

I took a deep breath and used my heightened reflexes to reorient myself in the air to see Dazzle and Sami were still stopping the Goblimon from swarming us, I angled myself towards Ogremon and Canard locked in battle while coiling the wool on all my legs. Hardened the wool on my forehead, I bucked my hind legs back and thrust my front legs out behind me to both my sides.

The recoil of four thousand spears going off at once launched me forward in the air and Canard, having gotten close up with fighting Ogremon stick to bone, suddenly dodged to the side. Giving my forehead the opening to slam into Ogremon’s chest and staggering him back several steps.

Canard followed up by jabbing the top of his hockey stick forward to double Ogremon over by solidly ramming it into his stomach as I landed. I went up on my hinds legs and took up a stance.

“Are you okay?” I asked as my wool coiled for the lunge burst.

“What, why would you be asking that, I’m having the time of my…” Ogremon was apparently enjoying the battle as he stood up to full height ready to continued fighting.

I launched forward my hoof engulfed in flame as I struck him in the chest with a wool covered hoof, once there I braced my right leg with my left and roared.

“Buster Wolf!” The upwards explosion staggered him further and he still managed to slapped me into the ground with his left hand.

“Oof!” I bounced and managed to flip onto my hooves. Okay, he tanked a Tankmon cannon and my Buster Wolf… what else could we hit this guy with to beat him and get him to talk?

“Nice attack, could use a little more oomph!” Ogremon, who wasn’t paying attention to Canard, suddenly lost a portion of his left horn to the blade of Canard’s hockey stick swing upward.

I watched as the broken bit of horn flipped upwards and Canard raised his stick high to swing it downwards into the broken off portion and launched Ogremon’s own left horn downwards, point first, into his right thigh. “AGHH, YOU PIECE OF… BARF!?”

Dolly decided it was a good time to throw the stone bone and it knocked him over with a powerful impact to the left side of his jaw, breaking off his right fang in the process of shutting him up.

“Well at least I know where the Goblimon get their odd predilection for weird noises now.” I bluntly stated as Dolly caught the bone with her left paw. “Please tell me you’re ready to give up?”

“You kidding, this is the most fun I’ve had in weeks!” Ogremon stated as he got back up. “I’m really working on my revenge plan and villainous story for every blow you land on me, this pain is great! I’m outnumbered, my guys are being routed and I’ve got a whole villainous monologue I’m going to be working on for when you next meet me and everything! First you have to actually beat me and we can’t have you’re eventual victory against me be put into question by me running away at this point, that would make all you’re hard work moot wouldn’t it? So keep fighting me like this, I need heroes like you to motivate me to be better at being evil!”

I opened my mouth to say something when Canard just shook his head at me.

“Don’t question it Pom, some Digimon are just like this.” Canard stated while shouldering his hockey stick and readying his puck projectile pistol. “I would know, I’ve been dealing with them for digital years.”

“Okay less gabby, more stabby!” Flipping his bone club around, Ogremon revealed the other end of the bone was a sharpened point like a spear and grinned at us as he clenched his left fist.

He leapt at Canard firing a pummel whack making him roll to the right, then he turned and charged for me, I hopped back as he tried to spear me with the large bone. I was about to attack him back when he turned and sent a pressure wave at Dazzle, who looked almost caught flatfooted as she was in the middle of firing a flame burst.

Canard was already in motion as the pressure wave hit and knocked Dazzle into the air and over the pit, Canard swung out his Hockey Stick and Ogremon was going for him. I inhaled and burst forward, while giving Dolly a mental idea of what to do in this situation, I received a smiling Dolly face and two raised digits on a paw in my head. I was relying on her to time this correctly.

Canard caught Dazzle’s back and right armpit, hooking her back towards the floor with his stick as Ogremon surged forward to launch a point Pummel Whack.

I crashed into Ogremon’s right shoulder with a leap and fire a thousand spear from my right hoof into where his broken right fang was throwing off his aim and sending the ‘Pummel Whack’ by Canard’s face as he heaved Dazzle to safety.

What happened next was dependent on Dolly as Ogremon swung his right arm out to fling me off and over the pit.

I felt something slap me in the back and launch me forward, my eyes glanced to the left in slow motion as the thrown stone bone continued on its path and turned my sights back on a surprised Ogremon as I landed a solid flying buck to his forehead to prevent him from trying to toss anyone else into the pit.

Landing on my hind legs I gave him a quick left, right, left hooking hoof combo of while pressing forward and locking my hind legs against the floor to give me more stability while mounting the forward pressure to knock him back. I followed up by pressing both my front hooves against his chest and braced my hind legs to the floor with my wool as I fired two more 'thousand spears' into him.

Ogremon basically popped backwards and I stopped attacking him for a second by going on to all fours and crouching down. I idly noted a Flame Burst arcing overhead towards the Goblimon that sent several fireballs flying Dolly’s way.

“Hah, that was… BLARNEY STONE?!?” That wasn’t even a random noise that time Ogremon, that was just you randomly saying ‘Blarney Stone’ loudly, instead of the ‘eurgh’ ‘barf’ or the seldom heard ‘spleen’ noise that Goblimon seemed to make. I did manage to push him back into the path of the stone bone as it arced its way back for Dolly and taking that fully across his skull knocked the sense out of him. “Ooo-kay, maybe the small one isn’t…. isn’t a mascot and is battle support…”

I shifted an amount of wool to the front of my body and added the wool wolf digits and claws into the shaping before twisted my body for a twirling leap. I kind of felt like a mole doing this...

“Magical Drill Claw!” I leapt forward into whirling dervish of slashes and Ogremon barely blocked with his bone, but the magic portion bypassed his bone and started to tear him up.

“Agh, okay, ow, EURGH, BARF…” Each rolling claw slash pushed Ogremon back further and further up until I finished my twirl raising my left hoof high and bringing it down on Ogremon’s chest and raked him from chest to thighs with a massive magic claw. “SPLEEN!”

Despite all the clawing he was still standing, but now he was breathing roughly.

“Okay, I might understand ‘BARF’, but how did you get the 'spleen' noise from that?!” Okay, maybe I was a little bit irate about the funny noises the Goblimon and Ogremon kept making.

“That’s because we Basher Bullies are just that awesome!” Ogremon announced happily despite the pain he had to be in. “Now come on I still got some… EURGH?!”

Canard came in with a painful overhead blade first blow between Ogremon’s eyes, at this point I don’t think anything would make Ogremon stay down as he staggered again.

Dolly gave me a mental heads up that Tankmon was aiming for Canard and about to fire, I inhaled and the pushed off the ground to tackle Canard out of the way.

“Pom?! Why did you…” Canard started to ask only for Ogremon’s chest to erupt in a fountain of pain when a metal projectile embedded in it. Looking over my shoulder I saw that Tankmon was bowled over by Frizzle a second later.

I looked back to Ogremon as I got off Canard and we both stared at him gasping and standing there with Tankmon’s projectile buried in his chest.

“Okay… that stings... a little...” Seriously Ogremon, at this point a lesser being would be dead by now or sucked into a vortex like a Goblimon. He calmly sat down, which prompted the tank shell to explode in his chest and knocking him over. “BLARGHFLARGLE… okay… I give… that one took the fight out of me. What do the mighty heroes want with me, it better not be stupid like free weapons or something masochistic…”

A Flame Burst immediately hit Ogremon when he tried to surge to his feet knocking him back down and cauterizing the ugly blast mark into his chest, stopping the leakage of what passed for blue cube like blood for a Digimon.

“Yeah, probably shouldn’t have tried that...” What I wanted to know was why Ogremon hasn’t disappeared into a vortex yet, he can’t have that much stamina left in him… right? A splash of purple liquid landed near Ogremon's head and started eating away at the ground.

“You do not want me to hit you with that.” Dazzle stated with a glare.

“Let the weapon go.” Canard pressed Ogremon into the floor with the blade of his hockey stick on Ogremon’s neck.

“Okay, no more tricks, no more fighting, I give, for real this time.” Ogremon even relinquished hold of his bone club and held up his hands in a sign of surrender. “Just know that I’m going to come back at you later stronger and fiercer than ever and my Goblimon are going to continue attacking you as soon as you try to leave. Also this was just the kind of motivational fight I needed for getting stronger, now get on with it… what’s you’re heroic motivation in all this?”

“Tell us where Etemon is… or at least tell us where Octomon is.” Canard state while holding his hockey stick at the ready as Ogremon coughed and gasped in pain.

“Ooh… information that only I have at the moment, nice reason for you to be here as any.” Ogremon was quite affable and chatty despite trying to knock us into a pit or harm us violently. “I know where Etemon is, but if he’s you’re main target then I know where we’re going to meet up for a fight again so I can’t exactly go telling you that. Might send an envoy Goblimon to tell you later when I’m ready for the big brawl. As for the big purple horned pot headed squid with the swords, guns and a perverted streak a mile wide that’s probably on weed thus making the who pot headed thing a double entendre, yeah Ultros is not going to be hard to find once you hear he has his place in the northwest near Jijimon’s Territory. The beach bungalow is where his Monitamon gather on the shore, probably hanging out in the safety of the digital waters and he’ll definitely come out for some of your female companions in bikinis… the guys slimier than I am and I am totally impressed with that fact. From what I hear, he’s planning on getting the karaoke bar and Ferris wheel under his purview soon, so you might want to quickly get back over that way and fight him into submission. As for me… I’m activating my Backspace System now, since my base is actually set to where Etemon currently is…. I’ll be waiting for you and will better than ever next time, thanks for the evil motivation, MWUHAHAHA!”

With that demented laugh that made me shudder, Ogremon soon suctioned into a vortex taking his bone club with him and leaving a massive amount of credits behind that absorbed into the three present Digivices.

We stood there for a few seconds and heard a crash and then turned around to see Frizzle slamming Tankmon’s head into the wall left of the entrance several times and caused a portion of the walkway above to fall down.

“Ack?!” I yelped when I felt a blasts of flames hit me and quickly rolled on the ground to put the fire out, Dolly quickly helped me with that and we both glared at the Goblimon at the throne.

“Like the boss says, we are not done hounding you yet!” The Goblimon at the throne that attacked me was quickly blasted by a rocket from Sami, this also destroyed the throne of weapons. As if Ogremon needed more motivation to fight us later if he were to find out about that.

“Sorry, got distracted by Frizzle’s fight. Let’s move out, we’re so done here!” Sami stated from above as she loaded her tube weapon again and fired a spray from her rifle to clear the way up the stairs.

We quickly made for the staircase, passed the destroyed throne, went past the door and onto the walkway by Sami who brought up the rear. I stopped and so did the others, when a thought occurred to me.

“Okay, wait… how are we going to deal with Frizzle? We can’t leave without her.” I asked as Sami continued to fire at the Goblimon still coming out of the two doors to the left and right of the throne.

“Well we’re certainly not leaving her like that either.” Dazzle said gesturing at a roaring Frizzle who held Tankmon aloft above her head with both claws and then slammed him into the ground spine first with a nasty cracking noise. “Do we… do we have to fight her?”

The badly battered and beaten Tankmon quickly disappeared into a vortex, then Frizzle turned her gaze to us with wild eyes as the nearest living things around with energy building in her mouth.

“Everyone dive!” I leapt off the walkway towards the once shifting floor at the entrance of this warehouse place, Dazzle landed on top of my front half and Canard landed on my back half. Well at least I broke their falls… Dolly halted her momentum before she hit the floor and Lit came out of hiding to hop onto her back.

Looking up I stared at the hole blasted by a wave of raw sound, similar to what Bathory to her surroundings did while dynamic maximized in evaporating solid matter with pure sound.

“Yeah, that’s definitely Hyper Voice...” Dazzle stated in a dazed tone with a hint of fear as Frizzle turned to us and was opening her mouth for another attack.

Several things attached to and exploded against the back of her neck in quick succession, knocking her down and face first into the floor.

“Hey over here, I know you’re a bit distracted by the digital hazard, but we need to get out of here like yesterday!” Turning to look at the beings that just threw those explosives and shouted at us with urgency, we saw a large wheeled sled like vehicle with five blue Commandramon. The one driving had veered the back end of the flatbed vehicle to facing us. One of the Commandramon that threw the series of explosives was tentatively aiming his rifle at Frizzle. The other three were firing at the Goblimon at the entrance or those trying to cross the left walkway. There was also Uver riding on a strange plant motorcycle digimon, he was also motioning for us to hurry while giving Frizzle a curious and equally frightened look. Looks like we just got some backup on getting out of here, I was getting quite tired of having to fight my way through the city. “Hurry onboard, before that distorted Growlmon gets up!”

We quickly went up the ramp that was lowered for us, as Frizzle was slowly getting into a standing position and began roaring at us.

“Punch it!” One of the Commandramon screamed while quivering at Frizzle’s berserk fury as the vehicles wheels squealed and we were on our way out of Ogremon’s place.

This was soon to be followed by Frizzle smashing her way through the entrance after us, sending debris everywhere in a terrifying display of endurance that she was still going after all that fighting with Tankmon.

298. Cross-Dimensional Phone Calls.

-Equus, Abyssinia, Palicoast, Jaded La Perm-

“So…” I started to wonder if Tianhuo was going to be alright after I asked a rather unusual question.

I had many friends, stallions, mares, my new brother Gallus, his friends I helped kidnap to go on vacation to the beaches in Abyssinia which were nice this time of year and among my friends one was functionally one of the most competent guards I’ve ever run across in my life.

Tianhuo was not the perfect guard, since no one could be out and out perfect, but she was flexible on being friends with me as long as I was not performing anything she considers illegal in front of her. She knows I do illegal things, like just about everyone does, but it’s catching me doing them with evidence to support a conviction that is ridiculously hard to do.

Finally, Tianhuo responded with a sigh as she looked to me. She got along so well with Fizzy ‘The Tempest Queen’ Berrytwist La Perm and I wondered how well she’d get along with me when I wasn’t being an active roguish jerk.

I gave her a wide eyed, lip quivering, cute kitty assault with my clawed hand clasped together.

“Fine, I will join you in your therapy sessions.” Nice to have you on board Tianhuo! “If only to help you stop from being a nuisance to everyone.”

“Why would you ever make me stop being a nuisance? I’m close to being the world’s best security consultant, being annoying is a part of the job!” I knew Anubis was going to be quite angry with me when I bring Twilight into the next session after putting a small wedge of cheese and a tortilla over her horn. Some extra distractions couldn’t hurt with Anubis the god of Death and Psychological Health, the jackal was very much friendly with his pastime with talking people into living longer. Nicest god I know, next to Sekhet anyway, when he wasn’t running around with a nightmare parasite. “Besides… I know what it’s like watching someone be in danger and not being able to do anything about it.”

Considering I had to watch Fizzle lose her horn when she was filly… while I was basically wandering around as what was basically a disembodied ghost for thousands of years. I’m just glad Fizzy went the angry villain route instead of the sadder route.

-Airship Mauled, Paprika-

“So how’s the pregnancy going Paprika?” It was Oleander calling me on a crystal ball, it was so nice to hear from one of my friends that probably needs a hug because they can’t find Pom.

“Meep.” I answered.

“Yes, I miss you too, though I think Fred might still be a bit wary of you. How goes the inability to get near your wives?” That was the sad part about all of this, I couldn’t touch them until I had my child.

“Meep!” So much to say and so little time.

“Well the socioeconomics of it alone seem fairly okay from a standpoint. Though I think it would destabilize things further so I would say no, that’s not a good idea Paprika.” I considered Oleander’s words carefully and nodded. “Do not try to help the world economic problems and let them stabilize on their own. I think general madcap antics will just make things far worse, also please remember Jaded La Perm rule three in the ‘Jaded’s so bad at math that we’ll all die if it was required from her for any reason whatsoever’ pamphlet.”

“Meep?” I questioned.

“I’m sure you’ll do fine as a mother Paprika, you could always talk to yours. Your biology only stops you from approaching your loves, it doesn’t stop you from approaching the rest of your family. They can even come to you to help out.” Oh, that’s an idea, I could talk to mommy and daddy she could help me with having a cria given she’s done it so many times! “I’d run it by Doctor Bones first before attempting any traveling, also don’t some alpacas live in Airship Mauled. I’m sure they or Ratatoskr would be able to get into contact with your nomadic tribe Paprika.”

“Meep!!” I stated jovially.

“Nice talking to you too… now if you’ll excuse me… DIE PIZZA MONSTERS!” Turning around Oleander blasted a monster made of bread and cheese that was slowly encroaching upon her with dark magic from her horn. Her friend Buttina, in a large bipedal machine, was slowly being overwhelmed by giant pizza slice faced monsters and blasts noises were happening every other second. “I know you belong here in Dimension X, but I’m taking you out of this world!”

“These guys are worse than the xenomorphs Oleander, there’s cheese everywhere and it’s clogging my ride armors servos!” Oleander’s friend Buttina screeched. “I’d actually prefer the molecular acid to this!”

That’s when Fred grabbed the crystal ball and the call ended.

My friends were always so busy doing fun things. I knew it would take a long time, but I didn’t know it would be so hard to take care of a life inside me and carry it for so long. I gently wrapped my belly in a hug, I wasn’t able to do fun things, but soon I would be doing the most fun thing of all… raising my cria.

Now I needed to write to my mother, father and maybe my brother the snow cone king. Maybe they can help with Velvet? She’s been getting rather cranky that Arizona won’t fight her because of her condition and Arizona is upset that she can’t give Velvet the kind of exercise she actually wants.

Arizona doesn’t mind being abused violently, but she was understandably quite afraid to give as good as she was currently getting.

At least Tinsel has been a big help, he was a very good ice sprite. Even if he was focusing more on Velvet than me, he still made and set aside time for me.

Once I get my cria out of my belly, I’m a hugging machine again!

Oh… wait… maybe I should have told Oleander that we know where Pom actually is? Ah well, I’m sure she’ll hear about it eventually and will join the Tambelon Mission once Pom is finished with the stuff she’s currently doing.

-Ransei Region, Violight Capital, Violight Castle, Castle Dungeons, Jail Cell, Pom-

At least they let me keep the Arceus device to contact Tianhuo with and our Digi-vice’s. They didn’t know what the devices did, but the Pokémon guards of our cells decided they weren’t weapons or armor. Not to mention my travel bag or satchel was also left to me after they searched it.

“I’m kind of upset that they put Lit in a jar… it would have been quite cruel to do to the little guy if there weren’t holes in the lid.” Dolly had made her opinion on this situation known quite loudly multiple times and verbally.

Despite the time disparity caused by the digital world, the communication device Arceus gave me basically had charged only the same amount as the time we’ve been missing. As could be expected from the amount of 'real' time involved.

I think our Digi-vice had more charge for calling Dolly's home than Arceus's device did, then again this device didn’t have an interconnected world to use to make the energy cost far less than the crossing of dimensions it took for me to speak to Tianhuo.

“You can call them you know… I’m sure we’ll get out of this situation if we just be calm and reasonable and talking to some of your family members might calm you down.” What I was more worried about is the fact that Skull Chaosdramon X might breach into this world far easier than he would into the digital one. It was a possibility, but I think it would be easier to fight Skull Chaosdramon X in a place of weight and a lack of energy the Digimon needed to be at their full capacity where they would be stuck moving around on the ground. “Frizzle and Sami have been rather quiet.”

“I think the they realize and acknowledge that the situation is a bit tense and are likely not adding to the possible trouble their presences might cause.” Sideline was at least put in the same cell as Calumon, having been the only other one to take the paralyzing electrical attack well aside form Lit. He calmly let it happen as there was no way he could fight off every single Pokémon guard in this castle by himself. “My support abilities are going to be heavily limited in this world, they are most effective on machinery and digital entities which this world seems to lack in significant amounts. My full dog transformation, aside from an increased tracking ability, is slightly better in physical combat prowess but it denies me most of my Digi-bot forms support capabilities. I am sorry to say that I am not going to be of much use here, my abilities are all based in the parts that I’m equipped with. If we can resolve this situation peacefully without hurting anyone, then I will remain calm as I am able ma’am.”

“This place doesn’t seem very nice.” Calumon whined from the cell Sideline was in.

“I think Calumon is referring to the fact that they have your friend Dazzle currently muzzled.” That was somewhat understandable Sideline, they probably don’t want her spewing poison around even if she wasn’t going to do anything. To be fair Dazzle had told us that Salandits and Salazzles were feared and we’re seeing some of that fear openly here if they’ve muzzled her. I couldn’t exactly see how they muzzled her from this cell, but Sideline had no reason to lie. “At least they don’t seem as worried about your friend Canard.”

“Yeah, I’m okay… mostly.” Canard muttered. “At least the air here is fresh and real, though I could do without all this static energy in my feathers. Also I could use some clothes. Any ideas?”

“None at present Canard.” Though we would be best at talking our way of this situation… barring that I could squeeze my way out of the cell and we could fight our way out, but that would mean we wouldn’t be welcome in Violight ever again and we might need to come back here. Also there’s the fact that they had paralyzed us so easily making escape a problem. “I’m hopeful things will work themselves out, because otherwise we’re stuck in here.”

I hoped they would at least feed us, aside from that I was just going to sit here waiting for my device to be ready to call Tianhuo about this slight setback and several other things. Right now though… Dolly could still call her family, well the rest of her family that wasn’t already present.

“Going to call your family? I mean, we have little else to do at the moment. So might as well talk to someone right?” I was glad for that pizza from the last digital realm night currently sitting heavy in our stomachs, not to mention the light breakfast we had before setting out.

Dolly took a deep breath and then exhaled before putting on a weak smile.

“Yeah, okay, might as get my one call right? Maybe get my family working on getting us connected to Canard’s friends at least.” Yeah, Dolly hadn’t taken getting shocked into immobility very well, also they considered her skateboard and helmet armor and weapons. Dolly pulled the Digi-vice from under the Pecha scarf the guards allowed her keep. “Uh… call Dalmatian family?”

“Calling family, connecting… please wait a minute or two for cross dimensional communications to occur.” Yggdrasil.sys apparently had multiple copies of herself, one in each Digi-vice at least considering the one in the digital realm said we’d be cut off from her.

-The world where dreams ‘can’ come true, Camden Town, 101 Dalmatian home, Deepak-

“Meow-wow-wow-wow….” All was peaceful, all was… some loud ringing disturbed my peace and I flopped off the couch and onto my face and looked at the tablet.

Perhaps it was Bentley calling Dawkins to discuss technology again? Who else would be calling us? We do not have many contacts aside from ones with several hero teams and the Mcduck Family, Rufus of Team Possible did sometimes call to discuss meditation techniques with me given he has incredible control over his incredible mystical monkey powers.

I quickly padded over to the slab of technology and answered the call, much to my surprise it was my prodigal elder sister that has left on her journey on the other side of the portal that was the screen and I can see some… bars behind her?

“Dolly, it is quite nice to hear from you, have you come back from your journeys?” I asked calmly, though the sight of bars was significantly worrying, my sister was clever and attentive to her surroundings.

“Deepak… so it worked? I’m calling from an alternate reality, how cool is that! Anyway as you can kind of see things have gone a little… bad… recently, also I learned that I could make interdimensional calls on the device Domarch…” My sister suddenly became very quiet and disturbed, it still tears at her what happened to the youngest accepted member our family has had to date, besides Dorothy who was happy and healthy even if she misses Dolly greatly. “Left… behind…”

Why the Caper Canine plush toy was Dorothy’s knew favorite toy given the immense resemblance to Dolly, quite a few of our siblings had one thanks to Hunter Dalmatian’s contributions to our family.

“Hey Deepak, Dolly could use some calming down and I wanted her to talk to you guys. We kind of need your help with something.” It was nice to see Pom too, even if her face looked like a slightly smashed grape, something we dogs have to avoid due to the lethality of the fruit to us, and she had obviously taken a rather nasty injury lately leaving it severely bruised.

“I will help in whatever capacity that I am able, although I am not exactly the greatest dog when it comes to technology. Also I do not believe I have the capacity to transfer across dimensions so my form of help is most likely to be spiritual.” I knew Technology was brother Dawkin’s thing. Innovation and sights always set on the future, but never missing living in the present given the rest of us are making sure he doesn’t. “If there anything I can do to help you, then I will do it if it’s within my capabilities. Maybe some meditative chanting or a chance to talk to anyone in our family?”

“Yeah, there is something you can do to help, but it’s nothing urgent at the moment. We’re kind of in a prison cell in an alternate dimension in a country full of electric creatures that zapped us and then threw us in here after a rather relatively easy escape from a strange reality connected to this one. I really doubt there’s much you can do on your side of things. We’re not going anywhere fast.” Dolly seemed to want to move forward regardless of her feelings being a bit on the lower side of things, she still kept her optimistic personality that things will work out. That was nice to see despite the pain she was holding onto in her chest. “I just wanted to do some talking and get my mind off the situation we’re currently in, I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff since leaving our world. Anything you want to ask about Deepak?”

“Are their meditative practices in other worlds as well?” I was moderately curious, given my sister is calling from another place and time.

“Sure thing, but you know me, I’m not exactly really going to ask around about that kind of stuff.” It seems my sister was the same as always, but she could meditate as well as I did if she put her mind to actually doing it. “Just need to pass some time… say are you still in contact with that gang of thieves? We need to contact that hockey team of vigilantes, the ones with the uh…”

“Hockey as a religion thing Dolly, Canard basically lives and breathes it. Deepak we need you guys to get into contact with the ‘Mighty Ducks team of Anaheim’. As Dolly said, it’s not immediately urgent, but we need you to tell them we’ve found their lost friend ‘Canard Thunderbeak’. I’m sure they’ll have some varied reactions to that, also tell them that Wildwing will still be team captain if he can make it back through whatever hoops we’ll likely be jumping through. They’ll certainly want to hear where he’s been.” Pom answered because Dolly tended to forget some things she considers unimportant at times. “Aside from that I’ll let Dolly continue to talk with you, she kind of needs a bit of a pick me up talk with family, outside of me I mean. Nice to hear from you Deepak.”

“Nice to hear from you too Pom.” I said with a jovial manner, it swelled my metaphorical heart to know and hear that Pom was taking care of my sister as much as Dolly was taking care of her.

“Pom-wha-the.. gah… don’t tell him that!” Snorting at Dolly getting embarrassed, I started giggling.

“I have all the time in the world for my sister at present. I can also get some others in on this call if they are not too busy as needed or requested.” If I were a betting dog, I would even say Dolly would want to talk to Dylan to harass him into having fun. Dylan has been recently training extensively for the space program, he still wanted to be the first dog on mars and the McDuck Clan were willing to make that happen for him. “Everyone has been doing fine Dolly, do you want to talk about how things are going for you?”

“Fine, let me tell you how we ended up in these jail cells…” Dolly rolled her eyes, but I could tell she was happy to hear my calming voice. “Well it started when we first came into this world, apparently Pom and her friends have a thing about ending up in valleys a lot…”

-Elsewhere in Ransei, ???, Skull Chaosdramon X-

With a roar the monster flopped into a mass of snow having breached into Ransei and started slowly stomping forward on its legs to hunt for its target, the lack of digital world energy making it slower.

It looked towards the sky in the direction of the moon, where on the far side of it the Moon Cell commanded it to continue the hunt.

It didn’t know which direction to go in, but any sign of civilization was its focus now.

-Violight Castle, a few hours or so later, Jail Cell, Pom-

“So we escaped that realm and ended back up here in Ransei, yeah I certainly feel better getting that off my ches… whoa.” Dolly finally noticed that her brothers and sisters were listening to her with rapt attention. “I still got it huh?”

“That you do Dolly!” Deedee said happy to see her older sister.

“Yeah, except this story is much better because it is all real!” Dizzy echoing her sentiments.

“We don’t mind you exaggerating stuff Dolly, but in this case the actual truth is quite farfetched and really hard to believe… if it weren’t for our ancestor’s friend being a zombie chicken and you have several people with you that can confirm the story.” Dawkins motioned to Spot who was relaxing off to the side with several of the puppies.

“You have an electric tick and you’ve been letting it live on you?!” Yeah that seemed like the thing Dylan would get hung up on entirely, even I was a little iffy about Lit being a large tick at first.

“Hey it’s an alien tick and Lit is a really cool little guy… who’s currently been trapped in a jar for a while now.” We heard loud squeaking of sadness in the distance. “Poor guy… so did you guys write that information you needed to deliver to the Mighty Clucks guys.”

“Its ‘ducks’ Dolly… also yes I’ve written it down. We’ll take care of it and see if we can relay you to them the next time you call. The tablet is about out of power so you might want to end your call now.” Dylan had all the puppies around him whining about that. “Don’t worry guys I’m sure Dolly, Pom and their friends will be fine, I mean they’ve made it this far together right?”

“Bye guys, I’ll try to call again when my situation is a bit better than being stuck in a prison cell. I’m sure we’ll get out of this soon enough one way or another.” Dolly was a lot more chipper as she listened to the sound of ninety plus puppies saying bye to her. She then turns to me as she attaches the device back to her the band on her neck. “So… going to call Tianhuo?”

“Yeah, it’s about time for me to do so anyway.” If there was one thing that could make me calmer, it was talking to Tianhuo. “Just a few more minutes to wait.”

-At this time, throne room, Ginchiyo-

“Approach.” One Eelektross floated forward, the two limbed eel bowed his head to me and waited for my go ahead. “So… what do you have to report of the strangers that have appeared in the castle?”

“We have several reasons to believe that they did not get past the guards and our defenses in question were never breached Queen Ginchiyo. It seems they came from elsewhere through a portal of unknown make, not related to any Pokémon could be capable of making. As such it is safe to say we are not under threat of invasion by Ultra Beasts.” That was a comforting bit of news to received, but I would not let up my gaze just yet. “Among their things we found only a few things that could be seen as weapons or armor. If you wish to bring in someone to interrogate the Joltik, then might I suggest the psychic Raichu we have on retainer. Otherwise a number of them appear to be outsiders and one of them was carrying a rescue Team Badge.”

“Any signs that the rescue team badge was stolen?” Though why someone would bother with stealing one was on my mind.

“No Queen Ginchiyo, it does not appear to be stolen. The scents on it point to the wooloo like outsider being the holder with no other strong scents other than those who have been around her.” Well my guard just gave me a point in the favor of letting them go, but they still arrived in a curious fashion within the center of my domain. “The badge itself seems to belong to her.”

“Have any mystery dungeons appeared nearby?” It would be terrifying if natural disasters started occurring in Ransei, I had to be sure of this bit of information.

“I have sent out scouts to check, but it doesn’t seem to be the case Queen Ginchiyo.” That was one less problem and stress off my mind, but it seems the Eelektross wasn’t done reporting. “Now as to about the Salazzle’s presence, a Salandit was seen in the presence of the wooloo outsider earlier this very day in Voltsburg. It has apparently since evolved, its unnatural size notwithstanding among the many oddities our prisoners present… the Salazzle might be a royal and a ‘Noble’, but not strictly a part of Viperia.”

“There was some news of a runaway princess heading for Ignis, she has apparently found asylum and friendship. If this is her then I may wish to speak with her eventually… very well remove her muzzle, but warn her of taking any rash actions before doing so. As for the Joltik have our Psychich Raichu come in and carefully find out what has occurred from as much as the Joltik can remember without harming him, I can easily recognize one of the citizenry that so feeds off our lovely lightning towers.” I turned to the other Eelektross that was acting as a personal guard for me in case an assassination attempt was oncoming. Now it seemed that the intruders were only here by happenstance or for otherwise benign reasons, at least it would appear that way. I still had some room for doubt. “You, follow me, I wish to speak to the prisoners personally.”

I got up from the throne and started making way towards the dungeons.

Either they were innocent of any ill intent or they were very good about hiding a vile plot. I was beginning to believe it to be the former if a Rescue Team was here in Ransei and not for the constant disasters in other parts of the world with the labyrinthine mazes of the mystery dungeons. I’ve been in two, one was part of my ascension rite to the throne where I had to battle the thunder beast Raikou.

-Jail Cell, Pom-

I looked at the floating metal spheres with magnets, dull eyes and screws sticking out of them. They were interesting and didn’t seem to be focusing on much, they were definitely Pokémon and a little weird biologically speaking.

They probably wouldn’t do anything to us as long as we stayed in our cells, rarely saw them move or do more than blink, the blinking pupil thing was a bit disturbing though. Now I had to call Tianhuo and I would only have ten minutes to tell her how my time disparity days have been.

“Okay…” I called Tianhuo and she immediately picked up.

“Pom?” Tianhuo said with a smile that turned into a frown when she saw my face, she was apparently on a beach? “Are you alright?!”

“I’m fine, the swelling is going to take a while to go down.” Her concern for me always left a warm fuzzy feeling in my chest. “No permanent injuries so far Tianhuo. Also I’m in a jail cell right now because some things happened.”

“I can tell.” Tianhuo said while staring at me with a continued hint of concern.

“Instead of talking about that, have you ever been concerned that I don’t have a formal schooling diploma.” The boggled looked I that that was my current concern and not being stuck in a jail cell awaiting judgment for appearing in the middle of a castle unannounced like we did was a bit silly. She seemed to be quite ready to talk on the subject of choice. “It’s never exactly come up in Huoshan that I haven’t been to a school since I was a little ewe.”

“I haven’t necessarily been concerned personally, for you are a very bright individual and have learned every lesson with high marks when it comes to guard training.” Okay yes, there didn’t seem to be any issues then Tianhuo, but I’m surprised nobody questioned my lack of ‘professional’ schooling. Not that lambkin schooling was professional, but we did have the books required for advanced learning. “That you are allowed to teach guards how to work with canines in the HCD should tell you that it is not much of a concern in Huoshan and you are a trusted member of the community, as long as you can show you that have an education of some kind or a greater knowledge of a subject then it is a moot point to have a piece of paper telling you that you are smart. Though getting a formal diploma would be a personal goal to seek after you have returned to Equus. What is your current situation and how did you become imprisoned.”

“Long story short, I ended up in a realm that is connected to this one. It has some time disparity issues and we came out about three hours after going in and spending days in there. Unfortunately our exit point was not the same as our entry point.” Which leads to our current situation with being imprisoned, I’m actually quite understanding about being in a jail cell really. “We came out in the middle of one of Ransei’s castles and the guards had an insanely impressive reaction time, since while we were still getting our bearings they paralyzed us with electrical energy immediately, surrounded by at least twenty guards and well… here we are. That and the queen was where we appeared, so they definitely had the right to detain us considering the fact that we could have been hostile forces. My face isn’t a result of them taking us down, they were surprisingly gentle in that regard.”

“Were we to have those guards in Huoshan, then we would likely never have to worry about Jaded stealing anything again.” Tianhuo got me giggling quite a bit, despite how much it hurt to laugh at the moment.

“Heh, no, I think Jaded would still try and find a way… she would even wear a rubber suit if she had to. It would certainly absorb the shock waves that stunned us.” I could see a gentle smile on Tianhuo’s face and sighed. “I can tell that things are going to get worse before they get better, but at least I’ll take this as a decent break.”

“I too feel stressed, do not believe that I don’t when it comes to your safety. Which is why I am on a beach with friends who can ease my worries, but the worries are still there knowing you are not where I can be by your side to face the troubles ahead of you.” Tianhuo was of course talking about the fact that Arceus probably wants me to do something huge. “We are as prepared as we can be on our end knowing what’s coming, what else would you like to talk about?”

The small talk afterwards was the most relaxing part about all of this. I said my goodbye to Tianhuo and the call disconnected after we declared that we loved each other openly, I heard a throat clearing behind me.

“Who would that have been I wonder?” The large quadrupedal lynx like cat with black and blue fur with accents of yellow throughout beyond the bars was sitting patiently. Ginchiyo had quite a stern look on her face as her body sparked with lightning energy. She looked like she could stare right through me with her red ringed yellow eyes.

“My wife, of whom I love dearly and only get ten minutes of time to talk to a day.” I answered flatly with a snort. “I thank you for not interrupting our conversation as we have much to say and so little time to say it in.”

After a moment Ginchiyo blinked, then looked ready to carry on as if what I said hadn’t caused her to pause for a second.

“Then you’re welcome to keep your devices as long as they do not interrupt the security of my realm, it seems to have a tint of the divine of a legendary to it and aside from it, the Rescue Team Badge speaks greatly of your character.” That was nice to know Ginchiyo, but where were you going with it when it comes to releasing us? “However, I wish know how you came to be here and I will have one of mine corroborate your story via psychic powers, I do not wish to be deceived by good impressions. To that end we will interrogate the Joltik, I wish to get a picture of a possible threat to my kingdom if there is one to be found. You will be held here for a few days, but you will not be treated poorly, I swear this on my honor as queen of this kingdom. Now… what was your purpose here Salazzle, what did you and your comrades come to my kingdom for originally? None of your comrades will speak up on this matter, I want to hear it… from you.”

“I was just traveling with my friends and wish to return to simply Aurora after we were done making sure nothing horrible was happening here.” Dazzle answered, they had recently removed her muzzle. “Trouble has been sprouting up in Ignis, Aurora, Greenleaf and Fontaine. Greenleaf has had recent internal issues, but apparently they resolved that on their own. Aurora has been plagued by Riolu and Lucario banditry, but that has been stopped due to the efforts of many of the normal types. Ignis is in the middle of a volatile civil war that threatens to spill over into other territories. Fontaine recently had a monstrous vampiric creature draining people of their blood and torturing them, they even had dynamic maximizing capability while controlling the minds of many of Fontaine’s soldiers.”

“Hm… so you are not a lover of Viperia I take it, understandable though curious that you grew so large. Would all of you be more comfortable in a single cell together?” After asking that we all had an obvious answer to Ginchiyo’s query.

“Yes!” We all said at the same time, even Dolly matched the sentiment with her emotions.

“Very well, guards, blankets and pillows for our guests and let them share this cell, except for the Joltik. Keep him seperated from them. They are not as of yet esteemed as far as guests go, but I am a little less concerned about their presence in my kingdom and more concerned about something happening in my kingdom altogether… if, they are telling the truth. Make sure that they get fed.” With that Ginchiyo turned about and walked off. “I will have several envoys confirm those happenings you speak of and will personally see if your story corroborates with the Joltiks. The bad happenings occurring in various kingdoms seems to be of an epidemic quality, which is of great concern to us as well given that we have not heard of such issues happening down south. Quite concerning indeed... I'm only being more lenient because you did not choose to be here, but you still trespassed upon my castle intentionally or not.”

Ginchiyo stalked away from us looking thoughtful.

Author's Note

Who's going to be the Aurora Kingdom envoy to Violight to help Pom?

Crazy Captain Skeeball- Because we need an insane skitty that has done delegate work before, mind you riding in on a Wailord might be seen as an act of aggression to be shot down with lightning. Her personality also might be a bit much.

Chaos Dragoon Jiri- Because we need a slightly clumsy Buneary who causes problems almost every time she uses Bounce, she's also leading around a unit of tough bear Pokémon. At least as long as she stays grounded she should be fine and Celebi won't die again... hopefully...

Cleric-al Error Geoff- Because the lovable persistent pervert is cuddly... and is likely to hit on Queen Ginchiyo enough times to cause an international incident to the detriment of everyone involved.

The Brigand Riffrat 'of mildly low intelligence' Teeth- Would you seriously trust a dark Rattata, especially this one, with something as delicate as peaceful negotiations to help release Pom?

The Chansey known as Chan- The correct option since they are a healer and Chansey are good at peaceful negotiations, but what are the chances of her being the one they send given she's constantly busy as the best medic of a kingdom with relatively incident prone Pokémon?

It's a wonder Aurora doesn't have even worse problems than Ignis on the horizon... which is why Shanty, Smolder and Ocellus are now going to be back in view.

313. Wild Wooly Wonders.

Author's Note

...

Geoff's Theme Music for this whole page: You Say Run- My Hero Academia.

313. Wild Wooly Wonders.

-Equus, Seaquestria, Twilight-

“What do you mean she went on vacation, to where?!” Apparently the vacation destination was private and I couldn’t even begin to guess where it was, the guards looked a bit reticent to bother their queen who ran two civilizations. Sighing loudly I ran a hoof slowly over my face. “Look, can you at least let her know I needed to talk to her about something that’s moderately urgent at her soonest convenience?”

“Sure thing ma’am, when she gets back. She’s always so busy so it’s a first for us to hear she wanted a vacation. We’re not about to disturb her and Princess Skystar’s mother daughter bonding time.” The male guards here were quite efficient and competent considering the aquatic megafauna they have to deal with.

On land I doubt they’d be about as competent as my guard without Fizzle in it. The less said about paper bags and the inability of Equestria’s guards to fight their way out of them, the better. There’s a reason why we paid Jaded La Perm as a security consultant and threatening training aid.

The vacation actually sounded quite important given how busy Queen Novo got after the Storm King situation was dealt with. If she was a workaholic like Celestia was, then she clearly deserved it.

“Wait… Skystar has more cousins than us in the Hippogriffs and Sea Ponies like me and Terramar?” Silver Stream, who I asked for some help from, looked entirely confused to hear this news.

Apparently Silver Stream had thought Princess Skystar didn’t have too many cousins beyond her or her brother, there was something she wanted to know now too judging from the look on her face. Most likely who her other cousins were and why Novo had never mentioned them.

I was certainly curious too.

Maybe…

“We’ll find out about that later Silver Stream, may I be escorted to the local library please?” Underwater libraries of Seaquestria were very precisely kept, because written word was hard to get underwater unless you had magic ink and used special seaweed for paper. I was also curious about how schools worked down here too… I’ve been meaning to look into Sea Pony education, Hippogriff education was well known to me already thanks to Silver Stream’s father.

I might as well turn this into an educational experience since Novo wasn’t here, I might actually find something in my research.

-Pokémon world, Kingdom of Pugilis, Pummelton Indoor Super Stadium and place with an unfortunate acronym, Smolder-

So Pom beat the ever loving snot out of Dolly and got battered, bloodied and bruised herself… yet Pom was still going. Dolly did surprisingly give Pom a lot of trouble, though I think that was because Pom didn’t use magic claws or her wolf transformation thing.

The most medical advice that the Fighting Types around could give about Dolly was either the healing spring or seeking the nearest Medicham they knew of. That or some berries for when she wakes up and some bandages with some rub to help with the bruises right now. Fighting Type Pokémon tended to rest off most of their injuries, they were all about pain and gain what with the muscle parade going on around here… kind of like dragons in a way.

Kind of why I liked it here.

How have we gotten so far on so little medical knowledge in the group with the injuries we’ve incurred? Dormarch was bound to be our medical professional until… yeah…

It was beginning to concern me how many worlds we’ve been to and long term sickness didn’t seem like a thing that would happen to us.

Even I knew it was impossible to visit foreign places without picking up at least something if you weren’t inoculated to it. I didn’t just go to Equestria without seeing a doctor first before being pushed into the School of Friendship that Twilight created.

Could have used someone like Dr. Bones from Airship Mauled or Dr. Sweet Heart from Ponyville on this journey because Pom has looked like a constant mess after a certain point in this journey. Yet she was a constant mess for our sakes and still found the time to talk to us, which… she wasn’t currently doing.

Speaking of our lambkin friend, she was standing there waiting for her match with Geoff to be called up.

Ocellus had pointed it out, Shanty pointed it out and even I pointed it out, that we were all quite aware that Geoff wasn’t exactly subtle in wearing a yellow mask with smiling faces on it and pretending to be something larger than life.

Now Lucha Mundo, there was an interesting and colorful guy.

“So what exactly did you teach Geoff?” There, I put it out there.

“I did not teach any Geoff, I taught the Wild Wrestling Wooloo, a fantastically quick learner of the traditions of wrestling, which are Honor, Family, Tradition… and Donuts!” The bird guy stated with his beak held high.

Next to him was Dazzle’s friend Frizzle and she was silently chomping away at the honey glazed donut sticks called churros. Apparently a unique form of energy in this world was thin and it made it hard for to stick around, she was quiet, hungry for baked goods and felt like she had a dragons demeanor hidden under her moderately cute and tough exterior.

“What, did you need money and Geoff had enough to pay off your debts or something?” I said bluntly and the guy started sweating.

“Maybe, but I still have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to this Geoff character.” His accent was nice at least, but he wasn’t a very believable liar. I stared at him and he sighed. “You are not buying this one bit are you?”

“I don’t think anyone who knows Geoff is buying it, even Lit wouldn’t buy it and he’s kind of close to being what we’ve heard of feral Pokémon where those Mystery Dungeons are thing.” Well as close to feral as Pokémon got around here, on other continents Pokémon who lacked intelligence somehow gotten it beat into them.

I’m noticing a disturbing lack of schools around, I mean aside from all the dojos in this one crazy sports happy kingdom, and yet these Pokémon can build civilizations with lights, indoor stadiums with multiple combat rings and castles?

Yeah, this place had similar tech levels to Equestria at times and there wasn’t much explanation for it. According to Ocellus, Fighting Types cared about spectacle and sport so apparently their technology reflected it in its entirety. It’s like how Pom told us about lightning powered structures in Violight.

I bet a Pegasus would have fun with a job for creating lightning as a power source, a power source that only requires water and atmospheric friction. Something Ocellus and I were becoming good at given how we’ve supported the recent battles Aurora’s gotten into.

Speaking of Lit, the little guy was currently wrapping some of Dolly’s wounds with silk as Ocellus helped him. He was cute, friendly and ultimately deadly if you underestimated his ability to blast a lightning bolt into you on a moment’s notice. Hard to believe the little guy’s species could paralyze someone and then eat said person alive, they were living bug zappers and Dolly probably wouldn’t have ticks or fleas as long as Lit was around.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen Dolly do more than hand Lit a berry once come to think of it, yet the bug seemed incredibly healthy. We haven’t known Lit for as long, but apparently he mostly takes care of himself and was smart enough to ask for help or food.

I quietly made my way over to Pom who was sitting off to the side looking thoughtful and her eyes were still somewhat hollow. After that fight one would have to wonder what’s going on in her head. She seriously didn’t want to hurt or kill Dolly, that wasn’t up for debate, but the whole golden glowing wool thing needed an explanation as that had happened on Pom’s command.

“You don’t want to talk about it?” So I decided to broach the topic in a different way.

“Yes.” How did Pom make it sound so hollow?

“Going to at least get your injuries checked?” As the competition was going to have top twelve winners, Pom and Geoff were the last two in their block to determine who got first or second place here.

Of the four blocks, the top three winners from all the battle blocks can volunteer for a free-for-all battle afterwards. For little incentive more than proving you wanted to have bragging rights over others, that and a slight extra monetary prize depending on the number of opponents you could bring down and not winning the whole overall thing after the blocks were done.

The tournament was a little weird, but the fights had been spectacular to watch as the runners of the tournament seemed to pair capability and merit pretty well. Probably why Pom even got to fight that Machamp guy and he didn’t even seem angry about losing to Pom the way he did.

“No.” Again, it was a single word answer and no explanation, Pom really had issues at the moment and I didn’t know if I could even help with them. Ocellus didn’t look like she was about to try either, but I was of the opinion that we were giving Pom too much space to sink into her own head.

“Worried that Geoff can actually beat you in a fight?” Now this was supposed to be a goofy left field question, yet Pom hesitated and looked to me.

“… Yes…” That… really Pom? Sure Geoff was one of the most reliable guys in fight, in fact he stayed standing through most of the fights we’ve been through, but you were actually worried… about him? The gentle Wooloo with a heart of, moderately to extremely perverted, gold?

“Really?” I actually asked in surprise and Pom smiled a bit as she glanced at me with a bit of life in her eyes.

“Tired.” Coming from you Pom, the word could be and mean of a lot of things. Tired of being bloodied, beaten and hurt, tired of being put through a whole lot for our sakes, just tired in general… that word could have meant positively anything in reference to the definition of it. “Hurting. Might prove to be too much… looking forward to it...”

“Contestants Pom Lambchop and Wild Wrestling Wooloo…” I didn’t bother listening to the announcer as Pom started to move forward past me, she glanced at me and gave off a wan smile.

“Thank you…” For what Pom, not pushing about the golden glow thing that destroyed an entire ring with raw magic? You’re not going to explain yourself of course… and I haven’t exactly pulled the dragon card with her as a ‘Huoshan Guard’ for most of our adventure and I wasn’t about to do so now.

“For what?” So I asked for clarification.

“For being a friend.” Pom coughed a bit and chuckled weakly. “Dolly might tell you eventually or Tianhuo might, but… well… we’ll see…”

“That bad huh, doubt whatever it is would really stop us from being there for you.” With a pause and her back to me, I saw Pom look back at me.

“That’s kind of what I’m afraid of…” What, Pom was afraid of us staying close to her?

We’d fight tooth and nail for Pom… ah… oh… we would do that wouldn’t we…

I watched her go to the ring where Geoff was waiting with his silly mask on. Sure he was being rather silly, but he did beat several Fighting Types and that was said to be quite hard for a Normal Type Pokémon.

Pom’s still putting too much pressure on herself to get us home safely and this world… it’s completely nuts if a dragon like me can have my scales be so easily punctured.

I calmly ran my claws over the shattered scales and winced as the pain skyrocketed throughout my body, had my wound been any deeper… well not to worry because it hadn’t been. Taken down in one blow again, where was my pride as a dragon?

Probably right where I left it, gathering dust when I became good friends with Ocellus, we were both from strange places.

Things are always so… complicated… dragons try not to think too deeply about things considering we’ll outlive almost everyone we could come to love as a friend that wasn’t another dragon and any bitter resentment can last centuries for us. We are more ruled by our need to prove we existed and were strong, that’s it. We really weren’t strong when even the smallest thing like a microbe and some sickness could fell the mightiest of dragons, we weren’t overly complicated either.

Something as small as an illness felling a great and powerful thing that was impervious to most forms of injuries is how Dragons usually died, usually because the sickness that could make a dragon sick was one that could survive and thrive off the internal temperatures of our bodies.

We could build a civilization worthy of note and would be remembered forever, but we were too lazy to do what the Longma did… functionally feeling secure in our might and power, where showing weakness such as love outside of privacy was a foreign concept for us.

Changelings could survive for as long as they were loved, whether that be open or not a Changeling would feel it. A species based around emotions meets a species that refrained from outwards shows of emotion, the joke writes itself.

I wonder what Changelings felt when revulsion wasn’t the first reaction to meeting them, I would know what Ocellus felt. She could practically taste my utter curiosity when she transformed for the first time, she went from being the fake dragon she was hiding as to the cute little bug I have come to know and love.

Back to here and now, I’m still somewhat surprised Shanty could even put up something like a fight after the kind of battering that messed up her body and if Dodo hadn’t been there… from what I heard her shouting had slowed down an attack that would still have killed her even with Dodo’s help.

Thankfully that strange Hideyoshi guy showed up to save her. Heard Hideyoshi seemed to have less sense about things than King Evan and I had thought that, like many things, to be impossible. This world was as weird as it was amazing, kind of like home in a bizarre sense.

“Hey, Ozzy, do you think Pom will lose to Geoff?” I asked as took a seat next to Ocellus.

“Maybe… I think Pom wants to lose, to know that she gave her best and still couldn’t push above and beyond. She probably direly desires the feeling of mediocrity, because she’s only excelling and pushing so much for our sakes. At the moment I think Geoff is aiming and willing to give her that feeling with the amount of determination he’s putting out.” That Ocellus and the fact that Geoff was making quite a showing among the Fighting Types for Aurora. If I were to look at it from a dragon’s perspective, he’s at least showing that Aurora wasn’t weak by any stretch of the imagination even if most of their military is out of action.

-Pom Vs Wild Wrestling Wooloo (Not So Secretly Geoff after what would be considered an insanely fast crash course in wrestling with a dubious trainer that is a Hawlucha that goes by the name Lucha Mundo.)-

The referee for this fight was a Crabrawler, a large purple crab with two large bone colored horns above its head, four blue tipped legs sticking from its lower torso and two large blue claws that… again… resembled boxing gloves like numerous Fighting Types had as a theme.

“Please don’t destroy this ring, we only have so much budget to rebuild them with… even though we built them to be rated for taking Fighting Type attacks worth of punishment, but you wouldn’t be able to tell that with how you two broke or completely your fighting rings. Each of you to a corner, this is a special title bout between you two.” They proceeded to follow the referee’s instructions, who was only going to step in if someone was about to die or grievously injured to prevent permanent injuries, the referees around the stadium were surprised that these two hadn’t caused anything close to a permanent injury… not for the seeming lack of trying when they broke their fighting rings in respectively amazing ways. The Wooloo in particular had their currently referee spooked given Geoff was glaring at Pom with a set jaw. “In this corner from elsewhere and beyond, the wooly outsider whose speed impressed all who can even see it as much as her insane fighting techniques have… Pom Lambchop! In that corner we have another white wooly wonder who is the dark horse of this competition in the block he’s in, the Wild Wrestling Wooloo… whose name is apparently Geoff! A wooloo that’s known for a being a Cleric, a good militia unit leader in Aurora, his favorite color is blue and he likes fire roasted apples.”

“… awww…” Geoff was upset that his identity was given away so readily, not that he was hiding it all too well in the first place being the only Wooloo within miles of Pugilis. Some Pokémon might have even thanked the fact that the problems in Ignis stopped Wooloo from traveling to here and elsewhere to bother Pokémon everywhere, aside from all the deaths that incurred because of all the fighting.

Geoff had wanted to do the whole dramatic reveal and everything, not that he was doubting anyone who knew him wouldn’t be able to tell it was him already. It was the principle of the mystique that was wrestling that he keep his identity secret until after he’s won the battle or not. The smiling faces on his mask were representative of Ditto’s simplistic face too.

“Can we get this over with… please?” Pom asked dully.

“Ready…” The crab brawler backed away from the center of the ring raising his right claw. He slung it forward as he backed away. “Fight!”

Pom immediately launched forward left leg primed to ram its way into Geoff’s smiling masked face, only to be utterly surprised seconds later when he went onto his hind legs and used Cotton Guard.

Geoff grabbed her leg with a single hoof at the point of impact with his wool and kicked off the floor with his three other legs and brought her into a one leg lock where he was standing on her back.

Pom struggled as Geoff got his right hoof under her right leg around its pit and then let go of her left leg while avoiding Pom lashing out at him and then he got his other hoof under her left legs pit.

Geoff started squeezing Pom tightly and her eyes widened as the pressure became somewhat familiar to her.

“Let the power of hugs compel you! Let the power of hugs compel you! Let the power of hugs compel you!” Geoff stated loudly as he held her tightly from her back.

-Airship Mauled, Paprika-

It was quite nice to see her father and brother, even if she couldn’t approach them what with the pregnancy problem and it was annoying that she couldn’t even approach Velvet or Arizona. At least she could hug her mother… that was one hug she would have felt bad if she couldn’t give it directly.

Her right ear twitched and Paprika stared off into the distance for a bit, then shrugged and felt like hugging her brother and father anyway even if the pregnancy was stopping her from almost approaching just about everyone personally.

Paprika was anything other than fine psychologically, physically she was eating healthy and for two. So she just separated most of her wooly fluff from her body and sent it off to hug others in her stead.

It wasn’t quite the same as a personal hugs upfront that she was itching for direly, but she loved her brother and father all the same. It was nice that her family came here to help keep her spirit up, who knew that this stuff would be so hard? There was only a mild concern as to who was watching the rest of the cria in her family back in the nomadic alpaca tribe, but she was sure they were fine.

“So does Paprika need more healthy premixed drinks to keep up her strength?” She looked up and saw the stallion Mr. Liquid Refreshment talking to Kuril about her, Airship Mauled had really nice people and so many families that look out for one another.

It was a good community, especially with everyone looking out for her family.

-Pom vs Geoff-

“What are you doing Geoff… compel me to do what?” Pom stopped struggling for a moment to ask this dully.

“Huh, might have thought you were possessed by a Ghost Type Pokémon with the way you were acting, maybe I should just try to cheer you up while winning the fight.” Despite the fact that they were supposed to be beating each other into the ground Geoff was still as amiable and friendly as he ever was. “Also I am a Cleric, working an exorcism in was just a guess on my part as to what was wrong with.”

“Just fight me…” Despite the fact that Pom had upset Geoff with her words, he nodded and increased the hugging pressure on Pom.

Pom leapt up and fell back first.

Geoff’s Cotton Guard protected him from the impact, but it did make him lose his grip on Pom. He soon quickly rolled onto his hooves as the jet of a Thousand Spears passed by where he just was.

Pom was fast, but Geoff started moving faster than anyone had likely ever seen him move before, he was using a Pokémon move called Agility to avoid Pom’s attacks. Even Pom’s Dancing Flame was kind of hard pressed to keep Geoff in sight before he tackled her with a flying glomp, then lifted her up to slammed suplex her into the floor.

Afterward Geoff tried to leap onto Pom to do a knee drop and pin her in place, with a single inhale and exhale Pom blurred out of the way and into a standing position on three hooves as her left hind leg lashed out and struck Geoff’s wool as it fluffed out to cover his masked face and he hopped backwards.

Pom proceed to aim her hind leg and fire off a Thousand Spears from her hind leg with a bucking motion.

Geoff dodged and then did something that really surprised her, as her wool was pierced with a Thousand Spears attack fired off from Geoff’s left hoof?!

After piercing through her wool, Pom felt her body get struck with a large amount of raw blunt force instead of an expected sharp pain.

This was Geoff after all so he notably didn’t want to seriously hurt or injure Pom, maybe just knock her out.

“What in the…” Ocellus stated from ring side.

“Geoff apparently knows Agility, Protect and Electro Ball.” Dazzle interrupted with an impressed look as Geoff started a duel of Thousand Spears sending jets of air across the ring as they dodged and jumped around. “He also apparently knows the move Copycat, didn’t think it would actually work on beings other than Pokémon... this might actually be decided on how he decides to interpret things. Also there’s something about that mask he’s wearing.”

“It is a Lucha Mask, it has certain ‘unique’ mystical properties.” Lucha Mundo stated with his arms crossed as he smiled proudly at Geoff. “I have a request to make of your leader, whether she wins or loses it does not matter, as I will make it all the same. She takes commissions, yes?”

After hopping around the arena firing Thousand Spears, Geoff really hopped Pom didn’t figured out how he replicated her move and that he could only replicate one ‘unique’ move at a time. He couldn’t copy simple attacks, it had to be absolutely and particularly ‘unique’. He also cottoned onto a special technique to hold onto a specific move for ‘Copycat’, it required him to not physically see another move or use a move himself.

Geoff didn’t know blind fighting techniques, but he could definitely improvise whatever technique Pom might use.

For some reason Pom skidded to a stop for a moment and so did Geoff, Pom let out a growl and then…

“Awooo!” Once Pom finished her howl, her wool shifted and took on a more wolf like appearance with her wool taking the shape.

A mischievous sparkle appeared in Geoff’s eyes.

“Awooo!” Geoff performed the same wool shift and even got a good idea of what it did as he did so, soon he too was in Sheep’s Clothing mode. Instead of looking like a wolf, he resembled a small Lycanroc.

Pom glared and leapt at Geoff attempting to slash at him with her left claw, the unfortunate problem for her was that any buffing abilities a Pokémon used tended to stack.

Agility, plus the insane Sheep’s Clothing boost and some good old natural Pokémon battle instinct had Geoff moving at a speeds far exceeding what Pom could. The fun thing for Geoff about Pom having done this… even if she used a different move Geoff would still be in Sheep’s Clothing form if he used copycat since the form counted as a constant passive buff.

As such Pom found her eyes going wide when Geoff slammed into her from the left side after seemingly teleporting there and slapped her into the nearby ropes with blunt left paw. Geoff still stuck to his principles regardless of the power boost and would continue to just try and batter Pom down.

Geoff also used another Cotton Guard and the shape of his wool hardened and thickened in place while retaining the boosting ability, as Pom slowly pushed herself off the ropes with gritted teeth.

Pom couldn’t armor herself while her wool was wolf shaped as it was too busy enhancing her body’s capabilities. It just meant she had to be more careful as Geoff was surprising her even more.

With a roar, Pom charged forward and inhale as she went onto her hind legs and swiped a magic right claw for Geoff. She exhaled and dodged to the side and barely managed to keep up with and out speed Geoff to kick him with her left hind leg.

As he flew backwards Geoff added another stack of Agility to himself and then blinked out of existence, Even when Pom started inhaling she began to realize something. Geoff was staying far faster than she was as she exhaled and tried to hit several blurs with claw swipes only to find them to be after images.

Pom had not thought Geoff as much of a threat to her, they were friends even if he was annoying, but in this case she was horrified by what he was truly capable of as hoof strikes started to slam into her body as if from out of nowhere.

She quickly wool shifted back to her basic ‘steel wool’ form and tried to figure out what to do as she protected her face from an onslaught of high speed hooves that reminded her of her Full Feral Flurry move.

One would think wearing a bright yellow mask covered in dopey smiling faces would make Geoff easy to follow, there was nothing more than an indistinct streak moving around Pom trying to pummel her through her wool. The impacts were quite numerous and hitting with a lot of strength, had she stayed in her Sheep’s Clothing wool shift she would have been quickly defeated.

Pom concentrated and sniffed the air, flexed her ears and inhaled slowly trying to think of a way to retaliate against the nearly invisible outline of Geoff moving around and laying into her.

Nodding to herself as she continued to inhale, Pom launched herself straight up with the wool from her hind legs springing her up and then angled her mouth downwards and exhaled a bone chilling powerful howl that shook the entire area around the ring with a powerful wide coned torrent of energy.

This came with an effect that was a mix of a Bark Blast, Noivern’s Boomurst and sounded like a banshee wailing or Shanty extending a pirate shout. An attack that hit the entire ring and slowed Geoff down immensely. Pom’s Howl Blast was less concentrated than her Bark Blast, but it hit a much larger area and was impossible for Geoff to dodge.

“Ngh… I’ll not let you win if it means you staying like this!” Geoff had kept moving in the hopes to avoid a raining showers of Bark Blasts, he hadn’t expect her to do something new that could slow him down and the pressure of the noise hurt a lot.

Pom landed and was immediately on him a slash of magic claws with her right hoof, it didn’t penetrate Geoff’s wool as he reared back using Agility to build distance and then fired an Electro Ball point blank as Pom followed.

“Ggggg-gggg—ggg.” Pom grunted while fighting through the pain to lunged forward at Geoff to slam him in the face with her left hoof hard straight.

Geoff was sent flying back until he was bouncing off the ropes, he used the momentum to hit her with another Eletro Ball before bodily slamming into her with a flying right knee to her throat gagging her from launching another Bark or Howl Blast attack.

Pom couldn’t ground herself in the ring and both electro balls had hurt a lot, she still managed a nasty blow to Geoff’s chin with her left hind leg raisin him up into the air, she leapt and brought both her hooves down in a hammer blow to slam back first into the floor of the arena.

Unlike Pom who was open to attack while in Sheep’s Clothing form, Cotton Guard was making up for what would have been Geoff’s lack of defensive ability as he was up and firing another electro ball.

Pom being in the air was hit by the full brunt of the attack before she could manipulate her wool for a maneuver and shrieked before hitting the floor, she quickly rolled out of the way of another electro ball and then decided to try something different.

“Are you okay…” Pom took up a stance and readied her right hoof.

“Funny you say that, because I want you to be!” This had been a particular moment Geoff had been waiting for all fight, a chance to end this without hurting Pom any worse than he had to. He had to put a stop to her current demeanor.

“Buster Wolf!” Pom shot across the space between them in a blink with her right hoof leading and covered in the friction flames, Geoff went on to his hind legs and then jumped upward and forward as Pom’s initial blow missed.

Pom braced and fired off the angled pillar explosion trying to catch Geoff in the air, she missed there too.

Geoff’s smiling face pressed against Pom's. Nose to nose as his entire body seemingly rolled up her forehead and over her back, Geoff brought his rear legs in and bucked her in the center of her spine forcefully to kick off and away from Pom.

Pom’s chin slammed into the floor and she let out of shout of pain.

Geoff looked at Pom sadly as he gained some distance with Agility and then said something that drove a cold chill into Pom’s battered form.

“Are ‘YOU’ okay…” Pom looked up wide eyed as Geoff mimicked her stance that she had just used a second ago except he would be leading with his left hoof.

Pom inhaled and exhaled as Geoff shot across the distance between them with a sad smile.

Geoff wasn’t about to tell Pom he had once copied this move from her prior to this battle at some point and then tested its every last limitation. Pom could have been using this far more inventively than she had been and Geoff was about to show her that despite all the jokes about Wooloo… he was truly a genius in a fight.

His left hoof lashed forward and Pom dodged to his right, like he knew she would, he braced and then smiled.

“Buster Wooloo!” Instead of the eruption pillar happening in the same direction he was aiming, Geoff had basically pulled the wool over Pom’s eyes, it instead appeared in the exact direction Pom was dodging into and exploded directly into her with full force.

The pillar of energy engulfed Pom in a conflagration and she shrieked in slow motion having been caught entirely off guard.

She was pushed back towards Geoff and would have passed by him, had he not launched his right hoof forward at her forehead.

His hoof and the sudden brain jarring change in momentum almost made Pom lose consciousness, then the back of her head and the pressure on her skull did just that a moment later when Geoff put her through the floor of the ring and shattered it entirely.

“Winner… by knockout… Wild Wrestling Wooloo!” The Crabrawler was stunned, he thought that Pom was tough contender. The Wooloo was clearly the insane one with tactical acumen like that.

Despite the cheers that rose up, Geoff’s only concern was Pom and he carefully pried her from the ring and gently carried her off to the side.

“I wish for you to find the peace in your heart.” Geoff leaned down and kissed Pom on the forehead, then tears sprung from his eyes. “Cresselia, I beg of you, hear me, give this lost one peaceful rest! Show her dreams of her loved ones, her wife and her family… she more than anyone else in the world needs you now and may your love Darkrai eat her nightmares! Darkrai, I know there’s a stigma behind your nightmares, but I believe your nightmares to be heavenly and beautiful as Cresselia’s dreams, please help this little unworthy Wooloo’s earnest wish come about! HELP MY FRIEND!”

-In a border slightly beyond reality, Darkrai and Cresselia-

“Oh my…” Cresselia a Pokemon of peaceful rest and dreams heard a plea so strong that it drew both her and her beloved Darkrai to Pugilis in an instant and they looked down on the Wooloo crying over an outsider with his nose raised to the ceiling and hooves held up in prayer.

“... he… even asked for my help…” Darkrai looked into the nightmares of the being and boggled at the intensity, if someone were to use Pain Split on her right now… he shivered at the thought.

“Very surprising to me as well, but can you truly eat the nightmares plaguing her?” Cresselia asked with her little paws held up in prayer.

“If I can’t, then we both know I’m going to very well try my best to at least steer the nightmares into something productive.” For how often did someone call upon the Pokémon of nightmares and sleeping terror to fix something?

It was rather unprecedented, but together… they would listen to a Wooloo’s plea and bestow the best rest Pom would have gotten in a long while without her anxiety or the sheer terror of what she actually was getting in the way for once.

-Smolder-

“Wow… that just… wow… holy… what the… how the…” As much I and some of the others would think of Geoff as something of a joke, that…. that fight said a lot about him and what he was truly capable of when pushed. “I can’t even come up with a cuss I’m so flabbergasted.”

“Ahem… let me be doing that, if we only be getting one this entire story... HOLY *Porpoise Noises*.” Everyone stared at Shanty. “I grew up with pirates, I be knowing how to curse like a salty dog.”

“It is as I thought, he learned my wrestling maneuver quickly and had a plan going into this fight. He fights with Honor, Family, Tradition… and of course Donuts!” Lucha Mundo stated while waving a close claw high into the air. “He can keep the mask, for he is the best student I have ever had the pleasure of teaching.”

“In the absence of Pom… what did you want to ask her?” Ocellus was already taking charge and carrying Lit over to Pom quickly, the little guy hopped off her hoof and started to wrap up Pom forehead with soft and gentle silk.

“Hola Mi Amigos, I would like to join you on your trip back to Aurora, in fact… I want to be a member of your traveler team!” Lucha Mundo stated with pride as he thumbed a claw at himself.

“Well a flying and fighting type would definitely round out our odd unit.” Quetal commented while still staring at Geoff with wide open eyes.

So what that would make it Shine, Dazzle, Favela, Quetal, Lit and Mundo?

“What about the Charjabug guy?” I asked pointing at the loaf of green bread currently getting curious looks from Dazzle’s friend Frizzle.

“Oh I’m not going to be acting as a traveler with you guys, I just want to travel around with you for a while and be friends!” The Charjabug was still as sweet and peppy as ever. “I’ll help out if you really need me, but I’d rather not do any fighting. You guys are plenty strong enough that I can travel around safely and won’t have to!”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence on that, despite the fact that most of us were utterly wrecked before we got to the healing springs here.” Those springs couldn’t work fast enough for all of us…

-A few hours later, Ocellus-

“Uh… you’re wool is still…” I tried to say to Geoff and he sighed.

“I honestly don’t know how to change back, I kind of knocked out the only person that could do that for me… it’s not all too bad. I’m at least cute right?” Geoff smiled goofily he was first place in his block and he went on to fight in the free-for-all battle. He earned a lot of money for Aurora and entered to help Pom to the best of his ability at the same time. The triangular wool shaped ears on his head shifted in an adorable manner, but I wasn’t about to tell him that or his wagging fluffy tail made him stupidly cute.

Geoff would likely look too deeply into that and I really didn’t want to think about it too hard if I said anything positive.

Otherwise Geoff was truly a hero of Magic, Kindess, Generosity, Honesty and Loyalty… laughter was up in the air at the moment, but he could probably swing the pratfall side of it what with being a pervert that constantly fails.

“Do you think Pom will at least give me one date when she wakes up?” Geoff said hopefully looking for all the world like a bright eyed puppy.

“Not within your lifetime Geoff and possibly up to ‘never’, even if you somehow become immortal through some impossibly ridiculous means.” We were stuck with a wolf like Wooloo for the time being and apparently he was also stuck with the enhancements of the wool shift as well.

“Awww…” Geoff wilted, but still he smiled. “I hope she will be okay after that… I really let her have it huh? Didn’t even need to use Protect for that… certainly had to during the Free-For-All afterwards.”

“I feel like Pom kind of needed all that stress off of her skull… so probably.” I never imagined Pom would be beaten by someone like Geoff, it was kind of amazing to watch happen.

“I have never seen so many Fighting Types terrified of a Normal Type in one place before.” Dazzle stated with honest surprise.

“Technically the wrestling mask makes me a pure ‘Fighting Type’ while worn, it only seems to work for Normal Types though.” Geoff stated while looking at the yellow mask he had earned from Lucha Mundo sitting in his hooves. “I heard rumors of a Pokémon superpower with a similar principle involving crystal crowns doing the same thing to other Pokémon, not that they can fully capitalize on a type change if they don’t have the attacks suited for such a thing. Still it would adversely change ones defensive abilities greatly. Lucha Mundo… I’ll hold onto this mask… with Honor, Family, Tradition, Donuts…. and pride!”

A teary eyed Wooloo hugged onto a teary eyed wrestling bird.

“Sorry, I’m not gay, so don’t look into this manly hug as anything more than what it is.” Lucha Mundo stated dryly, bluntly and flatly all in one tone.

“Awww…” Whined a teary eyed Geoff. “You’re feathers are so nice and well-kept though, I hope you meet a really nice lady in your future you handsome monster you!”

“Well we’re going to let Pom heal in the springs with Dolly for the rest of the day and then we’ll be heading back for Aurora tomorrow morning.” I was a little worried about passing through Ignis, but I’m sure we’d be fine. If Pom and Dolly didn’t wake up sometime tomorrow well… we’d cross that bridge because they seriously got into some rough fights.

“Ah yes, our home establishment on this continent… this place was quite nice but…” Kec-Red stated with his chin held high and proudly hefting the wait of the Kec-Merchant wares on his back.

“It was extremely profitable, never sold so much mystical training gear in so little time! Going to be hard to have repeat customers though, that training gear was built to last.” Kec-Blue smiled as he hefted a huge sack of Poké on his back. “Also snack stands are must with crowds like that, always a good business opportunity when combined with sports!”

“Indeed it is!” A jovial Kec-Red started chuckling.

“Can we make a stop in Ignis before heading back to Aurora?” The newly christened Combusken asked, I didn’t see the problem with it.

“I don’t see why not.” If it was on the way and not too far off the beaten path, then I was okay with a small detour.

327. Forest Ops 2.

Author's Note

Zelda: Tears of The Koroks has clearly driven my productivity into a hole.

Yeah, the problem is... that I'm having way too much fun lately. I can now understand why there's a feasible 256 hours of recording for the heroes path thing.

327. Forest Ops 2.

-Pokémon World, Ransei, Inner Illusio, in some random forest near a giant tree, Pom-

I sat here on the stump silently contemplating things as I stared at the fire.

“It’s never the physical scars is it?” Looking up at Canard as he took a seat next to me, I sighed. “It’s more the mental ones that’ll stick with you.”

“The reason Dolly hasn’t woken up yet, is definitely because of the mental scars.” That was my answer and I was going to ignore that my own even exist for the time being. That and because Dolly found out she was carrying Dormarch’s heart in her chest and I’m carrying his mind in my head, that’s quite scarring information on its own. Dormach can’t hold himself together without a soul and the only reason why he could do this is because we can synchronize with one another and hold together the parts of himself that he gave to us. “Come peril or happiness, Dolly is sticking to my side like glue and I can’t break the bond between us. Not that I would want to now, but Dolly knows what her choice entails because I’ve been reminding her and she’s been nothing if not optimistic. This, her being attacked in her sleep, I couldn’t do anything to protect her from Gilgamesh. Goodness knows who Gilgamesh will attack next once he recovers from the damage we dealt to him.”

I definitely wouldn’t break our bond before, but I wasn’t certainly going to let someone else do it now. Not with what I knew about having a part of Dormarch just sitting around inside of me. Dolly and I barely dealt him any damage, but Dormarch… I he actually really hurt Gilgamesh. We kind of need Gilgamesh to be hurting, to be hesitant to use that form of attack on us again.

I doubt I could have as easily repelled him from Shanty, Smolder or Ocellus’s mind. Gilgamesh obviously chose the target that would hurt me most and he was definitely asking for comeuppance quite loudly. He was even basically asking me to come and get him, to stop him from committing atrocities. I was going to try to at least, but even I saw the writing on the wall on this one.

“… What do you have on them?” Canard received a glance from me as everyone meandered about the campsite interacting with one another, he was giving me a well-meaning look that this was an obvious distraction from my thoughts.

I took it for all it was worth and actively swapped to thinking about the people we ended up camping with. Shanty and Favela hanging out, Ocellus was spending time with Smolder, Lit was being protective of Dolly, Dazzle was playing a game with Frizzle by drawing in the dirt. Quetal was glaring at the Ponyta and Cotton with, curiously enough, an amount of distrust. Shine had disappeared off to somewhere. Mundo was just exercising and making loud grunting noises and he flexed his muscles.

None of the people we knew personally were doing anything unusual. What Canard was asking about, was the Ponyta Prowlers and Cotton Murkrow.

“Ponyta Prowlers, been here for about two weeks after the crash they said they’ve been through, look at the ship and how the ground around it has been displaced by the crash. The ship was at one point almost split in two, but the keel held together. They’ve been making good repairs thus far, but there is a reason they are asking us to procure the two things they need and are not doing it themselves. I think something is up with that.” I was murmuring what I’ve noticed about them. “They have somewhat honest intentions involving us, but I’ve noticed they haven’t disclosed the exact thing that brought them to Illusio in the first place. It’s likely something to do with Gilgamesh, but they are trying to get to Cerebrum City and happen to be going our way. Though their dubious intent does have my hackles raised for some reason.”

The leader of the Psychic Type Ponyta was cheerful and friendly, yet there was an underlying something to it. The medic equally so, but more pure in actually being friendly and cheerful, the others were a bit more serious or a little less exuberant and I’m fairly sure none of them were faking their personalities in the least.

Inky Dye was the face of their group, someone to draw attention away from the rest of them once you’ve noticed they’re their. She was the one I suspected of something unusual, but I had no evidence of it… yet.

Lumber Spry was in fact a medic… a combat medic, she has blood on her hooves and that was not in the process of healing others, it probably haunted from what I was reading of her character and how she acted about someone being hurt. She likely had a pathological need to make sure the people around her were okay, she likely didn’t like causing pain unless absolutely necessary.

“And the black bird?” Canard queried after scrutinizing the wooden airship.

“Cotton is in fact a spy as she says she is, but her level of importance is what I believe to be actually vastly understated. I believe she is ‘The Spy’, as in the top one of her kingdom. She absolutely doesn’t care if people knows she’s a spy, so she might have reason to believe she’s just that talented enough to not be worried about anyone knowing who she is. She flew off at some point earlier and I believe she was doing us a small favor for a later payoff. Likely delaying the groups you say that stopped our previous route for getting to Cerebrum City as led by Mentalis.” I glanced at Cotton resting on a branch with a sprig of hay sticking out of her beak her belly full of good soup. I didn’t mind cooking for big groups, I had spent a lot of time making homemade dog food for my familiars as well as fun snacks for myself growing up. Tianhuo also loved my cooking, she might not have had a good home cooked meal in a while since I’ve been gone. “Cotton is actually trying to endear herself to us for some reason. I’m getting the idea she wants to take advantage of us being around and is helping us out so we’ll scratch her back when she needs us. None of them are necessarily good, though I’d give Lumber Spry a fair shake. Cotton has worked something out with the Ponyta, at least within the last three days or so considering how well they seem to know each other and she’s wary of them.”

“Right, I’ll keep that stuff in mind. So what do we do about the help the Ponyta want from us?” Canard was rubbing the underside of his beak as he glanced at our groups and then looked at the Chrysalia Irregular unit that set up a defensive perimeter. Ninjask currently couldn’t fly and even Heal Pulse could fix his damaged wing and it needed time to regenerate.

That would take a few days and we might not have that kind of time.

“I just need to ask them two questions before we do anything, like help them acquire what they need to get that airship back in the air. Since obviously there’s a reason they haven’t done that yet as repairing the main part of their ship would take a week at best from the fall damage… yet they’ve scouted exactly the places where to find the resources they needed and didn’t bother grabbing said resources themselves. They’ve been surviving off the land for the last few days and were ravenous for a cooked meal, so they all have a talent for natural survival, but not civilized survival.” As if that didn’t smell, I saw Shanty look my way and I nodded to her. She nodded back to me that she had in fact noticed something. Good, at least I’m not the only one paying attention since I woke up. “I have my suspicions of a setup, but not what kind of setup. There’s possibly third party stuff going on in Illusio that may have nothing to do with Gilgamesh or the currently forming disorganized rebellion.”

Fleer kind of dropped the hint what with her friend Abby being able to quite literally detect incoming disasters, someone might be doing something behind the scenes to either help or hinder the situation or just doing their own thing which might have a knock-on effect. It is quite unfortunate that I’m going to be, and always will be apparently, dragged into such things.

“So ask your questions, we’ll have the Chrysalia and Violight guys keep an eye on things.” Canard was likely more willing to trust the local militaries we were allied with, they had authority and were here on the idea that something was happening in Illusio that needed to be investigated. I very much agreed with the sentiment that someone needed to watch this oncoming powder keg carefully to make sure that it isn’t set off. They were also quite friendly to us and had right to be wary of the odd happenings in Illusio.

I had an idea as to what Gilgamesh was going to do and he needed to be stopped completely before whatever it was happens. The build-up of psychic energy in the Illusio region was the only clue to that and anything requiring a buildup of so much energy was never going to end well.

“I think I will.” I cleared my throat and looked at the Ponyta, strange fluffy colorful curly hair and a whimsical feel about them. I mentally compared that to the Rapidash called Red Hare that basically tore everyone that went near him. No matter how cutesy they may act, any Pokémon is still dangerous. “Excuse me, I have two questions for your group in particular if you are willing to answer them.”

“Okay, what is it?” Inky came over to me and sat down with a smile on her face.

“First question, you told me about a Pokémon named Inkay and its ink being needed as fuel for your airship. You mentioned that said ship was made of quick burning, if sturdy, wood. So what are you going to use the ink for if it’s not for burning?” That question from me seemed to bring Inky up short as she flinched a bit as her nose crinkled up cutely, probably didn’t expect me to notice that the airship doesn’t have something like a burner. I was taking from what little I knew of airships from Equus and trying to apply it here.

“Well… we definitely won’t need it for burning…” Okay, but what did you need it for Inky? “Any fire applied to Fairy Wood would be really quite bad in any situation as we’ve told you. Wouldn’t use the wood with fire unless you need a small bit of the wood to quickly start up a campfire. In that case I would use other kinds of wood for a longer lasting fire.”

“Elaborate on what the ink you need is for then.” I just stared at her.

“Okay, we specifically need some Inkay ink for its rather unique properties. Normally burning ink would help make a balloon inflate. We don’t need to do that.” Inky seemed a bit shifty about explaining it in full, but she eventually relented under my gaze. “Given Inkay ink can make things float in the air under the right circumstances, it’s actually how Inkay float or fly around. They can’t use their own psychic energy on themselves to levitate like other Psychic Types, because they are partially Dark Types they are functionally incapable of using their psychic energies on themselves. They can still certainly use those energies on other people.”

“So what you’re saying is, you do something and the ink suddenly becomes viable for flying purposes?” Ocellus asked as she came over to us. “So that’s how the ink would fuel the ship to fly?”

“That’s my explanation exactly.” That wasn’t deceit, just nervousness, but Inky was still particularly worried about something all the same. “That’s why it’s needed as fuel, fuel that doesn’t run out unless we lose the mass.”

They lost the entirety of whatever they were using previously for the balloon to their airship, but it might not have been Inkay ink specifically. I wasn’t about to ask what the propulsion was or their previous fuel source happened to be, but I was concerned about finding out.

“Why would you be having problems getting it then?” Shanty stated as she came into the conversation as she came over to sit next to me with Favela. I’ve only asked one question and they were going to help me keep to the two questions by asking their own, nice to know that they’ve caught on to something as well and are going to assist me with this. “You look to be having a fully ‘healthy’ unit and you don’t be seeming to be being that weak to me.”

Hmm… Shanty was getting good at scrutinizing the strength of others, even then she’d still fight even if she was outmatched and thought there was something worth fighting for.

“Before you say anything, you have a healer on hoof, you could have left at least three of you to defend the airship if that was the issue and the other three to go after the Inkay ink on your own at least.” I wasn’t going to say anything about the Leavanny quite yet.

Inky Dye said that the Leavanny that they wanted nearby was surrounded by Pokémon that were either feral or being driven insane by the psychic energy build up in the region. They couldn’t split off three of them, or four if Cotton were to join in being a recent acquaintance of theirs, and still have enough in numbers to safely deal with whatever was going on around the Leavanny. I’m currently making several assumptions here about the situation, aside from already being told the Leavanny is one of the ones being driven insane.

“The Inkay can spray their ink, mostly as defensive maneuver that’s not a Pokémon related move and they can be rather aggressive after they’ve blinded you. Usually they only do that if you’re immune or strong to their mental manipulations. We could use the ink from their evolved form, Malamar, just as well. Inkay are easier to get to… squirt for the lack of a better term, and are far less dangerous. However, there’s a strong chance that an Inkay will turn into a Malamar upon expending an amount of ink that keeps them in the air, we’re quite wary of any Inkay flipping upside down and threatening to evolve into a Malamar on the spot afterwards. Any Inkay that flips upside down has a chance of that happening.” Inky shuddered and gagged as if she was going to throw up, there wasn’t a full explanation as to why they hadn’t succeeded in acquiring this ink yet. “I wouldn’t want to hurt the Inkay anyway, but Malamar are bad news for us. Stronger, larger and most importantly a fairly aggressive partial Dark Type that has some powerful mind manipulating abilities that can even affect Psychic Types, on top of being immune to psychic attacks and only being weak to Bug or Fairy based attacks. Getting into a fight with a Malamar is not something we would ever want to do, there’s a reason why Malamar are considered some of the most dangerous Pokémon to encounter in the Kingdom of Yaksha. Even if we do have Fairy Type Moves, we don’t have many we can actually learn. Also we need the ink to be fresh and unsullied, as in not having touched anyone or the ground and just the container we’re trying to get the ink in. The last few times we tried to fight them, they actively sabotaged the buckets of ink we tried to carry away by touching the ink or incidentally making us do so. I said we need barrels and even a little bit would be getting us started on getting back into the sky.”

“Couldn’t you just ask for their help peaceably?” Thankfully this was becoming an open group discussion as Mundo stopped exercising and decided to join in the circle we had going on here.

The chain reaction of questions from one question was cascading quite soundly and I only needed to ask my other question to confirm things, the question about the Leavanny situation.

“Can we say that we already tried, leave it at that and move on with our lives?” Tried as in attempted to immediately bribe, which sounds like what you were saying Inky. The ponyta looked fairly embarrassed, apparently whatever you tried didn’t go over very well. “The Inkay Ink would be the easier task if you can figure out a way to get away from them with their ink freshly caught. Again, so much as touching or letting the ink hit anything other than a container would ruin it for the purposes we need it for.”

“Sounds like you’re field of expertise Shanty. I’m sure you can handle that well enough by manipulating the liquids into whatever containers the Ponyta provide.” Turning from my addressing of Shanty who could carry out that task tomorrow, it then went back to focusing on the Ponyta Prowlers leader with some hints of suspicion about how they would react when I ask about the Leavanny. “Okay, second question, what are the Pokémon around the Leavanny that are so dangerous that are stopping you from recruiting their help? Aside from the fact that the psychic energy might be driving them insane and we have to presumably knock some sense into them or get them close to the Morpeko unit to bring them back to their senses.”

“Scyther and their relatively hard to achieve evolution… Scizor.” There was a haunted look in all the Ponyta’s eyes, it was almost pure terror. She brought out a scroll and revealed the appearances of large green and red bipedal bugs, one with dangerous looking scythe limbs comparable to Quetals claws and the other with large meaty claws and larger thoraxes. Scizor seemed more streamlined in being built for speed and Scyther seem more built for standing their ground with heavier feet. You could tell their evolutions were related at least. “Those are not the kind of guys you want to mess with while they are berserk, not to mention the Leavanny and their previous evolutions Sewaddle and Swadloon possibly attacking us and them on top of all that.”

Apparently the Ponyta Prowlers unit from Titania, if that’s where they are really from, had images of every nearby Pokémon artfully rendered on a scroll. Leavanny in particular looked like a frail Pokémon on paper with its bug like body wrapped in leaves, but the chart on Leavanny gave me a different idea that Leavanny can get as big as a Scyther or Scizor. Bug and Grass type was an odd combination, then again so was the Inkay being Psychic and Dark.

I’m starting to see why the Ponyta were having problems. They couldn’t use their effective attacks on the Inkay to get the ink from them, as knocking them out or capturing won’t produce said ink. The Scyther looked dangerous already, the Scizor was probably a nightmare in being part steel type and the Leavanny itself must not be too bad in a pitched battle. They were trying to avoid a chaotic free for all battle and capture at least one Leavanny to assist them.

“Hm… Canard, can you take the Companions unit and three of the Morepeko to ask the Leavanny for help, if the Morpeko can generate enough of a field to remove the effects of the psychic energy in the air, then they might be more open to interacting peacefully. If they are in fact being driven insane by the increase in energy of course.” Sound plan, if the opponent is being driven berserk, then solve the issue by taking away what was making them berserk in the first place. “We’ll start tomorrow morning, Dolly should be awake by then. The other three Morpeko stay here to make sure the psychic energy doesn’t cause trouble here. I’m going with Shanty, Dolly, Dodo and Ocellus to retrieve the ink. I want Lumber Spry to show us the way.”

“Do you have some containers we can use available?” Ocellus asked Inky while getting distracted by Smolder playing with her ribbon.

“Yes, we’ll provide the barrels you’ll need to fill and get back here.” Inky answered amiably seeming excited that we were going to help out. It might be my imagination, but something still felt off about her and her group.

“Right, then good evening, we’ll start moving out tomorrow.” I went to my tent and turned in and made sure Dolly was resting peacefully.

-That night, snooping around the grounded airship, Cotton Murkrow-

Hmm… interesting.

I should probably warn my possible allies, but I don’t think they’d believe me at this juncture.

Eh, I can take care of it later. It’ll endear me to them better if I time it right, I like making friends anyway, not enemies.

I was careful not to move anything and carefully snuck my way out while making sure nobody saw me make my exit to check on the Hypno approaching or were already in the forest. We won’t have much time tomorrow, at least the Chrysalia unit will be able to set up a nice defensive perimeter. Violight group might not be the brightest colors around, but they’d likely do their jobs dutifully to keep their allies safe, Queen Ginchiyo was not of the habit of training useless units.

I saw the Hypno on approach forest and saw smoke rising over the hills and mountains to the northwest, Pom had the right idea about that town possibly being attacked.

I had some traps to set up to slow them down, maybe I’ll make some really fun ones with tree sap and some Feather Dance feathers.

-The next morning, after a quick breakfast, southwest of the Power Spot tree, Lobe Lake, Pom-

Lumber Spry was fidgeting nervously as Dodo carried the two barrels we were going to fill up. I worried about Canard, but he arguably had the stronger group and tougher mission.

Dolly was still somewhat out of it, but she seemed to be smiling as she pressed a paw against her chest. She can still honestly say she never lost a puppy, but we could still lose Dormarch if we weren’t careful with the two pieces of him that we did have.

“Remember once we have both the barrels filled, Dodo needs to run back to the tree as fast as he can go.” We’ll be doing a fighting retreat if we couldn’t do this peacefully, speaking of peacefully… “How are you feeling Dolly?”

“Come on Pom, you’ve asked me that at least thirty times, the answer is the same. I’m a bit sore, I have some mental scars, but otherwise like when you try to say it and can’t mean it. I’m fine.” Dolly rolled her eyes and was fully kitted out in her gear, helmet, skateboard and the strangely boomeranging stone bone. “Now let’s go bother some squid things.”

“Is everything alright?” Lumber Spry asked, four of the Ponyta Prowlers were left at the campsite to do some mining of psychic crystals and would be put towards actually getting us near Cerebrum City.

“Everything’s fine, I’m just overly concerned with Dolly’s health.” Honestly, I could see that Dolly was looking healthier and more energetic by the second and yet I was still worried. I was at least expecting some form of adverse effects from being assaulted in her sleep.

“She’s a really healthy looking canine to me, you sound like you take very good care of her.” Complimented Lumber as we stopped at the edge of a lake, where we could see six Inkay floating about.

They were really cute looking, if I didn’t know their little light up spots can manipulate people on sight… there’s also a possible chance of them being capable of causing epilepsy. Unicorns back on Equus had to be careful with how they flashed the lights their magic could create, certain patterns and colors of light can sometimes cause seizures in some people. At least Oleander didn’t seem to be capable of causing that kind of problem being a primarily dark magic using unicorn.

“Hey can we talk to you about something?” Blinking I looked as Charjabug waddled up to the floating squids hanging around the edge of the lake and they all gave him a flat look. I don’t actually recall asking Charjabug to join us on this side mission.

“Sure you can, but we probably won’t gab all day… make it quick, we have important lazy floating about to be doing and all.” Okay first impressions were generally on the odd side, but that was rather abrupt and rude. “Also we are the ‘Splatoon Squid Squad’ and if you’re here for our ink, then think again… because you’ll get it, but probably not in the way you want it!”

“Er… Lieson… we can’t actually use ‘Splatoon’ in the name for our unit.” Another Inkay said with a slight bit of worry.

“Well why not Greg?!” The rude floating squid stated.

“Well there is a particular unit made entirely of Smeargle, called the ‘Splatter Goon’ mercenary unit, said unit might smear us across the landscape if we do going around using the ‘Splatoon’ name.” Greg apparently answered flatly. “Also they have dibs on the branding and one of them knows how to do Draco Meteor, which implies that they survived being hit with a Draco Meteor personally.”

“Can we call ourselves the Squid Beaks unit at least?” While they were distracting themselves, I decided to get things back on track.

“Would you mind giving us some ink?” I asked pleasantly and nicely.

“Nope, not happing, especially not without an epic fight, but we can do this instead!” They all started to light up and I quickly closed my eyes, tensed up my ears and tried to keep their locations in mind in a spatial area around me. I opened my eyes when it sounded like they were done flashing their light patterns. “Darn, your aware of our tricks then. Nothing else for it, let’s do this thing!”

Lieson, apparently that was his name, fired a blast of psychic energy at Charjabug and sent him sprawling. The rest of us had to scatter a bit while having to dodge the five other bolts of energy.

“Are you sure we can’t work this out without us having to hurt you?” I asked with a bit of worry for them. “I’m sure we could do something for you or make a trade of some kind.”

“Nope, as if you could even hurt us, you’d have to move pretty fast to actually hit…” Sighing and not waiting for the Inkay to finish talking, I inhaled, exhaled and flickered to plant my left hoof straight into Lieson’s face and fired a point blank Thousand Spears on impact.

The squid Pokémon slammed bodily into a nearby tree and the bark on it crunched inwards from the impact. I winced at the noise, but they did attack first and started things.

“That fast enough?” I asked sadly while preparing the to fight the other five and have a big row with them, only to find out the others had acted quickly to take out the other Inkay as I had. All the other Inkay were already on the ground groaning in pain. So what I just said came off as more insulting than I could have actually meant it to be. “Sorry about that… but you were asking for it.”

Lumber Spry was checking on Charjabug as I made my way over to the Inkay embedded in the tree and pried them out to carry him over to her.

Shanty used the blunt backside of her cane scythe to smash one of them to the ground.

One Inkay had a highly carbonized bread loaf painfully embedded in their head, Dodo’s favorite form of ranged reprisal since losing his beam blasting capabilities.

Dolly had hit another with a thrown momentum boosted bone, which would explain the bone shaped imprint covering most of their small body. Dolly just leaned against the bone and looked at me, she was wondering if the Ponyta Prowlers seriously actually had problems with these guys and I was starting to wonder myself how these guys could cause them so much trouble.

Surprisingly Ocellus had attacked one as well and it was dazed as if blinking spots out of its eyes and its face was glittering with spots of energy, I raised a questioning brow to the changeling.

“Hearing how Dazzling Gleam works, I just fired what is essentially a glitter spell into its face.” Well it seems Ocellus was looking into replicating Pokémon moves. “It slightly continuously burns until I let up on my magic, but it’s not going to cause any serious harm.”

As for the one lone Inkay that was still floating among the five we took down in an instant, they were shivering quite a bit as Charjabug got up.

“I think they’re done.” Quite right Charjabug, wondered how Canard’s side of things was going?

-At that moment, east of the Power Spot tree in a forested region, Canard-

A hockey stick slapped across the face of the speedy metal red bug and sent it sprawling into a log I prepared myself for the others coming at us.

Quetal leapt into a kick and started using aerial ace after deflecting the Scythers blade with that kick, I had other problems to focus on. Like another Scyther coming for me with its blades raised.

I immediately found myself out of position in a blink and looked around to see Shine smiling as she danced out of the way of the blades and flicked a rock behind her into the Scizor’s eyes causing it to miss smashing her with its claw as it rocketed by. I raised my hockey stick charged forward and brought into the back of the head of the Scyther was facing a second ago.

Lit and the Morpeko blasted lightning into the mob to give us some breathing room. I wondered how easy Pom had it. As more of them came at us out of the wood work from all around us with their blades or claws swinging for the net.

A large swath of them were cleared out by a flaming whip from Dazzle as Frizzle blasted flames into one of the Scizor, they were particularly effective against the ridiculous fast Scizor.

I slung my stick into the claws of an oncoming Scizor, then kicked them in their larger abdomen. I raised my stick up into their chin, once they had doubled over, to knock them down

“Frizzle, Dazzle, keep focusing on the Scizor. Morpeko, Lit, keep hitting those Scyther!” I turned and narrowly avoided taking several bladed leaves to my right eye and even blocked a few before they could hit me.

“Va-vaannnny~!” It seems more trouble has joined the fray as several Leavanny dropped in from above and started adding to the chaos by leaping around, they even began attacking each other as much as us or the Scyther and Scizor.

We need just one of those right? I hoped the Morpeko eventually worked out with calming their madness from the psychic energy in the air.

The other evolutions of Leavanny, Swadloon and Sewaddle, started adding trouble to the mix as well. They weren’t nearly as dangerous as the four to six foot tall dangerous bipedal Pokémon surrounding us.

I can see why the ponyta were reluctant to deal with this mess, speaking of, the one Ponyta Prowler member that came with us was having problems with a Scizor.

The Scyther and Scizor seemed fairly focused despite being mad, none of them have tried talking to us after I tried to reason with them. While they did have madness in their eyes, the Scyther and Scizor had somewhat at least some presence of mind enough to not attack each other and focus on us, now we all had the Leavanny to deal with.

Mundo was even wrestling one of the Scyther physically after body slamming them with his Flying Press move.

“Mr. Thunderbeak, there’s too many of them!” Cleffa whined as she continued to fight alongside us and was hanging in there.

“Sami, can you back up Cleffa?!” I dodge another scything arm, but this time it was the leafy appendage of a Leavanny.

“On it, Canard!” Sami stated as she produced a bomb and prepared to throw it into the thick of numerous Pokémon that were attacking us and each other.

-Pom-

A pillar of smoke rose above the trees, from what little I could see through the thick overhead canopy. I hoped they were doing well.

Why couldn’t the ponyta deal with this? Sure, the Inkay were reluctant, but they still did it and filled the barrels. We even did them a favor by finding them some of their favorite berries to make up for knocking them about.

Dodo was already well on his way back to the airship with the two barrels of ink they wanted. Lumber Spry healed the injuries we caused and nothing too horrible happened.

Where was the issue or the horseshoe dropping this time? I was surprised that we didn’t see a Malamar or were attacked by something else being driven mad by the psychic energy, I’m pretty sure I saw some of the mushrooms around here moving a bit and were probably Pokémon.

There was a lot of movements in the trees and bushes, but nothing came of it.

“You might want to hurry back to the airship, the Hypno are entering the forest and they will be mighty clear on making sure you can’t get your hopes off the ground much less that airship.” I looked up at Cotton reclining on a tree branch and looking at me from under a hat of feathers with a grinning beak. “You’ll want to dig in quite quickly and hold them off from damaging our ride too much.”

I had us pick up our pace, though Cotton didn’t seem too perturbed by what she told us and stayed where she was to watch us as we started hastening our pace.

I was fairly worried that we were about to be hit by Gilgamesh’s hit squad.

“Well this did seem too easy…” Even Dolly acknowledged what I thought, but then added on to it. “Did the Ponyta even try to go after the Inkay, they didn’t seem to recognize Bumble Fly.”

“Her name is Lumber Spry and there might be Ponyta native to Illusio in this forest, the Ponyta Prowlers must have also met a different stronger Inkay.” Though I wasn’t too sure about that or much else as we quickly and quietly made our way back to the Power Spot tree and the campsite. “Just keep that in mind Dolly and watch the Ponyta or Cotton carefully if they are around and inform me if they do anything suspect.”

It was still a concern that was going to have space in the back of my head for a while, but I was willing to give them some benefit of a doubt until stronger evidence came to mind.

“Hey Lumber, I’ve been meaning to ask, why do your hooves smell like blood?” The ponyta flinched at my question and whimpered, but she still looked at me a little bit forlorn.

“We’ve had to deal with some really violent Pokémon in this forest, we… didn’t kill them.” Lumber said as she looked about as her fluffy mane glowed several pretty fluctuating colors, as if reacting to her low mood. “It’s why I know the moves Heal Pulse, Healing Wish and Hypnosis, all of them very useful in the medical field. I really don’t like being forced into combat and just want to be a healer, I really don’t like getting my hooves bloody.”

She didn’t want to elaborate on why they were bloodied from what I could smell and I wasn’t going to push it.

“Mumbler Pry seems alright to me, but eh…” I agree with Dolly, at least Lumber Spry seemed nice enough.

Don’t know about Inky Dye or the other Ponyta, who were apparently stealth experts and that’s adding on to the conflicting information I think I might be getting here. Ugh, Illusio was driving me insane even when I'm trying to resist the paranoia that is naturally inherent to me and the local energies messing with my head somewhat.

I just had to keep my eyes, ears and nose out for anything suspect from our new acquaintances, especially Cotton.

-Inside the entrance to the forest, Head Hypno-

“Our informant tells us they are camping at the Power Spot, they won’t have the ability to run this time as they have to protect the airship.” I pointed my unit forward as did the other Hypno, we had a fugitives to deal with. “Let’s put a stop to them before they can even get their ambitions off the ground!”

340. Mental Compound Fracture, Finale: Breaking Point.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Evening, Spitfire-

“Okay where’s your annoying wife and why hasn’t she bugged me to chase her in a while?” I couldn’t believe I was actually asking about or even worried about Jaded ‘Freaking’ La Perm, something was wrong with my head I know it!

What beings that Jaded bugged constantly would be worried about her of all Abyssinians?! She was annoying as all get out and even Rainbow Dash, who was one of her friends, was easily annoyed by the smarmy smiling rogue.

“Ah, a crazy cat lady is driving you insane by not being around, classic.” I believe that was the Abyssinian named Capper Dapperpaws, sitting across from him was Rarity Belle, nothing unusual about that.

“Yes, well, what do you expect when Jaded isn’t around raising havoc as much as Pinkie Pie on a bad day?” Apparently Rarity knew what Jaded was up to at the moment.

“She’s in Saddle Arabia again isn’t she?” I said dully.

“If she is, then I’m literally building a doghouse just for her to sleep in. If she sends Snickers to do something, then I’ll just be upset with her and chide her about being a bad influence on her sweet little familiar.” Ah, leader of the guard and Storm Queen herself, Fizzlepop ‘Tempest’ Berrytwist La Perm. The unicorn that was insane enough to marry a really charming chimera and the world’s most annoyingly cheeky Abyssinian.

“Baaa-~!” A tiny ewe barely managed to climb up onto the table and was smiling at Fizzle.

“You’re familiar explains so much about you…” Everyone knows what having a tiny ewe as a familiar meant.

“I still don’t understand how having a tiny ewe as a familiar makes me a pervert.” As she said this she held up a cherry tomato to the smiling ewe and it ate it in an adorable manner. “Also is Jaded like a highlight of your month or something, you really need to get out more and make some friends if Jaded is managing to worm her way into being your number one adversary when she’s already got the entirety of Saddle Arabia for that.”

“Isn’t that rather ironic advice coming from you?” My dull tone was met with an even duller look from Fizzlepop.

“Yes, it is, but I’m quite over the issues I’ve caused in the past.” Said the hard flanked mare who managed to take all of Canterlot with barely less than a quarter of the forces she brought to bear against it. Heck she only needed twenty Storm Creatures to take Canterlot, she needed thirty to hold it. “Also if my cuddle kitty is anywhere other than Meadow Hills right now, she knows that I’ll be waiting right here for her to try and explain herself.”

-Meadow Hills, Jaded La Perm-

A spine chill, aching left shoulder, right ear twitch, heart clench, the taste of purple…

“Oh come on Fizzy, I’m not nearly that bad!” I then went back to drawing a plan in crayon on how I was going to affect Saddle Arabia from here without actually going there.

Let’s see… I needed a golf ball, five gallons of nacho cheese, some lederhosen, a magical wind flute…

I stopped for a moment to take a look at the lambkin ram that was looking at me.

I shrugged and they shrugged too, we both went about our businesses.

Sure I was dressed like a ninja, but apparently I was being so low key about spying on the lambkin that they wouldn’t freak out or panic like crazy.

I’m pretty sure Twilight Sparkle would completely freak out to learn that I figured out my own version of Pinkie sense, however, it was incredibly and very specific to the people I love and care about.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Illusio, Cerebrum City, Upper Tier, Within the Prison Compound walls, Pom-

I barely had two minutes left of ‘haste’ and I’ve already taken down sixty Pokémon, there were at least one hundred more within the prison walls and a few of them were going into the prison itself while ignoring my rampage.

With one of my jumps to kick off a wall and an overhead punch of my left hoof into the eye of a Sigilyph I saw many more Pokémon outside the prison walls. I was never going to be able to deal with them all before ‘haste’ wears out.

I’ve been hit twice and my muscles were quickly wearing down from constant Dancing Flame and my wool boosting my abilities. Even when I was pacing myself, my wool does not protect from purely energy based attacks that psychic types are known for. Does help that I nearly had my bones crunched earlier by the two Meowstics.

I rode the Sigilyph to the ground and then kicked off into the nearest wobbuffet, it would be dumb of me to attack them with an energy based attack. I just had to knock them out in one hit, if I hit them with an energy attack then they’d reflect a ranged attack with more power back at me.

To no one’s wonder, I was being exceptionally careful around the Wobbuffet, at least Destiny Bond didn’t work. My bond with Dolly apparently superseded the effects of the Destiny Bond move, though Dolly did mentally say she needed to act to block it.

I turned away from the Wobbuffet and started to back away a bit while glaring down the approaching Drowzee.

I growled, but tried not to let this increased aggression go to my head, even then I had to keep mauling Pokémon until people could get out of the prison.

One of the six Drowzee on approaching was suddenly struck by a glowing metallic shine coming from Mundo’s wing and it was followed by Shine erupted out of the shadows and sending three of them flying before she dove back down.

“Go stop anymore from getting into the prison building!” I pointed out the entrance that several Pokémon were attempting to go through and were struck with a ball of exploding shadows, launched by an angry looking Cleffa. “Is this really a place she should be right now? GROUND UPPER!”

Sure Cleffa was really knocking out a number with those shadowy spheres of energy, but she couldn’t have too much energy to help in the fight in the long run.

As I asked my question as I dodged around glowing fist from a Drowzee and placed the back of my hoof on the ground and then raised it straight up while shifting the wool around my hoof to stop being mostly frictionless. My hoof ignited and blasted the Drowzee into the air, I quickly reapplied the frictionless feeling to my wooly wolf shaped muscle enhancements around my right hoof.

“No, but where else would we put her?” Shine stated with a smile as she started to run towards the entrance.

“We shall watch after her to the best of my abilities.” Lucha Mundo quickly scooped up Cleffa with his wing cape and followed after Cleffa. “You continue letting loose you’re frustrations on everyone out here, I’m fairly sure this is a sign of you bottling up your problems!”

It was just the ‘haste’ haze that I was acting like a mauling beast… right? I didn’t really have time to stop and think as I had used the ‘Ground Upper’ to get onto my hind legs. I had a Drowzee behind me and in front of me, this prison yard was certainly getting crowded by all the Pokémon coming in.

I held out my front legs to both my sides and spun counterclockwise in a tight circle letting loose a powerful sweeping pair of magical claw attacks as I did so. The spinning double magical claw lariat took down the Drowzee and a Woobat I hadn’t seen sneaking up on me.

I had about one minute of haste left, I better make it worthwhile.

-Between Dark Cellblock and Reception, close to Reception, Shanty-

“I am surprised that we even be getting you up the stairs.” I stated to Espurr and he nodded to me, the guards noticed and pretty much stated they didn’t be wanting this guy to be being anywhere near the Sleeper Cellblock.

“I’m still surprised… that I’m actually out of my cell.” He responded as well, we heard a blast of water from behind us spraying out, apparently the Araquanid be watching our backs. His wide purple seemed to be staring off into the distance. “The Sleepers Cellblock… need to get to the sleepers.”

As we continued forward we be hearing fighting ahead from the other Araquanid as it slammed its head forward and its heavy water bubble bashed a Wobbuffet into a wall a wall out of the hallway we were exiting. It then be spraying a powerful scalding hot stream of water and several Woobat shrieks were heard.

Dazzle, Quetal and the Morpeko quickly hurried forward and started firing off attacks towards the entrance. I be peeking around the corner of the hallway entrance to the room and saw a lot more Pokémon coming in.

“We’ll help the Araquanid hold them here!” Quetal be saying before spraying a massive amount of stars out of his mouth at some Hypno.

“The Sleeper Cellblock warden? Stop them!” Several Hypno pointed out as Favela and I be escorting the warden through the room.

The Hypno that shouted this was hit by an explosion of shadows knocking them to the floor, a second later and two flashes bashed two of the Hypnos into the walls revealing the two Leavanny had blindsided them.

Following their appearance three small wheels covered in darkness rammed into the Drowzee and be bowling them all over.

The Woobat that were about to launch attacks from close to the ceiling were soon blasted into the floor when a figured exploded from the ceiling spinning and smashing the nearby Woobat with their pink fist.

With a flip Shine landed on the floor and be striking a dynamic pose. She just took out five of the nine encroaching Woobat.

“Flying Press!” The other Woobat were slammed into the wall from my left, so that would be being… the right side. This was followed up by Lucha Mundo flipping after rebounding off the wall and then he be slamming down on top of the four of them and pinning them to the floor painfully. “Hello friends fancy meeting you here!”

I be shaking my head and turning to see the Purrloin helping the limping form of the warden Espurr towards the Sleepers Cellblock.

“Come on Favela!” I motioned with my hoof to get Favela’s attention as I started down the hallway after them.

-Quetal-

Shanty and Favela were going to keep an eye on the warden, I turned back to the rest of our friends. Dolly was sitting on her board and calmly petting Lit and the little bug seemed to be enjoying the attention.

“We’ll hold position here, what’s it like out there? There’s a bit of a riot going on in here.” Kind of an understatement.

“Its pure chaos out there Quetal, hundreds of Pokémon… maybe a third of Gilgamesh’s forces are surrounding the prison. We wouldn’t have been able to sneak in if Kenshin hadn’t drawn a lot of attention to himself and Pom is trying to keep them away from this Prison building, she is really pushing herself hard out there.” Okay so Pom was here and she was doing fine, thanks for the knowledge Shine. I would say I’ve taken a Shine to her, but we both know that would be a bit out of character for me. “What’s going on in here?”

“Pom’s infiltration team successfully started a prison break.” I quickly got Shine up to speed on what I knew, which wasn’t much, but it was enough with Dazzle to corroborate her side of things with Dodo eating his way through the walls in the Sleepless Cellblocks.

-Sleeper Cellblock, Shanty-

“Ocellus!” I was so glad to see she was okay, but she looked to be concentrating on something so hard she hadn’t heard me.

“Hrm… she’s a novice, but she’s not doing too horrible. Wait a moment and set me down guys.” Espurr be moved into a sitting position and he looked to be concentrating as the Purrloin backed away from him. “We Espurr and Meowstic don’t specialize in putting Pokémon to sleep, but in particular I’m quite good at waking up those who are sleeping, my specialty is in manipulating the dream realm. I just have to wait for her to finish.”

Gasping Ocellus finally be backing up and rubbing at her head next to her horn with her right hoof and then she paused and turned to us, I be waving merrily to her and she waved back with a weak smile. Behind her the Araquanid be standing up and looking around in distress, it soon be creating a bubble of water around its head and be looking to us.

“Hey you, get moving down that way, be helping our friends would you?” Without saying much of anything aside from nodding to me, the Araquanid made for the exit. This Cellblock had a lot of unmoving, but still breathing bodies lying around.

“You’re a novice potential, but you’ve been quite decent at waking the few that you have. Let me take care of waking the rest of them for you.” Espurr be closing his eyes and looked to be concentrating quite a bit. “Give me a minute to do so…”

“Hey Ocellus, are you alright, you don’t be looking too happy.” I walked up and gave her an affectionate hug and then I realized that I didn’t see someone. “Wait… where’s Smolder?”

“She was taken…” As much as a frown is being seen on her face, a frown be forming on mine at hearing this news.

That was not being good, I can already be telling how Pom is going to react to hearing this.

-Outside the Prison Compound, Kenshin Himura: Rebel Leader-

My Fury Cutter slashed through a Hypno, despite the power of my Fury cutter increasing with every successful hit, I still have yet to kill anyone. I have been controlling the angles of my slashes expertly and only cutting what I wanted to cut.

My kindness will let them continue living after the current combat, provided they survive the issues that are coming to Cerebrum City. I’ve taken out seventy five of their number, my arms a blow of motion as I slashed and cut my through entire units by myself.

Never slowing down, never giving them time to attack me and using all my skill to draw their ire away from the one I could sense was fighting on the other side of the wall with all of her might. I could feel her potential and the damage she was doing to herself as she pushed beyond her limits with every breath and it was having a negative effect on her body.

I had to keep up the pace and make sure to defeat every adversary I can if I wanted to acquire the help of the rescue team leader, the Wobbuffet were the tricky ones I was trying to avoid until I’ve dealt with the other surrounding enemies.

-Reception room, Dolly-

Man this day was getting to me, I also felt several attempts to mess with our bond, but I stopped those attacks with Dormarch’s help.

As I sat here watching the guys hold the front next to the cocooned upside down Meow Wow thing, I tried to gain some of my energy back. Things were quite hectic around here.

Suddenly the world shook and I felt a pulse coming from the direction of… what was it again? The Sleepy Block?

“What was that?” I saw Quetal turn and look as some more enemies started coming through the entrance, I hopped up and threw my bone.

I bounced off a whiffle bats nose and came back to my paw.

“Can we worry about it later, we’re kind of in the middle of a siege here!” Dazzle looked behind her and noticed a third Araquanid. “We’re getting a trickle of help, so we should be able to hold out until we’re ready to leave.”

“Dazzle, didn’t you say the cellblock you came from has people that need to be freed? We need to work on that then!” Wrestler bird was immediately dragging the two leavies and little cleft with him.

“Ugh…” Flinching, I felt another attack on our bond, but I dealt with it easily. Pom must find those blue guys as annoying as I currently do.

-Sleeper Cellblock, Ocellus-

“Wow…” All the sleeping bodies, all the dreaming emotions suddenly became livelier as a lot of Pokémon start to wake up all around us. I turned to the grey furred cat with the purple eyes they brought in here and he looked quite weak.

“Wow, boss sure did what he said he would.” One of the two purple felines cradling him stated with a sad tone. “He needs medical help after exerting himself like that.”

“Give us some time and we can find someone to help him with whatever is wrong.” I responded and then heard the sound of a familiar set of wings flapping.

“Where are we Ocellus?” Ninjask flew up to me, having been the first to fully regain his senses among those who were put into a deep sleep that was hard to wake up from.

“We’re in the Upper Tier of Cerebrum City, eastern side at the prison.” I went on to explain what just happened and why he was surrounded by well rested Pokémon that probably needed something to eat or drink after having been asleep for so long.

“I take it we need to get ourselves in gear, okay listen up everyone!” Ninjask landed on the last Araquanid here. “We need those of you who can fight to get up and start moving, we have to break out of here and get most of you that can’t to safety.”

“Why should we listen to you?” Said a strange grey pig head creature with a pearl on it, with a spring tail that started bouncing in place and two little arms.

“I’m part of a Chrysalia investigation team, from what I’m seeing here, things have gone downhill quite gravely here from what I’ve seen.” Ninjask pointed at the bouncing pig thing. “Also do you know how long you’ve actually been in this place? I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want to stick around.”

“… Okay, we’ll listen to you!” Said the bouncing pig with a suddenly smiling face.

“That’s what I thought, okay give us a rundown of our situation and we’ll see what we can do from there.” Ninjask turned to Shanty, Favela and I, Shanty moved forward to explain, after he heard what was happening he looked at the Espurr. “We’ll get him medical attention ASAP, I’m sure there’s a Pokémon or some supplies around here that can help him.”

-About this time, Pom-

There was a crack, I was in the middle of the air when I felt it and new what it meant.

I immediately inflated my wool, slowed down and flipped to slam into the ground on my back as the red haze from the aggression fell away as did the incredible speed boost of Dolly’s ‘Haste’ spell wore out on me.

I quickly rolled to the side and was on my hooves as the ground erupted with a psychic blast where I was, I quickly had to come to a decision as I took one last inhale and exhaled harshly. After this I was dropping my Dancing Flame, because I could no longer sustain it and I trusted my wool shifting ability to enhance me enough to avoid the Psychic Type attacks as I retreated past the numerous bodies, I left out cold or in agony on the ground, with a single backwards bound.

I hopped back several more times at a tenth the speed I had been moving and avoided several blasts from several batches of what looked like several groups of six eggs with faces as they fired several blasts my way.

Woobat, Hypno, Drowzee, what I assume to be the evolved form of Woobat, those eggs in unusual batches of six, A few Wobbuffet and even a few Meowstic were showing up and flooding the inner prison yard through the open entrance. I could even see a Golduck or two.

I backed away while frowning, my muscles were on fire and my body had handled worse than this, but I had to pace myself now or else I’ll never get to face Gilgamesh.

My mind was so very tired of having to put up with stuff like this, I couldn’t go out fighting or win this fight alone.

“Help…” I weakly called out, my voice was a bit hoarse from one too many bark blasts and busters spat out at a rapid pace.

My opponent’s eyes started glowing and they were preparing their psychic attacks for a heavy bombardment. I tried to firm up a resolve I didn’t have and looked behind me at the entryway to processing and reception in the prison, I had to hold on.

-Cotton-

Looks like I wasn’t needed here after all, I had to plan some moves again. Things here were going to be fine here thanks to the rebel leader.

“Gyeh-heh-heh… if hadn’t been for me Illusio would have been long destroyed you see, but what can I say, what would they know, nobody needs to currently hear from good old Cotton Murkrow~.” I dipped back into the shadows with a grin on my beak, what more could I do though?

-Pom-

“Exeggcute!” The six eggs at the front said in unison and they all started to fire off their attacks at the same time.

“Ryumeisen!” An explosion of noise made me wince as something broke the sound barrier, but I kept my eyes open as a figure stood in the middle of the now various disoriented Psychic Types.

Said figure jumped and landed in front of me on two legs, I looked up at him and he looked to the left and down at me with blazing red eyes. The lower half of his body was white, the upper half was green, there was some kind of red spike in the center of his body, his head had a damaged blue crest sticking up from it and an X-shaped scar on his face.

I glanced at the Psychic Types which seemed paralyzed or stunned by what he just did, he had his blade pulled out and he slammed it into his sheathe. He didn’t even attack anyone with it, he just stunned them with the explosive force.

“…” I continued to look into his eyes and then at the sword with a bit of scrutiny. “You’re kind.”

He flinched, shivered and seemed a bit upset by what I said.

“You’ve quite the intuition my new friend. I’m Kenshin Himura… leader of the rebels.” He smiled weakly at me and I could tell a lot of things in that smile.

“I’m sorry for asking this, but… how many have you killed?” There was a solemn expression on his face when I asked this.

“Today? Thankfully none. I’d rather move forward with my life and not be held down by a pitch black past.” Kenshin answered and he turned his gaze forward.

“I’m Pom Lambchop, nice to meet you, wish it were under better circumstances.” I sighed audibly.

“I too wish it were under better circumstances.” He too sighed audibly like I did, I felt something of a kinship with this guy. I felt that life had kicked him around as much as it has me. “It’s a pleasure to make you’re acquaintance then Ms. Lambchop.”

“Actually I’m a ‘Mrs.’, I’m married to someone I hope to speak to after retrieving what was stolen from me by Gilgamesh… it is currently the only way to contact my significant other.” Hearing what I just said, Kenshin frowned. I quietly mumbled to myself. “I really should make sure my marital status isn’t forgotten.”

What I was afraid of was what Tianhuo would think when she found out about my life expectancy, especially at the rate things were going.

Seeing a familiar glow start to travel up my leg, I gripped my right leg with my left hoof and gritted my teeth. The golden glow slowly crawling up my right leg died out and was pushed back down. I had to keep that completely under control through sheer force of will.

“Gilgamesh much to answer for.” Kenshin brought up his curve blade edged arms with extended elbows and they started glowing green once all the Psychic Types started getting their bearings to start targeting us. “Whatever that golden glow was seemed to be causing you immense emotional pain and stress, I hope you can fight even if it intends to get in the way since it seems detrimental despite looking so beautiful.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ve still got plenty of kick in me. It’s… just something I’ll have to deal with eventually in one way or another. If you think the golden glow is beautiful, then it’s probably best that I don’t tell you what having it entails.” The process felt like it couldn’t be stopped once ignited, I didn’t know for sure if I could stop it forever. It could be controlled and I was going to keep it under control, my life kind of depended on it. “Also I might need some professional healing and a long talk with my spiritual therapist that we probably don’t have time for when it comes to dealing with Gilgamesh’s forces and Gilgamesh himself.”

“We’ll have to survive here first… I intend to make that happen.” As he said this Kenshin took up a stance and I prepared one myself.

I had run myself a bit a ragged already and needed some rest, at last count I’ve dealt with and taken down approximately one hundred and forty seven Pokémon in the five minutes I was under the effects of ‘Haste’. Still had numerous more to go and I had to rely on my normal ability and wool boosted enhancements of speed and some strength.

My throat was a bit hoarse and my body was in pain from the few hits I did take, mind you my endurance couldn’t match my stamina. Said stamina was slightly better than my ability to take pain. So I was in trouble… I felt the flow of the world change around me, Dolly was lending me her Flowing Motion ability, which is going to be quite helpful.

At this point all the Psychic Types fully recovered from whatever ‘Ryumeisen’ was and didn’t seem too damaged by it, now they were starting towards us together while charging their attacks.

I started to run forward and Kenshin started moving as well then attacks started flying our way, however they were horribly innacurate, I wondered what was wrong with the Sigilyph… they had Miracle Eye right?

A ball of shadows flew past me and explode into a few Woobat and what I assumed to be a Dark Type wolf directly applied itself to the Sigilyph’s eye and started gnawing on it viciously. Blasts of scalding hot water bombarded the Pokémon in front of us.

I win into a slide utilizing my left hip and my wools near frictionless nature and slammed my rear hooves up into the chin of a Drowzee as I popped up and then lashed out a swirling powerful right hook into the face of a Hypno behind them.

A whip of fire slapped into the six egg shaped monster group about to attack me and they were taken out immediately.

“Exeggcute, grass psychic types, don’t worry about them, I’ve got them handled!” Dazzle said as she showed up. So wait, those eggs were actually seeds? Huh, neat. Also my friends were showing up and turning the tide.

“Freedom from the nightmare!” Roared out a Pokémon who, was coming from our side, looked like a floating wind chime with a yellow antenna, a small white body with two limbs and a long flat tail like tassel sticking out below them.

The shockwaves from its shouting that slammed into the crowd of Woobat, the damage was good, but the effect didn’t seem to bother them as much because they were more nose than ears.

“Don’t stand there in a daze Pom!” Called out Quetal as he suddenly launched himself into a Drowzee from out of nowhere taking it down in several leaping claw swipes with Aerial Ace, he also blasted a few Woobat with Swift star blasts.

I quickly darted forward and saw Kenshin mash his way through several Pokémon with a particular shade of glowing green encompassing his arms that reminded me of Bug Types.

Turning to the nearest Pokémon I planted my left hind hoof and swung out with my right hind leg to kick a Woobat into a Wobbuffet, the end result was the Wobbuffet countering the Woobat and not me.

Having seen this several of the people and my friends that came to help me gained devious looks as they stared down the remaining Wobbuffet. They started doing their best to knock the other Pokémon into them and stop the Shadow Tag effect they were trying to use to pin someone down.

I was one of the ones that got pinned for a few seconds before Shine blasted out of some shadows and knocked some Pokémon into the Wobbuffet that got me and broke the Shadow Tag that locked me into having to be near it.

I immediately leapt and slashed a few Woobat out of the air with my magical claw swipes, with a combined effort and ever increasing help coming from within the prison, we started to gain ground against the hundreds of Pokémon still left.

The numerous Pokémon still looking for a fight were getting wiped out under the building forces trying to completely take over the prison and Kenshin was taking them down incredibly fast with every attack and I was falling back. I’m somewhat spent and I was soon joined by Dolly who set herself up in front of me with her board held up defensively.

“How are you feeling Pom?” You know you could just feel how bad off I was Dolly. “Yeah, but I want to hear you actually tell me.”

“I’m tired, exhausted, I wish could relax and not have to follow through with actually having to kill someone… but with the way things are going and how things are run under him considering what’s been happening in this prison, Gilgamesh is really asking for a dethroning.” It felt awful to be me at the moment, then again I’ve been on the wrong end of a trauma congo line for quite a while and I’m still surprisingly able to maintain the idea of who I am versus who I’m being force to be.

“Let’s go take a break Pom, you need it…” After saying this Dolly threw the bone and knocked an evolved Woobat out of the air and caught the bone in her right paw when it rebounded back. “Sounding so much like Dylan right now, do you think I’m responsible or being too uptight?”

“Dolly you’re fine the way you are… as for me, I wish I was fine with what I’m becoming.” I felt the itch of that golden anti-magic glow and pressed down on it harshly trying to crush my heritage out of existence. It didn’t succeed in the slightest, I was still a Lambkin Chrysomallus and I don’t think all the well-wishing would stop it as I back away towards the processing hallway towards reception with Dolly stay in front of me defensively.

“Is she being okay?” Shanty asked as she and Favela showed up to protect us.

Dolly shook her head no when I went to open my mouth and respond, I sighed as we retreated inside. I slowly shifted my wool back to armor mode, as useful as that was around here when most attacks were energy based and not magical…

Shanty and Favela followed while several more Pokémon surged out and joined the battle at the gate, I should be out there giving it my all too… but… I was here hiding and not helping. I felt kind of awful about it and leaving it to others, but I’m relieved that I didn’t have to fight for a while.

“Misery loves company Pom and Gilgamesh already made his next move to really get your dander up, I’ve already figured out what his plan is.” Ocellus looked fairly miserable.

“Why? What is Gilgamesh going to do?” I felt something clench in my heart, there’s Ocellus, Shanty… Dodo was reported to be nearby… where’s Smolder?! Oh no… he wouldn’t… he couldn’t… he probably did and I honestly started feeling a somewhat boundless cold fury about it.

“Well…” Ocellus started, but I held up a hoof.

I already had an idea what he had planned.

“He has Smolder right?” My question as met with a nod from Ocellus and looked at those present. “Given how susceptible Smolder is to psychic energy… how long could you say Smolder has left to live with a case of malnourishment via lack of a major diet of gems and jewels provided she’s forcefully been turned into a giant dragon? I also need to know how fast I would I have to beat her into submission to save her life, if you can even calculate such a thing Ocellus.”

“… less than twenty four hours, sixteen if we’re talking minimal time Smolder might have if it’s as bad as I think it is…” Yeah, that… Ocellus…

“So I have to fight Smolder, save her, fight whatever other plans Gilgamesh has in the way before we can get up to the Castle of Illusion and then fight him in what has to be an impossible struggle to fight a ungodly powerful enemy who could have killed us all if he starts actively taking us seriously as a threat.” When I put it like that everyone around me winced. “Not only that, but Gilgamesh expects us to succeed or die trying, because he wants to make or force heroes to be forged from the fires of adversity to save the day…”

“Pom…” Ocellus wilted, looking lost without Smolder here to be sarcastic or protective.

“We’re going expecting a full sized dragon problem… once that we have to deal with in less than a day and then get to medical help.” I said in response while nodding with my eyes closed. “We’re going to need eight of those hours to rest and get some sleep, then the next few upon waking to work out a plan…”

“Pom?” Shanty seemed worried, she should be.

-???-

Pom opened her eyes and a red sparkle appeared in them and gold ringed her eyes for a few seconds, one made of madness from an enraged fighting spirit awakening. She slowly raised her hoof and a gold glow started building on it.

“Pom you don’t have to…” Ocellus tried to say as she moved up to her.

“So… Gilgamesh wants heroes?” Pom said with an air of finality as she mentally snapped. “Instead I’ll give him a true monster that he’ll have to try hard to even begin to stop… one that would sacrifice almost anything for those she cares about without limitation.”

A beast was going to fight a beast, she just needed eight hours of sleep, a reviver seed and a lot of Sitrus Berries to be ready for the coming conflict.

Dolly sat there staring at Pom with fear in her eyes as Pom just mentally decided that, when the moment came, she would embrace her canine nature and Chrysomallus nature at the same time and not care about her sanity any further.

Pom was going to sacrifice whatever remained of her ‘functional sanity’ to save Smolder.

Ocellus calmly, pulled out the ribbon Smolder left in her care and tied it around her horn and stared at Pom as she went to sit in a corner facing away from everyone and looked to be taking a meditative position. Dolly dutifully taking a seat at her side with a notably worried expression.

The changeling noted that she could no longer feel Pom's anxiety and something was very wrong with her.

-Origin Space, Bahamut-

“…” I sat there wide eyed wondering if the Chrysomallus could really fight dragon on equal ground, the situation with Lu Bu growing within Moon Cell was a horror show and things were proceeding apace as we sat here and watched.

Sure Smolder wasn’t a conceptual dragon like the ones that Moon Cell has seen before, but it was still going to be a horribly one sided fight.

Author's Note

My cellulitis is almost fully gone, but there's still a knot in me that's taking it's sweet time to go down... I just need more sleep.

That said Pom is not going to get better for a while.

351. Bridging the gap.

-Equus, Meadow Hills, close to midday, Jaded-

“So that… ah ram was… well, I think I’ve found out all I’ve needed to.” I got up and went to catch the next merchant airship out of here, Lambkin were seriously nuts at times… though it was nice to have a conversation with Queen Novo about what being a Chrysomallus was and why it might be a really, really bad thing for Pom. “Thank you for your time, now I’ve got to go tell a Longma she’s going to eventually lose her wife due to circumstances beyond her control. See you later around Equestria Princess Skystar… and you to Novo I guess! Oh and Novo, you might not want to come to Airship Mauled, given the curse of crashing airships that the place seems to have and how they always hit gods and goddesses.”

“Hmm…” Queen Novo didn’t say anything, but she did send me a concerned look as I waved and walked off.

“See you around Jaded!” Now Skystar was rather pleasant to talk to, she had a perky personality on par with Pinkie Pie’s personality.

It was understandable why Novo might be a little upset, since she wanted to spend some alone time with her most recent daughter and I kind of interrupted it to learn some interesting facts about what being a Chrysomallus entails.

Said facts are something the Lambkin were well aware of already, given they were somehow aware of the ‘marmalade conspiracy’ incident that occurred and apparently Lambkin would make for good investigators and or detectives if they didn’t have panic attacks every other hours.

So Pom likely at least knew most of what was happening to her, but has been out of touch for a while due in part to something obviously happening on her end of things. Of course it was a little weird that a Chrysomallus doesn’t have to be primarily a ram, but a ram is more likely to survive the nastier side effects of being a Chrysomallus than a Ewe like Pom would. Even then surviving doesn’t exactly help with the expected life expectancy problem. I would turn it over in my head how to help Pom, but from the way Novo explained it… yeah Pom living a full and fruitful life wasn’t likely if she at any point sprouted wings. Sure the incredible amount of blood loss from said sprouting sounded bad, but the wings sprouting at all was the real issue given the symbolic nature of said wings.

To think one of the first red flags of a Chrysomallus was a lambkin with dreams of flying, Tianhuo did mention a few times that Pom wanted to figure out a way to fly alongside her in the sky and sometimes dreamed of it.

I was about to lose one of my friends and they were one of my cuter friends that I liked to annoy, mostly because those puppies of hers can really give me a good run and they really know how to chase someone down intelligently.

Ten out of ten those star puppies were born fighters, but they mostly just wanted to be cute little bodyguards for Pom than anything else for belly rubs and head pats. Now what was I going to do with what I know now? If I said anything with those puppies present, they were going to get very upset.

Hopefully Tianhuo knows tact when she hears my need to talk with her alone without Ruff, Tuft, Puff and Woof present.

-Pokémon World, Ransei Region, Illusio, Top of Cerebrum City, Sanosuke-

It didn’t take me long to notice, it had been too slow to notice before, but Cerebrum City was definitely going down and eventually instead of floating down it’ll start dropping at terminal velocity and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere on Cerebrum when that happens.

“Everyone start the evacuation Cerebreum City is falling, secure any enemy you can and drag them to safety if you can force it!” I looked up to the Castle of Illusion above us and at the weapons falling and striking the battlefield. There was no point in trying to hold Cerebrum, the real fight was happening up there and Kenshin was in it. “Kenshin… Alright my personal unit will meet up with Kaoru’s and we’ll be the last to withdraw as we’ll wait for Kenshin as long as we’re able, everyone start withdrawing as quickly as you can. Someone figure out how to help the Dark Types or at least tell them that they need to get off this floating death trap like yesterday somehow! No sugar coating it, people are going to die if they stay here and Illusio is going to be on the back foot for a long time afterwards, but we will try to carry on in spite of all of this!”

Quite a number of units were behind me weren’t afraid of what was coming and others already started moving, thus far the battlefield had all been about keeping Pokémon off the teleporter to the Castle of Illusion. Now that was no longer required, there was no longer any point to protect the teleporter.

We would have to pull back, Kenshin knew what he was getting into when he went up to fight Gilgamesh and I hoped that he would come back alive. He better not leave Kaoru with a broken heart or else I’ll find a way to revive him and then kill him again myself for being an idiot!

It certainly takes an idiot like me to know an idiot like him! Besides, like I said, I’d wait until the last moment to leave for my best friend.

-A lot higher up than Cerebrum City, Bridge to the Castle of Illusion, Pom-

Dazzle and Frizzle had Gilgamesh’s focus, which meant less weapons flying our way. Still far too many and how has he not run out them yet?! I couldn’t even count the number of weapons he fired at us, only half or a quarter of them had to be arrows by pure volume alone.

I glanced at Shanty as she once again deflected an entire salvo with a single superbly timed swing creating a domino effect that protected us on all sides, the sudden boost in her mental fortitude was unnatural and it had only occurred when she looked at the weapon Gilgamesh was wielding.

There were a number of things I’m fairly concerned about, but Shanty seemed fine as we met up with Quetal who immediately tossed something to me.

Having seen what I just caught in it in my left hoof as my right deflected what I recognized as being a bastard of a sword, my eyes widened… Quetal just got the device back to me! One less reason to be here, now I just needed to end Gilgamesh and survive so that I could talk to Tianhuo about what’s happened for the last few weeks.

Heh… so much… I really needed therapy for all the negative thoughts going on in my head… and no amount of therapy will make things okay, but it would possibly still help. I just needed to take a trip to Meadow Hills and hire a professional if I made it back to Equus.

I’m now certain it didn’t matter how disheveled, broken and ruined I looked, Tianhuo would only care that I’m still alive and in… mostly one piece, physically, let’s go with that, what sanity issues? I should also really tell her my life span has shortened drastically, I would not keep something like that from her. I already made things worse when I sacrificed personally to help Dolly survive that nasty chest wound, ever inch lost is an inch I’ll never get back.

I would only be able to tell Tianhuo any of this if I absolutely survived this fight to make that call and she would have right to be worried about me. She must be at least somewhat worried about why I haven’t called.

Oh great goddess Jiutian… please find some way to see me through all of this, because calling out to any lambkin gods certainly isn’t going to be of any help outside a total peace situation. They have the same personality flaws most lambkin do and the ewe goddesses are the worst. I think I can almost forget what being a lambkin feels like, given the many situations I’ve been put through in such a short period of time it would not be hard to see why.

I quietly placed Arceus’s device at the back of my neck next to Dolly’s head and surrounded it protectively with wool and made sure Dolly was still breathing. Quetal turned about helped and us reach Dodo.

It didn’t take us long as Gilgamesh certainly had a lot of focus on, what with Frizzle and Dazzle tag teaming him to the best of their abilities, along with kinetic bombing most of the kingdoms of Ransei into the ground. Were there any survivors, how long have we been fighting Gilgamesh for again?

Dodo had Shine, Cleffa and Favela stuffed in his back, Mundo was barely standing, but still defending himself valiantly as well as us when required with Steel Wing to keep his wing arms from getting hurt from the numerous incoming impacts that rattled his form. Hawlucha were really something else considering how Mundo managed to keep going even on a battlefield where he had very little advantage aside from flight and even that was minimal to help in this situation.

Thinking of flying, I’m betting that anywhere away from the bridge or the castle at this height would not have very much oxygen this high up and the only reason we were breathing was because the castle projected an atmosphere to live this high up.

Dazzle and Frizzle were at least holding against Gilgamesh, but I could already see that they wouldn’t hold up for much longer against that strange weapon that had a variety of effects. One of those effects would be shredding things apart into a fine mist, because I don’t see any pieces of the three pronged spear I was wielding previously. I was now wielding a single elongated spike spear for all the good it would do against Gilgamesh when we decided to join the battle.

As for Kenshin he was taking a break back here and deflecting a high speed weapon every once in a while with his reverse blade, which should have honestly shattered on that weapon that Gilgamesh wielded. I haven’t the foggiest why it wasn’t damaged at all, but Kenshin’s weapon seemed to have an aura all its own as he wielded it. That aura was probably an equalizer to whatever Gilgamesh’s weapon did and Gilgamesh’s weapon had a lot of presence in ways I couldn’t even begin to describe as everyone obviously felt it.

Kenshin pulled out one of his ultimate moves… and didn’t succeed, but he still had some fight in him and he was on the battlefield for hours. I had to give it to him, as a guy who leads from the front, he certainly proves himself as a leader of the rebels.

Lit was still fighting Inky Due, doing far better than multiple people at fighting her at once all by himself.

I had to wonder though, how was Frizzle surviving attacks from Gilgamesh… was it because she was a being made of information?

Glancing at Shanty she seemed certain that we needed to get back into the fight and keep doing so, even in the face of such horrendous power. Frizzle certainly wasn’t holding back and was doing very little to actually put Gilgamesh on a back foot with her current size, not that he had feet to begin with.

Okay Pom, get your head in gear, you can do this, you got back what you wanted in all of this and the reason you came all this way.

Now if only we could all leave without the world ending…

I hefted the spear in a defensive forward manner and started moving forward once again across the bridge with the reminder that I had to be careful with Dolly stuck to my back.

Sigh…

I went past Dodo with Shanty and Quetal. Mundo stuck with Dodo in bringing up the rear.

-Three fourths of the way across the bridge, Dazzle-

I was out of Dragon Pulse energy because I gave it all to Frizzle. She was at least making good use of it, but her claws couldn’t break that weapon and she was only breathing fire in short bursts to make sure that Gilgamesh couldn’t reflect it back at us.

Frizzle might be bigger than Gilgamesh, she wasn’t stronger than him though as he continued to deflect her claws and failing attempts to smash him with her size in her dragon evolution. It was still weird to me that Digimon can slide up or down their evolutionary lines depending on various factors.

I lashed out with one Fire Lash, as I wasn’t about to burn the bandages wrapping my other claw unless I wanted to burn my wounds shut, and the flame whip readily was deflected. Gilgamesh was even pushing us back towards the middle of the bridge. The guy was basically a torso with floating hands and he’s kicking our rears, were Hoopa really this powerful? I wouldn’t know as I’ve never met many of legendary Pokémon, well at least not before meeting Pom and witnessing a Jiri bounce incident.

I’ve come a long way since then and I’m not going to be afraid of Viperia forever.

“As havoc flies, the fire of the heart fries~!” I sang out a Round move and the sound waves actually caught Gilgamesh off guard because he couldn’t see the attack coming, not that it did much aside from possibly blast out whatever passed for eardrums for him and knocked him back.

Round was not a very powerful attack unless used in a group. It could be a reason why Aurora is never invaded since Wooloo or other Normal Types can use the move Round one after the other increasing its power by a ton, a unit command using the move round was kind of terrifying given the soundwaves reached Hyper Beam levels of destructive with wider range and no cooldown drawback aside from needing to sing with others.

A Pokémon known as Toxtricity certainly know how to use sound moves like that and between Violight and Viperia. There were always at least some wandering Toxtricity bards that should not be messed with if you weren’t immune to sound assaults. The vibrational force alone was still quite painful even if you couldn’t hear it without ears.

Well… all that and the Wooloo were horrible well known perverts across the entire continent who tend to stick to the grasslands of Aurora.

I ducked a shockwave as Gilgamesh swung his… I want to say sword, was it even a sword? Weird things to be thinking when you’re under attack. Hard to tell what his weapon was. Even if someone were to describe the weapon, I would find it hard to believe they were telling the truth. Also it didn’t seem like the weapon could damage the bridge or Gilgamesh was once again avoiding doing damage to the bridge or just simply couldn’t.

Frizzle went sliding backwards from the impact. She could fly, but she was staying on the bridge and using her wings as shields and she even sent a massive amount of weapons flying back at Gilgamesh by flapping them forward as were being besieged by another salvo, only to have them redirected to raining at us from above only to be deflected by Frizzle’s wings spreading again to cover us from above like a umbrella.

“Something is up with your friend there, I should be doing more damage to them than what’s actually happening... not that they can actually hurt me back that much.” Yeah, I can see why Gilgamesh was confused, apparently Digimon don’t register to Psychic Types very well. Maybe it was because Frizzle wasn’t exactly biological? I just know that the difference is there and that it is helping her survive attacks most others wouldn’t otherwise, I saw what those attacks did to the others.

Frizzle might be able to avoid taking the full amount of damage from his attacks despite her current size leaving her wide open for his devastating power, but I couldn’t afford to take any hits from that weapon and it was a good thing I could see the ripples coming off it whenever it was swung in a half serious manner.

It almost felt like Gilgamesh still wasn’t taking us very seriously.

I dodged to the right and another shockwave, ripple or whatever that was flashing by along the bridge and considered using Toxic. If Gilgamesh didn’t know I had the move then using it on him when he later unbinds, because that’s looking very likely, would be a better use of the move. That I had to stay standing until then and defeating Gilgamesh before that happens is a huge problem, as right now he seems almost capable of being defeated, afterwards he might be nearly impossible without me using Toxic to slow him down somewhat.

I lashed out with another flaming whip to little effect as it was canceled out like a candle simply being blown out and Gilgamesh followed up by blocking Frizzle’s large claws swiping for him and pushing her into sliding back past me with a single stab.

Gilgamesh then began to target me even further for some reason, could he… oh right Psychic Type, he could possibly read our minds even as we were fighting him.

Before he could get off an attack on me, while Frizzle was still sliding backwards, a stream of energy stars veering around from my left towards Gilgamesh’s right side and he deflected that with a constant rippling in the air and that’s when Mundo bodily rammed into him with a Flying Press. That didn’t end too well for Charjabug, but the attack looked to have done as much damage as when he did it.

Mundo attack might be of average effectiveness given it defaulted to flying type energy before the impact, but it did draw Gilgamesh’s attention onto him. Gilgamesh attempted to bring his weapon down on Mundo only for Pom to show up and divert it with the flat of blade from the spear she wielded. It was a simple impact to Gilgamesh’s right hand and wrist, then Pom promptly slapped him across the left side of the face with back end of the spear in a sharp twist to stagger him.

Following up Pom’s attack was Kenshin going for a slash and his blade clashed with Gilgamesh sending him sliding backwards.

“Okay, you might have a night infinitely miniscule chance to defeat me, only miniscule though for a pathetic lot like you!” Stated a grinning Gilgamesh as we arrayed against him. Shanty and Dodo were handling the constant rain of weapons coming at us from behind and the sides, whatever those two couldn’t handle Frizzle would take the impact for us with her temporary wings acting as giant shields and evolved battle physique that possibly wouldn’t last much longer under the constant strain.

I was what gave Frizzle strength, she chose me for a bond similar to what Pom and Dolly shared, if I went down then so would she.

“We’ll take that chance!” Pom said with a bit more bravery than she usually had, with a slightly wild look in her eyes.

“Can you transform?” I asked to the side.

“Nope, completely blew that on Smolder and it’s a once in a day thing, I can still shift my wool to wolf mode for added speed and strength, but with the number of weapons being launched at us I’d rather not drop my defensive abilities for a burst of strength and speed Dazzle. Any hit in that state would be devastating.” Well that transformation Pom had used against the Hypno elites would have been helpful here, but it seems to have its limitations.

It was easy to trust someone like Pom to know her own limits.

“Understood, we’re doing this the hard way.” I glanced past Gilgamesh as another blast of lightning went off.

“Hmph… why are you watching that fight, you’re fight is with me!” Gilgamesh lunged forward with the blade in his right grip pulled back to start lashing out at us. The weapon had something like a twisting motion going on with it and I ducked and slapped a whip off the ground and up at Gilgamesh, he swiftly dodge it as I dodge his attack and Kenshin charged forward.

Kenshin was still determined to fight Gilgamesh as ever, it was hard to tell if he was pacing himself or not.

-Castle of Illusion entrance, Lit-

The fight was arduous and painful, mostly on Inky Due’s end, for Inky Due would specialize in fighting large or god based targets with her ability to morph into chains or produce them. Against a legendary Pokémon she would have obviously been the victor a long time ago.

Lit was a major problem for Inky as he was small, fast and most importantly for this situation, stupidly talented for a tiny yellow fluffy tick. Inky Due would have dealt with multiple other larger Pokémon in less time. Lit was a problem as Inky Due just could not hit him while he was in motion.

Every attempt Inky tried to hit Lit was met with him using a bit of web to swing away, around or even through a mass of chains while continuously dealing damage through Electrowebs, Lunge and a series of Thunderbolts.

Inky Due had thought she was powerful, but Lit was almost on another level of instinctual skill for a Bug Type and it was shockingly distressing for Inky Due to silently admit that she was on the back hoof to the tiny powerhouse.

Most Joltik were seen as tiny and not very threatening individually outside of swarms as far as combat goes. Lit happened to be such a tiny juggernaut among his species, as he was quite threatening for his size that Pokémon several times larger than him would be wary and or even recognize him as a very viable threat for his insane level of maneuverability, speed and the amount of sheer energy he put off.

The series of shocks were finally getting through Inky Dues unusual abilities, it was almost like she had the Limber ability due to her chain transformation capability. Limber was an ability that prevented paralysis that was known to be caused by most Electric Type attacks.

It is now discovered after the last thunderbolt that struck her, Inky wasn’t immune to being paralyzed at all and after the series of heavy powerful shocks… paralysis finally took effect and Inky Due could no longer transform parts of herself into chains or even move.

Lit, the tiny bug, had actually beaten Inky Due in one on one combat, even at half strength Inky recognized Lit as a worthy enemy and was what Gilgamesh was looking for, a hero that could go beyond their appearance, character and even size to do what seemed impossible. Lit was an example of someone who could fight a god and possibly win.

Inky was left on the ground under the archway covered in electrified webs that caused her no end of grief as Lit ran off to help in the fight against Gilgamesh.

Each shock or bit of stiffness from the paralysis was making it hard to build up energy, but slowly bit by bit, Inky prepared to help Gilgamesh reach true power before he could be taken down. These heroes they drew in, they might actually bridge the gap between the truly godlike powers with raw mortal determination... at least Lit definitely could.

Maybe it was the very simplicity of Lit’s nature that made him so strong, he had very little room for complex thought and most what was there was taken up with incredible battle instinct. The one thing Lit didn’t have was the stamina to keep fighting forever as he was quite tired after having been on the battlefield for a long time, then the fight with Inky Due he was running low on his ability to put up a fight.

This did not mean he would make any other decision than to go after Gilgamesh.

Lit probably shouldn’t have left Inky Due to her devices as the web covered Psychic Type Ponyta started trying to build up energy for the move Healing Wish, a move that heals all wounds and status ailments of a target at the cost of the users health.

Inky Due was quite willing to give everything to Gilgamesh, for he would remember her.

In any incarnation Gilgamesh would never forget the sacrifice of Enkidu his best friend, he hadn’t this time and he wouldn’t in the future should they meet again.

Every little bit of energy she could build for the move despite the random jerky movements caused by the paralysis, the more chances she had to pull off Healing Wish when Gilgamesh needed it the most.

Lifting her head slightly Inky Due looked at Gilgamesh to see him holding up against multiple fighters without breaking a sweat with a yellow speck making full speed for his back and he was likely to get in a good hit.

-Inky Due-

“Heh… so we’re doing this again… history repeats because we couldn’t let go of it.” I stated dully. “Those of us who could… they might be able to surpass their own stories where we couldn’t.”

A few tear drops fell onto the stonework beneath my face and I firmed my concentration. At best I might be able to generate one more chain, the gods of this world would probably send something at us that might be worth the effort, but aside from that everything is now going to Healing Wish.

-Quarter of a bridge away, Pom-

Even with all of us pressuring him, Gilgamesh still seemed like he was on the winning side of things. I continued to react defensively and tried to get in a hit now and then. This was likely to Gilgamesh’s consternation that I wouldn’t meet him head on in an aggressive manner, like I would since I saw what happened to the previous spear and the fact that he can cut straight through my wool meant I was far better off acting in evasive capacity. My every breath was a cautious invocation of Dancing Flame.

In fact I was at my usually at my best when I’m acting on the defense, someone needed to keep these almost randomly spraying weapons from completely overwhelming us. Almost, because Gilgamesh seems to know exactly where every weapon he’s shooting is going, he’s not misaiming them he’s just going for volume in our general direction given he’s not even coming close to hitting himself.

In fact I just saw a sword pass by his face within an inch of hitting him and he didn’t flinch, as I dodged away from the scimitar as it hit the bridge and sprang up in an attempt to cleave me from head to tail as it bounced forward while spinning at high speeds.

Mundo was recently taken down, but he at least got a good right hook on Gilgamesh before his injuries got to him, he was quickly picked up by Dodo. The seat in Dodo’s back was looking quite cramped now.

Quetal using Substitute did give us some extra firepower, but it took some strength out of him to create one and they would only be about as capable as he was. I kind of wished we had Captain Skeeball, but she was busy with helping the Dark Types if she and Wilhelm haven’t been skewered by the weapons raining all over Illusio yet.

Grim thoughts aside, getting an opening on Gilgamesh was proving to be challenging as his onslaught with that ridiculous weapon he pulled out continued to be a major problem. It was damaging to a level that we can’t compete with if we weren’t Frizzle and even she was starting to feel the attacks if the tiny cubes coming off her injuries were something to be worried about.

It was how Digimon bled and it was a bad sign from what I saw of Sami Soldier being in a similar state, at least the cubes aren’t looking too huge yet.

Shanty was about to be attacked again and Kenshin moved in to prevent it, Gilgamesh seemed really eager to take down Shanty when previously he was quite focused on making sure that I specifically suffered.

What was it about Shanty that had him worried? Also why was Shanty acting weird since he pulled out that weapon? It’s all tied together that’s for sure, I flinched back as a flail nearly stabbed a spiked ball into my chest. With a jerk of the spear in my hooves I sent the flail flying off the right side of the bridge in a flash of an exhale.

Well even if he was more focused on Shanty, he was still trying to seriously kill me. We were not getting any reinforcements for one and everyone we had here with us was all we’re going to get.

A lightning bolt struck Gilgamesh from behind flattening him against the bridge. Was it wrong that I was happy to see him be blindsided by an attack so hard?

Kenshin tried to capitalize on it as did Dazzle and Frizzle, but with a flicker Gilgamesh appeared behind Lit who was already leaping backwards toward us, having turned around in mid-air to face him before he even finished teleporting and dropping his weapon down on the spot Lit had been. With a green spark Lit burst out of the way of the ripple that would have killed him, he squeaked distressingly and was breathing pretty roughly after that.

The stonework of the entire bridge held up to the shockwave that knocked us all back and it felt like there was an earthquake for a few seconds.

Shanty quickly leapt into the air and shouted to deflect a number of weapons coming at us as Frizzle took impacts of various others that Shanty’s shout didn’t send flying away.

“One of you actually managed to defeat Enkidu, I’m actually somewhat impressed… considering the size of the one who did it.” Gilgamesh was being honest here, he was actually staring calculatingly at Lit. “Don’t think that’s going to stop my plans though, there’s almost enough energy to unbind and that one kooky bird Cotton couldn’t stop everything. You guys who are still standing even with broken bodies and battered spirits, you’re all amazing, now please survive and actually stop me… if you can. I’m still pretty awesome and going strong!”

As he said this Gilgamesh prepared to launch another salvo of weapons appearing from portals, he still looked halfway healthy and raring to go and we looked like a bedraggled band of imminent hospital victims. Notably, the sealed gash across my chest only added to my pale complexion from the blood loss and being lightheaded. I’m pretty certain that at this point that Gilgamesh never intended to run out of weapons to shoot at us, the only weapon he had a death grip on and wasn’t firing or using carelessly was the one he was holding.

I wonder what the story behind that rapier was… because that was all I could define it as and with the way Gilgamesh wielded it, it was hauntingly powerful in his grip and I doubt he’d use this weapon if he was afraid of losing it.

Gripping the spear tightly, I prepared to charge forward.

-Nearby pocket space, Hoopa-

“The ‘Ultra Wormhole’ almost done, the cross dimensional summoning is almost done… how are things going Celebi?” After I do this, the Ultra Wormhole would make making long distance portals like Gilgamesh does impossible, which would immediately cease his assault on all of Ransei and if he didn’t think we were going to respond to this kind of thing… well he had something coming to him.

“They are getting their backsides handed to them and I’m surprised that they aren’t dead yet, also something is up with the goat Shanty… I think it has to do with that god weapon that has a strong primordial water element wafting off it and information about the truth of an alternate dimension’s beginnings. It would be comparable to seeing the actual birth of Arceus… also father Arceus was adorable as a baby if you wanted to know.” Celebi winced loudly and rubbed at their head. “Point of contention incoming by the way so get the preparations finished. Quetal is flagging, but he’s still holding up despite nearly being taken out. How many more Swift attacks can he do before running dry… I really don’t know how Pom even pulled that off with a spear, but now she’s without a weapon. Dodo seems to be protecting the unconscious ones fairly well with some trouble. Dazzle just took a nasty hit and Frizzle is only surviving that weapon because she’s an informational entity.”

“Did we ever get back any news back on the whole ‘Mirage System Mew’ that escaped from the being digital into reality in one of the ‘Ketchum Offshoot’ timeline dimension where the voices were a little off? I think it’s about to become relevant given what we’re all about to be dealing with here after we’re done setting this up. Oh yeah, I’m going to be completely out of energy after this, hope you got this buddy.” Hopefully my curiosity could be quenched, because there was that institute that created digital Pokémon and given who our current dimensional next door neighbors were here… yeah, having digital Pokémon friends might aid in creating a cohesive atmosphere. “I ask because we’re about to have a major digital problem soon and if that Mew appears… maybe it could help with the integration?”

“Don’t know, but I’ll run it by Arceus, he likely knows what became of that Mew. That Mew was quite abused… even if it was only digital at first, it definitely had the heart of a true Pokémon.” Responded Celebi who was continuing to watch the fight. “Yeah… it’s not going well. Lit might be a title ‘Hero’ with a capital H, but even he’s looking to be running out of steam. Can you hurry it up? I think they are literally dying out there.”

“You can’t rush this sort of thing Celebi… it might kill you.” I answered flatly.

“Oh- ha ha.” Celebi grumbled.

We rarely worked together, but when we do… like Palkia and Dialga working together when they were not fighting over who has better conceptual control of reality, miracles tended to happen.

“Give me another minute here… the wormhole is about ready to open into Ultra Space and when it does it’s going to cause a grand reaction.” I continued to move my mitten hands and I was starting to sweat a little at how much power this was going to use, it’d be worth it though.

“Ready in three, two…” I said and then pumped all my power into creating the Ultra Wormhole on purpose instead of it appearing accidentally. “SUMMONING!”

-Bridge to Castle of Illusion, Pom-

“Rawf!” I fired a Bark Buster, one might be wondering why. Well Bark Blast was a dumb idea in this situation, bark breaker would likely do nothing to whatever that weapon was and as for a Bark Buster…

The liquid magical energy came flying out of a portal and I leapt up and slammed might right hind leg into it as the portal that conveyed it back at me disappeared. The magic took on a spherical shape as it blazed forward compressing down into the size of a shrinking tennis ball and once it was close enough I remotely detonated it in the direction of Gilgamesh’s grinning face.

His pupils shrunk as my Bark Buster went off and blasted him onto his back to the point he was sent skidding down the bridge. After spending a few seconds to talk to Inky Due, he teleported back to us.

“Okay, that… that surprised me… and you got me pretty good.” Gilgamesh admitted as he took a bark ball special to the face, bark buster was much more controlled than my other bark attacks and based on Oleander’s ability to create remotely detonated explosions of dark energy. Absorbing the energy back and or repurposing it wouldn’t too hard. He floated back up into the air, now he was no longer grinning. “Still not enough though.”

Too bad nobody was standing at the moment to be capable of capitalizing on it, Quetal tried to get standing and failed. Frizzle was acting a living shield for all the weapon coming at us. Dodo was busy protecting down friends. Shanty tried to move, but one of her hind legs was injured by a glancing blow of a cutting ripple and the scarlet spilling from her right hind leg was slowing her down no matter how willing her spirt was. Lit was quite spent from his battle with Inky Due and was now resting in Dodo, he still had some energy for attacks left, but that was likely a last ditch effort or resort now.

Kenshin was up, but he stayed in place deciding to rest and deflected a knife away from taking out one of Dazzle’s eyes after it got by Frizzle, Dazzle was already on all fours and breathing roughly, she sent a grateful smile to Kenshin.

After what he recently pulled off Kenshin probably didn’t have the energy to use any of his sword techniques at the moment after what he did earlier, so defense was the best we could have hoped for from him.

“You’ve all been quite troublesome… so let’s see you stop this next attack without anyone dying.” Shanty was immediately ready as was Kenshin and I.

Raising the sword high in the air, it started glowing with a lot of power and Frizzle looked at us, I shook my head, buy Frizzle didn’t seem to catch my response not to do so.

“Frizzle!” Dazzle wanted to stop her, but it was too late, Frizzle already made her choice.

“Rupture the world!” With a single central swing down I saw a pillar of light coming at us and Frizzle taking up a defensive position in front of us wing forward and folded.

…

After thirty seconds, sight came back to my eyes and I could see the bridge had finally taken damage up to the point that that last attack had struck her. In the smoking crater was a flickering bit of light that coalesced into a small sphere with bat wings for ears.

“Frizzle… protects friends… Jyarimon… sleepy…” The high squeaky voice we’ve come to know stated as the blackened circle around Frizzle revealed that she had been knocked entirely back to being lower than even a Gigimon. Even then she didn’t look good.

Dazzle quickly got to Frizzle and managed to store her away in the digivice, she wouldn’t survive taking any more damage.

“Reprise!” With an upward swing instead of a downward swing, Gilgamesh unleashed a weaker shockwave that sent us all flying. I inflated my wool before I hit the bridge and managed to slow down the momentum of being blasted off my hooves. The others weren’t nearly as lucky, at least Kenshin manage to plant the tip of his sword against the bridge. “Still alive huh? You lot are like roaches!”

Dodo had been toppled too, but he still managed to get standing and pick up our friends. Shanty probably told him to not charge in to attack Gilgamesh. Hundreds of portals opened up around us and were ready to fire weapons.

“Just die already, your obviously not what I wanted, where’s the will to live in spite of all odds, where’s the pushing beyond your limits? If this doesn’t do it, then nothing will… Rupture the world!” He could do that attack more than once?! As he was swinging down, the caustic pillar of energy came at us once more, damaging the bridge as it approached and then something opened up in the sky between us and incoming death.

Several things happened at once, Shanty sighed in relief, the hundreds of portals with weapons suddenly disappeared and a massive portal appeared above us and something came out of it at high speeds into the path of the attack.

“What?!” Gilgamesh seemed angry as the blaringly pillar of light exploded on impact with the shadow that came out of the portal.

A lot of dust was kicked up from the explosion and thirty second later I saw a tall shadowy figure standing in the path of the attack had taken it for us.

-Gilgamesh-

Thousands of portals across the continent all shut as soon as that massive hole in the air appeared, something was preventing me to use the Gates of Babylon to their fullest and I had a hunch it had to do with that portal.

Is this your reprisal Arceus? It felt quite powerful, might even get my blood pumping. It even felt divine… such a poor move though.

“Enkidu!” I tried to create more than four portals, but I could only generate two? Eh, two was enough as a chain launched out of the portal at shadowy figure still standing after taking that attack.

Slowly the dust settled and I blinked… the creature my attack hit… it did nothing to them.

NOW THAT WAS WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT!

Too bad Enkidu’s chain caught them while they were too dazed to…

“Kweeeeeh? WARK!” The chain shattered immediately, how? It could bind any diving creature, beast or god.

I was now feeling hyped up for a good fight!

As the dust settled, what I saw was a giant green bird glaring at me while glowing with power.

“A giant chicken, that’s what you’re sending at me?” I stated with consternation.

…

…

“BAHAHAHAHAH, now you’re just giving me a good meal!” I laughed, wondering if Arceus was actually serious.

-

-

-

A whistling noised was heard and something big and red slamming what I vaguely recognized as a naginata into me, before I found myself going back first through the throne of the illusionary castle.

I was groaning a bit as I tried to get my head in gear.

“Who dares to mess with my best buddy ENKIDU!” A giant red mass of muscles stated with a very weird long nose as it pointed the Naginata at me, it was a giant overly muscled mosquito…. “I GILGAMESH WILL MAKE YOU PAY FOR TRYING TO ENTRAP MY BEST REINCARNATED CHOCOBO BUDDY EVER!”

“Wark.” The giant green chicken stated angrily while looking at this so called ‘Gilgamesh’.

I… what even…

“Hey, I said I was sorry about eating you when you were chicken, how was I supposed to know that was actually you at the time!” The big red shart that I was going to make a bloody smear stated loudly and obnoxiously. "At least I'll always have a part of you with me chained to my very soul... also you were very tasty at the very least."

“If you wanted my ire Arceus, then sending a big red idiot like this at me has certainly done it!” I groused out angrily at the sky while waving the sword of rupture, he was probably watching. The gods always are and they laugh at the misfortune of mortals.

“Hey, who are you calling an idiot, you are facing the mighty Gilgamesh I’ll have you know! Interdimensional traveler, weapon collector and Bartz hunter extraordinaire!” Seriously…. what? This buffoon could clearly not be a version of me, he was too mentally impaired and so.... well ridiculously flamboyant! “You sir are asking for a fight… oh and we’re on a bridge… cool, best setting for one of those high budget action sequences and… oh… you have such an awesome weapon! One of those godlike weapons like the Excalibur right? I just keep finding Excalipoors, at first they seemed entirely useless but I’ve actually found a use for them all. This battle is going to be one of those good ones, I can already tell. By the way have you seen a guy named Bartz Klauser? I’m like totally obsessed with the guy like Deadpool is obsessed with chimichangas, pizzas, tacos and pancakes… he’s a really cool guy, tried to kill me a few times and I won all his guns off him. Why are you giving me that look Enkidu, I so totally did not rob a guy blind in his own home, I mean he wasn’t even using those rocket launchers anyway! So what if I got tired of trying to fight with long range weapons after while, they are still good weapons, I’d just rather brutalize someone up close and personal and…”

I reiterate, this excited shart of a dead person is going to be quite a bloody one by the time I’m through with him and his blathering was as annoying as was his very existence.

Wait… did he just mention he was after the Excalibur and knowing god weapons when he sees them?! He also did just send me through a nigh indestructible throne using my body as the medium…

I don’t know whether to grin or cry now… you win a round Arceus,

...

JUST A ROUND!

-Origin Space, Arceus-

*GRINS*

Author's Note

Sorry this took a while, I've been having problems concentrating as of late and I've been getting more sleep than necessary. I also need to start an exercise routine.

Now that the author related excuses are out of the way...

Music: The ULTIMATE Battle on the Big Bridge (Gilgamesh) Medley.

You all saw this coming, yes it's happening and yes Gilgamesh as a Buzzwole for a few particular reasons. This is FF Gilgamesh after all.

Also yes, FF Enkidu is a Chocobo this time... a green one with a particular set of abilities.

361. Steel Harbor: Enemy Contact!

-Equus, Airship Mauled, the next morning, Jaded La Perm-

“So no, giant robots are most certainly not invading us and Rainbow Dash did not easily kill one named Starscream with a Sonic Rainboom.” My mother Kuril was stamping down on the rumors that were getting out of control and is actually getting the crowd to calm down. I stood in the circle that was central to our town where the eternal campfire of the sun priestess, which was me, was placed. “We are not experiencing a giant robot invasion and aside from Puks trying to attack us with flying industrial grade hairdryers.... again..., who knows how they even got them… probably the science fiction puk tribe, anyway we’re a perfectly fine and safe community!”

I yawned and then walked back into the restaurant by myself, my eyes darted about as I made my way into the kitchen and stopped to look at the toaster.

“Toasty, Blendor, Mixter, I think some ponies from Ponyville are on to you.” I said quietly.

“Then shall I make their bread black with great justice?!” The toaster said suddenly came to life and began wiggling with bright flashing colorful lights coming out of it in a display that was less than subtle to anyone who was even remotely nearby to see it. “We Applia-trons are never scared of a battle!”

“Yeah, I’m just as surprised we haven’t been caught yet with captain loudmouth here Jaded, goodness knows what Micro-waivie thinks of all this.” The blender, otherwise known as ‘Blendor the fruit chewer’ stated as it too flashed and wiggled as a voice came from it, except it was acting far more subtle in not giving off very much light or wiggling so hard the whole restaurant could hear it doing so.

“Mixter is very fond of making cakes for birthday parties held here!” The mixer of cake batter and cream, Mixter, said from nearby trying to have a little more tact than Toasty the fire spewing spirited toaster. He was apparently the youngest here and thus could only disguise himself as a larger object, thankfully it wasn’t an ice box or a refrigerator.

Goodness knows if anyone will notice if our ice box gets replaced randomly.

“Look, people are just starting to get suspicious, can you keep your war with the Com-bot Encom in Ponyville down a little bit please?” I asked while clasping my claws together and giving them the big kitty eyes. “He hasn’t been much of a threat since his secret library lair was destroyed by Tirek from what you’ve told me, besides my great granddaughter Providence has an eye on him.”

“That was a day of the many greatest of justices, also it was quite a most humorous incident to befall our mortal nemesis… fine, but I shall still continue to toast your breads to golden perfection with my mighty warmth forevermore!” Toasty finally finished stating after a few seconds of my staring, then he became inert alerting me to the fact that someone was coming in.

“Hey, were you just talking to the toaster right now?” Gallus stated as he came in with what looked like a bad case of feather head and was half awake.

Think quick, play it off!

“What me, no-, of course not! I just like playing make believe with them with Silvers, then I just got into and can’t stop doing it myself.” I giggled and Gallus just gave me a concerned look. “Did you want something little bro?”

“Yeah, I wanted to make a honey glazed seed bagel.” After assisting Gallus with a toasted honey glazed seed bagel and hugging my little brother, because mommy wanted her kittens to get along affectionately, Gallus set off to enjoy his breakfast before my wife started beating him into the ground. My little bro was growing up to be the best guard in Canterlot ever… I would have to be more careful of him then when it came to my shenanigans.

After Gallus left, while glancing back at the toaster in suspicion as he did, once he was clear and far enough away Toasty started coughing.

“Agh… seeds… trapped… in my… burn-ination unit… my one true weakness!” The violently glowing and wobbling toaster stated. “May all your crusts be golden brown, things are getting darker… is that light at the end of the tunnel… a-a- sexy waffle maker beckoning me ever forward?”

“Yeah, don’t go into that, I’ll get you cleaned out soon enough buddy.” The very reason I stuck around was to help Toasty, he didn’t do well with more heavily seeded breads.

He’d be fine though, I’ve done this a few times and it was kind of annoying, but I was a good friend even if I could be quite annoying myself.

In Canterlot I was a member of the thieves’ guild known as ‘The Squirrels’, which was actually run by squirrels. Also a side member of ‘Capture Bridle Defend’ organization as an advisor, most specifically in security as that’s usually what they ask me about. Really didn’t want the CBD catching wind of the Applia-trons as I was already protecting them well enough as it is.

Is CBD still trying to figure out how my Zamponi even works the way it does? Thoughts for later about personal ice paving vehicles of mass destruction.

In Manehatten, I was a part of the wrestling federation run by Shocking Awe and Jock Hawk. Sure I was ‘somewhat’ enemies with the Quarrelsome Quartet, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t share a pastime like my golfing thing with Teatime Clockwork! I even got to play ‘the heel’ too.

In Ponyville I was a muffin cultist under her hidden royal highness the Muffin Queen, AKA Derpy ‘Butter’ Hooves the secret true third alicorn. Muffins were delicious and warm, the queen was also quite snuggly and preferred a normal-ish life as a pegasus pony.

Here in Airship Mauled I had my own thing going on the side with the Applia-trons and the Com-bots, aside from my usual plans for Saddle Arabia. Incidentally, green beans was all that they would be able to get or eat for weeks and all it took was me buying a single mango in the marketplace in Ponyville!

I was already thoroughly grilled about buying that mango in Ponyville a few times though, given we have a perfectly good fruit orchard going on here where I could just basically grab one for free from Mr. Refreshment. Even then nobody would naturally be able to connect it back to me that the mango was the very innocuous catalyst that has caused the ‘green bean’ food epidemic in Saddle Arabia.

Life was fun, but weird, stupidly extremely unfathomably weird. I couldn’t actually get an entire week of normalcy to save my life or that of my family… loved it.

-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Kingdom of Titania within the Fairy Dust Islands, ‘The Dream’, early morning, Pom-

At least I didn’t have a night terror this time, but the dreamless sleep was just as bad.

Now operation ‘mess with Lord Oberon’ was a go and the ring leaders agreed with Dolly and Quetal’s plans. Absolutely everyone in the Kingdom of Titania was in on it with the exception of the Ponyta Prowlers who were still stuck in Illusio and a few other scouts they had in other kingdoms to keep an eye on things.

“Sir Mik, you are a very nice individual, thank you for telling me of the plight of the Mimikyu.” The costume wearing Pokémon nodded at me. Mimikyu were a sad species of Pokémon, but they were fairly strong beings. I hugged the lower portion of the strangely cute makeshift costume of an Electric Type Pokémon where the real being underneath resided, if Titania wasn’t a big enough threat to deter someone then Mik definitely was. “So are you ready to get things started Queen Titania?”

“Yes.” The Florges known as Queen Titania stated while rubbing her tiny hands together. She looked like a living flower, but was still just purely a Fairy Type and Flabebe apparently fused their flower into their final evolution yet never gained the Grass Type attribute like one would assume. Pokémon were ever strange to me. “Trust me, my truly beloved husband has this coming for a while now.”

Quite a few of the pranking factions agreed with their queen on that and would even follow the plans to get at Lord Oberon with their own queen backing it.

“Okay, I wanted to get in more practice with this weird spear, so you’ll know where to find me for the ‘final act’ when we get around to it.” I shouldered the spear and made my way towards the training room in the inn, I wanted to see what Curdle was capable of before I helped her evolve into an Alcremie.

Milcery evolved through friendship, being strong enough, trust and apparently spinning around in circles in a specific manner at different times of day. Curdle was going to prepare for her evolution after proving she wouldn’t be a burden to us on our quest to fight what would be termed as a nigh indestructible monster.

I wonder if I’ll actually meet Articuno, the blizzard bird of Nixtorm and legendary that Ice Types have a high approval rating for, Vannilish talked about that legendary Pokémon a lot. The ice bird has been said to be actually managing to hold off Skull Chaosdramon X from completely collapsing the kingdom for quite a while, one of the few beings that can ward the informational monster off.

All we could do is wait for Queen Titania to set up the situation and then get the one way trip to Nixtorm… well that shouldn’t have sounded as ominous as it did in my mind.

-Illusio, day of departure, Shanty-

“I think you need to increase the pressure and you need to focus on what you’re trying to cut and just do that, that’s all I’m going to say as advice.” With that the battered and still healing Kenshin then walked off, leaving me to think of what he be meaning with that as I boarded the airship.

Apparently Seer Xatu still be having a lot of pull, because we be having the airship at our disposal to get to Valora. Skitty Squad and the Bullet Buizels were going to be helping us investigate the spreading problem coming from there.

One we be ready, we set out and there were being enough supplies in the hull for everyone. The Psychic Types wouldn’t be able to do anything for a while and the Dark Type mercenaries under Zoroark would assist the Psychic Types in recovering from their massive amount of losses.

I be wondering if Cotton would even be surviving her injuries, the Ponyta Prowlers haven’t set out for their kingdom because they were busy helping people here. We be meeting a lot of nice people, also I am being sad about all the homeless Pokémon, there wasn’t much civilization left in Illusio after we were done with it.

While we be taking off, I be turning Kenshin’s words over in my head. Increase the pressure of my cutting ability? Like making an ice cube by freezing it so it condenses. There’s also the focusing on what I’m trying to cut… I’m usually… ah?!

I be having something of an idea of what to do now, but I would be needing to put into practice. Unfortunately I can’t be doing that on the ship, even I be knowing better than that.

“Ahoy, Captain Canard, is the ship being alright or is anyone in need of anything?” For a given definition of it after the stuff we be going through. “I be wanting to work on my cabin girl skills.”

-Several hours later-

Things had been pretty quiet thus far as we were on approach for Valora.

“What is that and what are those things?” A Bullet Buizel be saying and that be drawing my attention to what was below us. The Skitty Squad was onboard with us and Wilhelm was happily swimming in the waves below.

Sami quickly came up to see what we were looking at and brought up a pair of binoculars.

“Is that a freaking digital battleship?!” Sami exclaimed. “Canard evasive actions now, we’re being targeted, there are digital entities down there and they do not come from any of the digital realms I’ve heard of before!”

Canard immediately put the ship into a hard left and a massive beam be passing by us.

“Unknown digital aggressors are attacking, someone man whatever weapons this airship has or attack at range if you can!” Sami called out and the Skitty Squad, minus Captain Skeeball were immediately moving.

“Permission to go on the attack?” I asked as I glanced at Favela, Lucha Mundo and the Bullet Buizels.

“Incoming boarders or it’s an aerial offensive formation. Go if you think you can somehow handle the main ship, but watch out there are two smaller ones coming up behind it. The rest of us will try to hold the incoming enemies off here!” Sami stated as she pulled her rifle from her back and immediately started firing at strange creatures that were a torso with two arms, white wings, a head and a long dangling bit like a tail or a spine.

These things came flying at us while wielding bows with the two arms that fired arrows made of light or energy, given the arrows forming in their bows as they started to take aim. Some of them were carrying other things that looked to be holding weapons. None of them be having faces.

“I’m lowering altitude so we don’t crash into the ocean if we’re shot down!” Canard shouted.

One of these weird things had its head blown clean off by Sami within a second of getting too close with a single well place shot and it turned into a shower of quickly disappearing cubes. The rest of the body dissolved as it fell towards the sea.

“Enemies are definitely digital, no signs of active intelligence, take them down hard and fast, they don’t have the capacity to feel pain!” Sami Soldier would know, she was an informational being herself.

“Favela with your with me, Bullet Buizels follow us when you can as I’m not sure if the two of us can take a ship alone!” I didn’t ask for Mundo because he would be doing better up here in the air as an actual flyer compared to the Bullet Buizels who have temporary flight ability.

With that I took a flying leap off the starboard side towards the sea with Favela following me as energy arrows started crisscrossing wildly through the air. The Bullet Buizels suddenly leapt and started rocketing through the air to ram their way through the numerous winged monsters coming up to attack the ship and some of them even dropped weapon wielding passengers they had their spines wrapped around and were trying to drop on the airship, if I could be generating water like they could then I would be doing that too.

I curled up and started rapidly spinning, creating a Bouncing Blades defensive sphere of cutting force around me as I fell towards the sea, I felt my body get rocked several times as it deflected or be cutting through several energy blasts.

I slammed into the sea and my body slowed down a lot as my form cut into the water. I popped out of my rapid spin a few feet under the water and created a Bounding Bubble and started to push myself back to the surface, I saw a nearby explosion seconds before Favela be hitting the water too and falling in.

She be using Seed Bomb to handle the impact, she just be needing more strength and a bit more spine and she’d be a perfect crewmate for me.

Favela quickly surged for the surface as water to started building up a mass water beneath her as Favela started using the move Surf to send a tidal wave at the metal ship, the attack being much stronger out on the ocean as.

As she rode the wave upwards, I started jetting across the surface of the sea in my bubble with water spraying out the back pushing me forward to get in front of her.

My bubble be deflecting several bolts of energy into different directions as my bubble had a reflective property to it and I be protecting Favela from the fire as the both of us moved towards the ship.

A shadow passed beneath us and then Wilhelm popped up and blasted a Hydro pump into the energy weapons firing on us and be damaging the enemy ship.

“Stick with me Favela!” Poking my head out of the top of my bubble to call this out, I quickly pulled it back in as several energy blasts be splattering across the water I had in the way of the incoming attacks.

I saw Dodo flying down for the ship as well, slicing his way through several winged enemies on the way towards the ship.

We’d meet him there and see what the enemy had to offer. He’d hopefully have a spot for us to get on the ship from and then we’d be finding out what kind of problems these things were causing.

-Unknown Entity Forces-

Target acquired: Autonomous digital monster entity detected.

Priority Objective: Acquire fresh fully functional autonomous digital monster entity for study.

Secondary Objective: Prevent full destruction of battleship fleet.

Tertiary Objectives: Fully escape blockade, gain access and takeover digital monster entity realm, find a foothold from which to build up resources, continue spreading area of influence and begin build up for total destruction of local populace.

-Shanty-

Favela raised the wave and we be launching off the top of it as the wave crashed across the bow of the giant flat topped ship and we landing on the deck to see multiple things being knocked down and turning into evaporating cubes.

Despite a good number of the faceless things going down, we be receiving an entire mass of them coming at us with axes, sword and spears. A beam of water slammed into the deck and swept across it to take out a number of our opponents.

“Wilhelm, can you be taking care of the other ships while we be taking on this one?!” I shouted out at our friend and in response the whale dove underwater, I could see his shadow moving through the water going after the two smaller ships while Favela, Dodo and I be moving to engage the numerous enemies appearing on deck of this strange ship.

They be bipedal, strangely metal looking, certainly not being of this world at the very least as they came charging at us. Their heads being round or rectangular with lights, their limbs being simple and seemingly made of metal and wielding weapons as they came at us in mass while appearing out of the air from nowhere.

Where did they all be coming from and why do they be looking like robots? They not be acting like robots at the very least.

Behind them was a strange floating turtle shell device that was glowing red at the top of it where an opening was and beneath it appeared more of these things that were attacking us including the winged flying bow wielders that continued to swarm towards the airship. I would think that that thing in particular was creating these things after seeing more of these strange things appear below it.

Pulling the water away from my head, I really do be needing another method to talk, I called out to Favela.

“Favela, target that turtle shell thing with Seed Bomb and keep hitting it until I can be getting close to it! Dodo protect Favela, I’m going in!” I hear Dodo be making an upset, but understanding, mechanical warbling noise as I charged forward in my bubble.

A wave of spear wielding faceless came forward brandishing their spears, I created a single tentacle of water and with a single powerful cutting swipe I be tearing their entire line in half. The axe wielding faceless be lunging and striking at my water and boiling a bit of it away with their burning hot axes creating a massive amount of steam.

I tried to strike out at them with some more of the water from the bubble, yet they simply defended against it with the burning axes working in unison to burn away more of my water by using them as shields and shrinking the amount I had to use against them. I would not be getting out of my bubble to be facing these things close up.

I tried to strike out at them with the water, only to again be stopped in place as they started moving toward me aggressively.

“Ahoy there, glad to see someone slowed them down and is trying to fight them, come on men let’s help out the little ladies and their steel bird!” A gruff old voice said and six chains intersected and pierced through all the axe wielding guys and with a single pull they tore them apart. Looking to see who be helping me out, I be blinking as I see wheels attached to anchors with eyes and they be having lots of seaweed on them. It is being strange, but I can be at least telling that it was a Pokémon given the lead anchor that be talking to me be having a big green mustache. “Hey there, if you need to push forward and take out the enemy, then let us help you with that… we’re definitely friends here if n’ you’re their enemies too! We’re a unit of Dhelmise, just don’t expect us to attack those heat axes too much directly unless we can catch them by surprise.”

Several sword wielding beings charged with the swords raised and I quickly blasted forward shooting water out the back of the bubble and created a shockwave as I whipped out two tentacles of water to the sides to tear them apart.

The anchors slowly followed after me.

-Favela-

I was bombarding that floating shell thing and the Seed Bombs were doing plenty damage to it, but not quickly enough. It didn’t help that Shanty got into trouble after dealing with the spear guys so easily, those burning axe guys really seemed to be a hard counter for Shanty’s Bounding Bubble only for us to get help from the water.

I watched as the anchors launched themselves into the air three on each side using their seaweed and then launched chains through all the enemies keeping Shanty from getting close to that thing that was obviously producing them.

The proceeded to start firing Shadow and Energy Ball attacks before the enemy could close in and Shanty took advantage of the six anchor Pokémon supporting her to fight her way closer towards the sword wielding faceless things as I continued bombarding the glowing turtle shell thing from a distance.

Dodo be slashing through apart any energy blast that be aimed for me with his wings and then knocked one of the feathered winged things starting to surround us from the air with one of those highly blackened bread loaves he seems to be fond of spitting at things he dislikes.

At least I know that Dodo likes me, he always gives me good tasting stuff. Not what I should be focusing on right now, I needed to break that floating shell thing. I quickly moved forward at a gallop as several energy shots landed behind me, as I ran forward I felt Dodo grab me by the horns and he swiftly yanked me into his back.

I didn’t mind and continued firing Seed Bombs as Dodo provided the evasive movements for the both of us.
That thing had to be destroyed as it was seemingly producing even more spears, lance, axe and sword wielding faceless things, on top of the weird winged bow wielding things too. None of these things looked like they felt pain as they continued to swarm at us in heavy numbers and it was almost like we were fighting a horde of substitutes attacking us.

The good thing about all of this is that they be about as fragile as a Substitute too, even if their weapons can cut, slash, slice, or pierce, they wouldn’t be able to do anything if they couldn’t get remotely close to us. Their continued numbers were a bit unreal though.

-Sami-

“What are these things?” They were programs brought into reality, that was certain and not related to Digimon or Digibots in the slightest.

I ducked one of the angel or seraph things as it tried to lash out and get me with its tail, I a quick burst from my rifle tore its data apart and then I quickly loaded the quickly disappearing data to find out what we were dealing with here.

… Oh… oh dang… not good! This situation definitely needs far more soldiers than me on it. I managed to take one of them out of the fight by loading their data, so that’s one less problem to worry about and I started stealing the data that would get sent back to their spawner every time one of them was killed so that they could be recreated and sent back out.

“Find a way to destroy that entire ship like yesterday, it cannot be allowed to continue heading towards Illusio!” The information I picked up from the enemy was sporadic, but I got enough to know what a full-fledged digital invasion force looks like. “In fact don’t let any of those ships go, we need to destroy every last bit of them!”

Digimon have invaded other realities plenty of times, so it was relatively easy for me to recognize what this invasion force was here for. The force basically had endless replication within a limited area with their spawners and they could only spawn so much and their invasion forces were all simplistic in design, but it could simply overwhelm with numbers in a hive mind like efficiency.

The most telling thing of all about the next few bits of data I stole and loaded… I was considered a primary objective and the other bit of data is that they wanted to kill absolutely everything on this world.

These things thankfully could not act autonomously outside the range of their spawners or any vehicles they can use to recollect their data back and reassemble back into a fighting unit once it is destroyed. However I dropped the maximum capacity just by eating some of their unit’s data causing errors.

They were all functionally endless unless their unique method of recovering their numbers were dealt with quickly in a permanent fashion in any way, like my loading of their data! The lucky thing was that they required time to forge the shattered data into new units, but that they could do so in bulk all at once was a terrifying prospect.

They were using some stolen data from a Digimon to break into this reality, which would not be very good if they had managed to catch any functioning Digimon alive. Fortunately the stolen data made them vulnerable to Digimon loading it. It seems their methods to generate true manifestations without requiring tethers in reality, like the spawners, was lacking. Once they could manifest these soldiers without said tethers, they could go any distance away from their spawners and the battle would change drastically afterwards.

A flaming whip wrapped around another one of the bow seraph things and pulled it into another before it was torn apart by Dazzle.

“Jyarimon do not come out of that Digivice until you’re at least back in rookie shape and able to defend yourself, they have a top priority to capture living Digimon and its part of their invasion plan for this world!” I warned towards Dazzle, who seemed to realize what I was saying and she nodded as she continue to fight off our borders who were getting rapidly taken out by the Ice Beams our Skitty friends were unleashing into them.

Even as they were taken down, they’d be quickly reconstituted and sent our way because I was here. Less and less of them were showing up because I was bugging their data by eating it wholesale, the unfortunate problem was that it was making me stronger and more likely to digivolve and I was still quite terrified of turning into a Sealsdramon.

Hopefully we could deal with them quickly.

A large axe wielding digital soldier program was dropped onto the deck and I quickly pulled a DCD Bomb out and chucked it at them immediately upon recognizing it as a more intelligent battle unit. My blast them away with a mid-air remote detonation as to not damage the ship.

This sent the elite unit’s data flying back for their spawner, with the confirmation that I existed, before they could do really anything with that burning axe to damage the ship. I at least managed to draw its weapon data for that heat axe it had been wielding to me, before its data could get away or be pulled back fully.

I could probably use this later for something and I dealt them a problematic blow as that was some premium key data for all of their other axe fighters, woo that was some minor good news for those attacking the battleship. The enemy couldn’t afford to field any more elites against me directly after such a quick and massive loss in their combat ability, especially not when their data read as 'Data Types' to me and puts them in a severe disadvantage.

All I had to do was avoid Digivolving, not too hard because I’ve been running at a deficit of digital energy for a while now given how thin it was in this world, might even share some of this with Frizzle once we’re through here to get her back up to speed.

We might seriously need Frizzle’s ferocity in the near future.

“They are effectively endless until we deal with their ship or I can steal the data off them, get us close to the battleship Canard!” Virus types like me were going to be very important in the future battles with these things, we had enemy digital network that needed to take care of ASAP before it hurt this wonderful world even worse than Gilgamesh did. “I need to ruin and bug it beyond recognition like the virus type I am, it cannot be allow to transmit any data back to the rest of the invasion force!”

They had sent that axe elite at me, but didn’t realize how powerful a Digimon was against lesser data based entities, especially virus type Digimon.

-Shanty-

The thing that be generating the faceless bipedal enemies suddenly flickered a bit and when it be generating axe guys their axes suddenly disappeared and they started walking around aimlessly as if looking for them…

I grinned and immediately took advantage of the confusion of the things no longer having heat axes to fight with.

My bubble bounded forward and I started sweeping the enemy without a problem getting closer as I thrashed my way through the lance, spear wielders with wide sweeps of water lashing away through them. That’s when the sword wielders decided to light up their weapons with lightning and I had to back off as they tried to stab them into my bubble in unison, they almost caught me off guard too.

Multiple spheres of energy ripped them to shreds as the living anchor guys be coming to my aid in dealing with the lightning weapon guys, then lashed out with chains to continue opening a path to the thing generating them.

I be getting beneath the floating humming device and then I thrust both my hooves upwards to spike my bubble of water straight up and through it. I spread my hooves out and split the floating shell shaped machine apart easily after all the damage Favela be doing to it with her Seed Bombs.

Pulling the water back from my head, I looked to the anchor guys that said they were… Dhelmise?

“What be going on in Valora?” I be asking.

“Well little lady that is a long story, us anchors can tell you about it, but it appears that we aren’t quite done here!” That’s when a flood of new faceless bipedal creatures and fewer winged creatures than before surged up onto deck from platforms that lowered near us and raised up with more enemies and others be coming up a ramp towards the back of the ship and we were being near the middle of the ship.

“We need to destroy this ship entirely and I’m here to help with that!” Sami shouted as she dropped to the deck. “Shanty, Favela, Dodo, I need you and the Bullet Buizels to cover me while I set up blowing this whole ship apart. Do not, under any circumstances, allow them to capture me!”

The Bullet Buizels, after a brief break from the fighting, jumped from the airship as it hovered above and rammed their way through several white winged faceless enemies and then landed with pinpoint precision.

Yeah, this would definitely be being enough to draw Pom’s attention, we’d be meeting her in Valora eventually even if we didn’t be knowing where she was if she wasn’t already there to begin with!

I be fighting my way through the surging enemies who grew thicker the more we became embattled in enclosed spaces with them by trying to go below deck.

This might even be my first pirate boarding action... not how I would be thinking it to be going.

-Fairy Dust Islands, ‘The Dream’, Flowering Head Fields, Pom-

I stared at the weapon, it seemed so inoccuous upon first glance, but I think it tipped its nature to me a little too fast by being highly unusual. The lance’s gentle slightly dark white shading was easy on the eyes, the cute blue puppy patterns printed on it to make it seem disarming in appearance and that was the first sign that something was up with it.

Nobody would clearly make a weapon look this adorable on purpose. No, I’m pretty sure this was the weapons doing to appear charming and as disarmingly friendly as possibly.

That this lance could open up like an umbrella or parasol despite looking like it was made of solid material was the second thing that I noted as something being up with it. The weapon had a very notable blunt spear tip, probably based on my desire to not hurt anyone… I’m pretty sure this was one of those weapons that could feel exactly what its user would need.

So the calming effect as I wielded it was the third sign of something being up with it, given it fit perfectly with my hooves and worked with the Huoshan Spear style despite being part lance.

I couldn’t help but continue to think something was off about it. With several signs showing that it seemed too coincidental or good to be true for me to have spotted and liked it at first sight. For a Lambkin, and begrudgingly Chrysomallus, like me… well coincidence was always just short of being a conspiracy and the marmalade conspiracy was real… so how many things have we Lambkin been right about since then what with our over the top paranoia?

“You better not be the main reason something tries to kill me later.” I sighed loudly, I at least expected it to say something or jump up and attack me for being suspicious of it, but no it seemed perfectly fine to mold itself to my needs of a weapon for my personal defense and the protection of my friends.

I felt a warmth and the unnatural general feeling of safety radiating off this weapon, I hoped I could trust it to be benign as it was currently acting.

Didn’t have much to do while Dolly, Quetal and Queen Titania were doing everything in their power to make Lord Oberon miserable.

“Something about that weapon bugging you?” It was sir Mik, he seemed to shift or hop along the ground under his costume that seemed perpetually upright and he came to stop to look at the Para-lance. “Hmm… can you look away for a bit? I want to test something Lady Pom of the Harmony Team. Please do not look at me directly, for I am going to show my true form and I would not like for you to be sickened by the sight of me.”

Yeah, I didn’t like the whole ‘Lady Pom’ thing, but it is definitely going to catch on since all of the Fairy Types started calling me that.

I looked away and then looked back, my body started glowing gold as I gazed upon Mik’s true form and then looked away again.

“Are you hurt Lady Pom?” He asked with worry as he swiftly slammed his costume back down over himself.

“I’m fine, you’re actually kind of cute, if not for the curse magical energy seemingly coming off your form.” And all Mimikyu were like this?! Yikes forever… no seriously, I’m glad Sir Mik got recognition and love despite having to wear a costume to keep everyone safe from his actual appearance.

“Good, then that golden glow you gives off allows you to see me for what I truly am, I will cherish the memory that at least one being aside from Arceus or the other legendary Pokémon can look upon us without revulsion, sickness or... death.” The costume wearing Pokémon turned back to the seemingly inert, unusual weapon. “Now to test my theory with the weapon you are wary of… please do not look upon me again even if you are resistant or even immune to the sickness Lady Pom. I would rather not like to test whether or not the killing effect will actually take with you eventually.”

I stayed quiet and a bright white light shined from where Sir Mik is.

“Okay, you can look again. The weapon is as you might think of it, it is of some intellect to be wary of and it burned my curse slightly at its touch… it did not however harm me personally.” Sir Mik stated while facing towards me in what was said to be a Pikachu costume. “It may be safe to wield, but continue to be wary of its power.”

“Would you like to occupy my time Sir Mik?” He was an interesting person to talk to. “I have little else going on while waiting to force Lord Oberon to ask for a true smile while giving him one.

“I would gladly occupy your time and keep you company Lady Pom.” He came to sit next to me in the grass and we chatted about how he grew up, how he got his costume and why he became a knight of Lord Oberon and Queen Titania. Mimikyu were very sad, definitively 'magically cursed' individuals like Jackie 'The Blackcap' Chickadee was, unless they can make good friends like me or Queen Titania they tended to be a very lonely species.

Sir Mik was truly happy to talk to me and I was happy to make his day as one of his friends.

Author's Note

Just a taste of what is happening in Valora.

If you know what Enemy Programs (EP) are, then you might know they can come in many disastrous forms.

380. Rise a Champion.

-Ironclad City Outskirts, on a hill about to get swarmed badly, Pom-

I pulled the Paralance out and thrust it forward while opening it explosively to send several enemies flying away with a blast of raw force. I did so before they could stab me, I was getting quite tired of it after being stabbed for a fourth time in so many minutes and had to narrowly avoid having an artery severed.

I finally started using the paralance, my misgivings about the weapon should not hold me back from using it to defend myself and my friends from hundreds of enemies, all of which Shanty had recently said were in the massive city.

How spread out had they been before they started coming after me like this in one large clump?

Dolly sent the wiry assassins flying with blunt force and boosted momentum blows with every swing of her skateboard. Though she could do without the cute tricks between her attacks in a serious combat situation.

Thus far we didn’t have to worry about the Seraphs, they were out of those minutes after Dodo arrived and started blasting the cubes out of them.

I brought the open paralance around and used the sharp edge of the canopy to cut the arms off a Reaper and then brought the back end around to bash its head off. Its legs and torso fell to the ground and dissolved.

“We should probably start a fighting retreat!” Quetal grunted as he was covered in cuts and was bleeding, he needed a moment to patch himself up.

“At least they will be running out of Assassin Reapers soon, it is just being a hundred and fifty or more to see. There still be being hundreds of the Sabers, Lancers and Berserkers on the horizon, but those are being easier to fight.” Shanty didn’t even comment on the Seraphs that were coming with them. The energy arrows they fire were a threat, but the Seraphs themselves having fragile bodies made them easy to take out if you could hit them. “You should be being thankful that there isn’t being a PLANT nearby!”

“PLANT?” My confusion was short lived as I brought the Paralance to be directly above me, as a falling Reaper tried to come down on top of me after leaping a good eighteen feet straight up.

I quickly spun the lance above me and it stubbornly clung to it and tried to stab me from above while on top of it, I whipped it about and sent the Reaper plowing through a dozen climbing the icy hillside and said ice was quickly melting. These things weren’t very heavy.

“It be a nasty floating jellyfish like thing that be rapidly regenerating these Enemy Programs as soon as we be taking them out.” Well that sounded like quite a hassle Shanty, I’m partially glad I wasn’t around for most of it thus far. “Which is being why we be trying to deal with the PLANTs first, they are a major problem if you be seeing one and are usually well protected.”

The Assassin Reapers were just attacking like crazy, not caring about their own destruction. Most of their attacks were focused on me or on getting by the others to get at me.

With my favorite blade happy goat and Dodo here, we were actually managing to barely hold position despite being vastly outnumbered. The quality in those numbers was in doubt though given that things weren’t as dire as I might be thinking.

“Can we ice up the hill again?” My question was met with a wary whine, after I thrust the open paralance forward and smashed a Reaper with blunt force, I turned and saw that the Spheal were all resting a fair distance behind us.

“They still need some time to recover, but I can keep going!” Another sparkling flash, which only had an effect on what Curdle wanted it to, went off.

Curdle was pushing the swarming Reapers that managed to get beyond the ice straight back into the climbing swarm. Curdle didn’t have to worry about her injuries like Quetal or the rest of us did, it made me wish that I knew the Pokémon move ‘Recover’ personally.

Some weren’t even going onto two feet to attack me and were moving on four spindly legs that was their limbs slightly transformed with or without the knives as part of the legs. I’d like to make a lot of bug comparisons in their movements, but I was pressed with just keeping them away from me.

“Quetal fall back and see to your injuries, we’ll hold as well as we’re able!” I called, he did so while firing Beat Up attacks that was creating a number of shadows copies, including a shadow copy of Dodo that rammed into the Assassin Reapers with quite a bit of force.

I quickly tossed Quetal my pack and then stepped forward leading with the open paralance to block a leaping Reaper and thrust it forward to send them flopping onto their back for Dormarch to rend with a pair leaping claw swipes.

“Dolly how are you doing?” One of the advantages of my wool is that I could see to my injuries while I’m fighting. Not that the blood loss, the lightheadedness and the onset of dizziness was going to stop after I sealed a wound.

Adrenaline was going to keep me going long after I shouldn’t be.

I shifted my wool around my left leg and fired of a Thousand Spears shot into a leaping Reaper, it tore through its eye into its torso and then out of its upper back, Dolly finished it off with two quick swipes from the edges of her board and then blocked a knife stabbing down for her from one of the ones that entered a two legged movement and charged her.

“I’m mostly fine, but this is getting kind of nuts Pom!” Dolly shoved it off and staggered it with a sharp blow. It was soon blown away from attacking further, along with the seven or so other Reapers about to attack us all at once, in a small shockwave that came from off to the side.

“I thought you couldn’t do that anymore!” I glanced Dormarch before I bashed the back end of the paralance into the midsection of a bipedal walking Reaper and then spun the weapon about to take off its head with the edge of paralance’s canopy.

The Reapers body, despite missing its eye and head, still tried to come at me and was taken down with a Retriever Bark from Dormarch.

“Sorry for the misconception mom, it’s just hard for me to do a Wild Howling as I am and the charge time isn’t going to make it very helpful here. Program Wild Bark is far easier for my body to handle, but its range leaves something to be desired as you’ve noticed.” In fact the more Dormarch fought these things, the stronger he was getting, he was healing from any injuries dealt to him without needing to use Cure Liquor too often. Dormarch was even getting better at dealing with them quite rapidly, any awkwardness in his fighting was disappearing and he was beginning to match my good boys back home in their protective ferocity. “Please do not take any more stabbings or hits mom, I don’t want your health to be rapidly declining again and I don’t want you to sacrifice yourself into the ground!”

“Oh believe me, I’m trying not to get hit or sacrifice here!” The Sword, Axe and Lance wielding menaces were close to joining the Reapers in the fight.

There was only six of us holding the hill and we were slowly backing up towards the peak of it where the Spheal were all resting.

Curdle, made glitter fill the air around her in a constant display of colorful eye searing blasts that was Dazzling Gleam.

Shanty was shredding anything that so much as moved near her, her scythe dancing along with her hooves slashing movements. She quickly eviscerated the ones that were about to assault the three of us, which made me finally note Dolly and Dormarch’s proximity to me hadn’t changed one bit since the fight started and there were still Assassin Reapers getting through.

I was doing the least amount of damage and yet attracting the most amount of trouble, constantly on the defense and almost fighting on my back. As I closed up the paralance, I batted away another crawling Reaper that came leaping for me.

Dolly was trying to protect me and be proactive in her offensive, I saw her trying to start up a Counter Rave, but the enemies were not hitting her enough to make her overcharge for it.

Dormarch, was… in a word… amazing, he was teleporting around, ripping into them with his claws and blasting them with Retriever Barks and Wild Barks. I think he was absorbing strength from them and the more he defeated, the better off he was. I was quite proud of him lasting as long as he had, I would look into his mental state after all of this.

The one doing the most damage here was undoubtedly Dodo though. His exploding Volcanic Bread bombardments were taking out quite a number of them, which would be more helpful if he could fire them anywhere near us. He was taking entire chunks out of the swarm though.

The next Seraph swarm finally came in ahead of the melee weapons and were about to attack and suddenly became blindsided by the Skarmory that I could finally see personally. Their tails were like can openers. Their heads resembled spears hippogriffs would use for simpler forms of fishing. Their wings of metallic feathers were like fans of razor edged blades. The three talon claws of the Skarmory would puncture straight through and rupture a Seraph instantly.

There was just two units of them, but they were a welcome sight and they were absolutely decimating the Seraph. A seraph fired an energy arrow shot that hit a Skarmory in their right eye and… the shot bounced off of it harmlessly and all it did was enrage the flying metal bird, even their eyes were, unbelievably enough to me, armored. The only problem I could see is that they had problems with gaining height given how heavy they must be, but when it came to diving you probably wouldn’t want to be in the way of a Skarmory.

I rapidly thrust the spear several times and knocked away three more crawling Reapers trying to lunge and stab at me with their front legs, I was recently lightly stabbed in the chest so no thanks to letting that happen again.

One of the oncoming Reapers avoided my rapid stabs and went into being bipedal and swiped at me with its left knife, I narrowed my eyes and saw that it was going to fall short so…

I blocked to my left and the knife in its right hand became caught on the paralance’s cone. I quickly took my right hoof off of my weapon and fired a point blank Thousand Spears to take out the creepy eye staring at me with malice. Following that I pushed back the right arm. The left immediately started to come around again, I ducked back from the swipe and swung the back end up of the lance into the Reapers chest staggering them as they tried to attack with both knifes at the same time.

With the back end raise of the paralance raise, I then jammed it forward straight into what passed for the Reaper’s chest to knock it down and then proceeded to bring the lance down right on top of it with a devastating overhead swing to splatter it into quickly disappearing cubes.

I huffed and puffed and saw even more coming for me and raised the lance defensively. I was quite upset that this was continuing to be my life. Was I going to end up fighting for every inch of time that I had left in me?

We were certainly getting overwhelmed here as three more came at me from the left, right and above with its right spindly leg raised to skewer me. Dolly was busy and… something was happening with Dormarch, our reestablished bond started to shift oddly and I worried about him.

-Dormarch-

I had to protect mom, she was in danger! I watched as she bashed and stabbed the various digital constructs that were targeting her specifically with that strange lance.

I could feel her love, concern and… she was proud of how well I was doing so far?

Dolly was struggling to take down more to get to Pom and I knew she loved me, my emotions took shelter in her heart for a long time and I could feel the familial warmth from her.

A fierce warmth equally blossomed in my chest knowing they took a few moments to check in on me even when things were so hectic. I had to keep fighting to the best of my abilities, which were improving rapidly… I could almost imagine a small bar filling up with each destruction of these mindless digital constructs that deign to call themselves assault programs.

You want to come after Pom, then you’d have to go through me and Dolly… and I’m not letting you even hurt my big sister without a fight!

We were being pushed back, those Skarmory were a bit busy, Dodo was doing a good job of not landing those explosions anywhere near us and we were still outnumbered far more than ten to one at any given time given there were hundreds of Enemy Programs climbing the icy covered hill and they all had the markings of Moon Cell.

I was gathering a vast amount of data and I felt it hit a point where it was coalescing, it surpassed a threshold that it had before. I could feel it, the digital evolution I was meant to have from before, the one I couldn’t use due to it being sealed off by Kahn Industries. It could help me turn the tide and nothing was stopping me from doing it this time.

Whatever I became, I would do so to protect my mom, Dolly and all those who I cared about, I wanted to be a miracle in the making! I wasn’t going to go crazy like Frizzle had, I was going to stay focused.

Miracles can sometimes just happen, but why should you wait for a miracle to happen? It was best that you should sometimes be proactive and make your own miracles like mom can, because I was going to do it too here and now!

“Dalmamon digivolve to…!” I screamed as I felt myself bursting with digital energy and I started absorbing all the spilled digital energy in the area, drawing in the massive amounts of the stuff just floating around and I could see thousands of zeroes, ones and even twos pass by my vision.

Parts of myself expanded, I started growing. I was getting bigger, bigger than Dolly at least… was I becoming an adult sized dog? At least I wasn’t turning into a Machinedramon, but what was I becoming… I felt my new data evolution being settled.

“Dobermon D-Type!” I roared and then used Wild Howling, no charge time, no stressing my body, it came out like a veritable sonic cannon that we had used to shake apart that meteor back in Cape Suzette.

Said attack blasted down the hill and didn’t so much as touch my allies, my enemies however weren’t so lucky.

The Enemy Programs charging my mother, evaporated. Any Classification Assassin, designation Reaper ceased to exist as my howl started up.

The crawling ones coming up the hill, heavily damage and barely functional as they went sliding back down the slope.

The ones further beyond? They started to get very confusing signals in their programming and seemed to be panicking due to the sudden scrambling of all their combat routines, I had just effectively hacked their coding by howling lines of data at them.

I knew what a Dobermon was, such a digimon has existed before prior to this moment, but it did make me wonder what the D-type stood for. Was it Data, Dalmamon, Dormarch or just Dalmatian? I’m the one that named this form as soon as I became it, why didn’t I know? I wasn’t anywhere near as big as a full sized true Dobermon, but I was okay with that.

The plus stats in my spirit core, turned from D+++’s into C++’s and my classification changed to ‘Saver Shielder Beast’, the classification system seemed to have quite a glitch or two in it. To be honest this classification sounded far nicer to me than assassin, didn’t change any of my skills from the spirit core though.

Something about the Spirit Core was trying to get me to start living entirely off of my mother’s magic, but I ignored that urge and mentally erased what was causing it from my mind. I did not need mom’s magic to continue to exist whatever that strange insistence was, but it was nice to know that mom could fuel me with some of her magic if I needed it.

The stats in my primary soul digital core had some interesting readouts as well. There was bits of Dorulumon and Gaomon data having involved themselves in my evolution somehow, everything felt alright though.

Unfortunately I couldn’t immediately use Wild Howling again, because my evolution transformation to this form apparently created a quick load feature and would load up one program of my choice every time I did an evolution from my Dalmamon form. I could apparently hold and or save that one move for whenever I needed it and even use it when I returned to Dalmamon form, but I wouldn’t be able to change it out or save a new move until I used up the previous quick loaded one. At least I could dump the move for energy instead of using it, it’s like an emergency backup battery.

It had thankfully defaulted to Wild Howling and I kind of needed that raw power at the time so that was rather fortunate.

I became quite thoroughly aware of the Power Saver mode activating now that I had an evolution to wield, apparently this was a highly useful stock standard thing for all ‘Digidestined Digimon’ since forever. It’d go into effect when necessary and I’d return to my cute and cuddly rookie level self after all the fighting was said and done.

Now what changed about my overall body?

-Dolly-

“Bow-whacka-whoa bro…” There was a small lull in the action and I leaned against my board for support as I stared at Dormarch wide eyed.

Dormarch didn’t look all too different, but I could certainly feel the difference in our bond. He was a little bigger, he had a much sleeker athletic look and his big goofy claws were slightly closer to being a bit more normal sized… still goofy looking though. In fact he almost looked like a normal dog, if you could ignore the tails.

He was wearing a silver collar that covered most of his neck and chest like armor and there was also silver legs guards wrapped around the front of his legs. I could barely see his blue scarf sticking out from under the metal collar armor, so it was definitely Dormarch. The three tails were a bit bigger with sharp spikes at the top and bottom edges of his fins now, his fur was basically the same and the spots still had a fish scale motif and he just looked like far more to cuddle, if there wasn’t currently a fierce look on his face.

Overall he still looked like a Dalmatian with fish tails, only an adult, wearing armor and with the most notable change was the two streams of a something coming from his back at the base of his neck, kind of like the two streams Dazzle had coming from her butt above her tail.

Wait, they were moving, looking closer were those… small black, white spotted flat octopus tentacle things?! Okay, what the dog was going on with that? He was still my little bro, but darn if that wasn’t really weird… like zombie chickens, ghost ancestors, evil coat lady and a number of other odd things that apparently occurred on my step mothers side of the family, like my side was any better with Dante and Dad having supernatural abilities. Actually does my dad hooking up with Delilah count as part of the oddities of the Dalmatian family?

I watched as he noticed one and moved it to look at it in confusion, stretching out wide like an extra fin shaped wing and then slimmed it back down to a tentacle again and he suddenly turned to sling it forward to lob a blob of energy into a nearby Leapers leaping for Pom.

He looked even more confused than Pom and I did at what just happened, as the creepy crawly killer knife thing was blasted by a small explosion of energy.

Had to really step up my game to not fall behind to that, which means I needed to ultimately figure out how to do more for less.

I mean, how hard could being a super smart pup, like most of my brothers back in Camden, truly…

I’m doomed, I just tempted fate again.

-Dormarch-

Let’s see… P-Surge Projector… yup, that’s a new one.

Talk about odd system mutations… I mean armored skin flap tentacles that can spread out to be fin wings that can charge up and fling energy. I’ll just live with it, I mean it’s kind of helpful and mom has been taking an interest in studying the evolutions of Pokémon, so maybe she’d want to study my new form with me. The tentacles have must come from the Gaomon combat data, because I at least know the data evolution of it has something similar to this.

We still had a fight to finish and a veritable army to mop up and I just got a power up like in the Poodle Wolf game, better make this count while it lasts!

“Honestly… aside from the armor you look cuddlier.” Pom stated with good cheer as she propped herself up on the paralance with her left leg, Quetal looked ready to get back into the fray and I was ready to do more too.

The remaining Assassin Reapers that were further away with disrupted combat routines seemed to have managed to reboot themselves after the last few minute or so of peace and they were once again coming after mom, but they had me to deal with.

-Pom-

Dormarch walked to the right of me and I felt one of his tentacles wrap around my waist affectionately. I just smiled at him, as big as a full sized Dalmatian like Delilah, but he now had some notably power and confidence behind him.

I gave him a hug with my right hoof and nuzzled the back of his head, then let him free to charge forward and tear through a number of Assassin Reapers in quick succession as they came at us with the aid of Curdle and Quetal. He was a lot stronger than before, I wonder how Digimon Evolution differed from Pokémon Evolution, aside from the backsliding like I’ve seen Frizzle do when she goes back to Guilmon.

They grow up so fast, although now I was a little concerned with how powerful Dormarch was getting, as he whipped his tentacles through them as he passed by a number of encroaching enemies. It was either that or he slung blasts of energy from either one and his claws despite their smaller size seemed be as or even more effective than before.

“I can do Wild Howling more often, but it’s going to require at least some time between each use, don’t want to overdo it.” Dormarch said cheerfully as I stood up and held the paralance at the ready when he came back to me and Quetal once again joined us on the frontline of battle with his wounds haphazardly bandaged.

When we were about to start fighting the remaining fifty or so oncoming Reapers and then take on the incoming army of other enemies wielding a variety of melee weapons, that’s when another surprised showed up coming from the direct north of the horde.

“Did you think you could continue to beleaguer my kingdom’s peace without facing my might on the field of battle?” An angry large armored figure wielding an oversized pike and large shield roared onto the battlefield as he went charging straight into the line of sword and shield wielding enemies recklessly all by himself. “I am Ieyasu Tokugawa, and you invaders from elsewhere are not welcome in the kingdom of Valora!”

Ieyasu hit them all with the explosive force of a freight train, the large bipedal armored thing tore a solid swath through all that were in his path, at least forty enemies went flying and far more were decimated or in the process of dissolving into light cubes upon impact from the charge.

Having slowed down Ieyasu started to lay into them with his oversized pike exploding with incredible force every once in a while. It took me a moment to notice he had a sack full of cannonballs strapped to his back and was actively loading his barrel ended spear with them between brutal violently powerful attacks, he was loading his weapon at an incredible speed with a practiced claws.

Beyond Ieyasu’s sudden attack, far behind the horde I could see Frizzle turning into Growlmon, so our Pokémon Companion friends have finally arrived from the southeast and a large blast of lightning from Lit signaled that they were joining in the fight now.

More units of Pokémon came from the north, among them I noticed a Hakamo-o bearing a flag spear, it was Jeanne D’ Arc. It looked like she had been rushing to catch up with Ieyasu who had furiously charged into battle by himself. Nice to see Jeanne made it back home okay, but I had more to worry about in this situation.

The last of the seraphs was just finished off by the Skarmory, they turned and suddenly swooped down to start assisting Ieyasu in dismantling the veritable army. They scythed long lines of destruction through the enemy ranks as their wings slice through numerous bipedal weaponry wielding entities that had vaguely different designs based on the weapons they wielded.

It finally hit me. Some Hope blossomed in my chest, tears sprung in my eyes and I let out an admittedly disturbing sounding giggle. Our friends were finally here and we were going to be saved!

I had to quickly defend myself from an Assassin Reaper by raising the lance horizontally catch the two knives being brought down towards me. I was forced onto my back by it, should really pay more attention to my surroundings.

With a quick kick I knocked it over and kicked up to smashed my lanced down on it, then I did so until it turned into light cubes with several clubbing blows while it was prone. Dormarch was busy taking down three others for me trying to take advantage of me while I was down.

Dormarch lashed out his left tentacle and jammed it into the next Assassin Reaper that came at me, he got it right into the things chest and glared at it. It violently exploded into a mass of cubes that seemingly sucked into the tentacle.

“Huh… neat…” Curiously stated Dormarch said as he waved his left tentacle right in front of his face.

“Who is that guy, he’s awesome!” Dolly stated with an excited smiled after burrowing her board into a Reaper Assassin, then tore it out ripping the thing entirely in half and with a following two flipping vertical downwards swings it was down to a dissolving torso.

“He said his name quite loudly Dolly, I thought he announced that he was the king of this kingdom quite clearly!” I think my blood was likely to be made entirely of healing berry juice after this, but I’d welcome it.

“Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention at the time.” As she said this Dolly whipped her board over her head by the strap twice and then snapped it forward with two swing to tear another one of the crawling Reapers down as it tried to raise up for a quick lunge.

I thought about how we could fix the damage that was dealt to the skateboard once we reached the Team Harmony wagon, I seriously doubted Shanty would leave that behind.

“Not many of the Reapers left, but they still aren’t giving up on trying to get to you Pom.” A bandaged Quetal called out as he slashed down one of the reapers in a flurry of claw swipes that made cubes fly out of several monsters with each successful slash. “I don’t think the rest of that army will either.”

Quetal followed that with a barrage of Beat Up shadow copies, which included Shine, Lit and the others so they were definitely within range to become part of the attack and it was making Quetal’s attack rapid fire quite a number of shadow copies like crazy. Quetal smiled when he saw a Shine shadow copy fly forward while twirling with its arms wide out to take out three enemies as it passed by.

The last Shadow copy was that of Frizzle as Growlmon completely crushing the life out of five of the last seven or so Assassin Reapers, some would say that was overkill. I call it a relief, especially when the final two went up in a blasts of explosive bread from Dodo.

The Frizzle shadow copy he fired made Quetal smile quite a bit.

I flopped onto my butt and took a sigh of relief and watched as Ieyasu tore that army a new one, I don’t think I would be able to do that. Just walk into an army and expect to win the fight by myself like him.

In fact, it was awe inspiring to watch as Ieyasu sent them flying and flopping all over the place with each destructive swing of his weapon, an explosion from the cannonball loosed from it or stomp if one were to get under foot. He blocked hundreds of attacks with his iron hide and shield that looked to be suspiciously made from his hide as some kind of repurposed molting.

Dormarch looked to me and seemed to be expecting something, a Spheal hopped up to me and flopped into my lap while happily squealing. It seemed the Spheals were almost recovered enough to get back to fighting if they were jolly enough to seek comfort in me.

“Give me a minute, then we’ll go help… but I’m definitely staying behind that guy and maybe Jeanne.” My eyes turned to Curdle who was using ‘Recover’ to heal her somewhat amorphous mass and form, then to Quetal who was sitting and watching the action too.

Quetal glanced at me and I gave him an expectant look, and tilted my head while darting my gaze to the Steel Type tearing through the enemy’s ranks.

“Be sounding good to me and quite fair, Dodo can be covering us from above.” Shanty said as she took a seat next to us. “Dormarch is looking cooler than ever and it’s nice to be seeing you buddy! How have you been?”

“Yeah, it’s nice to be back Shanty and I’ve been better.” Dormarch stated while waving his right tentacle toward her in a friendly manner. “Getting better too! Are you even going to ask Shanty?”

“Why should I?” Shanty stated cheerfully as she pulled out a bottle of rum and popped the cork, don’t even want to know where she pulled that from or how it got there. “Pom be doing lots of weird things, so I just be assuming something weird be happening.”

As Shanty took a large gulp of her fruity smelling rum, that’s when Quetal did what I expected of him, he explained what Ieyasu was.

“That Pokémon is an Aggron, six to eight feet of raw Steel and Rock Type power that are ridiculously tough physically… they are exceptionally weak to Fighting and Ground types moves, generally weak to Water Types so Shanty could easily take him theoretically. Fire doesn’t affect them as much as it would other steel types. In the absence weaknesses, Aggrons are some of the most dangerous Pokémon around here. It’s never a good idea to get into a fight of attrition with one unless you have one of their weaknesses available.” We watched as the top half of a Berserker landed in front of us and began dissolving, Quetal grinned somewhat. “I can see why he’s still highly respected and well renowned king. Also, given his constant use of Double-Edge, he might have the ability Rock Head which makes him entirely immune to recoil from Pokémon moves that would otherwise hurt him for even doing them. I wouldn’t be surprised if he knows Take Down too.”

Dormarch idly stabbed his left tentacle into the Berserker and absorbed a few cubes from it and I should probably ask questions about that later. The Hakamo-o soon joined the fray and they started devastating their opponents close up and personal.

“Well what more are we waiting for.. aside from you Pom?” Dolly stated as she looked to me.

“Well fine, but we’re not going to just dive straight into that many enemies without being careful…” I groaned as I patted the Spheal gently on the head before placing it off to the side and got up. I stretched out and started walking on three hooves to the slush covered slope and opened the paralance to shade me from the sun. “Look, they are going to be gunning for me, so can you at least promise to stick close to me and will listen to me if I say we run?”

“Yeah/of course/we can be doing that!” Both Dormarch and Dolly cheered, but Shanty had joined in too with a cheerful grin.

It was kind of exhausting to deal with them all as the designated adult, but I loved them dearly despite the idiocy about to take place with me deciding to continue fighting.

“Right, let’s put Dormarch through his paces. Shanty, Quetal, Curdle I hope you will help with protecting me as live bait for the horde. The Spheal can stay here if they want to keep safe.” Also another reason to go on the offensive, Ieyasu was getting a bit in over his head and I was quite concerned about how surrounded he was getting.

Author's Note

What, were you expecting a Sangloupmon the vampire/blood wolf digimon? Dormarch is not going to go nearly that insane with his first evolution.

Dobermon Defense-Type: A Digimon known for it's nearly indestructible Obsidian Digizoid tentacles growing from it's spine around the base of it's neck that is used for defense and offense. They are capable of stabbing into a target to drain or manipulate data safely and can offload viruses from their body into others to get rid of them, this offers the Data-Type dog digimon some much needed protection from Virus-Type digimon.

The data for the tentacles is said to come from a Gaogamon's ribbons 'SAFELY' mixed with Etemon Dark Network Data.

Unlike Dobermon in it's constant aggressiveness, if you can get a digimon to turn into Dobermon D-Type you'll have a loving and cuddly bodyguard. The Dobermon D-Type is less than half the size of a typical Dobermon and moderately slower.

The data for it's personality come from Dalmamon, a rather new affectionate Digimon species that tend to congregate together and live in large families.

It also has a limited amount of armor made of Chrome Digizoid that protects it's legs, neck and chest.

This armor is said to be created from the limited data of a Dorulumon.

It's signature move 'Program Surge Projector' allows it to manipulate and utilize energy to stun, shock and or blast it's opponents before it either closes in to attack with it's tentacles to hack it's opponent or runs away.

It is less likely to run when protecting another unless it can carry what it's protecting.

If the digimon partner has the Andromon attack 'Program Lightning Blade' or at least two energy manipulating attacks and one bark or howl move, then this is a possible alternative evolution.

The spikes on it's tail or tails are as much a defensive measure as it's two tentacles.

The tail spikes are said to occur from having at least five percent of Dorulumon's tail data, without this data the spikes are a quarter of the size they would be normally.

Dobermon Type-D's have either two or three tails depending on whether or not it was previously a Dalmamon. If it was a Dalmamon prior to Digital Evolution, then it will have three tails instead of two and if it wasn't a Dalmamon prior to evolution, then it will not have fish tails or a Dalmamon's particular coloring.

Primary Function: Private Search Engine.

Spirit Core Alterations by Champion evolution for those who want to see a single stat go up.

Class: Saver Assassin Beast changed to-> Saver Shielder Beast.

Even if Dormarch becomes Dalmamon again, he will still be classified as 'Saver Shielder Beast'.

Attribute: Star.

Class Skills:

Presence Concealment, D+ -> C

This is as far as Dormarch's presence concealment can truly go. It makes him exceptionally hard to find when swimming in a Data Sea or when launching a surprise attack with 'Search Hunter'.

Pom and Dolly know his location at all times if they are within the same realm regardless due to the familiar bond.

Independent Action, EX.

Counter Hero, D+++ -> C++.

Servants have slightly more trouble when facing Dormarch.

Magic Resistance, D-EX -> C-EX.

Naturally is more resistant on his own, but Pom's connection still overrides it completely.

Territory Creation, C.

Independent Manifestation EX.

Parameters:

Strength: D+++ -> C++

Endurance: D+++ -> C++

Agility: D+++ -> C++, EX -> EX+.

Has more reaction time when coming out of a Search Hunter, thus bumping up his separate EX rating to a EX+.

Mana: D.

Luck: EX.

Dormarch still wishes he could give this to Pom.

Noble Phantasm: D+++ -> C++

Despite the current inability to use 'Shooting Stars Miracle', it still increases in strength with Dormarch's current evolution.

391. Dammed if you do or don’t pt. 6.

-Moon Cell Realm, Cape City, Central Path, halfway point, Jeanne-

A large shadow appeared and… the Commandramon on their vehicle popped out with three of those PLANT things, it looked like it could carry four. Wonder what made them came back so soon.

The wheels soon popped out of the vehicle and it rolled forward away from the wall of water as six of them opened up on the several jellyfish that popped out of it after them.

“You know what to do, get those to the castle, give those lazy Gazimon something to work on!” Sami called out and the Commandramon drove, before she turned to me and Canard. “Keep holding this point until we need to retreat, we’ll explain later why we’ll be retreating.”

“Where’s Pom and some of the others?” Canard question was met with a quick grimace from Sami.

“They have the most dangerous job at the moment, but the risk will be worth the effort. We’re not taking the territories within the larger enemy territory, they’ve given us an opportunity to do something much worse to them than fight for small territories while they are at a major advantage.” This was intriguing to hear Sami. This was said to be a suicidal mission at the outset, but nobody has died yet and this situation can be turned around? I looked up at the sea walls surrounding the territories in the city that we held. I held no illusions that we’d get too many victories without putting our spines into it. “It’s going to take Dormarch marking the PLANTs for us to pick up while he and Pom’s group will be quite busy distracting that whale and the servant. The waters are full of enemies, we don’t have the numbers or even capabilities to take them all on. So we’re going to follow Shanty’s suggestion and make a work around. They’ll distract while we pick up the PLANTs and bring them back to the castle.”

We’re following the goat’s suggestion? Isn’t she a bit young to be having ideas worth following in a war situation?

I held my tongue, until I saw the end results and would continue the maintaining a defensive posture. I would argue later, I wasn’t the one going into the waters with the enemy that had the environmental advantage like Water Types. We were doing pretty well so far, given we hadn’t been immediately crushed under a swarm of constant inevitable death. I was positive I would even see Valora again if I fight hard enough, thankfully there were no more of those Sahagin.

-Left Path, flooded zones, Pom-

All we had to do was swim around and draw attention to ourselves and then keep it, the digivice would automatically mark the locations of the inactive PLANTs for Sami’s group to pick up.

Swimming up to the corner of a building I poked my head around it and looked out into the open waters in the street next to the huge black ocean of open waters. There was so much wide open space it was a little hard for the enemy to cover everything, but eventually they would have the numbers to do so. I’m fairly certain the open waters in the actual sea around the city were even worse in EPs numbers.

The constant sunlight barely reached this far down. I spotted the glowing jellyfish and motioned to Rokusho, he nodded and moved out. He circled around through some building, snuck up on it and punched it with his explosive fist blasting it apart and then immediately started coming in our direction as it attracted a group of Caster Eels disturbed by the sudden destruction of a nearby EP. He was far stealthier than I would expect.

As they were about to reach Rokusho, Pepper Cat popped out of an alleyway and destroyed all of them instantly with a blast of electrical energy that lit up the waters to an insane degree. None of the energy even went close to Rokusho at al as it fried the Caster Eels.

The Caster Eels were an odd bunch, given that the ‘Caster’ designation had something to do with magic or manipulating territory. They were responsible for turning the surrounding cityscape into seabed, coral and seaweed, but they also had a rather nasty ability with the ability to pump magic into a target or drain it out completely. They’d pump it into someone like Dolly and she’d die from magical overload and the explosion from that wouldn’t be pretty, they suck it all out and she’d have been rendered incapable of using magic for a while. Things that don’t have magic would naturally be weak to such a tactic, so Caster Eels had a generally dangerous ability either way, but I doubt they’d want to mess with anti-magic and I didn’t want to find out if they would explode in my face or not.

The Eel that had went after me previously had been set to pump me full of energy, which had confused Dormarch for a bit. Up until he explained it to me that he finally sorted through the coding of what Caster Eels could do.

I had to explain to him that an energy manipulator was a major problem to deal with, thankfully they couldn’t do something like that at range. Not to mention they were the main reason the environment was changing so drastically in Cape City into a sea floor in the sea flooded sections. Apparently ‘Territory Creation’ came with a lot of applications in its usage and Dormarch could do something similar to the Eels to make a territory his own, though the way they did it was different.

We soon saw a massive shape moving in our direction, the shadow as very much familiar to us now.

Showtime Dormarch, let’s see if we can do something to this monster.

Dormarch nodded as I let him wrap my right leg in his left tentacle and stuck my wool to his back for good measure as we prepared to swim up and draw its attention.

Rokusho gestured to Pepper Cat and they quickly evacuated the area, they were a bit slow in water but the two digi-bots were no less lethal for it up close. Shanty and Dodo were also getting out of the way, Dodo could thankfully act as a mobile oxygen source for Shanty between short skirmishes. Didn’t exactly discover that Dodo could do that until recently, but I’m guessing he adapts to Shanty’s needs as most machines on Elhorn seemed to regular adapt to things in their surroundings.

Dormarch queried if I was sure about what we were about to do, but I reassured him we needed to face it eventually and we had to draw it and the servants attention off of what the Commandramon, Pepper Cat and Rokusho would be doing for a bit. Dodo and Shanty were going to be supporting us if we got into trouble.

Keeping the whales attention would be easy enough, I would be drawing every EP in the area to kill me from miles away and the priority kill order made it all too easy to be a distraction. I hated how my life was going in so many ways as this unfortunately meant we were about to set off a frenzy of hundreds of aquatic EPs to come after us all at once.

The frantic swimming around would at least let us mark the locations of the inactive PLANTs for everyone else to collect and we’d be getting a lot of exercise, if we survived the several miles of underwater swimming against things that were bound to be as fast or faster than Dormarch is in the water.

We’d swim around the left path and on to far lower edge if the city passing by the docks and then would start back up the down path right path back towards our AP held territory. Provided we couldn’t go back up the right path, we’d go through central. We’d be using alleyways, buildings, coves made by the Caster Eels and more to avoid being trapped or caught in a dead end.

At least the Digivice could communicate the surroundings to Dormarch via making a holographic display in front of him. Unicorns could create visual images out of light, so it wasn’t an entirely unknown phenomena to me and didn’t surprise when I first saw it back on Dolly’s home world.

Once the whale closed in on us, I patted Dormarch on the belly with my left hoof and pointed upwards, he meekly nodded and then started ascend and I helped by kicking with my hind legs and used my left hoof to add momentum to the both us. We were out in open water above what used to be a city and was now more like an underwater jungle maze that was a mixture of buildings and reefs now.

The red sweeping light continued to look downwards and I decided to get in quick shot.

“RrrrrrRRRRRRRrrgggg…. yip!” The Bark Breaker vibrational soundwave flew out of the bubble of protective wool around my head and fluctuated through the water before striking the deadly whale.

The vibrations caused what amounted to a minor hairline crack in the things metal skin, one that was barely an inconvenience to something of its size.

The metal whale roared, most likely drawing the attention of every sea based EP from miles around. I was blinded by the pair of red lights from its eyes as they focused directly on us. I grinned and waved with my left hoof at it in a very shy manner and mentally told Dormarch that we had inexorably gained its attention.

Dormarch swerved and started pulling my downwards as the whale came towards us at a slow speed, a speed that was rapidly picking up as it opened its mouth. I looked back and saw hundreds of rotating teeth as its mouth started creating a vortex that was threatening to suck us up into it.

I turned back forward and helped Dormarch with swimming downwards with all the strength I could must to not get sucked into that. Fear of being turned into chunky salsa was a fairly powerful motivator.

We managed to reach the streets and started to slow down as the vortex got close to us, I managed to get a hoof on the building and fought against the currents sucking us towards that massive mouth and pulled Dormarch helped pull us into building.

That’s when Rokusho and Pepper Cat unleashed the trap, we thought we could fill the water with ‘DCD Bomb: Water Mine Modification’ and the mines would surround the whale to damage it from the outside slightly with a remote detonation.

In this case the outcome would be a little better as the mines would be far more effective than we could have hoped for as the whale started immediately sucking them up when they started floating out of the various buildings. Ten Commandramon making one explosive each of the same make that could be remotely detonated by one signal over the course of a couple of minutes when they could make them every ten seconds?

Five hundred or so water mines were currently moving to clog up the monsters mouth as it continued to inhale them all. Dormarch was waiting until the mass of them was inside the whale and then hit the detonation signal, a series of muffled explosions went off in the mouth of the whale.

The whale stopped moving forward and thrashed in place, Dormarch made a gesture to Rokusho and Pepper Cat to get ready to move the PLANTs we already detected in this area and motioned for Dodo to get ready to follow us with a paw.

I could see Dodo’s eyes bob in acknowledgment as he was taking cover in a nearby building where we could see him. Afterward we were quickly off to the races while the whale was still groaning from the belly full of explosions, which didn’t seem to do much to damage it heavily.

Dormarch launched out from the building we took cover in and we were heading for the far side of Cape along the path and passed straight under the whale that was quickly regaining composure. Once it did it started shining its lights around in a tight circle turning until it turned and caught sight of us swimming away down the street behind it.

The reaction as immediate as the Berserker Sharks shadowing it immediately started coming after us at incredible speeds. Dormarch would not be able to out speed them, not with me clinging to him, but outmaneuvering was still likely as Dormarch performed a ninety degree sharp right and I kicked off the wall to push is further down the alleyway as one of the sharks got stuck at the entrance.

Large, fast, terrifying and refused to die, we were most certainly not fighting Berserker Sharks on their home turf!

We didn’t want the enemy to lose sight of us, but we also didn’t want to stop moving as the EPs in the region were going to swarm us. To that end at least ten Caster Eels started to flow into the Alleyway from above, coming at us with fangs bared.

I swiped out with my left hoof firing off a magical wolf claw to fend them off and destroy a few of them with the swirling current of claw slashes.

This didn’t stop the Knifefins from almost skewering us from the sides as we crossed an intersection of alleyways and we had to quickly figure out something as we didn’t want to get cut off from moving around.

Any moment to stop and fight was giving a chance for the enemy to set up our doom by surrounding us with no wiggle room.

A large school of Knifefins showed up at the end of the alleyway, Dormarch quickly fire a Surge Projector from his right tentacle and it blew through them all as the current of energy bounced between them and blew them apart. This allowed us to get onto a side street and swim up for a moment to get our bearings, I could see the far side of the city in the distance and we were still heading the right way.

Looking behind us, a pair of unhappy red lights started shining down upon us as we swam for and I started kicking to help us pick up speed and urgently got Dormarch to take us back down into the buildings and alleyways. We quickly swerved right into an alleyway as a large pack of Assassin Jellies swarmed at us from head, Dormarch started picking up speed as we continued down straight into enemy territory with trouble all around us as the sea came alive with movement that wasn’t just the sharp coral or the seaweed.

I hoped Shanty was being discreet with following us.

-Sami-

“Say can a number of you APs go help pick up the PLANTs at these locations while leaving some other for the defense?” The AP nodded to me and then simply walked into the wall of water and started swimming, the other APs from the other defensive territories started going into the flood zones too to scout and find our targets. “We’re going to take the right side, while the APs help Rokusho and Pepper Cat deal with the PLANTs on the left.”

There is a lot of enemy activity out there, the APs are not coming under assault as all the EPs started surging towards where I suspected Pom to be. There was also the fact that the map my Digivice was showing was lighting up with various inactive PLANTs, so I gave the coordinates out to the APs.

As we slowly moved into and subsequently through the water, there was no enemy presence which was disturbing how silent everything was. We eventually came upon our first PLANT to pick up with no one around to catch us loading it onto our vehicle. The vehicle could carry about four at a time and we could personally carry one PLANT with two Commandramon effectively, so we got to work.

The commandramon started swimming towards it their flippers working properly, their breathing masks not outright killing them for unknown reasons or failures and they were working as a unit that I was directing.

We were not the ones getting the short end of the stick on this detail, but the eerie silence still had us all on edge and we were staying well away from the more open waters.

By the time Pom swept around to coming back, we would already have most of the PLANTs picked up.

Good luck out there Pom and Dormarch, you needed it more than we did running an underwater salvage operation.

-Shanty-

“Keep them in sight Dodo, because they are going to be needing a lot of help!” I be discreetly tearing into the enemy EPs from a distance creating cutting arcs in the water. They apparently can’t be detecting me through it so I was going to be using that to my advantage to keep giving Pom and Dormarch room to keep moving.

I heard a worried mechanical warble as Dodo continued to glide underwater and stay out of sight while not making much noise.

-Heading towards the far side district or docks zone, Pom (More ‘The Lost Archenemies’ music)-

Alright we just needed to attract the attention of the servant Rider Totsugeki and make sure she doesn’t catch us, we’d be drawing the enemy back towards our defensive lines.

Dormarch was still pretty fast even with me clinging to him like a limpet, we continued to avoid the tens of hundreds of Eps coming at us. Every once in a while the red light would spot us and then those horrid Berserker Sharks would be either trailing us or right on top of us trying to take a bite out of me.

Thankfully the reefs the enemy made was starting to work against them as we started to swim through the confusing maze of what were once buildings.

Dormarch came to a dead stop, why did he come to a stop?!

I looked ahead, up behind us to the left and the right, the sharks were farther off from the right, but they had use surrounded and there were eels and jellies all swarming at us and Dormarch was panicking.

A window suddenly blew out with an arcing cut, I was more surprised there were any windows left intact after the tidal wave that wiped out the lower portions of the city. At least it let me know that Shanty could still see us and just gave us a way out.

Dormarch there!

Dormarch lunged us upwards as we were being closed in on from all sides, we went through the window as a Shark narrowly missed biting my right hind leg off. Dormarch opened the door in the room and moved us through, I kicked it shut as afterwards and a pair of Caster Eel fangs burrowed through the door behind us as Dormarch swam us downstairs.

I glanced at the NPC reading a newspaper in a chair as it floated around upside down, why were so many things in my life this weird? The guy didn’t pay attention to our home invasion as we swam through the living room past him.

As we past it, there were Berserker Sharks trying to tear in through the front door.

Basement!

Dormarch about faced from the front door and opened the basement door and used his free tentacle to close it behind us and barricade the entrance with a bar of coral covered wood as we swam down into the basement. There was a small window leading to a back alley street, pointing at it, he nodded and pulled me over to it.

It wasn’t big enough for us to both get through at the same time, so him first. He poked his head through and looked around.

Upon seeing nothing, Dormarch squeezed through the small exit and I slowly did so as the doors to the basement was getting destroyed. I quickly started pry myself through and Dormarch helped pull me the rest of the way out and we shut the window behind us before swimming for it as the home we invaded was swarming with all the aquatic EPs you can imagine cutting off every entrance except for the one we used to escape.

Taking my hoof in his left tentacle we swam up a bit and got our bearings to aim at the far side once more and not a moment too soon did we start swimming down into the streets as a patrolling Assassin Jelly spotted us. Alerting every EP in the area to our location.

-Shanty-

Oh good they got out of the building, but now there were being EPs all over them again, that whale sure did be making a lot of them.

-Close to the far side, Dormarch-

This was ridiculous, how many of these EPs are they throwing at us, all of them?!

I swerved and blasted out a window with a Surge Projector and turned right and then blew out another window and swam out into the street, blew through the front door of another building and suddenly found ourselves in a building that bled straight into being a slightly open coral reef area.

Well no jackknifing through buildings here, just have to keep going fast and into trench, because mom was possibly drawing every EP in the water at us…

Correction it was every aquatic EP in the water coming at us, event he slow Kraken we managed to get around because I was fast enough to avoid it’s grasping tentacles with Pom in tow.

At least fifty Berserker Sharks were descending on us as we turned the corner in the coral field and mom started assisting me with swimming through a tunnel. She had swapped out her front fins for rear leg fins.

I could feel her mind going through the places we could drop the increasingly large presence of EPs coming at us from all directions as we shifted up, down, left and right through the tube avoiding sharp bits of coral stabbing into us.

Though the Knifefins might be the weakest among them, they were certainly the fastest and could catch up to us easily when they started showing up. Whereas the Berserker Sharks were being slowed down by the thick coral trench and tunnels we were passing through.

We needed a quick out, but this was a straightaway full of coral in various places making us swerve through it. Wait, why were we worrying about the not destroying the coral again?

It didn’t use to exist and we could just blasts through it into places it blocked off, because if we didn’t the oncoming Knifefins were going to skewer us if the ones behind us with the Berserker Sharks didn’t.

There were also Caster Eels and Jellies coming at us from both ends, I immediately pulled us to a stop. I took aim at some coral where I could see nearby with a visible hole through to the other side of it and then loosed a Retriever Bark.

Unlike mom, my bark attacks weren’t restricted underwater and after blowing a hole through the coral blocking our way I swam through and up and the red lights came down on us once more. That whale was quite incredible in how well something of its size could keep up with us.

We turned and immediately booked it down the street away from the slowly opening mouth that would threaten to suck us in and there were a few Saber Knifefins in the way of our egress as we continued towards the far side of Cape.

They were suddenly decimated in a flash of water, Shanty apparently cleared them out of our way for us as we swam right into the dock district with the lethal whale at our backs and slowly catching up to us.

Pom pointed at something with her left hoof and I blinked as I saw an underwater canning factory and the warehouse connected directly to it.

She was kidding right, she wanted to go into a place with heavy machinery?! Nope, she wasn’t kidding and I found myself putting my full strength behind going that way, at least the machinery wouldn’t be active with being so waterlogged.

I felt something of a strain on my current evolutionary form as we burst forward towards a window of the factory, I’ve been holding onto my form for quite a while now and it was beginning to flag from holding it.

I smashed through a window of the factory and made sure mom avoided the sharp bits of coral that floated out of our way.

We saw that said machinery in the factory was still active, why wouldn’t it be? We were in a digital realm and it took me a moment to realize that the laws of physics, thermodynamics and plenty of other things were somewhat more of a suggestion here. This outer layer of Moon Cell seemed so real up to this point, that this is the thing that made me call foul was silly.

A goggling Pom looked behind us as she scrunched of up her hind legs and fired off the coiled wool with a buck to one of the many berserker shark’s nose as it slammed into the window widening hole while snapping at us angrily.

Mom quickly pulled me forward and gave me a worried look as we continued through the factory avoiding the machinery and the clouds of chum that seemed to be floating around from the Knifefins that swam in and suddenly got canned. Apparently the bits wouldn’t disappear if it was the results of the machines.

I wouldn’t eat the seafood here.

We reached a door, I tried it with a paw only to find it locked, Mom jammed her left hoof against the lock and turned it. Using her wool to act as a key and that unlocked and opened the door. She shoved me through turned and swam backwards closing the door behind us as something slammed into it knocked her away.

Mom quickly swam back up to it and locked it, why would she do that? It’s not like they’d try the…

The door knob jiggled a bit.

Never mind, they would apparently use the door like it is supposed to be used.

We were now in a warehouse and not a canning factory of horrors starting to fill with Eels, Jellies and Knifefins.

Turning around Pom looked about for something, she got me to let her go and told me what we were looking for.

A box?

Okay… we’re in a warehouse with a lot of boxes, what could she tell me that would be more specific here?

-Five minutes later, Knifefin T800-

The warehouse was flooded with Saber Knifefins, Caster Eels, Assassin Jellies and more were after the priority target.

Unfortunately it seems the priority target had gone missing in the canning factory and warehouse. This should have been functionally impossible given the number of scouting units scouring the surroundings.

Aside from one crate that seemed to be moving, possibly due to a water currents glitch, it decided to report in.

It would be back.

-Near the docks, Rider Totsugeki-

How could they have lost the… oh right, they were hunting something far more intelligent than them. I swear if Moon Cell wanted its targets dead it would give everything hunting the target far more intelligence and put it under the servant system.

Moony was apparently afraid that one of the servants could find a way to code themselves into starting a rebellion… oh… right… exactly what we’re dealing with.

Turning my head slightly to the left I saw box that wasn’t there seconds ago and the waters definitely couldn’t have put it there.

Hefting my weapon up and swimming over to it, I grinned and thought about the ones shivering underneath the box and slammed the anchor down destroying it and revealing… nothing at all?

It must have been my imagin… AGH?!

-Pom-

Dormarch thought she wouldn’t be fooled, but she went for the box and I managed to jam the paralance into the back of her right shoulder painfully with a burst of forward movement. From what I saw she had recovered from her injuries and we needed to get moving now that we had her attention.

Dormarch quickly swam up to me and latched on to him to start swimming away.

“Totsugeki!” Wait, she could shout that even underwater and still be comprehensible? That’s… actually kind of impressive as far as lung capacity went.

I pushed us to the side with a burst of coiled wool from my hind legs and Rider Totsugeki shot by on the blue dolphin while swinging the anchor at an incredible speed, she was stupidly fast underwater and she almost tagged us with the anchor which was looking much easier for Rider to wield in this environment.

Dormarch, please kindly swim us back towards central please, because I see the whales shadow incoming and we now have unequivocally gotten the servants attention.

Dormarch immediately put us back on course for going back into the Cape City: Coral District and I told him we would need to juke once in a while, because Rider was not going to let us go so easily after I just blindsided her so easily. At least it would be easy to tell if she or one of her summons was coming at us, she tends to shout her attacks openly and probably needed to do so for the magic she used to work.

-Right path side, flood zone, Sami-

The APs were making the collection of the PLANTs go by insanely fast, also it was a little disturbing that we didn’t see any enemies on the way to bringing them back to the castle.

Pom must really be in quite some trouble at this point and Jeanne still hadn’t found any useful Neutral NPC’s aside from the marketplace guy Torneko, a boat maker named Cid and someone weird girl named Welch who said that she had missed her opportunity to meet someone named Oleander and she got soul trapped in a computer again. That name sounded familiar for some reason and Welch might not be a normal NPC.

Still it was interesting to have the NPCs that were in the taken territories of the city that were neutral to Moon Cell and were willing to see what we were about.

Pom and Dormarch were on the move back towards central and there was a mass of enemy signals on them. It was sufficient to say they were surrounded by a sea of red, were it me and the boys we’d certainly be dead and would have gone down fighting.

“Pom’s group is coming in hot, Rokusho, Pepper Cat, are you in range to hear me? Pom needs immediate evacuation help. Gather the Dhelmise and be prepared for a fighting retreat towards our territory.” Afterwards we would be retreating all PLANTs to Cape Castle and would then use them all at once to do something very peculiar, but Dormarch assured me the set up would work and it would at least deal with the whale monster somewhat. “They have a lot of EPs on their backs, most of the PLANTs have been successfully received thanks to the APs… do you read, Pom needs help!”

“We’ll be back on the front lines as soon as we’re done placing the PLANTs.” Rokusho stated calmly as I started getting the Commandramon to start setting up some explosive help for Pom.

-Entering Central Path Ocean Flood Zone from far side path heading for central AP protected territory, Pom-

Dolly gather at the central zone, this is about to become a really bad fight!

The red light was on us as we swerved through the trench load of sharp coral, I’m beginning to think its intentionally aggressive environment changes. With the Berserker Sharks on us we really couldn’t… nggg… I just took a Knifefin to the flank.

Dormarch’s right tentacle reached over crushed it and flicks its dissipating body off to the side and I sealed up the stab wound with my wool immediately. Barely lost any blood that time…heh… ow.

We felt the suction behind us as the whale started trying to draw us in.

Looking back, I saw Rider Totsugeki was sitting on its head with her right leg crossing over her left and she tilted it back and forth looking to be humming something with a broad grin. Also we were about to be hit by two of the eels.

We haven’t heard her shout Totsugeki or a name in a while, because most of her attacks were straightforward rushes and while fast, they really didn’t really turn on a dime as well as Dormarch could. They were burst high speed attacks that only move in one direction, almost similar to Dancing Flame and now I was on the other end of it.

Why did she seem to be guiding the aquatic EPs to keep us in the trench though? They were swarming along the sides of the trench and not into it at us.

Dormarch…

?

It’s not actually trying to inhale us this time.

The two beams of red light had us in its sight and it wasn’t inhaling anymore, its mouth was full of energy. The Commandramon sea mines we used earlier didn’t really do much too slow it down or stop it from being a threat at all did it? We were about to see what was really threatening about this thing and I had an idea that it was going to be a large beam, usually the kind of thing you’d expect in this situation when you were in a narrow area where it couldn’t possibly miss us.

That caused Dormarch to start looking around for a spot to take cover in, the only reason why we hadn’t been taken down yet was because we were recklessly swerving through sharp coral and avoiding all kinds of attacks coming at us. We should consider ourselves glad that they didn’t have ranged attacks and most of the enemy were entirely dangerous close up, the whale however did have a range attack as did Rider Totsugeki if you counted her summoning ability.

Thinking of attacks, I twisted and lashed out to kick an eel in the chin and let loose a coil of wool to blast its head off, I then lashed out my other hind leg and did the same to the other one. Dormarch suddenly swerved to the right and we avoided the jaw of a Berserker Shark coming down right on top of us.

What?! Dormarch was about to lose his evolution form, now of all times?! At least he’s still be able to swim pretty fast as Dalmamon. This was still going to be a problem as we were surrounded and Rider Totsugeki was personally leading Moon Cell’s forces here, she’s not exactly as dumb as we made her look not too long ago.

Come on, come on there’s got to be a place we can go, there Dormarch, shift us sideways in three, two… now!

We purposefully slammed into the trenches wall and I glued us there and bunkered us with my wool.

A second later the entire underwater passageway lit up brightly, the world was rumbling and I felt a surge of intense heat as the beam swept past the small hollow in the coral filled trench that kept us safe. Suddenly Dormarch shrunk to fitting in my hooves instead of being equivalent to a large dog. He was a Dalmamon again, he finally ran out of energy on his evolution.

I quickly swam out and Dormarch still tried to help speed us up only for me to be grabbed around the waist by a Kraken from above. It was trying to crush me, but my wool was up to the task of holding against it for the moment as multiple jellies tried to close in.

Suddenly a shift in the water and the tentacle was cut away and the Jellies evaporated. Right Shanty was still with us and…

Dodo came zooming in with a large amount of bubbles coming out of his backside as he boosted towards us. I grabbed his extended wing and he quickly carried us forward as I clambered up onto it with Dormarch and held onto him as I glued myself to Dodo’s wing and carefully moved closer to the body.

Shanty waved cheerfully to me with a hoof before turned back and lashing out with her hoof to tear apart the Kraken that was coming at us beak first.

Turning to Dormarch, I asked how many Retriever Barks or Wild Barks can he currently do?

Not many, he was fairly spent combat wise, swimming several miles through dangerous enemy infested terrain would do that. He could still carry out his plans for the collected PLANTs as it wouldn’t require any personal energy from him. Just an activation from his spirit core, he’ll reserve his energy for emergencies now.

Dodo was fairly fast underwater not as fast as Dormarch was, but Dodo didn’t need to move his body to use up energy and even with our added weight he wasn’t any slower. That and he was a tough metal ostrich that could fly, swim and run… spew pastries… Shanty had a very capable familiar for traveling at the very least.

A swarm of Eel and Knifefins came diving at us and were suddenly shredded, Shanty was doing good on the defensive at least. She was creating nearly invisible blades out of water and was taking out swaths of enemies that closed in behind us in wide cone shaped fashion, as you can imagine that would fit the wide magical cutting arcs Shanty made.

Dodo turned his head to the side and let loose a glowing blob that a Berserker Shark ate and a second later it promptly exploded, the bits of exploded shark continued to chase after us with violent intention and would never succeed in battering us. I think the time they could keep attacking after dying was dependent on how much of the body was left, that was exactly ten seconds.

“Totsug-ARGH!?” We were about to be hit by a charging dolphin, but Rider Totsugeki suddenly took a slash across the chest. Shanty was proving to be exceedingly dangerous when in water at any range, as Rider Totsugeki was knocked from the top of the whale. She wasn’t done yet however. “Totsugeki!”

She came at us while riding the dolphin as Dodo skimmed through the reef and up onto a cobblestone path. We were getting closer to central and Rider Totsugeki was coming at us with a fairly determined look on her face.

Suddenly the dolphin rider dodged and slowed down, I blinked. Did she, did she actually just dodge an ultimately invisible attack from Shanty, the nearby Saber Knifefins that split in half points to that being yes. You’d have to be precognitive or at least able to see the magic Shanty was using.

The water was getting brighter, so we were closing in and I saw a large amount of small sea mines floating in dark corners of the various half buildings and coral sculptures shaped like they were buildings.

I sighed with relief, we’re about to get some help.

A series of blasts erupted behind us and Rider Totsugeki avoided it, the swarm of enemy EPs were not so lucky. The EPs being destroyed didn’t matter as the whale would just produce more in a short amount of time, but that was less directly chomping at our butts like the sharks that act like zombies after being killed.

“Mr. Yamada!” Rider Totsugeki called out and the large pink smiling whale bursts out from below us hitting Dodo’s back end and making him unstable, just as we were about to exit the waters.

Thankfully Mr. Yamada missed us coming back down, but then we started flipping out of control. A second later Shanty jumped out of Dodo’s back and went on the offensive in a bounding bubble.

I suddenly could see sky and ground as we flipped out of the wall with a splash and then…

Dodo landed upright on his legs and fanned his left wing up into the air while lowering us to the ground gently.

“Always the show off, huh Dodo?” I said dryly as Dodo smiled at me expressively.

As Shanty went flying past us as she was pushed back trying to deflect Rider Totsugeki’s anchor, Shanty landed on her hooves as Rider Totsugeki popped out of the water behind us and landed with the large metal whale poking its head out of the wall of ocean.

“Okay, it’s time I stopped sitting around on my backside waiting for my sea forces to overwhelm you. I’m basically healthy again, so I’m going to take you out now!” Rider Totsugeki pointed her anchor at us. “Come on Moby Dick, TOTSUGEKI!”

“Everyone fighting retreat, APs to the front to defend our retreat, everyone else to the back towards the castle!” I called as the whale spewed forth a whole slew of aquatic EPs all over the ground, like a massive amount of horrible smelling ambergris.

“All active PLANTs retreat towards the castle!” Dormarch called a second later. Surprisingly our PLANTs started moving as ordered.

I hoped whatever Dormarch was going to do with all of those inactive PLANTs would work, we were going to be quickly pushed into a corner.

“You’ll not escape me, you don't really have many places to go and I know where you live!” Rider Totsugeki shouted as shield wielding APs threw themselves into her path and went skidding backwards upon taking impacts from her anchor.

Shanty was swept up by Dodo as I was already running for the castle. Rokusho, Pepper Cat and the Dhelmise were covering our retreat from the Assassin Jellies trying to stab us in the back.

Author's Note

Now a summoning will occur, but it's not Rider Totsugeki doing it...

404. Metal Hound Chaos! Pt. 8.

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Velvet-

“So quite frankly the long term magical implications are not good, the short term is fine.” Kuril reassured me with Dr. Bones next to her as I laid on my side with my body warming up from the shifting inside of me. “So long as we don’t overdo it on the magical potions or for cross species capable mating or the same sex mating, then the world won’t collapse. That and I can keep the recipe of how to even make the potions on the down low. I’m not going to be responsible for dooming the world, unlike my kitten if anything happened to Silvers. Saddle Arabia would be the first to go too in that instance, since Jaded would actually start trying.”

“Well that’s nice to know.” The fluff clone of Paprika patted me on the back and cuddled up to me slightly, Paprika still wouldn’t go within twenty feet of Arizona or Me, Arizona still wouldn’t hit me back and it’s becoming quite a strain on the relationship with my insides being kicked about that I couldn’t get the snot beaten out of me. “Their daughters are about to have some cousins soon and Paprika has been getting the same feelings. Her parents and big brother are helping her out a lot… wonder what the rest of their family is doing?”

“That lot? Still traveling around like the love happy nomads they are, they are nomadic precisely because it lets them meet all kinds of interesting people to fall in love with… among other reasons.” Dr. Bones watched as a hoof poked at my belly from the inside. “The wee one is really given you quite an internal beating huh?”

“Yes… it’s definitely Arizonas… she’s a fighter already and that’s playing havoc on my insides.” I groaned out, as I continued to rub at my belly and hoped the life in me didn’t turn out like Arizona in being highly volatile… at least not while they were still inside of me. “I’m not having any more kids after this one unless it’s Paprika carrying them. Given what her mother and father are like... well I’ll be making sure to not be touching Arizona during conception to be safe if we ever want more children.”

“Aye, magic is being a rather iffy subject when it comes to conception, its little wonder unicorns tend to have more neurological problems than Earth Ponies or Pegasus Ponies. The magical surges of a baby unicorn in the womb is less pleasant than this I tell you that as a certainty.” The red furred diamond dog sighed and took out a bottle of what smelled like wine and drank some. “As far as things are going, they are looking good for your next of kin, just keep avoiding using any magic until your bundle of joy comes along. You might experience a few fevers, if that’s the case, then come to me immediately to make sure that your body isn’t overheating and is naturally staying cool, otherwise whit’s fur ye’ll no go past ye’.”

“Thank you Dr. Bones.” It was nice that she was considered my family.

“Don’t ever be taking me for an unkind vagabond, I’m going to be looking into your little brother Gallus’s lovely lass when cherries start popping onto that sundae.” Dr. Bones was always a little weird for a diamond dog, sometimes a little grumpy, but overall she’s been a good doctor and one of the best Cruise Liner Hospital has to offer.

Some Unicorns and a variety of other doctors, especially the great sage Mage Meadowbrook, were rising in notoriety around Airship Mauled. The doctors always had patients whenever an airship crashed, but never has the injuries been above a minor fracture… unless it was Jackie Blackcap Chickadee La Perm, she sometimes needed more than an entire crew specialized in medical practices just to stay alive.

Jackie was not only a notoriously cursed pirate, but she was also known in the medical field as being the best practice patient in the world one can have for learning the ins and outs of medical emergencies.

-Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, Castle Alexander, Rokusho-

“If there’s an Eater underground tell them to not go anywhere near it and to get the word to Pom and the others down there.” I was wary of the eaters showing up again, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad… not like what happened during a previous invasion of them in Yggdrasil.sys realms. “How are we even getting a signal from down there anyway?”

“They’ve taken enough territories for it apparently.” Responded Krosserdog as he continued to snipe the numerous enemies.

Who was I kidding, whenever they showed up and weren’t dealt with quickly things get really bad quickly when they start multiplying.

“Also tell them to not engage it in close combat if possible, Eaters effect all beings, biological, digital, robots, it doesn’t matter to them… they can eat just about anything! At least they’ll attempt to eat your mind first, before your body… less painful turn out that way at least.” I wonder how many Commandramon were eaten in the line of duty when that digital world was falling to the Eaters? At least Yggdrasil.sys successfully sent out the system heroes in that realm to find help to prevent the full destruction from the eater invasion of that digital world at that time; I wonder if Alphamon still has that odd obsession with making horrible tasting coffee that only true weirdoes like Metabee would accept? Not like Metabee ever drank it, it really does look like it makes for a good lubricant though. “It is sufficient to say they aren’t normal, they are in fact eldritch in nature as much as appearance.”

“Heed our words well, if those things are not in their more benign state and their more active destructive state… we soon may found ourselves fighting to save Moon Cell as much as destroying it from within to save far more worlds as the Eaters can become an unceasing problem if the cause of them being here is not found swiftly.” I added a second later as I looked out over the battlefield and saw a bandaged Shanty that seemed to be made of water among all the exploding mines and gekko falling into pitfalls dug out by the Gazimon that also had the cycling mines.

“Hopefully they can deal with the problem down there, I would rather stay as far away from Eaters as I feasibly can get away with doing.” Sami always seemed so cheerful before, she now seemed particularly worried.

“Got the prototype Skein Flyer working and Welch is working on the design some more. Still need to work out the kinks in the energy weapons system, it’s not firing energy pucks correctly, but I’m ready to get back into it with some air support!” Canard stated as he flew a hovering V shaped motorcycle with tiltrotor propeller wings to hovering above the wall and fired off a burst of its weapons. The lasers tore into the armor on the Gekko like hot butter in a barrage of baseball shaped shots

He seemed fairly disappointed that the lasers it was firing were not puck shaped. Was hockey really that big a religion on his home world that it had to be in every aspect of his life? What he had right now worked perfectly fine.

-Underground Region, Forest, Dolly-

We weren’t here to save this place, but it really seemed like we were doing Bloody Backside a solid here. Even as our machine was mildly melted by several jets of flames from the mooing menaces

“Dolly it’s called Moon Cell! Also how are you holding up?” Perfectly fine Pom, controlling this machine through you wasn’t easy. Tossing out a repair or two to our friends wasn’t too bad on our magic and it wasn’t like it was breaking me physically to keep shooting at things like this was a video game.

A very dangerous realistic one where if I messed up, we’d suffer the consequence or die. I’m glad that I’m working so well under pressure at the moment, then again a few thousand rounds of gun will take the nerves off. I can see why people liked firing things like this and the armor itself was cool.

“Isn’t that exactly what I thought?” I saw no difference in what I called Bum Jail and what she just said… the actual name that is. “Also what are we doing here?”

I mean aside from gunning down a lot of gekkos, dodging attacks coming from every which way and clawing down dinosaurs when they got too close. Like right now!

Bringing the right arm to left across the machine’s torso, I then jammed it outwards with the nails straight into the head of a large yellow raptor with black stripes and spun it bodily around by the impaled head before pulling it free by stopping the momentum and sent it launching into a lizard robot that had one of our guys down and was attacking his canopy with those three tentacles.

The machine toppled as the head of it was snapped off by the raptor projectile with added momentum, this mangle wreck platemail machine boosted any magic we’re already capable of on top of having that healing beam thing that can heal and repair us too. If it could boost my momentum manipulating ability, then I can channel that through the machine to be absolutely devastating… maybe I was as strong as Dormarch is getting.

“Thanks for the save Doll!” The Militia Monster stated and I raised the machines left claw in acknowledgement, as I attempted to gun a flying squirrel panther out of the air with the right arm I just used to launch the raptor.

Managed to stop the monster from swoop down on us, didn’t manage to stop the damage to left arm as a flightless yellow dragon bit at us and I quickly used it to block the creature’s mouth from getting the entire shoulder of our machine.

“It’s a Wyvern Dolly, dragons have front legs or arms and not just legs and wings.” Whatever you say Pom, sure thing! “You’re not really paying attention are you?”

“Oh I’m totally paying attention, we’d be taking on more damage if I wasn’t!” That’s when I was proven wrong a second later as we were slammed through a tree knocking it over and then against the ground as the creature gripping onto the machine shook us about violently while trying to rip the arm off the machine.

Pom was paying attention to the positions of the other Commandramon dealing with more zombie tentacles geckos, raving raptors, what looked like a nasty mix between a cheetah, a porcupine and an armadillo, plus more weird terrors like a flying spaghetti monster… but I think that was just a hallucination. It wasn’t all bad, there were wild creatures fighting the zombies as much as we were, like Enemy for instance, the white furred guy that still stalked Pom was ripping anything that challenged him apart… and he was clearly enjoying himself.

Don’t know where Hack Hound was, but we weren’t currently in a position to worry about him at the moment as we the canopy cracked when we were slammed into a boulder. I was pouring shot after shot into the yellow winged lizard, but he wasn’t putting us down, it was like he couldn’t feel pain or… oh right, zombie, heh… yeah… probably wasn’t paying that much attention.

“Dolly we’re getting used as hammer here, focus!” And do what Pom?! The gun wasn’t exactly working on it! “Uh, use the healing function to repair the current damage to the arm and shoulder at least before the left arm gets ripped off the armor?”

Okay activating the heal, cure, antidote, poisona, shell, barrier or whatever function this machine had.

Pom and I felt magic get drained from us to activate that one function, didn’t know what other functions this machine had, but instant repairs could only be a… what the?

As the green field of energy encompassed our machine, it touched the yellow undead monster with the scary white eyes and… it up and turned into dust on the wind. I always just thought that was a metaphor in that one song about how short our lives are in comparison to the universe around us and that we’d all eventually become dust with time. Eh, can’t exactly use ‘Aero’ to make lethal dust devils now can I? Wonder if DJ can send a copy of that song to Dormarch’s Digivice…

“Dolly, I sometimes can’t honestly tell if you’re getting smarter or not.” Pom stated blandly.

“Why thank you!” I stated pleasantly while wagging my tail, me being even considered to be remotely smart was nice. I’m well aware that I wasn’t exactly the smartest top dog in the Dalmatian family, heck half my siblings were smarter than me in a variety of ways… but I was the most fun and wanted to at least be recognized for some intelligence.

“That wasn’t a compliment.” Oh… uh… well then, machine’s repaired itself and most of the nearby monsters are gone and our companions over there are getting attacked from all sides. “Get us back to the group before we lose someone Dolly.”

Right, I steered us into walking back towards our friends while firing on anything attacking them, while wondering what just happened to big bad and brutal that was just slamming us around like a roasted ham during the Christmas holidays at the Dalmatian house. All the Puppies always got some ham and we roughed it up quite a bit as we fought over it. Why do I keep thinking of my family?

“You’re homesick like me and I’m thinking of my family too, we’re kind of getting emotional bleed over from each other through our constant bonding being as tightly put together as it currently is. While we’re combining our brain power and reflexes in a powerful symbiosis that wouldn’t be possible if you weren’t my familiar otherwise Dolly.” Well that all sounded very complicated and wordy. “Also, yes, I’m wondering how we just dissolved that zombie wyvern like that. One second it was on us and being a powerful undead nightmare if we didn’t have this armor and the next poof, pile of dust after… wait… what happens when you heal a zombie?”

“Dylan would say something like, a cleric healing what was already dead would render it gone because of a pair of dogs.” There was a pause as Pom took control of her body back from me, confusing me a bit as it stopped us entirely in place. “Don’t know any pair of dogs that would eat a zombie though, sure we dogs love a good bone, but zombie’s eugh… probably tastes nasty. Fresh meat or no eat for this dog.”

I missed the taste of that bacon, that Circle bird harpy person that turned into a pig tasted pretty nice.

“All Commandramon gather quickly round us, don’t worry about fighting the enemy zombies for the moment, Just draw them right to us!” What, do you have in mind Pom? What suddenly changed and why did you take control away from me like that? “Dolly just said something that gave me a very good idea of how to deal with the majority of these zombies in one fell swoop!”

“Huh?” My confusion made Pom smile, it wasn’t a happy smile, but it was at least a good one.

“You said healing a dead thing causes a paradox… therefore, if this armor does what I think it can…” Pom stated as all the Commandramon surrounded us quickly as ten or so yellow bipedal machines leapt for us along with a lot of yellow and black striped weird animals or creature. “Activating the function of the armor that we already know how to use, but spread it over a widespread range and…”

A green pulse erupted from our machine and repaired the Commandramon’s machines, any recent damage to ours and our mild bruises from being slammed around by the big lizard. The green wave then struck the… there were no more zombies anywhere near us now.

“Huh… neat…” I said with a grin as dust slowly floated to the ground. Ah yeah, we just wiped an entire plagues worth of undead in seconds.

“We needed that Big Boss Lady, but what did you just do?” One of the militia monsters asked.

“I think she just used the inverse healing law most RPGs are coded to have, where zombies heal when poisoned or hit with darkness… but healing them damages them instead of mending their flesh.” Looking around that seemed to be the case with the zombies as they had evaporate from the given area. “The only things left near us are the gekko that are ‘technically’ alive and not ‘technically’ zombies yet until defeated. How much of your magic did that exactly use Pom?”

“A lot, I’m a little lightheaded, but I’m fine. Didn’t overexert myself.” Pom what were you looking… oh… you’re left leg started showing signs of gold wool, just a few hairs and you’re right leg wasn’t even entirely filled up yet. That was very bad wasn’t it? The slight flinch Pom did showed me how much that that wasn’t a good thing. “Don’t worry about it Dolly… just… get back to controlling this thing.”

Like heck I’m not going to worry about you, is that the reason you’re so reluctant to use too much magic yourself? Well alright then, we only use the healing thing for emergencies from now on.

Pom relinquished control of her body to me and with that the machine overall, I gladly took over again as more cow noise making two legged armless, tailless, machine lizards jumped at us. We focused them down as we stood around the burning forest and trees that were suddenly cleared of numerous incoming zombies.

“Was it a tactical RPG at least?” Driver asked his comrades a second later as he and the others started firing on them with us helping out as well.

“As far as the digital gaming scene is concerned, I did not eat the data of Soldier B on the third campaign map of that one particular game system.” That sounded like specific denial of the suspicious kind commando boy! “Soldier B never existed in the games data at all, nope, I had nothing to do with it as a code eating virus.”

Couldn’t really focused on that as we were all concentrating our guns on the bipedal flamethrower turret heads hopping at us until there wouldn’t be enough left of them to even fill a living room.

“Seismic activity, look alive people!” Driver called out as the ground rumbled underneath us, Pom was tensing up and I was glad I was in control as I prepared to move us. “Wait for it… move!”

Everyone ran away from each other in an outwards circle as a pair of drills popped up in our midst and the five dragon privates immediately tossed glowing grenades on them as soon as their domes were down. I added some damage by shooting at the less damaged drill with our guns.

“I still hate using stickys.” One of the Commandramon groused out as I pummeled holes into the side of the drill, the other Commandramon opened fire too as their grenade exploded and the two drills got wrecked before they could pull back underground entirely. “As far as we know the machines only has two drills, but once they are gone it’ll be forced to be above ground!”

“Then once we’re done with it, the actual fighting starts.” Pom stated sadly with a slight hint of a whine in her voice. She wasn’t wrong, Adversary and Lack were going to both be attacking us if not each other and the Metal Hound was going to be destroyed by them. “I’m so glad we all got in that bathroom break.”

Those two coming after Pom don’t need machines to fight on equal ground and I wasn’t nearly as strong as Dormarch in being able to stop at least one of them by myself. One of them was basically a machine butler with chainsaws, flaming knives and a ridiculously sharp blade that can cut up things and recover from any damage, the other was nigh impervious monster that gets stronger the more you fight it according to Pom. The two could easily beat the snot out of Pom if they worked together, even when she had the strange metal umbrella and wasn’t entirely on the defensive at the time. It was a good thing that they couldn’t work together.

The drills tried to sink back into the ground while Pom, I and our two buddies continued to damage them, the others were busy with more of those leaping lizards, but after a moment under the ground…

Several powerful blasts went off and a second later the ground was rumbling and some smoke started to pour out.

“I think that last round of explosions finally did it, we destroyed its ability to burrow anywhere everyone retreat to a safe distance, that thing is coming up and it’s not going to be very happy about it!” Following Pilot and the other four guys we quickly ran for it as the ground started to erupt beneath us as the large machine started to pull itself out.

We continued to run and as I looked us back at it, I hadn’t exactly realized how big it was... it was huge. Well, with drills bigger than our machines of course it was going to be huge.

It was slowly rising up, toppling trees send rocks, mud and dirt everywhere and we were narrowly getting out of range of it when a pack of blue raptors tried to descend on us, I just simply mowed them down after I swerved us around a tree while we were still on the move to get out from above the machine pulling itself from the ground. The raptors weren’t very threatening at all while we still had the armor.

I turned us around and started at the large mantis thing as it raised its two small front arms and then with a flicked doubled their length and made them started glowing with a lethal amount of energy. I gulped loudly, as it held them up threateningly while raising its six legs out of the ground on which two of those legs were the badly damaged drills on the back legs that no longer worked.

-Pom-

Here, we…

“There you are, Blade Mode!” Saber Jack Wolf showed up to leap up at it and attack with his high speed cutting attacks.

Much to his surprise and ours, it deflected all his high speed swings with ever faster movements of its two larger front arms with extending energy blades and then nearly cut the poor guy in half as he was sent flying when he blocked the long energy blades with his sword.

“Open fire and don’t stop until you have to cycle ammunition!” I shouted and we started shooting, I had Dolly focus on damaged the barrels of its head guns further. I didn’t trust them to not be able to fire at least some energy after some of the previous damage we did to the thing.

“I don’t think the Magitek Armors guns can do enough damage to that thing… we might have to actually climb onto it to attach bombs personally, but that seems like a suicidal idea at best.” Driver suggested as Saber Jack Wolf came running back.

“That won’t be necessary I’ve defeated this thing before and…” Saber Jack was going to attack the middle right side leg. Unfortunately for him he was almost hit with a wall of fire that erupted along the legs protecting them from being approached, much less being anywhere beneath the thing as the conflagration spread out along the ground making Jack back up a lot as one of his arms partially melted in the heat that turn a tree full of life into a stump in seconds. “That wasn’t a defense mechanism of the original Excelsus that I defeated!”

“See, told you, definitely suicidal to approach that thing to plant bombs.” Driver Commandramon commented with an amused sounding voice.

“I honestly don’t think it cares Jack.” The second voice from Jack’s body stated. “It seems whatever modifications have been made to it has given it defenses specifically with us in mind, the fusing the two realms have altered it quite nastily. Also its damaged drills are starting to repair themselves, though very slowly as are the two plasma cannons, so good on you for noticing temporary ally ewe. If we don’t destroy it here, it may have the capacity to full recover if it digs itself underground and stays there. Also it thankfully can only generate Gekko while above ground.”

“Did you really have to say all of that Blade?” Groused out Jack Wolf as six Gekko appeared from out of nowhere, slowly forming from the legs up and he was immediately on them.

“Yes, we have temporary allies we’re going to kill afterwards after all.” Wow, that wasn’t even subtle on Blade’s part… or was it on purpose? Hard to tell because it sounded like. “You’re death will be a beautiful one Doggy Messiah, we’ll be sure of it!”

Oh my gods and goddesses… REALLY?!

We kept our guns focused on the large machine as we backed away from it and that’s when a gekko, an entire one, was thrown at it and the Excelsus easily slashed it apart with an outwards scissoring swipe of its front energy blades.

Dolly turned us to see Fou with an excited growl coming from him as he looked at the Excelsus, he howled loudly.

Yeah, this was likely right up Fou’s ally, he enjoys fighting too much to ignore that thing. I was just quite tired of all this chaos and it didn’t help that when Fou’s howl brought a ton of NPs down on us, also enemy EPs were rushing the combat area while trying to draw the incoming zombie’s ire. They were specifically targeting the zombies, so we were leaving them to it, we didn’t have the numbers and we couldn’t really take any losses.

There were very few Asssassin Caerbannog APs around showing up to assist us, but they were mostly sticking with us in a support manner, we were definitely outnumbered, outgunned and on the smaller side of things here. At least everything wasn’t focused on killing us as a mostly three way war started in the general area of the forest that was quickly getting leveled by everything in it going nuts. In fact the forest was almost entirely flattened thanks to all the fighting and the environmental damage was spreading to the jungle surroundings.

“Guys, focus on the bigger problem and while defending ourselves from the smaller ones where necessary. We do have some Caerbannog assistance.” I called out and received back five affirmatives, as we started focusing on the chaos around us for a bit to fight of the enemy before turning twelve streams of shots onto the largest machine around doing minimal damage, but it was still damage.

“We’re going to chip damage this things main body to death with a million paper cuts aren’t we?” One of the Commandramon commented dryly, considering how little damage we were doing to it overall. “Also we are definitely not approaching that thing from the front any closer than we already are if it can move its arms that fast.”

The guy had a good point, a reason why is I watched as an NP get stabbed by the mantis like glowing arm blade and immediately turn into a zombie with a requisite scorched hole in it from the energy. Did not want that to happen to my Commandramon friends.

Leg flamethrowers, blazingly fast energy blade arms and more… seriously, what is my life that I’m not yet dead from all of this insanity? At least it didn’t have fast repairing systems or it would be functionally impossible to take down.

-Nearby the chaotic battle, Dormarch-

Yeah, that… I don’t know how anyone would want to go near that thing after seeing it zombie something on contact and that was just with the energy blades. I’m not sure touching the rest of it was safe without a buffer either.

I at least saw mom among the Commandramon, but it felt like Dolly was piloting that armor… at least it was visibly different from the rest and not hard to track.

“Um… excuse me…” I freaked out and jumped, bashing my head against a tree branch and was caught from falling to the ground by a pair of gently paws that pulled me into a hug. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”

It was that odd winged Caerbannog I saw on the way here, in fact the candy ponies and little green gummy bear like gators were also really odd.

“That’s… okay… you scared me more than that hurt.” You’d be scared too if a cute giant bipedal angelic bunny snuck up on you. I rubbed at my head with a paw, oddly my blue scarf felt like it absorbed most of the force of the impact for me. So that’s how a Defense Scarf works. “What did you need? It’s kind of dangerous for you to be around here.”

“Oh I know, but um… wow that is getting really violent… anyway, I came to warn you about the thing called an Eater slowly destroying everything. If you see a black and white checkered thing that looks like a cephalopod or gastropods, don’t touch it or go near it. It doesn’t matter what you are, it will eat you, it can even eat biologicals from what I’ve been told and digital critters like you have seen these things before.” Well that was some news to be getting from a beautiful pink haired bunny that was likely born of an assassination program… I wonder if she was the femme fatale setting of Assassin Caerbannog. “Oh, where are my manners, I’m Cuddlestare.exe. I was born and come from within Dodo’s head.”

“Wha…?” That was more confusing to hear than anything. In any case I told Pom to ask the Commandramon about what an ‘Eater’ was and how bad were they on a scale of one to ten.

-In Mare Melum proper, Castle Alexander, Throne Room, Ocellus-

In the distance across the city a large thing rose up from the ground and was clearly visible from Castle Alexander on the other side of the city in the warped farmlands region.

“Okay, so… that is a problem…” A large two legged, one red eyed robot reared up out of the shrine region on the other side of the city with what looked like featherless wings and a large whipping tail. It looked like a wyvern? At least it wasn’t yellow, but it was firing on us. “Can someone tell me if Alexander will be capable of doing that heavenly judgement thing soon? We got incoming missiles fired by what looks like a huge enemy Gekko.”

“We’ve got it, switching to the anti-air fire mode.” One of the Commandramon said as two of the towers on Castle Alexander, from what I was seeing on a screen, switched away from artillery and started firing tons of smaller projectiles at the incoming missiles that blew up before they could reach us. The explosions toppled a few tree infested buildings. “It’s not going to be able to get any missiles by us! Though we kind of need to be in artillery mode to protect our ground forces from the numerous problems around Castle Alexander.”

“Negative on the Alexander’s special attack little miss, we don’t have the power for it. We can enter walking combat mode though and fight with its paws while keeping the towers active if we have to for a limited time. That’s not something I’d recommend though.” That was Cid Highwind, nice to know we had some capability of taking Castle Alexander on the offensive instead of just being a massive stone turtle. “We’re still not running a fully repaired and fully powered ship here, I would love to see what this thing is like in it’s prime though… and flying!”

The Six Harmony Programs would at least be taking care of the underground territories to the best of their abilities. Though we were worried about the Eater running around down there, especially Sami. Nice to know the power of friendship was somewhat infectious.

“Ocellus why is an injured Shanty fighting out here without a headset?” Jeanne asked and I responded.

“That’s a water clone of Shanty, it’s kind of autonomous. Shanty can only make one though, she can make two clones while actively in a fight herself. She has no idea what it’s doing aside from helping.

“If it be doing what I be wanting it to do, then it will be doing that as long as it doesn’t be getting hit too hard. Learned how to finally be making a fully working clone from watching Quetal enough.” Shanty stated from beside me as she tapped her headset. “Smolder you might want to be looking out to your left.”

“I see it!” Smolder responded and an EP was blown apart by the resulting fireball on one of the screens. Our mine field just couldn’t cycle explosives fast enough for all the enemies sieging our surroundings, but our territories were still holding strong. The bipedal machine that started launching missiles at us was a new wrinkle, but we were still okay. “That underground team better finish off the problem fast, I’d rather just deal with the EPs than all of these Nopes and Yellow Zombies.”

“I’d rather we not deal with the Eaters presence getting worse, but it obviously will, then you’ll really start to see some horrible stuff Smolder.” After that the battle continued as normal with Sami, currently as Hi-Commandramon, firing a whole slew of grenades with her ‘Stampede XM’ attack that cleared a huge swath of the field as if a stampede of animals just flattened everything. “Eaters are considered eldritch for a reason, even if they aren’t necessarily supposed to be monsters.”

-Somewhere in the underground region of Mare Melum, Program Pony Gaiden, Purpsmart.exe-

“Okay, why am I a lavender and dark blue highlighted feathered raptor?” I said as I transmitted from Dodo to the coordinates that Pinkpie.exe gave me after Flarity.exe disappeared and after a bright light I popped out in a carnivorous ground bird’s body. The coordinates were different the last two times, but the location code was the same random string of weirdness Pinkpie.exe called out. So that’s why I waited to see what’s going on. “Why is Flarity.exe a marshmallow tiger? Why is Applelove.exe a muscular blue cow? Where is Cuddlestare.exe? I thought she was the first one to come here!”

“I’m a cougar darling… oh darn you Pinkpie.exe I just realized the pun with my current species after what I just said, I’m the same age as you darn it!” Stated the marshmallow cougar angrily.

The snickering taffy pony grinned weakly and leaned away from the marshmallow cougar’s candy cane claws, which were as tough as titanium with the way they were coded, with large globules of candy syrup dripping off of her head in fright.

“In order and for most of those, we’re just working with what we have Purpsmart! It was either this blade horned raptor or a uniceratops… which would you have preferred? Cuddlestare is busy with warning our other friends down here about the Eaters.” Pinkpie stated. “Also we just took a territory that had strong raptor data in it and the PLANT that formed was already set for intelligent raptors.”

“Don’t you mean Eater?” Applelove.exe stated.

“Nope, look over that way!” There were three black and white checkered whelks floating around consuming all the code within the general area of themselves, the only thing they weren’t consuming entirely was the ground, but they did leave patches of foggy glitches in their wake.

“Hmm… I do prefer being a raptor, but I’m still upset with you!” I crossed my arms and turned my head away from Pinkpie.exe and huffed, while glancing at the horrifying Eaters gnawing their way through the coding at an ever exponentially increasing pace. “Also, maybe you should have done Rainbow.exe first, she could be going a little stir crazy and leaving her alone in Dodo’s head might have consequences we won’t want to deal with later.”

“Like leaving those Eater things to run amuck and multiply like they currently are?” Applelove pointed out, at least they weren’t coming in our direction and apparently Pinkpie had built up a lot of territory. The other taffy ponies with the ‘exe’ markings on their flanks were hitting the eaters with jawbreaker cannonballs, but not doing much to the eaters aside from minimal damage. Those Eater things looked to be stupidly tough and they were quite alien even to our odd existences as harmony based entities in the form of programs.

There were now seven Eaters out there eating everything. Make that eight… yeah, the taffy Ponies could barely deal with one let alone more and the cannonballs they were firing weren’t exactly made of cotton candy fluff like Pinkpie’s hair.

“Fair.” Pinkpie.exe and Flarity.exe stated flatly. Don’t know if that was about the Eaters or Rainbow.exe.

Knowing what Rainbow.exe was like, sure she was loyal to a fault, but if we left her alone for too long… I shudder to think what she’ll do. She was denser and nuttier than the fruitcake we were originally going to use, before Dodo came up with the highly carbonize high velocity bread loaves himself as a viable projectile alternative for combat. The highly carbonized bread loaves were faster to produce than the fruitcake bricks and almost efficiently the same in damage potential, it’s just that the carbonized bread loaves couldn’t be used as building material afterwards.

417. Naga May Die Pt. 2.

-Moon Cell realm, Midgar, underground, outside the mysterious facility, Canard-
‘
The three Zealot Riders on Skein Flyers blasted the incoming Shriekers, blowing them into chunks or shooting their wings out while they were over water. The Shriekers had very weak wings, but the rest of them was purely dangerous and somewhat tough to make up for it, they’d probably be more dangerous on land rather than appearing over water.

“How’s the progress on the skiff Sami?” I looked up and was watching the energy blades slowly progressing their way through the doors of the facility. I could see where Pom had come from, but not where she was going. These visors weren’t like the mask of Drake Ducaine, but they were fairly good gear.

“It’s coming along and I can’t go any faster Canard, at least we know Pom’s alive and they are working on their exit strategy. We’re the finish line, so I need to keep working on getting this thing airborne again.” Sami had the two halves at least back together, even if it was ugly with how it looked, we just needed it working. She was currently working on the damaged front right engine. “What do you think caused that massive explosion earlier?”

“Nothing good for our enemies hopefully and that was likely Pom, things tend to get weird around her.” There was a trickle of strange glowing liquid coming out of facility and was dripping into the water further down from us, my instincts were screaming to never touch that stuff. “If you see a bluish green liquid, don’t touch it, there’s some over there and it doesn’t look good.”

“Can you get a scan of it Canard? It might be important to know what that stuff is for later.” Nodding to Jeanne, I made my way over to the stuff leaking from the building and started to scan it with the Digivice.

-Somewhere inside the facility, Pom-

I fired several Thousand Spears from my right leg and the jets blew the flying drones out of the air as Dolly dealt with the crawlers on the walls and floor, none were thankfully on the ceiling at the moment.

As I was about to claw apart a crawler with my right hoof, I froze when one of the walls suddenly cracked destructively.

Dodging a blast of lightning from the crawler I was going to attack, I quickly leapt up to grab Dolly out of the air and kicked off the wall and entered a quick Dancing Flame state to just start running and jumping away from the drones and crawlers, while avoiding them entirely.

The wall behind us was blown open by a roaring Behemoth that tore into the crawling robots we left behind with its horns. I was quickly getting us out of sight and heading towards part of the facility that weren’t on the visors map until we got close enough to spot anyone else wearing a visor.

“Do you think those things ever stop being destructive?” Dolly asked that and she had seen what the junkyard we ended up in looked like.

Obviously there was more to the place where the Behemoths had been contained, as in they sent sweepers in to fight the behemoths for testing or had thrown unruly prisoners to them considering the proximity to the prison cells. This realm was representing a world that had existed at one point and horrible things definitely went down in Midgar, especially if such a place like this existed.

-Continue battle, Shanty’s Irregulars vs. Triple Threat Naga Cruel, Crazy and Elise the Coward-

Shanty had figured out early on that they had to destroy the knives as much as the snakes as a snake could suddenly become a knife or a knife could become a snake at any time. There was also the fact that the three naga were annoyingly fast when it came to slithering along bars and poles that their bodies practically hugged in an oddly affectionate way, it was hard to attack them because if you could climb up to them they could immediately get far way before you could hit them close up.

So Shanty was focusing primarily on slicing the knives and snakes up wherever they were, she was not leaving any of the unusual knives on the ground to surprise them later.

Among those present, Krosserdog, Snake and Shine were the ones that were able to throw or shoot projectiles. Shanty and Peppercat were out of luck in dealing with the naga directly unless they tried to come down after them personally.

Shanty didn’t feel particularly safe getting encased in stone that high up, it’s already happened once and she didn’t know how long it would take her to get out if she was encased again. There was not nearly enough time for her to do so in the air falling from high up, so she was sticking to wiping out the hundreds of transforming knives all three naga could throw out in such a short amount of time.

Peppercat ran to one of the poles that one of the Naga was on with an electrified claw.

Elise simply, uncoiled and stretched her snaking arm out and pulled herself away to a different pole to wrap around, one that was fairly far away from the one Peppercat just electrified before the bot could even hurt her.

Elise launched knives at Snake upon spotting him, an imaginary red exclamation mark appeared above her head before she did so. Snake quickly leapt backwards and chucked enough exploding darts to destroy the incoming knives and Elise slithered higher up the pole she was on and was trying to avoid a direct confrontation.

Crazy stayed up and out of the way on a horizontal bar trying to gorgon gaze Shine while giggling like a maniac when she saw the shadowy gourd scurrying away from her cones light that her sharp gaze created in the dark room. Crazy was also still randomly flailing knives and snakes like no tomorrow in a chaotic mess, she wasn’t afraid of getting in an up close confrontation, her real passion was making chaos.

Cruel was the most focused one of the three naga and was actively trying to take out at least Krosserdog as a major threat to the three of the naga attacking the intruders. She was having problems doing any damage to Krosserdog with Shanty’s and Peppercat’s timely interference.

Running to the side to avoid redirected knives while shooting them out of the air, Krosserdog wasn’t having any problems with his aim. His eyes could track all three naga as they flipped, grappled and shifted about up, down and across the structures all around the room.

The problem was that Krosserdog just couldn’t actually hit any of the naga while trying to fire as often as his weapons could cycle more ammunition. As soon as Krosserdog fired a shot that would hit one of the three naga they would always do something avoid taking a hit. Crazy would somehow preternaturally block his shots by randomly freezing a knife or a snake in the air in the path of the given shot as he fires it or get lucky with throwing knives into the path of them when the shots are aimed at the other two. Cruel would somehow deflect Krosserdog's shots off a knife towards her enemies or away from her allies before throwing the freshly summoned weapon. As for Elise the Coward… she simply dodged or moved often enough that hitting her was a problem as the most mobile of the three, whereas Crazy was currently staying mostly in one place yet adding the most chaos to the battle.

“Ah?!” The light cone of a gorgon gaze attack from Crazy caught Shanty unaware and she and her cane scythe were engulfed in stone after having just taken down a Search Snake leaping for her fangs ready to bite down, she had been unfortunate be even vaguely facing in the general direction of the naga.

All the naga started attacking the stone statue with a focused barrage of knives, forcing Pepper and Krosser to defend Shanty together.

“Agh… this is nuts, how long can they actually keep this up for?!” Peppercat right arm just got damaged by a Search Snake biting down on it, even if she promptly shocked it off, the damage had already been done.

“How much ammo do I have?” A nearly infinite amount as long as Krosserdog could cycle it, if his arm parts were damage or destroyed then he’d have almost zero ammo.

The stoned over Shanty was shaking the stone encasement enough to have broken it off her muzzle enough to actually breathe in the claustrophobic stone shell and she’d soon be free of the thin layer of rock preventing her from moving.

Shine and Snake hadn’t been idle, but Shine was trying to figure out how to catch the naga by surprise and Snake was trying to get a read on how capable in battle they were when not just throwing stuff around.

Snake had seen several clues of the nagas true capabilities, like the ability to block things with their telekinetically controlled shifting weapons, they were fast enough to react to deflecting shots from Krosserdog and they were also quick enough to dodge the shots. Snake led a really weird life before this when he could honestly say that these were things he’s already seen and dealt with before in a prior life, just not all at once like this...

“Can’t we just leave?” Shine asked. The gourd Pokémon could slide through the shadows easily enough, but the problem was actually getting up to the naga as she couldn’t fit into shadows with a smaller profile than her very well. Basically if a pole was shadowed over she wouldn’t be able to swim through the shadows to get up at them snaking around in the forest of metal bars and poles. Maybe the metal beams criss crossing randomly throughout the room, but getting to those would require her exposing herself to attacks.

“Can’t, already checked, they got us trapped in here with them and I think I’m losing concentration on making sure my butt cheeks don’t make clapping noises while I’m sneaking around.” A knife slammed into a cardboard box the voice came from, but it was another false alarm as the box, flipped over revealing to not have Snake in it and just the Search Snake that was thrown in the form of a knife.

“How does he keep…” Cruel was about to ask when Crazy took a powerful kick to the face from Snake swinging down at her from above on a rope dart. “That makes even less sense, I definitely heard his voice from below us a second ago!”

Crazy didn’t tumble to the floor instead her tail lashed out and grappled onto a pole and swung around it expertly, before she flung herself directly at Snake trying to keep his momentum to swing away and toss out another rope dart.

“Die-die-die-die-die!” Crazy shouted while pulling out two knives as she shot towards snake with a wild grin on her face.

Snake pulled out a single knife and started to deflect her flurry of blows one handed as he tossed out another rope dart to swing even further away before Crazy could ride him into the ground while he was falling.

Crazy wasn’t letting him go that easily and threw a knife that tore through the rope with her left hand, then extended that arm to grapple a pole and swing at him while attacking even more ferociously with a knife in her right.

“While the berserker is busy with rabbit season, I’ll show you how dangerous we really are!” With back flip showing off her long serpent body and tail, Cruel landed on the floor and then pulled two knives much like Crazy did, but instead of wielding them with wild abandon she shot towards Peppercat and Krosserdog while deflecting every shot Krosserdog fired at her. She was wielding the knives like more refined instruments and incredible expertise. “Coward you better not get into trouble without me for the next minute or so, because so help me!”

“I won’t…” Whimpered Elise who shied away from the implied threat that would never be enacted on her and continued to throw out knives and Search Snakes. This was in support of either Crazy who was making sure to not lose sight of her target with a rabid aggression or Cruel who was a better more meticulous forward fighter, while Elise herself made sure to be on the lookout for Shine.

Closing in on Peppercat with a wicked grin, Cruel started to zigzag as she slithered forward with incredible speed while deflecting or dodging shots from Krosserdog.

Peppercat lunged forward with a right hook covered in energy and missed as a smiling Cruel interposed Peppercat between her and Krosserdog, the red cat digital robot followed with a leftward uppercut and a blast of electricity.

Cruel popped backwards in the air and her left arm extended upwards, then swung downwards to jam a knife into the top of Peppercats left knee and quickly released it before the shocking plug cat could tag her with an electrical reprisal.

“Yearrhghggh!” Peppercat at least let off a blast of electricity to destroy the knife, but she was not happy with the damage she just took.

“How delectable, the robot can feel pain.” Cruel stated softly with a smile as she swiftly dodged and deflected several shots at her from Krosserdog who moved off to the side to not accidentally hit Peppercat.

Cruel seemed to sway back and forth almost randomly, it was far more precise movement than one would expect because of the initial impression anyone would get from knowing Crazy for thirty seconds.

Cruel tried to stretch her right arm out to slash the knife held in her right claw for Peppercat’s chest.

The cat robot flopped backwards due to the knee injury and fired a short range blast of electricity from her left claw that was swiftly avoided by the naga’s retracting limb.

Continuing to deflect shots from Krosserdog with the knife in her right claw, Cruel suddenly changed target from attacking the prone Peppercat to going after Shanty was almost free of her stone imprisonment.

The rest of the cracked stone across Shanty’s body shattered as Cruel got close and Shanty had to lean back to avoid taking a knife through the side of her ribs.

Shanty returned the favor with a horizontal scythe swing at Cruel, forcing the naga to slither backwards while continuing to deflect shots from Krosserdog that kept at least one of her arms busy.

Looking like she was about to lunge, Cruel then launched her left arm for Peppercat forcing her to roll out of the way and then she whipped it forward for Shanty.

Deflecting the blow upward Shanty charged forward under the arm, only for Cruel to shift her hips harshly, this made Shanty take a harsh slap across the right side of her chest by the naga’s tail whipping into her with a decent crushing force.

It certainly cracked a few bones in Shanty’s chest making it slightly hard to breathe as the goat was knocked down. Shanty was about to get up when she turned her head away from a third Gorgon Gaze that intended to immediately immobilize her again, after that last injury it would take longer to get free and this fight had not started off well for the goat.

Luckily she had avoided seeing or looking in the general direction of the cone of light produced by Cruel this time.

Peppercat launched at Cruel from behind silently or as silently as she could after moving into position on all four limbs, her knee apparently being too damaged to even actually walk upright.

Turning to block the next two shots from Krosserdog with her left knife, she swung out and cut a rent into Peppercat’s chest.

Peppercat managed to tag Cruel with her electrical claw blast before she was knocked away.

“Gah, you little… at least it felt nostalgic, exactly like I was being struck by lightning from-AGH!” Cruel was a bit more shocked than actually seriously hurt, but the stunning effect did last long enough to let a shot from Krosserdog go through left side of Cruel’s hood at an angle puncturing a hole in her flesh before she could fully evade the shot.

The next shot didn’t touch her as Cruel just got even more focused on what she was doing and that was making these three feel some glorious pain.

Shanty followed up by letting loose a series of slashes that Cruel was hard pressed to deflect as cutting arcs came flying at her from the cane scythe in Shanty’s left hoof and her right hoof was slashing out as well as she continued to press Cruel.

Seeing a shift in Cruel’s hips, Shanty dodge the whipping tail, only she wasn’t the main target of the attack as the tail extended as it continued its swing. Krosserdog didn’t see the extending body part that struck with a painful whip like crack to the chest that sent him flying into a wall of the room.

Cruel locked a knife with Shanty’s scythe and threw a Search Snake directly at the face of a leaping Peppercat, almost without looking, knocking Pepper down with a snake biting her left shoulder.

Peppercat quickly electrified her whole body to wipe the Search Snake from existence and she rolled onto her claws and good leg while her tail whipped about angrily, one could hear an angry feline growl coming from the red robot.

“Something just be feeling entirely off about this entire fight… where be the powerful abilities that servants are being known for?” So far it was just thrown knives that can transform into snakes on a whim, stone encasing, stretching arms and a good level of brawling ability, yet none of those seemed particularly special to Shanty for the servant they were fighting.

There were three identical servants with different expressions on their faces, Shanty was trying to puzzle out what was up with their being three of them as she clashed with the one that seemed to like the evil team leader of the group.

The first servant they faced was Rider Totsugeki, she could summon sea creatures and huge serpent monster and she was classed rider. Shanty didn’t know how she ended up with ability to summon her own dolphin, but she thanked the servant for apparently putting some wind in her sails with a gift like that.

The second servant had a sword that cut through most material like it was hot melted butter or didn’t exist in the first place, was a cyborg and had a canine companion mind to support his own, he had insane amounts of strength and high resilience to most attacks… for as long as he had a sword and he was classed Saber so it made plenty of sense that most of his power was in his sword and weapons.

Those two were fairly unique in how dangerous they had been outright, Pom couldn't face the second one on one and survive without some planning involved.

This third one was puzzling Shanty fiercely, as their abilities were all over the place and the servant obviously had three identical bodies that weren’t cheap magical clones that she could produce at a major cost of her becoming dehydrated or using a lot of water. Injuring one didn’t injure another so they didn’t share feelings of pain.

Shanty would say berserker for at least the body with a crazy giggle or assassin for the one she was fighting, but the one staying out of the action didn’t seem to have much of a classification.

The Search Snakes and part time summoned knives were easily destroyed even if they could be redirected after being thrown to go anywhere as if a unicorn was around. To avoid the gorgon gaze you just don’t look into the cone of light which was a problem for Shanty’s wide bar eyes and she recognized the issues of being unable to fight or breathe after the first two times. The stretching limbs was unusual, but again it didn’t seem to be the most special thing about the grab bag of abilities Shanty and the others were fighting against. All of that was part of the overall issue Shanty was having with this fight, this servant seemed like they were in three places at once and they were all effectively fighting at different levels of aggression, so controlling three bodies wasn’t this servant’s special ability. They all had the same capabilities yet wielded them in completely different ways at times.

The naga Shanty was fighting for example seemed particularly skilled in combat and knew how to deal with multiple opponents, even made a comment about enjoying the suffering of others. The naga after Snake was wild, crazy, frenzied even in how she sought to take down the friendly servant hidden as one of the Assassin Caerbannog, she seemed to care very little if she was injured and seems to enjoy personal pain as much as causing pain to others.

The odd one out was the third one, who was supporting the other two and not trying to fight as much, but she was the fastest and staying well away while focusing on Shine and keeping her distracted from being unable to help. Yes, she was helping the other two, but something seemed off about her, her movements were free flowing and her personality was an odd form of constantly upset.

Peppercat was fighting on spite more than anything at this point as she took another damaging knife strike across her forehead while managing to zap the naga sapping her of her strength further. Krosserdog continued to try and help from a bit further away in range, but the naga had more time to deflect the shots in a direction she wanted, which was generally in the direction of her enemies.

The naga the digi-bots and Shanty were fighting was really quite good at keeping up with three of them at once. If they were all capable of such feats, then why were the other naga facing only one opponent each?

“Are you even paying attention?” Asked Cruel as she swiped at Shanty with a leftwards knife swing, after deflecting a shot that grazes the goat’s right cheek with her right knife.

Shanty narrowed her eyes and shot forward, her right hoof lashed out twice deflecting the knives aimed for her jugular and kidney, then slashed the scythe across Cruel’s throat.

Choking on her injury Cruel flopped over grinning as she died, much to Shanty’s confusion that the soul didn’t immediately exit the body or eject upon the servants defeat.

“Come back to life… resurrection!” It was still a part of Elise’s soul and she couldn’t resist the need to resurrect that part of herself, even if it was still going to be fully under Moon Cell’s control when she did so as she couldn’t separate Moon Cell’s hold on Cruel or partial hold on Crazy.

Cruel and Crazy had silently worked together to separate Elise’s primary personality from Moon Cell’s complete hold, but they still couldn’t free the rest of their single solitary soul any further from Moon Cell's machinations.

Given Crazy was busy, Elise the main personality of the three was forced to resurrect Cruel and she couldn’t even resist doing this even if she sorely wanted to.

Shanty took a glancing slice across her right shoulder as Cruel immediately popped back to life from where she fell. When the goat retaliated it was mostly just turned into deflecting several knife slices and summoned snake attacks from her opponent as she backed off and took another glancing blow in cutting into her left side.

That’s when Shanty fully realized what the real and true problem of this servant was going to be. A servant that wouldn’t easily just die like that and could fend them off endlessly to wear them all down. That and Cruel likely took the neck blow on purpose just to give Shanty a bleeding injury with a surprise attack.

“I should be kicking this up a notch then.” Shanty stated as she pulled out a canteen and wrapped a bubble of water around herself to create a bounding bubble, which was good as Cruel almost knocked Peppercat into the path of one of Krosserdog’s shots and then turned to use her gorgon gaze ability.

The cone of light struck the bubble and then the light veered entirely around Shanty without touching her or encasing her in stone. Shanty smirked at Cruel who narrowed her eyes and frowned.

“Crazy stop playing around and being an idiot, Coward get the lead out of your tail and start spewing as many Search Snakes or knives as you can. I’m not losing to these guys just because you two nimrods couldn’t step up and actually put up a fight!” Cruel called out and both the other naga responded. "We all have the same general capabilities, so we should be trouncing their asses!"

Crazy responded by speeding up and becoming a bit more ravenous in chasing after Snake who was constantly using rope darts, exploding knives and holy hand grenades to keep Crazy off of himself... this was at least up to the point he was even caught in one of the holy hand grenade blasts when Crazy caught it with a stretching snaking arm and then rushed him down while holding onto it with a bright insane smile. She went up in a bright flash and the sound of a chorus going 'hallelujah' and it hit Snake as well.

“Come back to pain and suffering, resurrection!” Cruel stated as she sent Search Snake into the water bubble Shanty formed and they were immediately crushed in the water before they could even reach Shanty.

“Keeheehee~!” Crazy quickly reappeared smiling as insanely as ever her body reforming out the air despite having been completely obliterated in a holy blast of flames a second ago.

Shanty bounded forward and created a huge slashing blade shaped out of the water to swipe at the naga. Cruel retreated by stretching an arm out and grappling her way up to a horizontal bar high up above herself, she swiftly swirled around it quickly and scrutinized Shanty.

Crazy started throwing out Search Snakes and knives randomly that went everywhere, nothing new there, but they seemed more targeted to ambush attacks now. While the Search Snakes were easily dealt with, they were using up time and energy, both which favored the naga who could seemingly throw out an infinite amount of them.

The naga did in fact have a hard limit of just how many Search Snake they could summon t once, but they couldn't reach it fast enough to matter with how quickly they were being wiped out.

Snake easily took the worst of the kamikaze attack Crazy did against him and was now trying to weakly get up after being caught in the blast of his own explosives.

Coward does exactly as Cruel wanted by flailing knives and snakes everywhere from above as she slithered across the vertical and horizontal poles and beams of metal, while trying to track or find Shine using the light the searching snakes started generating from their foreheads and eyes.

Shine couldn’t really use pain split on digi-bots or the allied servant Snake could she? She quickly retreated from dealing with the one called Coward by diving into the shadows and towards Shanty to help her with the bleeding shoulder as the bubble started to disturbingly turn slightly red.

It was technically five to three, not counting the Search Snakes, but Shanty and her friends were still losing this quite badly.

Shine popped up next to Shanty and tossed a Sitrus Berry into the bubble before quickly diving back down into the shadows to avoid being attacked by a purple glowing knife that dug itself into metal up to halfway up the hilt.

Shanty swiftly drew the berry into her mouth using the surrounding water and used it to heal her recent injuries as she fended off the Search Snakes that dove into her bubble to attack her. She bounded up in the air and lashed out at Cruel who dodged and threw a knife charged with energy that deeply pierced into the bubble of water at such a high speed that Shanty barely avoided it actually hitting her.

Several tendrils of water reached out and grabbed the various surrounding poles, Shanty quickly started to give chase to Cruel and tried to figure out how to deal with all three of the naga if they could just revive themselves endlessly. It obviously required taking them all out at the same time, but to even do that they needed to be gathered up… a change in opponent was in order.

Shanty instead of chasing the retreating form of Cruel who continued to throw charged knives that she could barely deflect or push away from hitting her even with the water bubble’s protection, she instead chose to target the one called Coward.

Upon doing that Cruel changed targets as well and while lunging to the side to avoid shots from Krosserdog, she flung a high speed charged knife at Peppercat who barely defended herself with her left claw blasting it out of the air with a quick pulse of lightning. She ignored Shanty going after Coward entirely and focused on Peppercat while deflecting another shot from Krosserdog.

“This isn’t working!” Krosserdog shouted and blasted a charge knife out of the air as it came for him. It had been within something like a millimeter of hitting the barrel of his right rifle, but he managed to shoot it in time.

“You think!” Peppercat stated as she tried to crawl back on three limbs as she blasted the Search Snakes that came at her with her left claw. “My damage is getting really severe here, to think I recently just fully healed from battle!”

“Even if I could take her down or get another shot on her, the others will just revive her!” Krosserdog stated as he made his way over to Peppercat and helped lift the red cat robot up while backing away from the numerous snakes now coming at them while firing his left arm rifle into the swarm, Peppercat assisted with blasts from her left claw and some from her damaged right.

Speaking of snakes, Snake was roughed up by the explosion and fending off the Search Snakes really was eating into time they could be using to deal with the naga themselves. They were all dangerous, even the one that seemed to be upset that she was in this situation of having to help the other two naga in battle.

Snake just fell back on some good old close quarters combat to deal with the number of incoming snakes as Crazy was now focusing on tracking Shine after having injured Snake badly enough that he wasn’t as much to worry about.

It was a little insulting, but Snake needed some time and possibly a Search Snake to eat to get some strength back into him… there was just too many Search Snakes slithering about to single one out for some good eating at the moment.

Coward, or Elise to those who knew her, was fleeing from Shanty, quite successfully too as the goat tried to continuously attack her with the bubble of water and failed to get close. The charged knives that Elise threw had gotten dangerously close to hitting Shanty in the side of her neck or one her hind legs, but they weren't being aimed lethally surprisingly enough concerning Cruel's attempt to take out one of Shanty's eyes.

Just because Elise was afraid didn’t mean she wasn’t as capable as the other two and Shanty recognized that the other two didn’t seem to be worried about Elise in the slightest in her attempts to get them to clump up together was not going to work. So she changed targets to Crazy who seemed to be the most aggressive and chaotic of the three deadly naga.

The three naga had worn down Snake, Peppercat and Krosserdog somewhat. Shine was having problems finding moments to help out offensively as the Search Snakes were tracking her movements remarkably well for someone who can phase through walls and move in shadows. While Shine could escape, she wouldn't know how to find help soon enough to make a difference and was sticking by her friends to the end.

“Its days like this that made me a hero…” Snake grumbled to himself as he summoned two rope darts to his fuzzy hands and faced off against multiple Search Snakes with a slight crouch. These three naga reminded Snake of a knife wielding vampire lunatic, a psychic powered psychotic mantis and a constantly crying wolf. The naga had most of those abilities combined and it was a little beyond what Snake could handle personally, so sacrificing himself wouldn’t help with the given situation given the naga just might revive him on their side if they were capable of such a thing.

So it was just time for Snake to just survive like old times and figure out the lynchpin or solution to fighting these three as Shanty’s method to gather them together by attacking the fearful one wasn’t going over to well. They could kill all three of them in quick succession, but they needed people in positions to do that at basically the same time and they were already faltering... ‘badly’.

Making up his mind, Snake started to work his way towards Krosserdog and Peppercat. Shanty was seen bounding around above him battling with a berserk Crazy who was shouting ‘die’ a lot and throwing charged knives with extreme force that seemed to be even worse than what Cruel or Coward could, given that they turned on dime instantly to try and hit Shanty at a variety of uncomfortable angles while still moving at high speeds.

Shanty continued to battle with Crazy in the air, Crazy in particular seemed at home moving erratically and attacking the goat at ridiculous angles with wonky limb movements that have them wrapping around poles before stabbing forward or bending at odd angles like there were no bones in the stretching arms at all.

Crazy even once threatened to get herself crushed in Shanty’s water bubble in an attempt to stab the goats heart out while whispering terrifying words as if trying to perform a strange ritual, something about a kali-ma. This really spooked Shanty somewhat as personally being in pain didn't stop Crazy at all, it was actually a fairly respectable trait of the sanity challenged one.

As the four friends with Shanty gathered to present a defensives front, they really needed some help to turn things around.

They were being completely overwhelmed by the constant Search Snakes and telekinetically redirected knives going everywhere. Killing the naga at this point seemed to be a moot point if you couldn’t take all three out at once in quick succession or at the same time and that was a tough prospect for those who were currently available in the fight. The injuries were mounting for Peppercat, Snake and even Krosserdog who just got bit in the left leg by a Search Snaked that he quickly stomped on with his other right metal foot and kept gunning down incoming projectiles or snakes rapidly slithering in on them from all angles.

Krosser silently thought that Metabee would have been far better suited for this given situation with his higher firing rate.

Peppercat and Snake still had the worst injuries overall, but between them Snake still seemed the more used to being on the back foot or fighting while hurt as he didn’t slow down in tearing apart Search Snakes.

Snake even found a moment to stuff the body of one of the attacking snakes into his mouth after tearing its head off with his sharp, very much not like a rabbits, teeth while it was still flailing away at him on one of his knives.

“I haven’t seen this much spam since I visited my old friend at the farm in Valora.” Shine was supportive at the very least and hadn’t been scratched much in all of the fighting since she had various ways to avoid personal injury, she also hadn’t been too helpful in causing injuries to their opponents either. At least Shanty was still relatively healthy after eating a Sitrus Berry and taking on the arguably worst of the naga by herself, it was highly unfortunate that she couldn’t be in three places at once.

Not that Shanty could change the entire course of the fight, it had been going poorly since they found out about the servants ability to basically endlessly ‘resurrect’. That was a fairly major morale killer for them.

-Somewhere nearby in the strange facility, Pom-

Okay lost that Behemoth now… hold on… telemetry data… Shanty is… huh… okay!

“Dolly… I think we found them!” I shouted happily, only to see Dolly breaking a crawler apart with the stone bone, then my mood dipped by quite a lot. “Also, I think they’re fighting Elise…”

“Ugh, finally! Let’s go help them before any more of those horned things from my brother Dante’s nightmares find us again.” Dolly grunted as she pulled the stone bone free, stowed it away in her skateboard strap and ran up to me. “I’m still wondering how we could have run into all four of the remaining ones in the last ten or so minutes… are you… are you ready to do that plan? Mentally I mean.”

“I’ll have to be… since it might help Elise…” I’m putting all my hopes on a ‘maybe’ here, but I wanted my friends to survive even more than that. So I had to swallow my concerns, rescue Shanty and the others… then I had to kill Elise after immediately dealing with her other personalities of 'Cruel' and 'Crazy'.

All the pressure... once again, with feeling!

“How are we getting there Pom and what direction do we need to go?” Dolly asked and in answer I quickly pried up a nearby vent cover using my wool and motioned for her to follow me in. "Right, let's do this thing, Bow-Whacka-Wow!"

Author's Note

Next: ???

Let's see four behemoths, two nasty naga, one sweet forlorn naga, five battered heroes and Pom with Dolly added to the mix...

Arc 1: The Art of Compassion.

Author's Note

So this is my opener for this story, should I drop it or continue into what is going to be a bunch of interesting absurdity? I don't know if I'm going to 'yay' or 'neigh' this personally though.

I'm thinkin post entire arcs all at once or post page by page.

Eh, either way I'm taking this slow and might never finish it. I might never write another story again. I'm chock full of ideas, but time and a few other things need to come first as far as I'm concerned.

Emotional connections.

Pom- Okay with Smolder. Neutral with Shanty. Mild wariness of Ocellus.

Smolder- Great with Ocellus. Good with Pom. Neutral with Shanty.

Ocellus- Great with Smolder. Neutral with Shanty. Mixed feelings about Pom.

Shanty- Neutral with everyone currently.

Arc 1: The Art of Compassion.

"Sometimes sympathy is needed to calm a raging beast, or at the very least get help from one who has let their pain blind them. I didn't exactly see any true monsters when I looked into their eyes, just those who wanted everything hurting as badly as they constantly did."

Arc 3: Machines, Magic, Mayhem and Madness.

Author's Note

Emotions from next page.

Pom- Alert, Whiny, Determined and Panicked.

Shanty- Alert, Determined, Aggressive.

Ocellus- Panicked, Caring.

Smolder- Alert, Angry.

Arc 3: Machines, Magic, Mayhem and Madness.

"Well Po defeated Kai and Pom be resting through it. It be taking a few days for everyone to recover. Oogway be teaching Po how to use the Yen of Yunshu. It didn't exactly do what we wanted though, another valley... and a deadly war. Valley's be being a theme."

Arc Interlude: Tambelon.

"So what happened after the Mechanikat incident?" This changed the mood of the group.

"..." Ocellus was quiet.

"..." Smolder was shivering.

"..." A sob echoed out, coming from one of the group's members. A group that has expanded by quite a bit.

"..." Whimpering could be heard from four puppies.

"I be thinking... that I am being done with the questions for today." The cold tone of Shanty, it was absolutely frigid enough to freeze the very air itself as even Velvet herself shivered from the coldness of it. Reindeer were naturally immune to such chills, but the feeling coming off of the goat was supernatural.

"Can you see the stars mom?" Said a quiet voice again, as Dormarch rocked back and forth while sitting on his own tails. "Are we not shining bright enough?"

"Let's go howl at the moon with our pack afterwards little bro..." The only cheer left in the group, Dolly was a spark that had a great refusal to give up on her positivity, even in times of great stress. Even the personification of the 'winds of fortune' could have only done so much.

There was a sad keening mechanical noise from the living mechanical bird that relaxed next to the goat.

"What measures the soul, the life it led, the life it could lead or ultimately what becomes of it at the end of all things after it has already been through the lives it experiences over the course of many times? I am mostly just a guide in many things." Said the calming voice of Anubis to the therapy group. "Think on this and we'll get to what happened in... Tambelon... the next session. Then comes the greatest question that will need to be answered by at least one of you then... what exactly did Pom do? Many gods are wondering about how one mortal lambkin managed to shake the very foundations of the entire world of Equus and many neighboring realities, we all know that only you would have the answers we seek where we were all but blinded to the very event itself."

"That is being the next session then." Shanty quietly mounted Dodo and rode away on him.

Nobody said anything afterwards, there was a disturbing silence around the dying campfire.

-An excerpt from Anubis's therapy group, three months after the Tambelon incident. On the desk of Twilight Sparkle-